Last Exit

I stumbled upon this video by one of the most brilliant versions of Bill Lazwells experimental jazz ensemble, Last Exit by accident.

I was looking for something by the Drummer/Composer, Ronald Shannon Jackson, who has led The Decoding Society for 30 years now. I was friends with Mr. Jackson back in the late 70's and early 80's and was the Decoding Society's mover with my trusty Toyota pickup truck.

So, Ronald Shannon Jackson is the drummer in this piece. Bill Laswell is one of the great synthesysts of modern music. His bands, like Material and Last Exit have brought together musicians from different ends of the realm of music. The metal gutarist, Buckethead and primal James Brown/Funkadelic Bassist Bootsy Collins (my personal hero, role and style model) formed a lasting unlikely partnership through the influence of Mr. Laswell,

This version of Last Exit has Sonny Sharrock playing guitar and I will freely admit that I consider Mr. Sharrock was one of the most distinctive and creative guitarists in jazz. I find that people either love Sharrock or find him unlistenable. It's true that his playing could encompass extreme idyllic beauty and sheer abject existential terror within a single phrase.

This was recorded live in Bochum, Germany in 1988. Free Jazz is an endangered specie!

Stardate 10.16.2009

Captains Log, Stardate 10.16.2009....

The last position of the Starship Enterprise was a few degrees from the center of the Velcro IV Galaxy as we entered the outer planetary system of Vegas 9 and were proceeding on our mission to investigate whether intelligent life still existed on the inner planets, Hollywood and Trumpworld when the enterprise was caught in a bizarre space/time continuum. Some sort of inexplicable force has us repeating the same manoever over and over again and the computer screens look like the primitive early computer game, QuadraPong.

The ship seems to be in cloak mode and we are being forced over and over again to the same location above the Planet Earth and the computer keeps insisting that we are now in the 21st Century. Some force is bringing the Enterprise back to the same location over the continent of Europe, more exactly, over a place which was once the primitive country of Switzerland.

Scotty seems most affected as his accent has become more primitive, braying things like, "Aye Cap'n, the wee cunt's fahring air disrupter farce ay the same place, over en over! Ay dinnae touch a cunt hair on the panel."

Then we seem transported back to the same location in our time, near the Vegas system ...only to have the same mad thing happen over and over again!

The crew is getting a little crazy and Scotty wants to pick up a haggis the next time it happens."

More than a year after an explosion of sparks, soot and frigid helium shut it down, the world’s biggest and most expensive physics experiment, known as the Large Hadron Collider, is poised to start up again. In December, if all goes well, protons will start smashing together in an underground racetrack outside Geneva in a search for forces and particles that reigned during the first trillionth of a second of the Big Bang.

Then it will be time to test one of the most bizarre and revolutionary theories in science. I’m not talking about extra dimensions of space-time, dark matter or even black holes that eat the Earth. No, I’m talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, put this idea forward in a series of papers with titles like “Test of Effect From Future in Large Hadron Collider: a Proposal” and “Search for Future Influence From LHC,” posted on the physics Web site arXiv.org in the last year and a half.

According to the so-called Standard Model that rules almost all physics, the Higgs is responsible for imbuing other elementary particles with mass.

“It must be our prediction that all Higgs producing machines shall have bad luck,” Dr. Nielsen said in an e-mail message. In an unpublished essay, Dr. Nielson said of the theory, “Well, one could even almost say that we have a model for God.” It is their guess, he went on, “that He rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them.”

This malign influence from the future, they argue, could explain why the United States Superconducting Supercollider, also designed to find the Higgs, was canceled in 1993 after billions of dollars had already been spent, an event so unlikely that Dr. Nielsen calls it an “anti-miracle.”

Captains Log, Stardate 10.17.2009.........................................

Kill The Wabbit!

On MSNBC this afternoon, Andrea Mitchell asked Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) about a MoveOn-organized protest outside his Salt Lake City office, where protesters criticized Hatch for allegedly being beholden to the insurance industry because it donated a lot of money to his past campaigns.

"I'm supported by people all over the health care system," Hatch said, "including doctors, including hospitals, including insurers, including liberal people, conservative people and moderate people. Everybody knows how much money you have to raise to run for the Senate."

Then Hatch turned his fury to MoveOn and George Soros.

