Another brilliant and funny as hell review by Nick the Bookman)

Thus spake The Mad Prophet Of The Airwaves back in the mid-seventies. Things are going from bad to worse. The world is having a global meltdown. Manners are a thing of the past. Up yours, Jack, I've got mine etc. Wars. Fiscal failures on an epic scale. Wilder weather extremes. Disunity. Disharmony. Dystopic convulsions. Financial fuck-ups. The NWO. The Bilderbergers. The CFR. Where the hell does one start to stop-stop-stop-erk-op? The stutter-start howls of anguish to an indifferent Universe. The world's woes are sideswiped by irrelevance. Everyone who can is having their meltdowns in the public and VR arenas. Film at 11.00. Film in real time. Non-stop films ad nauseum until the end of our Spacetime Continuum. Which is a shorter existence than infinity and fuck it, mine's a double Soma latte...

For the third time this year, I've had another "book adventure". Another book I didn't know I needed (because I already had it somewhere in my library) has turned up at the right time to foreshadow coming disasters. This latest one that picked me is Douglas Botting's "Gerald Durrell The Authorised Biography". A second remake of his idyllic childhood in Corfu in-between the Two World Wars is now showing on British TV. He founded The Jersey Zoo, which opened 26/3/1959 - a day that later proved to be a historic event in the history of species conservation. He wrote numerous books on his travels and animal collecting expeditions and subsequent breeding programs to stave off the omnipresent threat of species extinction. He was in The Top Three of great naturalists. Along with Dr. Desmond Morris and Sir David Attenborough. I was skimming through the book and was reminded of an incident in 1986 when a child fell into the gorilla enclosure. Jambo, the silverback patriarch of the lowland gorillas in the Zoo stood protectively over the unconscious child until his keepers were able to enter the area and retrieve five-year old Levan Merritt. He made a successful recovery. The incident made the TV news worldwide. A low-key, low-tech rescue and no fuss. Then came the news of a similar incident at the Cincinnati Zoo...

Americans sure do things differently. A four-year old boy hopped into the gorilla exhibit to play with the gorillas. Mum wasn't paying heed. Probably got the attention span and awareness of a chair leg. Panic! Disaster! Melt-down! The child was eventually rescued, but Harambe (a western lowland gorilla playing the Jambo role) was shot dead to preserve the boy's safety. He was 17 years and one day old. Happy birthday. Bang! Bang! The drama took place on Saturday 28/5/2016. The Zoo Director, the exotically-named Thane Maynard, was in "no doubt the boy's life was in danger" and defended the shoot-to-kill policy. The mother who outed herself on social media as Michelle Gregg rejected charges she was responsible for Harambe's death by failing to supervise her son. She shouldn't be blamed because "accidents (read shit) happens".

My first gut contrary instinct was to feel they are both idiots and should have been shot instead of Harambe. Stupidity after all carries its own death sentence. It's a capital offence. Just look at The Darwin Awards where the belly-flopping, shallow-diving residents of the gene pool reside. Wow, their demise means we just became a micro-fraction smarter as a race, thanks to the self-removal of these unfortunates from the joys of earthly existence. Then I thought, that's not nice. Old hippy that I be, I should not be going against the Laughter Sweetness Decency happy thoughts that shaped my Sixties/Seventies outlook.

Now the worm Ouroboros has turned on itself with a vengeance. People are pissed off that the Zoo executed an endangered species animal under its protection to save the Hillbilly Mom and the Halfwit Son. A Facebook page called "Justice for Harambe" was created and has had over three thousand likes so far that I know [Editor L-G: "147,330 Likes, 1,550,107 People talking about this. Almost half a million people signed the Justice for Harambe petition!"]

Michelle was excoriated via her Facebook page and has since cancelled her account. Apparently people were even more vicious than me. The police have opened an investigation into the family behaviour and how much blame they should get. A Government panel is going after the Zoo for killing an endangered animal. Three earlier incidents have been revealed. Two polar bears escaped their enclosure in 2010 and wandered into the tourist dining area. A cheetah got loose in 2008 and some people were bitten by snakes in 2000 or so. Cincinnati doesn't seem to have much nous in running its Zoo.

Incidentally, Thane is an unusual name. It's a Scottish term equivalent to Laird or Baron. Not quite Royalty, nor a serf, but a member of the Landed Gentry. As in Thane of Cawdor ("Macbeth"). And there was Thane Eugene Cesar - Robert Kennedy's Secret Service Agent who was about five feet behind him when he was assassinated in 1968. Probably helped to shoot him. Or so the Secret Sinister Government history runs. Following in the ignoble footsteps of William Greer who was JFK's driver that fateful day in Dallas. He was said to have turned around and fired that fatal shot that killed Kennedy. Apparently, better film footage exists than on the Zapruder Film. Check out Milton William Cooper's videos on Youtube. Meanwhile, a recent BBC report says the Tanzanian elephant could be extinct in six years. One third of the Great Barrier Reef has been "bleached" sterile. The weather is getting wilder in the American Mid-West and West. Probably due to HAARP technology being utilised in a very bad way.

