WE’RE BACK

“Now if we can just make it through Christmas…”

HARDLY THE WISHED-FOR OUTCOME, BUT I’M GLAD WE GOT THAT SORTED

Back in August (August 27th, to be precise, if you want to click back and check) I expressed my alarm at the idea of Tracy Lords playing Deja Thoris in a movie version of Edgar Rice Burroughs “Princess of Mars.” It now takes shape this will indeed the case. Except there will be not one but two movies based on Burroughs Mars novels. Lords’ feature is the rancid-cheapo version that’s out now, and looks, from the trailer, to be even worse that those post-The Road Warrior Italian apocalypse flicks of the 1980s that don’t even have tack-appeal. We are going to have to wait another couple years for the Andrew Stanton/Michael Chabon super de luxe big budget epic John Carter of Mars.

Click here for the cheesy Lords trailer.

The secret word is Barsoom

DON’T BOGART ME

Some remakes can may sense. Check this version of “Don’t Bogart Me” by Paulina Sinaga, her ukulele, and her cat, that Munz sent by. Click here.

TACTICAL NUCLEAR PENGUIN

In Scotland (where else?) there is a beer on the market almost as strong as whiskey. Valerie sent the word…
“A controversial Scottish brewery has launched what it described as the world's strongest beer - with a 32% alcohol content. Tactical Nuclear Penguin has been unveiled by BrewDog of Fraserburgh. BrewDog was previously branded irresponsible for an 18.2% beer called Tokyo, which it then followed with a low alcohol beer called Nanny State.
Managing director James Watt said a limited supply of Tactical Nuclear Penguin would be sold for £30 each. “This is an extremely strong beer; it should be enjoyed in small servings and with an air of aristocratic nonchalance .” Click here for more.

AND TALKING OF BOTH NUKES AND PENGUINS…

The discovery of this poster suddenly and happily made me realise, even though he has left the world in near-ruin, Dreadful George W Bush. is really now a part of all our yesterdays and we don’t have to worry about him any more. Of course we do still have the alien Palin as champion of the dumb and destructive, so pass the fucking Valium and then the scotch. Will we ever win?

HANGING IT UP FOR TURKEY DAY

I was going to press on, posting shit regardless, through this oddly inappropriate holiday. I was feeling unable to connect with even the concept of a holiday of excessive eating and drinking while I’m still trying to figure out if we’re in terminal freefall or what. But everyone seems to be heading home, and Facebook is choked by the idle, so what the decked hall? I can’t fight a massive native flightless bird, thus I leave you to the butterball orgy with some truce facts from Delancey Place, plus a puzzlement as to why there’s no real Thanksgiving music. (I mean, where is Elvis singing “Blue Turkey”?) Be seeing you.

“Author Tony Horwitz muses on the discovery of America after hearing from a Plymouth Rock tour guide named Claire that the most common question from tourists was why the date etched on the rock was 1620 instead of 1492: 'People think Columbus dropped off the Pilgrims and sailed home.' Claire had to patiently explain that Columbus's landing and the Pilgrims' arrival occurred a thousand miles and 128 years apart. ..."By the time the first English settled, other Europeans had already reached half of the forty-eight states that today make up the continental United States. One of the earliest arrivals was Giovanni da Verrazzano, who toured the Eastern Seaboard in 1524, almost a full century before the Pilgrims arrived. ... Even less remembered are the Portuguese pilots who steered Spanish ships along both coasts of the continent in the sixteenth century, probing upriver to Bangor, Maine, and all the way to Oregon. ... In 1542, Spanish conquistadors completed a reconnaissance of the continent's interior: scaling the Appalachians, rafting the Mississippi, peering down the Grand Canyon, and galloping as far inland as central Kansas. ..."The Spanish didn't just explore: they settled, from the Rio Grande to the Atlantic. Upon founding St. Augustine, the first European city on U.S. soil, the Spanish gave thanks and dined with Indians-fifty-six years before the Pilgrim Thanksgiving at Plymouth. ... Plymouth, it turned out, wasn't even the first English colony in New England. That distinction belonged to Fort St. George, in Popham, Maine. Nor were the Pilgrims the first to settle Massachusetts. In 1602, a band of English built a fort on the island of Cuttyhunk. They came, not for religious freedom, but to get rich from digging sassafras, a commodity prized in Europe as a cure for the clap. ..."The Pilgrims, and later, the Americans who pushed west from the Atlantic, didn't pioneer a virgin wilderness. They occupied a land long since transformed by European contact. ... Samoset, the first Indian the Pilgrims met at Plymouth, greeted the settlers in English. The first thing he asked for was beer." -- Tony Horwitz, A Voyage Long and Strange

The secret word is Cranberry

THE FROZDICK FAMILY WOULD LIKE TO REMIND YOU…

...just remember while you’re feasting – Soylent Green is people!

