CAN YOU SPELL GYLLENHAAL?

Actress Maggie Gyllenhaal has long been a solid favorite of Doc 40, and the above picture is published to mark the fact that she taken over from Kate Moss as spokes-whatever of lingerie line Agent Provocateur. Yeah. Right. We take note of lingerie promotions. Would you believe that we’re publishing the post because the much admired Miss Gyllenhaal seems to have definite inclination for erotic restraint? I mean, she was locked into all those intricate devices in the 2002 movie Secretary and now this. Or maybe we’re posting this out simple animal voyeurism?

But talking of animals…

"WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO THE EARTH?'"

The following horror story comes out of China…
"The pelts of 27 snow leopards were recently seized from a black market trader in China. The record bust highlights the menacing threat to one of the world's most endangered cats, experts say. Acting on a tip, agents from China's State Forestry Administration raided an apartment in western China last month, according to state media. Police arrested the fur trader, identified only as Mr. Ma, after discovering the cache of pelts, along with 104 bear skins and parts of clouded leopards and lynx "Police found three snow leopard heads and two snow leopard skeletons in the raid," Ge Yun, of the China-based nonprofit Xinjiang Conservation Fund (XCF), told National Geographic News. The seizure is reportedly the largest haul of leopard pelts since Chinese officials began keeping records in 1949. An official with China's State Forest Administration, who identified himself as Mr. Li, confirmed the arrests in a telephone interview but declined to offer details. "The snow leopard is endangered, and the government is working very hard to protect it," he said." Click for more

"WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO OUR FAIR SISTER?'"

We’re Iberian lynx* and this is our tale of woe. (Sent by Valerie) When the fuck are you humans going to leave us animals alone?

* Is lynx the plural of lynx?

"THE SCREAM OF THE BUTTERFLY"

Having been using lyric fragments through this post, here’s a full 12 minutes of The Doors doing a live version “When The Music’s Over”.

Oh yeah, Andy and I had a really swell time playing the Hyperion Tavern last night. Great crowd, great reception. We resolve to make it regular haunt. We also discovered it was formerly gay bondage bar called Cuffs. (Which kinda takes us back to the top of the post.)

The secret words are Turn Out The Light

THINGS CAN'T ALWAYS BE PERFECT

Sadly the ladies of the QMAPDP may be unable to make the gig but Mick Farren and Andy Colquhoun can be counted on to be rolling out their two-man psychedelic deviant future blues at Tequila Mockingbird’s Club Fluffer at the Hyperion Tavern in Silver Lake TONIGHT! (September 13th) and you are cordially invited. We have still not been informed of show time, but we figure showing up between 9.30 and 10.00 PM would be about right.

Hyperion Tavern, 1941 Hyperion Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90027. 323-665-1941

Drink it up, tip the waitress, forget your troubles and come on down. (Our current slogan.)

The secret words are Be There

THE ROAD TO QUAGMIRE

Aeswiren, who we depend on to keep an eye on these kind of things sent this acute analysis of how the Reagan Administration taught the Saudis the art of advanced corporate fraud. (The kind that involved oil, rather wives, camels, or goats.) And, of course, at precisely the same time, the CIA was pouring billions of dollars into the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan to support their guerrilla war against the Soviets. And, needless to say, one of the Mujahedeen’s most prominent organizers and financiers was a wealthy young Saudi named Osama Bin Laden.

“Oil is so important to the strength of a nation’s economy that it was the United States’ final plan of attack to crush the Soviets. During the late summer of 1985, the Reagan administration had a sudden stroke of genius. Tired of the stalemate, the American government knew that the only alternative to physical destruction of the Soviet Union was to nuke their economy. And knowing that much of its economy was based on two exports— oil to Europe and military weapons and training to anti-Western countries—we found an in. Mindful of the saying “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” we decided to make a little pact with Saudi Arabia—an offer the Saudis couldn’t refuse. You see, high oil prices from OPEC kept Soviet exports to Europe and other countries profitable. It also allowed Iraq, Iran and Syria to purchase advanced Soviet weapons and training. And those countries had been threatening Saudi Arabia for years. The high oil price also allowed the Soviet Union to keep a military presence in South Yemen, Syria, Ethiopia and Afghanistan. The idea was to bankrupt the Soviet Union by having Saudi Arabia drop its oil prices far below what the Soviets could afford to sell for. Once non-Soviet prices were lowered, former Soviet oil clients would cease buying from the USSR, killing the communist giant’s income. It would also harm the Soviet economy because Iraq, Iran and Syria would no longer be able to sell their oil at prices high enough to be able to afford Soviet weapons and training. It was a sucker punch to end the Cold War, a numbers-crunching accountant’s wet dream . . . and it was just crazy enough to work. But that’s also where the problems begin. In short, we taught the Saudis how to cook the books and how to make their supplies appear larger than they really were to keep the oil prices low. In December 1985, the price of oil was $26.46. And then, suddenly, on March 31, 1986, it plummeted to $10.25. The Soviets couldn’t keep up, and their economy began to collapse. Our part of the bargain for Saudi Arabia’s aid in bankrupting the Soviets would become known as Operation Desert Storm. But the book-cooking lessons learned by the Saudis would soon become widespread among OPEC nations— and even among Big Oil companies. And after decades of inflating their actual reserve numbers without finding any more significant oil resources, the future of the world’s oil is falling apart faster than a canvas shoe on a rainy day.” From Report -- Energy and Capital.

The secret word is Hydrocarbon

And, for the rock & roll section of our show, what better than David Bowie live and “Putting Out Fire With Gasoline.”

