Saturday, February 28, 2004

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

I wonder how many of you recall an old Paul Newman film titled WUSA, in which Newman, a alcoholic DJ, who carries his martinis with him in a sharp aluminum Thermos, goes to work for a fascist radio network dedicated to an American dictatorship. Clear Channel seems determined to make the movie all reality. I keep coming back to the phrase corporate totalitarianism, and some may think I’m overstating, but I would suggest the that right now the communication conglomerate, with its Zero Tolerance Broadcasting Decency Campaign does seem to the be setting itself up as Bush administration’s own Ministry of Truth. Although I’m not sure going after Howard Stern, no matter what you might think of him, is a terribly smart idea. It’s a move that might just shift working stiffs back to the left where they ought to be, and properly make “blue-collar conservative” an oxymoron. They also seem to have forgotten that some of Howard’s biggest fans are rank and file law enforcement.

For chapter and verse on Clear Channel, (courtsey some girl) go to...
http://www.takebackthemedia.com/radiogaga.html (And do scroll down to the visual aide to the whole unholy relationship between Clear Channel and the White House.)

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

And over at the Office of Vice & Virtue, Mel Gibson, while making the crucifixions run on time and bloody, is not neglecting the merch. Henry Cabot Beck sends the following clip...

You can buy "witnessing tools," including lapel pins labeled in indecipherable Aramaic (yay Aramaic! What a comeback! Who knew?) and lapel pins with crucifixes, and packs of "witnessing cards" to swap with your Jesus-happy friends, just like the Disciples did when they sat around the holy campfire, swapping tales of sad lost goddesses and making s'mores with communion wafers and pink Easter marshmallow peeps. But nothing says "slightly masochistic Jesus fanatic" like adorning your fine self with a two-inch silver pewter crucifixion-nail pendant, hanging 'round your neck from a nice 24-inch leather cord. Oh my yes. It's an actual product, available right now for about ten bucks from Mel Gibson's official "Passion of the Christ" movie Web site, while supplies last, which they will forever and ever because they're doubtlessly made in bulk by Malaysian sweatshop workers wearing faded "Lethal Weapon IV" T-shirts who all believe in a very unhappy Allah. Irony, it knoweth no boundaries.

For full story...
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2004/02/25/notes022504.DTL


LOVE IS HATE

But what could be more decent and wholesome than a televised execution? Isn’t Mel helping prove that? After the recent Doc40 post on the subject, kaymo seems to have the bit between his teeth...

We should do more on this. I have lots of qs. Like why Houston, Tex? What is it with the culture there that makes that town so fond of executions? And why the opposition to having them on TV? When, who, what etc... It seems so mewling, puking, sickly and weak of this stern visaged, balls of steel, minds of adamant, hearts of stone right wing rulership that they should want to hide the moment of death from those designated as the enemy to all things wise and wonderful (and usually white). if I can grab some time I will dig into this in coming days.
(Comment above or email byron4d@aol.com, especially from you guys from Texas.)

NADER IS RALPH

My considered, and I hope final thoughts on the Ralph Nader bit for the presidency came out this week in LA CityBeat – http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=693&IssueNum=38

CRYPTIQUEMind crossing your feet?

Friday, February 27, 2004

THE ELEPHANT ANALOGY

In response to yesterday's half-assed missive from A. Huffington, kaymo explains all we know about global warming (which may not be that much.)

Global Warming is still a very tricky thing...the models for mapping it are still soooo crude. Analogies include: Imagine an elephant in a sealed off room. There is no video, no audio, no smell sensor, all we have to examine it with are some mechanical arms. We know that it's pretty big and it may be dangerous. The elephant is getting angry about something, but we don't know what, exactly. It may break out of the room and if it does we're in trouble, in fact it does seem to be getting restless. It may be upset by our bad breath, or it just may be going into Musth, in which case all bets are off and let's get the hell out of here.

