Apocalypse Culture II

Rating:
Summary: Thrilling, "Mondo Cane"-esque look at cultural extremes
Review: "Apocalypse Culture II" is the eagerly-awaited sequel to the 1987 underground classic "Apocalypse Culture." Like its predececcesor, "Apocalypse Culture II" is a series of articles chronicling cultural extremes.

The articles take many forms. Some are essays written by the editor, Adam Parfrey, and other contributors (Jim Goad, Crispin Glover, Michael Moynihan). Others are interviews with assorted artists, writers, and mass murderers. Some are documents reprinted from other sources (i.e. an analysis of the song "American Pie" by the Aryan Nations, love letters to Jodie Foster by John Hinckley Jr.). As Parfrey states in his introduction, the book is "designed to assist the reader in finding front-row seats to its perverse pleasures and strange solutions." Much of the content is extremely disturbing, but as Parfrey advises, "Readers are urged to contemplate the strange and often contradictory information within, and make up their own minds regarding its value."

Like real life itself, "Apocalypse Culture II" is simultaneously frightening, thrilling, hilarious, perverse, and disturbing. This book is NOT for the squeamish or easily offended. No matter how "progressive" and "open-minded" you think you are, there is something in here that will DEFINITELY offend you. Given the extremity of the viewpoints and artwork/ photos, it's also not a book to casually leave on your desk at work or on your coffee table.

However, if you have a strong stomach and an open mind, you're in for quite a ride.

Also highly recommended: the original "Apocalypse Culture," "Cult Rapture" (a series of lengthier articles by the editor Adam Parfrey), "Amok Fifth Dispatch" (a 500+ page directory of extreme texts and information), "Psychotropedia" (another 500+ directory of extreme texts, but with lengthier reviews and analyses by the editor, Russ Kick), "Rapid Eye Movement" (a compilation of articles by the late Simon Dwyer), and "Critical Vision" (a compilation of articles from the amazing British journal "Headpress").

Rating:
Summary: A Walk On The Wild Side, by fermed
Review: Adam Parfrey has put together his second volume of what he delicately calls "the extreme societal tendrils" of our culture. Volume II is even finer than the first volume: bigger, more varied and with greater depth.

So what have we got here? From the banal : descriptions of the exquisitely realistic female sex dolls, with orifices (it is said) more pleasure-giving than the real thing, for a mere $5,750.00 plus shipping. From the horrendous: satanism, the sexual vicitimization of children, necrophilia. From the in-between: a writing by Ted Kaczynsky (a rather dull fantasy); Danny Rolling (the Gainesville serial murderer)contributes a letter and a painting from death row; Sondra London has a short, thoughtful piece about "Murder Light," and Jim Goad writes a piece justifying (he thinks) the brutal beating of his girl friend. Jim wrote a very funny and intelligent "Redneck Manifesto," which I reviewed not so long ago. He wrote the Apocalypse piece from the Oregon State Penitentiary, where he resides on account of the above mentioned violence.

This book is full of asperities and venom and razor-sharp protrusions. It is guaranteed to scrape and not to sooth. I cannot think of any normal (or abnormal) person who will not bleed a bit, here and there, just from browsing this book. With that warning, it is highly recommended. 60 articles, lots of pictures, 457 pages.

Rating:
Summary: Well, it _woulda_ been good...
Review: Apocalypse Culture II is a huge, 450 page collection of articles, essays and other assorted texts that present the most extreme and bizarre opinions and practices that can be found in society today. That's putting it mildly. An encyclopedia of the taboo including cloning Jesus, cannibalism, necrophilia, pedophilia, conspiracy theories, Satanism, mind-control, vampirism, excretment, genetically engineered hermaphrodites, expensive sex-dolls made of silicon used for masturbation, a short story by Ted Kaczynski, pictures that combine images of Hitler, Holocuast victims and child pornography; the list goes on and on. The views expressed can be largely classified as nihilistic, as another commentator notes--a narcissistic belief in nothing, a cultural vaccuum. Pedophilia is given more space than anything else in the anthology--especially disturbing since this book was published in 2000, a year and a half before the Church scandal and the widely publicized child abductions. The material here is not for the faint of heart or those who are not cynical and optimistic about the human condition.

