BOB BUSTED, SQUEAKY RELEASED, AND A PENGUIN GETS A WETSUIT – YES, TGIF!

Yes my friends, no matter how far my boot heels do go wandering, the fabulous sixties seem never quite to go away. Bob Dylan is arrested in New Jersey by an idiot rookie cop for looking like a weird old bum, and Lynette Squeaky Fromme of Manson Family fame is released from jail just days after the fortieth anniversary of the Sharon Tate slaying. Meanwhile, back in the 21st century, the weather forecast on my computer claims LA will have 80 degree temperatures tomorrow and “smoke.” (As I live and hardly breathe.) I can only presume the smoke will have drifted south from the masive Lockheed wildfires in the Santa Cruz mountains. Meanwhile, in England, a penguin gets a wetsuit. Right now I’m at a loss to comment except that it’s just one more weekend and even William Gibson couldn’t have made this shit up. What can a poor boy do?

Click here for the Bob story.

Click here for the Squeaky story

Click here for the Penguin story

And click here for Bob doing a very strange, big shoulders, and maybe Christian version of “I Shall Be Released.”

(Big thanx to Wendy and Valerie.)

The secret word is Choke

IT'S AUGUST AND THE SQUID IS ON THE WING

Don't say the Doc didn't warn you!

SPACE OPERA

THEY’RE BACK

They were so 1990s. Armed to the teeth, and with an arcane and racist, weird Jesus/John Wayne-tilted and occasionally speedfreak philosophy, they waited for their Date with Destiny when the black helicopters of the New World Order would bring foreign UN troops – Turks and Africans – to herd them into Bill Clinton’s FEMA death camps, except they would fight to the last man for liberty and justice thus become heroes – and maybe martyrs – of the New American Revolution. Of course the Day never came and in the wake of 9-11, they kinda melted away as too crazy even for the madness of Bush’s reign. But now, as sanity struggles to reassert itself, they appear to be back, maybe with dubious corporate astro-turf ties, and buying ammunition.

"AP WASHINGTON - Federal counter-terror agents are probing the threat posed by resurgent domestic militia groups focusing their anti-government rage at President Obama, US officials told the Daily News Wednesday. Word of the feds' new push to get a grip on fringe extremists - who faded into the background after the 9/11 attacks - came as a new watchdog report warned militias are making a racist "comeback" thanks to Obama's election. "The face of the federal government today is black, and that has injected a whole new element into the militia movement," said Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s intelligence project, which issued the report.
The center's report said a rash of domestic terrorism cases recently, plus skyrocketing firearms and ammunition sales and an explosion of heated rhetoric by disgruntled militia types, is cause for worry. Some hate groups also are opposing Obama's health care reform efforts as a form of Socialism, a top federal agent said. After Obama's election, many counter-terror officials snickered at the idea of a militia comeback from the 1990s. Some still insist the threat is overblown - and local. But when Obama was sworn in, the FBI's Intelligence Directorate and Domestic Terrorism Section - which probes homegrown malcontents - asked joint-terrorism task forces nationwide to sniff around for hints of possible violent activity.
They are not spying on protected speech, officials emphasized. "We don't know if there's an increased threat," a law enforcement source said. There's legitimate concern," said an agent inside the Justice Department who laughed off the threat months ago. "You're seeing more paranoia by the militias." Author Ronald Kessler reports in his new book, "In the President's Secret Service," that threats against Obama are up 400% over threats to George W. Bush."

The secret word is Camouflage

Les Paul – RIP

DOLPHIN KILL

Aeswiren sent this review of the The Cove…

"The Cove" is a powerful and effective piece of advocacy filmmaking, but it's difficult to watch it without thinking of subtitles like "The Place Where Evil Dwells" or "The Little Town With the Really Big Secret." Which is no accident. "The Cove's" story of a quiet village in Japan that specializes in clandestine dolphin slaughter is quite consciously structured as a thriller by director Louie Psihoyos who won an audience award for it at Sundance. The film follows a group of determined environmental commandos as it attempts to document what goes on in a deceptively tranquil lagoon.” Click here for more.