Google: Greenland Pump.
The G-Pump is an area of the North Atlantic where water from warmer parts that has drifted across the Atlantic and way north, cools off enough to sink down through the fresher-- therefore lighter-- water already there. This water is "heavier" ie saltier, because it's been on the surface a long time and it started out in warmer climes where evaporation removed a certain amount of the water and left the salts behind. This "North Atlantic Drift" begins with the good ol' Gulf Stream and it basically keeps Europe from looking like Labrador though they're on the same Latitude. If you've flown from Europe to the US in a window seat you may have noticed just how stark the difference is. Once the heavier Drift water sinks it drops all the way to the bottom of the ocean and flows back south in a huge bottom current that after about 4,000 years or so surfaces again in the Indian Ocean. Now, it is estimated that the Greenland Pump has weakened by between 20 to 30% in the past fifteen years or so. Reasons for this weakening include a sharp increase in the fresher water melting off Greenland's ice cap. Should it stop functioning then the "pull" on the warm North Atlantic Drift water will be much reduced and the Drift will be reduced in turn. Which will mean a very chilly period for Europe's 500 million inhabitants. It's happened before-- during the Little Ice Age (1450-1650)the Thames regularly froze over and England's viniculture gave up the ghost. But, the effect will be (maybe already is) felt all around the Northern Hemisphere. The result could be a quite abrupt shift to a rather more extreme climate, with hot dry summers and colder winters. Needless to say this will be great for the British Air Conditioning and Central Heating industries, both of which have struggled to find customers in a land where the ambient temp tends to be in the mid 50s F. It may also be tough for the US corn and wheat belts, especially if the interior of North America experiences a strong drying trend. The potential losses to world food stocks of having the climate of Iowa-Ohio become more like that of Saskatchewan-Manitoba are huge. Winter wheat is great, but American fattens its meat animals on corn and the difference in productivity between a field of Manitoban wheat and one of Ohio Corn is pretty damn huge. This may be the answer to America's problem with waistlines. As to the big question-- are we causing this change? Answer: maybe. The fact that the warmest years on record are clustered in the post 1980 era does point that way. But we're working with pitifully frail data. The elephant may just be in a frisky mood, ready for a change, or it may be that our CO2 emissions have maddened it. Either way, when push comes to shove it's going to blow our house down, big time.


BUT OH THAT THE ELEPHANT WOULD SIT ON SIMON

The joke has always been that Simon Cowell would reject Bob Dylan out of hand if he was ever a contestant on American Idol (I think that’s Pop Idol to you UK homeboys). And now here is the loathsome abomination actually saying it for himself. (Culled from the current TV Guide)...
Bob Dylan? Too ugly, too boring, too whiny, and too serious.
Yeah, well Simon, you’re an idiot babe, it’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe.

AND A SHAGGY ORGAN STORY (but true)

From MSNBC
A drug suspect trying to pick up 119 pounds of marijuana at Buffalo Niagara International Airport instead got two boxes of human organs, one box containing a heart intended for a transplant. The Canadian woman was arrested 12 hours later when she attempted to exchange the organ boxes for the packages full of pot, which was wrapped in plastic and smeared with mustard. Her accomplice, a New York man, was also arrested. The heart was delivered to the transplant recipient in time for the emergency surgery. What is unclear is why it took the culprits so long to realize the airport's mistake -- the boxes were labeled "PLEASE RUSH, HUMAN TISSUE FOR TRANSPLANT."

CRYPTIQUEBlood on your saddle.

Thursday, February 26, 2004

THE END OF THE WORLD IS CONFUSING

The following is an excerpt from a newsletter from Arianna Huffington...

