Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Art Beat

Today's art asshole would be whoever reported the guy painting this
"Chase Burning," courtesy of artist Alex Schaefer
to the police.

And the LAPD would qualify as jerks for actually bugging the artist. We'd say the lesson here would be to shoot a photo & then paint from it in the privacy of one's studio, except ...

Ten yrs. after the righteous & entirely justified attack on America's little Eichmanns, what further proof is needed that these United Snakes have finished the transformation to a fascist nation?

All the details you'll need, as stolen from laist who stolecompiled links which you, too, may use.

Royal Viking Motel (Sign)

Integrity Round-Up

We'd have a little (but not that much) more respect for Dr. Rice's self-professed integrity if she'd be honest about this & would stop doing crap like this.

We're nonetheless appalled by Cheney's bullshit
Cheney [...] wrote that Rice "came into my office, sat down in the chair next to my desk, and tearfully admitted I had been right."
& this earlier but equivalent bullshit from a Cheney biographer concerning Cheney's partner in war crimes, Donald Rumsfeld:
Instead, Miss Rice was so fazed by former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that she burst into tears at a meeting in the White House situation room.

The floodgates opened for the then national security adviser in February 2004, as the Bush administration was wrestling with growing instability in Iraq and the legal status of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
And appalled by the entire tone of the Torygraph item. (Referring to her as "Miss" rather than Doctor, "floodgates opened," which is hardly in line w/ the quote "Her eyes welled up and her next words caught in her throat. The men in the room did not know where to look." Those are some wide-open floodgates, not that we believe any of it ever happened.)

Pre-Emptive Strike

We offer below the expected not-so-crypto fascist response to this from Alternet:
According to Workamper.com, a workamper is “an adventurous individual who has chosen a wonderful lifestyle that combines ANY kind of part-time or full-time work with RV camping. If you work as an employee, operate a business, or donate your time as a volunteer, AND you sleep in an RV (or on-site housing), you are a Workamper. Workampers generally receive compensation in the form of a free campsite, usually with free utilities (electricity, water, and sewer hookups) and additional wages.”

[...]

Most workamper jobs are of the minimum-wage variety. Workampers generally don’t receive unemployment insurance benefits, severance pay or any warning that a job is about to end. Workampers face many of the same job insecurity issues as the millions of Americans who have been downsized due to job outsourcing, financial mismanagement and slow consumer demand for products and services, except workampers are purposely more nimble and have been conditioned to pack up and move to where the jobs are. “We have to be mobile to land a job,” said Suzann. Those who become jobless and live in traditional stationary homes aren’t usually able to move to another city on a moment’s notice.
The (momentarily imaginary) response:

"What are these people complaining about? They own an RV (A recreational vehicle. See? Lazy mooching parasites!) so they're not poor & it's not as if they have to ride the rails the way they would have had to in the Great Depression of the 1930s, & this is a good thing anyway, because workers should have to accomodate whatever the desires of their job-creating betters may be. Too bad they can't just float their RVs across the Pacific to Asia, where the jobs have been sent by the Invisible Hand."

(Electrons expended here as well.)

Stupid Band Name, Even Worse Music

There are no words to express the revulsion we have for this song, the band memberswhores in the band & their managers/agents/parasites who sold it to a corporate entity that uses it to advertise beer, the singer's hideously cutesy-poo voice (Throat cancer for you, toots!) the gawd-awful ricky-tick piano, the inane lyrics, the necessity of hitting the mute button whenever it crosses our path, everything!

It is to vomit, & if we could vomit the crummy beer it advertises all over the band it wouldn't be enough punishment for them. Shoving an unopened bottle of the swill for which these horrid clowns whore up the Heinie-hole of every band member wouldn't be enough. Making them drink said horse piss mixed w/ their own shit would be a start.Fucking Danes, it turns out. Can we get organized & separate their peninsular shit-hole from the Continent & let it drift to the Arctic where the occupants will freeze to death? (We type that having recently discovered, while self-stalking on the Internet, that the ancestors we thought were Scots were descended from some fuck who emigrated from Jutland or whatever the fuck it was then called to Britain & Anglicized his name to something Scottish close to a thousand yrs. ago. Way to make us less upset about being descended from Bavarians & wop-a-dagos as well!)

