Monday 31 August 2015

The Room (3 Stars)


I don't know what I should judge this film on: the story, the acting or the party atmosphere in the cinema when it was shown. If I gave it five stars I would be unjustly praising it, if I gave it one star I would be denying the film its cult value, so my three star rating can be interpreted as an I-don't-know-what-to-rate-it rating.

Made in 2003, "The Room" is considered by many to be the worst film ever made, replacing "Plan 9 from Outer Space", which had held the title for decades. As is typical for special film showings at the Electric, a friendly young man went on stage to introduce the film before it started, after which it commenced without any ads or trailers.


The film's plot: Johnny and Lisa live together in an apartment in San Francisco. The apartment is small but luxurious. They've been together for five years and intend to marry soon. Unknown to Johnny, Lisa is having an affair with his best friend Mark. She confesses to her mother that she loves Mark and finds Johnny boring. Lisa's mother encourages her to stay with Johnny for financial security, but due to Johnny not getting an expected promotion she doesn't feel so secure. When Lisa's friend Michelle tells her that Mark doesn't earn much, Lisa says she will stay with Mark to get as much as she can, after which she'll look for a richer man.

With a plot like that anyone else would have made an average, completely forgettable film, but in the hands of Tommy Wiseau, who wrote, directed and produced the film, it became something extraordinary. This was Tommy's first film, and he financed the $6 million budget himself. Not counting the actors, he had a crew of 400 people working on the film, which is as many as are used in typical Hollywood blockbusters. What stands out is the unbelievable style of the story. There are countless sub-plots introduced throughout the film which are never resolved. For instance, in an early scene Lisa's mother says that she's just been diagnosed with cancer, but this is never mentioned again. Then there are strange scenes where Johnny and his friends gather on the roof of the building to throw a football to one another. That's hardly the best place to throw a football, is it?

One of the film's stranger features is that Tommy Wiseau, who plays the lead role of Johnny, speaks with a thick eastern European accent, maybe Hungarian or Romanian. When watching the film I thought that this was his real accent, but I've found a few interviews with him on YouTube, and he has a normal American accent. The reason for this accent can be found in interviews about the film. It was intended that Johnny should be a vampire. This part of the film was omitted when Tommy realised his budget wasn't enough to show his car flying -- do vampires have flying cars? -- but the accent remained.

The audience loved the film. Every time Johnny's friend Denny visited him, which was frequent, the audience shouted "Hi Denny" and "Bye Denny". When Lisa's mother visited, voices in the audience shouted, "What about your cancer?" I got into the act as well. Whenever Johnny delivered particularly emotional lines I shouted, "Give him an Oscar". But the film's highlight was that whenever a painting with a spoon was shown the audience threw plastic spoons at the screen.


On another topic, compare Cineworld's film tickets with the Electric's tickets. At Cineworld the ticket shows the cinema's name, the film's name, the screen, the seat number and various other relevant information. The Electric's ticket just says "Admit One". That's it. That's old school!

Sunday 30 August 2015

All About My Mother [Guest Writer] (3 Stars)

All About My Mother is a 1999 Spanish film directed by (yes you've guessed it) Pedro Almodóvar.
The film is about Manuela (Cecilia Roth), a nurse for a Transplant Clinic in Madrid and a single parent to her 17 year old son, Esteban (Eloy Azorin). On Esteban's birthday he is killed by a car as he races to try and get a autograph from Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes), an actress performing in A Street Car Named Desire, the play Esteban had seen for his birthday. Following the death of Esteban, Manuela returns to Barcelona, in search of Esteban's father, Lola, a transvestite, who Manuela has not seen since fleeing Barcelona after finding out about her pregnancy. Returning to Barcelona, Manuela reconnects with an old friend Agrado (Antonia San Juan), also a transvestite, and meets a nun, Rosa (Penélope Cruz). The production of A Street Car Named Desire, the same one Manuela and Esteban saw on the day he dies, also comes to Barcelona.
This film, I wanted to like it, it seemed to be an original and different script, and I admire that. I like variety and originality; but I don't know. It just lacked meaty substance, everything is all wrapped up lovely with no loose ends and it's all very...safe. I loved the character of Agrado and thought she was quite funny, but her alone couldn't save what was quite a slow film with very little character development throughout. It's worth a watch but you'll struggle to be bowled over by this one.

Saturday 29 August 2015

Species 4: The Awakening (2½ Stars)


"Species 4" is the weakest film in the series. It lacks both the horror and the sexiness of the previous three films. It's only loosely connected to its three predecessors. With hardly any rewriting it could have been a standalone film.

Professor Tom Hollander teaches Biochemistry. Together with a brilliant young student, Forbes Maguire, he carries out experiments on creating human life. Shouldn't his name be Tom Frankenstein? He finds that he can regenerate human tissue by adding DNA that was sent by an alien race a few years ago. That's the only link to the other films. After most of his experiments fail and his creations have to be destroyed he feels guilty and vows never to create new life again. Forbes vows to continue the work by himself.

Only one of the experiments has survived, a female called Miranda. 20 years later Tom is living with her, claiming to be her uncle after the death of her parents. She has no idea that she isn't quite human. Forbes is living in Mexico, earning a living by bringing dead relatives back from the dead for huge sums of money. Tom is glad to ignore Forbes and his unethical medical practises, until Miranda gets sick and shows signs of morphing into an alien form. Tom drives her to Mexico to get Forbes' help.

As a horror film it's average, not scary enough to make me jump. It suffers from having a smaller budget than the previous films. They could have compensated by adding more nudity, but there are only occasional glimpses of naked flesh, less than in the other films. Overall it's a dull film that nobody would want to watch more than once.


The film uses a white-on-black version of the Metro Godwyn Mayer logo that I've never seen before. Usually it's in full colour with a roaring lion, and occasionally black-on-white, but this version is new to me. It looks so cool.

Friday 28 August 2015

Bad Education [Guest Writer] (5 Stars)


OK, no surprises that my second blog review would come from the same Pedro Almodovar box set. This time it's Bad Education (2004).
Bad Education explores the story of Ignacio (Gael Garía Bernal), and Enrique Goded (Fele Martínez), two childhood friends who shared a childhood sweetheart romance. Fate rips the two apart until Enrique is reunited with Ignacio, now known as Angel, as he seeks to have one of his stories, The Visit, turned into a film. The film explores Ignacio's childhood experiences at school and the victimisation and trauma he received during his school through the hands of Father Manolo (Daniel Giménez Cacho).
The film explores childhood victimisation, sexual orientation and the reality with dealing with very traumatic events for the main character, Angel. This is not a nice film, although the suspense and mystery around the film suspend from too much of that darkness coming to the forefront. I liked the format of the film switching between different time frames, and the plot doesn't really reveal itself until towards the end of the film. There is suspense and mystery - which is sustained well through the film. The script is very good and original. The acting is outstanding.
It's not until the end of the film, as I sit down to write this, that the message it leaves is far darker and upsetting then you initially think whilst watching the film. The film is shot in fairly bright colours, and the flow of the film tends to give a more positive, upbeat feel to the film, which I think masks some of the darker elements of the film. Left now to write about the film I am focusing of the ideas of child grooming, paedophilia, child abuse in the Catholic church, struggling with your sexual identity during a time when there was little acceptance and understanding (1980) and exploring drug abuse and how all these effect not just the individual, but the others around you.
This film I find has a good balance to keep the film afloat with enough buoyancy to not let you get caught up in the horrific content of the film. It makes the film watchable. This helps bring attention to and gives people an insight and consideration to the struggle some people go through with childhood abuse and sexuality. However, now I am left analysing the reality of such a person, and wondering how very different reality can be from film.

Absolutely Anything (4 Stars)


This is a witty comedy film from the hands of the Monty Python team, written and directed by Terry Jones. Neil Clarke (Simon Pegg), the schoolteacher responsible for class 10c, is selected at random from all of the Earth's population to receive absolute power. He can do anything he wants by speaking his wish out loud and waving his hand. This is a test by powerful beings from an alien race. If he uses his power for good the Earth will be saved, if he uses his power for selfish reasons the Earth will be destroyed.

It's noteworthy that this is the last film made by Robin Williams before his death. He performs the voice of Neil's dog Dennis.

The film is a cross between "Bruce Almighty" and "Bedazzled" (particularly the 2000 version with Brendan Fraser). Neil Clarke has godlike powers, but he has to be careful what he asks for, because if he formulates his words carelessly he doesn't get what he intended. For instance, when he wishes that he is on the bus he finds himself on the roof of the bus.

The question we asked one another as members of the film group is what we would do if we could do absolutely anything. The answers varied between winning the lottery and making David Cameron homeless. Both very good wishes. But what would I do?

