"Aren't we forgetting the true meaning of Christmas? You know… the birth of Santa." -- Bart Simpson
(Image and quote suppied by Valerie)
The secret word is Fruitcake
On Christmas Eve, Uncle Bill and his young friend take their guns and hunt art.
But click here to watch The Junky’s Christmas.
Oh dear. Seems as though we jumped the gun, rushed to judgment, laughed too soon, and were wrong in our assumptions. The drug for which Bristol Palin’s possible future mother-in-law was busted turns out not to be speed at all, (see last Saturday) but oxycontin, that good old hillbilly heroin.
"WASILLA, Alaska — Wasilla resident Sherry L. Johnston, mother of Bristol Palin's boyfriend, faces a Jan. 6 court date for an oxycontin-related arrest at her home by Alaska State Troopers. Little additional information was available Friday on the case as authorities remained unusually tight-lipped about details. But Palmer court records listed Johnston's scheduled court date and a troopers spokeswoman said in a release late Friday afternoon that the charges "are in relation to the drug oxycontin." (Click for more.)
In which Marilyn sits pensive and discontented. “They send me on all these wretched adventures but do they really give a damn about me?” She reflects upon how untenable her role in the multiverse has become, and how weary she is with the ceaselessly shifting set up and the irrationality of the Random Flips. She grimly fumes at the nonsensical orders from the 14th International, and the constant reminders, transmitted by jackbooted chorus boys at Timereich S7 Macro, of the apocalyptic consequences of an accidental meeting with any of the infinite number of her Norma Jean Variables. And if that wasn’t bad enough, she finds herself in the perpetual vice between the too-certain, judgmental, goddess-hating Apollolonians to the right of her, and the too-horny, drunken, trigger-happy Dionysian to the left. Meanwhile the middle ground just squirms like a slimy clone vat with the likes of The Unspeakable Zero Brothers, Archbishop Moriarty and his Diamond Dogs, plus all the benighted hick-demons who are too stupid to recognize they're locked in the repeating depression killer-cycles of a Kellogg Rift. And, finally, floating over everything, are the tedious goddamned aliens, with their anal probes, their temporal calibrators, and their deathrays. Marilyn sighs deeply. “How long to they seriously expect me to keep on doing this?”
I must confess I am more than pleased that it didn't succeed. Our popular culture is sufficiently neurotic, and this might have pushed it into some very weird dimensions.
The secret word is Issues
The wino on the bench insulted Uncle Bill’s new suit. Uncle Bill knocked his hat off and beat him mercilessly.
Finn is a new arrival at the Doc40 household. He is five months old, a trainee terrorist and quite a handful, and he came to me from an animal rescue group with the help of his Three Godmothers. For a while I wondered if to adopt him so soon was disrespecting the memory of the sorely missed Newton, but I was persuaded by my friends that a new kitten would point me outward, and I think they were right.
A week ago today, I ran a picture of Elizabeth Taylor in Suddenly Last Summer for no really good reason except that it was there and I liked it. Our pal Valerie in Barcelona responded with this great shot which, one can only assume, was taken a while later after the scene wrapped. Valerie also noted in the accompanying email, “Had always seemed like Italy to me probably because of shades of Pasolini. Till a visit a couple of years ago to S'Agaró, once a wild and wonderful place along the coast, where they still remember the filming. You can imagine the excitement for a tiny village in 50s Franco and church controlled Spain. The little Catalan boys who ate Montgomery Clift....”
The secret word is Falange
Davey Graham -- RIP
As some of you already know I have a schoolboy weakness for the entire mythology of Nazi space exploration, secret bases, and the Flugelrad (the Nazi flying saucer.) I totally indulged this fixation in the fourth and (so far) final Victor Renquist vampire novel, Underland – and if you haven’t read it, you really should. Our pal Jon emailed me a whole bunch of stuff under the general rubric of diesel-punk which included a link to this movie-in-production titled Iron Sky which really looks like fabulous stuff for those who like that sort of thing. Click here to watch a trailer, and here for the webpage.
