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.

BELIEVING ISN'T SEEING

We’ve been asked on more than one occasion (like, at least two), “Apocryphist, have you ever actually SEEN a demon?” This is a ludicrous question. It’s like asking if you’ve ever seen a proton or a quark. And protons and quarks are, after all, merely physics propaganda, cooked up by scientists to justify the hefty research fees they receive from unsuspecting taxpayers. The true building blocks of matter were discovered by the alchemists of the 16th century in the midst of their quixotic attempts to create gold. Try sniffing that out in the snot-stained index of your average high-school history textbook!

Where were we? Oh yes, demons. So asking if someone has ever SEEN a demon is ludicrous, because demons were not created to appeal to the sense of sight – if you could see them, they’d be way too easy to kill, and that’s bad evolution. It would be like, oh great, there’s a demon in the closet again, call the exterminator. It would be like, we love going camping, except for all these damn demons. It would be like, here’s my pet demon, Otis – he’s housebroken.

If you plan on being a terrifying entity, the first rule is that you should keep out of sight. What’s the use of setting your sights on freezing the blood in the hearts of men when men can catch you picking your noses during an unguarded moment? Sight is the least frightening of human senses. Scary sounds are certainly acceptable – in fact, they’re inevitable. If it weren’t for scary touch, we’d have no incubi or succubi or tarantulas. Scary smells have been appropriated by many of our current society’s chemical treatment plants. And as for scary taste – well, very few people have experienced a truly horrifying flavor and lived to tell the tale, and if they have, their tongues tend to be corroded beyond the ability to speak. Pursue all of these options if your intent is fear, but for Ba’al’s sake, don’t show yourself!

Not that there’s anything supernatural about demons. They’re flesh and blood creatures, distant relatives to the poltergeist, which is itself a rare species of bird, originally native to central Europe, that fly so fast as to render themselves invisible to the naked eye. Obviously if you fly around that fast in someone’s house you’re going to knock crap off the walls and be all-around nuisance. After frightening humans from their nests, these poltergeists settle in and adapt the newly abandoned spaces into their own habitats, giving rise to myths and legends of ghosts and haunted edifices.

Demons move incredibly quickly too, but they’re not really birds anymore – they’re, you know, demons. Their other main divergence from poltergeists is that they don’t endeavor to remain rooted to a single breeding ground; they’re just nigh-invisible peripatetic pains in the ass. Our great early naturalists, such as Hieronymus Bosch and Dante Alighieri, provide some of the most compelling depictions of these misunderstood creatures, and we urge you to pore over their works for an eyeful of real science.

HERITAGE ON YOUR CHEST

Again, we’re not the sort to advocate the stewardship of rare natural or cultural treasures by earthly bureaucracies – if something ancient and precious is going to get blown up, knocked down, or winnowed away to nothing by the fierce and remorseless desert winds, there’s often a damn good reason for it. Likewise, those landmarks and artifacts that are truly important to mankind’s progress upon earth are more than capable of taking a few lumps for the team. (We’re lookin’ at you, Sphinx.)

That being said, the World Heritage Centrrer (a division of UNICEF) has just released its new annual list of “Inscribed Properties” earmarked to be the subject of increased vigilance and protection over the coming years (though exactly how chiseling one’s organization’s name across the face of a “property” is tantamount to “protecting” it is beyond us). It serves as an interesting matrix of what mainstream humanity considers significant and amusing, a litmus of how little the League of Nations understands the true workings of the world it claims to represent.

This year’s list reads as a rogue’s gallery of history’s also-rans: Vanuatu, Mauritius, San Marino, Kenya, Slovakia – sure, each of these locations houses important populations of relict Lemurian descendants, but can we please let it go? Lemuria was a failed continent, and it failed for a reason. The very powerlessness of the League of Nations stems from its secret history as an epicenter of the Lemurian diaspora – and look where it’s gotten them. They’re starting to get as tiresome as the so-called Atlanteans, who are actually just a bunch of ancient Welsh fishermen who got lost and needed some kind of story to explain why they were missing for a thousand years. Put it to bed, people – we’re bored.

