Sunday, June 30, 2013

We Wouldn't Be So Sure

Sunday Cityscape

God's Mad At Somebody

Who is it this time?
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indianapolis police say three children were injured when lightning struck a summer camp on the north side of the city, including one child who was critically hurt.

Officer Kendale Adams says the critically injured child was taken to Indianapolis St. Vincent Hospital, but the child's condition wasn't immediately known. The other two were taken to Riley Hospital for Children in stable condition.

Witnesses told police that the children were injured when lightning struck shortly before 2 p.m. Saturday at the Goldman Union Camp Institute, a Reform Jewish summer camp.

Memento Mori

Detroit, North Of Wilshire I
2013
Detroit, North Of Wilshire II
2013

Saturday, June 29, 2013

All Of Them, Katie

We're certain we've previously suggested the usual gasbags stop it w/ the 2016 speculation. And if we haven't mentioned "ideas festivals," stop w/ the fucking "ideas festivals" already.
Nate Silver on Hillary Clinton: "From the standpoint of the party primary, it's almost as though she's an incumbent president, right, where she even trumps, kind of, the VP, who very often wins nomination after a president is term-limited. If you look at polls, you know, 60 to 70 percent of Democrats say they prefer Hillary to be the nominee. There's no kind of non-incumbent in history with those types of numbers."
Don't make us come up there, gasbags. Or go back there. Or move.

Liberation Up-Date

In honor of our (admittedly accidental) liberation of property.We're ahead $4.99 + 8 & change%what the hell, it's 9% now? sales tax, & now we know why we use the self check-out at the supermarket wherever we may have been shopping today. All aboard the train!

Crime Report

This reporter committed an actual (not thought) crime today, 'though entirely unintentionally & accidentally. As if the judge would give a crap.

And, we are such a bad ass that although we could have uncommitted it we didn't, property being theft & all.

Number One!

Looking to burn.
A meteorologist who blogs about weather for Banning-Beaumont Patch plans to be in Death Valley this weekend to record a new world record high temperature, if it gets that hot.

Kevin Martin of Corona, who runs web sites including The Weather Space and Southern California Weather Authority, said Friday he plans to drive to Furnace Creek and Badwater Basin in Death Valley National Park on Sunday June 30.

The National Weather Service has issued an excessive heat warning for the San Gorgonio Pass and most of Southern California from 10 a.m. Saturday to 8 p.m. Sunday.

Death Valley is billed by the National Park Service as the hottest, driest, lowest spot in North America, and it is now officially known as the hottest place on Earth.
In Fall 2012, a team of scientists known as the World Meteorological Organization, the climate agency for the United Nations, tossed out a temperature reading of 136.4 degrees claimed by the city of Al Aziziyah, Libya, on Sept. 13, 1922.

A 134-degree reading recorded at Greenland Ranch in Death Valley on July 10, 1913, is now the official world record, the New York Times reported in December.

Park and weather officials are planning a World Record Heat 100th Anniversary event on Wednesday July 10, 2013.

[...]

The forecast for Death Valley on Saturday June 29 is "Sunny. Highs 104 to 107 in the mountains . . . around 130 at Furnace Creek."

The extended forecast, which includes Sunday June 30 is "Sunny. Highs 106 to 109 in the mountains . . . around 130 at Furnace Creek."
Beat that w/ a stick!No, we do not regularly read the Banning-Beaumant Patch."Official" video                                                            "Unofficial" video

Friday, June 28, 2013

Parking Enforcement Dep't.:
The Roads Must Roll

Tow-away commences promptly at 1600, bit-chezz!
Shot at 1617. It probably didn't help to be in the loading zone, but the enforcers aren't out in force looking for violators until 1545-ish.

Today In Street ArtStenciling

Animal Farm

How fucking many sheep will they cram into this pen?
What's been demolished to make way for this worker barracks? A Savings & Loan bldg. that had been converted into a Methodist (we think) church for Korean people, & a pod mall w/ a great Philly cheesesteak place (Wish we remembered the name, if they didn't go out of business but moved elsewhere we'd eat there.*) a boxing gym & a likker store, among other enterprises.
Nagonna look 'cause we'd hate to see what the rent is. (Too damn high? Mmmm, could be.)
*Here 'tis.
If they moved they're using a different name. And no, this reporter never had a fucking "chicken steak" sandwich, because we are a man, & self-destructive.

Privatization Dep't.

No fucking comment. (If you can't figger it out, LADOT is L.A. Dep't. of Transportation.) Same light standard, different sides.
South.
North.