1-800-CALL-GOD

And God thunders...

“THIS IS NOT MY BLOODY PHONE NUMBER!!!”

Or however the angry voice of God might look in print. (This is all the fault of Munz.)

THE BEES AND THE BEARS AND NOW THE US NAVY IS SCREWING WITH THE WHALES

As the Army in the form of Gen. David Petraeus, recommends that decisions on the contentious issue of reducing the main body of the American troops in Iraq be put off for six months, the Navy has made it their mission deafen, disorientate and kill whales. The following letter from James Taylor (yes, that James Taylor) was forwarded by Sky. Do what you can.

"The Navy's sonic assault on whales should be stopped immediately. I'm asking for your help to make it happen. Let me be clear: I have the deepest respect for the U.S. Navy. When I was growing up, my father was a doctor and commander in the Navy. His role in helping to establish a base at the South Pole in 1957, as part of the International Geophysical Year, had a lifelong impact on me. We loved the Navy because it helped win World War II. But we also loved the Navy because it was a leader in the scientific study of the natural world. That's why I feel so strongly that today's Navy should be using its vast resources to protect not just our nation but the health of our planet's oceans as well. And it's why I am so distressed by the acoustic onslaught the Navy is now waging beneath our planet's oceans -- an onslaught known to kill whales with dangerous mid-frequency sound waves. Mid-frequency sonar is designed to detect enemy submarines. The Navy's warships deploy underwater speakers that blast the ocean with noise in excess of 235 decibels -- a sonic barrage roughly comparable to a Saturn V rocket at blast-off. That explosive level of noise can cause whales -- who have an exquisite sense of hearing -- to panic, surface too quickly, and hemorrhage internally. Many beached whales have been found bleeding around their brains and ears after their fatal encounters with military sonar. Imagine a sound so disorienting or so painful that you jump out of the sea and die on the beach rather than be subjected to it for another minute! From a whale's point of view, the Navy's sonic assault must seem like torture. But that torture isn't just cruel, it's unnecessary. You see, the Navy could adopt simple safety measures when training with sonar that would prevent the needless infliction of pain and death on these magnificent animals. For example, the Navy could avoid marine habitats where whales are known to migrate, feed, and raise their young. These common-sense precautions would not compromise military readiness. But the Navy refuses. So the maiming and killing of whales goes on. This callousness toward nature -- toward the ocean itself -- does not reflect the Navy I grew up with. We deserve better. And, as Americans, it's our right to demand better. Our message is simple: Whales should not have to die for military practice. Please join me and millions of other people in getting that message to the U.S. Navy and to Congress. Click here now and tell the Navy to do the right thing.

Sincerely, James Taylor, RDC Action Fund"

AND IF YOU HAPPEN TO BE...

…the only person on the planet who hasn’t seen the Britney Spears MTV Awards train wreck, here it is again.

The secret word is Over

WE'RE DOING IT AGAIN

“We’re going to see Mick & Andy next Thursday?”
“Of course, darling, we’re purple-haired, future-retro space lesbians, what else could we do?”

Mick Farren and Andy Colquhoun will be rolling out their two-man psychedelic deviant future blues at Tequila Mockingbird’s Club Fluffer at the Hyperion Tavern in Silver Lake next Thursday (September 13th) and you are cordially invited. We have not been informed as yet of show time, but we figure showing up between 9.30 and 10.00 PM would be about right.

Hyperion Tavern, 1941 Hyperion Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90027. 323-665-1941

Drink it up, tip the waitress, forget your troubles and come on down. (Our current slogan.)

But now we move to something considerably more grim...

FIRST THEY FUCK UP OUR PLANET AND NOW THEY WANT TO SHOOT US FOR FUN

The following distressing item was forwarded by some girl. “An…Independent on Sunday investigation has found that polar bears are being shot in alarming numbers by rich trophy hunters from the US, Europe and Japan, even as their increasingly fragile habitat melts beneath them. Campaigners know that climate change and pollution are the biggest threats to polar bear survival, but believe that stopping sports hunting is symbolically important.” Yeah? My initial reaction was to more than symbolic. It was violently angry. I wished I was younger, and had a helicopter and an AK47. It would give me deep satisfaction to shoot some of these rich bastards and see how the fuck they like a burst of hollow points ripping into their ass. Click for the rest of the story.

The secret word is Revenge

FRAGMENTED SUNDAY

Seems to be a lazy Sunday, fit for doing very little except tidying up outstanding stuff. We have two versions of the same story about the latest theory on bee disappearance from Betsy and Mike. And also an intriguing bit from Valerie on just how smart octopi are turning you to be.
And also The Small Faces singing the magnificnent obvious. (Look for Steve Marriot's very brief Jagger impression.)

FREE MUSIC

HCB also forwarded another of those sites where one can get free downloads of old Deviants recordings if you know how to work them. In this instance it’s Disposable

AND AN OPTICAL ILLUSION

The secret word is Headache

ALL THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT

Valerie has sent a fascinating link to Project Censored – News The Didn’t Make The News. It’s long, but some of it really makes the blood run cold. “Project Censored have their new book and list for 2006-2007 (Still don´t understand why the books called "2008").”

The secret word is Smokescreen

LEVEL 5 TASTE WARNING! (Help is here!)

"Darlings, we're to save you from the Crocs. And we have heels!"

