SEEN IT, DONE IT
Sent by Mr MR
"United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting. According to reports from Saigon, 83 percent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballotsyesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong. A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam." – Peter Grose, in a page 2 New York Times article titled, 'U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote,' September 4, 1967.
QUOTE
"Personally, I've decided to stop evolving. No point, really. Evolution is so 20th century." – Maureen Dowd
The secret word is Enough.
Friday, February 04, 2005
Thursday, February 03, 2005
FUCK THIS SHIT (in a dull, weary, and defeated tone)
I have been advised on the comments board to be more in touch with my feminine side. Well hell. How many sides are required on this rolling penny of damnation? Mark the to-do list and the task agenda. My feminine side, my feline side, my avian side, my canine side, my paranoia, extreme narcissism, megalomania, masochism, and sundry phobias, and then at least ninety minutes in the lizard brain, unless that’s covered by watching TV. Damn it all, the entire drift of my fiction for at least the last decade should have clearly demonstrated my growing disgust at my human side. Or maybe it’s time to just shut the fuck up. Or retreat into my study with a bottle of whiskey and a pistol.
(If you don’t hear a gunshot in the first hour, though, don’t come a knocking. After more than a half a century, I may actually be happy, or quiet. Also I’m fairly sure an antique .38 cap and ball, double load, Navy Colt can pump a ball through the kind of glue and sawdust doors they have round here. And if that doesn’t work I’ll go for the .45 1911 standard auto.)
The secret word is Death
NOW SHALL WE CONSIDER HEDY LAMARR?
From HCBeck...
"Any girl can be glamorous," Hedy Lamarr once said. "All she has to do is stand still and look stupid." The film star belied her own apothegm by hiding a brilliant, inventive mind beneath her photogenic exterior. In 1942, at the height of her Hollywood career, she patented a frequency-switching system for torpedo guidance that was two decades ahead of its time. Read more...
http://www.inventions.org/culture/female/lamarr.html
CRYPTIQUE -- The crow is slow. Where is the end of this tether?
I have been advised on the comments board to be more in touch with my feminine side. Well hell. How many sides are required on this rolling penny of damnation? Mark the to-do list and the task agenda. My feminine side, my feline side, my avian side, my canine side, my paranoia, extreme narcissism, megalomania, masochism, and sundry phobias, and then at least ninety minutes in the lizard brain, unless that’s covered by watching TV. Damn it all, the entire drift of my fiction for at least the last decade should have clearly demonstrated my growing disgust at my human side. Or maybe it’s time to just shut the fuck up. Or retreat into my study with a bottle of whiskey and a pistol.
(If you don’t hear a gunshot in the first hour, though, don’t come a knocking. After more than a half a century, I may actually be happy, or quiet. Also I’m fairly sure an antique .38 cap and ball, double load, Navy Colt can pump a ball through the kind of glue and sawdust doors they have round here. And if that doesn’t work I’ll go for the .45 1911 standard auto.)
The secret word is Death
NOW SHALL WE CONSIDER HEDY LAMARR?
From HCBeck...
"Any girl can be glamorous," Hedy Lamarr once said. "All she has to do is stand still and look stupid." The film star belied her own apothegm by hiding a brilliant, inventive mind beneath her photogenic exterior. In 1942, at the height of her Hollywood career, she patented a frequency-switching system for torpedo guidance that was two decades ahead of its time. Read more...
http://www.inventions.org/culture/female/lamarr.html
CRYPTIQUE -- The crow is slow. Where is the end of this tether?
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Monday, January 31, 2005
MONDAY READIN'
I have been a Gore Vidal fan as long as I can remember, and his latest take on George Bush indicates that he’s far from flagging...
"So here we are, in the middle of the unfinished Iraq tragedy, and the President, in his inaugural address, is serenely declaring war on the rest of the world. Instead of talking about how the hell we get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, we are talking about going into Iran."
And here’s the rest...
http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=39&contentid=1843
While Maureen Dowd in the NY Times has been discussing sex and torture, if you have a mind for it...
"A female military interrogator who wanted to turn up the heat on a 21-year-old Saudi detainee who allegedly had taken flying lessons in Arizona before 9/11 removed her uniform top to expose a snug T-shirt. She began belittling the prisoner - who was praying with his eyes closed - as she touched her breasts, rubbed them against the Saudi's back and commented on his apparent erection."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/opinion/30dowd.html?oref=login&th
Plus a bunch of stuff on the sign of Satan and what is laughably called the first family...
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/january2005/210105devilhand.htm
AND FINALLY THE QUOTE OF THE DAY
"The death camps were created by men with a high opinion of themselves-some of them well-educated and possessed of refined manners-but without conscience. And, where there is no conscience, there is no tolerance towards others...no defense against evil...and no limit to the crimes that follow." – Dick fuckin’ Cheney at Auschwitz in his parka and wooly hat, I suppose proving that in addition to no conscience, he has no manners.
The secret word is Weimar
I have been a Gore Vidal fan as long as I can remember, and his latest take on George Bush indicates that he’s far from flagging...
"So here we are, in the middle of the unfinished Iraq tragedy, and the President, in his inaugural address, is serenely declaring war on the rest of the world. Instead of talking about how the hell we get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, we are talking about going into Iran."
And here’s the rest...
http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=39&contentid=1843
While Maureen Dowd in the NY Times has been discussing sex and torture, if you have a mind for it...
"A female military interrogator who wanted to turn up the heat on a 21-year-old Saudi detainee who allegedly had taken flying lessons in Arizona before 9/11 removed her uniform top to expose a snug T-shirt. She began belittling the prisoner - who was praying with his eyes closed - as she touched her breasts, rubbed them against the Saudi's back and commented on his apparent erection."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/opinion/30dowd.html?oref=login&th
Plus a bunch of stuff on the sign of Satan and what is laughably called the first family...
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/january2005/210105devilhand.htm
AND FINALLY THE QUOTE OF THE DAY
"The death camps were created by men with a high opinion of themselves-some of them well-educated and possessed of refined manners-but without conscience. And, where there is no conscience, there is no tolerance towards others...no defense against evil...and no limit to the crimes that follow." – Dick fuckin’ Cheney at Auschwitz in his parka and wooly hat, I suppose proving that in addition to no conscience, he has no manners.
The secret word is Weimar
Thursday, January 27, 2005
DOC MOREAU ROCKS AND RULES
From BCBeck
Here come the manimals, closely followed by that species which is directly below them on the evolutionary ladder, the lawyers. Maybe it's the birth of those creatures whose coming was foretold by animated shorts of the 20th century--Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and Mickey Mouse, among others. From National Geographic News...
January 25, 2005
Scientists have begun blurring the line between human and animal by producing chimeras—a hybrid creature that's part human, part animal. Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created. They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells. In Minnesota last year researchers at the Mayo Clinic created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies. And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains. Scientists feel that, the more humanlike the animal, the better research model it makes for testing drugs or possibly growing "spare parts," such as livers, to transplant into humans.
Watching how human cells mature and interact in a living creature may also lead to the discoveries of new medical treatments. But creating human-animal chimeras—named after a monster in Greek mythology that had a lion's head, goat's body, and serpent's tail—has raised troubling questions: What new subhuman combination should be produced and for what purpose? At what point would it be considered human? And what rights, if any, should it have? There are currently no U.S. federal laws that address these issues.
Ethical Guidelines
The National Academy of Sciences, which advises the U.S. government, has been studying the issue. In March it plans to present voluntary ethical guidelines for researchers. A chimera is a mixture of two or more species in one body. Not all are considered troubling, though. For example, faulty human heart valves are routinely replaced with ones taken from cows and pigs. The surgery—which makes the recipient a human-animal chimera—is widely accepted. And for years scientists have added human genes to bacteria and farm animals.
What's caused the uproar is the mixing of human stem cells with embryonic animals to create new species. Biotechnology activist Jeremy Rifkin is opposed to crossing species boundaries, because he believes animals have the right to exist without being tampered with or crossed with another species. He concedes that these studies would lead to some medical breakthroughs. Still, they should not be done. "There are other ways to advance medicine and human health besides going out into the strange, brave new world of chimeric animals," Rifkin said, adding that sophisticated computer models can substitute for experimentation on live animals. "One doesn't have to be religious or into animal rights to think this doesn't make sense," he continued. "It's the scientists who want to do this. They've now gone over the edge into the pathological domain." David Magnus, director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University, believes the real worry is whether or not chimeras will be put to uses that are problematic, risky, or dangerous.
Human Born to Mice Parents?
For example, an experiment that would raise concerns, he said, is genetically engineering mice to produce human sperm and eggs, then doing in vitro fertilization to produce a child whose parents are a pair of mice. "Most people would find that problematic," Magnus said, "but those uses are bizarre and not, to the best of my knowledge, anything that anybody is remotely contemplating. Most uses of chimeras are actually much more relevant to practical concerns."
Last year Canada passed the Assisted Human Reproduction Act, which bans chimeras. Specifically, it prohibits transferring a nonhuman cell into a human embryo and putting human cells into a nonhuman embryo. Cynthia Cohen is a member of Canada's Stem Cell Oversight Committee, which oversees research protocols to ensure they are in accordance with the new guidelines. She believes a ban should also be put into place in the U.S. Creating chimeras, she said, by mixing human and animal gametes (sperms and eggs) or transferring reproductive cells, diminishes human dignity. "It would deny that there is something distinctive and valuable about human beings that ought to be honored and protected," said Cohen, who is also the senior research fellow at Georgetown University's Kennedy Institute of Ethics in Washington, D.C. But, she noted, the wording on such a ban needs to be developed carefully. It shouldn't outlaw ethical and legitimate experiments—such as transferring a limited number of adult human stem cells into animal embryos in order to learn how they proliferate and grow during the prenatal period. Irv Weissman, director of Stanford University's Institute of Cancer/Stem Cell Biology and Medicine in California, is against a ban in the United States. "Anybody who puts their own moral guidance in the way of this biomedical science, where they want to impose their will—not just be part of an argument—if that leads to a ban or moratorium. … they are stopping research that would save human lives," he said. Mice With Human Brains Weissman has already created mice with brains that are about one percent human. Later this year he may conduct another experiment where the mice have 100 percent human brains. This would be done, he said, by injecting human neurons into the brains of embryonic mice. Before being born, the mice would be killed and dissected to see if the architecture of a human brain had formed. If it did, he'd look for traces of human cognitive behavior. Weissman said he's not a mad scientist trying to create a human in an animal body. He hopes the experiment leads to a better understanding of how the brain works, which would be useful in treating diseases like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease. The test has not yet begun. Weissman is waiting to read the National Academy's report, due out in March. William Cheshire, associate professor of neurology at the Mayo Clinic's Jacksonville, Florida, branch, feels that combining human and animal neurons is problematic. "This is unexplored biologic territory," he said. "Whatever moral threshold of human neural development we might choose to set as the limit for such an experiment, there would be a considerable risk of exceeding that limit before it could be recognized." Cheshire supports research that combines human and animal cells to study cellular function. As an undergraduate he participated in research that fused human and mouse cells. But where he draws the ethical line is on research that would destroy a human embryo to obtain cells, or research that would create an organism that is partly human and partly animal. "We must be cautious not to violate the integrity of humanity or of animal life over which we have a stewardship responsibility," said Cheshire, a member of Christian Medical and Dental Associations. "Research projects that create human-animal chimeras risk disturbing fragile ecosystems, endanger health, and affront species integrity."
The secret word is Cheese
From BCBeck
Here come the manimals, closely followed by that species which is directly below them on the evolutionary ladder, the lawyers. Maybe it's the birth of those creatures whose coming was foretold by animated shorts of the 20th century--Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and Mickey Mouse, among others. From National Geographic News...
January 25, 2005
Scientists have begun blurring the line between human and animal by producing chimeras—a hybrid creature that's part human, part animal. Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created. They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells. In Minnesota last year researchers at the Mayo Clinic created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies. And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains. Scientists feel that, the more humanlike the animal, the better research model it makes for testing drugs or possibly growing "spare parts," such as livers, to transplant into humans.
Watching how human cells mature and interact in a living creature may also lead to the discoveries of new medical treatments. But creating human-animal chimeras—named after a monster in Greek mythology that had a lion's head, goat's body, and serpent's tail—has raised troubling questions: What new subhuman combination should be produced and for what purpose? At what point would it be considered human? And what rights, if any, should it have? There are currently no U.S. federal laws that address these issues.
Ethical Guidelines
The National Academy of Sciences, which advises the U.S. government, has been studying the issue. In March it plans to present voluntary ethical guidelines for researchers. A chimera is a mixture of two or more species in one body. Not all are considered troubling, though. For example, faulty human heart valves are routinely replaced with ones taken from cows and pigs. The surgery—which makes the recipient a human-animal chimera—is widely accepted. And for years scientists have added human genes to bacteria and farm animals.
What's caused the uproar is the mixing of human stem cells with embryonic animals to create new species. Biotechnology activist Jeremy Rifkin is opposed to crossing species boundaries, because he believes animals have the right to exist without being tampered with or crossed with another species. He concedes that these studies would lead to some medical breakthroughs. Still, they should not be done. "There are other ways to advance medicine and human health besides going out into the strange, brave new world of chimeric animals," Rifkin said, adding that sophisticated computer models can substitute for experimentation on live animals. "One doesn't have to be religious or into animal rights to think this doesn't make sense," he continued. "It's the scientists who want to do this. They've now gone over the edge into the pathological domain." David Magnus, director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University, believes the real worry is whether or not chimeras will be put to uses that are problematic, risky, or dangerous.
Human Born to Mice Parents?
For example, an experiment that would raise concerns, he said, is genetically engineering mice to produce human sperm and eggs, then doing in vitro fertilization to produce a child whose parents are a pair of mice. "Most people would find that problematic," Magnus said, "but those uses are bizarre and not, to the best of my knowledge, anything that anybody is remotely contemplating. Most uses of chimeras are actually much more relevant to practical concerns."
Last year Canada passed the Assisted Human Reproduction Act, which bans chimeras. Specifically, it prohibits transferring a nonhuman cell into a human embryo and putting human cells into a nonhuman embryo. Cynthia Cohen is a member of Canada's Stem Cell Oversight Committee, which oversees research protocols to ensure they are in accordance with the new guidelines. She believes a ban should also be put into place in the U.S. Creating chimeras, she said, by mixing human and animal gametes (sperms and eggs) or transferring reproductive cells, diminishes human dignity. "It would deny that there is something distinctive and valuable about human beings that ought to be honored and protected," said Cohen, who is also the senior research fellow at Georgetown University's Kennedy Institute of Ethics in Washington, D.C. But, she noted, the wording on such a ban needs to be developed carefully. It shouldn't outlaw ethical and legitimate experiments—such as transferring a limited number of adult human stem cells into animal embryos in order to learn how they proliferate and grow during the prenatal period. Irv Weissman, director of Stanford University's Institute of Cancer/Stem Cell Biology and Medicine in California, is against a ban in the United States. "Anybody who puts their own moral guidance in the way of this biomedical science, where they want to impose their will—not just be part of an argument—if that leads to a ban or moratorium. … they are stopping research that would save human lives," he said. Mice With Human Brains Weissman has already created mice with brains that are about one percent human. Later this year he may conduct another experiment where the mice have 100 percent human brains. This would be done, he said, by injecting human neurons into the brains of embryonic mice. Before being born, the mice would be killed and dissected to see if the architecture of a human brain had formed. If it did, he'd look for traces of human cognitive behavior. Weissman said he's not a mad scientist trying to create a human in an animal body. He hopes the experiment leads to a better understanding of how the brain works, which would be useful in treating diseases like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease. The test has not yet begun. Weissman is waiting to read the National Academy's report, due out in March. William Cheshire, associate professor of neurology at the Mayo Clinic's Jacksonville, Florida, branch, feels that combining human and animal neurons is problematic. "This is unexplored biologic territory," he said. "Whatever moral threshold of human neural development we might choose to set as the limit for such an experiment, there would be a considerable risk of exceeding that limit before it could be recognized." Cheshire supports research that combines human and animal cells to study cellular function. As an undergraduate he participated in research that fused human and mouse cells. But where he draws the ethical line is on research that would destroy a human embryo to obtain cells, or research that would create an organism that is partly human and partly animal. "We must be cautious not to violate the integrity of humanity or of animal life over which we have a stewardship responsibility," said Cheshire, a member of Christian Medical and Dental Associations. "Research projects that create human-animal chimeras risk disturbing fragile ecosystems, endanger health, and affront species integrity."
The secret word is Cheese
ICEBERG SLIM
This fucking week has really hit the iceberg. And right now I’m floating on the tattooed harpooner's coffin, to mix shipwreck metaphors.
BUT
I do have a reasonably perceptive if highly biased diatribe in LA Citybeat. Read it up there, brothers and sisters.
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=1591&IssueNum=86
The secret word is Avast
CRYPTIQUE – Who gives a rats ass if you’re waving or drowning, and who are you waving to anyway?
This fucking week has really hit the iceberg. And right now I’m floating on the tattooed harpooner's coffin, to mix shipwreck metaphors.
BUT
I do have a reasonably perceptive if highly biased diatribe in LA Citybeat. Read it up there, brothers and sisters.
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=1591&IssueNum=86
The secret word is Avast
CRYPTIQUE – Who gives a rats ass if you’re waving or drowning, and who are you waving to anyway?
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
CROW CONCERN
I like crows. A lot. Indeed, in the pathological cartoon anthropomorphism of the late Edward Barker, I am one. (See logo top right.) I am also well aware that crows may well be more intelligent than many in the current President’s cabinet, but, at risk of going Alfred Hitchcock on you, they do seem to be massing. Yesterday’s Cryptique came to me before I heard the report that Auburn, NY had a population of 23,000 humans and 68,000 crows. I know that crows now rule on my street. I saw they held considerable sway over the rooftops of Tokyo, and would be interested to heard crow counts from Manhattan and London. But now I find they have established a veritable beachhead in Auburn, I have to wonder, especially as Auburn doesn’t seem to like it.
