ONE MIND BOGGLING 2

“So when’s the cavalry going to come to the rescue?”
“You are the cavalry.”
“Oh fuck.”

AN ANSWER TO YESTERDAY’S QUESTION

Elizabeth, after informing us that we could have looked it up on google, sends the following on those Nigerian bank scams...

A Five Billion US$ (as of 1996, much more now) worldwide Scam which has run since the early 1980's under Successive Governments of Nigeria. It is also referred to as "Advance Fee Fraud", "419 Fraud" (Four-One-Nine) after the relevant section of the Criminal Code of Nigeria, and "The
Nigerian Connection" (mostly in Europe). However, it is usually called plain old "419" even by the Nigerians themselves. The Scam operates as follows: the target receives an unsolicited fax, email, or letter often concerning Nigeria or another African nation containing either a money laundering or other illegal proposal OR you may receive a Legal and Legitimate business proposal by normal means. Common variations on the Scam include "overinvoiced" or "double invoiced" oil or other supply and service contracts where your Bad Guys want to get the overage out of Nigeria; crude oil and other commodity deals; a "bequest" left you in a will; "money cleaning" where your Bad Guy has a lot of currency that needs to be "chemically cleaned" before it can be used and he needs the cost of the chemicals; "spoof banks" where there is supposedly money in your name already on deposit; "paying" for a purchase with a check larger than the amount required and asking for change to be advanced; fake lottery 419; and ordering items and commodities off "trading" sites on the web and then cheating the seller. The variations of Advance Fee Fraud (419) are very creative and virtually endless. At some point, the victim is asked to pay up front an Advance Fee of some sort, be it an "Advance Fee", "Transfer Tax", "Performance Bond", or to extend credit, grant COD privileges, send back "change" on an overage cashier's check or money order, whatever. If the victim pays the Fee, there are often many "Complications" which require still more advance payments until the victim either quits, runs out of money, or both. If the victim extends credit on a given transaction etc. he may also pay such fees ("nerfund" etc.), and also stiffed for the Goods or Service with NO Effective Recourse. The Nigerian Scam is, according to published reports, the Third to Fifth largest industry in Nigeria. It is the 419 Coalition view that, in effect, the elites from which successive Governments of Nigeria have been drawn ARE the Scammers - therefore, victims have little recourse in this matter.

And HC Beck sends a link for those who want to know more

http://www.quatloos.com/cm-niger/nigerian_scam_letter_museum.htm

COMMENTS

I’m beginning to wonder if the comments board is going to go into overload and implode, thus proving Some Girl, and all the others who said we should do it the conventional way with a comment button after each post, absolutely right as usual. It’s starting to feel like one of those submarine movies in which the crippled sub sinks deeper and deeper while the crew sweats and the officers watch the depth gauge go into the red, and everyone wonders when it’s going to be flattened like a tin can. Like the submarine crew, we can only wait to see what happens.

THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY BUSHWHACKERS (LEB)

From today’s NY Times...

Now let's turn to the administration's other big embarrassment, the budget deficit.
The fiscal 2005 budget report admits that this year's expected $521 billion deficit belies the rosy forecasts of 2001. But the report offers an explanation: stuff happens. "Today's budget deficits are the unavoidable result of the revenue erosion from the stock market collapse that began in early 2000, an economy recovering from recession and a nation confronting serious security threats." Sure, the administration was wrong — but so was everyone.
The trouble is that accepting that excuse requires forgetting a lot of recent history. By February 2002, when the administration released its fiscal 2003 budget, all of the bad news — the bursting of the bubble, the recession, and, yes, 9/11 — had already happened. Yet that budget projected only a $14 billion deficit this year, and a return to surpluses next year. Why did that forecast turn out so wrong? Because administration officials fudged the facts, as usual.

FROM THE EMAIL

A strange one from Blanche...

Rosie Reid, a first year student at the University of Bristol, placed an advert on eBay offering her virginity to the highest bidder and received offers of up to £10,000 before eBay Inc. removed the auction from its website. Reid said that she came up with the idea after hearing that lots of students sell things on eBay to help keep debts under control: “I needed to raise cash and I was thinking about what I could sell. It seemed that my virginity was something really valuable, yet at the same time something I could do without. The way things are going, I’ll leave university £15,000 pounds in debt. That’s why I’m taking drastic action. With £10,000 in the bank I could work less. I could live comfortably till the end of my course and concentrate on my studies. Unless I do this I’m going to be in financial trouble.” She also reasoned that “people have sex all the time and they do it free of charge. And I don’t know many people who actually stay with the person they ever sleep with.” Her advert, which was placed earlier this month read: “Eighteen-year-old university student looking to sell virginity. Never lost it due to lesbianism. Will bung in free massage if you are any good. Picture on request.”

And HCB, who we suspect has never met a rack he didn’t like, is still fascinated with Janet Jackson making a clean breast it. I wrote “I will not go any further with JJ’s right tit.” Henry responds...

Supposing of course that she would let you. Why, I wonder, is the word pastie no longer in the world lexicon? I've only seen one photo of the malevolent mammary, but is she not wearing a star-shaped pastie? Correct me here, but isn't the lovely tittie made more respectable by the application of a nipple hubcap? I hate to keep quoting Lenny Bruce but when he was responding to the idea that tits are dirty, he said, "Not to me, Jim. I like to hug 'em and kiss 'em."

And on Buddy Holly...

ok--the first r&roll death by tragic accident, if you don't count James Dean - I'll buy that. Followed in short order by Eddie Cochrane and Patsy Cline. But the first real crash and burn R&R self-inflicted demise was to my mind, arguably, Hank. After Hank, most of them did it that-a-way.

TRUE LAWYER JOKES 2

More true courtroom absurdities from Disorder in the American Courts, courtesy of Jessica. (See yesterday’s post)

Q: Are you sexually active?
A: No, I just lie there.

CRYPTIQUE – Viddy well, my droogs.

COMRADES, I HAVE A QUESTION

You’re all probably very familiar with this kind of email...

I am Mrs Mariam Sani Abacha (Widow), the wife of Late General Sani Abacha Former Military Head of State of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, who died while in office in 1998. After my husband's death and, upon the enthronement of, the present democratic elected government of OLUSEGUN OBASANJO in 1999 thus, started the probe of my husband's tenure as Military head of state over the years, during the tenure of my husband, he acquired and accumulated a lot of money while in office, stashed this funds in various banks in America, Canada, Europe and Africa but unfortunately, my husband died. However, the present Government succeeded in discovering and frozening* most of these accounts and have so far recalled some of these money back to the country, with exception of the above stated(USD$45.5 MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS) deposited with a Bank in Switzerland, blah, blah, blah, etc.

(* gotta love the word frozening)

...but now the bloody things have started showing up daily, I’ve commenced to wonder what the con really is. I’m aware that it probably involves giving out your bank details to some gutterjumping cutpurse, but I would really like to know some of the details. Like, is it a straight cyberscam where a computer siphons off all your worldly, or is it one of those greed-driven progressive psychological elaborations like the old found briefcase game? I’m fascinated by the mechanics of fraud, and if someone out there can fill me in on the nuts and bolts, it would save my overtaxed brain trying to figure it out. I promise that all answers will be posted with credit and gratitude, and also be treated as a public service rendered – and if Doc40 ever finds itself in a position to be giving out free t-shirts, you’ll be the first to get one.

THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY BUSHWHACKERS (LEB)

The anti-Bush propaganda is coming in by the ton. The sheer volume is a great comfort, demonstrating as it does there are so many of you out there who loathe the bastard as much as I do, but it’s starting to prove a tad daunting. Thus Doc40 has decided to coral it in a special section using the above title, I hope, with sufficient style to, as I said yesterday, “put boots and a duster coat back into politics.” Again I wish that Doc40 had the resources to hand out t-shirts and secret decoder rings. Maybe one day. I also just realized that LEB could also stand for Let’s Evict Bush.

So let’s start the ball rolling with a one-two from the dangerous kaymo...

MUCK, BOOTS & BULLETS

Interesting to see that lots of prom Dems did military service, but not a single one of this bunch of GOP fuckwits with their raving mad itch to blow up the world ever put on army boots.

http://www.awolbush.com/whoserved.html

UNCLE BUCKY

W.H.T. Bush, Dubya's Uncle, joined the board of directors of Engineered Support Systems of St. Louis, Missouri, in March 2000. W.H.T. Bush-- "Bucky" Bush, was one
of the Bush Pioneers who raised more than $100,000 for Dubya's Pres bid. ESS is a highly profitable contractor for the Defense Dept, garnering between $300 and $500 million in contracts most years. Most comes from the Army. In March 2003 ESS announced an order for 52 Chemical Biological Protected Shelter systems worth $19 Million, to bring the Army inventory up to 204 of these units. CBPS units are self-contained contamination free work areas to serve as mobile medical aid stations, field command posts etc. May 1 2003 ESS acquired TAMSCO (Technical and Management Services) a Maryland based outfit that specialises in radar systems, computer
networks and things like TDMAs (Time Division Multiple Access satellite terminals). Needless to say plenty of all these things have been bought this past year by the Pentagon for the Iraqi ops. Bucky Bush sits on the ESS audit committee and owns a considerable number of shares in the company. Bucky is also a trustee for the investment firm Lord Abbott, one of the top ten shareholders in Halliburton Corp.

HOMELAND SECURITY

Now I’ve started this, I have become quite fascinated with the Doc40 site tracking system. Today I noted the Doc got two hits from the United Arab Emirates. Welcome pal, whoever you are. Join the crew. But I guess that will get me on yet another fucking list.

FROM THE OTHER EMAIL

TRUE LAWYER JOKES

Jessica has sent a bunch of courtroom absurdities from a book called Disorder in the American Courts. Here’s the first guaranteed, absolutely true-life recorded exchange. More to follow.

