towards the end of a perfect day. bright sun, blue sky, perfect surf, lots of people strolling around eating ice creams and oblivious to me and my strange feelings of alienation and detachment, i walk with my true friend pan, we attach a tennis ball onto a super stretchy piece of elastic and tie the other end onto a tree branch. everytime i throw the ball pan goes to get it only to have it whizz passed him straight to me, its so funny, pansy's face, the look of bewilderment as he looks at me, and i am laughing, for the first time in many days, i laugh and laugh and there's a slight feeling of freedom that washes over me, just for a short while, i am happy. what is happiness, a girl on a swing a boy and his dog.
i speak to my parents in the london, my mother tells me about the huge rise in anti semitic violence, the tv, the protesters, everyone blames isreal, mum says she wants to go back there, dad tries to sound positive but he isn't, he sounds sad. i tell them about their beautiful grandson.
later in the evening i hear that mel gibbon, an actor i never really rated was charged with drunk driving and then on arrest yelling out about how the jews are behind all warfare and they control the money. apparently the police tried to cover it up but some paperwork got leaked. Gibbon blames the alcohol for his behaviour.
so far most people who come to talk to me are in agreement with him, its amazing i think, i wonder what they would say if i told them i am a jew, i'm broke, i didn't start any wars and as far as i know none of my family did. the jews are nazis, people say. mmm, i usually make an excuse and leave, but i am getting to the point where i will actually develop a stratagy based upon my usual ability to make people laugh at themselves without even knowing it, 'yes those jewish nazis giving back lands in wars they never started, for a peace that never came, jeez, dumb nazis marching themselves into concentration camps like sheep, yeah stupid jewish nazis, spreading their evil message via bob dylan, robert downey juniour, sarah bernhardt, harvey keitel, daniel day lewis, woody allen and winonna ryder, iggy, the bangles, beck, jack black, t rex, mick jones (the clash) perry farrell, richard hell, lou reed, the coen bros, leonardo da vinci, j d salinger, stan lee, jack kirby, fritz freeling, matt goring, frida kahlo, the marx bros, lenny bruce, mike leigh, fritx lang, the red hot chilli peppers, paul auster, issac singer, slash, etc all signed up members of the nazi party.
phone rings its my cousin in isreal eagle, i am momentarily stunned, and somewhat speechless, what can i say. we chat about the situation, he seems relaxed, i don't know what to say, he tells me he drove through the city of hiafa, its deserted, everyone moved south. we talk about girls for a while. he says the noise is unbelievable, sirens and missiles, he tells me Katushias come in all the time, later i tell him i'm going to send him some music, turn the stereo up loud eagle, blast the church, echo and the bunneymen, some weird dub cuts out through the walls, rock and roll can stop the war.

Alternative Metaphysics
by Peter J Carroll

Philosophy often seems like a dead issue to most people, and even Wittgenstein reportedly quipped that 'philosophy leaves everything as it is', after spending a lifetime on it. Metaphysics, a branch of philosophy that studies 'being' and what we can know in principle, often attracts the greatest derision as mere empty speculation. In theory, metaphysics stands above mere physics (the study of the material world) and thus it structures what we can know through physics. In practice, physics has achieved astonishing things whilst metaphysics has gone nowhere. However I will argue that we have ignored metaphysics only because we have not needed to change it for several centuries but that now we approach a revolution in the subject.

Philo-sophy means word-wisdom in Greek, however very few philosophers have dared to question the assumptions built into the words they use. Words fail to express some types of thoughts, but worse, some words allow invalid concepts to exist. In using words as the units of thought philosophers have overlooked something quite astonishing. What they missed showed up in mathematics. Specifically it showed up in the maths which describe the quantum physics on which this universe runs. Basically this shows that nothing 'is' anything else, and nothing 'is' even itself. It means nothing for example, to say that an electron 'is' a particle or that an electron 'is' a wave The entire category of 'being' has no actual reality at all, it just arises out of poor observation and sloppy thinking. No-'thing' stands still in a state of 'being'. Reality consists of dynamic events only.

Whenever we say that something 'is' anything else, we really mean that an event exhibits a behavior in particular circumstances or frames of reference. In every case a statement of 'is-ness' represents a kind of useful shorthand, although it always conceals a loss of information. We can never actually observe anything in a state of 'being'. Even an apparently immobile object consists of a maelstrom of internal activity and energy exchanges with its environment. Stopping this activity would actually obliterate the event and the 'object' would cease to exist.

Now we pay an enormous price for the convenience of having the verb 'being' in our languages. It makes it too easy to believe things which have no basis in our actual experience. It more or less forces us to believe that we ourselves have a 'being' somehow separate in some way from the body and its doings, or, even more nonsensically, that we 'are a being'. This leads to the silly questions of what happens to 'beings' when they cease to do, (i.e., die), where does 'being' come from, and what about possible 'higher' or more powerful 'beings'? Most traditional occultism depends on the idea that you can interact with the 'being' or 'essence' in all sorts of animate and inanimate phenomena. From a simple fault in language, mighty stupidities have grown to confuse us.

Language though, only accounts for half of the main illusion under which we labour.

Neuroscience can now demonstrate quite simply and convincingly what the philosopher Hume first articulated in the west, what many Buddhists have known for millennia, and what some have seen on heroic doses of LSD. The 'self' of which we think we consist, and which we regard as the font of our 'being' and our thoughts and acts, does not really fulfill such a role at all. We think and act quite automatically on the basis of acquired or innate patterns of thought and behavior (or sometimes just randomly), and then within a measurable fraction of a second of having done so, a particular part of the brain usually identifies with the action and claims responsibility for it. In other words, the 'me' or the 'I' that we subjectively feel that we consist of, does not actually initiate thought or action at all! This sometimes becomes apparent as a result of meditation, but with a few carefully placed electrodes it becomes disturbingly obvious.

Perceptive Buddhists priests have, in the main, kept pretty quiet about the enlightenment of no-self. The doctrine has proved understandably unpopular and tends to lead to widespread unauthorized suicide. Despite that the realisation of the illusory nature of the 'self' forms a core part of the original Buddhist enlightenment, the majority of popular sects have marginalised or disguised this doctrine. Many Buddhist sects even have elaborate doctrines of reincarnation, although the specification of exactly what reincarnates remains suspiciously vague.

So why do virtually all humans have a false but overwhelmingly strong subjective sense of 'self'? Well it has a huge survival value for a start. Few people can hold any sort of a life together without the illusion that they consist of some sort of unity despite the multiplicity and unpredictability of much of their actual thought and behavior. Thus the hardwired neuroprogram of 'self' acts in a very similar way to the software linguistic program of the verb 'being'. Both act as convenient shorthand, but both impose false preconditions upon our understanding of reality. The subjective experience of the 'self' leads all too easily to the theory of the soul, especially when mixed with the concept of 'being'. This opens the floodgates to any desired amount of irreality and wishful thinking.

In discarding the concepts of 'being' and 'self' we also dispose of the theory of spirits and immaterial 'beings' and the Neoplatonic/Animist ideas of 'essence' which underlie so much of religious and occult thought and practice. We also have to abandon the idea of free will. To some people this does not look like a very promising start for a New Magical Paradigm. However, a closer look reveals that it can lead to a much leaner, fitter, meaner, more interesting, and more credible magical paradigm which has acquired the name of Chaos Magic.

If all the gods and spirits and daemons do not exist as the 'gaseous vertebrates' that previous generations seem to have imagined, then the phenomena which they cause must arise from something else instead. We know that the mind consists of many more or less autonomous systems including the 'self' and that in extreme cases it can create multiple personalities with selective amnesia about each other. We also know that parapsychology can occur occasionally. Thus it seems more logical and more fun to conclude the obvious, that humanity has always made its gods and daemons and spirits whilst pretending that it didn't. So from now on we can actually manufacture deities and daemons and spirit servitors to our own designs, tastes and needs, by the requisite investment of belief.

(For technical details see my books and CDs).

If free will does not exist, then our thoughts and actions must arise from all the capabilities that we have either inherited at birth or have acquired as skills during life. When we think or act in ways unpredicated by either, then we have acted randomly.

The illusion of free will works like this, when humans find themselves in a situation in which all the innate and acquired logical and emotional reasons for acting on one of two or more alternatives balance out, then pure chance decides the resulting action. However once the action has occurred, the 'self' identifies with it and claims it as its own. Well this usually happens, but if the outcome proves too disagreeable the 'self' may attempt to dissociate itself from itself. And yes that makes no sense, and it often causes strange malfunctions.

Personally I do not miss having a belief in free will. My 'self' has learned to enjoy the surprises that my capacity to act randomly throws up. When thinking, I often combine ideas randomly to see if anything interesting comes out of it, if it does, my 'self' tends to feel elated, but as a number of frequent thinkers have realised, ones 'self' does not actually do the thinking. The realisation that ideas and inspiration do not come from within the 'self' or the 'I' or the 'Me' or whatever you want to call it, has led virtually all mystics and many schizophrenics to assume the existence of spirits. It has also fooled most occultists.

Now in the absence of free will, the exercise of intent in life and in magic in particular becomes a much more sophisticated activity both in theory and on a practical level. We never actually act out of Will. The subjective experience of will or willpower arises merely out of conflicts between various fears and desires and real or imagined limitations. It has nothing to do with what we actually end up doing. Most of our apparently chosen actions result from trickery; they arise because one set of mental programs has tricked another set into submission. Hypnosis provides a rather extreme example of this process at work, but we all spend a lot of time having various parts of our minds hypnotising other parts. As social animals we also spend a lot of time trying to hypnotise other people into believing us, or agreeing with us, or complying with our wishes.

What we call 'will' actually means achieving a unity of desire, and we achieve that through the learned skills of Sleight of Mind. Those people who have a strong 'will' have simply acquired a lot of skill at deceiving conflicting fears and desires into submission. They often achieve much but the process can get out of hand and end up negating basic survival programs. 'Weak willed' people have simply not acquired this skill, so one whim or fear or desire just takes over from another in rapid succession and they fail to maintain any course of action for long, but this often keeps them out of serious trouble.

Magicians use enhanced Sleight of Mind techniques on themselves as a deliberate cheat. Successful magicians have always done this but in a rather haphazard fashion without really understanding why. Chaos Magic provides the theory and the technology to systematically exploit it. For extended practical suggestions see my books, but the trick works something like this: Take a whim, any whim, and I say 'whim' disparagingly because nobody ever has an entirely wholehearted desire completely unfettered by doubt or conflicting thoughts. Symbolise the whim somehow, and then use physiological techniques to either whip up the whole mind and body into an extraordinary frenzy or to plunge the mind and body into deep trance. Having achieved that, concentrate upon the pre-prepared symbol and you may achieve a parapsychological or a deep psychological effect out of all proportion to what ordinary wishing or 'willing' can achieve.

Enhanced Sleight of Mind has many advantages over more traditional methods involving the so-called 'Will'. With sleight of mind you can even conjure successfully for things that you have no particular personal commitment to, without first spending a lot of time trying to summon the commitment by a tedious process of repeated small sleights of mind.

