I wanna see the movies of my dreams


* What is in Popeye's pipe? [via] excerpt:

"...Yet is the spinach which gives Popeye his super-strength really a metaphor for another magical herb? Have children around the world been adoring a hero who is really a heavy consumer of the forbidden weed – marijuana?

"The evidence is circumstantial, but it is there, and when added together it presents a compelling picture that, for many readers at least, Popeye's strength-giving spinach is meant as a clear metaphor for the miraculous powers of marijuana."
...
"During the 1920s and '30s, the era when Popeye was created, 'spinach' was a very common code word for marijuana. One classic example is 'The Spinach Song,' recorded in 1938 by the popular jazz band Julia Lee and Her Boyfriends. Performed for years in clubs thick with cannabis smoke, along with other Julia Lee hits like 'Sweet Marijuana,' the popular song used spinach as an obvious metaphor for pot.

"In addition, anti-marijuana propaganda of the time claimed that marijuana use induced super-strength. Overblown media reports proclaimed that pot smokers became extraordinarily strong, and even immune to bullets. So tying in Popeye's mighty strength with his sucking back some spinach would have seemed like an obvious cannabis connection at the time."
...
"Further, in the comics and cartoons made during the '60s, Popeye had a dog named Birdseed. Surely the writers who named Popeye's dog during this "flower power" era were aware that cannabis was in fact America's number one source of birdseed until it was banned?

"Another slightly different drug reference occurs in the 1954 cartoon, Greek Mirthology. In the cartoon, Popeye tells his nephews the story of his ancestor, Hercules. Hercules, who looks just like Popeye, is shown sniffing white garlic to gain his super strength. By the end of the cartoon Hercules has discovered spinach and switches over to it. Is this a metaphor for the benefits of cannabis over cocaine or snuff?"

* Sign this petition to get Neil Young to release "Time Fades Away" on cd. [via]

* Top tenconservative idiots. excerpt:

"2. Scott McClellan
The real scandal of the Jeff Gannon story, is, of course, 'what did the White House know, and when did they know it?' - and as usual, they're pretending not to know anything. However, last week Scott McClellan admitted that he knew Jeff Gannon was using an alias, because anyone who wants to get into a White House press briefing must provide their real name. Yet he consistently referred to Gannon/Guckert as 'Jeff' when calling on him during press briefings - how kind of Scott to keep up the pretense. Additionally, Gannon didn't have full press credentials (or did he?) - in fact, he'd previously been denied a press pass to cover Congress on the grounds that Talon wasn't a real news organization. Yet somehow he was able to obtain daily passes to White House briefings whenever he felt like it. At a press conference last week, McClellan said, '...[Gannon], like anyone else, showed that he was representing a news organization that published regularly, and so he was cleared two years ago to receive daily passes, just like many others are.' That's odd, because according to this DailyKos analysis, Talon started publishing 'news' on April 1, 2003, and Jeff Gannon's first report from a White House briefing was on April 3, 2003. Considering that Gannon's partner in crime Bobby Eberle is a big-shot Texas Republican, and considering that it only took two days to come up with a White House 'Jeff' on the many occasions he called on him for a question, it's hard to avoid the stench of rotting bullpoop emanating from the White House press secretary."

FYI: Americablog promises "a big Gannon story" at some point today.