An anonymous reader writes "Lawrence Lessig has announced plans to kickstart a SuperPAC big enough to make it possible to win a Congress committed to fundamental reform by 2016. From the article: 'If you can’t beat them, join them. Then take them down from the inside. That’s the basic idea behind a super PAC launching Thursday that wants to destroy super PACs for good. The Mayday PAC, as it’s called, seeks to raise enough money to sway five House elections in 2014 and elect representatives who have committed to pressing for serious reform of the campaign finance system. If that endeavor—a sort of test case—is successful, the PAC will then try to raise an enormous amount of money for the 2016 cycle—enough, PAC organizers hope, to buy Congress."
Miley Cyrus might have her own line of gold rolling papers, but GWAR has its own line of vaping fluids. The band is moving on in the wake of Oderus Urungus’ death in a very GWAR way, launching a vaping line through Mt. Baker Vapors (“The Summit Of Northwest Vaping”) that includes very GWAR-appropriate flavors like “Bloodbath” and “Jizmoglobin.” The latter is described as “a creamy blueberry blend with notes of nut and custard.” Other varieties include “German Chocolate Beefcake,” “Gwary4,” and “Spew.”
According to a statement from the band’s Beefcake The Mighty, GWAR “only use(s) freshly squeezed babies to give [the flavors] that personal GWAR touch.”
All the fluids are available now via the Mt. Baker site.
The original founder of Mt. Gox, Jed McCaleb, told Ars that he lost around $50,000 (held in dollars, not bitcoins) in the meltdown of the Bitcoin exchange that he created. The now-defunct Bitcoin exchange allowed users to hold US dollars and bitcoins in their online wallets.
In an interview with Ars, McCaleb said that he is no longer involved with the company—which eventually became the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange—since he sold it to Mark Karpeles. Karpeles is now at the center of the Tokyo-based company’s breakdown and bankruptcy and has said little about how Mt. Gox collapsed. McCaleb does, however, retain a 12 percent stake in the company, according to a company document leaked earlier this year.
“I met [Karpeles] I think on bitcointalk.org,” McCaleb said, referring to a primary discussion forum for Bitcoin users. “The Bitcoin community was very small at that time and I asked him to do some software development for me. He did that task and I was looking for someone else to run Mt. Gox so I could focus on other things. We discussed the possibility of him buying Mt. Gox from me and I ended up selling it to him in 2011.”
Thanks for moving here to start your parent-funded IT consulting "business." Thanks for jumping on the credit union train at 30, because your mom's monthly check counts as a direct deposit. Dr. Daddy is proud of his littlest princess' first $1500 studio apartment in the brand new eyesore built atop an entire city block of foreclosed homes and displaced minorities, on 3ish work days a week. Oh, you share a house with 4 other people? Sorry, your $700 hot-tub equipped bedroom confused me. Thanks for your contribution to our annual hike in rent. Thanks for establishing your "trendy" thinly veiled christian magazine. Thanks for your checklist of demands at our local coffee shop. Thanks for bro-ing down with your rent-a-cop. Thanks for adopting that decade-late Hitler haircut, and covering yourself in more flannel and pomade than could be practical. Thanks for dating this asshole for frequent trips to his parents' Tuscan villa. Thanks for bringing your loud, normal girlfriend to our favorite quiet park. Thanks for blaring your techno on the first sunny day of the year at your BBQ with your 9 try-hard friends. Thanks for commercializing every counter-culture your puny mind can wrap itself around, only to mock and undermine every sincere, conscious, community building "hippy punk" you see. Thanks for having the (in)decency to barely obscure your racist, classist, white entitlement. Thanks for leaving your rich just-outside-the-city suburb to pollute our town. We are coming for you.
The concept of ‘Mount & Blade with pirates and pirate ships’ is probably enough to sell a fair few people on a game, but what if that’s not enough? What if they need more? What if they demand razzmatazz? This problem calls for dramatic punctuation. Bang on an exclamation and bosh wallop, we have Caribbean! and the Internet falls over itself in excitement.
Snowbird’s piratical sandbox action-RPG has now hit Steam Early Access in alpha at £10.99.
Calling it “Mount & Blade with pirates” isn’t just lazily dismissive, mind. Caribbean! is built on Mount & Blade: Warband‘s engine and is awfully similar at its core. It’s the classic M&B formula of building armies, leading them into battle, conquering, trading, and becoming a mighty leader.
Only this time it’s about pirates, so you can roam the seas on upgradeable ships, manage a crew, get into naval battles with cannons blasting away, and send your chaps in to board the enemy. Also you get to wear a pirate hat and some magnificent doublets. And it’s really sunny.
Snowbird say Caribbean! is “70% complete” as it hits Early Access, and are planning to add odds and ends like siege artillery and factional meta-goals. Pirates, for example, might win by fending off Englishmen come to quash them. Here’s a dev diary with more on what is and isn’t in right now:
New trademarks for No One Lives Forever, the beloved spy shooter series from the early 2000s, were filed last week by Night Dive Studios, a publisher of classic PC games.
The Operative: No One Lives Forever kicked off the franchise on Windows PC in November 2000; it was followed by No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way in September 2002 and a prequel, Contract J.A.C.K., in November 2003. All three games were developed by Monolith Productions, which is now owned by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.
The rights to the series were believed to have resided with publishers Fox Interactive and Sierra Entertainment, both of which ended up as subsidiaries of Activision. But last April, Dan Amrich, then Activision's social media manager, reported that the company did not believe it owned the No One Lives Forever rights. It is currently impossible to purchase a new copy of any of the games in the franchise.
