THE LAST FOUR YEARS HAVE MADE THIS COUNTRY DANGEROUSLY ANGRY AND IT ISN’T GOING TO DISSIPATE NEXT WEEK.
(Leapin' lizards, Sandy, I’ve started writing in capitals, and soon my eyes will turn into blank discs. I think I have combat fatigue. )

The secret word is AWOL

CRYPTIQE -- It's bat country!

WOULDN’T IT BE NICE IF, NEXT WEDNESDAY, I COULD GARBAGE ALL THE NOTES AND LINKS AND REFERENCES I HAVE AMASSED TO PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH BECAUSE I WAS NEVER GOING TO HEAR FROM HIM AGAIN?

Gary (Pig) Gold’s tribute to Greg Shaw.
http://torpedopop.com/articles/page.asp?id=155

CRYPTIQUE – Adunay vassu baragas.

The secret word is Friday

FUN
In this week’s LA CityBeat, I pay tribute to Godzilla on his 50th birthday. (Although the "his" may be in some doubt.) In researching the piece I was amazed to learn that Godzilla and Gamera had never appeared in the same movie. Indeed, Gamera is not even a Toho Pictures character. Which is damned weird because it means that I have false movie memories of scenes in which Godz takes on the rocket-assisted turtle that never happened. Seems I can’t take my own word for anything, any more. I also didn’t have enough space to recall John Belushi’s brilliant portrayal of Godzilla as a terminal-Elvis superstar on SNL, back in the days before singers lipsynced. (Or maybe that never happened either.)
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=1346&IssueNum=73

And this is a load of fun, and may also be made an instrument of cyber-voodoo with suitable invocation. (Think about it.)
http://uk.download.yahoo.com/ne/fu/attachments/buildabetterbush.htm

UNFUN
Peter W. Galbraith in yesterday’s Boston Globe...
"In 2003 I went to tell Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz what I had seen in Baghdad in the days following Saddam Hussein's overthrow. For nearly an hour, I described the catastrophic aftermath of the invasion -- the unchecked looting of every public institution in Baghdad, the devastation of Iraq's cultural heritage, the anger of ordinary Iraqis who couldn't understand why the world's only superpower was letting this happen.
I also described two particularly disturbing incidents -- one I had witnessed and the other I had heard about. On April 16, 2003, a mob attacked and looted the Iraqi equivalent of the Centers for Disease Control, taking live HIV and black fever virus among other potentially lethal materials. US troops were stationed across the street but did not intervene because they didn't know the building was important.
When he found out, the young American lieutenant was devastated. He shook his head and said, "I hope I am not responsible for Armageddon." About the same time, looters entered the warehouses at Iraq's sprawling nuclear facilities at Tuwaitha on Baghdad's outskirts. They took barrels of yellowcake (raw uranium), apparently dumping the uranium and using the barrels to hold water. US troops were at Tuwaitha but did not interfere."
Read whole thing fast because they start charging after 48 hours...

The secret word is Reptilian

TO THE RAT BRAIN!

HCBeck, after being off the air for a while writes – "It's all we need--rat brain cells learning to fly airplanes." and refers us to...
"A University of Florida scientist has grown a living "brain" that can fly a simulated plane, giving scientists a novel way to observe how brain cells function as a network. The "brain" -- a collection of 25,000 living neurons, or nerve cells, taken from a rat's brain and cultured inside a glass dish -- gives scientists a unique real-time window into the brain at the cellular level."
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-10/uof-us102104.php)

Meanwhile, John Dean of Watergate fame figures it’s all gonna end in civil war and I ain’t exactly arguing...
"It may be days or weeks, if not months, before we know the final results of this presidential election. And given the Republican control of the government, if Karl Rove is on the losing side, it could be years: He will take every issue (if he is losing) to its ultimate appeal in every state he can. The cost of such litigation will be great - with the capital of citizens' trust in their government, and its election processes, sinking along with the nation's (if not the world's) financial markets, which loathe uncertainty. After Bush v. Gore, is there any doubt how the high Court would resolve another round? This time, though, the Court, too, will pay more dearly. With persuasive power as its only source of authority, the Court's power will diminish as the American people's cynicism skyrockets. It does not seem to trouble either Rove or Bush that they are moving us toward a Twenty-first Century civil war -- and that, once again, Southern conservatism is at its core. Only a miracle, it strikes me, can prevent this election from descending into post-election chaos. But given the alternatives, a miracle is what I am hoping for."
http://writ.corporate.findlaw.com/dean/20041022.html

The secret word is Willard

CRYPTIQUE – Stay off the junk and you’ll go far.

A POX ON THESE FAUX POP-SLUTS

Watching the clips of Ashley Simpson fucking up on SNL and, I hope, destroying her worthless career in the process, causes me to recall an Saturday Night of yesteryear, when Marianne Faithfull had blown out her trademark ashtray voice during rehearsals and then, as showtime approached, fell into the kind of thousand-yard performance panic that required her to get lacquered on cognac before going on camera. And still she pulled off an heartfelt and most moving reading of "Broken English", and finished with a nice curtsey in her leather jeans. But that was when songs and singers meant something.

I am becoming extremely interested in meme and, of course, the viral mutation of the mind and mass culture. All input is welcome. (byron4d@msn.com)

CRYPTIQUE – Walking against the electronic wind.

The secret word is Manacle

JOHN PEEL RIP

THE OAF
I find it truly offensive to hear the unspeakable Bush (who never bore a burden or paid a price in his wretched simian life) daring to quote – and thereby liken himself to – John F. Kennedy.

THE WOLF
Back on March 18th of this year, I wrote a long piece about wolves and how much I like them that can be found in the archives. Now the goddamned Bush campaign is running a TV commercial in which wolves in their habitat are made metaphors for terrorism. All I can scream is at least stick to your own species, scum. For the wolves’ view (courtesy of fidicen)...
http://www.wolfpacksfortruth.org/

FAITH IS THE BASE
"Britain's Armed Forces have enlisted their first Satanist after a naval technician serving on a frigate was granted permission to practice his beliefs while at sea" – MSNBC

The secret word is Bastinado

The archives, the links, the famous message board all seem to have sunk to the bottom. If you need them, you now have to scroll to the bottom. It may, of course, be one of those things that mysteriously right themselves after a while, so I refuse to panic. But dadnabit, fucking computer voting!!! Even if the machines weren't built by Bush's cronies we'd still probably get Little Richard as President.

SODOMY ANYONE?
From the South Dakota Argus Leader
"A window sticker scarcely larger than a standard photo print has the nation's top elected Democrat and the state's Republican Party pressing separately for a criminal investigation. The white-on-blue sticker reads, "Vote for Daschle & Vote for SODOMY." A disclaimer alerts readers that fees were "Paid for by someone who loves Jesus. This ad is not authorized by any candidate of (sic) candidate committee." The mass mailing went out earlier this month to churches statewide. A select few homeowners with yard signs supporting Democratic Sen. Tom Daschle also received copies in their mailboxes."

Which is yet another example of timorous liberals finding themselves forced to fight the religious nutters according to the nutters’ designated rules. Me? I have nothing against sodomy, believing that it is entirely the business of the sodomite and the sodomized. Indeed, I might go so far as saying that I’m quite in favor of sodomy, given a suitable appliance. You can love Jesus all you want, okay? But it doesn’t give you the right to get on my ass, so to speak.

