Eyes Yet Open, and Lives

tonite little dynamo opened up the phone lines and got outta the way, letting our callers spin the evening's thread

started with a quick look at a couple chapters in Leviticus, the Old Testament's book of codifications (principally for the Hebrew priesthood, the Levites, but also to lesser extent for the populace)

expiation and atonement of "sin" as defined by Yahweh via Moses is always accomplished via blood sacrifice, utilizing animals which stand for various segments of the population, whether in ancient Israel, modern America, or elsewhere on Earth for that matter

various blood-sacrifice prescriptions are demanded in the Old Testament, and the sacrificial schema of Leviticus 4 was: for sins by commoners, a female goat or sheep; for sins by an anointed priest, a bull; for sins by the "congregation" (i.e., not the populace-in-toto, but "inner Israel"), a bull; and for sins by one of Israel's leaders, a male goat

note that as the "sinning authority" rises in rank (e.g., from a common person, or what we'd call a "common citizen," to, say, a sin by an anointed priest), the gender of the scapegoat/sacrifice moves from female to male -- in this case, from a female goat or sheep to a bull -- obviously, a male animal

the New Testament "sacrifice to end all sacrifices," the Old Testament sacrificial schema, and modern methods of atonement-sacrifices (whether of individuals or groups, these are largely accomplished occultly and/or unconsciously) depend upon the QUALITY of the offered scapegoat -- i.e., in order that the individual or group transgression receive pardon, the sacrifice must be of sufficient quality

Leviticus illustrates the inflexible requirement of literal blood for the manifestation of the ancient Hebrew "god" and subsequent forgiveness of Mosaic-code infractions

karma and the animating energy that "passes between dead halves" by medium of blood is inferred . . . the spiritual link, or ligature, between ancestors/generations permits the incarnate individual a kind of DNA open-window for a tremendous -- and potentially eternal -- restoration, interpreted in Leviticus as sin-atonement

Levitical use of blood as restorative medium (the go-between "pathway of God") is permitted, or graced, while usage of blood for purpose of suspending animation or gathering power is antithetic, unholy, and pseudo-divine

the sacrificial entities identified in Leviticus have human correspondents (amongst the ancient Hebrew tribes and amongst all peoples), and clearly this blood-atonement system is the locus of ancient and modern Hebrew faith, as in the famous example of Abraham and Isaac (which effect "lowered the ante" from the human-sacrifice of Issac to animal-sacrifice as representative of humans -- the willingness of Abraham to give up his son satisfied God )

the Twentieth Century was awash in ritual sacrifice: world wars, Jonestown, private and group occult workings, mass-murder rites such as Manson and the Zodiac undertook, numerous assassinations of prominent people, the WTC collapse, etc.

question is: were these Levitical, hallowed, restorative rites? -- or mere acts, powerful though they be, of selfishness, pride, madness, and will-to-power? rituals intended to separate, to breed spiritual divisiveness and collective weakness, preparatory to our being "conquered" and enslaved
(in which case, we would likely not consider ourselves either conquered or enslaved!)


Helter Skelter/Total Race War was Manson's oft-stated aim, and implementation of the divide-and-conquer Hegelian Dialectic amongst race and gender in America has tossed the nation wholesale into the maw of the wolf -- fostering reactionary theo-politics; concentration of power in the hands of transgenerational, self-styled "elites"; disaster for the environment and future meteorology; decimation of the American middle class; the largest prison system in the world; missing fatherhood, broken brotherhood; widening rich/poor gaps; mass dis-spiritment, emasculation, and regression to the psycho-socio-political matriarchal id

Jesus' torture and death were quite routine (perhaps "formulaic" is a better word) blood-sacrificial-scapegoat ceremonies, squarely in the Mother Goddess/Lover Son fertility traditions that went so oft before, and continue today

as Jesus' self-prophecies make obvious, the New Osiris (Tammuz, Dionysus, Attis, etc) was well aware of his stalkers -- priests, potentates, and "evil in high places" . . . he was cognizant of the "game" as it unfolded around him like a poison rose

. . . and so was Baptist John, sacrificed to the Mother-Cult of the Virgin, even as John Lennon was

Jesus could have run . . . but the world is a chessboard, a boxed chessboard, to certain interests -- and fleeing in cold sweat terror is what the slobbering hounds and lordlings and "courtiers" WANT -- our great "global elite," noble "hunters of souls"

kookoo . . .kookoo . . . kookoo

:O)


as for the Lady, why . . . there's Sister Mary! deep in her habit

but the horns blast, the hounds bay, and lo! her breasts heave like sudden leaven, like a milk thundershower, rising, falling

see, when The Hunt is on, even Sister's blood gets up, furnacing her cheeks, faint crease of sweat on her stiff upper lip ...

then it's off to morning services! :O)

white males have been Scapegoat of Choice the past few decades, producing the anticipated and inevitable underground, prison-centered "white power" reactionary movement -- a reaction very difficult to control, because discrimination against lower-and-middle class white males is often very real

affirmative-action, Identity-atomized America produced a fractured, dis-spirited, selfish nation, with each Me Group scrambling for fixed tickets in the Victim Sweepstakes

the national death-stroke was applied by inclusion of American women in the 1964 Civil Rights Act under assumption of ongoing, and historically extensive, "oppression" by, yup, them Evil White Mens

unable to resist such a polished and purty apple, and infused with infallible conviction in her own moral superiority, the American Woman bit, and bit deep -- instantaneously placing herself in superior legal, cultural, and psychological status vis a vis every male inhabitant of the land

and placing her soul in jeopardy

not a gameshow, either! :O(

chaos, predictably, ensued . . . and folks, it may have happened by magick, but it ain't going away so easy

nuclear and extended families shattered, men and women became primary competitors (with females advantaged by law), and male suicide, unemployment, prison-rates, underemployment, durg use, homelessness, and premature death-rates soared

Grrrl Power enacted a heavy price, and it was mostly paid by American boys and men -- a bloodprice that, like oil, just keeps getting steeper

American males slowly graduated from disbelief, to bewilderment, thence either to denial (that there's any problem) or various levels of rage at second-class citizenship and at betrayal by their own women (i.e., white women)

with this cooking, little dynamo then discovered the apparent fact that Martin Luther King's given birthname was "Michael" (according to Wikipedia and other internet sources -- obviously, little dynamo doesn't have the Doctor's birth certificate . . . shit, dynamo can't find his driver's license in his own wallet!)

Michael Martin King was killed in 1968 which, in tandem with 1966, were peak/thresh-hold years of mass blood-sacrifice in a major American "spiritual undertaking"

the night before the sacrifice, M.K. delivered his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech at the Memphis Masonic Temple, during which he made fairly overt references to his upcoming death

the Old Testament Levitical blood-atonement pattern is intact -- Moses, like Doctor King, brought "God's word" from the mountaintop to the people, and ancient Memphis was a premiere Egyptian site of sorcery, necromancy, sonomancy, and geomancy

modern Memphis, of course, is home to "The King" and his "Graceland," and a matix for creation, distribution, and broadcast of the sonic waves called music (along, in particular, with Nashville and it's Towers/Mall)

songs are weapons, or tools, of power -- of creation and/or destruction

that's not all they are, but that's their fundament

the fact that modern people relate to songs as frivolities or entertainments changes nothing . . . indeed, such assumptions VASTLY INCREASE the occult potency of songs, musicians, and especially the interests and intents of persons and groups who "control the airwaves," so to speak (or claim/use commerical "rights" to a song -- thus de-sacralizing it, and unleashing its divisive and distopian potential)

about 1/5 of the way down the Wikipedia page on Michael/Martin, the header photo (doppleganged below) jumped out

Wikipedia's accompanying caption reads:

Martin Luther King Jr., after his arrest in February of 1956, at the age of 27. He had been arrested during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The mug shot was found in July, 2004, during the cleaning out of a storage room at the Montgomery County Sheriff's Department. Someone had written "DEAD" twice on the picture, as well as 4-4-68, the date King was killed, though it is not known who wrote it.





















like names, numbers/numerals "adhere" to human beings, and are helpful in understanding and using magical systems -- or in Unspinnng the Assassination of a Nation. . .

included in Wikipedia's discussion of the numeral "24" is object M-24 in the Saggitarius constellation; the 24 major and minor keys comprising Western "tonal music"; the 24 books comprising the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh -- also called the Mikra [Mike-Ra]; the number of carats representing pure gold; the number of teeth in a human child's mouth; and the number of "blackbirds" (angels) baked into "Sing a Song of Sixpence's" pie (which was a sacrificial offering set before a "king")