First I would return to my youth. I want to look the way I did when I was 20. I would freeze myself at that point in my life and not age any more. I would keep my beautiful long blond hair forever.

Then I would want knowledge of all space and time. What good is being able to do everything if you don't know everything? I would want to be able to see everything that has happened everywhere in the universe. I would want to see everything that will happen in the future, including the variations if I want to intervene to stop a future event happening. I don't mean I want a vast canvas in front of me, I want to be able to zoom in and watch individual places or people, flipping forwards and backwards through their lives like pages in a book.

If I wished for these two things I wouldn't need any more. Living immortally young and always knowing the results of my actions would make me in control of my destiny. It doesn't mean that I could do whatever I want. It means that I would always do what's best for me, my friends and my community.


One thing that I would never use my power for is to make someone do something. That's Neil's biggest mistake in the film. Taking away someone else's free will is monstrous. If a girl only falls in love with me because I use my powers to make her love me I'll never be happy. I'd be making her my slave, and I don't want a slave, I want a lover.

Wednesday 26 August 2015

I Shot Andy Warhol (4 Stars)


Mmmm, don't you just love this picture on the DVD cover? It must be one of the most stylish DVD covers ever. Three-tone Lili Taylor looking like a wild west hero. Delicious!

A few days ago I posted the text of the SCUM Manifesto. This must have seemed very random to my regular readers. Did any of you take time to read it in its entirety? I've read it twice this week, and I have a printed copy lying next to my computer. There's a connection to this film. Valerie Solanas wrote the SCUM Manifesto. Valerie Solanas shot Andy Warhol.

I was excited when I first heard about this film. It was made in 1996, but not released on DVD until 2006, which is when I bought it. Valerie Solanas has long been one of my heroes. I have the same relationship to her Manifesto that I have to the Bible: I don't accept everything it contains, but there's a lot of wisdom that I can read and learn from.

Understand how shocked I was when I saw the film for the first time. This woman that I've admired for many years isn't portrayed as a visionary, she's a nervous, neurotic woman whose desire to change the world comes second to her longing to get money for her next meal. My first reaction was rage. I watched it again after calming down. Maybe Lili Taylor is showing Valerie Solanas the way she really was. She may have been a genius with a vision to change the world, but being homeless and hungry can do things to a person.

Valerie Solanas wasn't perfect. Far from it. But her words are pure. They have provided inspiration to women for the last 48 years. When I got my first Internet account in 1995, with a 14,400 bps modem, one of the first things I did was join a feminist chat group on IRC. We discussed the SCUM Manifesto for hours. Some of the participants blindly accepted everything written, while others (including me) were critical, but all of us had a deep respect for the words. I'm sure that everyone who participated profited greatly from the discussions.

I kept the chat logs of the group backed up on CD for years, until my CD's were stolen by Thomas Kuzilla of Dearborn Heights, Michigan. He destroyed my CD's when I refused to buy them back from him for an extortionate price.


Volver [Guest Writer] (4 Stars)


This is my first venture into Spanish films. Being dyslexic I have always found it daunting to read a movie but lately I have tried watching German films to help me learn German. Not only is it a useful tool to help hear German more regularly; German cinema produces some very good films, so it is entertaining too! I have really enjoyed German cinema so I have begun to wonder what other good films I am missing out on simply because I have to read them. A friend very kindly lent me a box set of four Pedro Almodóvar's films. I decided my first film from the set should be Volver, a 2006 film staring Penélope Cruz.

Volver is based around Raimunda (Penélope Cruz), her daughter Paula (Yohana Cobo) and her sister Sole (Lola Dueñas). Raimunda is a hardworking, working class mother with a deadbeat husband. The sisters, who are still not over the death of their parents (who died several years earlier in a house fire) are shocked by the death of their Aunt. This recent death along with other events in Raimunda’s life triggers the materialisation of her mother’s spirit (Carmen Maura) to help comfort the sisters as they try to get on with their lives and overcome the difficult situations. 

I found the film a little difficult as I don’t speak Spanish at and the film is a little fast-paced to begin with. I was interested by the different cultural beliefs of the women in the film, especially by the buying and maintaining of your own gravestone before you die and the belief in spirits manifesting themselves to help you through crisis. I thought Pedro Almodóvar directed well and I loved the location of the film and thought the scenery was good. The storyline is quite original, which is refreshing (take note Jurassic World!) and the acting was fantastic. However I thought the script let the film down a little. Raimunda is a very strong woman, but given what she has been through she doesn't seem to quiver from a strong or happy disposition. It seems that in the writing of the script, the writer's thought they didn't have time to add a scene showing the situation overcoming Raimunda. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to have a strong female lead - but it may be a little unrealistic to aspect someone to go through so much and not breakdown at least once. Another downside is the dialogue is a little fast paced and takes some time to get use to reading so quickly – but never the less a very good film that is well worth a watch!

Tuesday 25 August 2015

General: About this blog


I'd like to remind my regular readers that this isn't a film review site, it's a film diary. You've probably noticed that I do write reviews, so what's the difference?

Because this is a diary I write about films as I watch them. If I watch a film three times I write about it three times. If I have nothing to say about a film I make a short post about it anyway. Sometimes in the case of a true story my post is about the real life events, not about the film itself. Sometimes I use a film as a springboard for a rant about something only partially related to the film itself. If a film has a special meaning to me, for instance it reminds me of a romantic evening the first time I saw it, I might write about my memories of the evening instead of the film.

The main difference is that I don't just want to tell my readers about films, I want to tell my readers about how films affect me. This blog is very personal. It's impossible for anyone to read it without getting to know me.

Nevertheless, I'm open to suggestions. Please leave comments if there's something you want me to write more about. I might do what you want, or I might just tell you to do it yourself. If anyone wants to write for this blog I allow "guest writers" to contribute. Ideally I would like other writers to contribute a few times a week to offer more variety. Just let me know if you would like to share your reviews here.

This is a link to my requirements for guest writers.

Unlike other blogs, you will find no ads popping up on my pages. I don't make money from clicks. The first two weeks of my blog, back in September 2010, I did use "Google AdSense" to add appropriate ads to my pages, but I removed it when I saw how much it slowed down the page loading times on slower computers. I want to entertain my readers, not annoy them. However, my sidebar contains links to Amazon's web pages in America, England and Germany. If you wish to purchase an item from Amazon, use one of those links to visit Amazon, and I shall receive a small percentage of whatever you spend. There will be no difference in price for you.

Monday 24 August 2015

Off-Topic: The SCUM Manifesto

For the sake of reference, I'm posting the complete text of the SCUM Manifesto. Please leave comments.


THE SCUM MANIFESTO

Copyright 1967 by Valerie Solanas

Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.

It is now technically possible to reproduce without the aid of males (or, for that matter, females) and to produce only females. We must begin immediately to do so. Retaining the male has not even the dubious purpose of reproduction. The male is a biological accident: the Y (male) gene is an incomplete X (female) gene, that is, has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.

The male is completely egocentric, trapped inside himself, incapable of empathizing or identifying with others, of love, friendship, affection or tenderness. He is a completely isolated unit, incapable of rapport with anyone. His responses are entirely visceral, not cerebral; his intelligence is a mere tool in the service of his drives and needs; he is incapable of mental passion, mental interaction; he can't relate to anything other than his own physical sensations. He is a half dead, unresponsive lump, incapable of giving or receiving pleasure or happiness; consequently, he is at best an utter bore, an inoffensive blob, since only those capable of absorption in others can be charming. He is trapped in a twilight zone halfway between humans and apes, he is capable of a large array of negative feelings – hate, jealousy, contempt, disgust, guilt, shame, doubt – and moreover he is aware of what he is and isn't.

Although completely physical, the male is unfit even for stud service. Even assuming mechanical proficiency, which few men have, he is first of all, incapable of zestfully, lustfully, tearing off a piece, but is instead eaten up with guilt, shame, fear and insecurity, feelings rooted in male nature, which the most enlightened training can only minimize; second, the physical feeling he attains is next to nothing; and, third, he is not empathizing with his partner, but is obsessed with how he's doing, turning in an A performance, doing a good plumbing job. To call a man an animal is to flatter him; he's a machine, a walking dildo. It's often said that men use women. Use them for what? Surely not pleasure.

Eaten up with guilt, shame, fears and insecurities and obtaining, if he's lucky, a barely perceptible physical feeling, the male is nonetheless, obsessed with screwing; he'll swim a river of snot, wade nostril-deep through a mile of vomit, if he thinks there'll be a friendly pussy awaiting him. He'll screw a woman he despises, any snaggle-toothed hag, and, furthermore, pay for the opportunity. Why? Relieving physical tension isn't the answer, as masturbation suffices for that. It's not ego satisfaction; that doesn't explain screwing corpses and babies.

