JOHNNY SEVEN STRIKES AGAIN

You might wonder why I’m devoting so much time to a forty year-old plastic toy when the world is beset by war, famine, pestilence, death*, the White House and the fact that Tom Cruise may be the Scientology Messiah. I might respond with a curt “how the fuck should I know” (I freely admit I’m in the foulest of foul moods – what Churchill called “the black dog”) except it would seem that, after I mentioned the damned thing last week, (see Jan 17th) a whole debate broke out on Live Journal. (The above was lifted from ortho bob, and it costs $102.50 on eBay, and that’s only for the box.)

* possibly mine

Or maybe it’s just that the above was The Child Our Parents Wanted Us To Be.

Meanwhile being deprived of rock & roll adulation still festers. The following was posted on the blog of Urbanmutation, who has exactly the opinion we should value…

“Last night should have been the reunion gig of the Kings of Oblivion line-up of the Pink fairies at the Roundhouse in London. Unfortunately, Larry Wallis buggered his back up (that’s the official reason at least) and so the gig had to be shelved. It was an especially bad blow as Mick Farren had been booked to come over and do a few numbers. So if the gig had gone ahead it may have been of mythic stature, the kind of gig that people talk about for years to come.”

And just to prove that I am really freefalling, I have written a lively defense of Fox and 24 in this week’s LA CityBeat.

The secret French word is Merde

CRYPTIQUE – Rage or depression? It’s a buck dancer’s choice, my friend.

REMEMBER WHEN...

In my travels I happened across this picture from long, long, long, long, long ago when Keith Richards meant something more than Johnny Depp’s dad and $450 for a concert ticket. Those were the days, my friends, when a generation of junkies had a reliable role model, and could circulate titillating rumors of mysterious Swiss clinics, and one was dicked around at airports by the war on narco-terrorism rather than on Islamo-fascism. Meanwhile, just yesterday…

STATE OF THE SIMIAN

The President of the United States managed to read an hour-long speech without stumbling over the words, and the punditing heads on my TV treated it as though he cured AIDS and explained String Theory while walking on water. And if I didn’t think the buzz saw of justice might be moving closer to the bald head of Dick Cheney, I’d probably skip this century and move on to the next where people might be waiting for me.

The secret word is Ambien

CRYPTIQUE – I don’t feel so well.

STATE OF THE UNION

IT COULDA BEEN ME!

I suppose it was kinda inevitable that I spent a goodly part of the day just passed wondering why the hell I wasn’t on stage as advertised at the Roundhouse in London, and reflecting (with a measure of suitably narcissistic self-pity) the close to absurdist sequence of events that had conspired to transform this unique opportunity to close what would have been a nearly lifelong circle into an embarrassingly pear-shaped debacle, and pondering what possible ways might be found to restore collective credibility and attempt some kind of substitute rematch, because, having had a whiff of the possible fun and frolic, I would sure like to pull off some modestly spectacular performance in the old country before this year is out. (pic by yukiko akagawa)

The secret word is Determination

Meanwhile the excellent Valerie sends a report from the BBC about how the poppies are blooming in Afghanistan, but the collective prejudice of multiple governments continue to prevent anything useful being done with the potential opium crop.

A MOMENT OF PERSPECTIVE

Supplied by some girl (I hope this isn't too small for some computers.)

FOUND GRAPHIC

God was unavailable for comment. His burning bush was down.

The secret word cannot be uttered.

AN ARMY OF ONE

This less than sharp picture is of what was called The Johnny Seven One-Man Army, and I discovered it in accidental passing being offered on sale for some absurd amount of money on eBay. And why, you might ask, is Farren posting a picture of The Johnny Seven One-Man Army that he discovered in passing being offered on sale for some absurd amount of money on eBay? The answer, my friend, is that The Johnny Seven One-Man Army was about the apex in toy guns -- almost guaranteed to prevent a young lad turning homosexual in later life -- and, when I was around eight or nine years old, I wanted one in the worst possible way. It was big. On the scale of an 8 year-old, it was as big as Rambo’s M60, and an obvious prepubescent penis substitute. The Johnny Seven One-Man Army was a combined grenade and missile launcher and bipod machine gun, with a detachable cap pistol, and, if I recall rightly, a rubber bayonet. I believe pacifist mothers cited it during the War on War Toys that was waged in the 1960s. Needless to say the purchase price was way beyond my lousy pocket money, and my mother definitely didn’t think I needed a combined grenade launcher, machine gun, pistol, and bayonet. Thus I settled for a Dan Dare sparking ray gun, but it was no substitute.

I really only mention this as another possible reason so many of my g-g-generation verged on the insane.

The secret word is Padderblap*
*an explanation will be offered if requested.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING BYRON

I woke and almost immediately threw up. I had been at a party the previous night and, still pissed off, I guess, at the termination of the show at the Roundhouse, had relapsed into the arms of my common and reliable downfall from Lynchburg, Tenn, although, even impaired by Jack Daniels, I did discover a cocktail napkin with a phone number in my pocket. But before that could cheer me up, I learned from the TV that Fidel Castro is maybe on his last legs, and then received a number of emails from London informing me that Germaine Greer (huh?) is slagging me off in The Guardian, in the context of some Brit comedian called Russell Brand (double huh?) who, as far as I understand, attempts to cut some 21st quasi-Byronic figure. The main gist of the attack follows...

