Don’t like it? SCROLL

We all run our social media accounts, in our own way. Me? I figure, your account is your little cyber-home. Your living room, your rec-room, your kitchen and ewww…possibly, your bathroom, so?  Post what you want. Your “followers”, your friends, your family have the option to scroll, to hide or to ignore any objectionable commentary, memes or jokes. Sometimes, you’ll lose some, divides are too deep.  C’est la vie.

I’ll tell you; I object to censorship. On general principle. Obviously, I am not pro-child abuse or animal abuse. To make such comparisons is ridiculous, to my mind but what can you do? Someone will always take a point and run with it.

I don’t like to see the removal of racism/misogyny/misandry pages/Tweets.

Removing the material doesn’t remove the mindset. In fact, it makes it all the more dangerous because they move “underground”. INCELS are an example; they get booted from popular media and they went underground, living the virtual life in their echo chambers, with their rape fantasies and bitterness.  Same thing happens with the racists; remove them from popular media and they head out into darker, deeper wells of misinformation and they get what they need the most, validation of their opinions, reinforcing their hatred, increasing their threat to society.

History’s latter day dictators, with their OGPU, their Brown Shirts…Khmer Rouge all began in their little dark corners. Force the modern day versions of these people onto the Dark Web, into the dank corners of cyberspace and they’ll fester, they’ll grow and become more of a peril to every day, real life.

So yeah, I object to censorship on any social media platform, save the ones directed at children. Adults must have freedom to information. I prefer to know what denizens are saying as opposed to living in a bubble, unaware of what is suppurating under society’s surface.

I believe in debate, discussion.  If the debate becomes circular, if goal posts are moved…if logical fallacies are the order of the discussion?  I exercise my freedom and excuse myself from further participation. If someone continues to post objectionable material or make comments that I find to be hateful?  I “unfriend” them.  No harm, no foul – they go their way, holding their opinions and I go mine.

Social media users have the right to not read what I post or participate in any discussion that may arise. I, often, have items show up in my newsfeed that I find objectionable.  I don’t report them, I simply ignore them and use my scroll option.  Freedom of speech also includes a caveat, whereby, I also have the freedom to not listen/encourage objectionable behaviours/posts.

I have to say though; those of us living in this world, have the singular, most powerful tool for actual education, at our fingertips, that this tool is used to disseminate misinformation, to fertilize hate and intellectual poisons, just leaves me, seriously, doubting our future as a species.

Stephen King is Back!!

Life has slowed down enough for me to indulge in one of my primary passions, reading. I have just finished The Institute by Stephen King. I am so happy to see that he is back. There was a period of years, prior to his terrible accident where, unbeknownst to the author, we parted ways. I was no longer his “Number One Fan” (sorry, couldn’t resist).

The Institute was awesome. The book had me hooked, in the first few pages, as the reader is introduced to Tim and then lured me in, with a group of well-defined characters; Luke, Annie, Sha, Nick. I experienced the emotional highs and lows only Stephen King has managed to elicit from me, through writing. Oh sure, there are other authors I enjoy but there is something about the way King crafts a story, something in the way he gives birth to characters, defines them, makes them live and breathe. Something almost magical.

I could see Luke, in my mind’s eye. I wanted to grab The Avester and bring him home, keep him safe. Kanisha and Nick; I could see them hanging out in a local park, goofing around.

Yes, the main characters are children, the adults are, primarily, antagonists and let’s face it, aren’t we, too often, the true antagonists, in the lives of children?

This novel is part thriller, part science fiction and perhaps a bit of horror (the type of horror only humans can perpetrate against each other). I really do recommend it.

I have just started this one, and so far, I am loving it. Within the first chapter, I have already had an “out loud” laugh. Keep you posted but this first chapter is proving to be worth the price of the book.

“If It Bleeds”

Plandemic, Hoax, Not Dangerous

So, truth is what you want. Truth is what you’re going to get. It has taken me over a month, to decide whether or not to share this information. It is extremely personal and I can’t even describe how painful but regardless, perhaps it will enlighten someone out there, stuck down the rabbit hole of internet conspiracies.

Currently, the ill-informed, the biology/physiology/virology challenged are claiming that death certificates are being altered to increase the statistical death rate of Covid-19.

Viruses are intricate, powerful things. They pre-date mankind. They are one of the original forms of life. They have one purpose, that they’ve honed over millions of years; how to invade and survive in a living entity. They are far more adept at survival than are we. Sometimes they make mistakes…kill themselves off. In modern history, sometimes we get the upper hand and kill them. By and large though; they are far more canny than are we.

Okay, so from what I’ve seen of the rabbit hole/conspiracy theory half-wits; people aren’t dying of Covid-19 at the rate reported. They are dying from pneumonia and multiple organ failure. Ok. What caused these things to occur? Covid-19. It attacks the body, looks for places to hide, to multiply and to destroy. Without Covid-19, the pneumonia would not have occurred, the massive organ failures would not happen. It takes a devastating incident to cause organs to shut down. They prefer to operate and to survive. Due to our lack of immunity, our organs cannot fight back.

Now for the tough part; the dismissive attitude. “Ah well…these people were immuno-suppressed anyway..” “They are old, you know…” As if this, somehow, negates the dangers. The virus is finding ways to survive and devastate younger systems and it will continue to do so.

It is my conclusion that these conspiracy idiots and yes, I mean idiots, have never seen someone die due to massive organ shutdown. If they had, they would not be conspiracy idiots.

You see the dark haired woman in the photo? She was my mother. My best friend. My total confidante. My rock. She got sick, not Covid-19. She died in 2014. Massive organ failure. My brother and I were there, we were by her bedside while this happened. We had an up close and very personal view of what happens when major organs fail.

She had surgery, to repair artery damage in her leg. According to the surgeon, the operation was a success but she died. The operation, itself, did not kill her. The complications did. Actually, had she not had the surgery, her organs would not have failed. The same with Covid-19. If the virus was not contracted, then the organs would not fail, the pneumonia would not have set in.

