FORTY YEARS AGO TODAY

That’s back in the day when J. Edgar Hoover had death squads, and the FBI and local peace officers decided to exterminate the Black Panther Party with the most extreme prejudice, and we wondered who they’d get to after that. So how much has the shit changed in four decades? Don’t look at me, motherfucker. I just report the news…

“Today marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. On December 4th, 1969, Chicago police raided Fred Hampton's apartment and shot and killed him in his bed. He was just 21 years old. Black Panther leader Mark Clark was also killed in the raid. While authorities claimed the Panthers had opened fire on the police who were there to serve a search warrant for weapons, evidence later emerged that told a very different story: That the FBI, the Cook County State's Attorney's office and the Chicago police conspired to assassinate Fred Hampton. We speak with attorney Jeffrey Hass, author of "The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther.” (Click here for more.)

The secret word is Solidarity

MAYBE WE AREN’T AS BAD AS WE THINK WE ARE

I suppose, as a deviant anarcho-syndicalist at heart, I have to believe in an innate human capacity for charity and cooperation otherwise what’s the fucking point? But having said that, I then find myself beset by snarling Hobbesians who a totally convinced that even the most minor societal breakdown will result in a hell-on-earth outbreak of looting, burning, rape, pillage, and cannibalism among the underclass – in fact just like the lying and wholly fiction news reports that Fox beamed of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Happily, a recent study (sent by our pal Peromyscus) shows that is not the case and that humans are predisposed actually to get along, at least until society’s pliers grip them. Even cooperation still seems part of the natural order. These Londoners sheltering from Nazi bombers in a tube (subway) station during the World War II blitz are sleeping. Not ripping off hunks of each other’s flesh by the light of barbarian fires. On the other hand, they might have been singing Vera Lynn* songs earlier, and that’s a whole other story and also why we needed to invent rock & roll.

“What is the essence of human nature? Flawed, say many theologians. Vicious and addicted to warfare, wrote Hobbes. Selfish and in need of considerable improvement, think many parents. But biologists are beginning to form a generally sunnier view of humankind. Their conclusions are derived in part from testing very young children, and partly from comparing human children with those of chimpanzees, hoping that the differences will point to what is distinctively human. The somewhat surprising answer at which some biologists have arrived is that babies are innately sociable and helpful to others. Of course every animal must to some extent be selfish to survive. But the biologists also see in humans a natural willingness to help. The helping behavior seems to be innate because it appears so early and before many parents start teaching children the rules of polite behavior.” (Click here for more.)

And now click here for Vera Lynn* and some damn fine Spitfires in flight. (It’s schoolboy Biggles-wallowing, but what the hell?)

PERFORMANCE PIECE

Finn the cat has taken to draping himself over the keyboards of my computers. In the spirit of Uncle Bill Burroughs we are treating what appears on the screen as found poetry. This is Finn's First Work….

“feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrmn 4,eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]16666666666666666666666666666666666333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333330000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000099999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999993.
3 eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee32\”

So buy a copy of my new book Zones Of Chaos (Click here to know all.)

RIDE THAT DINOSAUR, ARYAN JESUS!

Quite by accident, I came across a blog called Snake Oil that appears to delight in the excesses of the evangelical. Its stock in trade is images like the one above, and quotes like this one from serial killer Donald “Pee Wee” Gaskins…
“I have walked the same path as God, by taking lives and making others afraid, I became God's equal. Through killing others, I became my own master. Through my own power I come to my own redemption.”
I do try to restrain my prejudices against God-fearing, Rapture-anticipating, Jesus-fans. Really I do. As far as I’m concerned, folks can believe any arrant crap they like as long as I don’t have to listen to it. Unfortunately the bloody faithful are incapable, by the very definition of their faith, of keeping anything to themselves. They bomb women’s health clinics, they destructively interfere with the lives of thousands of their fellow Americans. They carry guns to healthcare rallies, and become the devoutly unquestioning tools of the most baleful neo-fascism. The even support deep and evil shit like the death penalty for gays in Uganda.
I am all too aware that they are out their, 400 pounds, living on bio-engineered meat and processed corn syrup, watching reality TV and The 700 Hundred Club. They are ones who make the political career of Sarah Palin possible, who, in turn, is just a ignorant shill for totalitarian corporate capitalism, and the money being poured into her ambition is really being spent to achieve a ultimate goal of sidelining democracy as a powerless sideshow. But I also wonder, what will happen to all these slug-soft worthless and delusionary fools when that same totalitarian corporate capitalism has no more use to them? HAL 9000 will doubtless turn off the life support.

