Porn found at Osama Abbottabad hideout

By Mona Goldwater
Cross-cultural Affairs Editor


Pornography found at the Osama Abbottabad hideout/compound includes Men and Camels 3, Pulp Friction, My Bare Lady, and Sheepless in Montana. . .

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Alien Lore No. 204: Hitler's deal with The Greys

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Faces No. 208: Clown Wars/Clone Wars

Drawing by Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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An amazing & interactive chart showing the U.S. population center for the last two centuries

This is a pretty masterful interactive chart showing the center of population of the United States for the last 220 years--fascinating, and just maybe, an example of the far reach and influence of the information visionary Edward Tufte?  The center of population "is determined as the place where an imaginary, flat, weightless and rigid map of the United States would balance perfectly if all residents were of identical weight."

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Vladimir Petrovich Demikhov & The Russian DogBot

By Jack Brummet
Unexplained Phenomena Editor

Thanks to Jeff Clinton, our Number One paranormal and bizarre happenings tipster. 

Over the last few years, a lot of fascinating news and images have emerged from Russia and the former Soviet Union.  And this, like much of the news and images, is both difficult to pin down and incredible to imagine happening in what was then an extremely tightly-controlled society.  Neither Jeff nor I can determine if this is just an excellent PhotoShop hoax, or "real," whatever real actually means.

Gizmodo--whom I tend to believe--pronounces these images as excellent fakes (and say and, "like all good lies, there's a some truth in this story").

"According to recently unearthed—and completely fake—scientific papers posted in Russian forum Stepashka, the Soviets took over where the Nazis and Dr. Frankenstein left it: During the 1950s, a team of communist scientists from Moscow University and the Soviet Academy of Sciences led by Dr. Vladimir Demikhov worked on the creation of a giant robot controlled by a dog head in secret facilities created by Joseph Stalin."

Vladimir Petrovich Demikhov was an actual Soviet scientist (and one of the first people to believe that human lung and heart transplants were possible). He was both a latter day Frankenstein/madman and a scientific visionary.  He performed bizarre experiments with dog heads--including keeping them alive, separated from their bodies, and transplanting them to other dog bodies.  And just maybe, created a DogBot. . .

Click images to enlarge/zoom

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Faces No. 207 - drawings by Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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Dennis Kucinich, about to be gerrymandered out of a job, considers carpetbagging to Washington State

By Pablo Fanque, Congressional Affairs Correspondent

Dennis Kucinich, about to be gerrymandered out of a job, is considering  carpetbagging in Washington State.  Representative Kucinich's 10th District seat in Ohio may well be eliminated next year as Ohio loses two seats in the House due to population declines.  Washington State will add a congressional seat next year.

In the fine carpetbagging tradition of Bobby Kennedy and Hillary Clinton, Kucinich is pondering relocating (at least legally, if not physically) to Western Washington.  Jay Inslee's seat may be vacant if he decides to run for governor.  Maybe Jim McDermott will throw in the towel.  He is always returned to Washington by huge majorities. . .even if he is a back-bencher, because our district is unrepentantly Democratic.

The Seattle Times pointed out an interesting Washington-Kucinich connection.  The Congressman says he saw a UFO south of Seattle, when he was staying at Shirley McLaine's house.

Kucinich's press secretary, Nathan White, claims that Kucinich has been urged by people in 20 states to move to their district and run for office.  Right.  White went on to say "As he has repeatedly said, he fully intends to remain in Congress; he just doesn't know in what district he will run."

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John Lennon sings "mother" live at MSG

Mother by John Lennon

Mother, you had me but I never had you,
I wanted you but you didn't want me,
So I got to tell you,
Goodbye, goodbye.
Farther, you left me but I never left you,
I needed you but you didn't need me,
So I got to tell you,
Goodbye, goodbye.
Children, don't do what I have done,
I couldn't walk and I tried to run,
So I got to tell you,
Goodbye, goodbye.
Mama don't go,
Daddy come home.
Mama don't go,
Daddy come home.
Mama don't go,
Daddy come home.
Mama don't go,
Daddy come home.
Mama don't go,
Daddy come home.
Mama don't go,
Daddy come home.
Mama don't go,
Daddy come home...
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Song, defined by Nick Tosches

