THE OIL IS BAD ENOUGH BUT THIS IS TEN TIMES WORSE

Barack Obama has advocated three dubious energy solutions. Most recently it was off-shore oil drilling, and we’re still seeing how that one turned out. Before drilling it was clean coal and nuclear. The nuclear really jarred with me at the time, quite undoing my initial delight that we actually had a president that could pronounce the word. Obama declared the modern nuclear power plant was safe, and the old Monty Burns models were a thing of the past. Unfortunately it’s starting to emerge that nuclear power regulation is as much of a corrupt clusterfuck as oil.

“Much like Captain Renault in Casablanca, the White House is suddenly shocked, shocked to find that oil rigs can explode, destroying ecosystems and livelihoods. The Obama administration has backed away from its offshore oil expansion policy in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe as the long-term environmental and economical consequences unfold in the Gulf States. Headlines are clamoring for the criminal investigations of BP, TransOcean, Halliburton and ultimately, the federal regulator, Mineral Management Services (MMS). Rather paradoxically, President Obama is using the oil spill to call for more nuclear power. Yet, with the exception of a handful of insightful political cartoonists, the obvious parallel between the regulatory delinquency of MMS and that of its nuclear equivalent - the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) - and the potential for an equally catastrophic accident in the nuclear sector, has not been drawn. As with the MMS debacle, the NRC is gambling with inevitable disaster with the same spin of the wheel of misfortune and with potentially even higher stakes. Investigations have already revealed that MMS had become too friendly and compliant toward the industry it was supposed to regulate. This hands-off approach proved to be a formula for inevitable disaster. Similarly, the NRC consistently puts the financial motives of the nuclear industry it is supposed to regulate ahead of public safety. In instance after instance, the NRC has chosen not to enforce its own regulations even in the face of repeated reactor safety violations, risking a serious reactor accident while leaving often high-risk safety problems to linger unresolved for decades.” (Click here for the rest)

Click here for Janis

The secret word is Strontium

AND WHILE WE’RE CONTEMPLATING NUKES…

…let’s ponder a bit of dangerous science.

“This is because the uranium is not enriched. A nuclear bomb fueled by uranium releases energy through fission, the breaking apart of an atom. When a neutron hits the nucleus of a uranium atom, the atom breaks apart. The resulting pieces weigh slightly less than the original whole; that weight having been turned into huge amounts of energy. Here's the key – each split nucleus has to release at least two neutrons of its own. They hit other nuclei and start two more reactions, and those atoms release more neutrons and start more reactions. The result is either a steady hum of energy or a big boom, depending on how you work it. Let's face it. If it were that simple, nuclear bombs would have been invented long ago. If there's one thing the internet proves, it's that people will never stop looking for flashy ways to hurt themselves and others. The reason why everything, from the pyramids to the Eiffel Tower aren't reduced to little particles of dust wafting around the upper atmosphere is only very, very rare isotopes of uranium break apart easily enough and give off enough neutrons to sustain a nuclear reaction. The most common uranium isotope is uranium-238, with ninety-two protons and 146 neutrons. It doesn't sustain a reaction. Uranium-235, with 143 neutrons, is the money isotope.” (Click here for more)

Click here for the greatest Boots Randolph tenor solo of all time.

THOSE WHACKY SCIENTISTS

(The image came from Valerie. We’re thinking of you, gal.)

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Ricky Frozdick became a master of disguise in the days when he was stalking Mick Jagger.

KEEP WATCHING THE DRUMMER

Click here for percussion hilarity (Sent by Munz)

SUNDAY BREAKFAST

The piece of wedding cake had been sent by the bride. It arrived in a silver box. “Yum”, I though, “Coffee and cake.” I made myself the coffee, I placed the cake on a plate, but then, as I was about to spear it with a fork, it suddenly transformed into a malevolently hostile robot that would have attacked me if I had not beaten it immobile with my favorite Elvis Presley coffee cup. (Image supplied by Faux Smoke)

