I am not where I am, am I?

Oh, Toulouse!

Out with the old....

In with the new....

Toulouse.  "La Ville Rose," legendary rugby town, birthplace of Claude Nougaro and Carlos Gardel (maybe).  Zebda, Bigflo & Oli, The Fabulous Trobadors....

Toulouse.  Known for its vibrant hip-hop and graffiti scenes.  I just grokked a (Space) Invader piece earlier today, glued to the wall of the Café des Artistes, hehe.  Ate lunch at my son's flat, haha -- we called my 1st apartment the "flat sun" -- on a narrow street (rue Gramat) with facades covered from cobblestones to eaves with big works of graffiti.  Local rap collective La Dalle (The Hunger) filmed their video for their song Insatiable at the lad's "trap."  

"Get the hip-hop vinyls, Scarface and Halloween posters in the background...." 

"I got Scarface on RE-peat!"  Hey maig'n, I cain't hep it if'n I'm frum Tampa...."

If you look close enough you'll see one of those Dalle blighters wearing my HS class ring

Toulouse.  On the rue Gramat, elderly couples walk by with cameras, digging what's fresh.  Classes of lycéens sit and take notes as teachers explain the "graf."  The dealers sit perched at either end to sell off-the-truck smokes or "shit"--and it is shit--what they call hash here in France....all of it seems to work.

Untranslated articles, but the quantity alone indicates the little street's fame:

Rue Gramat (Wikipedia.fr)

La rue Gramat : des fresques vivantes et pleines d’histoire (Le 24 Heures) (Lively Frescos full of History)

Pourquoi la rue Gramat est-elle recouverte de graffs ? (Le Journal Toulousain) (Why is the rue Gramat covered in graffiti?)

Toulouse. Graff : la rue Gramat prend les couleurs de la paix (La Depêche) (Rue Gramat takes on the colors of Peace)

Toulouse.  A student town:  tolerant, diverse, bustling, working-class.  My home for 20+ years (most importantly, natch.  Croix-Daurade (The Gilded Cross), La Daurade (Eldorado), Côte Pavé (The Paved Slope....?)....Tolerant of gypsies, Cathars, soothtsayers, Jews, the homeless and the itinerant back in the Middle Ages, and still pretty tolerant today.  Early memory:  Hanging out in a speakeasy in the basement of a "hairdresser's."  We're watching the owner negotiate for a rack of off-the-truck shirts.  Me, 5 Ghanaian dudes, and a transvestite prostitute, .  A comely lass; 'tis a pity she was a whore, but she was cool.  No Bowiesque punch-ups...."like a dude...."

So, according to Kaye's 5 rules of vexillology, which Toulouse flag is better, the old (top) or the new (bottom)?  There actually is a right answer.

In your opinion, which one is better?

I'll say this:  remove the out-of-place kow-tow -- the obsequious curtsey -- to the fleur-de-lis weighing down the old city flag and you'd already improve it by a factor of appx. 92.2733 %.  Unless the market is depressed that year.

Well, that's something.

I could spew until the good time you promised comes to fruition. Hard-pressed to run, evade, even move.

Union of the Snake

I've done a whole series about snake imagery as it relates to the Crucifixion and the medical profession, as well as the sculpture of Bourdelle, the shenanigans of Moses, and the Black Virgins. Not sure I have more to say on the theme, but in the cause of my ongoing psychogeographical-like efforts to invest the drab and humdrum commute I am obliged to undertake in my ongoing struggle as a wage slave with some meaning, I post this. The Toulouse metro uses a symbol for each station, and the Phaculté de Pharmacie uses a serpent. 

Of course, this is self-evident. What is not is that it's one of the stations I now use frequently in my current pursuit of gainful employment. Signs and symbols keep reoccurring in my personal geography.  My psychogeography. Apophenia, red car phenomenon. Whatever.  Both objectively "true" and subjectively meaningful. As if subjective and objective mean anything anymore, if they ever did.

And hey, it sets my thoughts in motion and makes the drab and deary navigation through the stultifying urban shitscape somehow a little better than completely meaningless..... 

