MORE ON LITTLE TONY
Phil Franks sends the following from his extensive archive...
http://www.ibiblio.org/mal/MO/philm/friends/littlet.html

EXTRA! EXTRA!
WILD TURKEYS THREATEN YOSEMITE! (So we needn’t feel so bad about eating the bastards)
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-hunt24nov24,0,7818305.story?track=tothtml

GOBBLE FUCKING GOBBLE
I learned a lot today. As in...

South Caroline is the #1 turkey producing state in the nation. (But, unfortunately, the toxicity in the birds is growing.)

Mark Morford is brilliant. This link was sent over by Munz, and just the fact that such a piece of writing ran in the San Francisco Chronicle, says a whole lot. Dare we hope Bush really is in the bunker? Really? Really? So when will they hand out the revolvers and cyanide caps?
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1124-29.htm

In the middle of the obligatory patriotic Thanksgiving TV footage of poor fucking National Guard grunts eating turkey under orders to look happy, a shot of a company on patrol revealed that their uniforms were less than...(well)... uniform, and that identical Imperial Storm Trooper look has started deteriorating into individual improvisation like flack jackets and cut-off t-shirts. A Vietnam vet of my acquaintance told me to watch out for this, since it means, in a precise and basic way, that the noble cause is history, and that each unit is simply watching out for its own survival. The next stage is scrawling peace signs on the helmets with a Magic Marker.

I’m still watching the pandacam. (Today I actually caught him awake and wrestling with his mommy.)
http://animal.discovery.com/cams/pandavidr.html

It seems that Bob Dylan is currently including a Clash song in his live show.
http://screwlooseum.blogspot.com/2005/11/dylan-calling.html

I’m also wondering why so many of the Yuletide tunes backing TV commercials in this desperate holiday are being sung by Dean Martin.

LINKS
"THE CUTE GUY HELPED ME. I’M GOING TO FUCK HIM TONIGHT!" AND OTHER BON MOTS
Some girl sent over this piece of fun...
http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/

Hipspinster blogs of rats and war
http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/

And Miss Templeton has the entire script of the Camp Chippewa First Halloween Pageant
http://horslipsmusic.blogspot.com/

But bad news also arrived...
LITTLE TONY – RIP

The secret word is Tryptophan

LINK WRAY -- RIP
(Nobody told me)

AND ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF DEALEY PLAZA...
http://www.wonkette.com/politics/conspiracy-theories/index.php

SCENES FROM IDIOT AMERICA
No comments, just read ’em and weep...

"The godfather of the Dominionists is D. James Kennedy, the most influential evangelical you've never heard of. "Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost," Kennedy says. "As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors -- in short, over every aspect and institution of human society."

"The Rev. Richard Land, top lobbyist for the 16-million-member Southern Baptist Convention, enjoys a weekly conference call with top Bush advisers including Karl Rove. "We've got the Holy Spirit's wind at our backs!" Land declares in an arm-waving, red-faced speech. He takes particular aim at the threat posed by John Lennon, denouncing "Imagine" as a "secular anthem" that envisions a future of "clone plantations, child sacrifice, legalized polygamy and hard-core porn."

AND TALKING OF ROVE...
While our attention is on CIA leaks and Iraq, post-Katrina New Orleans turns into a mendacious shell game. Kaymo sent over the following from today’s NYT.

"BATON ROUGE, La., Nov. 18 - Less than three months after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, relief legislation remains dormant in Washington and despair is growing among officials here who fear that Congress and the Bush administration are losing interest in their plight. As evidence, the state and local officials cite an array of stalled bills and policy changes they say are crucial to rebuilding the city and persuading some of its hundreds of thousands of evacuated residents to return, including measures to finance long-term hurricane protection, revive small businesses and compensate the uninsured.
"There is a real concern that we will lose the nation's attention the longer this takes," said Representative Bobby Jindal, a Republican from Metairie, just west of New Orleans. "People are making decisions now about whether to come back. And every day that passes, it will be a little harder to get things done."
So now that New Orleans has been emptied of the Democrat voting base, is there any reason to think that the Rovian GOP has any intention of really rebuilding anything there except a kind of "Partyland" around the French Quarter? The city can be safely downgraded now to a small tourist destination, and a largely automated port facility."

The secret word is Desperate

THE MORE TIME PASSES, THE MORE OF A BILL CLINTON FAN I BECOME
And happy to see that he is finally climbing down off the fence on Iraq.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051116/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_clinton

The above is courtesy of Miss Templeton at...
http://horslipsmusic.blogspot.com/

Meanwhile this site created by "traitiors with tits" warns of the plight of Mississippi’s last and only abortion clinic.
http://www.livejournal.com/community/leftist_cunt/

And on a far more cheerful note, MrMR has sent over a truly brilliant and way cool gallery of microphotographs of popular cocktails.
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/cocktails/index.html

The secret word is Gibson

Now I go back to watching the panda roll over in its sleep.

Damn it, but that panda can sleep!

BEWARE! THE PANDACAM IS ADDICTIVE!

FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS, WHATEVER ELSE YOU DO, YOU GOTTA WATCH THE PANDA CAM!
http://animal.discovery.com/cams/pandavidr.html

The secret word is Butterstick

SINGULARITY
So it’s Thursday in what is proving to be a long and anxious week, with the Santa Annas blowing out from the canyons, where pachuco demons hawk starmaps to Gehenna, with maybe a thirty degree temperature difference between night and day, and the very air feeling somehow eerie and estranged. And I guess it was in an early phase of this state of mind when I took a look at The Singularity for LA CityBeat...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2881&IssueNum=128

I also discovered that The Pasadena Weekly had reprinted the crystal meth story that I wrote a couple of months ago. If you didn’t read it then, here’s another chance. Speed, Nazis, JFK, Mods, the Mexican Mafia, drag queens and much, more. Loads o’ fun.
http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/feature.html

IDIOT AMERICA
Some girl sent over a truly excellent piece from Esquire by Charles P. Pierce on Intelligent Design and Idiot America. Here’s a sample (although its reproduced on a weird deviantArt message board, but don't let the trolls deter you)...
Let's take a tour, shall we? For the sake of time, we'll just cover the last year or so. A federally funded abstinence program suggests that HIV can be transmitted through tears. An Alabama legislator proposes a bill to ban all books by gay authors. The Texas House passes a bill banning suggestive cheerleading. And nobody laughs at any of it, or even points out that, in the latter case, having Texas ban suggestive cheerleading is like having Nebraska ban corn. James Dobson, a prominent conservative Christian spokesman, compares the Supreme Court to the Ku Klux Klan. Pat Robertson, another prominent conservative preacher, says that federal judges are a more serious threat to the country than is Al Qaeda and, apparently taking his text from the Book of Gambino, later sermonizes that the United States should get with it and snuff the democratically elected president of Venezuela.
http://forum.deviantart.com/community/politics/525981/

The secret word is Phosphorus

BILL O’REILLY
has started an enemies list and I sooooo want to be on it!
http://thinkprogress.org/2005/11/14/oreilly-mccarthyism/

WHILE SONY MURDERS YOUR COMPUTER...
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/computing/20051115-1407-sony-copyprotection.html
(Class action suit?)

ANYONE FANCY A HEINEKEN COMMERCIAL?
http://www.ps260.com/editors/hein_dominatrix.html

GET ME OFF THIS FUCKING PLANET!
Before the six disc DVD collection of the best of Oprah gets me! (That's true torture.)

MY BRANE STILL HURTS
No time today to continue yesterday’s mental stumblings, but, fear not, I will return to them. Maybe another part of the explanation for my confusion is that I have been lately working on a summation of The Singularity, both the hot new sub-genre of science fiction and the event apex in about thirty years when the human race will be overtaken by machines. But, for that, you’ll have to wait until Thursday when LA CityBeat will be published and, of course, a link posted here.

THE NOVELIST’S SKETCHBOOK
When I was in art school they encouraged us to keep a sketch book. I didn’t do much drawing in mine, tending rather to make small written notes and past in newspaper clips, which wasn’t exactly what was required, but you could get away with just about anything in a British art school in the early 1960s. The habit kinda continued and even today and I save found objects like the clip below on the computer. The image is remarkably vivid.
SHIZUOKA — A teenage girl arrested for allegedly attempting to poison her mother had been carrying with her tiny bottles containing poison as her amulets, investigative sources said Sunday. According to investigations, the 16-year-old high school student, whose name is being withheld because she is a minor, bought a total of 50 grams of thallium — banned for sale to those under 18 — at a drugstore near her home in the city of Izunokuni in August and September. She has since carried with her tiny bottles containing thallium in the forms of powder and water solution as amulets, the sources said, adding the bottles measure about 2 centimeters in diameter and 15 cm in length.

IT’S AMAZING WHAT YOU FIND
I come across a lot of stuff on my webwalks, but an18 minute radio interview from four or five years ago was about as unexpected as parts of it are tedious. (Although others are quite amusing.)
http://musicsojourn.com/AR/Prog/page/f/FarrenMick.htm

The secret word is Marconi

I just realized it’s the 13th. Maybe that explains some of what’s below. Triskaidekaphobia may have unconsciously set in. On the other hand, I may just be right.

