The Freaky Times Electronic Newsletter: For your perusal.

[BongTalk@aol.com]

THE FREAKY TIMES
#1, SEPTEMBER 1995
The Electronic, All-Text Journal of The Freak Show!

Author: Albert Barger
Editor: D. Bhaviorist
 
WELCOME TO THE PARTY
 Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the first Freaky Times newsletter.
 This is an offshoot of our public access television program The Freak Show!
 There are several purposes intended for this periodical.  We want, first of
all, to start reaching out to people outside of our local Indianapolis
market. We are also interested in finding local contacts to take the show to
cable systems in other cities.  Please let us know if you are interested.
This written format is, in itself, a forum for the personal expression which
is at the core of our freakdom, er, freedom of speech.  
   And finally, we are offering some freaky merchandise for sale, primarily
copies of the show itself.  Even if you are not interested in actually buying
the tapes, the descriptions in the ad copy will give you a good idea of what
the show is like.
   "Buy" the way (just a little sublim advert for you), subscriptions to this
electronic newsletter are free via the miracle of e-mail. We can also send
you the newsletter free via snail mail (USPS), but please send us a couple of
bucks for postage for the next 12 issues.  You can contact us via e-mail:  

BONGTALK@AOL.COM 
or at 
The Freak Show! 
POB 18236, Indianapolis, IN 46218.
   
 Here's hoping that you are entertained and provoked. So, with all the
enthusiasm our white suburban asses can muster, let's get this party started
right! Bow wow wow, yippee yo, yippee yay (sic?) !!
 

1-900 F BARNEY
 "I love you, you love me..."  Remember?
   Hi, gang, it's your old pal Barney here.  
   Are you lonely, and in need of affection?  I know I am.  So why don't you
call me at 1-900 F BARNEY?  
   It's been a long time.  Remember years ago when you were a child, and your
parents left your love to me?  They didn't have enough time to give you, so
they left your love to me.  I was always there for you.  You'd pull my
string, and I'd tell you that you were special, and ask you to hug me.
 Remember?
   Well, we've both grown up a lot since then, and now I need your special,
mature loving.  Call me, and tell me about the special grown up hugs and
kisses you want from me now.  I'm here, and I've still got time for you. 
   Call me NOW, and let me give you my purple loving.  It's been so long, and
a dinosaur gets lonely.  I can still give you love that your parents never
could.  I'm just aching to share my purple passion with you RIGHT NOW.  
   Call me, and we'll talk about all those grown up things your parents
wouldn't talk to you about.
  MAKE THAT CALL...
  1-900 F-BARNEY
  I'm waiting... for you!
 
PS: Al's afterthoughts on 1-900 F BARNEY.
  There are few things I find more rewarding than finding a way to use
perverted sexual humor at the expense of an empty entertainment icon to make
a serious critique of our media culture. 
   In this case, I'm after the oft-stated but rarely actively avoided ill
effects of letting TV raise your children, and the ruthlessness of commercial
pandering to even our most pathetic neuroses.
   Barney, however, is on PBS, so of course charges of crass commercialism
against his creators would be ridiculous.  Of course.
 
FOOD PHILOSOPHY  
   Life is a constant struggle to improve our conditions and work our way up
the ladder.  Our ancestors proved to be a very competitive breed, placing
humans firmly at the very tip-top of the food chain.  It is our minimal duty
to maintain the status we inherited.  So, then, let me summarize my
philosophical position in a series of disconnected platitudes, just right for
the typical consumer of food, and other preprocessed, digestible tidbits such
as daily meditations, CNN Factoids, and PETA tracts:
 
  "I don't feel right about eating a meal unless something with consciousness
died for it".

 "I'll stop eating animals when animals do."

 "When eating animals is outlawed, only outlaws (and animals) will eat
animals!"
_______________________________
 
   Animals think they're pretty smart
   They shit on the ground
   And see in the dark
     -"Animals"  by David Byrne of Talking Heads
 
 
 
 



Dear Newt...
   Newt Gingrich is proposing a bill before congress to provide an automatic
death penalty for drug smugglers, limiting them to one appeal and 18 months
to fight their convictions.  He contends that these mandatory executions will
kill so many people that the flow of drugs into the country will decline.
   Please allow me to respond:
 