Q: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for breathing?
A: No.
Q: So then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
A: No.
Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
Q: But could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
A: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere.

AND HOW ABOUT SEX?

I have begun to worry that Doc40 is getting damned earnest and highly unsexy. I mean, two headed babies, exploding whales, and a ludicrous president are all very well, but are they enough? I will not go any further with JJ’s right tit, because this is now a media assault on our intelligence, and I suspect a weapon of neo-totalitarian dumbdown, but I have been wondering if I should post a couple of the more lurid sections of the still unsold ROCKNOVEL, and also be looking more closely at what calls itself the sexblog community. Without sex, the risk seems high of the Doc simply turning into an Ann Coulter of the left. What does everyone think? (Maybe that I should get a life?)

CRYPTIQUE – Hello, Danny.

THE CIA IS A COMPANY YOU MAYBE DON’T WANT TO FUCK WITH

In a transparent attempt to get his lying ass off the hook over the failure to turn up any Iraqi WMDs and starting a war under false pretences, GWB has instituted an inquiry into the failure of the intelligence community to tell him what he already knew. That the inquiry is a shameless attempt to shift the blame from the White House to the Central Intelligence Agency is being swiftly confirmed by conservative pundits who, in a truly bizarre role reversal, are now damning the agency as the heart of darkness where once it was the great bastion of freedom. One of the first into the ring with this rightist newthink was NY Times resident lamebrain and lockstep Bush propagandist David Brooks, who yesterday in a confusing and unattractively written column condemned the CIA for its betrayal of the president. Here’s a snippet...

For decades, the U.S. intelligence community has propagated the myth that it possesses analytical methods that must be insulated pristinely from the hurly-burly world of politics. The C.I.A. has portrayed itself as, and been treated as, a sort of National Weather Service of global affairs. It has relied on this aura of scientific objectivity for its prestige, and to justify its large budgets, despite a record studded with error

For those of us who are old enough to remember the murders of Che Guevara, Salvador Allende or Malcolm X, or Operation Chaos that sought to link the Anti-Vietnam war movement with the Red Menace, and who maybe still have files in the Langley vaults, these developments can only produce a bitter smile.

And by a weird piece of synchronicity, a book of mine from the late 1990s, CIA – Secrets of the Company has just been republished in the UK by Chrysalis Books, with new updated chapters. The book was intended as a young persons guide to basic paranoia, but now Barnes & Noble have taken quite a substantial order for the US, and I’m wondering if the eventual readership may turn out to be right-of-Attila, GOP hard-ons. An odd prospect, although the royalties may still keep me in Jack Daniels and reefer. Lord knows something has to.

One word of warning, though, George, old boy. The last president who threatened the CIA was Jack Kennedy after he decided Allen Dulles had railroaded him into the Bay of Pigs, and we all know what happened to Jack. Maybe it would be a good idea to stay out of Dallas, know what I mean?

For a quick resume of old-time CIA–JFK conspiracy (courtesy of fidcen) try... http://www.ciajfk.com/

THE TURTLE THEORY

I have yet to completely gather my thoughts about what the Kerry surge in the Dem primaries really means. A USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll that shows Bush trailing Kerry by 53 percent to 46 percent, but, after the savage destabilization of Dean, I do see the image of a turtle. (Not unlike Homer Simpson after he ate the Guatemalan Insanity pepper.) When the head pokes out – in the form of a clear Dem frontrunner – it will be immediately hammered to a bloody pulp by the Bush media and money machine. I hope to hell I’m wrong, but time will quickly tell. I also see a potential divide between those who want a particular Dem contender elected, and those who simply and desperately want to see Bush evicted from 1600 Pennsylvania. Again, my mental ducks are not quite in a row, but we have to find away to make this a positive, and not four more years of the disaster named George.

FROM THE EMAIL

Kaymo comes up with another horror story...

IMPERIAL AMERICA

Been reading "The Sorrows of Empire" by Chalmers Johnson (author of "Blowback"). He's a Japanese oriented wonk with lots of experience. Essentially his case is that the US Military has slipped the leash and is now steadily taking control of the State. It's budget is no longer controllable by any civilian authority and we may have already reached the point where the Military decides what it's going to do and then tells the Administration. There are more than 750 US military bases around the world now, and CINCs for every continent. Some interesting questions occur. The Pentagon is said to be thinking of taking control of orbital space and forbidding other countries to put anything in orbit without American permission. Clearly this puts the US and China on collision course. Russia is fast losing the power to even fire its missiles let alone keep them in good working order. The enfeeblement of the Russian economy shows no signs of ending anytime soon. But look further down the road. Consider: US Military is the global hyperpower, cop etc. etc. But the US itself is heading into massive, systemic debt. At some point down that road the needs of the Baby Boom generation for their Social Security Checks and the demands of the Military for ever more spending are going to come in conflict. The Boomers are too big and vocal a group to be denied, unless the US suffers a military coup and becomes a full fledged fascist state. The other possibility is that the US Military would begin to charge other countries for the costs of protecting them. It might begin with "contributions" in oil and Euros, and thus progress bit by bit to the good ol' annual tribute. Once that kind of thing is established can anything hold the US back from becoming a kind of hyper-Rome, a vast parasitical military, and state, foot firmly planted on the necks of the rest of the world, imposing taxes on everyone else to fund an ever expanding Military Industrial complex?

There was a whole mess of other fine email, but I’m too tired tonight to clean up the codes. But, as Scarlett O’Hara told us, tomorrow is another day. So come on back, and I might even reveal the secret plans of The League of Extraordinary Bushwhackers and the plan to put boots and a duster coat back into politics.

NOW FOR SOMETHING REALLY DISGUSTING

This was circulating in the topless tower of CityBeat World HQ. I’m not even going to tell you what it is, except it’s fucking gross – and Dominican.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/040204/481/xwa10102041432

AND THIS MAKES ME VERY HAPPY

My novel Jim Morrison’s Adventures in the Afterlife was, although brilliant, hardly a runaway best seller, but now some folks who do that kind of thing have turned it into an online role-playing game called Afterlife. If you so fancy, take a look at...

http://www.livejournal.com/community/the_afterlife/

CRYPTIQUE – I can’t do that, Dave.

FORTY FIVE YEARS GONE

The word went round Worthing High School for Boys that Buddy Holly was dead. Not to diminish them, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper had also been killed in the same crash. Sad, but they didn’t signify in the same way. Holly was the gangly geek-nerd straight out of Texas, with the first Stratocaster we’d ever seen in the hands of a white boy, and it would be a couple more years before the cheap Burns and Framus copies showed up in the windows of the oh-so square music shops and piano stores, and we could handle a knocked-off surrogate for ourselves. Holly was the one that gave us hope. If he could make it with his thick glasses and buck teeth then maybe so could we. We were too young and untutored in the ways of the rama-lama at the time to be fully aware that he was touched by near-genius, or that Peggy Sue and Rave On would be rock songs of the century, and Holly would provide the Rolling Stones with their first real hit. We simply saw him as, by proxy, one of us. He wasn’t as stunningly handsome or blessed with the vocal shaman-magic of Elvis, he couldn’t hit those notes like Roy Orbison, and he didn’t have the dark frustration-rage of Gene Vincent. He was the one who brought us the word that, in rock & roll, all things were infinitely possible.

But, back on that grey, English February day, he also brought the first death in our rock & roll experience and attached a shocking sense of mortality to the music. If Buddy Holly could make it, so could we. If Buddy Holly could die, so would we. The shock resonated deep, and, for the rest of the day, we English schoolboys went through the motions of education, surly and recalcitrant, with a potential prison-riot vibe hanging in the classroom air. A secondary rumor told of a kid in Manchester who had hung himself because he could take a world in which That’ll Be The Day was all Buddy wrote. I never did find out if the rumor was true. The teachers didn’t get it, but they knew enough not to push a potentially incendiary situation. One beery math-teaching oaf was overheard to mutter something about how he was unable to fathom why we should be making such a fuss over “some bloody crooner”, and suggested, by way of explanation, that form 2B had been infected some horrible and virulent form of communicable homosexuality. Little did the oaf know that, in just seven racing years, other “bloody crooners” would be pointing us to the barricades, and the culture would be in violent upheaval.


FROM THE EMAIL

From Larry Kirwan of the excellent band Black 47 (via HCB)
www.black47.com

Happy James Joyce's birthday. He would have been 122 yesterday. My, how the years have flown. And on a more poignant note, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper died 45 years ago today. I was just thinking of the three of them on Sunday night during the hilarious Superbowl Half-time Show Is it just me or was there something intrinsically, mind-blowingly funny about that spectacle? Was it meant to be funny? I was in a noisy pub and couldn't hear the sound that well, so couldn't tell if the whole thing was camp or serious? I'm hoping it was the former. Then again, I'm not sure, maybe it was a bit of both - one is lost for words when trying to categorize it - perhaps, post-orange alert irony? At any rate, it's an interesting thread - sociological, if not musical - between Buddy's Stratocaster and Janet's nipple. Maybe, it's because it's five in the morning and "Macbeth had murdered sleep," but I'm also reminded of a framed picture of Che Guevara that I see from time to time. Of course, one is jaded by his commercial T-shirt likeness flaunted by everyone from Dick Cheney to my Aunt Fanny's third cousin's granddaughter. But in the wonderful picture I speak of, the man is captured in all his stormy idealistic handsomeness. I sometimes stop to look at him and wonder how he would have dealt with polls, opinion groups, town hall meetings, etc.? Would these modern artifices have given him pause, or caused him to change course? And if so would he still be alive today, an elder statesman baring opinions and revelations to Barbara Walters? Or is he better off glaring out from that lonely picture in all his moody magnificence? Oh dear, the thoughts that torment at five in the morning.

And a horror tale from Kaymo...

