The Talented Mr. Santos

Heisman Trophy winner George Santos

George Santos, creator of RuPaul's Drag Race 

I started this post a while back and quickly abandoned it.  I conceived of it as a brief catalog of Santos' lies, how his ongoing presence in Congress is linked to Trump's normalization of "alternative facts," and how for today's GOP the end justifies any means.  Sadly, the lies started coming in so thick and fast I couldn't keep up....Bear in mind this is a woefully incomplete and undeveloped text.

Let me introduce George Santos, uh, I mean Antony Devolder, um, excuse me, that's George Devolder.  Ahem.  Wait, what?  Ah fuck it.  We don't know what his name is....

A drag queen "hides" in plain sight.  We know it's a man dressed as a woman, but we enjoy the illusion, indeed, we reward it.  Or at least RuPaul does.  But drag is not a lie.  It's not even false.

The lies of George Santos' lies as of February, 2023

Santos stands up in front of the public and lies to them.  Unlike drag, there is no consensus.  The public has not agreed to participate in an illusion.  We like to think of Politics as Theater.  If the illusion between an actor and the public is erotic, the lies of a politician are closer to rape by deception:  

a situation in which the perpetrator deceives the victim into participating in a sexual act political exchange that they would otherwise not consent to.

Santos is either a con-man who has reached too far, or a compulsive liar.

Santos means "Saints," as in "Saints alive!" --  but the only holy things here are his stories: "Hole-y" that is, as in full of holes.  Dude's got more holes than a box of doughnuts.... 

Herschel Walker. Bald-faced lies, Alternative facts, Doublespeak, GOP rhetoric

His mom died in 9-11!  His grandparents were killed in the Holocaust!  He's Jewish.  Oh, I meant "Jew-ish."  He was the target of a kidnapping attempt.  He was a producer on that ill-fated Spider Man musical.  He fell off a chair and tipped a table over during a meeting with Stephen A. Schwarzman....

Mix in a few boners to make the lies about the power broker stuff more credible....

Santos has lied about his education and his professional background, but one company he actually did work for was found to be defrauding clients in a Ponzi scheme.  He is accused of sweeping campaign finance law violations.  He robbed a vet's Go Fund Me earnings; the homeless veteran was raising money to save his service dog.  No money, no care.  The dog died.  Santos also robbed an Amish farmer, paying for some puppies with a rubber check.  Bur hey! his (non-existent) charity has saved thousands of (non-existent) dogs. 

He is accused  of organizing a credit card scam in 2017, even blackmailing a guy into participating.  He has been broke one moment and wealthy the next.  He stole clothes from and otherwise defrauded his roommates.  He is accused of sexual harassment.  He claims he was the target of a kidnapping attempt.... 

Here's his official House of Reps biographical blurb:

SANTOS, George, a Representative from New York; born on July 22, 1988; unsuccessful candidate for election to the One Hundred Seventeenth Congress in 2020; elected as a Republican to the One Hundred Eighteenth Congress (January 3, 2023-present).

Bare bones indeed.

That this dude hasn't been frog-marched to the Capitol entrance and flung down the steps is a testament to due process, and/or Congressional venality.

So that's the beginning of the abandoned project. Wikipedia has a good overview of his deceit.  This here post is problematic and not at all developed, and I've given up on it, but I'm so disgusted with this guy I figured anything that publicizes his shittiness is worth putting online....

...a pointless rock wall as a metaphor for the myopia of the culture-bound...

Israeli West Bank Barrier - Justin McIntosh. CC License.

A wall is defined as "a structure that defines an area, carries a load, or provides shelter or security".  Seems simple enough, but simple definitions are themselves walls that hide complex realities. 

Walls can be made from a large variety of materials and serve a large variety of purposes.  There are many kinds:  Curtain, Mullion, Partition, Party, Infill, Fire, Shear, Knee, Cavity, Pony...and that's just in building lingo.  We won't even go into Facebook walls and firewalls.  They can be works or art or canvases, even the screen for vast and complex animated films.  From Banksy to Blu, the ordinary can be made into something extraordinary, a reclamation of our shared environment.  We don't think about them too much, but we should, for they define us as humans as much as opposable thumbs, binocular vision, and the use of tools.  

"Tear down this wall!" signaled the end of a nearly 100-year geopolitical duopoly whose ramifications are still defining the world in which we live.  The wall in question came crashing down, and the clouds of dust are still settling.  Within this murky atmosphere, the blind and our one-eyed kings are clamoring to put walls back up.  The rich retreat behind them and some western nations are debating them as a way to keep the migrants out.  The collision between globalization and nationalism may well be a story of walls, or a lack thereof.

Matty Stern/U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv. Public Domain.

But enough with the stentorian platitudes.  This post came about after seeing a photo of Trump at the Western Wall -- he loves his walls, -- and an EFL class I gave using public art and urbanization as its theme.  We discussed the Vietnam Memorial Wall, and I intended to do a short post about the two walls as places to grieve, where people leave mementos of their grief, whether rolled up pieces of paper with prayers written upon them, or mementos of a war whose combatants are now dying off.  The memories will soon be gone, but the wall will remain.

Some of the most famous walls -- The Great Wall of China, Hadrian's Wall, The Berlin Wall, The West Bank Barrier, Trump's proposed border wall -- were erected to keep people out...or in.  There are score thousands of lesser-known walls all across the world, like their cousins the fence, making manifest the abstract lines on a map that define the boundaries of private and public property, from the homeowner to the state, from anonymous mud-brick dwellings to the only human structure visible from space.  They shelter and protect us from the outside world, from threats real and imagined.  But I wanted to speak of other kinds of walls.

Some of these walls are metaphors, like Pink Floyd's Wall, the emotional barriers to shut out the world, to compartmentalize experience, the kind of walls that allow a preacher to spread the gospel on Sunday and snort methamphetamine with male prostitutes on Saturday.  Or in this case "where traumatic experiences are represented as 'bricks' in the metaphorical wall [the hero] constructs around himself that divides him from society."

 

The Walls of Jericho were blown down a trumpet....the Walls of Jerusalem and countless other cities the scene of great mayhem and carnage.  Alexander the Great scaled walls like a spider, single-handedly jumping into a walled city to inspire his troops along their unstoppable march to India and back to Macedonia.  And when there were no more walls to breach, he died.

