new assignment: rue morgue

just got back to zielona góra, where i thought i'd have a chance to catch up on the primary project i was working before getting pulled in to work on that beijing-timed stuff.

but no. i barely got into the office this morning before derrick, my boss, calls me in. he's brilliant, and works his ass off; he's exactly the type that will be on the council himself someday, i'm sure. but on a personal level, he's basically a jerk. just completely unsympathetic and tactless, is all. you get used to it. or you get transferred, i guess.

anyway, with no preamble whatsoever, before i even finish sitting down, he says, 'you're going to media ops, celebrity division. you'll report to begner.' and then he just keeps poring over the papers on his desk, doesn't even say 'thanks' or 'that's all' or anything.

his assistant gave me the folder with all the details on my way out. there were copies in there of the review procedures for the scenarios i'd worked on over the last, what's it been? 30 months? he put some decent comments in there; nothing too glowing, but all true, at least. once he's a councilor, those will be nice to have in my file, no doubt about that.

so, media ops, celebrity division. or as it's more popularly known around the organization, the rue morgue. i guess begner was impressed with some of the work i did on the u.s. scientology people a couple years ago.

so long story short -- too late i know -- i'll be helping organize and plan some of the distracting and headline-stealing antics of your most-loved and/or most-hated celebrities. you'll see my work in everything from tabloids to vogue, from e!tv to the bbc. of course it won't all be me, the staff at the rue morgue is huge. but hopefully it won't be too long before they give me someone big & splashy. like paris, or britney, or brad, or becks.

unfortunately i have to leave poland, and only right after i got here. sigh. just boarded the rail europe train in wroclaw. i couldn't schedule a jet to paris until late tomorrow, so i figured i'd just slum it on reg transit. i'll meet some of my new coworkers in paris, which is as much of a central office as the celebrity division has, i hear. then on to new york, to meet begner.

maybe i'll see someone famous on the way, lol.

the green line

just finished a good national geographic article on bethlehem. it's from the december 2007 issue, what can i say, i'm behind on my magazine stack. well, this is reading for pleasure, that's why.

ng is one of my favorite reg mags, because it doesn't try to get all political. you have to realize how impossible it is to read any news or political analysis when you know that any time an author's right about what's going on, it's completely by accident. so ng is a nice escape: fossils, slice of culture somewhere, some exotic animal, etc.

so this issue's slice of culture somewhere is bethlehem 2007 a.d., right in the middle of the israeli-palestinian conflict. now, of all the conflicts in all the world, this one is indeed special. it is the only one that is totally uncontrolled, unstaged.

all the others, literally without exception, are carefully orchestrated by us to accomplish certain objectives, or to maintain certain stases. from india/pakistan to the "georgia crisis", they're all planned out. and you wouldn't believe how rarely they stray from plan, or how quickly they're put back on if they do.

but not israel. that whole damm place is wild and on its own. it has been since 1949. things were sliding into chaos after 1948 -- real chaos, not our usual faux chaos -- but the councilors couldn't agree on what to do. oddly enough, there were partisans for both sides, which never happens. i don't know why, though i know it wasn't any of that religious claptrap that fuels the conflict on the ground.

so during one particularly absinthe-fueled night, after weeks of interminable meetings, the idea was floated: what if we really let them go? au naturel, uninterfered-with, and see what happens? amazingly, the councilors were all so sure their side would quickly prevail that they agreed. and the knowledge to be gained from such an experiment was another benefit, they decided.

that's what the green line is really named for, the absinthe. the ink-color story was cooked up for the media, for obvious reasons.

the rest, as they say, is history. nothing's stabilized, and it doesn't look like anything ever will be. there were, and still are, interesting observations coming out of research about it. but frankly the cost and work of managing everything else surrounding this thing is beyond immense.

"This is not just land," says Froman, his long white beard spilling from his chin, unruly as a river rapid. "This is the Holy Land. There's no oil, no gold, no diamonds. It's a desert! But this is God's palace." Froman is 62 years old; he can count back 17 generations of rabbis in his family. He's the 18th. His son is also a rabbi.

guess what dude. it is in fact just land. and you're right, it's not even good land. hang it up already, you crazy bastards.

russia and georgia go for the gold

as you've probably guessed, the main destabilization planned to occur during the worldwide distraction event in beijing is the russian/georgian conflict. without the media cover of something on the scale of the olympics, it's much harder to keep this kind of thing on the back burner. and that's where it needs to be for a little longer, while it continues to simmer, building pressure.

the final result, as the tv networks have already started hyping, will be the return of the russians to superpower status. once obama is sworn in next january (spoiler alert; oops, too late, lol), the u.s. will be stepping down as global aggressor and wildcard. it's another character's turn to play the heavy in next season's episodes.

but don't worry about that. just keep watching to see if your favorite "athletes" will medal in beijing. (here's an insider tip: watch what happens with jessica zelinka.)

