Monster Movie Madness

Bonus play w/ "Pygmy Twylyte."Crankin' & a-cokin' in the Winchell's Donut (Straight outta Temple City!) midnight ...

Salting The Wound

Some may remember this hippies vs. cynical realists event at Empire of the Senseless.

Not to beat a horse that someone else killed, but we were struck by the belief that marching against the Vietnam atrocity somehow hastened its end. We thought not (Pres. Johnson wanted out, but was afraid of being called "soft on communism" by limp-dicked compensating Republicans, for example.) & others agree:

But then in terms of effect, it’s also not clear that the anti-Vietnam movement had a huge policy impact. By 1968, there was a growing elite-level consensus that continuing the war was a bad idea. Nixon and Kissinger wanted to get out on their own terms, but they definitely wanted to get out, and mostly for international rather than domestic reasons.

Not as if zillions in the street worldwide on the same day protesting the potential Iraq atrocities had any effect either, we're happy to point out. ("Happy" in a point-scoring way; we weren't happy the invasion & occupation went right ahead, hippies in the streets or not.)

Much the same question has been asked at Balloon Juice.

Yellow & Orange & ...

And another grouch heard from. Sorry, grumpy, we quite like Candy Corn. Perhaps as much for the texture (having wiped out our taste buds w/ booze, terbaccy & spicy food over a long period of time) as the sweet sugary sweetness.This is just sick, however.

Sick, sick, sick.

Second Amendment Voting

If we can't have democracy, at least we have our guns.

What is happening in Florida is part of a national trend, as election law has become a fierce partisan battleground. In states where Republicans have taken majority control, they have tightened rules for registering new voters, reduced the time for casting ballots and required voters to show photo identification at the polls. The new restrictions were usually adopted on party-line votes and signed by Republican governors.

Classic Republican illogic:

During Florida's legislative debate on the new law, a Republican state senator argued that it should not be easy or convenient to vote. Voting "is a hard-fought privilege. This is something people died for," said Sen. Michael Bennett of Bradenton, the chamber's president pro tempore. "Why should we make it easier?"

Didn't voting used to be one of those great "rights" that were so exceptionally American?

UPDATE (1214PDT 31 October 2011): A Johnny-come-lately bothered to research some links, if a shit is given by anyone about the subject.

A Waste Of Our Time & Their Money

What is wrong w/ this putrid pimp?

Hey there,
I'm reaching out to you because Thumbtack is getting a lot of job leads for childcare providers, and I'm looking for another childcare provider who is interested in taking on more clients.

After checking out your website I think you are a great fit for Thumbtack and I'd love to start sending you job leads. Please fill out a few details about your skills and rates, and I'll start forwarding you potential new clients.

If you have any questions about what Thumbtack can provide, please don't hesitate to ask.

Thanks, Heather

To which we responded:

I fucking hate children, & filthy liars!. Do not send me any more lying shit claiming "After checking out your website I think you are a great fit for Thumbtack." Thank you, advertising scum, & may you & every spam-sending piece of garbage like you rot in hell!

M. Bouffant

Not the first time we've received a similar message from "Heather Madison," if that is her real name, but we hope it's the last.

Concession To Hallowe'en

Even the trees are pseudo.

Scenes From The Capital City Of Shit

28 October 2011, 2249-2304PDT:

Police Terror I

Rampart PAL Carnival

If you don't know, Gurgle "Rampart Division."

Police Terror IIA

Police Terror IIB

Alexander's B. S. Restaurant

This Is How Much I Hate The World You Fucking Nazis Have Built

Hell, this is the world you Nazis have built. The first number is by one Lewis Allen Rabinowitz."I think Lou Reed is a creep." — The Dictators, "Two Tub Man"At least Wild Man had no tats & his original hair color.

Summing It Up

Quote of the Day
"Our team wants someone authentic, creative, fresh, bold and likeable. And we don't have much tolerance for too many facts or too much information. In politics, a bumper sticker always beats an essay."

-- Republican strategist Ed Rogers, writing in the Washington Post, on the psychology of GOP activists.

It's not just activists who won't tolerate facts, information, or even the grim truth.