"Shaka, when the walls fell"....in an episode of Star Trek, this is a phrase uttered by an alien trying, incidentally, to break down the walls between humans and his race.  In that episode, the language barrier is eventually overcome.  The aliens speak in allegory and though Capt. Picard and crew understand the words, the meaning is lost without knowing the ur-tales to which the allegory refers.  When the walls fall, the language barrier drops.  Dialogue is established and when Riker asks Picard if they'd made friend that day, Picard can answer that at the very least, they didn't make an enemy.

Some walls exist only because they are all that's left of an edifice, like The Western Wall, the last remaining remnant of Solomon's temple.  Jews go there to mourn the destruction of the Temple and pray for its reconstruction, leaving prayers on rolled up papers pushed into the crevasses.  It is the holiest site where Jews are allowed to pray -- the holiest site is actually behind it.  Some rabbis teach that the Foundation Stone is located near the El-kas fountain, opposite the exposed section of the wall and where the Holy of Holies once stood.  As a practical reality, the wall symbolizes the great obstacle to the restoration of Judaism, for Islam's second-holiest shrine, the Dome of the Rock, sits atop the Temple Mount.  Its destruction would unleash Armageddon.  As long as the Dome of the Rock stands, the Temple cannot be rebuilt.  It is an impassable wall with apocalyptic ramifications.  As the location of the Foundation Stone, it recalls that our earthly creation was in effect the separation of Man from God; it is a great wall separating Heaven from Earth.

In addition to the mosque on the Temple Mount, Muslims revere the wall because it is believed that the Prophet's miraculous steed was tethered to it by Muhammad during his night flight to Jerusalem.

Stoning the Devil in Mina - Al Jazeera English. CC License.

During the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca incumbent upon all able-bodied Muslims with the means to undertake it, Muslims also perform a ritual called the Stoning of the Devil.  Pilgrims throw seven pebbles at three walls (jamarāt), from east to west, in order to reenact a part of Abraham's pilgrimage, where he threw pebbles at three pillars.  For safety reasons, in 2004 these pillars were replaced by walls.  The walls represents God's temptation of Abraham, Hagar, and Ishmael to renounce the sacrifice of Ishmael.  They also represent casting away base desires and are a repudiation of the self before God.  This renunciation also serves to bring the pilgrim closer to God; the walls in effect represent not just temptation, but sin itself, and thus represent, much like the Western Wall, the separation of God and Man.

Again, like the Western Wall, walls serve a stand-in for the buildings themselves.  Sacred Walls:  Learning from Temple Symbols, is a book about the symbols found on the walls of a Mormon temple, symbols which communicate to the faithful.

Both books and buildings have voices.... However, even though architectural symbolism existed before the written word, the message of a building is often difficult for most of us to recognize.

For Latter-day Saints, temples are the most important and symbolic buildings in existence. Through temples the unique doctrines of the restored gospel are communicated...

This unique and fascinating book is designed to help you see the House of the Lord with new eyes as you examine the “voices” of temple exteriors along with the “voices” of the Book of Mormon....

Gate of a Hunting Ground - Jean Jacques Lequeu. Public domain.

This is no different from a Catholic cathedral, which is in many ways a Bible in stone, a visual didactic tool for the illiterate.  It is "architecture parlante" -- or speaking architecture.  Architecture parlante may be as simple as an inscription or phrase, a quote perhaps, to instruct and to declare the building's purpose.  Or it may be that a building's form reflects its purpose:  the cooper's atelier is shaped like a barrel, the brothel resembles an erect penis (yes, those were real proposals).  The idea of architecture parlante was originally "voiced" at the time of the French Revolution by architects Claude Nicolas Ledoux, Étienne-Louis Boullée, and Jean-Jacques Lequeu.  "The same concept, in the somewhat more restrained form of allegorical sculpture and inscriptions, became one of the hallmarks of Beaux-Arts structures" and was a recurring feature of American civic architecture.  The severity of Modernist architecture saw a decline in the use of ornament and inscription, but Post-Modernist architects have revived it.

Married (Mario Roverto Durán Ortiz). CC License.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington is composed of three parts: the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, the Three Servicemen Memorial, and the Vietnam Women's Memorial.  These latter were erected to appease early critics of the original memorial -- which consisted of the Wall alone -- who deemed it shameful because of its unconventional design, black color and lack of ornament.  Sad to say, architect Maya Lin's gender and ethnicity were a factor in much of the negative reaction (Ross Perot reportedly called her an "egg roll").   It's since become highly regarded, if not revered.  The Memorial Wall is a wall that doesn't enclose or bear anything at all.  Like the Western Wall, people leave articles, not prayers necessarily, but personal mementos.  As one travels along the wall it gets higher and the names of the dead eventually rise over one's head.  It's a mournful black, and a mirror in which one can see oneself reflected.  It is spare, elegant and deeply moving.  It has the atmosphere of a holy place, like an outdoor temple.  Visitors are hushed and while there is no wailing, there are a lot of tears.  It's perhaps one of the most powerful memorials in Washington, and has been described as a "wound that is closed and healing".  In a sense, it is architecture parlante, and it is a dialogue.

The three soldiers appear to be looking at the wall and there is something archetypal about their number: Three Kings, Freemasonry's Three Ruffians, The Trinity.... 
 

Cliff (cliff1066) - http://www.flickr.com/photos/nostri-imago/3041642644/.  CC License.

The Women's Memorial also depicts three uniformed women evoking perhaps the Three Mary's, with a wounded soldier.  It is a Pietà in all but name.

The wall has proven so popular that at one point three half-sized portable versions traveled across the country and to date have attracted tens of millions of visitors.  There are four other traveling versions of differing scale, and four fixed replicas.

The idea that architecture can communicate something, a set of ideals or civic virtues, may be a high-falutin' topic to be bandied about by art historians and architects, but something in it resonates in the popular imagination:  "If these walls could talk...." some people say, as if the walls, silent witnesses, retain memories of scenes enacted within them, like video cameras which record but cannot play back.  The artists Blu and Banksy have made them speak, however, often quite eloquently.  The simple wall, however, unadorned, can often speak volumes.  While ostensibly barriers, they can serve to identify where one space meets another and serve as points of communication.  Why have more than one space at all?  Boundary stones, fences, great walls....are these basically human equivalents of pissing on rocks to mark a territory, like most graffiti?  One piss stain upon another?  I dunno, It's too late for more of my grade-school philosophizing.  I just thought it was neat how that photo of Trump at the Western Wall popped into my monitor about the same time I was discussing the Vietnam Memorial Wall, two walls where people feel compelled to leave stuff.  The rest is just riffing.  Breaking on through to the other side.

