I am a baby rhinoceros called Zuri, and I am still learning to wallow. Baby pandas may be more cute, but Eugène Ionesco never wrote a play about them. (Pic from Valerie)

The secret word is Absurdity

MAYDAY! MAYDAY!

“Perhaps it’s just as well that you won’t be here to be offended by the sight of our May Day celebrations.” —Lord Summerisle to Sgt. Howie from The Wicker Man

It’s the festival of Beltane. But where are the fires on the hillside, the banners of Pendragon, and the masked, anonymous, antlered copulation, goddamn it? This is all very disappointing. (But I’m probably too old anyway.) Almost as disappointing as…

...it is also May 1st and another year has passed in which we have failed to overthrow capitalism. Indeed the forces of repression seem to be having it all their way as Steve M. notes in this report from the old country…

“There are now 266 powers under which UK state officials can raid an individual’s home. These include “checking for foreign bees”, “inspection of high hedges”, “surveying seal population” and “checking for offences related to stage hypnotism”. Info comes from the Centre for Policy Studies think-tank (via The Week). The Centre’s research show that most of these powers have been created by Parliament in the last two decades...”

The secret word is Maypole,

But I don’t think this one going to fly, and these poor girls do look as though they’d definitely benefit from some pagan flaming. (pic from Valerie)

DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSIC'S #8

For Peromyscus, see yesterday’s comments.

KENT DOESN'T HAVE EARTHQUAKES

I’m sorry. I find myself wholly disturbed. It’s just not supposed to happen. An earthquake in Kent is akin to finding a live plesiosaur in Central Park Lake. I’ve never heard of anything so outrageous. Earthquakes happen here in California, not the South of England. My mind boggled when Valerie sent me this BBC report that “homes in five streets in Folkestone had to be evacuated because of structural damage including cracked walls and fallen chimneys. The magnitude 4.3 tremor struck at 0819 BST and experts said its epicentre was a few miles off the coast in the English Channel. One woman was taken to hospital with a neck injury.” Do we now have to contend with the Maidstone fault line or something? In this instance I am not attaching any kind of apocalyptic significant to this ridiculous seismic event. I am simply appalled.

The secret word is Trembler

Mstislav Rostropovich -- RIP

Bobby 'Boris' Pickett -- RIP

GENDER REDRESS

Some of the women who regularly read Doc40 have expressed a certain disapproval with recurrent posts that feature scantily clad, or even, at times, naked young women. One very good friend of the blog even went to so far as to call these posts “pornography”, although after some debate, during which I became a tad indignant, we compromised on the term “cheesecake” but she still wasn’t happy. Unfortunately as Dark Prince of this domain, although not wishing to offend feminine sensibilities, I really don’t intend to cease publishing classic pinups, retro-bikini girls, sex kittens (with or without whips), and pulp fiction lesbians, but, when this still of Marlon Brando with his shirt off arrived synchronously from HCB – a reference to my Brando essay (see last Thursday) – I hoped its posting might do something to redress the balance.

MORE BAD BUZZ

This rather strange picture is of a bee fully loaded with pollen, and it appears because Mike has sent us a link to a very interesting new theory on bee disappearance.

DENIAL IS A MANY SPENDORED THING

The secret word is Emphysema

And no, I haven’t resumed smoking.

Doc40 is an affiliate of the White Panther Party.

DEPRESSION IN A BOX

The secret word is Remote

THE DOC40 12.21.12 COLLECTION #1

While neither doubting nor believing that some cataclysmic event is going to occur on December 21st, 2012 – the increasing notorious 12.21.12 – I am wholly fascinated by the effect that such a belief might have on our already very shaky collective consciousness. We already have the Mayan calendar, Terence McKenna’s Timewave Zero, and Einstein’s bee prediction pointing the way, and from here on in I’m instituting The Doc40 12.21.12. Collection. I have a totally open mind about all this. The artist in me treats it as an assemblage of bizarre found prose, the anarchist sees it as a experiment in creating mass panic among the gullible, and the paranoid psychotic sees it as valid prediction of the darkness bearing down on us. That’s my take. You can assume your own. But first a word of warning…

"What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way." -Bertrand Russell

