SINCE BUSH AND CHANEY HAVE FAILED TO RESIGN, LET'S TURN TO THE ODD FOR THE WEEKEND

A good place to start is to stare into the blue sphere for as long as your attention span can take it. If you see anything of any rare significance, it would probably be best to stop there, because you are a long way ahead of the game. (Is Farren putting us on?) If nothing materializes then I would suggest heading on to a rather strange connection supplied by MrMR about the nature of time and perception that will at least fill in some time until the next episode of Dr Who.

"Our journey starts with an experiment conducted in 1976. Dr. Kornhuber asked a number of volunteers to be wired with EEG electrodes to measure their brain activity. He then asked the volunteers to flex the index finger of their right hand, suddenly and at various times of their own choosing. He wanted to measure how fast it took for the mental decision to move the finger to actually make the finger move. His results were not what he expected"…(more?)

And, yes, the dot (you'll get to it) does change color.


The secret word is Chronometer

RESIGN!

More later, because I have a column to write, but, if you haven’t already seen it, I can’t urge you more strongly to watch Keith Olbermann’s call for Bush and Cheney’s resignation on MSNBC.

George Melly -- RIP

THE ROCKETS' RED GLARE

SIGN A PETITION TO IMPEACH DICK CHENEY
Except, as I filled in the boxes a feeling of unease came over me. Was I putting myself on some future list as a target for retribution? But I went ahead anyway realizing that such anxiety is the power and product of a potentially fascist state, and all the more reason to haul the sons of bitches out of power.

The secret word is Now

GOTTA KEEP ON RISING

Ruben reminds us that Jim Morrison died thirty-six years ago today. I could only imagine, had he lived, he’d be drinking harder than ever as society spirals even faster to a pointless consumer hell where the future's more uncertain and the end decidedly weirder. He also serves to remind me that, when all is said, and done, no one here does get out alive, and the only legacy we leave is the work we produce. Thus, the dead must rest, and I have to get back to my keyboard and my imagination. There is no other option.

A Morrison artifact (courtesy fidicen, like the photo)

The secret word is Perception

IF THIS NATION RETAINS A VESTIGE OF CIVILIZATION, THE PRESIDENT AND VICE PRESIDENT SHOULD FORMALLY RESIGN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY

What is there left to discuss? Their evil must be held to be self-evident. Their corruption stinks for sea to shining sea, and their homicidal, criminal stupidity is taking the nation to the brink of dysfunction.

NONETHELESS THE TIGERS ARE IN THE TANK

Meanwhile, with amazing synchronicity, as Valerie sends the tigers, noudela gives us this clip of Muddy Waters doing “I’ll Put A Tiger In Your Tank.”

The secret word is Grrrr.

Beverly Sills – RIP

SLIME DOES NO TIME

As Bush lets Scooter Libby walk, our favorite southern belle writes "I am nuts with anger. Please write something."

Well darlin' I'll try, but right now all I can do is shake my head, and wonder if I ever expected anything else from these shameless, clean-shaven sons-of-bitches. Gandhi always advised patience and that the swine would always get their’s in the end, but, the Mahatma forgive me, mine is wearing dangerously thin. Not to mention it has wholly spoiled Nation UFO Day.

(In fact, the actual quote is “There have always been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall. -- think of it, ALWAYS.” – Mahatma Gandhi)

NATIONAL UFO DAY

Seemingly, in some quarters, this is National UFO Day. So if you see an alien, I recommend you buy it an ice cream. Beyond that, here’s the read-all-about-it. (Although I fear the cow is toast.)

The secret word is Mutilated.

On the other hand, ain’t much that was more alien than Dr. John back in the day. (From MrMR)

SUNDAY IN THE HEAT WITH ELVIS

I’ll frankly admit that I think the dog-days of summer are on us here in bloody LA and the prospect of two months of rising temperatures plus all the other crap that flesh is heir to is starting to depress the hell outta me, but I guess I’ll survive it. (But is that the good news?) Peromyscus sent me an amusing clip of Elvis. And Elvis is always good for impending depression because, his story was more beaucoup fucked-up than any other in our rock & roll universe, especially when I stumbled across this clip of “Unchained Melody”, recorded about six weeks before the man’s death when he had degenerated to a bloated, sweating hulk, sans mind, sans pride, sans everything except the power of that miraculous voice. A real case of “observe thou mortals and tremble at the downfall of a god and the distance it is possible to fall.”

