My Name is Not Merv Griffin (Merv Griffin, Dead at 82)

tv-He hadn't been doing much as an entertainer for many years, but he was producing some really bad tv shows! Merv was OK, though, really. He's partly-responsible for the funniest moment in any motion picture, anywhere. The movie? Why, Steve Martin's and Carl Reiner's "The Man With Two Brains" (1983) of course. It was Merv's shining moment, his eden, forget Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy.

Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr: You. You're the elevator killer. Merv Griffin.

Merv Griffin: Yeah.

Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr: Why?

Merv Griffin: I don't know. I've always just loved to kill. I really enjoyed it. But then I got famous, and - it's just too hard for me. And so many witnesses. I mean, *everybody* recognized me. I couldn't even lurk anymore. I'd hear, "Who's that lurking over there? Isn't that Merv Griffin?" So I came to Europe to kill. And it's really worked out very well for me. (imdb.com)

I love that movie, it was one of the last films that Steve Martin was truly hilarious in. After that, he decided not to do too much comedy, I don't know why. His greatest work will always be his collaborations on film with Carl Reiner, especially "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" (1982), the movie my mother walked-out on. But putting Merv Griffin in there for no logical reason was inspired genius, like having Regis Philbin doing the same scene and dialog. What Makes Merv so cool is that he got it, and agreed to do it. Kathleen Turner also deserves a lot of credit for getting it too, she proved a beautiful woman can be funny again.

Merv began his showbiz career as a singer for swing bands during WWII, he was just 19 when he began. He's one of the few real "rags-to-riches" stories (rare, because that's not how life works for the rest of us). He even had a #1 song with his faux cockney rendition of "I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts." He interviewed everybody on the tv shows he hosted: John Lennon (while still a Beatle), Martin Luther King Jr., Bertrand Russell, Richard Pryor, Orson Welles, Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford--nearly everyone who was someone. His real name was not George, but he was unimaginably rich. Besides being rich, he was even featured in a Captain America "What If?" comic where the Captain (sans Tennielle) is cryogenically freezed and thawed-out during the 1990s. Hopefully, he left his wealth--even a smidgen--to L.A.'s homeless, but I doubt it. How did he die? He was 82. After that age, your toenails hurt. Welcome to America, where you either make nothing or too-much. Then, the people who make too-much tell us how wonderful it is here, hahahahahah. He was a great tv host, but should he have had more money than God?

Merv: http://www.merv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=category.display&category_id=19

Michael Alig's mom is in my area and zip code (last I knew!)

Michiana--I keep threatening to do this, but it might have to come-to-pass: an interview with Michael Alig. Michael's mother--Elke Blair--lives just miles from our home here. In watching the documentary, "Party Monster," I was stunned at how similar our experiences living around here were.

I'm not gay, but it makes me shudder to think of the abuse that Michael had inflicted upon himself by others in the area. It makes for a better understanding of why he did what he did. Living here, I am completely unsurprised that Michael's life ended-up the way it did, and look at the entire story as a tragedy. You couldn't find an uglier place for real outsiders than this region.

It could have worked-out differently, though I have to wonder if he would have had the drive to accomplish what he did with the club kids without the rage that began here in the South Bend/Mishawaka area.

Being a kid around here in the 1970s-80s was a extremely violent time for a lot of us. It was another era entirely, and if you didn't fit-in you were a target. There was no escape from this existentialist hell, and like today, adults were unwilling to take any responsibility for this atmosphere. Many of them actively encouraged the hunting-down of the "others" who were "different." The violence was rife, ubiquitous, and everywhere as a daily-occurrence.

What constituted that difference usually didn't matter. I can recall a memory from those times of watching in horror as a well-known family of young malcontents literally enslaved neighborhood children into building a kid's "fort" for them through violence and intimidation. The examples are numerous and similar. It was like a war zone.
There is a theme of revenge, or a desire for it, in Alig's life that must surely spring from this context. Who were his predators during his childhood, the individuals who victimized Michael Alig? "Party Monster" outs a local preacher, but also hints at homophobic tormenting and bullying by other children in this area (as well as general climate of violent bullying). This should be examined more thoroughly.

What Michael did was wicked, evil, and wrong by any standard, but I don't think the surface was remotely scratched by documentarians Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato. They should have gotten more of a feel for where Alig grew-up. It's probably the shortest-part of "Party Monster-The Shockumentary" (1998). Watching it on its original broadcast, I nearly fell off of my couch! I never saw it coming. But how does one summarize a life?

That's not entirely their fault, it's a tall order. James St. James has done a good job in these areas, and I agree that the filmmakers were probably a little too enamored with their subject, being too seduced by the glitz and glamor they were party to. It's not unlikely that Michael Alig became his oppressors in some way through dehumanization and constant humiliation. We should find-out who these people were, because they could be doing things that are far-and-away worse than what Alig did, even today. I believe the preacher is deceased, but what of Alig's peers from those early-years before his move to NYC?

Who are they? What are they doing today?

For myself, the club kids were something you saw on Springer, Sally Jesse Raphael, or Geraldo. They were a visually interesting and bizarre part of an ugly and boring decade. I liked them in their Kabuki-style poses, though I would learn later that much of it was copped from UK designer Leigh Bowrey. But there was also something very intriguing about their androgyny and free-spiritedness, it was interesting and appeared very fresh. The ladies attached to the scene were pretty hot. It all looked very sexy and subversive.

Hilariously, I once received a Richie Rich single in the mail for a little zine' I was doing during that period--there was no context for it at all! Frankly, the single was hilariously bad dance techno with helium-vocals. The Club Kids weren't exactly talented, they just became very famous overnight. What's amazing is how long it all lasted. Where it all went wrong was that many of the participants couldn't face that these scenes only last a for a time, and then they're gone. Normally, they don't last more than a couple years, which is what made this countercultural scene so unique. But holding-on to something that must inevitably end is when the demons arise from their hiding-places.

Add tons of hard drugs, and stir! There are so many rumors and allegations surrounding this story, and while I would trust James St. James over Michael Alig in most areas, it would be healthy for Michael to finally finish that autobiography ("Aligula"), and in a shorter form than he's been promising (a staggering 5,000 pages). It should be clear and manageable for readers, and direct. My hope is that he finds someone to help him edit it into something readable and accessible (paging Michael!).

