Friday, October 31, 2014

First Hallowe'en Of WWII

TUE 31 OCT 1939
U.S. freighter Black Osprey is detained at the Downs by British authorities; freighter Gateway City, detained by the British since 16 October, is released after cargo billed for delivery at Antwerp and Rotterdam, Holland, is seized as contraband.

More Dreadful Grate

From the same photo session as earlier this date, the same tune. But mos. later, on 29 November 1966.
Crypts cheerfully kept clean (w/ expectorant & urine, natch) unless your eternal resting place is transformed into subterranean parking for another ticky-tacky box filled w/ apparently-overpaid young people overpaying for newly constructed pseudo-post modernism.

Pigeon In The Straw

"This is really my best side."

Anomaly Aboard The "B" Ark*

A CONCEPTUAL ILLUSTRATION OF SPACESHIPTWO INTERIOR. IMAGE: V. GALACTIC.
Charging the filthy rich U.S.$250,000 for a suborbital trip & then crashing/exploding the spacecraft w/ the spendthrift assholes still aboard is the most exciting (if expensive) population control idea that's come across our desk in some time.

Admittedly, work is needed on where the craft meets the ground (assuming it hasn't mostly burned & broken up before impact) the Mojave not being that difficult a target. There are, for example, intersections in various large & densely-occupied urban areas that are more challenging targets, & much worthier of total destruction, &/or receiving a huge &, we hope, flaming debris field.

The only foreseeable drawback from our perspective is the possibility of fare increases on our next Virgin Atlantic flight across the pond.
*Or, "Stairway To The Desert Floor." (Too soon? Hah! Your "time" is entirely relative.)

Really Horrifying

Not even Breitbart, trying its sad best to make D'Souza Entertainment's latest awful offering palatable, can find a picture of the multi-talented author/director/disgraced fornicator or adulterer (Not quite sure, we'll fling both.) & ejected college prexy that makes him look good.
In an exclusive telephone interview with Breitbart News, D'Souza explained his plans for taking America's message across the nation as a mobilizing and educational tool, and revealed several new undertakings that he says will sweep America's political and cultural landscape by storm.
It's the new dance that's sweeping the ocean!

Hippies from 1968, watch the fuck out:
There's a spirit of 1776 that has built America up and a spirit of 1968 that is pulling us down. And it's really a matter of which spirit will triumph in the long term. Obama is very much a creation of the spirit of 1968. The immigrants he wants to bring to America reflect that spirit; they want to sit in the bandwagon, not pull the bandwagon.
He's onto you bandwagon-sitting loafers & parasites; you have only seven months until he's free from Obama's ankle-monitored political prison!
Due to his court-ordered confinement and eight-month travel ban, D'Souza conducted the interview from San Diego, where he will be serving out the remaining seven months of his term. "I'm going to come off the matt [sic] in a very surprising way. Instead of being beaten down by all of this, I'm going to be energized by it," he said.

[...]

D'Souza added that he has begun the undertaking of a philanthropic, two-year project that he is developing to take America across the nation and show it to millions of young people, beginning upon the completion of his confinement in May 2015.

Additionally, D'Souza said he is, in fact, working on another film for the 2016 election year, which he has already begun. "I'm putting the elements together for the film, which will come out in the summer of 2016." He explained that the new film, like his earlier two, will include a great deal of "hidden knowledge" as, he dubs it--information that the world did not necessarily know about..

"Showing you stuff that is true, indisputable, and yet is not somehow in the public domain," he said. "And I certainly want to do that again with new information in my next film."
Conservative Philanthropy: Flitting about the country in first class while staying at the finest hotels, all on somebody else's dime, while pimping your own drivel to yokels & bumpkins by signing a few copies & holding a 30-min. (max.; it's in the contract) Q&A after the show. Fifty yrs. in Leavenworth wouldn't have been enough.

It's Official: The Three-Day Wknd. Of The Hallowed Dead Is Underway

Snappy dressers. (Tom Hanks, second from left, Dustin Hoffman, center.)

I Like Texture

Even if it can't actually be felt.

Yeah, Boo ...

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Too Much Color Enhancement

Interesting (but not fabulous) effect.

Limeys Detain Again

MON 30 OCT 1939
U.S. freighter Scanpenn is detained by British authorities at Kirkwall, Orkneys; freighter Hybert is detained by British authorities at the Downs the same day (see 11 and 5 November, respectively).

Big Sky Country

U.S.$50.00 Pumpkin!

Today In Non-Infra Structure

It's Pittsburgh, Pa.,  by the way.

Garden GnomesBuddhas

Do the Buddha's followers put statues of Hay-soos On A Stick in their zen gardens?

Profit Motive

"Orbital Sciences"
Your tax dollars at "work": Privatize the profits, socialize the risk.

This Is What Democracy Looks Like

How many times must I type that elections are a joke? The people of Burkina Faso have finally awoken to that grim reality & done something about it,
Protesters angry at plans to allow Burkina Faso's President Blaise Compaore to extend his 27-year-rule have set fire to parliament.

Correspondents say the city hall and ruling party headquarters are also in flames in the capital, Ouagadougou.

A huge crowd is surging towards the presidential palace and the main airport has been shut.

MPs have suspended a vote on changing the constitution to allow Mr Compaore to stand for re-election next year.