From this month's Scientific American we have news of – Littoral Airborne Sensor Hyperspectral – US Navy is experimenting with this system on board blimps Next time you see a blimp hovering over your zone, check it out carefully. It may be keeping you and yours under surveillance. LASH is a computerized color detection and matching system. Blimp borne cams scan the ground below seeking anomalies which are fed into the Dbase and crunched. Anything that seems out of place can then be zeroed and examined in greater detail. In Oct 2002 the feds planned to use LASH to search for muzzle flashes in the hunt for the DC sniper, but the case was solved before LASH could get into the air. While it may first be deployed to check for terrorists landing on US shores in small boats, further uses aren't difficult to imagine as the USA slides towards a police state future.

LINK

Now I suppose you could stretch a point and make the jump from LASH to erotica. Well, okay, I could. And, for those with a taste for the explicitly well written, today’s Belle de Jour is a gem.

http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.com/

CRYPTIQUE – Those who would follow you into hell all too frequently bring their own hell with them. Just to make sure there’s enough hell to go around.

BLOG POLITICS

As you probably gathered from recent posts, I’ve been spending far too much time in the blogosphere attempting to grok the fullness of it, and today the report from the ether is categorically political. The following snippet is from the right, quoted by a solid Bush supporter who wants not only to outlaw a woman’s right to choose, and take us back (all except the rich) to the backstreet horror of pre-Roe v Wade, but also make abortion the conservative litmus test yet again. The interview with Wes Clarke is by Joseph McQuaid of the Manchester Union-Leader,

Clark: I don't think you should get the law involved in abortion.
McQuaid: At all?
Clark: Nope.
McQuaid: Late-term abortion? No limits?
Clark: Nope.
McQuaid: Anything up to delivery?
Clark: Nope, nope.
McQuaid: Anything up to the head coming out of the womb?
Clark: I say that it's up to the woman and her doctor, her conscience...You don't put the law in there.

And after that the commentary departs into a fantasy of waiting until the fetus is at it’s junior prom and killing it on the dancefloor. Meanwhile, a liberal/progressive blog offers a clip from the New York Times...

Consultants for Mr. Bush have tried in vain to get him to control his smirk. Still, the smirk slips out from time to time, as it did during the president's State of the Union address when Democrats clapped at Mr. Bush's warning that the Patriot Act, an antiterrorism law, would soon
expire. “Bush is vulnerable when that smirk rears its ugly head,” said a Republican strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It comes across as not only cocky, but arrogant, and nobody likes an arrogant politician.”

And since I so totally agree with this, let’s work the smirk, in hope the whole country sees him revealed by it as a sneering, lying, oaf-of-a-richboy with neither wit, brains, or conscience. In other words, let them see him the way I do.

LATE POST

Roger reminds us that this is the 45th aniversary of the death of Buddy Holly. (See comments board.) No wonder it was such a rotten and bloody day. Maybe more on the subject tomorrow.

FROM THE EMAIL (And there’s a ton of it – which is good because it saves me ranting at the end of a wet and wretched Monday.)

Doug Lunn, master bassplayer and once and future Deviant passes along the following shaggy president joke...

A lobbyist, on his way home from work in Washington, D.C., came to a dead halt in traffic and thought to himself, "Wow, this seems worse than usual."He noticed a police officer walking between the lines of stopped cars, so he rolled down his window and asked, "Officer, what's the hold-up?" The officer replied, "The President is depressed, so he stopped his motorcade and is threatening to douse himself in gasoline and set himself on fire. He says no one believes his stories about why we went to war in Iraq, or the connection between Saddam and 9-11, or that his tax cuts will help anyone except his wealthy friends; the press called him on the lie about Iraq trying to buy uranium from Niger, he and Powell are caught in their lie that the weapons inspectors were thrown out of Iraq under Clinton, and now Campbell Brown is threatening to sue him for a sexual innuendo he made at a recent press conference. So we're taking up a collection for him."
The lobbyist asks, "How much have you got so far?"
The officer replies, "About 14 gallons, but a lot of folks are still siphoning."

And our old pal Henry Cabot Beck comments, first on last weekend’s terror alert...

Well, the prognosis was that we'd get hit on Jan 7th (I got this from an inside-the-news source). and that came and went, and then we were worried about the Superbowl. and I was told last week of Jan, first week of Feb, and that doesn't seem to be happening. We're like kids waiting for dad to come home, either to punish us or bring us a present--I guess it's where anticipation meets anxiety. And cynical me keeps saying keep your gloomy forecasts to yourself--it may well fucking happen, just like death, but worrying is just tossing your energy down a suckhole, and I haven't got all that much to spare. What's more, it's the worst kind of self important self indulgence. But then you know that. Them fucking terrists. All buildup and no punchline. We've been living a shaggy dog joke for 2 1/2 years. I'm just glad I'm not Catholic--they're prefab doom clocks--original sin sundials, the whole lot.

And on the German cannibal conviction (see Saturday Jan 31st), to which HCB alerted us to in the first place...

Still doesn't explain the ten wiener/eight bun conundrum. Funny, though, that cannibalism isn't illegal in Germany. It's like that old Lenny Bruce routine about drafting legislation to deal with animal sexual abuse--there had to be a crime for the legislature to draft a law “The sheep aren't safe! What are they doing in Sacramento?”

Finally from Mike Stax, editor of Ugly Things, the great garage band ‘zine, or, as he bills it, “wild sounds from past dimensions.”

Re: the upcoming elections. Now that the media has marginalized Dean completely it seems Kerry is our only hope of salvation from Dubya. While I'm not exactly knocked out with Kerry, he does have at least three things going for him:
1) He played bass in a garage band in the 60s -- OK an East Coast prep school band, but it's oddly comforting to know that he has more than a passing acquaintance with R&R. (They were called the Electras; there's a pretty great photo of them on the Internet somewhere.)
2) He protested against the Vietnam War -- after fighting in it.
3) He could, just possibly, beat Bush.

LINK

Our homegirl hipspinster has a great blog on David Bowie live in LA at http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/

CRYPTIQUE – Don’t vex me, MacGregor!

ROCK OF FUCKING AGES

Since George Bush has done nothing apocalyptically deranged over the weekend, the Democrat demolition derby won’t resume until tomorrow, and I’m absolutely determined not to discuss the Scott Peterson or Kobe Bryant trials, lets talk rock & roll. In fact, let’s talk rock & roll history. A very small and slightly demented part of me still feels that rock & roll shouldn’t have a history, but that’s the same reactionary part that also thinks that rock songs should be 2.45 minutes long, and come on seven-inch, black-vinyl platters that explode after exactly three weeks. The primary and more rational mind, knows damn well that all things are collected, and sold on eBay, and that everything has a history. Modern rock may be more a consumer product than a force for insurrection, Lust For Life may be a cruise line commercial, and the survivors of the MC5 may have sold out to Levis in Japan, but this is not to deny that, back in the day, the changes in the mode of the music soundly shook the walls of the city, and maybe the stories from the day should be recorded for posterity.

The problem that I’m experiencing is that I’ve spent two thirds of a lifetime in and out of the history of rock & roll, and close to more than my fair share of significant events and the damage done, and now I seem to be needed to tell the tale. In the current issue of Mojo, the brit retro-rock mag, I find myself – along with Paul McCartney, Pete Townshend, Joe Boyd, Robert Wyatt, Roger Waters, Arthur Bown and a bunch of others – all over an “oral history” of UFO, the formative London psychedelic club. (I can’t offer a link, Emap, the parent corp doesn’t run a free, online version of the mag.) The issue is billed as an “Acid Special” with stories about the Doors, Hendrix, Spirit etc., but much of it seems to have been written by guys who no only weren’t born at the time, but seem to have never taken acid in their lives, and one even has the audacity to claim that this D21C band – the abominable fake Doors with Ray Manzarek and Ian Astbury – might be better than the original, although how he can know, never having seen the fucking Doors with Jim escapes me.

On the whole, though, the Mojo experience was okay. The story of UFO is probably better told in Give The Anarchist A Cigarette, but what the hell? The writer Johnny Black called me. I had just smoked a joint, and I waxed eloquent. I figure the traditional place for the old gunfighter is in the back of the bar copping free drinks while he tells his tall tales. Johnny was phoning from England, so he couldn’t spring for the Jack and a beer back, but plenty have. Unfortunately, a whole new factor has recently come into play with the spread of email. The market used to be flooded with cheap cut’n’paste rock books that recycled other books and magazine interviews ripped off pretty much verbatim. When lawsuits finally caught up with that game, the oral history became the thing. Legs McNeil was the master of that trade, but he always at least bought dinner, and even paid Angie Bowie when she demanded money. And he knew how edit his tapes. Now we have the internet, everything has changed. At least three or four times a month, I receive questionnaires from someone who is writing a book about some facet of the sixties and seventies. At first, I dutifully responded, figuring I was consolidating myself as a (so far) living legend, but, lately, not only are the questionnaires getting longer, but I suddenly twigged that what was really going on. These writers were simply pasting together the ad hoc prose of myself and other old lags. They weren’t even transcribing tape, and certainly not springing from the booze. In fact, we were writing their fucking books for them, one email at a time. One young women, with over twenty detailed questions that needed one or two paragraph answers, grew quite miffed when I told her everything she wanted to know was in my own book, and even had the temerity to simper that she would so much rather have my fresh thoughts on the subject. Right dear, I bet you would. No copyright.

Okay, so I’m damned happy to be a living legend, but the work load is getting absurd, and all these rock histories are pure business and not part of any revolution I’m fighting. I’m not quite sure what to do about it. I know John Hopkins, another grizzled psychedelic veteran, is now charging fifty bucks an hour to reminisce. That seems tacky, but there’s got to be some solution. Maybe I’d settle for a bottle of absinthe in the mail before I start spinning the glory yarns. Doc40 is my labor of love, and, with it, I figure I gave at the office. Comments?

