It is truly said that "America is so rich our poor people are obese." That seems to grow more true by the moment for the poor, low-information eaters teetering among us on wobbling platform heels or swooping past us in those little electric carts in the supermarkets.
Conversely is also said that "you can never be to rich or too thin." To confirm that the rich among us are always fooling around with their intake in a binge/purge self-fornication festival. On the one hand many among our rich of pallor have chosen to feed on the lard-laden excrement doled out daily by the current administration and are lining up to by more. On the other hand it would seem that the same wan affluent are lining up to buy food that is so refined and uptight that it has been entirely stripped of what any other culture, any other era, would recognize as... well... food itself. So deep is the affluent American's longing for thin that we have now arrived at "food free food."
It is no surprise to anyone paying attention to the long and unwinding national nutrition neurosis that we need to have some new mountain of diet bullshit to climb every five years of so.
Mount Organic.
Mount Sustainable.
Mount Lo-Fat No-Fat.
Mount Creamy No-Fat.
Yes, it is a libidinal landscape made of featureless false and phony foods. It is a dietary desert of drifting sans. Sans lactose. Sans meat. Sans chicken. Sans land animal. Sans face. Salt free. Sugar free. Gluten free. And, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever will be, Kosher.
Up and up the bullshit steams in a never ending inward spinning gyre of dietary dreck and nutritional nuttiness so complicated and so intertwined in morality and self-image that there seems to be, at times, nothing left to eat in a country that has more food per capita than any other nation in the history of the world. To quote that great American philosopher, Chester A. Riley, "What a revoltin' development this is."
It now seems to be the case that the food fetish factories of the world, in an effort to separate the American rich from their extra money, have pushed the pedal to the metal now that it is clear the American dollar is about to go the way of the Zimbabwe dollar. Just last month I noticed the store in my neighborhood was selling bags of crispy kelp flakes. That's right. Kelp aka "Seaweed." A bag of these unfrosted flakes weighing in at less than an ounce was being offered up "on sale" for $4.99. A quick bit of grocery store math tells you that some company in collusion with the store seemed to feel it could retail its product for $60 a pound. Sixty smackers a pound. For.... Kelp aka "Seaweed." Weed from the sea..... An offer beyond bogglement.
But I only wandered in that brave new kelpflaked world beyond bogglement for a bit before I came across, just this afternoon, a new product that offered me even less food for more money. It was something called "Crispibread" and its selling points were proudly displayed on the box:
There you have it. To say this food is "vegan" (as it does) is to underestimate its nothingness. Free of nuts. Free of soy. Free of gluten, wheat, dairy, eggs, and that evil life form, yeast. Free of it all. Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free of food at last!
Our long national nightmare is over.
Let's eat.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
The Waste Land
August 1942.
"Training in marksmanship helps girls at Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles develop into responsible women. Part of Victory Corps activities there, rifle practice encourages girls to be accurate in handling firearms. Practicing on the rifle range in the school's basement." -- -- Shorpy Historical Photo Archive
He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots.
12 And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots.
13 And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.
14 And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.
15 And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants.
16 And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work.
17 He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants.
18 And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the Lord will not hear you in that day.
1 Samuel 8 KJV - And it came to pass
Howso' great their clamour, whatsoe'er their claim,
Suffer not the old King under any name!
Here is naught unproven--here is naught to learn.
It is written what shall fall if the King return.
He shall mark our goings, question whence we came,
Set his guards about us, as in Freedom's name.
He shall take a tribute, toll of all our ware;
He shall change our gold for arms--arms we may not bear.
-- orkut - Rudyard Kipling "The Old Issue"
HT: Bobbye
1. We admitted we were powerless over spending—that our deficit had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that increasing taxes two times greater than all those currently levied could restore us to solvency.
3. Made a decision to turn our nation and our lives over to the care of Socialism as we understood it.
4. Made a searching and fearless inventory of all the gold actually left in the vaults of the Fed and Fort Knox and found two nuggets worth $325.99.
5. Admitted to voters, to the Federal Reserve, and to all eternal Government bureaucracies the exact nature of our bankruptcy and appeared in a barrel on The View.
6. Were entirely ready to have the Fed print infinite money on whatever paper they could get at a case discount down at Staples.
7. Humbly asked the voters to give us all their money, their IRAs, and title to their vacation homes.
8. Made a list of all persons that still had something squirreled away, and became willing to make send in the National Guard to dig up their backyards and basements.
