Where the hangman lived on Washington Square

You wouldn’t know it today, as you walk through the marble arch or past the central fountain. But an estimated 20,000 bodies are buried beneath Washington Square Park.

Read the full article on Ephemeral New York here

Redneck Blood Feud In the Appalachians: The Hatfields Vs. The McCoys

     Blood feuds occur in areas of the world with little government oversight and a weak or non-existent police force. Taking the life of a member from a rival family in exchange for a murder might be the only type of justice available when crimes are committed in regions isolated from the law. Such a region is the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River that separates West Virginia from Kentucky. At the end of the Civil War, the Hatfield family occupied some farmland on the West Virginia side and the McCoy’s lived across the tributary on the Kentucky side. Both families sent soldiers to fight with the Confederate army and they lived peacefully near each other, sometimes doing business together and socializing as well. By the end of the Civil War, that peace no longer held.

     One member of the McCoy family, however, chose to fight with the Union. This was Asa Harmon McCoy who joined the 45^th Kentucky Infantry in 1863. This Union soldier may or may not have been the first casualty in the Hatfield – McCoy conflict that elevated to a war a few years later. One reason he may not have been the first casualty in the feud is because Devil Anse Hatfield, the patriarch of the Hatfields, claimed he shot William McCoy, Asa Harmon’s brother and Union soldier, sometime earlier in the Civil War. This has never been verified.

     William McCoy was the head of a Scotch-Irish extended family that immigrated to America in the earlier part of the century. They settled in the wilderness of the Appalachians and began farming and making moonshine. Devil Anse and the Hatfields had settled on the opposite bank of the Tug Fork; they too made their living by agriculture and illegal liquor. The Hatfields were more prosperous and had some loose connections with the government. Those connections were not strong enough to prevent the bloody conflict that would later ensue.

     Towards the end of the Civil War, Asa Harmon McCoy got shot in the chest and died in a hospital. Legends were later told that Devil Anse Hatfield was the one who put the bullet in Asa Harmon’s heart. The story is apocryphal. Hospital records state that he was shot during a skirmish with a band of rebel guerillas but Devil Anse Hatfield was, according to documents, laying in a hospital bed at the time of that fight after getting shot in the leg during a previous attack.

     But the death of Asa Harmon McCoy is neither here nor there in regards to the Hatfield – McCoy Feud even though some people say it was the first murder of the families’ conflict. During times of war, soldiers shoot and kill members of the opposing force without knowing who they are as individuals. That is just the way it goes. But still the legend persists that Devil Anse Hatfield’s friend Mose Christian Cline was shot by Asa Harmon McCoy in retaliation for the killing of William McCoy. Some also say that Jim Vance, another friend of Devil Anse Hatfield probably murdered Asa Harmon McCoy to get revenge for the shooting of Mose Chrsitian Cline. Maybe the full truth will never be known.

     After the Civil War ended. The two families had no problems. Then passions got riled up in 1878 during a dispute over a stray pig. To make their domestic animals easy to identify, the McCoys cut notches into the right ears of all the animals they owned. A hog with a notched ear was discovered by Randolph McCoy to be in the care of Floyd Hatfield, a cousin of Devil Anse’s. The two farmers could not resolve the argument on their own so they took the case to court. The Justice Of the Peace for the trial was Anderson “Preacher Anse” Hatfield, another member of the Hatfield family. Bill Staton, a relative of both families, acted as the star witness and his testimony made Preacher Anse Hatfield rule in favor of his own family. Floyd Hatfield took the pig back to his property.

     Two years later, when Bill Staton was walking in the woods, he encountered Sam and Parris McCoy who were also out for a hike. They began arguing about the trial. Guns were drawn. Shots were fired. Bill Staton died. The two McCoys got away with the murder on the grounds of self defense.

