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My town is on lockdown and something is coming

The police car’s siren was the first thing that woke me up. Living in a small town, I was not used to hearing it in the dead of the night. I grumbled something not very pleasant towards our peacekeeping force, then tried to put myself back to sleep.
I was having a very vivid nightmare, so in a way it was a good thing that this patrol car took me out of it. Now I could try to dream about something pleasant. That’s when I heard the siren a second time. This was unusual, something was definitely happening in town. I thought I’d just hear about it in high school in the morning.
A third car came down my street, but this time, someone was talking in a large speaker. Hearing the tone of the man made me realize it was for sure not an advertising for an upcoming circus performance. I forced myself to wake up, took my head out of the pillow and instinctively looked at my phone to check the time.
It was 2:30AM, but that is not what caught my attention. I received a text from a two-digit number -98-, probably something official:
FOLLOW MILITARY INSTRUCTIONS // THIS IS NOT AN EXERCISE // IF YOU HAVE FIREARMS TAKE THEM // TAKE ONE FLASHLIGHT PER PERSON MINIMUM // LEAVE YOUR HOUSE NOW // STAY CLOSE TO LIGHT SOURCES
What the hell did that mean? Was that some kind of joke? I’ve heard about some official alert message-guy making a mistake in Hawaii, maybe that was it. Some prank.
I heard helicopters flying above our town. Now that woke me up. This never happens. Our little valley town of about 23 000 inhabitants was not a place of trouble. We gave all the attention and problems to the city of Missoula, way south, beyond the Indian reserve of Flatheads. I opened the window of my bedroom and saw that there was about a dozen helicopters in the air, some pointing flashlights around the city as if looking for something, some landing in the parking around the town’s casino.
There was some noise outside my room. My parents were awake, and I saw the light of the corridor flowing under my door. They were a little bit on the paranoid side, wanting nothing else than a quiet life, and so were already packing. I let go of a long yawn, watched a large military transport plane land in the small airport south of our house, and started to get dressed.
Twenty minutes later we were in the streets. The night was still very dark, despite all those helicopters in the air. All the neighborhood was up and walking, following the police officers that were directing us to the mall. My dad tried to ask a couple of questions to the officer, but he was as confused as us. Apparently, the police station got a call not long before us, and had to hurry to get in gear and to take the people to a staging area from which we would be brought to the southern mall. There, we would be “safe”. Safe from what?
Jonathan!”
I turned around, looking for the person calling my name. It was Sophie, a classmate that was also a neighbor. Apparently waking up was much harder for her than it had been for me, looking at her face. I made a joke about it that did not get the result I expected. She just yawned to my face, threw a casual insult, and went on with the conversation.
Do you know what is happening?
I shrugged and shook my head.
Nothing more than that weird text saying to stay in the light,” I admitted, “maybe something happened at the Canadian border? Maybe a terrorist attack? Maybe ther-“
I was interrupted when four military jets flew in low altitude right above us, going north at full speed. The sound was deafening, and I saw my mom along with many others protecting their ears with their hands. I tried to follow the lights of the planes with my eyes, but they disappeared not long later. Our city is in a valley going North/South, so if they were following it, it was easy to guess where they were going. Few smaller towns, then the Canadian border.
I felt my heart stop for a second when I heard detonations, way up north. This was not an exercise, just as they said. These planes just bombed something. I looked at my parents with shocked, open eyes.
Are the Canadians invading?” I asked, not believing what was happening.
Nobody could tell us anything. We just kept following the police officers. Military trucks were going north up our suburban streets, and every time they came, we stepped on the side of the road to let them go. It was weird enough, but when combat transport vehicles started to go alongside regular tracks, people started to whisper. “Are we at war?” whispered a mid-aged lady, visibly frightened.
My eyes caught Sophie, who was distraught. She was stepping away from her parents and seemed very nervous, with tears forming in her eyes.
“What’s up?” I asked her, trying to sound as casual and reassuring as possible in this crazy situation.
It’s Margaret. She was spending the night at the casino with some friends.
Margaret was Sophie’s older sister. I did not really like her, she was too much of a wild party girl. Not that I want to sound like a boring suburban high schooler.
So? She can join us directly at the mall, right?
Sophie tried to make something with her mouth than sort of looked like a smile. A tear went down her cheek.
I don’t know. We tried to call her, it goes directly to voicemail. I heard someone saying the military were using the casino as headquarters. Maybe she didn’t go out in time. Maybe… I don’t know. Oh my god…”
She started to cry, and I hugged her. I tried to say a few good things to make her feel better, but I’ve never been good for this kind of thing. Even my hug was not that great, since we needed to keep walking while hugging.
Listen, let’s go there real quick, pick her up, and direct her to the mall. Deal?
She looked up at me with teary eyes. I could see the judgement in her eye.
Are you stupid? There are so many soldiers there.”
So what?” I gave her a real smile just as a couple of Apache attack helicopters broke formation west from us and went north at great speed. “They are on our side. Plus, if there are so many soldiers, we’ll be safe there, too.”
It was not a great plan, but I really thought it would be fine. In the worst case they would catch us and send us on the way to the mall. We were kids, right? It would not take a lot of time.
I asked a neighbor friend to tell my parents that I’d go with Sophie quickly pick up her sister, and that we’d all meet at the mall. If I told them directly my dad would just catch me and carry me on his back to make sure I’d stay with them.
The large group of neighbors arrived at a military checkpoint. Soldiers were there, taking command from the police officers. Everyone was given a distress flare and military-grade flashlights by soldiers, and then got inside a truck. Headed directly to the southern mall, I guessed.
One thing caught my attention: One of the soldiers at the checkpoint was not in regular army camouflage. He had a black-and-red uniform that seemed more high-tech to my unexperienced eye. I mean, I kinda like to know the name of military hardwares, but I don’t know much about uniforms. The man was there, standing on an Humvee, giving orders around, making sure that everyone got a flare and embarked in the trucks.
The crowd started to mass in front of the checkpoint. That was our chance.
Let’s cut through the Robinson’s garden to get around the army.” Sophie looked at me as I was saying my stupid plan. “From there we can go straight for the casino.”
And that’s exactly what we did. Away from the group, we plunged into the dark of the suburban gardens. To the distant north more explosions came. I looked into the skies and saw nothing except the very pale moon and some black clouds. The skies were pitch-black. Some funky lights were coming from the valley up north. Was that the result of the bombing? Or some weird thunder?
“Don’t you feel it is cold?” asked Sophie. I did not pay attention until now because of the adrenaline but yes, it was freezing. Much more than what was usual for such a summer night.
Yeah I feel it, plus that damn wind won’t start blowing. It’s not even going in th-“
I stopped instantly. I realized something that froze the blood in my veins. In our town the airport was a big source of jobs, and I wanted to be an air controller. Lots of useless trivia I knew about our airport. One of them: It was built to follow the wind, in order to help pilots to take off with the wind on their back. And that wind was always coming from the north, going south. Not tonight.
The wind is blowing north…It just won’t stop blowing…”
Sophie stared a me with round eyes. I could read the incomprehension on her face.
It never happened.” I whispered while shrugging.
If you try to scare me, Jonathan… Let’s just turn on the lights.”
Sophie was taking her flashlight out of her pocket put I quickly pushed it away.
No! The soldiers will see us. We need to not make any noise.”
A huge rumble came up from our left, on Main Street. We both crouched and tried to see from behind the fence we were hiding behind. A column of Abrams battle tanks were going North at great speed, towards the casino. The whole goddamn Army was deploying in our town.
I was about to offer to, maybe, go to the mall, when Sophie started moving again.
Okay, let’s hurry. I don’t want to stay here a minute more than what is necessary”
We walked ten more minutes. Fighter jets kept going north to bomb god-knows-what. More and more troops arrived, be it by helicopters, transport planes, or coming up from Route 93. I was acting tough in front of Sophie but in truth, it was terrifying. I swear I saw the shadows of a couple kids while we were crossing the gardens. They were going straight to the east, probably also looking for a way inside the casino. Maybe Margaret’s friends? They did not see us, moving fast away from us. I would have called them out if I were not so frightened to be heard by the patrolling soldiers around us.
Our terror switched to stupefaction once we arrived at the casino. The entire casino area had been turned into a fortress. Defensive positions had been erected, snipers were on the roofs, tanks were on the parking lot. Everyone was looking north. On the roof of the casinos huge light projectors were being installed. I don’t know the exact name of these things, but you know the thing that is used for the Bat Signal? That sort of thing.
Hiding in a backyard, we tried to look for a way in. We failed. Soldiers were patrolling everywhere. With the helicopters not high above, it was difficult to hear what any of them were saying. Most of them seemed confused, scared even. I guessed that they did not know either what to expect, or at least not completely. Most of them looked very nervous, and I did not want to risk them reflex-shooting us because we were trying to sneak in their backs.
A squad of four black-and-red soldiers came not far from us. Same advanced uniform as the one coordinating the evacuation effort. They also seemed stressed but were staying away from the bulk of the troops. I made a sign to Sophie to stay silent, and then tried to focus to hear what they were saying.
Any refugees coming from the north?” asked a first soldiers to their squad leader. To my surprise, he had a strong foreign accent that I sort of recognized as East-European.
None. They couldn’t run away in time.” Said the man leading the unit in a cold, harsh tone, before pointing to the roof of the house to our right. “Put Karl, Mikhail and Frédéric up there. If HQ falls they’ll cover the retreat. Any news from Tomohiro’s unit?”
The whole group stopped, not five feet from our position. We were standing in a bush, behind a fence, still as a shadow, holding our breaths.
Defenses at the Wallmart are up,” said a man carrying a large computer-looking device on his back, connected to his helmet through wires. “He will try to delay them, but that won’t make us gain much time.”
Silence fell for a few seconds before the fourth soldier, a woman with a Texas accent, asked: “Why are we setting up here? It’s not a great defensive position.”
“First, we don’t question orders, you know this,” answered immediately the squad leader, “and second, this is the last town before the valley opens up. The last bottleneck before these things can get out of the valley and spread to the flatlands. We have to hold the line until the other Households have regrouped and counter-attacked.”
More seconds of heavy silence. I couldn’t hold my breath anymore and started breathing as discreetly as I could. The squad of black-and-red soldiers started to move away.
“We just have to hold the night? They’ll be weaker in the daylight, right?” asked the man that was previously worried about refugees.
If they can close the Rift. Otherwise dawn will never rise again on this region.
They kept talking while walking the outskirts of the casino-fortress. Series of powerful explosions rang from the north, this time much closer to our city. It jump-scared me like thunder. Gunfight erupted in what I knew was the direction of the Walmart, north of the city. It sounded like a huge firefight… or it was just a lot of soldiers were shooting at something.
The helicopters above us broke formation, taking altitude while launching volleys of rocket towards an unknown enemy. The fighter jets were now dropping bombs not twenty kilometers away from us. Even though we were not that close, we felt the aftershock and the heat waves, something unlike anything I felt before.
Let’s go through the sewers,” I offered, “we’ll be safe there, and we can reach the casino that way.”
“I’m NOT going in the sewers,” shouted back Sophie, “No way. Absolutely no way.”
A rain of huge rockets flew above our heads from way south, headed straight to the valley in the north. Way on my left I saw the shape of a huge twin-rotored helicopter getting away from the combat zone. He was spiraling out of control. I did not see what was causing that but after ten seconds of spiraling fast he just plummeted to the ground. Screams started to rise from beyond the casino, as firefights erupted everywhere.
This whole place is turning into a warzone,” I said to Sophie, “I’m all up for not going into this fortress, but at least let’s take the sewers to get away. It’ll be way faster. I’ve seen it in movies.”
Sophie was utterly terrified. She did know what to do. I could guess she still wanted to save her sister, or join her parents, or mine, or anything. I just wanted to get the hell away from whatever was coming. Out of town.
Let’s wait a few minutes, she offered, maybe it’ll calm down. Maybe they’ll win.”