Completely egocentric, unable to relate, empathize or identify, and filled with a vast, pervasive, diffuse sexuality, the male is psychically passive. He hates his passivity, so he projects it onto women, defines the male as active, then sets out to prove that he is ("prove he's a man"). His main means of attempting to prove it is screwing (Big Man with a Big Dick tearing off a Big Piece). Since he's attempting to prove an error, he must "prove" it again and again. Screwing, then, is a desperate, compulsive attempt to prove he's not passive, not a woman. But he is passive and does want to be a woman.

Being  an incomplete female, the male spends his life attempting to complete himself, to become female. He attempts to do this by constantly seeking out, fraternizing with and trying to live through and fuse with the female, and by claiming as his own all female characteristics – emotional strength and independence, forcefulness, dynamism, decisiveness, coolness objectivity, assertiveness, courage, integrity, vitality, intensity, depth of character, grooviness, etc – and projecting onto women all male traits – vanity, frivolity, triviality, weakness, etc. It should be said though, that the male has one glaring area of superiority over the female – public relations. (He has done a brilliant job of convincing millions of women that men are women and women are men.) The male claim that females find fulfilment through motherhood and sexuality reflects what males think they'd find fulfilling if they were female.

Women, in other words, don't have penis envy; men have pussy envy. When the male accepts his passivity, defines himself as a woman (males as well as females think men are women and women are men), and becomes a transvestite he loses his desire to screw (or to do anything else, for that matter; he fulfils himself as a drag queen) and gets his cock chopped off. He then achieves a continuous diffuse sexual feeling from "being a woman". Screwing is, for a man, a defence against his desire to be female. Sex is itself a sublimation.

The male, because of his obsession to compensate for not being female combined with his inability to relate and to feel compassion, has made of the world a shitpile. He is responsible for:

War: The male's normal method of compensation for not being female, namely, getting his Big Gun off, is grossly inadequate, as he can get it off only a very limited number of times; so he gets it off on a really massive scale, and proves to the entire world that he's a "Man". Since he has no compassion or ability to empathize or identify, proving his manhood is worth an endless number of lives, including his own – his own life being worthless, he would rather go out in a blaze of glory than plod grimly on for fifty more years.

Niceness, Politeness and "Dignity": Every man, deep down, knows he's a worthless piece of shit. Overwhelmed by a sense of animalism and deeply ashamed of it; wanting, not to express himself, but to hide from others his total physicality, total egocentricity, the hate and contempt he feels for other men, and to hide from himself the hate and contempt he suspects other men feel for him; having a crudely constructed nervous system that is easily upset by the least display of emotion or feeling, the male tries to enforce a "social" code that ensures a perfect blandness, unsullied by the slightest trace of feeling or upsetting opinion. He uses terms like "copulate", "sexual congress", "have relations with" (to men, "sexual relations" is a redundancy), overlaid with stilted manners; the suit on the chimp.

Money, Marriage and Prostitution, Work and Prevention of an Automated Society: There is no human reason for money or for anyone to work more than two or three hours a week at the very most. All non-creative jobs (practically all jobs now being done) could have been automated long ago, and in a moneyless society everyone can have as much of the best of everything as she wants. But there are non-human, male reasons for maintaining the money-work system:

1. Pussy. Despising his highly inadequate self, overcome with intense anxiety and a deep, profound loneliness when by his empty self, desperate to attach himself to any female in the dim hopes of completing himself, in the mystical belief that by touching gold he'll turn to gold, the male craves the continuous companionship of women. The company of the lowest female is preferable to his own or that of other men, who serve only to remind him of his repulsiveness. But females, unless very young or very sick, must be coerced or bribed into male company.

2. Supply the non-relating male with the delusion of usefulness, and enable him to try to justify his existence by digging holes and filling them up. Leisure time horrifies the male, who will have nothing to do but contemplate his grotesque self. Unable to relate or to love, the male must work. Females crave absorbing, emotionally satisfying, meaningful activity, but lacking the opportunity or ability for this, they prefer to idle and waste away their time in ways of their own choosing – sleeping, shopping, bowling, shooting pool, playing cards and other games, breeding, reading, walking around, daydreaming, eating, playing with themselves, popping pills, going to the movies, getting analyzed, travelling, raising dogs and cats, lolling on the beach, swimming, watching TV, listening to music, decorating their houses, gardening, sewing, nightclubbing, dancing, visiting, "improving their minds" (taking courses), and absorbing "culture" (lectures, plays, concerts, "arty" movies). Therefore, many females would, even assuming complete economic equality between the sexes, prefer living with males or peddling their asses on the street thus having most of their time for themselves, to spending many hours of their days doing boring, stultifying, non-creative work for somebody else, functioning as less than animals, as machines, or, at best – if able to get a "good" job – co-managing the shitpile. What will liberate women, therefore, from male control is the total elimination of the money-work system, not the attainment of economic equality with men within it.

3. Power and control. Unmasterful in his personal relations with women, the male attains to general masterfulness by the manipulation of money and of everything and everybody controlled by money, in other words, of everything and everybody.

4. Love substitute. Unable to give love or affection, the male gives money. It makes him feel motherly. The mother gives milk; he gives bread. He is the Breadwinner.

5. Provide the male with a goal. Incapable of enjoying the moment, the male needs something to look forward to, and money provides him with an eternal, never-ending goal: Just think what you could do with 80 trillion dollars – Invest it! And in three years time you'd have 300 trillion dollars!!!

6. Provide the basis for the male's major opportunity to control and manipulate – fatherhood.

Fatherhood and Mental Illness (fear, cowardice, timidity, humility, insecurity, passivity): Mother wants what's best for her kids; Daddy only wants what's best for Daddy, that is peace and quiet, pandering to his delusion of dignity ("respect"), a good reflection on himself (status) and the opportunity to control and manipulate, or, if he's an "enlightened" father, to "give guidance". His daughter, in addition, he wants sexually – he gives her hand in marriage; the other part is for him. Daddy, unlike Mother, can never give in to his kids, as he must, at all costs, preserve his delusion of decisiveness, forcefulness, always-rightness and strength. Never getting one's way leads to a lack of self-confidence in one's ability to cope with the world and to a passive acceptance of the status quo. Mother loves her kids, although she sometimes gets angry, but anger blows over quickly and even while it exists, doesn't preclude love and basic acceptance. Emotionally diseased Daddy doesn't love his kids; he approves of them – if they're "good", that is, if they're nice, "respectful", obedient, subservient to his will, quiet and not given to unseemly displays of temper that would be most upsetting to Daddy's easily disturbed male nervous system – in other words, if they're passive vegetables. If they're not "good", he doesn't get angry – not if he's a modern "civilized" father (the old-fashioned ranting, raving brute is preferable, as he is so ridiculous he can be easily despised) – but rather expresses disapproval, a state that, unlike anger, endures and precludes a basic acceptance, leaving the kid with a feeling of worthlessness and a lifelong obsession with being approved of; the result is fear of independent thought, as this leads to unconventional, disapproved of opinions and way of life.

For the kid to want Daddy's approval it must respect Daddy, and, being garbage, Daddy can make sure that he is respected only by remaining aloof, by distantness, by acting on the precept "familiarity breeds contempt", which is, of course, true, if one is contemptible. By being distant and aloof, he is able to remain unknown, mysterious, and, thereby, to inspire fear ("respect").

Disapproval of emotional "scenes" leads to fear of strong emotion, fear of one's own anger and hatred, and to a fear of facing reality, as facing it leads at first to anger and hatred. Fear of anger and hatred combined with a lack of self-confidence in one's ability to cope with and change the world, or even to affect in the slightest way one's own destiny, leads to a mindless belief that the world and most people in it are nice and that the most banal, trivial amusements are great fun and deeply pleasurable.

The effect of fatherhood on males, specifically, is to make them "Men", that is, highly defensive of all impulses to passivity, faggotry, and of desires to be female Every boy wants to imitate his mother, be her, fuse with her, but Daddy forbids this; he is the mother; he gets to fuse with her. So he tells the boy, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, to not be a sissy, to act like a "Man". The boy, scared shitless of and "respecting" his father, complies, and becomes just like Daddy, that the model of "Man"-hood, the all-American ideal – the well-behaved heterosexual dullard.

The effect of fatherhood on females is to make them male – dependent, passive, domestic, animalistic, nice, insecure, approval and security seekers, cowardly, humble, "respectful" of authorities and men, closed, not fully responsive, half dead, trivial, dull, conventional, flattened out and thoroughly contemptible. Daddy's Girl, always tense and fearful, uncool, unanalytical, lacking objectivity, appraises Daddy, and thereafter, other men, against a background of fear ("respect") and is not only unable to see the empty shell behind the aloof façade, but accepts the male definition of himself as superior, as a female, and of herself, as inferior, as a male, which, thanks to Daddy, she really is.

