Telenovela du Jour

Jaye Beldo
Sunday, December 2, 2012
http://roadruin.blogspot.com/2012/12/by-jaye-beldo-orange-haired-flamenco.html

The orange haired Flamenco dancer swirled about-some Country and Western song blasting on the jukebox.  I knew there wasn’t a chance when she zipped through her pics on her camera across the street at the restaurant and I got a summary life montage in about a minute or so. Cathedrals in Barcelona, Mexican desert, Fabio looking guys playing guitars near tropical fountains and the one she had shot of me barely able to muster a smile, with what appeared to be some wan hued greasepaint on my face. I couldn’t synch with her svelte moves and stepped on her toes quite a few times, thinking of what to do with my father’s cremains all the while.

It was the usual deformed lot at the bar. I made some comment to a friend about a chemical spill that surely must have occurred in the town so many years ago and he told me it was meth and I couldn’t argue that. The pink hair, rotted grey teeth, moth eaten Metallica t-shirts and heads that sprung out from shoulders like side show dolls celebrating their own planned obsolescence still stick in my mind.

The chica’s hermanas  also alienated me with their drinking and laughter, although I admired their defiance of America’s collective depression. They made a mockery of it –clapping out some sophisticated rhythms not apparent in the Merle Haggard they were dancing to. As they were closing in to complete their Iberian sarabande, I went out into the downpour, crossed the dark street to the Excursion, climbed in the back and picked wood ticks off of the dog we had to rescue because his legs and hips were too stiff and he couldn’t walk back up to the top of the mountain after following us down earlier in the day.  He promptly ate the blood filled things while I continued to comb through his fur with my fingers and rip out more.

Back at the restaurant I tried out my Spanish soap opera monologue I’d been rehearsing for weeks on the trio. Amping up the dramatic effect wasn’t enough apparently-I was told I needed to be even more exaggerated in my delivery. But the applause received made the extra effort worthwhile and hugs and kisses ensued. One of the lovely ladies tried to convince me that I’m a ‘being of light’ and shouldn't kill myself as I had confessed in my rudimentary Spanish while clutching my heart, nearly falling out of my chair.  It could have been some subtle irony that got lost in her own stagecraft attempts to assuage me, but there was some genuine warmth which made me even more abstracted though and I only wanted to walk the five or six miles in the dark, back to the foot of the mountain and ascend in the rain and risk falling into the raging river we surveyed on motorcycles earlier in the day.  It really didn't matter. She would be off to Columbia in a few days and some ayahuasca experimentation in the jungle  with ‘Jivaro’ Indians  she told me–way out of my league from what I gathered on the dance floor as well as from the tentative squeeze of her hand when I tried to hold it under the table during dinner.

Eulogy Tableau

Jaye Beldo
November 26th, 2012

What to make of my father, Dr. Leslie Allen Beldo AKA Pete Beldo who passed on peacefully today at the age of 90 plus years? For starters, he read the entire Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary cover to cover, more than once. He could do differential calculus in his head, yet one time I discovered him in the garage trying to mix four stroke oil and gasoline together for the lawn tractor. His capacity for abstraction tended to distance him from the rest of us (I.Q 165) and we could never fully figure out where he was in his mind. Yet, he could dance a mean Polka/Tango/Cha-Cha with my mother and make some sublime tasting Finnish pancakes, bouillabaisse and exotic hors de oeuvres conjured from French cookbooks.

The youngest of thirteen children, he suffered through the Great Depression on a rather bleak and desperate farm in Sebeka, Mn. where life was hard and self sufficiency essential. The experience forever made him a liberal Democrat who greatly admired FDR and his New Deal. Generous to a fault, my dad always put himself last and helped so many struggling people throughout the years for he himself knew what hardship was. People like this are nearly non-existent now, especially  in our age of infantile self absorbtion and the cut throat capitalist philosophy of Ayn Rand.

Les should have never been enlisted in the army (WWII) for he had a pre-existing condition of high blood pressure.  Experiencing the ‘theater of war’ not only compromised his physical health but made him quite cynical about the military. We could never really get him to open up about it at all. No stranger to the machinations of bureaucracy, he had a kind of superhuman tenacity to work through reams of red tape to get things done- a skill he no doubt acquired during all his years working in market research, long range corporate planning as well as during his time as an enlisted man. He successfully helped a family member receive compensation from an insurance company which initially rejected the claim that was submitted to them.  He also once helped an uncle get veteran’s benefits after his initial application was rejected.  Such perseverance against all odds also has been a great source of inspiration for us.

My father was a bit self deprecating, which is an understatement.  His name appeared in the Royal Blue Book of 1969 which had such distinguished persons as Robert F. Kennedy listed in it. Even though he had quite a bit of clout in the advertising world at the time, having written a very influential report on how to advertise beer for the Hamm’s Brewing Co. amongst other things,  he always downplayed the influence he had in the corporate world. He named the Ford Mustang back in the early 60’s, Chanel perfume and even came up with the concept of Hamburger Helper.  He was quite skilled in writing, having earned a journalism as well as a psychology degree at the University of Minnesota. His penchant for naming things so notably also extended to a more domestic realm: Marauder the Tabby cat, Daffodil the Sheepdog and Java, an errant mutt we had back in the seventies, being a few of the more outstanding examples of  his ability to come up such memorable nomenclature.

My father was very cultured and constantly encouraged us to read, listen to classical music and watch foreign films, which I used to do with him back in the days when such things actually aired on television. Most of all he inspired us to become our own teachers.

“Always get an education.” He once told me. “It’s the one thing that no one can take from you.”  These words have stuck with me for my entire life. It was the best advice he could have given for it certainly is true-none of the vultures hovering about have been able to take this from me.

“Rise above the deadly middle.” He also advised me and pointed out that the word ‘mediocrity’ has its etymological origin in ‘halfway up the mountain.’ of which he underlined several times in red ink in his well worn copy of the above mentioned dictionary. He once showed me a painting called The Hay Wain by Hieronymous  Bosch and all the gluttonous, desperate souls trying to hop aboard this allegorical vehicle for a free ride. He certainly had his share of people trying to do the same on his own personal hay wain and it took a profound toll on him.

“The world is a pretty brutal place for anyone who has a sensitivity to art, music and literature.” Is another observation of his that has stuck with me and, based on personal experiences over the last 30 years or so, has rung so very true. He amassed a personal library/fortress with well over 5000 books of which I spent most of my life going through as well as hundreds upon hundreds of classical music, Opera LPs and the like.  Yet, he could listen to Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys and Johnny Cash for he had none of the snobbery usually associated with the high hat endeavors listed above. Farm life does that to a person I guess.

He had quite a macabre sense of humor as evidenced by the legions of cartoons he would draw, many of which I’d find in the marginalia of his books, on the back of bank statements, paper napkins, drink coasters, etc. I once found one on the inside cover of Marshall McLuhan’s book, The Gutenberg Galaxy, of a man kneeling at a cross on which was inscribed a bar graph  indicating a more banal dimension of profit and loss. Sadly, as the cartoon suggests, salvation only can be found at the bottom line for many.

His skills as a photographer also were very apparent-esp. in his 35mm photos taken with natural light. Gifted in the art of composition, he could catch the true essence of whatever subject matter he chose to depict. His pictures often betrayed the rather cold and remote persona he projected upon the world-revealing  that he was quite a sensitive, vulnerable and caring soul indeed.

It is through this all too brief tableaux of portraitures described here that I choose to remember my dear father, on this sad and painful day.

Some Pelagic Musings

Jaye Beldo
Monday, November 19, 2012
http://roadruin.blogspot.com/2012/11/some-pelagic-musings.html

Arriving in Fort Bragg a few days ago, I got to enjoy a much welcome pelagic view after being mountain locked for over eight months. Benignly soporific waves far below cast their foam far up onto the rocks and a lonely gull posed for a few cliff side pics, some gnats flying around its head which didn't seem to perturb it in the least.  A guy in a pickup truck scanned the kelp ridden bay with some binoculars and I went over to chat it up with him.

"The herons are eating gophers." He said. "They pick them off on the fly. I watch them wriggle in their throats. Stomach acids finish them off eventually. Fishing isn't as good anymore."

I had heard the same while in Nova Scotia a couple of years ago during a boat tour of some bird islands near Stanley. The weary tour guide pointed out the anorexic seals warming up on the rocks-a hard to ignore reminder of the plight of our depleted oceans and the toll its taking on all living things.

Heading north I pulled into a deserted state park just outside of town and after setting up camp, soon found that the beach is not a good place to traipse with one's head in the clouds.  While examining a bit of flotsam that looked like a French tickler, a 'rogue' wave nearly pulled me out to sea in its undertow. Soaked to my waist and my boots filled with salt water, I slushed my way back to the camp site, musing on Fukushima, wondering if the sea flora was some mutant offspring of the disaster.