We waited for about ten minutes. The battle was now in full swing. I did not know what was going on. We went a few streets south from the casino, hidden in another backyard, not far from where we could access the sewer. It was like being in the middle of a huge firework show, except the fireworks where a thousand times louder. However, it was not bright at all, and if not for the sound and shockwaves, we could have thought the town was peaceful.
I took the opportunity of having a bit of time to write everything on my social media. More helicopters crashed all over town as more convoys of troops and vehicles arrived, deploying their infantry in the streets around us before heading to the fighting in combat formation. We were staying hidden as all of this happened.
The winds started to grow ever stronger, and the light of the moon was getting paler and paler, until we could barely see anything apart from the explosions. The light was going away, somehow. Even the screen from my phone seemed dimmed, as if critically out of battery.
Incoming! Take positions!” I heard one of the soldiers not far from us shout to his men. Then it hit us. Cold grasped my body as all the lights of the streets went out. In an instant I could not see anything more than ten meters away, except the dimmed flashes of the soldiers weapons firing. Sophie looked at me, utter terror in her eyes.
I took out the flashlight from my pocket and turned it on. It barely helped, but it was something. I saw something moving not far to my right, and pointed the lights towards it. It was nothing, just shadows dancing with shadows. Far to my left the soldiers were screaming, screams of horror and pain. Whatever was happening, they were losing.
I kept praying that somehow our army would turn this battle around. That this, whatever it was, was not the end of the world. That we would survive this. What I did not know at this moment was that the mission to stop this nightmare had already happened. That is was led by an elite force beyond my imagination. And that they had already failed.
Okay,” said Sophie, crying, “let’s try the sewers”.
We waited two additional minutes that the firefight around us got less intense before going for it. Then we heard an inhuman howl, something almost insectoid and rocky. It sounded as if it came from the other side of an auditorium, echoing beyond us and then back.
Let’s go,” I shouted to Sophie, taking her hands as we were running towards the sewer entrance, ready to enter the darkness below.
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Gravity's Rainbow and the secret integration.

I've read Gravity's Rainbow four times and thought I understood it pretty well. However, reading Beckett's Molloy/Malone Dies/The Unnameable trilogy and the Beckett biography Damned to Fame, and a lot of Jung, and going through some difficult times made me realise how much within me that I had previously repressed. The slow process of integrating everything I was in denial about has allowed me to find peace that I never thought I would attain, having been clinically depressed and suicidal for around ten years. I started reading GR again with this new understanding of myself and realised that I actually hadn't understood it properly at all. I thought I'd share a few things I realised in case they might be of interest to any of you. I will discuss the book from a psychoanalytical perspective and a political perspective here, but I do not wish to reduce what is such a brilliant novel in its own right to these elements alone; I feel like the literary perspective has been discussed far more than these aspects though, and strongly doubt I would be able to add anything new to that excellent body of existing work. Even though I have realised that the political and psychoanalytical aspects are examined and explored very overtly in GR, I think they are often underexamined because the readers themselves haven't come to terms with their own inner conflicts, and are therefore in denial about certain things in themselves, such as their own possible complicity (through inaction or otherwise) with the System - much like Pokler. Therefore I am only going to be discussing the book within the very narrow frameworks of psychoanalysis and politics, while acknowledging that this comprises only a fraction of what it really is.
The sheer density of GR can make it hard to tell what the hell is going on even just in terms of things like the plot. But maybe this isn't such a surprise, Pynchon's intelligence and education, how long he spent writing it, and and how much research he had to do in the process. It's only after doing a lot of the background reading that he refers to that things started to come together for me. With subjects such as Pavlov's theories of conditioning, statistics, physics, engineering, Pynchon reproduces key concepts within the text. For example:
Pavlov was fascinated with “ideas of the opposite.” Call it a cluster of cells, somewhere on the cortex of the brain. Helping to distinguish pleasure from pain, light from dark, dominance from submission... . But when, somehow—starve them, traumatize, shock, castrate them, send them over into one of the transmarginal phases, past borders of their waking selves, past “equivalent” and “paradoxical” phases —you weaken this idea of the opposite, and here all at once is the paranoid patient who would be master, yet now feels himself a slave... who would be loved, but suffers his world’s indifference, and, “I think,” Pavlov writing to Janet, “it is precisely the ultraparadoxical phase which is the base of the weakening of the idea of the opposite in our patients.” Our madmen, our paranoid, maniac, schizoid, morally imbecile—
However, for much of the history, particular that regarding intelligence agencies (whether that is WWII activity such as the O.S.S. or the S.O.E., or CIA activity in the 60s and 70s around the time that Pynchon was writing GR in a Californian beach house, very near where groups such as the Black Panthers were operating, targets of programs such as COINTELPRO and Operation CHAOS), the books had not even been written yet. I think the first few pages, with the carriage full of evacuees, can be interpreted as moving into the darkest parts of lost or repressed history, e.g.:
and it is poorer the deeper they go... ruinous secret cities of poor, places whose names he has never heard..
These names he has never heard could range from the Herero tribe whose genocide he discovered while writing V. ten years before, to Novi Pazar (with the Adenoid passage), to the all other hidden history in the book. I have also read people remarking on how in The Crying of Lot 49 it seems like Pynchon was somehow aware of MK-Ultra (which Dr Hilarius was involved with) before well the documents were leaked and the program confirmed. However, fortunately, many these history books have since been written. If anyone is interested, a great place to start is The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government, published in 2016, which follows Dulles from his time at the Wall Street law firm Sullivan and Cromwell to his time in the O.S.S. in Switzerland, working with Nazis in Operation Paperclip, to his directorship of the CIA through the 50s and 60s. Reading about this Cold War history, and also the writing of Huey Newton (who I strongly believe Enzian is in part based on), made a lot of GR far clearer. It is important to recognise that these histories of intelligence agencies contain irrefutable documented facts that the public at large is collectively in denial about - because they are too dark for them to acknowledge and face. For them to acknowledge these facts requires integrating that darkness into their conscious minds, before anything can be done about it on the political level. I think that, through the incorporation of all the world's darkness, from politics to history to sexual and paedophilic fantasies to etc..., this is the Secret Integration that Pynchon is trying to accomplish, and which concept he wrote a story about, published in Slow Learner. Reading this book causes the beginnings of this process, as all of the darkness is brought into one's mind by reading it.
Another crucial area for me was understanding a bit about Freud and Jung. Particularly Freud's tendency to project his own incredibly powerful repression onto his patients, because of his own compulsion to analyse and differentiate everything, much in the Western tradition, seen in, for example, his five stages of psychosexual development, oral, anal, phallic, latent and genital stages. Some people don't need to delve into the darkest aspects of their unconscious to find peace, but since Freud did, he felt the need to inflict this also on his patients - seen in the many cases where he would tell victims of childhood sexual abuse that it was due to their own subconscious desires to be raped, which could, obviously, do enormous damage to his patients. His compulsion to do this might have stemmed from, alongside his overanalytical compulsions, the truth that anything we are in denial of or repress causes inner conflicts that manifest in our daily lives, and the only way to get rid of them is to integrate them into the conscious mind. Jung's equivalent of this is his statement that “until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Jung's thinking on the unconscious, and particularly the notion of the collective unconscious - this idea that all the darkness in humanity is also within ourselves, and vice versa, much as in Daoism, another critical source for GR - is very useful to help understand the book.
An interesting thing to consider is that the old psychoanalytic approach, more directive/authoritarian (going back to Mesmer powerfully dominating his hypnotic subjects), where the analyst would attempt to integrate these repressions into the conscious mind of the patient by force, has fallen out of favour - it is now seen that the permissive style, in which the therapist tries to help the patient realise things themselves without use of force, is a much healthier approach for the average person (though there are still some cases where the directive style can be more effective). The former's effects can be seen in GR when, after many sessions with Freud, Greta's darkest parts of her unconscious mind rise up and she begins murdering children. Pynchon links Freud's repressions to trauma carried down by Jews from life under the Romans, and elsewhere, slavery under the Ancient Egyptians, which is fundamental to their religious texts (linked itself with attitudes and trauma in the black population about the more recent black slavery).
The trouble with Sigmund was the place he happened to be living in, a drafty, crenelated deformity overlooking a cold little lake in the Bavarian Alps. Parts of it must have dated back to the fall of Rome. That was where Sigmund brought her.
She had got the idea somewhere that she was part Jewish. Things in Germany by then, as everyone knows, were very bad. Margherita was terrified of being “found out.” She heard Gestapo in every puff of air that slipped in, among any of a thousand windways of dilapidation. Sigmund spent whole nights trying to talk it away. He was no better at it than Rollo. It was around this time that her symptoms began.
However psychogenic these pains, tics, hives and nauseas, her suffering was real. Acupuncturists came down by Zeppelin from Berlin, showing up in the middle of the night with little velvet cases full of gold needles. Viennese analysts, Indian holy men, Baptists from America trooped in and out of Sigmund’s castle, stage-hypnotists and Colombian curanderos slept on the rug in front of the fireplace. Nothing worked. Sigmund grew alarmed, and before long as ready as Margherita to hallucinate. Probably it was she who suggested Bad Karma. It had a reputation that summer for its mud, hot and greasy mud with traces of radium, jet black, softly bubbling. Ah. Anyone who’s been sick in that way can imagine her hope. That mud would cure anything. Where was anybody that summer before the War? Dreaming. The spas that summer, the summer Ensign Morituri came to Bad Karma, were crowded with sleepwalkers. Nothing for him to do at the Embassy. They suggested a holiday till September. He should have known something was up, but he only went on holiday to Bad Karma—spent the days drinking Pilsener Urquelle in the cafe by the lake in the Pavilion Park. He was a stranger, half the time drunk, silly beer-drunk, and he hardly spoke their language. But what he saw must have been going on all over Germany. A premeditated frenzy.
This is a similar process to what Slothrop goes through in the Abreaction Ward, when under sodium amytal ("truth serum") and the supervision of psychoanalysts, Slothrop explores the parts of his unconscious that he has repressed, including his feelings towards race and homosexuality.
PISCES: We want to talk some more about Boston today, Slothrop. You recall that we were talking last time about the Negroes, in Roxbury. Now we know it’s not all that comfortable for you, but do try, won’t you. Now—where are you, Slothrop? Can you see anything?
Slothrop: Well no, not see exactly...
By the presence of Red (Malcolm X) in the scene where Slothrop flees the black men at the jazz club trying to rape him down the toilet (which leads through a trip not only through Slothrop's own unconscious racism but also through the repressed histories, all the Preterite lost and forgotten.
Either he lets the harp go, his silver chances of song, or he has to follow. Follow? Red, the Negro shoeshine boy, waits by his dusty leather seat. The Negroes all over wasted Roxbury wait. Follow? “Cherokee” comes wailing up from the dance floor below, over the hi-hat, the string bass, the thousand sets of feet where moving rose lights suggest not pale Harvard boys and their dates, but a lotta dolled-up redskins. The song playing is one more lie about white crimes. But more musicians have floundered in the channel to “Cherokee” than have got through from end to end.
