Ungawa! A parable of George Bush's failed "mission" in Iraq

A Texas business man traveled to Japan for some business meetings and a few rounds of golf. He arrived in Tokyo the night before his meetngs.

Feeling lonely that evening, he employed a gorgeous young Japanese girl as his companion. The girl spoke very little English and the honky businessman. of course, spoke no Japanese. Over the course of the night, the ended up making the beast with two backs. . They made passionate love, and in the heat of the moment she began yelling "Ungawa! Ungawa!"

The Texan knew he had pleased his hot Japanese friend and soon fell sleep.

The next day, Mr. Businessman was playing golf with his Japanese hosts. One of his Japanese partners made a hole-in-one shot from 170 yards away! Everyone went crazy and began yelling excitedly in Japanese. Wanting to impress his friends, the Texan joined in and began yelling, "Ungawa! Ungawa!" Suddenly everyone became quiet.

After a moment of silence, one of the Japanese turned to him and asked "Wrong hole? What do you mean wrong hole?"

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Today is the 4th anniversary of Accomplishing Our Mission In Iraq

It was four years ago today that President Bush told that nation that "major combat operations" in Iraq were over. Thousands of lives and billions of dollars later. . . .well, we're just getting started.

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Crackdown on toilet paper in Kansas prison: warden apparently gi-normous Sheryl Crow fan

According to the Associated Press, toilet paper is now a hotter trading commodity at the Hutchinson Correctional Facility than cigarettes. Prison officials in Kansas have recently begun enforcement of a longstanding limit on prisoner toulet paper rations.

Inmates are now limited to four rolls of toilet paper each. "The increased enforcement has angered many of the more than 1,600 inmates housed at the facility."

"Some take this for granted," inmate Carl Kennedy said in a letter to The Hutchinson News. "But in here it's part of a safeguard for widespread infections. We use it to blow our noses, clean sinks, toilets and tables."


If each inmate uses one less roll per month, according to prison officials, they would save the prison $600 a month. "There are a lot of things that individually don't cost much," said Kansas Department of Corrections spokeswoman Frances Breyne. "But when you multiply that by hundreds, it makes a drastic impact."
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Alien Lore No. 106 - The 1989 UFO Battle Over Russia

One of the best known Russian UFOlogists—Nikolay Subbotin—told this story to his fellow American UFOlogists. This bizarre story took place in the skies 0ver Zaostrovka on September 16, 1989. Six metallic UFOs and one golden UFO battled it out.

Mr. Subbotin says hundreds of people witnessed a group of six silver saucers fight against one golden UFO. The UFOs engaged in a stunning show of aerial acrobatics, flying as low as one mile above the earth. Red beams, or lasers of some sort were the weapons.


A Russian UFO web site says that an account of the battle was published in the local paper, the "Semipalatinsk." The report was written by a helicopter commander named Sichenko, who claimed that the energy generated by the warring UFOs was so intense that local power stations automatically shut down.


The witnesses interviewed by Sichenko said that the golden UFO was finally defeated, after fighting a heroic battle, and crashed into a bog on the military test range. The area was then zoned off to everyone except military personnel.

Subbotin says a Russian army team searched the area following the battle and crash and that the story leaked out from these searchers.


The entire area was insanely high in radiation readings following the crash, and was eventually shut down. A crew of military personnel guarded the site. And there the story comes to an crashing halt. This is one of those plausible sounding cases, with many witnesses, where so few details have actually emerged that it is impossible to vet its veracity.
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Country Joe McDonald Gives A Shout Out For Peace (Woodstock 1969) with lyrics to I Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die Rag (next stop Vietnam)

Country Joe McDonald (who I often saw around town when I lived in Berkeley) performs his "Feel like I'm fixin' to die rag" at the Woodstock Festival. Country Joe was pressed into service solo when other scheduled performers were mired in traffic. That also accounts for John Sebastian's completely stoned performance--he didn't know he would be performing until the organizers leaned on him to fill some time for the half a million music-thirsty fans.




