THE TRIP MEDICINAL

Munz sent us the following intriguing report about a reevaluation of LSD as a therapeutic agent. It’s interesting, although, having seen, first hand, how badly squares behave on acid, I do have my misgivings.

“For the first time in four decades, the government is cracking open the door to studies looking into the medical benefits of LSD. The watershed moment came last September, when the FDA approved a clinical trial on the use of LSD to treat anxiety in cancer patients. According to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (or MAPS), it was the first time since the 1960s that a medical study involving LSD was permitted by the federal government. MAPS Director Rick Doblin called it “a symbol that the psychedelic renaissance is here.” (Click here for the whole story.)

The secret word is God

GRATUITOUS BARDOT

It’s another picture of Brigitte for absolutely no other reason than maybe because it’s Saturday. This time she’s wearing shades.

SPACE OPERA

That'll teach her the consequences of trusting Earth-men.

IN THE CAPITALIST TWILIGHT

As wave after wave of demented Astroturf absolutism crash over Barack Obama, and morons tote AR14s to town meetings, while, at the other end of the rainbow, we on the left feel we are being progressively sold out to a hollow and corrupt center, I still cannot quite bring myself to abandon the president after just a matter of months. My sense of loyalty demands better. It did, however, occur to me that Obama might well be – in the long run of history – playing the role of America’s Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev was a communist who eased Russia into a soft landing in the next phase as post-Stalinist socialism disintegrated, and, in the same way, Obama is a capitalist who could well be ultimately smoothing the way to a brave new nation as the foundations of 21st century capitalism crumble and fail.
The only problem is that when the Soviet Union fell, it had a ready-made ideological airbag in the form of its own distorted version of bare knuckle free enterprise, with the Moscow mafia attending the confinement as midwives. As capitalism in the USA ceases to be sustainable, there is no obvious replacement system and it may have to be made up as it goes along. Plainly the most viable bet would be on a form of digital neo-socialism with software substituted for the bureaucracy that was the downfall of so many old-style soviets. Unfortunately, if the recent rightwing shenanigans are an indication, massive destabilizing pressure will be exerted to panic the population into lumpen TV-driven fascism fronting for an authoritarian corporate totalitarianism – Orwell with Twinkies and Twitter. But lets not forget how, in Russia, it took tanks in the streets to make the Evil Empire safe for Pepsi and Burger King. This may not be easy.

Similar sentiments – but without the gonzo flamboyance – are expressed by Robert Kuttner writing in The Washington Post.

“When economically stressed and frightened people are anxious and sullen, you never know who will capture their fears and hopes. In the 1930s, economic anxiety produced leaders as different as Franklin Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler. History shows that if the reformist left doesn't offer a plausible story and strategy of reform, the lunatic right will gain ground even with an implausible one. So where are the liberal protesters? The initiative has passed to the know-nothing right for two big reasons.” (Click here for the whole thing.)

The secret word is Transition

But, by way of an antidote to Fox, here are some clips. Viddy well my droogs.

Click here for the trailer of Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story

Click here for vintage Richard Pryor as 40th President of the US.

And click here for the final word on healthcare

AND NOW A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR...

A NASTY PIECE OF HARDWARE

Our commenting pal Ghostwoods alerted us the highly disturbing revelation that cops in the UK are now deploying this eye-in-the-sky remote-controlled "flying saucer" as one more piece of Big Brother tech in their surveillance arsenal. It’s first public outing was at the neo-Nazi British National Party's Red, White and Blue festival in Codnor, Derbyshire, where “anti-fascist protesters had assembled.” I recall a piece of science fiction where the protagonists shot down similar mini spy saucers with their blasters. I can’t remember without checking whether I wrote it myself, or maybe it was Philip K. Dick, or even a Vaughn Bode cartoon.

According to the London Daily Telegraph…
“Merseyside Police was the first force to use the drones, launching them during a number of crackdowns on gun and gang crime, as well as against anti-social behaviour. The aerial cameras have also previously been deployed to deter crime at pop festivals. Yesterday was the first time it was used at a demonstration. Their capacity to provide extra video evidence could prove useful to police forces which face allegations about their public order tactics, and about differing versions of major events such as London's G20 protests in April.” Click here for the rest.

