WAY PAST TIME TO WISE UP

From Salon…
"In 2001, Portugal became the only EU-member state to decriminalize drugs, a distinction which continues through to the present. Last year, working with the Cato Institute, I went to that country in order to research the effects of the decriminalization law (which applies to all substances, including cocaine and heroin) and to interview both Portuguese and EU drug policy officials and analysts (the central EU drug policy monitoring agency is, by coincidence, based in Lisbon). Evaluating the policy strictly from an empirical perspective, decriminalization has been an unquestionable success, leading to improvements in virtually every relevant category and enabling Portugal to manage drug-related problems (and drug usage rates) far better than most Western nations that continue to treat adult drug consumption as a criminal offense."

Even with Obama bringing a measure of sanity to the power structure, so much arrant nonsense is still being talked about drug policy that I feel my head starting to explode. Everyone seems to forget that the vast profits in drug trafficking, that fund so much global mayhem, are created the very illegality of the product. Make it legal and they vanish. Drug legalization in the USA and Europe could be a domestic tax bonanza, and even, as an instrument of foreign policy, could stabilize both Afghanistan and Mexico. I have so much to write about all this that my other head wants to explode. But whether it will ever be published in this time of media crisis is a whole other matter.

The secret word is 4261747368697421

OR YOU COULD THROW TOMATOES AT AIG

There’s even a touch of Jackson Pollack creativity about it. (Click here)

OH NO NOT BONO

Dave Marsh has posted a searing attack on Bono on Counterpunch, which I’m linking, because I’ve never quite bought the idea of St. Bono, Savior of the Huddled Masses...

“Bono is no man of peace--he has yet to speak out against any war. Bono is part owner of Pandemic/Bioware, producers of Mercenaries 2, a video game which simulates an invasion of Venezuela. Last year Bono met with US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to discuss plans to set up a new U.S. military command for Africa. Forbes, the magazine Bono co-owns, constantly beats the drums for war (Bono says he was attracted to the magazine because it has a “consistent philosophy”).” (Click here for the whole tirade.)

WARNING!

“We have you on radar. Identify yourself or we scramble our fighters.”

A FRIDAY PICTURE SHOW

It’s Friday (TGIF) and here’s a special program of stunning videos for your amusement. We have…

EXTREME SHEEP LED ART (Send by Noudela) Click here

SHORT WITH BETTIE PAGE Click here

INTERMISSION (Don’t miss this!) Click here

THE CAT HOUSE ON THE KING (Send by Aeswiren) Click here

And all this reminds me that one day I swear I will bring Doctube up to speed.

AND TALKING OF THINGS I HAVEN’T DONE

Regular readers will know that I have always dreamed of creating a Doc40 secret decoder ring. I once got as far as getting a quote from a manufacturer, but the minimum order was beyond our means. Now we have a this damned economy, the dream retreats further. We do, however, still have the virtual secret decoder ring with which to amuse ourselves. And here’s the secret message…

546f206563686f2054686520477261746566756c
20446561642c20224f6e6520776179206f722061
6e6f746865722e2054686973207374617276696e
67277320676f7420746f20676976652e22

(All you have to do is copy the message, click on the site, clear the box, paste the message into the box, and hit “decode.”)

The secret word is 44656d656e746961

OUR WHACKY UNCLE BILL

Uncle Bill blends with the crowd by shifting the film in the camera. It’s a trick he learned from Victor Renquist who never likes to be photographed.

GOODBYE DUBAI

“Former boomtown Dubai has suffered a sharp downturn in its property market, where prices could fall almost 40 percent this year according to a Reuters poll this week. Standard and Poor's has said Dubai's economy could shrink 2-4 percent in 2009.”

Is it unfair to feel a measure of pleasure at the news that the formerly untouchable Emerald City of the Gulf oil sheiks and their corporate henchmen is suffering – at least in some degree – the pain and uncertainty that currently afflicts the rest of us? Hell no. I’m only human. I need something to mitigate my anger and discomfort after I leaned earlier that George W(TF?) Bush has been given a $7 million advance for a book by Random House, while serious and talented writers can hardly get themselves arrested as the corporate world destroys both journalism and literature.

…so disposable, in fact, that hundreds of them are being laid off, let go, or taking horrendous pay cuts every week.

The secret word is Mutiny

BUT KOWALSKI SEZ…

“I jump for joy. It’s 1970, I’m full of speed, and driving a Dodge Challenger R/T from Denver to San Francisco at maximum warp.”

