This is Art -- probably the first Visual Art I ever made. (I had been prohibited from ever again trying to make visual art by my public school art teachers, who believed I was Visually and Chromatically and Æsthetically Deranged. My vision tested fine, but all my art teachers believed there was Something Wrong after the images of the world I saw passed into my Brain. I remember being screamed at for painting a goat purple.)
These links must all be dead by now, and I don't know if they ever caught Roderick Neal Hotham. When I first posted this on "Elmer Elevator's Discount Prep," a very angry lady wrote me an e-mail. She cursed me for defaming a wonderful and completely innocent man.
If you want to curse me, or if you know what happened to Roderick Neal Hotham, Leave A Comment.
If you think my Visual Art sucks, stand in line behind all my Art Teachers, who by now are eternally burning in the fires of Hell.
The Cowboy and the Dutch Tulip Girl
A Cowboy from Niagara Falls is highly popular and admired but lonely. At the same time, a Dutch Tulip-Seller Girl, so recently arrived in St. Louis, Missouri that she has not yet had time to acquire local clothes or shoes, is lonely. Each decides to take a vacation and fly to Paris. Paris, city of innocent gaiety and mirth, where half-clad women dance, show their derrieres to tourists, leapfrog over Japanese businessmen, and lounge around in their lingerie smoking and occasionally thinking about Abraham Lincoln. There the Cowboy and the Tulip Girl meet and fall in love.
Meanwhile, fugitive embezzler Roderick Neal Hotham has also fled to Paris, where he is hatching an evil new scheme involving the unwitting young lovers. He spies on them through the window of a restaurant where they are dining with another cleancut American couple. Because they are in Paris and think it's the local custom, they all commence une menage a quatre. Across town, two young nude women who live with kangaroos practice boxing and calisthenics in their atelier.
September 1995 / from Dover Clip Art ("Naughty French Illustrations," "Travel") and the Post Office wall.
Copyright © 2015 by Robert B. Merkin, All Rights Reserved
13 comments:
I remember getting in trouble in school for "wasting supplies" when I made some large 3-D mask shapes using colored construction paper.
Hiya Anonymous, who r u, where r u, what r u?
i don't know where or how they train art teachers, but they seem to focus on stamping out all student individualism and imagination. I do my adult visual art now largely as Revenge. Feels wonderful.
I am Roderick Neal Hothams brother Tim. I just came across this post. I know exactly what happened to my brother. There is a lot you clearly don't understand. Innocent until proven quilty. Don't be such a sheep dumbass! Your weird.
Hello Tim,
First, to you, and to that woman who e-mailed me in defense of Rod long ago, I'm authentically sorry for causing you pain and unhappiness. I rarely mean to upset people, it's not my nature. You'll just have to trust me on that, just as I have to trust you about Rod's innocence.
But your accusation that I'm weird -- well, stand in line, take a number. It's not an original accusation.
There are some important nuances to the presumption of innocence. After an indictment, a criminal trial is scheduled. At that trial, the burden of proving guilt is entirely on the prosecution. The accused doesn't have to prove anything.
But if the accused fails to appear for trial -- well, that still doesn't prove guilt, but it makes him a fugitive from justice, and gets his particulars posted on every Post Office bulletin board in the USA. That's an entirely different crime from the original accusation -- and a lot easier for the prosecution to prove.
I got my e-mail addie up here somewhere. If you'd like to take this private and say anything more, please do. Meanwhile, sorry again for inadvertently causing you unhappiness.
And sincere good luck to Rod. Step 1 to the best possible outcome is to get himself an excellent criminal lawyer (I know a great one) and arrange for a voluntary surrender. It's only at that point that the presumption of innocence can work for him.
Weird Bob
(1 misdemeanor arrest, no conviction)
weird bob
clearly there is a lot to Rod's disappearance that you and most people are unaware of. There is an active murder investigation by the Maine state police in spite of what the feds say. They indicted him after they murdered him because killing him did not work. The truth was coming out and they had to "indict a ham sandwich" in order to frame the story to their favor. We all have a lot to learn about what is really going on within our government and how they are using the system to demonize innocent people who know to many of their dirty secrets. So can we give Rod "the presumption of innocence" If he was murdered before the indictment therefore unable to answer to the accusations against him? The charges against my brother are bullshit and could be easily defended in a court of LAW. Rod is not guilty of anything! We the people have grown lazy and ignorant to our duties and responsibilities in keeping our country free from the corruption that killed my brother. Rod's death is as much on the heads of the American people as it is those within our system that participated in this. It is really not that hard to understand what happened to Rod if you have all the facts. When people see the whole picture it is clear to them that they have been misinformed and that Rod Hotham is a victim.
Hi Tim,
I've read the archives of the Bangor Daily News, the Associated Press, and other regional media who covered the story. (As you know, it has connections to New Hampshire and Vermont, it's spread throughout northern New England.)