CHARLIE IS STILL TV's DARLING

The media constantly prove themselves such suckers for the combination of death, Hollywood, and the 20th century. This week MSNBC felt the need to drag out poor, 72 year-old Charlie Manson as the personification of psychedelic evil in a show luridly titled The Mind Of Manson. They didn’t even bother to wait until some kind of anniversary or parole hearing. In the interview segment, Charlie made the point that he was the squares’ scapegoat for all the stuff they hated and feared about the 1960s. And, to a degree, I have to sympathize with the guy. Beside Pol Pot, Charlie was a rank amateur. Click for some of Charlie’s recent rantings that MSNBC didn’t get. (By the way, Charlie will be next considered for parole in 2012. One more factor for a year already gathering unhealthy significance.)
Meanwhile, in this week’s LA CityBeat, my media column is all about the mass attempts to subvert Wikipedia and names the guilty.

The secret words plainly have to be Helter and Skelter

SURPRISE! This has to the Web Toy of the Week! (Thanks some girl)

LEVEL 5 TASTE WARNING!

THESE ARE CROCS. SHOOT THE WEARER ON SIGHT. TAKE NO PRISONERS. ACCEPT NO EXCUSES.

I TOLD YOU RONALD REAGAN WAS HAUNTING DOC 40

Yeah, Ron? And when the hell is America going to wise up to the fact that socialized medicine in one form or another is the only practical and civilized solution, unless a nation is so extreme and alarming in its moral bankruptcy that it is quite prepared to allow its poor to suffer and die (yes, die) while supporting the obscene profits of insurance companies, HMOs, the medical profession and pharmaceutical industry? Hey Ron, your family wasn’t financially devastated by your Alzheimer’s, but hundreds have been. To demonize functional, organized, single-payer healthcare as “socialist” is as fundamentally absurd as talking about a “socialized” army or “socialized” sanitation and highways. (Although Bush seems to be busy privatizing the bloody military.) Healthcare is simply another facet of national defense, or, if you like, the national infrastructure. If the idea of altruism bothers anyone, look at it as self-interest. Is capitalism simply too obtuse to realize that, if the poor have no health care, they represent, in the event of an epidemic (or pandemic) an untreated vulnerability vector that points the virus straight at the rich? I would go on at length except everyone seems to glaze over at this point in the rant, refusing to accept that, in the matter of healthcare, the USA willfully chooses to be a third-world hellhole for about 40 million of its citizens. (Pic from Tom Sutpen)

The secret word is Sick

And all this talk of health care provides, I guess, the thinnest pretext for running Elvis Costello and Steve Naïve playing “Pills & Soap”

Luciano Pavarotti – RIP

IT DOESN'T MATTER IF YOU'RE YOUNG OR OLD, YOU JUST HAVE TO BE A ROCK STAR

Thanks HCB

DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSIC'S # 25

It’s amazing what the media will come up with on a slow news day. In this instance MSNBC offered a stunning statistic. "Rock stars - notorious for their "crash and burn" lifestyles - really are more likely than other people to die before reaching old age. A study of more than 1,000 mainly British and North American artists, spanning the era from Elvis Presley to rapper Eminem, found they were two to three times more likely to suffer a premature death than the general population." I guess you can file it under "fast", "young", or "corpse." Unless you want to read more, let’s just end this barely relevant piece of data with Sid Vicious singing My Way

The secret room is 1009

PS The Los Angeles heatwave seems to have broken. I may soon be back to my normal irate self.

(Pic from HCB)

RANDOM TUESDAY

Mind deadened to a dull ach by the same layer of motionless heat, power blackouts, dull dissatisfaction, and, other scenarios shopping themselves in Hollywood as prequels to the apocalypse or beasts caged in the heart of the city (they should be so lucky) I offer nothing except a clip from Doug the Bass demonstrating just how barking crazy Ted Nugget really is and how he should be put out of his misery with one of his own guns.

The secret word is Craving

A ROMANTIC ON LABOR DAY

The translation is “Anarchist books are arms against fascism” (Thank you Valerie.) Which I allow to reassure me that I am not a fraud, because all I do is write or rant about the fight for what I fondly define as liberty. And also, with its Spanish Civil war !No pasaran! romance, the poster totally shames me into renewing my belief that the struggle will continue – must continue – no matter how distracted or diluted it may have become, because, very simply, this planet could be a fucking paradise if we would simply stop abusing and exploiting it and each other.

The secret words are If Only

And here’s the Clash doing “Spanish Bombs” – trite perhaps, but at least Joe always meant it.

POST-HUMAN (a hot night rumination)

Here in Los Angeles, the temperature was pushing 100F this afternoon with no exaggeration. Parts of the city suffered power blackouts, and the cat decided it was sufficient reason to demand two breakfasts just in case some PM apocalypse might occur and upset what the airlines call meal service. And, of course, it’s the Labor Day holiday weekend in a city, country, and culture with so little pride in the power of labor or the dignity of unions that a party or parade would – like socialism – be just tooo 20th century. (But what do I know about work? I’m a bloody writer.)

And as a writer a found a couple of brand new hyphenated words to play around with that came with both a thrill and a chill…

“Post-human” he muttered to himself, over and over, ruminating and less than happy.