Some very bizarre rumors and allegations surround the murder of Angel Melendez, and the government's investigative role in Gatien's clubs doesn't add any clarity. One is that Alig and his roommate "Freez" cannibalized Angel's body. This sounds very hard to believe. What's certain is that Gatien's clubs were teeming with law enforcement who were incognito.

If the Feds knew the answer to this question, they certainly were keeping it secret, as it appeared they intended to use Alig as a Prosecution Witness against Peter Gatien. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office surely knew also, but they have a long history of hiding from the public information about crimes involving the Occult. Further investigation proved that Michael Alig and Freeze were involved with the Occult; Michael being a ‘dabbler’ whereas Freeze was heavily involved. (Americanmafia.com, 'The Agony Of Ecstasy: The Fall Of Sammy Gravano And Peter Gatien, James Ridgway de Szigethy. September 2002)

Peter Gatien's story is also basically untold, and by all appearances, he was probably railroaded by the federal government in all of this. Consider that for a long-time, they didn't even care about Angel Melendez's murder, and that they just wanted to take down Mr. Gatien and the Limelight club, the Palladium, Club USA, and other venues he owned during the 1980s-90s. Gatien is now living in Toronto (2008).

Law enforcement even ignored an early confession of Alig to Melendez's murder and allowed him to roam free for weeks. Sound familiar? But what Gatien and Limelight, and his other clubs, can be seen as are victims of former NYC Rudolph Giuliani's campaign to "clean-up" the city (for organized crime?). The murder probably was--and is--unimportant to law enforcement at all levels. None of this is in-defense of Michael Alig. Four-years-ago this 21st of August, Peter Gatien was deported to his native Canada. He currently resides in Toronto, sans his distinctive eye-patch.

Again, there could also be a much larger and untold story in this area known as Michiana regarding Alig's background. Remember that Michael grew-up around Penn High School (a place swarming with rednecks), the very same stomping-ground as that of "Heathers" (1989, written just a couple years after Alig left for NYC) scribe Dan Waters. Watch that film, and you'll see that the connections to Alig's life are there.

My own experiences in the educational system around here echo the movie in many respects (no, not literally in what Christian Slater's character does to his tormentors), so I know that Michael's environment was almost identical to my own, and that of many others.

Waters was an astute social observer: he really nailed the rage and anger experienced by outsiders around here. It's all about the pecking-order. Such are the roots of Columbine, and all the other tragedies, the elephant in the room that everyone's afraid to acknowledge. Part of the reason is that many parents and other "trusted" authority-figures would be going to jail for life.

That elephant is how horrible we all allow others to treat one another, and the price of tolerating the pathological bully, the pederast, and the child abuser. That price is too high for our society. How many murders were there in the Haight Ashbury district after the Summer of love? A lot. It would dwarf the body count of the club kids, and handily, yet that's not the picture we usually get of that scene.

The whole thing about these scenes is that it's an ongoing tragedy about young people wanting to have acceptance and to escape from the alienation of the modern world by creating their own space. They just wanted to create another life, a better life, and as wrongheaded as many of them were, it's not an evil motive at all. As these ersatz Edens crash, the hard drugs strat playing a role. But someone had to provide the drugs, and that brought in the criminal-elements and the cops.

Alig was one of the "two Michaels" hired by Gatien in the late-1980s to promote the Limelight, the other being Michael Caruso. Caruso became a DEA informant after being popped sometime during the early-1990s.

A May 2000 Village Voice article offers some clarification of his role in the club kids scene:

Two years ago, as he sat on the witness stand at Limelight owner Peter Gatien's drug-conspiracy trial bawling his eyes out in a badly fitting blue suit, Michael Caruso's life seemed effectively over. The big-time promoter—the man who first brought techno music to Manhattan and turned Staten Island on to Ecstasy—confessed to a string of brutal crimes: bank robbery, home invasions, extortion schemes, kidnapping attempts, wholesale drug trafficking, and more. These should have put him behind bars for 20 years. But in exchange for leniency, he became the centerpiece of the government's case against Gatien [Ed.-Instead of Michael Alig?], betraying a man who he'd told associates was closer to him than his own father. Caruso's testimony about the inner workings of the Limelight's drug network, which he himself created, not only provided a glimpse of the seamy underbelly of club culture—the violent demimonde of dope peddlers, gangsters, professional party-goers, and police informers hidden behind the superficial veil of fun and fabulousness—but helped put behind bars many of his former colleagues. (Village Voice, 'Wu-Tang Clan are Sumthing ta Fuck Wit,' Frank Owen. May 24-30, 2000)

Well-intentioned Edens fall. This shouldn't be an unfamiliar theme to anyone. One can hardly blame James St. James in his wish to move-on from this whole affair. It's a sad story filled with animosity, subterfuge, and several unexplained deaths and a few explained murders. Utopian experiments rarely end well, and we should be examining why this is so. The seeds-of-destruction are usually already in-place, often coming from that "outside world" the participants are desperately trying to escape.

Watch Heathers again sometime, and consider what you have read here. Add informant programs and other elements of criminality added to-the-mix (not DJ Keoki's!), and it only gets uglier. It didn't have to end the way it did, but it did. What can I say? It looked like so much fun, and it could have been so good. It could have been so very good.

Lightly Revised and Corrected, 09.12.2008

America's Least-popular Industries

USSA-I caught this at www.michaelmoore.com today, but it's interesting. What's the least-popular industry in America today? The oil companies? Wrong. It's the cable companies! Their approval rating is at 1%. We literally--all-of-us--hate the cable companies. The article was a link to a recent Harris poll, and it was noted that HMOs and the health insurance company sector were hovering around 20%. The reason? Harris is ascribing it to Michael Moore's 'SiCKO,' but I think he really just reminded us all of how much we absolutely hate these institutions and want them ended. We're tired of being ripped-off, all Mr. Moore did was remind us of this fact, ultimately. But sometimes, we need to be reminded, and he's done a good job again.

Back to the cable companies: the programming basically sucks, right? That's due to the over-concentration of media ownership, but we all knew this. The remedies are very simple. You regulate the cable industry properly, discourage monopoly through prosecutions (thus encouraging real competition), finally force the communications industry to pay-for the national fiber-optic infrastructure that they promised to build under previous conditions of deregulation, bring back the Fairness Doctrine at the FCC making it permanent law, and a gradual nationalization of the media (particularly news & journalism, like the CBC and BBC in earlier-years, only go further).