If he’s smart enough to use it, the Democratic nominee may have just been handed the perfect cudgel with which to pummel President Bush — and cripple Karl Rove’s attempts to position his man as America’s go-to guy on national security. The weapon in question is a new report on the grave and gathering threat posed by global climate change — and the potentially cataclysmic consequences of the Bush administration’s obstinately ignorant approach to global warming. And the thing that makes the report so frightening — and the prospective bludgeon so crushing — is that it wasn’t authored by some crunchy granola think tank or a band of tree-hugging Earth Firsters, but by the U.S. Department of Defense. That’s right, the Pentagon — Rummy’s playpen. In fact, the report, which was slipped to the press earlier this month after being kept under wraps by the White House for four months, was commissioned by Andrew Marshall, a legendary DOD figure, nicknamed “Yoda” for his sagacity. As head of the Pentagon’s secretive Office of Net Assessment, Marshall has offered national security assessments to every president since Richard Nixon. And this latest assessment pegs climate change as a far greater danger than even the scourge of international terrorism. Dryly entitled “An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security,” the report reads like the plot summary of the upcoming Dennis Quaid doomsday flick, The Day After Tomorrow in which global warming pushes the planet to the edge of anarchy and annihilation.

But this scenario is not science fiction. According to the Pentagon study, the question is not if abrupt climate change will happen, but when. It could be, according to the report’s authors, as soon as the next three years, with the most devastating fallout potentially occurring between 2010 and 2020. At that point, we could find ourselves in the midst of a new ice age in which mega-droughts devastate the world’s food supply, drinkable water becomes a luxury worth going nuclear over, 400 million people are forced to migrate from uninhabitable areas, and riots and wars for survival become commonplace. But the Bush White House remains unwilling to address — or even acknowledge — this looming peril. Instead, the oiligarchs in the administration continue to fiddle while the atmosphere starts to burn, routinely ignoring scientific evidence and international consensus, and casting a questioning eye on the very idea, let alone the fact, of global warming. It’s a stance that has warmed the hearts —globally, no doubt — of the Bush Pioneers and Rangers in the oil and energy industry, making them feel very generous indeed. As last week’s release of a scathing letter signed by 60 prominent scientists — including 20 Nobel laureates and former science advisers to both Republican and Democratic administrations — makes clear, the Bush administration has made an art out of ignoring science. Particularly whenit comes to the issue of global warming.


Unfortunately Arianna, a recent convert from right wing Republicanism, is not so well versed in the techniques of doom-saying as those of us who have been at for decades, like (say) kaymo, Doc40's own grim prophet of destruction. She gives no references, no chapter and verse, and even mistakes it as a party political issue and not another indication that this planet is just sooo fucked that we might as well stay loaded until The End. Fortunately, here at Doc40, we can at least manage to run a Google search, which revealed that the source of her alarming information is a month old issue of Fortune (apt, AH?), from which we lifted the following excerpt...

Global warming, rather than causing gradual, centuries-spanning change, may be pushing the climate to a tipping point. Growing evidence suggests the ocean-atmosphere system that controls the world's climate can lurch from one state to another in less than a decade—like a canoe that's gradually tilted until suddenly it flips over. Scientists don't know how close the system is to a critical threshold. But abrupt climate change may well occur in the not-too-distant future. If it does, the need to rapidly adapt may overwhelm many societies—thereby upsetting the geopolitical balance of power. Though triggered by warming, such change would probably cause cooling in the Northern Hemisphere, leading to longer, harsher winters in much of the U.S. and Europe. Worse, it would cause massive droughts, turning farmland to dust bowls and forests to ashes. Picture last fall's California wildfires as a regular thing. Or imagine similar disasters destabilizing nuclear powers such as Pakistan or Russia—it's easy to see why the Pentagon has become interested in abrupt climate change. Climate researchers began getting seriously concerned about it a decade ago, after studying temperature indicators embedded in ancient layers of Arctic ice. The data show that a number of dramatic shifts in average temperature took place in the past with shocking speed—in some cases, just a few years.
For the full story – http://www.fortune.com/fortune/subs/print/0,15935,582584,00.html

BUT CHEER UP

Here, courtesy of Henry CB (who’s name I misspelled yesterday) is a new animation from the great Joel Veitch, that is quite as good as Viking Kittens or Gay Bar. – http://www.rathergood.com/moon_song/

MEANWHILE...

