August 2004 - Life In The X-Files
 RayzRealm (c) August, 2004

[Aug 07][Aug 22][Aug 28]

Saturday August 07

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful,
and so are we. They never stop thinking about
new ways to harm our country and our people,
and neither do we."
-GW Bush in a Freudian slip

I've always been a big fan of the X-Files, science fiction, spook and be afraid, be very afraid! spy movies. They offered an escape into intrigue from my normal humdrum existance. Little did I suspect years ago that reality would become stranger than fiction. Every day I've woken up since Bush was installed in the Oval Office thinking things can't get any stranger than they are, but as each day passes, the weirdness bar has been raised another notch.

It was bad enough when Reagan and Bush 1 were in charge, my check karma light kept flickering on and off a dull yellow. Since junior and his gang of thugs have blown into town on an ill wind, the check karma light has been glowing steady bright red.

The past 3.5 years seems to have been one giant psyop perpetrated on the American people and those around the world. My minor in college was in Psychology, which was where my true interest was, not in my major, Management Science. From my navy days, where I had to study warfare tactics, college courses and my own personal research, I learned a lot about how psyops, mind control, marketing and manipulation work. People for the most part are predictable, Hitler knew it as well as every other dime store despot that's stained the pages of history. Keeping the masses in a constant state of anxiety and sending mixed messages is one way of keeping the masses dazed and confused, as well as scared shitless!

"Be afraid, be very afraid, terrorists will nuke the Mall of America somewhere around the holidays, but fear not, shop as you normally would. We are in control."

"Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and poses an imminent threat to the US."

"Osama and Saddam are best buddies, be doubly afraid."

"Relax, treat yourself and keep the American economy strong, go out and but the biggest SUV you can."

"Terrorists are everywhere, maybe your next door neighbor is one. Be on guard, report all suspicious behavior, but reach and help you neighbor, keep America strong."

I've reached the point where I no longer watch any news on TV, since it's all controlled by a small media conglomerate presented in sound and video propaganda bites. Even PBS is getting more neocon friendly. The Internet and alternative press are where I now get my news from mostly. I'm almost afraid to think about what Bush will do to the Internet during his second term, and yes, I am almost 100% certain he will be reinstalled as commander in thief for another 4 or more years, and no, I am not voting for him. I was watching the Disinformation DVD over the weekend and was enjoying author, Robert Anton Wilson's monologue on disk 2. I have to agree with many of his statements, but one is true today. "we've reached a point where Americans have to pick one lieing bastard over another to be president." The country has truly gone down the crapper since they assassinated, JFK, Martin Luther King and RFK. I feel that this was when America began to lose her soul.

I had never seen "Wag The Dog" with Robert DiNero and Dustin Hoffman and picked up the DVD last weekend for under $10. I watched it last night and have to say it is timely, media manipulation to placate the masses.

If there still any Area51 visitors out there (traffic stats tell me 0-2 people a day visit now vs 300-600 a day a few years ago) an interesting book is "The 48 Laws Of Power" by Robert Greene. It's probably one of the better books I've read on the subject of people in power, how they get there, how they stay there, manipulating the masses, etc.

Yep, reality has gotten almost as strange as the X-Files, just add aliens. If we wait long enough, the department of homeland insecurity may announce the terror alert level raised to red, "we're under attack by Sodomite terrorists from the planet Uranus."

Sunday addendum; on the local front. The weather in Boston this weekend was superb, low humidity and temps in the high 70's, good weather for trekking about town. I've been doing a lot (too much really) thinking about the small handful of people I've met since my dear departed friend, Paul passed away. Paul was a sweet spirited, well grounded true gentleman, real salt of the Earth.

I only have 3 or 4 people remotely in my life besides Noel and Ellen, and the small crop that has crossed my path during the past 2-4 years have been traveling train wrecks. I swear, it seems society today is made up mostly of sociopaths, walking wounded, the undead, real Pearl Harbors of the soul, who are all on psych meds and seeing shrinks for some reason or another. At times, I feel I'm the one who's crazy because I see what's happening and it bothers me to no end. I don't remember people being anywhere this bas 30-40 years ago. I can't go into the gory details; names places, phone numbers, etc since ya never know who'll be reading this, but I'll say that my mental back yard has been dug up by pansexuals, sexual compulsives in remission, dry drunks, emotional and physical whores, as well as compulsives of every other sort, double speakers, flim flam artists, liars, etc, etc.