Portland, Oregon-based Night Dive Studios is a publisher that resurrects classic games and readies them for modern digital distribution. The company has brought games such as System Shock 2 and The 7th Guest to Steam.
In an email to Polygon, Night Dive CEO Stephen Kirk said, "At this time we are unable to comment on future plans. I would like to add that our team has a great fondness for these games and our hope is that they will one day be re-released."
"The 10 members of the town's advisory board had unanimously voted against ending the ban."
"If we have these things in the town, it draws the wrong type of people."
A Massachusetts town's 32-year-old ban on coin-operated video and arcade games is no more: Residents of Marshfield, Massachusetts, voted to end the prohibition at a town meeting April 28, reports The Patriot Ledger.
The measure, which required a majority vote, passed by a vote of 203-175. The 10 members of the town's advisory board had unanimously voted against ending the ban.
Marshfield's ban on coin-op games, which applied to all local businesses, had been incorporated into the town's bylaws in 1982. Opponents fought it all the way to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which upheld the law; the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case in June 1983, according to the Christian Science Monitor. Marshfield residents had kept the ban alive all this time, voting against petitions to repeal the prohibition in 1994 and again in 2011.
Back in 1983, one of the leaders who originally proposed the ban told the Christian Science Monitor that it was a "progressive step in that it protects life in a small town from an urban-type hony-tonk environment." Another proponent added, "If we have these things in the town, it draws the wrong type of people."
The new effort to lift the ban was led by resident Craig Rondeau, who found six local business to join his cause after the advisory board told him no business would support overturning the law.
"I was sitting thinking, 'Why is this illegal in my town, to have fun with my friends?'" Rondeau told The Patriot Ledger.
'Brian Hoyer is currently penciled in as the starter in Cleveland, but he's far from a lock to start, or even make the roster.'
Vince Young's NFL road will continue at least a little longer with his next shot coming in Cleveland.
It's been a long journey back to the NFL for Vince Young and while he's still a long way from making his first regular season appearance since 2011, he has his foot back in the door. Young went through a minicamp workout with the Cleveland and was impressive enough to earn a one-year deal from the Browns, according to Ian Rapoport of NFL Network.
Young hasn't appeared in a game since playing for the Eagles in 2011. He had offseason stints with the Buffalo Bills and Green Bay Packers, but didn't stick with either team. The opportunity with the Browns may be his best shot at getting back into the league. Cleveland has a very unsettled quarterback depth chart, which could allow the 30-year-old Young to earn one of the top spots. Brian Hoyer is currently penciled in as the starter in Cleveland, but he's far from a lock to start, or even make the roster. Alex Tanney was the only other quarterback on the team before Thursday when the Browns signed Young and veteran Tyler Thigpen.
Most expect the Browns to draft a quarterback early next week, which would likely leave Hoyer, Young, Thigpen and Tanney competing for two spots. Young was thought to be on his supposed "last chance" before so it's hard to definitively say this is his final opportunity, but time is certainly not on his side. Young has, however, proven he can have success in the NFL. If he can recapture that success, he could be in line for playing time in Cleveland. While it would likely only be as a placeholder for whatever rookie the Browns draft, it's an opportunity.
With less than 100 rostered quarterbacks in the NFL, backup spots are hard to get and even harder to hold on to. Young wasn't able to land a spot in his last two attempts. Maybe the third time will be the charm in Cleveland.
GQ is facing the wrath of Fox News after its social media account dissed the network by saying disgraced LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling would get a show on the network.
“Apparently, they don't like Fox,” host Steve Doocy opined. “And — apparently — they don't like conservatives!”
The show featured outraged feedback from Fox News fans, including one who accused GQ magazine of turning a high school kid “into a life-long drug addict.”
“Those are some strong words,” Anna Kooiman riffed. “But maybe GQ ought to stick to the colorful socks, and the pocket squares, and hair gel!”
“Half the country leans to the right, half to the left,” Doocy noted. “For them to anger half of the country who might buy their stupid magazine, that's just not a good business model!”
The Old Testament is full of examples of chiasmus, which is a figure of speech used in ancient times to emphasize balance. It lists a bunch of ideas or things and then repeats each of them in reverse order. It’s often not an identical repetition. It frequently uses the opposite of what came before or something similar to it.
Here’s a simple chiasmus I came up with to show you what it looks like:
A. The cat was heavy
B. She ate too much food
C. Something had to change
B. I gave her less food to eat
A. Now she’s less heavy
The first and last lines are similar, the second and fourth lines are opposite but related, and the third line is the turning point that links the ideas contained in the chiasmus.
Why am I giving a grammar lesson? Because I’ve noticed this same pattern used in films – a Cinematic Chiasmus, if you will. That shouldn’t be too surprising. Good storytelling involves setting up ideas and then paying them off over the course of the story. But some films have second halves that so closely mirror their first halves that it makes them truly breathtaking to behold once you notice their chiasmus at work.
RoboCop (1987) is the first film I reviewed on this website, so it’s fitting that it should be the first that I talk about here. Get ready to see how RoboCop is an almost perfectly symmetrical film.