Now nobody yet has a cast iron theory of exactly how unity of desire translates from a mental state into a parapsychological effect on the outside world. On the other hand nobody yet has a cast iron theory about how the so-called physical laws of the universe get enforced over time and distance either. However I strongly suspect that a breakthrough on a metaphysical level could supply an answer in both cases. In discarding the concept of 'being' we should also replace the idea of all tenses of it with something more dynamic.

The ideas that anything 'was' in the past, and that anything 'will be' in the future now begin to look very questionable. Most people now accept a probabilistic future but they still cling to the idea that there really 'was' a singular past. Quantum physics now confirms suspicions aroused by retroactive enchantment. The past has no more of a fixed nature than does the future. In fact with quantum optics you can actually do small scale retroactive enchantment reliably every time. You can change the pasts. Here we encounter profound metaphysical implications, for probabilistic pasts and futures strongly suggest that time has three dimensions rather than just one. Multiple pasts and futures lie sideways in time.

Three dimensional time explains a great deal about how magical/parapsychological events can occur and it also solves many of the conceptual problems in quantum physics. It also changes our ideas about 'being' completely and it sets new horizons to what we can in principle know about reality.

Metaphysical assumptions underlie all attempts to understand reality. Most physicists derisively ignore metaphysics precisely because they already have a fixed metaphysic and they do not want to alter it. Three-dimensional time would mean a new metaphysic that might just explain a whole raft of mysteries in science and in magic, and it might just unify both subjects.

n a 1966 Playboy interview, Timothy Leary said that LSD was the most powerful aphrodisiac ever discovered, and that---under the proper conditions---women could literally have thousands of orgasms in a single evening while on it. Tim later admitted that he was exaggerating a bit, but anyone who has ever had sex on acid knows that he wasn't really exaggerating all that much. Wide-eyed trippers rave about timeless sessions of exquisitely heightened sex. Making love under the influence of a psychedelic may be one of the most extraordinary experiences that human beings are capable of.

Psychedelic drugs and plants can dramatically amplify physical sensations and greatly dilate our sense of time. Because they increase our sensitivity to sensory stimuli, and elastically stretch each moment, these mind-expanding substances can heighten sexual sensations enormously.

Psychedelics can also amplify emotional connections, dissolve personal boundaries, and deepen interpersonal bonds, making sex a much more meaningful and multi-dimensional experience. In the proper environment, psychedelic lovers can be transported to heavenly realms beyond description. In the best of situations, this can actually become a truly sacred event, a genuine mystical or religious experience.

Why is Marijuana so Popular?

Many people say that they smoke marijuana before sex because it enhances their erotic experience, and this aspect of the controversial plant's use may play a significant role in its popularity. I've certainly found this to be the case. Having sex when I'm high is much more pleasurable than when I'm not. For me, marijuana acts as a mild psychedelic. It enhances my senses, heightens my imagination, and during its initial phase it often makes me horny.

Although my orgasms on marijuana are considerably more intense, the actual desire to orgasm is substantially decreased. I have much greater sensitivity when I'm high, and the feelings are significantly elongated, so I enjoy each moment of the experience more. There is no desire to rush into orgasm and end the rapture. When I close my eyes during cannabis-heightened love-making, my interior world is filled with brightly-lit visions. There is also a sacred aspect to these shamanic unions. I feel great feelings of reverence during my marijuana highs, and this tends to make my sexual experience much more holy.

What Does It Feel Like To Have Sex on LSD?

The sexual encounters that I've had on LSD have been among the most incredible experiences of my life. I've had ecstatic experiences with my lovers on acid, where our bodies completely melted, our minds totally merged, and our orgasms continued for (what seemed like) hours on end. LSD tends to make me extremely horny, and I will generally have between ten and fourteen orgasms on trips where my sexual desire is given free reign.

A common experience that I have had while making love under the influence of LSD is that my partners lose their individuality. I no longer feel as though I'm making love to a single woman, but, rather, to all women. Looking into my lover's face while I'm tripping I see a stream of archetypal faces, a morphing cascade of women of all ages, races and cultures. Her face shifts with each heartbeat, from African princess to Babylonian whore to cackling old woman. Then she's a wild teenage girl, my mother, or a stream of haggardly witches and beautiful goddesses.

Sometimes it seems as though I am ALL MEN making love to ALL WOMEN. On higher doses I feel as though I'm making love to the entire web of life, to the whole universe, or to God. Boundaries completely blur, and eventually dissolve entirely. One simply becomes (as a girlfriend once put it) "DNA with eyes". This genetically-centered awareness allows lovers to transcend their individual identities and merge with the larger life process.

Apparently this is a rather common experience, as I've spoken with many other people who have had similar identity dissolutions on LSD or psilocybin mushrooms with their lovers. (Mushrooms never made me feel particularly horny, and they make it difficult for me to orgasm, so my sexual experiences with them have been limited.)

The Post-Orgasm Bliss of MDMA

I've spent whole evenings cuddling with my previous girlfriend on MDMA, looking into her eyes and stroking her face in the candlelight. However, I've never actually felt like having sex while I'm peaking on MDMA, and the few times that I actually did try, I found it difficult to achieve an erection and nearly impossible to orgasm.

But, for me, the MDMA experience itself feels very similar to the way that I normally feel for those few precious moments of pure contentment right after the peak of an orgasm---only it lasts for hours. Pure bliss and pure love. No desire in the world, except to continue to savor the sensory fullness of each euphorically exquisite moment. The enhanced communication, increased empathy, and strong feelings of love that MDMA fosters can add incredible depth to the love-making that often comes at the end of an MDMA trip.

Ketamine and Alien Sex

I never really got very horny, or much spiritual enhancement from ketamine, although I have heard that other people have had those types of experiences with it. However, the times that I had sex on low doses of ketamine were often quite amazing because of their extraordinary strangeness, as well as the perceived telepathy that my lover and I experienced. Although the anesthetic properties of this unusual hallucinogen significantly reduced my sensitivity to physical sensations, I enjoyed these experiences immensely, and a number of them were fictionalized in my science fiction novels.

Once, when I was tripping on a fairly high dose of ketamine (90 mg) with a girlfriend, I found myself in an X-rated science fiction movie. I was making love to a creature that had thousands of tentacles and many bizarre alien appendages. We were underwater in a small arena, and I was also such a creature myself. After making love as this alien creature for what seemed a good while, I suddenly snapped back into my human form, and found myself in the process of making love to my girlfriend. I was completely shocked; I had totally forgotten that I was a human being.

Psychedelics and Masturbation

I've also found that marijuana and LSD can add new dimensions to the process of masturbation. Besides heightening physical sensations, psychedelics amplify the imagination to an uncanny degree. Because of this, these substances allow solitary sexual satisfaction to reach new heights of pleasure. I have experienced some amazing states of ecstasy all by myself, tripping on visions of making love to angels and porn stars, that all but turned to flesh before my eyes, they seemed so real.

One woman even told me that she actually preferred masturbation to sex when she was tripping. "I had many consecutive orgasms on LSD, but its more challenging. I find it easier to masturbate on LSD than to have sex with another person, because there are so many things to be distracted by," she said.

Making Love to God

Perhaps most significantly, I've had sexual experiences on psychedelics that have been profoundly meaningful, deeply spiritual, and suffused with feelings of divine love. There are extremely deep, multilayered levels of soul-to-soul connection that two people can experience while on psychedelics that seem to go beyond the boundaries of our current lifetimes. It has appeared as though I have known my lover over many lifetimes, or forever.

There have also been times where I truly could not distinguish where my body ended and my lover's body began. Other times it seemed as though my partner and I became a single being, and our erotic exchange became simply an elaborate form of masturbation. It was as though we were God making love to herself, and all of the cosmos was in a state of sexual ecstasy.

Many times on LSD I've seen a reflection of (what appears to be) the deepest aspect of myself in my partner's eyes, a smiling recognition of our mutual divinity. When we share these types of experiences with our lovers they become deeply imprinted onto our nervous systems, and usually create extremely strong and lasting bonds.

Forbidden Knowledge and Ancient Secrets

Naturally, my experiences with sex and psychedelics got me interested in Tantra, the ancient Indian system of sexual yoga. Over the years, I have become fairly well-acquainted with basic Tantric practices, and have gotten to know a number of people in the Tantric community. This sensual and spiritual community incorporates consciousness-raising sexuality into their daily religious practice. From spending time with these people I learned that it is not uncommon for practitioners of Tantra to incorporate psychedelic plants, such as cannabis or magic mushrooms, into their sacred rituals.

Although the ritualistic mixing of sex and psychedelics is ancient---and openly discussed in the writings of iconoclastic philosophers like Aleister Crowley and Robert Anton Wilson---the psychopharmacological techniques for activating higher states of sexual consciousness remain unknown by most people, and they are often kept secret from early initiates of Tantra. Techniques for enhancing sexual rituals with sacred plants are rarely mentioned in popular books on Tantra or in Tantra workshops.

This important omission is deliberate. It's due to the fact that it requires a good bit of training to handle the enormous amount of energy that a Tantric-psychedelic session can generate. Tantric sex can be quite intense on its own, and that may be more than enough for most people who are interested in exploring Tantra. Not everyone can handle shivering in ecstasy for hours while their partner's face is melting.

The omission of psychedelics is also largely due to the fact that most people in the Tantric community are aware that the idea of a sexually-based spirituality is controversial enough for most people. Mixing sex and religion elicits strong taboos in many people. Making it widely known that, many of those same people who are mixing sex and religion, are also using "Schedule 1 drugs", may not be the wisest way to gain societal acceptance during a time in history when sacred plants are regarded as forbidden fruit by the Puritanical overlords of society. So their secrecy is understandable.

However, since it can be quite emotionally risky to mix sex and psychedelics if one isn't properly prepared, perhaps a more open discussion of these experiences would be beneficial. Since nothing is going to stop people from mixing sex with just about every substance imaginable, and since the emotional consequences of these experiences can be so extreme, openly sharing our experiences with one another is probably a good idea.

This is one of the reasons that Annie Sprinkle and I are currently working on a book about sex and drugs, with an emphasis on psychedelics. We are collecting anecdotes for the book, and are eager to receive submissions. Please send us any interesting experiences that you have had combining sex with a psychoactive drug, regardless of whether it was positive or negative. Be sure to include written permission to quote from your experience in our book, and let us know if you wish to remain anonymous or not.