Oh yeah, I’m toying with my own book on the real-deal history of psychedelic music and audio mind-expansion, so publishers take note.

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COMMERCIAL
If any of you in the US are wondering how to buy a copy of Give The Anarchist A Cigarette or any of my other books, Borderland Books in San Francisco provides an friendly alternative to the mighty Amazon. Try their website (now updated and much improved) at http://www.borderlands-books.com and search the site, or call toll-free 888 893-4008 to order books.

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MEANWHILE

As I write this, there’s a deranged guy called Dante driving round LA with his dead wife in the car, having just murdered her and burned down the family home. Simultaneously the media is in an uproar about Janet Jackson's right tit being exposed on the Superbowl halftime show. I defy anyone to maintain a perspective as the world abandons logic and probably hope. (But what was that you said? Turn off the TV?)

And Dante and Janet almost causes me to forget that today is Groundhog Day. Go Punxsutawney Phil!

CRYPTIQUE – The plugs may have been rewired.

SUNDAY POETRY II

I’d hate to turn this into some kind of Doc40 tradition, because this site is really not at all about traditions, but since I started it last week, I figure I’ll do it again. I’m not 100% certain if this is a poem or a song lyric. Andy Colquhoun, who lately I have, through force of rotten circumstances, been neglecting abominably, composed the music for it, and we tried it out with me doing a kind of David Bowie Wild Is The Wind vocal, but my pitch over some of the changes was so fucking dubious and unlovely that we kinda put to one side, and haven’t really looked at it since. Here it is in print, and it rhymes, it’s a light piece, hardly Howl, but you decide. It’s called...

Naked Radio

Silence is the quality in this apartment
The only sound in this room is from below
An open window lower down the airshaft
A woman listening to the naked radio

Listening to the naked radio
Chained and listening to the naked radio

An announcer tells her Lucifer is falling
Is it truth or just part of the show?
Believe it at your sweet peril, darling
What they say on the naked radio

Listening to the naked radio
Are you believing the naked radio?

Did you hear about the Martian invasion?
They were here but then they had to go
Far too many people got the warning
That was broadcast on the naked radio

Listening to the naked radio
To the Martians on the naked radio

Silence is the quality in this apartment
The only sound in this room is from below
An open window lower on the airshaft
A woman listening to the naked radio

Listening to the naked radio
Chained and listening to the naked radio

FROM THE EMAIL

Along with much personal, stuff Michael Moorcock writes that after all these years a deal has been signed for an Elric movie...

Since a piece appeared last week in USA Today, it probably isn't very secret about the movie! :) The Weitz brothers are young, hip and very literate and I finally gave in and sold Elric because I trust them to do a good job. LOTR of course has helped studios see the potential in such things.

For more on Moorcock try...
http://www.eclipse.co.uk/sweetdespise/moorcock/

QUIZ

And since it’s Sunday, how about another nice quiz when tired of the Sunday papers? With all this talk of cults and cannibals on the comments board, what better than...

How Would You Murder?
http://quizilla.com/users/sethlyp/quizzes/how%20would%20you%20Murder?

YANCEY SLIDE

And if you still don’t have anything better to do, go over to Funtopia and check out the online serial Slide On The Run. (Just hit the homepage and follow the flashing links.)

CRYPTIQUE – It’s just a hungry feeling.

CANNIBAL UPDATE

If you look in the Doc 40 archives for Monday December 8th, you’ll find the story of Armin Meiwes, the 42-year-old German computer expert, who killed and ate Bernd Juergen Brandes, in March 2001 at Meiwes' home in the town of Rotenburg. The sexually motivated chow-down was conducted with Brandes full consent after the two had contacted each other through magazine personal ads. This week, a court sentenced Meiwes to eight and half years in jail, deciding that Meiwes had no ''base motives'' thus sparing him a murder conviction. Prosecutors had sought a life sentence, calling Meiwes a ''human butcher'' who acted simply to ''satisfy a sexual impulse'', but the defense argued that since the victim volunteered to be killed and eaten, the crime should be classified a mercy killing, which carries a five-year maximum penalty. According to reports Meiwes was calm after sentencing, chatting with his attorney and occasionally grinning for cameras. For a sense of warped perspective, in the US, one might well get a similar eight and a half years for selling an eightball of coke.

WALK THE BLOGOSPHERE LIKE CAINE
(That’s Kwai Chang, not Michael)

This is something of an experiment. Since I entered the weblog business at the start of December, I have wandered the ether and wondered at the sheer volume and diversity of the what is being blogged out there, and also the disturbingly high levels of fantasy, isolation, depression and rage. In the last week, I started picking up random snippets as I passed, like daisies in the field, and here is a sampling of the results. These anonymous quotes are not edited even as to sequence, and the original spelling is intact. Obviously the following of links constitutes a certain rudimentary navigation, but, apart from that, all is guaranteed random. I don’t know if this found poetry, a third generation Burroughs cut-up, or merely a reflection of the C21 condition of computerized humans. You decide and let me know.

Female age 14
I woke up this morning after having an extremely wierd dream about the extermintation of human beings.
Female teen
my name is mary...and im sick of xanga
Male teen
i've got some money now, finally, and i'm not entirely sure how to spend it. i'm going to get my conch pierced soon.
Male age 27
The problem was the gum was laced with some addictive additive, highly refined sugar or perhaps heroin.
Male teen
AHHHHH! HOW THE FUCK COULD U DO THIS TO ME...I THOUGHT U WERE MY FUCKIN FRIEND U FUCKIN BACK STABBER...U OUT OF ALL PPL...YEAH SOME FUCKIN MAGIC U DID...FUCKIN BONIN THE GIRL I LIKE...YEAH...AND U...I THOUGHT U FUCKIN CARED ABOUT ME..FUCKIN BULLSHIT THAT IS HUH...I GUESS U FUCKERZ R MEANT FOR EACH OTHER...U GUYZ CAN FUCK ANY-FUCKIN-TIME U WANT...I CANT BELIEVE U GUYZ WOULD DO THIS 2 ME...AFTER ALL THE SHIT THAT IVE DONE...THIS IS THE FUCKIN THANX I GET...FUCK U ALL...IM FUCKIN OUT!!!!!
Male adult
Hacked a few sites and know the ropes well enough for me or my friend to not jump your ass.
Male adult police officer
it's a bit disconcerting when officers get involved in gun battles twice in one week.
Female adult peepshow performer
He's ba-ack! Everyone's favorite virus-chaser, and the fair-haired boy of the peep show. Hard to believe that a guy who looks like Malibu Ken and wears a Rolex would be so willing, nay hungry, to lick other guys' cum off the floor of the booth.
Female adult chef
As I was making dinner I found myself stabbing an uncooked spaghetti squash Manson Girl-style, over and over again. I was aiming for the fifty-cent piece-sized label on its fat yellow side, full bore concentration toward my target. I caught myself thinking, "...hmmm...I'd always thought stabbing someone was the easy way to kill them but now I see that a certain amount of accuracy is involved.
Male adult
Imagine a party with a thousand hot man (at least) all tripping on X (real MDA not the bullshit you get today), crystal (meth/speed), acid and coke, horny as fuck, grinding together in a huge ballroom under an artificial sky filled with stars and lights and a gigantic floating disco ball. For a 24-hour period I was taken on rowdy rides that always ended with me getting nailed to a wall and fucked, hard.
Male adult
she was collared the whole weekend and spent it in skimpy night clothes.
Female teen
i stealed it from someone's lj who was linked to Yume-chan's lj...heh. I's a theif.
Female teen
last nyt naginuman kmi nina agot n jokim kina monty, andun cna ajoy, jenny at ang jowa ni jenny
na si ariel...Bday kc ni ariel kya my painom...
Male teen
...i broke my headphones today...because i am an angry man...an angry young man...watch out before i kill all my friends...
Male adult musician
...and adam still refuses to drive with me, yet i've never given him a near death experience...i don't get it...when i drive, I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING! goddamn it...

FROM THE EMAIL

Roger makes it clear that Elvis (see yesterday) absolutely refuses to leave the building. Not content with the possibility of a religion, he has, in the UK, inspired a political party with the following mission statement. “We believe that Presley is still alive and is now a sixty eight year old left wing revolutionary committed to over throwing the capitalist system which turned him into a fat media joke.”

For more – http://www.theplace4.co.uk/elvisseeninbaghdad/

Roger also reminds us to remember what Humpty Dumpy said to Alice, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.”

CRYPTIQUE – On your feet or on your knees.

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THIS BLOG IS DAILY, SO LOG ON REGULARLY AND EMAIL YOUR FRIENDS
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THE SOUND OF ONE MIND BOGGLING

Over on the comments board a discussion has been triggered by Jett (when you’re a Jett, you’re a Jett all the way) over the worship of Elvis Presley as a viable religious alternative, and arsydd is perfectly correct. I did start toying with the idea in fictional form in the novel The Armageddon Crazy back in 1989, and by around 1998, as the Millennium approached, I had pretty much decided the Elvis faith might well be the coming thing, and wrote accordingly in Mojo and elsewhere. My basic thesis was that Elvis Presley had unknowingly tapped into primal human response; that he was something a modern fertility god. Moreover, his story was another version of the prehistoric fable of the sacrifice of the boy king that has been reflected down the years in The Fisher King, the New Testament, the Arthurian legends. A healthy non-judgemental, pillhead change from Islam or the old Judeo-Christian ethical bullying, I though, and even contemplated a gig in my old age as a Shaman of El (with enough of a stipend to keep me in a gold suits and a holy Cadillac.)

Then a number of things happened that made me less optimistic. The 21st century arrived and much of the pre-Millennium metaphysical – Elvis, chupacabra, aliens, Satan cults, mothmen, etc, – appeared, if not actually to melt away, at least to become chimeral and transparent in the grim light of the new world order. Also, what looked like the first real nucleus of Elvis worship underwent what I could only define as a schism between the life-affirming, young-Elvis, rock & rollers, who celebrate on January 8th, and the grim, and probably Republican women who stage The Death Day in the August humidity of Memphis.