9. Made direct promises to replace any precious metals or gems found with paper money, ten cents on the dollar, to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would require a cash award of more than $49.98.
10. Continued to search for hidden assets and when we found them promptly seized them.
11. Sought through Universal Health Care and reducing the military to improve our nation until it resembled Great Britain in real power and influence, and confiscated all guns and ammunition we could lay our hands on to keep pesky disagreements with the National Guard on a name-calling basis, praying only for a disarmed, dispirited, depressed and Universally Medicated citizenry and for the power to rule over them.
12. Having had a rebirth of the Soviet Union under Stalin as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to any remaining free societies, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
INT. UNDERGROUND DC PARKING GARAGE. BOTTOM LEVEL. NIGHT.
Libra's footsteps echo off the walls. Flickering neon light buzzes. In the corner of the garage a whole sector of lights has gone dark. Shadows thicken. A lighter flickers in the darkness as a cigar is lit.
LIBRA: Carthago. Countersign?
CENTURION: Delenda est. Sort of overly dramatic don't you think?
LIBRA: Not paid to think. What is the assignment?
CENTURION: The Wing thinks it's time to lay a little blue smoke between the mirrors. Take the heat off our team and torch the other side. That's your job.
LIBRA: Fine. How wet does the Wing want it to get?
CENTURION: We project that if three team members are put down it should put a stop to any attrition in 2014.
LIBRA: Wouldn't taking out just one serve the same purpose?
CENTURION: No. It has to look like a pattern.
LIBRA: Fine. Any particular team members you need erased?
CENTURION: Nobody from Chicago or San Francisco. And from safe seats only. We need to preserve the count. Renegade's very keen on that.
LIBRA: Level of obfuscation?
CENTURION: None. Public and messy. "Accidents" would be counter productive. But no families. Renaissance would be upset.
LIBRA: Timing?
CENTURION: Within the next 10 days. It would be best if all three were within the same day.
LIBRA: You want target clearance and notification?
CENTURION: No. This will be the last contact for this contract.
LIBRA: Half to the Bahamas account by noon tomorrow and the half on completion to our friend in Costa Rica.
CENTURION: Done.
LIBRA: Anything else?
CENTURION: No. If we need you again we can always find you.
LIBRA: That's what you people always think. Oh, by the way, was that stuff about you getting naked with Renegade over the golf weekend the real deal?
CENTURION: Just get it done.
FADE TO BLACK
For all you do / This bud's for you.
On sale in Seattle something that will lower your information, voter:
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Faust. Was this the face that launched a thousand ships
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet, make me immortal with a kiss. [Kisses her.]
Her lips suck forth my soul; see where it flies! --
Come, come, give me my soul again.
-- Marlowe, Christopher. Doctor Faustus.
One is speaking, of course, of our latter day Helen of Troy, ye right honorable first beard first lady of the Disunited States, Michelle Obama. Her "official" second term portrait was just released and is provided here as source material. (Standard "can't unsee the seen" warning applies.) Play nice.
Updated with a fresh spread from Michelle La Vaughn's Secret Diary via Cripes Suzette -- Dear Diary – BANGS! |
Continued...
When all Earth's seas shall Levitate,
Dark shawled within the skies,
Upon our eyes will Starfish dance
Their waltz of Blind surprise.
The sun will Rise within wine Dark
As Argonauts imbibed,
Whose drunken arms embrace that sleep
Where Phaeton's horses Stride.
Upon all of Earth's wind-sanded shores,
As dolphins Learn to soar,
All we once were on the land
Shall be sealed behind the door
Of Ivory and Chastened Gold,
That the Mystery solved complete
Shall never til the seas' Long fall
Wake mariners from their sleep.
Big Data comes to Professional Porn: Deep Inside - A Study of 10,000 Porn Stars by Jon Millward.
They seem to be light and lively:
The average male and female performer are the same height as the average American man and woman: 5’10″ and 5’5″ respectively.2 However, porn stars are quite a bit lighter. At 117 lbs, the average female performer is a considerable 48 lbs under the national average for women, and the average male, at 167.5 lbs, weighs 27 lbs less than the national average for men.
And, no, they don't have bodacious tatas:
The most common bra size for a female porn star is a surprisingly handleable 34B. Not double-D, not even a D. Double-D actually came in 4th, behind B, C and D. The most common set of measurements for the women was 34-24-34.