Ahh war is a terrible thing, it makes my head hurt. the mid east at the end of the day once judgements are passed, comments are made, accusations hurled and theories abound, it comes down to survival, one people trying to survive, against another people, see if i had my time machine, i'd make time go backwards, isreal would rebuild beruit with their armies, those hezbolla peoples would be returning the soilders, there would be peace again, mmmm, not even i am nieve enough to believe there ever was peace.
well i went for a wander through old babylon, watching the town thrieve, met jake for a cup of tea in the back of the bookshop where we do our thing, read the papers and chat about stiuff, hes started tafe and was asking me about UNI. i explianed to him how i was doing a course in arts and photography in london and a year in the college became a UNI and the cert. I was doing became a degree. I explained to him, qualifications like degrees are useless, you can buy them over the net, they just mean you spent a lot of money at UNI and attended some lectures. Its better to travel, see the planet, learn the language of the world, broaden your realm of experience with the senses and intuition, never put yourself in the position where you are programed by some fuckwit with a history book or a political theory book or a book on globalization, marketing, etc. its always smarter to get the knowledge first hand. for example all the physics i learnt at school, is now redundant, the model of the physical universe was wrong. i said to Jake, 'Read Lucifer Principle.' its the only book worth reading, then read 'Global Brain.'
Take this information into the world and use it in every encounter you have, that's education and intelligence.
Well i drove him to the bus stop and we chatted a bit about war, peace and girls. Then i managed to get myself caught in some weird neurotic loop where i just wasted a day, walking in circles and cleaning things, and repiling my piles of books. there are to many books now, they are everywhere, masses of them sprawled over my floor, once the sun sinks i can't see them and have to negotiate my way through their maze, its kinda silly but i wouldn't have it any other way, of course if you got a spare book case i'd be happy to take it off your hand :)

Q: How can Israel justify killing civilians if their intent is to crush Hezbollah?
 
A: The death of innocents is a tragic inevitability of war. Our hearts go out to all those caught in the middle. The sad fact is that the Lebanese people are being held hostage by Hezbollah. Just as it is clear that Hezbollah is morally culpable for any harm done to the two Israeli hostages that they hold, so too are they culpable for the fate of Lebanese innocents amongst whom they hide. A civilian who is killed while being used by a terrorist as a human shield is a victim of the terrorist, not the Israeli army, who does not target innocent civilians. 
 
Q: Isn't Israel's response a bit disproportionate?
 
A: If Israel were merely taking revenge, then it would need to be proportionate. But Israel is waging a defensive war. Since when is war proportionate? In war, you don't measure your response to the enemy by what they have done to you in the past, but rather by what needs to be done to stop them attacking in the future. Israel's actions are proportionate to the threat, not the damage done.
 
Q: Doesn't Israel understand that they are just creating more terrorists? The anger and fury at Israel as a result of bombing Lebanon will only make more people want to join Hezbollah.
 
A: Feelings of frustration, anger, fear and rage do not make you into a terrorist. A culture of death and an education of hate does. Israel doesn't need to do anything to create terrorists - Islamic extremism does that - but Israel must act to destroy those who threaten its people.
 
Q: Hezbollah indeed has a militant wing, but it also does a lot of good. They are responsible for social programs, educational projects and humanitarian work in South Lebanon. By destroying Hezbollah, Israel also destroys all the good they do. Isn't that demonising a group that is not all bad?
 
A: If a serial killer also happens to volunteer for his local hospital, has donated money to an orphanage, and looks after his ailing grandmother, he is still a serial killer, and should be treated as such. The danger he poses far outweighs the concern for any good he may do.
 
Q: By using violence, how is Israel any better than its terrorist enemies?
 
A: That is as ridiculous as saying that a woman who fights off an attacker is no better than her attacker. Israel would not touch Hezbollah if it did not attack. Israel seeks to live in peace with its neighbours; Hezbollah and its allies seek to destroy Israel, no matter what Israel does.
 
Look at the Hezbollah flag. It depicts a rifle lifted in the air. Violence is a part of its very identity. On the other hand, the very name of the Israeli army defines its purpose: The Israel Defense Force. Its flag depicts an olive branch and a sword: peace is a priority, war is a last resort.
 
For Hezbollah, war is holy. For Israel, war can never be holy. War may be necessary, like when your citizens are being attacked unprovoked; war may be moral, like when innocent lives are being threatened; but even then, war is never holy.
 
There is a world of difference between a moral war and a holy war. A moral soldier fights reluctantly, while holy warriors glory in the fight. A moral soldier is burdened by the obligation, while holy warriors delight in the pain inflicted on the enemy. A moral soldier fights when there is no other option; a holy warrior seeks violence as a way of life. A moral soldier takes measures to limit innocent casualties; a holy warrior seeks to maximise them.
 
A holy warrior fears times of peace, because then he has no purpose. A moral soldier dreams of a time when peace will reign. Then, the Israel Defense Force will be made joyously redundant, as "one nation will not lift a sword against another nation, and they will no longer learn to wage war". 

tony james host of lateline actually interveiwed an isreali spokesman from foriegn affairs and grilled him relentlessly as any journalist should but he was answered by a very articulate and straightforward young man who had to repeat several times that 2500 missiles had fallen on Hiafa alone that day, he offerred a joint investigation into the UN base that had been shelled and denyed that isreal targeted the building on purpose. 'this is not a video game, this is a war, we don't want to fight it, we have taken casulaties as well, we did not start this and our aim is to live in peace, thats why we give back land, but we need to make sure our citizens are safe just as any other country would.'
tony james was relentless, but he seemed to be getting reasonable answers to his questions, no rethoric, no religious tripe, and he even asked about the israeli causilties only to be told that it is the custom of the IDF not to talk about the dead until their families are informed.
this 10 min interveiw was shown at 2300 while throughout the rest of the day carnage in lebonan was shown, bodies and dead people, children and the tears of mothers, anger and hate, sow the seeds of the future. in isreal it was quiet, everyone is south or in bunkers waiting, families have been there two weeks.
the town i lived in was bombed, they showed some film of the damage, at 2300 when no one watches the news, and i wonder what isreal has to do. its obvious that everyone has come to despise the jewish state (its not jewish its secular) its obvious that the media hate isreal (i guess back in 1980 when yasser arafat killed 6 western journalists who dared question him and then dismembered the publisher and sent the body parts to the Beirut foreign press corp it's understandable why journalists get nervous about reporting the truth)
Oh that's one of many examples of the kind of problems one has to deal with in the middle east if you feel like hearing others, check out the so called Jenin massicare, that's a cracker. Oh you people would probably have never even heard about this one....

A massacre is the deliberate mass murder of the defenseless. The "Jenin massacre" is more than a fiction. It is a hoax. "Palestinian Authority allegations," reported the Boston Globe (April 29), "...appear to be crumbling under the weight of eyewitness accounts from Palestinian fighters who participated in the battle and camp residents who remained in their homes until the final hours of the fighting... All said they were allowed to surrender or evacuate."

And yet for weeks the world has been seized with the question of the "Jenin massacre." The U.N. Security Council called emergency meetings. The secretary general appointed a special investigating committee (now disbanded). The European press published the most lurid allegations. To say nothing, of course, of al-Jazeera TV.

All this for a phantom massacre. Yet this same Middle East conflict yields no shortage of real massacres:

April 27: Adora, Palestinian gunmen enter residential quarters shooting everyone, including a 5-year-old girl shot through the head in her bed.
April 12: Jerusalem, suicide bombing at a bus stop, 6 murdered.
April 10: Yagor, suicide bombing on a bus, 8 murdered.
March 31: Haifa, suicide bombing in a restaurant, 15 murdered.
March 28: Eilon Moreh, shooting attack, 4 murdered.
March 27: Netanya, suicide bombing at a Passover seder, 28 murdered.
These are massacres -- actual, recent massacres. Massacres for which the evidence is hard. Massacres for which the perpetrators claimed credit. Where was the Security Council? Where was the Kofi Annan commission? Where was the world?

The United Nations' excuse will be that these murders were perpetrated not by states but by groups. But this is nonsense. The Palestinian Authority is a recognized government. The links of its top leadership to these murders is precisely the kind of question that warrants investigation. Yet the very idea that the United Nations would investigate Palestinian massacres is absurd.


The despair comes from the bewilderment of living in a world of monstrous moral inversion.

The fact that such an undertaking is unimaginable is what has made the past several months so deeply, despairingly troubling. The despair comes from the bewilderment of living in a world of monstrous moral inversion.

Take Jenin. What was the real story? That hand-to-hand, door-to-door combat, in an intensely built-up shantytown, among dozens of houses booby-trapped by Palestinian fighters, should have yielded somewhere between seven and 21 scattered civilian casualties is nothing less than astonishing. It testifies to the extraordinary scrupulousness of the Israeli army, which lost 23 soldiers in the battle, precisely because it did not want to cause the civilian casualties that come with aerial bombardment, as has happened everywhere from Grozny to Kabul. And yet Israel was investigated precisely for defending itself against massacres that warrant no investigation.

Palestinian apologists wave away this double standard with the magic mantra of "occupation."

More nonsense. Twenty-one months ago, Israel offered a total end to the occupation, ceding 100 percent of Gaza and 97 percent of the West Bank to the first Palestinian state ever. The Palestinians turned that down and took up the suicide bomb. By the Orwellian logic of today, the Palestinians are justified in perpetrating one massacre after another to end an occupation that Israel offered to remove almost two years ago.

For the "international community," as embodied by the United Nations, such inverted moral logic is the norm. This is what it must have been like living in the false consciousness of Soviet communism, where everyone had to publicly and constantly pretend to believe the official lies, all the while knowing they were lies. This is what it must have been like living in the 1930s, as the necessities of appeasement created a gradual inversion of right and wrong -- the Czechs, for example, pilloried by official opinion in Britain and France for selfishly standing in the way of peace at Munich.

Churchill's great gift to civilization was not just that he rallied good against evil but also that he pierced a suffocating fog of self-deception by speaking truth to lies. Where is the Churchill of today, the official of any government, prepared to tell the United Nations that its frantic hunt for a phantom massacre by Jews -- while ignoring massacre after massacre of Jews -- is grotesque and perverse?

BEHIND THE SCENES IN JENIN
By Saul Kramer
A reserve soldier speaks about child weapons-carriers, and bodies dug up after 2 years.
April 25, 2002

During the Defensive Shield Operation, my reserve battalion was stationed on the border of Jenin with the purpose of ensuring the enclosure of the area. Together with 11 other soldiers, I manned a small roadblock at the northern tip of Jenin, which was one of the main thoroughfares for traffic entering and exiting the area.

Last Sunday, my good friend Ben and I were on duty at the roadblock at a time when no press were allowed to enter Jenin. We spotted a jeep trying to evade the roadblock through an adjacent field. We managed to stop the jeep and discovered a group of French Journalists who had managed to enter Jenin and were now trying to leave.

We followed the normal procedure of questioning them, checking their vehicle and identification. This process sometimes takes a while because we have to phone another army base who then checks the identities with the Israeli authorities which includes the intelligence operations.

One of the supposed French journalists was actually a Palestinian terrorist on Israel's wanted list.t turned out that one of the supposed "French journalists" was actually a Palestinian terrorist on Israel's wanted list. He was taken away by the police, together with the other real French journalists. But you never hear about that on TV.

Last Thursday, friends on duty at another outpost a few kilometers away spotted two young kids walking in the middle of the day carrying black backpacks. The two kids entered an abandoned structure about 800 meters away from the outpost, and left without the bags. The kids thought they had gone unnoticed.

It was later discovered that the bags contained weapons, explosives -- and an Israeli army uniform with a red paratrooper beret. The plan was for a terrorist to pick up the loot at night, dress up as an Israeli soldier, and attack the outpost. We had already received intelligence reports 5 days earlier warning of a terrorist dressing up as a soldier and entering one of the outposts.