The secret word is Royal

Thanks Hermit

HOWL AT THE FULL MOON, MY DROOGS, FOR SURELY THERE'S MUCH TO HOWL ABOUT

The secret word is Luna

GEORGE'S CRUSADE -- THE ENDGAME

Our pal aeswiren has sent the following from Truth Out with the comment – “As the death spiral of the Bush Administration tightens and Dubya feels the grip of history's contempt on his collar, the temptation to bring down the entire world – to wreak Gotterdammerung and Armageddon in one blow will grow stronger.” The story by JP Briggs II, Ph.D., and Thomas D. Williams starts…

"President George W. Bush has become dangerously steeped in ideas of Armageddon, the Apocalypse, an imminent war with Satanic forces in the Middle East, and an urgency to construct an American theocracy to fulfill God's end-of-days plan, according to close observers. Historians and investigative journalists following the "end-time Christian" movement have grown alarmed at the impact it may be having on Bush's Middle East policies, including the current war in Iraq, the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian crisis, the strife in Lebanon and the administration's repeated attempts to find a cause for war against Iran."
The rest of this story is long, but a major eye opener.

FILE UNDER SCARCELY BELIEVABLE

THE LEPER OF CABLE NEWS

The last few days have proved somewhat fragmented, to the point that I totally forgot to provide a link to a savage attack in my LA CityBeat media column on the fetid Lou Dobbs.

The secret word is Liar

THE FUTURE'S GETTING HARDER, BOYS

Posting pictures today, neighbors, because if I don't get some work done, I'll be begging for energy.

AND NOW FOR THE COMMERCIALS

Man, have I gotta cough. Which way to Stone Street?

(from HCB

DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSIC'S #18

As Dr Kinsey noted at some length, the sexual mindclamp of the mind 20th century, that tried to jail Lenny Bruce for saying “cocksucker”, produced some barely explicable weirdness, in those days of yore when perversion meant perverted, not online nipple-clamp vendors. In this decidedly odd illustration, I can fully understand how the ladies might employ the Ping-Pong bat, but why does the peeping tom need one? Comments are more than welcome.

JACKSON POLLOCK CROP CIRCLES?

Actually no, much as it would be a blast to believe there were abstract impressionist aliens, the real story from Steve UK goes as follows...
Authorities in Holland successfully managed to capture a man on the loose in his father's car after he crashed it in a ditch, but not before managing to ruin an entire corn field and four police cars. The individual, who was using cocaine, was trying to make an escape from the police when he entered the field. Officers damaged the cars as they attempted to prevent the drug user from returning to public roads. (From Metro freesheet)

AND BY POULAR DEMAND…
An Iggy encore. Not a dry eye in the house. (From noudela)

Oh, and one more time for the thespian prairie dog

The secret word is Torch

THEY DON'T MAKE BANDS LIKE THAT ANY MORE

“Why do I have to be Mr. Pink?”

This is the Move in 1966, when acid was a fairly rare, esoteric source of recreation, so quickly made illegal because its users appeared to be having too much fun. The Move's hit that year was “Night Of Fear.” A year later they’d be wearing paisley and singing “I Can Here The Grass Grow.” (Photo and link from 00Soul.)

The secret word is Combo

CREATURES FROM THE BLACK BUDGET

The Pentagon black budget is a secret iceberg that makes all horrors plausible. As in “gee, guys, wouldn’t be nifty to tailor a sexually transmitted long-incubation retro-virus to depopulate a whole third-world mineral-rich continent like Africa. And we can test it on the gay communities in New York and San Francisco.” (Thanks Valerie)