MY BRAIN HURTS
(When in crisis look to the old Python)
MY BRANE HURTS
(When in crisis look to string)

Unless you have the fortune to become a tediously predictable mega-star -- like Bono or the equivalent -- the artist-outlaw is essentially a scavenger, a semi-domesticated coyote, an opportunist wolf, a carrion bird, skulking on perimeters and peripheries of the massive and infinitely sluggish mainstream, living off the roadkill-debris and subverted medications of the culture, although, at certain other times, when pride dictates what might be another man’s folly, using his or her mobility to lope short ways up the untrod trail, all up ahead, and return with word – handed down whether they want it or not – that beyond the mountains we can expect the dawn. Or not.

The metaphor is of a vast nomadic Mongol encampment – patched yurts, walled-eyes ponies and no plumbing, but a TV in every pot – over-bloated so far beyond its functional capacity that it founders into the Phase of Lemming Transfixion , a Golden Horde now peeling gilt and verdigris, with no more world to conquer, pointlessly hoarding garbage for chicken comfort, and hardly covering a honest mile in a sweating day. Aimless fellaheen, sullen and lumpen trudge behind leaders from an exhausted gene pool, too numb for coupe or insurrection, too numb to cope, save to spread disease and rumors of disease, to feed on fear and craven recoil as, in the flash undirected feral fury, fights break out around the swampland gin mills and the temples of insanity – neglecting, of course, to educate the children in anything but the art of Molotov cocktail. (Is Paris burning?)

But more importantly, whole areas of prime cultural real estate wink out and reappear elsewhere in different form and shimmering guise by processes of complex phantomization. The Royal Library of Alexandra mutates to an electron stream, but who can haunt its stacks without, by necessity, becoming a phantom?

(This train was kinda set in motion by the following story in today’s New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/business/yourmoney/13frenzy.html?th&emc=th
Just the very idea that (say) the intro to the Kinks "You Really Got Me Should" be the ringtone on some asshole’s cell phone -- braying out in the movieshow or on line at bank, instead of calling us to arms or at least sexy drunken mayhem -- began building a head of steam on a Sunday when I would have been very happy to hide under the blankets humming "Make The World Go Away.")

More (probably much more) to...

The secret word is Come

CRYPTIQUE – Like TIE fighters* round the Millennium Falcon.

* http://www.starwars.com/databank/starship/tiefighter/

LOCAL GLOAT
A smug happiness descends on Doc40 with today’s news that the voters in California have seemingly proved they’ve finally come to their fucking senses by rejecting a shopping basket of Arnold-Uber-Alles, education-cutting, union-busting ballot initiatives by which Schwarzenegger hoped to extend his power as State Terminator. At time of writing, Proposition 73, which would bar abortions for minors without parental notification was also going down in defeat. The state Republicans had hoped this would be the hook to bring the religious right to the polls in droves, but apparently not so. We can now only hope that this condition of regained reality will toss the Austrian oaf out of office in next year’s Gubernatorial elections.

The secret word is Merriment

CRYPTIQUE – You extra-large political dwarf, you will be dealt a thousandfold retaliatory blow!

I just heard "The Times They Are A'Changing" and "I Can See For Miles" on back to back TV commercials. On whom do I put the hurt?

PARANOIA, PORNOGRAPHY AND TORTURE
First Paranoia...
The last couple of weeks have been something of private nightmare, which may explain why a lot of Doc40 has been devoted to fun links rather than my own deathless musings. For a moment there it seemed as though maybe my life was a lot less deathless than I thought it was – but, like Uncle Sweetie once told Jack Fate, "I don’t talk about my troubles when I’m having them, I talk about them when they’re over." And although – touching all talismans – I seem to have dodged the grinder, I still feel marginally shell shocked, which may account for a yesterday-flash of paranoia – a epiphany of maybe (or maybe not) irrational gut-dread.
It went like this. I was potatoed on the couch watching Chris Matthews on Hardball with the usual roadkill fascination as various heads talked about the Bush/Cheney Legalize Torture* Campaign. Suddenly the cable froze out. At the same synchronous moment multiple helicopters chattered overhead in a sky growing dark before possible rain from the ocean. I suddenly wondered if – should things turn any nastier worse for George W. – the White House would stage a kind of reverse coupe, taking over the entire function of government and declaring a smirking dictatorship. Fearing if I was too horribly right, I randomly switched channels and found myself in the middle of Masked And Anonymous, and Bob Dylan was singing "Dixie". Usually I dream such stuff, but...

Related Question
Q – Is there a context in which torture is acceptable.
A – Maybe foreplay?

Which Brings Us Neatly To The Porn...
The novel by Lewis "Scooter" Libby – mentioned in Doc40 on November 1st – has become a hot item now that Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff is under indictment. An inscribed copy of the out-of-print "The Apprentice: A Novel," which Libby wrote in 1996 was on sale on Amazon on Monday for $2,400. Unsigned hardcover copies were going for $700. The only consolation is that the author gets none of this; a reality I learned to my dire ire when some of my old books started assuming crazy collector prices.

But all of the rabid right are not closet pornographers. Check out this wonderful 1960s anti-pornography film produced by financier Charles Keating, linking smut to the Communist conspiracy and the decline of Western civilization. As some will recall, Keating was also the arch-foe of Larry Flynt, and went to jail for fraud after the Reagan era savings and loan scandal
http://www.archive.org/details/Perversi1965

AND IN OTHER NEWS...
I will be on TV in the UK, on a show from the rock & roll hall of fame (I’m unclear as to the title) that airs on Wednesday 9th November at 11pm on Channel 4 after Lost.
And for those who care, there’s a long piece on the New Times imminent destruction of the Village Voice in the current New York magazine.
http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/media/features/14987/index.html

* For more torture fun-comments (sent by HCB) see...
http://tbogg.blogspot.com/2005/11/even-corrupt-soulless-evil-lying.html

The secret word is Anxiety

CRYPTIQUE – A flock of crows that have smelt human blood.

MARTIAN CHRONICLES (How else do you follow vampires?)
In 1990 I published a novel titled Mars, The Red Planet. And in it, I made one of the worst errors of my science fiction career. I assumed that the Soviet Union (as in "Red" geddit?) would survive well into the twenty first century, whereas it collapsed pretty much before the book even hit the stores. All in all, through, it was a cute read, and the Mars Society voted it "Best Noirish Mars Book: ("You want more when your finished with this one.") I wish someone would republished the sucker along with so much of my neglected back catalogue.
http://www.newmars.com/archives/000012.shtml

And this week, as Mars passes the closest point to Earth on its orbit, I have a snappy discourse in LA CityBeat on H.G. Wells’ place in the modern world. http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2829&IssueNum=126

Also our pal hipspinster bogs about the nearness of Mars.
http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/

The secret word is Thuvia

THIS WOULD SEEM TO NAIL IT
From MrMT. In yesterday’s Washington Post, E. J. Dionne Jr. seen to drive a stake to the heart of the White House conspiracy...
Has anyone noticed that the coverup worked?
In his impressive presentation of the indictment of Lewis "Scooter" Libby last week, Patrick Fitzgerald expressed the wish that witnesses had testified when subpoenas were issued in August 2004, and "we would have been here in October 2004 instead of October 2005."
Note the significance of the two dates: October 2004, before President Bush was reelected, and October 2005, after the president was reelected. Those dates make clear why Libby threw sand in the eyes of prosecutors, in the special counsel's apt metaphor, and helped drag out the investigation. (For the full story...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/31/AR2005103101386.html

VAMPIRES OF THE BLOGOSPHERE
Thank heavens there’s still some fun to be had in this world, as at the crazy blog that has been publishing Bram Stoker's Dracula for the last six months. Individual pieces of the novel have appeared on the calendar dates indicated in the text, starting with Jonathan Harker's May 3rd Bistriz journal entry, and will finishing up on November 6 and the Final Note. I came to this a little late, but what’s a few months to the undead.
http://infocult.typepad.com/dracula/

In related news, it seem that Anne Rice has become a born again Catholic and is writing books about Jesus.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9785289/site/newsweek/

Now everybody go and buy a Victor Renquist novel and save me from dying in poverty.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/6556/ref%3Dpd%5Fsl%5Faw%5Ftops-1%5Fstripbooks%5F8143964%5F2/103-7583784-7925458

The secret word is Hammer

SEX, LIES, AND LITERATURE
To write fictional sex is unavoidably self revealing, and if you can’t handle the revelation, don’t go join the game in the first place. Advice Scooter Libby might well have taken before embarking on his 1996 novel "The Apprentice" which is now being scrutinized in this week’s edition of The New Yorker for its sex scenes and what they demonstrate about the indicted Bush cohort. Comment was solicited from Nancy Sladek, editor of Britain’s Literary Review, which, each year, holds a contest for bad sex writing in fiction. (In 1998, someone nominated the Starr Report.) Sladek agreed to review a few passages from Libby. "That’s a bit depraved, isn’t it, this kind of thing about bears and young girls? That’s particularly nasty, and the other ones are just boring," she said. "God, they’re an odd bunch, these Republicans." For decidedly odd excerpts...
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/051107ta_talk_collins