The FCC seems to be rolling hard in it’s clean up of the airwaves, and also providing Bush with another fatuous smokecreen. Bubba the Love Sponge is history and Clear Channel jerked Howard Stern from its stations just as Stern joined the League of Extraordinary Bushwhackers (LEB) by furiously turning on GWB and backing Kerry. But more of this later as the news comes in.

CRYPTIQUEJesus H. Christ, Mel...

Wednesday, February 25, 2004

COME WITH ME TO THE CASBAH

The following small wonder came in today from Henry Cabot Back...

DEAR Citibank Members,

This E-mail was _sent_ _by the Citibank server_ to
veerify your_ E_MAIL addres.
You musst clmoetpe this prsecos by clicking on_the link
below and enttering in the smal winddow your CITI-bank
ATM Card number and Pin that you use in the local ATM Machine.
This_is done - for-your pcertotion -G- because some of_our
members no logner have accses to their email adrssedes
and we must verify it.


Aside from qualifying as the most inept webscam of all time – or at least to date – the looney clip from Henry also started me thinking. I’m well aware that my imagination tends towards overcook a lot of the time, but that’s how I earn a living (distant laughter), and also how I keep myself sane (more distance laughter), but it serves as yet another reinforcement of my fantasy picture of the internet. Al Gore dubbed it the Information Super Highway, conjuring, for me at least some rolling, big-deal perspective that had elements of Heinlein’s Roads Must Roll, the world of the clone-makers in Star Wars II, the Venusian city of Mekonta, and Osaka International Airport, all clean and chrome, plexiglass, and airstream tubular, with order and efficiency, a precision of integrated and organized traffic. And maybe that’s why Old Al found himself incapable of defeating chump-chimp George W. because at least Bush, probably courtesy of Dick Cheney, and with rich-boy contempt, could see a little, if iniquitous, vision of the true unkempt nature of reality.

For me, the internet has always seemed far more like a some middle eastern bizarre, a souk or casbah, part futurist, part medieval, a space-floating Interzone, unplanned, asymmetrical and labyrinthine, although easily negotiable by those who know, with narrow accessways between gimcrack structures, who’s flaws are hidden by hypnoswirls of niteglo color, and all the whores, hustlers, cutpurses, deadrabbits, footpads, swackdogs and gutter jumpers at which an adventurer could ever hope to shake his swordstick. Quack croakers with dirty instruments want to enlarge your penis, brothel-shills do it with domestic beasts, and that’s only the promise of better things inside, swarthy bunco artists whisper of fortunes in Nigeria, and politicians with corrosive blood want your money even more than they want your vote. Sexualized cartoon hentai-children retail their tears in darker alleyways, dancing in come-to-me display for dangerously scarred and mind-numbed teenage gunpersons on r&r from the carnage of their X-cubes, while dealers in long coats of a million pockets whisper transactionally of every dubious pill know to man and crustacean, to calm your mind, roll up your eyes, or keep you fucking to Sunday. Pop-ups like dirty grey beggars need beating, while mules look for their 40 acres, and the gambling games tell you there’s ninety minutes in every hour and a hundred seconds in a minute and the odds are in your favor. And you should believe that when pigs eat your brother.

And in the middle of it all, there’s Doc 40's Own Cozy, Leather-Jacket Gin-Joint, 24 Hour Global House Party, and Medicine Show, offering sharp conversation, bad ideas, honest politics, cheap stimulation, dirty concepts, and links to revolution, right out on the stairs. The girls are smart, the women wicked, the men at least reasonable, poets cut up, the aliens behave themselves, the cats help themselves, the fire escapes work, and there’s never a cop around – even if you need one. And that, my friends is why I attempt to keep it all going. Even if it is only a bunch of freaks on a stream of electrons. Come on back now, y’hear.