"The city tells NEWS 10NBC the crow problem is getting worse and now a federal agency is involved. Members of the U.S Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services are using handheld lasers, pyrotechnics and loud noise all aimed to disrupt the crows' sleeping habits. The U.S.D.A. hopes that these efforts will eventually drive the crows to the countryside. We want them not to be harmed, but to just push themselves out into the county where they belong."
Full story...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6818818/
I am not so sure that angry, sleep deprived crows are a terribly good idea.
CRYPTIQUE – Is it a bird, is it a plane?
SO WHAT’S THE SPEED OF DARK?
Watching some of the eulogies for Johnny Carson last night, my mind wandered (never a big Carson fan) to wondering why I hadn’t seen comedian Stephen Wright in long time. So I ran a search and came up with all manner of good stuff, as in...
"I have a switch in my apartment that doesn't do anything. Every once in a while I turn it on and off. One day I got a call from a guy in France who said, "Cut it out!"
"Hermits have no peer pressure."
"I spilled Spot remover on my dog. Now he's gone."
"Why in a country of free speech, are there phone bills?"
Many more at...
http://www.notso.com/wright.htm
And Wright’s website...
http://www.stevenwright.com/a_word/index.shtml
AND
Check new stuff at http://hipspinster.blogspot.com
The secret word is Black
I like crows. A lot. Indeed, in the pathological cartoon anthropomorphism of the late Edward Barker, I am one. (See logo top right.) I am also well aware that crows may well be more intelligent than many in the current President’s cabinet, but, at risk of going Alfred Hitchcock on you, they do seem to be massing. Yesterday’s Cryptique came to me before I heard the report that Auburn, NY had a population of 23,000 humans and 68,000 crows. I know that crows now rule on my street. I saw they held considerable sway over the rooftops of Tokyo, and would be interested to heard crow counts from Manhattan and London. But now I find they have established a veritable beachhead in Auburn, I have to wonder, especially as Auburn doesn’t seem to like it.
"The city tells NEWS 10NBC the crow problem is getting worse and now a federal agency is involved. Members of the U.S Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services are using handheld lasers, pyrotechnics and loud noise all aimed to disrupt the crows' sleeping habits. The U.S.D.A. hopes that these efforts will eventually drive the crows to the countryside. We want them not to be harmed, but to just push themselves out into the county where they belong."
Full story...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6818818/
I am not so sure that angry, sleep deprived crows are a terribly good idea.
CRYPTIQUE – Is it a bird, is it a plane?
SO WHAT’S THE SPEED OF DARK?
Watching some of the eulogies for Johnny Carson last night, my mind wandered (never a big Carson fan) to wondering why I hadn’t seen comedian Stephen Wright in long time. So I ran a search and came up with all manner of good stuff, as in...
"I have a switch in my apartment that doesn't do anything. Every once in a while I turn it on and off. One day I got a call from a guy in France who said, "Cut it out!"
"Hermits have no peer pressure."
"I spilled Spot remover on my dog. Now he's gone."
"Why in a country of free speech, are there phone bills?"
Many more at...
http://www.notso.com/wright.htm
And Wright’s website...
http://www.stevenwright.com/a_word/index.shtml
AND
Check new stuff at http://hipspinster.blogspot.com
The secret word is Black
Monday, January 24, 2005
I NEED A DAY OFF
Having just completed a massive mess of work on assassinations and conspiracy theory, I’m taking the day off. Just as well, as I hear that statistically January 24th is the most depressing day of the year. I’m unsure how they arrived at that conclusion, but it feels right.
Meanwhile here’s a gender game...
http://www.bookblog.net/gender/genie.html
The secret work is Inert.
CRYPTIQUE – Count crows.
Having just completed a massive mess of work on assassinations and conspiracy theory, I’m taking the day off. Just as well, as I hear that statistically January 24th is the most depressing day of the year. I’m unsure how they arrived at that conclusion, but it feels right.
Meanwhile here’s a gender game...
http://www.bookblog.net/gender/genie.html
The secret work is Inert.
CRYPTIQUE – Count crows.
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Today the flight from reality is all mine as I avoid the Bush coronation, (or, as Dr Susan Block calls him Thanatos, Lord of Death, Destruction & Fake Texas Accents). I figure when I can no longer lose myself in prose, I’ll watch the DVD of Fight Club four or five times.
CRYPTIQUE – Gasoline and frozen orange juice concentrate.
A TALE OF EVIL NUNS
Seems there some nuns out in the Indian tsunami mess who won’t feed the starving Hindus unless they first embrace Jesus. Read all about it...
http://in.news.yahoo.com/050116/139/2j1rp.html
The secret word is Gimmee
CRYPTIQUE – Gasoline and frozen orange juice concentrate.
A TALE OF EVIL NUNS
Seems there some nuns out in the Indian tsunami mess who won’t feed the starving Hindus unless they first embrace Jesus. Read all about it...
http://in.news.yahoo.com/050116/139/2j1rp.html
The secret word is Gimmee
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
DINOSAURS FROM THE EMAIL
Regarding last week’s post about dinosaur-eating mammals, kaymo has comments.
(And if anyone wonders what this is all about, be reminded that Doc40 as run dinosaur stuff, from Godzilla to palenotology, ever since the getgo. Partly because we like it, and partly because humanity might benefit from a contemplation of extinction.)
kaymo writes...
Oh, sure, exciting find. And evidence that mammals were really waiting in the wings for the chance to expand into any new niches that might open up...but must keep in perspective... cat and small dog sized mammals preying on psittacosaurs and lurking around the breeding sites makes good sense. But those same mammals would have drawn attention from all sorts of two legged dino/bird critters, some feathered, some not, all hungry. Life was earnest, life was hard and probably, life was brief. Maybe we're seeing tip of iceberg and a lot more of these mammal fossils will appear, or more likely, not, for simple reason they weren't that numerous.
Note: the herd animals of the time, the ones with the big biomass within the faunal assemblage, are all dinosaurs, like the various ceratopsi (horned jobs), the hadrosaurs, and the huge old apatosaur/diplocid/brachiosaur things...which, incredibly, seem to have had an unbroken run, species succeeding species, from early mid-Jurassic to the very end of the Cretaceous, virtually unchanged, the same body plan, long necks, tails, huge bodies with fermenting guts and gastroliths to grind up their chow. That's around 80 million years. That is an amazing run when you think about it.
and later adds...
The dinos lost their grip after the KT catastrophe and since then Mammals have provided the big biomass species-- the herds, basically, and the whales. But the dinos are not out of the race. There are something like 6,800 known species of Birds (and Birds are dinos) in the world and something like 4,600 species of Mammal. So the dino clade diversified into a huge variety of niches, culminating in the rise of the Passerine Birds-- who alone make up about 3,500 species (I think that's about right, but whatever, it's a big number.) All those little "sparrow" sized (Passer, right) birds from robins to finches to ad infinitum that exploit insects and seeds all over the world. Ruling the bird world are the Crows/Ravens, who are smart. Should we do ourselves in-- as we may well be doing already with the bath of chemicals produced by industrial civilization (30,000 chems in broad use, probably 1/3 carcinogens, another 1/4 teratogens) -- the birds will be only too happy to abandon energy demanding flying and take our place. Check back in say, 10 m years.
EARTH FROM EMAIL
boarg writes...
NASA Science News published an article on 10/01/2005 entitled 'How theEarthquake Affected Earth'. This article details how the 26/12/2004 'megathrust' earthquake has made the Earth more round, quickened the Earth's rotation, and shifted the Earth's axis, according to calculations done byNASA scientists. These effects are small, but one wonders ...
The full story is at...
http://science.nasa.gov/
...at which you can also access an article on the strange green Comet Machholtz that was prominent through December and makes its closest approach to Earth this week. Not only is it large and green, but it has also got two tails.
The secret word is Geophysical
CRYPTIQUE – Do you bowl?
Regarding last week’s post about dinosaur-eating mammals, kaymo has comments.
(And if anyone wonders what this is all about, be reminded that Doc40 as run dinosaur stuff, from Godzilla to palenotology, ever since the getgo. Partly because we like it, and partly because humanity might benefit from a contemplation of extinction.)
kaymo writes...
Oh, sure, exciting find. And evidence that mammals were really waiting in the wings for the chance to expand into any new niches that might open up...but must keep in perspective... cat and small dog sized mammals preying on psittacosaurs and lurking around the breeding sites makes good sense. But those same mammals would have drawn attention from all sorts of two legged dino/bird critters, some feathered, some not, all hungry. Life was earnest, life was hard and probably, life was brief. Maybe we're seeing tip of iceberg and a lot more of these mammal fossils will appear, or more likely, not, for simple reason they weren't that numerous.
Note: the herd animals of the time, the ones with the big biomass within the faunal assemblage, are all dinosaurs, like the various ceratopsi (horned jobs), the hadrosaurs, and the huge old apatosaur/diplocid/brachiosaur things...which, incredibly, seem to have had an unbroken run, species succeeding species, from early mid-Jurassic to the very end of the Cretaceous, virtually unchanged, the same body plan, long necks, tails, huge bodies with fermenting guts and gastroliths to grind up their chow. That's around 80 million years. That is an amazing run when you think about it.
and later adds...
The dinos lost their grip after the KT catastrophe and since then Mammals have provided the big biomass species-- the herds, basically, and the whales. But the dinos are not out of the race. There are something like 6,800 known species of Birds (and Birds are dinos) in the world and something like 4,600 species of Mammal. So the dino clade diversified into a huge variety of niches, culminating in the rise of the Passerine Birds-- who alone make up about 3,500 species (I think that's about right, but whatever, it's a big number.) All those little "sparrow" sized (Passer, right) birds from robins to finches to ad infinitum that exploit insects and seeds all over the world. Ruling the bird world are the Crows/Ravens, who are smart. Should we do ourselves in-- as we may well be doing already with the bath of chemicals produced by industrial civilization (30,000 chems in broad use, probably 1/3 carcinogens, another 1/4 teratogens) -- the birds will be only too happy to abandon energy demanding flying and take our place. Check back in say, 10 m years.
EARTH FROM EMAIL
boarg writes...
NASA Science News published an article on 10/01/2005 entitled 'How theEarthquake Affected Earth'. This article details how the 26/12/2004 'megathrust' earthquake has made the Earth more round, quickened the Earth's rotation, and shifted the Earth's axis, according to calculations done byNASA scientists. These effects are small, but one wonders ...
The full story is at...
http://science.nasa.gov/
...at which you can also access an article on the strange green Comet Machholtz that was prominent through December and makes its closest approach to Earth this week. Not only is it large and green, but it has also got two tails.
The secret word is Geophysical
CRYPTIQUE – Do you bowl?
I SEE YOUR HAIR IS BURNING
85F in LA today. I’ve not only seen the science fiction movie in which we seem to be living, but I think I’ve remembered how it ends. A few hundred randomly selected elite escape in a big fat rocketship with fins and the rest of us are left to fry to a crisp.
The secret word is Liftoff
(I have a whole rant I have to finish writing plus crucial stiff from boarg and dinosaur commentary from kaymo to post but it’s been another hard day and it’s all going to have to wait until morning again.)
85F in LA today. I’ve not only seen the science fiction movie in which we seem to be living, but I think I’ve remembered how it ends. A few hundred randomly selected elite escape in a big fat rocketship with fins and the rest of us are left to fry to a crisp.
The secret word is Liftoff
(I have a whole rant I have to finish writing plus crucial stiff from boarg and dinosaur commentary from kaymo to post but it’s been another hard day and it’s all going to have to wait until morning again.)
Monday, January 17, 2005
Are we living in a science fiction movie or what? Last week 20 inches of rain fell here in Southern California. This week we have a Santa Anna heatwave with temps in the mid-80s(F). The cat sniffed the air and looked at me with an expression of "Say what? It's goddamned January" I have much more to say about this, but I gotta sleep.
Where the fuck are the silver spaceships? I want off this monkey planet.
Where the fuck are the silver spaceships? I want off this monkey planet.
Saturday, January 15, 2005
THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE (Jungian Mix)
When I called the current power structure fascist, some of my nearest and dearest accused me of a certain drama queen hyperbole, but, of late, I find that commentators, bloggers, and columnists are now going to some length to explain why the current power structure really is essentially classic fascism only with less flags and eagles, and no jackboots. I’d feel vindicated except I’ve kinda moved on to thinking in terms of Bush-rule as nothing more than deeply fucking insane. A few have again felt that maybe I was again proclaiming for effect, and cited my well known detachments from reality, but now I again find myself more that born out, at least in the Old School of Uncle Carl Jung, where the President is now identified as not only clinically barking crazy, but also dangerously infectious.
Read all about it...
http://baltimorechronicle.com/011305PaulLevy.shtml
The secret word is Thorazine
When I called the current power structure fascist, some of my nearest and dearest accused me of a certain drama queen hyperbole, but, of late, I find that commentators, bloggers, and columnists are now going to some length to explain why the current power structure really is essentially classic fascism only with less flags and eagles, and no jackboots. I’d feel vindicated except I’ve kinda moved on to thinking in terms of Bush-rule as nothing more than deeply fucking insane. A few have again felt that maybe I was again proclaiming for effect, and cited my well known detachments from reality, but now I again find myself more that born out, at least in the Old School of Uncle Carl Jung, where the President is now identified as not only clinically barking crazy, but also dangerously infectious.
Read all about it...
http://baltimorechronicle.com/011305PaulLevy.shtml
The secret word is Thorazine
Friday, January 14, 2005
IT’S BEEN REAL
Remember how, earlier in the week, I was concerned that I was becoming increasing detached from reality? (See Tuesday) Well, although it still kinda ebbs and flows, I am reminded by no less than Arianna Huffington that I am not alone and it is in fact quite the happening thing in modern politics...
A top Bush aide actually told the New York Times' Ron Suskind that administration officials disparagingly dismiss what they call "the reality-based community"– specifically, people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality" as irrelevant. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he declared. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality– judiciously, as you will– we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors. . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
CRYPTIQUE – Go Speed Racer!
Remember how, earlier in the week, I was concerned that I was becoming increasing detached from reality? (See Tuesday) Well, although it still kinda ebbs and flows, I am reminded by no less than Arianna Huffington that I am not alone and it is in fact quite the happening thing in modern politics...
A top Bush aide actually told the New York Times' Ron Suskind that administration officials disparagingly dismiss what they call "the reality-based community"– specifically, people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality" as irrelevant. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he declared. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality– judiciously, as you will– we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors. . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
CRYPTIQUE – Go Speed Racer!
Only after the last river has been poisoned,
Only after the last fish has been caught,
Only then will you find that money can not be eaten
– Cree prophecy for North America (courtesy PDB)
or to put it another way...
America currently spends $13 million per hour on foreign oil
The secret world is Glutton
Only after the last fish has been caught,
Only then will you find that money can not be eaten
– Cree prophecy for North America (courtesy PDB)
or to put it another way...
America currently spends $13 million per hour on foreign oil
The secret world is Glutton
Thursday, January 13, 2005
PREHISTORIC WEIRDNESS (Alley oop-oop etc.)
The story at the end of the link below showed up in Wired, and, as a dinosaur enthusiast from infancy, it struck me as weird. Seems as though the Chinese have dug up a prehistoric mammal that ate little tiny dinosaurs, and this could be crucial, especially for those of us who are still processing the asteroid impact, and a brontosaurus with feathers and a sticking out tail that is nothing like the plastic model we bought in the Natural History Museum. The big danger is the that the demented creation Christians will get a hold of this and claim it’s proof that the world is only six thousand years old and Adam and Eve hobnobbed with dinosaurs like in that Raquel Welch movie, along with Lilith and all the others that lived outside the Gates of Eden in the land of Nod about which Christians will never give me a straight answer.
But anyway, there’s the story...
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,66254,00.html
The secret word is Gorgo
And hipspinster is blogging some good stuff at...
http://hipspinster.blogspot.com
AND FROM THE EMAIL
HCBecks succinct response to the concept of Joey Gallo seeing Don Rickles before he was shot was "from insult to injury".
But the fair some girl is miffed that I didn't mention who told me of the plan to have Keith Richards playing Capt. Jack Sparrows father, for it was she.
The secret world is still Gorgo
The story at the end of the link below showed up in Wired, and, as a dinosaur enthusiast from infancy, it struck me as weird. Seems as though the Chinese have dug up a prehistoric mammal that ate little tiny dinosaurs, and this could be crucial, especially for those of us who are still processing the asteroid impact, and a brontosaurus with feathers and a sticking out tail that is nothing like the plastic model we bought in the Natural History Museum. The big danger is the that the demented creation Christians will get a hold of this and claim it’s proof that the world is only six thousand years old and Adam and Eve hobnobbed with dinosaurs like in that Raquel Welch movie, along with Lilith and all the others that lived outside the Gates of Eden in the land of Nod about which Christians will never give me a straight answer.
But anyway, there’s the story...
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,66254,00.html
The secret word is Gorgo
And hipspinster is blogging some good stuff at...
http://hipspinster.blogspot.com
AND FROM THE EMAIL
HCBecks succinct response to the concept of Joey Gallo seeing Don Rickles before he was shot was "from insult to injury".
But the fair some girl is miffed that I didn't mention who told me of the plan to have Keith Richards playing Capt. Jack Sparrows father, for it was she.
The secret world is still Gorgo
Did you ever have one of those days when the entire planet and a couple of extra dimensions of nastiness seemed to be making a study of busting your balls, to the point that you want to scream except that would mean getting out of the fetal position you have assumed in the corner of the couch because you are burned out from humping a desperate fucking keyboard? Sure you have. But did you then take a break from it all and turn on the inevitable television to find our enunciation-challenged state governor Arnold the Barbarian wearing a flight jacket to which I know he’s not entitled (what about daddy’s death’s head, Conan?) telling a malignant and collapsing mud mountain that "we’ll be back"? This lunacy is no longer even morbidly funny. It’s just plain disgusting. When’s the fucking uprising, mes enfants? Could we please make it soon? I have a lot of unanswered email.
The secret word is Contemptible.
The secret word is Contemptible.
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
CALL THIS A REALITY? (I’m not ready for reality.)
I don’t know if it’s the California rain, or black dogs, or too much bad holiday TV, or something that I ate, or the miasma of endless work in which I currently find myself, or simple being surrounded by a nation that should probably be institutionalized if not actually eased into straightjacket and the straps pulled very tight, but, in the last few days I have found myself tempted to retreat more and more from reality. It’s too early to know what direction this may take but, be assured, I will keep you up to speed.