LESBIAN VAMPIRES
In related news, Miss Templeton has blogged on 19th century lesbian vampires. I can only hope that she eventually moves on to 20th and 21st century examples, and that my own former- Nazi starlet, occasional (in-so-far-as) lesbian vampire Julia Aschenbach – the constant irritant to Victor Renquist – will be included. I do so hate to be overlooked.
http://horslipsmusic.blogspot.com/

AND HERE IS SOMETHING I WOULDN’T WALK ON WITH MY WORST ENEMY...
http://www.snopes.com/photos/architecture/skywalk.asp

The secret word is Count

HCB DOES NOT AGREE
"To paraphrase an old lawyer joke...Q: What’s the indictment of one Bush henchman? A: A good start." But from our pal HCB...
"It's a total pussy indictment--the least charges to the least important player--one that completely ignores even a hint of the real crimes. Libby was always the goat, and losing him in this way and to these charges was not an amputation nor any kind of grievous wound. Unless Fitz comes forward with something else here, I'm going to assume that this indictment is just another GOP CYA."

(The email here, by the way, is byron4d@msn.com)

LAST NIGHT IN AMERICA, WE WERE SUPPOSED TO PUT OUR CLOCKS SOMEWHERE. I PUT MINE IN THE MICROWAVE.

MARS IS VISIBLE
http://www.space.com/spacewatch/051028_mars_close.html

"Reality, I suggested, might be merely what each one of us says it is. Does that idea make you feel lonely, Mr. Cornelius?" - Michael Moorcock

ALL OUR YESTERDAYS 1
I had said that I would shut up about the fate of the alternative press for the moment but synchronicity don’t play that. In my web wanderings I discover this feature from Playboy, August 1967, when the bunnymag discovered the underground press and marveled at it.
http://www.trussel.com/lyman/brackman.htm

ALL OUR YESTERDAY’S 2
Feeling that I should be even au courant on coming plagues and pestilence, I was reading up on chicken flu and learned there was a "pandemic" in 1968. Damn me, but I didn’t notice. I mean, I recall the shootings of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and the Chicago riots, and even the Deviants making disposable, but I somehow missed the pandemic. Too loaded? Or maybe a combo of meth, reefer, whiskey and cigarettes are just the perfect innoculation?

A BRACE OF MUSIC RELATED BLOGS/SITES PRESENTED WITHOUT COMMENT...
http://theworldsamess.blogspot.com/
http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3375718

The secret word is Unnatural

ONE DOWN, HOW MANY MORE TO GO?
To paraphrase an old lawyer joke...Q: What’s the indictment of one Bush henchman? A: A good start.

MrMR (who knows a thing or two about conspiracies) comments (reminding me that, before Bush can be removed, Cheney has to be unseated, or the result would be to aweful to contemplate)...Gordon Liddy went to jail for more than five years to cover his puppet masters, Mayhap the weight of facing thirty years at the hands of what appears to be a serious prosecutor, might in fact loosen libby's tongue, and rekindle his co-conspiratorial memories of Rove and Cheney , whom he is currently falling on the sword for.

And Ed B. forwards a link to an analysis of how Bush may fair as the pressure mounts, which, although kinda heavy on the 12 step philosophy (remember that 13 steps lead to the gallows) does contain a further link to an hilarious vid-clip of the future POTUS drunk at a wedding.
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/october2005/271005Bush.htm

WHAT THE FUCK IS A SLEESTACK?
Yesterday I asked what the fuck is a sleestack, and, at Doc40, one gets answers. Some girl sent the short form and a link...
A sleestack is one of the green-skinned, bug-eyed, vaguely reptilian bipeds that menaced the castaway-in-time humans in the classic saturday-morning live-action '70s show "land of the lost."
http://imdb.com/title/tt0071005/

While MrMR (again) who knows a thing or two about the deeply weird sends full chapter and verse...
Sleestak are large green humanoids with both reptilian and insectoid features; they have scaly skin with frills around the neck, bulbous unblinking eyes, pincer-like hands, stubby tails, and a single blunt horn on top of the head. Sleestak are more sophisticated than Pakuni, able to manufacture crossbows, rope, nets, periscopes ("Fair Trade") and other relatively advanced technologies. They were once significantly more developed, however; Sleestak are the degenerate descendants of the Altrusians (see below). The Sleestak have a current population of about 7,000 according to the Library of Skulls ("The Longest Day"), but there were only three Sleestak costumes available for the show's production, which sometimes required creative editing to create the illusion that they were that numerous.
Sleestak live in the Lost City, an underground tunnel complex originally constructed by the Altrusians. They hate bright light and rarely venture out during the day. Sleestak also have a "hibernation season" during which they cocoon themselves into rocky alcoves using some sort of webbing; cool air keeps them in hibernation, and the heat from lava in a pool that the character Peter Koenig (see below) dubbed "Devil's Cauldron" inside the caverns of the Lost City revives them again on a regular schedule (the episode "Follow That Dinosaur"). The Sleestak are very defensive of the Lost City. They know that their ancestors built it, but do not know how or why. They have occasionally tried exploring beyond the chasm that separates the Lost City from the rest of the Land, but their expeditions generally never return and they consider the City to be their only refuge.
The Sleestak have encountered many other humans who have become trapped in the Land of the Lost before the Marshalls arrived, and regard humans as a terrible threat; they attempt to capture and sacrifice humans to their god at every opportunity.
Altrusian moths are required for fertilization of Sleestak eggs, and the Sleestak hunt them when they emerge during the night ("The Longest Day"). In "Blackout," the Sleestak scheme to cause perpetual night by disabling a second clock pylon, allowing them to capture the Altrusian moths. The Sleestak planned to devour these, which would in one thousand hours yield a thousand Sleestak, which could then resume control over the Land of the Lost. Unfortunately, the cold of the long night also began killing the moths.
Sleestak eggs are gestated in a communal hatchery. The Sleestak capture live animals and tie them up there, leaving them for the young to feed on when they hatch ("Fair Trade"). Occasionally, a Sleestak will be hatched that is a "throwback" to their Altrusian ancestors, being born with greater intelligence and with an innate knowledge of Altrusian history and technology—though not, for some reason, knowledge of Pylon operation. The other Sleestak regard these throwbacks as a threat, and so they are also sacrificed to the Sleestak god when detected. One such throwback named S'latch was encountered by the Marshalls in the episode "The Hole", but S'latch was never seen again thereafter.
The Sleestak have a Sleestak Council and Sleestak Leader. The Leader wears a distinctive pendant, and Enik occassionally negotiates with him, as in the episode "Fair Trade".

IF FOX NEWS HAD BEEN THERE
HCB forwards some very funny graphics...
http://mysite.verizon.net/vze1ldyn/id2.html

The secret word is Notwithstanding

MIERS DONE GONE LIKE A TURKEY THROUGH THE CORN
And I can’t improve on Wonkette...
The radical right-wing sleestaks that stalk this land hopped up on quasi-Christian kookdom and stronger than ever, have beaten the President into supine submission on Miers and are slavering at the mouth for satisfaction. (But what the fuck is a sleestak?)
http://www.wonkette.com/

NEW TIMES, CLEAR CHANNEL, STARBUCKS
Most of you may not care, others may not know what the hell it’s all about, but this whole New Times takeover and the demise of the Village Voice as we’ve known it is kinda personal. And, if that ain’t enough, any two of the above might provide a reason. Also it’s bringing out the worst in some of my fellow travellers. (Call it Hitchens syndrome, or maybe just chickenshit.) Doc40 has been getting beaucoup hits from an NT server, and also accusations of how I'm afraid of corporate takeover. On the latter matter, quite the reverse, mes braves. I think, in a weirdass way we (the good guys) are gonna win this one. Donnell Alexander goes deep in the current LA CityBeat...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2812&IssueNum=125

BEING SUCH A DAMNED SNOB, I RARELY NOTICE LA ALTERNATIVE PRESS
But they also get their licks in...
With this likely merger, the alternative press in this country will suffer the same kind of corporate consolidation that other media outlets have gone through. Like the daily newspaper chain model that eliminated competition in cities decades ago, this will establish a new paradigm of monopoly, killing the idea of competing editorial voices.
As we’ve seen in places like San Francisco, where the venerable Bay Guardian has been under-attack by the two New Times chain papers in the region, New Times doesn’t like to compete. They like to undermine and destroy. New Times has been negotiating deals with Clear Channel, owner of radio stations and concert venues (nice bedfellows, huh?) to be the only advertising vehicle for Clear Channel properties, blocking other papers from ad dollars.
And Clear Channel is a perfect example of what happens when previously independent media come under one parent company. But where everyone was openly by angered the loss of music diversification, and where Clear Channel was so easily targeted as the enemy all things artistic, somehow the same behavior in the world of alt. newsweeklies has been met with casual shoulder shrugs and a general sense ambivalence.
And now, for the moment, I think I'm done on this topic...