I'd love to just be able to develop a small circle of tried and true, trust worthy friends. One contributing factor could be my age, at 57 it's harder to meet new people than it was when I was 27-37.

A real turning point in my current state of hermitage was after a period when I was in contact with a guy in Western Mass through my web site. We talked almost nightly for hours, week after week. It was like we were Siamese twins (finally someone who's on my wavelength). All was well and good until I agreed to be his guest for a weekend out in Wendell, Western Massachusetts is beautiful country, filled with interesting people; anarchists, survivalists, yuppies who dropped out, organic lesbian farmers, intellectuals, bikers, artists, performers, writers, radical faeries, conspiracy buffs, the effluent from mental hospitals, etc. I always felt drawn to Amherst, Hadley, North Hampton, Wendell and places like that. This part of the state has a very strange seductive energy about it that screams out, "quit your day job and come live with us." The areas is filled with one of a kind, cafes, shops, book stores and people. Provincetown used to have a similar energy until it became overly gentrified by rich yuppies. Now P-Town has become Massachusett's answer to The Hamptons.

Well anyway I eagerly anticipated my visit, like a kid getting ready to visit Disney World and was on the road at 6AM winding my way Westward along Route 2. I had never driven much further West on 2 beyond Gardner and Belchertown. I kept going and going until the highway became a single lane byway. It was like a scene out of some Stephen King novel and I managed to get lost, so got out of my car and got in the cell phone. The air was "dead" quiet, except for the sound of hawks as they flew overhead.

My host met me at a roadside diner, leading me into town. Wendell, ya gotta love a place who's town motto is, "We're all here, because we're not quite all there." The weekend was pleasant and relaxing, but my check karma and bullshit discriminator lights kept flashing the whole time I was there. Well anyway to make a long story a bit longer, after my visit this guy was playing some terminal level mind games, and I later found out by accident that he was crazier than a shit house rat. And it's only gone downhill from there.

It's interesting how there's a real flaw in many of us that attracts us to what is worst and most hazardous to our emotional, spiritual and physical well being, (fools rush in) a desire to caress the tiger, kiss the king cobra on the lips or have sex with some unspeakably attractive person who has dynamite strapped around their waist, holding a detonator in their hand, "tell me when you're getting ready to come, I'll press this little red button. You'll have the orgasm of your life."

You don't have to look much further than who's running the world today. We've got a dry drunking megalomaniac in the White House who has most of the country hypnotized by his spell it's getting very very weird out there.

Here's this weeks mid Summer harvest of news and journals.

[Top Of page]

 

Sunday August 22

Nothing to say, nowhere to go, nothing to do and nobody to do it with, so no news is no news. Just sitting here waiting for the rapture to come. I suspect that I won't be taken, as full of foul
Babies for Bush

"Vote for me this coming
November, or the baby goes
to Guantanamo"

smelling sins as my life has been, but it will be interesting to see who else is left on the platform as the Hallelujah train rumbles through.

This brings me to an interesting conversation byte I had with a guy last week. I jokingly mentioned the rapture, his reply, "oh yeah, that's that song by Blondie, right? Gee whatever happened to Blondie anyway?" Close but no cigar.

I asked him what, if any religion he was brought up in, "Catholic", he replied, "and I also went to Protestant churches."

So I said, "you grew up Catholic and went to Protestant churches and never heard of the rapture?"

"No Am I supposed to?"

"How about Armageddon, the second coming of Christ, end of the world as we know it stuff?"

"Huh, I never heard any of that in church. Was I supposed to?"

I explained (to the best of my knowledge) what the rapture and following 7 years of tribulation mean. Just before the shit begins to hit the fan 1,000,000 worse than the world has ever seen it in history, Jesus will swoop down and snatch away all the pure and saved Christians, leaving the rest of us at the mercy of neocons or worse. According to fundies I've heard talk, you might be driving home on the freeway during rush hour and all of a sudden people just disappear, leaving their cars to swerve out of control. I just hope I'm not an a commercial airline flight when the rapture comes, especially if the flight crew are all saved.

