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Strange Daze

Pie Town  Lee  along with his wife Jane, arrived in Pie Town, a community of nearly 200 homesteaders, in Jun 1940. As the Magdalena News put it: “Mr. Lee of Dallas, Texas, is staying in Pietown, taking pictures of most anything he can find. Mr. Lee is a photographer the United States department of agriculture. Most of the farmers are planting beans this week.”

40 Acres and a Mall –   “Great Replacements” can and do happen, and black L.A. is in the final stages of one.

But black L.A.’s Great Replacement is unique in that it represents the complete and total failure of the post-civil-rights-era black American business model, which can be summed up as “Don’t make yourself indispensable, don’t make yourself needed, or even wanted. Shout, march, and bully for your supper, because you’re owed it.”

Black L.A. is disintegrating because blacks are surrounded by racial and ethnic groups that adhere to very different models. The problem facing black L.A. isn’t “white supremacy.” It’s that every demographic group in Southern Cal does better than blacks. Indians, Pakistanis, Filipinos, Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, even African blacks. Those groups have more wealth, they constitute a more vital part of the workforce, and they contribute more to the economy than black Angelenos. So as L.A.’s blacks are chased out on one end by Hispanics who conquer by sheer numbers, they’re gentrified out on the other end by every other race and ethnicity in the city.

There can be no improvement or renovation to the mall, whether by whites, Jews, blacks, or whoever, because the moment that area ceases to be crappy, all those other, more successful populations—with their capital and spending power—will flood in. It can’t be stopped. Black Angelenos are in an unenviable position where their only possible hope for survival as a “community” (as opposed to a diaspora) is to keep their last remaining neighborhoods shitty.

Pluto   This little planet1 with the adorable heart-shaped tramp stamp is Pluto. The photo was taken around 4 pm EDT 13 Jul 2015 by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) the Ralph Instrument aboard the New Horizons spacecraft from a distance of 476,000 miles.

Clyde Tombaugh (4 Feb 1906 – 17 Jan 1997), the oldest child of Muron and Adelle Tombaugh, was born in Streator Illinois. As a child he became interested in astronomy and after the family moved to a new farm in Burdett, Kansas, he began building telescopes and sending his observations to Lowell Observatory. The observatory’s director, Vesto Slipher, was so impressed with his drawings that he offered Tombaugh a job.

Whipped Cream & Other Delights

This LP, a 1966 pressing of Whipped Cream and Other Delights (A&M SP-4110), was Herb Alperts’ most popular and successful release. It spent eight weeks at #1 on the Billboard charts, sold 6.5 million copies, and won four Grammys. If you didn’t own this yourself then it was almost certainly in your parent’s or grandparents’ record collection.

Then there’s that cover.

Dolores Erickson began modeling as a teenager. She studied art at the University of Washington but dropped out at 19 to model full-time in San Francisco. By 1960 she ended up in LA as an aspiring actress under contract to Paramount then Warner Bros, where she had several bit parts in TV shows.

While in LA she became a model for the photographer Peter Whorf who used her for Nat King Cole and Cy Coleman releases. She, along with her husband, an record industry exec, became friends with Alpert and Moss. Peter Whorf also happened to be Alperts’ art director. You can see where all of this is going.

When Whorf began to design the cover for Alperts’ fourth album – a concept that Alpert though “was skirting the line” – he flew Delores out to LA for a one-day shoot in his garage studio. He used strategically placed chiffon and shaving cream to hide not only her strapless bikini but her three-month baby bump.

The Model   In 1961 Brown and Bigelow asked him to revamp their popular Artist’s Sketch Pad calendar. It was a commission he would hold for 15 years. The so-called Willis Girl, a combination of the innocent coquetry of 1940s/50s and the direct explicitness of the 1960s sexual revolution, was perhaps the last classic American pin-up:Walter Foster was born in 1891 in Woodland Park, Colorado. He became an an accomplished artist, art instructor and director of his own advertising agency. In 1919 he self-published, out of his Laguna Beach garage, the book. Drawing Simplified.