Today In Cinema

Our connection to the theatrically-released surface pond scumfilm* industry is seeing adverts for their industrial dreck on the screen in our bunker, at least until the flick reaches our screen, so we don't give fuck one at a rolling doughnut (Man on doughnut!!) but what little curiosity remains to us was piqued by similarities between adverts for an explosion-fest called Olympus Has Fallen, which came & went w/o any impact we noticed beyond the ads, & current load of blammo White House Down. Hell, we suspected the current one was OHF retitled because it didn't do so well the first time out.

Guess not:
Maybe most to the point, I’d already seen—and loathed—pretty much the identical movie back in March. You remember Olympus Has Fallen, don’t you? It’s not just that the basic audience grabber—see the White House get trashed, everybody!—is the same. Plotwise, the two are twins at a level so freakish Diane Arbus would give her left eye to photograph them together. Wholesale attack by squads of creepily clad paramilitary baddies? Check. A lone hero who’s on the premises by accident and ends up as the last, best hope of mankind once POTUS’s protectors get blown away by the casual dozens just to ensure he’s indispensable? Bingo. An insider who’s a turncoat, some gobbledygook about accessing nuclear codes to start World War Three as the villains’ ultimate goal, a plucky child (the president’s son in Olympus, the hero’s daughter in WHD) in excruciating jeopardy? Yep, yep, yep.

[...]

Otherwise, the only claim I’d make for White House Down is that, if you only see one schlock movie about the White House under siege this year, this is the one to see. That isn’t really a sentence I ever pictured myself writing back in film class, but never mind.
Nothing we can add. This web log shizzle is pretty damn easy.
*It was asked recently-ish in comments at this dump if anything was still shot w/ actually-has-to-be-developed film. Good question, & we don't know, but our suspicion is that some older wretches may still use it, because lighting for a CCD isn't the same as lighting for toxic chemicals on a strip of celluloid or whatever plastic may have replaced celluloid, & said wretches don't want to learn new stuff when they're so close to retirement. We sure as hell don't, but we're already retired. (And gave up well before retirement.)

Democracy In Action

Or, "Democracy At Work." Maybe "Back To The Future." (Inspired, aren't we?)
No idea why Horsey repeats or explains himself in text, but here it is.

Friday Is Filler Day

Same tired, tiresome shit & no one knows or cares what fucking day it is.

Thursday, June 27, 2013

News Flash

Is Fischer aware there are doubtless "opposite-sex" marriages that are "sodomy-based?" (We'd guess his marriage is, what w/ him being a big ol' closet case. Or maybe he took the "only when we want to make another baby & at no other time ever" approach.)

Stereotypical

Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Archibishop Salvatore Cordileone claimed that the spread of marriage equality will threaten “the common good of all.”
Jesus appearing on burned toast, a bog-monkey & a wop-a-dago spewing Catholic bullshit. Clichés made flesh.

Seriously, bead-rattling mackerel-snappers, get back to us when you have some White Americans to spew your crap. We don't need any more filthy immigrants ruining This Great Nation Of Ours™ when we already have homos doing it in the streets & frightening the horses.

And speaking of homos, if your job requires you to dress like this & you aren't in a circus or a KISS tribute band, you have some deep psychological problems, & you are not going to be able to pray those problems away.
Cardinal Bushmills says: "Hic!"
Too crazy for the Mafia gig he wanted, had to settle for Archbishop.
White-hot hatred inspired by the self-righteous explainers of the obvious at Think Progress.

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Police Terror Situation

In the sector today.

Fucking helos had been orbiting for some damn time when we decided to take a shot at them. (W/ pixels. This time.)
A potential fish in a barrel.
Action on the ground too.
Although not everywhere on the ground. (We're probably fortunate the oink w/ the shades didn't come over & beat on us. Surly looking bastard, esp. considering how hard he's working.)
Party's over. We were advised they were looking for a suspect w/ the canines.
Loaded for bear.
After party/de-briefing.
The suspect must have gotten away, assuming he was anywhere nearby. If he wasn't nearby, he really got away. Nothing on the iNternet about all this.

A Very Shallow Species

Well, you can't expect people who buy the magic seeing rock & salamanders crap the Mormons shove down their throat to be sophisticated or connected to reality, but the utter shallowness of "Don't care until it affects me or those related to me" is fucking pathetic. Why don't people just stop being total jerks? (We've emphasized the most pathetic parts.)
Wendy Montgomery, 37, of Bakersfield and her husband supported Proposition 8 in 2008 but changed their position “180 degrees” after they learned their 13-year-old son was gay a year and a half ago. Montgomery, a practicing Mormon, said she voted for the measure and spent a couple of days canvassing and working on a phone bank for it.

“We’re Mormon. The church asked us to participate in Prop. 8, and we did, pretty much unthinking,” she said.

When her son came out, he told his parents he had at first planned never to tell them he was gay, because he thought they hated gay people because they had supported Proposition 8.

“I know that’s not the message that the Mormon Church was intending to convey,” Montgomery said. “But it was the message that was received.”

