I found this gem in my web travels and, yes, well, I guess it does have a point. It also avoids STDs too, I suppose, but what effect it might have on our simultaneously sexually obsessed and sexually repressed culture might be debated. But while you ponder that, I've just posted a bunch of new tunes on DOCTUBE which may be just as much fun.
The secret word is Wood
Charles Stross is an eminent science fiction author and also runs Charlie’s Diary, and excellent and superior blog. Recently he posted these examples of rightwing religious thinking, strip-mined from their own internet chat sessions. These are the ones to whom our would-be leaders grovel. These are the ones to whom Huckabee panders. You can laugh or your skin can crawl, but the final one can be nothing a symptom dangerous psychosis or actual deep seated evil. (Spelling is verbatim)
"I can sum it all up in three words: Evolution is a lie"
"One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted EVERYWHERE BY EVERYONE. Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn't possible: UNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it."
"Jesus is not a Jew. Jesus was Jewish."
"all the evolutionists, tell me something. i know how the big bang "has happened, but tell me, wouldnt an explosion, especially one that size, take away life instead of allow it? think about it. ex: the a-bomb, the h-bomb, grenades, cannon balls (when fired from a cannon of course), mines, rocket launchers, and anything and everything in between. they all have taken lives."
[Replying to 'as for not seeing evolution it takes several million years... incase you missed that memo...']
"several million years for a monkey to turn into a man. oh wait thats right. monkeys dont live several million years."
"Everyone knows scientists insist on using complex terminology to make it harder for True Christians to refute their claims. Deoxyribonucleic Acid, for example... sounds impressive, right? But have you ever seen what happens if you put something in acid? It dissolves! If we had all this acid in our cells, we'd all dissolve! So much for the Theory of Evolution, Check MATE!"
"A woman wants to abort a rape child? She should have thought of that before she walked down that dark alley without a male prescence, not to mention she should have thought before putting on revealing attire."
The secret word is Crucify
I’ve had a lot of writing to do of late so Doc40 has been heavy on links and pictures and kinda shy on original text, but I hope I’ll be able to air some of my obsessions very soon. In the meantime I was sent a link to a great web site called Nickel In The Machine (there's also a permalink on the right) that is an inspired amalgam of British rock and political history that is truly fascinating. I learned, for instance that Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, lived on Cheyne Walk, the same London street on which Mick Jagger had a residence a few doors down and more than half a century later. If you scroll down a bit, you find an account of The Battle of Cable Street when Sir Oswald Moseley and his blackshirts (above) – The British Union Of Fascists – attempted a mass march through the then Jewish ghetto of Whitechapel and were stopped in their tracks by Trade Union members, Communists, and just regular working people. Oh that we had such cohesion today, but like I said, it was easier when fascists looked like fascists, and not aging frat boys in expensive suits.
The secret word is Solidarity
AND, in total contrast, here’s a clip from Noudela that I find wonderfully restful.
The following was sent by Brer LW (to whom I owe a jocular email). He is talking to Danny Baker on Baker’s Brit radio show.
"Dan, around the time Micky Farren was working at NME, he did a wonderful thing. Whenever Mickey, or any of us lot ( The Lone Groovers), bought something that had Polystyrene packing, he would take said shaped blocks, and stick them on his ceiling, thus creating Farren`s Moon City. Of course, when we had partaken of a drop of the old Peruvian Beaver Cheese, we would lie on our backs and observe said Moon City, until of course, we felt as if we were in space, looking down at the rare and strange buildings. Ah, them`s wuz the days."
Oh course, our styrofoam moon city looked nothing like the one above although it might have done had I worked on it longer and more obsessively. (And of course, if we’d had video camera phones back then, there’d be film of it.) But there are people out there who truly believe an alien city of rare and strange buildings exists on the Moon. Click for the somewhat implausible story and pics.
The secret word is Selenite
Oh yeah, after yesterday’s poke at Tom Cruise and Scientology, no men in black suits are lurking outside my building. So maybe they’re not as all-powerful as we assume. (Or better at lurking.) On the other hand, the Vegas odds against any C of S member reading this blog are probably ultra astronomical.
Regular readers will know that every two weeks I write a media column titled Mick’s Media for the tabloid LA CityBeat, and every two weeks I post a link so all you folks from Birmingham to Bangalore can also read it. But no longer it would seem. In their less than infinite wisdom, the management of LACB decided to revamp the site, which everyone agreed did look a bit circa 1998. But instead of some new, user friendly, techno-wonder, the lackwit contracted to do the job launched some dysfunctional piece garbage that is little short of a cybernetic puzzle from hell which would lead most readers to assume LACB Online was out of business. Whether anything will be done about it remains to be seen, and whether I’m fired for calling out management on their ineptitude also may need watching. For the moment, I intend to post the columns here in full instead of fruitlessly linking them. (Only, of course, after they have hit the stands in print.) We shall see what happens. This is from last Thursday’s issue.