Most of the material is insanity, and worthless, but very interesting if you want to know what is going on in some people's heads. There are a few good contributions that do tell us a lot about our culture as a whole. The best essay is "America the Possessed Corpse," the preface to James Shelby Downard's autobiography, CARNIVALS OF LIFE AND DEATH. Here's the message--America is not a great big melting pot, but rather a witch's cauldron brewing with sex-magic, ritual murder and race-mixing. Revisionist historian Michael Hoffnman gives his critique of the FBI's handling of the Unabomber case. The man who pled guilty to the attacks, Ted Kaczynski, was a symbolic scapegoat to cover up for the "Cryptocracy's" ritualistic crime involving pagan fertility rites and black magic. "For Fear of Little Men" is a similarly bizarre essay detailing our collective fascination with small, artificial, animated men. This fettish manifests itself in such things as GI Joe, Barbie dolls, cartoon characters, video game characters, Furbies, Telletubbies and robotic dogs. "High Tech Marketing Research" details the methods of how advertisers and retailers collect information on consumers' spending habits--a great threat to people's privacy. The essayist asks this thought provoking question: "Do we really want to give up our privacy for a 10% discount on Pop Tarts?" The final contribution in APOCALYPSE CULTURE II is a short story by Ted Kaczynski, "Ship of Fools." A ship is sailing further and further north into icy and dangerous waters, but the people on the ship are not aware or concerned about this and pester the captain about irrelevant issues that feel good for the moment but offer no hope of collective survival. A woman passenger wants the women to have as many blankets as the men, an animal-lover wants the ship's dog not to be kicked, an Indian wants to be allowed to run a casino, a Mexican sailor wants his orders to be issued to him in Spanish, a homosexual sailor wants to be able to...Anyway, a cabin boy pipes up and says the people have some legitimate grievances, but they better focus on turning the whole ship around. His shipmates denounce him as "fascist" and "counter-revoloutionary," and the ship crashes between icebergs and everyone on the boat perishes.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating...Horrifyingly Speaking!
Review: Carl Jung quipped once about the necessity of bringing darkness to light and what a damn unpleasant and unpopular task it can be. No wonder such compendium masterpieces as Apocalypse Culture II are rarities in a publishing world rife with the kind of corporate pabulum which only serves to distract us from the shadowed seemliness of our freak show world. Feral House editor Adam Parfrey, who put the volume together, has done for us a most unpleasant yet much needed task. It's up to us to find some kind of light within the amply sordid tome he offers.
Cutting through the general malaise which saturates Apocalypse Culture II, one discovers that this volume was not published with shock for shock's sake in mind, like such ill fated and idiotic 'zines as Boiled Angel for example. Parfrey has chosen some of the best writings in the Culture Noir genre to include in this ample sequel volume. There is enough intelligence and foresight within to actually encourage us to go beyond the human condition by forcing us to go through it, page after page. Reading Apocalypse Culture II is like touring one of the more unpleasant Bardo realms found in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, rife with Hungry Ghosts and other discarnate forms of pestilence.
In spite of the explicit taint of the book, many of the essays, articles, poems and letters contain qualities which are edifying and transcendent. There is something strangely uplifting in regards to recipes that require human baby meat as an ingredient, especially if envisioned being negotiated in the hands of Martha Stewart on her T.V. show when she's whipping up something for a dinner party. How can one ignore the confessions of an academic wannabe cannibal accompanied by pictures of his dismembered and half savored victim (found in the piece "The Strange Crime of Issei Sagawa" by Colin Wilson)? Surely Jerry Springer would invite the connoisseur onto his show if he could somehow spring him from prison, encouraging him to take full benefit of his prime time Trailer Trash democracy.
