Among Friday’s comments, Peromyscus noted – regarding Funtopia’s online edition of my very old novel The Tale Of Willy’s Rats – “I didn't know it was online. Mick, I think you should do more BSP (Blatant Self Promotion) in your blog. Currently you don't do any at all. Too much could be irritating but I think “some” is in order. Having said that, the Willy's Rats' page tells me it doesn't exist. That is to say, it gives a 404. (See, a perfect excuse to have that corrected and then post about your books.)”
I have been, I guess, concentrating on aliens, implants, Lemmy, and other trivia for the last week or so, since in the real and deadly world, our elected representatives are so self-seeking scum-happy they devote time we don’t have to politically positioning themselves, via the minutiae of congressional procedure, and advancing their ’08 re-election agendas, while the killing and maiming goes on regardless, (and the mystery of the 363 tons of cash that went missing), and meanwhile we’re effectively distracted by pampered and possibly homicidal love-bugged astronauts. Aside from the horrendous civilian casualties, The New York Times suggests that the insurgents have evolved some painfully simple measures to take US military and contract merc choppers into Black Hawk Down reruns…
“Some aspects of the recent crashes indicate that insurgents have become smarter about anticipating American flight patterns and finding ways to use old weapons to down helicopters, according to military and witness reports. The aircraft, many of which are equipped with sophisticated antimissile technology, still can be vulnerable to more conventional weapons fired from the ground.”
And then Anna Nicole Smith drops dead as Elvis and I can’t help but wonder if one or more of her lawyer-manager-sleazeball-courtiers took a posture of by-any-means-necessary-with-extreme-prejudice and whacked the poor girl’s pathetic and confused ass. I mean, she’s stumbling Dairy Queen, OxyContin wreckage with a legal umbilical to around $100 million and – really – how hard would it be? You’d only have to leave enough dope in the plain sight and she’d do the rest herself. Right there in her suite at the Hardrock Casino. (And I’ve learned the hard way whereof I speak.)
All of which tends to push me in the direction of…
RUSSIAN FISHERMEN CATCH SQUEAKING ALIEN AND EAT IT
“So Anna Nicole dropped dead, did she?”
Today a letter arrived from England, and, when I opened it, it turned out to be from Boss Goodman. For those of you who aren’t already aware, Boss was major player in many of our adventures over the years, from The Deviants, to The Pink Fairies, to Phun City, to Dingwalls Dance Hall, to the Town & Country club, to lumberjack pie, to the night be cooked dinner for Bill Clinton. Last spring he suffered a left-brain stroke and has been struggling to regain some degree of normality ever since. The picture above is of Boss and me in our revolutionary days prior to storming the David Frost Show.
The note, that is a major step forward, read…
YES
WEEKADCGOING
WASAGGOING
IT AS GOOD!
BOSS X
I’m making of it what I can, but as an offering to Boss, here are some clips of Gene Vincent that MrMR sent over.
The secret word is Endurance
HCB posts a visual comment and the message, “You left out the primary Metalunan mutant motivation, (Bad) Faith Domergue!”
And you might wonder why we’re wasting so much time, space, and energy on whacked retro-alien trivia, when there’s so much else of so much more vital importance in the world. Well, my friends, the answer is that here at Doc40 we’re both biding our time and covering our bases. It would seem that the aliens might be back. First they buzzed Chicago and more recently Hawaii.
Also, despite all of the voices raised in universal condemnation, George W. fucking Bush seems bent on provoking some kind of military confrontation with Iran in the near future. The nuke-fear machine is cranking up, but, thank heavens, only the extreme wing nuts are listening. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to deter either him or his Uncle Cheney, and they're just surging ahead.
And so I wait -- maybe for another instalment in the neocom apocalyse-soon -- having minimal if any fun, watching far too much TV, and concerning myself more with the Cylon menace than the Mamalukes of Islam.
