ZYGONE
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THURSDAY,
JANUARY 19, 2011
First the snow, deep, birds are
flittering for food, fill the feeder. Dog is reluctant,
says, "Let's go inside, my paws are
cold."
Then the rains hit and the wind
catapaults branches and sends the
blue tarps flying and the creek is
rising, reaching for the bridge, do
you like to kayak, then launch rght
now and go all the way to the Willamette
River and the Columbia and
then out to sea, see what you can see.
QUESTIONS
FROM GREECE FOR A MAGAZINE AND ANSWERS FROM MUSE
Yiassou (hello) Mr. Babbs
Greetings from Athens,
I send you the questionnaire.
If you believe that are many questions - but REALLY
GREAT STORY - to answer
as many as YOU like !!
Questions are many because we do not
have direct communication to be options,
and are a little bit general, but is a
1st contact with the Greeks!
Please feel free for the time YOU want to send
the answers back.
Just i bend my head with respect to you ...and thank you once
again
love, peace, and happiness
mike
When
was your first desire to become involved with the psychedelic area
& who were your first idols?
There I was taking a nap with my mouth
open, snoring like a logger sawing wood and some
prankster dropped a tablet in my mouth
and I woke up choking and coughing and the lights
went crazy color and hovering over me
were angels laughing like maniacs and they became
my idols although no one can accuse me
of idolatry.
Which is the most interesting period
in your life and why?
Most, as opposed to least, is a hip
expression you hear, like, the food at that restaurant is the most,
and they aren't talking about
quantity, they are talking about quality, for you can guess who was
the cook, that's right, the intrepid
traveler hisself who skated on the greasy skillets and walloped
the pots and why was that so
interesting? Because it was the intersection of appetite and
cleanliness
and led to what came next.
From whom have you have learned the
most secrets about the life?
From whom, indeed, and once again the
word most doesn't necessarily mean the greatest number
but could mean the wildest most
outrageous secrets there are, and to get to the bottom of that one
I would have to mine the depths and
plumb the quests and come up with the Marine Corps Captain
in Okinawa who coached the basketball
team and taught me there is an invisible string connecting
me to the man guarding me and with
that string I can move that man anywhere I want, although
I scissored him out of the play when I
went to the toilet.
to be continued:
MONDAY,
JANUARY
16, 2011
MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY
IT SNOWED ON THE CEREMONIES
FRIDAY,
JANUARY
13,
2011
Friday
the 13th
A black cat screeches as you stroll
under a ladder
A mirror breaks causing release of
your bladder
13 twists on a hangman's noose; 13
seats at the final supper
Fear washes over like the sea through
a scupper
The 13th letter of our alphabet is M
Ask a biker what that means to him.
Superstitions change, as we get older
But intrepid skypilots just get bolder
and boulder
-- skypilot Bill Billings
Predictions
for 2012
By
Paul Krassner
Politics:
The electoral
college will be replaced by a system where voters will
choose the polling firm
they trust the most. Barack Obama will be re-elected
because his
vice-presidential running mate Joe Biden will be replaced by
Hillary Clinton,
thereby gaining the women’s vote. Failed Republican
campaigners will all take
other jobs. Mitt Romney will start smoking a
pipe and portray the character Bob
Dobbs in a movie about the cultish
Church of the Subgenius. Newt Gingrich and
Herman Cain will launch
the bipartisan Adultery Party in 2016, joined by
Democrats John Edwards
and Bill Clinton. Ron Paul will unite with Ru Paul and
they’ll perform
on Dancing With the Stars. Rick Santorum will be caught in an
airport bathroom stall enjoying a gay encounter. Michelle Bachmann
will launch
a lie-detector company. Rick Perry will copyright the word
“Oops.” And it will
be revealed that Donald Trump was actually born
on Mars; he will have a birth
certificate to prove it, along with a
photo of him as a typical Martian baby
with a comb-over.
Show
Business: Vegetarian
converts will include Lady Gaga, who will
wear a dress made entirely of
heirloom tomatoes, and Meatloaf will
change his name to Tofuloaf. Kermit the
Frog and Miss Piggy will
win Academy Awards for best male and female actors.
Angelina Jolie
will legally adopt Brad Pitt. Kim Kardashian will get married
and
divorced on the same day. The Tea Party will become a popular
sitcom.
Capital-punishment executions will become a top-rated
reality-TV series. The
Second Coming of Jesus Christ will occur
live on a three-hour special to be
telecast on every single channel
simultaneously, with an offstage voiceover
narration by God.
