THOSE DALEKS ARE IRRESISTABLE

While attempting to duck under the porn/cheesecake issue, it would seem that, in real life, human/robot love is on the rise (so to speak.) Valerie points out a fascinating tale recounted by Clive Thompson on Collision Detection (read the whole thing.)

At the Yuma Test Grounds in Arizona, the autonomous robot, 5 feet long and modeled on a stick-insect, strutted out for a live-fire test and worked beautifully, he says. Every time it found a mine, blew it up and lost a limb, it picked itself up and readjusted to move forward on its remaining legs, continuing to clear a path through the minefield. Finally it was down to one leg. Still, it pulled itself forward. Tilden was ecstatic. The machine was working splendidly. The human in command of the exercise, however -- an Army colonel -- blew a fuse. The colonel ordered the test stopped. “Why?” asked Tilden. “What's wrong?” The colonel just could not stand the pathos of watching the burned, scarred and crippled machine drag itself forward on its last leg. “This test,” he charged, “was inhumane.”

CRYPTIQUE – Don’t ask, don’t tell, Will Robinson.

The secret word is Anthropomorphic

A VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM NEWTON THE CAT

This is so simple a dog can do it. The Animal Rescue Site needs lots more people to click on it daily to meet their quota of the free food donated to abused and neglected animals. The way it works is that their corporate sponsors/advertisers donate food in exchange for advertising, but these donations are calculated by the number of hits on the site. Thus use the link above to go to the site, click on the purple box "fund food for animals". It doesn't cost you a thing and takes about a minute. It would probably take another minute to email the link to everyone you know. Do it now, humans.

The secret word is Purr

AUGURIES OF DOOM HEAT UP

As I both hoped and expected 12.21.12 seems to be taking hold on the peripheries of the collective dementia. A character with unlikely name of Mhynek delivers a load of foreboding.

"The complete loss of the honeybee will felt over the next 4 years. The sunspots are just starting. They will peak in 2011. Many things will change in the next four years. Expect a shortage of food, much death, followed by new dawn of enlightenment. This is how the 4th epoch of man ends and the 5th epoch of man begins after 13.0.0.0.0, you know this date as Dec 21st, 2012. The Mayans prophesied *that from 1999 we have 13 years to realize the changes in our conscious attitude to stray from the path of self-destruction and instead move onto a path that opens our consciousness to integrate us with all that exists. The Mayans knew that our Sun, or Kinich-Ahau, every so often synchronized with the enormous central galaxy. And from this central galaxy received a 'spark' of light, which causes the Sun to shine more intensely producing what our scientists call 'solar flares' as well as changes in the Sun's magnetic field. The Mayans say that this happens every 5,125 years. But also that this causes a displacement in the Earth’s rotation, and because of this movement great catastrophes would be produced."

Meanwhile the cash registers are ringing, right along with the death knell. Amazon.com shows more than 100 books on the subject, with titles like Doomsday 2012 and 2012: You Have a Choice! Spirituality conferences are already convening like "2012 Ascension Symposium," which promised, "Offer humanity global reassurance and change the Consciousness of the world." This would all seem to be shaping up to be much more fun than Y2K.

*Oh yeah, and you can watch an animated countdown of how long we have left!

CRYPTIQUE – Will the last one alive turn the lights out?

More bad news but it's in Mayan.

A VERY BAD IDEA OF YESTERYEAR

And, alas, as history has proved, Katy Manning's naked embrace of a Dalek did not make her a household name or even a global object of desire lusted after by millions.

The secret word is Davros

But if all of this is a little retro-sexist tacky or whatever, we recommend the fabulous...
Elephantcam

OR MAYBE EXTINCTION'S CLOSER THAN WE THINK

Astronomers have spotted a cataclysmic explosion that marked the death of a huge, distant star in a blast five times as bright and powerful as any they had seen previously. They said yesterday that a similar fate may be imminent for a star in Earth's galactic neighborhood. The size and energy of the newly recorded blast, 240 million light-years away, have already begun to transform scientific understanding of how especially large stars explode, and have left awestruck researchers concerned -- and a little excited -- about what might happen to the similarly enormous and unstable star closer to home.