If you heard it here first, you heard it heard it here first, but I doubt it will be the last time (maybe the last time, I don’t know.) Supposedly the post-human condition will be whatever emerges in the wake of The Singularity when, in thirty or some years, as predicted by Ray Kurzweil and others, the computers will be smarter than we are and they’ll be calling the shots, and our brains will supposedly be integrated with advanced microprocessors and nanobots will be rebuilding our cellular structure, granting us virtual immortality. Or possibly our personalities will be uploaded onto a super-future hard drive and then decanted into some incredible piece of animatronic biotech. Although when I say we, I actually don’t include myself in all this because even though I quit cigarettes, I in no way expect to live another thirty years with US healthcare, and even if I did, I would be so fucking old when all this came to pass, I'd hope to be too full of synthetic opium to care. And I would also be more than a trifle ashamed to evolve into something more complex and some kind of wonderful while a planetary crisis of extinct polar bears and level 7 hurricanes still almost certainly will remain unsolved. Or is being solved by the super smart computers who might – like Skynet, the Matrix, the Daleks, and HAL 9000 before them – decide that the first and most rational and eminently sensible move towards restabilizing Earth would be to exterminate humanity with all possible speed.

But it’s a hot night and I’m really only playing with the words
“Post-human?”
“Post-human?”
“Post-human?”
“Post-human?”
“Post-human?”
“Post-human?”

The secret word is Hell

And for no other reason than impulse and the mood of the night here's the orginal b&w video of David Bowie singing "Wild Is The Wind" (And, of course, the song does contain the secret word.)

ANOTHER JULIAN BEEVER

Here’s another Julian Beever (the English artist famous for his chalk art on the pavements of England, France, Germany, USA, Australia and Belgium – see last Wednesday.) A crowd gathers around the archeological illusion. (From HCB)

NOAM CHOMSKY MAKES IT PERFECTLY CLEAR

Doug the Bass sends over this was an 'off the cuff' response by Brother Noam Chomsky, during a public talk, to an audience interruption asking "...what are you talking about? Fascism? Anarchy? Define your terms."

"Fascism is a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership togetherwith a belligerent nationalism."

"Anarchism is not just a romantic fable but the hard-headed realization, based on 5000 years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners. It is founded on the observation that since few people are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to ruleothers."

The secret word is Hope

(And, of yeah, Andy and I had a pretty satisfying show last night – mainly thanks to Francine.)

The email is still byron4d@msn.com

A MOMENT OF COMPLETE SELF-INDULGENCE

Where is the woman in the black vinyl dress?
And why does she weep and stumble from the mausoleum?
Last night I had the dream I have feared
For over a year.
The surrealist cocktail of grief and Gethsemane
The twisting vortex of fury and dead flowers
Is there significance that it comes 48 hours
Before I have agreed to perform?
And Nick Cave is singing Suzanne
On my TV
At a Leonard Cohen tribute
In Canada
And, at that point, I almost catch myself
In a moment of madness
Buddhist or booze fighter?
Savage or St. Francis?

I never made it to Assisi
Or Alpha Centauri
But I can’t stop now.
Why should I?

(Poor Otis dead and gone, left me here to sing his song.)

There is no secret word. But come and see us play. Maybe the duck will drop.

(Andy Colquhoun and I perform tonight at Tommy Ray’s. See Monday for information)

HILLY KRISTAL -- RIP

RONALD REAGAN IS HAUNTING DOC40

I don’t know if it’s an omen, good or bad or what, but Ronald Reagan keeps popping up all over. Here he is with James Dean on the cover of the new Radiators From Space CD. It was sent over by Miss Templeton who explains its provenance. (But beware. There’s more Reagan to come.)

"It's from a 1952 TV playhouse thing in which Dean is rather good as a drunken beatnik and Reagan is, well, Reagan as a Doctor who has been held hostage by Dean until he can fix up his friend who is badly wounded - they can't go to a hospital because the wounds occurred in the course of a robbery or whatever. It's called "The Dark Dark Hours" and is mostly rubbish, Dean's fascinating hep-talking beatnik excepted. Classic network cheese. A black/white simplistic moral situation, decent society vs degenerate 'other' and then everyone's perennial favorite: guns. It wouldn't be more than a footnote in either actor's history, except that one of them became the President of the United States at the time when the national Chevrolet was taking a hard turn to the right. And the other become the international icon of that streak of raw American rebellion that's always there and ready and doesn't even need to wait for a cause."

The secret words are Republicans Caught In The Men’s Room

(AND DON’T FORGET I’LL BE PLAYING LIVE TOMORROW. SEE MONDAY’S POST FOR DETAILS)

CAUCASIAN CHALK ILLUSION

Julian Beever is an English artist who's famous for his chalk art on the pavements of England, France, Germany, USA, Australia and Belgium. The 3D illusion is a real mindfuck. Figure where the chalk stops and the beer begins. (Thanks HCB)

PERMISSION TO BE FREE

(Spanish Civil War poster from Refugi 307)

After writing for most of the weekend, my hands hurt, I had no thoughts left, and some local weatherman with a flair for the dramatic he probably gleaned from watching Inside The Actor’s Studio, was telling me that another unmitigated heatwave was on the way. On Thursday I’m doing my first live show in god knows how long and everyone will stay home and hug the AC. But then this diatribe turned up from Frank-in-the-Bunker via Doug the Bass and I figured it was wildly radical enough to pass along instead of a resume of my late summer August neurosis. The gun control argument may get some of you going. It is, however, almost identical to the Black Panthers position on firearms. (And probably what got a whole lot of them massacred by cops and FBI.)

"Slave: "Master, will you please stop whipping me?"

Master: "No."

Slave: "Ow. Pretty please?"

Master: "No."

Slave: "Ow. Darn."