24 also is:

the maximum number of Knights Companions in the British noble/occult chivalric society, the Order of the Garter; an unlucky denotative numeral in Cantonese due to similarity with the phrase "easy to die"; associated in Brazilian occultism due to the number's association with homosexuality and the deer (see Levitical scapegoat, supra); the number of hours per day; the frames-per-second rate of most motion pictures; and last, but not least, designation of US Interstate 24, which runs -- like the Levitical Spirit of God between deadness and deadness -- between Illinois and Tennessee

all the above correspondences pertain to the blood-sacrifice contexts surrounding Doctor King as he stood on the balcony of that cheap Memphis hotel . . . but of them all, the Interstate 24 reference leaped out like a stotting gazelle

so we'll try that road, after a brief pit-stop . . .

the "storage room clean-out" in the Montgomery Co. Sheriff's Dept. that uncovered the photo above smacks of the ark, and its various coverings and uncovering . . . also smacks of apocalypse itself, which means "uncovering"

M.K.'s "prisoner number" sums 24 (7+0+8+9)

the TWO scrawls of DEAD in blue-ink -- blue being the color of contained or "living" blood, of course -- suggest, perhaps, the Biblical first and second deaths . . . or perhaps, have more straightforward necromantic/zombie connotations (recall the Zodiac's obsession with afterlife "paradise slaves" and the Egyptian fixation on slaves or "bound captives")

the following paragraph from Paul Duggan's online article, Breaking and Dividing: Covenantal Sacrmentology suggests another Levitical/ritualistic facet to the twin "signings" of DEAD:


The ascension offering (Leviticus 1) is a tightly focused picture of this. The ascension offering (usually translated, whole burnt offering) involves all five of the animals of GenesisÊ15, and they are also divided (except the birds). What happens then is significant: the head and shoulders are "ascended" without being washed. They are considered clean already. The entrails and hindquarters need to be washed before they may ascend in smoke up to God.


the first signature DEAD appears just above M.K.'s head, as "unwashed head and shoulders" or more broadly, the "modern evolution" of the human form, neocortical; the lower DEAD appears just above M.K.'s groin/bowells, the "unwashed," unclean, and unascended portions of the body (representing the limbic/reptilian, the unraised land itself, or the geopolitical National Body of America)

thus M.K., like the nation, is broken into pieces, divided spiritually and psychologically (or, into realpolitik Red and Blue voting-bloc states, for you poli-junksters!)

M.K. and the nation thus remain indefinitely in limbo (much worse, actually) and cannot function with the national body severed, it's mind and spirit "ascended" but its mammo-reptilian body left behind, in a state of terror and despair, Earth "cut off from heaven"

in Leviticus, the re-animating Spirit of the LORD -- NOT the Egypto-Chaldean Goddess Isis -- passes between the twin DEAD zones . . . the King's Upper and Lower Egypt, uniting them:

And there came a fire out from before the LORD, and consumed upon the altar the burnt offering and the fat.

(Lev. 9:24)



as posted elsewhere on this blog, certain Highway Systems in America have strong occult undertones and magickal functions, including Interstate 80, Interstate 40/Old Route 66, Interstate 35, the under-construction Texas "International Highway," and a number of other significant routes (many routes now include subterranean fibre-optic networks and other technologies, both extant and potential)

Dwight Eisenhower -- an astute student of geopolitical magick and ancient civilizations -- championed and founded the "National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956"

note the little-known DEFENSE half of that equation

Interstate 24 intersects with the major East-West artery, Interstate 40, in Nashville

Nashville, that ole Southern Charmer, hosts perhaps the most powerful sonomantic set-up on the planet, with music and other sound altered, amplified, and broadcast via the Nashville Towers/Mall [discussed and pictured in a prior post]

Wikipedia opens its descriptive passages on Interstate 24 thus:


One of the most notoriously hazardous stretches of Interstate highway in the United States is approximately 40 miles (64 km) west of Chattanooga on I-24 in Monteagle, Tennessee, where the highway goes over the Cumberland Plateau.

Compared to grades elsewhere, Monteagle's 4 to 6% grade does not come close to the steepest highway roads (Interstate 40 between Nashville and Knoxville features 5% grades in each direction), but the slope is protracted over a distance of several miles. While all motorists need to exercise caution, truckers are particularly vexed by Monteagle, and many have died going through this area.

The east bound lanes feature several runaway truck ramps where a truck with no brakes can exit into a long pit full of loose gravel to safely stop. This dangerous stretch of highway inspired Johnny Cash to write a song about Monteagle Mountain.

Another interesting tidbit about the Monteagle grade is that it sports the widest "median" of any Interstate highway. There's more than a mile between the eastbound and westbound lanes at one point. The eastbound lanes descend the mountain on one side of a ridge, while the westbound lanes ascend on the other side of the ridge.


again, we note the "descending" and "ascending" portion of the "severed artery" of I-24, reminiscent of the Levitical washed and unwashed portions of M.K.'s autographed-body

mirroring (or perhaps mocking) the primordial spiritual descent/ascent motifs, Interstate 24's most harrowing and deadly stretch is near Monteagle, TN ("Eagle Mountain," with allusions to the American Eagle)

more speculatively, this division of I-24 at the Monteagle Grade divides the road into a high-way and a low-way . . . and even the word "grade" connotes qualitative judgment

the broken road thus produces two mini I-12s, with 12 inferring two sets of apostles or holy companions -- a light, visible, overt dozen, and an occluded, sinister dozen

the murderous, separated lanes of I-24 at Monteagle illustrate the severed ligaments or vessels of the American people and land, composed of twin, or mirror-image, halves -- both of which, like its warring genders, are dead

the same prophecy and reality are inscribed on the photo of Michael King, who although twice-dead, has eyes yet open, and lives

Groaned and Delivered

Rock Star #1: Uhh . . . is Chas on vacation? Who's that drivin' the limo?

Rock Star #2: Dunno apparently he ain't shy of cameras.

Rock Star #3: I want my Ma(g)Ma!

Rock Star #4: EEEEEE!!




















speaking of taking apart and putting together, even the land seems about half-dead these days . . . the thirsting Southwest, lost Texas, teetering California, the bereft Eastern seaboard . . .

darksome as the hour is -- and it's ugly uptown and down, me droogies -- little dynamo feels good about the future ("the" future, not his future, lol)

one of the few things dynamo has grocked about the god-stuff (and definitely the coolest thing) was that My Belief Is Not Required

LOL!

ennyway here's a worthy sentiment from Egg Salad Annie's blog today:

Doing what we do comes from a deep love, care, and concern for the Earth and the inhabitants therein. We do what we do, write what we do, and push the limits as we do also from a deep sense of mission to others, based on our belief in a God of Love, who entrusted us to be proper custodians of the bounty we've been given.


not much to argue there, except of course dynamo's no "believer" -- rather an overgrown child requiring ongoing miracles to stave off casual (but persistent!) doubt

... he does respect, tho, those of you that sincerely pull off the faith-thing -- now that is a real mystery .. .unlike Babylon

:O)



And, behold, the word of the LORD came unto him, saying, This shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir.

And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be.

And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness.

And he said unto him, I am the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.

And he said, LORD God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?

And he said unto him, Take me an heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.

And he took unto him all these, and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against another: but the birds divided he not.

And when the fowls came down upon the carcases, Abram drove them away.

And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him.

And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years;

And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance.

And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age.

But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.

And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces.

In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:

The Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites, And the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims, And the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.

(Gen. 15)


Paul Duggan's Breaking and Dividing: Covenental Sacramentology spelunks this passage, making clear especially the simultaneous restoration of the servants of god ("Israel" or the "seed of Abram") and the land (the physical Earth including the spiritually and corporeally dead):

The furnace is a sign of God's glory shining through in the midst of darkness and terror. The glory passes between the pieces in the form of a furnace, prophetic of the furnace of affliction which Israel will experience (1 Kings 8:51). God's burning glory is a promise of resurrection.

Commentators take note that no indication that the animals are consumed by the fire is given, so we may understand this as parallel with the burning bush, symbolizing God's personal presence with Israel as a purifying fire that does not consume or destroy. Here with Abram, God's glory is comes to meet the need of separated dead animals, and is predominantly promissory of re-creation and resurrection.

The prophetic aspects of the passage (which are not dwelt on by Robertson) can help us to interpret the rite. God is providing two co-relative revelations, one verbal, the other pictorial. This is what is indicated in Hebrews 6:18 about the promise God makes to Abram two immutable things, God's verbal promise and the covenant oath He makes.

Deep sleep is the time in which God reveals oracles to men, and in this vision God predicts in detail the future history of Abram's descendants, that they will be oppressed in Egypt for 400 years, but that they will come out again and will return to the land.

These animals do not primarily represent God and what will happen to Him, but rather Abram's seed and the land they are to inherit. The five animals specified are those used in the sacrificial system of Leviticus. These animals were to be used as substitutes by the Israelites, each animal symbolizing a different stratum of society. The bull was for the priests, sheep and goats for most of the people, and doves ane very poor (Leviticus 4-5).