Atheists and agnostics will picket the production, only to be
struck by lightning. Howard Stern will expose himself on America’s
Got Talent.
The Taliban and al-Quaeda will be the final
competitors on The Biggest
Terrorists. Hulu and Netflix will merge as Huflix.
Fashion
Trends: Square
Hitler-style mustaches will finally become
stylish after decades of ridicule.
Botox will become a soft drink that
will get rid of unwanted wrinkles from the
inside. Pornography will
be allowed in public libraries, but moaning out loud
will definitely
not be permitted. Fetus transplants from poor pregnant girls
to
wealthy anti-abortion women will become a controversial new fad.
Arizona,
Mississippi and Tennessee will refuse to recognize Leap
Year. Lottery winners
will be fingerprinted. Private prisons will be
turned into ashrams. Inspired by
Steve Jobs, many industries
will continue his legacy by transforming planned
obsolescence into
a virtue. Prescription drugs will become children’s names,
such
as Ambien and Lipitor. Travel agents will begin arranging guilt
trips for
clients who have given up on airplanes. Combination
vibrators and insomnia
cures will be invented, trademarked as
Dildoze. Pope Benedict XVI will permit
condoms to be marketed
if there are tiny pinhole pricks in the reservoir tips
in order to ensure a
fighting chance for spermatozoa to get through. Serial
pedophiles, gay
bashers and Internet hackers will form unions.
The
Economy: The
Department of Energy will release a report concluding
that so-called “clean
coal” is, in point of fact, “filthy dirty.” The Bank of A
merica will stop doing
business with Verizon and switch to Credo. The
largest protest in history will
take place by ongoing Occupy-the-Federal-
Reserve-System demonstrations. The
recession will evolve into a depression,
which will end quickly as the war on
drugs morphs into the legalization
of every single strain of cannabis will be
designated as medical marijuana.
Facebook members will be taxed for every
friend, Twitter users will be taxed
for every tweet, Monsanto will be taxed for
every genetically modified food,
and masturbators will be taxed for every
ejaculation. The Supreme Court will
download all corporations into embryos.
Several million jobs will be created as
Unemployment Insurance clerks.
International
Relations:
North Korea’s new Beloved Leader will be caught
cheating on his SAT
examination, but he will redeem himself when he allows
almost 70 McDonalds
restaurants to open all over his dictatorial realm; however,
in keeping with
his father’s policies, he won’t allow them to sell any food.
Saudi-Arabia will
outlaw laughter. Iraq will become our 51st state.
Afghanistan will
require all men to wear burkas. Iran will develop a nuclear bomb, than
drop it
by
accident on Libya and Syria. World War III will be fought entirely by
drone
planes attempting to destroy each other in the air. Products made in
China
will
be increasingly pirated by American entrepreneurs. Global warming will
continue
to melt icebergs as well as Sarah Palin’s cold heart. The world will
end on
December 21st, but will begin all over again on December 23rd,
just
in
time
for last-minute Christmas shopping. The most popular gift will be
cans of p
epper-spray in a variety of flavors. Pakistan will continue to be
bribed by us.
And the Nobel Peace Prize will be secretly awarded to Anonymous.
These
predictions
for
2012
were
originally published in Metro Newspapers.
Paul Krassner publishes the infamous
Disneyland Memorial Orgy poster.
His latest book is an expanded and updated
edition of his autobiography,
Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut:
Misadventures in the Counterculture,
available at paulkrassner.com and as a
Kindle e-book.
SUNDAY,
JANUARY
1,
2012
pic
from
a
Jacqui
Lawson card
NAPPY
OF
THE
HEW
YEAR
This
year, it realy works, to say, twenty twelve and not two thousand and
twelve,
becacuse twenty twelve hs a nice roll
off the tongue and look out gums here she
comes, whereas two thousand and twelve
is just too damn long and hard.
FRIDAY,
DECEMBER
30,
2011
Good
Morning Ken,
My name is Fred McCarthy.
I live in Seattle and on Whidbey
Island.
I just finished your book.
A friend who was an Army medic during
the same time
in Nam came across the book and gave
it to me for Christmas.
I was an Army Warrant Officer
stationed at Soc Trang in 1967-68.
I was with the 121st AHC - "The Soc
Trang Tigers".
The gun platoon was the "Vikings"
I was a "Tiger" and then a fire team
leader in A/B Model Huey gunships.
My call sign was "Viking 23".
I flew 1300 hours of combat missions
during 1967-1968.
That time included the Tet Offensive
of 1968.