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Dick, Liz & Din-Din: Under $100

Sorry, "This event is currently SOLD OUT."
Don't despair, opportunities to be fleeced remain: There's an "overflow remote viewing area." No price given, but it isn't free, although the book signing is. (Must buy the book from the Reagan Library, of course.) Grab your guns & get on up there!

Added fun: Reagan Presidential Foundation & Library website is copyrighted 2010. Senile dementia is contagious.

Still Scum After All These Yrs.

George Bush, not the two commies seen here.That Moulitsas guy really has a face for the radio & a voice for typing on the Internet, doesn't he? We're a bit disappointed there's no footage from the "interview." Legalities, perhaps.

Monday, August 29, 2011

Bad Attitude Round-Up (UPDATED)

We like Chicago Times columnist T.J. Simers because others in the sports-typing/babbling trade often whine about his alleged negativity. We'd consider it a reflection of reality, if we gave it any consideration at all, but what do we know?

Apparently he got some good quotes from "one of the team's very few good players," Andre Ethier, in his Sunday column. The FOX Sports Prime Ticket post-game broadcast crew (Steve "Psycho" Lyons & some other toad) were a bit unhappy. Fuck 'em.

We contemplated bothering w/ a link & so on, then decided not to, then read this brief item from L.A. Observed which pulled good stuff from ESPNLos Angeles.com that reminded us that we have some photos burning a hole in our hard drive of said Ethier, described by the ESPNLA typist as
A guy who certainly isn't helping his reputation with all these public outbursts, especially at a time when, according to various sources, scouts from other teams are starting to pick up on his moodiness and the fact he can be high maintenance[.]
As illustrated:
Double-barreled, bit-chezz!
BUILDINGS TOO (2205PDT 30 August 2011):
From Dependable Renegade.

Wrong Again

It was a joke, obviously.
She hailed the tea party as being common-sense Americans who understand government shouldn't spend more than it takes in, know they're taxed enough already and want government to abide by the Constitution.

"I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?' Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we've got to rein in the spending."

Plenty of people in the crowd said they were interested to learn more about Perry, but Bradenton retiree Philip Staples said he's already sold on Bachmann. "She's got the fire in the belly, and she's a straight shooter. She's one of the common people,'' he said.

Asked in an interview to spell out the chief difference between her and Perry, Bachmann pointed to her record leading the charge against most of President Barack Obama's agenda and willingness to buck her own party.
Isn't this taking Gawd's name in vain? And how do we know this isn't Gawd warning us about climate change & the possibility of "fracking" causing earthquakes?

Michele Bachmann on telebision, trying to wriggle out of her "joke:" "It isn't every day that we have an earthquake in the United States."Uh, look again, Gawd's Dimmest Bulb.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

"Libertarian" Theocrat

Yes, Ron Paul. Who'd you think?
Ron Paul is only a "libertarian" where and when it's convenient. Much of the rest of the time, he's not merely a social conservative but a religious conservative promoting an agenda very close to that of Christian Nationalists.
While it's a four-yr. old item, Representative Paul's head is stuffed so far up his ass it's hardly likely any of his positions have "evolved" in the meantime.

And speaking of four+ yrs., we knew we'd covered the same territory. Didn't quite remember it was exactly the same territory.

Tip o' the chapeau this time around to @ronaldjackson, as re-Twitted by @rufuspolk.

Highland Park Hates Hipsters

Do not imagine we scrawled this for photo fodder.
Context: New tree holders in the 'hood.
UPDATE (0240PDT 30 August 2011): Meanwhile, in Brooklyn. (Not the Highland Park of the East, but still ...)

Tween In A Tree

Music Is Not Enough

Whew!

Happy to report that we rode both the Red Line & Gold Line (twice each!) yesterday & were not stabbed to death or w/in an inch of our life.

(Probably random luck; we'll no doubt get ours next time.)

No Idea

None at all. We doubt the flags & the eagle on a rock have anything to do w/ whatever it is.

Swimming Pools, Cacti

To hell w/ palm trees, here's the real clichéd Southern California:

Don't Believe The Hype

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Last Wk. About This Time

Church Too Gay?