The division of the animals points to the alienation of man from the land. Man is created from the soil, having been originally divided off from it by God's own word. With the advent of sin, a curse is on the land, and man is estranged from it. What should have been distinct but united, are threatened by external oppressors (the birds) and lie dead and severed in horrible darkness.

Abram is alienated and estranged from the land of promise, though God has said that he will inherit it. God says that this alienation continues for a time: Abram's seed will sojourn in a strange land for many years. In the end they will return and enter the land, and God's personal presence will bring them in. His own glory will be the binding agent between Abram and the Land, granting him "resurrection" out of darkness and deep sleep (John 11:9-11). As James Jordan writes:

In the context of Genesis 1 and 6-8 we can see God again de-creating and re-creating the world Just as the Flood returned the world to a condition of formlessness and emptiness, which God refilled, so in the vision of Abram the world returns to the primeval darkness of Genesis 1:2, before God established the covenantal separation-union of day and night.

Abram himself is in "deep sleep," the same condition as Adam was in Genesis 2:21 when God separated Eve from him and established a covenant separation-union between the man and the woman. Here the purpose is to reestablish the connection between man and the 'erets [land]. The false and perverted relationship between man and land, which came in with the fall, is undone by de-creation; but before the birds can descend to destroy matters utterly, the covenant order is re-created by God Himself becoming the unbreakable binding force connecting the two. Abram is as likely not to posses the land as God is likely to perish.



oathkeeper, arkmaker, healing fire, sorrowbreaker

your covenant lives

Steed Brave, Beloved and True: God Bless You

"No Apologies"

Britain brands nearly 1,500 citizens criminals by mistake


Sun May 21, 9:23 AM ET

LONDON (AFP) - Britain's embattled Home Office was at the centre of fresh controversy after it admitted to labelling nearly 1,500 innocent people as criminals by mistake.

The ministry -- already reeling from a foreign prisoner scandal -- was also under pressure following reports that an immigration officer has been suspended due to allegations that he offered to help a teenage Zimbabwean claim asylum in Britain in return for sex.

The Home Office said the people had been mistakenly labelled as criminals after their identities were confused with real offenders when the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) carried out checks on individuals applying for jobs working in positions of trust with children or vulnerable adults.

"This is not about the CRB making 'mistakes': where there has been a mismatch, it is because the individual's details are similar or even identical to someone else's conviction data on the Police National Computer," a ministry spokesman was quoted by Britain's domestic Press Association as saying Sunday.

"These cases are clearly regrettable, but represent a tiny proportion of cases -- 0.03 percent of the nine million disclosures issued by the CRB since it began operating in March 2002," he said.

Last year, the Home Office successfully stopped 25,000 unsuitable people from gaining work with children or the vulnerable.

"We make no apology for erring on the side of caution. We are talking about the protection of children and vulnerable adults," the spokesman said.

The Mail on Sunday, which broke the story of the blunder, said many law-abiding citizens lost jobs or were barred from taking courses because they had been wrongly classed as pornographers, thieves and violent robbers.

The victims had to go to their local police station to be fingerprinted in order to clear their name, it said.

The scandal will prove a challenge for new Home Secretary John Reid who took over the Home Office from Charles Clake earlier this month.

Clarke was ejected in a cabinet reshuffle after admitting his ministry failed to consider more than 1,000 foreign criminals for deportation after they were released from jail. Some went on to reoffend.

Nick Clegg, home affairs spokesman for the opposition Liberal Democrats said the revelations "take Home Office incompetence to new absurd levels".

"While dangerous criminals are allowed to walk freely in our communities, innocent people are being given criminal records and prevented from getting on with their lives."

________________


gee . . . i wonder what percentage of the Mistaken Evildoers (oops!) were male?

had enuf yet?

shall i post a few more? hmmm?

:O)

note that Mr. Clegg -- purportedly the "opposition" -- is in fact not "opposed" to the "scandalous incumbents" at all

his carefully worded statement appears to refute the "opposition" -- but in fact relies on the same demagoguery, fear-mongering, and agitational propaganda as the "scandalous incumbents"

precisely like America's "choice" between Kerry and Bush

Witches and Warthogs

Danger bird, he flies alone
And he rides the wind back to his home
Although his wings have turned to stone

And we used to be so calm
Now I think about you all day long
(That's the moment that he cracked)
'Cause you've been with another man
(long ago in the museum with his friends)
Here you are and here I am

The jailbird takes the raps
And he finds himself spread-eagled on the tracks
But the training that he learned will get him nowhere fast

And I know we should be free
(With the rain pounding on his back he recalls)
But freedom's just a prison to me
(the moment that he cracked long ago in the museum)
'Cause I lied to keep it kind
(with his friends)
When I left you far behind
(And like those memories the rain keeps pounding)
down, down, down

And though these wings have turned to stone
I can fly fly fly away
Watch me fly above the city
Like a shadow on the sky

(N'eel)

_______



Dragonlike Dinosaur Skull Donated to Museum

Mon May 22, 6:49 PM ET

INDIANAPOLIS - The 66-million-year-old skull of a dinosaur whose name was inspired by the Harry Potter series has found a permanent home in the Children's Museum of Indianapolis.

Dracorex hogwartsia will be housed permanently at the museum, officials and paleontologist Robert Bakker were to announce Monday.

The dinosaur's name was taken from the Latin words for dragon and king, and the fictional Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry in
J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels. Rowling agreed to the name because her two children are dinosaur fans.

"The naming of Dracorex hogwartsia is easily the most unexpected honour to have come my way since the publication of the Harry Potter books," Rowling said in a written statement.

The dinosaur, a member of the pachycephalosaur family, had a flat skull with spiky horns, bumps and a long muzzle. Other pachycephalosaurs had domed foreheads.

Scientists believe the pachycephalosaurs, which were herbivores, used their knobby heads to butt other dinosaurs.

Three Sioux City, Iowa residents who found the 18-inch-long skull in South Dakota donated it to the museum in 2004, before it was named.

"When we found the skull, all that was showing was a little of the snout and some teeth," said Steve Saulsbury, one of those who found the skull. "But as we excavated more of it, it was clear we had something unique."

The fossil skull, left encased in a layer of rock and mud, was shipped to the children's museum where it was reassembled by paleontologist Victor Porter, who also made casts that were used by other scientists to confirm the dinosaur was a new species.

Porter and Bakker agreed upon the name after children visiting the museum suggested it resembled a dragon.

"This is the first new dinosaur found, restored and named by a children's museum," Bakker said.

The fossil will be displayed on the second level of the museum this summer and later will be moved to its permanent home in the Dinosphere wing.

______________

It's a funny thing being took under the wing of a dragon. It's warmer than you think.

Amsterdam Vallon, "Gangs of New York"

Stripmining the American Mind

[surprise surprise sed Gomer -- this blog's been re-enabled -- y making my statement about yesterday's disabling appear the ravings of a Paranoid Evildoer . . . O Nurse Ratched, please get the Syringe ready!]

:O)



Thieves Steal Personal Data of 26.5M Vets

By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer 52 minutes ago [5/22/06]

WASHINGTON - Thieves took sensitive personal information on 26.5 million U.S. veterans, including Social Security numbers and birth dates, after a Veterans Affairs employee improperly brought the material home, the government said Monday.


The information involved mainly those veterans who served and have been discharged since 1975, said VA Secretary Jim Nicholson. Data of veterans discharged before 1975 who submitted claims to the agency may have been included.

Nicholson said there was no evidence the thieves had used the data for identity theft, and an investigation was continuing.


Methodology: spooks investigating spooks

Finding: spooky


"It's highly probable that they do not know what they have," he said in a briefing with reporters. "We have decided that we must exercise an abundance of caution and make sure our veterans are aware of this incident."

Veterans advocates expressed alarm.

"This was a very serious breach of security for American veterans and their families," said Bob Wallace, executive director of Veterans of Foreign Wars. "We want the VA to show leadership, management and accountability for this breach."

Ramona Joyce, spokeswoman for the American Legion, agreed that the theft was a concern. "In the information age, we're constantly told to protect our information. We would ask no less of the VA," she said.


yet another Spokeswoman, Speaking for voiceless and powerless m-e-n

where were you on draft day, Ramona?

i don't recall seeing you in line at the induction center



Nicholson declined to comment on the specifics of the incident, which involved a midlevel data analyst who had taken the information home to suburban Maryland on a laptop to work on a department project.


an English 1A student at the local community college could concoct better cover-disinfo than this preposterousness




The residential community had been a target of a series of burglaries when the employee was victimized earlier this month, according to the
FBI in Baltimore. Local law enforcement and the VA inspector general were also investigating.


see Methodology and Finding, supra


"I want to emphasize there was no medical records of any veteran and no financial information of any veteran that's been compromised," Nicholson said, although he added later that some information on the veterans' disabilities may have been taken.

