NIGHT AND FOG
I guess the reason this election has left me so disabled (aside from the fact that I firmly believe that it’s the start of a theocratic-Nazi take over of America) is that we really did all we could. You, me, Springsteen, all of us, we pulled out the fucking stops, but still could not counter Karl Rove and the Coalition of Faith, or whatever that unholy evangelical alliance calls itself, because our side, somewhat ironically, still tote the kind of moral values that make it impossible to sink deep enough into the Harry Lime sewer where the fear is really manipulated.

A FEW BON MOTS OF THE NEW ORDER FROM MY TV
Hilary Clinton reeks of blue. – Meaning we in the blue states smell bad.

Manhattan, San Francisco, and Hollywood are not America. – Well fuck you, Charlie. Manhattan took the hit and LA and the Bay Area are prime targets for the nuclear jihad that has you scared out of your chicken-shitless, middle American wits. Al Qa’eda is not going to bomb the mall in Skankburg, Oklahoma, okay? You breed your own fucking terrorists, stupid, like Tim McVeigh and the Columbine crew.

Filth – Heard the word a bunch of times today in different contexts.

Plus there’s acres of the usual crap about the Dems have to move to the right, embrace Jesus, and dump the homo rock & roll vote, plus all the Tucker Carlson giggles and sneers that are great for the Q-rating, but trickle down to the street to germinate the petri dish miasma of queer bashing and Brownshirt get-the-freak. Remember, the Michael Jackson trial is next up after they fry Scott Peterson, that could really be spun into a homophobic feeding frenzy.

CRYPTIQUE – Time for the fish to get back in the water.

I’ve been avoiding voter fraud. It ain’t my beat. But this graphic’s gotta make you wonder and ponder...
http://img103.exs.cx/img103/4526/exit_poll.gif

The secret word is Theory

WE TRIED TO ESCAPE
OUR SENTENCE WAS DOUBLED
Our President held a predictably gloating press conference today. (Anyone remember when he last held one?) He told reporters – "I earned capital in the campaign - political capital - and now I intend to spend it. That’s my style."
And lo, it was a style I immediately recognized. The style of an habitual drunk. As I in "I got the price of a round, fuck the rent and the phone bill." Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. Or as in the words of Little Richard, a faith based artiste if ever there was one –
It’s Saturday night and I just got paid
Fool about my money don’t try to save
(gonna rip it up)

The secret word is Ammunition

OLD COUNTRY NOSTALIGIA
In England it's Guy Fawkes Night (unless it was banned by some quality of life ordinance I didn't hear about.) It's a native celebration of venerable domestic terrorism. I miss it.

CRYPTIQUE -- Pacific access denied.

The spectacle of the working poor voting tax cuts for millionaires makes me weep for this twilight zone of a country.

DEMOCRACY? YOU CAN’T HANDLE DEMOCRACY

I see a nation rendered infantile, and vicious by the manipulation of second hand fear and demented bigotry. I really want no part of this mass of fools and their walleyed values. My disgust is that of one who has always believed in the people, but you bastards make it hard, going on impossible. Damn you all and the red states that raised you, I have no intention of compromising with your bovine book-burning stupidity. When the hell is your bloody Rapture going to take you and leave this life to the rational? I am hardly able to write. Fortunately Maureen Dowd can...

W. doesn't see division as a danger. He sees it as a wingman. The president got re-elected by dividing the country along fault lines of fear, intolerance, ignorance and religious rule. He doesn't want to heal rifts; he wants to bring any riffraff who disagree to heel. W. ran a jihad in America so he can fight one in Iraq - drawing a devoted flock of evangelicals, or "values voters," as they call themselves, to the polls by opposing abortion, suffocating stem cell research and supporting a constitutional amendment against gay marriage. (NY Times)

CRYPTIQUE – When democracy fails and negativity won’t pull you through (try violent surrealism.)

I sense there's a lot of us seeking comfort right now, with little to offer except the fact that are still a lot of us, and what will get us all through is the mutual strength remaining good and fucking mutual.

Joe Hill is hard and grim, but correct -- "Don't mourn, organize."

Or there's Willie Dixon -- "Don't get mad. Get smart."

And there's always....

"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine." – Thomas Jefferson

All I can think of right now, as I wander from room to room, with rage vying with depression and rejecting the impulse to flee or at least go back to bed, is to post something I wrote a while ago...

WE HAVE TAKEN IT TO THE EDGE OF GRAVITY'S DEFILE
WE HAVE SHOT OUT RAINBOWS WITH OUR CANNON
WE HAVE WALKED WITH SPURS AND HARD NAILS
OVER THE CURVATURE OF PLANETS
AND MADE OUR MARK ON IRON MOUNTAINS
SO TELL US QUICKLY GREAT HERO
AND MAN WITH NO NAME
WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO NOW?

WE HAVE MATCHED POCHEEN
AND DOUBLE SHOTS OF RAILROAD GIN
WITH NAZGUL OF THE NINTH INTERNATIONAL
AND TAKEN ABUSE
TO THE UPPER ECHELONS OF NAKED ART
WE HAVE BEEN AND SEEN
AND SPURNED THE DESIGN
ABANDONED THE PLAN
AND REJECTED THE PLEA BARGAIN
SO DO NOT LEAVE US HANGING
HERE IN THE DISCOLORED DARKNESS, DON VITO
FOR ARE WE NOT YOUR CHOSEN MEN?
WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO NOW?