   Newt! You are a hypocritical fascist fuck.
   You and yours say that you want to decrease the power of government, and
leave people alone to live their own lives as they please.  You all
(particularly Jesse Helms) are quite happy to recognize such rights for
people in the tobacco industry, for example, and indeed to give them a nice
fat taxpayer subsidy to further their pursuits of happiness.  
   On the other hand, however, citizens and taxpayers who wish to use their
freedom to alter their body chemistry with substances of which you do not
approve (for whatever reason) get no such recognition.
   There is no property more private than your own body.  You oppose
increased inspection and regulation of factories that dump carcinogens into
the air that ends up on other people's property (e.g., their lungs), but you
are perfectly willing to hire do-gooders with guns to climb up my very
bladder to see if I've been smoking pot.  Well, PISS ON YOU.
   Destroying the Bill of Rights (which, by the way, was printed on hemp
paper) and mass murder of the private businessmen who sell us these chemicals
does not constitute "getting the government off our backs." (Oh, now you've
done it.  I'm ranting and raving like an insane dope fiend.)
   While we're at it, let's look briefly at the well-known endemic violence
associated with illegal drugs.  Almost certainly this violence is the major
justification you will offer for the mass murders you propose, but you and
your colleagues and predecessors are the ones primarily responsible for this
pervasive atmosphere of violence, and this proposal is a perfect example of
why.  
   Drugs are not violent; they are inanimate objects.  The buying and selling
of marijuana, LSD or even heroin is no more inherently violent than the
business of distributing cigarettes, alcohol or Prozac.  If lots of people
want to buy a product, there will be people to supply it.  Simple market
economics.  (I'm sure you've heard of the concept.)  
   The violence (and exorbitant prices) come from the laws governments pass
against these businesses, and the increasing ruthlessness used in enforcing
those laws.
   Contrast the older, benign image of dope-dealing and drug culture
personified by the Cheech and Chong film idiom against the modern ugly
reality personified by such people as Pablo Escobar and countless domestic
gang bangers.  The primary difference is not 20 years of smoking pot.  It is
decades of demagogic politicians and their goon squads constantly ratcheting
up the severity of legal penalties and the ruthlessness of their enforcement.
 Peaceful pothead hippies have been run out of the business, jailed or
killed.
   With these modern high prices, there will be people selling drugs; and
with this modern death penalty, the sellers who survive will be the ones
willing to kill absolutely anyone and everyone who they think even might
snitch on them.  There's no place here for Cheech and Chong; hey, they just
wanted to get high and have a good time. 
   By the way, Newt, will your death penalty swift and sure apply to drug
smuggling done or overseen by your own "intelligence" agencies, such as the
CIA?  Will any of your prosecutors or grand juries be questioning your old
buddy, former CIA director George Bush?  
   Of course not.  About the first time some prosecutor comes sniffing around
an "intelligence" operative, a couple of scary men with automatic weapons in
their trenchcoats will show up muttering vague syllables about "national
security," and that will be the end of it.  Indeed, killing off some of the
independent competition may improve your market share.
   Let me sum it up, then.  I was real pleased to see a bunch of
mealy-mouthed socialist Democrats take it in the ass, but trading them in for
hard-assed national socialists like you and yours is no real improvement.
   This is one old country boy you ain't fooling.  Yeah, you believe in
freedom, all right-- freedom for everyone to do whatever you and your
corporate and religious backers want us to.
 
  
  Gimme Liberty or Death,
 
  Al Barger
 
PS to our readers:  I apologize for the low humor quotient here, but
sometimes shit just ain't funny, though I'd bet Dana Carvey could drive Newt
to suicide if he put his mind to it.
 
                                    
STUFF TO BUY  
  Good people, we need at least a little money to finance our anti-social (or
at least anti-socialist) shenanigans, but we hate pleading for a handout like
some worthless socialite on PBS.  We'd much rather offer you something of
value for your money, such as...
 
THE FREAK SHOW!
Volume I - Shows 1 to 4
   Starting with Al's classic first Bong Talk:  he smokes some kind bud, and
talks about his experience as a subject of a "routine" random DEA drug search
while riding a Greyhound bus from Oklahoma City, reaching the conclusion that
Thomas Jefferson, for one, would be advocating the assassination of DEA
agents. A witty, downhome excursion into "no-no" topics, just two prescient
weeks before the Oklahoma City bombing. Coincidence? 
   Also included is a wry philosophical analysis of that country music
patriotic classic by Bill Anderson, "Where  Have All the Heroes Gone?",  in
which Bill laments the passing of real heroes such as Winston Churchill
"whose two fingers raised together meant victory, not just a
let-your-enemy-have-it-all kind of artificial peace."
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!
   Self-connoted Jesus freak Todd Yarling sings his original Christian grunge
hymn "Come, Holy Spirit." Christian fanaticism never sounded so good!
    And we have a puppet play, featuring the debut of Dr. Red Rover, Ph.D.
from the Department of Men's Studies, teaching his how-to class, "Sexual
Harassment 101."
   And that's just the first show!
  