By the 1950s Willis was advertising his own art instruction materials – The Fritz Willis Method (“now anyone can draw beautiful girls!”) – so his collaboration with Foster seemed a natural. He authored The Nude (Foster no. 96), Faces and Features (106), The Model (117) and Art Secrets and Shortcuts (143). Although all of the Foster books are undated, Willis’ titles all appear to be from the 1960s. Here are some examples from The Nude:

Psalm 121

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

2 My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.

3 He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.

4 Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

5 The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.

6 The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.

7 The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.

8 The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.

Raconteur Report: Wounds My Heart With A Monotonous Languor… If you have a leader, follow them. If you don’t, BE one.

If TPTB go through with this, if they think they can brazen the theft of an election, a presidency, and an entire country, simply because they don’t care about what it costs them, there’s but one answer to that.

In the absence of orders or direction from higher authority, find someone or something Communist, and destroy it. Lather, rinse, repeat.

That’s going to be the Prime Directive for some good time. Count on it.

If…if…

IF you love freedom enough.

On the other hand: Just Walk Away |   As risky as it may sound, it is the only way forward within the rules of the current electoral system. Consider it the Flight 93 option or perhaps the denouement to the Flight 93 election. With no other options available within the rules, this is a last effort to preserve the rules by forcing the parties to defend the rules. Otherwise, we are left with John F. Kennedy’s admonition. “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

That Time Colonel Sanders Tried to Kill the Competition by Literally Trying to Murder the Manager of the Competition  Going back to the Colonel, sleeping in his car and broke again, he finally got one Pete Harmon, owner of the Do Drop Inn in Salt Lake City, Utah decided to make a deal to license his recipe and chicken making method. With a handshake agreement in 1952, Salt Lake City became the first city with a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise.

A historical look at the sexy stewardesses of the 1960s-1980s 

The girls who qualify for hostesses must be petite; weight 100 to 118 pounds; height 5 feet to 5 feet 4 inches; age 20 to 26 years. Add to that the rigid physical examination each must undergo four times every year, and you are assured of the bloom that goes with perfect health.

The post-WWII America changed drastically and millions of Americans started to travel on airplanes and the stewardess profession expanded further.

Now, young working women did not have to change bedpans or take dictation; they could travel the world, meet important people, and lead exciting lives. The stewardess position was well paid, prestigious, and adventurous – and it quickly became the nation’s most coveted job for women.

Towards a Cultural History of Plexiglass

Schoolchildren hunch over workbooks inside plexiglass table-tents. Receptionists greet patients from behind acrylic panels, pointing to the hand sanitizer and extra paperwork that must now precede a visit with the doctor. Plastic dividers separate us from cashiers scanning our groceries, couples eating next to us at the outdoor café, and weekend warriors huffing along on the elliptical trainers next to us at the gym. (That is, if our gyms are open at all.) Even the dealer at the baccarat table sits behind a see-through partition. When trials resumed in early September in Greenbelt, Maryland, the courtroom had been transformed into what the the Washington Post called a “plexiglass maze,” where walls-within-walls separated prosecution from defense, lawyers from clients, witnesses from jurors, and the judge from everyone else. Speakers wore plastic face shields so that the assembled could observe expressions and read lips. 

Plastic fails to prevent invasion, and it is itself invasive. The very ubiquity of plastic exacerbates its penetration of our bodies. Microplastics have been discovered in human organs; plastic bags have been found in the deepest trenches of the ocean; polymers have melded with rock to create new geo-engineered forms. The manufacture of acrylic fiber, like that of most plastics, requires the depletion of fossil fuels and the use of carcinogenic chemicals. 40 As we deploy more and more plexi barriers to support our own purity and security, we also extend plastic’s longevity. The residues of our plastic age will linger in the environment for hundreds of years — by which time our own bodies may have succumbed to a new pandemic, or to the climatic crises affected by the plasticization and carbonization of our world. And as long as we address such existential threats by hiding behind (literal and metaphorical) plexiglass shields rather than making systemic changes, it’s all but certain that the microbes and environmental milieux from which we attempt to cordon ourselves off will instead become ever more entwined with human life. At least we’ll get a clear view of the destruction, through the screen.

This is One of the Longest Walks You Can Find on Google Maps   One of the longest known “walks” you can find on Google Maps is the route you see above which takes you from Cape Town, South Africa to Magadan, Russia.