RECYCLING THE DEAD

Avi, a good friend who studies with me at university, was stationed in Nablus during this operation and told me the following: The soldiers took over a house in Nablus as a stronghold in order to clear out the terrorist infrastructure there. While in the house, they did not use the electricity to charge their cell phones. They did not touch or eat any food in the house. They made a concerted effort not to use any furniture in the house. When they left the house later during the pullout of Nablus, they cleaned the house and left money on the table.
When the soldiers left, they cleaned the house and left money on the table.The idea of Israeli soldiers leaving "rent money" for the Palestinian residents is amazing. What's more amazing is that I have heard similar stories reported from soldiers who were in Bethlehem, Tulkarm, Kalkilya and Jenin.

On Monday morning this week, a UN bus entered Jenin carrying a UN rescue team from Britain. The team included doctors and other personnel who get dispatched around the world to help with rescue operations. Four hours later, when the bus returned through our roadblock, they stopped and we had a chance to chat. The first thing they said is that this was the biggest waste of time for them and they would be catching the next flight out of Israel. One of the doctors told us that one of the "massacred" bodies he examined was that of a man who had been dead for two years. What a shame that the Palestinians dug him up to add to the death toll.

In the fighting that took place in the refugee camp, children were used as human shields by the terrorists. One of the brigade commanders told us last Saturday night that soldiers were shot at in the small alleys of the camp. They returned fire, only to hear the cries of young children. They immediately stopped shooting and prayed that they had not killed any children. They hadn't.
The army's respect and consideration for the lives of civilians is of the highest standard. For this reason, 23 of our own boys were killed in the Jenin fighting. If we had no regard for the lives of innocent civilians, 23 sons, husbands and fathers would be at home with their families right now. They were the price we paid for the high moral and ethical standards of the IDF.

Let's face it the UN peacekeeping force has been in the middle east for years, it did absolutly nothing to stop missiles coming into isreal from Lebanon not to mention the suicide bombers from the West Bank or Gaza, it was extremely accusationary towards israel every chance it got, and even now i hear hungry journalists waiting to rejoice at the announcement that war crimes may have been commited. The real war crimes are commited by the double standards that here is a tiny country of 6 million, up against a huge empire of 280 million who cannot accept isreal in the neighbourhood. well who put them there in the first place, the UN!
Yeah its would suit everyone if israel would be destroyed, people loved the jews as victims when they were stateless and weak, now they have the ability to look after themselves everyone gets a bit scared.
The other rant, while i am on a role is this idea of the two soliders. Why all this over two soilders?
Because in a country of 6 million in the geographical location and political climate every young person has to serve in the army, else it would never exist. those two soilders belong to the people, they didn't volenteer or sign up. and another reason why its immperative isreal have their soilders returned is the last three soilders that were kidnapped were ripped to shreds by a mob including children, i know becuase i saw the footage on BBC, CNN, and Al Jezzera, it was repeated no stop for three days.
Ask yourself what type of army would you want to serve in? One that does nothing to get its men back or one that tries everything.

letter arrived today all official from the police, obviously my first thought was a speed related offence, but it was marked confidential and my address was hand written, not like the usual traffic offence notices. I opened it up and it was from an officer investigating a sexual assault, of a girl i knew. scan reading has its merits but for a moment i thought, jeez some girl has made some allegation about me but it turns out it was a young girl i helped when i worked in a crisis refuge, she had alleged a sexual assault in 1995 and i the case deemed to be on hold, and now there was a dna match so the coldcase was reopened and the police wanted to ask me about the night. Obviously i can't recall any specific events from my years working in crisis services, we basically moved from crisis to crisis, it was our normal working environment, but i did recall the girl. so here i am captain mission helping the police with enquires. i told the dectective she must be good at her job to have tracked me down, having been somewhat nomadic over the last 11 years.
working in crisis services for years was an amazing experience, a lot of these young people were actually really nice kids who were dealing with very serious issues, ie. sexual assult, abuse within the family. the problem was the services i worked for all were run by young women who seemed to have no idea, no patience, no tolerence for dealing with young boys. everytime i went into work my co workers had evicted the boys, girls within the refuge system had all the resources, boys were expected to be politically correct ideologically sound people and if they were not or refused they were evicted. this culture was rife within the industry, possibly becuase all the women who worked in these services had issues with men themselves, the more i attempted to advocate for boys the more i myself was persecuted, once i was even suspended. It was a bizzare situation and it's not surprising that adolecent suicide is a major problem, as is the displacement of young australian males.

intresting that the letters in the SMH this morning about the Paul Sheehan comments were very critical of him as usual however the reasons why these people didn't like what he wrote were becuase he is a man, writing about feminine/religious issues, apparently this is taboo, not one person in support of what he was saying, just letters attacking him becuase of his sex. this is another example of why i hate the left so much, becuase they are ignorant and randomly attack anything that is trendy to attack. all the socialists i know live in huge homes and drive two cars and have high incomes or they are teenagers who have very little experience in the world but read newspapers. there are of course exceptions but few and far between.

old capt. mission had a busy couple of days, ups and downs, lots of conflict and unheavel, it's a funny old world but not with out its beauty to, which reminds me i had a lovely visit from my style consultant who came to visit me on friday. yeah all the way from the blue mountain in her little motor car. i don't know why they call it the blue mountains when she lives there, but there you go. gotta say, i really enjoyed seeing her, unfortunatly mission control is extremely cold at this time of year so we went for a walk with pansy, had a coffee, watched the clouds and gazed at the ocean, talked about magick and art. all my favorite things. later evan and pop invited us for dinner at the japanese resturant down the road where they ran out of rice. it was a lovely evening but old capt. mission was exhuasted, all his resources were being used to fight the cold.
then straight into work, lots of conflict and tension, lots of discord hanging around so it was a long weekend, dragging longer and getting more painful, i could feel the stress in my head building up, i could feel the crash and sure enough at about 9am Monday morning, it came. Crash!
I've taken two days of to get my head sorted, if feels filled with those metal washers and nuts, and throbs like a metal machine music. there's war in the world, there's war at work, there's war in my head.

Paul Sheehan wrote a brilliant article in the herald this afternoon, i had to call and tell him how excellent i thought it was, they may publish my letter tomorrow. Here it is in all it's glory for you if your intrested:

Paul Sheehan asks why Western feminists are mute on the plight of their Islamic sisters.

When a beautiful young woman from Somalia wrote a screenplay entitled Submission, about the treatment of women in Muslim culture, and a Dutch artist, Theo van Gogh, then made the film, Muslim fundamentalists in Holland delivered a famously spectacular review.
Van Gogh was shot eight times and his killer was apprehended while attempting to decapitate the body, just in case the message had been too subtle.
As for the screenwriter, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, she was taken into police protection and moved from house to house.
The van Gogh murder, committed in 2004, lives on in Europe as an emblem and a threshold in the accumulating body of evidence and incidents of intimidation by Muslims living within Western society. In Australia, our own extreme symptom and threshold in this same trend and cultural struggle was the gang-rapes of dozens of young women by Muslim men in Sydney. Nine trials have worked through the courts so far as a result of these crimes.
In this cultural clash, the treatment of women is the most hotly contested terrain. Not just the treatment of non-Muslim women by Muslim men, but the treatment of Muslim women within Western culture. Many Muslim women live under constraints that are unacceptable to wider society. For years, a symptom of this tension, which is largely submerged, has been the distraught young women turning up at the Australian embassy in Beirut to escape forced marriages.
In the midst of this cultural and moral struggle one element has been conspicuously missing - the feminists - the authors, academics and commentators who rose to prominence as advocates of women's rights. In Australia and Europe, their response to the growing levels of sexual intimidation, harassment or suppression of women by Muslim men has either been a deafening chorus of silence, or denial and blame-shifting.
Instead, the combat has been left to journalists, and the heaviest work has been done, at great risk to themselves, by dissident women inside Islamic culture. Women such as Hirsi Ali, who, before her life in Holland became intolerable and she retreated to the United States, wrote The Caged Virgin, a book in which she comments: "Islam dominated the lives of our family … I was taught that Islam sets us apart from the rest of the world, the world of non-Muslims. They, the others, the kafirs, the unbelievers, are antisocial, impure, barbaric, not circumcised, immoral, unscrupulous, and above all, obscene; they have no respect for women; their girls and women are whores …
"Islam is strongly dominated by a sexual morality derived from tribal Arab values dating from the time of the Prophet … a culture in which women were the property of their fathers, brothers, uncles, grandfathers, or guardians …
"[Yet] the adherents to the gospel of multiculturalism refuse to criticise people whom they see as victims … Criticism of the Islamic world, of Palestinians, and of Islamic minorities is regarded as Islamophobia and xenophobia … I cannot emphasise enough how wrongheaded this is. It is racism in its purest form."
Her voice was joined by that of Wafa Sultan, a psychiatrist who fled Syria after members of the Muslim Brotherhood gunned down one of her university professors in the classroom. She became a legend on the internet this year after standing up to a fundamentalist cleric on Al-Jazeera TV, brilliantly articulating the real schism facing the Western world: "The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of civilisations. It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs in the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilisation and backwardness, between the civilised and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality."
Last year, from the safety of Canada, a Muslim woman dissident, Irshad Manji, wrote The Trouble With Islam, which challenged the Koran's core statements on women (such as, "Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other"). She also raised the issue of double standards among Western liberals: "Why does the legitimate questioning of some people (Muslims, for instance) carry the charge of being racist while legitimate questioning of other people (say, non-Muslim Americans) doesn't?"
She was joined this year by other writers, including the Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, who fled to Europe after her novel Shame invoked death threats from Muslim fundamentalists, when they signed an open letter calling for an end to the double standards of liberal Western intellectuals: "We reject 'cultural relativism' which accepts that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions … Islamism is a reactionary ideology."
The most recent and most scathing commentary has come from a British journalist, Melanie Phillips, whose new book, Londonistan, examines the culture which produced last year's terrorist bombings in London by British Muslims. She is outraged by the dangerous hypocrisy of self-styled "progressives": "It is remarkable that the left … with its obsessions with issues like gay rights, equality for women and sexual licence … should have forged an alliance with radical Islamists who preach death to gays, the subjugation of women and the stoning of adulterers. It is an eye-opener to see, on the streets of London, so-called 'progressives' marching shoulder to shoulder with radical Islamists under the metaphorical banner of human rights and the literal banners of Hamas."
In Australia, much the same. Prominent feminists have responded to the cascade of reactionary provocations by Muslim men in this country with an ideological forbearance, and a pall of silence.
The silence of the lambs.