"R.P.D.M.": Far Out Shirts Design In Movie

Here at Far Out Shirts, our involvement with movies is usually limited to making designs inspired by them. So we were excited to be contacted by independent filmmaker Mark Harris of Desperate Comfort Films about using an image from one of our shirts in a short film.

The film, finally done and fresh from winning 2nd place in a film festival in Los Angeles, is great. You can't miss our shirt design, which is from Cthulhu For President, one of our most popular shirts.

NOTE: The film is unrated, but is definitely "not suitable for work". I'd hazard to guess that if it were rated by the MPAA, it would be in the "R" neighborhood (drug use, violence, brief nudity; all that good stuff).

That disclaimer out of the way, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present: R.P.D.M.

china 2008 coming together well

after a close call involving some especially media-worthy perversions on the behalf of a couple high-level chinese functionaries, an international incident that was avoided by two hundred kg of fresh butter (or at least, the promised delivery of two hundred kg of fresh butter), and a case of over-the-top internet privacy invasion at chinese hotels that ALMOST wasn't noticed by the west, it looks like our preparations for this year's worldwide distraction event are just about done.

for that's what the olympics are, of course. summer and winter. plus the world cup, various sport-specific worldwide or regional tournaments, and hell, regular pro sports too, for that matter.

sex and violence are of course two of the main tools of distraction. actual violence has its uses, of course: skirmishes, outright wars, assassinations, crime, etc. but that's only the fear side of the psychological equation.

for the hope side, sport is the proxy for violence. and for sex, too, in some cases, but that's just a happy side-effect. it's not like we really need to push more psych-positive sexual imagery, do we.

the other nice thing about sport, besides the main benefit of the spectacle's irresistibility, is the power and fame fantasies it engenders. here are these bigger-than-life heroes. what children (and their parents) can't resist dreaming of reaching that pinnacle someday? the resultant outpouring of energy in that direction (and therefore away from activities that foster awareness of what's going on around them, unrest, etc.) is phenomenal.

another nice aspect of the international nature of these events is that it makes our work easier. cuts down on travel, to have all the pawns in one place. also sets a perfect stage for some of our international operations (e.g., like the destabilization scenario that includes that hotel spying episode).

apparently there was some worry, back when these big, global sports events were being slotted in for nearly every year, that people would realize what they were really for. it seemed too overt, too obvious to some of the councilors. but as usual, those few were overestimating your perceptiveness.

but what i personally think makes it even worse, especially in the olympic years, is how egregious the "athletes" are. these bizarre individuals are nearly all owned, er, sponsored, by people in the Organization. it's a hobby for a lot of them, kind of like breeding dogs for show. they wind up with athletes that strain credulity, but year after year everyone still buys into the fantasy. and the bar is raised, and the whole illusion is stronger.

let the games begin!

uh-oh. plus, twitter

wouldn't you know it. i hijack the blog of some dopey, obscure t-shirt site to write about working for the secret one world government that really rules the world, and 2 weeks later they get linked to from imdb.com. crap.

oh well. i didn't think anyone would ever read this, but welcome anyway, noobs.

also, for twitterers, i tweet sometimes, too: twitter.com/novusordo.

obfuscation

damm, i've been traveling a lot lately. on my second glass of cru des ptolmees after a long day of meetings here in cairo. it's a balmy 33 degrees in this outdoor rooftop cafe, but the temperature's dropping now that the sun is going down.

one of the main topics of discussion, both in and between these various meetings, is another obfuscation that's been ordered. the target of this one is an author: a mr. alaa al aswany. i won't get into the facts of his threatening behavior, not because i don't know them (i do, in more detail than i care to, believe me) or because i'm worried about getting in trouble (guaranteed nobody will ever read this, or trace it to me if they did). i won't go over the case simply because it's quite boring.

but there are rules. and under these rules, this guy's been sentenced to obfuscation. and that's what i want to write about, rather than the details of this particular case.

