"I deplore brutality," he said. "It's not efficient. On the other hand, prolonged mistreatment, short of physical violence, gives rise, when skillfully applied, to anxiety and a special feeling of guilt. A few rules or rather guiding principles are to be borne in mind. The subject must not realize that the mistreatment is a deliberate attack of an anti-human enemy on his personal identity. He must be made to feel that he deserves any treatment he receives because there is something (never specified) horribly wrong with him. The naked need of the control addicts must be decently covered by an arbitrary and intricate bureaucracy so that the subject cannot contact his enemy direct."
To summarize: McKenna theorizes that as the North African jungles receded toward the end of the most recent ice age, giving way to grasslands, a branch of our tree-dwelling primate ancestors left the branches and took up a life out in the open -- following around herds of ungulates, nibbling what they could along the way.
Among the new items in their diet were psilocybin-containing mushrooms growing in the dung of these ungulate herds. The changes caused by the introduction of this drug to the primate diet were many -- McKenna theorizes, for instance, that synesthesia (the blurring of boundaries between the senses) caused by psilocybin led to the development of spoken language: the ability to form pictures in another person's mind through the use of vocal sounds.
About 12,000 years ago, further climate changes removed the mushroom from the human diet, resulting in a new set of profound changes in our species as we reverted to pre-mushroomed and frankly brutal primate social structures that had been modified and/or repressed by frequent consumption of psilocybin. [more]
This photo was taken by Pagan Moss when we traveled to the east coast recently over the holidays. This poster we found at the bottom of the Exorcist steps in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. It seemed sort of coincidental as we had just watched some of the films from the French New Wave a few months earlier.
Georgetown University's Unofficial Unsponsored Underground Satire Magazine, the Georgetown Gonzo. I believe this was the first college humour magazine published online. I don't know that they've done much with it since.
The link doesn't work anymore, but you heard it from Justin Hall himself--I, Dr. Menlo, the creator of the Georgetown Gonzo--am responsible for the first college humour magazine published online.
I didn't actually put the paper onto the net myself, but I did create and edit the zine, and when a very talented young fellow by the name of Martin Cunningham suggested the idea, I enthusiastically supported it.
Oh yea, and I'm also the creator of the visual blog, too.
Companies that send jobs overseas could kiss their state contracts goodbye if two Colorado lawmakers have their way.
Democratic state Sens. Deanna Hanna of Lakewood and Terry Phillips of Louisville said too many companies are moving jobs out of state or overseas, hurting the state economy. [more]
In December I read about a similar bill proposed here for Washington State; I immediately wrote to both the congressmen who were to introduce the bill with my own proposed title for the bill: "The Economic Patriot Bill."
Later that day my manager stuck her head around the corner of my cubicle, "[Menlo], [HR guy] would like to talk to you for a minute."
I followed her up the elevator to another floor of the company and we went together down the hall to the CEO's office. There the HR guy sat behind the desk and next to the desk was some upper-level manager. I sat down and before she launched fully into her spiel I stopped her, "So I'm being laid off?"
She objected. "We're initiating a workforce reduction project."
Ah, then. That was different. I told her just to skip ahead to the next step in this process, wherein I was led to a conference room where several others nominated for the same project were already sitting. We were waiting for several more and then our last seminar in said conference room would begin: how to apply for unemployment, etc. When nobody managerial from the company was present we talked openly amongst ourselves while we waited.
"Well, this isn't a surprise, but a week before Christmas?"
"Two of the managers were the first to go. One couldn't even stop and give her phone number to a fellow worker. They were escorted right out of the building. When they sat down to their computer when they went back to their office to pack, they were already locked out."
"Why do we have to wait here? Why can't we just go?"
"I feel like a criminal."