And, yes, porn looks like America:
The proportions of each race match the general American population almost exactly, despite the fact that race is still heavily fetishized in porn.
At the same time, traditionalists will be pleased to know that porn stars make a nice couple: "Nikki Lee and David Lee—the most common first and last names of porn stars."
Much more safe for work than you think.
PS Blondes evidently do not have more fun: "Dark-haired porn stars outnumber blonde ones almost 2-to-1."
[Note: Last week's cruising debacle resulted in thousands of articles and comments including this one: 7 Reasons to Never Ever Ever Vacation on a Cruise Ship It also caused me to revisit my own brief flirtation with cruising some years back and add the 8th reason: It's BOR-ING!]
"A life on the ocean waves,
A home on the rolling deep..."
-- Sea Shanty
In travel I once thought there were only three levels of tedium that overtake one between departure to destination. If you go by car, your tedium level is light. You have the power to interrupt your journey at any point as well as a changing view and a task, driving, for diversion. Travel by rail or bus introduces you to the second level of tedium when only scheduled stops enable you to break the journey, but the scenery remains in the middle distance as a diversion. Should you go by air, your despair and terror are lessened by the knowledge that, except for extreme distances, your powerlessness and lack of view will at least last no more than a day.
The three levels of tedium. Each more or less equal to the others and each part of what you pay for wanting to indulge in the mindlessness of modern travel. But I have, this week discovered, a fourth level and this level contains all the horrors of travel plus the horrors of actually being there. This is a level of tedium previously unexplored by me, but rumored to exist by sensible travelers who have gone and returned to tell the tale. I should have believed them but, like the fool I have always been, I had to experience it myself. Right now I am still trapped within the confines of the experience but it isn"t too soon to send out a warning in the hopes that there are others out there who will not be the fool I was; who will turn back before committing themselves to this constantly renewing fresh hell on the ocean waves.
But should you have a taste for tedium, should boredom be like mother"s milk and daily bread (lots of it) to you, you will be surfeited by this otherwise antiquated mode of travel. Indeed, for sheer, mind obliterating tedium, for the kind of vacancy induced only by event horizons with no events and fewer horizons; for a feeling that arises in no experience other than incarceration, there is nothing that can beat the tedium induced by that modern masterpiece of torpor, stupor and pointlessness, the Cruise Ship.
Continued...
"First they came for the blacks, and I spoke up because it was wrong, even though I'm not black.
"Then they came for the gays, and I spoke up, even though I'm not gay.
"Then they came for the Muslims, and I spoke up, because it was wrong, even though I'm an atheist.
"When they came for illegal aliens, I spoke up, even though I'm a legal immigrant.
"Then they came for the pornographers, rebels and dissenters and their speech and flag burning, and I spoke up, because rights are not only for the establishment.
"Then they came for the gun owners, and you liberal shitbags threw me under the bus, even though I'd done nothing wrong. So when they come to put you on the train, you can fucking choke and die.
"Or you can commit seppuku with a chainsaw. I really don't care anymore. This is the end of my support for any liberal cause, because liberals have become anything but."
[Written by The Sacred Cow Slaughterhouse ｻ The Post in Which I Piss Off EVERYBODY.]
"I wonder if at some point, those who get things done just get tired of all this and give all of the idiots a sort of separate, but parallel world where they can spend valueless money on worthless crap, compete with each other for meaningless honors, and attempt to impose preposterous narratives on one another through an unending parade of news shows, talking points, and blog posts. Meanwhile, the doers build and repair the infrastructure, pioneer innovations, bear and raise kids with a good shot at becoming perfectly decent human beings, and run the real financial system according to sound principles.
"Perhaps Kornbluth's Marching Morons [FullText] already covers this ground, but today we don't have to worry about the idiots out-reproducing the doers. Sufficient access to birth control, abortion on demand, not-especially socially costly diversions, inflated credentials and titles, food, and a few hundred square feet of living space in a "cool" urban setting will keep them content for a lifetime. In a few generations they will have chatted and partied themselves out of existence. The solution need need not have a eugenic dimension. Those children of idiots who show a strong desire to create (in the real, material sense), who like children, who want to raise them responsibly, and who believe that wealth is to be earned through toil could always be invited to the other side.