I also made the most and had a chat with an editor and suggested one of his journalists do something really innovative and write something about 'disproportion' when reporting on the old mid east conflict. The lady that took my call was quite amazed when i suggested this to her, she said no one seems to have even considered this. I said, 'yeah chances are it won't get a mention, it never does.'
the other amazing thing i discovered was a brilliant article taken from Howard Blooms new Book which may be published in 2010 but it was about journalism and how it is shaped by conformity enhancers, absolutly brilliant reading but is the world ready for it, 'The Puppets of Pandamonium.' I so want you all to read it unfortunatly there is no net version for me to cut and paste however here is his intro to his TOE, brace yourself:

"For those who worry that our ingenuity has upset nature's equilibrium, Bloom has a message that is both reassuring and sobering. 'We are nature incarnate,' he writes. 'We are tools of her probings and if, indeed, we suffer and we fail, from our lessons she will learn which way in the future not to turn.'" The New Yorker

"I am speechless with admiration, overwhelmed by virtuosity." Walter J. Freeman, M.D. Walter J. Freeman Neurophysiology Lab, UC Berkeley, author How Brains Make Up Their Mind


In the coming weeks, months, and years, this website will present hors-d'ouevres, desserts, and solid meals for the mind, bits of brainfood harvested from author and mass-behavior expert Howard Bloom's Grand Unified Theory of Everything In the Universe Including the Human Soul.

Grand unified theories are normally the province of physicists or of crackpots. Bloom is neither.

Bloom is the author of two critically-acclaimed books, The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century. He is a visiting scholar in the Graduate Psychology Department at NYU and is the founder of two fields, mass behavior and paleopsychology.

Christopher Boehm, director of the Jane Goodall Research Center, says: "Howard Bloom should be taking notes on what he does every hour of the day. He is single-handedly creating a scientific revolution." Gear Magazine adds that, "Howard Bloom…may just be the new Stephen Hawking, only he's not interested in science alone; he's interested in the soul." And Britain's Channel 4 TV declares, "Howard Bloom is next in a lineage of seminal thinkers that includes Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Freud, and Buckminster Fuller…he is going to change the way we see ourselves and everything around us."

Bloom is the founder of The International Paleopsychology Project, a founding member of the Epic of Evolution Society, a Founding Council Member of The Darwin Project, and a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Society, the Academy of Political Science, the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, and the International Society of Human Ethology.

Bloom dove into cosmology, theoretical physics, and microbiology at the age of ten, built his first Boolean algebra machine when he was twelve, crafted the concept for a Westinghouse-Science-Prize-winning computer at the age of thirteen, participated in research on the immune system at the world's largest cancer research center (The Roswell Park Memorial Cancer Research Institute in Buffalo, NY) at sixteen, and did research on programmed learning at Rutgers University's graduate school of education before his freshman year of college.

It was at sixteen, while aiding in cancer research, that Bloom established a life goal--to see the pattern that emerges when one views all the sciences at once. A Grand Unified Theory, Bloom felt, has to include more than just the origin of quarks and galaxies. It has to include what the Big Bang's quarks have now become--you and me, our passions, our hungers, our insecurities and our lusts.

Nearly 50 years later, Bloom's Grand Unified Theory of Everything In the Universe Including the Human Soul takes up over 300 Mb on a computer hard drive. If it were printed out, it would fill 600 books. The table of contents to the work lists over 3,900 chapters and increasing daily. And their titles are mouthwatering.

Bloom's cross-disciplinary theories trace crowd patterns from the precipitation of the first protons in the Big Bang to future trends in the life of humankind.

We, in the Big Bang Tango Media Lab, find Bloom's raw notes fascinating. We think that you will, too.

At heart, science and the arts both aim at the same target--seeing what we take for granted from radically unexpected points of view. Those of us who shatter the barriers built by specialization need to carve out a niche of public recognition for ourelves. If we succeed in doing so, we'll make big picture thinking legitimate for the young who come behind us. This world needs those who want the whole panorama and nothing less-its Leonardo da Vinci's and Renaissance Men. If we succed in showing that microbiology, psychology, neurology, physics, cosmology, marketing, business, photography, the fine arts, publicity, journalism, and popular culture all relate, others will follow. And if they do, they will take further what I've been attempting-to make aesthetics, intuition, emotion, logic, politics, business, and science all facets of a common process…a common search for creativity, empowerment, and truth.

Okay obviously i am not going to post the whole lot here on me humble Blog but here's the link www.bigbangtango.net and here's howards own web page www.howardbloom.net

enjoy and be dazzled

damm, there's something really strange going on. i heard billy conolly talking once about when he was getting old he noticed hair growing in strange places like his nose and ears, fortunatly i don't suffer from that specific problem but i do have a strange case of ear wax, i don't even know why or what ear wax does but this morning i was scooping out gallons, or wads of wax, i had to use loads of those thingy's, cotton buds and there seemed no end in sight. baffled by this phenomenon i looked up some intresting information about ear wax on the net and this is what i came up with.

What is this stuff, anyway?

Ear wax is a sticky liquid secreted by cerumen glands. It isn't really wax in the 'candle wax' sense (paraffin). Skin contains many tiny glands whose sole purpose is to secrete a variety of substances. Sebaceous glands, for example, secrete sebum, which gives skin its greasy quality. Sweat is also produced by microscopic glands. Cerumen glands are found only in the skin of the ear canals.

What good is it?

Ear wax, sticky stuff that it is, traps anything foreign that flies, crawls, or is blown into the ear canals. Dirt, tiny bits of plant material, small insects, bacteria, and so forth are immobilized by wax. Think of wax as the sticky stuff on a No Pest Strip. The primary purpose of ear wax is to protect your ear canal and ear drum from such foreign materials.

What problems can ear wax cause?

Ear wax can cause hearing loss, pain, and cough. Hearing loss occurs when wax completely blocks the ear canal. This prevents sound waves from easily reaching the ear drum, in exactly the same way that ear plugs (or a strategically-positioned finger) block sound. Even a small amount of wax, if wedged between the ear drum and the ear canal wall, reduces the ability of the ear drum to conduct sound. Some people form very hard wax, which can cause pain by putting pressure on sensitive ear canal walls. Finally, since the ear canal shares some of the same nerves which give sensation to the throat, ear wax can provoke a "tickle in the throat" which can then lead to cough.

Why am I having this problem NOW?

While some folks have problems with ear wax throughout their lives, many people develop "problem wax" suddenly, without any obvious explanation. Similarly, a person may have wax problems with one ear and not the other. Ear surgery can occasionally result in the new onset of ear wax problems.

Usually, there is no answer to the question, "why is this happening now?"

How should I clean my ears?

Everyone has heard the ridiculous commandment, "Never stick anything in your ears smaller than your elbow." This may have been funny the first time, but now it's about as fresh as "Why did the chicken cross the road?" In fact, ear swabs are safe if used correctly. It is certainly safe to swab the outer portion of the ear. The opening of the ear canal can also safely be swabbed.

Deeper swabbing is potentially risky for three reasons. First, if you have a lot of ear wax, placing the swab into the canal will tend to pack it down, which can turn a partial blockage into a complete blockage. Second, you may damage the ear drum if the swab is inserted too deeply. Finally, if you scratch or abrade the ear canal skin, you may cause a painful infection of the canal ("swimmer's ear," known medically as otitis externa.) Despite these risks, if you do not have a lot of wax and are careful in your technique, you can swab more deeply in the canal. But why would you want to do this? Wax migrates out of the canal all by itself and does not need your help. Remember, wax protects the ear canal skin and ear drum.

What should I do about problem wax?

People with a history of ear disease should go to an ENT for wax problems and not try treating the problem themselves.

Most primary care physicians will attempt to remove wax by irrigation (squirting warm water into the ear canal to wash out the wax) or by scooping the wax out with a curette (a very small, metal ring at the end of a metal handle). The curette technique can be very effective in skilled hands, but can be painful (and potentially damaging) in less-than-skilled hands. (Incidentally: removal of an impaction of hard wax is inevitably painful, regardless of technique.) Irrigation is always uncomfortable to some degree; some folks tolerate this better than others.

Ear, nose, and throat (ENT) doctors usually remove wax by suction and/or curette techniques. This is typically done with the assistance of an operating microscope to give the doctor optimal visibility. ENT doctors have a variety of tools to remove wax, and will typically alter their methods depending on the hardness and location of the wax.

Over the counter wax removal systems use irrigation with a solution containing hydrogen peroxide or a similar chemical, carbamyl peroxide. This can be effective, although hard wax and complete blockages often require more aggressive treatment (by a doctor!) Also, bear in mind that you run the risk of converting a partial blockage into a complete blockage by using peroxide, because the liquid can get trapped between the wax and the ear drum. This is true for any home remedy (see next dot).

Some home remedies are safe and effective. A vinegar-water-peroxide solution (1:1:2) can be warmed to body temperature and applied to the ear canal to soften wax. A drop of baby oil can be placed in each ear canal on a regular basis (typically, once or twice per week) to soften hard, painful wax. People who have a history of middle ear infections, swimmer's ear, or a hole in the ear drum should NOT try these remedies, nor should they allow a physician to irrigate their ears, as such methods can lead to a painful and/or dangerous ear infection. As a rule, people with a history of any ear disease should go to an ENT for wax problems and not try treating the problem themselves.

CANDLING has gained popularity in recent years. In this technique, a candle is placed in the ear canal. The wick is lighted and the candle is allowed to burn for a short period of time. Supposedly, the burning flame creates a vacuum at the other end of the candle, which can suck wax and other evil humors from the canal. When the candle is removed, the base of candle typically will appear dark brown, leading the person to believe that their ear wax has been removed by candling.

THIS IS A HAZARDOUS AND INEFFECTIVE TECHNIQUE! Hot wax can burn the external ear, and if any gets into the canal it can cause a painful burn, infection, or even a perforation of the ear drum. One could conceivably set one's hair or clothing on fire. REMEMBER:

I was looking at steve's blog and wrote a song based on some themes that were coming up that appeal to me, its called,

'Jazz Cigarette.'

