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Where have you gone, James DiMaggio?

A slightly interesting bit of name gamery going on in the case of the California teenager (Hannah Anderson) found this week in Idaho, recovered unharmed after her abductor James DiMaggio was shot and killed.

The area:  Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness.  Indeed.

Weird thing is this obscure area of the country was in the news a few months ago.  A Twin Falls (Twin Peaks) animal shelter counts 34 dogs missing in February and March in the area an hour or so south of where DiMaggio, Joltin' James, took his victim.  All of the dogs vanished without a trace.

The area:  Magic Valley.

On March 12th, the body of a German Shepherd was found covered in a purple sheet, its head smashed to bits with a lump of concrete found at the scene.  The possibility of ritual killing and/or animal sacrifice was entertained.  This was in a place called Devil's Corral....

All Dogs Go to Hell.

Apparently, there's some doubt as to whether the number of missing dogs is in fact higher than the amount of missing dogs in previous years.

Still, we loves us them evocative names and when I saw the report about Anderson, the missing dogs immediately came to mind because well, usually all we hear about Idaho involves potatoes and survivalists.

Still, this is pure Baader-Meinhof.  Reminds me of a paragraph in the article I wrote about in my last post: 

One way to illustrate this [the filter theory of selective attention] to yourself is to experiment with a magical technique described by William S. Burroughs called, “Walking on Color.”  Pick a color and take a walk in an area that is familiar to you, choosing to only allow objects of that color to draw your attention.  You will quickly find yourself noticing things you’ve never paid attention to before.  Those things were always there, but your consciousness was editing them out, because it deemed them unimportant.

A few words by Burroughs himself can be found here.

But wait, what the hell, DiMaggio was killed 18 years to the day that his father, James Sr., committed suicide, not long after he'd held another girl, also 16, hostage.  Twin falls....

In another odd but as of yet inconclusive tidbit: 

The riders who spotted Hannah with DiMaggio earlier in the week said she appeared healthy and safe at the time, leading Sheriff Gore to conclude: 'As far as we know, it didn't appear she was being held against her will.'

The area has also been rife with alleged cattle mutilations. Since the 70's, a biggish wave has hit the state every 5 or 6 years. To the south-east of Magic Valley, 30 cattle were mutilated in 1989-90. In 2007, two bulls had their sexual organs removed. This was a bit farther north, in Clark County. (source)

A string of mutilations and shootings took place in 2010 on the other end of the valley in Gem County.

In any event, there's been no more news about the dogs since March.

BTW, Anderson is a name meaning son of Andrew, a name derived from the Greek for "man". Son of Man?  Baader-Meinhof nourishes my own suffering little girl/Jesus narrative.

This is a bit about how I interpret the "news" and construct poetic narratives out of random facts (alleged).

Children’s shows are exploding with hidden penises

In light of this idea of selective attention, it’s surprising to me that not many mentions of Donald in Mathmagic Land show up among the Illuminati theories, as there is a detailed description of the pentagram (which is widely misinterpreted by conspiracy theorists following the Illuminati paradigm as a Satanic symbol), as well as a positive description of the Pythagorean cult.  You’d think that they would be all over this one.

from Donald Duck: High Priest of the Illuminati at Disinfo.

Yeah, you'd think so....

More on Whackypoodle

See also Hidden in Plain Sight

Masonry and Related, Austin/Dallas

.sWineDriveR. makes a photo set available called Masonry and Related, Austin/Dallas, including some shots taken on my visit to Austin which inspired my Lone Star Republics post.

Please check them out and then go onto the other brilliant photo sets.

Pictured are:

• the doors of the Zavala State Archives and Library Building, Austin
• statues of Sam Houston and Anson Jones in front of the Zavala Building  
• a Masonic Temple in Dallas
• Scottish Rite mosaic and sculpture of the double-headed eagle
  
• a window in the General Land Office with a pair of six-pointed stars
• a Ten Commandments monument which led to a Supreme Court Case, decorated with an All-Seeing Eye 

This last monument has an interesting history.  Presented to the city in 1961 as a kind of weird tie-in to Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments, it led in 2005 to

a United States Supreme Court case involving whether a display of the Ten Commandments on a monument given to the government at the Texas State Capitol in Austin violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

The court ruled it didn't.  What intrigued me about the monument is that the tablets have another image of the tablets contained within them, in a strange lettering.  Looking into this I came across the following post.

The Ten Commandment Tablets actually pictured in the DeMille film used a classic Reformed Christian Church version of Ten Commandments divided into four and six. The chiseled lettering was "early Canaanite type".