The secret word is Juvenile
…yet another reason the rest of the world is getting very nervous of the USA.The secret word is Flee
The President of the United States managed to read an hour-long speech without stumbling over the words, and the punditing heads on my TV treated it as though he cured AIDS and explained String Theory while walking on water. And if I didn’t think the buzz saw of justice might be moving closer to the bald head of Dick Cheney, I’d probably skip this century and move on to the next where people might be waiting for me.
I suppose it was kinda inevitable that I spent a goodly part of the day just passed wondering why the hell I wasn’t on stage as advertised at the Roundhouse in London, and reflecting (with a measure of suitably narcissistic self-pity) the close to absurdist sequence of events that had conspired to transform this unique opportunity to close what would have been a nearly lifelong circle into an embarrassingly pear-shaped debacle, and pondering what possible ways might be found to restore collective credibility and attempt some kind of substitute rematch, because, having had a whiff of the possible fun and frolic, I would sure like to pull off some modestly spectacular performance in the old country before this year is out. (pic by yukiko akagawa)
The secret word is Determination
Meanwhile the excellent Valerie sends a report from the BBC about how the poppies are blooming in Afghanistan, but the collective prejudice of multiple governments continue to prevent anything useful being done with the potential opium crop.
I woke and almost immediately threw up. I had been at a party the previous night and, still pissed off, I guess, at the termination of the show at the Roundhouse, had relapsed into the arms of my common and reliable downfall from Lynchburg, Tenn, although, even impaired by Jack Daniels, I did discover a cocktail napkin with a phone number in my pocket. But before that could cheer me up, I learned from the TV that Fidel Castro is maybe on his last legs, and then received a number of emails from London informing me that Germaine Greer (huh?) is slagging me off in The Guardian, in the context of some Brit comedian called Russell Brand (double huh?) who, as far as I understand, attempts to cut some 21st quasi-Byronic figure. The main gist of the attack follows...
Mick and I were as close as you can get at one time; I think he now thinks he invented me. In one of his works of non-fiction, Give the Anarchist a Cigarette, he tells the world I married George Lazenby, which will give you an idea of what he means by non-fiction. Mick glued together a personality for himself out of a cluster of ready-made images - Elvis, the Fugs, Lou Reed, the Hell's Angels, Frank Zappa - all stewed in mockney. He was punk before punk, which was not surprising because he predicted punk. Like Brand, Farren had a tendency to get stopped by the police. He was mouthy, talked tough and was anything but. Brand's like that - not so much a Hell's Angel as a Hell's Cherub, with his short upper lip and habit of speaking through clenched teeth like a featherweight Tommy Cooper, dropping references to Schopenhauer and ball-bags in a breath, simply to amaze and appall.
If you want the rest of the story, use The Guardian link above. Me? I’m just sitting here nursing a hangover of full Johnny Cash proportions, and wondering how it might be possible for Ms Greer to still hold a grudge after almost forty years. It's one weird fucking world.
I also understand there's something about me in the magazine Uncut, under the rubric "I thought you were dead." If anyone could send me a clipping, I will be, if not eternally grateful, at least for a week or so.
The secret word is Pain
Alice Coltrane -- RIP
We at Doc40 cannot reveal how the following email was intercepted but…
Dear Georgie,
Will you just stop fretting about not having enough troops to invade and subjugate the entire Middle East, plus North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba? I know your feelings about reinstating the draft and having, as you so succinctly put it the last time you visited my bunker, “a few hundred thousand longhaired doped-up peacefreaks” yelling at you every time you step outside of the White House. You should have more faith, George. Did I ever let you down?
Although it has up to now been a top secret project, kept even from you (for the obvious reasons) I can finally reveal the first production models of the Lockheed Halliburton Robotrooper Mk 1 (pictured above) are now ready from active deployment and will finally remove the annoying inconvenience of the human factor from the modern battlefield. Obviously an initial order of five million units at a cost $2.75 million per unit is going to take what can only be described as major bite out of the national budget, but what other use is there for the American people except to pony up their taxes and keep their mouths shut? Also, with these babies on the march, we aren’t going to hear any more crap out of the Chinese about how much we owe them.