The total distance is approximately 22,366 km (13,898 miles) and Google estimates it would take you about 4,470 hours to complete (at a pace of 5 km/h). So if you were to walk just over 12 hours each day at a pace of 5 km/h, it would take you an entire year to complete the walk!

Have you ever seen a fish so big that it could rival a land mammal? Meet the giant Mola mola.

The Mola mola, which is its real scientific name, can be found in the warm waters of tropical oceans around the world.

The Mola mola’s weird shape is complemented by its extreme weight. An individual Mola mola can reach up to 14 feet long and weigh up to two and a half tons — which is as heavy as a rhinoceros and slightly more than your average car. In fact, the ocean sunfish ranks as one of the world’s heaviest fish, only beaten out by a handful of sharks and the giant oceanic manta ray. 

Despite its heft, the Mola mola is known to perform high jumps like dolphins. These strange animals have been recorded to jump as high as 10 feet. Researchers posit that these jumps serve the practical purpose of ridding their bodies of the 40 different species of parasites that live on their skin at any given time. 11 Jaw-Droppingly Weird Animals That Are Too Alien To Be EarthlySea Monkeys, X-Ray Specs, and the Twisted Secret Behind Vintage Ads from American Comic Books

The Search for the Lost World For the first time in decades, science has gone from continuous advance to a sudden defensive mode against a disease in which the most likely outcome is a years-long stalemate. Even that fragile stalemate can easily be destabilized by the outbreak of another disease, or perhaps famine, financial crisis, or war, as also happened in the 14th century. The Design Margin which so long seemed adequate against all contingencies has evaporated in a single year.

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  • Elmo December 8, 2020, 4:48 AM

    Tsunami: Considering that cloudburst probably contained as much water as several hundred Sikorsky S-64F water drops makes me wonder how the Good Lord suspends that much weight in the air before he lets it loose.

  • Jack December 8, 2020, 6:32 AM

    The photos of the PieTown children are heartbreaking and God, I truly hope that their lives changed for the better.

    The blacks of LA are not one smidgen different from blacks anywhere else. Change the name of the city and you have the same general picture; one that will likely never change because they are the ‘chosen peeps’ although that designation ain’t helping them except with social sympathy from some on the Left.

    Everyone, even those who support them should understand, they hate white people with a frothing passion and while they stew daily in their vitriolic African bile every other minority group in the nation has or is accelerated and pulled itself way out ahead of them. Time waits for no one, even the Chosen Peeps.

    The air hostess of yesterday has been generally replaced by older women and a disproportionate number of old blacks and polished gay men who didn’t study their math and chemistry. But I quit flying because of the assholes with the TSA who deal with the public. Only mankind could make a more loathsome employee.

    Back in the early 80s when I was young and pretty I would slip off by myself on 3-5 day sabbaticals and travel to Mexico and go diving. It was safe then and cheap, there were plenty of lovely American girls in the towns and beaches and no one had ever heard of AIDS. I got on a cattle boat one morning that was taking a group out for a drift dive and when I my air was low I surfaced to signal the boat, which was probably 300 yards away, for pickup.

    It’s an odd feeling to be in deep water alone, even with diving gear, and I had to wait because the boat was picking up other divers as it moved toward me. So, there I am, bobbing on the surface, imagining, that I’m a cricket or a dry fly, tossed into a bream bed and waiting to be inhaled, so I looked down into the depths to see what was going on and in the water beneath me were 4 Molas, just flipping by with no discernible curiosity about me. They are huge and incredibly beautiful and I remember thinking that only God Himself would think of designing a creature like this….a giant that dines on jellyfish.

  • Casey Klahn December 8, 2020, 6:54 AM

    This is like a Thanksgiving or Christmas feast of curiosity, delights, and dark foreboding politics and culture. I’ll speak out before I’ve read it all, because my pants are on fire.

    Last night I was reading with some schadenfreude how the SecState in Michigan was responding to an “armed protest” at her house. She had it that they were ginned-up on the ether of non-substance; the elections were clean and Biden was destined for certification. By the MI hearings, with a beleaguered and ill Mayor Rudy Giuliani at the helm, I had reached hearings fatigue. PA, then GA, then AZ, I think, and I was fading out and convinced of the steal. My brother-in-law watched the whole MI hearings and he was madder than a wet hen at the steal.