The secret word is Achtung
Yesterday we all had a good laugh when Muntadar al-Zeidi hurled his shoes at George Bush, and today some political activist sent me an email suggesting that we all send old shoes to Bush at the White House. It seemed, for a few minutes, to be a suitably goofy idea, but then the realization fell on me like a great weight that to think of George Bush as goofy is a dangerous mistake. He is a deadly combination of arrogance, ignorance, criminality, and uncaring incompetence, and that is something we should never forget. The cynical attempt to whitewash his disastrous presidency with the current Bush Legacy Project won’t fly. The man cannot plausibly reinvent himself as our first Dear Leader of the 21st century, but, at the same time, for him to be reduced to a figure of fun – the doofus who couldn’t get a book deal – is so much more than he deserves that it has to be rejected out of hand. The man is evil. He started two wars, wasted thousands of lives, attempted to create an American police state, left New Orleans to drown, and wantonly destroyed the national economy. Even now he is sowing a minefield of presidential orders to make the cleanup in the aftermath of his regime as difficult as possible. George Bush should probably be tried as war criminal, but US politics are such that this is unlikely to happen. But, for chrissakes, don’t let’s remember him with a smile.
The secret word is Iniquity
In which Marilyn, working as a fifth columnist for the Albert Hoffman Brigade of the Dionysian Red Legion, infiltrates the CAPCOM base of the government troops with the intention of using her goddess wiles for subvert the rank and file grunts, and sapping their will to fight before the inevitable battle when the rebels come down from the mountains. She experiences a moment of panic, however, when the sergeant wraps the silk scarf around her neck. Could he be a Thugee-trained strangler of Kali? But no. He has no idea of her true identity or mission. He’s just trying to buy her good will with gifts. Next thing, he’ll be offering her cigarettes, chocolate, and nylons. She knows she will easily bend him to her will. Hasta la victoria siempre.
We all seem to have heard about the Iraqi reporter who called George Bush a "dog" and threw his shoes at him earlier today. Our lovely friend Valerie sent a visual comment on what might have been if the reporter had proved more adventurous in his choice of footwear.
The secret word is Heel
(If you haven’t heard the story, click here.)
MrMR has once again clued us in…
“Have you ever wondered what all those extra SUVs are in the Presidential or VIP motorcades? You know, the ones with blacked windows that no one gets in or out of. Well, wonder no more. They are the heavyweight protection and have a 6-barreled 7.62 mm mini gun that fires over 4,000 rounds per minute. The vehicle is also armor plated, and the wipers need to be running to remove spent casings when the weapon is firing.” (Click here for a shoot 'em up promo video from the company that makes this monster.)
The secret word is Ratatatatatatatat!
I guess what I really want from Detroit is a car that’s lightweight, non-polluting, made in a union shop, and looks just like this. Like Eddie Cochrane once remarked, “there’s a car made just for me/to own that car would be a luxury.” Am I the only one who feels like this?
And HCB writes in an email, “the determined sonsobitches who pretend the way to save the auto industry is to eviscerate the workers. Union busters have their own subdivision in hell where they have to endlessly re-experience the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire.”
BETTIE PAGE – RIP
And it’s Liz posing unhappily on the beach in Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer. I’d like to pretend I was so school-boy, hip-literate that I came to the work of Tennessee on it’s own merit, but the truth is that I went to see the movie because my dirty minded little homies told me Liz’s white, one-piece swimsuit became transparent when wet. When I actually shuffled into the cheap seats of the local cinema, I discovered that Suddenly Last Summer was a twisted epic in which Liz on the beach is attracting young boys for her husband Sebastian, and is later threatened with a lobotomy by Sebastian’s mom, played by Katherine Hepburn, who brings in Montgomery Clift (baby) to declare Liz insane when she threatens to blow the whistle on Sebastian’s predatory gaiety. And, after the whole story ended in cannibalism, there was no stopping me. I promptly boarded the streetcar to the glass menagerie. (And, around the same time, I also discovered the work of Hank – the other of the Williams boys.)
Who was eaten alive by the teen-boys he’d previously been debauching.
