THE WOMAN WHO STOPS LIGHT IN ITS TRACKS

UK Steve sent us this quite mind boggling story from Wired. (And wouldn’t you just love to have that lab in which to play?

Lene Vestergaard Hau can stop a pulse of light in midflight, start it up again at 0.13 miles per hour, and then make it appear in a completely different location. "It's like a little magic trick," says Hau, a Harvard physicist. "Of course, in all magic tricks there's a secret." And her secret is a 0.1-mm lump of atoms called a Bose-Einstein condensate, cooled nearly to absolute zero (-459.67 degrees Fahrenheit) in a steel container with tiny windows. Normally — well, in a vacuum — light goes 186,282 miles per second. But things are different inside a BEC, a strange place where millions of atoms move — barely — in quantum lockstep. About a decade ago, Hau started playing with BECs — for a physicist, that means shooting lasers at them. She blew up a few. Eventually, she found that lasers of the right wavelengths could tune the optical properties of a BEC, giving Hau an almost supernatural command over any other light shined into it. Her first trick was slowing a pulse of light to a crawl — 15 mph as it traveled through the BEC. Since then, Hau has completely frozen a pulse and then released it. And recently she shot a pulse into one BEC and stopped it — turning the BEC into a hologram, a sort of matter version of the pulse. Then she transferred that matter waveform into an entirely different BEC nearby — which emitted the original light pulse. That's just freaky. Hey, Einstein may have set that initial speed limit of light, but he only theorized about BECs. "It's not breaking relativity," Hau says. "But I'm sure he would have been rather surprised."

And while in a science mode here is a funny but damning video on Windows Vista

THIS HAS TO BE THE LAST WORD ON THANKSGIVING

DAYS OF TRYPTOPHAN AND PIES

As the Turkey weekend laboriously grinds on, I do my best to write, sleep, and ignore it since, apart from having no need for any public displays of gratitude, it would seen that what was a dubious concept in the first place (pilgrims, Native Americans, dumb birds etc.) has now degenerated to drooping orgy of overeating, shopping, and football. I can only bring you this quote from Warren Ellis as conveyed by our pal Dr. Adder…
“Don't forget, my Yanqui readers, the true meaning of Thanksgiving: give your neighbors an infected blanket this Thursday and then move into their houses after they're dead.” – Warren Ellis
And, or course the above page from a fundamentalist comic that I stumbled across in my web travels. I find it hard to fathom what these people do with their time when they’re not complaining, praying, swaying to Christian rock, voting Republican, or mindfucking their children. Do I really have spell out the multilateral aberration this work of art.

I suppose they could play human Pacman.

The secret word is Butterball

SOMEHOW I CAN'T EVER FORGET WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

Pic from Gorightly

The secret words are Lone Gunman

THE WORLD COULD BE BEAUTIFUL

But we also have these unspeakable mechanisms, already the last thing seen (or not seen) by thousands of our fellow humans.

The secret word is Cranberry

THE MONKS...

Back in the day, The Monks somehow passed me by. I can only plead the “I can’t be clued in on everything” defense. Over the years, though, they became known to me because they were written up in the same kind of ‘zine that also featured me and The Deviants. I never so much as suspected that The Monks had videos, and then Doug the Bass put me straight with this gem that hints at all kinds of ideas that would later lay foundations for everything form krautrock to Devo.

…MOBIUS OR MANDELBROT

You wanna see some Möbius transformations? Me? I just smoked a joint and stared at the sequence like an unreconstructed hippie, but, if you wanna find out about the science, click here. On the other hand, you might just prefer a fractal sequence.

The secret words are Live and Learn

This blog does not respect authority.

THE AGONY AND THE FANTASY

“Please wash your hands after engaging in pain management.”

This theory that sexual fantasy may be a method to reduce pain is hardly new, dating as it does, from 1999, and although it's still entertained today, I have reservations. From my own experience, I would say that any major psychological motivation can function as a distraction from pain and sex angle is just a headline grabber. I recall from when I was a kid how the legendary Manchester City soccer star Bert Trautmann played out the 1956 FA Cup Final with a broken neck, and also all the damage Pete Townshend has done to himself, seemingly without noticing, while on stage with The Who. Me, I think I would prefer opiates to fantasy. I mean, fantasy takes one so far and no further. (And what if pain is part of the sexual fantasy, we wonder?)