This is not to say that Elvis has gone, but he’s certainly in danger of being swamped in the present wave of mindless trivia, as the metaphysical lifeforce is syphoned of by sneaker manufacturers for their TV commercials.

But trivialization emerges as today’s theme. I have a diatribe on the subject in this week’s LA CityBeat that argues the TV show Entertainment Tonight is the embodiment of epidemic stupidity and dumbed-down distraction.

BOYS ARE STUPID

I have a good friend who frequently ends her emails with the line “BOYS ARE STUPID”, after she’s been castigating me for my lack of attention to detail and my use of mendacity when I’m losing an argument. (But we all know how the Doc loves a sound castigation.) I guess it was inevitable that the phrase should wind up on a T-shirt, and so it did, going just a little further to “BOYS ARE STUPID – THROW ROCKS AT THEM.” I smiled until I discovered it was also inevitable some fool should attempt to make the joke an issue. The fool in this case was a talk-radio idiot called Glenn Sacks who broadcasts here in LA, and has actually managed to get three chain stores to pull the shirts from the racks, because they “encourage violence.” It’s been my observation that little girls have thrown rocks a little boys – and vice versa – since the monkey met the monolith, and I don’t think a t-shirt is going to make that much difference. Are we of the Doc40 crew the only ones who have lives?

COMMENTS

Did I say lives? Another matter under discussion is the comments board. Some girl, Lord Marmite, and davinian all opt for the conventional form of a separate comment under each post, while others like the anarchy of the current formless comment heap that seems to taking on a life of it’s own as a diverse and decidedly weird miniblog. Me, I kinda lean to the anarchic, and, since the tech seems to be resisting the former, it may well stay as it is for a while, maybe until it collapses under its own weight. In this matter, however, majority will probably rule, so let’s hear from you.

WHALE BLOWS UP REAL GOOD

Proving that, despite our protests, we are not exempt from the seduction of trivia, I can’t resist the following wire service tale from Taiwan. The decomposing remains of a 66-ton sperm whale exploded on a busy street in the southern city of Tainan, showering nearby cars and shops with blood and organs and stopping traffic for hours. The 56-foot dead whale had been on a truck headed for an autopsy at a university earlier this week, when gases from internal decay caused its entrails to explode The whale had died after it was beached on the southwestern coast of the island. (On the other hand, maybe an exploding whale isn’t that trivial.)

CRYPTIQUE – Moby no dick.

WHAT THE FUCK? – For a few hours on Thursday afternoon, the Google ad at the top of the blog was for Bush’s reelection campaign.

ANOTHER STUPID AND REALLY DANGEROUS IDEA

A story in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune can hardly be anything but cause for new levels of concern about what exactly the bloody White House thinks it’s doing. As I read it, according to “military sources”, the Bush administration, well put out by recent assassination attempts against Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, and a resurgence of Taliban forces in neighboring Afghanistan, is preparing a U.S. military offensive that would reach inside Pakistan with the goal of destroying Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network. I could be wrong, but, to a grizzled and paranoid science fiction writer, this would seem like an incredibly bad idea, in that it would set the Moslem Fundamentalists in fresh ultra-uproar, and further destabilize a highly fucked-up nuclear power, the stability of which is already about as tenuous as the snail bladerunning on the sharp edge of the proverbial straight razor.

ELVIS SHOULD LEAVE THE BUILDING

It's obviously nowhere near as serious as Pakistan going ballistic in a megaton blaze of Isamic, radioactive glory, but I also feel damned uncomfortable with the idea that the Elvis Presley Estate has authorized what would appear to be the fucking silly idea of cutting the quarter-inch master tapes of the Elvis Sun recordings into one inch strips and then encasing them in plexiglass plaques that can be sold to the true-believers, like pieces of the True Cross, as objects touched by the Magnetism of the King. Okay, so all of the music contained on the tapes is cleaned up, digitally preserved, and totally safe, but, hell, somehow it doesn’t seem right to be putting a knife into such originals. If Graceland Inc. needs the cash that bad, couldn’t they have called McCartney, Springsteen, Ted Turner, Felix Dennis and assorted other rich guys and asked them if they wanted to buy the whole uncut reels?

LINK OF THE DAY

Hip Spinster is a natural diarist with wondrous and on-the-money insights on all manner of topics from bars to cars to poetry to rock & roll, love, literature, depression, alcohol and the lousy shape of the human condition. Visit, but treat her right. She blogs at...http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/

CRYPTIQUE – Did you hear something?

POSTSCRIPT

And just as I'm posting this I find out that James Brown is back in the slam on a domestic violence rap. Damn, James wassamatter wit you? You're motherfucking 70, man. Like, old enough to know better.

THE GASPS OF DEMOCRACY

In the snow and bitter weather of icy New Hampshire, the alleged deciding of our fate continues with a wide-margin win for John Kerry, but the mainstream media, not sated with last week’s spontaneous destruction of the Dean campaign, leaps ahead with full scale trivialization; tales of Drew Barrymore doing a documentary on the presidential campaign and traveling with Wes Clark, Kerry having to deny he's using Botox, Al Frankin getting his glasses knocked off, and NY Times resident nitwit David Brooks attempting to spin Edwards “Two Americas” speech. Meanwhile the Bush machine stands in menacing reserve like the fiscal equivalent of an SS panzer division, with the capacity, I understand, to spend a million bucks a day on the SOB’s reelection all the way clear to November. Shee-it, I know with that kind of money, I could probably fix anything. I even wonder about today’s rumor that the real reason Dick Cheney is running all over the planet trying to convince the world that he has no plans to conquer it is only to thwart a palace coupe that in which Bush would dump Cheney in favor of Rudy Giuliani as VP. It could so easily have been concocted in some evil White House sub-basement, and tossed like a bone of false hope to the opposition. Kinda like the python giving the mouse a fleeting but erroneous idea that it might not be swallowed and digested after all.

One of my problems, of course, is that Democrat primaries always take me back 1968, when the Dems milled about like chickens in the rain, as cities burned and the SE Asia war raged, and Hubert Humphrey presented himself as the natural succesor to LBJ, while all the time the dark prospect of Richard Nixon bore down on us. But, wonderous day, a white knight in the shining form of Bobby Kennedy suddenly made it seem as though democracy might actually work one more time. Then finally the shock, horror and a scream of “No! Not again!”as, in the moment of winning California, he was gunned down in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel by yet another implausible lone gunman (with a cleanup by the LAPD and a young-but-rising Daryl Gates) and the sun went out, Hell moved closer, and everything turned ugly.

FROM THE EMAIL

HC Beck informs us...

NO PAPAL THUMBS UP FOR BIKER FLICK

In an official statement released today, a spokesman for Pope John Paul II disputed widely published reports that His Holiness saw and enjoyed the new biker film "Torque." The film, which went into wide release on January 16, ignited a firestorm of controversy when studio publicists started spreading the word that the Pope had viewed the film in his Vatican City apartment and had pronounced the film "awesome." According to the publicists, producers of the film had presented Pope John Paul II with a special DVD edition of the film, complete with narration by the film's director, never-before-seen footage, outtakes and bloopers. Coinciding with the release of the film, reports started emerging in the mainstream press that the Vatican had issued the following summary of the Pope's private screening of "Torque" "He saw it, and it was good." But in a strongly worded statement released today, a spokesman for the Pope denied in no uncertain terms that the Pope had given two papal thumbs up to the biker flick, adding, "His Holiness did not see 'Torque,' nor is he entirely sure what the word 'Torque' means."
In other news, the Dalai Lama today denied widely published reports that he called "Along Came Polly" "the feel-good movie of 2004." In a prepared statement, a spokesman for the Dalai Lama said, "The Dalai Lama was, frankly, disappointed by 'Along Came Polly,' and warns moviegoers that all of the funny parts are in the trailer."

AND COUPLE OF LINKS

John Skipp, novelist, filmmaker, splatter punk, wit, gastronome, and a damn fine dude with whom to share a table at a book signing, blogs and more at – http://www.johnskipp.com/

While the spendid Jay Babcock of Arthur mag fame does the same at – http://www.jaybabcock.com/magpie.html

OUT OF THE RISING SUN

Yesterday I did an interview for a Japanese rock magazine called Quest, which took up most of my afternoon and then I spend more hours reading the corrected m/s of my new novel Kindling (for a full description, and a shot of the cover I would refer you to http://www.thanatosoft.freeserve.co.uk/deviancefiles/kindling.htm)

I’m now two weeks late with the bloody m/s which is not my style at all, but a combination of overwork, poverty, flu, and an intense depression at the way Tor Books is currently treating me like mid-list scum, left me too depressed to look at for a number of days.

A combination of all things Japanese and the fact that Kindling is set in a whole imaginary alternate world prompts me to post the following from Yukiko in Tokyo, who rocks very politely, and quotes Mishima, who, I suspect, we in the West do not properly understand. The good news is that fact that Doc40 now appears to be rocking too has cheered me up no end. Also Yukiko’s remark about “Peeping Tomism” is highly apt in that it’s totally how I feel on my prowls of the blogosphere that have taken me to the domains of everyone from distraught teenagers to the journal of a witty and erudite brit call girl who blogs under the name Belle de Jour and defines her days of the week in French. http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.com/

Yukiko writes...

