Tuesday, July 31, 2012

A Tale Of Two Tabs

Seeing this we started making a noise some might have recognized as
at least similar to "I've Got Rhythm," then realized why: We'd recently opened this & were going to give it a listen.

Open Your Box

ABC News:
EGYPT: REOPENING TOMBS TO DRAW TOURISTS BACK
Amid the ongoing turmoil following Egypt’s revolution, the Washington Post reports Egypt is planning to reopen tombs, many for the first time in decades, to draw tourists back to the land of the pyramids. The tomb of Queen Meresankh III will be opened for the first time in nearly 25 years, as will five other tombs of high priests.
Damn, we're not even mailing it in.

OK, Everything Usable In That Folder's Been Used

Still can't quite get a grip on the concept that there's a lump of rock visibly drifting 238,900 miles (384,400 km) above our head. Can you?

This Never Grows Old

Does it?
Honestly we're a little dulled out w/ living inside a cliché. You can't look up w/o seeing some of the damn things.

Not The Only Rug Store We Saw
That Had Gone Out Of Business


As could be imagined, we didn't bother w/ the first one. This is becoming a bakery or something. Rugs are o-u-t out this yr.

Reflections

— of the current economic slump.
You got an "A" but you went broke selling coffee?

Jungles

The sky above,
the mudconcrete below.

Monday, July 30, 2012

Dumb & Stupider

Sure, we knew this one, if only for one of the all-time couplets.And this one, even, 'though it's semi-contemporary.Now version three comes to light.C'mon now, it's not as if CNN played a tune entitled "Dumb-Ass Witch & Her Cretin Husband."
"Dumb-Ass Witch & Her Cretin Husband"

3-D Olympic Games

As we understand it, the phrase "Olympic Games" can not be used legally by any one other than paying Olympic sponsors & broadcasters, which explains why one hears "summer games" & "London games" so often. So sue us, collection of wretched aristocrats & bribery-fueled fucks. You suck as much as the Academy Awards/Oscars.

These 3-D images of the opening crap snatched directly from our telebision may be illegal as well. Good. Do something.

Five Guys Fries

Last time we mentioned Five Goys a comment-maker questioned their fries, of which we had had none. Today we went for some, 'though a bit off-put by the US$3.09 they ask. (What the hell, why not US$2.99, izzat thin dime their entire profit margin?) Once we saw how many fries come in the cup & spill into the bag we weren't so price-pissed.
Later. We ate at least as many in the store as are on the plate.
Quality, not quantity: Pretty damn salty, quite crisp. Skin on. Greasy? You decide:
Maybe an hr. after we got our order.
Flash for extra contrast.
Regular, not Cajun. Figured in ah Cajun-stylee could be too much for the wretched aging Bouffant gut. Later/tomorrow we will heat & consume them w/ blue cheese dressing as nature intends.

Off W/ Their Heads!

Say what you will about the hateful Islamic assholes running Iran, they do come up w/ a good idea once in a while.
Four people have been sentenced to death for their roles in Iran's biggest-ever bank fraud scandal.

Two other defendants received life sentences, while 33 more will spend up to 25 years in jail, the chief prosecutor was quoted as saying.

The scandal involved forged documents reportedly used by an investment company to secure loans worth $2.6bn.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last year denied allegations that his government was involved.

The identities of the defendants have not been made public.

Impeachment vote
The case broke in September 2011 when an investment firm was accused of forging documents to obtain credit from at least seven Iranian banks over a four-year period.

The money was reportedly used to buy state-owned companies under the government's privatisation scheme.

As part of their probe, authorities froze the assets of an Iranian businessman thought to be the mastermind behind the scam.

The BBC's Sebastian Usher said the firm at the heart of the scandal had moved from a small start-up capital to being worth billions of dollars.

The affair fuelled weeks of political infighting between Mr Ahmadinejad and Iran's ruling hierarchy of clerics.

Economy Minister Shamseddin Hosseini scraped through an impeachment vote in November after conservative hardliners accused him of failing to take action over the fraud.
Deep economic thinkers will note that the whole megillah stems from the Islamic Republic's privatization scheme. See also: Russia, oligarchs, yada.

