Still Suffering

Floozies in The Lobby

Contrastingly

Hollywood Suicide By Cop

Yes, that is the Kinkos, then FedExKinkos, now FedEx Office, where this reporter last held a job.And no, we were sleeping the sleep of the righteous at 1019.

Interesting that the gunman seems to have aimed & fired more at cars than people. It can be hard to tell the difference around here. (Right now, for example, we're pretty sure we're a 1965 Buick Skylark.)

Pretty Much Fer D00des Only

Cuz dames mostly have more sense than to be fascinated by such dangerous, wasteful activity. But the length to which your gov't. will go just to snoop is pretty amazing, isn't it?Some context:

What many people don’t realize is that U-2s were actually flown off aircraft carriers in the 1960s. Yup, modified U-2s took off and landed from the carriers USS Ranger and USS America between 1964 and 1969. These weren’t just test flights to see if you could land a jet the size of a U-2 on a ship. U-2Gs and U-2Rs flew actual recon missions from the two carriers.

Injury Report

It's always something: Managed to poke ourself in one of our eyes, not w/ a fork* but w/ the corner of a bookmark, resulting in an abraded cornea & pain in the ass from a trip to the Ruth & Harry Roman Emergency Department at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where the celebrated go to die.

As the hydrocodone-acetaminophen is having no effect on the pain & we'll be attempting to put drops & ribbons of goo in said peeper, which, by the fucking way, has been exuding fluid as if there were no tomorrow since we poked ourself (How long will that US$2.16 box of tissues last, we wonder.) don't count on much activity here. Sure, we may be just fine after a good night's sleep (Estimated time of healing: Two days.) but one never knows.

---

*Fork in your mind, drive you insane!

Why You Can't Bail Out Of Your Flying Car W/ Your Jet-Pack

All we got in the second half of the 20th century were some improvements on one of those inventions — the computer — with the personal computer, the Internet and the iPhone. (Boomers were more focused on acid trips than space trips and dropped the ball on the hard work of pushing scientific progress forward.)
— Ann Coulter, in The DC.

Cartoon Break

Monza By The Streetlight

YouTube comment for above: "This song is heavy as hell for 1966."♪"... liars & cheaters & people like you ..."♬

♫Cheesy Cheesy♬

The revolting Velveeta® details. If that's his real name.

... And?

Now that you mention it, we are confused. Is it Thursday already? Which cup of coffee is this, & so on.

Last Late One

At the end of this year, with too few members left to maintain an organization, the Pearl Harbor Survivor Association will disband. Back in 1958, the group had 28,000 members; now, The New York Times reports, there [are] 2,700 left, most of whom are in their 90s and cannot actively participate in the group. Soon our only access will be through historians and the documentation they rely on, such as the images gathered below, now preserved by the National Archives.

That About Which ...

Guns N' Roses, Chili Peppers
in rock hall of fame

Nekesa Mumbi Moody, Associated Press

Thursday, December 8, 2011

So fucking what.

Added Visual Aid

As mentioned/linked.

1) Dorris Miller was a mess attendant on the U.S.S. West Virginia when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7th of 1941. Though Miller served his time as a cook, he proved his bravery by aiding fellow wounded soldierssailors. Miller carried his shipmates to safety while Japanese bombs killed hundreds of soldierssailors on board. Miller also manned a 50-caliber anti-aircraft machine gun until it ran out of ammunition and he had to abandon ship. The military awarded his bravery with the Naval Cross.

(Our corrections above. — Militarism Ed.)

Admiral Nimitz awarding the Navy Cross medal to
Cook Third Class Doris Miller aboard the USS West Virginia.

From.

Hippies!

"Get Off Our Lawn" Campaign Succeeding In County

*California has 58 counties. County population totals range from 1,109 persons in Alpine, the least populated county, to over 9.8 million persons in Los Angeles, the state's most populous county.

*The state’s nine largest counties, Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Clara, Alameda, Sacramento and Contra Costa each have over one million residents. They are home to 70 percent of Californians.

*Riverside, Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, and San Bernardino counties posted the highest numeric population gains and account for over half of the state's growth. Growth in these counties was primarily due to natural increase. Los Angeles County experienced net out-migration.

*Most counties gained population but 18 counties experienced population decline.

*Like the state, two-thirds of the counties experienced net out-migration (more people moving out of the county than moving in).

As excerpted. Now shoo!

Wretched Excess

One of the perks of celebrating the holidays near the Pacific are the spectacular holiday boat parades. Vessels adorned with festive decor, twinkling lights, holiday tunes and costumed carolers cruise harbors and channels, summoning holiday spirit and merry competition. The annual sea traditions are free for viewers, except for the cost (and joy) of parking.

We've corralled 7 for you to check out this month, and it looks like Saturday, December 10 is the day of the boat parade.