Here, among other things, if we consider Slothrop's mouth harp a (Rilke-referencing) metaphor, in part, for Pynchon's own tools of artistry, I feel like these floundering musicians can be seen as other writers who have not come to terms with the darkest parts of history, and thus their own unconscious. And the decision to delve into these things as an artist necessitates exposing one's own unconscious repressions, which causes you to be in a vulnerable position - particularly since They like to use these aspects of people to control them, as with Prentice and the drawing of the Scorpia Mossmoon lookalike he is given to activate the Kryptosam. In Pynchon's case, this means exposing his own racism and homophobia:
If Slothrop follows that harp down the toilet it’ll have to be headfirst, which is not so good, cause it leaves his ass up in the air helpless, and with Negroes around that’s just what a fella doesn’t want, his face down in some fetid unknown darkness and brown fingers, strong and sure, all at once undoing his belt, unbuttoning his fly, strong hands holding his legs apart—and he feels the cold Lysol air on his thighs as down come the boxer shorts too, now, with the colorful bass lures and trout flies on them. He struggles to work himself farther into the toilet hole as dimly, up through the smelly water, comes the sound of a whole dark gang of awful Negroes come yelling happily into the white men’s room, converging on poor wriggling Slothrop, jiving around the way they do singing, “Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!” [*] And the voice that replies is who but that Red, the shoeshine boy who’s slicked up Slothrop’s black patents a dozen times down on his knees jes poppin’ dat rag to beat the band... now Red the very tall, skinny, extravagantly conked redhead Negro shoeshine boy who’s just been “Red” to all the Harvard fellas—“Say Red, any of those Sheiks in the drawer?” “How ’bout another luck-changin’ phone number there, Red?”—this Negro whose true name now halfway down the toilet comes at last to Slothrop’s hearing—as a thick finger with a gob of very slippery jelly or cream comes sliding down the crack now toward his asshole, chevroning the hairs along like topo lines up a river valley—the true name is Malcolm, and all the black cocks know him, Malcolm, have known him all along—Red Malcolm the Unthinkable Nihilist sez, “Good golly he sure is all asshole ain’t he?” Jeepers Slothrop, what a position for you to be in! Even though he has succeeded in getting far enough down now so that only his legs protrude and his buttocks heave and wallow just under the level of the water like pallid domes of ice. Water splashes, cold as the rain outside, up the walls of the white bowl. “Grab him ’fo’ he gits away!” “Yowzah!” Distant hands clutch after his calves and ankles, snap his garters and tug at the argyle sox Mom knitted for him to go to Harvard in, but these insulate so well, or he has progressed so far down the toilet by now, that he can hardly feel the hands at all...
GR can be seen even as a process of abreaction that Pynchon underwent. If the rumours that he used drugs through writing it are true, then that would mean exposing things in him unconscious even to himself while writing it. Worth at this point also to note Jung's criticisms of Freud's use of abreaction, and thus the possible dangers of doing this.
Though traumata of clearly aetiological significance were occasionally present, the majority of them appeared very improbable. Many traumata were so unimportant, even so normal, that they could be regarded at most as a pretext for the neurosis. But what especially aroused my criticism was the fact that not a few traumata were simply inventions of fantasy and had never happened at all.
However, as Daoism asserts, light and darkness is in everything. For the Pavlovian Pointsman, who views things in binary, this is impossible to accept - the idea that for between every extreme - like black and white - lies a spectrum, a continuous rainbow. As Western humans understand things through this differentiation and analysis, this continuity causes an inherent conflict. Pointsman, the pure cause-and-effect man, the "Antimexico" (since Mexico, the statistician who thinks all can be explained through independent variables and probability distributions, takes the opposite position), says this on Daoist thinking early on.
“Pierre Janet —sometimes the man talked like an Oriental mystic. He had no real grasp of the opposites. ‘The act of injuring and the act of being injured are joined in the behavior of the whole injury.’ Speaker and spoken-of, master and slave, virgin and seducer, each pair most conveniently coupled and inseparable—The last refuge of the incorrigibly lazy, Mexico, is just this sort of yang-yin rubbish.
But by the end of Beyond the Zero, he's having a breakdown, as his unconscious is trying to tell him the truth of the Daoist wisdom he was so quick to reject in his scientific arrogance.
“Talking to myself, here. Little—sort of—eccentricity, heh, heh.”
“Yang and Yin,” whispers the Voice, “Yang and Yin... .”
With all that out of the way, the plot of what GR is actually about can perhaps begin to be discussed. I'm going to make a lot of assumptions here that many of the male characters are based on Pynchon himself. You may disagree with this approach, which is very understandable, given my total lack of evidence. My justification for it is the following passages from Slothrop's trip down the toilet:
Here now is Crutchfield or Crouchfield, the westwardman. Not “archetypical” westwardman, but the only. Understand, there was only one. There was only one Indian who ever fought him. Only one fight, one victory, one loss. And only one president, and one assassin, and one election. True. One of each of everything. You had thought of solipsism, and imagined the structure to be populated—on your level—by only, terribly, one. No count on any other levels. But it proves to be not quite that lonely. Sparse, yes, but a good deal better than solitary. One of each of everything’s not so bad. Half an Ark’s better than none.
Then slightly later on:
Isn’t there supposed to be only one of each?
A. Yes.
Q. Then one Indian girl...
A. One pure Indian. One mestiza. One criolla. [*] Then: one Yaqui. One Navaho. One Apache—
Q. Wait a minute, there was only one Indian to begin with. The one that Crutchfield killed.
A. Yes. Look on it as an optimization problem. The country can best support only one of each.
Q. Then what about all the others? Boston. London. The ones who live in cities. Are those people real, or what?
A. Some are real, and some aren’t.
Q. Well are the real ones necessary? or unnecessary?
A. It depends what you have in mind.
Q. Shit, I don’t have anything in mind.
A. We do.
However, given the extent to which Pynchon has managed to keep his life quiet, I'm aware that this assumption could be projection from me. I think might be by design of the book though:
“Pre cise-ly why,” leaps Rozsavolgyi, “we are now proposing, to give, Slothrop a com plete- ly dif-ferent sort, of test. We are now de sign- ing for him, a so called, ‘projec-tive’ test. The most famil-iar exam- ple of the type, is the Rorschach ink-blot. The ba- sic theory, is that when given an un struc-tured stimulus, some shape-less blob of exper-ience, the subject, will seek to impose, struc- ture on it. How, he goes a -bout struc-turing this blob, will reflect his needs, his hopes—will pro vide, us with clues, to his dreams, fan- tasies , the deepest re-gions of his mind.”
With those disclaimers out the way, here's what I think. I think Mexico is the "cheap nihilist" of Pynchon as a younger man, before he's delved into his own darkness, and still very much without belief in any sort of spiritualism:
“It makes no sense unless we also consider those who’ve passed over to the other side. We do transact with them, don’t we? Through specialists like Eventyr and their controls over there. But all together we form a single subculture, a psychical community, if you will.”
“I won’t,” Mexico says dryly, “but yes I suppose someone ought to be looking into it.”
Pointsman is his analytical side, obsessed with cause-and-effect, which eventually, he comes to realise, necessitates delving in the darkest regions of Slothrop's mind, but still obsessed with control, never losing control:
Sign and symptoms. Was Spectro right? Could Outside and Inside be part of the same field? If only in fairness... in fairness... Pointsman ought to be seeking the answer at the interface... oughtn’t he... on the cortex of Lieutenant Slothrop. The man will suffer—perhaps, in some clinical way, be destroyed—but how many others tonight are suffering in his name? For pity’s sake, every day in Whitehall they’re weighing and taking risks that make his, in this, seem almost trivial. Almost. There’s something here, too transparent and swift to get a hold on—Psi Section might speak of ectoplasms—but he knows that the time has never been better, and that the exact experimental subject is in his hands. He must seize now, or be doomed to the same stone hallways, whose termination he knows. But he must remain open—even to the possibility that the Psi people are right. “We may all be right,” he puts in his journal tonight, “so may be all we have speculated, and more. Whatever we may find, there can be no doubt that he is, physiologically, historically, a monster. We must never lose control. The thought of him lost in the world of men, after the war, fills me with a deep dread I cannot extinguish...”
Prentice, the employee, the seasoned intelligence veteran, strikes me as a maturation from Pynchon's earlier Mexico phase, into a more realistic and experienced person and, by the time he gets into the Counterforce, "activist". This could be projection but given that the book was written from around the mid-60s until 1973, and how much changed in that time, I feel like this could be based on his own experiences with political activism in California around that time. Might be totally wrong about that, but I just got that impression from reading the weird "interview" towards the end of the book with the Wall Street Journal between the interviewer and the "spokesman for the Counterforce". Who knows, read it again and see what you think.
And Slothrop, the experimental subject, is a model of Pynchon himself, rather than a differentiated portion of his own psyche which he turned into a character.
So, what I think is going on:
PISCES is using Slothrop (conditioned by Jamf) to exploit the racism of the Germans in psychological warfare with the whole Schwarzkommando thing. Pointsman is following his own pathological drive to analyse every facet of Slothrop's psyche. This includes Bloat taking photographs of Slothrop's map of girls linked to rockets, which we find out later might partly be falsified, which I interpret perhaps as Pynchon's recognition of his own attempt to impose his sexual interpretation system onto the world at large - interestingly something touched on early on in Bleeding Edge, though I can't find the passage right now, he quietly references the sexual hysterias of youth or something like that.
Prentice is an employee of the Firm, a greater They than either PISCES or Pointsman, using his ability to have other people's fantasies, notionally for Pointsman, but really for some even grander scheme. This is reflected in the discussion of the message which Prentice picks up from the rocket which he and Slothrop see at the beginning of the book. From the Kryptosam message with the Scorpia lookalike:
Slowly then, a revelation through the nacreous film of his seed, in Negro-brown, comes his message: put in a simple Nihilist transposition whose keywords he can almost guess. Most of it he does in his head. There is a time given, a place, a request for help. He burns the message, fallen on him from higher than Earth’s atmosphere, salvaged from Earth’s prime meridian, keeps the picture, hmm, and washes his hands. His prostate is aching. There is more to this than he can see. He has no recourse, no appeal: he has to go over there and bring the operative out again. The message is tantamount to an order from the highest levels.
This "highest orders" thing can be compared with Slothrop seeing the hand of God pointing down at him.
There is in his history, and likely, God help him, in his dossier, a peculiar sensitivity to what is revealed in the sky. (But a hardon?) On the old schist of a tombstone in the Congregational churchyard back home in Mingeborough, Massachusetts, [*] the hand of God emerges from a cloud, the edges of the figure here and there eroded by 200 years of seasons’ fire and ice chisels at work, and the inscription reading:
In Memory of Constant
Slothrop, who died March
ye 4th 1766, in ye 29th
year of his age.
Death is a debt to nature due,
Which I have paid, and so must you.
...
6:43:16 BDST—in the sky right now here is the same unfolding, just about to break through, his face deepening with its light, everything about to rush away and he to lose himself, just as his countryside has ever proclaimed... slender church steeples poised up and down all these autumn hillsides, white rockets about to fire, only seconds of countdown away, rose windows taking in Sunday light, elevating and washing the faces above the pulpits defining grace, swearing this is how it does happen—yes the great bright hand reaching out of the cloud...
I think Pynchon recognised that with his unique abilities, perception, intelligence, and even privilege, it was his duty to delve into these hidden histories and play his role in bringing about this integration of the darkest levels of the unconscious. But Beyond the Zero is all about systems, and as Pynchon is well aware all systems are inherently limited because there are irrational elements in the world. So after this we have the briefer section in the Casino Hermann Goering, where the role of chance - or fate, depending on your interpretation - is recognised, and systems are examined, particularly language systems, like the drinking game Prince. So after that, with the third part, In the Zone, I think he may have been using drugs and various other techniques to bring out unconscious things in himself, to get past these conscious systems. And then completed with the Tarot reading performed at the end, where it says "here are the cards, exactly as they came up" - I think it's very possible that he did an actual Tarot reading at this point. Maybe I'm wrong about this though, I don't want to make too many assumptions given the lack of information we really have on him. If that thing with the drugs is true, it would explain that infamous quote Jules Seigal attributed to him, "I was so fucked up while I was writing it... that now I go back over some of those sequences and I can't figure out what I could have meant." But it's unclear whether that quote is real or not.
How does this play into politics? I've written far too much already, but I'll just leave things with a couple more quotes and the observation that the final part, the Counterforce, contains some very valid criticisms of the countercultural movement as it manifested in the 60s through 70s. There's this critical passage when Enzian is motorbiking around the Zone, high on Pervitins, and realises that everything has come together for this. There's definitely a sense that Pynchon is acknowledging here the importance of his work, the fact it has done things that no other book had before. But in it too there's also, in it, the mocking of the temptation to view everything as an ordered conspiracy, and not acknowledge the non-rational and non-causal forces also at work, and mocking of his own self-seriousness.
