ALL MAY NOT BE WHAT IT SEEMS

Freeway signs warning of upcoming drug checkpoints turn out actually to be a ruse: the local sheriff sets up real drug a checkpoint at the next offramp and searches panicky motorists who pull off to ditch or better hide their dope. When the hell is someone going to appreciate just how tired this game of cops and stoners has become. (Click here the full story)

Click here for Johnny Cash

The secret word is Devious

BUT THERE’S ALWAYS CASH FOR MORE JAILS

Tired isn’t the word for his dreary perpetuation…

“Due to the prolonged economic meltdown, many states are now making drastic cuts in funding for social services - such as health, education, and public housing - but not on policing and prison improvement and expansion. There are nearly two million people behind bars in the U.S., most poor whites and people of colour, making the United States the number one country in the world in terms of the imprisonment rate. The report notes that about 16 percent of incarcerated people also experienced homelessness before being arrested. "Most of these people are significantly more likely to have both a mental illness and a substance addiction, which frequently go untreated," said Nastassia Walsh of JPI. She said that states with higher high school graduation rates and college enrollment have lower crime rates than those with lower educational attainment levels.” Click here for more

I AM JUST A POOR DOGPOET WHO FINDS HIMSELF LOCKED OUT OF THE CATHOUSE

Our good friend Ann has posted a third segment from last Friday’s live performance at the Luz de Jesus Gallery. This piece is titled “Just A Poor Dogpoet Who Finds Himself Locked Out Of The Cathouse.” Click here

THE WORLD STOPS

I’ve never been a soap fan but I figured I should mark its passing…

"For 54 years, CBS took viewers to the town of Oakdale, Ill., home of "As the World Turns." On Friday, after almost 14,000 episodes, the legendary soap opera aired its final episode. Soaps, which once ruled daytime television, have been on the decline for several years. At the height of their popularity, 40 years ago, there were 19 on TV. That number is down to six. And yesterday, As the World Turns, one of the most successful of them all, fell victim to TV's tough new economic realities. "It's all about the bottom line," explains the show's executive producer, Christopher Goutman. "Scripted drama in daytime is a tough proposition, because it's expensive to produce, and I understand that. We are a victim of the times."

GRATUITOUS BOWIE

SPACE OPERA FRIDAY SPECIAL

Don’t get it? Click here and watch the video.

CROWS TOOL UP

As a regular denizen of the dawn, I have an uneasy acquaintance with the crows that hold avian sway on my block, and I keep a careful eye on all things crow-related. I’ve seen the video clips of crows making hooks out of paper clips and removing corks from bottles during lab experiments, but it now seems that they are using tools in the wild and thus this item on io9 instantly caught my attention. To say the least this makes me feel a tad uneasy and I would refer any crow who might be reading this to the next post down and where tool-use ultimately gets you.

“Tool use is incredibly rare in the animal kingdom, so it's a big deal when we discover crows going to considerable trouble to use sticks for hunting beetle larvae hiding inside branches. Using a tiny stick might not seem like much, but it's the crow equivalent of piloting a 747 or running a particle accelerator - it takes years of training to master and it's still pretty difficult even for experts at the practice. The crows, found on the Pacific island of New Caledonia, also have to make the decision to learn how to use the sticks when they are very young, or else they won't be able to pick up the skill later. So why do crows bother with something so brutally complicated? The answer lies in their diets. Oxford researcher Christian Rutz examined what the beetle larvae contribute to the crows' overall nutrition. They were able to do this because the larvae carry nitrogen-fixing symbionts, which shows up in the blood and feathers of crows who eat them but are absent in those that lack the tool skills to get at the larvae. Rutz discovered just a few larvae can satisfy a crow's energy needs for an entire day, meaning a crow can almost immediately make up for the huge amount of time it had to put into getting the larvae. Nothing the crows would otherwise eat can compare to the raw energy content of the beetle larvae, which provides a major advantage to crows that can use tools. Let's just hope it's not too much of an evolutionary advantage, or else we could be looking at a nightmarish Planet of the Crows scenario in a few million years. There's a reason a group of crows is called a murder, after all.”