Winter has come 12 months to soon
Taken my love and gone to the moon
Yeah it’s colder than an artic junky
And I can’t believe it’s only Monday

We are hanging on to the ceiling
Trying to escape this feeling
Wrapped up like old Tibet
Smoking my jazz cigarette

My street is empty my town a ghost
I’m the last man standing at this outpost
Yeah there’s a full moon and a dogs a howling
I’d sing the blues but you’d start laughing

We are drowning in Maluka, honey
And baby it’s not that funny
I’m breaking up and broken down with regret
Smoking my jazz cigarette

Mile's Davis
Charlie Parker
Steve Kilbey
Andy Partridge
Brian Eno
Mike Scott
David Bowie
Iggy Pop
(fade)

well here i am in my post deconstructionalist blues, assessing the old situation, watching war on tv, big brothers and media incorrectness as it struggles with truth and content, i mean it's easy to appease the vast numbers of people on one side who out number the enemy, who have the worlds biggest resource, who will stop at nothing to realize their ambition, while historically the global enemy of all nations, the one civilization that has survived overwhelming odds and is in a position to protect itself now, desires peace with its neighbor's and the rest of the world, yet does not have oil, does not have good media, does not have the kind of peace that you or i have, why?
I know the answer? but do you?
the biggest misrepresentation the public makes is this idea of disproportionate attacks. the accusers have a very monfocused view upon the truth, if one accounts an even ratio of proportion via population, it is overwhelmingly clear that the victims are mostly Israeli citizens. a population of 6 million surrounded by a population of 280 million.
Yet why over here in the laid back educated suburbs of sydney do i constantly deal with comments like, 'fucking jews' and 'bastard Israelis' and the ever common, 'its the jews that control the money and power, and the us government.'
Well like i said i know the answer but do you?
Lets look at what i know. I know that Israel does not support george bush at all, in fact it had a much better relationship with Gore, who was in fact a lot more pro isreal than Bush and his family and friends who have investments with the oil sheikh in the Mid East. Yeah generally jews are smart, they do attain positions in society like drs, lawyers, writers, artists, musicians, despite being possibly the smallest minority religion on the planet, but so freaking what, is that such a crime, george soros was on tv last night the man accused of causing the asian meltdown, he was the person the blame fell upon, 'the jews control the money' and last night what was he doing, he was giving it away, billions and he was talking about how he invested and lost billions in the fight against bush, he was talking about his experiences in a concentration camp, he said it was ironic that the one thing he is proud of is is 'humility.' He was smart enough to see the irony in that statement.
Lets look at the dreaded word Zionism. These days its associated with fascism and many people i know equate the star of david (Israel's flag) with the swastika. Well zionism is based upon the idea that jew can live in isreal free from persecution. I have heard millions of arguments why this is an issue for people but the fact is jews are still persecuted outside of Israel, everyday for the last 3 weeks i hear comments that are racially motivated against jews, just as any Parisian jew how they feel or alternatively the jews of England who had to deal with blares political campain posters of a shylock charactuture taking money from the poor printed on a poster as Micheal Howard the Conservative party leader. That's why when isreal defends itself it's defending the entire population of jews over the world.
I hate the idea of having to take sides, i want peace on planet earth as much as anyone, i want to embrace my arab neighbor and honour our god together, that's why when Barak tried to make peace with Arafat, he was not the one who wore a gun to the summit. That's why 99.99% of what arafat wanted back, land was offered and rejected, yet isreal withdrew from gaza. here is a country that will do almost anything for peace, yet it's a peace it will never attain. Why?
i don't really wanna get into an ongoing argument with people about this at all but i am intrested in why people are so frightened of israel and have such a huge issue with it. i mean its far from perfect but then hows your own govt?

I received an interesting e mail today

"you may be pleased to know that it appears your blog has been censored from being viewed in china. i will try again - but you may just hold the title of being my first friend to be gagged by a major communist regime.
not bad, not bad at all captain - you gotta blog that bit of news. "mission-starseed dialogue downed by totalitarian system".
love it!! "



Well there you go, my blog banned by the our friendly chinese neighbours, good old google, once the radical innovative service provider now in the service of some weird totalitarian dictatorship, it's the same old story.

'Chairperson Tzu we have to inform you of a dangerous ideology that is infecting the party.'
'What Fulan Gung?'
'No this is much worse Mr. Chairman. This is Captain Mission's Blog.'
'Captain Mission hey! He sounds like a cartoon charachter.'
'He spreads terrible tales, talk of magicj, visions, dreams, and art.'
'Art!'
'Yes Chairperson. Art.'
'Send in the tanks.'

The irony is that a lot of the information in these here pages originate from ancient china.

well it's been a busy day here at Mission Control, yeah in between showers of heavy rain i managed to re pot some old friends, two gorgeous but sad plants are now, georgous and very happy plants. Mission Control cleaned and dusted, lots of old paperwork chucked away, books sorted through, my whole life seems so much better when i throw stuff out, clutter, to much clutter. jake starts TAFE tomorrow so i helped him get some stuff then took my guitar in to get fixed, then bought some food. yes i actually have food in my house at the moment, not a lot, just some olives and feta chese and a tub of hummus, and some very very special ice cream.
i've been thinking of getting my pshycadelic furs images blown up into large A1's and printed on fine paper, i think they are both really good shots. But i am very excited about the Pan sequence, yeah they are freaking excellent. I'll be posting them soon.

Lighten Up. The next guest has arrived and you'r sitting next to him, yeah it's the funniest guy who ever stood on a stage, here's a few lines from some choice routines

BILL HICKS

"One of my big fears in life is that I'm gonna die, you know, and my parents are gonna come to clean out my apartment, find that porno wing I've been adding onto."

"It is hard to quit smoking. Every one of them looks pretty good to me right now. Every cigarette looks like it was made by God, rolled by Jesus and moistened shut with Claudia Schiffer's pussy right now."

"You know we armed Iraq. I wondered about that too, you know. During the Persian Gulf war, those intelligence reports would come out: 'Iraq: incredible weapons – incredible weapons.' How do you know that? 'Uh, well ... we looked at the receipts.'"

"I'm so sick of arming the world and then sending troops over to destroy the fucking arms, you know what I mean? We keep arming these little countries, then we go and blow the shit out of 'em. We're like the bullies of the world, you know. We're like Jack Palance in the movie Shane, throwing the pistol at the sheep herder's feet: 'Pick it up.' 'I don't wanna pick it up mister, you'll shoot me.' 'Pick up the gun.' 'Mister, I don't want no trouble, huh. I just came down town here to get some hard rock candy for my kids, some gingham for my wife. I don't even know what gingham is, but she goes through about 10 rolls a week of that stuff. I ain't looking for no trouble, mister.' 'Pick up the gun.' Boom, boom. 'You all saw him. He had a gun.'"

"Fundamentalist Christianity. Fascinating. These people actually believe the world is 12 thousand years old. Swear to God! Based on what? I asked them. 'Well, we looked at all the people in the Bible, and we added them up all the way back to Adam and Eve, their ages – 12 thousand years.' Well, how fucking scientific! Okay. I didn't know that you'd gone to so much trouble there. That's good.
You believe the world's 12 thousand years old? 'That's right.' Okay, I got one word to ask you. A one word question. Ready? 'Uh-uh.' Dinosaurs.
You know, the world's 12 thousand years old and dinosaurs existed, and they existed in that time ... you'd think it would have been mentioned in the fucking Bible at some point. 'And lo, Jesus and the disciples walked to Nazareth. But the trail was blocked by a giant brontosaurus ... with a splinter in his paw. And O, the disciples did run a-shrieking: "What a big fucking lizard, Lord!" But Jesus was unafraid, and he took the splinter from the brontosaurus's paw, and the big lizard became his friend. And Jesus sent him to Scotland where he lived in a loch for O, so many years, inviting thousands of American tourists to bring their fat fucking families and their fat dollar bills. And O, Scotland did praise the Lord: "Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord."'"
"You ever notice how people who believe in creationism look really unevolved?"
"A lot of Christians wear crosses around their necks. You think when Jesus comes back, he ever wants to see a fucking cross? Kind of like going up to Jackie Onassis with a rifle pendant on, you know."

"I was just down in Dallas, Texas. You know, you can go down there and to Dealey Plaza where Kennedy was assassinated. And you can actually go to the sixth floor of the Schoolbook Depository. It's a museum called ... 'The Assassination Museum'. I think they named it that after the assassination. I can't be too sure of the chronology here, but ... Anyway, they have the window set up to look exactly like it did on that day. And it's really accurate, you know, 'cause Oswald's not in it."

"The war on drugs to me is absolutely phoney; it's so obviously phoney, OK? It's a war against our civil rights, that's all it is. They're using it to make us afraid to go out at night, afraid of each other, so that we lock ourselves in our homes and they get to suspend our rights one by one."

"Why is pot against the law? It wouldn't be because anyone can grow it, and therefore you can't make a profit off it, would it?"
"I believe that God left certain drugs growing naturally upon our planet to help speed up and facilitate our evolution. OK, not the most popular idea ever expressed. Either that or you're all real high and agreeing with me in the only way you can right now. [Starts blinking]"

"They lie about marijuana. Tell you pot-smoking makes you unmotivated. Lie! When you're high, you can do everything you normally do just as well ... you just realize that it's not worth the fucking effort. There is a difference."

"Not all drugs are good. Some ... are great."

"Go back to bed, America. Your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed, America. Your government is in control again. Here. Here's American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up. Go back to bed, America. Here is American Gladiators. Here is 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go, America! You are free to do what we tell you! You are free to do what we tell you!"
"I am available for children's parties, by the way ...I'm Beelzebozo, The Clown. [singing] It's Beelzebozo time..."

"The world is like a ride at an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it's very brightly coloured and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question: Is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, 'Hey – don't worry, don't be afraid ever, because this is just a ride ...' And we ... kill those people. Ha ha, 'Shut him up. We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up. Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This just has to be real.' It's just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn't matter, because – it's just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.


"People come up to me and say, 'What's wrong?' Nothing. 'Well, it takes more energy to frown than it does to smile.' Yeah, you know it takes more energy to point that out than it does to leave me alone?"

"I smoke. If this bothers anyone, I recommend you look around the world in which we live, and... I don't know, shut your fucking mouth?"

"Non-smokers die every day. Sleep tight!

See, I know you've employed some kind of eternal life fantasy because you've chosen not to smoke; let me be the first to pop that fucking bubble and send you hurtling back to reality – because you're dead too. And you know what doctors say: 'Shit, if only you'd smoked, we'd have the technology to help you. It's you people dying from nothing who are screwed.'"

"And I'll tell you something too. That's starting to annoy me about UFOs, the fact that they cross galaxies or universes to visit us, and always end up in places like... Fyffe fucking Alabama... Maybe these aren't superintelligent beings, y'know what I mean?

"To my delight, I find that there is a different warning on each pack of cigarettes. Mine says: 'Warning: Smoking can cause fetal damage or premature birth'. Fuck it – I've found my brand! 'Yeah, give me a carton of Low Birth Weights.' Just don't get the ones that say lung cancer, you know? Shop around, it is your body."

"It's really weird how your life changes. Tonight I'm drinking water. Four years ago? Opium. Night and day, you know?"

"Your denial is beneath you, and thanks to the use of hallucinogenic drugs, I see through you."

"The rock stars today who don't do drugs and who in fact speak out against drugs – 'We're rock against drugs!' ... Boy, they suck."

"You see, I think drugs have done some good things for us. I really do. And if you don't believe drugs have done good things for us, do me a favour. Go home tonight. Take all your albums, all your tapes and all your CDs and burn them. 'Cause you know what, the musicians that made all that great music that's enhanced your lives throughout the years ... rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreal fucking high on drugs. The Beatles were so fucking high they let Ringo sing a few songs."

"They say rock 'n' roll is the devil's music. Well, let's say that it is; I've got news for you. Let's say that rock'n'roll is the devil's music and we know it for a fact to be the absolutely, unequivitely true.
Boy, at least he fuckin' jams! Ha ha ha ha! Okay? Did you hear that correctly? If it's a choice between eternal hell and good tunes and eternal heaven and new kids on the fuckin' block... I'm gonna be surfing on the lake of fire, rockin' out... high five at Satan every time I pass the motherfuckin' shore!"

"You know, if you play New Kids On The Block albums backwards ... they sound better. Gives them that edge they're missing, puts some fucking hair on their balls."

"'Come on, Bill, they're the New Kids, they're so good and so clean-cut and they're such a good image for the children.' Fuck that! When did mediocrity and banality become a good image for your children? I want my children to listen to people who fucking rocked! I don't care if they died in puddles of their own vomit. I want someone who plays from his fucking heart!"

