JUMP CUTS

BOMBS AWAY


h-bomb in spain 1966

i can only imagine what they're not telling us nowadays. this happened back in the halcyon days of the cold war & our naive mixed feelings about nuclear arsenals. that the bombs in spain fell mainly on their plains(& not on, say, omaha)doesn't really account for the blithe tone i detect in this report.

March 18, 1966 - A hydrogen bomb that went missing for three months in the Mediterranean Sea is back in the hands of the U.S. military after being found the previous day.

The bomb had been lost in January when two U.S. military planes, a KC-135 tanker and a B-52 carrying four thermonuclear weapons collided during midair refueling. Three of the four bombs fell to the ground near Palomares, Spain. While none of them detonated with a nuclear explosion, the high-explosive triggers in two of the bombs went off upon impact and contaminated the area with radioactive material.

A fourth bomb plunged into the water off Spain's southeastern coastline.

Following the incident, the Spanish government announced it would no longer allow U.S. planes carrying nuclear weapons to fly over its territory.

The search for the missing bomb takes 80 days. On March 17, the U.S. Navy, using a midget submarine called the Alvin (pictured on The Chronicle's front page the next day), finds the bomb 2,500 feet underwater, intact and with its parachute still attached.


PIG CHENEY & THE MAN OBAMA

dick cheney has disgraced the office of the vice president to the point that he, specifically, is no longer deserving of the respect most of us try to hold for the office, if not the man holding the office. his attacks on obama are so cowardly & petty that he's re-defining arendt's idea of the "banality of evil."

& the attacks are coming while obama is "manning up" & saying "the buck stops" w/him when it comes to solving the mess that cheney & his stooge president created. while the bush administration was in office, they distinquished themselves w/their craven lies, duplicitous crony-ism, & shameless banditry. the cowardice of their irresponsibility will be historic. they are now proving that this really had nothing to do w/the old idea of "power corrupting." it's all about the lack of character & integrity & decent humanity in these people. god help them. history, i can assure you, will not.



NO JOY IN MUDVILLE

i expect the usa team to get waxed by japan. they haven't played well & are lucky to be in the semi's. they've been rehearsing their excuses since they got blown out in a mercy rule 7inning game by puerto rico. they shouldn't have gotten this far but they dug down deep & actually played ONE inning of gutsy baseball when they had to do it. that's about all we're going to be getting from them. the other night, during their loss to venezula, nearly the entire on-field team forgot how many outs there were. the ensuing confusion wasn't commented on much but it pretty much summed up team usa's attitude.


PAPAL PABLUM


just how out of touch is the catholic church? well, let's just forget about the bumbling, fumbling attempts to deal w/the child abuse. they'll never ever come completely clean about all that, even tho millions & millions keep being paid out.

let's just focus for one second on the pontiff's african aids debacle. africa has 2/3 of the 33 million infected children/adults in the world. this is a conservative estimate. the pope told his new constituency(africa is one of the last places that catholicism is actually growing in terms of numbers)that not only are condoms WRONG but that they make things worse.

i think there's a point in time where belief can topple over into delusion. i think there's a moment when an obvious lack of compassion reveals underlying cruelty & ignorance. i think there's a moment when superstition & blind compliance collapse beneath the weight of a harrowing reality. preaching abstinence in africa is criminally negligent. as far as i'm concerned, his holiness abdicated any moral authority he had or we were willing to give him. any of his pronouncements on any world issue should now be politely ignored. & he needs to ask his god for forgiveness.


BOYS & GIRLS IN AMERICA


they really do have such a sad time together.

when hervey beat haller up, my initial reaction was to get a couple of the outrigger gang & beat his callow ass into a senseless pulp. i remember johnson always espousing a credo taught to him by an old black guy that used to work w/him at the toxic chemical company: "you beat a man bad enough, he never fuck w/you again." that always made sense to me back then. of course nowadays any young punk can get his hands on an automatic weapon & an automatic weapon tends to render credos irrelevant.

i did go to confront hervey about the assault & found him & haller in bed together. all had been forgiven. they were ready to move on. it was two days after the episode & her black eye was quite a sight to see. they broke up for good maybe a month later after another beating. a true romance.

i read this nyt article w/only a little surprize & sadness. things haven't changed much for boys & girls in america. not since sal paradise. not since the outrigger. not since rihanna & chris.


HOT TAMALE BABY

"Singer, songwriter, and pianist Marcia Ball was born today in 1949, in Orange, Texas. She leans heavily on a New Orleans jazz and blues sound in her music, and is a great favorite in these parts in live performances."

i can still remember hearing ms. ball at the maple leaf bar sing "i'd rather go blind." it shook me all the way down to my toes & it's not a boogie woogie song like many of her standards. she's a texan but she's definitely plugged into the new orleans musical zeitgeist. let's hope she's keeps playing for many years to come.










TIME WAITS FOR NO ONE



evil has a way of working on a man. there's no doubt that manson was scapegoated way back when(this was the REAL face of the counterculture, we were told). there's also no doubt that this was/is a truly insane man. helter skelter, charlie, she's comin' down fast.