US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama greet trick or treaters at the North Portico of the White House as they celebrate Halloween. The First couple welcomed more than 2,000 children from Washington, Maryland and Virginia schools and their families to celebrate Halloween.
Halloween at the Obama House
Seen first @ KA-CHING!
And don't miss: The inside scoop (illustrated) from Michelle Obama's Mirror's: Lady M’s Purrrrr-fect Halloween Party
Clinton puzzled at Pakistan failure to find al Qaeda
Hillary Clinton, setting the argument that women are as smart as men back 100 years every day.
To surge, or not to surge: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous battles,
Or put down arms against a sea of troubles,
And by withdrawing end them? To retreat: to fight
No more; and by retreat to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To retreat, to leave;
To leave: perchance to lose: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that leaving, what defeat may come
When we have shuffled off this Afghan soil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of a long war;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of polls,
The oppressor’s wrong, the talking head’s contumely,
The pangs of pacifists, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his swift exit make
With a curt order? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary war,
But that the dread that some would cry “defeat,”
That vicious accusation from whose bourn
No politician returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Nobel Committee! Wimps, in thy orisons
Be all my sins forgotten.]
-- By sooth it is by ye bardlette: neo-neocon »
The video was shot all stills - roughly 3225 still photos for the entire video, using one camera, hanging from the ceiling for the main body of the movie. -- Everything you wanted to know about Oren Lavie's HER MORNING ELEGANCE
Sort of speaks for itself, doesn't it? Courtesy of The Virginian.
Every six months, the Audit Bureau of Circulations releases data about newspapers and how many people subscribe to them. And then everyone writes a story about how some newspapers declined some amount over the year previous. Well, that's no way to look at data! It's confusing—and it obscures larger trends. So we've taken chunks of data for the major newspapers, going back to 1990, and graphed it, so you can see what's actually happened to newspaper circulation. (We excluded USA Today, because we don't care about it. If you're in a hotel? You're reading it now. That's nice.)
Take a look. It really is quite illuminating for a single graph:
Continued...
From time to time I take on small photographic projects. One of these is called 1,000 Photographs of New York City.
Beginning in early October of 2001 and ending at around ten in the evening of November 9, 2002, I kept a detailed photographic record of what we were like and how we lived in New York in that shaky first year of our unsought new era. During those months I took over 23,000 photographs in all the areas and neighborhoods and places in which I found myself, night and day. Of these I destroyed most. In the end, I kept about 5,000 that struck me as worth preserving for one reason or another. Of those I've narrowed it down to 1,000.
I began this tonight and will continue with it until all 1,000 images of the set are uploaded -- no matter how many days, weeks, months that may take. In general I'll try to add ten to twenty images from the set per day, but not promises.
If this appeals to you you might want to bookmark: 1,000 Photographs of New York City.
Illustration via the indefatigable iOwnTheWorld.com
"TALK-SHOW host David Letterman has been recorded on tape having sex with a female staff member - and he is worried that the footage will eventually be leaked, it's reported today." -- News.com.au
It was interesting when Pamela Anderson's "leaked" to the Internet because she still looked like, well, "Pamela Anderson" at the time. It was less interesting when Paris Hilton did it because skank is skank no matter how blond or how rich. Nowadays the concept of celebrity sex tapes is banal and boring and fills me with equal measures of revulsion and inertia. Whose sex tapes would you LEAST like to see?
Snark And Boobs has some suggestions.
- Susan Sarandon & Tim Robbins
- Rosie O'Donnell and her wife
- Bill Clinton & any of his chicks
- Mitt Romney and his wife
- Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie
- Al and Tipper Gore
- Harry Reid and his wife
- Keith Olbermann
- Janeane Garofalo
Aside from "all of the above" whose sex tapes would you least like to see? Top of my list would be "Nancy Pelosi with Nancy Pelosi."
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, famously told the governor to “kiss my gay ass” at a Democratic fundraiser last month. Two days later, the governor responded in the veto message of one of Ammiano’s bills.
Can you decode the letter?
Via Ka-Ching!
Again I ask, "Where do we get such men and women?" And now I add, "Why have we saddled them with a President whose most notable achievement is to find whole new frontiers in dithering?"
"The Warrior Song" Now Available on iTunes. All profits donated to the Armed Forces Relief Trust. Get it from the source HERE.
HT: Little Miss Attila “Kill with a heart like Arctic ice.”
By night a chaos of commingling power,
The whole Pacific hovers hour by hour.
The slow Pacific swell stirs on the sand,
Sleeping to sink away, withdrawing land,
Heaving and wrinkled in the moon, and blind;
Or gathers seaward, ebbing out of mind.
