"For emergencies, darling, stash some gin in a perfume bottle. It’s perfect to wash down the Nembutal."

(After blogger being out of action all day...)
THE BOOZE IS BACK
The following report came from MSNBC. I must, however, add my own comment. It may of course be rosy hindsight, but didn’t the world run better when everyone went to the bar at lunchtime, sank a few pints or downed a couple of martinis?

An estimated 15 percent of the U.S. workforce consumes alcohol on the job, has a drink before going to work or otherwise is under the influence of alcohol, according to a study by the University of Buffalo’s Research Institute on Addictions. That equates to some 19.2 million workers impaired during the workday via intoxication, withdrawal or hangover.
"Clear policies should be in place regarding alcohol impairment and impairment at work, wrote Doctor Michael Frone, principal investigator of the study. But despite management’s responsibility for the development and enforcement of such policies, managers report elevated rates of consuming alcohol during the workday, working under the influence of alcohol, and working with a hangover," he said.
The institute said that the study, the first of workplace alcohol use to utilize a representative sample of the U.S. workforce, surveyed 2,805 employed adults across the United States from January 2002 through June 2003. Young, single men figured prominently among those who were affected by alcohol, the results showed. Drinking on the job, being under the influence or working with a hangover was more prevalent among men than women, more common among younger workers than older staff, and among unmarried workers than married workers, the study found. Coming into work with a hangover was the most common finding.
The highest levels of alcohol use and impairment were in management, sales, catering and construction. "Of all psychoactive substances with the potential to impair cognitive and behavioral performance, alcohol is the most widely used and misused substance in the general population and the workforce," Frone said.
"The misuse of alcohol by employed adults is an important social policy issue with the potential to undermine employee productivity and safety," he added. The institute said that 10.8 percent admitted they either drank at work, before work or turned up with a hangover but that it happened less than once a month, while 2.9 percent said it was a monthly occurrence and 1.65 percent said weekly.

THIS YOU HAVE TO SEE...
LW says...Folks, jam with youself, this is greeeeeeeeat!
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/7661/R/CFD_101/

AND DON’T WE ALL FEEL LIKE THIS AT TIMES...
http://pics.livejournal.com/slurpee/pic/0009015x/

The secret word is Hammered

AND IN LA CITYBEAT...
I have a riff on TV award shows.
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=3140&IssueNum=136

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DR. HOFMANN
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DR. HOFMANN
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DR. HOFMANN
DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR BICYCLE?
Dr Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD25, will be a 100 years old today, a milestone to be marked by a symposium in Basel, Switzerland on the chemical compound that he discovered and that famously unlocked the Blakean doors of perception, altering consciousness around the world and giving rise to a lot of guitar feedback and squirrelly dayglo art.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Hofmann

AND FOR FUN IN A SOMEWHAT SIMILAR VEIN...
http://www.permadi.com/java/biomorph/index.html

OR WOULD YOU RATHER GO BOWLING?
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/20057/R/CFD_101/

OR HEAR MORE ABOUT EVO MORALES?
"Meanwhile in Caracas, President Hugo Chavez, a Morales supporter, said Tuesday that he was certain that officials at the US embassy in La Paz had 'already started the conspiracy against Evo Morales. 'I'm sure that the American military in Bolivia is talking, searching for coup plotters' against Morales, he said."
http://www.forbes.com/work/feeds/afx/2006/01/10/afx2442112.html

The secret word is Trippin’

"Sebastian, is this really the only way you can hook up with boys? Can’t you go to a gay bar like everyone else?"

MENTAL HEALTH HOTLINE
Hello. Welcome to the psychiatrist hotline
If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press 1 repeatedly.
If you are co-dependant, please ask someone to press 2.
If you have multiple personalities, please press 3, 4, 5, and 6.
If you are paranoid-delusional, we know who you are and what you want. Just stay on the line so we can trace the call.
If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a little voice will tell you which number to press.
If you are manic-depressive, it doesn’t matter which number you press. No one will answer.
If you are anxious, just start pressing numbers at random.
If you are phobic, don’t press anything.
If you are anal retentive, please hold.
(From lazzafairy)

WITHOUT COMMENT
"Bolivian presidential candidate Evo Morales of the Movement Toward Socialism
(MAS) party celebrates during a news conference inside the coca growers'
headquarters after exit polls gave him a victory with close to 50 percent of the
votes."

What else need be said?

THOSE DARN BUREAUCRATS
"Space tourists must be screened to ensure they are not terrorists, according to proposed regulations from the US Federal Aviation Administration."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4589072.stm

AND TALKING OF SPACE...
More sci-fi pulp covers than you ever dreamed of.
http://www.coverpop.com/visco.php

The secret word is Saucer

ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR
WE DON’T WANT YOUR FUCKING WAR
The Pentagon are wondering why Army recruiting numbers are soooo down, and they decided it was all the fault of war opponent Rep. Jon Murtha, not considering for a moment that it might be the prospect of being shot, blown up, maimed, mutilated or killed – not the mention they way that the brass have been screwing around with extended tours of duty. Some girl sent over this report...

"Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a news
conference Thursday that Murtha's remarks about Iraq are damaging to troop
morale and to the Army's efforts to bring up recruitment numbers. Pace, the
nation's top general, was asked specifically about an ABC News interview this
week in which Murtha, 73, said if he were eligible to join the military today he
would not join, nor would he expect others to join.
"That's damaging to
recruiting," Pace said. "It's damaging to morale of the troops who are deployed,
and it's damaging to the morale of their families who believe in what they are
doing to serve this country."

http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,84687,00.html

The secret word is Disaffected

Now I’m messing around with color and images, I naturally wonder what the merry visitors to Doc40's Online Funhouse think about all this. Plus I’d welcome all bizarre, subversive, or devious images. (byron4d@msn.com)

WHO REMEMBERS MY LAI?
WHO REMEMBERS VIETNAM?
MrMR sent over this piece by Richard Goldstein from the NYT.
"Hugh Thompson, an Army helicopter pilot who rescued Vietnamese civilians during the My Lai massacre, reported the killings to his superior officers in a rage over what he had seen, testified at the inquiries and received a commendation from the Army three decades later, died yesterday in Alexandria, La. He was 62.
The cause was cancer, Jay DeWorth, a spokesman for the Veterans Affairs Medical Center where Mr. Thompson died, told The Associated Press.
On March 16, 1968, Chief Warrant Officer Thompson and his two crewmen were flying on a reconnaissance mission over the South Vietnamese village of My Lai when they spotted the bodies of men, women and children strewn over the landscape.
Mr. Thompson landed twice in an effort to determine what was happening, finally coming to the realization that a massacre was taking place. The second time, he touched down near a bunker in which a group of about 10 civilians were being menaced by American troops. Using hand signals, Mr. Thompson persuaded the Vietnamese to come out while ordering his gunner and his crew chief to shoot any American soldiers who opened fire on the civilians. None did.
Mr. Thompson radioed for a helicopter gunship to evacuate the group, and then his crew chief, Glenn Andreotta, pulled a boy from a nearby irrigation ditch, and their helicopter flew him to safety.
Mr. Thompson told of what he had seen when he returned to his base.
"They said I was screaming quite loud," he told U.S. News & World Report in 2004. "I threatened never to fly again. I didn't want to be a part of that. It wasn't war."
Mr. Thompson remained in combat, then returned to the United States to train helicopter pilots. When the revelations about My Lai surfaced, he testified before Congress, a military inquiry and the court-martial of Lt. William L. Calley Jr., the platoon leader at My Lai, who was the only soldier to be convicted in the massacre.
When Mr. Thompson returned home, it seemed to him that he was viewed as the guilty party.
"I'd received death threats over the phone," he told the CBS News program "60 Minutes" in 2004. "Dead animals on your porch, mutilated animals on your porch some mornings when you get up. So I was not a good guy."
On March 6, 1998, the Army presented the Soldier's Medal, for heroism not involving conflict with an enemy, to Mr. Thompson; to his gunner, Lawrence Colburn; and, posthumously, to Mr. Andreotta, who was killed in a helicopter crash three weeks after the My Lai massacre.
The citation, bestowed in a ceremony at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, said the three crewmen landed "in the line of fire between American ground troops and fleeing Vietnamese civilians to prevent their murder."
On March 16, 1998, Mr. Thompson and Mr. Colburn attended a service at My Lai marking the 30th anniversary of the massacre.
"Something terrible happened here 30 years ago today," Mr. Thompson was quoted as saying by CNN. "I cannot explain why it happened. I just wish our crew that day could have helped more people than we did."
Mr. Thompson worked as a veterans' counselor in Louisiana after leaving military service. A list of his survivors was not immediately available.
Through the years, he continued to speak out, having been invited to West Point and other military installations to tell of the moral and legal obligations of soldiers in wartime.
He was presumably mindful of the ostracism he had faced and the long wait for that medal ceremony in Washington. As he told The Associated Press in 2004: "Don't do the right thing looking for a reward, because it might not come."

