“It was really long but kind of floppy.”
Sunday, December 09, 2012
OUR WHACKY UNCLE BILL: Part 1 (Long time readers will remember this series)
“I’m back
and I’m not happy.”
OUR WHACKY UNCLE BILL: Part 2
“I’m not your Uncle Bill. I just play him in the movies. And I never saw the mugwump before
in my life.”
Wednesday, December 05, 2012
NO GUNS, PLEASE, WE’RE JAPANESE
I have
always been morbidly fascinated by how the Japanese managed to conduct serious
warfare while spurning the use of firearms for more than two centuries because
they debased the nobility of combat.
"Alone among countries that
acquired and mastered guns, Japan effectively banned and repudiated these
weapons, while simultaneously cutting itself off from the outside world. This
meant that Japan was defenseless when U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry arrived with
gunships in 1853, a culturally shocking moment, which vaulted Japan into a
civil war caused, in part, by conflict between those who wanted Japan to
continue to hold to its traditions -- and those who wanted to rapidly modernize
Japan and catch up with the rest of the industrializing world:
"Warfare ensured that once states had acquired guns, they could not give them up. To this rule, there is one glaring exception: Japan. The Japanese first encountered firearms when Portuguese adventurers arrived in 1453 with two matchlocks, guns in which the powder was ignited with a match. Japanese blacksmiths quickly learned to produce such weapons in large quantities. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are known as the Age of the Country at War, when powerful lords battled for control of the country. At the Battle of Nagashino in 1575, an army of 38,000 men, of whom 10,000 carried guns, defeated an army of sword-wielding samurai (or Japanese knights). Japan soon had more guns than any European country. Warfare and the proliferation of guns had serious social consequences, however. The battles showed that even a poorly trained peasant with a gun could kill a samurai, no matter how courageous, well trained, or expensively armored he might be. This threatened the position of the warrior class, who numbered half a million and were jealous of their status and their privileges, such as the right to carry swords.
"Warfare ensured that once states had acquired guns, they could not give them up. To this rule, there is one glaring exception: Japan. The Japanese first encountered firearms when Portuguese adventurers arrived in 1453 with two matchlocks, guns in which the powder was ignited with a match. Japanese blacksmiths quickly learned to produce such weapons in large quantities. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are known as the Age of the Country at War, when powerful lords battled for control of the country. At the Battle of Nagashino in 1575, an army of 38,000 men, of whom 10,000 carried guns, defeated an army of sword-wielding samurai (or Japanese knights). Japan soon had more guns than any European country. Warfare and the proliferation of guns had serious social consequences, however. The battles showed that even a poorly trained peasant with a gun could kill a samurai, no matter how courageous, well trained, or expensively armored he might be. This threatened the position of the warrior class, who numbered half a million and were jealous of their status and their privileges, such as the right to carry swords.
In the
early seventeenth century, Tokugawa Ieyasu and his descendants defeated their
rivals and established a military dictatorship. In the 1630s, they began
restricting the manufacture and sale of firearms. Only in two towns could
gunmakers practice their trade. Civilians were forbidden to buy guns.
Gradually, the government cut back its orders of firearms; by 1673, it was
buying 53 large matchlocks or 334 small ones on alternate years. It also
expelled all foreigners and forbade Japanese people from traveling abroad
under penalty of death. For the next two centuries, no foreign power
threatened Japan. The country was practically cut off from contact with the
outside world and saw no reason to keep up with technological changes occurring
elsewhere. Guns were forgotten until 1853, when American warships arrived in
Tokyo Bay and, by firing their cannon, awoke Japan to the power of modern
technology.” – Daniel R. Headrick: Technology: A World History (Oxford University Press)
The secret
word is Loaded
Dave
Brubeck – RIP
Sunday, December 02, 2012
JUST 19 SHOPPING DAYS TO OBLIVION
My
relentless ego compels me to remind everyone how I was discussing The 2012
Solstice Doom Racket back when José Argüelles and Terence McKenna were the only major
players. Now even the mainstream media are not only in on the act, but shrieking like Helen
Lovejoy, “Will someone think of the children?” But don’t despair, whatever else
might come to pass on December 21st, The Deviants and their
ill-gotten cronies will be hosting a party in a pub in Brighton so we can all
cease to exist together. Details will be revealed as the plot thickens, but it
should not be confused with band’s full-on, no-prisoners rock & roll on
show in Lewes on December 14th. (See about three items down.)
