ISN'T THIS GETTING A BIT ABSURD?

When UK Steve passed on this piece of intelligence from Yahoo News my feelings were, to say the least mixed.
“Councillors in Stoke-On-Trent are reportedly considering erecting statues of Lemmy from Motorhead and Slash after being petitioned by rock fans wanting to honour local heroes.”
The following thoughts passed through my mind in rapid sequence…
1) Aren’t municipal statues the kind of thing we used to struggle against? As in part of the problem?
2) Even if we accept the statue thing, neither Lemmy nor Slash are exactly Che Guevara, Abe Lincoln, or he Duke of Wellington.
3) Okay so Elvis and Buddy Holly have statues in their home towns, but at least they’re dead.

Click here for Motorhead

The secret word is Huh?

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

When Sol Frozdick lurked, he lurked with intent.

SPACE OPERA

(Image by Alex Rafael)

ELVIS AND MORE ELVIS

I know I keep vowing to stop stealing stuff from Dangerous Minds but this was just too historic and I had to pass it along. We’ve all seen stills and short clips of the Elvis Presley open-air, velvet-shirt, homecoming concert on September 26, 1956 at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show, but, damn, here’s a full thirteen minutes of the show with the actual live sound. Fucking amazing, especially the way it degenerates into classic rock & roll chaos towards the end. Click here.

The secret word is History

INTERNET ID

Our pal Elf Hellion sent us the following. Although I do feel that whatever Google doesn’t have on us already is hardly worth having.

“Just before Christmas, the few right wing conspiracy groups I get mailings from hemmed and hawed that the FCC wanted to give control of the internet to the telecom giants--namely, Comcast, AA+T and Verizon. I thought they were being paranoid. Obama signed it away, despite the fact that over two million people petitioned against it. Now, Obama's administration is proposing a national ID system for anyone and everyone that uses the internet, which is basically everyone. Even the a**hole FCC chairman says this is useless and outrageous. Because the public said no to a national ID system, they're trying to find other methods to shove us further down the Big Brother black hole created since 9/11. DemandProgress.org has set up a petition... please sign and pass on:” Click here.

CODEPENDENT LESBIAN SPACE ALIEN SEEKS SAME

The title of the film was too good to ignore. Click here for the trailer.

GRATUITOUS BARDOT (Does this make up for yesterday?)

I HAVE TO GET OFF THE LONE GUNMAN BEAT

But before I do I feel the need to draw attention to the supremely twisted logic of an individual called Trent Humphries who is the co-founder of Tucson's Tea Party.

"A lot have taken as gospel that…this was caused by talk radio, by Tea Party extremists. I think it's done a lot of damage. It's given people the idea that somebody like my wife and I caused this murder. There's no evidence. And there's no evidence Sarah Palin caused this murder. The Democrats are using this opportunity to bludgeon their opponents. It's political gamesmanship. The real case is that she [Giffords] had no security whatsoever at this event. So if she lived under a constant fear of being targeted, if she lived under this constant fear of this rhetoric and hatred that was seething, why would she attend an event in full view of the public with no security whatsoever?"

Click here for Nancy Sinatra

The secret word is Squirm

MEMPHIS PSYCHOSIS

Back in December I posted how movie director called Kris Hipps was working on an  independent film based my old Tijuana Bible song/poem “Memphis Psychosis” and seeking funding via Kickstarter. She still hasn’t quite made her target and is looking for help. Above is Sara Michael, one of the stars of the proposed film. Click here to learn more.

DON'T YOU MISS THE 19TH CENTURY?

GRATUITOUS KATY PERRY

PALPABLE MADNESS

I don’t know if it’s simply because I’m watching it from a supposed safe distance, but the sense of something being very wrong in the USA seems as strong as ever. The scarcely believable don’t-look-at-me video released today by Sarah Palin does nothing to promise anything like return to sanity. (Click here to watch it in its mendacious entirety.) About the only encouraging note comes from Paul Krugman writing in the NY Times.

"Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P. And there’s a huge contrast in the media. Listen to Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann, and you’ll hear a lot of caustic remarks and mockery aimed at Republicans. But you won’t hear jokes about shooting government officials or beheading a journalist at The Washington Post. Listen to Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly, and you will. Of course, the likes of Mr. Beck and Mr. O’Reilly are responding to popular demand. Citizens of other democracies may marvel at the American psyche, at the way efforts by mildly liberal presidents to expand health coverage are met with cries of tyranny and talk of armed resistance. Still, that’s what happens whenever a Democrat occupies the White House, and there’s a market for anyone willing to stoke that anger. But even if hate is what many want to hear, that doesn’t excuse those who pander to that desire. They should be shunned by all decent people. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been happening: the purveyors of hate have been treated with respect, even deference, by the G.O.P. establishment. As David Frum, the former Bush speechwriter, has put it, “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us and now we’re discovering we work for Fox.” So will the Arizona massacre make our discourse less toxic? It’s really up to G.O.P. leaders. Will they accept the reality of what’s happening to America, and take a stand against eliminationist rhetoric? Or will they try to dismiss the massacre as the mere act of a deranged individual, and go on as before? If Arizona promotes some real soul-searching, it could prove a turning point. If it doesn’t, Saturday’s atrocity will be just the beginning." (Click here for the rest)

Click here for Johnny Cash

The secret word is Weep

UN-HENGED

I was called away from my breakfast and when I returned I found that tiny aliens had built the above. The cat was staring in total disbelief and, if the that wasn’t bad enough those annoying elves Snap, Crackle and Pop had been abducted and were being anally probed. (No, this is nonsense. I actually don’t actually like Rice Krispies and the image is a piece of art by Brock Davis.)

OMG

SPACE OPERA

SO HOW DID THIS GUY…

…TURN INTO THIS GUY?

I guess now Jared Lee Loughner has three names and no accomplice that makes him a bona fide lone gunman.

Click here for Cate Blanchett

The secret acronym is MKULTRA

AND NOT A DEITY IN SIGHT

I love this stuff.

“How did a bunch of lifeless molecules transform themselves into living cells, turning the ancient, dead Earth into a planet teeming with life? It's an incredibly difficult question to answer, but a new model might explain part of the story. Before you can have life, complex organic molecules have to start replicating themselves in much the same way that cells reproduce. Molecules that can replicate themselves using only the chemicals around them are what we might call "protocells", a key transitional stage between a fully lifeless world and one dominated by living cells. But explaining how protocells come to be has proven tricky. Even if scientists can come up with a mechanism by which the molecules can reproduce, the process always involves lots of copying errors, or mutations. The occasional mutation will be beneficial for the molecule and increase its ability to reproduce - a rather rudimentary form of evolution, if you will - but the vast majority of these errors are just that, mistakes that leave the molecules unable to replicate properly. There's decades worth of experiments showing that these bad mutations will eventually win out and make impossible any further replication.” Click here for more

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Caspar Lee Frozdick stockpiled his own WMDs.

NAVIGATION CAN BE CRUCIAL

DID SOMEONE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT COLD DEAD FINGERS?

Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s people who kill people.

Click here for Marty Robbins

The secret word is Packing

AND WHILE WE’RE DOWN WITH THE VISUAL AIDS…

Talk your way out of this one, Palin.

DON'T YOU MISS THE 20TH CENTURY?

SUNDAY BREAKFAST

I know exactly how he feels. (But we were so much older then.)

Click here for a whole chapter of Back Pages

MARILYN SEZ...

“Get off the pavement and stop thinking about the government.”

TOMORROW BELONGS TO THEM

While Jared Loughner and his possible accomplice were supposedly cutting lethally loose with a machine pistol in Tucson, MrMR sent us this item about schoolgirls going to jail for just joking about violence.