I TOLD YOU SHE WAS AN ALIEN

(Image supplied by Aeswiren)

KILLING THE BLUE PLANET

I suspect I am making an unseemly big deal about the return to reality. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Worse things exist in this world than Sarah Palin. (Although, sometimes as the she-alien moves, unbidden, across my TV screen, and Frank Rich validates the monster in the NYT, I find them hard to enumerate.) One of those worse things might well be today’s discovery that – while we freely accept the North Pole is rapidly turning into a salt water Slurpee – the South Pole is in much worse shape than we ever previously imagined…

“The East Antarctic icesheet, once seen as largely unaffected by global warming, has lost billions of tonnes of ice since 2006 and could boost sea levels in the future, according to a new study. Published Sunday in Nature Geoscience, the same study shows that the smaller but less stable West Antarctic icesheet is also shedding significant mass.
Scientists worry that rising global temperatures could trigger a rapid disintegration of West Antarctica, which holds enough frozen water to push up the global ocean watermark by about five metres (16 feet).” (Click here for the whole story)

The secret word is Malfunction

DESPERATE FUN WITH POETRY #1

Awake.

Shake dreams from your hair

My pretty child, my sweet one.

Choose the day and choose the sign of your day

The day's divinity

First thing you see.

A vast radiant beach and cooled jeweled moon

Couples naked race down by it's quiet sideAnd we laugh like soft, mad children

Smug in the wooly cotton brains of infancy

The music and voices are all around us.

Choose they croon the Ancient OnesThe time has come again

Choose now, they croon

Beneath the moon

Beside an ancient lake

These are the first three stanzas of Jim Morrison’s “Ghost Dance.” They precede the bits about scattered Indians and the child’s eggshell mind, the ones we all should know. And this, below, is the last. It seems kinda apt to mood, aye?

A city rises from the sea

I had a splitting headache

From which the future's made

Click here for the video.

GRATUITOUS BARDOT

THIS BLOG IS STILL PROTECTED BY...

PART OF THE PROBLEM

Part of the problem is that immediately I adjust my set, this woman will appear. She is becoming inescapable in any situation involving electricity and a screen. The unwanted corporate inanities that appear during the morning boot-up were already discussing whether this Newsweek cover was “sexist.” And I found myself murmuring “Who gives a fuck. She stood still for the fucking picture, and she wants to be our fucking President. Unless Newsweek has adopted Fox-style fakery, she owns her own ass. The real question is who in their right mind would allow this She-Thing-From-The-Warp-of-Evil access to nuclear weapons?” How say you, neighbors? Sexist or reptilian, like the 1983 version of V? Maybe we culture-up an attack rumor that Palin is a pageant-disguised extraterrestrial? Is the nation so insane such a tale might find traction? Nazi flying saucers over Alaska? But a short hop from the deep Draco fissures of Tibet. A scenario starts to unfold, but I fear it is too complex, even for the History Channel and certainly for Glenn Beck who will never graduate from the FEMA Camp.

The secret word is Vril

BUT THE AZTECS HAD A SOLUTION

Sometimes the reentry to dire reality from a Sunday on the lam isn’t easy. When part of the cure for what ails me comes from those dispensaries with green crosses that call themselves “caregivers” here in SoCal, and are spreading with the alarming alacrity of Starbucks in yesteryear, even the focusing of my eyes requires a certain effort of will and a degree of voluntary thought. Yes, 21st century reefer is stronger than 1960’s reefer, but shut up about it. We like it that way. Having said that, I must also note that the Aztecs were sufficiently fucked up for centuries during which they forgot to invent the wheel in any other functional form except the yo-yo. (The image is from the lovely and talented Valerie.)

Click here for The Ramones, in sequence they follow The Three Stooges.

SPACE OPERA

The fat lady is, at the very least, clearing her throat.

SUNDAY ON THE LAM FROM REALITY

The God Particles had raised a pyramid for the purpose of worship, constructed from the dead eyes of burned out media receivers. The nano-thralls were in the bloodstream. We tingled as they commenced the full reconstruction. All too soon the membrane would be compromised and humanity would merge sufficiently with the other/nether so we would wholly cease to signify as an independent entity. Siegfried was definitely doomed, but that hardly mattered any more to anyone but Siegfried. Velma verged on happy. The bites of conversant data were now being delivered in progressively more minute package. They would no longer hold complex concepts or even sustain sub-erotica. For Velma this was a relief. The bastions no longer vibrated and congealed into slow organic decay. They were instantly bypassed and erased from recall functions. The crucial remaining question was simply if it was safe to approach the pyramid? Or was this merely another phase of the entrapment. Maybe we had no remaining rights to be read to us. On the other hand, was it safe to remain where we were, and not to approach the pyramid? Previous God Particles had not taken kindly to rejection. Indeed, they had flamed with the rage of neglected courtesans, burning all before them into pink and black ash, and insisting it was the price of failure. We survivors had to face the fact. We didn’t have the price of failure between us. We barely had enough for a round of drinks. Our options had run out. We approached the pyramid. But we approached it slowly. And with care.

A secret word would not Make Sense

SUNDAY ON THE LAM FROM REALITY 2

In a similar time space, the young women discovered that the product of a mating between narcissism and zero-ethic opulence increasingly emerged as a spawn of recreational homicide.

Click here for The Three Stooges, but in sequence, please.

