NOT SEXY BUT CRUCIAL

The conservatives of the world howl and gnash their teeth in the face of imagined debt and the IMF seek to impose punitive austerity on what had once been the workers of the developed world before capitalism descended into voodoo abstraction. All economists to whom I care to pay attention tell me that that current drastic cuts to public spending are nothing short of suicidal. In the instance it’s Robert Reich – formerly Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor (remember peace and prosperity?)

“Not only is the United States slouching toward a double dip, but so is Europe. New data out today show even Europe’s strongest core economies – Germany, France, and the Netherlands – slowing to a crawl. We’re on the cusp of a global recession. Policy makers be warned: Austerity is the wrong medicine. We all know about the weaknesses in Europe’s “periphery” – Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. But the drop in Europe’s core is dizzying. Germany grew at an annualized rate of just half a percent last quarter, down from 5.5 percent in the first quarter of the year. France didn’t grow at all. What’s going on in Europe’s core? Partly it’s a loss of confidence due to debt crises in the periphery. But that’s hardly all. Europe depends on exports – especially to Asia, India, Latin America, and the United States. But exports to China and other emerging markets have been dropping. China, worried about inflation, has pulled in the reins on its sizzling economy. Brazil has been pulling back as well. And as the United States economy sputters, exports to America have been slowing. But chalk up a big part of Europe’s slowdown to the politics and economics of austerity. Europe – including Britain – have turned John Maynard Keynes on his head. They’ve been cutting public spending just when they should be spending more to counteract slowing private spending.” (Click here for more)

Click here for Barrett Strong

The secret word is Clueless

NOT SEXY BUT DANGEROUS

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Pavia and Abigail Frozdick failed to grasp the reality of the Nazi Party.

HOW DO YOU OUTLAW THE OUTLAW’S MASK?

THE CHELSEA TO BE REMODELED? THE WORLD MAY INDEED BE ENDING

Everything ages, everything changes, do what you think you should do, but there are no truths outside the Gates of Eden. So rage, rage against the dying of the light.

“The bohemian long-term residents of Manhattan’s Hotel Chelsea may be about to meet their match in the New York landmark’s new owners: a Moroccan-Jewish family with vast American real estate holdings and past legal difficulties. The Chetrit family, who purchased the famous property on August 1, has made clear its intention to remake the West Side building. And that is making at least some of the Chelsea’s famously bristly residents a little nervous. “I would say it’s very clear their intentions are to get tenants out, because that’s what the practical nature of business demands,” said theater producer Scott Griffin, a 20-year resident of the Chelsea. Griffin described the hotel’s atmosphere as “funereal,” since the family took control and closed the property to transient guests. “They’re being very formal and very respectful right now, as they make their changes,” he said. “But I don’t anticipate that to last. Not because they’re bad human beings, but they’ve made an investment and they need to make sure the investment realizes itself. Such cautious anticipation has not always characterized the hotel tenants’ attitude toward its owners. Following the removal of the hotel’s popular longtime manager in 2007, someone sent a fish head and a pile of excrement to one of the building’s owners. Though the manager wasn’t reinstated, his replacement was eventually chased away. The hotel — usually known as the Chelsea Hotel — holds an unparalleled place in American pop culture myth: It was the site of the sexual encounter recalled in Leonard Cohen’s song, “Chelsea Hotel No. 2,” and of the murder of Nancy Spungen, girlfriend of Sex Pistols member Sid Vicious. William Burroughs wrote “Naked Lunch” at the Chelsea, and everyone from Dee Dee Ramone to Bob Dylan spent long hours in one or another of its rooms.” (And me, many times! Click here for more)

Click here for Nico

The secret word is Desecration

FREAKS OF GRACELAND – A MEMORIAL

DON’T FORGET THE STAR FLEET PRIME DIRECTIVE

If you have inter-entity sex with The Captain, you will probably die before the end of the episode. 

GRATUITOUS BARDOT

LET US PRAY TO THE DARK GODS THAT THE MAYAN CALENDAR IS CORRECT AND THE WORLD WILL END IN DECEMBER 2012

BECAUSE IF EITHER OF THESE PSYCHOS REALLY BECAME PRESIDENT, I WOULDN’T WANT TO SURVIVE IN THIS REALITY

A DEAD MAN’S HAND?

The conclusion is hard to avoid or pretend it might be otherwise. Click here for Nick Cave.