Yesterday the German news magazine Der Spiegel published in SPIEGEL ONLINE an interview with Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post, one of the most influential conservative commentators in the United States. The result is an interview of over 4,000 words giving us in-depth look at Krauthammer's thinking and observations that we'd never see in the American news media. Since a wide-ranging interview of this length is a rarity in any medium, I'd urge you to read the entire piece. It will give you a sense of the Krauthammer's wide-ranging intellect that you can't get from newspaper columns and brief television appearances. That said, here are a few choice excerpts:
On the Nobel "Prize"
SPIEGEL: Mr. Krauthammer, did the Nobel Commitee in Oslo honor or doom the Obama presidency by awarding him the Peace Prize?Charles Krauthammer: It is so comical. Absurd. Any prize that goes to Kellogg and Briand, Le Duc Tho and Arafat, and Rigoberta Menchú, and ends up with Obama, tells you all you need to know. For Obama it's not very good because it reaffirms the stereotypes about him as the empty celebrity.
SPIEGEL: Why does it?
Krauthammer: He is a man of perpetual promise. There used to be a cruel joke that said Brazil is the country of the future, and always will be; Obama is the Brazil of today's politicians. He has obviously achieved nothing. And in the American context, to be the hero of five Norwegian leftists, is not exactly politically positive.
Emerging Powers?
Krauthammer: The Chinese are rising, the Indians have a very long way to go. But I'm old enough to remember the late 1980s, "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" by Paul Kennedy and the prevailing view that America was in decline and Japan was the rising power. The fashion now is that the Chinese will overtake the United States. As with the great Japan panic, there are all kinds of reasons why that will not happen.
Wars of Necessity, Wars of Choice
Krauthammer: The phrase "war of necessity and war of choice" is a phrase that came out of a different context. Milan Kundera once wrote, "a small country is a country that can disappear and knows it." He was thinking of prewar Czechoslovakia. Israel is a country that can disappear and knows it. America, Germany, France, Britain, are not countries that can disappear. They can be defeated but they cannot disappear. For the great powers, and especially for the world superpower, very few wars are wars of necessity. In theory, America could adopt a foreign policy of isolationism and survive. We could fight nowhere, withdraw from everywhere -- South Korea, Germany, Japan, NATO, the United Nations -- if we so chose. From that perspective, every war since World War II has been a war of choice.
The Obama "Doctrine"
Krauthammer: I would say his vision of the world appears to me to be so naïve that I am not even sure he's able to develop a doctrine. He has a view of the world as regulated by self-enforcing international norms, where the peace is kept by some kind of vague international consensus, something called the international community, which to me is a fiction, acting through obviously inadequate and worthless international agencies. I wouldn't elevate that kind of thinking to a doctrine because I have too much respect for the word doctrine.The full interview is HERE.
[HT: Wheat & Weeds: But He Could Be Re-Elected Anyway?]
The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books - a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. -- Albert Einstein
I haven't yet run into an argument that has made me want to change my mind. After all, a believing religious person, however brilliant or however good in debate, is compelled to stick fairly closely to a "script" that is known in advance, and known to me, too.
Atheism: class is a distraction | Carlo Strenger | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
According to the Pew survey, 85% of humanity is religious in some way, and that's probably a low estimate, since nobody knows the true figures about China. This doesn't mean that religion is true (it can't, because religions contradict each other), but that there are strong cognitive and motivational factors that give religions an evolutionary advantage in the market of ideas. A scientific worldview is cognitively and emotionally more difficult, and hence at a disadvantage..... None of what I have said here is new except for recent data. It has become quite fashionable to bash Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens et al and to call them "new atheists" as if they say something new. It is even more fashionable to think that atheism betrays a lack of cultural sensitivity or sophistication, exemplified by Terry Eagleton's moniker "Ditchkins", used to make fun of Dawkins and Hitchens. But basically they restate the very cogent analyses of thinkers like David Hume, Marx, John Stuart Mill, Nietzsche and Freud that explain why humans hang on to the strangest beliefs despite evidence to the contrary..... While some critics of the "new atheists" have made valid arguments, primarily that their optimistic humanism is far from realistic, they are missing out on a simple point: adhering to a scientific worldview requires discipline; it requires giving up on the certainties of childhood and the belief in ultimate protection. I don't know whether doing so turns us into better human beings, but it certainly makes us intellectually more responsible.
filmed in and around these counties, understand that the foul mouthed, hot tempered, illiterate rednecks featured on this show are the creme de la creme of mossback society. Supported mostly by what is left of the logging industry in these parts, they live largely in dilapidated singlewides surrounded by clearcut woodlands and collections of the rusted remains of every car, truck, motor, transmission, and assorted piece of machinery or scrap metal that have been handed down through generations from father to son. To a city boy like I was at the time, they were suspect in every way. Which leads me to the proverbial hole in the donut of this tale. -- WESTSOUND MODERN
For starters, what's not to like about Mister Tough Guy by Mark Steyn on National Review Online?
