AFTER THE HANGING, A QUARTET OF QUESTIONS

1) While being aware that Saddam Hussein was a mass-murdering shithead, I must confess that a part of me found the cable TV deathwatch, the jubilation and all the other trappings both distasteful and embarrassing. We are supposed to be civilized and therefore operate on a higher level than mass murdering shitheads, no?

2) Of course, SH would have made it a lot easier had he shot himself like Hitler or even gone down in a hail of bullets like his sons, but no. He tried to survive and failed. But isn't there some old time honor system whereby his rank alone should have afforded him at least a firing squad complete, with cigarette and blindfold?

3) But now it seems that hanging has established as the current penalty are we to assume it applies to our own mass-murdering shitheads in the USA?

4)And one final query? How soon will the execution be up on YouTube?

The secret word is Hemp

CRYPTIQUE -- I'm helping clockwork Santas drown themselves.

FROM THE POST-XMAS MAIL
Aeswiren reports on…

CTHULHU’S PARENTAGE
“According to correspondence between Lovecraft and fellow author Clark Ashton Smith, Cthulhu's parent is the androgynous deity Nagoob. Nagoob mated with the Outer God Yog-Sothoth to bear Cthulhu on the planet Vhoorl. Now, considering the descriptions of Yog-Sothoth I've seen, heavy on the quivering, the gelatinous etc., one does rather wonder why anything remotely androgynous would consider touching him with the proverbial barge pole, let alone actually mating."

And in the same (jugular) vein this little gem came from 00soul.

WHILE Elizabeth marvels…
“James Brown is in a gold coffin. The white hearse has glass sides!”

AND MrMR sends a link to a incredibly comprehensive compendium of recent Daily Kos piece on developments in the War On Drugs with (for me) a previous unseen piece on recreational psychoptropics by the late great Carl Sagan.

The secret word is Future

FINALLY, as always, in the time honored, Doc40, seasonal tradition, we have PENGUIN WHACKING

MEANWHILE I have a media column in the new LA CityBeat on the moral effects of Xmas advertising, and also Steve Appleford has a cover story on Hunter S. Thompson.

POET FINDS LOST WORK
When Lizzie Siddal, the wife of Dante Gabriel Rossetti died of am overdose of laudanum, the distraught Rossetti had his unpublished poems buried with her in her grave in London’s Highgate Cemetery. Eight years later, when he felt creatively tapped out, he had the coffin exhumed, retrieved the verses and published them.
I must confess that I haven’t been writing too much poetry myself lately, (maybe for kindred reasons to DGR) but, maybe because of how they have this bullshit planet set up, there’s plenty else to write about so I wasn’t bothered. Then, over Xmas, aside from attempting all the bonhomie my system would stand, I was also moving files from an old computer to a new one, I happened across a file of a piece that must have been written around 1986-7, in the Tijuana Bible days, that I had totally for gotten about. It is titled…

THE LADIES OF THE VAMPIRE CLUB
It is possible that I have spent too much of my life in the company of The Ladies Of The Vampire Club but, like Otis Redding once remarked, it's too late to stop now

My mind drifts back to night-complex self destruction, the synaptic crapshoot at suicide's edge that we knew as fun, the blatancy of things past, and, above all The Ladies Of The Vampire Club. Now what was the name of that place? The afterhours bunker, fashionable slum haunt out on Avenue C? Where you had to look as though you had just come from an appointment with your personal embalmer to circumvent the Sumo wrestler guardian of the velvet rope, and mingle with the girls who never saw the sun.

The Ladies Of The Vampire Club

And those lairs wherein they lurked, Ninth Street railroad walkups transformed to Spider Queen salons in which they courted and held court, and drank the blood of servants among their relics, the human skulls, the Chinese cymbals, the Arabian mandolins, and the severed index fingers of paramours who had lost their roll of the dice to the soft hiss and cold breath across pearl white fangs of

The Ladies Of The Vampire Club

And those moments of rage that not even ice blue valium could mitigate when, as all too often they believed they had not been used appropriately or accorded the measure of emotional control they viewed as their right. Those moments of rage like the howl of driving rain and the deafening crash of night-thunder around the granite turrets of the castle, scattering the walking wounded of Valhalla with their epic Wagnerian Nazi-scream "Where is the gasoline for my tanks?"And finally the satisfaction, the curled kitten retraction of fangs and claws when rage was spent and guilt instilled, and the otherwise required effects had been achieved. They took no prisoners The Ladies Of The Vampire Club, for they were possessed of a supernatural instinct, for gauging the exact moment when pleasure prolonged could transcend to torture in the beating of their soft leather wings.

It is possible that I have spent too much of my life in the company of The Ladies Of The Vampire Club, but, like Otis Redding once remarked, it's too late to stop now.

JAMES BROWN --RIP

SO? YOU GOT A PAIR OF 3D GLASSES HANDY?

I should be writing about Bubble Boy's fucking demented brainstorm of a military "surge" in Iraq, and how carrier groups are sailing into the Persian Gulf, and how I wouldn't put it past the asshole white devils in power to attempt to slip a new war past us over the holidays while we're drunk, but in the darkness of the year's longest night the whole prospect of both war and Christmas are depressing the hell out of me, and I feel a lot happier posting meaningless images. I mean, this is the first holiday since...well...just since...

The secret word is Numb

(But are the images really that meaningless? (sinister laugh) The Shadow knows!)

From Dimitrios...

A actual pic of Keith Richards as Jack Sparrow's dad. Remember you saw it here second!

(Also check Dinitrios' zine-site Gang Bang.)

