Glenn Beck continues to amaze with his hypocritical rants about Obama. He claims concern for the President’s safety while creating an imaginary scenario in which Obama is beheaded in India. “It’s the classic double-negative: God forbid anything bad happen to the people I so love to hate.”

The audio clip below which was broadcast by The Glenn Beck Show on Thursday, Nov. 4, 2010 is further evidence that Beck is more toxic than the BP oil spill and just as slimy.

Why is the president putting himself in danger? Why is anyone allowing him to put himself in danger, and if it’s not a danger, why do we have 34 warships? I don’t care if you spend $10 billion to protect the President. Nothing can happen to the president, period. I don’t like the man. He’s the President of the United States nothing can happen to him, so I don’t care how much money you spend, but why is he going there? Why are we spending $2 billion to put him there?”

The 34 warships and $2 billion dollar claim is based on bullshit rumors emanating from an anonymous source in India. Its taken on a life of its own thanks to the right wing press. It simply is not true. Beck insinuates that Obama’s life may be in jeopardy because he has turned his back on his Muslim brothers and sisters. Why else would India hold such danger? Once again, the Obama is Muslim lurks as subtext. Is nutjob Beck suggesting that an American President adopt a bunker mentality when it comes to interacting with one of the most important nations on the planet? Xenophobia as public policy. And what’s with Beck invoking Gandhi in the midst of his twisted tirade? It’s a pious smokescreen disguising hate.

Why do I waste my breath? Because millions and millions of people listen to douchebag Beck and take his word as gospel.

“If fantasizing on the radio about the assassination of the President of the United States sounds sick to you, that’s because it is.”

God help us all indeed.

Via The Raw Story

 
Peter Blegvad is an all around swell songwriter/ poet/visual artist that I’ve long admired. Here are some great cartoons of his that are posted at the Radio Free Song Club which also hosts some songs by Blegvad as well.
 

 
More after the jump…

Breyer P-Orridge in 2006 by Laure Leber.
 
A further statement, rather ambiguous, from Genesis Breyer P-Orridge regarding the recent Throbbing Gristle rift. According to Gen, s/he didn’t quit the group:

Dear Friends,

We have seen and heard various inaccurate, erroneous, even sometimes libelous speculations about why we felt compelled to drop out of the current Throbbing Gristle tour. As a result we intend to address these matters in full as soon as possible. We hope that what we state now, and later, will be clear, will not fan the flames of destructive gossip, will not seem negative and will reduce an somewhat dramatic situation into a simpler story. We want to make it clear right now that we did not, and have no wish to quit TG. Obviously there is more involved than just that simple statement. Personally, at this point of my life, my position is that the inner workings and dynamics of any band, but especially of TG, are as intimate, unique and most of all complex as they are within any family. Unfortunately, even at the level TG occupy in popular culture, band business becomes potentially everyone’s business. We all know the internet has amplified the speed of distribution of “information” almost as fast as it has accelerated the decline of accuracy worldwide. We have no interest in pointing fingers (or is it claws?) at various people or sites and accusing them of letting the cat out of the bag. Bickering is never attractive, not one on one nor within the realms of an ever expanding media fueled by smart phone technologies and laptops. As soon as we have composed a written version of what series of events we believe led to my feeling unable to remain part of THIS short tour by the re-grouped TG that feels acceptable we will post it here.

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge

Below, a video demonstrating an amazing new multiple from Breyer P-Orridge, the “Pandrogyne Cube.” The limited edition shifting photo sculpture, 4 x 4 inches, edition of 300 costs $123 + shipping and handling. Purchase at Invisible Exports in NYC.
 

 
Thank you kindly for the nomination, Ernesto Verdejo. I do hope that I could live up to this solemn challenge and I am very flattered.

 
(via Arbroath)

 
Amazing vintage “teaser” poster for one of the greatest movies of all time—at least in my book—James Whale’s 1935 Bride of Frankenstein. On auction for a minimum bid of $375,000, but closer to half a million once you factor in the buyer’s premium for the house.

Below, one of the best scenes, when campy Ernest Thesiger, playing campy Doctor Septimus Pretorius, shows Victor Frankenstein his tiny creations. This scene must have knocked audience’s socks off in 1935.

“To a new world of gods and monsters!”
 

Via the @Letters of Note’s Twitter feed

 
The artist and digital activist Ai Weiwei is currently under house arrest in his native China, according to the Guardian. Weiwei, who has embarrassed Chinese authorities on several occasions with his campaigns on sensitive issues, says he has been placed under house arrest until Sunday night because he planned to hold a party to mark the demolition of his newly built studio.