The most recent whine — the anti-Fox campaign — is, apart from anything else, unbecoming to the office. President Obama is the chief of state of one of the oldest free societies in the world, but his official White House website runs teasers such as: "For even more Fox lies, check out the latest ‘Truth-O-Meter.’” It gives off the air of somebody only marginally less paranoid than this week’s president-for-life in some basket-case banana republic ranting on the palace balcony because his interior security chief isn’t doing a fast enough job of disappearing his enemies
Continued...
"Whenever anyone preaches disunity. Tries to pit one of us against the other through class warfare, race hatred, or religious intolerance, you know that person seeks to rob us of our freedom and destroy our very lives...."
In from National Juggernaut who observes, "This cartoon seemed far-fetched In 1948."
Thanks to Mizz E in the comments for pointing this one out.
Illustration via The People's Cube - Correct Opinions for Progressive Liberals
Neoneocon rounds the bases in her essay today, Tyranny and Obama: success or failure
Continued...Ooooo.... that's gonna leave a mark.
How is it that when Righties quote Lefties, they have video, audio, and notarized confirmation from the Pope, but when Lefties “quote” Righties, they have Wiki entries contributed by “Cobra”? -- THEY WANT TO BELIEVE | Daily Telegraph Tim Blair Blog
Mickey Kaus is, like many who still suffer from "Obama Arrangement Syndrome,"** contorting himself enough to squeeze into a FedEx shipping envelope over the Fox News issue. In Kausfiles : What's Your Beef With Fox, Mr. Dem-Basher? he comes up with this key graph on why Fox News is the same but different.
Continued..."Americans voted for 'change' in the last election. They didn't vote for 'surrender. " A bookend to the video of Penn Jillette is this hard jolt of sense from Pat Condell. He lays out how the forces of darkness now are chipping away at the First Amendment.
Continued...
"I sat on TV, while my hero Tommy Smothers yelled in my face how pissed off he was at me for appearing on Glenn Beck. It broke my heart. "
Portrait of a man trying to come to terms with friendship versus the truth.
Continued...
As tanking traffic, revenues and interest metastasize at the once proud but now flaccid Little Green Footballs, czarina Charles ("I'm writing as bad as I can") Johnson takes time out from slander and libel and Christian bashing to post a "News Item" that begs his dwindling clutch of hatchlings to buy their Halloween costumes and candy from his Amazon links:
Continued...MSNBC's overpayed Contessa Brewster opines about the lot of all the $10-an-hour workers in her exclusive circle and then gets her professional American race hustlers mixed up.
Contessa Brewster: Joining me now to talk about this and the nation's joblessness is Reverend Al Sharpton.....
Jackson: Ah.... I'm Reverend Jesse Jackson....
Brewster: O, er, well you know the script in front of me said Al Sharpton. Looking at your face I know you're Jesse Jackson. We all do.
Oh, do we now, Contessa, you ignorant slut?....
Continued...
Closing in on the meaningless day when there will be one tweet for every person on Earth, Twitter went past a milestone yesterday when it logged tweet 5 billion. Not likely to rank in history near, say, the creation of the Salk Vaccine, the tweet was nevertheless emblematic of the internet. It contained both sex -- "sexysloan" -- and the inability to capitalize "Lord" because.... Well, because the shift key is just too much trouble. It's a Rule 34** / e.e. cummings world. We just text in it.
** Rule 34 " If it exists, there is porn of it. " Generally accepted internet rule that states that pornography or sexually related material exists for any conceivable subject.
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Geller and Spencer: They're real and they're spectacular.
Questioning the Commander-in-Chief
In a quick pre-Frankfurt six-figure sale, Mitchell Ivers at Simon & Schuster/Threshold acquired world English-language rights to The Post-American Presidency by Pamela Geller, the popular Atlas Shrugs blogger, and four-time New York Times bestselling author Robert Spencer [of Jihad Watch] (The Truth About Muhammad and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam [and the Crusades]). Scott Mendel at the Mendel Media group did the deal and says the book will appeal far beyond Threshold's conservative base. Publication is expected in July 2010. -- Deals: 10/19/2009 - 10/19/2009 - Publishers WeeklyContinued...
Shameless self-promotion with a rock and roll hook for
Not only the Rolling Stones here , but the most recent 10 items on my Tumblr site are below.