The secret word is Leverage

Sid Rawle – RIP

NUKE PORN

Seemingly there aren’t that many of these cameramen left. “Quite a few have died from cancer,” George Yoshitake, 82, one of the survivors, told an interviewer.

YES, IT’S HER AGAIN

After only one day as the Republican nominee, wannabe Senator Christine O’Donnell proves that she has a direct line to the mania of America as her concern is revealed about the menace to the nation posed by monster mice…

"They are -- they are doing that here in the United States. American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains. So they're already into this experiment." Click here for more.

Click here for video proof

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

James Tiberius Frozdick was quietly delighted with the first successful test of his space suit.

THIS PERKY POWER POODLE WANTS TO BE A SENATOR AND ALSO TO STOP YOU TOUCHING YOURSELF. (HAVE A NICE DAY)

You all are most probably all aware that the dire and demented Christine O’Donnell is now the GOP Senate nominee for Delaware, even though she made her political bones as a Bible-bending, con-artist operating in the sexual paranoia religion racket, with a special obsession about masturbation, and with a deft mendacity that enables her to make up her facts to fit her opinions as she goes along. That this cutesy-poo megalomaniette could even approach power in a nuke armed superpower leads me closer and closer to the conclusion that the USA is going fundamentally insane and the world may be doomed. Oh well. We all have to go sometime. O’Donnell didn’t, however, come out of nowhere. The boot camp for her poison was the Bill Maher’s old ABC show Politically Incorrect that also spawned Coulter, Malkin, and a whole slew of faux-fanatic facist harpies. Click here for a video clip I lifted from Dangerous Minds that show her facing down Eddie Izzard.

Click here for The Rolling Stones

The secret word is Simpering

ODDLY THIS AD WAS BANNED

I’m not sure if this is related news…

“Britain's advertising watchdog has censured an Italian ice cream manufacturer over an advertisement depicting a heavily pregnant nun that appeared ahead of a papal visit to the UK. The ad featuring the strapline "immaculately conceived" over an image of the expectant sister spooning from a tub of Antonio Federici ice cream was "likely to cause widespread offense," the Advertising Standards Authority ruled. The watchdog rejected the manufacturer's claims that it was "using gentle humor" to convey the message that "ice cream is our religion." "We considered the use of a nun pregnant through immaculate conception was likely to be seen as a distortion and mockery of the beliefs of Roman Catholics."

Click here for Little Richard

BUT THERE IS SOME GOOD NEWS

Doc40 is a huge fan of Elizabeth Warren and now it seems that she will be the new sheriff to clean up Wall Street. We couldn’t be happier.

“President Obama, sidestepping a possibly heated confirmation battle, will appoint Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren as a special advisor to the Treasury Department to launch the government's powerful new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to two Democratic officials familiar with the decision. Warren could still be nominated as the director, but the Treasury appointment will allow her to shape the formation of the agency in the coming months, a top priority of Obama, without waiting for Senate approval, the officials said late Wednesday. They requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.”Click here for more

MO’ METROPOLIS

A restored print of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, with 25 extra minutes, just showed in an art deco power plant in Austin this past weekend. The weekend screening of Metropolis was organized by Austin's Alamo Drafthouse, and featured a live orchestral score by Golden Hornet Project. (Now how about a workers' uprising?)

CATTLECLASS? (How Much Of This Shit Are We Expected To Take?)

Just one more example of how the corporate overlords assume we will tolerate anything in preservation of their profits. We are not considered customers, we are categorized as cattle.

“The SkyRider is a saddle-style airplane seat which will allow airlines to squeeze even more passengers into already cramped cabins. The poor passenger will perch atop a sculpted squab that has more in common with a horse-saddle than a comfy chair. The new seats are due to be launched next week at the Aircraft Interiors Expo Americas conference in Long Beach, by manufacturer Aviointeriors. They’re intended to introduce a new cabin-class, below economy. It should probably be called cattle-class. As you can see, part of the passenger’s weight is taken on their legs, and the legs are tucked under the seat in front. Just how close are the seats? Aviointeriors says that the seat-pitch is just 23-inches. Seat-pitch is the distance between the same point on two seats, and the smallest seat-pitch on economy-class flights is around 31-inches. Even low-cost carrier Southwest has a pitch of 32-33 inches on its planes. No airlines have yet committed to using the SkyRider, but it can’t be long before companies like Europe’s Ryanair, notorious for wanting to charge passengers to use the toilet, puts these things into their planes" Click here for more

