WAY PAST TIME TO WISE UP

From Salon…
"In 2001, Portugal became the only EU-member state to decriminalize drugs, a distinction which continues through to the present. Last year, working with the Cato Institute, I went to that country in order to research the effects of the decriminalization law (which applies to all substances, including cocaine and heroin) and to interview both Portuguese and EU drug policy officials and analysts (the central EU drug policy monitoring agency is, by coincidence, based in Lisbon). Evaluating the policy strictly from an empirical perspective, decriminalization has been an unquestionable success, leading to improvements in virtually every relevant category and enabling Portugal to manage drug-related problems (and drug usage rates) far better than most Western nations that continue to treat adult drug consumption as a criminal offense."

Even with Obama bringing a measure of sanity to the power structure, so much arrant nonsense is still being talked about drug policy that I feel my head starting to explode. Everyone seems to forget that the vast profits in drug trafficking, that fund so much global mayhem, are created the very illegality of the product. Make it legal and they vanish. Drug legalization in the USA and Europe could be a domestic tax bonanza, and even, as an instrument of foreign policy, could stabilize both Afghanistan and Mexico. I have so much to write about all this that my other head wants to explode. But whether it will ever be published in this time of media crisis is a whole other matter.

The secret word is 4261747368697421

OR YOU COULD THROW TOMATOES AT AIG

There’s even a touch of Jackson Pollack creativity about it. (Click here)

OH NO NOT BONO

Dave Marsh has posted a searing attack on Bono on Counterpunch, which I’m linking, because I’ve never quite bought the idea of St. Bono, Savior of the Huddled Masses...

“Bono is no man of peace--he has yet to speak out against any war. Bono is part owner of Pandemic/Bioware, producers of Mercenaries 2, a video game which simulates an invasion of Venezuela. Last year Bono met with US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to discuss plans to set up a new U.S. military command for Africa. Forbes, the magazine Bono co-owns, constantly beats the drums for war (Bono says he was attracted to the magazine because it has a “consistent philosophy”).” (Click here for the whole tirade.)

WARNING!

“We have you on radar. Identify yourself or we scramble our fighters.”

A FRIDAY PICTURE SHOW

It’s Friday (TGIF) and here’s a special program of stunning videos for your amusement. We have…

EXTREME SHEEP LED ART (Send by Noudela) Click here

SHORT WITH BETTIE PAGE Click here

INTERMISSION (Don’t miss this!) Click here

THE CAT HOUSE ON THE KING (Send by Aeswiren) Click here

And all this reminds me that one day I swear I will bring Doctube up to speed.

AND TALKING OF THINGS I HAVEN’T DONE

Regular readers will know that I have always dreamed of creating a Doc40 secret decoder ring. I once got as far as getting a quote from a manufacturer, but the minimum order was beyond our means. Now we have a this damned economy, the dream retreats further. We do, however, still have the virtual secret decoder ring with which to amuse ourselves. And here’s the secret message…

546f206563686f2054686520477261746566756c
20446561642c20224f6e6520776179206f722061
6e6f746865722e2054686973207374617276696e
67277320676f7420746f20676976652e22

(All you have to do is copy the message, click on the site, clear the box, paste the message into the box, and hit “decode.”)

The secret word is 44656d656e746961

OUR WHACKY UNCLE BILL

Uncle Bill blends with the crowd by shifting the film in the camera. It’s a trick he learned from Victor Renquist who never likes to be photographed.

GOODBYE DUBAI

“Former boomtown Dubai has suffered a sharp downturn in its property market, where prices could fall almost 40 percent this year according to a Reuters poll this week. Standard and Poor's has said Dubai's economy could shrink 2-4 percent in 2009.”

Is it unfair to feel a measure of pleasure at the news that the formerly untouchable Emerald City of the Gulf oil sheiks and their corporate henchmen is suffering – at least in some degree – the pain and uncertainty that currently afflicts the rest of us? Hell no. I’m only human. I need something to mitigate my anger and discomfort after I leaned earlier that George W(TF?) Bush has been given a $7 million advance for a book by Random House, while serious and talented writers can hardly get themselves arrested as the corporate world destroys both journalism and literature.

…so disposable, in fact, that hundreds of them are being laid off, let go, or taking horrendous pay cuts every week.

The secret word is Mutiny

BUT KOWALSKI SEZ…

“I jump for joy. It’s 1970, I’m full of speed, and driving a Dodge Challenger R/T from Denver to San Francisco at maximum warp.”

MO' BOB

At risk of going irredeemably retro, the subject of Bob Dylan has come up again. London Steve writes…

“I think we all have to accept by now that there's no way we can prevent all those songs we know and love being used in TV ads. But the real pisser is when they condense and conjoin songs so that the original verse/chorus structure is corrupted. Case in point is the new ad over here for the Co-op's fair-trade initiatives, which uses Bob's original Blowin' In The Wind. I guess Dylan thought this was a worthwhile cause, but I wonder if he knows what they've done to his song. The verse starts off, as it should, with "How many roads can a man walk down before you call him a man?/How many seas must a white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand?" All well and good, but then some stupid fucker has decided that "cannonballs fly until they're forever banned" doesn't fit the ad's sentiments - so they've arbitrarily stuck in the "mountain exist... until it is washed to the sea" line as the last line in this verse. So it doesn't rhyme, makes no sense and pisses the hell out of every Dylan fan who hears it.”

But, in another email, Steve wonders “I'm also not sure that Dylan gives a damn one way or the other (after all, he was happy to appear in that Victoria's Secret ad, though maybe the lure there was the scantily clad woman).”

In addition, when I noted on Face Book that “The worst thing about hard times is that they can demand undignified solutions.” Valerie sent us a 1994 clip of Bob performing Dignity (in a polka dot shirt.) Click here.

The secret word is Crumb

Natasha Richardson -- RIP

HAVE A SATISFACTORY ST. PATRICK’S DAY

Blessed are the waters of the Liffey

The secret word is Fenian

THE ADVENTURES OF MARILYN (Part 2134)

In which Marilyn finds herself both outraged and distressed. Without the slightest hint of what might be coming or any suggestion of transition, she materializes seated on a bed in a less-than-luxury hotel room, next to a cyborg, drag-queen replicant of Jane Russell. The environment is, of course, total illusion, and she has no doubt that this is the work of the lizard thugees from Zeta Reticuli, but she also has no clue how to reverse the process and get the hell out of there. It wasn’t by any means the first time that she had been abducted by aliens, but the lizard thugees, who usually liked to gloat from behind the rectal probe, are refusing to show themselves, and that is much more disturbing.

(Pic supplied by Valerie)

(THE ADVENTURES OF MARILYN NOW HAS IT’S OWN PAGE SO THE WHOLE THING CAN BE READ WITHOUT SCROLLING. CLICK HERE)

SUNDAY, AND TOYS MANIFEST THEMSELVES.

Playmobile – who brought us the airport security action toy (see Doc40 February 5th) – also wants to sell the kids the concept of a private jet. Why do I think this is a Bush-era idea very seriously past it’s time.

The secret word is Yesterday

THE ROLL CALL OF WEIRD COMICS GROWS LONGER

And just the other day, I received a Barbie Collectors’ Catalogue in the mail, which surprised and confused me, and had me wondering how I got on the mailing list, because I never believed I was that kind of person.