And with that, I'm Audi 5000.

PS

Looks like I hit "Publish" too soon.  Reading about the Robert Frost poem "Mending Wall" (of "Good fences make good neighbors" fame), I came across the following analysis of the themes, stating more or less what I was trying to say at some point in the post:

The poem explores the contradictions in life and humanity, including the contradictions within each person, as man "makes boundaries and he breaks boundaries".  The poem also explores the role of boundaries in human society as mending the wall serves both to separate and to join the two neighbors, another contradiction....Then, in "Mending Wall", Frost meditates on the role of language as a kind of wall that both joins and separates people.

Build it and they will come

Proposed Lincoln Memorial by John Russell Pope, 1912.

Interesting review of  the National Building Museum's "Unbuilt Washington" show in today's Washington Post.  I'd love to see this show!  A great collection of proposed streetplans, monuments and buildings that were, as you can imagine, never built....and too bad, in my humble "o".  Who wouldn't want a fuck-off enormous ziggurat at the end of the National Mall?

....The pyramid has architectural pedigree even more ancient than the Greek temple, yet no major pyramid has been built in Washington. Why? Not because it’s never been proposed. Benjamin Latrobe designed a monument with a pyramid-shaped top and simple columns as a mausoleum for George Washington in 1799-1800, but it was never built. Nor was the 1837 colossal pyramid-shaped Washington monument proposed by Peter Force, who seemed to be channeling the terrifying utopian grandeur of the visionary French architect Etienne-Louis Boullee.

Nor were any of the various pyramid schemes, or the round ziggurat, proposed by John Russell Pope (architect of the Jefferson Memorial) as a monument to Lincoln in 1911-12. In each case, the form seems desperately, even comically out of place, and yet as curator Martin Moeller argues, a pyramid is no more or less arbitrary as a Lincoln memorial than the rectangular classical temple (designed by Henry Bacon) that was ultimately finished in 1922.

BTW, Wikipedia lists some American ziggurats for your benefit:

• The Temple of Eck in Chanhassen, Minnesota.
• The University of Tennessee Hodges Library in Knoxville, Tennessee.
• The United States Bullion Depository Gold Vault in Fort Knox, Kentucky.
• The National Geographic Society headquarters in Washington, DC, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
• The Chet Holifield Federal Building in Laguna Niguel, California, designed by William Pereira.
• The Ziggurat in West Sacramento, California, headquarters of the California Department of General Services.
• The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York was conceived by architect Frank Lloyd Wright as an "inverted ziggurat."

City of Light

Barrière du Trône. (LoS)

The radicals of the French Revolution were ambitious fellows.  They not only sought to overthrow a regime and its accomplices, but to export this revolution around the globe.  Most audacious perhaps was the goal of redefining consciousness itself via the cultivation of reason and a new way of perceiving reality.  If the senses were the gateway to the mind, how they processed that sensorial input, how they measured and categorized it, would need to be reworked.  For this reason the French revolutionaries adopted the metric system, changed the calendar and reorganized the administrative lay of the land, all towards a goal of establishing a radiant citadel of reason.  Paris, if not the geographical center, was nevertheless the center of this beacon.  La Ville-Lumière....The City of Light.

Every man and woman could be a star, but they needed a city to reflect this....and magnify it.  Thus Paris itself is a kind of temple to the principles the revolutionaries wanted to instil...not within its subjects, but its citizens.

Architecture and urban planning became a crucial weapon in this struggle.

The Triumph of the Republic.  Aimé-Jules Dalou, 1889. LoS

Paris's Place de la Nation features a massive bronze sculpture which represents the Republique and its virtues in allegorical form:  The Triumph of the Republic.  At the eastern entrance stands a pair of massive columns, surmounted by globes, marking the Barrière du Trône.  These colums were erected in 1787 and designed by architect Claude Nicolas Ledoux.  Ledoux is believed to have been part of a Rosicrucian order and a Freemason, attending the Loge Féminine de la Candeur.  Perhaps this influenced his design.  Two freestanding colums  have marked the entrance to sacred space since antiquity:  the Egyptians used two obelisks and the Phonecians used pillars, a design reproduced by Hiram of Tyre in Solomon’s Temple, the model for the use of pillars at the entrance of a Masonic Lodge (see previous stuff here and here).  In any event, Ledoux was considered a rigorous Neoclassicist and utopian whose designs reflected the ideas of architecture parlante (both Ledoux and "ap" previously on LoS).

The columns and two nearby pavilions were originally part of the Mur des Fermiers généraux, a series of towers, wall and barriers used to enforce the octroi.  This tax on goods entering the city has ancient roots, but it was certainly a gripe for many.  Tax farming was essentially privatized tax collection, a neat deal in which tax farmers at the head of private companies reaped colossal fortunes at public expense.  The Parisian wall was very unpopular, it was said, "Le mur murant Paris rend Paris murmurant".  (Loosely: "The enclosing wall has Paris grumbling").

There was also an epigram:

Pour augmenter son numéraire (To increase its cash)
Et raccourcir notre horizon (And to shorten our horizon),
La Ferme a jugé nécessaire (The Farm judges it necessary)
De mettre Paris en prison (To put Paris in prison).

The architectural style of these buildings, "dens of the Tax Department metamorphosed into palaces with columns" according to Louis-Sebastien Mercier, highlighted the oppression which the wall represented for Parisians.

The toll on goods was removed on May 1st, 1791 in the early stages of the French Revolution, but was restored in 1798 by the Directory.  The tolls persisted under Napoleon, but the majority of the barriers were destroyed during the expansion of Paris in the 1860's and the octroi that had been collected at the wall was abolished.

Perhaps because this place was so emblematic of the abuses of the Ancien Régime, a guillotine was set up here.  A sculpture was created to honor the centennial of the Revolution : The Triumph of the Republic.  The central figure of liberty, herself mounted atop a globe, looks towards the hated place where the Bastille prison once stood, while four paths (in the four cardinal directions?) and then streets radiate outwards like rays of light.

Placing the columns in the east is also interestng, coincidence or otherwise,  for the east has alway been associated with light and the rising Sun, which as we have seen, was a Revolutionary symbol of both Wisdom (Illumination) and regeneration.  We have also seen this represented by columns themselves.