There was a time when this reporter lived a few blocks east of the Crescent Heights MC on Fountain Ave.
In its 97 years, Crescent Heights Methodist Church has flourished and floundered. As recently as 2004, the congregation was growing so much, it asked the many 12-step programs meeting there to find other spaces. The West Hollywood Recovery Center was started as a direct result of the church closing its doors to the 12-step programs there (12-step groups have since been allowed to meet there again).

During that time, Pastor John Griffin was holding Sunday services that incorporated Broadway show tunes, bringing in a lot of new members. But when Griffin was reassigned to a church in Long Beach in 2005, the people who loved the Broadway tunes left with him.
We could always count on 12-Stepping losers being outside smoking, & get a laugh from announcements of the show tunes services.

No more.
"I'm a gay, pro-medical marijuana pastor," Pastor Scott Imler told West Hollywood Patch. "The United Methodist Church is becoming increasingly conservative and our church is too gay for them."

Woooooo!

"Nature Boy" Ric Flair (who stole his shtick from "Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers) doesn't approve of a Grantland item, per FishbowlLA & TMZ.

So, let's look for the awful to share.

Or, fuck it, people either want to wallow in schadenfreude or they don't (Most do, of course, w/ the knowledge that every one of them will be dead soon enough being the ultimate schadenfreude. What a horrid little species.) often depending on their attitude toward professional wrestling, celebrity/infamy, or their own deep-rooted issues, so they can look or not. Seems to be a timeline of crap dug out of court records. Here's the stupidest image we could find following a cursory search.
Hah, we chanced upon this in our desultory attempt to locate visual emabarrassment:
After we posted the story noting that a Ric Flair representative told TMZ that Flair was considering taking legal action against claims made in the Grantland.com article, a number of readers sent in emails pointing out that Flair admitted in his 2004 autobiography to suffering from Alcoholic Cardiomyopathy.
Considering that Flair's considered complaint against Grantland is that he doesn't have boozer's ticker, we are ++amused. Guy's another fucking Rick "Read/don't read that book I put my name on & had published last yr." Perry, isn't he? Wooooo!

Friday, August 26, 2011

Cookies Seal Deal

As mentioned below.Also, Dodgers beat Rockies 6-0. And the cookies.

Worst McCourt In The World

And now, the rest of the story.

UPDATE (2105PDT 26 August 2011): Vin just announced during a break he'll be back for games this side of the Continental Divide next yr. (While showing a cookies someone who wanted him back had sent him.)

Self-Centered Media Blitz

Are those of us who have cable news playing in the background as we terrorize the Internet going to be cursed w/ eyewall-to-eyewall coverage of this dumb-&-dull-ass hurricane through Monday? Let us know if, as some have theorized, New York's subway floods, because that would be very amusing; otherwise bugger off.

As we no longer have relatives in Rockville Centre, we don't really caregive Sweet Fanny Adams what happens to the Island, but here's a musical suggestion for the eastern bridge & tunnel crowd:Cah

Astronomy ... A Star (x4)

Even more interesting than the diamond planet or the black hole sucking up a star that hit the news toyesterday is the 80°F "star" (brown dwarf, really).
This artist's conception illustrates what a "Y dwarf" might look like. Y dwarfs are the coldest star-like bodies known, with temperatures that can be even cooler than the human body. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
PASADENA, Calif., Aug. 24 (UPI) -- NASA scientists say they've discovered the coldest class of star-like bodies, with temperatures as cool as that of the human body.

The discovery was made using the space agency's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, since the so-called Y dwarfs are nearly impossible to see when viewed with a visible-light telescope, a release by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said Tuesday.

The WISE infrared telescope was able to spot the faint glow of six Y dwarfs relatively close to the sun, within a distance of about 40 light-years.

"WISE scanned the entire sky for these and other objects, and was able to spot their feeble light with its highly sensitive infrared vision," said Jon Morse, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Y dwarfs are the coldest members of the brown dwarf family, often referred to as "failed" stars, having too little mass to fuse atoms at their cores and burn like the sun. Instead, astronomers say, they cool and fade with time until what little light they do emit is at infrared wavelengths.