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Politeness Is To Do & Say ...

laist advises:
A driver in a 2005 Mazda, identified as 37 year-old Keetha Knox, was heading south on Western Avenue near 108th St. in Westmont (an area just south of South Los Angeles) around 9 p.m. last night when she hit a pedestrian, identified as 28 year-old Alexis Brooks, sheriff deputies said. The impact threw Brooks into the northbound lane where she was hit by another car. Brooks was pronounced dead at the scene. Unfortunately the night’s chaos did not end there, according to City News Service (CNS).

Knox reportedly got out of her car to check what had happened, at which point, CNS says, one of Brooks’ acquaintances took out a gun and started shooting at Knox. Knox got back into her car, drove home and called 911.
You fucking sad-ass loser, how can we make this a more polite society if you can't even hit the rude person who deserves a lesson in decency? More time on the range, politeness fans.

Why We Aren't Watching The Olympics

No actual competition, that's why.

There can not be anyone watching "synchronized diving" can there? It's odd enough that it exists, let alone that it has an audience, even if only every four yrs. Is "Higher, faster, stronger" being fulfilled in any way by such crap?

Should people want to see horses dancing they should try dragging someone around on their back while striking peculiar poses. (Oh. Repressed sexuality again, innit Ann Romney? This is why we like to type stuff; it's educational & informative to us as well as the audience. Some of you may be old enough to remember when every middle-class girl in the suburbs wanted a pony so, so much.) And those who enjoy watching humans in water dancing, &/or young girls who've done their best to delay puberty writhing on poles & bars like strippers should go to the fucking ballet or to a strip club. (Granted, sickening pervs won't get the thrill of watching the pre-pubescent writhing about at the gentlemen's club. Too bad, sicko.)

In general, anything that involves judging is not a sport, but an exhibition. Of crap. Some may ask "Boxing?" but it's not actual boxing unless one of the contestants finishes lying down in blood, preferably their own. Don't need a fucking judge to call winners & losers for that.

Indeed, any event that does not feature the losers literally fucking dying (And maybe a few of the winners, in team sports.) is not competition, but bullshit to fill the space between the adverts for wimp telebision viewers.

UPDATE (29 July 2012, 2130PDT): Voilà the sort of punk-ass chump who enjoys this sort of shit.
... just watched the women’s synchronized diving. My favorite was the last two young girls who won silver in diving, because it is just so nice watching someone win silver, not gold, and still be ecstatic.
The fucking sheep are so easily manipulated. "Up close & personal" our ass.

Pee-Pants Nation

We live in a country, after all, where significant pluralities of the population refuse to accept the worldwide scientific consensus on climate change and fervently continue to believe in the superiority of a piecemeal, private-sector health care system despite ample evidence that Americans spend more for medical care, and have poorer outcomes, than people in any other major Western nation. The cultural and geographic isolation of the United States has a lot to do with this, as do the failures of our education system, but those explanations aren’t quite sufficient. One aspect of the paranoid worldview is a sense of immense self-importance: The CIA has chosen you for secret experiments, or you and your Internet friends are the only people who can see that the Obama birth certificate seen and touched by independent experts is an obvious fraud. In the United States, we cling to this sense of specialness on a manic, nationwide, tautological scale; the way we do things in America is clearly superior because we know we live in the greatest country in the world.
So there, un-Americans!

Cars & Guns

Florida again:
Miami Police issued a lookout alert for 23-year-old Erin Cash around noon, for a "suspect randomly driving around shooting at victims," according to a release.

The incident began as a domestic dispute when Cash and his girlfriend got into an argument, police said. Officials said their 3-year-old son was inside this white Pontiac as Cash beat up the child's mother.

"He said that he was going to kill her, the mother and the child," said public information officer William Moreno. "Secondly, he has told her that he's not going down without a fight."

The girlfriend threw herself out of the car and Cash took off with their toddler, planning to make good on some of his threats, police said.

"He was driving around, he's been going to different family members' homes and shooting at victims randomly," Moreno said.
Not sure what "randomly" means if he's shooting at family members, but it's not as if Public Information Officers are anything but mouthpieces for the police gangsters.

"The Spectrum"

Two more who think it of the Rom.

As noted here:
(Now being considered semi-autistic by two separate sources, one of them highly respected.)