First – it was her kidneys. They failed. Her body swelled with fluid. She was in great pain. The doctors tried to re-start her kidneys, get them to function again, to no avail. This lasted about a week, a week of pain. Intense pain. We couldn’t move her or adjust her position without her crying out.

Then her lungs started to fill with fluid that her body could not dispel. Liquid in the lungs is pneumonia. She couldn’t breathe. She was drowning in her own fluids. There was nothing they could do. They had tried everything possible. I was given the news that it was, perhaps, a matter of hours. I tried to get her moved to a palliative care facility, closer to the family, so everyone could say their good byes. It was denied. She would not have survived the ambulance ride. This proved to be incorrect. My mother, my friend, lay there for another 48 hours, struggling to breathe, pain racking her body.

My brother and I sat, during her final 12 hours. Each hour worse than the one before. She was in and out of consciousness. During that 12 hours we watched her, battling for each breath. Struggling to remove the oxygen mask because in her state, she was trying to breath, she was drowning. She weighed less than 100 lbs at this point. She had been unable to eat for 2 weeks. Her liver was failing, allowing poisons to invade her body. Her leg, where the surgery was performed, was turning black. The pain was unbearable for her.

She struggled though, she tried to hang in there. Imagine yourself being held under water. Your limbs on fire, pain in every part of your body, so much so that you can’t fight to surface, to get that oxygen.

Her body, would heave, trying to get just a little air, into her fluid filled lungs. She would thrash her head, moan and there would be tears, no sobs because she couldn’t breathe enough to sob. Each hour was a nightmare for all 3 of us. Mom because she was losing her battle, for my brother and myself? We had to watch our mother, our protector, our love, die – slowly, and in terrible pain. There was nothing we could do. Nothing. We were helpless against this horrible destruction of our mother.

Oh sure, we could hold her hand, tell her how much we loved her but believe me, that is no comfort, when you are watching a loved one, die.

Her condition worsened, we could hear the fluid in her lungs…her fight to breathe increased. We called the nurse, begged him to do something to help her. He explained that the medication would shorten her struggle, that she would die. We made the decision, help her breathe.

The meds were administered, Mom was able to catch some oxygen, more so than earlier but not enough, not enough to ease her panic. She died about an hour later.

So no, technically the surgery didn’t kill, and no, perhaps Covid-19 does not, technically, kill people; it is the complications. Without the surgery, Mom wouldn’t have died. Without Covid-19, invading the human body and devastating organs, its victims wouldn’t have died either.

So you want to split statistical hairs? You’re evil. At least Mom had the two of us, with her went she died.

Covid-19 victims die alone, among strangers, with masks, gowns and gloves. Alone. They don’t go gently into that dark night. They are terrified, they are in pain and they are, above all, alone.

May Karma never visit you, I mean that; no one should ever have to watch a loved one die in this manner. It never goes away. Oh, you can push it to the back of your mind but it is always there. You will suffer from this experience for the rest of your life. Covid-19 takes more victims than your splitting of statistical hairs.

Don’t wear a mask, don’t practice common sense social distancing.  Covid-19 will find you or find someone you love and destroy your life.

Idiots, Idiots…It’s a Pandemic of Idiots

I want to be careful here; I’ve been told that when my frustration level hits the red zone, I become very sarcastic and sometimes downright nasty.

While this, really, shouldn’t have to be said; the internet has been, by and large, abused by too many people without even the most basic understanding of how the damn thing works.

OMG, Facebook is censoring! Yes. It is. False information is being removed, because? Let’s see if we can connect the dots…because, people are sharing it and there are just too many gullible people out there, sucking it up. Yes, they are entitled to their opinion but Facebook is a corporation, you don’t pay for it, so if you don’t like what is going on? Leave. Simple as that. YouTube is pulling down channels, videos with false information? All outraged, are you? Don’t go to the site; you aren’t paying a dime for it. Grow, the hell, up.

Let’s address a few things:

1. Contact apps – I forget the meme…something about defriending people if you download the app. Just so many….I don’t know where to start with this one. Seriously? Who, the fuck, do you think you are that you believe the “gubbermint” is watching YOU? Let me let you in on a little “deep state” secret, (it isn’t really a secret, at this point, it should be, glaringly, evident); the “gubbermint” doesn’t give a rat’s ass about you. The app isn’t some nefarious plot to find out where you shop or to whom you speak. Even Walmart knows that. The minute, you open a cell phone, Bluetooth enabled or not, you are trackable. The minute you log on to your computer – VPN be damned – you are trackable. Pay a bill? Government could, if they chose to do so, track you. Use a credit card? Same thing. Pay taxes? Whole lot of information on your-all-important-self.
2. Covid is a conspiracy, in order to vaccinate everyone, injecting microchips. This one is so stupid I can’t even fathom the level of idiocy. A microchip will not fit through a syringe, my friends and that’s just for starters. What kind of injection would it be, that allows for the transport of this microchip”

• Intravenous injection?
• Intramuscular injection?
• Subcutaneous injection?
• Intradermal injection?

A microchip could not be introduced through any of these methods. Could a chip be introduced? Sure, a very few companies actually wanted to do this, but it would need to be introduced, subcutaneously, and yeah, you would notice something like that. Didn’t work, by the way.