And now the first entry from someone called Peter A. Gersten – “At the very center of our galaxy, strange things are occurring. Besides the popular Black Hole - Neutron Star theory, astronomers have discovered a loop‑like structure some 20 light‑years across close to the center of the Milky Way. The loop may produce sub-atomic particles with a thousand times more energy than those in man-made accelerators. And the team that found it believes the vast, bizarre structure could be some form of cosmic particle accelerator. Further, eight new sources of very high energy gamma rays have recently been found in the center of our galaxy, including two dark sources that have never been seen before at other wavelengths. And lastly, astronomers have detected an unusual, powerful burst of intermittent radio waves emanating from the direction of the center of our galaxy. One can speculate that some type of trans-dimensional event will be triggered by an energy source emanating from the Galactic Center during the Galactic Alignment.”

THIS BLOG IS STILL PROTECTED BY...

THE BUZZ GOES ON (or does it?)

“I’m a bee. Remember me like this”
(via Valerie)

Aeswiren writes….
"I'm beginning to think that Bt toxin in GMO corn has done something to bees that on its own is tolerable, but when added to infestation of Varroa is utterly lethal. Or-- it may be another of these slow building things. The first few generations of Bt toxin affected bees are superficially okay, but then it reaches a critical mass (as it were) and slam, the Queens die, or become infertile, or lose the capacity to produce the powerful pheromones that hold the hive together and that's that. As with so many things in America (and Britain too) these days, this story is too dangerous to investigate. Not seeing any real journalistic work on it, are you? But, of course, if the bees continue to vanish, then US agriculture is gonna crash too. At which point it will be very interesting to see how they present the story--- will it just shift quickly to food riots-- with footage of folks being unpleasant a la New Orleans-- and no mention whatsoever of GMO corn or other crops? Or will some media mouse dare to actually bell the cat, and ask the dangerous questions?” For more

MARLON

In this week's LA CityBeat I have a feature on Marlon Brando and the exhaustive documentary about him that Turner Classic Movies will be airing next week. Read, enjoy, it’s fine stuff.

DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSIC'S #7

This is one of the few pulp covers where the lesbians get to keep their clothes on.

The secret word is Rectitude

SOMEONE'S ALWAYS GOT TO BE DISCOVERING SOMETHING

WASHINGTON - For the first time astronomers have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is potentially habitable, with Earth-like temperatures, a find researchers described Tuesday as a big step in the search for "life in the universe." Hey cool. Halliburton just filed papers to own it. (Read the whole story.) Supplied by some girl.

“What the fuck?”

And then some girl goes on to point out that some fool thinks he’s found Kryptonite. It doesn't glow green, but an unidentified mineral discovered in a Serbian mine matches the molecular composition of Kryptonite described in the movie Superman Returns. (What does this mean Kal-el?) When minerologists tried to find other substances that matched the white, grainy rock they found in a mine near the Serbian region of Jadar, they came up with nothing -- until they searched the Web and …well...you try and make sense of it.

GROWTH INDUSTRY

MEXICO CITY - Mexico City lawmakers voted 46-19 to legalize abortion Tuesday, a decision likely to influence policies and health practices across Mexico and other parts of heavily Roman Catholic Latin America. The proposal will take effect when the leftist mayor signs it. (Full story)

Presumably the city will be preparing for the massive influx of US citizens who will have no other choice once Bush’s supreme court finds an excuse to overturn Roe v Wade.

Doris Richards -- RIP
And I really don't see why TV news morons find this a reason to do some humor bit about Keith now snorting his mum. I mean, the guy lost his mother. Give him a fucking break.

TOOT TOOT DIDERUMP (THE DREAM IS NEVER OVER)

The last time I published a cartoon by Robert Crumb, I almost did two years in one of Her Majesty’s very unpleasant slammers.