Portrait Of The Photographer As A Shadow

Fall In Los Angeles

Note well that not all leaves stay green.

Scare Tactics II

By their advertisers shall ye know them, & their readers. There really oughta be a law.

Sorry, can't embed it (or even copy it, they claim ...) but you must watch this video before it is too late.

(Make sure your sound is turned on! Please wait up to 5 seconds for the video to load.)

When the shit hits the fan, fellow patriot & brother-in-arms, you will need to know which 37 items you should hoard. You don't want to be sent to a FEMA "relief camp," do you?

Scare Tactics

Interesting:

On any other evening, presenting a frightening or threatening visage might be a violation of a general duty not to scare others. But on Halloween at trick-or-treat time, that duty is modified. Our society encourages children to transform themselves into witches, demons, and ghosts, and play a game of threatening neighbors into giving them candy.
— Bouton v. Allstate Ins. Co., 491 So. 2d 56, 59 (La. Ct. App. 1986)

So, if there is, under law (or something) a "general duty not to scare others" (except on All Hallows Eve) can the right-wing phobia-induction propaganda machine therefore be estopped, as the legal eagles put it? (And might there be just a bit of punishment in the deal as well, at least for the worst offenders?)

Wishing all not a "happy," but a truly frightening, horrific Hallowe'en that puts fear (if not an acute myocardial infarction — that's truly frightening, not "scary") in your hearts & poop in the pants of whatever idiotic costume you're sporting.

Oh, No!

Just about to stop following stupid hippie @yokoono.

Music good, brain not.

Yet Another Exercise In Late Night/Early Morning Cynicism

Read it & weep. We're too cynical to take it out of context & copy it here.

More Terror Train Photos

Attention al Qaeda: Do what you will w/ these. Surely they will help you to destroy America.

Escalators to the circles of hell.

The New Brutalism. (The old one wasn't brutal enough?)

Leaving hell.

Slipping back into hell.

Try To Stop US!!!

Potential terror situation?

Big deal across the local Internets yesterday, all copped from the Times:

The ACLU of Southern California sued the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and several of its deputies Thursday alleging they harassed, detained and improperly searched photographers taking pictures legally in public places.

We're fortunate nothing happened to us on this expedition:

Is this oinker (one of several deputies who inspired the ACLU suit) simply angry because he's on Metro duty rather than busting heads on the street?

Professional photographer Shawn Nee was detained and searched Oct. 31, 2009, for shooting images at the turnstiles of the Los Angeles subway system. Nee was shooting newly installed turnstiles at the Metro Red Line's Hollywood and Western station when a deputy asked why he was taking pictures. Nee told the deputy he was not doing anything, the deputy warned him that photography was prohibited at the station because it is a terrorist target.

"Al Qaeda would love to buy your pictures, so I want to know if you are in cahoots with Al Qaeda to sell these pictures to them for terrorist purposes," Deputy Richard Gylfie then reportedly told him.

The deputy grabbed Nee, pushed him against a wall, searched him and lectured him about terrorism, the lawsuit alleges. He also threatened to forward Nee's name to counterterrorism so it could be added to an FBI "hit list"

The incident was captured on video. According to the suit, the deputy was not disciplined despite a complaint.

Earlier this year, deputies ordered Nee not to photograph on the sidewalk outside the W Hotel at Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

There being a Metro sation in front of the W, we note, even if the Times doesn't.

Taking our life into our hands again:

What are you lookin' at?

We were honestly a bit worried about the unattended bag w/ handle in this one, but it didn't explode before we got off:

No sheriff's thug in the world could understand the aesthetic impulse behind this one:

Granted, we're not sure we understand it either. Disadvantage of the digital age: Imagine an ossifer making a photog show all his/her shots &, w/ his/her little piggie mind, figuring something like that could only be for sale to the highest terrorist bidder.

What Does Herman Cain Think Of This?

"This" being this. Which didn't provide a link, forcing us to find it ourself.

"This could be the beginning of the end of a lot of businesses down there," Vincent said. "It's basically sending a message that if you smoke, we don't want you coming into Hermosa Beach. It's clear that the City Council has been going after restaurants, bars and taverns for awhile. Through ordinances, they've managed to constrict to a point of killing an industry."

