and we can't build our dreams

(from Captain Marvel Adventures #113; October 1950)
B.E.F. - Suspicious Minds (from Music of Quality and Distinction, Vol. 1, 1982; collected on The Best of B.E.F. 2002) - In which the Ware and Marsh production team (previously of the Human League, and the heart of Heaven 17) reimagine one of The King's finest works with the help of tarnished glam idol, Gary Glitter. ("Because I love you too much, baby..." Major contextual eeeeew, there.)

"We can't go on together with suspicious minds." Too true, which is why there are major developments in the pipeline concerning Armagideon Time.

Stay tuned.

Halloween Countdown: October 13 - shapeless in the dark again

Autumn is in full swing up here in New England. The days are getting shorter, the nights are feeling chillier, and the leaves on the trees are turning lovely shades of gold, red, and orange. Unless you count clean-up and prep work (which I don't), the home gardening season is effectively over.

The flowers in the beds which surround our house on the hillside have all gone to seed, save for a small clutch of pink impatiens determined to hang in there until the first frost and, of course, the various grouping of mums. I have nothing against mums, despite their status as harbinger for summer's demise. They're pretty enough flowers, though they lack the majesty of zinnias or sopranos, but they leave me pining for a more sophisticated late season blooming plant -- something, say, like the Evil Puritan Strangulation Vine...

An extremely hardy and aggressive hybrid of clematis and pansy, the Evil Puritan Strangulation Vine was introduced to the region in the 1600's by Prudence Carver. Goody Carver was executing by drowning in 1631 on charges of witchcraft, manifested by her unwillingness to sell her plot of land to Miles Standish for pennies on the pound.

Just prior to her execution, Carver enjoyed a last meal of wildflower seeds with a goat's blood chaser, and from her bloated, rotting corpse sprang the first documented specimen of Clematis puritanus asphyxiata.

The plant does have a (somewhat deserved) reputation for being difficult to cultivate, mostly due to the fact that it will only germinate in the rotted corpse of an evil spellcaster.

Despite what you might have been told, this does not have to be an insurmountable obstacle. There are many occult home and garden outlets willing to supply the needed remains for quite reasonable prices. (Some experts will tell you to seed the bed with a premium 3:5 witch/warlock mix, but I've had perfectly fine results using a cheap industrial-grade hedge wizard mulch.)

One of the best things about the plant is that it requires no special fertilizer or plant food once the first shoots poke through the soil. In fact, the plant can make do with whatever material is at hand. All it needs to thrive is plenty of water, well-drained soil, and the blood of your enemies.

If there is a drawback to planting an Evil Puritan Strangulation Vine, it's that the plant does tend to get a bit leggy and can quickly turn invasive if not carefully kept in check.

To prevent this from happening, I recommend sticking to a regular schedule of deadheading and pruning, which is best done by hand or teeth.

With a little bit of time and effort, you too can have a healthy, beautiful addition to your late-season garden that will make your neighbors green with envy and your enemies regret that they ever had the temerity to cross you.

The Cure - The Hanging Garden (Studio Demo) (from the expanded rerelease of 1982's Pornography LP) - Gone are the relentless beats and claustrophobic production of the album version, leaving behind a haunting remnant that sounds like it was plucked off of Seventeen Seconds.

Halloween Countdown: October 7 - red corpuscle menace

The American public's interest in superheroes was at a low point in the early 1950's, leaving the fine folks at Fawcett scrambling to keep up with trend curve as it pertained to their flagship character. Horror comics were all the rage at the time, so Captain Marvel found himself pitted against ghosts, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures. The Red Scare was in full swing, so Marvel was sent off to fight communist hordes both at home and abroad.

I suppose it was inevitable, then, that writer Otto Binder would cobble together a story incorporating both elements into a single, racially-insensitive masterpiece of supernatural Cold War agitprop.

It all came together in Captain Marvel Adventures #140 (January 1953), in a story titled....well, check it out for yourselves...

All documented. All true.
It's late 1952 and the Korean War has become a bloody stalemate. The fighting is fierce, as both sides of the conflict hope to turn territorial gains into leverage at the negotiation table. Captain Marvel, the quintessential Truman Democrat, does his part for the global crusade against communism by transporting supplies of blood from the States to military hospitals near the front line.

Marvel's golden opportunity to exchange witty (yet socially aware) banter with the wacky crew of the Four-Oh-Seven-Seven is interrupted by the arrival of a thirsty horde of Mongol bloodsuckers on a whole plasma packie run...