The secret words are Hole and Card

DON’T YOU MISS THE 20TH CENTURY

Click here for the Do Long Bridge

SUNDAY BREAKFAST

The eggs are looking back at me and I’m very tempted simply to go back to bed. Maybe until September. Let’s face it, friends and neighbours, it’s been one hell of a week. The world feels as though it’s teetering on multiple brinks, and now the eggs are looking back at me. I woke up this morning seeking for respite but all I found was a TV awash in facile social commentators talking unmitigated crap about the UK riots without even the insight of my friends on Facebook. Meanwhile, back in the USA, after barely avoiding an economic apocalypse – which has not exactly gone away – the wholly insane Michele Bachmann has won the GOP Iowa Straw Poll that sets her on track for a run to the White House, and I blanch at the idea that this madwoman should control nuclear weapons. And just to cap it all, my email was hacked and everything I sent out for some 24 hours was going out under the name Clerissa Kahlil. (You figure it.) And yes, brothers and sisters, the eggs are looking back at me.

Click here for Patti singing Bob

The secret word is Contact

MARILYN SEZ...

“But you do realise, darling, if you go back to bed, it’ll all still be there when you wake up again.”

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Lilo and Niki Frozdick had excellent seats for the atomic blast.

IT’S THE REAL THING

CAMERON GRABS FOR THE BIG OFF SWITCH

For a long time I have believed that if any politician could seize the power to control, censor, or even shut down the internet, we had probably lost the ballgame. Despite the content warnings, corporate bullshit, and all the other irritants, the social networks are the people’s media. They are the only free mass communication in a world of electronic manipulation. But now Cameron has seen his chance. I’d like to say that dog won’t hunt but I just fear it just might. The UK media are whipping a lynch mob frenzy modeled on US TV in the wake of 9/11, except the enemy is the children of the underclass, not terrorists on the jihad. The War On Youth? It is all so bloody absurd I shudder and look away. Dangerous Minds tells the story…

“In response to the English Riots, British Prime Minister, David Cameron announced a series initiatives to “do whatever it takes to restore law and order and to rebuild our communities. Amongst the suggested plans (including removal of face masks) was the rather disturbing news that Cameron plans to block access to social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Blackberrys. In a speech to Parliament, Cameron said: “Mr Speaker, everyone watching these horrific actions will be stuck by how they were organised via social media. Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them. So we are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder…” Click here for more

If we lose the internet we won't be able to click here for this guy.

Or Click here for The Clash

The secret word is Dicey

THEY’LL TAKE MY MASK WHEN THEY RIP IT FROM MY COLD DEAD FACE

ME TOO

DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSIC'S # 94

Smoke it if you got it. What else after the week that was?

THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND – THIS LAND IS THEIR LAND

They sure as shit aren’t going to let me write this for The Guardian. Which is a shame because I think this might well be a valid insight. Right now I have a very bad feeling that the rioting in the UK is much more than a destructive sociological hiccup in hard times. My fear is that we are actually witnessing a whole new youth movement – just like the mods, just like the hippies, just like the punks, just like the gangstas in the hoodies, and just as inexplicable to the older generation. In political terms it is a counterculture of frighteningly perfect nihilism, ideologically pure and pristine in so far as it has severed all ties with compassion, empathy, even most minimal agenda beyond instant gratification. It has rejected the basic social compacts that make simple civilization possible. Perhaps in instinctive rejection of a corrupted social system that offers no hope, it’s a lemming lunge of the feral into a twilight world of knives, dope, and guns. You can’t fool the children of the revolution. No, no. You also can’t deter them from a violent and suicidal path. They neither have nor require an attention span and exist wholly in the moment. This new teen and preteen nihilism has embraced the logic of The Hulk – “Me want. Me take. Me smash. Last one out, torch the gaff.” Can’t argue with that, granddad, because this neo-nihilism is artfully inarticulate. A tribe of Sids Vicious without a Joe Strummer among them. This is the way they want it, and we must share the responsibility; all of us. The ones who abandoned this inconvenient, post-industrial generation to street life, video violence, and dead end TV, and we on the other side who didn’t fight hard enough to prevent it. If a solution exists at all, it will require extremely focused thought of a kind that cannot be interrupted by rhetoric, sloganeering, or cravings for popularity. Unfortunately precious few in power are capable of such thought. Maybe none. That makes matters even more problematic. (Unless the Tories use the Nixon strategy of the Attica era of the early 1970s and flood poor neighbourhoods with cheap heroin.)

