Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Monday, April 23, 2012
LEAVE IT TO BERTOLT
On a wet
Monday morning, how better to duck coming to grips with reality that giving the
floor to a German playwright. He might, however, have added conservative
candidates for political office to his list.
Click here
for P.J.Harvey
The secret
word is Educate
THE FROZDICK FAMILY
Ward and June Frozdick were found to be wholly and completely normal even after rigorous testing. One researcher described their normality “frightening.”
Sunday, April 22, 2012
SUNDAY BREAKFAST
As the
world waxes increasingly surreal, and the wake of dreams glows luminous even
after waking, the poet cracks his egg and perceives – to his dire horror – an
eye. A fucking eye? Poe or Lovecraft? Wither the chicken and the road uncrossed? The egg-eye stares
back at him with what might be reproach. Does it resent his importunate morning
intrusion? Or was it too long a night in the Saturn Lounge with girls of the
Toad Forest? Should he fear that some albumen revenge will be meted out to him
when he is low and least expecting the maybe deserved untoward? Or is it simply
that, on this bright April day, it his mind has finally cracked with the rising
of the a rooster morning sun and reason has snapped and hallucination holds
sway, consigning him to an eternal landscape of fissured pavements, Granada
cloudscapes, distorted limbs, and soft slither-sliding chronometers? Or is it just
that the yolk is one him?
Click here for Julie London
The secret
word is Shriek
Saturday, April 21, 2012
BP JUST KEEPS ON GIVING
Disasters
occur and then they fall from a fickle news cycle, but just because the
universal attention span is lamentably short it does not mean the horrors have
abated.
“Scientists studying the Gulf of Mexico are reporting
alarming rates of deformities in marine-life, including 'horribly mutated
shrimp, fish with oozing sores, underdeveloped blue crabs lacking claws, and
eyeless crabs and shrimp'. Findings show that the grotesque mutations are a
direct result of chemicals released from the BP oil spill in 2010.
Collapsing fisheries and deteriorating ecosystems in the Gulf,
such as steadily depleting coral life, have also raised concerns. "The
fishermen have never seen anything like this," Dr Jim Cowan told Al
Jazeera. "And in my 20 years working on red snapper, looking at somewhere
between 20 and 30,000 fish, I've never seen anything like this either."
"Given that the Gulf of Mexico provides more than 40
per cent of all the seafood caught in the continental US, this phenomenon does
not bode well for the region, or the country," writes Dahr Jamail for
Al-Jazeera.” (Click here for more)
Click here for Marc (looking like he’d been walking the charlie.)
Friday, April 20, 2012
HERE COMES THE EUROCLYSM
Yesterday I
was rubbishing the USA, but Europe is also on the path to seeming destruction.
Paul Krugman, my favourite economist, laid out the cliff edge scenario in the
NY Times.
So if European leaders really wanted to save the euro they
would be looking for an alternative course. And the shape of such an
alternative is actually fairly clear. The Continent needs more expansionary
monetary policies, in the form of a willingness — an announced willingness
— on the part of the European Central Bank to accept somewhat higher inflation;
it needs more expansionary fiscal policies, in the form of budgets in Germany
that offset austerity in Spain and other troubled nations around the
Continent’s periphery, rather than reinforcing it. Even with such policies, the
peripheral nations would face years of hard times. But at least there would be
some hope of recovery.
What we’re actually seeing, however, is complete
inflexibility. In March, European leaders signed a fiscal pact that in effect
locks in fiscal austerity as the response to any and all problems. Meanwhile,
key officials at the central bank are making a point of emphasizing the bank’s
willingness to raise rates at the slightest hint of higher inflation.
So it’s hard to avoid a sense of despair. Rather than admit
that they’ve been wrong, European leaders seem determined to drive their
economy — and their society — off a cliff. And the whole world will pay the
price. (Click here for more)
Click here for The Who
The secret
word is Fools
Levon Helm – RIP
Thursday, April 19, 2012
WHEN STUPIDITY BECOMES LAW
Sometimes I think I came back home in the nick of time.
“Tennessee, you will recall, is the proud home of the famous “Monkey Trial of 1925” in which John Scopes, a high school science instructor, was prosecuted for teaching evolution. These days the forces of anti-thinking don't simply deny the science, they demand that ignorance be given equal time. David Fowler, a former state senator and head of the Family Action Councli of Tennessee who helped craft the bill aided and abetted by a creationist front group called (with no discernable irony) the Discovery Institute, complains that Tennessee textbooks call the Genesis story a "creation myth" – as opposed to revealed truth. Moreover, teachers don't present a "balanced" view of evolution. They don't present a "balanced" view of the laws of gravity, the speed of light and the fact that the earth revolves around the sun, either. And speaking of heliocentrism, James Inhofe of Oklahoma likes to compare himself to Galileo Galilei. He's persecuted for proclaiming that "global warming is a hoax". The form of his persecution is somewhat unclear: he's a US senator rolling in cash courtesy of oil and gas corporations. This somehow qualifies him to say that while 97% of climate scientists accept anthropogenic climate change, that "doesn't mean anything". His peer-reviewed journal of choice is the Bible: "Genesis 8:22: 'as long as the earth remains there will be springtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night'. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous." Click here for more.