MOVIE NEWS
Doc40 does not as a rule post movie news, but (see above) I was quite delighted when I was informed that Keith Richards may play Capt Jack Sparrow’s (Johnny Depp’s) father in Pirates of the Caribbean II. And then HC Beck sent over the following...
There is going to be a two-part TV miniseries on Elvis, come May, that takes him from the beginning through the 68 comeback special, which I suppose makes it official, that, like Spade Cooley (who is also the subject of a biopic launched by and starring Dennis Quaid, who is maybe a foot and a half taller than the very short, very vicious Cooley), Elvis went out at an opportune moment. In the future, historians will write that Elvis died in 1968. Don't know if you ever read Bradbury's story about the guy in the time machine pickup truck who fixes wrong deaths, taking Hemingway back to his near-death early-50's plane crash and sparing him the subsequent years of pain and depression. And of course there's the Johnny Cash biopic, which is rolling round the bend. The Elvis TV thing looks to be fashioned by total hacks, but the one bright light, to my eyes, is that they've cast Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as Elvis, who is pretty and menacing, as anybody who saw him in Ride With The Devil may remember. He played the evil Confederate killer with the long hair.
CALL THIS A REALITY? (Part 2)
The Christian SS are attempting to destroy away with science yet again and are re-assaulting Darwin because they can’t bear to believe they are descended from simians. (A sentiment, incidently, shared by many monkeys of my acquaintance.) They are now pushing some piece of crap called Intelligent Design, which is Biblical Creationism in scientific drag – which kinda makes it look like the dopey prof in a 1950s Big Ant movie who intones, "this could be the end of civilization as we know it."
Read the full horror...
http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/011105L.shtml
The secret word is Bubbles
CRYPTIQUE – On the night he was shot in Umberto’s Clam Bar, Joey (Crazy Joe) Gallo had been to see Don Rickles perform. (And if anyone can explain why this interests me, I will be very happy.)
I don’t know if it’s the California rain, or black dogs, or too much bad holiday TV, or something that I ate, or the miasma of endless work in which I currently find myself, or simple being surrounded by a nation that should probably be institutionalized if not actually eased into straightjacket and the straps pulled very tight, but, in the last few days I have found myself tempted to retreat more and more from reality. It’s too early to know what direction this may take but, be assured, I will keep you up to speed.
MOVIE NEWS
Doc40 does not as a rule post movie news, but (see above) I was quite delighted when I was informed that Keith Richards may play Capt Jack Sparrow’s (Johnny Depp’s) father in Pirates of the Caribbean II. And then HC Beck sent over the following...
There is going to be a two-part TV miniseries on Elvis, come May, that takes him from the beginning through the 68 comeback special, which I suppose makes it official, that, like Spade Cooley (who is also the subject of a biopic launched by and starring Dennis Quaid, who is maybe a foot and a half taller than the very short, very vicious Cooley), Elvis went out at an opportune moment. In the future, historians will write that Elvis died in 1968. Don't know if you ever read Bradbury's story about the guy in the time machine pickup truck who fixes wrong deaths, taking Hemingway back to his near-death early-50's plane crash and sparing him the subsequent years of pain and depression. And of course there's the Johnny Cash biopic, which is rolling round the bend. The Elvis TV thing looks to be fashioned by total hacks, but the one bright light, to my eyes, is that they've cast Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as Elvis, who is pretty and menacing, as anybody who saw him in Ride With The Devil may remember. He played the evil Confederate killer with the long hair.
CALL THIS A REALITY? (Part 2)
The Christian SS are attempting to destroy away with science yet again and are re-assaulting Darwin because they can’t bear to believe they are descended from simians. (A sentiment, incidently, shared by many monkeys of my acquaintance.) They are now pushing some piece of crap called Intelligent Design, which is Biblical Creationism in scientific drag – which kinda makes it look like the dopey prof in a 1950s Big Ant movie who intones, "this could be the end of civilization as we know it."
Read the full horror...
http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/011105L.shtml
The secret word is Bubbles
CRYPTIQUE – On the night he was shot in Umberto’s Clam Bar, Joey (Crazy Joe) Gallo had been to see Don Rickles perform. (And if anyone can explain why this interests me, I will be very happy.)
Saturday, January 08, 2005
ELVIS ABIDES
Today would be Elvis Presley’s 70th birthday, if he wasn’t, of course, dead. The tributes are hardly being paid in the way the were back in the Great Elvis-Sighting Era of the 1990s (which also largely coincides with the Presidency of Bill Clinton, who’s Secret Service codename was reportedly Elvis – as in "Elvis had left the building". Work with that one, paranoids.) A few movies are scattered round the cable menu, including the truly bizarre Wild In The Country, with a script by Clifford Odets, but TBS no longer runs marathons of Elvis – The TV Show. Elvis fades? I dunno. The image still looms and the voice still resonates, and, for the moment, I will still write "Elvis worshiper" on any document that demands record of my religion. (And I feel we may have a some of those in our future.) Such declarations are not merely acts of inanity. They are also a measures of self protection since the Christian SS are superstitiously loath the mess with The People of the King. (I expound on this theme in my novel The Armageddon Crazy, which is sooo out-of-print, and even out of date like 1984, since it is sci fi set in the year 2000, but none the less apt. There’s even a war with the godless Canadians.)
AND TALKING OF FUNDAMENTALISTS...
The next time you’re bothered by a Stormtrooper for Jesus, try this on them – "There is no God and his mother is Mary." It just drives them batshit. It's like asking "why" of a computer on Star Trek. But be warned, they may kill you.
There’s also a whole very long, very dense, very learned bit on this theme on Counterpunch...
http://www.counterpunch.org/davis01082005.html
Or if you want it close up and nasty try...
www.godhatesfags.com
but it’s hard to link. I think some pinko-commie, maybe Howard Stern-related crash‘n’burn plug-pulling has been applied to this holy site.
BEAUTIFY NORTH KOREA – GET A HAIRCUT
The following came from Mr MR...
BBC NEWS Asia-Pacific N Korea wages war on long hair
N Korea wages war on long hair North Korea has launched an intensive media assault on its latest arch enemy - the wrong haircut. A campaign exhorting men to get a proper short-back-and-sides has been aired by state-run Pyongyang television. The series is entitled "Let us trim our hair in accordance with Socialist lifestyle."
So it’s official. The Glorious Flower of Revolution has reached the cultural equivalency of about 1954, and the mind-set of my old Eddie Cochran-hating headmaster "Taff" Evans who did so much to instill basic sado-masochism into our preteen psyches in the days when Elvis supposedly wore the Haircut of Satan, and Jimi Hendrix as only a future horror. Which brings us very neatly back to Elvis. (But watch out, Kim Il Jong will could invent rock & roll sometime around June.)
The secret word is Megaton.
And the email is byron4d@msn.com
CRYPTIQUE – "Somebody save my back catalogue." he shrieked in desperation.
COMMERCIAL -- mp3 downloads and a highly lauditory analysis by Dave Thompson on...
http://www.mp3.com/mick-farren/artists/13747/summary.html
Today would be Elvis Presley’s 70th birthday, if he wasn’t, of course, dead. The tributes are hardly being paid in the way the were back in the Great Elvis-Sighting Era of the 1990s (which also largely coincides with the Presidency of Bill Clinton, who’s Secret Service codename was reportedly Elvis – as in "Elvis had left the building". Work with that one, paranoids.) A few movies are scattered round the cable menu, including the truly bizarre Wild In The Country, with a script by Clifford Odets, but TBS no longer runs marathons of Elvis – The TV Show. Elvis fades? I dunno. The image still looms and the voice still resonates, and, for the moment, I will still write "Elvis worshiper" on any document that demands record of my religion. (And I feel we may have a some of those in our future.) Such declarations are not merely acts of inanity. They are also a measures of self protection since the Christian SS are superstitiously loath the mess with The People of the King. (I expound on this theme in my novel The Armageddon Crazy, which is sooo out-of-print, and even out of date like 1984, since it is sci fi set in the year 2000, but none the less apt. There’s even a war with the godless Canadians.)
AND TALKING OF FUNDAMENTALISTS...
The next time you’re bothered by a Stormtrooper for Jesus, try this on them – "There is no God and his mother is Mary." It just drives them batshit. It's like asking "why" of a computer on Star Trek. But be warned, they may kill you.
There’s also a whole very long, very dense, very learned bit on this theme on Counterpunch...
http://www.counterpunch.org/davis01082005.html
Or if you want it close up and nasty try...
www.godhatesfags.com
but it’s hard to link. I think some pinko-commie, maybe Howard Stern-related crash‘n’burn plug-pulling has been applied to this holy site.
BEAUTIFY NORTH KOREA – GET A HAIRCUT
The following came from Mr MR...
BBC NEWS Asia-Pacific N Korea wages war on long hair
N Korea wages war on long hair North Korea has launched an intensive media assault on its latest arch enemy - the wrong haircut. A campaign exhorting men to get a proper short-back-and-sides has been aired by state-run Pyongyang television. The series is entitled "Let us trim our hair in accordance with Socialist lifestyle."
So it’s official. The Glorious Flower of Revolution has reached the cultural equivalency of about 1954, and the mind-set of my old Eddie Cochran-hating headmaster "Taff" Evans who did so much to instill basic sado-masochism into our preteen psyches in the days when Elvis supposedly wore the Haircut of Satan, and Jimi Hendrix as only a future horror. Which brings us very neatly back to Elvis. (But watch out, Kim Il Jong will could invent rock & roll sometime around June.)
The secret word is Megaton.
And the email is byron4d@msn.com
CRYPTIQUE – "Somebody save my back catalogue." he shrieked in desperation.
COMMERCIAL -- mp3 downloads and a highly lauditory analysis by Dave Thompson on...
http://www.mp3.com/mick-farren/artists/13747/summary.html
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
MO DOGS
Let me tell you, mama, what that black dog done done to me
Let me tell you, mama, what that black dog done done to me
He cheated me from my regular, now he's after my used-to-be
– Blind Blake
But the good news is...
"If a man shall meet the Black Dog once, it shall be for joy; and if twice, it shall be for sorrow; and the third time, he shall die." – Folklore (NW USA)
(all courtesy of HC Beck)
But enough of my Hellhound/Black Dog fixation. A whole lotta stuff has piled up while I’ve been flirting with the supernatural, and I must post some of it.
BITS AND PIECES
PAY ATTENTION IN SCHOOL AND MAKE THE UK TABLOIDS
A 10-year-old girl who learnt about tsunamis in a geography class saved her family and hundreds of tourists from death. Tilly Smith noticed the tide rush out on Maikhao beach in Phuket, Thailand, where she was on holiday with her mother Penny, father Colin and seven-year-old sister Holly. The schoolgirl remembered her geography teacher's lesson about the bubbling water only weeks earlier and told her family they had to leave the beach. According to The Sun she said she had just finished a school project on tsunamis and thought one was minutes away. Tilly, from Oxshott, in Surrey, told The Sun: "I was on the beach and the water started to go funny. There were bubbles and the tide went out all of a sudden. "I recognised what was happening and had a feeling there was going to be a tsunami. I told mummy." Her parents warned hotel staff and holidaymakers who fled the beach and escaped without serious injury when the tsunami struck. Andrew Kearney, geography teacher at Oxshott Danes Hill Prep School, said he told his students that after the sea was sucked backwards, the next five to 10 minutes were crucial for people to survive. He said: "Nothing illustrates Tilly's character more than her brave actions in a terrifying situation." Tilly's mother said she was "very proud" of her daughter and headteacher Robin Parfitt said she had "wisdom beyond her years".
Also elephants seemed to know what know what was happening, and some folks know as the Sea Gypsies.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/01/01/sea.gypsies.ap/index.html
THE BUSH AGENDA
From the fatuous David Brooks in the NY Times (on Social Security)
Europe may find itself locked into a vicious circle: an aging population means more public spending, which means higher taxes, which means lower growth, which means higher unemployment, which means more public spending, which means more taxes and even lower growth.
Which would essentially mean that the aged poor should fuck off and die.
ALSO
From PDB
Torture? Permanent imprisonment without charges? Fundamental violations of the law. How can we continue to ignore the gravity of this situation? –
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=19358&mode=nested&order=0
KELLY FREAS RIP
WILL EISNER RIP
The secret word is Endless
Let me tell you, mama, what that black dog done done to me
Let me tell you, mama, what that black dog done done to me
He cheated me from my regular, now he's after my used-to-be
– Blind Blake
But the good news is...
"If a man shall meet the Black Dog once, it shall be for joy; and if twice, it shall be for sorrow; and the third time, he shall die." – Folklore (NW USA)
(all courtesy of HC Beck)
But enough of my Hellhound/Black Dog fixation. A whole lotta stuff has piled up while I’ve been flirting with the supernatural, and I must post some of it.
BITS AND PIECES
PAY ATTENTION IN SCHOOL AND MAKE THE UK TABLOIDS
A 10-year-old girl who learnt about tsunamis in a geography class saved her family and hundreds of tourists from death. Tilly Smith noticed the tide rush out on Maikhao beach in Phuket, Thailand, where she was on holiday with her mother Penny, father Colin and seven-year-old sister Holly. The schoolgirl remembered her geography teacher's lesson about the bubbling water only weeks earlier and told her family they had to leave the beach. According to The Sun she said she had just finished a school project on tsunamis and thought one was minutes away. Tilly, from Oxshott, in Surrey, told The Sun: "I was on the beach and the water started to go funny. There were bubbles and the tide went out all of a sudden. "I recognised what was happening and had a feeling there was going to be a tsunami. I told mummy." Her parents warned hotel staff and holidaymakers who fled the beach and escaped without serious injury when the tsunami struck. Andrew Kearney, geography teacher at Oxshott Danes Hill Prep School, said he told his students that after the sea was sucked backwards, the next five to 10 minutes were crucial for people to survive. He said: "Nothing illustrates Tilly's character more than her brave actions in a terrifying situation." Tilly's mother said she was "very proud" of her daughter and headteacher Robin Parfitt said she had "wisdom beyond her years".
Also elephants seemed to know what know what was happening, and some folks know as the Sea Gypsies.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/01/01/sea.gypsies.ap/index.html
THE BUSH AGENDA
From the fatuous David Brooks in the NY Times (on Social Security)
Europe may find itself locked into a vicious circle: an aging population means more public spending, which means higher taxes, which means lower growth, which means higher unemployment, which means more public spending, which means more taxes and even lower growth.
Which would essentially mean that the aged poor should fuck off and die.
ALSO
From PDB
Torture? Permanent imprisonment without charges? Fundamental violations of the law. How can we continue to ignore the gravity of this situation? –
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=19358&mode=nested&order=0
KELLY FREAS RIP
WILL EISNER RIP
The secret word is Endless
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
YOU AIN’T NEVER CAUGHT A RABBIT...
Regular visitors to Doc40 know that the usual stock-in-trade of the weblog is cultural outrage and popular esoterica, but on New Year’s Eve at the stroke of Midnight, I may have beheld an apparition, or at least had a brush with resonating folklore. (See Jan 1st) Clearly to confess such atavism without clouding it in poetry or pretending its metaphor is not easy, although I feel I’m entitled, seeing as how I've published a quartet of critically acclaimed vampire novels that were even lauded by Bookslut who normally scathing of such things. Thus, neighbors, here is an edited version of the all-you-need-to-know about Hellhound encounters that was so kindly supplied by our pal Mr. MR. The italics are mine. Themic norms will be resumed when Doc is good and ready, and no longer feels like Robert Johnson’s old suit.
The term ‘Black dog’ is used to refer to apparitions of creatures which typically resemble black dogs though it is also often used as a generic term for canine apparitions of other colours and types. The term does not usually include apparitions of pets however (Brown, 1978; Miller, 1984). . "
A. That which is generally known locally as the Barguest, Shuck, Black Shag, Trash, Skriker, Padfoot, Hooter, and other names. These are not the names of individuals but of an impersonal creature which is distributed over certain areas…This type, which we may call the Barguest type, changes its shape, a thing that no true black dog ever does." (p.176).
B. That which is nearly always known as the Black Dog, is always black, and is always a dog and nothing else. It is always associated with a definite place or ‘beat’ on a road. It is always an individual. Sometimes it is associated with a person or a family…Another personal association is that with witches." (p.178). "C. A third variety of Black Dog, which is rare, is that which appears in a certain locality in conjunction with a calendar cycle*." (p.179).
(* First few seconds of 2005 would seem to qualify under section C)
The black dog is known by different names in different parts of the British Isles (Bord & Bord, 1985; McEwan, 1986): e.g. Norfolk Shuck, Black Shuck, Old Shuck
East Anglia Old Shock, Shucky Dog, Black Shuck, the Shug Monster
Suffolk Scarfe, Gally-trot, Gallytrot, Galley Trot, Moddey Dhoe
Isle of Man Moddey Dhoo, which means "Black Dog" and is pronounced "Mauther Thoo" in Manx Gaelic
Lancashire Trash, Guytrash, Skriker Yorkshire Barghest, Barghaist, Barguest, Barguest, Barn-ghaist, Skriker
Westmorland Cappel Staffordshire Padfoot Warwickshire Hooter Lincolnshire Hairy Jack Leicestershire Shag Dog Midlands Hooter Somerset Gurt Dog or ‘great dog’ Wales Gwyllgi (dog of darkness)
Scotland Black dog known as the Muckle Black Tyke and in Gaelic as Choin Dubh. Cu Sith** or fairy dog is more common and is usually green or sometimes white.
(** Ghost dog of the Sith, perhaps?)
Black dogs are often associated with a particular place or area (Miller, 1984). Black dogs have also been reported at places associated with violent crimes **** (Miller, 1984). Types of places associated with appearances of black dogs include: roads, crossroads, lanes, footpaths, bridges, gateways, doorways, staircases, boundaries, fields, hedges, green lanes, treasure sites, wayside burials, graves and gallows, wells and trees (Brown, 1958, 1978; Bord & Bord, 1985). Black dogs are often encountered near water, e.g. the sea, ponds, and bridges over streams or rivers (Bord & Bord, 1985). However, Bord & Bord (1985) note that "there are very few places in Britain where one is very far away from water (except in times of drought!)" (p.98). Bord and Bord (1985) theorised that black dogs might patrol ley lines and dis/appear at various ley points such as churchyards, prehistoric remains and ancient trackways.