Continued...
I would not feel so all alone, / Everybody must get stoned.
"If religion is the opiate of the people, marijuana is the new religion."
Gentlemen, start your bongs! Today it was announced that the Obama administration "will not seek to arrest medical marijuana users and suppliers as long as they conform to state laws, under new policy guidelines to be sent to federal prosecutors Monday".... and because it's cool!.... and because it takes us a step closer to legalizing (and taxing) a very profitable cash crop.... and because, in the America of the very near future you're going to have to be very, very stoned not to see how deeply you're being screwed.... and because stoned people, if they can get off the couch, tend to vote for their pushers.
And also because the Obama is a stoner and wants to get some fine ganja growing in Michelle's garden. That way he can take up smoking again and have everybody say, "It's okay. It's only some fine White House chronic, not tobacco." Wanna bet?
American Digest saw this coming in the middle of last December....
The Chuck Norris Bible: "More American Than the King James Version!"
The amazing grace of Larwyn sent me this, The Blind Boys of Alabama singing "Amazing Grace." And it is amazing.
It's moving on to midnight Sunday here in Seattle where, at last, the rains have moved in. End your weekend or start your day with this. You can't got wrong either way.
are a gospel group from Alabama that first formed at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Blind at Talladega, Alabama in 1939. The three main vocalists of the group and their drummer/percussionist are all blind.
If they can see, surely we can too.
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A current Twitter fad is rewriting the Bible (140 characters or less at a time) to a more liberal perspective: #liberalbible . This run of twitter brain jazz often produces some memorable items. Here are just a few out of thousands:
Surely re-distribution and massive taxation shall follow me all the days of my life.
And I will execute great vengeance upon the Right; and the'll know that I'm the LORD, when I'll set Rahm Emanuel upon them.
Blessed are the appeasers...for they shall inherit the Nobel Peace Prize
And G-d said to Obama, you shall lead your people out of Chicago to go to Copenhagen for an ego beatdown.
And on the 38,034,034th day, Man created Botox. And Nancy Pelosi knew it was good.
Do unto others what you think is best for them.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. Unless you're a Kennedy. Or a Clinton. Or Jesse Jackson. Or a liberal in general.
I will fear no evil, for Barack shall meet with them without preconditions.
Love thine enemies and sell out your allies.
Wheresover your wallet shall be, there shall my hand be also.
On the 7th day, Obama created the 57th state!
Come unto Barack all ye who are poor & lazy and he shall give you food, shelter, clothing, and a college education.
For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but lose the majority in congress?
Then Barack said: “Let there be transparency!" and there was none.
For everything a season under heaven; a time to be born and a time to die- and we will decide if and when either will happen.
Whatever is expensive, whatever is ineffective, whatever increases our power, think on such things.
Shepard Fairey: "I state for the record that the AP is correct about which photo I used...and that I was mistaken. While I initially believed that the photo I referenced was a different one, I discovered early on in the case that I was wrong. In an attempt to conceal my mistake I submitted false images and deleted other images."
Why would Fairey make such a statement at this point? Perhaps because the only thing worse than being caught in a lie is, as his lawyers obviously informed him, being caught in a lie when that lie can be transformed into a criminal charge of perjury. At that point, the case against Fairey for stealing an image transforms itself from a question of money and damages into something that has actual jail time attached to it. Fairey saw the handwriting on the wall and that hand writing said, "1-to-5." At this point his mind concentrated itself and saw that there were -- at last -- possible consequences to being a Lying King.
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"Go back to the porch!" is code for "You're a house negro." Williams is having none of it.
Poster boy for male menopause, Charles Foster Johnson is proving to be a bigger inspiration to the blogosphere than his sclerotic writing and photography skills would ever suggest. This just in from BITE ME! Comics presents....
Hilarious and much more work than Johnson merits on his humble merits alone. Still, there's a certain pleasure in seeing the talented use of an axe and a stiletto on a deserving target.
Five pages more @ BITE ME! Comics presents...
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I'm using my Tumblr blog -- Van der Leun: Things That Go Boing in My Brain -- more and more as a simple and effective scrapbook of things I find and things that go boing in my brain. As the rain and snow settle in across this not-so-warming-globe, you might want to check it out every so often. In the last couple of days you'd have found, among many other things....
- THE 27 DAILY AFFIRMATIONS FOR BLOGGERS
- The Deeper Suck of Shepard Fairey’s “Art”
- Brain Dead Conservatives Obsessed with 'Freedom'
- Juiced Up and Sloppy Keith Richards can’t play...
- Visitors? Strange Days. My mom and dad in the...