DANCING?

In the new LA CityBeat, I have a whimsical piece on dancing. That's right. Dancing.

The secret word is Tuxedo

My mind is also really from the concept that Bubble Boy George is now demanding a bigger army. (And more tax cuts for the rich.) But more of that later.

OOOOOPS! (As in serious)
Doug the Bass sent over this little tale of horror…
The Nation Mon Dec 18,
In March 2005, a nuclear warhead almost exploded in Texas. The near miss accident occurred in Amarillo, when workers at the Pantex nuclear weapons plant bungled the dismantling of a W-56 warhead, a weapon 100 times stronger than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II.
Details of the averted catastrophe have been kept under wraps until last month, when the Department of Energy (DOE) fined the company that operates the plant, BWX Technologies, $110,000 for safety violations.
In a letter obtained by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), technicians at the plant blamed the accident on severe working conditions, including mandatory 72 to 84 hour work weeks. One nuclear scientist told POGO that he "would not work on his car engine if he were fatigued from a 72-hour work week, and sure as hell would not work on a nuclear weapon."
Besides hellish hours, workers described the "degrading" physical state of the plant in the letter to the BWX board. "Look around the plant. You will find leaking roofs, crumbling buildings, waist-high weed-infested landscapes, barricades and safety tape that makes this once-proud plant look like a crime scene."
In 2007, production goals at the plant will increase by 50 percent, which POGO calls a "recipe for disaster." Clearly it's time for the DOE to step in and show that the government is serious about nuclear security, both abroad and at home.

The secret word is Chernobyl

TO THE DYING OF THE LIGHT
With just four days to go to the solstice, the sunset comes before one is ready. (Or even out of bed.) Of course, I am in LA, not Helsinki or Oslo, but the gloom can still be felt and the primeval question nags. Will the light ever return? Our ancestors made every effort to ensure it did, all the way, it’s recorded, to human sacrifice, but, at the same time, they held the Saturnalia of the solstice in order to eat, drink, merrily fist fight, and fornicate like there was no tomorrow. Today, of course, we have Galileo, Copernicus and Newton to assure us that the sun will continue to rise in the morning east, plus our Chanukah candles and Christmas ribbons, maybe some aid from Odin to stave off the twilight, and the Maya at least guarantee us until 2012. This year, though, I have a certain nagging pagan doubt. This has been a year when death has dogged me too hard. Will the sun really return? Or will this be Ragnarok, and should I embrace simply the darkness?

But here’s a bit of background…
Ragnarok ("Doom of the Gods"), also called Gotterdammerung, means the end of the cosmos in Norse mythology. It will be preceded by Fimbulvetr, the winter of winters. Three such winters will follow each other with no summers in between. Conflicts and feuds will break out, even between families, and all morality will disappear. This is the beginning of the end. The wolf Skoll will finally devour the sun, and his brother Hati will eat the moon, plunging the earth into darkness. The stars will vanish from the sky. The earth will shudder with earthquakes, and every bond and fetter will burst, freeing the terrible wolf Fenrir.

The secret words are Cheerful Bastard

GLOATING

In the this week's media column, I do a lot of of gloating over the new order in Washington. This was written, however, before the unfortunate Senator Johnson had his stroke. (You might, however, notice, when you click to it, that the banner of the LACB webpage is a recruiting ad for the Los Angeles Police Department. Times have certainly changed in the alt press and let no man tell you different.

The secret nostaligia is Oink

ALSO our pal Chris Rowley is now posting his excellent science fiction online.

AHMET ERTEGUN -- RIP

CLIVE THOMPSON & I ARE WORRIED ABOUT OCTOPI
Check out what the man has to say and watch the truly amazing piece of video. If we ever piss them off we're toast.

The secret word is Tentacle

(Finally beta is making me post hot links like a grown up)

“CATASTROPHUCK” (or maybe “catastrofuck”)
The night before last, as far as I could tell beneath the beeps, Jon Stewart invented this fine new word. (And talking of beeps when the fuck do Dems take back the FCC swo sanity can be restored to broadcasting and Howard Stern would be back where he belongs on 97.1FM, because Sirius ain’t happening?)

While I still wipe the metaphoric kosmolene from the new computer, and accustom myself to Blogger Beta, MrMR -- while still celebrating the demise of the loathsome Pinochet -- sent us a copy of…