“NASA scientists took time on Wednesday (Nov. 28) to soothe
2012 doomsday fears, warning against the dark side of Mayan apocalypse rumors —
frightened children and suicidal teens who truly fear the world may come to an
end Dec. 21. These fears are based on misinterpretations of the Mayan calendar. On the 21st, the date of the winter
solstice, a calendar cycle called the 13th b'ak'tun comes to an end. Although
Maya scholars agree that the ancient Maya would not have seen this day as
apocalyptic, rumors have spread that a cosmic event may end life on Earth on
that day. There is no true issue here," David Morrison, an astrobiologist
at NASA Ames Research Center said "This is just a manufactured fantasy.
“Unfortunately, Morrison said, the fantasy has real-life consequences. Morrison
receives many emails and letters from worried citizens, particularly young
people. Some say they can't eat, or are too worried to sleep, others say
they're suicidal.”
96% OF THE UNIVERSE IS MISSING
And even if
the great multidimensional, string-theory main switch is shut off, it still
seems we only know about 4% of the known universe.
“Astronomers and physicists
are now grappling with evidence that suggests, even with the most powerful
telescopes, we can only observe four percent of the universe. The rest, they
posit, is dark matter and dark energy: " 'Dark,' cosmologists call it, in
what could go down in history as the ultimate semantic surrender. This is not
'dark' as in distant or invisible. This is not "dark" as in black holes
or deep space. This is 'dark' as in unknown for now, and possibly forever: 23
percent something mysterious that they call dark matter, 73 percent something
even more mysterious that they call dark energy. Which leaves only 4 percent
the stuff of us. As one theorist likes to say at public lectures, 'We're just a
bit of pollution.' Get rid of us and of everything else we've ever thought of
as the universe, and very little would change. 'We're completely irrelevant,'
he adds, cheerfully.
"The 'ultimate Copernican revolution,' as [astronomers] often call it, is taking place right now. It's happening in underground mines, where ultrasensitive detectors wait for the ping of a hypothetical particle that might already have arrived or might never come, and it's happening in ivory towers, where coffee-break conversations conjure multiverses out of espresso steam. It's happening at the South Pole, where telescopes monitor the relic radiation from the Big Bang; in Stockholm, where Nobelists have already begun to receive recognition for their encounters with the dark side; on the laptops of postdocs around the world, as they observe the realtime self-annihilations of stars, billions of light-years distant, from the comfort of a living room couch. It's happening in healthy collaborations and, the universe being the intrinsically Darwinian place it is, in career-threatening competitions.
"The astronomers who have found themselves leading this revolution didn't set out to do so. Like Galileo, they had no reason to expect that they would discover new phenomena. They weren't looking for dark matter. They weren't looking for dark energy. And when they found the evidence for dark matter and dark energy, they didn't believe it. But as more and better evidence accumulated, they and their peers reached a consensus that the universe we thought we knew, for as long as civilization had been looking at the night sky, is only a shadow of what's out there.” – Richard Panek: The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality ( Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
"The 'ultimate Copernican revolution,' as [astronomers] often call it, is taking place right now. It's happening in underground mines, where ultrasensitive detectors wait for the ping of a hypothetical particle that might already have arrived or might never come, and it's happening in ivory towers, where coffee-break conversations conjure multiverses out of espresso steam. It's happening at the South Pole, where telescopes monitor the relic radiation from the Big Bang; in Stockholm, where Nobelists have already begun to receive recognition for their encounters with the dark side; on the laptops of postdocs around the world, as they observe the realtime self-annihilations of stars, billions of light-years distant, from the comfort of a living room couch. It's happening in healthy collaborations and, the universe being the intrinsically Darwinian place it is, in career-threatening competitions.