"Creating armor that renders a soldier invisible. Stimulating the brain to suppress sleep for days. Arming sharks with chemical implants and cameras to work as spies. This year the Pentagon will spend $78 billion, about half of all government research and development dollars, on a variety of projects, according to the American Association for the Advancement for Science (AAAS). The vast majority - about $68 billion - goes to traditional spending, like weapons development and space systems. But some fringe research mimics the best of science fiction. There seems to be no failure of imagination in advancing warfare, but some experts fear these farfetched projects show a little too much imagination. Just this month, the government confirmed that an Ohio Air Force laboratory had asked for $7.5 million to build a nonlethal "gay bomb," a weapon that would encourage enemies to make love, not war. The weapon would use strong aphrodisiacs to make enemy troops so sexually attracted to each other that they'd lose interest in fighting. Last year, scientists at Boston University developed brain implants that could steer sharklike dog fish with a phantom odor. Just three years ago, the military funded a specious study of psychic teleportation, according to the Federation of American Scientists. An 88-page report prepared by the Air Force Research Lab contended that moving through mind powers is "quite real and can be controlled."
"The military has a lot of crazy ideas," said Noah Shactman, editor of the Wired blog Danger Room. "But it's hard to turn these ideas into action." For the rest…

The secret words are Need To Know

But if the above has depressed the fuck out of you, here’s Iggy at Glastonbury. (How the fuck does he do it at his age?) Thanks Tim B.

AND it would also seem that Peromyscus has worked out a way to save images from the Jackson Pollack Machine, see yesterday’s comments.

Or amphetamines can have similar effect but eliminate the need for boiling water and a mug. (And talking of coffee mugs, I really think a Doc40 coffee mug needs to be organized. Sadly, Café Press doesn’t do a secret decoder ring.)

THE FUTURE'S GETTING HARD, BOYS

SUNDAY DIVERSION -- THE JACKSON POLLACK MACHINE

Hello. Missed a couple of days. Have not been feeling well for the last twenty hours, and have been hiding from the computer, and although there is much to discuss, I still feel a tad tired to be sitting at the keyboard for hours on end. On the other hand, I do feel the Doc40 funhouse should not every be closed and shuttered, and also, thanks to our good friend Yukiko, we have a fab toy with which to waste our time. The Jackson Pollack Machine, is truly amazing, but it’s more frustrating that an Etch A Sketch in that I have not found a way to preserve the creation. (Left click to change color.)

We also have amazing aerial photos of highway intersections, a Simpson’s movie trailer from Dimitris, and a killer video of the singing Tesla Coil.

The secret word is Weak

Dave Howson -- RIP

HELLO SAMURAI KITTY

(That’s Kitty-san to you, gaijin.)

Having read the piece below and aware that armed Europeans surround him, Newton is now lobbying for a suit of samurai cat armor. (Thanks Valerie)

FIRST TO CATCH A BULLET IN AMERICA

Both MrMR and some girl have sent over versions of this fascinating report about the discovery of what might be the first shooting victim in the New World. We particularly like the line – “The individual may have been escaping from the Europeans.” (And, of course, the victim was an Inca, not a cowboy playing poker. I just liked the pic.)

"Archaeologists in Peru have uncovered the human skeleton of what they conclude is the earliest known gunshot victim in the New World. Digging in an Inca cemetery in the suburbs of Lima, they came on well-preserved remains of an individual with holes less than an inch in diameter in the back and front of the skull. Forensic scientists in Connecticut said the position of the round holes and some minuscule iron particles showed that the person most likely was shot and killed by a Spanish musket ball. Ceramics and other artifacts in the 72 examined graves established the approximate time of the burials, archaeologists said, and this indicated that these were casualties of combat between Inca warriors and Spanish invaders, who seized the Andean empire in 1532. Spanish chronicles describe a pitched battle, a last stand of the Incas that was fought in the vicinity in 1536.
Conquistadors were equipped with some of the first effective firearms, which had been developed recently in Europe, military historians say. The National Geographic Society announced yesterday the discovery of the gunshot victim by the independent Peruvian archaeologists Guillermo Cock and Elena Goycochea, who have conducted research at the Puruchuco cemetery for years. A NOVA-National Geographic television program on the research is scheduled for next Tuesday.
In a telephone interview Monday, Dr. Cock said that at least 35 of the excavated skeletons bore evidence of violent injuries: cheekbones crushed by heavy blows, broken hands and limbs, a smashed chest. Some had presumably fallen in hand-to-hand combat or been trampled by Spanish horses, another instrument of warfare new to the Americas. No similar evidence of a death by gunshot this early has been found elsewhere in the Americas, Dr. Cock said. The musket shot appeared to have entered the back of the man’s skull, punching a piece of bone from outside to inside, and emerged through the face.
“The individual may have been escaping from the Europeans,” the archaeologist said. These particular graves attracted the attention of the excavators because they were shallow and the bodies appeared to have been interred hastily. They were not ritually wrapped in shrouds and placed in a crouched position facing northeast, as was customary in Inca burials. Forensic experts at the University of New Haven, in Connecticut, confirmed the violent nature of the deaths. Albert B. Harper, executive director of the Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science at the university, said, “We tried to rule out all kinds of causes of the hole — a rock from a slingshot, spear, sledgehammer.” An examination of the skull with a scanning electron microscope detected the otherwise invisible iron traces, Dr. Harper said, sealing the verdict of death by a musket ball fired from a range of perhaps 100 feet."