"Good Luck, Toni" A new book, a new website, and a book signing....

 

 

 

I. 

 

Back in December, 2018 I posted that my friend Waîthira Francis had published her first novel, My Name is Toni.

I'm pleased to report that she's published a sequel, Good Luck, Toni.

Toni is no longer a naïve, young Kenyan immigrant struggling with her religious upbringing as she navigates the mores of an unfamiliar culture, but a married woman, a mother, and a working professional.

"Her life is not spared the drama, love snares and shenanigans that seem to follow Toni everywhere."

Francis has created a website where you can order copies from her directly:  Waîthira Francis.

II.

I've organized a reading/book signing for November 12th at 8PM.   The reading will take place at The Wild Rose (17, rue Maury, Toulouse; you can contact the venue directly at 09 81 84 88 06.)  

In addition to Francis, I will be reading from my novella, The Ice Mine.  Books will be available for purchase and signing.  This reading was originally planned for over a year ago but was derailed by the pandemic.

Fabrice Gieryga will play a few songs and I will sing on one song and play tambourine on some others.  The reading and music will last an hour and a half at most. 

The Lost Generation had Paris in the 20's and 30's.  The Beats called an unnamed hotel at 9, rue Gît-le-Cœur home from the late 50's to the early 60's.  Will Toulouse become known as a literary hotbed for the expat writers of Generation X?  Come help make it happen.  At the least you can grab a drink and hear some literature and live music.... 

A few words from the critics....

Le Colber

Here's either some shameless self-promotion or just some plain ol' Johnny Hustle.  Hopefully you don't see this as smarmy tooting of my own horn.  I just want you to read the book!  Two of these blurbs have already appeared on the blog but I've gathered them all together in this here post.  All quite positive, which is flattering and humbling.

In addition to Amazon, in Toulouse it can be found on the shelves of Ombres Blanches and in Verdun-sur-Garonne at Le Colber....

And of course you can find it directly on the Whisk(e)y Tit website!

Thanks to all the reviewers....

Ombres Blanches

On Amazon.fr


Alex McC
William Burroughs meets Heart of Darkness
5 Stars
8 août 2018


This first-person narrative really feels like back in the Heart of Darkness, only this time the voyage is through a futuristic terrain, and the narrator is coming off a drug addiction. The story flowed easily, with bouts of philosophical musings that were poignant and that had me laughing at times. I would have enjoyed an even longer book, as the only criticism I can think is that the novella size does it injustice. Well worth the read. Kudos to Adkins on his first novel... definitely want to read more of his books.

On Amazon.com

J. Frankel
A madman goes in search of the Ice Mine
5 Stars
December 12, 2018

The Ice Mine
Steven M. Adkins’ ‘The Ice Mine, “The Relation” of Ricardo Etienne Bream’ is a hallucinatory novella of a madman’s quest for a mythical place, in this case an Ice Mine. The narrator has lost his wife, children, home, and job through addiction to narcotics. He manages to kick his addiction and hopes to recover at least some semblance of a life, in the course of which he discovers among his books ‘Relations’ of other travellers who have gone in search of the Ice Mine, which may lie to the north, or the east, or the south. Most who light out to find it never return. The narrative has the feel of Browning’s strange Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, a poem he dreamed.

Adkins’ prose is sonically rich, full of words like ‘blorp’, evoking comics as much as classic sci fi. The heart of his writing is surrealism and the great strength is his fine rendering of a marginal consciousness riven by guilt and self-hatred. He compares self-pity to the honey of bees, something he defecates at night and consumes in the morning. The story alternates between his adventures into terra incognito, encounters with mythical beasts and dangerous defiles, rocky wastes, storms and dust, and reflections on his life and the history of his people. It is a novel of alienation and nightmare, enlivened by the knowing prose, which straddles the abyss between the ludicrous and the terrifying.

Amazon Customer
Awesome read!
5 Stars
February 18, 2019
Verified Purchase

Like Pynchon meets Asimov, seriously, this book is amazing. Thanks!

