“Some of the most delicious vegetables in the known world are produced by the undead Gardeners of Sheloth, a small group of enthusiasts who sold their souls in exchange for supernatural botanic skills.”

“The newcomer to Transylvania will find himself in a world of overwhelming mystery and alien phenomena and time is needed to adjust to its unique environment. The towns and hamlets, though themselves steeped in a tradition of occult participation, offer the visitor some semblence of normality and the opportunity to acclimatize to the darker realities that exist here.”

Apparently it’s been 15 years since my shitty band from high school, Heel, was released as part of Shakefork Records “It’s a Punk Thing… You Wouldn’t Understand”.

To celebrate this very momentous occasion Shakefork has posted all the songs from the 10″ on their MySpace page. Here’s the track listing:

* A1 Gauge - “Blank”
* A2 The Bollweevils - “Talk”
* A3 Smoking Popes - “Lets Hear It For Love”
* A4 Cap’n Jazz - “Scary Kids Scaring Kids”
* B1 Friction - “Milt”
* B2 Screeching Weasel - “Celena”
* B3 Heel - “Blu Zone”
* B4 Angerhouse - “Complex”

Listen here.

We won’t be accepting comments on this post.

btw… anybody know where the fuck Scott Broadhurst is?

Just heard a great interview on NPR’s Planet Money with trader Vinny Catalano that shed some light on current our economic woes. Apparently we shouldn’t be watching the DOW average, we should keep our eyes on the credit market.

The credit markets, specifically the commercial paper markets, are frozen and that’s effecting business’s ability to operate. This disruption of day to day operation is lowering investor confidence in business which in turn is causing the DOW drop.

As long as the credit market is frozen the DOW will continue to drop.

There are two indicators to watch to see if the credit market is thawing out. One is the US Treasury Bill 3 month yield rate. As this rate goes up that means less money is being hidden in the giant government “mattress” and is again available for lending. The other factor is something called the TED Spread which tracks the LIBOR less the 3 month Treasury Bill. As this number goes down that means that banks are beginning to lend to each other and the credit market is thawing.

So keep an eye on the 3 month T-Bill, as that rate goes up and the Ted spread goes down then we know capital and credit are flowing again. At this point the Stock market should rebound and we should be out of the woods. Make money make money makemoneymonay!

Listen to the Planet Money show here.

Read Catalano’s Blog about this here.

Track the TED Spread here.

Track the 13 week treasury bills here.

I think it’s fair to say that the single most profound influence on my life, both directly and indirectly, has been John Lennon. From his music, to his art, to his unflinching exploration of his relationship with Yoko Ono, and his working class attitude toward life, politics, drugs and spirit, John Lennon, however unlikely a candidate, shaped the person I am today unlike anything else.

When I was ten my older sister’s boyfriend turned me on to punk rock. JFA, Dead Kennedy’s, Circle Jerks, the Ramone’s, Rabbid Rabbit, Agent Orange… all the greats. The energy, edge, and anarchistic attitude of punk rock shook me to my core and ignited my own strange orgone with a voltage that would not, from that point on, take much umbrage in suburban ideals. I took a hard left at that point, so hard I damaged my tires alignment for the rest of my life.

But where punk rock fired up my synapses for individualistic expression I was never fully nurtured on that promise until 2 years later I was turned onto the Beatles and most specifically the work and life of John Lennon. From that point on John Lennon would become the tensile point from which I would discover eastern religion, psychedelic drugs, magick, audio recording, anarchist and leftist politics, and, most importantly, the unparralleled power of music.

Also from Lennon I learned how to be curious and curious with a passion. Rarely stopping for too long at any point of exploration, I would indulge deeply, seriously, and then furiously turn my back against whatever point of exploration when I found the bottom of the pool. I learned from him a means to life as art and, in my summation, that means is a very disciplined egalitarian curiosity coupled and balanced with a ferocious loyalty not to that point of exploration but to exploration itself.