The secret word is Tuesday

REASONS FOR REVOLUTION PART 1

Someone sent me this during all of last week's freaking out, but I’m damned if I can remember who it was and I forgot to make a note, but please email or leave a comment and I will credit accordingly…

"People will lose their homes and most of their “investment income” as business’s collapse, both because they can’t find enough customers, and the fact it costs way too much for the sheeple to travel from their McMansions in their SUV’s to their “discretionary spending” based jobs. Once the house of cards called the American economy starts to collapse, the federal debt is gonna prevent Uncle Sam from stepping in like Roosevelt did in the first economic meltdown we had. Banks and finance companies will first try to collect on the debt they loaned out, but they will collapse as they receive properties they can’t sell to cover their costs and as the financial system stalls, even formery ’safe” jobs will start to feel the pinch, government workers will face lay off as local and state governments go into debt with rapidly shrinking tax bases. As the local then state governments become insolvement, the social programs and public safety programs will grind to a halt, which will force the federal government to declare martial law. Hence the Patriot act, Halliburton build prisons for Homeland security, changes in “Habeas Corpus”, and the “posse comitas” act to empower whoever sits in Bush’s chair, has the power to control a rapidly disintragating situation. Welcome to the future as we will see it."

The secret word is Disintegration

Is still...

byron4d@msn.com

David Halberstam – RIP
Bois Yeltsin – RIP

HOME OF THE FUTURE

“The 4,000-square-foot house is a model of environmental rectitude. Geothermal heat pumps located in a central closet circulate water through pipes buried 300 feet deep in the ground where the temperature is a constant 67 degrees; the water heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. Systems such as the one in this "eco-friendly" dwelling use about 25% of the electricity that traditional heating and cooling systems utilize. A 25,000-gallon underground cistern collects rainwater gathered from roof runs; wastewater from sinks, toilets and showers goes into underground purifying tanks and is also funneled into the cistern. The water from the cistern is used to irrigate the landscaping surrounding the four-bedroom home. Plants and flowers native to the high prairie area blend the structure into the surrounding ecosystem. No, this is not the home of some eccentrically wealthy eco-freak trying to shame his fellow citizens into following the pristineness of his self-righteous example. And no, it is not the wilderness retreat of the Sierra Club or the Natural Resources Defense Council, a haven where tree-huggers plot political strategy. This is President George W. Bush's "Texas White House" outside the small town of Crawford. Yes, the same George W. who believes arsenic and drinking water might not be such a bad combo, the same man who reneged on his campaign promise to lower carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, the same man who is doing everything in his power to fling open the Alaskan Natural Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.”

Why, you might ask, does our President live in this high eco-tech miracle home, except to maybe piss off Al Gore? One answer is the super-powerful and super-rich are well aware of the hideous energy crunch and the environmental hell that's coming and protecting themselves well in front. New Orleans can go to hell, but George will be cozy in Crawford with his inexplicable wife and drunken daughters. (Clip by Rob Sullivan, supplied by logicgrl)

The secret words are Soylent Green

CRYPTIQUE – I brag of my misery, I like to live dangerously

DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSIC'S #6

Does this require comment?

BEE UPDATE

I’ll never understand the mindset of the rightwing asshole. Everything is always just hunky dory. We’re winning the war in Iraq, Al Gore invented global warming, and the bees aren’t vanishing. There’s even a whole deal being made as to whether Albert Einstein actually said the words that have been attributed to him and repeated all over in the last couple of weeks. "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man." I didn’t use the Einstein quote in all that I’ve recently written about bees recently, (see last Thursday) because I wasn’t sure how much the great mathematician knew about bee-keeping. And this now seems to be the big debate and totally clouding the seriousness of the bee disaster. What is wrong with these fools? (I also resisted the Einstein quote because it tied in too neatly with the theory of the end of humanity 12.21.12)

Meanwhile, Doug the Bass has sent some interesting economic statistics… Over 80 per cent of Americans are broke at 65 years of age.
CEO's in this country make more than 360 times that of the regular worker in their company?52 per cent of homeless people are Veterans?

Sho o suteyo machi e deyou (Throw away your books, rally in the streets) – Shuji Terayama; 1971

The secret word is Ire

"TAKE THIS ROCKET TO NEPTUNE!"

So I’m woken on 4/20 by a cat who wants his breakfast. I crawl out of bed, habitually turn on the TV to MSNBC only to discover that a lone gunman is holding up NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Huh? After blinking for a while, and knowing that I will be accused of cynicism and a lack of the correct piety in the face of TV death, a flight of fancy winged its unbidden way across my consciousness that maybe the guy was planning to hi-jack a spaceship, but had gone to the wrong place.