According to the capricious Doc40 color code, I think I’ll print these in turquoise, indicating that I wrote it, but that it has already been published elsewhere.
The secret word is (yet again) Clusterfuck
DECADENT TIMES
A modest proposal for the immediate execution of Dita Von Teese
I have eliminated physical newspapers from my home. I receive the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post via the Internet (and also the New York Post, ever a mind-boggler). In addition to saving trees, the computer allows me to trippingly bypass the mindless filler that struggling broadsheets vainly believe will deliver the grail of the 18-to-35 demographic. But on Sunday, December 30, I made an exception. With no false modesty, my co-author Suzy Shaw and I had entered the L.A. Times bestseller list at No. 13 with our new book, Bomp!: Saving the World One Record at a Time, and I wanted to admire my name in old-
fashioned print. (Something I actually couldn’t do, but that’s another story.)
Having not had a copy of the Times in the house for months, I was surprised by its bulk. Surprise escalated to amazement when I encountered the “Image” section, dominated by a vast headshot of Dita Von Teese and the message “like the car you drive, or the watch you wear, the bubbly you reach for … speaks volumes about who you are.”
Perhaps my world has become a trifle cyber-esoteric, but I initially wondered on what terminally decadent planet I’d landed. I had clearly been lamentably ignoring plutocrat idiocy. My recall of Von Teese was as Marilyn Manson’s former flame, a modern pinup girl with interesting taste in corsets and a burlesque act that, although a highly pleasing method of punctuating rock-band performances, was little more than old-school stripping with some Belle Epoch pretensions, or a Weimar edge.
Now I discover she’s some kind of spokes-shill for the champagne industry, which, led by Cristal, was pimped-out in the 1990s by P. Diddy and is now selling itself like liquid bling: Witness the $300 Armand de Brignac in its gold-plated bottle (promoted by Jay-Z and an item in Academy Award nominee gift bags). Then, two days after reading a soufflé of a full-page interview about how Dita has had “offers” to act, and once purchased $500 worth of pies to throw at her friends on New Year’s Eve, the TV told me that, in the real world, oil had hit a record hundred bucks a barrel.
Von Teese herself also seemed to have physically changed. While with Manson, she affected a glossy, neo-counterculture style, but as the “Image” cover girl she appeared to have undergone a conservative makeover, causing her to resemble Monica Lewinsky’s slimmer, prettier sister. But perhaps this is just a last hurrah, a neocon bunker apocalypse in which the measure of a man will be judged by the brand of champagne he drinks, but only until the champagne runs out.
On the other hand, this is the Los Angeles Times’ happy promotion of an obscene level of social and cultural inequality that – in a country at war, and a world in which deadly crises are too numerous to count – will hardly build circulation or comfort its existing readers. Dita and her decadent ultra-marketing seem to be doing nothing less than moving routine Hollywood lipstick pointlessness toward a full-blown Marie Antoinette let-them-eat-cake. Historically, that attitude has a limited half-life; before too long, the guillotines are rolled out, the blades fall, the crowd cheers, and equality is imposed the hard way with the head in the basket.
I suppose I’m joking about Von Teese’s execution, but, as we move into the eighth hellish year of the Bush regime, we are obliged to examine all the absurd legacies that will remain, and the Dita Von Teese school of talentless celebrity and disgusting over-consumption has to be one of them. Maybe the foolishness of gold champagne bottles, being promoted by women famous for little more than their lovers and their foundation garments, will be recognized by the changing times as patently absurd.
In the meantime, I’m clicking over to Craig’s List to check out rented tumbrels and carpenters who might be willing to construct some cheap serviceable decapitation devices.
Maila Nurmi (Vampira) -- RIP
Since today is an overloaded day weighed down with work, I thought I’d pass along these quotes sent as a New Year greeting by a dear friend, either for your amusement or to provoke fury.
"The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma." [Abraham Lincoln]
"Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?" [Arthur C. Clarke]
"Religions are all alike - founded upon fables and mythologies." [Thomas Jefferson]
"Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile." [Kurt Vonnegut]
"Religion is based . . . mainly on fear . . .fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. . . . My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race." [Bertrand Russell
The secret word is Kneel
Today is Elvis Presley’s birthday. Had he not committed subconscious suicide by butter and bacon three decades ago, he would have been 73 today. I always celebrate Elvis’ birthday, and constantly wear a mystic Elvis talisman on a cord around my neck, along with a load of other totems including a pentacle, and the key to the Tardis. Why do I tell you all this? Because, despite all my intellectual pretension, curling up in a corner and reading Mikhail Bakunin did not make me the man I am today. Hell no. It really all started with Elvis. He was the one who, with “Heartbreak Hotel”, set me on the rocky road to Gene Vincent, Jack Kerouac, Theodore Sturgeon, Jack Kennedy (and the lone gunman), Bill Burroughs, Bob Dylan, Che Guevara, and a truckload of recreational intoxicants, all long before I groked the fullness of Mikhail B.