QUOTE OF THE DAY – "If you don’t see a sucker at the table, you’re it". – Amarillo Slim (professional poker player)

FRAUD AND MORE FRAUD
I’ve been kinda delegating the worry about election fraud to others, but this story really does need reading...
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/041022/phf016_1.html?printer=1

+++++++++++++
GREG SHAW RIP
+++++++++++++

FEAR AND LOATHING
Read the latest from Dr. Thompson in Rolling Stone? Good, but not vintage, and he and I have also inadvertantly used the same joke in our election summations. Here’s a taste...
"It was the most brutal seizure of power since Hitler burned the erman Reichstag in 1933 and declared himself the new Boss of Germany. Karl Rove is no stranger to Nazi strategy, if only because it worked, for a while, and it was sure as hell fun for Hitler. But not for long. He ran out of oil, the whole world hated him, and he liked to gobble pure crystal biphetamine and stay awake for eight or nine days in a row with his maps & his bombers & his dope-addled general staff. They all loved the whiff. It is the perfect drug for War -- as long as you are winning -- and Hitler thought he was King of the hill forever. He had created a new master race, and every one of them worshiped him. The new Hitler youth loved to march and sing songs in unison and dance naked at night for the generals. They were fanatics. That was sixty-six years ago, far back in ancient history, and things are not much different today. We still love War. George Bush certainly does. In four short years he has turned our country from a prosperous nation at peace into a desperately indebted nation at war. But so what? He is the President of theUnited States, and you're not. Love it or leave it."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/6562575?&rnd=1098394261180&has-player=true

The secret word is Prosthesis

TV, AYE
I had resolved to doze in front of the TV and avoid watching cable news all day at all cost, but TV and homie don’t play that, because all this stuff kept happening, as in...

All these nice people have been coming by from the new link at smirking chimp (see below) and finding me temporarily as smart as an egotistical post and as scattered as an intellectual diaspora. When I should offering them metaphoric cake (or death?) to insure that they all come back real soon, I’m sitting around in my cybernetic longjohns scratching myself.

Then Letterman showed a clip of a small boy who, while being used as backdrop for a Bushbite, began to shake his teddy bear to death with his teeth. I can only suggest Ritalin for the problem – but have no idea what to do for the small boy. (Rimshot!)

Earlier I watched Fidel Castro fall over in the shadow of a highly heroic statue of Che Guevara and break his arm and knee. A Bush spokesthing seemed to feel that it was a omen for the return of freedom to Cuba (like in Iraq?). When asked if he wished Dr. Castro a swift recovery, the creature snapped "No!" Ungracious I thought. DOC 40 SAYS GET WELL SOON, FIDEL.

(Also get well Jett!)

And then I caught the rumor that Bill Clinton wants to be Secretary General of the United Nations, when Kofi’s deal runs out in 2006, which seems like exactly the right gig for him. Should (horror upon horror) Bush be returned to power, we may need those unmarked black helicopters to save us from the Waffen FBI when Ashcroft starts the cultural cleansing.

Ron Suskind’s lengthy piece on Bush in last Sunday’s NY Times has been scaring the shit out of many. A clip...

"And for those who don't get it? That was explained to me in late 2002 by Mark McKinnon, a longtime senior media adviser to Bush, who now runs his own consulting firm and helps the president. He started by challenging me. ''You think he's an idiot, don't you?'' I said, no, I didn't. ''No, you do, all of you do, up and down the West Coast, the East Coast, a few blocks in southern Manhattan called Wall Street. Let me clue you in. We don't care. You see, you're outnumbered 2 to 1 by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don't read The New York Times or Washington Post or The L.A. Times. And you know what they like? They like the way he walks and the way he points, the way he exudes confidence. They have faith in him. And when you attack him for his malaprops, his jumbled syntax, it's good for us. Because you know what those folks don't like? They don't like you!'' In this instance, the final ''you,'' of course, meant the entire reality-based community."

The full story (but hurry, I don’t think it’ll be free much longer)...
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html?pagewanted=all&position

And for our Vulcan readers...
UNDER BUSH WE WILL NOT PROSPER AND MAY NOT LIVE LONG.

Check the thoughts of Chairperson hipspinster – http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/

The secret word is Kenny

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
BUY A BOOK, SAVE AN AUTHOR.
http://www.borderlands-books.com/ usually has my stuff in stock
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

The email is byron4d@msn.com

CRYPTIQUE -- I'm beyond aroma therapy

COOL
Yesterday’s cover story I wrote for the local rag got itself reprinted (is that the word?) on Smirking Chimp. Damn am I proud. Especially so because it’s right next to a piece by Jimmy Breslin, my boyhood hero among columnists, who I once met in the bar of the Mayfair Hotel on Central Park West.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=18356

I also got a note from BBC Radio 2 that something I wrote about the Rolling Stones in 1971 (gulp) will be read by an actor on the new Rock’s Back Pages radio show.

Now I am not so depressed.

The secret word is Implement

A BRIEF HISTORY OF RAT FUCKING
Here’s a link to the thing I’ve been primarily working on and making myself nuts with for the last ten or so days. Not a subject that one wants to address while attempting to quit smoking and get in somewhat less sorry shape. If the War on Bush is to be conducted in a series of hopeless but romantic Jacobite charges, this is mine. For what it’s worth...

http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=1316&IssueNum=72

(And if one more chic liberal tells me – with that in-the-know tone – that a Bush victory has always been a forgone conclusion, I will personally, viciously, and without warning put a big major, Tony-Soprano hurt on the individual. For the reason that (A) it makes me depressed, and (B) it doesn’t get out the vote.)

The secret word is Snarl

PHEW...
Well, I finished my election opus (all being well, it will be out on Thursday and links will be provided) and it almost seems like it’s all over for me, but here are two clips from The New York Times, by way of a little decompression, and because the bloody fight is still going outside the window...

IF BUSH PACKS THE SUPREME COURT
"If Roe is lost, the Center for Reproductive Rights warns, there's a good chance that 30 states, home to more than 70 million women, will outlaw abortions within a year; some states may take only weeks. Criminalization will sweep well beyond the Bible Belt: Ohio could be among the first to drive young women to back-alley abortions and prosecute doctors. If Justices Scalia and Thomas become the Constitution's final arbiters, the rights of racial minorities, gay people and the poor will be rolled back considerably. Both men dissented from the Supreme Court's narrow ruling upholding the University of Michigan's affirmative-action program, and appear eager to dismantle a wide array of diversity programs. When the court struck down Texas' "Homosexual Conduct" law last year, holding that the police violated John Lawrence's right to liberty when they raided his home and arrested him for having sex there, Justices Scalia and Thomas sided with the police." – Adam Cohen
Full story...
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=18303&mode=nested&order=0

THE DRAFT
"The reality is that the Iraq war, which was intended to demonstrate the feasibility of the Bush doctrine, has pushed the U.S. military beyond its limits. Yet there is no sign that Mr. Bush has been chastened. By all accounts, in a second term the architects of that doctrine, like Paul Wolfowitz, would be promoted, not replaced. The only way this makes sense is if Mr. Bush is prepared to seek a much larger Army - and that means reviving the draft." – Paul Krugman

And an old friend is blogging at...
http://stashdauber.blogspot.com/

And here’s a nice story about bears from Mr MR...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3749604.stm

The secret word is Honey

CRYPTIQUE – Don’t go up to the castle.

WHO ARE THESE FUCKING PEOPLE?

Isn't it grand to watch bullyboy media blowhards go down. First Rush Limbaugh turns out to be a wretched squirming drug addict, and now (it's alleged) Bill O'Reilly is a creepo phone perv. Hardy-har.

(Forgot to mention that the link to the Iraq mutiny story was provided by some girl. Watch this story. It's the kind of thing the "legit" media quietly disappears.)

Still self-importantly writing myself into the ground, but these possibly crucial snippets floated past...

The Osama bin Laden, Chinese, October surprise...
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7077.htm

And maybe the first mutiny in Iraq...
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=2&u=/ap/20041016/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_unit_investigation

The secret word is Eggroll

I’m still working on the election opus,
but let me leave you with a riff on Farscape from LA CityBeat...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=1313&IssueNum=71

And some spooky inspiration sent over by fidicen
And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land. The White Man will never be alone. – Chief Seattle, 1854

CRYPTIQUE – How forked is your tongue, amigo?