"Bringing to mind a favorite sexual fantasy may be a good way to lessen pain, according to a recent study of college students by researchers at Johns Hopkins and the University of Wisconsin. The work, which tests the authors' theory about the relationship between pain and mood, could produce simple, cost-free ways to lessen pain in a variety of situations, says anesthesiologist Peter S. Staats, M.D., who led the study. "It also suggests changes in the way physicians should approach patients experiencing pain," Staats says. The new theory indicates that pain stimuli yield strong negative emotional responses. Operating on that premise, counterbalancing pain with a strong positive emotional response should decrease pain. Researchers set out to measure the effects of sexual fantasies a very strong positive emotional response on pain. "The biology underlying this theory relates to the idea that emotions are likely processed in the thalamus, a region of the brain also closely involved in processing pain responses," says Staats, director of the Division of Pain Medicine at Hopkins and an associate professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine." (For more) Thanks Valerie.

Nobody feels any pain? Let’s hear from Ol’ Bob, an expert on the subject.

(Photo by Gahbryel)

IF I GAVE HER THE WOOL COULD SHE KNIT ME ONE?

Or, I suppose, if the pain got too bad, one could try knitting a Dalek. Click here for the pattern.

The secret word is Exterminate

The following report comes from HCB – “Fox News was on the television with the sound off and in the close captioning, I noticed that when Bill O'Reilly said "No Spin Zone," it translated on the screen as "Nose Been Sown." I’m not making this up. Maybe they're outsourcing their subtitles, or the caption writers are in revolt.”

YOU DO THE MATH

“It says here that the global environment is totally fucked.”

"That's nice, dear."

Doug the Bass sent over this fascinating if highly disturbing AP report with some very nasty numbers on the condition of our planetary condition…

The following are some key findings in a report issued Saturday by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:
• Global warming is "unequivocal." Temperatures have risen 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit in the last 100 years. Eleven of the last 12 years are among the warmest since 1850. Sea levels have gone up by an average seven-hundredths of an inch per year since 1961.
• About 20 percent to 30 percent of all plant and animal species face the risk of extinction if temperatures increase by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. If the thermometer rises by 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit, between 40 to 70 percent of species could disappear.
• Human activity is largely responsible for warming. Global emissions of greenhouse gases grew 70 percent from 1970 to 2004. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is far higher than the natural range over the last 650,000 years.
• Climate change will affect poor countries most, but will be felt everywhere. By 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will suffer water shortages, residents of Asia's large cities will be at great risk of river and coastal flooding, Europeans can expect extensive species loss, and North Americans will experience longer and hotter heat waves and greater competition for water.
• Extreme weather conditions will be more common. Tropical storms will be more frequent and intense. Heat waves and heavy rains will affect some areas, raising the risk of wildfires and the spread of diseases. Elsewhere, drought will degrade cropland and spoil the quality of water sources. Rising sea levels will increase flooding and salination of fresh water and threaten coastal cities.
• Even if greenhouse gases are stabilized, the Earth will keep warming and sea levels rising. More pollution could bring "abrupt and irreversible" changes, such as the loss of ice sheets in the poles, and a corresponding rise in sea levels by several yards.
A wide array of tools exist, or will soon be available, to adapt to climate change and reduce its potential effects. One is to put a price on carbon emissions.
• By 2050, stabilizing emissions would slow the average annual global economic growth by less than 0.12 percent. The longer action is delayed, the more it will cost.
(This version CORRECTS seven-tenths to seven-hundredths of an inch.)

And here’s live concert clip from REM stating the obvious.

