The Vanishing Point of Microdot

For all the friends of Microdot who perhaps have been wondering about the ominous absence of posts since his return from the hospital, I, Madame Microdot have finally enough courage to sit in front of his computer and write a few words to tell you that that delightful, creative, curious, surreal, encyclopedia brain behind thebrainpolice is no longer among us.

It is very strange for me to be sitting in his chair in his natural habitat of utter chaos where I never, never have ventured before.  He had his space, I had mine.  We would often send emails to each other from upstairs to downstairs.  There would be ensuing howls of laughter through the floorboards.  But tonight I am here and looking around at his hodge podge, topsy-turvy shelves and they speak more about the man than I could ever describe.  For sure, no one ever policed that singular brain of his!

Here is just a peek... I don't think he would mind. (Impossible to list more than a fraction of the stuff, but you'll get the idea, as my eyes roam over the piles.)

Two Robert Crumb cards of Blind Lemon Jefferson and Barbecue Bob bluesmen

A little book he adored by one of his favorite artists, Edward Gorey, "The Water Flowers"

A video tape of "Forbidden Planet"

A little teddy bear statue that a lady here gave him

The Art of Charcuterie Cookbook

The MC5 "A True Testimonial" DVD

About 50 or 60 Georges Simenon Maigret books

An old Belle Star 45 rpm from our days in the band in NY, circa the early 1980's

Books about mushrooms, wild orchids, kite craft, cartoonists

A plastic statue with a bobbing head of "Big Boy", home of the double decker

Tangled up cords of every description (computer, radio, electric... who knows)

Piles of comic books with a penchant for Weird Comics

Recipes of Chinese Spareribs

Colette's "Secrets of the Flesh" ... (Hey, that's mine and I wondered where it went...)

Lots of CDs of Frank Zappa, Wayne Kramer, Iggy Pop, Bootsy Collins, (Bootsy's New Rubber Band), Sun Ra, Funkedelic, etc.

Reproductions of Marcel Duchamps, Max Ernst (Microdot was simply gaga for DADA)

A sweet Dutch wall calendar (out of date)

Videos of all of the Jacques Tati films

A Batman pin

An antique box camera

A couple of pairs of old shoes stuck in the bookshelf

A hammer, some wrenches, nails and screws, screwdrivers crammed in a Pernot water pitcher from the '50s, along with oil paint and water color brushes

Five Japanese calligraphy brush sets

A huge pile of maps

And that is just scratching the surface...

I almost passed out when we got the prognosis as he left the hospital: he had from 3 days to a month to live.  His cancer(s) had progressed to the point of no treatment possible.  He said to me, "Don't worry, I'm going to drag this thing out like the third act of a bad Opera."  And he did.  He lasted just a little over a month.  During that time he was reading avidly, and I mean gluttonously, stuffing that brain with more facts.  He mostly was reading history books, almost one a day.  He never complained.  He told me that he didn't have time to be depressed.  If he wasn't reading he was doing the NY Times crossword puzzles.  Death came gently and he was at home with the window open to the new leaves of spring.

I have to turn off his computer now.

My email is: mygarden@orange.fr

In closing, here is a little poem by Emily Dickinson from 1894 that I read today:

The Butterfly upon the Sky

That doesn't know its Name

And hasn't any tax to pay

And hasn't any Home

Is just as high as you and I,

And higher, I believe,

So soar away and never sigh

And that's the way to grieve~~~

Black Bird

Beck using the curved side of a dinner fork to get ultra-high notes to simulate the ambient chirping of birds sampled for the track:
"Round about spring, a blackbird sings loudly up on my roof," jeff said, and "Although I didn't record that bird, I got a tape of a blackbird and started jamming with him. If you listen, the notes the bird is singing are almost beyond human hearing, but the actual punctuation and tonal things are there. I aped the bird as close as I could, and we all had a good laugh with that one."
Album "YOU HAD IT COMING" (2003)

Still Alive! After my unscripted departure over 2 weeks ago to the Medical Center in Perigueux, I got to come home! Thanks to all of my friends who sent emails and concern and good wishes, I truly appreciate and value them. My nephew has a Buddhist monastery in Thailand chanting for me every day!  I really have a new respect for the French Health Care System. All of the staff was professional and really caring. I have not paid a centime and I'm even getting some of the money I spent on having a TV reimbursed by my Mutual. It's not over for me by a long shot...life takes some very unexpected turns but I am confident that I am getting the very best treatment available. but now a nurse comes to my home a few days a week. I won't go into the nature of my problems here but it takes a lot to bring me down and I'm far from down! I posted one week's menu from the hospital. The food was actually pretty good! I'll be writing more about our Health Care System in the near future. I haven't really been out of a bed for 2 weeks. I'm still pretty weak and tired but I can walk again! I wanted to let all of my friends and blog readers know that I'm back on line and happy just to be alive!

Street Artist Installs a Giant-Sized Oscar Statuette Snorting Cocaine Near the Oscars Venue

Wednesday, Wednesday....

I cannot wait to see more of this stuff....I was always a Charles Addams fan.

And where have I been?

