AY CARAMBA!

This came in from Delancey Place…
“By the estimate of journalist Philip Caputo, the most violent city in the world is not located in Afghanistan, Iraq or some Sub-Saharan African country, but across a river from the United States in Juarez, Mexico. And in the almost three years since President Felipe Calderón launched a war on drug cartels, some 14,000 people have been killed in the country of Mexico, and part of the country is effectively under martial law: "The U.S. government estimates that the cultivation and trafficking of illegal drugs directly employs 450,000 people in Mexico [out of 110 million people]. Unknown numbers of people, possibly in the millions, are indirectly linked to the drug industry, which has revenues estimated to be as high as $25 billion a year, exceeded only by Mexico's annual income from manufacturing and oil exports. Dr. Edgardo Buscaglia ... concluded in a recent report that 17 of Mexico's 31 states have become virtual narco-republics, where organized crime has infiltrated government, the courts, and the police so extensively that there is almost no way they can be cleaned up. The drug gangs have acquired a 'military capacity' that enables them to confront the army on an almost equal footing.”

I’m going to say this very quietly and very slowly because I’m hoarse from repeating it for more than four decades. “This is only caused by the illegality of recreational drugs in the United States."

The secret word is Tether

CLICK -- Ignorance is strength.

WHO IS THIS FAT FOOL?

The fat fool depicted is Mack Steven who appears the be some cousin-marrying hillbilly cat who has managed to eliminate both taste and shame from his work. Even by the notches on the Bible Belt this idiot is a holy prize. Click here for his classic Downward Road.

“Wake up, asshole, we’re almost out of drugs.”

SPACE OPERA (Fundamental)

NAZI PENGUINS GUARD THE SECRET ANTARCTIC ENTRANCE TO THE HOLLOW EARTH

I have a grave suspicion that I’ve spent the last few days hiding in alien fantasy from the incredibly depressing cable news reality. Of course, the spiral light over Norway was major and the Frozdick family has to keep on rocking, but, where maybe I should have been chronicling the disappearance of Barack Obama’s credibility and my dissolving dreams of sweeping FDR reforms, I’ve been avoiding the ugly hopelessness of the now. As it is, I can barely stand to watch healthcare in the USA circle the toilet bowl, and two wars aimlessly dragging on for no clearly defined purpose, with one in a theatre of operations that even Alexander the Great wouldn’t touch with rubber gloves. The world has plainly been handed back to Goldman Sachs who, in their myopic ultra-greed, cannot even grasp the basic principle that unless you pay the worker/consumers enough to buy the goddamned goods and services, money becomes an abstraction and vanishes in hyperinflation, and even their Blackwater guards won’t save the rich from the cannibal hordes.

The secret word is almost Despair. (But not quite.)

“ALL EXTREMITIES, ALL FILTH, ALL ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES -- SUCH COMPLETE CHAOS THAT EVEN LOVECRAFT'S MONSTERS WOULD BE FORCED TO MAKE A SANITY CHECK”

Our pal Jon has sent us a heads up on a place called 4chan. He wonders "Real cyberpunk or real bullshit?"

“They say the children are our future. But if 4chan is any indication of what they have in store for us, we are in for a very rough time indeed. For the blissfully innocent, 4chan is an image board -- a format copied from popular Japanese sites, it allows users to post text and images anonymously. The anonymous nature of the board, of course, allows users the courage to post everything from the most extreme pornography to death threats to the coordination of raids on public institutions. The site was started in 2003 by a kid named “moot” (then fifteen) who set up the site with his mom's credit card, and who has managed to keep it going with sporadic ad revenue from only the dodgiest, least scrupulous advertisers. (Improbably, moot was a top 100 finalist for Time magazine's “most influential person of the year” award for 2009.) 4chan and its sister sites, the other “Chans”—7chan, 420chan, 711chan, etc. al.—are the black hole of the Internet. They collect the worst that the Internet has to offer, a morass compounded from the ids of the world's adolescent shut-ins.” (Click here for more.)

AINA VASILEVSKIS – RIP

Aina Vasilevskis – my friend of some thirty plus years – was buried today in Dorsington Wood in Warwickshire.

CATTLE MUTILATION ALL OVER AGAIN

“What are you little grey bastards looking at?”

So, after the big thingy over Norway – although we’re now being told it was a Russian missile test gone wrong – it would seem that cattle mutilation has started up again in the Midwest.