it's basically just this: when one of you famous regs gets anywhere near the truth about our organization, and has any remote possibility of broadcasting what they know to any decent number of people, they must be taken out.

with your typical blunt, unsubtle reg mind, you probably immediately assume i mean assassination. that's the kind of thinking the culture division constantly cultivates. especially the video guys. 'first reaction: violence' was actually their department slogan for about 10 years (now it's, 'the unreality of reality' or something like that).

anyway, no. the absolute last thing we want for these dangerous individuals is martyrdom. that's serious, and much harder to counteract when it occurs. in fact, the most troublesome obfuscation targets are also assigned round the clock security, typically for 10 to 15 years after their fade from the public interest. all it takes is a remarkable death of some sort to bring these people back into the spotlight again.

much more effective is for these people's audience to dry up. no more interviews, publicity tours, crowds of fans. actually, that's not true. it can't be too sudden, or it will just add fuel to conspiracy flames. no more *high profile* interviews, *successful* publicity tours, *large* crowds of fans. it's okay for these people to still have some hardcore followers. it just makes them look even more like fringe players.

and that's what will happen to mr. aswany. he'll just fade and fade and fade until he's barely remembered by anyone. welcome to footnote-ville. if that.

sometime i'll have to tell my favorite obfuscation story: miss patricia andrzejewski. my uncle jonas worked on that one. the obfuscation is pretty run of the mill; it's the events leading up to it that are the juicy part.

Everyone Welcome Edith

Hi, everybody. Chris from Far Out Shirts here. I tried to log in yesterday to write a short post, and found our blog had a, um, new guest author. "Edith," who works for the secret one world government, or something like that.

It also had a new password, and I couldn't log in. Great, I thought. We've been hacked.

So I tried to send this Edith person an email, but it bounced. And before I even had time to finish double-checking the address, I got another email. It had no sender or reply-to addresses, and no routing information.

Here's the full contents of the message:

dude, don't waste my time. if you want access back to your zero-audience blog, log in as [REDACTED], password [REDACTED]. but don't mess with me.

edith

Sure enough, the login worked. But I didn't have any administrative access to the blog anymore; I could only post stories, and edit the ones I posted. Totally unacceptable.

I didn't know how she got that bounced email before, but it seemed like somehow I could communicate with her that way. So I wrote another, angrier message. I think I threatened to close the account if I had to. Anyway, that was a big mistake, though I didn't realize it until later. At the time, all I got was another message. Again, it came immediately and had no sender information at all. All it said was, "dude, seriously. what did i tell you?".

Half an hour later, my cell phone went dead. I called AT&T from a landline, but despite spending an hour and a half on the phone with them, they couldn't find any trace that I'd ever had an account with them.

On my drive home that night, I was stopped and ticketed four times. And when I got home, I found my city water bill, in an envelope postmarked two days ago, was for $17,543. It also said that the name of my "personal customer account manager" was -- you guessed it -- Edith. Though it was printed on my bill as "edith", all lowercase, like she writes.

I got the hint. Edith, enjoy the blog. I'm still a little hurt that she thinks our blog is so obscure that she could publish humanity's deepest, darkest secrets here.

Oh well. At least it'll be updated occasionally now, I guess.

P.S. The post I was going to write yesterday wasn't much, anyway. Just a link to this guy's Teach the Controversy shirts. Making fun of this "intelligent design" bullshit, they're just really funny and well-done. Hats off to you, Jeremy Kalgreen. We're jealous.

new bungalow in new france

i have the day off today; it's moving day. well, not moving day, more like just move-in day. i'm moving into my 5th bungalow. this one's in trois-rivières, quebec. nice spot to spend time in during the dog days of summer. it's a comfy 22 here today.

i'm sure i'll write more about how this in general, but the way housing works for us is this: everyone gets a bungalow to live in. several, actually, if you want them, anywhere in the world. all free, of course. it sounds luxurious, and i guess in some sense it is. but not in the way you're thinking.

this will seem very foreign to all you regs, but all of us basically have whatever we want. i mean, what good is secretly running world affairs down to the burg level, if we don't skim a little off the top? ;)

but what's weird is that since we can all literally have anything we want, all the trappings of conspicuous consumption that are so common among you regs just don't exist. plus the fact, of course, that we can't flaunt it publicly anyway, of course. sure, people get into it for a while when they're young. but it's pretty boring to have 6 ferraris in your garage if you can't drive them around and show them off.