It is the increase of fatherhood, resulting from the increased and widespread affluence that fatherhood needs in order to thrive, that has caused the general increase of mindlessness and the decline of women in the United States since the 1920's. Thhe close association of affluence with fatherhood has led, for the most part, to only the wrong girls, namely, the "privileged" middle-class girls, getting "educated".

The effect of fathers, in sum, has been to corrode the world with maleness. The male has a negative Midas tough – everything he touches turns to shit.

Suppression of Individuality, Animalism (domesticity and motherhood) and Functionalism: The male is just a bundle of conditioned reflexes, incapable of a mentally free response; he is tied to his early conditioning, determined completely by his past experiences. His earliest experiences are with his mother, and he is throughout his life tied to her. It never becomes completely clear to the male that he is not part of his mother, that he is he and she is she.

His greatest need is to be guided, sheltered, protected and admired by Mama (men expect women to adore what men shrink from in horror – themselves) and, being completely physical, he yearns to spend his time (that's not spent "out in the world" grimly defending against his passivity) wallowing in basic animal activities – eating, sleeping relaxing and being soothed by Mama. Passive, rattle-headed Daddy's Girl, ever eager for approval, for a pat on the head, for the "respect" of any passing piece of garbage is easily reduced to Mama, mindless ministrator to physical needs, soother of the weary, apey brow, booster of the puny ego, appreciator of the contemptible, a hot water bottle with tits.

The reduction to animals of the women of the most backward segment of society – the "privileged, educated" middle-class, the backwash of humanity – where Daddy reigns supreme, has been so thorough that they try to groove on labour pains and lie around in the most advanced nation in the world in the middle of the twentieth century with babies chomping away on their tits. It's not for the kids' sake, though, that the "experts" tell women that Mama should stay at home and grovel in animalism, but for Daddy's; the tits for Daddy to hang onto; the labour pains for Daddy to vicariously groove on (half dead, he needs awfully strong stimuli to make him respond).

Reducing the female to an animal, to Mama, to a male, is necessary for psychological as well as practical reasons: the male is a mere member of the species, interchangeable with every other male. He has no deep-seated individuality, which stems from what intrigues you, what outside yourself absorbs you, what you're in relation to. Completely self-absorbed, capable of being in relation only to their bodies and physical sensations, males differ from each other only to the degree and in the ways they attempt to defend themselves against their passivity and their desire to be female.

The female's individuality, which he is acutely aware of, but which he doesn't comprehend and isn't capable of relating to or grasping emotionally, frightens and upsets him and fills him with envy. So he denies it in her and proceeds to define everyone in terms of his or her function or use, assigning to himself, of course, the most important functions – doctor, president, scientist – thereby providing himself with an identity, if not individuality, and tries to convince himself and women (he's succeeded best at convincing women) that the female function is to bear and raise children and to relax, comfort and boost the ego of the male; that her function is such as to make her interchangeable with every other female. In actual fact, the female function is to relate, groove, love and be herself, irreplaceable by anyone else; the male function is to produce sperm. We now have sperm banks.

In actual fact the female function is to explore, discover, invent, solve problems, crack jokes, make music – all with love. In other words, create a magic world.

Prevention of Privacy: Although the male, being ashamed of what he is and of almost everything he does, insists on privacy and secrecy in all aspects of his life, he has no real regard for privacy. Being empty, not being a complete, separate being, having no self to groove on and needing to be constantly in female company, he sees nothing at all wrong in intruding himself on any woman's thoughts, even a total stranger's, anywhere at any time, but rather feels indignant and insulted when put down for doing so, as well as confused – he can't, for the life of him, understand why anyone would prefer so much as one minute of solitude to the company of any creep around. Wanting to become a woman, he strives to be constantly around females, which is the closest he can get to becoming one, so he created a "society" based on the family – a male-female couple and their kids (the excuse for the family's existence), who live virtually on top of one another, unscrupulously violating the females' rights, privacy and sanity.

Isolation, Suburbs and Prevention of Community: Our society is not a community, but merely a collection of isolated family units. desperately insecure, fearing his woman will leave him if she is exposed to other men or to anything remotely resembling life, the male seeks to isolate her from other men and from what little civilization there is, so he moves her out to the suburbs, a collection of self-absorbed couples and their kids. Isolation enables him to try to maintain his pretence of being an individual by becoming a "rugged individualist", a loner, equating non-co-operation and solitariness with individuality.

There is yet another reason for the male to isolate himself: every man is an island. Trapped inside himself, emotionally isolated, unable to relate, the male has a horror of civilization, people, cities, situations requiring an ability to understand and relate to people. So, like a scared rabbit, he scurries off, dragging Daddy's little asshole along with him to the wilderness, the suburbs, or, in the case of the "hippy" – he's way out, Man! – all the way out to the cow pasture where he can fuck and breed undisturbed and mess around with his beads and flute.

The "hippy", whose desire to be a "Man", a "rugged individualist", isn't quite as strong as the average man's, and who, in addition, is excited by the thought of having lots of women accessible to him, rebels against the harshness of a Breadwinner's life and the monotony of one woman. In the name of sharing and co-operation, he forms the commune or tribe, which, for all its togetherness and partly because of it (the commune, being an extended family, is an extended violation of the females' rights, privacy and sanity) is no more a community than normal "society".

A true community consists of individuals – not mere species members, not couples – respecting each other's individuality and privacy, at the same time interacting with each other mentally and emotionally  – free spirits in free relation to each other – and cooperating with each other to achieve common ends. Traditionalists say the basic unit of "society" is the family; "hippies" say the tribe; no one says the individual.

The "hippy" babbles on about individuality, but has no more conception of it than any other man. He desires to get back to Nature back to the wilderness, back to the home of the furry animals that he's one of, away from the city, where there is at least a trace, a bare beginning of civilization, to live at the species level, his time taken up with simple, non-intellectual activities – farming, fucking, bead stringing. The most important activity of the commune, the one on which it is based, is gangbanging. The "hippy" is enticed to the commune mainly by the prospect of all the free pussy – the main commodity to be shared, to be had just for the asking but, blinded by greed, he fails to anticipate all the other men he has to share with, or the jealousies and possessiveness of the pussies themselves.

Men cannot co-operate to achieve a common end, because each man's end is all the pussy for himself. The commune, therefore, is doomed to failure: each "hippy" will, in panic, grab the first simpleton who digs him and whisk her off to the suburbs as fast as he can. The male cannot progress socially, but merely swings back and forth from isolation to gangbanging.

Conformity: Although he wants to be an individual, the male is scared of anything in himself that is the slightest bit different from other men; it causes him to suspect that he's not really a "Man", that he's passive and totally sexual, a highly upsetting suspicion. If other men are A and he's not, he must not be a man; he must be a fag. So he tries to affirm his "Manhood" by being like all the other men. Differentness in other men, as well as in himself, threatens him; it means they're fags whom he must at all costs avoid, so he tries to make sure that all other men conform.

The male dares to be different to the degree that he accepts his passivity and his desire to be female, his fagginess. The farthest out male is the drag queen, but he, although different from most men, is exactly like all other drag queens; like the functionalist, he has an identity – he is a female. He tries to define all his troubles away – but still no individuality. Not completely convinced that he's a woman, highly insecure about being sufficiently female, he conforms compulsively to the man-made feminine stereotype, ending up as nothing but a bundle of stilted mannerisms.

To be sure he's a "Man", the male must see to it that the female be clearly a "Woman", the opposite of a "Man", that is, the female must act like a faggot. And Daddy's Girl, all of whose female instincts were wrenched out of her when little, easily and obligingly adapts herself to the role.

Authority and Government: Having no sense of right or wrong, no conscience, which can only stem from an ability to empathize with others... having no faith in his non-existent self, being necessarily competitive and, by nature, unable to co-operate, the male feels a need for external guidance and control. So he created authorities – priests, experts, bosses, leaders, etc – and government. Wanting the female (Mama) to guide him, but unable to accept this fact (he is, after all, a MAN), wanting to play Woman, to usurp her function as Guider and Protector, he sees to it that all authorities are male.

There's no reason why a society consisting of rational beings capable of empathizing with each other, complete and having no natural reason to compete, should have a government, laws or leaders.

Philosophy, Religion and Morality Based on Sex: The male's inability to relate to anybody or anything makes his life pointlcss and meaningless (the ultimate male insight is that life is absurd), so he invented philosophy and religion. Being empty, he looks outward, not only for guidance and control, but for salvation and for the meaning of life. Happiness being for him impossible on this earth, he invented Heaven.