"MoveOn.org is a scurrilous organization," he said. "It's funded by George Soros. He's about as left wing as you can find in this country. And they're up to just one thing, and that is to smear good people. And frankly, they're not gonna smear me without getting kicked in the teeth by me."

So...Hatch says he gets donations from all sorts of people -- "including liberal people" -- but as for that supposed left-winger George Soros and that "scurrilous" liberal group MoveOn.org -- they've got a kick in the teeth coming.

A few of the blatant inaccuracies in Hatch's claims about MoveOn.org and George Soros: "MoveOn is a PAC funded by small donors - including it's almost 23,000 members in Utah. It is not funded by Soros. It is a completely false right-wing talking point. Soros gave a one time contribution in 2004. MoveOn does not accept any donations over $5,000, and the average donation to MoveOn.org Political Action is under $100."

Here's a statement from MoveOn:

Local Utah MoveOn members went to Orrin Hatch's office to question whether his opposition to health care reform is tied to the $900,000 he took from insurance interests, and what did he do? Go on national TV and threaten to kick them in the teeth. Apparently, this was easier than defending his ties to the insurance companies who have a stranglehold on our healthcare system. The people of Utah, including 23,000 Utah MoveOn members, deserve better. Hopefully, whoever Sen. Hatch kicks in the teeth is independently wealthy, in case their claim is denied by one of the insurance companies who've been funding his campaigns.

What's Hatch going to kick MoveOn in the teeth with? His highly polished rich Corinthian leather wing tips? He's beginning to sound like Elmer Fudd to me!

The Spawning

There have been indications that Rush Limbaugh is growing jealous of Glenn Beck’s success. Limbaugh recently suggested to Politico that Beck’s promotion of the 9/12 march was “cheap and disingenuous.” In the second part of her interview with Limbaugh, NBC’s Jamie Gangel asked the hate radio host what he thinks of Glenn Beck. Limbaugh responded somewhat defensively:

GANGEL: Glenn Beck — do you worry about the new guy on the block?
RUSH LIMBAUGH: No. Look, in 1988, I’m the only national conservative voice. Now look at conservative media. Look what I have spawned. Glenn Beck to me is right on daddy-o. Glenn Beck is a result of my success.

Limbaugh’s attempt to take proud procreative ownership of Beck sickened MSNBC’s Donny Deutsch yesterday morning. “What a megalomanic,” Deutsch said of Rush. “What a scary, distasteful human being he is.” Emphasizing that Beck and Limbaugh are in the business of “selling hate,” Deutsch observed, “Think about what I’ve spawned? Think about someone who even says that. Ick. Ick. Ick.”

Yeah, Donny, distasteful, but strangely, ummm....fascinating. Just think of all the bucks we could have made if we had the actual video! C'mon, you'd pay to see that!

Paint Your Toes With Bulls Blood?

I seem to have drawn the attention and ire of a lifelong student engaged in interpreting biblical verse. Not many people actually have read the bible, but they rely on people who claim to have actually read it to "interpret" what is written.

Now there is a conservative christian group who claims they are re editing the bible to fix the parts which might encourage "liberal" tendencies.

I find it disturbing that this collection of myths, slanted history, misunderstood physical and psychological phenomena which confused humans compiled in an attempt to impose order on a universe beyond their understanding is still taken so seriously.

I might find it funny, but the results have crippled the intellectual evolution of our specie.

This video brings up just a few verses which seem to have no bearing on any healthy reality imaginable. Why would a supreme being want the fat around bull kidneys?

Just asking.....

33,333

In a few moments, the blog counter will hit 33,333...what that actually represents is rather nebulous, but after 3 yeas of thebrainpolice, I think I have to celebrate.

So here is Django Reinhardt and his Hot Band back in 1936 performiong a little song named Nagasaki. Reinhardt was one of the greatest jazz guitar players of all time, still able to drop jaws with his amazingly light facile brilliant improvisation.

He is still influencing players today who can only dream of playing as brilliantly as this three fingered gypsy genius.

Of course the Hot Band was all the more hotter with Stephan Grapelli, the violinist who stremlined the sound and complimented Djangos genius with his own!