There doesn’t exactly dawn, no but there breaks, as that light you’re afraid will break some night at too deep an hour to explain away—there floods on Enzian what seems to him an extraordinary understanding. This serpentine slagheap he is just about to ride into now, this ex-refinery, Jamf Ölfabriken Werke AG, is not a ruin at all. It is in perfect working order. Only waiting for the right connections to be set up, to be switched on... modified, precisely, deliberately by bombing that was never hostile, but part of a plan both sides—”sides?” —had always agreed on... yes and now what if we—all right, say we are supposed to be the Kabbalists out here, say that’s our real Destiny, to be the scholar-magicians of the Zone, with somewhere in it a Text, to be picked to pieces, annotated, explicated, and masturbated till it’s all squeezed limp of its last drop... well we assumed—natürlich!—that this holy Text had to be the Rocket, orururumo orunene the high, rising, dead, the blazing, the great one (“orunene” is already being modified by the Zone-Herero children to “omunene,” the eldest brother)... our Torah. What else? Its symmetries, its latencies, the cuteness of it enchanted and seduced us while the real Text persisted, somewhere else, in its darkness, our darkness... even this far from Südwest we are not to be spared the ancient tragedy of lost messages, a curse that will never leave us... . But, if I’m riding through it, the Real Text, right now, if this is it... or if I passed it today somewhere in the devastation of Hamburg, breathing the ashdust, missing it completely... if what the IG built on this site were not at all the final shape of it, but only an arrangement of fetishes, come-ons to call down special tools in the form of 8th AF bombers yes the “Allied” planes all would have been, ultimately, IG-built, by way of Director Krupp, through his English interlocks—the bombing was the exact industrial process of conversion, each release of energy placed exactly in space and time, each shock-wave plotted in advance to bring precisely tonight’s wreck into being thus decoding the Text, thus coding, recoding, redecoding the holy Text... If it is in working order, what is it meant to do? The engineers who built it as a refinery never knew there were any further steps to be taken. Their design was “finalized,” and they could forget it. It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted... secretly, it was being dictated instead by the needs of technology... by a conspiracy between human beings and techniques, by something that needed the energy-burst of war, crying, “Money be damned, the very life of [insert name of Nation] is at stake,” but meaning, most likely, dawn is nearly here, I need my night’s blood, my funding, funding, ahh more, more... . The real crises were crises of allocation and priority, not among firms—it was only staged to look that way—but among the different Technologies, Plastics, Electronics, Aircraft, and their needs which are understood only by the ruling elite...
Yes but Technology only responds (how often this argument has been iterated, dogged and humorless as a Gaussian reduction, among the younger Schwarzkommando especially), “All very well to talk about having a monster by the tail, but do you think we’d’ve had the Rocket if someone, some specific somebody with a name and a penis hadn’t wanted to chuck a ton of Amatol 300 miles and blow up a block full of civilians? Go ahead, capitalize the T on technology, deify it if it’ll make you feel less responsible—but it puts you in with the neutered, brother, in with the eunuchs keeping the harem of our stolen Earth for the numb and joyless hardens of human sultans, human elite with no right at all to be where they are—”
We have to look for power sources here, and distribution networks we were never taught, routes of power our teachers never imagined, or were encouraged to avoid... we have to find meters whose scales are unknown in the world, draw our own schematics, getting feedback, making connections, reducing the error, trying to learn the real function... zeroing in on what incalculable plot?
Up here, on the surface, coaltars, hydrogenation, synthesis were always phony, dummy functions to hide the real, the planetary mission yes perhaps centuries in the unrolling... this ruinous plant, waiting for its Kabbalists and new alchemists to discover the Key, teach the mysteries to others...
And if it isn’t exactly Jamf Ölfabriken Werke? what if it’s the Krupp works in Essen, what if it’s Blohm & Voss right here in Hamburg or another make-believe “ruin,” in another city? Another country? YAAAGGGGHHHHH!
Well, this is stimulant talk here, yes Enzian’s been stuffing down Nazi surplus Pervitins these days like popcorn at the movies, and by now the bulk of the refinery—named, incidentally, for the famous discoverer of Oneirine—is behind them, and Enzian is on into some other paranoid terror, talking, talking, though each man’s wind and motor cuts him off from conversation.
Some words of wisdom from the seasoned veteran Prentice:
“You’re a novice paranoid, Roger,” first time Prentice has ever used his Christian name and it touches Roger enough to check his tirade. “Of course a well-developed They-system is necessary—but it’s only half the story. For every They there ought to be a We. In our case there is. Creative paranoia means developing at least as thorough a We-system as a They-system—”
“Wait, wait, first where’s the Haig and Haig, be a gracious host, second what is a ‘They-system,’ I don’t pull Chebychev’s Theorem on you, do I?”
“I mean what They and Their hired psychiatrists call ‘delusional systems.’
Needless to say, ‘delusions’ are always officially defined. We don’t have to worry about questions of real or unreal. They only talk out of expediency. It’s the system that matters. How the data arrange themselves inside it. Some are consistent, others fall apart. Your idea that Pointsman sent Gloaming takes a wrong fork. Without any contrary set of delusions—delusions about ourselves, which I’m calling a We-system—the Gloaming idea might have been all right—”
“Delusions about ourselves?”
“Not real ones.”
“But officially defined.”
“Out of expediency, yes.”
“Well, you’re playing Their game, then.”
“Don’t let it bother you. You’ll find you can operate quite well. Seeing as we haven’t won yet, it isn’t really much of a problem.”
Roger is totally confused.
And finally, amid all this darkness, in a superlatively dark book, some hope at last, to hold onto, that makes life worth living, and why I think that despite what many say, GR is not a nihilistic work at all (Tchitcherine, the born nihilist, is almost a parody of this position). It starts with Slothrop's awakening to nature:
Trees, now—Slothrop’s intensely alert to trees, finally. When he comes in among trees he will spend time touching them, studying them, sitting very quietly near them and understanding that each tree is a creature, carrying on its individual life, aware of what’s happening around it, not just some hunk of wood to be cut down. Slothrop’s family actually made its money killing trees, amputating them from their roots, chopping them up, grinding them to pulp, bleaching that to paper and getting paid for this with more paper. “That’s really insane.” He shakes his head. “There’s insanity in my family.” He looks up. The trees are still. They know he’s there. They probably also know what he’s thinking. “I’m sorry,” he tells them. “I can’t do anything about those people, they’re all out of my reach. What can I do?” A medium-size pine nearby nods its top and suggests, “Next time you come across a logging operation out here, find one of their tractors that isn’t being guarded, and take its oil filter with you. That’s what you can do.”
And then, after Slothrop's harp makes its trip down the toilet, and through all of the darkness of the book until that point, where does it next show up? After he draws a rocket mandala, scrawls Rocketman was here on a wall, after the sequence with the Magician using black magic and a mandrake to multiply money, and a delegate from the Committee on Idiopathic Archetypes shows up to visit:
Crosses, swastikas, Zone-mandalas, how can they not speak to Slothrop? He’s sat in Säure Bummer’s kitchen, the air streaming with kif moires, reading soup recipes and finding in every bone and cabbage leaf paraphrases of himself... news flashes, names of wheelhorses that will pay him off enough for a certain getaway... . He used to pick and shovel at the spring roads of Berkshire, April afternoons he’s lost, “Chapter 81 work,” they called it, following the scraper that clears the winter’s crystal attack-from-within, its white necropolizing... picking up rusted beer cans, rubbers yellow with preterite seed, Kleenex wadded to brain shapes hiding preterite snot, preterite tears, newspapers, broken glass, pieces of automobile, days when in superstition and fright he could make it all fit, seeing clearly in each an entry in a record, a history: his own, his winter’s, his country’s... instructing him, dunce and drifter, in ways deeper than he can explain, have been faces of children out the train windows, two bars of dance music somewhere, in some other street at night, needles and branches of a pine tree shaken clear and luminous against night clouds, one circuit diagram out of hundreds in a smudged yellowing sheaf, laughter out of a cornfield in the early morning as he was walking to school, the idling of a motorcycle at one duskheavy hour of the summer... and now, in the Zone, later in the day he became a crossroad, after a heavy rain he doesn’t recall, Slothrop sees a very thick rainbow here, a stout rainbow cock driven down out of pubic clouds into Earth, green wet valleyed Earth, and his chest fills and he stands crying, not a thing in his head, just feeling natural...
And later:
Slothrop moseys down the trail to a mountain stream where he’s left his harp to soak all night, wedged between a couple of rocks in a quiet pool. ... Through the flowing water, the holes of the old Hohner Slothrop found are warped one by one, squares being bent like notes, a visual blues being played by the clear stream.
There are harpmen and dulcimer players in all the rivers, wherever water moves. Like that Rilke prophesied,
And though Earthliness forget you,
To the stilled Earth say: I flow.
To the rushing water speak: I am.
It is still possible, even this far out of it, to find and make audible the spirits of lost harpmen. Whacking the water out of his harmonica, reeds singing against his leg, picking up the single blues at bar 1 of this morning’s segment, Slothrop, just suckin’ on his harp, is closer to being a spiritual medium than he’s been yet, and he doesn’t even know it.
There's hope after all, and I think it's reflected in how much more positive all his later works have been. Thanks so much for reading, I hope it was at least vaguely interesting, not too much of an unstructured ramble. Also, this is such a great subreddit, really I love the community here. My very best to you all!
submitted by pynchon_as_activist to ThomasPynchon [link] [comments]

My town is on lockdown and something is coming

The police car’s siren was the first thing that woke me up. Living in a small town, I was not used to hearing it in the dead of the night. I grumbled something not very pleasant towards our peacekeeping force, then tried to put myself back to sleep.
I was having a very vivid nightmare, so in a way it was a good thing that this patrol car took me out of it. Now I could try to dream about something pleasant. That’s when I heard the siren a second time. This was unusual, something was definitely happening in town. I thought I’d just hear about it in high school in the morning.
A third car came down my street, but this time, someone was talking in a large speaker. Hearing the tone of the man made me realize it was for sure not an advertising for an upcoming circus performance. I forced myself to wake up, took my head out of the pillow and instinctively looked at my phone to check the time.
It was 2:30AM, but that is not what caught my attention. I received a text from a two-digit number -98-, probably something official:
FOLLOW MILITARY INSTRUCTIONS // THIS IS NOT AN EXERCISE // IF YOU HAVE FIREARMS TAKE THEM // TAKE ONE FLASHLIGHT PER PERSON MINIMUM // LEAVE YOUR HOUSE NOW // STAY CLOSE TO LIGHT SOURCES
What the hell did that mean? Was that some kind of joke? I’ve heard about some official alert message-guy making a mistake in Hawaii, maybe that was it. Some prank.
I heard helicopters flying above our town. Now that woke me up. This never happens. Our little valley town of about 23 000 inhabitants was not a place of trouble. We gave all the attention and problems to the city of Missoula, way south, beyond the Indian reserve of Flatheads. I opened the window of my bedroom and saw that there was about a dozen helicopters in the air, some pointing flashlights around the city as if looking for something, some landing in the parking around the town’s casino.
There was some noise outside my room. My parents were awake, and I saw the light of the corridor flowing under my door. They were a little bit on the paranoid side, wanting nothing else than a quiet life, and so were already packing. I let go of a long yawn, watched a large military transport plane land in the small airport south of our house, and started to get dressed.
Twenty minutes later we were in the streets. The night was still very dark, despite all those helicopters in the air. All the neighborhood was up and walking, following the police officers that were directing us to the mall. My dad tried to ask a couple of questions to the officer, but he was as confused as us. Apparently, the police station got a call not long before us, and had to hurry to get in gear and to take the people to a staging area from which we would be brought to the southern mall. There, we would be “safe”. Safe from what?
Jonathan!”
