Never Forget. Remember, Remember...

 

"... the true genius of the plan was THE FEAR... FEAR became the ultimate tool of this government." -- V, V for Vendetta 

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

Under the Republicans, petty tyrants used 9/11/01 and the threat of "terrorism" -- a real thing that existed but that the government-sponsored fear campaign and its lackeys in the media leaned on far too heavily to grease the skids to justify new, increasing power grabs.

Under the Democrats, for the past year-and-a-half up to today, 09/11/21, and likely into the near future, petty tyrants are using "covid" -- a real thing that exists but that the government-sponsored fear campaign and its lackeys in the media lean on far too heavily to grease the skids to justify new, increasing power grabs.

 
While not all the details are the same, how unfortunately prescient the movie "V for Vendetta" was... It takes place in 2020, after an infection was made in a lab, leading to a pandemic, that a national political party generated increasing FEAR around in order to win a divisive election, and upon winning continued to lean more heavily into in order to maintain and enhance control over the population, imposing upon the populace a remedy that resulted in record profits for a pharmaceutical company, while still instituting lockdowns and other increasingly draconian policies based on FEAR in the name of "UNITY".

And while we in the US might not be at the level of tyranny as seen in the movie, add in another similar factor of British-sounding accents, curfews, family members being taken from homes, concentration camps, and more -- and Australia is just about there, revisiting its history and ancestry as a continent-sized prison colony. 

So maybe it's not as far off as we'd like to believe, considering how rapidly Australians made their transition.

The parallels are a little too close for comfort.

Petty tyrants, at any level of government, whether they claim to be so-called "conservatives" or "liberals" (whatever these terms even mean, anymore) should be allowed nary an inch. It's the same old story that repeats itself. The generation and propagation of FEAR is, has been, and will always be, the greatest tool the government can use to get the people to willingly grant them, due to inflated or even outright false pretenses, increasing and permanent control over their choices, their livelihoods -- and their very lives. 

As the slip slopes, the dominoes will continue to fall...

A thousand cuts. The ubiquity of it all numbing us, dumbing us down. They grow increasingly numerous, sharper, and deeper -- all for a virus with up to a 99.99% infection recovery rate, where the vast majority of the infected have a mild to asymptomatic response, where those with sever reactions have an average of four comorbidities, and where the average death age is higher than the average life expectancy. 

According to MedRxiv (pronounced "med-archive"), a free online archive and distribution server for complete but unpublished manuscripts (preprints) in the medical, clinical, and related health sciences, and jointly owned and operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), Yale University and BMJ, "The [Infection Fatality Rate] of COVID-19 in community-dwelling elderly people is lower than previously reported. Very low IFRs were confirmed in the youngest populations." Until people hit their seventies, all age groups have survival rates well over 99%:

• 0-19: 99.9973%
• 20-29: 99.986%
• 30-39: 99.969%
• 40-49: 99.918%
• 50-59: 99.73%
• 60-69: 99.41%
• 70+: 97.6% (non-institutionalized)
• 70+: 94.5%

In spite of this, the narrative of FEAR and impending chaos and looming ubiquitous death must be reinforced, regardless -- note the constantly shifting goal posts and the focus on "cases" as opposed to considering the actual virulence of the infection.

Your "jab" is less and less consequential. Enjoy your forever-jabs!

Covid, now endemic as so many of us always expected it to be, is never going away. If the ongoing narrative regurgitated by the usual suspects in the government, media, and useful idiots in the rank-and-file embeds itself over the long-haul, then these and other power grabs along with the campaign of FEAR continuing into perpetuity is a very real prospect. 

The beatings will continue until morale improves

I don't know about everyone else -- but I know what I'm watching, tonight, on this September 11th.

Tool's 'Fear Inoculum' Released 4,869 Days after their last album, '10,000 Days'

Three major events took place in my life, recently. First, after years of financial sacrifice, we bought our first house. Second, we had our third child, a girl. And third?

The new Tool album, Fear Inoculum, was released. It had been 4,869 Days between the release of Tool's 10,000 Days and their new Fear Inoculum. That's almost 13 and-a-half years... or 160 months... or 116,856 hours... or 7,011,360 minutes... or 420,681,600 seconds, or... nevermind. I think I can speak for all Tool fans when I say that we've been waiting a long time for this...

Notice if you take the way TOOL is written, and fold it over itself,
it creates a syringe ('Inoculum').

