I was perhaps too hasty when I implied Darby Conley was helping the Belgium Conspiracy with reverse psychology (the comic linked to in that post is now missing -- if anyone has a copy of the panel where Satchel reveals the truth that Belgium doesn't exist, please send me a scan.)

With today's comic, I now believe that Darby is in fact a double agent slyly introducing key paranoid concepts in ways that his handlers at the NWO-controlled Syndicate will find unobjectionable. By cleverly disguising an AFDB as a mere prognosticap, the Syndicate will think that Darby is mocking beanie usage, while the actual effect of the mocking is to subtly hint at the true purpose of Bucky's hat.

There are, however, problems with Bucky's design:

While the Quaker-style cylindrical deflection manifold will offer a maximum of lateral diffusion, the top is shown unfoiled, allowing satellites and UFOs unrestricted access to the wearer's brain. Also, the pointy end of the coat hanger could puncture the foil surface as it bobs with the weight of the star, leading to catastrophic beanie failure. Presumably Darby included these design flaws to deflect the Syndicate from his true agenda. Budding paranoids, it's hoped, will copy the spirit of Bucky's hat and not his exact design.

(P.S. No one tell the Syndicate that Darby's working for us.)

UPDATE 2006-06-24: More on Conley's paranoia propagation...

Strange Magazine has an article titled "A Game With The Forteans" about the viral ad campaign for the videogame Shadow of the Colossus that I wrote about in October.

It notes that a press release sent to Strange after my post had the hidden TBWA\Chiat\Day reference replaced and wonders if the viral advertisers read my blog. They probably did, since there was a link to my site on the Giantology blog's sidebar under "Forteana" that disappeared shortly after I posted that entry.

I have since played Shadow of the Colossus. While it's a good game, it is not a realistic megacide simulator. I cannot recommend it for training Cascadians to battle the forces of Federalist Canada as it's unlikely that any of the McLuhanator series will have their damage-points highlighted by glowing mandalas for easy stabbing. For the time being, continue training on the rock walls at REI.

A paranoid operative deep under cover inside the Disney-controlled "town" of Celebration, Florida (name withheld to protect them from the wrath of Town Hall) forwards this not-really-shocking-at-all notice that was handed out to Cast Citizens:

On Wednesday, Dec. 7, a film crew from Belgium will be filming a show titled "How to Start Your Own Country" throughout the day in Celebration. This project has been authorized by Town Hall, and a representative from Town Hall will be present at all times.

My guess is they are creating a new orientation film for those working behind the scenes at the Belgian Conspiracy -- a replacement for their older one:

Belgian Conspiracy orientation film frame, smuggled out of Disney-controlled ABC.

As previously mentioned, Edison's Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Serviss is an unauthorized 1898 sequel to H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. Unauthorized by Wells, that is. It was authorized by Thomas A. Edison, and the story reads like an Edison promotional vehicle (which it essentially was):

Edison reveals his inventions to the assembled leaders of Earth, including the insufferable Kaiser Wilhelm -- curse his handlebar moustache!

Read more...

Perhaps by now you've seen the blog with the video of the giant uncovered by the tsunami?

Back on the 12th I received an email from someone claiming to be the publicist for Eric Belson, the owner of the above blog, who claimed to be writing a book on the mythology of giants. The publicist asked if I would run the tsunami giant footage on my site. The email had attached a press release in MS Word format breathlessly announcing the release of the video. Opening the doc up in a regular text editor revealed that it was created by someone working for TBWA\Chiat\Day, a large advertising agency used by Sony and known to engage in viral marketing.

The general consensus, based on the content of the video and others since released on the blog, is that it's all a viral ad for a Playstation megacide simulator called Shadow of the Colossus. So here's further confirmation, albeit somewhat late.

It also confirms the dangers of Microsoft Word. This is why True Paranoids write their duplicitous press releases using hex editors.

(When I received it, I emailed the publicist back asking if she worked for TBWA\Chiat\Day, but she never responded. If I had made the connection with the game then, I would have tried to finagle a free copy out of them -- no doubt a useful training aid for my eventual final showdown with the forces of Federalist Canada -- but it's obviously too late for that now. Oh well. Anyway, thanks for linking to my site, guys... although it should be "Zapato Productions intradimensional" not just "intradimensional" -- hey, I was nice enough to humor your ridiculously backslash-cobbled name, allow me my titular extravagancies.)

