Secret Mistresses of the MRM

On the Man Boobz blog the other day, commenter C. C. Fuss made a startling admission:

What you new MRA recruits failed to realise is that we fymynymymynysts have also
taken over the men’s rights movement. You must now accept my orders!

Muahahahahaha….

I have since spent the intervening days in intensive investigation of this claim, and what I have to report will rock you to the very core of your being: C. C. Fuss was telling the truth! Warren Farrell is actually Jill at Feministe; the Anti-Feminist is actually Lindsay Beyerstein of Focal Point; and W. F. Price, Lord of the Spearhead, is none other than Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon. And it turns out that Roy Den Hollander, the Manhattan attorney who has made a career out of suing bars with Ladies Night drink specials, isn't even a human being; "he" is actually the animatronic Woodrow Wilson from Disney World's Hall of Presidents, reprogrammed by a secret cabal of feminist cyberneticists.

If you think about it, this makes all kinds of sense. The central focus of the Man Boobz blog itself is pointing out the incredibly vicious, rampant* misogyny that infests the Men's Rights Movement like a repulsive infestation thingie. As the, um, spearhead of online anti-feminism, the MRM is the face of Male Resistance on the internet. Naturally, then, feminists are going to try to discredit their opponents by making them out to be a gang of psychopaths spewing out spittle-flecked rants in support of wife abusers and rapists.

So, to any Men's Rights Activist out there who happens to read this post, beware! You only think you're fighting the good fight! You're actually puppets dancing on the strings umbilical cords of the very feminists you think you're opposing!

But it's not too late! Boycott MANcott the so-called Men's Rights Movement! Go your own way! Get out there and organize battered men's shelters! Protest prison rape! Build low-income housing for homeless men! Make a real difference in the lives of the oppressed men of the world! That's how a REAL man fights the Matriarchy!

*Veiled penis reference.

Prophecy 5

The Prophecies of Johnny Pez continue, even though the terrible powers at work are causing my ears to turn blue. The Great Work must go on, though I forfeit peace of mind and suffer the scorn of a skeptical world.

After they see what the curtain reveals
All will bow down at the sign of the weasel
Five hundred hamsters are spinning their wheels
To start up the engine that powers Nurse Diesel

I sooth my battered ego with the thought that one day millions will revere me.

(continue to Prophecy 6)

It's a subtle form of compliment

Man does not live by prophecy alone. Man also requires the occasional embedded music video. Here is 1992's "I Don't Care" by Shakespears Sister.

Prophecy 4

The Prophecies of Johnny Pez continue. When the prophetic trance seizes me, the everyday world vanishes. There may come a day when it does not return.

The rushing bear does his business in the woods
At the end of the bag the thief gains his sting
The Master of Laketown is caught fencing stolen goods
While the Dark Lord's mighty bell begins to ring

Do not meddle in the affairs of prophets, for they are subtle and quick to anger.

(continue to Prophecy 5)

The Rapture Wave

The usual picture of the Rapture as presented by Xian fundamentalists has it occurring everywhere in the world, all at once. However, Harold Camping of Family Radio has come up with a new twist. He says the Rapture will happen at 6PM on May 21, separately in each time zone. So what Camping is predicting is not Rapture Classic, but rather a Rapture Wave, sweeping around the world over a 24-hour period as each time zone reaches 6PM.

For an idea of what Camping's Rapture Wave would look like, consider the world as it is when this blog post will appear, at 11PM on the evening of May 20 on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. A thousand miles west of here, in the Central Time Zone, it is 10PM. Two thousand miles west of there, in the Pacific Time Zone, it is 8PM, and in Hawaii it is 5PM. And west of Hawaii . . .

West of Hawaii is the International Date Line, where the date jumps forward from May 20 to May 21. There, in Kiribati, it is 4PM on the afternoon of May 21, and the Rapture is just two hours away. Two hours from now, at 1AM Eastern Time, when the clocks strike 6PM in Rawaki, all the Real True Christians there, and everywhere else in that time zone, will be raptured up to heaven. An hour later, at 2AM Eastern Time, the same thing will happen in the next time zone to the west, the time zone containing New Zealand. An hour after that, the Rapture will reach Port Vila, Vanuatu; an hour after that, at 4AM Eastern Time, it will reach the east coast of Australia.

The Rapture Wave will continue moving west across the face of the Earth, reaching the Eastern Time Zone itself in seventeen hours. Six hours after that, it will pass through the Hawaiian Islands, the last place on Earth to experience the Rapture Wave.

