Tuesday tidbits

We are going on a trip this coming Thursday, first to Miami to visit relatives, and from there to Akumal, Mexico for some sun, snorkeling and sand. These days everything is always up in the air, as Covid Nazis can alter everyone’s plans at will. But at this time Mexico requires no PCR test or vaccination documentation, no masks on arrival. To return to the US requires a PCR test, and given that the Moronic variant is said to be running rampant, the country may by then be in lockdown as Joe Biden’s Dark Winter sets in. It’s out of our control, but this is key: If we test “positive” for this fictitious entity, Mexico does not care. We simply extend our vacation. They do not quarantine. Maybe it is time to be looking for housing down there, as the country seems to have escaped the psychopathic insanity, On our trip to Baja a few years ago, I learned to appreciate fresh seafood – I can deal with being stuck on the Mexican coast.

______________________________

I am reading Mask of Sanity by Hervey (yes, “Hervey”) Cleckley (1903-1984), an inquiry into the nature of psychopathy. I did not expect such good writing an potent insight from it. The man was deeply observant.

One of the later chapters (Chapter 34, page 303 of my 1955 third edition) describes a patient of his, an attractive woman in her middle twenties, who had slept with 20 consecutive men, each only once (one or two twice but no more). She was not uninhibited, and knew that she needed to come to grips with her own behavior. She was quite aware it was aberrant. She had no feelings for the men, but she was not a psychopath. Further inquiry by Cleckley formed a new idea of the reason behind her burst of promiscuity. She had a friend, a woman somewhat older, married. The two were attracted to one another, and the patient described their intimate interludes with this older woman as the most pleasurable and satisfying she had ever encountered.

Then the older woman simply ended the affair, moved away, and this was when the patient became promiscuous. She was grieving. Sex with men was an outlet, as the alternative, sex with women, was hard to come by, everyone being closeted, or at least the woman was not in tune with underground networks that surely existed at the time.

Another aspect of her personality that caught my eye … this was in an era in which women were home bound to cook and clean and raise children. She absolutely rebelled at that idea, and realized she could never settle into that life. She regarded it as a prison.

So we have here a woman trapped in an era … like so many, a lesbian who has to stay in the closet, and a feminist who had no outlet for expression of her skills and creativity.

I know that Intelligence was behind both the Civil Rights and Feminist movements, that Gloria Steinem was CIA, and yet have to say I do not care. Blacks needed to find their voice, and women needed to be able to express both their talents and natural sexuality. These movements have freed people up to live more fulfilling lives. Of course, the Intel folks probably had more malevolent ideas, slowing down reproduction, breaking up the nuclear family – that’s always been their thing, that’s why we have Men Are Pigs and AIDS, etc., but there is an upside to their activities. Blacks and women were unchained. That’s ongoing, and not a bad thing.

Cleckley’s book was published in 1941.His insights were prescient.

______________________________

There’s a series now playing on Amazon Prime, American Playboy: The Hugh Hefner Story that screams ZAL! For those unfamiliar, Zal is the concept brought to us by Tyrone that if an event is made into a major motion picture, that event was fake. With American Playboy we are told that a man of limited means in Chicago was in 1953 able to acquire high quality nude photos of the movie icon of the time, Marilyn Monroe. This was the origin of Playboy magazine. That does not happen. What happened is called a “rollout.”

Playboy is now online only. As a teenager in the sixties, I was of course aware of it, my parents having found a copy under my mattress. Later, when I learned to read as well, I would follow Playboy into subjects beyond my grasp, such as civil rights and the anti-Vietnam war movement. Playboy was right in the middle of all of it, controlled opposition for sure. The magazine had a self-image that was contradictory, wanting to normalize pornography while at the same time delivering (pseudo) intellectual content, along with fashion notes, humor and cocktail advice. As I watched the series I now cannot help but note that the people in the Playboy interviews were all those who I now know to be juiced – Malcolm X (fake death), Martin Luther King (fake death), Jimmy Carter, William F. Buckley for instance. On the latter, I ate up the entire Playboy interview in the early 70s, as I was a National Review subscriber and I idolized the man. I still have latent admiration for him (he died in 2008), as my conservative views were then and (after traveling the spectrum) are now in line with his.