Mick and I were as close as you can get at one time; I think he now thinks he invented me. In one of his works of non-fiction, Give the Anarchist a Cigarette, he tells the world I married George Lazenby, which will give you an idea of what he means by non-fiction. Mick glued together a personality for himself out of a cluster of ready-made images - Elvis, the Fugs, Lou Reed, the Hell's Angels, Frank Zappa - all stewed in mockney. He was punk before punk, which was not surprising because he predicted punk. Like Brand, Farren had a tendency to get stopped by the police. He was mouthy, talked tough and was anything but. Brand's like that - not so much a Hell's Angel as a Hell's Cherub, with his short upper lip and habit of speaking through clenched teeth like a featherweight Tommy Cooper, dropping references to Schopenhauer and ball-bags in a breath, simply to amaze and appall.

If you want the rest of the story, use The Guardian link above. Me? I’m just sitting here nursing a hangover of full Johnny Cash proportions, and wondering how it might be possible for Ms Greer to still hold a grudge after almost forty years. It's one weird fucking world.

I also understand there's something about me in the magazine Uncut, under the rubric "I thought you were dead." If anyone could send me a clipping, I will be, if not eternally grateful, at least for a week or so.

The secret word is Pain

Alice Coltrane -- RIP

HERE THEY COME TO SAVE THE DAY!

We at Doc40 cannot reveal how the following email was intercepted but…

Dear Georgie,

Will you just stop fretting about not having enough troops to invade and subjugate the entire Middle East, plus North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba? I know your feelings about reinstating the draft and having, as you so succinctly put it the last time you visited my bunker, “a few hundred thousand longhaired doped-up peacefreaks” yelling at you every time you step outside of the White House. You should have more faith, George. Did I ever let you down?
Although it has up to now been a top secret project, kept even from you (for the obvious reasons) I can finally reveal the first production models of the Lockheed Halliburton Robotrooper Mk 1 (pictured above) are now ready from active deployment and will finally remove the annoying inconvenience of the human factor from the modern battlefield. Obviously an initial order of five million units at a cost $2.75 million per unit is going to take what can only be described as major bite out of the national budget, but what other use is there for the American people except to pony up their taxes and keep their mouths shut? Also, with these babies on the march, we aren’t going to hear any more crap out of the Chinese about how much we owe them.
So, for fuck sake, cheer up, stop eyeing the Jack Daniels, and, above all stop complaining to La Rice at all hours of the day and night. In future, what happens in her dungeon stays in her dungeon. Did you think world conquest was going to be easy?

Your Uncle Cheney

HERE HE COMES TO SAVE THE DAY! PART 2

Dear Doc40,

Although I posted a comment yesterday complaining about the use of my immortal catchphrase, "Here I come to save the day!" in the content of a giant rabbit, I have received neither the apology nor acknowledgement I feel I feel I am more than due. And do not believe this is merely a matter of Hollywood ego. The President of the United States is clearly insane, beyond all constitutional control, and intends to start as many as three more gratuitous new wars at the same time to ensure his dubious place in history. At the same time, the planet itself would appear to be gearing up to rid itself of the irritant of humanity. At such a perilous juncture I feel it is crucial that America and the rest of the world to be absolutely certain and harbor no lingering doubts as to which superhero rodent is going to come to save the day. (And let’s not rehash that business with Andy Kaufman and the gramophone. I mean, that was soooo 20th century.)

The sole and original,

Mighty Mouse

The secret word is Lettuce

ROBERT ANTON WILSON -- RIP
YVONNE DE CARLO -- RIP

HERE HE COMES TO SAVE THE DAY!

So I sat bemused, exchanging glances with the cat, and alternately wondering if our Simian President was on Thorazine, or was about to blow up the entire middle east, or both, because the only interpretation I could put on what was going down – what with the Navy carrier group steaming into the Persian Gulf and those AC130s blowing the shit out of Somalia yesterday – was that Chimp Boy and his Uncle Cheney think they can keep their nasty little neocon war going for another two years, plus maybe some sub-nuclear strikes on Iran and Syria, plus more ugliness on the Horn of Africa, and then leave office sniggering because they’ve left Obama to sort it out. I was so bummed that I was even thinking of lighting a cigarette and the HCB brought the news. WE HAVE THE GIANT RABBIT!





















Also I have a highly perceptive piece about watching in the new LA CityBeat
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=4863&IssueNum=188

THIS CRUSADER FOR HIRE

As Bush pushes his disastrous doctrine of surge and sacrifice, aeswiren sent over this chilling piece from Alternet that reveals just how many private security mercs and hired guns are on the loose in Iraq and, spookier still, their close ties with the religious right and how they might me used domestically if the circumstances could be created. Here’s a sample…

“If the United States falls into a period of instability caused by another catastrophic terrorist attack, an economic meltdown or a series of environmental disasters, these paramilitary forces, protected and assisted by fellow ideologues in the police and military, could swiftly abolish what is left of our eroding democracy. War, with the huge profits it hands to businesses and right-wing interests that often help bankroll the Christian right, could become a permanent condition. And the thugs with automatic weapons, black uniforms and wraparound sunglasses who appeared on street corners in Baghdad and New Orleans could appear on streets across the U.S. Such a presence could paralyze us with fear, leaving us unable to question or protest the closed system and secrecy of an emergent totalitarian state and unable to voice dissent.”

And hit Alternet for the rest of the story...