In the piece, "The Late, Great Aesthetic Taboos" by Ghazi Barakat, pornography, the most prevalent expression of middle class mediocrity/blight at the moment is treated as something anesthetically redeeming. The paintings of the American exile/artist Stu Mead whose work the printers of Apocalypse Culture II found reprehensible enough to censor serve as a prime example. One can only wonder why they didn't choose to black out an image of a Shirley Temple facsimile working her eager little bald pudenda with the handle of a riding crop. Maybe because she's enticingly adorned in Nazi regalia made her image somehow morally acceptable enough for the printers to leave uncensored.
One of the more disturbing essays "Pedophilia and the Morally Righteous" by Chris Campion vacillates between gruesome descriptions of child murder, rape to lofty expositions on Greek mythology and Philosophy in attempt to have us Platonically recollect ourselves and truly see the profound contradictions we are, at times, composed of. After reading this, one would gladly want to escape into the realm of eternal Ideas for a breather. Another worthwhile piece in this volume comes from Michael A. Hoffman II, "The Scapegoat: Ted Kaczynski, Ritual Murder and the Invocation of Catastrophe." In the spirit of the late James Shelby Downard, the author charts out the latent mystical toponomies in the Unabomber case and how the media manipulated the collective unconscious of America via the scapegoat archetype. The subliminal machinations of the cryptocracy are adequately exposed in this essay. One cannot ignore the alchemical import of the sacrifice and perhaps in the future will be able to read between the lines of corporate media depictions of mad bombers and other assorted lone nutters as to what truly is being manipulated within our own psyches.
One clue hinting at the metaphysically redeeming quality within Apocalypse Culture II lies directly upon the inside cover. Unassumingly tucked within a squeamish montage of cretinous visages to marvel at in Side Show fashion, is a picture of Avatar Meher Baba in the lower right corner. How one of the most advanced spiritual beings going in our cosmos shows up in the pages of such a patently transgressive book is a most encouraging ambiguity indeed. I think Baba is there to remind us all that the horrors within Apocalypse Culture II are ultimately illusions of which we can substantially transcend if not transform into a lasting understanding of humanity's ongoing plight. If we can raise our vibe just a little, as Baba encourages, we will intimately understand the persistence of transgression in our culture. Perhaps reading Parfrey's well selected articles which follow Baba's invitation, beckoned with his sublime presence, will help us speed up the sanskara burning process by allowing us to confront what we desperately try to project out and away from ourselves over and over again. Maybe in the future we won't need any more JonBenet Ramseys, Renee Hartevelts or Ted Kaczynski's to dump our unresolved karma into in hopes it will be purged once and for all through their sacrifices. Maybe we can sabotage the scapegoat assembly line the media depends so much upon for its fodder as well. Perhaps Apocalypse Culture II will inspire some of us on the spiritual cusp of evolution to work through the kind of implicate dreck depicted in its pages, within our very own psyches. It is most difficult to write off Apocalypse Culture II with mere horrified fascination or other irresponsible forms of morbid entertainment. One has to be mighty deaf not to hear a response calling from our souls to acknowledge the consequences of the perversion depicted in its pages. If we listen, perhaps we can be actually compassionate towards the Kaczynski's and McVeigh's currently roaming the planet in search of a venue in which to detonate their essays.

