This will be an unconventional We Salute You.  If you’re new to Brainsturbator, we do an irregular series of profiles on folks I consider to be Important Humans.  In the past, that’s included such admirable primates as Aubrey DeGray, Jacques Vallee, Yoshiro Nakamatsu, even UFC fighter Jeff Monson.  These are all people who are, in their own way, making a positive contribution to the human species.

G. Clotaire Rapaille is not.  At all. Rapaille is a marketing consultant, one of the highest-paid, highest-profile experts on the hidden psychological forces that drive consumers.  He is a very wealthy and successful man, and he has no qualms about the serious social damage that his work has done.  So why write about him—why “salute” him, especially?

I am writing this because Rapaille is a con man.  Rapaille is, near as I can tell, one of the most accomplished, audacious and ambitious con men alive today.  He has woven a tapestry of pre-existing ideas into something he claims is radically new—and he’s convinced the many of the most powerful people in the world that he’s right.  Considering consensus reality is against me here, you might be thinking I’ve set the bar too high—if the Fortune 500 says Rapaille is right, who am I to say he’s wrong? Just a hick with a sharp eye, folks.  I’m not asking you to agree with me, but I do think you’ll enjoy chewing this over.  Let’s take a closer look behind this curtain.

[continue reading]

This is probably long overdue.  Although Brainsturbator has attracted a lot of flattering attention from the publishing industry (as well as Scientologists) for flagrant violation of copyright law, I’m still a big fan of real damn books, the kind you can carry around with you and read in the backyard.  PDF files are great, but my laptop would give me testicular cancer if I tried using it like a book. 

The classic excuse for pirating mp3s is really true, at least in my case: when I download a book I really like, I will go out and buy it.  This was true for Kevin Kelly‘s masterpiece Out of Control, and just this past week, that was true for Ben Mack‘s outstanding marketing book, Think Two Products Ahead.  If the book is important enough to be re-read and referred back to regularly—and damn few of them are—then it’s worth investing money into getting a hard copy.

[continue reading]

When I came across Benford’s Law, also known as the Signifigant Digit Phenomenon, I was pissed off.  Because I recently turned 26, and that means I’ve spent a quarter century of my life completely unaware of what would appear to be one of the most important mathematical laws in existence.  Worse still, this particular mathematical law was discovered in 1881, and formally proven in 1935, so I am several lifetimes behind the curve.

Surprise is good—existiential shock is even better.  As we’ll see in the course of this article, being whumped upside the head by the utterly absurd and totally unexpected is the best possible way for a human being to learn—there are whole disciplines of mathematics that define Information as “the difference that makes a difference.”

And man...this is a difference that messed my head up good.

[continue reading]

“I ask of cinema what most North Americans ask of psychedelic drugs.”

Is it any wonder this man is one of my favorite directors?  This has been a policy of mine for years—I’m not interested in a movie that’s not at least as weird as my own dreams. I do not watch films to see the subtleties of real-life relationships writ large, or to witness the human drama get re-interpreted....I want huge, insane and beautiful vistas that could only exist in cinema.  (For now.) Alejandro Jodorowsky not only agrees with me, he probably thinks I’m a sissy for not making even bigger and crazier demands.

A few years ago, Jodorowsky basically didn’t exist here on the Internets—thankfully, that’s changed quickly.  Best of all, he’s even working on a new movie, rumored to be funded by none other than Marilyn Manson.  Like any worthwhile human, Jodorowsky is way more complex than we could possibly give him credit for—but we’re going to give it a shot just the same.  Director, actor, magician, occultist, therapist, artist and comic book creator—and that’s just the first couple layers.  Say hello to Alejandro Jodorowsky.

[continue reading]

Aside from getting into all the hottest clubs for free, the best part about running Brainsturbator is the readers.  They keep me in line and they ask me good questions.  After the Colonia Dignidad article, I got a whopper: “Does there come a point where these investigations of yours become self abuse, what with these things you’re finding? Is it dangerous to pummel the mind with these facts for extended periods of time?”