The secret word is Prey

BUT MAYBE THEY AREN’T SO BAD

I mean, here’s a nice t-shirt requesting prayers for the president. Or so it seems until you actually look up Psalm 109:8, and discover that the text reads – “Let his days be few; and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.” In other words it’s a biblical call for assassination. These people disgust me.

SPACE OPERA

If I just had the time to think up a proper title, figure out a plot, write a libretto and score, and raise a few million bucks to mount a full scale production, I could have a wonderful Broadway show and win tons of Tonys and be the toast of the town. (Who shot you, Dutch?)

ARMED BANKERS FEAR THE WRATH OF MOB

This just in from Bloomberg columnist Alice Schroeder. She reports that…

“Goldman Sachs vampires are loading up on handguns to defend themselves against popular uprising. “"I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit," said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.” (Lifted from Boing Boing.)

The secret word is Bunker

A SUGGESTION

This gold customized .45 caliber Colt 1911 – with the gilded engraving that looks so much like cash money – should be just the defensive ticket for any nervous Master of the Universe. Even though it’s been in use for almost a century, the 1911 is the perfect prole-stopper and was the favored side-arm of (among others) Mike Hammer, Sonny Crockett, the Phantom, the Spirit, the Shadow, Nick Fury, Walker, Pike Bishop and the rest of The Wild Bunch. It’s ideal piece to persuade the poor that poverty is just God’s way of chiding their stupidity and laziness.

MARS ATTRACTS

Our friends at the Bangalore Film Society sent this link to an amazing War Of The Worlds all-you-ever-might-need-to-know website. Click here.

Sadly, our pal Doctor of the BFS has been in what appears to be a fairly serious auto accident and we all wish him well.

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Even by the family’s exceptionally flexible standards, F9C7 Frozdick was considered odd.

COMMERCIAL

“Without my Bennies, I would never have bombed Dresden.”

MARILYN SMOKED DOPE?

“Who? Me?”

While Marilyn has been on a protracted, but maybe much needed, furlough from her multi-dimensional Doc40 adventures, it turns out that maybe the blonde goddess was a stoner. Our pal Mark Haspam has already alerted us in a comment on yesterday’s “THEY SHALL NOT PASS” post in which he reports …

“A silent home movie allegedly showing Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe smoking marijuana has surfaced, retrieved from an attic some 50 years after it was filmed. The reel-to-reel silent, color film was recently purchased by collector Keya Morgan for $275,000 from the person who took the film, who has asked to remain anonymous. Morgan and the person who shot the film gave Reuters permission to use a minute of footage from the four minutes of Monroe on camera. According to Morgan, the footage shows a personal side of the tragic actress, rarely seen by the public after she achieved stardom. The copyright of the image will be put up for sale on eBay later this week, Morgan said. The claim that Monroe was smoking marijuana came from the photographer, who spoke only on condition of anonymity."

Click here for the clip (but you might have to verify your age.) The rare image was supplied by the marvellous Valerie. A similar BBC report comes from our homegirl Hipspinster. Click here.

The secret word is Muggles

IS THIS WOMAN PART OF THE CONSPIRACY?