However, even more notable than the list’s inclusions are its omissions. Where are the Antarctic Mountains of Madness? Amityville, NY’s Portal to Hell? The Bedrock City of the Dakotas? Surely these sites are worthy of the care and attention of a few dozen drunken, incestuous Lemurians?

The most intriguing entry on the new list, however, is Sturtsey, the volcanic island currently growing off the coast of Iceland. It is clearly a bald attempt to breed a new lost continent that will be the subject of myth and rumor for many generations after it has finally disappeared from the face of the earth, and for this boldness of vision we salute its architects. Sure, we can think of about thirty million more opportune locations for the advance of a mysterious civilization (the North Atlantic? Right near a populated island? Come on, guys!), but the very unlikelihood of its position might prove to be an unmistakable asset. The very fact that the Lemurians are recognizing it in this way is evidence that they are quaking in their stupid little boots. Rugged Sturseyans of the future, let us be among the first to preemptively invite you to your eventual mastery of the human race. We’re proud to say we'll have known you when.

THE SECOND MOST DANGEROUS GAME

It is time for us to lob some words of sympathy at an institution that is dear to our wee, shriveled, walnut-resembling heart. No, we speak not of our Cabal, which, though integral to the concealed workings of the hidden world you are unable to recognize as lying behind your own, exists well beyond the ken of this weblog. Instead, we refer to the International Cryptozoology Museum.

Unlike the so-called “mainstream” scientific institutes that do little more than plash messily in slopping-over vats of semi-liquefied lies, the International Cryptozoology Museum is devoted to the only fauna worth considering: that which we do not readily see. Derived from the Latin prefix “crypto-,” or, “devoted to the art of breaking the secret codes of reality,” the Greek word “zoo,” meaning “zoo,” and the Olde English suffix “-ology,” which roughly translates to “fierce devotion bordering on the eccentric,” “cryptozoology” is a hybrid word, much like the hybrid beasts it studies along with garden variety Bigfeet, Abominable Snowpersons, and Loch Ness Monstroids.

Our first experience with cryptozoology occurred when we were quite young, and strange creatures would wander to our bedside as we attempted in vain to sleep. Childhood is not the province of innocence, but rather of truth – the things that we saw then may remain hidden to most conscious eyes, but their invisibility makes them no less real. It is a perverse comfort to know that roaming the earth somewhere are stink owls, headless dogs, and killer whales that walk like men, and it is cryptozoology that translates this occult knowledge into the truth few people can dare to face without a few stiff drinks ahead of time.

Of course, the Powers That Are don’t look kindly upon this kind of truth-gleaning, and so have conspired through its super-secret assassination task force – the IRS – to shut its doors. The Museum’s proprietress, the lovely Lauren Coleman, is struggling to keep its mighty iron doors – festooned with minotaur skulls – from closing around the bright flames of glory within. We normally don’t take up Causes, but this one is an exception. Please consider donating a guilder or two in order to keep the Museum afloat. Tell them the Apocryphist sent you. Or on second though, no, don’t.

LIE IN THE SKY

Some people have utterly sick senses of humor. Look at this story from the distastefully named website "Boing[sic]-Boing[sic]":

Police in South Wales, UK, were dispatched to respond to a 999 emergency call to investigate a "bright stationary object" in the sky above a concerned citizen's home. The BBC News posted a recording and transcript of the conversation between the control room, the caller, and the police:

Control: "Alpha Zulu 20, this object in the sky, did anyone have a look at it?"

Officer: "Yes, it's the moon. Over."

When we have lost sight of the fact that the moon might actually be the largest, most advanced alien spaceship in the history of large, advanced alien spaceships, then we have lost our way as a species, and we deserve whatever eyeball-frying, liver-whipping, blood-congealing radio waves its crew decides to send down upon our sad, narrow-visioned race.

USA PATRIOT TRACT

As the 232nd anniversary of our nation’s declaration of independence creeps towards us at a speed more befitting a drunken slug than a rocket-powered locomotive of patriotism (yes, we are having a long week), this is a suitable time to ruminate upon the qualities that make this country such an unlikely success in affairs both domestic and international. As such, here is our list of the Top Ten Super-Secret Things That Make America Endure Despite Its Ruling Powers’ Efforts to the Contrary.