SALVADOR ALLENDE’S LAST SPEECH
Santiago de Chile, 11 September 1973, 9:10 A.M.
This will surely be my last opportunity to address you. The Air Force has bombed the antennas of Radio Magallanes. My words have neither bitterness but disappointment. They should stand as a moral castigation of those who have been traitors to their oaths: Chilean soldiers, titular commanders-in-chief, Admiral Merino, who has designated himself commander of the Navy, even more señor Mendoza, the cringing general who only yesterday manifested his fidelity and loyalty to the Government, and who also has named himself Director General of the Carabineros. In the face of these deeds it only falls to me to say to the workers: I shall not resign!
Standing at a historic point, I will repay with my life the loyalty of the people. And I say to you that I am certain that the seed we have surrendered into the worthy conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans, will not be able to be reaped at one stroke. They have the power, they can make us their vassals, but not stop the social processes, neither by crime nor by force. History is ours and is made by the people.
Workers of my Nation: I want to thank you for the loyalty you have always had, the confidence you placed in a man who only was the interperter of great yearnings for justice, who pledged his word to respect the Constitution and the law, and who did so. In this final moment, the last in which I will be able to address myself to you, I want you to take advantage of the lesson: foreign capital, imperialism, united with reaction, created the climate for the Armed Forces to break their tradition, that which they were taught by general Schneider which was reaffirmed by commander Araya, victims of the same social sector that today will be be expecting with an alien hand to reconquer the power to continue defending their profits and their privileges.
I address myself to you, above all to the modest woman of our land, to the campesina who believed in us, the mother who knew of our concern for the children. I address myself to the professionals of the Nation, to the patriotic professionals who continued working against the sedition overseen by their professional academies, classist academies that also defended the advantages of a capitalist society.
I address myself to the youth, to those who sang and who brought their happiness and their spirit to the fight. I address myself to the man of Chile, to the worker, to the campesino, to the intellectual, to those who will be percecuted, because in our country fascism has now been present for several hours; in the terrorist assassinations, blowing up the bridges, cutting the railways, destroying the oil and gas pipelines, in the face of the silence of those who had the obligation to behave.
They are in jeopardy. History will judge them.
Radio Magallanes will surely be silenced and the tranquil metal of my voice will no longer reach you. It is not important. You will continue to hear it. I will always be together with you. At least my memory will be that of an upright man who was loyal to the Nation.
The people ought to defend themselves, but not sacrifice themselves. The people ought not let themselves be subdued or persecuted, but neither should they humble themselves.
Workers of my Nation, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will go beyond this gray and bitter moment when treason tries to impose itself upon us. Continue to know that, much sooner than later, we will reopen the great promenades down which free men pass, to construct a better society.
Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!
These are my last words and I have certainty that my sacrifice will not be in vain, I have certainty that, at the least, I will be a moral lesson to castigate felony, cowardice, and treason.

The secret word is Kissinger

"He s-o-o-o bores us with his technological complaints."

The following came in from our pal Tim. Progress really does seem to be becoming a royal pain in the ass, but we persevere.

Hey Mick,
I recently switched over to the beta as well. It takes a day or two to get used but you’ll get it. The big pain was reformatting my page to what I wanted, but once that was done it was easy.
I hope it’s working a bit better by the time you read this…

BUT AUGUSTO PINOCHET (THE MURDERING FUCKHEAD) IS DEAD, BUT -- DING FUCKING DONG -- AT 91!

THE DOC HAS PROBLEMS

Okay, so I'm breaking in new computer and I don't have the old cookies, and, at the same time, blogger beta has been introduced. It wants me to sign in 29 times before I can post and the template has gone weird with all the achives, the antique message board etc. all having sunk to the bottom of the scroll-down. So I'm floundering here (although these things have habit of righting thmselves.) I'd wellcome any feedback that's going. The email is byron4d@msn.com

SERIOUS MALFUNCTION, PLUS BLOGGER BETA IS MAKING EVERYTHING TURN WEIRD.

IS THERE SUCH A THING AS VISUAL PUN?

While I was brewing the Xmas absinthe, our old homie HCB, sent over the pics here posted.

As he tells us -- under the general rubric, Biblical Epics We'd Like To See -- they are, of course....

"SODOM AND GAMERA"




(If the joke isn't immediately apparent, blow some dope and think about it.)

BUT WHILE WE ARE POSTING IN HASTE...
Two of our longest-time pals have new stuff to say...
http://www.valleyboy.net/
http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/

The secret word is Wormwood

"Stay the course?"

DOESN’T ANYONE HAVE A FUCKING CLUE ANY MORE?
I was watching CNN earlier and really starting to wonder how long its going to take for there to be Vegas odds on an actual military defeat of the US in Iraq. Like a hideous retreat from Baghdad to Basra that resembles something very unpleasant out of the crusades except with air support. Then some Army spokesguy comes on telling us how things aren’t half as bad as they clearly are, but what really stops me in my tracks is the spokesguy’s name. It’s Custer – I swear – Colonel John Custer (although I might be wrong about the rank.) Maybe I could be a little over-tuned to these things, but it seems – even though he’s not actually called George Armstong – anyone with the name Custer should maybe not be in Army public relations.

MORE cluelessness in this week’s Media column about the OJ confession fiasco.
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=4682&IssueNum=182

I WAS probably a tad clueless myself when, in Wednesday’s post, I failed to explain how Barack Obama’s full name really is Barack Hussein Obama, but that my ire was at the repugnant glee with which the Republican’s kept using it.

I WOULD ALSO recommend that everyone read Keith Olbermann’s special comment on the loathsome Newt Gingrich, Free Speech, and how Gingrich seems to playing with the fantasy of his being declared Evil Dictator of American by popular acclaim.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15976642/

The secret words are Sitting Bull

"This is your brain on zen."

A MESSAGE FROM OUR FUHRER...
"NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim November 30, 2006, as National Methamphetamine Awareness Day. I call upon the people of the United States to observe this day with appropriate programs and activities.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-seventh day of November, in the year of our Lord two thousand six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-first.
GEORGE W. BUSH"

(I swear this is absolutely genuine, plus the dumb bastard only gave us two days notice and I don't even have the decorations up!)

The secret word is Tweak

I MAY BE WATCHING TOO MUCH TV, BUT...
Twice today, I noticed Republican talking heads calling Barack Obama "Barack Hussein Obama" with a definite Karl Rove flourish on the Hussein, just to make him sound-like some dangerous threatening raghead. Interesting they should start putting the poison in so early. They are clearly frightened well in advance by Obama’s smarts and charisma. I swear to my soul that he’s the boy. Maybe Obama v Giuliani. Now that would a real Don King matchup.

The secret word is Distortion

"Ever have days when your brain feels like this?"