FROM SEWER AND CESSPOOL
TRAILER PARK AND HALF CROWN KNOCKING SHOP
FERAL AND FASTIDIOUS
WITH ONLY A BOTTLE OF PILLS BETWEEN US
SHARP SWORDS AND A FISTFUL OF DYNAMITE
SONGS OF VICTORY AND EXECUTION
WE HAVE DONE THE BIDDING OF ALL
AND THE WILL OF NONE
WE HAVE SACKED AND PILLAGED
IN THE CITIES OF THE RAVAGED NIGHT
BUT NEVER EXCEPT IDLY AND TEMPORARILY PROFITED
AND IT'S THE TIME TO CLUE US IN
DIVINE MARQUIS
FOR WE NEED TO KNOW
WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO NOW?

WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO NOW?

WHAT FOOLS HAVE WROUGHT THIS DAY...

As I was attempting to rationalize some perverse and unhealthy method by which to find the last twelve hours amusing, and also contemplating the romance of an old fashioned revolution with flags, marching songs, and hideous carnage, the following came from England’s green and pleasant.

Jeezus wept, just woke up to the news that the election is all but lost to Bush, and although thereis still a slim chance of Kerry salvaging it things don't bode well. If anything, I feel more gutted nowthan when Bush was elected for his first term. It's almost impossible to countenance the prospect of another four years of this madman and his puppeteers - not to mention the repercussions that this second term will cause down the years to come. But while there's still a slim hope....
Rich

And from Roger in Scotland...

Oh fuck.

The secret word is Suicide

CRYPTIQUE – Martians went home

LUCK BE A LADY TONIGHT
(Don’t blow on the other guy’s dice.)

And remember the choices...
1 – GEORGE W. BUSH
2 – JOHN KERRY
3 – CIVIL WAR
(Last night Jon Stewart got on the Civil War thing, but remember you heard it here first.)

CRYPTIQUE – Martians walk the Earth

TOMORROW'S THE DAY OF THE DEAD
THE SANTA ANNA BLOWS DOWN FROM THE HILLS
THE WAYWARD WIND IS A RESTLESS WIND
(but they also call the wind Mariah, which always struck me as kinda dumb)

CHAOS

One of my favorite things. Infinitely preferable to raindrops on roses.

Seems like everything’s been done that can be done and we wait until tomorrow for the new phase of the horror.

In the meantime HCBeck sends this fascinating clip from New Scientist. Towards the end, I am strongly reminded of the process of walking while drunk, in which one achieves forward moment by leaning until off-balance and then falling while hoping one’s legs will respond fast enough to keep one from nosing into the sidewalk.

A control system based on chaos has made a simulated, multi-legged robot walk successfully. The researchers behind the feat say it may have brought us closer to understanding how people and animals learn to move. Standard robots control their leg motion either through complex computer programs or by using so-called genetic algorithms to "evolve" a successful walking strategy. Both these options are time-consuming and require a lot of computer power. Roboticists Yasuo Kuniyoshi and Shinsuke Suzuki wondered whether chaotic systems might also generate efficient walking behaviour. Chaotic systems behave in a way that means that small effects are amplified so rapidly that the systems’ behaviour becomes impossible to predict more than a short time ahead. Such chaotic systems are behind a number of phenomena, including the weather and the performance of financial markets. The Tokyo University pair reasoned that just as the chaotic maths that determines the weather can produce clear patterns such as hurricanes and weather fronts, similar systems might underlie the movement patterns involved in locomotion. "We, and animals, seem to be able to work out how to move in different situations without going through thousands of trial-and-error situations like today’s robot-control software does," says Kuniyoshi.

To test their idea, Kuniyoshi and Suzuki devised a computer simulation of a 12-legged machine in which each leg was controlled by a chaotic mathematical function. The functions were initially fed 12 parameters chosen at random. From then on, sensory information from each limb was fed back into the chaotic function that controlled it. The team found that certain combinations of starting parameters made the robot’s limbs rapidly adopt "walking-on-the-spot" behaviour, but the machine did not get anywhere. However, when they placed a weight at one end of the simulated robot (see graphic) they found that four of the legs seized up, allowing the front and back legs to dominate movement and let the robot scamper along.

The robot could also negotiate obstacles in its path. After scuttling about for a few seconds, its mode of locomotion would change to allow it to scramble over whatever was in the way. Although it was just a simulation, the software mimicked the robot’s performance in fine detail. Kuniyoshi is confident that the trick will work in a real robot. Remarkably, the robot performed these tricks without any conventional programming. And its behaviour emerged far more quickly than it would if it had used genetic algorithms. Kuniyoshi suggests that his chaotic approach may have similarities to the way that biological systems learn to move. "Many findings point to the presence of chaotic patterns in general in the human brain," says Max Lungarella, who researches artificial intelligence at the University of Tokyo. But Kuniyoshi and Suzuki’s approach is still unconventional, he says. "It diverges radically from the traditional way of thinking about intelligence." Roberto Fernández Galán, a biophysicist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, also finds the approach intriguing, but he is sceptical about the Japanese team’s idea that chaos plays a role in animal locomotion. "It is surprising to achieve what they call goal-directedness with a chaotic robot," he says.

GIRLS TALK DIRTY TO OUST BUSH
One last look – http://www.liegirls.com/flash.html

FACT
Today some 250,000 Americans with mental illness live in prisons, the nation's primary supplier of mental-health services.

The secret word is Goddamnit

FOR THE HALLOWEEN PARADE
"I know the forces of spontaneous, emergent Life are stronger than the forces of evil, repression and death, and the forces of death will destroy themselves." – William S. Burroughs (from a letter to Jack Kerouac, May 24, 1954) courtesy of munz.

And also thinking a lot about the internet and the mutating effect of a medium, as America lurches to what is looking increasingly like an inevitable cultural showdown. I wrote this back in march when Doc40 was but a fledgling, but I have been given no reason to change my mind.

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.

The secret word is Dorothy.