The secret word is Again

A vignette for Elvis

HAPPY ELVISMAS
Elvis Presley would be 71 today except that he’s dead. Left is a drawing of Elvis by the 15 year-old Jimi Hendrix. (Courtesy of Ben.) Yukiko wonders how such a item was ever preserved. I don’t have a clue. Maybe I’ll ask Ben.

The secret word is Cadillac

LINKS FOR THE WEEKEND

THE BRITISH OPIUM WAR AGAINST THE USA
For many years, we’ve been able to count on wingnut Lyndon Larouche
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_LaRouche)
as a guaranteed bundle of laffs, but now he seems in the process of being coopted by the religious right, the fun can really start...

"The counterculture is a conspiracy at the top, created as a method of social control, used to drain the United States of its commitment to scientific and technological progress. That conspiracy goes back to the 1930s, when the British sent Aldous Huxley to the United States as the case officer for an operation to prepare the United States for the mass dissemination of drugs. We will take this conspiracy apart step-by-step from its small beginnings with Huxley in California to the victimization of 15 million Americans today. With 'The Aquarian Conspiracy', the British Opium War against the United States has come out into the open."
For much, much, more...
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/aquarian.htm

AND TALKING OF CONSPIRACY...
HCB sends us a brand new German theory that it was Fidel who whacked JFK. (When we all know it was CIA, Hoover, the Military Industrial Complex and the Mob.)
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,393540,00.html

While some girl draws our attention to the fact that there’s maybe something amiss with Elmo.
http://www.local6.com/news/5784303/detail.html

AND...
Doug the Bass sends over an essay by Howard Zinn, who is simply one of the best minds of any generation. http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1230-36.htm

BUT THE HIPPO AND THE TURTLE ARE HAPPY
http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/hippo.asp

The secret word is Cute

Much fine posting awaits, but it'll have to await awhile longer tomorrow because I'm obsessively playing Gimp Roulette. (see Thursday)

HEALTH NOTES (Don’t Laugh)
Your uncle Pete Townshend is worried about all you iPod cats with phones in your ears winding up deaf as posts. I also wonder about all those cars that drive by pulsing with bass overload. Pete seems to think that it was headphones in the studio that destroyed his hearing – not the stage-wall of Hi-Watt 4x12s – and I tend to agree with him. My own hearing ain’t what it used to be, and after a few hours under headphones, my ears feel a little odd.

"Guitarist Pete Townshend has warned iPod users that they could end up with hearing problems as bad as his own if they don't turn down the volume of the music they are listening to on earphones. Townshend, 60, guitarist in the 60s band The Who, said his hearing was irreversibly damaged by years of using studio headphones and that he now is forced to take 36-hour breaks between recording sessions to allow his ears to recover. "I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal components deaf," he said on his Web site. "Hearing loss is a terrible thing because it cannot be repaired. If you use an iPod or anything like it, or your child uses one, you MAY be OK ... But my intuition tells me there is terrible trouble ahead." Referring to the increasingly popular practice of downloading music from the Internet, Townshend said: "The downside may be that on our computers – for privacy, for respect to family and co-workers, and for convenience – we use earphones at almost every stage of interaction with sound." The Who rock group was famous for its earsplitting live performances, but Townshend said his problem was caused by using earphones in the recording studio."

Pete’s blog – http://www.petetownshend.co.uk/diary/index.cfm?zone=diary

AND TALKING OF STAYING FIT...
This service might out a whole new spin on exercise...
http://www.misscandypt.blogspot.com/

The secret word is Vibrate

Our motto – We Serve The Sick

LA CITYBEAT
I was planing only to post a quick link to my scarey cover story in the new LA CityBeat...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=3102&IssueNum=135

But than gilfane sent over...

GIMP ROULETTE
http://members.aon.at/rialskaedda.html/gimproulette.swf

You gotta see this. And persevere. It’s not a proof-of-stupidity game.

The secret word is Click

(The email is still byron4d@msn.com)

GREED NEVER SLEEPS
I have nothing to say about what still goes on in the US mining industry that Woody didn’t say a whole lot better sixty years ago...

It was early springtime when the strike was on,
They drove us miners out of doors,
Out from the houses that the Company owned,
We moved into tents up at old Ludlow.

I was worried bad about my children,
Soldiers guarding the railroad bridge,
Every once in a while a bullet would fly,
Kick up gravel under my feet.

We were so afraid you would kill our children,
We dug us a cave that was seven foot deep,
Carried our young ones and pregnant women
Down inside the cave to sleep.

That very night your soldiers waited,
Until all us miners were asleep,
You snuck around our little tent town,
Soaked our tents with your kerosene.

You struck a match and in the blaze that started,
You pulled the triggers of your Gatling guns,
I made a run for the children but the fire wall stopped me.
Thirteen children died from your guns.

I carried my blanket to a wire fence corner,
Watched the fire till the blaze died down,
I helped some people drag their belongings,
While your bullets killed us all around.

I never will forget the look on the faces
Of the men and women that awful day,
When we stood around to preach their funerals,
And lay the corpses of the dead away.

We told the Colorado Governor to call the President,
Tell him to call off his National Guard,
But the National Guard belonged to the Governor,
So he didn't try so very hard.

Our women from Trinidad they hauled some potatoes,
Up to Walsenburg in a little cart,
They sold their potatoes and brought some guns back,
And they put a gun in every hand.

The state soldiers jumped us in a wire fence corners,
They did not know we had these guns,
And the Red-neck Miners mowed down these troopers,
You should have seen those poor boys run.

We took some cement and walled that cave up,
Where you killed these thirteen children inside,
I said, "God bless the Mine Workers' Union,"
And then I hung my head and cried.

Woody Guthrie – The Ludlow Massacre

For background...
http://www.fortunecity.com/tinpan/parton/2/ludlow.html

The secret word is Organize

ROLL UP, ROLL UP, THE REPUBLICAN APOCALYPSE IS NEAR!
The post-Solstice miasma that seemed to grip the entire planet this merry morn was considerably brightened by the news that key Washington lobbyist and GOP influence peddler Jack Abramoff has cut a plea deal and is poised to plead guilty to charges of tax evasion, fraud and corruption, and is presumably rolling over on all his Republican chums and the whole stinking and gangrenous house of cards will collapse of its own corruption. (Well, I can hope.) For more of the gory details and particularly the role of one Emily Miller in all this, another outta-control right-wing fuhrette, try Wonkette...
http://www.wonkette.com/politics/abramoffukkah/index.php#bang-the-manicurist-slowly-146280

The secret word is Glee

IT'S THE YEAR OF THE DOG IN JAPAN

The secret word is Woof!

2006 OKAY?
Keep watching the skies
Keep watching the assholes (you know the ones)
And may it be totally splendid for all of us.

I’M SO HAPPY THAT THE WHITE HOUSE IS HELPING POOR ANNA NICOLE GET HER MONEY AND THAT THE PRESIDENT REALIZES THAT EVEN BLIMP-SKANKS DESERVE THEIR DAY IN COURT
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/12/26/scotus.roundup.ap/index.html

I’M ALSO VERY HAPPY THAT MAUREEN DOWD IS BEING BOOTLEGGED OUT FOR FREE
http://theunknowncandidate.blogspot.com/2005/12/secrets-shadows-and-vice.html

AND HAPPY TO HAVE A NEW PIECE IN LA CITYBEAT
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=3060&IssueNum=134

AND, THANKS TO SOME GIRL, I CAN SHOW YOU THE MILLION DOLLAR WEBSITE INSTEAD OF WATCHING IT ON TV AND CURSING THAT I NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT
http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/
For the story...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051229/ts_nm/homepage_dc

I'M EVEN HAPPY TO LEARN OF THE IRISH ELVIS FAN CLUB
http://www.irishelvisfanclub.com/index.htm
(Thanks to Miss Templeton http://horslipsmusic.blogspot.com/ )

The secret word is Delighted

CRYPTIQUE – You get the police state you pay for.