National Review once did a take-down of the Playboy empire in one of its issues in the 1970s, concluding that the magazine did nothing more than give men at once what they wanted and what they thought they should want, like using a copy of Tragedy and Hope to hide Mad Magazine.

As I matured, I gave up on pornography, including that of Playboy. My reaction to it was this: Vague and distant airbrushed naked women hold no appeal for me. I need close and personal, and real. A beautiful woman in her early twenties, a centerfold with one foot in a bucket of ice water and sporting a baseball cap and bat who says “I need things that are real in my life” (OK, I made up that whole scene) do not fire me up. I realized that the Playboy centerfolds were classic bimbos, and Hefner a lightweight.

Yesterday at Barnes and Noble I can across a thick coffee table book that had in it all of the lyrics of songs written by Paul McCartney. “Sheesh!” I thought – the man is a total poseur. Did he write the music? Did his twin brother? Far more likely, neither. The man is a walking phony, every day pretending to be something he is not. Lorne Michaels has called him a “fucking modern-day Mozart.” Nah. He’s just another Bezos, Gates, Musk … men who are public actors, fake geniuses, behind whom are people of real talent supplying their achievements.

In the same manner, I have come over the years to regard Hugh Hefner (real death – 2017) as a public actor behind whom was Intel. You don’t just stumble on a very high quality nude photo of Marilyn Monroe in 1953. That was handed over to him as he was selected to lead a project to objectify women, loosen morals, break up the nuclear family, create a generation gap, and slow down the reproductive machine. Maybe that is seen as necessary by the people who control our perceptions. maybe it even needed to happen, or was at least inevitable. If you happen to watch this series, you’ll see that Hefner is portrayed as the beating heart of the enterprise. I doubt it. In later years he could be seen watching baseball games in Los Angeles, three playmates at his side. That, to me, screamed impotence, but to keep the empire alive, Playboy needed a public images of a rabbit-like mogul banging every nude woman who crossed the pages of the magazine. Hefner by that time was used up. I have to wonder if Hefner in the 1950s was shy, insecure, retiring, and surrounded by men and women of greater talent.

The intellectual pretense of Playboy was also off-putting. Hefner in his public appearances and interviews did not come across as much of a genius. His “Playboy philosophy” was cheap justification for the existence of the magazine – but honestly, I never read it. And anyway, he gave up on it before it was finished. Probably best. It was going nowhere. He did not have the salt to see it through.

Every man reading this has had masturbatory fantasies fulfilled by Playboy, but also, hopefully, outgrew them and went on to form mature and fulfilling relationships with partners of substance and quality. To roughly quote Jerry Seinfeld, adults in adult relationships are playing baseball. People reading (or these days viewing online) Playboy are playing Wiffle Ball.

30 thoughts on “Tuesday tidbits”

  1. *I know that Intelligence was behind both the Civil Rights and Feminist movements, that Gloria Steinem was CIA, and yet have to say I do not care. Blacks needed to find their voice, and women needed to be able to express both their talents and natural sexuality. These movements have freed people up to live more fulfilling lives. *

    I’ve had similar thoughts about today’s obviously contrived “identity politics.” No matter the culture or time period, a society’s gender stereotypes and expectations are deliberately manufactured to serve the purposes of the people at the top. In order to stick, they need to have some connection to nature. Men leaving home to gather food and supplies while women stay home with the babies is a pretty natural arrangement, really. For centuries though, and even today, this natural arrangement has justified the delusional belief that men are smarter than women, that they should make all the decisions and women should merely serve and obey, etc. That kind of bullshit enters our psyches care of the psychopaths who mold society to their will, perhaps because the masculine intelligence of Mind is easier to control and subvert than the feminine intelligence of Spirit. (Does that sound kind of woo-woo? I dunno… I don’t think it is.)