Lady MacR-Money's Horseshit

Mme. Romney (w/ her original hair color) about to give the hose to a son.
Five offensive to the ordinary volk things Miss Ann has said in public.

Most of which the well-informed reader has already heard or read. But there are specific revelations of interest:
Hmm. Interesting indeed, considering that her husband is worth about $200 million. If elected, he would be among the richest presidents ever to occupy the White House, topping both the Roosevelts and the Bushes, who were no slouches. In fact, he’s wealthier than the last eight presidents combined.
That assumes that Mittens isn't worth well over 200 million simoleons, which is why he won't whip out his earlier tax returns.

Odd turn of phrase:
Mrs. Romney said she likes to see what women are up to on the campaign trail, asking “Why are you here? What made you come out of your house today to this event? And what do you think about the future?”
Did hubby give you ladies permission to leave the house w/o him or another male relative, Saudi-style?

Out, damned blot on humanity!

Grand Central Pants Station

Also gone: El Taco, where zombie crackheads used to hang. And Dante's Inferno.The St. Francis is still there, but we're afraid the Sultan Room is long gone as well.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Looking Northeast

Approximately.
(What, we should carry a compass w/ us?)

Friday, July 27, 2012

America's Best Value

It's probably not endless images of colorful (w/in a limited palette) clouds, but what the hell.
"Sunset"
"Dusk/Dawn"

The Hand

Shot at Bloomfest last Sat.
No idea who we think we're kidding. At least we remembered to tilt the head back to minimize the chin.

"You Wonder What
Goes Through Their Minds"

More memories of the once-televised dead, in this case Tom Snyder, subject of a remembrance excerpted at FishbowlLA; entire thing here.
“Everyone in Los Angeles television was at the old Columbia Bar and Grill at Sunset and Gower for the celebration,” says Horowicz. “Tom made a mental note of who was absent and when his turn came to speak at the podium he said, ‘If a bomb were to hit this place right now, Steve Edwards would become the biggest star in Los Angeles TV!’
Bonus (& possibly apocryphal) from us: Guy w/ whom we worked at KVST-Channel 68 1974-ish knew people who worked at KNBC when Snyder did the news there; he advised us that one of Tom's favorite in-studio pranks was to say "Boy, do I have to urinate!" the second he got the "Clear" sign from the floor director, hoping to beat the audio operator who was supposed to cut Snyder's mike.

Back In The Saddle Again

Drunken semi-literate whoortramp Bristol Bay Palin's ghost-typer has offered us this:
Well, it was very painful for everyone involved. After that fight, Tripp and Willow both dozed off, so it gave me – finally – some quiet time to think. I prayed about my life.

I asked for some sort of direction as to what to do, which direction to go…

After all, it’s complicated. Should I focus on work? A relationship? Even after that terrible fight, I wasn’t sure about where Gino and I stood.

In other words, I prayed and asked for guidance.

After Lifetime wrapped up filming for the day, they took the microphones off Willow and me. It wasn’t ten minutes later that my cell phone rang.

It was the casting director of Dancing with the Stars.

I was ecstatic. It was like God placed this opportunity right at my feet. I called my mom right after our conversation and told her the offer I had gotten. I was totally brought to tears just thinking about the last few years of my life, and how abundantly blessed I am to have such amazing opportunities.  I’m thankful for my book*, for this blog, for my Lifetime show, and now this. And, I’m thankful for you guys.

What I’m learning: God’s plan is much greater than our own.

Does that mean I’ll win DWTS? Not necessarily. I’ll give it my all, and see what happens.

But this is what I do know. I’m trying to live every day a little more confidently, because I know that God is in control of our lives, our futures, and even our foxtrots.
Meanwhile, Bristol herself offers us all that she has to offer.
Jesus wants you to keep that thing covered up, hypocrite.

*We fucking bet she's "thankful" for her "book," considering she probably exerted no more effort for it than to sign the contract.