Paris was a hot bed of Jazz with clubs springing up in every basement cubbyhole available in the 1930's. The Artist, Poet and Writer, Jean Cocteau was a more than passable jazz drummer. The writer Georges Simenon was seduced by Josephine Baker. Much of this action occurred in the little Boit de Nuit, Le Hot Club, where Reinhart and Grappelli held court for years!

I am posting this for a fellow who goes by the tag TLGK. Colonel, if you stop by here...this is a very good place to begin to appreciate the real cross fertilization of jazz as it became a genre of world music very early on.

What happened in the cosmopolitan centers all over the world influenced what was happening everywhere else and music and visual art were always the avant garde of style. They led and we followed, joyfully!

Everybody Hates A Tourist

I am posting this for MikeB32000...to make up for the posting of the Star Trek, The Next Generation post with Stephen Hawking....

Here we go, the sound track is the cover of Common People, the Pulp song, by William Shatner, Ben Folds and Joe Jackson. one of those moments when pure Kitsche collides with absolute hipness and the result is sheer genius!

This is a cut from Shatners Masterpiece, the 2001 recording, Has Been.

Whewn it came out, I saw the band, Shatner, Joe Jackson, Ben Folds and a boys choir perform this live on Jay Leno and I became absolutely utterly incoherent for days!

Let's Play Fair...

This article was published yesterday, October 9, in The Boston Commons, on their website.

When I went to the comments, for some reason almost every comment had been censored by the editor. I tried to comment, but voila! My comment was censored, too. I can't imagine why. I promise, I will not censor your comment and I will kick it off with my comment.

Here is the article:

LIMBAUGH TO JUDGE 2010 MISS AMERICA PAGEANT

LAS VEGAS- The Miss America Organization says Rush Limbaugh will be a judge for the 2010 Pageant in Las Vegas.

It will be heald at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino on Jan.30, boradcast live on TLC.

Limbaugh will be on the panel of seven judges that will help decide who will be crowned

Miss America 2010.

The Misss America Organization said Friday when making the announcement that Limbaugh's Radio Program is in its 22nd year and is on nearly 600 radio stations with an audience of 20 million.

President and CEO Art McMaster says the organization is thrilled to have Limbaugh as a judge.

Voila, that was the article, comments , please......

There was this poker game....

There was this poker game with Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton, Data and Stephen Hawking....

I guess I was a closet Trekkie for years...I used to watch Star Trek Next Generation religiously, but I never saw this episode!

l'affaire Mitterand

I suppose if you are not familiar with French politics, the present "scandal" making the news regarding the present Minister of Culture, Frederic Mitterand could be quite confusing.

First of all, what is a Mitterand doing in the government of UMP President Nicolas Sarkozy?

Francois Mitterand was the very popular Socialist President of France who ruled for 12 years which included his last term when he was visibly ill with cancer. Frederic is his nephew who rose to fame using his family name to make a carreer in the art world as a pseudo intellectual media figure.

The openly gay, flamboyant Frederic was never very political. His Aunt, the widow of Francois, the scholar and writer, Danielle Mitterand recently said of Freddy, "We always knew he was a little fascist."

None the less, he was a television presenter and writer who specialized on royalty. His name opened many doors and his mellifluous voice was mocked by comedians as the epitome of fatuous, boring and pretentious pendantic narration.

He became part of the coterie surrounding the present wife of Nicolas Sarkozy, Carla Bruni. About 3 months ago, she persuaded her husband to get rid of the fairly popular Minister of Culture, actually one of the few remaining women in his government and replace her with Mitterand.

This, at the time, was seen as another one of Sarko's brilliant coups, co opting the opposition by bringing a Mitterand into his government. Immediately, it became apparent that this would not be the case as evident by the reception he recieved at the Left's Annual Fete d'Humanitie last month where he was booed off the stage when he tried to speak.

Then, the Polanski case occurred and immediately, without consultation, Mitterand made an indignant defense of Polanski, who is in fact a French citizen. Frederic had drawn attention to himself. The media criticized him for his pompous style. He had bells installed in his offices to summon his uniformed aides and had redone the offices he used to his regal standards.

On Tuesday, the proverbial shit hit the fan, as Marine LePen, the daughter of the far right leader, Jean-Marie LePen of the now struggling Front Nationale brought up the 2005 auto biography by Mitterand called "Un Mauvais Vie", or "A Bad Life".

