DON’T BEAM ME UP, QUITE YET.

I have never been a big fan of the idea of being disassembled into my component sub-atomic particles, beamed or otherwise transmitted somewhere else and then reassembled, so when, last week, a think tank in Birmingham, England, predicted – a little rashly I thought – that in a hundred years computer capacity would be such to make such a thing so, I was forced to re-analyze why I was firmly against the whole business. The first time I encountered the idea was in the Dan Dare strip in The Eagle when I was about five years old. The Treens on Venus had a device called the Electro-sender which beamed Dan Dare and his lower class sidekick Digby (this was England in the 1950s) from somewhere near the Venusian flame belt to the northern capital of Mekonta. Even this early, a hint that all might not be right with such a system was implanted when Digby came through somewhat disarrayed. Then The Fly was released with all its help-me, help-me, Vincent Price consequences. (Which were repeated twice with Jeff Goldblum and then Bart Simpson getting the insect head.) Finally I watched all those decades of Star Trek with only Dr. McCoy treating the transporter as a potential hazard.

For most, the fear is seemingly that one won’t materialize in the same physical shape as one left, but this has never worried me. Any kind of travel involves risk, and all one can do is play the odds and hope for the best. My distrust of the transporter is far more metaphysical. I wonder if the “you” that arrives at the destination is really the same “you” that left the embarkation point. Okay, so it’s identical in every detail, atoms, molecules, mannerisms, memories, but is it really "you"? What’s to guarantee that it’s not an entirely new entity, an exact replica in every respect, but a different being, while, meanwhile, the original “you” is dead, gone, finished, croaked, deceased, and otherwise tuning up with the Choir Celestial. By this reasoning, a whole stadium full of James T. Kirks could have died riding the transporter in Star Trek, and no one really ever gave a rat’s ass as long as the replicas were seamless and perfect. Even the replicas wouldn’t know the difference because, according to their memory, they would have gone through the process unscathed. They swear blind that they're the original. (They only find out to their eternal cost, the next time they are beamed up or down.) In other words, no one cares whether it’s the real “you” are not. As long as it’s a close enough facsimile for rock & roll.

AMONG THE CURRENT EMAIL

Munz informs me that The Death of Joan Vollmer Burroughs: What Really Happened? by Uncle Bill Burroughs' long-time friend and trustee of the writer's estate, James Grauerholz, can be downloaded from http://www.lawrence.com/burroughs/

While HelgaLA forwards the following – “JACKO FINDS ISLAM: The King of Pop is restyling himself as Jacko X. Michael Jackson last night became a member of the Nation of Islam - and sources said his religious changeover comes along with a shake-up of his personal staff. High-ranking members of the Nation of Islam have been working to bring Jackson into Reverend Louis Farrakhan's flock - and Jackson's conversion is now well-known in the Nation Of Islam community. Exactly why Jackson converted was not clear to sources. But Fox News' Web site reported yesterday that Jackson's brother Jermaine, who converted to Islam in 1989, has been seeking to win favor with his more famous sibling, and has brought Farrakhan's chief of staff, Leonard F. Muhammad, into Jacko's inner circle as a "bodyguard." That's just one of many changes under way in Jackson's inner circle, sources said.” Which I guess is as good a way as any to remind the world that he’s one more black man up on a possibly bogus rape rap.

While the lovely natalein offered a link to a funny, Bush-bashing cartoon that should maintain morale among the troops. – http://flash.bushrecall.org/

WHY A BLOG?

Blog? You gotta a problem with that? Yeah, I’ve started to blog even though my dislike of the word kept me away from the whole process for quite a while. I mean, blog wasn’t even on my spellcheck. (But then again neither is “spellcheck.”) Finally a very dear friend dared me – on penalty of my techno-pride – to I check it out. And, in the course of a single weekend, I took to the process like a duck to water. Or maybe Daffy Duck walking off the cliff (but he only falls when he looks down.) Obviously blogging is a seductive lure for us egomaniacs who believe their every thought is of such immense fucking significance that needs to communicated to the world. I was also attracted to the fluidity and ease of the system, and that, in a weird way, it rather resembled an advanced and more lucid version of Uncle Bill Burroughs cut-up fixation, plus blog-time tended have the appearance of running backwards, something that would obviously have its attractions for me. Also I like the transitory, message-in-bottle feel about it. Is anyone out there actually reading this?

