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A sweet Dutch wall calendar (out of date)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!