It's Bill Gates' last day at Microsoft. He is retiring to work full time on philanthropy, as yesterday the Dow dipped so low that headlines appeared saying it had been the worst June since the great depression, while blogs have simmered down a bit whispering that Steve Jobs is dying, yet the apple (aapl) keeps falling too. So is it the price of oil or the credit crunch following the subprime loan mess that's causing stocks to plummet, while everything gets more and more expensive - gas, coffee, cigarettes, NACHOS (isn’t there a better biofuel than corn?¹ The Brazilians² seem to have a different... better? ... worse? ...idea) - as we enter as they say, stagflation, or is the real underlying panic the fact that the Alpha Centaurians are taking our two favorite geeks away from us? Gates and, man I hope not, Jobs? In any case, you’ll still be able to get your 3G iphones with your government gift card, if you haven’t already blown it on Nachos, gas or crack. Pray that this guy isn’t really becoming our era’s Rasputin, and that the hedge funds and amateur short sellers of the world don’t send the American (and world's to follow) economy back to the stone age soon. Should be an interesting day... on Wall Street, if anyone cares.

-Renic Lee

¹ For more on corn and subsidized corn farming see King Korn. Also a lot more on corn and how much of you is made up of corn, carbon wise, FZ suggests Michael Pollan's The Onivore's Dilemma.

² The Brazilians are running cars on sugar based ethanol, basically high 'tane rum...!

Wish we could expound on this film clip in the science section. Would like to view more on this "study" from the "Film Board of Canada." In the clip found on Frinko, we see the effects on web building while spiders are under the influence of everything from marijuana to LSD to everyone's favorite pick me up, crack. Okay I will admit it, as someone who is banned from Canada for having had a DUI (not there, but in the states), it's nice to see that at least spiders are allowed a little fun in The Great White North. -CM.

I know I swore I wouldn't be fooled again after getting shammed at that Sham 69 show like six months back, but I did, and I felt even more dumb because I wrote a listing up for the Christian Death show that happened last night at the Knitting Factory. In case you missed it, here it is again in all its embarrassing totality:

After nearly 20 years of really confusing iterations, it can be, mostly, settled that this is the closest to the original Christian Death that Christian Death is going to get, unless Rozz Williams somehow lifts himself from his self-imposed grave. Which he is not, unfortunately for all his legion of goth-punk followers, fans of the great album Only Theater of Pain, and other early Christian Death recordings before all the Confusion of Pain started with Rozz and Valor Kand, who owns the legal rights to the band name Christian Death. Yes, it's all very complex for those who want to follow the trail; for others, it's simple enough to say there were once two Christian Death(s), and that, for most of the true believers, this (sometimes referred to as Christian Death 1334) is the path Rozz would have  chosen. Now fronted by goth-queen Eva O, of Shadow Project, of former-lover Richard "The Night Stalker" Ramirez infamy, of former-lover Rozz Williams fame, Christian Death incarnation number ? brings all the goths to the yard at the Knitting Factory.

It should have told me something when I walked in to the club to about 12 people in the crowd, and about four goth kids dressed straight from the mall and looking about 20 years old, at most. I think I even texted my girlfriend that there were more amps on stage than people in the audience, but then again, it was an opening band. I should have left when the Christian Death roadie started duct taping silk roses and Halloween-decorative cobwebs to the stage and monitors, but I stayed to realize the fullness of my mistake. In my defense, the information about Eva O came from a (supposedly) very trustworthy source, of course now which is highly suspect, because who appeared last evening was not Eva O, but rather Valor Kand and his merry band of pranksters who looked like they were the embodiment of a vision concepted by a corporate director's board and some top sellers from Hot Topic. Yes, this is what a goth band looks like! Although I wanted to very badly, I didn't heckle the band (who was awful, as you might expect). I felt bad enough they dragged this name on for 20+ years only to play a show in New York City to 30 people. The four goth girls danced dreamily, in a way that should be reserved for the privacy of their bedrooms, and I took note that this was the worst show I'd ever been to. I snapped the blurry picture in order to remind myself of what a terrible night I was having and that this was surely no dream. —mkl

The Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, NY has launched Moving Image Source, a handsome new site for top-notch film criticism and scholarship. Edited by the incomparable Dennis Lim—former film editor at the Village Voice—the site already features a typically firebrand piece from Michael Atkinson on director Werner Herzog, as well as a look at forgotten 1960s auteur William Klein by the legendary Jonathan Rosenbaum.

