THE TRIP MEDICINAL

Munz sent us the following intriguing report about a reevaluation of LSD as a therapeutic agent. It’s interesting, although, having seen, first hand, how badly squares behave on acid, I do have my misgivings.

“For the first time in four decades, the government is cracking open the door to studies looking into the medical benefits of LSD. The watershed moment came last September, when the FDA approved a clinical trial on the use of LSD to treat anxiety in cancer patients. According to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (or MAPS), it was the first time since the 1960s that a medical study involving LSD was permitted by the federal government. MAPS Director Rick Doblin called it “a symbol that the psychedelic renaissance is here.” (Click here for the whole story.)

The secret word is God

GRATUITOUS BARDOT

It’s another picture of Brigitte for absolutely no other reason than maybe because it’s Saturday. This time she’s wearing shades.

SPACE OPERA

That'll teach her the consequences of trusting Earth-men.

IN THE CAPITALIST TWILIGHT

As wave after wave of demented Astroturf absolutism crash over Barack Obama, and morons tote AR14s to town meetings, while, at the other end of the rainbow, we on the left feel we are being progressively sold out to a hollow and corrupt center, I still cannot quite bring myself to abandon the president after just a matter of months. My sense of loyalty demands better. It did, however, occur to me that Obama might well be – in the long run of history – playing the role of America’s Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev was a communist who eased Russia into a soft landing in the next phase as post-Stalinist socialism disintegrated, and, in the same way, Obama is a capitalist who could well be ultimately smoothing the way to a brave new nation as the foundations of 21st century capitalism crumble and fail.
The only problem is that when the Soviet Union fell, it had a ready-made ideological airbag in the form of its own distorted version of bare knuckle free enterprise, with the Moscow mafia attending the confinement as midwives. As capitalism in the USA ceases to be sustainable, there is no obvious replacement system and it may have to be made up as it goes along. Plainly the most viable bet would be on a form of digital neo-socialism with software substituted for the bureaucracy that was the downfall of so many old-style soviets. Unfortunately, if the recent rightwing shenanigans are an indication, massive destabilizing pressure will be exerted to panic the population into lumpen TV-driven fascism fronting for an authoritarian corporate totalitarianism – Orwell with Twinkies and Twitter. But lets not forget how, in Russia, it took tanks in the streets to make the Evil Empire safe for Pepsi and Burger King. This may not be easy.

Similar sentiments – but without the gonzo flamboyance – are expressed by Robert Kuttner writing in The Washington Post.

“When economically stressed and frightened people are anxious and sullen, you never know who will capture their fears and hopes. In the 1930s, economic anxiety produced leaders as different as Franklin Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler. History shows that if the reformist left doesn't offer a plausible story and strategy of reform, the lunatic right will gain ground even with an implausible one. So where are the liberal protesters? The initiative has passed to the know-nothing right for two big reasons.” (Click here for the whole thing.)

The secret word is Transition

But, by way of an antidote to Fox, here are some clips. Viddy well my droogs.

Click here for the trailer of Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story

Click here for vintage Richard Pryor as 40th President of the US.

And click here for the final word on healthcare

AND NOW A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR...

A NASTY PIECE OF HARDWARE

Our commenting pal Ghostwoods alerted us the highly disturbing revelation that cops in the UK are now deploying this eye-in-the-sky remote-controlled "flying saucer" as one more piece of Big Brother tech in their surveillance arsenal. It’s first public outing was at the neo-Nazi British National Party's Red, White and Blue festival in Codnor, Derbyshire, where “anti-fascist protesters had assembled.” I recall a piece of science fiction where the protagonists shot down similar mini spy saucers with their blasters. I can’t remember without checking whether I wrote it myself, or maybe it was Philip K. Dick, or even a Vaughn Bode cartoon.