The parties at Vampa Mongol Vampa are wild, dude!
Marvel manages to swat aside the commie bloodsuckers, but not before they cart off most of the field surgery's blood supply. A helpful Corporal Klinger fills the Captain in on the pertinent backstory...

Here Marvel channels both Walter Winchell and Charlie Brown.
Realizing that his presence might deter the Maoist monstrosities from returning for an all-American ass-whooping, Marvel transforms back into boy reporter Billy Batson and waits for the following evening. The vampires return as hoped, but Billy's plan runs into a dirty commie hitch when the devious fiends cart him off, along with the remaining supplies of blood. As per Captain Marvel story conventions, Billy is bound and gagged and brought before the dreaded Scarlet Vampire.

The Supreme Leader of the Vampire Soviet uses the opportunity to explain his nefarious plans, as well as to revel in his status as an racist caricature...

"I considered the 'So solly' approach, but it felt rather gauche."
When the pack of fiends sets out to wreak havoc among the American forces, Billy is left behind to consider his future as a dessert course. Billy's guard, understandably miffed about being left out of the mass exsanguination, decides to give into his cravings for hot teenage boy blood and pounces on the helpless lad.

Luckily for Billy, his captor's fangs were designed more for perpetuating stereotypes rather than piercing flesh, and Billy's gag becomes snared in the vampire's incisors. This stroke of luck gives Billy the chance to utter the magic word and transform into Captain Marvel, who promptly smashes in the vampire's skull with a boulder before flying off to deal with the rest of the commie leeches.

Over at the 38th Parallel, the situation has taken a turn for the dire, with the American forces have been routed by the unholy might of the Glorious People's Vampire Army. Have no fear, true believers, because Captain Marvel is on the scene and prepared to set things right no matter how many laws of physics are broken in the process...

TRUE FACT: The sun is entirely composed of delicious creamery butter. Also, if you cut and paste properly, you can alter a Land O' Lakes package to make it look like the Indian Maid is flashing her boobs.
Marvel's masterstroke of bad science quickly takes care of the rank and file bloodsuckers. When it comes to the Big Vamp-huna, however, Marvel takes a more hands-on approach...

It's moments like these when Marvel realizes how much he loves his work.
What's that you're saying? The story seems a bit violent, jingoistic and racist for a comic book aimed at younger children? Pshaw! Everybody knows that the Golden Age Captain Marvel stories are the pinnacle of wholesome kid-safe entertainment, unlike the drek published today. If it wasn't so, then why would Captain Marvel Adventures #140 carry the following stamp of approval?

The seal doesn't lie, my friends.

drill baby drill

Tom Smirch is a typical American...

"Fuck you, nanny state jerks! This is the land of the FREE!"
...with a typically American sense of moral obligation.

"Oh, well. If anyone asks, I'll say it was started by illegal immigrants."
Tom's ecological conscience makes him perfectly suited for work in the oil industry, where he can work to generate windfall profits while despoiling virgin landscape to make America independent from foreign oil.

You just know his truck is sporting a "Ron Paul '08" bumpersticker...
Tom is just trying to live the American Dream, but try explaining that to those pointed-headed liberal elitists bent on wrecking our cherished way of life...

Captain Marvel's flagrant disregard for IOKIYAR is appalling.
Because Marvel was too busy saving townspeople from the tar flood instead of rescuing Tom's excavation equipment, the drilling venture goes belly up and Tom is ruined....

...OR IS HE?

You're doing a heckuva job, Smirchy!
(From Captain Marvel Adventures #126; November 1951)

I was watching the fallout from the collapse of Bush's grand corporate welfare plan on the morning news. The network gave a considerable amount of screen time to various stockbrokers and speculators, who were universally unrelenting in expressing their contempt of Congress's lack of action.

I'm not convinced the bailout plan will work, and I'm certain that it won't help those folks who have suffered most from the market meltdown, but the last thing I need to see are the same motherfuckers who lined their pockets during the late smash-and-grab-a-thon bitching that the government isn't riding to their rescue fast enough. To quote Comrade Highlander, "my heart bleeds pish" for them. Let them pray to the trinity of Adam Smith, Ludwig von Mises, and Milton Friedman for succor...or is that "suckers?"

Transvision Vamp - Baby, I Don't Care (from Velveteen, 1989) - Schadenfreude loses much of its luster when innocents are caught in the vortex of comeuppance. Transvision Vamp loses much of its indie bubblegum luster when you realize that every song on every album sounds virtually identical.