The secret word is Arithmetic

IT WAS SATURDAY NIGHT AND WE DIDN’T GET PAID

Since at least the 1970s we have watched the reduction and disempowerment of organized labor in the West, and with it the destruction of one of the most crucial sets of checks and balances on the natural inequality of capitalism, especially when it forgets its own essential need for consumers. In outsource-target, developing nations, labor unions are suppressed by any means necessary including the occasional death squad. The concept is hardly grasped by former communists, and China fails to rise above the Red sweatshop. We listen to the well financed, and professionally orchestrated sobbing of the obscenely wealthy at the horror of taxation – even to pay for their own wars – and their absolute conviction that management should be paid a 1000% or so more than labor. And when propaganda and corruption fails, violence is always the last resort. This brilliant photo essay by Martin Shakeshaft and David Bowmer actually covers the 1984 UK miners strike when Margaret Thatcher supposedly broke the mineworkers union, but it is a pattern repeated over and over by rightwing regimes. And yet this does have a surprise ending.

Music? How about Marilyn Manson doing “Working Class Hero”? Too decadent? Okay, so here’s Lennon.

Was Saturday night better when I stopped thinking and just got drunk I wonder?

“Will she ever stop haunting my dreams? And do I want her to?”

A LAUGHING MATTER?

Yes, it’s an old joke. But I’m seriously starting to wonder if there’s anything funny about George W. fucking Bush, and whether we should be taking him very much more seriously than we do. Especially now, with Blackwater, he would appear to be building his own private army.

KEEP WATCHING THE SKIES

Valerie reminds us the Leonid meteor shower hits tonight. (And who knows, we may all go blind and the triffids will eat us.) Sadly they are really only visible outside the big city bright lights and the exhaust of a million gas burners, which rather counts me out. (Click here for the sensible details.)

The secret word is Burnout

A COMET BIGGER THAN THE SUN

I was grounded in too much science fiction as a lad to seriously believe in signs in the sky or astronomical portents, (black dogs are more my speed) but when a comet named Holmes (maybe after Sherlock or perhaps Celeste?) blows up to something larger than the sun, and, instead of quietly hanging round in the Kuiper Belt, becomes, if only briefly, the biggest thing in the solar system, one can but wonder – especially as we coast towards the future mythology of 2012. (The insert of Saturn in the pic gives an idea of scale.) The comet did whoever do something similar in 1892, and we are still around so maybe we shouldn't worry. Here’s one report of the event from Reuters, and another from the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, both sent by our friend peromyscus.

And this is Interstellar Overdrive with Syd.

The secret word is Void

Hank Thompson -- RIP

“I think I’d like to be a space pirate when I grow up.”

STRIKE ONE (WEEK)

In today’s LA CityBeat, I expressed some of my doubts about the writer’s strike…

“While I won’t lower the red flag or hang-up my IWW T-shirt, I confess to mixed emotions about the strike by the Writers Guild of America. The problem might just be timing: Can the writers in TV and movies afford a walk-out over back-end money when a rapidly fragmenting mass culture is nose-diving into a bottomless abyss of Saw movies and American Idol? Or maybe it’s just old fashioned jealousy. When they’re working, writers for both TV and film are paid vastly more that novelists, poets, or journalists for work that is often so substandard it could cause an old time pulp hack to weep into his Smith Corona.” (Click for the rest)

But my mixed feelings have turned into a kind labor relations scrapbook. I mean, I wholly agree with this comment on Huffpo. Except just being a bloody writer doesn’t make you one of the good guys. (Hitler, Coulter, Hobbes)

“If the creative people of america won over the monstrously imperious corporations it would create an extra hour of daylight in this country (to paraphrase Spike Milligan, writing and performing genius) Keep them coming. Other Americans will get that this is bigger than the perceived bunch of lucky white guys making silly amounts of money. If the corporations, already in tune with the Neo-Con agenda, could eliminate writers, they could control content. Support your writers America.”

And who could argue with Howard Zinn and Woody Guthrie? On the other hand, I am not overly impressed by the street theatre of writers from The Daily Show. But sympathy then does an abrupt 180 while watching the media mogul fatcats smugly justifying their hideous greed. And after all this indecision I can only leave it to Billy Bragg.

Except I have another separate piece in CityBeat today on my own writing and why I do it. And, believe me, it ain’t for the digital backmoney.

AND ALL OF YOU IN LA, DON’T FORGET I’M PLAYING OUT TONIGHT WITH ANDY AND TOM, SCROLL BACK TO TUESDAY FOR DETAILS.