     Matters heated up more when Johnse Hatfield, the son of Devil Anse, began sneaking out at night and meeting up with Rosanna McCoy for a little moonlight romance on the banks of the Tug Fork. Soon she was pregnant and for a short time, Roseanna lived with Johnse on the West Virginia side. She was welcomed warmly by the Hatfield family but the McCoys were not pleased. Losing a pig to the Hatfields was one thing but losing a daughter to them was just a little too much. They convinced the daughter to return but she missed Johnse and went back to West Virginia to begin the relationship again. One day when Johnse crossed the tributary to the Kentucky side, the McCoys alerted the police to his presence. Johnse Hatfield had a warrant out for his arrest in Kentucky due to illegal moonshine sales. They took him to jail. Roseanna escaped in the night and alerted Devil Anse of Johnse’s arrest. Devil Anse called up a posse of armed family members who went over to Kentucky, surrounded the jail and broke Johnse out. They took him back to West Virginia but he dumped Roseanna shortly after. Despite all she had done for him, Johnse started having an affair with her sister Nancy who he married in 1881.

     Tensions between the families got a lot worse on a Kentucky election day in 1882. A cabin on the road to Pikeville was used as a polling station. In those days, elections drew crowds of people from all across the region who came to sell food and meet up with old friends. Ellison Hatfield, the brother of Devil Anse, crossed the river with a jug of moonshine. He spent the day getting drunk with three McCoy brothers, Tolbert, Phamer, and Bud. By the time evening came, the four men were drunk, rowdy, and belligerent. The friendly conversations of the day turned mean and they began arguing. Soon fists were flying and the McCoy brothers pulled out their knives and stabbed him 26 times. Then one of them shot Ellison and left him for dead. The police quickly came and arrested the three McCoys. Somebody carried Ellison Hatfield to a nearby cabin to attend to his wounds.

     Word got out to Devil Anse and soon he was riding through the woods of Kentucky with a gang of armed family members and friends. As the night grew darker, they intercepted the police who were taking their three captives to the nearby Pikeville jail. The lawmen were sympathetic to the Hatfields, and outnumbered too, so they turned the three brothers over to the vigilante gang. Devil Anse commanded one man to stand guard at the cabin with Ellison and come find them if anything tragic occurred. The three McCoys were tied together and taken on horseback over the Tug Fork to the West Virginia side. In the forest, they were bound to a tree while the group of armed and angry looking men stood patiently around.

     Early in the morning, Ellison’s watchman approached and told them the Hatfield brother had died. Some said the rapid sounds of shotgun fire could be heard clear across the water in Kentucky. The next day, people searching for the McCoy boys found the three dead bodies still tied to the tree. Their bodies were mutilated with bullets. One of the brothers had the top of his head blown off; chunks of blood and brains were hanging from the branches. Another’s face was so bloody he could not be immediately identified. The third looked as if he had raised his hand in fear of being shot; the bullet went straight through his hand and hit him between the eyes.

     Warrants were obtained for the arrest of twenty members of the Hatfield family but none were captured or tried in court. The police in that region were a small and weak force. When the need for a larger party arose, members of the public had to be temporarily deputized to build up a group big enough to handle a problem. The Hatfields were considered to be too dangerous and they were never apprehended. They moved to a new plot of land, farther from the river, and continued to live as farmers and moonshiners, even venturing into the timber business while the statute of limitations went into effect.

     Things were still tense in 1886. The husband of Martha McCoy, named Perry Cline, put up a bounty for the capture of members of the Hatfield family as well as Devil Anse himself. That same year, Jeff McCoy shot and killed a mailman. Policeman Cap Hatfield, Devil Anse’s son, and another deputy named Tom Wallace were assigned to arrest Jeff McCoy but the wanted man escaped into the woods. Running along the river, Cap and Tom Wallace shot and killed Jeff McCoy. Tom Wallace was later found murdered in retaliation for that death.

     On New Year’s Eve of 1987/1988, the Hatfields decided to finally win the war. Devil Anse laid out plans to ambush the McCoy’s family cabin on their farm across the river. He put Cap Hatfield in charge of the team which included Ellison Mounts, a man said to be mentally disabled and not too bright. The patriarch Randolph McCoy slept with his family while the Hatfield gang crossed the water and crept up the hill. They set fire to the small cabin, hoping to drive Randolph out but he escaped without them noticing. The two children got shot while trying to escape; their mother fell out a window and the Hatfield gang beat her until she nearly died. Unable to find Randolph McCoy, they left and went back to West Virginia.