SUNDAY ON THE LAM FROM REALITY 3

Although technically an alien, even Superman sought the tactile relief of public humiliation in acts of voluntary subjugation that were both invert and abject. He claimed it was part of his assimilation into the culture of his adopted species, and that, on Krypton, it was mandatory. Of course, in the matter of the latter, he was lying.

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Brunhilde Frozdick was the first to notice the camera.

ALL THINGS ADOLF

The slogan of Disposable, the second Deviants album was “If you can’t trip on garbage, you can’t trip on nothing.” Here’s a new one for the modern world, “If you can’t laugh at Hitler, you may not survive the 21st century.” This was prompted by my latest perusal of the blog of our goodbuddy Adam Gorightly, where I was hipped to The Daily Hitler. It is a truly outrageous (and I use the word very precisely) Adolf funfest – kinda Chaplin meets Lemmy.. But wait…I feel another slogan taking shape within the swirling mist. “If you can’t laugh at history, you are liable to be fucked by it.” Click here for The Daily Hitler.

The secret word is Heil

ALL THINGS BALLARD

Our pal Peromyscus alerts us to Ballard.com. A website that is a massive collection of all things about and adjacent to the work of the great J. G. Ballard.

"At the opening party there was wildly drunken reaction, and what seemed to be barely repressed hostility came bursting out. During the month on show the cars were attacked, daubed with paint and so on. Many visitors stared at them numbly. I don’t think there would be the same reaction today, 35 years later. Since then there have been so many provocations that the audience response to three crashed cars would be much more calm. People are still shockable today — as with the Myra Hindley handprints portrait — but nothing defuses a sense of shock more than the sense that it’s all been done before. Duchamp’s urinal would produce no gasps, in fact I think a [sic] saw it, or a replica, at the Hayward gallery some ago. No-one was looking at it. I said to my girl-friend that the only way to startle the audience would have been to urinate into the thing, which I think someone has now done. I don’t think today’s audiences are all that different. Apart from the Arts Lab regulars, the audience in 1969 were readers of International Times, rather than today’s Time Out, and people interested in any new ideas that might be floating about. They certainly weren’t extras — I was very keen to see their reactions to the cars. The whole thing was a psychological test, to see whether my hunches were sufficiently confirmed for me to go on and write Crash. They were. The show’s object was not to shock, but to prompt a response."

OUR WHACKY AUNT AYN

In her youth, Aunt Ayn had a fairly unorthodox approach to her craft.

SPACE OPERA

CLICK (You shoulda been wearing clothes.)

I DON’T USUALLY SAY A WORD ABOUT SCIENTOLOGY

Here in Hollywood we don’t say anything bad about Scientology. Too many Hollywood stars on the roll of true believers. Too much sinister real estate over on Hollywood Boulevard just west of Sunset Junction. They are also too solid a part of local occult folklore, what with Hubbard hooked up with Jack Parsons, OTO, the Jet Propulsion Lab, the Process, and even Charlie Manson out on the edge. Even a once and future sci-fi writer, who has wondered now and then if forming a religion might be fun, doesn’t like to quote stuff like this slice from Wikipedia for fear the Thetans might get him.

“Xenu was according to Scientology founder and science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, the dictator of the "Galactic Confederacy" who, 75 million years ago, brought billions of his people to Earth in a DC-8-like spacecraft, stacked them around volcanoes and killed them using hydrogen bombs. Official Scientology dogma holds that the essences of these many people remained, and that they form around people in modern times, causing them spiritual harm. Members of the Church of Scientology widely deny or try to hide the Xenu story. These events are known within Scientology as "Incident II", and the traumatic memories associated with them as The Wall of Fire or the R6 implant. The Xenu story is part of the Church of Scientology's secret "Advanced Technology", normally only revealed to members who have already contributed large amounts of money.”

But while we keep quite in LA, the church is being hammered in Australia…

"The Church of Scientology in Australia was last night defending itself from a scathing attack by a politician using parliamentary privilege. In a senate speech late on Tuesday, independent south Australia senator Nick Xenophon said: “Scientology is not a religious organisation. It is a criminal organisation that hides behind its so-called religious beliefs.” Mr Xenophon questioned Scientology’s tax exemption status and called for it to be investigated by the police and parliament. The senator tabled letters he received from former Scientology members detailing claims of abuse, false imprisonment, forced abortion, embezzlement and the covering up of children’s deaths." (Click here for more)

And in France…

"In Paris last month, a court fined the French branch of the Church of Scientology €600,000 after finding it guilty of fraud, but stopped short of banning the group from operating in the country. Scientology’s Celebrity Centre and its bookshop in Paris, the two branches of its French operations, were fined €600,000 for preying financially on several followers in the 1990s. The court also handed down suspended prison sentences ranging from 10 months to two years and fines of €5,000 to €30,000 to four leaders of the group in France. France regards Scientology as a cult, not a religion, and had prosecuted individual Scientologists before, but this case marked the first time the organisation as a whole was convicted." (Click here for more)

The Secret word is Clear

MORE ON HOW I WAS PHISHED

Our pal Stephan writes on Facebook… "HACKER WARNING! There is a new way to hack your Facebook. A Notification will be sent to you that one of your friends has commented on your status, it will open a new page and tell you to re-enter your Facebook user name and password. The page looks just like the FB login page so be on the look out!! Repost this to your status to let your FaceBook family know."
And Valerie has sent us visual evidence.