The secret word is Wackenhut

CRYPTIQUE -- Thank god for Ted Kennedy

NEVER ASSUME IT'S A DONE DEAL

In the wee hours of the morning the following hit my email… The Pink Fairies are sad to announce that due to circumstances so beyond our control it`s not true, we won`t be able to make the Roundhouse gig on Jan 22nd. Larry has a trapped sciatic nerve, which to the non-medically mined, is the longest nerve in the body, travelling from the lower back, down the length of the leg. This is an incredibly painful and debillitating condition, making all movement impossible, without a lot of screaming and shouting. We`ve tried everything, from the strongest drugs possible, to Osteopathy, Accupuncture, and Chinese Massage, and short of sacrificing a goat and dancing in the woods, we have run out of options. So, we do hope, that with the indulgence of our friends out there, and the Roundhouse folks, we will be able to re-schedule, and attempt to put on the kind of show that our loyal and much-loved fans deserve, as soon as health returns to the Pinks camp. Once again, we are really sorry kiddies, but whatcha gonna do?

Which is a damned good question since I’m sitting here, too late to improvise, with a plane ticket and a desire to make history and the strong feeling that this is a chance that will not easily come again. Maybe we should have sacrificed the goat.

The secret word is Disappointed

ELVIS' BIRTHDAY

Today is Elvis Presley's birthday. He would have been 72. The above illustration is the famous Elvis Prayer Mat by Joni Mabe.

And what better news to get on such a day is the word sent by some girl (bless her) that there may be life on Mars after all.

The secret word is Dead

WE ARE DOING IT AGAIN, WE KID YOU NOT

Above you see the lads doing the serious business onstage at Dingwalls Dancehall, sometime in the mid to late 1980s (during our “Wiseguy Period), and now it would appear that we are doing it all over again.

The press release for the Pink Fairies Kings Of Oblivion Reunion show on Monday January 22nd at London’s legendary Roundhouse reads…

“The original kings of oblivion featuring Larry Wallis on guitar, Russell Hunter on drums and Duncan Sanderson on bass, represent a crucial missing link in British rock & roll, bridging the gap between 1960s psychedelia and the dawn of punk. Storming out of Ladbroke Grove when it still meant something – the Pink Fairies have been cited by everyone from Joe Strummer to Billy Connolly (believe it) as proof positive that – with the right gin palace swagger and defiant determination – all things are possible.

And now they are back at the Roundhouse where their rumpus first started in the early 70s, when the band shared stages and a commitment to mayhem with the likes of the MC5, The New York Dolls, Hawkwind and Motorhead. The Pink Fairies amassed a fan following so outrageously extreme that it extended from the Hells Angels to jet-trash drag queens. They will again raise the tattered Flying Pig banner, and ply their old, loud, and totally unique rock & roll trade, one more time, and one time only. The old guard makes its final stand. Miss the cacophony at your peril.”

Not mentioned above, but now I believe it’s safe to reveal that, for a number of somgs, I will be a honored guest at the cacophony. I have a plane ticket and thus there’s even more reason to show up. Further information will be posted as comes through, but these are the Kings of Oblivion and it tends to arrive in fits and starts.

The secret words are Willie Nelson

I CAN HARDLY BELIEVE IT!

Thanks to the most amazing piece of detective work by some girl (all hail and praise her name) the old Doc 40 comments board, and most of its more than a thousand posts has been recovered, and Billy Oblivion and others can dry their tears. I have now posted the monster as a separate website. It appears even to work just like it used to (ie slowly, crankily and when it feels like it.) Plus it seems to open itself upside down when so inclined. So, once again, a huge round of applause for some girl, who used something called The Way Back Machine, which I don’t fully understand, but will investigate, and have also linked.

They don’t have fun like this at Huffington Post!

HEEEELP!!

For most of the day, I have idly watched the Democrats install themselves in House. I am not a huge Nancy Pelosi fan, but to have politicians who actually resemble humans makes such a vast and comforting difference, particularly on a day when, during a regime change in the legislative branch of government, goddamn Bush grants himself executive power to open our mail without a warrant. The shape of things to come was also indicated the procession of Republican talking heads on cable news who wanted know how come the Dems hadn’t stopped the war, halted global warming, balanced the budget, and found the cure for cancer after they’d been in power for a whole entire day.

But I’m still hoping, if not for the best, at least that politics will become interesting. I suspect John Murtha will be worth his considerable weight in amusement as this ex-Marine with a bad attitude and too old to care goes after the nuts and bolts of Little George’s war machine.

I fear though, the shit may have piled up so high in the secret places of the Bush administration that they will prove a regular Augean Stable. And it’s all going to take so damned long, I whine. Hence the polar bears. Like the time ain’t tall if on time you depend. (Second Bob quote in two days.) This planet is not only running out of road, but it’s running out of ice, and you know what that can do to a party.

In other news, Keith Olbermann was all over the O’Hare UFO (see yesterday) and why the hell the FAA kept it secret for almost a month. And Doug the Bass brought news of a quite astonishing new self-help book.

The secret word is Promise

A MEASURE OF SUCCESS

Well, this new template does seem to be working, and yes, it is a great deal more conventional than the previous one, and I miss the huge implausible comments board with its 1027 posts that is now lost for eternity, but like old Bob once reminded us “everything ages and everything changes” (or was it the other way round?) and we work within the bloody corporate limitations to do what we think we should do. All I can suggest is that we get used to it and have as much fun as we can. The conflict is by no means over.

And did anyone happen to see the story about the bloody great UFO that hovered over Chicago’s O’Hare Airport on November 7th, but nobody told us about until a couple of days ago? (Sent by some girl)

The secret word is Excelsior

Meanwhile I have a cover story in the new LA CityBeat on Bush’s Twilight Zone as it moves from 2006 to 2007.