(And my cynicism might not be so deep-seated if the outpourings of the news media weren’t so pompously inaccurate. No one, from Fox News to The Huffington Post seems to know the difference between a serial killer and a mass murderer, and that the psychoses involved are vastly different.)

The secret word is Enterprise

FOUR TWENTY

The 1889 birthday of Adolf Hitler, a murdering bastard of epic proportions who probably burns in Hell if there is one.

Also the anniversary of the 1999 shooting rampage by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold at Columbine High School in the Denver suburb of Littleton which has obviously just been subject once again to the media spotlight.

The significant stoner numerology.

(Although 4.20 is nothing in comparison to what will come to pass on 12.21.12)

The secret word is Abacus

GOOD FOR YOU, GOOD FOR ME

Valerie has sent this link to The New Scientist that provides further evidence marijuana is in fact a cancer retardant. The drug enforcement industry – like the oil industry with global warming – mutters crap about not enough research and the jury still being out and therefore the dope should remain illegal, blah, blah, blah, but their position becomes less and less tenable except, of course, they have heavily armed police, a vast penal system, and a massive Federal Gestapo to reinforce their opinion.

The secret word is Inhale

TODAY IN PRINT

Today’s LA CityBeat has an environmental theme, which gave me a chance to put together all the information I’ve been gathering on disappearing bees over the last month or so. I also bid a less than fond farewell to the old fool Dom Imus.

ROUND UP THE DEPRESSED, THEY'RE DANGEROUS

I’ve already been accused of an unfeeling cynicism because I am not weeping over the deaths of one set of strangers rather than another. I weep for friends and lovers. But now I feel I have to court even more disapprobation by pointing out the very fine line between tragedy and The Death Circus, and I fear we are already walking into the big top. (There’s a pun in there that only Londoners will understand.) The media is now left with nothing to show but candlelight vigils and probing the minutia of the madman. The clowns are being sent in, the nuts and racists are entering the arena, and Newsweek makes sure we know it.

“The bodies had barely been removed when the racial epithets started pouring in. Cho Seung-Hui, the 23-year-old identified as the killer of 32 on the Virginia Tech campus, may have lived in the state since his elementary school days, but to the bigots in the blogosphere it was his origins in Korea that mattered most. "Koreans are the most hotheaded and macho of East Asians," wrote one unnamed commentator on the Sepia Mutiny blog. "They are also sick and tired of losing their Korean girlfriends to white men with an Asian fetish."

Talk radio fascists beat their chests and demand to know why the victims couldn't take down one lone gunman -- and an Asian to boot -- while NBC reacts with sanctimonious delight as it finds itself with Cho’s press kit of Travis Bickel pictures and his multimedia mental meltdown.

“Network officials turned the material over to the FBI and said they would not immediately disclose its contents pending the agency’s review beyond characterizing the material as “disturbing.” It included a written communication, photographs and video."

Voices bleat how can we stop such a terrible event ever happening again? The answer is that we can’t, and secretly don’t want to, or we wouldn’t sell machine guns to the mentally disturbed with such merry abandon. The occasional mass murder is just the price tag on the right to bear arms. And, of course, a symptom the quiet fact that American popular culture just dotes on death.

(And as I write this highly unconfirmed rumors flicker across my computer of two people shot at University of Missouri and a triple homicide and a suicide in NY????)

BTW -- Today's bodycount in Baghdad was 183.

The secret word is Broken

THE WEIRDNESS DEEPENS

I believe this is what you become after graduating from being a space cadet.

Meanwhile HCB writes…
"This business about Ismail is far more interesting than the fox etc for-hire pundits who are blaming violent movies and video games. Scary though to see a new wave of campus violence related to important literary sources--some bible, some Melville, some Leonard Cohen. In my day our motivational source was more likely to be Bartleby the Scrivener--a classic of passive resistance. I'd be interested to see a panel of lit professors and bible intellectuals tackling this on Charlie Rose. Might like to see Hannity and O'Reilly scratching their heads on this one as well. I think your poem, "Murder Impulse" is worthy of any coffeehouse slam. I predict Ismail Ax will be the name of a band within three months--sorry to be so obvious. I haven't read the guy's plays, but they can be found here"

ISMAIL AX

The weirdness commences. Seemingly Cho Seung-Hui died with the words "Ismail Ax" in red ink on the inside of one of his arms. The scrabble to find a meaning is now spreading like an internet contagion. The following speculation comes from Prison Planet.