I really like what veteran writer Chris Hedges has to say, but that doesn’t mean I always agree or endorse. In this piece, he complains that we are being distracted from the abyss by trivia…

“Will Tiger Woods finally talk to the police? Who will replace Oprah? (Not that Oprah can ever be replaced, of course.) And will Michaele and Tareq Salahi, the couple who crashed President Barack Obama's first state dinner, command the hundreds of thousands of dollars they want for an exclusive television interview? Can Levi Johnston, father of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's grandson, get his wish to be a contestant on "Dancing With the Stars"? The chatter that passes for news, the gossip that is peddled by the windbags on the airwaves, the noise that drowns out rational discourse, and the timidity and cowardice of what is left of the newspaper industry reflect our flight into collective insanity. We stand on the cusp of one of the most seismic and disturbing dislocations in human history, one that is radically reconfiguring our economy as it is the environment, and our obsessions revolve around the trivial and the absurd.” (Click here for more.)

Okay, he’s probably right, but here at Doc40 – where we pride ourselves on being part of the solution – we rejoice in the madness of the trivial and absurd. Today alone we have Marilyn, Katy, Daleks, and the War on Christmas. In a time when bread is scarce and the circuses suck, it’s the only guard against combat fatigue in the good fight. The Skip Williamson image below is old, but it says it all. (And BTW Cynthia Heimel seems to think Michaele Salahi is a hooker.)

AIN’T THAT THE TRUTH?

NUDE WITH DALEK

Way back in May of 2007, we posted a picture of actress Katy Manning posing naked in boots with a Dalek. At the time it was a thing of modest (or maybe immodest) fun, but since that time, it has taken hundreds – if not thousands – of hits from people with no interest in Doc40 who have been Googling Katy and her evil-robot companion. Well, guess what? Here’s another shot from what has to be the same photo shoot that I happened across while trolling the fringes of the Dr Who universe/time-curve. Grubby fanboys of Planet Earth, start your search engines.

THE WAR ON CHRISTMAS

The buttons are coming. Stay tuned.

THEY SHALL NOT PASS

THE WAR ON CHRISTMAS STARTS HERE. For years now, the manipulators of the right – O’Reilly, Hannity, more lately Glenn Beck and all their banshee companions have, each December, been trumping up crap about a liberal-commie War On Christmas, but here in 2009, I figure we need one. Now we have Walmart shoppers trampling each other to death in some Hobbesian gift-apocalypse the whole Yule concept has to be very seriously revised. Way back in 1986, I wrote in the old (honest, pre-Lacey) Village Voice…

“It's around this time of year that I'm profoundly glad that I'm not a parent. How do you explain to a TV-soaked brat that all he's getting is a rather small clockwork robot and that there is no way, short of starving through January and February, that the family can spring for the sev­en-foot-long, fully operational G.I. Joe aircraft carrier? There’s a sense of being trapped. You start to feel that even if you went so far as to hide out in the hills, a red red robin would insist on bob bobbing along as a yule re­minder. A simple trip to the supermarket continues the numbing propaganda holly motif. The people on the sidewalk all seen more determined than you are in their will to jollity. It's all too easy to become convinced, like my friend the rummy, that ev­eryone else is as loving and giving as the Cosby family and that you're the only one stifling a humbug. A flip through Decem­ber's Playboy can give a man the impression that there are women out there who give their boyfriends gift-wrapped motorcycles. How come I have to be satisfied with a lousy bottle of after-shave? The only respite is Elvis Presley singing “Blue Christmas.” At least someone once copped to seasonal misery.”

And this was in the middle of greed-is-good, Manhattan affluence. How much worse will it be today here in the 21st century zombie depression? Okay, so celebrate the solstice, Odin, Elvis*, Cthulhu, General Zod**, the Universal Mind, Diana the Huntress or just the simple Return of The Light. (And heaven only knows we could use a bit of light returning to this miasma.) Eat, drink, fart, fall over, but enough with the terminal death-dealing consumerism. We will talk more about this.

The secret word is Ixnay

*Click here for an added Elvis moment.