Amethyst
Creative and beautifully written
5 Stars
March 19, 2019
Verified Purchase

I did not know what to expect when I picked up The Ice Mine. I brought it along on vacation to peruse during down times. However, I found myself devouring the book at every chance. The writing is gorgeous. You can tell every word Adkins wrote was carefully considered and crafted with love. I also love that Adkins created his own setting, his own world, and wrote about this world as if we all lived in it. It was one of those books - a book where you can't help thinking of all the people you know who would love it too. In fact, I just bought another copy to send to my sister. If you pick up The Ice Mine, be prepared to do nothing else but sit in your armchair with a cup of tea - having a good read.

On Instagram

brianbiswas
May 24, 2019

Absolutely floored by this book: The Ice Mine, by Steven M. Adkins (Whisk(e)y Tit Press). The writing is beautiful, and reminds me of Alvaro Mutis (Maqroll), one of the great South American magical realists. It’s the account of a journey to a mysterious—and possibly mythical—place dubbed “The Ice Mine”. The description throughout is thick and richly-textured. Luscious. Drop-dead gorgeous. (You get the idea.) It’s one of those books that is so heavenly, so involving, that when you finish it you immediately want to read it again (which I will!).
#bookstagram #booksbooksbooks #whiskeytit

 

October 9:  Ombres Blanches has sold all copies of the book and I've gotten 2 5-star reviews on Good Reads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41129777-the-ice-mine

A Decrepit Beacon of Enlightenment

Blagnac Histoire & Memoire is an historical society dedicated to the history of, ta-da! Blagnac, a small city and suburb of Toulouse. It's a wealthy city with lots of tax revenue generated by Airbus and its well-paid employees, so the association gets a decent subsidy from the Mairie in order to print their review, Blagnac, Questions d'Histoire. In 2013 the association published a special edition exploring the histories of the city's street and place names. Almost an entire page is dedicated to the Place de la Révolution, discussed many times here on LoS because of the curious monument located there which has been dubbed the "Illuminati Pyramid" but is officially named Le Temple de la Sagesse Supreme. Oh what a monster we unleashed upon the English-speaking world! (I can't tell you how many sites reproduce several of my photos and field observations without attribution. The French pull these little tricks as well....I just tried to right-click and save an image of the world map from another website but they'd blocked that function and a little message popped up to tell me the image was protected by copyright.  Fair enough, but I took the g-dam photo in the first place! The author had copied a photo I took and had the nerve to claim copyright!)

I've decided to translate the entry regarding this curious plaza for your edification. For further elaboration, feel free to peruse our posts bearing this tag. 

 

RÉVOLUTION FRANÇAISE (Place de la) F7 

Conceived as the Southern port of entry into the Grand Noble quarter, this plaza was built in 1989 as a solemn commemoration of the bicentennial of the French Revolution; it is also officially known as the Place du Bicentenaire, (Bicentennial Plaza). It displays more or less easily identifiable symbols that recall one of the great founding acts of our history.

A large rectangle, delimited by monumental arcades, the plaza combines a play of circles, ovals and spokes. It starts as a central tumulus, crowned with a pyramid pierced by a window, inserted into a frame in the form of a house.  The pyramid is a fountain where from hundreds of holes water gurgles into a basin in the form of a double hemisphere world map.  In front of the pyramid, bronze stelae represent the cosmos and bear the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.  Facing the pyramid on the North is a large belvedere-gallery and to the South an ensemble with a long shaft surmounted by a tricolor flag and a votive column wearing a Phrygian cap and a cockade.

When he presented his project in 1988, architect Jean-Philippe Dubourg, winner of the contest organized by the city, explained that all these are linked: 

"The belvedere emits a laser, a ray of light pure and abstract, on a North-South axis....This light will modulate, taking on the essence of the Rights of Man as it passes through the Temple of Supreme Wisdom (the pyramid) and the House (allegory of the Homeland)...Thus symbolically metamorphosed, the ray of light will be refracted in the parabola (the cockade) of the votive column of the French Revolution, spreading the incontrovertible truths contained in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen into the ether....the central tumulus is a also a subtle botanical garden, metaphor of France as a gentle garden of liberty, planted with a Liberty Tree and a multitude of perennial plants, from gaillardia to santolina, plants dating from the Revolution."