Oh yeah, the secret word is Headache

Right now I'm working on what will probably be my last big utterance before the election on the black arts of politics, so blogs maybe curt for the next couple of days.

DEVIANT DESIRES FOR $2000, PLEASE ALEX
It occurred to me while watching Jeopardy that Ken Jennings must be hell on wheels at crossword puzzles.

(For those of you who don’t live in the USA, or catch watch 36 hours of TV a day -- it requires multiple sets -- Ken Jennings has been winning on the quiz show Jeopardy for almost two straight months, and – on a show where winners normally walk away with twenty or thirty grand – has racked up close to two million in prize money.)

CRYPTIQUE – Quick, before the drugs kick in.

I was watching the DVD of Fahrenheit 911, and, at the end, it occurred to me how The Who’s "Won’t Get Fooled Again" would have fitted so perfectly over the final credits. Okay so Neil Young’s "Rocking In The Free World" was mighty fine, but "Won’t Get Fooled Again" would have come so perfectly off the final words of the voice over. The story was that Pete Townshend refused Michael Moore permission to use it. With Pete selling The Who’s classics as wallpaper for Hummer commercials, my first reaction was to credit the refusal to simple greed. But, observing current electoral antics, I stared to wonder if Pete had been warned off giving aid and comfort to the left and the anti-war if he ever wanted to bury that cyber-sex criminal record from 2003.

BIG NEW MONKEY
Kaymo tells us of what maybe a new, previously unknown species of primate that’s been discovered in the Congo. Somewhere between a gorilla and a chimp, it’s big and smart and maybe a little hostile. (Let's not forget that it was kaymo who told us about the Spanish vultures who, after thousands of years, had decided to save time and do their own killing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3730574.stm

The secret word is Banana.

Sometimes I think my intellect is failing, but then I turn on the television.

No one in the media has so far commented, or even seems to have noticed, but, at one point in the last Presidential debate, Bush attempted to blame the underestimates of troop numbers going into Iraq on his generals. Always dangerous for a CinC to blame failures on the generals. They tend to get pissed off and stage a coupe. I also recall that Hitler did much the same before he shot himself in the bunker. (Along with Eva and the dog Blondi.)

Attempts to characterize the recent Florida hurricane rampage as a meterological flook is kinda negated by the fact that the very same thing is happening in Japan with typhoon after typhoon slamming into Tokyo.

The debates in Photoshop (from fidicen)
http://www.youforgotpoland.com/

The secret word is Woof

CRYPTIQUE -- Sell the car to Little Richard.

Americans seem somewhat upset that the English have screwed up their flu vacine. Did I understand correctly that the problem was at a factory in Liverpool? Payback, at long last, for John Lennon, perhaps?

In the review below, I especially love the phrase "zany yet brutal".

When the workers aren’t paid enough also to be consumers, capitalism screws the pooch and the game is over.

EGO EGO EGO
While googling myself to prove I was really real, I came across the following very cool review of The Renquist Quartet by bookslut. I shamelessly pass it on because I am extremely fond of my vampires and would love for them to find a wider audience. They were a little – as they call it – underpublished.

From http://www.bookslut.com/
The final vampire series worth checking out is Mick Farren's Renquist Quartet (which includes The Time of Feasting, Darklost, More Than Mortal, and Underland). Farren, a former rock journalist known for psychedelic sci-fi novels, started the series off with a mostly mainstream horror story of a colony of New York vampires thrown into disarray by internal politics and external hunters. However, with the second book, the series took a turn for the bizarre that had only been hinted at previously, as Farren established vampires (and most other supernatural creatures) as being the result of long-ago alien experimentation on earth. Had he taken the theory too seriously, the books would have come across typical cheesy sci-fi (or a late-series X-Files episode). But since Farren pervades the series with a sense of fun (while never letting the characters themselves be utterly serious about the world in which they live), we end up with a zany yet brutal world in which alien vampires mingle with ancient wizards, in which a vampiric Kurt Cobain and Lovecraft's Cthulhu can be found, and in which Nazi Mole Men and UFOs square off against secret US government immortality projects. At the core, though, the novels are still about Renquist and his crew of vampires as they travel the globe and try to make sense of the insanity. Farren's quartet manages to be a hoot, without ever tripping too far into the "humorous" side of the humorous horror realm.

BITCH BITCH BITCH
And on the subject of reviews of vampire novels, Anne Rice has posted a unbelievably demented defense of herself and her vampires on Amazon, explaining at undignified length how she hasn’t jumped the shark, and apparently blaming a lot of it on her readers. (Unless it’s revealed as a cruel and unusual hoax.) Excerpts...

First off, let me say that this is addressed only to some of you, who have posted outrageously negative comments here, and not to all. You are interrogating this text from the wrong perspective. Indeed, you aren't even reading it.

You are projecting your own limitations on it. And this book is most certainly written -- every word of it -- by me. If and when I can't write a book on my own, you'll know about it. And no, I have no intention of allowing any editor ever to distort, cut, or otherwise mutilate sentences that I have edited and re-edited, and organized and polished myself. I fought a great battle to achieve a status where I did not have to put up with editors making demands on me, and I will never relinquish that status. For me, novel writing is a virtuoso performance. It is not a collaborative art.

If this reaches one reader who is curious about my work and shocked by the ugly reviews here, I've served my goals. And Yo, you dude, the slang police! Lestat talks like I do. He always has and he always will. You really wouldn't much like being around either one of us. And you don't have to be. If any of you want to say anything about all this by all means Email me at Anneobrienrice@mac.com. And if you want your money back for the book, send it to 1239 First Street, New Orleans, La, 70130. I'm not a coward about my real name or where I live. And yes, the Chronicles are no more! Thank God!

For the whole tirade go to http://www.amazon.com/ , dial up her new(ish) book The Blood Canticle, and scroll down the reader reviews.

QUOTE TO THE DAY
I still love Maureen Dowd – even though one of Doc’s lady admirers has laughingly threatened to "scratch that redheaded bitch's eyes out!"
"Senator Kerry evoked the voice of Bush 41 to get under 43's thin skin. The more Mr. Kerry played the square, proper, moderate, internationalist war hero, the more the president was reduced to childish scowling and fidgeting, acting like a naughty little boy who refuses to sit in his seat and eat his spinach and do all the hard things a parent wants you to do."

LINKS
Our dazzling pal hipspinster has been out on the razzle...
http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/

And try this. It’s really worth the effort.
http://wearabledissent.com/101/floridaballot.html

CRYPTIQUE – He’s drunk!

The secret word is Ovoid

Last night during the VP Smackdown, Darth Cheney defended Haliburton by telling viewers to go to factcheck.com to read all about his former company’s philanthropic innocence. I recommend you try it, but actually type the URL into your browser or the hilarity will not ensue.

DESTROY ALL NEIGHBORS
I wrote the following book review for LA CityBeat, but since it was to small to make the website, I thought it’d share, now the issue is off the stands....
Ever had the urge to annihilate the individual next door who is loudly and ineptly learning an electric instrument or insists on playing bass-heavy post-Soviet disco at pain-threshold volume? Has anger reached the level were simple homicide will not suffice and you feel the need to level the entire building in which the culprit lives? Or did you just find those catapults in Return of The King just too cool? Either way, author William Gurstelle has the book for you. In The Art of The Catapult, he not only chronicles the plus two millennia history of catapult technology – along with notes on siege tactics, and the use of poisonous snakes and severed human heads as projectiles – but provides detailed DIY instructions to build your very own, environment-friendly, boulder hurling engine of death. Fancy a Macedonian ballista? A Roman onager? Or a reconstruction of the big English trebuchet nicknamed Ludgar the War Wolf? All are yours to command provided you can muster a minimal skill with sharp and heavy tools, protective eyewear, and all the other stuff beloved by Homer Simpson. Just observe the important swinging arm and flying object alerts in the diagrams and be the first on your block with artillery! Gurstelle’s plans are for scale models, but one can, of course, multiply.
Art of The Catapult by William Gurstelle (Chicago Review Press, $14.95)

MY TV TOLD ME
Seemingly London bookies are now giving odds on which Simpsons character will come out in the new year. Favorite at 5-2 is Waylon Smithers.