TROLLS FROM NOWHERE NEAR THE SHORT FOREST
My spybots inform me that, all through Xmas, hundreds of right wing trolls have been silently marching through Doc40 with snow on their boots. One even left a comment on the decor. They would appear to have been pointed our way by an Australian who believes George Bush can do no wrong and takes the concept of Global Warming as a personal affront.
http://timblair.net/

AND TALKING OF TROLLS
Here’s a shot of Georgie in action...

"Last month, Republican Congressional leaders filed into the Oval Office to meet with President George W. Bush and talk about renewing the controversial USA Patriot Act.
Several provisions of the act, passed in the shell shocked period immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, caused enough anger that liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union had joined forces with prominent conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and Bob Barr to oppose renewal.
GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.
"I don’t give a goddamn," Bush retorted. "I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way."
"Mr. President," one aide in the meeting said. "There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution."
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face," Bush screamed back. "It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!"
I’ve talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution "a goddamned piece of paper."

For the full story...
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7779.shtml

The secret word is Oaf

LINKS
TOP FIFTY GADGETS
HCB sends over a fascinating list. (I mean, who could forget the Timex Sinclair?)
http://pcworld.com/resource/printable/article/0,aid,123950,00.asp

AND A BIT OF A PROBLEM FOR UNCLE OSAMA...
http://men.style.com/gq/features/landing?id=content_4071

AND FROM THE PEOPLE WHO BROUGHT YOU DOMESTIC SPYING...
http://www.nsa.gov/kids/home_html.cfm

PANDAFIX
http://www.pandafix.com/pandafix/2005/12/tai_shan_goes_f.html

HAPPY BOXING DAY, YOU PAGANS
One of the better inventions of the British Empire (better even than the cunning use of flags – thank you, Eddie) by which the long suffering proletariat got the day off after Christmas to eat leftovers, drink gin, watch soccer, and send the whining kids out to play in the traffic.

I even unearthed a special holiday read – a piece from Fact magazine from about 18 months ago about fire and summer rock festivals. A sample – "I had clearly regressed down my DNA helix to some prehistoric point not too long after the monkey met the monolith, but demonstrable method lurked in my madness. "
http://www.factmagazine.co.uk/da/12261

The secret word is Atavism

GAMES UNDER TREE ON XMAS MORN
(Sounds like a track on Syd Barrett's Christmas Album.)

Animated humbug (courtesy of HarleyC1)
http://www.illwillpress.com/xmas.html

Star Wars Bunnies
http://www.angryalien.com/1205/starwarsbuns.asp

Chainsaw bunnies
http://www.angryalien.com/0605/txchainsawbuns.asp

Limp woman in gravity (from Rich)
http://soap.chattablogs.com/archives/flash/tetka.swf

The secret word is Cranberry

Merry Christmas, friends, neighbours, and comrades.

IT’S FESTIVUS!
When I posted the Cryptique Christmas Cavalcade, I hadn’t realized that today was also Festivus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festivus

Yes, brothers and sisters, it’s the...
CRYPTIQUE ALL-STAR CHRISTMAS SPECIAL

Heap food on your family!
Without spilling a drop.
Santa gonna be coming.
Down your chimney tonight.
One of those bells that now and then ring.
I too was amazed.
Half full and half empty are the same fucking thing, man!
The camel in the eye with a needle.
You would be well advised to behave with discretion.
We played every song that driver knew.
The shaman does the cool jerk.
Except today isn’t Wednesday.
It’s Wednesday somewhere.
The bears were on fire.
The sidewalks were on fire.
A wild cat did howl.
The anagram of Satan.
Gobble, gobble.
How many nails did you say you had?
Charge in all directions at once!
We don’t need no stinking sanity clause.
We don’t need no stinking pear tree.
Ain’t nothing but a voice from the bicameral mind.
And science is mankind’s brother.
Beware the mineshaft gap!
You can put a cat in an oven.
But it don’t make it a biscuit.
You bloodthirsty reactionary, you are sadly mistaken.
There’s no one else in the car.
No direction home.
Johnny 7 One Man Army.
No figgy pudding.
The bird is still the word.
Not stealing. Paying tribute.
Recycle the airlock.
He injected himself with a hard-boiled egg.
No safety in objects.
Quick, before the fight starts.
She ran away on a bus to Vegas.
Fire in the impulse cylinders!
There are never enough lifeboats.
Workers of the World ignite!
You have nothing to lose but your branes.
A brane is a terrible thing to waste.
They make great pets.
Here come the proletariat.
Yes. They make great pets.
Clinton is spending more time in Harlem.
Undertake the undertaking.
I’m making breakfast.
I beat him when he sneezes.
I don’t feel well.
Welcome to the cheap seats.
Turn off all electrical devices.
Never jam today?
Do the timewarp again.
What took you so long?
I like the Iliad.
I've never been Homer-phobic.
Bechtel owns the rain.
You politically illiterate hooligan!
Clothed all in green, ho, ho.
Your accusation is no more than barking at the moon!
One is me and the other isn’t you.
Misery loves capital.
Five gold rings.
A committee will investigate.
He don’t know me very well, do he?
A insoluble crossword puzzle that demands no answers.
Your velcro has been cut.
The red wire or the blue wire?
Don’t take a knife to a gunfight.
Rule Britannia.
Hello sailor.
What did you expect from a nautical nation?
Nyuk-yuk!
There must be some kinda way out of here.
Living is easy with eyes closed.
Close my eyes and drift away.
Some junkie nurse has been cutting the morphine with Sani-Flush.
Dr Benway, I presume?
So walk my happy ass outta here.

The secret word is Wassail

WITH WHAT WE HAVE TO CONTEND
Maybe Ann Coulter should simply be put to sleep. Between the cigarettes and bulimia, she can’t be a happy girl. She has even ceased even to be funny, as in her Christmas column. (And no, I ain’t gonna provide a link.)
"I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East, and sending liberals to Guantanamo."

OH SHIT
The report of the FBI harassing students over Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book is apparently a hoax, but that it was so plausible says volumes of how we view our government. (ie We don’t trust the bastards further than we can hurl.) To make up for the error, here's an account of how the Feds carried on back in the day by veteran radical and old pal Stew Albert...
http://www.counterpunch.org/

BUT IF YOU LIKED BUNNY ALIEN, YOU’LL LOVE THIS
http://www.angryalien.com/1005/wowbuns.asp

The secret word is Credible

*******************************
AND LO – THE CRYPTIQUE CHRISTMAS SPECIAL IS AT HAND!
*******************************

DECK THE HALLS – 'TIS THE SEASON FOR IMPEACHIN'
My TV has used the word "impeachment" at least five times today. Now wouldn’t would that be a Yuletide gift to warm the heart? But let’s not forget that Cheney has to go first. After Bush is impeached, we’re stuck with whatever VP for the next three fucking years.
And not only have Bush and his gang apparently driven a semi-truck through federal law and the Constitution, but in a manner, it emerges, that is totally witless. As in...
http://www.newyorkblade.com/thelatest/thelatest.cfm?blog_id=4146

The secret word is Oooops!