     A few days after the New Year’s Massacre, Deputy Sheriff Frank Phillips of Pike County gathered a group of armed men to hunt down and arrest the members of the Hatfield raiding party. Two sons of Randolph McCoy went with them. The posse cornered Devil Anse’s old friend Jim Vance in the woods. He refused to surrender so they opened fire until he died. They began raiding the homes of Hatfield family members and their supporters. Many of them were chased to Grapevine Creek where Devil Anse and a small army of his followers were waiting. A firefight began between the two gangs but eventually the Hatfields surrendered. Nine were arrested and taken to Pikeville to stand trial for the murder of Alifair McCoy, the daughter of Randolph McCoy who died during the New Year’s Massacre. Devil Anse and the others escaped.

     They held the trial in Pikeville. All of the eight prisoners were found guilty. Seven were sent to prison for life sentences. The mentally disabled Ellison Mounts was sentenced to death by hanging. Apparently one more person had to die, possibly for symbolic reasons, so they chose the one least likely to defend himself. Two thousand people showed up to watch the execution. The war between the two families ended when Mounts dangled from the rope.

     Devil Anse lived on into old age in his home with his family. Years later when Randolph McCoy died, he attended his funeral and expressed regret that the whole war had ever happened. The Hatfields and McCoys made peace and their ancestors get along well with each other to this day.

By the time the feud ended and the trial began, the outside world had begun to take notice of the obscure Appalachian region of the Tug Fork tributary. Businessmen from the logging and mining industries began arriving. With them came the railroads and the electric companies. Along with these industries came the journalists who saw a great story in the Hatfield and McCoy Feud. They sent their news stories of gun toting hillbillies with bare feet, long beards, and tattered clothes back to the big cities to be printed and distributed across the nation. Some scoops were more accurate than others. Some were entirely made up. What mattered most was not truth but the sale of newspapers and the feud was a story that kept the media in business. Without journalism, this little war would have been forgotten like so many others that had happened all over the USA around that time; many of those were bigger and bloodier and racked up a much higher body count. Those have mostly been forgotten.

References

Alther, Lisa. Blood Feud: The Hatfields & the McCoys: The Epic Story of Muder and Vengeance. Lyons Press, Guilford: 2012

Jones, Virgil Carrington. The Hatfields and the McCoys. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill: 1948.

R.I.P. Candy Samples

The Residents

from Repo Man

directed by Alex Cox (1984)

Kraftwerk - The Man Machine

Kraftwerk

The Man Machine

from the lp The Man Machine

Book Review: Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

Book Review

Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

     The trickster archetype is one that has shown up in the mythologies of various cultures, across time, and throughout human history. One aspect of the trickster symbola are that they show up in a world gone wrong, make mischief and create chaos until the society collapses; when the dust settles a state of order, where things are put to right, can be returned to once again. The nameless detective in Dashiell Hammett’s first novel Red Harvest is just such a character.

     The story’s protagonist gets sent by San Francisco’s Continental Detective Agency to a town named Personville, known as Poisonville by those who live there. Donald Wilsson, the owner of the town’s newspaper, requests his presence without saying why. When they agree to meet, he never shows up and soon we learn he was murdered. The quick thinking detective solves the case effortlessly and almost instantly. Early in the book, an experienced reader of detective fiction might wonder what is left if the murder case gets solved at the beginning. And so begins the unpredictably wild ride of a story that Red Harvest is.

     Elihu Wilsson, the man who founded Poisonville as a base of operations for a mining company, summons the detective to his bedside where he rests, due to illness and advanced age. He had given the newspaper to his son Donald in an effort to rid the town of the gangsters that had taken over. The town’s criminals were initially brought to Personville by Elihu Wilsson to act as strongmen for his company when the Wobblies came in to strike. After a few skirmishes, the labor unionists were chased out of town but the thugs decided to stay and now Elihu Wilsson had lost control over their activities. He does not know he is in for more trouble when he hires the detective to rid Poisonville of these pests once and for all.