“There by the trough - past the locked gate a quarter-mile from U.S. 350 east of Hoehne - was the calf. Its front legs and torso were gone. Its back legs were hanging by hide to a shattered pelvis and a meatless backbone. [Rancher Tom] Miller thought a pack of coyotes had torn into the calf the night before.Then he saw the ears: sliced off the head in circular, surgical-like cuts. He noticed that there were no tracks. And no blood anywhere . . .” (Click here for more plus a very unpleasant picture.)

COSMIC WONDER TOY

But we can take a look at the nicer quadrants of the universe. I haven’t had time to really shake it down, but MrMR has sent us links to an amazing cosmic toy called The Chromoscope that enables users to look at various section of the heavens in a variety of wavelengths including those of normal light, X-ray, Heat, Hydrogen, Radio, and a bunch of other ways. He writes…

“Check out this incredible tool for viewing the heavens on many levels. That such a tool has been developed it amazing in itself, but more amazing to me is that it is just sitting out there in cyberland waiting for anyone to come by and play with it!”

Click here for a video introduction, and click here for the Chromoscope itself.

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Minnesota Frozdick had a very unorthodox approach to the game of pool.

BIG WEIRDASS THING OVER NORWAY (“They’re here?")

I worked all night and rose at a highly unreasonable hour and the emails were already in. (The first came from the fabulous Wendy.) Yes my friends. A huge unearthly thingy has been hovering over Norway. If this is indeed the herald of the mothership or somesuch, I’m damned glad it’s Norway. I’d hate the first extraterrestrial encounter to be with hostile, born-again, lumpen fascists. The UK Daily Mail reported…

“A mysterious light display appearing over Norway last night has left thousands of residents in the north of the country baffled. Witnesses from Trøndelag to Finnmark compared the amazing sight to anything from a Russian rocket to a meteor or a shock wave - although no one appears to have mentioned UFOs yet. The phenomenon began when what appeared to be a blue light seemed to soar up from behind a mountain. It stopped mid-air, then began to circulate. Within seconds a giant spiral had covered the entire sky. Then a green-blue beam of light shot out from its centre - lasting for ten to twelve minutes before disappearing completely. The Norwegian Meteorological Institute was flooded with telephone calls after the light storm - which astronomers have said did not appear to have been connected to the aurora, or Northern Lights, so common in that area of the world. The mystery deepened tonight as Russia denied it had been conducting missile tests in the area. Fred Hansen, from Bø in Vesterålen, described the sight as 'like a big fireball that went around, with a great light around it again.' 'It spun and exploded in the sky,' Totto Eriksen from Tromsø told VG Nett. He spotted the lights as he walked his daughter Amalie to school. He said: 'We saw it from the Inner Harbor in Tromsø. It was absolutely fantastic. 'It almost looked like a rocket that spun around and around and then went diagonally down the heavens. 'It looked like the moon was coming over the mountain, but then came something completely different.” (Click here for more story and a video.)


Our pal Faux Smoke sent a link to VGTV in Norway for more video (Click here) and a article that he Google translated from Norweigan. (Click here.) He noted...

“What I find interesting about this article, was that one of the comments said to "look up Project Blue Beam", which I hadn't heard of, so I did... didn't find a whole lot, other than info about how the article on the subject had been deleted from wikipedia & a number of conspiracies involving nasa [or other agencies, governments, secret groups and various organizations, nasa just being the most popular and mainstream of them] implementing some sort of plan to dominate the globe and implement some sort of new world order via the manipulation of the minds and thoughts of the masses from outer space. I didn't read too thoroughly into any of the conspiracies, I've got finals this week and really don't have the time... Nonetheless, I figured that you, being a connoisseur of most things UFO & outer-space related, might find it interesting if nothing else.”

The sercret word is Encounter

ANOTHER IMAGE

DOC40 WAR ON CHRISTMAS SPECIAL OFFERS

"Now go away."

Thanks to our homeboy Joly, of WWWhatsup, we have a Doc40 free offer of I HATE CHRISTMAS buttons. All I need is to be sent a stamped and addressed envelope and I’ll mail them out. The only snag is that you have to email byron4d@msn.com to get the address. (I don’t give it out to bad company.)

HOWEVER…Doc40 is also doing a special Solstice AMAZING OFFER. Just stuff a US ten dollar bill in an envelope and we will send you both an I HATE CHRISTMAS pin and a signed copy of ZONES OF CHAOS. (That's almost six bucks off the cover price.) I know sending cash is risky, but WTF, if any are lost we’ll cover it. Screw Paypal. But again you need to email byron4d@msn.com to get the address.