MEANWHILE
London’s blogging callgirl Belle de Jour seems to have acquired a stalker...
http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.com

AND A LAST WORD ON DEATH

I'm not quite sure how many Americans want to see executions live on TV, but according to a recent poll, it’s a hefty and bloodthirsty majority. I’ve been against capital punishment since I first saw Susan Hayward in I Want To Live, essentially figuring that a society should act according to a higher moral standard than its killers. (And if you’ve got a problem with that, the comments board is up on the right.) On the other hand , I do think, if we’re going to put people to death, it should be televised, just so we see exactly what is being done in our name. And if we’re not sickened by it, we are hardly worth the designation civilized.

CRYPTIQUEEmbiggen the girl.

Tuesday, February 24, 2004

HARD DAY AT THE KEYBOARD

Not so much to relate today, except the desire to maintain continuity and keep you all coming back. The entire day was taken up by finishing a story on the new season of The Sopranos and resolving yesterday's fury at Ralph Nader into something more manageably literate, (plus deftly and insouciantly linking the two) and following that, I find myself flagging and in that void-like moment when I really wonder if it’s all making any difference at all, or if it’s just creating the illusion of doing something to camouflage basic political impotence. Or maybe I wonder if I can still write at all. Both pieces are destined for LA CityBeat and will – editor’s willing – appear in print and online -- Nader Thursday next and The Sopranos the week after.

But hell, I can’t really believe it’s a waste of time. If I did, or began to, it really would be the cue to blow my brains out. The idea can be quite attractive in these grim days when very little seems to work as it should, but mercifully two things mitigate the self-destructive urge. One is a Hamlet-like fear of the void and the other is the quasi-logic that, since nothing remains the same, it might actually get better.

Meanwhile, there’s enough in the email in the box to make the log-on worth the effort. Plus our lovely Doc40 pal hipspinster has a new blog posted.

That’s – http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/

FROM THE EMAIL

Jamie-in-Canada sends this unique perspective on the 21st century world...

Went to funeral for wife's cousin. He was Sergeant at Arms for oldest bike club in Toronto, The Last Chance. All wearing Hell Angels patches now. Province of Ontario has biggest HA group in world. Dozen or so at the funeral were all 5'10" looking like 400lbs of pork on kebab. You'd think with chemical business they'd be a little thinner. And what's with this new clothing empire they're building. T-shirts, jewelry, pants, hats, all from the RedWhite company. Nike should be so well represented.

THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY BUSHWHACKERS (LEB)

Kenshim proffers a shaggy president story...

SLEEPLESS IN THE WHITE HOUSE

One night, George W. Bush is tossing restlessly in his White House bed. He awakens to see George Washington standing by him. Bush asks him, "George, what's the best thing I can do to help the country?" "Set an honest and honorable example, just as I did," Washington advises, then fades away. The next night, Bush is astir again, and sees the ghost of Thomas Jefferson moving through the darkened bedroom. Bush calls out, "Tom, please! What is the best thing I could do to help the country?" "Respect the Constitution, like I did," Jefferson advises, and dims from sight. Bush isn't sleeping well the third night when he sees another figure moving in the shadows. It is Abraham Lincoln's ghost. "Abe, what is the best thing I can do right now, to help the country?" Bush pleads. Abe replies, "Go see a play."


And Dick 13 passes on a chance for direct action...

Subject: Censure President Bush

Dear friend, In an attempt to escape responsibility for the misleading statements that led the nation to war, President Bush has announced plans to form an independent inquiry to look into what went wrong. An inquiry would serve the Bush administration well: it would envelop the issue in a fog of uncertainty, deflect blame onto the intelligence services, and push any political damage into 2005, after the upcoming election. But the facts need no clarification. Despite repeated warnings from the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, President Bush and his administration hyped and distorted the threat that Iraq posed. And now that reality is setting in, the President seeks to pin the blame on someone else. We can't let him. Congress has the power to censure the President -- to formally reprimand him for his betrayal of the nation's trust. If ever there was a time to use this function, it is now. Join the call for Congress to censure President Bush now at:
http://www.moveon.org

And fidicen feels differently about Ralph Nader...

