The Riddle of the Guide: Donald Trump's Solution

PART I

The Guide, this guy-have you seen this guy?The “Guide,” they call him, well, maybe that’s what he calls himself.I don’t know, I don’t see much guiding out of this guy.This guy-you want to talk about somebody with problems, the Guide-can we just call him the Minotaur, folks?Can we do that?I mean, who are we kidding folks, who are we kidding.We have people going into the Maze, going in there every day, sometimes several times a day-some people have been going in for years, if you can believe that.And they just call him the Guide.The Guide, the Guide, the Guide.Folks, you can’t solve a problem if you won’t say what the problem is.Okay?You can’t solve it like that.Folks, this is a minotaur we’re dealing with, the original Minotaur, really.So I’m just gonna call him-because who are we kidding, right folks?I’m just going to call him the Minotaur.So this guy-what a piece of work he is, what a-you know where this guy comes from?You know the story on this guy?Look, I don’t know what happened, I don’t know, I don’t even think I ought to discuss it, I shouldn’t even say where this, this monster-it’s what he really is, he’s a monster, I mean, you ask me what a monster is, I’m going to describe something scary, misshaped, ugly, deadly-and don’t kid yourselves, folks, don’t kid yourselves, this guy is deadly.And that’s a monster, that’s what we call a monster.And you know where he came from right?Should I talk about it, do I need to talk about it?Because they’re going to give me such a hard time-tomorrow, it’s going to be, “Trump uses disgusting language, Trump says bad words,” all over the news, everywhere, CNN, FOX News, everywhere, that’s all you’ll hear.So I don’t know, I don’t know that I can even talk about this stuff anymore, but if you-well, listen, listen folks, what can I do, you’re all screaming to hear it, maybe this is a bad move, maybe it will get me in trouble, but who cares...

PART II

So people are still, still they’re asking me, “Mr. Trump, why do you keep talking about this wall?You know you can’t build that wall, there’s no way, it can’t be done.”Folks, let me tell you, I am going to build a wall, and it’s going to be the best-look, we have lots of walls right?Circling, dividing, just walls all over, more walls than we know what to do with, so many walls, maybe some of you are sick of walls.But you-you know what the Guide says?The Guide, they call him the Guide, I call him the Minotaur, if you want to know the truth, that’s what he is, the Minotaur, but you know what he says, he says he can’t even tell which side is the Maze anymore.Bright guy, right?And this is the guy you want running your Maze, right?This guy, this clown who doesn’t know which-and he’s the architect, he says.I mean, I don’t know what that means, can this guy even hold a pencil in those hooves of his?What’s he doing, holding a pencil in his mouth?[mimes drawing a blueprint with a pencil in his mouth] It’s ridiculous, folks, what a disaster this guy is. But he says he can’t tell which side is the Maze.And I say, what is this guy, kidding?Is he really that stupid, could our guide be that stupid?This guy’s guiding you around the Maze, and all of a sudden he’s not even sure whether you’re in the Maze.And they call him “Guide,” “Guide” they call him, well, I don’t know about that, I don’t know.I don’t know how you can build a place-and folks, I’m a builder, ok? I’m a builder, it’s-you see my name, all over the world, buildings, the best buildings, the tallest towers, Trump, Trump, Trump.And I’ll tell you, when I walk inside one of my buildings, when I walk inside Trump Tower, I don’t start asking people, “Am I inside or outside? Is this Trump Tower or Brooklyn?” It’s a disaster, this guy, he’s a disaster.

- by vewatkin

See Ape Nose

This is an 1896 engraving of an ape. (I could not find out the name of the artist.) Does it look familiar to you? What do you think-could this image have been Manson's reference for the ape in Room 38?

I mean, an ape profile is an ape profile is an ape profile, but it seems like a decent bet. That oddly 2-shaped nose on the SEE! poster is even more 2-shaped in the original engraving. (This is actually the reason I started looking at ape profiles-I wanted to know if that 2 could possibly mean something or if apes in profile just had 2-shaped noses.) To me, the pattern of light and shadow on the faces look similar, as do the proportions of the features. In addition, it seems to be a relatively well-known image, as far as engravings of ape profiles go.

If the 19th-century engraving was Manson's reference, then that is kind of wonderful, because it shows just how much thought might have gone into this little poster. One of the tricky bits about the "see ape nose" riddle (as discussed in the Room 38 Mazecast) is getting that the picture shows an ape and not, say, a chimp or a gorilla. After having done a little research on the engraving, we discovered that it depicts a Koolakamba-a species of ape reported in the 19th century which was thought by some to have been a hybrid between a chimp and a gorilla. There doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence that these apes were anything other than unusual chimps or perhaps bonobos, but still-as Vincent pointed out-if Manson was aware of this little cryptozoological tale, could he have picked a better way to depict a generic ape?

(You can read more about the Koolakamba on Wikipedia, on this Cryptozoology wiki, and on this nutty-but-entertaining cryptozoology website.)