A COMMERCIAL

“Will you buy Mick’s new book Zones of Chaos?”
“Will it stop me being a poly-amatory, fur-wearing slut?”
“I very much doubt that.”
“How I get one?
“Click here.”

DOC WAS PHISHED!

Late last night I was phished via Facebook. So, instead of posting, I’ve been clearing up the mess, changing passwords, running virus scans (and sleeping.) If the little bastards leave me alone, I should be back to normal tomorrow.

The secret word is Decimate

WE’RE COMING BACK FROM THE PAST TO SCREW THE RECORD COMPANIES, OKAY?

Our pal Joly posted a link to the following on Facebook, and I’m repeating it here, because, for once, the artist may have a chance to stick it to multi-national media corporations that have had their way for far too long. It may be a little involved for those who aren’t involved in the recording or writing of songs, but it’s probably worth a look.

“The late ’70s, when punk exploded and disco imploded, were tumultuous years for the music industry. A time bomb embedded in legislation from that era, the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, could bring another round of tumult to the business, due to provisions that allow authors or their heirs to terminate copyright grants — or at the very least renegotiate much sweeter deals by threatening to do so.
At a time when record labels and, to a lesser extent, music publishers, find themselves in the midst of an unprecedented contraction, the last thing they need is to start losing valuable copyrights to ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s music, much of which still sells as well or better than more recently released fare. Nonetheless, the wheels are already in motion.” (Click here for more.)

The secret word is Vengeance

BILL MAHER ON SWINE FLU

I don’t always agree with Bill Maher and I’m not sure if I agree with all of what he has to say here, but, when I found it on Common Dreams, I figured it was worth passing long.

“While America is still in the grips of swine flu mania, let me use this opportunity to clear up a few things about my beliefs concerning the flu shot, vaccines, and health in general. I do this because there is obviously a lot of curiosity about this subject of vaccines -- it comes up in every interview I do these days, and I've been finding that people, including doctors, are privately expressing a skepticism that is still not very prevalent in public. I feel like I've become a confessor for people who want someone to be raising questions about vaccines.
But I don't want the job. I agree with my critics who say there are far more qualified people than me -- its just that mainstream media rarely interviews doctors and scientists who present an alternative point of view. There is a movement to stop people from asking any questions about vaccines -- they're a miracle, that's it, debate over. I don't think its that simple, and neither do millions of other people. The British Medical Journal from August 25 says half the doctors and medical workers in the U.K. are not taking the flu shot -- are they all crazy too? Sixty-five percent of French people don't want it. Maybe its not as simple as the medical establishment wants to paint it.” (Click here for the rest.)

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Aquitaine Frozdick is neither drowning nor waving.

I don’t usually post political cartoons but this kinda had a resonant edge. Especially in the rendering of the Palin insanity.

BELLE PEELED

I don’t know how many of you recall Belle de Jour. Our pal Hipspinster reminds us how, back in 2003, borrowing a name from the Bunuel movie, she ran a highly graphic blog, called Diary of a Call Girl what went early viral across the English-speaking world, resulted in two books, and finally a lame TV show – Secret Diary of a Call Girl – starring former pop chanteuse and Dr. Who sidekick, Billie Piper. At the time, there was a mighty furor about Belle’s true identity, but now all is revealed. Click here to find out.

REMEMBER SPAIN?

I also don’t know how many of you remember Spain Rodriguez. He was/is one of the truly great underground comic artists. Is on-going strip Trashman: Agent of the Sixth International – the first radical left comic book hero – was even cited as a subversive influence at the Old Bailey trial when my partners and I fell foul of the law and were forced to defend ourselves for publishing the comic book Nasty Tales back in the day. Munz sends us this timely reminde…

“For the cover of My True Story, an autobiographical anthology of his work, cartoonist Manuel “Spain” Rodriguez used one of his many illustrations of a barroom brawl. This one is a real beauty, the royal rumble of bar fights. Bikers, truckers, a blonde frozen in mid-scream—everyone is either pummeling or about to get pummeled. There has perhaps never been so many comic strip sound effects packed onto a single page: ptoomf, wonk, ptaf…even a blump. (That one sounds like it didn’t hurt too bad.) In the center of the melee is Spain himself, ducking slightly, a hint of a smile on his face as he grips the neck of a beer bottle, ready to swing. Bar stools are flying through the air. Chains, wrenches, and fists are poised over the crowd. A thought bubble above one brawler’s head reads, “Someday, this will make a great comic strip.” (Click here for more.)

MO’ SPAIN

This is the cover for his graphic biography of Che Guevara.

WEEKEND WARNING

DAWSON’S BATTLING BEES

Doc40 has always paid attention to bees. We’ve run posts on their diseases, their increasingly odd behaviour, their abuse by the agribusiness, and even their mysterious disappearances. This story and video from Valerie, however, is something else again. Male bees fighting to the death to get laid. (Of course, they are Australian.)

