saturday AFTERNOON me//
ooops/a glorious day in the mountains today/
been weeding/potting/pruning/toking/
grilledcheesesandwich/tea--sweet, of course/
pink sweatshorts/white ACT-UP tee/flipflops/
listening: Four Three by All India Radio/
forecast: finalfourbasketball/
wondering what i can feed my dog now/
still a study in contradictions, aren't i?/
so how about you?/

Today's Quote: If you can solve your problem, then what is the need of worrying? If you cannot solve it, then what is the use of worrying? -- Shantideva

Round of Zimas. My treat, bitches.

After a day of running errands I return to find that sweet Anathea had sent me some delicious truffles and I didn't waste any time diving into them. I'm eating a honey-almond one in this picture.

My dog, Buddy, came over after he smelled chocolate but I didn't give him any of it. Thanks again, Anathea, and Happy Friday everyone.

Bill Maher: New Rules For Bush And Cheney

"Traitors don't get to question my patriotism. What could be less patriotic than constantly screwing things up for America? You know, it's literally hard to keep up with the sheer volume of scandals in the Bush Administration. Which is why I like to download the latest scandal right onto my iPod. That way, I can catch up on this week's giant fuck-up on my drive in to work." Read More

Watch the above YouTube piece from last Friday's show or read the same rant from the HBO site.

Secret Drugs Of Buddhism

Mike Crowley and his excellent work on the Secret Drugs of Buddhism. First is an introduction and a brief synopsis of his adventures leading up to his engagement with Buddhism. A lama is asked if psychedelics have been used as a secret practice. He answers, "How would I know if it was secret?" Mike Crowley elaborates an idea which many of us have long suspected.

Read more | via

Clever product design. Oil of Olay goes for the Undo key command. (CTRL + Z = Undo) I think it's kind of fun. If their market is grandmothers in their 50s they've got themselves a slam dunk.

link | via | via

Goa Gil - May 19, 2007 - Deerfields (Asheville, NC)

Atlanta Psytrance and Those People Productions welcome Goa Gil back to the Southeastern US, on his second rite of passage as your shamanic guide, for an extended journey into the heart of Primordial Bliss.

Join us in a regional gathering of the tribes as we celebrate as one primal force Goa Gil's sonic transmission of cutting-edge psychedelic trance across Deerfields, a 940-acre private retreat in the sacred Appalachian Mountains. Beneath the skies, on earthen soil where nature abounds, we will dance by ritual fire as the ancients once did -- guided by Goa Gil in Redefining the Ancient Tribal Ritual for the 21st Century through the Trance Dance Experience!

link

Robert Crumb retrospective curated by Todd Hignite just opened at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. It runs from March 16 to July 8, 2007. The show includes over 200 of the best examples of Crumb's art, spanning his prolific and rich lifetime body of work. [via]

NSFW
Here's 81 photos taken on the opening day.

ULTRACULTURE - JOURNAL ONE
Era Vulgaris 2007
Editor: Jason Louv

The issue includes: Genesis Breyer P-Orridge on the holographic Garden of Eden, Brion Gysin's travelogue of his journey to Alamut, the citadel of the Assassins, The psychedelic rantings of Ganesh Baba, the world’s most tripped-out guru, and much more.

So many good articles to read I don't know where to begin. It's in beta now but you can buy it for a small price.

[via: dreamflesh]

saturday morning me//
black yoga pants/black top/old granny sweater/
snowflakes softly drifting down/
did you know bozo is a clown?/
listening: Coming Back To Me - Jefferson Airplane/
better find something more uplifting before i slit my wrist/
so what about you?/

Happy St Patrick's Day!

Quote For Today
Love the earth and sun and animals,
Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
Stand up for the stupid and crazy,
Devote your income and labor to others...
And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
~Walt Whitman

ON THIS DAY - MARCH 16, 1968

1968 - Vietnam: My Lai Massacre

Carrying on the tradition of 'teaching' American values to the godless & the communist, Captain Medina leads a 'victorious' attack on the village of Xom Lang, near My Lai in South Vietnam.

While the upper brass circles overhead in helicopters,
Charlie Company enters the hamlet of My Lai 4 &
methodically & ruthlessly murders an estimated 347
civilians over an 8-hour period.

Most are women, children & old men. Some are slain by
bullets fired into their houses, others herded into small
groups & mowed down, & still more die when they are
hurled into a ditch & sprayed with automatic rifle fire.

The Army will first try to cover it up & the US media will
refuse to report it. Later they will portray it as an aberration,
one bad guy (Calley), one good guy (who stops it). Calley
is later convicted, sent to his room for being a bad boy,
then released.