- EVER DREAM THIS MAN? every night throughout the night ...
- Tallest Treehouse in the World It looks downright dangerous ….
- Time and Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg - Time and Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg
- 10 WORDS — The Painted Words of Ed Ruscha [Slideshow]
- Pissed-Off Women
- Scientists Give Flies False Memories
- TAKE NOTICE! That the SPHINCTER Grip Spring...
- It takes this much money to eat with Barack Obama...
- Overwhelming Entertainment! It’s got it all:...
Western theme, Steve Martin, elephants and chimps! What’s not to like?
So far this month there's over 200 items @ Van der Leun: Things That Go Boing in My Brain, so if you do decide to go, pack a snack.
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Video for Fagottron's track 'Expialidocious'. The track is composed of a sine wave bass, custom drum sequences, and sounds recorded from the Disney film 'Mary Poppins'.
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Click Me and Grow Big
The Pumpkin that Ate My Backyard
It began as a $1.49 seedling at Home Depot which I bought for my step-son to plant.
He planted it, as heedless 9-year-old boys will, in an obscure corner of a sandy bed under some ice-plants. It seemed to me at the time that the pumpkin was going to have a short and shady life.
But then, after about a month, it seemed to suddely clamber across my terrace. Then it strangled the corn plants. That gave it HUNGER and it ate the chair. When it approached the deck it lunged, fell back and sprouted this "fruit" of the vine.
Now the pumpkin is trying to invade my neighbor`s yard. Last night I heard them outside calling plaintively for their new puppy to come back in, "Sloopy! Little Sloopy! Sloopy, come!"
But answer came there none...
I grew this once in another life. It was a frightening experience.
If it wasn't for Halloween, this grotesque and useless vegetable would be extinct. And good riddance.
Let's review.
Somewhere dotted about the fruited plains of America something like lebenty-leben gazillion acres of pumpkins are planted every damn year. Then care and water and chemicals are slathered on these fibrous tumors causing them grow big. Some very big. Some so big that they can be hoisted into the air and dropped onto a car and obliterate said automobile.
Many are midget pumpkins. This year I'm seeing teeny-weeny baby pumpkins ripe for pumpkin abuse. But most are middle to large hunks o' pumpkin by the time they are "ready for harvesting."
Sounds so pastoral, doesn't it? "Ready for the harvest." Except that when you actually "harvest" a plant the assumption is that, somewhere, somehow, some people are actually going to eat the thing.
Continued...This.
Source: Gary's Social Media Count @ PERSONALIZE MEDIA
Last known picture of Falcon Heene with a smile on his face.
Balloon Boy Found Alive ... At Home
The kid who everyone thought was flying through the air in a homemade balloon was finally found -- hiding in a cardboard box in the attic of his home.This is one case where a kid won't have to "wait until your father gets home."
December 10, 1950 Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, novelist William Faulkner gave the following speech at the Awards banquet. Unlike most other speeches given by most other recipients of the Nobel Prize, this speech has endured like Dilsey in The Sound and the Fury. This is an example of what can rise out of the Nobel when it is awarded to someone or real achievement who actually deserved it. [Emphasis added]
I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work -- a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.
Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed -- love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.
Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.
The poet’s, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.
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CNN: Decades to build credibility, eleven minutes to decimate. The most masterful evisceration of a news network to date. How the people who work for CNN can come into work in the morning after this is beyond me. They must be doing it for the money because pride and self-esteem doesn't enter into it.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| CNN Leaves It There | ||||
| ||||
Today's most influential critic of fine-art photography, Ace d'Allahpundit has cracked the Johnson referential surface once again and offers up this penetrating, and exclusive, analysis:
"With 'The Molesting Post' Johnson at once presents us with what at first glance seems to be an out of focus post and bar motif set starkly against his trademark soft and fuzzy ocean with a soupçon of foam. This, however, is only the signifying surface of his deeper signifier.
Mark how the stark black shaft of the post is topped with a broad black knob just above the cut part of the shaft. Reflect on how the top of the knob just barely intrudes into the clear off blue of the sky above after rising out of the weedy mud below. Recall that placed against the wet of the ocean the shaft and knob must obviously be, if not soaking wet, at least pleasantly slick with sea spume. Reconstructing this deconstruction of angst, desolation, dark childhood fears of being locked in the closet, plus the profound isolation of the self from the self implicit in all of Johnson's work, and we can ultimately "decode" the inner confession that lurks just beneath the surface of all of Johnson's mature work.
With 'The Molesting Post' Johnson has finally broken free of his previous inhibitions and become, at last, a mere self of his former shell. I, for one, am glad that the fierce internal pressure that writhes within Johnson's most tortured work has finally found it's release in the eternal truths of soft-focus photography."