     In the middle of all this mess is a woman named Dinah Brand, a gold digger who dresses up in threadbare clothes and seemingly dates every goon with money she can get her hands on. The detective befriends her and begins collecting information from her as well as Noonan, the corrupt chief of police, and McSwain, a small-time grifter he meets on the street. The detective begins spreading rumors and lies throughout the underworld to sow confusion. Poisonville erupts into a brutal series of murders, blood lettings, and gun fights that leave piles of corpses wherever the detective shows up. He plans on turning all the thugs against each other until everyone is dead and Elihu Wilsson’s wish to sea his town free from evil is accomplished. Neither Elihu Wilsson or the detective act out of moral conviction; Wilsson wants to regain control of the rackets and corruption whereas the detective wants revenge on Noonan for trying to get him shot during an ambush at the start of all the gang wars. At one point, the detective realizes he is no better than the criminals he is associating with; the only thing that sets him apart is that he wants them all dead whereas they all want to survive.

     Red Harvest is an intriguing read. For one thing, it is a treasure trove of underworld lingo, some of which may seem cliché today because of movies and books; but reading it as a part of a narrative like this really keeps the slang alive in an interesting way. Also the plot twists start early and continue on through to the last chapter; so many unexpected corners get turned that the reader may feel as if they have gotten hopelessly lost in Poisonville and will never get out. Another source of confusion is the number of shady people that the detective easily associates with even though they mostly all get killed soon after they meet. There are points where the narrative gets muddled because it is hard to keep track of the body count and who is allied to who when the shootouts take place. The novel’s biggest problem is that it seems a little far fetched at times but Red Harvest is ultimately a fantasy and a fast paced and brutally violent one at that. It stays interesting throughout and can help prepare the reader for Dashiell Hammett’s later masterpieces The Thin Man and The Maltese Falcon. The darkly swaggering and fearless nature of this book can intrigue anyone be they a jaded reader or a youngster looking for an entry into the world of hard boiled detective fiction.

     It is best not to let a few clunky parts of the story turn you off to Red Harvest; they are just some bumps and potholes in the road. It is a rough and dangerous ride anyways. That is probably why you would want to read it in the first place. 

Hammett, Dashiell. Red Harvest. Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Vintage Books, New York: 1992.

Butthole Surfers - All Day

Butthole Surfers

All Day

from the compilation lp A Texas Trip

Eight Tons of Punk

Facing rising San Francisco rent prices, the world's largest collection of punk records and the anit-establishment music magazine that safeguards it must find a new home

Read the full article on The Outline here

Emanuele Taglietti

Police raid frees 19 from dangerous religious cult

DEMONS OUT!One official said the rescued members believed they had ‘demons,’ which had to be removed by beatings, resulting in bruises covering their bodies

Read the full article on Taipei Times here

The Rite of Spring Riot of 1913

In May 1913, Igor Stravinsky debuted his ballet The Rite of Spring. Though it is one of Stravinsky's most famous works, his creation was first met with harsh criticism, negative reviews, and...a riot.

Read the full article on Liveaboutdotcom here

NoMeansNo - And That's Sad

NoMeansNo

And That's Sad

from the lp Small Parts Isolated and Destroyed

Killdozer - Pig Foot and Beer

Killdozer

Pig Foot and Beer

from the lp 12 Point Buck

How Long Does a Human Head Actually Remain Conscious After Being Cut Off?

When Jean-Paul Marat's killer, Charlotte Corday, was executed by guillotine in 1793, a man named Francois le Gros allegedly lifted her head and slapped both cheeks.

Onlookers claimed that Corday's face took on an angry expression and her cheeks became flushed. There are other reports from history of severed heads that seem to have shown signs of consciousness.

Read the full article on Science Alert here

Book Review: Empire Of the Sun by J.G. Ballard

Book Review

Empire Of the Sun by J.G. Ballard

     Reading J.G. Ballard’s Empire Of the Sun can be a challenge. This is testament to its power as a novel and not at all a criticism. The heavy and depressing subject matter, the graphic descriptions of the dead and dying, and the surreal but bleak psychological tone could make a faint-hearted reader give up before finishing. However, if the young protagonist of the story can survive his miserable ordeal, why can’t you, the well-fed reader, sitting in the safety and comfort of your own home, at least put up with it before going back to your warm bed and kitchen stocked with food, some of which will be thrown away for not being eaten by the expiration date on the packaging?