Nicholson said he does not know how many of the department's 235,000 employees go thorough background investigations. He said employees who have access to large volumes of personal data should be required to undergo such checks, but he does not believe the VA employee was involved in the theft.

"We do not suspect at all any ulterior motive," he said.


supra


The department has come under criticism for shoddy accounting practices and for falling short on the needs of veterans.

Last year, more than 260,000 veterans could not sign up for services because of cost-cutting. Audits also have shown the agency used misleading accounting methods and lacked documentation to prove its claimed savings.


endless billions for bombs and "defense" and sub-sub-contractors and korporate kronies and spookettes and Der Secured Homeland

foot-up-the-ass (and far, far worse) for the guys whose butts went on the line -- many by force of law -- for Der Homeland

despicable

how DO you sleep at nite?

not well, methinks

don't keep many mirrors in the house either, i'll bet

[whoops! our "friends" just joined me online . . . welcome, fellow "patriots" . . . what took you so long? busy studying "borrowed data"?]

:O)


"It is a mystifying and gravely serious concern that a VA data analyst would be permitted to just walk out the VA door with such information," Illinois Rep. Lane Evans, the top Democrat on the Veterans Affairs Committee, said in a statement signed by other Democrats on the panel.
Sen. John Kerry D-Mass., who is a Vietnam veteran, said he would introduce legislation to require the VA to provide credit reports to the veterans affected by the theft.


bluther blahh btttat pustachio?

nurkle grrzrrkle globbledee mcsplootle?

ah, yes: Skull-and-Bones Kerry, co-conspirator of Skull-and-Bones Bushy, ever-ready with comforting tripletalk and la-la-la legislation and another poisoned handshake

our wardens and torturers, our smoothtongued sadists, are At Their Posts

listening and watching

watching and listening

"This is no way to treat those who have worn the uniform of our country," Kerry said. "Someone needs to be fired."

count on it, fatboy

but it won't be whatever Sad Scapegoat you monsters decide to trot out

The VA said it was notifying members of Congress and the individual veterans about the burglary. It has set up a call center at 1-800-FED-INFO and Web site, for veterans who believe their information has been misused.

call in and provide them with more info, so your country can verify the data it stole from you

Or, well

Cough, ka

Hacks

ptoooey!

It also is stepping up its review of procedures on the use of personal data for many of its employees who telecommute as well as others who must sign disclosure forms showing they are aware of federal privacy laws and the consequences if they're violated.

Deborah Platt Majoras, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, said her task force has reached out to the three major credit bureaus to be alert to possible misuse.

Debbie's Task Force is Reaching Out!

duck 'n cover!!

the Global Gulag wanted yet more information on the vets it's been mindfucking and experimenting on over the past few decades, and apparently hit some bureaucratic snag enroute to Total Information Awareness

thus, this absurd cover story, fronting a scapegoat and allowing Our Leaders to scrounge around for whatever uber-kontrol tidbits they desire

evil and sad, as usual, of course

but just as pathetic, ludicrously amateurish

A Tracy Billingsley America

[text note: during composition of this post, this blog's editing functions were again disabled -- thus the format is plain-text]


I saw a clip on teevee tonite about a recently deceased man named Jim Moore, a pretty "average" American guy who, in his off-work hours, often umpired youth baseball games. He got 30 bucks a game but, clearly, did the job because he loved baseball, loved giving, and saw an unattractive chore that, nevertheless, needed doing.

Mr. Moore reminded me of my dad. Umpires and refs, even at Little League games, take a LOT of shit. Way more than 30 bucks worth, count on that. In my dad's precious off-work hours he often groomed the L.L. ballpark fields, raked the dirt, set up the bases, and umpired the Farm League games, for which he received zero dollars and mucho crapola. The Moms, also unpaid, staffed the Snack Bar, without which revenue the L.L. couldn't have survived, and hundreds of little boys would never have had their Sunly Moments -- albeit small and fleeting -- of success and glory. Moments that, as grown men, we cherish and never will forget.

My dad had many faults, he was just a person too, flawed. On balance he was a good man and,in many ways -- like Mr. Moore -- an exceptional man.

I'm not as good a man as my dad was, and that ain't false humility, just fact. That's ok tho -- it gives me something to strive toward.

If I had sons, what I'd most want to tell them -- other than assurance of my love -- is that most of the mistakes I've made were self-inflicted wounds. I shared the weaknesses of my generation, faults of inebriation or sex or selfishness -- faults of overindulgence which, at root, are narcissistic and foolish.

Mostly I hurt myself -- undermined my health or finances or opportunities to do something worthwhile in, or for, this world.

Occasionally, my inebriation combined with passionate nature led to hurting others in a direct way. Not violently -- we're not talking murder or beatings or rape here -- more like crossing personal boundaries with others. Things I would not have done when sober, petty stuff . . . but still, wrong and shameful.

Like my mom, I'll always struggle with addictions, and like her, sobriety is a day-to-day quest. My dad would take an occasional drink, but the Wild Child was not his nature.

I'd want my sons to recognize, and hopefully not to repeat, my faults. But I'd also want them to know that my mistakes were not malicious, nor sadistic, but stemmed from an excess of love of life. I wanted to experience everything, and I wanted to do it again and again!

And boys, I still do! :O)

Gradually, however -- very gradually -- I've been able to rein in most of my overindulgences, bring the stallion under some semblance of control. It's been many years since the worst of my mistakes, and I have not repeated them. Guys like me (and there are many) mess up because we love too much, or love in the wrong way. That doesn't excuse our behavior, but there's a difference between overstepping boundaries out of passion, and overstepping boundaries out of calculated malice.

I'd want my sons to know that I never sat around and schemed on how I could hurt people, steal their money and power, subjugate their wills, or crush their bodies and spirits. Sure, I've done cruel little things in moments of anger and spite, but not as a policy calculated to enrich or empower myself. It's not a Spirit I understand, the thirst for vengeance and sadistic domination. But clearly, that Spirit is not only alive in America -- it's in charge of America, run amok in a land that once pretended to justice and liberty. It's not a Spirit of overindulgence, of runaway zest and love for life.

It's an Unspirit, really. A cunning, well-organized Beast that manipulates our fears, our desires for security and materialism in order to advance hatred, crushing souls not merely to gain wealth and power, but for the sheer pleasure of torture, of captivity, of death-dealing.

It's the Unspirit of anti-life. In desire for, and service of, Almighty Safety, America has given herself over to that Unspirit. Or perhaps I'm naive, and that was her true nature all along.

If I had sons -- or daughters, for that matter -- irregardless what faults they might have or develop, I pray they always would oppose that Unspirit, and seek to defeat it whenever and wherever it re-arises.



1,000 Incarcerated Per Week From '04-'05


By ELIZABETH WHITE, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 24 minutes ago [5/21/06]

WASHINGTON - Prisons and jails added more than 1,000 inmates each week for a year, putting almost 2.2 million people, or one in every 136 U.S. residents, behind bars by last summer.

The total on June 30, 2005, was 56,428 more than at the same time in 2004, the government reported Sunday. That 2.6 percent increase from mid-2004 to mid-2005 translates into a weekly rise of 1,085 inmates.
Of particular note was the gain of 33,539 inmates in jails, the largest increase since 1997, researcher Allen J. Beck said. That was a 4.7 percent growth rate, compared with a 1.6 percent increase in people held in state and federal prisons.

Prisons accounted for about two-thirds of all inmates, or 1.4 million, while the other third, nearly 750,000, were in local jails, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Beck, the bureau's chief of corrections statistics, said the increase in the number of people in the 3,365 local jails is due partly to their changing role. Jails often hold inmates for state or federal systems, as well as people who have yet to begin serving a sentence.

"The jail population is increasingly unconvicted," Beck said. "Judges are perhaps more reluctant to release people pretrial."

The report by the Justice Department agency found that 62 percent of people in jails have not been convicted, meaning many of them are awaiting trial.

Overall, 738 people were locked up for every 100,000 residents, compared with a rate of 725 at mid-2004. The states with the highest rates were Louisiana and Georgia, with more than 1 percent of their populations in prison or jail. Rounding out the top five were Texas, Mississippi and Oklahoma.

The states with the lowest rates were Maine, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Vermont and New Hampshire.

Men were 10 times to 11 times more likely than women to be in prison or jail, but the number of women behind bars was growing at a faster rate, said Paige M. Harrison, the report's other author.

The racial makeup of inmates changed little in recent years, Beck said. In the 25-29 age group, an estimated 11.9 percent of black men were in prison or jails, compared with 3.9 percent of Hispanic males and 1.7 percent of white males.

Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, which supports alternatives to prison, said the incarceration rates for blacks were troubling.