My secret email agent sends in this report and says, "Wow! Someone surely put some time and effort into this one!" [Clicketh to embiggen]
Plus this snazzy new video, "Kiss Me Son of God" by Dr. Wu via iowahawk: The Art Just Won't Stop. You'll be humming this all day.
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
-- SEPTEMBER 1, 1939 W.H. Auden
Much as Barack Obama is the imaginary friend of liberals, so Charles Foster Johnson is the imaginary friend of himself.
From Science Made Stupid Written and Illustrated by TOM WELLER. A 1986 Hugo Award Winner.
Americans at Their Very Best: Why this isn't clocking upwards of a million views on YouTube is beyond me. Stick around for the slo-mo instant replay.
"This pie fight was held the day before my sister's wedding to celebrate the occasion. In all, 78 pies (54 Lemon Meringue and 24 Boston Cream Pies) were disposed of in approximately 78 seconds! "
When she is off the radio I announce,
"All the big pieces are still there." She smiles at my poor attempt at early morning humor, then asks me who is going to be flying... "You of course," I say. She is such a smooth pilot, in fact maybe the best I have ever flown with at this airline, that I always try to shove the flying to the right side of the flight deck when we work together, which is often. Yeah, I have more experience and possess a "been there, done that" gray hair factor, but she is a better stick. Her Dad was a well known and respected pilot, too. It must be genetics. -- Flight Level 390: Why Am I Dressed this Way?
"Clearly, reality has jumped the shark." -- Fat Man
Iowahawk is on the case with Dial 'M' For Maternity Excerpts from the new Mike Loads gyno-mystery by Andrew Sullivan
Nine months is a lot of time. Enough time to rehab a darling vacation bungalow on Cape Cod. Enough time for a whirlwind romance with the contractor. The birds 'n' bees boys down at the OB/GYN lab claim that's how long it takes to hatch a baby. But in my line of work you learn it's also plenty enough time to hatch a plot -- maybe the single biggest stinking political gestation coverup plot ever to hit P-town. My name is Loads. To me, everything is a mystery.READ. IT. NOW.
"All cults of personality begin as high drama and end as low comedy." -- Benjamin Kerstein Obama’s Nobel Prize: The World as Farce | The New Ledger
The always interesting Bookworm Room today is a case study in how a reaction to news evolves in the Blogsphere. There the first raw WTF!? to the news of the Nobel Peace Prize and then a chain of further thoughts as more information comes in.
The updates Bookworm has been posting today are a map to a mind engaged with the news and looking for a greater understanding.
Bookworm Room » Obama wins the Peace Prize *UPDATED -- FREQUENTLY*First reaction:
I've decided that this is a preemptive prize, because the Committee looked ahead to the insane nuclear winter and global Muslim/non-Muslim war Obamaâs fecklessness is bringing into being and they knew: he makes a desert, and calls it peace. Since the Committee can confidently expect that, once Obama does what he does best, there will be no more prizes, now was the time for a preemptive award.Then the Updates begin. Continued...
"I'd like to thank all the little people."
The Fix Was In: Worth noting, Obama took office less than 10 days before the Feb. 1 deadline for Nobel Prize nominations. -- @markknoller
2:09 AM You always knew those beauty contest declarations about "world peace" would pay off. And without even having to put on a bikini. US President Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize
U.S. President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for his calls to reduce the world's stockpile of nuclear weapons and working for world peace.Plus his signal accomplishments so far in office, "Jack" and "Shit." Now the whole world has an imaginary friend. And like all beauty queens he looks good in a thong. Continued...
We can't say we weren't told. An important essay by Dr, Bob:
"With the loss of the notion that man is a reflection of a divine Creator, and accountable to a higher Being or Law, the individual must compensate for his devaluation (for we are, after all, just cosmic accidents) by becoming ever more outlandish and outrageous in ways self-destructive, offensive to others, and hideous. Michael Jackson becomes our Dorian Gray — as the rotting necropolis of the spirit seeps through the grave clothes we have so carefully wrapped, having whitewashed the entombed soul with plastic surgery, slick production, Photoshop edits and high fashion. Our Ferragamos and facelifts, our tattoos and painted toes, are but weathered signposts on the rutted road to the expansive wasteland of our inner desolation."
Read the rest at Life in the Necropolis | The Doctor Is In
snapped shot * technical difficulties
However, I will add that there is not a single online source that I've been able to find references Watusi (Hard Edges) as being a "study" of Matisse's prior work—Merely that she declared that, "If that old man can do it, then so could I"—which isn't usually considered to be how you "study" something.