Quick answer: hell yeah, it’s self abuse.  I lose sleep, weight and hope for the future when I stare the abyss in the face like this.  I can’t say my nightmares have gotten any worse, because they’ve been making me question my sanity since I was a kid, but the everyday world is a very different place.

But you know what?  The everyday world always was a different place.  Whether we subject ourselves to this horror or not, it’s still out there and it’s still real.  And of course, the quick answer is superficial and misses the real meat—this is an important question to look at in some detail, so before I keep subjecting Brainsturbator readers to these nightmares, let’s examine why it is nescessary, important, and ultimately—empowering.

[continue reading]

As we’ve noted several times, American horror films are taking a disturbing nose dive towards snuff flicks.  The past five years have seen a rapid escalation of the sadism and torture quotient, notably movies like Hostel and the Saw series.  Although I should probably just chalk it up to the Kali Yuga, it bothers me a lot because frankly, there’s very little fiction in these movies.  (It also bothers me because these films are all pretty weak: after Passolini’s film Salo, there is absolutely nothing more that can be done with onscreen brutality.  Don’t believe me?  Watch it.)

Today we’re going to look at a little-known spot in Chile.  Villa Baveria is the more recent moniker—but we’ll refer to by the name it used to be known as, which is Colonia Dignidad.  I’ve had a number of readers express disgust and shock about our previous article on “The Finders,” and I would urge them not to read this at all.  Colonia Dignidad was essentially a non-stop, decades-long version of the most brutal horror film ever made—and that’s probably an understatement.

[continue reading]

This is going to be an ugly article.  It’s a topic I still don’t want to cover, but unrelated threads led me back to this information and now I feel obligated to share it.  The story is dumb simple: local police get a strange phone call from concerned citizens down at the park.  Some white van pulled up and two impeccably dressed men unloaded a bunch of barely-dressed, dirt-filthy little kids.  They’re at the playground and behaving strangely—as if things needed to get any weirder.

So the police investigate and the men refuse to speak about what they’re doing.  The children say they’re headed to Mexico for a special school.  US Customs agents get involved and discover that the men are linked to a Washingon DC area group called “The Finders,” and it turns out The Finders have some CIA connections.  The CIA steps in, says the investigation has become ”an internal matter,” and the entire case gets dropped.

Like I said, this is going to be an ugly article, because the most interesting and disturbing aspect of this story is that it’s all true.

[continue reading]

Thanks to Kory for the heads up on this guy—a goofy, lovable and generous mad scientist from Japan who’s working towards 6000 inventions before he dies at age 144.  He has built an elaborate daily ritual which keeps him energized, loving life, and creating brilliant ideas left and right.

“In my country, the drive to succeed-and the competition-is unbelievably intense. From early on, Japanese children are under enormous pressure to learn. I was fortunate that my parents encouraged my natural curiosity along with my academic learning from the very beginning. They gave me the freedom to create and invent-which I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember.”

This began as a quick “We Salute You” post, because it’s been over a week since my last entry—but Nakamatsu’s beautiful brain has covered so much territory that I wound up with a badass article despite myself.  Please enjoy the ride.

[continue reading]

This is yet another preface to our upcoming series on UFOlogy—the first was our UFOlogy Library.  In the past month, I’ve received many emails from people who would rather see Brainsturbator move in a different direction.  Some of these messages have been eloquent and polite, some of them have been very confrontational—but they all make the same point: on a planet where over 16,000 children die every single day due to starvation, disease, abuse or warfare, what the fuck am I doing talking about aliens?

Well, first off, I’m not talking about aliens.  The UFO phenomenon is way stranger than mere extraterrestrials.  And that’s precisely why I’m interested in it, and why I will continue to cover it—it’s located at the center of nearly all that is weird and unexplained in the human experience.  This is slippery territory, and it’s very easy to get tripped up on your own assumptions, it’s very easy to make mistakes—huge, retarded mistakes.

In short, UFOlogy is a great study to hone your critical thinking skills—and that’s what todays article will focus on, with some considerable help from our friend, Jacques Vallee.

[continue reading]