Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Popular in German-speaking Alpine folklore, the figure of Krampus is a devil-like horned creature who punishes badly-behaved children the night before St Nicholas' Day.


Greetings from Krampus


Dec 6, 1941: three sailors were photographed while having a drink at a bar in Pearl Harbor. Clifford Olds (at right), was on board USS West Virginia when it was sunk during the Japanese attack the next morning. When salvage workers found his remains in a compartment several months later, a marked calendar revealed that he and two other shipmates had lived for 16 days trapped within the ship. Let that sink in.




Has the bitter, cold, dark month of December already got you down? If so, pretend you been time transported back to the 50s and head down Route 66 to Santa Claus, Arizona in the warm, sunny Mohave Desert. You might even get to see Freija in an Elf suit. She is Santa's foreman in the woodworking shop.


In a town that almost was, founded in 1937, Santa Claus lies approximately 14 miles (23 km) northwest of Kingman, Arizona, along U.S. Route 93 between mile markers 57 and 58, immediately north of Hermit Drive and just south of both Grasshopper Junction, Arizona, and the Junk Art of Chloride, a group of metal statues in Chloride, Arizona, that include a flamingo made out of a motorcycle gas tank. It was a tourist hotspot in the 1940s and the 1950s to improve Santa Claus, which received publicity through the writings of American novelist and famed science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein and U.S. pioneer restaurant rater Duncan Hines. Characterized in 1988 as "a little roadside place on the west shoulder of U.S. Route 93."

Back in 1988 you could of bought the whole town for $52,500. In 1995 Santa Claus became a ghost town. The remaining structures in the abandoned town were torn down sometime in early 2022. All that remains is rattlesnakes and dust in the wind.

A short history Walking Tour of Santa Claus, Arizona by a weird dude. What remained of it just before it was all demolished. The land (reduced to 4 acres) is still for sale today.



If you're curious on the real history you can listen to Andrew Explains it All - Christmas Special on Santa Claus, Arizona


Dec 6, 1963: [FBI] Think Oswald Might Have Shot At Gen. Walker



Who was General Edwin Walker? Was he a patriot, a madman, or a little of both?

If you have any interest these two vids will blow your mind:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quqzNA00F54

Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6IKhtf5yFk


Dec 6, 1982: Reagan's Rx for the MX. Peacemaker? Pacemaker? Or...?




Say hello to my Little Friend...




This song is now 31 years old...



For contrast, here is the world 31 years before Here Comes The Hotstepper.



"Time is slowing down" is an often made observation that the pace of cultural change is less rapid in the 21st Century than it was in the latter part of the 20th Century. Fashion, music, design, architecture etc are seen as less volatile, contain less novelty, than before.

It's a hindsight experience in some ways: you probably had a landline in 1994, read magazines, watched analog TV, commuted daily to work and listened to the RADIO. People smoked indoors. People bought newspapers and read books on the train. Time is still changing, just the medium you see it in has changed.


That's why (I'm guessing) it's hard to talk about 21st Century pulp. It doesn't quite have the shock or the strangeness of the old. The past doesn't feel like an undiscovered country there, even though we are a quarter of the way through the current century. We may need a new word for our more recent digital nostalgia, something that captures the oddness of times past, the way pulp was a shorthand for mass market printing and the types of entertainment that found a home there.



One simple word I can think of is "gizmo." Jean Baudrillard's work uses it to refer to everyday, functional technological objects that in a consumer society become signs of status, style or coolness rather than just tools. His concept of simulation, where signs and copies replace the real (ex. hyperreality), shows how these gizmos, media, and digital trends create a world where the representation becomes the reality, famously inspiring The Matrix.

Although there's always been gizmos, the idea of a 'gizmo lifestyle' picked up pace once the World Wide Web developed and expanded: the internet became a thing you 'did' rather than a tool you used or a place you visited. It was a lifestyle choice and a cultural signal. Those days are long gone - perhaps LLMs are the new gizmo lifestyle for a few, but it may take a little longer for it to gather the heady aroma of nostalgia that pulp seems to have.

I've noticed many Youtube comments are the island of lost souls sifting the debris field of a dead culture.


Who's still listening to/watching this in 2025?
I took this for granted growing up.
When things were real. Take me back.

Heartbreaking commentary.

Aspectus perditus / L'air perdu / Looking lost "lost hope" or "gone forever".


Dec 6, 2012: Submarine Cryptologic Technician Robert Patrick Hoffman II, 40, of Virginia Beach, Virginia was arrested. Fell for not one, but 2 honeypot traps. One by Russians and one by FBI with agent alias Tracey Tea. His license plate read "GR8 LEI." In 2014 he was Sentenced to 30 Years in Prison for Attempted Espionage. His last good time...




Hmmmm...


https://x.com/OANN/status/1997135153798566217