Your writing captured the combat
situations we faced and
the hell raising that went on in the
"Tigers' Den" at night.
We did operations in all of the same
places mentioned in your
book. After I got out of Vietnam, I
flew with the 540th AHC at Fort Lewis.
At that time I flew the CH-34 and got
an FAA type rating in it (SK-58).
By that time they were pretty well
"seasoned" and all of the systems
like the multiple fuel tanks,
hydraulics, etc, made most pilots jumpy.
Not to mention the fuel that would
drip down during start and catch
fire from time to time. The crew chief
stood by with a large fire extinguisher
for each start. I remember that with
the right power setting and
manifold pressure you could shoot a
flame six feet long out of the
stack at night.
The "Tigers" (slick drivers) shared
Soc Trang with the "Warriors" (slick drivers)
and their gun platoon the
"Thunderbirds" from the 336th AHC.
Sometimes after a night in the
"Tigers' Den" they would piss on our
helicopters and we would go down to
their flight line and cut down a
banana tree and bring it back to
theTiger's Den and run it through the
overhead fan before buying up all the
Fallstaff Beer, filling up the fire
extinguishers and hosing off their pilots.
Then the slip and slide contest would
start across the tile floor and into the bar.
Your songs and poems were great. The
traditions established there
continued on. You captured both the
craziness of the experience and the
interesting characters that emerged
from the whole mix of combat and climate.
I guess we were the Army pilots that
the base was prepared for by the Marines.
One night on a scramble from a mortar
attack with my co-pilot three sheets to the wind
from 6 hours in the "Tigers' Den" he
grabbed
the trigger on the mini guns as we
lifted off and he pulled the trigger,
spraying the area with bullets before
I reached over and slapped his hands off the gun sight.
In the morning we woke up to a big
round piece of swiss cheese where the MARS radio
antenna used to be. . . enough of my own war stories. . .
thanks for the memories.
Sincerely,
Fred
THURSDAY,
DECEMBER
29,
2011
Big
Hot Tuna weekend here.
Took the 2-hour bus down to 41st St
Port Authority station on Friday, then walked 30
blocks to the Beacon Theater, probably
the best place to see rock shows in New York
these days. Imbibed a little
(too much) left-over paper-mache, then made the mistake
of drinking liberally on the
Upswing. Whoops. I got into the show fine, but didn't mesh
with the way it was all
going, so left about 2/3 of the way through to catch the 11:15 back
home.
Good idea. I thought I'd try
taking the subway back downtown instead of a cab, but,
being quite a bit more than
One Toke Over the Line Sweet Jesu, got completely
L-O-S-T .. finding myself stumbling
around in a Harlem station, WAY in the wrong
direction. A lot of scary people
staring at me as I fumbled a crumpled wad of money
to buy more tickets. Tried
desperately to back-track and realized I was then on a train
headed for Brooklyn.
Smashed. Ugly confusion.. a loose
drunk waiting for Big Problems. Looking frowsy
and un-focused, I approached a trio of
pistol-packing Transit cops, and mumbled,
"Uhh..I'm sort of inebriated.. can you
tell me how to get to the Port Authority?"
The nearest cop gives me this hard
look for a second, like, should I bust this frizzy
weirdo with the Gonzo shirt.. then
softened his demeanor drastically and became
very fatherly, grabs me gently
by the sleeve.
"Ya see that gate over there? The one
RIGHT THERE. Yeah? Okay.." like he's
talking to a secondgrader,
appropriately.."GO THROUGH THAT GATE. When
the train comes by, GET ON IT. Wait
until the doors open first. Then stay in your
SEAT for about fifteen
minutes... until you see big signs outside the window for
42nd Street. Think you got it? Okay
then!" He gave me a soft shove in the right
direction, like he was launchng a toy
sailboat.
I finally made it back to my suburban
town around 1 AM somehow.. had another
couple of drinks at the local gin
mill.. then staggered two miles home through the
moonlit neigborhoods.
Woke up feeling fully cratered, and
spent the day drinking spring water and nursing
the Floating Dizzies from the couch.
Sometime around 6 PM, just when I was feeling
slightly human again, I get a
call from pal Kevin, saying, "Wannna go to Tuna tonight?
My son can't go.. free ticket for
you.. I'll drive". Wow.. the last thing I'd expected was
to return to the Scene of the Crime,
but it was an offer I couldn't refuse...
Night and day difference from the
previous evening. We sailed smoothly into Manhattan
and parked in a lot close to the
Beacon. We had a couple of (LIGHT) drinks at the same
bar as previous.. then walked over to
a dark spot on 76th Street, a couple blocks away
from the show, so's to toke up half a
joint Kevin had. Kind of a ritzy, residential street..