The Chiasmus
First of all, I’ll write out the chiasmus in the film’s sequence of events:
A. Main title
B. Media Break 1
C. Main character identifies himself as Murphy
D. OCP Junior Executive Kenny is killed after holding a gun in a meeting
E. Bob Morton goes over Dick Jones’ head to initiate the RoboCop Program
F. Clarence Boddicker makes his debut
G. Car chase with Boddicker and his cohorts
H. Partners Alex Murphy and Anne Lewis separate to take on Boddicker’s gang
I. RoboCop is born and he tests his abilities at a shooting range
J. RoboCop causes property damage in the name of law and order
K. Media Break 2
L. Lewis reminds RoboCop who he really is
M. RoboCop visits the home where he lived
N. RoboCop hunts for Boddicker
O. Boddicker reveals he’s working for Jones
P. RoboCop gets shot at by a lot of drug dealers in a warehouse
Q. RoboCop arrests Boddicker
Q. RoboCop attempts to arrest Jones
P. RoboCop gets shot at by a lot of cops in a parking garage
O. Boddicker gets another assignment from Jones
N. Boddicker gets a tracking device to hunt RoboCop down
M. RoboCop hides at the steel mill where he died
L. RoboCop sees his own face for the first time
K. Media Break 3 (Note: This is the only thing that’s out of order. It actually takes place where O is)
J. The bad guys cause property damage in the name of chaos
I. RoboCop fixes his targeting system
H. RoboCop and Lewis split up to take on Boddicker’s gang once again
G. Car chase with Boddicker
F. Boddicker is killed
E. RoboCop plays a recording of Jones saying, “I had to kill Bob Morton because he made a mistake”
D. Jones is killed after holding the same gun Kenny held in a meeting
C. Main character again identifies himself as Murphy
Now let’s go through each of these points to see their similarities in greater depth.
A. Main Title
This is pretty straightforward. The movie is bookended by its title. “RoboCop” is the first thing we see. No “A film by Paul Verhoeven” or “Orion Presents” preceding it. And “ROBOCOP” is the last thing we see before the end credits roll.
B. Media Break
In the first Media Break, we learn that a police officer is in critical condition after a gun battle with Clarence Boddicker. Plus, OCP Senior President Dick Jones says of the cops who are threatening to strike, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” In the final Media Break, which was deleted from the final cut of the film, Officer Anne Lewis is shown to be recovering after a gun battle with Boddicker. She repeats Jones’ line from her hospital bed.
C. Main Character’s Identity
When Alex Murphy arrives at his new precinct, he tells the Police Chief, “Hi. Murphy, transferring in from Metro South.” At the end of the film, when the Head of OCP asks for his name, he replies, “Murphy.” It’s a subtle thing, but it’s meaningful because it shows how RoboCop has regained his humanity by returning to his level of self-identity from the start of the film.
D. OCP Executive Killed During a Meeting
In the first demonstration of ED-209, a junior executive on the OCP Board points a gun at the giant robot and is promptly shot to pieces, landing on a scale model of the planned Delta City. In the final scene, a desperate Dick Jones uses that same gun to take the president of OCP hostage. However, RoboCop soon shoots Jones many times until he falls outside the building.
E. Bob Morton and Dick Jones
An ambitious junior executive named Bob Morton literally goes around Jones to pitch his idea for RoboCop to the Old Man after Jones’ ED-209 demonstration fails spectacularly. Jones gives Morton a murderous look as Morton walks off. Later, when RoboCop is asked for evidence that Jones is guilty of murder, he simply provides testimony from Jones himself saying, “I had to kill Bob Morton because he made a mistake.” His mistake, of course, was making Jones look bad in front of the Old Man.
F. Clarence Boddicker’s Introduction and Farewell
The first time we see Clarence Boddicker, he’s angry at his cohort for frying the money they stole, and he gets violent. The last time we see him, he’s angry at Lewis for frying his last henchman, and he again gets violent.
G. Car Chase with Boddicker and His Cohorts
Murphy and his new partner Lewis engage in a high-speed pursuit of Boddicker and his henchmen. Boddicker kills a wounded member of his team by throwing him out of his van, bringing the chase to a sudden halt. Later, Lewis pursues Boddicker in another car chase. Boddicker accidentally kills one of his wounded team members, which leads to an unexpected end to the pursuit.
H. Partners Split Up
After finding Boddicker’s abandoned van, Murphy and Lewis go in different directions to try to find his gang members. Lewis is wounded and unable to help Murphy until it’s too late and he’s been killed. Later, Lewis drives a car while RoboCop draws the bad guys’ fire on foot. She gets shot by Boddicker and she’s unable to warn RoboCop in time to prevent him from getting crushed by falling metal beams.
I. RoboCop at the Shooting Range
One of the first things RoboCop does after being created is test his aiming ability at a police firing range. He hits dead center with every shot. After taking heavy damage, his targeting system is off by a few inches. Lewis helps him correct it so he’s perfectly accurate once more.
J. Causing Property Damage
His first night on the job, RoboCop causes a lot of property damage in the name of serving the public trust and protecting the innocent. On the night that the Detroit Police Force goes on strike, the city’s criminals cause a lot of property damage in the name of chaos and self-gratification.
K. More Media Break
The second Media Break focuses primarily on RoboCop and how he is on his way to eliminating crime in Old Detroit. The third Media Break focuses on the Detroit Police Force’s impending strike, which will cause crime to skyrocket in the city.
L. “Murphy, It’s You”
At her first opportunity, Lewis stops RoboCop and says, “Murphy, it’s you.” This reveals his real name, which he had forgotten. Later, RoboCop removes his helmet, revealing his face, which he hadn’t seen since his death. Lewis says, “It’s really good to see you again, Murphy.”
M. RoboCop Goes Back and Tries to Remember His Family
After learning of his own murder, RoboCop visits the old home and finds it abandoned. He has a few flashes of memories of his wife and son, but nothing substantial enough to rekindle his old self. After surviving another attempt on his life, RoboCop hides out at the abandoned factory where Murphy was killed. He laments to Lewis about his family, “I can feel them… but I can’t remember them.”