I don't know if this is going to work or turn into a total monster. You may have to bear with me as I try to work things out. Once again, I seem to have fallen into a "improvement" that may be anything but.

MORE PROBLEMS WITH THE NEW BLOGGER SET UP AND WE NOW HAVE TO RECONSIDER AN ENTIRE CHANGE OF FORMAT WHICH IS SOMETHING I DON'T RELISH.

AFTER THE HANGING, A QUARTET OF QUESTIONS

1) While being aware that Saddam Hussein was a mass-murdering shithead, I must confess that a part of me found the cable TV deathwatch, the jubilation and all the other trappings both distasteful and embarrassing. We are supposed to be civilized and therefore operate on a higher level than mass murdering shitheads, no?

2) Of course, SH would have made it a lot easier had he shot himself like Hitler or even gone down in a hail of bullets like his sons, but no. He tried to survive and failed. But isn't there some old time honor system whereby his rank alone should have afforded him at least a firing squad complete, with cigarette and blindfold?

3) But now it seems that hanging has established as the current penalty are we to assume it applies to our own mass-murdering shitheads in the USA?

4)And one final query? How soon will the execution be up on YouTube?

The secret word is Hemp

CRYPTIQUE -- I'm helping clockwork Santas drown themselves.

FROM THE POST-XMAS MAIL
Aeswiren reports on…

CTHULHU’S PARENTAGE
“According to correspondence between Lovecraft and fellow author Clark Ashton Smith, Cthulhu's parent is the androgynous deity Nagoob. Nagoob mated with the Outer God Yog-Sothoth to bear Cthulhu on the planet Vhoorl. Now, considering the descriptions of Yog-Sothoth I've seen, heavy on the quivering, the gelatinous etc., one does rather wonder why anything remotely androgynous would consider touching him with the proverbial barge pole, let alone actually mating."

And in the same (jugular) vein this little gem came from 00soul.

WHILE Elizabeth marvels…
“James Brown is in a gold coffin. The white hearse has glass sides!”

AND MrMR sends a link to a incredibly comprehensive compendium of recent Daily Kos piece on developments in the War On Drugs with (for me) a previous unseen piece on recreational psychoptropics by the late great Carl Sagan.

The secret word is Future

FINALLY, as always, in the time honored, Doc40, seasonal tradition, we have PENGUIN WHACKING

MEANWHILE I have a media column in the new LA CityBeat on the moral effects of Xmas advertising, and also Steve Appleford has a cover story on Hunter S. Thompson.

POET FINDS LOST WORK
When Lizzie Siddal, the wife of Dante Gabriel Rossetti died of am overdose of laudanum, the distraught Rossetti had his unpublished poems buried with her in her grave in London’s Highgate Cemetery. Eight years later, when he felt creatively tapped out, he had the coffin exhumed, retrieved the verses and published them.
I must confess that I haven’t been writing too much poetry myself lately, (maybe for kindred reasons to DGR) but, maybe because of how they have this bullshit planet set up, there’s plenty else to write about so I wasn’t bothered. Then, over Xmas, aside from attempting all the bonhomie my system would stand, I was also moving files from an old computer to a new one, I happened across a file of a piece that must have been written around 1986-7, in the Tijuana Bible days, that I had totally for gotten about. It is titled…

THE LADIES OF THE VAMPIRE CLUB
It is possible that I have spent too much of my life in the company of The Ladies Of The Vampire Club but, like Otis Redding once remarked, it's too late to stop now

My mind drifts back to night-complex self destruction, the synaptic crapshoot at suicide's edge that we knew as fun, the blatancy of things past, and, above all The Ladies Of The Vampire Club. Now what was the name of that place? The afterhours bunker, fashionable slum haunt out on Avenue C? Where you had to look as though you had just come from an appointment with your personal embalmer to circumvent the Sumo wrestler guardian of the velvet rope, and mingle with the girls who never saw the sun.

The Ladies Of The Vampire Club

And those lairs wherein they lurked, Ninth Street railroad walkups transformed to Spider Queen salons in which they courted and held court, and drank the blood of servants among their relics, the human skulls, the Chinese cymbals, the Arabian mandolins, and the severed index fingers of paramours who had lost their roll of the dice to the soft hiss and cold breath across pearl white fangs of

The Ladies Of The Vampire Club

And those moments of rage that not even ice blue valium could mitigate when, as all too often they believed they had not been used appropriately or accorded the measure of emotional control they viewed as their right. Those moments of rage like the howl of driving rain and the deafening crash of night-thunder around the granite turrets of the castle, scattering the walking wounded of Valhalla with their epic Wagnerian Nazi-scream "Where is the gasoline for my tanks?"And finally the satisfaction, the curled kitten retraction of fangs and claws when rage was spent and guilt instilled, and the otherwise required effects had been achieved. They took no prisoners The Ladies Of The Vampire Club, for they were possessed of a supernatural instinct, for gauging the exact moment when pleasure prolonged could transcend to torture in the beating of their soft leather wings.

It is possible that I have spent too much of my life in the company of The Ladies Of The Vampire Club, but, like Otis Redding once remarked, it's too late to stop now.

JAMES BROWN --RIP

SO? YOU GOT A PAIR OF 3D GLASSES HANDY?