**Click here for an added General Zod moment.

FROM THE WHAT-MORE-DO-YOU-NEED-TO-KNOW? ARCHIVE

Although I have no independent confirmation, I believe this was the conclusion of negotiations for the Nazi/Zeta Reticuli bioengineering project that would ultimately bring us Sarah Palin. (Image lifted from Adam Gorightly.)

CLICK – What’s that behind you?

DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSIC'S # 68

Even Santa’s elves are not what they used to be.

STRAIGHT OUTTA R’LYAH

As I face the last Monday in November – and all that might entail – pseudo-synchronius stirrings emanate from the Old Ones in the form of a couple of links sent by our pal Roldo to some new Cthulhu comics and an accidental stumble across writings by the oddly knowledgeable Old Castro who reminds us that…

“…when the stars have come right for the Great Old Ones, "some force from outside must serve to liberate their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented them from making an initial move." At the proper time, the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from his tomb to revive His subjects and resume his rule of earth....Then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.”

I have to confess that “a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom” sounds infinitely more attractive that the dismal prognosis for Xmas 2009, shall we commence to chant? All together now…

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.”

(I wish there was a widget to make the above flash on and off. That would be pretty nifty.)

Click here for the comic Why We’re Here
Click here for Who Will Be Eaten First

The secret word is Dementia

DIANA DORS AND GEORGE

And just to accentuate the my general sense of darkness-before-dawn unreality, here is a picture of Diana Dors and a robot called George. For those who frown unknowingly, Diana Dors was Britain’s domestic Marilyn Monroe in the 1950s, and George the robot – more a remote controlled mechanical man – was supposedly built by built by Diana's husband, Denis Hamilton, but it looks a lot like earlier models built by one Captain W. H. Richards. (The whole package is compliments of out goodbuddy HCB.) And on the theme of girls and robots we have a tease of new material being posted on Katy Manning and the Daleks. Stay tuned.

SPACE OPERA (Exotic Chorus)

WE’RE BACK

“Now if we can just make it through Christmas…”

HARDLY THE WISHED-FOR OUTCOME, BUT I’M GLAD WE GOT THAT SORTED

Back in August (August 27th, to be precise, if you want to click back and check) I expressed my alarm at the idea of Tracy Lords playing Deja Thoris in a movie version of Edgar Rice Burroughs “Princess of Mars.” It now takes shape this will indeed the case. Except there will be not one but two movies based on Burroughs Mars novels. Lords’ feature is the rancid-cheapo version that’s out now, and looks, from the trailer, to be even worse that those post-The Road Warrior Italian apocalypse flicks of the 1980s that don’t even have tack-appeal. We are going to have to wait another couple years for the Andrew Stanton/Michael Chabon super de luxe big budget epic John Carter of Mars.

Click here for the cheesy Lords trailer.

The secret word is Barsoom

DON’T BOGART ME

Some remakes can make sense. Check this version of “Don’t Bogart Me” by Paulina Sinaga, her ukulele, and her cat, that Munz sent by. Click here.

TACTICAL NUCLEAR PENGUIN

In Scotland (where else?) there is a beer on the market almost as strong as whiskey. Valerie sent the word…
“A controversial Scottish brewery has launched what it described as the world's strongest beer - with a 32% alcohol content. Tactical Nuclear Penguin has been unveiled by BrewDog of Fraserburgh. BrewDog was previously branded irresponsible for an 18.2% beer called Tokyo, which it then followed with a low alcohol beer called Nanny State.
Managing director James Watt said a limited supply of Tactical Nuclear Penguin would be sold for £30 each. “This is an extremely strong beer; it should be enjoyed in small servings and with an air of aristocratic nonchalance .” Click here for more.

AND TALKING OF BOTH NUKES AND PENGUINS…

The discovery of this poster suddenly and happily made me realise, even though he has left the world in near-ruin, Dreadful George W Bush. is really now a part of all our yesterdays and we don’t have to worry about him any more. Of course we do still have the alien Palin as champion of the dumb and destructive, so pass the fucking Valium and then the scotch. Will we ever win?