DOCTOR ZIMBARDO AND HIS EXPERIMENT
Seems like Doc40 stays about 48 hours ahead of the news media. Two days after Jett had reminded us all of the Stamford experiment with prisoners and guards, it was all over MSNBC and our local Fox News (and those were only the ones that I saw) neatly packaged, along with a up-to-the-minute sound bite of the good doctor himself, like some government spin control office had the whole thing ready to go in case the whole subject of torture became public, and the “aberration” case needed to be made. (See yesterday.)
BUT LET’S NOT FORGET...
Fox Butterfield writes in today's NY Times...
Physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, similar to what has been uncovered in Iraq, takes place in American prisons with little public knowledge or concern, according to corrections officials, inmates and human rights advocates...The corrections experts say that some of the worst abuses have occurred in Texas, whose prisons were under a federal consent decree during much of the time President Bush was governor because of crowding and violence by guards against inmates. Judge William Wayne Justice of Federal District Court imposed the decree after finding that guards were allowing inmate gang leaders to buy and sell other inmates as slaves for sex. The experts also point out that the man who directed the reopening of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last year and trained the guards there resigned under pressure as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after an inmate died while shackled to a restraining chair for 16 hours. The inmate, who suffered from schizophrenia, was kept naked the whole time. The Utah official, Lane McCotter, later became an executive of a private prison company, one of whose jails was under investigation by the Justice Department when he was sent to Iraq as part of a team of prison officials, judges, prosecutors and police chiefs picked by Attorney General John Ashcroft to rebuild the country's criminal justice system.
THE BUGGERS ARE AT IT AGAIN
Another position statement comes from the Netherlands-based Buggers, and is reproduced below. (Although I did cut a lengthy first paragraph about pulling down Saddam’s statue in Iraq, partly because I felt there’d been enough talk about Iraq this weekend, and also because it made the thing much too long.)
The use of vandalism to undermine the ideology behind official art or the media has been an effective strategy of revolutionary art in Western societies since the early 20th century. In fact, the vandalistic techniques developed by Duchamp, Picabia, Heartfield, Burroughs & Gysin, Guy Debord, the Dutch Provo movement, Destroy All Monsters, and many others, have proved
to be vital impulses to Western art, literature, music and thought. In its purest form vandalism is no more than the destruction of capital or property. But even this seemingly uncomplicated form of vandalism has led to vital and complex art, music and thought. We already mentioned Gustav Metzger's auto-destructive art in our position #1, but now also think of people as various as John Cage, Dick Raaijmakers, Iggy & The Stooges, and The MC5*. The controlled but real destruction of goods during performances refuses to represent anything else. It blows up all representation, and radically forces the spectators to face the void. Dangerous buggers! Seemingly more complex techniques of vandalism adding something to objects, taking something from them, damaging them in various degrees, etc. can be summarised as hostile modifications of objects, and range from the simplest drawings in school diaries to the attack on national monuments. Duchamp demonstrated in his modification of a reproduction of the Mona Lisa (using the schoolboy's technique of adding a moustache and an obscene subscript) that vandalism can give access to the unconscious, much like the Freudian joke or lapsus. Burroughs & Gysin's cut-up technique shows that hostile modification can induce paranoid lucidity and disclose covert
ideologies and connections. But the sheer impact of ridiculising, sexualising, desexualising, cursing, damaging, etc. can be effective too.
As long as its powerful and loud enough. Vandalism offers a wide range of possibilities to change the perception of reality, to expose the ideologies and mental constructions that define objects in public space (Space in its broadest sense, also including television, the internet, language and history). Anti-vandalism regulations and measures determine to a considerable extent the design, construction and choice of materials in public space. This, together with the increasing surveillance and control of public space, makes it fair to say that we live in an environment of suppressed vandalism. The suppression of vandalism is not synonymous with public order but is an important part of it. In Western capitalist societies public order mainly serves the protection of property, investments and the conservation of ideologically valuable goods. For that reason The Buggers believe that vandalism directly undermines the grip of Western capitalist industries on citizens, and that strategic use of vandalistic techniques is a powerful weapon in reclaiming public space. At present the Robert Johnson collective in Paris demonstrate that deconstructing advertisements and reclaiming public space through vandalism forces the capitalist industries to expose their repressive nature. Bugger on!
The Buggers are hosted by: Sea Urchin Editions, PO Box 25212, 3001 HE Rotterdam, The Netherlands, email: the.buggers@sea-urchin.net
* I was kinda surprised, however, at the omission of Pete Townshend, Keith Moon and The Who. I recall one of the first times I ever spoke to Pete was at a 1967 after-party for DIAS (Gustav Metzger's Destruction In Art Symposium) at which an upright piano was sacrificed.
CRYPTIQUE – M...m...m...my g...g...generation.
Saturday, May 08, 2004
Friday, May 07, 2004
THAT WAS THE WEEK (WASN’T IT?)
I catch myself in repetition, describing over and over again how my mind whirls at current events as they stream from the TV, from the corporate online news and from newspapers and magazines, and how, after a week like the one through which we have all just passed, the emails to Doc40, Howard Stern, and alleged crazy people make more logical sense than those who are foisted on us as experts. When I hear a fool like David Brookes on PBS News Hour blandly claiming that the systematic torture of prisoners is just an “aberration” I start to want to scream. It’s in all the CIA torture manuals, goddamn it! Chapter and verse. Disorientation and degradation. All that’s missing is what has to be a new addendum on how to attack Moslem prisoners via their weird sexual mores. (A gift from Sharon/Mossad?) As in get girls to attach the electrodes. The outrage burns so intensely that it would take an major essay to organize, so instead, let me just huf and puff offer a shit-list of the unfocused impressions...
1) For once, the military-intelligence complex is doing its own dirty work. A history of torture extends from Saigon to El Salvador, but was usually conducted by local proxies. The CIA and Special Forces may have trained the torturers, but the deeds themselves were done, more often than not, by ARVN, the Arena Party death squads, or the local secret police hot out of the School of the Americas at Fort Benning. Plausible deniability? I guess the Bush boys were in too much of a hurry, or simply, in their arrogance, assumed that, after 9/11, they could get away with anything.
2) Why the fuck did we expect anything different. Neocoms like Ann Coulter have been shrieking for years how anything goes when smiting the evildoers.
3) Danger in all this talk of the Zimbardo experiment. (Thanx Jett – see the infamous comments board) It’s already been picked up by Bush media hacks as proof of the “aberration” defense. Like, you know, it was just stress-related weirdness. Yarbles, I say. Yarblockos. And refer everyone back to1).
4) And didn’t Harry Palmer long ago point out that torture was ultimately pointless, because torturers only get told what they want to hear.
5) Meanwhile the poor busted MP grunts cry, “I was only following orders” – the mantra of Nazi war criminals. Except, at Nuremberg, the brass was on trial. Again in their arrogance, the Bush crew seem to believe they can stem the destructive tide with the courts martial of a few rank and file military police. Blame it on Pvt. England, She Wolf of the US.
6) Bush and his handlers have not only started a war under the most inconceivable of pretexts, but are now managing to lose it. In a parliamentary democracy, Rumsfeld would have been forced to resign weeks ago, and Bush, were he prime minister, would be fighting off a Vote of No Confidence and removal from office. As it stands, almost half the country still thing he’s a great guy doing a grand job. Who the hell are these people? Are they so lumpen deluged by Friends, Jesus, snacks, and American Idol they believe any garbage that’s fed to them?
7) Okay, forget the plain benighted folks, what about Disney? Suppressing Michael Moore and the story of Bush and the Saudis until after the election, because of some short term business interests? Who do they imagine is going consume their damned movies and dopy theme parks when the economy is wrecked, a pointless war drags on, and the nation is in a state of Homeland siege?
8) Or what about John bloody Kerry. Where’s the towering condemnatory rhetoric? Where’s the wrath and the power? Yesterday I heard him mumble a sound bite phrase, something about “a huge historical miscalculation”, but delivered like a schoolboy buying condoms in an old fashioned drug store. Are his handlers telling him to stay out of the fray? Is this a tactic? Am I naive to expect more?
9) And at this point, I feel myself running out of steam. History is so tiring, my dears. But I can’t help wondering when some swine in the White House will start wondering if strapping electrodes to domestic enemies might be a workable idea? Or if, at the other end of the sado-fantasy, any Washington domination parlor has opened its very own Baghdad Room? *
10) Is there anyone out there who knows DC and its surrounds really well, and can suggest a fictitious address where a ultra high class, s&m bordello might be situated? *I feel prank fiction coming on. (Maybe I should offer stuff as a prize.)
Hey, it’s a Letterman Ten, how about that?
CRYPTIQUE – Boots and saddles.
I catch myself in repetition, describing over and over again how my mind whirls at current events as they stream from the TV, from the corporate online news and from newspapers and magazines, and how, after a week like the one through which we have all just passed, the emails to Doc40, Howard Stern, and alleged crazy people make more logical sense than those who are foisted on us as experts. When I hear a fool like David Brookes on PBS News Hour blandly claiming that the systematic torture of prisoners is just an “aberration” I start to want to scream. It’s in all the CIA torture manuals, goddamn it! Chapter and verse. Disorientation and degradation. All that’s missing is what has to be a new addendum on how to attack Moslem prisoners via their weird sexual mores. (A gift from Sharon/Mossad?) As in get girls to attach the electrodes. The outrage burns so intensely that it would take an major essay to organize, so instead, let me just huf and puff offer a shit-list of the unfocused impressions...
1) For once, the military-intelligence complex is doing its own dirty work. A history of torture extends from Saigon to El Salvador, but was usually conducted by local proxies. The CIA and Special Forces may have trained the torturers, but the deeds themselves were done, more often than not, by ARVN, the Arena Party death squads, or the local secret police hot out of the School of the Americas at Fort Benning. Plausible deniability? I guess the Bush boys were in too much of a hurry, or simply, in their arrogance, assumed that, after 9/11, they could get away with anything.
2) Why the fuck did we expect anything different. Neocoms like Ann Coulter have been shrieking for years how anything goes when smiting the evildoers.
3) Danger in all this talk of the Zimbardo experiment. (Thanx Jett – see the infamous comments board) It’s already been picked up by Bush media hacks as proof of the “aberration” defense. Like, you know, it was just stress-related weirdness. Yarbles, I say. Yarblockos. And refer everyone back to1).
4) And didn’t Harry Palmer long ago point out that torture was ultimately pointless, because torturers only get told what they want to hear.
5) Meanwhile the poor busted MP grunts cry, “I was only following orders” – the mantra of Nazi war criminals. Except, at Nuremberg, the brass was on trial. Again in their arrogance, the Bush crew seem to believe they can stem the destructive tide with the courts martial of a few rank and file military police. Blame it on Pvt. England, She Wolf of the US.
6) Bush and his handlers have not only started a war under the most inconceivable of pretexts, but are now managing to lose it. In a parliamentary democracy, Rumsfeld would have been forced to resign weeks ago, and Bush, were he prime minister, would be fighting off a Vote of No Confidence and removal from office. As it stands, almost half the country still thing he’s a great guy doing a grand job. Who the hell are these people? Are they so lumpen deluged by Friends, Jesus, snacks, and American Idol they believe any garbage that’s fed to them?
7) Okay, forget the plain benighted folks, what about Disney? Suppressing Michael Moore and the story of Bush and the Saudis until after the election, because of some short term business interests? Who do they imagine is going consume their damned movies and dopy theme parks when the economy is wrecked, a pointless war drags on, and the nation is in a state of Homeland siege?
8) Or what about John bloody Kerry. Where’s the towering condemnatory rhetoric? Where’s the wrath and the power? Yesterday I heard him mumble a sound bite phrase, something about “a huge historical miscalculation”, but delivered like a schoolboy buying condoms in an old fashioned drug store. Are his handlers telling him to stay out of the fray? Is this a tactic? Am I naive to expect more?
9) And at this point, I feel myself running out of steam. History is so tiring, my dears. But I can’t help wondering when some swine in the White House will start wondering if strapping electrodes to domestic enemies might be a workable idea? Or if, at the other end of the sado-fantasy, any Washington domination parlor has opened its very own Baghdad Room? *
10) Is there anyone out there who knows DC and its surrounds really well, and can suggest a fictitious address where a ultra high class, s&m bordello might be situated? *I feel prank fiction coming on. (Maybe I should offer stuff as a prize.)
Hey, it’s a Letterman Ten, how about that?
CRYPTIQUE – Boots and saddles.
Wednesday, May 05, 2004
THE OLD ONES ARE THE BEST
As in the old CND recruiting poster parody...
JOIN THE ARMY
VISIT EXOTIC LANDS
MEET INTERESTING PEOPLE
AND KILL THEM
(Except now we can add...and if any are left alive, strip them naked, put plastic bags on their heads, and attach electrodes to their genitals -- and then put a saddle on their grandmother and ride her around the cell.)
Or there was Simon de Montfort, who had it all going on with slaughtering infidels and heretics in the 12th century, and who operated according to the maxim...Kill 'em all and let God sort it out.
And was it Barry Goldwater or the Marquis de Sade who claimed that...A measure of excess in the defense of freedom is never a bad thing?
THE HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH
The story circulates that the real reason Disney are attempting to bury Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 -- that demonstrates the links between GWB and the Saudi royals -- is that Jeb Bush has leaned on them, threatening Disney World's Florida tax breaks if the film sees the light of day before the election.
I also understand that Homeland Defense has a truly lunatic plan to start fucking with the Muslims in the Federal Corrections gulag. I wish them luck. My money is on the jailhouse Muslims.
But don't despair, (and talking of prisoners) Charlie Manson will be on today's Entertainment Tonight.
CRYPTIQUE -- Leave the bottle.
As in the old CND recruiting poster parody...
JOIN THE ARMY
VISIT EXOTIC LANDS
MEET INTERESTING PEOPLE
AND KILL THEM
(Except now we can add...and if any are left alive, strip them naked, put plastic bags on their heads, and attach electrodes to their genitals -- and then put a saddle on their grandmother and ride her around the cell.)
Or there was Simon de Montfort, who had it all going on with slaughtering infidels and heretics in the 12th century, and who operated according to the maxim...Kill 'em all and let God sort it out.
And was it Barry Goldwater or the Marquis de Sade who claimed that...A measure of excess in the defense of freedom is never a bad thing?
THE HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH
The story circulates that the real reason Disney are attempting to bury Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 -- that demonstrates the links between GWB and the Saudi royals -- is that Jeb Bush has leaned on them, threatening Disney World's Florida tax breaks if the film sees the light of day before the election.
I also understand that Homeland Defense has a truly lunatic plan to start fucking with the Muslims in the Federal Corrections gulag. I wish them luck. My money is on the jailhouse Muslims.
But don't despair, (and talking of prisoners) Charlie Manson will be on today's Entertainment Tonight.
CRYPTIQUE -- Leave the bottle.
Tuesday, May 04, 2004
I SEE YOUR HAIR IS BURNING
While well aware that no one outside the LA basin gives a rat’s ass that the city is going through it’s second cruel and unusual heatwave in eight days, and most are probably bored with my complaints like how yesterday’s 101F totally derailed your humble correspondent and the wonders he desires to perform. My theory is that the unseasonable temperatures are another symptom of global warming, and the waters of the Pacific are in entirely the wrong place (a idea possibly supported by yesterday’s TV panic about sharks – maybe great whites – in the bay.) Kaymo, on the other hand, emails what may be a different, but equally alarmist explanation...
Commiserations etc. but there may be something else going on... article in NY Times this Sunday indicated that scientists are finally coming around to accept what archaeologists and hydrologists have been saying for quite a while.. the 20th century was freakishly wet in the Western USA. Now in 6th year of drought the thought is occurring that maybe there will be a return to the real dry times, like those between 900 AD and 1300 when so little rain fell that even the Anaszazi abandoned their settlements in Arizona and New Mexico. The question that has to be asked is what will the millions of Americans now living in a desert do if – for instance – the Colorado River simply stops flowing? (and the cost of fetching water from Alaska or British Columbia remains prohibitive)
On a deeper level than the weather, however, or even the climatic fate of Los Angeles, the great problem of the 21st century is that exchanges like the above finish up blowing in the wind while communications are bowed down under the weight of Bush and his bloody war, the sadism of his minions, the short-attention-span unscrupulousness of his corporate backers, and the madness of his fundamentalist support. We don't even have the time to discuss whether the Anaszazi moved away or were kidnapped en masse by aliens any more. (Or how the aliens seemed to move out when Bush moved in.)
And talking of blowing in the wind, I hear that Bob Dylan wants to be a judge on American Idol. Senses taking leave? Jeez. But maybe more about Bob tomorrow.
Meanwhile, our pal hipspinster writes about Mustangs, heat, and Pixies at http://hipspinster.blogspot.com
CRYPTIQUE – Please notify my next of kin.
While well aware that no one outside the LA basin gives a rat’s ass that the city is going through it’s second cruel and unusual heatwave in eight days, and most are probably bored with my complaints like how yesterday’s 101F totally derailed your humble correspondent and the wonders he desires to perform. My theory is that the unseasonable temperatures are another symptom of global warming, and the waters of the Pacific are in entirely the wrong place (a idea possibly supported by yesterday’s TV panic about sharks – maybe great whites – in the bay.) Kaymo, on the other hand, emails what may be a different, but equally alarmist explanation...
Commiserations etc. but there may be something else going on... article in NY Times this Sunday indicated that scientists are finally coming around to accept what archaeologists and hydrologists have been saying for quite a while.. the 20th century was freakishly wet in the Western USA. Now in 6th year of drought the thought is occurring that maybe there will be a return to the real dry times, like those between 900 AD and 1300 when so little rain fell that even the Anaszazi abandoned their settlements in Arizona and New Mexico. The question that has to be asked is what will the millions of Americans now living in a desert do if – for instance – the Colorado River simply stops flowing? (and the cost of fetching water from Alaska or British Columbia remains prohibitive)
On a deeper level than the weather, however, or even the climatic fate of Los Angeles, the great problem of the 21st century is that exchanges like the above finish up blowing in the wind while communications are bowed down under the weight of Bush and his bloody war, the sadism of his minions, the short-attention-span unscrupulousness of his corporate backers, and the madness of his fundamentalist support. We don't even have the time to discuss whether the Anaszazi moved away or were kidnapped en masse by aliens any more. (Or how the aliens seemed to move out when Bush moved in.)