In the opinion of his colleagues and fellow architects, Jean-Philippe Dubourg's project paid homage to Enlightenment philosophy and to the revolutionary ideals which it inspired; without a doubt, through the pyramid, to Freemasonry (whose role in the genesis of the Revolution has been greatly exaggerated); and finally to the great architects of the 18th century (Boullée, Ledoux and Lequeu); all the while applying the precepts: 

"A rational architecture using simple geometric forms and having a moral bearing on Man."

My photo, borrowed and copyrighted!

Since 1989 the plaza has suffered from the wear and tear of time and from technical failures.  The laser, victim of recurrent outages, never really functioned.  The double hemisphere world map has disappeared under a coating intended to plug leaks.  On the stelae, one looks in vain for the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen; the support panel is loose and damaged...Perhaps it will one day recover its place?  Finally, the garden has lost its luxuriance, the maintenance requiring too much care....Despite all this, the plaza has retained a certain allure.

The plaza has gained, despite itself, a renown well beyond the limits of Blagnac, thanks to the Internet.  According to Internauts fond of esotericism, it symbolizes the "New World Order", a world dominated by a small elite of initiates: the Illuminati.  This thesis hasn't failed to astonish and amuse the citizens of Blagnac; perhaps they are flattered to discover that a monument in their city illustrates such a remarkable plan? 

B.Q.H n. 1-2-3-4-8

Urban Beekeeping, or, Honey Made of Clay

As our last two posts featured beehives, I thought I'd keep the ball rolling with a pair of photos I took years ago with the idea of doing a post on unusual or esoteric symbols found throughout Toulouse, but I never got around to using them.  

So, without further ado, this is a beehive found on a downtown facade about ten feet up and squarely between two first-floor windows.  I've never found out why it's there, or if it was made at the instigation of the neighborhood, an individual, or some sort of guild or fraternity.  All I know is that it's made of terra-cotta, a local specialty, and that it's located on the left side of the Rue. St. Rome when facing Place Capitole, about halfway between Places Capitole and Esquirol.  

Anyone know why this beehive is here?  

For some fine example of sculpture groups in terra-cotta, one can poke around the nearby Musée des Augustines.  In using terra-cotta, the artists of Toulouse were simply using a common and relatively cheap material at hand.  The local tradition stems from the liberal use of brick in local construction, a feature so dominant in Toulouse and neighboring towns such as (Montauban), that Toulouse has been nicknamed "la Ville Rose" ("the Pink City") because of the effect of the sun brightening the reddish bricks (aka "forains") of its buildings.

My Bologne has a first name:

L'obelisque

When I moved to Toulouse in April, 2002, I lived a few hundred yards away from this plaza and for over a year regularly frequented the restaurants and bars nearby.  My best pal Alex's office is just around the corner and the plaza provides a convenient shortcut to the hopping/happening Place St. Pierre.

Which is why it's kind of odd that I must have seen this plaza fewer times than I can count on one hand.

The few times I had been there I must have

dithered about as if in a dream, 
some kind of hapless mote 
floating through on a sunbeam

(from Burning Pizzle by J. Trenchwheat)

because I'd never really quite grokked -- done the spit-take as it were -- the fact that there's an obelisk fountain at the dead center.  And if there's anything I'd grok, it's an obelisk fountain.  This quiet, almost hidden plaza in the midst of one of Toulouse's hubbiest bubs features an obelisk and, as Prof. Freedom Williams once said, "I'd never even gone "hmmm."")

The Place de Bologne is relatively new, so it's jut another indication that the Egyptian Revival is still going strong in Toulouse  (I've written extensively about plethora of contemporary pyramid monuments in the metropolitan area).  Egypt remains a source of inspiration for architects, developers, and builders as it has since the Phoenicians, Hebrews, Greeks, Romans -- times when Egyptian civilization was the antiquity of what we consider our own antiquity.

Place de Bologne as seen from the LoS helicopter

Take a S.I.P.