The secret word is Boom!

And the numeric sequence is 12.21.12

CRYPTIQUE – It’s hard to make the transition from the unthinkable to the unspeakable.

SOME AFTERNOONS I THINK THIS SPECIES SHOULD BE EXTINCT

The way in which the story – and much more important, the hideous live cell phone footage -- of the death of 17-year-old Du’a Khalil Aswad has been orbiting the periphery of the mainstream media for days now greatly disturbs me. The teenager was stoned and kicked to death by a crowd of close to a thousand men because her family were from a minority Kurdish religious group called the Yezidi, and she was seeing a Sunni Muslim boy. Local security forces seemingly looked on, and the so-called "honour killing" was recorded by dozens of cell phones – modern technology for the 10th century – and are now circulating the internet like fucking snuff movies for the amusement of the mentally hideous. The dilemma is what does one do? Anyone with half a brain and an internet connection can find the footage in approximately 18 seconds. Maybe I should just keep quiet, but the images are in my mind and will not go away, and maybe silence really does equal death. I guess that’s one of the reasons I’m a fucking writer. So I can chronicle the multitude of ways men can find to shame and disgust me.

IS THIS REALLY KANSAS, TOTO?

"Clearly the goats don’t like it."

As we should probably have expected, the post-tornado devastation in Greensburg, Kansas has been massively exacerbated by half the Kansas National Guard being in Iraq and, as a result, ability to shift emergency equipment has been severely handicapped. Kansas (Dem) Gov. Kathleen Sebelius said the government’s response to the disaster was undermined by ongoing National Guard deployments to the Middle East. “I don’t think there is any question if you are missing trucks, Humvees and helicopters that the response is going to be slower, and the real victims here will be the residents of Greensburg.” Also having the totally unbelievable Sam Brownback as one of its Senators may also hamper Kansas more than a little. Brownback, who has spent all his time in the Senate fighting evolution, gay marriage, and broadcast indecency, is now running for the Republican nomination, as the GOP “Rapture” candidate.

MEANWHILE MISS TEMPLETON IS NOT AMUSED
"Mondays are bad enough as is, what with the going back to work and all, but when one comes home to a story on the evening news where one's president (strategically shaved chimp though he may be; we are still a republic when last checked, E Pluribus, Divided we Stand, No Money Down, etc. etc.) is freakin' COMING ON to the Queen of England in some mixture of Dallas used-car salesman sincerity crossed with ankle-bracelet wearing "bringing sexy back" predator charm, then one knows that the seventh seal is not only broken; it's long past its warranty. Cue the locusts."

NEW BOOK = NEW BOOK = NEW BOOK = NEW BOOK (See Saturday’s blatant self promotion.)

DENIZENS OF THE DEEP

Doc40 has published its share of bikini babes struggling with octopi, but, for a change, here is the real thing. (Octopi, not bikini babes.) From Collision Detection come the most amazing pictures of exotic deep-sea life, which have to be worth the time and effort. And also fab film of an octopus opening a bottle from Peromyscus.

The secret word is Fathom

MASSIVE MONDAY VONNEGUT

(image lifted from swac)

I couldn’t help it, when this piece came in from Subversive Ilene, I was going to cut out some parts to make it an easy-read length, but then I caught myself. I was going to start cutting up Kurt Vonnegut? Not a chance, Lance. So I just posted the whole damn thing as it was delivered.