I should be writing about Bubble Boy's fucking demented brainstorm of a military "surge" in Iraq, and how carrier groups are sailing into the Persian Gulf, and how I wouldn't put it past the asshole white devils in power to attempt to slip a new war past us over the holidays while we're drunk, but in the darkness of the year's longest night the whole prospect of both war and Christmas are depressing the hell out of me, and I feel a lot happier posting meaningless images. I mean, this is the first holiday since...well...just since...

The secret word is Numb

(But are the images really that meaningless? (sinister laugh) The Shadow knows!)

From Dimitrios...

A actual pic of Keith Richards as Jack Sparrow's dad. Remember you saw it here second!

(Also check Dinitrios' zine-site Gang Bang.)

DANCING?

In the new LA CityBeat, I have a whimsical piece on dancing. That's right. Dancing.

The secret word is Tuxedo

My mind is also really from the concept that Bubble Boy George is now demanding a bigger army. (And more tax cuts for the rich.) But more of that later.

OOOOOPS! (As in serious)
Doug the Bass sent over this little tale of horror…
The Nation Mon Dec 18,
In March 2005, a nuclear warhead almost exploded in Texas. The near miss accident occurred in Amarillo, when workers at the Pantex nuclear weapons plant bungled the dismantling of a W-56 warhead, a weapon 100 times stronger than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II.
Details of the averted catastrophe have been kept under wraps until last month, when the Department of Energy (DOE) fined the company that operates the plant, BWX Technologies, $110,000 for safety violations.
In a letter obtained by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), technicians at the plant blamed the accident on severe working conditions, including mandatory 72 to 84 hour work weeks. One nuclear scientist told POGO that he "would not work on his car engine if he were fatigued from a 72-hour work week, and sure as hell would not work on a nuclear weapon."
Besides hellish hours, workers described the "degrading" physical state of the plant in the letter to the BWX board. "Look around the plant. You will find leaking roofs, crumbling buildings, waist-high weed-infested landscapes, barricades and safety tape that makes this once-proud plant look like a crime scene."
In 2007, production goals at the plant will increase by 50 percent, which POGO calls a "recipe for disaster." Clearly it's time for the DOE to step in and show that the government is serious about nuclear security, both abroad and at home.

The secret word is Chernobyl

TO THE DYING OF THE LIGHT
With just four days to go to the solstice, the sunset comes before one is ready. (Or even out of bed.) Of course, I am in LA, not Helsinki or Oslo, but the gloom can still be felt and the primeval question nags. Will the light ever return? Our ancestors made every effort to ensure it did, all the way, it’s recorded, to human sacrifice, but, at the same time, they held the Saturnalia of the solstice in order to eat, drink, merrily fist fight, and fornicate like there was no tomorrow. Today, of course, we have Galileo, Copernicus and Newton to assure us that the sun will continue to rise in the morning east, plus our Chanukah candles and Christmas ribbons, maybe some aid from Odin to stave off the twilight, and the Maya at least guarantee us until 2012. This year, though, I have a certain nagging pagan doubt. This has been a year when death has dogged me too hard. Will the sun really return? Or will this be Ragnarok, and should I embrace simply the darkness?

But here’s a bit of background…
Ragnarok ("Doom of the Gods"), also called Gotterdammerung, means the end of the cosmos in Norse mythology. It will be preceded by Fimbulvetr, the winter of winters. Three such winters will follow each other with no summers in between. Conflicts and feuds will break out, even between families, and all morality will disappear. This is the beginning of the end. The wolf Skoll will finally devour the sun, and his brother Hati will eat the moon, plunging the earth into darkness. The stars will vanish from the sky. The earth will shudder with earthquakes, and every bond and fetter will burst, freeing the terrible wolf Fenrir.

The secret words are Cheerful Bastard

GLOATING

In the this week's media column, I do a lot of of gloating over the new order in Washington. This was written, however, before the unfortunate Senator Johnson had his stroke. (You might, however, notice, when you click to it, that the banner of the LACB webpage is a recruiting ad for the Los Angeles Police Department. Times have certainly changed in the alt press and let no man tell you different.

The secret nostaligia is Oink

ALSO our pal Chris Rowley is now posting his excellent science fiction online.

AHMET ERTEGUN -- RIP

CLIVE THOMPSON & I ARE WORRIED ABOUT OCTOPI
Check out what the man has to say and watch the truly amazing piece of video. If we ever piss them off we're toast.

The secret word is Tentacle

(Finally beta is making me post hot links like a grown up)

“CATASTROPHUCK” (or maybe “catastrofuck”)
The night before last, as far as I could tell beneath the beeps, Jon Stewart invented this fine new word. (And talking of beeps when the fuck do Dems take back the FCC swo sanity can be restored to broadcasting and Howard Stern would be back where he belongs on 97.1FM, because Sirius ain’t happening?)