The secret word is Capped

THE GREEN GODDESS GOES PUBLIC

The New York Times discovers absinthe at sixty bucks a bottle. My hope is that it will drive the apple martini crowd drooling insane and then return to being the secret of the bohemian elite. But I’m blind drink and hallucinating on my own green dragon home brew that I am unable to think this through. I will consider it tomorrow. (Thanks to Munz and Alex for the links.)

The secret word is Rimbaud

DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSIC'S #17

The magazine industry might think long and hard about re-launching this title, or, at the very least, an online version.

POPE SAYS BABIES CAN GO TO HEAVEN

BUT DEFERS DECISION ON BUNNIES

The world rapidly becomes inhabitable. Species hurtle into extinction. The computers are down on the International Space Station. The Greenland Pump may soon cease to function. Nuclear weapons slyly proliferate. In Africa, ten year-olds with AK45s snort cocaine and gunpowder and fight endless, shapeless, wholly pointless wars of asymmetric attrition. Disguised reptiles may govern the United States of America. A month or more ago MrMR sent me the following, but I never posted it. I figured it was too whacked even for Doc40, but in the intervening time, I changed my mind. It’s amazing how time flies when the world is losing its reason.

“The Vatican has determined that limbo does not exist, opening the gates of heaven to babies who die unbaptised. A member of a high-level theological commission made the announcement with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI. "The many factors that we have considered ... give serious theological and liturgical grounds for hope that unbaptised infants who die will be saved." The medieval concept of limbo as a place where unbaptised infants spend eternity but without communion with God seems to reflect an "unduly restrictive view of salvation," the document says. The thought that stillborn babies, for example, would be relegated to a kind of no-man's-land in the afterlife tormented generations of Catholic families. The idea of limbo - from the Latin for "edge" - was meant to address the paradox that unbaptised babies could not go to heaven because their original sin had not been expunged, but nor should they go to purgatory or hell. In 1984, when Benedict headed the Vatican's doctrinal enforcement body as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he said he was "personally" in favour of scrapping the 13th-century notion, which he termed a mere "hypothesis". He has approved the document drafted by the International Theological Commission, the panel's secretary told reporters, adding however that its conclusions were not to be considered Roman Catholic Church dogma.”

The secret word is Dementia

This blog is still affiliated with The White Panther Party

WHAT'S A MONDAY WITHOUT A FEW PILLS?

This picture provided by Julien's Auctions shows a prescription drug bottle once owned by Elvis Presley, and prescribed by the infamous Dr. Nick. The bottle, sold empty, was among 15 objects connected to Presley that were part of Julien's Auctions Entertainment Sale in Beverly Hills last Saturday. Naldecon is kind of a bore, however, a simple anti-congestant. We have yet to learn from our man-on-the-spot HCB how much it fetched at auction.

The secret word is Demerol

BUT THIS IS MONDAY SERIOUS

While we continue to worry about the vanishing bees, let’s not forget the deformed frogs. This picture and story are from the BBC. (Thanks Valerie)

"The creature - which has six legs - has stunned a BBC wildlife expert who said it could be an early warning of environmental problems. Laura Pepper, from the Green Umbrella nursery in Weston-super-Mare, said: "We thought it was three frogs huddled together at first. "It is very strange. The children couldn't believe it." Mike Dilger, from the BBC Natural History Unit, said: "I have never seen anything like this. "Frogs are primitive animals - so the occasional extra toe is not that unusual. But this is very unusual." All the creature's eyes and legs appear to function normally, but it is not known whether it eats using all three of its mouths. The amphibian was kept in a container for several hours but hopped away later while nursery staff were showing it to curious parents."