“My mission is far from accomplished. Assimilation is not yet complete. ”

BLACK DOG TURNROUND

This may strike newer readers as odd but it has a provenance.

I wrote the paragraph below when I was quite paranormally spooked on New Year’s Day, 2005, but I guess, since I’m still around, the dog clearly meant me no harm and now I further learn that according to the Hindu scripture, the Mahabharat, dogs accompanied Dharmaraj Yudhisthir on his journey to heaven. There is also a Hindu belief that dogs guard the underworld.

"Just over two hours ago it was 2004. At 11.58, I stepped out onto the balcony to listen the calendar change, noble in my new Yukata. The concrete was cold under my feet. Car horns were hooting, fireworks and perhaps guns were going off, echoing in the Hollywood Hills, and then, as precisely as I could judge, right on midnight, a silent dark dog – or maybe a coyote – raced up the street, running flat-out desperate, breakneck, and headlong north, into the darkness between streetlights. The omen potential was so overwhelming that it left me a little stunned. As far as I could tell, I was the only one who had seen it, and I hardly cared to make an analysis. The black dog looms large in my native folklore, and, for the most part, it isn’t at all good. But was this black dog – so real that I considered I was hallucinating – crossing my path or running on past me?"

The secret word is Possible

And this, more traditionally, is Robert Johnson – Hell Hound On My Trail

(Dogs from Valerie and Elizabeth)

LET'S ROCK AGAIN!

As part of the celebrations for Amy Wallace and Handsome Dick Manitoba’s The Official Punk Book of Lists, Mick Farren and Andy Colquhoun, with help of Tom Gardner, will be playing some bizarre cosmic blues this coming Thursday (November 15th) at Skylight Books, 1818 N. Vermont (90027) – 323 660 1175. it all starts at 7.30.

It’s rumored there’s free beer, pizza and patron Tequila.

I also suspect that since Handsome Dick couldn’t fly in from NYC, I was chosen as the nearest similar haircut

THE INVASION OF THE RHIZOMORPHS

Today, I took Veterans Day off (see Sunday 11/4) and spent it in bed. Even now I’ve risen I find myself falling asleep in front of a TV that is showing nothing of any substance except reruns of The X-Files. I believe this is one of those days when I have to admit I have been doing far too much and no longer have the stamina of Capt Marvel Jr. (or have forgotten the magic word.) Thus, feeling a lot like a lethargically insane fungus, I happened by synchronicity (thank you Dr. Jung) to come across another account of this famous entity and the invasion beneath our feet.

“The underground fungus [is] estimated to be between 2000 and 8500 years old . . . . [It] spreads mainly along tree roots, but also through the soil using shoestring-like structures called rhizomorphs . . . . Researchers thought that individual fungus organisms grew in distinct clusters in the forest, marked by the ring-shaped patches of dead trees that they spotted during overhead flights. No one expected to find that the well-separated clusters represented one contiguous organism." (For more)

And this is Captain Beefheart playing Big Eyed Beans From Venus

The secret word is Room

And I also forgot to post links to two pieces in last Thursdays LA CityBeat. One short take on the WGA strike, and another a rare (for me) piece of rock crit.

“I’m sorry Dorothy. Under no circumstances are you going back to Kansas.”

UP AGAINST THE WALL MOTHERFUCKER REVISITED

Is there such a thing as political nostalgia? Looking back over the century so far, I wonder about how much we have been forced to hold the line against the war, stupidity, and simplistic evil of the Bush/Cheney regime and the moronic culture and thought patterns it has engendered and nurtured in its fetid hothouse of torture and greed. Few speak any longer of utopian ideals and the revolutionary movement that might need to be created to achieve them. And then I happened across this comment on HuffPo and it started me thinking.

"Frank Little, member of the Executive Council of the IWW (formed 12 years before the Russian revolution) was lynched by Pinkertons both for union organizing and his stance against worker participation in WWI. I suggested the anti-war strike in memory of Mr. Little and I'm neither a democrat nor a red, as if I needed to apologize for either. This country needs a general strike because the class running the show presently is driving all of us to ruin. Fact is, the sub-prime scandal (according to Paul Volcker) has resulted in the biggest crisis for capitalism in the history of this country. We have a war-drunk and corrupt administration which, in concert with an under-regulated, over-leveraged and senile finance capitalism, is quickly driving this country headlong into bankruptcy."