Earlier this week Weiwei, best known for his bird’s nest design for China’s Olympic Stadium, and his Sunflower Seeds exhibition,  was ordered to demolish his recently completed $1.2m studio in Shanghai, which had been built after a personal invitation from the local mayor two years ago. The studio was to form part of a new cultural area, where Weiwei was to teach architecture. Authorities now claim the studio had been erected without the relevant planning permission and has to be demolished. In response Weiwei said:

“I was very surprised because the whole process was under government supervision and they were very enthusiastic in pushing it,” he said.

“Two years ago quite a high official [from Shanghai] came to my studio to ask me to build a studio in this newly developed cultural district in an agricultural area. I told him I wouldn’t do it because I had no faith in government, but he somehow convinced me, saying he had come to Beijing from Shanghai, and so I said OK.

“Half a dozen artists were invited to build studios there because they wanted a cultural area. I’m the only one singled out to have my studio destroyed.”

Weiwei decided to hold a huge party before demolition work began, today Ai tweeted that national security officers visited him to say he could not leave his Beijing house until midnight on Sunday - the day of the event. As the Guardian reports:

They appear to have been concerned by the size of the party as well as its nature. Thousands of people had said they wanted to attend after Ai issued an open invitation via Twitter. Chinese authorities are always nervous about large unauthorised gatherings.

“They came last night and tried to interview me, saying I should not do it because it was getting too big,” he said.

“I told them: ‘I cannot cancel my party, because it is our only chance before the building is destroyed.’ Then they suggested I said I was under house arrest. I said: ‘This is ridiculous, because I’m not under house arrest and I’m not going to lie to the public.’”

Ai said he suggested they could either let the party go ahead and stop it if there was any wrongdoing, or ask the Shanghai government not to demolish the building – even if it were only a temporary stay of execution. Had they done so, he would have called off the party.

The police returned today and announced he was under house arrest after he reiterated that he would go unless they stopped him by force.

“They said it was an order they had received … They were very polite and very embarrassed,” he added.

“This is the general tragedy of this nation. Everything has to be dealt with by police. It is like you use an axe to do all the housework because this is the only tool you have.”

 
Rescued Chilean miner Edison Peña creates magic on the Letterman show. This guy is so happy to be alive he radiates the power of a 1000 suns. His Elvis impression is bliss personified. Wow.
 

 
Tremble Under Boom Lights has created a map of Detroit record labels. 

The link below will take you to a Google Map with pinpoints of over 200 Detroit record labels throughout history. With each pin-point comes a little bit of info about that label. My criteria for this was simple…an address I could find for a record label. Most were taken from Keith Rylatt’s essential book “Groovesville USA” but a fair amount were also gleaned from my own independent research, ie, addresses listed on the labels or sleeves in my possession.

A map of Detroit record labels.

 
Divine sings “The Name Game.”

Divine gives it her all at The Hacienda in Manchester, 1983. The audience appears to be totally clueless - joyless division. Where the FOK is Happy Mondays?

Divine was punk before punk. A shit-eating Diva that could have devoured the entire Sex Pistols for breakfast.
 

 
Tejano music was part of the soundtrack of my life when I was living in New Mexico, as pervasive as the smell of roasting Hatch chilies. The insistent rhythm of Tex-Mex blasting from low-slung, tricked out Camrys cruising Paseo del Pueblo Sur.

The Nortec Collective is doing something very cool here - combining Mexican norteno music with techno: nor-tec. Accordions, horns, drum machines and synthesizers come together in a sound that is both modern and traditional. Borders dissolve in the dance.

Nortec Collective perform live and record as Bostich + Fussible and Hiperboreal + Clorofila under the banner of the Collective.
 

 
Bostich + Fussible are going to be touring in 2011 and here’s a promotional clip. The masks have a hi-tech Lucha libre look. Very hip.
 

 
I lived in Las Vegas from 2000 to 2003. It’s a karmic hellhole, a crespusculating asshole made of bad vibes and plasterboard. The air is radioactive. It tastes like braised metal and smells like a bedpan being broiled in a toaster oven. The morning sun lays despondently on the horizon, a fat sweltering whore stuffed into a bright orange body stocking. By noon it’s so hot you can’t touch the steering wheel of your car without searing the flesh off your hands. The ‘Strip’ is a shimmering skidmark on the underwear of absolute reality, Fruit Of The Doomed. From my perfectly sculpted Liberace lawn off Flamingo Dr., I could see the Luxor Hotel & Casino jutting into the sky, a giant cancerous nipple spewing a fluorescent stream of toxic milk from its blackened tip. I hate Vegas. The collective I.Q. of the local politicians is less than that of a lobotomized mongoloid suffering the aftereffects of a bad crack habit. I hate the metallic death rattle of the slot machines and the desperate guttural moans of suicidal gamblers as they force feed the blingy machines of certain death. I hate the women in Vegas. I hate the men. I hate the dogs that yank at chains in the backyards of suburban tract houses located on dismal little streets with Disneyesque names like Pirates Cove and Whistling Waters. I hate the people of Vegas because they’re there, too brutalized by the soul deadening aura of the place to lift themselves up and get the fuck out. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas because there’s only room enough for one Hell on this fucking planet…and Vegas is that Hell… a Devil’s circus, Dante’s Cirque Du Soleil.