Meanwhile, back in the USA, frog deformity is at epidemic proportions, and, in the Clinton era, research was linking it with industrial pollution. But then Bush arrived and the whole deal, like anything else that might be good for the planet, but bad for business, was instantly defunded to provide tax-cuts for Donald Trump, Bill Gates, and Paris Hilton. States still struggle on but it’s a story largely ignored by the media except as a three-legged geek bite. As the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency neatly summed it up…

"Deformed frogs have been found in Minnesota and in other parts of the country. They were being studied by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and other government agencies to determine the cause of the deformities. However, as of July 1, 2001, funding for the MPCA to work with deformed frogs was discontinued. Some federal agencies are continuing to work on the problem." For more.

SUNDAY MORNING

For months, I have been waiting for a reason to publish this breathtaking photograph of the greatly underrated Stella Stevens, but, finally, I’m posting it for no other reason that its Sunday morning, the cat sleeps, and it pleases me. Dawn will come soon enough and the squirrels will play in jacaranda trees before the late-rising crows arrive like the avian Gestapo. I also have a clip of one of my favorite tunes for this occasion. Lou has ensured the song has a totally different melancholy whether or not you are alone. Does Sunday mean toast and newspapers or merely an unmade void? (But surely Stella Stevens could ward off any too-early contemplation of blue Monday.)

The secret word is Bagel

ART, COMMERCE, AND THE LAST WORD

The great and revered Jamie Hewlett, who drew Tank Girl, in its prime, is now designing the packaging for an apparently very successful line of vibrators and adult toys.

MEANWHILE HCB may well have given us our last word on The Sopranos.
"Read this on a blog. I think it's my favorite…
Everything went black for the VIEWERS, not for Tony, AJ, Carmela or anyone else in the diner. WE, the audience were the ones who were whacked."

I have to take this to mean that Big Tony’s world abides but we are all in some television afterlife, but the we don’t know. I find this as plausible as the universe being balanced of the back of a giant turtle, or created by some bad-tempered, bearded, goat-herders' god six thousand years ago.

PLUG FOR MYSELF

Just reminding y'all, neighbors, I have a new and quite alarming non-fiction book – WHO’S WATCHING YOU? – published by Disinformation who describe it thusly on Amazon (while otherwise keeping it a well protected secret…)

“The threat of terrorism and the corresponding climate of fear encouraged by the government have together eroded our freedom to live our lives in peace and quiet away from the prying eyes of hidden cameras. The government is tightening its grip on us by watching and recording what we do. They are doing this because they know they can and because knowledge is power. But exactly who are "they" and why do they want to know so much about us? This book includes chilling, accurate, and up-to-date descriptions of the methods the government (and private company proxies) use to watch us.”

Boing Boing was very nice about it saying -- “Who’s Watching You? includes chilling, accurate and up-to-date descriptions of the methods the government (and private company proxies) uses to watch us. Essential reading for everyone concerned about privacy and freedoms of speech and association, even–perhaps especially–if you don’t plan on doing anything wrong.”

The secret word is Buck

PLUG FOR A PAL

This show was produced by our good buddy Erik. Set your Tivo.

WHALES WOULD LIVE A VERY LONG TIME IF ASSHOLES DIDN'T STICK HARPOONS IN THEM. (Official)

Having spent far too much of my time thinking about the fictional Italian Mafia, I find this whale story truly fascinating. I was always struck by a marine legend (that’s an urban legend except at sea) that, when seagoing humans switched from sail to steam, the vibration of all those propellers in the water totally fucking up the whale’s highly sophisticated sonar-style navigation system, and forced them to redesign their entire migration patterns to a much less efficient “short hop” system. (And, from that Star Trek movie I watched earlier in the week, they are also real tight with the aliens.) All in all, we really have to start treating our cetacean brothers and sisters with considerably ore respect.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - A fragment of a weapon used by commercial whalers in the 1800s was found in a massive bowhead whale caught off Alaska last month, suggesting it may be more than a century old, officials said Tuesday. The fragment, from a bomb lance manufactured around 1880, was discovered in a bowhead harvested in the traditional subsistence hunt conducted by Alaska's Inupiat people, said officials from the North Slope Borough, the local government in northernmost Alaska. The fragment shows that the whale could be nearly 130 years old, said Craig George, a wildlife biologist with the borough's Department of Wildlife Management.