Five people have been killed in the protests, among the most serious against Mr Compaore's rule, reports BBC Afrique's Yacouba Ouedraogo from the capital.

The military fired live bullets as protesters stormed parliament, our correspondent says.
why do Americans remain cowed by a few thugs w/ weapons? Oh, right, the average American is paralyzed in irrational fear of virtually everything, because s/he is descended from chickenshit losers who didn't resist expulsion from their European home, but were more than ready to kill everyone already in America because they out-gunned them. Fuck you, Yanks, you're getting just what you deserve, good & hard!

Surprise surprise surprise!

Mr Compaore is a staunch ally of the US and France, which uses Burkina Faso as a base for military operations against militant Islamists in the Sahel region.

Both France and the European Union (EU) have called on him to scrap the proposed constitutional amendment.

The EU said it could jeopardise Burkina Faso's stability. The US has also raised concern about the proposed amendment.
On my, "concern" has been "raised." You see there the comittment of these United Snakes to democracy. Ha ha ha. Fuck you, fuck your mother, fuck the horse you rode in on, just fuck everybody to hell w/ a splintered broomstick, I've had it up to here for about the millionth time again!!

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Tale Of Two Cities

For the morbidly curious.

Truck Fire

Mad Bum!

Anyone placing 2016 Series bets?

Today's Airship Sighting

Darkness At Noon

Or, Land Of The Midnight Sun. You know, Seattle:
Note also the "Uproad" at Garfield.
Good job all around, KING5.

Hillish Landscape

“A GOOD LIFE IN THE HOLLYWOOD HILLS” BY JOHN WEAVER – APRIL 1970

In the old days the cliffdwellers were left to live as they pleased, like remote islanders who could be spared the civilizing advantages of clothes and churches because they had no natural resources worth exploiting. But the development of new earth-moving machines and building tech­niques during World War II, coupled with southern California’s explosive postwar growth, made it both pos­sible and profitable to subdivide mountain sites once considered un-buildable (they used to be given away as radio quiz-show prizes).
[Holiday Magazine, via.]

Hellish Landscape

Wandered all over hell Mon., & have the pictures.

Most Interesting Event In
Today's News (As Of ...)

Not really an event yet, but "Ebola" appears nowhere in it.
When President Obama "overnights in the Providence area this week, it will be the first time in more than 50 years that a sitting president has slept in the nation's smallest state," the AP reports.
[Entirely from P. Wire.]

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Monday Afternoon W/ The Rock

Monday Afternoon Under The Rock

Wait For It ...

City of Flint Back To Norway

SAT 28 OCT 1939
U.S. freighter City of Flint, again under German control, sails from Murmansk for Norwegian waters. At no time during City of Flint's enforced stay at Murmansk has the ship's master, Captain Joseph A. Gainard (an inactive USNR officer) been allowed to communicate with the U.S. Embassy in Moscow (see 3 November).

U.S. freighter Black Tern, detained at Weymouth, England, by British authorities since 11 October, is released.

German armored ship Admiral Graf Spee makes rendezvous with tanker Altmark near Tristan de Cunha. The warship refuels from the auxiliary, and transfers British freighter Trevanion's crew to her.

Batter Up!

By Krista Hostetler. CREATED 6:12 PM
Las Vegas police were called to the home of former MLB outfielder Jose Canseco after an accidental shooting.

It happened on Tuesday afternoon at his home on Market Crest.

Police said Canseco accidentally shot himself in the hand and was transported to University Medical Center in Las Vegas.

No other details have been released.
[abcHD13ACTION NEWS]

The Way I Live Now

But first, then. (Again.)
Now, now. (As of Sat., actually.)
Not sure it makes any difference beyond the difference, barring differences caused by re-orientation to the prevailing magnetic fluxes (or Fluxus). And not seen is the other half of the bunker, which still has junk piled all over it.

Chickens Roosting Again

We steal it whole so you may decide w/o clicking:

Western Masters Now Terrorized By Victims of Imperialism

The Western nations, since the age of exploration and imperialism, have accustomed themselves to mastery over emergent, backward or broken nations, or primitive or failed empires.

They exercised over them a rule that ranged from the ruthless and exploitative to the paternalism of the latter-day colonialism of the 1920s to 1950s. They nominated their monarchs, offered them western education and religion, and held out to them unconsidered and unfulfilled promises that someday they would be like their western masters, possessing an imitation of western ways of life and the prospect of distant graduation into their own version of the civilization practiced by the West.

Today the tables have been turned in the relations of imperialist victims and imperial rulers, but the nature of the relationship is changing into a new one of terrorization or victimization of the latter by the former.

This is true even for the United States, which traditionally has proudly held itself a liberator of nations, but held a real Empire from 1898/1901 until 1945, including the Philippines, with Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and scattered Pacific territories its ambiguous present-day reminder and remnant. In present-day America the liberation flag can no longer in conscience be flown.

The threat of terror produced by past victims of American Middle Eastern imperialism comes from the new imperialism of the United States that appeared after it had survived its Russian and Vietnamese phases, and moved into the Arab world.

Now the Islamic Middle East is striking back in a sudden and ruthless way that has alarmed and even panicked Europeans and Americans, even those people and politicians in the Western homelands themselves.