In his book, Mitterand is quite open about his sexual life and even bragged of his attraction to young boys and his trips to Thailand, in which he detailed his sexual tourism.

"I got into the habit of paying for boys," Mr Mitterrand wrote, adding that his attraction to young male prostitutes continued even though he knew "the sordid details of this traffic".

"All these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market excited me enormously ... the abundance of very attractive and immediately available young boys put me in a state of desire."

This is all very unfortunate for the legitimate struggle for gay rights and equality in the real world.

The very real problems of violence towards gays in the Banlieus is a big subject in the news this month. The revelations about Mitterand and his sexual pecadillos seriously muddies the real issues.

The UMP Party seems to be trying to rally around Freddy, but the far right elements are keepiing their diistance. Frederic is making the media rounds, but his naturally arrogant and combative manner and his propensity to make outrageous statements are not winning him points with the press or people.

Sarkozy will hang on to him as long as he can, he has always had a very hard time admitting a mistake, but we are 72 hours into this spin cycle and I'm beginning to smell carrion............

Democrazia

A controversial law granting Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi legal immunity has been dramatically thrown out by the country's top court, raising the likelihood that the media mogul will again face prosecution on corruption charges.

As the political pressure mounted last night, the 73-year-old premier lambasted the Constitutional Court judges as "red toga-wearing tools of the left" and vowed not to quit, despite predictions by opponents that the ruling could force him to resign and hold a snap election. "We must govern for five years, with or without the law," Mr Berlusconi told reporters outside his residence in Rome.

And just how much does Italy really want to be a nation governed by law? How much of a chance does this ruling have of actually influencing the corrupt and dangerous regime of Berlusconi?

I posted a piece earlier this year regarding the forces that have influencesd the phenomena of piracy off the coast of Somalia. In the hysteria over the existence of the pirates, we overlook the destruction of the livelihood of the fishing industry of Somalia and the destruction of the environment caused by the illegal dumping of hazardous wastes by The Italian Mafia run waste disposal scams. Untold numbers of death ships have been sunk by the Italian Mafia in the last 15 years in a garbage scam that threatens the health of the Ocean. Barrels of toxic medical waste and radioactive matterials have polluted the shore, causing disease and toxic reations in the population. The fishing industry has been decimated as well.

The basic scam used by the Mafia controlled industry is to buy a rotting ship, take out the maximum insurance on it, load it with garbage to be disposed, then the ship is "lost" at sea, the Mafia company collects the fee for the disposal as well as the insurance money for the ship.

In the last month, graphic evidence has been uncovered by robot submarines of ships sunk in the same manner off the Calabrian coastline of Italy.

Pressure is growing on the Italian government to act over revelations that 30 or more ships with radioactive cargoes, deliberately sunk by the Mafia, may be polluting the Mediterranean.

The Calabrian region in the south of the country last night threatened to bypass Rome and petition the European Commission directly for help in dealing with the potential environmental disaster, while in another development investigators said that human remains may have been found on one ship – raising the possibility of a murder inquiry.

Silvestro Greco, head of the region's environment agency, lambasted the response by ministers to the apparent discovery of one of the missing toxic waste vessels, the Cunsky, 18 miles off the Calbrian coast.

"It has been 20 days since the boat was found and there has been not a single sign from the government," he said. "We do not believe this silence is normal."

Mr Greco added that "the entire Mediterranean, from the Adriatic to the Tyrrhenian sea and from the Strait of Sicily to the Aegean" could be threatened by sunken waste ships. "Cleaning and removing the load will be particularly complex in terms of cost, given the vast area involved," he said.

Sebastiano Venneri, vice-president of the environmental pressure group Legambiente, told The Independent there were fears that leaking radioactivity may already have been absorbed by plankton. If that is the case, there is a risk that it will make its way into the food chain.

Aurelio Garritano, the deputy-mayor of Longobardi, a town close to the Cunsky wreck, noted that no environmental tests for toxic waste had yet been carried out. "We cannot continue like this, the government must intervene," he said.

With this in mind, the Calabria region will write to the Italian environment minister, Stefania Prestigiacomo, calling for radical cabinet action. Failing that, Italy's council of regional governments would appeal directly to the EC, Mr Greco said.