According to the London Daily Telegraph…
“Merseyside Police was the first force to use the drones, launching them during a number of crackdowns on gun and gang crime, as well as against anti-social behaviour. The aerial cameras have also previously been deployed to deter crime at pop festivals. Yesterday was the first time it was used at a demonstration. Their capacity to provide extra video evidence could prove useful to police forces which face allegations about their public order tactics, and about differing versions of major events such as London's G20 protests in April.” Click here for the rest.

Anti-social behaviour? Demonstrations? Pop festivals? On the surface, it would seem that the jaws of the vice are closing and, like fucking sheep, we are being corralled into a culture of slavish obedience to authority, but I retain some hope and faith the human capacity for fuck-you deceit. Maybe masks with become a fashion vogue (we may also need them to breath the air before too long) and we’ll all start wearing them like in V for Vendetta or – if you’re old enough to remember – the Nazi-fighting Deathless Men in the old brit comic The Wizard (which I suspect Alan Moore borrowed for V for V.)

And talking of sheep…

The secret word is Click

SHEEP?

Pic lifted from Brusquelles

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

In any debate, Dale Evans Frozdick remained firmly on the fence.

THOSE CRAZY CHRISTIANS

“Hey kids, matching Fenders for The Rapture.”

A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND EXCUSES

Today I am overworked, exploited, verging on obsessive, and with no time to write, pontificate, comment, or even send emails. Fortunately Syd sent me this quite extraordinary picture of the crew back in the day. L to R you have Boss Goodman, Paul Rudolph, Sandy, your’s truly (OMG the fucking hair!), Ace Mandelkau, Russell Hunter, and, needless to say, Twink. You notice a sign in the background that reads saloon bar. Clearly we are either entering or exiting the Portobello pub know as Finches.

The secret word is Yesterday
(And yesterday there was no secret word.)

DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSIC'S # 60

It’s not really a party until someone shows up with a monkey.

UK MoD RELEASES UFO FILES

Yesterday the British Ministry of Defense released more UFO documents, and while the media picked up on a general tone of debunk and sneer, a little light was shed on some celebrated incidents…

“Bright lights seen across Devon and Cornwall, South Wales and Shropshire in the early hours of 31 March 1993 by 70 police and military witnesses were documented in more than 30 sightings reported to the MoD over a six-hour period. The reports said it was very big, shaped like a catamaran and was completely silent. The MoD's UFO desk, known as section (AS)2a, asked the RAF to replay its radar tapes but nothing unusual was detected.
The head of the UFO section told Sir Anthony Bagnall, the assistant chief of the air staff, that given the quality of the witnesses the sightings could not simply be written off: "It seems that an unidentified object of unknown origin was operating in the UK air defence region without being detected on radar; this would appear to be of considerable defence significance." There were detailed inquiries, particularly of the Americans, over whether they were testing any new "stealth" aircraft over Britain, but the MoD finally established what had been seen was a Russian rocket re-entering the earth's atmosphere after launching a Cosmos satellite.” (Click here for more.)

And while we’re talking anomalous phenomena click here to check out our pals at LOWFI (The League of Western Fortean Intermediatists)

INDUSTRIAL APOCALYPSE

A correspondence between George Monbiot and Paul Kingsnorth poses some truly horrific questions…
“The writing is on the wall for industrial society, and no amount of ethical shopping or determined protesting is going to change that now. Take a civilisation built on the myth of human exceptionalism and a deeply embedded cultural attitude to "nature"; add a blind belief in technological and material progress; then fuel the whole thing with a power source that is discovered to be disastrously destructive only after we have used it to inflate our numbers and appetites beyond the point of no return. What do you get? We are starting to find out. We need to get real. Climate change is teetering on the point of no return while our leaders bang the drum for more growth. The economic system we rely upon cannot be tamed without collapsing, for it relies upon that growth to function. And who wants it tamed anyway? Most people in the rich world won't be giving up their cars or holidays without a fight.” (Click here for the whole exchange.) Pic by R. Crumb

LOVE IS A MANY SPLENDORED THING

OUR COCAINE CAPITAL

Our longtime pal Aeswiren sent us little gem. I can recall when it was Miami rather than Washington where coke incrusted the money, but that was back in the days of Tony Montana and Don Johnson. Maybe it explains some of the current political dementia in the USA.