One of the Y dwarfs, WISE 1828+2650, is the record holder for the coldest brown dwarf, with an estimated temperature of less than 80 degrees Fahrenheit, they said.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

They get it right, for once:
Heavy metal was also first used to describe ugly guitars. The phrase, of course, originated with William S Burroughs in his 1962 novel The Soft Machine, featuring Uranian Willy, the Heavy Metal Kid. Then John Kay of Steppenwolf sang the phrase "heavy metal thunder" in 1968's Born to Be Wild. But it first reached print as a synonym for hard rock via Mike Saunders (later Metal Mike Saunders, singer for early-80s punks the Angry Samoans), in a review of Humble Pie's As Safe As Yesterday in Rolling Stone from 1970, describing the album as "more of the same 27th-rate heavy metal crap".

The same year, punk rock was coined [in Rolling] Stone's Detroit rival, Creem, via Dave Marsh, who used it in a ? & the Mysterians live review ("Needless to say, it was impossible to pass up such a landmark explosion of punk rock, even after two nights running of Tina Turner"). Punk magazine came along a few years later.
Two origins we did not know:
But sometimes an artist assigns a title that becomes something else. Power-pop was coined by Pete Townshend in 1967 to define the Who, but wound up being what Eric Carmen of prime power-pop practitioners the Raspberries described as "groups that came out in the 70s that played kind of melodic songs with crunchy guitars and some wild drumming". Not to mention the endless acolytes who mimicked them.

Often, technology drives musical changes, so equipment plays its role, too. Acid, noted above, is one example. So is dub, short for the "dubplate" (duplicate platter) Jamaican sound system operator Ruddy Redwood ordered in late 1967 from Duke Reid's pressing plant. The recording was On the Beach by the Paragons, and the engineer, Byron Smith, accidentally wiped the vocal. Reid played it alongside the vocal version; the response was so strong he began putting instrumentals on the B-sides. Eventually, creative engineers such as King Tubby and Lee Perry would take the dub side into whole new areas of bass-heavy abstraction.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Yada Yada Yada

Speaking of which, Media Matters for America, why no adjustable volume on your player? Assholes. It's 'cause of that Joo Soros, innit?

Today's Amazon.com Special

All Of You Please Fuck Off & Die*

If we never hear, view or read another fucking word about food & the unsavory people who prepare & eat it, it will be several yrs. too fucking soon.

America (& other white people nations): Stop living in fear of sex & its accompanying diseases (few of which are worse than food poisoning, immediate [E.coli, &c.] or long term [heart disease, diabetes, yada]) & start fucking more, eating less & not discussing food at all again ever (except for where to get a good burger cheap, maybe).


*Preferably by choking to death on a food-like object:
No idea who "nick koudis" is; he can get his fucking royalties anytime he wants.

On The Horizon: More Disappointment

As various gubmint agencies & "leaders" seem to be taking the threat of Hurricane Irene seriously,
Aug 25 (Reuters) - New York City residents who live in low-lying areas should voluntarily start moving out on Friday, before Hurricane Irene is expected to hit, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Thursday.

Otherwise, they risk getting stuck because the mass transit system that millions of New Yorkers rely on might have to be shut down on Saturday, he said at a televised news conference.

New Yorkers should start feeling the effects of Hurricane Irene early Sunday morning. It is expected to hit the city of 8.4 million people as a Category 1 storm, the lowest ranking of major storms.

The mayor made it clear that residents in coastal areas, such as Battery Park City on Manhattan's southern tip, Coney Island and the Rockaways, should not linger until he issues an evacuation order because doing so could endanger emergency workers.
it becomes pretty obvious that the hurricane therefore won't arrive w/ a whimper, let alone a bang. A great disappointment to us. Even the obvious opportunity to let this one wailis small compensation for the destruction & human tragedy for which we had hoped.

Following on an "earthquake" in which no one was injured enough to make any of the news we've seen/heard, we're about ready to abandon all hope of a righteously angered nature starting to get you parasites off her back.

Oinking Update

These sons-&-daughters-of-stupid-bitches are paid for this crap?
A seven-hour police standoff in Hawthorne ended abruptly today, when authorities burst into the apartment where they thought their suspect was barricaded — only to discover that he wasn't there.

Neighbors near Kornblum Avenue and 132nd Street told Fox LA that they saw officers with their guns pulled attempting to serve a search warrant around 4 a.m. this morning.

Authorities were searching for a suspect accused of shooting a man in the leg a [sic] two weekends ago near Dockweiler Beach. The LAPD's Pacific Division thought they saw a movement in the building, so they called in the Swat Team just after 6 a.m. this morning [sic].