N. Predators Hunting Their Prey
RoboCop goes to a night club to find a member of Boddicker’s gang who can lead him to the crime lord’s hideout so he can kill Boddicker. Later, Jones gives Boddicker a tracking device to lead him to RoboCop’s hideout so Boddicker can kill him.
O. Boddicker Working with Jones
Boddicker shows up at Morton’s home and tells his girlfriends to leave. Then Boddicker plays a recorded message from Jones, showing that he works for Jones. Later, he goes to Jones’ office and hits on his receptionist, who not so subtly tells him to get lost. Then he gets another assignment from Jones to take out Morton’s creation, RoboCop.
P. RoboCop Survives a Firing Squad
When RoboCop finds Boddicker, he’s greeted by more than a dozen bad guys all firing bullets at him. He’s unharmed by their attack and kills almost all of them. Later, RoboCop is heavily damaged by ED-209’s guns and then he faces more than a dozen cops who mercilessly fire on him. He’s weaponless, so he can’t fire back and he barely survives the ordeal.
Q. RoboCop’s Arrests
The turning point of the movie is when RoboCop arrests Boddicker. Up ‘til then, he’s been indestructible and able to handle anything that comes his way. But after throwing Boddicker through several glass windows, RoboCop is about to crush his throat when he’s reminded that he’s a cop. His programming takes over and denies him the ability to kill Boddicker. He arrests the criminal instead. Then, when RoboCop confronts Jones, he’s prevented from arresting him by his programming. And RoboCop gets knocked through several glass doors/windows by ED-209.
Seeing Double
I have no idea if the makers of RoboCop intended for it to be so symmetrical. The fact that they accomplished this feat while still making a fast-paced action film that never feels like it’s repeating itself is simply amazing. It shows that it’s possible to make a work of art, even when making a movie with a silly title and in a genre that usually doesn’t call for much depth.
This is the Deja Reviewer bidding you farewell until we meet again.
This is for @Tiresias when his obsession with Phil Spector gets old.
L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, crooner.
Photo illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker
The early 1980s were a particularly strange time for Scientology. L. Ron Hubbard, the church’s controversial founder, kept such a low profile that rumors abounded that he had, in the parlance of Scientology, “dropped the body.” The rumors gained such currency that Hubbard’s son, Ronald DeWolf, filed to become an appointed trustee of his father’s estate on the grounds that Hubbard had not made a public appearance since 1980, and was most likely dead.
Hubbard, whose fetish for secrecy and privacy rivaled late Howard Hughes’, countered the claims not by making an appearance but by signing an affidavit from his secret lair that asserted that he was experiencing a late burst of multifaceted, runaway creativity. “As Thoreau secluded himself by Walden Pond,” Hubbard waggishly boasted, “so I have chosen to do so in my own fashion. I am actively writing, having published Battlefield Earth, and my Space Jazz album.” (For the record, at no point during his seclusion in Walden Pond did Thoreau release an album named Space Jazz.)
The novel Battlefield Earthplays a central role, of course, in Scientology’s strange relationship with pop culture. But even people morbidly obsessed with Hubbard might not realize that before John Travolta donned platform boots to cackle maniacally at the foolishness of puny man-animals in the film version of Battlefield Earth, the book had been adapted into an album written by Hubbard called Space Jazz. Space Jazz wasn’t the only album masterminded by Hubbard in the final years of his life, as the eccentric guru boogied his way toward death. Collectively, these albums offer a fascinating glimpse into both Hubbard’s psyche and rampant egomania. (To describe these albums as music at all represents runaway narcissism on Hubbard’s part.) Though designed as proselytizing tools, these albums instead function as fascinating sociological and anthropological artifacts chronicling the secretive and insular world of Scientology at a strange, uncertain time.
Thanks to Edgar Winter, Mission Earth rises to the level of cheesy mediocrity.
Space Jazz, released in 1982, was the product of a very specific cultural moment. Thanks to the popularity of E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises, space was the place and science fiction was the hottest genre around. Scientology wanted in, so an ambitious plan was hatched: Hubbard’s epic 1982 Battlefield Earth novel, to be followed by Space Jazz, and then a big-budget Battlefield Earth movie to follow in the mid-’80s, with John Travolta in the lead as hero Jonnie Goodboy Tyler.
It didn’t quite work out that way. Battlefield Earth wasn’t made into a film until 2000, at which point Hubbard was long dead and Travolta, aged out of playing a boy hero, was cast as the villain Terl instead. So Space Jazz is a forgotten curio despite its connection to one of the most notorious flops in pop culture.
Hubbard’s sonic space opera is, as you might imagine, a staggeringly strange piece of work, a bewildering cross between Queen’s Flash Gordonsoundtrack (whose hero is referenced in the shameless opening track “Golden Age of Sci-Fi,” along with Superman and Buck Rogers), an amateur radio play, and a campy audiobook that goes overboard with special effects and musical cues. If you have not recently read all 1,050 pages of Battlefield Earth or seen the film, the album is completely incomprehensible; if you’re familiar with the story, it’s mildly comprehensible.
Musically, the album alternates between canned uplift (“Jonnie”, “Golden Age of Sci-Fi”) and droning dirges, broken up with patches of comic-book dialogue, robot voices, and laser-gun sound effects. A then-new, extremely expensive digital sampling synthesizer called a Fairlight CMIpeppers the album; Hubbard seemed to imagine it represents the sound of the future, but it actually sounds more like the rightly discarded mistake of an abandoned past. Even for Battlefield Earth buffs like myself, Space Jazz is less a guilty pleasure than a harrowing endurance test. With Space Jazz, L. Ron Hubbard set out to re-create Battlefield Earth as a purely sonic experience. He succeeded all too well.