"It is rare for any species of animal to regularly kill its own in combat. However, male Dawson's bees, one of the world's largest bee species, are so aggressive that they kill each other en masse in a bid to mate with females. The bees enter a frenzy of fighting, and by the time their deadly combat is over, every male bee is either killed or has perished.
The extreme behaviour, which can lead to even females being killed, is caught on film by a BBC natural history crew. Dawson's bees (Amegilla dawsoni ) are large burrowing bees that nest in the baked soil of the Australian outback." (Click here for the rest of the story and mindboggling video.)

The secret word is Buzzkill

REMEMBERING THE DUST BOWL

This showed up in the daily email from Delancey Place. I’m running it, I think, on the principle that if we ignore history we will – sure as shit – be forced to repeat it.

"The rains disappeared - not just for a season but for years on end. With no sod to hold the earth in place, the soil calcified and started to blow. Dust clouds boiled up, ten thousand feet or more in the sky, and rolled like moving mountains - a force of their own. When the dust fell, it penetrated everything: hair, nose, throat, kitchen, bedroom, water well. A scoop shovel was needed just to clean the house in the morning. The eeriest thing was the darkness. People tied themselves to ropes before going to a barn just a few hundred feet away, like a walk in space, tethered to the life support center. Chickens roosted in mid-afternoon. "Many in the East did not believe the initial accounts of predatory dust until a storm in May 1934 carried the windblown shards of the Great Plains over much of the nation. In Chicago, twelve million tons of dust fell. New York, Washington - even ships at sea, three hundred miles off the Atlantic coast - were blanketed in brown. Cattle went blind and suffocated. When farmers cut them open, they found stomachs stuffed with fine sand. Horses ran madly against the storms. Children coughed and gagged, dying of something the doctors called 'dust pneumonia.' In desperation, some families gave away their children. The instinctive act of hugging a loved one or shaking someone's hand could knock two people down, for the static electricity from the dusters was so strong.” – Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time

“Yes, darling, but are you evil enough?”
(Pic supplied by Lost Jimmy.)

AND THIS IS THE NEWS FOR FRIDAY 13TH

Okay, so NASA has just told us that the LCROSS probe found water on the moon – in a crater at the lunar south pole (click here for more) – but it’s also time to start counting down the days until the Large Hadron Collider cranks up again and maybe a black hole gets us…

“It's been plagued by everything from liquid helium leaks to wayward baguettes, but the mega-physics experiment known as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is finally ready to start smashing protons into each other. Particle collisions could begin in two weeks.
The LHC is a 27-kilometer underground tunnel designed to accelerate atomic particles and smash them into each other. The goal is to see what happens when such particles interact with tremendous amounts of energy, the way they might under extreme conditions in outer space. The results of LHC experiments will reveal a lot about the origins of our universe, and the composition of matter within it. CERN, the Swiss facility where the enormous underground experiment is located, has announced that test beams in the LHC have zoomed around most parts of the accelerator without incident.” (Click here for more.)

And let’s not forget the theory that time travelers might come back down the string and put a stop to all these God Particle shenanigans. (Click here to go back to Doc40, October 19th for that story.)

The secret word is Apprehension

SEEN PLENTY BUT RARELY HEARD

The video of Elvis Presley playing the 1956 open air concert in his home town of Tupelo in the green velvet shirt is mom supposedly been made for him has been aired over and over, but I’ve never seen one with the original audio. (Click here)

SPACE OPERA (Devotional Special)

Image donated by Valerie

MY HATRED FOR LEAF-BLOWERS IS IMPLACABLE

I normally sleep between approximately 4am and noon. I always have, and don’t feel like arguing with anyone who thinks early rising is a virtue. Lately I have roused no less than three mornings each week between 7.30 and 8.00am by a piercing motorized metallic screaming like the sound of some cacophonous ensemble that Brian Eno might have devised had he developed a deep aversion to humanity. The cause of the noise is the massed leaf-blowers of guys who like to be called landscapers. The idiotic machines do nothing but blow the dead leaves of autumn off one property and onto the one next door. Rakes would be infinitely more efficient, but it seems the mechanization is everything. How all this goes on in a wretched economy and in what is a modest neighborhood of bungalows and three and four storey apartment buildings is a mystery. It is, however, driving me crazy. I need my sleep. So if you hear of a mass homicide of contract gardeners, you’ll know I’ve cracked.
(I would even seem to have green support. Seemingly each backpack engine pumps out as much smog-forming pollution as 80 cars, each driven 12,500 miles, according to a government air quality management agency in California. Click for facts.)

HOW DARE THEY MEEP?