What else is there to say on a damp Sunday afternoon except we miss Divine more than we miss Mick Jagger and – oh yeah – there’s new stuff on DOCTUBE (and the picture was lifted from Tom Sutpen )
The secret word is Incongruous
Don't you just adore heavy handed and ironic 1950s nuclear doomsday comics. And aren't you glad the same doesn't play today.
The secret word is still Missing
The New York Times informs us how, in western Virginia, far from the limelight, United States Attorney John L. Brownlee found himself on the telephone last year with a political and legal superstar, Rudolph Giuliani. For years, Mr. Brownlee and his small team had been building a case that the maker of the painkiller OxyContin had misled the public when it claimed the drug was less prone to abuse than competing narcotics. The drug was believed to be a factor in hundreds of deaths involving its abuse. Mr. Giuliani, celebrated for his stewardship of New York City after 9/11, soon told the prosecutors they were wrong. In 2002, the drug maker, Purdue Pharma of Stamford, Conn., hired Mr. Giuliani and his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, to help stem the controversy about OxyContin. Among Mr. Giuliani’s missions was the job of convincing public officials that they could trust Purdue because they could trust him. (For the whole vile story)
The secret word is Shameless
Early Sunday, distracted with not a lot to say. May think of more later, but I wonder who’s reading this now that Christmas is upon us. But this cartoon from Jon is the business….it’s called the The Communist Manifestoon
Here at Doc40, it seems we can’t go a month or more without running a picture of Marilyn Monroe. This time, I’ve added a poem by Delmore Schwartz (who was also a mentor of Lou Reed.)
LOVE AND MARILYN MONROE
by Delmore Schwartz
(after Spillane)
Let us be aware of the true dark gods
Acknowledgeing the cache of the crotch
The primitive pure and pwerful pink and grey private sensitivites
Wincing, marvelous in their sweetness, whence rises the future.
Therefore let us praise Miss Marilyn Monroe.
She has a noble attitude marked by pride and candor
She takes a noble pride in the female nature and torso
She articualtes her pride with directness and exuberance
She is honest in her delight in womanhood and manhood.
She is not a great lady, she is more than a lady,
She continues the tradition of Dolly Madison and Clara Bow
When she says, "any woman who claims she does not like to be grabbed is a liar!"
Whether true or false, this colossal remark states a dazzling intention...
It might be the birth of a new Venus among us
It atones at the very least for such as Carrie Nation
For Miss Monroe will never be a blue nose, and perhaps we may hope
That there will be fewer blue noses because she has flourished
Long may she flourish in self-delight and the joy of womanhood.
A nation haunted by Puritanism owes her homage and gratitude.
Let us praise, to say it again, her spiritual pride
And admire one who delights in what she has and is
(Who says also: "A woman is like a motor car:
She needs a good body."
And: "I sun bathe in the nude, because I want to be blonde all over.")
This is spiritual piety and physical ebullience
This is vivd glory, spiritual and physical,
Of Miss Marilyn Monroe.
The secret word is Nembutal
Okay, so it’s Battlestar Galactica merchandise, and I find myself having increasingly more sympathy with the Cylons, but this merch is so damned well designed, here’s a link. (Sent by Some Girl)
Meanwhile Valerie sends us this clip from the New Scientist in which Tom Simonite speculates that humans are really fucking boring on a galllactic level. “Messages sent into space directed at extraterrestrials may have been too boring to earn a reply, say two astrophysicists trying to improve on their previous alien chat lines. Humans have so far sent four messages into space intended for alien listeners. But they have largely been made up of mathematically coded descriptions of some physics and chemistry, with some basic biology and descriptions of humans thrown in. Those topics will not prove gripping reading to other civilisations.” (Click for more)
The secret word is Vigilance
Maybe someone allowed a chink in the curtains. The sunlight prenetrated the vice presiental gloom, and his attendant vampires conflagrated?
The secret word is Undead
Or would you rather watch a Doc Marten commercial that was banned in the UK?