Space Jazz was followed four years later by an album inspired by another of Hubbard’s late-period magnum opuses, the aforementioned Mission Earth, which Edgar Winter adapted for a concept album ostensibly written by the reclusive senior citizen, who had officially died by the time the album was released in 1986. So if Edgar Winter’s Mission Earth soars above Space Jazz to earn the dubious distinction of the greatest album L. Ron Hubbard ever wrote, that’s largely because the previous effort set the bar so low. Of the four albums credited to Hubbard, Mission Earth is the only one that actually sounds like music. It’s the only album that could conceivably be played on the radio without prompting confused cries of, “Why?” and “What?” and “Is this even music?” and “How could this have happened?”
The guitarist deserves a St. Jude medal for making typically convoluted couplets like “To Mission Earth I was assigned/ A planet that was seizure inclined” sound like the base components of actual music, and not the ravings of a madman. It helps that Mission Earth has a driving, propulsive beat that makes it easy to overlook the profound silliness of the lyrics—and that Winter brings to the project a scary conviction and effete theatricality to rival John Travolta’s in Battlefield Earth.
If I might damn Mission Earth with faint praise, it has some of the kitschy, campy stomp of The Elder, Kiss’ notorious concept album. Songs like “Just a Kid” and “Bang Bang” have the infectious hooks, narrative thrust and the ripe theatricality of show tunes; they’re not good by any stretch of the imagination, but they are listenable, which is more than can be said of any of the other albums Hubbard is credited as having written.
Thanks to Winter, Mission Earth rises to the level of cheesy mediocrity. Given his source material, that is a remarkable achievement. A lot of talented professionals worked on the commercially available albums credited to Hubbard, including Chick Corea, Isaac Hayes, and Stanley Clarke (as well as Winter, of course), but Mission Earth is the only project that feels remotely professional.
Space Jazz and Mission Earth are direct offshoots of Hubbard’s career as a scribbler of science-fiction kitsch, but the other two albums written by Hubbard, 1986’s The Road to Freedom and the 2001 tribute The Joy of Creating, are Scientology’s version of gospel: psalms designed to express Hubbard’s ideas and messages through song.
The Road to Freedom is attributed to “L. Ron Hubbard and Friends”; the album was conceived as a tool for disseminating Scientology, and acolytes were encouraged to buy multiple copies to hand out to friends and co-workers. However, it’s difficult to imagine anyone but the morbidly curious making it past the first track, “The Road to Freedom,” which finds Travolta, Leif Garrett, and Frank Stallone expounding the gospel of L. Ron Hubbard, earnestly trying to wrap their mouths around lines like, “You are not mind or chemicals, you don’t even have a form/ You’re in a trap of senseless lies, it’s time to be reborn” over the tremblingly earnest sounds of wimpy soft rock.
The tone is painfully earnest, the jargon thick. No one can accuse The Road to Freedom of being off-message: “Take the route of auditing and once again be free,” the title track admonishes. “Give them the cans and audit it out!” implores “The Evil Purposes.” To help non-Scientologists lucky enough to be gifted with this bizarre vanity project, the liner notes to The Road to Freedom contains a glossary of Scientologist terms like ARC, auditing, engram, and reg, but even with that cheat sheet The Road to Freedom still feels like it was recorded in another language and then only intermittently translated into English.
The Road to Freedom is defined by a messianic sense of purpose. It’s filled with flowery, maudlin rhetoric about saving mankind and freeing people as well as a cheerfulness that frequently feels demonic. “Laugh a Little” implores listeners to find something to laugh about as an antidote to the blues but the laughter on the song sounds less joyous than monstrous, the final cackles of fools laughing themselves to death.
L. Ron Hubbard’s posthumous gift to Scientologists ends with “L’Envoi Thank You for Listening,” the only song on any of the four albums where he actually sings, in a foghorn baritone that has been synthesized and processed into a state of ghostly unrealness. The Wizard steps out from behind the curtain for a bow, and the effect is just as surreal and jarring as you might imagine. Hubbard presents himself not as a man with a philosophy but as a speaker of profound truths:
I do not sing what I believe
I only give them fact
If they believe quite otherwise
It still will have impact
For truth is truth and if they then decide to live with lies
That’s their concern not mine, my friend,
They’re free to fantasize.
The Road to Freedom does nothing to refute the notion that Hubbard was a charismatic lunatic who managed to convince a surprising number of otherwise intelligent people that he was not just sane but humanity’s last, best chance at sanity. That, friends, is what you call a long, long grift.
The Joy of Creating, cobbled together from Hubbard’s writings and released 15 years after his death, is defined by forced joviality. Everyone seems to be performing with a plastic smile. The Joy of Creating reduces its roster of singing Scientologists to poor imitation of themselves—pod people versions of the personas they’ve spent their careers creating.
Isaac Hayes, for example, is no longer a towering exemplar of swaggering sexuality; he’s the smiling figure of benevolence seen chuckling in the Joy of Creating CD booklet, clad in a bright orange Cosby sweater. This is not a man who will steal your woman—this is a man who will give your toddler a piggyback ride.
