"Bizarre, Man"

As they say, the schaden freudes itself:

SAN JOSE -- Amid inspirational talk, chanted mantras and shouts of victory at a late-night firewalking event attended by thousands Thursday came agonized shrieks from followers whose soles were scorched by the superheated coals, witnesses said.

At least 21 people were treated for burn injuries after taking part in the crowning event of the first day of a Tony Robbins function downtown, including at least three who went to the hospital, a San Jose fire captain said.

The people who suffered various second- and third-degree burn injuries were among more than 6,000 who attended the motivational speaker's event at the San Jose Convention Center called "Unleash the Power Within."

After the event, which ended about 11 p.m., the crowd walked across the street to the park, where 12 lanes of hot coals measuring 10 feet long and 2½-feet wide rested on the grass.

Jonathan Correll, 25, decided to check out what was going on when "I heard wails of pain, screams of agony." He said one young woman appeared to be in so much pain "it was horrific."

"It was people seriously hurting, like they were being tortured," he said. "First one person, then a couple minutes later another one, and there was just a line of people walking on that fire. It was just bizarre, man."

Correll, a San Jose City College student, said he saw between 10 and 15 people being treated. He said he videotaped the scene for about 5 minutes before an event staffer told him to put the camera away.

One can never go broke underestimating the idiocy & masochism of the American public.

Personal Appearance Notification

Best-laid plans not gone awry, we should be at this mess tomorrow, to catch Third Grade Teacher (An actual LAUSD third grade teacher fronts the band, but she wears a Catholic schoolgirl uniform. Does that make sense?) who aren't bad, & a couple other acts (Like, Mike Watt may be OK, that one time we saw The Gears over 30 yrs. ago we think they were pretty good, & Saccharine Trust.) depending on stamina. Like we're going to last for six hrs. in the forecast 88°F.

Should you see & recognize us, a subtle wave or nod of the head will do. Sorry, no autographs.

Liar Liar, Magic Underpants On Fire

On A Lighter Note

Light.

Thanks for sending in your submission to LA Red Sunset Photos: July 18
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Send it to your friends, family and followers to help it get voted to the top.
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The HuffPost Social News Team

Ours is number 49. Get on it, "Followers."

Tragedy Strikes

Can't even go to sleep because there's always a sick fuck shooting someone somewhere in these United Snakes.

What the hell: Is Colorado the massacre capital of the U.S.?

And, very sorry to hear of the death of Tom Davis. Not quite a yr. older than we are. We'll type up the story of Tom & this reporter almost being arrested on the Santa Monica freeway in 1974 or '75 (not too long before he & that Senator guy were hired by Saturday Night Live) & share it later.

70 Years Ago Today

Recorded in Hollywood, 20 July 1942.

Even More

Pics of last night's sunset. (We just submitted one, not sure if/when it will show. Fucking Nazis at HuffPo make submitters crop their shots to some artificial standard of squareness. Actual, equilateral squareness, not merely devoid of interest squareness, like most of the HuffPo.)

Pin-Dick Gestapo Wrap-Up

Compensate much?

We note that the fuckheads at Huffngton Post think it's funny, possibly because white middle-class pigs like the Huffy staff are seldom on the receiving end of police terror.

HuffPuffer Kathleen Miles quotes this anyway, just to ruin her own point, because she is stupid & entitled.:

One commenter on The Agitator's story tore apart the NBPD's image:

I have lived in Newport Beach. [There are] no gangs (or poor people)… The police there are well known to be overbearing and treat the smallest violations like violent felonies... they normally hang around the beach and harass young people who come to the beach to have fun... any black or hispanic visitors are considered suspicious and treated as probable criminals.

Do enablers like Miles have to be on the end of a nightstick"baton" wielded by the sort of loser who becomes an oinker before they wise up?

We add that we stolefound it fromat laist, not HuffPo.

OK, We Suck

Better images of last night's "epic" sunset aggregated by laist.

Wish we'd been at the beach.

A bit later: Sneaked one in!

Sticks & Stones

Been reading much crap recently (Nothing but crap, actually: Everything's made of shit. Everything!) concerning comment sections on this here Internet, & how awful many commentors* are.

Whiny weaklings, sensitive little flowers & their ilk are invited to refresh their memories of something they should have internalized by, oh, second grade for the slower among them, by reading (Carefully, cretins; move your lips if you must.) the title to this item. Did your mommies teach you nothing? Did you not learn of the First Amendment in your cruddy schools?

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*Why in the name of hell doesn't Google's shitty spell-check recognize the word "commenter?" It's in several dictionaries.

Flaming Sky*

Between the pollutants & the Fabio remnants, one hell of a sunset. These don't really do it justice, but hey, if you weren't here this is all you get. Pardon the clichéd palm trees; they're unavoidable.