PIN

SPACE OPERA

Here’s the promised Jack Kirby, but maybe it’s redundant if the aliens are really about to land in Norway.

WORST CASE SCENARIO

Back in the 1970’s, in paranoia movies like Three Days Of The Condor, the projected day when the oil ran out was also when civilization collapsed and the barbarians busted down the gates. With this ancient cultural toxin lodged firmly in my lizard mind, I was obviously dismayed when the latest email arrived from our highly informed pal Aeswiren

“This came in from Energy and Capital newsletter. While global warming is on many minds, we should also be thinking about the ongoing decline in oil production. Panic may be just a few months away. More than one-quarter of our crude production comes from just 20 oilfields. Most of these massive oil fields were discovered about 50 years ago. Another 50% of global oil supply comes from about 110 other fields, with the remaining production produced by approximately 70,000 smaller fields. The natural rate of decline in fields past their peak was approximately 9%. Of course, of those 20 largest oilfields, every one of them has passed their peak production. If you really want an idea of what can happen to these oil fields, look no further than the once-mighty Cantarell field in Mexico.
Discovered in 1976, the Cantarell field was the second largest oil producing field in the world at one point. In 2000, Pemex began injecting nitrogen into the field. Three years later, Cantarell was pumping out 2.1 million barrels per day.
Since then, the field has been in an out-of-control death spiral that nothing could stop. Production started to decline at a rate of 14% per year. Today, production has fallen to half a million barrels per day. The consequences will be even more drastic: Approximately 90% of Mexico's electricity generation is dependent on fossil fuels. Recently, the country's energy minister announced its goal to have 26% of its power-generation come from renewable sources. That may be little more than wishful thinking. Revenue from Pemex accounts for 40% of the country's budget.
It's only a matter of time before Mexico becomes a net oil importer. If so much of their budget is dependent on oil, how can they possibly afford it?”

ARE YOU READY?

In his autobiography We'll Be Here For The Rest of Our Lives, Paul Shaffer quotes verbatim the time-honored introduction by Danny Ray, James Brown's formidable master of ceremonies. ..

"Now, ladies and gentlemen, it is Star Time. Are you ready for Star Time? Thank you and thank you kindly. It is indeed a great pleasure to present to you at this particular time the artist nationally and internationally known as the hardest-working man in show business. Yes, he'll make your bladder splatter, he'll make your knees freeze and your liver quiver. The star of the show, Mr. Please Please himself, soul brother number one, Mr. Dynamite, the man with the crown ... James Brown and the Famous Flames.” (And click here for some fine, hard-working JB.)

ABSTINENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW

The stuff one can stumble across is nothing short of amazing. A catalogue of Christian merch? Damn me. And are these young woman modelling the God-wear the arm-waving, Christian-rock singing, Rapture-confident, Palin-boosting, sexually abstaining, wide-eyed youth that I have seen on those annoying CD commercials? Um, okay. But the look of them does rather enhance the scurrilous rumours that the abstinence movement has devianted to a weird ass postion in which Jesus is kinda okay with anal and oral, and only draws the line at actual, all-the-way, penetrating missionary fucking. But hell, what to I know? I’m damned to hell anyway.

SPACE OPERA

From the great Jack Kirby's Forever People. (And there may be another one tomorrow.)

WAITING FOR JUSTICE FOR A QUARTER OF A CENTURY

We remember 1984 mainly for George Orwell’s novel, or maybe for how Michael Jackson swept that year’s Grammies, or Tommy Cooper died of a massive heart attack live on live on TV, or that “Nightstalker” Richard Ramírez started his slay-spree, but how many of us remember Bhopal?

“In December 1984, a cloud of poison gas escaped from the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal and went on to kill thousands of people. Twenty-five years later, the tragedy continues to dominate the lives of those who live in the city, as Allan Little discovered.
Swaraj Puri - urbane, eloquent, hospitable - tugs up a sleeve to reveal a series of little white scars on the inside of his left wrist. "I can't remember," he says, "how often they had to puncture the vein to measure the cyanide in my blood. It is amazing I'm still alive I suppose." Mr Puri was the police chief in the state of Madhya Pradesh that night. Roused from his bed after midnight, he made straight for the plant to find out what was going on with still no notion of the scale of the catastrophe that was being unleashed.
"In the control room there was only one official," he told me, "a very junior sort of a person. I asked him what had leaked and from where. He said he didn't know. Did he have any way to find out, I asked. He said no." Mr Puri climbed to the highest part of the plant that night. "It is probably what saved me,"
"The poisonous gas methyl isocyanate is heavier than air so, when it escaped from the plant, it settled in a dense cloud and moved silently through the poor neighbourhoods around the plant. "I could see," he said, "the black density of the poisonous cloud making its slow progress through the dimly lit streets." (Click here for more.)

