Imaginary Corporations, by Adam Baulderstone

Ed.--This is a letter sent to me by a friend. It's not meant to be scientific, only observational. But the observations are excellent ones...

That whole interlocking grid of TV shows was pretty impressive. I remember the end of St Elsewhere from back in the day, but I had no idea it was connected to Homicide. It really gets baffling when you work Newhart into it as that whole series turned out to be an extended dream sequence from The Bob Newhart Show, and Mork was a character from a dream of Richie Cunningham from Happy Days.

I thought it was funny that the Doctor Who / Hitchhiker's Guide crossover I just mentioned to you came up in there, too.

They were limiting themselves to just TV shows, but I noticed a few connections that lead into other media. They mention the Weyland-Yutani Corporation as client of Wolfram and Hart, a satanic law firm in Angel and as a weapons manufacturer in Firefly, but it's original appearance is as "The Company" in Alien. It is never mentioned aloud, but the name and logo can be seen around the Nostromo and on beer cans. The name was invented by Ron Cobb, the designer of the Nostromo. He originally wanted to call it Leyland-Toyota, imagining it as a merging of British and Japanese businesses, but for legal reasons changed the name. In 1979, we hadn't reached the point where real companies were so eager to have their names in movies they would agree, even if the movie was just trying to make the point that their product was designed for morons, like Gatorade in Idiocracy. Weyand-Yutani is mentioned by name in Aliens but the logo has been made significantly blander in accordance with James Cameron's artistic vision.

From Alien, there is the obvious leap to Predator 2. You could lead in to comics by way of DC's Batman vs. Predator or the execrable Aliens vs.Superman, possibly the worst-conceived crossover ever, but I'm going to go with Predator vs. Judge Dredd, not that it is much better, but Judge Dredd teamed up with a time traveling Johnny Alpha. And who doesn't want to see Strontium Dog as the distant future of Homicide.

Of course once you've entered comics almost everything bleeds into everything else, especially when you toss Top 10 and League of Extraordinary Gentleman into the mix, so this is all a little to easy. The real danger is if the Munch Meme breaks into the world of comics all that interconnection could allow it to expand exponentially in only a matter of issues. In no time at all racks will be overflowing with Munch: GCPD and Judge Munch comics.

That's as far as I want to go down the Weyland-Yutani path. There is another corporate client of Wolfram and Hart you might remember: Yoyodyne. They also identify it as the builder of the run down bus depot where The John Larroquette Show is set, as well as a contactor building starships for Starfleet in Star Trek: the Next Generation. But if you delve deeper, Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems appears in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai across the Eighth Dimension, as a company infiltrated by the Red Lectroids, aliens that landed in 1939 at Grover's Mill in New Jersey (5 minutes from my sister's house right by an excellent Indian restaurant), using Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast as a diversion.

A sequel was written, Buckaroo Banzai against the World Crime League, in which the hero Buckaroo Banzai and his Hong Kong Cavaliers are assisted by a trucker named Jack Burton. But, despite picking up a dedicated following amongst nerds, the movie tanked, being released in 1984 against Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Ghostbusters andStar Trek III (two Yoyodyne related movies in one summer!), and the sequel went unmade. W.D. Richter instead went to work writing Big Trouble In Little China.

But all this is just a detour from the true origin of Yoyodyne: Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, V., and Vineland in which it is a thinly-veiled version of the real-world Rocketdyne Corporation, a company formed in the wake of WWII to reverse-engineer Nazi rocket technology, specifically the V-2 rocket, whose parabolic path would give Gravity's Rainbow its title and primary theme.

Much like comics, once you've hit Pynchon you can tie pretty much anything in. For instance, William Gibson took one line from Gravity's Rainbow, a description of a mirrored wall, and used it word for word in Neuromancer. I'd quote it but I don't have a copy ofNeuromancer and it could take me a few days to find In Gravity's Rainbow. Pynchon paid him back by taking a TV worshiping trailer park cult that Gibson created in Virtual Lightand used it in Vineland.

Vineland also contains Eddie Enrico and his Hong Kong Hotshots an obvious reference to Buckaroo Banzai and his Hong Kong Cavaliers. To highlight the reference he also mentions Ramon Raquello on the same page. Raquello was the fictitious bandleader whose show was interrupted by Orson Welles to bring news of the landing at Grover's Mill.