For more…

The secret word is Queequeg

Morton the Shark -- RIP

DOROTHY..?

"Dorothy, are you sure there’s no such thing as sequin poisoning?”

END OF AN ARIA

Of course I’m disappointed with what I wrote. (But I always am, kinda. I think it’s motivational.) I wanted to sum up seven years of The Sopranos – all 86 episodes – in a work of such critical brilliance that Oscar Wilde himself would rise from his Parisian grave to embrace my genius, literary prizes would be showered upon me, and ravishingly gorgeous mature women in high heels would worship me. I dunno. I did my level best and here it is. But I did also did discover that David Chase is another who can’t exit with the statutory Bob Dylan quote.

The secret word is Cannoli

BUT IF IT'S SLAYING WE NEED...

This link is to a very reasonable argument why Frank Lunz -- the human slime -- should be taken out and hung from a handy lamppost, or the historic sour apple tree.

And these smug boyos look like they too might benefit from at least a cull, if not extermination, possibly right along with their supposed target women and other men who believe that passion can only be measured in dollars and scents.

Death to transaction and doublespeak

DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSIC'S #16

What can I say except this has to be a virtual artifact, and Ballard always saw it coming from the very get-go.

The secret word is Vermillion

WATCHING YOU WATCHING ME

We have a brand new Chinese Panda-cam but I suspect it’s having trouble with all the traffic and a lack of bandwidth because sometime it’s there and sometimes it isn’t. (From Valerie)

ALSO we have an unsolicited testimonial forwarded by SE. – YOUR SITE IS EXCEPTIONAL! A friend of mine, an internet expert of sorts, calls sites like yours "sticky sites"; a site that keeps the viewer looking and reading and looking and chortling and thinking and.
Praise in this century is praise indeed.

The secret word is Appreciative

IS THIS HOW YOU WANTED IT TO END?

The corpse of Albert Anastasia. Yet another theft from Tom Sutpen. I just can’t help myself. His shit is so cool.

I have to finally admit that I think I’m gangstered out for a while. Last night’s Sopranos, took some thinking about and then some writing about and finally a period of decompression while I watched that really fucking dumb Star Trek movie about Kirk’s bunch coming back to the 20th century to mess with time and kidnap a couple humpbacked whales. I finally got to bed at 8.00am and today I’m doing nothing except facing the frustration that, in all the discussion, my brilliant 10 cents'-worth won’t come out until Thursday, but that’s the cross the print writer has to bear. Fortunately there’s four reruns of The X-Files tonight (it’s replaced Law & Order as my comfort TV). Plus there’s some epic on the History Channel about Mayan doom prophesies which will get me started back on 12.21.12 even though I don’t believe in it and am only trying to start a gratuitous mass panic.

Or I could watch Lawrence Welk play “Sister Ray”

And also, while I rest my weary hands we have a fortuitous and highly insightful missive from HCB…

Forgive me Mick for soundboarding you here. I knew you were writing about the Sopranos and it got me thinking a little with you in mind. Thing is, we know where to look for the hidden faces and all that--that's our heritage--we're professionals--you more than I--you're a fucking expert. But not many people out there are likely to relate it to the greatest sport of the sixties, conspiracy theorizing, just before Frisbees. So this is what I wrote thinking about you and T, a couple of lines of random shit mostly.
Where's the acid? Sopranos has turned the nation or the internet anyway into the greatest conspiracy-hunting machine ever. Tony buries Paul. Staggering numbers, all with theories. A nation of academic deconstructionalists, Funny though that one of the principle waste products of psychedelics, all that 3-D holographic connect-the-dots stuff, is happening without any substance more foreign than TV. Chase may be as clever a punning cryptic as Dylan. Think we saw his thought dreams as the plastic was melting and the chromium too. I knew it was a comedy when I heard Vanilla Fudge, but Phil's crushed head was as funny as any great seinfeld moment. I think what I liked best was how directly Chase was addressing the audience with that same combination of seduction and contempt that Dylan had--. Someday people are going to be looking at Chase and Milch (after Oliver Stone) as the neo-psychedelicists.

