STILL HARD AT IT, BUT I THOUGHT THIS WAS WORTHY OF SOME CONSIDERATION

(from munz)

I AM HIDEOUSLY BUSY RIGHT NOW, BUT JUST SO YOU KNOW I'M STILL THINKING OF YOU, HERE'S A CLIP OF TORTOISES FUCKING

ALL CRAFT WARNING!
STEER CLEAR OF THE MONKEY PLANET
When Doug the Bass sent over the following excellent piece of film, I couldn’t help but recall a piece I wrote years ago for the old LA Reader, and since right now I’m up to my ass in a fairly arduous writing job, I decided to re-publish it for your general amuse ment.
Watch the clip – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a15KgyXBX24

Then read the story

BIG TROUBLE ON THE MONKEY PLANET
The last time that I was abducted by aliens, I returned with the distinct impression that they were close to the end of their extra-terrestrial rope with the Third Stone from the Sun and, in particular, its overdeveloped, tool using, simian inhabitants. Namely us -- the human race. When one of those lipless little grey suckers with the bald heads and huge guppy eyes came up to me, right there in the main abductee reception area, a charmless place not unlike Ontario airport with an added dimension, and wanted to know "when the hell are you Earth monkeys going to stop breeding yourselves into extinction", I had to accept the fact that we may not be the most admired lifeform in this neck of the quadrant.
I rarely admit my abduction experiences. Not so much because I'm embarrassed by them. It's more that I've never really felt that my encounters had been significantly productive. I tended to talk about them rather more when I lived in New York. I discovered that, on 14th Street, if you told the guy on the next bar stool that you were an UFO abductee, he would more than likely dismiss you as crazy, but mercifully harmless. Try the same thing at a party in Venice and they'll not only totally believe you but proceed to recount their own adventures in space, usually centering on intrusive alien surgical procedures, often of a gynecological nature. Some will even give you the number of a therapeutic support group.
It was during the initial medical examination that the ETs started to discover that I was hardly the experimental subject of their collective dreams. I was first abducted at a time when I was drinking even more heavily than usual. It solved the missing time problem, but my blood alcohol level spiked out and created chaos butterflies in their nano-stats. Even worse, my chromosomes had been so customized by the quantities of LSD 25 that I'd consumed during an earlier bout of destructive self exploration, that I was pretty much useless as a source of genetic material, unless, of course, someone or something wanted to breed a race of nappy haired tadpoles with nasty imaginations. Rumors also circulated that, when particularly fucked up, I would show a less than appropriate affection for the rectal probe.
In terms of the normal conventions of Earth/alien interaction, I pretty much proved myself a social incompetent, and I would never have been abducted again had the implant not already been in the small of my back, just to the left of my spine. This means I'm solidly on the tracking computer, and can be hauled up for a bogus 20 thousand light year service at any time, and there isn't a damn thing that I or any other bio-entity can do about it. I don't want to see them, they don't want to see me, but, like junk mail and unwanted relatives, they just keep coming around.
This was surely the reason that, after the third routine beam up, I was shuffled aside to hold gentlemanly if sometimes oblique conversations with Qua/D/Thrrof, the discursive focus of a being, essentially a form of highly intelligent yeast, about nine thousand miles long and one molecule thick, that makes its home in a loose orbit around Jupiter. Qua/D/Thrrof was the first alien to make crystal clear what I'd already suspected. As far as the rest of the inhabitants of the viable cluster are concerned, here on the Monkey Planet, (as Earth is commonly known) we are in big trouble. That's why, even after twenty thousand years, we still haven't emerged from the quarantine phase as laid down in the Prime Directive. (He also confirmed how Tom Tomorrow's theory about the Republican Party and Rush Limbaugh being a secret alien test of human stupidity is uncannily on the money.)
Like most foreigners, Qua/D/Thrrof blames a considerable proportion of Monkey Planet woes to the affluent of the United States. (Or, as they call them, The Resource Gobblers.) In our most recent conversation, he expressed trepidation over how 2000 AD is a Presidential election year, and the escalating horror of the phenomenon might, this time round, actually push us over into a collective, species-wide, greed-barking psychosis.
"I don't know why you don't just get rid of democracy." Qua/D/Thrrof has a certain problem gasping concepts like the rights of the individual, coming as he does from a collective consciousness of over two billion component facets. He's good, however, at accepting nuances like how election finance reform is fundamentally impossible because the television stations end up with the lion's share of the bucks, and around election time, politics yields more ad revenue than headache remedies, phone sex and psychic hotlines combined.
"Just get rid of television." Even other passing aliens realized that Qua/D/Thrrof was elaborately out of touch with this remark. A small green person with tentacles and huge ears sadly shook what approximated for a head. "It's only television that keeps them from killing each other more than they already do. If television hadn't been introduced in the fifties, they'd be into mechanized erotic cannibalism by now. You know what the monkeys are like when you leave them to their own devices."
Another received snippet of intergalactic gossip is that our Earth, despite its quarantine, is getting the reputation as a clandestine hangout of vermin and lowlife. High on the list are the crew of retard hot rodders and nova scum from Zeta Reticuli who've been putting on the lightshows out at Area 51, just north of Las Vegas, and sending the conspiracy paranoids into uproar. It would seem that these alien Hells Angels have managed to have convinced the US military that they are the Supreme Authority in the Universe, rather than the malicious honky tonk sweepings of a hundred parasecs, and now have total run of the Pentagon.
What really worries Qua/D/Thrrof, however, is our galloping overpopulation. "Surest way to foul up a perfectly good planet. You either got to stop breeding or start dying." Qua/D/Thrrof is especially pissed at the Catholic Church and their attitudes to population control. As he puts it "Jesus was one of ours in the first place. It's kinda embarrassing."
Another serious consideration would seem to be that many aliens feel that our Earthling stupidity is playing directly into the hands of some galactic political hard liners. Apparently the stampede to the bellicose right is not confined to only this solar system. An entire multi-species mindset would be just as happy to fire up the Great Planet Fryer and turn this whole messy sphere that we call home into one vast, fused, green glass Christmas Tree ornament. Seemingly they view Earth as something akin to a planetary welfare case.
Like they say on the X-Files. "The truth is out there." Or at least some approximation of it.
Written in 1996. First published in 1996 in The Los Angeles Reader as a column in the "Panic In The Year Zero" series.