The jihadists, once refugees in the West, now are returning to the Arab scene as candidate-terrorists, ambitious afterwards to return to the countries that had once taken them in as refugees—and pretty much abandoned them to ghetto life, the governments that had taken them in not knowing what to do with them that might turn this mass of persecuted peoples into integrated Westerners.

The jihadists have appeared in the big cities of Western Europe and North America—only a few as yet, but more of them feared by western populations as determined to take revenge on their well-intentioned former benefactors—while finding Paradise for themselves.

They are mostly westernized Muslims but include European and North American converts to Islam. This is an export-import affair, small in scale, well within the resources of western police and security forces. But it has set nerves on edge in Canada and in the United States, as well as in Western Europe.

There is something important to say about all this.

In 1957 a book of profound significance was published by a former wartime British Army intelligence officer named Norman Cohn, who in the course of his military career had dealt with Nazi war criminals and later—when he was stationed in Vienna—with postwar refugees from Stalinism. In civil life he was a scholar at Sussex University. His book was called The Pursuit of the Millennium. It was to prove one of the most influential and important historical and political books of the twentieth century.

Its argument, as Cohn summarized in the foreword to his second edition, was that in the past “traditional beliefs about a future golden age or messianic kingdom became, in certain situations of mass disorientation and anxiety, the ideologies of popular movements of a peculiarly anarchic kind.” He said that these movements in the Middle Ages possessed a hidden continuity and integral resemblance to modern totalitarianism in all of the latters’ excesses and terror.

Now we witness the arrival of ISIS. There is nothing new in it (unless this is its predilection for decapitations). Norman Cohn will tell you all about it.

He will also tell you that it is a phenomenon that will pass. It is in no way integral to the Islamic religion, any more than Nazism was to German nationalism, or Stalinism to Marxism. For modern Muslims of the Eastern Mediterranean it is surely a terrifying phenomenon, because this movement comes from within their own society itself.

Europeans have seen Nazi terror and mass murder grow within their own peoples. So have Russians. Colonial America had a large experience of it—as Cohn points out—in the witch-hunts of Puritan New England. One might venture to say (as some have) that in today’s American security state, with its all-encompassing surveillance, use of courts of exception and Star Chambers, perpetual imprisonment, and secret torture, one detects a shadow of it. Thanks to Professor Cohn, we can know it when we see it - and will understand that it, too, passes.

Visit William Pfaff’s website for more on his latest book, “The Irony of Manifest Destiny: The Tragedy of America’s Foreign Policy” (Walker & Co., $25), at www.williampfaff.com.
© 2014 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Stairway To The Stars

Another booming success for private enterprise & the American Way:

On The Stump

Only another wk. of this yr.'s electoral idiocy & idiotic reporting thereon, 'though w/ the bastards screeching around the final turn the volume will be set at 11! & the idiocy at 12. (So dulled out w/ the urging to vote I may burn my mail-in ballot like a fucking draft card if I hear one more democracy-trusting sap repeat that crap. STOP PRETENDING!!)
Then the recounts & recriminations begin.
Manifestation of Cthulhu?
And after suffering that for a few wks. the 2016 babble & yap can begin in fucking earnest. (Although you can bet even your worthless ass there'll be many a spew next Weds. a.m. about who is & isn't in The Horse Race To Hell.)

Can't wait. For someone to put me out of this American misery.

Chuck E. Cheese's® Open Now

Homogenization of Westlake & assimilation of its population, largely immigrants or their immediate descendants, w/ the attendant economic status bleeding-heart liberals can imagine. (What's that? A bilingual menu is all the proof needed they aren't "assimilating" fast enough? Sorry I mentioned it. Or even noticed.)
Wilshire Blvd. at S. Benton Way 90057

No, Really: Amerika W/ A "K"

This story about the gov't. of the United Snakes hiring Nazis after they "lost" WWII is 40 yrs. old, you ignorant NYT mainstream media buffoons. See?

Another Johnny-come-lately tweets it on Storify. (Here we pause, shake our head & say "What the fucking hell, why do you clots make it so hard on yourself?")

Hitler's Ghosts have been running this nation for almost seventy yrs. & the apparently brain-dead employees of the Old Gray Lady just noticed? What a surprise! It's almost as if they were in on it.

Monday Afternoon In The Park

Autumn Leaves

But it just got here!

Call Direct, Call Collect,
But Call By The End Of The Wk.!

Monday, October 27, 2014

Today Among The Law-Abiding,
Gun-Fetishizing Citizenry

The mind of the guns' rights advocate:
Secret Facebook groups such as “People Who Were Blocked by Moms Demand Action Demand Action Now” — which has well over a thousand members — disseminated gun rights propaganda and helped orchestrate attacks on individuals commenting on Kroger’s page. Some gun nuts combed the profile pages of people commenting in support of gun reform, harvested personal photos of them and Photoshopped them to include obscene or humiliating comments, before reposting the photos on Kroger’s page, or on other social media sites. Because Kroger frequently bans users who post that kind of content, the gun extremists created disposable fake accounts — sometimes using the name and profile photo of an opponent— to quickly dump posts without being held accountable.