I turned around, looking for the person calling my name. It was Sophie, a classmate that was also a neighbor. Apparently waking up was much harder for her than it had been for me, looking at her face. I made a joke about it that did not get the result I expected. She just yawned to my face, threw a casual insult, and went on with the conversation.
Do you know what is happening?
I shrugged and shook my head.
Nothing more than that weird text saying to stay in the light,” I admitted, “maybe something happened at the Canadian border? Maybe a terrorist attack? Maybe ther-“
I was interrupted when four military jets flew in low altitude right above us, going north at full speed. The sound was deafening, and I saw my mom along with many others protecting their ears with their hands. I tried to follow the lights of the planes with my eyes, but they disappeared not long later. Our city is in a valley going North/South, so if they were following it, it was easy to guess where they were going. Few smaller towns, then the Canadian border.
I felt my heart stop for a second when I heard detonations, way up north. This was not an exercise, just as they said. These planes just bombed something. I looked at my parents with shocked, open eyes.
Are the Canadians invading?” I asked, not believing what was happening.
Nobody could tell us anything. We just kept following the police officers. Military trucks were going north up our suburban streets, and every time they came, we stepped on the side of the road to let them go. It was weird enough, but when combat transport vehicles started to go alongside regular tracks, people started to whisper. “Are we at war?” whispered a mid-aged lady, visibly frightened.
My eyes caught Sophie, who was distraught. She was stepping away from her parents and seemed very nervous, with tears forming in her eyes.
“What’s up?” I asked her, trying to sound as casual and reassuring as possible in this crazy situation.
It’s Margaret. She was spending the night at the casino with some friends.
Margaret was Sophie’s older sister. I did not really like her, she was too much of a wild party girl. Not that I want to sound like a boring suburban high schooler.
So? She can join us directly at the mall, right?
Sophie tried to make something with her mouth than sort of looked like a smile. A tear went down her cheek.
I don’t know. We tried to call her, it goes directly to voicemail. I heard someone saying the military were using the casino as headquarters. Maybe she didn’t go out in time. Maybe… I don’t know. Oh my god…”
She started to cry, and I hugged her. I tried to say a few good things to make her feel better, but I’ve never been good for this kind of thing. Even my hug was not that great, since we needed to keep walking while hugging.
Listen, let’s go there real quick, pick her up, and direct her to the mall. Deal?
She looked up at me with teary eyes. I could see the judgement in her eye.
Are you stupid? There are so many soldiers there.”
So what?” I gave her a real smile just as a couple of Apache attack helicopters broke formation west from us and went north at great speed. “They are on our side. Plus, if there are so many soldiers, we’ll be safe there, too.”
It was not a great plan, but I really thought it would be fine. In the worst case they would catch us and send us on the way to the mall. We were kids, right? It would not take a lot of time.
I asked a neighbor friend to tell my parents that I’d go with Sophie quickly pick up her sister, and that we’d all meet at the mall. If I told them directly my dad would just catch me and carry me on his back to make sure I’d stay with them.
The large group of neighbors arrived at a military checkpoint. Soldiers were there, taking command from the police officers. Everyone was given a distress flare and military-grade flashlights by soldiers, and then got inside a truck. Headed directly to the southern mall, I guessed.
One thing caught my attention: One of the soldiers at the checkpoint was not in regular army camouflage. He had a black-and-red uniform that seemed more high-tech to my unexperienced eye. I mean, I kinda like to know the name of military hardwares, but I don’t know much about uniforms. The man was there, standing on an Humvee, giving orders around, making sure that everyone got a flare and embarked in the trucks.
The crowd started to mass in front of the checkpoint. That was our chance.
Let’s cut through the Robinson’s garden to get around the army.” Sophie looked at me as I was saying my stupid plan. “From there we can go straight for the casino.”
And that’s exactly what we did. Away from the group, we plunged into the dark of the suburban gardens. To the distant north more explosions came. I looked into the skies and saw nothing except the very pale moon and some black clouds. The skies were pitch-black. Some funky lights were coming from the valley up north. Was that the result of the bombing? Or some weird thunder?
“Don’t you feel it is cold?” asked Sophie. I did not pay attention until now because of the adrenaline but yes, it was freezing. Much more than what was usual for such a summer night.
Yeah I feel it, plus that damn wind won’t start blowing. It’s not even going in th-“
I stopped instantly. I realized something that froze the blood in my veins. In our town the airport was a big source of jobs, and I wanted to be an air controller. Lots of useless trivia I knew about our airport. One of them: It was built to follow the wind, in order to help pilots to take off with the wind on their back. And that wind was always coming from the north, going south. Not tonight.
The wind is blowing north…It just won’t stop blowing…”
Sophie stared a me with round eyes. I could read the incomprehension on her face.
It never happened.” I whispered while shrugging.
If you try to scare me, Jonathan… Let’s just turn on the lights.”
Sophie was taking her flashlight out of her pocket put I quickly pushed it away.
No! The soldiers will see us. We need to not make any noise.”
A huge rumble came up from our left, on Main Street. We both crouched and tried to see from behind the fence we were hiding behind. A column of Abrams battle tanks were going North at great speed, towards the casino. The whole goddamn Army was deploying in our town.
I was about to offer to, maybe, go to the mall, when Sophie started moving again.
Okay, let’s hurry. I don’t want to stay here a minute more than what is necessary”
We walked ten more minutes. Fighter jets kept going north to bomb god-knows-what. More and more troops arrived, be it by helicopters, transport planes, or coming up from Route 93. I was acting tough in front of Sophie but in truth, it was terrifying. I swear I saw the shadows of a couple kids while we were crossing the gardens. They were going straight to the east, probably also looking for a way inside the casino. Maybe Margaret’s friends? They did not see us, moving fast away from us. I would have called them out if I were not so frightened to be heard by the patrolling soldiers around us.
Our terror switched to stupefaction once we arrived at the casino. The entire casino area had been turned into a fortress. Defensive positions had been erected, snipers were on the roofs, tanks were on the parking lot. Everyone was looking north. On the roof of the casinos huge light projectors were being installed. I don’t know the exact name of these things, but you know the thing that is used for the Bat Signal? That sort of thing.
Hiding in a backyard, we tried to look for a way in. We failed. Soldiers were patrolling everywhere. With the helicopters not high above, it was difficult to hear what any of them were saying. Most of them seemed confused, scared even. I guessed that they did not know either what to expect, or at least not completely. Most of them looked very nervous, and I did not want to risk them reflex-shooting us because we were trying to sneak in their backs.
A squad of four black-and-red soldiers came not far from us. Same advanced uniform as the one coordinating the evacuation effort. They also seemed stressed but were staying away from the bulk of the troops. I made a sign to Sophie to stay silent, and then tried to focus to hear what they were saying.
Any refugees coming from the north?” asked a first soldiers to their squad leader. To my surprise, he had a strong foreign accent that I sort of recognized as East-European.
None. They couldn’t run away in time.” Said the man leading the unit in a cold, harsh tone, before pointing to the roof of the house to our right. “Put Karl, Mikhail and Frédéric up there. If HQ falls they’ll cover the retreat. Any news from Tomohiro’s unit?”
The whole group stopped, not five feet from our position. We were standing in a bush, behind a fence, still as a shadow, holding our breaths.
Defenses at the Wallmart are up,” said a man carrying a large computer-looking device on his back, connected to his helmet through wires. “He will try to delay them, but that won’t make us gain much time.”
Silence fell for a few seconds before the fourth soldier, a woman with a Texas accent, asked: “Why are we setting up here? It’s not a great defensive position.”
“First, we don’t question orders, you know this,” answered immediately the squad leader, “and second, this is the last town before the valley opens up. The last bottleneck before these things can get out of the valley and spread to the flatlands. We have to hold the line until the other Households have regrouped and counter-attacked.”
More seconds of heavy silence. I couldn’t hold my breath anymore and started breathing as discreetly as I could. The squad of black-and-red soldiers started to move away.
“We just have to hold the night? They’ll be weaker in the daylight, right?” asked the man that was previously worried about refugees.
If they can close the Rift. Otherwise dawn will never rise again on this region.
They kept talking while walking the outskirts of the casino-fortress. Series of powerful explosions rang from the north, this time much closer to our city. It jump-scared me like thunder. Gunfight erupted in what I knew was the direction of the Walmart, north of the city. It sounded like a huge firefight… or it was just a lot of soldiers were shooting at something.
The helicopters above us broke formation, taking altitude while launching volleys of rocket towards an unknown enemy. The fighter jets were now dropping bombs not twenty kilometers away from us. Even though we were not that close, we felt the aftershock and the heat waves, something unlike anything I felt before.
Let’s go through the sewers,” I offered, “we’ll be safe there, and we can reach the casino that way.”
“I’m NOT going in the sewers,” shouted back Sophie, “No way. Absolutely no way.”
A rain of huge rockets flew above our heads from way south, headed straight to the valley in the north. Way on my left I saw the shape of a huge twin-rotored helicopter getting away from the combat zone. He was spiraling out of control. I did not see what was causing that but after ten seconds of spiraling fast he just plummeted to the ground. Screams started to rise from beyond the casino, as firefights erupted everywhere.
This whole place is turning into a warzone,” I said to Sophie, “I’m all up for not going into this fortress, but at least let’s take the sewers to get away. It’ll be way faster. I’ve seen it in movies.”
Sophie was utterly terrified. She did know what to do. I could guess she still wanted to save her sister, or join her parents, or mine, or anything. I just wanted to get the hell away from whatever was coming. Out of town.
Let’s wait a few minutes, she offered, maybe it’ll calm down. Maybe they’ll win.”
We waited for about ten minutes. The battle was now in full swing. I did not know what was going on. We went a few streets south from the casino, hidden in another backyard, not far from where we could access the sewer. It was like being in the middle of a huge firework show, except the fireworks where a thousand times louder. However, it was not bright at all, and if not for the sound and shockwaves, we could have thought the town was peaceful.
I took the opportunity of having a bit of time to write everything on my social media. More helicopters crashed all over town as more convoys of troops and vehicles arrived, deploying their infantry in the streets around us before heading to the fighting in combat formation. We were staying hidden as all of this happened.
The winds started to grow ever stronger, and the light of the moon was getting paler and paler, until we could barely see anything apart from the explosions. The light was going away, somehow. Even the screen from my phone seemed dimmed, as if critically out of battery.
Incoming! Take positions!” I heard one of the soldiers not far from us shout to his men. Then it hit us. Cold grasped my body as all the lights of the streets went out. In an instant I could not see anything more than ten meters away, except the dimmed flashes of the soldiers weapons firing. Sophie looked at me, utter terror in her eyes.
I took out the flashlight from my pocket and turned it on. It barely helped, but it was something. I saw something moving not far to my right, and pointed the lights towards it. It was nothing, just shadows dancing with shadows. Far to my left the soldiers were screaming, screams of horror and pain. Whatever was happening, they were losing.
I kept praying that somehow our army would turn this battle around. That this, whatever it was, was not the end of the world. That we would survive this. What I did not know at this moment was that the mission to stop this nightmare had already happened. That is was led by an elite force beyond my imagination. And that they had already failed.
Okay,” said Sophie, crying, “let’s try the sewers”.
We waited two additional minutes that the firefight around us got less intense before going for it. Then we heard an inhuman howl, something almost insectoid and rocky. It sounded as if it came from the other side of an auditorium, echoing beyond us and then back.
Let’s go,” I shouted to Sophie, taking her hands as we were running towards the sewer entrance, ready to enter the darkness below.
