#juice that awakens you to the absurdity of existence

[crustaceansingles]

You shouldn't have encouraged me yesterday if you didn't want me to drop everything and do more juiceposting.

[kongwithashotgun]

Kong With A Shotgun 3:  'Dueling Doctors’

Dr. X; the tragic story behind the mad scientist turned Beast Priest of Skull Island.  He was of course, the Legendary Monsterverse’s own Dr. Rick Stanton. But this is and alternate reality in a weird tales Monsterverse.  Throw everything you think you know out about Dr. Rick Stanton (which shouldn’t be much).

Little Rick Stanton grew up within the shadow of earth shattering discovery.  Born in 1959 into a world of mystery, little Rick’s parents were some of the first scientists brought on board to examine and unravel humankind’s newest secret uncovered five years earlier; our radical discovery of a semi-aquatic 400 foot prehistoric reptile in the South Pacific.  

From an early age, Rick grew up on the distant shores of Odo Island off the coast of Japan.  It was here in the mid ‘60′s the secluded isle of humble fishermen was stripped and converted into the top secret facility of study attracting the world’s top minds.  Young Rick lost himself in this bizarre environment of test tubes, theories, geniuses, analysis, and arcane historical studies.  

He followed in his parents footsteps, developing ingenious projects on his own completely outside the box, all to help fathom the absurdity of titan’s existence in our world.  In the late 70′s he was one of the chosen few to relocate to the new facility on Skull Island.  He and a young Dr. Serizawa, the more even-keeled of the two, at this time were studying together until the discovery of the mystical red berries in ‘85.  They differed in drastic ways when it came to the controversial Mechagodzilla Project they were co-developing, and by the time of our abduction of the island’s god Kong, never spoke again.

Dr. Stanton then relocated to a new facility in the deserts of the American Southwest where we imprisoned the ape and developed Project Godkiller.  From here things escalated rapidly.  Discoveries of ancient religions, dozens more cyclopean monsters awakening, alien dragons, hollow earths, horrible truths; mass destruction.  Dr Stanton kind of went insane by this time.  He changed his name to Xero; Dr. X.  As in ‘zero-sum game’.  His twisted humor and cynicism over being such an integral part in those diabolical events shattered his mind.  He took to red berries like all the rest, and submitted himself to an unstoppable force beyond human control, joining the fanatical group, the ‘Order of Kong’, at a very early stage in it’s development  He worshipped below Kong With A Shotgun.  

A once inquisitive, hyper aware mind faded into oblivion and hallucination within the neb-pagan, geo-political, drug induced landscape of the newly formed ‘Kingdom of Monsters’

-From the records of Dr. Serizawa; ‘Red Berry free’ co-founder of the Mechagodzilla Project.  Former friend and colleague of Dr. Rick Stanton.  Currently 175 years old and 60% bio-mech augmented, deep underground in one of humanities last facilities finishing development on the first met ‘Patrol Rigs’ to roll out in 2154 (see godzillaprimordial.tumblr.com for more details).  Last effort to reassert control through man-made titans.   

‘Kingdom of Monsters’ Timeline 

 1954: Godzilla discovered in the depths of the South Pacific. 

 1959: Rick Stanton is born. 

 1963: The Stanton family transfers to a top secret facility on Odo Island off the coast of Japan for the further study of Titans. 

 1970: Age 16, Dr. Rick Stanton receives his second doctorate in behavioral psychology. Meets friend and colleague Dr. Daisuke Serizawa. 

 1973: Kong and Skull Island discovered, ‘hollow earth’ theory confirmed. 

 1974: Doctors Stanton and Serizawa begin conceptual work on the Mechagodzilla Project; man made titan development. 

 1978: Dr. Stanton transfers to a secret facility on Skull Island along with Dr. Serizawa. 

 1985: Skull Island ‘Red Berries’ discovered. That same year, Godzilla first invades decimating Skull Island marking the beginning of the Godzilla/ Kong war that would last over 70 years.

 1988: Discoveries of multiple hollow earth portals across the globe. Activity heightens and cannot be contained. Titan’s begin waking up. 

1991: A three-headed golden alien dragon hatches from a meteorite egg thing buried deep within the arctic circle.  It tries to destroy all monsters, and fails.  The first epic monster brawl in modern history.

 1992: The ‘Hollow Earth War’ cold war goes hot; and global.  Stirred and awoken by the brawl a year earlier, a subterranean reptilian invasion erupts.  Titan awakenings continue, new discoveries, archaic history, ancient religions, and more new species discovered from deeper within the earth. 

1995: Godzilla’s heightened aggression peaks with the complete annihilation of Tokyo.  Alongside the hollow earth reptilian invasion: balance of nature becomes ‘God of Destruction’. 

 1998: Kong is abducted and transported to the American southwest for experimentation on a new project dubbed ‘Project Godkiller’. 

 1999: Dr. Stanton transfers to the American southwest to begin work in earnest for Project Godkiller; development of ‘man manipulated titan’.