TIS THE SEASON
Frederica, Del. (from Breibart)
The apparent suicide of a woman found hanging from a tree went unreported for hours because passers-by thought the body was a Halloween decoration, authorities said. The 42-year-old woman used rope to hang herself across the street from some homes on a moderately busy road late Tuesday or early Wednesday, state police said. The body, suspended about 15 feet above the ground, could be easily seen from passing vehicles. State police spokesman Cpl. Jeff Oldham and neighbors said people noticed the body at breakfast time Wednesday but dismissed it as a holiday prank. Authorities were called to the scene more than three hours later. "They thought it was a Halloween decoration," Fay Glanden, wife of Mayor William Glanden, told The (Wilmington) News Journal. "It looked like something somebody would have rigged up," she said.

The secret word is Noose

Indictments today? Yes? Please?

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

THE WORKS OF GENERAL ZOD?
(From MSNBC) An Austrian man who claimed he was Superman and could fly was hospitalized early Tuesday after leaping from a fourth-floor window, authorities said. Paramedics rushed the 23-year-old man to a hospital in the city of Graz, about 120 miles south of Vienna, after he jumped from a window and suffered head and back injuries, police said. They said the man - who apparently had drunk several bottles of red wine before attempting the jump - appeared at the window ledge at around 4 a.m. and shouted: "I am Superman! Nothing can happen to me!"

(But hang on a minute. If General Zod is out of the dread Phantom Zone and running for POTUS, (see yesterday) what about Ursa and her fabulous boots?

The secret word is Prostrate

ME! ME! ME! ME! ME! ME!
And while I was waiting for the Grand Jury to hand down indictments (oh please, please) I found this fabulous review on the web...
Jim Morrison’s Adventures in the Afterlife: A Novel by Mick Farren. Really more a collection of character sketches and subplots all held together by their connection to the Lizard King’s adventures in the hereafter. Aside from Morrison, Doc Holiday features in the story a variety of other characters from Egyptian gods to voodoo loas to the founder of the Foursquare Church. The book is filled with humor that requires a breadth of knowledge from pop trivia to historical minutiae - in other words, it’s a lot of fun. The overall story is good and the subplots are interesting, but this book is about the characters and the characters are compelling.

You know, you really ought to read this book if you haven’t, and buy it, if you haven’t, or republish it as a handsome paperback if you’re in that line of work.

LATE NIGHT FINAL FOCUS
In one of those moments of weary clarity, I had a final thought on the whole New Times business (see most of yesterday) and recalled the story of how LA New Times carried nothing on the attack on the World Trade Center in their issue of September 11th, 2001. Maybe the destruction in New York fell outside their formulaic editorial parameters, or maybe the attack happened too close to deadline for coverage to be cost effective. I’m not sure this is true, but I repeat it because this is a blog, not the Washington Post and it makes me viciously happy. I also wonder if New Times papers will be reporting the story below that Colonel Boylan does want over-signified.

I found this anonymous comment on the web. I post it without any of my own.
Recently, the publisher for whom I currently work told me that he had finally discovered that dirty, little secret of publishing success: pay the writers nothing. The alternative weeklies, like many industries, have done good business paying writers little or nothing. And, now, with fear as an incentive, they will be able to exploit this dirty secret in ever more-effective ways.

While reading the merger coverage, I also found myself getting extremely bored with snide cracks about tired old hippies by left-over failed-yuppie hacks. Try saying to my face, you 1960-born scumsuck.

The secret word is Unreconstructed

Or maybe Teargas

MILESTONE/MILLSTONE
"U.S. Army Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, director of the force's combined press center, wrote in an e-mail to reporters, "I ask that when you report on the events, take a moment to think about the effects on the families and those serving in Iraq. The 2,000 service members killed in Iraq supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom is not a milestone. It is an artificial mark on the wall set by individuals or groups with specific agendas and ulterior motives."
And my only reply is yes, Colonel, I am one of those who have an ulterior motive. I want to know for what, in the name of holy hell, these 2,000 Americans, plus Brits, and also tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, gave their precious lives.

POST SCRIPT (WHICH OF COURSE, IN THE BLOGOSPHERE, PRECEDES THE SCRIPT IT POSTS)
It just occurred to me that maybe New Times is the alternative we deserve in a world where Britney Spears hires a limo to transport her dog across the country and some corporate CEO drops a quarter of a million bucks on champagne and lap dances at Scores, and the poor don’t even complain, let alone revolt. (For further clarification take a look at the pic of the NT honchos in the NY Times report.)
Or this shit happens (from some girl)...
http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=1231684&page=1


ROSA PARKS -- RIP

NEW TIMES/BAD TIMES
Hell, I didn’t like it when underground became alternative...
The news was out yesterday that the long rumored a merger between the New Times corporation and Village Voice Media is a done deal, and, as of now, no one in the alternative ink business really knows what the outcome will be but many are affeared. Especially, as always, the workers being sold down the proverbial river. I think I said about all I had to say in LA CityBeat a couple of weeks ago, and I only need repeat these kind of corporate powerplays can only devalue what little resistance remains in the world print at a time of war, pestilence, global disfunction and a collapsing White House.

But shall we take this in increments?

My original diatribe stands, so far I’ve been proved right, and the piece can be read at...
http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2698&IssueNum=122

The only thing to add is that, having written for The Village Voice for six or seven years in the days of (variously) Lester Bangs, Nat Hentoff, Stanley Crouch, Michael Musto, and Cynthia Heimel, I mourn for its debasement and wonder how any of them would fare under the New Times junta.

For the full news report try the NY Times (plus a picture that says it all)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/24/business/24voice.html?th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1130288453-UvQsChtID2CArIVXF/lH5A

or Editor & Publisher
http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001351490

And although I wonder what makes Dan Savage think New Times is in anyway anti-establishment, here’s the reaction from another independent alt weekly.
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=23784

Natalie Nichols blogs a major insight into the scumbaghood of NT fuhrer Michael Lacy...
http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/

And local reaction in LA can be found if you scroll down a bit at...
http://www.laobserved.com/

Much more will very obviously follow.

The secret word is War

CRYPTIQUE – You ultra-right gangster, you would be well advised to behave with discretion!

AND ON A HAPPIER NOTE
Here’s a killer review of my brand new CD "To The Masterlock" by asyd.
http://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/review/1434

AND THANK HEAVENS FOR GENERAL ZOD!
http://www.zod2008.com/index.htm

WEEKEND READIN'
A whole lot of really interesting stuff has been coming down Doc40's pike in the last 48 hours with which to occupy ourselves as we wait to see if the entire Bush White House is going to do the perp walk next week, so, without further preamble, lets get to it.

First up is an entire (albeit short) book by firebrand Tom Vague, Getting It Straight In Notting Hill Gate, that tells the story of my old manor from the Teddy Boys and race riots of the 1950s, through the adventures of likes of Boss Goodman, Mike Moorcock, Lemmy and me, (and, a little later, The Clash) all the way to the contemporary horror as the old freak/rude boy ghetto is bought out as the playground of the rich and fashionable. There are a few inaccuracies, but all in all it’s on the money.
"HISTORYtalk has teamed up with local writer Tom Vague to develop a pop history of Notting Hill. Tom has been charting the area's pop culture for a number of years as part of his London Psychogeography Project. Any comments or memories that readers may have about the music scene in Notting Hill from the 1950s through to the present day are welcome. Tom can be contacted at tvague@kcchg.org"
It’s on Acrobat and can be printed out or downloaded
http://www.historytalk.org/Tom%20Vague%20Pop%20History/Tom%20Vague%20Pop%20History.htm

Kaymo sends a stunning analysis by the editor of no less that Harpers that contends the US is already a facist state. "On the evidence of the wonderful work currently being done by the Bush Administration with respect to the trade deficit and the national debt -- to say nothing of expanding the markets for global terrorism -- I think we can look forward with confidence to character-building bankruptcies, picturesque bread riots, thrilling cavalcades of splendidly costumed motorcycle police..."
http://organicconsumers.org/Politics/harpers101205.cfm

A weird blog from Dr Mysterian (another good Doc) that links B horror movies and obscurist rock & roll.
http://drmysterian.com/blog.html

And just a plain old fashioned interesting blog...
http://theapologist.blogspot.com/

The secret word is Paragraph

CRYPTIQUE – You bloodthirsty human scum, we will mercilessly crush you with the weapon of singlehearted unity!

HAPPY 200TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR TO THOSE WHO KNOW WHAT THE HELL I’M TALKING ABOUT
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Trafalgar

The secret word is Grapeshot

LAUGH OR FUCKING CRY
Kaymo sent over the following that would have me rolling on the floor if this slick-suited sonofabitch wasn’t so hideously representative of the purblind arrogant dullard crooks who are currently running the nation into the bleeding earth. The only good news is that there’s a warrant for this monstrosity’s arrest, and we can only hope he ultimately does serious time, in some a real nasty Texas pen.