Awakening around two a.m., I turn on the flashlight and see my shoes floating in a pool of rainwater outside the tent. A cold awakening and a needed ablution for my feet the next morning. . None of the other campsites around me had any standing water. Perhaps something needed to dissolve in me via alchemical solutio.

At dawn, I headed further north and after much serpentine effort, road wise speaking, eventually arrived at Sinkyone Wilderness Area-still looking for some kind of  peace. The camp host sat at a park bench reading and I walked over and sat down with her in the semi-sun, sharing an ad libbed synopsis of my blog travelogue and how I had come to arrive at this fairly remote place. She took me to my brook side campsite and after setting up, I walked along the Lost Coast-admiring how plate subduction had contributed to creating such a remarkably beautiful place.  Waves below seemed to rebuke my errant thoughts and I found myself standing on the edge of an eroded bit of trail-the drop down to the beach would have been nothing short of fatal if it collapsed. Warnings given to me by the head of the Juneau search and rescue team in Alaska a few years ago came to mind and I promptly backed away.

The next day out on the porch of the visitor's lodge we sat. Rain clouds loomed and I had to be ready to evacuate lest I be stranded for days.  Sophia poured over a field guide to sea life, pointing to a pictures of some species of kelp she used to make a salad.  I couldn't get the island of plastic debris floating in the Pacific out of my mind. Eventually, the island will become a country once it melts into something more cohesive. Perhaps some protracted lightning storm will fuse it all together, rendering it into some kind of gulag for dissidents around the world. I reach for a geology book inside the lodge and page through it, a more bedrock endeavor IMO considering the surface plight at hand. The rains eventually came while we talked about aborigines and I sped my way back up the treacherous road and back to the highway, passing through a pot town called Garberville.

After more winding roads the next day and the day after, I eventually arrived in Calistoga and soaked in some hot springs.  While contemplating my feet in the whirlpool jets, a mish mash of different languages melded with the sounds of the  waters. A bald woman with Pierre Cardin sunglasses flaunted her buffed body speaking, with her friends in some eastern bloc language I’m guessing. A woman at a table read, The Servant Class,doing some vicarious  salt of the earth living while she flipped through the pages, munching on a cucumber sandwich. I’m reminded of a scene in the Bunuel movie Belle de Jour where one of the idle rich says, “I often think of the working class when it snows.”

Lulled by the bubbles, dreaming of netting some hippy heiress, I look up only to see a rather plump woman to my right wearing a tie dyed crepe gown stuffing her face with a salad at one of the tables. I wished I had some flower child lens to see the world through at that moment.

My head swirls a bit and a slender woman soaking in the same springs looks at me with calculated distance. I try to weave the steam into an invitation since there is not a varicose vein on her body. But she looks away, her ready eyes trained on some jet set retribution far beyond the springs.

I pass through Calistoga and feel the presence of the living vine there. Is this some kind of soul recollection or a lost part of me that needs to be reclaimed?  Or echoes from the wedding feast at Cana? Only the lord would know, I suppose. Perhaps if I drank some vintage Chablis the region is famous for, it would evoke such a thing, like Proust biting into a Petite Madeleine and the remembrances the dessert inspired in him. Passing vineyard after autumn hued vineyard, it is all blue ruin to me though. Perhaps just a sip? It would have to be the rarest of vintages indeed, some private reserve locked away in a Rotshchild vault. The bottle has my real name written on it, that I can see, with all sorts of intricate filigree etched into the glass which serves to weave the circuitous travails of my life together. I would never cork it open though, but if I did, I’d embrace this place and the people here with my heart, wine holding the key to its full opening. I’d embrace their BMWs and Porsches too. More importantly, I’d look at myself more objectively-opt for Botox injections, get the crow’s feet buffed away and my graying hair dyed into something more attractively conducive. Perhaps the wine, even if I spit it out like a professional taster, will impart some healing powers and I’ll be able to erase all signs of weathering in the moneyed class that have staked a claim to this region. How liberating  would that be? Cosmetic surgeons would be put out of business and have to move elsewhere. Yoga instructors too. As I speed down the highway with such prospects fading, a silk theater curtain woven by Tuscany handmaidens descends to the valley and backstage, they siren call me into a 12th century past, where my troubadour inspirations could stand a better chance, that is if they’re not dashed against the rocks of the wine inspired illusions written above.

Now my hands chill in this campsight as I type this out near my backpacker’s tent. Dark coming fast as we approach the solstice.

The Road from Ruin: California Part 2

Jaye Beldo
Thursday, May 3, 2012
http://roadruin.blogspot.com/2012/05/road-to-ruin-california-cont.html

Death will be easy here. Ravines, runnels, ridges and the valley itself will funnel the miscreants in. Tweak whacked trash, guided by a revenant Jack rabbit we call The Messenger, will someday climb this high and break through the gate.  Haunts me all the time now.  Guy got three bullets in his head down the road last year. Not that far down from here I guess. Raven radar helps though, even in the fog shroud. Perk of canine ears in any direction has me reaching for a fire arm I don’t even have.

What drives them is easy to figure for they’re on the same death march as over 150 years ago. Whose hand the ace is in is still hard to tell though.

The abyss is my own gravestone, epitaph being a bottomless marl plummet right through the collective ravage down on the rez.
Eulogy a somber report some deputy far below can gauge the caliber of as he muses on the ensuing investigation and if it would be worth it going all the way to the top of Quail ridge. The Messenger may not even take any interest in it either, answering to some other blood or an earthquake echo or some vaporous release of the blackness the soil here still holds. Not enough shovel power to shed light on it though. Only the plants can break through it ,given they are the right strain.

Now, the clouds suck into some riverine foliage below a revealing alpine expanse on the other ridge, some lime light after burn, ignored by two legged pack mule ghosts clambering back into the past en route to Bloody Run creek. My host complains about the cost of potato salad and a distant Costco retribution over 2.5 hours away and that keeps me together. My penned and remembered bible quotes are tenuous in this kind of atmosphere.

Did some Job suffering in the barren and iced trailer this morning, 90’s décor conspiring betrayal, spelled out mostly in the wall paper, little paintbrush arcs of cold grey and brown, intended to break up the interior monotony but only rousing the absoluteness of the context itself which the sunlight sealed into ersatz permanency. My skeletal system, utterly racked by my sorrowed and quivering flesh, bore most of the brunt.

The resident Mockingbird provides counterpoint though via a prolix and doubled medley, a repertoire potpourri that only Messiaen himself could transcribe. The composition would be only be barked at the auction of this property after the Feds seized the composition, their helicopters smacked down by clouds turned into concrete via some umbrage mantra uttered by one of the birds completing a migration all the way from Columbia. It makes a nest egg out of the debris field, albeit inaccessible from this vantage. It would be a nice prize to snatch and dash away with and sell in town for sufficient gas money to escape.

Artists would freeze in this kind of light, unable to acclimate to such a mystique confine.
 

The Road from Ruin: California

Jaye Beldo
Sunday, March 18, 2012
http://roadruin.blogspot.com/2012/03/road-from-ruin-california.html

Slaloming  the Malibu through cavalcades of tumbleweed and dust mixed with the flower petals of Almond trees, I jettisoned myself further away from Barstow. 5 was even bleaker.  The northward travail punctuated with signs that read: Congress Created This Dust Bowl with Pelosi’s, Costas’s and Boxer’s names crossed out. NAFTA uber alles. Thought of all the produce I had eaten in my life that was grown in this region. No more.

A bit of rain and fifty degrees gave me relief from the desert harshness I had escaped but the gas station I had stopped at seemed but an odd oasis of sorts. Not meant to be there although the 4.70 per gal. prices said otherwise.  I leave and a giant tumbleweed careens into my grill, shatters and vaporizes before the north wind sweeps it away instantly.

Road fatigue didn’t set in until I passed through Bakersfield and managed to bail out on a much welcomed side road, working my way through some verdant, mountainous terrain. A tenuous sense of peace pervaded, like being on the cusp of something unique, if not extraordinary.  Yet this too was co-opted territory. By what I couldn’t tell.

Met my host in a small town at a Safeway, after passing by a lake rendered idyllic by twilight. I followed her through the dark and serpentine roads for well over an hour until we reached a depressed town on the edge of an Indian reservation.
Definite meth stronghold here I felt.The dark didn’t really add anything to the gloom, but I was glad when we reached the gate of her property and made it to the top of Spirit Mountain. Greeted by a 140 lb. German Shepherd and a sophisticated Doberman who was a bit demure at first, it was nice to get out of the car.

A pleasant alpine expanse greeted me the next morning, home to Black Bears and Mountain Lions. The terrain seemed content somehow, assuaged by clouds and fog. A bit of climactic respite, although the feeling of something looming prevailed.