Click here for Moby Grape

The secret word is Flummoxed

CUT AND RUN

PILLS (To My Head)

(By Jason Mercier)

Click here for Bo

GRATUITOUS ADOLF

NATTY DREDD

I always suspected that this society/culture/civilization would degenerate into cheap science fiction but I didn’t think it’d be Judge Dredd.

Click here for the Pink Fairies in Finland (Sent by Walcir Chalas)

NAGASAKI MON AMOUR

I’ve never been sure why the US needed to drop a second bomb on Nagasaki. To prove they could? Greg Mitchell also wonders why.

“Few journalists bother to visit Nagasaki, even though it is one of only two cities in the world to “meet the atomic bomb,” as some of the survivors of that experience, sixty-six years ago today, put it. It remains the Second City, and “Fat Man” the forgotten bomb. No one in America ever wrote a bestselling book called Nagasaki, or made a film titled Nagasaki, Mon Amour. “We are an asterisk,” Shinji Takahashi, a sociologist in Nagasaki, once told me, with a bitter smile. “The inferior A-bomb city.” Yet in many ways, Nagasaki is the modern A-bomb city, the city with perhaps the most meaning for us today. For one thing, when the plutonium bomb exploded above Nagasaki it made the uranium-type bomb dropped on Hiroshima obsolete. And then there’s this. “The rights and wrongs of Hiroshima are debatable,” Telford Taylor, the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, once observed, “but I have never heard a plausible justification of Nagasaki”—which he labeled a war crime. Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who experienced the firebombing of Dresden at close hand, said much the same thing. “The most racist, nastiest act by this country, after human slavery, was the bombing of Nagasaki,” he once said. “Not of Hiroshima, which might have had some military significance. But Nagasaki was purely blowing away yellow men, women, and children. I’m glad I’m not a scientist because I’d feel so guilty now.” (Click here for more)

Click here for Bambi v Godzilla

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Nobody told Maudie Frozdick and her atom bomb cake was maybe not the way to commemorate the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

DON'T MESS WITH THE WARRIOR PRINCESS

WHAT THE FUCK DID ANYONE EXPECT?

I feel like I’m drowning in a sea of cynicism. The dogs of brutality have been loosed and the hopelessly feral are on the rampage. Like Bob once said, “the words leave my head and they fall to the floor.” Every police cell in London is full. I’ve seen it in LA, I’ve seen it in Brixton, I’ve seen it in Detroit, I’ve suffered the clubs and smelled the teargas in the morning, and here we go again. And it’s worse here than in LA in 1992 because in LA no one lived above the shop. The nonsense pouring for my TV is the same as it ever was. “Thugs”, “criminals”, “rats”, “scum”, “mindless” “consequences”, “punishment,” “justice will be done.” COBRA? Gimme a break. As I write, a BBC reporter tells me “this is what happens when fear of the police evaporates.” Why should citizens fear the police, goddamn it? Another reporter repeats the same line. It's part of the script. The idiot mayor of London waxes bellicose for cameras how this is nothing to do with social justice. The new euphemism for escalated police violence is “robust response.” Some fools think the street mayhem is all being directed via “social networks” and this red herring this will probably trigger a clamor for clampdown on the internet. Other fools can’t wait to see the army on the streets or the use of riot control weapons previously reserved for the Irish. The mega-rich have tanked the global economy with vast pyramid scheme, and them walked away unscathed. Did anyone think there would be no repercussions when the entire burden of loss was dumped on workers and the underclass? When public sector workers stage a mass one day strike they’re ignored. Charlie Gilmore acts up and is tossed in jail. Now the dialogue is with the wholly inarticulate, with fire and broken glass. What the fuck did anyone expect? Like I said I feel like I’m drowning in a sea of cynicism.

Click here for Frank Zappa

The secret word is Betrayal

THIS IS KEITH OLBERMANN. HE IS THE LAST RATIONALLY ANGRY VOICE IN US MEDIA

Please, click here. This is rousing stuff.

OR WE COULD TAKE THE EASY WAY OUT…

GRATUITOUS EVA GREEN

MORE POPULAR THAN GOD

“Hey kids, remember peace and prosperity?”

Our pal Marjorie sent this item from The Jewish Chronicle. But will Bill remember what happened to John Lennon when was more popular than God?