As the story starts, Jim is an eleven year old English boy, born and raised in Shanghai because his father is a wealthy businessman. A live-in nanny named Vera, while watching over him, tells him that not everyone has it as well as he does. Vera is a Jewish refugee from Poland and her poignant statement resonates ironically throughout the story. As Jim’s journey into World War II progresses, it becomes clear that he does not have it as well as he could but despite his nightmarish existence, he still has it better than most of the other people he encounters.

     In the first third if the novel, Jim has a revelation when he sits in a defunct bomber he finds while exploring an abandoned airport in Shanghai. He spots it while playing with a toy balsa-wood airplane and the bridge between him and aviation, play and reality, childhood and adolescence are all established. As he sits in the airplane, thinking about his future, a platoon of Japanese soldiers stands nearby; his father comes and takes him away before they approach and a link between his family and the Japanese military is also established in preparation for Jim’s psychological development later in the book. In a narrative reversed foreshadowing, Jim’s father takes control of him while the Japanese military becomes Jim’s guardian later with the airplane being the centerpiece between the two.

     Jim and his parents wake up the next morning and watch from a hotel room on the Bund as Japanese invaders take control over the waterfront in an attack on the two American ships stationed there. In the ensuing chaos, he loses his parents and ends up wandering alone throughout the abandoned houses of Shanghai, searching for them while surviving on scraps of left-behind food. Details like the swimming pool drained and full of garbage heighten the sense of his family’s absence. The thoughts that the war will soon end and he will be reunited with his parents become powerful psychological mechanisms that help Jim to persist in surviving as the plot advances. The void of parental authority in his life is another theme that enters at this point. Then Jim meets up with Basie, an effeminate American thief who hopes to profit from the war by collecting items left behind by people as they get taken away to internment camps. He tries to sell Jim at the market and when he fails, they develop an ambiguous relationship. Basie is the oddest character in the book and he keeps reappearing throughout.

     Jim gets captured by the Japanese soldiers and gets sent by truck to Lunghua internment camp on the outskirts of Shanghai. The trip out there is harrowing; the other passengers are weak and close to death as they pass out on the floor of the truck bed in pools of vomit, blood, and urine. Jim befriends another key character, Dr. Ransome. Other themes are introduced here too since the Japanese driver, new to Shanghai and fresh off the boat from Japan, does not know how to find the prison camp; Jim helps him find his way since his parents had taken him to parties at the resort located next to Lunghua and he knows exactly where it is. Jim here established himself as possibly the smartest person in the book and one who has a greater chance of survival because he makes himself useful to everyone around him.

     The second section fast-forwards three years into Jim’s life at Lunghua. Living conditions are starting to get worse as the Japanese start losing the war and food rations get cut. Jim, the growing fourteen year old teenager, grasps for bits of parental guidance wherever he can find them. One way he does this is by identifying with the authority figures of the Japanese military who run the internment camp. Despite their cruelty, they do provide food, shelter, and a certain type of parental discipline. The British prisoners at Lunghua act like cowardly, petty, and mean. In his confused mind, he begins to admire the Japanese for their courage. The thief Basie, also imprisoned there, teaches Jim survival skills and gives him some illicit jobs to do in exchange for food and access to his collection of Reader’s Digest magazines. Basie rations these items to Jim to control him but Jim may be simultaneously learning how to manipulate Basie. Dr. Ransome helps Jim with schoolwork, teaching him Latin and trigonometry but when Jim suggests teaching the Japanese trigonometry so they can use airplane shadows to calculate where their bombs will fall during air-raids, Dr. Ransome decides to replace those lessons with algebra instead. At this point, Jim has become an amoral pragmatist; this is not a failure on his part. It is a psychological adjustment that increases his chances of survival. (Nietzsche or Foucault might interject here to say that complex systems of morality are tools of domination devised in societies that have progressed to where mere survival is taken for granted).