For knowing the truth, that puts me in the same fuzzy grey area as everyone else, and there we all must remain until a body is found and identified with certainty, or until a living fugitive is caught or surrenders. Everything else is guesswork or faith in memories of your brother's character. Nobody likes gray unresolved areas -- but that's where we're all stuck for the moment.
Until something certain is found, it's an uncomfortable cliche, but your guess is as good as mine (and the best conclusions of a dozen or so professional journalists who've spent weeks or months researching this story).
I sincerely wish you and your family good luck in this ordeal.
Weird Bob
good morning weird bob
If all the info you are working with comes from the news outlets you mentioned than you are not well informed. I would love to spell it all out for you but I realized long ago that people only understand from their level of perception. In order for our system of government to function properly, the citizens must have a well developed understanding of the details of what is happening so they can participate accordingly. In his book Tom Fenton, a 40 year veteran for CBS News, states "Americans can sense that they're under informed. They know that they don't know enough. A pervasive feeling has haunted many Americans...a fear that all manner of shadowy forces and strategies are at play beyond their den, and that we the people are powerless to shape or even react to them... because our access to information is so flawed". You see Bob, the forth estate has not been doing their job. And what about the "professional journalist" who thought that this story was their ticket to the big dance only to run to the shadows when they realized what they had stepped into. Jordanna Hart, Boston Globe; Josh Weinstein, PPH; Stanly Brown, Unsolved mysteries; Janet Smith, WLBZ. You seem to be using the term "professional Journalist" awfully loosely Bob.
I don't know if you are purposely trying to control how this story is handled or if you just don't know any better. Your thinking that we must remain in a "fuzzy grey area" until we have a body is wrong. There is enough evidence to clearly tell this whole story. It is clear who benefits from people thinking that this is fuzzy and grey. Far from "guesswork or faith" this story is simple and clear to those who wish to know for themselves the whole ugly truth. In order for "we the people" to do our best as the ultimate authority in managing our country, we need to have good information. The concern of journalism is to be the watchdog over business and government, "...to keep our public informed of events that will affect them". In order for our system of government to function properly, the citizens must have a well developed understanding of the details of what is happening so they can participate accordingly. We have allowed ourselves to become ignorant to many of the critical circumstances of our society because of the manipulation and filtering of the information we receive through our failing media. Martin Baron, editor of the Boston Globe, admitted that " we journalists do bear some responsibility for American ignorance".
Nice try Bob, but the truth will not be stopped, big trees will fall and all will know that Rod Hotham did nothing wrong and was murdered for what he knew not what he did. Let us all awake to a sense of our awful situation and choose the right and stop acting like mindless sheep.
Tim Hotham
Afternoon Tim
Well, before I left to pursue a full-time career in Weirdness, I was a professional (print, newspaper) journalist. Your point that we bear some responsibility for American ignorance is well taken and acknowledged.
Of course I spent only 5 percent of my time trying to make Americans more ignorant; it seemed then and seems now that I spent 95 percent of my time, energy and best efforts to make Americans less ignorant and more knowledgeable.
Were Bad People trying to keep secrets from me, my journalist colleagues, and Americans? Sure. That was what made being a journalist fun, it's why I drifted into it in the first place and stayed for so long.
Your perspective suggests I only dug up Truth from crappy, amateur Secret Keepers, people who sucked at keeping big or small secrets, so a dope like me and the other dopes in the newsroom could find and reveal their secrets now and then.
But your Real World is run by super-expert Evil Guys & Gals who are super-good at keeping secrets from everybody.
I'm talking not about Rod Hotham and his situation. Like you, I'm talking about a much larger, more fundamental world of Truth and Secrecy -- meta-Truth, I guess you could call it. How much of our world is truly, effectively hidden from everyone except the small Inner Circle of Evil Controllers?
(2 of 2)
Not long ago I was foolish enough to get into an on-line hissy-fight with some Truth Knowers who knew that the Illuminati had murdered Prince. I finally gave up and wrote it off as a fool's errand to convince these people that the Illuminati and the Rothschilds and Rockefellers secretly ran the world, and murdered beloved rock musicians in tight pants and convincingly made it look like a Fentanyl overdose.
One critique of the Dark Conspiracy of Secret World Control is that, to keep the Truth hidden from nearly all of us requires a cabal of brilliant evil geniuses who think of everything, take care of every detail with forethought and precision, and are so super-slick that they never get caught. Have you ever even come close to a bunch that answered to that description? Such malevolent Brainiacs -- well, nothing in my long experience with human beings has ever even hinted that our species churns out very many such people. They don't exist in our Reality, but every popular Marvel and DC comic book is filled with an endless queue of them. And they do indeed rule and control the world within the 24 pages of the latest issue of Big Atomic Muscle Guy.