The secret word is Banana

ALSO fidcen sent over the full text of Hugo Chavez speech to the UN. And I was a amused to note that a number of talking heads on MSNBC seemed to think that reference to the Satanic smell of sulphur was a fart joke. Do we live in South Park?
http://www.counterpunch.org/chavez09202006.html

Bumpersticker lifted from Valley Boy

http://www.valleyboy.net/

THANK WHATEVER DEITY YOU FAVOR IT’S FUCKING FRIDAY
Because I for one have had more then enough of this week, what with all the unseemly Sept 11th clamor, our incoherent President all over the media selling his bloody war, the same media drooling over Debra Lafave, no more Deadwood, my own constant craving for nicotine, an importunate feline, the fact that I am neither making love nor expecting rain, plus a bunch of other nasty interior phantasms that bedevil my mind, but are far too personal and maybe revealing to describe. On the plus side, I have obtained a copy of ol’ Bob Dylan’s new blues record and like it a whole lot, but that’s not a great deal to make up for the rest of the shit.

In would also draw regular readers attention to the old comments board up on the right ("comments (977)" just above the crow logo) which seems sadly neglected. Okay so it’s cranky, ancient, and hard to scroll, slow to load – but who isn’t these days, dahling. It used to be a lot of fun and I’d sure like to see it make it to 1000.

Among my peers, the lovely Natalie Nichols has a column in LA CityBeat that is both witty and thought provoking, although some of the boys don’t get the joke...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=4341&IssueNum=171

And inebriate, occasional Deviant and former Texas Jewboy Michael Simmons has started writing for HuffPo...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-simmons/wayne-coe-is-a-scream_b_29383.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-simmons/the-us-vs-john-len_b_29446.html

The cats in the picture came from http://www.hotheadpaisan.com/ (sent by some girl)

And the secret word is (now nostalgically) Cocksucker

ANN RICHARDS – RIP

AND TO MAKE MATTERS MORE COMPLICATED, SOMEONE LISTENED!

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION
On the first of this month, I exhorted everyone to read Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC Countdown editorial, and damn me, but I’m only doing it again. Today Olbermann took special time to castigate Bush’s 9/11 antics, and the wretched little ABC/Disney propaganda miniseries that concluded tonight. In conclusion he even went to so far as to cite Rod Serling. Which ain’t bad for cable news....
"This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney's continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things.
And long ago, a series called "The Twilight Zone" broadcast a riveting episode entitled "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."
In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm. Suddenly his car -- and only his car -- starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man's lights go on. As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced. An "alien" is shot -- but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help. The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials are seen manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there's no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it's themselves."
And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight: "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men.
"For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own -- for the children, and the children yet unborn."
For the whole bit...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/

The secret word is Cornfield

THE TWILIGHT ZONE IS ESPECIALLY APT IN THIS CONTEXT AS ALL THE MANUFACTURED 9/11 SPIN AND HOO-HA HAS ONLY SERVED TO DISGUISE THE NEWS THAT CAME WITH YESTERDAYS WASHINGTON POST THAT THE WAR ISN’T ONLY FUCKed UP, BUT POSSIBLY BEING LOST...
"The chief of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq recently filed an unusual secret report concluding that the prospects for securing that country's western Anbar province are dim and that there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there.
The officials described Col. Pete Devlin's classified assessment of the dire state of Anbar as the first time that a senior U.S. military officer has filed so negative a report from Iraq. "We haven't been defeated militarily but we have been defeated politically -- and that's where wars are won and lost."