Listening to NPR this morning, heard a profile which seemed to be about Barack Obama, and the Sex Pistols were playing in the background of an Obama speech - the intro to "Pretty Vacant." The thought crept in, well if change is what this campaign is about, that's quite a smidgen more radical than the Clinton's Fleetwood Mac theme song for the '92 election. (Personally, well, that's "cool," but maybe not the best idea to win over those "swing states".)

But listening further, it was the 40th anniversary of Bobby Kennedy's assasination that was the focus of the story, and there were of course again comparisons to Kennedy's campaign and Obama's.

And the Sex Pistols thing....the song was there as a nifty snippet simply forshadowing the next story on "Punk Rope," the newest fitness craze. Jumping rope to punk music that is...See here at punkrope.com.

So what should the official Obama theme song be? Is there one? Any thoughts?

Oh and apparently Clinton is to officially concede this Saturday.

Well we had already mentioned that Obama had clinched the Democratic nomination earlier yesterday, and then upon arriving home the TV is on CNN. And of course there's Wolf Blitzer center stage, the one man situation room, bringing us the "breaking news" around 9 pm eastern time. Blitzer, if I recall, also helped bring us (into) the Iraq war a few times with official situation room announcements. This pronouncement however seems much more hopeful.

While most of the media seems ready to move on to a decided fight between Obama and McCain, it was still unclear last night whether or not Clinton conceded.

*BTW that Blitzer is again by Mr. Jock, to whom Fanzine promised more would be written about if he drew him... Not to editorialize, but all I could think to add was the "(into)" above, which was somehow left out before. Was thinking there might a good youtube video to sum up the Blitzer effect, prior to the second US/Iraq war, but instead only found this.

But that's not really the news. Congrats to Obama...

...ahem, someone in our shared office said, upon hearing that Kurt Cobain's ashes were stolen from a (nooo...really?) "heart-shaped" handbag (not box). "You mean not like teen spirit?...doesn't smell like...?"

Anyway, just got a text about it from our pal Danny Jock, whose Cobain water color graced the pages of our last Talk Show. Cobain, a hero to many of many generations committed suicide in 1994 and most of his ashes were already scattered in a river in Wiskah, WA. Last time I heard anything from Courtney Love was a year ago (vaguely in person) when she pulled up at a hotel in Soho and started yelling at someone on the street from the back of a black cadillac Escalade... Now you see this was what I was afraid of...with this blogging thing that is. In any case, it's in the news.

In other real news, Barack Obama has technically clinched the Democratic Party's nomination. Really?... Eyes will be glued to what Hillary comes out with next.

Well, it's official now, as they say. Democrats finally decided to seat delegates from Michigan and Florida, but punitively gave them only half a vote each. It was a six-of-one, half-dozen-of-the-other kind of deal, and Democrats from both of those states should probably feel grateful they got anything out of it at all since the two states held their primaries against their own party's rules (Both candidates originally agreed that the two states' delegates shouldn't be seated at all). Clinton's supporters are the most outraged—she gained 24 new delegates after yesterday's decision, but still trails "Bro-bama" by 176, making it, again, virtually impossible to claim the presidential nomination. What's not clear yet, however, is how far she is willing to go and how much of her opponent's credibility, and public confidence in him, she is willing to try to destroy before he wins anyhow. Obama has already moved on to bigger things, but it's all following the Democrat playbook of making a mockery of "party unity" while watching the Republicans roll to victory, then setting upon each other again and laying the blame. Who will be this year's Ralph Nadar?