The possibility of a murder inquiry also arose last night after it emerged that cameras sent down to investigate the Cunsky appeared to show human remains aboard.

Bruno Giordano, the public prosecutor for the Calabrian coastal town of Paola, told The Independent: "It appeared to show what were two human skulls. Obviously this will have to be investigated as well. As will claims that there are 30 or more other vessels out there in the Mediterranean."

The scandal of the sunken waste ships hit the headlines earlier this month after a former member of the 'Ndrangheta crime syndicate turned informer directed investigators to underwater remains thought to be those of the Cunsky, one of the missing vessels.

The informer, Francesco Fonti, told prosecutors he had been involved in the sinking of the ship in 1992, in order to dispose of 120 barrels of radioactive sludge. He added that he had also taken part in the sinking of two other ships, the Yvonne A and the Voriais.

Mr Fonti, who is now under house arrest, claimed that he knew of at least 30 more vessels sunk by the Calabrian mafia in Italian waters. He said the waste came from European pharmaceutical companies, and the Mafia was paid between $2m and $20m to sink the ships.

The Ansa news agency yesterday reported that up to 39 vessels carrying toxic or radioactive waste produced by European chemical or pharmaceutical companies may have been sunk in the racket.

While the world frets over the possibility that Iran might be developing nuclear arms, the corrupt facist government of Silvio Berlusconi is tacitly involved with organized crime in an obscene scheme that is a real imminent threat to the health of the plane. Yet, we watch Silvio cavort like an embarrassing relative at a family party.

The damage has been done, it is a planetary crime. How can Silvio Berlusconi be stopped before his corruption affects the quality of everyones life on this planet?

What Mama Said

About 2 years ago, I started to feature Women in Rock Music...I posted a piece on Jennifer Batten, the extraordinary guitarist who has done so much work as an anonymous session musician. She has recorded so much on her own and I featured her video of "The Flight Of The Bumblebee" here. It was a tour de force of heavy metal tapping technique.

She rose to prominence as a live performer as the guitarist for Michael Jacksons touring band in the 80's and early 90's.

She became a protege of Jeff Beck in the 80's and played with him through a decade or so, co composing and touring with him. Here in this live performance in 1999, the band performs her composition, What Mama Said, another tour de force of the tapping technique. Beck as uusual shows that there are no rules in his music tht bridges all modern genres of jazz, techno and rock. Just the audacity of his tone and the sheer humor of his phrasing establish him as one of the most innovative and recognizable instrumental voices of modern music.

I just read that he is going to be performing with Chick Corea in the near future, superglue down you wig hat on you heads.....

Pennsyltucky

Yes, there is a place beyond the edge of imagination, where Elvis still shines emblazoned on the American flag and drunken white trash in a bar somewhere in a land called Pennsyltucky fall down on their knees and break into tears....

Aww, Ain't That America?

Pachamama

This is a special request and so here is Yma Sumac, the legendary Incan princess in a performance from 1954. Yma was the wife of the band leader Les Baxter, one of the originators of "Exotica". Ms. Sumac did have a remarkable 5 octave vocal range which she used to great effect, but, I never quite fell for the Incan princess bit.

Yma Sumac, Amy Camus....?

This, in any event is pretty wild stuff.

Reuben Blades

Last night, I heard a cut from the new release by Reuben Blades, La Perla, on the BBC World Service. It was great, Reuben  performs with a Group called Calle 13 and the lyrics are pretty explicit. It's something like salsa/rap...the rythmn and sound of the Sapnish language and the beats of the music demand an entirely different approach to "rapping"> I was so excited that I wanted to post it if possible and share it. I found the cut on YouTube, but iit cannot be embedded yet.

Reuben Blades is one of the great voices and muusicians of modern latin music. He trascends genres, but is known for his work within the context of Salsa. Blades is Panamanian and actually ran for president of Panama a few years ago. He is a great humanitarian and multi talented performer. I met him back in the mid 90's when he starred in Paul Simons under appreciated Broadway Musical, " The Capeman" which I got to do maquillage for all the gang members. Blades (pronounced Blah-des) played the lead and sang and danced as the adult version of the character.