Our pal Joly sent the following, knowing it would provoke a response …

"MEEP!
Don't know what it means? Don't worry -- most people over the age of 22 don't either.
But the nonsense word -- which apparently started with the 1980s Muppet character Beaker -- is causing a lot of teeth-gnashing for adults at one Massachusetts high school. They have gone so far as to threaten suspension for students caught meeping.
But just what does it mean to "meep?" No one really seems to know -- even those who use it as part of their daily vocabulary. Bob Thompson, a pop culture professor at Syracuse University, said he first heard students meep about a year ago during a class screening of a television show. "Something happened and one of them said 'Meep,'" he said. "And then they all started doing it." The meeps, he said, came from all of the students in the class in rapid-fire succession. When he asked them what that meant, they said it didn't really mean anything. "It's almost like they look at you like it's a silly question," he said." (Click here for the rest of the non-story, but…)

The truth is that the word Meep was coined in 1969 by my old and dear friend and partner in crime, the late lamented Edward Barker. He was the creator of the cartoon alien species (with no arms) called The Largactalites whose one word vocabulary was the single word “meep”. They were named after the antipsychotic drug Largactil (Chlorpromazine) the UK brand name for what was sold in the US as Thorazine. The Largactalites ran in the underground paper IT, from 1970 to around 1973. I was also picked up by the national Sunday paper The Observer, but this raised profile brought the name to the notice of Smith Kline & French, the makers of Largactil, who threatened a lawsuit, and the name was changed to The Galactalites. Edward was finally fired when he turned in a strip that consisted of four frames with nothing but a blank, single-line horizon, with no characters and no dialogue. We all thought that was pretty damned Dadaist, but The Observer didn’t see it that way.

You can guess the secret word.

APOCALYPSE WHEN?

I’ve can’t count the number of times I’ve seen the movie Apocalypse Now, and you can add 50% if to count Apocalypse Now Redux. Now MrMR has sent me what I guess you might call a fumetti graphic novel of the film. I'm not sure I like it, but the work by Eduardo Saboya is pretty amazing considering the hundreds of stills and acres of dialogue he’s used in its creation. Definitely worth clicking here to check it out.

CLICK (You shouldn't be doing that.)

BRAZIL HACKED INTO DARKNESS?

Back in the formative days of the web, you heard lurid and grandiose tales of super-hackers – based in Albania or Uzbekistan, and working on old Red Army computers – who were poised to take out airports, hospitals, TV networks, entire banking systems, and generally hack us back to the stone age. Legend claimed that someone called The Black Avenger had shut down an entire hydroelectric project in Ethiopia. But none of the worst case scenarios ever materialized, and hacking turned out to be no more epic than identity theft and an occasional viral freakout. Until yesterday, that is, when the Brazilian power grid went out and the world and its uncle started screaming hacker. The Brazilian central government now blames the outage on bad weather but the world continues to wonder if maybe the Son of the Black Avenger is on the loose.

The secret word is Lurking

Click here for news story. Click for video.

THE HUMAN PARASITE

Mother and Doctor from the Bangalore Film Society sent this and I’m posting it as is...

“The pilgrim stood in the great void of the seventh city, the city of the revelations, muttering prayers that announced the completion of his arduous journey and beseeching that he now, be swept away by he blinding light of truth and redemption. Nothing happened. Silence remained, as thick and impassive as the walls. Bent at the knees, the pilgrim collapsed. Snatches from his own life, memories of his long pilgrimage to the seventh city now convulsed and throbbed in the hollow of his body. The mind and the soul snapped and he howled. The silence and the walls echoed the scream, twisting it into a grotesque wail of agony and in the darkness of the void; he saw a vision of flesh and pain- a grotesque structure of countless flailing limbs, mouths and torsos. At the top were the heads- pig-like and mindless, mouths that knew only to consume with knowing any limits. At the bottom lay the diseased- the screaming and abscessed, the entrails. And in the middle, lay the torsos and the bellies, blind to ecstasy, beauty, agony, disgust, all human feeling and seeking only continuous sedation and numbing. The red furnace light of the vision tinged the walls and the pilgrim, fallen on the ground, recognized the sanctum sanctorum of the seventh city, the womb, l’originie du monde. Fear gripped him, a fear whose seeds lay in a sense of betrayal and later morphs into terror when the betrayal announces itself in the form of an unnatural and mutant monstrosity. There would be no redemption. The source itself had been parched, poisoned and forgotten by the prodigal offspring who in a delusion of misguided intelligence and hubris had turned itself into a parasite- the human parasite.”
- Ibn Al- Nahati, The Final Journals

DO WE REALLY NEED A REMAKE OF THE PRISONER?

GODDAMN IT, IS NO SPECIES SAFE?

Obviously Doc40 will do everything to spread the word about the threats to wolves, polar bears, tigers, grizzlies, and any other endangered species, but I am so tired and angry about the constant need to do it. What is wrong with the human race? Are we a fucking virus? And, if so, when will Gaia find a vaccine to eliminate us?

“Australia's koalas could be wiped out within 30 years unless urgent action is taken to halt a decline in population, according to researchers. They say development, climate change and bushfires have all combined to send the numbers of wild koalas plummeting. The Australian Koala Foundation said a recent survey showed the population could have dropped by more than half in the past six years. Many have been killed by the sexually transmitted disease chlamydia. Previous estimates put the number of koalas at more than 100,000 - but the latest calculations suggest there could now be as few as 43,000.
The foundation collected field data from 1,800 sites and 80,000 trees to calculate the numbers. In one area in northern Queensland estimated to have 20,000 koalas a decade ago, a team of eight people could not find a single animal in four days of searching.
The foundation said as well as problems caused by deforestation, hotter, drier conditions attributed to global warming had reduced the nutritional value of their staple food, eucalyptus leaves, leading to malnutrition. Koalas, which are confined to forests in Australia's east and south, are notoriously fussy about what types of the leaves they eat.” (Click here for more plus a video.)

