Robert Guffey

"Robert Guffey's The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook is weirder than parthenogenesis, weirder than the Republican Party, weirder than the fetishizing of pregnancy that suffuses our culture, weirder than all the back issues of Weird Tales combined. You will laugh, gasp, and scratch your head in pleasurable bemusement. I can't recommend this tongue-in-cheek tour de force too highly."-James Morrow, award-winning author of Only Begotten Daughter and Behold the ApeThe Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook is part novel, part fabulist encyclopedia. It's academic research that's shockingly close to the truth. The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook is a cabinet of wonders disguised as an informational guide for expectant mothers. Backed up with scientific-sounding footnotes from imaginary obstetricians, this book threatens to raise the paranoia of postmodern motherhood to a new level of absurdity. In the pages of this handbook you will learn about such chimerical illnesses as the Quantum Singularity Syndrome, Symmetrical Child Syndrome, Involuntary Dimensional Transits, Spontaneous Infant Combustion Syndrome, Black Hole Syndrome, Polyinfantalia, Shrinking Brain Syndrome, Muppetitis, Midwich Disease, and Oneirokyesis (known to some pediatricians as "Dream Baby Disease"). But fatal diseases are not the only purview of The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook. You'll find out about the dangers of allowing your fetus in utero internet connection, how to use your child as an assassin, the growing problem of terrorism in the womb, in utero phone sex, the high weirdness of Origami Babies, the little known fact that Shakespeare created pregnancy, the mystery of the fetus-abducting Comprachicos, and a rare in-depth interview with Dracula about his attitudes regarding child raising, among many other illuminating tidbits of obscure but vital historical data. Ultimately, this book is a scathing satire on the unthinking commercialization of motherhood, fatherhood, and procreation in general.

Last week, did you tell your best friend why the King of Cryptopolis has gone insane and why he ordered his guards to behead him? Do you know the secret of the black magician Aleister Crowley-how he wrote of the moonchild, an ethereal spirit to be placed in a barren womb? Have you ever heard of Arson Hoover and the Worldwide Church of Appliantology? If you answered no to any of these, you're clearly misinformed about the newest collection of dark and fantastical stories by Robert Guffey. How would you even survive Casual Day at work? When the tattoos begin to pile up on your flesh like unlucky cars drawn to an accident on the freeway, don't come crying to me-I am just the back cover of a book, after all--but look for the answers inside me, inside Guffey's head, which I have chopped off and bound in paper.

"A fantastically rich and entertaining piece of work with an original sharp edge."-- Jim Woodring (writer/artist of Weathercraft, The Frank Book, and One Beautiful Spring Day)A mixture of urban fantasy and Los Angeles noir, DEAD MONKEY RUM revolves around a stolen Tiki idol that contains the ashes of visionary artist Stanislaw Szukalski. Our heroes. an alcoholic monkey named Robert Mclintlock and a beautiful bartender named Stephanie Waterfall, must locate the missing statue in the wilds of Los Angeles before a tribe of pissed-off Yetis can get their massive, dirty paws on it. Because the obsidian idol possesses magical properties, the cryptozoological beasts intend to use it to kickstart the destruction of the entire human race. DEAD MONKEY RUM is an alcohol-fueled voyage through the heart of Los Angeles. This tumultuous odyssey amidst the Tiki bars, illicit casinos, exclusive hotels, trains, buses, and hidden tunnels and grottoes that lay beneath the City of Angels propels our hero, Robert McLintock (who just so happens to be a wiseacre simian conman from a small island called Koshima located off the coast of Japan), from his comfort zone in Orange County, into the violent byways of Hollywood, and far beyond Southern California to the Rano Rarako volcanic crater on the remotest island in the world, Rana Nui, also known as Easter Island, where our heroes ultimately engage in a final, fierce, knockout battle with an army of homicidal Abominable Snowmen for the control of Planet Earth." Stanislaw Szukalski would love DEAD MONKEY RUM. This novel is addictive like a heavy drug. Make space in your calendar to read it all."-- Trek Dobrowolski (director of the Netflix documentary, Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski"Yetis, Tiki Gods, Cryptozoology, and rum-filled adventure Sign me up and tell me when the ship sails I'm recommending this Robert Guffey novel to all my friends, family, and foes to take their minds completely off whatever they are thinking about, Wonderful."-- Loren Coleman (Mysterious America, The Field Guide to Lake Monsters and Sea Serpents, The Field Guide to Bigfoot, Curious Encounters, and go other books - Director of the International Cryptozology Museum)"Robert Guffey's fantastic novel, DEAD MONKEY RUM, will at least bring your brain out of a coma, if not get your imagination off the couch. This is a thinly masked tribute /adventure to the late Stanislaw Szukalski and his boundless imagination. This book is a mental gymnasium."-- Robert Williams (Visual Addiction, Hysteria in Remission, and Through Prehensile Eyes)