In the meantime, authorities had cordoned off the neighborhood, and neighbors were evacuated. Some news reports were saying that the suspect was refusing to come out, and this incident was labeled a "potential barricade situation."

And then it wasn't.

The SWAT officers finally entered the apartment around 11:30 a.m. but then, well, the suspect wasn't there, according to Los Angeles police Officer Norma Eisenman.

LAPD didn't really said much after that, so it's hard to tell what happened. No other information about the suspect or the alleged assault with a deadly weapon were released.
At least the taxpayer's obligation to pay disability or funeral expenses wasn't increased by any of these Keystone Kops shooting themselves or another oinker during this entire cluster-fuck.

Scum Sack Of The Day

Kent Scheidegger of the Criminal "Justice" Foundation.

21st Century Sanitation

Look, no floaty ball.
And, it flushes again. No more dumping a wastebasket full of H2O in it.

Twitter: Now More Agony Than It's Worth

Actual Statistics

Leave that Billy Paul/Today in History item alone!

Absolutely

The more of you we encounter, the likelier we are to take a shot at you.

Criminologists have realized for quite some time that summer is more violent than the colder months not because people get all hotted up to commit homicides or aggravated assaults by the sun.  Rather, it’s because warm and dry days mean people are out and about more, and as they come into contact with more and varied souls they’re more likely to try to shoot each other.

Read more: http://www.lineofdeparture.com/2011/08/25/el-nino-and-war/#ixzz1W4daQv3c


So thank whatever bullshit entity before which you prostrate yourselves that we're as agoraphobic as we are.

Devolution Would Be More Like It

We're willing to hate anybody, for any reason. (Sometimes the only reason we need is that a humanoid is involved.) Please, hate along w/ us.Still, isn't making puppet shows for YouTube distribution definitionally "hipster?"

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Not This Yr. You Don't

It's officially off.
The fate of the festival has been a cliffhanger for much of the month, with city officials voicing dismay that, in the middle of a municipal budget crisis, event organizers still owe $260,000 from last year's festival to the city. Meanwhile, backers of the event described critics of the festival as “haters” and implored the board to change course.
Well, once you're reduced to screeching "haters" at critics, it should be over.

FURTHER DETAILS (Looks as if laist did some reporting here, rather than their usual aggregatingstealing):
Board member Jerilyn López Mendoza was the first to address McKinley and the room, and she expressed concerns echoed by members of the Silver Lake community who were afraid the organizers would do little to improve upon the safety, noise, and access to the festival for locals, who in recent years became incensed at being required to pay admission to cross the street to get to their own homes.
You are invited to imagine what may have resulted if, when we lived in the Swish Alps, a festival volunteer had requested us to pay US$25.00 to get back to our dump.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Where's The Waste, Fraud & Abuse Outrage?

Apparently the baby-killers have been wasting a lot of money on crap. One might imagine that if the losers who enlist because they can't find a job in the real world absorbed "Spiritual Fitness" lessons they would realize that Jesus is the alleged Prince of Peace, not the King of Baby Murder, & stage a mutiny or something. Yet the lesson hasn't quite sunk in. Of course, you're dealing w/ clowns who "defend" a nation that won't provide jobs for them, thereby forcing them into the baby-killing services in the first place. Catch-22.

Read & weep.
DoD Funded Evangelical Christian Youth Programs
Service members are not the only ones targeted by evangelical Christian programs paid for with DoD contracts. Military children are also heavily targeted, both here in the U.S. and on bases overseas. Evangelizing the children of service members is one of the largest areas of spending.

The biggest ministry contracted by the DoD to target children is Military Community Youth Ministries (MCYM), whose mission statement is "Celebrate life with military teens, Introduce them to the Life-Giver, Jesus Christ, And help them become more like Him." MCYM has received $12,346,333 in DoD contracts since 2000. One of MCYM's tactics? Stalking "unchurched" military children by following their schools buses.

Ranking second is Cadence International, with over $2,671,603 in contracts since 2003. Cadence describes itself as "an evangelical mission agency dedicated to reaching the military communities of the United States and of the world with the Good News of Jesus Christ." Cadence not only targets young service members and military children for conversion to evangelical Christianity, but also actively tries to convert members of foreign militaries in the countries where they operate under DoD contracts.