The secret word is Word

“Do unto others what you would have them do unto you." A lot of people think Jesus said that, because it is so much the sort of thing Jesus liked to say. But it was actually said by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, five hundred years before there was that greatest and most humane of human beings, named Jesus Christ. The Chinese also gave us, via Marco Polo, pasta and the formula for gunpowder. The Chinese were so dumb they only used gunpowder for fireworks. And everybody was so dumb back then that nobody in either hemisphere even knew that there was another one.
We've sure come a long way since then. Sometimes I wish we hadn't. I hate H-bombs and the Jerry Springer Show. But back to people like Confucius and Jesus and my son the doctor, Mark, each of whom have said in their own way how we could behave more humanely and maybe make the world a less painful place. One of my favourite humans is Eugene Debs, from Terre Haute in my native state of Indiana. Get a load of this. Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was not yet four, ran five times as the Socialist party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, almost 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had this to say while campaigning:
"As long as there is a lower class, I am in it.
"As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it.
"As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
Doesn't anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools, or health insurance for all?
When you get out of bed each morning, with the roosters crowing, wouldn't you like to say. "As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
How about Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.
And so on.
Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly George W Bush, Dick Cheney, or Donald Rumsfeld stuff.
For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.
"Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break! It so happens that idealism enough for anyone is not made of perfumed pink clouds. It is the law! It is the US Constitution. But I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened instead is that it was taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d'état imaginable.
I was once asked if I had any ideas for a really scary reality TV show. I have one reality show that would really make your hair stand on end: "C-Students from Yale." George W Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka Christians, and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or PPs, the medical term for smart, personable people who have no consciences.
To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete's foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr Hervey Cleckley, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Medical College of Georgia, published in 1941. Read it!
Some people are born deaf, some are born blind or whatever, and this book is about congenitally defective human beings of a sort that is making this whole country and many other parts of the planet go completely haywire nowadays. These were people born without consciences, and suddenly they are taking charge of everything. PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!
And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And they are waging a war that is making billionaires out of millionaires, and trillionaires out of billionaires, and they own television, and they bankroll George Bush, and not because he's against gay marriage.
So many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick. They have taken charge. They have taken charge of communications and the schools, so we might as well be Poland under occupation. They might have felt that taking our country into an endless war was simply something decisive to do. What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. They are going to do something every fuckin' day and they are not afraid. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they don't give a fuck what happens next. Simply can't. Do this! Do that! Mobilise the reserves! Privatise the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody's telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass! There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: only nut cases want to be president. This was true even in high school. Only clearly disturbed people ran for class president.
The title of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 is a parody of the title of Ray Bradbury's great science-fiction novel Fahrenheit 451. Four hundred and fifty-one degrees Fahrenheit is the combustion point, incidentally, of paper, of which books are composed. The hero of Bradbury's novel is a municipal worker whose job is burning books.
While on the subject of burning books, I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and destroyed records rather than have to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.
So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House of Representatives, or the media. The America I loved still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.
And still on the subject of books: our daily news sources, newspapers and TV, are now so craven, so unvigilant on behalf of the American people, so uninformative, that only in books do we learn what's really going on. I will cite an example: House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger, published in early 2004, that humiliating, shameful, blood-soaked year.
In case you haven't noticed, as the result of a shamelessly rigged election in Florida, in which thousands of African-Americans were arbitrarily disenfranchised, we now present ourselves to the rest of the world as proud, grinning, jut-jawed, pitiless war-lovers with appallingly powerful weaponry - who stand unopposed. In case you haven't noticed, we are now as feared and hated all over the world as Nazis once were. And with good reason. In case you haven't noticed, our unelected leaders have dehumanised millions and millions of human beings simply because of their religion and race. We wound 'em and kill 'em and torture 'em and imprison 'em all we want.
Piece of cake.
In case you haven't noticed, we also dehumanised our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class. Send 'em anywhere. Make 'em do anything.
Piece of cake. The O'Reilly Factor. So I am a man without a country, except for the librarians and a Chicago paper called In These Times. Before we attacked Iraq, the majestic New York Times guaranteed there were weapons of mass destruction there.
Albert Einstein and Mark Twain gave up on the human race at the end of their lives, even though Twain hadn't even seen the first world war. War is now a form of TV entertainment, and what made the first world war so particularly entertaining were two American inventions, barbed wire and the machine gun. Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don't you wish you could have something named after you? Like my distinct betters Einstein and Twain, I now give up on people, too. I am a veteran of the second world war and I have to say this is not the first time I have surrendered to a pitiless war machine.
My last words? "Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse."Napalm came from Harvard. Veritas
Our president is a Christian? So was Adolf Hitler. What can be said to our young people, now that psychopathic personalities, which is to say persons without consciences, without senses of pity or shame, have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations, and made it all their own?”
© 2005 Kurt Vonnegut Extracted from A Man Without A Century: A Memoir of Life in George W Bush's America.

