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“… If We Want It, Quite Enough”

If adults have difficulty with this bizarre, long-running PR association between a high-tech death machine and the hope for universal peace (begun quite accidentally in 1955 when a child calling Sears Roebuck's Santa wish line got NORAD, instead) , print, TV and now the Internet have done their best to keep the tone light by exhorting parents to essentially “play along people, it’s Christmas!” Read more on military co-opting of Christmas here

Kids might enjoy the exciting graphics, but they des

Is The Digital Currency Group's Move A Shill Game For Stamford?

This Year's Sema4

Fresh on the heels of 2020's conflict-of-interest between Governor Lamont's $17 million

coronavirus testing contract with Sema4 and his wife's financial ties with the same 2019 start-up (1), last November's introduction of the Digital Currency Group to Connecticut also enjoyed "legacy investment" backing from Annie Lamont's firm, Oak HC/FT. Not until April 2021--fully four months after relocation negotiations began between New York City-based DCG and David Lehman of the stat
Idavox •

Look Who’s Angling For A Seat At God’s Table

A First-Time Conference similar to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) In Somerset, New Jersey was held last week, drawing both State And National Far-right Figures. We decided to take it in.

Themes of freedom from threats to bodily integrity, voter corruption, centralized education and secularism in government arose repeatedly throughout the six hours Cora Santaguida and I were in attendance at A Seat At The Table: New Jersey Resurgent. This inaugural gathering of some 200-250

Of Deliberate And Reactionary Paradises: Outer Space And The Citizen Consumer

Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery.

For its themes and dreamy look, Christopher Penfold's "The Guardian Of Piri", one of the more ethereal episodes of Space: 1999 (ITC, 1975-77), fans have long cited influences drawn from Op-Art, Greek mythology and the drug scene of the era. (1)

Oblivious to these observations at the time as a thirteen-year-old, the combination of glowing spheres in a sherbet orange sky and gleaming slabs dotting

Messiahs Or Floor Mops: "Jupiter Ascending" As Populist Alternative To "Dune"

"The misplaced love of the common people for the wrong which is done to them is a greater force than the cunning of the authorities."

Starting in 2000 I spent about a year and a half in Vancouver, B.C. studying computer modeling and animation at what was, at the time, a little school on Beatty Street, which shared space with a barber shop devoted to hip hop culture.

Even if I didn't have to return to class, I still recall after all this time being too stunned by the crude entrepreneurialism

I
Idavox •

Black Ties For Jackboots: American Renaissance Conference From the Inside (penned pseudonymously)

So while some of us held it down outside the American Renaissance (AmRen) Conference this year, some decided to actually take in the event in all its fascist glory. This is what they saw.

One of the first things I noticed upon settling in for the initial night of the 2021 American Renaissance Conference in Berns, Tennessee (November 12-14) was the apparent lasting impact of a single altercation between an AmRen attendee, William Markley, and an Antifa protester back in 2017.

Invoking the memor

Varieties Of Evolutionary Experience In Sci-Fi Media

I admit, right off, much of my affection for Del Tenney's deliriously hokey The Horror Of Party Beach (20th Century Fox, 1964) stems from delight in the novelty of it having been shot in my hometown of Stamford, Connecticut.

Like the giant bug films of the prior, post-Hiroshima decade, such as the ants-take-LA spectacle Them! (Warner Bros., 1954) and Universal's response, Tarantula, the following year, with occasional exceptions, radiation provided the most common explanation for spectacular an

In Praise Of Fallen Heroes

“The world is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves, or have listened only to their neighbors to learn what they ought to do, how they ought to behave, and what the values are that they should be living for.”

–The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell; Bill Moyers, Doubleday, 1988, p. 181.


“Wait a minute! Kid, you saved my son’s life. Maybe you can’t use the Force. So what? Neither can I, and it hasn’t held me back.”