Click here for Eileen Barton

The secret word is Decepticon

AVIAN GANG ACTION

The observation of the local urban wildlife has long been a fascination and I even wrote a story about it in the now defunct LA CityBeat that, in turn, actually got me hired on at the LA Times as an occasional op-ed columnist. (But then I was dropped for my shameless leftwing bias.) In my street alone, we have possums, raccoons, scary tree rats, and one time, in the dead of night, a pair of coyotes loped by like two Viet Cong during Tet. Over in Laurel Canyon you can add deer, bobcats, and hawks. Indeed, at one July 4th barbeque, I saw a hawk alight on a tree branch with a snake struggling in its beak. The other guests paid it little mind, but, as a classicist, I though it a dire omen for America. (You be the judge.)For some years now, the crows have owned my street, running off the doves and blue jays, and even demanding tribute from the squirrels. They would squire it in the dawn, eyeing the prtevious night's beer cans as possible tools, and shooting me looks as I watched from my balcony that clearly said, “If I had an opposable thumb, human motherfucker, your species would be toast.” But lately the crows have somehow lost their absolutist sway. As if it was some grim episode of The Sopranos, their power has waned. The doves are back, the humming birds work the provided feeder, and the squirrels have grown bold. The crows haven’t departed but their sass has diminished, and I’m unsure of what it might mean.

(Drawing by the late and still lamented Edward Barker)

Click here for Steeleye Span

BUT THE CROWS MAY NOT BE THWARTED YET

BUT IT’S THE WEEKEND, AND I CAN PUT MY FEET UP (Like the little lion last Friday)

OR WE COULD REMEMBER D-DAY

“THOMAS KINKADE IS A DEADBEAT”

The business practices of Thomas Kinkade – the massively successful painter of Christian-kitsch cottages – are coming under serious scrutiny as one of his companies goes belly up. This comes on top of long buzzing rumors about his connections with World Vision, a supposedly evangelical aid organisation that the paranoid conspiracy community has suspected for decades of being a CIA front operation with ties to brainwashing and the 1978 Jonestown massacre.

“One of Thomas Kinkade's companies filed for bankruptcy protection Wednesday, a day after a $1-million payment was due to former gallery owners who have tried for four years to collect on a judgment they won against the self-styled "painter of light." The Chapter 11 petition was filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in San Jose in the name of the Kinkade production arm, Pacific Metro of Morgan Hill, Calif. It allows Pacific Metro to reorganize and puts an automatic stay on the collection of all judgments, including one for $3 million owed to Karen Hazlewood and Jeff Spinello. "Kinkade is a … deadbeat," said their lawyer, Norman Yatooma, who accused the artist and his Los Angeles attorney, Dana Levitt, of "breaching their agreement" to pay up. "Kinkade's word is as worthless as his artwork. His lawyer is no better." (Click here for more)

Click here for Joe Brown

The secret word is Saccharine

“BLUE LAGOON”

Click here for another track (plus minimalist video) from the upcoming virtual album String Theory by my longtime songwriting partner and band mate Andy Colquhoun (once and future Deviant and Pink Fairy). The title of the track is “Blue Lagoon.” I don’t know if Andy was thinking of the cocktail or an idyllic beach when he composed the piece, but, naturally, here at Doc40, we used the image of the alcohol. Click here for previous upload.

SPACE OPERA

GRATUITOUS BARDOT

COKE, IT SEEMS, IS BAD FOR YOU (Or so they say)

It’s Friday and here on Doc40 it’s turned out to be a day of recreational pursuits away for all the ghastly stuff that seems to be our daily news fodder.

"TUESDAY, June 1 (HealthDay News) -- Cocaine abusers -- already at risk for an abnormal heartbeat, hallucinations, convulsions and stroke -- can add another potential health complication to the list: rotting flesh. "If you are a user of cocaine, you should be aware that some of the cocaine is not clean and can have other agents that can cause you to have a low white-cell count or skin tissue death," said Dr. Ghinwa Dumyati, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Rochester and an epidemiologist for the Monroe County Health Department in New York. In a report in the June 1 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, Dumyati and doctors from the University of Rochester Medical Center discuss two cases involving women with a history of cocaine use who came to the hospital for help when they noticed purplish plaques on their cheeks, earlobes, legs, thighs and buttocks. Their profiles were typical of toxicity with levamisole, the doctors reported. The medication is a veterinary anti-worming agent, approved for use in cattle, sheep and pigs. It was once used to treat cancer, autoimmune diseases and kidney problems in humans, Dumyati said. It's no longer approved for use in people in the United States, she said, because of adverse side effects. But it's often used to cut cocaine, before distribution to the user, she said. "Almost 80 percent of the cocaine coming into this country has levamisole mixed in," Dumyati said." (Click here for more)

Click here for Marianne

The secret word is Cut

PORN BY THE NUMBERS

Click here for a mass of graphic and explicit facts and figures

Click here for Elvis

And after that what else but…

ORGIES ARE NOT WHAT THEY USED TO BE #3

Click here for Christina Aguilera (Seems like everyone’s got an orgy video, although I notice Kylie’s has been pulled down.)