Wars, I might add that will have resonances that could last for generations, if not centuries. If we have centuries.

OTHER LINKS...
Valleyboy makes a point about James Woods new TV series...
http://www.valleyboy.net/

While blu sends a link to someone who is very concerned about contrails...
http://www.surfingtheapocalypse.com/conchem.html

And shane flipside just has to be read to be believed...
http://shaneshit.blogspot.com/

BUT THERE ARE OTHER WAYS OF LOOKING AT IT...

(sent by the fabulous Valerie)

I refuse to post a picture of the twin towers burning. Today is September 11th. It is the anniversary of the attack on New York City in 2001, and also the 1973 death of Salvador Allende and the overthrow of legally elected government in Chile by a fascist military junta backed by the Nixon Administration and the CIA. I have heard much distressing blather about the one and nothing about the other, except the comment below. I figure I’ll do my own remembering in private.

The secret word is Tears

AND PEOPLE WHO KNOW DON’T VOTE THEM INTO PUBLIC OFFICE BECAUSE THE WHORES IN WASHINGTON TRANSMIT FAR WORSE CONTAGIONS THAT SYPHILIS AND GONORRHEA. (This has been a public service announcement.)

So where do we start this fine Sunday? How about the fact that...
THE AMAZON APPEARS TO BE DYING
(That’s the river. Not the dot com.)
As in this story from New Zealand that claims "the consequences would be awesome. The wet Amazon Basin would turn to dry savannah at best, desert at worst. This would cause much of the world to become hotter and drier. In the long term, it could send global warming out of control, eventually making the world uninhabitable.At one point in the western Brazilian state of Acre, the world's biggest river shrank so far that it was possible to walk across it. Millions of fish died, and thousands of communities whose only transport was by water were stranded. And the drying forest caught fire; in September, satellite camera images showed 73,000 blazes in the basin." For the whole horrible and almost unnoticed story –
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/print.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10392615

(pic by Chris Welch)

Meanwhile back on TV...
SO REPUBLICANS ARE FUCKING LIARS AND STILL SPOOKED BY BILL CLINTON? SO WHAT ELSE IS NEW?
Today I’m going to be doing my best not to watch the piece-of-shit ABC 9/11 miniseries that seems to be attempting to prove that the 2001 attack on New York was all Bill Clinton’s fault. Max Blumenthal did a bang up job following the money and the influence that made this rewrite of history possible, and how, bankrolled by Disney and the far right, the plot centers around the machinations of the despicable David Horovitz. Here’s the link...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/discover-the-secret-right_b_29015.html

Blumenthal did a great piece of joining the dots, but the way the left-ish media responded has me kinda worried. Isn’t there a tactical thinker – or even a poker player – in the while mess of them. Last week, Bush was practically on the ropes and babbling, and the left should have just been pounding him in the ribs with Katrina and the War. The ABC show would most likely netted lame to lousy ratings, but then this furor-of-the-week blew up, and the entire bloody liberal media drops everything and starts defending Ol’ Bill like it was 1999. The net result is more pointless noise. Bush, Rummy and the rest get a breathing space, and ABC gets a shitload of free promo, adding profit to propaganda. I suspect the only real way to neutralize the likes of Horowitz, Coulter, Hitchens etc., is to ignore them. By responding, we guarantee their face time. It's so damned tempting to go after these lying scum fucks, but its also a terrible waste of resources and playing into their game. If I was rich, I'd commission a highly plausible, CGI porno of Bush and Condi in BDSM flagrante and let that sucker loose on YouTube. Alas though... (This all started off a note to LA CityBeat Editor Steve Appleford, but then kinda grew.)

The secret word is Remote.

ABOUT FUCKING TIME
After only a sixteen month wait, someone has finally posted something new on the Supermodels Personals site. Whoever writes it, the shit is funny, and as irascible Uncle Lou long ago instructed us – "first thing you learn is that you’ve always got to wait."
http://supermodelpersonals.blogspot.com/

AND ON OTHER LINKS
Shane has sent this link to a fascinating but alarmingly dense treatise on paradox...
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n17/jame02_.html

Gawker tells how, on the Animal Farm that is now the alt press, Mike Lacey’s new Village Voice has just dispatched Bob Christgau to the glue factory.
http://www.gawker.com/news/village-voice/the-dean-is-dead-198022.php

Hipspinster is blogging up a storm.
http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/

I would also have a rant for you to read on the Katrina and 9/11 "anniversaries", except the fucking LA CityBeat website (which I innocently hoped would one day join the 21st century, but...) is currently down. (Repeat Lou Reed quote. Fade to black.)