And talking of blowing in the wind, I hear that Bob Dylan wants to be a judge on American Idol. Senses taking leave? Jeez. But maybe more about Bob tomorrow.
Meanwhile, our pal hipspinster writes about Mustangs, heat, and Pixies at http://hipspinster.blogspot.com
CRYPTIQUE – Please notify my next of kin.
Sunday, May 02, 2004
FROM THE EMAIL
In LA, the disturbing climate cycle is now in a repeat phase and the temps promise to climb into the Fahrenheit hundreds again. Mercifully stuff keeps coming down the ether and today (after taking yesterday off) I don’t have to write too much. The following comes from Ben, and although I’m pretty sure I don’t agree with the call for a new desexualization, it’s a fun piece of theorizing that I hope stimulates thought. I fear, however, that Ben and his crew make little distinction between (say) Britney Spears and the Maquis de Sade, when, on days of more intense cultural desperation, I’m prone to muse on the idea of how, in some timeless libertine dimension, the former might be handed to the latter for an education...
BUGGER!
Although the discoveries in the USA and Great-Britain of photographs ofAmerican and British soldiers torturing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners should make us wary and wonder if their simultaneous disclosures aren't a deliberate move in Anglo-American war propaganda to demoralise the enemy, they do reveal an aspect of the clash between Western capitalism and Islam hitherto less manifest. The most striking feature, the overall atmosphere of the photographs, is a sexual one. Sexually active champions of capitalism are opposed to sexually passive Muslims, or Muslims are forced to take part in sexual activities against their will. Sexual abuse of Muslims, especially by female soldiers, has also been reported by prisoners released from the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp. At the same time in several Western European countries the controversy about headscarves worn by muslim girls and women has grown to absurd proportions. Wearing a headscarf (an instrument to desexualise girls and women) by pupils and/or teachers has
already been forbidden at all schools in France, and at conservative schools in Germany and Holland. The fury that this traditional symbol of desexualisation evokes in capitalist countries and the perverse delight with which muslim girls and women are forced to expose themselves in public show similarities with the sexual harassment revealed in the recently published photographs. For that reason we, The Buggers, believe that sexualisation has become a capitalist strategy in the conquest of its opponents.
Based on the theories of Marx and on misinterpretations of Freud the sexual liberation of the masses used to be a revolutionary strategy to bring down a repressive capitalist system and its bourgeois values and social structures. Western revolutionary art in the 20th century embraced this strategy, from surrealism to Beat poetry to the counter-cultural art of the sixties and seventies. Although the pursuit of individual sexual freedom has brought about many positive changes in capitalist societies, it failed to undo the capitalist system itself. We now know that the strength of the capitalist system lies in its absolute lack of morals and its subsequent ability to absorb the moral force of its opponents, only to pervert it for commercial purposes. Now, instead of pursuing sexual freedom and changing society in the course of it, the masses find themselves chasing the sexual mirages produced by the capitalist industry - without ever finding gratification. The capitalist system deliberately keeps its sexually emancipated consumers in a prolonged sexual frenzy. Bugger it!
Since Lacan's interpretation of Freud we know that sexual desire centres around a void, a lost 'object', and that it can never be really satisfied. An endless string of ungratifying substitutes for the lost object marks the trail of individual sexual realisation. Capitalist industries consciously exploit this phenomenon; they promise sexual fulfillment, provide eroticised substitutes for the lost object, know how to sell them, and make huge profits in doing so. Desexualisation, the refusal to become part of a public sexualised circuit, poses a genuine threat to capitalism. Anti-capitalist cultures and religions, and particularly individuals or groups within capitalist societies that scorn sexualised consumerism, have come to symbolise the origin of the sexual desire that capitalism feeds on: the void, the nothingness. They shatter the illusion constructed to keep consumers prisoners of their own desires and must therefore be sexualised or destroyed.
The Buggers' second proposition is that modern revolutionary art can no longer employ sexual liberation as a weapon against the capitalist system. We believe that nowadays desexualisation, emphasis on the void behind the sexual drive, provides a more appropriate weapon. We invite you to explore the artistic possibilities of desexualisation, and to redefine the 'obscene'. Or to be more precise, to develop revolutionary strategies of public desexualisation (we wouldn't want you, or any other individual, muslim or non-muslim, to stop buggering in private).
The Buggers are hosted by Sea Urchin Editions
PO Box 25212
3001 HE Rotterdam
KING OF ALL MONSTERS
While Henry Cabot Beck brings us back to the more pleasant topic of the relativity of Godzilla and Elvis Presley. (And let’s not forget that Godzilla’s official birthday occures on November 3rd of this year, and it’s probably morally and culturally incumbent on all of us to party like it was 1999. (It will also be the day after the election, when we will know if we've dumped Bush, or at least if the elections being stolen in Florida all over again.)
I'm researching Godzilla for a Daily News piece, and I discover today that the day the Godzilla production was announced by Toho in Japan, July 5, 1954, is the day Elvis cut That's All Right. Don't know if that makes Elvis the Godzilla of America or Godzilla the Elvis of Japan, but it's fun to think about.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
Hiding the faces of the war dead makes the motivation seem like saving face in an election year. Americans won't take casualties for the credibility of the Bush administration. That's not a good enough reason for people to die. – Maureen Dowd in the New York Times.
CRYPTIQUE – Mothra! Mothra!
In LA, the disturbing climate cycle is now in a repeat phase and the temps promise to climb into the Fahrenheit hundreds again. Mercifully stuff keeps coming down the ether and today (after taking yesterday off) I don’t have to write too much. The following comes from Ben, and although I’m pretty sure I don’t agree with the call for a new desexualization, it’s a fun piece of theorizing that I hope stimulates thought. I fear, however, that Ben and his crew make little distinction between (say) Britney Spears and the Maquis de Sade, when, on days of more intense cultural desperation, I’m prone to muse on the idea of how, in some timeless libertine dimension, the former might be handed to the latter for an education...
BUGGER!
Although the discoveries in the USA and Great-Britain of photographs ofAmerican and British soldiers torturing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners should make us wary and wonder if their simultaneous disclosures aren't a deliberate move in Anglo-American war propaganda to demoralise the enemy, they do reveal an aspect of the clash between Western capitalism and Islam hitherto less manifest. The most striking feature, the overall atmosphere of the photographs, is a sexual one. Sexually active champions of capitalism are opposed to sexually passive Muslims, or Muslims are forced to take part in sexual activities against their will. Sexual abuse of Muslims, especially by female soldiers, has also been reported by prisoners released from the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp. At the same time in several Western European countries the controversy about headscarves worn by muslim girls and women has grown to absurd proportions. Wearing a headscarf (an instrument to desexualise girls and women) by pupils and/or teachers has
already been forbidden at all schools in France, and at conservative schools in Germany and Holland. The fury that this traditional symbol of desexualisation evokes in capitalist countries and the perverse delight with which muslim girls and women are forced to expose themselves in public show similarities with the sexual harassment revealed in the recently published photographs. For that reason we, The Buggers, believe that sexualisation has become a capitalist strategy in the conquest of its opponents.
Based on the theories of Marx and on misinterpretations of Freud the sexual liberation of the masses used to be a revolutionary strategy to bring down a repressive capitalist system and its bourgeois values and social structures. Western revolutionary art in the 20th century embraced this strategy, from surrealism to Beat poetry to the counter-cultural art of the sixties and seventies. Although the pursuit of individual sexual freedom has brought about many positive changes in capitalist societies, it failed to undo the capitalist system itself. We now know that the strength of the capitalist system lies in its absolute lack of morals and its subsequent ability to absorb the moral force of its opponents, only to pervert it for commercial purposes. Now, instead of pursuing sexual freedom and changing society in the course of it, the masses find themselves chasing the sexual mirages produced by the capitalist industry - without ever finding gratification. The capitalist system deliberately keeps its sexually emancipated consumers in a prolonged sexual frenzy. Bugger it!
Since Lacan's interpretation of Freud we know that sexual desire centres around a void, a lost 'object', and that it can never be really satisfied. An endless string of ungratifying substitutes for the lost object marks the trail of individual sexual realisation. Capitalist industries consciously exploit this phenomenon; they promise sexual fulfillment, provide eroticised substitutes for the lost object, know how to sell them, and make huge profits in doing so. Desexualisation, the refusal to become part of a public sexualised circuit, poses a genuine threat to capitalism. Anti-capitalist cultures and religions, and particularly individuals or groups within capitalist societies that scorn sexualised consumerism, have come to symbolise the origin of the sexual desire that capitalism feeds on: the void, the nothingness. They shatter the illusion constructed to keep consumers prisoners of their own desires and must therefore be sexualised or destroyed.
The Buggers' second proposition is that modern revolutionary art can no longer employ sexual liberation as a weapon against the capitalist system. We believe that nowadays desexualisation, emphasis on the void behind the sexual drive, provides a more appropriate weapon. We invite you to explore the artistic possibilities of desexualisation, and to redefine the 'obscene'. Or to be more precise, to develop revolutionary strategies of public desexualisation (we wouldn't want you, or any other individual, muslim or non-muslim, to stop buggering in private).
The Buggers are hosted by Sea Urchin Editions
PO Box 25212
3001 HE Rotterdam
KING OF ALL MONSTERS
While Henry Cabot Beck brings us back to the more pleasant topic of the relativity of Godzilla and Elvis Presley. (And let’s not forget that Godzilla’s official birthday occures on November 3rd of this year, and it’s probably morally and culturally incumbent on all of us to party like it was 1999. (It will also be the day after the election, when we will know if we've dumped Bush, or at least if the elections being stolen in Florida all over again.)
I'm researching Godzilla for a Daily News piece, and I discover today that the day the Godzilla production was announced by Toho in Japan, July 5, 1954, is the day Elvis cut That's All Right. Don't know if that makes Elvis the Godzilla of America or Godzilla the Elvis of Japan, but it's fun to think about.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
Hiding the faces of the war dead makes the motivation seem like saving face in an election year. Americans won't take casualties for the credibility of the Bush administration. That's not a good enough reason for people to die. – Maureen Dowd in the New York Times.
CRYPTIQUE – Mothra! Mothra!
Friday, April 30, 2004
THE HARDEST WORKING MAN IN POLITICS
Last night, Howard Stern second banana, Artie Lange, supplied us with the following fascinating statistic. In the last year (I guess figuring the war had been won) President George Bush had 98 days of vacation time, plus long weekends at camp David.
THE HARDEST WORKING MAN IN CHAOS
Earlier I was lying on the couch half-watching the movie Basquiat for about the nineteenth time, and I started idly wishing that I could get up one morning and string together a whole bunch of words that made absolutely no sense at all and get paid obscene amounts of money for so-doing. But, alas, it is not 1981, and may never be again. I do ask myself, however, what is the use of having the bloody Republicans in power if it can’t generate a totally spurious, bullshit art boom? I recall how Uncle Bill Burroughs and many others did very well for themselves in the Reagan era by doing very little. Today we simply wait for the roosting chickens, as in...
THE HARDEST LURKING ANXIETY FOR 2050
What did Jim Morrison tell us? “The old get older and the young get stronger”? When he said it, the young was my generation, but now Jim’s dead, and I don’t feel so great, and the young are doing the will of Allah. The point is made by Niall Ferguson in the London Sunday Times that the Muslim world has double the Western birthrate, which then causes him to make the following grim but all too plausible, not-so-longterm projection. “A youthful Muslim society to the south and east of the Mediterranean is poised to colonize a senescent Europe to the north and west.”
THE HAPPIEST LARGE ANIMAL
Meanwhile, Brother John is concentrating on the important stuff, and tells us more about the perc-a-pop (see yesterday)...
"Carfentanil (Wildnil®) is an analogue of fentanyl with an analgesic potency 10,000 times that of morphine and is used in veterinary practice to immobilize certain large animals" I hadda look up Fentanyl (and its analogs). In general I've always been rather against animal tranks -- not a gentlemanly indulgence -- but that's rooted in a natural bias against PCP. Not a prejudice that extends to opiates. I don't see how anybody could refuse something 10k the potency of morphine. I feel convinced that I could qualify as "a large animal"...
CRYPTIQUE – Time to wake the Mamalukes.
Last night, Howard Stern second banana, Artie Lange, supplied us with the following fascinating statistic. In the last year (I guess figuring the war had been won) President George Bush had 98 days of vacation time, plus long weekends at camp David.
THE HARDEST WORKING MAN IN CHAOS
Earlier I was lying on the couch half-watching the movie Basquiat for about the nineteenth time, and I started idly wishing that I could get up one morning and string together a whole bunch of words that made absolutely no sense at all and get paid obscene amounts of money for so-doing. But, alas, it is not 1981, and may never be again. I do ask myself, however, what is the use of having the bloody Republicans in power if it can’t generate a totally spurious, bullshit art boom? I recall how Uncle Bill Burroughs and many others did very well for themselves in the Reagan era by doing very little. Today we simply wait for the roosting chickens, as in...
THE HARDEST LURKING ANXIETY FOR 2050
What did Jim Morrison tell us? “The old get older and the young get stronger”? When he said it, the young was my generation, but now Jim’s dead, and I don’t feel so great, and the young are doing the will of Allah. The point is made by Niall Ferguson in the London Sunday Times that the Muslim world has double the Western birthrate, which then causes him to make the following grim but all too plausible, not-so-longterm projection. “A youthful Muslim society to the south and east of the Mediterranean is poised to colonize a senescent Europe to the north and west.”
THE HAPPIEST LARGE ANIMAL
Meanwhile, Brother John is concentrating on the important stuff, and tells us more about the perc-a-pop (see yesterday)...
"Carfentanil (Wildnil®) is an analogue of fentanyl with an analgesic potency 10,000 times that of morphine and is used in veterinary practice to immobilize certain large animals" I hadda look up Fentanyl (and its analogs). In general I've always been rather against animal tranks -- not a gentlemanly indulgence -- but that's rooted in a natural bias against PCP. Not a prejudice that extends to opiates. I don't see how anybody could refuse something 10k the potency of morphine. I feel convinced that I could qualify as "a large animal"...
CRYPTIQUE – Time to wake the Mamalukes.
Thursday, April 29, 2004
PERC-A-POP
Yesterday a wall o’climate fell on Southern California like the Wrath of the Molten Brain-Eater, as the temperature hit 102F in downtown. The eyes in the cars are bloodshot, and I feel as though I’ve been run over by a busload of the living dead on the way to a company picnic. For those of you with an interest in meteorology, the spring in LA is always something of a tussle between the cold of the ocean and the heat of the desert, but never conducted according to such brutally extreme parameters. Until the end of June, the sea usually wins, at least before lunch. It’s cooler today, but we are warned by the TV weathermen that the heat will return as another head of high pressure builds over the land. Meanwhile the battle for Fallujah rages with the US attempting to fight counter insurgency with gunships, like it’s 1969, but no one seems to be paying attention, more concerned that American Idol may be fixed in favor of a geeky, tone-deaf, ginger-haired, white kid*. Maybe drugs are the only answer to despair and the impulse to mass homicide with an accurate rifle from a tall building. Give the anarchist a perc-a-pop. (As in...)
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- A narcotic painkiller that looks like a lollipop - designed to speed relief to cancer patients - is starting to show up in illegal sales with the nickname "perc-a-pop." The drug's ease of use and sweet taste have law enforcement officials worried about the potential for abuse. Actiq, a berry-flavored lozenge on a stick, contains the synthetic opioid fentanyl. "We're starting to see it emerge as a drug that is, as we call it, 'diverted,' which is a legally prescribed drug being used illegally," said Kevin Harley, spokesman for state Attorney General Jerry Pappert. "It's a drug that is easily administered or taken by somebody who might be afraid to either take a pill, snort or inject a needle in their arm."
AND...
* More on the state of current media dementia in this weeks LA CityBeat.
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=876&IssueNum=47
CRYPTIQUE – Phew, Hellboy, wot a scorcher!
Yesterday a wall o’climate fell on Southern California like the Wrath of the Molten Brain-Eater, as the temperature hit 102F in downtown. The eyes in the cars are bloodshot, and I feel as though I’ve been run over by a busload of the living dead on the way to a company picnic. For those of you with an interest in meteorology, the spring in LA is always something of a tussle between the cold of the ocean and the heat of the desert, but never conducted according to such brutally extreme parameters. Until the end of June, the sea usually wins, at least before lunch. It’s cooler today, but we are warned by the TV weathermen that the heat will return as another head of high pressure builds over the land. Meanwhile the battle for Fallujah rages with the US attempting to fight counter insurgency with gunships, like it’s 1969, but no one seems to be paying attention, more concerned that American Idol may be fixed in favor of a geeky, tone-deaf, ginger-haired, white kid*. Maybe drugs are the only answer to despair and the impulse to mass homicide with an accurate rifle from a tall building. Give the anarchist a perc-a-pop. (As in...)
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- A narcotic painkiller that looks like a lollipop - designed to speed relief to cancer patients - is starting to show up in illegal sales with the nickname "perc-a-pop." The drug's ease of use and sweet taste have law enforcement officials worried about the potential for abuse. Actiq, a berry-flavored lozenge on a stick, contains the synthetic opioid fentanyl. "We're starting to see it emerge as a drug that is, as we call it, 'diverted,' which is a legally prescribed drug being used illegally," said Kevin Harley, spokesman for state Attorney General Jerry Pappert. "It's a drug that is easily administered or taken by somebody who might be afraid to either take a pill, snort or inject a needle in their arm."
AND...
* More on the state of current media dementia in this weeks LA CityBeat.
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=876&IssueNum=47
CRYPTIQUE – Phew, Hellboy, wot a scorcher!
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
LOST IN TRANSMISSION
Ducking the war and all the rest of the dementia and turning to Pay for View for a chance to become prone in front of the TV but not totally mindless, I ceased to be one of the few inhabitants of the LA Basin who hadn’t seen Lost in Translation. My reactions?
1. Boy was I disappointed. Not that it was a bad movie, but it had been so over-sold to me that I was expecting considerably more than I got. And, folks, I love Bill Murray. I have seen Groundhog Day some 38 times, and this, Ms Coppola, was not Groundhog Day.