(*** Now here is does get a tad Rod Serling, and I only made the connection when I read this material, is that there was, in fact, a guy shot dead, about five years ago, exactly where I saw the said dog. (I swear.) The culmination of a Honduran carjacking. It was even on the Channel 2 News. The cops stood around his body for two hours leaning on the hood of a black white, drinking coffee and eating donuts waiting for the CSI to arrive, while the victim lay in the sidewalk under a bodybag. A small growth of candles and flowers appeared the next day and remained until they melted or wilted.)
Black dogs are usually seen at night (Bord & Bord, 1985) though sightings have taken place in daylight (Brown, 1978). They are usually experienced outside, often in lonely rural settings, although a few accounts of encounters inside houses have been reported (Bord & Bord, 1985). In some cases the percipient was making their way home alone at night. Percipients may report that they suddenly become aware of a black dog trotting along beside them (Bord & Bord, 1985; Miller, 1984).
3. Characteristics of the apparitions
It has been suggested that the appearance of the apparition might be influenced by the percipients’ psychological disposition**** and their repertoire of images and symbols (Brown, 1978; Miller, 1984).
(**** I'll go along with that.)
The main ways that black dog apparitions differ from normal dogs is in terms of their size, their eyes and their behaviour (Bord & Bord, 1985). 5. How are these apparitions interpreted?Reactions to black dog apparitions vary from fear and aggression to acceptance and friendship (Miller, 1984). Sometimes people try to stroke the dog (presumably if it appears friendly) whilst at other times people have attempted to strike it (Bord & Bord , 1985). Black dogs in Lincolnshire have often been considered to be harmless and protective (Rudkin, 1935, 1938 cited by Miller, 1984). Indeed, it seems that the English black dog has become a less fearsome and more friendly creature over the last century (Brown, 1978 cited by Miller, 1984). Bord & Bord (1985) suggest that "Working on the basis of first-hand accounts there is rather more evidence that black dogs are friendly (or at least harmless) than that they are dangerous. Indeed the dogs are often positively helpful." (p.94). The appearance of black dog apparitions has often been regarded as an omen of death or bad luck or bad weather (Bord & Bord, 1985; Miller, 1984). Some appearances are good omens but they are mostly believed to be bad omens, either communally or personally (Brown, 1978). A number of other normal, paranormal and supernatural explanations for Black Dog encounters have been suggested. One normal explanation is that reports were made up by parents to keep children away from restricted areas or going near rabid dogs and/or by grave-robbers to keep the public away from graveyards (see Miller, 1984). Alternatively, stories of black dogs might have encouraged certain societal norms, such as respect for the dead, and discouraged grave-robbing (Sikes, 1880; Thomas, 1978 cited by Miller, 1984). Although this theory might be able to explain some historical accounts, it is difficult to see how this could explain more recent reports. Another normal explanation is that the dogs are normal dogs or big cats that have been misperceived (e.g., Miller, 1984). Again this might account for some cases but this explanation cannot readily explain some of the more unusual features of the creatures' appearance/disappearance and behaviour. It has been suggested that the Black Dog might be purely hallucinatory and based upon personal or cultural archetypes (see Baynes, 1950; Jung, 1968, cited by Miller, 1984).
Another avenue that seems to be becoming more popular is the notion that apparitions in general might somehow be facilitated or created by interactions with environmental variables, such as electromagnetism or geomagnetism***** (e.g., Houran & Lange, 2001; Radin & Rebman, 1996) which might be particularly prominent in certain locations, such as ley lines (Bord & Bord, 1985; Miller, 1984). It has been suggested that electrical storms****** might facilitate their appearance (Bord & Bord, 1985).
(***** I like this one)
(****** been having storms in LA for over a week, thunder, rain, the whole bit. I rest my case whatever it might be.)
That’s all, folks.
CRYPTIQUE – If Pluto’s a dog, what the fuck is Goofy?
Regular visitors to Doc40 know that the usual stock-in-trade of the weblog is cultural outrage and popular esoterica, but on New Year’s Eve at the stroke of Midnight, I may have beheld an apparition, or at least had a brush with resonating folklore. (See Jan 1st) Clearly to confess such atavism without clouding it in poetry or pretending its metaphor is not easy, although I feel I’m entitled, seeing as how I've published a quartet of critically acclaimed vampire novels that were even lauded by Bookslut who normally scathing of such things. Thus, neighbors, here is an edited version of the all-you-need-to-know about Hellhound encounters that was so kindly supplied by our pal Mr. MR. The italics are mine. Themic norms will be resumed when Doc is good and ready, and no longer feels like Robert Johnson’s old suit.
The term ‘Black dog’ is used to refer to apparitions of creatures which typically resemble black dogs though it is also often used as a generic term for canine apparitions of other colours and types. The term does not usually include apparitions of pets however (Brown, 1978; Miller, 1984). . "
A. That which is generally known locally as the Barguest, Shuck, Black Shag, Trash, Skriker, Padfoot, Hooter, and other names. These are not the names of individuals but of an impersonal creature which is distributed over certain areas…This type, which we may call the Barguest type, changes its shape, a thing that no true black dog ever does." (p.176).
B. That which is nearly always known as the Black Dog, is always black, and is always a dog and nothing else. It is always associated with a definite place or ‘beat’ on a road. It is always an individual. Sometimes it is associated with a person or a family…Another personal association is that with witches." (p.178). "C. A third variety of Black Dog, which is rare, is that which appears in a certain locality in conjunction with a calendar cycle*." (p.179).
(* First few seconds of 2005 would seem to qualify under section C)
The black dog is known by different names in different parts of the British Isles (Bord & Bord, 1985; McEwan, 1986): e.g. Norfolk Shuck, Black Shuck, Old Shuck
East Anglia Old Shock, Shucky Dog, Black Shuck, the Shug Monster
Suffolk Scarfe, Gally-trot, Gallytrot, Galley Trot, Moddey Dhoe
Isle of Man Moddey Dhoo, which means "Black Dog" and is pronounced "Mauther Thoo" in Manx Gaelic
Lancashire Trash, Guytrash, Skriker Yorkshire Barghest, Barghaist, Barguest, Barguest, Barn-ghaist, Skriker
Westmorland Cappel Staffordshire Padfoot Warwickshire Hooter Lincolnshire Hairy Jack Leicestershire Shag Dog Midlands Hooter Somerset Gurt Dog or ‘great dog’ Wales Gwyllgi (dog of darkness)
Scotland Black dog known as the Muckle Black Tyke and in Gaelic as Choin Dubh. Cu Sith** or fairy dog is more common and is usually green or sometimes white.
(** Ghost dog of the Sith, perhaps?)
Black dogs are often associated with a particular place or area (Miller, 1984). Black dogs have also been reported at places associated with violent crimes **** (Miller, 1984). Types of places associated with appearances of black dogs include: roads, crossroads, lanes, footpaths, bridges, gateways, doorways, staircases, boundaries, fields, hedges, green lanes, treasure sites, wayside burials, graves and gallows, wells and trees (Brown, 1958, 1978; Bord & Bord, 1985). Black dogs are often encountered near water, e.g. the sea, ponds, and bridges over streams or rivers (Bord & Bord, 1985). However, Bord & Bord (1985) note that "there are very few places in Britain where one is very far away from water (except in times of drought!)" (p.98). Bord and Bord (1985) theorised that black dogs might patrol ley lines and dis/appear at various ley points such as churchyards, prehistoric remains and ancient trackways.
(*** Now here is does get a tad Rod Serling, and I only made the connection when I read this material, is that there was, in fact, a guy shot dead, about five years ago, exactly where I saw the said dog. (I swear.) The culmination of a Honduran carjacking. It was even on the Channel 2 News. The cops stood around his body for two hours leaning on the hood of a black white, drinking coffee and eating donuts waiting for the CSI to arrive, while the victim lay in the sidewalk under a bodybag. A small growth of candles and flowers appeared the next day and remained until they melted or wilted.)
Black dogs are usually seen at night (Bord & Bord, 1985) though sightings have taken place in daylight (Brown, 1978). They are usually experienced outside, often in lonely rural settings, although a few accounts of encounters inside houses have been reported (Bord & Bord, 1985). In some cases the percipient was making their way home alone at night. Percipients may report that they suddenly become aware of a black dog trotting along beside them (Bord & Bord, 1985; Miller, 1984).
3. Characteristics of the apparitions
It has been suggested that the appearance of the apparition might be influenced by the percipients’ psychological disposition**** and their repertoire of images and symbols (Brown, 1978; Miller, 1984).
(**** I'll go along with that.)
The main ways that black dog apparitions differ from normal dogs is in terms of their size, their eyes and their behaviour (Bord & Bord, 1985). 5. How are these apparitions interpreted?Reactions to black dog apparitions vary from fear and aggression to acceptance and friendship (Miller, 1984). Sometimes people try to stroke the dog (presumably if it appears friendly) whilst at other times people have attempted to strike it (Bord & Bord , 1985). Black dogs in Lincolnshire have often been considered to be harmless and protective (Rudkin, 1935, 1938 cited by Miller, 1984). Indeed, it seems that the English black dog has become a less fearsome and more friendly creature over the last century (Brown, 1978 cited by Miller, 1984). Bord & Bord (1985) suggest that "Working on the basis of first-hand accounts there is rather more evidence that black dogs are friendly (or at least harmless) than that they are dangerous. Indeed the dogs are often positively helpful." (p.94). The appearance of black dog apparitions has often been regarded as an omen of death or bad luck or bad weather (Bord & Bord, 1985; Miller, 1984). Some appearances are good omens but they are mostly believed to be bad omens, either communally or personally (Brown, 1978). A number of other normal, paranormal and supernatural explanations for Black Dog encounters have been suggested. One normal explanation is that reports were made up by parents to keep children away from restricted areas or going near rabid dogs and/or by grave-robbers to keep the public away from graveyards (see Miller, 1984). Alternatively, stories of black dogs might have encouraged certain societal norms, such as respect for the dead, and discouraged grave-robbing (Sikes, 1880; Thomas, 1978 cited by Miller, 1984). Although this theory might be able to explain some historical accounts, it is difficult to see how this could explain more recent reports. Another normal explanation is that the dogs are normal dogs or big cats that have been misperceived (e.g., Miller, 1984). Again this might account for some cases but this explanation cannot readily explain some of the more unusual features of the creatures' appearance/disappearance and behaviour. It has been suggested that the Black Dog might be purely hallucinatory and based upon personal or cultural archetypes (see Baynes, 1950; Jung, 1968, cited by Miller, 1984).
Another avenue that seems to be becoming more popular is the notion that apparitions in general might somehow be facilitated or created by interactions with environmental variables, such as electromagnetism or geomagnetism***** (e.g., Houran & Lange, 2001; Radin & Rebman, 1996) which might be particularly prominent in certain locations, such as ley lines (Bord & Bord, 1985; Miller, 1984). It has been suggested that electrical storms****** might facilitate their appearance (Bord & Bord, 1985).
(***** I like this one)
(****** been having storms in LA for over a week, thunder, rain, the whole bit. I rest my case whatever it might be.)
That’s all, folks.
CRYPTIQUE – If Pluto’s a dog, what the fuck is Goofy?
Monday, January 03, 2005
To paraphrase Iggy from 37 years ago...
AND NOW IT’S 2005
AND FUCKING HELL, WE’RE STILL ALIVE
(Of course, some of us aren’t, but what can you do?)
As I wake far too early on the first working day of the New Year, now going for the midpoint of the first decade of the new millennium, I find my thoughts highly scattered and my imagination vividly fragmented, while wondering if am still able to play the hand I seem to be getting dealt. Motherfucker looks too much like an inside straight. An old phrase from Bob Dylan keeps running through my head. "May you have a strong foundation/When the winds of changes shift." And I ask myself, do I? "Well do I, punk?" And I would hazard a guess that, when my internal dialogue is awash with Iggy, Bob, and Harry Callahan, it’s a telling symptom of the condition my condition is in.
DON’T YOU JUST LOVE THAT MOVIE?
"In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and what did that produce - the cuckoo clock!" – Harry Lime
The secret word is Zither.
THE BLACK DOG
Of course, though loath to admit that I am hideously superstitious in the sub-basement of my ruined belief system, the black dog (see January 1st) still has me a little spooked. In the folds of England’s green and pleasant South Downs, the black dog is the harbinger of Death. But you meet him coming towards you in the lane, not running past in the mean and lonely Hollywood street, so maybe it’s Something Else. It has been variously suggested that it was (all referential to my fiction, which is, of course, superstition made a tool of the trade...
1) The ghost of Jim Morrison
2) The ghost of the black Labrador in the famous (color) photo of Jim in leather jeans and a blue workshirt.
3) "Maybe it was Yancey Slide*, being fully satisfied with his feat of Tsunami in SE Asia, just stopped by for warning to a U.S. citizen, grinning wide behind his tucked-in tail ...?"
* Once the current hired gun work is executed, I will complete the final episode of Slide On The Run. (See Funtopia if you’re not down with that rebop.)
CRYPTIQUE – Where the hell is that junkie nurse? I need a joint, an accountant, and a Valium.
QUOTE – "Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
AND NOW IT’S 2005
AND FUCKING HELL, WE’RE STILL ALIVE
(Of course, some of us aren’t, but what can you do?)
As I wake far too early on the first working day of the New Year, now going for the midpoint of the first decade of the new millennium, I find my thoughts highly scattered and my imagination vividly fragmented, while wondering if am still able to play the hand I seem to be getting dealt. Motherfucker looks too much like an inside straight. An old phrase from Bob Dylan keeps running through my head. "May you have a strong foundation/When the winds of changes shift." And I ask myself, do I? "Well do I, punk?" And I would hazard a guess that, when my internal dialogue is awash with Iggy, Bob, and Harry Callahan, it’s a telling symptom of the condition my condition is in.
DON’T YOU JUST LOVE THAT MOVIE?
"In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and what did that produce - the cuckoo clock!" – Harry Lime
The secret word is Zither.
THE BLACK DOG
Of course, though loath to admit that I am hideously superstitious in the sub-basement of my ruined belief system, the black dog (see January 1st) still has me a little spooked. In the folds of England’s green and pleasant South Downs, the black dog is the harbinger of Death. But you meet him coming towards you in the lane, not running past in the mean and lonely Hollywood street, so maybe it’s Something Else. It has been variously suggested that it was (all referential to my fiction, which is, of course, superstition made a tool of the trade...
1) The ghost of Jim Morrison
2) The ghost of the black Labrador in the famous (color) photo of Jim in leather jeans and a blue workshirt.
3) "Maybe it was Yancey Slide*, being fully satisfied with his feat of Tsunami in SE Asia, just stopped by for warning to a U.S. citizen, grinning wide behind his tucked-in tail ...?"
* Once the current hired gun work is executed, I will complete the final episode of Slide On The Run. (See Funtopia if you’re not down with that rebop.)
CRYPTIQUE – Where the hell is that junkie nurse? I need a joint, an accountant, and a Valium.
QUOTE – "Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Saturday, January 01, 2005
Just over two hours ago it was 2004. At 11.58, I stepped out onto the balcony to listen the calendar change, noble in my new Yukata. The concrete was cold under my feet. Car horns were hooting, fireworks and perhaps guns were going off, echoing in the Hollywood Hills, and then, as precisely as I could judge, right on midnight, a silent dark dog – or maybe a coyote – raced up the street, running flat-out desperate, breakneck, and headlong north, into the darkness between streetlights. The omen potential was so overwhelming that it left me a little stunned. As far as I could tell, I was the only one who had seen it, and I hardly cared to make an analysis. The black dog looms large in my native folklore, and, for the most part, it isn’t at all good. But was this black dog – so real that I considered I was hallucinating – crossing my path or running on past me?
Friday, December 31, 2004
HAPPY 2005, BOYS AND GIRLS – FOLLOW THAT FALLING BALL
Unless someone asks the Deviants to play, I no longer go out on New Year’s Eve, considering it amateur night for drunks, with overpriced drinks, surly bartenders, and gouging cabs. Plus, here in LA we have the added attraction of the vatos locos firing their Uzis at the moon at midnight. Although that doesn’t worry me any. I don’t believe there’s a stray bullet with my name on it, plus I’ve heard a lot of opposing theories about what happens when rounds fired in the air come back down.
Thus 12/31 finds me at my computer attempting to process...
TSUNAMI REACTIONS
Since I freely admit truly I can’t get my mind around a vast natural disaster except in the abstract, or by tightening down to the tiny details. (Like Eisenstein’s glasses on the steps.)
Just now some TV news show bleeped two words from a Tsunami home video, presumably "Fucking Jesus!", a very Australian reaction to the apocalyptic wall of water. Seemed to say too much about our cowardly new world. Accordingly I did a quick cull of the agitweb (with the help of the excellent Peoples’ Daily Briefing) for other reactions and came up with the following...
ANIMALS (esp elephants)
http://www.rense.com/general61/seu.htm
US NAVY
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2004/291204foreknowledgeofdisaster.htm
CHRISTIAN RIGHT
http://www.workingforchange.com/printitem.cfm?itemid=18309
QUOTE
Gloucester said (although I can’t recall in which damned play.) "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport."
The secret word is Lang
CRYPTIQUE – ...if on time you depend.
Unless someone asks the Deviants to play, I no longer go out on New Year’s Eve, considering it amateur night for drunks, with overpriced drinks, surly bartenders, and gouging cabs. Plus, here in LA we have the added attraction of the vatos locos firing their Uzis at the moon at midnight. Although that doesn’t worry me any. I don’t believe there’s a stray bullet with my name on it, plus I’ve heard a lot of opposing theories about what happens when rounds fired in the air come back down.
Thus 12/31 finds me at my computer attempting to process...
TSUNAMI REACTIONS
Since I freely admit truly I can’t get my mind around a vast natural disaster except in the abstract, or by tightening down to the tiny details. (Like Eisenstein’s glasses on the steps.)