The secret words are Cruel and Unusual

BUT THE ANSWER IS SO DAMNED OBVIOUS

We have the technology to run trains at 300+ mph. The energy saving would be quantum, and the massive public works investment involved in building a new railroad system would make the economy sing. (The Chinese have already made a start on one.) Would I contemplate a twelve hour ride from LA to NY? Of course I would, if it was from city center to city center, in comfort, with a bar car and a restaurant, and no cabs to and from the airport or invasive security. You can’t hi-jack a train and the tracks could have built in safety measures. I love the idea of high-tech, mag-lev trains and could ride the topic for pages, but I’ll leave that for later. But, of course, as we can all surmise, the oil barons and the airline moguls will fight it to the last bastard.

Click here to solve the Mystery. (It’s well worth the effort)

IS THERE A CHINAMAN IN TOWN?

Amazing Ann has posted another video segment from last Friday’s live performance. It’s my opium opus “Is There A Chinaman In Town?” Click here

WAITER, THE TITANIC HIT AN ICECUBE AND HAS SUNK IN MY DRINK

DON'T YOU MISS THE 20TH CENTURY?

DON'T YOU MISS THE 20TH CENTURY? (Janie Jones Special)

As I idly scanned Dangerous Minds today (there’s a link on the right) I was halted by an item on Janie Jones. Most of you who remember her at all would do so because of the Clash song about her. Jones was a 1960s party girl who found herself railroaded on vice charges when authorities tried to make her a moral example and cast her as some kind of Swinging London Prostitution Queenpin. I never met the lady, although I think I may have walked into a couple of parties just after she had left. The real connection between us was the arch-conservative Judge King-Hamilton. King-Hamilton was a hanging judge who was wheeled out whenever such moral examples were to be made. King-Hamilton was the judge who gave Janie her vicious seven year bit in jail, and he was the judge when my partners and I went for trail on obscenity charges for publishing the comic book Nasty Tales. King-Hamilton would happily have sent me down for the max, but fortunately the jury disagreed and I walked out of the Old Bailey a free and vindicated man. It does prove, however, that pop-culture history is a very small world.

“She was mostly known for her uninhibited sexuality and ‘fuck you’ attitude toward the stodgy and hypocritical British establishment. She hung out with actors, politicians and rock stars, including Marc Bolan, Tom Jones and Dusty Springfield. But her biggest claim to fame was when she was arrested and imprisoned for running a prostitution ring. Her high rolling friends were shocked at what was considered a harsh sentence for something as benign as arranging “dates’ for some of London’s most famous hipsters. This was the sixties after all, the era of free love. It was as if she were being punished for the behavior of an entire generation. Janie’s bust made her an instant cause celebre and the fodder for countless tabloid headlines. When sentencing Janie Jones to seven years in prison in 1973 after she’d faced charges for vice and corruption, Judge King-Hamilton called her one of the most evil women he’d ever sentenced.” (Click here for more)

The secret word is Scapegoat

Click here for The Clash

MEMPHIS PSYCHOSIS

The redoubtable Ann has just posted a clip of Andy and me performing “Memphis Psychosis” last Friday. Click here

And if you can’t catch some of the words, they’re all in my book Zones of Chaos

EARTHLING

Our pal Aeswiren brought this to our attention…

"EARTHLINGS is an award-winning documentary film about the suffering of animals for food, fashion, pets, entertainment and medical research. Considered the most persuasive documentary ever made, EARTHLINGS is nicknamed “the Vegan maker” for its sensitive footage shot at animal shelters, pet stores, puppy mills, factory farms, slaughterhouses, the leather and fur trades, sporting events, circuses and research labs. The film is narrated by Academy Award® nominee Joaquin Phoenix and features music by platinum-selling recording artist Moby. Initially ignored by distributors, today EARTHLINGS is considered the definitive animal rights film by organizations around the world. “Of all the films I have ever made, this is the one that gets people talking the most,” said Phoenix. “For every one person who sees EARTHLINGS, they will tell three.” (Click here for a trailer and more)

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Coco Frozdick’s fragrance was a dismal failure despite her unparalleled optimism.