Well, I have been carping about not feeling well for too long. I visited my local doctor  and had some tests done and seemed to be feeling lousier and lousier. I dragged myself into the Hautefort Medical Center today and my doctor said I was going into the Hospital in Perigueux tomorrow morning or else! So tomorrow at 8:30 a medical taxi is collecting me, Hopefully, I will be able to use a laptop to hook into their Hospitals WIFI system so I can do live blogging on the French Medical System in action. Can you believe, so far, I have not had to lay out a centime. The taxi is free and since I do have a mutual health policy, I get a private room. I promise to charm all the nurses. I feel pretty positive about this. I feel bad that my wife will be stuck with our demonic little cute puppy doggie, Romeo. Luckily we have very close network of good friends who will go above and beyond with help and support. I seem to have a tumor developing on my liver and it is causing all kinds of problems. Now we will take care of it and hopefully I'll be back in action on a few weeks!

The Middle East That Might Have Been

In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson dispatched a theologian named Henry King and a plumbing-parts magnate named Charles Crane to sort out the Middle East. Amid the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, the region’s political future was uncertain, and the two men seemed to provide the necessary combination of business acumen and biblical knowledge. King and Crane’s quest was to find out how the region’s residents wanted to be governed. It would be a major test of Wilson’s belief in national self-determination: the idea that every people should get its own state with clearly defined borders.

You don't have to buy the book or see the movie. Here, just for you, 50 Shades of Grey and now,

 I'm working on the sequel, 50 Shades of Beige....

Valentines Day

Happy Valentines Day, Y'all!

Samuel Cody

I was thinking of one of my long time heroes, Samuel Franklin Cody, today. He was a Wild West Show entrepreneur, actually and old friend of Buffalo Bill Cody and they were friendly rivals in later years. Sam went to Europe and became a successful showman there, but he had another passion. He invented and designed kites. He incorporated his Bat winged box kites into his shows and kept refining the designs. I've written in this blog quite a bit about him over the years. He offered his kites to the British Admiralty and was a commissioned officer. He is considered the father of the British Air Force. I ran across this video of him today from perhaps 1910? It isn't dated, but he did build the first aeroplane in Britain and held the sustained flight record for a few years. He built flying motorised kite boats and crossed the English Channel. All in all,  Sam Cody is a man who deserves a bigger place in history than he is given. One of the great innovators of aviation and a real showman to boot!

Curtis

Curtis Mayfield, live on stage at Montreux, 1987
If There's A Hell Below, We're All Going To Go

A Day Called X

Your retro Cold War Paranoia fix for a freezing Friday night! 

A 1957 CBS docudrama narrated by Paul Ford about the evacuation of Portland, Oregon in advance of an H Bomb attack. What makes this all the more fascinating is this is 1957 Portland and except for Ford's narration, all of the actors are actual Portland citizens. 

Death By Disco!

Why Does Shit Float?

Why do the ISIS militants dress their hostages in Orange Guantanamo Jump suits? Why did FOX choose to show the ISIS video of the execution by public burning of the Jordanian pilot on their website?  Why does almost very other civilised and responsible media outlet on the planet refrain from spreading these images? In FOX's case,  is it the sheer depraved need to use these images for propaganda purposes, to incite reactions and fuel hatred or simply the the utter irresponsible greed of ratings hype? Which trumps what?

Which ever reason, ISIS learned the value of media exploitation a long time ago. They use social media and carefully choose the images they decide to release to the world knowing full well where they will end up and the panic they will create.

In the video from the NY Times I have embedded here, musing from their lofty aerie, high atop the NY Times Bldg on Times Square, they dare to ask the question,  regarding the measles vaccine controversy, "how did we get to a point where personal beliefs can triumph over science?"

Well goddamn, New York Times, I don’t know. Maybe something about a decade and a half of “it would be irresponsible not to speculate” and “both sides do it” and “if everybody’s mad at us we’re doing something right” and “hey, we don’t tell you the truth, we tell you what six competing people each say is the truth, individually, despite that one of those people is having paranoid delusions, and one of them can’t find a sentence with a torch and a posse. and one of them thinks vaccines not only cause autism but also that Jonas Salk faked the moon landing, and one of them is a pet therapist, and one of them has a degree from the American College of Sexologists and only plays a doctor on the radio, and the last person runs the fucking CDC, but hey, who are we to judge?”

We have spent the past 20 years at least pretending that the most anti-science, anti-progress, anti-goddamn-reality people in the world have a right to have their absurd bullshit repeated without challenge or inquiry. We have put these people in Congress, in positions of immense influence in media, with the ability to make pronouncements that are repeated ad nauseum at volumes unthinkable to, say, anti-war protesters or those who want to raise the minimum wage. We have told ourselves this is not only necessary, to listen to people like this, but it is unavoidable. This is just the way the world works now, we have said, so that we do not have to take any responsibility at all for the institutions we run.

As far as I am concerned, most mainstream media has contributed to the deliberate dumbing down of America. Profits and the desire to save their obsolete asses has enabled even the most once noble media outlets to pander to who ever will help them meet their profit targets to keep their erudite nostrils above the water. If you are plugged into the internet, you realise that most media is a few bubbles off center and and a few beats behind reality. I won't even look at or use CNN as an information source. They censor and filter the news you see and hear and try to tell you what to think with out offending the craziest of their audience, because they know the crazies are the most profitable! If you want facts, do your own research...if you want to know what the crazies are really thinking, check out Alex Jones once in a while... 