What's a little hard to understand is that the oil companies are at 33% approval, which is strange. They're why we're in Iraq. They overcharge us daily for gasoline. What gives America? Is it acceptance? At least we put them in the "worst" category, though, so we must be learning something. The key is turning it into action, and it's time to start speaking-out and asserting our rights and our collective power. No, you cannot boycott a commodity--boycotters of Citgo found this out the hard way--but you can make the politicians who service Big Oil feel the pressure and the love. You can make them squirm. So, give you representative a call and share the love today. Make them explain themselves, but be civil and stay within the law.

The Harris poll piece: http://digital50.com/news/items/BW/2001/07/14/20070808005058/some-substantial-changes-in-how-americans-view-different-industries.html

Matt, why don't you write about the war?

Why bother? For what reason? What will it accomplish? If you think merely voting and holding-up a sign every weekend is going to work, you're so hopelessly naive there's no talking or writing that's going to reach you. You're already paralyzed. There's a misconception throughout the "progressive" blogosphere that if we show enough moral disdain for this war that it will simply go-away. Wake me when that one actually works. Only the Iraqi people can decide this, by deciding the reality on the ground. Sorry, the Gandhi approach doesn't always work, and it took the Japanese military beating-down the British Empire to provide a real context for Indian statehood. This is what the absolute believers in non-violence are either ignorant of, or just wilfully ignore for their own agendas. Some of them might just be craven cowards, but that's for history to decide.

Life is a lot more complicated than the adherents of non-violence would have us all believe, and that's not an exhortation to violence, just an observation of fact: power concedes nothing without demands and at least the threat that violence is possible (as a warning) without genuine reforms. The Iraqi people are the real deciders in this pointless and illegal conflict, not that moron occupying the Oval Office like a Columbia University student, circa 1968. Yes, George W. missed-out on the 1960s, so he's doing some catch-up. The best-move is to kick his ass out of there the same way. Digest that one, Lyndon Larouche. Write? I'd enjoin our troops to desert, but that's illegal (like the war itself).

Still, if it was me, I'd desert and apply to the Swedish, German, French, Swiss, Italian, and Dutch embassies for political asylum. Getting there would be the hardest-part. This war is a joke, a crime, and is a pointless waste of lives and treasure. It has nothing to recommend it, and it's not a worthy cause. Note that the mainstream media NEVER challenges the legality of the conflict, nor hardly any politicians currently holding office right now. That should tell you everything you need to know about the current political generation: they have to go next year, all of them we can sink, and it should done in a way that is as ugly and contentious as possible. But it should be done within the law. Let the establishment do the crimes, it's what they do.

MARK FOLEY, PEDOPHILE ON-THE-PROWL

Forget that pedophile blogger that CNN and FOX NEWS keep fawning over, I just thought I'd remind everyone that Foley still hasn't been brought-to-justice, and neither has Dennis Hastert for covering-up. Oh yeah, and everyone else in Congress who knew, which was an awful lot of people. No serious investigations have occurred yet, I wonder why? Yep, just another broken-promise--not that the Republicans promised not to chase our kids for some tail. Lock-up your children, Floridians, Mark Foley might be out tonight, thanks to obstructionism by the GOP and Democrats in Congress. Future block and cellmates of Mark Foley & and his protectors: you know what to do. Save-up that urine and spittle, he's coming, eventually, into your loving-arms. Give him that Joel Steinberg treatment, you know the kind. Use-up that rage you've been storing all these long years.

If you know anything-at-all about pedophiles, you already know that they never, ever stop being pedophiles. What they learn is to do is to lie about their condition. Society doesn't know what to do with them. They never stop being what they are, and they have that urge to molest their entire lives. This is why they have to be watched regularly until they're gone. Does Katherine Harris have kids? In-the-end, it's all child abuse. Abu-Ghraib is just America exporting its own perverse form of it, as are the majority of wars. Poverty can be counted as the ongoing war against children and people-in-general, with American at the lead! Why, by God, we are exceptional after all (especially Mark Foley and Joel Steinberg).

Coming soon to J-7...

No, not "BUCKAROO BANZAI VS THE DICK CHENEY WORLD CRIME LEAGUE, but an updating of "The Devil's Dictionary" for this peculiar era. It's overdue, and you know you want it. Like the original, it's going to be serialized, parsed-out letter-by-letter. Expect something different from Bierce's original. I might even be kind enough to illustrate each letter with an appropriately cynical drawing. They carry hell with them.

A (trick) question to readers: What is a society for?

J-7--The winner gets my eternal respect and gratitude, though I already know the answer. Like Frank Zappa (RIP), the few classes I thought were worth paying-attention to in High School were civics/social studies and history. The rest was mostly bullshit to flog obedience into all of us, we all know this. It was also to destroy our imagination, but we have the media for that too. Mainstream conservatives (not traditional ones, a species that is virtually extinct) who can answer this question honestly become honorary, de facto members of the human race.

CINDY SHEEHAN ANNOUNCES CONGRESSIONAL RUN, MAINSTREAM TELEVISION MEDIA IGNORES YESTERDAY'S ANNOUNCEMENT

"I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it." --President Dwight David Eisenhower, August 31st, 1959.

tv-Cindy announced yesterday that she's running against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in her own district for failing to...you-name-it. We wanted solid-steps towards ending the war. We wanted Congress cleaned-up. We wanted the Bush administration to be collared and reined-in, forcing them to follow the rule of law as everyone else does. It would behoove the Speaker to start vocally outing every single Democratic representative occupying Congress now who is obstructing the legitimate investigations into Bush administration crimes, as well as those who are criminally aiding the president in prolonging the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This would include Rep. Joe Donnelly (Moe) and Sen. Evan Bayh (Larry), as well as Sen. Dick Lugar (Curly). Keep making your lame excuses, and we'll keep a count of them. After a certain number, you're going to be washed out of office. Gone.

You have not earned our trust, and you could be gone with the next elections as a result. Your recent handing-over of even more surveillance capabilities to an administration that cannot be trusted on any front is scandalous and will be remembered next year in the elections. We in the blogosphere are going to be coming for you on this, and many other points. The American public made their feelings on all this very loud-and-clear in the elections of 2006. If you do not obey our will, you will be replaced in the next elections, coming sooner-than-you-think. The time for full impeachment of the Bush administration is in-order, and we're going to keep hammering you until you do it.

