Seems like I’ll be gracing the stage at the LA Knitting Factory tomorrow, performing at a Hawkwind tribute, at the invitation of our pal Tommy Grenas . I’ll be reading Bob Calvert’s Sonic Attack and I hope a good time will be had by all. If you happen to be in Hollywood, the grand finale, of which I’ll be a part, as will master guitarist Andy Colquhoun, should launch at about half past midnight.
The secret word is Space
The secret message is 546970207468652062617274656e6465722e
I have a well reasoned rant about Grey Aliens posted on the L.O.W.F.I. website. (That’s League of Western Fortean Intermediatists, to you, pilgrim.) Click here to read it.
The sign read “AMERICAN TAXPAYERS ARE THE JEWS FOR OBAMA’S OVENS.” At first I laughed in disbelief. The Republican Party, just as I predicted back in January, moves closer and closer to becoming “a rump fragment of the GOP – the Raving Looney Shotgun Hillbilly Jesus Party who would, if lucky, constitute some 15% of the electorate and never manage to be more than a noisy nuisance the rest of us could tune out.” The only problem is that cable news in general, and Fox in particular refuses to tune them out. Even when only dozens instead of thousands turn out for the absurd – and unfortunately named – teabag tax protest, Fox goes on trumpeting as a “grassroots revolution.”
Unfortunately all this nonsense unwittingly backs the Raving Looney Shotgun Hillbilly Jesus Party in the direction of the White Supremist/armed militia/neo-Nazis fringe. A ugly wind blows through a ravaged middle American landscape, and lacking any appreciable philosophy, or even a pragmatic core of belief, conservatives follow the prime directive of protecting the rich and corporate, and fob off their benighted rank and file with nothing more than an irrationally venomous and sometimes racist personal hatred of Barack Obama. Earlier this week a report leaked from the Department of Homeland Security indicated that the extreme right was growing and on the move.
“If you think the conservative "Tea Party" movement is daunting, take a look at a new report issued by the Department of Homeland Security that says right-wing extremism is on the rise throughout the country. In the report (a full copy of which is below), officials warn that right-wing extremists could use the bad state of the U.S. economy and the election of the country's first black president to recruit new members to their cause.” (Click here for the whole thing)
I trust Homeland Security about as much as I trust Rush Limbaugh, but I did find it amusing that Limbaugh, Hannity, Malkin, Glenn Beck and the rest started screaming bloody murder about how conservatives were victims of an Obama police state, forgetting, perhaps, how gung ho they were when the DHS was hunting terrorists through the libraries of the land, and the NSA was tapping our phones. Back then they were prone to snarl how patriots who hadn’t done anything had nothing to fear, and that we should be willing to give up our liberty if we wanted to be safe. Bob Cesca notes in HuffPo…
“But back to that "fascist" accusation. I'm not convinced that tea baggers like Michelle Malkin understand that fascism is, in fact, a form of right wing extremism. Because for the last 24 hours or so, Malkin, Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and the usual band of apoplectic brainiacs appear to have been vigorously defending "right wing extremism" after having previously accused the president of being on the same flank of the ideological spectrum.” (Click here for the whole thing.)
Essentially if someone doesn’t shut the fuck up, it could all turn very ugly. The extreme right are not posturing media shills. They have guns and very bad attitudes.
The secret weapon is MAC10
The secret message is 546f206b6e6f772068696d20697320746f206c6f
76652068696d2e
Munz forwarded this and we swear that it’s real, and reproduced about as intact as we can make it.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rachelle Spector
To: undisclosed-recipients:;Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 03:50:52 -0700Subject:
Calling on ALL family, friends, acquaintances---I'M CRYING FOR HELP!!!!
FREE PHIL SPECTOR--NOW!!!!
Phil Spector, my husband, needs YOUR help now more than ever!!!!
A grave mis-carriage of justice has taken place and another innocent man has gone to jail for something he clearly and scientifically did NOT do.
Please help FREE PHIL SPECTOR!!!
Please do as many interviews as possible with regard to this case because NOW the gag order is OVER....we are ALL free to talk to whomever we wish!Do interviews for as many TV, radio and internet sites as possible; write letters to the president, the governor of California, councilmen/women...to everyone and anyone that will listen!!!
WE NEED TO EXPOSE JUDGE FIDLER. WE NEED TO GET OUT ANY AND ALL INFORMATION ABOUT LANA CLARKSON THAT THE JUDGE WOULD NOT LET IN.