Some had tears. I had only been at the company for a year as an employee and a year before that as a temp, and was all of their juniors there by far. I tried to lighten the room with jokes. There was one fellow who had been brought into the company months ago to oversee all production. He gave inspirational meetings puncuated by the handing out of stuffed animals. He told us all that there was turbulence ahead but if we worked hard, there were a lot of oppurtunities for moving up. His own office had enough stuffed animals in it to supply several nursery-school nap rooms. He wandered the office hallways spreading ominous, unspeakable jolly. More than once in the restroom I would notice that after using the urinal he would dash straight to the exit without washing his hands. He was supposed to make the entire department more efficient, but in the end all he did was send all the jobs to India. He was primarily the butt of my jokes.
When I got home I called Pagan and asked her to meet me for dinner after work. I was not entirely unhappy--this had been only a day job for me. I was eligible for six months of unemployment while I looked for something else and retrained. I had a decent severance check and the rest of my 401K. But I felt sorry for the people who worked there and really cared about the place, who had put in years and years and one in particular--the lady who had actually hired me--who as an empty nester had started working there in the mailroom and after years of dedication and loyalty had worked her way up. These people didn't need to be treated like this. They didn't need to be herded into a conference room a week before Christmas with tears in their eyes only to then be escorted downstairs to clean out their office or cubicle and then to the door, like a common criminal.
This company, like the ones mentioned in the aforementioned article, deals only in state contracts. Transnationals like Boeing can and do routinely flex their ability to move elsewhere if they're not given enough tax breaks, but a company which exists solely on state contracts cannot do that, which is why I predict big things for this bill in Colorado and the one just like it here in Washington. The American people have been gathering anger for at least twenty years as they've watched their corporate overlords send more and more of their jobs overseas--first it was the blue-collar jobs, and now the white-collar jobs are also going--and this anger has combined with a sense of impotence because there's nothing that they can do about it. So if you give them one sector of the society where they can do something about it? The Economic Patriot Bill, indeed. Would pass easily, and not only that, the companies who deal in state contracts could probably not muster the lobbying power and campaign money needed to overcome the aforementioned twenty years of simmering anger and resultant impotence directed at corporate off-shoring like the hefty transnationals could.
More importantly, targeting these companies with state contracts with legislation to stop their overseas outsourcing could lead to a momentum--and perhaps the politicians fueled by the public would finally take on the transnationals on this subject as well.
Obviously we're hearing a lot of heady speeches these days promising a lot, but the now-nationalized phrase "Benedict Arnold CEO" is certainly a step in the right direction.
"Ye fucking gods!! Are you nuts!? Those Jesuit bastards will eat you alive!" --Hunter S. Thompson, to me, circa '93
"Man oh man, 'Dr. Menlo.' Now there's an alternative blog. Kindness to animals, Seattle anarchists, nudism galore, SubGenius, anti-Bush black propaganda, jeez louise, Doc, that thing sure is happenin'." --Bruce Sterling, Schism Matrix
"Dr. Menlo is one smart guy, with a sharp eye for images sacred, profane, and in between. Sometimes the doctor riffs on them, sometimes he leaves you to connect the dots." -- Killing the Buddha
"Dr. Menlo is weblog-ilicious!" --Fred Pyen, Metascene
"Who do you trust? I trust Dr. Menlo." --Andrew Abb, gmtPlus9
"Dr. Menlo's links are roadmap of progressive thinking. This site lives somewhere near the western spiral arm of the sensible part of the web. Plenty of sex to be found here." --fucker.net
"Read Dr. Menlo! Support Dr. Menlo! Long Live Dr. Menlo!" --Craig Jensen, BookNotes
"Dr. Menlo is a powerful and idiosyncratic voice." --Eliot Gelwan, Follow Me Here
"Dr Menlo's site deserves your attension. His site opened my eyes to the still-trying-to-be-defined possibilites of blogging, and it's a beautiful thing to behold, like a cultural hub awash on the sea of information. It looks cool too, his style a breathe of fresh air. His girlfriend, Pagan Moss, of the Sensual Liberation Army, is also cool. Her blog Peep Show Stories documents her life working in the Sex Industry. Very inciteful. There's nothing more sexy than a woman who is completely comfortable with her sexuality. *meow*" --SpankThePlanet
Dr. Menlo: censored by China, Blogsnob and "The Lefty Directory"
