PLEASED TO EAT YOU

Imagine the toe-curling, hand-waving, shrill-squeaking glee we experienced upon discovering that one of our favoritest web-based logs, entitled Strange Maps, had posted a “Cannibal Map of the World” in yesterday’s edition. But then imagine our head-dropping, sigh-inducing, shoulder-sloughing disappointment upon discovering that, as always in manners cannibalistic, this 1893 delineation of anthropophagical strongholds throughout the known world was studded with amateur errors.

First, a disclaimer: we do not condone cannibalism as a lifestyle choice. We don’t think people should engage in cannibalistic behavior for any reason (with the possible exception of Uruguayan soccer teams who have crash-landed in the Andes), because it is wrong and weird and gross and probably doesn’t taste nearly as good as you might expect. But that being said, is it possible not to be curious about all of the horrible, grim, bloody details?

A side note: our favorite bit of cannibal hypocrisy is the fact that, after battles, many cannibal tribes would eat their enemies in order to absorb their strength. But what kind of strength can they possibly have had? They lost. By eating the conquered cannibals actually absorbed their weakness, which is why the enterprise was doomed from the start. If the losers were to eat the winners, on the other hand, we’d see much more cannibalism in the modern world.

That being said, onward to the map! We notice at least three cannibalistic groups missing from its roster:

1. The Yipps of the Kamchatkan Peninsula. Members of this rugged Northeast Asian tribe hunted and slayed each other in the wild for centuries, until discovering that most of the people they killed were actually bears. Realizing their mistake, they surrendered their cannibal status and became bear-hunters instead.
2. 19th-century Londoners. After Sir Sweeney Todd was elected to the House of Commons in 1878, it was revealed in the popular press that the pie empire upon which his fortune was based was built upon the bones of the dead. Shrugging with Dickensian callousness, Londoners returned to their suppers.
3. The Antarctic proto-human slaves of the Old Ones. Faced with the option of eating either Cthulhu cuisine or each other, they opted for the latter. Apparently they were all very gentlemanly about it.

And we’d like to defend one group that has obviously received a bad rap: the Aztecs. Sure, they sacrificed humans, and yes, fine, it was bad and they shouldn’t have done it. But when, oh when, will modern science finally come clean and admit the presence in pre-Colombian Mexico of the alien life forms known as Tzitzimimeh? It was this small group of extraterrestrial assholes who did the actual people-eating, and the Mexican government has their freeze-dried DNA to prove it – the only reason it’s remained hidden is because they don’t want to piss off Quetzalcoatl.

But being afraid of Quetzalcoatl is just as absurd as accusing Catholics of cannibalism simply because the doctrine of transubstantiation states that the Holy Communion actually turns into the body and blood of Jesus Christ upon ingestion. And this is because Quetzalcoatl, like Jesus, is a fictional character – in this case, one invented by Tzitzimimeh in order to keep the Aztecs in line. Wake up, Mexico! They can’t eat you anymore!

Still, nice try, anonymous 19th-century mapmaker. You did as well as your provincial, paranoid, imperialistic culture would allow. Better luck next time.

UNDERGROUND FILM-FLAM

It is with dismay that we note the premiere of Hollywoodland’s adaptation of H.G. Verne’s natural history text Journey to the Center of the Earth in 80 Days. Ever since the dawn of cinema, in such films as The Island of Dr. Caligari, the Show-Me Business has displayed a poor track record when it comes to adapting non-fiction books to the screen. These so called Dream Manufacturers would do much better to stick with such escapist, popping-corn fantasy fare as The Greatest Story Ever Told, Fahrenheit 911, or Munich.

That being said, one of the things that makes the Center of Earth such an unpromising setting for a feature film is that it is, in a word, boringasallhell. This is partly because most people expect the Center of the Earth to actually BE Hell, and this expectation is dead set on disappointment. Not only is Hell itself, yes, boring, it isn’t even located at the Center of the Earth: the historical basis for the Christian vision of the sinners’ afterlife is actually the Saturnian moon Enceladus, which originally orbited around the earth until it was pushed out by our current moon during a celestial 372 A.D. power grab.