Just now some TV news show bleeped two words from a Tsunami home video, presumably "Fucking Jesus!", a very Australian reaction to the apocalyptic wall of water. Seemed to say too much about our cowardly new world. Accordingly I did a quick cull of the agitweb (with the help of the excellent Peoples’ Daily Briefing) for other reactions and came up with the following...
ANIMALS (esp elephants)
http://www.rense.com/general61/seu.htm
US NAVY
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2004/291204foreknowledgeofdisaster.htm
CHRISTIAN RIGHT
http://www.workingforchange.com/printitem.cfm?itemid=18309
QUOTE
Gloucester said (although I can’t recall in which damned play.) "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport."
The secret word is Lang
CRYPTIQUE – ...if on time you depend.
EITHER THE ALIENS ARE BACK OR THE TRENCHCOAT MAFIA ARE TRYING TO BRING DOWN A JET
Cleveland -- Authorities are investigating a mysterious laser beam that was directed into the cockpit of a commercial jet traveling at more than 8,500 feet. The beam appeared Monday when the plane was about 15 miles from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, the FBI said. The pilot was able to land the plane, and air traffic controllers used radar to determine the laser came from a residential area in suburban Warrensville Heights. In Colorado Springs, Colo., on Monday night, two pilots reported green pulsating laser lights shined into their cockpits. Both the passenger plane and a cargo plane landed without problems.
Cleveland -- Authorities are investigating a mysterious laser beam that was directed into the cockpit of a commercial jet traveling at more than 8,500 feet. The beam appeared Monday when the plane was about 15 miles from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, the FBI said. The pilot was able to land the plane, and air traffic controllers used radar to determine the laser came from a residential area in suburban Warrensville Heights. In Colorado Springs, Colo., on Monday night, two pilots reported green pulsating laser lights shined into their cockpits. Both the passenger plane and a cargo plane landed without problems.
Thursday, December 30, 2004
FROM MY OLD PAL STEVAN...
There is more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra today than on Alzheimer's research. This means that by 2040, there should be a large elderly population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely no recollection of what to do with them.
The secret word is Huh?
JERRY ORBACH RIP
There is more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra today than on Alzheimer's research. This means that by 2040, there should be a large elderly population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely no recollection of what to do with them.
The secret word is Huh?
JERRY ORBACH RIP
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
ATLAS SHRUGGED
I guess it’s serious when I find myself quoting bloody Ayn Rand, if only for effect. The planet twitches, a nervous twitch, and 100,000 and maybe more are dead. How can that be reconciled with the storm outside my window, that Newton the cat doesn’t like the thunder, or that I spent half yesterday fighting a inundation of pop-ups? (Or that Bush thinks that $35 million in disaster aid – far less than he’s spending on his fucking inauguration – is going to really help? Isn’t that like $350 per fatality?) I guess it has to be reconciled, the micro and the macro, otherwise we go insane.
But what happens when the Earth actually screams?
Meanwhile here’s a scarey Simon Winchester piece from the New York Times along the same theme...
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/29/opinion/29winchester.html?pagewanted=2&th&oref=login
The secret word is Helpless
AND ON THE SUBJECT OF POPUPS.
The software Ad-Aware seems to have worked very nicely, thank you. But now I ponder what dumb bastard thinks advertising that interrupts my work, wastes my time, ruins my day, and gives the impression it’s destroying my computer is going to make me buy their fucking product. Are you capitalists terminally half-witted?
CRYPTIQUE – Get off of my cloud.
I guess it’s serious when I find myself quoting bloody Ayn Rand, if only for effect. The planet twitches, a nervous twitch, and 100,000 and maybe more are dead. How can that be reconciled with the storm outside my window, that Newton the cat doesn’t like the thunder, or that I spent half yesterday fighting a inundation of pop-ups? (Or that Bush thinks that $35 million in disaster aid – far less than he’s spending on his fucking inauguration – is going to really help? Isn’t that like $350 per fatality?) I guess it has to be reconciled, the micro and the macro, otherwise we go insane.
But what happens when the Earth actually screams?
Meanwhile here’s a scarey Simon Winchester piece from the New York Times along the same theme...
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/29/opinion/29winchester.html?pagewanted=2&th&oref=login
The secret word is Helpless
AND ON THE SUBJECT OF POPUPS.
The software Ad-Aware seems to have worked very nicely, thank you. But now I ponder what dumb bastard thinks advertising that interrupts my work, wastes my time, ruins my day, and gives the impression it’s destroying my computer is going to make me buy their fucking product. Are you capitalists terminally half-witted?
CRYPTIQUE – Get off of my cloud.
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
Friday, December 24, 2004
Even though I earlier found myself subjected to a featurette about Paris Hilton’s Christmas on one of the tv gossip shows, which almost made me give up on the whole thing...
A COOL YULE TO ALL YOU FINE READERS OF DOC40
The secret word is Wassail
THE RED AND THE BLUE
With the voyeurism that is such a part of the internet, I’m just a stone fool for the Next Blog button. Today I came across a very nice man who was against the war and posted pictures of his cats in the snow, and had been looking at some Red chat rooms where he discovered the following post from a character called Joe M. Richardson, who may be the real voice of middle America, in the subject of the soldier who had complained to Rumsfeld that his Humvee was a bunch of defenseless junk : "The duped soldier should be put at the very front of the action, no armor. The cooperating sergeant's career should be over and maybe become MIA. Pitts and all his cronies should be executed as traitors. We are fighting a war, the debate is over, you’re either for us or against us, there is no middle ground. I say start executing the leftists in our country, soon."
Is it just that’s it’s Christmas, or do I detect a decidedly biblical echo in Joe’s desire to put the unfortunate grunt in the front line. Wasn’t this what King David did to the husband of one of his royal fuck-bunnies? I also wonder why Joe wants us killed soon rather than right now. Nothing more lame than a procrastinating Nazi. Or maybe there’s something he wants to watch on the History Channel.
CRYPTIQUE – Hardly bright and certainly not calm.
A COOL YULE TO ALL YOU FINE READERS OF DOC40
The secret word is Wassail
THE RED AND THE BLUE
With the voyeurism that is such a part of the internet, I’m just a stone fool for the Next Blog button. Today I came across a very nice man who was against the war and posted pictures of his cats in the snow, and had been looking at some Red chat rooms where he discovered the following post from a character called Joe M. Richardson, who may be the real voice of middle America, in the subject of the soldier who had complained to Rumsfeld that his Humvee was a bunch of defenseless junk : "The duped soldier should be put at the very front of the action, no armor. The cooperating sergeant's career should be over and maybe become MIA. Pitts and all his cronies should be executed as traitors. We are fighting a war, the debate is over, you’re either for us or against us, there is no middle ground. I say start executing the leftists in our country, soon."
Is it just that’s it’s Christmas, or do I detect a decidedly biblical echo in Joe’s desire to put the unfortunate grunt in the front line. Wasn’t this what King David did to the husband of one of his royal fuck-bunnies? I also wonder why Joe wants us killed soon rather than right now. Nothing more lame than a procrastinating Nazi. Or maybe there’s something he wants to watch on the History Channel.
CRYPTIQUE – Hardly bright and certainly not calm.
Thursday, December 23, 2004
HO HO HO
Q – Why is America overweight?
A – It gave up smoking.
(And before you Brit homies laugh too hard, remember you’re on the same slippery, non-smoking slope.)
VARIED YULE THOUGHTS
God is always being "used" by those that desire to control the citizens of their nations and to "move" them in the desired direction -- it has never worked and is doomed to failure here in America -- but what will be the cost? – Longrider
If you want entertainment, you can get a couple of hookers and an eightball. – Sean Penn
The secret word is Cough
Q – Why is America overweight?
A – It gave up smoking.
(And before you Brit homies laugh too hard, remember you’re on the same slippery, non-smoking slope.)
VARIED YULE THOUGHTS
God is always being "used" by those that desire to control the citizens of their nations and to "move" them in the desired direction -- it has never worked and is doomed to failure here in America -- but what will be the cost? – Longrider
If you want entertainment, you can get a couple of hookers and an eightball. – Sean Penn
The secret word is Cough
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
OH...CHRISTMAS
Another wartime Christmas? Tet offensive? The Battle of the Bulge? Looking up from Iraq on TV, I can’t help thinking about those poor dumb bastards in France in WW1, the idiot grunts, Brit and German, who climbed out of their trenches, kicked a soccer ball around, toasted each other in gin and schnapps, and whatever else they had to hand, sang Silent Night, and then some bloody officer in polished boots blew a whistle, and they all went back to slaughter-as-usual. We used to get regaled of that story in school as though it was something good. The mind boggles.
CRYPTIQUE – Drive on, it don’t fucking matter.
The secret word is Conifer
Another wartime Christmas? Tet offensive? The Battle of the Bulge? Looking up from Iraq on TV, I can’t help thinking about those poor dumb bastards in France in WW1, the idiot grunts, Brit and German, who climbed out of their trenches, kicked a soccer ball around, toasted each other in gin and schnapps, and whatever else they had to hand, sang Silent Night, and then some bloody officer in polished boots blew a whistle, and they all went back to slaughter-as-usual. We used to get regaled of that story in school as though it was something good. The mind boggles.
CRYPTIQUE – Drive on, it don’t fucking matter.
The secret word is Conifer
Sunday, December 19, 2004
REMEMBER THE NWO?
WONDER WHERE THE ALIENS WENT?
Real weird, real paranoid, and real big fun (and, by some very odd syncronicity) there’s what seem to purport to be a picture of the phenomenon mentioned below)...
http://www.senderberl.com/
WONDER WHERE THE ALIENS WENT?
Real weird, real paranoid, and real big fun (and, by some very odd syncronicity) there’s what seem to purport to be a picture of the phenomenon mentioned below)...
http://www.senderberl.com/
ANOTHER SYMPTOM OF AN EXTREMELY SICK PLANET THAT WE CAN TOTALLY IGNORE AS WE DRIVE OUR SUVs AND CLAIM A PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH JESUS, RIGHT?
I discovered this tale, both cautionary and spooky, while I was reading about something else. I failed to make a note of it’s origin, but it might have been the London Guardian.
Eskimos and scientists report a strange "lightness at noon" that is turning the usual all-day darkness of the high Canadian Arctic into twilight, apparently in defiance of natural laws. Canadian government officials say it may be the result of an unusual atmospheric phenomenon caused by global warming. Inuit hunters are telling the government's weather station at Resolute Bay - Canada's second most northerly village, 1,000 miles from the North Pole - of a new light in the sky. And Wayne Davidson, the Canadian government official who runs the station, says he believes it is caused by climate change. For the past five years, Mr Davidson says, there has been a growing light along the horizon in the middle of the day in winter. "The entire horizon is raised like magic, like the hand of God is bringing it up," he says. But Mr Davidson's investigations, backed by other scientists, suggest a more prosaic explanation. Warmer air, from global warming, is overlaying the cold air of the Arctic and the interface between the two creates a kind of "mirror in the sky" which reflects the sun's rays from further south.
The secret word is Population.
CRYPTIQUE -- Elvis gotta be worth more than $100,000,000
I discovered this tale, both cautionary and spooky, while I was reading about something else. I failed to make a note of it’s origin, but it might have been the London Guardian.
Eskimos and scientists report a strange "lightness at noon" that is turning the usual all-day darkness of the high Canadian Arctic into twilight, apparently in defiance of natural laws. Canadian government officials say it may be the result of an unusual atmospheric phenomenon caused by global warming. Inuit hunters are telling the government's weather station at Resolute Bay - Canada's second most northerly village, 1,000 miles from the North Pole - of a new light in the sky. And Wayne Davidson, the Canadian government official who runs the station, says he believes it is caused by climate change. For the past five years, Mr Davidson says, there has been a growing light along the horizon in the middle of the day in winter. "The entire horizon is raised like magic, like the hand of God is bringing it up," he says. But Mr Davidson's investigations, backed by other scientists, suggest a more prosaic explanation. Warmer air, from global warming, is overlaying the cold air of the Arctic and the interface between the two creates a kind of "mirror in the sky" which reflects the sun's rays from further south.
The secret word is Population.
CRYPTIQUE -- Elvis gotta be worth more than $100,000,000
Thursday, December 16, 2004
LAWD GIVE ME STRENGTH
I can only think that if you take all of the intolerable religious nuts from Europe, toss them out into a huge continent to kill Indians and mate with their cousins, and give them maybe a hundred and fifty years to turn a prairie into a shopping mall, you will come up with a culture that can marry cybertech and ancient ergot visions into something as totally insane as the Rapture Index.
http://www.raptureready.com/rap2.html
Fortunately some can mock.
http://www.insolitology.com/guides/rapture.htm
The secret word is Smite
I can only think that if you take all of the intolerable religious nuts from Europe, toss them out into a huge continent to kill Indians and mate with their cousins, and give them maybe a hundred and fifty years to turn a prairie into a shopping mall, you will come up with a culture that can marry cybertech and ancient ergot visions into something as totally insane as the Rapture Index.
http://www.raptureready.com/rap2.html
Fortunately some can mock.
http://www.insolitology.com/guides/rapture.htm
The secret word is Smite
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
JAPAN THREE
I walk alone onto the stage, seriously wondering if, this time, I have gone completely too far. I am about to read unaccompanied poetry to a audience whose first language is Japanese. Also the show is running late and the drag queens who have the club for the midnight matinee are already reshaping their eyeliner and showing signs of the totally international (and maybe even interplanetary) Miss Thing-style "Oh p-LEASE!" The room is very crowded with what has to be neo-Furry Freak Tokyo, but the silence is complete. Small but elegant, purple covered booklets of Yukiko’s translation have been distributed through the crowd, but that hardly guarantees that everyone will follow the metaphoric bouncing ball. The first move in this piece of theatre is that my left hand, the one holding the blue binder of words to be spoken, has started to shake, and I must will it still. I have to fill the room with my voice and bend it to my pleasure. Or I disembowel myself with my sword, right?. Accordingly I put my voice on the tightest leash and lower it a deliberate half octave, letting gears grind to the max. This will be the last time and, if I can’t speak in the morning, it don’t mean fucking nothing.
"All his life he walked with the demon, from the Radium Room to the Palace of Mirrors, From the Place of Skulls to the Canadian Border..."
I growl and stagger the tempo. After four stanzas, I stop, because the first piece is short, and I drop a very non-Japanese, Three-Musketeers, bow-with-a-flourish, announcing that the first "song" is over. It’s an interesting silence by a room full of people who didn’t know what to do. They probably would have be-bop finger-popped if they had been so-instructed up front. Then someone (maybe one of my own crew) applauds. The room follows suit. I thank them and go into the second piece with all the method I can muster. At the end, I again lower my book and bow. This time the applause is instant and quite enthusiastic. Ha! I can get through this. I can. I can. The room has collectively twigged. Later, when we rocker poets have departed, there may well be a drag queen lipsyncing to Marlene Dietrich singing in German. Who knows? Who cares? This is performance art and my only responsibility is to perform and damn the consequences. I know exactly where I am. Off to the races. Didn’t Eddie Izzard assure me it was all about presentation. After the show a young man tells me my voice is "like electric guitar." He means it as a compliment. "Well thank you kindly and bless you, me old china*-san." (*For those who translate – Cockney rhyming slang; china=china plate = mate=pal.)
It could be that this is only working because it’s Blue Velvet Night in the Blue Chamber, which is unusual in any language. BVN is a weird performance homage to a culture thread that stretches from the Warhol Factory to Twin Peaks. It is run by Gaku Torii, the most forceful individual I have met in all of Japan and something the local – but far better organized and mortally adept – Lester Bangs. The Blue Room itself is owned by Madam Togawa, a famous and venerable Tokyo chanteuse and mystery writer. She is a grande dame in the grand manner, and her club has an old-school, gay-bar, cocktail-decor ambiance, and the dressing room is a sitting room with brocades, silk flowers, and huge pictures of Edith Piaf – instead of the usual cupboard under the stairs with some broken furniture and endless band graffiti. Madame holds court in surgical mask and Raybans. Her young assistant informs me Madame has a cold. She is thus drinking vodka today. I order a Jack and we toast, exchanging books and pleasantries. Then she leaves us musicians to our nerves and preparations, but returns at showtime in some flowing Lauren Bacall number. Exiting we embrace. This could be happening anywhere from Tokyo to Buenos Aires and is just so damned cool.
By a miracle of left brane-string Zen synchronization, I walk into the super-psychedelic UFO Club at precisely the moment I am required for sound check. It’s a little chilly out. The wind is off Godzilla’s famous Tokyo Bay, and I am wearing my ankle-length, Matrix-Welldressed, high showing-off coat with all the buttons. (See pic 09 in the Funtopia report.) Some wag on the soundboard inexplicably calls, "Good morning, captain." I step nimbly to the stage and Beefheart the vocal mike. (Straight stand, please.) "Good morning to you son. Do you need another mule skinner, on your mumble mumble." (So what is the fourth fucking line of Mule Skinner Blues on the spur of the moment?) Laughs in the room. Thus is international rock humor conducted.
I have whined about how I miss hotdogs, and the Japanese equivalent of a Tom Parker foot-long has showed up with the latest round of Kirin draft. Holy heck. Japan is turning me into some stoner Charlie Chaplin, and, in silent-movie mode, I slice the singularly phallic object into bite sized slices and offer it round as is the custom. The comrades find this cracking-up droll, including the fact that I seem to be addressing the sausage as Colonel Parker even if I’m not fully communicating the obscure historical connection. We seem to spend a lot of time in cafes across the street from clubs, drinking beer and sharing snacks in the abyss of hours between sound check and show. We also spend a hell of a lot of the time laughing. I eat everything that’s put in front of me, but shamelessly demand a fork. The Japanese spend much time eating, but small amounts and slowly, and I see no fat people. What I do see is a lot of musicians. Tokyo and Osaka cats, refugees from punk and glam and glitter and every past fad you care to name, but now tough or crazy and seeming checking out my apparently minor-legend condition. They show up at shows, but they also show up at the interim café. Some are earnest and respectful and others are slapstick drunk like Crazy Motherfucker in Nagoya, a lunatic with Afro and goatee who was seemingly once in some famous bands, but now seems to be huffing cleaning fluid and drinking beer like a more survival-orientated Steve Took, but, of course, his girlfriend may be a t-shirt mogul. Who knows?