Imagine how geeked out I got when after seeing the obelisk I took a look at the office doors facing it and saw a triangle logo for home builder (an outfit called S.I.P.)  I have explored the links between Freemasonry, the Egyptian Revival(s), the triangle and/or pyramid logo, and the French real estate and construction industries.  In this case I was doubly geeked:  facing this first S.I.P. was another be-triangled business:  Groupe Osiris (!) is a developer and real estate manager.

Osiris has the cool-for-us title of the "Lord of Silence" -- but he was also known as the "Lord of the Dead" and the "King of the Living".  Interesting -- perhaps the Groupe seeks to evoke the importance of urban planning and lodging as a controlling force in our lives.  Haussmann certainly understood the relationship between urban geography and political liberty when he designed wide boulevards favorable to army forces and cannon at the expense of the narrow streets favorable to building blockades and defending the poor quarters with rusty rifles and kitchen knives.

King of the Living Room

When Toulouse performed the same kind of "remodeling" (at about the same as Haussmann), the city's motivations were probably less strategic than practical in terms of everyday traffic.  In any event, if an urban zone is defined by the constant reconstitution of its component parts (to paraphrase T.A. Wilson), a city is in a constant state of degeneration, regeneration, and transformation.
Osiris worship was in essence a cult of regeneration and rebirth, and a city it essentially an entity which is dying and re-birthing itself at every second of every day.  The city is its own mother, father, and child, a family coiled-up into a convoluted relationship which at its mutating center is a kind of cosmic incest.  (If in fact we can speak of a center at all; perhaps it's less inaccurate to speak of something so folded up in upon itself that it's all periphery.

Given the increasingly restrictive circles in which the elite travel, and -- like boolean ovals -- intersect through various boards, clubs, business groups, Lodges -- tighter and tighter as we head towards the tip of the pyramid -- it's no small wonder these increasingly reduced and therefore intimate business bedfellows move with ease within the nomenclature of this incestuous Egyptian genealogy: Horus, Osiris, Cheops....

One of the many challenges facing urban planners is how to move a city forward without totally destroying its past.  One can't forbid any and all new construction in an historic city or we end up stunting a city's dynamism.  We have a static showpiece where we can't even put in a new skylight because it doesn't mesh with the surrounding 19th century character, for instance.

That said, I'm a firm believer in taking the time and spending whatever is necessary to properly investigate new construction sites and thinking long and hard about what we're destroying.  When in the 19th century the city of Toulouse plowed through the medieval warren of the centre ville to create a logically straight pair of central axes, they did indeed facilitate movement through the center of town; they also forever destroyed  its medieval character.  The neighborhoods around these axes remain today among Toulouse's most beautiful streets.  Imagine what has been lost.

In my own time, during the renovation and construction of the new Palais de Justice, the remains of the palace of the Counts of Toulouse were found; minimal archaeological investigation was carried out and what we might have learned from it has probably been lost forever.
  

Not so far from there, the destruction of a building attached to the Church of the Dalbade revealed a medieval cemetery underneath.  This was also investigated, but then, poof, a new building appeared and the cemetery was lost forever.

The Place de Bologne is another such place, which "represents in an edifying manner the problems posed by a certain kind of urbanism" (here).  Some of the buildings were renovated for use in the current plaza, but some very old buildings, in one of the oldest parts of Toulouse, were simply destroyed.  If we were dealing with some run-of-the-mill urban building, we could shrug it off as acceptable change.  "Urban Renewal" has been used to put lipstick on the pig of various corrupt and disruptive schemes dreamed up by developers eager to squeeze every last coin from every last square foot, but if we look past the abuse of this doctrine, we'll find it's a necessary and even positive part of urban evolution.  Without renewal, there is no urban stasis, only decay.

But the ruins here were in fact the last vestiges of the palace of the Visigoth kings of Toulouse, before various depredations obliged them to remove to Toledo (Spain, not Klinger's hometown).