Really think vilifying Nader does more harm than good to the Democrats and the cause of defeating the fascists. We must take the inclusive high road (a la Roosevelt vs. 3rd party man Thomas in 1932--look it up if you don't know) and cannot allow ourselves to be defined and hemmed in bypotential Bush rhetoric and dirty tricks, a core mistake of Gore. A true blue message, stated presidentially, cannot lose this time and most of Nader can be safely co-opted. First and foremost, Nader, and the very few in the handful of swing states who might NOT vote Dem because of him (as opposed to any Green, Lib, or not voting at all people) can be neutralized by respect for their inarguable positions, their right to seek office and vote their conscience, and for their chutzpah to do so at this time. Include them in the discussion and show respect and my guess is they leave in October.

CRYPTIQUEThe sound of one foot walking on eggs.

Monday, February 23, 2004

RAGING AT NADER

I stayed up all night and watched Ralph bloody Nader announce his run for the White House on Meet the Press this morning. Refraining from screaming “Egomaniac weasel shithead!” more than four or five times – I contained my thoughts into three basic points.

1) Nader is attempting to take the progressive, anti-corporate high ground. This means that, if Kerry (or whoever) attempts any bold or radical initiatives on health care, prescription drugs, oil dependancy etc., the door will be wide open for accusations by the Bush campaign that the Dems are merely caving in to pressure from the Nader left, and cry "how can you elect a president who can be pushed around by Ralph Nader."

2) Where will Nader get his money? He says from web appeals, but it would be all too easily possible for Bush to keep him in the race as a spoiler and energy drain, by covertly channeling funds, with or without Nader even knowing it.

3) Nader gives the impression that he believes he can pick up many of the young and idealist Dean supporters to be his campaign grunts, almost as if he had some divine right to their support. As one who is not so young but still shamelessly idealistic, I'm disgusted, because, bottom line, what he betrays by this is nothing more than a cynical contempt for their idealism.

Right now I’m lobbying for print space to expand this analysis.

THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY BUSHWHACKERS (LEB)

The matter of Bush’s monstrous heap of cash money is pointed up by a webclip from some girl...

Specifically, while the president attacks Senator John Kerry (D-MA) for accepting money from lobbyists, a new study shows "the president accepted more in direct contributions from lobbyists in one year than Kerry did in the past 15 years." All told, Bush collected at least $6.5 million in "bundled" contributions from lobbyists last year alone.
Full story – http://www.misleader.org

And some girl also spotlights Bush’s under-the-radar attacks on women’s rights...

Thumbing his nose at the Senate for the second time in recent weeks, President Bush today appointed one of the most virulently anti-choice and anti-privacy judicial activists, Bill Pryor, to the Eleventh Circuit federal bench. Just a month after his surprise appointment of anti-choice Charles Pickering to the Fifth Circuit bench, Bush proved today that he'll go to any length, violate any rule, and upset any precedent to pack the courts with anti-choice extremists. Mr. Pryor has called Roe v. Wade an "abominable decision." The truly abominable decision is to give this hardened anti-choice crusader a seat on the federal bench. This outrageous appointment puts a judge who opposes abortion even in cases of rape or incest in a frightening position of power over women's lives in Alabama, Florida and Georgia.
Full story – http://prochoiceaction.org

Which brings us back to Nader and his totally cavalier attitude to abortion rights in the 2000 campaign, retold on the Headblast website – http://davidcogswell.com/

In that campaign his response to a question about whether the Republican Supreme Court would endanger the right to abortion, Nader said if the Supreme Court struck down Roe vs Wade it would just go back to the states, as if the lives of women in Bible belt states were not a concern to him.

BLIMP LIKE AN EAGLE

Kaymo sends another of his military-industrial horror tales, which fits quite neatly with the revelations on last night’s edition of 60 Minutes that the Patriot Missile System (PMS???), so touted by Bush Sr, as a Scud-buster in the first Gulf War, is in fact better at shooting down US planes that enemy missiles. In Pentagon-speak it has “high fratricide levels”.