(Image from DAT)

WHAT IMMORTAL HAND OR EYE?

(We don’t often get to quote Blake around here.)

POST 9/11 THOUGHTS ON AIR RAIDS

Aside from being too tired yesterday to contribute anything that might mark the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center towers, I was also somewhat conflicted about what I really felt nine years after the event. Especially as I lived for almost a decade in full view of them. I would never argue it was anything but a dreadful spectacle of death and destruction, and dealt a massive, and shockingly traumatic blow to the psyche of America. The conflict starts when I too plainly hear the horror and the death toll being exploited for political gain and to generate irrational fear, bigotry, and hatred. It deepens when I find myself sadly aware that many of exploiters (Rudi Giuliani being a prime exception) come from a middle-country mindset that has traditionally loathed New York City for its supposed moral decadence and shameless diversity.
To put everything in perspective, I tell myself that the 2001 attacks were nothing more than an unorthodox surprise air raid. I can understand the concept of an air raid. I am younger than the English children in the picture but old enough to have been told how, when I was a still a tiny baby, Nazi V1 rockets (I guess today we would call them drones) reigned destruction on the streets of the town where I lived. Thus when I hear people talk about Ground Zero being a sacred site or hallowed ground, I can only reflect just how many other cities on this planet have their own sacred sites and hallowed ground. London, Rotterdam, Coventry, Hanoi, Liverpool, Tokyo, Berlin, Guernica, Dresden, Baghdad, Leningrad, and, of course, Hiroshima and Nagasaki – once started the list goes on and on. And, in some cases, it wasn’t just the terror of a single awful morning, but bombing that went on for weeks – even months – with the body count running into tens or hundreds of thousands. Sadly, many of these atrocities were authored in our name by British and American military strategist. (Indeed, my own father was marginally complicit in the fire-storming of Dresden, and died in the process.) Don’t think I’m trying to diminish the profound impact of 9/11 on the USA, all I am suggesting is that, instead of making September 11th a date of institutional mourning, let us focus instead on working to a world where humans being do not feel the need to drop high explosives, or worse, from the sky to kill and maim other humans.

I have – maybe self indulgently – posted links two pieces of WWII Brit blitz propaganda, to show the impact of air raids in a slightly different cultural light.

Click here for London Can Take It
Click here for Noel Coward

LADY GAGA IS A PSYOP WEAPON?

Moving quickly from the appalling to the ridiculous, our pal Jon has sent us a stunning theory that Lady Gaga is a planned force for mass mind control in the psycho-civilized society. He comments – “Personally I'm hoping some of this is real. It's all so Malcolm MacLaren.” Camille Paglia wrote an analysis of Gaga yesterday in the London Sunday Times, but this is much more fun and also free.

“During their reeducation, subjects are said to be exposed to numerous symbols such as trees, spider webs, masks, mazes, butterflies, etc. They are also shown movies which contain specific symbols (or “triggers”) such as The Wizard of Oz and many Disney Movies. The same way those subjects are brainwashed and reeducated, mass media conducts a large scale mind control project, which starts at birth with Disney movies and continues with Hollywood flicks and music videos. What we must retain here is the symbolism Monarch project engendered and its use in mass media. Monarch is a type of butterfly and became the ultimate “insider’s”symbol of mind control. Symbolism surrounding Lady Gaga, in her pictures and videos, mixes those symbols with occultism of secret societies.. Her vacuous, robotic and slightly degenerate persona embodies all the “symptoms” of a mind control victim.” Click here for the whole theory

Click here at your own risk

UMM…OKAY?

BUT I GUESS ONE THING LEADS TO NATURALLY TO ANOTHER

(If it’s only truth in advertizing.)