“The largest ever study of banknotes has found that 95% of dollar bills in Washington DC bear traces of the illegal drug cocaine. The figure for the US capital is up 20% over two years. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth tested notes from more than 30 cities worldwide. They say the rise observed in the US may be due to increased drug use caused by higher stress levels linked to the global economic downturn.
Bank notes can pick up traces of cocaine directly from users snorting it through rolled up bills or when cash is stacked together. Besides Washington, other big US cities such as Baltimore, Boston and Detroit had the highest average cocaine levels on their dollar bills.
Dr Yuegang Zuo, who led the research, said: "To my surprise, we're finding more and more cocaine in banknotes. "I'm not sure why we've seen this apparent increase, but it could be related to the economic downturn, with stressed people turning to cocaine."
Other countries where notes were tested were Canada, Brazil, China and Japan.
China had the lowest rates, with only 12% of its bills contaminated.
In the US the cleanest bills were collected from Salt Lake City, home of the religious group, the Mormons.”

A TRIUMPH OF CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE

The following came from our good friend Doug the Bass…

"Outside the Bristol Zoo, in England , there is a parking lot for 150 cars and 8 coaches, or buses. It was manned by a very pleasant attendant with a ticket machine charging cars £1 (about $1.40) and coaches £5 (about $7). This parking attendant worked there solid for all of 25 years. Then, one day, he just didn't turn up for work.
"Oh well", said Bristol Zoo Management - "we'd better phone up the City Council and get them to send a new parking attendant . . . ""Err . . . no", said the Council, "that parking lot is your responsibility."
"Err . . . no", said Bristol Zoo Management, "the attendant was employed by the City Council, wasn't he?"
"Err . . . no!" insisted the Council.Sitting in his villa somewhere on the coast of Spain (presumably), is a man who had been taking the parking lot fees, estimated at £400 (about $560) per day at Bristol Zoo for the last 25 years. Assuming 7 days a week, this amounts to just over £3.6 million ($7 million - or $280,000 every year for 25 years)! And no one even knows his name."

PS ON ELVIS AND BOB

Click here for the only Bob Dylan song Elvis Presley ever recorded.

AND MAYBE ALL THE COKE IN WASHINGTON EXPLAINS IDEAS LIKE THIS…

The secret word is Fatuous

ELVIS DEATH DAY

Today we can celebrate – should we care to – the thirty second anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley, and how, in all of the intervening years since he left the planet, every kind of conspiracy theory and more has been advanced to claim that Elvis was not dead at all but was living in anonymous seclusion, had been abducted by aliens, or, according to some very tricky cosmology, was the face on Mars. Me, I don’t really like to celebrate this August 16th Elvis Death Day. It’s just too fucking negative and depressing. I’d rather go for the birthday party on January 8th when we recall the Hillbilly Cat and generally throw the first party of each new-minted New Year. The Death Day is the dour domain of mean old Republican woman with wigs and facelifts of the kind who would happily follow Sarah Palin to perdition, and who go to Memphis to hold dismal convocations of grief for the big-fat-spangled-sandwich-eating-fucked-up-Vegas Elvis, and play his cover of the god-awful Timi Yuro song “Hurt” as a representation of totemic misery and stolen what-might-have-been.

I also kinda blame the Tennessee Tourist Board for the whole thing. I swear they promoted these Elvis Death Day antics as a wicked ploy to lure elderly visitors with credit cards to Memphis in the sweating big-river August heat and humidity, which probably kills a whole bunch of the faithful with delayed strokes and heart failure when they get back home. But hey, it’s another way the pull the plug on Grandma.

Elvis singing “Hurt.” Click here if you’re not depressed enough already, or scroll on for some suitably random artifacts from the Doc40 Elvis collection.

“Honey, when a man's been dead for thirty-two years, it’s gotta be all or nothing.”