2. Boy would I like to back in Tokyo amid all that neon. I could have watched the teen-rituals in the video arcade for an hour. (And all the ennui of the characters seemed less than sympathetic in a city that so positively vibrates. If you’re fresh in Tokyo and bored, you got crisis energy problems, Bob and Charlotte. I recall being in my hotel room with jet lag, and watching inexplicable movies, but bouncing up and down with delight, even at the commercials.)
3. Boy was that some racist movie. The dumb-depicted Japanese were such stereo-parodies of the infinitely courteous and helpful people I encountered, I just found myself becoming irritated to the point that I didn’t give a rat’s ass what he whispered to her at the end.
4. Boy do I want one of those toy machine guns with the laser bullet-effects.
KILL THE WABBIT
Later, on Letterman, a resemblance between George W. Bush and Porky Pig was more than adequately demonstrated with film clips. Yes, kill the evil d-d-doers.
That’s all folks. It was 100F in LA today. The end is nigh, but distaff ire, if nothing else, seems to have brought the comments software back online. (Open now for "soft" jokes.)
CRYPTIQUE – B-b-b-banzai!
Ducking the war and all the rest of the dementia and turning to Pay for View for a chance to become prone in front of the TV but not totally mindless, I ceased to be one of the few inhabitants of the LA Basin who hadn’t seen Lost in Translation. My reactions?
1. Boy was I disappointed. Not that it was a bad movie, but it had been so over-sold to me that I was expecting considerably more than I got. And, folks, I love Bill Murray. I have seen Groundhog Day some 38 times, and this, Ms Coppola, was not Groundhog Day.
2. Boy would I like to back in Tokyo amid all that neon. I could have watched the teen-rituals in the video arcade for an hour. (And all the ennui of the characters seemed less than sympathetic in a city that so positively vibrates. If you’re fresh in Tokyo and bored, you got crisis energy problems, Bob and Charlotte. I recall being in my hotel room with jet lag, and watching inexplicable movies, but bouncing up and down with delight, even at the commercials.)
3. Boy was that some racist movie. The dumb-depicted Japanese were such stereo-parodies of the infinitely courteous and helpful people I encountered, I just found myself becoming irritated to the point that I didn’t give a rat’s ass what he whispered to her at the end.
4. Boy do I want one of those toy machine guns with the laser bullet-effects.
KILL THE WABBIT
Later, on Letterman, a resemblance between George W. Bush and Porky Pig was more than adequately demonstrated with film clips. Yes, kill the evil d-d-doers.
That’s all folks. It was 100F in LA today. The end is nigh, but distaff ire, if nothing else, seems to have brought the comments software back online. (Open now for "soft" jokes.)
CRYPTIQUE – B-b-b-banzai!
Sunday, April 25, 2004
WEEKEND FEVER DREAMS
As what seems like another too-early heatwave hits LA, the sense inhabiting a very nasty, but highly realistic science fiction movie closes in on me, and the sense that I may be writing for my life, and but with knowledge that it is probably already too late. Global weather systems lurch out of whack. The planet is now so crowded that my favorite cities have grown, just in the last few years, to the point of standing-room only. An enlightened species would be galvanized by a sense of apocalyptic urgency. Population and environmental disaster loom, but instead of uniting in a common awareness of the threat, those in power, both secular and spiritual, allow the contagion of war to run lose yet again. The USA has been stumbling down the slippery slope of counter-insurgency for a year, and has now fallen into a dead run. The last time this benighted and evil game was played, it ran for twelve years, cost lives of 50,000 young Americans, a million Vietnamese, and don’t even mention the Kennedy Brothers. It split the country, polarized the world, and took a bite out of my youth, although I will freely admit that we had a lot of fun fighting the good fight to stop that wat. Who the hell knows where the mess in Iraq is going to take us, or how long it will be in the taking? But right now it causes menacing images to spin out at random from my memory.
Like who recalls the neutron bomb? The neutron bomb was a piece of nastiness from the Carter era. Small, low yield nuke that was designed to vaporize the Soviet tanks as they rolled across the West German Border without doing to much permanent damage to the friendly real estate and infrastructure. The fear at the time was of the Red tank superiority over NATO, and the joke was that the neutron bomb killed people, but left the buildings intact. The thought can only lurk in the back of my mind that at least someone in the Bush is wondering where we left them and how hard it would be to dust them off. Kill the insurgents but don’t irradiate the crude?
And then there’s John Kerry. He is now the repository of the world’s hope to oust Bush and restore some semblance of civilization to this country. We all knew he’d run into a barrage of flack, but he hardly seems to be coping with it. While the Republican’s drag out to old fabricated snitch-files of J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO that absurdly claim the VVAW was seeking to overthrow the government, Kerry is still fumbling the smear about how he voted on the invasion of Iraq.
On this last topic, Andrew Christie, wrote the following and more for CommonDreams.org (sent by some girl)
There was Dick Cheney speaking to an NRA crowd last week, firming up the base, getting in the administration's favorite Kerry dig: Kerry could try to "explain or explain away all he wants" his vote to authorize the Iraq war, but such vacillation, was, to Mr. Cheney's way of thinking, unbecoming in a man who would be Commander in Chief. Incredibly, Kerry has allowed this issue to remain an issue, via his thread-the-needle, what-I-really-meant parsings ever since his former primary opponents started lobbing his war vote at him, now continuing to allow it after the GOP has taken it up, using it as the polishing cloth to burnish up their frame around Kerry's flip-flop image. Incredible because this was, and is, an issue easily dealt with. When Cheney demands to know how Kerry can justify his shameful, unmanly, indecisive, poll-driven equivocation on the war -- how it is that he now opposes what he once obviously supported -- he need only reply as
follows: "Because you lied to me, Dick. Remember? The White House sent its managers to Congress before the vote, and they briefed the House and Senate Intelligence committees on the dire threat of Saddam. The reconstituted nuclear program. The mushroom clouds that would be appearing over New York and Washington in a few years. The lie you were telling the American people in general terms, you told us with specific, impressive-sounding statistics and authoritative reports -- that legendary 'bad intelligence.' It was on that basis and that basis alone -- the basis of imminent threat to America from weapons of mass destruction -- that my colleagues and I voted to give your boss the authority to invade.
COMMENTS
After all last weeks discussion of the comments board, the bloody thing seems to be falling apart and I don’t really know enough html to either fix it or replace. Of course, once you declare a piece of web of software to have failed, it frequently reasserts itself. If anyone finds that it’s working perfectly for them, please email me. If anyone has a link to an alternate server, let me know about that too. (Byron4d@aol.com)
CRYPTIQUE – I can’t do that, Dave.
As what seems like another too-early heatwave hits LA, the sense inhabiting a very nasty, but highly realistic science fiction movie closes in on me, and the sense that I may be writing for my life, and but with knowledge that it is probably already too late. Global weather systems lurch out of whack. The planet is now so crowded that my favorite cities have grown, just in the last few years, to the point of standing-room only. An enlightened species would be galvanized by a sense of apocalyptic urgency. Population and environmental disaster loom, but instead of uniting in a common awareness of the threat, those in power, both secular and spiritual, allow the contagion of war to run lose yet again. The USA has been stumbling down the slippery slope of counter-insurgency for a year, and has now fallen into a dead run. The last time this benighted and evil game was played, it ran for twelve years, cost lives of 50,000 young Americans, a million Vietnamese, and don’t even mention the Kennedy Brothers. It split the country, polarized the world, and took a bite out of my youth, although I will freely admit that we had a lot of fun fighting the good fight to stop that wat. Who the hell knows where the mess in Iraq is going to take us, or how long it will be in the taking? But right now it causes menacing images to spin out at random from my memory.
Like who recalls the neutron bomb? The neutron bomb was a piece of nastiness from the Carter era. Small, low yield nuke that was designed to vaporize the Soviet tanks as they rolled across the West German Border without doing to much permanent damage to the friendly real estate and infrastructure. The fear at the time was of the Red tank superiority over NATO, and the joke was that the neutron bomb killed people, but left the buildings intact. The thought can only lurk in the back of my mind that at least someone in the Bush is wondering where we left them and how hard it would be to dust them off. Kill the insurgents but don’t irradiate the crude?
And then there’s John Kerry. He is now the repository of the world’s hope to oust Bush and restore some semblance of civilization to this country. We all knew he’d run into a barrage of flack, but he hardly seems to be coping with it. While the Republican’s drag out to old fabricated snitch-files of J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO that absurdly claim the VVAW was seeking to overthrow the government, Kerry is still fumbling the smear about how he voted on the invasion of Iraq.
On this last topic, Andrew Christie, wrote the following and more for CommonDreams.org (sent by some girl)
There was Dick Cheney speaking to an NRA crowd last week, firming up the base, getting in the administration's favorite Kerry dig: Kerry could try to "explain or explain away all he wants" his vote to authorize the Iraq war, but such vacillation, was, to Mr. Cheney's way of thinking, unbecoming in a man who would be Commander in Chief. Incredibly, Kerry has allowed this issue to remain an issue, via his thread-the-needle, what-I-really-meant parsings ever since his former primary opponents started lobbing his war vote at him, now continuing to allow it after the GOP has taken it up, using it as the polishing cloth to burnish up their frame around Kerry's flip-flop image. Incredible because this was, and is, an issue easily dealt with. When Cheney demands to know how Kerry can justify his shameful, unmanly, indecisive, poll-driven equivocation on the war -- how it is that he now opposes what he once obviously supported -- he need only reply as
follows: "Because you lied to me, Dick. Remember? The White House sent its managers to Congress before the vote, and they briefed the House and Senate Intelligence committees on the dire threat of Saddam. The reconstituted nuclear program. The mushroom clouds that would be appearing over New York and Washington in a few years. The lie you were telling the American people in general terms, you told us with specific, impressive-sounding statistics and authoritative reports -- that legendary 'bad intelligence.' It was on that basis and that basis alone -- the basis of imminent threat to America from weapons of mass destruction -- that my colleagues and I voted to give your boss the authority to invade.
COMMENTS
After all last weeks discussion of the comments board, the bloody thing seems to be falling apart and I don’t really know enough html to either fix it or replace. Of course, once you declare a piece of web of software to have failed, it frequently reasserts itself. If anyone finds that it’s working perfectly for them, please email me. If anyone has a link to an alternate server, let me know about that too. (Byron4d@aol.com)
CRYPTIQUE – I can’t do that, Dave.
Friday, April 23, 2004
LAWRENCE OF BLOODY ARABIA
The US in Iraq looms large in my fevered dreams, like some chickenshit Roman Empire without the courage of its own brutality. At least Caligula was quite open about believing he was a god and therefore above the dictates of morality. Wes Clarke was just on TV, crucially pointing out how to retake Falluja with 2000 marines means big fire power, Blackhawks, air support, and beaucoup collateral wasted. The math of death is kicking in as we watch. Civilian dead create insurgent support, and the curve rapidly grows exponential. Without massive colonial-style suppression, and maybe a couple of nukes where they won’t fuck up the oil, this war can be conceded lost right now. Post McLuhan, brothers and sisters. The speed-up makes what took a year to happen in Vietnam flash past in a couple of months in Baghdad. It all starts to look like a high-tech rerun of Lawrence of Arabia – except we’re the Turks.
At least in ‘nam, Hanoi was a visible enemy with whom to negotiate. The Iraqi’s have nothing. About the only thing they agree on is that they don’t want a US puppet government of neo-con backed old crooks-back-from-exile, and the default scenario is one of endless theocratic civil war. Maybe Saddam’s defense at his upcoming trial should be that he was required to be a murdering shithead, because that’s what it took to keep so many lunatics under the slightest semblance of control, and that’s why the CIA gave him so much fucking support.
But don’t worry about the draft. It’ll take a year for all the exemptions for the children of the rich to be figured out, and in way that won’t reflect on future desires to run for office.
FROM THE EMAIL
People seemed very concerned with Doc40's design and function. These just in. (And I figure some girl will take a hit out on wrenchski.)
davinian writes...
Hi Mick, I agree with 'Some Girl'... comments on the individual post are a more logical way of doing things (or rather that is how the community known as bloggers are doing it). The comments at present can take a while to load and can be a bit confusing - especially if you want to leave a comment - where/how do I do it? oh, it's right down here at the bottom. Saying that I do enjoy sieving through them. Another off comment comment (Not influenced by your books at all :-) Do you think there is an alterative motive to all this doom and gloom terrorist/evil shit thats being brooded up around the world? I mean, by trying to stamp out terror - the likes of Bush and Blair have actually increased its profile to such an amount that it's having an effect on the whole world. Do they want to bring an ancient, evil god through from another dimension? But to do this they need such an evil/terror-state-of-mind that their willing to risk a full-blown 3rd world war (could potentially be WW4). Maybe its me, but I think there is a reason for all the nonsense in the world at the moment - and to tell you the truth it's starting to scare the crap out of me. Anyway, I suppose I had better get on with my work.
Doc replies...
Of course, according the Emanuel Goldstein, Joseph Goebbels, and probably Henry Kissinger too, a condition of continuous war is the perfect medium for the implementation of psycho-civilized mind control of the domestic population. War is really the gift that keeps on giving.
wrenchski writes...
So, some tit wrote you with "improvements" on your weblog...and the next thing you know, she'll be moving in and downsizing your stereo tearing the pictures of mao's bloody knutsack and other sports heros off the walls replacing them with flowerpots candles and collages of shampoo adverts... Fuck that, leve the damn thing alone and just write more...yer about the only limey writer who doesn't make me wanna change the channel three sentences in... Repeat after me... There is nothing wrong with my website...there is nothing wrong with my website...there is NOTHING WRONG WITH MY WEBSITE...
Doc replies...
Well, actually there’s plenty wrong with this site. The Animal House ambiance was not the intended effect, but, like so many things, it evolved by a cowboy momentum that, once in motion is very time consuming to divert. I have seen some fine Darth Vader weblogs out there, and found myself muttering “please can I have one of those for my birthday”. On the other hand, I do notice that many of the super sites often don’t have too much content because the game is all in the housekeeping. The choice is not easy. I can spend time improving the site. Or (as wrenchski notes) I can write. Which is why I came here in the first place. As it is, I spend too much time simply pulling hidden codes out of the email. As always, the enemy is inertia. When in doubt all things remain the same. Why the fuck do you think I still screw around with AOL?
In the best of all possible worlds, someone who likes doing that kind of thing could design a dream blog for us, with topics comments, and a running all-access sublog, multiple links, with the skin-finish of a high class Tombstone saloon, plus really easy for me to load and post. Then we can all move in an be happy ever after.
Any offers? (byron4d@aol.com)
CRYPTIQUE – No prisoners!
The US in Iraq looms large in my fevered dreams, like some chickenshit Roman Empire without the courage of its own brutality. At least Caligula was quite open about believing he was a god and therefore above the dictates of morality. Wes Clarke was just on TV, crucially pointing out how to retake Falluja with 2000 marines means big fire power, Blackhawks, air support, and beaucoup collateral wasted. The math of death is kicking in as we watch. Civilian dead create insurgent support, and the curve rapidly grows exponential. Without massive colonial-style suppression, and maybe a couple of nukes where they won’t fuck up the oil, this war can be conceded lost right now. Post McLuhan, brothers and sisters. The speed-up makes what took a year to happen in Vietnam flash past in a couple of months in Baghdad. It all starts to look like a high-tech rerun of Lawrence of Arabia – except we’re the Turks.
At least in ‘nam, Hanoi was a visible enemy with whom to negotiate. The Iraqi’s have nothing. About the only thing they agree on is that they don’t want a US puppet government of neo-con backed old crooks-back-from-exile, and the default scenario is one of endless theocratic civil war. Maybe Saddam’s defense at his upcoming trial should be that he was required to be a murdering shithead, because that’s what it took to keep so many lunatics under the slightest semblance of control, and that’s why the CIA gave him so much fucking support.
But don’t worry about the draft. It’ll take a year for all the exemptions for the children of the rich to be figured out, and in way that won’t reflect on future desires to run for office.
FROM THE EMAIL
People seemed very concerned with Doc40's design and function. These just in. (And I figure some girl will take a hit out on wrenchski.)
davinian writes...
Hi Mick, I agree with 'Some Girl'... comments on the individual post are a more logical way of doing things (or rather that is how the community known as bloggers are doing it). The comments at present can take a while to load and can be a bit confusing - especially if you want to leave a comment - where/how do I do it? oh, it's right down here at the bottom. Saying that I do enjoy sieving through them. Another off comment comment (Not influenced by your books at all :-) Do you think there is an alterative motive to all this doom and gloom terrorist/evil shit thats being brooded up around the world? I mean, by trying to stamp out terror - the likes of Bush and Blair have actually increased its profile to such an amount that it's having an effect on the whole world. Do they want to bring an ancient, evil god through from another dimension? But to do this they need such an evil/terror-state-of-mind that their willing to risk a full-blown 3rd world war (could potentially be WW4). Maybe its me, but I think there is a reason for all the nonsense in the world at the moment - and to tell you the truth it's starting to scare the crap out of me. Anyway, I suppose I had better get on with my work.
Doc replies...
Of course, according the Emanuel Goldstein, Joseph Goebbels, and probably Henry Kissinger too, a condition of continuous war is the perfect medium for the implementation of psycho-civilized mind control of the domestic population. War is really the gift that keeps on giving.
wrenchski writes...
So, some tit wrote you with "improvements" on your weblog...and the next thing you know, she'll be moving in and downsizing your stereo tearing the pictures of mao's bloody knutsack and other sports heros off the walls replacing them with flowerpots candles and collages of shampoo adverts... Fuck that, leve the damn thing alone and just write more...yer about the only limey writer who doesn't make me wanna change the channel three sentences in... Repeat after me... There is nothing wrong with my website...there is nothing wrong with my website...there is NOTHING WRONG WITH MY WEBSITE...
Doc replies...
Well, actually there’s plenty wrong with this site. The Animal House ambiance was not the intended effect, but, like so many things, it evolved by a cowboy momentum that, once in motion is very time consuming to divert. I have seen some fine Darth Vader weblogs out there, and found myself muttering “please can I have one of those for my birthday”. On the other hand, I do notice that many of the super sites often don’t have too much content because the game is all in the housekeeping. The choice is not easy. I can spend time improving the site. Or (as wrenchski notes) I can write. Which is why I came here in the first place. As it is, I spend too much time simply pulling hidden codes out of the email. As always, the enemy is inertia. When in doubt all things remain the same. Why the fuck do you think I still screw around with AOL?