    Anyway, in a similar way, it’s quite natural–and is as old as humanity itself–for people to seek balance between their masculine and feminine aspects, their yin and their yang. The politics of LGBTQ and the non-binary movement take this natural impulse and politicize it into self-defeating nonsense. According to society, you can’t achieve and maintain balance, equilibrium and harmony unless society “empowers” you by going out of its way to avoid offending you and hurting your feelings. It’s absurd. But I like to believe some young people–maybe a lot of them–who are currently fooling around with this nonbinary nonsense, worrying about pronouns and whatnot, will ultimately take some kernels of truth from it and leave all the toxic bullshit behind. That’s what I imagine Steve Kelly has done with the hippie movement he grew up in, though that’s obviously for him and not me to say.

    Thanks for the tidbits, Mark.

    Like

    Reply

    1. I think what scares the herdsmen most is the individual creativity in each one of us. If imagination can be suppressed with canned memes there is little time to create one’s own dream, test it out in the field, and modify it as needed. A very famous rock musician once said to me: “Always star in your own movie.” Easy, right? Easier said than done. Social media, identity politics, hierarchies of all variety rob us of that quiet time needed to observe our own internal workings. Until we are able to see ourselves clearly inside and out, this global, culturally-embedded game of “Simon Says” will persist.

      Like

      Reply

  2. I may have posted part of this video before- I know I’ve posted some of this more than once on Facebook. Anyway, this is the whole segment with Lenny Bruce on Playboy After Dark where, to his credit, Hefner keeps his mouth shut and let’s his guest have the floor. Bruce critiques other comics of the day, and I know Mark knows comedians, but at about minute 20, Bruce explains how to sell a new disease and how the AMA cashes in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G1F8m363Uw

    Like

    Reply

    1. That certainly is a weird bit Bruce does. He starts off talking about a bit he did in his act involving a boy who made the news for getting trapped in a well. Bruce says he was satirizing the hypocrisy of people around the nation who criticized a doctor who attended to the boy because the doctor sent the boy’s economically disadvantaged family a bill. Bruce’s points out that working-class people, including the father of the boy, want to get paid for THEIR services when they do THEIR jobs, so why shouldn’t the doctor want to be paid? The punch line, where the doctor treats the boy but then says he has to go back to the well, could have worked if Bruce actually stuck to that point. Instead, he goes on this weird tangent about the AMA and fake flu epidemics that has nothing to do with working-class hypocrisy. When he finally gets to the punch line about sending the boy back to the well, it doesn’t land, and barely even makes sense.

      Has anyone heard him do the boy-in-the-well bit in his stand-up routine? Was it as muddled as it is here, or did Bruce just botch it because he was drunkenly improvising ?

      Like

      Reply

      1. It makes me wonder if this was a deliberate attempt to do something we see in our propaganda all the time now: Blackwash the truth by making it sound like the gibberish of a drunk/drug addict/deranged murderer/Trump-supporter, etc.

        Like

        Reply

      2. I do like comedians, but I’ve never for a second related to Bruce, mostly thinking that it is just time stamp. There are some that just do not reach me, others that so quickly devolve into profanity that I think they lack talent. Bill Hicks was, I’m suspicious, promoted by Intel to question the Kennedy assassination, so that he could die of cancer, leaving in his wake the idea that Intel was killing people who doubted the Warren Commission by mysteriously injecting them with aggressive cancer.

        On the lighter side, I like comedians who tell jokes and enjoy making people laugh. No pretense. Conan O’Brien, Demetri Martin, Kevin Nealon come to mind. Many others left out. Conan is not even standup, but is delightful in his podcast.

        Like

        Reply

        1. Have you ever thought that maybe the vax could be a vehicle of depopulation?

          Hicks was only one man.

          This makes a considerable amount of sense, given the way that the depopulationists faced the same dichotomy as a virus does: how do you kill a sufficient amount of people without alerting them to the danger quickly enough for them to avoid it?

          The vaccines couldn’t inspire an immediate Ebola-like reaction, or no one would permit themselves to be injected. On the other hand, if the vaccines were as harmless as the common cold, they would not serve the depopulationist agenda. That’s why I suspected, from the start, that they would target human fertility in some manner, as it would take years before the adverse effects would be sufficiently recognized by the public.