After running for a few days on a simple blogspot template, Rich Deakin of Funtopia came into the picture and customized the whole thing which made me very happy, and I’m now free to start thinking, gathering, cutting, pasting, and generally keeping a non-linear internal diary and scrapbook, with links, lures and all kinds of good stuff -- plus the usual errors and typos -- and hopefully something new at least every couple of days. The admiring and the pissed off are welcome to email me at...

byron4d@aol.com

...but be warned that relevant communications may find themselves posted. The friend who got me started also told me to talk to Rich about activating a comments device, but that is obviously something for the future. Assuming, of course, that there is a future.

Channel 2 has just told me that scientists have discovered a gene in worms that makes them pre-disposed to drunkenness. Of course, they didn’t tell me what scientists or where, or any details about the worms, but it does leave me thinking the following...
1. My lifelong drinking isn't my fault. It’s in my genes.
2. I’m keeping a watchful eye out for drunken worms.

The following clip comes from the desk of the mighty Henry Cabot Beck. I suppose we should be happy its all going on in Germany, and not in Nebraska. Meanwhile, back at home, the nation supposedly has it's underwear bunched because John Kerry said fuck in and interview with Rolling Stone. I fact, Kerry declared that Bush "fucked up". Seems succinct. Although I continue to wonder what reality we are all attempting to grasp.

KASSEL, Germany (AFP) - A self-declared cannibal told a German court in chilling detail how he killed and ate a man he says consented to be dissected and consumed in front of a running video camera. In matter-of-fact tones in front of a hushed court Wednesday, Armin Meiwes explained how an obsession with cannibalism developed as a child and eventually led him to kill and eat a fellow human being.
"I had the fantasy, and in the end I fulfilled it," he said.
He had the chance to kill and feast on other apparently willing victims, he added, saying "hundreds and thousands are out there looking to be eaten," but passed up the opportunity because they were not the right type.
The macabre case is unprecedented in German legal history. Meiwes, a 42-year-old computer technician who says he regrets what he did, admits killing, but insists it was not murder as he was only doing what he had been asked. Testifying on the opening day of his trial for murder, he said his fantasy began between the ages of eight and 12, when he would imagine killing, carving up and eating schoolfriends he liked. Meiwes, dressed smartly in a dark jacket and tie, said he felt lonely as a child after his father and two older brothers abandoned the family. He longed for a younger brother. "But then I realised one day that was not enough." He soon began imagining a friend he could keep for ever by consuming him.
"Slim and blond, that would have been the type," he said.
It also aroused him sexually, Meiwes admitted, although he denied that sex was linked to the alleged murder. "I didn't want to have sex with the partner I chose to slaughter. That had nothing to do with it."
Horror films and seeing animals slaughtered fuelled his imagination. Cannibalism is not a crime under German law. Meiwes is charged with murder for the purposes of sexual satisfaction and "disturbing the peace of the dead" for carving up the body. State prosecutor Marcus Koehler claimed Meiwes had always intended to kill and that he took advantage of a mental disorder in the dead man, Bernd Juergen Brandes.
If convicted, he faces life in prison. A verdict is due early next year.
Defence lawyers say Meiwes is guilty at worst of "killing on demand," which is punishable by up to five years in jail. Meiwes, who has admitted killing, said he contacted Brandes, a 43-year-old Berlin engineer, after advertising via the Internet for someone willing to be eaten. The whole scenario was recorded on video, reportedly by mutual agreement. Brandes travelled to his house in Rotenburg, near Kassel, after settling up his personal affairs. At one point he demurred but was persuaded to carry on, the prosecution said. After Brandes downed sleeping tablets and whisky, Meiwes cut off Brandes' penis which they planned to eat together, but found that due to its consistency, it was inedible "even when fried."
After a while Brandes became unconscious. "Spurred by sexual motives," said Koehler, Meiwes laid him on a bench, stabbed him and hung his body from a hook in the ceiling of his kitchen. The accused said he kissed his "friend" first, "then I did it."
He dissected the corpse, slicing off 30 kilograms (66 pounds) of the flesh which he stored in a freezer. He later ate two-thirds of it. "With every bite, my memory of him grew stronger."
The case did not emerge until an Austrian student spotted another Internet advertisement by Meiwes and alerted police. Officers who examined a mass of computer equipment and videos found at his home tapped into a hitherto hidden cannibal scene. Meiwes said he later met five other people who had also offered themselves via the Internet. One wanted to be beheaded, but Meiwes did not like him and thought him too fat. Another backed out when the accused told him, "if you come here, you have to realise that it will be for the last time."