The secret word is Up

FLICKER-FLASH-POW: LATER EDIT
The LACB site is up again so here's the column...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=4303&IssueNum=170

(The photo is from Jon and we figure it's an industrial action by Brazilian miners)

HAPPY LABOR DAY, BROTHER AND SISTERS!

Graphic transmitted by Munz

Picture by mickryan
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/38444732/

AFGHAN OPIUM CROP BREAKS ALL RECORDS
I was happy to read the following in today’s New York Times since it pretty much confirms everything I was ranting on about in LA CityBeat back in July... http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=3994&IssueNum=161 )
KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 2 — Afghanistan’s opium harvest this year has reached the highest levels ever recorded, showing an increase of almost 50 percent from last year, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, said Saturday in Kabul. He described the figures as "alarming" and "very bad news" for the Afghan government and international donors who have poured millions of dollars into programs to reduce the poppy crop since 2001.
He said the increase in cultivation was significantly fueled by the resurgence of Taliban rebels in the south, the country’s prime opium growing region. As the insurgents have stepped up attacks, they have also encouraged and profited from the drug trade, promising protection to growers if they expanded their opium operations.
"This year’s harvest will be around 6,100 metric tons of opium — a staggering 92 percent of total world supply. It exceeds global consumption by 30 percent," Mr. Costa said at a news briefing."
I would, however, advise Mr Costa not to worry about under-consumption. Mood I’m in, I could make up the difference on my own. And wouldn’t the world be mightily improved by a whole lotta old fashioned opium dens with cushions, fans and beautiful – should we call them flight attendants? – to keep the pipes filled and lit?

The secret word is Dream

In Europe they would seem to have fewer illusions. But meanwhile, back in the USA...

THIS REALLY DESERVES TO BE READ BY EVERYONE
In an uncharacteristic solo wrap to his MSNBC show Countdown, Keith Olbermann delivered the following and gravely angry editorial after Donald Rumsfeld’s extraordinary speech to the American Legion in which he brought the oozy art of rabid innuendo to a previously unrivaled level.

"Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis—and the sober contemplation—of every American. For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence -- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve." For the full text...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12131617/#060830b

The secret word is Algae (which I believe is the name for the green stuff that floats on stagnant ponds.)

THEY DON’T MAKE IT EASY
The following story comes from some girl who also supplied the Bush/Hitler graphic above...
"The level of nicotine that smokers typically consume per cigarette has risen about 10 percent in the past six years, making it harder to quit and easier to get hooked, according to a new report released Tuesday by the Massachusetts Department of Health. "

For the whole foul story...

THIS CULTURE IS TAKING LEAVE OF ITS SENSES SO RAPIDLY, IT CAN MAKE A POOR BOY’S HEAD SPIN
Did you hear about what’s going on in Maine? I got this from MSNBC. Seems that up there in Maine – which is, after all, deep Stephen King country – the National Guard has come up with what’s being called the ``Flat Daddy" and ``Flat Mommy" phenomenon, in which life-size cutouts of deployed service members are given by the Maine National Guard to spouses, children, and relatives back home. The Flat Daddies ride in cars, sit at the dinner table, visit the dentist, and even are brought to confession, according to their significant others on the home front. ``I prop him up in a chair, or sometimes put him on the couch and cover him up with a blanket," said Kay Judkins of Caribou, whose husband, Jim, is a minesweeper mechanic in Afghanistan. ``The cat will curl up on the blanket, and it looks kind of weird. I've tricked several people by that. They think he's home again." Does the name Rupert Pupkin ring any bells?

GLENN FORD -- RIP

TOUCHED AND AMAZED
(But also aware that this will quickly get self-indulgent and boring, but this self revelation so prevents me from turning back.)
Well, the eradication of the demon nicotine continues. I permitting the jones three fags yesterday and that’s it. I hope, by the weekend, the gaspers will be history, excluding maybe the odd lapse while drinking. (Never strive for total perfection, it is an affront to the gods.) Meanwhile the encouragement continues. The most original (with illustration left) comes from Jon...
"How often have you paused to ask yourself, "How long could I hold my breath if I was called upon to rescue a babe from the clutches of a gigantic octopus?"
He also includes an entire webpage of octopus and babe related pulp and comic art. Which you gotta admit is weird.
http://www.cyrune.com/pulp.html

Alan proves a comrade in arms...
"Yes, good luck with quitting the ciggies, Mick. I had to, (after 39 years), as I have a dodgy heart valve they want to fix. Trouble is the valve is hereditry so I begrudge giving them up. Worst is finding something to do when you usually smoked, ie after a beer, a coffee, food, everything! They say it's more addictive than heroin, and they stick us in a padded cell to get over that. Nevertheless, good luck, and as an afterthought, I loved the parallel in 'Conflagration' of the Bowie to Jones knife - I noticed if no one else did! Stick with it, the world needs Mick Farren around!" – Alan. (Alan is at http://alanburridge.freeuk.com )

"Hang on in there over the nicotine withdrawal, if it's your programme plan then it should work for you so ignore all other advice/suggestions." – Miriam

But that enough self-pity. The normal attacks will resume after this.