So, for fuck sake, cheer up, stop eyeing the Jack Daniels, and, above all stop complaining to La Rice at all hours of the day and night. In future, what happens in her dungeon stays in her dungeon. Did you think world conquest was going to be easy?
Your Uncle Cheney
Above you see the lads doing the serious business onstage at Dingwalls Dancehall, sometime in the mid to late 1980s (during our “Wiseguy Period), and now it would appear that we are doing it all over again.
The press release for the Pink Fairies Kings Of Oblivion Reunion show on Monday January 22nd at London’s legendary Roundhouse reads…
“The original kings of oblivion featuring Larry Wallis on guitar, Russell Hunter on drums and Duncan Sanderson on bass, represent a crucial missing link in British rock & roll, bridging the gap between 1960s psychedelia and the dawn of punk. Storming out of Ladbroke Grove when it still meant something – the Pink Fairies have been cited by everyone from Joe Strummer to Billy Connolly (believe it) as proof positive that – with the right gin palace swagger and defiant determination – all things are possible.
And now they are back at the Roundhouse where their rumpus first started in the early 70s, when the band shared stages and a commitment to mayhem with the likes of the MC5, The New York Dolls, Hawkwind and Motorhead. The Pink Fairies amassed a fan following so outrageously extreme that it extended from the Hells Angels to jet-trash drag queens. They will again raise the tattered Flying Pig banner, and ply their old, loud, and totally unique rock & roll trade, one more time, and one time only. The old guard makes its final stand. Miss the cacophony at your peril.”
Not mentioned above, but now I believe it’s safe to reveal that, for a number of somgs, I will be a honored guest at the cacophony. I have a plane ticket and thus there’s even more reason to show up. Further information will be posted as comes through, but these are the Kings of Oblivion and it tends to arrive in fits and starts.
For most of the day, I have idly watched the Democrats install themselves in House. I am not a huge Nancy Pelosi fan, but to have politicians who actually resemble humans makes such a vast and comforting difference, particularly on a day when, during a regime change in the legislative branch of government, goddamn Bush grants himself executive power to open our mail without a warrant. The shape of things to come was also indicated the procession of Republican talking heads on cable news who wanted know how come the Dems hadn’t stopped the war, halted global warming, balanced the budget, and found the cure for cancer after they’d been in power for a whole entire day.
But I’m still hoping, if not for the best, at least that politics will become interesting. I suspect John Murtha will be worth his considerable weight in amusement as this ex-Marine with a bad attitude and too old to care goes after the nuts and bolts of Little George’s war machine.
I fear though, the shit may have piled up so high in the secret places of the Bush administration that they will prove a regular Augean Stable. And it’s all going to take so damned long, I whine. Hence the polar bears. Like the time ain’t tall if on time you depend. (Second Bob quote in two days.) This planet is not only running out of road, but it’s running out of ice, and you know what that can do to a party.
In other news, Keith Olbermann was all over the O’Hare UFO (see yesterday) and why the hell the FAA kept it secret for almost a month. And Doug the Bass brought news of a quite astonishing new self-help book.
The secret word is Promise
Well, this new template does seem to be working, and yes, it is a great deal more conventional than the previous one, and I miss the huge implausible comments board with its 1027 posts that is now lost for eternity, but like old Bob once reminded us “everything ages and everything changes” (or was it the other way round?) and we work within the bloody corporate limitations to do what we think we should do. All I can suggest is that we get used to it and have as much fun as we can. The conflict is by no means over.
And did anyone happen to see the story about the bloody great UFO that hovered over Chicago’s O’Hare Airport on November 7th, but nobody told us about until a couple of days ago? (Sent by some girl)
The secret word is Excelsior
Meanwhile I have a cover story in the new LA CityBeat on Bush’s Twilight Zone as it moves from 2006 to 2007.