Photograph of Kim Phuc (reprinted above) running from a napalm attack on My Lai with her clothes burnt off, one of the most enduring images of the Vietnam War. She recalls: "Nick Ut [the photographer,] took us to the hospital nearby and then he dropped us there and ran into the darkroom to develop the film that he took."

Live from the electronic teat..... the Anti-War edition

* On March 19 the fifth year of the illegal, immoral, disastrous war in Iraq will begin. Activists across the country are mobilizing to mark the occasion with demonstrations, vigils and direct actions from Friday March 16 through Tuesday March 20. Add your voice to the rising call for peace: right here

* Congress is expected to vote on the bill to suspend operations at the SOA/WHINSEC in as early as May 2007. April will be a critical time for us to organize and make our voices heard.

This April 25-27, SOA Watch activists will organize local public fasts and events throughout the United States to educate the general public and members of Congress on the SOA/WHINSEC issue. link

* Activists 'Purify' Site After Bush Visit link

* 20 Arrested At SDS New York Counter Recruitment Action - link

* Do you have a protest or topical song available on the web? As of today Neil Young's Living With War website has 1430 song listings. Send your song link to: songs@lwwtoday.com

* Sign The Petition - The US Copyright Office has released their new set of rates for the payment of royalties by Internet Radio -- royalty rates so high that they will put RP and every other US-based indie webcaster out of business.

Quote For Today
"Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war." --Martin Luther King, Jr.

Finally in print - the official companion volume to Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School!

"Dr. Sketchy's Official Rainy Day Colouring Book" is one part DIY handbook, one part activity book on acid, and one part history of the Sketch Revolution. To sweeten the broth, we've added dozens of photos, paper dolls, colouring book pages and puppets of Amber Ray, Lolita Haze, Little Brooklyn, Audra Gwarskitty,and all your other favorite Dr. Sketchy's models.

"Dr Sketchy's has gone from New York treasure to international phenomenon in a handful of months: a little piece of imaginary Twenties Paris where anyone who can hold a pencil may sketch beautiful burlesque models while sinking booze or sipping coffee. It's a wonderful thing: and only the Brooklyn Renaissance Woman that is Molly Crabapple could tell you about it this well."
- Warren Ellis. Author of Transmetropolitan

Molly Crabapple, founder

I always enjoy finding a new Mark Ryden painting. The Tree Show is now at the Michael Kohn Gallery.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

This weekend the little-known 1970 film will get a brand new score performed live by Espers, Philadelphia freak folk musicians — including a harpist, a cellist and an "enigmatic electronicist". Will you even need libation at the after-party?

What about a girl who gets her period and discovers her womanhood 'Alice in Wonderland' style? Not freaky enough for you? The 1970 Czech film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is a nudie fairy-tale head trip, an Aquarian stew of Freud, Murnau, Hefner and the Brothers Grimm, complete with lecherous priests, a pubescent heroine and a vampire grandmother.

Valerie and her Week of Wonders
8pm Saturday and 9pm Sunday--March 10 and 11
Anthology Film Archives

Very cool that Espers is doing the music, but besides that, try to catch this old film sometime. You may like it if you enjoy wicked strange cult films.

They're protesting Bush's visit down in Latin America and one policeman couldn't be happier about it.

saturday morning me//
fumblefuck fogheaded feeling/
fetch me a java/morphine drip --stat/
find my cleanest dirty black tee &/
indian print drawstring pants/chinese slippers/
come sit beside me/bring your old fender/
pass the splifferoo/mama's on a bender/
so how about you?/

Carpe Scrotum - Grab life by the balls

Priests to purify site after Bush visit

GUATEMALA CITY - Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.

"That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday.

The purification entails chanting and burning incense, herbs and candles.

link

As long as I lived I never thought I'd see a president who was worse than Richard Nixon. I didn't know how wrong I would be.

FRIDAY RANDOM 10
Shuffle 'em up and show us your ten. Come on... give grandma some love.

1. The Verve - Bittersweet Symphony
2. Band Of Horses - The Funeral
3. Panda Bear - Comfy In Nautica
4. Tom Waits - Bottom Of The World
5. Boards of Canada - Skyliner
6. Deerhoof - +81
7. Arcade Fire - Intervention
8. Pearls And Brass - Wake In The Morning
9. Brightblack Morning Light - Everybody Daylight
10. Spooky Tooth - Better By You, Better Than Me


as usual-- the old, the new, the in-between

WOW! Grandmother Me

Yesterday I saw my very first grandchild on a sonogram. The doctor said the baby has
been growing for 13 weeks and is currently the size of a gummy bear. We could see the baby's head and spine and legs and arms and also the little heart beating.