...and the style and the bells and whistles. Although we do have admit that we're suckers for the innocent simplicity and historical romance of that old time revolution. Thanks anonymous.(Click here for a larger image.)
The secret word is Plutocrat
In which Marilyn attempts to make conversation with the other guests at the banquet for assembled sentients. “What have they done to the Earth?” She asks. “What have they done to our fair sister? Ravaged and plundered, and ripped her, and bit her, stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn, and tied her with fences, and dragged her down. I hear a very gentle sound, with your ear down to the ground. We want the world and we want it...” She pauses and frowns. Something is very wrong. “Oh dear. That’s not me. I’m channeling Jim Morrison. We must have had an iconographic poetry distort.” She attempts to dismiss the glitch with a bright disarming smile. “At least we’re still speaking English…aren’t we?”
Alerts to this story came in from a number of sources…
CHICAGO — Workers who got three days' notice their factory was shutting its doors have occupied the building and say they won't go home without assurances they'll get severance and vacation pay they say they are owed. About 250 workers occupied the Republic Windows and Doors plant Saturday while union leaders outside criticized a Wall Street bailout they say is leaving laborers behind. Leah Fried, a United Electrical Workers organizer, said the Chicago- based vinyl window manufacturer failed to give 60 days' notice required by law before shutting down. During the peaceful takeover, workers have been shoveling snow and cleaning the building, Fried said. "We're doing something we haven't since the 1930s, so we're trying to make it work," (Click for more)
“The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.” – Che Guevara
The secret word is Rising
“Oh my God! I seem to have given birth to a litter of puppies!”
(And talking of litters, I’m agonizing over adopting a new feline friend. If anyone has a smart, sturdy, ideologically sound, long haired, male kitten, I can offer it a fabulous home. Email byron4d@msn.com )
Munz forwarded this note from Dale Gieringer of the Drug Policy Forum of California...
“This Friday, Dec 5th, is a day to toast the 75th anniversary of the repeal of alcohol prohibition. We did it once, we should do it again! Repeal put an end to a decade of prohibition-fueled violence, gangsterism and lawlessness. Alcohol prohibition dates from the same era as drug prohibition, the devastating consequences of which remain with us still: thousands dead in Mexican drug war violence, thousands more victims of prohibition-fueled wars in Afghanistan and Colombia; half a million US prisoners, 800,000 marijuana arrests per year, illicit smugglers, growers in the forest, etc. Alcohol prohibition lasted just 13 years. Next April 1st will mark the 100th anniversary of the first national drug prohibition law, the Opium Exclusion Act of 1909. The time is long overdue for a serious debate on repealing obsolete, last-century, prohibitionist drug laws.” (Click here for more.)
The secret word is Insanity
Forrest J. Ackerman – RIP
As the heads of the Big Three auto companies beg the Senate Banking Committee for their bailout, the United Auto Workers express willingness to make concessions, sacrificing job security and retiree health care to keep General Motors and Chrysler out of bankruptcy. But that doesn’t seem to be good enough for the Motor City moguls who, to sweeten the deal with the government, are busily promising massive layoffs and cuts in the labor force. These bastards seem simply too stupid to get the message. The whole point of the Obama New Deal-style recovery plan is to create jobs, and put cash in the pockets of workers to prime a new consumer cycle. There is no auto industry if the guys on the line aren’t paid enough to buy the goddamned cars. Henry Ford knew that, but seemingly his successors can’t grasp the concept.
The secret word is Nationalize
On Sunday, I sat pensive at the computer when a short, sharp, physical shock shook the windows and rattled the walls of my apartment. A boiler exploding? A bomb? A terrorist attack? I had become accustomed to the sound of bombs during the 1970s when the Provisional IRA were planting infernal devices around London. This shock seemed too short and sharp. What the fuck? Which remained the question until I later learned it was a sonic boom created as the space shuttle Endeavour landed on Runway 4 at Edwards Air Force Base after its 16-day assembly mission at the International Space Station. It had been diverted from a planned landing in Florida by low clouds and high crosswinds at the Kennedy Space Center.
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