Too many high eyes in these parts for a teetotaler such as myself. Stoned is more than just a way of life, rather a blight that makes people content with their own mediocrity. In a trailer, I was forced to listen to this doped up woman patronize a carpenter 30 plus years older than her. She claimed she could see his glowing soul through his skin but I could see otherwise-her cosmically sourced, ulterior motives were quite transparent to me.  I got up and left without excusing myself and apparently that offended her from what I heard the next day. Nothing that the acupuncture she learned to do couldn’t cure. The scene left me wishing for some needles stuck in my own meridians -primarily in hopes that they would  alleviate the lingering disgust I had-for the carpenter-who was more than mesmerized by her uplift rap.

Time to sign off folks. My green tea is getting cold here in this coffee shop. I’ve got to tough it out at least until the fall.  Funny what having no money forces a person to do-just never thought it would be like this-the desperation that is.

TBC

(C)2012-Jaye Beldo

Lava Cocktail Blog

Greetings Friends,

I've archived my now defunct Lava Cocktail blog in a 'best of' kind of way @:

http://lavacocktail.wordpress.com/

Enjoy such classics as the Bon Jovi Conspiracy, Mind Control in Black and White, The Christ Conspiracy book review, Curse of the Lutefisk, The Optimism Gestapo and more!

Best,

Jaye Beldo

FeedBack: New theory blames Soviets for death of Albert Camus

Jaye Beldo

The Myth of Sisyphus now needs revision: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is not suicide but whether or not the KGB did Camus in."

The Masks of Imperialism

Thanks to Jaye Beldo...

Hipsters: An Intuitive Perspective

Jaye Beldo
8/21/2010
LavaCocktail.com
http://blog.lavacocktail.com/2010/08/21/hipsters-an-intuitive-perspecitve.aspx

(editor's note: I wrote this after a recent trip to Minneapolis, where the hipster reigns supreme)

What could be more loathsome than that reprehensible bastion of the 80's AKA yuppies? Why hipsters of course-a mutant blend of both yuppies and hippies, conjured up by none other than psychopathic Madison Avenue brujos trying to outdo defense companies in the creation of the most effective and devastating weapons against humanity. What makes hipsters so worthy of our contempt is their hereditary hollowness-truly a marketing, if not genetic triumph far beyond the Grunge phenomena of the 90s. What is so menacing at the heart of all this is the pervasive influence hipsters have on everything from music to politics. Their marketing clout cannot be ignored. One only needs to look at how mediocre so-called "independent" publishers have become who have no choice but to cave in to their trend-a-minute demands. The same goes for music, art and literature as well because whatever enters into the hipster's perceptual field, whether it be a Beethoven sonata or a painting by Velasquez becomes instantly devalued-forever flat lined, no matter how vibrant and life sustaining they once were. In light of this instinctual desire to deaden everything, the hipster is responsible for the annihilation of culture on a global scale.

Hipsterism is an infectious disease rampantly spreading and no one is fully immune from its effects. It has contaminated life on a pandemic scale. As an example, I was in Spain in '08 to give a talk on my work and an audience member told me afterward that the literary references I had made ( esp. to Ortega y Gasset's work The Revolt of the Masses ) would not be understood because the young people in Spain didn't read that kind of stuff anymore. Interestingly enough, I found myself pleading with the young audience at the beginning of my talk not to get sucked into the corporate vacuum cleaner like Americans and to value their culture and heritage. Obviously, my admonitions fell on deaf ears.

In the heart of the hipster lies a glib savagery. The hipster reflexively will consider you in a way that makes you feel like you're being scanned by something not quite human. If the hipster cannot find vulnerabilities to take advantage of, they will move onto the next available prey at hand. All this happens within a mere two or 3 seconds time. There's a kind of predatory absolute in their hearts, which is understandable, considering that it is required for their game- of- chess approach to life. The hipster will do anything whatsoever to checkmate you. Usually this is done with a cold and calculating stare or empty promises they never intend to fulfill in the first place or even bragging in an unsolicited way about their salaries while savoring Rotted Cod, Smoking Loon or some other fashionable wine. Yet, most tragic is how the hipster has virtually zero respect for their elders and the riches of wisdom and experience they possess. Rather, a golden ager's bank account and whether or not they drive a hybrid Toyota Prius matter the most. Personally, I have experienced this with the 20 something crowd who cannot even give even a modicum of thanks for what they get. Expressing gratitude is beneath the hipster and they have no qualms letting you know this. At first I thought this was anomalous behavior but soon found out that, sadly, it is the across the board norm. One hand does not, nor will it ever, wash the other with the hipster crowd.

It is pitiful that hipsters have no ability to discern how they are being manipulated by the corporate powers that created them in the first place. At least yuppies were fully aware that they were materialistic, money grubbing slimeballs. However, hipsters are unconsciously deft when it comes to camoflauging this trait-primarily through their perpetual fixation on whatever trend they are prompted to follow-whether it be drinking Hamm's beer out of a can, which, over thirty years ago was the blue collar worker's only means of salvation at the end of the day, to listening to Coldplay while drafting up their plans to re-model their condos to in order to one up their next door neighbors. ( a contractor I talked to in Minneapolis told me that he made a lot of money by catering to hipsters who he could convince that replacing their marble counter tops with concrete was the in thing to do amongst other ploys.)

Hipsters are not going to go away any time soon considering the enormous influence they have on everything from Hollywood to interpersonal relationships. One suggestion I have for the Lava Cocktail reader is to work on heightening your awareness of their inherent manipulative abilities and protect yourself as best you can from their detrimental glitz, otherwise you will compromise your own humaneness in a way that will be most difficult to rectify. In fact, you may very well become one of them if you don't do this, no matter how old you are.

It's a Man's World: Men's Adventure Magazines, The Postwar Pulps

http://blog.lavacocktail.com/2011/01/26/its-a-mans-world-mens-adventure-magazines-the-postwar-pulps-hardcover.aspx

It's a Man's World: Men's Adventure Magazines, The Postwar Pulps
book review
Jaye Beldo
1-26-11

After exploring the lurid confines of It's a Man's World ,the latest/boldest offering from Feral House on the post war adventure magazines, I immediately flashed an idea for a cover of the next issue of Ms. Gloria Steinem would appear, campily cartooned along with CIA operative Clay Felkner, the Esquire editor that brought her to feminist fame in the early 70's.

Picture it if you can: a Bowie knife wielding, Green Beret uniformed Felkner trying to liberate a skimpily dressed Steinem who is entwined to a United Nations flag pole by some giant viper with the face of Henry Kissinger (who she actually dated in the 1980's). Elizabeth Forsling Harris, a CIA-connected PR executive who, by the way, planned John Kennedy's Dallas motorcade route, looks on with smug satisfaction, bull whip in hand, wearing a moth eaten Gestapo uniform. Or maybe Rosie O' Donnell could be garishly depicted on the cover of, let's say, Misandrist Monthly , a potential pulp alternative to her now ailing 'zine, held in similar serpentine bondage by her very own CIA backed publisher,begging for sweet release. (I can't think of anyone who would want to rescue her however....maybe Andrea Dworkin dressed up like a Navy Seal.)

What I'm struggling to say, via these unlikely to be seen in the mainstream images, is that we are currently suffering from a kind of mass polarity reversal. It is now the castrating fantasies, Will to Power drives and other hormonally imbalanced Überfrau desires of today's corporate woman that are beckoning to be scrutinized in comic book fashion. However, these burgeoning fantasies are kept just beyond the margins of acceptable consensuality, veiled behind carefully crafted PC ideologies that will ensure that the heterosexual white male will forever remain the perennial scapegoat. I suggest that these estrogenated day dreams, on the verge of rising above the subconscious horizon, be as graphically and overtly rendered as the images depicted in It's a Man's World. It very well may prevent something truly horrible from happening.

The cover illustrations within It's a Man's World seem to beg for us to breathe life into them so the soldiers, hunters, cowboys, criminals and jungle adventurers can animate their way into the very crux of our psyches and conquer whatever needs to be conquered and plunder what needs to be plundered . I can confidently say that buying this book, fetishizing it, whether you are a man or a woman, will be profoundly therapeutic and even cathartic because nothing like the art depicted within It's a Man's World exists on the newstands any longer and probably never will again. The images within this garish but intriguing testament to the American male of a bygone era, some how give a kind of unadulterated power to the very things within ourselves that we try to repress and then project upon one another.

With this kind of power in mind, now is the time to try and convince the men's magazine illustrators of the 50's ,60's and 70's to come out of retirement, ignore the PC police and translate these current fantasy modes such as described above to the covers of noxious feminist tabloids, T.V. Guide, Playgirl and maybe even Newsweek. I'm confident that many of the evolution retarding, sexual/political conflicts we now distract ourselves with would instantly be resolved.