Not White

And probably didn't exist any more than the Angel Moroni existed. A mere prop on which to hang bullshit to be used for social & (especially in the case of the Latter Day Shits) economic control. See here.
“It has simply been overlooked just how ‘white’ the Mormon Jesus really is,”
says Edward Blum, a history professor and religious scholar at
San Diego State University.
Above are notable depictions of Christ by Mormon painters.
From left: "Gentle Healer," by Greg Olsen; "Christ Creating the Earth," by Robert T. Barrett; and "Christ's Love," by Del Parson.
This version looks a little like Jim Morrison to us.
A shitload of LDS representationalism. The guy who did this:
Jebus doesn't want to admit his hemorrhoids are acting up.
The other in the triptych above just makes J.C. look like a damn sissy, & we've already done too much research & copying for this item.

Fix It Again, Tony

Apologizing For America

We're sorry we left the seat up.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

How Long, How Long?

Earlier begging for disaster aside, we really can't wait for the Grand Offal Party's Tampa convention. If total buffoon Romney (Now being considered semi-autistic by two separate sources, one of them highly respected.) continues performing as he did in London today the whole world may be watching something similar to the convention the other party held in Chicago in the halcyon days of 1968.

We can imagine pitched battles in the streets involving bloated Tea Party loons on their diabetes scooters, collegiate idiot Ron Paul supporters (who at least will be able to stand for more than ten minutes) & the other usual gangs of idiots that populate the Republican Party, who, unlike Chicago '68, will be packing heat & relying on Florida's infamous "stand your ground" law to stretch their whitesnakes just a silly millimeter longer. All wildly amusing of course, untilha, who are we kidding, e-fucking-specially amusing when someone gets hurt. No one is innocent, so there will be no innocent bystanders about whom to pretend we give a flying fuck.

The best result would be the first rejection of a "presumptive nominee" since whenever the hell the nominating process began to include the actual voted wishes of the party members, & his replacement by an even greater buffoon. Of whom there are many to choose.

Our curiosity extends to whether they will attempt to salt the hall w/ non-honkies, New York 2004-style. Or was it wherever they held it in 2000? We remember how funny that was, either yr. Our guess is that this go-round they'll be packing the hall w/ as many Anglo-Saxons as they can rustle up, & we bet you know why.

A Better Eulogy For Tom Davis

Police Beat

Urbane sophisticate that we are, we prefer to ignore everything that happens in the less settled & unsophisticated zones to the south of us in L.A. County, & in Orange & San Diego Counties even farther south. It'd be nice if Mexico started around San Pedro. Two reasons why:

Long Beach murder rate spikes 54 percent

From the Daily News. (Believe it or shove it, there are two "newspapers" in Los Angeles.)

Amid Days of Riots, Residents Wonder If Anaheim is Most Dangerous Place on Earth

That from the Daily Beast.

The Government Is No Help At All

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Funny You Should Mention It ...

What exactly is the United Nations and, for that matter, why is there still a United Nations at all? How has it managed to survive over time, from 1945 down to the present—given its long record of underperformance, frequent outright failure, and even more frequent irrelevance?
We were just wondering why & how the Hoover Institution still exists. (Not that we necessarily think the United Nations is the greatest thing since sliced bread or anything.)

You Tell 'Em!

We have to wonder just how old this ranter is.
It is painful to sit in a coffeeshop and listen to these sorts of people as they continually spout out cliche hipster nonsense that they seem to think is intellectual thought, but isn't. It's like the entire generation that these late-20s, early-30s come from are completely emotionally detached, intellectually stunted, and politically and socially disengaged -- but they somehow remain completely self-absorbed. I mean, self-absorption was once solely the domain of the intellectual and artistic elite* -- Einstein and Picasso, for instance -- but has now filtered down to those who don't even have a reason to be self-absorbed. Hell, with the seeming nonexistence of rational thought, pragmatism, emotional maturity, or any sense of the world outside, I'm not even convinced there is a self to be absorbed in.
The complete rant here.
*Uh, no. We're no Einstein, but really, who could be more interesting to us than we are?

Can't Fucking Wait

To poke out our peepers.
24 July 2012
No wait, a change in the plan:
25 July 2012
These Oh-limp-dics will be great if they're this screwed up.

Moonlight On ...*

Tip o' the chapeau to bjkeefe, the human & the web log, for reminding us to get off our ass & run these lunar items.
Maybe the educator described was unable to determine the difference between moon & clouds. We had a bit of trouble ourself.
*Sadly, we were not on Vermont Ave.