so, with a few exceptions, we all pretty much settle into a lifestyle surrounded by the absolute best, not by the absolute trendiest or coolest or hippest. audis & bmws, not ferraris or aston martins.

and that's how it is with the bungalows. they're not really what you think of when you hear the word 'bungalow'. that's just the common term for them, a generic that applies to a wide variety of abodes in a wide variety of locations. they're nice, but they're not ridiculously opulent mansions. they're usually apartments, actually. large, beautiful apartments, located in the nicest part of town. apartments & condos are much easier to be anonymous in than houses, anyway.

i've spent most of the last few months, aside from traveling for work, at my place in lagos. yes, the one in nigeria. not exactly the kind of place you usually see posters of in your travel agent's office, lol. but my cousin gregor runs the municipality, and some of the food and music there is really nice. but it's been getting hot, and i've been missing québécois.

my furniture was just deliviered; gotta go.

voting with your money

happened to be in a reg store this morning, and was struck by the number of seals, marks and verifications adorning the products. not just low-fat, diet, or that kind of thing. but the ones that make the buyer feel they're 'supporting' something. you've seen them: organic, fair trade, natural, recycled, breast cancer awareness, etc.

then the thought struck me, what if someone wanted to know which products were produced under the auspices of the true masters? but that only made me laugh, because such a mark would have to be put on every label of every package in the store. if you buy anything, anywhere, anytime, you're supporting us.

so, uh, thanks for that! lol.

salmonella - it's gonna get ya

please don't miss the boat on freaking out about the big salmonella outbreak. it's this year's scary, unstoppable disease. bird flu, lyme disease, etc.? all passé. last season's fashions. i mean, they're still out there, and they could still GET YOU, so be sure to maintain at least a residual, background level fear about them, too. sure they faded from the news, but nobody ever found a cure, did they?

but more urgently, it's salmonella that you should worry about right now. and talk about; don't forget to spread the fear. we put a lot of effort into promoting these scary diseases, so it's the least you can do to help out. if nothing else, please at least feel powerless.

because you are, lol.

how perfect is this picture from a washingtonpost.com story on the epidemic, btw? a bright picture of fresh produce in some local village market -- that would otherwise practically be a damm postcard -- is transformed into something only slightly less repugnant and terrifying than eating live roaches. and the wizened, disembodied hand? a brown hand, for full effect in the post's caucasian-majority media market, note. and what's that airborne tomato doing? is it being tossed in; discarded in disgust? but that blur looks like it's going up, doesn't it? does the brown hand belong to some aboriginal witch-doctor? double-scary!

i'm not sure who doctored this shot, i think it was werner. the man's a master. always pushing the envelope; piling it on like this. i never think the media will run the stuff he comes up with, but they always do. like they have a choice, lol.

hijacking this now

hello all. i'm taking over this blog. the poor saps who run this dorky shirt company or whatever obviously don't use it. and i need to cover my tracks anyway. might as well use this.

can you believe their effing password was "blogger"?? i kid you not. amateurs; seriously.

my name's edith. i work for the secret, transnational governing body that REALLY runs things. you know all the conspiracy nuts? the new world order, illuminati freaks? they're more or less right. that's my company.

of course there's an entire supersection of the employee handbook forbidding participation in any kind of interactive reg media. so writing this -- hell, just thinking about writing it -- could get me disappeared. but you know what? i can't keep it in anymore.

don't think i'm against what we do. i'm not. it's pretty cool, actually. it's the world's absolutely innermost inner circle. the ultimate clique. i feel kind of sorry for all you regs out there, to be honest. but whatever. it is what it is. and i certainly don't want to bring it down or anything.

no, i just can't stand not having an audience for some of the stories i know. what fun is a secret if nobody EVER finds out? it's been, like, 4,000 years or something now. time to let some of you suckas in on the fun.

p.s. no, of course my name's not really edith. jesus.

Drawing Winners

It's time -- past time, actually -- for some free shirt giveaways. Since it's been more than a month since our last, we're going to pull TWO lucky winners out of the helmet this time (emails obscured to protect the innocent):

AMAZINGLY LUCKY WINNER NUMBER 00001:
archer873@xxxxxxxx.com.au

SHOCKINGLY LUCKY WINNER NUMBER 00002:
Sillylillydog@xxxxxxxx.ca

We've also sent emails to these amazingly, shockingly lucky individuals. All they have to do is tell us which shirt they want, and where they want it sent.