Anti-social behaviour? Demonstrations? Pop festivals? On the surface, it would seem that the jaws of the vice are closing and, like fucking sheep, we are being corralled into a culture of slavish obedience to authority, but I retain some hope and faith the human capacity for fuck-you deceit. Maybe masks with become a fashion vogue (we may also need them to breath the air before too long) and we’ll all start wearing them like in V for Vendetta or – if you’re old enough to remember – the Nazi-fighting Deathless Men in the old brit comic The Wizard (which I suspect Alan Moore borrowed for V for V.)

And talking of sheep…

The secret word is Click

SHEEP?

Pic lifted from Brusquelles

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

In any debate, Dale Evans Frozdick remained firmly on the fence.

THOSE CRAZY CHRISTIANS

“Hey kids, matching Fenders for The Rapture.”

A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND EXCUSES

Today I am overworked, exploited, verging on obsessive, and with no time to write, pontificate, comment, or even send emails. Fortunately Syd sent me this quite extraordinary picture of the crew back in the day. L to R you have Boss Goodman, Paul Rudolph, Sandy, your’s truly (OMG the fucking hair!), Ace Mandelkau, Russell Hunter, and, needless to say, Twink. You notice a sign in the background that reads saloon bar. Clearly we are either entering or exiting the Portobello pub know as Finches.

The secret word is Yesterday
(And yesterday there was no secret word.)

DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSIC'S # 60

It’s not really a party until someone shows up with a monkey.

UK MoD RELEASES UFO FILES

Yesterday the British Ministry of Defense released more UFO documents, and while the media picked up on a general tone of debunk and sneer, a little light was shed on some celebrated incidents…

“Bright lights seen across Devon and Cornwall, South Wales and Shropshire in the early hours of 31 March 1993 by 70 police and military witnesses were documented in more than 30 sightings reported to the MoD over a six-hour period. The reports said it was very big, shaped like a catamaran and was completely silent. The MoD's UFO desk, known as section (AS)2a, asked the RAF to replay its radar tapes but nothing unusual was detected.
The head of the UFO section told Sir Anthony Bagnall, the assistant chief of the air staff, that given the quality of the witnesses the sightings could not simply be written off: "It seems that an unidentified object of unknown origin was operating in the UK air defence region without being detected on radar; this would appear to be of considerable defence significance." There were detailed inquiries, particularly of the Americans, over whether they were testing any new "stealth" aircraft over Britain, but the MoD finally established what had been seen was a Russian rocket re-entering the earth's atmosphere after launching a Cosmos satellite.” (Click here for more.)

And while we’re talking anomalous phenomena click here to check out our pals at LOWFI (The League of Western Fortean Intermediatists)

INDUSTRIAL APOCALYPSE

A correspondence between George Monbiot and Paul Kingsnorth poses some truly horrific questions…
“The writing is on the wall for industrial society, and no amount of ethical shopping or determined protesting is going to change that now. Take a civilisation built on the myth of human exceptionalism and a deeply embedded cultural attitude to "nature"; add a blind belief in technological and material progress; then fuel the whole thing with a power source that is discovered to be disastrously destructive only after we have used it to inflate our numbers and appetites beyond the point of no return. What do you get? We are starting to find out. We need to get real. Climate change is teetering on the point of no return while our leaders bang the drum for more growth. The economic system we rely upon cannot be tamed without collapsing, for it relies upon that growth to function. And who wants it tamed anyway? Most people in the rich world won't be giving up their cars or holidays without a fight.” (Click here for the whole exchange.) Pic by R. Crumb

LOVE IS A MANY SPLENDORED THING

OUR COCAINE CAPITAL

Our longtime pal Aeswiren sent us little gem. I can recall when it was Miami rather than Washington where coke incrusted the money, but that was back in the days of Tony Montana and Don Johnson. Maybe it explains some of the current political dementia in the USA.