     The Japanese soldiers, Basie, and Dr. Ransome, among others, all serve as surrogate parental figures to Jim. Still, a huge void where his mother and father used to be has never been completely filled. One of the ways he compensates for this loss is by taking a deep and active interest in aviation. Jim plasters his walls with pictures of bombers cut out from magazines. He learns the names of all the airplanes being used in the war and since Lunghua is located next to a landing strip, Jim gets firsthand views of American air raids, being impressed by the sleek and superior machinery of the US fleet. He continues to admire the Japanese fliers though, describing the wings of a Japanese airplane as being the strong and protective arms of his mother.

     Another psychological development occurs in Jim’s character during this time at Lunghua internment camp. He learns to accept his place in the world and even, in some ways, thrives despite his awful diet of gruel, weevils, and rancid sweet potatoes served once a day. His chances of survival increase because he does not succumb to the misery and hopelessness of the other other prisoners, many of which might have died because they desired a better life rather than finding freedom where they were. Not everyone’s life is as good as his. Jim identifies deeply with the prison camp and in some ways, possibly lapsing into delusion due to illness and being malnourished, feeling as if he were responsible for its success.

     In the final section of Empire Of the Sun, the prisoners are led out of the camp on a death march. They stop in a sports stadium where the stronger prisoners are separated and taken out to be shot. Jim escapes this fate by pretending to be dead. While sleeping in the stadium pitch early in the morning, he sees several flashes in the sky. Jim later learns that these were from the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and World War II has ended with the surrender of the Japanese. Jim begins wandering back to Lunghua. The land, canals, and paddies are strewn with rotting corpses and derelict airplanes. Jim survives by eating rations dropped by American airforce pilots. His thinking becomes erratic and delusional; at one point Jim believes he can resurrect people from the dead by placing pieces of spam in their mouths. The last section also has no shortage of disgusting imagery.

     Empire Of the Sun is a story of survival but it is not a sentimental novel about optimism and the strength to triumph against all odds. Nor is it about the strong trampling over the weak; jim is so sick and famished he sometimes can not even stand up and walk. It is more like a grim and misantrhopic commentary on how terrible human beings can be. Jim does not survive because he is an unfailing optimist; he survives because he is selfish enough to see how every opportunity can be used to keep himself going. He helps people for the sake of benefiting himself. The other prisoners are not any more moral than he is and the Japanese and Chinese characters in the story are nothing but outright cruel. There is little psychological comfort to be found in these pages, not even at the end. What makes Jim so strong in the end is not just his amorality; he takes active interest in everything around him, has an insatiable curiosity, and desires to live life to the fullest even when that means flourishing in hell. Jim is the ultimate stoic. His survival is not merely physical since it involves the mental acuity of this emaciated boy to find an advantage in any situation no matter how grotesque or disturbing it might be.

     Finally, it is a mistake to read Empire Of the Sun as an autobiography or memoir. While it is based on J.G. Ballard’s real childhood in a Shanghai internment camp, it is altered, embellished, and refined to make it a truly Ballardian novel. It has many echoes of themes, imagery, dark humor, and elements presented in other works like Concrete Island, High Rise, and The Wind from Nowhere. But Empire Of the Sun probably represents J.G. Ballard’s artistic and commercial peak. If you keep his other works in mind and read it as a surrealist novel, you might get a lot more out of it than just interpreting it as a simple war and survival story.

Ballard, J.G. Empire Of the Sun. Washington Square Press, New York: 1985

Public Image Ltd. - Low Life

Public Image Ltd.

Low Life

RIP Sid Haig

actor

David Lynch - Movin' On

David Lynch

Movin' On

from the lp Crazy Clown Time

The Pop Group - We Are All Prostitutes

The Pop Group

We Are All Prostitutes 

How Vikings Went Into a Trancelike Rage Before Battle

Ethnobotanists have a new theory on which plant the berserkers ingested.

Read the full article on Wired here

Ros Sereysothea - Chnam Oun Dop Prom Muy

Ros Sereysothea

Chnam Oun Dop Prom Muy 

Red Head Klimt by Morgan Fahrnbruch 

https://morganfahrnbruch.wordpress.com/

Sonic Youth: Blood On the Beach

Sonic Youth: Blood On the Beach

live in England (1985)

Scientists Can't Agree on Whether Genetically Modified-Mosquito Experiment Went Horribly Wrong

Biotech company released millions of genetically modified mosquitoes into Jacobina in Brazil.