BUT ALSO FOR SPECIAL TREATS
Alien in Bun-O-Vision (courtesy of Rich)
http://www.angryalien.com/0704/alienbunnies.html

*********************************
!!!! THE CRYPTIQUE CHRISTMAS SPECIAL IS VERY NEAR !!!
*********************************

XMAS WEIRD PART II
But where shall we start? The report sent by some girl on rampaging Santas in New Zealand?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051219/od_nm/newzealand_santa_dc

Or revelations about Joe Stalin and monkeys?
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=2434192005

Or more about monkeys? (Although I’d naively thought Spencer Tracy had sorted this all out in the 1920s.)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10545387/

Or maybe The Invisible Sphere of Condi Rice?
http://sparklepony.blogspot.com/2005/12/breaking-condi-has-small-spherical.html

And what would Xmas be without a serious dose of Yuletide paranoia. (This one from the good people at Leftist Cunts http://www.livejournal.com/community/leftist_cunt/

NEW BEDFORD -- A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's tome on Communism called "The Little Red Book." Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the UMass Dartmouth library's interlibrary loan program. The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said. The professors said the student was told by the agents that the book is on a "watch list," and that his background, which included significant time abroad, triggered them to investigate the student further.
"I tell my students to go to the direct source, and so he asked for the official Peking version of the book," Professor Pontbriand said. "Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security is monitoring inter-library loans, because that's what triggered the visit, as I understand it."
Although The Standard-Times knows the name of the student, he is not coming forward because he fears repercussions should his name become public. He has not spoken to The Standard-Times. The professors had been asked to comment on a report that President Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to spy on as many as 500 people at any given time since 2002 in this country. The eavesdropping was apparently done without warrants. The Little Red Book, is a collection of quotations and speech excerpts from Chinese leader Mao Tse-Tung. In the 1950s and '60s, during the Cultural Revolution in China, it was required reading. Although there are abridged versions available, the student asked for a version translated directly from the original book. The student told Professor Pontbriand and Dr. Williams that the Homeland Security agents told him the book was on a "watch list." They brought the book with them, but did not leave it with the student, the professors said. Dr. Williams said in his research, he regularly contacts people in Afghanistan, Chechnya and other Muslim hot spots, and suspects that some of his calls are monitored.
"My instinct is that there is a lot more monitoring than we think," he said.
Dr. Williams said he had been planning to offer a course on terrorism next semester, but is reconsidering, because it might put his students at risk.
"I shudder to think of all the students I've had monitoring al-Qaeda Web sites, what the government must think of that," he said. "Mao Tse-Tung is completely harmless."
This story appeared on Page A9 of The Standard-Times on December 17, 2005.

The secret word is Gestapo

On second thoughts, however, this Elvis Jr is maybe not so weird. He does have an online gift shop. (And I actually kinda like the fascist-looking Elvis wings.)

SON OF ELVIS
Yes, my friends, it’s time for the Xmas weird. I found this in a moment of net wandering, and, as weird, it can hardly be beat.

http://elvisjr.com/

The secret word is Implausible

*********************************
!!!! THE CRYPTIQUE CHRISTMAS SPECIAL IS COMING !!!
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MESSING WITH THE PRESS
This week, in LA CityBeat, I add my eleven cents to the discussion of the propaganda war as conducted by the Bush White House.
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=3003&IssueNum=132

I was considering the War on Christmas, but I dismissed it. I found I had nothing to say beyond another discourse on smoke-screen idiot-mechanics, as the neocon evangelists (unthought of, though, somehow) cross the Jungian frontier and assault the doors of perception.

But here’s a link to a blog of really interesting stuff scientific/cultural stuff...
http://www.collisiondetection.net/

CRYPTIQUE – Someone feed the lions

The secret word is Trenchcoat

*********************************
!!!!DON’T MISS THE CRYPTIQUE CHRISTMAS SPECIAL!!!
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CRYPTIQUE -- Don't send a hillbilly for champagne

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

SOMETIMES ONLY A MARTINI WILL MAKE IT
Who remembers Judge Robert Bork? He was a right wing absolutist who was kept off the Supreme Court back in 1987, when all thinking people breathed a sigh of relief. Of Bork, Ted Kennedy said – "Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, children could not be taught about evolution."
And yet I find myself in full agreement (except for the olive) with the following letter, written by Bork and published in Monday’s Wall Street Journal...

Martini's Founding Fathers: Original Intent Debatable
Eric Felten's essay on the dry martini is itself near-perfect ("Don't Forget the Vermouth," Leisure & Arts, Pursuits, Dec. 10). His allusion to constitutional jurisprudence is faulty, however, since neither in law nor martinis can we know the subjective "original intent" of the Founding Fathers. As to martinis, the intent may have been to ease man's passage through this vale of tears or, less admirably, to employ the tactic of "candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker."
What counts in mixology is the "original understanding" of the martini's essence by those who first consumed it. The essence remains unaltered but allows proportions to evolve as circumstances change. Mr. Felten's "near-perfect martini" is the same in principle as the "original-understanding martini" and therefore its legitimate descendant. Such latter-day travesties as the chocolate martini and the raspberry martini, on the other hand, are the work of activist bartenders.
Mr. Felten lapses into heresy only once. He prefers the olive to the lemon peel because the former is a "snack." Dropping a snack into a classic drink is like garnishing filet mignon with ketchup. The correct response when offered an olive is, "When I want a salad, I'll ask for it."
Robert H. BorkThe Hudson Institute
Washington

And, just for reference, here is how Doc40 makes a perfect martini.
Take a cocktail shaker, and half fill with ice.
Pour in a shot of vermouth.
Shake.
Throw away the Vermouth, but keep the ice.
Pour a large shot of gin over the vermouthed ice.
Shake very quickly.
Decant into conical glass.
Add lemon peel or olive. (I love a martini-soaked olive.)
The only thing you can’t put in a martini is a cocktail onion because that makes it a Gibson.

Also Natalie Nichols also has a very good piece on gin in the LA CityBeat drinking issue.
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2974&IssueNum=131

The secret word is Legless

TOOKIE WILLIAMS -- RIP

In California, to all human disgust, this depressing fucking gangsta execution grinds on. (And will the hood riot?) While, in New York, actors shoot cops.

IF YOU LOVED PENGUIN WHACKING YOU’RE GOING TO LIKE THIS (OR VICE VERSA)...
The longer you shake it, the more they scream. (sent by Rumor)
http://www.starterupsteve.com/swf/snowglobe.html

BUT SERIOUSLY, FOLKS...
I kinda made it a rule at Doc40 not to dedicate too much energy to eulogizing the dead or commemorating the death of icons, if for no other reason that my life drifts into that area of age where the RIPs become progressively more numerous. On a bad day it can seem like the Old Guard are dropping like flies, and, on a worse one, I tentatively contemplate my own mortality, even though I still secretly believe that I’m indestructible. Thus, when Munz sent over this link to a 1971 John Lennon interview with Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn, passing it along seemed like a suitable Doc40 way to mark and remember. Back in the day, I didn’t really see eye to eye with either Ali or Blackburn. We were on the same side, and in the same raging confrontations with authority, but methods and motives were questioned in both directions. Having said this, I have to admit they did move Lennon to talk about stuff never even approached by the likes of Rolling Stone. (But that is the quaint way we talked about revolution, and don’t let anyone tell you different.)
http://www.counterpunch.org/lennon12082005.html

DEMOCRACY, WHISKEY, AND SEX
I also don’t necessarily agree with a lot of what Hooman Majd has to say but there’s some food for thought in his very lengthy observations of the Islamic world. (I also noted, in the comments that followed, a lot of Huffington Post readers were put out by the length. Cyber-attention span may be a coming problem.)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hooman-majd/jihad-vs-mcsex_b_12034.html

CRYPTIQUE – The pecking order of arrogance is not the stairway to heaven.

The secret word is Imagine

RICHARD PRYOR -- RIP

OKAY YOU CYBER-PAGANS, GET FESTIVE WID IT...

IT’S PENGUIN WHACKING TIME AGAIN!
This link has been posted before, but since Lazzafairy reminded of it, and it is also so disturbingly funny, I can’t resist doing it again. Ambiguous as Doc40 is about Yule and Solstice traditions, maybe it will become one. (Click once to load a penguin, click again to whack.)
http://n.ethz.ch/student/mkos/pinguin.swf

BRAND NEW PANDA CAM!
After all the fun we’ve had watching Butterstick, the San Diego Zoo weighs in with a brand new cam of their own that features multiple non-bears.
http://www.sandiegozoo.org/zoo/ex_panda_station.html

But if your still loyal to Butterstick, here’s the link yet again...
http://animal.discovery.com/cams/pandavidr.html

NEVER...
Play cards with a man called Doc
Eat at a place called Mom’s
Sleep with a woman called April Dawn...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/08/AR2005120802156.html

OR YOU MIGHT END UP LIKE THE JAPANESE
Who are beset by giant jellyfish that are real and not some coming-home-to-roost product of Toho Pictures.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1910322,00.html

MEANWHILE MIKE WALLACE HAD A QUESTION FOR GEORGE BUSH
Talking with the Boston Globe about his new book, Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes fame offered a question he'd like to ask President Bush. "What in the world prepared you to be the commander in chief of the largest superpower in the world? … You apparently were incurious. You didn't want to travel. You knew very little about the military. … Do you think that has anything to do with the fact that the country is so [bleeped] up?"