This is a matter of life and death people!!!!!! Any thoughts, ideas, plans....PLEASE DO NOT HESITATE TO TALK TO ME....BUT LETS GET OUR BUTTS MOVING.....
I had frankly grown bored with the Obama’s new dog. The First Puppy was taking far too long to arrive and had even developed its own politically correct political strings. But then I learned that the Portuguese water mutt had been named after Bo Diddley and I had to stop and think. That the White House Dog is named for the late lamented Bo has to be some kind of mildly significant symbol, even if Obama is flakey about legalizing dope.
And while you’re thinking about it click here for some Bo.
The secret word is Woof!
The secret message is 57686f20646f20796f75206c6f76653f
Uncle Bill falls asleep at the dream machine.
And HCB has coincidentally sent us this review by Jason Anderson of the documentary FlicKeR, directed by Nik Sheehan.
“Toronto director Nik Sheehan’s biodoc on visionary painter and writer Brion Gysin doubles as a cogent yet appropriately trippy primer on how the activities of a few freaks who drifted between Paris and Tangier in the ’50s came to have a vast cultural influence. It was Gysin who led the Beats to Morocco after the British-born, Alberta-bred artist first joined Paul Bowles there in 1950. And it was Gysin who pioneered the literary cut-up technique that would be popularized by his pal William S. Burroughs. What interests Sheehan most of all in FLicKeR is another of Gysin’s innovations, the Dream Machine. This mysterious contraption offered the prospect of a drugless high. Though Sheehan has his own custom-made, the film also shows how low-cost versions can be jimmied up with a light bulb, some construction paper and a record player. (An additional record player may also be employed to spin Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” or the astral music of your choice.) Iggy Pop, Marianne Faithfull and Genesis P-Orridge are just three of the countercultural icons we see experiencing the machine’s effects on camera — alas, none report having visions of Karl Rove being sodomized by a mountain goat. In any case, Sheehan succeeds at renewing interest in an artist whose influence far outweighs his fame.”
Jetex was crucial in the development of my pre-teen personality, and thus, when I discovered an actual print ad for the Jetex motor on my favorite website I was both surprised and uplifted. The Jetex motor was a cheap, solid-fuel burning, rocket-propulsion unit for toy planes, cars, and boats.
My first encounter was with a Jetex powered car that was supposed to run on a line – at quite alarming speed – in circles around a central tether. Although it was my car, my stepfather insisted on setting the thing up and lighting the Jetex fuse. And, needless to say, he fucked up. The car was being run on a very uneven patio. It hit a bump, went straight up on the air for some distance and then came back down again, scared the dog, and pretty much wrecked itself, although the Jetex motor was still intact.
My second Jetex experience was with something called the Dan Dare Jetex Space Rocket that was launched from a spring-loaded ramp, supposedly released a parachute after it had achieved what Werner von Braun called brenschluss, and floated gently to earth. It came in kit form. My grandfather and I took almost a full month of one summer to complete the asbestos-lined, balsa wood construction. But we miss-timed the first launch, and the rocket fell off the ramp before the motor ignited, and then it lay on its side, burning grass and spewing smoke until the fuel burned out.
The second launch of the Dan Dare Jetex Space Rocket was much more successful. The rocket went up a hundred feet or more before the fuel was spent. Unfortunately the chute didn’t deploy until far too late in the fall to stop it ploughing into the ground. After it was glued it back together, the Dan Dare Jetex Space Rocket made one last flight, with an incendiary device aboard to blow it up in mid-air. Which gets me to my real romance with Jetex. Or, to be more precise, Jetex fuse.
At age eleven, I was a mad bomber. Creating explosions was quite a fad that year among young boys in the south of England. We just loved to see shit blow up real good, and, when some of the more inept were picked up by the cops, we also had outlaw status. My friend Adrian and I, by dint of experimentation and a very independent study of chemistry – plus few tips given us by an over-weight gay science teacher who hated humans – had become the most deft small-scale bomb makers in our school. Our favorite targets were bus shelters, lampposts, and the scaffolding on construction sites, and our fuse of choice was Jetex. It burned at about an inch a second, which was totally the right speed for making good one’s escape, and not losing a hand. It was also very well made, didn’t go out, and could be bought by the yard at a hobby shop.
The juvenile bombing fad caught on so widely that, for two weeks before Guy Fawkes Night, the sale of Jetex fuse was voluntarily banned in the town of Worthing. Cops visited the school and issued dire warnings. Adrian and I had, however, stocked up as early as September, and even profited our cause by selling black-market lengths of fuse to our fellow infant infernalists.