In the best of all possible worlds, someone who likes doing that kind of thing could design a dream blog for us, with topics comments, and a running all-access sublog, multiple links, with the skin-finish of a high class Tombstone saloon, plus really easy for me to load and post. Then we can all move in an be happy ever after.
Any offers? (byron4d@aol.com)
CRYPTIQUE – No prisoners!
Thursday, April 22, 2004
LONG DAYS JOURNEY
I was going to get down with Iraq and this new evangelical bullshit that it’s Armageddon warming its jets just like in the Left Behind doomsday saga, and the eyes of the unbelievers will agonizingly melt at the onslaught of Jesus, etc, etc,. But it’s been a long day and I’m going to lay down my weary tune for tonight. I will leave you, though, with this note from some girl that takes a new look at the Doc40 comments board.
COMMENTS?
Some girl writes...
as i was looking at the comments on your blog, where the number creeps ever higher, and wondering where the insanity will stop, a thought occurred to me. i think i have made this individual-comments-vs.-continuing-comments argument in the wrong manner (ie, some vague bullshit about web/blog aesthetics). but i noticed as i looked at the unwieldy comment board that, even before the crash and burn, there really weren't any new commenters. it's all the same people, give or take a random lunatic, and i think you should consider the possibility that the comments in their current form could prove daunting to any newcomer. it looks like a closed little cyber-community -- as opposed to an open one. i recommend giving doc40 visitors the ability to comment after every new post. and maybe you could explore the possibility of turning the existing comments board into an actual forum (a la the buffyguide boards and millions of other examples), so your in-crowd can still continue to play the way they want to.
So what does anyone else think? Chaos generates fear and elitism? Maoist rough & tumble or silliness? Comment by scrolling to the bottom of the chaos above, or write byron4d@aol.com.
The problem so far has been the technology of which I have had a basinful of late. This is a pop and nothing store, my friends. Rich tried installing a second version of enetation but it simply duplicated itself. I think what I would need to implement some girl’s suggestion might well be a second comments system provider, and very simply spelled out instructions on how to install it. I can only quote Groucho Marx. “A child of five could understand this. Fetch me a child of five.”
BUT GOOD NEWS
Munz is first with the news that The Deviants “Let's Loot the Supermarket...” is #87 in the May Mojo's 100 Greatest Protest Songs. Fame at last, fame at last.
A PERSONAL NOTE
I still have a mess of unanswered email, but I’m getting to it. I swear. Also the next Slide On The Run episode is on the stove.
CRYPTIQUE – Civilization ends.
I was going to get down with Iraq and this new evangelical bullshit that it’s Armageddon warming its jets just like in the Left Behind doomsday saga, and the eyes of the unbelievers will agonizingly melt at the onslaught of Jesus, etc, etc,. But it’s been a long day and I’m going to lay down my weary tune for tonight. I will leave you, though, with this note from some girl that takes a new look at the Doc40 comments board.
COMMENTS?
Some girl writes...
as i was looking at the comments on your blog, where the number creeps ever higher, and wondering where the insanity will stop, a thought occurred to me. i think i have made this individual-comments-vs.-continuing-comments argument in the wrong manner (ie, some vague bullshit about web/blog aesthetics). but i noticed as i looked at the unwieldy comment board that, even before the crash and burn, there really weren't any new commenters. it's all the same people, give or take a random lunatic, and i think you should consider the possibility that the comments in their current form could prove daunting to any newcomer. it looks like a closed little cyber-community -- as opposed to an open one. i recommend giving doc40 visitors the ability to comment after every new post. and maybe you could explore the possibility of turning the existing comments board into an actual forum (a la the buffyguide boards and millions of other examples), so your in-crowd can still continue to play the way they want to.
So what does anyone else think? Chaos generates fear and elitism? Maoist rough & tumble or silliness? Comment by scrolling to the bottom of the chaos above, or write byron4d@aol.com.
The problem so far has been the technology of which I have had a basinful of late. This is a pop and nothing store, my friends. Rich tried installing a second version of enetation but it simply duplicated itself. I think what I would need to implement some girl’s suggestion might well be a second comments system provider, and very simply spelled out instructions on how to install it. I can only quote Groucho Marx. “A child of five could understand this. Fetch me a child of five.”
BUT GOOD NEWS
Munz is first with the news that The Deviants “Let's Loot the Supermarket...” is #87 in the May Mojo's 100 Greatest Protest Songs. Fame at last, fame at last.
A PERSONAL NOTE
I still have a mess of unanswered email, but I’m getting to it. I swear. Also the next Slide On The Run episode is on the stove.
CRYPTIQUE – Civilization ends.
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
READING IRAQ
The feeling grows, watching the news out of Iraq, that we are entering the desperate stage of disinformation where even reading between the lines is hardly enough. Over the last few days, since last week’s computer malfunction, I’ve been pushing to catch up on my own life, and have not been reading and watching the news in the way that I normally do. Even so, the bits and pieces that I have gleaned seem to indicate a far more fucked up and dangerous situation than the optimistic, oh-this-uprising-is-just-a-glitch picture than the White House and Rumsfeld are trying to paint. As far as I can tell, the three main supply routes from Baghdad, north to Turkey, South to the sea, and west to Jordan are all cut and trucks are simply not getting through to the capital with essential supplies. Another disturbing piece of info comes from a Doc40 friend in the UK, who may or may not want to remain anonymous, giving a clear, grassroots indication that now mercs are being hired on to augment the US, and Brit regulars, and the troops of the other “allies”. And this does strike me as a little weird. Obviously most will be running convoys and logistical support, but the obvious other field has to be counter-insurgency dirty work. Face it neighbors, this is a mess. When the Pentagon is shopping for hired guns, it can only mean trouble.
Word from ex-squaddie chums: now, for at least the last 2 months, ANYONE who's ever spent even a month in the army is being offered "freelance" work in Iraq. Starting at £60k per annum tax-free. Poss. guarding static posts -- poss. working convoys. About 2 or 3 weeks before the News started telling us that the situation was running away, I heard from a pal (who now feels he's just too old & too married to accept such a gig ... half regretful/half grateful) that Baghdad airport was being mortared twice daily and 1 in 3 convoys was taking small arms fire.
CRYPTIQUE – Napalm in the morning?
The feeling grows, watching the news out of Iraq, that we are entering the desperate stage of disinformation where even reading between the lines is hardly enough. Over the last few days, since last week’s computer malfunction, I’ve been pushing to catch up on my own life, and have not been reading and watching the news in the way that I normally do. Even so, the bits and pieces that I have gleaned seem to indicate a far more fucked up and dangerous situation than the optimistic, oh-this-uprising-is-just-a-glitch picture than the White House and Rumsfeld are trying to paint. As far as I can tell, the three main supply routes from Baghdad, north to Turkey, South to the sea, and west to Jordan are all cut and trucks are simply not getting through to the capital with essential supplies. Another disturbing piece of info comes from a Doc40 friend in the UK, who may or may not want to remain anonymous, giving a clear, grassroots indication that now mercs are being hired on to augment the US, and Brit regulars, and the troops of the other “allies”. And this does strike me as a little weird. Obviously most will be running convoys and logistical support, but the obvious other field has to be counter-insurgency dirty work. Face it neighbors, this is a mess. When the Pentagon is shopping for hired guns, it can only mean trouble.
Word from ex-squaddie chums: now, for at least the last 2 months, ANYONE who's ever spent even a month in the army is being offered "freelance" work in Iraq. Starting at £60k per annum tax-free. Poss. guarding static posts -- poss. working convoys. About 2 or 3 weeks before the News started telling us that the situation was running away, I heard from a pal (who now feels he's just too old & too married to accept such a gig ... half regretful/half grateful) that Baghdad airport was being mortared twice daily and 1 in 3 convoys was taking small arms fire.
CRYPTIQUE – Napalm in the morning?
Monday, April 19, 2004
PSYCHEDELIC UNCLE TOM
The fine guitarist and author John Perry has a book out titled Electric Ladyland, which is exactly what it is about; the Jimi Hendrix album of the same title. It’s part of a series of small format books from Continuum called 33 1/3, each dedicated to a single classic rock album, and, damn, but is it fine to read a really ace guitar player who also writes really well talking about music. He not only explains the true nature of feedback, but also provides some quite astonishing historical notes on US rock crits initial reaction to Jimi, especially that of Bob Christgau, with whom I worked with for years at the Village Voice etc., and whose word has become treated like holy writ. Today, Hendrix is totally canonized, but seemingly it was not always so...
When Jimi burst on them at Monterey, six months later, he was as unknown to most Americans as he’d been to English audiences. Yet it was as though they were reviewing a different performer. Critics wrote of an “undignified” “psychedelic Uncle Tom” whose “gimmick-laden” act was a “second-rate copy of The Who’s destruction”. Even his speech annoyed them with it’s “superspade jive”. The shrewd reader may feel a common theme underlies all those responses...
The liberal American press from Esquire to the Village Voice were perplexed by Hendrix in a way that the English never were. It seems extraordinary that the hippest American papers lined up with views found only in the English tabloids (“Wildman of Borneo” etc.). Nobody expected English papers like the Mirror to get anything right, least of all music, but one hoped for more from the American underground press. Filtering their reviews through a whole complex of self-consciously ‘radical’ Vietnam-era attitudes to race relations, they managed to miss the music almost entirely.
My purpose is not to flay the American press - they were quite busy enough flaying themselves. Behind a whole raft of complaints about Hendrix’s undignified performance and his irritating failure to fit existing critical categories for black performers, lay the essential point that his songs mysteriously failed to punish the audience for being white. Hendrix didn't play the wounded, angry black man, or the dignified bearer of oppression; he didn't provide white critics with a handy receptacle for their guilt. They didn't know quite what role he fulfilled. But they knew they didn’t like it.
Reviewing Monterey for Esquire, the 'Dean of American Rock Critics', R. Christgau, first distinguished himself by calling the Grateful Dead “the standout improvisers of the Festival” (actually the performance was so awful the Dead refused to allow even ten seconds to be used in the film or the soundtrack album). Garcia was very funny when he spoke about this, years later in London. He told me: “we blew Monterey and Woodstock. I dunno that big festivals ever really suited us. At Monterey we were sandwiched between The Who and Hendrix … first The Who - bang crash roar - smashed everything … then Hendrix - huge sound, set fire to everything … whooooosh … then we came out and played our little music…”
But as Christgau saw it:
"But [the Dead’s] performance was quickly obscured by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Hendrix is a Negro from Seattle who was brought from Greenwich Village to England by ex-Animal Chas Chandler in January. It was a smart move. England, like all of Europe, thirsts for the Real Thing, as performers from Howlin' Wolf to Muhammad Ali have discovered. Hendrix picked up two good English sidemen and crashed the scene. He came to Monterey recommended by the likes of Paul McCartney. He was terrible. Hendrix is a psychedelic Uncle Tom. Don't believe me, believe Sam Silver of The East Village Other: "Jimi did a beautiful Spade routine." ... He also played what everybody seems to call "heavy" guitar; in this case, that means he was loud. ... The destructiveness of The Who is consistent theater, deriving directly from the group's defiant, lower-class stance. I suppose Hendrix's act can be seen as a consistently vulgar parody of rock theatrics, but I don't feel I have to like it. Anyhow, he can't sing.”
It’s not my intention to single out Christgau. Clearly he represented one definite strain of US opinion (not necessarily restricted to white reviewers) and to his credit, he continues to stand by his original impression; a good polemicist should oppose the prevailing orthodoxy. But the disparity between UK and US opinion remains deeply puzzling. Hendrix's offences (apart from being, in Charlie Murray’s wonderful phrase, ‘unnecessarily black in an American context’) appear to be:
Coming on after the Grateful Dead. (A dirty job but someone’s got to do it)
Going to England. (Thereby reinforcing the deplorable European taste for Real Things).
Crashing the scene (!)
Being terrible (!!)
Seeming to be "heavy" (?)
Consistent vulgarity.
Inability to sing.
Phew. Add tone-deafness and poor microphone technique and you’ve got a pretty damning case.
SUBSERVIENT CHICKEN
And some girl sends us a real sicko-bizarre bit of corporate promo from – of all places – Burger King.
http://www.subservientchicken.com
CRYPTIQUE – Cluck, oh Mistress.
The fine guitarist and author John Perry has a book out titled Electric Ladyland, which is exactly what it is about; the Jimi Hendrix album of the same title. It’s part of a series of small format books from Continuum called 33 1/3, each dedicated to a single classic rock album, and, damn, but is it fine to read a really ace guitar player who also writes really well talking about music. He not only explains the true nature of feedback, but also provides some quite astonishing historical notes on US rock crits initial reaction to Jimi, especially that of Bob Christgau, with whom I worked with for years at the Village Voice etc., and whose word has become treated like holy writ. Today, Hendrix is totally canonized, but seemingly it was not always so...
When Jimi burst on them at Monterey, six months later, he was as unknown to most Americans as he’d been to English audiences. Yet it was as though they were reviewing a different performer. Critics wrote of an “undignified” “psychedelic Uncle Tom” whose “gimmick-laden” act was a “second-rate copy of The Who’s destruction”. Even his speech annoyed them with it’s “superspade jive”. The shrewd reader may feel a common theme underlies all those responses...
The liberal American press from Esquire to the Village Voice were perplexed by Hendrix in a way that the English never were. It seems extraordinary that the hippest American papers lined up with views found only in the English tabloids (“Wildman of Borneo” etc.). Nobody expected English papers like the Mirror to get anything right, least of all music, but one hoped for more from the American underground press. Filtering their reviews through a whole complex of self-consciously ‘radical’ Vietnam-era attitudes to race relations, they managed to miss the music almost entirely.
My purpose is not to flay the American press - they were quite busy enough flaying themselves. Behind a whole raft of complaints about Hendrix’s undignified performance and his irritating failure to fit existing critical categories for black performers, lay the essential point that his songs mysteriously failed to punish the audience for being white. Hendrix didn't play the wounded, angry black man, or the dignified bearer of oppression; he didn't provide white critics with a handy receptacle for their guilt. They didn't know quite what role he fulfilled. But they knew they didn’t like it.
Reviewing Monterey for Esquire, the 'Dean of American Rock Critics', R. Christgau, first distinguished himself by calling the Grateful Dead “the standout improvisers of the Festival” (actually the performance was so awful the Dead refused to allow even ten seconds to be used in the film or the soundtrack album). Garcia was very funny when he spoke about this, years later in London. He told me: “we blew Monterey and Woodstock. I dunno that big festivals ever really suited us. At Monterey we were sandwiched between The Who and Hendrix … first The Who - bang crash roar - smashed everything … then Hendrix - huge sound, set fire to everything … whooooosh … then we came out and played our little music…”
But as Christgau saw it:
"But [the Dead’s] performance was quickly obscured by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Hendrix is a Negro from Seattle who was brought from Greenwich Village to England by ex-Animal Chas Chandler in January. It was a smart move. England, like all of Europe, thirsts for the Real Thing, as performers from Howlin' Wolf to Muhammad Ali have discovered. Hendrix picked up two good English sidemen and crashed the scene. He came to Monterey recommended by the likes of Paul McCartney. He was terrible. Hendrix is a psychedelic Uncle Tom. Don't believe me, believe Sam Silver of The East Village Other: "Jimi did a beautiful Spade routine." ... He also played what everybody seems to call "heavy" guitar; in this case, that means he was loud. ... The destructiveness of The Who is consistent theater, deriving directly from the group's defiant, lower-class stance. I suppose Hendrix's act can be seen as a consistently vulgar parody of rock theatrics, but I don't feel I have to like it. Anyhow, he can't sing.”
It’s not my intention to single out Christgau. Clearly he represented one definite strain of US opinion (not necessarily restricted to white reviewers) and to his credit, he continues to stand by his original impression; a good polemicist should oppose the prevailing orthodoxy. But the disparity between UK and US opinion remains deeply puzzling. Hendrix's offences (apart from being, in Charlie Murray’s wonderful phrase, ‘unnecessarily black in an American context’) appear to be:
Coming on after the Grateful Dead. (A dirty job but someone’s got to do it)
Going to England. (Thereby reinforcing the deplorable European taste for Real Things).
Crashing the scene (!)
Being terrible (!!)
Seeming to be "heavy" (?)
Consistent vulgarity.
Inability to sing.
Phew. Add tone-deafness and poor microphone technique and you’ve got a pretty damning case.
SUBSERVIENT CHICKEN
And some girl sends us a real sicko-bizarre bit of corporate promo from – of all places – Burger King.
http://www.subservientchicken.com
CRYPTIQUE – Cluck, oh Mistress.
Saturday, April 17, 2004
ONE BULLSHIT PLANET
Friday night in Hollywood, and the cars cruise past beyond the windows (yes, stuffed with eyes) and pulsing with hip-hop bass. I swear a new generation of the stone deaf are being created. And if that wasn’t enough, the LAPD choppers circle the building, like it was 1969 in Saigon, annoying the drunks in Plummer Park with their sunguns, and drowning out my TV with that recurrent Doppler bass boom. Whomp-whomp-whomp-whomp-whomp-whompity-whomp-whomp.
Meanwhile, hearing the news today (oh boy) I learn that an HIV vector and maybe actual test-positive infections have closed down the porn industry in the Valley, or is this just some Justice Department black-disinformation op that has stilled the cameras in Chatsworth? The next advance of oppression after Janet Jackson’s Reichstag tit?
Meanwhile, a GOP propaganda web site features a game where players can be President George Bush killing terrorists who have invaded the White House. (No, I ain’t giving you a link to that.) So are you of anything approaching sound mind – you out there in Middle America, where you all believe Monkey Boy is some kinda John Wayne and doing just great? As a good socialist, I have defended you to friends and acquaintances. You the People simply can’t be that stupid. But listen, now you’re making a monkey outta me, and I cannot tolerate that. I look bad. This shit has got to go, or I turn violently elitist, okay? As I recall, the last world leader to accompany his troops personally into battle was King George II (I think), who led a quick safe cavalry charge during the War of Austrian Succession (maybe) but then headed swiftly back to his tent, his mistress, and several nice bottles of vintage port.
Maybe it’s just that it’s the nominal end of a long week, but -- despite Patti Smith singing good, but looking like Willie Nelson’s sister on Letterman, and Lenny Kaye healthy with a green Fender -- this seems like one bullshit planet right now, and I want out. Intelligent life? Forget about it. Have the greased Scotsman beam me up. Like, with some urgency?