While I still wipe the metaphoric kosmolene from the new computer, and accustom myself to Blogger Beta, MrMR -- while still celebrating the demise of the loathsome Pinochet -- sent us a copy of…

SALVADOR ALLENDE’S LAST SPEECH
Santiago de Chile, 11 September 1973, 9:10 A.M.
This will surely be my last opportunity to address you. The Air Force has bombed the antennas of Radio Magallanes. My words have neither bitterness but disappointment. They should stand as a moral castigation of those who have been traitors to their oaths: Chilean soldiers, titular commanders-in-chief, Admiral Merino, who has designated himself commander of the Navy, even more señor Mendoza, the cringing general who only yesterday manifested his fidelity and loyalty to the Government, and who also has named himself Director General of the Carabineros. In the face of these deeds it only falls to me to say to the workers: I shall not resign!
Standing at a historic point, I will repay with my life the loyalty of the people. And I say to you that I am certain that the seed we have surrendered into the worthy conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans, will not be able to be reaped at one stroke. They have the power, they can make us their vassals, but not stop the social processes, neither by crime nor by force. History is ours and is made by the people.
Workers of my Nation: I want to thank you for the loyalty you have always had, the confidence you placed in a man who only was the interperter of great yearnings for justice, who pledged his word to respect the Constitution and the law, and who did so. In this final moment, the last in which I will be able to address myself to you, I want you to take advantage of the lesson: foreign capital, imperialism, united with reaction, created the climate for the Armed Forces to break their tradition, that which they were taught by general Schneider which was reaffirmed by commander Araya, victims of the same social sector that today will be be expecting with an alien hand to reconquer the power to continue defending their profits and their privileges.
I address myself to you, above all to the modest woman of our land, to the campesina who believed in us, the mother who knew of our concern for the children. I address myself to the professionals of the Nation, to the patriotic professionals who continued working against the sedition overseen by their professional academies, classist academies that also defended the advantages of a capitalist society.
I address myself to the youth, to those who sang and who brought their happiness and their spirit to the fight. I address myself to the man of Chile, to the worker, to the campesino, to the intellectual, to those who will be percecuted, because in our country fascism has now been present for several hours; in the terrorist assassinations, blowing up the bridges, cutting the railways, destroying the oil and gas pipelines, in the face of the silence of those who had the obligation to behave.
They are in jeopardy. History will judge them.
Radio Magallanes will surely be silenced and the tranquil metal of my voice will no longer reach you. It is not important. You will continue to hear it. I will always be together with you. At least my memory will be that of an upright man who was loyal to the Nation.
The people ought to defend themselves, but not sacrifice themselves. The people ought not let themselves be subdued or persecuted, but neither should they humble themselves.
Workers of my Nation, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will go beyond this gray and bitter moment when treason tries to impose itself upon us. Continue to know that, much sooner than later, we will reopen the great promenades down which free men pass, to construct a better society.
Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!
These are my last words and I have certainty that my sacrifice will not be in vain, I have certainty that, at the least, I will be a moral lesson to castigate felony, cowardice, and treason.

The secret word is Kissinger

"He s-o-o-o bores us with his technological complaints."

The following came in from our pal Tim. Progress really does seem to be becoming a royal pain in the ass, but we persevere.

Hey Mick,
I recently switched over to the beta as well. It takes a day or two to get used but you’ll get it. The big pain was reformatting my page to what I wanted, but once that was done it was easy.
I hope it’s working a bit better by the time you read this…

BUT AUGUSTO PINOCHET (THE MURDERING FUCKHEAD) IS DEAD, BUT -- DING FUCKING DONG -- AT 91!

THE DOC HAS PROBLEMS

Okay, so I'm breaking in new computer and I don't have the old cookies, and, at the same time, blogger beta has been introduced. It wants me to sign in 29 times before I can post and the template has gone weird with all the achives, the antique message board etc. all having sunk to the bottom of the scroll-down. So I'm floundering here (although these things have habit of righting thmselves.) I'd wellcome any feedback that's going. The email is byron4d@msn.com

SERIOUS MALFUNCTION, PLUS BLOGGER BETA IS MAKING EVERYTHING TURN WEIRD.

IS THERE SUCH A THING AS VISUAL PUN?

While I was brewing the Xmas absinthe, our old homie HCB, sent over the pics here posted.

As he tells us -- under the general rubric, Biblical Epics We'd Like To See -- they are, of course....

"SODOM AND GAMERA"




(If the joke isn't immediately apparent, blow some dope and think about it.)

BUT WHILE WE ARE POSTING IN HASTE...
Two of our longest-time pals have new stuff to say...
http://www.valleyboy.net/
http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/

The secret word is Wormwood

"Stay the course?"

DOESN’T ANYONE HAVE A FUCKING CLUE ANY MORE?
I was watching CNN earlier and really starting to wonder how long its going to take for there to be Vegas odds on an actual military defeat of the US in Iraq. Like a hideous retreat from Baghdad to Basra that resembles something very unpleasant out of the crusades except with air support. Then some Army spokesguy comes on telling us how things aren’t half as bad as they clearly are, but what really stops me in my tracks is the spokesguy’s name. It’s Custer – I swear – Colonel John Custer (although I might be wrong about the rank.) Maybe I could be a little over-tuned to these things, but it seems – even though he’s not actually called George Armstong – anyone with the name Custer should maybe not be in Army public relations.

MORE cluelessness in this week’s Media column about the OJ confession fiasco.
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=4682&IssueNum=182

I WAS probably a tad clueless myself when, in Wednesday’s post, I failed to explain how Barack Obama’s full name really is Barack Hussein Obama, but that my ire was at the repugnant glee with which the Republican’s kept using it.

I WOULD ALSO recommend that everyone read Keith Olbermann’s special comment on the loathsome Newt Gingrich, Free Speech, and how Gingrich seems to playing with the fantasy of his being declared Evil Dictator of American by popular acclaim.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15976642/

The secret words are Sitting Bull

"This is your brain on zen."

A MESSAGE FROM OUR FUHRER...
"NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim November 30, 2006, as National Methamphetamine Awareness Day. I call upon the people of the United States to observe this day with appropriate programs and activities.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-seventh day of November, in the year of our Lord two thousand six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-first.
GEORGE W. BUSH"

(I swear this is absolutely genuine, plus the dumb bastard only gave us two days notice and I don't even have the decorations up!)