Thanks to Valerie for the link.

The secret word is Criminal

LIBERALS WON’T SAVE YOUR ASS

I don’t mean to make reprinting Chris Hedges Monday columns from TruthDig a regular thing, but this one is just so damned right.

“Liberals are a useless lot. They talk about peace and do nothing to challenge our permanent war economy. They claim to support the working class, and vote for candidates that glibly defend the North American Free Trade Agreement. They insist they believe in welfare, the right to organize, universal health care and a host of other socially progressive causes, and will not risk stepping out of the mainstream to fight for them. The only talent they seem to possess is the ability to write abject, cloying letters to Barack Obama—as if he reads them—asking the president to come back to his “true” self. This sterile moral posturing, which is not only useless but humiliating, has made America’s liberal class an object of public derision.” (Click here for the rest.)

SPACE OPERA

DECADENT SUNDAY CONVERSATION

DRYDEN – I once knew this Uzbekian heroin dealer in Istanbul. He kept three king cobras in a glass tank like an aquarium. Big mean poisonous motherfuckers that'd kill you as soon as look at you. Always hissing and spreading their hoods, (gestures like a cobra spreading its hood) Son of a bitch used to hide all his dope and his money under the gravel in bottom of the tank. Figured that anyone trying to rip him off would never have the balls to stick their hand in the cobra tank.
MILNE – When the fuck were you in Istanbul?
DRYDEN doesn't look at MILNE.
MILNE (grins knowingly) – You were never in fucking Istanbul.
DRYDEN (shrugs) – Actually it was Trenton, New Jersey. The guy was some old time hippie asshole with a big beard, looked like Jerry Garcia with bulimia. I only said Istanbul to improve on the story. Shit always sounds better if you set it somewhere exotic, you know what I mean?
CHA-CHA – What you mean is that you're a fucking liar.
DRYDEN – I’m a weaver of lurid tales, kid.
MILNE – I’ll wager he wasn’t Uzbekian either.
(The phone rings, a European-style double ring.)

TO LIVE OUTSIDE THE LAW YOU MUST BE HONEST

Our pal Jon left a comment on Friday’s post "RIDE THAT DINOSAUR, ARYAN JESUS!" in which he used the word “antinomians.” I had no idea what that meant and checked with Wikipedia.

“Antinomianism or lawlessness in theology, is the idea that members of a particular religious group are under no obligation to obey the laws of ethics or morality, and that salvation is by predestination only. Antinomianism is the polar opposite of legalism, the notion that obedience to a code of religious law earns salvation. The term has become a point of contention among those opposed to religious authorities. Few groups or sects, outside of Christian Anarchism or Jewish anarchism, explicitly call themselves "antinomian", but the charge is often leveled by some Christian denominations against competing denominations, and for example, by the Jewish Encyclopedia against Paul of Tarsus. The Latin term Sola fide ("[by] faith alone") refers to the foundational Protestant belief in salvation through faith alone, a concept preached intensely by Martin Luther, but who was also an outspoken critic of antinomianism, for example his Against the Antinomians.”
In more modern times…
"George Orwell was a frequent user of “antinomian” in a secular (and always approving) sense. In his 1940 essay on Henry Miller, “Inside the Whale”, the word appears several times, including one in which he calls A.E. Housman a writer in “a blasphemous, antinomian, ‘cynical’ strain”, meaning defiant of arbitrary societal rules." (Click here for the whole thing.)

Aren’t you glad we got that settled?

The secret word is Learnin’

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Siegfried Frozdick wore a nice clean white shirt to the meeting.

CAT POETRY

The inclusion of the poem by Finn the cat in last yesterday’s post generated enough email to make me think that I should throw Doc40 open to other feline poets. Send email submissions to byron4d@msn.com and I will post them. The rules are simple.

The work must be spontaneously generated. Placing the cat on the computer keys would be a breach of honor.

The poem must be accompanied by the cat’s name, a short biography, and a picture. (And don’t make it larger than around 150 kb.)