"The astronomers who have found themselves leading this revolution didn't set out to do so. Like Galileo, they had no reason to expect that they would discover new phenomena. They weren't looking for dark matter. They weren't looking for dark energy. And when they found the evidence for dark matter and dark energy, they didn't believe it. But as more and better evidence accumulated, they and their peers reached a consensus that the universe we thought we knew, for as long as civilization had been looking at the night sky, is only a shadow of what's out there.” – Richard Panek: The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality ( Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Click here for Danse Society
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
AS GOOD AS IT GETS
All through
the interminable preparation for this book I tried to avoid the inevitable
contemplation of the hideous reality that this was my life. I was gathering
together some of the best surviving stuff that I had ever written, goddamn it.
This was my fucking life. This was it. Life. This was all there was. The blurb
reads…
“The definitive collection of
Mick Farren’s prose, over four hundred pages of some of the best writing the
counterculture has ever produced, carefully selected and extensively annotated
by Mick Farren himself, with superb line-art illustrations by Michael Robinson,
a foreword by CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY, a preface by FELIX DENNIS, plus encounters with
JOHNNY CASH, FRANK ZAPPA, CHUCK BERRY, GORE VIDAL and PETE TOWNSHEND, among
others. Over four decades of Farren’s very best interviews and polemics.”
Right now
you can buy the deluxe paperback. The much cheaper paperback will be out in the
spring.
Click here
for Sid
The secret
word is History
BUT LET'S NOT FORGET
This fine,
fine, novelette is also still very much on sale – except Amazon seem to be having
trouble grasping the reality of this. The publishers assure me that this will
soon be fixed, which is crucial for buyers in the UK. In the mean time you can
contact Penny Ante by clicking here.
Friday, November 23, 2012
49 YEARS AND STILL WAITING
I’m one of that generation who gave up on the concept of
democracy when JFK was gunned down in Dealey Plaza 49 years ago today, except
I’ve always had my own spin of the deal. When they shot Jack – CIA style – that
was tragic, but when Jack Ruby took out Lee Oswald – Mob style – I knew
instinctively something was wrong. Very wrong..
“November 22 marks the 49th anniversary
of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The memory of the
tragedy in Dallas seems to be fading in America's collective consciousness. Few
people younger than myself (I'm 54) have any memory of the day it actually
happened. 9/11 has certainly replaced 11/22 as the time stamp of American
catastrophic angst. Yet the JFK story still acts as a gravitational vortex in
America's pop culture galaxy. ABC News released of audio tapes of First Lady
Jacqueline Kennedy conversations shortly after her husband's death. The
factually grounded but over the top Jesse Ventura blamed JFK's assassination on "the same old military industrial complex " Stephen King published a time-travel epic called November 22, 1963. Bill O'Reilly wrote an uncharacteristically wimpy JFK book. And next year, Tom Hanks plans to
release a big-budget assassination drama called Parkland, the hospital where JFK died. In this
media spectacle, the Internet is a mixed blessing. The Web keeps the JFK story
alive by providing a platform and audience for ever more fantastical theories
about the death of the 35thpresident. More constructively, the Web has made
the government's troubling records about JFK's death available for the first
time to millions people outside of Washington and the federal government. I
believe this diffusion of knowledge is slowly clarifying the JFK story for
everybody.” (Click here for more)
Click here for Cher
The secret words are Bolt and Action
Thursday, November 22, 2012
THANX
Thanx to
all my friends in the USA for being my friends in the USA.