FROM THE POST-XMAS MAILCTHULHU’S PARENTAGE
“According to correspondence between Lovecraft and fellow author Clark Ashton Smith, Cthulhu's parent is the androgynous deity Nagoob. Nagoob mated with the Outer God Yog-Sothoth to bear Cthulhu on the planet Vhoorl. Now, considering the descriptions of Yog-Sothoth I've seen, heavy on the quivering, the gelatinous etc., one does rather wonder why anything remotely androgynous would consider touching him with the proverbial barge pole, let alone actually mating."
And in the same (jugular) vein this little gem came from 00soul.
WHILE Elizabeth marvels…
“James Brown is in a gold coffin. The white hearse has glass sides!”
AND MrMR sends a link to a incredibly comprehensive compendium of recent Daily Kos piece on developments in the War On Drugs with (for me) a previous unseen piece on recreational psychoptropics by the late great Carl Sagan.
The secret word is Future
FINALLY, as always, in the time honored, Doc40, seasonal tradition, we have PENGUIN WHACKING
POET FINDS LOST WORK
When Lizzie Siddal, the wife of Dante Gabriel Rossetti died of am overdose of laudanum, the distraught Rossetti had his unpublished poems buried with her in her grave in London’s Highgate Cemetery. Eight years later, when he felt creatively tapped out, he had the coffin exhumed, retrieved the verses and published them.
I must confess that I haven’t been writing too much poetry myself lately, (maybe for kindred reasons to DGR) but, maybe because of how they have this bullshit planet set up, there’s plenty else to write about so I wasn’t bothered. Then, over Xmas, aside from attempting all the bonhomie my system would stand, I was also moving files from an old computer to a new one, I happened across a file of a piece that must have been written around 1986-7, in the Tijuana Bible days, that I had totally for gotten about. It is titled…
THE LADIES OF THE VAMPIRE CLUB
It is possible that I have spent too much of my life in the company of The Ladies Of The Vampire Club but, like Otis Redding once remarked, it's too late to stop now
My mind drifts back to night-complex self destruction, the synaptic crapshoot at suicide's edge that we knew as fun, the blatancy of things past, and, above all The Ladies Of The Vampire Club. Now what was the name of that place? The afterhours bunker, fashionable slum haunt out on Avenue C? Where you had to look as though you had just come from an appointment with your personal embalmer to circumvent the Sumo wrestler guardian of the velvet rope, and mingle with the girls who never saw the sun.
The Ladies Of The Vampire Club
And those lairs wherein they lurked, Ninth Street railroad walkups transformed to Spider Queen salons in which they courted and held court, and drank the blood of servants among their relics, the human skulls, the Chinese cymbals, the Arabian mandolins, and the severed index fingers of paramours who had lost their roll of the dice to the soft hiss and cold breath across pearl white fangs of
The Ladies Of The Vampire Club
And those moments of rage that not even ice blue valium could mitigate when, as all too often they believed they had not been used appropriately or accorded the measure of emotional control they viewed as their right. Those moments of rage like the howl of driving rain and the deafening crash of night-thunder around the granite turrets of the castle, scattering the walking wounded of Valhalla with their epic Wagnerian Nazi-scream "Where is the gasoline for my tanks?"And finally the satisfaction, the curled kitten retraction of fangs and claws when rage was spent and guilt instilled, and the otherwise required effects had been achieved. They took no prisoners The Ladies Of The Vampire Club, for they were possessed of a supernatural instinct, for gauging the exact moment when pleasure prolonged could transcend to torture in the beating of their soft leather wings.
It is possible that I have spent too much of my life in the company of The Ladies Of The Vampire Club, but, like Otis Redding once remarked, it's too late to stop now.
SO? YOU GOT A PAIR OF 3D GLASSES HANDY?
I should be writing about Bubble Boy's fucking demented brainstorm of a military "surge" in Iraq, and how carrier groups are sailing into the Persian Gulf, and how I wouldn't put it past the asshole white devils in power to attempt to slip a new war past us over the holidays while we're drunk, but in the darkness of the year's longest night the whole prospect of both war and Christmas are depressing the hell out of me, and I feel a lot happier posting meaningless images. I mean, this is the first holiday since...well...just since...