I enjoy your weblog. Long time ago, when the word "internet" was known to only a handful of tech people, someone told me that the development of the internet would entirely depend on a single thing: Peeping Tomism. He was proved right. What a pleasure to know what has inspired someone whose creative works you admire - today. As you pointed out, some posts are too local to make much sense over here, but I don't mind since Japan is usually too unique in nearly every level of human activity. But what you write there is mostly applicable to us, too. Also, the fact that Farren-sensei has started weblogging reminded me of Mishima's diary which he published as "Holidays of a Novelist". One day Mishima impressively wrote about the period 1945-47/48 (when he was around 26 years old) as follows (again, please put up with my lame translation):

“Around that time, although I could do nothing practical in real life, I had sympathy and anticipation for vice whirling around in my mind. While doing nothing significant, I was certainly ‘sleeping with’ the epoch. However counter-epoch pose I might have taken, I was, anyway, sleeping with her. Compared with this, the current time -- the year 1955 or 1954 -- is not enough to make me sleep with it. Ever since I reached so-called the ‘reactionary" period’, I have never slept with an era. Should a novelist always sleep with his/her contemporary era like a whore? Of course, a novel should inevitably have some features of the current time. However, aren't the solitude and abstinence of an author in a reactionary period more prolific to create great stories?
Yet, a novelist must have, at least once, the experience of sharing a bed with an era and, apparently, he/she needs to be energized by the memory of it.”

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THIS BLOG HAS NEW POSTS ALMOST DAILY, SO COME BACK SOON, WORD UP?

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A COMMERCIAL

I have a new book out. Or at least the paperback edition of the last hardback. UNDERLAND is now in the stores, although the publishers, Tor/St. Martins are doing their level best to make it a well kept secret. So buy a book, strike a blow, support the scribe. Go you local store, or look on Amazon. UNDERLAND, the last for the moment of the Victor Renquist counter-culture vampire stories, is loads of fun being choc fill o’ not only vampires, but the Hollow Earth, Nazis, flying saucers, the NSA, serpent gods, snow, government corruption, alternative history, plus all the usual lurid sex, drugs and violence. (Someone should really make a movie.)

I would also recommend THE DNA COWBOYS TRILOGY and JIM MORRISON’S ADVENTURES IN THE AFTERLIFE.

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DENY EVERYTHING, BUT ONLY WHEN BUSTED

The following quote comes from no less than yesterday’s New York Times.

“If we were a true empire, we would currently preside over a much greater piece of the earth's surface than we do. That's not the way we operate.” – Vice President Dick Cheney, on whether the United States considers itself an empire.

Now I must confess that I found this a tad curious because I thought it was only we deluded radical nutters were of the opinion that the Bush Administration harbored an intention of conquering the known world by high-tech advanced military force. I could be wrong and am certainly open to correction, (let’s face it, friends, I’m always open to correction) but it seemed to me that, up on the “reasonable” level of the NYT, such ideas were dismissed as paranoid hysteria. Indeed, I have read a number of right-wing columns that made exactly the point and poured scorn on the concept that bellicose neoCon think-tanks like Plan for the New American Century (PNAC) were running the show. Thus I feel forced to ask why Dickie is going to all this trouble to deny what are only the hallucinatory fears of the likes of me?

OLD HIPPIES JUST GET WEIRDER AND THEY HAVE NO SENSE OF TIME

And talking of hallucinatory fears, (and nutters) I discovered the following anonymous screed in my wandering of the blogosphere, and felt it needed to be reproduced. Damn, but I didn’t know this kind of thing still went on. If nothing else, it makes me feel a lot more comfortable with my own insanity. Let’s not forget, though, that one of the greatest practitioners of this kind of thinking was the long incarcerated Charlie Manson.

I'm sure I'm not the first person to whom this has occurred, but suppose this whole thing was a smokescreen for Dylan's death in a motorcycle accident in Woodstock (site of a festival - from which Dylan was notably absent - held the same year as the memorial service on the zebra crossing) and subsequent replacement by an actor who looked the same, except for the beard, but had a different voice ('I can't see your face anymore, your voice has changed...'). This would explain the presence of the Beatles (featuring J.W. Lennon) on the cover of J.W. Harding. And of course, it's not Johnny who's in the Basement but Bobby, like, as in under the ground in upstate New York. 'He travelled with a gun in every hand'. Could this be a reference to the multi-handed doll on the cover of Sgt Pepper? The apparent reference on which to the Rolling Stones is actually a reference to the author of Like a Rolling Stone (also there depicted, along with a lot of other dead people - 'some are dead and some are living'), over whose grave a stone (also, incidentally, the maiden surname of his mother, Beatty Stone) has just been rolled. God (=JWH) said to Abraham (Zimmerman, of Hibbing, Minnesota), kill me your son. The covenant of HW61R (what is Dylan wearing on the album cover?) not only foreshadows Dylan's own death on the symbolic Highway 61 of his semi-rural idyll, but echoes the covenant made by Robert Johnson (who produced Highway 61 Revisited?) with the devil at the crossroads on Highway 61 decades earlier.
And of course there's all the Freewheelin' stuff (parked VW vehicle etc.). George acquired this album in Paris. But as well as designating France's capital city, 'paris' is also the plural of the noun 'pari', meaning 'bet'. So the Beatles were actually the Roman soldiers attending the Christlike Dylan's death. 'In a little hilltop village, they gambled for my clothes'. Hilltop? Clearly an allusion to The Fool on the Hill, and the fact that it's not McCartney who's dead but Dylan; the Paul is Dead thing is just a ruse to 'fool' the world. 'On the Hill'? A possible reference to one of the sites of the fooling taking place, viz I Dreamed I saw Saint Augustine ('alive as you or me'), itself a reworking of 'I Dreamed I saw Joe Hill'. It's merely a dream that St Augustine is still alive - and that's how alive Dylan is.
And what model Triumph did the accident occur on? A Bonneville TT 650cc. Bonneville? Salt Flats? Salt? Pepper...?
Just what was going on in Woodstock with all that apocalyptic imagery (e.g. All along the Watchtower - incidentally, magazine of the "JWH's" Witnesses - , with its 'barefoot servants' and 'two riders')? Yes, the apocalypse. Of St John. In Woodstock. Or St John's Woodstock? Are the Beatles the four horsemen? Is Ringo the Joker? Is Lennon the Thief (he stole a harmonica - a symbol closely associated with Dylan - in Arnhem en route to Hamburg; when he sings 'they're going to crucify me' does he mean as Christ or as Thief by Dylan's side)? Dylan sings of 'lies that life is black and white', knowing the truth that it is death - his death - which is inextricably connected with the black and white of the zebra crossing. 'Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now'. It's as if he knew in 1964 - the year he met and 'turned on' the Beatles- that he was to be replaced by an actor younger than him. 'If I ain't dead already, then you'll know the reason why', sings Lennon. The reason why being that Dylan - to whom he has not long before alluded - has been offered as blood sacrifice.

FOR MONDAY, MONDAY

Today, being a Monday, I would also recommend Modern Drunkard Magazine.

http://www.moderndrunkardmagazine.com/

CRYPTIQUE – Baby needs new shoes.

POETRY ON SUNDAY

The idea of posting poetry on Doc40 has been a question that I’ve recently mulled to only partial avail. Should I? Shouldn’t I? There was so much other fun to be had, but then a hip spinster of my acquaintance started posting poems on her blog that had previously been about angst and drinking, so I decided what the hell, some of you might enjoy it. This piece was written two or three years ago, it’s been performed a few times when Andy Colquhoun and I have been out doing our solo Hendrix and poetry thing. It was on the short list to be recorded for the Dr. Crow CD, but the composition had so many movements and stuff, it would have busted our shoestring budget. It’s also a great exercise in borrowed lines from other sources that span Oscar Wilde to Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.

Because it was...

Just something to do between cigarettes

That was what I said as bought myself a ticket
Ventured into the darkness and sat down
Right there in the very first row
To take a good look
At Little Egypt and her tattoo
Her ruby
And the diamond big as Texas on her toe
But lord, lord, hey pardon me ma'am
It was really nothing
It was...
Just something to do between cigarettes

That was what I rationalized
As I cut myself free
From all tiresome reality
As I merged with the movie
And drifted through the sheen
Of the screen with a prodigious thirst
And became one with the black and white
There somewhere in between
But I swear to you all
I considered it...
Just something to do between cigarettes

And in the flash of a moment
I found my phone was tapped
And I was on the lam from Special Agents
Of the Red Queen
Who thought busting themselves a poet
Would provide a path
To painless professional prestige
With maybe blackmail as a fallback
And I told myself as I ran through the sewers
In a voice like Harry Lime
Hey you guys, this is a terrible mistake
It was...
Just something to do between cigarettes

And later that was the only
Explanation I could offer
To the girl with short black bangs, the satin dress,
The fuck me sandals and Rayban sunglasses
And who was pointing a revolver at my head
And seemed to be extremely angry about something
I'd done or maybe failed to do
But it didn't mean nothing, baby. It was...
Just something to do between cigarettes

Just something to do between cigarettes
And on a day trip in a dayglo blue bus
To the end of the night and all the way out
To the leading edge of insanity
Straining with bleeding ears
To hear the multitude sounds of the Earth
The million half notes
Played on the stringed lute of the world
By all the winds of the air
From Loanshark Laments
To the Chorus of the Cutting Crew
The requiem of the Murder Review
The faces lost and masks regained
And I will never be the same
A full half century pissed away
(Should I go or should I stay?)
And it seems like only yesterday
(I hardly believe in yesterday)
When all I needed
When I assumed all I needed was...
Just something to do between cigarettes

Just something to do between cigarettes

MARMITE

Some discussion has been taking place on the comments board on the matter of Marmite. For all of you who don’t know, Marmite is a brand of salty savory spread made from brewers’ yeast. It is a disgusting looking black/brown viscous paste that is spread on toast, or dissolved in water as a hot drink. It comes in a mysterious brown-glass jar with a Victorian label. Small British children become addicted to it at early age after being fed “Marmite soldiers”, small slivers of toast spread with the stuff to dip in their soft-boiled eggs. My personal, heart-stopping weakness was to fry slices of bread in either butter or bacon grease and then slather it with enough Marmite to burn off the roof of your mouth. The finished product is quite as daunting as Elvis’ fried peanut butter and banana creation. Marmite is alleged by some to cure hangovers, but I’ve never noticed that it did, beyond the obvious benefit if hot greasy food and lots of B complex vitamins.