 Other highlights of this two hour dogma buster cum variety show include the
"social analysis as phone sex ad" called "1-900 F BARNEY." 
   Check out Todd Yarling's biblically sanctioned immortal ode to "The
Feminist Attorney,"  an actual song with a real melody and real-live hooks.
 (REM, are you listening?  This is the frequency.)  
   Also, Al shows how he handles dumb bigots as he tells his down home story
describing a one-sided verbal sparring match with a local redneck in "The
Legend of the 101% Rebel."
   Don't think we lack sympathy for the suffering:  watch as D. Bhaviorist
and Al mount a condolence movement (complete with sympathy cards) to aid
Christians in overcoming their 2000 year state of denial of the death of
Jesus, so that they can finally complete the grieving process and --at long
last-- get on with their "lives".
   And all this stuff isn't half the tape.  It's more fun than a month of
Letterman, and more enlightening than a year of Rush Limbaugh.

WARNING:  The Surgeon General recommends viewing only one show at a time,
lest the intellectual de-compression cause your freakin' head to explode!
VHS   2 HOURS   ONLY $9.00 (CHEAP!)
 
 
 
THE FREAK SHOW!
Volume II - Shows 5 to 8
 
   The production values soar, the philosophical points cut deeper, and the
laughs get more twisted in Volume II.
   D. Bhaviorist performs his composition "He's Not Lisa"," perhaps the all
time greatest acapella homoerotic country and western psycho ballad.
   "Al's Modest Proposal for Judicial Reform" becomes a toy play as Sebastian
the Crab and ET (that's ET for "Extra Trusting") explain why Christians
should not be allowed to serve on juries, followed immediately by Jesus freak
Todd Yarling's compelling Christian grunge adaptation of "Psalm 23." 
   In "Pre-born Meets the One-Eyed Monster", an aborted fetus and her
polka-dotted pimp offer an unassailable defense of child sex slavery:  "Being
a baby hooker sure beats being a Choice."
   Elvis makes his biggest comeback ever on "The Mark Hamill Musical
Showcase" after an extended stay in a little town called Deliverance.  "A
DING-DANG-DO!"
   Al throws a Bong Talk party celebrating the anniversary of Abe Lincoln's
assassination, and dares to tell why.
   Al says "ixnay" to Yahweh the Biblical Hitler, devoting a whole show to a
"genocide special," including Biblical analysis, Al's formal declaration of
political non-allegiance, an indictment of George Bush for war crimes, and of
Lee Greenwood as propaganda minister for the military-industrial complex.
 (Greenwood's hit "God Bless the USA"  gets Al so excited, however, that he
finds himself wanting to "squirt a big load all over the nearest flag."  But
then maybe that's just the bong talking.)  And don't even ask how Pearl Jam
fits into all this.  Oy vey!
   That touches on almost half of this two hour party monster.  More outrage
than a year of G. Gordon Liddy, more education than 12 years of public
school, and weirder than a month of Pee Wee's Playhouse!  (Actually, we're
not sure about that last part.)
  
WARNING:  Do not buy this tape.  It is bad art for bad people.  Authority
figures in your life will not be amused. Teachers, preachers, parents, and
probation officers will be very disappointed if they catch you with this
tape, and YOU KNOW THEY WILL.
VHS   2 HOURS   $9.00
 
                          
AL'S HAIR
   We're so committed to our multi-media freakdom that we are willing to sell
(some) body parts.  Al will send you part of his hair, along with a
certificate of authenticity signed by Al personally.
  Call for quotes on other body products (e.g., dandruff, sperm, blood, or
nail clippings. Offers for the One True Cross void where prohibited)
FREELANCE PROTEIN   APPROX. 1 FOOT     $5
  


GIVING THE DEVIL HIS DUE
   On September 12th, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama,
made a visit to Washington DC.  To appease the Chinese government that
controls his homeland by virtue of brute force, the Clinton White House
carefully held him at arms' length, and made sure that there were no pictures
of the two of them together.   
   There was at least one prominent politician, however, who was perfectly
happy to be seen associating with the Dalai Lama:  Jesse Helms.  If you have
even the vaguest idea of Freaky Times philosophy, you can guess that none of
us have much use for this, uh, "person", though I must admit that he is
certainly some variety of freak.  Anyway, in this case he was doing the right
thing, for whatever reason.  For this, I commend him.  
 
PARTING THOUGHTS
  
 If only by default, THE FREAK SHOW! is associated with "the underground" or
"the counterculture," whatever people mean by such descriptions.
   That's fine, but let us take pains here to dissociate ourselves from the
common nihilism of "Boho for Boho's sake" culture.  To that end, let us part
with a paraphrased benediction from the most awesome, Tom T Hall:
    
 "I love coffee in a cup  
        Little fuzzy pups
        Bourbon in a glass...
        And grass
 
    
 And I love you, too.
 
 
 Sincerely,
 Albert Barger
 D. Bhaviorist
 
 and the rest of the agitators, malcontents, conspiracy theorists, and
  closet freaks at 20 Rock, the Freaky Times cyberplex.