Saturday, June 16, 2007

PLUG FOR MYSELF



Just reminding y'all, neighbors, I have a new and quite alarming non-fiction book – WHO’S WATCHING YOU? – published by Disinformation who describe it thusly on Amazon (while otherwise keeping it a well protected secret…)

“The threat of terrorism and the corresponding climate of fear encouraged by the government have together eroded our freedom to live our lives in peace and quiet away from the prying eyes of hidden cameras. The government is tightening its grip on us by watching and recording what we do. They are doing this because they know they can and because knowledge is power. But exactly who are "they" and why do they want to know so much about us? This book includes chilling, accurate, and up-to-date descriptions of the methods the government (and private company proxies) use to watch us.”


Boing Boing was very nice about it saying -- “Who’s Watching You? includes chilling, accurate and up-to-date descriptions of the methods the government (and private company proxies) uses to watch us. Essential reading for everyone concerned about privacy and freedoms of speech and association, even–perhaps especially–if you don’t plan on doing anything wrong.”

The secret word is Buck

PLUG FOR A PAL


This show was produced by our good buddy Erik. Set your Tivo.

Friday, June 15, 2007

WHALES WOULD LIVE A VERY LONG TIME IF ASSHOLES DIDN'T STICK HARPOONS IN THEM. (Official)


Having spent far too much of my time thinking about the fictional Italian Mafia, I find this whale story truly fascinating. I was always struck by a marine legend (that’s an urban legend except at sea) that, when seagoing humans switched from sail to steam, the vibration of all those propellers in the water totally fucking up the whale’s highly sophisticated sonar-style navigation system, and forced them to redesign their entire migration patterns to a much less efficient “short hop” system. (And, from that Star Trek movie I watched earlier in the week, they are also real tight with the aliens.) All in all, we really have to start treating our cetacean brothers and sisters with considerably ore respect.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - A fragment of a weapon used by commercial whalers in the 1800s was found in a massive bowhead whale caught off Alaska last month, suggesting it may be more than a century old, officials said Tuesday. The fragment, from a bomb lance manufactured around 1880, was discovered in a bowhead harvested in the traditional subsistence hunt conducted by Alaska's Inupiat people, said officials from the North Slope Borough, the local government in northernmost Alaska. The fragment shows that the whale could be nearly 130 years old, said Craig George, a wildlife biologist with the borough's Department of Wildlife Management.

For more…

The secret word is Queequeg
Morton the Shark -- RIP

DOROTHY..?


"Dorothy, are you sure there’s no such thing as sequin poisoning?”

Thursday, June 14, 2007

END OF AN ARIA



Of course I’m disappointed with what I wrote. (But I always am, kinda. I think it’s motivational.) I wanted to sum up seven years of The Sopranos – all 86 episodes – in a work of such critical brilliance that Oscar Wilde himself would rise from his Parisian grave to embrace my genius, literary prizes would be showered upon me, and ravishingly gorgeous mature women in high heels would worship me. I dunno. I did my level best and here it is. But I did also did discover that David Chase is another who can’t exit with the statutory Bob Dylan quote.



The secret word is Cannoli

BUT IF IT'S SLAYING WE NEED...



This link is to a very reasonable argument why Frank Lunz -- the human slime -- should be taken out and hung from a handy lamppost, or the historic sour apple tree.


And these smug boyos look like they too might benefit from at least a cull, if not extermination, possibly right along with their supposed target women and other men who believe that passion can only be measured in dollars and scents.

Death to transaction and doublespeak

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSIC'S #16


What can I say except this has to be a virtual artifact, and Ballard always saw it coming from the very get-go.
The secret word is Vermillion

WATCHING YOU WATCHING ME



We have a brand new Chinese Panda-cam but I suspect it’s having trouble with all the traffic and a lack of bandwidth because sometime it’s there and sometimes it isn’t. (From Valerie)

ALSO we have an unsolicited testimonial forwarded by SE. – YOUR SITE IS EXCEPTIONAL! A friend of mine, an internet expert of sorts, calls sites like yours "sticky sites"; a site that keeps the viewer looking and reading and looking and chortling and thinking and.
Praise in this century is praise indeed.

The secret word is Appreciative

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

IS THIS HOW YOU WANTED IT TO END?




















The corpse of Albert Anastasia. Yet another theft from Tom Sutpen. I just can’t help myself. His shit is so cool.