Another piece of rock humor. Ken and Nabeji have taken to breaking into Heartbreak Hotel at sound checks. At first it’s a goof and then we find that we really like playing it. It becomes an encore. Even though I’m singing it more like a monotone Howling Wolf than Elvis Presley, the tune has a real bulldozer of an impact. You can hear the first two lines as they the strike the audience’s conditioned and universal, rock & roll instincts. A new place to dwell. Musical mortar fire and damn but it’s fun. Plus it don’t need no stinking language.
I have to here thank Kanzawa, who was assigned to lift my bags and tote my bales and without whom I might have been wholly screwed in some of the more physically stressful, Dexter Gordon, getting-on-and-off-trains moments. Good looking out, bro. Thank you.
(A somewhat less subject account and loads of pics of my recent Japanese adventure are posted on Funtopia. Hit the link up on the right, and then go to the news page.)
The secret word is Breakfast
AND...
Check out this measure of madness.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041208-122555-6114r.htm
I walk alone onto the stage, seriously wondering if, this time, I have gone completely too far. I am about to read unaccompanied poetry to a audience whose first language is Japanese. Also the show is running late and the drag queens who have the club for the midnight matinee are already reshaping their eyeliner and showing signs of the totally international (and maybe even interplanetary) Miss Thing-style "Oh p-LEASE!" The room is very crowded with what has to be neo-Furry Freak Tokyo, but the silence is complete. Small but elegant, purple covered booklets of Yukiko’s translation have been distributed through the crowd, but that hardly guarantees that everyone will follow the metaphoric bouncing ball. The first move in this piece of theatre is that my left hand, the one holding the blue binder of words to be spoken, has started to shake, and I must will it still. I have to fill the room with my voice and bend it to my pleasure. Or I disembowel myself with my sword, right?. Accordingly I put my voice on the tightest leash and lower it a deliberate half octave, letting gears grind to the max. This will be the last time and, if I can’t speak in the morning, it don’t mean fucking nothing.
"All his life he walked with the demon, from the Radium Room to the Palace of Mirrors, From the Place of Skulls to the Canadian Border..."
I growl and stagger the tempo. After four stanzas, I stop, because the first piece is short, and I drop a very non-Japanese, Three-Musketeers, bow-with-a-flourish, announcing that the first "song" is over. It’s an interesting silence by a room full of people who didn’t know what to do. They probably would have be-bop finger-popped if they had been so-instructed up front. Then someone (maybe one of my own crew) applauds. The room follows suit. I thank them and go into the second piece with all the method I can muster. At the end, I again lower my book and bow. This time the applause is instant and quite enthusiastic. Ha! I can get through this. I can. I can. The room has collectively twigged. Later, when we rocker poets have departed, there may well be a drag queen lipsyncing to Marlene Dietrich singing in German. Who knows? Who cares? This is performance art and my only responsibility is to perform and damn the consequences. I know exactly where I am. Off to the races. Didn’t Eddie Izzard assure me it was all about presentation. After the show a young man tells me my voice is "like electric guitar." He means it as a compliment. "Well thank you kindly and bless you, me old china*-san." (*For those who translate – Cockney rhyming slang; china=china plate = mate=pal.)
It could be that this is only working because it’s Blue Velvet Night in the Blue Chamber, which is unusual in any language. BVN is a weird performance homage to a culture thread that stretches from the Warhol Factory to Twin Peaks. It is run by Gaku Torii, the most forceful individual I have met in all of Japan and something the local – but far better organized and mortally adept – Lester Bangs. The Blue Room itself is owned by Madam Togawa, a famous and venerable Tokyo chanteuse and mystery writer. She is a grande dame in the grand manner, and her club has an old-school, gay-bar, cocktail-decor ambiance, and the dressing room is a sitting room with brocades, silk flowers, and huge pictures of Edith Piaf – instead of the usual cupboard under the stairs with some broken furniture and endless band graffiti. Madame holds court in surgical mask and Raybans. Her young assistant informs me Madame has a cold. She is thus drinking vodka today. I order a Jack and we toast, exchanging books and pleasantries. Then she leaves us musicians to our nerves and preparations, but returns at showtime in some flowing Lauren Bacall number. Exiting we embrace. This could be happening anywhere from Tokyo to Buenos Aires and is just so damned cool.
By a miracle of left brane-string Zen synchronization, I walk into the super-psychedelic UFO Club at precisely the moment I am required for sound check. It’s a little chilly out. The wind is off Godzilla’s famous Tokyo Bay, and I am wearing my ankle-length, Matrix-Welldressed, high showing-off coat with all the buttons. (See pic 09 in the Funtopia report.) Some wag on the soundboard inexplicably calls, "Good morning, captain." I step nimbly to the stage and Beefheart the vocal mike. (Straight stand, please.) "Good morning to you son. Do you need another mule skinner, on your mumble mumble." (So what is the fourth fucking line of Mule Skinner Blues on the spur of the moment?) Laughs in the room. Thus is international rock humor conducted.
I have whined about how I miss hotdogs, and the Japanese equivalent of a Tom Parker foot-long has showed up with the latest round of Kirin draft. Holy heck. Japan is turning me into some stoner Charlie Chaplin, and, in silent-movie mode, I slice the singularly phallic object into bite sized slices and offer it round as is the custom. The comrades find this cracking-up droll, including the fact that I seem to be addressing the sausage as Colonel Parker even if I’m not fully communicating the obscure historical connection. We seem to spend a lot of time in cafes across the street from clubs, drinking beer and sharing snacks in the abyss of hours between sound check and show. We also spend a hell of a lot of the time laughing. I eat everything that’s put in front of me, but shamelessly demand a fork. The Japanese spend much time eating, but small amounts and slowly, and I see no fat people. What I do see is a lot of musicians. Tokyo and Osaka cats, refugees from punk and glam and glitter and every past fad you care to name, but now tough or crazy and seeming checking out my apparently minor-legend condition. They show up at shows, but they also show up at the interim café. Some are earnest and respectful and others are slapstick drunk like Crazy Motherfucker in Nagoya, a lunatic with Afro and goatee who was seemingly once in some famous bands, but now seems to be huffing cleaning fluid and drinking beer like a more survival-orientated Steve Took, but, of course, his girlfriend may be a t-shirt mogul. Who knows?
Another piece of rock humor. Ken and Nabeji have taken to breaking into Heartbreak Hotel at sound checks. At first it’s a goof and then we find that we really like playing it. It becomes an encore. Even though I’m singing it more like a monotone Howling Wolf than Elvis Presley, the tune has a real bulldozer of an impact. You can hear the first two lines as they the strike the audience’s conditioned and universal, rock & roll instincts. A new place to dwell. Musical mortar fire and damn but it’s fun. Plus it don’t need no stinking language.
I have to here thank Kanzawa, who was assigned to lift my bags and tote my bales and without whom I might have been wholly screwed in some of the more physically stressful, Dexter Gordon, getting-on-and-off-trains moments. Good looking out, bro. Thank you.
(A somewhat less subject account and loads of pics of my recent Japanese adventure are posted on Funtopia. Hit the link up on the right, and then go to the news page.)
The secret word is Breakfast
AND...
Check out this measure of madness.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041208-122555-6114r.htm
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
RED V BLUE – THE SOUND OF ONE WEBSITE COMPLAINING
The following comes from HCB...
Hi Mick
Nice report from Japan--looking forward to more. Thought you might like this business I sent to my producer in Ireland last week...
Hi Hugh,
Indecency Complaints Come from One Group, Says Report 6 Dec 2004
The startling rise in indecency complaints -- from fewer than 350 in 2000 and 2001 to 14,000 in 2002 to 240,000 in 2003 -- was attributed Sunday to a single activist group, the Parents Television Council, part of L. Brent Bozell's conservative Media Research Center. Mediaweek reported that an FCC analysis of the complaints dated Oct. 1, 2004 found that 99.9 percent of all indecency complaints had been brought by the PTC. The trade publication's report came only two days after FCC Chairman Michael Powell wrote in a New York Times Op-Ed article: "Advocacy groups do generate many complaints, as our critics note, but that's not unusual in today's Internet world...that fact does not minimize the merits of the groups' concerns." But Jonathan Rintels, head of the Center for Creative Voices in Media, an artists' advocacy group, told Mediaweek that its report demonstrates how "a tiny minority with a very focused political agenda is trying to censor American television and radio."
So I went to their site and found this stuff:
"Cable television is rife with the most licentious, decadent and perverse content imaginable. Our report shows that obscene language and graphic sexual content are readily available on advertiser-supported basic cable," said L. Brent Bozell, president of the PTC. For this report, the PTC looked at original series that aired during all times of the day, from early afternoon to late at night, on seven channels that are included in virtually every basic and expanded basic cable package: MTV, Spike TV, Comedy Central, TBS, E!, FX and ESPN. In recent years, these networks have featured explicit dialogue, scenes with strippers and nudity, threesomes, masturbation, anal sex, oral sex, statutory rape, sadism/masochism, bestiality, incest and forced sodomy/rape."
In other words, everything that makes life interesting. Here's some more:
FCC OKs Sexually Graphic Content for Families, But Newspapers Reject Same Content as "Too Explicit" for Ads.
Los Angeles, CA – Today, the Parents Television Council, the nation’s most influential advocacy organization protecting children against sex, violence and profanity in entertainment, reports that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved television content that is so offensive that virtually every major newspaper in America has rejected the same content for their adult readership. PTC members filed complaints with the FCC about the indecent content of FOX’s Keen Eddie and the WB’s Off Centre in 2003, and the FCC rejected both complaints last week. Thus, FCC Chairman Michael Powell, Commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Kathleen Abernathy believe the following is suitable, decent programming acceptable for children:
Content from Keen Eddie (Aired June 10, 2003; 9:00 pm ET/PT, and 8:00 pm CT/MT) The plot featured a band of thugs trafficking horse semen and hiring a prostitute to perform a sex act with a horse, so as to extract the semen from it.
Prostitute: "No, that’s not natural!"
Thug: "Extraction for insemination. If you look at the picture on page 45 you’ll see how natural it is."
Second Thug: "You’re a 40-year-old filthy slut, you’ll do anything."
Prostitute: "With a human."
But the prostitute agrees to go through with it, except the horse suddenly drops dead, at which point she says, "I never laid a finger on it. I lifted up my blouse, that’s all… He needs to get aroused."
Content from Off Center (Aired October 10, 2002; 9:30 pm ET/PT, and 8:30 pm CT/MT)
Dr. Wasserman: "How are those penises? Mike, has the, uh, redness gone away? And what about the flaking and peeling? Are you still using the lotion twice a day?"Mike: "Yeah, yeah. Sometimes more. I broke up with my girlfriend."
Dr. Wasserman: "How’s uh, old ‘Snuffleupagus,’ huh? I hope you remember that the uncircumcised penis poses challenges to hygiene. I mean, smegma may be a funny word, but it's no laughing matter, believe you me."
PTC president Brent Bozell responded, "This is revolting. When did the concept of hiring a prostitute to have sex with a horse become an acceptable community standard? Chairman Powell, when did filth like this become decent? American families deserve more from the FCC in protecting our children from overtly indecent content." To prove how obscene this dialogue is, the PTC submitted advertisements that contain the newly FCC-approved content from both shows to USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. All of the newspapers rejected the ads. The Los Angeles Times called the ad "too explicit." USA Today said that, "Our newspaper is distributed in schools and we too believe children shouldn’t be reading such material." The Washington Post said that the ad is "not acceptable for family viewing." The New York Times said that, "there are a number of words and descriptions in this advertisement that we do not accept in this newspaper."
Nice of them to run the dialogue verbatim. Now if only they'd show us some fithy, unforgivable pictures as well.
Cheers
hcb
JAPAN TWO
A highly flattering report from Yukiko Akagawa and loads of pics of my recent Japanese adventure are posted on Funtopia. Hit the link up on the right, and then go to the news page. And thanks to Yukiko and Rick for all the hard work. And having seen all this, I feel totally beholden, and am already writing a highly personal self-revelation in response. It’ll post tomorrow. Please don’t miss it.
BERNIE KERIK
Maybe I’m perverse, but, if you have to have Homeland Security at all, I’d feel a lot more comfortable with a NYC, thug-lookin’, cop-discount SOB, with a Gordon Liddy haircut and two mistresses, one of whom is sexy power-publisher Judith Regan. (Although James Bond would never leave a note to the wrong broad in his assignation crib.) Better than some Midwest Jesus Nazi, f’sure.
The secret word is Ribbentrop
The following comes from HCB...
Hi Mick
Nice report from Japan--looking forward to more. Thought you might like this business I sent to my producer in Ireland last week...
Hi Hugh,
Indecency Complaints Come from One Group, Says Report 6 Dec 2004
The startling rise in indecency complaints -- from fewer than 350 in 2000 and 2001 to 14,000 in 2002 to 240,000 in 2003 -- was attributed Sunday to a single activist group, the Parents Television Council, part of L. Brent Bozell's conservative Media Research Center. Mediaweek reported that an FCC analysis of the complaints dated Oct. 1, 2004 found that 99.9 percent of all indecency complaints had been brought by the PTC. The trade publication's report came only two days after FCC Chairman Michael Powell wrote in a New York Times Op-Ed article: "Advocacy groups do generate many complaints, as our critics note, but that's not unusual in today's Internet world...that fact does not minimize the merits of the groups' concerns." But Jonathan Rintels, head of the Center for Creative Voices in Media, an artists' advocacy group, told Mediaweek that its report demonstrates how "a tiny minority with a very focused political agenda is trying to censor American television and radio."
So I went to their site and found this stuff:
"Cable television is rife with the most licentious, decadent and perverse content imaginable. Our report shows that obscene language and graphic sexual content are readily available on advertiser-supported basic cable," said L. Brent Bozell, president of the PTC. For this report, the PTC looked at original series that aired during all times of the day, from early afternoon to late at night, on seven channels that are included in virtually every basic and expanded basic cable package: MTV, Spike TV, Comedy Central, TBS, E!, FX and ESPN. In recent years, these networks have featured explicit dialogue, scenes with strippers and nudity, threesomes, masturbation, anal sex, oral sex, statutory rape, sadism/masochism, bestiality, incest and forced sodomy/rape."
In other words, everything that makes life interesting. Here's some more:
FCC OKs Sexually Graphic Content for Families, But Newspapers Reject Same Content as "Too Explicit" for Ads.
Los Angeles, CA – Today, the Parents Television Council, the nation’s most influential advocacy organization protecting children against sex, violence and profanity in entertainment, reports that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved television content that is so offensive that virtually every major newspaper in America has rejected the same content for their adult readership. PTC members filed complaints with the FCC about the indecent content of FOX’s Keen Eddie and the WB’s Off Centre in 2003, and the FCC rejected both complaints last week. Thus, FCC Chairman Michael Powell, Commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Kathleen Abernathy believe the following is suitable, decent programming acceptable for children:
Content from Keen Eddie (Aired June 10, 2003; 9:00 pm ET/PT, and 8:00 pm CT/MT) The plot featured a band of thugs trafficking horse semen and hiring a prostitute to perform a sex act with a horse, so as to extract the semen from it.
Prostitute: "No, that’s not natural!"
Thug: "Extraction for insemination. If you look at the picture on page 45 you’ll see how natural it is."
Second Thug: "You’re a 40-year-old filthy slut, you’ll do anything."
Prostitute: "With a human."
But the prostitute agrees to go through with it, except the horse suddenly drops dead, at which point she says, "I never laid a finger on it. I lifted up my blouse, that’s all… He needs to get aroused."
Content from Off Center (Aired October 10, 2002; 9:30 pm ET/PT, and 8:30 pm CT/MT)
Dr. Wasserman: "How are those penises? Mike, has the, uh, redness gone away? And what about the flaking and peeling? Are you still using the lotion twice a day?"Mike: "Yeah, yeah. Sometimes more. I broke up with my girlfriend."
Dr. Wasserman: "How’s uh, old ‘Snuffleupagus,’ huh? I hope you remember that the uncircumcised penis poses challenges to hygiene. I mean, smegma may be a funny word, but it's no laughing matter, believe you me."
PTC president Brent Bozell responded, "This is revolting. When did the concept of hiring a prostitute to have sex with a horse become an acceptable community standard? Chairman Powell, when did filth like this become decent? American families deserve more from the FCC in protecting our children from overtly indecent content." To prove how obscene this dialogue is, the PTC submitted advertisements that contain the newly FCC-approved content from both shows to USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. All of the newspapers rejected the ads. The Los Angeles Times called the ad "too explicit." USA Today said that, "Our newspaper is distributed in schools and we too believe children shouldn’t be reading such material." The Washington Post said that the ad is "not acceptable for family viewing." The New York Times said that, "there are a number of words and descriptions in this advertisement that we do not accept in this newspaper."
Nice of them to run the dialogue verbatim. Now if only they'd show us some fithy, unforgivable pictures as well.
Cheers
hcb
JAPAN TWO
A highly flattering report from Yukiko Akagawa and loads of pics of my recent Japanese adventure are posted on Funtopia. Hit the link up on the right, and then go to the news page. And thanks to Yukiko and Rick for all the hard work. And having seen all this, I feel totally beholden, and am already writing a highly personal self-revelation in response. It’ll post tomorrow. Please don’t miss it.
BERNIE KERIK
Maybe I’m perverse, but, if you have to have Homeland Security at all, I’d feel a lot more comfortable with a NYC, thug-lookin’, cop-discount SOB, with a Gordon Liddy haircut and two mistresses, one of whom is sexy power-publisher Judith Regan. (Although James Bond would never leave a note to the wrong broad in his assignation crib.) Better than some Midwest Jesus Nazi, f’sure.