PEACE IN OUR TIME
Some girl, Miss Templeton, and a couple of others forwarded this story from Associated Press
"A homeowners association in southwestern Colorado has threatened to fine a resident $25 a day until she removes a Christmas wreath with a peace sign that some say is an anti-Iraq war protest or a symbol of Satan. Some residents who have complained have children serving in Iraq, said Bob Kearns, president of the Loma Linda Homeowners Association in Pagosa Springs. He said some residents have also believed it was a symbol of Satan. Three or four residents complained, he said. "Somebody could put up signs that say drop bombs on Iraq. If you let one go up you have to let them all go up," he said in a telephone interview Sunday. Lisa Jensen said she wasn't thinking of the war when she hung the wreath. She said, "Peace is way bigger than not being at war. This is a spiritual thing. "Jensen, a past association president, calculates the fines will cost her about $1,000, and doubts they will be able to make her pay. But she said she's not going to take it down until after Christmas. "Now that it has come to this I feel I can't get bullied," she said. "What if they don't like my Santa Claus." The association in this 200-home subdivision 270 miles southwest of Denver has sent a letter to her saying that residents were offended by the sign and the board "will not allow signs, flags etc. that can be considered divisive."
The subdivision's rules say no signs, billboards or advertising are permitted without the consent of the architectural control committee. Kearns ordered the committee to require Jensen to remove the wreath, but members refused after concluding that it was merely a seasonal symbol that didn't say anything. Kearns fired all five committee members."

What also boggles my mind is that the AP reporter instinctively operates within these acrid hicks levels of ignorance. "He said some residents have also believed it was a symbol of Satan." But only because some residents were too fucking pig-uninformed to be aware of any facts, even though the history of the so-called "peace sign" is very well documented. It was designed by Gerald Holton, a graphic designer from the Royal College of Art, in the late 1950s for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. It's based on the semaphore signals for N & D enclosed in a circle, and, of course, there's the vague look of a stylized rocket/bomb with fins. Satan wasn't even at the meeting. Later it was coopted by hippies, various marketing and merchandize organizations, and now the Gap.

But if you really want to get down to double unplus-good, sick and twisted shit, try this genius from the Christian Resource Center of Bermuda...
http://www.nisbett.com/symbols/peace_sign.htm

The very secret word is Love

MEANWHILE...
Although I do not even want to hear the name Michael Richards (unless he’s maybe eaten by sharks) I do worry that loopy self-promoting, legal vulture-hack Gloria Allred seems to believe there is a basis in law for an audience member to sue the performer if the performance causes them pain or discomfort. So there goes the entire function of art, not to mention my career.

LET THEM EAT CAKE!
That’s right neighbors. No one in America is hungry any more.
The Orwellians in the Bush administration have decided to no longer use the word "hunger" to describe the 35 million Americans -- that's 12 percent of the population -- who aren't always sure where their next meal is coming from. Instead, the poor people formerly known as the hungry will now be referred to as people experiencing "very low food security."
Of course, according to the USDA, which measures Americans' access to food, this has nothing to do with trying to sugarcoat the disgraceful reality of 35 million people not being able to put food on the table in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. It's all about accuracy. Hunger, you see, is actually the byproduct of being "food insecure" and thus harder to precisely measure. In the words of a USDA advisory panel, hunger "should refer to a potential consequence of food insecurity that, because of prolonged, involuntary lack of food, results in discomfort, illness, weakness, or pain that goes beyond the usual uneasy sensation."

JFK WON’T GO WAY.
Indeed, neither will either of the Kennedy Brothers. And neither they should, if only as a Camelot reminder of how far the Real Bastards in Power will go when they feel something might be taken away from them. The end of November always brings it around, I guess for those of us who are old enough to remember, the chill of what went down – the shots, and the lies, and the excuses for the next war to come – and the melancholy of what might have been. But it goes further. The knowledge is impossible to shake that, although we undoubtedly have the all components of Utopia, vicious greed and blind stupidity always right there prevent the vision ever being assembled and made to function.

The secret word is Yesterday

HAPPY THANKSGIVING Y'ALL

(pic supplied by MrMR)

"I’m still the patsy"

AND HOW CAN WE PREPARE FOR THANKSGIVING WITHOUT ALSO RECALLING...
that this is the forty-third anniversary of the killing of JFK? Which, for my money, was the start of the current 20th/21st century shit cycle

BUT CHEER UP, HERE ARE SOME PROMISED LINKS...
Sabrina sends bit how no one will be reading in 2025...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14823087/GT1/8717/

From Valerie on how life on Earth originated elsewhere...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6146292.stm

And a great pitce of film from Doug the Bass who remarks, "I think it was Gore Vidal who said "having no talent is no longer enough...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzqumbhfxRo

And here are the lyrics of one generally accepted version of the song "Stagolee" which I reproduce just because HCB sent it...
I was standin' on the corner
When I heard my bulldog bark;
He was barkin' at the two mens
ho gamblin' in the dark.
It was Stagolee and Billy,
Two men who gamble' late,
Stagolee throw seven,
Billy swore that he throwed eight.
Stagolee told Billy,
"I can't let you go with that;
You have won my money
And my brand new Stetson hat."
Stagolee went home,
And got his forty-four,
Says, "I'm goin' to the bar room,
To pay the debt I owe."
Stagolee went to the bar room,
Stood four feet from the door
Didn't nobody know when he
Pulled his forty-four.
Stagolee found Billy,
"Oh please don't take my life!
I got three little children,
And a very sick little wife."
Stagolee shot Billy,
Oh he shot that boy so fas'
That the bullet came through him,
And broke my window glass.
Some folks don't believe,
Oh Lord that Billy dead
You don't believe he gone,
Jus' look what a hole in his head.