First, a Quick Time Warp to the 90s

Going back, I started really discovering my own taste in music in the 6th grade. My first album was the Escape From LA soundtrack I bought with some money I saved from illegally working as a minor, pumping gas at a full service gas station. Escape from LA was an awesomely bad, cheesy action flick I loved, released in 1996 with a solid lineup and absolutely horrific special effects.

Man, they really don't make 'em like they used to... and thank goodness for that.

The soundtrack really struck a chord with me and inspired much of my taste, with other great music by the likes of Gravity Kills, White Zombie, Stabbing Westward, Ministry, Tori Amos, and, of course, Tool. Their track, Sweat, among others, immediately hooked me and away I went. I was already somewhat familiar with Tool's music at the time, having been somewhat scared, but oddly entranced by, their unique, dark, stop-motion music videos from when they'd play on MTV. From there, flipping through one of my video-game magazines, I found one of those thick sheets that listed maybe one or two-hundred different albums, advertised as "PICK *10* CDs, ALL FOR ONLY A PENNY!", with the obligatory explosive graphic behind it that we're all oh-so-familiar with. I excitedly penned in the little square boxes for the ones I wanted, enclosed a corroded penny in the envelope with the list and sent it off, completely not grasping the concept of 'fine print' with my rapidly changing, hormone-rattled, 11-year-old brain. If I remember correctly, my collection of music began at this moment, with the order of Opiate, Undertow, and the new AEnima Tool albums, The Downward Spiral and Pretty Hate Machine by Nine Inch Nails, Antichrist Superstar and Smells Like Children by Marilyn Manson, Astro-Creep: 2000 and Supersexy Swingin' Sounds, by White Zombie, and The Crow movie soundtrack.

Anyway, I remember receiving additional CDs in the mail I never ordered, seemingly for free, keeping some and tossing others. Increasingly larger bills eventually started arriving, which I naturally ignored, and collectors naturally pursued with additional fees, interest, and messages on our answering machine. I remember the story my mom told me about how she blew up at them over the phone for being the dopes who tried collecting money from an 11-year-old child, incapable of entering into any legitimate contract on his own. They stopped calling, and I still had ten cool, new music CDs. With a newfound discovery and appreciation for music, my world opened up.

All for a single penny.

 Ahh, yes. Simpler times. 

Lateralus was released several years later, a year before my high school graduation. With each subsequent Tool album, there's a clear sense of steady growth and refinement of their sound from a previous one, but this was a huge evolution in tone that essentially retained, while somewhat transcending, their original and iconic sound, with their next 10,000 Days feeling like an expansion and slight twist on Lateralus. These changes in style, tone, and spirit from one album to the next have always been subtle, but steady, organic, transcendent, and on their own terms, while retaining their signature unique sound.

Tool also introduced and turned me on to Alex Grey, who collaborated with them
on numerous pieces of album artwork for Lateralus, 10,000 Days, and Fear Inoculum.

A common thread through much of Tool's music has long been about a cycle of realizing and integrating the Jungian shadow, of change and growth, the shedding of old skin and letting go, and transcending that which we crave and hold on to from social conditioning and base instincts. Needless to say, a lot has changed in my life in those 4,869 Days, with so many things, people, places, and parts of myself left behind. My love and appreciation for Tool's music remains, however, all the same, and as it's grown and changed, so have I.

A True Scotsman's Fan's Review... A Pneumasterpiece or Premature Inoculation?

Thirteen years. Six very long songs, broken up by four tracks of instrumentals and/or oddball sonic experimentation. Fairly par the course for a Tool album, right? Wrong. These songs are absolutely epic in length and dwarf all past Tool songs -- they each range a bare minimum of over 10 minutes to up to almost 16 minutes long. Even if you smashed Parabol and Parabola off of the Lateralus album into one track, you'd still only end up at 9:02. That may sound intimidating, because it is -- but they're all good to great pieces and feel like they're over within the length of a typical song. This is truly progressive metal, with most tracks starting off quiet, low, and simple, and building up to increasingly heavier and complicated structures over the course of the song. Basically, if Pink Floyd and Tool had a baby, that baby would be named Fear Inoculum.

