THE BULLSHIT GOES ON

I can only register my disgust that the Obama adminstration – of whom I once, long ago, had such high hopes – continues to fight the tired and discredited War On Drugs with the same misinformation and mendacity regarding marijuana. I would also point out that chocolate has no accepted medical use but that is not a reason to make its use a crime. Barack, you’re a shithead like all the other lying bastard politicians. (The following is from MSNBC)

“The federal government officially declared that marijuana has no accepted medical use and should remain classified as a dangerous and addictive drug. It will remain in the same class of drugs as heroin. The Department of Justice declared Friday: "DHHS concluded that marijuana has a high potential for abuse, has no accepted medical use in the United States, and lacks an acceptable level of safety for use even under medical supervision." The decision comes almost a decade after medical marijuana supporters asked the feds to reclassify cannabis. The activists point to research that showed its effectiveness in treating certain diseases, like glaucoma and multiple sclerosis, and the side effects of chemotherapy. The LA Times spoke to advocates who criticized the ruling, but said it came with a silver lining because they could now move the issue to the federal courts. "We have foiled the government’s strategy of delay, and we can now go head-to-head on the merits, that marijuana really does have therapeutic value," Joe Elford told the Times. He is the chief counsel for Americans for Safe Access and the lead counsel on the recently filed lawsuit. The Times notes that this is the third time that petitions to reclassify pot have failed to be approved. The first, filed in 1972, took 17 years for a ruling. The second was filed in 1995 and denied six years later. Both decisions were appealed, but the courts sided with the federal government. This will not help California's effort to legalize pot for medical use. Voters approved Prop. 215 several years ago, but it has never completely gelled with the feds who on occasion bust medical marijuana facilities.”

Click here for Ian Dury

The secret word is Revulsion

TODAY LONDON, TOMORROW THE WORLD?

Dare we hope that this might really be the decline and fall of the Murdoch Empire?

“News Corp. share values tanked to such an extent that it was estimated Murdoch and his family lost hundreds of millions on Wednesday alone. And the closure of a major property, and the threat to a high-stakes deal, will likely make things worse. British Prime Minister David Cameron, a favorite of Murdoch’s media, had made his break from Murdoch’s grip, declaring: “Let us be clear. There will be an inquiry, perhaps inquiries, into events. It is no longer just celebrities and politicians, but murder victims. The whole country is appalled.” Appalled he should be. Every hour brings new revelations of hacking—the BBC says thousands of cellphone accounts may have been targeted by Murdoch’s minions—that has violated the privacy rights of politicians, celebrities, soldiers, crime victims and others. Should Americans be appalled by a scandal in Britain? Certainly. It raises huge questions about how news stories are and will be obtained in an era of new media, and about the extent to which supposedly personal communications are private. These are not just British questions. Ask Anthony Weiner. And they also raise questions about how Murdoch’s media plays politics —on camera, and off. Murdoch’s empire is not merely a network of media that spreads around the world. It is widely viewed as a political project that is usually conservative, frequently prowar and consistently corporate-friendly. Above all, it has maintained influence over the political players who make definitional decisions about the shape of the media landscape on which News Corp. is often a dominant player. “The relationship between politicians and Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper empire is also under close scrutiny,” explained the BBC on Thursday, noting that “media commentators have argued that for the past two decades no politician with any prospect of power has dared to attack his empire.” (Click here for more)

Click here for Kid Creole and the Cocanuts

STREEP AS ATTILA THE HEN

One part of my motivation for leaving the UK for New York back in 1979 was to get the hell away from Margaret bloody Thatcher. (Only to trade her for Ronald Reagan.) Now Meryl Streep has recreated her in all her lacquered horror. Click here.

DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSIC'S # 93

THE NEWS OF THE WORLD IS DEAD. GOOD RIDDANCE

The British counterculture and The News Of The World have had an adversarial relationship that goes back for almost half a century. I recall, way back in 1967, being beaten bloody by police outside the NOTW offices in London’s Fleet Street while protesting the newspaper’s part in the jailing of Keith Richards and Mick Jagger after the Redlands drug bust. And then there were the regular stamp-out-these-hippie-dope-fiends “exposés” that fueled the dangerous red-faced ire of all the saloon bar tweed blowhards who “only read the paper for the sports” and not the weekly catalogue of rape cases. And then, of course, the whole game was played all over again against John Rotten and his ilk in the punk era. Rupert Murdoch has closed down his disgusting organ and I hope its memory will yellow and decay. Unfortunately, I suspect the NOTW will soon be replaced by something equally loathsome like The Sunday Sun.

Click here for The Deviants

The secret word is Gutter

AND TALKING OF THE DEVIANTS…

The following came via Facebook from our pal Bob Fish…

"Hi Mick, Remember this? 1967/8? The Cricketers Pub, Westcliff-on-Sea (Nr Southend) Southend Art School Dance. You standing, singing on the back of a 850cc Norton Commando on stage, (gear lever removed) while I sat on the bike revving like mad. It was a great gig! I went to the Art School & booked you & ran those gigs at the time. Somebody had pulled down some plastic decorations and set fire to them in the middle of the dance floor... this combined with the carbon monoxide (from the Norton) and hundreds of joss sticks that I'd given away on the door, proved a heady mix. The manager of the pub (eyes streaming) found me & said "Mr Fish, I want to see you at the end of the night". Needless to say, I didn't hang around. Anyway... a great night! You & the Deviants were amazing. HAPPY DAYS!"