"Contempt is an important part of the scheme. Not of the doers for the idiots, but for the idiots for the doers. As the last idiot couple pops the last viagra and copulates for the last time to some life desecrating lyrics played on a sound system they could never understand, and as they die of simultaneous orgasms/strokes, they must die with contempt on their wrinkled lips for the doers. They must always be absolutely convinced of their superiority (that sound system would never have been built without us... you didn't build it... we did!). Given their hubris, I don't think that is a hard goal to achieve.
"And to be honest, I really don't think that we are that far from being able to put this plan into practice. Not that far at all."
Posted by: el baboso as a comment on Modern Love
Some people like ballet but I've always been one for the subtleties and wistful nuance of interpretive dance. This brief example is surely one of the finest of that wistful genre of deeper insight and feeling when it comes to the dance. Indeed, discerning connoisseurs of dance will rejoice at seeing, once again, the most moving moment in the history of dance coming in at 1:22.
Indeed, so wonderful and universal is this moment that scholars of the dance may want to study it closely a few times. In that way they can deepen their understanding of the manner in which the dancer's restrained and even, deconstructively speaking, [airquote]chained[unairquote] angst and fin-de-siecle malaise can be released into an ever evolving gyre of praise to freedom emerging like a reluctant toadstool through the elemental torrent that is released upon her. As well as wanting to get her a towel for a stimulating rubdown. I am not sure if a dissertation on this theme and moment has been written but I am sure that, if one is written, it will be an original contribution to knowledge.
“I’m no yenta, but I think this is going to work." - Jim Rogers
"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments..."
Submitted for your consideration an item most notable for its soothing palliative tone in which the unusual is normalized. As the age's intellectual insanity assumes the proportions of a plague, the experience of reading the herald of these plague years, the New York Times, becomes more and more like reading dispatches from the alternate universe of "hoping these changes stick." That the changes can only stick if the core of the more normative America holds both economically and militarily (even as the 'changy' culture struggles to destroy it) is where the hoping enters in.
Still it is an item imbued with sweetness in the coyly named "Weddings & Celebrations" section of the Times. It really has it all when it comes to the modern nature of love in a time of cultural cholera: Vows - Kate Adamick and Kay Diaz - Weddings and Celebrations - NYTimes.com [Emphasis carefully added]
"The two women were introduced Feb. 4, 2008, via an e-mail message from their mutual friend, Jim Rogers, the New York State deputy attorney general in the social justice division, for which Ms. Diaz, 45, is a senior trial counsel....On Valentine’s Day the women exchanged photographs. “It’s an absolute bonus she is as beautiful as she is,” Ms. Adamick said. They scheduled their first phone call four days later. Lengthy, nightly conversations ensued....
The next day Ms. Adamick flew back to New York from California. To her surprise, Ms. Diaz was waiting for her at Newark Liberty airport with two dozen roses. The connection was instantaneous. “She dropped the flowers on the ground and kissed me,” Ms. Adamick said. “We were making out in the car like two teenagers,” Ms. Diaz said. By the following morning they were engaged. 'It just came out of my mouth...' "
A little more than a year later, on May 8, the couple were legally married by Jeanne Laughlin, a Connecticut justice of the peace, in a conference room at the Stamford Government Center.
They exchanged yellow pipe-cleaner rings, saving their engraved gold bands for their public ceremony the next day, when Mr. Rogers — who had introduced them — led them through their vows in the three-story atrium of 632 on Hudson, an event space in a 19th-century New York town house.
“All my life I searched for you, but never thought I’d find you,” Ms. Adamick said. “All my life I dreamed of you, but never dreamed you were real.”
Mr. Rogers said, “You may both kiss the bride,” and their 96 friends and family cheered as the couple smiled exuberantly.
"And," as Walter Cronkite would totalled up the whole passel of perfection if he'd attended, "That's the way it is."
Having not been invited, all I can say is that they seem like a nice, attractive couple and that I wish them all the happiness they can garner from the world. Life's tough enough on the denizens of this relentlessly advancing and evolving world, and tougher still without love.
And yet for all that it seems to me that the report of the affair as scribbled by the oddly yet predictably named "Devan Sipher" in the 'paper of [the broken] record' is trying too hard to retain a deadpan affect; a state in which the writing does not "dumb it down" so much as it "blands it out."
Continued...
Who says a major in English Lit is wasted? The Boston Globe decided to use the first line from Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow: See the whole front page here.
"A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.
