DENY EVERYTHING, BUT ONLY WHEN BUSTED

The following quote comes from no less than yesterday’s New York Times.

“If we were a true empire, we would currently preside over a much greater piece of the earth's surface than we do. That's not the way we operate.” – Vice President Dick Cheney, on whether the United States considers itself an empire.

Now I must confess that I found this a tad curious because I thought it was only we deluded radical nutters were of the opinion that the Bush Administration harbored an intention of conquering the known world by high-tech advanced military force. I could be wrong and am certainly open to correction, (let’s face it, friends, I’m always open to correction) but it seemed to me that, up on the “reasonable” level of the NYT, such ideas were dismissed as paranoid hysteria. Indeed, I have read a number of right-wing columns that made exactly the point and poured scorn on the concept that bellicose neoCon think-tanks like Plan for the New American Century (PNAC) were running the show. Thus I feel forced to ask why Dickie is going to all this trouble to deny what are only the hallucinatory fears of the likes of me?

OLD HIPPIES JUST GET WEIRDER AND THEY HAVE NO SENSE OF TIME

And talking of hallucinatory fears, (and nutters) I discovered the following anonymous screed in my wandering of the blogosphere, and felt it needed to be reproduced. Damn, but I didn’t know this kind of thing still went on. If nothing else, it makes me feel a lot more comfortable with my own insanity. Let’s not forget, though, that one of the greatest practitioners of this kind of thinking was the long incarcerated Charlie Manson.

I'm sure I'm not the first person to whom this has occurred, but suppose this whole thing was a smokescreen for Dylan's death in a motorcycle accident in Woodstock (site of a festival - from which Dylan was notably absent - held the same year as the memorial service on the zebra crossing) and subsequent replacement by an actor who looked the same, except for the beard, but had a different voice ('I can't see your face anymore, your voice has changed...'). This would explain the presence of the Beatles (featuring J.W. Lennon) on the cover of J.W. Harding. And of course, it's not Johnny who's in the Basement but Bobby, like, as in under the ground in upstate New York. 'He travelled with a gun in every hand'. Could this be a reference to the multi-handed doll on the cover of Sgt Pepper? The apparent reference on which to the Rolling Stones is actually a reference to the author of Like a Rolling Stone (also there depicted, along with a lot of other dead people - 'some are dead and some are living'), over whose grave a stone (also, incidentally, the maiden surname of his mother, Beatty Stone) has just been rolled. God (=JWH) said to Abraham (Zimmerman, of Hibbing, Minnesota), kill me your son. The covenant of HW61R (what is Dylan wearing on the album cover?) not only foreshadows Dylan's own death on the symbolic Highway 61 of his semi-rural idyll, but echoes the covenant made by Robert Johnson (who produced Highway 61 Revisited?) with the devil at the crossroads on Highway 61 decades earlier.
And of course there's all the Freewheelin' stuff (parked VW vehicle etc.). George acquired this album in Paris. But as well as designating France's capital city, 'paris' is also the plural of the noun 'pari', meaning 'bet'. So the Beatles were actually the Roman soldiers attending the Christlike Dylan's death. 'In a little hilltop village, they gambled for my clothes'. Hilltop? Clearly an allusion to The Fool on the Hill, and the fact that it's not McCartney who's dead but Dylan; the Paul is Dead thing is just a ruse to 'fool' the world. 'On the Hill'? A possible reference to one of the sites of the fooling taking place, viz I Dreamed I saw Saint Augustine ('alive as you or me'), itself a reworking of 'I Dreamed I saw Joe Hill'. It's merely a dream that St Augustine is still alive - and that's how alive Dylan is.
And what model Triumph did the accident occur on? A Bonneville TT 650cc. Bonneville? Salt Flats? Salt? Pepper...?
Just what was going on in Woodstock with all that apocalyptic imagery (e.g. All along the Watchtower - incidentally, magazine of the "JWH's" Witnesses - , with its 'barefoot servants' and 'two riders')? Yes, the apocalypse. Of St John. In Woodstock. Or St John's Woodstock? Are the Beatles the four horsemen? Is Ringo the Joker? Is Lennon the Thief (he stole a harmonica - a symbol closely associated with Dylan - in Arnhem en route to Hamburg; when he sings 'they're going to crucify me' does he mean as Christ or as Thief by Dylan's side)? Dylan sings of 'lies that life is black and white', knowing the truth that it is death - his death - which is inextricably connected with the black and white of the zebra crossing. 'Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now'. It's as if he knew in 1964 - the year he met and 'turned on' the Beatles- that he was to be replaced by an actor younger than him. 'If I ain't dead already, then you'll know the reason why', sings Lennon. The reason why being that Dylan - to whom he has not long before alluded - has been offered as blood sacrifice.

FOR MONDAY, MONDAY

Today, being a Monday, I would also recommend Modern Drunkard Magazine.

http://www.moderndrunkardmagazine.com/

CRYPTIQUE – Baby needs new shoes.