Contact email: chivalrousrat@yandex.com

This site features poetic musings, poetic musings, short absurdist films, and zany drawings, which pour out of one man who lives feverishly upon the creative currents of his own mind.

Astro Sockriot

Coming soon...

The founder of this site believes that the exalted use of language can cleanse the mind of accumulated toxins, and reverse the effects of cultural brainwashing.

I just wanted to thank you again for including me in your wondrous world of imagination. I had a great time!

Best

Nicholas Thomas

"Butter Klutz"

(Pictured here with Bessie Amato)

BUTTER KLUTZ

"I believe in a playful, joyous eroticism which connects us to our deeper selves."

"ALL THE GUSTS OF GUSTY." A purple-haired girl develops an infatuation for her handsome mailman, thus jeopardizing her close bond with her brother. Filmed on 16mm film in Arizona (in the early 2000's), this film is truly outrageous. "She (Cynthia Quez) is over the top of the top," said one viewer (with great fondness). "I don't know what this is," said another, "but everyone should see it."

Note: Other films below and on Film Page.

GOOSEFIDGET

"We are living in a tattered society, due mostly to the universities and the mass media (two of the greatest evils of the modern world)." (2016)

"Groowinky" is the alternate/artist name of Astro Sockriot, and this site is meant as a sister/companion site to the main film site.

"What's a theoretical Lassie yam?"

"The poetry of the damned shall replenish the soiled self."

"I avoid the herds at all costs, and seek refuge in the quiet corners."

"I have begun reading your posts. Thank you for creating this site!!!!! When I read the various reflections on the empty, evil, ugliness growing all around us, although I wish it weren’t true, I take comfort in knowing I am not alone out here. Your one-man rebellion has found an ally."

-- Brennan, a brilliant neo-Luddite

"Three young kids were crossing the street today: skinny, cursing, one of them in a man-bun. Their laughter was mean-spirited. Their gestures were mean-spirited, arrogant, bestial. Human beasts are spilling liberally out of every culture, extending beyond superficial boundaries and spreading their poisons."

"The modern world suffers from an overdose of scientific rationalism, which has cut off the flow of feeling and creativity."

"Everything that is extraordinary or poetic is regarded by many Americans as 'weird' because they spend their lives watching crappy TV shows which diminish their intelligence and train them to regard the world with suspicion and hostility."

"The world is coming apart at the seams...

oh, take me to a place of licorice-colored dreams!"

(From "licorice bandit")

"THE UGLY FACES OF FACEBOOK"

The faces of "Facebook" are faces distorted by the modern breeding-ground of hatreds and cross-hatreds, scattered about the psychic sphere like the poisons of a poison shuffle. These faces are the faces of a terminally ill humanity, and this illness only seems to grow with each post -- each "status" update -- each "like." For even when something is "liked," the liking fingers seem to exist in a void of cyber-space where "like" and "love" are not emotions but vague distractions from the undercurrent of wrath-upon-evil.

Words are used like cars driven by drunken drivers, mowing down and annihilating all in their path. The identity crisis of the modern world only increases as people confuse banality with communication, popularity with friendship, politics with constructive action, celebrity with respectability, assaults with opinions. In the downward spiral from face-to-face to Facebook, humanity seems to have acquired the mysterious and fast-spreading venom which makes many of the faces of Facebook so very ugly.

"The beauty of the dream rises above all else."

"The standard suburbanite's response to the brutal world that THEY did so much to create: get a dog and watch TV. "

"LIKE WARTS UPON A FACE"

Journal Entry: "Corporate chains have taken over entire towns and sections of cities, splattered across the land like homely warts upon a face. Fast-food restaurants are followed inevitably by the 'box' stores, creating an atmosphere of inescapable corporate tyranny."

"AGE OF RIGIDITY"

Online Post: "I have often described myself as 'a free spirit living in an age of unprecedented rigidity,' and this description is more applicable now than ever. I resist the clone mentality firmly and unwaveringly."

"WIND-BLOWN SOULS"

Journal Entry: "I shall live freely and joyously, ducking the contagion of the world whenever possible. I can see all the wind-blown souls searching for the wind that has blown them."

"REDEMPTION OF THE INDIVIDUAL"

Journal Entry: "I pray for the redemption of the individual; may every man step away from the Brotherhood of the Damned and reclaim his destiny. "

"Dreams bait my waking self, turning reality into an arduous cluster of sins which reproduce each other with dizzying speed." (2013)

"I will write above and beyond the PC zealots, hanging my words in Eternity -- which they cannot reach. They belong strictly in this vile and pathetic era, and have no place in the eternal."

"Words form tapestries in my mind, stretching into Infinity. Only in creation can we rise above the soot and nastinness of the world."