For a man, having no ability to empathise with others and being totally sexual, "wrong" is sexual "licence" and engaging in "deviant" ("unmanly") sexual practices, that is, not defending against his passivity and total sexuality which, if indulged, would destroy "civilization", since "civilization" is based entirely on the male need to defend himself against these characteristics. For a woman (according to men), "wrong" is any behaviour that would entice men into sexual "license" – that is, not placing male needs above her own and not being a faggot.

Religion not only provides men with a goal (Heaven) and helps keep women tied to men, but offers rituals through which he can try to expiate the guilt and shame he feels at not defending himself enough against his sexual impulses; in essence, that guilt and shame he feels at being a male.

Most men, utterly cowardly, project their inherent weaknesses onto women, label them female weaknesses and believe themselves to have female strengths; most philosophers, not quite so cowardly, face the fact that male lacks exist in men, but still can't face the fact that they exist in men only. So they label the male condition the Human Condition, pose their nothingness problem, which horrifies them, as a philosophical dilemma, thereby giving stature to their animalism, grandiloquently label their nothingness their "Identity Problem", and proceed to prattle on pompously about the "Crisis of the Individual", the "Essence of Being", "Existence Preceding Essence", "Existential Modes of Being", etc, etc.

A woman not only takes her identity and individuality for granted, but knows instinctively that the only wrong is to hurt others, and that the meaning of life is love.

Prejudice (racial, ethnic, religious, etc): The male needs scapegoats onto whom he can project his failings and inadequacies and upon whom he can vent his frustration at not being female. And the various discriminations have the practical advantage of substantially increasing the pussy pool available to the men on top.

Competition, Prestige, Status, Formal Education, Ignorance and Social and Economic Classes: Having an obsessive desire to be admired by women, but no intrinsic worth, the male constructs a highly artificial society enabling him to appropriate the appearance of worth through money, prestige, "high" social class, degrees, professional position and knowledge and, by pushing as many other men as possible down professionally, socially, economically, and educationally.

The purpose of "higher" education is not to educate but to exclude as many as possible from the various professions.

The male, totally physical, incapable of mental rapport, although able to understand and use knowledge and ideas, is unable to relate to them, to grasp them emotionally; he does not value knowledge and ideas for their own sake (they're just means to ends) and, consequently, feels no need for mental companions, no need to cultivate the intellectual potentialities of others. On the contrary, the male has a vested interest in ignorance; it gives the few knowledgeable men a decided edge on the unknowledgeable ones and, besides, the male knows that an enlightened, aware female population will mean the end of him. The healthy, conceited female wants the company of equals whom she can respect and groove on; the male and the sick, insecure, unself-confident male female crave the company of worms.

No genuine social revolution can be accomplished by the male, as the male on top wants the status quo, and all the male on the bottom wants is to be the male on top. The male "rebel" is a farce; this is the male's "society", made by him to satisfy his needs. He's never satisfied, because he's not capable of being satisfied. Ultimately, what the male "rebel" is rebelling against is being male. The male changes only when forced to do so by technology, when he has no choice, when "society" reaches the stage where he must change or die. We're at that stage now; if women don't get their asses in gear fast, we may very well all die.

Prevention of Conversation: Being completely self-cantered and unable to relate to anything outside himself, the male's "conversation", when not about himself, is an impersonal droning on, removed from anything of human value. Male "intellectual conversation" is a strained, compulsive attempt to impress the female.

Daddy's Girl, passive, adaptable, respectful of and in awe of the male, allows him to impose his hideously dull chatter on her. This is not too difficult for her, as the tension and anxiety, the lack of cool, the insecurity and self-doubt, the unsureness of her own feelings and sensations that Daddy instilled in her make her perceptions superficial and render her unable to see that the male's babble is a babble; like the aesthete "appreciating" the blob that's labelled "Great Art", she believes she's grooving on what bores the shit out of her. Not only does she permit his babble to dominate, she adapts her own "conversation" accordingly.

Trained from early childhood in niceness, politeness and "dignity", in pandering to the male need to disguise his animalism she obligingly reduces her "conversation" to small talk, a bland insipid avoidance of any topic beyond the utterly trivial – or, if "educated" to "intellectual" discussion, that is, impersonal discoursing on irrelevant abstractions – the Gross National Product the Common Market, the influence of Rimbaud on symbolist painting. So adept is she at pandering that it eventually becomes second nature and she continues to pander to men even when in the company of other females only.

Apart from pandering, her "conversation" is further limited by her insecurity about expressing deviant, original opinions and the self-absorption based on insecurity and that prevents her conversation from being charming. Niceness, politeness, "dignity", insecurity and self-absorption are hardly conducive to intensity and wit, qualities a conversation must have to be worthy of the name. Such conversation is hardly rampant, as only completely self-confident, arrogant, outgoing, proud, tough-minded females are capable of intense, bitchy, witty conversation.

Prevention of Friendship (Love): Men have contempt for themselves, for all other men whom they contemplate more than casually and whom they do not think are females, (for example, "sympathetic" analysts and "Great Artists") or agents of God and for all women who respect and pander to them; the insecure, approval-seeking, pandering male females have contempt for themselves and for all women like them; the self-confident, swinging, thrill-seeking female females have contempt for men and for the pandering male females. In short, contempt is the order of the day.

Love is not dependency or sex, but friendship, and, therefore, love can't exist between two males, between a male and a female or between two females, one or both of whom is a mindless, insecure, pandering male; like conversation, love can exist only between two secure, free-wheeling, independent, groovy female females, since friendship is based on respect, not contempt.

Even among groovy females deep friendships seldom occur in adulthood, as almost all of them are either tied up with men in order to survive economically, or bogged down in hacking their way through the jungle and in trying to keep their heads above the amorphous mass. Love can't flourish in a society based on money and meaningless work; it requires complete economic as well as personal freedom, leisure time and the opportunity to engage in intensely absorbing, emotionally satisfying activities which, when shared with those you respect, lead to deep friendship. Our "society" provides practically no opportunity to engage in such activities.

Having stripped the world of conversation, friendship and love, the male offers us these paltry substitutes:

"Great Art" and "Culture": The male "artist" attempts to solve his dilemma of not being able to live, of not being female, by constructing a highly artificial world in which the male is heroized, that is, displays female traits, and the female is reduced to highly limited, insipid subordinate roles, that is, to being male.

The male "artistic" aim being, not to communicate (having nothing inside him, he has nothing to say), but to disguise his animalism, he resorts to symbolism and obscurity ("deep stuff"). The vast majority of people, particularly the "educated" ones, lacking faith in their own judgement, humble, respectful of authority ("Daddy knows best" is translated into adult language as "Critic knows best", "Writer knows best", "PhD knows best"), are easily conned into believing that obscurity, evasiveness, incomprehensibility, indirectness, ambiguity and boredom are marks of depth and brilliance.

"Great Art" proves that men are superior to women, that men are women, being labelled "Great Art", almost all of which, as the anti- feminists are fond of reminding us, was created by men. We know that "Great Art" is great because male authorities have told us so, and we can't claim otherwise, as only those with exquisite sensitivities far superior to ours can perceive and appreciate the greatness, the proof of their superior sensitivity being that they appreciate the slop that they appreciate. Appreciating is the sole diversion of the "cultivated"; passive and incompetent, lacking imagination and wit, they must try to make do with that; unable to create their own diversions, to create a little world of their own, to affect in the smallest way their environments, they must accept what's given; unable to create or relate, they spectate. Absorbing "culture" is a desperate, frantic attempt to groove in an ungroovy world, to escape the horror of a sterile, mindless existence. "Culture" provides a sop to the egos of the incompetent, a means of rationalizing passive spectating; they can pride themselves on their ability to appreciate the "finer" things, to see a jewel where there is only a turd (they want to be admired for admiring). Lacking faith in their ability to change anything, resigned to the status quo, they have to see beauty in turds because, so far as they can see, turds are all they'll ever have.

The veneration of "Art" and "Culture" – besides leading many women into boring, passive activity that distracts from more important and rewarding activities, from cultivating active abilities and leads to the constant intrusion on our sensibilities of pompous dissertations on the deep beauty of this and that turd. This allows the "artist" to be set up as one possessing superior feelings, perceptions, insights and judgements, thereby undermining the faith of insecure women in the value and validity of their own feelings, perceptions, insights and judgements,

The male, having a very limited range of feelings and, consequently, very limited perceptions, insights and judgements, needs the "artist" to guide him, to tell him what life is all about. But the male "artist", being totally sexual, unable to relate to anything beyond his own physical sensations, having nothing to express beyond the insight that for the male life is meaningless and absurd, cannot be an artist. How can he who is not capable of life tell us what life is all about? A "male artist" is a contradiction in terms. A degenerate can only produce degenerate "art". The true artist is every self-confident, healthy female, and in a female society the only Art, the only Culture, will be conceited, kooky, funky females grooving on each other and on everything else in the universe.