But perhaps the most positive and proud effect John Lennon has had on my life is in his public approach to his relationship with Yoko Ono. As a 13 year old discovering sexuality at the same time I was discovering John Lennon I received a gift that has paid dividends up to this day as I’m sure it will well into the future. I found myself, from the earliest stirrings of my longing for a mate, to want a partner that would be more than the traditional models of wife that I was so surrounded by. And while I saw that there was no dishonor in a woman serving a man and vice versa I saw that that model of compatibility was flawed in that it saw any act that a man would do for his woman as serving. In John and Yoko I saw two people who became one, who no more served one another than a hand serves an arm. I longed for a mate who would be a friend, a passionate lover, a challenge to my ideas, a supporter of my efforts, and a child in the face of a viscious world. I expected a woman who could be gentle and smart and defined enough to leave herself behind in service of our union. This is what I saw in the public image of John and Yoko and this is what I sought out.

And I am thrilled on this and just about every (good) day of my life to realize that I have found that companion in my wife.

When I sit and think about it I still cannot rectify a world that would first be able to create the circumstances that would become John Lennon and then in the same breath create the circumstances that would allow Mark David Chapman to shoot him down in cold blood. And while it tears me to pieces to think that this kind of mongoloid ardour could come to pass, there is also a kind of poetic rhythm and working class discomfort that seemed to have first forged John Lennon, and then, finally, allowed for the means of his death. In there somewhere is an expression of the great duality of the world John Lennon did some much to help me love. And in there, also, is a watershed moment on the in-folding of Western Civility that I believe has yet to be fully realized.

Happy Birthday John Lennon and thanks for all the chuckles…

In celebration of the best dirn month of the year I will be posting some of my favorite pages from one of my favorite books from my youth. At the end of the month, it’s my plan to post the entire volume of A Tourist’s Guide to Transylvania in PDF form.

A Tourist’s Guide to Transylvania is an odd collection of licensed fantasy and horror illustrations, magical and occult references, and awkward humor. Released by Octopus Books in 1981, my seven year old self stumbled across this at the local K-Mart while out shopping for, as I remember, school supplies for my first year at school. What an odd world 1981 must have been that a first grader in an affluent suburb in the midwest could stumble across such a peculiar collection of horror and occult doctrine.

Stay tuned for the entire collection of A Tourist’s Guide to Transylvania, I promise it is a wonderful ride.

If you watched the Presidential Debate last night you might have noticed John McCain’s mention of a $3 million earmark, supported by Barack Obama, for an Overhead Projector.

“He [Obama] voted for nearly a billion dollars in pork barrel earmark projects, including, by the way, $3 million for an overhead projector at a planetarium in Chicago, Illinois. My friends, do we need to spend that kind of money?”

Now, I know the projector he’s talking about. The old one, in need of replacing, is pictured above. In fact, I’ve seen many a sky show at the Adler Planetarium as a youth and it helped ignite my excitement for the larger world around us. The galactic vistas and interstellar reaches projected on that dome were more inspiring than you’d think possible with a collection of Zeiss steel and glass. Unfortunately, this projector is over 40 years old - its nebulae have grown dim. It’s time for a replacement. What price would you put on reaching untold millions of children over another 40 years? I think $3 million out of the Federal Budget is a bargain. Click here to read the Huffington Post’s take on the AP debunking of McCain’s “Overhead Projector” as well as a statement from the Adler Planetarium itself.

That’s the title of a book I haven’t read on Santeria, but I’m just floored by that collection of words. So economical, yet evocative of so much. I highly recommend spending a little time letting your brain swim in that puddle of language. Amazing stuff.

Google hunting on that phrase I came across a song entitled, “The Dead Sell Memories“. I know nothing of the band Oracular Laboratory, but I think the lyrics are quite nice:

Mama is loco,
And daddy is tired;
And sister is vocal,
And I’m just wired.

I look over the trees,
And I look to the river
And across it I imagine
Lives the Great Forgiver;

That is where all the dead people go,
That is where all the dead people know,
That is where they have eyes to see,

You must understand:
The Dead sell memories.

O take me away
I am so superstitious;
The ghosts they come knocking
And their habits are vicious;
And we the living
We stand with our wishes,

They do not breathe
Yet the Dead sell memories.

O burn a candle,
Burn it upright,
Burn it so long into the night,
Burn a candle for all to see,

Because the Dead they sell memories.

I stood silently
By the shore of the lake,
I had nothing left,
There was nothing to take;
I did not have coin,
But my pain they could see,
So the dead spoke to me
In the language of memory.

The Dead sell,
The Dead sell,
O the Dead sell… memories…