ALL THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT

Valerie has sent a fascinating link to Project Censored – News The Didn’t Make The News. It’s long, but some of it really makes the blood run cold. “Project Censored have their new book and list for 2006-2007 (Still don´t understand why the books called "2008").”

The secret word is Smokescreen

LEVEL 5 TASTE WARNING! (Help is here!)

"Darlings, we're to save you from the Crocs. And we have heels!"

CHARLIE IS STILL TV's DARLING

The media constantly prove themselves such suckers for the combination of death, Hollywood, and the 20th century. This week MSNBC felt the need to drag out poor, 72 year-old Charlie Manson as the personification of psychedelic evil in a show luridly titled The Mind Of Manson. They didn’t even bother to wait until some kind of anniversary or parole hearing. In the interview segment, Charlie made the point that he was the squares’ scapegoat for all the stuff they hated and feared about the 1960s. And, to a degree, I have to sympathize with the guy. Beside Pol Pot, Charlie was a rank amateur. Click for some of Charlie’s recent rantings that MSNBC didn’t get. (By the way, Charlie will be next considered for parole in 2012. One more factor for a year already gathering unhealthy significance.)
Meanwhile, in this week’s LA CityBeat, my media column is all about the mass attempts to subvert Wikipedia and names the guilty.

The secret words plainly have to be Helter and Skelter

SURPRISE! This has to the Web Toy of the Week! (Thanks some girl)

LEVEL 5 TASTE WARNING!

THESE ARE CROCS. SHOOT THE WEARER ON SIGHT. TAKE NO PRISONERS. ACCEPT NO EXCUSES.

I TOLD YOU RONALD REAGAN WAS HAUNTING DOC 40

Yeah, Ron? And when the hell is America going to wise up to the fact that socialized medicine in one form or another is the only practical and civilized solution, unless a nation is so extreme and alarming in its moral bankruptcy that it is quite prepared to allow its poor to suffer and die (yes, die) while supporting the obscene profits of insurance companies, HMOs, the medical profession and pharmaceutical industry? Hey Ron, your family wasn’t financially devastated by your Alzheimer’s, but hundreds have been. To demonize functional, organized, single-payer healthcare as “socialist” is as fundamentally absurd as talking about a “socialized” army or “socialized” sanitation and highways. (Although Bush seems to be busy privatizing the bloody military.) Healthcare is simply another facet of national defense, or, if you like, the national infrastructure. If the idea of altruism bothers anyone, look at it as self-interest. Is capitalism simply too obtuse to realize that, if the poor have no health care, they represent, in the event of an epidemic (or pandemic) an untreated vulnerability vector that points the virus straight at the rich? I would go on at length except everyone seems to glaze over at this point in the rant, refusing to accept that, in the matter of healthcare, the USA willfully chooses to be a third-world hellhole for about 40 million of its citizens. (Pic from Tom Sutpen)

The secret word is Sick

And all this talk of health care provides, I guess, the thinnest pretext for running Elvis Costello and Steve Naïve playing “Pills & Soap”

Luciano Pavarotti – RIP

IT DOESN'T MATTER IF YOU'RE YOUNG OR OLD, YOU JUST HAVE TO BE A ROCK STAR

Thanks HCB

DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSIC'S # 25

It’s amazing what the media will come up with on a slow news day. In this instance MSNBC offered a stunning statistic. "Rock stars - notorious for their "crash and burn" lifestyles - really are more likely than other people to die before reaching old age. A study of more than 1,000 mainly British and North American artists, spanning the era from Elvis Presley to rapper Eminem, found they were two to three times more likely to suffer a premature death than the general population." I guess you can file it under "fast", "young", or "corpse." Unless you want to read more, let’s just end this barely relevant piece of data with Sid Vicious singing My Way

The secret room is 1009

PS The Los Angeles heatwave seems to have broken. I may soon be back to my normal irate self.

(Pic from HCB)

RANDOM TUESDAY

Mind deadened to a dull ach by the same layer of motionless heat, power blackouts, dull dissatisfaction, and, other scenarios shopping themselves in Hollywood as prequels to the apocalypse or beasts caged in the heart of the city (they should be so lucky) I offer nothing except a clip from Doug the Bass demonstrating just how barking crazy Ted Nugget really is and how he should be put out of his misery with one of his own guns.

The secret word is Craving

A ROMANTIC ON LABOR DAY

The translation is “Anarchist books are arms against fascism” (Thank you Valerie.) Which I allow to reassure me that I am not a fraud, because all I do is write or rant about the fight for what I fondly define as liberty. And also, with its Spanish Civil war !No pasaran! romance, the poster totally shames me into renewing my belief that the struggle will continue – must continue – no matter how distracted or diluted it may have become, because, very simply, this planet could be a fucking paradise if we would simply stop abusing and exploiting it and each other.

The secret words are If Only

And here’s the Clash doing “Spanish Bombs” – trite perhaps, but at least Joe always meant it.