There you have the entire political process, in this country and every other. Instead of asking nicely, should the slave be allowed to forcibly stop the master from whipping him? Surely we can't have that! That would be against the "law"! No single sentence better sums up the belief that we are the PROPERTY of the politicians, than this one: "You have to work within the system."In other words, we have no right to do what we want, until we first get the politicians, via "legislation," to SAY we have the right (which means it isn't a "right" at all). "Mom, can I please go out and play?" "Congress, can I please keep more of what I earn?" The asking itself implies that THEY have the right to decide, which in turn implies that they OWN all of us.The Declaration of Independence speaks of unalienable individual rights--which we didn't get from "government," and which no "government" has the right to deprive us of. Why, then, when the politicians do violate those rights (as they do on a daily basis), do we ask THEM to please stop it? It's because the general public does NOT believe in unalienable rights at all.If someone is trying to steal my car, do I need the THIEF'S permission before I have the right to try to stop him? No. So if tyrants are stomping on my rights, why would I need to ask them for "legal" permission to resist their oppressions? The very idea is idiotic. When it comes to "lobbying" politicians, I find the example of "gun control" particularly amusing. Lots of Americans believe, as the Founders of the country did, that an armed populace is the best guard against oppressive government. In other words, the common folk should be armed so that, if the government becomes overly abusive and oppressive, the people can violently overthrow it. So how silly is it to "lobby" politicians to please "legalize" private gun ownership? Consider the absurd message it sends: "We have the right to forcibly resist you if we decide you're being oppressive! So, um, can we please keep our guns? Pretty please?"The Founders said these things a lot more politely, and in a more respectable, civilized manner. I'll say it so anyone can understand: If someone tries to disarm you, when you haven't committed force or fraud against anyone, you have the absolute right--"law" or no "law"--to kill the person who tries it. Oddly, even most "gun rights" advocates don't like putting it that way, though their stated reasons for "gun rights" is to protect against tyranny. Well, duh: if you need the tyrant's PERMISSION (via "law") before you'll resist tyranny, what's the point?A consistent message from people who believe in gun rights—which admittedly would make most people very uneasy (because of their underlying "government"-worship)--would be this: "Dear Congressman, I understand you are considering voting for so-called 'legislation' that would disarm me. Be advised, if you do that, I have the right to kill any thugs you send to disarm me, and the right to kill you for sending them to do it. Have a nice day."I know a LOT of you cringed when you read that. No offense, but the only reason you would cringe is if, deep down inside, you believe that we are all OBLIGATED to obey whatever commands politicians decide to dish out. And in order to believe that, you must believe that each of us BELONGS to them. If some private individual threatened to come into your house to disarm you, most of you would, without hesitation, condone a response such as: "Try it, and I'll blow your damn head off!" And if ten people, or a hundred people, threatened to disarm you, you'd have the right to violently resist ALL of them.So why would you have any less of a right to do it--and why does the idea of forcibly resisting make most people uneasy--when people wearing the label of "authority" try it? Aren't they just people, too? In most peoples' eyes, NO, they aren't just people; they are representatives of our collective master, our OWNERS: "government." And as long as the people hold that view, the ONLY power they will ever have is the power to pitifully beg their masters to please be nice. In other words, they will have no power at all. A lot of people have said that they want something somewhere between what I speak of and what we currently have. They want a lot less government, but not none at all. But once again, when it comes right down to it, there are only TWO options: either we each own ourselves, or we are all owned by "government." There is no in between, and there can be no compromise between the two. EVERY so-called "moderate" solution concedes that we are slaves, but asks our owners to be nice. If we own ourselves, we don't NEED their permission to be free, their "laws" carry no obligation to obey, and we have every right to forcibly resist their infringements just as we would have if our neighbor decided on his own to start "taxing" and "regulating" us. If you ask me, being a slave who can only beg his master to be nice isn't good enough. If that makes me an "extremist," so be it. If I were a slave, I'd prefer a nice master. I'd be oppressed so rarely, and to such a small degree, that even I would rarely bother to complain about it. Nonetheless, there is still a fundamental, crucial difference between being the property of a wise, benign, permissive and kind master, and owning yourself. The former should never be accepted as being good enough. – Larken Rose

The secret word is Right!

A PROMOTIONAL ANNOUNCEMENT -- WE ROCK AGAIN

It’s been while since Mick Farren and Andy Colquhoun walked their musical dog in the Los Angeles basin. But did you really think we’d hung it up? Hell no. We’ll be rolling out the two-man psychedelic deviant future blues at Tommy Ray’s on Ventura for a special show next Thursday (August 30th) and you are cordially invited.

Tommy Ray’s, 12345 Ventura Blvd, Studio City, CA 91604 (That’s like between Laurel Canyon and Whitsett.)
(818) 506-2412

And if you’re wondering about the heat of the dog days, the show’s on a patio. So drink it up, tip the waitress, but make sure you come on down.

(Goddamnit, this reads like an old time radio commercial.)

The secret word is Nervous

I'M NOT SURE WHAT THIS HAS TO DO WITH THE ABOVE

Bernie sent this review from yesterdays Sunday Times in London of a 32 track CD compilation called “Cries From The Midnight Circus – Ladbroke Grove 1967 – 78” on which I feature on three cuts with and without The Deviants.

"The soundtrack of Richard Curtis’s Notting Hill ignored bands from the area in favour of anodyne pap appropriate to the film’s content. Here’s the real soundtrack of Notting Hill: 32 tracks follow musicians from Ladbroke Grove, London’s little Haight-Ashbury, as they shed shaggy afghans for proto-punk street gear. The Pretty Things invent the rock opera on Defecting Grey; American expats the Misunderstood preempt psychedelia with the eastern stomp Children of the Sun; with Do It, the Pink Fairies could have been our Stooges; and Mick Farren, a local legend, flails around enthusiastically, achieving nothing but sounding splendid."