 2020: Project Godkiller complete; King Kong rolls out, shotgun in hand, new muscle to champion our dominion battling against hollow earth vermin and eternal reptiles.  

2022: Beginning’s of the cultish ‘Order of Kong’ begins in the shadows; first recorded case of modern Titan worship.  Red Berry juice abuse begins to become a problem.   

 2028: After years of fighting and adventuring under our new king, retaliation ensues; Kong breaks his techno-shackles and destroys Godkiller Base, going rogue and returning to Skull Island.  Red Berry Juice gets loose from Godkiller Base, rocks the world; global drug pandemic triggering mass hysteria and hallucination.  Pilgrimages to Skull Island begin.

 2030: ‘The Shattering’. Historical ending point of most civilization as we know it. 

 2035: New globalist pseudo-government erected; the ‘Kingdom Of Monsters’, reality twists and bends under the influence of the Red Berry.  Territories split apart, Titans with their corresponding tribes.  Dr. Rick Stanton becomes Dr. X and vanishes from the world, joining the Order Of Kong.     

 2040: Titan worship heightens, fringe cults established over the past decades gain legitimacy. The ‘Order of Kong’, ‘Godzilla Doomers’, Mothra’s ‘Bug People’, The Rodan ‘Punkers’. 

 2054: Full human integration;  the Kingdom of Monsters is universally recognized. Titans war across the globe and their cult tribes worship and fight below them. 

2085: Kong With A Shotgun is finally killed, after waging a century long war against Godzilla. The last battle taking a full year from Japan, ending in New York City. The next age of monsters begins.

[indigogoinggone-blog]

Mennonite and Mexico

Checking my prejudice

It had been three days since I stuck out my thumb and tied my bike to the backseat of this Mexican man’s car. We are in hot pursuit of the greatest taco in the Yucatan as we hurtle ever closer to the Belizean border that will signify our parting of ways. Presently we are in the armpit of some great God. It smells pugnant, moist and like heavy immovable air - though this is not a necessarily a bad smell. The God showers regularly and eats well it would seem, which figures given its divine status and probable access to green smoothies, but smell aside it is the stifling heat that is the dominating sensation inside the vehicle. I turn to my new friend. “Mucho calor, putaaaaaa.” He wears a necklace of sweat beads as he declines to verbally answer, instead making a rapid right turn.

He tells me that he remembers seeing a beach marked here on the map, and sure enough, a parking space emerges in our line of vision, flanked by vendors of every description. Particularly pleasing to me was the peddling of mango in all its forms. Do you want it dried? Fresh and sliced? Diced? Whole? With chilli? Frozen? On a kebab? As a juice? Ohhhh sweet fruit, oh sweet, sweet package of sugar and joy, my mouth salivates and hands exchange pesos for you eagerly. There is a childish and excitable fevor gripping both my partner and I. We have mango juices dripping perversely from chin to chest, eyes alight with a sugar rush, and tyranny of the humidity forgotten. Car parked, we join the throng that is descending upon the gracious shores of the Carribean.

And here is when something happens that has been stuck in the machinery of my reflection, trying to churn out an understanding for the last two weeks. It begins with a young boy holding up a bag of apples to me. “Quiero?” He asks. In immediate essence he isn’t profoundly different from the dozens of other vendors littering the path to the beach. I decline his offer for the apples, and begin to walk ahead when something - I don’t exactly know what - forces me to stare at him a little longer. It’s his eyes that I notice first. Trauma. A hand squeezes my maternal heart and instinct, gently at first and then with a paralysing gusto. Having seen traumatised children before, and having been close to trauma and it’s side effects for many of my recent years, a strange sense for its manifestations has developed. I can’t look away. His little eyes are flickering from me to my partner to the ground, with that tragic vagueness indicative of a childhood robbed. His tiny frame flinches as I reach above his head for my hat, as if he were reacting to a pulled punch. I’m so consumed by the mother within me that I hadn’t noticed the more obvious oddities to his appearance.

His eyes are blue, skin freckled and pale and tiny frame sporting dusty look overalls. Cowboy hat and turned up shoes, he looks as though he been pulled from the set of a bad B grade movie, probably starring Reagan in his hey day. But he was speaking Spanish? My friend catches my eye in shared confusion. We watch as the little boy picks his way through the crowds, stopping to tempt others with his apples. None of the locals seem put off by his strange appearance and I conclude it must be me who is the strange one then. I watch the kid find his way back to a group of similarly dressed kin. A whole group of what looks like conservative Amish meets Mormon meets traditional farmers named McDonald. Six people in total, peddling apples and carrots and bracelets like the Mayan and a Mexican vendors around them, and all dressed in either overalls, cowboy hat and turned up shoes (male) or thick, oppressive, dirt length dresses with a bonnet and ribboned hat (female). All pale, blue eyed, freckled and tall amongst a population of dark eyed and sun tanned small peoples.