And I remember this happy day very well indeed. Bob doesn’t mention that before the show, some kind person handed out lumps of black hash and handfuls of yellow dexadrine, and by the time we hit the stage, were flying without wings. Standing on the bike, I didn't know the gear shift was gobne, and was wondering if Bob was going to pop the clutch and send it and us wheelying into the audience. I mean, Iggy threw peanut butter on the crowd, but a quarter of a ton of high powered motorcycle would have been wholly something else. It’s also one reason I sigh when people ask me to play the old songs and reproduce the old vibe. The above can never be recreated, and that was what it was all about when we were young and insane.

THE LAST SHUTTLE

I’m sad. I just watched Atlantis – the last space shuttle – take off. Is this the end of space exploration as we know it? Yes, I do miss the 20^th century when I took acid and other men went to the moon. Once we had space ships. Now we have smart phones. And yes, I know all the whiney arguments about solving terrestrial problems before blasting off to Mars and beyond, but, damn it, I come from a culture that thought nothing about sailing off to the edge of the world just to find out what was there, and maybe indulge in a little piracy along the way.

GRATUITOUS CHARLOTTE RAMPLING

IF THIS AIN’T A HARBINGER I DON’T KNOW WHAT IS #1

Click here for the monkey with the machine gun.

IF THIS AIN’T A HARBINGER I DON’T KNOW WHAT IS #2

Click here to watch the dust roll into Phoenix

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THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Bobo and Ida Frozdick  were having too much fun to believe in harbingers.

MALAISE 1

This was lifted from Wonkette. America is ill.

MALAISE 2

This was hacked in to the Fox News Twitter account. Amercia is maybe too ill to recover.

MALAISE 3

When is Ray bloody Manzarek going to give up the wages of necrophilia? Our good pal Richard Metzger says it all on Dangerous Minds.

“Yesterday, on the 40th anniversary of Jim Morrison’s death, Ray Manzarek and Robbie Krieger played a Doors gig after visiting Morrison’s grave site at Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Fronted by one of the band’s endless series of faux Lizard Kings, Morrison look-a-like David Brock of Doors cover band Wild Child, Manzarek and Krieger did their best to remind anyone watching why their music careers have been utterly insignificant since Morrison died. John Densmore had the good taste and wisdom to not attend. Advice to Manzarek: stop pissing on your legacy. I know your Muse - and cash cow- abandoned you when Jim checked out in that bathtub but your determination to milk every last drop out of the Doors’ legacy has been arrogant, pathetic and shameless. If you must perform, call up the former members of your Doors knock-off Nite City. They could probably use the work. And Ian Astbury has probably got some holes in his Cult tour schedule. Every time you drag out another version of The Doors, you remind us all of how utterly empty the band is without Jim’s voice and presence.”

Click here for Jim

The secret word is Reptile

SHORT ATTENTION SPAN APOCALYPSE

It’s now more than a hundred days since the massive quake, the tsunami, and the Fukushima meltdown, but the western media hardly mention it any more. The only consolation in this deafening lack of extended interest is a growing measure of concern that floods and wild fires the USA could damage American nuclear facilities. I suppose that’s something, but damn…

“Just 100 days after a deadly earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, concerns are being raised about several U.S. nuclear stations that are facing natural disasters of their own. Rising floodwaters from the Missouri River are threatening to damage Nebraska's Fort Calhoun Station and Iowa's Cooper Nuclear Station, while a raging forest fire is advancing towards the Los Alamps Nation Laboratory in New Mexico. The Los Alamos lab has been shut down since Monday, one day after a wildfire was sparked in the Santa Fe National Forest, while Fort Calhoun has been closed since mid-April for routine refueling. It remains closed, as floodwaters have crept up to 306 metres above sea level – 2.4 metres short of the plant's threshold "design base". Floodwaters at Cooper station are also below shut-down levels, "and the river would have to rise several feet even beyond that to reach a point where we'd be talking about Cooper's design base," Nuclear Regulatory Commision (NRC) spokesperson Scott Burnell told IPS. Still, many are comparing the United States' readiness for a disaster with Japan's emergency response in March.” (Click here for more)

Click here for Johnny Cash

The secret word is Cobalt

DID YOU EVER SEND OFF FOR SEA MONKEYS?

Talking about my generation and how possibly millions of us kids got conned by this comic book scam. Instead of the cute humanoid family as depicted in its submarine suburban home, all we got was bloody daphnia, only good only to feed fish. But that was nothing compared with the invisible goldfish…

“If you so much as flipped through a single comic book sometime after 1962, von Braunhut’s ads might have gotten you curious about whether his doodads worked even approximately as advertised. For Sea-Monkeys, the ads portrayed a cheerful family of humanoid creatures bearing crowns of some sort and hanging out by their underwater castle. Mom had blond hair. The fine print said something about “caricatures,” but never mind—the bigger type spun a magical tale of pets that would be “like a pack of friendly trained seals” if you followed the directions. Von Braunhut wrote the copy himself, for at least the first couple decades. Ads for another von Braunhut invention, the X-Ray Specs (not to be confused with the English punk band X-Ray Spex), promised the power to see through obstacles and showed a guy grinning at a woman in a dress. Again there were words like “illusion”—the effect is created by feathers or grooves in the lenses, von Braunhut’s patents show—but that wasn’t where the average comic book reader focused his attention. In von Braunhut’s most impressive marketing coup, he peddled “Invisible Goldfish." The kit included a glass bowl, a handbook and fish food. That was it. He said they sold out. There was a 100 percent guarantee that the buyer would never see the fish, and I’m 100 percent sure that guarantee never failed. The greatest trick the Invisible Goldfish ever pulled was convincing the world they existed.” (Click here for the whole sorry story)

A CUNNING PLOT (Dadaism in action)

This little mindfuck blueprint was lifted from our pals at World of Wonder.

DON'T YOU MISS THE 20TH CENTURY?