The Wit of the Staircase

Totalitarian Ambassador

The Germans are absolutely correct. Scientology and other religious cults were fomented by the CIA's MK ULTRA and other covert "brain war" programs to undermine democracy globally, whether their blank-eyed followers realize it or not.

"Not everyone shares Mr. Singer’s enthusiasm. 'Scientology is a totalitarian ideology,' said Berthold Graf von Stauffenberg, the eldest son of Colonel Stauffenberg and a retired West German army general. 'The fact that an avowed Scientologist like Mr. Cruise is supposed to play the victim of a totalitarian regime is purely sick."

'Tom Cruise is not just an actor who is a Scientologist,' Ms. Caberta said. 'He is an ambassador for Scientology. All totalitarian systems have their celebrities to open doors for them'.”

Link: Valkyrie - Tom Cruise - Germany - New York Times.

Above, actor Tom Cruise with the X-ed out Christian cross designed by Aleister Crowley that was later adopted by Crowley pal L. Ron Hubbard for Scientology:

scientology cross crowley - Google Search.

Wigged Out British Twins Make For One Riveting Tale

"The tale of the Gibbons girls is one of sibling rivalry that seemed in danger of turning murderous, featuring a baffling childhood pact of silence that propelled them, via educational exclusion, to become teenage outcasts who responded to dashed literary ambitions and bungled sexual adventures with a life of petty crime that would lead them ultimately to Broadmoor Psychiatirc Hospital.

Jennifer, born 10 minutes after June, imagined her older sister to be cleverer, prettier, more beloved. Jennifer feared she would be left behind. Later, June would write of Jennifer: 'She wants us to be equal. There is a murderous gleam in her eye. Dear lord, I am scared of her. She is not normal ... someone is driving her insane. It is me'.

Anne Treherne, an expert on elective mutes, met the twins and became convinced a game was going on: that by secret eye signals Jennifer was stopping June speaking, controlling her as if she were a robot. The twins spooked her colleagues: moving extremely slowly in perfect time, they seemed inhuman, like 'zombies', drinking cups of tea or taking off their coats in eerie unity. A head teacher even called Jennifer 'evil'...."

Link: 'Have I the strength to kill her?' | Classical and opera | Guardian Unlimited Music.

Twins from Kubrick's The Shining, above.

The Pervert's Guide To Cinema: Hitchcock's "Psycho" And The Staircase

For You From Wit: The Online Mix Tape Generator

Link: Cassette Generator.

Friday Night Special: Wasting Money Around The World

"THE street price of cocaine varies hugely across the world. No surprise that it is cheapest in Colombia, the world's biggest producer of coca: at $2, a gram costs less than a Big Mac. Geography is an obvious price factor. The farther away a country from the main producers in South and Central America, and the more isolated it is, the higher the cost to traffick there. In far-flung New Zealand, a gram costs a wallet-busting $714.30...."

Link: Drugs | Pricing powder | Economist.com.

Beware The Undertow

Fog, like reason, settles on the peeling district.
This is the new money. The new economy.
Where my lover lives. When I left him,
I left books, coats, silverware. Things.
It wasn't charity; it was an impure,
commonplace case of forgetting. (May he find some use

for my low-rent betrayals.) Land ends
with miles of aloe along the Great Highway.
Surfers strip off their suits, half-naked
to the naked sea. The sand's ignored
BEWARE OF THE UNDERTOW signs:
these are the notes of the drowned.

The Sunset, by Randall Mann

Link: The Sunset by Randall Mann.

Via: un regard oblique.

Above, Surfer by Catherine Opie

Not America? Well, It Is

"...when it comes to beating folks up, this country has nearly a million people legally authorized to beat, kidnap at gunpoint (arrest) and kill if deemed necessary, a large portion of which exercise the first two of these rights thousands of times daily. At last count in 2002 America had 14,254 law enforcement agencies employing 675,734 sworn officers and 294,854 civilians. With the "war on terror," heaven only knows how many have been added.

Public protest usually provides a glimpse into this force, and every year we see more smuggled videotapes that somehow seldom make the news. Jumpy footage of ordinary folks beaten with wooden clubs, shocked with Tasers, and riddled with rubber bullets, even while on their knees praying. Elderly protesters of Miami's free trade zone were Maced in the face and dragged across the ground in handcuffs and a female reporter testified she was forced to strip before male cops. People who bother to find and watch these videos on the Internet keep saying the same thing over and over again: 'This is not America.' Unfortunately, it is.(...)"

Link: Joe Bageant: Smirking Allies: Nazi Brown and Kevlar Black.

Via: ::: wood s lot ::: "the fitful tracing of a portal".

New Issue Of The Hatchet: Journal Of Lizzie Borden Studies Online

Link: The Hatchet: Journal of Lizzie Borden Studies.

I Am Vertical

But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them--
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
The the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

--Sylvia Plath

Link: ::: wood s lot ::: "the fitful tracing of a portal".

Wit, Off The Hook

Wit will be back later today. We're in the library just now, studying up......