206 pages, the upshot of which is: the Hebrew God Yahweh was an astronaut who happened upon our Earth and got into a pissing contest with the resident God, Elohim. Yahweh wasn't very popular, so he created his own separate race to worship him: the Jews. And that's why anti-semitism is such a big problem. And it's all in The Bible, if you know where to look, and Marc Dem knows where to look, because he's got a massive brain and is an incredibly sensitive and perceptive person who is ABSOLUTELY NOT against the people of Israel.
We read this shit so you don't have to. Well, we skim it. We skim shit. There's the motto if we ever get a TOMTIT coat of arms.
Looks like P. Parsons is back in business.This glossy SF film magazine landed on our car this morning, and we didn't even reserve a copy by cutting out a coupon and spoiling the back cover.
Electric Orange are from Westphalia in Germany. The title of one of their albums is 'Krautrock from Hell', which perhaps sums up their mix of drifting psychedelic jam music and occasionally crunching riffage.
Lots of stuff here and on You Tube, which has several of their albums in their entirety, including 'Platte', a record that sounds like Pompeii era Pink Floyd but without the gongs and afghan hounds.
‘Brutes and
Savages’ is a mondo film, so you’ll know what to expect: dusky foreign breasts
and repulsive animal cruelty.
The clearly Italian ‘Arthur Davis’
leads an expedition into Africa and South America to document the primitive rites
of the indigenous people, the titular brutes and savages. His modus operandi is
to tip up to a remote village and ask for the head man’s permission to film
some notorious ritual that the tribe are famous for. When the chief refuses (perhaps
because he is frightened of Arthur’s salmon safari suit) Arthur makes the culturally insensitive decision to go
ahead and film it anyway, at which point we cut to some faked footage that goes on for ages. Don’t worry
though: ‘all scenes, whether actual or
simulated, represents actual truth’.
This truth
includes a turtle having its throat cut, a goat being decapitated, a llama
having its heart removed and numerous scenes of birds and animals killing and
eating each other. Oh, and a monkey gets put on a fire.
The whole thing peaks very early on, with a bizarre sequence
in which African tribesmen are forced to wade through a river as part of their
initiation into manhood. Using stock footage, blatant re-enactment and a series of
unconvincing models, the film makers stage a fatal crocodile attack, including
jump cuts to footage featuring a different man battling a plastic croc in what looks
like a California swimming pool. It’s pathetic, especially the fake hands and fake head
stuffed in the fake reptiles fake mouth. Worryingly for the viewer, this is the
highlight of the film, and there is still an hour and fifteen minutes left
to run.
It's a long haul to the end, although we
do get to see men simulate sex with llamas and get a sneak peek at South
America’s most important collection of ‘erotic pottery’ (Arthur takes great
pleasure in pointing out the penises). Mostly, however, it’s quite boring,
interspersed with uneasy moments of graphic nastiness. On the plus side, the music is by Riz Ortalini, and is excellent, although sadly unavailable at present, which is just fucking typical.
In the end analysis, the
narrator (the recently deceased Richard Johnson, slumming it to the extent that
he is virtually a homeless, meth addicted derelict) asks if these ‘brutes and
savages’ are really any worse than us so-called sophisticates. Is slowly sawing
out the throat of a turtle any different to killing a chicken? Does having deep
freezes and TVs make us better people? Aren’t we all really brutes and savages
at heart?
He’s got a
point.
But,
unfortunately, he chose to make it in this film.
TOMTIT read a lot of self-help books and instructional leaflets, not because we haven't reached perfection but because it is important to know what your enemy has in his arsenal. Let's face it, it's not the books or even the writers that you have to look out for, but the readers: anyone who buys a book about 'projecting unspoken orders that must be obeyed' to use in earnest needs to be carefully watched: they're clearly some sort of dangerous psychopath, looking for a way to put you under their power. Avoid.
The observant among you will notice something highly irregular about this vintage postcard of Stonehenge. That's right, old people are not usually allowed in the inner circle for hygiene reasons.