MAKE THE PIE HIGHER!
This is a short poem made up entirely of actual quotations from George W. Bush. These have been arranged, only for aesthetic purposes, by Washington Post writer, Richard Thompson. It’s come via Roger in Scotland, where GWB is held in low estimation, laddie.
I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty
And potential mental losses.
Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the Internet
Become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?
They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being
And the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope,
Were our wings take dream.
Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher!
Make the pie higher!
CRYPTIQUE – In the sky with Elvis.
Friday night in Hollywood, and the cars cruise past beyond the windows (yes, stuffed with eyes) and pulsing with hip-hop bass. I swear a new generation of the stone deaf are being created. And if that wasn’t enough, the LAPD choppers circle the building, like it was 1969 in Saigon, annoying the drunks in Plummer Park with their sunguns, and drowning out my TV with that recurrent Doppler bass boom. Whomp-whomp-whomp-whomp-whomp-whompity-whomp-whomp.
Meanwhile, hearing the news today (oh boy) I learn that an HIV vector and maybe actual test-positive infections have closed down the porn industry in the Valley, or is this just some Justice Department black-disinformation op that has stilled the cameras in Chatsworth? The next advance of oppression after Janet Jackson’s Reichstag tit?
Meanwhile, a GOP propaganda web site features a game where players can be President George Bush killing terrorists who have invaded the White House. (No, I ain’t giving you a link to that.) So are you of anything approaching sound mind – you out there in Middle America, where you all believe Monkey Boy is some kinda John Wayne and doing just great? As a good socialist, I have defended you to friends and acquaintances. You the People simply can’t be that stupid. But listen, now you’re making a monkey outta me, and I cannot tolerate that. I look bad. This shit has got to go, or I turn violently elitist, okay? As I recall, the last world leader to accompany his troops personally into battle was King George II (I think), who led a quick safe cavalry charge during the War of Austrian Succession (maybe) but then headed swiftly back to his tent, his mistress, and several nice bottles of vintage port.
Maybe it’s just that it’s the nominal end of a long week, but -- despite Patti Smith singing good, but looking like Willie Nelson’s sister on Letterman, and Lenny Kaye healthy with a green Fender -- this seems like one bullshit planet right now, and I want out. Intelligent life? Forget about it. Have the greased Scotsman beam me up. Like, with some urgency?
MAKE THE PIE HIGHER!
This is a short poem made up entirely of actual quotations from George W. Bush. These have been arranged, only for aesthetic purposes, by Washington Post writer, Richard Thompson. It’s come via Roger in Scotland, where GWB is held in low estimation, laddie.
I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty
And potential mental losses.
Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the Internet
Become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?
They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being
And the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope,
Were our wings take dream.
Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher!
Make the pie higher!
CRYPTIQUE – In the sky with Elvis.
Friday, April 16, 2004
I’M BACK
The last few weeks have not been exactly halcyon days of technology. Indeed, they could well be described as Valium, Jack Daniels and wanting-to-throw-the-hardware-at-the-wall days, as the battlestar went into system collapse. But I loosed myself from the clutches of the 900-number technical support boiler-rooms of major corporations, and found a nice funky repair shop between Swing House rehearsal studio and the Formosa (venerable landmark to the alcoholics of Hollywood since something like 1931). It was run by a guy who looked like a retired roadie, and who was repairing a thirty year-old Mini-Moog for some strange low-fi keyboard player, and I knew it was where I wanted to be fixed. Now I have a new hard drive, and thus a new prosthetic memory, and all now works as it should again, although I am refusing to think about all the ideas, notes, outlines, synopses, hallucinations, dirty pictures, and correspondence that went the way of all electrons in the meltdown. But if I can’t remember them, what the hell? They never really happened, and if I can, they can be reconstructed. Thus I console myself that I also got rid of a fuck of a lot of garbage. Hell, I can work without notes. Unlike the President of the United States who can’t even work with notes, and can hardly claim English as a second language.
I must confess, though, a certain unreality lurks as I approach my cleanslated laptop. It’s all too quiet. All too normal. Ideas and even fantasies are a little tentative, like maybe they overloaded the old C-drive in the first place. There’s been too much frustration and desperately logical focus. I would like to take to my bed for the weekend, but I have a book of quotations to finish and several tons of email to answer. I swear I never worked so hard in the 20th century.
But Doc40 is tranquil and this will leave you with a short piece of harmonious inspiration sent during my times of trial by our favorite southern belle...
THE STREAM
Picture yourself near a stream.
Birds are softly chirping in the crisp cool mountain air.
Nothing can bother you here.
No one knows this secret place.
You are in total seclusion from that place called "The World."
The soothing sound of a gentle waterfall fills the air with a cascade of serenity.
The water is clear.
You can easily make the face of the person
Whose head you are holding under the water.
Look.
It's the person
Who caused you all this stress in the first place.
What a pleasant surprise.
You let them up...just for a quick breath...then ploop!...back under they go...
You allow yourself as many deep breaths as you want.
There now...feeling better?
CRYPTIQUE – Fuck you, Squiddly!
The last few weeks have not been exactly halcyon days of technology. Indeed, they could well be described as Valium, Jack Daniels and wanting-to-throw-the-hardware-at-the-wall days, as the battlestar went into system collapse. But I loosed myself from the clutches of the 900-number technical support boiler-rooms of major corporations, and found a nice funky repair shop between Swing House rehearsal studio and the Formosa (venerable landmark to the alcoholics of Hollywood since something like 1931). It was run by a guy who looked like a retired roadie, and who was repairing a thirty year-old Mini-Moog for some strange low-fi keyboard player, and I knew it was where I wanted to be fixed. Now I have a new hard drive, and thus a new prosthetic memory, and all now works as it should again, although I am refusing to think about all the ideas, notes, outlines, synopses, hallucinations, dirty pictures, and correspondence that went the way of all electrons in the meltdown. But if I can’t remember them, what the hell? They never really happened, and if I can, they can be reconstructed. Thus I console myself that I also got rid of a fuck of a lot of garbage. Hell, I can work without notes. Unlike the President of the United States who can’t even work with notes, and can hardly claim English as a second language.
I must confess, though, a certain unreality lurks as I approach my cleanslated laptop. It’s all too quiet. All too normal. Ideas and even fantasies are a little tentative, like maybe they overloaded the old C-drive in the first place. There’s been too much frustration and desperately logical focus. I would like to take to my bed for the weekend, but I have a book of quotations to finish and several tons of email to answer. I swear I never worked so hard in the 20th century.
But Doc40 is tranquil and this will leave you with a short piece of harmonious inspiration sent during my times of trial by our favorite southern belle...
THE STREAM
Picture yourself near a stream.
Birds are softly chirping in the crisp cool mountain air.
Nothing can bother you here.
No one knows this secret place.
You are in total seclusion from that place called "The World."
The soothing sound of a gentle waterfall fills the air with a cascade of serenity.
The water is clear.
You can easily make the face of the person
Whose head you are holding under the water.
Look.
It's the person
Who caused you all this stress in the first place.
What a pleasant surprise.
You let them up...just for a quick breath...then ploop!...back under they go...
You allow yourself as many deep breaths as you want.
There now...feeling better?
CRYPTIQUE – Fuck you, Squiddly!
Thursday, April 15, 2004
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
Postscript
(which in the blog world precedes the script because time runs backwards)
In this Hellmouse set-up, where Doc40 is pink on white, like a bloody wedding cake, I can't even access the comments board. Someone email me and tell me what's doing, or, better still, send me the actual comments URL and see if I can get to it that way.
I'M IN A 64K TIMEWARP
I'M IN A 64K TIMEWARP (and I don't wanna do the timewarp again!)
I'M IN A 64K TIMEWARP
I'M IN A 64K TIMEWARP
but it would seem that I can cut and paste. Hmmm.
Or should I just start to hallucinate and describe that? Maybe while watching Bush's press conference?
This may all cause me to lose my sanity. Don't all snigger at once.
(which in the blog world precedes the script because time runs backwards)
In this Hellmouse set-up, where Doc40 is pink on white, like a bloody wedding cake, I can't even access the comments board. Someone email me and tell me what's doing, or, better still, send me the actual comments URL and see if I can get to it that way.
I'M IN A 64K TIMEWARP
I'M IN A 64K TIMEWARP (and I don't wanna do the timewarp again!)
I'M IN A 64K TIMEWARP
I'M IN A 64K TIMEWARP
but it would seem that I can cut and paste. Hmmm.
Or should I just start to hallucinate and describe that? Maybe while watching Bush's press conference?
This may all cause me to lose my sanity. Don't all snigger at once.
Well friends, here's the story so far. Last Friday (yeah, Good Friday, that one) my computer crashed with signs of dangerous hard drive distress, and for the interim, as I seek to get it fixed, I'm working on a model T clunker without enough ram to scratch it's own ass, and that gets cranky when more than three screens are up at once, and in fear that, although the major works are saved to disk, all manner of notes, ideas and jottings are lost to the world, which as an artist kind of makes me sick to my stomach. Thus Doc40 will stagger as best he can, if it's only to be pissing and moaning about the ill fortune that has recently been besetting the technology. Like I just told Larry Wallis in an email, it's like trying to play Hendrix on a clapped out $20 mail order guitar. But, hey, thanks to all of you who have offered advice, help, possible loaners, and general sympathy. Email is late being answered, but tomorrow I see the fix-it guy and maybe all will be well.
Cryptique? Are you kidding? I can hardly read the blog itself on this machine.
Cryptique? Are you kidding? I can hardly read the blog itself on this machine.
Saturday, April 10, 2004
Thursday, April 08, 2004
BAD? AS OPPOSED TO WHAT?
History never looks like history when you’re are living through it. – John W. Gardner
I don’t want to alarm anyone but, this is all looking exceedingly unpleasant. Reading between the war-media bullshit, as we have trained ourselves to do, it would appear that, in Iraq, the US is losing control of the cities, and calling down airstrikes, while reluctant allies pull out of the hotspots. Both Sunni and Shi-ite insurgents move through the civilian population like Chairman Mao’s fish through water. Civilian casualties, and incidents like yesterday’s aerial blitz on a Falluja mosque strengthen Iraqi resolve, and move matters inexorably towards a full-scale popular uprising – something with which the US military is totally unequipped to cope. A mendacious and unnecessary war has gone beyond being illegitimately waged and is now being arrogantly lost, in classic ‘Nam fashion, and at mind-boggling speed. Meanwhile the poor fucking grunts, some already there a year, have their tours extended, and spring moves towards summer in one of the most environmentally unappealing places on the planet. In a parliamentary democracy, it would only be a matter of time before a vote of no confidence would be organized, and the current leadership removed from power. But that is not the American way, and so the gang in the White House fumblingly presides over what may well be the collapse of the First Crusade of the Third Millennium, and who knows what the hell will follow, as the whole of Islam, in all its infinite numbers, engages against us. I’d just love to be wrong, but I’m started to worry that these larcenous pygmies-in-power may have actually triggered an epic, if not an apocalypse.
MAYBE GREENLAND MELTING?
And as the war hots up, this story from Nature comes at me...
Greenland's huge ice sheet could melt within the next 1,000 years and swamp low-lying areas around the globe if emissions of carbon dioxide and global warming are not reduced, scientists said on Wednesday. A meltdown of the massive ice sheet, which is nearly two miles thick would raise sea levels by an average seven yards, threatening countries such as Bangladesh, islands in the Pacific and parts of Florida. ''Any area that is less than seven meters above sea level would be flooded,'' said Jonathan Gregory, a climate scientist at the University of Reading in southern England. Researchers have already calculated that an annual average temperature rise of more than three degrees Celsius would be sufficient to melt the ice sheet in the future.
LINK
I wrote the cover story in today’s LA CityBeat. It’s a profile of publishers-to-the-damned Adam Parfrey and Richard Metzger. http://lacitybeat.com/
CRYPTIQUE – Check with the Mamalukes. Bang or whimper?
History never looks like history when you’re are living through it. – John W. Gardner
I don’t want to alarm anyone but, this is all looking exceedingly unpleasant. Reading between the war-media bullshit, as we have trained ourselves to do, it would appear that, in Iraq, the US is losing control of the cities, and calling down airstrikes, while reluctant allies pull out of the hotspots. Both Sunni and Shi-ite insurgents move through the civilian population like Chairman Mao’s fish through water. Civilian casualties, and incidents like yesterday’s aerial blitz on a Falluja mosque strengthen Iraqi resolve, and move matters inexorably towards a full-scale popular uprising – something with which the US military is totally unequipped to cope. A mendacious and unnecessary war has gone beyond being illegitimately waged and is now being arrogantly lost, in classic ‘Nam fashion, and at mind-boggling speed. Meanwhile the poor fucking grunts, some already there a year, have their tours extended, and spring moves towards summer in one of the most environmentally unappealing places on the planet. In a parliamentary democracy, it would only be a matter of time before a vote of no confidence would be organized, and the current leadership removed from power. But that is not the American way, and so the gang in the White House fumblingly presides over what may well be the collapse of the First Crusade of the Third Millennium, and who knows what the hell will follow, as the whole of Islam, in all its infinite numbers, engages against us. I’d just love to be wrong, but I’m started to worry that these larcenous pygmies-in-power may have actually triggered an epic, if not an apocalypse.
MAYBE GREENLAND MELTING?
And as the war hots up, this story from Nature comes at me...
Greenland's huge ice sheet could melt within the next 1,000 years and swamp low-lying areas around the globe if emissions of carbon dioxide and global warming are not reduced, scientists said on Wednesday. A meltdown of the massive ice sheet, which is nearly two miles thick would raise sea levels by an average seven yards, threatening countries such as Bangladesh, islands in the Pacific and parts of Florida. ''Any area that is less than seven meters above sea level would be flooded,'' said Jonathan Gregory, a climate scientist at the University of Reading in southern England. Researchers have already calculated that an annual average temperature rise of more than three degrees Celsius would be sufficient to melt the ice sheet in the future.
LINK
I wrote the cover story in today’s LA CityBeat. It’s a profile of publishers-to-the-damned Adam Parfrey and Richard Metzger. http://lacitybeat.com/
CRYPTIQUE – Check with the Mamalukes. Bang or whimper?
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
ECCLES?
A while ago I started to collect found email poetry of the kind that’s used to beat spam blockers, but then I got bored and gave it up. But I decided to post the following because it included the world eccles and I wonder how many of you out there are old enough and English enough to recall the Famous Eccles.
compassion shoelace splint gracious mitigate degree fowl biaxial salaried alden munich sherbet adverbial calcify
bank lobule gczk jzdk
pistachiopocketful swag eccles numinous cecil who'd inaugurate was inequity rerouting artillery haiku october
But with Jungian synchronicity, Beck sends me this...
This is an authentic subject heading for a Viagra email ad I received today. Since I know what the ad is for, this phrase is evidently to be taken to mean something about virility and tumescence, or to paraphrase Neil Young, the wiener and the damage done. So while I'm disconcerted about the word shrink in the beginning, "tete bidirectional denial" clearly states that this product is designed to circumvent psychological problems within the marriage, and promises that taking this pill will result in a "transoceanic revolt muscle tsunami, " especially on intercontinental flights. I leave the Bulldog Drummond part and the rest to your imagination.
Subj: aberrate shrink vicar polarimeter bissau individualism tete bidirectional denial transoceanic revolt muscle tsunami ccny mistress drummond rhenish signboard
But I guess this is just one way to take some time out from the ugly fact of a full scale shi-ite uprising in Iraq, and avoid commenting that one of the most provocative things an Army of Occupation can do is this start shutting down newspapers. I guess Bush and his gang are too fucking stupid to learn any of the lessons taught to the Brits in Northern Ireland over the last 30 some years.
CRYPTIQUE – We don’t need no stinking cryptique.
A while ago I started to collect found email poetry of the kind that’s used to beat spam blockers, but then I got bored and gave it up. But I decided to post the following because it included the world eccles and I wonder how many of you out there are old enough and English enough to recall the Famous Eccles.
compassion shoelace splint gracious mitigate degree fowl biaxial salaried alden munich sherbet adverbial calcify
bank lobule gczk jzdk
pistachiopocketful swag eccles numinous cecil who'd inaugurate was inequity rerouting artillery haiku october
But with Jungian synchronicity, Beck sends me this...
This is an authentic subject heading for a Viagra email ad I received today. Since I know what the ad is for, this phrase is evidently to be taken to mean something about virility and tumescence, or to paraphrase Neil Young, the wiener and the damage done. So while I'm disconcerted about the word shrink in the beginning, "tete bidirectional denial" clearly states that this product is designed to circumvent psychological problems within the marriage, and promises that taking this pill will result in a "transoceanic revolt muscle tsunami, " especially on intercontinental flights. I leave the Bulldog Drummond part and the rest to your imagination.
Subj: aberrate shrink vicar polarimeter bissau individualism tete bidirectional denial transoceanic revolt muscle tsunami ccny mistress drummond rhenish signboard
But I guess this is just one way to take some time out from the ugly fact of a full scale shi-ite uprising in Iraq, and avoid commenting that one of the most provocative things an Army of Occupation can do is this start shutting down newspapers. I guess Bush and his gang are too fucking stupid to learn any of the lessons taught to the Brits in Northern Ireland over the last 30 some years.
CRYPTIQUE – We don’t need no stinking cryptique.
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
I'LL LIVE
Thanks for all the cards and flowers, friends and neighbours. I'll be answering the email in dribs and drabs. The old bolshevik is recovering and now reflecting on how even staying indoors these days can give a boy combat fatigue. Talking it slow, but gotta give you a heads up for Thursday when Condee meets 9/11. After all the prima donna stalling, she better play like it like Joan Collins in Dynasty or she's the sacrificial toast.
More tomorrow, I hope.
CRYPTIQUE -- Fax more soup and bourbon.
Thanks for all the cards and flowers, friends and neighbours. I'll be answering the email in dribs and drabs. The old bolshevik is recovering and now reflecting on how even staying indoors these days can give a boy combat fatigue. Talking it slow, but gotta give you a heads up for Thursday when Condee meets 9/11. After all the prima donna stalling, she better play like it like Joan Collins in Dynasty or she's the sacrificial toast.
More tomorrow, I hope.
CRYPTIQUE -- Fax more soup and bourbon.