It's a Man's World: Men's Adventure Magazines, The Postwar Pulps
Adam Parfrey (Editor), Mort Kunstler (Contributor), Josh Alan Friedman (Contributor), David Saunders (Contributor), Bruce Jay Friedman (Contributor), Bill Devine (Contributor), Hedi El Kholti (Designer)

http://www.amazon.com/Its-Mans-World-Adventure-Magazines/dp/0922915814/thekonformist

Lava Cocktail Review Winter Solstice Edition 2010

http://blog.lavacocktail.com/2010/12/12/lava-cocktail-review-winter-solstice-edition-2010.aspx

Lava Cocktail Review Winter Solstice Edition 2010
Jason Bodel

'A Toast to Your Psychic Health!'

In this Issue:

Adios Conspiracy
Pseudonym Confession
Coal Burning Virtual Reality
Art from the Overworld
An Offer the Vikings Cannot Refuse
Peter Russell Letter
*****
Dear Reader,

Thanks for tuning in to the latest installment of the Lava Cocktail Review. It has been rather a rough time here at the Lava Cocktail Lounge, but I seem to be surviving the spiritual tests doled out to me non-stop and they have afforded much needed insights into everything from the sorry state of humanity to the workings of evil forces above, below and 24/7 all around. Most humans are simply not equipped to deal with the onslaught of evil in our world and opt for passive acceptance of it, unconsciously acclimating to these forces via whatever distraction or numbing means is available-whether its T.V. or onanizing to the latest conspiracy.

Since the Autumn equinox, I've embarked on an intensive purge which began with gathering up and getting rid of all the conspiracy, mind control, UFO, and 'alternative' spirituality books that have accumulated in my library over the last 10 years. It has been a pleasantly cathartic experience and I must confess I feel quite a bit lighter, more joyous and expansive than ever before. It has also helped me get in really great physical shape as I have had to haul dozens and dozens of boxes up a flight of stairs and into the garage. At first, burning the dreck in a huge bon-fire wearing a Nazi uniform was the only option-destined for You Tube. A fantasy was also harbored of various conspiracy writers all holding hands, infinite love pouring out of their eyes in mutual respect of each other, as they danced around the flames with ecstatic abandon. With this unlikely vision squelched, I distributed the collection. for real, to various used book stores in Minneapolis. The meager proceeds garnered were then used to buy bird food for some grateful critters in the backyard such as Red, Black and Grey Squirrels, Yellow Shafted Flickers, reclusive Cardinals and of course the Blue Jays at large whose gulosity knows no bounds. It was all akin to a Tibetan air burial where the corpses are ground up for the vultures to eat. Most beneficial however has been the liberation of my soul from the labyrinthine prison of conspiracy and other forms of mediated weirdness, now and forever.

In the peaceful aftermath of the purge, I still hold on to my view that the only real conspiracy is ourselves and how what we say and do effects other people. Love and forgiveness are all that are really left as there's nothing, absolutely nothing left to get intrigued by or wrapped up in anymore. Ever since my podcast on love and forgiveness ( http://blog.lavacocktail.com/2010/03/13/love-and-forgiveness-are-out-of-style.aspx ) was posted-traffic to my blog has decreased considerably as people are obviously looking for ways to remain in fear, so they can justify their shut down, apathetic state, while looking for ways to absolve themselves of all responsibility to the planet. Regular readers of the Lava Cocktail Review are perhaps tired of this hobby horse I often get on, but conspiracy has become nothing but a Fun House commodity that the likes of Alex Jones and others daily hawk. The perps of the JFK Et. Al. assassinations will never be brought to justice, chem-trails will continue to be sprayed and Lady Gaga will shove the Illuminati into deep recesses of our soul-all in pop 4/4 until the end of time no matter how successfully we figure it all out.

Honestly, I derive much more satisfaction doing things such as consoling an accordion player at the nursing home-which occurred recently while visiting my folks there. He had lost his wife the year before and started crying. Holding his hand and looking into his swollen eyes, I asked him to share the good memories of his lifelong companion with me. He brightened up quite a bit and shared stories of them playing Polka tunes at various taverns across West Central Mn. and North Dakota. And to think, I could have used my time more wisely, trying to figure out the Bilderbergers's next geo-political move. A few days ago, I found myself doing some intercessory praying for the well being of a single mother whose wayward video game app kept turning her cell phone on and off with an ominous, gargled roar-over and over again-while her toddler ran off to the kitchen of the restaurant we were in, taking advantage of the tragic distraction to slip away. Instead of praying for her and her child's welfare, I perhaps should have spent the time trying to predict when the Bohemian Grovers will initiate a New World Order takeover and ruffle my feathers on Coast to Coast about it instead.

During the above mentioned purge, I've also donated thousands of dollars worth of CDs, DVDs, books, art supplies,clothes, furniture, computers, musical instruments etc. to the local Salvation Army as a way to walk my compassion/generosity talk-esp. considering donations are way down this year as people clamp up in response to the bleak economic forecasts they're daily fed-the so called 'adversity' we are facing. As I do this, what comes to mind are the people in third world countries who have nothing to lose and are the kindest, warmest, most open souls I've ever met. With all the talk of the U.S. turning into a third world country, let's hope the same happens here-but it will only occur if we pull the fear plugs out of our butts.

Sorry folks, I cannot stoop to fear mongering like Alex Jones or hate mongering like John Kaminski, all in hopes that you go out and buy guns and gold and freeze dried food to fortify yourself for a Martial Law Armageddon that will never happen because it will put too big a dent in retail sales-even if it lasted for only one day. Focus on your hearts and ask yourself what you can do for someone less fortunate than yourselves instead of waiting to see politicians shapeshift into Boa Constrictors or UFOs from the Pleiades clean up the earth's atmosphere by 2015 as they have apparently promised. It is the only way to put conspiracy hucksters out of business-something that needs to be done pronto IMO. You can start by getting rid of your conspiracy books and feeding the birds instead.

Cheers,

Jason Bodel

p.s. Jason Bodel? I'm no longer using my pseudonym Jaye Beldo but rather my real name that I've managed to keep concealed all these years. It's all a part of my openness and transparency policy.

http://www.lavacocktail.com/

*****

Coal Burning Virtual Reality

(editor's note-a rather uppity missive I sent to Mondo 2000 who actually published it. It was also quoted in Mark Dery's book, "Escape Velocity" How ironic that virtual reality, the internet/cyberspace first hyped by the 'zine is still sustained by our archaic coal and nuclear based energy grid.)

Dear M2000,

I'm writing in regards to the 'direction' your magazine is taking. Every time I open up a new issue of Mondo 2000 I feel like I've missed the cybernetic boat. I'm ultimately thankful that I am not aboard your boat for it is floating in a Virtual Void, completely unmoored, with no substantial roots of any kind. Your flippant elitism, as evidenced by page after page of nebulous, smart drug induced prose attempts to mask your basic ontological ignorance of human evolution. The smart drugs you editors have taken have made you only into smart asses. Every page of your rag smacks of a callow betrayal of aesthetic, literary and philosophical integrity, in short, a pop trashing of the frontiers of consciousness. You surf these frontiers like like babitts tossing beer cans and rudely clicking off instamatic portraits. It is tragic that your magazine is supposed to represent the new consciousness of the coming bi-millenium. You do not take your task very seriously (R.U. Sirius? Yes I am!). After reading Mondo 2000, I feel that something is being taken away from me, rather than me gaining something. You really have no intention of enlightening your readers but rather distancing us by your arcane use of terms, ideas you yourself are unsure about. There doesn't seem to be any virtue in your virtual reality. Why don't you start addressing some of the more crucial socio-economic and environmental issues at hand?

Sincerely,

Jaye Beldo

*****

Art from the Overworld
Jaye Beldo

(editor's note: Here's an excerpt from an article I wrote years ago that included two other artists. One, a self promotional virago, deleted what I wrote about Frank Bigbear Jr. and the other artist-then formatted the piece to make it look like I had written it only about her and was distributing it to galleries on the east and west coast. So, I've taken it upon myself to delete what I wrote about her below. She was one of the main inspirations for my novel A Stab in the Light.)

In the work of Native American artist Frank Bigbear, Jr. exhibited recently at Intermedia Arts in downtown Minneapolis, part of the: "Endangered: Art and Performance by Men of Color" installation, the other side of the coin of so-called spiritual art is painfully depicted in terms of the secular conditions of many whose spiritual heritage lays in the ruin of oppression by those in power.

Within the sickly psychedelic panorama of Bigbear's work, born of what seems to be visions induced by inhaling metal flake spray paint, drinking kerosene or lighter fluid, the ghastly, great white, twentieth century foreclosure on American Indiana's spiritual heritage is agonizingly depicted. An ironic, cubist betrayal (an image of Picasso is the only image left undistorted) housing the work has fragmented and drained the archetypes of Indian mythologies, narrowing our perspectives, not liberating them in multi-dimensional resonance. Not only is Indian mythological heritage fragmented and nullified, but also heritages of other oppressed peoples throughout the third world who are the current victims of eradication by whites in power. In one of the panels, a starving African child with a swollen belly plopped miserably in a bowl meant for food is framed by a motto inscribed on the bowl's rim: Life is short, Death is Long. In the upper panel of the tryptich work "Chemical Man in a Toxic World", even the spirit guides cannot escape dismemberment by the cubist razor blades of "DWEMS" (Dead White European Men) and their appropriated (stolen) primitive inclusiveness. Mutilated mandalas bleed their bile nectar in garish acidic colors into the geomtric frames which try to house them in an obscenely sublimated perspective. In the uppermost portion of the work, a partially shrunken head, its rubbery scalp impaled in the manner of the Lakota Sun Dance participants, sheds its toxic head blood to the white man's colorless sun, in a sacrifice unappealed.