You had better know that the majority of the American public has had enough, and a long-time-ago. We're tired of excuses. If we have to call a Constitutional convention again, as was done over 200-years-ago, we'll do it. It doesn't have to be, but we can do this, and it won't be pretty for you or your corporate backers. The Army isn't going to back you anymore either. Neither will the National Guard or the Reserves. This isn't 1967, nor is it 1970. This is how much you have wrecked the military and its morale. If you attempt to use private security forces like Blackwater to stop our legal right to form a new government--if we have to--you're not going to like the outcome at all. Does reasonable reform look so bad now?

It better not, because if it does, you're more criminally-minded than we all assume, and that's when we're really all going to start coming after you in the courts, the voting-booth, and the streets. It's the constitutional and legal right of Americans to create a new government when the old one isn't serving their interests anymore, and it can be done without violence. All of you incumbents in Congress should understand that you're just making the soil that more fertile for it in your actions (and inactions). This is not a threat, but a warning. We can all live together, or eventually, you'll wreck this great system--flawed as it is--and that will be the greatest crime of all. America isn't as special as we've been told, but it's a simple fact that if we cannot coexist together here, it won't be possible anywhere else either. You will have doomed human society and the species to extinction. There is nothing more criminal than that. It is the apotheosis of crime. Cindy's Presidio announcement (http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/index.php?id=904 ) could be the beginning of the road back to Philadelphia, one that has been deferred for too long.

Masters of Horror: The Black Cat DVD (2006) review

"I've read two or three biographies of his, and one of the things that really interested me is that he's a Southerner. A lot of people don't think of him that way. He wasn't even from Baltimore. I mean, there's a football team named after him and he spent some time in Baltimore, but his formative years were spent in Richmond, Virginia, and in England. Richmond, Virginia is where he came from. During his entire literary career, he had to go where the work was, which was Philadelphia and New York. At the time, this was ten years before the Civil War, all that tension between the North and South didn't come out of nowhere." --Jeffrey Combs (UGO.com, 2006?)

I cannot fathom it, but somehow, some way, Stuart Gordon just improves as a director with each film. This is the atypical view of movie making, which usually tells us that a director does their best work when they're in their 30s-40s. It's being trashed here, in what is the best translation-to-screen of Edgar Allan Poe's short story, "The Black Cat" to date.

Gordon and his frequent co-writer Dennis Paoli have given us a wonderful gift: the finest version of a Poe tale, and an illuminating look at the misery that was his life (though tinged with a little joy). Besides his screenwriting work with Gordon, Paoli is a noted Poe scholar, and even star Jeffrey Combs did an enormous amount of research into our greatest writer's peculiar life. This is evident in the use of Poe's favorite song throughout the film, as well as the little details such as his continued wearing of his West Point jacket (its silken-lining worn inside-out--he was expelled from the academy for gambling).

By now, most Americans understand how horrific the 1840s were, largely-thanks to Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York." A good dose of Poe's horror springs from his own specific time-and-place, and his constant displacements weren't uncommon. The vast-majority of Americans were impoverished at this time, slavery was still firmly in-place, the frontier was still young and dangerous, the Indian wars were still raging (with the trail of tears coming during Poe's last years), there was rampant criminality and banditry, rampant corruption, rigged elections, labor violence, unhygienic conditions, an impending war with Mexico, extreme contentions over immigration, and much more. It was a bloody time that echoes our own.

Therefore, it should be unsurprising that horror is popular again, as it would be by the end of Poe's lifetime. America is horror. Contrary to popular belief, Edgar Allan Poe was experiencing reasonable success as a writer at the time of his mysterious disappearance--and reappearance--in Baltimore during October of 1849. He was the only show in town who wrote tales of horror and of the fantastic.

If you've read the short story, you'll know that it's rarely been done well. There are a number of them that literally have nothing to do with the original, and several elements are generally left-out due to how graphic the original short story still is, even today. Edgar J. Ulmer's 1934 version is great, but it's not the same story at all. The same can be said for Lucio Fulci's 1981 film. Roger Corman's take is much closer, but couldn't show us a number of crucial actions (the removal of the cat's eye with a penknife, as well as the protagonist burying an axe in his wife's brain).

The Argento version in "Two Evil Eyes" (1990) has been one of the best until this version. Simply doing the story proud would have been enough, but Gordon and Paoli did-one-better--they fused the facts of Poe's tortured life with the tale itself! This elevates this film to that of a timeless classic, and it's unlikely to be outdone anytime soon, if ever. Coupled with this, cinematographer Jon Joffin's photography is just breathtaking, with a sepia-tone look of an old 19th century tintype. The only tinges of color we see are scant, usually being blood & alcohol, as well as a cat's eye. The effect is dramatic, and the end-result is genuine horror.

Poe's life with Virginia Clemm--his first cousin--was only troubled by their poverty and her tuberculosis, and their love for each other was uninterrupted by her untimely death. She is the muse of "The Raven," and "Annabel Lee," the ghost that would haunt him until the day he died. One could imagine that even in his last moments of delirium, he was thinking of her. Death would not part them, even after Poe remarried and continued to write. The cat in his short story is the guilt and the specter of death (hence, the name "Pluto," the lord of the underworld and death) that haunted he and Virginia throughout their poverty-stricken years together, and she was one of his great champions.

Their love was unconditional, a rarity in this life, but also a part of that romantic "Southern gentility" of the time that would be felled by the Civil War. Poe, after all, was a Southern "gentleman," and part of a fallen aristocracy (like Lovecraft, though he was of Rhode Island extraction) that didn't understand the new industrial order arising in the Northern and Eastern states. He was of a dying feudal order, a pre-capitalist romantic watching his world die. No tears should be shed for the ending of slavery, but other great things were lost in the destruction of the Antebellum South.

This is probably part of why we got such stories of decline and decay from Poe. He was seeing a lot of it during his lifetime, and the beginnings of what he would have rightly seen as a horrible new order in America (you don't have to be a Marxist to dislike bourgeois capitalism). Poe had other problems--mental ones. Jeffrey Combs captures Poe's self-destructive perversity well, and it's going to be a surprise to many how truly Southern his portrayal of the writer's dialect is. But what may come as the greatest surprise is just how tortured his imagination was, and we get some great references to "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Telltale Heart," and more, woven throughout the biographical details and The Black Cat's plot.