Get Woke, Go Broke: Gillette's Second Ad with Pandering Redemption Arc tries to Disallow YouTube Comments and Impressions, Fails

Remember the polarizing Gillette ad, 'We Believe the Best Men Can Be', released a couple of months ago? Looking at those ratios, it's clear that most of the vocal part of the internet, at least, male and female alike, found the ad very problematic. Toxic, even. As always, the best (worst?) content is always in the comments section -- it currently sits at 29.5 million views, with 418,608 comments, the easy majority of which are very derisive, with 1.4 million 'Dislikes' to 776 thousand 'Likes', a ratio of almost 2:1 negative. On top of this, many people are alleging that many of the YouTube comments have been deleted and dislikes significantly reduced, as well, suggesting the ratios for Gillette's ad are far worse, in reality (many commenters and articles noted they were as much as 10:1 negative).

Depending on their core political beliefs, you could fairly accurately determine a person's opinion of the ad, with some seeing the ad as a rare example of corporate social awareness and responsibility, a right-and-proper 'woke' calling-out of western men being outright guilty of, or at least complicit in, rampant 'toxic masculinity'. Others saw it as just another example of off-the-rails, dishonest feminist misandry and oversimplified or entirely inaccurate hyper-generalizations of western male culture, all while insulting their customers and pandering to third-wave (what I refer to as 'vulgar' as opposed to 'classical') feminist ideologues. While I initially found the ad to be a mixed bag, at best, I could definitely appreciate the arguments as to why it was interpreted as particularly misandrist, by so many. 

Regardless of one's thoughts on the ad, it's safe to say it was a huge marketing blunder, and I'm not going to delve deeply into that, here -- it has been done well enough, elsewhere, already.

Today, Gillette released a new ad, titled 'Every Hero Sweats'. While still playing it safe so as to not undermine their infamous previous ad or irritate the virtue-signaling hordes of Leftists, they seem to be running to the opposite side of the spectrum in an all-too-transparent attempt to placate 'those' who could be 'the only ones' irritated by the whole ordeal -- blonde, white conservatives, 'obviously'! The ad even satisfies that old conservative trope of military 'hero' worship, putting it right in the title of the ad. It all seems a bit too contrived, misses the sticking-point entirely, and, also, is probably too little too late. Unfortunately for them, any potential good faith in the corporate executives and marketing teams at Gillette likely evaporated into thin air when they drew that line in the sand with their first ad.

I expect they realize this, because as one can plainly see -- they've disabled any method of directly commenting on the video. No comments, likes, or dislikes are allowed. In their reach for absolution, they have, once again, firmly placed themselves behind the line they've already drawn, just now utilizing the tool of censorship to try to shield themselves from the fallout of their short-sightedness. 

Luckily, the time of politically biased content censorship is on its way to being over.

Was President Lyndon B. Johnson Just a Time-traveling, Alternate-reality Racist Rick Sanchez?

On this gray, stormy, Boston October, Saturday morning, I engaged one of our favorite pastimes -- tumbling down the internet rabbit hole. Eventually, it brought me towards 'ole Lyndon B. Johnson, former Vice President to John F. Kennedy who, upon JFK's assassination in 1963, succeeded the throne to President of the United States. LBJ is particularly hailed by his fellow Democrats for his 'Great Society' reforms, where,

... the main goal was elimination of poverty and racial injustice... [and] in scope and sweep resembled the New Deal domestic agenda of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

There are some, errr, lesser known facts about him, as well, though. As it turns out, he was quite the character. Self-absorbed egomaniac, exhibitionist, known machiavellian for getting policy through congress (Frank Underwood from House of Cards was primarily "two scoops of LBJ with a dash of Richard III and a pinch of Hannibal Lecter"), and mid-sentence burps all give LBJ a certain je ne sais quoi that even Rick Sanchez, himself, might envy...

"Ladybird--I mean, Morty--everything in life is about sex, Morty -- EXCEPT SEX. 
Sex is about POWER, Morty!!!" - Frank Underwood/LBJ/Rick Sanchez

Rick Sanchez, is that you?

I came across this wonderfully, appropriately animated video of an audio recording where LBJ is on the phone in the oval office of the White House ordering some tailored pants. This is where I found the rabbit hole and started peering into it. Now, it's clear this guy knows how he likes his pants and throws around measurements like its nobody's business, but there's a segment of the video, from about 1:11 to 1:51 that really stood out...

The glorious transcript of this segment, below:

The Apple iPhone's 'Notch' Abomination is Spreading and There is Not a Goddamned Thing you can Do About It

When I first saw 'The Notch', its barbarism felt like a cheese-grater against my brain. I couldn't take it. It was a total, fucking eyesore. I found peace in the fact that it was an 'Apple iPhone thing' at the time, and I was an avid Android user. I'd cast aside the Cult of Apple a decade or so ago, and took solace in the idea that the despicable nonsense of 'The Notch' would be rejected and cast aside by civilized society, obviously. My devices would be safe.