In one case, they found a photo of a woman’s preschool-age child and wrote on it, “My mom sucks more cock than Richard Simmons” and circulated it online. In another case, they grabbed a photo of a mother and her child and wrote “Big retard, little retard” on it before reposting it. One woman posted to Kroger a photograph of a receipt showing money she spent elsewhere, and gun extremists swarmed her post, with hundreds of responses, including comments like “what you could do is shut your god damned whore mouth,” “calm your tits,” and “fuck her right in the pussy,” which Kroger’s Facebook admin allowed to stand over a day later.
Whoa. Secret Facebook groups w/ well over 1,000 members. Isn't there a law or something? Also, disposable accounts & Kroger doesn't give a flying fuck at one of their dough-nuts about the ninnies populating their Facebook page! (What's the Seinfeldian deal w/ "humiliation" anyway? If it's made-up invective who gives a crap what someone on the iNternetFacebook types?)

Just kidding, fuck a buncha pindick wanna-bes who talk big on the iNternet/Facebook (I don't qualify only because I don't wanna "be.") but honestly, we self-arsed w/ a dog-bites-human/ammosexuals-as-usual-again link like this
only because of our admiration for the sheer adolescent (Because it's about S-E-X! Ooooh, dirty.) juvenility of “My mom sucks more cock than Richard Simmons”.*

No, two reasons, the second from the projection dep't.:
If you sign the petition, Reed says, you can knock Moms Demand Action back “into their little liberal utopia where they can chase leprechauns and ride unicorns all day long”
Good one from someone who lives in a Call of Doody (Your Pants): Scary Negro Jihad A-Comin' So Grab Your Gun Noble Teutonic Knight! fantasy land.
*So stupid my inner eight-yr. old is still laughing.

Theoretically Insect-Free Kitchen

Flash, not otherwise adjusted. Heavenly, innit?
Abused to bring out the grime.
Where it all went.
Confirmed body count: One.

"low-key approach bears fruit"

FRI 27 OCT 1939
U.S. freighter City of Flint is again placed under German naval prize crew from armored ship Deutschland (see 28 October and 3 November).

U.S. Consul at Gibraltar William E. Chapman meets informally with British Colonial Secretary there, and objects to protracted delay in detention of U.S. merchantmen, especially freighter Exporter, which has on board diplomatic pouches bound for Athens, Greece. Consul Chapman's low-key approach bears fruit. Exporter, detained since 14 October, is released later that day, as are freighters Oakman (detained since 13 October) and Meanticut (detained since 21 October).

What's W/ That Constant Nuclear Explosion Thing In The Sky?

Meditations after being forced from the bunker for a several-hr. period well before sundown by a team of insecticiders:
Does that aerial A-Bomb do that all day long? And you suckers willingly expose yourselves to its radiation on a daily basis, merely for money? I knew humanoids were effed up but good, but that's beyond absurdity.

Another conclusion I've reached:
L.A. is (nothing but) a (big) pile of dirt.
You don't care, but this was started at a library branch about 1500. I gave up after realizing it would take two separate infinities to upload the piles of shitdirt.

Missed Opportunity

Took me several mins. to come up w/ a clever name for H.Q.'s Wi-Fi network/hot spot/whatever. But why didn't I think of this one?

LAX Flight Grounded After Some Jerk Names Their WiFi Hotspot A 'Terror Nettwork'

I may ("May?" hundreds of voices ask as one.) be a jerk, but I'm not as stupid as the moron who brought this to the attention of the flight crew. Idiot squealers like that are the people who should be on the no-fly list. (And on the "no-reproduce" list we're compiling at WEB OF EVIL H.Q. Do you have any suggestions? Or are you on it?)

Sunday, October 26, 2014

Detention Diplomacy

THU 26 OCT 1939
U.S. freighter Black Eagle is detained by British authorities (see 5 November).

U.S. Consul at Gibraltar William E. Chapman confers informally with British naval authorities there concerning protracted delays in detention of American merchantmen (see 27 October).

Odyssey Over For Jack Bruce

... through the tissues of your mind.

Image Test

Figured this lonely shoe was worth(y of) a shot, did nothing aesthetic for me on viewing it later, but it's better than an image of a test pattern. Maybe.
S'pose I could just see how long it took to load & then not publish, but that'd be a waste of something.

P.S.: Uploaded at an acceptable speed, & w/ an Ethernet cable that the effing devil-box has twice before advised me was not working. Idiot robot.

Summer Of '77:
Handsome Dick ♥ Frisco

Who knows what tunes lurk in the minds of men (or disembodied iNternet entities) but this entity suddenly wanted to hear "The Next Big Thing" & found a recently uploaded live performance wherein Dictators frontperson Handsome Dick Manitoba attempts to ingratiate himself w/ the S.F. crowd. The suck begins 'round (4:22), 'til then enjoy the throbbing tune & its comedic stylings.
Saw the same act at L.A.'s Whiskey days earlier; did the reaction of the masses there lead to H.D.'s fit o' pique?

Here Dick stops the song, but only to disprove his point; at least the implication is that being the rockin'-est urban sector in the Golden State is a relative honor & would you tired hippies get off your asses & boogie?
(Note substitution of "Johnny Carson" for "Joe Franklin".)

I just like this one.
Boogie 'til it's Sunday afternoon nap-on-the-couch time, wretched Dictators fans!

Low-Impact Lifestyle

In reduce/reuse/recycle news, found a so-new-the-label's-still-on laundry basket in the dumpster yesterday.
This has also served as a test. Mikey may well have been right; set the wireless gateway to channel 11, all worked at the previous speed. (Or maybe the stupid robots straightened themselves out while they were in standby & I was sleeping.)