Future Sound of London - It's Not My Problem (from Accelerator, 1991) - It's not my problem unless it affects me directly, in which case it's the WORST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED EVER AND SOMEONE NEEDS TO FIX IT RIGHT NOW.

coming home to roost

The present financial crisis, as explained and resolved in six panels of a Golden Age comic book:

(from Captain Marvel Adventures #112; September 1950)
A fundamental weakness in the underpinnings of market capitalism? Pshaw! It's all about telepathic waterfowl seeking to undermine our entirely sound and totally rational system of unrestrained greed, long since freed from the petty shackles of effective oversight. Thankfully, we have a government that is compassionate enough to insulate the titans of finance from their own self-destructive tendencies and is willing to commit as much of the taxpayers' money as is required to cover the speculators' losses.

Hey, it's an emergency. We can discuss accountability and regulatory issues later, after the the wheelbarrows full of cash and lines of low-interest credit have been dispensed to the poor, poor plutocrats who have already suffered so much. Please, pay no mind to the restructuring of the banking regulations that were created to prevent commercial banks from dabbling willy-nilly in the investment banking sphere. We need to be grateful that these entities were willing to buy out their failing cousins in a time of crisis, so just put aside any worries that this will pose an even greater economic risk down the line.

When the worrybird cackles, a quick response is required. As for those of you who will ultimately foot the bill for the bailout, and who have been suffering the most from the turmoil....well, you should have been more responsible with your financial affairs. Next time, don't take out a subprime mortgage to buy a home -- buy the firm that uses such mortages as security to game the markets. Then the government might be willing to slip you a share of that sweet $700 billion.

The Rare Breed - Beg, Borrow, and Steal (from a 1966 single; collected on the Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era box set, 1998) - This single was re-released in 1967 and credited to the Ohio Express, one of the many faceless bubblegum proxy groups used by songwriters and studio wizards of the period, though the actual touring line-up of the "band" hadn't yet been assembled. So don't expect to hear any similarities between this respectable slice of garage rock and "Yummy Yummy Yummy."

Action Pact! - Who's to Blame (from Survival of the Fattest, 1984) - It's a shame the 80's Britpunk scene imploded when it did, as there were a number of bands that were on the verge of breaking away from the formula (while not falling into the standard hard rock/metal/grindcore career trajectory) before it all came crashing down. You can hear it in the studio side of The Partisans' The Time Was Right LP, which sounds like nothing else recorded before or since, and you can hear it to a milder extent in Action Pact's second album, from which the above track was taken.

Wire - Let's Panic Later (from an EP included with, and later appended to 154, 1979) - It is impossible to calculate the creative debt indie rock owes to Wire....unless you're talking about Elastica, in which case the exact sum has been recorded in an out-of-court settlement.

Note: My other project, pronounced WOO-BIN, celebrates its second week of existence with a recital of the most sublime verses ever penned by human hands.

the autumn of my killer robot

He came to us on a brisk October afternoon in 1951. His arrival was heralded by the hum of servo motors and the intoxicating scents of ozone and machine oil.

His name was Timmy Tinkle, he was a robot, and he needed a job.

He was created in the laboratory of Professor Derook, but wanted to leave his surrogate father's shadow and blaze his own path.

Mr. Morris found Timmy a position in the WHIZ-TV warehouse, and he soon proved himself to be a motivated and tireless worker. Many were the days we labored shoulder to mechanical shoulder in the cramped, dusty space, and a bond developed between boy reporter and mechanical man.

Such was the strength of our mutual affection that I failed to see the obvious warning signs -- the failure to properly sign off on shipping manifests, the vicious beating and hospitalization of the night watchman, the way in which the office safe was torn out of the wall and its contents emptied.

I didn't want to believe it. I worked with Timmy. He was my friend. We were closer than brothers. How could such a sweet, gentle construct be a brutal robo-criminal?

In my grief and confusion, I confronted him, wishing more than anything that it was just a silly misunderstanding.

His reaction was terrifying to behold.

I was forced to defend myself, and perhaps the shock of betrayal made me strike back with more force than necessary.

Afterwards, I kneeled over Timmy's inert body and gazed down in disbelief at the shattered remains of my once-close friend.

I prepared to squash his cybernetic corpse into a ball for easy transport to the scrapyard, but my blearly eyes noticed something unusual embedded in Timmy's inner workings.

It was a remote control device planted by Derook. Having managed to create a fully functioning humanoid robot and a complex artificial intelligence unit with vacuum tube era technology, Derook had decided the best way to monetize his discoveries was to use Timmy as a Trojan Robot in order to steal the petty cash box from a minor market broadcast studio.

With Derook in police custody, the refurbished Timmy returned to his job at WHIZ-TV, and put his killer robot ways behind him.