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Headlines for week 06 of 2019

Listen to the Headlines for week 06

​Show notes for Security Endeavors Headlines for Week 5 of 2019
InfoSec Week 6, 2019 (link to original Malgregator.com posting)
The Zurich American Insurance Company says to Mondelez, a maker of consumer packaged goods, that the NotPetya ransomware attack was considered an act of cyber war and therefore not covered by their policy. According to Mondelez, its cyber insurance policy with Zurich specifically covered “all risks of physical loss or damage” and “all risk of physical loss or damage to electronic data, programs or software” due to “the malicious introduction of a machine code or instruction.” One would think that the language in the cyber insurance policy was specifically designed to be broad enough to protect Mondelez in the event of any kind of cyber attack or hack. And NotPetya would seem to fit the definition included in the cyber insurance policy – it was a bit of malicious code that effectively prevented Mondelez from getting its systems back up and running unless it paid out a hefty Bitcoin ransom to hackers. Originally, Zurich indicated that it might pay $10 million, or about 10 percent of the overall claim. But then Zurich stated that it wouldn't pay any of the claim by invoking a special “cyber war” clause. According to Zurich, it is not responsible for any payment of the claim if NotPetya was actually “a hostile or warlike action in time of peace or war.” According to Zurich, the NotPetya cyber attack originated with Russian hackers working directly with the Russian government to destabilize the Ukraine. This is what Zurich believes constitutes "cyber war." https://ridethelightning.senseient.com/2019/01/insurance-company-says-notpetya-is-an-act-of-war-refuses-to-pay.html
Reuters reports that hackers working on behalf of Chinese intelligence breached the network of Norwegian software firm Visma to steal secrets from its clients. According to investigators at cyber security firm Recorded Future, the attack was part of what Western countries said in December is a global hacking campaign by China’s Ministry of State Security to steal intellectual property and corporate secrets. Visma took the decision to talk publicly about the breach to raise industry awareness about the hacking campaign, which is known as Cloudhopper and targets technology service and software providers in order reach their clients.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-cyber-norway-visma/china-hacked-norways-visma-to-steal-client-secrets-investigators-idUSKCN1PV141
A new vulnerability has been discovered in the upcoming 5G cellular mobile communications protocol. Researchers have described this new flaw as more severe than any of the previous vulnerabilities that affected the 3G and 4G standards. Further, besides 5G, this new vulnerability also impacts the older 3G and 4G protocols, providing surveillance tech vendors with a new flaw they can abuse to create next-gen IMSI-catchers that work across all modern telephony protocols.
This new vulnerability has been detailed in a research paper named "New Privacy Threat on 3G, 4G, and Upcoming5G AKA Protocols," published last year.
According to researchers, the vulnerability impacts AKA, which stands for Authentication and Key Agreement, a protocol that provides authentication between a user's phone and the cellular networks.The AKA protocol works by negotiating and establishing keys for encrypting the communications between a phone and the cellular network. Current IMSI-catcher devices target vulnerabilities in this protocol to downgrade AKA to a weaker state that allows the device to intercept mobile phone traffic metadata and track the location of mobile phones. The AKA version designed for the 5G protocol --also known as 5G-AKA-- was specifically designed to thwart IMSI-catchers, featuring a stronger authentication negotiation system But the vulnerability discovered last year allows surveillance tech vendors to create new models of IMSI-catchers hardware that, instead of intercepting mobile traffic metadata, will use this new vulnerability to reveal details about a user's mobile activity. This could include the number of sent and received texts and calls, allowing IMSI-catcher operators to create distinct profiles for each smartphone holder. https://www.zdnet.com/article/new-security-flaw-impacts-5g-4g-and-3g-telephony-protocols/
The Debian Project is recommending the upgrade of golang-1.8 packages after a vulnerability was discovered in the implementation of the P-521 and P-384 elliptic curves, which could result in denial of service and in some cases key recovery. In addition this update fixes two vulnerabilities in the “go get” command, which could result in the execution of arbitrary shell commands. https://www.debian.org/security/2019/dsa-4380
It is possible to trick user’s of the Evolution email application into trusting a phished mail via adding a forged UID to a OpenPGP key that has a previously trusted UID. It's because Evolution extrapolates the trust of one of OpenPGP key UIDs into the key itself. The attack is based on using the deficiency of Evolution UI when handling new identifiers on previously trusted keys to convince the user to trust a phishing attempt. More details about how the flaw works, along with examples are included in the article, which is linked in the show notes. Let’s take a minute to cover a bit of background on Trust Models and how validating identities work in OpenPGP and GnuPG:
The commonly used OpenPGP trust models are UID-oriented. That is, they are based on establishing validity of individual UIDs associated with a particular key rather than the key as a whole. For example, in the Web-of-Trust model individuals certify the validity of UIDs they explicitly verified.
Any new UID added to the key is appropriately initially untrusted. This is understandable since the key holder is capable of adding arbitrary UIDs to the key, and there is no guarantee that new UID will not actually be an attempt at forging somebody else's identity. OpenPGP signatures do not provide any connection between the signature and the UID of the sender. While technically the signature packet permits specifying UID, it is used only to facilitate finding the key, and is not guaranteed to be meaningful. Instead, only the signing key can be derived from the signature in cryptographically proven way.
GnuPG (as of version 2.2.12) does not provide any method of associating the apparent UID against the signature. In other words, from e-mail's From header. Instead, only the signature itself is passed to GnuPG and its apparent trust is extrapolated from validity of different UIDs on the key. Another way to say this is that the signature is considered to be made with a trusted key if at least one of the UIDs has been verified. https://dev.gentoo.org/~mgorny/articles/evolution-uid-trust-extrapolation.html
If you’re up for some heavy reading about manipulation and deceit being perpetrated by cyber criminals, it may be worth checking out a piece from buzzfeednews. It tells a woeful and dark tale that does not have a happy ending. A small excerpt reads: “As the tools of online identity curation proliferate and grow more sophisticated, so do the avenues for deception. Everyone’s familiar with the little lies — a touch-up on Instagram or a stolen idea on Twitter. But what about the big ones? Whom could you defraud, trick, ruin, by presenting false information, or information falsely gained? An infinite number of individual claims to truth presents itself. How can you ever know, really know, that any piece of information you see on a screen is true? Some will find this disorienting, terrifying, paralyzing. Others will feel at home in it. Islam and Woody existed purely in this new world of lies and manufactured reality, where nothing is as it seems.” https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/tomi-masters-down-the-rabbit-hole-i-go
Security researchers were assaulted by a casino technology vendor Atrient after responsibly disclosed critical vulnerabilities to them. Following a serious vulnerability disclosure affecting casinos globally, an executive of one casino technology vendor Atrient has allegedly assaulted the security researcher who disclosed the vulnerability at the ICE conference in London. The article covers the story of a vulnerability disclosure gone bad, one involving the FBI, a vendor with a global customer base of casinos and a severe security vulnerability which has gone unresolved for four months without being properly addressed. https://www.secjuice.com/security-researcher-assaulted-ice-atrient/
Article 13, the new European Union copyright law is back and it got worse, not better. In the Franco-German deal, Article 13 would apply to all for-profit platforms. Upload filters must be installed by everyone except those services which fit all three of the following extremely narrow criteria:
Available to the public for less than 3 years Annual turnover below €10 million Fewer than 5 million unique monthly visitors Countless apps and sites that do not meet all these criteria would need to install upload filters, burdening their users and operators, even when copyright infringement is not at all currently a problem for them. https://juliareda.eu/2019/02/article-13-worse/
Researchers from Google Project Zero evaluated Apple's implementation of Pointer Authentication on the A12 SoC used in the iPhone XS. There are bypasses possible, but the conclusion says it is still a worthwhile exploitation mitigation technique. Among the most exciting security features introduced with ARMv8.3-A is Pointer Authentication, a feature where the upper bits of a pointer are used to store a Pointer Authentication Code (PAC), which is essentially a cryptographic signature on the pointer value and some additional context. Special instructions have been introduced to add an authentication code to a pointer and to verify an authenticated pointer's PAC and restore the original pointer value. This gives the system a way to make cryptographically strong guarantees about the likelihood that certain pointers have been tampered with by attackers, which offers the possibility of greatly improving application security. There’s a Qualcomm white paper which explains how ARMv8.3 Pointer Authentication was designed to provide some protection even against attackers with arbitrary memory read or arbitrary memory write capabilities. It's important to understand the limitations of the design under the attack model the author describes: a kernel attacker who already has read/write and is looking to execute arbitrary code by forging PACs on kernel pointers.
Looking at the specification, the author identifies three potential weaknesses in the design when protecting against kernel attackers with read/write access: reading the PAC keys from memory, signing kernel pointers in userspace, and signing A-key pointers using the B-key (or vice versa). The full article discusses each in turn. https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2019/02/examining-pointer-authentication-on.html
There is a dangerous, remote code execution flaw in the LibreOffice and OpenOffice software. While in the past there have been well documented instances where opening a document would result in the executing of malicious code in paid office suites. This time LibreOffice and Apache’s OpenOffice are the susceptible suites. The attack relies on exploiting a directory traversal flaw, identified as CVE-2018-16858, to automatically execute a specific python library bundled within the software using a hidden onmouseover event. To exploit this vulnerability, the researcher created an ODT file with a white-colored hyperlink (so it can't be seen) that has an "onmouseover" event to trick victims into executing a locally available python file on their system when placing their mouse anywhere on the invisible hyperlink. According to the researcher, the python file, named "pydoc.py," that comes included with the LibreOffice's own Python interpreter accepts arbitrary commands in one of its parameters and execute them through the system's command line or console. https://thehackernews.com/2019/02/hacking-libreoffice-openoffice.html
Nadim Kobeissi is discontinuing his secure online chat Cryptocat. The service began in 2011 as an experiment in making secure messaging more accessible. In the eight ensuing years, Cryptocat served hundreds of thousands of users and developed a great story to tell. The former maintainer explains on the project’s website that other life events have come up and there’s no longer available time to maintain things. The coder says that Cryptocat users deserve a maintained secure messenger, recommends Wire.
The Cryptocat source code is still published on GitHub under the GPL version 3 license and has put the crypto.cat domain name up for sale, and thanks the users for the support during Cryptocat's lifetime. https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1092712064634753024
Malware For Humans is a conversation-led, independent documentary about fake news, big data, electoral interference, and hybrid warfare. Presented by James Patrick, a retired police officer, intelligence analyst, and writer, Malware For Humans covers the Brexit and Trump votes, the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Russian hybrid warfare, and disinformation or fake news campaigns.
Malware For Humans explains a complex assault on democracies in plain language, from hacking computers to hacking the human mind, and highlights the hypocrisy of the structure of intelligence agencies, warfare contractors, and the media in doing so. Based on two years of extensive research on and offline, Malware For Humans brings the world of electoral interference into the light and shows that we are going to be vulnerable for the long term in a borderless, online frontier. A complete audio companion is available as a separate podcast, which can be found on iTunes and Spotify as part of The Fall series and is available for free, without advertisements. https://www.byline.com/column/67/article/2412
Security Endeavors Headlines is produced by SciaticNerd & Security Endeavors with the hope that it provides value to the wider security community. Some sources adapted for on-air readability.
Special thanks to our friends at malgregator dot com, who allow us to use their compiled headlines to contribute to show’s content. Visit them at Malgregator.com.
Additional supporting sources are also be included in our show notes
More information about the podcast is available at SecurityEndeavors.com/SEHL
Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week!
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[Table] IAma Las Vegas Nightclub Promoter. Ill clear up any misconceptions or reservations you have about this BEAST that's known as "The Strip". AMA

Verified? (This bot cannot verify AMAs just yet)
Date: 2014-02-27
Link to submission (Has self-text)
Questions Answers
What's the best way to go about getting a table/bottle service without completely breaking the bank? It's Vegas so of course it's not gonna be cheap by any stretch but do you have any tips to get the most bang for your buck? Stay away from clubs that have a Major Dj/ Act on that night. Fridays and Saturdays are the worst. They'll price you according to how many people you have. For example at Encore beach club, if you have 6 in your group they'll price you at $1k-1500 to start with. Night clubs usually start at 4/bottle. If you have women with you get them inside through a guest list. They'll get in free. Example, its 4 guys and 4 girls they'll want to get you on a two bottle minimum. Instead have the guys walk in for the one bottle minimum and let the girls know what table number youre at. TA-DA! Youll also get just enough seating for 4-6 but fuck it, youre in a club so get up and have fun!