"ONE-MAN REBELLION"

Journal Entry: "The corporate elite has spread out in all directions, blocking the flow of creativity and directing dreams toward oblivion like evil traffic cops who direct pedestrians into the oncoming traffic. I form a one-man rebellion against this, resisting the urge to give in to despair."

Someone online described Americans as "hardened and desensitized." This is true. No one knows this better than I, as these things have frequently been directed towards me. (2016)

"PATERNOSTER OF PAIN"

Journal Entry: "At restaurant in Downtown Brooklyn: a muscular black man wiped away the tears of his sobbing girlfriend with such focused tenderness that I was moved and just a little envious. I found myself wishing that someone would touch me in such a way. But my own sorrows remained unbrokered, and I existed in a Paternoster of Pain." (2015)

“DEAD PEOPLE ARE FRIENDLIER

A friend said of joggers and cyclists: "They’re bitter, angry people. I ride my bike to visit my dad’s grave at the cemetery, and the dead people are friendlier than they are." Indeed, I turn away from their severe, distracted, unsmiling expressions. They are jogging and cycling into oblivion."

"Yes, your creative site is, indeed, enchanting!! I dare say... magical!!" (Actress)

"America has succeeded in reducing people to pathetic shadows of their former selves, and all I can do is watch with attendant horror."

"We have been led back into slavery once again... but this time, they call it 'work' and issue us fancy titles so we will never guess the terrible truth."

"THE HUMAN BEAST"

Journal Entry: "Due to the crude and inescapable savagery of modern life, many human beings have regressed into beasts once again. They talk, dress, think, and behave like beasts of the lowest caliber, barely distinguishable from the so-called lower life forms. They scurry about the Earth, shamelessly displaying their misshapen minds and bodies and contaminating and destroying everything they come across."

"CANOPY OF TRESSES"

"Her black hair fell at her shoulders in a shawl-like formation, a canopy of tresses which alone secured the survival of femininity."

"EVER DEEPER"

Journal Entry: "What one lover should always say to the other: 'I will show you that your beauty can be used to inspire ever-deeper levels of beauty so that it doesn't just hang in the air. I will show you that your beauty, when combined with a deep spiritual beauty, can create the kind of passion that is so often sought but so rarely achieved.'"

"WORDS LIKE RARE JEWELS"

Journal Entry: "We are living in an era of crude and de-poeticized language. To me, words are like rare jewels which form a constabulary of self-expression."

The Pilgrimage of the Brave shall begin now. (2014)

"SCENARIOS OF RESPLENDENCE DO NOT REACH FRUITION AMONG THE DISPATCHERS OF DOOM AND DISGRACE." (2014)

“THE 100TH EMAIL”

To Friend: “When we exchange our 100th email, then we’ll know for sure that we’re allies in a broken world.” But I know, due to the diminished capacity for depth and friendship, that we won’t even get to the fiftieth email. (2008)

"I AVOID THE ROARS OF CROWDS."

"As others

flock to the

cities of mayhem

and madness, I

flee to the cities of the interior,

where the byways

and passageways

lead back to

the self." (2014)

"THE HOUR OF REBELLION IS AT HAND. NO LONGER WILL WE ACCEPT THE LIES THAT HAVE BEEN FED TO US."

"THIS DISEASE"

“’Technology destroyed everything,’ said a woman in a hospital, as her husband received treatment for a frightful disease. Initially, this statement may have seemed unrelated to her husband’s disease, but upon closer scrutiny his body seemed to be responding to the disease of the world – as all bodies do – and this disease has indisputably been spread far and wide by technology.

"Modern humans are fools. They do not understand that beauty nourishes the soul, and seem insistent on destroying all the beauty of the world and leaving us with sprawling vistas of rot and filth. The psycho-social impact of this foolishness cannot be overstated.”

Beautiful, intelligent man: "Most people are watered- down morons who just spew out ridiculous vulgar nonsense. Can’t be bothered with them." (2018)

"LEGLESS VETERAN"

"I stepped over a legless Vietnam veteran as he was polishing the stars on Hollywood Boulevard. His sincere love of old=time Hollywood movie stars, so evident in his facial expressions and mannerisms, clashed violently with the crude squalor of modern-day Hollywood. There was nothing left of its former glamour, and even the murals of old-time movie stars, painted on the gates of stores, seemed to look upon the scene in suspended horror.” (2003)

ITALIAN GOLD

His voice possessed a natural warmth which heated the Italian gold within him and made me feel like the recipient of this fine gift -- in shades of self that emanated a filtered burgundy.