Next, an unwired upload. A shot of the current laundry basket, actually a lidless hamper inherited from house-mate Miss Ellie in 1987 & in this reporter's possession since should provide context.
Uploaded w/o wiring, speed excellent!
Note the crack at bottom. I'd actually contemplated buying a new one, but apparently The Big Fucking Killer in The Sky is sweating the small stuff for me. While letting me get screwed on the big stuff every time. Thanks a lot, Hebrew War Gawd. I got something you can worship right here, Yahweh!

Annals Of Obliviousness

Twelve days ago I made a big dealphoto essay of a new modem.
"Modem." It is to laugh, & then laugh some more, as it took 12 days for Brainiac here to realize that's no mere modem, but a "wireless gateway"! Oh, I saw the little tornado/come of death dealies marked "2.4GHz" & "5Ghz", but it wasn't until today after redecorating (for lack of a less pretentious word) & then staring at it for a while in its new spot that it sank into the extra-dense Bouffant skull that there was no purpose to those little dealies unless wirelessness was going on inside the "modem" w/o benefit of a separate router.
The Quik E-Z Connect Moron Guide was next to useless, apparently assuming the moron was already using a "wireless gateway". But after waiting 25 mins. for the initial set-up disc that went unmentioned in the Imbeciles' Guide to extract itself (Snack time!) & dicking about for an hr.+ after that, everything works wirelessly, except now it runs as slowly as molasses in some cold month, even wired to the fucking gateway w/ the WiFi off. Gawddam fuck shit piss.

Saturday, October 25, 2014

I Shall Be Released

WED 25 OCT 1939
U.S. freighter Sundance, detained at London, England, by British authorities since 11 October, is released; freighter West Hobomac, detained by the British since 18 October, is released.

U.S. freighter Nashaba, detained at Le Havre by French authorities since 14 October, is released.

Hey Diddle Diddle!

Links qualify as light, let's close two before shutting down
& moving things around.

Unlike many of the tourist traps passing from the Hollywood scene, I have visited the Cat & Fiddle, & more than once. ('Though, like all the rest, not for a while.)

The soon-to-be-dispossessed owners warn us all:
HOLLYWOOD, we are worried for your fate, overdeveloped & overpriced. Out of town landlords who are worried about their pockets and not their souls. It's a sad place to be.
Also bummed? Morrissey:
The Morrissey online zine True to You has the singer's reaction to news that L.A. pub The Cat and Fiddle is closing in December:
The earth dies screaming

A large part of me dies at news that the pillowy bosom of the Cat And Fiddle is to close down on December 15th, making the universe all wrong. A beacon of light will soon be a headstone, and where will we now go to chew each other's fat? Yes, life is fragile and we all end up as worm chow, but the Cat And Fiddle is one of the Great Drinkers of The 20th Century, and is as stable and rooted a part of the Strip as number 77. We are all orphaned.

with funeral pace
Morrissey
Florence, Italy, 22 Ottobre 2014.
I'm only going to say that if you use Ottobre, type Firenze, Italia as well. Oh, also, the Cat isn't on the "Sunset Strip," & "77" never existed. It was imagined at 8524 Sunset, but it's history now.
In M. Bouffant history, lived across the street at 8497 Sunset OVER 40 YRS. AGO!!

Today In Décor

Dear Diary:
Web-loggery will be light for a while
there is dust to be stirred.

Asteroid Defense Failure!

Google exec returns to planet surface unharmed. Better luck next time, Space Command.

Advertising (Free)

(It's only prostitution if a link is provided. And pardon the poor cropping; the bus was coming.)

Dedication Time

Teabagging Congressional cretin Steve King pretty sure
gay people are going to hell

Damn, still rocks & wails, even if half of 'em are currently ghosts.
(Hey, think they airbrushed his waist on the L.P. cover?)

[Headline source.]

Friday, October 24, 2014

Action in Yucatan Channel

TUE 24 OCT 1939
British light cruiser HMS Orion and Canadian destroyer HMCS Saguenay locate German tanker Emmy Friedrich in the Yucatan Channel; British light cruiser HMS Caradoc subsequently intercepts Emmy Friedrich, whose crew scuttles her to avoid capture.

British steamships Menin Ridge and Ledbury are attacked and sunk by German submarine U-37 (torpedoes and gunfire, respectively) 36°01'N, 07°22'W. U.S. freighter Crown City rescues the only five survivors from the 27-man crew of Menin Ridge and Ledbury's entire 33-man crew.

Soviet authorities intern U.S. freighter City of Flint's German prize crew from armored ship Deutschland at Murmansk (see 27-28 October and 3 November).

U.S. freighter Wacosta is detained by British authorities (see 8 November); freighter Iberville, detained by the British since 13 October, is released after cargo due to be discharged at Antwerp and Rotterdam, Holland, is seized as contraband. British authorities at Kirkwall remove 468 bags of U.S. mail destined for Gothenborg, Sweden and 18 for Helsinki, Finland, from Finnish freighter Astrid Thorden.

Note, & Note Well

Didn't stand for the singing of "Gawd Bless Amurika" & left my ballcap on. Whatcha gonna do about that, National Security State?

Oh yeah? I fucking dare you!