Click here for Idiot Wind
The secret word is Cretinous
LIKE THE OPENING SCENE OF A PORN MOVIE
I don’t know why exactly -- maybe it's just the grainy b&w -- but when I first saw this picture of Elvis and Jeannie C. Riley clearly getting acquainted it wholly reminded me of the opening scene in some vintage porn reel. Or maybe it’s just an illusion of my badly warped mind.
Click here for Harper Valley PTA
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
ICE STATION ZEBRA REVISITED
While the oil barons spend fortunes to play down obvious climate change, the military are far more pragmatic. They just move in to secure what used to be under the ice.
“While the corporate media continues to keep alive a false narrative that the world's scientists are still divided over global climate change - new reports show the military has moved beyond that debate. The Associated Press reports today that "to the world's military leaders, the debate over climate change is long over." Instead, military planners from a number of nations that border the Arctic are gearing up for a new cold war - a battle for control of the vast treasure of mineral and oil resources and control of new, strategic sea lanes. As the ice cap melts, the war for the North Pole is heating up. Greenpeace reported last year: "Wikileaks releases... have shown the Arctic oil rush is not just a threat to the environment and our climate, but also to peace." Click here for more.
Click here for Viking Kittens (and oldie but goodie)
The secret word is Scramble
SERIOUSLY, THOUGH, DON’T YOU FIND WONDER WOMAN KINDA WEIRD?
(I mean, all that lariat bondage and the invisible plane?)
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
IS THIS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS?
Maybe. I was kind amused that the North Korean Unha-3 orbital rocket fell apart right after launch, but that’s not going to be the end of it. I guess if the psychedelics are strong enough when the nukes fly I’ll go out grinning. But there are still a few months to go until December 21st and all those scenarios of doom.
Click here for Billy Idol
SEXUAL HUMILIATION – STATE CONTROL
The US Supreme Court has decided that cops can strip and cavity search just about anyone anytime. Naomi Wolf doesn’t think so.
“Our surveillance state has shown considerable determination to intrude on citizens sexually. There's the sexual abuse of prisoners at Bagram – der Spiegel reports that "former inmates report incidents of … various forms of sexual humiliation. In some cases, an interrogator would place his penis along the face of the detainee while he was being questioned. Other inmates were raped with sticks or threatened with anal sex". There was the stripping of Bradley Manning is solitary confinement. And there's the policy set up after the story of the "underwear bomber" to grope US travelers genitally or else force them to go through a machine – made by a company, Rapiscan, owned by terror profiteer and former DHA czar Michael Chertoff – with images so vivid that it has been called the "pornoscanner". Believe me: you don't want the state having the power to strip your clothes off. History shows that the use of forced nudity by a state that is descending into fascism is powerfully effective in controlling and subduing populations. The political use of forced nudity by anti-democratic regimes is long established. Forcing people to undress is the first step in breaking down their sense of individuality and dignity and reinforcing their powerlessness. Enslaved women were sold naked on the blocks in the American south, and adolescent male slaves served young white ladies at table in the south, while they themselves were naked: their invisible humiliation was a trope for their emasculation.” Click here for more
(But let’s not forget that sexual humiliation can be endless fun when consensual and private.)
Click here for Trash Palace
The secret world is Bullyboy
Monday, April 16, 2012
BUT WHERE EXACTLY DO WE GO FROM HERE?
When the Bolsheviks too over Imperial Russia and created the Soviet Union, when the grunts on the Russian front turned around and shot their officers, when Cossacks were unleashed against women and children but even that brutality failed, a political, economic and social theory had already been served up by Karl Marx, ready to go, one size fits all, and Communism with all of its strengths and flaws was the order of the day and ruled. Today it’s a very different story. Alan Greenspan, in the wake of 2008, admitted that modern capitalism no longer had any philosophical foundation short of Gordon Gekko greed, and – on our side – we would be hard pressed to claim a philosophy or theory of a new revolution. My gut feeling is that some kind of post-cyber, post Trotsky, post-Guevara IWW, global, neo-anarcho-syndicalism may what’s needed, but I don’t have the recipe. I am just not that kind of clever bastard. But someone has to be working on it, don’t they? I mean, don't they?
Click here for Aretha
The secret words are Cunning and Plan
Sunday, April 15, 2012
SUNDAY BREAKFAST
The biblical allegation is that the meek shall inherit the earth, but I’ve never quite seen it that way. All too often the gross, the greedy, the grasping the brutal, the ruthless, the exploitative, the mendacious, the materially flagrant, the tres chic, the sexually manipulative, the sociopaths, the slash and burn entrepreneurs, and the bastards who can afford good accountants are the ones who pick up most of the available marbles and it requires constant vigilance and a readiness to resist on the part of the rest of us just to hang onto the basic requirements of survival.
Click here for Bruce Cockburn
The secret word is Levelling
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
.JPG)