Rating:
Summary: One thing not mentioned in this book: 9/11
Review: I have to say a lot of what this book talks about sounds VERY hokey. But there is one extremely good thing about this book that puts all the other seeming silliness in a scary new light: Please note the copyright date this book was released on. At least a full year before 9/11. And the information obviously arrived to the publisher's hands well before this date. This is the best example of a written work that chronicles a man who actually KNEW what was going to happen before 9/11. And nobody believed him. He went to the CDC, the FBI, the CIA, and no one listened. He asked these people in power, "Does America have a plan in case of biological attacks?" The answers will surprise you, and if anything, you will get a chilling sense that there is DEFINITELY something wrong with a country that denied a man the right to warn his country of impending danger. Think how that man must feel today... A MUST READ...

P.S. For those further interested in some of this book, an excellent interview was done with the musical rock group The Hidden Hand. Many things were explored, like the Moon landing, and secret societies in power. The interview will be run hopefully by the end of February 2003, so look for it in the 38th issue of Vibrations of Doom Magazine.
http://vibrationsofdoom.com

Rating:
Summary: time for a change?
Review: I loved the first book,but found little in here to care about.The Bobby B piece is interesting as are a couple other parts but,overall this just doesn't jive with me.I don't care about pedophaelia or Jonestown.Ugh.

Rating:
Summary: intellectual stew
Review: Parfrey is the dangerous mole dwelling and drilling in America's subconscious mind. He digs up things we are afraid to touch, and it repels us. This is a veritable potpourri of societal leprosy, and I love it. What can I say, I just basically love the guy. I may not be as smart as him, but I can dig his vibes, man.

Rating:
Summary: Nice reading for a new Bush era?
Review: The first Apocalypse Culture (1987, with a revised and expanded edition in 1990) offered a provocative melange of paganism, UFOlogy, art brut, body modification, serial-killer philosophizing, and nonpartisan political paranoia that not only blew away Reagan/Bush-era complacency but helped shape Nineties pop-culture from The X-Files to Jerry Springer to MTV's whitebread rockers covered with pseudo-primitive piercings and tattoos. In fact, now that the mainstream culturemeisters have co-opted fringe thought to appeal to a young demographic considering itself hipper than Britney Spears fans, Apocalypse Culture II might not have the impact its predecessor did--a shame, since this new book contains essays as extreme as the first book's, and sometimes more so.

The new book features contributors famous and obscure, infamous and almost socially respectable. A Holocaust revisionist named Michael A. Hoffman II details a black magic-related conspiracy theory involving the Unabomber. A newsgrouper named Joe rhapsodizes about serial killing. Jim Goad, publisher of the magazine ANSWER Me!, chillingly writes about beating up a girlfriend he depicts as unstable. The actor Crispin Hellion Glover hilariously tears apart the director Steven Spielberg. ("Is it possible that the Columbine shootings would have not occurred if Steven Spielberg had never wafted his putrid stench upon our culture, a culture he helped homogenize and propagandize?") And the Unabomber himself, Ted Kaczynski, closes the book with a non-PC fable about the new international economy.

Obviously, some of the philosophies (such as pedophilia and Nazism) espoused by certain contributors WILL offend most readers, but this nonhomogenizing book has intended that. I should note, though, that Apocalypse Culture II has a near-total lack of female writers. Couldn't the book's editor, Adam Parfrey, find enough women who rail against a blandified world?

Rating:
Summary: funny, memorable, but...
Review: The only way to describe this book is "a collection of the f*#&$ed up." From cannibalism to pedophilia to poop-eating, this is the perfect book for that special 14-year-old in your life... the one who makes his mom slow down when they drive past an accident. However, if you're not a 14-year-old guy, borrow it from your little brother.

Rating:
Summary: At last: a sound rumination on the ketamine-induced NDE!
Review: When I first noticed Apocalypse Culture II on Amazon, I shuddered at the thought of a redundant go-around threatening to rob the predecessor of its genuinely stately cultural presence and dignity. However, I was compelled to place an immediate order to see for myself the editor's current vision of the now pervasive apocalypse culture we all inescapably eat, breathe, drink - and intramuscularly inject! My fears were utterly dispelled when I found the book to contain an absolutely brilliant essay on the spiritual use of the hospital anesthetic ketamine hydrochloride. A subject quite profoundly removed from sexual murder, kiddie porn, masturbation, etc., I remain absolutely stunned that the author, David Woodward, details observations - such as dead people with ants in their pants jockeying for position to foist themselves into the ketamine user's "fleshy, nubile mind" - that I had always assumed were my own, private, embarrassing thoughts no one else could ever possibly share or understand. I am eternally indebted to this unexpected courage and honesty. Apocalypse Culture II has truly liberated me! The apocalpyse is redeemed!! HIGHLY recommended!!!