The actual Center of the Earth, as we doubt many people need to be told, consists of little more than white-hot, slug-like creatures known collectively as magma. Retaining much of the heat of the explosion that downgraded the Sun to its current, dwarfish size – in the process expelling the mineral nuggets that would later accrue into the planets – magma don’t really have much to offer the world above. They tend to stick to their own kind, and, when they’re not huddling close to their fellows for extra, redundant warmth (they’re addicted to the stuff), they have a reputation as cruel practical jokers. They find nothing funnier than to cut a trick a hole in the floor (aka the Earth’s Crust) and watch their unsuspecting friends cascade down it and harden in the cold air outside – a phenomena known to English-speaking humans (among others) as the Volcano.

So if you’re going to use your hard-earned guilders to see any film this weekend, make it the biopic Hellboy II, starring one of our most distinguished actors, Sir Ron Coleman. More entertaining, and more historically accurate to boot.

MUSICAL MYSTERY TOUR

Normally our free-floating yet rigorous imagination prefers not to be hamstrung by redundant explorations of the same topic (especially because we utterly exhaust each topic’s essence in the few short paragraphs we devote to it), but on occasion a subject is so deeply relevant and rich in possibility that it requires a more in-depth meditation. Such a subject is the Tony awards.

As we hinted on Monday, few art forms say more about life as it is currently lived than the Broadway musical, and there is no more succinct and reliable snapshot of our times than its yearly ceremony of honors. (Straight plays remain and will always be little more than half-baked musicals, lacking in the essential fabulousness – comparable to reportage without facts, or cheese without milk.) We’ve already analyzed the nominees in the pivotal category of Best New Musical; now let us turn our attention to one that is arguably even more important, judging from Broadway’s defiantly retrograde tendencies: Best Revival of a Musical. The nominees are as follows:

• 110 in the Shade
• The Apple Tree
• A Chorus Line
• Company

First of all, let us point out how telling it is that, alphabetically speaking, none of these titles go past the letter C. The C is for “conservative”; these are deeply reactionary times that find Broadway holding back at the essentials – the ABC’s, as it were – thereby reflecting the national mood as a whole.

It’s also no accident that all of the nominated shows reflect Biblical themes. The most obvious is The Apple Tree, which takes the tale of Adam and Even as the starting point for a whimsical exploration of original sin. Less obvious, however, is 110 in the Shade, an encrypted retelling of the Deluge myth, in which a formerly repressed woman causes a massive flood by sinfully embracing the life of the body.

There are also secret evangelical overtones in A Chorus Line, with its group of wannabe dancers representing the population of the world, only a small number of which will be “raptured” away to musical-comedy success by an all-powerful director/deity. Rounding out the list is Company, Stephen Sondheim’s allegory for the life of Christ, in which the Messiah (played in this production by a mesmerizing Raul Julia) proves himself all too human by sleeping with and/or being jealous of his various disciples. To gather all of these semi-scriptural events under the rubric of “Revival” is merely the unpopped cherry on top.

It will be fascinating to see which aspect of Judeo-Christian legend the Tony committee will choose to designate as the zeitgeist. However, the die is essentially already cast – by favoring this particular worldview over all others, any winner will serve to support the status quo. And this is simply how the system works. In a sense, the Broadway musical represents a utopian eden, a mythological past during which mankind sang instead of speaking and danced instead of dying. The immense and epoch-making importance of this art form only confirms this primal dream of plenty.

Bearing all of this in mind, one should perhaps not be surprised that the Apocryphist’s heart belongs to the stage. We are only human, after all.

CRUCIFIXIONAL CHARACTER

We’ve stated previously our belief that Jesus Christ was created by Christian priests as a myth to justify their religious hegemony. The ensuing chicken/egg-style question of priority is therefore highly germane for a holiday that has appropriated similar imagery in its stated purpose of selling chocolate to the world. Yes, we’re talking about Easter: Halloween of the Spring.