10 MIND-NUMBING QUOTES BY TOM DELAY
1) "So many minority youths had volunteered that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like myself." --Tom DeLay, explaining at the 1988 GOP convention why he and vice presidential nominee Dan Quayle did not fight in the Vietnam War
2) "Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?" -Tom Delay, to three young hurricane evacuees from New Orleans at the Astrodome in Houston, Sept. 9, 2005
3) "I AM the federal government." -Tom DeLay, to the owner of Ruth's Chris Steak House, after being told to put out his cigar because of federal government regulations banning smoking in the building, May 14, 2003
4) "We're no longer a superpower. We're a super-duper power." -Tom DeLay, explaining why America must topple Saddam Hussein in 2002 interview with Fox News
5) "Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes." -Tom DeLay, March 12, 2003
6) "Guns have little or nothing to do with juvenile violence. The causes of youth violence are working parents who put their kids into daycare, the teaching of evolution in the schools, and working mothers who take birth control pills." -Tom DeLay, on causes of the Columbine High School massacre, 1999
7) "A woman can take care of the family. It takes a man to provide structure. To provide stability. Not that a woman can't provide stability, I'm not saying that... It does take a father, though." -Tom DeLay, in a radio interview, Feb. 10, 2004
8) "I don't believe there is a separation of church and state. I think the Constitution is very clear. The only separation is that there will not be a government church." -Tom DeLay
9) "Emotional appeals about working families trying to get by on $4.25 an hour [the minimum wage in 1996] are hard to resist. Fortunately, such families do not exist." -Tom DeLay, during a debate in Congress on increasing the minimum wage, April 23, 1996
10) "I am not a federal employee. I am a constitutional officer. My job is the Constitution of the United States, I am not a government employee. I am in the Constitution." -Tom DeLay, in a CNN interview, Dec. 19, 1995

DOH!
Link from some girl concerning what happened when Islamic fundamentalist edited The Simpsons. http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article320877.ece

LA CITYBEAT
I have a somewhat fluffy column on TV revisionism in this week’s weekly tab.
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2763&IssueNum=124

The secret word is Thug

CRYPTIQUE -- What the fuck does Bono think he's up to?

BEYOND THE WILDEST NIGHTMARE
While still dealing more the usual crap that flesh is heir to, (maybe one day I’ll look back and laugh and tell you all about it) I can only keep Doc40 rolling with stuff like this monstrous little horror story from Mike Musgrove at the Washington Post forwarded by some girl...

It sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it isn't. The pages coming out of your color printer may contain hidden information that could be used to track you down if you ever cross the U.S. government.
Last year, an article in PC World magazine pointed out that printouts from many color laser printers contained yellow dots scattered across the page, viewable only with a special kind of flashlight. The article quoted a senior researcher at Xerox Corp. as saying the dots contain information useful to law-enforcement authorities, a secret digital "license tag" for tracking down criminals.
The content of the coded information was supposed to be a secret, available only to agencies looking for counterfeiters who use color printers.
Now, the secret is out.
Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco consumer privacy group, said it had cracked the code used in a widely used line of Xerox printers, an invisible bar code of sorts that contains the serial number of the printer as well as the date and time a document was printed.
With the Xerox printers, the information appears as a pattern of yellow dots, each only a millimeter wide and visible only with a magnifying glass and a blue light.
The EFF said it has identified similar coding on pages printed from nearly every major printer manufacturer, including Hewlett-Packard Co., though its team has so far cracked the codes for only one type of Xerox printer.
The U.S. Secret Service acknowledged yesterday that the markings, which are not visible to the human eye, are there, but it played down the use for invading privacy.
"It's strictly a countermeasure to prevent illegal activity specific to counterfeiting," agency spokesman Eric Zahren said. "It's to protect our currency and to protect people's hard-earned money."
It's unclear whether the yellow-dot codes have ever been used to make an arrest. And no one would say how long the codes have been in use. But Seth Schoen, the EFF technologist who led the organization's research, said he had seen the coding on documents produced by printers that were at least 10 years old.
"It seems like someone in the government has managed to have a lot of influence in printing technology," he said.
Xerox spokesman Bill McKee confirmed the existence of the hidden codes, but he said the company was simply assisting an agency that asked for help. McKee said the program was part of a cooperation with government agencies, competing manufacturers and a "consortium of banks," but would not provide further details. HP said in a statement that it is involved in anti-counterfeiting measures and supports the cooperation between the printer industry and those who are working to reduce counterfeiting.
Schoen said that the existence of the encoded information could be a threat to people who live in repressive governments or those who have a legitimate need for privacy. It reminds him, he said, of a program the Soviet Union once had in place to record sample typewriter printouts in hopes of tracking the origins of underground, self-published literature.
"It's disturbing that something on this scale, with so many privacy implications, happened with such a tiny amount of publicity," Schoen said.
And it's not as if the information is encrypted in a highly secure fashion, Schoen said. The EFF spent months collecting samples from printers around the world and then handed them off to an intern, who came back with the results in about a week.
"We were able to break this code very rapidly," Schoen said.

LAUGH?
This from Sid S.
Go to google. Run a google search on the word FAILURE and the read the first result. (This may not last.)

KEN MATSUTANI GET WELL SOON!

The secret word is Struggle

WOKE UP THIS MORNING
And the stress was waiting, tres beaucoup, but, while I cope and until I come back with more, check out this piece of nastiness (from some girl). Seems like I recall similar stories at the Greenham Common anti-nuke protests back in the UK.
http://www.sploid.com/news/2005/10/did_washington.php

The secret word is Weight

AN "I WISH I’D WRITTEN THAT" MOMENT
In San Antonio they tell me that power and money are one
They can buy us or sell you to keep you afraid, on the run
But no one can stop us!
My vision is clearly in sight
And the Free Mexican Air Force
Mescalito riding his white horse
Yeah the Free Mexican Air Force is flyin' tonight

Razored this from Miss Templeton’s weblog. (See yesterday.) I have to do much more research as to it’s origin
http://horslipsmusic.blogspot.com/

(Email address as ever – byron4d@msn.com)

The secret word is Thompson

SINGLE THOUGHT ON A VERY SLOW SATURDAY
After a week that left a quantum deal to be desired, I actually slept all day and, when I woke, the weather had changed to autumn and, after the raw heat of the previous day, the transformation was not a moment too soon. But, before I fell into my ten hour near-coma, a thought slow-danced through a mind that was attempting to blank itself out for its own protection, or at least lose itself in contemplation of sex, drugs, or vintage rock & roll. It came in the form of a question I’d dearly love to pose to George W. Bush...
"Yo, Georgie, I was just sitting here wondering if you’d install some incompetent, numbskull rich-boy halfwit or woman-of-no-importance to head up your own Secret Service detail, or to pilot Air Force One. No? Of course not. Dumb question, right? Then pray tell me Mr. President, how come you make such appointments to FEMA, Homeland Security, the United Nations and the Supreme Court, where my safety and that of the rest of the world hangs in the fucking balance?"

RELATED GAME
Sent over by Bill although I have managed nothing better than a zero score.
http://www.imgag.com/product/full/ap/3067907/graphic1.swf

UNRELATED GAME
http://www.bunnysneezes.net/page16.html
This ingenious, creative and non-competitive, gothic, virtual paper-doll game comes from a new friend Miss Templeton whose weblog, although nominally dedicated to Irish rock & roll and (seemingly) the consumption of alcohol, currently contains nice remarks about me, a shared affection for Wednesday Addams, and fine picture of Elvis getting drunk.
http://horslipsmusic.blogspot.com/

The secret word is October

CRYPTIQUE – Am I sure Hank done it this way?

PLEASE, SHUT THE FUCK UP
Really, enough. In LA the temperatures once again push close to the 100F mark, the planet’s in the toilet, I don’t feel well, and although I know I’ve said all this before, the Fundamentalists keep pushing their crap to the point that, if I had the strength I’d reach for my revolver. Pat Robertson will not do the decent thing and just shut his mouth so, between pimping his brand of canned shakes, he’s now telling us that Jesus is now on the way back (something he might, in actuality, do well to fear...)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051009/en_afp/quakesasiausreligion_051009185041

AND MEANWHILE IN KANSAS THEY’RE PLAYING GET THE LESBIAN
(Gimme a break...)
Republican lawmakers are drafting new legislation that will make marriage a requirement for motherhood in the state of Indiana, including specific criminal penalties for unmarried women who do become pregnant "by means other than sexual intercourse."
According to a draft of the recommended change in state law, every woman in Indiana seeking to become a mother through assisted reproduction therapy such as in vitro fertilization, sperm donation, and egg donation, must first file for a "petition for parentage" in their local county probate court. Only women who are married will be considered for the "gestational certificate" that must be presented to any doctor who facilitates the pregnancy. Further, the "gestational certificate" will only be given to married couples that successfully complete the same screening process currently required by law of adoptive parents.
More on this in Natalie Nichols column in LA CityBeat
http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2734&IssueNum=123

OH AND HERE’S A JOB APPLICATION...
http://www.cronyjobs.com/

The secret word is Exhaustion

CRYPTIQUE – Let the air be dead

AND NOW, A PICTURE OF OUR GLORIOUS LEADER...
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5812/438/1600/cthulhu1.jpg

The secret word is Arkham

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

PUNK ISSUE
Two new stories from your humble servant in today’s issue of LA CityBeat. The first is a erudite bit on the roots of punk (this being a special punk issue)...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2704&IssueNum=122

And the second is a scurrilous attack on the New Times "alternative" newspaper chain...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2698&IssueNum=122

And already my comments seem to be causing a minor flurry...
http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2005/10/waiting_for_new_times.html#more
and...
http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=10408

From Chris Morris
Mick's screed about the NT/Voice merger is RIGHT FUCKING ON. Beautifully framed. And it's nice to see that it's got the NT people steamed. The truth always hurts. (BTW, spread the word: I'm gonna be hosting "Watusi Rodeo" on Indie 103.1 – LA area – at 11 a.m. this Sunday.)