And then, by what can only be total synchronicity I came across this article from the New Statesman about revolutionary youth movements in Eastern Europe. But why not in the West? I mean, goddamn it, we have so much more communication technology than we he had 30-40 years ago. The idea of creating instant flash mobs, for instance, has only been used for undergraduate pranks, and never employed by (say) the anti-war movement. Like good little lemmings we have been working within the system, and, I for one feel that my old time principles have have been compromised and betrayed in the process. Okay so we work for a Democratic win in 2008, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need to start now to create mechanisms with which to hold Hillary’s (or whomever’s) feet frirmly to the fire of actual change.

This is the Jefferson Airplane and I will shoot the first one who sniggers. Because here’s a snatch of lyric.

We are all outlaws in the eyes of America
In order to survive we steal, cheat, lie, forge, fuck, hide. and deal
We are obscene, lawless, hideous, dangerous, dirty, violent, and young*
But we should be together
Come on all you people standing around
Our life’s too fine to let it die and
We can be together
All your private property is
Target for your enemy
And your enemy is
We
We are forces of chaos and anarchy
Everything they say we are we are
And we are very
Proud of ourselves
Up against the wall
Up against the wall motherfucker
Tear down the walls

* Or am I just getting old?

Your humble host on TV during the previous revolution.

"The HAL 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error."

DEATH DON'T HAVE NO MERCY IN THIS LAND

NORMAN MAILER – RIP

And here’s something of a tribute. (Via Noudela)
I intend to post more later, but I didn’t want to wait on this. The old guard are going fast. And I don’t feel so well myself. But now, more than ever, we really must continue no matter how tempting dreamless oblivion may become.

GIMME THAT OLD TIME ROCK & ROLL!

“Hell, what do I know. I’ve been dead thirty years and still sell records.”

Kass sent over this report. It does, however, emanate from Fox Noise so there may be more to the slant. The same report was also heavily down on Britney Spears Blackout CD that has now shown up in the Billboard charts at #1.
"Clear Channel seems to have sent a clear message to other radio outlets that at age 58, Springsteen simply is too old to be played on rock stations. This completely absurd notion is one of many ways Clear Channel has done more to destroy the music business than downloading over the last 10 years. It’s certainly what’s helped create satellite radio, where Springsteen is a staple and even has his own channel on Sirius. It’s not just Springsteen. There is no sign at major radio stations of new albums by John Fogerty or Annie Lennox, either. The same stations that should be playing Santana’s new singles with Chad Kroeger or Tina Turner are avoiding them, too.”

I’m not certain that it’s just a matter of simple ageism. Clear Channel is essentially run by corporate suits who know little about music, and like to keep it that way. They also hate the whole idea of diversity because its untidy and unpredictable, and only really want to be assured that they have a universal and standardized formula that will attract what they believe is the crucial 18-45 (or whatever) key demographic. With Clear Channel one also has to look for an underlying political motive and, in this instance, I think they would rather see the whole 1960s-70s generation with its independent thinking and pinko-socialist ideas just fuck off and die because, philosophically, they are just too noisy and high maintenance. But we won’t, fuck, it. On the other hand, does anyone really want to do like The bloody Eagles and sell a million and some units exclusively through Wal-Mart.

The secret word is Fluff

And this is Elvis

GLOBALLY, THE BAD NEWS IS WORSE

This story from Scientific American makes for extremely dire reading…
“Since 1987 annual emissions of carbon dioxide—the leading greenhouse gas warming the globe—have risen by a third, global fishing yields have declined by 10.6 million metric tons and the amount of land required to sustain humanity has swelled to more than 54 acres (22 hectares) per person. Yet, Earth can provide only roughly 39 acres (15 hectares) for every person living today, according to the United Nation's Environmental Program's (UNEP) Global Environmental Outlook, released this week. "There are no major issues," the report's authors write of the period since their first report in 1987, "for which the foreseeable trends are favorable.” (For the rest)

OLBERMANN OPENS UP ON BUSH AND JAILTIME

Yesterday on his MSNBC show Countdown Keith Olbermann delivered what he called a “special commentary” accusing George Bush of now only being concerned with holding on to power for its own sake while keeping his sorry ass out of jail. Powerful stuff.