"It is too late. The Evacuation still proceeds, but it's all theatre. There are no lights inside the cars. No light anywhere. Above him lift girders old as an iron queen, and glass somewhere far above that would let the light of day through. But it's night. He's afraid of the way the glass will fall--soon--it will be a spectacle: the fall of a crystal palace. But coming down in total blackout, without one glint of light, only great invisible crashing." -- Thomas Pynchon: Gravity's Rainbow (opening)
"Picture yourself in the 80's. In rural Tennessee. You're a Vietnam vet. You've been partying ever since you got back.
"Now picture yourself waking up from a drug overdose. And you're lying on the floor of a wood structure. It's sixty feet off the ground and there's no one else around. It's a treehouse.
"So you tell God if he lets you live, you'll change your ways.
"Soon after, you burn the treehouse to the ground.
"And then the vision comes. God wants you to build another treehouse. The largest treehouse that's ever been.
"And so you do.
"If that is you, then your name is Horace Burgess of Crossville, Tennessee.
"What does your creation look like? See it here."
The Borderline Sociopathic Blog For Boys: I've Been In So Many Places I Shouldn't Have Been -- The State of Tennessee says it's not safe, you can't go in there. The State of Tennessee can shove a rope up a drainpipe.
Whew. What a relief!......
Wait..... wait..... Oh Damn!
Sigh. Keep comin' back. We're sure to get a winner one of these days.....
Like... maybe.... tomorrow?
About 1,100 injured as meteorite hits Russia with force of atomic bomb | Fox News
A problem that is bigger than global warming | Watts Up With That?
Asteroid 2012 DA14 makes its closest approach at 2:24 p.m. EST/1924 GMT today. .... The likelihood in this century of an asteroid impact with 700 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima A-bomb: 30%.... While politicians, their activist friends, and pundits caterwaul over a few tenths of a degree change in the global temperature over the last 100 years, with some Ehrlich-like nutballs even claiming it will cause extinction of humanity, today might be a good day to recognize a real extinction level challenge humanity faces. One wonders if yesterday’s meteor in Russia wasn’t some parts of the asteroid fragmented in a deep space collision eons ago and in a similar trajectory hours ahead. It may also be simply coincidence.
In which we note the growth and coming together of stars raised up on YouTube into FlashStars. Who needs the rolling failure of American Idol. Idols are everywhere.
The Lazy Song-Bruno Mars (cover) Megan Nicole | Views 36,438,654
Alex Goot | "Good Time" 9,840,441 views
ThePianoGuys One Direction - What Makes You Beautiful | 17,610,947 views
That's taken from Taylor Swift's "Begin Again" whose much more schmaltzy, "Look I'm in Paris!" version goes like this:
Continued...
I'm just putting it out there because that racist Rob sent it in. Talk amongst yourselves.
"The late Paul Harvey was a masterful throaty narrator in the romantic age
before the onset of America's now ubiquitous metrosexual nasal intonation. Harvey just didn't sound different from the present generation, but from what we suspect, he sounded different from most generations to come as well. One reason that our age cannot make a Shane, High Noon, or The Searchers is that most of our suburban Hollywood actors cannot even fake the accent of either the frontier or the tragic hero anymore. When Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall go, so goes too the last link to the cinema's Westerner. There are no more voices like Slim Pickens or Ben Johnson. One of the successes of the commercial is that the photographed farmers did not speak, and left the impression of mute superiority." --Works and Days | The Super Bowl Farmers
Video Next
Continued...
Created by @notoserfdom.
Obama SOTU/Chris Dorner Manhunt Open Thread: Ace of Spades HQ
"Yes, alas, it's an Open Thread, and not a liveblog. I don't really feel like listening to this imbecilic gasbag. I asked around but no one else has much interest, either.
"CNN/Chris Dorner Update: No, Anderson Cooper did not ask if it's harder to find a black man at night. See the "red flag" at the end."
Meanwhile Morgan is happy to give you a translated synopsis. Excerpt:
Too many families with solid credit who want to buy a home are being rejected. Too many families who have never missed a payment and want to refinance are being told no. That’s holding our entire economy back, and we need to fix it. Four years without a budget is not holding our economy back, and bizarre new health care regulatoins aren’t holding our economy back, and the constant threat of ever-increasing taxes on “millionaires and billionaires” is not holding our economy back. It’s those darn banks telling people no.
Best number from the finest pop concert film ever made, Stop Making Sense. [Full film is HERE.]
David Byrne: I've got a tape I want to play.