          However, the evidence being presented by the Bhakdi/Burkhardt pathology results shows a plan that is very nearly as insidious as a fertility-targeted attack. Instead of triggering lethal results among a reasonably small percentage of the population, the !vaxx is designed to reverse the recent advances in life expectancy. This lifespan-reduction approach is also much less disruptive and more efficient than the fertility-targeting approach, because it specifically targets the removal of the least productive and most expensive segment of the population, the elderly.

          Lifespan reduction is also less dangerous to the depopulationists, as it’s easier to explain away a general decline in life expectancy than a massive increase in stillbirths and sterility, and perhaps more importantly, avoids infuriating tens of millions of young men and women in their twenties and thirties who are in their physical prime.

          Last 4 paragraphs belong to Vox Day.

          Like

          Reply

          1. The mRNA injection prompts the body to attack spike proteins. This protein plays an important role in the development of a placenta. There are an unusually large number of miscarriages due to inflammations on the placenta, according to the mainstream media in the Netherlands. These are of course attributed to sars-cov-2.

            Both versions of the TV series Utopia have the scenario that the world’s population has been deliberately poisoned for a long time through the products of the food processing industry and that the noticeable effects of this are attributed to a virus.

            The goal in this series was to be able to force a vaccine on the world population that would keep them infertile for a few generations.

            Like

            Reply

  3. This gent describes what has been written about as a process. What is written about is not a thing. A process of breaking down traditional values…to weaken morality to the point of accepting World Government.

    I think most rational people believe in women’s rights, black rights, etc.

    But as a process we are now at the point where we have, and continue, to promote transexualism, proper “pronouns”, legal action for “misgendering” someone, Drag Queen Story Hour for 4 year olds, and sexual perverts being allowed into opposite bathrooms: ALL FOR EQUAL RIGHTS.

    This woman is beyond disgusting.
    Celebrating an abortion. Nice.

    You get people to celebrate abortions, is it no wonder same trash celebrate global lockdowns? I mean, really!

    Give it a moment’s thought and agree they had to “start somewhere” (Malcom X, Gloria Steinem, MLK, BLM, Antifa, etc.).

    https://www.bitchute.com/video/Ze1iRw280Jy1/

    Like

    Reply

  4. As intel agents go, Hef bothers me less than most… Maybe I’m biased because he showcased so many great cartoonists who were able to do gorgeous, painted full page art.. In an era when most other magazines were shutting out illustration/ cartoons, and becoming bland and modern.

    The No Agenda guys turned up this great cell phone video of a woman confronting a pharmacist about lack of info inserts w the vaccines.. You have to watch it – it’s stunning what the pharmacist says. Poor guy, he must have a guilty conscience to break down like this when put on the spot.

    Pharmacist comes over at 1:45 –
    https://filedn.com/lNcSErof1HQYvaQ3T6q9gBJ/DEC%202021/Pharmacist%20Gets%20Red-Pilled-Full%20Version.mp4#t=0.2

    Like

    Reply

      1. Maybe she has the phone on a resting on a counter or something? The pharmacist seemed so genuine to me, didn’t seem like acting… I’ll have to rewatch it.

        Like

        Reply

    1. At a certain point in time during my life we crossed a line and indecency and in-your-face visual and verbal aggression became acceptable. That stuff is offensive and I don’t think it needs to be brought here.

      Like

      Reply

  7. Random question – people are hotly debating the merits (or lack) of this new “satire” Don’t Look Up by Adam Mckay..

    I’m intrigued, but I know it will just be an elaboration of the satirical themes already written into the media narrative… Ie, the “satire” has already been baked in, by the “reality” scripters. Who are constantly trolling us with their clowns and performers.

    So my question is, what would an actual satire look like? How would one actually satirize things – from a, ahem, more accurate understanding of things…

    Like

    Reply

    1. TimR, my question would be, what’s the difference between “actual” satire and satire “baked in” by the propagandists?

      I’ll get pretentious and quote Nabokov, who looked askance at satire even though everyone thought he was engaging in it. He said, “Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.”

