Alex Jones, "Holmies," And Celebrity Doubles: Surfing Down The Chapel Perilous

Alex Jones makes the big-time.

"Chapel Perilous is a stage in the magickal quest in which your maps turn out to be totally inadequate for the territory and you're completely lost. And at that point you get an ally who helps you find your way back to something you can understand. And then after that for the rest of your life you've got this question: Was that ally a supernatural helper, or was it just part of my own mind trying to save me from going totally bonkers with this stuff? And the people I know who've had that kind of experience, very few of them have come to an absolutely certain conclusion about this." 
-- Robert Anton Wilson 

I've stayed away from this blog for a number of reasons as of late, as several things have depressed me deeply and have shook my decision to continue writing this stuff.


The biggest thing on my radar is the Alex Jones meltdown on CNN recently. What a horrorshow. A friend of mine suggested that he was invited to speak on the Piers Morgan program with the producers specifically anticipating that he would go batshit crazy and make everybody else who is interested in fringe subjects also look like loonies; I partially agree with this assessment. It's almost like I can't completely blame Jones, as I think that the way he acted on that program was pretty much his honest-to-God default mechanism -- a mix between feeling paranoid away from his homebase, the adrenaline pumping from being on national TV, and so on.

But you know, a meltdown such as this doesn't help the thousands of people who do have legitimate questions about the status quo -- who desire to have a rational convo on gun control and whatnot. Doesn't help the NRA, doesn't help the cause of Alex's followers, doesn't help, doesn't help, doesn't help. And then Drudge chimes in with more incendiary headlines featuring pics of Adolph Hitler (which pretty much Godwins the entire discussion). I read these comments on Alex's YouTube, see these headlines on Drudge, read these articles like "The New South" on Salon, and I just think this is all a horrible combination, that's ultimately going to result in some Waco-like disaster.

"They are all the same actor"

Along those lines, at the beginning of the week I had an acquaintance targeted on this massive conspiracy site as the "actor-double" of James Holmes. This was a major clusterfuck nightmare, complete with my friend's contact info right on the website. The site -- which is extensive -- pretty much believes that most major events in the U.S. and whatnot have been staged by using celebrity actors. This site believes that Alice Cooper and Steve Carell are the same person. I had to read this site like 10 times to figure out if it was just an Onion-like put-on. It wasn't. And the fact that my acquaintance -- who, unlike most of the people libeled on the site, pretty much isn't even a celebrity (with celebrity-level security)  -- had his life turned upside-down over this was just horrifying.

An example of James Holmes fan art

Then there was stuff like the James Holmes fan club community coming out in full force this week -- which is another post entirely. They have their own conspiracy theories, which dovetails into these new Sandy Hook conspiracies....this Venn diagram of teenage fangirls and hardcore old-school theorists (some of whom believe that no children were harmed in SH and it was all just a Hollywood production)...

All these things and more makes fringe researchers -- or the merely curious -- look like maniacs, and distracts people from the real issues.

Fuck, it is so depressing. Reading some old stuff from Robert Anton Wilson and Tim Leary that's cheering me up a little bit, as well as a Red Ice Radio interview with Drunvalo Melchizedek that at least gave me some new positive ideas -- I mean, I don't buy everything Melchizedek says, but it was a good change of pace with some insights I haven't thought of before. Stench of Truth as usual tries to refocus stuff on the issues. And I got some good synchromystic notes written out that might make some fruitful posts -- or at least research for shits and giggles -- down the line. But this week was rough, with me questioning a lot of stuff.