"You know what causes sexual thoughts? I'm gonna clear the air for you tonight. I'm gonna end this debate, hopefully once and for all while on this planet, 'cause outer space awaits our presence, we are better and more unique creatures than this and all eternity is our playground, so let me go ahead and clear this one issue up once and for all and let's move on to real issues.

Here's what causes sexual thoughts: Having a dick."
"What do atheists scream when they come?"
"Are there actually women in the world who do not like to give blowjobs?
Guess there's a lot of guys on dates here who've got their fingers crossed by now ..."
"I was talking about blowjobs, and a woman in the audience shouted: 'You ever tried it?' I said: 'Yeah. Almost broke my back ...'"
"I actually did that act one night in the south. Then, after the show, these three rednecks came up to me. 'Hey buddy, we're Christians and we didn't like what you said.' I said, 'Then forgive me.' Later on, when I was hanging from the tree ..."


"They (Australians) celebrate Easter the exact same way we do: commemorating the death and resurrection of Jesus by telling our children a giant bunny rabbit left chocolate eggs in the night. Now, I wonder why we’re fucked up as a race. Anybody got any idea? You know, I’ve read the Bible. I can’t find the word bunny or chocolate anywhere in the fucking book. Where do they come up with this shit? Why not goldfish left Lincoln logs in your sock drawer? As long as you’re making shit up - you know - go hog-wild. At least the goldfish with a Lincoln log on its back going across your carpet has some miraculous connotations: 'Mum, today I found a Lincoln log in my sock drawer.' 'That’s the story of Jesus.'"
"Do you all have different books in the Bible than I do? Are you all Gideons? Who are the fucking Gideons? Ever met one, no! Ever seen one, no! But they're all over the fucking world, putting Bibles in hotel rooms! Every one of them: 'This Bible was placed here by a Gideon.' When? I've been here all day and I ain't seen shit! I saw the housekeeper come and go, I saw the minibar guy come and go, I've never laid eyes on a fucking Gideon! What are they, ninjas? Where are they? Where are they from? Gidea? Who the fuck are these people?!
"I'm gonna capture a Gideon. Yeah, I'm gonna make that my hobby. I'll call up the front desk one day and say, 'Uh, I don't seem to have a Bible in my room.'"

"People suck, and that's my contention. I can prove it on a scratch of paper with a pen. Give me a fuckin' Etch-a-sketch, I'll do it in three minutes. The proof, the fact, the factorum. I'll show my work, case closed. I'm tired of this back-slapping 'aren't humanity neat?' bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, OK? That's all we are."

"What do you say we lighten things up and talk about abortion? You know, I feel like I'm losing some of you here, and I want to win all of you back with this one. Let's talk about abortion. Let's talk about child killing and see if we can't get some chuckles rippling through the room here. Let's talk about mass murder of young, unborn children and see if we can't coalesce into one big, healthy gutlaugh. Ha ha ha ha!
Boy, I've never seen an issue so divisive. It's like a civil war, isn't it? Even amongst my friends, who are all very intelligent; they're totally divided on abortion. It's unbelievable. Some of my friends, for instance, think these pro-life people are annoying idiots. Other of my friends think these pro-life people ... are evil fucks. How are we going to come to a consensus? You ought to hear the arguments around my house: 'They're annoying, they're idiots.' 'They're evil, they're fucks!' Brothers, sisters, come together! Can't we once just join hands and think of them as evil-annoying-idiot-fucks? I beseech you. But that's me ..."
"'We're pro-life.' Eww, you look it! You look like you're filled with life."
"'I was adopted by pro-life Christians when I was a kid. Does my penis make me a bad boy? That's what they told me!'{gunshot, gunshot}... Please, give me the Satan-worshipping family down the block ... the ones that have the good albums." Christians are pretty stupid.

"Here is my actual theory ... beyond the huge, hilarious jokes I have. Here's my real theory, though: If you're so pro-life and you're so pro-child, then adopt one that's already here, that's very unwanted and very alone and needs someone to take care of it to get it out of a horrible situation. Okay? People say, 'Why don't you do that?' And I say, 'Because I hate fucking kids and couldn't care less.' Couldn't give a fuck. Don't care at all about abortion. It's your choice, case closed, the end, bottom line. And by the way, that 3 month old kid in your belly is not a fucking human being, okay? It's a bunch of little congregated cells. You're not a human ... till you're in my phonebook."

"I was over in Australia, and everyone's like: 'Are you proud to be an American?' And I was like, 'Um, I don't know, I didn't have a lot to do with it. You know, my parents fucked there, that's about all."
"I hate patriotism. I can't stand it.... It's a round world, last time I checked."

"Here's how I feel about gays in the military: anyone...DUMB ENOUGH to want to be in the military should be allowed in. End of fucking story. That should be the only requirement. I don't care how many push-ups you can do, put on a helmet, go wait in that fox hole. We'll tell you when we need you to kill somebody. I've been watching all these Congressional hearings, and all these military guys and all the pundits going, 'The esprit de corps will be affected and we are such a moral...' excuse me, aren't you all a bunch of fucking HIRED KILLERS? SHUT UP!"

"Just keep selling them the shitty shit. We'll be fighting the next war. they'll have muskets. 'America won a war with this!' Yeah, a hundred years ago! [makes aerosol can noise] 'What's that?' It's musket repellent.
"I'll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. 'I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs.' 'I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking.' 'Hey, wait a minute, there's one guy holding out both puppets!'"
"Yeah, you really got my act down good, guys. That'll be great. You know, when I'm done ranting about elite power that rules the planet under a totalitarian government that uses the media in order to keep people stupid, my throat gets parched. That's why I drink orange drink." (After being asked to do an advertisement for orange drink)

"Folks: It's time to evolve ideas. You know, evolution didn't end with us growing thumbs. You do know that, right? Didn't end there. We're at the point, now, where we're going to have to evolve ideas. The reason the world is so fucked up is we're undergoing evolution. And the reason our institutions, our traditional religions, are all crumbling, is because... they're no longer relevant. They're no longer relevant. So it's time for us to create a new philosophy and perhaps even a new religion, you see. And that's OK 'cause that's our right, 'cause we are free children of God with minds who can imagine anything, and that's kind of our role."

"I'm sorry if anyone here is Catholic. I'm not sorry if you are offended, I'm actually sorry – just the fact that you're Catholic. Gotta be one of the most ludicrous fucking beliefs ever. Like these vampire priests sink their twin fangs of guilt and sin into you as a child and suck your joy of life out of you the rest of your fucking existence."
"The whole image is that eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God's infinite love. That's the message we're brought up with, isn't it? Believe or die! 'Thank you, forgiving Lord, for all those options.'"
"I've been compared to Koresh before. People've said I was like Koresh, only without the guns or pussy. And, uh ... which means I'm just a really annoying guy, basically."

"And I knew Bill Clinton became one of the boys when he bombed Iraq. Remember that? It was just a little news story for two days, isn't that interesting? He launched 22 cruise missiles against Baghdad in retalliation for the alleged assassination attempt against George Bush, which failed. We killed six innocent people, launching twenty two, I think three million dollars-a-piece missles on Baghdad, killing six innocent people. Umm ... I think that's a little bit overdoing it if you ask me. What we should have done is embarrass the Iraqis. And here's how we should have done it: we should have assassinated Bush ourselves. 'There, that's how you do it, towel heads. Don't fuck with us.' And see, if it had been Bush who had died, there would have been no loss of innocent life."


"Wouldn't you like to see a positive LSD story on the news? To hear what it's all about perhaps? Wouldn't that be interesting? Just for once?"
"Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration... that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There's no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we're the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather."
(regarding field sobriety tests to catch drunk drivers) "Then comes the kicker... say the alphabet... backwards. Well shoot, ya got me. I'm not drunk but I'm obviously too stupid to be driving, goddammit."

[Crowdmember yells out "Freebird"]
"Please quit yellin' that. It's not funny, it's not clever; it's stupid, it's repetitive. Why the fuck would you continue to yell that? I'm serious.
[Crowdmember yells out "Kevin Matthews"]
Okay, Kevin Matthews. What does that mean now? [voice slowly rising] Now what does it mean? I understand where it comes from, so do you. Now what does it all mean? What is the culmination of yelling that?
[Crowdmember yells out "Jimmy Shorts"]
Jimmy Shorts. He's not here. He's not gonna be here, now what? Now where are we? [voice rises faster Hicks get's down on one knee and speaks directly to audience member] We're here with you interrupting me again, you fucking idiot! That's ... you see where we're at? We're here at the same point again, where you, the fucking peon masses, can once again ruin anyone who tries to do anything because you don't know how to do it on your own! [shouting] That's where we're fuckin' at! Once again, the useless wastes of fucking flesh that has ruined everything good in this goddamn world! That's where we're at! [Hicks lunges toward another section of the audience, almost completely horizontal and on the ground bellows] Hitler had the right idea, he was just an underachiever!
[Runs over to hecklers and screams directly to them]Kill 'em all, Adolf, all of 'em! Jew, Mexican, American, white, kill 'em all! Start over, the experiment didn't work!
[despairingly -- now Hicks is crouched over a chair and directing his energies toward the other section again.] Rain forty days, please fuckin' rain to wash these turds off my fucking life! Wash these human wastes of flesh and bone off this planet! I pray to you, God, to kill these fucking people!
[Crowdmember yells out "Freebird" again]
[utterly deflated] Freebird. [Hicks drops to the floor, mike in hand]
[Hicks sits up]
And in the beginning there was the word "Freebird" and "Freebird" would be yelled throughout the centuries. "Freebird" The mantra of the moron!
[Hicks is on his knees now]
"Freebird", "Freebird", "Freebird", "Freebird" If we keep yelling this, one day we'll be funny, Keep doing it. "Freebird", "Freebird", "Freebird", "Freebird" We will sit at the feet of Kevin Matthews "Freebird", "Freebird", "Freebird"
[audience joins in]
"Free-" I'm feeling enlightened! "Freebird" Oh how holy.
[Hicks gets up]
"Well, I don't think this is going to be a "get-laid" set for me
[dusts dirt off of suit]
so uh,
[laughter]
Well, Bill, good guess. But I'm not leavin', fuckers. As I said...
(The infamous tirade against a heckler repeatedly crying out "Freebird" in Chicago, 1987)



"All governments are lying cocksuckers."

"Tell you, the worst kind of non-smokers' the kind where you're smokin' and they just walk up to you ... [starts coughing affectedly] I always say, 'Shit, you're lucky you don't smoke. That's some cough you got there, dude. I'm smoking, you're coughing. Wow.' That's kind of cruel, man. Going up to a smoker and coughing. Shit! Do you go up to crippled people dancing too, you fucks? 'Hey, Mr. Wheelchair. What's your problem? Come on ironside, race ya!'"

"I have been a comedian for a long time, so forgive me while I plaster on a fake smile and plough through this shit one more time."