The columns are a perfect illustration of competing political agendas.  During the Restoration, the globes were fitted with a pair of rather severe statues of Philippe August (1165-1223) and Saint Louis (1214-1270), deftly celebrating both the monarchy and the church.  They separate the avenue de Trône from the Place de la Nation, whose previous names reflect the upheaval of  the Revolution :  place du Trône (Place of the Throne) became place du Trône-Renversé (the Throne Overturned) during the Revolution.  Its less aggressive moniker dates from the Bastille Day festivities (July 14th) of 1880.

from Wikipedia

Post-revolutionary Paris became a series of gateways into new spaces.  Napoleon created the Arc de Triomph on the Place de l'Étoile, so named for the symbolically-laden 12 streets radiating thenceforth like beams of light.  Napoleon's arch is echoed in the La Grande Arche de la Défense.  This arch in perfect alignment wih the Arc de Triomph along the "axe historique" which radiates westward from the Louvre and includes the obelisk of the Place de la Concorde.

La Défense

The Arche is almost a cube (width: 108m, height: 110m, depth: 112m).  It was inaugurated in July 1989 with military parades to mark the bicentennial of the French revolution...just as the The Triumph of the Republic was created to celebrate the centennial.  It is is turned at an angle of 6.33° on this axis. The most important reason for this turn was technical, but the turn emphasizes the depth of the monument, and is similar to the turn of the Louvre at the other end of the Axe historique.

Even as is drives the nation's motors of commerce and finance, Paris remains a kind of ceremonial space, both rational and mystical, organized along various significant axes, boulevards and plazas.  Washington D.C. is such a "ceremonial" city in an even stricter sense.  Unlike Paris, it has only one function:  to house the government and the monuments that glorify its values and accomplishements.  It is a hieratic city, a kind of city/temple and funerary monument.  It is not the home of a significant cultural, financial or commercial industry, aside of course from the very significant governmental or quasi-governmental organisms which partake in those sectors.  I've always thought it quite like Paris in its physical arrangement.  Perhaps this should come as no surprise when we consider the original design stems from the hand of a Frenchman.

Indeed, there is a book called Paris on the Potomac dedicated to exploring the influence of Paris on the US capitol.  Apparently in 1910 John Carrère, consulting architect for the US Capitol complex, said "learning from Paris made Washington outstanding among American cities" and that both plans should "underlie all city planning."  I've only glimpsed through its "Google booked" contents, but it seems clear Washinton was consciously modeled on Paris, a city which didn't become fully rationalized itself until the 1860's, and this at the expense of the medieval clutter which had been growing organically for centuries.

America provided the rationalists with a new and fresh start, not only in forms of government, but in the neat little grids they plopped down and which are characteristic of American cities and which one only finds rarely in Europe.

On the square, as it were.

"And the LORD opened the mouth of the ass...."

It occurred to me the other day that the name Assange could be read as a portmanteau of "ass" and "ange", the French word for "angel".  The Ass and the Angel.  I was sort of  thinking this might be an apocryphal book of the Bible until I took a look and realized the book in question is in fact Bel and the Dragon.  I was confused with Nick Cave's first novel, And the Ass Saw the Angel (a reference to Numbers 22:28).  Which reminds me of another French/English bad pun.  "Niqué" means "fucked" and "nicked" means "arrested"....so this Julian Assange guy needs to go hole up in a cave because he's gonna get nicked and he's certainly fucked.

Anyone else think those rape charges are trumped up?

Anyway, the bestiality of the ass and the divinity of the angel remind me of the conflicting feelings I have about WikiLeaks' most recent endeavour:  noble public service or dangerously irresponsible act?  Journalism or espionage?  The Ass or the Angel?  (Associationalist philosophy may come in useful in examining these seemingly contradictory viewpoints....)

Sometimes I feel one way, sometimes another.  But our boy Julian, a name whose origin implies youth and downy beards, is a young man.  Too young to spend the rest of his life locked up in a superprison somewheres under the Denver International Airport.

Pull the tiger's dragon's tail and whatnot.  In Bel and the Dragon, Daniel blows the whistle on the Persian priests who have long deceived the king (Cyrus) into believing a clay and bronze dragon idol eats the offerings put before him.  Using a clever ruse, Daniel proves the priests and their families consume the goodies instead.  For this, the priests and their families are put to death and Daniel is allowed to destroy the idol.

Not so for our poor Julien.  For lifting the veil he's either gonna rot somewheres in prison or wind up in concrete boots at the bottom of the Potomac, an offering to the water dragon who lives there: a consumer of souls, purveyor of lies and all around stinker.  "Veil" ain't an anagram of "evil" for nothing....

There are only two speaking animals in the Old Testament:  Balaam's ass when he and his master encounter an angel...and the deceitful serpent of Genesis.  Fancy that.

Interestingly, while the Biblical story about Balaam casts him as a villain, other sources speak of the blessings he brought upon the Israelites.

a)  Ass
b) Angel
c) Both
d) None of the above

Take your pick!

Political Saviors

In light of commentary generated by our last post last, we thought it might be a good idea to put up some other images with play with religious symbolism. We add these without editorial comment in the hopes that others will share their take on them. (This means you Anonymous and Terry!)

Unlike the Obama photo, these are straight photos and not Photoshop manipulations, if that makes much difference at all. I think this is more a case of snarky photographers than anything else, but some of them, the first one in particular, are real eye-poppers.

Also, two of these photos have been on LoS before and alas, I don't have dates or any context or info about where they originally appeared, as I collected them mainly just to have them hanging about the hard drive. So, apologies for omitting these crucial details.

Journey to the Center of the Earth

According to our Google analytics, among the most highly-viewed pages on LoS is a post about the "DC pentagram" titled Weird scenes from above, and thus it has been since we started using analytics. Since The Lost Symbol hit the shelves it has consistently been number one or two in our list. In the post we took a brief look at the pentagram, which doesn't require squinting one's eyes or leaps of faith; in other words, it is clearly there, albeit incomplete. We focused on the Masonic elements contained within the form; there are actually quite a few.

In response to popular demand (one person anyway), we've decided to take another look at the subject (full disclosure: this could lead to a gift of beer--fingers crossed--and thus our purpose does not lie entirely outside of the mercenary!)

A Bit of Background

(The next few paragraphs originally appeared on the Plastic Tub--a site not dead, but sleeping.)

