Graffiti the Ghost

Have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water?

Ok, ok, I know that I've been watching too much Alias. That's probably why I've been having dreams in which I die (yes, die- so much for that myth that if you die in dreams you also die in real life) from breathing poison gas and falling from the sides of buildings. Granted. But when you spend several hours of your life every week watching the DVD exploits of fictional CIA agents it's hard not to start seeing conspiracy and intrigue everywhere. Yeah, sure those are PG&E employees drilling holes with a jackhammer in front of my bedroom window every morning- not some form of slow psychological torture aimed at triggering violent reactions in randomly chosen human guinea pigs, i.e. the residents of Waller Street. Whatever.

So I felt somewhat vindicated when I read this on Boingboing this morning. It's an excerpt from the same book that brought Mike the Headless Chicken to my attention, so you know it's gonna be good. It's from a book called THE WORLD'S WORST: A Guide to the Most Disgusting, Hideous, Inept and Dangerous, People, Places and Things on Earth. This entry details the exploits of another CIA agent named Sidney, but believe me, folks, this guy is no Jennifer Garner. In fact, he's been named the "Maddest Mad Scientist." Meet Sidney Gottlieb:

On a warm autumn evening in Paris in 1952, a 25-year-old, up-and-coming American artist named Stanley Glickman was enjoying a coffee at his favorite haunt, the Café Dome in Montparnasse. Perhaps he spent the moment thinking of his Canadian girlfriend who was touring Europe at the time, or of the painting he’d completed that was hanging in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In any case, Glickman’s musings were interrupted when an acquaintance approached him and invited him to have a drink across the street at the Café Select. He accepted. There, the artist and his companion were joined by an unfamiliar group of Americans. Dressed in unfashionably straight-laced clothing, the strangers espoused political beliefs that were highly disagreeable to Glickman. After hours of hotly contested debate, the artist decided to pay his part of the bill and go home, but one of the strangers—a man with a clubfoot—insisted on buying him a drink as a way to make up for their argument. Instead of calling over the waiter who’d been serving drinks to the party all evening, the clubfooted man went to the bar himself and bought a Chartreuse for Glickman.

Before he even finished his cocktail, Glickman began to feel “funny.” The walls appeared to move, the electric lights in the café were ringed with halos, and wine bottles seemed to levitate on Glickman’s silent behest. Another member of the party told Glickman that he was now capable of “performing miracles.” link

Of course he was doing it all in the interest of "national security." For more on Gottlieb and his little "pranks," and to find out why you should never drink the punch at the CIA Christmas party, check out this site, which goes so far as to claim that Gottlieb may have even been the inspiration behind this guy:


"It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works." Gen. Jack T. Ripper, Dr. Strangelove

posted by Jess @ 10:23 AM