And, with those last two lines, we kinda get back to JFK

I suppose the secret word is Gobble

Robert Altman -- RIP

"It’s Micky, darling. I haven’t been gone that long."

DRAINED BY THE CONSIDERATIONS OF COMMERCE, I MANAGED TO FIND MY WAY BACK
After one final 27 hour end-run that left me hardly able to tell if it was Saturday or quarter to three on Venus, I finally hung up my guns on the commercial fix-up project that has demanded so much of my time, concentration and literary heavy lifting to temporary abeyance of so much else including Doc40. And without a single cigarette. (Although doubtless emails will arrive from a copy editor who has either observed my genuine errors or is at least justifying his or her existence. And you all know how I can make errors when I’m excited or tired. Thimk about it it.) Thus – to paraphrase the Venerable Old Dylan, I am now wholly totally free to do anything I wish to do but die, which leaves me simultaneously both excited and daunted. It’s like the final phase of Let’s Make A Deal. Wadda ya want, Doc? Door #1? Door #2? or Door #3? In response to mighty cosmic Monty Hall, I cry gimmee all three, motherfucker. Even the one with the goddamned goat. Because, the time ain’t tall if on time you depend. Too much business is bad for you baby (now where the fuck did that come from? Moby Grape?") and I know that the only hope of salvation is to let the consciousness stream, and hope some kind person shows up with the money and a bucket. Music in the cafes at night and revolution on the stairs? The privateer Santa Anna whispers in my sleeping ear. Oh, dear me, yessss my precioussss. Less would scarcely be worthy. Instinct rides me to quest into the abyss, and plumb the fun of the unknown lightning. Nicola Tesla, rescue me! (And, oh yeah, I’m about to start infusing my own absinthe. Figure that’s the only way to get it up the full metropagan emerald vision-strength.)
So, over the next few days I gotta take a lotta baths and, between naps, catch up with all the links and gags and pointers to subversion that have backed up while I was plying the weaver’s trade. And also give my word as a gentleman, I’ll write the final episode of the Yancey Slide serial. And make it really good.

So the secret word is Swashbuckling

And now let’s get on with it, he muttered to himself, doggedly groping for his Katana .

"Yeah right. Free labor. Even more cost effective than cheap labor. Up the IWW!"

ALTHOUGH THIS I S NOT TO SAY THAT I’M NOT KEEPING A HIGHLY WATCHFUL EYE ON THE REPUBLICANS
Because if all those sons of bitches just keep on positioning themselves for the constant election and doing their best to fuck with any practical solutions, we are in unthinkable trouble.
It’s going to take a whole mess of finesse to get out of Iraq with quantumizing the chaos, and starting a full scale Sunni, Shi-ite red-hot jihad plus the fall of the House of Saud, all over what’s left of the oil. This is trickier than 1914, and with a whole lot more fire power. Especially if it really starts to turn sour, because then it will become increasingly hard to persuade the Israelis to keep their nukes holstered. The room’s full of gasoline and these sonsofbitches are playing flick the Zippo. Let’s just repeal the 22nd amendment and let Bill fucking Clinton run in ‘08 because that might at least give us a whisper of a prayer of a chance.

My CityBeat election night tale is still worth a read...

http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=4623&IssueNum=180

UPDATE
I HAVEN’T HAD A FUCKING CIGARETTE FOR FOUR WEEKS AND I’M PRETTY DAMNED PLEASED WITH MYSELF. (Hardly doing well in the area of trashy erotic shoes, however.)

I continue to work relentlessly on this hired-gun book project like a character in Johnny Cash song, but -- primarily by not sleeping -- I managed my last shot of loathing at Bush before the election. Do read it. It’s loaded with classic science fiction allusions.
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=4548&IssueNum=178

And also a riff on attack ads.
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=4554&IssueNum=178

I swear Doc40 will be back to normal as soon as possible. If only because I like doing it.

The secret words are Salt Mine

TO WRITE IS A HARD TASKMISTRESS, FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS
I feel like I’m letting everyone down by being absent from the blog just when GWB cancelled habeas corpus and started changing Republic to Empire. I can only tell you that I am up to my ass in survival non-fiction and it may well stay that way for week or more, but I swear I’ll be back in full force as soon as I get out from under the workload.

For those who ate interested, I have not smoked a cigarette now in three weeks.

I would however draw your attention to Iggy’s gig contract rider that Doug the Bass sent over.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1004061iggypop1.html

There are also a who bunch of YouTube recommendations that I haven’t had a chance to look at yet

The secret word is Inundated.

MEANWHILE
A paparazzi snaps a bag of grass in Paris Hilton’s handbag. Does this mean she's not really that stupid -- just high as a kite?

The secret word is Rizla

IRRATIONALLY HAPPY
I find myself irrationally happy that the big old slow and obsolete comments board over on the right has now passed the 1000 mark. I never believed it would ever last that long. And how better to pass its millennium with someone (probably a hired troll of the RNC) calling me a "dumb piece of shit"? (And then I confirm it by making a typo in my response.)

And while we’re in the realm of error, clowns and Republicans, I noticed that GWB has declared two things unacceptable in the last week or so. One was a North Korean atom bomb and the other was "to think".

The secret word is Overworked

CRYPTIQUE – Smart witch needed.

But put your shirt on, sweetie. It might make you a bit more plausible.

