WAR – FOR WANT OF A BETTER WORD – IS GOOD

This memoir of A.A. Milne (of Winnie the Pooh fame) makes me wonder if the mindset of the fat cat elite of 98 years ago was really any different to that of the fat cat elite of today.

"A.A. (Alan) Milne says in his autobiography that he would have liked to ignore the four years he spent in the army. 'I should like to put asterisks here, and then write 'It was in 1919 that I found myself once again a civilian.' For it makes me almost physically sick to think of that nightmare of mental and moral degradation, the war.' But of course the war cannot be ignored. In 1914, no one (reader, writer, or hero) can ignore history. Milne overheard hideous talk in the smoking-rooms of golf clubs and recorded it in the issue of Punch that came out the day after war was declared. 'What England wants,' someone said, leaning back and puffing at his cigar - he was, of course, himself well past military age - 'What England wants is a war. (Another whisky and soda, waiter.) We're getting flabby. All this pampering of the poor is playing the very deuce with the country. A bit of a scrap with a foreign power would do us all the good in the world.' He disposed of his whisky at a draught. 'We're flabby,' he repeated. 'The lower classes seem to have no discipline nowadays. We want a war to brace us up.'"

Click here for Frankie

The secret word is Bayonet

Johnny Otis – RIP
Etta James – RIP

YOU TALKING TO ME?

Click here for Travis

IS IT ANY WONDER?

Click here for Del Shannon

DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSICS # 96

DOC40 IS BLACKED OUT IN SOLIDARITY. Click here for why.

TANKS FOR THE DRUG WAR

Remember the cocaine submarine? Now we have drug tanks. Seemingly the bad-ass Mexican narco crews are creating their own panzer divisions. Police found this armored dope-mobile war wagon in a metalworking shop. I would yet again point out that all this would vanish like the morning mist if legalization removed the criminal profit motive, but who the hell listens to me?

“The completed versions were bigger than what has been found before. Built on three-axle truck beds, they had room for 20 armed men, one official said. They were covered with inch-thick steel, which could withstand 50-caliber fire, and each had been equipped with insulation. The Mexican Army officials do not seem particularly intimidated. They have criticized the machines for being difficult to maneuver, noting that they are designed to frighten rivals. But for most Mexicans, the mere sight of the seized narco-rhino monsters in military photographs offers a stark reminder that in the battle against crime here there is no place more dangerous than Mexico’s roads.”

Click here for Gene Vincent

The secret word is Sherman

READ ALL ABOUT IT

There’s a rather nice interview with me in the current issue of Word magazine. Click here for the website but I think you may have to pick up a real paper magazine to read the interview.

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Lucrezia Frozdick found it hard to obtain credit.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GREAT ONE

GRATUITOUS BARDOT

SUNDAY BREAKFAST

Breakfast with the iguana? What can I say today? He is the lizard king. He can do anything.

Click here for an extended dueling banjo.

NOSFERATU DIY

In the last decade I labored long and hard on what came to be known as The Renquist Quartet, four modern-gothic novels on a nosferatu theme that had little if nothing to do with the bloody vampire nonsense we currently see in the cinema and on TV. Maybe, of course, that was my mistake, but that hardly seems relevant now tales of the undead can be composed with magnets.

Click here for the Victor Renquist Facebook page. (Not, I might add, created by me.)

ALL I HAVE TO DO IS SCREAM

I sometimes wonder how Edvard Munch would have felt if he knew that his most celebrated painting was reproduced on t-shirts, fridge magnets, and in inflatable plastic. These are his words on the inspiration behind epic painting. I’d never read them before and thus I pass them on…

“I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.”

Click here for the animated version.

MARILYN SEZ...

“In space no one cares if you scream.”