The Supreme Court rulings Wednesday, she said, “just made me smile because I feel like now my son will be treated like everyone else.”
Yet almost heartwarming in the end.

Also (almost) heartwarming is some of these shitheels getting an idea of what being stigmatized* is like.
Moreover, people who share his opposition to gay marriage feel increasingly stigmatized by those who brand them as intolerant.

“If you are for traditional marriage you must be a bigot, a hater.... No one wants to be called that, or labeled that,” he said. He stressed that he and other opponents do not have any “animosity toward those in the gay community … but that doesn’t change my understanding of society and traditional values.”
No, no animosity toward you at all, Satan-spawned destroyers of all that is sacred, none whatsoever.
“It’s not just that there is an acceptance of same-sex marriage, it’s that there is a [lack of] acceptance of people who are not supportive,” political consultant Mike Madrid said. “That’s just fascinating, as a student of politics.”
However, as could be expected, not all is well w/ those completely dedicated to the cause:
“Obviously we’re disappointed, but we’re going to live to fight another day,” said Jennifer Roback Morse of San Diego, founder of the Ruth Institute, a project of the National Organization for Marriage. “Believe me: People are going to be exploring any option.”
Sounds like "by any means necessary" to this reporter. Let us all hope they don't get together w/ the Mohammedans & decide stoning infidels is a good "option."

Speaking of, we'd like to see something more than the mere assertion about the majority of American Muslims that Imam Moustafa al-Qazwini, head of the Islamic Educational Center of Orange County in Costa Mesa, offers.
“As far as the Islamic faith is concerned, marriage is defined as between a man and a woman. However, the vast majority of Muslims in America respect the choice people make. It’s a personal issue,” he said.
Whatever. We note that no Hebrew religious types weighed in, one way or the other.
*Our generous offer to help anyone understand what stigmatization is stands: You bring the wood, we have the hammer & nails.

Devo Drummer Dead

It was the machines what kilt him (Or brain cancer.):
And Gerald Casale, Devo co-founder, also remarked on Myers' passing (and couldn't help implying that others in Devo were responsible for his departure): "RE: Alan Myers. I begged him not to quit Devo. He could not tolerate being replaced by the Fairlight and autocratic machine music. I agreed."
From the L.A. Times, which offers a couple of vids we will assume to be good demonstrations of his stickwork. Check the comments too.

Our fave number:Another born after we were yet dead before we are. I.e., gone too soon. (Assuming we aren't a corpse right now. Sometimes we can barely tell. Hold that mirror under our nose, wouldja?)

Cracker-Ass Honky Award Won!

We have two winners this wk., & they are real winners, aren't they?
Horrid person: Wouldn't be wrong or anything, it's the media.
Paula Deen, awful in every respect.
There’s almost always a larger context like that when someone falls as spectacularly as Deen has fallen, and there’s almost always a prelude: a first strike.

Hers was in early 2012. That’s when she lost the benefit of the doubt, not racially but in terms of her character, by revealing that she had been diagnosed three years earlier with Type 2 diabetes, which is abetted by the calorie bombs on which her empire thrived.

This disclosure was timed not to benefit her fans, who were continuing to follow her fatty counsel, but to benefit her: one of her sons had a new healthy-cooking show that needed promoting, and she herself was stepping out as a spokeswoman — a paid spokeswoman — for a diabetes drug.
Look at him: Total fucking punk loser.
A guest typist at Esquire notes some of the problems in pin-dicked compensator/wanna-be cop/murderer Zimmerman's questioning by the police.
George Zimmerman is going to be found guilty. All the evidence you need — all the evidence the cops needed — is right there in the interrogation they did with him three days after the shooting. The only thing more shocking than what Zimmerman says in the clip, which was released on the internet one year ago, is how little it has impressed the bloviating jerks who dominate the coverage of this trial.

Why did he follow Martin, a police officer asks.

“These assholes, they always get away,” Zimmerman answers.

The officer asks, “What’s behind that?”

“These people who victimize the neighborhood,” Zimmerman answers.

In Zimmerman’s angry mind, without trial or jury, even after he killed him and learned he was a 17-year-old who was legitimately staying in the complex, Martin was an asshole victimizing the neighborhood.

[...]

A few moments later, he asks Zimmerman why he kept following Martin even after the police dispatcher told him not to. Zimmerman’s answer is staggering.

“I wanted to give them an address.”

An address? This may be the moment that will convict him. It means that even he suspected that Martin was a legitimate visitor to the complex, staying in an apartment and legally on the property, Zimmerman continued to pursue him. And it makes sense that Martin was staying there because of the terrain, the complex being isolated from other complexes and a mile distant from the nearest shopping center. A professional thief would be moving intentionally, not wandering down the middle of the street in the full light of the streetlamps. Although Zimmerman’s fear supposedly hinges on the series of robberies that the police believed had been addressed already with an arrest, it seems clear that even Zimmerman didn’t really believe his own alibi. More likely, even in his mind, Martin was a kid from the neighborhood out smoking a joint and at the worst, looking for a little illicit excitement — a “fucking punk.”