Oops, I Did It Again...

Max Raabe und Palast Orchester

By The Way, I Peed In Your Soup......

History repeats itself. Anti-vac editorial comic from the 1940s.

It appears that we are viewing the rebirth of The Measles Liberation Front. Chris Chrisie is in England trying to establish his International Goombah Creds and in his first Press Conference had to cut it short because of the controversy regarding his non commitment in regards to measle vaccinations. He refused to answer questions and cancelled his interviews, attempting to deal with the British Press the same thug like way he tries to control the American Press. Didn't work. Head to walk back the comments he made in the USA 2 days earlier. 

This is only another glaring example of how politicians, like Rand Paul are pandering to the Bad and Fad Hysterical anti Science radicals of the libertarians and the Tea Party Movement and destroying America in the process. Paul is particularly dangerous because he presents himself as a "doctor". He is not a board certified doctor. He is a self certified doctor and tries to present himself as a medical expert to his deluded followers. I guess he is another graduate of the Ayn Rand School of Medicine.

For the record, his heroine, Madam Rand, died addicted to methedrine, and in spite of the bullshit she spewed, she was accepting and both Social Security and Medicaid.

We all know that there have been some problems with vaccinations over the last 200 years, but we have eradicated smallpox and measles and mumps which were serious childhood diseases were for all purposes, are a problem of the past. The latest to weigh in on the measles vaccination controversy was the serial drooler, Pat Robertson on the 700 Club, waxing nostalgic for the good old days when kids got sick, either died or got better and then came down with shingles when they lived long enough to become as senile as he is.

Again, his evidence is based on shaky anecdotal "I knew the mother of a friend" type of hearsay non reasoning.

I guess this is all about protecting our Freedoms! Right?

Okay, I hope you’re not eating while you read this. Seriously. 

North Carolina Republican Senator (you’re cringing already, aren’t you) Thom Tillis has decided that requiring restaurant employees wash their hands after going to the bathroom is an infringement on … FREEDOM! 

Tillis was discussing this idea with a friend, who seemed, I am fairly certain, a little taken back. 

Tillis said his interlocutor was in disbelief, and asked whether he thought businesses should be allowed to “opt out” of requiring employees to wash their hands after using the restroom. 

The senator said he’d be fine with it, so long as businesses made this clear in “advertising” and “employment literature.” 

And it would say something like, “Come to Starbucks, where we guarantee a little pee in your coffee.” 

Okay, so how is requiring the business to have their employees wash their hands any different than requiring the business to post a sign or advertise if they don’t? Unless, of course you quietly eliminate the advertising stipulation when no one is looking. 

Republicans: Guaranteeing the freedom to pee in someone’s soup! 

Joyeux Anniversaire, Monsieur Crumb!

Robert Crumb is 70 years old today and here is a little music he released with his buddies, Les Primitifs du Futur, here in France back in the mid 90's!

More Mark Mothersbaugh, Even

I have been an admirer of Mark Mothersbaugh since the 1970's when DEVO first appeared in Kent, Ohio. Mark was a pioneering art student at Kent State and musician. DEVO mixed humor, surreal conceptual social commentary with a naive, what ever it takes approach to music that still stands alone to this day. Mark recently has had a few gallery shows of his art work and a custom art book has been released called, MYOPIA. Mark went on to score music for television and many movies. The text for the book, Myopia, was written by Wes Anderson, who has worked with Mark on a few of his films. DEVO has gotten back together a few times in the last few years, but his friend and co founder, Jerry Casales died earlier this year.

I ran across this very recent video today of Mark talking about his approach to electronic music and his fascination with old analogue synths. He talks about his relationship with Robert Moog and how Bob Moog gave him his own personal early Mini Moog prototype back in the early 70's. I had a friend in Toledo who was an early synth freak who purchased the very first production Mini Moog from Moog Studios in Ithaca, NY in 1972. I went with him on a camping trip to Upstate NY to pick it up and met Bob Moog. 

I'm not writing a lot today because I am still pretty ill. I have a doctors appointment tomorrow afternoon. I'm walking on the edge of pneumonia and feel like crap. This was the most incredible bout of the flu I have ever experienced. I almost felt okay yesterday, but today seems to have been a relapse. OY VEY..... even my symptoms have symptoms!

Are you a jihadist?

Not Sure?

The French Government just published this handy chart to help.

Mystic Eyes

Buh-Byeee!
Does this mean it's Clinton/Bush in 2016?
cheezofrikin pizza.....

Der morgige Tag ist mein

From the 1972 film version of Cabaret.

Don't Drool On Me

After the fall out from the last few public appearances by Sarah Palin, most notably her debacle last weekend at the Iowa Freedom Summit, many of her former very best friends are desperately trying to wash the taint off of their hands. Palin is running out of options to make money stay in the public’s eye and she’s nothing if not an attention whore. But she’s 50 years old and her looks are starting to fade. That might sound sexist but there’s no way around it: Palin’s looks have been a vital component of her success. Americans are kind of shallow but American conservatives are really really shallow. Or did you think it was a coincidence that all the women at Fox News are pretty blondes in tight skirts?
The future is not looking too bright for Sister Sarah and her clan (other than the millions they’ve already banked). Personally, I hope she sticks around for another decade or two. She really is the embodiment of the American right wing: Shallow, proudly ignorant, intellectually lazy, tasteless, narcissistic, phony beyond belief and just plain annoying.