MO' BOB

At risk of going irredeemably retro, the subject of Bob Dylan has come up again. London Steve writes…

“I think we all have to accept by now that there's no way we can prevent all those songs we know and love being used in TV ads. But the real pisser is when they condense and conjoin songs so that the original verse/chorus structure is corrupted. Case in point is the new ad over here for the Co-op's fair-trade initiatives, which uses Bob's original Blowin' In The Wind. I guess Dylan thought this was a worthwhile cause, but I wonder if he knows what they've done to his song. The verse starts off, as it should, with "How many roads can a man walk down before you call him a man?/How many seas must a white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand?" All well and good, but then some stupid fucker has decided that "cannonballs fly until they're forever banned" doesn't fit the ad's sentiments - so they've arbitrarily stuck in the "mountain exist... until it is washed to the sea" line as the last line in this verse. So it doesn't rhyme, makes no sense and pisses the hell out of every Dylan fan who hears it.”

But, in another email, Steve wonders “I'm also not sure that Dylan gives a damn one way or the other (after all, he was happy to appear in that Victoria's Secret ad, though maybe the lure there was the scantily clad woman).”

In addition, when I noted on Face Book that “The worst thing about hard times is that they can demand undignified solutions.” Valerie sent us a 1994 clip of Bob performing Dignity (in a polka dot shirt.) Click here.

The secret word is Crumb

Natasha Richardson -- RIP

HAVE A SATISFACTORY ST. PATRICK’S DAY

Blessed are the waters of the Liffey

The secret word is Fenian

THE ADVENTURES OF MARILYN (Part 2134)

In which Marilyn finds herself both outraged and distressed. Without the slightest hint of what might be coming or any suggestion of transition, she materializes seated on a bed in a less-than-luxury hotel room, next to a cyborg, drag-queen replicant of Jane Russell. The environment is, of course, total illusion, and she has no doubt that this is the work of the lizard thugees from Zeta Reticuli, but she also has no clue how to reverse the process and get the hell out of there. It wasn’t by any means the first time that she had been abducted by aliens, but the lizard thugees, who usually liked to gloat from behind the rectal probe, are refusing to show themselves, and that is much more disturbing.

(Pic supplied by Valerie)

(THE ADVENTURES OF MARILYN NOW HAS IT’S OWN PAGE SO THE WHOLE THING CAN BE READ WITHOUT SCROLLING. CLICK HERE)

SUNDAY, AND TOYS MANIFEST THEMSELVES.

Playmobile – who brought us the airport security action toy (see Doc40 February 5th) – also wants to sell the kids the concept of a private jet. Why do I think this is a Bush-era idea very seriously past it’s time.

The secret word is Yesterday

THE ROLL CALL OF WEIRD COMICS GROWS LONGER

And just the other day, I received a Barbie Collectors’ Catalogue in the mail, which surprised and confused me, and had me wondering how I got on the mailing list, because I never believed I was that kind of person.

DID YOU EVER SEE A PANDA SNEEZE?

It’s Saturday. We got through Friday 13th. It’s time for silliness. (Click here.)

OR HULDUFOLK?

The nation of Iceland, now without an economy, is concentrating on their Icelandic elves…

“The huldufólk are thought to live in another dimension, invisible to most. They build their homes inside rocks and on craggy hillsides, and they seem to favor lava formations. The port town of Hafnarfjördur, near Reykjavík, is thought to have a particularly large settlement of elves—as well as other mystical beings like dwarves (who also fit under the broad category of huldufólk). According to local clairvoyants, the huldufólk royal family lives at the base of a cliff in that town. Elf-spotting is an intergenerational phenomenon in Iceland, although more children than adults report seeing huldufólk. Indeed, it's thought that many who are born clairvoyant lose the ability after the age of 8 or so. Furthermore, it's not just Icelanders who have this capacity—theoretically, anyone, from any country, can have the power to communicate with elves. Clairvoyants see elves year-round, sometimes in their own backyards, but Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.” (Click for more.)

The secret word is Illusion

PROLETARIAT PINUP #9

“Always remember the words of the immortal Che – ‘At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.’”

OUR WHACKY UNCLE BILL

Mr. Dylan comes walking through the park in his new boots. Uncle Bill decides he doesn’t want to see Mr. Dylan and uses an ancient Hopi invocation to become invisible.

And talking of Mr. Dylan, our pal Michael Simmons has posted an advance heads up on a new album on the Mojo blog. Not as exciting as it might have been in 1966, but still significant that Old Bob can keep popping out tunes. (Click here.)

TO THE SINGULARITY?