“God is more popular than Barack Obama at the moment but less popular than Bill Clinton before he was reelected president in 1996. In a survey of 928 American voters by Public Policy Polling, 52 per cent of respondents said that if there was a God, they approved of his performance. In contrast, only 12 per cent had a favourable view of Rupert Murdoch. A majority of respondents said they supported the way in which God handled the creation of the universe, however only half approved of how He handled natural disasters. A third of those questioned said they were unsure of their opinion of God's treatment of animals. Gods popularity at the recent survey – only nine per cent of people said they disapproved of his performance – would probably be envied by many politicians. Approval ratings – figures used to measure the performance of public figures – have been used to rate American presidents since they were introduced by George Gallup in the 1930s. Ratings tend to fluctuate a great deal during a presidency, but President Obama's popularity is currently some six per cent lower than God. In contrast, while President Clinton only had the confidence of 37 per cent of voters when his popularity was at its lowest, in November 1996, two thirds of voters said they approved of him. Still, while God is more popular with the general population than the current occupant of the White House, a poll this week showed the president enjoyed an approval rating of 60 per cent among Jewish voters.”

Click here for the afforementioned Lennon

The secret word is Knowledge

SO NOW CIGAR JOKES ARE KOSHER?

(See comment from last Thursday)

THE ACADEMICS OF FLOGGING

If nothing else, this would seem to the further comfirmation that academics are clueless and full of shit.

"Not sure you want to do those five years in prison? How about 10 lashes, instead? That's the tradeoff a U.S. academic suggests in his subtly titled new book,In Defense of Flogging, Peter Moskos, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, argues that our prison system is not only overcrowded and violent, but that it is completely ineffective. "I can't think of another institution that has failed as mightily as the prison has," he writes. As an alternative, he says, the least dangerous convicts should be given a choice — jail time, or two lashes for every year of their sentence. Moskos predicts the prison population would see a massive decline, freeing up billions of dollars for more useful purposes. Others suggest government-sanctioned violence would do nothing to reduce crime, and might even increase criminals' violent tendencies. Is flogging really our best option?" Click here for more (Please Mistress.)

BUT MISTRESS SEZ…

“This guy Moskos is joking, right? I get paid hard cash for floggings.”

UNCLE BILL WITH CAT (Shall we all sigh an adoring aaaah?)

William Burroughs is reported to have highly valued his feline companions. “My relationships with my cats has saved me from a deadly, pervasive ignorance.”

SUNDAY BREAKFAST

Back in the days of yore, after Sunday breakfast, she would smoke and I would drink vodka and grapefruit juice and ponder philosophy. Then we might go back to bed for the balance of the day. Will those days ever come again? Who knows? Maybe they will. (The following pondering was supplied by our pal Elf Hellion but the identity of its original author is unclear.)

FAMOUS WORLD IDEOLOGIES AS EXPLAINED BY COWS

* Feudalism: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.
* Pure Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else’s cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you all the milk you need.
* Bureaucratic Socialism: Your cows are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs the regulations say you should need.
* Fascism: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.
* Pure Communism: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.
* Real World Communism: You share two cows with your neighbors. You and your neighbors bicker about who has the most “ability” and who has the most “need”. Meanwhile, no one works, no one gets any milk, and the cows drop dead of starvation.
* Russian Communism: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the black market.
* Perestroika: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the Mafia takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the “free” market.
* Cambodian Communism: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.
* Militarianism: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.
* Totalitarianism: You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.
* Pure Democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.
* Representative Democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.
* British Democracy: You have two cows. You feed them sheeps’ brains and they go mad. The government doesn’t do anything.
* Bureaucracy: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.
* Pure Anarchy: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.
* Pure Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
* Capitalism: You don’t have any cows. The bank will not lend you money to buy cows, because you don’t have any cows to put up as collateral.
* Enviromentalism: You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them.
* Political Correctness: You are associated with (the concept of “ownership” is a symbol of the phallo-centric, war mongering, intolerant past) two differently – aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender.
* Surrealism: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

Click here for a satiric or maybe ironic shout-out to Tottenham. (I add ironic and satiric so I’m not dragged off for incitement.)

The secret word is Repeat

MARILYN SEZ...

“Haven’t I heard the phrase ‘London’s burning’ somewhere before?”