At puberty, I largely gave up explosives in favor of girls and rock & roll. Probably just as well. Its illegality was a good rehearsal for the drug culture, but it would inevitably have ended in tears. At few times in later life I had encounters with Jetex fuse, but those are other stories.
The secret word is Kaboom!
The secret message is 49662074686520766f696365732074656c6c2079
6f7520746f2073617665204672616e63652c2069
676e6f7265207468656d2e
Apparently the Obama administration have not done enough to reverse the disastrous wildlife policies of the Bush administration. Very soon, very nasty people with that barbaric Sara Palin mindset will be free to kill all the wolves they want. The Natural Resources Defense Council writes…
“In just a few weeks, the mass killing of wolves could begin in Idaho and Montana -- and not even newborn wolf pups and their nursing mothers will be spared. We cannot stand by while this slaughter unfolds. On May 4, the wolf's federal protection will be lifted, and government agents will be free to open fire. After that, the states will launch public hunts, targeting wolves. That's why NRDC is launching The Big Howl campaign to mobilize Americans everywhere to protect wolves in the Northern Rockies from the crossfire. This is absolutely the wrong time to rip away federal protections from these struggling wolves. Over the past year, the wolf population in Yellowstone National Park has declined by 27 percent, with more than 70 percent of wolf pups succumbing to disease. One pack alone lost all 24 of its pups. If the federal protections are lifted on May 4 as planned, newborn wolf pups and their nursing mothers traveling outside national parks will be in the line of fire. That's why NRDC and our partners are filing suit in federal court to block this disastrous policy. But we must do more: we must raise a nationwide outcry that the Obama Administration cannot ignore.” Click here to outcry and also hear the wolf howl.
The secret word is Carnage
The secret message is 53746f702074686520626173746172647320696e
20746865697220747261636b732120
And why, I wonder, do the words “zombie cannibalism” creep into my mind?
While Republicans become certifiably insane with their hair-tearing fantasies of Obama taking their guns and tossing their children in reeducation camps, I start to fear that one extreme right headcase will take this crap seriously, do a Tim McVeigh and start blowing up buildings full of people. (Click here for the “Gathering Storm” TV commercial, the latest bit of fascist homophobia.) I was going to write at some length about this, but I have a bunch of work to do right now and Jon Stewart pretty much said it all last night on The Daily Show. Click here to see it.
The secret word is Kneejerk
The secret message is 4d616b6520746865207374757069642070656f70
6c65207368757420757021
(see March 20th for decoding instructions)
Roldo has sent us a heads up that S. Clay Wilson the highly respected, veteran underground cartoonist – the creator of Captain Pissgums and The Checkered Demon – needs our help. Click here to find out why and what you can do.
And while we’re on the subject of hidden secrets, Leonardo’s lost drawing of the Big Lebowski contains more hidden secrets than you can shake a stick at. Remember you read it here first.
416c6c206861696c204265656c7a6562756220
(see March 20th for decoding instructions)
Uncle Bill lands on the moon. He intends use his Geiger counter in the search for Loretta Lynn’s deadly secret.
Meanwhile, since it’s Sunday, here are two videos by William Burroughs -- Click for Ah Pook the Destroyer and The Western Lands. (Ah Pook was sent by Valerie and the image by HCB.)
The secret word is Crater
Below is a glowing commentary of Darklost, the second novel of the Renquist Quartet. I don’t know if any movie directors visit Doc40, but if they do, I would draw their attention to the second paragraph. (But do movie people still read, or do they just look at the pictures? I’d be happy talking with an artist who was looking to do a graphic novel.)
"The second novel of vampire Victor Renquist, now shifted to LA where there is a rich and mad cult planning to raise Chthulhu, plus a woman who was halfway turned before the vampire concerned died (she is termed a darklost), plus a squadron of violent off-the-books cops, a rock band, a feral Mexican vampire, some armadillos (don't ask me) and Marlon Brando. It's highly compressed - almost 500 pages, nearly all of it covering a couple of days of beautifully orchestrated action, full of exciting set-pieces, with the overall megathreat never occluded at all.
He's also great at creating memorable visuals (my oldest friend was particularly captivated by the opening of Phaid The Gambler). At the climax of this, LA is in chaos: riots, people going crazy, strange energies flashing around, covered in a toxic fog. The vampires are coming to save the world: 1000-year-old Victor with his cursed samurai sword, Brando looking as he had in The Wild One, a little girl in Victorian schoolgirl garb, with her bald teenage sister, another who has worked for decades as an unstoppable Mafia assassin, and others. This lot come striding out of the fog, everyone instinctively getting out of their way - any movie director could make a career out of that scene."
