DAWSON’S BATTLING BEES

Doc40 has always paid attention to bees. We’ve run posts on their diseases, their increasingly odd behaviour, their abuse by the agribusiness, and even their mysterious disappearances. This story and video from Valerie, however, is something else again. Male bees fighting to the death to get laid. (Of course, they are Australian.)

"It is rare for any species of animal to regularly kill its own in combat. However, male Dawson's bees, one of the world's largest bee species, are so aggressive that they kill each other en masse in a bid to mate with females. The bees enter a frenzy of fighting, and by the time their deadly combat is over, every male bee is either killed or has perished.
The extreme behaviour, which can lead to even females being killed, is caught on film by a BBC natural history crew. Dawson's bees (Amegilla dawsoni ) are large burrowing bees that nest in the baked soil of the Australian outback." (Click here for the rest of the story and mindboggling video.)

The secret word is Buzzkill

REMEMBERING THE DUST BOWL

This showed up in the daily email from Delancey Place. I’m running it, I think, on the principle that if we ignore history we will – sure as shit – be forced to repeat it.

"The rains disappeared - not just for a season but for years on end. With no sod to hold the earth in place, the soil calcified and started to blow. Dust clouds boiled up, ten thousand feet or more in the sky, and rolled like moving mountains - a force of their own. When the dust fell, it penetrated everything: hair, nose, throat, kitchen, bedroom, water well. A scoop shovel was needed just to clean the house in the morning. The eeriest thing was the darkness. People tied themselves to ropes before going to a barn just a few hundred feet away, like a walk in space, tethered to the life support center. Chickens roosted in mid-afternoon. "Many in the East did not believe the initial accounts of predatory dust until a storm in May 1934 carried the windblown shards of the Great Plains over much of the nation. In Chicago, twelve million tons of dust fell. New York, Washington - even ships at sea, three hundred miles off the Atlantic coast - were blanketed in brown. Cattle went blind and suffocated. When farmers cut them open, they found stomachs stuffed with fine sand. Horses ran madly against the storms. Children coughed and gagged, dying of something the doctors called 'dust pneumonia.' In desperation, some families gave away their children. The instinctive act of hugging a loved one or shaking someone's hand could knock two people down, for the static electricity from the dusters was so strong.” – Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time

“Yes, darling, but are you evil enough?”
(Pic supplied by Lost Jimmy.)

AND THIS IS THE NEWS FOR FRIDAY 13TH

Okay, so NASA has just told us that the LCROSS probe found water on the moon – in a crater at the lunar south pole (click here for more) – but it’s also time to start counting down the days until the Large Hadron Collider cranks up again and maybe a black hole gets us…

“It's been plagued by everything from liquid helium leaks to wayward baguettes, but the mega-physics experiment known as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is finally ready to start smashing protons into each other. Particle collisions could begin in two weeks.
The LHC is a 27-kilometer underground tunnel designed to accelerate atomic particles and smash them into each other. The goal is to see what happens when such particles interact with tremendous amounts of energy, the way they might under extreme conditions in outer space. The results of LHC experiments will reveal a lot about the origins of our universe, and the composition of matter within it. CERN, the Swiss facility where the enormous underground experiment is located, has announced that test beams in the LHC have zoomed around most parts of the accelerator without incident.” (Click here for more.)

And let’s not forget the theory that time travelers might come back down the string and put a stop to all these God Particle shenanigans. (Click here to go back to Doc40, October 19th for that story.)

The secret word is Apprehension

SEEN PLENTY BUT RARELY HEARD

The video of Elvis Presley playing the 1956 open air concert in his home town of Tupelo in the green velvet shirt is mom supposedly been made for him has been aired over and over, but I’ve never seen one with the original audio. (Click here)

SPACE OPERA (Devotional Special)

Image donated by Valerie

MY HATRED FOR LEAF-BLOWERS IS IMPLACABLE

I normally sleep between approximately 4am and noon. I always have, and don’t feel like arguing with anyone who thinks early rising is a virtue. Lately I have roused no less than three mornings each week between 7.30 and 8.00am by a piercing motorized metallic screaming like the sound of some cacophonous ensemble that Brian Eno might have devised had he developed a deep aversion to humanity. The cause of the noise is the massed leaf-blowers of guys who like to be called landscapers. The idiotic machines do nothing but blow the dead leaves of autumn off one property and onto the one next door. Rakes would be infinitely more efficient, but it seems the mechanization is everything. How all this goes on in a wretched economy and in what is a modest neighborhood of bungalows and three and four storey apartment buildings is a mystery. It is, however, driving me crazy. I need my sleep. So if you hear of a mass homicide of contract gardeners, you’ll know I’ve cracked.
(I would even seem to have green support. Seemingly each backpack engine pumps out as much smog-forming pollution as 80 cars, each driven 12,500 miles, according to a government air quality management agency in California. Click for facts.)