West Side, not far from Lincoln
Center. Lot of rich-looking people passing by as we
smoked. All done, we walked 20 yards
to the corner and waitied for the light. Suddenly
there's a hand pulling my arm and a
soft voice is saying, "Okay guys, let's go, walk over
here with me," and it's an undercover
cop, pulling his necklace badge out of his shirt.
Ahh, shit. Busted.
Neither of us hesitated or squirmed in
anyway, simply let ourselves get lead to a wall
where another plainclothes
approached and they patted us down briefly while firing
fast-paced questions to see if we
would flinch.
Got anything else?
Nope. No Sir! True enough, except
for another little piece of paper somewhere in my jacket.
Got ID?
Yeeaaahhh... we both palmed-over our
driver's licenses...
Where do you live? Where do you work?
What's the name of the company? What's your
job with the company?
Rat-a-tat-tat.
We answered the questions calmly. We
had nothing left to find, but my heart was racing,
especially after just smoking that
skunk.
Kevin was born in Manhattan. A
real New Yawka. Crew-cut like a cop.. talks like a cop...
knows lots of cops...father was
a big cop in Manhattan. Only Kevin is one of the biggest
Deadheads going.. used to eat acid
like Good & Plenty back in the day. So he starts
chatting with the main fuzz.. jumped
right into it.. knew all the terms.. the cadences..
the catch-phrases and such. Within a
few moments they were discussing Who played
Who in softball and We used to kick
your asses.. as soft chuckles begin to erupt. The
one cop takes our ID's over to a dark
Toyota sedan where they undoubtedly have the
world's fastest mobile cop
computer...New York City, post 9-11 of course, total Federal
Money for all Cop Desires..
checked us out for warrants I suppose, then wrote our names
down on a paper.
The first cop all but apologized.
"People on this street keep
complaining because you guys are looking for somewhere to
smoke-up before the shows. Hey, I
gotta do what I gotta do..."
Kevin puts on this big grin and joins
right in.
"Hey, Mo! [the big cop word out
east].. I understand completely! You gotta job to do! Hey!"
Next thing they're shaking hands and
saying something about sister's-in-law and beers next
time somewhere. I shut up the whole
time and tried to melt in with the concrete wall.
That was it... just wrote our names
down for smoking on 76th St. I suppose if they found us
doing it again three months from now
we'd get a real ticket. So now my name is on a 12th
Precinct computer file somewhere for
Tokin' where you Shouldn't. Kevin laughed. Big joke!
He looked forward to telling all his
cop buddies.
Oh, yeah... ELECTRIC HOT TUNA was
AWESOME that night. A big cast of characters...
Jorma and Jack of course, with an
oustanding, poweful drummer.. then you had David
Bromberg, GE Smith, Steve Kimmock,
Larry Campbell, and Charlie Musslewhite...
They mixed it up numbers of ways
during the show, and when it was on, MAN was it
ON. Thick, rich dripping psychedelic
rock like raspberry jam on a slab of warm bread.
ALL of them are simply top-flight
guitarists.. tight as hell...and they all knew the Tuna
music fully. FUNKY #7 was
mind-blowing... multi-layers of ringing, psychedelic riffing,
each with an individual sound..
blended together beautifully. A powerhouse show...lots of
Primo blues
numbers... BROMBERG totally on fire, (you ever see David? He's
incredible)..
Big Jack Cassidy like on a demonic
mission, goose-stepping across the stage with that low-
slung golden bass, whumping it out
LOUDLY. He looked great.. Jorma was spot-on... t
he packed house roared. If you can
make it big in the Beacon like that... you're On Top.
Look for them to come around..
(ELECTRIC that is).. I'm hoping for a CD to come out of it..
was THAT good.
-- Skypilot China Greg
THURSDAY,
DECEMBER
1,
2011
From an
article in the Eugene Register Guard by Bob Welch, Nov 6, 2011
Geneva gave
birth
to
Ken
in
La
Junta,
Colo.
The
family
came
west
after World War II when
Geneva's
husband, Fred, got a job here at a
creamery.
"Ken was always
attentive,
always rebellious," she says.
"When the books came
out, they
were not red-letter days for me,"
Geneva says.
"They
should
have
been.
But
I
didn't
appreciate
all
that
he had
put into those books.
She loves the
downtown statue of Ken reading to the
kids.
And yet, in a sense,
that was about
someone else's Ken.