ALTHOUGH REVEALED AS A STUNT
The video is stupidly funny...
http://www.snopes.com/photos/advertisements/mailbox.asp

AND FINALLY VIRTUAL GIFT FROM DOC40 (MAYBE)
As far as I can tell, this site offers free downloads of a whole bunch of old Deviants recordings if you have the technology and the expertise to use it.
http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3375718

CRYPTIQUE – You gonna see me coming in a big black Cadillac

The secret word is Slay

BUT AFTER ALL OF YESTERDAY’S GLOOM AND DOOM (SEX)...
Here’s more than you ever needed to know about Jenna...
(With pictures)
http://www.jennafatigue.blogspot.com/

BUT YOU CAN’T BE HAPPY ALL THE TIME (DRUGS)
Right before Yule, New York narcs make Manhattan vipers very fucking miserable. Shall we all go to the window and, in unison, scream "fuck this shit!"
(With pictures)
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1208052cartoon1.html

The secret words are Rock & roll

OKAY, IT’S ALL OVER
The ever watchful Kaymo sends over the following. The first real bad news comes from London and The Guardian...
"In Egyptian myth, Apophis was the ancient spirit of evil and destruction, a demon that was determined to plunge the world into eternal darkness.A fitting name, astronomers reasoned, for a menace now hurtling towards Earth from outerspace. Scientists are monitoring the progress of a 390-metre wide asteroid discovered last year that is potentially on a collision course with the planet, and are imploring governments to decide on a strategy for dealing with it. Nasa has estimated that an impact from Apophis, which has an outside chance of hitting the Earth in 2036, would release more than 100,000 times the energy released in the nuclear blast over Hiroshima. Thousands of square kilometres would be directly affected by the blast but the whole of the Earth would see the effects of the dust released into the atmosphere."
But for a whole lot more...
http://www.space.com/news/051103_asteroid_apophis.html

BUT THE INUIT CIRCUMPOLAR CONFERENCE (ICC) IS STILL FIGHTING
"For Inuit, warming is likely to disrupt or even destroy their hunting and food-sharing culture as reduced sea ice causes the animals on which they depend to decline, become less accessible, and possibly become extinct,"
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/12/07/051207182757.ht1oak7y.html

LIKE HURRY IT UP, OKAY?
I keep hearing tantalizing whispers that a megaton Republican sex scandal is about to burst that will blast all the way from the White House to Saudi Arabia, but the damned thing so-far refuses to detonate. Here are a couple of examples of the current whispers...
http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/archives/2005/12/dc_sex_scandal.html
http://www.wonkette.com/politics/duke-cunningham/index.php
I just wish someone would move it along and solve the problem of...

THE WORST PRESIDENT EVER
Historians move towards the conclusion that Boy George is finally easing out James Buchanan (1856-1860) for the title (sent by doug the bass)...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucrr/20051203/cm_ucrr/isgeorgebushtheworstpresidentever

AND HAROLD PINTER EXPLAINS WHY
Pinter, too sick to pick up his Nobel Prize, delivers a searing attack on Bush and much much more. (sent by munz)
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1208-28.htm

AND FINALLY
Momma said there’d be days like this
There’d be days like this, my momma said
I can only present this graphic with no further comment.
http://www.deviantart.com/view/25788560/

The secret number is Delusional

(Roll credits – play theme)
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that you've been faithful
Ah give or take a night or two
Everybody knows you've been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows
(Fade to black)

RUNNING OUT OF ROAD
I had a whole bunch of stuff that I was going to post tonight – including the latest move by The Inuit Circumpolar Conference, but the hour has grown late and I seem to have run out of time. So let me just present a link to my mini-treatise on hangovers in today’s LACityBeat Special Drinking Issue, and look for the rest of fun stuff later today.
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2969&IssueNum=131

The secret word is Morning

EXPLAIN THIS ONE, DOROTHY!
For the last couple of days, I’ve been coughing like Doc Holiday and feeling lousy. Flu? Cold? Stress? Who the hells knows? Nothing that a good dose of laudanum wouldn’t cure, if I could find an apothecary (or maybe a clandestine Chinaman.) Expression of sympathy and gifts of narcotics would be quite appropriate. And indeed, I might have remained slumped and abject well into tomorrow had not the ever vigilant MrMR sent over the following and raised my ire. I know Kansas has gone all to hell since Uncle Bill Burroughs departed, but this behavior is totally unacceptable...
(12-05) 20:25 PST Lawrence, Kan. (AP) --
A college professor whose planned course on creationism and intelligent design was canceled after he derided Christian conservatives said he was beaten by two men along a rural road early Monday.
University of Kansas religious studies professor Paul Mirecki said the men referred to the class when they beat him on the head, shoulders and back with their fists, and possibly a metal object, the Lawrence Journal-World reported.
"I didn't know them," Mirecki said of his assailants, "but I'm sure they knew me."
Messages left by the Associated Press on Mirecki's cell phone were not immediately returned.
Sheriff's Lt. Kari Wempe said Mirecki reported the attack just before 7 a.m.
The professor said he confronted the men after they were tailgating his vehicle along a road south of Lawrence. "I'm mostly shaken up, and I got some bruises and sore spots," he said.
Mirecki planned to offer a spring course called "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies" after the Kansas Board of Education decided to include more criticism of evolution in science standards for elementary and secondary students.
Last week, Mirecki asked the university to cancel the class after he created a furor by sending an e-mail to a student organization mocking Christian fundamentalists.
Mirecki had referred to religious conservatives as "fundies," and said a course describing intelligent design as mythology would be a "nice slap in their big fat face." He has apologized for those comments.

And since we’re dealing with the shame of Lawrence, Kansas...

The secret word is Quantrill

GEORGE BEST
For those who know, Miss Templeton has a moving blog on George Best's funeral. (You have to scroll down a couple of items.)
http://horslipsmusic.blogspot.com/

THE GREAT ESCAPE
Our pal, MrMR points out to me that Al Qaeda is as busy escaping from Afghan jails as Brit POWs were from Germany Stalags in WW2. Seems that nothing can go right in the Hogan’s Heroes world of the War on Terror. The following is an excerpt from the NY Times...

"WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 - The prisoners were considered some of the most dangerous men among the hundreds of terror suspects locked behind the walls of a secretive and secure American military detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan Their escape, however, might as well have been a breakout from the county jail.
According to military officials familiar with the episode, the suspects are believed to have picked the lock on their cell, changed out of their bright orange uniforms and made their way through a heavily guarded military base under the cover of night. They then crawled over a faulty wall where a getaway vehicle was apparently waiting for them, the officials said. "It is embarrassing and amazing at the same time," an American defense official said. "It was a disaster."
The fact of the escape was disclosed by the American authorities shortly after it set off an intense manhunt at Bagram, 40 miles north of Kabul, on the morning of July 11. But internal military documents and interviews with military and intelligence officials indicate it was a far more serious breach than the Defense Department has acknowledged.
One of the four suspects was identified as Al Qaeda's highest-ranking operative in Southeast Asia when he was captured in 2002, a fact that emerged only during an unrelated military trial last month. Another, a Saudi, was also described by intelligence officials as an important Qaeda operative in Afghanistan.
The detainees planned their breakout meticulously, United States officials said, apparently studying the guards' routines, getting themselves moved into a cell that was less visible to the guards and taking advantage of construction work that was intended to expand and improve security at the prison.
"Based upon the findings of the investigation, it appears that the detainees had a clear understanding of the operating procedures of the guards inside the facility," said the chief spokesman for United States military forces in Afghanistan, Col. James R. Yonts."

UNFORTUNATELY...
MrMR also responds to my Saturday post when I proposed a Doc40 corporate buy-out...
"sorry my friend as you know you have a bad fucken incorrigible attitude that we thankfully get for free , now who wants to taint that equation, and risk the new u ?"
So there go my dreams of shameless luxury. Ah well.

The secret word is Colditz

THIS BLOG FOR SALE
I heard yesterday that Gawker Media, the corporate blog bundle that owns, among others, Disclaimer, Fleshbot and Wonkette was bought by the New York Times for $32 million. My first reaction was thirty two fucking million? Are they out of their New York minds? How the hell does anyone expect to earn back $32 million from blog advertising? My second though was what the fuck? If blogs are the new dotcom, let’s get in on it. Anyone want snap up Doc40? To you, just $1.5 mill, complete with sex machine links, secret words, and fucking cheap at the price. Call me, okay?