The secret word is Craving

Have a Futurista Tuesday, boys and girls!







Is the secret word Distorted?

"Farren will never quit. These human-alien hybrids are pathetic suckers for nicotine."

BUT IN FACT I’M HANGING IN AND GETTING LOTS OF SUPPORT...

"You don't know me, and i only know you through yer blog and albums, but good luck with quiting the smoking. i'm trying to quit right now(first time at 30), and it's harder than i thought. the brain starts to go funny after prolonged abstinence.
it might just be me, but the ramsey case seems to be straight up exploitation of a sensational and disgusting crime, endlessly regurgitated by the media to feed the morbid fascination of the pixilated masses. i don't watch tv, but friends of mine who do say it's a non-stop media frenzy. sick. what did this guy eat on the plane? blah blah. as for tv itself, if i want to watch a bee with a french accent extoll to me the virtues of using the latest nasal spray, i'll do six hits of acid. haven't watched tv for 7 years now, and glad of it. advertizing resembles bad trips, and tv shows and news programs bring to mind 1984. it seems that for those that have disconnected from the boob tube, when going back it seems more than surreal, it truly resembles brainwashing. but of course, as the anarcho-punk band Crass put it, "big brother aint' watchin' you mate, you're fucking watching him." death to the cathode ray tube..ptoofffffff, – -sam

Wish i had some good advice about quitting smoke, but i'm a wretched tobacco sucker myself... may the Force be with you. – best, nuno

Hey, good luck, amigo. Horrible fucking drug. Horrible fucking companies, who profit from it too. – aeswiren

In fact, I’m sticking to self-devised program despite the fact that the jones really fucking sucks, but all this posting sets me up for so much public humiliation if I fail, I am compelled to succeed. Zen ego-logic, ese? (But where is the comfort of Kim Novak?)

LINKS
A Bob Dylan anecdote
http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/blowin.asp

A dry but handy site that monitors the evil moves of multinationals
http://www.oligopolywatch.com/

Blog of Jon who is one of the good guys
http://www.cheblogs.com/roller/page/njon/

(The email here is still byron4d@msn.com )

IF THE UTTERANCES GROW DISTORTED...
Once again – and I hope for the very last time – I am wrestling with the cutting down and ultimate elimination of cigarettes from my life, and the dismantling of all that early programming by Humphrey Bogart, James Dean, James Bond, Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, FDR, and Oscar Wilde. I tried a while ago, but no-kidding fate violently intervened and pretty much whacked me back to square one. (Do not pass Go and pick up a carton of Merit on the way.) But here I am, trying it all over again, swearing to retire the black and silver Zippo, while admitting that the romance of the coughing-outlaw, lunger-poet is definitely not all it’s cracked up to be, and is seriously inhibiting other areas of potential adventure. So wish me luck and look kindly on any weirdness in my though processes because this shit ain’t easy.

The secret word is Wheeze

I seem to be on an ursine kick this weekend, but also need an excuse to post this great graphic from Valerie...

THE BEARS ARE PISSED!
They’ve been shot at in New Jersey, messed with in Montana, the polar bears in the arctic are seeing their environment melt to slush around them, and now fucking Bush wants to hand it all over to his oil baron masters. Also I understand that studies show male polar bears’ genitals are shrinking due to pollution. (I got this fact from Bill Maher, but I guess he’s as good a source as any.) And Butterstick the cam-panda (left?) is grown and wholly forgotten. Would you blame the bears if they came looking for payback? And wouldn’t it be nice if one of them ate Christopher Hitchens.

The secret word is Paddington

ROBERT REDFORD WANTS YOU TO WATCH THIS VIDEO, AND SO DO I AND SO DO THE BEARS

http://www.nrdcactionfund.org/redfordarctic/action.asp?step=2&item=52387

DOGGONE BUMMER
Pluto is no longer a planet. After a tumultuous week of clashing over the essence of the cosmos, leading astronomers stripped Pluto of the planetary status it has held since its discovery in 1930. And I’m bummed, or, as HCB puts it "Woke up this morning, dug around in my pants and found I was missing a planet. They can't take that away from me." The question of of the exact nature Goofy has not been resolved.

IN THE SAME EMAIL, HCB ALSO REMARKS
"Funny you'd bring up Lee Harvey in connection to Karr – I thought of Oswald as soon as I saw him. Same vacancy or whatever that quality is in his eyes. Someone who has really crossed that border. Meantime they're showing more footage of JB Ramsay on stage in her bathing suit.
(Spoiler warning)
"Don't know if I mentioned this, but the whole deal with Little Miss Sunshine is all about a kid who wants to go to one of these pageants, but who is completely unsuited for the thing. Meantime, unbeknowst to the audience and the girl's family, her porn crazy coke and dope snorting grandpappy Alan Arkin has tutored her to do a strip to Superfreak, which is the climax of the picture. I keep wishing they'd play that song when they show JBR on these segments."