So, keep your eye on Kiribati. If everyone is still there at 1:01 AM Eastern Time, you'll know that Camping was wrong, again, and the Rapture hasn't come. Of course, there may not be enough Real True Christians in Kiribati to make any impression, so the real test case will be in New Zealand, three hours from now. If all the Real True Christians are still in their bodies at 2:01 AM Eastern Time, we'll know for certain that this was yet another false alarm.

UPDATE: 2:54 AM EDT. The Rapture seems to have passed New Zealand by. O the embarrassment.

UPDATE 2: 10:29 AM EDT. Australia still unraptured. More on this story as it develops.

Prophecy 3

The Prophecies of Johnny Pez continue. Today's prophecy was composed while I was supposed to be working. I make no apologies; there are powerful forces at work here, and the slightest mis-step on my part could result in whole nations being consumed in fire.

The Lord of the Imf will feel the bite of the handcuff
To the Belgians and Swiss will come rumors of war
The City with the Big Shoulders will suffer from dandruff
And worms will emerge from the Big Apple's core

The burden is terrible, but I shall persevere.

(continue to Prophecy 4)

Prophecy 2

We now present the second installment of the Prophecies of Johnny Pez:

The hairy potter fires his earthen cup
While the riddling Lord enchants the cross whore.
Within a hog's warts a parcel of tongues opens up,
But the server's nape closes the dumbled door.

What does it mean? Maybe nothing. But maybe it fortells the end of the world!

(continue to Prophecy 3)

The Prophecies of Johnny Pez

Being a prophet is easy.

Whether we're talking about the Oracle at Delphi, the Revelation of St. John the Divine, the Prophecy of Merlin, the Prophecies of Nostradamus, or even the Prophets of the Celestial Temple, it's always the same game. The prophecies are always couched in such cryptic, arcane, metaphorical language that they could mean pretty much anything. Always, it's only after the prophecied event takes place that people are able to look back and see what the prophecy was actually referring to.

Thus, it isn't necessary for a prophecy to actually predict anything. All you need is something that sounds like a prediction, cloaked in appropriately murky language, and you can gain a coterie of groupies followers who will sing your praises and (most importantly) buy collections of your prophetic writings.

Sounds like a sweet deal to me, so I've decided to get into the prophecy business. I'm going to start composing my own prophecies in the form of Nostradamus-style alternate rhyme quatrains. Since I don't want to glut the prophetic market, I'll limit myself to no more than one per day. Here's the first one:

The lions of the north will shake their heads
Two hundred Bolivians will seek release
The Lord of the Trumpet will bare his threads
And a plague of vampires will trouble Greece

Remember, folks, just because I think it's a load of old rubbish, doesn't mean these aren't genuine prophetic utterances. For all anyone knows, I may actually be channeling some higher power when I write these things. So, when I start publishing my prophecies in expensive hardbound volumes with tooled leather covers, you may want to buy a copy.

Just in case.

(continue to Prophecy 2)

Happiness is a cool Gunn

These days, Blake Edwards is best known as the director of the Pink Panther films. However, back in the 1950s, Edwards was best known as the creator of Richard Diamond, Private Detective, a radio drama that was revived as a TV series in 1957 on NBC. The suits at NBC were so pleased with Richard Diamond that the following year they asked Edwards to come up with another private eye show.

Edwards had a quirky sense of humor, and it may be that he set out to give the lead character in his new show the most blatantly phallic name on television: Peter Gunn. He may have expected NBC to veto the name, but they didn't, and on Monday, September 22, 1958, Peter Gunn had its television debut.

Peter Gunn was not your typical tough private eye. He was smooth, sophisticated, a snappy dresser, and a jazz aficianado. Instead of swilling rotgut in a run-down office, he liked to sip a very occasional martini at a jazz club called Mother's. The show's theme song and incidental music, composed by Henry Mancini, echoed Gunn's taste for jazz. In fact, you may not be aware of it, but you're already familiar with the "Peter Gunn Theme" (here it is in the trailer for the Blues Brothers movie).

Peter Gunn was an example of a now-extinct art form, the half-hour television drama. These days, it's not uncommon for a plot thread to extend through an entire season, or even for the entire run of a series. This gives the writers and producers a lot of freedom, but that freedom comes at a cost. The ability to create the necessary elements of a drama, such as plot, characters, and background, and do it all in 30 minutes, requires a great deal of discipline and a knack for concise storytelling that you don't see much on television any more.

Thanks to the miracle of YouTube, you can now see the pilot episode of Peter Gunn, "The Kill", in glorious black and white (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). And if 30 minutes of Peter Gunn isn't enough, a search through YouTube will also produce the next three episodes, "Streetcar Jones", "The Vicious Dog", and "The Blind Pianist".