Hmmm, if Bush's power bas are all evangelical born again's as they claim to be, then all of the neocons will be whisked to heaven before Armageddon begins. So if the rapture occurs before the November election, John Kerry should win by a landslide, since the only people left will be all of us tree hugging, devil worshipping liberals. Do I believe (if there really is a such thing as the rapture) that the far right wingnut conservatives will al be carried off to some eternal paradise filled with oil wells, expensive cars and nubile young virgins for the hypocrites to bugger to their hearts content for all eternity. In the immortal words of Homey the Clown, "I don't think so!"

I sent this article to all the people (all 12 of them) in my address book, and an old friend and partner in crime who is no longer in the area sent this comment in a mail reply, and he's not even religious, spiritual, but not religious. 

You know something Ray? I think we need the Rapture. We have become such a
sick, twisted and perverse society that we need to be purged. But I don't
think Fallwell and Bush, etc will be saved. I think we're all going to die,
even the self-righteous wacko fundies, and heaven will definitely NOT be
our reward for all this!

Yeharrrr! let the games begin! "General load up them birds with nukes and get'em in the air. Get them missile silos warmed up and ready for action. It'll be a hot time on the old rock tonight."

Here are a few outside news articles and journals.

[Top Of page]

 

Saturday August 28

"What's in a name?"

Just when I thought it was safe, the "other" Ray Levasseur has been released from prison and has moved back to his home state of Maine. I first became aware of his existance back in the 70's, shortly after my wedding to my ex wife. My mother was always a police blotter page junkie and she called me chucking, "there's a domestic terrorist on the loose that has the same name as you. Isn't that funny."

Well anyway, my new wife and I had just returned from our honeymoon in the Big Apple and were celebrating our first weekend in our new apartment, so we went to buy some shrimp and a bottle of champagne to celebrate. I was 28 and still got carded whenever I tried to buy liquor (I looked much younger than I was), so I cheerfully handed the guy behind the counter my driver's license. He looked at it and said, "I'll be right back". About 5 minutes later a dozen police cars came screaming into the parking lot, officers stormed into the store, threw me to the floor and begin grilling me. Needless to say, I was pooping my pants. What the hell have I supposed to have done. I never had as much as a parking ticket. After the local gendarmes realized I was not "him", they let me up, storming out of the liquor store, without so much as an apology. The only crime I had committed was having the same name as another guy who the local and federal cops were hot to trot for.

There's another similar story that took place 6 years later, shortly after my divorce, when I was driving home from work on a Friday night, taking the illegal left turn everyone in my building took so as to avoid and extra 6 miles through town. A state trooper pulled me over, asked for my license and registration and returned to his cruiser for what appeared to be a suspiciously long time. I sat there for over a half hour until I saw a dozen or so state police cars and cans roar past heading in the opposite direction. Then I noticed an equal number coming my way and stopping, blockading the road. I looked in my rear view mirror, only to see the first group pull u turns, blocking the road behind me. I was sitting there thinking, "hmmm, I wonder what's going on, until a wall of cops in riot gear surrounded my car yelling at me to exist my vehicle slowly with my hands up", throwing me to the ground when I opened the door. There's something very intimidating about having a dozen or so guns pointed at your head. I still didn't get it, trying to figure out what all the fuss was about my illegal left turn. As this was going on a few of my coworkers, including my boss drove by, only to see me spread eagled, hand cuffed and shirt less across the hood os a state police car. All I could think was, "ohhh shit, what am I going to say on Monday?"

They had me strip, looking for some sort of tattoos, and of course weapons. The only weapons I carried were the pencils in my pocket. After an hour of answering questions, "have you ever lived in Maine? Have you ever been associated with this and that terrorist groups? etc they realized that I was just a scared "pants pooping" shit less programmer. now they all breathe a sigh of relief, "ha ha no hard feeling buddy right?" I still got a ticket for the illegal left turn and on the way home picked up a fifth of scotch, which I made a healthy dent in when I got home.

It seems that everyone at work knew what it was all about. Someone had taped a Xerox'd copy of a wanted poster for Ray Levasseur outside my cubicle and this became the big office joke for weeks.

One night my boss called me at home and was laughing, "heh heh, I guess you won't be coming to work. I'll have to post an opening for your job." At first I thought, "what!" then he asked, "do you have the TV on?" I told him no, "well you should, You were just on America's Most Wanted." The airing of the Ray Levsaseur as one of the top 10 public enemies segment got my phone ringing for a couple of days.

