The secret word is Click
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
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.)
The secret word is Yesterday
(And yesterday there was no secret word.)
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
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)
“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
“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
Monday, August 17, 2009
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.”
“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."
"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."
Sunday, August 16, 2009
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.
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.
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 FOUR
Elvis died for somebody’s sins but not mine. © MF
The secret word is Pointless
Friday, August 14, 2009
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
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
Thursday, August 13, 2009
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
"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 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.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
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
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
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.
Monday, August 10, 2009
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.
“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.”
Sunday, August 09, 2009
AND FOR NO PARTICULAR REASON…
Every few weeks, we post a totally gratuitous picture of Brigitte Bardot.
Saturday, August 08, 2009
FORTY YEARS AGO TODAY...
However tasteless the homicide iconography may seem to some, LA is having itself a quite a Manson Family weekend, recalling how, if nothing else, Charlie scared the living shit out of the squares, which was a turnround for many of us freaks who had been feeling it was open season on longhairs. Tonight – while Charlie still lingers institutionalized in maximum security – I will attend the Sharon Tate Memorial Dinner at an undisclosed location , and tomorrow (Sunday) I will be drinking cocktails at Wacko, the amazing store at Hollywood and Vermont, as our pal Adam Gorightly launches the new edition of his Manson book The Shadow Over Santa Susana.
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