So, I didn't get La Perla, but this is a great example of how a familiar piece of music in the hands of a great artist can become something else altogether. This is Mack The Knife, but set to a salsa beat and a Latino sensibility, it becomes something totally different. A great performance. Here is Blades reworked version of Mack The Knife, it becomes Pedro Navaja, translated into English for you:

Oh the shark bites with his teeth, dear
And he shows them pearly white
Just a jack knife has MacHeath, dear
And he keeps it out of sight

Round the corner of the old neighborhood I saw him go,
with the familiar gait that bullies have
his hands always deep inside the pockets of his coat
so that nobody knows which one holds the dagger

He uses a wide brim hat, tilted to one side
sporting sneakers, to fly when in danger
dark shades so nobody knows what he's staring at
and a golden tooth that shines when he laughs

Three blocks away from that corner, a woman
strides the whole curb for the fifth time
and inside a store she goes to have a drink and forget
that the day moves slow, and she has no customers to attend

A car moves slowly through the avenue
it has no marks but everyone knows it's the police
Pedro Navaja, his hands always inside his coat
looks and smiles, and his golden tooth shines again

He looks to one side and looks to the other, not a soul is seen
and running, silently, he crosses the street
and at the same time, on the other side is the woman
mumbling 'cause she made no money for food

As she walks, she draws a gun from her old coat
to save it inside her purse, so it won't bother
a .38 special "Smith & Wesson"
that she keeps always, to rid her from all evil

And Pedro Navaja, the dagger in his hand, jumped on her
the golden tooth, shining the whole avenue
and as he laughed, the dagger plunged relentlessly
when suddenly a gunshot bursted out like a cannon...

And Pedro Navaja, fell on the curb as he saw the woman
with the gun in her hand, and mortally wounded telling him:
"I thought: today is not my day, I'm on a bad streak.
But Pedro Navaja, you're worse: you're worthless"

And believe me, people, even though noise was made, nobody came out
nobody was curious, no questions were made, nobody cried
just a drunkard stumbled upon the two bodies
took the gun, the dagger, the money and went off
and stumbling along the way, he went along singing out of tune
the chorus I've brought you, that tells you the message of my song

"Life brings you surprises, surprises are brought by life, O God!"

Who Wanted To Go To Those Stupid Games, Anyway?

Earlier this week, we watched in fascination as the conservative "anything to thwart a black president, even shoot ourselves in the ass" faction reveled in their attempts to scuttle Barack Obama's bid to bring the Olympics to Chicago in 2016.

Never mind the billions of dollars in lost income, the projected job loss and the stature gained by having Americas second city host the Olympics. There was even reports of rejoicing and cheering as the news that Chicago was out was announced and Rio was in.

But, in spite of President Obama’s lobbying efforts, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) may have chosen to reject hosting the 2016 summer olympic games in Chicago due to the post-9/11 visa tourist policies established by his predecessor, George W. Bush. Michael Froomkin, Professor at the University of Miami School of Law, is convinced that the “the same stupid anti-visitor policy that is destroying American higher education” also sunk Chicago’s Olympic bid. Chicago was eliminated during the first round and received the fewest votes. A New York Times article points out:

In the official question-and-answer session following the Chicago presentation, Syed Shahid Ali, an I.O.C. member from Pakistan, asked the toughest question. He wondered how smooth it would be for foreigners to enter the United States for the Games because doing so can sometimes, he said, be “a rather harrowing experience.”

A “harrowing experience” may be an understatement. Immediately after 9/11, the Bush Administration began requiring fingerprints and photographs of tourists from all but 28 countries entering the US. President Bush required that all foreigners register online within three days of travel. Thirty-five (mostly European) countries now participate in the US Visa Waiver program, however tourists from the rest of the world still have to jump through the following hurdles:

* Pay hefty visa processing and issuance fees.

* Undergo an interview by a visa officer at the US Embassy.

* Provide evidence which shows the purpose of the trip, intent to depart the United States, and arrangements made to cover the costs of the trip may be provided.

* Present convincing evidence that an interested person will provide financial support if the applicant does not have sufficient funds to support him or herself.

The average wait for a US visa has risen to about three months. Brazil, which will host the 2016 Olympic summer games in Rio de Janeiro, has a reciprocal visa policy with all countries. US tourists are required to have a $130 advance visa before entry into the country and are fingerprinted and photographed upon arrival — matching US requirements for Brazilians.