You heard about this one?
USAF is working on the Evolutionary Air and Space Global Laser Engagement, or EAGLE, a gigantic blimp about twenty to thirty times as big as a Goodyear blimp. Slung underneath it would be an array of huge mirrors designed to reflect high power laser beams that would be directed from either ground based transmitters or from orbiting power satellites. The reflected laser beams would be used to destroy enemy missiles, planes, limousines, you name it. This monstrosity is being created at the Air Force Research Lab's Directed Energy Division. At first glance this looks like just another Pentagon mega-turkey. A way of spending lots of taxpayer dollars and allowing young, right thinking science types to have rewarding careers. But apart from the grotesque mismatch between acronym and gas bag there's also the Pandora effect to consider. If the US can do this, so can others and do we really want colossal airships patrolling the stratosphere ready at a moments notice to fry just about anything chosen as a target to a crisp?


CRYPTIQUEIt beats working.

AND IF YOU FIND DOC40 QUAINTLY AMUSING, FOR FUCK’S SAKE SEND A LINK TO A FRIEND!

Sunday, February 22, 2004

SUNDAY POETRY – A NEW TWIST (and it goes like this)

Uncle Bill Burroughs should have lived to see this. He would have loved it – online porno sites masking their content from the latest generation of spam blockers, parental controls, government surveillance, and god knows what other manifestations of online moral enforcement, by using unintelligible scrambled and cutup text around the crucial hotlink to the site being promoted.

Even I thought the porn vendors were getting a little bold when, one afternoon (as is my habit) I rose and opened my email to find a clear and graphic sample image of a rather depressed-looking young woman felating a carthorse. There is little that shocks the Doc, but after coughing into my first Coke and cigarette of the day, I decided those responsible were sailing a tad close the contemporary winds of censorship, but that is really beside the point. John Ashcroft and worried webservers had unwittingly turned cyberpanderers into post-Beatnik techno-poets.

In the course of their subterfuge, the porn spammers were busily, but, I assumed, unknowingly, creating a form of found poetry, hugely resembling the works created by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, first with paper and scissors, and then with their various models of cutup engine, a technique later "borrowed" by David Bowie in his Thin White Duke incarnation, or so David boasted at the time.

Most of this kind of spam seems effectively random, although some spammers betray a self-awareness and creativity over and above their basic mission of smut-camouflage, by arranging the text into fanciful and maybe symbolic typographic structures – unless of course some HAL 9000 artificial intelligence is at work and playing long with the game. Unfortunately these line and column formations are destroyed by the act of removing the codes prior to posting. Which is a pity but inevitable. Unless someone had a smart idea.

As evidence that nothing is ever wasted in the constantly expanding culture, I have started to collect these items. More are always welcome, and I will post them until they stop coming or we all get bored with the exercise. (Send to byron4d@aol.com.) Here is the first example. The title is imposed, but I don’t think that’s breaking the rules...

LUCRETIUS CONCEDES.

On televison program,
On sit, a exciting there overcooked I shabby also f x, is forked
he .soup, Their she child and and comedy g g a early.
dull,
Is I'll or British pastry bar n u,
it becoming he stabbing a doctor.
&&&&
There wanna,
She dusty, their pie she generic object web site a hill on geeky
The could? I high,
On right are vibrator a k or slow their dirty their against it
don't gonna.
The text,
A buying the creamy a five dollar bill I because leaf,
a before it of he .

Is suit,
found there four n p is deep
or biscuit also run
h a there until and tender she atom f e is silky.

It brothers y p, I about v o I shiny the brain throughout
j q and trailer q l a are king on does also she frosty. 318
Or bat b b, ours u o he train
I lonely there dropping u s he smacking h o on home
I great gun. Or store y p, She ;)
The coloring book, I bed and n v she mail. n f

adjectival deflate

delirious happy aunt bernice prissy
delirious happy aunt bernice prissy

I'd love to perform for you. manicuring Lucretius concedes.


COMMENTS BOARD

Funtopia Rich, the Doc, and I are wondering what to do about the comments board. Suggestions? Maybe a second one?

CRYPTIQUESee Spot die.