Musical Break:
"Your Mistake Is My Beefsteak"

Moments later: Speaking of mistakes ... here's the correct tune:
And the original:

Anything But Temptation

Hey, would you fools on telebision please stop reminding me just how easy it is to get my itchy trigger finger on a gun in this country?

Because I have an issue w/ all 535 Members of Congress, who have been committing economic terrorism against the retired & disabled since the dawn of time.
This year's increase was 1.5 percent, the year before it was 1.7 percent.

"While any increase is better than no increase, the fact of the matter is that for millions of seniors, retirees and federal employees, these annual increases will be gone before most even receive them," said J. David Cox, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees.
Let's see our representatives retire on US$1,192.00/mo. Let's just see them retired on nothing, which is about what they were worth when they were holding office.

Hell, I'd to see them all on their knees before me begging for mercy while I wave my All-American equalizer in their frightened faces. Pigs.

ADDED: The clowns on the L.A. City Council have some explaining to do as well. (I knew there was a reason I didn't vote for that shithead tool of the parasites Mitch O'Farrell.) Also at the point of a gun!

Chickens II

Chickens Return To Roost Again!

"Bwok bwok bwok," chump-ass punks!

Not currently giving a damn about school shootings that kill any less than 20. Step up your game, teenagers driven mad by this world of shit & pain your parents made you live in!

Oh, & these United Snakes might just try not to drive its children crazy in their schools w/ its non-stop bullshit (& apparently some racism, but that's All-American, innit?) but that might cut into someone's profits or the "defense" budget, so fuck it, right sheep?

Area Man Frees Self From
Forces Of Oppression, Is Arrested

Man who allegedly stabbed both his wife and his boss at 2 separate locations southwest of Houston arrested at a supermarket in Boling, Texas - @HoustonChron

Thursday, October 23, 2014

Shut Up & Take Your First Cousins
As Your Second Wives Already,
Whining Saints

Garmies:
[T]he LDS church released a video on its website explaining the ritual purpose of temple garments, requesting that non-Mormons and members of the media to treat "Latter-day Saint temple garments as they would religious vestments of other faiths. Ridiculing or making light of sacred clothing* is highly offensive to Latter-day Saints.
Fuck you, self-styled Saints & all the other shitheads who swallow that they must dress in a special way to please their sky fairy & distinguish themselves from mere mortals but then complain when laughed at. You don't want to be ridiculed, don't be ridiculous. (I think it's called the Golden Rule; isn't it in your book of fairy tales & silly stories?)

And yes yes we understand that making their cultists look idiotic to the rest of the world is only one of many ways the shepherds of the flocks reinforce group identity to keep their marks alienated & separate from the awful-in-its-way outside world of shit & pain.

Previously in underwear.
*They aren't sacred to me, whatever that means. And for heaven's sake, no matter what's under discussion, don't remind this reporter or anyone else how offended you'll be if someone dares to mock you. We'll start to think you're asking to be "made light of".

A.P.L. Prexy Apoplectic

MON 23 OCT 1939
U.S. freighter City of Flint arrives at Murmansk (see 24, 27 and 28 October and 3 November).

U.S. freighter Tulsa is detained at London by British authorities (see 9 November).

U.S. steamship President Hayes, detained by British naval authorities at Alexandria, Egypt, the previous day, is released, but not before a consignment of rubber earmarked for delivery to Genoa, Italy, is unloaded. The cargo is held at Alexandria for about two weeks, and then reloaded on board steamship President Polk. The President of the shipping concern involved (American President Lines) subsequently requests the Department of State to protest methods employed by the British naval authorities at Port Said and Alexandria in searching that company's vessels. "The fact that [the] British...allowed this eventual delivery," the shipping company executive complains, "indicates that [the] shipment ought never have been interfered with in [the] first place."

TRIGGER WARNING:
DO NOT TRIGGER ME!

Damn it to hell you worrywart morons, no more about Ebola until/unless the bodies are piled in mounds in the streets, alright? (Or else!)

It's just one schmuck in New York, bloviating buffoons. Clench your sphincters, take off your training pants, & pull up your big-person pants. Or just get off the fucking air.

Store W/ No Name

View From The Bunker

Much better than what passes for reality.

???

How'd I miss this?
Wow. Sun is bright.

Why You Will Die From E. Coli,
Not Ebola

It took at least five cattle for one lb. of ground?

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Cat Pack

Four plus one. And a bonus bobcat.

Senile Dementia: Contagious?

Reagan spreading Alzheimer's to one of his flunkies might explain the following load of codswallop, said flunky having typed a book & begun skree-ing "Secession!" to attract the members of the herd, pack or tribe (pick one, depending on how much you wish to dehumanize the reactionary & senile elements polluting our culturekeeping us from having nice things) his publisher has targeted. We will textualize some of it for you, from Rabid Weasel Watch (where you should go to listen to all seven mins. of lip-flappin' foolishness).

Former flunky Douglas MacKinnon wants us to consider
a movement of states, starting with South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, to establish a new country that will adhere to the Religious Right’s political agenda.

Texas, MacKinnon explained, was not included in his secessionist blueprint because “there have been a number of incursions into Texas and other places from some of the folks in Mexico.”
Yeah, fuck them greasers. Damn dirty hippie paradise down there.