Sexuality: Sex is not part of a relationship; on the contrary, it is a solitary experience, non-creative, a gross waste of time. The female can easily – far more easily than she may think – condition away her sex drive, leaving her completely cool and cerebral and free to pursue truly worthy relationships and activities; but the male, who seems to dig women sexually and who seeks constantly to arouse them, stimulates the highly-sexed female to frenzies of lust, throwing her into a sex bag from which few women ever escape. The lecherous male excited the lustful female; he has to – when the female transcends her body, rises above animalism, the male, whose ego consists of his cock, will disappear.

Sex is the refuge of the mindless. And the more mindless the woman, the more deeply embedded in the male "culture", in short, the nicer she is, the more sexual she is. The nicest women in our "society" are raving sex maniacs. But being just awfully, awfully nice they don't, of course, descend to fucking – that's uncouth – rather than make love, commune by means of their bodies and establish sensual rapport; the literary ones are attuned to the throb of Eros and attain a clutch upon the Universe; the religious have spiritual communion with the Divine Sensualism; the mystics merge with the Erotic Principle and blend with the Cosmos, and the acid heads contact their erotic cells.

On the other hand, those females least embedded in the male "Culture", the least nice, those crass and simple souls who reduce fucking to fucking, who are too childish for the grown-up world of suburbs, mortgages, mops and baby shit, too selfish to raise kids and husbands, too uncivilized to give a shit for anyone's opinion of them, too arrogant to respect Daddy, the "Greats" or the deep wisdom of the Ancients, who trust only their animal, gutter instincts, who equate Culture with chicks, whose sole diversion is prowling for emotional thrills and excitement, who are given to disgusting, nasty, upsetting "scenes", hateful, violent bitches given to slamming those who unduly irritate them in the teeth, who'd sink a shiv into a man's chest or ram an icepick up his asshole as soon as look at him, if they knew they could get away with it, in short, those who, by the standards of our "culture" are SCUM... these females are cool and relatively cerebral and skirting asexuality.

Unhampered by propriety, niceness, discretion, public opinion, "morals", the "respect" of assholes, always funky, dirty, low-down SCUM gets around... and around and around... they've seen the whole show – every bit of it – the fucking scene, the sucking scene, the dyke scene – they've covered the whole waterfront, been under every dock and pier – the peter pier, the pussy pier... you've got to go through a lot of sex to get to anti-sex, and SCUM's been through it all, and they're now ready for a new show; they want to crawl out from under the dock, move, take off, sink out. But SCUM doesn't yet prevail; SCUM's still in the gutter of our "society", which, if it's not deflected from its present course and if the Bomb doesn't drop on it, will hump itself to death.

Boredom: Life in a "society" made by and for creatures who, when they are not grim and depressing are utter bores, can only be, when not grim and depressing, an utter bore.

Secrecy, Censorship, Suppression of Knowledge and Ideas, and Exposing: Every male's deep-seated, secret, most hideous fear is the fear of being discovered to be not a female, but a male, a subhuman animal. Although niceness, politeness and "dignity" suffice to prevent is exposure on a personal level, in order to prevent the general exposure of the male sex as a whole and to maintain his unnatural dominant position in "society", the male must resort to:

1. Censorship. Responding reflexly to isolated words and phrases rather than cerebrally to overall meanings, the male attempts to prevent the arousal and discovery of his animalism by censoring not only "pornography", but any work containing "dirty" words, no matter in what context they are used.

2. Suppression of all ideas and knowledge that might expose him or threaten his dominant position in "society". Much biological and psychological data is suppressed, because it is proof of the male's gross inferiority to the female. Also, the problem of mental illness will never be solved while the male maintains control, because first, men have a vested interest in it – only females who have very few of their marbles will allow males the slightest bit of control over anything –  and second, the male cannot admit to the role that fatherhood plays in causing mental illness.

3. Exposing. The male's chief delight in life – insofar as the dense, grim male can ever be said to delight in anything – is in exposing others. It doesn't much matter what they're exposed as, so long as they're exposed; it distracts attention from himself. Exposing others as enemy agents (Communists and Socialists) is one of his favourite pastimes, as it removes the source of the threat to him not only from himself, but from the country and the Western world. The bugs up his ass aren't in him; they're in Russia.

Distrust: Unable to empathize or feel affection or loyalty, being exclusively out for himself, the male has no sense of fair play; cowardly, needing constantly to pander to the female to win her approval, that he is helpless without, always on edge lest his animalism, his maleness be discovered, always needing to cover up, he must lie constantly; being empty, he has no honour or integrity – he doesn't know what those words mean. The male, in short, is treacherous, and the only appropriate attitude in a male "society" is cynicism and distrust.

Ugliness: Being totally sexual, incapable of cerebral or aesthetic responses, totally materialistic and greedy, the male, besides inflicting on the world "Great Art", has decorated his unlandscaped cities with ugly buildings (both inside and out), ugly decors, billboards, highways, cars, garbage trucks and, most notably, his own putrid self.

Hate and Violence: The male is eaten up with tension, with frustration at not being female, at not being capable of ever achieving satisfaction or pleasure of any kind; eaten up with hate – not rational hate that is directed against those who abuse or insult you – but irrational, indiscriminate hate... hatred, at bottom, of his own worthless self.

Gratuitous violence, besides "proving" he is a "Man", serves as an outlet for his hate and, in addition – the male being capable only of sexual responses and needing very strong stimuli to stimulate his half-dead self – provides him with a little sexual thrill.

Disease and Death: All diseases are curable, and the ageing process and death are due to disease; it is possible, therefore, never to age and to live forever. In fact, the problems of ageing and death could be solved within a few years, if an all-out, massive scientific assault were made on the problem. This, however, will not occur within the male establishment, because:

1. The many male scientists who shy away from biological research, terrified of the discovery males are females, and show marked preference for virile, "manly" war and death programs.

2. The discouragement of many potential scientists from scientific careers by the rigidity, boringness, expensiveness, time-consumingness and unfair exclusivity of our "higher" educational system.

3. Propaganda disseminated by insecure male professionals, who jealously guard their positions, so that only a highly select few can comprehend abstract scientific concepts.

4. Widespread lack of self-confidence brought about by the father system that discourages many talented girls from becoming scientists.

5. Lack of automation. There now exists a wealth of data which, if sorted out and correlated, would reveal the cure for cancer and several other diseases and possibly the key to life itself. But the data is so massive it requires high speed computers to correlate it all. The institution of computers will be delayed interminably under the male control system, since the male has a horror of being replaced by machines.

6. The money system's insatiable need for new products. Most of the few scientists around who aren't working on death programs are tied up doing research for corporations.

7. The male likes death – it excites him sexually and, already dead inside, he wants to die.

8. The bias of the money system for the least creative scientists. Most scientists come from at least relatively affluent families where Daddy reigns supreme.

Incapable of a positive state of happiness, which is the only thing that can justify one's existence, the male is, at best, relaxed, comfortable, neutral, and this condition is extremely short-lived, as boredom, a negative state, soon sets in; he is, therefore, doomed to an existence of suffering relieved only by occasional, fleeting stretches of restfulness, which state he can achieve only at the expense of some female. The male is, by his very nature, a leech, an emotional parasite and, therefore, not ethically entitled to live, as no one has the right to live at someone else's expense.

Just as humans have a prior right to existence over dogs by virtue of being more highly evolved and having a superior consciousness so women have a prior right to existence over men. The elimination of any male is, therefore, a righteous and good act, an act highly beneficial to women as well as an act of mercy.

However, this moral issue will eventually be rendered academic by the fact that the male is gradually eliminating himself. In addition to engaging in the time-honoured and classical wars and race-riots, men are more and more either becoming fags or are obliterating themselves through drugs. The female, whether she likes it or not, will eventually take complete charge, if for no other reason than that he will have to – the male, for practical purposes, won't exist.

Accelerating this trend is the fact that more and more males are acquiring enlightened self-interest; they're realizing more and more that the female interest is their interest, that they can live only through the female and that the more the female is encouraged to live, to fulfil herself, to be a female and not a male, the more nearly he lives; he's coming to see that it's easier and more satisfactory to live through her than to try to become her and usurp her qualities, claim them as his own, push the female down and claim she's a male. The fag, who accepts his maleness, that is, his passivity and total sexuality, his femininity, is also best served by women being truly female, as it would then be easier for him to be male, feminine. If men were wise they would seek to become really female, would do intensive biological research that would lead to men, by means of operations on the brain and nervous system, being able to be transformed in psyche, as well as body, into women.