I just posted the following on Face Book…

“After just a week and half of being on Face Book, I suddenly find the format has changed. This seems to be uncomfortably like Blogger and many other online systems that also change templates and formats with what seems to be irrational abandon. My heightened sense of what’s-wrong-with-this-picture (some call it my famous paranoia) wonders if were being evaluated or softened up for something.”

SOMETIMES IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT...

...only the oblique makes sense.

The secret word is Tomorrow

AS THE WORLD GOES TO HELL IT WILL SMELL OF WILLIAM SHATNER

Our pal Lost Jimmy sent this over with the question “are these for real.” To which I can but reply, “I fear they are.”

“Genki Wear, known for its licensed science fiction jewelry and perfumes, has produced what might be the most unusual Star Trek product ever: Star Trek colognes and perfume based on the original 1960s television show. In our latest look at Trek’s big Spring Collection, TrekMovie has all the exclusive first details and images on this unique addition to the pantheon of Star Trek merchandise.”

Sadly there’s no image for this one

"Pon FarrThe most risqué titled of the new Star Trek fragrances is "Ponn Farr" which is a perfume designed to "drive him wild." It should only be used once every seven years (okay, that isn’t true). Named for the Vulcan mating ritual first introduced in the episode "Amok Time," this perfume is one of the newly designed products meant to appeal to female fans. More details and an image on Ponn Farr will be available soon." (Click here for more of this nonsense.)

Will someone please beam me out of here?

SHAMELESS EGO

Our friends at Ugly Things sent me a vintage interview that I did for Your Flesh magazine back in 1997. (When things made more sense and the future seemed viable.) Now it’s been posted on the mag’s archive site along with this rather cool picture by my friend Wendy. (Click here if you want to read it.)

The secret word is Me

...BEFORE THEY EAT YOU

“Obviously welfare is for the wealthy. We know how to handle money so much better than you six-pack peons.”

Republicans are making ugly noise all over my TV, plainly demonstrating with their discredited, free-market, Obama-must-fail, idiot babble they have absolutely no agenda except loudly and doggedly to protect the wealth of the wealthy and corporate profits. I have heard the argument “that tax cuts must be given to the rich because they are the ones who create the jobs” until my stomach turns. The rich have a Bush-era history of creating jobs. In China, India, Mexico, and the Philippines, but back in USA? Forget about it.

The secret word is Absurdity

PRIDE AND PREDATOR????

I hardly believe this, but it was in Variety…
“Elton John's Rocket Pictures hopes to make the first Jane Austen adaptation to which men will drag their girlfriends. Will Clark is set to direct "Pride and Predator," which veers from the traditional period costume drama when an alien crash lands and begins to butcher the mannered protags, who suddenly have more than marriage and inheritance to worry about.” (Click here for more.)

THE ADVICE OF THE MIGHTY MONK

“Just because you’re not a drummer doesn’t mean you don’t have to keep time.” Such are the words of the great Thelonious Sphere Monk, words good for both a band and the whole wide world. Monk wrote the above memo in 1960, which was then photographed by Steve Lacy (and sent to us by Munz.) That’s Monk who could play opposing melodies with each had. That’s Monk who swallowed a handful of acid and asked for more. That’s Monk who should be heeded.

The secret word is Fifth

...AND SINCE IT'S A BEBOP SUNDAY (and the clocks moved forward)

“So when does this economic crisis end, for fucksake?”

TIMES ARE GETTING HARD, BOYS

"I hear the US lost a half million jobs last month."

The secret words are Class War

PROLETARIAT PINUP #8

“Remember the salutary warning of V.I. Lenin, comrades. ‘If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years.’”

PLEASE SAY THIS IS A PHOTOSHOP JOKE

Sent by HCB to disturb us all on Friday.

YOU CAN PUT A CAT IN A BONG BUT IT DOESN’T MAKE IT A BROWNIE

Our pal Elf Hellion sent over the following piece of reefer madness…

"A man who stuffed his girlfriend's cat into a makeshift bong and smoked marijuana through it said Tuesday that he had done it on other occasions and that it calmed the cat down. Acea Schomaker of Lincoln said he never intended to hurt the 6-month-old cat, Shadow. Lancaster County sheriff's deputies responding to a domestic disturbance at the residence ticketed the 20-year-old Schomaker on suspicion of misdemeanor animal cruelty Sunday after catching him smoking marijuana from a boxlike contraption that had the cat stuffed inside its 12-inch by 6-inch base. Schomaker's girlfriend, Marissa Vieux, also was ticketed for animal cruelty because she didn't try to stop Schomaker." (Click for more and a video.)