Absolutely non-clichéd: Hollywood sign on hill at left.
We didn't even notice until we "developed" the shots.
Ha, wrong, since the Roosevelt is at the far right.
Can't remember which station's xmitter that is on the left,
but it isn't on Mt. Lee.

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*Hoping for the Van Allen belts to light up.

Hey Birdbrains

Any idea what these suckers are? We're far from a birder, but we've never seen this blue/gray species before, & had no luck w/ name that bird websites. First noticed them because they were noisily trying to break open acorns or seeds or whatever the hell on the roof of a garage.

They spent several mins. (long enough for us to grab the camera & shoot) looking for stuff at ground level & beating it on rocks to open it.

Florida Scrub-Jay, maybe?

It's The Humidity

Remnants of Hurricane Fabio covered Hell today.

And yes, we are "web-logging" in our Fruit of the Looms & nothing else.

Corporatism Is Communism

It’s not just that the corporations have taken control over our government (though that’s awful enough). It’s also that they’ve taken control over — and put serious limits on — our choices regarding what we buy, where we work, how we live, and what rights we have. Our futures are increasingly no longer our own: more and more decisions, large and small, that determine the quality of our lives are being made by Politburo apparatchiks at a Supreme Corporate Soviet somewhere far distant from us. Only now, those apparatchiks are PR and marketing executives, titans of corporate finance, lobbyists for multinationals, and bean-counting managers trying to increase profits at the expense of our freedom.

More, "with tongue only somewhat in cheek," from Salon/Alternet.

Arroyo Seco

You fucking hicks would know it as a dry wash.

Brother Can You Spare A Loon?

Now we know where to ask for moneybeg to maintain our lavish existence:

According to data from Environics Analytics WealthScapes published in the Globe and Mail, the net worth of the average Canadian household in 2011 was $363,202, while the average American household’s net worth was $319,970.

C'mon people, we're starving down here! Seriously. We're down to about a hundred of your "kilogrammes."

Kitty Wells Joins Honky Tonk Angels

Her "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" in 1952 was the first No. 1 hit by a woman soloist on the country music charts and dashed the notion that women couldn't be headliners. Billboard magazine had been charting country singles for about eight years at that time.

Stolen whole.Of course, it was an answer song, to a number that deserved an answer.And two of our favorite hick tunes, written by Harlan Howard.

Today In Yankee Pig Imperialism

Too long, & mighty depressing. Stand by for blowback.

Screwed Up But Good

Valley residents indentured to dead-end jobs in the basin avoid the 405 & various canyon routes to take the new Expo line to their soul-destroying* gigs.

The trains into town from the Valley get pretty crowded on weekdays and weekends, but Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky says in the story that the Valley presence on the Expo Line is surprising. "I wish I could say I planned this....It is unanticipated," Yaroslavsky said. "It's a reflection of how screwed up traffic is in this city that commuters are doing this circuitous route."

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*Not actually true. Those who live in the Valley are either soul-less drones to begin w/ or living there destroyed their souls even before employment could deplete their humanity.

We've Told You & Told You

What is it we've repeated until we're exhausted to the point we no longer care? All sorts of crap, but there being room for only so many ideas/obsessions/fetishes inside our brain, one of the principal ones is that if you're so miserable you want to die (And really, who isn't & who doesn't?) don't let the bastards grind you down.

Don't off yourself, kill those who've made your existence miserable. Sure, you could get caught, maybe you'll be killed, but even so they'll have been forced to work to eliminate you, rather than outsourcing your desired death to you. Most of those who've made your existence the hell it is have probably never performed actual work one day in their lives: Make them pay for the suffering they've caused you, don't give up & take the "easy way out."

One good example of people who hate you & want you dead is the Limebags on about austerity:

The number of suicides and prevalence of suicidal tendencies is rising faster among older men than in any other age group, according to research released in the week the government postponed its suicide prevention strategy.

Nice, huh? Get a fucking gun & do what must be done!

Too Little, Too Late

Westminster noise curfew silences Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney as they attempt to thank fans after two-song duet

Too bad they couldn't shut the aging hacks the fuck up before the gig.

Black Plague On Your Mother ...

... Black plague on your brother
Black plague on all other
All other scum like you!
— Writ by us, 1983-ish. (The copyright's still good, so fuck off!)

Only about seven cases are reported in the United States annually, mostly in northern New Mexico, and New York City had not seen an instance in more than 100 years.

Whatever, lady; the plague is often found in squirrels here in the capital of the known universe.

"It is important for the public to know that there have only been four cases of human plague in Los Angeles County since 1984, none of which are fatal," Fielding said.

Stop trying to make us feel better. We want plague deaths, & we want them now!

Stumpy

Three-legged lizard.

Doesn't seem to bother it much. We didn't even notice until we looked at the picture later.