"Don’t worry about the morning after, darling. The night before is going to be complicated enough."

FINALLY SOME REPRODUCTIVE GOOD NEWS
Adults may buy the morning-after pill without a prescription - but only with proof they're 18 or older, US federal health officials decided Thursday. The Food and Drug Administration ruling culminated a contentious three-year effort to ease access to the emergency contraceptive.

The secret word is Finally

A COUPLE OF LINKS
The radical yippie archive of the late great Stew Albert
http://www.stewalbert.com/

And this – if nothing else – presents a weird cross section of humanity...
http://www.elvisinfonet.com/index.html

CRYPTIQUE – Why is there something instead of nothing?

THE ANNALS OF FLATULENCE
I cannot help but wonder who organized yesterday’s cable news inundation of items about how George Bush totally adores fart jokes and even "cuts a few for laughs." I figure the Democrats hardly have the wit to pull something so perfectly frat house, so it has to be the work of some faction of Republicans attempting to get out from under the escalating national dislike of their President. Unfortunately no one – not even the History Channel – had the audacity to work in a resume of previous world leaders famous for their farting. But here on Doc 40, audacity is our business. Heading the list, of course, would be Adolf Hitler (left), who broke wind continuously as a result of his bizarre, self-designed, vegetarian diet that seemed to consist of lentils and cabbage, followed by chocolate eclairs. Unlike Bush, however, Hitler did not find this in any way amusing, and was profoundly embarrassed by his odorous affliction. (It must be made clear that Doc40 is in no way likening – or even comparing – our President to Hitler. It’s just that a fart is a fart.)

The secret word is Poot!

FROM THE SUBMERGED TO THE RIDICULOUS
After being creeped out all day by the absurd news debate about whether John Mark Karr (already he has the killer’s three names – as in Lee Harvey Oswald) drank champagne on his business class flight from Bangkok, punctuated by the bloody President telling us that we’ll stay in Iraq for as long as he’s in office, I watched When The Levees Broke, Spike Lee’s superb documentary of New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina, and could hardly believe I was living in the same country. Lee’s unflinching and gorgeously edited four part piece (two more tomorrow on HBO) brought the suffering alive and reminded us that, while the barrage of Karr obsession sweeps cable news, New Orleans is still in ruins, and the bastards who did nothing, far from being impeached, fired, or taken out the back and shot, still wield their vacuous and vicious power. And more hurricanes are going to come.

The secret word is Swine

But isn’t the future itself by very definition a continuous and unstoppable revolution, and the only option it presents is to shape its temporal insurection from a position we must perceive as altruism? (Or maybe revenge?) Because, come what may, we will not escape it.

Who would have thought, even maybe a dozen years ago, that such communication as this would have been possible, and, on this ethereal net, I would be free to ponder – pointlessly or otherwise – sadness and madness, the inconsequential and the crucial, the literary and the perfunctory, the weight of deprivation, the absence of adoration, the lack of liason, and the lightness isolation, to balance mortality and triviality, the mundane and the feline (who, right now, loudly requires me to go with him on a midnight adventure.)

La Rivoluzione Futurista advances, with its attendant wingmen, those two old lags Confusion and Delusion, while the horsemen shoot seven-come-eleven for our pitiable humanity.

The future, by nature, is revolution. We make of it what we can.

CRYPTIQUE – Or do you just want to be on the side that’s winning?

SOME WEEKEND LINKS
The blog of Donnel Alexander
http://www.myspace.com/donnellalexander
Political Dylan parody sent by 00Soul
http://-paulhipp-.cf.huffingtonpost.com/Audio%20Only.html
Mo’ Valley Boy
http://www.valleyboy.net/
Mo’ hipspinster
http://hipspinster.blogspot.com
And folks saying nice things about me (and the autobiography referred to is Give The Anarchist A Cigarette)
http://www.blackcatbone.34sp.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=46693

OR DEATH?

INCORRECT? YEAH, BUT YOU GOTTA LAUGH
Doug the Bass writes...
OK, I have to admit it. "Politically correct" behavior and language has had a seriously negative effect on the state of humor. I confess that, as much as I detest nationalist stereotypes, few things strike fear into me like the concept of "New Age Standup". It's hard to escape the fact that humor remains the most intelligent form of cruelty. Still, that's no excuse for me forwarding this...
AND HERE’S THE JOKE...
LOGIC BADA BING
Vinny and Sal are out in the woods hunting when suddenly Sal grabs his chest and falls to the ground. He doesn't seem to be breathing; his eyes are rolled back in his head. Vinny whips out his cell phone and calls 911. He gasps to the operator, I think Sal is dead! What should I do?"
The operator, in a calm soothing voice says, "Just take it easy and follow my instructions. First, let's make sure he's dead."
There is a silence. and then a shot is heard.
Vinny voice comes back on the line, "Okay ... now what?"