"IN DEFENSE OF PIGEONS"

My grandmother took great pride in feeding the neighborhood pigeons. She methodically threw them pieces of her left-over Italian bread and then stood back happily and watched the birds feast on their unexpected meal. She continued to do this long after an increasingly totalitarian New York City had forbidden it, sometimes taking me along with her to act as her look-out as she performed her act of charity. “Pigeons have a right to eat too, don’t they?” she said with her characteristic innocence.

I nodded heartily, having defended pigeons against many unsympathetic parties – including a snobbish Frenchman who described them as a “filthy, disease-carrying menace.”

“Sounds like you’re talking about Euro-trash,” I quipped.

I thought sadly of the many old people who sat on benches along the avenue and did as Gram did, throw bread to the pigeons as the rest of the world seemed to be passing them by.

"Most of the dehumanized humans among us can barely lift their eyes off of their cell phones long enough to make eye contact with others in their midst."

Brilliant Man from Upstate New York: "I visited your site and the general feeling I get is this: You realize how most people on this Earth do NOTHING original, have very little brains left, and as a highly creative man you feel strangled, almost at times buried, unable to fathom what I call the steady dumbing-down of society. People in this world used to be mentored by older ones pointing them towards aspirational behavior -- not blindly aping behavior or attituudes that come from pure laziness. It's fucking appalling. How did we go from Grace Kelly to Snookie in one generation?"

"FROM GRACE KELLY TO SNOOKIE"

His beauteous eyes were like the stencils of some other race of man, not fully developed in him but strong enough to make him leave Ohio and refer to it only with a snicker (except when referring to his grandfather's wooden table which sat proudly in his kitchen). He lived, ironically, among other exiles and escapees of Midwestern whiteness, who stampeded snobbishly around his neighborhood (in Brooklyn), fully displaying the very same disease from which they had fled.

THE HUMAN TENDENCY

NOTHING that we do, politically or socially, will ever amount to anything if we do not first address one of the most pressing problems of human civilization: the human tendency to over-reproduce. As this behavior is often rooted in religious beliefs and just plain habit, it is a monumental task which requires a methodical and formidable effort. We should spread the word through TV shows and movies (showing no-child or one-child families in a positive light), schooling, and so on, presenting the large family as an obsolete and socially unacceptable model.

Sign the pledge for the one-child or no-child initiative: http://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/sustainable-population-pledge-block

"Middle-class America has become so suburbanized, so domesticated, so tamed, so sheltered that it produces a steady flow of bland, colorless people who spill into the world like an unacknowledged plague."

"I look upon the world with an impregnable sorrow, and imagine myself collecting ossified thought-slabs in the Garden of Doom. I set a rotisserie of wildly imaginative thoughts against a drab and terrible reality. Mother: ‘I don’t think anyone is happy in this world anymore.’” (2016)

"I work from spillage, allowing all to spill out of my mind uncensored."

SELECT RESPONSES TO FUGUNKA FILMS

Watching these films, I feel like I have been reunited with long-lost friends.

Brennan C., Brilliant Neo_Luddite

Regarding "His Clouds Are Made of Cornstarch":

Heal me with Cornstarch!

***

"Damn! This is as anti-Twilight, anti-mainstream as it gets!" (Industry professional)

Regarding "SIDESHOW CHICKEN":

I love Sideshow Chicken. It's like all the people who get bad press as underrepresented, ignorant, hopeless criminals lost forever in the ghettos and broken neighborhoods throughout America.

Regarding "TAFFY TUCKER":

I was able to download the files and have watched Taffy Tucker. Great! This film is valuable and thought provoking. For me, I see portrayed the very face of evil and obstruction that has reduced life from the fulfillment of rewarding and meaningful pursuits to an absurd, empty, and meaningless obsession -- in this case, tucking taffy. This film depicts the pain of life in modern cities in a way that does not resort to exploitation, and gratuitous violent and sexual abuse. In a sense, this kind of “G-rated” pain may be even worse because the actors are denied their own humanity, independence, adulthood, and autonomy, reduced instead into forced roles of subservient children playing games that amuse the owners of the city. Are they willing and complicit? Are they helpless and clueless victims of a modern society that refuses to acknowledge anyone’s humanity? They appear so innocent, yet they are so sado-masochistic. Is this just the best they can do when they are faced with the reality of empty lives and nothing to live for? In that sense, a life spent tucking taffy may be a victorious rebellion. Perhaps poem meaning and friendship is better than none at all, and if they are able to expose their tormentors, all the better.

*******

Ah, his film is so lovely and dreamlike. It took me back to my college days at the University of Toronto, way back in the 60's, when there was all sorts of experimentation going on -- in film, theater, society in general. Most of that has been lost now. Thank you, I needed this.

Brilliant Canadian Woman