    So, I goo-gulled and YoobToobed some queries re: the MI hearings, and the star witness, the blonde bespectacled gal. Google and YT were solid, page after page, of lock-step about how she’s the butt of late-night parodies and besmirchments, and how the elections were cleaner than a baby’s butt in a blanket. Total big brother treatment: information freeze-out. This morn I’m reading how Zuck the Cuck has hired third party conservative-killer fact-checkers in order to be plausible when Congress asks him if Facebook freezes out conservatives.

    Anyway, the reasons for this political war aren’t the drivers of the conflict anymore. In war, petulance and passion fuel conflagration. War has its own reasons, and facts and logic are not the drivers. Once you let that genie out of the bottle, he don’t go back in. The dems stole the election from Trump, the judges have reasons to dismiss plain evidence and middle-finger you, the Trump voter, Bob’d yer Uncle and fuck you.

    Ok, that was politics. The pretty illustration: her head is larger than the canon of heads. Doesn’t matter, though. We’re looking with newly calibrated eyes and she’s probably hotter that way.

  • Geo December 8, 2020, 7:16 AM

    My Father in Law, worked as a Salesman for Brown & Bigelow for many years. They were a powerhouse in the sales and promotion industry. They were famous for their Prints and owned the rights to many famous artist like Rockwell and others.

    When one of the partners died, his wife started selling off bits and pieces of the business and sold off their rights to the prints they owned and use to produce.

    It killed the company.

  • Hoss December 8, 2020, 8:26 AM

    My Father had that Herb Alperts album. I remember nothing of the music, but surely remember the album cover. It does stand the test of time.

  • Franks, Peter Franks December 8, 2020, 8:26 AM

    I still play that Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass while out driving. An uncle gifted the cassette as a birthday treat and it grew on me like a fungus.
    Could you imagine a band using that album cover today? The perpetually offended SJW would cry from their terribly oppressed comfort zones in a first world (for now) nation.
    Every race has been enslaved at some point but only one race never got over it and there won’t be enough free stuff to go around for everyone claiming chosen ones status.
    A downpour during a sunny day is a favorite natural phenomenon.
    A masked plastic society of soft weak fearful sheep will get lead to the slaughter pens.

    Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

    2 Corinthians 3:17

  • Sam L. December 8, 2020, 8:40 AM

    I HAVE that album. I KNOW not to lick it. Still, I’d sure LIKE to, though.

  • ghostsniper December 8, 2020, 12:48 PM

    What a cornucopia of potpourri delights spanning the spectrum, will take a while to digest entirely. Speaking of digest, these “Strange Daze” posts are like the old Readers Digest condensed books, which my dad bought religiously to entice us kids to keep on readin’. The Strange Daze posts are like the RD condensed books. A little this, a little that, and a great big bunch of you. From 88 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij0szSatcFU

  • whatever December 8, 2020, 1:02 PM

    Oh how I wanted a pair of those x-ray glasses. And the hypnotizing coin . The hovercraft looked interesting and amazing. But I could never figure out a way to buy any of it since I had no access to money. A boy could only dream.

  • ghostsniper December 8, 2020, 5:51 PM

    since I had no access to money
    ===========
    Sure you did. All you had to do was be a good boy and do your homework and dad would give you a quarter. Then, if you lived by his explanation of how compound interest works in your savings account, by the time summer was over you’d be wizzin around the neighborhood on that hovercraft.

    But no, you had to be your bad ol’ self like you always were, teasing your sister, toturing the cat, telling fibs, and leaving your bike lie in the driveway. I’m not surprised you never had any of that cool stuff and were left with just your dreams. And that sore ass where dad wailed the tar out of you.

  • Auntie Analogue December 8, 2020, 7:59 PM

    From what’s heard and said today about the Sixties you could believe that their soundtrack was nothing but The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, when a lot of what was aired back then was Herb Alpert and Bert Kaempfert. In fact Alpert’s and Kaempfert’s numbers became the theme songs for quite a few TV game shows, so those guys actually had broader media exposure than the rockers of that decade. What’s more is that unlike the rock tracks of that time, much of Alpert’s and Kaempfert’s infectiously catchy material made for sure-fire earworms – just try listening to Kaempfert’s “A Swingin’ Safari” and then . . . for the rest of the day, good luck trying to get it to stop playing and replaying inside your skull.