Monday, April 05, 2004
Friday, April 02, 2004
CAN THIS BE FATKIDGATE?
Monday night, the Letterman show aired a clip of GWB making yet another nebulous speech in Florida. Among the anonymous deer-in-the-limelight folk who stand beside and behind political speakers during sound bite speech snatches was a fat kid, age thirteen or so, who, in terminal boredom, yawned, stretched, and all but fell asleep. I didn’t think he picked his nose, but he might have done. The spectacle went on so long that I was moved to discuss with Newton the cat whether the kid was real or morphed. The cat wasn’t sure but I though probably morphed. Later CNN picked up on the clip, and ran with it, until the White House started complaining. CNN copped out by claiming it was a Late Show fabrication, but, Letterman's people denied it. They morphed no morph. Then the White House denied they’d ever called CNN. Then they admitted they had and CNN apologized to Dave. Complicated? Sure, but whatever the ultimate outcome, one thing is clear, there are people in the White House who watch more TV than the unemployed, and then attempt to put the frighteners broadcasters who do things they don’t like. The American Ministry of Virtue in the making? Or are the Bush thralls way less confident of the peerless leader’s reelection than some or our own comrades? The fat kid is on Letterman tonight and will be a cyber phenom like the dancing baby and fat Jedi kid by next Tuesday.
Press release...
So what's new with the CNN/White House flap? Monday we showed a clip of a speech given by the President from March 20 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. Directly behind the President stood a boy of 14 or so bored to tears. While the President spoke, the lad yawned, stretched, yawned some more, checked his watch, took a knee, yawned, and fell asleep standing up near the end. It was a very humorous actual clip we uncovered. Well, CNN played the clip the next day, Tuesday morning, stating that the White House had called and said the Late Show did some editing to the piece and it never happened. Two hours later, CNN showed the clip again and this anchor person said that the boy was at the speech, but was not standing behind the President as we had seen. Dave informs America that neither statement from CNN is true. The boy was at the rally and the boy was standing behind the President. Something strange is going on, and Dave smells a cover up. CNN is now saying the White House never called them. But why would CNN say the White House HAD called if the White House never did? Hmmm. And Dave reveals that our source, a very good source, confirms the White House DID call the CNN. Hoo boy, this is getting interesting. While Condoleeza Rice is testifying in front of the 9/11 Commission, perhaps she can shed some light on this as well.
And on the subject of weird broadcasting, who heard the Howard Stern April 1st parody Cross and Lopez, a perky “Fun Without Filth”, supposed replacement after Howard was pulled off the air? Had me for almost 45 minutes, and it was vx2 scary.
SOMETIMES MUST HAVE TO STAND NAKED
HC Beck writes...
Bob Dylan is the pitchman for the new Victoria's Secret commercial. Caught it on TV this evening. Bob sings ands looks menacing while girls cavort in their knickers. (No one will guide you, through Armagideon time)
CRYPTIQUE – An old bolshevik in search of a dentist meets the Buddha on the road. Who kills whom?
Monday night, the Letterman show aired a clip of GWB making yet another nebulous speech in Florida. Among the anonymous deer-in-the-limelight folk who stand beside and behind political speakers during sound bite speech snatches was a fat kid, age thirteen or so, who, in terminal boredom, yawned, stretched, and all but fell asleep. I didn’t think he picked his nose, but he might have done. The spectacle went on so long that I was moved to discuss with Newton the cat whether the kid was real or morphed. The cat wasn’t sure but I though probably morphed. Later CNN picked up on the clip, and ran with it, until the White House started complaining. CNN copped out by claiming it was a Late Show fabrication, but, Letterman's people denied it. They morphed no morph. Then the White House denied they’d ever called CNN. Then they admitted they had and CNN apologized to Dave. Complicated? Sure, but whatever the ultimate outcome, one thing is clear, there are people in the White House who watch more TV than the unemployed, and then attempt to put the frighteners broadcasters who do things they don’t like. The American Ministry of Virtue in the making? Or are the Bush thralls way less confident of the peerless leader’s reelection than some or our own comrades? The fat kid is on Letterman tonight and will be a cyber phenom like the dancing baby and fat Jedi kid by next Tuesday.
Press release...
So what's new with the CNN/White House flap? Monday we showed a clip of a speech given by the President from March 20 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. Directly behind the President stood a boy of 14 or so bored to tears. While the President spoke, the lad yawned, stretched, yawned some more, checked his watch, took a knee, yawned, and fell asleep standing up near the end. It was a very humorous actual clip we uncovered. Well, CNN played the clip the next day, Tuesday morning, stating that the White House had called and said the Late Show did some editing to the piece and it never happened. Two hours later, CNN showed the clip again and this anchor person said that the boy was at the speech, but was not standing behind the President as we had seen. Dave informs America that neither statement from CNN is true. The boy was at the rally and the boy was standing behind the President. Something strange is going on, and Dave smells a cover up. CNN is now saying the White House never called them. But why would CNN say the White House HAD called if the White House never did? Hmmm. And Dave reveals that our source, a very good source, confirms the White House DID call the CNN. Hoo boy, this is getting interesting. While Condoleeza Rice is testifying in front of the 9/11 Commission, perhaps she can shed some light on this as well.
And on the subject of weird broadcasting, who heard the Howard Stern April 1st parody Cross and Lopez, a perky “Fun Without Filth”, supposed replacement after Howard was pulled off the air? Had me for almost 45 minutes, and it was vx2 scary.
SOMETIMES MUST HAVE TO STAND NAKED
HC Beck writes...
Bob Dylan is the pitchman for the new Victoria's Secret commercial. Caught it on TV this evening. Bob sings ands looks menacing while girls cavort in their knickers. (No one will guide you, through Armagideon time)
CRYPTIQUE – An old bolshevik in search of a dentist meets the Buddha on the road. Who kills whom?
Thursday, April 01, 2004
WHAT’S REAL AND WHAT ISN’T?
A couple of days ago, up on the comments board, Boarg asked the strange but obvious question. Are all the people who visit, comment, and generally contribute to Doc40 real, or did I make them up? For my part, I can truthfully say I didn’t make anyone up, and if I had, I would freely admit it, proud of the diversity of my creation. On the other hand, Billy Oblivion, on the comments board, comes up with the perfect answer. “Of course we’re real...I think.” Almost a paraphrase of Descartes’ Cogito Ergo Sum. "I think, therefore I am." Like “I think...(therefore)...I am”, with the final reduction to “I think I am.” And that’s the joy of the web. The surfer – behind the pseudonym or screen name – can be whoever or whatever he or she desires. It’s worth thinking about. But the night is late and today is a deadline day and have to leave you with more action on the aforementioned comments board, and with two other things...
There’s a piece fine by me on the 9/11 hearings (and also a highly weird April 1st cover story) in the new LA CityBeat – http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=793&IssueNum=43
And, from fidicen, an unpleasant tale from the Axis of Logic site...
THE CHRISTIAN TALIBAN By Stephen Pizzo
During the Taliban rule of Afghanistan the world got a good look at what happens when religious zealots gain control of a government. Television images of women being beaten forced to wear burkas and banned from schools and the workplace helped build strong public support for the President's decision to invade Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11.
But even as President George W. Bush denounced the brutal Islamic fundamentalist regime in Kabul, he was quietly laying the foundations for his own fundamentalist regime at home. For the first time far right Christian fundamentalists had one of their own in the White House and the opportunity to begin rolling back decades of health and family planning programs they saw as un-Christian, if not downright sinful.
Since 2001 dozens of far-right Christian fundamentalists have been quietly installed in key positions within the Department of Health and Human Services, the Federal Drug Administration and on commissions and advisory committees where they have made serious progress. Three years later this administration has established one of the most rigid sexual health agendas in the Western world.
It began immediately. One of George W. Bush's first acts as president was to issue an executive memorandum reinstating a global abortion "gag rule." The rule was first implemented under Ronald Reagan but revoked during the two Clinton administrations. The rule prohibited federally funded family planning providers from even discussing abortion with their clients.
For the rest, click – http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/printer_5981.shtml
CRYPTIQUE – I yam what I yam.
A couple of days ago, up on the comments board, Boarg asked the strange but obvious question. Are all the people who visit, comment, and generally contribute to Doc40 real, or did I make them up? For my part, I can truthfully say I didn’t make anyone up, and if I had, I would freely admit it, proud of the diversity of my creation. On the other hand, Billy Oblivion, on the comments board, comes up with the perfect answer. “Of course we’re real...I think.” Almost a paraphrase of Descartes’ Cogito Ergo Sum. "I think, therefore I am." Like “I think...(therefore)...I am”, with the final reduction to “I think I am.” And that’s the joy of the web. The surfer – behind the pseudonym or screen name – can be whoever or whatever he or she desires. It’s worth thinking about. But the night is late and today is a deadline day and have to leave you with more action on the aforementioned comments board, and with two other things...
There’s a piece fine by me on the 9/11 hearings (and also a highly weird April 1st cover story) in the new LA CityBeat – http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=793&IssueNum=43
And, from fidicen, an unpleasant tale from the Axis of Logic site...
THE CHRISTIAN TALIBAN By Stephen Pizzo
During the Taliban rule of Afghanistan the world got a good look at what happens when religious zealots gain control of a government. Television images of women being beaten forced to wear burkas and banned from schools and the workplace helped build strong public support for the President's decision to invade Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11.
But even as President George W. Bush denounced the brutal Islamic fundamentalist regime in Kabul, he was quietly laying the foundations for his own fundamentalist regime at home. For the first time far right Christian fundamentalists had one of their own in the White House and the opportunity to begin rolling back decades of health and family planning programs they saw as un-Christian, if not downright sinful.
Since 2001 dozens of far-right Christian fundamentalists have been quietly installed in key positions within the Department of Health and Human Services, the Federal Drug Administration and on commissions and advisory committees where they have made serious progress. Three years later this administration has established one of the most rigid sexual health agendas in the Western world.
It began immediately. One of George W. Bush's first acts as president was to issue an executive memorandum reinstating a global abortion "gag rule." The rule was first implemented under Ronald Reagan but revoked during the two Clinton administrations. The rule prohibited federally funded family planning providers from even discussing abortion with their clients.
For the rest, click – http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/printer_5981.shtml
CRYPTIQUE – I yam what I yam.
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
JESUS H.
You may well have heard, or actually not heard, how, on last night’s Letterman show, the audio was dumped out when Janet Jackson said the word “Jesus”. During last week’s tech crisis I uttered the same word, and with considerably more emphasis, while on the phone to a corporate tech support thrall who was telling me that I should move my files to another computer and totally reinstall my entire system. I was immediately reproved. “Please don’t say that. It offends my religious beliefs.” Offending Christians is being rapidly elevated towards criminal status, as far as I can see, and we’ll soon have to leave the bar and curse in the street, for fear of giving offense by second-hand invective. Damn it to hell.
But the real problem in this is that a whole bunch of things offend me. And unfortunately one of them is computer tech support. I was already developing a theory that the tech supporters were making it up as they went along, and the only real object of the exercise was to get me and my problems off the phone as fast as possible. Then Henry C. Beck sent me the following first-hand account from Salon of life in a outsourced tech hell-hole. (Won’t link salon.com because they want money.)
Outsourcers are paid by the computer manufacturer based on the number of calls they handle. The more calls we take, the more the outsourcer is paid. So naturally everything that happens in this vast carpeted warehouse of cubicles is done with an eye toward speed. Our managers stress something called "average call time," which is simply the average amount of time a tech spends on each call. They want us to be under 12 minutes. Our phones monitor our ability to reach this magic number as well as the total number of calls we take, the number of times we ask for help, how much time we take between calls, even the amount of time we spend in the restroom. As long as we could answer the phones and provide records that we'd done so, the company would be paid every time we thanked someone for calling technical support...The most incompetent among us could have written a manual on how to answer calls and log them properly. As for how to actually troubleshoot and fix computers, we were largely on our own. Beyond a cursory overview of the computers we were in charge of healing, the closest thing to a troubleshooting tool we were taught was The Mantra. We repeated it over and over, the words seating themselves deep in the folds of our brains until the breakup of class began to feel more and more like the end of a cult meeting...The Mantra is simply, "We don't support that." On the face of it, it's completely logical. We're here to help with problems related to your computer hardware, but we don't pretend to know anything about your digital camera, or how to get the most out of Adobe Photoshop. Without The Mantra we'd waste precious time trying to answer questions beyond the scope of our expertise. Never mind that the scope of our expertise was largely limited to reciting The Mantra and logging calls. The important thing was that we understood our mission was to answer questions that fell within the limited margins outlined in the computer's warranty. Beyond that we didn't have to do anything.
WE’RE ALL DOOMED PART III
But offending people seems to be the theme of the week, if not the era. Seems that I have sadly upset Jay Babcock with yesterday’s response to his email. He resents that I misrepresented him as a defeatist. I assume the mail he sent me today was not intended for publication, so I can’t exactly give you chapter and verse, but he did want his posts removed, and I have agreed to that, only I fear it won’t be tonight because I’m too deadline beat to do the tech brain-surgery on the archives. He was also pissed I didn’t provide a link to Arthur, so here it is. Read Jay on his own turf. I think that’s fair.
http://www.arthurmag.com
Meanwhile there’s a whole bunch of related stuff over on the anarchic comments board from A-B-C, nigelr and some charming practical suggestions from philosohoe. (Long posts can be mailed to byron4d@aol.com, I’ll post ‘em.) And Beck (again) weighs in with...
“Look, it's *over for liberals in this country. Has been since Kennedy was killed -- possibly even earlier than that. It's a conservative nation and it's getting more that way with each year.”
I don't agree. I think the boomer generation went through a conservative phase in their thirties and forties, due to a kind of natural bio-sociological phase, and I think that same group will start to open up a few notches in their political waistbands as they get less nervous--one reason why Bush and his cronies are so determined to keep fear alive and ever present.
It's entirely possible that the success of movies like The Passion aren't about a movement towards religio-conservatism, but rather a reaction to an encroaching liberalism and the ever-greater slackening of religious bonds and beliefs. Dude, where's My God? Wasn't that a Bergman picture?
This doesn't make me any less cynical, because liberal or conservative we are and will remain a passive-aggressive people. But the hefty sales of books like Moore's, Clinton's, and Franken's seem to indicate there's a real shift out there--the new Silent Majority, maybe...
LINKS
Our pal hipspinster blogs about jury service at http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/
While fidicen draws our attention to the Washington serious, but highly informative http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
QUOTES OF THE DAY
When you’re smashing the state, keep a song in your heart and a smile on your lips. – Skip Williamson
A liberal is a man who leaves the room before the fight starts. – Dorothy Parker
CRYPTIQUE – beep! beep!
You may well have heard, or actually not heard, how, on last night’s Letterman show, the audio was dumped out when Janet Jackson said the word “Jesus”. During last week’s tech crisis I uttered the same word, and with considerably more emphasis, while on the phone to a corporate tech support thrall who was telling me that I should move my files to another computer and totally reinstall my entire system. I was immediately reproved. “Please don’t say that. It offends my religious beliefs.” Offending Christians is being rapidly elevated towards criminal status, as far as I can see, and we’ll soon have to leave the bar and curse in the street, for fear of giving offense by second-hand invective. Damn it to hell.
But the real problem in this is that a whole bunch of things offend me. And unfortunately one of them is computer tech support. I was already developing a theory that the tech supporters were making it up as they went along, and the only real object of the exercise was to get me and my problems off the phone as fast as possible. Then Henry C. Beck sent me the following first-hand account from Salon of life in a outsourced tech hell-hole. (Won’t link salon.com because they want money.)
Outsourcers are paid by the computer manufacturer based on the number of calls they handle. The more calls we take, the more the outsourcer is paid. So naturally everything that happens in this vast carpeted warehouse of cubicles is done with an eye toward speed. Our managers stress something called "average call time," which is simply the average amount of time a tech spends on each call. They want us to be under 12 minutes. Our phones monitor our ability to reach this magic number as well as the total number of calls we take, the number of times we ask for help, how much time we take between calls, even the amount of time we spend in the restroom. As long as we could answer the phones and provide records that we'd done so, the company would be paid every time we thanked someone for calling technical support...The most incompetent among us could have written a manual on how to answer calls and log them properly. As for how to actually troubleshoot and fix computers, we were largely on our own. Beyond a cursory overview of the computers we were in charge of healing, the closest thing to a troubleshooting tool we were taught was The Mantra. We repeated it over and over, the words seating themselves deep in the folds of our brains until the breakup of class began to feel more and more like the end of a cult meeting...The Mantra is simply, "We don't support that." On the face of it, it's completely logical. We're here to help with problems related to your computer hardware, but we don't pretend to know anything about your digital camera, or how to get the most out of Adobe Photoshop. Without The Mantra we'd waste precious time trying to answer questions beyond the scope of our expertise. Never mind that the scope of our expertise was largely limited to reciting The Mantra and logging calls. The important thing was that we understood our mission was to answer questions that fell within the limited margins outlined in the computer's warranty. Beyond that we didn't have to do anything.
WE’RE ALL DOOMED PART III
But offending people seems to be the theme of the week, if not the era. Seems that I have sadly upset Jay Babcock with yesterday’s response to his email. He resents that I misrepresented him as a defeatist. I assume the mail he sent me today was not intended for publication, so I can’t exactly give you chapter and verse, but he did want his posts removed, and I have agreed to that, only I fear it won’t be tonight because I’m too deadline beat to do the tech brain-surgery on the archives. He was also pissed I didn’t provide a link to Arthur, so here it is. Read Jay on his own turf. I think that’s fair.
http://www.arthurmag.com
Meanwhile there’s a whole bunch of related stuff over on the anarchic comments board from A-B-C, nigelr and some charming practical suggestions from philosohoe. (Long posts can be mailed to byron4d@aol.com, I’ll post ‘em.) And Beck (again) weighs in with...
“Look, it's *over for liberals in this country. Has been since Kennedy was killed -- possibly even earlier than that. It's a conservative nation and it's getting more that way with each year.”
I don't agree. I think the boomer generation went through a conservative phase in their thirties and forties, due to a kind of natural bio-sociological phase, and I think that same group will start to open up a few notches in their political waistbands as they get less nervous--one reason why Bush and his cronies are so determined to keep fear alive and ever present.