A few years later my mother called to let me know that she saw in the news that my name sake had just been arrested.

Things remained quiet for years until I was playing around in a search engine and entered my name. A bunch of links regarding my web site came back as well as a number of links about the other Ray. I explored one site that carried some of his writings from prison, reading all of his journals I thought, "now this is spooky. I agree with this guy on a lot of issues on racial, ethnic and social inequality, the country that I love and grew up in as a global bully, and other socio political topics."

Anyway, this past week a coworker asked if I was aware that Ray Levasseur was released from prison and returned to Maine. I Google'd my name and found a number of links to articles about the other Ray. Here's one from the Phoenix Anarchist Coalition announcing his release. Another article comes from A Maine News Site and the last is a link I've had hanging around for a long time, and Letters From Exile - Ray Luc Levasseur which contains some of his prison writings. If curiosity gets the best of you and you click on the Letters From Exile link, read his journals; some pretty interesting and thought provoking stuff.

After reading his writings and articles about him, he and I share a few things in common, but it stops there.

We're the same age,

Both our roots are Quebecois

Both came came from French Canadian blue collar mill town families.

Both served in the military in Viet Nam, him in the Army and me the Navy.

He claims to have become radicalized while in the Army. I didn't become radicalized, but my military experience woke me up to a lot of hard facts and lies that the American sheeple choose to remain ignorant to. My Navy years taught me that almost everything I thought I knew was wrong, and many things are not actually what they seem on the surface. I suppose in the eyes of the average neocon I'm a radical, but then anyone who does not totally stand behind the Bush posse is considered an enema...I mean enemy of the state.

He was active in Viet Nam Veterans Against the War. I belonged to a Vet's group on campus and joined the VVAW, along with most of my fellow Vet students.

The other Ray mentions in his writing how he became aware of the racial and ethnic hatred that runs rampant in society. I grew up during the 50's and my town was made up almost entirely of Catholics, Jews and Wasps. When I was a kid it was always some Wasp's kid who taunted me my kind with crap like, "you Canucks are all trash, White nigger! ha ha, nigger, nigger, dumb fucking Canuck nigger." One day I asked my Dad, "what's a nigger Daddy?" He blew up, "don't you ever use that word again. It's a bad evil word." I told him that kids called me a lazy, dumb Canuck white nigger. He went ape shit! He felt the same about the use of Canuck as a slur.

I have a friend that used to live in Nashua, NH, which has (or did have) a large French Canadian population. He would run off at the mouth about "fucking ignorant dumb Canucks" (yeah and he's a dyed in the wool Wasp). One day I asked him, "can I ask you something? If I were black, would you be calling other blacks nigger in front of me?" At first he was dumb struck, "well no...uhhh...but you're not like most French Canadians. You have to admit most are dumb Canucks." This isn't much different than someone saying to a Black friend, "well you're not like all the lazy ones who give the good negroes a bad name."

So like the terrorist from Maine, I learned at an early age that there is a ton of discrimination, belittlement and hatred toward people who can't trace their roots to some Wasp family who came over on the Mayflower. When you come right down to it, all of us living in the good ole US of A today are nothing but a bunch of mongrels whose roots are from somewhere else, except fot the Native American Indians who were here first. That's one of the things that being a US citizen interesting.

And here's where the similarities end! The only time I ever fired a gun was while I was in the Navy. To be honest, guns give me the wullies. I never felt any sort of attraction to guns, knives, explosives or nukes, and never felt violence was the answer to anything. Violence always seems to beget more violence, plus when you give in to violence, you lower yourself to your opponent's level.

Here's a note to all you "G" men out there who may stumble on Area51...I am NOT the other Ray Levasseur. I'm a programmer and have spent most of my life as a hermit. The most heinous criminal offense I ever committed was a couple of parking tickets. If you gummint spooks check out a Maine or Canadian phone book, Ray Levasseur is a fairly common name, Along with Roland, Armand and Roger, to name a few.

I'll end today by saying, I suppose things could be worse. I could have been born to a Saudi Arabian family and named Osama bin Laden. Hmmm, if I was born with the name George W. Bush, would rich people be sending me steamer trunks full of money? This concludes the August flight recorder. 

Here's this week's short list of nooze articles for you reading pleasure

[Top Of page]

 

Shalom, Ray