Its all about real estate. If you just want to have a table to enjoy your own space and not have to worry about waiting at the bar then get a table situated off the side. Also give hosts a hard time, don't just say YES to the first offer. Maybe see if they can throw in a bottle of champ or something. Or a buy two get one free.
Whats the craziest thing you've seen in vegas? Craziest? uhm sex inside clubs. Sex in cabs. Sex out in the open. A girl once was sooo fucked up that she was walking around The Aria with only a bikini bottom and a fishnet top. That's it. Fishnets used to catch Whales so a whole tit, and she had very nice sized tits, pretty much was hanging out. You could see a wave of jaws drop and conversations stop as she walked by with her drunk friend and their two guy friends. Ahh memories. But all in all, drugs, sex, and money being spent on the craziest things. Hobos fighting with themselves. Brides-to-be doing the walk of shame. Craziness.
Walk of shame? How do you mean? Still in the clothes that they wore the last night. Usually because they spent the prior night with someone that they shouldn't have. But its Vegas, spend your night with whoever you can!!! Yaaay!
Hobos fighting themselves? Like, Tyler Durden style? I saw a hobo talking to himself. He then got mad at himself and started punching himself in the gut. I didn't know who to put my money on.
Helix or dome fossil? Helix.
What is the biggest scam on the strip? Id say paying for club passes that are to be had for free. Biggest scam is paying for these wrist bands that promise you no line, no cover, and open bar all night. And its on a night when Tiesto or Zedd is playing. Yeah right, youre showing up to the club and they'll laugh at you. And after you tell them that you gave $30 to someone that seemed honest and even gave you his/her number. I once met a group of 26 girls from a sorority from AZ that each paid $25. After I told them that it was fake two out of the seven girls started tearing. I got them on guest lists to access the clubs for free with one offering an open bar. Was happy to alleviate some of the pain.
Oh shit, I forgot! The guys that bring out their tables on the strip and do the whole follow the ball thing. The people winning work with them. Watch them, they'll win and make sure they let out a WHOOO really loud and make sure people are looking. They lure in others and make it look really easy to win. I once saw a guy lose $1700 and a thick heavy as fuck gold chain in less than 3 minutes. he got on his knees and asked for some of it back . The guy gave him $200 because the idiot said it was the last of his money and was with his wife and three kids. Greed I tell ya.
It's always hard for me to believe that in 2014, people actually still fall for that shit... I mean, it's completely unmodified, it's literally a movie cliche scam. Exactly. I'm like really. Really people? I once saw a guy paying out $300 to 3 ladies and 2 dudes for helping. Imagine what he kept.
"A fool and his money are soon parted". Sounds like vegas exemplifies this adage? I pondered how to answer this question for too long. Short and simple... yes. Perfectly.
What's the best way for a middle-aged couple to do clubs? We love the music but feel ridiculous (which kills the fun) queuing up with beautiful twenty-somethings. First off, you wouldn't be the only middle aged couple. I see them all the time. Some just kick back and drink and then some are dancing all night and don't give a shit what anyone else thinks. Let me know what days you are here and I'll put you on some guest lists so you don't pay cover.
Where can I find those hot dogs? At the Casino Royal, next to the Venetian. All the way in the back. Michelobs for $1 at the bar at the entrance.
What about the shots? Bally's Casino. Taco joint in the back.
Sunglasses inside a nightclub. Fucking douche-bags or clever way to hide pupil dilation? Fucking get the fuck out of here. I cannot say "fuck" enough when I see those idiots in the club. I hope they slip on spilled beer, fall on sticky residue and get up right when the confetti is shot out.
Did someone stab you with sunglasses or something? No, they stabbed me with audacity... audacity to wear them inside a club. I guess its because I'm a form follows function type of guy. Sunglasses inside would only be ok when you're covering up a black eye from a beat down or your bloodshot red eyes would give away that you've been on a drug binge.
This is a long shot, but my friends and I are going to be in vegas for EDC, we plan to stay a week, is there anyway you could hook us up when EDC is over? Sure. Text me before you're here and ill let you know what I can do. Worst case ill be able to do a reduced cover. 7736200454.
You are now in my phone as Vegas promoter. I do Vegas about 6 times a year. So expect a text soon and if your down I'll buy you a few beers. You had me at "Beers".
Hey DisasterBUSE, got a question for you. I'm not really a club guy but I do like to go to bars. What are some of the better bars in the casinos that are good for someone who just likes to have a few drinks in between gambling. Also are there any good rock clubs in Vegas? If so, what are the called and where are they? The Wynn and Encore are very lively at night. If you want to gamble and drink with a great view, that's the place. Venetian, Palazzo, Bellagio, Aria, and last but not least The Cosmopolitan ate great places with great energy. The clubs SurrendeEncore Beach Club and XS have gambling tables in case you'd like to soak a little of the scene in while playing a few hands.
How's papa Giorgio? Not sure but I think he might look something like this nowadays.
Going to vegas for a cousins bachelor party from May 14 to 18. I am a student got any tips for me to be money wise? as the people I am going with are all older professionals with money. Any hook ups? thanks! Do most of your drinking at slots, tables. Ill put in $10 in a slot, and sometimes not even gamble at all. Cocktail servers come around and ask if I want drinks..."two vodka/tonics please" and tip her $4. If youre doing any pool parties and not doing bottle service you might want to get tickets before hand since theyre cheaper than paying at the door. Flasks flasks flasks! Let me know if I missed anything that concerned you.
In all seriousness, I'll be in Vegas for the opening weekend of the NCAA tournament. Know of any awesome places (besides the casino sports books) to catch the games? Bars off the strip are always great. No pressure and decent pricing on booze. unless youre willing to pony up and do Lagasses place at Venetian or something.
What's the most common misconception about clubbing and how do you correct people about it? That theyre impossible to get in, theyre not fun, expensive to get in, girls are hard to meet/ leave the club with. The club I work for 75% of the times im able to get couples in free provided that they show up early. On slower nights Im able to get uneven ratios in (more guys than girls) or give tickets that grant free entrance. And the ladies. To me they all look the same BUT its hard to get over it. Ive seen guys pick up ladies super quick and they only had a beer in their hand, you don't need a massive table with free drinks galore. Theres a lot of girls in the clubs that have awesome personalities but have their guards of because theyre just not comfortable with being groped. Approach them in a non creepy way and youre golden. I see this every week. What surprises me is how many people come to vacation here and are just total Debbie downers. The most amazing thing about this place is that people come here to have fun and dance theyre asses off, even when they have no clue what theyre doing. Walk in to a club through a guest list and get in free, have a drink and enjoy an amazing sound system. Even if its for 30 min, I feel its large part of the Vegas experience.
Good answer man! I'd love to have your job Theres a lot of bad that come with the jobs. A significant other will not be happy with your phone blowing up until the early morning. A lof of girls are absolute bitches and think the whole world owes them something for having their tits out. Its a hustle and with every "NO!", "EWW", and "I HAVE A BOYFRIEND CREEP" you have to keep on and hope the next says yes. And please note, I always approach with something non creepy like "Hey ladies sorry to interrupt, have you been invited to see Macklemore & Ryan Lewis tonight on a guest list"?
I've always wondered you guys must get paid pretty good money right? (There was one particular promoter I always stuck with until he recently moved) but this guy had an assistant and took nice trips I kinda just always wondered how that system works. And do Diplo and Dillion Francis put on good shows? I wanna see either one sometime soon Great question. First off Diplo is at my workplace tomorrow night so best believe Ill be instagramming tons of Videos. All of Maddecent are awesome. Dillon Francis and Diplo are both awesome. Tons of ass shaking tomorrow for sure!
So everyone pays differently. I only work at SurrendeEncore Beach and have a day job so my time is limited. So Ill breakdown promotions as much as I can. First off there are different types of Promoters. You have the ones that work at a club like yours truly. Since I only work at SurrendeEncore Beach club, which is run by Las vegas Nightlife Group. I only get paid for people that come to my club. XS and Tryst are owned by the same people and we are all located at the Wynn/Encore. You then have Tao Group, Angel Management Group (AMG), and Light Group. Tao clearly has Tao, Tao beach, Marquee and Marquee Dayclub. AMG has (or had, Hakkasan just bought the group out). Hakkasan, Wet Republic, Pure, LAX, Chateau, Venus, Coyote Ugly, Saville Row. LG runs Light, Daylight, Haze, 1Oak, The Bank and a few lounges/restaurants. Tao group promoters can have guest lists at all their venues so if they leave a group with a great impression and they check in on their guest list at all joints then the person just made $ times the number of venues they checked in. Light Group usually confines their employees to one club, unless they need help filling out another (which they usually do) and allow them to be paid (I waited 8 months to get paid by them, I don't like the way they manage their places). AMG varies as well, I heard some are only focusing on Wet and Hak but heard that before they had to have a certain amount check in at other properties. With all this said, if youre a good promoter, hardoworking, and have a good network, 1k a week is a cakewalk. Even 2k can be done for the greater part of the summer. I know of a guy that can make 4-8k/wk and its all through his phone. Money can be real good IF you work hard and hit high numbers. Ill elaborate a little more later on tonight if anyone wants me to. I need to head home.
If you feel like elaborating, what's the difference between the 1k a week promoter and the promoter making 4-8k? Well if you don't bring any people and ate not being paid hourly then you might not get a check at all. Those that are successful in this biz network hard, are usually seasoned, and are good enough to the point that clients want to go back to them and refer them to others. Ive heard of hosts being flown to exotic places, gifts being custom made as gifts, and so on. Its really like any other sales job, many do it, some are good, few are great. There are also many ways to make money. You can book hotel rooms, sell packages, etc. where you receive a kick back. When done right its a win/win/win.
What's are your experiences like with the Vegas drain dwellers? Any good stories? Theyre all over the place. Usually just getting drunk and laying out on the sidewalk. I pay no attention to them. Some have demanded money and when I tell them I have no cash or simply say "sorry, cant help ya" at times can get very aggressive. Then they fall on their ass or something. Comical most of the times. Look at them too long though it becomes depressing. The sad thing is I see a lot that are soo young. There was this young girl with a sign that read "pregnant with 2nd child and cannot afford anything. please help". I sat down next to her and asked her why she was out there. I asked if she sought help. I was baffled that such a young person could be so out of luck. She proceeded with a story about her losing her Social Security Income when she moved to Arizona or something. When she moved back they denied her or something along those lines. In the end it seemed like she lost hope and possible gave up too quickly. She said she didn't have family to turn to. Those are the moments when I realize that I am lucky to have a great family that would take me in if I ever went near that route.
Whats a good tip to you afer helpi. Some people out? I don't ever expect to get tipped. I get paid by the club. There are always people who value what I do and slip me a $20,$40. The most I've ever been tipped was $160. It was for setting up someone with table service at a few clubs. Tips humble me, just buy me a shot and we're good!
Show up at club with a big line. What amount should you slip the bouncer to let you in and a date? What would you say? I'm always afraid i'll hand over a hundred bucks and he'll make me wait in line anyway. Depends on the club. If its just you and a date Id say start at $40. Order of difficulty to skip the line from hardest to easiest: All guys> More guys than girls>even ratio mixed group>all girls. That being said if its just a guy and a girl then Id start out at $40, they might come back with $60-$80. If you feel like pulling their bluff thank them for the help but youll just wait in line. Sometimes they'll see $40 better than nothing. Imagine if he does that 10 times a night? Not bad...
Another thing you might want to think about is say you just left at a restaurant that's in the casino. Id probably use the whole "My buddy So-and-so, manager at ___, told me to come check it out. I forgot the name of who Im supposed to ask though (maybe guess a name). Can we go in and check it out"? Worst case scenario is they say no, next is they let you pass and you pay cover, best thing is you walk in no line and no cover. Ive met people who have succeeded.