It's entirely possible that the success of movies like The Passion aren't about a movement towards religio-conservatism, but rather a reaction to an encroaching liberalism and the ever-greater slackening of religious bonds and beliefs. Dude, where's My God? Wasn't that a Bergman picture?
This doesn't make me any less cynical, because liberal or conservative we are and will remain a passive-aggressive people. But the hefty sales of books like Moore's, Clinton's, and Franken's seem to indicate there's a real shift out there--the new Silent Majority, maybe...
LINKS
Our pal hipspinster blogs about jury service at http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/
While fidicen draws our attention to the Washington serious, but highly informative http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
QUOTES OF THE DAY
When you’re smashing the state, keep a song in your heart and a smile on your lips. – Skip Williamson
A liberal is a man who leaves the room before the fight starts. – Dorothy Parker
CRYPTIQUE – beep! beep!
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
WE’RE ALL DOOMED – PART II
Following yesterday’s exchange, Jay Babcock comes back with the following, (although it might be a plan to read ABC’s rant up on the comments board first.)
Look, it's *over for liberals in this country. Has been since Kennedy was killed -- possibly even earlier than that.It's a conservative nation and it's getting more that way with each year. Carter won cuz of a scandal and was promptly booted after one term. Clinton won cuz of a third party candidate -- he was the least-popular two-termer ever, and was almost removed from office. Gore *almost won because of the economy, the power of incumbency and because he ran with an essentially happy-faced Republican agenda. Republicans control the nation. Repeat: Republicans control the nation. It's a Republican nation. Not only do they own the media, they have the state governorships, the state legislatures, the House, the Senate and the White House. They've been building towards this for 50 years. We are in a period of Republican entrenchment, and it's not going to end any time soon. I'm not saying anything novel here. Did you not read the articles that ran on this in December in the New York Times and the New Yorker and the Weekly Standard???? (Lemme know and I'll send em right over.)
Bush is not "fumbling." Bush does not have to make a comeback. The only people following this day-to-day crap is a very small portion of the population: political junkies of all stripes, and died-in-the-wool liberals. The bast majority of the public DOES NOT KNOW, DOES NOT WANT TO KNOW and DOES NOT CARE TO KNOW. They tell this to pollsters -- don't you read the polls?
Bush has got this in the bag.
And even if he didn't: Kerry hasn't given even the slightest indication that he would alter America's imperialist ways. You've put an awful lot of what is charitably called 'misplaced faith' in this man, for some reason. Sure: I don't like Bush. He's irritating. He's an obvious smallbrain
and greedhead. I'd like to see him lose. The thought of a family of one-termers makes me cackle. But so what? I have no illusions about what a Kerry presidency could/would mean. I take him at his word: he won't withdraw US troops from anywhere; he'll continue the corporate agenda for the nation and planet; and he'll be able to construct complex sentences without squirming. Big fucking deal. The sooner this Empire falls, the better for the planet. I think another term of Bush would hasten that fall -- a Kerry administration would just prolong the demise, causing greater harm to the planet, on balance. Kerry is Eugene McCarthy redux. If he tries the RFK route, he'll get shot. That's what we do to insurgent liberals in this country. Can Nader win? Of course not. Should we make fun of him then? Should we denigrate him? No. If a man speaks Truth, you should applaud him.
Confronted with Jay’s total defeatism, I can only wonder, once we’ve finished applauding Ralph Nader, (and reading the Weekly Standard?) what do we do then? Hole up in the basement and shoot dope until they come for us? Join some outlaw militia unit in Montana? Move to Europe? Empires don’t usually collapse under their own inertia. Most times they need a few barbarians to kick in the gates. Those that do, like the USSR, tend to make a terrible mess, and the collapse of a monolithic superpower like USA21C would be catastrophic, to the point of famine, plague, and multiple civil wars. Even accepting the hugely elitist idea that Americans are too stupid for democracy (which I don’t, otherwise why bother?) there is the matter of post-McLuhan, under-the-radar cultural perception. If Bush can be turned from Peerless Leader to the demon Chuckie in the months we have left, we might have a fighting chance. Let the chimp miasma fall. It worked with Vietnam. Perception was turned with massively less communications tools. Strange bedfellowships will occure, though. Like Howard Stern. Most of you probably don’t like or don’t give a rat’s ass about Stern, but if Boy Powell’s FCC drives Stern off the air, you will have 18 million formerly Bush-worshiping Maxim readers extremely pissed off, and if only a percentage of them vote, it makes a difference.
And even if the defeat of Bush is a completely lost cause, I, for one, will continue to fight out of a sheer sense of romance and a need to keep my self respect. I believe I’ve already noted somewhere in past blogs that Spanish Civil War songs make me choke up.
(Comments can be posted on the board or sent to byron4d@aol.com . Much more on media perception in the next LA CityBeat. I’ll post a link Thursday if the website is configured right. And, oh yeah, the Leno/Letterman column from last week can now be read at – http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=783&IssueNum=42 )
QUOTE OF THE DAY – Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. -- Napoleon Bonaparte
CRYPTIQUE – Starvelings smell the coffee.
Following yesterday’s exchange, Jay Babcock comes back with the following, (although it might be a plan to read ABC’s rant up on the comments board first.)
Look, it's *over for liberals in this country. Has been since Kennedy was killed -- possibly even earlier than that.It's a conservative nation and it's getting more that way with each year. Carter won cuz of a scandal and was promptly booted after one term. Clinton won cuz of a third party candidate -- he was the least-popular two-termer ever, and was almost removed from office. Gore *almost won because of the economy, the power of incumbency and because he ran with an essentially happy-faced Republican agenda. Republicans control the nation. Repeat: Republicans control the nation. It's a Republican nation. Not only do they own the media, they have the state governorships, the state legislatures, the House, the Senate and the White House. They've been building towards this for 50 years. We are in a period of Republican entrenchment, and it's not going to end any time soon. I'm not saying anything novel here. Did you not read the articles that ran on this in December in the New York Times and the New Yorker and the Weekly Standard???? (Lemme know and I'll send em right over.)
Bush is not "fumbling." Bush does not have to make a comeback. The only people following this day-to-day crap is a very small portion of the population: political junkies of all stripes, and died-in-the-wool liberals. The bast majority of the public DOES NOT KNOW, DOES NOT WANT TO KNOW and DOES NOT CARE TO KNOW. They tell this to pollsters -- don't you read the polls?
Bush has got this in the bag.
And even if he didn't: Kerry hasn't given even the slightest indication that he would alter America's imperialist ways. You've put an awful lot of what is charitably called 'misplaced faith' in this man, for some reason. Sure: I don't like Bush. He's irritating. He's an obvious smallbrain
and greedhead. I'd like to see him lose. The thought of a family of one-termers makes me cackle. But so what? I have no illusions about what a Kerry presidency could/would mean. I take him at his word: he won't withdraw US troops from anywhere; he'll continue the corporate agenda for the nation and planet; and he'll be able to construct complex sentences without squirming. Big fucking deal. The sooner this Empire falls, the better for the planet. I think another term of Bush would hasten that fall -- a Kerry administration would just prolong the demise, causing greater harm to the planet, on balance. Kerry is Eugene McCarthy redux. If he tries the RFK route, he'll get shot. That's what we do to insurgent liberals in this country. Can Nader win? Of course not. Should we make fun of him then? Should we denigrate him? No. If a man speaks Truth, you should applaud him.
Confronted with Jay’s total defeatism, I can only wonder, once we’ve finished applauding Ralph Nader, (and reading the Weekly Standard?) what do we do then? Hole up in the basement and shoot dope until they come for us? Join some outlaw militia unit in Montana? Move to Europe? Empires don’t usually collapse under their own inertia. Most times they need a few barbarians to kick in the gates. Those that do, like the USSR, tend to make a terrible mess, and the collapse of a monolithic superpower like USA21C would be catastrophic, to the point of famine, plague, and multiple civil wars. Even accepting the hugely elitist idea that Americans are too stupid for democracy (which I don’t, otherwise why bother?) there is the matter of post-McLuhan, under-the-radar cultural perception. If Bush can be turned from Peerless Leader to the demon Chuckie in the months we have left, we might have a fighting chance. Let the chimp miasma fall. It worked with Vietnam. Perception was turned with massively less communications tools. Strange bedfellowships will occure, though. Like Howard Stern. Most of you probably don’t like or don’t give a rat’s ass about Stern, but if Boy Powell’s FCC drives Stern off the air, you will have 18 million formerly Bush-worshiping Maxim readers extremely pissed off, and if only a percentage of them vote, it makes a difference.
And even if the defeat of Bush is a completely lost cause, I, for one, will continue to fight out of a sheer sense of romance and a need to keep my self respect. I believe I’ve already noted somewhere in past blogs that Spanish Civil War songs make me choke up.
(Comments can be posted on the board or sent to byron4d@aol.com . Much more on media perception in the next LA CityBeat. I’ll post a link Thursday if the website is configured right. And, oh yeah, the Leno/Letterman column from last week can now be read at – http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=783&IssueNum=42 )
QUOTE OF THE DAY – Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. -- Napoleon Bonaparte
CRYPTIQUE – Starvelings smell the coffee.
Monday, March 29, 2004
E-CONFLICT
Yesterday I wrote...
"folks like Jay Babcock of Arthur mag telling me that I’m being essentially Stalinist in my unilateral insistence that backing Kerry is the only way to evict Bush from 1600 Penn"
Jay replied...
Never said or intimated any such thing -- please don't misrepresent me.
I simply said Ralph was right when he said both parties are bought and paid for by the same people. Kerry's courting of the corporation 'vote' this week was just the latest evidence. You get Bush out, and then what? THINK two steps ahead. What do you really think is going to happen? Come on. If you're lucky you get Clinton II -- and Clinton did plenty to set this world backwards. NAFTA, China Most Favored Nation status, 'welfare reform,' zero 'peace dividend,' etc. Empire with a more palatable face, but Empire all the same.
To this I can only respond...
Sure, maybe I did misrepresent you, but basically to trigger the debate that I hope will now ensue. I lack detachment in this. Mad as hell and not going to take Bush any more. At the end of last year, the given intelligence was that Bush was invincible, and four more years were inevitable. After a couple of obvious Bush fumbles, and a general moving out from under the evil smokescreen that criticism of the war leader is treason, we now see a glimmer of hope and some optimistic polls. Kerry is the only battering ram we have. And let’s not pretend that unseating Bush is going to require anything else than total effort, massive energy on all fronts, and some very strange and shakily pragmatic alliances. (Progressive feminists and Howard Stern?) We still face any number of horrendous scenarios by which Bush might stage a comeback. And horrendous can mean a lot with that bunch of crooks. This not to mention all the nasty little laws like the Clean Airwaves Act or the Lacy Peterson law that are currently being rushed through the legislature, the outrageous judicial appointments, plus the possibility of anything from a November state of emergency to mass polling fraud. I become quite emotional in my insistence that, right now, the entertainment of symbolic and unelectable third party candidates, and debates over whether Kerry will only be a less charismatic Clinton – but with his pants zipped – are a luxury we absolutely cannot afford. The only priority now is to save the bloody Empire from being turned into a totalitarian corporate theocracy with Clear Channel and the Ministry of Virtue eliminating though crime. Once that game's been thwarted, we can make a start on imperial destructuring
Let’s not forget that, if Kerry does make it to inauguration, he will be beholden to a lot of people including us thought criminals on the internet who have done so much to reveal Bush in his true light. He must be made aware that we’ll be looking to collect. Me, I want an immediate cease fire in the War on Drugs, funded stem cell research, and a decent space station. What does everyone else want?
Of course, my attitude may be genetic. We English are a tad blase about both the building and dismantling of Empires. And maybe the Doc40 brits should get in on this because the Blair dilemma is such an exact parallel.
AND TALKING OF CHINA
Our pal Ellen Sander is teaching in China. She writes...
Expatriate life, and particularly the trip home makes me appreciate America more even as it has escalated my skepticism and anxiety. The current reprehensible (and hopefully soon to be revised) administration has degraded international credibility and respect and as John Kerry puts it, fueled anti-American sentiments. Things get worse in Iraq, not better, and this resonates in allied countries. I think the bombing in Madrid, and its political aftermath bottomed out my last hope that there might be a positive outcome to the war in Iraq and by most standards, I’m a latecomer to this conclusion. The pre-existing overseas envy and apprehension in place before the Bush coup has now coalesced into a dark cloud of suspicion and rancor. Hegemony is a word I hear often when America is the subject of conversation. I must admit that word was not an active part of my vocabulary before. With the American economy sagging, the notion that U.S. primacy may not be indestructible is a fairly widespread one overseas. Americans themselves exacerbate this by remaining ignorant of the natural dynamics of international trade as they eat up politicians’ promises to keep manufacturing and technical jobs from being exported. Defying even basic logic, much less basic economics, Americans believe other countries, primarily China are at fault for domestic job loss – hello, who gives that work to offshore facilities and why? It’s aggravating to see even my more world-aware friends and family regard China with a 50-year old sensibility when it’s growing and transforming before our eyes. This is not your father’s China.
THANK THE LORD FOR ALCOHOL
nitroski writes reminding us of the important things in life...
Next time you happen to be alone and in a drinking mood...Erza Brooks black label.
Straight from the bottle, don't sully it with a glass,
might make you forget all about scotch for a while.
Myself, quit drinking 20+ years ago...curious side effects. i enjoyed my drinking, everybody I knew and some people I didn't all but insisted I stop.
CRYPTIQUE – How do ya spell Yalta?
Yesterday I wrote...
"folks like Jay Babcock of Arthur mag telling me that I’m being essentially Stalinist in my unilateral insistence that backing Kerry is the only way to evict Bush from 1600 Penn"
Jay replied...
Never said or intimated any such thing -- please don't misrepresent me.
I simply said Ralph was right when he said both parties are bought and paid for by the same people. Kerry's courting of the corporation 'vote' this week was just the latest evidence. You get Bush out, and then what? THINK two steps ahead. What do you really think is going to happen? Come on. If you're lucky you get Clinton II -- and Clinton did plenty to set this world backwards. NAFTA, China Most Favored Nation status, 'welfare reform,' zero 'peace dividend,' etc. Empire with a more palatable face, but Empire all the same.
To this I can only respond...
Sure, maybe I did misrepresent you, but basically to trigger the debate that I hope will now ensue. I lack detachment in this. Mad as hell and not going to take Bush any more. At the end of last year, the given intelligence was that Bush was invincible, and four more years were inevitable. After a couple of obvious Bush fumbles, and a general moving out from under the evil smokescreen that criticism of the war leader is treason, we now see a glimmer of hope and some optimistic polls. Kerry is the only battering ram we have. And let’s not pretend that unseating Bush is going to require anything else than total effort, massive energy on all fronts, and some very strange and shakily pragmatic alliances. (Progressive feminists and Howard Stern?) We still face any number of horrendous scenarios by which Bush might stage a comeback. And horrendous can mean a lot with that bunch of crooks. This not to mention all the nasty little laws like the Clean Airwaves Act or the Lacy Peterson law that are currently being rushed through the legislature, the outrageous judicial appointments, plus the possibility of anything from a November state of emergency to mass polling fraud. I become quite emotional in my insistence that, right now, the entertainment of symbolic and unelectable third party candidates, and debates over whether Kerry will only be a less charismatic Clinton – but with his pants zipped – are a luxury we absolutely cannot afford. The only priority now is to save the bloody Empire from being turned into a totalitarian corporate theocracy with Clear Channel and the Ministry of Virtue eliminating though crime. Once that game's been thwarted, we can make a start on imperial destructuring
Let’s not forget that, if Kerry does make it to inauguration, he will be beholden to a lot of people including us thought criminals on the internet who have done so much to reveal Bush in his true light. He must be made aware that we’ll be looking to collect. Me, I want an immediate cease fire in the War on Drugs, funded stem cell research, and a decent space station. What does everyone else want?
Of course, my attitude may be genetic. We English are a tad blase about both the building and dismantling of Empires. And maybe the Doc40 brits should get in on this because the Blair dilemma is such an exact parallel.
AND TALKING OF CHINA
Our pal Ellen Sander is teaching in China. She writes...
Expatriate life, and particularly the trip home makes me appreciate America more even as it has escalated my skepticism and anxiety. The current reprehensible (and hopefully soon to be revised) administration has degraded international credibility and respect and as John Kerry puts it, fueled anti-American sentiments. Things get worse in Iraq, not better, and this resonates in allied countries. I think the bombing in Madrid, and its political aftermath bottomed out my last hope that there might be a positive outcome to the war in Iraq and by most standards, I’m a latecomer to this conclusion. The pre-existing overseas envy and apprehension in place before the Bush coup has now coalesced into a dark cloud of suspicion and rancor. Hegemony is a word I hear often when America is the subject of conversation. I must admit that word was not an active part of my vocabulary before. With the American economy sagging, the notion that U.S. primacy may not be indestructible is a fairly widespread one overseas. Americans themselves exacerbate this by remaining ignorant of the natural dynamics of international trade as they eat up politicians’ promises to keep manufacturing and technical jobs from being exported. Defying even basic logic, much less basic economics, Americans believe other countries, primarily China are at fault for domestic job loss – hello, who gives that work to offshore facilities and why? It’s aggravating to see even my more world-aware friends and family regard China with a 50-year old sensibility when it’s growing and transforming before our eyes. This is not your father’s China.
THANK THE LORD FOR ALCOHOL
nitroski writes reminding us of the important things in life...
Next time you happen to be alone and in a drinking mood...Erza Brooks black label.
Straight from the bottle, don't sully it with a glass,
might make you forget all about scotch for a while.
Myself, quit drinking 20+ years ago...curious side effects. i enjoyed my drinking, everybody I knew and some people I didn't all but insisted I stop.
CRYPTIQUE – How do ya spell Yalta?
Sunday, March 28, 2004
READY FOR A HISTORY LESSON?
It’s short and there won’t be a test. (LEB OK?)
In the NY Times, David Kahn gives a fast historical perspective of how Bush and his WMD fantasy, while still mendacious and asinine, are hardly new in the chronicles of lost wars...