Click here
for the turkey triumph of Wednesday Addams
Click here
for MC5
The secret
word is Baste
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
31 SHOPPING DAYS TO INFINITY
If my
arithmetic is correct we now have just 32 days remaining until, according to
the Mayan calendar, reality is switched off and all of everything just kinda
winks out like the final episode of The Sopranos. I’ve always had a fascination
with End of the World theories from the panic of 999AD to the 19th
century Millerites who, in March of 1844, when The Rapture failed to
materialize and they didn’t rise bodily into the sky and go with God, were
plunged into what became known as the “Great Disappointment.” In more recent
times, we’ve had Nostradamus’ bad boy in the turban in 1999, Y2K in 2000, not to
mention the slightly more real Cuba missile crisis, plus the 1962 incident when a
bear almost kicked off World War III by triggering the wrong alarm, or the
other cluster-fuck in January 1995 when a Norwegian research rocket was
mistaken by the Russians for incoming US ICBMs and a vodka-drunk Boris Yeltsin was minutes from nuking the shit
out of the United States. And now it’s the turn of the Mayans. Hey, bring it
one. We’re even planning a party down here in Brighton – but more of that later.
The secret word is Countdown
Thursday, November 15, 2012
THE HORROR, THE HORROR, THE HARDBACK HORROR
So these are
the best selling books on the planet? I must confess I had to Google The
Alchemist, but the real horror was The Twilight Saga, I mean, The bloody Twilight Saga!!! Words
fail me. And where’s the Koran?
Click here
for Bo and the Duchess
The secret
word is Gutenberg
.jpg)
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
DUMB AND DUMBER
This theory
took me totally by surprise. But it does have it’s point. Is your phone smarter
that you are? Roll on the Singularity and let Skynet sort it out. I’ll be dead
anyway.
"Humankind's intelligence peaked thousands of years ago and
advanced civilization has made life so easy for so many that our trend towards
stupidity will continue as the ingenuity and intellect once needed for basic
survival erode even further. This, anyway, is the argument of a new study out in the
journal Trends in Genetics, authored by Stanford
University professor Gerald Crabtree. Crabtree's study claims that harmful
genetic mutations—occurring generation after generation as society
advanced—have reduced our "higher thinking" abilities and the
accumulated result has led to a gradual dwindling of our intelligence as a
species. The Guardian explains that Crabtree's thinking is a
speculative idea—one he'd be happy to have prove wrong—but also a simple one:
In the past, when our ancestors (and those who failed to become our ancestors)
faced the harsh realities of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, the punishment for
stupidity was more often than not death. And so, Crabtree argues, enormous
evolutionary pressure bore down on early humans, selecting out the dimwits, and
raising the intellect of the survivors' descendants. But not so today. “I would
wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000BC were to appear suddenly
among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive
of our colleagues and companions, with a good memory, a broad range of ideas
and a clear-sighted view of important issues,” Professor Crabtree says in the
paper." (Click here for more)
Click herefor them old Pistols
The secret
word is Stupid
.jpg)
Sunday, November 11, 2012
SUNDAY BREAKFAST
It’s a rare
weekend when I can get up on a Sunday morning like I truly deserve a Bloody
Mary and a bacon sandwich because the preceding week was not for once enclosed
in a complete fog of blurred and distorted cosmic anti-matter and I don’t need
to slither illicitly out of bed like a reluctant reptile. Obama was re-elected
and, no matter how he let us down during the first term, at least the Gates of
Conservative Hell didn’t swing open. I know New York and New Jersey are still a
mess but can I be forgiven for being relieved that this time it isn’t happening
to me. I figure we’ll all get our share of doomsday weather in due course. But
can I think about that tomorrow and, for today, go on grinning at how the
Director of the CIA – Bush’s favourite general – has totally screwed himself
and dumped his career by fucking a good looking biographer, and maybe more? And
can I feel all good and smug because three US states have legalized marijuana,
while in Europe the concept that an economy can be saved by the draconian
exploitation of the poor seems to be losing its already spurious philosophical
support and the Bundesbank should be backing off if it knows what’s good for it?
This may all be undue optimism and no doubt paranoid calamity will crash in on
us tomorrow, but will you all allow me a day at the rose-tinted monitor?
Click here for Dolly Parton
The secret
word is Eternal
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
.JPG)