In which Marilyn finds herself sitting beside the Big Fat Bastard. The Big Fat Bastard has
the girth of a Dionysian, but is really something else. The Big Fat Bastard reaches for Marilyn’s knee, and she attempts to halt him with a withering look, but she knows the Big Fat Bastard is not so easily stopped. The Big Fat Bastard has the ability to affect minds. The Big Fat Bastard is able to make others think in shorter and shorter sentences. Even a Blonde Goddess cannot easily resist. She sends out a counter-though. “Get away from me. You are a big fat four-sandwich eating motherfucker.” But it doesn’t work. Marilyn finds it harder and harder. Her thoughts are too simple. Too simple. It is not good. What shall she do? The Big Fat Bastard closes. Marilyn scowls. To be. Continued?
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)
I woke up this morning, flipped on MSNBC to see that the world was still there, and found that all other news had been preempted by the shooting massacre in Binghamton. Coming so hot on the heels of Wednesday’s post, it all gave me pause and the weirded feeling that maybe I shouldn’t be posting any TGIF fun and frolic before the bodies are cold. A strange Cartesian paraphrase slips into my mind. “We kill, therefore we are.” Or is it “we are, therefore we kill.?”
This picture was a found web object. I’m not even sure of the identity of the lady singer in blue.
The word is Showbiz
This story from The Christian Science Monitor sent by MrMR attempts to forge a link between hardship and mass murder. It leads with a certain logic…
“Four Oakland, Calif., police officers shot down. An Alabama man strolling a small town with a rifle, looking for victims. Seven elderly people shot dead at a North Carolina nursing home. And on Sunday, six people, including four kids, died in an apparent murder-suicide in an upscale neighborhood in Santa Clara, Calif. The details in all these cases are still emerging. In most, the exact motive has yet to be determined – or may never be fully understood. On a broader level, however, such incidents may be happening more often because an increasing number of Americans feel desperate pressure from job losses and other economic hardship, criminologists say.”
But then it continues…
“Social isolation is a huge factor in a country as large and transient as America, which places big emphasis on personal results. If you look at where many of these mass killings have occurred lately, they're in states that have lots of strangers, transients, and drifters, who don't have support systems to get them through tough times.” (Click here for more)
At this point the story goes off the rails for me. Great. Let’s marginalize and fear “strangers, transients, and drifters.” Let’s save the bankers and toss the autoworkers to the wolves. Let’s reject social safety nets and keep America safe from the evils of socialism. Let’s keep the people frightened and isolated because that also means they are powerless.
The secret word, once again, is Fury
And talking of Jesus, here’s more from the insane right of Congress. Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) argues that we could afford to keep increasing the levels of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, since dinosaurs got by just fine in a carbon-rich environment.
“Today we have about 388 parts per million [of carbon dioxide] in the atmosphere. I think in the age of the dinosaurs, when we had most flora and fauna, we were probably at 4,000 parts per million. There is a theological debate that this is a carbon-starved planet, not too much carbon. The earth will end only when God declares it’s time to be over. A man will not destroy this earth. This earth will not be destroyed by a flood. I appreciate having panelists here who are men of faith and we can get into the theological discourse of that position, but I do believe that God’s word is infallible. Unchanging. Perfect.”
Or you could watch this lunatic and wonder. Click here for the video.
I deeply regretted not hearing about this event in Northern California (from Adam Gorightly) until it was all over. Here at the Doc40 we prize the grilled cheese sandwich above most other foods. (Man cannot live by grilled cheese alone – but he can try!) Unfortunately the greatest proponent of the grilled cheese was also unable to attend…
Some of you in the US may have seen this already in your Sunday paper (if you still have one) and those who didn't may have to click on the image to enlarge, but I've posted it because it's one of the best pieces of visual sci fi I've seen in many a moon, and also it makes a lot of sense.
The secret word is Species
Doc40, being almost as chickenshit as much of the mainstream media, usually refrains from taking sides in the conflicts between Israel and its Islamic neighbors. Any debate tends to ultimately bog down in smokescreen accusations of anti-Semitism and worse. But when the Israeli army is running around in t-shirts like this, we have to comment. Israelis of good will really have to rein in these boyos before the macho gets homicidally out of hand. Questioning the actions of the Israeli military does not make me a Nazi and, right now, there would seem to be much to question.
The secret word is Accord
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