This is an important and relatively under-known period of the city's history:  the Dark Ages, the transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages -- the Visigoths being one of the tribes who brought that about -- in the epicenter of Gallo-Roman France.  The Visigoths had sacked Delphi and Rome and legend has it that they made off with the spoils of Solomon's Temple.  They built the first Church of the Daurade in an octagonal, Byzantine style, so-named for its golden mosaics.  Their kingdom extended from Andalusia to the Loire and Toulouse was their capital; Place de Bologne was the epicenter.

The worst part is what they destroyed it all for; the architecture is unremarkable and the entrances to the plaza are gated, giving the impression of a private rather than a public space.  Indeed, all the buildings on the plaza are a tightly controlled development, not really an organic residential zone but operated by one of the powerful developers which have had so much power in determining the ever fluid urban and suburban landscapes of French cities and villages

As one site puts it "the result of these errors makes this place close, cold, without life.  With a century of history destroyed beneath our feet."  Interesting now that I think of it.  Another one of these "dead zones" is Compans Caffarrelli, which, incidentally, is another big plaza surrounded by high-rises, a public space privatized, basically, but with a cold and inert feeling despite the fact that several hundred people probably live there.

One must also consider the chilling effect of all this not only on street life, but free speech.  Consider this anecdote from a few years ago:

Taking pictures of this pyramid and architecture, Daurade was approached by a squat little security guard, a little nervous and scowling, who informed him that taking pictures is forbidden. So there you have it. On the city streets one is free to photograph what one wants. But as all this public space is enclosed and privatized, public inquiry and expression are somewhat less free. In fact, taking a photo is forbidden. Whatever the reason for this, security probably, it still doesn’t eclipse the fact that in this new world order everything will be for sale, and those with money to buy are welcome. As long as the money keeps flowing in the right direction: up towards the pinnacle.

The fountain isn't remarkable:  an obelisk in an octagonal basin, accessed by three steps which form the octagonal base.  The plaza itself is paved in the same form.  I suppose one could read something into the three steps in terms of Freemasonry, but that may be pushing it!  It occurs to me that this is the second thing in this post described as octagonal; it's possible the form of the plaza is a reference to the original Church of the Daurade which sat in roughly the equivalent position at the other end of the Quai Lucien Lombard.

I've already mentioned in a few posts how the Count of Montalambert called Toulouse the "home of vandalism".  Part that vandalism isn't just the destruction of history, but replacing what has been destroyed by shite architecture.  Toulouse has recently been obliging people on the outskirts to sell their homes so they can be razed and big dumpy apartment blocks put in their place.  The whole quasi-rural character of vast tracts close to the dead center of Toulouse have been sucked into a cold and sterile, inorganic mess of character-less, undifferentiated buildings.

So, I was attracted by the Egyptian obelisk and, sniffing around for anything vaguely Masonic, came across the two developers using triangles -- a subject to which I've already dedicated both a post and a Picasa album -- one of these developers specifically evokes Osiris.  A curious choice, given the theme of death and rebirth.  They certainly killed something off here -- a piece of history which could furnish much-needed detail about the Visigoth period of Toulouse -- but whether something worthwhile has been born from this remains to be seen.

New World Odor

An entrance to a secret underground Illuminati city?

That title ain't no misprint. Henry Makow, Ph.D. reprints a Michael Hoffman (II) missive under the title Psychological Coercion, Illuminati Style.  From that text:

It isn't only the shocking nature of the changes imposed by the revolution, it is the speed by which three millennia of Western Christian civilization have been swept away since the rise of the sodomite-imposed rights movement in the 1960's. In a little more than 50-years the golem-goyim of America have permitted the surrender of our nation to those who make a love canal out of the sewer of the human body. (Emphasis mine).

Tell me about it, Mike! The Illuminati-controlled contractor responsible for the upgrades on the village sewer network aren't shy at all about giving a shout-out to their overlords, our Masters.

An entrance to a secret underground Illuminati city?

Something stinks here, literally.