1. Bill Gates. This one is just too much. The same people spreading this segment of an interview, which was edited and not very artfully, are sharing this absolute bullshit, using software and tools, brought to them by Bill Gates. There was some alluding to profit made by his charity; of course, the truth was totally ignored in favour of sensational bullshit. His charity didn’t MAKE money; it’s a charity. The work done by the charity WOULD HAVE been worth, I think it was 700 million, due to the benefits it wrought, vis a vis, healthcare etc. But hey, I get it, economics is not everyone’s forte however, this does not excuse wanton ignorance or spreading of malicious bullshit, created by basement Cheeto-munching keyboard bullshitters.
2. Covid was created in a lab and set loose by the Chinese. This one hurts so much, my eyes hurt. Oh sure, create a virus, set it loose on their own soil, to kill their own people. China is leaps and bounds ahead of most nations with regard to various technologies. I think it is rather obvious, if they wanted to infect the world, there are far more efficient ways to do it, rather than in a wet market, in some godforsaken little town. Was Mexico planning a global takeover with Swine flu? What about the United Kingdom and Mad Cow disease? Viruses that mutate and infect humans have happened long before the likes of Alex Jones or that insane Polly person (a Youtube idiot) decided to lower IQs with their videos. The main raison d’être of any virus or bacteria, is to survive. They do it pretty well, and have been doing it since life began. Viruses and bacteria, in animals, rodents do mutate and create problems from people, not just due to consumption; you can get salmonella from a damn turtle, for crying out loud. I caught psittacosis from some companions birds we had rescued. Chinese were not involved.
3. The heads of the various governments’ health departments aren’t expert on this virus – what about “novel coronavirus” do people not grasp? NOVEL – its new. Every researcher in the world is learning, as fast as they can, about this little bugger. No one has all the answers, they can only provide guidelines based on the evidence presented at any given time. And because it’s a virus, the information that may be true today, could very well change tomorrow – depending on which way the virus mutates. There are NO definitive answers yet; doesn’t take a virologist to figure out that erring on the side of caution, is the best line of defense.
4. There is no personal privacy anymore. None. Nada. Zip. Get over yourselves. Even people who think they are living “Off the grid”, are not. Even they are traceable, it’s just that nobody much cares who they are or what they are doing, so they continue on in ignorant bliss.

Everything is hackable. EVERYTHING. The Departments of Defense, the banking institutions, your email…somewhere, and probably pretty close to you, is someone with the knowledge and skill set to hack into your life. And there isn’t a thing you can do to stop it.

Go forth with the knowledge that you are as insignificant as a bug to the government, you have no control over what they do, you never did and never will. Sorry, but that’s the truth of it. Make a good life for yourself and your family. Stay safe, stay healthy. Stop spreading bullshit.

Conspiracy, Covid, Gates and the real virus danger.

Please stop. Please?

I get it, these are scary times. I get it, we are all worried, to some degree, about health, about our financial status etc but really?

Fear is at the bottom of most of the unattractive traits in humanity. Okay, fear and ignorance. Frankly, I get really annoyed by the latter because, in this day, in age, there is no excuse for ignorance. We have access to, virtually, every single piece of viable knowledge, throughout our history. So, I get a little bent out of shape when I see, ordinarily, intelligent people spreading YouTube garbage as actual information. These same people claim media is fake yet believe some half-baked asshat with access to a camera and microphone.

Do I believe popular media? No. Let’s face it, they aren’t charitable organizations and they need to pay their overhead like any other business. They create sensational headlines or headlines with trigger words, in order to generate interest/clicks.

I, certainly, don’t believe any of the YouTube offerings of “news”. I do confess to watching some of the conspiracy videos but simply for comedic relief.

The Gates-haters are the ones that make me laugh the hardest. If it weren’t for Gates? Few if any of these boneheads would be spewing their claptrap. Here’s a thought, if Gates is the devil that the haters claim? If he had the technology to implant microchips? Do ya not think that he would also possess the technology to block all these “truthers”? I like to think he watches them as well and giggles, at their expense.

We are a long, long way from a vaccine for Covid. Vaccines take time. They take something called “research” and that is my key word, “RESEARCH”!!

For the love of whatever invisible friend in whom you believe, RESEARCH. Stop the proliferation of ignorance and fear based on some yahoo, videotaping in some ersatz office setting. (Probably in his/her basement).

No, don’t believe popular media but for heaven’s sake, give yourself a smack if you believe what you see on the Youtubes…

If you don’t hold a higher degree in one of the health sciences, if you don’t know the difference between a bacterium and a virus? Don’t spread information unless you have, thoroughly, researched what you are posting. Of course, the best thing you could do would be to take a few science classes, a far better way to spend your time online, than watching twitches on YouTube.

The real viral danger (See what I did there ? ), is spreading faster than that Covid could have wished, in its wildest, little virus dreams…the Ignorance Virus. The difference is, of course, there is a cure for the Ignorance Virus; it is widely available and often, free of charge. The vaccine has a more common name; education.

Don’t believe popular media but using the same logic, don’t believe YouTube or Reddit or any other place where conspiracies are birthed, nurtured and then set lose to infect the unwary, the naïve.

Chico, A bien tôt

Chico left us on Tuesday night. He would have been 11 years old this month. He was with us for 9 years. 9 years of constant joy, love and goofiness.

You hear people talk about “good dogs”. Chico was one of the best. He was, truly, our fur baby. He was one of us. I know he loved us and we loved him back, fiercely.

Chico was ill. He was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy; in May of this year, we were told his life expectancy would be 6 months. We were devastated. We could not imagine life without him. Now, we have no choice.

He loved everyone; okay, except for cats. He was not fond of cats, everything else was fair game for lovings. Even skunks but that didn’t turn out so well, on a couple of occasions but he kept trying.

I don’t verbalize very well; I write out my thoughts, my feelings. And…I am finding that words are failing me. There is no way to express how much we loved him. The void…the hole that was punched through, by his leaving us, is huge. The emptiness? Indescribable.

I want to concentrate on all the positive memories but right now, they just seem to emphasize that hole.

I want to take comfort knowing that we never had to decide when he was suffering and to help him end it. I know, deep in my heart, it isn’t a decision I would ever have made.

I want to take comfort knowing that he left us, in his own sweet bed, in his sleep, with Dave and I by his side.

I want to take comfort knowing that it was quick.

I want to take comfort knowing that the vow we made, when he came into our lives, to always give him the best, to love him, and yes, to spoil him, was a vow we kept.

I want to take comfort in all these things but comfort is very hard to come by, right now. Perhaps in the coming months, coming years, that comfort will help to, somehow, soften the edged of that hole in our hearts.

I want to believe that this is simply, as is said in Quebec, “A bien tôt”. I want to believe that he is with my Mom and Dad, waiting for the day that we are all together; the three of them, waiting for us. I want to believe that. I have created a mental picture of that. I will keep that dream image, in my mind, in my heart.