Keep flaunting it, richies!

Next year, torpedoes.

Infamous Links

Forgotten crimes, forgotten Americans.

WATB Round-Up

Hoftstadter, cherry-picked by a guy at Salon, meaning he draws from more than The Paranoid Style.

Greatest Revelation: The newly paranoid right does hate America, as has been suspected for some time. (Some time around 1954, to be specific.)

The notion that paranoid movements were activated not by negotiable interests but by “fundamental fears and hatreds” was a more general and abstract version of the argument Hofstadter had made in an essay he wrote 10 years earlier, “The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt – 1954.” Hofstadter opened that essay by arguing that the new far-right dissenters were not in fact conservatives at all. “[A]lthough they believe themselves to be conservatives and usually employ the rhetoric of conservatism, [they] show signs of serious and restless dissatisfaction with American life, traditions and institutions. They have little in common with the temperate and compromising spirit of true conservatism in the classical sense of the word … their political reactions express rather a profound if largely unconscious hatred of our society and its ways – a hatred which one would hesitate to impute to them if one did not have suggestive evidence both from clinical techniques and from their own modes of expression.”

And then it goes on & on & on, but read it anyway. Minutes of amusement; few things are better than seeing one's despicable enemies demolished through dime-store psychology.

A Box Of Ugly Plastic Things

"Murder & destruction scream the toys in every store."

More On The End Of The Human World

Difficult as it is to hold the wind, we suspect your species will kill itself over the more-easily-commodifiable water. Punchy final paragraph:

We know at least one big thing about how this particular tragedy will turn out: the so-called civilization of the Southwest will not survive the present century, not at its present scale anyway. The question yet to be answered is how much it will have to shrink, and at what cost. Stay tuned. It will be one of the greatest, if grimmest, shows on Earth.

Perhaps not as grim for those who don't occupy this great emptiness. Even we may not be here in 80 or 90 yrs.

70th Anniversary

Inspired by JennofArk, we found more on the Santa shit theme.People died at Pearl Harbor so Yankees could buy crap like this in vain attempts to compensate for the emptiness of their miserable lives? Fuck, bet those guys moldering in the hull of the Arizona are really sorry they're dead now.

Rich School/Why Fake It?

45 yrs.+ later & this country still sucks. (Not that any place else is much fucking better.)

As B/4, Dillinger

Here, Learn Something Useful

Oh, great, didn't notice the "RIP" in the tweet. Should have known, really. Not too long ago:Hell, we remember seeing James Cotton back in the '60s, when he (& we) could still stand up.

And at last, something not shot by some pinhead using an iScrod equipped w/ a mike the size of the head of a pin.We don't always like using the "Morbidity Report" label.

Brainiac

Newton Leroy Gingrich, Defense Genius or Military Moron?

Either way, the photo's funny.

Click, read & decide.

Items We Never Finished Reading

After the anti-intellectualism of George W. Bush, Palin, and Perry, Republicans are showing a preference for a presidential candidate of substance by embracing Gingrich and Romney.

Sweet. Blood. Of. Jeee-zisss ...

Monday Music: D³

Not D3:

D is for disco decadence,death,
Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band - Waiting For The D Train by Yoko Ono

“'Waiting for the D Train' - D stands for death, so the thing is you’re waiting for death in a way. And while you’re waiting for death, a lot of things go on in your life. Separations or pain or some beautiful joy, all this stuff happens. And then in the end [of the album is] the song called “Higa Noboru,” which means “The Sun is Rising.” After the D Train, The Sun Is Down. And then the sun is rising, and I’m saying “I’m still alive.” It’s going into the new era, a new age. We’re gonna go to a new age together. That’s what it means.

Oooooo-kay.

And The Dead:

Fun W/ 'Phones

We miss good sound: One signal, by wire, w/ clarity & comprehension for all. No more in the age of cordless, wireless & Bluetooth digital whatnot: Expect to sound as if you're underwater in all your vital, just-couldn't-wait-till-you-got-home communications for the next few yrs.

And don't get us started on today's manners!

Anyway, a look at one schmuck's collection of Bell System 'phones of the previous century.

On the left, a 1947 prototype pushbutton phone which recently sold on eBay for $17,999.99.
On the right, a clear plastic version of the 302 model. From this model on,
Western Electric manufactured limited editions of most of their models in clear plastic.

Giant Art Rock Up-Date

Seasonal

Ho ho ho, sailor.

Think her toes are cold?

130 & Fading Fast

Neither price nor page count indicated, but a front page over 50% adverts is good.

Make book on it: We won't be blowing US$2.00 on today's edition for the privilege of sorting through a lb. & a half of lithographed advertising & yesterday's news.Too obvious?

Wrong Side Of The Tracks