The secret word is Vig

HAVE A SEAT

From Valerie...

"...This amazing art installation was made by Colombian sculptor Doris Salcedo for the International Instanbul Biennale in 2003. She used over 1,550 chairs stacked on an empty lot between two buildings!" Enjoy it while I wrestle with my appreciation of The Sopranos that you will be able to read on Thursday.

The secret word is Nanosecond.

Or you could build Mousey The Junkbot.

THE LAST SLICE OF THE PIZZA

So here we all are, approaching the evening of the final denoument and the last hour after which The Sopranos ends forever. I recall how, on Friday, I drew attention to the writer in the The San Francisco Chronicle who cited Yeat’s The Second Coming as a metaphor for big Tony in, I guess, a search for pop culture profundity. I posted the entire poem, mainly because I like it one whole lot, but also to illustrate just how intense academic analysis of The Sopranos has become. Hell, the shows finale made the cover of the New Yorker (above). A number of these earnest analysts have also reminded us with serious significance that the 2006 season started opened with a soundtrack of Material’s Seven Souls, featuring William S. Burroughs reading from his novel The Western Lands. What follows is an excerpt. For the non-Sopranos aficianados, just look on it as some free Sunday Burroughs. Beyond that I cannot commment. I still have my own learned analysis to write. (And I pray like a bride on her wedding night that I will not fail to beat out all the others.)

"The ancient Egyptians postulated seven souls, Top soul, and the first to leave at the moment of death, is Ren, the Secret Name. This corresponds to my Director, He directs the film of your life from conception to death. The Secret Name is the title of your film. When you die, that's where Ren came in. Second soul, and second one off the sinking ship, is Sekem: Energy, Power, Light The Director gives the orders, Sekem presses the right buttons. Number three is Khu, the Guardian Angel. He, she, or it is third man out . . . depicted as flying away across a full moon, a bird with luminous wings and head of light. Sort of thing you might see on a screen in an Indian restaurant in Panama. The Khu is responsible for the subject and can be injured in his defense- but not permanently, since the first three souls are eternal. They go beck to Heaven for another vessel. The four remaining souls must take their chances with the subject in the Land of the Dead. Number four is Ba, the heart, often treacherous. This is a hawk's body with your face on it, shrunk down to the size of a fist. Many a hero has been brought down, like Samson, by a perfidious Ba. Number five is Ka, the Double, most closely associated with the subject. The Ka, which usually reaches adolescence at the time of bodily death, is the only reliable guide through the Land of the Dead to the western Lands. Number six is Khaibit, the Shadow, Memory, your whole past conditioning from this and other lives. Number seven is Sekhu, the Remains.I first encountered this concept in Norman Mailer's, Ancient Evenings, and saw that it corresponded precisely with my own mythology, developed over a period of many years, since birth in fact."

The secret word is Cartouche

Or, after all this pop profundity would you rather see a bunny whup a snake. (Thanks Wend)

SATURDAY MORNING CARTOONS

Which I guess have a common theme, and the theme is sex, or, to be more precise, the clichés of sex, which, right at the moment, and to be wholly frank, I view with an ambiguity that is close to visible. As my emotional life grinds on, like some grim panzer retreat from a metaphoric Moscow – only with mercifully better weather – the inevitable culmination of the sexual cliché has become a matter of such utter predictability, that, all too frequently, it’s instigation takes on an inert pointlessness. Alcohol has much the same effect. I would like to be protractedly drunk, but the hangover would kill me. Slowly and with pain.

We could look at it another way, however. Perhaps here in the Shaolin Temple of Rock & Roll – among the Cirque du Dreamseekers* – we search for the original cliché with the wholly unexpected twist. (Between walking on Zigzag rice paper, perceiving Elvis in a potato chip, and snatching the pebble from my hand, grasshopper.) Now wouldn’t that be something? A blow for the oxy-morons!

* more later.