Trouble in transit, got through the roadblock,
We blended in with the crowd,
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines,
I know that ain't allowed.
We dress like students, we dress like housewives
Or in a suit and a tie.
I changed my hairstyle so many times now
Don't know what I look like!
You make me shiver. I feel so tender.
We make a pretty good team.
Don't get exhausted, I'll do some driving.
You ought to get you some sleep.
Burned all my notebooks, what good are notebooks?
They won't help me survive.
My chest is aching, burns like a furnace.
The burning keeps me alive.
Kate Upton fills out the cover for a second year because... well... because... because the editors were shackled by the ankles to the Upton Entity three years ago and have not yet been rescued. 2013 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue - A Full Look • Highsnobiety The full 39 (thirty-nine) photographs.
Photography @ 1x.com by Bill Gekas More work showcased @Bill Gekas Photography | The Gallery
Presenting, via The Borderline Sociopathic Blog For Boys, The Zero F**ks Given RX7
Twelve minutes of automotive nirvana. Highly recommended. "Never a dull moment here."
Created by the strange brain in the jar at Tom the Dancing Bug Blog.
There is no "Mastermind."
The wildly popular comedy series "The Office" has just been given an injection of hilarity with Hillary Clinton's decision to show off her talents as "World's Best Boss" in the tenth season of the multi-award-winning show. Producers believe that the previously organic succession of Dunder Mifflin's incompetent but lovable managers - from Michael Scott to Robert California to Andy Bernard - will be seamlessly completed by the former Secretary of State, who is expected to bring with her plenty of baggage and surprising international connections. -- People's Cube
Contact Hillary with any questions of concerns right HERE. YES, you can leave a note sharing your feelings.
You brought it to my attention everything that was made in God
Down through centuries of great writings and paintings
Everything lives in God
Seen through architecture of great cathedrals
Down through the history of time
Is and was in the beginning and evermore shall be
When will I ever learn to live in God?
When will I ever learn?
He gives me everything I need and more
When will I ever learn?
Contrail at 1:40.
"Same old tales ain't nothing new
What the hell's a soul to do
But maybe you can help me through
Giving me one dance with you
One dance with you
One dance with you
One dance with you
One dance with you...."
"Woody Guthrie carves a sign into his guitar
'This machine kills fascists', Ani Difranco says
'Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right'
I say, 'Here's a monkey wrench
Bop me on the head long enough....
Maybe I'll wake up for a second.'"
More and more watching these government creatures strut their stilted stuff yields only bitter laughter. Here's the classic example of buffoons on parade has His High Blomeness Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts blathers along framed by an obese fanner and a butch signer. This buffo comedy works best if you drop the sound and watch the craploa spew in the silence.
LAPD Had "No Idea" Who They Were Shooting At In Dorner Pursuit, Says Victims' Attorney - Reason.com
"It's 100 percent clear that they had no idea who was in that vehicle and just lit it up.... This could have been anyone. It could have been you. It could have been me."
Continued...
Opportunity Passes 9 Years on Mars NASA's Mars rover Opportunity just celebrated its ninth anniversary on Mars - a mission that was originally meant to last just 90 days.
Although recently eclipsed in the news by its bigger brother Curiosity, Opportunity is still going strong and making valuable scientific discoveries. Launched into space in 2003, Opportunity bounced to a hole-in-one landing in a small crater on Mars' Meridiani Planum on January 25, 2004. It has since spent 3,212 Martian days, or sols, on the surface, slowly moving from target to target, exploring craters, meteorites, unusual rock formations, and finding evidence of past water activity. Over the past 108 months, Opportunity has driven a total of 35.48 kilometers (22.05 miles) across Mars -- not bad for a mission designed to last only three months.
On First Looking Out of NASA's Rover
Written on January 25, 2004
Much have I imagined the arcing vaults of space,
And many fiery launches and cold orbits seen;
Round the darksided moon have I been
And raised a flag above Tranquility base.
Oft on one Red Planet would I place
Dreams of deep-brow'd Bradbury's Morning Green
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I saw Opportunity gaze upon our brother's face:
Then felt I like some sentinel in strange skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like those at JPL, when the Opportunity's eyes
Delivered them an image through the stars,
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise--
"All green" upon the dusty plains of Mars.
(Apologies to Keats. who would understand)
"The troubles came.
I saved what I could save.
A thread of light.
A particle, a wave."