At this point, the officer asks again why he was following Martin — and Zimmerman flat-out lies. “I wasn’t following him, I was just going in the same direction he was.” The cop just laughs.
We can only hope the prosecutor has gone over the interrogation as thoroughly & discovered the same contradictions.

Photo of the cracker bitch w/ added text courtesy of The Intersection of Madness & Reality. PhotoMugshot of the cracker asshole murderer (Not yet convicted, but ...) courtesy of the Seminole County Sheriff's Office.

Family Values = Nihilism

Marriage & "the family" (Manson family? Cosa Nostra? Which family, huh? A wide if not useless concept, innit?) being corrupt bourgeois institutions, we are horrified & disgusted that the Supreme Court didn't step up & outlaw all marriage bullshit, for straights, queers & dog-marriers alike.If Americans have no right to vote unimpeded, why in hell should they be allowed to marry &/or buy houses? Owning a house leads to housing bubbles, foreclosures & pathetic squareness which turns to naked fascism as the suckers defend the status quo to protect property values & their investment in a ticky-tacky box. All while bitching about property taxes, of course. (Apparently a cover of "Little Boxes" has been used as the theme to Weeds. We were hoping to bring it to a new generation of cretinous sub-humans. What. Ever.)After marriage, imbeciles whose genetic lines should have been stopped before they were allowed to enter the United Snakes breed like the animals they are. Which only causes further suffering as an excess of idiots suck the lifeblood from the planet.

Public figures & nobodies alike love to profess their deep & sincere concern about everything & everybody at the top of their polluted lungs, yet like everything else from their lips & keyboards this great concern for even the least of us is nothing but hypocrisy. If they cared so fucking much they wouldn't have soiled their nest w/ an excess of morons, would they?

Not that this reporter gives anything even vaguely resembling a fucking shit or a flying fuck, but we've never pretended or claimed to care about one damn thing beyond getting our kicks before the whole shit-house goes up in flames.

We leave you losers to choke on your own waste, die in the perpetual flames of the polluted landscapes your sheep-like consumption has ruined beyond recovery (Fracking, anyone?) or just drown as the icecaps melt & the oceans rise. Sayonara, suckahs!!

Real Americans

Well described:
The energetic ideological base of the Republican Party is a nationalist, identity-politics movement for relatively well-to-do older white Americans known as the "tea party". The tea party is interested in bald eagles, American flags, the founding fathers, Jesus Christ, fighter jets, empty libertarian rhetoric, and other markers of "authentic" American identity and supremacy. That America is "a nation of immigrants" is a stock piece of American identity politics, but the immigrants that made America America were, well, not Mexican, and spoke English, or at least Pennsylvania Dutch. Sorry Mexicans!

[...]

Republican politicians must nevertheless avoid too-enthusiastically supporting this package of good ideas, lest they fail to project sufficient appreciation for the importance of keeping America American and putting Americans first. To fail to introduce a dead-on-arrival poison-pill amendment that would, say, require all would-be Americans to score over 160 on the LSAT, or to personally assassinate a member of al Qaeda before setting foot on the "path to citizenship" is to invite a primary challenge from a more thoroughly "American" American less cowed by the insidious deracinating forces of multicultural political correctness.
And the rest of us have to live w/ these fucks.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Text Break

Ignorantly Foolish Question Of ...

Are vitamins a scam?

Of course vitamins are a scam. We've known (OK, figured) this for yrs. & yrs. (Never question this reporter's instincts: We are older, wiser & more experienced than virtually anyone else using the iNternet. Modest, too.)

And another fucking clue, consuming drones: 90% of the crap in the health & beauty aisles in corporate supermarkets & chain drugstores is a scam. (Another proof of Sturgeon's Law, but as the saying went, we don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.) Or, anything a corporation wants to sell is to insure its profits, not to benefit the consuming sheep (you) in any way. Consider yourselves lucky if you shove American consumer products down your gaping maw & you're still alive. (Or unlucky. We know some wish only for death's sweet release.)

Not only a scam, potentially bad for you.
High doses of folic acid have been associated with higher risk of precancerous colon polyps. Too much beta carotene has been linked to lung cancer. The chances of dying for people who take antioxidant supplements have been found to be 5 percent higher than non-users. As the New York Times pointed out in a 2009 article, “the selling point of antioxidant vitamins is that they mop up free radicals, the damaging molecular fragments linked to aging and disease.” The problem is that your body actually needs free radicals in order to fight off illnesses. Wipe them out and you may have just said good-bye to your body’s natural defense system.
Just one example of what crap all of this is, vitamins, supplements, whatever. And, it turns out the vitamin industry is as poorly regulated as the Mormon-dominated nutritional/dietary supplements industry. (Here, one need only apply Bouffant's Law: "If it's Mormon, it's a scam.")