I have to finally admit that I think I’m gangstered out for a while. Last night’s Sopranos, took some thinking about and then some writing about and finally a period of decompression while I watched that really fucking dumb Star Trek movie about Kirk’s bunch coming back to the 20th century to mess with time and kidnap a couple humpbacked whales. I finally got to bed at 8.00am and today I’m doing nothing except facing the frustration that, in all the discussion, my brilliant 10 cents'-worth won’t come out until Thursday, but that’s the cross the print writer has to bear. Fortunately there’s four reruns of The X-Files tonight (it’s replaced Law & Order as my comfort TV). Plus there’s some epic on the History Channel about Mayan doom prophesies which will get me started back on 12.21.12 even though I don’t believe in it and am only trying to start a gratuitous mass panic.

Or I could watch Lawrence Welk play “Sister Ray”

And also, while I rest my weary hands we have a fortuitous and highly insightful missive from HCB…

Forgive me Mick for soundboarding you here. I knew you were writing about the Sopranos and it got me thinking a little with you in mind. Thing is, we know where to look for the hidden faces and all that--that's our heritage--we're professionals--you more than I--you're a fucking expert. But not many people out there are likely to relate it to the greatest sport of the sixties, conspiracy theorizing, just before Frisbees. So this is what I wrote thinking about you and T, a couple of lines of random shit mostly.
Where's the acid? Sopranos has turned the nation or the internet anyway into the greatest conspiracy-hunting machine ever. Tony buries Paul. Staggering numbers, all with theories. A nation of academic deconstructionalists, Funny though that one of the principle waste products of psychedelics, all that 3-D holographic connect-the-dots stuff, is happening without any substance more foreign than TV. Chase may be as clever a punning cryptic as Dylan. Think we saw his thought dreams as the plastic was melting and the chromium too. I knew it was a comedy when I heard Vanilla Fudge, but Phil's crushed head was as funny as any great seinfeld moment. I think what I liked best was how directly Chase was addressing the audience with that same combination of seduction and contempt that Dylan had--. Someday people are going to be looking at Chase and Milch (after Oliver Stone) as the neo-psychedelicists.

The secret word is Vig

Monday, June 11, 2007

HAVE A SEAT


From Valerie...
"...This amazing art installation was made by Colombian sculptor Doris Salcedo for the International Instanbul Biennale in 2003. She used over 1,550 chairs stacked on an empty lot between two buildings!" Enjoy it while I wrestle with my appreciation of The Sopranos that you will be able to read on Thursday.

The secret word is Nanosecond.

Or you could build Mousey The Junkbot.

Sunday, June 10, 2007


THE LAST SLICE OF THE PIZZA



So here we all are, approaching the evening of the final denoument and the last hour after which The Sopranos ends forever. I recall how, on Friday, I drew attention to the writer in the The San Francisco Chronicle who cited Yeat’s The Second Coming as a metaphor for big Tony in, I guess, a search for pop culture profundity. I posted the entire poem, mainly because I like it one whole lot, but also to illustrate just how intense academic analysis of The Sopranos has become. Hell, the shows finale made the cover of the New Yorker (above). A number of these earnest analysts have also reminded us with serious significance that the 2006 season started opened with a soundtrack of Material’s Seven Souls, featuring William S. Burroughs reading from his novel The Western Lands. What follows is an excerpt. For the non-Sopranos aficianados, just look on it as some free Sunday Burroughs. Beyond that I cannot commment. I still have my own learned analysis to write. (And I pray like a bride on her wedding night that I will not fail to beat out all the others.)

"The ancient Egyptians postulated seven souls, Top soul, and the first to leave at the moment of death, is Ren, the Secret Name. This corresponds to my Director, He directs the film of your life from conception to death. The Secret Name is the title of your film. When you die, that's where Ren came in. Second soul, and second one off the sinking ship, is Sekem: Energy, Power, Light The Director gives the orders, Sekem presses the right buttons. Number three is Khu, the Guardian Angel. He, she, or it is third man out . . . depicted as flying away across a full moon, a bird with luminous wings and head of light. Sort of thing you might see on a screen in an Indian restaurant in Panama. The Khu is responsible for the subject and can be injured in his defense- but not permanently, since the first three souls are eternal. They go beck to Heaven for another vessel. The four remaining souls must take their chances with the subject in the Land of the Dead. Number four is Ba, the heart, often treacherous. This is a hawk's body with your face on it, shrunk down to the size of a fist. Many a hero has been brought down, like Samson, by a perfidious Ba. Number five is Ka, the Double, most closely associated with the subject. The Ka, which usually reaches adolescence at the time of bodily death, is the only reliable guide through the Land of the Dead to the western Lands. Number six is Khaibit, the Shadow, Memory, your whole past conditioning from this and other lives. Number seven is Sekhu, the Remains.I first encountered this concept in Norman Mailer's, Ancient Evenings, and saw that it corresponded precisely with my own mythology, developed over a period of many years, since birth in fact."

The secret word is Cartouche

Or, after all this pop profundity would you rather see a bunny whup a snake. (Thanks Wend)