C.o.S? Reality Check

Anton Szandor LaVey (1930-1997), along with Charles Manson, Timothy Leary, and other messianic pop gurus, was a notorious figure of the 1960’s subculture of social experiment.

As the flamboyant High Priest of the Church of Satan and the author of the Satanic Bible, he served as an ideal bogeyman for the sensation-seeking American media of that tumultuous period.

His curious celebrity was based largely on a self- created legend. This carefully orchestrated legend may, in the final analysis, be LaVey’s most enduring legacy. LaVey disseminated his legend through interviews with journalists, personal discussion with his disciples, and two LaVey-approved (auto) biographies (apparently ghostwritten by LaVey himself).

The first of these, 1974’s The Devil’s Avenger (credited to LaVey associate Burton Wolfe), embellished on the fabrications Wolfe had already sketched in his introduction to the Satanic Bible.

The second, 1990’s Secret Life of a Satanist (credited to Blanche Barton, LaVey’s live-in secretary and mother of his son), contradicted many of LaVey’s own claims in the earlier volume, while putting forth new legends for public consumption.

As social historians and scholars of occult movements begin to study LaVey’s life and times in an objective historical context, a wealth of information concerning the man beneath the Devil horns has come to light.

This brief checklist is a concise guide to separating the deliberate prevarications from the human, all-too-human facts.  For brevity’s sake, only the most well-known aspects of the legend will be clarified here.

LEGEND: Claimed that “Anton Szandor LaVey” was his genuine birth
name.

REALITY: Born “Howard Stanton Levey”.

SOURCES: Birth certificate 4/11/1930, Cook County, Illinois.
Confirmed by relatives.

LEGEND: Claimed his parents were Joseph and Augusta LaVey.

REALITY: Parents were Michael and Gertrude Levey.

SOURCES: Birth certificate 4/11/1930, Cook County, Illinois.
Confirmed by ASL’s daughter Zeena and daughter Karla according to her entry on ASL’s death certificate.

LEGEND: Claimed he was introduced to the Dark Side by his Transylvanian Gypsy grandmother, who regaled him as a child with supernatural folklore and tales of vampires and werewolves.

REALITY: ASL’s grandmother was not Transylvanian nor of Gypsy stock. She was a Ukrainian named Cecile Luba Primokov-Coulton (“Coulton” was Anglicized from “Koltonoff”).  Despite his frequent claims, ASL had no Gypsy ancestry.

SOURCES: Relatives, including ASL’s parents.

LEGEND: In 1945 the 15-year-old ASL was brought to the ruins of postwar Germany by his uncle, a U.S. Coast Guard officer. There the teenaged ASL was shown top-secret films inspired by Satanic cult lodges and their rituals. ASL claimed that the “German” rituals in his 1972 book The Satanic Rituals were actual transcripts of the filmed rituals he saw as a youth.

REALITY: Young Howard spent the entirety of 1945 in suburban northern California, and never visited Germany at any time in his life. The uncle who he claimed brought him to Germany was incarcerated at McNeill Island Penitentiary for involvement with Al Capone-related criminal activity during 1945, and was never in the armed forces.

Allied martial law forbade U.S. citizens from visiting postwar Germany. The “German” rituals in the Satanic Rituals are written in
extremely poor, Anglicized German. They are clearly unaccredited adaptations of the short story The Hounds of Tindalos by Frank
Belknap Long and H.G. Wells’ famous novel The Island of Dr. Moreau.

SOURCES: ASL relatives, former wife Diane LaVey, The Hounds of Tindalos, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Satanic Rituals, Church of Satan member Rosalind Herkommer (who translated ASL’s rituals into German).

LEGEND: The 15-year-old ASL played second oboe with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, making him the youngest musician ever to play with that prestigious institution.

REALITY: There was no “San Francisco Ballet Orchestra” in 1945. The San Francisco Ballet was accompanied by a local orchestra, whose records show that none of its three oboists was named “Levey” or “LaVey”.

SOURCES: San Francisco Performing Arts Library & Museum, San
Francisco, California.

LEGEND: In 1947 ASL ran away from home and joined the Clyde Beatty Circus. The Circus employed the 17-year-old as a lion tamer. He then replaced the Circus calliope player, accompanying such famous Beatty acts as the Concellos, Harold Alanza, and the Cristianis.

REALITY: The voluminous Beatty archives show no record of a “Levey” or “LaVey” as lion tamer or musician. The Concellos, Alanza, and Cristianis were never Beatty performers; they worked exclusively for the Ringling Brothers Circus.

SOURCES: Beatty 1947 Route Books, Circus World Museum, Baraboo, Wisconsin (Wright, “SD”, page 67); ASL relatives.

LEGEND: In 1948 the 18-year-old ASL was engaged to play organ at the Mayan burlesque theatre in Los Angeles. There he met a young stripper named Marilyn Monroe, with whom he had a passionate love affair in the period before her rise to film stardom. According to ASL, Monroe had resorted to stripping to pay her rent.

As proof of his relationship with Monroe, ASL later showed visitors a copy of Monroe’s famous nude calendar inscribed “Dear Tony, “How many times have you seen this! Love, Marilyn”.

REALITY: ASL never knew Monroe. Monroe intimate Robert Slatzer and Harry Lipton, Monroe’s agent in 1948, have exposed and discredited this tale. Lipton paid Monroe’s expenses, including her rent. Paul Valentine, director of the Mayan Theatre, has stated that the Mayan was never a burlesque theatre, and that neither Monroe nor ASL ever worked for the Mayan in any capacity.

Diane LaVey, ASL’s former wife, has admitted that she forged the “Monroe” inscription on the calendar. ASL’s former publicist Edward Webber claims ASL admitted he never knew Monroe.

SOURCES: Diane LaVey, Paul Valentine (Wright, “SD”, page #68), Harry Lipton (Aquino-Lipton conversation 12/1/82), Robert Slatzer (letter to Aquino 11/27/82), Edward Webber (interview by Aquino 6/2/91).