Feel Like I'm Fixing To Die Rag (Next Stop Vietnam)
by Country Joe & the Fish

Come on all of you big strong men
Uncle Sam needs your help again
he's got himself in a terrible jam
way down yonder in Viet Nam so
put down your books and pick up a gun we're
gonna have a whole lotta fun

(CHORUS)
And it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for
don't ask me I don't give a damn, next stop is Viet Nam
And it's five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates
ain't no time to wonder why, whoopee we're all gonna die

Come on generals, let's move fast
your big chance has come at last
now you can go out and get those reds
cos the only good commie is the one that's dead and
you know that peace can only be won when we've
blown 'em all to kingdom come

Come on wall street don't be slow
why man this war is a go-go
there's plenty good money to be made by
supplying the army with the tools of its trade
let's hope and pray that if they drop the bomb,
they drop it on the Viet Cong

Come on mothers throughout the land
pack your boys off to Viet Nam
come on fathers don't hesitate
send your sons off before it's too late
and you can be the first ones on your block
to have your boy come home in a box.
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Video: Crosby Stills Nash & Young Perform You Don't Have To Cry

Crosby Stills Nash and newest member, Young perform one of their sweetest songs, back in the day.
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Alien Lore No. 105 - The Grey Aliens

The Grey Aliens is the title of a J. Hunter Holly 1964 British paperback. The book was published in the US as "The Gray Aliens" in 1963 by Avalon Books. This science fiction novel has an alien abduction twist. Humans are scooped up by the shadows a/k/a the grey aliens a/k/a the ghost makers.


click to enlarge

The term "grey alien" is iconic now in alien lore, and this book was probably an early harbinger of what was to come. The Greys are huge now in the realm of alien/ufo lore, along with their associated phenomena like abductions, cattle mutilations, government conspiracies, implanted devices in humans, crop circles, and vast under-earth colonies. The Greys were not really prominent in the lore until the 80s'. The now familiar grey alien's appearance was alluded to in tales of earlier encounters of the fifties, sixties and even the seventies, but not until the 1980's did the Greys emerge as the rock stars of alien lore.
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Happy 108th Birthday Duke Ellington!

click duke to enlarge

Duke Ellington would have been 108 years old today (born April 29, 1899, died May 24, 1974). He is usually considered one of the most important figures to emerge from jazz scene in the twentieth century. Duke, however, didn't usually speak of jazz, but instead liked to consider his work just music. Jazz was too narrow for Ellington, although he created some of the best jazz yet, as well as nurtured hundreds of young musicians. Here is a YouTube video of his 1942 band:


Duke's band performing C Jame Blues in 1942


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Four videos from Lemmings - with John Belushi, Christopher Guest, and Chevy Chase

These videos come from a National Lampoon stage show, Lemmings, with John Belushi, Chevy Chase, and Christopher Guest, among others. I owned the soundtrack many years ago.

Belushi lures "Bob on stage to perform:



Belushi introduces Christopher Guest who parodies James Taylor:



Belushi (with a faux Leon Russell) performs his very good Joe Cocker parody:



A Crosby Stills and Nash/San Francisco sound parody:


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Painting: President Bush Awakes From His Recurring Nightmare

click to enlarge

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How to conduct a strip search! A video by the Bureau of Prisons

You need to go here to see the video (The Smoking Gun's website). You just never know when knowledge like this will come in handy. . .
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Painting: the devil casts his shadow on Old Glory

click to enlarge

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Drawing: The Therapy Group

click the drawing to enlarge
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Alien Lore No. 105 - Alien stone/UFO Droppings (?) found near Seattle

A University of Washington (Seattle) aka U-dub research engineer Bill Beaty is about to test a piece of stone that was reportedly dropped from an alien spacecraft 60 years ago.

For many years, Philip Lipson and Charlette LeFevre, who run the Seattle Museum of the Mysteries, have been chasing a story that began in June 1947 when a government employee saw flying saucers only three days after a Tacoma man said UFOs had dropped metal and molten rock on his boat, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported earlier this week.

Lipson and LeFevre believe a B-52 bomber crashed 60 years ago while carrying slag from a UFO. A black chunk of rock is their best clue, and Beaty will test the rock this week.

"You can tell it's been liquid because it's all full of bubbles," said Beaty. "We have to look at the bedrock in the hill and see what's there. If it looks like that, then it's probably the same."
"If this is totally different than the bedrock that's there, then this will be very interesting," he added.

A B-25 bomber exploded and crashed twenty minutes after take off from McChord Field. The Bomber crashed near Kelso, Washington (one of the "tri-cities") after the left engine caught on fire.

A local newspaper article gave details about what happened aboard the plane. "Woodrow D. Matthews, crew chief of the bomber reported helping Davidson and Brown into their parachutes and that at the time he jumped, flames from the blazing left engine were pouring into the cockpit. It was reported that Brown was standing in the aisle ready to leave the plane ³ when Matthews himself jumped out. Brown was found at the crash site with his parachute harness on but had apparently returned to the cockpit. His body was found in the wreckage. Matthews related that the only reason he could see that the officers did not get out was that the left wing might have crumpled, trapping them in the plane. Woodrow D. Matthews, crew chief of the bomber who put the parachute on Sgt. Taff and saved his life was proposed for the Soldier's Medal. An FBI report states the left wing was found 125 yards from the plane impact site and likely fell off throwing the plane into a plummeting spin."

Kenneth Arnold received another call from Ted Morello who told him the B-25 bomber from Hamilton Field had been shot down by a 20mm cannon. The Tacoma Times headlines read

Sabotage Hinted in Crash of Army Bomber at Kelso
—Plane May Hold Flying Disk Secret—

The article by Paul Lance said the plane had been sabotaged or shot down to prevent shipment of flying disk fragments to Hamilton Field, California, for analysis. The disk parts were said by the informant to be those from one of the mysterious platters which plunged to earth on the Maury Island (see Alien Lore No. 104) recently. At McChord field, an intelligence officer confirmed the informants report that the B-25 Bomber had been carrying classified material.

In the Seattle Post Intelligencer August 3, 1947, an AP report states "Pieces not Located." Brig. Gen. Ned Schramm, chief of staff of the 4th Air Force said he knew nothing about reports that the plane was carrying classified or secret material. "As far as I know, the plane was supposed to come in here empty," he said, "and there wasn't a single, solitary, secret thing aboard".

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The "Changes" cycle of poems is complete (Index to the Changes Poems)

I first started these poems on March 19, 2006. At first, it was hard not to write the other poems. And then it became an obsession. Thirteen months later—last night, in fact—I finished No. 64, the last one.

This cycle of poems is loosely based on the 64 hexagrams of the I-ching (along with some of their commentaries). I mainly used the Wilhelm-Baynes translations, although I sometimes consulted a couple of others, like Legge's. Some of them were written in one sitting, and others germinated for weeks (usually when I was stuck).

One of my favorite parts of doing All This Is That has been the series: the paintings and bios of all the Presidents of the Unites States; the 50 heroes and villains paintings; and the long-running Alien Lore series (which I have yet to actually index...if you want to see them, this G.I.S. seems to capture most of them. At least fifteen of these are among my favorite poems I've written in the last couple of years. I am done, and now I feel freed up, and can go back to writing about whatever strikes me at the moment. That will be either liberating, or spooky. We'll find out soon.

Index of the Changes Poems:

Changes One/Action
Changes Two/The Receptive
Changes Three/Trouble Ahead
Changes Four/The Young Shoot
Changes Five/The waiting
Changes Six/Conflict
Changes Seven/The Army
Changes Eight/Holding Together
Changes Nine/The taming power of the small
Changes Ten/treading
Changes Eleven/Peace
Changes twelve/standing still
Changes 13/Fellowship
Changes 14/Possession
Changes 15/The Armies Of The Night
Changes 16/Enthusiasm, or, the king begins to falter
Changes 17/Following
Changes 18/Fixing what has spoiled
Changes 19/The Approach
Changes 20/Contemplation
Changes 21/Biting Through
Changes 22/Grace
Changes 23/Splitting Apart
Changes 24/The Turning Point (for S.A.D.)
Changes 25/The Unexpected
Changes 26/The Taming Power of the Great
Poem: Changes 27/Taking Care
Poem: Changes 28/ Ta Kuo—Preponderance of the Great
Poem: Changes 29/The Abysmal
Poem: Changes 30/Clinging
Poem: Changes 31/Influence
Poem: Changes 32/Duration
Poem: Changes 33/Retreat Is Not Surrender—
Poem: Changes 34/ The Power of the Great
Poem: Changes 35/Progress
Poem: Changes 36/How to keep moving in the darkening of the light
Poem: Changes 37/ The Family
Poem: Changes 38/Opposition
Poem: Changes 39/Obstruction
Poem: Changes 40/Deliverance
Poem: Changes 41/Decrease
Poem: Changes 42/Increase
Poem: Changes 43/Breakthrough!
Poem: Changes 44/Coming to Meet
Poem: Changes 45/Gathering Together (a/k/a population explosion)
Poem: Changes 46/Pushing Upward
Poem: Changes 47/Exhaustion
Poem: Changes 48/The Well
Poem: Changes 49/Revolution
Poem:: Changes 50/The Caldron
Poem: changes 51/The Arousing
Poem: Changes 52/Keeping Still
Poem: Changes 53/Gradual Progress
Poem: Changes 54/Marrying Maiden
Poem: Changes 55 /Fullness
Poem: Changes 56/The Wanderer
Poem: Changes 57/The Gentle
Poem: changes 58/Progress
Poem: Changes 59/Dispersion
Poem: Changes 60/Limitation
Poem: Changes 61/ Inner Truth
Poem: Changes 62/Preponderance of the Small
Poem: Changes 63/After Completion
Poem: Changes 64/Before Completion
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