There is some debate as to whether Yoyodyne was spread through nerd culture directly by Pynchon's work or through Buckaroo Banzai. In the case of Star Trek it seems someone there is a Pynchon fan as unlikely as it might seem. Episode 523(!) of Deep Space Nine involves various conspiracies swirling around the auction of an ancient baseball card of Willie Mays. Oddly both Pynchon and Mays were born on May 8, and in Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon obliquely calls baseball, "A sport also well-spidered with suggestions of the sinister."

With all these new revelations about the Homicide Universe, it makes me wonder about Crosetti's "suicide." Just what did he find out about the Lincoln assassination?...

The Questionable Business Practices at Alticor/Amway/Quixtar™

MLMs (Multi-Level Marketing companies)--I knew a neighborhood family some 30-years-ago who were very odd. The parents had been in the Air Force and raised their son to be a military-drone (he thankfully escaped this fate of being an officer as far as I can tell and has a family now), indoctrinating him in some extremely wacky right-wing, militaristic and over-the-top marketplace ideologies.

That's right, I'm talking about that bizarre triangulation of Amway, the Air Force, and the "prosperity gospel" (and "Star Trek: The Next Generation" fans for good measure). And yet, it's worse than that...

The father was a forensic-pathologist who did blood-analysis (and could've been Jeffrey Dahmer's pa'), and had the personality of a cod. He and "the wife" had met each other while serving in the U.S. Air Force, that domain of religious, fanatical theocratic Christians, patriotic kookdom, and Moonies. What attracts these kind of sick people to that particular branch of the military deserves extensive studies by social scientists everywhere, though there are some statistics out there.

But, these people never made any money on Amway,™ they just bought the stupid--and by-all-appearances--overpriced and lousy products, and they were stuck with them. That was alright, but I was concerned for their son, and he was a friend whom I cared about.

One time, the Air Force mother came to our door and attempted to sell my mother some of the lousy products, and used the standard sell that Amway's™ known so well for (known so well for that they changed their name to "Quixtar,™" then back to Amway™: they try to make you feel inferior if you don't buy their products.

Yes, it's that sick, and as far as I can tell, nothing has changed since that now-distant time, but my mother's a smart cookie and she didn't respond well to it. There would be no sell, not ever.

Why do I bring this particular subject up? For a variety of reasons: I'm uncertain, but I believe my co-researcher on the Palfrey "defense team" (for want of a better term), Monique Rawlings, might work for Alticor.™ It might mean nothing-at-all, but it's strange someone working for them would be involved in such endeavors. Make of it what-you-will, because I don't know what to.

So, I was doing a lot of searching on Alticor™ today, and found some very interesting articles that partly-corroborated my childhood experiences with Amway and whatnot. According to a growing number of CPAs, institutions, and watchdogs, Amway™ is little more than a "pyramid scheme." This has been my own impression since childhood, yet somehow they continue to exist and do whatever it is they're doing these days, which appears to be the same as it was around 1978. Great.

One site really was spot-on in what I've learned from experience: Forensic CPA Tracy Coenen's http://www.sequence-inc.com/, which covers a range of similar subjects, an impressive site by an impressive woman. She does a pretty good job of expressing why these kind of firms are a "scam" that preys on the desperate and the troubled, a contention I tend to agree with. These links are to articles that aren't that new, but strike me as still being relevant, like my anecdotes on the subject.

I'm unsurprised, frankly, that Palfrey would surround herself with people from the corporate world. She was a small-business (depending on what you would call "small," though she decidedly petit-bourgeois in her attitudes) employer in her own way, and shared many of the same attitudes.

Palfrey's courting of the "legitimate press" speaks-volumes to such attitudes, as well as a cursory examination of what we know about how she ran her escort service (check Intelwire.com for more). It was all about the money, sad, and it probably brought about her death by her own hand. She wanted the "big time," the big money. Maybe that's why it's easier for those like her to claim she was murdered, and that she was "innocent." Neither case appears to be true at all, further revelations notwithstanding.

The "prosperity gospel," and other lies: http://quixtarisacultintervention.blogspot.com/2008/03/quixtaramway-perversion-of-faith.html

Forensic CPA Tracy Coenen on Amway/Quixtar/Alticor: http://www.sequence-inc.com/fraudfiles/2008/07/21/amway-sucks-quixtar-sucks-alticor-sucks/