Appalled at myself, angry at the initial disregard of Frank Bigbear Jr. and his people's suffering when I first surveyed the work, I thought of all the times I passed through the neighborhoods on Franklin Avenue in my comfortable car, shrugging my shoulders as I drove by, unconcerned with what was really going on inside the minds and hearts of the drunk Indians I saw, callowly writing them off as casualties of the modern world. I had no recourse as to what to do about it and still do not. As a 'priveledged' white I was forced to look at the indifference deliberately installed in me by my culture. I realized how much I have to fight to cast out a genocidal attitude which penetrates me like neutrinos out of a t.v. set while I sleep invading the possible sanctity of my dreams of a liberated future for all. The work made me aware of my own spiritual arrogance, an arrogance I thought I was too sensitive to carry as a person struggling to shed the biases of my own heritage as a white. The illusions that I foster, that somehow my soul is a favored one and that a reserved escape route will be available when things get really bad all lay shattered like the images in the work. I left the gallery feeling helpless, panicking, ashamed, sick to my stomach and head. I managed to gather my energies and attended a psychic fair at St. Anthony Main. Walking past the tarot readers, crystal vendors, palm readers all charting the futures of the shopping mall dwellers, I thought I heard someone screaming from within Frank Bigbear's work back at the gallery.

In a positive way, the work in its conveyance of suffering, helped me gain insight into my own crises of feeling helpless. The work invites me to reach in through the cubistic window frames and pluck out, the starving baby and nourish it instead of standing catatonic, unable to act. The invitation encourages me to pick out a radioactive flower and hold it to my heart. My hands and wrists may be slashed by the fragments of the shattered world within, but, somehow I am invited into the work to help those trapped within, since much of what they are trapped in, I am, in a way responsible for. Indeed, the work is more a reflection of my attitudes and prejudices than it is of the current spiritual condition of American Indians. I am elated, yet horrified that I too will have to some day pass through the hallucinatory detriment that the work consists of, pass through my own psychological ruin on route to an individuation actualized within the world and not beyond it. Frank Bigbear Jr.'s work has inspired me to strive for a hope within but not until we confront the horrors of our own misgivings about a spirituality some of us have stolen and claim it as our own.

(C)1990-Jaye Beldo

*****

@ Chicago Ave. and Franklin in Minneapolis. There's a future in colportage!

*****
An Offer the Minnesota Vikings Cannot Refuse:

After one of the most dismal seasons the Minnesota Vikings have ever had, it is obvious that Curse of the Lutefisk http://blog.lavacocktail.com/2009/12/31/curse-of-the-lutefisk.aspx is a strong as when it was first wished upon the team by Sven Larsen so many years ago. From Favre's Sexting scandal to Brad Childress's axing in November to the recent collapse of the roof of the Metrodome, it is obvious that something supernatural is very awry.

Ol' Sven

Having much experience in breaking curses, I, Jason Bodel hereby offer my services to the ailing franchise and suggest that team pays me $1.5 million to end, once and for all, the Lutefisk plight. The price is a mere pittance-not much more than one day's earnings for Brett Favre If the Vikings ignore my offer, it is guaranteed that the curse and its stench will follow them wherever they go. The Curse of the Lutefisk will prevail until the end of time!

*****
(editor's note: I received this letter from Peter Russell, an ostracized poet who lived in a windmill in Italy and once hobnobbed with Ezra Pound-a very un-PC thing to do. I had sent him a few of my articles on the plight of PC in the U.S. wrongly assuming it hadn't reached Europe yet. Peter passed away in Jan. of 2003 and his hand written letter is one of the few sent to me that I have bothered to save all these years.)

Peter Russell
12 Jan '96

Dear Jaye Beldo,

Your letter brought me great comfort at a very difficult time. At close on 75 years old and after two major surgical operations in the past three months, I am (against medical orders) on the point of leaving for London for a lecture tour, since my financial position is so "desperate", as they say. The official literary authorities will have nothing to do with me (I am completely non party-political) but private groups and individuals favor my work. I have published 25 long prose articles and 500 or more poems in the past two years. Total income $500. One can't live on $250 a year. Everyone talks and writes poetry, no one buys it. I support my 17-year-old son, a widely published poet too.

Here with, I send you a foretaste of my work. I would like to write you a long letter but I am so behind writing my lectures for London that I must be brief.

Creative writing has become big business for organizers-teachers who have never written a column, educational psychologists and sociologists, publishers about how to "get on" in the world. (Poets and writers, associated writing programs), the NEA (Antichrist's henchmen and minions) and the journalists who look for news and want only novelties. Po Biz nous.

In England, the Arts Council say "The new poetry is the new Rock and Roll" "Mythology is dead, the real poetry is on the street corner." Well, let them!

Your best mentor would be the New York monthly, New Criterion who savaged the Minneapolis Gay gladiators in their May or June issue 1994. And the new Norton anthology of recent U.S. poetry, recently reviewed by John Haynes. There is no literary criticism today because it isn't PC to call anything good or no good.

"Urine and faeces" (!): see how it CAN be done. The grunge think I'm an old fogey living in the past. I'm far more "contemporary" than them. But like Mandelshtam "I have never been anyone's contemporary." The grunges exemplify non-entity. Read Plato's Parmenides! To one who does not exist, nothing is.

Who publishes Robert Hughes, Poetry of Complaint? Ought I to read it? If it's only negative, I have no time for it. Healing is making whole.

Poetry is my central thing, my personal craft and trade. That means:

1, Contemplation and reflection. "A sort of religiosity."

2. Projection of imagination.

3. Scholarship.

4. Reading and writing of criticism.

5. Publicity and marketing.

Call itself is a sort of semi-transparent screen through which one perceives "poetry"-the numinous presence of the "other". The essence of poetry is non-figurative, beyond the image (s). It is the Pythagorean tuning the soul to the world of the intelligible essences. You can only see the light when it is interrupted by an obstacle. The poem itself is an obstacle which diffracts the light.

I am preparing an essay on Plato's Phaedrus as the best textbook of creative writing ever written. I shall be ostracized by the poetic community. Good. No loss.

Your two essays are absolutely fine. I can't fault a single word or concept. I shall reread them often. Song is the sacrifice of the voice to divinity. There is no literary criticism these days. Only hype-or silence. Why are you an Ex-artist? Why Minneapolis? You know the poetry of Dana Gioia? Exquisite. Surely the best living U.S. poet? And a very fine critic too. Gray Wolf Press.

Yes, for me, poetry demands transcendence, beauty no cult of self but no elimination of Self either.

Italy is like the UK, USA or Germany. Media, Internet, 24 hours a day of entertainment (for the money profit of the gambeen.) There are a few people in Italy who care, as in all countries.Ep. USA.

To evoke Eros once again. I've been doing just this for 50 years. We are all internal exiles, one can only survive by contact with a few like-minded people. It takes decades to find them. Certainly not on Internet.

I will collaborate willingly on Momus. But I have no knowledge of him save what one can glean from the classical handbooks. Send me photocopies all you can find on Momus, and I'll write on a contemporary Momoid vision. As for the rest, let my articles and poems say it all?

Warmest wishes,

Peter Russell

p.s. My son at 14 was publishing much admired poems in Italian in the lit. reviews. I support him entirely and he deserves it. He works 16 hours a day, minimum, like me.

for more info. on Peter check out: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Russell_(poet)
*****
Jason Bodel AKA Jaye Beldo has appeared on BBC and Capital Radio London, WGN Chicago, Spin FM 103.8, The Robin Zodiac Show, The X-Zone, The Grassy Knoll, Free Radio Olympia, Untamed Dimensions, Out There Radio, The Alien Agenda and The Gary Burbank Show. Please check out his website @: http://www.lavacocktail.com/

El día de los Muertos

http://blog.lavacocktail.com/2009/11/02/el-dia-de-los-muertos.aspx

El día de los Muertos
Jaye Beldo
LavaCocktail.com
11-2-9

On November 1st and 2nd of every year, there is a tradition in Mexico called El Día de los Muertos-where the dead are remembered in a most colorful and glorious way. In villages and cities throughout the country an exuberance of sugar skulls, calacas (skeletons) marigolds and other colorful wonders serve to honor the dead whether they be human or animal. Candlelight processions also serve to illuminate what would be otherwise be a rather somber occasion.