In addition to military youth ministries like MYCM and Cadence, military children are also targeted by military base Religious Education Directors, also hired with DoD contracts. These ministries and Religious Education Directors employ tactics that can only be described as "stalking" children, with some DoD contracts even requiring that the contractors identify and target the "unchurched" children at non-religious events and activities and get them into chapel programs, and to supply reports naming these children by name.
At least they aren't naming them by number (yet).

And that's merely the most egregious part we've read so far. Worse:
One of the reasons given by Cadence for the success of its "Strategic Ministry" is: "Deployment and possibly deadly combat are ever-present possibilities. They are shaken. Shaken people are usually more ready to hear about God than those who are at ease, making them more responsive to the gospel." Of course, they must first gain access to these "shaken" soldiers, but that's no problem -- the Army helps them out by allowing them to operate on Army posts and granting the soldiers in AIT extra privileges if they attend Cadence's retreats.
Did "the Life-Giver, Jesus Christ," suggest that the best way to gain converts was to prey on the scared & "shaken?"

This non-Christian nation needs a Hyde Amendment equivalent that sees to it that the First Amendment is not used as kindling for the fires of never-ending holy wars. Hell, we need such an amendment to ensure that our precious tax dollars aren't spent on the abortionmurder of living humans.

Winning

Saw the above in our in-box & thought for a moment that our long-lost (if not entirely forgotten or never even existed) sci-fi epic had been found somewhere & published.

Handbasket to Hell

Was the Great Recession Just Phase 1?

Felix Salmon sounds the alarm over what he believes to be "arguably the most uncertain outlook, in terms of the global political economy, since World War II ended and the era of the welfare state began... Most fundamentally, what I'm seeing as I look around the world is a massive decrease of trust in the institutions of government."

"It looks increasingly as though we're entering Phase 2 of the global crisis, with 2008-9 merely acting as the appetizer. In Phase 1, national and super-national treasuries and central banks managed to come to the rescue and stave off catastrophe. But in doing so, they weakened themselves to the point at which they're unable to rise to the occasion this time round... And that failure, in turn, is only going to further weaken institutional legitimacy across the US and the world. It's a vicious cycle, and I can't see how we're going to break out of it."

Richard Posner: "If we were being honest with ourselves, we would call this a depression. That would certainly better convey both the severity of our problems, and the fact that those problems have no evident solutions."

Megan McArdle Does Not Get It

Go to the source, not the shorter.

East Cost Wimps Shaken Up

Come on, you bunch of Northeastern/Midwestern elitist sissies. Pull up your man-pants!

A reminder: The aftershock can be of greater magnitude than the original temblor.

(And how's that New Madrid fault looking?)

Monday, August 22, 2011

No, We Don't Want To Be Todd Martens

Horrifying of course to have seen a homicide on the train, but this Chicago-adoring (Feel free to move there any time, punk!) typist for the L.A. Times has some serious problems w/ usage/vocabulary too.

We thought "cab" here might have been a simple (YET STILL ABSOLUTELY INEXCUSABLE! Read your crap before posting.) typo,
We were all in the first cab, and the assault occurred directly behind the conductor’s pen. Most riders huddle toward the center of the train, oblivious or disinterested in the fact that the first car provides a grand view of the twists and turns of the Los Angeles tunnels.
but he repeated it:
I looked down, and saw a string of blood working its way down the ridges of the subway cab.
Shouldn't that be "grooves in the floor of the car," or something? Although "a string" would imply it was in just one groove.

Not to mention that he thinks the operator (Not "conductor.") is an animal who is kept in a pen or corral.
The conductor yelled that no one was to leave the train, and went back into his corral.
What the hell? Do young people know nothing, or absolutely nothing? Get this:
The knife looked almost homemade. Its handle was wooden, thick and seemed haphazardly carved. The blade was crude, maybe four or five inches long and three inches wide. A reporter asked me if it could have been a kitchen knife. I haven’t spent enough time in kitchens or Crate & Barrels to know exactly what a kitchen knife would look like.
Odd & specific details to remember, but does Martens really not know from a kitchen knife? The blade was "crude," as if it had been forged in a backyard smithy somewhere?