10. The Underground Railroad
Many consider it a historical novelty, but the system used for delivering runaway slaves to more desirable locales than those from which they ran still endures, though for entirely different purposes. Purposes that you are too weak to understand.

9. Bigfoot
As our closest living simian ancestor, the Sasquatch offers a bounty of insights about mankind’s role on the earth – and we’ve got ‘em! Sure, there are a few tooling around in Canada, but for taxonomical purposes these are not considered true Sasquatches, but have rather been relegated to the category of Lesser Sasquatch - shyer, more complacent, and nicer than their U.S. counterparts. Wilier, more aggressive American Sasquatches can be seen across our nation, as local aldermen, Dunkin Donuts clerks, and masseurs. If you can track one down, study it closely – it just might be your uncle.

8. Facebook
Why didn’t someone tell us sooner about this clever social networking tool? Over the past few months we’ve spent countless hours trolling its depths, digging up as much dirt as we possibly can about our multifarious enemies and gleaning new and novel ways to destroy them. ("Favorite Film: Strictly Ballroom." Hmm…) We haven’t signed up for a profile ourselves, of course (even this weblog is severely compromising our inaccessibility), but as believers in the unexpected yet retrospectively inevitable phenomena known to superstitious folks as “miracles,” there’s always a chance that might change…

7. The Lack of Nationalized Universal Health Care
Many view this as one of America’s drawbacks, but in a free market economy it’s a simple fact that you can’t lug around your dead weight like so much feverish, crippled, bleeding, concussed, diabetic, pustule-ridden, feeble, frail, decrepit, incontinent, armless, immune-deficient, consumptive, sneezing, wheezing, pallid, nauseous, quadriplegic, morbidly obese, stroke-wracked, artery-clogged, tumoriffic dead weight. We don’t cart our corpses around with us everywhere we go, so why should we do the same with our sick and injured? If they can’t take care of themselves, they’re part of the problem.

6. Neqa’el
The cutest little itty-bitty kitty cat in the world. Yes, she is. Yes, she is.

5. The National Weather Service
As many of you no doubt remember from a past post, the National Weather Service is responsible for regulating the weather worldwide – or, to state it more accurately, regulating people’s perception of the weather. As a largely psychological phenomenon, weather is infinitely manipulatable by a trickster’s array of cons and sleights – moves at which the U.S. government has proven only too adept.

4. Attractive, Up-and-Coming Starlets
One thing that America will always be able to give to the world – and exhibit a skill for importing – is the peculiar combination female pulchritude, talent, youth and pluck that characterizes our most precious natural resource: starlets. Though some go on to squander their nearly unlimited potential (did you really need to take that demeaning secretary role in Sex and the City, Jennifer?), even the laziest amongst them will grow up to helm an obscure charity or run for local office. But more importantly, while in their prime they are the fuel of the world’s Dream Engine, and little would get accomplished without them.

3. Libertium
A rare mineral, found only in the soil of certain parts of North America, that ensures political freedom. Sub-microscopic dust particles of Libertium act chemically upon the brain when inhaled in certain quantities. Interestingly, the biochemistry of the Caucasian race results in deeper, more rapid breathing than is normally found in other ethnicities, which explains much of our early history.

2. The Stupidity and Pettiness of the Rest of the World
We’re not saying that everyone else in the world is naturally inferior to us, we’re just saying that, given all of the other advantages listed here, we’re able to crawl ever so slightly further out of the rancid heap of humanity into the glaring, stink-inducing sunlight above.

1. The Apocryphist
If not for us, you wouldn’t even be aware of all of this.

Happy Interpendence Day, everyone! Don’t let the fireworks hypnotize you – that’s how the local municipalities steal your money.

AQUAPOLITICS

For more than a year now, we have been deeply enmeshed in issues beyond the ability of most sentient beings to comprehend – but what else is new. As a result, our binary-based dabbling in the little things that make the world worth living in for most so-called “regular” people was put on indefinite hiatus. But time, spirit and June twilights move one to a state of generosity that oft overcomes the prickly vagaries of the sort of things we’re not inclined to tell you we’re involved with. As such, for as long as the world can stand it, we are pleased to announce the RETURN of THE APOCRYPHIST.

Yes, you’re welcome.

