Cassette Boy vs. The One Show
Video terrorist Cassette Boy takes on Britain’s vapid morning talker, The One Show. Click here for Cassette Boy vs. Harry Potter.
Via Holy Moly!
Video terrorist Cassette Boy takes on Britain’s vapid morning talker, The One Show. Click here for Cassette Boy vs. Harry Potter.
Via Holy Moly!
Not to further harsh yer mellow or anything, there’s been plenty of bleak environmental reporting all over the place today. I read an article this morning in Foreign Policy that chilled me, because it’s about a brand spankin’ new horseman of the Apocalpyse: “Peak Phosphorous.”
Phosphorous is a non-metallic element thought by the alchemists of the Middle Ages to be able to contain light because it glowed in the dark, hence the word phosphorescent. It’s a major component in industrial fertilizer and perhaps the primary reason why the world has been able to sustain such a massive several billion persons population growth since the 1950s. Guess what? There is probably only about 40 years worth of it left:
From Kansas to China’s Sichuan province, farmers treat their fields with phosphorus-rich fertilizer to increase the yield of their crops. What happens next, however, receives relatively little attention. Large amounts of this resource are lost from farm fields, through soil erosion and runoff, and down swirling toilets, through our urine and feces. Although seemingly mundane, this process cannot continue indefinitely. Our dwindling supply of phosphorus, a primary component underlying the growth of global agricultural production, threatens to disrupt food security across the planet during the coming century. This is the gravest natural resource shortage you’ve never heard of.
The root of this problem has previously been the subject of presidential concern. In a message to Congress in 1938, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt warned that the phosphorus content of American agricultural land “has greatly diminished.” This shortage, Roosevelt warned, could cause low crop yields and poor-quality produce, detrimentally affecting “the physical health and economic security of the people of the nation.”
Phosphorus is used extensively for a variety of key functions in all living things, including the construction of DNA and cell membranes. As it is relatively rare in the Earth’s crust, a lack of phosphorus is often the limiting factor in the growth of plants and algae. In humans, it plays an essential role in bone formation. Without a steady supply of this resource, global agricultural production will face a bottleneck, and humankind’s growing population will suffer a serious nutrition shortage.
Peak Phosphorus (Foreign Policy)
Some of the best dub I’ve ever heard courtesy of my long time associate and genius about town, Mr. Eddie Ruscha who describes this beast of a platter thusly :“Yes man. Fatman Rhythm Section plays the most heavy heavy dubwise style. These are 200-300 lb. dudes playing here. Bass and drum TOUGHER than TOUGH. Jacob “The Killer” Miller was also larger than large and his voice slides through the dub like clouds of smoke. A well charged download!!!”
The picketing hate group known as the Westboro Baptist Church—which is basically just one family, led by patriarch the Rev. Fred Phelps and his daughter Margie—is infamous the world over for its hate speech aimed at Jews, blacks, Catholics and especially homosexuals. The Phelps family made a trip to West Virginia earlier this month to picket things the Phelps family—calling them a “church” is really twisting language—view as sinful. This could be just about anything with the Phelps family, of course, and often is: The WBC once picketed an appliance store that sold a particular brand of Swedish vacuum cleaner.
Why? Because Sweden supports gay rights, of course!
Make sense? Of course it doesn’t. These are the same people who picket the funerals of dead American service members with signs reading “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” and instruct their children to desecrate the American flag as families grieve. Astonishingly, during their stay in West Virginia, as news from the Montcoal Mine disaster became known, the Phelpses targeted the families of the dead miners!
But how do you counter such people when they decide to inflict themselves on your community? First off, you don’t even bother trying to counter them, you siphon off their media thunder. Concerned civic and religious groups in Wheeling and Charleston took the novel approach of using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to organize Stop the Hate Rallies, Spread the Love flash mobs.
Signs in front yards also spread the message: “West Virginia is No Place for Hate!” with symbols of Judaism, Christianity and a rainbow (representing gay and lesbian residents) by far outnumbering the placards carried by the Phelps family (one read “God Hates WV.” Another said “You Will Eat Your Babies”!). But it was the disco dancing flash mobs doing the electric boogaloo to “Take Me Home Country Roads” that stole the show.
“We want to become the story; to steal the story from the WBC,” said one organizer, Rabbi Jim Cohn of Temple Israel. “We’re annoyed by the idea that they get the publicity through hatred.”
For more information see www.niot.org.
Cross posting from Brand X
A horse-drawn carriage led the coffin of Malcolm McLaren through the streets of London today. The coffin was black and spray-painted, “Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die,” the name, at one point, of the former Sex Pistols manager’s King’s Road clothing shop.
In celebration of the impresario’s life, McLaren’s son (and Agent Provocateur founder), Joseph Corré, urged people to enjoy a midday moment of mayhem: “Put on your favourite records and let it RIP!” I’ll be playing this.
“He’s no stranger to the Hollywood life of glitz, glamour, and the public eye.” The calculation calculus goes like this: mock born-again Stephen Baldwin, you’re mocking God. Well, Stephen and speaking-in-the-third-person Stephen will no longer abide the mocking!
Watch below as Stephen positions himself as a Job-like figure whose various misdeeds (bankruptcy, public idiocy, more public idiocy) amount to nothing more than tests of his own essential righteousness.
A small “token gifting” on your part would help ease the pain of Stephen’s bankruptcy and give him the ability to reach even more people with the gospel, so donate now, won’t you? (Along with your gifting, take some time to write Stephen a message of encouragement. I’m sure he needs it!) Next up: the site to restore Jesse James.
The Restoration of Stephen Baldwin
Bonus: Why Should I Support Stephen Baldwin?
(via VF Daily)
Although it was covered in the Los Angeles Times and shown at a couple of high profile film festivals, Spike Stewart’s mid 80’s doc “D.U.I.” has been utterly lost to obscurity. A collection of completely obnoxious performances captured roughly
on semi-pro VHS gear, it probably deserves its unknown status but is still a rare glimpse into a very marginalized and hilarious scene of performance art tinged bands. And yes, that’s 17 year old me on drums with Severed Head in a Bag. NSFW !
Dangerous Minds pal, Peter Bergman is back on the radio! The Firesign Theatre funnyman has resurrected the Radio Free Oz moniker of his legendary KPFK radio show of the mid-1960s and is trying something new for 2010.
Broadcasting from his new homebase in Whidbey Island, WA, Bergman’s new incarnation of Radio Free Oz continues on with his unique take on freeform radio and features cameo appearances from his comrades in the Firesign Theatre (I even make an appearance in one of them). Currently a weekly program going out live on Sunday nights, Radio Free Oz will soon be on five nights a week.
The highlight for me are the segments about weirdo evangelist Tony Alamo by Philip Proctor in each show. I laughed so hard I cried. Co-hosted by David Ossman.
And speaking of Radio Free Oz, Proctor and Bergman, I found this unusual—and really interesting—piece on YouTube today and it features Peter Bergman and Philip Proctor reading from William Burroughs. Peter reads “Death Dwarf in the Street” on the old Radio Free Oz show in the ‘60s and Phil reads “The Saragossa Cafe” in a more recent recording. An excerpt from Nova Express, a film by Andre Perkowski.