Read the full article on LiveScience here

Tompkins Square Park Riot of 1988

Nearly thirty years ago, on Saturday, August 6th, 1988, a full-blown riot had broken out at Tompkins Square Park.

Read the full article on NYU Journalism here

MISSING FOUNDATION, THE LONG-LOST INDUSTRIAL ROCKERS WHO ALMOST DESTROYED NEW YORK CITY

Shortly before the Disneyfication of Manhattan, when the lower east side was still a churning ball of druggy chaos and the art scene was spewing up creeps, weirdos and bleak visionaries like Nick Zedd, Kembra Pfahler, White Zombie and the Toxic Avenger, one group emerged as the undisputed Kings of the Wasteland. They were called Missing Foundation, and they had come for your children.

Read the full article on Dangerous Minds here

Daniel RAKOWITZ

Daniel Rakowitz is an American murderer and cannibal. He was born in 1960 in Rockport, Texas. He moved to New York around 1985.

In Manhattan's East Village in 1989, Rakowitz walked around Tompkins Square Park bragging that he had killed his roommate, Monica Beerle, a Swiss dancer and student. He said that he had boiled her head and made soup from her brain. He had tasted it and liked it, and thereafter he referred to himself as a cannibal.

He was found not guilty by reason of insanity on February 22, 1991, and was moved to a state hospital for the criminally insane.

Read the full article on Murderpedia here

Temple of the True Inner Light

The Temple of the True Inner Light was formed in 1980 by Alan Birnbaum as an offshoot of the New York City branch of the Native American Church. The Temple uses Di-Propyl Tryptamine (DPT) as its sacrament which Temple followers regard as the actual manifestation of God, rather than a means to access God. DPT ingestion, according to the Temple, allows direct communication with spirit forms and this communication provides the source of their theology. The Temple theology has been described as “eclectic drug-based Christian revisionism."

Read the full article on Entheology here

RIP Larry Wallis

Larry Wallis - Police Car

Larry Wallis

Police Car

Larry Wallis - On Parole

Larry Wallis

On Parole

Three billion North American birds have vanished since 1970, surveys show

North America's birds are disappearing from the skies at a rate that's shocking even to ornithologists. Since the 1970s, the continent has lost 3 billion birds, nearly 30% of the total, and even common birds such as sparrows and blackbirds are in decline, U.S. and Canadian researchers report this week online in Science. "It's staggering," says first author Ken Rosenberg, a conservation scientist at the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology. The findings raise fears that some familiar species could go the way of the passenger pigeon, a species once so abundant that its extinction in the early 1900s seemed unthinkable.

Read the full article on Science here

Rebecca Skelton

http://www.rebeccaskelton.com/rebeccaskelton.com/home.html

Why Some People Have Endless Thoughts of Death. They May Be 'Existentially Isolated'

Feeling as though nobody gets you may be linked to persistent thoughts of death. 

Read the full article on Live Science here

72 Hours in Chateau Marmont with Kenneth Anger

72 Hours in Andre Balazs' Chateau Marmont with Kenneth Anger

short film by Floria Sigismondi 

Nosferatu - Willie the Fox

Nosferatu

Willie the Fox

from the lp Nosferatu

The Mystic Astrological Crystal Band - I Think I'll Just Lie Here and Die

The Mystic Astrological Crystal Band

I Think I'll Just Lie Here and Die

from the lp Clip Out Put On Book

Mass Graves in Russia Tell the Grim Story of Mongol Invasion

After years of digging, archaeologists discover nine medieval graves holding the remains of at least 300 people.

Read the full article on Wired here

This painting explains a surprising amount about your political views

The link between modern art and modern politics.

Read the full article on Vox here

Amon Duul II - Jazz Kiste

Amon Duul II

Jazz Kiste

from the lp Utopia

Are Double-Sided Graves the Solution to London’s Burial Crisis?

Toward a new definition of eternity.

Read the full article on Atlas Obscura here

MIT engineers develop “blackest black” material to date

Made from carbon nanotubes, the new coating is 10 times darker than other very black materials.