Well, for the most part...

Moloko - Are 'Friends' Electric? (from Random: A Tribute to Gary Numan, 1997) - The sleazy side of future shock.

The Gymslips - Robot Man (from a 1983 single; collected on Rockin' with the Renees: The Punk Collection, 2000) - Not to be confused with the Scorpions track (covered by The Expoxies on Stop the Future) with the same name, this is an infectious piece of punky retro-pop by a quartet of hard-partying British lasses.

(panels taken from Captain Marvel Adventures #125 and #136.)

the root of all evil

The above lesson on the nuances of mythological avarice is the reader's introduction into "Captain Marvel Fights the Menace of Greed" from Captain Marvel Adventures #111 (August 1950). The story is a quaint piece of agitprop crafted to evangelize on behalf of the post-WW2 "enlightened" variety of capitalism while dispelling any lingering spectres of Depression Era socialist agitation.

While popular mythology might lead one to think that the national consensus of the World War II period continued unbroken though the mid-1960's, the truth is that the immediate post-war years were a time of rampant labor unrest. There were a significant number of Americans who remembered the hardship of the Great Depression and who had given of themselves, overseas and on the homefront, during the war years who were determined not to be cut out of loop when it came to sharing the economic spoils of victory. The government's response to such agitation took the form of such draconian measures as President Truman's threat to draft striking transport workers in 1946 and the Taft-Hartley Act, which drastically curbed the power of organized labor.

The mythical and much cited prosperity of the 1950's was an artificial construct built on a foundation of Keynesian economic policies, government subsidized defense spending, a labor shortage, and the efficient application of planned obsolescence to the field of consumer goods -- a short-term balancing act which turned out to be unsustainable in the long run. To get to that point of hothoused (and unequal) prosperity, some socio-economic panel-beating had to be done, most notably through the cynically directed hysteria of the Red Scare and Cold War brinksmanship, but on a less shrill note in the pages of this comic story, as well.

When Mr. Morris, the very FDR-like owner of radio station WHIZ, embarks on a tour of Europe, he leaves the management of his business in the hands of Jason Cox, a individual whose hook nose and pencil-thin mustache came straight from central casting's "shifty character" drawer. Armed with the power of attorney, Cox implements a whole raft of workplace changes. Wages are rolled back, infrastructure and maintenance budgets are slashed, and payrolls moved to a biweekly schedule.

While the business press lauds Cox's "visionary leadership," boy reporter Bill Batson suspects something fishy behind his behavior. Hoping to get to the bottom of things, Billy transforms himself into Captain Marvel, the World's Mightiest Shop Steward, and confronts Cox...

"It's simple capitalism, Captain. You don't have anything against capitalism do you? Your costume does have a lot of red in it..."
Fear of being labeled a godless pinko who hates America and Baby Jesus forces Marvel to stay his hand, so he zips off to Pyramid Investment Corporation's various holdings to see if there really are resources to exploit, virgin wilderness to despoil, and rightfully elected governments to overthrow.

The diamonds, uranium, and oil are present at the sites though the portfoilo had the locations mixed up. A chastened Marvel returns to apologize to Cox for his lack of faith, only to be met by a hail of bullets from two of Cox's business associates. As it turns out, Cox had been moonlighting as the manager of Pyramid even as he diverted funds to the firm as financial manager of WHIZ. (Thank you, financial industry deregulation!)

Not realizing that the mineral investments were actually on the level, Cox's plan was to fleece the station for all it was worth before fleeing with his suitcase full of ill-gotten (but entirely legal, according to revised SEC rules) gains. Marvel wastes no time in giving Fortune Magazine's "Outstanding Executive of 1950" a good thrashing and a stern, yet confusing, lecture...

"'Mixed message?' Whatever do you mean?"
With Cox sent up the river (to a minimum security country club) and Mr. Morris back from Europe, WHIZ returns to its harmonious state as an ideal example of "social contract" capitalism in action...

...until the firm's stocks are downgraded due to Morris's largesse, causing the investors to depose Morris as CEO and sell the station to a national media conglomerate, who promptly lay off most of the workforce and switch the format from local programming to nationally syndicated fare. Michael Savage's show now runs in Billy's old time slot.

Heartbreaking, I know, but you have to stay competitive in today's global economy. Plutus demands it.

The O'Jays - For the Love of Money (from Ship Ahoy, 1973) - Money and I have an open relationship. It comes and goes as it pleases and I enjoy it while it's around.

Lord Sitar - If I Were a Rich Man (from Lord Sitar, 1968) - Hey! There's a sitarist on the roof! (He'd better climb down before the wife sees him. She despises sitar music.)