The secret word is Goombah

THE BULWER-LYTTON FICTION CONTEST
(from Jude at Borderlands books in SF)
The winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for 2006 have been announced! In case you're not familliar with this august contest, (whose results are announced in July) their website explains it succinctly: "An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is the essence of simplicity: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels." This year's winner was submitted by Jim Guigli of Carmichael, CA: "Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean." For more startlingly bad opening lines, visit

http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/english/2006.htm.

And talking of books, reports have come out of Crawford, Texas, that our President was seen looking at a copy of The Stranger by Albert Camus. We can only assume that, from the title, he assumed it was a western.

The secret word is Literacy

SELF ADVERTIZING
I discovered this glowing review of the 1996 Deviants studio CD cut in LA, and since, it’s a bit of a rare forgotten gem, I thought I’d toss it up while recuperating.
http://www.answers.com/topic/eating-jello-with-a-heated-fork

IS PLUTO A PLANET?
(AND THEREFORE WHAT THE FUCK IS GOOFY?)
Nearly 2,500 astronomers from 75 countries gathered in Prague Monday to come up with a universal definition of what qualifies as a planet and possibly decide whether Pluto should keep its planet status. For more...
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aCyILM8pzjwk&refer=europe

(Am still not feeling well, but have antibiotics and may live.)

The secret word is Hack

AND LET’S NOT FORGET THAT ELVIS DIED 29 YEARS AGO TODAY

I am feeling a little unwell today. Mo better tommorow, I hopes.

The secret word is Zygote

And right on schedule...
FEAR FEAR
FEAR FEAR
FEAR FEAR
FEAR FEAR
FEAR FEAR
FEAR FEAR
FEAR FEAR
FEAR FEAR
FEAR FEAR
FEAR FEAR

FEAR FEAR
FEAR FEAR
FEAR FEAR
FEAR FEAR
FEAR FEAR
OH, AND DID I MENTION TERROR?
(And of course the ever popular tax cuts for the rich and quantum profits for the oil industry?)
In the above, my friends, you have the entire 2006 Republican election campaign in a nutshell.
The illustration – send by Valerie – is Cruficied Grouper by Hugo Bruce. (And damn do I feel like a crucified grouper.)

BUT TO STOP YOU ALL GETTING AS DEPRESSED AS I AM,
here’s a bit of video of a monkey annoying Tigers. It was sent by HCB who advises turning off the ghastly audio.
Http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8811551493740102634&hl=en

The secret word is Signifyin’

GORE IS GREAT!
A couple of weeks ago interviewed Gore Vidal -- one of my heroes -- and here’s the teaser...

"[Bush and his cronies] are all sissies. Remember that," he says. "These are people who’ve never been in an army. The men behind the war in Iraq are cowards who did not fight in Vietnam. They’ve run away like the president, who I refer to as the Yellow Rose of Texas. They’re weak little people with an agenda – which is: ‘We’ve gotta show our muscle around the world. Running out of oil? We’ll take it. Show how tough we are. We’re macho.’ And we’re also dumbo, and that is the problem."

For the whole deal...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=4180&IssueNum=166

I also managed a demented deliberation on TV commercials...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=4177&IssueNum=166

VAMPIRE SEA SPIDERS!
Everyone knows we adore cute critters at Doc40, but these, drawn to our attention by HCB, seem pretty fucking extreme. (And don’t they look kinda familiar, Lt. Ripley?) Oh for the happy days of the pandacam.
"Weird spider-like creatures that live at the bottom of the ocean and use a 'straw' to suck on their prey are baffling scientists. These sea spiders, some of which are blind, are defying scientific classification. They crawl along the bottom of the sea floor, sometimes more than 6000 to 7000 metres down, where they live in the dark, feeding on slow-moving soft-bodied sponges and sea slugs."
For the full story...
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1675573.htm

The secret word is Bathyscape

ARTHUR LEE -- RIP

EVIL DOG EATS ELVIS’ TEDDY
The invaluable somegirl and also Valerie (welcome back) both sent versions of the following tale of horror...
"On Tuesday night the doberman pinscher guard dog, after six years' blameless service, went berserk: within minutes Mabel, a 1909 German-made Steiff teddy bear once owned by Elvis Presley, more recently the pride and joy of an English aristocrat, lay mortally wounded."
For the full story...
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1836014,00.html

or
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5240832.stm

CRYPTIQUE – Put a chain around my neck and lead me anywhere.

