Advertisements for Ourselves

The devil you say

At the risk of being dreadfully inappropriate, I draw your attention to the following video from CNN.  This article about the memorial to Vicki Soto includes a photomontage with the following image, about 55 seconds in.

Soto was a teacher killed in the Newtown shooting and is widely being hailed as a hero after locking her students in a bathroom and standing guard outside the door.

Another version from ABC News prudently crops the photo so the offending hand doesn't appear, whether by chance or design, who can say? (about 52 seconds in).

I don't know who first saw this, or created the photo still, but I saw it on my Facebook newsfeed.

A strange photobomb indeed.

Leave a good-looking corpse

Looks like Ke$ha, or at least the director of the video for "Die Young", has taken the bull by the horns and placed a whammy on the "pop-occulture", "Illuminati-in-pop-music" crowd by making a video so over the top it borders on parody. Yet it will still guarantee to offend.  In one scene she and her dancers burst into a what appears to me to be a church and start smashing things up, standing on the dais in front of a pentacle, engaging in sexual debauchery etc.  Triangles fade in, a flashing inverted cross appears as it fades out; Ke$ha herself flashes a ring with an eye in it.  She looks through her fingers splayed in a "V", making an eye in a triangle.  A skull and bones flashes in and out.  Etc.  **Video at the tend of this post**

Actually, this Illuminati-in-the-music business is an old (and obvious) meme and it's obvious why the media would be an obvious player in any well-constructed conspiracy theory.  Especially one involving indoctrinating the masses.  I've long read such theories regarding the music industry, media in general, really.  One actually good but disingenuous writer I refuse to link to is obsessed with the Illuminati symbolism in Lady Gaga videos.  Another (not so good a writer) sees the all-seeing eye in improbable hand configurations, including looking through the "ok" sign.  Hate to learn what he thinks of "got yer nose".  Hip-Hop is suspect (maybe for all the gesticulation) especially Jay-Z and Kanye West.  This other guy seems to have a lot of answers:

The general opinion regarding musicians and their “induction” into the Illuminati is tragically incorrect. These artists themselves aren’t actually IN the Illuminati, they are merely pawns FOR them. The deal is that they sign over particular creative rights in exchange for the publicity and access required to become a sensational star. They sign up with the Illuminati to become famous quickly, because Illuminati members have infiltrated and remain a ubiquitous force in the entertainment industry.

The author seems to think this is all a by-product of Saturn worship.  In his explanation he also manages to implicate the north and south poles, as well as the cube, in this infiltration of Saturn-worshipping Illuminists into all the higher echelons of society.  It reads as though he's grabbed a few half-digested internet conspiracy memes and sort of (barely) lashed them together in a tour de force of syllogism and unsupported statement.  Which is sadly effective, judging from the sheer number of similar websites. 

Personally, I think this video is taking a poke at these theories, all the while going for the easy and obvious provocation.  The dollar sign in Ke$ha's name seems especially apt in this context.  People are still going to take the bait, though.  It's very blatancy will be taken as an even more arrogant ratcheting up of that nebulous "revelation of the method."  She's certainly made the symbology crowd of Illuminati-watchers' work easy for 'em.  Just take the Saturn-worship guy, whose blog, erm, "Illuminati Watcher" makes that very point.    Ke$ha's going to town with the Illuminati thing; the photo stills from a performance of the song on Australia's X Factor are pretty eye-popping:  Weishaupt at Las Vegas.  More like backdrops to a Muppet Show number than ritual props in an alchymical mind-fuck.

She may even take Lady Gaga's place as Illuminati Marionette N° 1 at this rate.

Anyway, echoing Beyoncé's police state chic, this video of Ke$ha and her band of dancing Illuminists, who adore Ke$ha as if she were a saint, are all gunned down in the end by the police.  Shades of Waco.  As all those Davidians might have figgered out between the time the real police machinery launched a gas canister at their home and the fiery death that canister would lead to, we all "die young."

So here's the video.