      I think satire, like sarcasm, is cheap. It’s easy. If the propagandists can predict all the arguments against their “reality,” they can manufacture the corresponding satire. Satirists are stuck in consensus reality, making fun of it as powerlessly as dependent children making fun of their parents. Parody is a game where you can move out of the house, creating and inhabiting your own “reality” while you blithely thumb your nose at the object of your parody.

      I’ve gone way beyond what Nabokov actually said, but that’s how I see it.

      Like

      Reply

    2. Also, though I haven’t seen “Don’t Look Up,” it sounds like its “lesson” is that we’re not taking the “reality” of climate change seriously enough. Why are you intrigued? I’m not.

      Like

      Reply

      1. Just to see how it treats newscasters and politicos etc. It would probably be “hate watching” it with disdain or eye rolling, but just intrigues me bc Mckay is so openly rhetorical/ polemical compared to most entertainment. I’m not a fan, just can’t look away from “cultural artifacts” of that sort.

        I’m afraid I’m having trouble getting Nabokovs point and yours above, the distinctions you’re drawing elude me. Though it sounds interesting.

        Just to clarify, I know Mckay the satirist is “stuck in consensus reality” – I was wondering how a satirist who recognizes the stage set would proceed – though I guess answering that would take actually making a movie on those terms..

        Like

        Reply

        1. It’s been a long time since I saw Wag the Dog, but isn’t that the kind of satire you’re talking about?

          It was co-written by David Mamet, who, in my view, is more of a pretentious rabble-rouser than a satirist.

          I think satire is written for audiences that already agree with its “lesson.” McKay wrote his movie for leftists who worry we’re not doing enough about climate change. “Wag the Dog” is aimed at people who already know—to some degree or another—that politics, news, and media are rife with fakery and corruption. People enjoy watching and reading stuff that riffs on what they think they already know, and they like to imagine it could serve as a “lesson” for people who don’t know it… though, of course, those people won’t watch or read it, or will reject it if they do.

          Is that too cynical a definition of satire? It probably is. There can certainly be satire that’s artfully done, and goes beyond its inherently didactic nature. I think of Breaking Bad as a straight-faced satire of all that’s phony and delusional about American culture, and it might be a better example than Wag the Dog of the kind of satire you’re talking about.

          Like

          Reply

          1. Oh, another satire that “recognizes the stage set,” as you put it, is John Frankenheimer’s 1962 version of The Manchurian Candidate. Ever see it? That movie rather bluntly spills the beans about many of the issues we discuss here, including mind control and media fakery. Ever see it?

            Like

            Reply

            1. Yes, a good while back – my recollection would have been that the “mind control” was more cartoony or fanciful, and the whole thing kind of in the nature of fueling “conspiracy candy” fodder (for lack of a better term.) But I’d have to see it again to reassess. I do remember it being well made.

              Wag the Dog, yes… Kind of flirts with “our” perspective, maybe in a simplified way (though that may just be the limitation of time and format, and not being able to open too many cans of worms and still be digestible mass entertainment. Might need a series show to really tackle everything.)

              One interesting bit – it had a scene “synchronistically” predicting Monica Lewinsky and the blue dress etc – this is one of the very few things that has ever seriously provoked my “normie” friends and given them pause. They mulled over that on repeated occasions and couldn’t quite square it with their world view.

              Like

              Reply

            2. I would recommend watching Manchurian again if for no other reason than to listen to everything Angela Lansbury’s character says. The mind control stuff may (or may not) be over-the-top, but Lansbury blows the lid on the whole Cold War psy-op, among other things. It’s naked truth pretending to be satire pretending to be melodramatic thriller, maybe.

              Like

              Reply

              1. I’ll keep an eye out at the library. I love that kind of b&w filmmaking anyway. Just recently watched The Fountainhead for the first time – it’s always a shock how great b&w can be, when you haven’t seen any for a while.

                Like

                Reply

  8. MK-Ultra still taboo here? You see how fear & trauma works the general public. Hells Bells, movies still captivate most of you to this day. WHO makes this happen? The same people that paint the idea as ‘tin foil hat’ material. Red Flag. PS ‘science’ is a cult. Just look at Fauci (Jesuit) Bill freakin’ Nye.

    Like

    Reply

Leave a reply to ScottRC Cancel reply