LEGEND: ASL was exposed to the savagery of human nature during his stint as a San Francisco Police photographer in the early 1950s.

REALITY: San Francisco Police Department past employment records include no “Howard Levey” nor “Anton LaVey”. Frank Moser, who was a SFPD photographer in the early 1950s, said that ASL never worked for the Department.

SOURCES: SFPD records, Frank Moser (Wright, “SD”, page 68).

LEGEND: ASL studied criminology at San Francisco City College during the Korean War.

REALITY: SFCC has no record of ASL’s enrollment at any time.

SOURCES: SFCC records (Wright, “SD”, page 68).

LEGEND: ASL purchased the house at 6114 California Street (which would later become the headquarters of the Church of Satan – the infamous “Black House”) because he discovered on first inspection that it was the former brothel of Barbary Coast madam Mammy Pleasant. The house was honeycombed with trapdoors and secret passageways, built by Pleasant to elude police raids.

REALITY: 6114 was ASL’s parents’ home. It was never a brothel, nor did Mammy Pleasant ever live or work there. ASL’s parents first allowed ASL and his first wife Carole to live in the house, then transferred ownership of it to ASL and his second wife Diane in 1971. Such secret passages and hidden rooms that exist were constructed by ASL.

SOURCES: Relatives, San Francisco property records (Michael & Gertrude Levey, Joint Tenancy Grant Deed, July 9, 1971).

LEGEND: In the 1950s ASL traveled to Nice, France, where he recorded an album of organ music under the pseudonym of “Georges Montalba”.

REALITY: ASL’s first and only trip to France was in the mid-1970s, when his Dutch disciple Maarten Lamers, Amsterdam sex club owner, financed his voyage. The “ASL=Montalba” story appeared in 1989, when a gullible Church of Satan member found a Montalba album and suggested that it was similar to ASL’s own music. ASL, never pleased by competition, responded with the preposterous “pseudonym” claim – which is still ardently supported by his posthumous followers.

SOURCES: Diane LaVey, Zeena LaVey.

LEGEND: ASL was the official city organist for San Francisco until 1966, playing for gala events such as government banquets and
political meetings.

REALITY: San Francisco has never had an “official city organist”. According to ASL’s first wife Carole, his only income of $29.91/week was generated by his regular engagement at the “Lost Weekend” nightclub, where he was the house Wurlitzer organist.

SOURCE: Julie Burford, Civic Auditorium, San Francisco, California
(Wright, “SD”, page 68). Carole LaVey’s divorce proceeding records
(Wright, “SD”, page 68).

LEGEND: On the night of April 30, 1966 (the German Satanic festival of Walpurgisnacht), ASL in a “blinding flash” declared himself the High Priest of Satan, proclaimed that the Age of Satan had begun, and founded the Church of Satan as a religious institution.

REALITY: In 1966 ASL supplemented his income by presenting weekend lectures on exotic and occult topics, and by conducting “Witches’ Workshops”. He charged $2 a head, filling his living room with the curious and establishing a local reputation as an eccentric.

Professional publicist Edward Webber suggested to ASL that he “would never make any money by lecturing on Friday nights for donations …it would be better to form some sort of church and get a charter from the State of California … “I told Anton at the time that the press was going to flip out over all this and that we would get a lot of notoriety”.

In the summer of 1966, long after the fictional founding- date invented later, a newspaper article about ASL’s lectures
offhandedly referred to him as “priest of the Devil’s church”. This mixture of Webber’s idea and the newspaper’s characterization
resulted in the creation of the Church of Satan as a business and publicity vehicle. Jack Webb, a San Francisco Police investigator who knew ASL from the “Lost Weekend” nightclub, also suggested that he should form a church of some kind to exploit his recondite knowledge.

SOURCES: Edward Webber (interview by Aquino 6/2/91), Jack Webb, Diane LaVey.

LEGEND: ASL’s trademark shaved head was the result of a ceremonial head-shaving on April 30, 1966, to formalize his role as High Priest of Satan. This ritual was performed in the tradition of the Yezidi tribes of Iraq, who were said to have carried out a
similar ceremony.

REALITY: ASL shaved his head in the summer of 1966 due to a light-hearted dare from his wife. The “LaVey look” had nothing to do with the Church of Satan founding nor any mystical meaning attached to it later. Nor do Yezidi qawwals (religious teachers) shave their heads.

SOURCES: Diane LaVey; Ethel S. Drower, Peacock Angel, 1941; C.J.

Edmonds, A Pilgrimage to Lalish, Royal Asiatic Society, 1967.

LEGEND: In 1966 ASL personally designed the Baphomet emblem of the Church of Satan. He owns the right to this design, claiming it cannot be reproduced without obtaining licensing rights from the Church of
Satan.

REALITY: The Baphomet emblem used by the Church of Satan was neither original to it nor created by ASL, hence cannot be trademarked. The original Baphomet dates at least as far back as the medieval Knights Templar. The artwork for the current emblem’s goat/pentagram first appears in a 1931 book by Oswald Wirth.

The complete emblem with the added circles and “LVYThN” Hebrew letters appears on the cover of a book by Maurice Bessy two years before the creation of the Church of Satan.

Early photos of Church activities often show ASL or his disciples using the Bessy book as a photo-prop because of its
prominent cover-Baphomet, and he included that book in his Compleat Witch bibliography. The Baphomet, including this rendition of it, is clearly in the public domain.

SOURCES: Oswald Wirth, La fran-maconnerie rendue intelligible a ces adeptes – II, “Le compagnon”, Paris: Derry-Livres, 1931, page #60;
Maurice Bessy, A Pictorial History of Magic and the Supernatural, London: Spring Books, 1964 [the original edition of this work –
Histoire en 1000 images de la magie – was published in 1961 by Editions du Pont Royal]; Thomas H. Hilton, Sex and the Occult, Vol.
I, Los Angeles: Centurion Press, 1974;Church of Satan members, The Black Flame (a 1980s Church of Satan magazine).