The secret word is Avarice

FORGET ROSEMARY
After reading how Katie Holmes was tossed out of a movie theatre because she wouldn’t turn off some buzzing device that was supposed to do something to improve her baby, and then how she and Tom Cruise bought their own sonogram machine so they could keep looking at the damned fetus, a very disturbing idea crossed my mind. Could it be that they are actually breeding Scientology’s own Antichrist, the ultimate foe of the Nazareen, and future Evil Dictator of the Six Planets? Maybe the sperm responsible was really that of L. Ron Hubbard, decanted from cryo-preservation.
So where is Victor Renquist now that we need him?

The secret number is 666

I just saw a Che Guevara emoticom happy face on some teen message board. I think I'll quietly put myself in a home.

MODERN LOVE
As David Bowie once remarked – "God and man - no confessions/God and man - no religion/God and man - don't believe in modern love/Never gonna fall for modern love"
And modern love is really getting a tad complicated, schizophrenic, and weirdly accessorized...

TALE OF TWO PLANETS – VENUS
On one level, science discovers that love really is only random chemistry.
Psychiatrists from Pavia University have associated early romantic love with a biochemical known as nerve growth factor (NGF). Apparently, levels of NGF in the bloodstream were significantly higher in subjects who were in the early stages of romance than individuals not in a relationship. Interestingly, "subjects in love who—after 12–24 months—maintained the same relationship but were no longer in the same mental state to which they had referred during the initial evaluation" did not have elevated NGF levels.

But while Maureen Dowd asks "Are Men Necessary?", cellular biology further eliminates sex from the reproductive process...
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/fertility/0,2930,68970,00.html?tw=wn_story_page_prev2

Meanwhile, over in the BDSM community, the hot item would appear to be tattooing one’s slaves with a barcode registration. (Mark of The Beast? Now I want to be your dog?) What that has to do with NGF is anyone’s guess.
http://www.slaveregister.com/pictures/numbers/

And in the same general kink quadrant/Twilight Zone, one online sex-toy vendor demonstrates in graphic streaming that all partners may be rendered redundant by stark mechanisms never dreamed of in James Brown's philosophy. (WARNING – Do not click on this link if you are under 18, sexually repressed, daunted or judgmental, born again, or feel that all erotic playacting is somehow exploitative.)
http://www.extremerestraints.com/page/ER/CTGY/sex_machine_guide#love_machines

Now light a corporate AIDS candle for sponsored charity
http://www.light2unite.com/

TALE OF TWO PLANETS – MARS
Supposedly the opposite of Venus, Mars, it seems, holds water...
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8397

The secret number is #9

LA CITYBEAT
This week’s column is about Howard Stern going to satellite. (And even since I wrote the piece, I’ve been hearing tell of tech glitches on Sirius.)
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2937&IssueNum=130

AND WE EVEN HAVE AN ALTERNATIVE PANDA CAM
Try clicking this and, if your media player plays ball, you get another view of Butterstick. (But don't blame Doc40 if you can't get it to work, okay?)
" mms://160.111.253.227/pandacam1"

THE PANDA CAME IS BACK!
http://animal.discovery.com/cams/pandavidr.html

THIS TROLL FOR HIRE
Sometimes, as the bills roll in, I reflect bitterly on how fascism is so much better paid than fighting the Good Fight for the Tenth Internationale. Most of the time we think in terms of the big ticket pond scum – celebrity fanatics like Ann Coulter, loathsomely calculated turncoats like Christopher Hitchens, or megalomaniacal opportunists like Bill O’Reilly. But even down on the entry level, the sell-out thrives. I’ve had enough bits and pieces reprinted on those political blogs that are followed with endless witty or abusive comments to wonder how right-wing trolls find the time to be all over the map hollering "Yay, George! Yay Jesus! Yay, war! You’re all fucking traitors!" But all is now revealed by an ad on Craig’s List...

"A Christian based marketing firm is looking for 2 writers to blog and participate in a wide variety of blogs and online forums. Ideal candidates are fast typers, with excellent communication skills, and are fast learners. $11 per hour - 25 hours per week."

So now we know. The falange-trolls are low-rent cyber scabs whoring for a little over minium wage, which would seem to go hand in hand with all the bought-and-paid-for-talk show hosts, the planted shrills in the White House Press Corps, and the latest revelation that the US Army is writing the Iraqis’ newspapers for them, (and that has to be such a fun read).

(The clip was lifted from LA Observed – http://www.laobserved.com/ )

And if that wasn’t enough we also have a religious neocon rock band called Junkyard Prophet touring schools and being paid $1500.00 a gig by...wait for it...a Department of Education anti-drug program to spout some dumbed-down cocktail of Herman Goering, Ayn Rand, and Slayer – as in "The death sentence on you/Due to your sins/The very evidence of your sin/Will be your death!" I note from the story, though, that attendance was mandatory, maybe indicating JP suck transcendentally. Nixon really should have coming up with something like JP – the anti-Doors – returning the youth to patriotism, back when we commie-subversive, rama-lama cowboys were getting our cheques signed directly by Chairman Mao. Who knows? The war in Vietnam might still be going strong today, setting proud records for pointlessly sustained combat.
http://thinkprogress.org/2005/11/30/right-wing-rock/

The secret word is Nincompoop

CRYPTIQUE – Like the Rolling Stones.

AND THE GULFSTREAM SHRUGGED
It really doesn’t look so good around the Greenland Pump.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8398

DAMN IT TO HELL! THE PANDA CAM IS DOWN!

A MISSION FROM GOD
(HE AIN’T DRINKING, HE GOT RELIGION)
According to Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker, the President now believes that, in Iraq at least, he is on a mission from God...
"Bush’s closest advisers have long been aware of the religious nature of his policy commitments. In recent interviews, one former senior official, who served in Bush’s first term, spoke extensively about the connection between the President’s religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former official said, he was told that Bush felt that "God put me here" to deal with the war on terror. The President’s belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message from God that "he’s the man," the former official said. Publicly, Bush depicted his reëlection as a referendum on the war; privately, he spoke of it as another manifestation of divine purpose."
And the manifestation of this manifestation would seem uncomfortably close to the classic bunker, with the leader moving toy armies around on the map while the henchmen distance themselves...
"The President is more determined than ever to stay the course," the former defense official said. "He doesn’t feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage ‘People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.’ " He said that the President had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl Rove and Vice-President Cheney. "They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway."
The only guys I have ever trusted on a mission from God were Jake and Elwood Blues, and only then in the narrow context of staging a rock concert in suburban Chicago to save the orphanage. All else rapidly goes David Koresh.
For the full story...
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/051205fa_fact

The secret word is Nutjob

GOVERNMENT FALLS IN CANADA
But nothing to do, it would seem, with aliens. (See yesterday)

PANDA WALKS (I am not a bear)
Today the panda Tai Shan (or Butterstick, as wonkette and I prefer to call him) was rolled out at the National Zoo in Washington for a photo op. The results will be all over the media, but here’s an adorable link to Butterstick enjoying a rasta-spliff plus a full panda timeline...
http://www.wonkette.com/politics/butterstick/index.php
And the event also gives me the chance to post another link to the panda cam...
http://animal.discovery.com/cams/pandavidr.html

THE LACMA GARAGE
Due to be torn down tomorrow, the parking structure at the LA County Museum has become a transitory assembly of graffiti covering all of the walls. Hipsinster blogs about the explosion of guerrilla art, but we need to see some pictures. If any have been posted, do tell.
http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/

AND GET FRANK RICH FOR FREE (Instead of paying at the NYT)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/112705Y.shtml

CRYPTIQUE – You butter your margarine.

SHALL WE GO FOR A THOUSAND?
The ancient and highly cranky comments board – right over on the right there – has now made it to 800 comments. It has long functioned as absurdist piece of cyberart rather than any practical forum, and yet it so far survives. I know it takes a long time to scroll down to enter an new comment, especially on dial-up, but please persevere in the interests of seeing how far we can push it. (Always one of my favorite things.)