Mind control. Satanic rituals. Unspeakable sexual perversions. Supervillains eating children’s brains. A divine mandate to keep Donald Trump in the White House, no matter what. This surreal combination of horror-movie shocks and fascist marching orders is the signature of QAnon, which emerged from the dark corners of the internet in 2017 and soon became the galvanizing force behind Trump supporters, both during Trump’s presidency and in the volatile, ongoing aftermath of the 2020 election. But despite the strange pervasiveness of QAnon, its origins remain obscure. Who is behind QAnon’s messaging, and what do they want? And why do they pair their extreme political agenda with such obviously made-up, phantasmagorical beliefs? In Operation Mindfuck, Robert Guffey argues that this is not as mysterious as QAnon’s anonymous “drops” of cryptic directives seem to be. Drawing on an encyclopedic knowledge of conspiracy theories and mixing deep-dive research, political analysis, and firsthand notes from QAnon’s underbelly, Guffey insists that we’ve seen it all before. Unraveling QAnon’s patchwork quilt of recycled material, from pulp-fiction spook stories to Hunter S. Thompson-style pranksterism to Nixon-esque dirty tricks, Guffey diagnoses QAnon as a highly engineered ploy, calibrated to capture the attention and lock-step loyalty of its audience. Will its followers ever realize that they’ve been had? Can this new American religion be dispelled as a cult like any other? The answers, Operation Mindfuck reveals, are hidden in plain sight.

Widow of the Amputation & Other Weird Crimes is a collection of four novellas that explore the madness of murder through the warped lenses of urban noir, science fiction, horror, and experimental fantasy. In Decay in Amber, a convicted rapist and murderer wakes up one morning to discover he is only six inches tall and floating down the middle of the L. A. River in a beer bottle. In Rocket City Murder, a police lieutenant has only twenty-four hours to solve a brutal triple-murder committed within the secretive confines of the bio warfare research lab known as Micropolis. In Widow of the Amputation, the mythologies of various cultures collide as Charles Manson succeeds in busting out of Corcoran Penitentiary. And in You Might As Well Die, a crime noir writer is led into a clever cat-and-mouse game intended to frame him for a murder he himself unknowingly devised.

BETWEEN 1941 AND 1944, BELA LUGOSI starred in a series of low-budget films released by Monogram Pictures. To many viewers at the time and during the decades that followed, the "Monogram Nine" were overacted and underproduced, illogical and incoherent. But their increasing age has recast such condemnations into appropriate praise: in the 21st century, they seem so different not only from modern cinema, but also from Classical Hollywood, enough so as to make the aforementioned deficits into advantages. The entries in the Monogram Nine are bizarre and strange, populated by crazy, larger-than-life characters who exist in wacky, alternative worlds. In nine films, the improbable chases the impossible. This book, in turn, chases them. "Gary Rhodes has become my favorite nonfiction author, while the subject of some of his writings, Bela Lugosi, has long been one of my favorite actors. Now Gary has teamed up with co-author Robert Guffey to present, for the first time, a collection of in-depth and insightful essays evaluating those lesser 'classics' that comprise the so-called 'Monogram Nine.' If you are a Lugosi fan and also a fan of old 'B' horror films, you will love this book." - Donald F. Glut, filmmaker, Marvel Comics writer, and author of The Empire Strikes Back novelization "An extraordinary volume. Rhodes and Guffey refract these films through the lens of surrealism, detailed genre study, auteurist-informed close readings, star studies, and vigorous historicism to name a few of the kaleidoscope of methods employed. This book provides a breakthrough model for serious work on films that have to date received very little scholarly attention." - Michael Lee, Ph. D. (University of Oklahoma), editor at the journal Horror Studies