Alma Thomas, Watusi (Hard Edge), 1963: A prominent abstract painter of the 19...
Alma Thomas, Watusi (Hard Edge), 1963: A prominent abstract painter of the 1960s and 1970s and the first African-American woman to have a solo art exhibition at New York's Whitney Museum. Born in Columbus in 1891, racist attitudes and a poor education system for African-Americans at that time hampered her childhood, but she excelled at architectural drawing.
Henri Matisse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Le Bateau (1954) (This gouache created a minor stir when the MoMA mistakenly displayed it upside-down for 47 days in 1961.[20])
Henri Matisse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Afterwards, he started using a wheelchair. Until his death he would be cared for by a Russian woman, Lydia Delektorskaya, formerly one of his models. With the aid of assistants he set about creating cut paper collages, often on a large scale, called gouaches d馗oup駸. His Blue Nudes series feature prime examples of this technique he called "painting with scissors"; they demonstrate the ability to bring his eye for colour and geometry to a new medium of utter simplicity, but with playful and delightful power.
Michelle Malkin » Do the Watusi: Art, imitation, and the Obamas
Do the Watusi: Art, imitation, and the Obamas
By Michelle Malkin ⢠October 8, 2009 05:49 PM
Yesterday, we chuckled over the indecision-themed âword artâ that the Obamas chose to hang in the White House.
Today, a Free Republic poster notices another of the Obamasâ curious art choices: âWatusi (Hard Edge),â by Alma Thomas, who is described by the NYTimes as âa longtime Washington resident who is an African-American painter.â
Alma Thomasâs âWatusiâ (1963) looks to be an almost exact reproduction of a 1953 piece by Henri Matisse titled âLâEscargot:â
Museum of Modern Art hangs Matisse's Le Bateau upside down for 47 days December 4 in History
December 4, 1961 in History
Event:
Museum of Modern Art hangs Matisse's Le Bateau upside down for 47 days
The Escalator or the Stairs: Watch that first step, it's a B-flat.
He ran on "Do You Believe in Magic," and he finds that he has to govern to "Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?"
Ah, well, that's his problem and I'm sure he's got it all figured out. After all, he's the "smartest politician ever." Right? Right.
Our problem is whether or not Mr. Wonderful and his rollicking sidekicks are taking us right into the:
Continued...
To be heard at the Wheel of Stars Made by the genius of Jim Bumgardner and derived from data beamed down to Earth from Hipparcos:
I used this information to plot the brightest stars, and cause them to revolve about Polaris (the North Star) very slowly, as the stars appear to do. Like the night sky, this is a sidereal time clock -- it takes nearly 24 hours for the stars to fully rotate. You'll notice some familiar constellations, such as the Big Dipper in there. As the stars cross zero and 180 degrees, indicated by the center line, the clock plays an individual note, or chime for each star. The pitch of the chime is based on the star's BV measurement (which roughly corresponds to color or temperature). The volume is based on the star's magnitude, or apparent brightness, and the stereo panning is based on the position on the screen (use headphones to hear it better).Hear it now. Five minutes in full screen mode should recenter you with God's great cosmos.
Today we all love saying "Massive ordinance penetrator" six times swiftly. US giant bunker-buster bomb project rushed since Iran's Qom site discovered 28 September @ All Things News Function?
15-ton super bunker-buster bomb (GBU-57A/B) Massive Ordinance Penetrator, which can reach a depth of 60.09 meters underground before exploding.Here's the team of "Can do" Americans that made it all possible. Applause please.
Please take a couple of minutes from your day to watch this touching message from the folks at the top of the power pyramid.
[Bootlicking] Stage Participants Four doctors will stand on stage behind the President during his remarks. [Lab coats will be supplied.]
Proctologist-in-Chief: Surrounded by doctors, Obama pitches overhaul Oh sweet Jesus and Mary mother of God! Is there nothing that cannot be reduced to an inane photo-op? Apparently not in this diversity-drenched photo. (I especially treasure the aging hippy doctor with the ratty grey pony-tail. He's both a doctor & a lawyer so, I guess, he can go sue himself. Big Obama donor? Of course.)
"[The doctors] consider this thing a done deal, and they're jockeying for position on one of those righteous death panels. We've seen death panels before in this country, and it was a very fucking bad idea that time, too." -- Velociworld: O Death
Hard to know whether to file this under " jack or squat.". Either way, it now appears that the motto for "Health Reform" will be "Bend Over Here It Comes Again."