Quake Up-Date

It could be worse. Indeed, we're fucking begging to be put out of your misery:
The scenario developed in recent years for planning purposes assumes a magnitude as large as 7.8. But what if it might be even bigger? Maybe ten times bigger than previously thought possible?

"I think we do need to rethink how large an event it could be," said Victor Tsai, PhD, a geophysicist at the California Institute of Technology.

Tsai is a member of the research team that came to that eye-opening conclusion after studying a recent large quake that occurred half a world away, off the western coast of Sumatra.

The April 11 quake was larger than previously thought possible – magnitude 8.6 from a type of fault system that's not supposed to produce quakes that large.

Significantly for Southern California, it is the same type of fault mechanism as the San Andreas.

[...]

"We might have to change our modeling of the San Andreas," Tsai said.

Modeling the impact of a 7.8 magnitude quake on the lower San Andreas yielded projections of thousands of casualties and billions of dollars in damage from desert communities to the Los Angeles basin.

It would take weeks or months to restore utilities and transportation corridors. Most tall buildings would survive, but a handful of downtown's skyscrapers would be expected to collapse.
We don't want those hippies in the Northwest w/ their fancy-ass Cascadia subduction zone to top us do we? We didn't think so. And isn't Yellowstone overdue for an extinction level event?

So many reasons to keep living a few more yrs. When's that asteroid due for the "near miss?"

Compare & Contrast

The Daily Standard (Oil):
“I want to thank someone who put so much work into this event, Terry Bean," President Obama said as the crowd began to cheer. "Give Terry a big round of applause.”

Terry Bean is, according to the New York Post, a "gay-porn kingpin."
Not a producer or job creator but a "kingpin!"

Meanwhile, on the non-consensual sex & politics beat:
SALT LAKE CITY — A conservative activist charged with raping four women rubbed shoulders with some of Utah's most prominent Republican politicians and served as co-chairman of a 2007 fundraiser for GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Many of them, including Sens. Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Gov. Gary Herbert and 4th Congressional District candidate Mia Love, have attended a barbecue Greg Peterson hosted what [sic] he called the Rocky Mountain Conservatives Conference at his lakeside cabin the past three years.

Peterson organized it as a "healing" event in 2010 after the contentious state GOP convention that ousted Sen. Bob Bennett and a nasty primary election between Tim Bridgewater and Lee.

Politicians eager to put those ugly scenes behind them and wanting to associate with what appeared to be a new tea party power base in Utah's GOP were drawn to the confab despite not really knowing Peterson.

"That's exactly what it was," said Hatch campaign manager Dave Hansen, who attended the first event as state Republican Party chairman.

Gregory Nathan Peterson, 37, of Orem, faces 23 felony and two misdemeanor charges in connection with the alleged rapes of four women. One of those attacks, according to investigators, happened at his cabin near Heber City just one day after last year's barbecue.
Waiting for the outrage. Holding our breath. Gaaaa ...

A Probing Question

Was this intentional?
If you've forgotten.

Yes, We Felt It

Barely: 3.8, per the USGS.

Fingers crossed that something big & horrible will soon happen.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Bloomfest Continues

Carnage Asada
Ditto.
Saccharine Trust
The energetic Jack Brewer.
Less sun, more crowd.
Mike Watt & the Missingmen
Mike Watt
Numero Uno.

Name Dropping The Dead

As previously promised (& avoided until now because it will take more than a single paragraph) our most (& only) interesting story involving the now-late Tom Davis, of the comedy duo of Franken & Davis.

In 1974/75, we used to hang at the Pitschel Players, a club run by an improv troupe that had moved from San Francisco to the center of the known (media) universe using money one of the Players, Roger Bowen, had made from his role as Col. Blake in the Robert Altman classic M★A★S★H. Most of our hanging was done on open mic night (Tuesday, we think). No or tiny cover, so ...

Anyway, open mic night included no-talent losers trying to get started as well as talented acts trying new routines, the Credibility Gap & Redd Foxx (Saw him do most of You Gotta Wash Your Ass one night.) among them. And Franken & Davis. (One thing we remember from their bits was a post-nuclear devastation of L.A. newscast, in which the weather guy reports that the temperature is "800° downtown, & 810° in the Valley." Probably stuck w/ us because an excess of temperatures to report is one of the oddities of local reporting; we & F&D had both just hit town, & that's the sort of thing clever people notice.)