I read your comment about tipping and whatnot and how its not really necessary. i went last august with a group of 12 for my buddy's bachelor party and we got tables at light on a friday and lavo on a sunday. we tipped on both occassions, as i was under the impression that it was proper etiquette. for light we gave the guy a little over 200, and he was able to move us from a table on the 2nd floor in the corner to one that was pretty close to the main floor for the same bottle minimum (we had planned on giving him that much anyway before he moved us). at lavo we hooked the guy up with 100. were we too generous? or is that pretty standard? A 20% gratuity is always on the bill plus 8.1% tax. Now, with the $200+ you gave the host you then bettered your real estate setting in the club. While you don't really have to tip your host its customary to throw them a bone. You can get your table and have everyone leave you be except your busseserver. Start tipping security and they will make sure the crowd stays clear of your area. Tip your host and they seat you at a better table. Tip a "girl-guy" and they will bring you hot ladies. Now with that last one be very careful, ladies that table hop are very thirsty and the only way for them to stay alive is to have a constant source of alcohol. Party too hard and your 2k table has turned into 8k. Or your 7k has turned into 22k. Ive seen this happen at many clubs. If you just hit it big at the tables or hit a progressive at the slots then fuck it, LIVE IT UP! (Im kidding, save a small town from hunger).
Do promoters make a huge difference in cutting the line, hooks, and discounts, and saving money? Rather than just walking into the club blind? A good promoter wants your experience to be soo awesome that they contact you on their next visit or mention their name when a friend has Vegas plans. That said, our guest lists offer no cover or reduced entry. Express entry is only done when their at the ropes and have an incentive to get you inside faster. If youre a dude youll probably have to tip someone off to skip the line. When I come across a couple I always offer to set them up somewhere else the following night. Its simply good business and I believe in paying it forward. Before I moved to Vegas I made a trip with my SO and I know how hard the city can be without a hookup. I put myself in their shoes and do what I can for them. I always provide pics of my club and explain the whole line/open bar situation. I don't lie to them just for them to get in, it comes back to bite you in your ass.
So what's the best way for an international tourist to get some good coke? I've heard it's best to hire a limo and ask the driver. What do you think? Be very careful. Vice (undercover cops) are all over and look the role they are playing. I once was walking in front of the Bellagio fountains and within a matter of seconds a couple of men, tattoos on their necks and all, went from talking to a guy one second to quickly pulling out their badges and handcuffing the man. All I heard was "under arrest for possession and intent to..".
I'm a you get guy and I like older women, what are the best spots to meet them? Just to let you know im23 so older form me is 30+ Check out the pools, casinos. There a ton of HOT older ladies. A difference between them and younger chicks: Mature woman have no problem having a drink, laying out, or just walking by themselves. You'll find these that are here for a convention and have nothing planned for the night. Whenever I get them on my guest list theres a 90% chance they'll show up. Two weeks ago I had a large group of 9 woman show up. Every. Single. One. Was. Hot!
What is the incentive for someone under 21 to visit Vegas? To make it to 21 and join the fun! Now you have a goal. youre welcome.
I kid, kind of. I approach many under 21 and they all look like theyre having fun. I don't even think theres a curfew so you can at least people watch while sipping on whatever. The city never sleeps. Jump on the roller coaster at NYNY or head to Strasphere and have some fun. Lots of walking and selfie opportunities.
Are there ways to get a table at a club for free? If you have a group of great looking girls or have a local ID then yes, its possible. Youll only have to pay tip. $70-some odd bucks per bottle instead of $600 and change? not bad.
Does a promoter like yourself just walk up to us and say "hey, want a free table?" It depends. For a group of all ladies and if theyre cute I can get them a table with champagne bottles for free. The clubs want pretty ladies in so some places offer then a free dinner and a free table. Every club is different. But if theyre hot my first questions is "so how many girls/guys with you" and when its all girls then its a go. Some clubs require a picture of all girls, it then has to be sent to a manager to approve the group.
Is that the real Caesars Palace? Did Caesar live there? It was faxed it over bit by bit starting in the 60's. Yes Caesar lived there. Ordered tons of room service.
How often do people offer you drugs/money/sex in order to get into clubs? Those younger than 21 are willing to give me their first born just to get in. I get offered tons of things, Im not surprised anymore.
Has anybody ever told you that you look like Ami James? Like if you tattooed your neck and stuff I swear you could pass as a double. No but I see a resemblance. I always get Vin Diesel or Willie Nelson. Ok maybe not Willie.
What suggestions do you give for a small college restaurant/bar in terms of bringing people inside? Also what do you NOT suggest doing? Suggestions like what works to get them inside your place?
Any place really! I've seen just about everything in my city but most bars here are dead(50-100k population being students alone!) Its really location specific. Im from Chicago and Vegas is a whole different ball game. We deal with people that are here for a short amount of time. In the end though all places want bodies inside their place. Motion created commotion so if youre in a place that's packed and fun people want to stay and consume more. Most important, get bodies inside the club/bar early. Before 11 is key. That way any propect walking by sees that its busy and wants to be part of the fun. Does this make sense?
What would you recommend as far as afterhours edm parties go? You might like Artisan. The times that Ive been there its been nothing but deep house and some edm. Really weird décor too, worth seeing. Body English and Drais usually mix it up.
What's the craft beer scene like? I've always been a fan of travel, and love checking out the local craft breweries/brewpubs in an area. Sin City brewery at a few casinos, Big Dog Brewery, Banger Brewery in Downtown, Chicago Brewery to name a few. Yard House carries a few local brew I believe.
Chicago Brewing, at Rampart and Ft Apache was my stomping ground for the two years that I lived in Summerlin. I loved that place. Decent food and beer, and the upstairs bar area was perfect for baseball viewing. Good memories, thanks for reminding me of it. I remember watching my first Bears game there. I got Goosebumps seeing all the people with their jerseys on. Refreshing in this transient city.
Hey, thanks for the AMA. What's the deal with dress codes at various clubs? Does it depend on night/weekend? Heading out to Vegas with a bachelor party in June, curious to get your thoughts on this and strategy for a group of 15 drunk idiot single guys. You know, even I don't know. I mean if you're put together in a presentable manner than you shouldn't have a problem. If you stick to collared shirts and nice shoes then you're good. No athletic wear, no hats. Sometimes chucks slide but id rather you be safe than sorry. Clearly the day clubs are lenient on dress code, still no athletic wear. If you have a club in mind text me and ill make sure to find out what it is they are/are not tolerating.
You got me with the the VIP pass? Hit me up and if I have tickets I don't see why not.
Whats the best nightclub on the strip? Define Best and Ill tell you which one.
Surprise me. My favorite is XS. Hakkasan is the latest and greatest. It cost $100m and was named Nightclub&Bars best top club for 2014. Light inside the Mandalay Bay is awesome. I like Surrender because its an outdoor club with a dancefloor inside (I don't like being shoved every two seconds). Tryst is also cool with a 90ft waterfall. Marquee has always done well and is a must visit (it also gets too crowded for me though). It really depends if you like dancing in the middle of the dancefloor, what kind of music you like, outdoor vs indoor. Then you have your older clubs that still have a following like Pure, Tao. Maybe its because they've been around FOREVER.
I fly around a decent amount, if I wanted to make Vegas a frequent destination how could I get in contact with you? Buy calling/texting! 7736200454. Christopher Landeroz. Texting is way better, I can reply whenever.
Too bad doubles are 25$ there lol. Yes, a simple sprite sets you back $7. $10 at Hakkasan! That's why I tell people to load up at a slot so you only need 1-2 more when you're inside the club. But the place is awesome. Awesome can be expensive =/
Do those mexican guys on the Strip throwing phamplets at anyone actually manage to get people to call those escort lines? I talk to a few on a regular basis. Super nice people sweating their asses off and getting paid very little. According to one of them theyre just there to pass them out for a company. They almost never see a bonus for it. If the people they work for still have them up and down the strip passing them out then people must be calling. I don't know too much about the escorts you get from calling those numbers. I do know escorts that work for themselves though. Some of those chicks make tons of dough.
Do you know my cousin Tiffany? Does she own jewelry stores all over the place? Make pretty lamps with stained glass? Kidding.
Should I know her? Does she work there?
She used to work at surrender now she works at light. Server? Promoter?
I'll be in Vegas for edc weekend. Any chance you might be able to hook it up with guest list? :) Sure. I'm pretty sure we'll have some major talent that week. Message me sooner than later.
What are y'all gonna do when the water runs out? I should be back home in Chicago by then. Maybe swap out water for Vodka or something.
Promoter. Tae?
Yea, tay. Didn't talk to her much but yes, I remember her.
Leaving for Vegas tomorrow for Spring Break/My Bachelor Party! Any way to to get a sweet deal on your club for Saturday night? Madeon will be there Saturday night! Text me 7736200454.
My fiancee is bringing me to LV for my birthday in April. Any tips on birthday hook ups or perks I can get out there? We're staying at The Wynn. Your hook up is right here! Text me or message me.
I'll be there next week, any chance you could hook me up? :) EDIT: It'll also be my 21st Birthday! Of course! message me.
Wanna hook me up VIP style for my 21st in July? Why not! Message me!
I'll be there with my best friend in two weeks for her birthday. Any way you can help us out? Yup! Message me!
I highly recommend the show Absinthe in Las Vegas. I was there about two weeks ago and the show was AMAZING. Although, the humor in the show can be a bit vulgar so if you're offended very easily then I wouldn't recommend it. This. Ive heard nothing but good things about Absinthe.
I am going EBC when it opens March 29th for my birthday. Can I contact you for bottles !! Yes. Text me! Number is on my instagram profile or message me!
I'll have to check it out from Australia sometime :) Aussie Aussie Aussie!!! Aussies have to be some of the best people that come out. Super friendly, party hard, and uhh party hard!
Headed to Vegas the weekend of April 11th for my cousins bachelor party. Staying at Hard Rock. Need some direction on clubs! Message me, and Ill let you know whats hot. It usually boils down to hip hop or house (and don't get me started on todays "hiphop, Im oldschool but whatev), outdoor or indoor, daytime or night? Ill point you the way. you cant go wrong with the clubs at the Wynn/Encore though. Don't pay for anything online, sometimes they can be had cheaper here. Example: strip club packages for a bachelorette/bachelor party online charge $30-50 when I can get you the same thing for $7-45. A group of girls from back home (Chicago) were referred to me. For some odd reason one of them decided to buy a package for 9 girls. Turns out they overpaid by $135. Its the internet, they know that people like to preplan so they get you like that. Knowing what I know now Id book a room in advance (but would probably willing to try the last minute hotel sites, Ive heard great things about them) and tickets for clubs if it was all males.
So i'm going to vegas for the first time starting the 12th of march for my 21st birthday/ mountain west tournament trip what do you think the best clubs and pool parties are to go to to get the whole first time vegas trip experience Are you the one who text me already? If not then here it goes: (shameless plug) Surrender its an indoooutdoor club. We book talent ranging from hip hop, trap to EDC, Dubstep. While there check out XS and Tryst. Hakkasan at MGM is new and pretty big. Light at Mandalay Bay is new as well. Great lighting and "powered by Cirque du Soleil", meaning performers hang from the ceiling and behind their LED screen. Marquee at the cosmo has always held their weight. Both indoooutdoor. You then have Hyde, Pure, Tao, Moon, Ghost bar and many others. During the day I'm pretty Sure Ghost bar dayclub (GBDC) and Lavo Brunch will be going on during the day on Saturday. Basically they're clubs open during the day. Encore Beach Club might be open and a few others. Those dates are right on the cusp of pools opening so its TBD as of now. Message me and ill see what I can do for you.
You mean you're a mexican immigrant who flips cards at people? Or you're a strip bar "concierge" who wanders the strip getting bachelor parties to go to Treasures? And those cheap beers and tequila shots are available at the Taco place in Ballys... duh! Yes, glad I made myself clear. And not everyone knows their way around Vegas, just trying to help. Thanks for your contribution to the cause.
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