I’m not even sure about this myself. Should I do it? Or would it be gauche or bad form? From Counter Punch to Susie Bright I see all these blogs and static websites having what they call fund raising appeals to cover their operating expenses. Now I couldn’t say that Doc40 exactly had operating expenses, and we don’t take adds or (so far) sell you stuff, but funds are a constant headache, so being the Yule and all, I shed all shame and say what the fuck? The sensei puts out his begging bowl. Let’s have a one-time fundraiser. So Paypal contributions or Amazon gift vouchers or whatever will be very welcome at byron4d@msn.com (The illustration, by the way is an original by the later lamented Edward Barker, who I miss greatly.)
The secret word is Cheer
This is from Science Frontiers No. 173, Sep-Oct 2007, pp. 1&2 and sent by Sky Element 115
"Is "something" fine-tuning the universe for life – specifically human life? Fine-tuning the parameters of the universe is akin to the alignments mentioned above, being merely amore extreme example of nonrandomness. The fine-tuning addressed here is enshrined in the so-called Anthropic Principle. P. Davies, in a recent issue of *NewScientist,* provides a definition of the "strong" version of the Anthropic Principle...the laws of physics possess a weird and surprising property: collectively they give the universe the ability to generate life and conscious beings, such as ourselves, who can ponder thebig questions. Scientists never tire of providing examples of bio-friendly coincidences and fortuitous fine-tuning that permit the evolution and continued existence of earth life. A favorite example points out that if protons were just 0.1% heavier than neutrons, instead of vice versa, atoms cold not exist and neither could life chemistry.[A biologist might instead single out the astounding bit of fine-tuning seen in the properties of genomes---but of course genome chemistry is intellectually subservient to physics. Should it be?] Assuming the truth of the Anthropic Principle, P. Davies looks for an explanation---one not involving any religious entity. Reaching instead into the vast grab bag of quantumweirdness, he finds that time really has no meaning so that .the existence of life and observers today has an effect on the past. Ergo, we are permitted what is called "quantumpost-selection." This permits J. Wheeler to claim that: ...the existence of life and observers in the universe today can help bring about the very circumstances neededfor life to emerge. In short, today's life and its bio-friendly universe is the result of actions taken in the future by whatever humans turn out to be! Quantum weirdness allows this just as it permits the weirdness of entanglement. [Circular reasoning here?]"(Davies, Paul; "Laying Down the Laws," NewScientist, p. 30, June 30, 2007)
The secret word is Matter
About a week ago in Huffpo I found this very succinct nutshell history of US labor relations by Matt Stoller. Other stuff got in the way but finally I posted it.
"The roots are traceable directly to an authoritarian South, a one-party unique region in America that has held the balance of power since the 1930s and that was and is dedicated above all to a race-based hierarchical society. Through shaping even progressive legislation, like the Wagner Act, Dixiecrats ensured that broad-based class movements failed. It's not widely-understood, but the reason the South flipped to an anti-labor stance in the 1940s is because the CIO had tremendous success in organizing multi-racial unions as World War II labor markets tightened. This was a direct threat to Jim Crow, and so Southern Democrats cooperated with Republicans to pass Taft-Hartley, a piece of legislation which basically made labor organizing impossible and turned unions into groups that can only advocate for their own survival. At the same time, there were massive pre-McCarthy purges of leftists and decertifications of leftists unions, leaving unions open to infiltration by the CIA, FBI, organized crime, and bureaucratic inertia. The biggest movement for social justice in American history - the labor movement of the 1930s - ran up against the South, and the South turned it into a pro-Vietnam reactionary force that rejected the New Left in the 1960s.
In 1945, there were more strikes than there had ever been in American history. From 1946-1948, the purges happened. And then the 1950s somehow placidly came, and women were no longer in the factories and African-American soldiers were somehow living back in segregated neighborhoods. It's funny, how history is written by the winners. It's funny how the history of the post-WWII reaction, the women in factories in WWII being forced out of work and the returning African-American soldiers and population migrants being forced into racist structures, is just kind of glossed over. It shouldn't be. That's when the national security state, the seeds of the authoritarianism that sprouted into Vietnam, Iraq, and a radically unfair media and economy, were fertilized."
The rest of the piece was interesting, but not succinct
This week in LA CityBeat I have a piece on Robert Hawkins, the Omaha mall slayer.
Those voices in your head? Maybe you don’t need a tinfoil hat. They may be a commercial mindfuck. The A&E cable channel is literally targeting consumers with hypersonic beams on billboards. The rays broadcast sound in a beam, so the noise is inaudible unless the consumer/victim strays into the target area--in which case they may experience the sound as a voice in their head. (Click for more.)
About a condition that only stopped a month or so ago here in LA, and can come back any time it feels like it. (And was sent by Dr Adder)
“There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.” – Raymond Chandler, Red Wind
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