DEATH DAY ARTIFACT NUMBER ONE

Supposed coffin photo allegedly snapped on a concealed mini-camera for the National Inquirer, but never totally validated as genuine.

DEATH DAY ARTIFACT NUMBER TWO

Yes, Elvis fans, it's your very own reproduction of the Death Certificate

DEATH DAY ARTIFACT NUMBER THREE

I have no idea what this is supposed to be.

DEATH DAY ARTIFACT NUMBER FOUR

Elvis died for somebody’s sins but not mine. © MF



The secret word is Pointless

BOB BUSTED, SQUEAKY RELEASED, AND A PENGUIN GETS A WETSUIT – YES, TGIF!

Yes my friends, no matter how far my boot heels do go wandering, the fabulous sixties seem never quite to go away. Bob Dylan is arrested in New Jersey by an idiot rookie cop for looking like a weird old bum, and Lynette Squeaky Fromme of Manson Family fame is released from jail just days after the fortieth anniversary of the Sharon Tate slaying. Meanwhile, back in the 21st century, the weather forecast on my computer claims LA will have 80 degree temperatures tomorrow and “smoke.” (As I live and hardly breathe.) I can only presume the smoke will have drifted south from the masive Lockheed wildfires in the Santa Cruz mountains. Meanwhile, in England, a penguin gets a wetsuit. Right now I’m at a loss to comment except that it’s just one more weekend and even William Gibson couldn’t have made this shit up. What can a poor boy do?

Click here for the Bob story.

Click here for the Squeaky story

Click here for the Penguin story

And click here for Bob doing a very strange, big shoulders, and maybe Christian version of “I Shall Be Released.”

(Big thanx to Wendy and Valerie.)

The secret word is Choke

IT'S AUGUST AND THE SQUID IS ON THE WING

Don't say the Doc didn't warn you!

SPACE OPERA

THEY’RE BACK

They were so 1990s. Armed to the teeth, and with an arcane and racist, weird Jesus/John Wayne-tilted and occasionally speedfreak philosophy, they waited for their Date with Destiny when the black helicopters of the New World Order would bring foreign UN troops – Turks and Africans – to herd them into Bill Clinton’s FEMA death camps, except they would fight to the last man for liberty and justice thus become heroes – and maybe martyrs – of the New American Revolution. Of course the Day never came and in the wake of 9-11, they kinda melted away as too crazy even for the madness of Bush’s reign. But now, as sanity struggles to reassert itself, they appear to be back, maybe with dubious corporate astro-turf ties, and buying ammunition.

"AP WASHINGTON - Federal counter-terror agents are probing the threat posed by resurgent domestic militia groups focusing their anti-government rage at President Obama, US officials told the Daily News Wednesday. Word of the feds' new push to get a grip on fringe extremists - who faded into the background after the 9/11 attacks - came as a new watchdog report warned militias are making a racist "comeback" thanks to Obama's election. "The face of the federal government today is black, and that has injected a whole new element into the militia movement," said Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s intelligence project, which issued the report.
The center's report said a rash of domestic terrorism cases recently, plus skyrocketing firearms and ammunition sales and an explosion of heated rhetoric by disgruntled militia types, is cause for worry. Some hate groups also are opposing Obama's health care reform efforts as a form of Socialism, a top federal agent said. After Obama's election, many counter-terror officials snickered at the idea of a militia comeback from the 1990s. Some still insist the threat is overblown - and local. But when Obama was sworn in, the FBI's Intelligence Directorate and Domestic Terrorism Section - which probes homegrown malcontents - asked joint-terrorism task forces nationwide to sniff around for hints of possible violent activity.
They are not spying on protected speech, officials emphasized. "We don't know if there's an increased threat," a law enforcement source said. There's legitimate concern," said an agent inside the Justice Department who laughed off the threat months ago. "You're seeing more paranoia by the militias." Author Ronald Kessler reports in his new book, "In the President's Secret Service," that threats against Obama are up 400% over threats to George W. Bush."