HERE WE GO AGAIN

I vividly recall how the Los Angeles urban insurgency of 1992 was basically a case of the police needing to prove they were the most powerful gang in town. And already I hear Tory politicians on TV talking about “eradicating the thug element.” Do they really think people will go quietly into poverty and destitution?

Click here for freeform media.

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Labia Sackville-Frozdick wondered if it was still safe to walk her cheetah.

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, A NUCLEAR POWER WITH ENOUGH FIREPOWER TO DESTROY THE WORLD MULTIPLE TIMES OVER HAS JUST HAD IT’S CREDIT RATING DOWNGRADED. MEANWHILE THE CATAPOCALYPSE DRAWS CLOSER…

By way of explanation I’m tired, my head is starting to ache, and I feel disinclined to write any more tonight. Click here for Eddie Cochran

The secret word is Impossible

AND THE BIRDS MAY ALSO BE IN ON IT…

BUT BE WARNED...

MORE CHICKEN THAN A MAN EVER SEEN

Why you might ask, as the Dow sinks and the government of the United States and its corporate masters attempt to infect the global economy with terminal capitalist gangrene – and ultimately hand the infinite game to China – why Doc40 devotes its space and time to a recipe for Elvis Presley’s favorite fried chicken? The anniversary of Elvis’s death approaches, which is something we mark in passing here but certainly don’t celebrate. More important, though, as we seem to be dragged deeper and deeper into Great Depression II, I can’t help but reflect what Elvis was born during Great Depression I and almost certainly went hungry as a kid which might account for his compulsive eating in later life and why the recipe calls for no less that 30 chickens. (You note we have refrained from using an image of a fat Elvis. Doc40 don’t play that)

1/2 c thyme
1/4 c oregano
1/4 c basil
1/2 c onion powder
1/2 c garlic powder
1/2 c dry mustard
1/2 c paprika
1/4 c chili powder
1/2 c celery seed
2 Tbsp salt
1/2 c coriander
1/2 c cumin
1/3 c kosher salt
1/4 c cayenne pepper
1/2 c ground black pepper
1/4 c ground white pepper
3 gals. buttermilk
3 cases organic free range chicken (roughly 30 chickens, divided into 1.5- to 2-lb. sections)
Mix these amounts of the dry ingredients together in a large bowl, then whisk in the buttermilk until it's thoroughly mixed.
Pour the batter over the chickens and marinate for up to five days - keep refrigerated, of course.
For frying
Now mix another 4x the above dry ingredients, and add:
2 lbs. cornstarch
8 qts. all-purpose organic whole wheat flour
Dredge the marinated chicken pieces in the dry herbs/flour/cornstarch mixture mix.
Fry the dredged chicken in a large skillet with hot peanut oil @ 375 degrees. Once chicken has reached a golden brown color, finish cooking it in the oven.

Click here for Marianne (it’s a great tune)

The secret word is Schmaltz (figure it out, you goys)

THE BEAGLE GLOWS

Our pal Aeswiren sent us this oddity. Alas we don’t have pictures of the luminous doggie. (I also assume they called the 2005 clone-beagle Snuppy because, if they called it Snoopy, lawyers from the Charles M. Schultz Empire would have fallen upon the cloners like piranha.)

"South Korean scientists said on Wednesday they have created a glowing dog using a cloning technique that could help find cures for human diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, Yonhap news agency reported. A research team from Seoul National University (SNU) said the genetically modified female beagle, named Tegon and born in 2009, has been found to glow fluorescent green under ultraviolet light if given a doxycycline antibiotic, the report said. The researchers, who completed a two-year test, said the ability to glow can be turned on or off by adding a drug to the dog's food. The creation of Tegon opens new horizons since the gene injected to make the dog glow can be substituted with genes that trigger fatal human diseases," the news agency quoted lead researcher Lee Byeong-chun as saying. He said the dog was created using the somatic cell nuclear transfer technology that the university team used to make the world's first cloned dog, Snuppy, in 2005. The scientist said that because there are 268 illnesses that humans and dogs have in common, creating dogs that artificially show such symptoms could aid treatment methods for diseases that afflict humans. The latest discovery published in 'Genesis', an international journal, took four years of research with roughly 3.2 billion won ($3 million) spent to make the dog and conduct the necessary verification tests."

PLUGS FOR PALS

Click here for the good and wonderful Sonja Kristina’s band Mask

SHAVE AND A HAIRCUT TWO BITS

“Anything for the weekend, sir?”

GRATUITOUS MONTECRISTO