“It’s the fear of what comes after the doing that makes the doing so hard to do.” -- Tony Kushner

Before the fact, I wrote a longish bit for LA CityBeat on Angels In America, but that was from the advance HBO DVDs. When I planted myself on the couch to watch the real deal earlier, I discovered that, for the first twenty minutes some vicious junkie homophobe at cable central was messing with the sound levels. Wassup with that?

I just watched Rev Al Sharpton sing "I Feel Good" on Saturday Night Live. Damn, but who would have thought it? He has a voice like James Brown -- plus the moves -- and I may have to revise my entire position on the 2004 election.

THE DISGRUNTLED EMPLOYEE
Mick Farren

I HAVE AN AR15
AND FOUR BOXES
OF TWO TWENTY THREE
HIGH VELOCITY HOLLOW POINTS
AND I HAVE QUITE A LOT OF DEMEROL
LEFT OVER FROM MY HERNIA SURGERY
AND A PINT OF HIRAM WALKER'S TEN HIGH
SO I WILL FEEL NO PAIN
WHEN THE SHOOTING STARTS

AND I AM GOING
TO THE PLANT
TOMORROW MORNING
TO WASTE
AS MANY OF THE SONS OF BITCHES
AS I CAN
BEFORE THEY WASTE ME

I AM THE DISGRUNTLED EMPLOYEE
I AM THE NEW FACE OF LABOUR RELATIONS

SINCE THEY BROKE THE UNION
WE'VE TAKEN THREE PAY CUTS
AND GIVEN UP THE PRODUCTIVITY BONUS
AND HALF THE MEDICAL PLAN
AND AFTER DARLENE LEFT
AND TOOK THE KIDS
I STARTED GETTING
TOO MUCH SUGAR IN MY DIET
AND TOO MANY PORK PRODUCTS
AND BEGAN
HAVING CONVERSATIONS
WITH THE JAPANESE GUY
INSIDE THE TEEVEE

AND I AM GOING
TO THE PLANT
TOMORROW MORNING
TO WASTE
AS MANY OF THE SONS OF BITCHES
AS I CAN
BEFORE THEY WASTE ME

I AM THE DISGRUNTLED EMPLOYEE
I AM THE NEW FACE OF LABOUR RELATIONS

LAST FRIDAY
I SPENT EIGHTY SEVEN DOLLARS
PLUS TAX AND TIP
BUYING DINNER AND HARVEY WALLBANGERS
FOR JACKIE KOVACK
AT BIG BILLY'S
STEAK AND LOBSTER BARN
OUT ON I-7
AND AFTERWARDS
SHE REFUSED TO GIVE ME SO MUCH
AS A HANDJOB
SAID SHE JUST WANTED
US TO BE FRIENDS
AND THE NEXT DAY
I SAW HER
AND SOME OF THE OTHER WOMEN
FROM QUALITY CONTROL
TALKING AND LAUGHING
OUTSIDE THE FEMALE FACILITY
AND I KNEW THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT ME

AND I AM GOING
TO THE PLANT
TOMORROW MORNING
TO WASTE
AS MANY AS THE SONS OF BITCHES
AS I CAN
BEFORE THEY WASTE ME

I AM THE DISGRUNTLED EMPLOYEE
I AM THE NEW FACE OF LABOUR RELATIONS

AND TOMORROW NIGHT
WHEN YOU GET HOME FROM WORK
YOU'LL SEE ME ON TV

I AM THE DISGRUNTLED EMPLOYEE

I have never felt totally comfortable with the anti-globalization movement. Obviously I support its aims of stopping the WTO and the IMF in their despicable tracks, but, even before I could read science fiction, I consumed far too much Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future, and was filled with ideas of World Government, the UN, and a one-planet utopia. Later my travels, Bucky Fuller, and the clear need to consider a fragile whole-earth reinforced this that we are all one on the spaceship together. Thus aspects of the movement can’t help but strike me, maybe incorrectly, as echoes of counter revolutionary, proletariat chauvinism. It also occurres to me that maybe globalism is the weapon to fight globalism, and there’s been a model around for a century or more that might the reexamined. Yes, my friends, the IWW – International Workers of the World – the Wobblies, one big union. Scoff as you may, they scared the shit out of the plutocrats back at the start of the 20th century. They stuck it to those boys worse than they stuck it to the Black Panthers fifty years later. They killed them. Must have been doing something right.