The secret word is Camouflage

Les Paul – RIP

DOLPHIN KILL

Aeswiren sent this review of the The Cove…

"The Cove" is a powerful and effective piece of advocacy filmmaking, but it's difficult to watch it without thinking of subtitles like "The Place Where Evil Dwells" or "The Little Town With the Really Big Secret." Which is no accident. "The Cove's" story of a quiet village in Japan that specializes in clandestine dolphin slaughter is quite consciously structured as a thriller by director Louie Psihoyos who won an audience award for it at Sundance. The film follows a group of determined environmental commandos as it attempts to document what goes on in a deceptively tranquil lagoon.” Click here for more.

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Cousin Arachnia was always drawn to show business.

AND REMEMBER...

...Elvis Death Day approaches.

IT'S UGLY – REALLY UGLY

"I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS. I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived."

The most serious goons in the right-wing renta-mob are now arriving armed. Insurance companies may be channelling covert funds to neo-Nazi militia groups for the option of disrupting healthcare debates with escalating violence. Unscrupulous media whores like Glenn Beck and Limbaugh hardly stop short of calling for political assassination and “don’t let the sun set on you, Obama.” Our pal Aeswiren writes “Proctor and Gamble just pulled their ads. Why are these other companies (Bowlfex, Nutrisystem, Gerber, UPS, Orbitz, Geico, Vonage, Ameritrade, and Verizon wireless) still subsidizing Glen Beck’s hate rants on Faux News?” Stephen Hawking is obliged to defend the UK National Health Service after a rabid capitalist editorial in the equally rabid Investor's Business Daily extended the Palin death panel fantasy and the propagated big-lie that socialized medicine is a Final Solution to Old People, with the statement "Scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless." But IBD appeared ignorant of the fact that Hawking is British born, educated, and cared for.

The insurance and pharm lobbyists, who are deliberately orchestrating the insanely accelerating fear-fest, seem to be working straight out of some old CIA manual for destabilizing small South American nations. This time, however, America is destabilizing itself, all in the name of corporate profits. Although, as I write this, Geico and some other advertisers have dumped Glenn Beck, the mainstream media are still playing to dark and dangerous demographics, and I have to constantly remind myself of the stupidity of the enemy to stop smelling coup d’etat on the air.

The secret word is Scary

FAMILY PORTRAIT #1

(From Ray on Facebook)

FAMILY PORTRAIT #2

SPACE OPERA

WORLDWIDE MAD DEADLY COMMUNIST GANGSTER COMPUTER GOD

During the last weekend’s Manson memory fest I was hipped to the madness of Francis E. Dec Esq. I hadn’t been aware that Dec was the author of the bizarre filmette that I posted last Thursday titled Frankenstein Master-Race Radio Control. It now seems that everyone knew about Dec except me, but, thanks to Google, I’m making up for lost time. Wikipedia says of Dec Esq. …

“Francis E. Dec (January 6, 1926 – January 21, 1996) was a U.S. lawyer from Hempstead Village, New York, disbarred for fraud in 1959, and later known for the bizarre socio-political tracts of conspiracy theories he mass-mailed to the media, often denouncing a "Worldwide Mad Deadly Communist Gangster Computer God" mind-controlling mankind. Considered a paranoid schizophrenic of the influencing-machine delusion kind, he is often referred to as a "kook".
Not unlike Ed Wood, Dec later became a cult figure referenced in underground culture. He was the subject of a 1994 book chapter and a 1999 stage play; he also made his way into the folklores of the Discordians and the Church of the SubGenius. His rants have been reprinted in a 1983 issue of Robert Crumb's magazine Weirdo and circulated since 1986 from recordings by KROQ-FM host Doc Britton; they have been sampled in 1991 and 2004 by Psychic TV, in 2004 by Venetian Snares, and inspired a Coldcut album in 2005; they have been archived as outsider art by UbuWeb and WFMU.” Click here for much more.

And click here to read the rants, or click here to hear recordings of the same rants by Boyd "Doc" Britton.