UPDATE: Giantology Revisited.

Yesterday, I noticed that Wikipedia's entry for "pneumatic tubes" links to my Inteli-tube page. Since I reorganized the site, I went to update the link.

While there, I decided to clarify an ambiguous statement about pneumatic postage stamps (which were mentioned here previously). Of course, I had to also add a picture of one of the stamps.

Then I had to move a misplaced paragraph listing some occurrences of pneumatic tubes in fiction from the postal section. I put it in it's own section and expanded on it:

When pneumatic tubes first came into use in the 19th century, they symbolized technological progress and it was imagined that they would be common in the future. Jules Verne's Paris in the 20th Century (1863) includes suspended pneumatic tube trains that stretch across the oceans. Albert Robida's The Twentieth Century (1882) describes a 1950s Paris where tube trains have replaced railways and pneumatic mail is ubiquitous. Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888) envisions the world of 2000 as interlinked with tubes for delivering goods. Michel Verne's An Express of the Future (1888) questions the sensibility of a transatlantic pneumatic subway. In Michel & Jules Verne's The Day of an American Journalist in 2889 (1889) the Society for Supplying Food to the Home allows subscribers to receive meals pneumatically.

Later, because of their use by governments and large businesses, tubes began to symbolize bureaucracy. In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, pneumatic tubes in the Ministry of Truth deliver newspapers to Winston's desk containing articles to be "rectified". The movie Brazil, which has similar themes, also used tubes (as well as other anachronistic technology) to evoke the stagnation of bureaucracy. At the start of each episode of the 1999 television series Fantasy Island, a darker version of the original, bookings for would-be visitors to the Island were sent to the devilish Mr. Roarke via a pneumatic tube from a dusty old travel agency, making the tube seem not so much bureaucratic as sinister.

The failure of pneumatic tubes to live up to their potential as envisioned in previous centuries has placed them in the company of flying cars and dirigibles as ripe for ironic retro-futurism. The 1960s cartoon series The Jetsons featured pneumatic tubes that people could step into and be sucked up and swiftly spit out at their destination. Futurama imagined similar devices for the citizens of 31st century New New York.

But, sometimes a tube is just a tube, and not all pneumatic tubes in fiction are symbolic or meaningful beyond simply being interesting technology. In the James Bond film The Living Daylights, a supposed Soviet defector was smuggled across the Iron Curtain in an oil pipe-line. While not technically a pneumatic tube, the design of the transportation system in Logan's Run, in which cars traveled in elevated clear tubes, seems influenced by pneumatic tube aesthetics.

So, if anyone knows any other notable pneumatic tubes in fiction that I missed, please add to the article.

We call them by the proper name of les Schtroumpfs or de Smurfen but you will call them the Smurfs! The Belgian cartoonist Peyo, he created the Smurfs in 1958 based on the woodland creatures what live in the forests of Belgium. You see, the Smurfs, and to the lesser extent the Snorks (also created by a Belgian), show that our Belgian wildlife, even she is superior to yours!

Now they are making the film of the Smurfs (you English, read here) using the computer-generated imagery! Being that I am a privileged Belgische burger, I have already seen the, how you say, renderings. They look as real as the Smurfs I have seen in the forests of Wallonie (which, as you know, exists -- and is not in the computer, as M. Zapato says!)

When the Smurfs appear in the cinema, you and your children will learn that the Smurf-speak is double-plus smurf. Your English, she is pointless! Substitute the inferior English words with simple "smurf". Simple language for your simple English lives. When you are ready to think grand thoughts like we Belgians, you learn the Vlaams or the Français, or maybe even the Deutsch -- your choice! If you want, you come to Belgium and we teach you, yes?

Batman Begins isn't so much a Hollywood summer blockbuster as a Hate Crime against the Future.

