Quite a polarizing and still edgy sounding 1981 single by The Work. The Work being Henry Cow founder Tim Hodgkinson’s early 80’s post-punk combo. Sounding every bit like their studio mates This Heat having a battle royale with Captain Beefheart‘s Magic Band, this violently convulsive tune is the very definition of apoplectic rage. And this was only 1981 ! Imagine how angry this would have been had it been recorded in the Bushco era ! Fortunately there’s enough bile in this track to apply to any other past or future outrage you’d care to. Art rock sticking it to the man !
 

 

 
LA FOLIE DU JOUR: THE WORK ” I Hate America” (UK,1981)

“I always say that Nick was born with a skin too few,” Gabrielle Drake on her brother.
 
It took a ‘99, Pink Moon-accompanied Volkswagen commercial to jumpstart the posthumous career of the great Nick Drake.  The following year, Dutch director Jeroen Berkvens came out with a documentary on the tortured British singer-songwriter, A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake.

Featuring interviews with Drake’s sister Gabrielle, producer Joe Boyd, and principal arranger, Robert Kirby (who died last October), A Skin Too Few’s a fascinating look at Drake, who, sadly, took his own life at the age of 26.  It’s been floating around in pieces on YouTube, but the below video’s in one high-quality piece. 

 
Bonus: Nick Drake’s Blues Run The Game

 
Thanks, Marc Campbell!

 
Have you seen the new “gay friendly” McDonald’s ad from France, yet? I suppose the message “Come as you are” is a positive one and the vignette itself is sweet enough, but what does this have to do with fast food anyway? Admittedly, it’s a huge improvement over utilizing a clown in an orange wig, yellow jumpsuit and huge shoes to market their processed meat products, but I can’t say it makes me want to visit a a McDonald’s. You?

Still, it’s worth noting that here in America, a gay dating website called Mancrunch.com couldn’t even pay to broadcast its message during the Super Bowl. In 2010. Seems like it’s our culture that’s French fried, n’est-ce pas?

 
As if there needed to be yet another compelling reason not to do cocaine other than the shitty high, a limp dick, the expense and the fact that no one wants to be anywhere near a fucking coke fiend, now you can add “It rots your face off” to the list.

Here’s a crash course for the ravers: Much of today’s cocaine supply in the US is being cut with a veterinary drug called levamisole which causes a drop in white blood cells and inflammation of the epidermis. For chronic cocaine abusers, this can result in the death of the outer layer of skin. Experts at the CDC have said the percentage of cocaine tested with levamisole has risen rapidly in recent years and now dermatologists are starting to put two and two together. From HealthDay:

Cocaine abusers—already at risk for an abnormal heartbeat, blood pressure problems, hallucinations, convulsions and stroke—can add another potential health complication to the list: rotting flesh.

“If you are a user of cocaine, you should be aware that some of the cocaine is not clean and can have other agents that can cause you to have a low white-cell count or skin tissue death,” said Dr. GhinwaDumyati, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Rochester and an epidemiologist for the Monroe County Health Department in New York.

In a report in the June 1 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, Dumyati and doctors from the University of Rochester Medical Center discuss two cases involving women with a history of cocaine use who came to the hospital for help when they noticed purplish plaques on their cheeks, earlobes, legs, thighs and buttocks.

Their profiles were typical of toxicity with levamisole, the doctors reported. The medication is a veterinary anti-worming agent, approved for use in cattle, sheep and pigs. It was once used to treat cancer, autoimmune diseases and kidney problems in humans, Dumyati said. It’s no longer approved for use in people in the United States, she said, because of adverse side effects.

But it’s often used to cut cocaine, before distribution to the user, she said. “Almost 80 percent of the cocaine coming into this country has levamisole mixed in,” Dumyati said.

Contaminated Cocaine Can Cause Flesh to Rot (HealthDay)

 

 
Wave of Mutilation skateboard deck by Kevin Tong available over at SLOW for 54.90€.
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Miles Davis Quintet Skateboards
 
(via Super Punch)

Photo by Shannon Cottrell
 
A happy (belated) birthday to Dangerous Minds pal Lenora Claire, who celebrated at mr BLACK LA on Tuesday night with several hundred of her BFFs and… a unicorn! The LA Weekly has a 30 picture photo gallery from the event.

 
Apparently, Cookie Monster loves cookies and IBM.
 
From Technologizer:

IBM. The Muppets. Two venerable institutions-but not ones we tend to associate with each other. Yet in the late 1960s, before most people had ever seen a computer in person or could identify a Muppet on sight, the two teamed up when IBM contracted with Jim Henson for a series of short films designed to help its sales staff. Little known today, these remain fresh, funny, and surprisingly irreverent. Henson would return to their gags and situations in his famous later works–and he plucked the Cookie Monster from one of them when assembling the Muppet cast for Sesame Street in 1969.

 
The IBM Muppet Show
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
The Muppets Wanna Start Nuclear War in a Gay Bar
 
(via Nerdcore)

 
Pot-stirrer par excellence—and Mother Teresa foe—Christopher Hitchens, has a new memoir out.  For a man who seems to embrace his fair share of contradictory impulses, it’s titled, fittingly, Hitch-22, and just received a heap of praise in today’s New York Times:

Anyone who’s closely read Mr. Hitchens’s work—including his best-selling manifesto God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything—or seen him do battle on cable news programs, knows that he has a mind like a Swiss Army knife, ready to carve up or unbolt an opponent’s arguments with a flick of the wrist.  He holds dear the serious things, the things that matter: social justice, learning, direct language, the free play of the mind, loyalty, holding public figures to high standards.  His mental Swiss Army knife also contains, happily, a corkscrew.  Mr. Hitchens is devoted to wit and bawdy wordplay and to good Scotch and cigarettes (though he has recently quit smoking) and long nights spent talking.

Vanity Fair’s carrying a lengthy excerpt from Hitch-22.  In it, Hitchens recounts his friendship with Martin Amis and describes a typically cryptic telephone encounter with Thomas Pynchon.  And for a look at what topics might pop up during a long night with Hitchens, here’s a clip that touches on 22 of ‘em:

 
Bonus: Hitchens discusses Hitch-22 on ABC radio Part I, Part II

 
I’m not sure how such a thing is accomplished, but a group of marine scientists at Brazil’s Guaruja Aquarium attached a plastic window to a shark’s egg so as to better observe the development of the embryo inside.  A pretty astounding clip of the little swimmer follows below (and for those of you concerned about such things, the shark remained unaffected by the window):

 
Researchers Install Window On Shark Egg