Wasn't it Ronald Reagan who voiced on radio that he would like to see the world united by an alien invasion. (Of course it was. The Deviants sampled the speech for the start of the tune "Aztec Calendar".

Let's never forget, Julius Caesar had the last word.

I’ve heard a great deal of gloom recently – relayed in no small part by the alternative press, who should know better – about how the Republicans and the loathsome GWB will prove unbeatable in the 2004 elections. The cries of woe echo all round me. “Redistricting” they cry. “The Diebold touchscreen voting machines are fixed.” In fact, all in all, too many comrades are seem in deep despair. Katherine Seelye in the Weekly Standard informs me that, due to population shifts, “Democrats know that white men in rural parts of states like Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin — all of which went for Mr. Gore are increasingly voting Republican, largely because of issues like President Bill Clinton's personal behavior and recent court rulings on gay rights. As a Democratic strategist said, "Older white Americans moved away from us on impeachment and guns, and now same-sex marriage is a killer."

All I can snarl in response is give me a fucking break, and ask what we are supposed to do about it? Distance ourselves from longtime queer allies to accommodate dumb white guys and rural loons, who want only to be armed to the teeth, and quake at some imaginary biblical horror that they can’t even fully grasp, and is none of their business anyway? Oh please. This is pure defeatism. And why bother making any adjustments, anyway, if the fix is already in?

To attend to any of this, and to be panicked into embracing Republican principles (if you can find one) or neo-con Newspeak and tactics, is to sell out before the auction has even commenced. There are worse things than losing an election. We can always return to the mattresses of bohemian anarchy, and then turn really ugly. Never forget that, at any given time, by his or her very nature, the fascist is more desperately frightened than you are. (Just have tea with Ann Coulter.)

In the meantime, the election is not lost. We have ten months to continue hammering at the great vulnerability. The President of the United States (POTUS) is an idiotic, half-formed nonentity who will bungle anything close to nuclear backed confrontation or global crisis, because he smugly believes he can lie his way out of anything. See how much the dumb white guys worry about gay marriage when they’re glowing in the dark, or when the insane weather patterns of threshold global warming have turned Kansas and Nebraska into a goddamned desert.

A believe Sun Tsu had a whole lot to say about the demoralizing of the enemy before any army is even deployed. I would also refer you to the words of ol’ Noam, below...

"I can only repeat what I've often written. The US, and the West generally, has become far more civilised in the past 40 years, thanks to the activism of mostly young people in the 1960s and since. It is easy to give examples, including opposition to aggression and massacre, but also in many other domains as well. Of course, every effort is made to induce hopelessness and despair, but there is no reason to succumb. The future is in our hands, and the opportunities today are far greater than they have been in the past."

-- Noam Chomsky (who is 75 on Sunday)

And now feeling obligated to post something with some content, here's the lyric of a fabulous old tune...

MAN THAT WATERS THE WORKERS' BEER
(Paddy Ryan)

I am the man, the very fat man,
That waters the workers' beer
I am the man, the very fat man,
That waters the workers' beer
And what do I care if it makes them ill,
If it makes them terribly queer
I've a car, a yacht, and an aeroplane,
And I waters the workers' beer

Now when I waters the workers' beer,
I puts in strychnine
Some methylated spirits,
And a can of kerosine
Ah, but such a brew so terribly strong,
It would make them terribly queer
So I reaches my hand for the watering-can
And I waters the workers' beer

Now a drop of good beer is good for a man
When he's tired, thirsty and hot
And I sometimes have a drop myself,
From a very special pot
For a strong and healthy working class
Is the thing that I most fear
So I reaches my hand for the watering-can
And I waters the workers' beer

Copyright Workers Music Association

Check Funtopia

So, a new horizon of exploration? I stand mindless, but wait...

Something takes shape within the swirling mist.

(Voices off) -- "When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake!"

Now where have I heard that before?