Each year during this time (which coincides with All souls Day) I choose to remember the dead in my own personal way. All the innocent people that were murdered in Central America during the Reagan years as a result of the Iran-Contra scandal are foremost in my mind during El Día de los Muertos. I choose to focus on this bit of grimness because of how successfully whitewashed the whole sordid affair has become in the last 25 years and that it is not even a wisp of a memory for most Americans (who cannot even recall some of the more recent slaughters perpetrated by the US government). I envision millions of sugar skulls and calacas stacked atop one another in the manner of the victims of Pol Pot's genocide that are currently displayed in Cambodia, although this does nothing to alleviate the sorrow and bitterness.

While ruminating on this State funded, wholesale murder, I also honor the living-those still grieving the loss of their loved ones at the hands of the Contras. One would think that the Marigolds on the ofrendes (altars) would fade in light of such a tragedy, but for me they grow brighter in this regard-somehow nourished by the sorrow and offering a bit of hope. At times,I'm tempted to put Noam Chomsky's, "The Culture of Terrorism" which describes in horrendous detail, what went down in Central America under Reagan's watch, on the altar. But soon it would get pushed out of view, by other subversive tractates describing those forced to work in the maquiladoras set up by US corporations-raped and worked to death at gunpoint or kidnapped for the slavery market. l also am tempted to garnish this crowded altar with offerings to those murdered-trying to escape these death camps with no choice but to flee el norte only to get gunned down by border guards as they reached the land of the free. All this would be followed by a ,no doubt , futile prayer requesting that those who despise illegal aliens come to the realization that US corporations have made life so damn miserable in Mexico that the oppressed have no choice but to slip into America in desperate hopes of a better life.

Hardest of all during these days of funerary remembrance is to acknowledge an even far more insidious form of death-the death of memory itself; the inability and unwillingness to see that America itself rests on the back of third world corpses. Meditating on this alone causes the sugar skulls to melt into sickening sweet pools. The calacas turn to dust and the myriad petals of the marigolds fall off and blow away, leaving only their dried stems.

Perhaps, if more of us celebrate El día de los Muertos-the memories will reemerge from the hole they all funneled into and brought back to life in blood red colors. Perhaps a painful but welcome exuberance will then be found, one that can resonate beyond our collective indifference that continues to encourage us into deadly forgetfulness.

Techgnosis Review

http://blog.lavacocktail.com/2010/10/24/techgnosis.aspx

Techgnosis Review
Jaye Beldo
10-24-10

A unique coign of vantage is evident in Techgnosis: Myth, Magic and Mysticism in the Age of Information. A certain cybernetic quintessence pervades its pages, which is sure to inspire you to plug into a world that is, according to the author, more than it seems, at least alchemically speaking. Erik Davis's command of historical, political, spiritual and the necessary pop factuals keeps the read alive throughout and his sophisticated interface mix serves to keep the fluidium coursing through the fiber optic veins of the planet in an enlivening way. Using his scholarly skills that rarely encumber the flow, the author navigates the realm of the 'electromagnetic imaginary', offering us examples of how humanity has dealt with its own doppleganger in the form of an ever mutating technology that seems more and more to take on a life of its own.. Suggesting that 'magic is technology's unconscious' Davis spells out how the World Wide Whammy is playing out in social and political trends, politically, environmentally and perhaps more importantly: spiritually. It is getting harder and harder to escape technology's ever deepening influence, even for the most die hard of Luddites. It is literally reaching into the DNA of our being and tweaking things in a covert nano fashion. So the question of the day: Is it possible to have a genuinely spiritual technology which would reconcile the rift between flesh and machine? The notion of such an unlikely fusion has certainly been hyped up in recent years and has lead to some rather hard drive Icarus crashes of various sorts: Heaven's Gate being one of them and maybe electronic voting machines to come. But there is a gnostic glimmer of transcendental hope that may resist an immanent defragmentation: through the possible uploading into a digitally sustained samadhi at the click of the mouse. But the crux question remains: Will technology, even a fully spiritualized one, enable us to break free of the Archons, those planetary rulers the original Gnostics of Nag Hammadi fame so despised-or will it only be used by these heavies for further manipulation and control via the magical unconscious of our PCs, ATMs , Karaoke Machines and automated check out lanes at the supermarket? The latter seems to be the case-at least from the Gnostic perspective Davis provides us. I'd like to think that there are some heretical pockets left in the machine in which to hide in and wage war from -much like the desert fathers of yore once did.

On the one hand, I was impressed with Davis's cool articulations and the hypnotic, mercurial glibness that pervades Techgnosis. However it made me want to know more and more about the actual Erik and whether or not he smoked cigars and liked chocolate pies or to watch randy horses rolling around in the mud. The kind of cool detachment describecd above can be very dangerous and seems to be symptomatic of those commenting on media, its trends and perversions (such as Mark Dery and Douglas Rushkoff). So more personal introjections to bring all the Neo-Platonic refinement into perspective and preserve our humble humanism. .We need to break free of the spell of technology and I'm not so sure Erik is helping us out in that direction even as intriguing as the book is.. I mean how are we supposed to respond to lines like: "And so we drown, believing that to drown is to surf." ?

Group Therapy for Those Who Have Marlboro Man Hallucinations

http://blog.lavacocktail.com/2010/08/24/group-therapy-for-those-who-have-marlboro-man-hallucinations.aspx

Group Therapy for Those Who Have Marlboro Man Hallucinations
Posted by Lava Cocktail at 8/24/2010
Categories: Humor
Tags: Marlboro Ronald McDonald

(editor's note: This article appeared in The Wave-a Clear Channel publication on the west coast. I was surprised they ran it.)

Jaye Beldo of Lake Havasu, Nevada, has started a support group for people who suffer from what he calls Advertising Affliction Disorder. "One of the first full ­blown AAD experiences I had was when I was stuck in traffic and I saw the Marlboro Man jump out of a billboard and start rounding people up on the sidewalk and herding them into the terminal illness ward in a nearby hospital," explains Beldo. "I was on a radio show in Canada the other day and a caller said that she had a dream about having sex with Ronald McDonald and that it was great, so I'm not alone in this."

Beldo claims that the most frequent advertising icons to "visit" people with AAD are the Marlboro Man, Ronald McDonald, the Pillsbury Doughboy and Joe Camel. Common symptoms of AAD include the inability to appreciate art, music, literature and the inability to relate to others in a human way. Beldo claims that many AAD sufferers attempt to cure their depression, apathy and indifference through consumerism. "For me, the most annoying symptom is a growing inability to distinguish between advertising and politics. The other night I watched George W. Bush morph into the Tidy Bowl Man and back into himself again, over and over, until I just gave up trying to stop it."

Beldo believes many AAD sufferers start with hallucinations of just one corporate mascot,then gradually develop a larger repertoire of visitors. "I had nine advertising icons such as Palmolive Madge, Mr. Clean and Mr. Whipple make up the Supreme Court during one rather unpleasant evening when I was trying to get to sleep," said a sorrowful Beldo. "I forced myself out of that unpleasant vision, but realized that it wasn't really all that far from the truth considering that we have a bogus president in office now because of the Supreme Court's ruling on the so-called 2000 election."

"Most of the time, single icons haunt me, but they will interact with other icons or political figures such as the Pillsbury Doughboy sodomizing John Ashcroft with the Patriot Act, or maybe it was the other way around."

Beldo says that the psychiatric community at large has not embraced the perils of his condition, but he encourages those who suffer from this affliction to contact him at aadfree@aol.com to share their stories and to organize group therapy sessions. "It wouldn't surprise me to see some drug available on the market next year to 'cure' it," Beldo speculates. "No doubt they'll have some kind of mascot to promote the AAD remedy - a pill with arms and legs like the California Raisins."

A REQUIEM FOR WALTER BENJAMIN

http://blog.lavacocktail.com/2010/08/11/a-requiem-for-walter-benjamin.aspx

A REQUIEM FOR WALTER BENJAMIN
by Jaye Beldo

(editor's note: I penned this one sometime in the 90's and one literary magazine after another declined to run it because it was too 'depressing'. I think Theodor Adorno, the Baal devotee, was Walt's handler and may have driven him to suicide.)

Whenever the topic of Walter Benjamin's suicide comes up, I brace myself for the usual, myopic reactions to his death. I've heard his self-immolation labeled as a 'terrible thing', and a 'regrettable and pathetic act'. 'A tragic loss' is one of the more trite epitaphs I've heard amongst the romantically indulgent, a response that rudely glosses over the deeper implications of his self chosen death. The causes as well as the consequences of his suicide deserve closer scrutiny.