I’m clearly a little conflicted. I feel that “achieving nothing” is possibly an understandable error, so I’m totally concentrating on the “sounding splendid.”

FREE STUFF ON SUNDAY

Can’t write anything profound, insightful or even just plain silly today since I am contending with the deadline from Black Lagoon. I can, however, offer you a free download (if you can follow the directions, which I’m not sure I can) of Gringo Madness by Tijuana Bible. Tijuana Bible consisted of Henry Beck, John Collins and me, and was a minimalist, highly poetic, Manhattan anti-folk, unplugged kinda endeavor that played live in the saloons of the Lower East Side in the late 1980s and reconvened on a snowy weekend on 9th Avenue to cut this epic around the time Bill Clinton was getting elected president.

And if that’s not enough, how about some retro-culture in the form of a video of James Dean and Gig Young in a safe-driving public service TV spot.

The secret word is Overworked

HEY GUYS, LET'S INVADE IRAN!

Mainly in the interests of retaining my sanity, I pay as little attention as I can to what’s being promoted by Roger Ailes and Fox News. I am well aware of the neo-con mindset, but I try and remain as far detached from it as possible. It’s very, very ugly in there and I tend to get the shakes. The current drumbeat for a war with Iran, however, is too rabid to ignore especially when its sorted and packaged as in this new short film by Robert Greenwald that demonstrates how the current Fox campaign to demonize Iran is nothing more than a propaganda softening-up process to prepare Americans for the Bush administration starting a whole new war in the Middle East before they leave office. (Or maybe use it as an excuse not to leave office.)
I fear I constantly make the mistake of assuming that Bush/Cheney and their demon cohorts are at least marginally rational. We can’t have another war. It won’t play. Moral considerations aside, it just isn’t possible. The military is already stretched to its limit and the industrial end of the notorious military/industrial compex is so mired in graft and inefficiency that it can’t even come up with the 20,000 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles requested for use by the Army and Marines in Iraq. (Compare this with World War II when Ford auto plants, rerigged for aircraft production, were turning out one B-24 bomber every 63 minutes.) I tell myself the White House can’t be that chock full o’ insanity, but I’m finding myself less and less convincing.

The secret word is Ruthless or maybe Demented

And now do you wanna watch ol’ Bob do a rocking version of Masters Of War?

This blog is still affiliated with The White Panther Party

SIMULATION OR REALITY REVISITED

You may recall that, eight days ago (Wednesday August 15th ) Doc40 engaged the idea that we might all be imaginary entities running round in a computer simulation, construct, or nightmare created by some vast, possibly malignant, or maybe just bored third party being. (And if you don’t remember, it’s easy to go back and look.) The matter came up when our pal Dr. Adder complained how Oxford Ph. D philosopher, Nick Bostrom was pushing the concept of a Matrix-like unreality to the media as his own original thought when all he was doing was catching up to “up to where Philip K. Dick was 40 years ago”. I also pointed out that the suggestion our universe was nothing more than a micro-point in some unimaginably huge macro-reality had been "well known to paranoids, acid heads, schizophrenics, and comic book writers for at least a half century." The illustration above, probably from a 1950s Astounding Science Fiction (although I’m not wholly certain), would seem to be yet another confirmation of just how venerable the idea really is, as the lady in the headset seems remotely to manipulate the brutality of the human male.

Moreover we have clips from the notorious, but unseen by me at least, Cameron Diaz soft core BDSM movie* she made before she was famous, and also The Ramones Name Generator, the combination of which, in itself, would seem to be a little too weirdly complicated -- not to say convoluted -- for us all to be mere players in a sim game.

The secret word is Misapprehension

* Unsuitable for children. Piss off if you're under 18.

IS THIS THE FACE OF GLOBAL WARMING?

Hurricane Dean (for James Dean, Dean Stockwell, Dean Moriarty?*)didn’t hit any major population centers or wreck a city, and blew out leaving comparatively few deaths and less than total devastation. It was, though, at one point in its evolution, a monster Category Five, more powerful that Katrina, and also a week earlier in the season. For facts and figures check Chris Mooney in yesterday’s HuffPo, who makes the case that Dean may not be a symptom of a disintegrating global weather system, but it sure as hell could be.
*Original joke from HCB.

The secret word is Rising

PLUS
In this week’s edition of LA CityBeat, I make a stunningly plausible case for how another fourteen some months of this no-limit, no-quarter, no-prisoners presidential electioneering may reduce us all to drooling mental cases

AND HAS THE PEOPLE'S TEMPLE MOVED EAST...

...and is the ghost of Jim Jones stalking the desert sands? (They always did say he really fronted for the CIA.)

THE BOUND NAKED LADIES OF DUBLIN

Good lord, it sounds like something out of James Joyce, except this would appear to be an exercise in guerrilla art, which, if nothing else should piss off the still powerful Catholic church. Although the report in the Dublin Evening Herald does not record the number, a whole bunch of these identical images, by an artist known only as Pi, appeared on walls, bridges, and streets of Dublin in the course of a single night last week, slowing traffic, intriguing or disconcerting the populace, and sending more than one fleeing for a pint of Guinness and a shot of Jamieson’s.
A similar art performance occurred back in the 1980s when I lived in lower Manhattan where some unknown artist painted dozens of sinister life-size black silhouettes that were vaguely the shape of a young Elvis Costello, and consistently positioned them on shadowed walls and the entrances to alleyways for the maximum, corner-of-the-eye, double-take shock

The secret word is Samo

AND TALKING OF NAKED

BEES (NOT BY WARHOL)

I fear even we at Doc 40 suffer from the same deplorable short attention span as our brethren in TV and print. One day a story is red hot, but the next it is lining the proverbial canary cage, as was pointed out on the credits of Lou Grant. (Who among you remember Lou Grant?) A few months ago we were beside ourselves about the bees, citing Einstein, expecting Gotterdammerung, pretty much every panic response short of quoting Latin. Now all is silence. The bee story is on hiatus. But has anyone any new information, observation or rumor? If so, let’s hear it.