Charter Schools: Grift Or Scam?

Nice people, charter school operators. And dedicated to nothing but the students, as indicated in this press release The (Online) WSJ was kind enough to publish. We found it at theeastsiderLA.
The Superior Court lawsuit was served today on the Semillas charter elementary school, its chairman Marcos Aguilar, and his wife Minnie Ferguson, who serves as the school's principal. It was served previously on LAUSD.

[Restaurant & plaintiff] Hecho en Mexico is sandwiched between two parcels that comprise the elementary school. Semillas is a sister school to a charter high school about a mile away that is under the same ownership. Last week, the LAUSD board refused to renew the high school's charter, citing low test scores, financial troubles, alleged refusal to cooperate with district auditors, and failure to follow guidelines required of all district charters.

[...]

Simultaneous with its campaign against Hecho en Mexico, Semillas opened its own Mexican restaurant across the street. The Semillas restaurant was shut down for failure to comply with public health regulations but the campaign against Hecho en Mexico continued, the suit says.

The purpose of the Semillas campaign is "to interfere with and prevent the operation of (Hecho en Mexico's) business and ultimately seize the opportunity to operate the restaurant for themselves," the suit says.
Why, it's almost as if Marcos & Minnie (Nepotists, too. Is that approved of in charter schooling?) are interested in nothing but grifting taxpayers, & have found that charter schools are an excellent way of getting some property tax & California Lottery money that is supposed to be spent on education rather than restauranting.

Remember this the next time a reactionary whines that tired "poverty pimp" crap.

(Also at Whiskey Fire in approx. the same form.)

Elsewhere On The Internet

We typed something at Whiskey Fire which remains exclusive to WF 'cause we're too effin' lazy to copy & publish it here as well, even though it's only about 80 words including what we pulled from what we mocked (an Ann Althouse item).

Probability Dep't.

Chances the two-faced (& anonymous) cowards of the WaPo Editorial Board produce an editorialopinion piece condemning the United Snakes for its virtual infinity of double standards & filthy hypocrisy?
We didn't think so either.

Monday, June 24, 2013

Literacy Test

We dunno if the typist behind this is some liberal symp who's in denial, perhaps so as not to offend morons w/ the ugly truth of their brain-dead existences, or if he really believes it when he says,
The talking point says that a bill currently being debated contains many pages, and therefore must be a bad thing for America.

This is almost always offered by Republicans, in part because they generally think government should refrain from tackling complex problems that might require complex legislation to address, but also, I'm suspecting, because they've just gotten used to saying it, and for some reason Tea Party people seem really into complaining about how long bills are.
It's clear to us (if not Paul Waldman) this is a favorite talking point because the Republican base is functional illiterates/low-information voters whose lips are so strained by the (for them) physical act of reading that when Sen. Mike Lee proclaims something to be 1,200 pages long, he might as well tell his base that the bill is covered in horseshit &/or plague germs, so pronounced is their hatred of reading. And writing. "Dang it, I ain't no pointy-head interlex-u-uhl, & it ain't right our Congresscritters is neither! 'Sides, readin's bad fer yer eyes."

It is hoped by the G.O.P. that eventually their candidates will only need to point at opponents and shout "Her too smart! Me cretin Christian like you, vote me!" to get the base angry & voting.

String Up The Hypocrites!

At self-righteous Just Another Blog (From L.A.)® we type what we mean & mean what we type. If that's too high a standard for the hypocrites populating this planet of sheep & fools let them stay off telebision & radio & stop publishing lying two-faced bullshit on the internet & in venues requiring the death of trees. (And stop killing trees, period!)

We speak most specifically of certain alleged-to-be-Democratic Senators whose religious & ethnic backgrounds have (rather ironically) turned them into the very thing they claim to hate/fear the most, Nazis enabling the American Gestapo. That means you, Schumer & Feinstein.

Not, of course, limited to those two, or to Sens. of their persuasion. John McCain, for example, should have been put to sleep like the mad dog he is once the Vietnamese released him from the prison camp where he deserved to be for the war crimes he committed. (Also because he's a moron who should have broken off his bombing run earlier, but that's another story.)