SNUG, SNUG, SNUGGIE!

Does a closet desire for a Snuggie and the need to look like a survivor of the Heaven’s Gate cult indicate mental disintegration?

Oh yeah, seemingly today is Multiple Personality Day.

Hank Crawford -- RIP

THE DEMON PORKER WILL EXPLODE

As the madness of Republicans barks louder by the hour, our good-buddy HCB sends us the following comments…

“The attention Limbaugh is getting must be a better narcotic than a bottle of liquid Oxycontin, if his current rant is any indication. Listening to him on the radio at the moment, he's beseeching--demanding I suppose is a better word – Obama to debate him on his show (no flunkies, please, says Rush, no ex-Presidents, no current Vice-Presidents). Limbaugh is offering to fly Obama down, first class, feed him, and put him up in a five-star resort (I'm not making this up).
Do you suppose Limbaugh might be possessed by Idi Amin, might actually eat Obama if he gets within reach?
Limbaugh's ego is so inflated he appears to be on the verge of some kind of massive implosion, like a Lonesome Roads meltdown. I don't want to be on the same continent when this happens--a cross between the Hindenberg and the guy at the end of the Monty Python movie.”

The secret word is Dementia

SKYWATCHING

And while we’re talking friends of Doc40, our good pal Skylaire Alfvegren is now the Los Angeles correspondent for UFO Examiner. She will post every few days. (Click here for Skylaire.)

And click here for a Cthulhu-orientated humor piece from The Onion.

Or click here for a very nice review of The Deviants compilation CD On Your Knees Earthlings.

OUR WHACKY UNCLE BILL

Uncle Bill doesn’t find Mr. Zappa very amusing and reaches for his tiny Derringer.

THE TOTAL PERSPECTIVE VORTEX

The following – sent by our pal Elf Hellion – is kinda long, but is does confirm some things I have always suspected.

”Most people think of the "mentally disordered" as a delusional lot, holding bizarre and irrational ideas about themselves and the world around them. Isn’t a mental disorder, after all, an impairment or a distortion in thought or perception? This is what we tend to think, and for most of modern psychology's history, the experts have agreed; realistic perceptions have been considered essential to good mental health. More recently, however, research has arisen that challenges this common-sense notion. In 1988, psychologists Shelly Taylor and Jonathon Brown published an article making the somewhat disturbing claim that positive self-deception is a normal and beneficial part of most people’s everyday outlook. They suggested that average people hold cognitivebiases in three key areas: a) viewing themselves in unrealistically positive terms; b) believing they have more control over their environment than they actually do; and c) holding views about the future that are more positive than the evidence can justify. Thetypical person, it seems, depends on these happy delusions for the self-esteem needed to function through a normal day. It’s when the fantasies start to unravel that problems arise.
Studies into clinical depression have yielded findings leading to the development of an intriguing, but still controversial, concept known as depressive realism. This theory puts forward the notion that depressed individuals actually have more realistic perceptions of their own image, importance, and abilities than the average person. While it’s still generally accepted that depressed people can be negatively biased in their interpretation of events and information, depressive realism suggests that they are often merely responding rationally to realities that the average person cheerfully denies.Lear's Fool speaks wisdom disguised as madness. Those with paranoid disorders can sometimes possess a certain unusual insight as well. It has often been asserted that within every delusional system, there exists a core of truth—and in their pursuit of imagined conspiracies against them, these individuals often show an exceptionally keen eye for the real thing. People who interact with them may be taken aback as they find themselves accused of harboring some negative opinion of the person which, secretly, they actually do hold. Complicating the issue, of course, is the fact that if the supposed aversion didn’t exist before, it likely does after such an unpleasant encounter.As one might imagine, these issues present some problems when it comes to treatment. How does one convince a depressed person that “everything is all right” when her life really does suck? How does one convince an obsessive-compulsive patient to stop religiously washing his hands when the truth of what gets left behind after “normal”washing should be enough to make any sane person cringe? These problems put therapists in the curious position of teaching patients to develop irrational patterns of thinking—patterns that help them view the world as a rosier place than it really is. Counterintuitive as it sounds, it's justified because what defines a mental disorder isnot unreasonable or illogical thought, but abnormal behaviour that causes significant distress and impairs normal functioning in society. Treatment is about restoring a person to that level of normal functioning and satisfaction, even if it means building cognitionsthat aren’t precisely “rational” or “realistic.” It’s a disconcerting concept. It’s certainly easier to think of the mentally disordered as lunatics running about with bizarre, inexplicable beliefs than to imagine them coping with a piece of reality that a "normal" person can’t handle. The notion that we routinely hide from the truth about ourselves and our world is not an appealing one, though it may help to explain the human tendency toostracize the abnormal. Perhaps the reason we are so eager to reject any departure from this fiction we call "normality" is because we have grown dependent on our comfortable delusions; without them, there is nothing to insulate us from the harsh cold of reality.”