Whether to continue to use females for reproduction or to reproduce in the laboratory will also become academic; what will happen when every female, twelve and over, is routinely taking the Pill and there are no longer any accidents? How many women will deliberately get or (if an accident) remain pregnant? No, Virginia, women don't just adore being brood mares, despite what the mass of robot, brainwashed women will say. When society consists of only the fully conscious the answer will be none. Should a certain percentage of women be set aside by force to serve as brood mares for the species? Obviously this will not do. The answer is laboratory production of babies.

As for the issue of whether or not to continue to reproduce males, it doesn't follow that because the male, like disease, has always existed among us that he should continue to exist. When genetic control is possible – and it soon will be – it goes without saying that we should produce only whole, complete beings, not physical defects or deficiencies, including emotional deficiencies, such as maleness. Just as the deliberate production of blind people would be highly immoral, so would be the deliberate production of emotional cripples.

Why produce even females? Why should there be future generations? What is their purpose? When ageing and death are eliminated, why continue to reproduce? Why should we care what happens when we're dead? Why should we care that there is no younger generation to succeed us?

Eventually the natural course of events, of social evolution, will lead to total female control of the world and, subsequently, to the cessation of the production of males and, ultimately, to the cessation of the production of females.

But SCUM is impatient; SCUM is not consoled by the thought that future generations will thrive; SCUM wants to grab some thrilling living for itself. And, if a large majority of women were SCUM, they could acquire complete control of this country within a few weeks simply by withdrawing from the labour force, thereby paralysing the entire nation. Additional measures, any one of which would be sufficient to completely disrupt the economy and everything else, would be for women to declare themselves off the money system, stop buying, just loot and simply refuse to obey all laws they don't care to obey. The police force, National Guard, Army, Navy and Marines combined couldn't squelch a rebellion of over half the population, particularly when it's made up of people they are utterly helpless without.

If all women simply left men, refused to have anything to do with any of them – ever – all men, the government, and the national economy would collapse completely. Even without leaving men, women who are aware of the extent of their superiority to and power over men, could acquire complete control over everything within a few weeks, could effect a total submission of males to females. In a sane society the male would trot along obediently after the female. The male is docile and easily led, easily subjected to the domination of any female who cares to dominate him. The male, in fact, wants desperately to be led by females, wants Mama in charge, wants to abandon himself to her care. But this is not a sane society, and most women are not even dimly aware of where they're at in relation to men.

The conflict, therefore, is not between females and males, but between SCUM – dominant, secure, self-confident, nasty, violent, selfish, independent, proud, thrill-seeking, free-wheeling, arrogant females, who consider themselves fit to rule the universe, who have free-wheeled to the limits of this "society" and are ready to wheel on to something far beyond what it has to offer – and nice, passive, accepting, "cultivated", polite, dignified, subdued, dependent, scared, mindless, insecure, approval-seeking Daddy's Girls, who can't cope with the unknown, who want to continue to wallow in the sewer that is, at least, familiar, who want to hang back with the apes, who feel secure only with Big Daddy standing by, with a big, strong man to lean on and with a fat, hairy face in the White House, who are too cowardly to face up to the hideous reality of what a man is, what Daddy is, who have cast their lot with the swine, who have adapted themselves to animalism, feel superficially comfortable with it and know no other way of "life", who have reduced their minds, thoughts and sights to the male level, who, lacking sense, imagination and wit can have value only in a male "society", who can have a place in the sun, or, rather, in the slime, only as soothers, ego boosters, relaxers and breeders, who are dismissed as inconsequents by other females, who project their deficiencies, their maleness, onto all females and see the female as a worm.

But SCUM is too impatient to hope and wait for the de-brainwashing of millions of assholes. Why should the swinging females continue to plod dismally along with the dull male ones? Why should the fates of the groovy and the creepy be intertwined? Why should the active and imaginative consult the passive and dull on social policy? Why should the independent be confined to the sewer along with the dependent who need Daddy to cling to?

A small handful of SCUM can take over the country within a year by systematically fucking up the system, selectively destroying property, and murder.

SCUM will become members of the unwork force, the fuck-up force; they will get jobs of various kinds and unwork. For example, SCUM salesgirls will not charge for merchandise; SCUM telephone operators will not charge for calls; SCUM office and factory workers in addition to fucking up their work, will secretly destroy equipment. SCUM will unwork at a job until fired, then get a new job to unwork at.

SCUM will forcibly relieve bus drivers, cab drivers and subway token sellers of their jobs and run buses and cabs and dispense free tokens to the public.

SCUM will destroy all useless and harmful objects – cars, store windows, "Great Art", etc.

Eventually SCUM will take over the air-waves – radio and TV networks – by forcibly relieving of their jobs all radio and TV employees who would impede SCUM's entry into the broadcasting studios.

SCUM will couple-bust – barge into mixed (male-female) couples, wherever they are, and bust them up.

SCUM will kill all men who are not in the Men's Auxiliary of SCUM. Men in the Men's Auxiliary are those men who are working diligently to eliminate themselves, men who, regardless of their motives, do good, men who are playing ball with SCUM. A few examples of the men in the Men's Auxiliary are: men who kill men; biological scientists who are working on constructive programs, as opposed to biological warfare; journalists, writers, editors, publishers and producers who disseminate and promote ideas that will lead to the achievement of SCUM's goals; faggots who, by their shimmering, flaming example, encourage other men to de-man themselves and thereby make themselves relatively inoffensive; men who consistently give things away – money, things, services; men who tell it like it is (so far not one ever has), who put women straight, who reveal the truth about themselves, who give the mindless male females correct sentences to parrot, who tell them a woman's primary goal in life should be to squash the male sex (to aid men in this endeavour SCUM will conduct Turd Sessions, at which every male present will give a speech beginning with the sentence:" I am a turd, a lowly, abject turd," then proceed to list all the ways in which he is. His reward for so doing will be the opportunity to fraternize after the session for a whole, solid hour with the SCUM who will be present. Nice, clean-living male women will be invited to the sessions to help clarify any doubts and misunderstandings they may have about the male sex); makers and promoters of sex books and movies, etc, who are hastening the day when all that will be shown on the screen will be Suck and Fuck (males, like the rats following the Pied Piper, will be lured by Pussy to their doom, will be overcome and submerged by and will eventually drown in the passive flesh that they are); drug pushers and advocates, who are hastening the dropping out of men.

Being in the Men's Auxiliary is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for making SCUM's escape list; it's not enough to do good; to save their worthless asses men must must also avoid evil. A few examples of the most obnoxious or harmful types are: rapists, politicians and all who are in their service (campaigners, members of political parties, etc); lousy singers and musicians; Chairmen of Boards; Breadwinners; landlords; owners of greasy spoons and restaurants that play Musak; "Great Artists"; cheap pikers and welchers; cops; tycoons; scientists working on death and destruction programs or for private industry (practically all scientists); liars and phonies; disc jockeys; men who intrude themselves in the slightest way on any strange female; real estate men; stock brokers; men who speak when they have nothing to say; men who loiter idly on the street and mar the landscape with their presence; double dealers; flim-flam artists; litterbugs; plagiarizers; men who in the slightest way harm any female; all men in the advertising industry; psychiatrists and clinical psychologists; dishonest writers, journalists, editors, publishers, etc; censors on both the public and private levels; all members of the armed forces, including draftees (LBJ and McNamara give orders, but service men carry them out) and particularly pilots (if the bomb drops, LBJ won't drop it; a pilot will). In the case of a man whose behaviour falls into both the good and bad categories, an overall subjective evaluation of him will be made to determine if his behaviour is, in the balance, good or bad.

It is most tempting to pick off the female "Great Artists", liars and phonies, etc, along with the men, but that would be inexpedient, as it would not be clear to most of the public that the female killed was a male. All women have a fink streak in them, to a great or lesser degree, but it stems from a lifetime of living among men. Eliminate men and women will shape up. Women are improvable; men are not, although their behaviour is. When SCUM gets hot on their asses it'll shape up fast.

Simultaneously with the fucking-up, looting, couple-busting, destroying and killing, SCUM will recruit. SCUM, then, will consist of recruiters; the elite corps – the hard core activists (the fuck-ups, looters and destroyers) and the elite of the elite – the killers.

Dropping out is not the answer; fucking-up is. Most women are already dropped out; they were never in. Dropping out gives control to those few who don't drop out; dropping out is exactly what the establishment leaders want; it plays into the hands of the enemy; it strengthens the system instead of undermining it, since it is based entirely on the non-participation, passivity, apathy and non-involvement of the mass of women. Dropping out, however, is an excellent policy for men and SCUM will enthusiastically encourage it.