A Very Big Noise in Meta-Truth is Occam's Razor. Around 1300 A.D. Occam suggested that when two different theories both explain observed phenomena, nearly always the simpler theory -- the one with fewer cogs and whistles and gerbils in spinning cages -- well, that's the theory to go with for the time being. Maybe someday, the Ultimate Truth will surprise Occam, and the True Theory WAS the one with gerbils and cogs and whistles. But nearly always, the True Theory was the simpler one.
Your gerbils -- well, there are too many brilliant secret evil unknown geniuses for Occam, and for me. Us dumb journalists and the corrupt law-enforcement community are either stupidly or secretly keeping The Truth from everybody. I'm glad you believe The Real Truth will eventually come out. I hope my old newspapers give it Front Page (above the fold) big headlines.
My Wish for you and Rod's believers is that The Truth does come out, the sooner the better. I'm not invested in either Truth. If anything, I love an astonishing surprise -- and your theory would surely astonishingly surprise both me, Occam, and a few thousand New Englanders. And I would be happy to tell you the sweetest words in the English language: You were totally right, I was completely wrong.
Weird Bob
Good morning weird Bob
Sorry I am such an ass. This whole thing has changed me.
I have heard this argument before that this big secret could not remain hidden.
To me it is laughable. What most people call reality is not reality at all and the media has played a hugh part in this reshaping of people's reality. I would like to know what information people internalized that makes them believe this way.
For example millions know that the largest drug dealer in the world is the US government and people like the Bush family have been engaged in this activity for a long time yet only a small percentage of the people are aware of it. We give them buckets of money to fight the war on drugs and elect them to the highest office in the land. How is this possible? How has this hugh secret been kept quite? Are they all in on it? Why are people demonized when it is brought up. Are those who will not accept these truths in on it or somehow have they been lead to believe that the war on drugs is legit? Clearly the media is either in on it or ignorant of it. There are countless examples of stories on this subject and other stories of national importance being shut down.
If you want to control the way people feel about something, you need to control the information they receive. The power elite have known this for a very long time and greed may not be their only motive. A statement that was entered into the congressional record of February 9, 1917, by Representative Oscar Callaway of Texas and was the subject of a newspaper story in the New York Times a few days later relates how powerful people basically "control generally the policy of the daily press of the United States" This happened in March of 1915
How is is that so many truly smart people do not get it? My first hand experience is that the media has reported untruths about my family and "good people" in that business are going along with it. Why will they not stand up and do there job? If they are not knowingly a part of a cover-up then how have they been made to go along with one?
People who think that there is no way that this hugh secret could be kept have been conditioned to think that way in my opinion. This conditioning of the people is how "they" are able to do it. Can you say MK Ultra. This is over my head but clearly there is a hugh secret being kept from us somehow.
“Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”
― Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom
Thanks for letting me vent Bob
All The Best
Rod Hotham's brother Tim
Hiya Tim
You're not an ass. You're Rod's brother, and a few years ago an authentic and famous catastrophe careened into your and your family's life. Nothing previously had prepared you for anything like that. That you can still think clearly and express your beliefs -- well, my guess is you're doing better than I'd be doing if I were in your shoes.
Just as an addition to your catalog of secrets, a guy who regularly used to run for president of the United States, Lyndon LaRouche, knew, or claimed he knew, that the world's biggest drug dealer was secretly Queen Elizabeth II. Wikipedia's wiki on him makes for some astonishing reading.
I guess I'm still an Occam's Razor fan. (And I KNOW I studied much too much logic in college, it really frazzles your neurons and ... well, it's certainly a big component of what made me so weird.)
But remember that Occam isn't The Truth ... it's something less than The Truth ... it's a quick way to guess what's probably (but by no means certainly) The Truth.
The Watergate burglary was in 1972. A tiny handful of print journalists, getting tips from a secret government source nicknamed Deep Throat, linked the burglary close enough to the top of the Nixon administration that it forced Nixon to resign the presidency.
33 years later, the true identity of the mysterious Deep Throat was revealed: Mark Felt, a top administrator of the FBI. Time -- long, long stretches of time -- usually has that acid-erosive effect on Big Secrets. Eventually most Big Secrets are revealed. But for now, you won't know if or when that will happen.
But notice the inherent internal tug-of-war between the Secret Keepers and the human need to uncover secrets, and the human "Deep Throat" need eventually to spill the beans.
Hang on, keep (as you describe it) venting. I don't think it's venting. I think it's your search for truth -- but a search you never wanted to have to make, a search you had no training or experience with. That kind of Truth Search is going to have some rough edges and painful blisters.
Sorry about the circustances, but glad we bumped into one another. It's been a valuable and unexpected experience for me.
Weird Bob
Thank you sir
I am also glad to have bumped into you.
Take care
Tim Hotham
A Neal Hotham moved to the whitsundays Australia in 1993 and now living at 15 Castle Court Moore Park Beach Queensland Australia? Was a financial advisor? Also goes by the name of John Billington? Just look on facebook.
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