Read the full article on MIT News here

Book Review: The Wind from Nowhere by J.G. Ballard

Book Review

The Wind from Nowhere

by J.G. Ballard

     J.G. Ballard was one of the greatest writers of apocalyptic fiction in the 20^th century. The Wind from Nowhere is one of his earliest works in a series of novels about eco-calamities. While it is an example of Ballard’s minor works and not necessarily one of his best, it does stand out in a way for being one of the bleakest and most hopeless novels by a writer known for harshly bleak and hopeless fiction.

     The premise is simple: a strong and powerful wind begins to blow counter-clockwise around the planet Earth. Carrying dust and debris with it, the sky turns dark and people either die or flee to underground bunkers and tunnels to survive. As the wind speeds increase, eventually reaching 550 miles per hour, buildings collapse, food and water become scarce, and civilization regresses to a more primitive state in the collective human psyche.

     Three narrative threads tie the story together. Maitland is a jaded, middle-class scientist living in London whose purpose in life becomes mere survival as the wind continues to decimate the world. Lanyon is a u-boat commander for the American military; while stationed in Italy he realizes the futility of his chances for survival. Hardoon is a real-estate and construction mogul who builds a highly disciplined army and a concrete pyramid outside London with the intention of defying the destructive forces of the wind. Lanyon escapes from Italy in a submarine and heads towards London to pick up passengers on the way to Greenland where the disaster is less severe. At the London military bunker, Maitland is instructed to accompany Lanyon to the US naval docks nearby. Along the way, they have an unfortunate meeting with Hardoon when they end up approaching his pyramid.

The Wind from Nowhere is, in many ways, a typical disaster and action story. The characters are two-dimensional and their attempts at survival are mundane and maybe even cliché. How can you have a disaster story without at least a couple people struggling to survive against all comprehensible odds? Despite itself, this novel still manages to be unique. This is because of Ballard’s incredible talent for description. The visual and aural depiction of the wind blowing clouds of dirt and rocks through the air is amazing as are the descriptions of what it physically feels like to walk in a gale so strong that it causes bruises and abrasions. The collapsing architecture and hopeless landscapes of flattened cities create an atmosphere of depression. The masses of people huddled in subway tunnels, trying to survive as the passages begin flood and cave in drags the reader into a downward feeling of claustrophobia and despair. The subjectively felt pains of injury are hurt as the characters commit acts of brutal violence against one another. The sleek appearance of Hardoon and his massive team of black-clad stormtroopers nestled comfortably in his concrete pyramid evoke the chilling menace of fascism. Human bodies get hurled into the air before being shredded by the jagged edges of fallen apartment blocks, airplanes do cartwheels and sports cars roll across the desolate rubble of what was once considered civilization. It is as if Ballard used some of the most frightening imagery that Londoners might remember from World War II and took it a step further, saying this time it is nature coming to punish humanity rather than the self-inflicted wound that the war really was. The plot actually takes a backseat to the images of the horrific wind destroying everything that humanity has built and felt proud of; the story is more like a prop to hold up the situation and if you read the book this way it might be a more interesting experience. In the end, The Wind from Nowhere is a stark reminder that humanity is nothing when faced with the amoral forces of nature. While 19^th century writers critiqued the rise of dismal industrialization with long-winded descriptions of nature and pleasant country manors, Ballard critiques modernity by indulging in fantasies of implosion and the collapse of a technocratic society that lost its soul for the sake of comfort, commercialization, and convenience. In a way, Victorian sensibilities and postmodern apocalypse are confronting the same dilemma from different angles. But this book is not much of a commentary and if you want some kind of moral statement about the human condition, this would not be the best place to start.

     Despite all its flaws, this book may still be of interest, especially to die-hard fans of J.G. Ballard and apocalyptic fiction in general. It introduces important themes and elements that would get taken up again and refined in the classic works of this author. The descriptive powers of the writing make it worthwhile. Many people, including Ballard himself, have dismissed The Wind from Nowhere as being a mistake made by a naive but talented young writer. This opinion may be due for a re-evaluation. 

Ballard, J.G. The Wind from Nowhere. Penguin Books, New York: 1976