Looking inside yourself for salvation, contemplating your navel, is not, as the Drop Out people would have you believe, the answer. Happiness lies outside yourself, is achieved through interacting with others. Self-forgetfulness should be one's goal, not self-absorption. The male, capable of only the latter, makes a virtue of an irremediable fault and sets up self-absorption, not only as a good but as a Philosophical Good, and thus gets credit for being deep.

SCUM will not picket, demonstrate, march or strike to attempt to achieve its ends. Such tactics are for nice, genteel ladies who scrupulously take only such action as is guaranteed to be ineffective. In addition, only decent, clean-living, male women, highly trained in submerging themselves in the species, act on a mob basis. SCUM consists of individuals; SCUM is not a mob, a blob. Only as many SCUM will do a job as are needed for the job. Also, SCUM, being cool and selfish, will not subject itself to getting rapped on the head with billy clubs; that's for the nice, "privileged, educated", middle-class ladies with a high regard for the touching faith in the essential goodness of Daddy and policemen. If SCUM ever marches, it will be over the President's stupid, sickening face; if SCUM ever strikes, it will be in the dark with a six-inch blade.

SCUM will always operate on a criminal as opposed to a civil disobedience basis, that is, as opposed to openly violating the law and going to jail in order to draw attention to an injustice. Such tactics acknowledge the rightness of the overall system and are used only to modify it slightly, change specific laws. SCUM is against the entire system, the very idea of law and government. SCUM is out to destroy the system, not attain certain rights within it. Also, SCUM – always selfish, always cool – will always aim to avoid detection and punishment. SCUM will always be furtive, sneaky, underhanded (although SCUM murders will always be known to be such).

Both destruction and killing will be selective and discriminate. SCUM is against half-crazed, indiscriminate riots, with no clear objective in mind, and in which many of your own kind are picked off. SCUM will never instigate, encourage or participate in riots of any kind or any other form of indiscriminate destruction. SCUM will coolly, furtively stalk its prey and quietly move in for the kill. Destruction will never be such as to block off routes needed for the transportation of food and other essential supplies, contaminate or cut off the water supply, block streets and traffic to the extent that ambulances can't get through or impede the functioning of hospitals.

SCUM will keep on destroying, looting, fucking-up and killing until the money-work system no longer exists and automation is completely instituted or until enough women co-operate with SCUM to make violence unnecessary to achieve these goals, that is, until enough women either unwork or quit work, start looting, leave men and refuse to obey all laws inappropriate to a truly civilized society. Many women will fall into line, but many others, who surrendered long ago to the enemy, who are so adapted to animalism, to maleness, that they like restrictions and restraints, don't know what to do with freedom, will continue to be toadies and doormats, just as peasants in rice paddies remain peasants in rice paddies as one regime topples another. A few of the more volatile will whimper and sulk and throw their toys and dishrags on the floor, but SCUM will continue to steamroller over them.

A completely automated society can be accomplished very simply and quickly once there is a public demand for it. The blueprints for it are already in existence, and its construction will only take a few weeks with millions of people working at it. Even though off the money system, everyone will be most happy to pitch in and get the automated society built; it will mark the beginning of a fantastic new era, and there will be a celebration atmosphere accompanying the construction. The elimination of money and the complete institution of automation are basic to all other SCUM reforms; without these two the others can't take place; with them the others will take place very rapidly. The government will automatically collapse. With complete automation it will be possible for every woman to vote directly on every issue by means of an electronic voting machine in her house. Since the government is occupied almost entirely with regulating economic affairs and legislating against purely private matters, the elimination of money and with it the elimination of males who wish to legislate "morality" will mean that there will be practically no issues to vote on.

After the elimination of money there will be no further need to kill men; they will be stripped of the only power they have over psychologically independent females. They will be able to impose themselves only on the doormats, who like to be imposed on. The rest of the women will be busy solving the few remaining unsolved problems before planning their agenda for eternity and Utopia – completely revamping educational programs so that millions of women can be trained within a few months for high level intellectual work that now requires years of training (this can be done very easily once our educational goal is to educate and not to perpetuate an academic and intellectual elite); solving the problems of disease and old age and death and completely redesigning our cities and living quarters. Many women will for a while continue to think they dig men, but as they become accustomed to female society and as they become absorbed in their projects, they will eventually come to see the utter uselessness and banality of the male.

The few remaining men can exist out their puny days dropped out on drugs or strutting around in drag or passively watching the high-powered female in action, fulfilling themselves as spectators, vicarious livers or breeding in the cow pasture with the toadies, or they can go off to the nearest friendly suicide centre where they will be quietly, quickly and painlessly gassed to death.

[Footnote: It will be electronically possible for him to tune in to any specific female he wants to and follow in detail her every movement. The females will kindly, obligingly consent to this, as it won't hurt them in the slightest and it is a marvellously kind and humane way to treat their unfortunate, handicapped fellow beings.]

Prior to the institution of automation, to the replacement of males by machines, the male should be of use to the female, wait on her, cater to her slightest whim, obey her every command, be totally subservient to her, exist in perfect obedience to her will, as opposed to the completely warped, degenerate situation we have now of men, not only not existing at all, cluttering up the world with their ignominious presence, but being pandered to and grovelled before by the mass of females, millions of women piously worshipping before the Golden Calf, the dog leading the master on the leash, when in fact the male, short of being a drag queen, is least miserable when his dogginess is recognised – no unrealistic emotional demands are made of him and the completely together female is calling the shots. Rational men want to be squashed, stepped on, crushed and crunched, treated as the curs, the filth that they are, have their repulsiveness confirmed.

The sick, irrational men, those who attempt to defend themselves against their disgustingness, when they see SCUM barrelling down on them, will cling in terror to Big Mama with her Big Bouncy Boobies, but Boobies won't protect them against SCUM; Big Mama will be clinging to Big Daddy, who will be in the corner shitting in his forceful, dynamic pants. Men who are rational, however, won't kick or struggle or raise a distressing fuss, but will just sit back, relax, enjoy the show and ride the waves to their demise.

Trainwreck (4½ Stars)


This is one of the funniest films I've seen for a long time. It's a romantic comedy that follows the pre-defined rules of rom-coms, but the comedy element is in the foreground. It's a romantic comedy with a small R and a capital C. It was written by Amy Schumer, who also has the lead role. The character in the film is called Amy, which points to the fact that she's playing herself, as far as the personality is concerned.

Amy is a writer for a magazine called S'Nuff. Please don't forget the apostrophe. She leads a promiscuous lifestyle, because she believes that monogamy is unnatural. Her preference is for big strong men, all muscle and no brains. She has a selfish attitude to sex. She likes men to go down on her, but afterwards she often pretends to fall asleep, because giving a man pleasure bores her. Even if she does have intercourse with a man it's her rule that they don't spend the night together. No romance after the sex is over, it's not allowed.

Of course, like in the classical German Novellas, there has to be a turning point, leading to a chain of events over which the protagonists have no power. Amy has to interview a sports doctor for her magazine. He's not like the men she usually dates. He's intelligent and has a smaller build, but she falls in love with him. Of course, she doesn't use the L word, because she's in denial, but the audience knows it's love.

I would probably have given the film five stars if the doctor, played by Bill Hader, weren't such a dull character. I realise this is deliberate, a straight man as a contrast for Amy's comedy antics, but I think it's overdone. Bill could have played the role with a bit more spice.

Amy, on the other hand, is brilliant. I'd never even heard of her until recently, when she created a scandal by posing as Princess Leia in a photo shoot for GQ magazine. This was done without permission from Disney, the company which owns Star Wars, and possibly makes the magazine guilty of copyright infringements. That's a question for lawyers to decide.


Another recent incident was the red carpet at the Time 100 Gala, where Amy Schumer deliberately fell over in front of Kanye West, the "greatest living rock star on the planet". The photo says it all. Everyone in the room was laughing. Even Kim Kardashian cracked a smile. Only Kanye kept a straight face. If he had laughed with everyone else he would have retained his pride, but by being the only person in the room with a glum face it made him look like a fool.


Also worth mentioning is John Cena, better known as a WWE wrestler. Did Amy write the role of her boyfriend Steven with him in mind? I suspect so. He's a very intelligent, articulate man in real life, but in the film he's the complete opposite, a stupid person incapable of putting words together to make appropriate sentences in any situation.

Then there's the film within a film, starring Daniel Radcliffe as the Dog Walker. I hope this mini-film will be available as an extra feature on the Blu-ray.


P. S. I've repeated the rules of romantic comedies so often, but here they are once more for anyone who's too lazy to search my old posts:
  1. Girl meets boy.
  2. The girl doesn't like the boy, but as time goes on she grows to like him.
  3. Girl and boy go different ways. (Sometimes geographically, sometimes she returns to an ex-lover).
  4. Girl realises she can't live without the boy and returns to him.
Don't make me repeat myself again!