CANADA IS CONCERNED
Regular readers with be aware that I have previously ruminated on how the aliens seem to have gone to ground since George Bush wrangled his lease on the White House, but it seems the Canadians have their fingers on the extraterrestrial pulse. Canadian Defense Minister Paul Hellyer has allerted the Canadian Parliament to the dangers of alien invasion and initiated hearings about the implications of ET encounters and the possiblity that "advanced civilizations that may now be visiting Earth." Hellyer’s concerns were first made public back in September, when he made a speech at the University of Toronto.
"The secrecy involved in all matters pertaining to the Roswell incident was unparalled. The classification was, from the outset, above top secret, so the vast majority of U.S. officials and politicians, let alone a mere allied minister of defence, were never in-the-loop. . . . The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning. . . . The Bush administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide."

KAYMO IS ALSO CONCERNED
And sent over the following...
"Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the infamously stupid and rabidly right wing Congressman from San Diego, who resigned today after admitting to taking at least $2.4 M in bribes is the same oaf who attacked Bill Clinton in Sept 1996 for appointing judges who were alleged to be "soft on crime." Cunningham roared that "We must get tough on drug dealers. Those who peddle destructioin to our children must pay dearly." Four months later his son Todd was busted over a deal to ship 400 pounds of weed to California from Massachusetts*. When it came time for sentencing this particular drug dealer, Representative Cunningham begged the judge for leniency. However, Todd got two and a half years, in part because he tested positive for cocaine three times while on bail."
*Huh? Another Canadian connection?

IT’S A LEGAL MATTER, BABY
The ongoing trial of Saddam Hussein can only prompt me to feel that the WW2 Allies must have breathed a sigh of relief when Adolf Hitler shot himself, and also reflect that, okay, so Saddam was one murdering despotic bastard, but maybe – just maybe – that was what it took to keep Iraq quiet. But read the report (sent over by some girl) and you be the judge. There are, however, a couple of lines that raise a red flag. "The images are being broadcast by U.S. company Court TV with a 30-minute delay to allow officials to censor the footage."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051128/wl_nm/iraq_dc

Meanwhile, Gary Glitter could be the first rock start to be executed by firing squad. (Or any other means, for that matter, unless you count Victor Jara in Chile.)
http://www.news24.com/News24/Backpage/Crime_Court/0,,2-1343-1345_1840497,00.html

The secret word is Convict

AND TALKING OF VICTOR JARA
Las casitas del Barrio Alto
con rejas y antejardin,
una preciosa entrada de autos
esperando un Peugeot.
Hay rosadas, verdecitas,
blanquitas y celestitas,
las casitas del Barrio Alto
todas hechas con resipol.
Y las gentes de las casitas
se sonríen y se visitan.
Van juntitos al supermarket
y todos tienen un televisor.
Hay dentistas, comerciantes,
latifundistas y traficantes,
abogados y rentistas.
Y todos visten policron,
juegan bridge, toman martini-dry.
Y los niZos son rubiecitos
y con otros rubiecitos
van juntitos al colegio high.
Y el hijito de su papi
luego va a la universidad
comenzando su problemática
y la intríngulis social.
Fuman pitillos en Austin mini,
juegan con bombas y con políticos,
asesina generales,
y es un gángster de la sedición.
Y las gentes de las casitas
se sonríen y se visitan.
Van juntitos al supermarket
y todos tienen un televisor.
Hay rosadas, verdecitas,
blanquitas y celestitas,
las casitas del Barrio Alto,
todas hechas con resipol.

LA TIMES
Today I have an oped piece in The Los Angeles Times. In contrast to the morose posting below, it suggests that maybe we’re actually freaking out a little hard, a little too often...
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-farren28nov28,0,5965004.story?track=tothtml

ON THE SUNDAY AFTER THANKSGIVING (EAT THE RICH, YUM)
I keep telling myself I watch too much TV, and especially TV with commercials, and especially TV with commercials during what’s laughingly called the holiday season, because any sense of introspection will be subverted into to an unconscious guilt that I am not out buying stuff, or furiously earning, by any means necessary, the cash to buy said stuff. I am unfortunately very bad at taking my own advice and thus found myself slumped in front of a TV which was all red and white and holly jolly, and cars with bows on the roof, and about the only person I could identify with was the barbarian pillager in the credit card commercial (What’s in your wallet?) who shoots the plastic lawn reindeer with a crossbow and grins. And then, wholly unwanted, an old Lonnie Donegan songs invades my head, complete with imaginary mournful harmonica....
Times are getting hard boys
Money’s getting scarce
If times don’t much better boys
Sure that they’ll get worse
At which point I should have reached for the remote, but I hesitated long enough to catch Sixty Minutes where I learn about all the shit that’s going on over Plan B, the morning-after contraceptive, that only serves as yet another reminder of how a theocratic embryo police state is sliming its way through the land with aid of Wal Mart and all these Bush appointments of fanatics, incompetents, crooks, and imbeciles to key posts federal agencies. And then the next segment takes me on a tour of these hideously ugly, tasteless fucking mansions the rich are having built for them, these 13 thousand square feet, Republican starter-castles, paid for by the sweat of minimum wage, burning energy and leaking heat, that make Graceland look like Frank Lloyd Wright, and I can only pray they all die horrible Stephen King deaths because the developer laid the golf course over the old Indian burial ground.

The secret word is Rise

LINK
I’ve always been a big reader of newspapers from somewhere other than the US. Always, though, a pretty random effort, but now MrMR sends me a site that has foreign press all packaged and one-stop.
http://www.watchingamerica.com/index.shtml

MORE ON LITTLE TONY
Phil Franks sends the following from his extensive archive...
http://www.ibiblio.org/mal/MO/philm/friends/littlet.html

EXTRA! EXTRA!
WILD TURKEYS THREATEN YOSEMITE! (So we needn’t feel so bad about eating the bastards)
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-hunt24nov24,0,7818305.story?track=tothtml

GOBBLE FUCKING GOBBLE
I learned a lot today. As in...

South Caroline is the #1 turkey producing state in the nation. (But, unfortunately, the toxicity in the birds is growing.)

Mark Morford is brilliant. This link was sent over by Munz, and just the fact that such a piece of writing ran in the San Francisco Chronicle, says a whole lot. Dare we hope Bush really is in the bunker? Really? Really? So when will they hand out the revolvers and cyanide caps?
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1124-29.htm

In the middle of the obligatory patriotic Thanksgiving TV footage of poor fucking National Guard grunts eating turkey under orders to look happy, a shot of a company on patrol revealed that their uniforms were less than...(well)... uniform, and that identical Imperial Storm Trooper look has started deteriorating into individual improvisation like flack jackets and cut-off t-shirts. A Vietnam vet of my acquaintance told me to watch out for this, since it means, in a precise and basic way, that the noble cause is history, and that each unit is simply watching out for its own survival. The next stage is scrawling peace signs on the helmets with a Magic Marker.

I’m still watching the pandacam. (Today I actually caught him awake and wrestling with his mommy.)
http://animal.discovery.com/cams/pandavidr.html

It seems that Bob Dylan is currently including a Clash song in his live show.
http://screwlooseum.blogspot.com/2005/11/dylan-calling.html

I’m also wondering why so many of the Yuletide tunes backing TV commercials in this desperate holiday are being sung by Dean Martin.

LINKS
"THE CUTE GUY HELPED ME. I’M GOING TO FUCK HIM TONIGHT!" AND OTHER BON MOTS
Some girl sent over this piece of fun...
http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/

Hipspinster blogs of rats and war
http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/

And Miss Templeton has the entire script of the Camp Chippewa First Halloween Pageant
http://horslipsmusic.blogspot.com/

But bad news also arrived...
LITTLE TONY – RIP

The secret word is Tryptophan

LINK WRAY -- RIP
(Nobody told me)

AND ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF DEALEY PLAZA...
http://www.wonkette.com/politics/conspiracy-theories/index.php

SCENES FROM IDIOT AMERICA
No comments, just read ’em and weep...

"The godfather of the Dominionists is D. James Kennedy, the most influential evangelical you've never heard of. "Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost," Kennedy says. "As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors -- in short, over every aspect and institution of human society."

"The Rev. Richard Land, top lobbyist for the 16-million-member Southern Baptist Convention, enjoys a weekly conference call with top Bush advisers including Karl Rove. "We've got the Holy Spirit's wind at our backs!" Land declares in an arm-waving, red-faced speech. He takes particular aim at the threat posed by John Lennon, denouncing "Imagine" as a "secular anthem" that envisions a future of "clone plantations, child sacrifice, legalized polygamy and hard-core porn."