The Flying Lizards - Money (That's What I Want) (from The Flying Lizards, 1980) - It's a means, not an end unto itself.

lovelockean combat

Years before the Odinson mixed it up with Ego the Living Planet or the Autobots struggled against Unicron's Orsonwellesian might, the Big Red Cheese found himself going mano-a-planeto with a sentient planetary body which may be familiar to most of you...


"Captain Marvel Battles the World" (from Captain Marvel Adventures #148, September 1953; by Otto Binder & C.C. Beck) is narrated by Earth itself. (For some reason I imagine Earth sounding just like Sterling Holloway.) After a quick introduction guaranteed to outrage the creationist crowd...

Teach the controversy!
...the third planet from the sun outlines its grievances with the rapacious parasites that infest its crust:

YEAH!
In retaliation against those who have ravaged and plundered and ripped it and bit it, stuck it with knives, et cetera, et cetera, the Earth plays some meteorological hardball...

President McCain's environmental policy in action.
Forget carbon emissions and CFCs, the real "inconvenient truth" is that the Earth hates the human race...which is why it is our solemn duty to beat the planet into submission for the sake of corporate profits humanity.

Earth's global warming gambit is foiled by Captain Marvel, who evaporates an ice meteor in the upper atmosphere in order to restore Earth's cloud cover (while worsening the greenhouse effect, providing a catalyst for massive tropical storms, and causing massive coastal flooding. Eh, it happens).

Not the type of heavenly body to be put off by a minor setback, Earth attempts to shatter the cities and works of man by slamming a couple of glaciers together with tremedous force, sending destructive shockwaves across the face of the globe. This plan also fails due to Marvel's intervention, which takes the form of a giant felt suppository crammed up the Earth's south pole.

Captain Marvel: Glacial Proctologist
This indignity only serves to further fan the flames of Earth's anger, and in its rage unleash a cataclysm on a continental scale of improbability...

The elation upon finishing the Panama Canal was short-lived.
...which might have worked, except for the fact that wild implausibility is the coin of Marvel's realm and the basis for all transactions conducted therein. Unprecedented devastation unleashed by a rogue continent set adrift? Big deal. It's nothing that can't be fixed with some glue and a little elbow grease...

"It's a shame about the Falklands being obliterated, but no one but the Brits, Argentines, and some puffins gave a rat's ass about them, anyhow."
Realizing that half-measures will not do when faced with the World's Mightiest Mortal, Earth decides to pull out all the stops and simultaneously unleash the entire gamut of global catastrophe in order to put an end to its human infestation problem. Before the fireworks can commence, however, a renegade comet crashes the festivities and threatens to pulverize the poor Earth.

Fortunately for the hapless planet, Marvel isn't the type of guy to hold a grudge, and applies a little Atomic Age know-how (long on infatuation, short on realizing the consequences) to save the day...

Anti-nuke activists are just a bunch of killer comet-loving hippies.
The comet is destroyed (with only a 10,000% increase in global cancer rates following Earth's passage through the plutonium-laced debris cloud; Marvel is a strict utilitarian), and a chastened Earth is treated to a sanctimonious lecture by the Moon, who, it should be pointed out, lobbied hard for restricted community status after the Apollo 11 landing. "I do think humans are cute; I just think they should be cute somewhere else."

"Besides, what do they have -- another century or two left before the species offs itself? I can wait it out."
1919 - Earth Song (from a 1984 EP; collected on The Complete Collection, 2001) - Crunchy goth fare reminiscent of Killing Joke's punkier stuff. Comrade Highlander posted a rip of the entire EP a few months back, and while the hard copy of the collection is currently out of stock, the mp3 version can be downloaded from either Amazon or eMusic.

Blue Cheer - Ecological Blues (from Oh! Pleasant Hope, 1971) - Blue Cheer's heavy-duty blues-rock sound (and their cover of "Summertime Blues" on 1968's Vincebus Eruptum LP in particular) are frequently cited as one of the seminal influences on the heavy metal genre. While it's a valid observation, it does overstate things (as most proto-genre assertions tend to do) and overlooks the bizarro-psych side of the band as represented by this head-scratcher of a musical timepiece.

The Gun Club - Eskimo Blue Day (from Pastoral Hide and Seek, 1990) - ...and occupying the genre shadowlands between today's offerings from 1919 and Blue Cheer comes this swamp-punk-blues cover of one of Jefferson Airplane's better efforts (as opposed to the two tracks by the band that get heavily played on classic rock and oldies format radio).