Blackwater

Today on Fresh Air there was a great interview with Jeremy Scahill, who has been investigating Blackwater for a long time (he wrote a book called Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army in 2007) which was very crazy.
Check it out here if you want to get freaked out about how one man can start a private army that loans out jets to the US military to run covert operations with, among other supremely questionable things.

A little background information in case you aren't familiar.

Was:

Is:


In case you don't know about Blackwater here is a good intro from Wikipedia:

Xe Services LLC, still usually referred to as "Blackwater", is a private military company founded as Blackwater USA in 1997 by Erik Prince and Al Clark. In October 2007, the company was renamed Blackwater Worldwide. Blackwater has a wide array of business divisions, subsidiaries, and spin-off corporations but the organization as a whole has courted much controversy.

Based in North Carolina, Xe operates a tactical training facility (36°27′N 76°12′W / 36.45°N 76.2°W / 36.45; -76.2) which the company claims is the world's largest, and at which it trains more than 40,000 people a year, mostly from US and other military and police services. The training consists of military offensive and defensive operations, as well as smaller scale personal security.

The company announced on February 13, 2009, that it would operate under the new name "Xe". In a memo sent to employees, President Gary Jackson wrote that the new name "reflects the change in company focus away from the business of providing private security." A spokesman for the company stated that it feels the Blackwater name is too closely associated with the company's work in the occupation of Iraq. Spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said there was no meaning in the new name, which the company took over a year to arrive at in an internal search.

Xe is currently the largest of the US State Department's three private security contractors. Of the 987 contractors Xe provides, 744 are US citizens. At least 90 percent of the company's revenue comes from government contracts, of which two-thirds are no-bid contracts. Xe provided security services in Iraq to the United States federal government, particularly the Central Intelligence Agency on a contractual basis. They no longer have a license to operate in Iraq: the new Iraqi government made multiple attempts to expel them from their country, and denied their application for an operating license in January 2009. However, the company is still under contract with the State Department and some Xe personnel will likely remain working illegally in Iraq at least until September 2009.

One last thing:
Here is the only thing that shows up on website for Blackwater or Xe or whatever they are calling themselves at the moment.

Mutilator, Et all.

Mutilator: Hero Of The Wasteland was an animated short by Eric Fogel. Made while at NYU Tisch, it was deemed "inappropriate due to its violent content" by a professor. Mutilator would go on to win NYU's Award of Excellence in Animation and become a cult favorite of Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation.

Episode 1


Episode 2


If this looks a little familiar it was done by the guy behind The Head.


The Head was part of MTV's Oddities, which also featured The Maxx.
It was in part of a short lived series of experimental cartoon shows in the 1990's, that began with Liquid Television. From Wikipedia:
Liquid Television is an Emmy Award winning 1990s animation showcase that appeared on MTV. The first season of Liquid Television also aired on BBC Two in co-production with MTV. Ultimately, MTV commissioned three seasons of the show, which was produced by Colossal Pictures. It has served as the launching point for several high-profile original cartoons, including Beavis and Butt-head, Æon Flux, Cartoon Sushi, and The Head. The bulk of Liquid Television's material was created by independent animators and artists specially for the show, and some previously produced segments were compiled from festivals such as Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation. Mark Mothersbaugh composed the show's theme music. It was broadcast in New Zealand on TV3 and in Australia on SBS.


After Liquid Television's relatively short run was Cartoon Sushi.
From Wikipedia:
Cartoon Sushi was an animation showcase program that aired on MTV from 1997 to 1998. It was produced by Nick Litwinko. As a collection of animation shorts, Cartoon Sushi was of similar concept and format to MTV's own Liquid Television.


Both of these shows spawned so many classic cartoons from the 90's, Beavis and Butthead, Celebrity Deathmatch, Robin and Aeon Flux to name a few. These shows really marked a moment and gave a lot of young animators and writers their start.
I wish that shows like this were still around. I guess the internet and YouTube has replaced them as a proving ground for short films and animations.