Hayes is the first friendly voice heard on The Joy of Creating.He begins the album by reciting Hubbard’s poem “The Joy of Creating.” “Wax enthusiastic and you’ll very soon feel so,” he intones, his voice full of canned wonder and manufactured awe. “A being causes his own feelings.” According to the CD booklet, “The Joy of Creating” “reminds us that a being causes his own feelings, and this truth alone has revitalized many artists and professionals the world over.”
Hayes’ brief track is billed as a mere “Prelude,” a palate cleanser for what’s to come, yet four tracks later the words Hayes tried so nobly to instill with life and meaning reappear, reimagined by Doug E. Fresh as an old-school party jam. It doesn’t stop there. Six of the album’s 15 tracks are versions of “The Joy of Creating,” including versions by Chick Corea and our old friend Edgar Winter. At a certain point The Joy of Creating stops feeling like music and begins to feel like a sadistic thought experiment. If the same clumsy batch of words are repeated six separate times by professional musicians in a wide spectrum of genres, can that ungainly chunk of words somehow become music?
The Joy of Creating is an album of surreal blandness and empty polish: Remove the jarring strangeness of Hubbard’s words and you have an album begging to accompany massages or afternoons at the spa. The Joy of Creating was seemingly designed as a proselytizing tool; the album puts a friendly face on the tenets of Scientology, but an awful lot of creepiness seeps through. The final line in the titular poem—“The greatest joy there is in life is creating. Splurge on it!”—seems like a tagline you’d find on a billboard on Mars. The Friends of L. Ron Hubbard nursed an earnest, sincere desire to share their hero’s words and ideas with the world, with music as their medium. Yet The Joy of Creating, and Hubbard’s entire strange output as a songwriter in the 1980s, suggests that his “music” was the worst possible advertisement for his ideas (at least until the release of the film version of Battlefield Earth).
These albums constitute one of the strangest and least explored crannies of Hubbard’s bizarre and fascinating career. Hubbard set out to uplift all mankind; he saw his music, like his books and teachings and ideas, as gifts to a humanity whose true potential only he could unlock. But these albums live on only as gifts to lovers of camp the world over. Splurge on it!
NEW HAVEN >> Riding the momentum of similar movements at the University of Connecticut and New York University, graduate students at Yale University Wednesday presented officials with a 1,000-signature petition asking for a vote to unionize.
Several hundred members of the Graduate Employees and Students Organization, along with supporters from Unite Here Locals 34 and 35, marched in the rain from the Hall of Graduate Studies on York Street to the office of Yale President Peter Salovey on Wall Street. They gave one copy of their petition to Graduate School Dean Thomas D. Pollard and left another copy with Salovey’s secretary.
“If ever there was a day to show this is not a fair-weather movement, this is it,” shouted GESO Chair Aaron Greenberg, on the steps of Woodbridge Hall. Rallying students wore rain gear and chanted, “Our work makes Yale work.”
GESO has existed for decades, supporting union efforts at Yale by Locals 34 and 35 and pushing for the rights of graduate students to bargain collectively with the university. Yale has never recognized the group.
Yet GESO has been buoyed by two recent events. In April, graduate students at UConn voted to form a union after the university agreed to a process by which graduate students could vote on unionization. The same thing happened in 2013 at NYU.
“It’s exciting to have graduate students stand up and say they deserve a seat at the table,” said Ted Fertic, a graduate student in Yale’s history department.
Yale spokesman Tom Conroy said Wednesday the university and graduate school “have worked and will continue to work productively with faculty and students, including the Graduate Student Assembly, on the issues identified by the petition. We are committed to the best possible academic outcomes for our students.”
Conroy did not say whether Salovey had seen the petition. Pressure from GESO on unionization may prove to be Salovey’s first labor relations test since taking over as Yale president last year.
For GESO members at the rally, unionization is a matter of fair treatment for an increasing workload during tense economic times. They spoke of pay equity, health benefits, child care and negotiated grievance procedures, among other items.
“We teach, we grade, we hold office hours, we oversee experiments. We do work, and our work matters,” said Greenberg, a graduate student in political science. “If the university trusts us to teach, they should trust us to negotiate over the conditions of our work.”
According to Greenberg, an increasing amount of the teaching and academic work at U.S. colleges and universities is being done by graduate students who are not on a tenure track and have no job security.
Kim, a fourth-year graduate student in the English department, said she teaches two classes at Yale. She wrote the syllabus, teaches each class session and grades every paper.
“My work here takes many forms,” Kim said.
GESO gathered signatures for the petition over the past four weeks. The document asked that Yale work with GESO to create a fair process for graduate students to vote on union representation.
The petition also asked Yale to maintain competitive wages and benefits, address unfair workload situations, negotiate with graduate students as Yale adds two residential colleges and boost hiring of women and people of color.
“We have the same issues,” Tyisha Walker, secretary-treasurer of Local 35, said at the rally. “You’re not trying to get rich. You’re trying to take care of your families and yourselves.”
Also attending the rally was Local 34 Vice President Maureen Jones. “You say ‘yes,’ they say ‘no.’ You know what happens? They come around,” Jones said. “They really ought to understand that all work is work.”
An off-duty cop who started his day at a firing range allegedly capped off his night by pulling up next to a car at a stop light in the Westchester town of Pelham and firing 13 rounds at the vehicle, nearly killing a passenger.
Investigators believe that 27-year-old Brendan Cronin, of Yonkers, began firing his 9mm Glock without provocation shortly before midnight on Tuesday. "As of right now it seems to be completely random,” Pelham police chief Joseph Chief Benefico told reporters yesterday. “We have nothing to link either party to each other — no road rage, nothing right now."