For more check – http://waterpistol.davinian.co.uk

FROM THE EMAIL

The fine fidicen writes...
When this Interweb thing first hit I thought, mmmwaaahahahhaha, poets and freaks finally have the means to create, publish, and distribute from one point and on their own--this is the end of the JudeoChristiaNixonic Era... the Beast has been born in Bethlehem West, we shall hound the heathens to the far reaches of some doomed and frozen galaxy.
Then things sort of went nowhere except a slice of the smarmy indie musicians did all of their rot, and fairly poorly for the most part. Now seems like things are catching on. A non-Iraq voter has raised 25 or 40 million mostly via youth on the web and he will fuck things good even if they kick him out of the dance and now there's all this blogging and such, from Hollywood to Fallujah, not to mention blazing radical journalism like Counterpunch and tall walking bitches of digests like What Really Happened, Common Dreams, and Smirking Chimp. One could really get optimistic if one wasn't too careful.
So Bravo, we need you in fishwrap yes, but this is double plus good, and I will pass along to the ranks. 2004 is the time and the place. I reckon this is our moment to matter, at least until the next one comes--and I could live without that one if we fail here.
Give Them Hell,

And Dan forwards this important heads up...
Dear Friend,
As you probably know, Ralph Nader is considering running for president again in 2004. Like millions of Americans, I am disturbed that Nader may again cost the Democrats the election, and once again tip the balance in our closely divided nation to George Bush. Nader says he will make up his mind in the next few weeks. The link below will take you to a message about Nader's potential candidacy and a simple step you can take right now to oppose such a run.
Come watch Ralph Don't Run:

http://www.turtlerock.com/RalphDontRun

CRYPTIQUE – Without bread, you’re toast.

SQUIRM, YOU FAT BASTARD

Isn’t it fun watching radio-tubby fascist talk-pundit Rush Limbaugh’s porcine wriggles and squeals as he tries to weasel out from under accusations of felony doctor-shopping to feed his Oxycontin habit? Better maybe than the aura of sleaze gathering round the White House. This nutshell on the state of the play comes from MSNBC. Lawyers for Rush Limbaugh reject a plea deal of 1 felony count, and prosecutors reject the defense offer of no felony counts, but some drug rehab (hey, didn't he already do that?) So a standoff ensues, with prosecutors saying they have evidence that Limbaugh committed up to 10 felonies.

Meanwhile, in a related tale from Yahoo News...Israeli police had to close an entire floor of their station because the pungent scent of tons of confiscated marijuana was making them high.

ANNIVERSARY WATCH

Having noted the birthdays of Popeye, Elvis, and Godzilla, and also Chinese New Year, let’s not more seriously forget that yesterday was the 31st anniversary of Roe v Wade, another tattered flag around which we defenders we may yet again have to rally.

COMMENTS

So it would seem that, for the moment, the comment board is working and people are starting to complain which I guess means all is right with the world.

CRYPTIQUE – Are you sure you won’t be sorry?

SPACE IS THE PLACE

For your appreciation, my analysis of George Bush’s speech of last week on his plans for Mars and the moon appears in this week’s LA CityBeat. Click and check it out. Although it was written before the Spirit Rover went off line, I think I have that covered. And for those who appreciate seeing how the process works, take a look back at Jan 10th, 04, for my first thoughts on this matter.

MIND CONTROL 101

Half asleep on the couch, I semi perceived a TV commercial in which, I swear, the voice over was an actor doing a passable impression of Ronald Reagan. What this means in the scheme of things, I'm not yet sure, but I don’t think it bodes well. And for you in the UK, imagine if you suddenly heard the voice of Thatcher selling fish fingers or toilet paper.

Chinese New Year – Happy year of the monkey.

FINGERS CROSSED

Thanks to the mighty Rich Deakin, the comments board (the tiny link over on the top right of the page) seems now to be working. Apologies to all whom it previously thwarted.

GET RIGHT WITH GOD

According to MSNBC an Israeli rabbi has written a prayer for devout Jews to overcome their guilt after visiting a porn site on the internet. The rabbi recommends recitation of the prayer when logging on -- or having it flash up on the screen -- so they've got some coverage if they enter a porn site accidentally or even intentionally. The prayer: “Please God, help me cleanse the computer of viruses and evil photographs which disturb and ruin my work... so that I shall be able to cleanse myself of sin.” I ask myself, would it work for the contents and godless ideas of this weblog?

HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM

Yesterday I was complaining how no one seemed to be posting any comments even though the numbers of incoming hits were starting to look quite healthy. Then natalien informed me that she had attempted to cheer me up by posting a comment only to be confronted by a formidable column of error messages. The same was also confirmed by jfabiani (who decided the comment tech obviously hated him.) Thus it seems that we don’t have the technology, or, to be more precise, the technology we do have needs fixing. Life is always a work in progress. Right now I’m clueless, but help is on the way. (Thank you, Rich.) In the meantime, if you have something to say, you can always email me at byron4d@aol.com.

BUT ANOTHER PROBLEM SOLVED

Since Jan 8, I’ve wondering about Godzilla’s 50th birthday. Finally I asked Yukiko in Tokyo and her response was succinct and immediate. “Godzilla's birthday is an easy question to answer. It's 3rd November, 1954, when they released the first film. On 3/11* every year, various events are organized in Japan to celebrate his birthday.” So we have a lot of time to plan a huge, scaley, radioactive-breathing, building-eating, motherfucker of a wingding, friends and neighbors.

(* That’s 11/3 to you Americans. Right around the presidential election. Which brings us super-neatly to...)

FROM THE EMAIL

From Charles Lewis (The Buying of the President 2004) via Greg Palast

Our electoral process is broken, with about half or more of America's eligible voters not voting in every federal election cycle. After the Florida recount debacle, in which the likes of Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe lectured us on how to conduct democratic elections, we still do not have a single, standardized system of voting throughout the nation. The campaign process has become so expensive that it limits the talent pool available today to only millionaires or those willing and able to raise substantial sums of cash from wealthy and powerful interests with business before the government. Forty members of the current U.S. Senate are millionaires; less than one percent of the American people are millionaires. And big money mixed with irregular and high-tech redistricting help explain why the incumbent reelection rate in the House of Representatives the past three elections has been more than 98 percent. These are the kind of numbers we expect to see in countries like North Korea or China, not the United States.

WINSTON CHURCHILL’S PARROT SAYS HELLO (HELLO)

No rants today. Spent the day at VH1 being a talking head. (Don’t ask, we all like to be on the telly. I’ll tell more when the thing’s about to air, and I know I made the cut.) I couldn’t however pass up this news story out of London. (And a chance to paraphrase the Bonzo Dog Do-Dah Band.) Seems that a 104 year-old female Macaw called Charlie who once belonged to Churchill, is still alive at an English parrot sanctuary. Charlie is old, even by parrot standards, and reportedly does little but say “hello” and “good-bye”, but, every so often, she does break into a flow of invective against Adolf Hitler, although this may just be tabloid hyperbole.

Hey guys, when are some of you going to get down with comments? It’s the little link up on the top right of the page, between “the horror, the horror”, and “Funtopia”. Feedback makes a poor boy feel wanted.

Meanwhile, check out this fine political message...

http://www.liberaloasis.com/Bushmovie.swf

THE REBEL STAND

“What are you rebelling against, Johnny?”
“What’ve you got?” – Dialogue from The Wild One

Last Saturday I halted myself at the start of a rant about how liberals now want to call themselves “progressives”, I presume in the belief that the word “liberal” is now so tainted that it has become untenable. By Sunday, I had realized that I shouldn’t let it worry me. I was never a bloody liberal anyway. Yes, I embrace certain planks of a liberal platform, but liberals have always recoiled from a whole lot of what they assumed were my goals, firmly convincing me that liberalism was only ever a half-measure, and fell well short of the downfall of the Patriarchy and the overthrow of Western Civilization by lunchtime. And now they want to be called “progressive” I have to wonder just how much progress they really intend, and am thus holding off from flocking to the progressive colors.

I will admit, though, that part of my problem is a matter of heritage. Like the great majority of Englishmen, I’m somewhat disinclined to join clubs, parties, and organization. The British are notorious for being what sociologists call “unclubable”. Our juvenile gangs were always amorphous, like mods and rockers, and never went in for club colors and names like the Sharks, Jets, Diabolos, or Amboy Dukes. I have never enrolled in AA, the NRA, the IRA, the CIA, the PTA, or the Dead Rabbits. It’s all those damned cards that you have to carry, plus a bad case of the Groucho Marx syndrome; not wanting to be a member of any club that would have me as a member. Back when I was a teenager, my pal Alan Moore (no relation) tried to enroll me in the Young Communist League, dangling the temptation of commie gals who believed in free love. I was given a nice enamel badge, but I never completed the paperwork or went to a meeting. (The free love turned out to be largely mythic.) Which was just as well, because, if I had, I would have been excluded from entering the US without a lengthy process of recanting. I was once Minister of Information in the White Panther Party UK, but that was mainly an vehicle for agitprop ploys, and the confusion of the aforementioned liberals.

I fear I have always taken the stance of the lone rebel. The rebel stand is maybe a legacy of the Irish side of the family, but, by this stage of my development, I have been standing like a rebel for so long that it’s become a way of life. On the other hand, the political climate has turned so grim that maybe it’s time that we rebels gathered around some improvised black flag and began making a few demands of these progressives, in particular how we want our time honored, impossibly utopian, sex, drugs, and advanced rama-lama to be a part of the agenda – free, legal and polymorphous – otherwise we start slitting a few throats in the name of progress.