Secretary of State Kerry, whose entire gig as SecState will probably be based on protecting his wife's millions & millions of inherited dollars & investments, was going on about iNternet freedom in Russia & China in relation to whistle-blower Snowden today. Remove that beam from your eye, hypocrite! (We won't look it up, but we doubt Sec. Kerry was opposed to the release of the "Pentagon Papers" 40+ yrs. ago. We're still the radical loud-mouth we were 40+ yrs. ago, yet Kerry became the chickenshit & chump he is today. How/why does that happen?*)

The vein of hypocrisy America's elected idiots mine while they allow the shadow government to mine America's data is long & deep. We all know damn well that if the U.S. stopped being hypocritical long enough to declare Israel the terrorist nation it is & began spying on U.S. citizens & Israelis to stop their terror plots against the Palestinian people, Schumer, Feinstein & the rest of the two-faced would be having loud & public fits of hypocrisy at the police state tactics of the Obama administration.

We only wish we were in a better position to deal firmly w/ hypocrites. Violence is tempting (because we're an American ) & because the one-faced have gone on about hypocrites throughout human history, yet no amount of truth, reason, common sense or mockery has stopped any of the two-faced, ever. Isn't it time we improve the species by actually "intimidating & bullying" all the liars & cheaters into silence, as they claim is so often done to them? Yet not a one has shut his festering gob or stopped typing crap, no matter the intimidation of being told they're wrong & the bullying of pointing out what hypocrites they are. Maybe the United Snakes can have the "most transparent administration ever" once we quiet the hypocrites down & deal in reality.

Also on the list: Corporations that hand private information to the United Snakes, whether on a mere request or by warrant. Fuck warrant-granting judges too, if they don't fully comprehend that the human drones of the security state lie w/o a first thought. Judicial behavior by the secret F.I.S.A. "court" strongly suggests that anyone wearing a long black robe should be lynched, from the former assistant D.A./tough on crime assshole serving as a municipal judge to the Supremes. Example (note helpful addition of names):
Anyone got any rope?
*And that's the big (if not the only) question: What in the name of hell is wrong w/ these fucking people? Why do they, for lack of a better term, sell out, why are none of them capable of seeing anything near the truth, & why are any of them in positions of power? (The answer is democracy, & the joke's on you, sucker-ass voter! Also greed, too, but the suck-ass American voter is guilty on that count as well.)

Life On Mars

If you're writing for Space Western Comics already, what's to keep you from throwing in a few Nazis?
NB: "Spurs Jackson & his Space Vigilantes"

Saturday, June 22, 2013

Sidewalk To The Stars

One of Southern California's most disappointing & stupid things ever, because it's stupid, because those sporting rubber-soled footwear are very likely to slip & fall on the smoothed, tractionless sidewalk when it rains (not only the stars, all the black terrazzo as well) & because it's only an urban myth (& an especially stupid one) that performers are buried beneath their stars.That anyone would care about names in the sidewalk (to the point of leaving flowers at the star when a celeb goes to hell; it's almost religious) is beyond us, but that's no surprise; even w/ our many yrs. on this sorry ball o' dirt we haven't been able to grasp the what & why of most humanoid activity.

Friday, June 21, 2013

Goodbye For The Summer

Did hearing crummy tunes like this (one among many) every three or four hrs. on Top 40 radio 50-some yrs. ago contribute to what (or who) we are today? It's still a mystery!We'll be back sometime in the fall. Have a great summer!!

Tube Or Screen?
("television_vs_youtube_american_tv_habits_can_t_be_beat_but_google_is_trying")

Nothing left to life but a pair of glassy eyes:
Generally, the older you get in America, the more television sucks you in. The average senior citizen spends more than two full days of every week in front of the TV.
Lame San Francisco comedy music break, live from The Greekcensored by those YouTube fuckers
& so replaced:
... TV? Whatever else has happened in American life, TV just kept doing better. If you look at a chart of household TV viewing from 1950 to 2009, it’s a straight upward arrow. In the last couple years, live TV-viewing has begun to dip just slightly, but the decline has been offset by a rise in time-shifted viewing. Overall, despite every technology that has come along to usurp or disrupt it, we watch about as much TV in 2013 as we’ve ever watched.
"Web logs" our ass, still at the glassflat plastic teat. Good luck to Google getting people to watch rebuffering & other playback problems on a screen one fourth the size of the tube tee vee sets of the '90s while there's a 50ish-inch screen attracting dust in the living/media room. Not even Americans are silly enough to fall for ... uh, well ... also, don't hold the breath waiting for three-dimensional telebision. Apparently not enough demand for three-dimensional pornography either, & w/o sports or smut you can kiss 3-D in your living room good-bye.

And we say good-bye w/ an East Coast comedy music palate cleanser:

As The Planet Revolves

Yesterday's Paper

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Added To The List

Crying babies; little bastard better have something worth crying about.

Fucking breeders.

Where's The Fire, General?

Other than the Civil War-style shoulder straps (?) the U.S. Army's blue uniforms make officers look like firefighters.

Drones: Already Here?