NEW BOOK = NEW BOOK = NEW BOOK = NEW BOOK (See Saturday’s blatant self promotion.)

DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSIC'S #9

“She was practiced in the art of…"

STRAWBERRY SPEED FOREVER

You gotta read this one and also watch the video. Candy flavored crystal meth? Do I ask myself what they’ll think of next? I can think of little else to add except that I really had better get my definitive book on amphetamines written while the rapidly diminishing literate public still has enough brain cells to read it. Beyond that, I can only accept the concept as further confirmation that the world is very definitely going to hell, quite as predicted, in whatever metaphoric receptacle you care to select.

The secrets words are Bleeding Man

CRYPTIQUE – Maybe, sometimes, you just might find you can actually get what you want.

NEW BOOK = NEW BOOK = NEW BOOK = NEW BOOK (See yesterday’s blatant self promotion.)

BLATANT SELF PROMOTION

I have a new non-fiction book out called
WHO’S WATCHING YOU?
Published by Disinformation, and currently at fine stores and Amazon.com -- but you need the US edition. There is a Brit version by John Gibb in which I had no hand.
The blurb reads…
“The threat of terrorism and the corresponding climate of fear encouraged by the government have together eroded our freedom to live our lives in peace and quiet away from the prying eyes of hidden cameras. The government is tightening its grip on us by watching and recording what we do. They are doing this because they know they can and because knowledge is power. But exactly who are "they" and why do they want to know so much about us? This book includes chilling, accurate, and up-to-date descriptions of the methods the government (and private company proxies) use to watch us.”

Buy one. Buy two. Scare yourself shitless at all the creepy stuff they're doing to you.

MAYBE NOT ELVIS AND TENNESSEE, BUT...

A rare and very blurry picture of poet Michael McLure, giving the finger, followed by Jim Morrison with a beard and six pack of Bud, and maybe or maybe not Pamela Morrison with her head down. (Sent by fidicen)

A MORAL QUESTION MARK

Should with I have laughed with quite such unrestrained glee when I heard that Paris Hilton got 45 days in Sybil Brandt or some similar slam or correctional institution for violating her DWI parole? What was that Dylan couplet – “And that even the nobles get properly handled/Once that cops have chased after and caught them/And that the ladder of law has no top or no bottom”? Seemingly, though, Hilton will be in some kind of isolation for her own protection which I guess means a lot of disappointed diesels.

The secret word is Time

CRYPTIQUE – But it doesn’t apply to me, does it?

ODD, ANYWAY YOU LOOK AT IT

ALSO I have a reflection on guns and death in this week's LA CityBeat. Seems to go well with the the pic of Elvis and Tennessee. (Although a pic of Tennessee and Hank Williams, now that would be something. Right?)

WALLOW WITH EAGLES

I am in that unhappy state of being damned busy and fucking tired. No time or energy to be original, but here, to preserve continuity, is a very important philosopical statement from the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, contributed by the very excellent fidicen.

‘From somewhere deep in my memory, I heard a snatch of some half-remembered conversation between a construction worker and a bartender at a bar in Colorado. The construction man was explaining why he shouldn’t have another drink: “You can’t wallow with the pigs at night and then soar with the eagles in the morning,” he said. I thought briefly on this, then shrugged it off. My own situation was totally different, I felt. In about three hours, I was supposed to be down on the docks with my camera and tape recorder to spend another day on one of those goddamn boats. No, I thought, that geek in Colorado had it all wrong. The real problem is how to wallow with the eagles at night and then soar with the pigs in the morning.’ –Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt

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.”