"In Islam, Ibrahim is known as the father of the prophets and, upset that people in his hometown still worshiped idols and not Allah, he smashed all but one statue in a local temple with an ax. Ibrahim's son is Ismail, who also became a prophet. Ibrahim is Arabic for Abraham, who plays a significant role in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Two theories come from literature, where Ismail is spelled Ishmael. In one, tied to James Fenimore Cooper's novel "The Prairie," Ishmael Bush is known as an outcast and outlawed warrior, according to an essay written in 1969 by William H. Goetzmann, a University of Texas History professor. In Cooper's book, "Bush carries the prime symbol of evil -- the spoiler's axe," the professor wrote. Also, the narrator from Moby Dick, Ishmael, is considered an enigma who is well educated yet considers his time on a whaling ship worthy of time at Yale or Harvard, according to education site Sparknotes.com."

The secret word is Disturbing

THE MURDER IMPULSE

MASS MURDER
MASS MURDER
MASS MURDER
MASS MURDER
MASS MURDER
MASS MURDER
MASS MURDER
MASS MURDER
CHANGE CHANNEL
MASS MURDER
MASS MURDER
MASS MURDER
MASS MURDER
CHANGE CHANNEL
MASS MURDER
MASS MURDER
MASS MURDER
MASS MURDER
MASS MURDER
CHANGE CHANNEL
MASS MURDER
MASS MURDER
CHANGE CHANNEL
MASS MURDER
CHANGE CHANNEL
CHANGE CHANNEL
CHANGE CHANNEL
MASS MURDER
CHANGE CHANNEL
CHANGE CHANNEL
MASS MURDER
CHANGE CHANNEL
CHANGE CHANNEL
CHANGE CHANNEL
(MASS MURDER?????)
or...

THE RETURN OF THE LONE GUNMAN

For the last hour or so I have stared at the TV, essentially watching nothing except meaningless images of cops in bullet proof vests, armed with automatic weapons, standing around looking grim as TV cameras troll like sharks in search of images, and voices babble non-information. All I learned is that some kid with a couple of pistols and a shitload of ammunition went on the rampage and killed and wounded a whole lot of people. I have been told countless times that this is a record for civilian mass slaughter in the USA, like massacre was some variety of bloody sporting event. It has been suggested that the shooter was oriental and thus a foreigner. One talking head wanted to involve rap music.(?) There would also appear to be some two-hour anomaly in the timeline, which is a dash of mystery in a situation in which I am really leaning nothing. I’m also being told that the President – a man who likes to do his mass killing from a long and comfortable distance – will be on TV in less than an hour. I don’t quite understand why. All I know was that I had to sit down and write this, away from CNN, because all my television is doing was providing me with an inert, unhealthy, and vicarious connection to sudden death on the other side of the country and, as I watched, I begin to feel wholly disgusted with myself and decidedly less than clean.

FIRST THE BURN THE BOOKS....

I believe this is some kind of celebration of Ray Bradburym but in this day and age, who the hell knows anything for sure.

CRYPTIQUE -- "And love is just a funeral pyre."

The folllowing was recieved earlier...
"I think that nice young man in the "Marijuana will mess you up" poster just needs to put some color on his walls,.....a few lamps and pillows - much happier....maybe butter yellow would be nice. Best wishes, W Phillips (Mrs) Purley, Surrey"

DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSIC'S #5

I think Dick Cheney read this as a young man (and maybe accepted it as a guide to crisis management.) I also note that 2040 is around the generally estimated date of the Singularity.



(And what is going on in the background?)

SUNDAY: SMOKE DOPE, MESS UP HEAD/LIFE

And after I’ve finished doing that, I’ll reread this linked poem and reflect on the fact that there are people out their who accept this sub-sentimental banality as an equivalent of art/reality, that they not only hold opinions molded by this kind of bathos, but they also get to vote.

The secret word is Challenged

CRYPTIQUE – “You know all the rules by now and the fire from the ice.”

Don Ho -- RIP

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

THIS BLOG IS STILL PROTECTED BY...

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?