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Cousin Arachnia was always drawn to show business.

AND REMEMBER...

...Elvis Death Day approaches.

IT'S UGLY – REALLY UGLY

"I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS. I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived."

The most serious goons in the right-wing renta-mob are now arriving armed. Insurance companies may be channelling covert funds to neo-Nazi militia groups for the option of disrupting healthcare debates with escalating violence. Unscrupulous media whores like Glenn Beck and Limbaugh hardly stop short of calling for political assassination and “don’t let the sun set on you, Obama.” Our pal Aeswiren writes “Proctor and Gamble just pulled their ads. Why are these other companies (Bowlfex, Nutrisystem, Gerber, UPS, Orbitz, Geico, Vonage, Ameritrade, and Verizon wireless) still subsidizing Glen Beck’s hate rants on Faux News?” Stephen Hawking is obliged to defend the UK National Health Service after a rabid capitalist editorial in the equally rabid Investor's Business Daily extended the Palin death panel fantasy and the propagated big-lie that socialized medicine is a Final Solution to Old People, with the statement "Scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless." But IBD appeared ignorant of the fact that Hawking is British born, educated, and cared for.

The insurance and pharm lobbyists, who are deliberately orchestrating the insanely accelerating fear-fest, seem to be working straight out of some old CIA manual for destabilizing small South American nations. This time, however, America is destabilizing itself, all in the name of corporate profits. Although, as I write this, Geico and some other advertisers have dumped Glenn Beck, the mainstream media are still playing to dark and dangerous demographics, and I have to constantly remind myself of the stupidity of the enemy to stop smelling coup d’etat on the air.

The secret word is Scary

FAMILY PORTRAIT #1

(From Ray on Facebook)

FAMILY PORTRAIT #2

SPACE OPERA

WORLDWIDE MAD DEADLY COMMUNIST GANGSTER COMPUTER GOD

During the last weekend’s Manson memory fest I was hipped to the madness of Francis E. Dec Esq. I hadn’t been aware that Dec was the author of the bizarre filmette that I posted last Thursday titled Frankenstein Master-Race Radio Control. It now seems that everyone knew about Dec except me, but, thanks to Google, I’m making up for lost time. Wikipedia says of Dec Esq. …

“Francis E. Dec (January 6, 1926 – January 21, 1996) was a U.S. lawyer from Hempstead Village, New York, disbarred for fraud in 1959, and later known for the bizarre socio-political tracts of conspiracy theories he mass-mailed to the media, often denouncing a "Worldwide Mad Deadly Communist Gangster Computer God" mind-controlling mankind. Considered a paranoid schizophrenic of the influencing-machine delusion kind, he is often referred to as a "kook".
Not unlike Ed Wood, Dec later became a cult figure referenced in underground culture. He was the subject of a 1994 book chapter and a 1999 stage play; he also made his way into the folklores of the Discordians and the Church of the SubGenius. His rants have been reprinted in a 1983 issue of Robert Crumb's magazine Weirdo and circulated since 1986 from recordings by KROQ-FM host Doc Britton; they have been sampled in 1991 and 2004 by Psychic TV, in 2004 by Venetian Snares, and inspired a Coldcut album in 2005; they have been archived as outsider art by UbuWeb and WFMU.” Click here for much more.

And click here to read the rants, or click here to hear recordings of the same rants by Boyd "Doc" Britton.

The secret word is Tinfoil

SLY, MANIPULATIVE CREATURES

Finn knew this all along….

“Cats have a reputation for being sly, manipulative creatures, and it may be well earned, says Scientific American. A study at the University of Sussex found the domestic house cat has developed a special kind of purr, carefully tailored to persuade its owner to feed it. Less irritating than a loud miaow, which might simply get it ejected out of doors, but more urgent than a soft, deep, contented purr, the "solicitation purr" has an embedded, high-pitched element, with a peak similar to that of a baby's cry – perfect, in short, for provoking a nurturing – response in a soft-hearted human. This, at any rate, is the contention of Dr Karen McComb, a specialist in mammal vocal communication, who first noticed the solicitation purr in her own cat, Pepo, when he was hungry. Is she annoyed to find she has been cunningly manipulated by her pet over the years? "Pepo has been the inspiration for this whole study, so I'll forgive him," she says. 'Credit where credit's due."