The center of D.C. was originally designed by Pierre Charles L'Enfante, a Frenchman who had attained the rank of Major in the Continental Army. L'Enfante was fired by George Washington before the completion of his plan, which was significantly modified by surveyor Andrew Ellicott and his assistant Benjamin Bannaker when they began their work in 1791. Contrary to some popular internet "theorists", none of the three men were Freemasons. [So I said, sneering.  Actually, turns out L'Enfant was a Mason, revealed here in 2011.  My only defense is that at the time of writing this, most scholars believed L'Enfant wasn't a Mason--Duarade, 11/13/11] Over time, Washington evolved naturally and the street plan strayed from L'Enfante's vision. At one point, for example, what is now the National Mall was a muddy field used for grazing cattle and marred by an ugly railway station.

In 1901, a Commission chaired by Senator James McMillan of Michigan was formed to restore the Mall to L'Enfante's original vision. Among the experts he engaged was Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., a landscape architect who was, like McMillan, not a Freemason.

Tracing the Pentagram

Dupont Circle (1) and Logan Circle (2) form the two leg-points of a pentagram. The legs trace down 15th St. and Connecticut Avenue where, if continued, would form the bottom tip of the star at the center of the White House (4). They are, however, broken at K Street by Farragut Square (6) and McPherson Square (7). The lines pick back up after the Squares, but they are broken again at LaFayette Park (9).

K Street forms the bar of the pentagram and culminates at Mount Vernon Square (3) and Washington Circle (5).

The star is incomplete. From Logan Circle, Rhode Island Avenue seeks to complete the pentagram, but it stops, leaving the left arm incomplete from where RI meets Connecticut (connect it cut?) until Washington Circle. [One is reminded of the unfinished pyramid on the dollar bill.]

Pennsylvania Avenue, New Hampshire Avenue, New York Avenue, and P Street form a near perfect pentagon around the star, but from Logan Circle to Mount Vernon Square (the opposite of the broken arm), it is unfinished.

Please see the original post for a list of the Masonic elements of the pentagram; you will find that the squares and parks are all (but one?) named after Freemasons, and the HQ of the Southern District of the Scottish Right is smack dab in the middle of the pentagram's "crotch."

Of further interest is the flattened appearance of the pentagram. Usually pentagrams are more symmetrical, designed so that they fit perfectly into a circle; the D.C. pentagram, however, most nimbly fits into an ellipse. Just south of the White House, this is mirrored in that part of the National Mall known as "The Ellipse," an elliptical road 1 km in length in President's Park which is centered upon the point of the pentagram. The Ellipse was part of L'Enfante's original design. In 1919 a marker known as the Zero Milestone was dedicated there. The Zero Milestone, inspired by the Imperial Roman "Golden Milestone," was intended to be the point from which all distances to D.C. are calculated. It has engravings on five faces; the north features a winged helmet of the type associated with Mercury, or Hermes. "As Above, So Below," anyone? L'Enfante, incidentally, intended this point to be one mile east of the Capitol.

This will do little to assuage the fears of those who fret the US is the New Rome and heading in the same direcion, but there it is. The exact location of the Golden Milestone, or Milliarium Aureum, is unknown, but surviving fragments marked as such "are now believed by some to be identical with the Umbilicus Urbis Romae (or Navel of the city of Rome), a structure in the same area of the Forum which served a similar but not identical purpose."

The exact nature of both of these structures notwithstanding, it would seem that if one or the other served as the center of the Rome and thus the Empire, it would also by extension be considered the center of the world.

The idea of a "world navel", or axis mundi, is one of those archetypes that would seem to be found in a variety of disparate cultures worldwide. For our purposes, let's take a look at some Western examples.

Sacred Stones

In Greek, the word for "navel" is omphalos. According to myth, Zeus sent two eagles across the world and the point at which they met was thereafter to be considered its center. Not surprisingly, several places set up stone markers, also called an omphalos, to commemorate the spot; the most widely recognized was at Delphi, regarded as a holy site all across the Hellenic world.

There is even an omphalos at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. This refers to the medieval cosmology which places Jerusalem as the center of the world and thus, the universe itself.

This in turn is probably based upon the Jewish tradition which saw Jerusalem as the world navel. In this tradition, the Ark of the Covenenant rested on a rock in the Temple called the Foundation Stone. The tradition, which began in Hellenic times, may in fact have been inspired by or a competition with the oracle at Delphi.

Whatever the case, it remains the holiest site in Judaism and Jews worldwide pray towards it. According to the Talmud, the world was created from this rock and it was from nearby dirt that God first formed Adam. Several important events in the spiritual evolution of Judaism were said to have occurred here.

Muslims also hold a special reverence for this stone, for it was from this point that Muhammad once ascended into heaven (called the Journey of Al-Israa and Al-Mi'ara) for a private discourse with Allah. It is one of the holiest sites in Islam.

The holiest site, however, is in Mecca, which, like the Jews towards Jerusalem, is the direction towards which all Muslims pray. Within a shrine called the Kaaba is the Black Stone, al-Hajar-ul-Aswad. This stone, whose fragments are held together by a distincly vaginal-looking silver frame, is said to be black after absorbing all the sins of the faithful who make the pilgrimage here for the express purpose of kissing it.

Returning to Christianity, there is a metaphorical reference to a sacred stone; the Catholic Church, for example, bases its authority on the following quote by Jesus: "On this rock (also cephas in Aramaic, petra in Greek) I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it."

Indeed, the center of the Catholic world and for centuries a good chunk of Christendom, was St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, where the apostle is said to be buried. The keyhole-shaped piazza in front is decorated with an obelisk, perhaps the intermediary between all these later sacred stones and the more unfinished megaliths of prehistory.

Jerusalem and Rome were two of three places where medieval pilgrims could go in order to be absolved of all their sins. The third was Santiago de Compostela, in Galicia, Spain. This was a sacred place before the Christian Era, but its Christian significance came after

"a series of miraculous happenings: decapitated in Jerusalem with a sword by Herod Agrippa himself, his [Saint James the Great's] body was taken up by angels, and sailed in a rudderless, unattended boat to Iria Flavia in Iberia, where a massive rock closed around his relics, which were later removed to Compostela."

Is it surprising that the focal point of another sin-eating cult should prominently feature a sacred stone?