CRYPTIQUE – Which format do you prefer?

The secret word is Clamp

RODNEY DANGERFIELD RIP (Respect)

NOTES ON HOMELAND SECURITY
Yesterday another hospital emergency room closed in Los Angeles. Since the late eighties, Southern California had lost sixteen emergency or trauma facilities. Only eleven remain. The cited reason is that hospitals are mandated by state law to provide emergency treatment to all who seek it, regardless of whether they can pay or not. Thus the problem is deemed to be the fault of the poor, the indigent, the homeless, and the illegal. Whether LA, a clear target for potential terrorist action now has the needed medical facilities to cope with such an event, or a major earthquake, or another urban uprising is highly debatable. In the War on Terror, funds are available to create a police state, or contract for a Haliburton-imperial, top dollar war of conquests, but we must not mention healthcare. Such talk hints at socialism and endangers the profit margins of inequality.

RALPH
To ensure he doesn’t wipe out all trace of his highly creditable history, Ralph Nader really has to stand down right now with all dignity, or risk being chronicled as the looney spoiler of 2004, and maybe much worse.

QUOTE OF THE DAY
"War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today." – President John F. Kennedy

War Is A Racket
http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
["if you've never read this masterwork, do yourself a favor" – People’s Daily Briefing]

And now take the Patriot Pledge
http://yesbushcan.com/pledge.shtml

CRYPTIQUE – No blindfold!

The secret word is Casualty

MONDAY AFTERNOON
Having slept, now I wander in a haze muttering to myself that I have so much to do, I have no idea where to start, and should maybe go back to bed because Mt. St. Helens will explode triggering massive earthquakes, death and apocalypse. (I can contrive really massive excuses to go back to bed.) But here, in the very act of writing this, I have broken the deadlock of creative sloth and the day begins.

Yesterday was the 40th birthday of Underdog. Tomorrow is the 102nd birthday of Larry Fein of The Three Stooges, or it would be if he wasn’t dead.

And take a listen to "Fortunate Son" by Creedence. The relevance is eerie.
Some folks are born made to wave the flag,
Ooh, they're red, white and blue.
And when the band plays "Hail to the chief",
Ooh, they point the cannon at you,
Lord, It ain't me, it ain't me,
I ain't no senator's son, son.
It ain't me, it ain't me; I ain't no fortunate one, no,

Yeah! Some folks are born silver spoon in hand,
Lord, don't they help themselves, oh.
But when the taxman comes to the door,
Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale, yes,
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no millionaire's son, no.
It ain't me, it ain't me; I ain't no fortunate one, no.

Some folks inherit star spangled eyes,
Ooh, they send you down to war, Lord,
And when you ask them, "How much should we give?"
Ooh, they only answer More! more! more! yoh,
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no military son, son.
It ain't me, it ain't me; I ain't no fortunate one, one.

****************
JANET LEIGH RIP
****************

CRYPTIQUE – Just walking around to save funeral expenses.

The secret word is Duck

I thought I should make a brief post so you would not all think I had wandered off again. I have spent some of the last few days with the Felix Dennis, Glass Half Full Poetry Tour, and Felix can not only stage a reading, but put on a hell of an expansive lunch.

But as it’s still Sunday, because I haven’t gone to bed yet, here’s a segment of a story from The New Republic – WHY BUSH DOESN’T GO TO CHURCH by Amy Sullivan

But, even if Bush had the time for church services, supporters protest, the security precautions necessary for a presidential visit would drive congregants away. This is the exact same argument the Reagan White House trotted out to explain why the patron saint of the religious right hardly ever attended church from 1981 to 1989. Bomb-sniffing dogs, metal detectors, and security personnel, so the theory goes, would pose an onerous burden for the average church. "The president wants to avoid the sort of major weekly disruption that would be caused if he went to church," says David Aikman, author of A Man of Faith: The Spiritual Journey of George W. Bush." As it happens, I attended Foundry United Methodist Church for several years during the late '90s when the Clintons were members there. The only imposition was the extra ten seconds it took to walk through a metal detector. Parishioners did not leave the church in droves; on the contrary, many were pleasantly surprised to find that the Clintons played an active role in church life, particularly while Chelsea was involved in the choir and youth group.
Full story – http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=vKO1twmWG2Uvnyi2qoWQfW%3D%3D

The secret word is Effluvia

DEE BATE

I watched the Bush/Kerry debate -- twice in fact, once as it happened, and again when I got back from Felix’s wine and poetry fest at the Knitting Factory. Thus I saw it one time sober and one time a little drunk, and laughed my ass off each time as Bush fumbled, stumbled, pouted, took on that now almost trademark deer-in-the-headlights expression, and repeatedly whined (nine times?) that it was hard work? Which seemed kinda rich coming from the man who has taken more vacations than any US president in history.
Yeah, if we have to score the thing like a prizefight, I figure Kerry smote Bush and the only real question is to whether it was a mighty smiting or just a regular smiting. The bout certainly seemed to define the choice for President is between a patrician college professor and an ankle-bitting Bluto.

JACK
But on to the more important stuff, because the inquiring Doc wants to know why Jack Daniels is reducing the alcohol content in Old #7 from 86 proof to a mere 80 proof?

GENE
Gene Vincent was a great lover of Jack Daniels, and, indeed, pretty much anything with an alcohol with, just possibly, the exception of anti-freeze, and if you want to read an except from my fabulous new book about him – http://www.thedonotpress.com/extracts/geneex.html

And on the subject of books and booze, a new book (not mine) on absinth is about to hit the stores (intelligence from fidicen) – http://www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/books/3747.htm

FUNDAMENTALIST FOLLIES
How many of you are up to speed on Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas). Brownback, even by my expansive standards, is verily weird. He lives rent free in a Christian commune in Washington with the rent paid by some obscure cult, and is the avowed foe of indecency, abortion, Howard Stern, and probably me, if he knew about me. Read an account of Brownback in Neanderthal on the subject of stem cell research. – http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,65144,00.html


RICHARD AVEDON RIP


CRYPTIQUE – The dog has met the frog. (This is one for the decoder ring.)

The secret word is Sluggo

THE DRAFT
I have a piece this week in LA CityBeat on the rumors that George Bush is planning to reinstitute the draft. (But an edit killed a neat fantasy – seeing that women will be drafted – of an Elvis-style media event when Paris Hilton arrives at Parris Island for induction.)
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=1270&IssueNum=69

TWO QUOTES FROM GEORGE SOROS
I realize that what I am saying is bound to be unpopular. We are in the grip of a collective misconception induced by the trauma of 9/11, and fostered by the Bush administration. No politician could say it and hope to get elected. That is why I feel obliged to speak out. There is a widespread belief that President Bush is making us safe. The opposite is true. President Bush failed to finish off bin Laden when he was cornered in Afghanistan because he was gearing up to attack Iraq. And the invasion of Iraq bred more people willing to risk their lives against Americans than we are able to kill - generating the vicious circle I am talking about.

The Bush campaign is trying to put a favorable spin on it, but the situation in Iraq is dire. Much of the Western part of the country has been ceded to the insurgents. Even the so-called Green Zone (a small enclave in the center of Baghdad where Americans live and work) is subject to mortar attacks. The prospects of holding free and fair elections in January are fast receding and civil war looms. President Bush received a somber intelligence evaluation in July but he has kept it under wraps and failed to level with the electorate.
For the whole story... http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0928-16.htm

AND FROM WILLIAM SHIRER (author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich)
I would meet with the most outlandish assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious they were parroting some piece of nonsense they had heard on the radio or read in the newspapers.

Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but on such occasions one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a shock of silence, as if one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realized how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical disregard for truth, said they were.

LINKS...
Got Milk or got tequila?
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0929043limeade1.html

And God’s back. Creationists in pseudo-scientific drag
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/evolution.html

THE SQUID
The squid may be as smart as me
Enough to never leave the sea

THEM WACKY SPEEDFREAKS
Doc40 congratulates Steven K. Konopatzke who attempted to board a commercial airliner with the components of his meth lab in a carry-on bag. On the other hand, we might not buy his speed.

CRYPTIQUE – Verily I say unto you.

Verily I say unto you, let's all start using the word verily.

WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS (oh, say it isn’t so)
My informants inform me that, in addition to the discovery of a further twelve hours of sex tapes featuring Paris Hilton and various partners (dare we hope for domestic animals?) Ms. Hilton is also attempting to make the phrase "that’s hot" her legal copyright after which the rest of us English speaking mortals will have to pay her a royalty for the use of these two words. Although it’s not the greatest of the my fury-provoking preoccupations, I must confess I’m not only becoming burned out of the seemingly endless antics of this woman, but also this trend to stake out ownership on bits of the language, which strikes me as the linguistic equivalent of a wild west land grab. Maybe I should copyright the phrase "Fuck off and die"?

XMAS ZEP
And if I did the above, would I make enough on the deal to buy the 12-seater personal Zeppelin feature in the 2004 Neiman Marcus Christmas Book with a pricetag of $10 million? Now that's hot. Right, Paris?

NUTSHELL ON GWB
To be both megalomaniac and feeble minded is infinitely possible.

TWO QUOTES FROM TED KENNEDY
"The President's handling of the war has been a toxic mix of ignorance, arrogance, and stubborn ideology."
"I thank God that President Bush was not our President at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis."

For the full speech – http://kennedy.senate.gov/GWspeech.txt

CRYPTIQUE – Fuck ‘em if they can’t cast a vote.

WHILE FLORIDA TURNS BIBLICAL AND DESPITE WHAT JEB BUSH MIGHT SAY...
(From a British diplomatic website)
Climate change is a far greater threat to the world than international terrorism", the British government's chief scientific adviser Sir David King said the US had failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and without immediate action flooding, drought, hunger and debilitating diseases such as malaria would hit millions of people around the world. US President George Bush says more research is needed before he introduces punitive carbon taxes on industry. But Sir David criticised the Bush administration for relying too exclusively on market-based incentives and voluntary actions. "Climate change is the most severe problem we are facing today."

The icecaps are melting
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,65067,00.html

"You could hear things going by like missiles. I got a little scared when the tractor-trailer was blown across the parking lot." – Diana Corbett, on Hurricane Jeanne (from NY Times)

LINK
The privatized war – long, but a real eye-opener.
http://harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html

A THOUGHT OCCURRED TO ME
Remember when Oprah gave away all those free cars to her audience, and then they discovered they all had to pay the IRS about seven grand before they could take the cars home? I started to wonder if, when celebs show up at corporately sponsored parties, and are given $20,000-worth of gift bag for their trouble, do they have to pay tax on those goodies. I somehow doubt it, but why the fuck not?

QUOTE OF THE DAY FROM EXACTLY ONE YEAR AGO
"A year from now I'd be surprised if there's not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush." – Richard Perle

CRYPTIQUE – Three and a half minutes without air and your brain starts to die.

THE MORE IT CHANGES, THE MORE IT STAYS THE SAME
What’s the French for the above and did Marcel Proust say it? Damned if I know. Thirty nine or whatever years ago this was a lousy song at the commercial ass-end of protest folk rock. Funny how it resonates here in the Era of the Dumb. (Lyrics courtesy of Mr MR)

Eve Of Destruction
by Barry McGuire

The eastern world, it is explodin'.
Violence flarin', bullets loadin'
You're old enough to kill, but not for votin'
You don't believe in war, but what's that gun you're totin'
And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin'
But you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don't believe
We're on the eve of destruction.

Don't you understand what I'm tryin' to say
Can't you feel the fears I'm feelin' today?
If the button is pushed, there's no runnin' away
There'll be no one to save, with the world in a grave
Take a look around you boyIt's bound to scare you boy
And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don't believe
We're on the eve of destruction.

Yeah, my blood's so mad feels like coagulatin'
I'm sitting here just contemplatin'
I can't twist the truth, it knows no regulation.
Handful of senators don't pass legislation
And marches alone can't bring integration
When human respect is disintegratin'
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin'
And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don't believe
We're on the eve
Of destruction.

Think of all the hate there is in Red China
Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama
You may leave here for 4 days in space
But when you return, it's the same old place
The poundin' of the drum, the pride and disgrace
You can bury your dead, but don't leave a trace
Hate your next-door neighbor, but don't forget to say grace
And tell me
Over and over and over and over again, my friend
You don't believe
We're on the eve
Of destruction
Mm, no no, you don't believe
We're on the eve of destruction.

MONDAY, MONDAY

Almost October, and in the teeth of another week, when Felix Dennis reads his poetry in LA, on the same night as the Bush/Kerry debate, and aliens will again neglect to abduct me, I think I'll go to bed. (I believe I just heard gunfire, over in Plummer Park.)

CRYPTIQUE -- Web humor for Luddites. (nedludd.com)

CRYPTIQUE -- Even after all this time, we still don't expect the Spanish Inquisition.

ANOTHER FOUND OBJECT


You're Brigitte Bardot!


What Classic Pin-Up Are You?
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DAMN!
I adore the way Maureen Dowd tilts her head to one side...

WITHOUT COMMENT...
A press releases that the Texas Air National Guard sent to Houston newspapers in 1970 about young Bush, then a second lieutenant and new pilot. "George Bush is one member of the younger generation who doesn't get his kicks from pot or hashish or speed," the news release said. "Oh, he gets high, all right, but not from narcotics." (Thanks to Mr. MR for this and Tom Joad, – see below.)

HOW THE GAME IS PLAYED
Politics used to be fun. Especially in Texas where zany, God-fearing politicians really knew how to "get down." That was back when you could destory an opponent without really hurting him -- tell lies so unbelievable and outlandish that giggling voters flock to the polls to vote for you just because you're so dadgumed creative. In his heyday, nobody was better at gettin' down politically than Lone Star Lyndon. In 1948, after 11 years in the House of Representatives where he proved to be a formidable, power-hungry campaigner, LBJ hit fellow Democrat and popular former Texas governor Coke Stevenson with everything he had as they squared off for a run at the Senate. Legend has it Johnson told one of his aides -- "Go out there and tell 'em Coke was caught having sex with a farm animal."
"But, Lyndon," the aide protested, "you know that's not true!"
"Of course it's not true!" Johnson responded impatiently. "That's not the point. Tell it anyway -- and make him deny it..." – Sheila Samples, Information Clearing House

QUOTE OF THE DAY -- "I'm so pleased with my gender. We're not that bright." – Ann Coulter

("It’s a stupid country." – Johnny Depp)

CRYPTIQUE – I talk to people in bars.

LINKS
Morphine occurs naturally in the human brain.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,65053,00.html

Sim-sex update
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,65064,00.html

GOP admit mailing campaign literature saying liberals will ban the Bible
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=17969&mode=nested&order=0

The Man Who Shot Che Guevara
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/issues/2004-09-23/metro.html

WITHOUT COMMENT...
Ma: Then what, Tom?
Tom Joad: I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be there in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be there in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they built - I'll be there, too.
Ma: I don't understand it, Tom.
Tom Joad: Me, neither, Ma, but - just somethin' I been thinkin' about.