HOW DARE THEY MEEP?

Our pal Joly sent the following, knowing it would provoke a response …

"MEEP!
Don't know what it means? Don't worry -- most people over the age of 22 don't either.
But the nonsense word -- which apparently started with the 1980s Muppet character Beaker -- is causing a lot of teeth-gnashing for adults at one Massachusetts high school. They have gone so far as to threaten suspension for students caught meeping.
But just what does it mean to "meep?" No one really seems to know -- even those who use it as part of their daily vocabulary. Bob Thompson, a pop culture professor at Syracuse University, said he first heard students meep about a year ago during a class screening of a television show. "Something happened and one of them said 'Meep,'" he said. "And then they all started doing it." The meeps, he said, came from all of the students in the class in rapid-fire succession. When he asked them what that meant, they said it didn't really mean anything. "It's almost like they look at you like it's a silly question," he said." (Click here for the rest of the non-story, but…)

The truth is that the word Meep was coined in 1969 by my old and dear friend and partner in crime, the late lamented Edward Barker. He was the creator of the cartoon alien species (with no arms) called The Largactalites whose one word vocabulary was the single word “meep”. They were named after the antipsychotic drug Largactil (Chlorpromazine) the UK brand name for what was sold in the US as Thorazine. The Largactalites ran in the underground paper IT, from 1970 to around 1973. I was also picked up by the national Sunday paper The Observer, but this raised profile brought the name to the notice of Smith Kline & French, the makers of Largactil, who threatened a lawsuit, and the name was changed to The Galactalites. Edward was finally fired when he turned in a strip that consisted of four frames with nothing but a blank, single-line horizon, with no characters and no dialogue. We all thought that was pretty damned Dadaist, but The Observer didn’t see it that way.

You can guess the secret word.

APOCALYPSE WHEN?

I’ve can’t count the number of times I’ve seen the movie Apocalypse Now, and you can add 50% if to count Apocalypse Now Redux. Now MrMR has sent me what I guess you might call a fumetti graphic novel of the film. I'm not sure I like it, but the work by Eduardo Saboya is pretty amazing considering the hundreds of stills and acres of dialogue he’s used in its creation. Definitely worth clicking here to check it out.

CLICK (You shouldn't be doing that.)

BRAZIL HACKED INTO DARKNESS?

Back in the formative days of the web, you heard lurid and grandiose tales of super-hackers – based in Albania or Uzbekistan, and working on old Red Army computers – who were poised to take out airports, hospitals, TV networks, entire banking systems, and generally hack us back to the stone age. Legend claimed that someone called The Black Avenger had shut down an entire hydroelectric project in Ethiopia. But none of the worst case scenarios ever materialized, and hacking turned out to be no more epic than identity theft and an occasional viral freakout. Until yesterday, that is, when the Brazilian power grid went out and the world and its uncle started screaming hacker. The Brazilian central government now blames the outage on bad weather but the world continues to wonder if maybe the Son of the Black Avenger is on the loose.

The secret word is Lurking

Click here for news story. Click for video.

THE HUMAN PARASITE

Mother and Doctor from the Bangalore Film Society sent this and I’m posting it as is...

“The pilgrim stood in the great void of the seventh city, the city of the revelations, muttering prayers that announced the completion of his arduous journey and beseeching that he now, be swept away by he blinding light of truth and redemption. Nothing happened. Silence remained, as thick and impassive as the walls. Bent at the knees, the pilgrim collapsed. Snatches from his own life, memories of his long pilgrimage to the seventh city now convulsed and throbbed in the hollow of his body. The mind and the soul snapped and he howled. The silence and the walls echoed the scream, twisting it into a grotesque wail of agony and in the darkness of the void; he saw a vision of flesh and pain- a grotesque structure of countless flailing limbs, mouths and torsos. At the top were the heads- pig-like and mindless, mouths that knew only to consume with knowing any limits. At the bottom lay the diseased- the screaming and abscessed, the entrails. And in the middle, lay the torsos and the bellies, blind to ecstasy, beauty, agony, disgust, all human feeling and seeking only continuous sedation and numbing. The red furnace light of the vision tinged the walls and the pilgrim, fallen on the ground, recognized the sanctum sanctorum of the seventh city, the womb, l’originie du monde. Fear gripped him, a fear whose seeds lay in a sense of betrayal and later morphs into terror when the betrayal announces itself in the form of an unnatural and mutant monstrosity. There would be no redemption. The source itself had been parched, poisoned and forgotten by the prodigal offspring who in a delusion of misguided intelligence and hubris had turned itself into a parasite- the human parasite.”
- Ibn Al- Nahati, The Final Journals

DO WE REALLY NEED A REMAKE OF THE PRISONER?

