I keep hearing the same gripe from the critics of the critics of pop culture: Today’s writers eat it. Nobody knows how to cover music, or movies, or video games, or any of the other media that matter. We need someone to swoop in and save us: We need a new Lester Bangs, or a new Hunter S. Thompson– one of those guys who made criticism and alternative journalism seem so vital back in the 1960s and 70s. Where they hell did they go?

just stumbled across this; which quickly managed to snuggle in closely with much of what has been stewing in the jester’s brain recently . . .

The right to post political speech on public property is one of the most essential and protected rights of American Democracy . . .
USE IT

from the freeway blogger, excellent site, wondrous idea

The Video

The Site

both worth checking out

I really wanted to see Kerouac’s scroll when it was on tour a year or three ago but never had the time.

Having read a few books in both their original (unedited) and cut versions (Stranger in a Strange Land comes to mind) it will be very interesting to see what he had to say.

It’s literary legend, how Jack Kerouac wrote his breakthrough novel “On the Road” in a three-week frenzy of creativity in spring 1951, typing the story without paragraphs or page breaks onto a 119-foot scroll of nearly translucent paper.

IT MAY sound like something out of Frankenstein, but electric currents applied to the skin could potentially speed up wound healing. Ironically, though the phenomenon was reported 150 years ago by the German physiologist Emil Du Bois-Reymond, it has been ignored ever since.

Now Josef Penninger of the Austrian Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Vienna and Min Zhao of the University of Aberdeen, UK, have demonstrated that natural electric fields and currents in tissue play a vital role in orchestrating the wound-healing process by attracting repair cells to damaged areas.

Now what kid hasn’t dreamed of having this ability? Wonder what kind of trouble people will get in when they can scale the outside of buildings easily. Sounds like great fun.

SOLDIERS and spies of the future could be given special “Spider-Man” suits, enabling them to climb up sheer surfaces and even stick to the ceiling, according to a leading British engineering firm.

let’s do something
tragic together
we can call it living

let’s cry out
to and against
the emptiness of all
we cannot know

let’s create:
. . . loves
. . . religions
. . . corporate entities

loud desperation
and
silent negation

let’s continue to create
this world
in our own image

let’s see how that goes

i can only forgive
those who continue
to change
and i need
to absolve myself

From one of the blogs that I do attempt to read regularly, I came across this response to monies being spent in San Francisco on an anti-graffiti ad campaign . . .

At a time in our history when advertising has fallen to an all time low in its effectiveness, it seems somewhat naive to think that, of all things, an outdoor advertising campaign would have any effect at all on the situation.

Well, it looks like the whole DNA thing is more complex than originally thought.

In a living cell, the DNA double helix wraps around a nucleosome, above center, and binds to some of its proteins, known as histones.

The genetic code specifies all the proteins that a cell makes. The second code, superimposed on the first, sets the placement of the nucleosomes, miniature protein spools around which the DNA is looped. The spools both protect and control access to the DNA itself.

ever have one of those days where you run around, knowing full well that there is all of this terribly important shit that needs to be done, but you can’t get anything accomplished because you don’t have the faintest idea of where to start?

the last couple of months i’ve been indulging in a steadily increasing diet of odd intellectual fodder -

i’m shaking here
so impossibly anxious to
do something
great and sweeping,

Its funny that organics were pushed out by chemical manufacturers. We’re headed back that way, but not fast enough.

U.S. agriculture has developed a heavy reliance on chemicals to safeguard crops from yield-robbing weeds. However, many of those herbicides can pose substantial health risks to people, pets, and wildlife, which is why laws prescribe how some of these chemicals are handled in fields. A study now finds that trace quantities of such agricultural chemicals nonetheless find their way into consumers’ homes—not on the fruits and vegetables they buy but probably by hitchhiking on dust.

Why on earth should we listen to smart people when we have politicians to think for us? Sorry all. I promise to get back to ignoring the outside world and just writing more soon…

More than 470 physicists, including seven Nobel laureates, have signed a petition to oppose a new U.S. Defense Department proposal that allows the United States to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states.

I’ve often commented on the distinction between wisdom and intelligence. In all honesty I must say that the more important of the two, at least as far as survival of the species goes, is wisdom.

I’d like to point out an article that I just found that exemplifies my argument. Making a nuclear bomb is an exercise of intelligence. Not doing so would be an exercise of wisdom…

Here’s the article:

i was going to write about
the ultimate futility of something
then in the time it took to step to the keyboard
and get to the page
the thought slipped my mind

so i meant to put down something profound
bear with me
just play along for a while
and please forgive me my lapse
gimme this one
and you’ll have one coming

we all have those moments sometimes

First off, a definition… From Wikipedia:

Telepathy (from the Greek τηλε, tele, “distant”; and πάθεια, patheia, “feeling”) is the claimed ability of humans and other creatures to communicate information from one mind to another, without the use of extra tools such as speech or body language. Considered a form of extra-sensory perception or anomalous cognition, telepathy is often connected to various paranormal phenomena such as precognition, clairvoyance and empathy.

Here’s a great trailer for what looks like an enlightening movie.

Just heard the news today, Pink Floyd’s original front man, Syd Barrett, has died.

From what I know of the man; a couple of books, the great beast of rumor and factoids that are traded around by those who love Floyd, and of course, the music he created, both with Floyd and on his own, Syd was a true freak, a creature perhaps too weird for this world, or perhaps the world was too weird for him. He took chances; he pushed the edge, and almost certainly took too much acid. I’m sitting here listening to Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and as always, the innovation and brilliance of the songwriting is easily apparent.

yes, this trend of posts that plant, Fullery and myself have been making here on Lewd Cognoscenti has certainly taken something of a political bent as of late . . .
and

i,
as the finite jester
speak only for myself
in the following statement

i’ve been somewhat obsessed as of late

i could not even attempt
to count
the nights spent
dwelling on mortality
and (for lack of a better word that rhymes)
destiny

Eight years ago there was a big hubbub in the news concerning a relationship that our president at the time was having with an intern. The incident culminated with impeachment proceedings being held. For an extramarital affair. He was not convicted of a crime. No laws were broken.

Lets fast forward to the present. Now we have a leading congressman who is accusing the president of breaking laws. But these aren’t perjury charges. He is accused of breaking laws set up through the Constitution of the United States. And it involves spying on the people of the United States.

It’s sometimes spooky how Tom Fullery can read people’s minds, I started this post the other night, and then woke up to see that he’d posted about my own flag. Yes, I’m the guy with the upside down flag and the monkey. I’ll get into that in a second, but first; my own thoughts on desecration.

A question:

Which of the following is an act of desecration?

A friend of mine has a flag hung upside down in his bedroom. He also has a stuffed monkey pinned to it, but that is a different matter entirely. Anyway, when I asked him about the flag he pointed out that a flag should be hung upside down only in times of severe duress. He said that this is such a time, and that he did it to make a point. We are starting to become what we once hated (fascists).