I would be safe.

... or maybe not.

It didn't last. It's coming to more and more devices. With the last Android update on my beloved Pixel 2 XL, I noticed a new setting, buried deep -- hidden away, like a monstrous, threatening thing that was watching, waiting, to crawl out from its abyss and pull all back into oblivion with it. This setting added a software 'Notch' into my screen, likely for devs to design and program their apps around. I was aghast at what this implied for the future of my Android devices and I felt like huddling in the corner, wrapped up into a fetal position, rocking back and forth, sobbing as this abomination, my oppressor, beat me -- nonstop. Would the beatings end? Could they end?

No. The beatings will continue -- until morale improves.

A Meta Review: Ubisoft's New 'Far Cry 5' has the Ideologues All Bent Out of Shape... AnD tHaT's A gOoD tHiNg

Originally, I wasn't very interested in picking up Far Cry 5, the latest entry in a series of formularized games going back to 2004 -- but the more I read about and saw more of its gameplay a couple of weeks leading up to its release, the more excited about it I became. The Montanan setting was much 'closer to home' than past installments, the cult concept was intriguing, the graphics looked gorgeous, the music highly thematic, and the gunplay sweet. The addition of co-op in its beautiful and chaotic open world of Americana was all just too much to pass up, this time around.

Pre-orders were placed.


First, The Actual Game

Allusions to 'The Last Supper', anyone?

On the politics (or mostly lack-thereof) within Far Cry 5 -- they had absolutely zilch, zero, nada to do with my initial excitement, subsequent purchase and ongoing enjoyment of this game. Far Cry 5 feels like The Dukes of Hazard taking on some equally cartoonish cult, and, ultimately, if I’m playing a Far Cry game, I’m not doing it for deep political commentary, regardless of the setting. I'm doing it to have fun in amazingly rendered open worlds and with the characters that dwell there, with great voice-acting, script, and well-executed facial and other animation mo-cap. I expect solid gameplay and combat with many ways to approach varying, highly dynamic situations within the chaos-engine that smashes, head-first, into what would otherwise be considered a paradise on earth.

At the end of the day, you and your buds are going to be sending flaming mountain lions to ravage a bunch of goonish, cult-obsessed, drug-addled hillbillies. Or maybe you'll take out psychopathic cultists with an M60 machine gun mounted on a flame-painted muscle car. Or maybe you'll whack them upside the head with a barbed-wire, nail-studded bat as you whip by in a pickup truck. Or maybe you'll raid doomsday prepper stashes. Or maybe you'll just enjoy the scenery. Or maybe you and your friend will do some fishing in order to feed your diabetic pet grizzly bear, 'Cheeseburger'. Whatever floats your boat, man (like, literally, you can go fishing on your boat).

Medical Journal 'The Lancet' Shows that 'Low Fat' 'Diets' are Probably Actually Killing You

Ah, yes. As a 90s kid, I remember the old 'FDA-approved' Food Pyramid plastered all over the walls of the cafeterias of elementary school all the way through high school. Pure carbohydrate foods like bread, pasta, cereal, and rice made up the massive foundation of supposedly healthy eating, whereas fats were, for some odd reason, lumped in with sugar, and should make up the least of your diet. They apparently updated this slightly in 2005, and in 2011, simplified it all even further for our carb-loaded (read: sugar-loaded), nutrient-and-fat deficient brains (our brain is made up of fat) with the dopey MyPlate iteration in 2011.

But it's wrong -- all of it. Unhealthily, mortally wrong. Consuming 'low fat' foods are what is actually making people fat and unhealthy and as it turns out -- literally killing people. The government FDA-approved and propagated 'Food Pyramid' and 'MyPlate' too many of us have been convinced of for so long has been nothing but the result of power politicking in Washington DC.

Remember this nonsense? 

The Lancet, a widely known and well-respected medical journal, published a study that has officially and finally blown up the old post-hoc, ergo propter hoc justified narrative of 'consuming fats = bad, therefore, minimize fats (and by implication, replace with carbs)'. Of course, this also ignored the fact that much of our bodies, including our brain, skin, and almost all of our internal organs are made up of fats. 

Here's a direct link to the abstract for Associations of fats and carbohydrate intake with cardiovascular disease and mortality in 18 countries from five continents (PURE): a prospective cohort study, with the general summary provided below.