I FINALLY MANAGED TO TEAR MYSELF AWAY
Brothers and sisters, I not only managed to drag myself away from this monster and still ongoing project that has been swamping all of my sober, non-TV time, but I have now not smoked a cigarette in seven days, and although this blog is brief, at least its here, and I hope I can get back onto a more regular Doc40 schedule as soon as possible. Fortunately there’s a bunch of stuff to read in the new edition of LA CityBeat. I have a few comments on the Bill Clinton/Chris Wallace faceoff...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=4433&IssueNum=174
And as if that wasn’t enough, I also have something of a rant about how classic rock ruined radio. (Which has already elicited a very complimentary note from Sirius DJ Meg Griffin.)
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=4423&IssueNum=174
Plus there’s a story about rock novels by Anthony Miller which is illustrated with a very bizarre picture of me circa 1970.
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=4432&IssueNum=174

GOOD NEWS! DOPE CAN SAVE YOUR BRAIN
The following was sent by the lovely Valerie (and is good news for me, since my mother died of Alzheimer’s just shy of two years ago and, while no stranger to dementia, one can’t help wondering if one has the gene.)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Good news for aging hippies: smoking pot may stave off Alzheimer's disease. New research shows that the active ingredient in marijuana may prevent the progression of the disease by preserving levels of an important neurotransmitter that allows the brain to function. Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in California found that marijuana's active ingredient, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, can prevent the neurotransmitter acetylcholine from breaking down more effectively than commercially marketed drugs. THC is also more effective at blocking clumps of protein that can inhibit memory and cognition in Alzheimer's patients, the researchers reported in the journal Molecular Pharmaceutics. The researchers said their discovery could lead to more effective drug treatment for Alzheimer's, the leading cause of dementia among the elderly. Those afflicted with Alzheimer's suffer from memory loss, impaired decision-making, and diminished language and movement skills. The ultimate cause of the disease is unknown, though it is believed to be hereditary. Marijuana is used to relieve glaucoma and can help reduce side effects from cancer and AIDS treatment. Possessing marijuana for recreational use is illegal in many parts of the world, including the United States, though some states allow possession for medical purposes.

The secret word is Zoso

STILL HARD AT IT, BUT I THOUGHT THIS WAS WORTHY OF SOME CONSIDERATION

(from munz)

I AM HIDEOUSLY BUSY RIGHT NOW, BUT JUST SO YOU KNOW I'M STILL THINKING OF YOU, HERE'S A CLIP OF TORTOISES FUCKING

ALL CRAFT WARNING!
STEER CLEAR OF THE MONKEY PLANET
When Doug the Bass sent over the following excellent piece of film, I couldn’t help but recall a piece I wrote years ago for the old LA Reader, and since right now I’m up to my ass in a fairly arduous writing job, I decided to re-publish it for your general amuse ment.
Watch the clip – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a15KgyXBX24