The secret word is Ribbentrop
Monday, December 13, 2004
JAPAN ONE
It’s taken a while to process what was going on during my recent trip to Japan. For a while, all I had was a wealth of powerful but disjointed images – Tokyo in the rush-hour, sitting smoking on a rooftop watching the crows circle and the cats sleeping on sunlit roofs below, the awesome spectacle of Mt. Fuji from the bullet train, the soaring neon of pachinko palaces like a cardio-vascular monitor for Godzilla, getting my first acupuncture from a guy who knew Wilko Johnson, but not really understanding it. Then I started to realize that what I ‘d accomplished was to at least rise to meet a challenge the extent which I still wasn’t really grasping. On my previous excursion I had been with the 1999 incarnation of the Deviants – Andy Colquhoun, Rick Parnell and Doug Lunn. It had been an experience and a whole lotta fun. This time round I was going totally on my own, and the ramifications of that were greater than I’d realized, even as I boarded the outward bound JAL flight from LAX.
A band provides it own capsulized sense of self, of nationality and identity. The experiences, the highs and the problems are shared. You are all inside looking out, cocooned in a common language, individual familiarity, Monty Python jokes and where’s-the-beer? You provide your own filter on the alien environment. To paraphrase Bono, Outside Is Tokyo – but inside is the Deviants making the best of it. To go out and perform solo, somewhere were you may not be able to communicate verbally is something completely different.
In an Osaka Hotel room, I watch a Russian production of Chekhov’s The Seagull, in Russian with Japanese subtitles.
There’s been an awful lot of nonsense talked over the years about the common language of rock & roll, and, indeed, I’ve talked a who lot of it myself. Suddenly I was in a situation in which it had to be true or I was done for. Of course, the musicians in Ken Matsutani’s band Marble Sheep plus guitarist Nabeji had done their homework in spades. Ken had wanted to play some of the old tunes, and, while not adverse to the idea and happy to go along, there was no way that could perform material that I had written thirty five years ago that same as it was on 1968. The metaphor for rehearsal was that where once the song had been that of a young man’s desperation to get laid, it was now an old man’s song about maybe getting laid one last time. Tempo was made more determined. I would have liked to have said like Lee Marvin’s relentless and dealy footfalls in Point Blank. Perhaps that was too much of a stretch, but the message got through, and all was eminently clear, including how rock & roll music really was means of communication that needed little verbal augmentation. Suddenly my Japanese friends and I were even evolving our own cross-language catch phrases. One of the new lines that I invented for the 2004 version of the 1967 tune "I’m Coming Home" was "I have the key to the masterlock". Nabeji would grin at me across his red Fender. "We have the key to the masterlock" and we fucking knew we did.
But was the idea of reading poetry on my own in Tokyo to anyone who paid and cared to listen pushing the envelope a little far? Hubris? Insanity? For that you’ll have to wait for the next instalment.
The secret word is Arigato.
RED TAILED HAWK UPDATE
Seems that the National Audubon Society are suing 927 Fifth Avenue to get Pale Male and his family their nest back. How the homeless hawks are faring has not been reported.
AND...
A great piece by Frank Rich on the movie Kinsey and more Christian fascist fuss.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=19053&mode=nested&order=0
It’s taken a while to process what was going on during my recent trip to Japan. For a while, all I had was a wealth of powerful but disjointed images – Tokyo in the rush-hour, sitting smoking on a rooftop watching the crows circle and the cats sleeping on sunlit roofs below, the awesome spectacle of Mt. Fuji from the bullet train, the soaring neon of pachinko palaces like a cardio-vascular monitor for Godzilla, getting my first acupuncture from a guy who knew Wilko Johnson, but not really understanding it. Then I started to realize that what I ‘d accomplished was to at least rise to meet a challenge the extent which I still wasn’t really grasping. On my previous excursion I had been with the 1999 incarnation of the Deviants – Andy Colquhoun, Rick Parnell and Doug Lunn. It had been an experience and a whole lotta fun. This time round I was going totally on my own, and the ramifications of that were greater than I’d realized, even as I boarded the outward bound JAL flight from LAX.
A band provides it own capsulized sense of self, of nationality and identity. The experiences, the highs and the problems are shared. You are all inside looking out, cocooned in a common language, individual familiarity, Monty Python jokes and where’s-the-beer? You provide your own filter on the alien environment. To paraphrase Bono, Outside Is Tokyo – but inside is the Deviants making the best of it. To go out and perform solo, somewhere were you may not be able to communicate verbally is something completely different.
In an Osaka Hotel room, I watch a Russian production of Chekhov’s The Seagull, in Russian with Japanese subtitles.
There’s been an awful lot of nonsense talked over the years about the common language of rock & roll, and, indeed, I’ve talked a who lot of it myself. Suddenly I was in a situation in which it had to be true or I was done for. Of course, the musicians in Ken Matsutani’s band Marble Sheep plus guitarist Nabeji had done their homework in spades. Ken had wanted to play some of the old tunes, and, while not adverse to the idea and happy to go along, there was no way that could perform material that I had written thirty five years ago that same as it was on 1968. The metaphor for rehearsal was that where once the song had been that of a young man’s desperation to get laid, it was now an old man’s song about maybe getting laid one last time. Tempo was made more determined. I would have liked to have said like Lee Marvin’s relentless and dealy footfalls in Point Blank. Perhaps that was too much of a stretch, but the message got through, and all was eminently clear, including how rock & roll music really was means of communication that needed little verbal augmentation. Suddenly my Japanese friends and I were even evolving our own cross-language catch phrases. One of the new lines that I invented for the 2004 version of the 1967 tune "I’m Coming Home" was "I have the key to the masterlock". Nabeji would grin at me across his red Fender. "We have the key to the masterlock" and we fucking knew we did.
But was the idea of reading poetry on my own in Tokyo to anyone who paid and cared to listen pushing the envelope a little far? Hubris? Insanity? For that you’ll have to wait for the next instalment.
The secret word is Arigato.
RED TAILED HAWK UPDATE
Seems that the National Audubon Society are suing 927 Fifth Avenue to get Pale Male and his family their nest back. How the homeless hawks are faring has not been reported.
AND...
A great piece by Frank Rich on the movie Kinsey and more Christian fascist fuss.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=19053&mode=nested&order=0
Friday, December 10, 2004
NOW THIS IS WHAT I CALL A SUNDAY KINDA READ
(Of course, it’s only Friday, but what the hell?) From the Seattle Weekly, Is George Bush the AntiChrist?...
www.seattleweekly.com/features/0449/041208_news_antichrist.php
And while you have nothing better to do, run a Google search on "George Bush and Antichrist". The results are pure dementia.
The secret word is Paraclete
(Of course, it’s only Friday, but what the hell?) From the Seattle Weekly, Is George Bush the AntiChrist?...
www.seattleweekly.com/features/0449/041208_news_antichrist.php
And while you have nothing better to do, run a Google search on "George Bush and Antichrist". The results are pure dementia.
The secret word is Paraclete
Thursday, December 09, 2004
DAMAGE PLAN? GIMME A BREAK
Shoot the guitar player? Don’t you just love the hungry metal freak with his empty wallet on a chain. I mean, what the fuck next? A lone gunman assassinates Lemmy? Are we ready with the conspiracy theory?
ALSO SEEMS LIKE A PLAN...
Forwarded by Master Bass Player Doug Lunn...
From Michael Moore...December 8, 2004
Dear Friends,
May I take a break from our post-election despairto share with you a little piece of happy/silly/cool news?"Fahrenheit 9/11" has been nominated by the People's Choice Awards as the American public's "Favorite Film of the Year." The five nominees were chosen from a poll of thousands of Americans in mid-to-late November. The other nominees for best film are "Spiderman 2," "The Incredibles," "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (with Jim Carrey), and"Shrek 2." It is the first time ever a documentary has been nominated for best film by the People's Choice Awards. The People's Choice Awards are considered, among all the awards shows, to be the one which most accurately reflects the "mainstream" public opinion in the UnitedStates. OK, now, here's the best part: YOU get to vote!Online. Now. Just go to...
http://www.pcavote.com/voting/film/f01.shtml
click on the little circle next to "Fahrenheit 9/11" in the "Favorite Movie" category and press the "vote"button. Voting is going on now and continues only through this coming Monday, December 13, at 3:00pm ET, so send an e-mail to your friends and let them know they can vote, too. Winners will accept their awards live on CBS on January 9. Now, normally I wouldn't make a very big deal out of something like this. It's nice and I'm honored, but it's not exactly the number one priority on any of our minds these days. In fact, when we found out we werenominated over a week ago, I didn't even think to tell you about it or put it up on our website. But then a group of top Republicans took out a full page ad in USA Today (and placed a similar one in the Hollywood trade magazine, Variety) proclaiming that "An election is over, but a war ofideas continues." The point of the ad was to say that while they, as right wing conservatives, were proud of getting rid of Kerry, there was still one more nuisance running around loose they had to deal with – me! They also issued a not-so-subtle threat to the Academy Awards voters that, in essence, said don't even THINK about nominating "Fahrenheit 9/11" for Best Picture. And Bill O'Reilly recently bellowed that if the Oscars recognize my work this year, Middle America willboycott Hollywood.
Yeah, well, vote away. I live in Hollywood and I so don’t want to be boycotted by all those Red States. (yeah right!) So let’s all vote it up for F-911. Since the news that 99.8% of all the indecency complaints to the FCC come from one Jesus-fascist web operation, it’s about time us blue freaks got in some practice in the cyber-shaping of bullshit "mainstream" opinion. Scoring Michael Moore a People’s Choice Award maybe not as much fun as when Howard Stern listeners got Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf (God rest him) elected People magazine’s sexiest man of the year, but it’d be something to laff at.
MODUS FUCKING OPERANDI
Common dreams has on motherfucker of a scarey and succinct historical analysis...
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1207-26.htm
ALSO
Hipspinster has been writing some damned fine stuff.
http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/
CRYPTIQUE – Social viciousness is oft cloaked by a sickening sentimentality. (He remarked as he hung himself with a yellow ribbon.)
Shoot the guitar player? Don’t you just love the hungry metal freak with his empty wallet on a chain. I mean, what the fuck next? A lone gunman assassinates Lemmy? Are we ready with the conspiracy theory?
ALSO SEEMS LIKE A PLAN...
Forwarded by Master Bass Player Doug Lunn...
From Michael Moore...December 8, 2004
Dear Friends,
May I take a break from our post-election despairto share with you a little piece of happy/silly/cool news?"Fahrenheit 9/11" has been nominated by the People's Choice Awards as the American public's "Favorite Film of the Year." The five nominees were chosen from a poll of thousands of Americans in mid-to-late November. The other nominees for best film are "Spiderman 2," "The Incredibles," "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (with Jim Carrey), and"Shrek 2." It is the first time ever a documentary has been nominated for best film by the People's Choice Awards. The People's Choice Awards are considered, among all the awards shows, to be the one which most accurately reflects the "mainstream" public opinion in the UnitedStates. OK, now, here's the best part: YOU get to vote!Online. Now. Just go to...
http://www.pcavote.com/voting/film/f01.shtml
click on the little circle next to "Fahrenheit 9/11" in the "Favorite Movie" category and press the "vote"button. Voting is going on now and continues only through this coming Monday, December 13, at 3:00pm ET, so send an e-mail to your friends and let them know they can vote, too. Winners will accept their awards live on CBS on January 9. Now, normally I wouldn't make a very big deal out of something like this. It's nice and I'm honored, but it's not exactly the number one priority on any of our minds these days. In fact, when we found out we werenominated over a week ago, I didn't even think to tell you about it or put it up on our website. But then a group of top Republicans took out a full page ad in USA Today (and placed a similar one in the Hollywood trade magazine, Variety) proclaiming that "An election is over, but a war ofideas continues." The point of the ad was to say that while they, as right wing conservatives, were proud of getting rid of Kerry, there was still one more nuisance running around loose they had to deal with – me! They also issued a not-so-subtle threat to the Academy Awards voters that, in essence, said don't even THINK about nominating "Fahrenheit 9/11" for Best Picture. And Bill O'Reilly recently bellowed that if the Oscars recognize my work this year, Middle America willboycott Hollywood.
Yeah, well, vote away. I live in Hollywood and I so don’t want to be boycotted by all those Red States. (yeah right!) So let’s all vote it up for F-911. Since the news that 99.8% of all the indecency complaints to the FCC come from one Jesus-fascist web operation, it’s about time us blue freaks got in some practice in the cyber-shaping of bullshit "mainstream" opinion. Scoring Michael Moore a People’s Choice Award maybe not as much fun as when Howard Stern listeners got Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf (God rest him) elected People magazine’s sexiest man of the year, but it’d be something to laff at.
MODUS FUCKING OPERANDI
Common dreams has on motherfucker of a scarey and succinct historical analysis...
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1207-26.htm
ALSO
Hipspinster has been writing some damned fine stuff.
http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/
CRYPTIQUE – Social viciousness is oft cloaked by a sickening sentimentality. (He remarked as he hung himself with a yellow ribbon.)
WHY EAT THE RICH STILL SEEMS LIKE A PLAN
I sometimes wonder why the wealthy try so hard to be loathsome. For eleven years, Pale Male and his family of urbanized red-tailed hawks have nested on a ledge on the baroque facade of a Manhattan apartment building. (And for those who don’t know the geography of the Upper East Side, you have to be double-plus stinking rich to live at 927 Fifth.) They have been the delight of New Yorkers and even the subject of a fabulous and way cool PBS documentary, but now they are being evicted to an unknown fate by condo owners. The disgusting event was marked by an editorial in today’s NY Times.
"There is no historic preservation district or landmarks commission for hawks' nests. But if there were, the red-tailed hawk's nest at 927 Fifth Avenue, overlooking Central Park at 74th Street, would surely have qualified. Until Tuesday, the nest stood on a 12th-floor cornice with a sublime aerial view of the urban forest in our midst. Since 1993, 23 young hawks have been raised there, sired by a bird called Pale Male. Thousands and thousands of bird-watchers over the years have followed the lives of the hawks in that nest. But this is not an homage to bird-watching - it's an homage to birds. On Tuesday, workers took down the nest and, apparently, the metal anti-pigeon spikes that had helped hold it in place. So far, no one from 927 Fifth Avenue has spoken up to defend the co-op board's decision to remove the nest. Perhaps residents were annoyed that the hawks didn't do a better job of cleaning up after themselves by using a pooper-scooper or putting their pigeon bones in the trash, the way a human would. Perhaps they simply wearied of the stirring sight of a red-tailed hawk coming down out of the sky to settle on its nest."
The secret word is Oink.
I sometimes wonder why the wealthy try so hard to be loathsome. For eleven years, Pale Male and his family of urbanized red-tailed hawks have nested on a ledge on the baroque facade of a Manhattan apartment building. (And for those who don’t know the geography of the Upper East Side, you have to be double-plus stinking rich to live at 927 Fifth.) They have been the delight of New Yorkers and even the subject of a fabulous and way cool PBS documentary, but now they are being evicted to an unknown fate by condo owners. The disgusting event was marked by an editorial in today’s NY Times.
"There is no historic preservation district or landmarks commission for hawks' nests. But if there were, the red-tailed hawk's nest at 927 Fifth Avenue, overlooking Central Park at 74th Street, would surely have qualified. Until Tuesday, the nest stood on a 12th-floor cornice with a sublime aerial view of the urban forest in our midst. Since 1993, 23 young hawks have been raised there, sired by a bird called Pale Male. Thousands and thousands of bird-watchers over the years have followed the lives of the hawks in that nest. But this is not an homage to bird-watching - it's an homage to birds. On Tuesday, workers took down the nest and, apparently, the metal anti-pigeon spikes that had helped hold it in place. So far, no one from 927 Fifth Avenue has spoken up to defend the co-op board's decision to remove the nest. Perhaps residents were annoyed that the hawks didn't do a better job of cleaning up after themselves by using a pooper-scooper or putting their pigeon bones in the trash, the way a human would. Perhaps they simply wearied of the stirring sight of a red-tailed hawk coming down out of the sky to settle on its nest."
The secret word is Oink.
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
AND NOW SOMETHING EQUALLY WEIRD AND COMPLEX ABOUT JOHN COLTRANE...
http://www.heplaysjazz.btinternet.co.uk/giants.html
The secret world is Rebop
http://www.heplaysjazz.btinternet.co.uk/giants.html
The secret world is Rebop
CHECK OUT STRING THEORY
If nothing else it provides great science fiction excuses for the fantastic, the impossible, and the absurdly psychedelic...
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/07/science/07stri.html?th
CRYPTIQUE – I am very dubious about George Bush’s new Star Wars-style Commander-in-Chief jacket.
If nothing else it provides great science fiction excuses for the fantastic, the impossible, and the absurdly psychedelic...
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/07/science/07stri.html?th
CRYPTIQUE – I am very dubious about George Bush’s new Star Wars-style Commander-in-Chief jacket.
Monday, December 06, 2004
RECOVERY
I have to confess that I spent the last week dozing deliriously in front of the TV with some kind of respiratory ailment, which is why I’ve haven’t been telling any tales of pachinko neon, Mt Fuji from the Bullet Train, the strategic brilliance of Osaka Castle, and the people in Japan who took such good care of me. I sometimes forget that I’m far from being as young as I used to be, and, at definite moments, the barnstorming poet felt more like Dexter Gordon in Round Midnight as I paused in some Tokyo doorway to catch my breath. But fear not, the rock & roll went off well – mainly thanks to Ken and the Marble Sheep and the specially recruited Nabeji, and even the seemingly suicidal exercise of reading poetry in English to a Japanese-speaking audience, even if they did have a printed translation by the splendid Yukiko Akagawa. One audience member even came up to me and said that I had a speaking voice like an electric guitar. It was a compliment, I believe.
CRYPTIQUE – Bob Dylan on 60 Minutes.
And here’s a depressing but crucial read from The Jackson Progressive...
http://www.jacksonprogressive.com/issues/econandwelfare/dollarandsanity120404.html
And some military weirness...
http://www.skippyslist.com/skippylist.html
I have to confess that I spent the last week dozing deliriously in front of the TV with some kind of respiratory ailment, which is why I’ve haven’t been telling any tales of pachinko neon, Mt Fuji from the Bullet Train, the strategic brilliance of Osaka Castle, and the people in Japan who took such good care of me. I sometimes forget that I’m far from being as young as I used to be, and, at definite moments, the barnstorming poet felt more like Dexter Gordon in Round Midnight as I paused in some Tokyo doorway to catch my breath. But fear not, the rock & roll went off well – mainly thanks to Ken and the Marble Sheep and the specially recruited Nabeji, and even the seemingly suicidal exercise of reading poetry in English to a Japanese-speaking audience, even if they did have a printed translation by the splendid Yukiko Akagawa. One audience member even came up to me and said that I had a speaking voice like an electric guitar. It was a compliment, I believe.