If anyone has anything to add, I am, as ever, at byron4d@msn.com

LETS HEAR IT FOR JOHN DENSMORE
It’s refreshing to learn (from HCB in this case) that, here in Paris Hilton’s world, there’s someone who won’t do it all for money, and that one Door still stands by his former man. (Although if I was offered a million or so bucks for one of my cheesy old songs I might think long and hard.)
http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-et-doors5oct05,0,7733555.story?track=tottext

HALF PRICE DRINKS
And if you want to hear one of the cheesy old songs and know why it’s highly unlikely that I’ll placed the dilemma of being bought out, even for a beer commercial, there’s a free MP3 download at...
http://vslam.blogspot.com/

IN OTHER NEWS
Terminal alcoholics who get nervous with an empty glass in front of the them can now rest easy thanks to a beer coaster that can tell when a glass is empty. The coaster, fitted with sensors, measures the weight of the beer and sends a signal behind the bar when it's time for a refill.

Stately Wayne Manor burned down. The old Pasadena mansion built by the Busch beer family and used in the 1960s Batman series (POW!) burned down last night. Nothing to do with the wild fires, seemingly a remodeling accident.

AND SOME WEIRD PICS...
If you wonder why we’re all fucking crazy in LA, what do you expect when shit like this appears in the evening sky (after a missile lauch from Vandenberg Naval Base, perhaps part of the Star Wars defense idiocy.)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/vandenberg/

CRYPTIQUE – Now witness the firepower of this fully operational battle station.

The secret word is Diverse

H5N1
This virus, also known as the Avian or Bird Flu has been all over the news today, and Doc40 the Uberparanoid really wants to know why. I guess the trigger to the mini-furor it is the story of how researchers have replicated the 1918 Spanish Flu virus that started the historic pandemic that rivaled WWI in bodycounts. (Some girl sent over a concise report –
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/front/2005/1006/620625089HM1FLU.html )
Since then, though, H5N1 has been the scare story de jour with talking heads telling us we’re all doomed, because we’re well overdue for a massive flu pandemic, although making no mention of how part of the doom is in that the Great Global Superpower offers only Third-World health care to its non-wealthy citizens, organized, if at all, by deny-all-claims insurance companies and HMOs. Then Sen. Barack Obama (we hope a future president) warns that, should H5N1 mutate from hens to humans, the US is totally unprepared and lags desperately behind the UK and other developed nations in vaccine readiness. Just to confuse us further, Bush himself makes mention of Bird Flu in some White House al fresco Q&A media opportunity and declares that, if an outbreak happens, he’s real ready for it. He will use the military to quarantine the effected areas. (As some girl noted "him and what army?") Since this is plainly asinine, we have to wonder what the fuck is going on?
Perhaps...
1) Bush’s handlers think macho talk about influenza will smokescreen the general condition of chaos and fuck-up that surrounds the President Inept.
2) Bush’s handlers think influenza panic will provide another stepping stone to their desired Neocon Global Police State.
3) The pharmaceutical companies think influenza panic will smokescreen the fact that they are robbing us blind on a daily basis, and Michael Moore is making a film about them.
4) All of the above.
5) All of the above and more.
I’d write more about this deeply weird facet of homeland security only I don’t feel so good.

The secret word is Poorly

SHINING
HCB has alerted us to the a fabulous faux-trailer for Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining that’s making the rounds. Easy access via this site. Hit the first link to the trailer, but also scroll down because there’s more...
http://www.tatteredcoat.com/archives/2005/09/28/the-shining-redux/

CRYPTIQUE – You wicked bloodsucker, we will annihilate you with a fresh revolutionary upswing!

SUPREME SACRIFICE
If your mind boggles that our pal Georgie Bush, in the wake of the Michael Brown/FEMA scandal, is now appointing a lawer pal, Harriet Miers – who has never been a judge, and about whom no one seems to know very much at all – to the Supreme Court, try a little inside info from wonkette...
A Legal Times profile of Harriet Miers upon her promotion from deputy chief of staff under Andy Card to White House counsel includes information not likely to show up on an official bio, among them:
She is immensely, perhaps irrationally, into birthdays: "She always remembers everybody's birthday, and has a present for them. She'll be finding a present for somebody in the middle of the night.... 'Can't it wait until next week?' 'No,' she'd say, 'It has to be done now.'"
She has dated Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht "over the years." [NOTE: Absolutely no other article online mentions this fascinating fact.]
She's nit-picky micromanager who failed upwards at the White House: "She failed in Card's office for two reasons," the [former White House] official says. "First, because she can't make a decision, and second, because she can't delegate, she can't let anything go. And having failed for those two reasons, they move her to be the counsel for the president, which requires exactly those two talents."
Not even the president can think of much interesting to say about her: In 1996, at an Anti-Defamation League Jurisprudence Award ceremony, Bush introduced Miers as a "pit bull in Size 6 shoes," a tag line that has persisted through the years, in part because colorful anecdotes or descriptions about Miers are notoriously difficult to find.
We're not even that excited about the possibility of her being gay.
http://www.wonkette.com/

The secret word is Time

MEANWHILE DOWN YONDER...
I happened across this New Orleans website by complete accident and aside from the recipes, pics and eclectic NOLA tales there is – if you scroll down a bit – also some excellent first hand refuting of the tales of horror, rape and cannibalism after Katrina that still seem to be accepted a fact by far too many. Do check it out for yourself before this ugly crap becomes ingrained as history.
http://www.gumbopages.com/looka/archive/2005-09.html

CRYPTIQUE – Fuck Thomas Hobbes and the Leviathan he rode in on.

IN THE MATTER OF PENGUINS
I’ve had a whole bunch of other things on my mind of late so I really haven’t been paying much attention to who’s been going to see what films and why, and also so many recent Hollywood movies have been so fucking dire that what little notice I did give to the subject was pretty damned depressing. In a spare moment, however, I did notice a report that March Of The Penguins has been the surprise hit of the summer, which, at first, made me very happy because I am a bigtime, lifelong penguin enthusiast, and intended to rent the DVD as soon as it came out. I was therefore somewhat taken aback though to find that March Of The Penguins has been annexed by the Christian Right who claim to have found God in the study of the emperor penguin, and now "rejoice in penguins as upholders of family values" and as "obvious proof of intelligent design." They are now apparently running special excursion to screenings and taking flashlights so they can note down anything God might say to them during the course of the film. First I groaned, but then I recalled how emperor penguins aren’t actually monogamous, and many change partners each year. Some are also gay. And, of course, they are birds, with their own unique but impenetrable belief systems.

The secret word is Snowed

WOULD YOU BELIEVE
Would you believe that, back in the day, these guys wanted me to quit the band so they could concentrate on elevating their musicianship without my insane distractions?
http://home.earthlink.net/%7Eslugnoir/Fuz/bonus.html

AUGUST WILSON -- RIP

I see the comments board has reached all the sevens. Dunno what the Rastas will have to say about that.

(Have much to say, especially about penguins, but it's been a hardwork weekend and it will have to keep to the morrow.)

The secret word is Later

REPUBLICANS SAY THE DARNEDEST THINGS...
"But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." – William Bennett, former Education Secretary, former Drug Czar, author of The Book of Virtues.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9535204/

TURN UP THE SPEAKERS
This comes from logicgrl and is well worth the effort...
http://filmstripinternational.com

FIFTY YEARS
Fifty years ago today James Dean died near Paso Robles as his Porsche Spyder poughed into Donald Turnupseed’s ragged Ford, and the actor from the edge of the world became an icon and we kids thought we might ride to freedom on his doom.
Too many half centuries bear down – the dawn of Elvis, the death of Charlie Parker, Miles and John Coltrane, "Be-Bop-A-Lula", Night of the Hunter...
How much...
How much...
How much longer
(I had a pony, his name was Lucifer)

My TV proves that LA is on fire yet again, and I may have to ponder all this mortal history through the smoke-filled night.