LEGEND: One of ASL’s most widely-accepted falsehoods is his claim that he served as technical advisor for the 1968 Roman Polanski film Rosemary’s Baby. ASL also claimed to have played the curiously- uncredited part of the Devil in that film.

REALITY: ASL had no involvement with Rosemary’s Baby. Polanski’s close friend Gene Gutowski (original producer of the film) stated that there was no technical advisor, nor did ASL ever even meet Polanski. Producer William Castle, who details all aspects of the film’s production in his autobiography, never mentions ASL. He does describe Polanski’s diligence in basing the film exactly on the Ira Levin novel from which it was adapted, eliminating any need for technical advice. The father of the actress who played Mia Farrow’s body-double in the Devil scene recalled that a young, very slender professional dancer played the part, dressed in a small rubber suit. In 1971 this suit was acquired by Studio One Productions in Louisville, Kentucky, for use in a low-budget horror film Asylum of Satan. Michael Aquino, technical advisor for that film, examined the suit and concluded that the 200-pound, 6-foot ASL could not possibly have worn it. [The suit was worn by a girl in the Asylum film.] Not a single member of the cast or crew of Rosemary’s Baby has ever mentioned ASL’s involvement. In 1968 a San Francisco theater did ask ASL to make an appearance at the film’s local opening as a promotional event. This appears to have been ASL’s only connection with the film that engendered the 1960s’ popular interest in Satanism.

SOURCES: Gene Gutowski; William Castle, Step Right Up! I’m Gonna
Scare the Pants off America, New York: Pharos Books, 1992; Diane
LaVey, Michael A. Aquino (COS, page #17).

LEGEND: Jayne Mansfield, Hollywood sex symbol and actress, was a card-carrying Satanist and had an affair with ASL.

REALITY: Publicity agent Tony Kent, an associate of Ed Webber, arranged the meeting between Mansfield and ASL as a publicity stunt.

ASL was smitten with the actress. Mansfield, who made no secret of her many affairs, denied knowing ASL intimately, and no associate of hers has ever confirmed any supposed romance with ASL.

In a 1967 interview she said, “He had fallen in love with me and wanted to join my life with his. It was a laugh.”

According to ASL’s publicist Edward Webber, Mansfield would ridicule her Satanic suitor by calling from her Los Angeles home and seductively teasing him while her friends listened in on the conversation.

ASL’s public claims that he had an affair with Mansfield began only after Mansfield’s death in an automobile accident, which he also claimed was the result of a curse he had placed on her lover Sam Brody.

SOURCES: Edward Webber (interview by Aquino 6/2/91); interview with Mansfield quoted in Jayne Mansfield by May Mann, Pocket Books, 1974.

LEGEND: ASL wrote the Satanic Bible, his principal work, to fulfill his congregation’s need for a scriptural guide. (I, personally, refer to it as “Thelema For Dummies”.)

REALITY: The Satanic Bible was conceived as a commercial vehicle by paperback publisher Avon Books. Avon approached ASL for some kind of Satanic work to cash in on the Satanism & witchcraft fad of the late 1960s.

Pressed for material to meet Avon’s deadline, ASL resorted to plagiarism, assembling extracts from an obscure 1896 tract – Might is Right by Ragnar Redbeard into a “Book of Satan” for the SB, and claiming its authorship by himself.

Ironically these MiR passages are the ones most frequently quoted by ASL disciples.

Another third of the SB consists of John Dee’s “Enochian Keys”, taken directly but again without attribution from Aleister Crowley’s Equinox.

The SB’s “Nine Satanic Statements”, one of the Church of Satan’s central doctrines, is a paraphrase, again unacknowledged, of passages from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

The last words in the SB – “Yankee Rose” – have been puzzled over for years by readers. “YR” is actually the name of an old popular tune in ASL’s nightclub repertoire.

SOURCES: ASL, The Satanic Bible; Ragnar Redbeard, Might is Right, Port Townsend: Loompanics (reprint), 1896; Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (Galt’s speech, ca. pages #936-993); “Yankee Rose” by Sidney Holden & Abe Frankl (Irving Berlin Music, 1926).

LEGEND: ASL claimed that at the height of the Church of Satan’s popularity there were hundreds of thousands of formal members.

REALITY: Diane LaVey (who administered the Church as High Priestess 1966-1984), Michael A. Aquino (senior Magister of the Church and Editor of its Cloven Hoof newsletter 1971-1975), and Zeena LaVey (High Priestess of the Church 1985-1990) have all affirmed that the figures claimed by ASL were grossly exaggerated. The membership of the Church of Satan never exceeded 300 individuals, several of whom were non-member subscribers to the newsletter or ASL friends receiving complimentary mailings.

SOURCES: Diane LaVey, Michael A. Aquino, Zeena LaVey.

LEGEND: ASL claimed to be a multimillionaire, owning three homes in northern California, a convent in Italy, a chateau in France, a fleet of luxury automobiles, a 185-foot yacht, three salvage ships, and other property.

REALITY: During Diane [LaVey] Hegarty’s 1988-91 lawsuit against ASL, and ASL’s subsequent 1991 filing for bankruptcy, ASL stipulated under oath that he owned nothing more than 50% of the house his parents had given jointly to him and Diane, along with the personal items he kept therein.

ASL’s final years were subsidized by California state aid. Assessors declared the house to be in such poor repair as to be nearly worthless on the real estate market.

Family members have attested to the fact that by the mid-1970s the LaVeys lived in near-poverty, frequently having to rely upon ASL’s father’s generosity.

According to other LaVey relatives, ASL continued to rely on handouts from friends and relatives until the end of his life.

SOURCES: Hegarty v. LaVey (San Francisco Superior Court Case #891863), Anton LaVey Bankruptcy, Chapter 7 (U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Northern California, Case #91-34251), Zeena LaVey, other relatives.

LEGEND: ASL was a close friend of Sammy Davis, Jr. and inducted him into the Church of Satan.

REALITY: Sammy Davis, Jr. was invited to accept an honorary membership in the Church of Satan by Michael Aquino. After Davis sent Aquino his acceptance on March 17, 1973, he was presented with the honorary membership on April 13, 1973 by Aquino and Karla LaVey alone. ASL did not meet Davis until August 1973.

