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JOHN PARSONS: Sex, Solid Fuel Rockets, and L. Ron Hubbard.
Just read an interesting book:
Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons.
 It’s the true story of the high school dropout who helped launched the space program, John Parsons. But this is no fuck-up does good and become Lee Iacocca bullshit. Parsons was a WACKO, as well as an interesting footnote in the history of religious chicanery, serving as a bridge between the Victorian Old World flim- flam of Aleister Crowley and the Space Age Yankee flim-flam of L. Ron Hubbard (who makes a last act appearance as a dastardly villain, fleeing on yacht with Parson’s lady and a good chunk of his life savings.)
Parson blew up sheds in and around Cal Tech by day, and ran a Gnostic free love freakshow in an old Pasadena mansion by night. (LA was very, very weird in the forties. Full of racial strife, institutionalized corruption and flakely cults. The more things change...) Parson was Crowley’s man in LA, running the local temple of Crowley’s order, the OTO. He was also one of the underappreciated international network of amateurs that ushered in the rocket age.
Rockets were written off by the scientific establishment as goony kids stuff, not worthy of study, especially as propulsion for spacecraft. Some physicists, who should have known better, even argued rockets would not work in a vacuum.
It was only through the efforts of a bunch of obsessed misfits existing outside academia that the US eventually had any sort of rocket program. The Nazis, on the other hand, became very very interested in what their nerds were up to rocket-wise and as a result 3,000 V2s later rained on London and Rotterdam. Rockets worked.
The sadly ironic result for Parsons is that once rocketry became respectable, weirdos like him were pushed aside for degreed professionals. While his grab-ass little posse of pyros eventually became the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Parson ended his life in an accidental explosion, blowing himself to smithereens mixing up demolition effects for a movie studio.
What’s interesting is watching Hubbard, at the time a fairly successful Sci-Fi writer, out-Crowley Crowley, creating a global religion with not a little cribbing from Crowley’s playbook. Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein and L. Sprague de Camp (Conan’s co-creator) even make a brief appearance to comment on the audacity of their fellow pulp-spieler.
It’s the prose is a bit dry, but the subject matter more than makes up for it. As soon as you’re done rereading Princess Daisy, give it a spin.
John Paul Cupp: my kind of weirdo
 I have this mild fascination with Kim Jung Il, star of "Team America: World Police" and blood thirsty short person. He likes pizza, he likes Mike Jordan, and he's nutsy for the Juche Idea, North Korea's flavor of nutzoid people starving authoritarianism.
Like most Asian popstars Kim has yet to crack the states-side market. But he does have a friend in Portland, Comrade John Paul Cupp -- Chairman,Songun Politics Study Group (USA). If that weren't enough, Cupp is turning heads in the corridors of powers as the Chairman of US Solidarity Committee to Support the NDFSK and the South Korean People's Struggle. I'm calling you out, Teen People. Get your best star reporter on this New Soviet Man.
Paul has got himself a full plate, unlike the majority of North Koreans.
The wonder of all this is Paul manages to out-Gorky Gorky with some of the freshest, most heartfelt socialist realistic verses coming out of the red hot salons of Portland's Stalinist poetry scenes.
He has a 17 stanza ode with it's own internal fucked mickey mouse clock rhythm that blows Bourgeoisie standards of "talent" out of their Saragossa Sea of STAGNANT KITSCH.
It's called The Korea of Songun: a Poem in 17 Stanzas, and I'm not going to reprint it because I don't want any fancy pants North Korea intellectual property attorney bending me over in court. I will link to it here, however.
Fair use allows for reprinting part of a work for comment or review, so here's the first stanza to whet your whistle:
I. Preludes of Life and Death Battles
Long Live North Korea!
Long Live Freedom's Dream!
While mourning for Belgrade, and cheering for Baghdad,
Pyongyang, our eyes on you!
Long Live North Korea!
There's sixteen more where that came from, some even better than this!
And just so you know this love affair isn't one sided, the Pyongyang Mission of the National Democratic Front of South Korea sent back their own puppy love mash note.
So, heads up, policy wanks. Pyongyang's man in Portland is getting ready to take his place among the pundits and Wise Old Men. CNN, you listening? Yeah, I bet you are.
John Paul Cupp: a juicy man with a Juche plan.
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