Ice cream, Mandrake. Children's ice cream.

Many of my friends have observed that I do not drink so-called "soft" drinks, opting instead for one of several brands of seltzer water. In fact, with the exception of a ten-day stint in central Mexico, I have not had a"soft" drink in close to a decade (the significance of my extraterritorial imbibing will become clear in a moment).

Some friends, observing this, have occasionally asked me my reasons for soda water over so-called "soft" drinks. So here, for once and for all, I intend to set the record straight.

First of all, go to your local library (while it's still free) and get your hands on a copy of The Plays of Ford, Webster, Tourneur and Wharfinger, published by the Lectern Press, Berkeley, CA. Try to find the 1957 edition (it's a reprint. I think the first edition was a textbook). This version is important because it provides the only published version of Richard Wharfinger's play The Courier's Tragedy taken from the 1687 folio edition (most other published versions come from the Quarto, several years later) which replaces the closing lines of the fourth act:

"Who once has crossed the lusts of Angelo,"

with

"Who's once been set his tryst with Trystero."

As far as Jacobean revenge plays go, Courier's Tragedy is no masterpiece. But it is remarkable in that this (called by some corrupt) interchange of refrains is the first known mention of the Tristero.

The full stanza reads as follows:

He that we last as Thurn and Taxis knew
Now wrecks no lord but the stiletto's Thorn
And Tacit lies the gold once knotted horn.
No hallowed skein of stars can ward, I trow,
who's once been set his tryst with Trystero.

Dr Emory Bortz, in his 1967 monograph Plotting the Stealth and Intrigue of the Jacobean Revenge Plays lays out a convincing argument for the Folio over the Quarto refrains by comparing and contrasting what the audience's understanding of each would have been in Wharfinger's day:

"The 'hallowed skein of stars' is God's will. But even that can't ward, or guard, somebody who has an appointment with Trystero. To merely cross the lusts of Angelo would provide any number of avenues for escape: leave the country, for example. Angelo is only a man. But the brute Other, that was something else again. Evidently Wharfinger was convinced that, to his audience, Trystero would symbolize the Other very well."

Now, it can be argued (as some have done) that all such references are aberrations with little or no historical founding, and scant literary reference. In short, they sound like myths. True. But this fails to take into account the truly repressive clampdown on the flow of information during the political height of the Thurn and Taxis postal monopoly (the repurcussions of which, it can be argued, are still in evidence today. "Going Postal" is merely the most egregious contemporary example of a trend which has existed for quite some time).

The scant but constant fringe references to the Trystero (later Tristero) throughout the recorded history of the Thurn and Taxis (and even, it has been argued, such proto-modern postal organizations e.g. the Pony Express) is made all the more interesting by the almost complete hole of silence surrounding the name in the more commonly known histories of the politics of central and western Europe through the eighteenth century.

The silence begs the question: has there been, for five centuries, a viscious and arcane plot to undermine the established postal service? (in Europe and possibly even in this counrty) And if so, is this "silence" a direct result of fierce and constant repression on the
part of those who controlled the ebb and flow of facts through most of that period (Thurn and Taxis itself, and later systems based on the Taxis model) or, more insidiously, has the silence been generated by the Trystero itself?

Information historian Gossett Englebart may have unknowingly prefaced just these questions when he wrote of the advent of email and it's possible effects on the global information economy (in his article in The Economist reviewing Alvin Toffler's Future Shock and John Naisbitt's MegaTrends). Could it be that what has seemed all along like a safe, decentralized process of spontaneous generation and improvements (starting with the Arpanet and extending now through the World Wide Web, and particularly the ready availability of Eudora Light, Outlook, and now G-Mail) has really been a well coordinated, all out and perhaps final assault upon an
information management monopoly whose influences have been felt since the early days of western civilization?

One could put these questions to Gossett's cousin, Douglas Englebart (co-developer of the Arpanet and, not coincidentally, credited creator of the "mouse" - the hardware architecture
that made "surfing the web" a conceptual possibility literally within the grasp of millions) but he isn't talking. Perhaps he, too, knows the value of silence.

It is entirely possible (the evidence is there to support the proposition) that there is a long standing and not-coincidental connection between several key events in our recent history:

1. specifically (and already mentioned) the rise of a viable, "decentralized" long distance information courier system based on the Arpanet model (email);
2. the dramatic rise in deaths related to postal workers going over the edge
   
3. there is evidence of connection between between the government backers of arpanet in the sixties and the MKULTRA counterintelligence program which supervised mind control and destabilization experiments around the same time (see particularly the July 1989 issue of the Covert Action Information Bulletin, pp 15-21);
4. the "revamping " of the Coca Cola formula in the mid 80's, and its near immediate withdrawl and reintroduction as "Coke Classic" with a slightly altered formula which replaced good ol' sugar with high-fructose corn syrup
   
5. there was a particularly interesting study recently on the effect of high doses of corn syrup sweetening agents on the prevalence of psychotic breaks in occupations of high stress and repetitious activities. One interesting conclusion was the finding that service workers such as postal clerks were particularly susceptable;
6. and the collapse of the Soviet Union (with one result being that suddenly the much coveted Georgian and Ukrainian corn harvests were allowed to flood the global market in the interests of "stimulating the economy").

One could definitely make a case for it, and I agree with them. That's why it's seltzer water only for me, folks. The evidence is there, if you dig. Go do the detective work yourself - I think you'll agree.

Hope that clears things up.

Categories: conspiracy