Now I'm not saying George W. Bush doesn't love America. He clearly does. And I'm not saying he's the kind of man who takes pleasure in watching his successor slowly pinned and wriggling on the wall. He probably doesn't. ("Karl, what say we let that doofus with the Howdy Doody ears win the next one? It'll be good for at least another decade of those Pelosi losers eviscerating themselves. Put up... oh... I don't know... that McCain character. He's so dim he'll actually think it'll be an honor.")
And I'm not saying he likes watching prestige, power, wealth, and lives slowly being drained out of the body politic. He clearly loathes it. And I'm not saying that he's the sort of guy that say's "I told you so..." when he hasn't. He doesn't have to. Everyone except the most besotted core of Obamallationists knows the deep and sucking morass that is enveloping the Wunderkind with every passing day.
I'm just saying that sometimes, late at night on the ranch in Crawford, George W. Bush has to wander out onto the land and wonder....
Continued...
Wow! Just wow: After undocking, the space shuttle Discovery crew got a memorable view of the developing International Space Station (ISS). Pictured orbiting high above Earth last month, numerous solar panels, trusses, and science modules of the ISS were visible. -- Astronomy Picture of the Day, October 5 (This is much better if you click to enlarge and the link has a very high-def version. Recommended.)
Ssssh: Frank Warren of Post Secret reveals he receives about 1,000 post cards a week.
Continued...American Thinker: The Obamas Violated First Three Rules of Selling
Of course Barack and Michelle Obama failed in Copenhagen. Their strategy could not possibly succeed. In their academic arrogance, they thought they could sell a product they clearly do not believe in (the United States) and moreover, they could do so by stressing the benefits to the seller (Chicago) and not the buyer (the IOC). And to top it off, they committed the faux pas of talking too much about the sales force (themselves) and not about the product or the buyer. ... The bottom line is this: this was an Obama epic fail period. They were the sales force, they were the focus of the sales presentation and they were the product. The Obamas were there to sell the Obamas with the Obamas. All Obama all the time.
And the world said, "No thanks."
A recording of a video projection show perfectly mapped to the front of a mansion in England. You've just got to see it to believe it.
HT: Gerard
Video created by BulletPeople
The Gorgon had surveyed the building again in the night, and had added the one stone face wanting; the stone face for which it had waited through about two hundred years. It lay back on the pillow of Monsieur the Marquis. It was like a fine mask, suddenly startled, made angry, and petrified. Driven home into the heart of the stone figure attached to it, was a knife. Round its hilt was a frill of paper, on which was scrawled: "Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques." --A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
The Obama talking while touring cure for world problems. How's that working out? ZZZzzzzzz.... And now, while we wait for Joe the Plumber to deploy the Roto-Rooter to remove that look from FLOTUS' face, some "traveling music:"
I'm hearing the light from the window,
I'm seeing the sound of the sea,
My feet have come loose from their moorings,
I'm feeling quite wonderfully free.
And I think I will travel to Rio
Using the music for flight,
There's nothing I know of in Rio,
But it's something to do with the night.
It's only a whimsical notion
To fly down to Rio tonight,
And I probably won't fly down to Rio,
But then again, I just might....
From your goto source for mainlining the soul of Michelle: Michelle Obama's Mirror's Blog: Blame It On Rio (and Racism)
The Storyboard. He carried, for most of the day, a large wooden cross and stood near an entrance to Penn Station. Mute, his message read:
Police name is Cartwright and 2 other police rape sodomize my wife in the mid town south precint tues january 21 1986 . My daughter was torture and murder at bith in the hosp 5 more children missing nurse l miller use sciorggies and gut the child no operation no surgery my-leg-broken-police...As far as I could tell, no one ever stopped to ask him about it. God knows I didn't.
Peace, Love, Sales. If John Lennon crawled out of the grave without a cent, this is the job he'd take. Maybe it was him. What did I know about instant karma? It was a profitable hustle for a bit because it was so, well, creative. On hot summer days, the rose colored granny glasses brought out the dollars for pot research because we were all glad someone was doing it while we were at work. When the basket filled up his "sidekick" would drift over and be flicked back. One day they were gone. I imagine they'd finally raised enough to continue the research elsewhere before the big bong hits of winter slapped them stiff on the heating grates.
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- Trick or Treat or Else!
- The Secretary of Squat
- Obamlet
- Something Wonderful: Her Morning Elegance
- A Graphic History of Newspaper Circulation Over the Last Two Decades
- New York Life: A Tumblr Show
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- 'Obama Is Average' Interview with Charles Krauthammer
- On the Limits of the Human
- “Hey boys, We’re from Seattle and we’re lost…Can you help us out?”
- Just when you thought it was safe to not think about LGF...
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- Rainy Day Sunday Fun Zine
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