AND TALKING OF ROVE...
While our attention is on CIA leaks and Iraq, post-Katrina New Orleans turns into a mendacious shell game. Kaymo sent over the following from today’s NYT.

"BATON ROUGE, La., Nov. 18 - Less than three months after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, relief legislation remains dormant in Washington and despair is growing among officials here who fear that Congress and the Bush administration are losing interest in their plight. As evidence, the state and local officials cite an array of stalled bills and policy changes they say are crucial to rebuilding the city and persuading some of its hundreds of thousands of evacuated residents to return, including measures to finance long-term hurricane protection, revive small businesses and compensate the uninsured.
"There is a real concern that we will lose the nation's attention the longer this takes," said Representative Bobby Jindal, a Republican from Metairie, just west of New Orleans. "People are making decisions now about whether to come back. And every day that passes, it will be a little harder to get things done."
So now that New Orleans has been emptied of the Democrat voting base, is there any reason to think that the Rovian GOP has any intention of really rebuilding anything there except a kind of "Partyland" around the French Quarter? The city can be safely downgraded now to a small tourist destination, and a largely automated port facility."

The secret word is Desperate

THE MORE TIME PASSES, THE MORE OF A BILL CLINTON FAN I BECOME
And happy to see that he is finally climbing down off the fence on Iraq.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051116/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_clinton

The above is courtesy of Miss Templeton at...
http://horslipsmusic.blogspot.com/

Meanwhile this site created by "traitiors with tits" warns of the plight of Mississippi’s last and only abortion clinic.
http://www.livejournal.com/community/leftist_cunt/

And on a far more cheerful note, MrMR has sent over a truly brilliant and way cool gallery of microphotographs of popular cocktails.
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/cocktails/index.html

The secret word is Gibson

Now I go back to watching the panda roll over in its sleep.

Damn it, but that panda can sleep!

BEWARE! THE PANDACAM IS ADDICTIVE!

FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS, WHATEVER ELSE YOU DO, YOU GOTTA WATCH THE PANDA CAM!
http://animal.discovery.com/cams/pandavidr.html

The secret word is Butterstick

SINGULARITY
So it’s Thursday in what is proving to be a long and anxious week, with the Santa Annas blowing out from the canyons, where pachuco demons hawk starmaps to Gehenna, with maybe a thirty degree temperature difference between night and day, and the very air feeling somehow eerie and estranged. And I guess it was in an early phase of this state of mind when I took a look at The Singularity for LA CityBeat...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2881&IssueNum=128

I also discovered that The Pasadena Weekly had reprinted the crystal meth story that I wrote a couple of months ago. If you didn’t read it then, here’s another chance. Speed, Nazis, JFK, Mods, the Mexican Mafia, drag queens and much, more. Loads o’ fun.
http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/feature.html

IDIOT AMERICA
Some girl sent over a truly excellent piece from Esquire by Charles P. Pierce on Intelligent Design and Idiot America. Here’s a sample (although its reproduced on a weird deviantArt message board, but don't let the trolls deter you)...
Let's take a tour, shall we? For the sake of time, we'll just cover the last year or so. A federally funded abstinence program suggests that HIV can be transmitted through tears. An Alabama legislator proposes a bill to ban all books by gay authors. The Texas House passes a bill banning suggestive cheerleading. And nobody laughs at any of it, or even points out that, in the latter case, having Texas ban suggestive cheerleading is like having Nebraska ban corn. James Dobson, a prominent conservative Christian spokesman, compares the Supreme Court to the Ku Klux Klan. Pat Robertson, another prominent conservative preacher, says that federal judges are a more serious threat to the country than is Al Qaeda and, apparently taking his text from the Book of Gambino, later sermonizes that the United States should get with it and snuff the democratically elected president of Venezuela.
http://forum.deviantart.com/community/politics/525981/

The secret word is Phosphorus

BILL O’REILLY
has started an enemies list and I sooooo want to be on it!
http://thinkprogress.org/2005/11/14/oreilly-mccarthyism/

WHILE SONY MURDERS YOUR COMPUTER...
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/computing/20051115-1407-sony-copyprotection.html
(Class action suit?)

ANYONE FANCY A HEINEKEN COMMERCIAL?
http://www.ps260.com/editors/hein_dominatrix.html

GET ME OFF THIS FUCKING PLANET!
Before the six disc DVD collection of the best of Oprah gets me! (That's true torture.)

MY BRANE STILL HURTS
No time today to continue yesterday’s mental stumblings, but, fear not, I will return to them. Maybe another part of the explanation for my confusion is that I have been lately working on a summation of The Singularity, both the hot new sub-genre of science fiction and the event apex in about thirty years when the human race will be overtaken by machines. But, for that, you’ll have to wait until Thursday when LA CityBeat will be published and, of course, a link posted here.

THE NOVELIST’S SKETCHBOOK
When I was in art school they encouraged us to keep a sketch book. I didn’t do much drawing in mine, tending rather to make small written notes and past in newspaper clips, which wasn’t exactly what was required, but you could get away with just about anything in a British art school in the early 1960s. The habit kinda continued and even today and I save found objects like the clip below on the computer. The image is remarkably vivid.
SHIZUOKA — A teenage girl arrested for allegedly attempting to poison her mother had been carrying with her tiny bottles containing poison as her amulets, investigative sources said Sunday. According to investigations, the 16-year-old high school student, whose name is being withheld because she is a minor, bought a total of 50 grams of thallium — banned for sale to those under 18 — at a drugstore near her home in the city of Izunokuni in August and September. She has since carried with her tiny bottles containing thallium in the forms of powder and water solution as amulets, the sources said, adding the bottles measure about 2 centimeters in diameter and 15 cm in length.

IT’S AMAZING WHAT YOU FIND
I come across a lot of stuff on my webwalks, but an18 minute radio interview from four or five years ago was about as unexpected as parts of it are tedious. (Although others are quite amusing.)
http://musicsojourn.com/AR/Prog/page/f/FarrenMick.htm

The secret word is Marconi

I just realized it’s the 13th. Maybe that explains some of what’s below. Triskaidekaphobia may have unconsciously set in. On the other hand, I may just be right.

MY BRAIN HURTS
(When in crisis look to the old Python)
MY BRANE HURTS
(When in crisis look to string)

Unless you have the fortune to become a tediously predictable mega-star -- like Bono or the equivalent -- the artist-outlaw is essentially a scavenger, a semi-domesticated coyote, an opportunist wolf, a carrion bird, skulking on perimeters and peripheries of the massive and infinitely sluggish mainstream, living off the roadkill-debris and subverted medications of the culture, although, at certain other times, when pride dictates what might be another man’s folly, using his or her mobility to lope short ways up the untrod trail, all up ahead, and return with word – handed down whether they want it or not – that beyond the mountains we can expect the dawn. Or not.

The metaphor is of a vast nomadic Mongol encampment – patched yurts, walled-eyes ponies and no plumbing, but a TV in every pot – over-bloated so far beyond its functional capacity that it founders into the Phase of Lemming Transfixion , a Golden Horde now peeling gilt and verdigris, with no more world to conquer, pointlessly hoarding garbage for chicken comfort, and hardly covering a honest mile in a sweating day. Aimless fellaheen, sullen and lumpen trudge behind leaders from an exhausted gene pool, too numb for coupe or insurrection, too numb to cope, save to spread disease and rumors of disease, to feed on fear and craven recoil as, in the flash undirected feral fury, fights break out around the swampland gin mills and the temples of insanity – neglecting, of course, to educate the children in anything but the art of Molotov cocktail. (Is Paris burning?)

But more importantly, whole areas of prime cultural real estate wink out and reappear elsewhere in different form and shimmering guise by processes of complex phantomization. The Royal Library of Alexandra mutates to an electron stream, but who can haunt its stacks without, by necessity, becoming a phantom?

(This train was kinda set in motion by the following story in today’s New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/business/yourmoney/13frenzy.html?th&emc=th
Just the very idea that (say) the intro to the Kinks "You Really Got Me Should" be the ringtone on some asshole’s cell phone -- braying out in the movieshow or on line at bank, instead of calling us to arms or at least sexy drunken mayhem -- began building a head of steam on a Sunday when I would have been very happy to hide under the blankets humming "Make The World Go Away.")

More (probably much more) to...

The secret word is Come

CRYPTIQUE – Like TIE fighters* round the Millennium Falcon.

* http://www.starwars.com/databank/starship/tiefighter/