Poe had an interesting insight into the minds of killers, and The Black Cat seems very prescient today, considering the link between animal torture that has been found in the biographies of serial killers. Viewers will meet an Edgar Allan Poe that they never knew existed, and hopefully, they will grow to empathize with his difficult life (and those of the living). This isn't one for the squeamish. It's pretty bloody, and filled with madness and obsession--it is Poe in all his glory, and our ongoing American nightmare. Bravo.

HFCS & Mexican Cokes (TM)

The West Side of South Bend--We have a regional supermarket chain here in Michiana called "Martin's," and it's not too-bad either, with all-kinds of foods from other cultures. A couple-years-ago, some genius--and I mean it--got Mexican Cokes (TM) in. The bottles were really tiny, but they were glass and I bought a couple. The taste literally rocketed me back to a pre-1980s bliss: this was the way Cokes tasted, the real taste as I remembered it as a kid. I used to think that it was just my taste-buds changing, a part of growing to adulthood, but I was wrong (as usual)!

This is the problem with American Cokes, and most of our food and beverages--corn syrup. The Mexican-version uses cane sugar, not that garbage. My guess is that it's part of our farm subsides, and that a certain percentage of what's out there has to contain it to justify the programs. It's a shame, because I know friends with children who have an allergy to anything with corn in it, and some smaller soda-brewers have been picking-up the slack by offering cane sugar (sucrose) drinks. Fructose is about profits, not the public's right to good health and nutrition. It's about the bottom-line and "dazzling profits." It sure ain't about what the public wants or needs.

Fructose is absorbed primarily in the jejunum before metabolism in the liver. Fructose is converted to fatty acids by the liver at a greater rate than is glucose.14 When consumed in excess of dietary glucose, the liver cannot convert all of the excess fructose in the system and it may be malabsorbed. The portion that escapes conversion may be thrown out in the urine. Diarrhea can be a consequence.19 A study of 25 patients with functional bowel disease showed that pronounced gastrointestinal distress may be provoked by malabsorption of small amounts of fructose. ... (Weston A. Price Foundation, 02.19.2004)

An old Australian mate (heya Adam!) pointed-out that corn syrup could have been part of why he developed irritable-bowel syndrome, and it's worth consideration. My take was--and is--that he already had a pre-existing condition that was exacerbated by HFCS (high fructose corn syrup). Forget flavor, corn syrup could be making us all sick (and obese)!

Our little Martin's supermarket had the Mexican Cokes for about six-weeks, then they were suddenly pulled. I'd wager it was the local Coca Cola (TM) bottling plant that stopped them carrying them, probably something to do with only so many licenses in one region. But for those six-weeks, it was great! I've had the drink from a soda fountain here in rural Indiana, and it was the same. Some have said that because of over-centralization, most American plants cannot physically process granulated sugar anymore. Perhaps the problem is centralization? Quality becomes difficult after that. Why Coca Cola doesn't try to tap-into the market is really beyond me. Why not sell it as "Vintage Coke"? Sorry, I used logic there for-a-minute.

El Universal, 2004: http://www2.eluniversal.com.mx/pls/impreso/noticia.html?id_nota=6728&tabla=miami

Weston A. Price foundation on HFCS, 2004: http://www.westonaprice.org/modernfood/highfructose.html

Matt goes on-vacation, writes a new piece, and the DOJ 'magically" returns to J-7

The Department of Justice, Potomac, Maryland--Well, it's not magic, really. Maybe Wayne Madsen can share some of his (fictitious?) sources with me? And, ah, no apparent leads on whether Dick Cheney is in the records of Pamela Martin & Associates. I mean, really, who gives-a-shit? Will it change anything? Will it change our views on said individual? I don't think so. Hitting the waterboys--the functionaries--will be the key. It usually is.

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And...

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PAX AMERICANA II: WHY THE MAN AT 703-836-0522 HAS TO BE GARY ROUGHEAD'S BROTHER

1200 First Street, Alexandria, Virginia--Mr. Roughead testified before Congress on May 4th of last year as an intelligence analyst of some sort. Google a map of the District of Columbia--or better yet, just look at the maps-link under Mr. Roughead's name, it's less-than three miles from the Capitol building.

He could literally walk there if he had to (not that he does). Several mainstream publications and sites have been alerted to fact that this number is likely that of Ron Roughead, former head of IMN in Iraq, employed prior to early-May of 2006 by SAIC (www.saic.com).

Media are either afraid, lazy, or too stupid to understand the significance of who he is. There's little reason to doubt that this man called Ms. Palfrey in 2005 from his Alexandria, Virginia home, unless he has a son who used the services of Pamela Martin & Associates. This is unlikely.

This writer is saying we have our man, it's the same person. The surname is extremely rare in this spelling, and no other "Rougheads" besides soon-to-be CNO (Chief Naval Officer) brother Gary Roughead come up in any internet-based searches who reside in the United States. Absolutely nobody named Ron Roughead comes up in such searches except a race car driver in the UK. There was also the noted UK criminologist who Ron and Gary are related to, and a woman named "Lisa."

Only Ronald in Alexandria, Virginia fits. One could imagine that the deceased criminologist William Roughead would find some genuine irony here for, since his relations might be criminals themselves. They might want to reflect on this sometime.

Brother Gary would certainly have influence over whether the unidentified Naval Officer (a Lieutenant and "supply officer") could keep her job at Annapolis, and could have even previously exerted influence over the federal prosecution of Deborah Jeane Palfrey in this manner--and perhaps others that are currently unknown. Directories? If you cannot find a phone number doing a Google search, granted, it's likely to be listed. But grab your phone books, and you tell me how many "Rougheads" you find spelled with one "H." If you find any at all, you'll be lucky.

Ron lives at Meridian at Braddock Station apartments--at least part-time between his job with SAIC in San Diego and his lobbying and liason work for them in D.C.--and pays a minimum of $1,215.00-$2,230.00 per-month, so he could afford the services of Pamela Martin & Associates, and handily. http://www.everyaptmapped.com/ has this to say about where Ron lives:

Alexandria Apartments
Meridian At Braddock Station1200 First St., Alexandria, Virginia 22314

Meridian At Braddock Station is an Alexandria apartment complex that rents out efficiency, 1 and 2 bedroom floor plans with 1 or 2 baths. This Alexandria, VA apartment complex lists its units between $1215 and $2230. Total floor area for these Alexandria apartments is specified between 605 and 1220 square feet. Meridian At Braddock Station was built in 1992 and fully renovated in 2000.