The secret word is Buzz

In the meantime, here is some Latin, call it a CRYPTIQUE SPECIAL…
Dies irae, dies illa solvet saeclum in favilla (The day of wrath, that day which will reduce the world to ashes.)

(Pic and motivation from Valerie)

I NEVER THOUGHT RONALD REAGAN WOULD SHOW UP ON DOC40

But then Tim B sent this quote from the just published REAGAN DIARIES. The entry is dated May 17, 1986, and records Reagan’s opinion of George W. Bush, the son of his Vice President.

"A moment I've been dreading. George brought his ne're-do-well son around this morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the political one who lives in Florida. The one who hangs around here all the time looking shiftless. This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job. Maybe I'll call Kinsley over at The New Republic and see if they'll hire him as a contributing editor or something. That looks like easy work."

The secret word is Trash

(Oh, and by the way, I’m still not smoking cigarettes no matter how many dead presidents might want me to.)

Oh yeah, and if you though Reagan had a low opinion of Bush, check out what Hugo Chavez has to say -- and also the cows behind him.

I KNEW THERE WAS A REASON I AVOIDED VEGETABLES

Artist Till Novak constructed this produce masterpiece, the Alien made entirely out of vegetables as his tribute to H. R. Giger and Giuseppe Arcimboldo. (lifted from boing boing)

DOES THIS MEAN THE WARP DRIVE IS COMING?

The mainstream media seem to have totally ignored this story (sent by Sky) of particles moving at more than the speed of light, but if it’s true, surely it’s incredibly important.

"Scientists claim to have broken the ultimate speed record - by making photons travel faster than light. Exceeding the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, is supposed to be completely impossible. According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an object through the light barrier. Travelling faster than light also turns back time with bizarre consequences. An astronaut moving beyond light speed would theoretically arrive at his destination before leaving. But two German physicists now claim to have forced light to overcome its own speed limit using the strange phenomenon known as quantum tunnelling." (For more.)

"I can't do that, Dave"

THE BUGGERS ARE BACK (and fast)

For a while, our Dutch pals the Buggers seemed to be laying low, but then, back at the end of July the came through with new position, and now, suddenly, here’s another one about money and banking.

BUGGER POSITION #18

Normally speaking we would not give a rat's arse about the current bank crisis. Let banks sort out their own mess. We don't care for their dog-eat-dog world. But there are a couple of aspects of the current bank crisis which make it even more unsavoury than usual. In the first place, of course, the fact that the crisis has its origin in rip-offs of people whohave next to nothing. The subprime mortgages given out by American banks, which lie at the root of the crisis, cheat people without means out of what income and possessions they have. First the banks take their money through high interest rates and then, when the money has gone, they take possession of their homes. As long as the prices of houses are on the rise, there is no risk involved for the mortgager: the lender ends up with the borrower's money and house, which by then is worth more than the value it has beenmortgaged for. That is why subprime mortgages have always been lucrative deals for lenders. And that is how unscrupulous businessmen like Roland Arnall have made a fortune. A fortune that enabled him to buy himself the position of US ambassador of The Netherlands on the one hand and to buy off criminal prosecution on the other. A rat like that ought to have a price put on his head, or arse, if you think that part of the body will make a better investment.
A consequence of the subprime mortgages is that people are either forced to sell their homes at relatively low prices or that banks take possession of them and auction them. This rising amount of relatively cheap houses unsettled the already inflated housing market in the USA. When a couple of years ago the US housing market collapsed and the value of houses dropped, a crisis began to take shape. Subprime mortgages no longer guaranteed profit for the mortgagers, debts turned bad. Big banks and wholesale lenders had bought the debts from mortgagers when they were still considered profitable, repackaged them and sold them to Wall Street firms. These Wall Street banks and investment companies had further repackaged these debts and sold them to pension funds, hedge funds and institutions all over the world. So, once the debts of people with low incomes in the US had turned bad, the system was infected on a global scale. Some banks and funds suddenly faced huge financial losses, others became distrustful of making investments or granting loans to fellow-banks and funds. What is called a "credit crunch" is actually a flare of paranoia all around the dog-eat-dog world. Paranoia is inherent to this world. But it is ironical that failed rip-offs of the poor should kindle it. There is a sense of justice in this backfire. It is a cliché but in this case an appropriate one: "Dog" spelled backwards reads "God". The past few weeks central banks all around the world have injected huge sums of money into the financial world to ease the paranoia. With private banks distrustful of one another and unwilling to make investments or give out loans - except against high interest rates - the financial crisis was beginning to spread to other areas of the economy: the shares of companies that do business with borrowed money dropped in value and stock marketsaround the world plunged. Today the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the USA, announced that it has lowered its interest rate with 0,5 percent. No doubt, other central banks will soon follow. Now when central banks start to intervene, the public should be wary. Central banks, the monetary institutes of our governments, can only produce money and grant loans at low interest rates at the cost of inflation. Thus, the trick by which the financial losses of mortgage banks and investors are being compensated by their big brothers, the central banks, is called INFLATION: they simply decrease thevalue of our money. In the end the bugger in the street will pay the bill. Fuck a duck! There is no god after all. There are only dogs and rats.