SOURCES: Davis letter to Aquino 3/17/73; Church of Satan Priesthood Bulletin 4/30/73; Aquino, COS, Chapter 23; Sammy Davis, Hollywood in a Suitcase (pre-publication text, printed in Daily News, New York, 9/11/80), Karla LaVey.

LEGEND: ASL presented himself as a loving family man.

REALITY: ASL violently beat his wife Diane throughout their marriage.

In 1984 a police report was made describing Diane being strangled into unconsciousness by ASL, who was in such a murderous rage that his daughter Karla had to pull him off Diane and drag her outside the house to save her life.

ASL routinely physically beat and abused those of his female disciples with whom he had sex, forcing them into prostitution as part of his “Satanic counselling” and collecting their earnings.

In 1986 ASL was a passive witness to the sexual molestation of his own grandson by a long-time friend who was later convicted of
sex crimes with minors.

In 1990 ASL informed a mentally-ill stalker of his daughter Zeena whereabouts and the time & location of a public appearance she was scheduled to make, deliberately endangering her life.

SOURCES: San Francisco Police records of ASL attack on Diane LaVey, Zeena LaVey, Diane LaVey, Stanton LaVey.

LEGEND: ASL had a deeply affectionate relationship with Togare, his pet lion.

REALITY: While ASL was always careful to portray himself to the public as an animal lover, in private he was cruel to and neglectful
of his pets.

When he was given Togare as a cub in 1964, he was ill-equipped to deal with such an exotic, wild animal despite his
pretensions as a circus lion-tamer. As Togare became larger and more unruly, ASL frequently used an electric cattle prod to hurt and frighten him into submission.

Many animal-rights proponents, including Togare’s final owner Tippi Hedren, agree that it is detrimental to a wild animal’s development to be raised in a domestic environment.

ASL was arrested due to Togare’s unruly behavior, and ASL was ordered to donate him to the San Francisco Zoo.

After complying, ASL made only two visits to Togare. Due to the trauma of his early life, Togare needed special care at the Zoo and at every animal-care facility in which he subsequently lived.

SOURCES: Jack Castor (Lion Keeper, San Francisco Zoo), Diane LaVey, Zeena LaVey, Tippi Hedren (The Cats of Shamballa, McGraw-Hill, 1985).

LEGEND: ASL had a deeply affectionate relationship with his other pets.

REALITY: In the late 1960s ASL acquired a Doberman Pinscher (Loki) as an accent to his “sinister” image.

ASL never took the time to housebreak or train Loki, and relegated him to the overgrown and unkempt backyard of the house, regardless of weather.

If Loki ever tried to slip into the house for shelter, ASL routinely used Togare’s cattle-prod on him to terrify him back outside. In his old age Loki developed such severe arthritis that he could not climb the stairs to the back door to eat, and began wasting away from malnutrition.

ASL then gave him to one of his prostitute “students”, who at least saw that Loki had a warm, inside home until he died a few months later.

During her young childhood ASL’s daughter Zeena once awoke late at night to hear slamming sounds and the shrieking of her German Shepherd puppy.

Running downstairs, she saw ASL savagely beating the cowering, cornered dog with a wooden plank.

When Zeena begged ASL to stop and asked him what the dog had done to deserve such treatment, ASL screamed, “She won’t listen to me! I’m going to force her to obey me!”

ASL continued beating the dog until her face was covered with her blood, then dropped the plank and left the dog quivering in the
hallway, so injured and frightened that she wouldn’t let even Zeena come near her.

This incident left the dog traumatized for a long time afterwards.

SOURCES: Diane LaVey, Zeena LaVey.

LEGEND: On ASL’s original death certificate the date of his demise was recorded as October 31, 1997 (Halloween).

REALITY: An official investigation by the City of San Francisco determined that ASL’s actual date of death was October 29, 1997 and that the “Halloween” date had been illegally written on the document.

SOURCES: Death Certificate #380278667, San Francisco Department of Public Health; Dr. Giles Miller (attending physician at ASL’s death), Physician’s Amendment to Death Certificate, 11/26/97.
____________________
RESEARCH REFERENCES: Wright, Lawrence, “Sympathy for the Devil”,
Rolling Stone #612, September 5, 1991, Saints and Sinners. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. Aquino, Michael A., The Church of Satan. San Francisco: Temple of Set, 1983.

We extend our thanks to ASL’s relatives and associates who contributed their memories.

All credit for the above is given to:  http://www.churchofsatan.org/aslv.html

You Don’t Have The RIGHT To Have An Animal

No. You don’t. Just because you want one or your kids want one, doesn’t mean you have the “right” to have one.

1. If you can’t afford good food, vet bills (usually in the hundreds and sometimes, thousands of dollars), you don’t have the right to own another living being.
2. If you rent and aren’t absolutely assured of moving to a place that permits pets? You don’t have the right to put a living being at risk.
3. If want a dog and you aren’t willing to enroll in training classes? You don’t have the right to own a dog.
4. If you can’t afford to spay or neuter, you don’t have the right to an animal.
5. If you think allowing your cat to wander in the suburbs or city is, perfectly, acceptable? You don’t have the right to own one.
6. Animals require responsibility, they require money and they require unconditional love, even when they poop on your rug or scratch the crap out of your new couch.
7. It is NEVER acceptable to strike a dog or cat. NEVER.
8. It is NEVER acceptable to allow kids free-range with your animals. NEVER. Pets and children require constant monitoring, if you can’t or aren’t willing to do this? You don’t have the right to own an animal (& IMO, probably shouldn’t be breeding anyway).

I have family members who foster cast-away dogs; their stories are heartbreaking and enraging. Cast aside, no idea what they did wrong, why they were abandoned, why they were abused, neglected.

Our buddy is in his Golden Years and whether human or animal, those Golden Years present unique issues, health, behaviour, nutrition.