Her Ken is the kid
fishing off the
stern of the family boat at Odell
Lake. The man who
brought her gifts
from wherever he was in the
world, her favorite a
turquoise
necklace from Egypt.
photo by Kirk O'Green
"I never gave him
credit for all he
accomplished," she says,
Not that it's ever too
late to show
your pride. The other day, when a
doctor made reference
to her
turquoise necklace, she didn't hesitate
with her response. "My
son,
Ken Kesey, brought this for me from
Egypt."
the Joint chief of staff
wants to know
how's the elbow
where's the backbone
who's got the glue
why's the war
makes me so sore
it's all blood and gore
say no to any more
make it a peacetime lore
let our vets snore
without cannon's roar
ah, my stories don't have the gore
for I was there early in the war
I made everything up
just like a maid and the bed
now don't puncture my balloon she said
you don't wanna put yer mouth on
it
is what hemingway tole his boys
double barrelled earnest advice
sometimes the load gets heavy
other times it is a feather
blowing in the happy wind
beat up but
not beat down
we continue to beat
the peace drum
SATURDAY,
NOVEMBER
6, 2011
Questions from Brian Glaser
Q.
Tom Wolfe wrote about the unspoken thing a lot. Can you tell
me what that was all about?
A. Psychic emanantions. We
are always emanating but the other
half of the coin is the
emanater receptor which must be activated
and open in order to
receive the emanations. A finely tuned mental
instrumentation given
to bursts of clarity and also muddled reams
of garbled nonsense fading
into same old mundane thoughts of what
to wear to the gala galaxy
ball.
Q. On another subject, I sometimes wonder about Neal Cassidy. He's
something of a mystery
isn't he.
A.The first thing about
Neal was he had to always say, it's a-d-y like
in lady and not i-d-y like
in perfidy, and once a person gets that
straight it is possible to
understand Cassady was a highly intelligent
person striving as best he
could to set things right while not getting
caught up by the police for
outstanding traffic tickets or carrying a
pocketful of bennies. He
wanted to hold down a job and keep the
family together. Spit Six,
the Cassady Issue, deals very well with Neal
from many points of view.
AMERICA
AS AN EMERGING FOURTH WORLD NATION
CLICK ON
PUTTING HOME IMPROVEMENTS ON A NEW PAGE
HOME REPAIRS
THURSDAY,
SEPTEMBER
1,
2011
JAMBANDS INTERVIEW BY BRIAN ROBBINS
WITH MOUNTAIN GIRL
RE: THE MOVIE, MAGIC TRIP,
AND THE BUS, FURTHER
CLICK
HERE
Pic by Kathy Harrington.
I saw my picture of the water buffalo on your site. Glad you didn't think it was
too staged. However, minor correction that's actually a big deal to me. My dad
didn't obtain the water buffalo on a "visit" to Vietnam. He bought it when he was
stationed in Qui Nhon, Vietnam in '65 as an officer for the Army. He was a veteran
of three wars and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. That's Colonel William
J. Arnold. : ) I know how you feel about officers, but hey, I'm proud of him even
if he was a damn Republican.
Kathy
Book on down to your local
bookstore and procure this book, post haste ! It has Ken Babbs
written
all over it -- not just on the jacket and title page. Ken's elevated
repartee and warmth shine through in a story of camaraderie set in the
early days of Vietnam, when most Americans were blissfully unaware of
the brewing conflict in Southeast Asia. It's not as much about Vietnam
as it is about young men coping in the trying circumstances of wartime.
A great summer read. Kudos, Ken. It was worth the wait.
-- Don Groble
If you are going to order the book over the internet, or
by phone, get it from Tsunami Books, a locally owned
bookstore. Or go to the store in Eugene, Oregon.
You will get a signed copy.
Costs you $22. Free
shipping in
the
U.S.
Order by phone:
541-345-8986
MOVING BOOK STUFF TO A NEW PAGE
includes info about book and some
interviews and reviews and youtubes
WSTWB PAGE
Putting
all
the
other
book
reviews
and
interviews
on
another
webpage.
Click on:
Putting all the other reading youtubes on
another webpage.
Click on:
SHIRTS AND OTHER WSTWB STUFF
FROM SKYPILOT ALI BOB
click on:
SHIRTS AND MUG
"A
lovely
if
chilling
read,
chilling
because
it
brings
home
the
reality of a tragic war."
--
Larry
McMurtry
I've saved the
old frontpage and you can go to it
by clicking on:
FRONT PAGE
You can look at all the old pages (59 in all) by
clicking on:
you are
flyer number