"And, of course, that is what all of this is - all of this: the one song, ever changing, ever reincarnated, that speaks somehow from and to and for that which is ineffable within us and without us, that is both prayer and deliverance, folly and wisdom, that inspires us to dance or smile or simply to go on, senselessly, incomprehensibly, beatifically, in the face of mortality and the truth that our lives are more ill-writ, ill-rhymed and fleeting than any song, except perhaps those songs - that song, endlesly reincarnated - born of that truth, be it the moon and June of that truth, or the wordless blue moan, or the rotgut or the elegant poetry of it. That nameless black-hulled ship of Ulysses, that long black train, that Terraplane, that mystery train, that Rocket '88', that Buick 6 - same journey, same miracle, same end and endlessness."


-- Nick Tosches, Where Dead Voices Gather

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Yakima's Bitter Harvest - a cover from Seattle's underground paper The Helix (1967)

By Jack Brummet, Northwest History Editor

This image is a cover from the Seattle underground paper The Helix, in 1967. Walt Crowley (whom I met a couple of times and exchanged emails with later) drew this cover and was--I think--one of the editors of The Helix. This cover is on the plight of migrant workers who travel to the northwest in the summer to pick fruit and vegetables in Eastern Washington.

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Hobo With A Shotgun, starring Rutger Hauer: movie poster and trailer

By Jack Brummet, Genre Film Editor

 Hobo With A Shotgun is a second movie spun off from the fake Grindhouse trailers (Machete was the first). This movie opens today in Austin and NYC, and will open slowly elsewhere around the country. Judging from the trailer, it looks like a fine movie in the grindhouse tradition of sleaze. Nuns With Guns is also supposed to be in production. . .

The best part: Hobo With A Shotgun stars Rutger Hauer.

"A train pulls into the station - it's the end of the line. A Hobo jumps from a freight car, hoping for a fresh start in a new city. Instead, he finds himself trapped in an urban hell. This is a world where criminals rule the streets and Drake, the city's crime boss, reigns supreme alongside his sadistic murderous sons, Slick & Ivan. Amidst the chaos, the Hobo comes across a pawn shop window displaying a second hand lawn mower. He dreams of making the city a beautiful place and starting a new life for himself. But as the brutality continues to rage around him, he notices a shotgun hanging above the lawn mower... Quickly, he realizes the only way to make a difference in this town is with that gun in his hand and two shells in its chamber."

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Send The President a joint -- it just might chill him down?

By Jack Brummet, Social Mores Editor,
with research by Mona Goldwater. Wingnut and GOP affairs editor

As a long-time scholar of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, I loved stumbling onto this 1970 flyer.  In the end, I don't think sending marijuana to the White House had the desired effect.  LBJ kept the war running full-tilt, until he was replaced by Dick Nixon in January, 1969.  As it turned out, Nixon kept the war running at high levels as well, until he achieved "peace with honor," or, more correctly, we bugged out of the mess we created and left them to sort it out. . .

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"I ain't marchin' anymore": The British poet Siegfried Sasoon throws down his rifle in 1917

By Jack Brummet, Poetry Editor

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon was a soldier and one of the best known poets of World War I.  He won medals for bravery on the Western Front, and wrote poetry about the horrors in the trenches, and the patriotic hypocrisy of those who wages what he believed was a pointless war.  After he wrote this letter, echoing what the singer Phiil Ochs wrote fifty years later "(I ain't marchin' anymore") in 1917, the British army, which considered the letter treasonous, rather than fight his protest, or try him, or give him a platform, declared him to have shell-shock (what we call Post Traumatic Stresst Disorder today) and tossed him out of the army.

Click to enlarge - This image, and the photograph of Sassoon,

is in the  public domain because its copyright has expired.

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Drawing: Man with gun hobo sign, camouflaged

Drawing by Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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Photograph: Lyndon Johnson and S.O.D. Robert McNamara have an "Oh S**t!" moment

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor


Lyndon Johnson and S.O.D. Robert McNamara have an "Oh S**t!" moment.  They had a lot of those.

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