As we have previously noted in another post, boundary stones have been used to demarcate territory since the Sumerian city-states. It would also appear to mark the limits of sacred space as well: the obelisks at Egyptian temples come to mind, as do the stone circles of the Druids. A random thought is that perhaps these pagan cultures used several stones whereas in montheistic cultures, a single stone became the focal point. The theory has some merits. That stones were both centers and boundaries of these cultures gives the religious significance "nationalistic" overtones, at least in the sense of a "special" or "chosen" people, or ethnicity. Which is not so far-fetched when we consider that in many ancient cultures the king was literally a god, up until the Romans, for whome the state itself was a kind of cult.

American Freemasons use the slogan: "Making Good Men Better." This is symbolized by the rough ashlar, or stone, and the smooth ashlar, and represents central Masonic doctrine. Perhaps this is at the origin of its conflict with the Catholic church. Instead of a doctrine of original sin, which must be expiated, there is a doctrine of inherent goodness, which must be revealed, progressively. The doctrine of perfectibility, or at least an improvement upon nature, is implicit. One is reminded of the Renaissance Neoplatonism which inspired Michelangelo's sculpture: the latent, perfect form was revealed by gradually chipping away the extraneous. Or, to use another metaphor, the wild woods must be pruned in order to reveal the order inherent in creation, as in a park. Men can thus be improved, in part, by transforming nature itself.

City Planning

Which brings us back to DC, whose plan may be Masonic only insamuch as it represented an opportunity to design from scratch a rational, orderly city reflecting the idea of the clockwork universe. Unfortunately for those who'd jump all over that, none of these designers were Freemasons. But there is a city whose plan is in fact based upon Masonic symbolism and designed by a Freemason: Sandusky, Ohio Karl W. Kurtz:


As far as I have been able to check in the past several years, Sandusky is the only city in the world originally laid out on Masonic symbols.

Hector Kilbourne, the first Master of Science Lodge No. 50, Sandusky in 1818, was the surveyor who made the original plan of the city. He proceeded with well-defined ideas and painstaking care in making the original survey as well as giving names to the streets in honor of the statesmen, warriors and others prominent in the early history of the country. Brother Kilbourne in laying out the city ran the lines or streets in order to form a true representation of the Square and Compasses. This has been clearly shown in the accompanying illustration.

The original plan of the city, as here represented, may be said to represent an open Bible, Square and Compasses in correct position to proceed with labor upon opening the Lodge.


Others have claimed for Brussels what many claim for D.C. The claims seem equally unfounded. The only Masonic symbol we have been able to find in Brussels is in the layout of the Parc de Bruxelles. English Wikipedia has a paltry entry which flat out asserts it is based upon Masonic symbolism, a claim which is repeated ad nauseum on the net by guidebooks, many of them fully respectable one, such as Frommers.

French Wikipedia has this to say:

Les symboles maçonniques que d’aucuns ont voulu voir dans ce tracé — le compas notamment — ne sont attestés par aucun document. C’est, du reste, un dessin couramment utilisé dans le tracé des jardins paysagers depuis le XVIIe siècle.

In other words:

"The symbols some have wanted to see in the plan - notably the compasses - are not attested to in any document. It is, however, a design commonly used in the layout of landscaped gardens from the seventeenth century."

Neither statement of course negates the possibility it was Masonically inspired; but short of documentary evidence it seems a bit brash to declare so bald-faced and sure, that is was. That is was a common design may only serve to bolster the conspiracy theorist's idea that them Masons are tessellating the plane all over the place. Perfecting nature, however, is a Masonic doctrine, and this is not the first time we have associated the idea of parks with a Masonic and Enlightenment ideals. Indeed, this park dates from 1775, smack dab in the middle of the Enlightenment.

The park is also, for all practical purposes, the center of the city, as it is flanked by both the National Palace and the Belgian parliament.

Interesting to note, when for political reasons the Baron de Stassart retired as Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Belgium on 16 June 1841, "6,000 people gathered in the Parc de Bruxelles to show their solidarity with him, a considerable number for this era."


Consider this photo of the principle entrance to the Parc de Bruxelles. This type of pillar topped by a fir-cone is so ubiquitous that it has become banal. But we propose that its very ubiquity is pudding proof of its resonance.

For a more detailed look at the significance of the two pillars, we suggest at least skimming the following previous posts: Pillars of the Community and I ♥ Phoenicia. Both discuss at great length the origin of dual pillars, as well as their relation to Freemasonic symbolism. In the former, we can find a brief discussions of the perrons of this part of Europe, especially that of Liège, which seems to be the mother of all perrons.

The perron was both a symbol of judicial authority and financial independence and was the place where official proclamations were read. It could literally be considered as the center of the city. Some have speculated that the fir-cone on the perron at Liège is a Gallo-Roman import, where others see it as a local, perhaps Druidic, symbol. For our discussion, it doesn't really matter, and we have already noted that the idea of a world navel marked by a worked or unworked stone is a concept spanning different cultures.

An obvious question presents itself: Why is this so?

But that's a whole 'nother bag of bananas....

Ouvrez donc les yeux! Reichstag 911, redux.

The following post originally appeared on a website operated by Daurade sometime after 9-11. It was intended to be ironic and in some versions the word "Satire?" was emblazoned on the page. Several websites linked to the page and some comments were made, but everyone seemed to take it at face value; that is to say a serious accusation that Bush is part of a Satanic and or alchemical cabal of some sort. A question mark was used because there were indubitably some weird symbols which appeared in researching the satire, and to be truthful, was intended to be taken humorously. In light of recent LoS posts, it seems appropriate to revisit this story, which seems to fall into the Bush as Gog theory The Gid has mentioned in a recent post. The original text is in red. Current commentary is in black. Gid's commentary is in yellow and Jon in blue.

White house photographers have a fondness for photographing political figures under rotundas or with symbols behind them which cast a kind of halo or nimbus around the head. This is such a shot. What's strange about it is the makings of a grin on W's lips and from the heavy posture and the shadows around the eyes it's as if he's shooting daggers. The halo is almost certainly a governmental seal of some sorts, perhaps even the seal of the POTUS. Which becomes more meaningful in light of what's to follow.  

They intentionally shoot Bush with a halo because these people really do believe they are God’s true anointed. They both cynically use the myth and believe in it. Like all secret societies pursuing earthly power, they engage in acts that are exactly opposite to the values they espouse. Lying, homosexuality, drug use, torture (not that being gay is inevitably any of these things; arguably these people aren’t gay at all, they are rapists), masks, secret meetings, hording of wealth, the use of symbols, are all indicative of a cabal and a reversal of values. Consider the Cathar leaders who felt they were liberated from God’s law and were free to violate it, or various forms of extreme tantrism that came to dominate courts in Java in the pre-Islamic period.