The secret word is Tinfoil

SLY, MANIPULATIVE CREATURES

Finn knew this all along….

“Cats have a reputation for being sly, manipulative creatures, and it may be well earned, says Scientific American. A study at the University of Sussex found the domestic house cat has developed a special kind of purr, carefully tailored to persuade its owner to feed it. Less irritating than a loud miaow, which might simply get it ejected out of doors, but more urgent than a soft, deep, contented purr, the "solicitation purr" has an embedded, high-pitched element, with a peak similar to that of a baby's cry – perfect, in short, for provoking a nurturing – response in a soft-hearted human. This, at any rate, is the contention of Dr Karen McComb, a specialist in mammal vocal communication, who first noticed the solicitation purr in her own cat, Pepo, when he was hungry. Is she annoyed to find she has been cunningly manipulated by her pet over the years? "Pepo has been the inspiration for this whole study, so I'll forgive him," she says. 'Credit where credit's due."

THIS IS HARDLY WHAT I'M FIGHTING FOR

Far too much money is being made out of marijuana by far too many of the wrong people.

THE LEMMING OPPOSITION

Republican rent-a-mobs are now booing the tapering off of the national unemployment figures.

This picture comes from the excellent Headlines You Should Know. Check it out.

BIG BROTHER INFILTRATES THE NET.

I never did trust that fucking Kindle. Now Matt on Facebook supplies us with good reason to view it askance. (Very askance.)

“NEW YORK – A pirated e-book of 1984 led to an Orwellian moment for Kindle customers. Users of Amazon.com’s e-reader device were surprised and unsettled over the past day to receive notice that George Orwell works they had purchased, including 1984" and "Animal Farm," had been removed from their Kindle and their money refunded.
It was conspiracy time on the Internet. Big Brother? Pressure from the publisher? No, says an Amazon spokesman — the deletion of pirated copies that had been posted to the Kindle store.
"These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third party who did not have the rights to the books," spokesman Drew Herdener said Friday.
"When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers' devices, and refunded customers. We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances."
Herdener's explanation differed from what Kindle users were told by Amazon's customer service, which made no reference to piracy, but implied that the removal was the publisher's choice. "Published by MobileReference ... (the books) were removed from the Kindle store and are no longer available for purchase," according to an e-mail sent to customers. "When this occurred, your purchases were automatically refunded. You can still locate the books in the Kindle store, but each has a status of not yet available. Although a rarity, publishers can decide to pull their content from the Kindle store."
Herdener said the customer service statement was incorrect, and reiterated that the works were pulled because of legal issues. MobileReference is a digital publisher that offers a wide range of literary titles, although Orwell's books were not mentioned on the company's Web site as of Friday night. An e-mail message sent to the publisher's owner, SoundTells, was not immediately returned.
The Orwell ordeal highlighted two concerns in the virtual world — that a book already paid for and acquired can be revoked by the long arm of an e-tailer (the Kindle operates on a wireless connection that Amazon ultimately controls); and the difficulty of stopping bootlegged texts.
The digital library is rapidly growing, but numerous classic works, from "Catch-22" to "Lolita," remain unavailable as e-books. Piracy has been one concern for rights holders, although illegal works have yet to have a measurable impact on sales.”

The secret word is Minitrue.

PALIN – “SOCIALISTS SLAY SENIORS”

“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil." Thus posted Sarah Palin on her Facebook page regarding Obama's health-care plans. Palin isn't citing anything in any of the draft healthcare bills -- which, more than likely, she hasn't read. She's taking off from a congressional floor speech by Michelle Bachmann – the even more cretinous and extreme nut-job. (If such was possible.) Both Palin and Bachmann are busily and elaborately riffing on one of the currently circulating, insurance corps-generated black-ops rumors that, under socialism – as in France, Canada, and the UK – the old and the sick are routinely murdered when the cost of the their medical treatment is no longer socially viable. When President Obama was told of Palin's comment, he commented how it was "unproductive for Republican leaders to spread this kind of misinformation.”