The mother in me recoils at the sight of who appears to be the patriarch. He has cruel lips and eyes almost totally enveloped by his eyebrows. I don’t understand the literal translations of his words, but his tone is terrifying. In what I can only describe as an act of self preservation, I grasp the hand of my friend and walk only a pace away from running all the way to the beach. I ask him if he knows why there would be gringos in farm clothes like that, but he’s from the Baja. He’s got no idea. I can’t help think how fucking weird they seem. These predjudiced thoughts begin to take over, fuelled by my instinct that something wasn’t right. Or is it vice versa? Did I fill their narrative with violence simply because they were different and i didn’t understand their presence?

On my ride south to the border, I see a group dressed so similarly that there’s no mistake they share some common set of beliefs. This time the group is on horseback, drawing carts of furniture. While they certainly look a little different to the other people here, I don’t have a sick and alarming feeling in my stomach when I look at them.

Again, crossing the border into Guatemala I see one more family dressed in these overalls and cowboy hats that cover their blue eyes. Who are they? Where did they come from? My sense of fear has entirely disappeared and is replaced by blatant curiosity. Some deep seeded biological part of me recognises them as people who look similar to me in base appearance, and wants to connect with them. Understand why those who look like me dress differently. What is their story?

And in some ironic symbolism of the modern age, I am walking through Flores - after deciding that I will live here for a month or two - and outside the alter of Burger King I see a tribe of Mayan vendors and a tribe of these same pale farmer-esque peoples. Finally I’m in a position to quench my curiousity. I approach them with my hands behind my back in what I hope is the most non threatening and approachable body language possible. In broken Spanish I ask where they are from and what their names are. Their accents are much thicker than other Guatemalans and I struggle to associate meaning with a lot of what they are saying. I pick up on Mennonite, El Ramate, family, God and a few other key words. Eventually I smile a little awkwardly and bid them farewell. In an act of human connection, one of the ladies emerges from behind who appears to be her husband and breaks off half of her Burger and extends it to me. I eat fast food for the first time in five years and ponder the absolute absurdity that is this situation. Traditionally dressed Mayans and who I now understand to be Mennonites eat a product of the American consumerist culture that is both intentionally and unintentionally swallowing their cultures alive. And they share this product with me, who is also somewhat a product of consumerist culture. Strange strange strange. Gringo meets Mayans in colourful skirts meets other white skinned farmers who nonetheless speak a dialect the gringo does not understand.

Still these moments mulled over in my mind. I went searching for Mennonites on the inter webs and found their long history in the Americas. They were a new sight to me and my friend from the Baja because they migrated down the Carribean coast, settling in enclaves that still loosely exist today. From my understanding - and perhaps you could enlighten me if you know anything about them - they came from Europe during the settling of the Americas like many persecuted réglions groups. They have a story similar to many minority groups with themes of isolationism, cultural celebration, technological rejections and persecution. I experienced a major twinge of guilt upon recognising my own prejudices and perceptions. My composite image of an average person right now was so far removed from their image that immediately upon seeing them in Mexico for the first time, i immediately passed judgement. I felt threatened and perceived them as hostile, when perhaps they were not. However, I didn’t perceive future groups of their people as hostile, only curiosities. I think perhaps there is an instinctual understanding of who constitutes a threat, and who appears traumatised. But I’m still unsure. I’m unsure if my construction of them as Other influenced the way I saw their dynamics. I am aware that I am human and that I have these biases and tendencies to misconstrue the Other. In the same breath, I felt the traumitised state of a child and minorities have their share of abuse and abusers as any group of people do.

I guess my point of this whole rant is my awakening to how pervasive our perceptions of Other are in shaping our understanding of people. All it took was one conversation to break down the barrier between them and I; suddenly they were not an oddity but a part of the environment and landscape as anyone else. I no longer had residual fear or suspicion when I saw a group of them, simply because I spoke to them and took an interest in their history of movement. However my initial contact was influenced by the look of trauma I am uncomfortably familiar with. People are never entirely good or bad; there is no way to paint one group with one brush stroke; there is only fluidity, life, suffering and joy all in one. I think also my expectation that farm clothes and horse and cart riding entails cult like behaviour and therefore abuse needed to be challenged. Cults certainly entail a predisposition to abuse, but farm clothes, a rejection of technology in the favour of God and a tight knit cultural community do no entail a cult. And here ends my untangling of such a small series of encounters.

You know me, I can’t let the little things go. I have to understand, have to connect the dots. So I felt like sharing that one instance of dot collecting and drift into deep thought, though I have countless, day in and day out. It’s a powerful thing to travel. To move and migrate. To live in various places across Earth. Oh yes I forgot to mention, I live in Flores Guatemala now. Work at a bar and have wonderful neighbours. I will be here about a month before I hitch hike again. In any case, having homes, friends, experiences and a sense of movement has eroded any lingering belief in the story of the nation. We are people on a planet. Diverse peoples and often strange environments, but still just people on a planet. More similar than we are different. Mmmmm I have hooked into my meditative practises more regularly recently, and the sense of clarity is much appreciated.