Nice digs, especially if you're probably shuttling back-and-forth between the coasts for your job. A man needs to unwind sometimes, and it appears that Ronald has a penchant for this. He also has a penchant for making a lot of money testifying about phony videogames being used to recruit American children into joining Al-Qaeda ("Sonic Jihad," a title that illustrates the lack of media savvy on-the-part of the individual that concocted it). I know, I know, you want to know what Alec Baldwin thinks about the president's dog at Huffingtonpost, right?

More on "concoctions": someone else--probably at SAIC--is being paid to concoct the name "Sam Eardth" to get this writer to pull Ron's phone number. No-dice. Can I get a high-paying job creating nothing and doing nothing constructive on the taxpayer's dime? Boy, am I glad I don't have to pay any taxes with my unemployed status, I'd feel pretty ripped-off right now.

While Congress stupidly and self-destructively gives the Bush administration more power, and more funds to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the real war is occurring within the corridors of power. These are the real front-lines of an international war for who controls human civilization--the people, or a narrow group of "entitled" criminals.

Look at Ron's high rise apartment complex where he resides: http://maps.google.com/maps?li=rwp&q=1200+First+St,+Alexandria,+VA+22314

Everyaptmapped.com on where Ron lives: http://www.everyaptmapped.com/apartments/alexandria,virginia,va/meridian+at+braddock+station.html

Ed.-A call was made by myself at around 5:20PM Eastern today that finally resulted in an answer on the other end. A man answered and confirmed his name was Ron Roughead. I was asked who I was, and replied, "Matt Janovic. I'm a private researcher. I'm researching Ms. Palfrey's records," and was immediately hung-up on.

The tone of the exchange was as if he'd received other calls before that his phone number was in the records of Pamela Martin & Associates. There was a pause when I mentioned my name. The call couldn't have lasted more than 15-20 seconds. I could be wrong, but he sure seemed to react as if he already knew my name. Others are likely to encounter the same.

It's my brother's birthday today

Happy birthday Mike, I love you. Every birthday is special, because it's yours. I love you. We all love you.

I finally get that (mini) vacation

J-7-It's been belated, I've put-it-off for so long, but it's time. Yes, it's time to visit the Uncredible Duke and kin at an undisclosed location in Ohio. Nothing until Monday. Time for another bourgeois-hoot! Sam Eardth: make-up a better name, that one sucks. Did you honestly think I was going to pull any of the phone numbers off of this site when they're all in the public record? You're as stupid as you assumed I was. After all, I never voted for George W. Bush or his father. My momma didn't raise a dumbass (or a racist). Rich people are disgusting, it's time to make them all sweat like it's Havana, 1959.

What should be done with the Bush family in toto: trials for all of them, a very public tarring-and-feathering, executions for the traitorous, and sowing their soil with salt. Burn all their soiled clothing, and let the homeless live in their Kennebunkport estate. The Crawford ranch can finally become a wildlife preserve. Nationalize everything they own, give it to the poor, and make their children live in subsidized housing for life, as well as never allowing any of them to hold public office, in perpetuity. Also, they lose full citizenship, so anyone can hit, kick, spit-upon, or beat them. This would also be applied to the Cheney family, though I think all of the patriarchs should rot in prison at the Hague for life, which would be an appropriate punishment for conviction of treason. If the kids of W. knew anything about the family's crimes--the same. If not, either way, no reproductive rights whatsoever, no more Bush progeny. Hey, you gotta have dreams...

DC MADAM MISCELLANY FOR AUGUST 2ND

Washington D.C./Vallejo,California--Today we have...well, not a lot that hasn't been said or alleged before. But we have something new from the long-silent U.S. postal inspector, one Maria Couvillion who has filed a "new" affidavit in federal court against Deborah Jeane Palfrey.

Why do I think http://www.thesmokinggun.com/ was tipped on this again? There are no primary-documents from this filing at their site yet, so it seems the Hill scooped them. [Ed.-Except they didn't scoop anybody--the information is months-old.] They have posted documents on a Hoosier couple who had sex in-front of a day care center in Indianapolis this week (Republicans? Dan Burton? Mark Foley?). The Smoking Gun seems to get-along a little too well with the cops and the courts, carrying their water and whatnot--or even unknowingly helping in a misinformation/disinformation campaign to smear Ms. Palfrey? I know, it's never happened to writers and news sources, not ever. TSG could use a dose of healthy adversarialism in their relationships with law enforcement and our broken criminal justice system.

Perhaps TSG's editor should be grilling the prosecution as much as he did Palfrey back in October of last year, it might add some more balance. What happened after they outed Bill "Mr. Loofah" O'Reilly? Where's the edge? J-7 would love to have these suspicions allayed, particularly since thesmokinggun.com leaped at the throat of Ms. Palfrey last October. Their editor's presumption-of-guilt was dripping off of my computer-screen as I read it (which hasn't dried at this writing-a bit like drool). She hasn't even had a trial yet in almost a year's time. That's not due process.

Oh, but back to Maria, the quiet and coy Maria Couvillon (and Joe Clark). It's interesting, but there's a federal Judge in Louisiana named Irvin Couvillion. When I think of French last-names, I think of Quebec and Louisiana (even Mississippi). Irvin was appointed by the Maoist Saint Ronald Reagan when he occupied the Oval Office. Is this Maria's father? Also, there's a "Maria T. Couvillion" who appears to be employed in Phoenix, Arizona as a "private bookkeeper." Same woman? Palfrey claims that both U.S. postal inspectors lied to her realtor in a phone message on October 3rd, 2006, at 2 PM, claiming they were a couple who were moving to the area of her home ("transferred" is the term this writer keeps tripping-over), and wanted a look-around inside the house.

In short, Palfrey claims they were attempting entry into her home without a warrant (old ground, I know, but it's wise to retrace one's step occasionally). It's not hard to believe. Does any of this sound familiar? No warrants? Lies? Obfuscations? It should, but the mainstream media are dragging-their-feet in investigating the investigators (and the babysitters).