CRYPTIQUE – Bob Dylan on 60 Minutes.
And here’s a depressing but crucial read from The Jackson Progressive...
http://www.jacksonprogressive.com/issues/econandwelfare/dollarandsanity120404.html
And some military weirness...
http://www.skippyslist.com/skippylist.html
Friday, December 03, 2004
I’M BACK
I have returned from Tokyo more or less intact and am attempting to sleep for a week and place all circumstances beyond my control. Much to relate but it will require a essay. In brief, Japan was super fabulous, as were the folks I with whom I worked (Yukiko, Ken, Nabeji, Rie, Nabe, Kaoru – I love you all) and it was also very Japanese, so much so that back-in-the-USA now seems grimly American. More of this later, however. Right now...
The secret word is Knackered.
I leave you with this gem that arrived while I was away, sent by both Jack Lancaster and Doug Lunn.
YOGI BERRA ON JAZZ
Interviewer: Yogi, can you explain jazz?
Yogi: I can't, but I will.... 90% of all jazz is halfimprovisation. The other half is the part people playwhile others are playing something they never played with anyone who played that part. So if you play thewrong part, its right. If you play the right part, it might be right if you play it wrong enough.But if you play it too right, it's wrong.
Interviewer: I don't understand.
Yogi: Anyone who understands jazz knows thatyou can't understand it. It's too complicated. That's what's so simple about it.
Interviewer: Do you understand it?
Yogi: No. That's why I can explain it. If I understood it, I wouldn't know anything about it.
Interviewer: Are there any great jazz players alive today?
Yogi: No. All the great jazz players alive today are dead. Except for the ones that are still alive. But so many of them are dead, that the ones that are still alive are dying to be like the ones that are dead.
Interviewer: What is syncopation?
Yogi: That's when the note that you should hear now happens either before or after you hear it. In jazz, you don't hear notes when they happen because that would be some other type of music. Other types of music can be jazz, but only if they're the same as something different from those other kinds.
Interviewer: Now I really don't understand.
Yogi: I haven't taught you enough for you to not understand jazz that well.
I have returned from Tokyo more or less intact and am attempting to sleep for a week and place all circumstances beyond my control. Much to relate but it will require a essay. In brief, Japan was super fabulous, as were the folks I with whom I worked (Yukiko, Ken, Nabeji, Rie, Nabe, Kaoru – I love you all) and it was also very Japanese, so much so that back-in-the-USA now seems grimly American. More of this later, however. Right now...
The secret word is Knackered.
I leave you with this gem that arrived while I was away, sent by both Jack Lancaster and Doug Lunn.
YOGI BERRA ON JAZZ
Interviewer: Yogi, can you explain jazz?
Yogi: I can't, but I will.... 90% of all jazz is halfimprovisation. The other half is the part people playwhile others are playing something they never played with anyone who played that part. So if you play thewrong part, its right. If you play the right part, it might be right if you play it wrong enough.But if you play it too right, it's wrong.
Interviewer: I don't understand.
Yogi: Anyone who understands jazz knows thatyou can't understand it. It's too complicated. That's what's so simple about it.
Interviewer: Do you understand it?
Yogi: No. That's why I can explain it. If I understood it, I wouldn't know anything about it.
Interviewer: Are there any great jazz players alive today?
Yogi: No. All the great jazz players alive today are dead. Except for the ones that are still alive. But so many of them are dead, that the ones that are still alive are dying to be like the ones that are dead.
Interviewer: What is syncopation?
Yogi: That's when the note that you should hear now happens either before or after you hear it. In jazz, you don't hear notes when they happen because that would be some other type of music. Other types of music can be jazz, but only if they're the same as something different from those other kinds.
Interviewer: Now I really don't understand.
Yogi: I haven't taught you enough for you to not understand jazz that well.
Thursday, November 18, 2004
DOC 40 WILL BE OFF THE AIR UNTIL NOVEMBER 29th. GONE EAST.
Meanwhile here's a free speech alarm from Wired...
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,65734-2,00.html?tw=wn_story_page_next1
The secret word is Barbarian
Meanwhile here's a free speech alarm from Wired...
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,65734-2,00.html?tw=wn_story_page_next1
The secret word is Barbarian
Monday, November 15, 2004
I've been running round like crazy preparing for my trip to Japan. So no deep insights to post but here's message from Allen Ginsberg to encourage us all. (courtesy of munz)
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/ginsberg/images/wakening.jpg
The secret word is Solid
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/ginsberg/images/wakening.jpg
The secret word is Solid
Thursday, November 11, 2004
This Yahoo News clip comes from some girl...
NEW YORK Sen. Zell Miller, who famously challenged MSNBC host Chris Matthews to a duel during the Republican convention this year, now may have to face New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. Appearing on Don Imus', Miller ripped the woman he called "Maureen Loud," calling her a "highbrow hussy from New York." He added that the "red-headed woman at the New York Times" should not mock anyone's religion: "You can see horns just sprouting up through that Technicolor hair." Asked by the New York Post for a response, Dowd said: "I'm not a highbrow hussy from New York. I'm a highbrow hussy from Washington."
Okay so it’s cute comeback from our Maureen, but it goes deeper. This is the fourth or fifth time in the last 48 hours I have heard a Red talking head repeating some variation on the theme that us Blues are losers because we "mock" or "make fun" of good folks "religious beliefs." And I haven’t been watching a whole bunch of TV either. The election’s gone but the kneejerk-phrase generator is still set on You-Can’t-Hide and pulling power from the shields.
And I write more on that in this weeks LA CityBeat...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=1387&IssueNum=75
Plus the good folks with the laughable religious beliefs are now beavering away trying to ban the movie "Kinsey." – Alfred Kinsey is responsible in part for my generation being forced to deal face-to-face with the devastating consequences of sexually transmitted diseases, pornography and abortion," said Brandi Swindell, head of a college-oriented group called Generation Life that plans to picket theaters showing the film. -- The Culture War opens more like water torture than Waterloo.
(But let’s not forget how the Red demographic ran out and bought generators and shotguns to ward off Y2K)
CRYPTIQUE – Shit’s outta control already, momma!
GWEN DAVITT RIP
NEW YORK Sen. Zell Miller, who famously challenged MSNBC host Chris Matthews to a duel during the Republican convention this year, now may have to face New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. Appearing on Don Imus', Miller ripped the woman he called "Maureen Loud," calling her a "highbrow hussy from New York." He added that the "red-headed woman at the New York Times" should not mock anyone's religion: "You can see horns just sprouting up through that Technicolor hair." Asked by the New York Post for a response, Dowd said: "I'm not a highbrow hussy from New York. I'm a highbrow hussy from Washington."
Okay so it’s cute comeback from our Maureen, but it goes deeper. This is the fourth or fifth time in the last 48 hours I have heard a Red talking head repeating some variation on the theme that us Blues are losers because we "mock" or "make fun" of good folks "religious beliefs." And I haven’t been watching a whole bunch of TV either. The election’s gone but the kneejerk-phrase generator is still set on You-Can’t-Hide and pulling power from the shields.
And I write more on that in this weeks LA CityBeat...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=1387&IssueNum=75
Plus the good folks with the laughable religious beliefs are now beavering away trying to ban the movie "Kinsey." – Alfred Kinsey is responsible in part for my generation being forced to deal face-to-face with the devastating consequences of sexually transmitted diseases, pornography and abortion," said Brandi Swindell, head of a college-oriented group called Generation Life that plans to picket theaters showing the film. -- The Culture War opens more like water torture than Waterloo.
(But let’s not forget how the Red demographic ran out and bought generators and shotguns to ward off Y2K)
CRYPTIQUE – Shit’s outta control already, momma!
GWEN DAVITT RIP
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
DEATH IN THE FAMILY
Doc40 takes personal time and turns over the helm to a highly pissed off Mr.MR.
The secret word is Orphan
CRYPTIQUE – He worships owls.
The following arrived from Mr MR this morning...
Fuck the South. Fuck 'em. We should have let them go when they wanted to leave. But no, we had to kill half a million people so they'd stay part of our special Union. Fighting for the right to keep slaves - yeah, those are states we want to keep.
And now what do we get? We're the fucking Arrogant Northeast Liberal Elite? How about this for arrogant: the South is the Real America? The Authentic America. Really? Cause we fucking founded this country, assholes. Those Founding Fathers you keep going on and on about? All that bullshit about what you think they meant by the Second Amendment giving you the right to keep your assault weapons in the glove compartment because you didn't bother to read the first half of the fucking sentence? Who do you think those wig-wearing lacy-shirt sporting revolutionaries were? They were fucking blue-staters, dickhead. Boston? Philadelphia? New York? Hello? Think there might be a reason all the fucking monuments are up here in our backyard?No, No. Get the fuck out.
We're not letting you visit the Liberty Bell and fucking Plymouth Rock anymore until you get over your real American selves and start respecting those other nine amendments. Who do you think those fucking stripes on the flag are for? Nine are for fucking blue states. And it would be 10 if those Vermonters had gotten their fucking Subarus together and broken off from New York a little earlier. Get it? We started this shit, so don't get all uppity about how real you are you Johnny-come-lately "Oooooh I've been a state for almost a hundred years" dickheads. Fuck off.Arrogant? You wanna talk about us Northeasterners being fucking arrogant? What's more American than arrogance? Hmmm? Maybe horsies? I don't think so.
Arrogance is the fucking cornerstone of what it means to be American. And I wouldn't be so fucking arrogant if I wasn't paying for your fucking bridges, bitch.All those Federal taxes you love to hate? It all comes from us and goes to you, so shut up and enjoy your fucking Tennessee Valley Authority electricity and your fancy highways that we paid for. And the next time Florida gets hit by a hurricane you can come crying to us if you want to, but you're the ones who built on a fucking swamp. "Let the Spanish keep it, it's a shithole," we said, but you had to have your fucking orange juice.
The next dickwad who says, "It's your money, not the government's money" is gonna get their ass kicked. Nine of the ten states that get the most federal fucking dollars and pay the least... can you guess? Go on, guess. That's right, motherfucker, they're red states. And eight of the ten states that receive the least and pay the most? It's too easy, asshole, they're blue states. It's not your money, assholes, it's fucking our money. What was that Real American Value you were spouting a minute ago? Self reliance?
Try this for self reliance: buy your own fucking stop signs, assholes.Let's talk about those values for a fucking minute. You and your Southern values can bite my ass because the blue states got the values over you fucking Real Americans every day of the goddamn week. Which state do you think has the lowest divorce rate you marriage-hyping dickwads? Well? Can you guess? It's fucking Massachusetts, the fucking center of the gay marriage universe. Yes, that's right, the state you love to tie around the neck of anyone to the left of Strom Thurmond has the lowest divorce rate in the fucking nation. Think that's just some aberration? How about this: 9 of the 10 lowest divorce rates are fucking blue states, asshole, and most are in the Northeast, where our values suck so bad. And where are the highest divorce rates? Care to fucking guess? 10 of the top 10 are fucking red-ass we're-so-fucking-moral states.
And while Nevada is the worst, the Bible Belt is doing its fucking part.But two guys making out is going to fucking ruin marriage for you? Yeah? Seems like you're ruining it pretty well on your own, you little bastards. Oh, but that's ok because you go to church, right? I mean you do, right? Cause we fucking get to hear about it every goddamn year at election time. Yes, we're fascinated by how you get up every Sunday morning and sing, and then you're fucking towers of moral superiority. Yeah, that's a workable formula.
Maybe us fucking Northerners don't talk about religion as much as you because we're not so busy sinning, hmmm? Ever think of that, you self-righteous assholes? No, you're too busy erecting giant stone tablets of the Ten Commandments in buildings paid for by the fucking Northeast Liberal Elite. And who has the highest murder rates in the nation? It ain't us up here in the North, assholes.Well this gravy train is fucking over. Take your liberal-bashing, federal-tax-leaching, confederate-flag-waving, holier-than-thou, hypocritical bullshit and shove it up your ass.And no, you can't have your fucking convention in New York next time. Fuck off.
Doc would also deny the bastards access to the Pacific – and end with...
FUNNY WEB LINK (from the Abominable Dr. Jake)
http://72.3.131.10/gallery/1/
Doc40 takes personal time and turns over the helm to a highly pissed off Mr.MR.
The secret word is Orphan
CRYPTIQUE – He worships owls.
The following arrived from Mr MR this morning...
Fuck the South. Fuck 'em. We should have let them go when they wanted to leave. But no, we had to kill half a million people so they'd stay part of our special Union. Fighting for the right to keep slaves - yeah, those are states we want to keep.
And now what do we get? We're the fucking Arrogant Northeast Liberal Elite? How about this for arrogant: the South is the Real America? The Authentic America. Really? Cause we fucking founded this country, assholes. Those Founding Fathers you keep going on and on about? All that bullshit about what you think they meant by the Second Amendment giving you the right to keep your assault weapons in the glove compartment because you didn't bother to read the first half of the fucking sentence? Who do you think those wig-wearing lacy-shirt sporting revolutionaries were? They were fucking blue-staters, dickhead. Boston? Philadelphia? New York? Hello? Think there might be a reason all the fucking monuments are up here in our backyard?No, No. Get the fuck out.
We're not letting you visit the Liberty Bell and fucking Plymouth Rock anymore until you get over your real American selves and start respecting those other nine amendments. Who do you think those fucking stripes on the flag are for? Nine are for fucking blue states. And it would be 10 if those Vermonters had gotten their fucking Subarus together and broken off from New York a little earlier. Get it? We started this shit, so don't get all uppity about how real you are you Johnny-come-lately "Oooooh I've been a state for almost a hundred years" dickheads. Fuck off.Arrogant? You wanna talk about us Northeasterners being fucking arrogant? What's more American than arrogance? Hmmm? Maybe horsies? I don't think so.
Arrogance is the fucking cornerstone of what it means to be American. And I wouldn't be so fucking arrogant if I wasn't paying for your fucking bridges, bitch.All those Federal taxes you love to hate? It all comes from us and goes to you, so shut up and enjoy your fucking Tennessee Valley Authority electricity and your fancy highways that we paid for. And the next time Florida gets hit by a hurricane you can come crying to us if you want to, but you're the ones who built on a fucking swamp. "Let the Spanish keep it, it's a shithole," we said, but you had to have your fucking orange juice.
The next dickwad who says, "It's your money, not the government's money" is gonna get their ass kicked. Nine of the ten states that get the most federal fucking dollars and pay the least... can you guess? Go on, guess. That's right, motherfucker, they're red states. And eight of the ten states that receive the least and pay the most? It's too easy, asshole, they're blue states. It's not your money, assholes, it's fucking our money. What was that Real American Value you were spouting a minute ago? Self reliance?
Try this for self reliance: buy your own fucking stop signs, assholes.Let's talk about those values for a fucking minute. You and your Southern values can bite my ass because the blue states got the values over you fucking Real Americans every day of the goddamn week. Which state do you think has the lowest divorce rate you marriage-hyping dickwads? Well? Can you guess? It's fucking Massachusetts, the fucking center of the gay marriage universe. Yes, that's right, the state you love to tie around the neck of anyone to the left of Strom Thurmond has the lowest divorce rate in the fucking nation. Think that's just some aberration? How about this: 9 of the 10 lowest divorce rates are fucking blue states, asshole, and most are in the Northeast, where our values suck so bad. And where are the highest divorce rates? Care to fucking guess? 10 of the top 10 are fucking red-ass we're-so-fucking-moral states.
And while Nevada is the worst, the Bible Belt is doing its fucking part.But two guys making out is going to fucking ruin marriage for you? Yeah? Seems like you're ruining it pretty well on your own, you little bastards. Oh, but that's ok because you go to church, right? I mean you do, right? Cause we fucking get to hear about it every goddamn year at election time. Yes, we're fascinated by how you get up every Sunday morning and sing, and then you're fucking towers of moral superiority. Yeah, that's a workable formula.
Maybe us fucking Northerners don't talk about religion as much as you because we're not so busy sinning, hmmm? Ever think of that, you self-righteous assholes? No, you're too busy erecting giant stone tablets of the Ten Commandments in buildings paid for by the fucking Northeast Liberal Elite. And who has the highest murder rates in the nation? It ain't us up here in the North, assholes.Well this gravy train is fucking over. Take your liberal-bashing, federal-tax-leaching, confederate-flag-waving, holier-than-thou, hypocritical bullshit and shove it up your ass.And no, you can't have your fucking convention in New York next time. Fuck off.
Doc would also deny the bastards access to the Pacific – and end with...
FUNNY WEB LINK (from the Abominable Dr. Jake)
http://72.3.131.10/gallery/1/
Monday, November 08, 2004
ODD
The worker’s flag was deepest red
It shrouded oft our martyred dead
But now it’s blue
And the blood will show through
SURPRISE, SURPRISE
No sooner is the election over than the Battle of Fallujah is underway. And from the way we’ve been softening up the city, the civilian casualties we’ll never hear about will be horrendous. And on the symbolic level we’ll be handing the Jihad a fucking legend. Pound a fortress/city with rockets, air strikes and artillery and then go in with infantry, it’s going to create the resonances of history; Masada, Hue, Stalingrad, The Alamo. Shee-it, George, there you go makin’ martyrs again. Even a dumb asshole like you must remember The Alamo.
The secret word is Conscript.
The worker’s flag was deepest red
It shrouded oft our martyred dead
But now it’s blue
And the blood will show through
SURPRISE, SURPRISE
No sooner is the election over than the Battle of Fallujah is underway. And from the way we’ve been softening up the city, the civilian casualties we’ll never hear about will be horrendous. And on the symbolic level we’ll be handing the Jihad a fucking legend. Pound a fortress/city with rockets, air strikes and artillery and then go in with infantry, it’s going to create the resonances of history; Masada, Hue, Stalingrad, The Alamo. Shee-it, George, there you go makin’ martyrs again. Even a dumb asshole like you must remember The Alamo.
The secret word is Conscript.
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