So onto the first bit of news: the U.S. government’s decision to take North Korea off its list of terrorist groups, a development that augurs great changes for the future of mankind. Because seriously, how many of you think you know the real truth about North Korea? How could a country so shrouded in secrecy contain other than secrets upon secrets, sewed up inside little secrets that you can’t really see because they’re surrounded by so many other goddamn secrets? (Answer: it’s a secret.)

That North Korea is a cesspit of human degradation is not to be denied. But the question of WHY it has been engineered to become said cesspit is one that is not often asked. Geopolitics, the spread and decline of communist thought, the individual ego of the strange little man who runs the place – these are all contributing factors, no doubt. But they have coalesced around a situation so bizarre, so dangerous, that it is in the best interest of all the world’s powers to refrain from blowing the ruling regime from the face of the planet and thereby revealing it in all its horror.

Remember World War II? Of course not – if you were born then you probably wouldn’t be reading a blog. Suffice to say it was a global armed conflict that occurred between 1939 and 1952 (more on that in a future post). By the time the war began, Korea had been under Japanese rule for many years due to the insatiable taste of the Japanese for a rare variety of freshwater eel (the anguilla esculentus or “Happy Taste Bud Snake-Fish”) that could only be found in Korean waters. During the late 1930s, Japanese scientists began conducting what can only be described as “weird” experiments to breed a super-eel, a full order of magnitude larger than those found in nature, that could be used to goad and reward the increasingly belligerent Japanese troops.

Anybody who’s ever conducted “weird” experiments knows damn well how they usually turn out. A race of giant, lethally delicious eels was soon developed, and the scientists working on the project became paranoid about allowing them to leak into the greater world and thus leave fewer for themselves. The outbreak of war, unfortunately, allowed looser security measures, and several eels escaped into a network of lakes in the central part of what would later become North Korea, where they reproduced prodigiously. This region endured as a kind of eely prefecture unto itself until it was discovered by Soviet troops in 1945. Starved, these Russian troops turned to the eels as their only available food source, and became more addicted than the Japanese could have imagined. This predilection grew and mutated not unlike the eels themselves, until Stalin himself insisted that a Happy Taste Bud Snake-Fish be delivered to his chambers for breakfast each morning before facing an angry world. Hence the Russian insistence on controlling Korea above the 38^th Parallel, which has led to so much geopolitical grief over the years.

With the fall of Communism, knowledge of these eels spread throughout the ruling classes of the reigning world powers (China and the U.S. primary among them). As Russia scrambled to make amends for eighty-odd years of back-asswardness, an inebriated Boris Yeltsin made the mistake of inviting President Bill Clinton to sample one of the eels during one of their frequent “diplomatic drink-offs.” Overcome by the same eellust that had felled so many others, Clinton made a secret backdoor deal to import this delicacy to the White House. Once other staffers and Washington insiders became hooked, it was a matter of policy to keep their habit a secret from the rest of the world, and so the deadly North Korean regime was propped up by policy, even inspiring a phony nuclear scare to ensure that it would remain in a diplomatic limbo, the tasty eels safe within their shroud of mystery.

Sources inform us that the reason for today’s rapprochement is that the current President simply doesn’t have a taste for these slimy creatures. “Yuppie food,” he’s been known to call them to his close circle of advisors. The diplomatic cartwheels the U.S. has been forced to endure on behalf of this situation have strained Washington’s resources, and so Bush has, in what will no doubt stand as his last significant policy decision, allowed the potential for the whole world to be informed of these really quite scrumptious North Korean eels.

The future of North Korea now depends on the outcome of the upcoming Presidential elections. Senator Obama is known to be an eel teetotaler, while his erstwhile competitor, Senator Clinton, is known to have inherited her husband’s passion. Senator McCain remains inscrutable on the issue.

What will happen if open channels of trade allow the secret to be revealed? There are a number of scenarios, each one doomsday-ier than the last. Our guess is that, if North Korea’s ruthless dictator is allowed by the international community to leverage the addictive delectability of these creatures to his country’s advantage, North Korea will become the world’s next Great Power, outstripping both China and the U.S. in sheer flavor. Whether he will manage to turn all the peoples of the earth into an oppressed concatenation of desperate peasants, military insiders, and stunningly talented acrobats will remain to be seen.