DAMN!
Most of you cuties are mercifully too young the remember the last idiot war in detail, but, trust an old timer, in the last 48 hours, fucking Bush has started to sound just like fucking Lyndon Johnson.

CRYPTIQUE -- You can feel Carville is back.

SF4
During last weekend’s energizing reading, one piece received extremely well was Diabolo’s Cadillac. So, with stunning egotism, I’ve reproduced it below. (An orchestrated version appears on the Deviants’ CD Dr. Crow that will be re-released in super deluxe form by Captain Trip Records in Tokyo.)

DIABOLO'S CADILLAC
Room 101
A ratcage on my face
The pain is close indescribable
The horror, the horror
Last night I took a ride
In Diabolo's Cadillac

Morning is beyond the drapes
And demons wrench at my eyelids
With steel pliers
Blessed Virgin just show me mercy
Or give me a Valium
Last night I took a ride
In Diabolo's Cadillac

My brain is as dry and shriveled
As a motherless sponge
And I dread the ultimate re-entry
Of the blood
When the torture of the damned
Will resemble a bright day at the beach
Last night I took a ride
In Diabolo's Cadillac

Jesus, god, give me a break here will you?
It's only a chemical analogue
For those two old dogs
Pleasure and Retribution
I've heard that twelve steps
Can lead to salvation
But I also recall that one more
Will take you to the gallows
I don't need a stinking program
Just a remission from guilt
And some show about Hitler
On the History Channel
While I collect my scattered senses
Last night I took a ride
In Diabolo's Cadillac


===================OO=====
RUSS MEYER RIP (see comments)
===================OO=====

CRYPTIQUE – Ducks are waddling, in search of a row.

QUOTE OF THE DAY – Thank goodness I’m wearing a crotch rope. – Trinity

MY TV TOLD ME, TWO
I really wasn’t paying attention. As many of you are well aware, when I’m working – writing, that is – a TV is usually burbling somewhere close at hand, and news items enter by osmosis, and are most times, quickly dismissed as half-digested media clutter. I almost dismissed the tale of the mom who mail-ordered her kids Ritalin from Canada and received a whole bunch of Methadone by mistake and the poor little fucker could have died if mother had been so vigilant – but then a worm in my brain turned. "Hold on a minute," the worm snarled, "this is surely bullshit most mendacious. Who orders Methadone from Canada? Methadone needs a triplicate script. A canuck mail-order house would not be handing it. What?" This item surely has to be an under-the-radar, fear-story planted by some black-bag PR for a US pharmaceutical industry running scared from the threat of cheap and government regulated, north-of-the-border drugs to their monstrously obscene profits. The factoid is now in place, and will doubtless be rote-repeated by bought-and-paid-for politicians, and also Debs Norville, or some other talking hairdo. It’s now urban disinformation that will be cited as proof that Canadian drugs can’t be trusted. Which is crap. But that’s how the game is currently played. Another case of blog this, aye? (See yesterday)

CRYPTIQUE – I can get you a deal on some cheap moral fabric.

DON’T FORGET
There’s a bunch of good stuff on Funtopia News (over on the right there.)

The email address is – byron4d@msn.com

QUOTE OF THE DAY
From Nicholas von Hoffman
"The crappiest supermarket bread costs two bucks a loaf. A gallon of milk costs four bucks, and heating oil is already 20 cents a gallon higher than it was last year. The cost of housing is through the roof. Medical services are so famously high it doesn’t bear mentioning. The price of everything is going up, but every month the Bush people say that inflation is "contained," "tamed" and barely moving if you look at the "core" numbers—that is, the inflation number after throwing out the cost of food, fuel, shelter and unessential services such as medical care and education. This is the situation before the election. You can imagine what next year is going to be like after the election, when the Bush people have nothing to worry about and nothing to do for the next four years but grab everything in sight."
Full story – http://www.observer.com/pages/observer.asp

LINK
Ashcroft continues to seek new powers
http://www.aclu.org/NationalSecurity/NationalSecurity.cfm?ID=16491&c=24
[notice how they haven't shown ashfeld, minute rice, rumscroft or any of the other failure czars all year?]

(Many of these links, especially the political ones, come courtesy of – and with comments by – People’s Daily Briefing)

DAMN!

Twinkies went bankrupt.

DAMN!

The nation is safe from Cat Stevens, and am I fucking relieved.

FOUND OBJECT


You're Bettie Page!


What Classic Pin-Up Are You?
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SF 1
Damn, but I love the Bay Area. Coming from all too frequently mindless LA, it feels so good to be back in a place where life exists right out on the street, and to be unorthodox -- and not consumer rich -- does not appear to be the heinous crime that it is a few hundred miles to the south. The wind blows, clouds scud across the sky, rain falls, cabs ply for hire, and I start to feel a sense of unaccustomed normality.

SF2
And speaking of normality, while driving out to Berkeley with the redoubtable Jude from Borderlands, we waited in traffic in the Castro for a parade to go past. It appeared to be Leather Boys for Democracy, showing their black and blue striped bondage flag with the blood red circular spot. I never did find out the reason for the march, but it appeared highly serious with only strapping men in vests and cut-off chaps; no drag queens, sissies, or lesbians among their number.

SF3
The great fear for the performer is, of course, that no one will show up, and, needless to say, I went into the usual, well concealed, private funk for the hour or so before the event at Borderlands, but managed to cover it well be allowing myself to be taken to taken to a very unusual Irish pub where I drank beer and ate black pudding and boxty (and if you need that explained, you probably don’t want to hear the explanation) and then went on to read, sign, discuss, and debate topics that ranged from global warming the movie Abbott and Costello Go To Mars for a happily full house. And also ran into Jess Cox who I hadn’t seen in a million years.

WELL, BLOG HER
Deborah Norville – along with other dopey and dubious TV newspersons – has discovered the blogosphere and wonders how we seem to know shit before she does. The answer is that we ignore Karl Rove, use out brains, can add 2 + 2, and generally reach some approximation of 4. Debs is also worried that we are "unaccountable" and concerned that maybe something should be done about us. Tough shit, Debs; unaccountable, and unpaid, and mad as hell, and without 200 grams of makeup to aide our plausibility. We don’t need no stinking accountability.

GRIM FROM KAYMO
On 15 July 2004 William S. Lind suggested that "an American-Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. Such an attack may very well be on the agenda as the "October Surprise," the distraction President George W. Bush desperately needs if the debacle in Iraq is not to lead to his defeat in November." (Global Security. Org)

CRYPTIQUE – What’s keeping the giant killer robots?

SAN FRANCISCO
Back from a truly fine weekend in the Bay Area which I will report on later when I have all the awaiting work and other bits and pieces squared away, but, suffice for the moment, to say that Borderland Books were very, very good to me.

MY TV TELLS ME...
Poker Bots...my TV tells me that unbeatable poker robots are playing in those online poker games, meaning that if you're playing on one of those sites, you're screwed far beyond the combined imaginings of Isaac Asimov and Doc Holliday. (Never play cards with a guy named HAL)

QUOTE OF THE DAY
And best of all, the genie cannot be pushed back into the bottle. No neo-liberal charade, no "progressive internationalist" bullshit can convince the world that they have not seen what they have seen. Big brother may indeed have pushed his luck, and the freedom to say that 2+2=4 may yet emerge. No matter who wins, the death rattle of US empire may be sounding. – Daniel Patrick Welch (for full story...
http://www.redress.btinternet.co.uk/dpwelch17.htm

LINKS
A long, serious, but real scarey report on the coming of Soylent Green for real...
An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security
http://www.heuersdorf.de/Wrldclmt.html

Inside bush's torture chambers: One woman's story
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1308346,00.html
(And on the same subject, no one seems to have noticed, or admitted that the systematic torturing of prisoners, aside from being morally repugnant, is also a sure sign that all other intelligence gathering systems have broken down.)