Me. A grandmother. It was a very joyous day to say the least, and I couldn't be more thrilled.

Neon Bible by Arcade Fire is officially out today ($9.99 if bought through their label) though many have been listening to some of the songs since December or so. When riding in the car, it is the one cd my daughter won't try to change so I'd say it has broad appeal.

The eagerly anticipated second album from Montreal's Arcade Fire exceeds all expectations. Neon Bible was written, produced, arranged, and performed by the Arcade Fire and recorded throughout 2006 in Quebec, New York, Budapest,and London with recording and engineering help from Markus Dravs (Bjork, Brian Eno) and Scott Colburn (Animal Collective, Sun City Girls). With string and orchestral arrangements by the band's own Owen Pallet (also Final Fantasy) and Regine Chassagne, Neon Bible is full of both half-assed punk rock mistakes and meticulously orchestrated woodwinds. Processed strings and mandolin. Quiet rumbles and loud rumbles. But mostly just eleven songs that the band thinks are really good!

link

Derailroaded: Inside The Mind Of Larry "Wild Man" Fischer is currently running on Sundance Channel.

Josh Rubin's strangely fascinating documentary parses the life of outsider musician Larry "Wild Man" Fischer. Growing up in the '50s, Fischer was an undiagnosed manic-depressive schizophrenic who, after attacking his mother with a knife, landed in a mental asylum.

Eventually he headed to California in the late '60s, where Frank Zappa discovered him singing his own strange compositions for a dime a song along Sunset Boulevard. In a strangulated growl somewhere between a possessed Tiny Tim and Bobcat Goldthwait, Fischer's music is something of an acquired taste. Zappa championed him and he led a convoluted career appearing on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and landing on the British Top 50 charts.

Derailroaded is interspersed with plenty of talking heads delivering anecdotes, as well as footage of Fischer performing, but ultimately this is a film not about music or fame, but about the ravages of mental illness. Despite many moments of levity—such as a completely bizarre re-enactment of an interview between Dr. Demento and Frank Zappa, done with puppets—it's a devastating portrait of delusion and fathomless despair.

You sure can see the Zappa influence but man, oh man, was the poor guy ever out there.

link

Anarchy in the DK

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) - Demolition crews on Monday started tearing down a disputed youth center that was at the heart of recent street riots in Copenhagen.

Workers wore face masks under their helmets to conceal their identities as an excavator tore into the so-called Youth House, a graffiti-sprayed brick building in the Noerrebro district of the Danish capital.

A police anti-terror squad on Thursday evicted squatters from the building, triggering three nights of clashes with leftist youth that turned parts of the city into a battle zone.

More than 600 people were arrested and more than 20 injured as protesters hurled cobblestones at riot police and set fire to cars and trash bins in Copenhagen's worst riots in 14 years.

Punk Status

The Youth House for years served as a popular cultural center for anarchists, punk rockers and left-wing groups. The squatters considered it as free public housing, but courts ordered them out after the city sold the building to a Christian congregation.

The building, which has served among other things as a concert venue and featured performances by big stars like Icelandic pop artist Bjork and Australian musician Nick Cave, was recently sold to the Christian group Fadershuset, which requested the eviction of the youths.

An August 2006 court ruling ordered the occupants to be evicted from the centre, which they insist belongs to them. Riots have also been taking place around the Freetown Christiania area.

Related:
Solidarity Action
CopenBlog
History
Comments
ungdomshuset

Björk Confirms 'Volta' Release Date - Icelandic chanteuse Björk has announced the May 7 release of Volta, her sixth studio album to date and much anticipated follow up to 2004's Medulla. The forthcoming long-player, written and produced entirely by Björk, features 10 songs.

link

Friday Random 10 - Haven't done this in a while. Shuffle 'em up and show us your ten. (If you don't have a 10, an 8 will certainly do.)

1. Take My Hand and Come With Me - Lähtö
2. Wake In The Morning - Pearls and Brass
3. Waiting Phase One - Porcupine Tree
4. Hyper-Ballad - Bjork
5. Rejoicing in the Hands - Vashti Bunyan & Devendra Banhart
6. Universal Soldier - Buffy Saint Marie
7. Winters Love - Animal Collective
8. Pandora - Cocteau Twins
9. Black Wall - Six Organs of Admittance
10.Monkey Man - Rolling Stones

Happy Friday!
Now to go spend some quality time away from my family.

*After a well deserved nap (i was on the rode at 4am) I wake to see I'm rushing the week along and it's only Thursday. Oops. --yawn--