"It's not a sign of a healthy community when we've come to use incarceration at such rates," he said.

Mauer also criticized sentencing guidelines, which he said remove judges' discretion, and said arrests for drug and parole violations swell prisons.
"If we want to see the prison population reduced, we need a much more comprehensive approach to sentencing and drug policy," he said.

____________


I'm well-aware that American females consider themselves spiritually and morally superior to males.

The harsh truth, however, is that they are not.

Only a psychotic matriarchy could imagine -- much less act upon -- the notion that females are 11-times less "evil" than males. And only a psychotic matriarchy -- an Unspirit -- could cage two million males under pretense of security and law-and-order.

Indeed, there are some VERY dangerous people in America, and they're fairly evenly divided by gender. A few thousand of them -- some incarcerated, some not -- truly pose imminent and severe threats to the public. The vast majority of caged people, however, are far less sick and dangerous that the "enlightened society" that put them there.

The Unspirit that infests America, like a hysterical woman, gluts itself on manipulation, coercion, and control. America's Great Terrorist isn't Bin Laden, or Al Qaeda, or Islam, or China, or Iran, or the Alien Greys.

America's Great Terrorist is America. We are the Unspirit of the world.




The Slow Rot at Supermax

At Moussaoui's future home in Florence, Colo., inmates are reportedly not merely punished, but incapacitated and broken down.

By Richard A. Serrano, Times Staff Writer May 5, 2006

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Halfway through the trial, prison expert James E. Aiken looked straight at jurors and told them what Zacarias Moussaoui could expect if they sent him away for the rest of his life."I have seen them rot," he said. "They rot."


Aiken was describing what happens to the nation's highest-risk prisoners after they settle in at the federal government's maximum-security prison in Florence, Colo., known as Supermax.Moussaoui was formally sentenced Thursday to life in prison after a federal jury rejected a death sentence for the admitted Sept. 11 conspirator.

Officials at the Federal Bureau of Prisons said that Moussaoui was destined for the facility high in the Colorado Rockies.

Already there is a veritable "bombers' row" — Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center blast; Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski; Terry L. Nichols, an accomplice in the Oklahoma City bombing; Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber who Moussaoui testified was to join him in another Al Qaeda hijacking; and Eric Rudolph, who bombed abortion clinics and the Atlanta Olympics.All, like Moussaoui, are serving life without parole — spending their days in prison wings that are partly underground.

They exist alone in soundproof cells as small as 7 feet by 12 feet, with a concrete-poured desk, bed and stool, a small shower and sink, and a TV that offers religious and anger-management programs.They are locked down 23 hours a day.Larry Homenick, a former U.S. marshal who has taken prisoners to Supermax, said that there was a small triangular recreation area, known as "the dog run," where solitary Supermax prisoners could occasionally get a glimpse of sky.

He said it was chilling to walk down the cellblocks and glance through the plexiglass "sally port" chambers into the cells and see the faces inside. Life there is harsh. Food is delivered through a slit in the cell door.

Prisoners don't leave their cells to see a lawyer, a doctor or a prison official; those visitors must go to the cell.But prisoners can earn extra privileges, like a wider variety of television offerings, more exercise time and visitation rights, based on their behavior.There are 1,400 remote-controlled steel doors. Motion detectors and hidden cameras monitor every move. The prison walls and razor-wired grounds are patrolled by laser beams and dogs.The facility is filling up. Four hundred inmates are there now.

There is room for 90 more.Looking to restore order after a rash of prison violence at the federal maximum-security lockup in Marion, Ill. — the facility that replaced the notorious Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay — officials in 1983 put the prisoners on indefinite lockdown.California was among the first states to copy the concept, opening super-secure units in Corcoran in 1988 and Pelican Bay in 1989.

The federal Supermax prison in Colorado was opened in November 1994. Nobody has escaped."We just needed a more secure facility," said Tracy Billingsley, a spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. "We needed to bring together the most dangerous, that required the most intense supervision, to one location."In his trial testimony, Aiken said the whole point of Supermax was not just punishment, but "incapacitation.

"There is no pretense that the prison is preparing the inmate for a return to society. Like the cellmate of the count of Monte Cristo who died an old, tired convict, Aiken said, "Moussaoui will deteriorate."The inmate "is constantly monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week," he said. "He will never get lost in a crowd because he would never be in a crowd."

Christopher Boyce, a convicted spy who was incarcerated at Supermax, left the prison about 100 miles south of Denver with no regret. "You're slowly hung," he once told The Times. "You're ground down. You can barely keep your sanity."

Bernard Kleinman, a New York lawyer who represented Yousef, called it "extraordinarily draconian punishment."Moussaoui might be a household name today, "but 20 years from now, people will forget him," Kleinman said. "He will sit there all alone, and all forgotten."


Ron Kuby, another New York defense lawyer, has handled several East Coast "revolutionaries" who went on a killing spree, and a radical fundamentalist who killed a rabbi in 1990. All were brought to Supermax.

He thought Aiken's description that prisoners rot inside its walls was too kind."It's beyond rotting," he said.

"Rotting at least implies a slow, gradual disintegration."He said there were a lot of prisons where inmates rot, where the staff "plants you in front of your TV in your cell and you just grow there like a mushroom.""But Supermax is worse," he said. "It's not just the hothouse for the mushrooms. It's designed in the end to break you down."


_____________

America is ruled by Tracy Billingsleys, by Spokeswomen of the Unspirit, ever thirsty for a "more secure facility," ever innovative in designing modes for "more intense supervision," and ever convincing as to why we need more iron bars and subterranean cells.

Many of the Tracy Billingsleys attend church on Sunday, and profess themselves "followers of Christ."

Our millions of Tracy Billingsleys -- aided by many male counterparts -- have succeeded in transforming America, in a few decades, into a burgeoning Prison Industrial Complex. All in service of security, to be sure. In service of country. In service of "God."

America has empowered her Tracy Billingsleys to the supermax, and she simply cannot wait to spread her self-serving, and very profitable, righteousness and sense of justice throughout the planet. Given Her Way -- and Her Way, make no mistake, is all she really cares about -- the terror she and her co-conspirators in government, the courts, the medea, etc., will metastisize across the globe. Anything or anyone that offends her will be caged, preferably in her underground "chambers," and kept in darkness, in stale and foul air, in pain, and in sensory isolation until their minds shatter and their bodies waste and rot.

That'll learn 'em, you see. That's our motto: That'll Learn 'Em. Our hordes of Tracy Billingsleys don't see this as torture, nor as error, nor, certainly, as sin. They see it as their MORAL RIGHT.

Like Oprah, Tracy is, after all, The Goddess.

Who will argue with her? Who will stand against her?

Obviously: very few.

Our Tracy Billingsley America is gung-ho on annihilating the souls of other beings for two over-riding reasons:

1) they're only men (who, after all, are a sub-class of being); and most importantly

2) they're not Tracy Billingsley

Jim Moore is dead, my father is dead, and the Bright Candle of America they lit and tended is gutters out. The masculine ethos is expiring, and the Chaos Drakon assumes his place, preening and lunging and screeching for vengeance.

Now, it's A Tracy Billingsley America.

Across the nation's skies she swoops like a poison contrail. Deep in earth's bowells she burrows nests of foulness. She ensnares her victims in webs of liquor and smoke, in vast meadows of pretty poppies, in the ecstasies of the blood. Her flying monkeys and palace-guards are bought with power and wealth, and serve as frontmen. But she is the Spokesperson at the hub of the iron wheel.

While I was out good-timing it, the Unspirit vanquished the land, and the sea, and the air. And she did it For Our Own Good, if only you'll listen.

If I had sons, I'd tell them that though their father was a weak man, a stupid man, and a deceived man, he was not a malicious man. Even in failure, he loved his country, and his planet. I'd tell them that their grandfather, and his father before him, were TRULY great men, and that it is in their genes -- and, I believe, in their destiny -- to be great men also.

If I had sons, I'd warn them against the wickedness and snares of the Unspirit. And I'd promise them that all is not yet lost, neither their fallen nation, nor their dying world. I'd reiterate my absolute belief in them, and in the power of forgiveness, power of mercy, power of love.

Be not deceived, my sons: there is neither profit nor honor in hate.

Where your father failed, you shall overcome.

HAPPY BURFDAY SWEEEET SARAH!!

Seven going on Seventy! LOL!!


You are a Jewell of Joy
and when you smile, why
even the Sun gets shy, hides
behind a cloud awhile
then jumps out, sez HI!
"I was only gone a minute or two
but Goodness Gracious
I missed you!"


Sarah, you're the most generous and talented little girl i've ever met, and i beam with pride each time i see your great spirit shine

a few thousand miles will never be enough to keep my love from YOU

i wish you a Joy-Full Happy Burfday, may all your sweet dreams come true!