Then read the story

BIG TROUBLE ON THE MONKEY PLANET
The last time that I was abducted by aliens, I returned with the distinct impression that they were close to the end of their extra-terrestrial rope with the Third Stone from the Sun and, in particular, its overdeveloped, tool using, simian inhabitants. Namely us -- the human race. When one of those lipless little grey suckers with the bald heads and huge guppy eyes came up to me, right there in the main abductee reception area, a charmless place not unlike Ontario airport with an added dimension, and wanted to know "when the hell are you Earth monkeys going to stop breeding yourselves into extinction", I had to accept the fact that we may not be the most admired lifeform in this neck of the quadrant.
I rarely admit my abduction experiences. Not so much because I'm embarrassed by them. It's more that I've never really felt that my encounters had been significantly productive. I tended to talk about them rather more when I lived in New York. I discovered that, on 14th Street, if you told the guy on the next bar stool that you were an UFO abductee, he would more than likely dismiss you as crazy, but mercifully harmless. Try the same thing at a party in Venice and they'll not only totally believe you but proceed to recount their own adventures in space, usually centering on intrusive alien surgical procedures, often of a gynecological nature. Some will even give you the number of a therapeutic support group.
It was during the initial medical examination that the ETs started to discover that I was hardly the experimental subject of their collective dreams. I was first abducted at a time when I was drinking even more heavily than usual. It solved the missing time problem, but my blood alcohol level spiked out and created chaos butterflies in their nano-stats. Even worse, my chromosomes had been so customized by the quantities of LSD 25 that I'd consumed during an earlier bout of destructive self exploration, that I was pretty much useless as a source of genetic material, unless, of course, someone or something wanted to breed a race of nappy haired tadpoles with nasty imaginations. Rumors also circulated that, when particularly fucked up, I would show a less than appropriate affection for the rectal probe.
In terms of the normal conventions of Earth/alien interaction, I pretty much proved myself a social incompetent, and I would never have been abducted again had the implant not already been in the small of my back, just to the left of my spine. This means I'm solidly on the tracking computer, and can be hauled up for a bogus 20 thousand light year service at any time, and there isn't a damn thing that I or any other bio-entity can do about it. I don't want to see them, they don't want to see me, but, like junk mail and unwanted relatives, they just keep coming around.
This was surely the reason that, after the third routine beam up, I was shuffled aside to hold gentlemanly if sometimes oblique conversations with Qua/D/Thrrof, the discursive focus of a being, essentially a form of highly intelligent yeast, about nine thousand miles long and one molecule thick, that makes its home in a loose orbit around Jupiter. Qua/D/Thrrof was the first alien to make crystal clear what I'd already suspected. As far as the rest of the inhabitants of the viable cluster are concerned, here on the Monkey Planet, (as Earth is commonly known) we are in big trouble. That's why, even after twenty thousand years, we still haven't emerged from the quarantine phase as laid down in the Prime Directive. (He also confirmed how Tom Tomorrow's theory about the Republican Party and Rush Limbaugh being a secret alien test of human stupidity is uncannily on the money.)
Like most foreigners, Qua/D/Thrrof blames a considerable proportion of Monkey Planet woes to the affluent of the United States. (Or, as they call them, The Resource Gobblers.) In our most recent conversation, he expressed trepidation over how 2000 AD is a Presidential election year, and the escalating horror of the phenomenon might, this time round, actually push us over into a collective, species-wide, greed-barking psychosis.
"I don't know why you don't just get rid of democracy." Qua/D/Thrrof has a certain problem gasping concepts like the rights of the individual, coming as he does from a collective consciousness of over two billion component facets. He's good, however, at accepting nuances like how election finance reform is fundamentally impossible because the television stations end up with the lion's share of the bucks, and around election time, politics yields more ad revenue than headache remedies, phone sex and psychic hotlines combined.
"Just get rid of television." Even other passing aliens realized that Qua/D/Thrrof was elaborately out of touch with this remark. A small green person with tentacles and huge ears sadly shook what approximated for a head. "It's only television that keeps them from killing each other more than they already do. If television hadn't been introduced in the fifties, they'd be into mechanized erotic cannibalism by now. You know what the monkeys are like when you leave them to their own devices."
Another received snippet of intergalactic gossip is that our Earth, despite its quarantine, is getting the reputation as a clandestine hangout of vermin and lowlife. High on the list are the crew of retard hot rodders and nova scum from Zeta Reticuli who've been putting on the lightshows out at Area 51, just north of Las Vegas, and sending the conspiracy paranoids into uproar. It would seem that these alien Hells Angels have managed to have convinced the US military that they are the Supreme Authority in the Universe, rather than the malicious honky tonk sweepings of a hundred parasecs, and now have total run of the Pentagon.
What really worries Qua/D/Thrrof, however, is our galloping overpopulation. "Surest way to foul up a perfectly good planet. You either got to stop breeding or start dying." Qua/D/Thrrof is especially pissed at the Catholic Church and their attitudes to population control. As he puts it "Jesus was one of ours in the first place. It's kinda embarrassing."
Another serious consideration would seem to be that many aliens feel that our Earthling stupidity is playing directly into the hands of some galactic political hard liners. Apparently the stampede to the bellicose right is not confined to only this solar system. An entire multi-species mindset would be just as happy to fire up the Great Planet Fryer and turn this whole messy sphere that we call home into one vast, fused, green glass Christmas Tree ornament. Seemingly they view Earth as something akin to a planetary welfare case.
Like they say on the X-Files. "The truth is out there." Or at least some approximation of it.
Written in 1996. First published in 1996 in The Los Angeles Reader as a column in the "Panic In The Year Zero" series.

The secret word is Banana

ALSO fidcen sent over the full text of Hugo Chavez speech to the UN. And I was a amused to note that a number of talking heads on MSNBC seemed to think that reference to the Satanic smell of sulphur was a fart joke. Do we live in South Park?
http://www.counterpunch.org/chavez09202006.html

Bumpersticker lifted from Valley Boy

http://www.valleyboy.net/

THANK WHATEVER DEITY YOU FAVOR IT’S FUCKING FRIDAY
Because I for one have had more then enough of this week, what with all the unseemly Sept 11th clamor, our incoherent President all over the media selling his bloody war, the same media drooling over Debra Lafave, no more Deadwood, my own constant craving for nicotine, an importunate feline, the fact that I am neither making love nor expecting rain, plus a bunch of other nasty interior phantasms that bedevil my mind, but are far too personal and maybe revealing to describe. On the plus side, I have obtained a copy of ol’ Bob Dylan’s new blues record and like it a whole lot, but that’s not a great deal to make up for the rest of the shit.

In would also draw regular readers attention to the old comments board up on the right ("comments (977)" just above the crow logo) which seems sadly neglected. Okay so it’s cranky, ancient, and hard to scroll, slow to load – but who isn’t these days, dahling. It used to be a lot of fun and I’d sure like to see it make it to 1000.

Among my peers, the lovely Natalie Nichols has a column in LA CityBeat that is both witty and thought provoking, although some of the boys don’t get the joke...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=4341&IssueNum=171

And inebriate, occasional Deviant and former Texas Jewboy Michael Simmons has started writing for HuffPo...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-simmons/wayne-coe-is-a-scream_b_29383.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-simmons/the-us-vs-john-len_b_29446.html

The cats in the picture came from http://www.hotheadpaisan.com/ (sent by some girl)

And the secret word is (now nostalgically) Cocksucker

ANN RICHARDS – RIP

AND TO MAKE MATTERS MORE COMPLICATED, SOMEONE LISTENED!