The secret word is Acuity

THIS BLOG IS STILL PROTECTED BY...

Nick – “I hear Rush Limbaugh has effectively annexed the Republican Party.”
Nora – “Fat bastard drug addict.”

THE ADVENTURES OF MARILYN (Part 0100100)

In which Marilyn, expansive and gorgeous, excitedly leads the celebrations. Santa Clara has fallen, the armored train is derailed, the British Homosexual in the burnoose and white robes takes no prisoners, Zombie Bankers have packed their gold and uranium and taken it on the lam. The Mugwumps scatter in confusion. Apollonians put down their weapons and surrender in their thousands. Drinks are on the house and victorious Dionysians are as drunk as skunks in twenty dimensions. The files of the Secret Police are burning. The Men In Hats have gone with the wind. Princess Aura has been arrested and will be tried by The People’s Courts. Birds sing. Cats dance. Dogs have their day. But Marilyn is well aware that, in the reality streams of the multiverse, it only takes one inadvertently stomped butterfly to change everything.

(I must stop lifting images from Tom Sutpen.)

(THE ADVENTURES OF MARILYN NOW HAS IT’S OWN PAGE SO THE WHOLE THING CAN BE READ WITHOUT SCROLLING. CLICK HERE)

DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF PHILP K. DICK?

A controversy is growing around the publication of the novel The Owl in Daylight by Tessa Dick, last wife of Philip K. Dick, that claims to be a reworking of the book the revered author was working on at the time of his death in 1982. In an interview in Self-Publishing Review, Tessa Dick states her case.

“I started writing The Owl in Daylight when some of Phil’s loyal readers begged me to write it. I had (somewhat foolishly) posted a comment on a blog about the Owl that I knew the story and could write it. This was followed by pleas that I do so at once. I attempted to express the spirit of Phil’s proposed novel, without using his plot or the one character that he had created. Phil had written very little about this novel. In fact, all that has been found is a letter that he wrote to his editor and his agent (same letter, two copies). It was very sketchy and did not even name any characters. It did mention Dante’s Inferno and the Faust legend. I did not use Phil’s ideas as he expressed them in that letter to his editor and his agent. He was going to have a great scientist design and build a computer system and then get trapped in its virtual reality. The computer would be so advanced that it developed human-like intelligence and rebelled against its frivolous purpose of managing a theme park.
In the conversations that we had shortly before Phil’s death, I couldn’t convince him that a computer system would have to be designed and built by a team of experts in different fields, such as one expert in graphics, another in animation, one for hardware, one for software and so forth. I have read that Doris Sauter published an alternate plot involving a musician and aliens, but I did not read her book and did not use her ideas. The Owl in Daylight is my concept of what Phil’s novel should be. I relied heavily on Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute. The plot is loosely based on Phil’s life, which will become more apparent in the sequel, The Owl in Twilight. Sometimes I do feel that Phil is communicating with me from beyond the grave, but that concept is too spooky for me to accept completely. It’s probably just that I knew him so well that I can think the way he did."

Not everyone is exactly happy about all this. The opposing case is succinctly stated by our pal Dr. Adder (although is makes clear his doctorate is primarily in bullshit.)

“She's not just using the title, but she is publicly representing the book as being based on Phil's story; arguably, if nothing else, the estate might be able to claim that she's intentionally creating confusion in the market and undermining the value of the "real" Owl in Daylight story outline that Phil set down in writing while he was alive. The ungenerous view would be that this may be a work of blatant corpse-fuckery, as when August Derleth wrote "posthumous collaborations" with HP Lovecraft, basing whole novels on some dashed-off sentence in HPL's notebooks. Her intentions may be much more noble, buuuut...It sounds like she's on the outs with the estate and I wonder if she's setting herself up for a big legal kick in the teeth if the estate deigns to take notice. Though it doesn't look like she's put his name on the book and has been cagier in the phrasing in the promo material on the publisher's site, calling it a "tribute" to Phil.”

If more unravels we’ll bring it to you.

ANOTHER VERY ODD COMIC

(sent by Munz)

The secret word is Tricky