Being much more outgoing at the time, we struck up an acquaintance, & one day were riding w/ Tom to the Santa Monica pad of another acquaintance of ours, then-KMET newsman Ace Young, to dub copies of some F&D routines they wanted to shop around, Ace having two reel-to-reel decks. (A very different time. It's entirely possible that the demo reels were sent through the U.S. Mail. Believe it or shove it, kids!)

So we're on the Santa Monica (Or The 10. Oddly, few of us call it the Christopher Columbus Intercontinental Highway. Some of us call it the Mason-Dixon line, but that's another story.) heading to where the sunset would eventually be, smoking a reefer. We'd just finished a toke when, from the corner of our eye, we saw the front of a CHP cruiser which was dropping behind us. We said something to the effect of "Whew, could've been trouble," figuring the CHiPs hadn't seen us, when Tom reported that they were now behind us & had turned the red lights on. Thought he was joshing us, but he wasn't, & added/insisted "Eat the roach, & that joint in your cigarette pack." Which we did.

So there we were on the side of the 10 w/ a pair of pigs, & though they didn't search us (Could've not eaten the whole reefer!) they did look in the F&D Microbus, & went through their prop trunk which was in the back of the bus. First prop they found? A life-sized baby doll w/ a bread knife stuck through it, part of an Alice Cooper parody the boys were doing at the time. Not what the ossifers were expecting.

Then we were both advised to "Keep it at home next time," & the singular we (some of the reefer we'd just eaten was visibly stuck to our teeth & gums) was asked/told "Doesn't taste very good, does it?" Easily the most reasonable law enforcement encounter we've had when we were in actual danger of arrest.

We can only figure the CHiPpies probably didn't have a legal leg on which to stand for an arrest, or figured all the evidence was gone. Still can't figure why they didn't at least frisk either of us for weapons, or make us turn our pockets inside out, not that we're complaining.

Not too long after our little adventure Franken & Davis were snatched up by Lorne Michaels, the cheap bastard (From the NYT link: [The two should actually be called one of the show’s first writers: they accepted a single salary of $350 a week. Each, singly, was called “the guys.”] And: "Mr. Michaels summoned them to New York, where he negotiated with the writers’ union to offer the two a single apprentice job.") & we never heard from them again.

Condolences to all who knew Tom more recently. 59 is too damn young. (Too damn close to our age too, 'though we suspect our bile & other ill humours will enable us to outlive a lot of our idols.)

Fuck You, Foodies

Prescience: Started this item (& got as far as the title before giving up) 19 July, but decided against it. (The eternal question: WHY FUCKING BOTHER?) Less than a wk. later we don't remember what awfulness inspired it, but something came along that fits perfectly; fortunately we hadn't deleted the draft.

So: Have you ever seen anything this precious? Went to some shit-hole during the Bloomfest noted below & the insignificant other ordered some crap that came in these cute littleidiotic mini-Mason jars. (Which are made in fucking Italy. What's the matter, American jars not pretentious enough for you?)
Olives & sun-dried tomatoes, duck terrine, pickled vegetables.
In fucking jars.
The duck terrine had a distinctly chemical/airplane glue undertone. In fairness, our pastrami on mozzarella & flatbread w/ shitty-take mushrooms & some green stuff that tasted OK was pretty damn good.
Also about the only thing on the menu a self-respecting male American would have ordered.

Pertinent To Some Discussions

Spotted at Doc 40.

Monday, July 23, 2012

Snap Judgement?

Not that there's anything wrong therew/, but this seems like a rush to judgement, unless there are other factors that went unmentioned.
“Me realizing I was gay all happened pretty organically,” Wang says. “Literally a few days before I made the announcement, I had an encounter with a woman that did not go so well. I came to the realization that I was gay and decided I had to tell the world.”
NB: Name-related comments will be deleted w/ extreme prejudice.

Downtown Arts District

Outsourcing textual analysis of Bloomfest to Brother Brick. (He's heavy, but he ain't our brother.) We'll provide images.
Third Grade Teacher. Note hipsters in window.
Working the crowd.
Hendrix' ghost.
The Swords of Fatima
Crowd goes wild.
Hot.
Too hot for a headdress, even.