Love,

mike

You WILL Let Them Go

I don't build no heathen temples
Where the Lord's has done raised his hand
There's a well on the hill
Let it be

(J. Taylor)





2 More Fatal Fla. Gator Attacks Reported



By JENNIFER KAY, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 13 minutes ago [5/13/06]

MIAMI - The bodies of two women, both apparently killed by alligators, were found Sunday less than a week after a similar death in a state that had seen just 17 confirmed fatal attacks by the animals in the previous 58 years.


A 23-year-old woman staying at a secluded cabin near Lake George was attacked while snorkeling at a lakeside recreation area, said Marion County Fire-Rescue Capt. Joe Amigliore. The lake is about 50 miles southeast of Gainesville.

"The people she was staying with came around and found her inside the gator's mouth," Amigliore said. "They jumped into the water and somehow pulled her out of the gator's mouth."

Annemarie Campbell, of Paris, Tenn., was pronounced dead at the scene. Her stepfather, who had tried to help her, was treated on the scene for a hand injury, said Amigliore.

In Pinellas County, the death of another woman whose body was found early Sunday in a canal 20 miles north of St. Petersburg also was blamed on an alligator, authorities said.

Judy W. Cooper's body had been in the water for about three days, authorities said.

The 43-year-old Dunedin woman suffered animal bites that were consistent with an alligator, which "did play some part in the victim's death," according to a preliminary autopsy. The cause of death was pending and the medical examiner's final report will not be released for at least four weeks, the sheriff's office said.

"We don't know the condition she was in when this happened," said state wildlife spokesman Gary Morse.

It was not immediately known why Cooper was in the area where wildlife officials said alligators are frequently spotted.

Authorities were baiting traps in their searches for both gators Sunday.
On Wednesday, construction workers found the dismembered body of a Florida Atlantic University student in a canal near Fort Lauderdale. A medical examiner concluded that the 28-year-old woman was attacked near the canal bank and dragged into the water.

On Saturday, wildlife officers captured an 9-foot, 6-inch alligator in Sunrise that they believe fatally attacked Yovy Suarez Jimenez while she was out jogging.

Suarez's death was the 18th confirmed fatal alligator attack in Florida since 1948. Nine other previous deaths are unconfirmed, mainly because it was not clear whether the person was already dead when the alligator attacked.

What provoked the attacks in three separate Florida counties was unknown, but state wildlife officials said alligators are generally on the move looking for mates and food this time of year.

"As the weather heats up, the alligators' metabolism increases and they have to eat more," Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission spokesman Willie Puz said Sunday. "They might be moving more, but that just shouldn't mean increased alligator attacks."

Florida residents are warned not to swim in heavily vegetated areas, feed wildlife or walk pets near the water, especially between dusk and dawn when gators are more active, Morse said.


______________________

Cross-Shaped Ruin to Stay at Ground Zero


By DESMOND BUTLER, Associated Press Writer

Sat May 13, 11:37 PM ET

NEW YORK - The foundation in charge of developing ground zero's memorial and museum pledged to permanently display the two pieces of steel left standing in the shape of a cross after the World Trade Center collapsed.

WTC Memorial Foundation President and CEO Gretchen Dykstra agreed to find a place for the artifact at the site, though she acknowledged it's a delicate issue and viewers should be allowed to draw their own conclusions about whether it has religious significance.

During recovery efforts in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks, the two intersecting beams were treated with reverence by some rescue workers. The artifact was interpreted by some as a sign of hope. Religious services were held near where it stood in the smoking rubble. It remains at the site more than four years later.

"The artifact will be treated with utmost respect, but again as a public institution, we will not explicitly offer religious services in association with the artifact," Dykstra wrote in a letter Friday to Kenneth Ringler, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site.

Dykstra said the cross could be placed in the underground museum, which is set to open in 2009, or the outdoor memorial called "Reflecting Absence" that will fill eight of ground zero's 16 acres with two reflecting pools marking the spots where the towers stood.

"We agree wholeheartedly that this important and essential artifact belongs at the WTC site and affirm that its respectful placement, possibly with the memorial museum, will be a considered part of our content planning process," she said.

Officials have yet to decide whether the cross would remain at the site during construction.

The Port Authority scrapped plans to temporarily store it for safekeeping in a hangar at John F. Kennedy International Airport after clergy groups protested.

The Rev. Brian Jordan, who has worked to keep the cross near the site, has said one likely temporary location is the side wall of St. Peter's Church, which faces ground zero.

Nancy's New Jackboots

These boots are made for walkin'
and that's just what they'll do

















One of these days these boots
are gonna walk all over you!!



Nancy Sinatra Gets Hollywood Star


05/11/2006 8:09 PM, AP

Nancy Sinatra pulled on a pair of boots one more time Thursday for a strut on the Walk of Fame.

The 1960s pop icon was honored with a star on Hollywood Boulevard four decades after the debut of her rebel hit "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" in 1966.

"My advice to young women starting out is hang tough, don't quit — even if it takes 40 years," Sinatra said.


suuuure, Nance, you had SUCH a "tough" time in life, eh?

you're a real Empowered, Self-Made Woman!

'course Daddy's mega-millions and his cadre of Goons paved your yellowbrick road and protected your spoiled little ass at every boot-step, but, what the hell! there's no history like revisionist herstory!

the only thing you ever "hung in there" was your brothers

what "advice" ya got for them, Sug? "Don't strain at the Leash, you'll damage my nails"?



The daughter of Frank Sinatra was also known for her blonde bouffant, vampy style and string of chart-topping tunes, including "Sugar Town" and the James Bond title track "You Only Live Twice."

She wore jeans instead of her trademark miniskirt for the Walk of Fame ceremony.

"I've very proud of my sister," Frank Sinatra Jr. said. "Not only is she a fine talent but a great American."

. . . said the mobster of the mobsteress


In 1967, Nancy Sinatra recorded "Something Stupid," a duet with her father that became a No. 1 hit. She also costarred with Elvis Presley in the 1968 film "Speedway."

Her latest album of new songs, released in 2004, featured collaborations with Morrissey, Sonic Youth, Jarvis Cocker and other rockers.


that manblood ain't ever gonna wash off your purty boots, Nance

wear them proud, wear them forevermore

Deifying the Snake

The divine Miss Winfrey?

By Ann Oldenburg, USA TODAY Thu May 11, 7:28 AM ET


After two decades of searching for her authentic self - exploring New Age theories, giving away cars, trotting out fat, recommending good books and tackling countless issues from serious to frivolous -
Oprah Winfrey' has risen to a new level of guru.


She's no longer just a successful talk-show host worth $1.4 billion, according to Forbes' most recent estimate. Over the past year, Winfrey, 52, has emerged as a spiritual leader for the new millennium, a moral voice of authority for the nation.

With her television pulpit and the sheer power of her persona, she has encouraged and steered audiences (mostly women) in all matters, from genocide in Rwanda to suburban spouse swapping to finding the absolute best T-shirt and oatmeal cookie.

VOTE: Is Oprah a spiritual leader for the new millenium?

"She's a really hip and materialistic Mother Teresa," says Kathryn Lofton, a professor at Reed College in Portland, Ore., who has written two papers analyzing the religious aspects of Winfrey. "Oprah has emerged as a symbolic figurehead of spirituality."


On Monday, Winfrey shares one of her most ambitious events of the past year -Oprah Winfrey's Legends Ball- as a special on ABC (8 p.m. ET/PT). It lets viewers in on a weekend in which she invited 25 legendary black women and other guests to her home in Montecito, Calif., for a luncheon, ball and gospel brunch in their honor.

It was something she spent a year planning and describes as one of the "greatest moments" of her life. She appears on The View on Friday to talk about the special.

"This weekend was the fulfillment of a dream for me: to honor where I've come from, to celebrate how I got here, and to claim where I'm going," Winfrey says on her website. And now, as Winfrey "lives her best life," as her TV motto says, we get to experience it with her.

Although the concept of the Rev. Oprah has been building through the years, never was it more evident than this season of her talk show, during which she conducted the public flogging of author James Frey. Feeling stung and embarrassed after endorsing his memoir about addiction, A Million Little Pieces, which turned out to include exaggerations and falsehoods, Winfrey had Frey on the show to do an about-face.

"I left the impression that the truth is not important," she said on the show. "I am deeply sorry about that because that is not what I believe."
It was a watershed Winfrey moment, showing herself as not only a talk-show host with whom you don't want to mess, but also someone who is fully aware of the power of her own image.

Think back: She appeared in New Orleans to take on the government after Hurricane Katrina hit last August, and she sent a message to us all about civil rights as she stood by the casket of Coretta Scott King in February. Last week, she shed a tear with Teri Hatcher over sexual abuse memories, and she jumped on the Darfur bandwagon, encouraging viewers to support refugees there.