Between 1941 and 1944, Bela Lugosi starred in a series of low-budget films released by Monogram Pictures. To many viewers at the time and during the decades that followed, the "Monogram Nine" were overacted and underproduced, illogical and incoherent. But their increasing age has recast such condemnations into appropriate praise: in the 21st century, they seem so different not only from modern cinema, but also from Classical Hollywood, enough so as to make the aforementioned deficits into advantages. The entries in the Monogram Nine are bizarre and strange, populated by crazy, larger-than-life characters who exist in wacky, alternative worlds. In nine films, the improbable chases the impossible. This book, in turn, chases them. "Gary Rhodes has become my favorite nonfiction author, while the subject of some of his writings, Bela Lugosi, has long been one of my favorite actors. Now Gary has teamed up with co-author Robert Guffey to present, for the first time, a collection of in-depth and insightful essays evaluating those lesser 'classics' that comprise the so-called 'Monogram Nine.' If you are a Lugosi fan and also a fan of old 'B' horror films, you will love this book." - Donald F. Glut, filmmaker, Marvel Comics writer, and author of The Empire Strikes Back novelization"An extraordinary volume. Rhodes and Guffey refract these films through the lens of surrealism, detailed genre study, auteurist-informed close readings, star studies, and vigorous historicism to name a few of the kaleidoscope of methods employed. This book provides a breakthrough model for serious work on films that have to date received very little scholarly attention." - Michael Lee, Ph. D. (University of Oklahoma), editor at the journal Horror Studies

A young stand-up comedian must adapt to an apocalyptic virus affecting people’s sense of humor in this darkly satirical debut novel. What happens when all humor is wiped off the face of the Earth? Around the world, an unusual viral plague is striking the population. The virus attacks only one particular section of the brain. It isn’t fatal, but it results in the victim’s sense of humor being obliterated. No one is immune. Elliot Greeley, a young stand-up comedian starving his way through alternative comedy clubs in Los Angeles, isn’t even certain the virus is real at first. But as the pandemic begins to eat away at the very heart of civilization itself, the virus affects Elliot and his close knit group of comedian friends in increasingly personal ways. What would you consider the end of the world? Until the Last Dog Dies is a sharp, cutting satire, both a clever twist on apocalyptic fiction and a poignant look at the things that make us human.

A mesmerizing mix of Charles Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson, and Philip K. Dick, Chameleo is a true account of what happened in a seedy Southern California town when an enthusiastic and unrepentant heroin addict named Dion Fuller sheltered a U. S. Marine who’d stolen night vision goggles and perhaps a few top secret files from a nearby military base. Dion found himself arrested (under the ostensible auspices of The Patriot Act) for conspiring with international terrorists to smuggle Top Secret military equipment out of Camp Pendleton. The fact that Dion had absolutely nothing to do with international terrorists, smuggling, Top Secret military equipment, or Camp Pendleton didn’t seem to bother the military. He was released from jail after a six-day-long Abu-Ghraib-style interrogation. Subsequently, he believed himself under intense government scrutiny — and, he suspected, the subject of bizarre experimentation involving “cloaking”— electro-optical camouflage so extreme it renders observers practically invisible from a distance of some meters — by the Department of Homeland Security. Hallucination? Perhaps — except Robert Guffey, an English teacher and Dion’s friend, tracked down and interviewed one of the scientists behind the project codenamed “Chameleo,” experimental technology which appears to have been stolen by the U. S. Department of Defense and deployed on American soil. More shocking still, Guffey discovered that the DoD has been experimenting with its newest technologies on a number of American citizens. A condensed version of this story was the cover feature of Fortean Times Magazine (September 2013).

Examining nearly every conspiracy theory in the public’s consciousness today, this investigation seeks to link seemingly unrelated theories through a cultural studies perspective. While looking at conspiracy theories that range from the moon landing and JFK’s assassination to the Oklahoma City bombing and Freemasonry, this reconstruction reveals newly discovered connections between wide swaths of events. Linking Dracula to George W. Bush, UFOs to strawberry ice cream, and Jesus Christ to robots from outer space, this is truly an all-original discussion of popular conspiracy theories.

Written in a hopeful, honest, thoughtful, yet sometimes humorous, tone, Station of the Cross is a collection of sixty reflections on faith and life by an author who is an experienced pastor, writer, husband, father and friend. FROM THE INTRODUCTION "Is there a God? Can we know God? Is God worth knowing? What kind of God is this, really, who Christians claim is a personal God and one who cares for the person, the person in society and community? So what? "When I think about those questions, I find that it is not the answers to those questions but the unexpected glimpses of transcendence in the temporal that keep me going. It's the occasional breaking through of the numinous--of the character and presence of the divine--that points me again toward that which is pure, best and luminous in life.! [and] enough light to keep walking another step along the way."