A WMD OF OUR OWN?

Can I get it on Amazon?

A NEW DAY DAWNING?

By way of a postscript to yesterday’s post, President Obama, at a meeting of what the media call “lawmakers”, reportedly put the Republicans in their place with just two words. “I won.”

Munz also sent us an encouraging report from Entertainment Weekly that Obama not only carries an iPod but has it loaded with Dylan, Springsteen, the Grateful Dead and “A lot of Coltrane, a lot of Miles Davis, a lot of Charlie Parker.”

But less encouraging are reports are circulating that Obama may have bowed in some degree to Republican pressure, and that too much of the $800 billion stimulus package will be devoted to tax cuts – which do nothing for the growing army of unemployed – instead of the massive FDR-style public works programs that were promised.

The secret initials are BHO

THE RIGHT WON’T READ THE WRITING ON THE WALL

…BEFORE THEY EAT YOU.

With Obama only in power for 48 hours, the sorry resistance of the right was rallied by radio clown Rush Limbaugh who bluntly announced he devoutly desired the Obama administration to utterly fail. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Republican Senators and Congresspersons scurried to media-cams, weeping, moaning, bleating, snarling, complaining, and generally behaving as though they weren’t a political party whose best ideas were the wit and wisdom of Joe the Plumber and Palin for president. As the country spirals down to random multiple doom, they seem bent on allowing disaster to happen if the remedy for disaster is anything but their remedy. And the Republican remedy is still wholly based on the corporate-friendly, free-market, greed-is-good, pander-to-the-rich ideology that tipped us into the whole mess in the first place. Having pissed away the farm, the moderate right condemn deficit spending as a moral atrocity, while the really crazy are right back to calling Obama a godless socialist, and predicting that we’ll be overrun by crazy-homicidal Islamo-fascist terrorists by next Tuesday. (These people have the most horrible Hobbesian nightmares.) I hate to be so retro as to suggest Bob Dylan lines exist for every philosophic occasion, but, in this case it’s too apt and easy and just impossible to ignore...

“Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls”

Do I need to be so back-in-the-day as to go on? (But click)

And while all this is simmering, revisionist academics like Andrew Roberts, writing in the London Daily Telegraph (and brought to our attention by our pal Valis) are already attempting to rehabilitate the image of George Bush.

“In the avalanche of abuse and ridicule that we are witnessing in the media assessments of President Bush's legacy, there are factors that need to be borne in mind if we are to come to a judgment that is not warped by the kind of partisan hysteria that has characterised this issue on both sides of the Atlantic. The first is that history, by looking at the key facts rather than being distracted by the loud ambient noise of the 24-hour news cycle, will probably hand down a far more positive judgment on Mr Bush's presidency than the immediate, knee-jerk loathing of the American and European elites.” (Click here if you want to read the rest of the dementia.)

The secret word is Infantile

PROLETARIAT PINUP #4

“Come in kitty, but don’t forget that Karl Marx teaches how the human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.”

THIS BLOG IS STILL PROTECTED BY...

IS THIS THE MANSON FAMILY LIVE?

This video had been floating around in cyberspace along with the claim that it’s real live footage of the Manson Family breaking into and creepy-crawling a private home somewhere in Los Angeles. It does raise a bunch of questions including whether this kind of filming was technically possible back in 1969. Some people who’ve seen it swear it’s footage from an aborted movie, while others assert that it’s a total hoax. I found it on the weblog of Adam Gorightly (that also exhibits a excellent obsession with go-go dancers) and, still having a morbid fascination with all things Charlie, I present it for your consideration. Click here and make of it what you will.

The secret word is Rise

OUR WHACKY UNCLE BILL

Uncle Bill, still on the alien spacecraft, attempts to phone home.

WHO KNEW EVEL KNIEVEL HAD A LINE OF PHALLIC POPSICLES?

Are we getting a bit too retro round here? I’ll attempt to fix that tomorrow.

I HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH DISTORTED REALITY BUT THE IDEA OF LIVING ON A “GIANT COSMIC HOLOGRAM” IS A STRETCH

The divine Valerie sent us the following extraordinary report…
“For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it. According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into "grains", just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. "It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time," says Hogan.
If this doesn't blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: "If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram.”
Click here for the full story.

The secret word is Quantum

Danny Dill – RIP

GIT YER DOWNLOADS

Back in the early nineties, I recorded Gringo Madness with Henry Beck and John Collins, and we all had a splendid minimalist time going by the name of Tijuana Bible. Now I discover it’s a free download. Click here.

HERE WE GO -- MAKE IT SO, BRO!

The secret word is Inspire

TALKIN’ ‘BOUT MY C-C-CORPORATION

The original recording of “My Generation” by The Who is now a Pepsi commercial and getting heavy rotation in Inauguration news coverage. Doesn’t Pete have enough money? I am less than happy about this, both the selling of my memories and it’s symbolic role as an omen or portent.

GRAND OPENING

THE ADVENTURES OF MARILYN NOW HAS IT’S OWN PAGE SO THE WHOLE THING CAN BE READ WITHOUT SCROLLING. CLICK HERE, BUT DON’T WORRY, NEW EPISODES WILL CONTINUE TO POST FIRST ON DOC40.

THE ADVENTURES OF MARILYN (Part 1408)

In which Marilyn checks into the Leader Hotel. Her plan is to take a shower, then take a handful of Nembutal, chase them with a couple of martinis, and then repeat as needed. If her luck holds, she should be able to sleep for a week and let the Inter-dimensional Great Game go on very well without her. Unfortunately, just as soon as she steps out of the shower, the room turns disastrously Stephen King. The lights go out, the TV turns itself on, and appears to be self-aware and hostile. Clutching a towel, but maintaining her goddess equilibrium, she reaches for the phone. Even though it is now plugged into thin air, she speaks into the handset anyway because the TV refuses to show a program and is advancing in her direction. “Please organize me an extraction. And organize it right now. I think we have a cliff-hanger in progress.”

94% ACETATE

They don’t make shirts like this any more, which is probably just as well. Although I figure you could have hidden up to a half a kilo of cocaine in the that collar.

The secret word is Superfly

THIS MUST HAVE BEEN A VERY ODD COMIC BOOK

And extremely unhealthy.

PROLETARIAT PINUP #3

“Like Marx told us, anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex.”

THEY STILL DESIGN POSTERS LIKE THIS...

In response to last Thursday’s post about designer Rick Griffin, our pal Valis complained “I think you're overlooking some GREAT new designers of rock posters.” He sent me a bunch of contemporary examples like this one by Chuck Sperry that truly proved “the art of rock is very alive and well.”

The secret word is Corrected

Over the last few days, the right-hand side of Doc40 has sprouted a bunch of decals and widgets. Maybe I’ve given in to an infantile impulse to gussie things up in hard times, so I wonder if it’s a case of too many headlights on the scooter. How do you all feel about it?