"I have a scoop for you. I stole his act. I camouflaged it with punchlines, and to really throw people off, I did it before he did." (On the similarity of Denis Leary's act with his own)

"I am a comedian and poet, so anything that doesn't get a laugh ... is a poem."


"Watching television is like taking black spray paint to your third eye."

"I have never seen two people on pot get in a fight because it is fucking impossible. 'Hey, buddy!' 'Hey, what?' End of argument."

"I was in Nashville, Tennesee last year. After the show, I went to a waffle house. I'm not proud of it, I was hungry. And I'm eating, I'm alone and I'm reading a book, right? Waitress walks over to me: 'Hey, what you readin' for?' Is that like the weirdest fucking question you've ever heard? Not what am I reading, but what am I reading ... for. 'Well, God damn it, you stumped me. Why do I read? Hm ... I guess I read for a lot of reasons, and the main one is ... so I don't end up being a fucking waffle waitress.' But then, this trucker in the next booth gets up, stands over me and goes: 'Well, looks like we got ourselves a reader.' What the fuck's going on here? It's not like I walked into a Klan rally in a Boy George outfit, God damn it. It's a book!"
"Here is my final point. About drugs, about alcohol, about pornography and smoking and everything else. What business is it of yours what I do, read, buy, see, say, think, who I fuck, what I take into my body – as long as I do not harm another human being on this planet?"

"People say, 'Bill, quit talking about Kennedy, man. It was a long time ago. Just let it go, all right? It's a long time ago, just forget it.' I'm like, all right, then don't bring up Jesus to me. As long as we're talking shelf life here ..."

"Christianity has a built-in defense system: Anything that questions a belief, no matter how logical the argument is, is the work of Satan by the very fact that it makes you question a belief. It's a very interesting defense mechanism, and the only way to get by it – and believe me, I was raised Southern Baptist – is to take massive amounts of mushrooms, sit in a field and just go, 'Show me.'"

"We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution."

"I don't mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel, but I am, so that's how it comes out."

"I don't understand anything, so there you go ... You know what my problem is? I watch too much news, man. That's my problem, that's why I'm so depressed all the time. I figured it out. I watch too much CNN, man. I don't know if you've ever sat around and watched CNN more than, I don't know, 20 hours in one day ... I don't recommend that. Watch CNN Headline News for 1 hour, it's the most depressing thing you'll ever fucking do. 'WAR, FAMINE, DEATH, AIDS, HOMELESS, RECESSION, DEPRESSION. WAR, FAMINE, DEATH, AIDS, HOMELESS ...' Then, you look out your window ... [makes cricket noises] Where's all this shit happening? Ted Turner's making this shit up! Jane Fonda won't sleep with him, he runs to a typewriter: '"By 1992, we will all die of AIDS." Read that on the air. I don't get laid, no one gets laid!' I'm writing Jane Fonda: 'Will you fuck this guy so we can get some good news, please?' I want to see a well-laid Ted Turner newscast: 'Hey, it's all going to work out. Here's sports.'"
"I can't watch TV longer than 5 minutes without praying for nuclear holocaust."


"This is it, folks. This is the idea which has kept me virtually unknown for the past 16 years. I have watched my crowds dwindle. I am going nowhere, and nowhere quick, but, those of you who have children, I am sorry to tell you this, but they are not special. Wait! I know some of you are going: 'What, what?' Let me just clarify: I know you think they're special ... ha ha ha! I'm aware of that. I'm just here to tell you that they're not! Ha ha ha ha! Sorry. Did you know that every time a guy comes, he comes two-hundred million sperm? One out of two-hundred million – that load, we're only talking about one load – connected: Gee, what are the fucking odds? Do you know what that means? I've wiped nations off've my chest with a grey gymsock. Entire civilizations have flaked and crusted in the hair around my navel! [...] I've tossed universes in my underpants while napping. Boom! A Milkyway shoots into my jockeyshorts: 'Unngh ... what's for fucking breakfast?!'"

"As long as one person lives in darkness, then it seems to be a responsibility to tell other people."

"'Hey buddy, my daddy died for that flag.'
'Really? I bought mine. Yeah, they sell them at K-Mart and shit.'
'He died in the Korean War.'
'Wow, what a coincidence. Mine was made in Korea.'
No one – and I repeat, no one – has ever died for a flag. See, a flag ... is just a piece of cloth. They may have died for freedom, which is also the freedom to burn the fuckin' flag, see. That's freedom."

"But you know, it's hard to have a relationship in this business, man. It's gonna take a very special woman ... or a bunch of average ones. Anyway, I was reading an article in the paper about Ted Bundy [the mass murderer] being on trial in Florida. In the article it said the courtroom was filled with women waiting to give him flowers, love letters and wedding fucking proposals ... and I'm afraid to say that the first thing that entered my head was: 'And I'm not getting laid.' What am I doing wrong? I read another article, a woman is suing the state of Wisconsin. Here's why: She married a fella. He's on death row. Why is he on death row? He killed 8 women ... he has AIDS, and she's suing the state for rights of conjugal visits. And I'm afraid to say that the first thing that came to my head was: 'And I'm not getting laid.' OK, what exactly are you ladies looking for in a man here? They must have been heavy on the old sense of humour that you always talk about in your little women's polls. 'Ted Bundy, that old whip, he's hilarious. Some of the things Ted would do, he kills me. I overlooked the whole mass murder things 'cause he kept me in stitches.' It's just depressing. Michael Bolton, Garth Brooks, achey breaky fucking dick this guy is, Ted Bundy getting wedding proposals. You know, we're fucked up here. I tell you, Satan's gonna have no trouble taking over here 'cause all the women are gonna say: 'What a cute butt.' He's Satan. 'You don't know him like I do.' He's the Prince of Darkness. 'I can change him.' And I bet that's true, man. I wouldn't give Satan a snowball's chance in Hell against a woman's ego. He'd rule the earth for a day, then we'd see him outside, mowing the lawn. 'Hey, aren't you Satan?' 'Shut up.' 'Oooh, Mr. Prince of Darkness, you forgot the edge back there.' 'SHUT UP.' You'll see him at the supermarket buying 'Tampons, aisle three ...' 'Aren't you Satan?' 'SHUT UP.' 'You're pussy-whipped!' 'No, I'm Satan! GRRR!' 'You're not Prince of Darkness, you're Pussy-whipped of Darkness!'"

"Actually, I'm against drugs being legalized, and this is why. Last weekend, my friend and I went into a farm, took some mushrooms, and we sat on a field. I looked up into the sky and saw God. He told me that there is nothing to fear, that he loves every single creature on this planet, and he showered gifts of forgiveness and love onto the Earth, and I realised that there was nothing to fear, and I loved everything ... Now, if that isn't a bad thing for this country, I don't know what is. How can we continue to make weapons if we love everything?"

"No, I don't do drugs anymore, either. But I'll tell you something about drugs. I used to do drugs, but I'll tell you something honestly about drugs, honestly, and I know it's not a very popular idea, you don't hear it very often anymore, but it is the truth: I had a great time doing drugs. Sorry. Never murdered anyone, never robbed anyone, never raped anyone, never beat anyone, never lost a job, a car, a house, a wife or kids, laughed my ass off, and went about my day."

"I love the movies. Love 'em. Now I'm watching Terminator 2 the other day and I'm thinkin' to myself "they cannot top the stunts in this film, they cannot top this shit", unless, they start using terminally ill people as stunt people in feature films.... well hear me out, cos I know to a lot of you this may seem a little cruel. "Aww Bill, terminally ill stunt people? That's cruel!" You know what I think's cruel? Leaving your loved ones to die in a hospital room surrounded by strangers. Fuck that! Put 'em in the movies! What, you wanna let your grandmother live out her last days in a sterile hospital room, with translucent skin so thin you can see her last heartbeat work its way down her blue veins, or do you want her to meet Chuck Norris?
"So, thanks for coming out, I guess. Yeah, its good to see people, y'know. The newsman is so horrifying, you get the impression you're just going to walk out your door and immediately be raped by some cracked-addicted, AIDS-infected... pit bull or something."

"Have you seen what they're doing to movies now? They show the movie to a test audience, then change it depending on whether these 200 random "yahoos" (Underline yahoo, point some fingers at it, put a big fucking exclamation point on the end. Ya-fucking-hoo) liked it or did not like it, as though we are all one, as though we all have the same taste, as though, as though, as though.
For instance: saw a movie this year called Basic.............Instinct. Now, Bill's quick capsule review: Piece of shit. Thank you. That's all it was, by the way. Don't get yourself wound up in the phoney hype surrounding this "piece of shit" film. People were like "ooh, was it too sexist, and er do you think..." Whoa, whoa, whoa, you're way off base buddy. You've forgotten how to perceive correctly. Watch it again..."hey, it's a piece of shit". Exactly. That's all it ever was, was a PIECE OF SHIT. Anyway, after I'd seen it about 8 times, come to find out, all of the lesbian sex scenes had been cut, because the test audience...was turned OFF by them. Boy, is my thumb not on the pulse of America. If I'd been in that test audience, the only one out front protesting would be Michael Douglas demanding his part be put back in. "I swear I was in that movie, I swear I was". Well gee Mike, the film started, Sharon Stone was eating another woman for an hour and a half, then the credits rolled. I don't remember seeing your scrawny ass. Oh wait, was that you in the corner when Sharon Stone flipped the woman over and started eating her butt? Oh yeah, you were good! You were really good! I saw you real briefly, I was like "hey is that Michael Douglas? Oh, who gives a fuck, look at that".
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself. No, no, no it's just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day, they'll take root - I don't know. You try, you do what you can. Kill yourself. Seriously though, if you are, do. Aaah, no really, there's no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan's little helpers, Okay - kill yourself - seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously. No this is not a joke, you're going, "there's going to be a joke coming," there's no fucking joke coming. You are Satan's spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It's the only way to save your fucking soul, kill yourself. Planting seeds. I know all the marketing people are going, "he's doing a joke... there's no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a Yank friend - I don't care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking machinations. I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too, "Oh, you know what Bill's doing, he's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart." Oh man, I am not doing that. You fucking evil scumbags! "Ooh, you know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar. That's a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We've done research - huge market. He's doing a good thing." Godammit, I'm not doing that, you scum-bags!
Quit putting a godamm dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet!
"Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market, Bill's very bright to do that." God, I'm just caught in a fucking web! "Ooh the trapped dollar, big dollar, huge dollar. Good market - look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar..." How do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like fucking babies at night, don't you?"


OK, if drugs are so bad, how come Keith Richards still walks? They missed that part out. The surgeon general says "Drugs are bad, drugs are evil!!! Except for that guy" Keith Richards is shooting heroin into his eyeballs, yet he outlived Jim Fix, that runner and health nut guy. The plot thickens. That Jim Fix guy used to write books about jogging. How do you write a book about jogging? "Right foot, left foot....go home, shower" Thanks Jim, but I know how to jog, being the bi-ped that I am. Then the guy goes and has a heart attack while jogging. HAHAHAHAHAHAA! "Right foot, left foot, haemorrhage". Hey Jim, we're gonna need a better ending buddy. What's this "right foot, left foot, blood spurts out nose?" Are you having problems at home, Jim?