BUT ON DOC40 CUTE IS STILL STRICTLY RATIONED

“It’s Friday and I can put my feet up.”


(Image lifted from World of Wonder.)

THE WAGES OF GREED

I’ve admired Jim Hightower for a long time. He makes a lot of sense.

“Many news reports about the Gulf oil catastrophe refer to it as a "spill." Wrong. A spill is a minor "oops" — one accidentally spills milks, for example, and from childhood, we're taught the old aphorism: "Don't cry over spilt milk." What's in the Gulf isn't milk and it wasn't spilt. The explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon well was the inevitable result of deliberate decisions made by avaricious corporate executives, laissez faire politicians and obsequious regulators. As the ruinous gulf oil blowout spreads onto land, over wildlife, across the ocean floor and into people's lives, it raises a fundamental question for all of us Americans: Who the hell's in charge here? What we're witnessing is not merely a human and environmental horror, but also an appalling deterioration in our nation's governance. Just as we saw in Wall Street's devastating economic disaster and in Massey Energy's murderous explosion inside its Upper Big Branch coal mine, the nastiness in the gulf is baring an ugly truth that We the People must finally face: We are living under de facto corporate rule that has rendered our government impotent. Thirty years of laissez-faire, ideological nonsense (pushed upon us with a vengeance in the past decade) has transformed government into a subsidiary of corporate power. Wall Street, Massey, BP and its partners — all were allowed to become their own "regulators" and officially encouraged to put their short-term profit interests over the public interest. Let's not forget that on April 2, barely two weeks before Deepwater Horizon blew and 11 people perished on the spot, the public's No. 1 official, Barack Obama, trumpeted his support for more deepwater oil drilling, blithely regurgitating Big Oil's big lie: "Oil rigs today generally don't cause spills." He and his advisors had not bothered to check the truth of that — they simply took the industry's word. That's not governing, it's aiding and abetting profiteers, and it's a pathetic performance. But that was only the start of Washington's oily confession that it has surrendered control to corporate arrogance and avarice. With an unprecedented volume of crude gushing from the well and the magnitude of the disaster multiplying geometrically by the day, who was in charge of coping with that? Not the White House, not the interior secretary, not the EPA. As we saw when Wall Street's greed exploded our economy, the polluting scoundrels were left in charge!” (Click here for the rest)

Click here for The Pogues

The secret word is Uncaring

“BRING ME THE HEAD OF TONY HAYWARD!”

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Dunbar Frozdick took safe sex very seriously.

SPACE OPERA

Click here for Rage Against The Machine

ENOUGH GODDAMN IT!

Not content with foisting the asinine theories of Creationism/Intelligent Design on both the rational public and unsuspecting school kids, one bunch of bloody Christians is determinedly insisting the Earth is the center of the universe and everything else revolves around it because the Bible told them so. Doubtless they’ll loudly demand this end-run to the 15th century be included in Texas textbooks. I shudder in disbelief. Check out the following. This country is eating itself.

“To hear tell, geocentrism, the ancient doctrine that the earth is fixed motionless at the center of the universe, died over four centuries ago. At that time Nicolaus Copernicus, a Polish canon who dabbled in astrology, claimed that the sun and not the earth was at the center of the universe. His idea is known as heliocentrism. It took a hundred years for heliocentrism to become the dominant opinion, and it did so with a complete lack of evidence in its favor. Yet the victory of heliocentrism has been less than total. Over the years geocentrism has had its spokesmen. Among scientists who adhered to the centrality of the earth were three generations of Cassinis: a family of astronomers who dominated French astronomy from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries. Astronomers, pastors, and educators in the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church maintained the geocentric truths well into the twentieth century. They, with the reformers such as Luther, saw that the embracing of heliocentrism would weaken not only science, but also the authority of the Bible.” (Click here for more of this crap)

Click here for Sun Ra (always heliocentric.)