It is sometimes suggested that the Republican Party under Rove, Cheney, Norquist, Delay, Gingrich et al is a black-hooded homosexual cabal. Closeted gays are intentionally chosen because they can be blackmailed. But it is also possible that buggery is used as an initiation rite, as it is was purported to be for the Knights Templar, for pirates, for ancient Egyptians (cf the buggery episodes between Seth and Horus, where semen is hidden in lettuce and consumed, appearing in the intestinal track to fool the gods into thinking an act of buggery has occurred).

People will believe what they want to believe about the hand signal, at least consciously. But unconsciously matters are not so libertarian. The unconscious mind recognizes the primordial archetype of the horned hand and therein lies its transformative power in the process of human alchemy. When the sign of the horn is elevated to national prominence by "the most powerful man in the world," the unconscious mind groks that the reptilian tail is not far behind. Believe it or not, that's the "twilight language" message in this case; a message intended to go over the heads of the cattle on board the truck bound for the abattoir."

Michael A. Hoffman II, Plausible Denial: "Hornwinking" the Bush League January 21, 2005

Quite frankly, Hoffman comes across sometimes as a bona fide nut-case and a raging anti-Semite. But there is an eloquence of writing, and independent spirit and a penetration perception of contemporary culture which is startling.

Whether or not Bush is flashing devil horns or not is irrelevant; the fact remains that aside from people familiar with Italian hand gestures or the Texas Longhorns, the "Horns" will always be a heavy-metal devil sign, associated with Satanism. When our born-again and quite publicly croyant President flashes it, alarm bells are going to go off among our uncanny fundamentalist brothers and sisters: they're gonna see the Antichrist. Especially when they see such photos as these. 


Bush et al dare people to disbelieve them by openly lying and manipulating symbols clear in meaning to anyone with a brain. They demonstrate their power of intimidation by walking about naked asking us all to admire their beautiful clothes.

I think it would be mad to say that Bush is some sort of Messianic pretender. This photo says more about the photographer than Bush. But even so, none of that matters to the viewer, triggered with poetically resonant images. The President at the kairotic crux of the cruz, crowned by architecture parlante: "LORD" and an actual crown. Remember the Moonies? Remember the moon? The cross and crown motif can be found as a symbol of the Freemasonic Knights Templar, early Christian Science and early Jehovah's Witnesses. 

Others said you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide.

Bush as magician. Using a well-known magical gesture, Bush is indicating his allegiance to the Horned God. Notice his robes. Ostensibly they are those of an academic, but that is part of the arrogant humor of the Cabal; they stage their rituals publicly under the guise of regular events. No wonder he looks so smug.

He does look exceedingly smug. And he does resemble a magician. This is probably the most ironic barb towards the twilight language theory. The idea of a subliminal message staged in a public ritual. I don't even know the context of this photo. It's probably a graduation ceremony of Long dongs, er, horns. We could probably go on about Mithraism at this point, and be well within our rights. Fact is that this is such a pregnant image how could it not evoke such sinister claims? There is indeed a twilight message here, but if it's Bush, or some photographer's editor somewhere sending it, is to be debated. We tend to think of it as ourselves sending this message, Heisenberg-like as we observe from within the shadow of the valley of the Book of Revelation, agog and Gog-hungry, thoroughly Googled and definitely goggled, as in with blinders on. 


This example comes from a FEMA press conference in the wake of the Sept 11 attacks. (It is telling that Bush would display the symbols of his true office here, for FEMA has long been suspected as the real agency of domestic repression--under the guise of national emrgency--when it came time for the Cabal to seize control of the country). The horns are only the most flagrant Cabal joke in this photograph; the real story lies in the alchemical symbolism. The position of Bush's head in the FEMA seal, relative to the position of the presidential seal is a way of projecting the message: L'Etat, c'est moi. You could write a dissertation of the symbolism of this image.

As an artistic composition this cannot be beat. The reflecting circles, the motif of the eagle in the seal below and the wings above, the microphones. All the better as it appears that horns are coming from his head. He does appear to swoon but a photograph's quick-like mid-motion capture creates strange effects. "A Nation Prepared" reads the motto. But yeah, grok that circle and triangle, an alchemical symbol if there ever was one. The composition of the photo into light and dark halves, the repeating imagery vertically arranged is such a hermetic composition: As above, so below. Again, we're dealing more with a snarky photographer than a calculating President.

These photos would never have appeared if they didn’t want them to. But my concern is, after reviewing the photographic evidence so far, in support of an evident thesis, is that they are appropriating the Perpetual Art, the Most Ancient Arcanum, for their own perverted uses. Those who mess with the occult for evil purposes place both themselves and the world at great risk, but they inevitably fall, because the perennial heresy is before good and evil, and is an apprehension of the one and the many as an ongoing process of unfolding and return. Their division is one of divide and conquer. The Fall of Being into division is one of divide and create.

Notice the similarity of the presidential seal and the sigil of Baphomet. Concentric circles inscribed with words of power. Inside the circles an animal totem is circumscribed by a pentagram. In the Baphomet sigil, the pentagram is explicit. The President also displays it openly, but coded. In the presidential seal the pentagram is implied in the shape of the Eagle: its wings form the legs, its feet, the arms. Its tail forms the head. In this photograph the bottom triangle is made explicit in the angles of the microphones--which in the top circle is where the Eagle's tail would be if Bush's head weren't taking its place. The triangle finds a mirror image in the halo above Bush's head: as above, so below. The interplay between the FEMA seal and the Presidential seal reinforces this most basic of hermetic doctrines. Notice how Bush swoons as the Horned God enters his body to address the nation.

I stand by the comparison.

The flipside of the Dollar--Washington's sacred currency--reaffirms the hermetic motif of circles, triangles and stars. It is also quite clearly an expression of faith in the One. The interrelationship of symbols is a divine interplay between earthly might, spiritual authority and the implied solace of faith in their unity. Although it doesn't appear here (it appears above the Eagle on the obverse of the quarter), this is the real meaning of the national motto: "Out of many, One."

Okay, the idea of the motto is a bit-farfetched, "Out of many, one"; but I stick by "The interrelationship of symbols is a divine interplay between earthly might, spiritual authority and the implied solace of faith in their unity." 

Like father, like Son.