In 1941, Stalin disregarded reports that Hitler was about to attack Russia; millions of unnecessary deaths followed. In 1944, a Luftwaffe intelligence officer laid a photomosaic before Hitler showing that the Soviet Union had assembled the greatest artillery concentration of all time. Hitler swept it furiously from the desk. In 1973, Israeli intelligence believed that Egypt, having lost the 1967 war and having expelled Soviet advisers, would not attack. But on Yom Kippur it did. And during Vietnam intelligence reports that the conflict was unwinnable were rejected by President Richard M. Nixon. All these refusals to face facts cost gold and blood. Two centuries ago, Carl von Clausewitz concluded that "most intelligence is false." A century later, the chief of the German general staff, Alfred von Schlieffen, added a psychological explanation for this: “The higher commander generally makes himself a picture of friend and foe, in the painting of which personal wishes provide the main elements. If incoming reports appear to correspond with this picture, they are laid by with satisfaction. If they contradict it, they are discarded as entirely false.”
PLAYING CATCH UP
After Doc’s recent battle with the corporate Borg (TTC, OK?) there is much catching up to do. Where, you ask, are kaymo’s revelations on elk milk? Well, dearly beloved, that’s being edited, so just remember the old Lou Reed line – “First thing you learn is that you’ve always got to wait.” Of course Lou was talking about copping heroin, and all we have here is a weblog but the same applies.
Meanwhile, kaymo does suggest that if you have any complaints, the thing to do is to email the President. (LEB OK?) That’s what he’s there for. Here’s the addresses...
president.@whitehouse.gov
...or if you think Dick Cheney might be of more help.
gov vice.president@whitehouse.gov
and – with the note that Chernobyl is the Ukranian word for wormwood, the active ingredient of absinthe – kaymo also provides us with a link to kiddofspeed’s site that tells the true adventures of a very strange young woman who rides her high performance motorcycle around the ghost town left by the former-Soviet nuclear meltdown and takes photographs. (And if that ain’t sci-fi made flesh...)
http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/
THE SQUARE ON THE LEFT
The Third Page literary site has just been updated and if you follow the link and click the square on the left, you’ll find a newly published Mick Farren poem. http://emptymirrorbooks.com/thirdpage/indexstars.html
SUBLIMINAL CADRES LACKING ONLY SECRET DECODER RINGS
LEB = League of Extraordinary Bushwhackers (or Let’s Evict Bush)
TCC = Thwart The Corp
This are essentially half-formed concepts in cyber-anarcho punk agitprop. What we need is a manufacturer of secret decoder rings as a sponsor. (The revolution will not have sponsorship? Discuss?)
DEBATE
Since I wrote a piece in LA CityBeat (who still haven’t put their lame website to rights, dadnab it) trashing R. Nader as an egomaniac, I’ve been getting all this email from folks like Jay Babcock of Arthur mag telling me that I’m being essentially Stalinist in my unilateral insistence that backing Kerry is the only way to evict Bush from 1600 Penn. I stand by it. Chimp begone and then work it out. On the other hand, if Kerry wins and doesn’t halt the war on drugs tout fucking suit, there will be trouble, as in...
QUOTE OF THE DAY -- Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. – John Fitzgerald Kennedy
CRYPTIQUE – Netscape, schnetscape...
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
SUPPORT FREE SPEECH! BUY A BOOK! (Preferably one by me.)
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
It’s short and there won’t be a test. (LEB OK?)
In the NY Times, David Kahn gives a fast historical perspective of how Bush and his WMD fantasy, while still mendacious and asinine, are hardly new in the chronicles of lost wars...
In 1941, Stalin disregarded reports that Hitler was about to attack Russia; millions of unnecessary deaths followed. In 1944, a Luftwaffe intelligence officer laid a photomosaic before Hitler showing that the Soviet Union had assembled the greatest artillery concentration of all time. Hitler swept it furiously from the desk. In 1973, Israeli intelligence believed that Egypt, having lost the 1967 war and having expelled Soviet advisers, would not attack. But on Yom Kippur it did. And during Vietnam intelligence reports that the conflict was unwinnable were rejected by President Richard M. Nixon. All these refusals to face facts cost gold and blood. Two centuries ago, Carl von Clausewitz concluded that "most intelligence is false." A century later, the chief of the German general staff, Alfred von Schlieffen, added a psychological explanation for this: “The higher commander generally makes himself a picture of friend and foe, in the painting of which personal wishes provide the main elements. If incoming reports appear to correspond with this picture, they are laid by with satisfaction. If they contradict it, they are discarded as entirely false.”
PLAYING CATCH UP
After Doc’s recent battle with the corporate Borg (TTC, OK?) there is much catching up to do. Where, you ask, are kaymo’s revelations on elk milk? Well, dearly beloved, that’s being edited, so just remember the old Lou Reed line – “First thing you learn is that you’ve always got to wait.” Of course Lou was talking about copping heroin, and all we have here is a weblog but the same applies.
Meanwhile, kaymo does suggest that if you have any complaints, the thing to do is to email the President. (LEB OK?) That’s what he’s there for. Here’s the addresses...
president.@whitehouse.gov
...or if you think Dick Cheney might be of more help.
gov vice.president@whitehouse.gov
and – with the note that Chernobyl is the Ukranian word for wormwood, the active ingredient of absinthe – kaymo also provides us with a link to kiddofspeed’s site that tells the true adventures of a very strange young woman who rides her high performance motorcycle around the ghost town left by the former-Soviet nuclear meltdown and takes photographs. (And if that ain’t sci-fi made flesh...)
http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/
THE SQUARE ON THE LEFT
The Third Page literary site has just been updated and if you follow the link and click the square on the left, you’ll find a newly published Mick Farren poem. http://emptymirrorbooks.com/thirdpage/indexstars.html
SUBLIMINAL CADRES LACKING ONLY SECRET DECODER RINGS
LEB = League of Extraordinary Bushwhackers (or Let’s Evict Bush)
TCC = Thwart The Corp
This are essentially half-formed concepts in cyber-anarcho punk agitprop. What we need is a manufacturer of secret decoder rings as a sponsor. (The revolution will not have sponsorship? Discuss?)
DEBATE
Since I wrote a piece in LA CityBeat (who still haven’t put their lame website to rights, dadnab it) trashing R. Nader as an egomaniac, I’ve been getting all this email from folks like Jay Babcock of Arthur mag telling me that I’m being essentially Stalinist in my unilateral insistence that backing Kerry is the only way to evict Bush from 1600 Penn. I stand by it. Chimp begone and then work it out. On the other hand, if Kerry wins and doesn’t halt the war on drugs tout fucking suit, there will be trouble, as in...
QUOTE OF THE DAY -- Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. – John Fitzgerald Kennedy
CRYPTIQUE – Netscape, schnetscape...
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
SUPPORT FREE SPEECH! BUY A BOOK! (Preferably one by me.)
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Saturday, March 27, 2004
THE DOC MOVIES SHAKILY TO WARP SPEED
On a whole new provider, Doc40 enters a whole new phase this Saturday morning. The last few days have not been nice and I have learned a whole lot about the bowels of the corporate culture. The gods help us all, it really isn’t nice either, but that’s nothing new, except I’ve made it this far on a kind of winsome charm and brute psychology, and that ain’t gonna play much longer, because the portals will be guarded by goons who never deviate from the script (which doesn’t take too much perception to recognize as fascism in Nikes.) So the battle will be rejoined with some new cyber toys, and maybe speculation as to how the corps can be thwarted. TTC – Thwart The Corp. On this theme all thoughts are welcome.
I still have to figure it all these new and unfamiliar screens right now, and so this post should be looked on as something of a test, and we will proceed with the real thing with increasing vigor and panache.
In the meantime, here’s a poem about hangovers that some of you may have heard before. It was inspired by a cocktail involving tequila mixed by Eric, the bartender at Canters in Hollywood...
DIABOLO'S CADILLAC
---------------------------
Room 101
A ratcage on my face
The pain is close indescribable
The horror, the horror
Last night I took a ride
In Diabolo's Cadillac
Morning is beyond the drapes
And demons wrench at my eyelids
With steel pliers
Blessed Virgin just show me mercy
Or give me a Valium
Last night I took a ride
In Diabolo's Cadillac
My brain is as dry and shrivelled
As a motherless sponge
And I dread the ultimate re-entry
Of the blood
When the torture of the damned
Will resemble a bright day at the beach
Last night I took a ride
In Diabolo's Cadillac
Jesus, God, give me a break here will you?
It's only a chemical analogue
For those two old dogs
Pleasure and retribution
I've heard that twelve steps
Can lead to salvation
But I also recall that one more
Will take you to the gallows
I don't need a stinking program
Just a remission from guilt
And some show about hitler
On the History Channel
While I collect my scattered senses
Last night I took a ride
In Diabolo's Cadillac
CRYPTIQUE – There really is never a penguin when you need one.
On a whole new provider, Doc40 enters a whole new phase this Saturday morning. The last few days have not been nice and I have learned a whole lot about the bowels of the corporate culture. The gods help us all, it really isn’t nice either, but that’s nothing new, except I’ve made it this far on a kind of winsome charm and brute psychology, and that ain’t gonna play much longer, because the portals will be guarded by goons who never deviate from the script (which doesn’t take too much perception to recognize as fascism in Nikes.) So the battle will be rejoined with some new cyber toys, and maybe speculation as to how the corps can be thwarted. TTC – Thwart The Corp. On this theme all thoughts are welcome.
I still have to figure it all these new and unfamiliar screens right now, and so this post should be looked on as something of a test, and we will proceed with the real thing with increasing vigor and panache.
In the meantime, here’s a poem about hangovers that some of you may have heard before. It was inspired by a cocktail involving tequila mixed by Eric, the bartender at Canters in Hollywood...
DIABOLO'S CADILLAC
---------------------------
Room 101
A ratcage on my face
The pain is close indescribable
The horror, the horror
Last night I took a ride
In Diabolo's Cadillac
Morning is beyond the drapes
And demons wrench at my eyelids
With steel pliers
Blessed Virgin just show me mercy
Or give me a Valium
Last night I took a ride
In Diabolo's Cadillac
My brain is as dry and shrivelled
As a motherless sponge
And I dread the ultimate re-entry
Of the blood
When the torture of the damned
Will resemble a bright day at the beach
Last night I took a ride
In Diabolo's Cadillac
Jesus, God, give me a break here will you?
It's only a chemical analogue
For those two old dogs
Pleasure and retribution
I've heard that twelve steps
Can lead to salvation
But I also recall that one more
Will take you to the gallows
I don't need a stinking program
Just a remission from guilt
And some show about hitler
On the History Channel
While I collect my scattered senses
Last night I took a ride
In Diabolo's Cadillac
CRYPTIQUE – There really is never a penguin when you need one.
Friday, March 26, 2004
WEED & GUARANA
Okay, so it turns out to be one more day running on impulse power. Serious insomnia plus a weirdass dream about Ozzie Osbourne dropping dead at my feet (I swear) meant I really only made it through the remains of the day on grass and guarana, and did not feel sufficiently coordinated to refigure the warp drive. Metaphoric dilitium crystals can turn nasty on the tired and stoned.
Also TCM showed a unfuckedwith version of Norman Jewison's original Rollerball with James Caan, and I decided, since I haven't seen the film in yarons, I should be considered a cultural override on all levels. And, boy, has it stood the test of time. Aside from a really stupid 64k scene with Raph Richardson and a huge compter, the 1970s vision corportate totalitarianism in 2018 wholly holds water. The plan seems to be coming true before our eyes. The imagined exectutive pleasure girls even had the same smug vacuuity we see in the face of Paris Hilton.
Tomorrow I will brave the labyrinth of a new internet provider and all that may entail, even though the changing of the passwords alone is daunting.
CRYPTIQUE -- Wandering bootheels?
Okay, so it turns out to be one more day running on impulse power. Serious insomnia plus a weirdass dream about Ozzie Osbourne dropping dead at my feet (I swear) meant I really only made it through the remains of the day on grass and guarana, and did not feel sufficiently coordinated to refigure the warp drive. Metaphoric dilitium crystals can turn nasty on the tired and stoned.
Also TCM showed a unfuckedwith version of Norman Jewison's original Rollerball with James Caan, and I decided, since I haven't seen the film in yarons, I should be considered a cultural override on all levels. And, boy, has it stood the test of time. Aside from a really stupid 64k scene with Raph Richardson and a huge compter, the 1970s vision corportate totalitarianism in 2018 wholly holds water. The plan seems to be coming true before our eyes. The imagined exectutive pleasure girls even had the same smug vacuuity we see in the face of Paris Hilton.
Tomorrow I will brave the labyrinth of a new internet provider and all that may entail, even though the changing of the passwords alone is daunting.
CRYPTIQUE -- Wandering bootheels?
Thursday, March 25, 2004
"NEVER OFFER EXCUSES..."
...it shows weakness." Wasn't it Gen. George Patton who said that (played by George C. Scott in the movie)? Well, I'll quit my crying about unwinable battles with AOL because you're all probably sick of hearing about it, and, I hope, by tomorrow, I'll have installed a new provider which I naively think will all go as advertized, and the Doc40 subversion-cyberparty will no longer be in emergency mode, and I'll can roll out all the great stuff on conspiracy and elk milk. I must thank all the crew who've emailed concern and encouragement, lead by HCB who shot me over me a bit from Salon that confirmed all of my worst fears and most acute observations as to how corporate tech support is little short of consumer fraud, and no CEO gives a rat's ass about a vital infrastructure or nation communication resources.
I was going to leave you with a handcrafted link to LA CityBeat and my latest TV diatribe against Jay Leno, but -- although flatteringly strapped on the cover of the print edition -- whatever genius updates the LACB website forgot to post it. Maybe excuses will be offered. Who knows?
Hell, if I was a paranoid as I used to be, I'd probably go back on drugs...
...but what the fuck? (And there is a load of fine readin' in the archives over yonder on the right.)
CRYPTIQUE -- Yarbles.
...it shows weakness." Wasn't it Gen. George Patton who said that (played by George C. Scott in the movie)? Well, I'll quit my crying about unwinable battles with AOL because you're all probably sick of hearing about it, and, I hope, by tomorrow, I'll have installed a new provider which I naively think will all go as advertized, and the Doc40 subversion-cyberparty will no longer be in emergency mode, and I'll can roll out all the great stuff on conspiracy and elk milk. I must thank all the crew who've emailed concern and encouragement, lead by HCB who shot me over me a bit from Salon that confirmed all of my worst fears and most acute observations as to how corporate tech support is little short of consumer fraud, and no CEO gives a rat's ass about a vital infrastructure or nation communication resources.
I was going to leave you with a handcrafted link to LA CityBeat and my latest TV diatribe against Jay Leno, but -- although flatteringly strapped on the cover of the print edition -- whatever genius updates the LACB website forgot to post it. Maybe excuses will be offered. Who knows?
Hell, if I was a paranoid as I used to be, I'd probably go back on drugs...
...but what the fuck? (And there is a load of fine readin' in the archives over yonder on the right.)
CRYPTIQUE -- Yarbles.
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
SINCERLY, THIS SUCKS
My battle with AOL goes on, but I'm learning to be calm. I reject anger even though this mega-corp will not allow me to talk to a human being about the problems their systems failure and fragmenting programs are causing me. I will not be consumed by fury, and I will not contemplate a suicide attack on their corporate headquarters, or employing dark, Lovecraftian forces to conjure deformities among their empolyees. I am learning patience.
Fast LEB Emergency Fact -- Our President was once a cheerleader.
CRYPTIQUE -- And if you believe the above...
My battle with AOL goes on, but I'm learning to be calm. I reject anger even though this mega-corp will not allow me to talk to a human being about the problems their systems failure and fragmenting programs are causing me. I will not be consumed by fury, and I will not contemplate a suicide attack on their corporate headquarters, or employing dark, Lovecraftian forces to conjure deformities among their empolyees. I am learning patience.
Fast LEB Emergency Fact -- Our President was once a cheerleader.
CRYPTIQUE -- And if you believe the above...
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
WRITER LOSES MIND (But We Shall Be Revenged)
This is actually well past being funny. After the best part of a week on the phone to AOL, I now realise that their outsourced tech support is not a matter of fixing anything, but simply processing as many complainants through the system as possible by convincing them that the problem is nothing to do with AOL. They simply lie. It's rather like the HMO principle of starting by denying all claims. I can only think I now have to enter the nightmare of signing up with another provider and all the time comnsuming bullshit that entails.
Meanwhile good stuff piles up unpasted and unposted. But, in this wretched situation, I can at least leave you with a couple of links, as the one to the report on the death (murder?) of Athan Gibbs who was attempting to expose the possibility of the fixing of the Diebolt voting machines. (And after you've read the story recall that Karen Silkwood went to same way.)
And also a truly weird cybergraphic.
CRYPTIQUE -- I hate this
This is actually well past being funny. After the best part of a week on the phone to AOL, I now realise that their outsourced tech support is not a matter of fixing anything, but simply processing as many complainants through the system as possible by convincing them that the problem is nothing to do with AOL. They simply lie. It's rather like the HMO principle of starting by denying all claims. I can only think I now have to enter the nightmare of signing up with another provider and all the time comnsuming bullshit that entails.
Meanwhile good stuff piles up unpasted and unposted. But, in this wretched situation, I can at least leave you with a couple of links, as the one to the report on the death (murder?) of Athan Gibbs who was attempting to expose the possibility of the fixing of the Diebolt voting machines. (And after you've read the story recall that Karen Silkwood went to same way.)
And also a truly weird cybergraphic.
CRYPTIQUE -- I hate this
Monday, March 22, 2004
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FOR THE SECOND TIME IN A WEEK DOC 40 HAS FALLEN VICTIM TO AOL. DON'T KNOW WHEN WE'LL BE BACK UP. MAINLY BECAUSE I KEEP HAVING TO PAY HP $40 TO TELL ME AOL ARE LYING.
For any one who knows about these things, the AOL controls on the emergency AOL 6 I have to use since AOL 9 crashed, will not paste into Blogger. (Although it will cut.) Anyone who knows what's up with that email me a byron4d@aol.com
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
FOR THE SECOND TIME IN A WEEK DOC 40 HAS FALLEN VICTIM TO AOL. DON'T KNOW WHEN WE'LL BE BACK UP. MAINLY BECAUSE I KEEP HAVING TO PAY HP $40 TO TELL ME AOL ARE LYING.
For any one who knows about these things, the AOL controls on the emergency AOL 6 I have to use since AOL 9 crashed, will not paste into Blogger. (Although it will cut.) Anyone who knows what's up with that email me a byron4d@aol.com
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