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION
On the first of this month, I exhorted everyone to read Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC Countdown editorial, and damn me, but I’m only doing it again. Today Olbermann took special time to castigate Bush’s 9/11 antics, and the wretched little ABC/Disney propaganda miniseries that concluded tonight. In conclusion he even went to so far as to cite Rod Serling. Which ain’t bad for cable news....
"This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney's continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things.
And long ago, a series called "The Twilight Zone" broadcast a riveting episode entitled "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."
In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm. Suddenly his car -- and only his car -- starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man's lights go on. As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced. An "alien" is shot -- but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help. The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials are seen manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there's no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it's themselves."
And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight: "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men.
"For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own -- for the children, and the children yet unborn."
For the whole bit...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/

The secret word is Cornfield

THE TWILIGHT ZONE IS ESPECIALLY APT IN THIS CONTEXT AS ALL THE MANUFACTURED 9/11 SPIN AND HOO-HA HAS ONLY SERVED TO DISGUISE THE NEWS THAT CAME WITH YESTERDAYS WASHINGTON POST THAT THE WAR ISN’T ONLY FUCKed UP, BUT POSSIBLY BEING LOST...
"The chief of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq recently filed an unusual secret report concluding that the prospects for securing that country's western Anbar province are dim and that there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there.
The officials described Col. Pete Devlin's classified assessment of the dire state of Anbar as the first time that a senior U.S. military officer has filed so negative a report from Iraq. "We haven't been defeated militarily but we have been defeated politically -- and that's where wars are won and lost."

Wars, I might add that will have resonances that could last for generations, if not centuries. If we have centuries.

OTHER LINKS...
Valleyboy makes a point about James Woods new TV series...
http://www.valleyboy.net/

While blu sends a link to someone who is very concerned about contrails...
http://www.surfingtheapocalypse.com/conchem.html

And shane flipside just has to be read to be believed...
http://shaneshit.blogspot.com/

BUT THERE ARE OTHER WAYS OF LOOKING AT IT...

(sent by the fabulous Valerie)

I refuse to post a picture of the twin towers burning. Today is September 11th. It is the anniversary of the attack on New York City in 2001, and also the 1973 death of Salvador Allende and the overthrow of legally elected government in Chile by a fascist military junta backed by the Nixon Administration and the CIA. I have heard much distressing blather about the one and nothing about the other, except the comment below. I figure I’ll do my own remembering in private.

The secret word is Tears

AND PEOPLE WHO KNOW DON’T VOTE THEM INTO PUBLIC OFFICE BECAUSE THE WHORES IN WASHINGTON TRANSMIT FAR WORSE CONTAGIONS THAT SYPHILIS AND GONORRHEA. (This has been a public service announcement.)

So where do we start this fine Sunday? How about the fact that...
THE AMAZON APPEARS TO BE DYING
(That’s the river. Not the dot com.)
As in this story from New Zealand that claims "the consequences would be awesome. The wet Amazon Basin would turn to dry savannah at best, desert at worst. This would cause much of the world to become hotter and drier. In the long term, it could send global warming out of control, eventually making the world uninhabitable.At one point in the western Brazilian state of Acre, the world's biggest river shrank so far that it was possible to walk across it. Millions of fish died, and thousands of communities whose only transport was by water were stranded. And the drying forest caught fire; in September, satellite camera images showed 73,000 blazes in the basin." For the whole horrible and almost unnoticed story –
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/print.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10392615

(pic by Chris Welch)

Meanwhile back on TV...
SO REPUBLICANS ARE FUCKING LIARS AND STILL SPOOKED BY BILL CLINTON? SO WHAT ELSE IS NEW?
Today I’m going to be doing my best not to watch the piece-of-shit ABC 9/11 miniseries that seems to be attempting to prove that the 2001 attack on New York was all Bill Clinton’s fault. Max Blumenthal did a bang up job following the money and the influence that made this rewrite of history possible, and how, bankrolled by Disney and the far right, the plot centers around the machinations of the despicable David Horovitz. Here’s the link...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/discover-the-secret-right_b_29015.html

Blumenthal did a great piece of joining the dots, but the way the left-ish media responded has me kinda worried. Isn’t there a tactical thinker – or even a poker player – in the while mess of them. Last week, Bush was practically on the ropes and babbling, and the left should have just been pounding him in the ribs with Katrina and the War. The ABC show would most likely netted lame to lousy ratings, but then this furor-of-the-week blew up, and the entire bloody liberal media drops everything and starts defending Ol’ Bill like it was 1999. The net result is more pointless noise. Bush, Rummy and the rest get a breathing space, and ABC gets a shitload of free promo, adding profit to propaganda. I suspect the only real way to neutralize the likes of Horowitz, Coulter, Hitchens etc., is to ignore them. By responding, we guarantee their face time. It's so damned tempting to go after these lying scum fucks, but its also a terrible waste of resources and playing into their game. If I was rich, I'd commission a highly plausible, CGI porno of Bush and Condi in BDSM flagrante and let that sucker loose on YouTube. Alas though... (This all started off a note to LA CityBeat Editor Steve Appleford, but then kinda grew.)

The secret word is Remote.

ABOUT FUCKING TIME
After only a sixteen month wait, someone has finally posted something new on the Supermodels Personals site. Whoever writes it, the shit is funny, and as irascible Uncle Lou long ago instructed us – "first thing you learn is that you’ve always got to wait."
http://supermodelpersonals.blogspot.com/

AND ON OTHER LINKS
Shane has sent this link to a fascinating but alarmingly dense treatise on paradox...
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n17/jame02_.html

Gawker tells how, on the Animal Farm that is now the alt press, Mike Lacey’s new Village Voice has just dispatched Bob Christgau to the glue factory.
http://www.gawker.com/news/village-voice/the-dean-is-dead-198022.php

Hipspinster is blogging up a storm.
http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/

I would also have a rant for you to read on the Katrina and 9/11 "anniversaries", except the fucking LA CityBeat website (which I innocently hoped would one day join the 21st century, but...) is currently down. (Repeat Lou Reed quote. Fade to black.)

The secret word is Up

FLICKER-FLASH-POW: LATER EDIT
The LACB site is up again so here's the column...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=4303&IssueNum=170

(The photo is from Jon and we figure it's an industrial action by Brazilian miners)