Underneath the suffocating slab of the city, there is a culture of people who couldn’t get out, who got caught in the teeth of Sin City and now they’re being devoured. Good people in a bad place.

“Deep beneath Vegas’s glittering lights lies a sinister labyrinth inhabited by poisonous spiders and a man nicknamed The Troll who wields an iron bar.”

Read about Vegas’s denizens of the deep at the Mail Online.

Las Vegas journalist Matthew O’ Brian’s book ‘Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas’ is available here.  Oddly, the book is published as a ‘Travel Holiday Guide’.

 

 
Another article on the Vegas tunnel people previously posted on DM here.

 
It was the charwoman, Sophia Bishop, who uncovered the truth about Dr James Barry.  Her discovery proved a great embarrassment to the distinguished members of the medical profession, who had failed to guess the doctor’s secret, despite their former colleague’s diminutive stature and smooth complexion.

An embarrassment indeed, considering Dr Barry was one of the most outstanding doctors of the Victorian age, a celebrated surgeon who pioneered new treatments, and performed one of the first Caesarean sections.

It was only after the doctor’s death in 1865, as his body was laid out that Sophia Bishop could see Barry was a “perfect female.”  She also noticed what appeared to be stretch marks on Barry’s stomach indicating the doctor had once been pregnant.

As the news of this discovery spread, there was a frenzy of press speculation in a bid to uncover the truth of the doctor’s identity.

The Medical Times reported although the Army had failed to order a post-mortem to settle the matter, their sources said the facts about both Dr Barry’s sex and her maternity were true.

Other witnesses also commented on the late doctor.  The Dean of McGill Medical School in Canada, who had treated Barry for a chest infection, explained his ignorance of Barry’s sex by stating the bedroom had always been in almost total darkness when he paid his calls and this was why he had failed to notice anything unusual.

Staff Surgeon Major Dr McKinnon, who had described Barry as male on her death certificate, admitted he hadn’t been sure whether Dr Barry was male, female or hermaphrodite, but that he had no purpose in making such a discovery.

Dr James Barry was born Margaret Ann Bulkley in Ireland in 1792.  A highly intelligent child, Bulkley desired to study at university, something forbidden to women at that time.  However, in 1809, she travelled with her mother to Edinburgh, where she enrolled under the name of James Barry as a student of Medicine and Literature.  From existing correspondence, it is obvious Mrs. Bulkley was complicit in her daughter’s subterfuge.

Barry proved a brilliant student and qualified as a Doctor in 1812 – the first woman to ever do so in Britain.  It is impossible to guess just how isolated James Barry must have felt, not just in her student days but throughout her entire lonely, single-minded existence.  Her secret was shared by so few, the burden of deception heavy. Barry moved to London, where she qualified at the Royal College of Surgeons, and in 1813, was commissioned into the Army as Regimental Assistant.

Bulkley continued with her disguise as a man and may have served at Waterloo, before travelling to India and then to South Africa, where she served as military doctor and personal surgeon to the Governor of the Cape, Lord Charles Somerset.  It was while serving as Somerset’s physician that the first rumors spread aboout Barry’s gender, as it is believed Barry and Somerset were lovers, and it was here she gave birth to a child.

Despite her diminutive stature, Barry was a fine duelist, and is said to have successfully dueled in order to have a leper colony built. For the next 40 years, Barry served as an Army Surgeon, eventually reaching the position of Inspector General H. M. Army Hospitals. In 1864, Barry reluctantly retired, and returned to England, where she died in 1865, her body was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery, London.

Even by today’s standards, Dr. Barry’s career was remarkable - prodigiously talented and dedicated, her work on hygiene and preventative medicine was pioneering; her concern for the welfare of prisoners, lepers and inmates of the lunatic asylum was revolutionary.  Dr Barry campaigned for better medical care for the common soldier and, long before the advent of antiseptic and anesthetics, performed the first successful Caesarean section ever carried out by a British doctor, saving the life of both mother and child.
 

 
This is incredible: Behold as Miles David watches Louis Malle’s French film noir, Ascenseur pour l’échafaud, AKA Elevator to the Gallows, and improvises his moody soundtrack score. Followed by an interview with Malle.

Jazz critic Phil Johnson described this as “the loneliest trumpet sound you will ever hear.” This is like watching Picasso paint.
 

Via PCL Linkdump

 
Kraftwerk before Autobahn.
 

 
Bonus clips of early Kraftwerk in performance after the jump…