It's as if one follows us every time we leave the bunker.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

McArdle On Move - Again

How old's this shot?
It's not the same as seeing security escort her right out of the bldg. & onto the sidewalk, traditional cardboard box of personal items clutched in her hsnds, but we've at least kept her moving, & the pace quickens.
McArdle has been covering economics and public policy since 2001, when she launched “Live From the WTC” from a construction trailer* at the Ground Zero disaster recovery site. In 2003, she joined the staff of theEconomist as Deputy Countries Editor for the website.

[...]

In 2007, she left the Economist for The Atlantic, where she spent five years writing about the intersection of economics, business, and Washington politics. During that time, she helped launch Atlantic.com’s business vertical. For three years, she was also the magazine’s business columnist.

She left the Atlantic in 2012 for Newsweek.
Let's review:
  • Fairly well-respected Limey ragwebsite.
  • The Atlantic.
  • Newsweek (Also The Daily Beast. Only lasted there a yr. & wks. Hmmm ...)
  • Now off to Bloomberg View, where she will be a columnist covering the economy, business, politics and national affairs.
That's a negative trend innit?

Previously noted.
*Not that it was her trailer. She started her web log while goofing off at work. At the make-work job her daddy found for her, to be more exact. Did not build that!

La-La-La Can't Hear You!

Good g-d a-mighty inane drones in the silly world of politics, shut your festering gobs w/ the 2016 speculation already.

Not to be a "How can you even mention THIS when THAT is still occurring somewhere in the world?" type but concentrate on keeping the drooling ninnies of fascist reaction under control & out of office in 2014, & don't fucking worry about Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton's future (She'll turn 69 just before the election; you really want another dementia patientReagan in there?); there's always a call for corporate apologists/centrist defenders of the status quo. Elect someone who needs & deserves the work!

Untitled (Self-Portrait) 2013

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Worst Actress In The World

"My goodness."
Not such a wonderful human being either.

Same Corner, Different Food

Seeking New Representation

Moving picture Superman V6.x (or so) reviewed:
He spends a lot of screen time immaculately groomed, posing like Christ, and pondering why he’s alone in the universe.
For truth, justice, 7-Eleven® & the American Way.
Is he wearing a snakeskin body suit?
Why we desperately need a new agent: Every day of the wk. we get up, groom ourself immaculately, & then pose while pondering our place in the universe. For hrs. on end. Sometimes all day.

But did we get a call for the rôle? No.

Monday, June 17, 2013

Litmus Test

National joke Reince Priebus didn't pass.
I loved the way he started: “I just wanna let you know. I’m a Christian. I’m a believer. God lives in my heart. And I’m for changing minds, not changing values. Are you with me?” That was intended as an applause line. To call the response indifferent would be so kind as to be irresponsible.
While we're on the War Between The Republican Factions (as performed by the inmates of the Daily Beast under the direction of Tina Brown) Rich Lowry just came out against the Southern Strategy, &, having read to the end, we see he is pimping a book (which is not linked here as we are not a pimp for Amazon or any other hive of worker exploitation & villainy) about rail-splittin' Abe Lincoln (who, by the way, not only split rails & freed the slaves but invented the luxury automobile); the "stop pickin' on Lincoln" schtick is obviously complete bullshit designed to mess w/ his competition in the Lincoln-book field & is w/o any other meaning.
It is the Lincoln-Hating Right. You can't belong unless you feel a compulsion to write "bloody-minded tyrant" immediately before or after the name "Abraham Lincoln." Some members of this fraternity are old-style Lost Cause romantics, deluding themselves about the “War for Southern Independence,” as some Southerners have been doing since about 1866, while others are a peculiar breed of libertarian.

Libertarianism is supposed to make the Republican Party sleek and modern, but this variant of the creed—associated with Ron Paul—is stubbornly perverse and highly unappealing.
See, no meaning. And he didn't really mention Nixon or the Southern Strategy, because what could any of that have had to do w/ anything; it's the libertarians who are the real (albeit sleek & modern) racists!! Remember, he needs a reason to mention Lincoln so he can pimp his book; an even-close-to-accurate item comparing the present-day Republican Party to Lincoln would not go over well w/ those who must be pleased. So he concludes by admitting he wasted his time high-horsing it over a bunch of losers.
Operationally, they are pro-Confederacy. Their influence shouldn't be exaggerated. The vast majority of people will never hear of them. They exist only as a small but foul temptation on the right. If American conservatism ever wants to commit suicide, they offer the ready means. And it begins with the root-and-branch rejection of Abraham Lincoln.
And we're going to do a little high-horsing ourself (also laughing too) by sharing the title of Rich's opus. Ready? Food & drink out of mouths & away from keyboards? Here it is:
Lincoln Unbound: How an Ambitious Young Railsplitter Saved the American Dream—and How We Can Do It Again, on sale June 11 from Broadside Books, an imprint of HarperCollins.
Really? There are still young rail-splitters? Do not hold your breath.
The very final, extra-polished version of the above is available at Whiskey Fire.