"She's a moral monitor, using herself as the template against which she measures the decency of a nation," Lofton says.

But while this past year showed Winfrey at new heights, it also was a year that polarized people, particularly after the Frey incident.

"A self-righteous attack dog," wrote arts and culture critic Steven Winn in the San Francisco Chronicle.

"A sanctimonious bully," said media critic Robert Thompson on the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

"She puts the cult in pop culture," wrote media critic Mark Jurkowitz in The Phoenix Winfrey was applauded by many for her public mea culpa and for getting Frey to do the same, but her righteous demand for justice also evoked criticism.

"No one person should have that kind of power to affect markets, politics or anything else," says Debbie Schlussel, a lawyer, conservative columnist and blogger.

Deifying Oprah

Love her or loathe her, Winfrey has become proof that you can't be too rich, too thin or too committed to rising to your place in the world. With 49 million viewers each week in the USA and more in the 122 other countries to which the show is distributed, Winfrey reaches more people in a TV day than most preachers can hope to reach in a lifetime of sermons.

"One of the things that's key," says Marcia Nelson, author of The Gospel According to Oprah, "is she walks her talk. That's really, really important in today's culture. People who don't walk their talk fall from a great pedestal - scandals in the Catholic Church, televangelism scandals. If you're not doing what you say you do, woe be unto you."

In Ellen DeGeneres' stand-up comedy act several years ago, she included a joke about getting to heaven and finding that God is a black woman named Oprah.


And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world . . . [A]nd I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. [Rev. 12]


Last fall, at the start of this 20th season of The Oprah Winfrey Show, guest Jamie Foxx' name said much the same thing, but he wasn't joking.

"What you have is something nobody can describe," Foxx said to Winfrey on the air. Then he explained about how he told Vibe magazine: "You're going to get to heaven and everyone's waiting on God and it's going to be Oprah Winfrey."

perhaps

however, my smooth-stoned little brown-noser: if you're Rong, and it turns out God doesn't appreciate two-tongued hatemongers pretending to "spirituality," passing judgment on his sons (but, of course, not on his precious daughters!), and destroying the fragile bond of love between females and males on this planet, well . . . expect a rather grumpy God

but then, who's zooming who, eh? you know, and i know, that neither you nor Mizz Venom REALLY believe in God

otherwise you'd have more sense than to covet his place



He told her she has "different gears" than most people. "You're on the top of the world,


For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. [Ephesians 6]




and we really do watch and listen for everything you do and say to kind of get our lives together. It's the truth."


In a November poll conducted at Beliefnet.com, a site that looks at how religions and spirituality intersect with popular culture, 33% of 6,600 respondents said Winfrey has had "a more profound impact" on their spiritual lives than their clergypersons.

Cathleen Falsani, religion writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, recently suggested, "I wonder, has Oprah become America's pastor?"

"I am not God," Oprah said in a 1989 story by Barbara Grizzuti Harrison that ran in The New York Times Magazine titled The Importance of Being Oprah. But at the time, Winfrey called her talk show her "ministry," Harrison wrote. It remains an interview Winfrey says she hates. In a Los Angeles Times interview in December, the talk-show host said that "at every turn everything I said was challenged and misinterpreted."

She declined to be interviewed for this story, and she declined to allow USA TODAY to cover her most recent, and now rare, Live Your Best Life seminars. Tickets, priced at $185 each, sold out in minutes.

Katrina Singleton, 34, paid $450 each for tickets to the February event in Charleston, S.C., which she purchased through a ticket broker. "For Oprah, nothing is too much," she told the Associated Press. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience."

At the seminar, according to AP, Winfrey repeatedly spoke of her relationship with God. She even sang a chorus of I Surrender All.


does that include surrender of the 1.4 billion?



"I live inside God's dream for me. I don't try to tell God what I'm supposed to do," she told the crowd. "God can dream a bigger dream for you than you can dream for yourself."

Claire Zulkey, 26, an Oprah follower who has written about Winfrey in her online blog at zulkey .com, says, "I think that if this were the equivalent of the Middle Ages and we were to fast-forward 1,200 years, scholars would definitely think that this Oprah person was a deity, if not a canonized being."

Marcia Nelson says that it's not going too far to call her a spiritual leader. "I've said to a number of people - she's today's Billy Graham."

Nelson said that concept was most apparent when Winfrey co-hosted the 2001 memorial service held 12 days after the terrorist attacks in New York. She urged the people who filled Shea Stadium that day, and all Americans, to stand strong, rousing the audience by repeating the refrain, "We shall not be moved."

One of Winfrey's most appealing subtexts is that she's anti-institutional, says Chris Altrock, minister of Highland Street Church of Christ in Memphis. He says Winfrey believes there are many paths to God, not just one. After doing his doctoral research three years ago on postmodernism religion, a religious era that began in the 1970s as Christians became deeply interested in spirituality and less interested in any established church, he came up with what he calls "The Church of Oprah," referring to the culture that has created her.

"Our culture is changing," he says, "as churches are in decline and the bulk of a new generation is growing up outside of religion." Instead, they're turning to the Church of Oprah.

"People who have no religion relate to her," Nelson says.

Oprah's own evolution

When Winfrey started in the talk-show business 20 years ago, her goal was to beat Phil Donahue, then the reigning talk-show champ. As the Jerry Springer era of tabloid talk shows came into favor, she vowed to use her show to promote good, not sleaze.

By the late '90s, Winfrey's focus was Change Your Life TV, and a New Age message was more prevalent. She preached making the message of her life - take responsibility, and greatness will follow - the substance of the show. Keep a personal journal, purchase self-indulgent gifts, take time for you - because you deserve it. The notes rang true to millions of viewers.

Debbie Ford's book, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers, shot up the sales charts after Ford appeared on Winfrey's show in October 2000 to talk about aspects of ourselves that we deny but which can be sources of joy and strength.

"I think at the time when she had me and Gary Zukav and a lot of the other spiritual teachers on her show, it was her own journey, and she was taking all of the world on that spiritual evolution," Ford says.

Lately, Winfrey has seemed to focus more on social issues (along with the inescapable talk-show fare of celebrity guests, home and diet makeovers, and marriage and financial troubles).

"She's fabulous. She looks great and is not suffering," Ford says, so it makes sense she isn't exploring New Age philosophies anymore. Instead, Ford says, people now "look to her to find their greatness. She is so real. That's why people are attracted to her - for different reasons. Some people will say her brilliance. Others will say authenticity. Others will say her power. They're seeing part of themselves in her."

Adds Ford, "We're all on Oprah's journey, in a sense."

Maybe not quite "all" of us.

Schlussel says Winfrey followers "are incredibly gullible, bandwagon-jumping trend-slaves." Winfrey, she says, "acts as if her show has 'evolved,' but in fact, she still has the salacious sex and deviance stories, with a psychologist in the audience to make it seem highbrow and give it the kosher seal of approval. If this is the person whose morals we are putting on a pedestal, then America's moral compass is in much need of retuning."

The fact that Winfrey has never been married, never had children and is a billionaire distances her from her audience, Schlussel says. "How could anyone like this be in touch with the average American woman?"

The roots of faith

Lofton points out that any discussion of Winfrey should not be one that criticizes her or how she came to be a spiritual icon for the history books but one that examines how it came to be that way. "Why do we all need her so much? What is wrong with us that we so need this little woman in Chicago?"

Jim Twitchell, a professor at the University of Florida who has written several books about branding and describes himself as a cultural anthropologist, says Oprah reverence makes sense.

"Religion essentially is based on high anxiety of what's going to happen to you." Winfrey pushes the idea "that you have a life out there, and it's better than the one you have now and go get it."

It's most apparent in the setting of her show, Twitchell says.

"The guest is sitting beside her, but what she's really doing is exuding this powerful message of 'You are a sinner, yes, you are, but you can also find salvation.' What I find intriguing about it is it's delivered with no religiosity at all, even though it has a powerful Baptist, democratic, enthusiastic tone.

"It has to do with this deep American faith and yearning to be reborn. To start again."


at last! crept full from thy pit, old Mizz Fer!

the bootheel of my birthright shall finish my beginnings

nor will you rise again, save in mockery and curse forever

O-O Baybeeee!

Sending YOU glittering greetings and heaps o' happy hopes for a wonderful BURFDAY!!

A hundred starlings swooped and danced over the great river this eve, painting your face in the sky, playing tag and singing your praise to the heavens

Not bad for nine!!

:O)

All Earth's critturs feel your love, and they are so grateful and thrilled that you are their Cherisher and Defender

Righteous Hunter, brave aim true!

I am SO PROUD of you, and no matter where I am, you are ALWAYS with me, and my love is ALWAYS with you

Enjoy your special day! Gobbul a big piece o' cake for me!

mi

Inside the Invisible Circus, Part Huh?

ok Truepz. . . weirdid we leaveoff?