Personally, we prefer Good Friday: any holiday that celebrates the execution of a nettlesome fantasy is fine by us. But the underpinnings of Easter are more troubling than even we would like to admit. By killing off a fabrication only to resurrect it, the Christians created a scenario in which they expected us to believe about anything, including but not limited to an eternal afterlife based on occult justice; the appearance of holy figures on billboards and foodstuffs; and the self-imposed celibacy of priests.

We walked the streets yesterday, and saw firsthand how unmoved modern humans were by thoughts of resurrection. It was a normal Sunday, all told – despite the occasional inflatable rabbit bouncing in the wind atop a front stoop, there was no wide-eyed rejoicing, no “hosanna”-hurling, no wearing of outlandish bonnets. To our knowledge, no Jews were persecuted. Instead, folks were shopping, eating a strange hybrid of breakfast and lunch, and following other such earthly pursuits. (We didn’t see much else, because we don’t like to be outside for that long.)

Shouldn’t we just let Easter go once and for all? The candy oligarchy will raise holy hell, sure, but aren’t there more interesting things to commemorate? On April 8, 1766, the first fire escape was patented (a wicker basket at the end of a pulley). On April 8, 1946, the League of Nations assembled for the last time. On April 8, 1972, the official nickname of Firth, Michigan was changed from “Outpost of the Mundane” to “America’s Arthritis Capital.” Wouldn’t any of these events make for a more wholesome, invigorating feast than what we saw yesterday? We could keep the basket motif, and instead of bunnies, we could have chocolate diplomats, and gnarled marzipan hands – kids won’t know the difference once they’ve put them in their mouths.

Of course, the Catholic Church has a trick up its sleeve. By changing the date of Easter each year, it spawns a system of stealth attacks on less well-fortified holidays. As soon as a new celebration begins to arise, the Easter behemoth waits until it lands on a Sunday, and BAM! – the poor thing is in tatters. Turn the other cheek indeed.

GETTING HOT IN HERE, OR ME? (ANSWER: YOU)

The papers tell us that the Supreme Court decided yesterday to make a landmark decision involving the Environmental Protection Agency’s need to regulate greenhouse gases. We’re all like, sure, whatever. It’s not like it’s going to do a damn spot of good.

There are conflicting theories as to the causes of global warming. Some believe it involves the trapping of manmade carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere, absorbing heat without releasing it. Those fundamentalist Christians who are willing to acknowledge the phenomenon aver that it is caused by the fires of Hell, leaking out of the earth’s crust in a calculated bid on the part of Satan to take the underworld mainstream. Still others think it’s a dragon.

Compelling though these theories are (and leaving quite aside the distasteful “farting cow” hypothesis), they are all distractions from the main issue at hand. You see, it is simply not true that the atmosphere is heating up. On the contrary – the earth itself is cooling down.

Pretty much everyone (except those fundamentalist Christians again) believes that the universe was created in a fiery blast of matter a handful of billennia ago. Fair enough. Consequently, it should be stressed that this fiery blast of matter was HOT – stars needed to be made out of it after all, as well as tropical beaches, Thermador convection ovens, and lust.

So imagine a hot little earth spinning through a cold universe. What’s it going to do? Cool off, of course. Sure it has a molten core that still holds the original warmth of the Big Bang, but there are all sorts of little cracks and wrinkles and zits across the earth’s surface that slowly release this primal torridity into the cosmos. As the ground beneath our feet chills even as we walk upon it, the air around us feels warmer. And it’s not just a matter of human perception – the conflicting pull of the earth and its atmosphere makes all of our equipment go all farblonjet, resulting in the popular illusion of global warming.

So why didn’t this effect make itself clear in previous generations? Easy: there was greater moisture surrounding the earth previously. Every time a rocket or satellite is launched, it takes a little bit of the atmosphere’s moisture along with it, drying the world ever so slightly. In other words, one could say that, in the past, it wasn’t so much the heat as (wait for it) the humidity.

Mainstream scientists will not look kindly upon these conclusions, and that only stands to reason; this is not a very lucrative theory, after all. We apologize if this posting puts Al Gore out of a job, but truth will out.

OURS IS PURPLE

We are almost as tired of hearing about the fact that Jesus was a real human being as we were formerly tired of hearing about his status as the Son of God. Have 2000 years of this bullshit really taught you nothing? THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS A JESUS. Now, we know how difficult it is to prove a negative, but damned if we’re not going to try. (Also damned if we are, depending on what you subscribe to.)

A compelling piece of evidence for the case of there never having been a Jesus of any kind ever can be found in the following interview with a Wisconsin snow-plow driver named Morris Berkman. In 1973, Berkman received a visitation from the Angel Gabriel, who went on to tell him that Jesus did not exist before he was created by Christians. The below is excerpted from a 1977 pamphlet entitled Does God Know Your Favorite Color? It is, as we hope you have guessed by now, so far out of print that there is no record of it ever having been. (Much like Jesus! Except that in this case it’s real, whereas Jesus is not.)

INTERVIEWER: Tell us about your visitation.

MORRIS BERKMAN: Well, it was January 17, 1973. We had a blizzard the night before, and I had been working for about eleven hours. It was getting to be sunset, and I was on a back road, when my plow just stopped. Stalled out.

INTERVIEWER: Was there anything unusual about that?

MB: It was a pain in the ass.

INTERVIEWER: What happened next?

MB: Well, I was sitting in the cab there, about to radio back to the B and R -- that's Buildings and Roads -- when a raccoon started walking across the snow in front of me.

INTERVIEWER: Was it a normal raccoon?

MB: At first. But when it got in front of my plow, it turned and looked right at me. Into my soul, you know? I hate it when animals do that.

INTERVIEWER: What happened next?

MB: Well, it jumped onto the hood of the vehicle and started pawing at my windshield.

INTERVIEWER: Did you let it in?

MB: No sir! Those things have rabies!

INTERVIEWER: So how did you know it was an avatar of the Angel Gabriel?

MB: Well, it pointed at me with one of those sharp claws it had, and when I shook my head no, it cut out a perfect circle on the windshield and hopped in. It sat on the passenger seat.

INTERVIEWER: Did it speak to you?

MB: Yeah. But kind of in my mind, you know? It didn’t have a larynx.

INTERVIEWER: Uh-huh. What did it say?

MB: I’ll be honest, I didn’t understand the half of it. But it told me that it was the Angel Gabriel, and that it was visiting me because I had to be a prophet of truth.

INTERVIEWER: Did it say anything about Jesus?

MB: I’m getting there! God… So it told me there was no such person as Jesus. He was just a myth, that the priests created in order to make up Christianity and oppress people and crap.

INTERVIEWER: Did it tell you why the priests did this?

MB: It said a lot of stuff about free will and Providence and some Bible names that I couldn’t keep straight. But by this point, though, I was thinking, there’s a goddamn raccoon talking into my mind in the passenger seat of a snow-plow in the middle of Nowhere, Wisconsin. Why should I trust it?

INTERVIEWER: But you felt compelled to come out and tell your story.

MB: Hell yes. It told me if I didn’t, it would come into my house and give me rabies. But worse rabies than normal rabies, some kind of God rabies. And that it would bite me on my balls to do it.

INTERVIEWER: Did you ever stop to ask why a supposed agent of God would be trying to argue against the existence of Jesus, the belief in whom has been a major source of religious faith for millennia?

MB: No.

INTERVIEWER: Why not?

MB: I didn’t understand the question.

If anybody runs into a copy of Does God Know Your Favorite Color?, please write to us at theapocrpyhist@gmail.com. We will trade an uncut page of Series 1 Wacky Packages for it.