“The largest ever study of banknotes has found that 95% of dollar bills in Washington DC bear traces of the illegal drug cocaine. The figure for the US capital is up 20% over two years. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth tested notes from more than 30 cities worldwide. They say the rise observed in the US may be due to increased drug use caused by higher stress levels linked to the global economic downturn.
Bank notes can pick up traces of cocaine directly from users snorting it through rolled up bills or when cash is stacked together. Besides Washington, other big US cities such as Baltimore, Boston and Detroit had the highest average cocaine levels on their dollar bills.
Dr Yuegang Zuo, who led the research, said: "To my surprise, we're finding more and more cocaine in banknotes. "I'm not sure why we've seen this apparent increase, but it could be related to the economic downturn, with stressed people turning to cocaine."
Other countries where notes were tested were Canada, Brazil, China and Japan.
China had the lowest rates, with only 12% of its bills contaminated.
In the US the cleanest bills were collected from Salt Lake City, home of the religious group, the Mormons.”

A TRIUMPH OF CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE

The following came from our good friend Doug the Bass…

"Outside the Bristol Zoo, in England , there is a parking lot for 150 cars and 8 coaches, or buses. It was manned by a very pleasant attendant with a ticket machine charging cars £1 (about $1.40) and coaches £5 (about $7). This parking attendant worked there solid for all of 25 years. Then, one day, he just didn't turn up for work.
"Oh well", said Bristol Zoo Management - "we'd better phone up the City Council and get them to send a new parking attendant . . . ""Err . . . no", said the Council, "that parking lot is your responsibility."
"Err . . . no", said Bristol Zoo Management, "the attendant was employed by the City Council, wasn't he?"
"Err . . . no!" insisted the Council.Sitting in his villa somewhere on the coast of Spain (presumably), is a man who had been taking the parking lot fees, estimated at £400 (about $560) per day at Bristol Zoo for the last 25 years. Assuming 7 days a week, this amounts to just over £3.6 million ($7 million - or $280,000 every year for 25 years)! And no one even knows his name."

PS ON ELVIS AND BOB

Click here for the only Bob Dylan song Elvis Presley ever recorded.

AND MAYBE ALL THE COKE IN WASHINGTON EXPLAINS IDEAS LIKE THIS…

The secret word is Fatuous

ELVIS DEATH DAY

Today we can celebrate – should we care to – the thirty second anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley, and how, in all of the intervening years since he left the planet, every kind of conspiracy theory and more has been advanced to claim that Elvis was not dead at all but was living in anonymous seclusion, had been abducted by aliens, or, according to some very tricky cosmology, was the face on Mars. Me, I don’t really like to celebrate this August 16th Elvis Death Day. It’s just too fucking negative and depressing. I’d rather go for the birthday party on January 8th when we recall the Hillbilly Cat and generally throw the first party of each new-minted New Year. The Death Day is the dour domain of mean old Republican woman with wigs and facelifts of the kind who would happily follow Sarah Palin to perdition, and who go to Memphis to hold dismal convocations of grief for the big-fat-spangled-sandwich-eating-fucked-up-Vegas Elvis, and play his cover of the god-awful Timi Yuro song “Hurt” as a representation of totemic misery and stolen what-might-have-been.

I also kinda blame the Tennessee Tourist Board for the whole thing. I swear they promoted these Elvis Death Day antics as a wicked ploy to lure elderly visitors with credit cards to Memphis in the sweating big-river August heat and humidity, which probably kills a whole bunch of the faithful with delayed strokes and heart failure when they get back home. But hey, it’s another way the pull the plug on Grandma.

Elvis singing “Hurt.” Click here if you’re not depressed enough already, or scroll on for some suitably random artifacts from the Doc40 Elvis collection.

“Honey, when a man's been dead for thirty-two years, it’s gotta be all or nothing.”

DEATH DAY ARTIFACT NUMBER ONE

Supposed coffin photo allegedly snapped on a concealed mini-camera for the National Inquirer, but never totally validated as genuine.

DEATH DAY ARTIFACT NUMBER TWO

Yes, Elvis fans, it's your very own reproduction of the Death Certificate

DEATH DAY ARTIFACT NUMBER THREE

I have no idea what this is supposed to be.

DEATH DAY ARTIFACT NUMBER FOUR

Elvis died for somebody’s sins but not mine. © MF



The secret word is Pointless