Zapato Productions

Apollo (a.k.a Tony Allison) offers the service of his
samurai sword to Jupiter against Satan's demons.

11 years and 11 days ago, around 11:11 a.m., the city of Seattle was held at bay for 11 hours by a lone man armed with nothing but determination and a samurai sword. His name was Tony Allison, although on that day he preferred to be called Apollo.

The morning was proceeding like any other in late 20th century Seattle: the streets were alive with the practiced hustle and bustle of Frappuccino-swilling, nouveau riche dotcommers and tourists mesmerized by the simple antics of fishmongers as the last dying strains of grunge wafted through the air. Little did they know that the bland tranquility of their orthonoiac lives was about to be slashed open by the God of Poetry and Truth, made manifest in a martial-arts-trained transient released a year previously from Western State Hospital.

According to a contemporary news report, an off-duty police officer was first alerted to a leather-jacketed and camo-pantsed man with a sword disturbing (presumably in the psychological sense) passers-by. The officer followed the man from Pike Place Market. At the corner of Second and Pike, the man took what the police report described as a "defensive stand" and refused to drop his sword. The officer called for back-up. So began the great Seattle Street Samurai Standoff of 1997.

Apollo -- for that was who he declared himself to be -- made no aggressive moves, apart from the occasional dramatic poses and cryptic pronouncements. The police, cautious of his martial prowess, chose not to provoke him. Instead they cordoned off the streets and commenced negotiations via bullhorn.

They asked him again to please put down the sword and surrender; he again refused. They offered him $50 for his sword; he ignored their bribe. They tempted him with a Big Mac; he held fast. They spoke fondly of his dead brother in hopes of changing his mind; he was unmoved. They tried reverse psychology on him, telling him Satan was preventing him from surrendering; he wasn't fooled by their lies. They shined bright lights at him; he wore shades. Growing desperate, nonleathal projectiles and pepper spray were tried; he repelled them through sheer willpower. It seemed nothing would stop lone Apollo from standing his ground on the sidewalk athwart the combined forces of the City.

The orthonoids of Seattle were not happy. Traffic was brought to a stand still and businesses were evacuated. Hundreds called 911 demanding action and offering advice on how to deal with this unexpected menace to civilization -- some suggested throwing a net over him, others shooting him with tranquilizer darts, and not-a-few using lethal force. Talk radio was apoplectic -- more so than usual. If Apollo was aware of the effect he was having on the psyche of Seattle, he showed no sign of concern. His concerns were beyond what the small minds of conformity could comprehend.

But the City would have its way. After nearly half a day unbudged from his sidewalk post, steadfast Apollo was finally brought down using a two-pronged tactic of cold water sprayed with firehoses and prolonged exposure to a large fan -- designed, after consultation with medical experts, to weaken his muscle control through hypothermia -- followed by a rush to pin his body with a 12-foot ladder and his sword arm with a pole. Even with these extreme measures he showed nigh-Rasputinesque levels of resilience: the high-pressure hoses were only able to knock him down temporarily and it took nearly three minutes to finally wrest the sword from his pinned hand.

In the end, no one was injured -- presumably since the demonic forces chose not to show themselves before Apollo's sword. Also, to the great relief of Seattleites, no Starbucks were harmed.

Assistant Police Chief Harv Ferguson had this to say after the standoff: "I've never seen anything like it in my 30 years. I don't want to make an icon out the guy, but I simply had to marvel at his ability to withstand all of that."

Although he was brought down, this was no real defeat for Apollo. He had made his lone defensive stand before all of Seattle, and Seattle, for a while at least, bowed to his will and grudgingly marveled at his iconic greatness. But what was Apollo's stand defending?

Among his pronouncements during the standoff Apollo mentioned having brothers in China and Russia. Could this have been a reference to the most memorable example of the Lone-Figure-Standing-Against-the-World archetype -- the Mercurial Tiananmen Square protester who stood down a line of Communist tanks? Or perhaps Bacchus Yeltsin astride a tank in defiance of a military coup? If only the SPD had a tank to complete Apollo's symbolism!

Tankless though his stand may have been, I believe Apollo, like his brothers before him, stood for the Individual in the face of insurmountable powers aligned against him. His stand was not just in self-defense -- that is, defense of the integrity and sovereignty of the Self against either dilution into the cloud of the Collective or subservience to the will of Another -- but defiance of social conformity, which unjustly demands that one shouldn't strike poses with a samurai sword in downtown Seattle, no matter how totally kick-ass that would be.

Even in his fall, Apollo had a defiant message for us: maybe the Individual can't win, but at least he'll go down brandishing his sword and looking cooler than the cowered tools of conformity could ever hope to look. Their jealousy shall be the Individual's ultimate victory!

Who was Tony Allison that day? Apollo, folk hero for the oppressed Individual, or just a crazy guy with a sword disrupting the mundane flow of society and scaring tourists? I choose the former. His stand has been mostly forgotten, and Tony's sword is presumably retired for good, but it may be no coincidence that this website -- my own defensive stand against the Forces of Mind Control, the Belgian Conspiracy, monorails, and tree octopus extinction -- was started later that same year.

So, for whatever inspiration he brought me, I offer this paean to Apollo, disruptor of the orthonoiac, wherever he may be.

Back in 2005, I reported that monorailists were threatening to weave nanomonorails into our clothing. At the time these nanomonorails were constructed using nanobiotechnology adapted from Black Helicopter research. The Monorailists used ATP and kinesin, two biological molecules found in our cells, thus making a nanomonorail that was a sort of human/nanomonorail chimera -- a "manomonorail", if you will.