[SPOILERS]

The first act seemed innocent enough. We are thrust into the story of Bruce Wayne's tumble into the dark cave of fear and hate -- precipitated respectively by a traumatic childhood bat-attack and his guilt over his parents' murder by a mugger that resulted from his chiropteran fears. It begins, without so much as opening credits, in the midst of his Dantean trip into the underworld of crime, searching for the Ways of Wrongdoers and the means to stop them, and leads to his fiery rebirth from the Himalayan hideout of the League of Shadows as a Dark Avenger against Crime.

Batman costume ironically on display in the Sky Church in the EMP, through which the Monorail traverses.

But all this Sturm und Drang is just a façade, cobbled together from well-tread comicbook plots and backstory outlines, for director Christopher Nolan's real agenda: anti-monorail agitprop.

The gleaming monorail system that runs through Gotham in Bruce Wayne's childhood flashbacks -- made stereotypically retro in design by the art director to suggest it belongs to a future passed -- is at the center of both the city -- its rails spoke out from the hub of Wayne Tower -- and the film. It is showcased during a pivotal scene in which Bruce's father explains to him the troubles of Gotham. We learn that the monorail was built by him as a symbol of Hope and Unity for a city faltering on the verge of Poverty and Despair. This portentous scene takes place during a Wayne family trip to the opera that will result in the parental deaths at the heart of the Batman mythos. Here we see the monorail as grim Charon, ferrying the Waynes to their doom.

Years later, after Bruce Wayne's return to Gotham as the Batman, the monorail has become a symbol of degradation, covered in graffiti and sparsely occupied by muggers and Mafia hitmen. The propaganda message here is clear: Monorails are a False Hope and city planners would do well to reject them as a means to Urban Renewal.

But this isn't the final depth to which Nolan's propaganda will sink.

We eventually learn that the monorail is to become a tool of the League of Shadows, lead by immortal archvillain Ra's Al Ghul, to destroy Gotham by using it as a transport for a microwave weapon that will vaporize the water in the pipes that run beneath the monorail line, unleashing the fear-inducing psychotropic drug that the League has surreptitiously poisoned Gotham's water supply with, thereby hurling the city into chaos. So in the end, the plot is this: Only by destroying the monorail can Gotham be saved. If we were to believe the filmmakers, monorails attract terrorists and ninjas, lead to Madness, and need to be demolished for any hope of Salvation.

(I think it's fair to say that the anti-monorail motives of the filmmakers were shaped by their love of SUVs, as evidenced by the worshipful portrayal of the tank-like Batmobile. Upon seeing the Batmobile, Police Sergeant Gordon enthuses: "I got to get me one of these!" He later goes on to use the Batmobile to blow up the monorail. Not exactly subtle.)

As further evidence that the whole film was thrown together for the sole purpose of attacking monorails, consider the poorly thought-out doomsday scheme of the League of Shadows. If the microwave weapon were capable of vaporizing the Gotham City water supply, why did it not also vaporize the aqueous portions of the Gothamites? Why did the eyeballs of those in the Narrows not explode when their vitreous liquid was made gaseous by the microwaves? The only possibly explanation -- apart from an abject lack of understanding of Science on the part of the writers well beyond the norm for even the most curmudgeonly Ludditic anti-monorailist -- is that the filmmakers started with the idea that the monorail was to be destroyed and only later came up with a slapdash reason why. Their limited imaginations, typical of those who dismiss monorails, were simply not up to the task.

As I left the IMAX theater at the Pacific Science Center and took the Seattle Monorail back to my apartment, I was left shaking my head in befuddlement as to why a prestigious Center of Science would agree to show such an unscientific, hateful film so out of touch with the self-evident wonders of the Monorail so near to them. Is not the goal of Science a truer understanding of our World for the Embetterment of Mankind? How is that goal served by attacking what is not only the most significant discovery of Modern Science -- the Principle of Monorailular Transit -- but also the only means of lifting Humanity up out of its congestion, both traffic and moral, and into the sky so that we may ride swiftly and confidently into our Destined Future? It is not served at all by that, I say! Rest assured that I will be writing a strongly worded letter of complaint to the Science Center's Ombudsman.

As for Batman Begins, on a railular scale from one to five (one being a Supreme Achievement of the Human Soul and a Shining Beacon of Hope for our Children, five being Ignominious Refuse for the Junkpile of History), I give it four rails.