(01-07) 15:34 PST Reno, Nev. (AP) -- Six girls have been arrested after students were invited on Facebook to take part in "Attack a Teacher Day" at two middle schools. One girl was accused of inviting about 100 students on the social networking website to participate in the event Friday, and the other five were accused of responding with online threats against specific teachers, Carson Middle School Principal Dan Sadler said. The Nevada Appeal in Carson City reported the girls were booked Wednesday at juvenile hall on a misdemeanor charge of communicating threats. Their names were not released. While the students insisted it was a joke, Sadler noted they were arrested on the same day a suspended 17-year-old student in Omaha, Neb., fatally shot an assistant principal and wounded his principal before fleeing the campus and taking his own life. "School shootings really happen. That's why we took it seriously," Sadler told The Associated Press on Friday. "It's not OK, and it's not funny in this day and age if you're going to make a threat against a teacher." (Click here for more)

Click here for Korn

YES, WE MAKE GREAT PETS…

GRATUITOUS JAMES DEAN

IT’S ELVIS DAY

Today is Elvis Presley’s birthday, a date we never fail to celebrate here at Doc40. As time passes, though, it becomes hard once more to reiterate the impact of the man on both my life and world culture in the 20th century and after. Even with Elvis, the time comes when one starts to run short on new approaches to the celebration. I guess we could take this picture as something of a metaphor. I mean, there’s Elvis so way-cool on his Harley, but who the fuck are the two fat squares standing behind him? Conservative harbingers of the calories and compromises to come?

Click here for Elvis (and the legendary Boots Randolph)

The secret words are Thank You.

IF YOU COULD IMAGINE IT, THERE WAS A MAGAZINE ABOUT IT

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

When Leni and Reni Frozdick had their peasant-costume threesome with Adolf, it raised more than a few eyebrows.

IS THIS THE DOC40 ADVICE COLUMN?

BATS DIE

I really don’t want to engage in End Times alarmism, if for no other reason than Christians who believe the Rapture is coming at any minute can be downright dangerous. The modern world, on the other hand, is becoming frighteningly like a stress-toxic pressure cooker with the seals about to blow. Bees, birds, and now bats are all dropping dead. This latest horror story comes from DTA.

"In February 2006 some 40 miles west of Albany, N.Y., a caver photographed hibernating bats with an unusual white substance on their muzzles. He noticed several dead bats. The following winter, bats behaving erratically, bats with white noses, and a few hundred dead bats in several caves came to the attention of New York Department of Environmental Conservation biologists, who documented white-nose syndrome in January 2007. More than a million hibernating bats have died since. Biologists with state and federal agencies and organizations across the country are still trying to find the answer to this deadly mystery. We have found sick, dying and dead bats in unprecedented numbers in and around caves and mines from New Hampshire to Tennessee. In some hibernacula, 90 to 100 percent of the bats are dying. While they are in the hibernacula, affected bats often have white fungus on their muzzles and other parts of their bodies. They may have low body fat. These bats often move to cold parts of the hibernacula, fly during the day and during cold winter weather when the insects they feed upon are not available, and exhibit other uncharacteristic behavior. Despite the continuing search to find the source of this condition by numerous laboratories and state and federal biologists, the cause of the bat deaths remains unknown. A newly discovered cold-loving fungus, Geomyces destructans, invades the skin of bats. Scientists are exploring how the fungus acts and searching for a way to stop it." (Click here for more)

Click here for Bauhaus

The secret word is Extinct

CATS LIE

Research revels what has long been well known by those who live among them. Cats are deceitful creatures.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 4, 2011) — A cat regularly vomiting hairballs or refusing to eat probably isn't being finicky or otherwise "cat-like," despite what conventional wisdom might say. There is a good chance that the cat is acting sick because of the stress caused by changes in its environment, new research suggests. Healthy cats were just as likely as chronically ill cats to refuse food, vomit frequently and leave waste outside their litter box in response to changes in their routine, according to the Ohio State University study. Veterinary clinicians refer to these acts as sickness behaviors. (Click here for more)

A POWERFUL WEAPON AGAINST BOURGEOIS SOCIETY?

What the hell, just click here and find out for yourself. (Courtesy of Jon.)

DON'T YOU MISS THE 20TH CENTURY?