.... wars of antedeluvian sorcerers, blood carne-vales, staying too long at the faer...

self-awareness and resonance of place: the sentience of the land, often latent, as with eruptions or quakes . . . earth's conservation of mood, action, necessity -- earth's exponential, potential power when these are combined and repeated as ritual [wrote that paragraph on May 2]

toss in Penny Lane, Invisible Medical Facility Circuses, and Priestesses of the Black Oak

qwite a kollekshun o kritturz! (lol the Show Goes On)

Meanwhile Back in Ring Two, this from Yaho/oracle:

Corruption Trial Bares Vegas Secrets

By KEN RITTER, Associated Press Writer Sun Apr 30, 2:14 PM ET

LAS VEGAS - Even in a town used to baring it all — where gangster Bugsy Siegel is considered a founding father, showgirls are a way of life and old-timers fondly recall when the mob ran the casinos — the revelations in a political corruption trial have been shocking.

[abridged]


ack! and someone promised me Bingo Nite!

is it too late to just go bowling?

McCartney's "Penny Lane" (lyrics below) infers Penny Arcade, therefore a "carnival" of "low order" -- way downtown -- broadly The Meatpuppet Market of life, but more pointedly, perhaps . . . Las Vegas which, despite its ritzy glitzy tittified exterior, is the Shearing Capital of the World, lotsa bodies out in the desert etc

St. Pepper's L.H.C. Band, the "act you've known for all these years," is led by supposedly-apocryphal "one and only Billy Shears" . . . like "tourguides" Jolly Jimmy Johnson" and "Miss Winters" in the film Magical Mystery Tour, Billy shears the goats, lambs, rubes etc . . . hmm, is that the Voice of Known Patriot "Butcher Bill Cutting" radio-ing in from Ground Zero?

some have suggested the Beatles' "twenty years ago today" (prior to the album's release) referred to the death of Crowley in 1947

what's more certain is: the Cirque du Soleil/Beatles/Mirage Casino collaboration, "Love," opens in one month

fleabit old hippies all over zion must be skritchin their noggins and asking the protocosmic Question: uh . . . huh?

would the original Beatles have approved? how much resistance to commercialism and/or power was lost with George Harrison? how influential have Lennon and Harrison's widows become in deciding "Beatles matters"?

in Vegas, cash is King (well, Queen actually)

there can only be one king of this world, and if it's Cash, well . . . cash don't last, and methinks we can all do better

Vegas also commerizes sex, and thus profits from the alienation and degradation of libido

the show is advertised, after all, as "LOVE"

like the Beach Boys, the Beatles' once sounded clean, though not altogether pure (nothing is)

. . . but very, very clean -- and hopeful for the right reasons -- like the best of the new generation of american boys

"Penny Lane" perhaps captures that adolescent verve and hope, the sense of belonging -- a familiarity attached not only to persons, but to place . . . natural and non-natural "environmental" features resonating the environment, transposing with the citizenry . . . sacralizing and immotalizing the ordinary

"Penny Lane" reanimates a geographic, social, and psychic landscape, resurrecting it with slight variation in fifty million frontal lobes, a generation's innocence and zeal and mojo gathered like thunderclouds and suspended not only in a specific song, but in a specific place and mood . . . needletracked into vinyl and the collective mind

echoic evocation of mood is especially important to hypnosis and sorcery

in Liverpool, Penny Lane junctions with Smithdown Road to form a crossroads, a-hem . . . the Penny Arcade as lure, a four-card monte, providing streetside entertainment while roasting the "passengers" down in "Old Smithy"

"Penny Lane" was first a single, flipside to Lennon's "Strawberry Fields Forever," then later included on Magical Mystery Tour

the promo film for "Penny Lane" was filmed not in England's Penny Lane/Smithdown neighborhood, but in the East End's "Angel Lane"

Lennon was raised at 251 Menlove Avenue (locally called "Mendips")

Wikipedia reports two morsels:

The mysterious lyrics "A four of fish and finger pie" are British slang. "A four of fish" refers to fourpennyworth of fish and chips, while "finger pie" is a gratuitous sexual reference.


and:

Upon the release of the "Penny Lane" single, Douglas Adams claimed to have beaten up a child who'd heard the song on the radio, reportedly just to get him to hum the tune.


the wink-and-nod "joke" by author Douglas Adams suggests the tangential, subtly coercive aspect of the song -- a tune containing the ouroboric "meanwhile back" hook/chorus


In Penny Lane there is a barber showing photographs
Of ev’ry head he’s had the pleasure to know
And all the people that come and go
Stop and say ‘Hello’

On the corner is a banker with a motorcar,
The little children laugh at him behind his back
And the banker never wears a mac
In the pouring rain - very strange

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies I sit
and meanwhile back

In Penny Lane there is a fireman with an hourglass
And in his pocket is a portrait of the Queen
He likes to keep his fire engine clean
It’s a clean machine

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
A four of fish and finger pies in summer
meanwhile back

Behind the shelter in the middle of the roundabout
The pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray
And though she feels as if she’s in a play
She is anyway

In Penny Lane
the barber shaves another customer
We see the banker sitting waiting for a trim
And then the fireman rushes in
From the pouring rain - very strange

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies I sit
and meanwhile back

...Penny Lane!

beneath the song's cheery, synathestic, beer-hall presentation, McCartney is revealing Something else -- the lyric is labyrinthine, a comfortable prison . . . the customers in Penny Lane's magickal circus ring, like the characters in the film Magical Mystery Tour, are penned by myriad obsessive, earthly attachments -- the greatest collective obsession being the Circus itself -- (mostly) unconscious, vast, powerful, leviathanesque

the "Barber" opens and closes the lyric, because he's the circusmaster, shearing the sheep, er, patrons -- who are "heads" (addicts of various sorts)

the Barber's "photographs" suggest transtemporality and, again, a kind of spiritual "capture" inferring blackmail (a la the "prisoners" in iconography of the Egyptian underworld)

the Banker's distinguishing characteristic is his imperviousness to rain, i.e., the natural elements of this world, suggesting

1) a magickal shielding or cloaking or, at minimum, some type of occult power or alliance (probably via el jefe, the Barber)

and/or

2) reference to a Mackintosh -- a rubber raincoat -- with strong undertones in the song of British "rubber fetishism" (thus, the Banker prefers his golden showers au naturel)

the kids secretly mock the Banker, seeing through his motives

as for the Fireman -- could be different in Jolly Olde, but in 'merica Firemen don't use hourglasses LOL! . . . but these are more like our-glasses, prolly

:O)

apparently this "Fire man," however, has a Thang for the Regina Monologue -- keeps a snapshot of his long lost love handy for, uh, for investigative purposes only ma'am

but the Fireman is an honorable knight of the Queen . . . a defender and custodian of Earth, whose "hourglass" keeps kosmik time [NOT to be differentiated from STANDARD time, from which it isn't]

:O)

McCartney's Penny Lane Tourbus leads us verse by verse through the familiar, alluring, jolly, infernal neighborhood: the Barber's butchery and malice, the Banker's greed, the Fireman's lust, and finally -- in the very heart of the "roundabout," in the hidden control room at Grand Central Station

-- there is Queen Again, this time dressed as Sister Morphine, selling beauty and comfort (sexuality and drugs, specifically "poppies from a tray" . . . but, somehow, trapped now in her own Artifice du Matir, by forces and circumstances greater than her highness

poppies were the chief poison of Oz' Wicked Witch of the West, and the Witch/Miss Gulch were unacknowleged shadows of Dear Old Autie Em, of course . . . with witch the new western female was, and still is, struggling like Dorothy

"Miss Gulch" owns "half the county" and Aunt Em -- though unstated, because unconscious -- owns the other half!

the Kansas of Oz, like the Kansas of America, is a matriarchate, ruled by elder females

the males in Oz are weak, mostly phony, or goofy farm-hands -- and on The Farm, everybody (including Uncle Henry) openly defer to Aunt Em

meanwhile back . . .

in the Pen, the Show goes on

the carousel grinds around, the horses sweat blood, and deep in the roundabout's heart, the Pretty Nurse is selling poppies, the Barber shaving patrons, the Banker drooling for his carne cut

the song closes with the Fireman, perhaps apocalyptically, "rushing in" from the same "pouring rain" from which the Banker never shelters

the Fireman/rain is a kind of paradox, a complexio oppositorum -- like a hard day's night . . . and in this Hard Rain, the whole circus wheel's on fire, and a fireman's job is to, well, put fires out

"Penny Lane" also resonates with "Magical Mystery Tour," a film that attempts to externalize, to make conscious, to reveal the modern magickal process -- the Invisible Circus

that, hopefully, is next