Recent Posts

Ruins of Bonampak in the Lacandon Rainforest of Chiapas, Mexico
Myth

Popol Vuh: The Ancient Maya Dawn of Life and Overcoming the Forces of Awe

The Popol Vuh (Maya K’iche’ for “Council Book” or “Book of the Community”) features a creation myth, the Dawn of Life under the spectre of a flooded world, followed by the epic mythological stories of two Hero Twins: Hunahpu (Blow-gun Hunter) and Xbalanque (Young Hidden/Jaguar-Sun) as they confront the Lords of Death and Disease in the underworld caves of the “Place of Awe.”

Metropolis, Fritz Lang, dystopia
Film

H. G. Wells on the Futurist Dystopia of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis”

“Metropolis” hallucinates a futuristic city, a paradise of glass and steel, where underground workers toil endlessly at the giant machines that run the world above. Controlled by the autocratic industrialist, his spoilt son falls for the working class prophet who envisions some mediation between workers and managers. Noted science fiction author H. G. Wells reviews the controversial 1927 masterpiece.

screenshot from Commissioner of Sewers
Literary

William S. Burroughs – Commissioner of Literary Addictions

Burroughs wanted to free people from the slavery of addiction, whether to heroin or money or sex. “The Garden of Earthly Delights” was his shorthand for the diseased saturnalia of American affluence. From his earliest writings Burroughs foresaw a time when human beings, drenched in orgasmic “freedom,” would be reduced to their bodies, their minds completely manipulated by advertising and mass media.