Also, from SalopeSalon:
Now hold your horses there, MacKinnon says: He’s only talking about secession as part of an “academic” exercise. He just wants his dear readers to think about what a “Duck Dynasty”-watching, Cracker Barrel-patronizing, skeet-shooting republic with NO GAYS ALLOWED would look like.
One circle or another of hell in our imagination.

Alas, this one thing all Americans of good will & honesty agree upon, that these delusional cultists should self-deport themselves into one corner or another of the continent & bugger off, will never happen. (Geeze, even the allegedly comic relief saddens me.) But it is another pretty tacit admission that the running dog reactionaries have lost the culture war they started & are ready to run away, tails between legs & whining even more bitterly than usual, but (& this really is sad) there's no place for them to run & hide in the 21st century.

Small World Musical Interlude

See it you can follow this; we may have lost the thread ourselves ... Noted an Atlantic item noting the decline & fall of Evangelical hunkies, which was also noted by tengrain. His colorful phrase
was something along the lines of a dinosaur thrashing about in a tar pit,
having no idea that it is doomed
which obviously brought a certain Beefheart number to mind. And it's a live & new-to-us version.
Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band play the Smithsonian Institute Blues (or the Big Dig) live at the LA Country Club in Reseda, Los Angeles on January 29th, 1981.
Should you click through & read the above, it should be noted the gig was at a nightclub in Reseda called the Country Club, which should in no way be confused w/ The Los Angeles Country Club.

Today-ish In The War On Youth

While this reporter hopes not to drown his sensitive & easily offended/driven-to-a-burning-rage psyche in the constant stream of sewage that washes from the chattering classes, some like to wade right in & in our own way we're appreciative, not that we retract whatever crap we've typed about TPM's proprietor.
In the constant stream of articles that wash over us from an ever-expanding number of publications, a few stand out. One of them is an article published this morning by The Wall Street Journal. The subject was the increasing tendency for schools to bring in the police for incidents that most of us over 30 or certainly 40 would think of as things schools handle with detention or suspension or one of the other tools we associate with school discipline.
Here's where I remember why I'm not a big fan of Marshall.
The first is that anyone who is critical of hyper-policing and its partner over-incarceration needs to understand that the crime wave of the mid-late 20th century was real. See the charts here. The irony is that the most draconian policies were put in place just as the wave was subsiding. I think the reaction was misguided. But we can't understand the social or historical questions without recognizing that crime - particularly violent crime - seem to be rising inexorably. And a public reaction to that, of some sort, was almost inevitable. The question now is how we unwind it.
Yeah, wring your hands a little more, that'll help. Call it irony. And vote. We see over & over & over & over & over again how much voting helps.
The other point may be a more tenuous connection. But I am not sure these trends can be separated from the other trends in American society over the last few decades. We know the old saw that when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And we see this pattern in the increasing size and prominence of the Pentagon over the Department of State - in part since the Second World War but especially since the end of the Cold War.

Whatever one thinks of US national security policy, wars and all the rest, I increasingly think it is a fascinating thought problem to say, 'How would we or could we react to [Crisis X] if we simply didn't have a military that could strike with great lethality basically anywhere on the globe.' Again, whatever your views of national security policy it's a fascinating and often illuminating thought problem. Syria? ISIS? Ukraine? Those islands in the South China Sea. Of course, to paraphrase Ella Fitzgerald, in many ways, it's just better to be a strong country than a weak one. But an over-reliance on force brings its own problems.

And I could not help connecting this reality to what I was reading this morning about the criminalization of what many of us probably think of as the usual errors and learning experiences of growing up.
Also, when calling this nation of sheep a fascist shit-hole, call it a fascist shit-hole. (Chant w/ me now ... "Fasc-ist shit-hole!" "Fasc-ist shit-hole!" That's right.) That pseudo-lefty dog-whistling is inaudible to real Americans too nervous about Ebola & ISIS to think, straight or otherwise.

War Or Piracy?

SUN 22 OCT 1939
U.S. freighters Endicott and West Gambo are detained by French authorities and portions of their cargo ordered ashore as contraband; 750 bales of carbon black from West Gambo and 2,276 bars of copper and 1,796 bags of carbon black from Endicott (see 2 November).

U.S. steamship President Hayes is detained by British naval authorities at Alexandria, Egypt, and searched for contraband (see 23 October); freighter Patrick Henry, detained by the British since 10 October, is released.

German armored ship Admiral Graf Spee stops British freighter Trevanion, embarks her crew, and sinks the ship at 19°40'S, 04°02'W.

Copycattin'

Man reportedly taken into custody after jumping White House fence; White House appears to be on lockdown - @stevebruskCNN, @jeffmason1

Different Jesus

Didn't want to distract from that important item below w/ this art(ier) version.

Yeah, And ...?


Chrissy Teigen cracks wise about Canada shooting: ‘Active shooting in Canada, or as we call it in America, Wednesday’

Crazy, Stupid, Armed & Dangerous

From our "They Live Among You" Files, one of Sullivan's fans draws back the Curtain of Lunacy & reveals
what Roman Catholics really believe:
At this point, I need to explain exactly how conservative this man is. He carries a concealed weapon at all times (not that uncommon in Texas), BUT – he told us that he even carries it to church, because he wants to be ready if ISIS invades through the southern border and attacks our church, which he reasons would be an obvious target (FYI, we are hundreds of miles from the border). He is 100% serious about this. That should give you an idea of where this man is coming from.
Wherever the hell Mr. How-Conservative-Am-I? is "coming from," he should be going directly to a mental ward,
not attending a Roman Catholic church (An entire lunatic asylum in itself, but more enabling than therapeutic.)
while strapped.