The secret word is Cease

NO STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

But we’ll make an exception when it’s played on the harp. Click here.

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Lobella Frozdick was adamant that bunny ears should remain a family tradition.

SPACE OPERA

"If you're lost in the rain on Mongo and it's Eastertime too..." (Map supplied by MrMR.)

GET READY TO PARTY

Did somebody say a riot of their own? Now they have a party of their own. And maybe it spells the beginning of the end for the GOP. Early this year, I hoped/predicted that extreme right of the Republican party would fragment into what I laughing called the Raving Looney Shotgun Hillbilly Jesus Party. And now, so help me, it’s actually happened. According to the website Politico, “A Florida conservative has registered an official "Tea Party" with the office of the Secretary of State, and is promising to run candidates against Republicans and Democrats in state and national races. ‘The current system has become mired in the sludge of special interest money that seeks to control the leadership of both parties. It’s time for real change,” says Orlando lawyer Frederic O’Neal, the new party's chairman, who couldn't be reached immediately by phone. A spokeswoman for the Florida Secretary of State, Jennifer Davis, said the party had registered in August, and that its qualified candidates will appear on the ballot in the state.”

The secret word is Jubilant

THE FLUGELRAD IS BACK

Regular readers will know my deep fascination with Nazi flying saucers – especially the famed Flugelrad – and how that affection came to fictional fruition in Underland, the last book of the Renquist Trilogy (big hint-buy the book.) Thus, when I discover this picture of a confrontation between Soviet Kalinin K-7 (that never actually worked) and a possibly Vril powered Nazi saucer (that may never have existed) I was very pleased. Except I couldn’t find the source, but will keep you all posted.

SHOP 'TIL YOU DROP

ANOTHER DECADENT SUNDAY

"I've tried to escape from this planet on a number of occasions."
"No shit."
"Each time the aliens caught me and brought me back."
As the woman talked, apparently without end or continuity, the man drew dreamily on the long ornate ivory and hardwood opium pipe, with its carved gods and dragons, and brass mouthpiece. "Motherfuckers those aliens. I hope you avoided the anal probe."
She didn't appear to hear him. On the other hand, the man may not have actually spoken, only fantasized that he did. She frowned. "I also escaped from the nuns. A number of times. But they always caught me too."
The man shook his head as if to clear it. He had totally lost the thread. "Nuns?"
The woman gestured with stoned impatience. "I was raised by nuns in a Catholic orphanage of great barbarism. The benefits were few and the penalties severe. They administered enemas for our health and cruelly whipped us for the most minor infraction. I'm not sure which was worse, the nozzle or the cane."
The man didn’t feel he was obliged to say anything. He merely contemplated the opiate enhancement of the images the woman was creating.
"Those nuns..." She shook her head in search of a word strong enough to express her contempt. Her English was poor and her vocabulary small. "...those bitches in black and white were enjoying themselves. I used to wonder what they did when we couldn't see them."

CHRISTOPHER WALKEN READS LADY GAGA

"It is what it is so just click here, okay?”

The secret word is Cowbell

GRATUITOUS JANE BIRKIN

What else for a decadent Sunday? And click here if you really have a need to listen to her whisper her way through four minutes of the dubious “Je t'aime... moi non plus.”

SPACE OPERA

Decadent or not, you gotta watch out for those darn pyramids.

JOBLESS TOP 10%

Not much fun for the weekend, but here at Doc40, we take a great deal of notice of the unemployment figures, if for no other reason that a lot of our friends are writers and precious few are working. (Thank heavens I have a book to do.) Thus the news evoked nothing but dismay. The unemployment rate has topped 10% -- the first time since 1983. Per the AP, "The Labor Department says the economy shed a net total of 190,000 jobs in October, less than the downwardly revised 219,000 lost in September." But the unemployment rate increased, from 9.8% in Sept. to 10.2% in Oct. (And that not counting those who can’t claim benefits.) I can only agree with Paul Krugman when he argues the White House hasn't been aggressive enough. "President Obama came into office with a strong mandate and proclaimed the need to take bold action on the economy. His actual actions, however, were cautious rather than bold. They were enough to pull the economy back from the brink, but not enough to bring unemployment down." The sun ain’t yellow, it’s chicken.

The secret word is Dole

GOING POSTAL

John Ratzenberger was the guy who once played the mailman on Cheers. Now he’s a cohort of the ludicrous Michele Bachmann. At her absurd rally in Washington a couple of days ago, he told the crowd that the health care bill advocates were “Woodstock Democrats” like Abbie Hoffman and Wavy Gravy. Gail Collins in The New York Times commented – “The crowd seemed on the old side, but is it really possible that any of them are still worrying about Abbie Hoffman? That any of them knew who Wavy Gravy is? Wasn’t his main claim to fame giving out free granola? Is this a problem we need to deal with at the present moment?” (Story supplied by Munz.)