(And as I finish writing, I hear Kerry won in Iowa, which moves me nearer giving up on the whole process and endorsing Al Sharpton, because the fix is in anyway.)

TRIVIA
A couple of weeks ago I watched The Seven Samurai, and realized, after all these years, that Yoda is totally based on the Old Man of the Village in the Kurosawa classic. Same face, same wrinkles, same way of walking. Check it out if you don’t believe me.

CRYPTIQUE – She has your number, and the frequency, Kenneth.

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THIS BLOG HAS NEW POSTS ALMOST DAILY, SO Y’ALL COME BACK REAL SOON, Y’HEAR?

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FROM THE EMAIL

QM II -- Yukiko writes from Tokyo

Your post about the Queen Mary II (see Jan 15 '04) – I also noted the news, but mainly because of the point that the ship is, as you predicted, already cursed by the gods of the sea -- by deaths of 15 guests including a child/children who were invited last November for a special exhibition. A boarding bridge collapsed suddenly and they fell to their death off it. Maybe by now someone else may have told you this. I couldn't believe people were in a party mode so innocently at a place where 15 people died only a few months ago. But then again, the idea of the respect to the dead may be different in Japan from the West - the Japanese government STILL sends a ship every
year to Iwo Jima in order to collect bones of the dead soldiers and residents.

Or perhaps it's just the very rich in the West who have no respect.

RETRO FASCIST COOL & VAMPIRES -- From Henry Cabot Beck

There's a movie due this June called Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and the spectacular trailer lifts its imagery wholesale from the Superman Fleischer cartoons. Turns out the director's mother ( I think) was on staff at Fleischer at the time, and helped design the stuff. Takes place in 1937--retro-futurism. Angeline Jolie (small part), Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow. And if you really want to get your kicks, check out the trailer for Van Helsing, starring beautiful vampires, vile, snarling werewolves, and the Frankenstein monster. Can't vouch for either picture, but the trailers are just fucking brilliant. Links follow...

http://www.skycaptain.com/home.html

http://www.apple.com/trailers/universal/van_helsing/large.html

A SUNDAY KIND OF BLOG

Maybe, instead of doing the Sunday paper crossword and laying in the warmth of a winter bed, eating toast and marmalade, you might like to play a dumb-but-cool, inter-gender game that I found in my wanderings called What Kind Of Beautiful Woman Are You.

HE YAM WHAT HE YAM

It turns out that not only is Godzilla celebrating his 50th birthday in 2004, (see Jan 8, 04) but Popeye the Sailor makes it to 75 this year on a diet of canned spinach (which means he’s six years older than Elvis Presley)

AP offers a nutshell bio...Popeye began life in 1929 in the popular "Thimble Theatre" comic strip as a limited story line guest. He graduated to movie shorts, many by the renowned animator Max Fleischer. Popeye battled everything from sassy goats to the bloated bad-guy Bluto while pursuing the affection of girlfriend Olive Oyl. He even appeared in a video game in the 1980s, collecting falling hearts from his rail-shaped love. He was played by Robin Williams in the Robert Altman movie version.

Unfortunately, like Godzilla, Popeye has no specific or designated birthday on which we can all get crazy.

SATURDAY MORNING, SATURDAY MORNING

I was going to get off on some rant about Al Franken being signed to spearhead the progressive radio channel. Mainly because I can’t stand Al Franken. He was the lamest thing on the classic Belushi/Akroyd/Radner/Murray Saturday Night Live and, if anything, he’s grown less funny with age. As the voice of the progressive-left Franken will combine all the panache and political passion of Elmer Fudd with an irritating know-it-all, preppie cynicism, and I can’t think of a better MLK Day gift to the White House. But then I thought, what the fuck? It’s Saturday. Who needs it?

So, instead, here’s a truly bizarre conspiracy theory about George Bush and weird accusations of multiple cross-gender rape. Apparently the fable has been kicking around for a while, but it’s the first time that I’ve ever stumbled across it, and thus I pass it along as a bit of weekend web surfing. The trail of the tale starts with an old posting on the Counterpunch website. Take it from there.

http://www.counterpunch.org/carter1220.html

I suppose, before exiting, I should, in fairness, admit an element of envy where Al Franken is concerned. My ego, and also my bank account, would hardly be adverse to a gig on “progressive radio”. And, hell, didn’t some critic write that I had a voice like an “evil Jeremy Irons”? But I ain’t holding my breath for offers. I’ll probably have to wait until they set up the Johnny Yuma Rebel Radio From Hell before being loosed on the airwaves.

SANTA MARIA!

Ever had one of those days when it seems that the walls of the world were closing in, and you feel that maybe the human race should be quarantined? That sense of living-in-Mordor started as I watched the Michael Jackson forensic rodeo getting underway around the Santa Maria courthouse just down along the coast, with fans singing that song about Tom Sneddon, lawyers assembling like a mob summit, and locals selling twenty dollar hotdogs to the minions of the world media.
But I’ve already had my say on the Jackson matter in the current LA CityBeat, so, for the moment, you can check that out while I rest my case.
Meanwhile I could only marvel at the story out of Dutchtown, Louisiana, where two high school kids, Adam Sinclair and Chris Levins were arrested on charges of felony terrorism. Hardcore Trenchcoat Mafia, and fans of Klebold and Harris of Columbine fame, the boys were ratted out as potentially dangerous by a bunch of cheerleader-looking classmates and their parents. (The cry of Maud Flanders is heard throughout the land.) When the cops busted down the door, they supposedly found clear and present evidence of incipient terrorism in the writings of drawings of the pair.
My first though was of a recent edition of Sixty Minutes when a high school girl described how her school was put on “full lockdown” and each student was sniffed over by a police dog for “contact with marijuana”. Do we really expect the youth to remain sane on the face of the Thought Police?
I also recalled when I was fourteen. Fuckin’ hell (as we used to say), if they’d seen my writing and drawings, I probably would have been summarily executed, not to mention the .22 revolver with the broken hammer and the unexploded WW II, P-AT anti-tank rocket that was hidden behind the record player, until my stepfather stumbled across it and called the Army.
And as I conclude, fear stalks Hollywood that the collagen for those big Angelina Jolie lips may be Mad Cow contaminated.

TECHNOLOGY MARCHES ON

The Doc 40 comment system has just been put in place, courtesy of the excellent Rich Deakin who pilots the Funtopia website. It’s a little discreet link over on the top right of the page, just below “the horror, the horror.” Hurry and you might just be the first. Email to byron4d@aol.com is also still very welcome.


THOSE WACKY CANADIANS

The following story was carried by the wire services and also forwarded by Henry Beck.

BARRIE, Ont. (CP) - A marijuana "factory" concealed within a sprawling old brewery just steps from one of Ontario's busiest highways is proof Canada's pot problem has reached "epidemic proportions," police said Monday. The former Molson brewery in Barrie, Ont., plainly visible from Highway 400, one of the province's busiest commuter routes, was raided on the weekend by some 100 city and provincial police officers acting on a tip. Inside, police found marijuana with what they said had an estimated street value of $30 million, along with a grow operation of staggering proportions - the largest and most sophisticated in modern Canadian history.
"This is not a ma-and-pa operation," Barrie police Chief Wayne Frechette wryly told a news conference in this central Ontario city an hour's drive north of Toronto.
Across a 5,400-square metre complex the size of a football field, police found more than 25,000 pot plants growing everywhere - even inside the cavernous indoor vats once used to brew beer.
Citizen Beck enlarges on the story...“This was in effect a hydroponic Silent Running space station, a luxury liner, Battlestar Cannabis, with a crew the cops speculated might have been brought in blindfolded or under the cover of night, because loose lips sink ships. And they say nobody thinks big anymore.”

Meanwhile I rather question the use of language in the story, and especially the reference to Canada’s epidemic “pot problem.” From where I sit in Los Angeles, a city where BC bud is a welcome import, Canada hardly seems to have a “pot problem”. Indeed, it would appear to have a highly organized, high-tech, marijuana agri-business what is only waiting for full legalization to yield beaucoup revenues and tax benefits. Compared to the US, with its hundred of thousands of incarcerated reefer felons, its massive and costly drug enforcement industry, and its chicken-shit politicians too tremulous and self-serving to speak out against the seventy-year total failure of the War on Drugs, Canada hardly has a problem at all. And before anyone starts screaming the late Maude Flanders’ scream of “what about the children?”, consider, if marijuana was legalized, how many resources would be freed up to educate kids that maybe they should hold off on smoking dope at least until they have learned to read and tie the laces on their sneakers.


QUESTION OF THE DAY

Is it cruel to laugh when Ted Nugent hacks himself up with a chainsaw?

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THIS BLOG HAS NEW POSTS ALMOST DAILY, SO Y’ALL COME BACK REAL SOON, Y’HEAR?

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CRYPTIQUE – You know who are.

THE BIG SHIP SAIL$

(Is that an iceberg or are you just pleased to see me?)

Yesterday, on Entertainment Tonight, I watched the massive, top-heavy bulk of the Queen Mary II sail out of Southampton for Florida, with its on-board casino and planetarium, a full complement of passengers each paying up to $48 thousand a ticket. I couldn't somehow ignore a nagging feeling of unease. Wasn't this almost pornographic display of wealth, without even a single Irish immigrant in steerage, some weird affront to the gods of the sea? Maybe I've watched too many movies about the Titanic, and seen The Poseidon Adventure too many times, but I seem to recall that whenever a passenger ship was billed as the biggest and most luxurious of all time, it had a horrible habit of sinking in mid-ocean. Also, with the War on Terror still raging, isn't a monster liner like the Queen Mary II a impossibly tempting terrorist magnet?

(And the chains of the sea will have busted in the night/and be buried at the bottom of the ocean. – Bob Dylan)

(If I had a boat/I'd sail out on the ocean/And if I had a pony/I'd ride it on my boat. -- Lyle Lovett)