Even her trolling of the left is starting to get stale. The Tea Party has degenerated so far into lunacy, it’s incredibly hard to stand out as exceptionally crazy. Palin’s just not smart enough to generate any real outrage with any kind of consistency. Even Ann Coulter’s star is fading because of this and, love her or hate her, Coulter is way smarter than Palin.
I can’t think of a better spokesperson for conservatism.

So in the interest of keeping Sarah viable and useful to a politically progressive America, I would like to offer a few career options that just might revitalize her prospects!

1.Plastic surgery: If (at least) 50% of your appeal is a pretty face, going under the knife is your best bet. It worked for the Kardashians, right?
2.Degrading Reality TV: No one cares about the Palins talking about America or dancing on TV. But sooner or later, the Palins (already a white trash family) are going to figure out that people will pay money to watch them makes asses of themselves. It worked for the Kardashians, right?
3.A “leaked” sex tape: It’s a toss up if it will be Sarah or Bristol. It worked…ehhhh…you get the idea.
4.More “Victimhood”: Screaming about how everyone is out to get them will curry sympathy with the terminally stupid for a little while longer.
5.Country Music (God help us all): In a world where “18 Wheels and a Dozen Roses” is a hit song, anyone can sell an album to southern rednecks with no taste in music. But then again, I think I might prefer the sex tape.

Les Reels

A preview of the upcoming Chapitre V recording to be released in March. 

Totally accomplished traditional Correzien musicians who have their roots in the past and their imaginations in the future! 

The Storm Of The Century

One night crawling around my Avenue B apartment stoned and looking at all the different textures, I heard a gasping laughter. I froze, listening intently to the matted shag rug under the bed. Eventually, I realized it was my demented roommate Johnny Bubble in the living room. He was hooting and hollering. I found him on the sofa pounding his fist into his thigh, breathless from laughing so hard. Finally he pointed at the TV.
“Ahhh! The evil weather man!” was all he could say.
I sat down and looked. He was right. The weather man was cartoonishly evil. We stared transfixed for hours. We watched while burning our mouths on TV dinners of Salisbury steak and apple cobbler. We smoked Lucky Strikes and drank cold cans of 16 oz Rolling Rocks all with eyes glued.

Transfixed.

He was sooo fucking evil, yet no one seemed to notice over their own ridiculous fake cheer. But it was so obvious, his gleaming hatred of everything.
After a while we stopped laughing. It was beautiful, like an opera where he sang of his lust of wind and barometric pressure. “The storm of the Century,” he sang into the camera. Into our eyes and ears. Hypnotizing us to believe this was the pinnacle of evolution, crashing into our destiny. That we were here to witness it, this bright gift of the moment. A billion years of stardust fucking, coming down to this one blessed pinnacle of devouring destruction. All coming down to this. “The storm of the century,” we whispered to each other, long after the power went out. Long after we lost all hope of survival.

I Think My Appetite Is Coming Back...

After 3 days of the epic influenza....2 days spent in bed, one day against all common sense on horrific journey to Bordeaux to take my wife to see a specialist who is going to do a stem cell cornea transplant in her eye when a donor is available...Horrific? I had to get up at 6, my brilliant plan was to take the train and then a taxi to the university hospital so we could be there for the 11:15 appointment. We got off the train, only to be confronted by a massive taxi strike blocking the station and the mass transit! I somehow figured out how to find the bus that would take us to the hospital which was a massive complex, a maze of buildings with no indication of where we were to go. I have to thank all the very nice helpful people we met in Bordeaux who gave us instantly good direction. We got to the Opthalmology clinic on exactly on time, but we didn't get out until almost 5:30!

By that time, we had missed the return train I had counted on....and we got back to the station with only minutes to spare to catch the train to Perigueux that would connect with the last train to our little station, Condat le Lardin, where I had left the car. We didn't get home until 9:30 pm...Luckily, the dog didn't destroy the house. I didn't pull a Ratso Rizzo and die on the train. I thought that the entire experience would set my recovery back...but I woke up this morning feeling almost okay.  I actually have aching bruises on my ribs from coughing so much! 

Then my appetite began to come back and this video made my stomach rumble....

Monochromatic Regressive Therapy

In a previous life you were an entire forest. Selling life insurance in one of those big skyscrapers downtown. You could actually feel the thoughts alighting from your mind like so many birds. And you’d stop off at the bar after work on the way to the train. You’d down your first drink in blur and then maybe a second. You’d sniff and suckle the very air. Stale smoke, Murphy’s oil soap and some kinda of flower. Maybe it was perfume but it felt more delicate. Often some guy would start chatting you up about “Hey, where ya work?” or some wildly boring one liner. And you’d toss back your drink and roar blood all over the horizon.

French Lesson

A great song from 1958 by Serge Gainsbourg, Le Poinconneur de Lilas.

I was thinking of this song and I found this version with subtitles.

Once upon a time, when you entered the Metro, you had to have your ticket punched by a little man who did nothing but put holes in tickets all day long, every day.

One day he put a hole in his head.

The Apology

The FOX NEWS ACTION BOYS, John and Mikey attempt to personally apologise to the people of Paris. John and Mikey appear at the 1:33 point in the video, but the entire segment is worth watching. Eric Metzger and Quentin Margot are writers for Le Petit Journal and they are hilarious.  Tonight they presented their second instalment of their new smash sit com, Notre Belle Famille, The LePen clan at home, hanging out. 

SOTU SIMPLIFIED 4 U

The Grand Petulance

Ted Cruz, a sad sack, sorry tea bag licking mother fucker.
I hate to even go there, but what kind of abuse did he endure as a child to to get his face like that?

He posted this response to the SOTU last night but his staff even told him to make it go away ASAP!

They frantically tried to wipe it off of YouTube.

Too late, loser boy!

Magret de Canard Seche

It is that time of the year again!  All the markets are having sales on duck. I stock up on confit de canard, clarified duck fat, duck legs and thighs and one of my very favorite things, magret de canard. Those are big duck breasts. The ducks raised here are barbary ducks, the size of geese, so each duck has two nice sized magrets. The meat is red with a layer of fat. I love to barbecue them on the grill, but in the winter, they can be cooked in a hot skillet. You have to score the fat side. I've extolled the virtues of duck fat many times on this blog. It is not like chicken fat, Ducks and geese are aquatic and the fat is actually healthy, an omega 3 fat. It is traditionally used in place of other fats in cooking here and has been found to be part of the "French Paradox".  It acts like fish oil and has been cited as part of the reason this part of France has one of the lowest rates of heart disease in the world.

A very traditional way of preserving magret is dry curing it. The result is very much like dry cured ham...In fact, this technique is a part of Spanish Seraphic Jewish cuisine. They developed it because it is so much like the traditional Jambons de Bayonne or Serrano. 

So, I made one 3 weeks ago and started 2 more today. It's very simple as the video I posted above demonstrates. I trim the breast neatly, then cover it with gros sel...I think the equivalent in the USA is Kosher salt. I have reused the salt a few times. I put it in a non reactive dish and cover it with plastic wrap and let it sit for 24 hours in the fridge. Then take it out, wipe off the salt and grind fresh black pepper over the duck breast and push it into the surface. Be liberal with the pepper. I carefully wrap the breast in a clean towel. I have a plastic box with air vents which I put the towel wrapped breast in to keep it dry, then put it in the fridge and let it sit for at least 2 weeks while it dries. The one I unwrapped today was in the fridge for 3 weeks and it was perfect. It really is like prosciutto when you slice it thin. You could also use thyme and paprika when you put the pepper on as well, but I like to keep it simple.

One more winter thing I like. I haven't had a lot of time to write lately because of my wife's ongoing eye problem...tomorrow I am taking here to Bordeaux on the train to see a specialist who is going to do a cell transplant if it is possible. We have to get on the train from our little station in Condat-le Lardin and then go to the big city. I'd rather take the train to Bordeaux than drive, just because of the logistics and parking and the train is actually faster than the autoroute It's a simple 15 minute bus trip to the clinic from the station. Maybe the doctor will have good news for us. She is almost totally blind in one eye and it could very well be reversible.
Here's a picture of my magret I unwrapped today!

Because stereotypes exist only in your mind.

Meliani Siti Sumartini is an incredible 15 year old Indonesian Thrash Metal guitarist.

She demonstrates her chops here with Hourglass by Lamb of God.

Thrash Metal is pretty popular in Indonesia . The President of Indonesia,  Jobo Widodo is a self proclaimed Metallica Fanboy.

Toledo Terminal Bridge

I ran across this video this evening. I operated this bridge in the mid 1970's for almost 4 years from 11pm to 7am. This is the first bridge on the river at the mouth of the river on Maumee Bay. This bridge was built in 1917 and is still powered by the original DC motor and turns on a bearing the size of Volkswagen. There is a an emergency electrical generator powered by a Bucyrus Erie diesel engine that is bigger than the room I m in now. Once a month, to the utter annoyance of everyone in North Toledo, I would have to fire up the engine to make sure it was running properly. When I did that, usually about 3am in the morning, you could hear it all the way to the Michigan/Ohio State line! I also had to change the signal light bulbs. The Coast Guard delighted in calling me at 4am in the freezing rain and fog to let me know when a light was out.  I worked up in the little house you see in the bridgeworks when the train gets to the middle of the bridge. The train is heading north from East Toledo to Point Place. Once I was stuck out there for 3 days when a blizzard hit. I would get off of work, go have breakfast and then go to school at The University of Toledo. Funny, though this video brought back many memories, I don't really remember ever sleeping during that period...I must have.

One day, I quit and moved to New York to become a punk rock musician. I didn't get very much sleep then, either.

And while I'm forcing you all to be French, lately...

Did you ever see the great French animated film, The Triplets of Belleville?

C'est Genial, oui?

SHUT THE FOX UP!

Fox News et les No Go Zones à Paris-Eric et... by oliu1977
Watch This! It's hilarious!

Upping Zee Ante....

Ken apologized, well, sort of, kind of...not really, but his fee fees are really hurted:

To the people of France
by Nolan Peterson on January 23, 2015 08:30 PM19 Comment 10,790 Views
To the people of France,
I've been eviscerated in your media and online for my interviews last weekend with Fox News.
I’ve been called terrible things and sent death threats. It's not much fun to see your name dragged through the mud or to receive hundreds of hate emails. Especially in a country that you used to call home.
I lived in Paris for two years, from 2004 to 2006, and I think it is the greatest city in the world.
In 2005 I witnessed some very serious riots there, and what I said in my interviews were personal observations from that tumultuous time.
Unfortunately there was a map that accompanied my interviews, which implied the areas I was describing were in neighborhoods like Montmartre. That is, of course, ridiculous. I didn't make the map, had nothing to do with it, and didn't know it was on the screen with me. Nevertheless, it was connected with me and my name, and so I take responsibility for it and apologize for its inaccuracy.
I have been ridiculed and taken out of context in the past few days because Fox News draws the ire of a lot of media outlets. But I was asked to share experiences from my time in France, and that's what I did, truthfully. And I feel fortunate to have been given that opportunity.
I was in France in 2005 when, in response to the accidental deaths of two boys in the Paris suburb Clichy-sous-Bois, hundreds of schools were torched nationwide, about 9,000 cars were set on fire, thousands of rioters were injured and arrested, and President Jacques Chirac put the country under a state of emergency for months. In the end, the riots caused about 200 million euros in damage.
My comparisons to Iraq and Afghanistan were in reference to what I saw during the 2005 riots. I was in Paris for that difficult time and I visited the affected areas and saw the fires and other troubling things firsthand. You may not agree with me, but I stand behind what I said I witnessed in 2005.
I also stand by my claims that France's immigrant population needs to be better integrated, and that there are sections of Paris that are isolated from the whole.
If I ever have the opportunity, I would love to visit Paris again to see how those areas have changed from the way I experienced them in November 2005. I'm sure it would make me proud and hopeful for France.
Again, I did not make this distinction clear. That's my responsibility and I apologize.
For those who reached out to me in a kind and respectful way, I thank you for that. Your sophistication and grace in disagreeing with me reveals that at the end of the day we have much more in common than otherwise.
It also proves that, unlike the terrorist scum who attacked Charlie Hebdo last week, we can disagree with each other and still be respectful as human beings.
I understand that France is in mourning and this is a popular story. Yet, I was being truthful in my recollections. In the context of the time I was in Paris, and remembering what some sections of Paris looked like during the 2005 riots, I believe my observations and opinions are not absurd as they have been characterized to be.
Again, I take responsibility for whatever was televised in connection with my name that caused offense to the French people and if any of my observations or comments caused additional grief.
My years in Paris were some of the best of my life, and I served alongside the French military in Afghanistan with pride. If you believe my intentions are sincere, then hopefully your country can go back to discussing something more important than the recollections of a foreign journalist—healing.

If you would like to email comments, you can do so to Nolan@blueforcetracker.com.
I’ll respond to the best of my ability.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Respectfully,
Nolan Peterson

If you watched the video of Nolan and compared what actually was in the video to his lame response in this pathetic attempt of pull off some kind of PR Band Aid, you might kindly say that he is bald face liar. Nolan is a paid tool of the FOX Propaganda Machine. He is following orders from above. The motive is to spread as much disinformation and paranoiac anti immigration manipulation as possible to assist in the Republican Congress putsch to destroy the Obama Administration Immigration Reforms. But this is far from over. STAY TUNED, BOYS AND GIRLS! This is going to turn into one of the most uncomfortable episodes that FOX has ever experienced! More on this tomorrow!

Barbie And Ken Explain France For You

Fox News et les zones interdites en France-Le... by oliu1977

Another major FOX FAIL! But then again the mutants who have had their brains implanted with the alien Murdoch Bizarro Dimension dna, don't know, don't care and couldn't be bothered with with reality.  If the dimensional walls between the FOX BIZARRO WORLD and this world hadn't al ready been breached, Ken would be looking for a new job today. This was even more bizarre than the FOX claims about Birmingham ,England! Yann Barthes explains it all for you. It's in French, but I'm sure that what ever language you speak,  Barthes makes his point! Mr. T could say ti much simpler in English, "I PITY THE FOOL!"  There should be a study that compares heroin addiction to the paranoia fix FOX delivers to the mentally disabled every day. But, then again, these days, I tend to go with the dimensional warp between our universe and the FOX BIZARRO UNIVERSE!

Meanwhile, in the bizarro fox alternative reality, Sean Hannity ups the idiocy by inviting Nigel Farage, the leader of the extreme right UKIP Party in Britain to further hallucinate this alternative reality.
Really, there are no "NO GO ZONES" in French cities. This is a total nitro methane hate fueled racist right wing paranoid nightmare being used to manipulate the infected zombie fox brain dead viewers.

As a favor to me, please drop a line to Irena Briganti, Fox PR spokesperson and ask here whose flabby flaccid asshole she pulled these lies out of.
That's: irena.briganti@foxnews.com

City of Motors

Why don't we give more support to the Kurds? 

Our Bastion Of Hypocricy In The Middle East

Even as Netanyahu joined world leaders in Paris to march in solidarity against the massacre of the staff of Charlie Hebdo, this cartoon by Noa Olchowski published by Haaretz has made him and the staff of Haaretz the target of some pretty disgusting death threats.
Here's a translation:

"10 journalists killed in attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris (top), about 13 journalists killed last summer in attack on Gaza (bottom)"

A raft of death threats came in. “We must do what the terrorists did to them in France, but at Haaretz,” wrote Facebook user Chai Aloni. “Why is there no terror attack at Haaretz?” wrote Moni Ponte.

“Let the terrorists eliminate them,” wrote Daniella Peretz. “With God’s help, the journalists at Haaretz will be murdered just like in France,” wrote Miki Dahan. As Danit Hajaj put it, “They should die.”

“Haaretz is where the terrorists should have gone,” wrote Riki Michael. “Death to traitors,” added Moshe Mehager. “I hope that terrorism reaches Haaretz as well,” wrote Tuval Shalom. “With God’s help, [there will be] a Hamas operation that kills all of you, like the journalists in France,” wrote Ruti 

Hevroni.

Netanyahu came to Paris and demanded to be included in the march, in spite of being asked not to because of security reasons by Francois Hollande and (to quote today's issue of Haaretz), "Just as you can sometimes identify Israeli tourists abroad by their loud voices, poor manners and gauche behavior, none of the hundreds of millions of people around the world who watched Sunday's Paris rally on television had any problem locating Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: smack in the middle of world leaders at the front of the marchers." 

Hollande’s anger at Netanyahu was evident during the ceremony held Sunday evening following the march at the Grand Synagogue in Paris, an event attended by hundreds of members of the local Jewish community. Hollande sat through most of the ceremony, but when Netanyahu’s turn at the podium arrived, the French president got up from his seat and made an early exit.
Hollande’s concerns about Netanyahu were well founded. The Israeli leader did seek to exploit the tragedy in a speech at the Grand Synagogue in Paris where he made the case for French Jews to leave the country for Israel. From The Jerusalem Post:

Netanyahu, careful not to overtly called for immediate immigration, said, “ I want to say to you what I say to all our Jewish brothers, that you have a full right to live secure and peaceful lives with equal rights wherever you desire, including here in France.”
Then he added, “these days we are blessed with another privilege, a privilege that didn’t exist for generations of Jews – the privilege to join their brothers and sisters in their historic homeland of Israel.”

This was the only "incident" that marred an otherwise peaceful, historic day, that managed to avoid politics. Uhhh, unless you noticed the little elbowing incident by another publicity whore, Ex President Nicolas Sarkozy and his  strangely camera shy wife Carla.......

but then again, Sarko has a long history of hogging photo ops!

Monty Python: Find the Fish [The Meaning of Life, 1983] 

-I wonder where that fish has gone.

-You did love it so. You looked after it like a son.

-And it went wherever I did go.

-Is it in the cupboard?

-Yes! Yes! No!…

-Wouldn’t you like to know? It was a lovely little fish.

-And it went wherever I did go.

-It’s behind the sofa!

-Where can that fish be?

-Have you thought of the drawers in the bureau?!

-Shh!

-It is a most elusive fish!

-And it went wherever I did go.

-Ooooh, fishy, fishy, fishy fish!

-A-fish, a-fish, a-fish, a-fishy, ooooh.

-Ooooh, fishy, fishy, fishy fish!

-That went wherever I did go.

-Look up his trunk!

-Yeah, it’s hidden in his trousers!

Art Tatum plays Chopin (Valse in C# Minor, Op. 64, No. 2)

Vladimir Horowitz once said that if Art Tatum ever took up classical music seriously, Horowitz would quit the next day. This incomplete piece was recorded on a cheap tape recorder at somebody's home, but the sheer inventiveness, mixing jazz and Chopin and the technique of Tatum clearly puts him in a class by himself.

Sacré Bleu! Robert Crumb Weighs In!

Our new family member, Romeo. He is a three month old mix of griffon and terrier who was found abandoned in a forest out side of Cognac with his brothers and sisters back in October. I drove up into the Haute Vienne, near Limoges to see him at the farm where he was being cared for. Heck, I was just going to interview him and make him fill out the application form for the position of dog, but in less than a half hour, I adopted him and he adopted me. Quite a rambunctious tyke!

Our Own Cowardice Is The Ultimate Villian!

I wrote a little bit about the Charlie Hebdo Massacre in Paris on Wednesday and the constant threat the staff lived under. They were some of the greatest political satirists and multi disciplined intellectuals writing in France. They were dangerous. DANGEROUS MINDS. Economists, Physicians, Psychiatrists, Cartoonists and Satirists that respected no one. That's why Charlie Hebdo existed. There is nothing like them in America. It is an ancient tradition here. That is what brought down the monarchy, fueled the Resistance and savagely attacked the right, left and everything in between. Their last issue had a cover which ridiculed the writer, Michel Houllebecq for his latest fiction best seller, Submission, which is a tale of a France in 2021 in which a Muslim is elected president.

This was the issue that was on the streets when the massacre was committed. An issue which ridiculed a writer whose latest work fueled the anti Muslim racism latent in French society. Many of the well known political figures publicly mourning and sancrosanctly making speeches about the death of freedom hated Charlie Hebdo because they were often targets of the blistering satire. 
Charlie Hebdo was great because they respected no one. All religions were a target. In my last post I linked to a post I did in 2011 that gave a history of the paper after the bombing of their office, but the real root of the enablers of this crime started their work back in 2006. It was the cowardice of many sundry politicians back in 2006 when Charlie Hebdo republished the "blasphemous"  Danish satirical islamic cartoon images.
French President Jacques Chirac described the move as a “provocation“.
[Germany's] Angela Merkel, hedging her bets, made a lame and half-hearted defense of freedom of speech which she implied had to be balanced against the need to show respect to Muslims: “We need to learn to show mutual respect for each others’ views and feelings as well as to develop our shared values.”
Jack Straw, [the U.K's] Foreign Secretary at the time, denounced newspapers that had shown some genuine solidarity in the cause of free speech by saying: “I believe the republication of these cartoons has been unnecessary, it has been insensitive, it has been disrespectful, and it has been wrong.”
A few years ago, when Charlie Hebdo was about to publish a cartoon cover featuring Mohammad being pushed along in a wheelchair by an Orthodox Jew, the French government asked the staff to stand down.
The French government … appealed to the editors not to go ahead with publication, and when they went ahead anyway it shut down embassies, cultural centres and schools in 20 countries out of fear of reprisals.
The UK website, The Commentator wrote yesterday:

Which part of this message are we expecting the Islamists not to get? … So called “radicalized” Muslims do not need to go to Syria to believe they have a right to kill people in the name of their religion, as we have seen with many other terror attacks in recent years. They believe they are attacking soft and weak targets in the West because all too often (just re-read those quotations above) we have shown that we have turned ourselves into soft and weak targets.

Twelve Parisians went to work yesterday morning, expecting it to be a normal day with coffee and camaraderie and laughter and deadlines. Those people are now dead for making jokes, their families uncomprehending and devastated, and much of the European continent is in tears, on edge, or both.
Meanwhile, Western media continue to literally obscure the facts

Even after today’s events, many Western broadcasters and publishers continue to pixilate or blur out the Charlie Hebdo images — not the images of slaughter in Paris streets, but mere cartoon images of men in Middle Eastern garb.What do you want to bet that from now on, consistently and with an actual spine, politicians and civic leaders and media barons will call Islamist terrorism by its name? Or that they will defend – truly stand tall for – the right of all citizens to say, write, draw, and publish any religious joke at all? What is totally predictable is the way that authoritarian fascists on both sides will try to use this incident as a manipulative way to control you and strip you of your freedom of expression with their paranoid rants. 

Fundamental Islamists, Jews and so called Christians are a cancer. We do not owe them politeness and respect and sensitivity, just as we owe none of those things to any malignant cells in our own bodies. Summoning courage and ruthlessness and precision, we cut them out and survive… or we let them fester, with fatal consequences.

What we do owe, aside from a debt of lifelong gratitude to Charlie Hebdo and its horrifically decimated staff, is the determination to never let the magazine’s spirit of playful insolence be silenced by assholes with guns and bombs.

A few profound remarks from South Park on violence and censorship.

Honestly, I try to like winter, but sometimes I need a little HELP!

Charlie Hebdo Lives!

This is the cover of todays Charlie Hebdo as drawn buy the editor and artist Charb. It always comes out on Wednesdays, so it was on the stands when the artist and most of the staff, assembled for an editorial meeting were brutally assassinated this morning in their Parisian office.

Charb knew he was living under the threat of death for many years. Several calls to murder were launched after the publication of the Mohammed cartoons in the pages of the satirical weekly.

"I have no kids, no wife, no car, no credit. That may be a bit pompous what I say, but I'd rather die standing than live on your knees," he said in 2012 .

To threats, he always responded with humor. Charlie Hebdo is a long running political and social satire newspaper that prides itself being equally brutal to the right and the left. This is heroic satire and these brave people died doing what they loved. 

Jeffrey Linn of the blog Spatialities has mapped what New York City would look like under an additional 100 feet of ocean. The Jersey side has turned into an island, while only small parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx remain above water.
The map draws on a U.S. Geological Survey data that estimates that complete melting of the current global land ice mass could raise sea level by up to 80 meters, about 262 feet. This won’t happen overnight: In fact some scientists believe this kind of melting could take 1,000 to 10,000 years. Still, some day in the future Brooklyn Heights could become the Brooklyn Depths.

New York under 100 feet of water (larger)

Dreaming of Summer

Fatwah From The Desk of Grand Ayahtollah Rupert

From the throne of The Grand Ayatollah Rupert Murdoch

Message to all my FOX Faithful!

Who the fuck does this bean eating wet back, wannabee pope, Franky think he is?

The Fucking Pope?

He's just an ex disco bar bouncer freak of some kind wearing white robes --  and has challenged our Republican leaders. He thinks he's flexing his muscles internationally and increasingly driving a wedge between conservatives and the Catholic Church, even as he rants on about climate change and income inequality.

Who does this wanker think he is? I mean, pissing off Republicans like that?

Real Popes are supposed be Republicans and do what I say! Am I right?
Now, here's a neat idea to boost those sagging ratings:

I think it's time to start a good old fashioned