After all, why rewrite what's been done before?
An Associated Press article Monday declared a healthy jobs market, fantastic auto sales, a surging housing market, and a stock market rocketing to new all-time highs. What’s not to love? ***Continued...
Who says the Supreme Being doesn't have a sense of black humor?
[From the dependably demented Sooper. Mexy. CONservative. | SOOPERMEXICAN]
Continued...
"Today most people don't believe in the Muses any more. Not in the sense that the ancients did.
The three -- the goddesses of literature, science and the arts -- were at one time supposed to command men to speak. They have largely been replaced by the single all purpose modern deity: the Job. In modern political orthodoxy we do things for one rational reason only, which is to get paid. We write when the Boss tells us to. We craft a speech of talking points that the committee has approved. But of the muses we heard no more. Until recently. If any spiritual debt is owed to the informational technology revolution it has been in the resurrection of the Muses. For no one familiar with the programming world will believe for a minute that its best developers. For no one familiar with the programming world will believe for a minute that its best developers write code to be paid." -- Richard Fernandez / The House that Roger Built
"Everything is amazing and nobody's happy. We're not happy because for the first time in our history we're not allowed to be happy."
C'mon, invest the 20 minutes. You've got nothing more important to do in the next half hour.
Continued...
Newly-recruited female marines take their lunch with fellow Filipino soldiers after undergoing drills inside the marine headquarters in the town of Ternate, south of Manila on Tuesday. -- PhotoBlog
And after lunch? .... Training!
What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.
Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information.
Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism.
Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us.
Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.
Orwell feared we would become a captive culture.
Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.
As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”
In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain.
In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure.
In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.” – Neil Postman – Amusing Ourselves to Death
Continued...
File under: "Moon Landing. Yeah, right."
Now is the parking lot of our discontent: The History Blog's Liveblogging the Richard III announcement is the best of many, many sites and news sources covering this.
"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here at this ungodly hour to find out as soon as humanly possible whether the skeleton discovered underneath a Leicester parking lot can be conclusively identified by a combination of DNA analysis, radiocarbon dating and forensic analysis as the remains of King Richard III."
As Richard III is now:
As Shakespeare had him:
"There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Ana's that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge." -- Red Wind -- Raymond Chandler
Sometimes I almost think that there's hope for pop music after all. This is one of those times. Of course, I could be wrong.
Continued...1. To make this the greenest Super Bowl, the New Orleans Host Committee has partnered with fans and the community to offset energy use across the major Super Bowl venues. The exterior of the Mercedes-Benz Superdome features more than 26,000 LED lights on 96 full-color graphic display panels, designed to wash the building in a spectrum of animated colors, patterns and images. The system draws only 10 kilowatts of electricity -- equivalent to the amount of energy used by a small home -- and the lights are expected to last for many years before needing replacement. -- Energy.gov's Department of Energy
2. Officials from Entergy, the utility company supplying power to the Superdome, said the outage occurred when sensing equipment detected an "abnormality" in the system. A statement from Entergy and the Superdome said that a piece of equipment monitoring electrical load sensed the abnormality and opened a breaker, partially cutting power. -- Power outage stops game at Super Bowl XLVII - ESPN
"Demand a plan to ban massacres. I can't believe those are still legal."
In 1955, Life magazine looked into its crystal ball to imagine “what life may be like in A.D. 1980.”
Unhappy about the weather? Everybody talking but nobody doing anything about it? Well, just get in touch with the Atomic Weather Commission. A flick of the nuclear switch, and presto! — the North Pole melts, the vast continent of Antarctica thaws into productive use, Greenland grows bananas, Vermont grows oranges, and everybody’s heating bill vanishes. Not fantastic at all, according to mathematician John von Neumann, who also predicts that energy may be just about as “free as the unmetered air.” So, no light bills. -- The utopia of global warming | ROUGH TYPE
Well, by the 1980s things were indeed looking up as exemplified by the one-hit wonder Timbuk3's one-hit "The Future's So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades".
Continued...Meanwhile, in the real America far from the malls and the maddening crowd....
One minute and thirteen seconds. Whew! I couldn't do this. Could you?
Continued...
Darien Long Kick Ass Mall cop was recently in the news for his single handed stand against drug dealers near his mall. His videos went viral and may people applauded him for his great work. People would like to donate to enable him to get better and more gear Current Amount: $21,376.64 -- -- Donations at Crowdtilt.com
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