On that September night in 1940, on the Franco-Spanish border what spectral Anytus, Meletus, and Lykon did Benjamin try to persuade with dialectical eloquence? Did he offer any 'Apology' for the court assembled ad hoc in his room in the internment camp? If so, he wisely kept it under his breath. In spite of his reticence, the sentence, was handed over, nonetheless. He committed a crime against the Teutonic state which pursued him in imagination and in reality. Benjamin fully accepted his sentence and chose his hemlock: a fatal dose of morphine. In such light Benjaminic irony may be not much different than the Socratic variety.

What was Benjamin to do if he managed to escape his accusers who seized his Paris apartment and his treasured library and notes? What if he survived the holocaust, the grand Trauerspiel of our century, perhaps of all human history? According to Hannah Arendt, in her introduction to Benjamin's "Illuminations", he used to lament about going to America: "people would probably find no other use for me than to cart me up and down the country to exhibit me as the 'last European'." In spite of such disheartening anticipations, Gershom Sholem repeatedly urged Benjamin to flee to the west and join him and Theodor Adorno, Benjamin's one and only disciple. Benjamin was obviously morose about the prospect. Surely, he was aware of the fact that he could have gotten through border patrol to safety, on foqt> if he wanted to. Did he foresee the philosophical consequences of such a trans-atlantic journey before the others did? Between Berlin and Moscow, Paris and Naples, Benjamin could always find fertile ground to cultivate his geo-political dialectics. But Spain to America? What ground would lie in between? Perhaps, on that night in 1940, in his private Gethsemame, with opiated prescience, he saw himself hopping off a cruise ship only to end up sunbathing in Martha's Vineyard, scripting dialectical one liners for t.v. sit com scripts. Perhaps, as he fondled the ampule of morphine, he mused upon venturing further, arriving in New York where Adorno, Horkheimer and others awaited or even further westward, to Southern California where all the refugees joined the likes of Thomas Mann to while away the days of their exile. Maybe he dreaded dependence on Rockefeller funding to further his projects. Perhaps he envisioned the arcades of a post war America where he would be compelled to wander, divining for the capital of the twentieth century. He would file away notecards with observations on America's first shopping mall, the advent of television, and if he lived to be a centigenarian, cellular phones, fax machines and Virtual Reality. Perhaps while in the hypnagogic delusion brought on by the initial effect of the fatal dosage, he was unable to bring to any Hegelian synthesis, the fragments he saw in the country his colleagues urged him to adopt. Perhaps, he presaged the intellectual future of America and saw the hollow casuistry of Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan being worshipped, touted as the coffee house fashion of the day. Repulsed and despairing, Benjamin tried to fill the future's lacuna with more morphine.

Benjamin's suicide signaled the end of the great syncretism of Jewish-German intellect which produced some of the greatest minds, souls and cultures this world may ever know. The Frankfurt school could not pick up his pieces and carry on with much critical influence on the postwar world, as it has been claimed it has. The school's members may have had some geist but they did not have Benjamin's elan or capacity for synthesis. As a result, we will probably never philosophically recover from the loss of Walter Benjamin. He once said, 'every completed work (is) the death mask of its intention.' Perhaps his suicide was the death mask of an ontological intention yet to be deciphered by those able to look beyond the surface of his death. Someone familiar with the ways of the Kabbalah would do well in the investigation. Someone who can part the theatre curtains, and move past the alluring levels of deception, levels which pull the weaker willed off the path of ascent to Ein Sof. Since no one has yet come forth with such qualifications to decipher the mystery, it is easy to say Benjamin's death was 'tragic', for we cannot really understand the true import of his end. Especially now, as we enervate ourselves, trying to make sense of the conditions of our fragmentary world. Without substantial understanding, his suicide is reduced to a baroque embellishment on the tragedy of his brief life. The catastrophe of his suicide was the only apostrophe he could offer up to the muteness which awaited beyond the border. Whether he was courageous or not does not matter. The last European could not be carted around America because no one would be able to recognize him let alone understand the bundle of his scattered notecards which constituted his 'opus'.

Susan Buck-Morss is one of the few who have come forth to further our understanding of the spirit of Walter Benjamin. In her book, The Dialectics of Seeing, she attempts to piece together the fragments of Benjamin's Passagen-Werk to bring some kind of closure to his vast unfinished, unpublished papers on 19 c. Paris. Yet the apostrophe of Benjamin's suicide still looms over all he has written. It seems the wound it has left in our psyches cannot be healed.

Maybe Benjamin just has to wait until the morphine wears off. It may take a century or two. He'll wake up when he's ready to. He'll deftly acclimatize to whatever culture and its fossilized fragments are at hand and resume his exegesis. Rip Van Benjamin will gather us around a fireplace in a villa tucked away in some quiet mountains to spin an epic story he has been incubating, reading from his notecards woven into a vast, epic patchwork quilt draped over his lap. Our nervous, pack rat intellectualism will subside and we will listen, to his voice cadenced by the crackling logs to what he has been trying to tell us all along, something perhaps along the lines of Franz Kafka in a journal
entry dated Oct. 19, 1921:

Anyone who cannot cope with life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little of his despair over his fate...but with his other hand he can jot down what he sees among the ruins, for he sees different and more things than the others; after all, he is dead in his own lifetime and the real survivor.

Our task may be to find the reconciliation hidden within Benjamin's suicide, to see what is still alive among the ruins of not only his life and work, but in the most banal artifacts of commodity which stir round us. We may even be inspired to jot down what we see and create a new, life sustaining poetry. Cynicism towards our consumerized fates can abate. Vitality and life enhancement may then compose our attitudes. But for now, we may not be able to read our culture or ourselves in such a way until we fully appreciate the import of Walter Benjamin’s death.

Grunge Polemic

http://blog.lavacocktail.com/2010/08/08/grunge-polemic.aspx

Grunge Polemic

(Editor's Note: I recently found this polemic I wrote in the early 90's for Cake Magazine in Mpls. Enjoy!)

Guest Editorial

I'm compelled to convey some qualms concerning the so called "Grunge" movement which CAKE touts in an ironically impartial yet sarcastic "feel good" way. Why is an appallingly ineffectual movement (a movement which makes a deliberate point of going nowhere), one that glorifies vapidity and decay, so thoughtlessly embraced by the twenty nothing generation? Why does the Grunge generation make a point of writing itself off as a loss, even before it has learned to read? Since I probably won't get any answers, I'll pursue an intuitive lead to gather some possible clues to uncover the origins of this distressing socio-phenomenon. First off, where exactly does the Grunge substance itself come from? Do wannabe Grungers stealth off to the suburbs after the bar closes and siphon Yuppie cesspools and lavishly apply the fetid grease paint in some secret com-postmodern ritual? Or is the moldy manna simply scooped up out of the gutters near shopping malls? The dirt has got to come from somewhere and I doubt if it is the result of hard work, commitment to political change and a desire to alleviate the suffering of others. Now if, by chance, you happen to be clutching on to some Grunge, open your hand and spy what you got that you think is so precious and so different! Chances are its good 'ol fashioned Capitalist Dreck that's slithering in tarry, malignant strands through your fingers. Well now, ask yourself, Grunger and Grungette, if that loam you've bought has any fertilizing potential. I mean, can anything bloom out of your make-up that will make any lasting difference? Hardly! Because Grunge expects to rebel without the responsibility of rebellion which leads only to a blind conformism of the worst kind. In your fashionable passivity, you're doing exactly what the powers that be want you to do, i.e., look like a Special Ex drinker and do nothing. Grunge is the equivalent of sneaking up into baby boomers' attics and trying on musty hippy clothes. It's all nice and make believe up there in the dusty confines, but face it, it doesn't amount to shit when you come down the stairs in your costume and hit the streets. Get a clue Grunge monkeys! How about some Scour Power? Cuz I'd sure like to see what's underneath the dirt you're touting as the new ''Wow." An occasional bright mind? An imagination unscathed by MTV and Ecstasy? A bona fide world view and dedication to changing the conditions on this planet? Perhaps someone I can have a conversation beyond two exchanges before their fragile attention spandex snaps under the pressure of a limbic impulse signaling that it is last call for alcohol? Please help me, because I don't think I've ever encountered a trend so pathetically null in my 3.5 decades of existence.

Astringently,

Jaye Beldo

Univeralist Unitarianism: Mind Control Cult

http://blog.lavacocktail.com/2009/06/10/univeralist-unitarianism-mind-control-cult.aspx

Univeralist Unitarianism: Mind Control Cult
Jaye Beldo

A few years ago a ‘well-meaning’ neighbor kept insisting that I go to the local Unitarian Church with her. Trusting my gut instincts, I politely declined and successfully hid my irritation at her persistence. The Unitarian Church proclaims a ‘creedless', liberal’ and ‘tolerant’ perspective on all forms of spirituality, sexual and political orientation. At least that is the surface story that is offered up to its members. A few months ago, this same woman then dropped me as a friend after playing this ‘concerned’ and ‘motherly’ role during what at the time was a very stressful period of my life in regards to caretaking my elderly parents-for reasons that still remain unknown. So much for unconditional Unitarian love. Incidentally, the woman was also pressuring my parents to attend the church as well, even offering to drive them there while knowing of their elderly and frail condition. They too wisely declined the offer. As I passed by her house one day recently, wondering why she suddenly snubbed me, I felt this chill, accompanied by low level, very negative thoughts that persisted for quite some time afterwards.