Just at the moment the U.S. Supreme Court is meeting in order to discuss the constitutionality of same-sex marriage, the French tentacle of the Illuminati just can't resist giving a wave to their U.S. fellow travelers. Why else so brazenly mark their work with the eye in a triangle? They are all-seeing, even from within your toilet, their favorite point of view, (un)naturally! As for the coded numbers, who knows? I'm no Dan Brown. But next time you sit down to do the doo-doo, make sure you do it through a sheet with a hole cut in it, Jewish style (sheet/shit, get it?) Oh wait, apparently that's just anti-Semitic rumor-mongering. At least according to Snopes, who always get to the bottom of things.

We wonder if this sewer work is merely about installing cameras in your toilet, or if it's also part of an extension of the vast underground complex centered at Blagnac airport. The Illuminati loves these (see Down in a Hole, 25 May 2013); the secret underground base beneath Denver airport, for example, will serve as both a massive FEMA-managed concentration camp and a landing area for the Illuminati's alien overlords, revelated to the world in Christopher Wilson's Tripod Trilogy under the name of the Masters, pyramid-shaped creatures with 3 legs and 3 tentacles, these latter representing the French, American and Sirius-based arms of the Illuminati.

They also had 3 eyes, "set in a flattened triangle". You didn't think that one eye in the Illuminati symbol was literal, did you?

Here's lookin' at you, kid!

Toulouse is the "ville rose", or "pink city"; that triangle set into the Masters forehead is a pink triangle and the Blagnac base a vast prison for the opponents of gay-marriage, which, once approved in the U.S., will become legal in France. No coincidence that the pink city is also something like the San Francisco of France, with a high gay-to-straight ratio. What else would you expect of town where the Consistori del Gay Saber (Consistory of Gay Science) was founded in -- get this 1323. 13? 23? Fnord!

This group was originally called the Consistori dels Sept Trobadors (Consistory of Seven Troubadours), who were in fact seven Illuminati. The Consistory was dedicated to promoting such sissified activities as dancing and poetry as opposed to the more manly pursuits of hunting, rugby and warfare. It was the troubadours who created and promoted a feminine ideal, spreading the cults of the Virgin Mary, la Belle Paule and most of all, their patroness, Clémence Isaure, the Golden Isis. This worship of the female began to overturn the phallocentric model of early Christianity and essentially feminized the culture of Southern France, vaunting infidelity, feminine pursuits and above all, homosexuality.

So Hoffman, although essentially correct in his description of the thrust of the sodomite agenda, incorrectly places its origin to the 1960s, the beginning of the Stonewall-inspired "gay pride" movement only now reaching its climax as it goes before the 9 unisex troubadours of the U.S. Supreme Court. It actually began nearly 700 years ago, in Toulouse (Too loose!)

So those spray-painted sigils are only a wink and a nod from the rank and file drones of the Illuminati, celebrating the pre-ordained victory over one of the last cultural vestiges of God-fearing (straight) men and women everywhere: marriage. As Henry Makow, Ph.D. himself laments, they've already gotten to the Scouts! (Boy Scouts -- Model of Masonic Subversion?). And don't get us started on Disney! (see Queens of the Ice Age, 22 March 2013).

Like most major institutions, the Boy Scouts appears to have been subverted by Freemasonry, which has a hidden agenda of promoting homosexuality and denying God.

The Illuminati (the highest rung of Cabalistic Freemasonry) intends to degrade mankind and deliver us to Lucifer as Tribute. It spits in the face of God and mankind seems only too willing to go along.

What a bummer.

Tea for Tomb

Meissen obelisks

Terre Cabade Cemetery, Toulouse

I stumbled across these ceramic Rococo obelisks (c. 1750)  during an online search unrelated to ceramic Rococo obelisks. Like pyramids, I often associate obelisks with death, not so much for their Egyptian origins but because so many tombs and war memorials use them. A chapel overflowing with death-related iconography in Toulouse's Notre Dame de la Daurade (see the three images below) is flanked by two frescoes; the chapel's side walls are decorated on one side with images of the arts and spiritual might, the other side with images of the the sciences and worldly might, arranged in a fashion much like they are on these table settings. A kind of (perverse?) dissonance that these gaily-colored ornaments evoke (for me) a dark altar in a chapel of death. Roughly contemporary to boot. Construction on the current church was begun in 1761.