"It is a fact startling in its cynical simplicity and it requires cynical and simple words to be properly expressed: The presidency of George W. Bush has now devolved into a criminal conspiracy to cover the ass of George W. Bush. All the petulancy, all the childish threats, all the blank-stare stupidity; all the invocations of World War III, all the sophistic questions about which terrorist attacks we wanted him not to stop, all the phony secrets; all the claims of executive privilege, all the stumbling tap-dancing of his nominees, all the verbal flatulence of his apologists...All of it is now, after one revelation last week, transparently clear for what it is: the pathetic and desperate manipulation of the government, the refocusing of our entire nation, toward keeping this mock president and this unstable vice president and this departed wildly self-overrating attorney general, and the others, from potential prosecution for having approved or ordered the illegal torture of prisoners being held in the name of this country. (For the rest)

Wanna see some trick pool shots?

“My pets will protect me.”

THE BANNER SAYS IT ALL

Yesterday I wanted a day off. Maybe it’s now just a variation on Monday madness, but I find myself looking a pieces of what would appear to be a hideous jigsaw puzzle. Pakistan is obviously a part of it. A nuclear power with Al Qaeda in the mountains moves murderously towards military dictatorship as Musharraf suspends the Pakistani constitution and rounds up the intellectual opposition. This analysis seems good as far as it goes, but fails to factor in enough of nuclear India. Then another piece of the puzzle is the nagging idea that Musharraf could provide a template for Bush/Cheney holding onto power as their term in office legally draws to a close, except Bush has alienated the Joint Chiefs and so he must build up Blackwater – who now have their own intelligence agency – to run his coupe for him. And then I hear rumors of a drug made from fermented raw sewage that I don’t think even I would sample

And I really don’t want to put it all together. It could be the measure of my tether. Do we really have to tale our ivory handled Colts out of storage (the ones that now make us feel guilty about the elephant) and once again head for the metaphoric OK Corral? So, to buy myself as little time to procrastinate, I take refuge in the comfort of punk. Here are The Ramones, and also The Sex Pistols.

The secret word is Blitzkrieg

CRYPTIQUE – I miss my uncle Bill.

EX-PAT GUY NOSTALGIA

And I also miss Guy Fawkes Night, (and wondering if we celebrated him because he failed to blow up Parliament and King James I, or because he tried) and all the brands of fireworks of my youth -- Paynes, Brocks, Standard, Wessex, the Air Bomb, the Mine of Serpents, the penny banger, the Mt. Etna, the Emerald Mine, the smell of gunpowder and treason in the air. But for all I know, the UK nanny state has made it all illegal. (Actually the pic is of Barcelona fireworks sent by Valerie.)

WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE, BUT THIS ONE NEEDS A DAY OFF

It seems like I’ve been staring at this computer since at least the pre-Cambrian period – or perhaps last Tuesday – but even though nuke-packing Pakistan seems to be in the throws some military coupe in drag and Ms. Bhutto may well be assassinated and India will go to it’s Hindu version of DEFCON 1 and the Citigroup CEO just quit after losing billions, and what’s poor Stephen Colbert going to do now his two dozen writers are on strike, I refuse run around like Chicken Little until at least tomorrow because I’m just plain tired.

Meanwhile Kass has sent us a disturbing report of how, as if things weren’t bad enough, the Congress has sanctioned some idiotic program to fuck with the weather. But Noudela sent me a clip of Neil Young singing Like A Hurricane which seems appropriate. So now I think I’ll go and become a vegetable. Or maybe have a V8. (Sigh.)

The secret word is Wolf

Pinup donated by Valerie

BUT REMEMBER...