The secret word is Conceivable

(Over on the mighty comments board, Billy Oblivion has a point, and hipspinster blogs on the fires http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/.)

GO FIGURE THIS ONE, PAT ROBERTSON
While the Gulf Coast is under water, LA is now having a late September 100F heatwave, and Chatsworth (porn capital of Planet Earth) is on fire. No George, the jury is not still out on global warming. They have come back and pronounced you guilty as charged. Do the decent thing and resign.

CRYPTIQUE – When strippers talk about agriculture and animal husbandry.

AIN’T RETRIBUTION SWEET?
Could it be that House Majority Leader Tom Delay (the man I’ve always though of as Bush’s loudly born-again Martin Borman) will really wind up as someone’s bitch in a Federal joint? Maybe not, but I can hope.

And talking of hope, I hoped this was a joke, but I’m not so sure...
http://www.happynews.com/

Some mornings the smoke screen is so thick you can’t see the hand in your pocket.

Which reminds me that I should let those you know who are still interested that I continue to battle the king size nicotine jones. I had a bit of a lapse through my last couple of days in Tokyo, but hell, I was smoking Mild 7s and a poor boy can hardly taste those suckers.
I’d pray for strength but...

GOD SEEMS TO BE A BIT OF A PROBLEM
(from Wonkette http://www.wonkette.com/ )
According to a study published in the Journal of Religion and Society, heavily religious democracies such as the United States lag significantly behind less pious, more science-friendly nation states in most key quality of life indicators. The study, conducted by social scientist Gregory Paul, gets this bracing executive summary in the London Times: In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies. The study concluded that the US was the world’s only prosperous democracy where murder rates were still high, and that the least devout nations were the least dysfunctional. Mr Paul said that rates of gonorrhea in adolescents in the US were up to 300 times higher than in less devout democratic countries. The US also suffered from " uniquely high" adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates, and adolescent abortion rates.

The secret word is Dogbreath

MEANWHILE, BACK IN SHINJUKU
(With the right translation, nothing is ever lost)

Kaoru extends his index finger and, almost without hesitation, the bug alights on it and sits passively. The bug is tiny, but strangely cartoon-Japanese with tiny bobbles on the ends of its antennae. I ask Kaoru if this is a trick. Is the insect attracted to, like, the sweat on his skin? Or is it magic? He grins. It’s magic. But much magic had been performed during the seven days in Tokyo. Earlier in the week, I had given Kaoru a Sopranos t-shirt which he didn’t understand, David Chase’s NJ crime-family saga not having penetrated Japan, but he wore it proudly to the show in any case. It seemed, in a minor way, symbolic of how we handled everything from food to cultural fusion. Don’t quite understand what something is all about? What the fuck? Go for it anyway. It has to be interesting. And isn’t going for it the first function of art?

That I am in Tokyo at all is nothing short of magical, maybe even miraculous. That I should be flown in to read poetry, perform some rock & roll, and, as a postscript to the show, participate in a group discussion, for just one night and one night only, under the auspices of something called Tokyo Hipster’s Club (ambiguous initials THC) was hardly a run-of-the-mill occurrence in the first place. I would say that I wanted to go back to Tokyo so badly that I willed it to happen, except that would be a diminishment of all the good work put in by the formidable Gaku Torii and his partner Maki Fujimoto, the amazing Yukiko Akagawa, Ken Matsutani, the Marble Sheep and everyone else who worked so hard in reality to make my grandiose subjective illusion possible.

On the second hot, humid day in town, the phone rang. The entire two-day THC show had to be moved. An elderly geezer who dwelled near the venue had complained about noise potential and seemingly obtained some kind of legal injunction. I have heard messages like this, all the way back to Phun City and beyond. Old geezers with lawyers are simply a part of outlaw rock & roll. I will not panic, believing instead that all will ultimately be well. I mean, I have to believe all will be well. If it isn’t, my life will become temporarily untenable at a modest five thousand miles from home. And, hey! A few hours later, the problem has been solved. The entire show has been moved.

And the move is truly magical. The replacement venue is a cavernous, high-tech sound stage in the TV studios under the Tokyo Tower. Smaller than the Eiffel Tower, on which it seems modeled, the Tokyo Tower is nonetheless awesome. On the way into the studio complex, I notice a gift shop selling little five-inch models of the tower. Decided I wanted one, and cursed, when on leaving, I discovered the gift shop was closed. Maybe I should have made the purchase earlier, but there was so much to explore. The studio came with lavish TV-star dressing rooms and a green room fully stocked with beer and food. All conspired to enhance the feeling that I was doing was somehow of validity and importance. Although I am just one among the kick-ass band Slunky Side and star-veteran headliners Sheena and the Rokkets, my dressing room, maybe on a account of the presence of marijuana, becomes the party room.

On a trip to the green room for more beer, I peer, with a private eye gesture, through the blinds of its huge picture window. I find the window overlooks old buildings with elaborate tiled roofs at the edge of a park. I ask Ken what they are. He tells me a temple. Out back, temple ladies in identical trad costumes (nuns? I dunno) are taking a cigarette break.

The stage is all Jim Morrison could have hoped for. Lights, back projection, ample space. I commence with the now accustomed anomaly of reading poetry in English to a Japanese audience. This time, though with the band of Marble Sheep, plus Nabeji of Slunky Side, rising and falling, free-form, behind me. Then we get down to some old school psychedelic punk and all is well. After a super-rapid change into a dry shirt, I return to the stage with Gaku as moderator and translator Yusuke Inoue for a question and answer session that is, to say the least, a little strange until I take matters into my own hands and launch into an impassioned rant in a fervent but translatable monotone. There’s no point in any specific rhetoric about Bush, Blair or Koizumi. I talk generally about how we all live on an increasingly damaged planet that we must nurse back to health. As I write, Tokyo’s thirteenth typhoon of the season is spiraling in, New Orleans – home of the blues – has drowned. The war in Iraq drags on for Japan, Britain, and the US alike. And what is yet to come? The politicians are too self-interested to act for anyone but their corporate masters. We all, as artists, must hone our skills as weapons and get back into the fight using music and the visual, verbal and electronic arts as tools of change that transcend international boundaries. It’s maybe our only chance. The words seem now to connect as totally as the music. And afterwards I am treated as something of the hero.

Or maybe I’m just delusional, but I don’t think so. Sure I was rabble rousing to my own gratification, but I was also telling the truth as I saw it.

But the fun is not entirely over. The following night, I find myself on a street in Kitazawa (I think), a heaven of bikers, artists and hustling, high-heeled B-girls. The mission is to see Ken Matsutani play solo guitar at a tiny record store/performance space, that reminds me of the places like Café Bustello and Downtown Beirut on New York’s Lower East Side that I used to play with Henry Beck and Johnny Collins back in he 1980s as Tijuana Bible. Ken finishes a long and lyrical improvisation, and then invites me up to add some "satanic" words to his swamp guitar. I assume the stance of Victor Renquist and my Sunday-best-but-throat-ripping Beefheart delivery and launch into a lazily menacing amalgam of the off-the-cuff couplets, all I can remember from "Long Walk With The Demon", "Solitaire Devil", "Dogpoet" and more. The tightly packed crowd loves it. Wow! How much validation can a poor boy take.

Going back to the top of the story, Kaoru’s bug trick takes place during an improvised picnic on Yukiko’s roof in Shinjuku. Later a huge full moon rises over the corporate towers like a manga panel. Even though I have to fly back to LA the next day, magic really does fill the air, and I am extremely happy.

And there’s even a postscript. After my rant at THC, Yukiko tells me that my old friend Wayne Kramer, whom I haven’t seen in a long time, is expressing the self-same sentiments, and I should check out his journal. I do, and find the this is perfectly true, as in...

"I have wonderful friends all over the world. Indeed, we are all part of a new world order, a new global tribe of artists and doers and thinkers and creative people who are trying to do things that matter. The Internet allows us to stay connected. We're always conspiring on some project or another."
http://www.waynekramer.com/wk/report.cfm?&k_diary_id=27

The secret word is Together

MAYBE I SHOULD JUST STOP WATCHING TELEVISION
Of course, I won’t. In this week’s LA CityBeat I even have a riff on how TV news came through with unexpected courage in the midst of Katrina.
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2645&IssueNum=120

On the other hand, as I sat watching JetBlue 292 endlessly circling LAX, I had to wonder at my own part in this lifelong cathode conspiracy. Yes, it all came out okay in the end, and as Mr MR remarked in a subsequent email "let's take the jet blu pilot and just make him head of FEMA, the dude can handle an emergency!" But I had to ask myself was that what I really wanted, or was I vicariously waiting for the twisted metal and the all-consuming orange fireball? Sometimes it seems a little too hard and maybe needlessly narcissistic to be too openly honest with oneself.