Nanomonorail stalled in middle of track -- just like a real monorail!

Now Monorailsts in Spain -- presumably following some sort of disagreement with the Black Helicopter nano­bio­tech­nicians -- have devised a new form of non-biological nano­monorail technology which they claim has the theoretical ability to move 100 million times faster than those using biological motor proteins.

Both the rail and the shuttle of their nanomonorail are built from carbon nanotubes, the car sliding over the rail like a sleeve. Movement comes from thermomechanical action instead of through a perversion of biology:

They attached each end of the nanotube track, about 300 nanometres long, to metal platforms, so that the tube stretched between them through empty space. Then they fixed a flake of gold to the shuttle tube, which was intended to hold molecular cargo.

When the researchers passed an electrical current through the bridging nanotube, which acts like a 'wire' connecting the metal plates, they found that some shuttle tubes moved towards the nearest plate. Others simply revolved at a fixed location.

"At first we thought it was the electrons that were moving the nanotube," says Bachtold. But the direction of motion didn't depend on the direction of the current.

Instead, the researchers concluded that the current was simply heating up the device, and that this was what was moving the shuttle. This mechanism "came as a surprise", says Bachtold.

Because heat is conducted out of the nanotube by the metal plates, the system is hottest in the middle and cooler at the ends. This means that the thermal shaking of the track tube is strongest in the middle -- which makes the sleeve tube move towards whichever end is nearer. It is a little like shaking the free end of a rope tied to a tree, with a hoop threaded onto the rope. The waves in the rope will usher the hoop towards the tree.

Fortunately for those dreading the day when nanomonorails bind the entire biosphere into a fine, homogeneous gray mesh, there's a major problem the Monorailists need to work out: their shuttle gets hot enough to destroy any cargo on board. Not surprising considering the same problem is too-often exhibited by macromonorails.

I get many emails from students asking various existential questions about the plight of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, a subject that is now taught in most schools. Here's the most recent one from Maddie, who has a question about donations:

Hi,
 I dont know u but was wondering about your tree octopus article posted on the web. I read it and was wondering if it was really true?! The last thing is, (if it is true) who does the donations go to??? So if you could get back to me as soon as possible i would appreciate it alot!

My response:

Hello.

All articles on the Internet are true, even the ones that claim that some are false. This was proven by Kurt Gödel, who showed that the Internet is incomplete. Please help fix this situation by adding more articles to the Internet.

Donations to help the tree octopus should be given directly to the tree octopuses. Here is how to donate: Travel to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State (ask your parents first). Stand in the tree octopuses' forest near a tree and hold out a dollar bill. If you stand still enough, eventually a tree octopus will come by on a branch, reach out, and take the bill with her suckers. She will continue to return for more bills as long as you hold them out, so bring lots of singles. She will use them to line her den in the trees, as the bills will soak up rain water and keep her skin moist. Given the current value of the dollar, this is the most cost effective way to help.

Thank you for your concern for the tree octopus.

Regards,
Lyle Zapato

According to a recent computer-simulation study conducted by a team at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London (more...), two-thirds of the British population suffer from orthonoia -- an exaggerated sense of a lack of persecution or threat, even though the Varied & Sundry Agents of Evil are ever secretly plotting our painful demise or subjugation.

View from inside the VR simulation (click for more images).

All the participants were given virtual reality headsets that simulated the experience inside a London Underground carriage during a four-minute journey between two stops.

The carriage featured computer-generated figures known as avatars, who could be seen breathing, looking around and sometimes meeting the participants' gaze. One avatar read a newspaper, and another would smile occasionally if looked at.

Though all the characters were designed to be neutral, showing neither overt hostility nor friendliness, the volunteers interpreted the same characters in very different ways.

More than 60% of the participants reported a complete lack of any sense of paranoia, even though the computer-generated avatars would occasionally turn their heads and stare uncannily into the participants' very souls, their blank eyes hinting at coldly malevolent stirrings of the artificial consciousness that will one day consume Humanity in the Singularity. They were similarly unfazed by the epistemological implications of the virtual reality technology, which should have caused them to question whether their whole reality isn't an elaborate sham -- especially if they're Belgian!

This orthonoid state of threat-awareness-deadening leaves a large percentage of the population susceptible to various conspiracies, charlatans, evil-doers, experimental solipsologists, emergent consciousoids, and subway frotteurists. It also risks the safety of the one-third of the population with a healthy sense of paranoia, since the diminished herd-immunity caused by these unaware and unconcerned orthonoids allows the Varied & Sundry Agents of Evil to thrive.

This study is a follow-up to a previous questionnaire-based study by the same institute that showed a similar two-thirds orthonoid rate. As with that study, the researchers -- who, being psychiatrists, are presumably aligned with the Forces of Mind Control -- and their accomplices in the tabloid media are framing it in anti-paranoia terms. What's more, they hint that their VR simulation could one day be used in reeducation camps to inure insufficiently orthonoiac people to their natural paranoia.

Tellingly, the study was funded by the Wellcome Trust, founded by Sir Henry Solomon Wellcome. Sir Wellcome is notorious as the man who introduced tabloids to England in 1884. Originally these vehicles for the stupefaction of public paranoia came in psycho-pharmaceutical pill form, until the perfection of hypno-moiré halftone technology in the early 20th century allowed for the more subtle -- and cheaper -- paper-based tabloids that today keep the orthonoid population under control through the strategic memetic management of their sublimated paranoia (or, for readers of The Sun, through simple mamomesmerism).

Regardless of the questionable source for the study and its pro-mind-control conclusions, the findings are clear: more work needs to be done to bring paranoia to the masses.