From the Inaugural of George Bush Sr., 1989. Three alchemical triangles soar over the phallic personification of George Washington, state Godling. The Washington Monument dominates the skyline of the city that bears his name. It is as if it is the phallus of the city. And now a second Bush has descended upon the city. The coming of the Sun.


Do a web search for the "Apotheosis of George Washington" and you will find several sculptures and paintings depicting the ascension of our first president; becoming one with or becoming--Mormon-like--God Himself. He is a Godling of sorts in the national mythology, replete with weird tree-cutting fables and coin-tossing stunts. The phallic aspect of the obelisk is a trope needing no further elucidation. The trinity of triangles is exceedingly resonant. Remember all that talk of pyramids and power? Doesn't is riff nicely with that weird FEMA seal? Let alone that of the Information Awareness Office....

Federal law ensures that the Washington Monument will always be the tallest building in the nation's capital.

"Welcome to Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts."...Governor George W. Bush, Jr.

"[It's] time for the human race to enter the solar system."...Governor George W. Bush, Jr.

OK, I admit this is a bit of whimsy. But it does tie back into the idea that humanity is running out of space here on earth, so space out there in, urm, space, is the logical destination: The Stars My Destination. Also, they’re damn funny Bushisms. I say this without malice, but the man made me laugh so.

I would say it with malice! The man was malicious!

The quotes are whimsical, but the pilot aspect is not. Relating back to pyramid power, one can easily see that the aristocracy of old were cavalrymen. Today they are pilots.

A disembodied eye casts its gaze over the world, illuminating it."Knowledge is Power."

For anyone seeking to prove that the government is an Illuminist cover story, the IAO logo will be a clincher. Interesting that is embodies all the theses we’ve been going over in recent posts: the pyramid, the symbol of illumination, the link of knowledge and reason with progress and authority, the missionary ideal of bringing light to the world and then dominating it. In this case a domination through science, or, more specifically, technological prowess.

And just to really rub it in, DARPA named this program “Information Awareness Office” or I.A.O., which is a magic formula for Aleister Crowley and “as a gnostic godform … both a sun-god and mystery-god” (see Thelemapedia, “IOA”).

While the seal is surely supposed to represent the all-seeing eye casting light upon the world, consider some other creepy reads that we can layer onto the image. First, consider the eye as a projector. Pynchon’s phrase “Shall I project a world?” (from “The Crying of Lot 49”) has become synonymous with the enveloping layers of paranoia that wrap around us as we consider that such vast conspiracies may simply be constructs of our own mind, a projection of our own mad instance of meaning and structure upon a Newtonian world devoid of purpose.

This notion of projecting a world also invites a Gnostic interpretation of the image, with the eye over the unfinished pyramid suggesting an imperfect god, shown here in the act of creating a world. While it appears that this will be a world of light, note that as viewers, we can only see a glimmer of a lit world, for from our perspective, almost all that we see of Earth is cast in darkness, reinforcing the suggestion that this an incomplete god, caught in the act of trying to create life, but rending a world of shadows unable to see the True Light.

For a final alternate take on the image, consider the eye as the Sun, which, in addition to reinforcing the scientific and Egyptian mumbo-jumbo, means that this image shows the Earth orbiting the eye, which casts light on half the globe but leaves the rest of the Earth in shadow.


And of course this brings us back full circle to the IAO “as a gnostic godform … both a sun-god [shown here bathing the orbiting Earth in shadow and light] and mystery-god [shown here in its imperfection as it struggles to project a world].”

Is the point of all this just that Bush’s boys created a cool-looking symbol that they knew would trigger the paranoid radar just to f*ck with us? Or does this demonstrate Bush’s boys thumbing their noses, a demonstration of power, power so unmatched that They simply reveal themselves and speak their own true names?


Consider this infamous quote from an unnamed aide to Bush: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” That’s a quote from the New York Times, by the way, and after hearing this—the way it so perfectly fits this image of the “all-seeing eye,” a godly form that fails to even see its own unfinished foundation as it projecting a world of darkness and shadow suspended in its own imperfect godly glare—after hearing this, you must stop to marvel. On LoS we have been attempting to tease out a methodology of revelation through crypto-analytical deconstruction (“CAD”); it is amazing, is it not, the “Information Awareness” that a CAD can provide?

Consider, finally, the pyramid as monument rising upward to the god and note that one of IAO’s projects was “Babylon.” My God! Who would dare to flout their hubris in the very face of the maker? Hmm, could it be … SATAN!?!

Babalon, aka "Babalon" is given lengthy treatment in the aforementioned Thelemapedia, where it is discussed as, among a myriad of things, "the Gateway to the City of Pyramids."  This is "s a step along the path of spiritual purification, and a resting place for those who have successfully shed their attachments to the mundane world."

What are we to make of this image? Is it saying, "The whole thing was orchestrated, look to the recordings," or is this another way the Cabal has of thumbing its nose at us? There it is: the towers are burning, the conductor is waving her batons--they form a triangle around her head--and above it all is a signature: "The Coup." According to the label, this image was conceived of months before Sept. 11.

The towers always inspired apocalyptic images. After 9-11 I went back to my book Specimen Tank, written in the 80’s. In it I describe it as a giant syringe and the narrator/protagonist, Wally, imagines it smashed to pieces in the future, a heap of glass that archaeologists must number in order to reassemble it. The first time I went to try to go to the top I chickened out, it was too terrifying. The second time I had dinner at Windows on the World.

Another weird personal event (and I think things like the 9-11 attacks constellate meanings, hence all of the conspiracy theories that also swirl around the assassinations of the sixties), has to do with a video tape of The Wizard of Oz. My father-in-law taped The Wizard of Oz off of broadcast television on the day of the first World Trade Center Bombing. In 2000 my 4 year old daughter was watching this tape and I was talking on the phone to my ex-wife. I came into the room where Z. was watching and stared at the t.v. Suddenly a news alert rolled across the bottom of the screen saying the towers had been bombed. “Holy shit,” I said to my wife, “They bombed the Twin Towers again!” We couldn’t believe they would do it twice and she got off the phone to call friends and family and tell them. Seconds later I realized that I was watching an old video tape and that it wasn’t the news at all. I called her back and we laughed about it, realizing that of course it was absurd that the Twin Towers would be attacked twice.

The Twin Towers were always an affront, aesthetically. They should never have been built and no one liked them, that is until the first bombing. They then became beloved and more familiar as the neighbourhood around them was gentrified and populated with affluent young New Yorkers.