E.L. Doctorow on The Unfeeling President
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0920-13.htm

QUOTE OF THE DAY (courtesy some girl)

In the London Guardian, retired General William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency, characterized the tension between the Bush administration and the senior military officers over Iraqi as worse than any he has ever seen with any previous government, including Vietnam. "I've never seen it so bad between the office of the secretary of defense and the military. There's a significant majority believing this is a disaster. The two parties whose interests have been advanced have been the Iranians and al-Qaida. Bin Laden could argue with some cogency that our going into Iraq was the equivalent of the Germans in Stalingrad. They defeated themselves by pouring more in there. Tragic."

SAN FRANCISCO!!!!!!
Sunday, September 19th at 4 PM. Mick Farren reading and signing KINDLING at Borderlands Books, 866 Valencia Street (at 19th.) 888 893 4008 (see Tuesday’s post)

QUOTES OF THE DAY, BOTH FROM THE LOVELY MAUREEN DOWD (sigh)
The Democratic paranoia is a measure of the intimidation the West Wing is wielding in a race where John Kerry can't seem to take advantage of any of the Bush administration's increasingly calamitous blunders. The administration has been so dazzling in misleading the public with audacious, mendacious malarkey that the Democrats fear the Bushies are capable of any level of deceit. Iraq is a vision of hell, and the Republicans act as if it's a model kitchen. The president and vice president brag about liberating Iraqis and reassure us that they are stopping terrorist violence at its source and inspiring democracy in the region by bringing it to blood-drenched Iraq.

Unlike the president, the young men and women trying to stay alive in the unraveling chaos of Iraq can't count on their daddies to get them out of the line of fire.

SOUND OF OWN HORN BLOWING
Exceeding fab review of Kindling in the Journal of the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society.
http://www.netaxs.com/~hlazar/sf.htm

MO’ LINKS, AYE?
Fightin’ radical librarians
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,64945,00.html

George Bush's United States is clearly in a proto-fascist condition. http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=17771&mode=nested&order=0
The Al Qaeda franchise
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6884.htm

Hurricane Ivan
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,64952,00.html
Zippy the Pinhead
www.zippythepinhead.com

THIS JUST IN
The state of California has outlawed necrophilia, which I guess puts a new spin on the phrase "drop dead gorgeous."

SQUIRMING LIKE A TOAD
Today my TV seems burdened down by Bush spokesclones telling me that the only thing wrong with the war in Iraq is the negative reporting of a irresponsible free press. Seems like I heard the same shit in 1969, except Nixon’s VPSpiro Agnew had a neater line in alliteration – "nattering nabobs of negativism" – and, of course, The Doors were playing in the background. Think I’ll go and put on Strange Days.

CRYPTIQUE – Nothing giant killer robots wouldn’t cure.

GABAGABAGABAGABAGABAGABAGABAGABA
Johnny Ramone RIP
GABAGABAGABAGABAGABAGABAGABAGABA

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

SAN FRANCISCO

Sunday, September 19th at 4 PM. Mick Farren reading and signing KINDLING at Borderlands Books, 866 Valencia Street in San Francisco (at 19th.) 888 893 4008
(see below)

FOUND OBJECT


Jezebel


Which bad girl of the Bible are you?
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OUR GLORIOUS LEADER CONTINUES TO SCREW THE POOCH
Key U.S. general criticizes Fallujah attack – http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5983400/

Also a few folks have questioned the Caligula ref in a recent post about Oprah’s car giveaway. I was thinking of how, during the classic "bread and circuses" phase of Rome's decline, it was common to hurl free stuff to the mob to keep them quiet.

Q -- If Bush made his horse a senator would anyone notice?

I HEARD THE NEWS TODAY, OH BOY...
So Martha Stewart wants to serve her time right now so she can be out before the spring crocuses bloom, and do the bit in Danbury, Conn so she can be close to home. Like the Fonz used to say, "whoa!"

CRYPTIQUE – From the perspective of the rats and albino alligators, the road we travel is only the roof of a sewer.

SAN FRANCISCO!!!!!!

Sunday, September 19th at 4 PM. Mick Farren reading and signing KINDLING at Borderlands Books, 866 Valencia Street (at 19th.) 888 893 4008

"In his long and interesting career, Mick Farren has been a journalist, poet, author (23 novels and 11 works of non-fiction -- including four on Elvis!), and a founding member of the band The Deviants. His works include the cult sci-fi classic DNA COWBOYS TRILOGY, and the vampire saga THE RENQUIST QUARTET. Mick's latest novel, KINDLING, is an alternate history set in a world in which the Crusades never happened, changing the spread of religion, scientific progress, and the birth of America. Don't miss this chance to meet Mick Farren! Following the reading, Mick will discuss KINDLING with the Classic Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Club. Please contact Jude at jfeldman@borderlands-books.com for more information."

(I may also have some free time Saturday night, so if anyone in the Bay Area wants to grab a beer, email me – byron4d@msn.com)

OF COURSE, ALL OF THIS WOULDN’T BE HAPPENING IF I DIDN’T HAVE DSL.

HCB has been sending me stuff about the singularity movement in science fiction. Seems like it’s the hottest new flavor since cyber-punk, aye?
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.09/view.html?pg=4?tw=wn_tophead_8

I’m not a big Garrison Keillor fan, but this has a ring to it...
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/979

As does this piece on legalizing prostitution from The Economist
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3151258

Email = byron4d@msn.com

And meanwhile Oprah gives away a free car to every single member of her studio audience. I mean, it’s some new piece o’shit GM promotion, but isn’t this all getting a trifle Caligula?

CRYPTIQUE – We can track you down.

What is this?

Am I the only one who’s noticed that Iraq has been literally falling apart for the last few days, not mention the North Koreans blowing up mountains, while the President is looking for his spare copy of My Pet Goat?

I want a bloody cigarette!!!

On the new theory of fast and loose wit’ I will just slap it down crucial new snippets without any production. Like when the weekly hurricane slams into Florida and no one mentions that maybe all is not right with the world...

QUOTE – "In 2003, The UN's World Meteorological Organization reported unprecedented levels of extreme weather and climate occurrences all over the world. The report emphasized an alarming increase in global warming and pointed to the impact of human activity. The significance of this particular report is that the highly respected UN organization is known for its normally conservative predictions and statements."

I have to thank everyone who emailed me while I went missing, asking if I was both well and sane. I was neither for a little while, but seem to be improving in both areas. I am also in the process of giving up cigarettes.

The Japanese have a word...karoshi, or "death from overwork."

Then again, it’s always possible I have been hosed down with microwaves in the 450mhz range by NSA/FEMA and am a completely different person.

As Fast Eddie Felson once remarked...
I'M BACK

The first explanation of why I’ve been out of circulation so long is that it all started to get a little much for me. I became less and less clear exactly what I was doing. It was rather as though I’d embarked on my own little daily magazine and it was taking too much time, too much energy, and I was starting to worry about it in the most unhealthy way. I clearly had to step back and take stock.

Having stepped back, I found it very hard to step back in.

I finally realized that a blog is not a magazine at all. It is not even a web site. Much more informal. I should come to the process for shorter and more casual – but maybe more frequent visits. More free, more spontaneous, and less to worry about.

Also I had this new book to commence, and had to go through the literary equivalent of kneeling naked in some freezing chapel, praying over my armor on the eve of battle. That is all history now, however. The book is called Conflagration, it is the sequel to Kindling, (out now) I am some seventy pages in, and Cordelia finds herself attracted to the idea of torturing prisoners.

In the meantime, here's a flourish on heavy metal from LA CityBeat...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=1225&IssueNum=66

Well...the Doc is back (he said tentatively). It has been a long time, and all -- or at least some -- will be explained in due course.