RAVAGED EARTH REVISITED

Now we have a degree of confusion (see yesterday’s comments) about what fire photographs were taken when and by whom, I will simply leave it that this scary image all too vividly illustrates how all those little boxes (that’s right, the ones made out of ticky-tacky) are being built on hillsides with histories of cyclical wild fires. And all evidence appears to indicate that a longer fire season and larger and more intense fires are yet another symptom of escalating environmental catastrophe. Which is ultimately what counts and why I post these pics. Breathtaking as they might be, this is a horrorshow not an art exhibit.

The secret word are Scorched Earth

“Errors in Doc40 will not be tolerated, and, since they undermine your other arguments, the penalties must, by simple logic, be cruel and unusual.”

But this is definitely Venus In Furs.
(And the pic was definitely sent by Valerie)

YOU HAVE TO HEAR THIS!

There really is nothing else I can say except listen to Saturn! (apart from to thank Valerie for sending it.) I love this stuff! It rocks! (But bear in mind that I also once wanted to form a band with a pod of humpback whales.)

MEANWHILE, BACK ON THE RAVAGED EARTH

Doug the Bass sent over this pic by Nick in Rancho Santa Fe of deer taking refuge in what looks like a foot or so of water. If so inclined, I could drive myself into depressed insanity wondering if they survived, but I will attempt not to do that. I’ll just live with the knowledge that this planet is becoming a dangerously unpredictable nightmare and it’s our own fucking fault. Nick took a number of these fire pics, but I think one is more than enough for today.

BUT, in a slightly more optimistic frame of mind, I speculate in the current LA CityBeat on the oblivion that I hope awaits all the highly paid, far-right so-called media pundits when the Bush/Cheney regime finally falls and their audience moves on.

The secret word is Bambi

The Interplanetary Space Fleet endorses this site. (But not to such a degree as to get me off this godforsaken planet.)

AND NOW WE’VE HAD ALL OUR SCARY HALLOWEEN FUN SHALL WE RETURN TO THE SCARY BAD REALITY

This short film by Max Blumenthal was shot at the recent Value Voters Summit. (Just scroll down a little and activate.) It sounds like a supermarket promotion but, in fact, it was the religious right making it known to the Republican presidential candidates that they expect major payback after supporting George Bush for almost seven long years, and, from their point of view, getting very little for it. You really have to sympathize with these good folk. They expected to be a handed a theocracy and they didn’t get it. Roe v Wade wasn't overturned. Not a single heretic has been incinerated, and atheists and homosexuals have not been rounded up and “quarantined.” This film has already appeared on Huffpo. I don’t know how much Arianna’s Wal-Blog overlaps with Doc 40, but I’m running it anyway just to remind us all that those people are out there and they don’t like us.

The secret word is Burning

HAPPY HALLOWEEN FROM THE DOC40 FUNHOUSE

Stolen from deviantART

A HALLOWEEN TALE

“You’re a bloody fool, Slobodan. I told you to morph into a bat.”

And here is a gravely seasonal and 100% factual anecdote from Sky…
Serbian vampire hunters have acted to prevent the very remote possibility that former dictator Slobodan Milosevic might stage a come-back - by driving a three-foot stake through his heart. According to Ananova, the politically-motivated Van Helsings, led byMiroslav Milosevic (no relation), gave themselves up to cops after attacking the deceased despot in his grave in the eastern town of Pozarevac. Milosevic died in his cell in at the Scheveningen detention center in the Hague, back in 2006, while on trial in a UN war crimes tribunal for various unsavoury activities connected with the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. Miroslav Milosevic said "he and his fellow vampire hunters acted to stop the former dictator returning from the dead to haunt the country". His team explained that the wooden stake had been "driven into the ground and through the late president's heart". Slobodan Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia naturally condemned the desecration, while his daughter-in-law Milica Gajic said she "planned to sue the vampire hunters and accused the police of failing to protect the grave properly".

Since Halloween is the annual vanilla flirtation with evil, the secret word is Blackwater

THE ARNOLD LAYNE FAN CLUB

I don’t know if onanistic perversion and undergarment theft qualifies as a Halloween preoccupation, and the song Arnold Layne is hardly as classic as The Monster Mash, but why not play it anyway? Here’s the original with Syd Barrett singing plus another quite soaring version with David Bowie.

Image by LichtReize