Also, he's a pig:
I saw a beautiful woman who had been on the train frantically asking people what happened, and I walked over to tell her. If Hollywood has taught me anything, it’s that meet-traumatic has far more power than the meet-cute, but as I got closer I saw she had a wedding ring and opted to let others fill her in.
This after he "knew he would be sick." Odd that after giving up on romance he managed to walk about two blocks before heaving in front of Trader Joe's.

We're feeling a little sick now ourself, especially after determining that Todd must be closer to 30 than to 20.

The literate among you are invited to look for other oddities in his lexicon. The prize for finding them is that you don't get stabbed.

This isn't bad usage, but it's cretinous:
I have never, at least knowingly, been less than five feet away from someone with the capacity to stab another human being.
Wise up before it's too late. Even your board-game playing hipster indie-rock "friends" probably have the capacity to stab someone, quite possibly over a board game.

Just Idiotic

Line-up for the most likely cancelled Sunset Junction Music Festival & Street Fair. Note how fucking stupid the majority of the band names are:
Granted, the good names ran out a while back, but would you pay good money (Let alone US$25.00!!) to see a collection of losers w/ a gerund in their sentence fragment of a name?

Anti-Social In-Security

Unsure what, if anything, this may mean to the financial future of this reporter, but now that it's been five yrs. since we were sent to the hospital (& let out) we may be able to git some guns w/ which to take revenge on any shit-heel who fucks w/ our insurance payments.

We'd better start saving some of that "free" money, we s'pose.

Will Not Be Missed

In local news, apparently no Sunset Junction fest this yr.

Used to be fun (Especially when we lived two blocks above it & many "friends" would wander by the pad for drinking, whatnot & a place to sit the fuck down for a few minutes.) but got bigger & dumber each yr.: By the time they started fencing it in & charging serious money (as opposed to the US$5.00 "donations" of our relative youth) the party was over.

Now it's officially over.

RIOT

Humor in a jugular vein from Atlas. A sample:
Guy looks familiar ... can't quite place him 'though.

Annals Of Redundancy: Religious Bullshit

Compare & contrast.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Big Sky Country

Good Stuff On Telebision

Como Mango

A song about mangoes (Or a mango.) from Lucky 7.
"Like a mango/What a tasty mango"

Winning The Vulgarity Sweepstakes

A Hummer wrapped in money.
Credit is begrudged that it is at least a "real, G.I." Hummer, not an overstuffed for assholes H2.

Body Bags

Preferably in a mass grave.

Has Suffered For His Art

Stadium Parking Lot & Bathroom
Violence Round-Up

It's possible Raider fans won't be blamed for this one.
-- A man wearing a "Fuck the 49ers" T-shirt was shot outside Candlestick Park shortly after the end of Saturday night's preseason game between the Raiders and 49ers, a police sergeant said.
No, typed too soon.
Police detained a suspect shortly after the shooting - a man wearing Raiders apparel who was found on a party bus in an RV section of the parking lot, according to San Francisco Police Sgt. Frank Harrell.

[...]

A second shooting victim was found near Pole V in the parking lot, Harrell said, and had superficial wounds to his face. He was listed in stable condition at S.F. General.

In addition, according to Bay City News, a San Rafael man, 26, was assaulted and knocked unconscious in a restroom at Candlestick during the game, police said. He was taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries.

[...]

Police believe all three men attended the game. A police statement said the man in critical condition was 24 and the other shooting victim was in his 20s.

The two shooting victims were found separately and any link between them, or between either of them and the suspect, had not been established.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

No Forbidden Planet

Went to see this load of drivelclassic of 1950s cinema today.Had never previously seen it on the big screen or in color, & didn't know it was one of the last flicks made using Technicolor's three-strip process. Scratchy print w/ a couple of sucky splices 'though. Great job Universal: "35mm print supplied by Universal Studios." Couldn't do a little restoration?

We are surprised no one has yet remade it (or Forbidden Planet).

Always a thrill to see a movie w/ an audience, of course. When Russell (The Professor, of Gilligan's Island) Johnson appeared, one, maybe two people applauded. And when the big-head alien asked Dr. Ruth Adams (Faith Domergue) if she (A friggin' atomic scientist!) wasn't, "as a woman, curious" many of our fellow film-goers burst into laughter. Time marches on.

Added Fun

Outbreak of tar.
Not yet fenced off, like these two.