Vincent, whose restaurant has an outdoor patio smokers can use, said he never receives smoking complaints and is still struggling to financially recover from the recent yearlong overhaul of Pier Avenue, tighter parking regulations and two gloomy summers in a row, all of which have hurt businesses, he said.

Vincent added that also he felt it would be unjust to ask military veterans who happen to smoke that they can no longer light up at his businesses.

"I believe in public health, but I also believe in freedom of choice," Vincent said. "With the economy the way it is, patrons are very frugal about how their dollars are being spent.* They will just go somewhere else."

Our curiosity is piqued: When did it become "unjust" to ask veteran baby-killers to obey the same petty fucking rules & regulations to which you goddamn sheep subject yourselves? Do al Qaeda's hookah smokers hate us for our anti-smoking ordinances, rather than our freedoms? Should the slogan have been "No Blood for Tobacco?"

---

*In which case they should fucking quit smoking, n'est-ce pas?

Mission Accomplished

We did it! Tuesday the ragged one was still there. Today, all shiny & new.

Urban Camping Report

It's still quite popular.

Taken at 1232, if anyone cares.

On The Bouffant Bandwagon

Some guy who just got a new gig at an old rag would like to get some of our glory.

We'll merely note that our first use of "The Militarized Society" & "Police Terror" as labels was 3 May 2007 (an Internet eternity).

It even predates the "war on terror," although that has acted as what the arson squad would call an "accelerant" to the essential dynamic.

Indeed, it goes back to the '70s, when some law or another was passed allowing/forcing the Department of WarDefense to hand over surplus military equipment to local police forces, to fight the "war" on Negroes & Mexicans"drugs."

You put enough war propaganda into the heads of young men, hand them weapons, and give them a license to use them, and they are not going to see fellow citizens through the visors on their helmets. They are going to see enemies. Wars have enemies.

Additionally, many American police forces actively recruit former military personnel. And now we have a new load of nervous-as-hell killers straight outta the urban environments of Iraq & Afghanistan, where anybody & everybody were their enemies. Our very own Los Angeles Police Dep't. prefers to hire veterans. Shoot to kill & let gawd sort 'em out.

Violence Is As American As Tacos

We dunno where the idea of "book trailers" came from, but they're here, & here is one for Alice Bag's Violence Girl.Here's another picture.

Ms. Bag at a book reading, 16 October 2011. Nice tats, huh?

And a link. Or, from the mouth of the horse.

Previously, on Just Another Blog (From L.A.)™.

The Amazing Affectless Woman

Maintaining the rictus.

Concord, NH, 25 October 2011. AP photo.

2010 Kennedy Center Honors. newscom/Mike Theiler/UPI

More.

No Cable Telebision Suicide Watching

Realized that we're almost (Important qualifier!) looking forward to The Ellen DeGeneres Show.* (Because neither Geronimo, starring Chuck Connors, nor Judge Judy, nor Anderson, are cutting it. Maybe TV Patrol or El Gordo y La Flaca would do, but our Tagalog & Spanish, respectively, are pretty rusty.)

---

*Not that there's anything wrong w/ Ellen. Sure, she's no Jerry Springer, but you really can't hold that against anyone.

Occupier

Raging Dull

Bored limp (when not irked) by the world & all in it. Photos, then, so that others may be as bored.

Bruised sky.

Mean streets.

Liquor.

Voices Of The Loon-O-Sphere

Here Be Monsters indeed. ("Zombies" as well.) Hear the horrifying (What? She likes horror movies.) Vacuum Slayer at (24:20). Hear Another Kiwi at (40:35) report from the bottom (more or less) third (of the planet; no reflection on his economic status, if any). Also us (again) because we have little to no "life" & are here only to fill space, whether typing or literally babbling on the Internet, or just sucking up oxygen.

Listen to internet radio with Here Be Monsters on Blog Talk Radio

You can also see us being insulted in the chat room, of which we were not aware as it happened; we are dedicated to our performance & will not divide our attention.

We call on all of the un- & self-employed to call next wk. & for once make Dusty fill the entire two hrs. Use the Gmail 'phone thingie if you're cheap & want to sound like it. (We are & do!)