–Star Wars: The Crystal Star, Vonda McIntyre, Bantam Books, 199

"When Eden Was So Near“: The Surrender Of Love And Filialism To Imperial Fealty

Embarrassingly enough, the historically ironic import of the violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 in the Boston area—a legal stricture against military enforcement of domestic law originally inspired by the nation's Colonial experience—seemed lost to residents who came out en masse to applaud the departing occupation force when "its work was done" (as it turned out, the surviving perpetrator was located by a civilian, David Henneberry, after the lockdown was lifted

What makes this so ee

"In The Land Of The (Willfully) Blind": Poets In Conversation With Ralph Nazareth And Duane Esposito

Ferrying Secrets, Between Us the Long Road (released by Owlfeather Collective as a fundraising vehicle for a non-profit he co-founded [see below]), while featuring pieces of phantasmagoric satire, outrage, desire, mourning and more penned before the current administration, nevertheless maintains a well-timed propulsive inevitability in its critique of everything from the simplistic allure of parochial political thinking (“Oil Change”), intercultural contact/assimilation (“The Song Of the Plumber

A Map To Public Safety--Or To Nowhere: Big Pharma’s Influence On Mental Health Policy Post-Sandy Hook

Following the Newtown Massacre last December, national attention has focused with exhaustive detail on gun types and proliferation, while, at the same time settling for irresponsible vagueries when it comes to defining improved mental health policy. Given the disastrous role public/private sector-led psychiatric intervention programs have had on the young, this calls into question which is the real problem: too easy access to dangerous weapons by unbalanced individuals, or too much access to phy

Letting Go Of The Green Light

Instead of rediscovering our original ties with the biosphere, in the face of global economic collapse, terminal nuclear contamination, water/oil depletion, solar flare-induced electrical grid failure, Civilization instead insanely cries more desperately for fighting Carraway’s inexorable current, not just in pursuit of flattering, or sanitized post-WWII pasts that never existed, but, as recent two-dimensional output from Hollywood demonstrates, of ill-conceived “Jetsonian” futures that could ne

"Transformers" And Trance-Formation: Perpetual War In An Age Of Tentpole Entertainment

So today I want to touch on how current events, the entertainment industry and the social trends shaped by them weave a mutually-reinforcing cultural fabric that defines a perpetual state of conflict as an acceptable national narrative for those born pre- and post-2001.

Defining the New Norm (While Apologizing for It)

While there’s frequent nominal acknowledgement of policy excesses, like the remedial account of blowback following the US installation of Shah Reza Palavi in the opening of Arg

Table Talk With The Other Without... And Within

Though the unprecedented recent domestic enthusiasm for soccer (what the rest of the world calls football) was almost as exciting to observe as the World Cup games, themselves, the intersection of professional sports and nationalism in regard to the Other was easily caught through a casual stroll down Bedford Street during the games, where unbelievably impassioned reactions to the televised sporting events in open-air bars and restaurants ranged from screams of demanding anguish to the primal ch

A Loving Accounting Of Allen

Among various roles he has filled in his life, from political consultant, attorney and elected official, to college professor, CPA and all-around troublemaker, Don Wilen will speak this Tuesday at Curley’s about how his recommendation to Allen Ginsberg as a prospective personal financial/business adviser launched a friendship filled with warmth and memorable adventures rivaling the fecundity of Ginsberg’s own farm in Cherry Valley, New York, where Don and his family spent many weekends.

The Rea

Setting Fire To The White Picket Fences Of An Imaginary Nation

Raised in Darien, CT, Susan Cossette-Eng, tonight’s featured Open Mic poet, writes frequently in rebellious defense of genuine relationships, love and the sanctity of just plain individual humanity (especially relating to women) against the Plasticville artifice and faux freedom of the American suburban ideal that keeps us from effective engagement with the larger world.

tilt-shifted photo of an actual tract housing develop-

ment betrays the toy-like unreality of suburban life


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