Severance Check

"Mark Heisler (formerly) of the Los Angeles Times" delivers an obit.

Truthdig editor Robert Scheer's note:
Editor’s note: The Los Angeles Times’ Mark Heisler, 2006 winner of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame’s Curt Gowdy Award and a Truthdig contributor, was laid off by the newspaper in July, one year before he planned to retire. With 44 years in the business, and 32 at the Times, he reminds us that newspapers were in trouble long before the Internet but still offer at least the promise of something their competitors can’t match. Bearing in mind his severance agreement not to “disparage” the company “in any way,” he nonetheless provides an inside look as one of the world’s great papers is bought, sold and turned into a caricature of its former self.
We note in passing that not long after the Times let Mr. Scheer go from his columnist position, one Jonah Goldberg began appearing on the Times' op-ed page each Tuesday.

Friday, August 19, 2011

Fast Food Friday Continues

No Catholicism here, it's all-meat, all the time.

And synchronicity strikes again: No sooner do we mention Pink's than it is invaded by Bristle Palin & friends. This apparently occurred yesterday, 18 August.In other Pink's poop, Aunt Snow mentions that she visited in 1997 & there wasn't much of a line. Our blaming Hollywood & Highland may have been correct.

Real Food For Real Men

We done et at most of these dumps, 'though never at Tacos Delta. It still exists, so there's still a chance, although menudo gives us the creeps, & some of it might get into our taco; don't hold your breath for an exclusive review.Spotted here.

Who Are The Art Police?

The oinking bastards of the Long Beach Police Dep't., if you didn't know already.
Police Chief Jim McDonnell has confirmed that detaining photographers for taking pictures "with no apparent esthetic value" is within Long Beach Police Department policy.
Criminal photograph.
"If an officer sees someone taking pictures of something like a refinery," says McDonnell, "it is incumbent upon the officer to make contact with the individual." McDonnell went on to say that whether said contact becomes detainment depends on the circumstances the officer encounters.

McDonnell says that while there is no police training specific to determining whether a photographer's subject has "apparent esthetic value," officers make such judgments "based on their overall training and experience" and will generally approach photographers not engaging in "regular tourist behavior."

This policy apparently falls under the rubric of compiling Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR) as outlined in the Los Angeles Police Department's Special Order No. 11, a March 2008 statement of the LAPD's "policy …  to make every effort to accurately and appropriately gather, record and analyze information, of a criminal or non-criminal nature, that could indicate activity or intentions related to either foreign or domestic terrorism."
Yes, you "have" "rights." NO, YOU MAY NOT USE THEM!

Music B(4)

Really. He suggested 'em.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Inner Monologue Externalized

Even if we were mentally & psychologically capable of it, we still wouldn't give a shit.

Sudden Realization UPDATE (19 August 2011 @2255): That really should be "Interior Monologue," shouldn't it? See how little & late we care?

Spot The Ninny Living In The Past

The pants-pissers still fear ... THE SOVIET UNION!!
In an interview with conservative talk show host Jay Sekoluw, Bachmann said she knew what was bothering the American people. Bachmann described America's worries as a "unified message," before listing off about five things, one of which is a long-gone country:
It really is about jobs and the economy. That doesn't mean people haven't [sic] forgotten about protecting life and marriage and the sanctity of the family. People are very concerned about that as well. But what people recognize is that there's a fear that the United States is in an unstoppable decline. They see the rise of China, the rise of India, the rise of the Soviet Union and our loss militarily going forward.
Good answer, Michele. And what about the Ottoman Empire? Should we fear them, too? Is America prepared for a naval attack from the Phoenicians?
We are also quite amused by "our loss militarily going forward." In English that might have been expressed as "potential reduction of the defense budget," unless Rep. Bachmann believes these United Snakes are going to lose "militarily" some time in the future. The audio. Plus which.

And the just plain silly (Note: On the Just Another Blog™ devil-box there is a burst of irksome static as the advert starts, then, mercifully, there is no advert audio. Take the good w/ the bad, eh?):Who "came out today?" Mr. Representative Bachmann? Or was it Michele, advertising herself as a "man-ette?" And speaking of Mme. Bachmann's fashion adviser/buyer, has no one told him that those sleeveless dresses she wears are very immodest, if not downright slutty?