GODDAMN IT, IS NO SPECIES SAFE?

Obviously Doc40 will do everything to spread the word about the threats to wolves, polar bears, tigers, grizzlies, and any other endangered species, but I am so tired and angry about the constant need to do it. What is wrong with the human race? Are we a fucking virus? And, if so, when will Gaia find a vaccine to eliminate us?

“Australia's koalas could be wiped out within 30 years unless urgent action is taken to halt a decline in population, according to researchers. They say development, climate change and bushfires have all combined to send the numbers of wild koalas plummeting. The Australian Koala Foundation said a recent survey showed the population could have dropped by more than half in the past six years. Many have been killed by the sexually transmitted disease chlamydia. Previous estimates put the number of koalas at more than 100,000 - but the latest calculations suggest there could now be as few as 43,000.
The foundation collected field data from 1,800 sites and 80,000 trees to calculate the numbers. In one area in northern Queensland estimated to have 20,000 koalas a decade ago, a team of eight people could not find a single animal in four days of searching.
The foundation said as well as problems caused by deforestation, hotter, drier conditions attributed to global warming had reduced the nutritional value of their staple food, eucalyptus leaves, leading to malnutrition. Koalas, which are confined to forests in Australia's east and south, are notoriously fussy about what types of the leaves they eat.” (Click here for more plus a video.)

The secret word is Cease

NO STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

But we’ll make an exception when it’s played on the harp. Click here.

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Lobella Frozdick was adamant that bunny ears should remain a family tradition.

SPACE OPERA

"If you're lost in the rain on Mongo and it's Eastertime too..." (Map supplied by MrMR.)

GET READY TO PARTY

Did somebody say a riot of their own? Now they have a party of their own. And maybe it spells the beginning of the end for the GOP. Early this year, I hoped/predicted that extreme right of the Republican party would fragment into what I laughing called the Raving Looney Shotgun Hillbilly Jesus Party. And now, so help me, it’s actually happened. According to the website Politico, “A Florida conservative has registered an official "Tea Party" with the office of the Secretary of State, and is promising to run candidates against Republicans and Democrats in state and national races. ‘The current system has become mired in the sludge of special interest money that seeks to control the leadership of both parties. It’s time for real change,” says Orlando lawyer Frederic O’Neal, the new party's chairman, who couldn't be reached immediately by phone. A spokeswoman for the Florida Secretary of State, Jennifer Davis, said the party had registered in August, and that its qualified candidates will appear on the ballot in the state.”

The secret word is Jubilant

THE FLUGELRAD IS BACK

Regular readers will know my deep fascination with Nazi flying saucers – especially the famed Flugelrad – and how that affection came to fictional fruition in Underland, the last book of the Renquist Trilogy (big hint-buy the book.) Thus, when I discover this picture of a confrontation between Soviet Kalinin K-7 (that never actually worked) and a possibly Vril powered Nazi saucer (that may never have existed) I was very pleased. Except I couldn’t find the source, but will keep you all posted.

SHOP 'TIL YOU DROP

ANOTHER DECADENT SUNDAY

"I've tried to escape from this planet on a number of occasions."
"No shit."
"Each time the aliens caught me and brought me back."
As the woman talked, apparently without end or continuity, the man drew dreamily on the long ornate ivory and hardwood opium pipe, with its carved gods and dragons, and brass mouthpiece. "Motherfuckers those aliens. I hope you avoided the anal probe."
She didn't appear to hear him. On the other hand, the man may not have actually spoken, only fantasized that he did. She frowned. "I also escaped from the nuns. A number of times. But they always caught me too."
The man shook his head as if to clear it. He had totally lost the thread. "Nuns?"
The woman gestured with stoned impatience. "I was raised by nuns in a Catholic orphanage of great barbarism. The benefits were few and the penalties severe. They administered enemas for our health and cruelly whipped us for the most minor infraction. I'm not sure which was worse, the nozzle or the cane."
The man didn’t feel he was obliged to say anything. He merely contemplated the opiate enhancement of the images the woman was creating.
"Those nuns..." She shook her head in search of a word strong enough to express her contempt. Her English was poor and her vocabulary small. "...those bitches in black and white were enjoying themselves. I used to wonder what they did when we couldn't see them."

CHRISTOPHER WALKEN READS LADY GAGA

"It is what it is so just click here, okay?”

The secret word is Cowbell

GRATUITOUS JANE BIRKIN

What else for a decadent Sunday? And click here if you really have a need to listen to her whisper her way through four minutes of the dubious “Je t'aime... moi non plus.”

SPACE OPERA

Decadent or not, you gotta watch out for those darn pyramids.