SUNDAY BREAKFAST

I’m not pretending to be rational about all this. I want a martini. That manner of mood is upon me after managing to sleep through all the frightened, frightening and maybe less-than-healthy 9/11 mourning, manipulation, and mythmaking. The immaculate, gin-clear attraction calls too loudly to be ignored. I probably shouldn’t have one but what the hell, it’s not going to be easy to get anyway. I have yet to discover a cocktail delivery service, and I am not quite prepared to brave a bar. On Friday night I did a performance here in LA with guitarist Andy Colquhoun that certainly surpassed all of my expectations, and I think was very well received by those who attended. The first ten minutes of the show are up on YouTube and posted by our friend Ann Yonan on my Facebook page. Unfortunately this segment is far from the best of what came to pass. But as Andy and I found our feet and got used to the room, we moved from a slow start and – damn – we really commenced to cook as though some Reichian energy had magically fallen upon us and taken us to heights that were quite a surprise to this tired old boy.

The secret word is Satisfied

Click here for the first clip

Click here for the Band

MARILYN SEZ...

“Despite his craving for gin, he really seems quite pleased with himself.”

THINGS WE LEARNED FROM ELVIS

I lifted this from a site called Misscellania. Silly but, I think, Sunday fun.

1. The typical train is 16 carriages long.
2. All food in Germany consists of hasenpfeffer and black pumpernickel.
3. The Heartbreak Hotel is located at the end of Lonely Street and its desk clerk dresses in black.
4. Hula dancers are best judged by their ability to really move that grass around.
5. A harem in the Middle East contains 20 women.
6. So efficient is the US postal service that it will return an unwanted letter within 24 hours of its initial posting.
7. There are few sounds that make you feel more lonely than that of the midnight train.
8. If hitchhiking, it's hard to choose a better destination than Memphis Tennessee.

RELATIONSHIPS
1. When inviting a young woman to dance, you may increase your chances by noting that chicken is being served in the barn.
2. If rejected by the older sister in a family, by all means have a crack at her little sister, who may have matured more than you at first noticed.
3. Women named Marie are naturally duplicitous.
4. It's OK to date your cousin, providing she's a distant cousin "but not too distant with you".
5. Girls named Daisy tend to drive you crazy.
6. If caught without a partner during a dance at a federal penitentiary, why not try dancing with a wooden chair?
7. Conversation with a girlfriend can become tiresome if she fails to break up the conversation every now and then with a little action.
8. A .44-calibre pistol is an excellent firearm choice for a woman whose partner was doin' her wrong.

PERSONAL GROOMING
1. If wearing suede shoes, particularly of a light hue, one should make their protection one's No. 1 priority, even above that of preventing arson attacks on one's own home.

THE ANIMAL KINGDOM
1. There are few looks in life more intense than that of a one-eyed cat peeping in a seafood store.
2. A passionate kiss can be measured by the fact that even a team of wild horses would be unable to drag apart the two participants.
3. The embrace of a grizzly bear provides a useful point of comparison when considering the pressure necessary to demonstrate real passion during an affair.
4. A good hound dog should be able to catch a rabbit.

GEOGRAPHY
1. People are more likely to be alone during a blue moon than during any other lunar event.
2. In the state of Kentucky, precipitation usually occurs when a man is hitchhiking from town to town, having been abandoned by his baby.

MEDICAL
1. The lips of attractive women tend to taste like breakfast spread, in particular honey.
2. A temperature of 109 is quite common during the early stages of an affair.
3. The experience of love, especially early in life, can have serious medical consequences including sensations of itching, hand tremors, leg spasms, heart palpitations and language difficulties.

HISTORY
1. American soldiers were unable to approach young women in Germany in the period after the war, as local women wore signs in German saying, "Keepen Sie Off The Grass."

PHILOSOPHY
1. Children born in disadvantaged areas such as ghettos should receive special assistance as this reduces the likelihood of them turning to a life of crime, thus perpetuating an endless cycle of disadvantage.
2. A rabbit's foot, while widely considered a creator of good luck, makes only a moderate contribution to one's happiness compared to the impact of finding a good life partner.
3. If you suspect someone is evil check their middle name because it may well be "Misery".

AS THE WORLD TURNS

I guess a Lemmy action figure has to be some kind of full circle. Needless to say, I am bitterly envious. And left wondering where the hell do we go from here?

Click here for Lem on Leno