A new court filing in the criminal case against Palfrey reveals some of the details of what prosecutors believe are the “sins” of both Palfrey’s employees and clients. Maria Couvillon, a U.S. postal inspector involved in the investigation of Palfrey (it’s a crime to distribute the proceeds of an illegal business through the mail), offered gritty details in an affidavit supporting a search of Palfrey’s California home. The testimony accompanied a motion that Palfrey’s lawyers filed Friday to suppress evidence seized in the search. (thehill.com, 08.02.2007)

As with the original affidavits back in October of 2006, it's all information from "confidential informants," and we're all just supposed to suspend any disbelief we might harbor (like watching a Michael Bay movie) and believe everything the government is telling us, as well as what said informants are saying. For those of us who aren't familiar with legalese, it usually means they're someone who was popped doing something illegal (frequently unrelated to the defendant), and are in-fact "cooperating witnesses."

There is a genuine distinction here, as some juries reject the claims of cooperating witnesses, because they're likely to be under coercion by the prosecution in a given case. They're tainted. This is why you would want to cloud the distinction if you were a government prosecutor like Jeffrey A. Taylor or assistant U.S. attorney William Cowden.

According to previous court documents, there are a total of five "confidential informants" accusing Ms. Palfrey of running a prostitution ring. But the overriding-pattern appears to defame and slander the defendant before trial, and the FBI is usually known for leaks that accomplish this, though the IRS also has experience in this area:

On June 4, 2007, at approximately 8:30 p.m., two people knocked on Blanche’s residence door and identified themselves as Maria Couvillion of the U.S. Postal Service and Troy Burrus of the Internal Revenue Service and asked if they could speak with her. Having a weak heart and given the late hour, Blanche agreed, as she didn’t want to get into an argument. (Blanche PalfreyAffidavit,¶2)

The two agents came into Blanche’s house and questioned her for 30-45 minutes. During that questioning, Blanche told them that they should speak to the undersigned counsel, Mr. Sibley. In response, both agents indicated that they already had spoken with Mr. Sibley and that she should speak with them. (Blanche Palfrey Affidavit, ¶3)

Thereafter, they asked Blanche questions and she answered, regarding her daughter’s escort services and Blanche’s finances. They did not tape record the interview to Blanche’s knowledge, but were making written notes. (Blanche Palfrey Affidavit, ¶4).

Two additional facts are significant. First, Claimant was with her mother for the three days preceding this visit by Federal Agents to Blanche Palfrey and had left only minutes before the Federal Agents appeared at her door raising the specter that the Agents waited until Claimant had left in order to confront Claimant’s mother when she was along. Second, this Court must take judicial notice that it was scheduled to hold a hearing on the temporary restraining orders on June 5, 2007, the following day. ...Page 2 of 8... ('CLAIMANT'S MOTION TO LIFT STAY, DISMISS FOR OUTRAGEOUS GOVERNMENT CONDUCT AND FOR EVIDENTIARY HEARING,' filed to United States District Court for the District of Columbia, 06.14.2007)

The press hasn't caught-on much regarding these allegations against Couvillion, IRS agent Troy Burrus, or even the other U.S. postal inspector Joe Clark. Why wasn't he in Florida visiting Ms. Palfrey's ailing mother? As far as this writer can tell, only Alex Jones (and this writer) has written much about it. It would behoove the media to look into these areas a little more deeply...if they dare.

Then, there's the story at the Motley Fool that Ms. Palfrey's skills on the stock market are pretty solid. This goes back to early-May when the defendant moved to have her Dolby stocks sold as she felt that they'd matured, could depreciate, and that she wanted to use them to pay-down legal expenses in the civil arena. If it reveals anything at all, it's how daunting a civil forfeiture case can be for the accused in the United States. The difference in this case, according to Ms. Palfrey and her civil attorney Montgomery Blair Sibley, is that most defendants capitulate very early-on, which is accurate, hence the subsequent scrambling of the prosecution in the case. They thought this was going to be easy like all the others. Federal prosecutors aren't used to someone refusing to take a deal and fighting-back. The Motley Fool article doesn't say much, but it does show that Jeane Palfrey is a wise investor. They also make some snide remarks that paint her badly in other related articles, but that's their opinion and their right.

Don't choose a life of prostitution [Ed.-original emphasis]
Now, I know what you're thinking: The madam was right! (Ah-ah-ah! Remember -- alleged madam.) You're thinking that with a current price-to-earnings ratio of 34, against analysts' projected 19% growth in profits, Dolby is woefully overpriced, and it's sure to waste away, just as my debate's Palfrey predicted. But that's not necessarily so. [?!] Remember that the business often generates significantly greater cash profits than it reports as net income under generally accepted accounting principles [Ed.-or the exact opposite!]. That hasn't been the case so far this year -- the two numbers are almost precisely equal. (motley fool, 08.02.2007)

Yes, I was thinking this because she was right. She's been right about virtually everything this writer has looked into, and she wasn't lying about names on her phone records either. Remember that the same media that got us into the war in Iraq is still trying not to report on this story when they can get away with it. It's unfortunate, because one can imagine that many professional journalists are just itching to have their stories run on the Palfrey beat. Why wouldn't they? Because there are editors (pimps) and owners (expletive deleted), perhaps eliciting a Pavlovian response to save one's chances for: a raise, a promotion, or simply staying-on. Nobody said journalism was easy.

"Maria. I just met a girl named Maria."( and more on the same page): http://thehill.com/under-the-dome/nice-try-sen.-2007-08-02.html

Jeane Palfrey's Motions from June 14th, 2007 (w. affidavit of Blanche Palfrey): http://deborahjeanepalfrey.com/download/conduct.pdf

On Jeane Palfrey's Dolby stocks: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2007/08/02/dolby-wins-the-debate.aspx

"No Red Light District for Dolby" (pretty coy, eh?), 05.03.2007: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2007/05/03/no-red-light-district-for-dolby.aspx

"Is Your Broker a Prostitute?," 05.02.2007, where the debate over Dolby stock began: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2007/05/02/is-your-broker-a-prostitute.aspx

Ed. Update, 08.06.2007: Ms. Palfrey has assured me that the Hill article isn't news--the information in the filing by Couvillion is months-old, probably dating-back to October of 2006. A quick look at the original court filings by the prosecution confirms this. It reflects the lack-of-quality in reporting at thehill.com, as well as their cage-lining rag. Dick Morris writes for it, and he's been linked to being a client with Pamela Martin & Associates, though it is unconfirmed. Ever get the feeling you're being cheated? ;0)

Mrs. Vitter visits J-7?