OUR WHACKY AUNT AYN

Aunt Ayn reacts badly to a quote in The New York Times by Adam Kirsch that reads. “The plotting and characterization in her books may be vulgar and unbelievable, just as one would expect from the middling Holly­wood screenwriter she once was.”

THOSE CRAZY TABLOIDS

FROM BLOCKBUSTER TO OBSCURE

Yesterday my cool was impugned because I expressed mild anticipation regarding John Cameron’s Avatar. So here’s a movie that going to be real hard to find. It’s supposedly a true story, so I can even raise some trepidation that the guys pictured above might be the founders of “the next great American religion.” Don’t we have enough goddamned religions already? There’s a showing of The Object on Sunday at The Cinefamily on Fairfax here in Hollywood, but, otherwise, you’re on your own.

“Between jobs and at loose ends in his hometown of Owensboro, Kentucky, part-time tile layer Todd Walker headed to Nashville for a job, left home late, blew off the job, wandered through a Goodwill store, and for sixty-nine cents purchased an object that he feels is an Old Testament oracle with which he can communicate with God. The Object traces his life-changing experience with what he calls "God's computer chip." Todd and his brothers-in-law, Dale and David, see visions when peering into their find. Sharing their experiences with other seekers, they build a following of believers, ranging from a former "Jeopardy!" champion to a wrestling preacher. This documentary may be the first ever to chronicle the founding of, as one religious professor put it, the next great American religion. Come along on this riotous, often unbelievable, but always thought-provoking spiritual quest. The Object takes us to the intersection where Borat meets Flannery O'Connor, except this is for real!” Click here for a trailer

The secret word is Relic

FANCY PAGEANT GLOATIN’

As you all may have probably realised by now, I have zero tolerance for dumb-as-a-post beauty queens who figure it’s a double-plus, super-ace celeb-making career move to sashay their cute bikini asses into extremist homophobe bigot-rousing. Thus, when the execrable Carrie Prejean’s political career was fatally impaled by a recently surfaced, commercial-porn, masturbation-for-camera video, with Prejean as the solo performer, I couldn’t restrain grinning like a gloating fool. And why not, huh? One day Palin will also fall. Click here for the less salacious but more detailed mainstream account of Prejean’s descent from grace.

DID I EVER TELL YOU I LOVE PAPER AIRPLANES?

No? Well check out the way cool video. Maybe you will too. Click here.

CLICK (Gotcha!)

AVATAR? (No thanks, I’m trying to give them up.)

Up to now I’ve been ignoring it, but, as someone who has the TV perpetually mumbling on the other side of the room, I have now watched a few commercials for James Cameron’s upcoming megaflick Avatar, and they were sufficiently compelling to send me to IMDb to watch the trailers. I don’t have any overflowing sympathy for corporate franchise movies that cost more than the GNP of multiple third world nations. On the other hand, it sure looks like something important. I detect ideas that were mooted in Aliens that seem to have been brought to advanced resolution. And is this a whole new generation of CGI I see before me? It’s been a while since the LOTR trilogy and I’d like to have a massive epic movie to make me an eleven-year old once again. I just hope it’s not a crushing disappointment. Click here for trailers.

OR WOULD YOU RATHER STAY IN A SPACE MOTEL?

Our pal Faux Smoke contributed this story about a planned orbital hotel. I guess smoking a joint in your room might be a problem, and you probably couldn’t order any hookers. (Click here for the whole story.)

MEANWHILE, IN THE REAL WORD

My mumbling TV just informed me that Wall Street heavies like Goldman Sachs and Citibank have all the N1H1 flu vaccine they need for their employees while regular folk stand in line because New York hospitals, clinics, and private doctors are suffering from major shortages and cannot immunize even all the at-risk patients. Click here for the whole fucking absurd story.

SPACE OPERA (What else?)

The kids down the street capture a live alien. (Image lifted from Tom Sutpen.)

DOLPHINS ARE EVEN SMARTER THAN WE SUSPECTED?

The days seem to be creating an order of their own. Yesterday it was psychdelics. Today it’s animals. Our homeboy Aeswiren sent us this story about revised estimates of dolphin IQ…

“At the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Mississippi, Kelly the dolphin has built up quite a reputation. All the dolphins at the institute are trained to hold onto any litter that falls into their pools until they see a trainer, when they can trade the litter for fish. In this way, the dolphins help to keep their pools clean. Kelly has taken this task one step further. When people drop paper into the water she hides it under a rock at the bottom of the pool. The next time a trainer passes, she goes down to the rock and tears off a piece of paper to give to the trainer. After a fish reward, she goes back down, tears off another piece of paper, gets another fish, and so on. This behaviour is interesting because it shows that Kelly has a sense of the future and delays gratification. She has realised that a big piece of paper gets the same reward as a small piece and so delivers only small pieces to keep the extra food coming. She has, in effect, trained the humans.” (Click here for the whole story.)

The secrey word is Flipper