THE DOC’S DILEMMA

In LA it’s hot as a motherfucker – 90 degrees and unnaturally humid, and I’m wondering what the hell I’m doing here. Maybe Doc40 should have made like a New York Italian bakery and just closed up shop until September. Not that I’m exactly on vacation, quite the reverse, in fact. The truth is – to quote the good Captain Willard who I’ve quoted many times before – the shit is piling up so fast that I need wings to stay above it. Not that the shit is bad. My no means. It’s just that it keeps coming at me and I find myself slipping back, leaving mail unanswered, and all the other things that people complain about, plus the technological overhaul that I’ve been promising myself for months only advances in fits and starts and is still in phase where it continues to prove an inconvenience and I have yet to reap many labor-saving benefits.

At the root of the dilemma are books.  (Although yesterday I taped a segment for a TV show about Motorhead.)

First problem is that I’ve once again started writing one. And not just any book, part two of the whole big-ass alternate-history fantasy epic called Conflagration, that is the sequel to Kindling (see Funtopia) and Kindling is just about published in the USA (Tor Books). Thus a large portion of what brain I have left is taken up with breaking the creative inertia and getting that monster underway. I even reached the point of having to stop scaring the shit out of myself that the reelection of George Bush will mean hideous apocalypse. Of course, I still believe that, but I had to cool the obsession, and, anyway, Michael Moore is holding down the fort pretty damn well.

If you had all read Kindling, the blog prospect would be much easier to handle. I could write sidebar blogs all about plot points and the creative process, and you’d all know what i was talking about, but since most of you haven’t, you won’t and I can’t. And such insight is lost to world. Ah well. Do I now make myself completely clear?

And Kindling isn’t the only book being published. The UK, sometime about now, the Do Not Press are publishing a small format monogram o’mine called Gene Vincent – There’s One in Every Town. And I feel I have to spend a whole lot of time worrying about the response to these two items, and whether I’ll have a career or die in Van Gogh-style poverty.

So what do I do?

If Doc40 merely suspends operations for a while you’ll all hate me worse than you do now and never come back. If we had a proper bulletin board you could probably fight among yourselves until well into the fall, but we don’t, so again we’re screwed.

My best shot, neighbors, let me leave you with a check list.

Buy a copy of Kindling.

Buy a copy of Gene Vincent.

Keep on visiting Doc40, because the shit will be there, but maybe not everyday. But if their ain't nothing new, puruse the achives or read Slide On The Run on Funtopia. 

Keep those letters and cards coming.

Keep beating on Bush until the bastard goes away.

Give the Anarchist a valium.

But, meanwhile, the current LA, I have some comments on John Kerry...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=1061&IssueNum=58

And here's a funny/scary Jon Stewart breakdown of the Way It Works that comes via some girl

THE PROCESS
 
Thursday, July 15, 2004 - Jon Stewart - The Daily Show - Comedy Central

Talking Points: Keeping up with current events

Jon Stewart: "It's not easy keeping up with current events. As soon as you catch up, more happens. That's where conventional wisdom fits in. Conventional wisdom is the agreed upon understanding of an event or person. John Kerry is a flip flopper. George Bush has sincere heartland values and is stupid. What matters is not that the designation be true just that it be agreed upon by the media so that no further thought has to be put into it. So how is conventional wisdom arrived at? For instance, let's take the example of the addition of John Edwards to the Democratic ticket. I don't know how to feel about that. I don't know what it means. Here's how I will."

CNN: "This is 28 pages from the Republican National Committee. It says, "Who is Edwards? It starts off by saying a disingenuous, unaccomplished liberal." We also saw from the Bush-Cheney camp they released talking points to their supporters."

Jon Stewart: "Talking points. That's how we learn things. But how will I absorb a talking point like "Edwards and Kerry are out of the mainstream" unless I get it jack hammered into my skull? That's where television lends a hand."

Fox News: "He stands way out of the main stream."

CNN - Terry Holt, Spokesman for Bush Camp: "way out of the main stream."

CNN - Communication Director, Bush-Cheney: "He stands so far out of the main stream."

CNN - Lynn Cheney: "He's so out of the main stream."

CNN - Terry Holt: "They're out of the main stream."

CNN - Frank Donatelli, GOP Strategist: "well out of the main stream.

Jon Stewart: I'm getting a feeling. I think, I think they're out of the main stream. But, what if I wonder why?

CNN - Frank Donatelli: "two of the foremost liberal senators of the US Senate."

CNN - Crossfire: "two of the four most liberal senators of the US Senate."

MSNBC - Ed Gillespie: "the most liberal rated senator in the US Senate."

Hardball - Lynn Cheney: "the most liberal senator of the Senate."

Fox News: "who was rated as the number 1 liberal in the US Senate."

Fox News - Elizabeth Dole: "the number 1 most liberal senator in the US Senate."

Jon Stewart: Wow! Those guys are liberals!! In fact, if I didn't know better, I'd say they're the first and fourth most liberal in the whole Senate. Wow! And while we don't have any idea what that means and where those rankings come from and how they were arrived at or whether it's even true, I don't like the sounds of it. And it's certainly not something for the media to question. As a matter of fact, I would imagine people like that, liberal and out of the main stream, hang out in some pretty extreme places.

ABC - This Week - Lindsey Graham: "talking about the hatefest."

CNN: "Hollywood hatefest."

Fox News: "last Thursday night's hatefest."

Pat Boone: "Radio City Music Hall hatefest"

Jon Stewart: "Yeah. See, out of the main stream, liberals, and hatefest. Keeping up with current events is easier than you thing. Talking points – they're true because they're said a lot."

CRYPTIQUE – It should be, but it ain’t.

STRAIGHT, NO CHASER

The following came straight off the wire from kaymo. If it’s true, it so serious, it scarcely bears thinking about. This I’m posting it just as it came by email...

Off the Beeb (BBC) this morning..

.US 'may delay vote if attacked'

The Bush administration is reported to be investigating the possibility
of postponing the presidential election in the event of a terror attack.

US counter-terrorism officials are examining what steps would be needed
to permit a delay, Newsweek reports.

Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge last week warned al-Qaeda was planning
to attack the US to disrupt the poll but conceded he had no precise
information.

A senior Democrat in Congress has said talk of postponement is
"excessive".

Doomsday scenarios

In its latest edition, Newsweek reports that Mr Ridge has asked the
Justice Department to examine what legal steps would be needed to permit
the postponement of the 2 November election.

This follows a letter from the chairman of the new Election Assistance
Commission, DeForest Soaries, who urged Mr Ridge to seek emergency
legislation from Congress that would allow his agency to reschedule the
vote in the event of an attack.

If they do this, boy, my God, they're extremely desperate
Ciro Rodriguez Democrat Congressman Mr Soaries noted that while New York's board of elections suspended primary elections on 11 September 2001, "the federal government has no agency that has the statutory authority to cancel and reschedule a federal election."

Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse told Newsweek,
"We are reviewing the issue to determine what steps need to be taken to
secure the election."
Republican Representative Christopher Cox, who chairs the House Homeland
Security Committee, told CNN that it was prudent to prepare for a
postponement.

"These are doomsday scenarios. We don't have any intelligence to suggest
that it is going to happen, but we're preparing for all of these
contingencies now."

Old information

But Jane Harman, the senior Democrat on the House of Representatives
Intelligence Committee, said proposing a postponement would be
"excessive based on what we know".

She also criticised Mr Ridge's suggestion that al-Qaeda was planning to
disrupt the election, saying the warning was based on old information.

The BBC's Justin Webb in Washington says the Democrats' unspoken fear is
that the White House will play on the nerves of Americans as the
election nears, hoping to gain support from a nation fearful of any
change in course.

It is a difficult strategy for the Democrats to counter.

If they appeared complacent and terrorists did strike, they would be
politically destroyed, he says.

CRYPTIQUE -- Bad? As opposed to what?