The secret word is Loot (as in the profit of theft)

THIS BLOG IS STILL PROTECTED BY...

A NIGHT AT THE OPERA

Valerie send the above suggestion for staying cool in the August furnace.

THE SUMMER OF LOVE REVISITED (and revisited and revisited and...)

When Munz sent over this piece from The Guardian in London, I kinda groaned. Another fucking dissection of 1967? But this one seems to be fairly balanced, and attempts to place the counter-culture in a much broader social context. And the writer quotes me, so it can’t all be bad. For those unfamiliar with the history, Tom McGrath was the first editor of the UK underground paper IT. After IT’s first obscenity bust, Tom took it on the lam, and the paper was taken over by an ad hoc collective of which I was the most vocal and loaded. (I’m posting the story in full because the link has run out.)

SUMMER OF LOVE: The hippies were the most extreme example of a much broader movement transforming Britain into a relatively permissive society.

by Marcus Collins August 9, 2007

In March 1967 Tom McGrath, the editor of the leading countercultural newspaper, IT, sought to describe "the revolution [that] has taken place within the minds of the young" on the eve of the Summer of Love.
He identified its core as permissiveness: the notion that "the individual should be free from hindrances by external law or internal guilt in his pursuit of pleasure so long as he does not impinge on others". He was right, for "doing your own thing" became an articleof faith among his fellow hippies in the 1960s and beyond. Yet, for all their attempts to distance themselves from "squares" and The System, hippies were simply the most extreme example of a much broader movement transforming Britain into a relatively permissive society.
The legal restraints to which McGrath referred had been undergoing wholesale reform during the previous decade, transforming the relationship between state, society and individual. Print censorship was relaxed in 1959 and that of drama in 1968. Citizens won the right to take their own lives in 1961 and murderers got to keep theirs after 1965. Off-course betting became legal in 1960, as did abortion and male homosexuality in limited fashion in 1967. The National Health Service (Family Planning) Act of the same year extended access to contraception regardless of marital status, while the Divorce Reform Act passed two years later dissolved marriages that had undergone "irretrievable breakdown" after two years in consensual cases and five years in contested ones.
The liberalisation of the law was only one facet of permissiveness in 1960s Britain. McGrath's disavowal of "internal guilt" shows how those affected by legal change were no passive recipients of civil liberties. The radical theologian, Douglas Rhymes, duly urged his readers in 1964 to overcome both their guilt and any deference to "priest, Church, politician or parent" when making moral choices. Advocates of permissiveness equated individualism with iconoclasm, described by McGrath as a rejection of leaders and by George Melly (who died last month) as a "cool refusal to pay homage to traditiona bogeymen and shibboleths". Disdain for convention sat uneasily with the pluralistic dimensions of permissiveness. McGrath commended the "international, inter-racial, equisexual" dimensions of the "alternative society", while the anarchist hippie Mick Farren stated that "each and every individual has unique needs and desires that areentirely his own".Permissiveness encouraged people to express and satisfy these desires. McGrath urged everyone to follow their "inner voice in the most honest way possible", gays "came out" and the future politician and perjurer Jonathan Aitken incongruously applauded his generation's "remarkable frankness" in 1967. Self-expression often took creative forms such as the "wild new clothes" and "strange new music sounds" that caught McGrath's attention. The past decade or so had witnessed a cultural efflorescence that rid Britain of its frumpy image. A country producing the Beatles and the Stones, Mary Quant and VidalSassoon, Biba and Habitat soon lost its inferiority complex. Equally significant was the manner in which British culture challenged existing aesthetic standards. It was no longer self-evident that high culture was superior to popular culture or, indeed, how each termshould be defined. British icons likewise redefined female beauty (Twiggy), male beauty (Mick Jagger), artistry (Lennon and McCartney) and heroism (James Bond). Tom McGrath's championing of "the individual's right to pleasure (orgasm)" points to the bond between permissiveness and the sexual revolution. Britain overcame its reputation for prudery by conducting a carnivalesque breaking of taboos in the 1960s. The first C-word in a paperback (1960), the first F-word on air (1965), the first drug reference in a Beatles song (1965) and the first full-frontal centrefold in a soft-core magazine (1971) could be taken to signify liberation or merely titillation, but either way they indicated a weakening of controls. While this process was furthered by the relaxation of censorship, contrary attempts to restore public decency often achieved the same effect. The prosecution of Lady Chatterley's Lover in 1960 made it a bestseller; Christine Keeler's nude bodybecame the defining image of the Profumo Affair of 1963 and Marianne Faithfull served the same role in the 1967 Redlands drugs trial.
The primacy given to freedom, pleasure and sexuality necessitated a rethink of morality and religion, leading McGrath to write of a "new spiritual movement". Some defined the "New Morality" in terms of the abolition of prohibitions; others toyed with moral relativism. The famously liberal Bishop of Woolwich preferred to restructure Christianity around a situational ethics in which "nothing can of itself always be labelled as 'wrong'." But for humanists, permissiveness was inseparable from a process of secularisation thattook off in the 1960s and continues to this day.
McGrath's utopianism became painfully unfashionable once the 1960s gave way to the 1970s and the Summer of Love to the Winter of Discontent. But 40 years later, his vision of a Britain embracing freedom, individualism, iconoclasm, pluralism, openness, pleasure, creativity and a post-Christian morality seems almost prophetic. Britain is now a more permissive society than it has ever been, and hippies deserve their due for assisting in its creation.

The secret words are Oh Wow