The unidentified 47-year-old victim, whom the Post identifies as Joe “The Truck” Felice, was sitting in the passenger side of the vehicle when he heard popping sounds and realized he had been shot. He then slumped down in the seat but still caught five more bullets. Fortunately, by slumping down he dodged a bullet that pierced the headrest.
One local resident who heard the shots reported seeing a bald motorist drive away from the shooting with his car's hazard lights on. Police soon stopped Cronin, who still had his hazards blinking. According to police, Cronin pointed his gun at officers after he was stopped but finally dropped the weapon after a tense standoff. He refused to take a breathalyzer test at the scene, and officials say he's said little since his arrest. But one source tells the Post that Cronin did not even remember firing his weapon.
Felice is in stable condition recovering from gunshot wounds to his lungs, arms and torso. The incident is being investigated by the town of Pelham police and the NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau. Cronin, who is a six year veteran of the NYPD assigned to the 46th Precinct in the Bronx, was suspended yesterday.
At his arraignment in Pelham last night, court officials prohibited the press from entering the courtroom. The Journal News reports:
Although arraignments are supposed to be open to the public, Pelham court officials appeared to have treated Cronin differently. A court clerk refused to allow a reporter from The Journal News into the courtroom, saying only Cronin's relatives were permitted inside. The two judges who handle arraignments in Pelham did not return messages seeking comment.
David Bookstaver, a spokesman for the state Office of Court Administration, said court personnel were out of line. "Arraignments are public proceedings and not conducted simply for family members," he said.
Sources tell the Post "the trouble all began when Cronin downed numerous drinks with some other cops at the end of a day that included a visit to the NYPD firing range in The Bronx."
Last summer, Carmack left id Software for the virtual reality company Oculus Rift, which was purchased by Facebook earlier this year for $2 billion. Zenimax, the parent company of id, is now threatening legal action, claiming that Carmack took proprietary technology he developed at id and used it to help "develop and market" the Oculus Rift goggles, which allow you to look around and virtually inhabit a video game world.
If you missed the news, two people at the Danish Geodata Agency recreated a one-to-one model of Denmark in Minecraft. It was a pleasant story that got a lot of attention. And then the vandals showed up and trashed the place.
Four for you, Toaster Strudel, for four you for sending Lacey Chabert a present for the 10th anniversary of the release of Mean Girls. For all you youngins out there, Chabert played the part of Gretchen Wieners, who was totally rich because her dad invented Toaster Strudel. Now get out of here, the rest of us have to dwell on how old we are, with only this list of ways to celebrate Mean Girls' anniversary from our sister site Styelite to console us.
Previously in Mean Girls
'35-36 million gallons of water from Mount Tabor’s Reservoir 5 has been completely moved to another reservoir in Mount Tabor Park. It will remain there as part of an experiment to see if the city’s reservoirs can be used as water features after they are phased out of use in 2015.'
A retired colonel has offered his burial plot to a veteran Idaho lesbian who was refused the right to be buried in a military cemetery next to her late wife, who also served in the armed forces.
The push by U.S. Navy veteran Madelynn Taylor and a woman she married out-of-state comes as four Idaho lesbian couples are challenging the state's constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and a broader debate over gay nuptials nationwide. Taylor told a Boise TV station the state military cemetery denied the pair burial as they did not have the Idaho marriage license required under its rules. Her longtime lesbian partner, Jean Mixner, died in 2012. "I am happy to give my fellow veteran that small peace of mind," retired U.S. Army Colonel Barry Johnson, a 27-year veteran, wrote in an open letter published on Wednesday in the Idaho Statesman newspaper. "And I do it to honor all the great Americans I've served with along the way - gay, straight, whatever." It was unclear if the cemetery would allow the transfer. The Idaho Division of Veterans Services said the cemetery's policy remains unchanged.
From Colonel Johnson's letter:
As a lifelong Idahoan and a 27-year Army veteran of two wars, I've worked beside heterosexuals, gays, lesbians and bisexuals. I've really never wanted to hear about anybody's sex life or sexual preferences, one way or another. Besides, everybody more or less knew who is who regardless, and I don't recall anybody in the military ever saying a thing about it. Never. Frankly, the only thing traumatic about the policy change for our armed forces of allowing gays to openly serve our country was all the media making a big deal about it. It didn't change a thing for any of us doing the job.
Serving in uniform has always been about earning trust and has never been about sexuality. Most of us just shrugged and endured sitting through hours of mind-numbing briefings on a change that essentially changed nothing. Then we have Madelynn Taylor, who seems like one heck of a lady. She cared for another person with all her heart and had to watch that person die. She is a veteran. She loves her country. She wants her partner by her side and she wants to eternally rest among veterans in the state she made home. Madelynn, you deserve that.
She wasn’t perfect. “Throw the ball,” her tough sports coach yelled at her. “Ahh,” she said, and she squeezed her eyes closed, and threw. The ball exploded. Then she fell down the stairs. “Oh no,” she moaned. “How am I supposed to do business at the bottom of the stairs?”
***
She wasn’t perfect. She had two different colored eyes, which is definitely a flaw and not a magnetic, compelling, unusual form of beauty.
“It makes you so special,” he told her. She shook her head.
“Bad special,” she said.
“Good special,” he said. She didn’t know what to believe.
“I don’t know what to believe,” she told him. “You think the thing I think is bad thing is good thing.”
“That’s good thing,” he said.
***
Oh no, she thought. I’m going to start blushing. It was terrible. It subtly drew attention to the beautiful colors blooming across her face, and also made her look vulnerable and childish and full of deep feeling, which was very bad for some reason.