Manly P. Hall

Manly Palmer Hall (March 18, 1901 – August 29, 1990) was a Canadian-born author and mystic. He is perhaps most famous for his work The Secret Teachings of All Ages: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy, which is widely regarded as his magnum opus, and which he published at the age of 25 (or 27, 1928)

He has been widely recognized as a leading scholar in the fields of religion, mythology, mysticism, and the occult.

Carl Jung, when writing Psychology and Alchemy, borrowed material from Hall’s private collection.

In 1934, Hall founded the Philosophical Research Society (PRS) in Los Angeles, California, dedicating it to an idealistic approach to the solution of human problems. The PRS claims to be non-sectarian and entirely free from educational, political, or ecclesiastical control, and the Society’s programs stress the need for the integration of philosophy, religion, and science into one system of instruction. The PRS Library, a public facility devoted to source materials in obscure fields, has many rare and scarce items now impossible to obtain elsewhere.

In 1973 (47 years after writing The Secret Teachings of All Ages), Hall was recognized as a 33º Mason (the highest honor conferred by the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite), at a ceremony held at PRS on December 8th, despite never being initiated into the physical craft.

In his over 70-year career, Hall delivered approximately 8,000 lectures in the United States and abroad, authored over 150 books and essays, and wrote countless magazine articles.



Simply put, this is the most beautiful and complete occult book ever published. It represents a lifetime of research into the mythology, symbolism, and magical practices of countless cultures. From the secrets of Isis to the teachings of mystic Christianity, nearly every occult dogma imaginable is represented here. The book is full of giant illustrations, some of which fold out into a magnificent two-page splendor. This is the definitive guide to secret societies, famous figures, and more a must for every personal library.

Manly P. Hall is one of the most interesting people I have ever read about. He wrote the above book when he was 27 after spending his life researching primary texts at the NY Public Library and traveling all over the world.
He would give lectures while seated in a wooden chair. During these lectures, which would sometimes last for over 2 hours, he would not move or make any gesticulations. These talks would all be recited from memory without the aid of notes or any visuals.
Later in his life he would go on to hypnotize Bella Lugosi to help him perform scenes in a movie.

When asked by a fellow mystic, Claude Bragdon in 1937:
"Mr. Hall, how do you know so much more about the mathematics of Pythagoras than even the authorities on the subject?"
He replied:
"Mr. Bragdon, you are an occult philosopher. You know that it is easier to know things than to know how one know those things."

To listen to lectures, watch videos and read some of his many articles go here.

Also to read more about American mystics and weirdos, read Occult America by Mitch Horowitz. It is great.

Bike Lanes

Groups of bicycle-riding vigilantes have been repainting 14 blocks of Williamsburg roadways ever since the city sandblasted their bike lanes away last week at the request of the Hasidic community.

The Hasids, who have long had a huge enclave in the now-artist-haven neighborhood, had complained that the Bedford Avenue bike paths posed both a safety and religious hazard.

Scantily clad hipster cyclists attracted to the Brooklyn neighborhood made it difficult, the Hasids said, to obey religious laws forbidding them from staring at members of the opposite sex in various states of undress. These riders also were disobeying the traffic laws, they complained.

Read the whole article here.

How stupid is this?

Correction

So a while ago I bought this used copy of 95 Poems by E.E. Cummings. I used to love this collection when I was in high school. It is way out of print so I was psyched to find it.



However as I was reading it I noticed that someone had made a few corrections to one of the poems.



E.E. Cummings is pretty good and I would imagine that the decisions that he made in his writing were very considered, but this person begged to differ.
What do I know though.

Magazine Covers

These are a collection of old pornography magazine covers. There are some interesting design decisions going on on them. Very inspirational.

The second image shows a few miscellaneous bits taken from covers and pages of old porn magazines. Really nice stuff.

This is the type of stuff that I can remember finding in the woods as a kid. Nothing else really looks like these covers. They are instantly recognizable and yet forgettable. It is really interesting to me because the design of these covers and interior pages weren't really made for aesthetic pleasure (kind of). The readers of these magazines probably weren't buying them for the design. I like the idea of designing something for people who don't care what something looks like. These are simply what they are.

I Made This Awhile Ago