Meanwhile, condolences to all of you who didn't win. We won't say, "lost". "Winning-challenged", how about that? And unfortunately, this drawing was the last chance, as we're going to stop doing these freebies. For a while, at least. Thanks for playing!

P.S. We're putting the kibosh on this promotion because we're starting another one. It will only be available to our email newsletter subscribers, though, so you might want to make sure that you're signed up for that! The sign-up blank is over there in the right-hand sidebar. (If you're not sure if you're already subscribed, just sign up anyway; our email system will make sure you're only on the list once.)

Shop Now For Mother's Day

Mother's Day is coming (in the U.S.): May 11th. And some of our shirts would be totally, absolutely, unreservedly perfect for your ma. Others wouldn't. For your convenience, the 2008 Far Out Shirts Mother's Day Shopping Guide.

We carefully selected the following designs, hoping to suit the tastes and preferences of most woman who have given birth to you, along with an indicator (YES vs. NO) of how they held up in a survey of similar women recently conducted in local leek-farming communes. There may also be others we missed: see them all and decide for yourself.

YES

YES

NO

YES

NO

YES

NO!!

New Shirt: Prepare To Die

Are you seeking revenge on a man with six fingers on his right hand? Have you dedicated your life to the study of fencing? Are you not left-handed? Familiar with Bonetti's Defense and Agrippa? Then this is the shirt for you, my friend. Passing it up would be inconceivable.

In: Movies & TV

New Shirt: Aircraft ID Chart

At long last, and as a belated April Fool's gift to you and yours, here's our latest & greatest! (There wasn't room on the product page for the full text of the Act, but it's included here for reference.)




49 U.S.C. subtitle IX--ch. 701, sections 70101-70121, (the Act) provides for the Department to grudgingly tolerate and reluctantly accept civilian assistance in identifying airborne objects which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, do not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object.

Further, the Act may impose civil penalties if a person is found to have violated a requirement of the Act, a regulation issued under the Act, or any term or condition of the Act. This rulemaking partly consolidates parts 405 and 406 into one part, part 406. To that end, Sec. 405.7 is removed and new Sec. 406.9 is added. Section 406.117 provides for non-disclosure of certain information. This subpart is based largely on 14 CFR part 13 subpart G, under which certain civil penalty cases are adjudicated by the Department. The Act prohibits public disclosure of information that qualifies for an exemption under 5 U.S.C. 5521(b)(4)(ii) or information that is designated as confidential by the person or head of the executive agency providing the information, unless the Department decides that withholding the information is contrary to the public or national interest. All authority under the Act has been delegated to the Administrator. Under section 413.17, these mandated amendments are being adopted as the final rule without prior notice or prior public comment.

In: Far Out

(Update: minor changes to shirt design)

When I Die [Onion Shirt]

Came across a shirt in the Onion's store that I couldn't resist pointing out: When I die, I am going to haunt the fuck out of you people.

I also like their Kitten Thinks of Nothing But Murder All Day shirt.

Buzzkill - Malaria Charity Shirt

I bring to your attention this fine shirt, the purchase of which benefits a fine cause. Note that this is not a Far Out Shirts shirt, but is produced by the Nothing But Nets campaign, sponsored by the UN, to raise money to buy mosquito-proof bed-nets for malaria-ridden parts of the world.

I first heard about this campaign, and indeed, about what a killer malaria still is in much of the world, after reading an article about it in National Geographic. It made me say, "holy shit", anyway.

The bottom line is, malaria's bad, and there's no vaccine yet. It's transmitted almost exclusively by mosquitos, at night. People that can have a net over their bed, especially little kids, have a better chance of not dying a horrifying death or being permanently brain damaged.

And, that's a cool shirt. Available in men's & women's styles, printed on American Apparel shirts, $20. $10 of which buys somebody a lifesaving bed-net. Check it out.

January Winner & Newsletter

Congratulations to the winner of this month's free shirt drawing. Kyle S. is our lucky winner, and his new "It's A Trap" shirt will be shipped out ASAP.

It could be you next month, but only if you enter!

We also just sent out this month's newsletter. Subscribe when you sign up for the drawing with just one mouse-click. It's only sent once a month, we'll never give your address with anyone else, and it's easy to unsubscribe if it's not your bag.

New Shirt: Cthulhu Loathes You

Cthulhu loathes me, this I know
For the Necronomicon tells me so
Little ones to Him belong
They are weak but He is strong

In: Far Out