THIS IS MIKEY. HE’S A TERRORIST

From The New York Times...
The Transportation Security Administration, under scrutiny after last month’s bombing attempt, has on its Web site a “mythbuster” that tries to reassure the public.
Myth: The No-Fly list includes an 8-year-old boy.
Buster: No 8-year-old is on a T.S.A. watch list.
“Meet Mikey Hicks,” said Najlah Feanny Hicks, introducing her 8-year-old son, a New Jersey Cub Scout and frequent traveler who has seldom boarded a plane without a hassle because he shares the name of a suspicious person. “It’s not a myth.” Michael Winston Hicks’s mother initially sensed trouble when he was a baby and she could not get a seat for him on their flight to Florida at an airport kiosk; airline officials explained that his name “was on the list,” she recalled. The first time he was patted down, at Newark Liberty International Airport, Mikey was 2. He cried. After years of long delays and waits for supervisors at every airport ticket counter, this year’s vacation to the Bahamas badly shook up the family. Mikey was frisked on the way there, then more aggressively on the way home.
“Up your arms, down your arms, up your crotch — someone is patting your 8-year-old down like he’s a criminal,” Mrs. Hicks recounted. “A terrorist can blow his underwear up and they don’t catch him. But my 8-year-old can’t walk through security without being frisked.” It is true that Mikey is not on the federal government’s “no-fly” list, which includes about 2,500 people, less than 10 percent of them from the United States. But his name appears to be among some 13,500 on the larger “selectee” list, which sets off a high level of security screening. At some point, someone named Michael Hicks made the Department of Homeland Security suspicious, and little Mikey is still paying the price. (His father, also named Michael Hicks, was stopped for the first time on the Bahamas trip.) Both lists are maintained by the Terrorist Screening Center, which includes the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They are given to the Transportation Security Administration, which in turn sends them to the airlines. A spokesman for the T.S.A., James Fotenos, said that as a rule, “there are no children on the no-fly or selectee lists,” but would not comment on Mikey’s situation specifically. Click here for more

Click here for the Rolling Stones

The secret word is Disorder

APOCALYPSE 2

Although the mainstream media is still mostly treating the falling birds and related phenomena as something of a joke, large numbers of our friends and neighbours are finding it highly disturbing. Click here for George Noury on his Coast To Coast radio show out of Las Vegas. And while you’re getting pissed off – or if you prefer your propaganda short and fragmented – click here.

THEY SAY IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE

GRATUITOUS DIANA DORS

(Well, I am back in England.)

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

I have no idea what’s going on here except that I have consumed (and created) more than enough science fiction to know that thousands of fish washing up dead and flocks of birds dropping from the sky is a extremely bad sign. In popular culture such occurrences are portents of something Biblical, extraterrestrial, or from the black helicopter shadowland. You can choose your personal favorite in evil omens. Me? I’m reserving judgment and waiting to see what happens next. Here’s a Huffpo round up of the news stories. It at least gives an idea of how many of these occurrences have occurred.

“Millions of dead fish surfaced in Maryland's Chesapeake Bay in the U.S., Tuesday, while similar unexplained mass fish deaths occurred across the world in Brazil and New Zealand. On Wednesday, 50 birds were found dead on a street in Sweden. The news come after recents reports of mysterious massive bird and fish deaths days prior in Arkansas and Louisiana. The Baltimore Sun reports that an estimated 2 million fish were found dead in the Chesapeake Bay, mostly adult spot with some juvenile croakers in the mix, as well. Maryland Department of the Environment spokesperson Dawn Stoltzfus says "cold-water stress" is believed to be the culprit. She told The Sun that similar large winter fish deaths were documented in 1976 and 1980.” Click here for more

Click here for The Band

The secret word is Creepy

Gerry Rafferty – RIP

THE CONSPIRACY CONGEALS

Click here for a video explanation forwarded by our good pal Helga LA that covers the New World Order/black helicopter school of paranoia. It accounts for the birds that came down in Arkansas but takes no account of the episodes in Sweden and elsewhere.