THIS IS HARDLY WHAT I'M FIGHTING FOR

Far too much money is being made out of marijuana by far too many of the wrong people.

THE LEMMING OPPOSITION

Republican rent-a-mobs are now booing the tapering off of the national unemployment figures.

This picture comes from the excellent Headlines You Should Know. Check it out.

BIG BROTHER INFILTRATES THE NET.

I never did trust that fucking Kindle. Now Matt on Facebook supplies us with good reason to view it askance. (Very askance.)

“NEW YORK – A pirated e-book of 1984 led to an Orwellian moment for Kindle customers. Users of Amazon.com’s e-reader device were surprised and unsettled over the past day to receive notice that George Orwell works they had purchased, including 1984" and "Animal Farm," had been removed from their Kindle and their money refunded.
It was conspiracy time on the Internet. Big Brother? Pressure from the publisher? No, says an Amazon spokesman — the deletion of pirated copies that had been posted to the Kindle store.
"These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third party who did not have the rights to the books," spokesman Drew Herdener said Friday.
"When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers' devices, and refunded customers. We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances."
Herdener's explanation differed from what Kindle users were told by Amazon's customer service, which made no reference to piracy, but implied that the removal was the publisher's choice. "Published by MobileReference ... (the books) were removed from the Kindle store and are no longer available for purchase," according to an e-mail sent to customers. "When this occurred, your purchases were automatically refunded. You can still locate the books in the Kindle store, but each has a status of not yet available. Although a rarity, publishers can decide to pull their content from the Kindle store."
Herdener said the customer service statement was incorrect, and reiterated that the works were pulled because of legal issues. MobileReference is a digital publisher that offers a wide range of literary titles, although Orwell's books were not mentioned on the company's Web site as of Friday night. An e-mail message sent to the publisher's owner, SoundTells, was not immediately returned.
The Orwell ordeal highlighted two concerns in the virtual world — that a book already paid for and acquired can be revoked by the long arm of an e-tailer (the Kindle operates on a wireless connection that Amazon ultimately controls); and the difficulty of stopping bootlegged texts.
The digital library is rapidly growing, but numerous classic works, from "Catch-22" to "Lolita," remain unavailable as e-books. Piracy has been one concern for rights holders, although illegal works have yet to have a measurable impact on sales.”

The secret word is Minitrue.

PALIN – “SOCIALISTS SLAY SENIORS”

“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil." Thus posted Sarah Palin on her Facebook page regarding Obama's health-care plans. Palin isn't citing anything in any of the draft healthcare bills -- which, more than likely, she hasn't read. She's taking off from a congressional floor speech by Michelle Bachmann – the even more cretinous and extreme nut-job. (If such was possible.) Both Palin and Bachmann are busily and elaborately riffing on one of the currently circulating, insurance corps-generated black-ops rumors that, under socialism – as in France, Canada, and the UK – the old and the sick are routinely murdered when the cost of the their medical treatment is no longer socially viable. When President Obama was told of Palin's comment, he commented how it was "unproductive for Republican leaders to spread this kind of misinformation.”

MINIMALIST SUNDAY REVISITED (See yesterday.)

“We must kill the levitating boulder!”

THEY REALLY DON'T MAKE ALBUMS LIKE THIS ANYMORE

(Courtesy HCB)

MINIMALIST SUNDAY (Part One)

“Look! Look!”

MINIMALIST SUNDAY (Part Two)

“OMG it’s a levitating boulder!”

Click here for more.

R. CRUMB’S SHORT HISTORY OF AMERICA

Click here to check out this classic.

The secret word is Tomorrow

AND FOR NO PARTICULAR REASON…

Every few weeks, we post a totally gratuitous picture of Brigitte Bardot.

BUT REMEMBER...