The secret word is Arrant

A HIGH-TRASH HISTORY LESSON

Cuban Rebel Girls (also know as Assault Of The Rebel Girls) -- the impenetrable sexploitation saga of a gang of teenage girls out to support Fidel Castro in the overthrow of Batista -- not only rivals any Ed Wood movie as the worst film ever made, but also contains insider footage of the Cuban Revolution. The Wikipedia entry is curt...

“Cuban Rebel Girls is a 1959 film and the last film for Errol Flynn. It co-starred Beverly Aadland, then Flynn’s girlfriend, and was produced and directed by Barry Mahon. Written and narrated by Flynn, who was sympathetic to Fidel Castro at the time, the film is a semi-documentary. It is filmed in black and white with a screen time of 68 minutes. The storyline follows a group of mercenaries helping Castro against Fulgencio Batista.

The films significance lies in that, to save money, Flynn filmed during the actual Cuban revolution and shot some amazing documentary footage. (According to legend, he even encountered Che Guevara in Santa Clara.) Thus Cuban Rebel Girls poses a triple threat with its dire acting and plot, the pathetic spectacle of Errol Flynn coming terminally unglued, and the images of the real world victory over Batista, and for that it should be remembered.

Click here for a clip

A STARFLEET ADVISORY

Carefully guard your phaser when close to green women. (Image lifted from Adam Gorightly)

ORGIES ARE NOT WHAT THEY USED TO BE #2

But click here for Kylie’s 2010 pop orgy

SATAN ‘SHROOM SLAY

What the hell is going on in Northern California? Bad acid, disgruntled pot growers, and now diabolic mushroom murders…

“CRESCENT CITY -- Witnesses in Del Norte County Superior Court on Wednesday laid out a chaotic series of events surrounding a March killing in Klamath, weaving a twisted picture of a drug-filled night that led to the alleged torture and slaying of a 21-year-old Crescent City man. The accounts of the night are clouded by statements made by the four people in the house at the time of the incident or leading up to it, all of whom are believed to have taken psychedelic mushrooms. The victim and the suspect, according to the testimony, became preoccupied with the idea that a tidal wave was coming, that the end of the world was upon them and that a struggle between God and the devil was taking place. Del Norte County Superior Court Judge William Follett ruled after hours of testimony that there was sufficient evidence to hold Jarrod Wyatt, 26, in the alleged murder of his friend Taylor Powell. Wyatt will also have to answer to charges of aggravated mayhem and torture. The prosecution called two Del Norte County Sheriff's deputies to testify about what they found at the Requa house in which the killing took place in the early morning hours of March 21. The prosecution also called a detective who interviewed Wyatt after his arrest. The defense, in a move to dilute the charges against Wyatt, called his ex-girlfriend, who was at the residence that night and witnessed some of the events before Powell's death.” (Click here for more)

Click here for Robert Johnson

The secret word is Fungicide

Peter Orlovsky – RIP

THERE GOES THE LEG ROOM

I dimly recall when flying was kinda sophisticated, now it’s a cramped hell that is seemingly about to get worse. This is a letter to The Consumerist, and I can only add that Dallas to Orange County is bad enough, but LA to London or Tokyo could become even more of a painful nightmare.

“I’m a road warrior and fly every week from Dallas DFW to Orange County SNA for work. I’ve been doing this trip for about 6 months so I know the drill. Every week I book my ticket for about 3 weeks out to get the best fares and to get the seats that I like. My preference has been to sit in row 14 as that is the second exit row and the seats can recline. This week I went to book my ticket for the week of June 14th and I noticed that on my outbound flight (to SNA) 14 was the 2nd exit row, however on my return flight which is June 17th row 15 is the 2nd exit row. I figured it must be a mistake or something and checked around. It looks like American is adding in 2 rows to the 737 on or about June 15th. Previously there were only 28 rows on a 737 but now there will be 30. As someone who flies on the plane every week, I can tell you, it isn’t very roomy in coach as it is. When they add two more rows it will definitely suck.” (Click here for more)

Click here for the Byrds

DON’T BE A…

Although how much choice we have is becoming increasingly debatable. And while we debate it, let’s ponder the words of BP boss Tony Hayward on the destruction of the Gulf of Mexico. "There's no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back." At $4.5 million a year, I wouldn’t mind his life either.

Click here for Jimmy Reed

DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSIC'S # 76

(But with single payer health care!)

MARILYN SEZ...

“Happy birthday to me.”