Junk Mail

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This small 16 page pamphlet can be downloaded and reproduced to be stuffed into the prepaid business reply envelopes that come with junk mailings. You can stuff a pamphlet into every junk mail envelope you recieve and send your message of anarchy and revolt to a bored underpaid office worker in a cubicle somewhere in a desolate corporate death zone in any Nowheresville in an industrial zone near you.

The pamphet depicts (in the style of airline emergency instruction card) office workers snapping, destroying their workplace and turning into carnal, hunter-gatherer communards.

Boom Clique

I'd like to share a few minutes of improvised music from a group of guys who have been playing together since high school in NYC under the name of Boom Clique. I've known the guitarist, Luca Bartociolli since he was 6. He has been playing guitar just about that long. He designs and manufactures his own line of custom guitars under the name Caius Guitars.

The trumpet player is Joe Ancowitz, who actually introduced me to my favorite cheese, Epoisse, while visiiting us 2 years ago. Joe is an upcoming jazz player who has a lot of touring and recording work under his belt already. The drummer is Steve Bryant, who plays with many NYC based bands, such as The Benzos and Cru Jones.

Maybe Luca and Joe will play at my wedding reception in November...

This video was shot a few months ago.

Banned Book Week

A thebrainpolice exclusive! That's right! thebrainpolice has obtained an exclusive advance preview of the cover of Sarah Palins new book, GOIN' ROUGE!...

uhh, Goin Rouge? Hey, I think we have a little problem here. Doesn't anyone proof read this stuff? How many copies in the first printing?

Nevermind...I'm sure Miss Palin can deal with getting rid of unwanted books, as Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, she was responsible for causing the head of the Wasilla city library to quit her job in protest when she demanded that many, many adult and children books be banned as unsuitable in her opinion for the tender minds of Wasilla.

In fact, ironically enough, this week is Banned Books Week in the United States. Sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA), American Booksellers Association, and a variety of other organizations, the week of events around the country celebrates intellectual freedom and spotlights books that have been targets of attempting bannings. According to the ALA, there were more than 500 "challenges" to specific books in schools, stores, and libraries reported to the Office of Intellectual Freedom in 2008.

And probably many, many more that went unreported. And Tango Makes Three was apparently the biggest target. It's a true story about a same-sex penguin couple in New York's Central Park Zoo who were given an egg to raise. Without further ado, here are the top ten "most challenged titles" of last year. I linked to the Amazon page for each so you can collect them all or buy copies for your local library or school!

1. And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
Reasons: anti-ethnic, anti-family, homosexuality, religious viewpoint, and unsuited to age group

2. His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman
Reasons: political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, and violence

3. TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series), by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group

4. Scary Stories (series) , by Alvin Schwartz
Reasons: occult/satanism, religious viewpoint, and violence

5. Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
Reasons: occult/satanism, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit, and violence

6. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons: drugs, homosexuality, nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit, suicide, and unsuited to age group

7. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group

8.Uncle Bobby 's Wedding, by Sarah S. Brannen
Reasons: homosexuality and unsuited to age group

9. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group

10. Flashcards of My Life, by Charise Mericle Harper
Reasons: sexually explicit and unsuited to age group

For more, see the Banned Books Week site and the ALA's Banned Books Week pages.

IS IT SOUP YET?

"Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution through an interim administration that would do the serious business of governing and defending the nation. Skilled, military-trained, nation-builders would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars. Having bonded with his twin teleprompters, the president would be detailed for ceremonial speech-making.

Military intervention is what Obama’s exponentially accelerating agenda for “fundamental change” toward a Marxist state is inviting upon America. A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama’s radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible."

This is an excerpt from an article by William Perry that was posted last night on the GOP sponsored news site, NEWSMAX.  It was up for a few hours until the rest of the world outside of the billious  bubble began to notice it.

The article mysteriously disappeared, never to be spoken of again.

Perhaps Mr. Perry thought he was reaching an audience where his theme of a coup d'etat would resonate.

NEWSMAX, realizing the line they had crossed, quickly pulled the article, but they probably are pleased that they were able to add this theme to the obscenely orchestrated obstructionist concerto of hate that they are creating in America.

Will these chicken shit banana republicans get away with this? Will this be ignored and will everyone try to make nice? Wanna bet?