BLAME IT ON ELLEN
And if I didn’t watch TV, would I know about the following? It was, in fact sent by a.g. ford, but, without TV, there’d be no Pat Robertson...
Pat Robertson on Sunday said that Hurricane Katrina was God’s way of expressing its anger at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for its selection of Ellen Degeneres to host this year’s Emmy Awards. "By choosing an avowed lesbian for this national event, these Hollywood elites have clearly invited God’s wrath," Robertson said on "The 700 Club" on Sunday. "Is it any surprise that the Almighty chose to strike at Miss Degeneres’ hometown?"Robertson also noted that the last time Degeneres hosted the Emmys, in 2001, the September 11 terrorism attacks took place shortly before the ceremony."This is the second time in a row that God has invoked a disaster shortly before lesbian Ellen Degeneres hosted the Emmy Awards," Robertson explained to his approximately one million viewers. "America is waiting for her to apologize for the death and destruction that her sexual deviance has brought onto this great nation."
For more...
http://datelinehollywood.com/archives/2005/09/05/robertson-blames-hurricane-on-choice-of-ellen-deneres-to-host-emmys/

A PIECE OF THE ROCK
And, of course, it was only my TV that informed my how the insurance industry is already attempting to weasel out on claims by policy holders in New Orleans or Biloxi, asserting that it was not a hurricane that caused the damage (covered) but the resulting flood (not covered). Already Mississippi and Louisiana Attorney Generals are going after the cheap four-flushing bastards, but the odds may well be that, if forced to pay up, they'll declare bankruptcy and go running for a Bush government bailout.

MEANWHILE...
I’m still working on my Tokyo thoughts. Maybe a weekend treat.
And talking of Tokyo, here’s a video clip from Yukiko...
http://images2.jokaroo.net/videos/grandpajapan.wmv

And some retro-naked hippies from HCB...
http://www.nakedhippies.blogspot.com/

Also some Orwellian fun.
http://studentsfororwell.org/

The secret word is Tubular

CRYPTIQUE – We already put a man on the moon.

SO NOW WHAT?
As I watch, Rita turns into a level 5 and, while still recovering from my adventures in Tokyo, I wonder what the hell is going to be left at the end of all this? I also just realized that, before I went away, I forgot in the confusion to issue a warning that I was on BBC 3 in the UK in a show called Forty Years of F**k. Sorry about that, I hope it will repeat.

Meanwhile, it’s been brought to my attention that an Idaho weatherman on KPVI-TV who goes by the name of Scott Stevens seriously claims Japanese Yakuza used a Russian-made electromagnetic generator to cause Hurricane Katrina in a bid to avenge itself for the Hiroshima atom bomb attack - and that this technology will soon be wielded again to hit another U.S. city. For the full story...
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/2005-09-20-wacky-weatherman_x.htm

I heard nothing about this while I was in Japan and I also cannot confirm that the President immediately hired Stevens to head up a massively funded division of Homeland Security. It would seem, though, the Yakuza notwithstanding, The National Enquirer thinks Georgie is back on the sauce...
http://www.nationalenquirer.com/celebrity/63426

The secret word is Abandon

OKAY SO IT’S TUESDAY...
Just back from Tokyo Narita and boy are my arms tired (literally) – plus I guess a pun on the word "disorientated" comes into play. Very happy with the trip but pissed off that my faithful and longtime Zippo was confiscated under some asinine new fucking international law to defend us from terror. And then I land in the USA only to find that hurricane Rita is now bearing down on the Florida Keys and Panic Mk II is underway, my elderly cat has fleas for the first time in 12 years and is very unhappy, and then a thunderstorm cracks over LA just as I’m looking to sleep. And what is Bill Clinton up to? I guess a coupe d’etat is to too much to hope for.

I did, however, get a couple of super-cool Deviants t-shirts in the mail from this firm in the UK that is definitely worth checking out. No, I’m not making any money, but I did get a couple of free ones. http://cgi.ebay.com/THE-DEVIANTS-T-SHIRT_W0QQitemZ7542866066QQcategoryZ42443QQcmdZViewItem

More about my Oriental adventures when I have gathered my scattered wits, attended to crucial email, and generally debriefed myself.

The secret word is Jetboy

TODAY I FLY TO TOKYO FOR SOME READIN’ AND ROCKIN’ SO DOC 4O WILL FOR SILENT FOR PRECISELY A WEEK – UNLESS OF COURSE YOU HAPPEN TO BE AT THE TOKYO HIPSTERS CLUB NEXT FRIDAY NIGHT. I leave you with this thought...
"According to all aerodynamic laws, the bumblebee cannot fly because its body weight is not in the right proportion to its wingspan. But ignoring these laws, the bee flies anyway."

The secret word is Rising

SEE YOU ALL NEXT MONDAY

THE DOG DID NOT EAT GEORGE’S HOMEWORK, BUT, IF IT DID, IT’S REALLY THE FAULT OF HILLARY AND THE MEDIA
Ben Stein is a piece of human redundancy who wrote speeches for Richard Nixon, a novel about Quaaludes, did a bit of acting, and then hosted a quiz show. He also lives in LA and will be crying like a baby for FEMA and rescue when the next 7.4 hits us. Here, from The American Spectator, he does us a favor in 12-step tabulating all the standard arguments that will be used by Bush supporters and rightwing gum-flappers in the coming days, so we can all anticipate the mind-boggling bullshit in store. Over to the wholly ludicrous Ben Stein...

"A few truths, for those who have ears and eyes and care to know the truth:
1.) The hurricane that hit New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama was an astonishing tragedy. The suffering and loss of life and peace of mind of the residents of those areas is acutely horrifying.
2.) George Bush did not cause the hurricane. Hurricanes have been happening for eons. George Bush did not create them or unleash this one.
3.) George Bush did not make this one worse than others. There have been far worse hurricanes than this before George Bush was born.
4.) There is no overwhelming evidence that global warming exists as a man-made phenomenon. There is no clear-cut evidence that global warming even exists. There is no clear evidence that if it does exist it makes hurricanes more powerful or makes them aim at cities with large numbers of poor people. If global warming is a real phenomenon, which it may well be, it started long before George Bush was inaugurated, and would not have been affected at all by the Kyoto treaty, considering that Kyoto does not cover the world's worst polluters -- China, India, and Brazil. In a word, George Bush had zero to do with causing this hurricane. To speculate otherwise is belief in sorcery.
5.) George Bush had nothing to do with the hurricane contingency plans for New Orleans. Those are drawn up by New Orleans and Louisiana. In any event, the plans were perfectly good: mandatory evacuation. It is in no way at all George Bush's fault that about 20 percent of New Orleans neglected to follow the plan. It is not his fault that many persons in New Orleans were too confused to realize how dangerous the hurricane would be. They were certainly warned. It's not George Bush's fault that there were sick people and old people and people without cars in New Orleans. His job description does not include making sure every adult in America has a car, is in good health, has good sense, and is mobile.
6.) George Bush did not cause gangsters to shoot at rescue helicopters taking people from rooftops, did not make gang bangers rape young girls in the Superdome, did not make looters steal hundreds of weapons, in short make New Orleans into a living hell.
7.) George Bush is the least racist President in mind and soul there has ever been and this is shown in his appointments over and over. To say otherwise is scandalously untrue.
8.) George Bush is rushing every bit of help he can to New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama as soon as he can. He is not a magician. It takes time to organize huge convoys of food and now they are starting to arrive. That they get in at all considering the lawlessness of the city is a miracle of bravery and organization.
9.) There is not the slightest evidence at all that the war in Iraq has diminished the response of the government to the emergency. To say otherwise is pure slander.
10.) If the energy the news media puts into blaming Bush for an Act of God worsened by stupendous incompetence by the New Orleans city authorities and the malevolence of the criminals of the city were directed to helping the morale of the nation, we would all be a lot better off.
11.) New Orleans is a great city with many great people. It will recover and be greater than ever. Sticking pins into an effigy of George Bush that does not resemble him in the slightest will not speed the process by one day.
12.) The entire episode is a dramatic lesson in the breathtaking callousness of government officials at the ground level. Imagine if Hillary Clinton had gotten her way and they were in charge of your health care.God bless all of those dear people who are suffering so much, and God bless those helping them, starting with George Bush."

Below is something of a rebuttal from Michael Moore, although I really don’t think it’s worth bothering to debate the Stein doctrine. If someone starts spouting this crap at you, and is within easy reach, my best advice is to simply punch them hard between the eyes and be done with. If violence, even in the face of extreme provocation, cannot be considered an option for moral, religious, health, or gender reasons, simply and clearly enunciate the words "Shut the fuck up you abject cretin" and spit in their drink. Here’s Michael Moore...

"There is much to be said and done about the manmade annihilation of New Orleans, caused NOT by a hurricane but by the very specific decisions made by the Bush administration in the past four and a half years. Do not listen to anyone who says we can discuss all this later. No, we can't. Our country is in an immediate state of vulnerability. More hurricanes and other disasters are on the way, and a lazy bunch of self-satisfied lunatics are still running the show."

The secret word is Abdicate

CRYPTIQUE – The threat level is stuck on stupid.