“You’re fired,” her boss said through a mountain of briefcases. “I can’t have you blushing on the job!”
“She’s not fired,” said a voice nearby. It sounded like granite and honesty. “I’m an even more important Business Man and that blushing is a sign of her honesty and virtue.”
“Wha-wha-whaaaa?” her boss said.
“I’m giving you the business,” the granite-voiced man said. “But you can quit whenever you want, because I love you.”
She blushed.
***
She wasn’t perfect. Her mouth was, if anything, a trifle too full, like an overflowing Cupid’s bow.
“Would you…do you think you would like to go to the dance with me?” she asked sportsball captainback.
“That’s disgusting,” he said, sneering. “Your lips are beautiful and kissable and someone better than me is going to point that out to you in just a few years. Get out of my way.”
She cried out of her eyes. One of the eyes had a little freckle in it, which made her disgusting.
***
“No one will ever love me,” she told the guy who was older than her but not creepy older, just commandingly older, like maybe seven to nine years older and was also sort of her guardian or her teacher in some capacity, but again not in a gross way, like he wasn’t her teacher boss dad or anything, just a little more in charge than she was and also he had shoulder muscles. “I’m only half-elven [or half-vampire or half-dhampir or half-Watcher or half-Lycan or half-whatever amazing mystical race she was half a part of] instead of all the way, which gives me pretty much all of the same powers but none of the weaknesses and also I’m strong and beautiful. I’m a freak.”
He kissed her mouth with his mouth.
“Whaaa,” she was all like, because she was totally surprised that he had secretly loved her this whole time because he’d been so gruff and aloof and ten times harder on her than on any of the others, but it was because he had secretly loved her this whole time.
“I’ve secretly loved you this whole time,” he said with his mouth, then went back to kissing her.
***
I’ve always been different. I like books and animals better than people. Why, I don’t know. Maybe because books and animals are physically incapable of talking to me or having needs that supersede my own, so I can be in total control of them. Books can’t judge you or hurt you. They also can’t talk or eat or build a life with you, but whatever.
***
“You think too much,” her best friend who was this real free spirit who was always living in the moment instead of traveling back and forth through time like she did said. “That’s your problem. When the rest of us are just flinging ourselves through time and space with our brains entirely shut off, you’re always, like, off in the corner thinking, like, oh is this a good idea, what are the ramifications of my actions, and that’s why your life is such garbage.”
She worried the edge of her lab coat with her fingers and took off at least eight pairs of glasses. “I know,” she said. “But I don’t know how to stop.”
Then her friend made out with her and she got better.
***
“You only thought that was a flaw this whole time,” his mentor that he thought was dead but totally wasn’t dead at all, at least not “dead” in the way you traditionally think of dead told him. “It was actually your secret strength. You don’t have any flaws at all and you’re going to destroy the bad guy so much.”
He totally did.
***
“Your legs are too long.” How embarrassing!!!
***
“I just want to be normal,” she said, even though she had amazing powers and a super-family and was mega-gorgeous and better than normal in every way and the entire book would be terrible if she were normal and she had no conception of what normal was to begin with.
***
“That’s your problem,” her friend said. Normally her friend was all crazy and doing shots and saying “Girl, you need to kick him to the curb,” but not now. Now her friend was being quiet and serious, so you knew it was a really quiet and serious moment. “You would do anything to take care of your friends. But when was the last time you did something to take care of yourself?”
It was true. She hadn’t showered in four years. Her house had exploded and she didn’t even care. She hadn’t eaten in four months, and she was dead.
***
“I just don’t know what to do with this,” her hairdresser moaned, comically letting his arms fall to his side. “Your hair is just so wild and unmanageable, a lot like you. It can’t be tamed.”
“Neither can I,” she said, and she roundhouse kicked him in the face, and then she ran outside to find a real man who could handle someone who played as hard as she worked.
***
“You’re so noble,” the villain sneered, because he’d totally expected him to do that noble thing he’d just done but he was totally secretly impressed. “Not like me. I do whatever I want. So why do I secretly admire and maybe even love you a little bit?”
“Whoa,” he said.
“Wait,” the villain said. “I didn’t mean to say that last part. What I meant was why does your goodness shine through the light of my evil deeds and make me wish I was worth of you somehow?”
“Wait,” the villain said again. “You’re noble in a bad way, not a good way,” but it was too late. He was secretly good now, and they were going to become heroic friends.
***
“I’ll make dinner,” she said. “Oh, no, you won’t,” all her friends chorused in unison, and they picked her up and carried her to her favorite restaurant, so even though at first she was a little upset they didn’t like her cooking it was okay because they still got to be together and go to her favorite restaurant.
***
She called and ordered a dinner that she ordered a lot from the same restaurant she always called for delivery. “I know who you are,” the voice on the line said. “I remember your order,” because that was his job.
“This is so embarrassing,” she said in her amazing apartment. “Someone remembers my order. I’m such a loser.”
“It’s just my job to remember orders,” the voice said, but it was too late. She was already booking an around-the-world trip with that guy from work she was always fighting with.
***
“It’s really hard for me to trust people,” she said.
“Me too,” he said. “It’s hard for me to trust people too.” He thought for a second. “Do you want to trust me, though?”
“Okay,” she said, and they did, and then they made out.
Super Opinionated.
hodad
She wasn’t perfect. “Throw the ball,” her tough sports coach yelled at her. “Ahh,” she said, and she squeezed her eyes closed, and threw. The ball exploded. Then she fell down the stairs. “Oh no,” she moaned. “How am I supposed to do business at the bottom of the stairs?”