YOU’RE JUST NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THIS!
As many regular Doc40 visitors know our great and good friend Boss Goodman – former Deviants roadie, former Pink Fairies tour manager, former club DJ, concert promoter, and master chef at the Portobello Gold suffered a left-brain stroke back at the end of March. Since that time, he has received all kinds visits and notes of love and encouragement, but the one linked below really takes the cake. I can’t say more without giving away the surprise, but believe me, it’s scarcely believable.
(The pic was taken by Rich Deakin. It shows Boss at the country estate of Felix Dennis during his recovery from a heart episode that may have been a overture to the stroke. The sculpture, one of a series in Felix’s Garden of Fame is of a young Bob Dylan at the bedside of Woody Guthrie.)

Check this out!
http://www.mannorak.com/clintlet.htm

The secret word is Wow!

(And the headline below is purely coincidental and in no way a joke about Boss's famous girth.)

THE BIGGEST GODDAMNED DAMNED BLOB IN THE UNIVERSE
HCB sent over the following news report. There is no suggestion so far that it’s coming to get us, but you never know. (The blimp! The blimp! Fast and bulbous!)

An enormous amoeba-like structure 200 million light-years wide and made up of galaxies and large bubbles of gas is the largest known object in the universe, scientists say. The galaxies and gas bubbles, called Lyman alpha blobs, are aligned along three curvy filaments that formed about 2 billion years after the universe exploded into existence after the theoretical Big Bang. The filaments were recently seen using the Subaru and Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea. The galaxies within the newly found structure are packed together four times closer than the universe's average. Some of the gas bubbles are up to 400,000 light years across, nearly twice the diameter of our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy. Scientists think they formed when massive stars born early in the history of the universe exploded as supernovas and blew out their surrounding gases. Another theory is that the bubbles are giant gas cocoons that will one day give birth to new galaxies. The finding will give researchers new insight into what the structure of cosmos looks like at the largest scale. "Something this large and this dense would have been rare in the early universe," said study team member Ryosuke Yamauchi from Tohoku University. "The structure we discovered and others like are probably the precursors of the largest structures we see today which contain multiple clusters of galaxies," Yamauchi said.

The secret word is Jello.

RETRO DOGGONE
I discovered the reflection linked below in the course of my web wanderings and found it touching and poignant. Or maybe I just have a soft spot for cosmonaut canines.
http://headwideopen.blogspot.com/2006/07/rip-laika.html

The secret word is Whimper

NOTE THE FABRIC

On the left is Miss Israel, on the right in Miss Lebanon. They are at war. Yet the beauty pagents continue as the rockets explode, nations tear themselves apart, and we fear the eventual nuclear option. Doesn't this all make it totally pointless and criminally absurd and increasingly push the mind to the end of its tether?

The secret word is Extinction

"Okay so Farren will be out here pissing and moaning that’s it’s to hot to blog – or do anything else for that matter – and how there are power outages all across the nation, and it’s the end of the world, blah, blah, blah, and then he’ll post this picture because – unlike Stephen Colbert – he thinks bears are adorable, but this bear has some fucking news for all you human’s, okay? This may look way cute, and way cool, but what you don’t know is that this lump of ice I’m sitting on is ALL THAT’S FUCKING LEFT OF THE NORTH POLE, YOU BASTARDS!"

The secret word is Torridness.

Meanwhile, an old friend becomes a new blogger at...
www.valleyboy.net

And I have a media column in today's LA CityBeat on TV coverage of the brand new war.
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=4103&IssueNum=164

HEAT?

I CANNOT LIE TO YOU...
So where have all the blogs been for almost a week? The answer is that it’s been too fucking hot (as 100F+ in some parts of LA) to do anything much of anything except my appointed tasks, which in that last 4-5 days have included a major interview with Gore Vidal which will appear in LA CityBeat on the next couple of weeks, and also two live shows which made me very happy. I confidently hope that normal service with be resumed as soon as the temperatures drops at least into the low eighties.

Meanwhile, the lovely hipspinster had been blogging up a storm about Sir Ian Mckellan and the fear of Mercury in retrograde...
http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/

And the Doug the Bass sent over the following with the comment with which I totally concur "Hey, what do you know? Something from the Ayn RandInstitute that I actually agree with."

OPPONENTS OF EMBRYONIC STEM CELL RESEARCH AREOPPONENTS OF HUMAN LIFE JULY 20, 2006
"President Bush's claim that embryonic stem cell research violates 'the dignity of human life' is morally obscene," said Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "This research has the potential to rescue millions of individuals from painful and life-threatening diseases. Anyone who places the welfare of a few undifferentiated cells above that of actual human beings cannot claim to value human life. "There are no rational grounds for ascribing rights to an unconscious cluster of cells smaller than a grain of sand. But the opposition to embryonic stem cell research is not based on reason--it's based purely on religious dogma. From the development of anesthesia to the introduction of birth control, religion has consistently opposed scientific and medical progress. Today, with their assaults on evolution, cloning, and stem cell research, the religious right is attempting to drag us back to the Dark Ages. "Anyone who values human life must stand up forscience and against President Bush's attempt to impose his religious agenda on America."

The secret word is Swelter

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