The secret word is Tweak

I MAY BE WATCHING TOO MUCH TV, BUT...
Twice today, I noticed Republican talking heads calling Barack Obama "Barack Hussein Obama" with a definite Karl Rove flourish on the Hussein, just to make him sound-like some dangerous threatening raghead. Interesting they should start putting the poison in so early. They are clearly frightened well in advance by Obama’s smarts and charisma. I swear to my soul that he’s the boy. Maybe Obama v Giuliani. Now that would a real Don King matchup.

The secret word is Distortion

"Ever have days when your brain feels like this?"

PEACE IN OUR TIME
Some girl, Miss Templeton, and a couple of others forwarded this story from Associated Press
"A homeowners association in southwestern Colorado has threatened to fine a resident $25 a day until she removes a Christmas wreath with a peace sign that some say is an anti-Iraq war protest or a symbol of Satan. Some residents who have complained have children serving in Iraq, said Bob Kearns, president of the Loma Linda Homeowners Association in Pagosa Springs. He said some residents have also believed it was a symbol of Satan. Three or four residents complained, he said. "Somebody could put up signs that say drop bombs on Iraq. If you let one go up you have to let them all go up," he said in a telephone interview Sunday. Lisa Jensen said she wasn't thinking of the war when she hung the wreath. She said, "Peace is way bigger than not being at war. This is a spiritual thing. "Jensen, a past association president, calculates the fines will cost her about $1,000, and doubts they will be able to make her pay. But she said she's not going to take it down until after Christmas. "Now that it has come to this I feel I can't get bullied," she said. "What if they don't like my Santa Claus." The association in this 200-home subdivision 270 miles southwest of Denver has sent a letter to her saying that residents were offended by the sign and the board "will not allow signs, flags etc. that can be considered divisive."
The subdivision's rules say no signs, billboards or advertising are permitted without the consent of the architectural control committee. Kearns ordered the committee to require Jensen to remove the wreath, but members refused after concluding that it was merely a seasonal symbol that didn't say anything. Kearns fired all five committee members."

What also boggles my mind is that the AP reporter instinctively operates within these acrid hicks levels of ignorance. "He said some residents have also believed it was a symbol of Satan." But only because some residents were too fucking pig-uninformed to be aware of any facts, even though the history of the so-called "peace sign" is very well documented. It was designed by Gerald Holton, a graphic designer from the Royal College of Art, in the late 1950s for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. It's based on the semaphore signals for N & D enclosed in a circle, and, of course, there's the vague look of a stylized rocket/bomb with fins. Satan wasn't even at the meeting. Later it was coopted by hippies, various marketing and merchandize organizations, and now the Gap.

But if you really want to get down to double unplus-good, sick and twisted shit, try this genius from the Christian Resource Center of Bermuda...
http://www.nisbett.com/symbols/peace_sign.htm

The very secret word is Love

MEANWHILE...
Although I do not even want to hear the name Michael Richards (unless he’s maybe eaten by sharks) I do worry that loopy self-promoting, legal vulture-hack Gloria Allred seems to believe there is a basis in law for an audience member to sue the performer if the performance causes them pain or discomfort. So there goes the entire function of art, not to mention my career.

LET THEM EAT CAKE!
That’s right neighbors. No one in America is hungry any more.
The Orwellians in the Bush administration have decided to no longer use the word "hunger" to describe the 35 million Americans -- that's 12 percent of the population -- who aren't always sure where their next meal is coming from. Instead, the poor people formerly known as the hungry will now be referred to as people experiencing "very low food security."
Of course, according to the USDA, which measures Americans' access to food, this has nothing to do with trying to sugarcoat the disgraceful reality of 35 million people not being able to put food on the table in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. It's all about accuracy. Hunger, you see, is actually the byproduct of being "food insecure" and thus harder to precisely measure. In the words of a USDA advisory panel, hunger "should refer to a potential consequence of food insecurity that, because of prolonged, involuntary lack of food, results in discomfort, illness, weakness, or pain that goes beyond the usual uneasy sensation."

JFK WON’T GO WAY.
Indeed, neither will either of the Kennedy Brothers. And neither they should, if only as a Camelot reminder of how far the Real Bastards in Power will go when they feel something might be taken away from them. The end of November always brings it around, I guess for those of us who are old enough to remember, the chill of what went down – the shots, and the lies, and the excuses for the next war to come – and the melancholy of what might have been. But it goes further. The knowledge is impossible to shake that, although we undoubtedly have the all components of Utopia, vicious greed and blind stupidity always right there prevent the vision ever being assembled and made to function.