ABEL FERRARA’S GO GO TALES IS FINALLY SCREENED

The Abel Ferrara film Go Go Tales has finally been given a New York release after being shelved for almost three years. The Village Voice reported…

“A highly personal movie, Go Go Tales finds Ferrara in a frenzied yet pensive mode. Virtually the entire movie is set within the tawdry NYC confines of Ray Ruby’s Paradise, an institution that equally suggests an off–Wall Street titty bar and the magic theater from Steppenwolf (and was constructed for the movie in Rome’s Cinecittà studios). Paradise’s nonstop sweat-perfumed hubbub is immediately established with a blast of Archie Bell & the Drells to herald the contortions of a hula-hooping stripper. The beat goes on for some 90 minutes of choreographed pole-writhing, lap-dancing, and flamboyant backstage catastrophes—notably a tanning-bed fire—interspersed with the machinations of club proprietor and compulsive gambler Ray Ruby (up-for-anything Willem Dafoe) as he dodges his numerous creditors and schemes to game the Lotto.”

Click here for the trailer. The heads up came from Dangerous Minds

DON'T YOU MISS THE 20TH CENTURY?

BIG BROTHER JUST GOT BIGGER

All the better to watch you with…

“In ancient times, Gorgon was a mythical Greek creature whose unblinking eyes turned to stone those who beheld them. In modern times, Gorgon may be one of the military's most valuable new tools. This winter, the Air Force is set to deploy to Afghanistan what it says is a revolutionary airborne surveillance system called Gorgon Stare, which will be able to transmit live video images of physical movement across an entire town. The system, made up of nine video cameras mounted on a remotely piloted aircraft, can transmit live images to soldiers on the ground or to analysts tracking enemy movements. It can send up to 65 different images to different users; by contrast, Air Force drones today shoot video from a single camera over a "soda straw" area the size of a building or two. With the new tool, analysts will no longer have to guess where to point the camera, said Maj. Gen. James O. Poss, the Air Force's assistant deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. "Gorgon Stare will be looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we're looking at, and we can see everything." Click here for more

The secret word is Hide

BUT…

Now you can get a drone of your own.

ALTHOUGH YOU DON’T HAVE TO WORRY…

The world is about to end anyway. (Word from Doug the Bass)

“RALEIGH, N.C. – If there had been time, Marie Exley would have liked to start a family. Instead, the 32-year-old Army veteran has less than six months left, which she'll spend spreading a stark warning: Judgment Day is almost here. Exley is part of a movement of Christians loosely organized by radio broadcasts and websites, independent of churches and convinced by their reading of the Bible that the end of the world will begin May 21, 2011. To get the word out, they're using billboards and bus stop benches, traveling caravans of RVs and volunteers passing out pamphlets on street corners. Cities from Bridgeport, Conn., to Little Rock, Ark., now have billboards with the ominous message, and mission groups are traveling through Latin America and Africa to spread the news outside the U.S. "A lot of people might think, 'The end's coming, let's go party,'" said Exley, a veteran of two deployments in Iraq. "But we're commanded by God to warn people. I wish I could just be like everybody else, but it's so much better to know that when the end comes, you'll be safe." Click here for more

Click here for Blind Willie Johnson

A TRUE TESTIMONIAL

Our good friend Jon of Poetry Is For Assholes sent the following…

“I have a friend, a former bad boy. He used to sell rolls of bennies at the truck stops on 1-99 in the fifties. From there he went on to buying bulk methedrine from pharmaceutical warehouses and selling it to the San Francisco Hells Angels. His amphetamine fueled story went on for some years after that. He's not that guy any more. In fact, he counsels street schizophrenic addicts. Consequently he follows the literature, popular and professional, on street drugs. I dropped by his apartment this morning and he pulled out a copy of "Speedfreak". He showed it to me and said, "This is a really interesting book. Have you ever heard of this guy? " As a speedfreak from back in the day he says you got it right. I thought you might like the words of appreciation. By the way, did you know that if you spray bug spray on an old window screen and let it dry, you can scrape it off in powder form, snort it or shoot it and get "high"? That's the kind of shit his clients do when they can't afford good drugs.”

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

After a couple of drinks, Lola Frozdick was a fun date.