Dead! Dead! Dead!

They say celebrity death comes in sets of three; none of these three went any time near soon enough.
  • Oscar de la Renta
  • Ben Bradlee
  • Nelson Bunker Hunt
Meta: Had earlier (Yesterday?) considered noting how fucking little I cared about any of the above dying like the pigs they were, but this a.m. (even crankier) it was decided pointing out how much they deserved to die & asking WHY DID IT TAKE SO FUCKING LONG was the way to go. I hope their suffering was unspeakable & that they all burn in hell as I type.

When do we finish killing the aristocrats?

Ha Ha Ha!

Before you self-righteous Western assholes go off screaming & whining remember that acts of war against members of the military & Parliament are NOT acts of terrorism. Perfectly legitimate military targets, & no different than judicial murder (& "collateral damage") by drone.

And by the way, Canadian chumps, how's that Harper Gov't. worked out for you?

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

One Family, One Vote?

A homo-hatin' Federal Judge (No doubt a Catholic.) lays it out for you:
Traditional marriage is the fundamental unit of the political order. And ultimately the very survival of the political order depends upon the procreative potential embodied in traditional marriage.
How much'll you bet this buffoon has ranted long & often about "illegitimate" children? He can't really believe that fucking & reproduction will stop w/o traditional marriage*, can he?

But that's just the usual buffoonery from these people. Judge Pérez-Giménez has opened quite a can of worms w/ his rather anti-democratic contention that the political order's fundamental unit is the family. Seems to be lacking in recognition of the individual & his or her rights. Next hizzoner will be trying to disenfranchise the ladies, because some of them don't vote the way their husbands tell them to.
*This reporter has long labored under the impression that marriage leads directly to a severe & marked decrease in fucking, but this reporter is neither a Catholic nor fool enough to marry anyone. (Esp. not anyone who'd marry me! [RIM-SHOT])

No Norwegian Water For City of Flint

SAT 21 OCT 1939
U.S. freighter City of Flint, under prize crew from German armored ship Deutschland, puts in to Tromsø, Norway, for water. Norwegian government, however, orders the ship to leave; she sails for Soviet waters (see 23, 24, 27 and 28 October and 3 November).

U.S. freighter Meanticut is detained at Gibraltar by British authorities and ordered to proceed to Oran to discharge certain cargo earmarked for delivery to Italy (see 27 October).

More, Better

Sounds as if he knew her.

And Now, Audio

Oh, those irksome fucks at CNN censored it. Fascists!

Bristol Palin?

Presented in portrait mode as a public service, because TPM apparently can't figure it out.
From the Palin family album, via the Anchorage P.D.

Not Caring (Never Did) Shut Up!

Squawk until you're out of oxygen (Please!!) you still won't get me to give shit one about anything or anybody & their petty problems. Fuck it/them all. (Shorter: "FTW!")

Although I wouldn't hesitate to leave an Ebola-infested dump in the mouth of every single pundit & scared moron who has spoken or typed "Ebola" in the last month or so. A big Ebola-infested shit, right on that flapping tongue.

Sound harsh? Fuck you. If you'd rub a dog's nose in its own crap, why shouldn't hysterical yappers & typists (most of whom lack the intelligence or common sense of man's best friend) get the same treatment?

Next steps? Breaking of fingers, removal of vocal cords. There will be silence.

Monday, October 20, 2014

English: Do You Speak It?

FRI 20 OCT 1939
Commander Atlantic Squadron informs his ships to use plain language radio reporting of contacts.

U.S. freighter Scanstates, detained at Kirkwall, Orkneys, by British authorities since 14 October, is released.

Oh, Jesus M.B.! Get Lost Already

Out on a limb here, but we're guessing (we certainly hope) that POLITICO doesn't spend too much of its precious time calling cop shops & asking which reactionary religious drooler (This time it's Minnesota Madwoman Michele Bachmann, from & about whom this web log has heard just about enough over the last few yrs.) has asked for protection because some schmuck on the other side of the world issued a big fat fatwah on the iNternet last wk. or something.

Therefore just maybe possibly the information that Michele Bachmann was under the wing of the Capitol Police, as offered by "multiple law enforcement officials familiar with the situation" is either bullshit or offered by can you imagine someone w/ an axe to grind. As POLITICO types,
Officials declined to outline the specific nature of the threat.

Bachmann’s office referred news media inquiries to Capitol Police. A Capitol Police spokeswoman declined to comment.

“The U.S. Capitol Police does not discuss law enforcement operations or security regarding Members of Congress,” spokeswoman Kimberly Schneider wrote in an email.
Who, then, could these unnamed officials familiar w/ the situation who so cheerfully volunteered the operation be if the Capitol Police don't talk? Thin blue line my ass.

Perhaps Representative (But of what, exactly?) Bachmann should just knock off early, go home & huddle w/ her legal eagles in preparation for her potentially, possibly alleged indictment & trial for campaign finance irregularities, rather than drawing further attention to herself in a sad attempt to poison the jury pool.What is she so scared of, anyway? Isn't Jesus coming to get her? And wouldn't he be better protection than the loudmouths of the Capitol Police?