The secret word is Numb
(But are the images really that meaningless? (sinister laugh) The Shadow knows!)
From Dimitrios...
A actual pic of Keith Richards as Jack Sparrow's dad. Remember you saw it here second!
(Also check Dinitrios' zine-site Gang Bang.)
DANCING?
In the new LA CityBeat, I have a whimsical piece on dancing. That's right. Dancing.
The secret word is Tuxedo
My mind is also really from the concept that Bubble Boy George is now demanding a bigger army. (And more tax cuts for the rich.) But more of that later.
OOOOOPS! (As in serious)
Doug the Bass sent over this little tale of horror…
The Nation Mon Dec 18,
In March 2005, a nuclear warhead almost exploded in Texas. The near miss accident occurred in Amarillo, when workers at the Pantex nuclear weapons plant bungled the dismantling of a W-56 warhead, a weapon 100 times stronger than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II.
Details of the averted catastrophe have been kept under wraps until last month, when the Department of Energy (DOE) fined the company that operates the plant, BWX Technologies, $110,000 for safety violations.
In a letter obtained by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), technicians at the plant blamed the accident on severe working conditions, including mandatory 72 to 84 hour work weeks. One nuclear scientist told POGO that he "would not work on his car engine if he were fatigued from a 72-hour work week, and sure as hell would not work on a nuclear weapon."
Besides hellish hours, workers described the "degrading" physical state of the plant in the letter to the BWX board. "Look around the plant. You will find leaking roofs, crumbling buildings, waist-high weed-infested landscapes, barricades and safety tape that makes this once-proud plant look like a crime scene."
In 2007, production goals at the plant will increase by 50 percent, which POGO calls a "recipe for disaster." Clearly it's time for the DOE to step in and show that the government is serious about nuclear security, both abroad and at home.
The secret word is Chernobyl
TO THE DYING OF THE LIGHT
With just four days to go to the solstice, the sunset comes before one is ready. (Or even out of bed.) Of course, I am in LA, not Helsinki or Oslo, but the gloom can still be felt and the primeval question nags. Will the light ever return? Our ancestors made every effort to ensure it did, all the way, it’s recorded, to human sacrifice, but, at the same time, they held the Saturnalia of the solstice in order to eat, drink, merrily fist fight, and fornicate like there was no tomorrow. Today, of course, we have Galileo, Copernicus and Newton to assure us that the sun will continue to rise in the morning east, plus our Chanukah candles and Christmas ribbons, maybe some aid from Odin to stave off the twilight, and the Maya at least guarantee us until 2012. This year, though, I have a certain nagging pagan doubt. This has been a year when death has dogged me too hard. Will the sun really return? Or will this be Ragnarok, and should I embrace simply the darkness?
But here’s a bit of background…
Ragnarok ("Doom of the Gods"), also called Gotterdammerung, means the end of the cosmos in Norse mythology. It will be preceded by Fimbulvetr, the winter of winters. Three such winters will follow each other with no summers in between. Conflicts and feuds will break out, even between families, and all morality will disappear. This is the beginning of the end. The wolf Skoll will finally devour the sun, and his brother Hati will eat the moon, plunging the earth into darkness. The stars will vanish from the sky. The earth will shudder with earthquakes, and every bond and fetter will burst, freeing the terrible wolf Fenrir.
The secret words are Cheerful Bastard
GLOATING
In the this week's media column, I do a lot of of gloating over the new order in Washington. This was written, however, before the unfortunate Senator Johnson had his stroke. (You might, however, notice, when you click to it, that the banner of the LACB webpage is a recruiting ad for the Los Angeles Police Department. Times have certainly changed in the alt press and let no man tell you different.
The secret nostaligia is Oink
ALSO our pal Chris Rowley is now posting his excellent science fiction online.
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