Of course, those pictured in the DeMille film are those pictured in miniature on this monument.  The writer of the first post I ran across is Avrahaum Segol, a Jewish activist who sees the monolith and the film as an attempt to Christianize the Ten Commandments and promote Christianity.  He may have a point.  I've actually written about Segol before.  He was the guy who

claims the swastika shape of Wesley Acres in Decatur pays homage to the German scientists who came to nearby Huntsville after World War II and designed the rockets that put Americans on the moon.

Segol's got a hard graft ahead of him:

Between 1955 and 1985, more than 150 monoliths were dedicated in 34 states and Canada.  (here)

In any event, a less shrill history of the FOE monuments can be found here:   

THE REAL HISTORY OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS PROJECT, OF THE FRATERNAL ORDER OF EAGLES.

 Fraternal Order of Eagles stated mission is to unite fraternally for mutual benefit, protection, improvement, social enjoyment and association, all persons of good moral character who believe in a Supreme Being to inculcate the principles of liberty, truth, justice and equality, to perpetuate itself as a fraternal organization and to provide for its government as it's Constitution, Laws, Rituals, by-laws or other rules and regulations may from time to time provide, and to promote the general welfare, the Fraternal Order of Eagles ordains this constitution.

The officers of a Fraternal Order of Eagles Aerie are: Worthy President, Worthy Vice President, Junior Past Worthy President, Secretary, Treasurer, Worthy Chaplain, Worthy Conductor, Trustees, Inside Guard, and Outside Guard.

The mission and officers listed here lead me to believe the FOE was influenced a great deal by Freemasonry. Phoenix Masonry furnishes an initiation ritual. If you're familiar with Masonic ritual, you can decide for yourself if it influenced the FOE, or not.

Anyway, check out the pics and clamor for more!

Fun with Hitler

In Hitler Branding, we looked at weird uses of Hitler's name and Nazi imagery in a Thai restaurant and a few Indian stores and films.  We suggested that the historical signifcance of the Nazi regime simply doesn't have the same weight in Asia, with it's own horrors and teeming millions, their attention is focused on other aspects of their history.  A good many young Asians probably couldn't even tell you who Hilter was.

Can you name the Japanese emperor during WW2?  What about its current prime minister?  Can you name one political party in Thailand or India?  Any of its leaders in the last 50 years?

Westerners also joke about Hitler.  Are these people anti-Semites?  Are they insensitive?  Is it healthy to reduce Hitler to a joke?

What about......cats that look like Hitler?  Back before the internet, I had a friend with a cat that looked like Hitler.  They called it Adolf, naturally.

A so-called "Kitler"

Most cats on the "Cats that look like Hilter" website, don't really look the part.  The one above, on the other hand....

Then there's the "Hitler House"in Swansea, Wales.  This one dates back to 2011, originally tweeted by a young Welsh woman.  It got picked up by some comedian and then went viral.

Lebensraum

Says owner Clive Davies:

“I have never noticed any similarity before and most people who pass by are so close they probably never notice. Some people say they can see images of Jesus Christ on items such as toast, and I suppose it is just a variation on a theme. I don’t really think it looks like Hitler.”

Me neither.

Back in May, JCPenney caught flack for putting out a teapot, designed by Michael Graves, that looked liked Hilter.  In the "there is no such thing as bad publicity" vein, Forbes writes an interesting piece about this brouhaha as a marketing opportunity.

Hitler was also short and stout

Companies let things get to market that are obviously dumb only in hindsight all the time (how else could so many smart people working on Star Wars miss the ugly racial overtones of Jar Jar Binks?). It is inconceivable that the merchandisers at JC Penney purposefully green-lighted a Hitler product, though I had a laugh when somebody tweeted that the company would discontinue its planned Pol Pot pot (clearly part of a homicidal despot-themed housewares line).

JC Penney still sells this, btw, but they've taken a different photo....

A new look

So, we can laugh, right?

Conan O'Brien seems to think so.  Dig the following, replete with jokes about a swastika-bladed fan that "exterminates hot air" and the Bavarian pasta pot "with a conveniently-located gravy ladle brush that wipes away impurities."

Speaking of comedy, we'd be remiss to leave out Charlie Chaplin, who has the distinction of looking like Hitler before even Hitler did!

The Great Dictator

I don't what my point with any of this is, to be honest.  Just to say that people find humor in juxtaposing the cute and innocuous with the monstrous.  Hell, Mel Brooks made "Springtime for Hitler" and people find it amusing, which is actually quite relevant here, as he is satirizing the fact that the general public could find humor in a Nazi-themed show.

Anyway, I have no poignant commentary to make.  Just a collection of random stuff I've come across over the past few years that people compare to Hitler.