Chico became ill; he was very lethargic; he developed a cough and was obviously, unwell. We took him to a university animal hospital. Over a 3 day period? The tests, the stay, the medications cost over $3 000.00. His meds cost us $300.00 every few weeks. Let me tell you, there is a lot of belt tightening.

And then my husband and I had a conversation, how could someone, with children or less income afford to treat their animal, when he/she became ill? Easy answer, they couldn’t, and the animal would be permitted to die or live in pain/sickness.

July 1^st is an official moving day, in my province; our local shelters become inundated with unwanted pets. Inconveniences because the new place doesn’t permit them. What kind of thinking process do people have?

Animals have life spans and you don’t have the right to end those life spans just because you are too stupid to figure out the logistics and financial responsibility involved.

People complain about the pet adoption process and cost – if you can’t afford the adoption fee? You can’t afford the animal, by a long shot.

Responsible pet owners, the people who understand the commitment of owning an animal, understand that you don’t go to Kijiji or reasonable facsimile. You don’t sell an animal on social or marketplace media.

And you do not buy a pet to teach your loin spawn responsibility. Give them chores to do; don’t put an animal’s life in the balance because parenting is too complicated a process for you, to understand.

No. Owning an animal is not your “right” – it is a responsibility and commitment. If you don’t have a stable residence, if you don’t have the money to afford care, medications, spay or neutering; then you don’t have the right to own an animal. Period.

Can’t help myself…

Maybe you have to be Canadian to “get this”.  So reminds me of so many of my Canadian family and friends…

 

SRA, Satanic Abuse and False Memories

I read a few of Lucien Greaves’ essays this morning and I started thinking…always a dangerous thing 😊 When I get the urge to write, I have to write.  It is a compulsion.

I am “older”, a real life “Grey Faction” individual, although thanks to L’Oreal, you won’t see a physical manifestation.

Back in my youth, I wanted to enter social work.  I wanted to make a difference, I wanted to help people with less advantages than life had gifted to me.

Well, it soon became obvious that I lacked the absolute requirement of disassociation.   Could have been my youth or the external social change that was going on, in the end, the reason is irrelevant.  I simply could not distance myself from the misery, sadness and tragedy of the human condition in that kind of an up close and personal milieu.

I contented myself by studying psychology.  I read everything I could get my hands on and then, in the 80’s, the world of BBS’ing and then…THE INTERNET.  It was in the late 70’s and early 80’s that I noticed a very disturbing trend within psychology.  Publish or Perish took on a very dark and powerful persona.

Escalation of controversial therapies and just outright bullshit became the norm.  Repressed memories, hypnotic regression and of course, SRA – Satanic Ritual Abuse.  I was no theologian but even I knew, sitting there, in front of my Zenith/Amstrad/E-Machine/Compaq/HP/Dell/Alienware that this was absolute nonsense.  It made no logical sense, none.

I’m embarrassed to say, that the SRA hysterical nonsense saw some of its beginnings in Canada, through the drivel of an actual psychiatrist – Lawrence Pazder.  (https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-canadian-book-that-tricked-the-world-into-believing-they-were-overrun-with-satanist-murder-cults)

But, the USA, as it is wont to do…decided to take it bigger, more sensational and the nightmare for so many innocent people began.  The nightmare belongs to all of us.  The victims of the accusations, the children who were used as pawns and society.

I kept waiting for someone, anyone, responsible for the licensing, the control of these psychologists, the social workers, law enforcement and indeed, the very judicial system, to wake up and realize the total insanity of what was going on.  I am still waiting, by the way.

This isn’t to say that there is not abuse at the hands of misguided Satanists or any other religious group.  Of course there is, one only needs to open a news paper and see which bishop/priest/televangelist/rabbi or reverend has been busted for abusing a sacred trust.

Predators are a fact of life.  What is not a “fact” of life is the absurd claim that there are clandestine bands of Satanists dragging children through tunnels, flying them to secret destinations on airplanes and chowing down on infants.  This is insanity.  It is delusional and yet?  There are “professionals” out there, spreading these fabrications for, I assume, the notoriety, fame and bucks that it brings them.

People love a good conspiracy and if it involves sex, drugs and abuse?  All the better.  Critical thinking (if possessed) is tucked away, for another day.

The human psyche is a wonderful, complex, terrifying thing.  We can convince ourselves of anything, consciously or subconsciously.  Playing at or with the psyche of an individual is a dangerous thing and only someone with absolute integrity should ever think of attempting it.  Unfortunately, the world of psychology is chock full of practitioners without even an iota of that human quality.

I have no doubt, whatsoever, that if I were to undergo a regression, at the hands of one of these misguided “professionals”, I would show terrifying memories of childhood.  No Satanic abuse but perhaps alien abduction or the memory of Godzilla tearing up my neighbourhood or perhaps, some memory extremely close to the events experienced by character played by Barbara Hershey, in The Entity.

We retain these memories, they imprint themselves.  Every movie, book, news story, comic strip, is imprinted somewhere in our brain.  The imprint is deeper the more we think about it.  As toddlers, seeing a movie poster or in a foray to the kitchen for a drink, we catch a bit of a horror movie.  It imprints, it stays there.

Then, perhaps life throws us a curve-ball, or we develop a mental disruption/illness.  The Serotonin levels take a dip or spike and we seek “professional” help.  We are at the mercy of the therapist, at our most vulnerable.  How do you know if you are dealing with a reputable therapist, one who is not out to line their pockets, use you as a vehicle to recognition or suffering from their own delusions?

Well, currently – there is no way to know because the various licensing boards refuse to take a stand against their members, refuse to speak out on behalf of the truly vulnerable among us.

What began as a science, in the last century and into this one, has become pseudoscience all in the name of “Publish or Perish”.  It takes no prisoners and leaves the casualties to writhe on the side of the road.

It is up to us to take a stand and demand these boards stop standing idly by and call these charlatans out as the clear and present danger that they are.  Call out the ISSTD.  Call out these frauds.  Put them before courts of law, professional disciplinary boards and the courts of public opinion.

To quote, a very wise young man: “Everyone has a right to effective, evidence-based mental health care devoid of dangerous, long-debunked conspiracy theories.”