"I'm a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary [Clinton]. If he does something like that, I'm walking away with one thing, and it's not alimony, trust me." --Wendy Vitter in July, making promises she cannot keep. (Times-Picayune)

J-7--Of course, it could be someone else from the same city in Louisiana, but it wouldn't surprise me, this guy does a lot of sinning (S-E-X, and I'm pretty sure he eats meat). If she wants me to find-out more, she can throw some money (Larry Flynt too). Why do I think it could be Mrs. Vitter? Whoever it was came directly to my site without a search of any sort, they knew it already. That might also make it his office in the town, who knows? This writer is still waiting for Wendy Vitter to show us that she does in-fact posess some of the motivation of Lorena Bobbitt in defending her life and honor. Maybe she just enjoys the misery of being cuckolded again-and-again-and-again.

It's funny, but this site's probably very popular with everyone in Ms. Palfrey's Pamela Martin & Associates phone records! Quality-over-quantity, something my fellow dopes in the flyover states don't grasp very well. Mrs. Vitter should read Edgar Allan Poe's "The Imp of the Perverse" in-order to understand herself and her husband better, but I doubt the damned have such abilities towards self-reflection (or genuflection)! How little has changed since Poe's time, we're still just as perverse in every sense and meaning of the word. Vitter was using the services of Pamela Martin & Associates for something, and wasn't it great that he did this even during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath? If Louisianans tolerate keeping Vitter, the imp of the perverse is them, and they must enjoy their misery. Suck on that one, Army Times. "Waiting for Roughead," a new absurdist play coming-soon.

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Want real journalism? Please send Greg Palast a few-bucks.

www.gregpalast.com --The investigative team has been doing some gangbusters work uncovering the caging list scandals, and so many others. Freedom has a price, and all-too-frequently in this civilization, it's in dollars. J-7 urges all readers to pitch-in to keep Mr. Palast's investigations going, they're crucial with a media that's owned by super rich, right-wing extremists. Real change requires sacrifices, and a few-bucks isn't going to hurt most of us. Give what you can, we did it in WWII, and we can do it now. We owe it to our children, their children, and rednecks who are too dumb to read this.

DON'T SEX ME, CARNIVORE: SOME VEGANS TOXICALLY NEUROTIC?

"I would not want to be intimate with someone whose body is literally made up from the bodies of others who have died for their sustenance. When you are vegan or vegetarian, you are very aware that when people eat a meaty diet, they are kind of a graveyard for animals."
--Nichola Kriek, of Christchurch, New Zealand.


"[crying] Animals are people, just like you and me!!"
--A female nut--and former cheerleader--I had the misfortune of meeting in college.


New Zealand--While I love meat, I do agree with many vegetarians that modern society consumes too-much of it...and then, there's the nut-jobs: vegans. Well, even more-specifically, it's women who are vegans. I believe this new study in New Zealand (with only 157 respondents, mind you) underscores something about our times. We all know that our technological-industrial world is destroying natural-habitats throughout the globe. Also, many women in non-traditional, Western bourgeois society think that they're all fat (just these women are correct in their assumptions).

The study is extremely narrow, was conducted by a department that appears to be biased towards the control group, and sounds pretty dodgy. A study like this deserves a larger control group, comprised of many thousands, country-by-country, from numerous age-ranges, ethnicities, classes, etc. . They should all be figured-in. But these new observations are very interesting nonetheless, and I believe, very telling about the respondents themselves. Frankly, they're terminally-neurotic. It's a very bizarre statement (or an aberrant behavior) for someone to refuse to have intimacy with someone simply because they eat meat. What's incredibly strange is that it all has an odd sense of self-appointed moral supremacy (as opposed to White supremacy). It resembles a religion, but I'm unsurprised that the majority of respondents in the study who expressed this conceit were women. It would be interesting to know their ages, but none of the articles appears to have a rundown on the demographics.

Human beings are omnivorous--we can go both-ways (pun-intended). Like other animals, we eat other animals for protein. We also have canines. Again, other animals eat each other. Do vegans go out into nature and admonish animals? Do they keep their carnivorous-pets from eating meat-based feed? Some do, and it's balmy. Taking a moral-stance in all of this presupposes there is someone in charge, it's religious (a world revulsion akin to the Manichean heresey, or the "Cathars"), and it pretends there is some objective-basis for human morality. It's certainly not nature's morality at-play here. Look, we all have days when meat just strikes us as disgusting, that moment that Burroughs and Kerouac hit-on when we realize "what's at the end of every fork." Vegans have taken this revulsion into la-la land, but they are correct about us all eating too-much meat, it's true.

But let's be honest: would you want to have sex with someone who's that endlessly preachy and neurotic anyway? I wouldn't, not-at-all. Right, we've all dated Catholics at one time, but this is worse, far-worse, and appears to be strongly-isolated to women (many of whom who fear fatness and aging, which is good). Taken from another vantage-point, do they make their case against eating meat that well? Do they do anything except alienate others with their oddball sense of moral superiority? A number of them whom I had the misfortune of knowing were well-beyond my own misanthropy, and I believe that that's what you have at-the-core of many of their beliefs--particularly with the hardcore elements of vegetarianism. I myself wouldn't want to have sex with someone whose body is made up of dead plants, dead bacteria and microorganisms, dead-bugs, and dead animals--that's what soil is comprised of. They wish to escape the biological-processes, a futile endeavor ("As primitive as can be.").

Press.com.nz: http://www.stuff.co.nz/AAMB4/aamsz=300x44_MULTILINK/4147483a6009.html

Eli Lilly Visits J-7...again.

J-7--Has Randall L. Tobias returned to his desk in Indy? Maybe, you tell me. Sure, it could be some bored clerk, bureaucrat--even some exectutive who wants some facts, or at to at least check... www.dcphonelist.com . It's good to check one's site meter, it really is, I recommends it. They try, they really do. What they're trying to do, I have no idea. What I do know is that the Bush and Quayle families have controlling shares in Eli Lilly, ahem.

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A note to new readers...

Ed.-Many of you will be coming her based-on searches of the legal predicament of Deborah Jeane Palfrey. Most articles on this site are located from May-through-July, but a quick search of the blog with Ms. Palfrey's last name should yield what you're looking for. Read away, it's been quite a ride, and it's hardly over, though even the casual observer of the scandal will note that it has its ebbs-and-flows (just like this site).Is every speculation and contention accurate? That's for you--the public--to find-out and decide. J-7 encourages individuals to reach their own-conclusions, irrespective of my own or the mainstream media's. You're all smart enough, I have faith.