Comic Timing

Wanna-be Hell's Angel Jay Leno opens the hole above that huge mutant chin of his:

Moments before two Love Ride participants were killed Sunday in a freeway traffic collision, the event’s grand marshal, “The Tonight Show” host Jay Leno, told a crowd of bikers that he wanted to see “somebody go down.”

“Every year, [the organizer] says ‘Drive safe,’” Leno told the crowd in kicking off the 28th annual Love Ride in Glendale. “I’m gonna say, ‘Don’t drive safe.’ I wanna see somebody go down. So it’ll be fun. I want it to be in front or behind me and see a whole row of bikes go down. Get drunk, fall off the road. We’ve all become too damn polite … we haven’t had one incident.”

About an hour later, Romarino Zeri, 51, of Los Angeles and Julie Cameron, 38, of Venice were killed when their motorcycle collided with a big rig on the Golden State (5) Freeway in Pacoima, officials said.

The big rig’s rear tires ran over the pair, whom paramedics pronounced dead at the scene, California Highway Patrol Officer José Barrios said.

Representatives for NBC-Universal and Leno did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

In other motorcycling news,

A Hells Angels motorcyclist who was killed in a collision with an East Bay Paratransit driver Saturday in San Leandro was identified Monday as 51-year-old George Lopez Jr. of Stockton.

The paratransit driver, 31-year-old Eddie Hall of Oakland, was arrested on suspicion of felony hit-and-run and murder after the collision on eastbound Interstate Highway 580 in San Leandro about 4 p.m.

You scooter trash aren't such hot shit on your two-wheel pee-pee substitutes, are you?

Taking This Country Back From Itself

Not a joke ... ... we think.

Vileness

Andrew Sullivan mounts his high-horse of outrage because Scientology is alleged to have picked on his little buddies Matt & Trey of the inane "everybody-does-it (except libertarians)" South Park:

How Vile Is Scientology?

While we have nothing but contempt for Scientology & the cretinous morons who are suckered by it, at least the Hubbardites haven't (yet) been discovered stealing children from their political opponents & selling them to the wealthier & more righteous.

Indeed, we don't believe a peep has been heard on the Spanish Church & its vile activities from Mr. Sullivan, judging from a scroll across the lumps The Dish has deposited in our reader since the story broke. Hypocrisy, thy name is Andrew. Or he may just like Holy Mother Church so much because it's run by emotionally-crippled gay men. Birds of a feather & all.Let gawd do the rest. The rational among us have been waiting since October 4004 B.C.E., when gawd created the earth. Should be sometime in this millennium 'though, sez Andy.

Filthy Germs

Edward O. Wilson has called “the pattern of human population growth” in the twentieth century “more bacterial than primate.”
Read more

And breeding scum.

Game For Losers

Crazy, not so stupid.Noticed at.

Two Yrs. Ago

One Wk. Before Hallowe'en: Hollywood Forever Cemetery, 2009.

Hair shorter now.

End Of The Line

Re-Use

Is the best way to convert an office bldg. to condos to slap on glass panels & a few lines of paint while renting space on the ground floor in back to a Staples?

The "in the back" concept is not as relevant here as in other urban hellholes: In car-driven Los Angeles everyonemost consuming sheep drive through an alley to the back (PARKING IN REAR!) & enter through what would be the back door/delivery entrance in less parking space-challenged cities. This is extra-amusing to pedestrian us, as we get the impression that many store owners go for months w/o realizing how grubby the "fronts" of their retail establishments are.

Union Station, In & Out

Last of the American big city railroad stations, completed in 1939.

Public art at entrance to subway. Not part of the 1939 construction.

You can't get there from here. (Not that you'd necessarily want to.)

L.A. Link

The Militant Angeleno, who is mean to us (but, we'll admit, cleverly) in his bog-roll has lovely images (i.e., better than ours) of downtown bldgs., sun & fog.

Of course, we consider it flagrant cheating to be awake before noon, even if it is an exhibition, not a competition.

More Machete

Inquiring minds, yada.Not much more in a text report.

Refuge Of Scoundrels

At least it isn't frayed or faded.

Junior does not give a shit.