Terry D. and I knew about the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, Texas mostly because we were living in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Ann Arbor's own (mostly) Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen had recorded Live, Deep in the Heart of Texas there, so we viewed it as special although we really didn't know why.

So, one night in between sets of the Silvertones in the basement of The Blind Pig (that's a pure, wild ass guess ... but likely) Terry informed me that he had heard that the Armadillo World Headquarters was in some kind of trouble and might not be around much longer. Futhermore it was his strongly held opinion that we should go down to Austin, Texas and see a show there while we still could.  Finally and as an aside, he had heard that the girls in Austin were awesome.

So we did.

The place was big, rundown, and about half or more empty. The bill featured a bunch of local bands that were all pretty good.

We walked out back to the "Beer Garden" outside and met some people who told us that we needed to make sure to come back tomorrow night for Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown.

So we did.

I was stunned.

He played about every kind of American roots music you can think to name, Blues, Western Swing, Cajun, Swamp, that New Orleans Rhumba thing, Gospel, Funk.

The band was way hot with some outstanding backup vocals that seemed to just walk on up out of the crowd.

He was a helluva guitar player and just when you thought it couldn't possibly get any better, he picked up a fiddle and then later, the harmonica.

Ahhhhh, the memories ............

So anyway, this is Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown appearing on Austin City Limits many years later with another real nice band none of whom I know except that I'm sure I do know the guy up front playing the sax, I just can't pull his name out of RAM.

Born in Louisiana.

As for the girls in Austin, Texas ....... as advertized.

We've been looking for a very long time for some video that does justice to the jaw dropping magnificence that was/is Kid Creole and the Coconuts.

I still haven't found it but these two do offer up a taste.

The Kid and his band never sold well in States despite making a half dozen way sollid records that included a no kidding dozen tunes that should have been ... IMHO ... radio staples for the next 50 years, but they owned Europe in the 80's and continue to fill big rooms there to this day.

This is Band Leader, Record Producer, Songwriter and Frontman extraordinaire Thomas August Darnell Browder aka August Darnell aka Kid Creole on vocals and rhythm guitar, along with the bands Musical Director the lovely and talented Sugar Coated Andy Hernandez aka Coati Mundi on the vibraphone, timbales, boxing gloves, real ugly faces and all around hijinx.

The Coconuts, who don't happen to be appearing in this first vid are Choreographer Adreiana Kaegi aka Mama Coconut, probably Janique Svedberg but maybe Taryn Haegy and Cheryl Pointer, along with Peter Schott on keyboards, Carol Colman on the Bass, Mark Mazur playing guitar, Al Mackon on the drums, Bongo Eddie Folk on percussion, Charles Lagond on saxophone, Ken Fradley on trumpet, and Lee Robertson getting his star turn on trombone.

Easily among the very greatest showbands of all time, this is Kid Creole and the Cocounts in London, England, 1982.

Don't Take My Coconuts

Here's your Coconuts

Lifeboat Party.

Speaking of parasitic banks, does anyone think this clusterf#@& came from some private trader?

From SvD Naringsliv ..... I dunno ..... via google translate.

As always, click on the photo below for the entire translated ..... ish ..... piece.

Monster Orders Upholstered Exchange

Isn't that just the single greatest headline you've ever read?

Stockholm Stock Exchange was paralyzed on Wednesday morning of a purchase order of over 4.2 billion index futures. The value of words corresponding to 131 times Sweden's gross domestic product, and the stock market witnessed technical problems. 

The giant warrant december semester in OMXS30, a security equivalent to a basket consisting of the Stockholm Stock Exchange's 30 largest companies, and where trade is very important for the overall pricing of the stock market.

The order was on buy side of the order book and covered more than 4.2 billion futures, to a unit price of almost 107,000 dollars. It gives a theoretical value of 459 561 500 030 000, ie nearly 460 trillion dollars. Sweden's gross domestic product, by comparison, amounted in 2011 to more than 3500 billion.

This one has been going around pretty good the past couple of days ..... as well it should.

Throw in all those good people who have moved through that "Revolving Door" between Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and the Treasury Department, The Federal Reserve Bank and the President's Council of Economic Advisors over the past 30 years, not to mention the CIA, and the hint of a question begins to develope.

Could it be that the problems in the United States and Europe have less to do with differences between Democrats/Republicans or Conservatives/Liberal/Progressives, but rather are a result of the policies forced on the people by parasitic bankers?

Click on the map for the original 2011 piece from from the Independent from which this map was originally taken detailing some history about the Goldman alumnae already in power throughout Europe.

Click on this little gear right here for the Zero Hedge piece regarding latest Goldman alumnus Mark Carney's ascension to Chairman of the Bank of England.

From the State of Pennsylvania's Department of Public Welfare.

Presented without comment.

Our second plank offers up our thinking on "Climate Change" which having not sold all that well under it's original name, "Global Warming" and many of it's chief promoters having been discredited as haters, cowards, shameless profiteers and crazed sex poodles it has now been repackaged with a new name, new marketing and a new catastrophe ... Hurricane Sandy.

To begin with, the earth has been heating up lately ..... probably.

If you look at the chart above and notice the orange lines at the right end.  Those lines represent those years where temperatures were actually measured using instruments that record real temperatures.  

Take note of the word "Reconstructed" in the key at the upper left hand corner.

Among the problems with calculating "Climate Change" is that word "Reconstructed" as in the year 1000 AD there were almost no thermometers hanging outside the conning tower at your local airport recording daily temperatures.

For the better part of 1900 years out of a 2000 year ... ish ... chart, we're calculating average temperatures from tree rings and ice cores ..... among other things.

This bares repeating ..... tree rings and ice cores.

The problems in data collection are endless as even recently, examples of blatant stupidity and/or pure fraud have been detected in the numbers.

Here are just two physical examples.

By way of explanation for what you're about to look at here, the refrigeration unit and air conditioners blow cold air into the building and exhaust the hot air out ..... pretty much directly at the temperature sensor/thermometer.

Click on either photo below for more examples of sensor placements which are likely serving to help cook the books.

Get it? ..... Cook? ... the books?

I can't crunch the numbers on the research but there are enough complaints about the treatment of the numbers from people who can, not to mention enough assurances from a raft of people who for damn sure can't, to make my bullshit detector swing wildly.

Read this Richard Muller paper from 2003, it's a little long but it's not very tough reading.

Or you can take my word for it as I did read it because, while it is a little long it's not very tough reading.

There is a goodly amount of political nonsense and blatant profiteering being sold as "Science".

Understand something here, all of this is before you even begin to consider possible causes.

Which brings us to our first position.

The Moon is also warming up by the way.

Yeah, yeah that's only a 4 year chart, we're just having a little fun pretending to be Progressives.

NASA also thinks that Mars is warming up along with maybe Jupiter and Triton, but who the hell knows.

They're studying it because ..... that's what scientists do.

Finally, having researched and pondered this issue to the fullness of our not inconsiderable capabilities we arrive at the following conclusion.

Having been both warm and cold, it is our strongly held opinion that ...

From Bloomberg via Azizonomics.

As always, click on one of the above gears for the entire piece.

Japan’s Adult Diaper Boom

Japan’s population has gotten so old that diaper manufacturers are selling more adult diapers for incontinent seniors than they are baby diapers.

Unicharm Corp’s sales of adult diapers in Japan exceeded those for babies for the first time last year.

This is a pronounced trend all over the developed world. As people live longer and as fertility rates fall, there is a proportionately a larger and larger population of elderly retirees being supported by a proportionately smaller and smaller population of young workers paying taxes and interest on debt.