The secret word is Yesterday

HAPPY THANKSGIVING Y'ALL

(pic supplied by MrMR)

"I’m still the patsy"

AND HOW CAN WE PREPARE FOR THANKSGIVING WITHOUT ALSO RECALLING...
that this is the forty-third anniversary of the killing of JFK? Which, for my money, was the start of the current 20th/21st century shit cycle

BUT CHEER UP, HERE ARE SOME PROMISED LINKS...
Sabrina sends bit how no one will be reading in 2025...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14823087/GT1/8717/

From Valerie on how life on Earth originated elsewhere...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6146292.stm

And a great pitce of film from Doug the Bass who remarks, "I think it was Gore Vidal who said "having no talent is no longer enough...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzqumbhfxRo

And here are the lyrics of one generally accepted version of the song "Stagolee" which I reproduce just because HCB sent it...
I was standin' on the corner
When I heard my bulldog bark;
He was barkin' at the two mens
ho gamblin' in the dark.
It was Stagolee and Billy,
Two men who gamble' late,
Stagolee throw seven,
Billy swore that he throwed eight.
Stagolee told Billy,
"I can't let you go with that;
You have won my money
And my brand new Stetson hat."
Stagolee went home,
And got his forty-four,
Says, "I'm goin' to the bar room,
To pay the debt I owe."
Stagolee went to the bar room,
Stood four feet from the door
Didn't nobody know when he
Pulled his forty-four.
Stagolee found Billy,
"Oh please don't take my life!
I got three little children,
And a very sick little wife."
Stagolee shot Billy,
Oh he shot that boy so fas'
That the bullet came through him,
And broke my window glass.
Some folks don't believe,
Oh Lord that Billy dead
You don't believe he gone,
Jus' look what a hole in his head.

And, with those last two lines, we kinda get back to JFK

I suppose the secret word is Gobble

Robert Altman -- RIP

"It’s Micky, darling. I haven’t been gone that long."

DRAINED BY THE CONSIDERATIONS OF COMMERCE, I MANAGED TO FIND MY WAY BACK
After one final 27 hour end-run that left me hardly able to tell if it was Saturday or quarter to three on Venus, I finally hung up my guns on the commercial fix-up project that has demanded so much of my time, concentration and literary heavy lifting to temporary abeyance of so much else including Doc40. And without a single cigarette. (Although doubtless emails will arrive from a copy editor who has either observed my genuine errors or is at least justifying his or her existence. And you all know how I can make errors when I’m excited or tired. Thimk about it it.) Thus – to paraphrase the Venerable Old Dylan, I am now wholly totally free to do anything I wish to do but die, which leaves me simultaneously both excited and daunted. It’s like the final phase of Let’s Make A Deal. Wadda ya want, Doc? Door #1? Door #2? or Door #3? In response to mighty cosmic Monty Hall, I cry gimmee all three, motherfucker. Even the one with the goddamned goat. Because, the time ain’t tall if on time you depend. Too much business is bad for you baby (now where the fuck did that come from? Moby Grape?") and I know that the only hope of salvation is to let the consciousness stream, and hope some kind person shows up with the money and a bucket. Music in the cafes at night and revolution on the stairs? The privateer Santa Anna whispers in my sleeping ear. Oh, dear me, yessss my precioussss. Less would scarcely be worthy. Instinct rides me to quest into the abyss, and plumb the fun of the unknown lightning. Nicola Tesla, rescue me! (And, oh yeah, I’m about to start infusing my own absinthe. Figure that’s the only way to get it up the full metropagan emerald vision-strength.)
So, over the next few days I gotta take a lotta baths and, between naps, catch up with all the links and gags and pointers to subversion that have backed up while I was plying the weaver’s trade. And also give my word as a gentleman, I’ll write the final episode of the Yancey Slide serial. And make it really good.

So the secret word is Swashbuckling

And now let’s get on with it, he muttered to himself, doggedly groping for his Katana .

"Yeah right. Free labor. Even more cost effective than cheap labor. Up the IWW!"

ALTHOUGH THIS I S NOT TO SAY THAT I’M NOT KEEPING A HIGHLY WATCHFUL EYE ON THE REPUBLICANS
Because if all those sons of bitches just keep on positioning themselves for the constant election and doing their best to fuck with any practical solutions, we are in unthinkable trouble.
It’s going to take a whole mess of finesse to get out of Iraq with quantumizing the chaos, and starting a full scale Sunni, Shi-ite red-hot jihad plus the fall of the House of Saud, all over what’s left of the oil. This is trickier than 1914, and with a whole lot more fire power. Especially if it really starts to turn sour, because then it will become increasingly hard to persuade the Israelis to keep their nukes holstered. The room’s full of gasoline and these sonsofbitches are playing flick the Zippo. Let’s just repeal the 22nd amendment and let Bill fucking Clinton run in ‘08 because that might at least give us a whisper of a prayer of a chance.

My CityBeat election night tale is still worth a read...

http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=4623&IssueNum=180

UPDATE
I HAVEN’T HAD A FUCKING CIGARETTE FOR FOUR WEEKS AND I’M PRETTY DAMNED PLEASED WITH MYSELF. (Hardly doing well in the area of trashy erotic shoes, however.)

I continue to work relentlessly on this hired-gun book project like a character in Johnny Cash song, but -- primarily by not sleeping -- I managed my last shot of loathing at Bush before the election. Do read it. It’s loaded with classic science fiction allusions.
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=4548&IssueNum=178

And also a riff on attack ads.
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=4554&IssueNum=178

I swear Doc40 will be back to normal as soon as possible. If only because I like doing it.

The secret words are Salt Mine

TO WRITE IS A HARD TASKMISTRESS, FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS
I feel like I’m letting everyone down by being absent from the blog just when GWB cancelled habeas corpus and started changing Republic to Empire. I can only tell you that I am up to my ass in survival non-fiction and it may well stay that way for week or more, but I swear I’ll be back in full force as soon as I get out from under the workload.

For those who ate interested, I have not smoked a cigarette now in three weeks.

I would however draw your attention to Iggy’s gig contract rider that Doug the Bass sent over.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1004061iggypop1.html

There are also a who bunch of YouTube recommendations that I haven’t had a chance to look at yet

The secret word is Inundated.