Despite every sane and sensible person on Earth calling for the Rio Olympics to be cancelled or moved elsewhere, the all powerful vices of ego and greed means they won't. Lord Coe, the top dude in the IOC thinks it's better to have a Zika-induced pandemic rather than upset the big money interests. Tim Noonan wrote a smart, succinct article in the Sunday Post on 22/5/2016. Echoes my thoughts better than I did in my last report. He mentioned Zika. I didn't. I've always suspected that it escaped from some US Military bio-warfare Lab. Fort Dedrick, perhaps? A new scary disease is needed to start extensive population depletion because, well, AIDS just isn't working fast enough in getting rid of targeted undesirable elements of our global society. Rich, white and charmless are the tastes of the day. Zika targets pregnant mums and their foetal attractions. Turns them into lookalikes of "Schlitzi", the loveable "Pinhead" in the 1932 film "Freaks". And it could get worse and result in sterilisation of the mothers. Maybe that's the Evil Plan. Population eradication until it's a viable, manageable half a billion strong. That's 500-million breeders and slaves to serve the One Percent Rulers. Who might well be despicable reptilian ETs under the skin. And don't forget Wormwood is still coming...

So No Women. Bye-bye. Which is a somewhat contrived segue into an older part of this story. Namely, the Blues Night at the Lamma Grill last month with Winston on acoustic guitar and snazzy fingerpicking technique. And a voice like a gravel crusher having a rust wrenching collapse. He's joined by Stanley with the tiny ponytail and impeccable flute and Sam doing some sterling slap bass work and a little bit of electric guitar as well. Could well become Lamma's answer to Bootsy Collins. As for No Women. Bye Bye, the boys do a great rendition of "No Woman, No Cry" which is my homonymic rhyme point. There were less than a dozen people in the Lamma Grill that night and we all enjoyed the vibe. Marley (a lovely lady singer with the trio) chipped in with a great version of "Summertime". I'm not sure if "Marley" is the correct spelling of her name. I meant it as a tribute/reference to the song above, which is of course by Bob Marley. Stanley sent me three videos of the night. Lamma-Gung chose "The House Of The Rising Sun" as his Lamma Video of the Week, so you might have seen what you missed? I'm just playing catch-up. Stanley's lead vocal on a hilarious version of "The Three-Legged Chicken" was a highlight. It's followed by a song about moneylenders. My notes say "good riffage with a hint of The Who". The trio enjoyed each other's skills and the signs hopefully look good for future collaborations.

The Winston Experience @ Lamma Grill videos:




And what about the Artist formerly known as Glyph formerly known as "The Artist formerly known as Prince". His Purple Reign is over. Apparently he had terminal AIDS which he was convinced that he'd be able to "pray away". Didn't work and his addiction to industrial strength painkillers (dying of a Fentanyl overdose) was revealed. By Sinead O'Connor among others. A recent National Enquirer printed possible reconstruction photos showing Prince slumped over in his private lift at Paisley Park. He had overdosed deliberately after ending a near week long bender in which he worked more or less non-stop sorting out his final affairs. He died on 21/4/2016. Aged 57. It's likely his nearest and dearest knew this, which is why his body was cremated almost immediately after his autopsy. Those results haven't been released. The cover-up starts? Along with the unseemly bunfight by what seems like 600 or so near relatives and family kin. Who's in the will and who's out of it? What, there might not be one? At least he lived longer than Michael Jackson, a sometime frenemy.

And Prince also played at the HK Government sponsored SARS Festival in 2003. Along with Neil Young and Crazy Horse and two nights of The Rolling Stones to wrap it all up. Their first visit to China. Meanwhile, Papa Wemba collapsed and died on stage a day later at the age of 66. An African legend. There have been a lot of celebrity deaths this year. Mostly Old Timers. Which is a bummer of a comment to make. It means that boring people called Justin are bothering the Top of the Pops. And their music is even more forgettable than white on white aural wallpaper. Dimly heard/seen covering the exterior of an igloo on a full-on whiteout explosion of swirly snowflakes. Mass produced in white.

Oops, almost forgot. Howard Beale never existed in reality. Only in reelity. Cinema Verite. Film. He was played by Peter Finch in the movie "Network" and his performance won him the first posthumous Best Actor Award. Was it 1975? Can't remember offhand. But his manic mantra/incipient nervous breakdown rings truer now than it ever did. We're all mad as hell, but alas, we're gonna have to take it. At about the same time, the late Dr. Gonzo, aka Hunter S. Thompson wrote an unnerving observation in his classic book "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail". It still resonates and it goes "Jesus. How low do you have to stoop in this country to become President?" He was referring to his political Nemesis, Richard M. Nixon. The President who was ousted in a Coup d'Etat over the deliberately bungled Watergate burglary. If Hunter could only have seen the political pub brawl masquerading as the 2016 Election, he would have elevated his sights a lot lower. The Donald versus Billary.

If that's how the final two placing pans out, you know for damn sure that both are already signed up and ready to obey the orders of the One Percenters. These guys own both sides of every election and the corruption proceeds unimpeded with irrelevant sideshows to defocus the populace. That's Joe Sixpack. Fred (West) the Plumber. Or Babs Bubblehead to you. Pick your own level of immorality and stupidity and stand out of the way. Meanwhile, we still don't know if the UK is going Brexit or Britin. And the cashless society is drawing inexorably closer. And by the time you finish this story, at least one more species will have become extinct.

Cheers, ntb.

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