Theme Song Of The Wk.

Me nah look no work.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

The I.R.S. Story

Mark Evanier's father the I.R.S. Revenue Officer provides insight into the real I.R.S.:
It was my father’s unfortunate job to go to people who were seriously in arrears in their taxes and say, "We need to negotiate a payment schedule." He hated it. No, that’s not strong enough. He hated, hated, hated it. He especially hated it when the people were desperate and in trouble.

Not all were. Some of them were very rich guys who just felt it was beneath them to pay taxes. When my father called on one, he’d walk into a mansion in Bel Air or Beverly Hills. Most of them had on their walls one or more framed photos of themselves with Ronald Reagan and/or Richard Nixon.

My father knew what that meant. These guys would never pay their taxes in full and probably not at all. He’d be lucky to get five cents on the dollar out of them. And he’d be real lucky if his boss didn’t call him in and say, "We got a complaint from someone in Washington about you harassing this fine, patriotic gentleman." My father was about as menacing as Wally Cox with a broken fly swatter. In the meantime, the boss would order him to get every cent plus penalties out of the poor woman in Venice whose husband had never paid their joint taxes, then had deserted her and the six kids she now couldn’t afford to feed.

The woman in Venice was a real person. My father came home pale from the afternoon he called on her. She owed more money than she could ever possibly come up with and since she was not a Reagan donor, she was expected to actually pay it.
In other words, just how scandal-screeching Tea Partiers & other reactionaries think the I.R.S. should work. And how alleged progressives or liberals or whatever they call themselves allow it to continue, yr. after yr.

Again the question: Where's the real & justified outrage?

Annals Of Empire

75 yrs. pass, & little changes but the names of the perpetrators; the names on the receiving end are almost unchanged.
1938 Britain Offers to Suspend Bombings

LONDON — In response to the pressure of public opinion in the United States and other countries, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced today [June 16] that Britain would abandon its “humane” aerial bombing in India*, Palestine, Southern Arabia and Irak if such practices stood in the way of a general agreement to abolish bombing from the air as exemplified at its worst in Spain and China. Arthur Henderson, Labor M.P., asked the Prime Minister in the House of Commons whether he was aware of the offer by Secretary of State Cordell Hull to have the United States join other nations in seeking to humanize the rules and practices of warfare. The Prime Minister replied that he was aware of the remarks of Mr. Hull and that Britain is “always ready to co-operate in seeking an agreement to humanize the rules and practices of warfare.”

*Not that we think you don't know, dear reader, but for the benefit of gov't. & corporate agents or robots that may be reading, we remind that in 1938 current target "Pakistan" was a part of "India."

Stocky Tomboyish Blond(e) In Space!

50 yrs. ago today on the stairway to the stars:
1963 First Woman in Space

MOSCOW — A stocky blonde with a captivating smile kept a Sunday-morning date in space today as the Soviet Union successfully launched the world’s first spacewoman. Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova, 26, rocketed through the heavens just two days after Lt. Col. Valeri F. Bykovsky blazed the way. “Hello Hawk, hello Hawk, this is Seagull,” Valentina’s high-pitched voice rang out. “Hello Seagull, this is Hawk,” Col. Bykovsky replied in the strangest boy-girl encounter in history.* Miss Tereshkova, a tomboyish air force junior lieutenant, spun into space in Vostok 6 (East 6) after a week of rumor and speculation that the Soviet Union was about to enter a new phase of space research. As Col. Bykovsky was completing his 32d orbit in Vostok 5 and passing over the Soviet Union, the bulky capsule bearing Miss Tereshkova hurtled skyward.

*Oh? [raises eyebrow]

Oedipal Nation

You sick mother-fuckers.
Dr. Freud would like a word w/ each of you. And then pater will have an announcement about his will.

The Yankee Prez Has Always
Been A Scumbag

Not one of them can escape the national security state, or their own fears & inadequacies.

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Mythology Recap

Son of beetch, we may have been diagnosed (& not by mere readings in the DSM but by a semi-professional head-candler) as bi-polar (Whatever that means. What are we, a planet? A magnet?) but no one's claimed we're delusional, stupid or whatever in the name of hell is wrong w/ the following lumps of tissue.Note Trent Franks (Cretin - AZ) at (0:50) for sheer historical inaccuracy.

Video ThrillerFiller

Oh my.Fucking animists. Better repent, 'cause your bloodline is haunted. Yeah, this was all over the Internet but we just got around to listening. How can there not be something in the nut book about such people? Demon-haunted? Very.

Remember this one?Apparently Stephen Colbert's writers do: