IT'S SATURDAY AND THE CHEMBOTS ARE COMING!

As if life wasn’t complicated enough, the wonderful Valerie sent the following that decidedly slowed down my breakfast…

“The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is seeking innovative proposals to develop Chemical Robots (ChemBots): soft, flexible, mobile objects that can identify and maneuver through openings smaller than their static structural dimensions; reconstitute size, shape, and functionality after traversal; carry meaningful payloads; and perform tasks. ChemBots represent the convergence of soft materials chemistry and robotics to create a fundamentally new class of soft meso-scale robots.”
But you really need to read the whole thing.

The secret word is Slither

WHAT? NO BLOODY SINGULARITY?

And just as Doc40 embarks on the possible endeavour of seeing how much anarchic fun can have with the nebulous but all-encompassing doom scenario of 12.21.12, HCB, with his famous timing, sends over this fascinating debate on the other possible big whammy in humanity’s future.

WHAT IF THE SINGULARITY DOESN’T HAPPEN
By Vernor Vinge

It's 2045 and nerds in old-folks homes are wandering around, scratching their heads, and asking plaintively, "But ... but, where's the Singularity?" Science fiction writer Vernor Vinge--who originated the concept of the technological Singularity--doesn't think that will happen, but he explores three alternate scenarios, along with our "best hope for long-term survival"--self-sufficient, off-Earth settlements.

This is really worth reading. (Although it might just be science fiction writers taking themselves too seriously.)

Meanwhile Valerie sends over the following piece numerology. (She also provided the graphic above.)

12 + 20 (zero doesn't count) + 12 = 26 = ZThe rest is the same.Though have probably just ruined all credibility for attempts to analyse thefuture with numbers theory.PS. There are 24 letters in the Greek alphabet. Z, irritatingly, is number 6.

The secret word is Prospect

TIME TO START WORKING ON THE MASS PANIC

We have just five and half years to go to what everyone from the ancient Maya to the late Terrence McKenna would seem to agree is going to be the absolute, unqualified, total, all-encompassing, full-on, no-one-here-gets-out-alive, Elvis-has-left-the-building, End Of Everthing. The theory is that, on December 12th, 2012, the full finality will fall upon us. The fat lady will sing and reality will simply cease. Even the numbers for December 12th, 2012 look really good and ominous. I mean…
12.21.12
…now doesn’t that have a ring to it? What William Blake called a fearful symmetry? As regular readers will have gathered by now, there’s nothing I like better than a good, old-fashioned looming catastrophe. Global calamity is good, but something promising to wink-out the complete known universe -- plus an infinite number of other dimensions as well -- into pure black nothingness really has to be the business. Even when the shit doesn’t happen, it can be a whole lotta fun. Who can forget the mass fear generated by the Nostradamus quatrain that suggested a serious nasty was going to come to pass in 1999 and seven months? Who doesn’t remember the paranoia conjured by Y2K, hey? And let’s not forget the merchandising!!!

So time to get moving brothers and sisters. If the squares find it beyond their capacity to muster so much as a simple lick of sense – fuck ‘em and the Administration they rode in on. If they refuse to act rationally, they wholly deserved to be zapped by a taser-shock of blind, uncontrollable mad-lemming panic.

Shall we get down to creating that mass panic? We have a whole five years to work on it.

(For those who need to bone up a bit on the background, this summation provides a suitably bizarre and impenetrable rundown on the whole 12.21.12 deal.)

The secret word is Trepidation

Kurt Vonnegut – RIP

DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSIC'S #4

Clearly mental health is not what it used to be, but whoever said it was? At least, pro tem, the patient gets to keep her clothes on.

TO REJOICE IN SMALL VICTORIES

Alan Burridge writes (see last Saturday)…
Interesting to note, yet not due to my diatribe below, the lack of Hot X Buns at our local Hospital made the front page of today's Bournemouth Daily Echo newspaper. The decision was obviously reconsidered over the Easter Weekend by the hierarchy after the furore caused by hospital staff, and the buns, (usually given out on Good Friday), were reinstated and given to patients on Easter Sunday. The storm in a teacup now over, a normal cup of tea with a Hot X Bun was then enjoyed.

The secret word is Prevail

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RUFUS HARRIS – RIP

HAPPY EASTER!

Here's the first bunny! (From Valerie)

The secret words are Fertiity Goddess

THEOLOGICAL BUN CRISIS IN THE UK

This just in...

Our pal Alan Burridge (who also runs the Motorheadbangers Club) writes…
"Hot X Buns Indeed! Just read Mick Farren mentioning back in the UK they will be having Hot X Buns" and it's obviously one aspect of living in LA he's missing.But my wife, Jane, arrived home from her shift at our local Hospital yesterday to say that, (after 17 years of working there, and it happening every Good Friday, until now), the patient's are no longer getting their Hot X Buns.It was tradition!It was what happened!When one of her colleagues asked "Where are the Hot X Buns?" she was informed: "The Hospital Trust decided not to provide them as it might upset or offend patients of other ethnic groups/religions."Excuse me?I'm pretty open-minded about everything, but this is OUR country!What ever happened to When in Rome, you do as the Roman's do?They need not eat the darned Hot X Buns, so why should their choice of living and using the hospitals in the UK stop others, also in hospital, from doing so?Even though religions vary, God must be pretty much the same geezer, mustn't he?When we visit or live in other countries, we are expected to join in and enjoy their traditions and ways of life, so why do we have to change ours to accomodate them?"

We are also talking the importance of bake goods here. I mean, I’m not a Christian but a good hot cross bun -- as pictured above -- is transcendental, an old-country tradition, ancient and powerful enough to parallel that moment in The Godfather when Clemenza tells Rocco, after they whack Paulie. “Leave the gun, take the cannolis.”

DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSIC'S #3

Drug addicts probably fare as badly as lesbians in pulp fiction and also lose their clothes just as regularly.

BEARS, TO BUNS, TO BURROUGH, TO BUNNIES (AND STONED SPIDERS)

It’s Good Friday for all you Christians, right? All hammers, nails, crucifixions, and, back where I come from, things called hot cross buns that are delicious but defy description. So enjoy yourselves, right, and, come Sunday, you’ll be dealing with the theological significance of bunnies and chocolate. I wish you all joy.

For some unfathomable reason I find myself precipitated into a bout of double-plus nostalgia. Since about around the time I ingested my first chemical stimulants, I have been seeing photographs of what happens to the web-weaving abilities of spiders on various drugs, but now we have actual film.

And for no other reason that a blast from the past, here’s a showing of Uncle Bill Burroughs' classic Towers Open Fire.

The secret word is Golgotha

There's nothing like beating a cause into the ground! ACT! Fill in the email and send it off!

IF YOU MET US WE'D PROBABLY EAT YOU, BUT PLEASE SAVE US.

This is a Doc40 public service announcement. The Fish and Wildlife Service has recently announced a proposal to list the polar bear as 'threatened' under the Endangered Species Act. This opens a 90-day public comment period. Afterwards, the FWS will then undergo a 12-month review of all the comments, then issue a final ruling. Full story.

(We also trust that pictures of adorable polar bears evoke sentimental guilt to the max, if that’s what it takes to motivate us to salvage this sorry fucking planet.)

AS MUCH FUN AS WATCHING CHEESE MATURE

The panda cam is long gone. Butterstick is a surly teenager smoking cigarettes behind the bushes and the cheese cam is really no substitute. In fact the cheese cam – real name Cheddarvision TV – may be finest example of aesthetic boredom since Andy Warhol’s Sleep. What we are invited to watch is 44 pounds of English Cheddar cheese mature over a period of a year, give or take a few weeks either way. Thanks to Rich, Doc40 has both a news report and the actual cheese cam.

The secret word is Cracker

ALSO in this week’s LA CityBeat, I have some truly stunning observations on what’s being called viral politics.

MAYBE FALLING OUT OF A TREE DOES MAKE YOU TALK TOO MUCH

So Keef now claims he was joking when he regaled the NME with the tale of how he snorted his father's ashes along with a line of blow. He is, however, continuing to assert that he was trepanned by a brain surgeon, who watched his thoughts flying around in his head.

The secret word is Hush

DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSIC'S #2

Lesbians always have a terrible time in paperback

DOES FALLING OUT OF A TREE MAKE YOU TALK TOO MUCH?

The following story has been wandering around the internet for most of the day. Why Keith should indulge in all these revelations is anyone’s basic guess…

Keith Richards admits ingesting all manner of substances in his time. But none quite as bizarre as he reveals in his latest confession: he snorted his father's ashes. In a wide-ranging interview published today, the 63-year-old veteran of tequila breakfasts and drug marathons described how he once sampled his father's ashes mixed with cocaine. "The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father," he told NME magazine. "He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn't have cared, he didn't give a shit. It went down pretty well, and I'm still alive." Bert Richards died five years ago at the age of 84. He had been a factory labourer and wounded in the second world war.
But if this episode of his Rolling Stone son's life was relatively innocuous, it was a different story when the guitarist found himself in what he said was his most life-threatening drug experience. "Someone put strychnine in my dope. It was in Switzerland. I was totally comatose, but I was totally awake. I could listen to everyone, and they were like, 'He's dead, he's dead!', waving their fingers and pushing me about. I was thinking, 'I'm not dead!'," he recalled. He said his longevity in the face of multiple drug abuse over decades was just luck, and advised others not to follow his lead. "I've no pretensions about immortality ... I was number one on the Who's 'Likely To Die' list for 10 years. I mean, I was really disappointed when I fell off the list."
Richards himself had yet another brush with death last year when he had a fall on holiday in Fiji. It had been overplayed, he said; he was not climbing a coconut tree but sitting on a "shrub". But he did not play down the subsequent treatment. "I've been trepanned. That's quite an interesting experience, especially for my brain surgeon, who saw my thoughts flying around in my brain. I've got pictures of it, mate. They cut my head, brain, skull open, went in and pulled out the crap, and put some of it back again. I mean, shit, Keith Richards has got to do everything once."
And yes, I suppose he does. We have to give the old boy that much.

The secret words Crossroads

HOW THEY BUILT THE GREAT PYRAMID -- MAYBE!

This very disturbing report comes from the wonderful some girl but I don’t like it.
PARIS - A French architect claimed Friday to have uncovered the mystery about how Egypt's Great Pyramid of Khufu was built — with use of a spiral ramp to hoist huge stone blocks into place. Ending eight years of study on the subject, architect Jean-Pierre Houdin released his findings and a computerized 3-D mockup showing how workers would have erected the pyramid at Giza outside Cairo.

And here are pages of it, plus a slide show and 3D animation except the 3D animation involves downloading yet another goddamn player program, this one made by Dassault Systemes, which I kinda suspect are the same Dassault that made lousy jet fighters back when the French were losing their war against the Viet Minh.

I would be interested know however if M. Houdin has taken into account the odd system of narrow shafts and remote controlled doors discover by Rudolph Gantenbrink and his robot Upuaut. And then there are the man-hour calculations. I can’t give you a reference, but back in the 1970s, I recall a work-study on moving that volume of rock into a pyramid structure, and how it would have taken the then-population of Egypt, plus any available enslaveable neighbors about 350 years to complete the project without the use of levitation or alien tractor beams. That would mean they started building Cheops tomb some two and a half centuries before he was born. Me? I’m still an alien interventionist and cling to the image below. The origins of Victor Renquist will not be undermined.

The secret word is Secret

DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSIC'S #1

I come across so many great paperback covers in my travels I figure I should start an irregular series, just to share them with all of you friends and neighbors. And how better to start than with that laugh-a-minute cut-up George Orwell?

BEE STORY TURNS UGLIER

The more I read, the more the death of the bees is confirmed as a what-the-fuck crisis, and the suspicion level rises to the idea that this is something massive and wholly horrible, a portent from a science fiction scenario that ends apocalyptically badly. Except it's for real. In the following from Triple J sent via Munz, the finger is now pointed at Monstanto or maybe Bayer.

In Germany where they still teach science they published an article about the toxic nature of Monsanto’s Triple Hybrid GM corn and it's effect on bees in '05. Why won't the media here mention that GM corn is the likely cause of the bees disapearing? Could it be that Monsanto is a massive multinational corp with a market capitalization of 30 billion dollars?? Of course insects are seen as pests by most people. Most people who passed Earth Science class in highschool understand that every part of the food chain is important and some, but not most, understand that bees perform a task that vital to our survival. For more…

AND MEANWHILE the dry catfood would appear to be contaminated.

AND IN YET ANOTHER WORLD -- It was a nice Saturday afternoon -- until a bum dropped dead outside the drugstore right in front of my taxi. I found it disturbing that, after it was determined he was dead and cops were called, all the driver and I could do was decide to take Hollywood to Gardener instead of La Brea. I asked myself, "Is that all a man's life is worth, a change of cab route?" And then a voice, somewhere between Sam Elliot (two L's), and Johnny Cash replied "That's right. Mick. Sometimes the bear eats you." (I have already included this story in a personal note to a friend, but it was on my mind, and I felt I had to post it as a change from pics of Iggy and other trivia. My apologies to the recipient.)

The secret word is Wept

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

"Robbie, I think we have to deprogram the shoe fetish. Plus I'm getting tired of sitting on this ladder."

The secret word is Mule

REMEMBER ROCK & ROLL?

I have to stop stealing images from If Charlie Parker Was A Gunslinger There'd Be A Whole Lot of Dead Copycats (linked on the right) but I needed something to expunge all thoughts of Sanjaya Malakar.

The secret word is Dog

THE BEES ARE VANISHING

The mystery of the vanishing bees is no joke. I really think it’s hitting some kind of what-the-fuck crisis level.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Beekeepers throughout the United States have been losing between 50 and 90 percent of their honeybees over the past six months, perplexing scientists, driving honey prices higher and threatening fruit and vegetable production. Beginning in October 2006, beekeepers from 24 states reported that hundreds of thousands of their bees were dying and their colonies were being devastated. For more…

In LA CityBeat I have a short squib on The Tudors

And this really needs watching. Times ain’t getting any easier.

WASSUP WIT' SATURN?

"This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides," said Kevin Baines, atmospheric expert and member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, asadena, Calif. "We've never seen anything like this on any other planet. Indeed, Saturn's thick atmosphere, where circularly-shaped waves and convective cells dominate, is perhaps the last place you'd expect to see such a six-sided geometric figure, yet there it is." The hexagon is nearly 15,000 miles across. Nearly four Earths could fit inside it. The thermal imagery shows the hexagon extends about 60 miles down into the clouds."

For more and a video clip (thanks to Wendy)

The secret word is Perplexed

AND TALKING OF GALACTIC MENACES...

As if it wasn't bad enough that there's a sheep that's geneticaly 15% human, someone called Shigella has crocheted a Dalek. Which, in theory could give rise to an entire army of brand new wooly versions of the damned things zapping whole planetary systems and yelling "Exterminate! Exterminate!" in their annoying metallic voices. (Or would the knitted ones sound more like sheep?)This information come from Peromyscus whose very cool blog is perma-linked on the right.

The secret word is Tardis

Also If Charlie Parker Was A Gunslinger There'd Be A Whole Lot of Dead Copycats has some unbelievable pictures of the 1911 Triangle Shirt Factory fire in New York. (And, if you don’t know what that was, fucking look it up. It was the truly hideous face of capitalism.)

MEANWHILE, FLEEING THE CYLON MENACE...

When did Bob Dylan become one of the divine Lords of Kobol?

CRYPTIQUE -- There must be some way outa here.

MAYBE I WAS WRONG ABOUT TILLMAN

Seems like I may have been wrong about Tillman being a dangerous psycho. Some girl’s email that follows in its entirety shows that it she is much better informed, and I was just reacting to the foul propaganda Jessica Lynch stench that taints anything to do with Bush and his evil goddamned war machine.

looks like you've got yourself a particularly intelligent troll (haha). and of course the troll is an asshole, but i've read a bit on tillman, though not this article. all accounts show he wasn't a gung-ho anything (at least no more than other soldiers). he was a dupe and a pawn, same as all the military and much of the american people. his case resonates more b/c he was a successful pro football player who walked away from all that to go fight the taliban. and, of course, b/c his high-profile death was first used as an endless "martyr moment" and then suddenly disappeared from the talking points after it came out that he died in afghanistan under friendly fire. he was a perfect PR/recruitment poster for the bushies, a textbook case of "sacrifice" for "freedom" (and DAMN how they talked him up and talked him up during football season after he enlisted...and even after he died, until the circumstances came out. then the NFL stopped talking about him, too). then came the REAL tragedy -- the lies and coverup of how it happened. tough to portray him dying a "heroic" death when it was actually a horrible cock-up (of the type that certainly would remind the public of vietnam, a comparison bush et al were desperate to avoid at all costs back then...still are i suppose).as far as i know there's no evidence he was "fragged." fer fucksake, he was a corporal. fraggings in the nam happened usually to young, green, gung-ho first LTs who would actually get their underlings killed by ordering stupid assaults, patrols, etc etc. generally speaking LTs were fragged in self-defense. there's no conceivable reason a soldier like tillman would be that type of an uncontrollable risk. hence, fragging wouldn't be on the agenda. the accounts i have read of what happened that day indicate confusion, fear, fuckups, and deviations from an impromptu plan led to the friendly-fire death.what the government did in terms of lying to tillman's family (not to mention the rest of us) actually turned them against the cause. they would've better handled the truth and come to terms with it. instead they feel betrayed, because they were. the bush administration shook the faith in this country that one typically patriotic family held. to me the tillman case is another example of how much damage bush and his cronies have done, and a terrible reminder that they do not give one flying fuck about ANYBODY but themselves. if you're on their side, you may go into the meat grinder. if you're not on their side, you may go into the meat grinder. whatever works for them. they don't even take care of the people who support them; they only take care of their own. hang the faithful along with the faithless...they scarcely care to make that distinction, in the end.anyway, i thought the comment about tillman was very unfair and surprisingly callous. geez, he was actually opposed to the invasion of iraq, he was not religious, and he even opposed bush's reelection. i am not a fan of him; i think his choice was stupid, and the way he was held up in the media was infuriating and tiresome. at the same time i feel that we were all lied to, and some of us were more susceptible to those lies than others. the human toll that "talking points" and other rhetoric have wrought should not be forgotten -- especially b/c that's the way bush and co. act, like the words and the decisions and the actions don't have any consequences at all. but they do, and they have. not just here, of course, but in iraq and all around the world. the hypocrisy of the government and the military actively trying to conceal the truth from tillman's family strikes me as particularly despicable, maybe b/c it is such a perfect microcosm of all the things i've just mentioned.

PLAUSIBLE? ANY OF IT?

I have hardly been keeping up with all this Pat Tillman business, (here’s a report if your not up to speed either) but am I to understand from the word “fratricide” in the story means that, rather than being accidentally killed by “friendly fire”, he was actually fragged by his own men because he was a gun-ho barking-crazy psycho and fatally dangerous to anyone close to him? Or is that just my cynical assumption.

And meanwhile, as I posted the above, this appeared in my in-box. “TOKYO — A health ministry affiliate has received 23 reports of antiviral drug Tamiflu causing neuropsychiatric disorders in children aged under 10 such as hallucinations, depressed consciousness or delirium." Now wasn’t this junk being pumped up by the pharmaceutical companies as their first line of defense against H5N1 Avian Flu? I never did trust it. Like Pat Tillman’s unfortunate death, it just seemed so overhyped.

The secret word is Skepticism

THIS BLOG IS STILL PROTECTED BY...

NEWTON HAS AN UPDATE

The deaths supposedly caused by catfood that we were all worrying about last Monday have been attributed to rat poison, although how exactly is not clear. For what there is of the story...

BRITS TAKE SMALL STEP TO DRUG SANITY

Aeswiren sends us the following report from the BBC…
"The drug classification system in the UK is not "fit for purpose" and should be scrapped, scientists have said. They have drawn up an alternative system which they argue more accurately reflects the harm that drugs do. The new ranking system places alcohol and tobacco in the upper half of the league table, ahead of cannabis and several Class A drugs such as ecstasy. The study, published in The Lancet, has been welcomed by a team reviewing drug research for the government. The Academy of Medical Sciences group plans to put its recommendations to ministers in the autumn."

Rest of story…

The secret word is Benzodiazepine

BLATANT SELF PROMOTION (Nosferatu Division)

Earlier in the week (on Tuesday to be precise) we were discussing the arithmetic impossibility of vampires and I happened to mention Victor Renquist and posted a link to his Wikipedia entry (not written by me) but maybe I didn’t urge everyone sufficiently strongly, who hasn’t already gone out or online to buy The Renquist Quartet, to do so immediately starting with the first book – The Time of Feasting (left).

And when you’ve made the purchase, HCB poses some comments, all of which I think are brilliantly resolved in the Renquist novels. (Along with the problem of Nazi flying saucers and the whereabouts of the last Quaalude on the planet.)

“The vampire population is increasing in a geometric progression, and the population of humans is similarly decreasing -- and at that rate, the authors calculate, the entire human population would be transformed into vampires in only 30 months.”

HCB -- But you’d have to assume they were capable of traveling great distances because otherwise they'd entirely consume the local population in short order and starve (if they can in fact actually die) or tear each other to pieces. More likely they'd have the same effect as any lethal virus in a finite population, and like a contagious disease they'd have a much greater effect in bigger urban environments. There's also the native earth business to get around. I guess you could say they're land-locked.

“Am Legend that also became the Vincent Price movie The Last Man On Earth and was also the basis of The Omega Man with Charlton Heston”

HCB -- The new Will Smith version is set to release in Dec

HCB also provides a link to Hard Day’s Night Of The Living Dead

Larry "Bud' Melman -- RIP

A FAREWELL TO WASTE MANAGEMENT

In this week’s LA CityBeat I use up the space available for what I guess is my elegy on The Sopranos and how it is, in reality, a surviving product of the Bill Clinton 1990s.

The secret word is Bing! (or maybe Bah)

SPRING?

Our friend Yukiko has sent me a short poem known as "Waka" (a little longer form of Haiku) written the famous Japanese monk poet, Saigyo. Some of you will be aware why I post it here. Those who aren’t should just enjoy it.

Let me die in spring

under the cherry blossom,

let it be around

that full moon

of Kisaragi month

(Kisaragi is an ancient Japanese name for the month of March.)

VAMPIRES CAN'T EXIST

VICTOR RENQUIST WOULD NOT LIKE THIS ONE BIT. (Less in fact than he likes how he’s neither a graphic novel nor a major motion picture.)

“One of the most totally fun areas of publishing in recent years has been the emergence of books that probe the scientific bases of fictional universes. Among popular conclusions? Vampires can't exist. Why? Because they'd quickly depopulate the earth. To prove it, the scientists do some calculations by picking a random year in history -- 1600, specifically -- and imagining what would happen if one vampire suddenly appeared on earth. They assume, for the sake of argument, that a vampire needs to feed "only once a month", and that in the course of feeding, the vampire turns its victim into another vampire. They note that the global population of humans was 536,870,911 in the year 1600. They note that the global population of humans was 536,870,911 in the year 1600. Then the calculations begin. If a single vampire fed on a single human in the first month, this would create two vampires -- and decrease the human population by one, leaving it at 536,870,911 - 1 = 536,870,910. In the second month, those two vampires would each feed, transforming two people into vampires -- so you get four vampires and a human population of 536,870,911 - 3 = 536,870,908. So you can see where this is headed. The vampire population is increasing in a geometric progression, and the population of humans is similarly decreasing -- and at that rate, the authors calculate, the entire human population would be transformed into vampires in only 30 months. QED!”

For chapter and verse read Clive Thompson’s Collision Detection (also permanently linked on the right.)

All this arithmetic does, however, explain why so many once and future vampire authors like myself go such extreme trouble to make the conversion of a human to a vampire or nosferatu state much more complicated than one bite per customer. Also most of us knew that the whole idea of the exponential spread of Vampirism had been totally worked out in Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend that also became the Vincent Price movie The Last Man On Earth and was also the basis of The Omega Man with Charlton Heston (and a lot of guns.)

The secret words is Crypt

FOUR YEARS AND STILL COUNTING

How long, lawd, lawdy how long? Yes, indeed. How fucking long do we tolerate indefinite homicidal greed and stupidity? And how long do the questions remain merely rhetorical?

A NOTE FROM NEWTON

After last month's Purina dogfood panic we now have some serious and maybe fatal panics regarding various brands of cat food.

The secret word is Warning

PAT & PATTI

Today is St Patrick’s Day and I’m going over to 00Soul’s to eat cabbage and get drunk most likely. The IRA has hung up their guns and I don’t feel like writing, so, instead, I’m posting this rumination by Patti Smith, (aptly sent by Pat) because, although no one is going to give me any fucking prizes, or put me in a Hall of Fame – and if they did I would look pretty askance and mutter about speech day at school – I have had similar thoughts.

"On a cold morning in 1955, walking to Sunday school, I was drawn to the voice of Little Richard wailing Tutti Frutti from the interior of a local boy's makeshift clubhouse. So powerful was the connection that I let go of my mother's hand. Rock'n'roll. It drew me from my path to a sea of possibilities. It sheltered and shattered me, from the end of childhood through a painful adolescence. I had my first altercation with my father when the Rolling Stones made their debut on the Ed Sullivan Show. Rock'n'roll was mine to defend. It strengthened my hand and gave me a sense of tribe as I boarded a bus from south Jersey to freedom in 1967.
Rock'n'roll, at that time, was a fusion of intimacies. Repression bloomed into rapture like raging weeds shooting through cracks in the cement. Our music provided a sense of communal activism. Our artists provoked our ascension into awareness as we ran amok in a frenzied state of grace. My late husband, Fred Sonic Smith, then of Detroit's MC5, was a part of the brotherhood instrumental in forging a revolution: seeking to save the world with love and the electric guitar. He created aural autonomy yet did not have the constitution to survive all the complexities of existence. Before he died, in the winter of 1994, he counseled me to continue working. He believed that one day I would be recognized for my efforts and, though I protested, he quietly asked me to accept what was bestowed - gracefully - in his name.
Last night I joined REM, the Ronettes, Van Halen and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. On the eve of this event I asked myself many questions. Should an artist working within the revolutionary landscape of rock accept laurels from an institution? Should laurels be offered? Am I a worthy recipient? I have wrestled with these questions and my conscience leads me back to Fred and those like him - the maverick souls who may never be afforded such honors. Thus in his name I will accept with gratitude. Fred Sonic Smith was of the people, and I am none but him: one who has loved rock'n'roll and crawled from the ranks to the stage, to salute history and plant seeds for the erratic magic landscape of the new guard. Because its members will be the guardians of our cultural voice. The internet is their CBGB. Their territory is global. They will dictate how they want to create and disseminate their work. They will, in time, make breathless changes in our political process. They have the technology to unite and create a new party, to be vigilant in their choice of candidates, unfettered by corporate pressure. Their potential power to form and reform is unprecedented.
Human history abounds with idealistic movements that rise, then fall in disarray. The children of light. The journey to the east. The summer of love. The season of grunge. But just as we seem to repeat our follies, we also abide. Rock'n'roll drew me from my mother's hand and led me to experience. In the end it was my neighbors who put everything in perspective. An approving nod from the old Italian woman who sells me pasta. A high five from the postman. An embrace from the notary and his wife. And a shout from the sanitation man driving down my street: "Hey, Patti, Hall of Fame. One for us." I just smiled, and I noticed I was proud. One for the neighborhood. My parents. My band. One for Fred. And anybody else who wants to come along." © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

By way of a St. Paddy gift from Doc40. Here is a copy of The Hollow Men by T.S. Elliot.

The secret word is Erin

THIS BLOG IS PROTECTED BY...

NEED I SAY MORE?

Actually I'm sweating a deadline and wouldn't say more if I could. And, of course, I'm an Englishman with everything that entails.

But there is more news on the bees.

The secret word is Metrosexual

CAN YOU SPELL THAT FOR ME?

For some reason that I don’t quite understand, I find it profoundly disturbing that 45% of the sampled group couldn’t read the paragraph below with perfect ease. Or maybe because it’s the way I spell. (Supplied by Sheri)

Fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too. Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55% plepoe can.
i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

The secret word hardly matters.

CRYPTIQUE – You know the rules. It doesn’t stop until you’re dead.

TODAY...

Today is an anniversary I would really rather not be remembering, and maybe I shouldn’t even be making reference to it at all, especially in this semi-public context lest I reveal too much and loose another company of demons with which I can drive myself insane. Or should I attempt to explain the madness that visits, these dozen days into the month of March? I don’t know. I don’t know. Except I fear the same risk applies. Can one really undo or heal the damage wrought by events, and the disasters that remain after the passing of the show? Again I have no answer. I don’t know. I don’t know. It repeats like an infinite electric echo. The best I can do is to leave you with a lesser-known fragment of Jim Morrison that fidicen sent me, Jim also being dead.

GRAVEYARD POEM

It was the greatest night of my life
Although I still had not found a wife
I had my friends right there beside me
We scaled the wall
We tripped through the graveyard
Ancient shapes were all around us
No music but the wet grass
Felt fresh beside the fog

Two made love in a silent spot
One chased a rabbit into the dark
A girl got drunk & balled the dead
And I gave empty sermons to my head

Cemetery cool & quiet
Hate to leave your sacred lay
Dread the milky coming of the day
I´d love to stay
I´d love to stay
I´d love to stay

The secret word is Gone

YAY BARACK!

In this week’s LA CityBeat, I have written a quite uncharacteristic love letter to Barack Obama. (Photo by Steve Appleford)

And let’s also face reality. What the fuck is happening to the bees of the USA?

The secret word is Buzzed

CAPTAIN AMERICA SLAIN BY LONE GUNMAN

As it came in, hot off the wire, to a stunned populace...

"Eyewitness reports claim that the initial bullet, tagging Rogers in the shoulder, came from a sniper perched atop or in one of the buildings adjacent to the Federal Courthouse. Several other shots were fired during the ensuing commotion -- hitting Rogers in the chest and stomach--but witnesses fleeing the scene, as well as the U.S. Marshals who were escorting Rogers, have stated there was only one sniper shot fired."

Massive and highly complex conspiracies theories and a movie by Oliver Stone are expected to follow.

The secret word is Bucky

CRYPTIQUE -- The ides of March came early this year.

LIBBY DOWN...

...and how many more to go? We've had few enough moments of unseemly glee of late so let's enjoy this one while we can. Remember, a sweater starts unravelling with but a single thread. Maybe we'll see all the bastards doing the perp walk before both epic and epoch end.

But the secret word is Pardon

I BROKE MY PROMISE ON COULTER

Ann Coulter addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington: "I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot’."

Last Wednesday I broke a silent vow I had made a few months earlier that I would never mention Ann Coulter’s name in print again. As one TV head put it earlier today – “the woman needs constant publicity like a tapeworm needs a large intestine in which to live.” I was of so much the same opinion that I decided simply to declare her a non-person and get on with my life and style. But then she pissed me off with her “global warming is a fabrication of the liberal elite” and I slipped and slapped at her in passing. Which was a mistake. The only way to eliminate the bitch – short of gasoline-fueled auto-da-fe -- is totally to ignore her. Especially now her shtick seems have been rendered down to just-plain-evil fag baiting, like she was Julius Streicher in drag. Thus I will attempt never again to acknowledge her existence unless she is actually in my cross hairs. (And I do wish some of my "progressive" comrades would knock off this "is Coulter a man?" shit. I frankly find it as homophobic as her own nonsense.

The above picture is not Ann Coulter. It is Natasha Queen of Swords, a woman who practices a useful, historic, and honorable profession. (Thanks Valerie)

CRYPTIQUE – Chasing a toaster through a hurricane.

The secret word is Vomit

THE RAYGUN OF THE FUTURE

As many of you may already know and some may have surmised, I have this attraction to rayguns. About the same time as I was learning to crawl (or possibly shoplift) the first rayguns started coming on the market – Flash Gordon/Dan Dare numbers made from pressed tin or plastic, either cap or squirt guns, or with sparking friction mechanisms. One of my proudest artifacts is a raygun from the TV series Galaxy Rangers that both HCB and I (and also aeswiren) all scripted. Thus HCB knew what he was doing when he beamed over this link to Dr. Grorbort’s Rayguns, which have to be finest rayguns in the known world. He must also have also known the frustration he was creating with even Dr. Grorbort’s Manmelter priced at around fifteen hundred bucks.

BUT WHAT'S A RAYGUN WITHOUT A ROBOT?

(Breaks into song)
Kissed so hard,
Bruised my lips
Hurts so good my heart just flips
I gotta woman mean as she can be
Sometimes I think she’s almost mean as me

(Actually I don’t, but negotiations are always possible)

The secret word is Doombeam

NO ECLIPSE FOR THE WICKED

Of course, it wasn’t actually visible here on the West Coast of the Americas, but no one exactly warned me it was happening, but maybe that was because I was with Andy working on a recording project. Had I known though, I could have waxed well Terrence McKenna. The eclipse began at 2018 GMT, with the Moon totally immersed in the shadow of the Earth between 2244 and 2358 GMT. (Thank you for the picture, Valerie.)

The secret phrase is The Shadow Knows

FRANK SINATRA NEVER QUIT SMOKING

Regular readers will probably be aware that around five months ago, I quite smoking, after spending my entire life with a 100mm hanging from my lip. It wasn’t at all easy, but not quite as mind-bending as I has expected. Now Valerie sends me this item from the BBC that suggests a degree of brain damage (never a bad thing) makes the whole process much less painful. It does go on, however, to suggest that simple brain surgery (an oxymoron?) could destroy the craving for nicotine. I really don’t like the sound of this. Okay, so butts are no good, but we can’t have surgeons poking around inside our skulls fixing anything the entities who control the scalpel deem bad for us. It’s called surgical behavior modification and, in theory, can cure anything from socialist ideology to an unacceptable sexual preference.

In this week’s LA CityBeat I mount a brief but cruel attack on Sarah Silverman

The secret words are Slice and Dice

WE NEVER CEASE

“We have hats, zippers and matching boots. We are color-coordinated, we know no fear, we have support rods inserted in our rectums and we will never stop. We are the new wave of neocons.”



The neocon machine in the Dark Tower will seemingly never run down. Even though a large majority of the population no longer gives it much credence, the damned thing grinds on and on, feeding Drudge and Hannity and O’Reilly, and the New Children of the Rising Scum with factoids and fabrications and that choke every demented noise outlet that will still allow them a forum. Monday should have been a good day for Al Gore – even though he could lose a few pounds – what with winning an Oscar and finally appearing to have made a little headway in selling the idea that planet – in the form that makes it inhabitable for we humans – is in extremely serious trouble. But then up pops some self-appointed think tank called the Tennessee Center for Policy Research yipping and yapping that Gore’s gas and electric bills for his 20-room home and pool house devoured nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours in 2006, more than 20 times the national average of 10,656 kilowatt-hours. “He tells other people how to live and he's not following his own rules."
The logic then follows that Gore is a hypocrite, a liar, cannot be believed and therefore there’s no global warning, no drowning polar bears, no burning rainforest, no climatic disaster bearing down. Like Ann Coulter was howling the other day, it’s just a conspiracy of rich liberals, and we can all go back to our clear cutting, oil drilling, war profiteering, our conspicuous consumption, our guiltless SUVs, and our golf. (And don’t forget to support the troops, you patriots. Although that may not quite extend to picking up the tab when they come home with their arms and legs blown off. I mean, who knew so many of them would so inconveniently survive.)

The secret word is Sickening

BRAIN OR BRAWN OR THE MONTH THAT YOU WERE BORN?

Does the time of year you're born affect your mental state -- and your potential for developing some form of mental illness? The question is asked on Collision Detection, the blog of our cyberpal Clive Thompson. Seemingly the idea actually goes back all the way to 1929, when the Swiss scientist Moritz Tramer noted that people born in late winter were much more likely to develop schizophrenia later in life; indeed, that correlation has been verified in so many followup studies that one study argued "the increased risk of schizophrenia that comes with a winter birthday is almost twice the increase in risk linked to having a parent or sibling with the disorder.” For more…

The secret word is September

BLATANT SELF PROMOTION

On Sunday February 11th, some discussion took place over the role of Blatant Self Promotion (BSP) ,on a blog like Doc40 and I conceded that maybe I was a little neglectful of such things. What did they used to call it? Being backwards to put yourself forward? Thus I post a link to what I though was a very nice review of Underland, the fourth – and so far final – Victor Renquist novel, not only because I would be delighted it a whole bunch of you went out and bought the book, but also because even this guy’s complaints are near as dammit on the money. I freely admit I did rather vaporize things at the end.

...BEFORE IT'S ILLEGAL!

This was sent by Wendy from something called KiroTV. Figure it’s time to get some before it’s totally illegal.

"There's growing alarm about an herb that teenagers are trying.
The herb makes them hallucinate. It's been compared to acid and LSD, but it's legal here in Washington State. Eastside Bureau Chief Alison Grande has the warning for teenagers and their parents. It's called Salvia. It's being marketed to teenagers, and how they're using it has the feds investigating. Teens who used it told us they're surprised it's so easy to get.
“It's this thing you smoke. It will make you hallucinate,” said one teenager.
“You have to ask people, like, ‘What did I do?’ because you don't remember. I don't remember at least.”
Salvia Divinorum is an herb in the mint family.
We asked around outside an Eastside high school, and in minutes found users of this drug.
“It's not my thing because I don't like not having any control over myself and not be able to stop laughing or falling over,” said one teen.
Once used for spiritual ceremonies in Mexico, it's legal. The use of Salvia is on the rise and that has the Drug Enforcement Administration worried.
“Just because it's legal, just because it's not classified, just because it's not a controlled substance doesn't mean that it's healthy and safe,” said Rodney Benson of the DEA.
It's being blamed for the death of 17-year-old Brett Chidester in Delaware. The teen killed himself after using salvia. The note he left behind talked about his experiences while taking the drug.
Delaware created "Brett's Law," banning salvia. At least 13 other states are also cracking down on it. Washington is not one of them. Teens we talked to said it was easy to find here -- on the Internet and at smoke shops. Using a hidden camera, we went looking for salvia. In a matter of minutes, a clerk at a smoke shop handed over a vial. Down the street, we asked for salvia. We found it was always kept behind the counter. We paid more than 20 dollars for a container. And it's not just smoke shops. Nutrition shops carry it, too. This clerk told us to be careful not to use too much, and showed us a handout about the hallucinogenic effects. We paid more than $70 for liquid salvia.
“It does in some instances create some violent behavior and some hallucinations that could cause harm to our kids,” Benson said.
When we showed Special Agent Benson a container, he thought it was frightening. The packaging, the marketing -- obviously for young adults. Salvia could become a controlled substance soon. “Right now there's medical scientific professionals that are reviewing salvia for placement as a controlled substance,” Benson said.
But for now, the DEA is counting on parents to patrol their teens, and to talk to them about the risks and hope teens stop being guinea pigs. A 15-year-old who used salvia thinks parent should know about it. “It's just going to keep getting out of hand,” the teen said. In most cases, salvia is labeled as incense, but young adults are smoking it instead. "

The secret word is Zonk