In fact, they persisted for about three weeks.

In meditation one morning, I then saw the origin of the disturbance, i.e., what appeared to be a steel band around my third eye, something previously encountered during a brush with the Elizabeth Claire Prophet cult and which I describe in greater detail in my book Autobiography of a Monarch Butterfly. My spiritual guides then removed this etheric band from my forehead and I must confess I was rather shocked to see under all the so called broad minded, ‘creedless’ tolerance of the church, a distinctly Luciferic entity feeding off the energy bodies of church members-taking advantage of the 'liberal' premise in the group mind to conviently hide behind. It looked very similiar to the entity behind the Elizabeth Claire Prophet cult. My ego rejected these insights but after a few days the persistent negative thoughts I was having disappeared and I felt more at peace. Insight always leads to release, if wisdom is gained from the experience and if it is authentic.

Then suddenly I remembered that I had given a talk on my dream work at a Unitarian Church in Minneapolis in the early ‘90s. My impression at that time was that the church was really a kind of single’s bar using a spiritual premise to make it seem that it was operating at a higher level than a meat market. As I gave my dream spiel to the audience, there was this guy with a shirt unbuttoned to the navel sitting in the front row, flaunting a bear claw necklace. It took everything I had to keep from laughing at this spiritual stud no doubt ready to prey on some vulnerable widow afterwards and worm his way into her life.

Even weirder, I then recalled one of my ‘polite’ responses to the woman included one where I said I would only go if I could give a talk at the Unitarian church. I went home and actually began to put a Powerpoint program together entitled: New Age COINTELPRO and the Optimism Gestapo-rife with photographs of so called ascended masters such as Koot Hoomi, New Age con-artists like Neale Donald Walsch, etc. and wrote some notes for the lecture on… Luciferic deception in the New Age movement. It was purely an unconscious move on my part-perhaps both to distance and protect myself from the influences of the Unitarian Universalist Church and in retrospect, too eerie to ignore considering I was addressing the heart of the beast itself in my intended lecture.

This same women-using the ‘good intentions’ ploy no doubt, also took it upon herself to do some matchmaking for me and introduced me to another woman- a stunningly brilliant artist with a sensitive and deep soul. The relation ended only a few months later-quite horribly/harshly-as if forces were pitting us against one another that we both had little control over. Meditating, praying for insights, I could see how we were both being manipulated by these dark forces working through the so called church and the woman herself-although very unconsciously on her part. It left me feeling very bitter-at being used in that way-and I wished I could have met this person outside the realm of these malicious influences. I really think my spiritual guides were protecting me all along as I probably couldn’t have handled the insights during the time that I was interacting with the artist.

Recently, I came across an excellent observation about 'good-intenders', in William Gray's book Exorcising the Tree of Evil:

"If well-meaning but weak people act with good intentions but feeble effect, this may be commandeered by intelligent agents of evil motives, and misappropriated accordingly."

This certainly seems to be the case with the above mentioned woman who had no awareness of how evil was working through her. Since then, I've used this experience to further my discrimatory skills especially in regards to people who appear to be decent and good but are unconscious vehicles for negative forces. A pre-requisite to doing this has involved getting rid of my Aquarian optimism and tendency to want to think the best of people. Not anymore!

As always, when disturbing information surfaces, I tend to want 'tangible' information, a 'conclusive' verification that my reactions, gut instincts are valid. Attempting to ground my experiences out, I came across some disturbing information that at least confirms my initial misgivings about attending the church. In Robert D. Morningstar's book review on A Certain Arrogance by George Michael Evica www.ufodigest.com/news/1106/certainarrogance.html I discovered that:

"...the Unitarian Church and the Quaker movement, were used as "fronts" in the selection and culling of candidates for espionage and special operations by America's intelligences services, OSS and CIA, domestically and abroad."

On another net search, I also found that Greg Paker, from educationforum.ipbhost.com states:

"The Unitarian Church/International Association for Religious Freedom owned and operated the Albert Schweitzer College to which Oswald applied while still in the Marines with Thornley at Santa Ana.

During this same period, publisher r-w RC Hoile was giving lectures at Unitarian Churches and Exchange Clubs in Orange County. Also touring Unitarian Churches in the area at that time giving lectures were Stephen Fritchman, Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow - all representing the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute (WBSI).

Vaughn Marlowe has advised that he knew a Skinnerite at UCLA who was associated with the WBSI - leaving open the distinct possibility that Skinner himself was associated with it.

BF Skinner was a product of Army Intelligence. The book A Clockwork Orange was based on Skinner's experiments in behavioral control. Skinnerites were supporters of his theories involving reward/punishment."

Quite a bizarre alliance IMO-a church purportedly promoting ‘univeralist’ spiritualist values and allowing Skinnerites to give lectures there. Spirit is supposed to something free-not modified, behaviorally speaking.

From a 'Christian' perspective, here is what Contender Ministries observes about the Unitarian Church:

"It is evident that the draw of this cult is that it provides a release of each individual from accountability. As you will see, they profess that all will be saved, so everyone must follow the spiritual path of their choosing. It is a convenient departure from personal responsibility and accountability. The UU says, "Everyone is okay, so just live life the way you want to."

http://contenderministries.org/unitarianuniv.php

Before you write me off as a totalizing crank, I realize there are always exceptions to cult rules and I don’t want to come off like most conspiracists do who use convienient blanket analysis to write off whatever they suspect is a cult-however one must consider that any group mind whether created by the Unitarian Church or a seemingly benign politcal organization is vulnerable to infiltration by negative forces-who then hide behind the consensus and become very difficult to detect and locate. It is interdimensional COINTELPRO and we all must be on guard-heighten our perceptions and trust our gut feelings. In the case of the friendly Unitarian Church invite I received, if I had let my guard down fully, I could have been in worse trouble. So believer beware!

The Dark Side of Aquarius

Greetings Friends,
Two highly recommended films to watch:

The New Age Infiltration of the Truth Movement

which You Tube yanked but can be found @:

http://blog.lavacocktail.com/2010/06/19/new-age-infiltration-of-the-truth-movement.aspx

and

Aquarius: The Age of Evil

which you can find @:

http://blog.lavacocktail.com/2010/06/22/aquarius-the-age-of-evil.aspx

Truth be Known! Enjoy!

Sincerely,

Jaye Beldo
http://www.lavacocktail.com/

Cities of Dreams: When Women Ruled the Earth

Book review by Jaye Beldo

Who is Stan Gooch?

An unjustly ostracized scholar who has written a very compelling and substantial book called Cities of Dreams, some of which posits that the Neanderthals, based on much neglected evidence, were more advanced than the barbaric, hairy man apes that they are usually depicted as, possessed language skills and also a very sophisticated understanding of the cosmos which they oriented their lives by.

However, Stan adequately challenges the enforced presumptions of delinquent archaeologists, anthropologists and assorted cardboard academics who currently maintain the bastion of the orthodox/materialist belief system.

The supposedly clean separation between Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon species, for starters, is effectively dismissed by Gooch, who perseveres throughout Cities of Dreams by developing and sustaining arguments that are both impressive and actually quite thrilling. This is primarily because of the unique clarity in which he presents his views and also the evidence that he provides to back up his claims.

When an author has such a deep sense of resonance with the subject matter he has chosen to investigate as Gooch obviously does, evoking such things as long forgotten Palaeolithic inscapes becomes quite natural and this is what makes Cities of Dreams such a delightful read.

The author reminds us of such things as universal burial practices, which are evidenced by the ubiquity of the use of red ochre (hematite) in funerary rites, the amazing similarities of myths around the world concerning the origins of the Pleiades constellation (the seven sisters are always pursued by unsolicited suitors or animals) and the labyrinthine/lunar origins of ritual dance (some which mimic the construction of a spider's web of all things).

Gooch rises above the short-sightedness of many a tenured boob and offers us such a refreshing perspective on our ice age forebears that it becomes difficult to dismiss his ideas as many within the matrix police system have tried to do in recent times. After reading this work, one can fully see the shortcomings of those deluded enough to assume that modern humans are at the very pinnacle of evolution and why they are so insistent on preserving this outright lie for future generations.

More importantly, we have a perfect opportunity to bypass the matrix via Stan's book and directly access the worlds he has explored, worlds encoded in stone, dance, mazes, song and spider's webs as well.

Past Life Dissolving Device

Jaye Beldo

I dreamed that Robert Sterling handed me this past life dissolving device.

I pointed it at some frozen Tibetans on an inter-dimensional Mobius strip and thawed them out.

Robalini's Response: It wasn't a dream, dude...