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The future to me is utterly unattractive.
-Churchill to his Mother (circa 1896)
-Churchill to his Mother (circa 1896)
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The problem I see with throwing your shoes at people is you only get two shots.
-Saint Bif
-Saint Bif
It was an idea. I don't know. Who knows where they fucking come from. Isaac Newton invented gravity cause some asshole hit him in the head with an apple.
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-Hitchens
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- Gary Kasparov
“Mr Churchill, you are drunk”
“And you, madam, are ugly”
“Mr Churchill you are VERY drunk!”
“And you madam, are extremely ugly - but tomorrow I shall be sober”
“And you, madam, are ugly”
“Mr Churchill you are VERY drunk!”
“And you madam, are extremely ugly - but tomorrow I shall be sober”
233 comments
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July 6, 2008 at 6:14 pm
EEofDC
JR-
Never having been moderate in my life, is there anything to this other than replying to cultural comments? And/or posting my own? Dave had some thought-provoking (at least to me) things to say about “culture” on some other thread recently…. should they be here, too?
EE
July 7, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Holmes, I presume
@dave
Maybe this makes sense… these “greatmen” [EE, don’t get hung up on the non-gender neutral terminology; it’s N’s, not mine] necessarily are mutants in relation to the herd at large. Advances and changes that these greatmen help to facilitate are often perceived, at least in part, to be something of value to the masses. Regardless, the slave morality push-back is as inevitable and unstoppable (from happening) as a counterforce is to a force (as master morality, by analogy) in physics.
After the greatmen make their contribution, the part of it that can be embraced by the masses is appropriated, and then the greatmen and the remainder of the contribution (e.g., the part that is not understandable or perhaps undermines values associated with slave morality) can be cast aside like, well… used dish rags.
As many have said before, struggle is the natural state of things. Everyone plays a role in it.
Culture… I see it as a moving average of sorts, relating to and symptomatic of competing needs over time. Culture also serves the human desire to feel connected to something in the past… and to something bigger than any individual can be alone.
Ehhh… all things being equal, a cold beer in hand IMHO tends to improve just about any circumstance (or condition).
July 7, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Holmes, I presume
MOU, this one’s for you (because I adore you in kind and, anyway, who can say it better than Keith)…
July 8, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Saint Bif
Elle est si chaude. J’ai tant de désir.
Translation: She (or it) is so hot. I have such desire.
Bunn, I know it’s pompous and silly to speak French at CFN. Every year I strike a nihilistic left bank pose with regard to the Tour de France. But I can’t help it. It’s such a beautiful thing. Throw in some carbon fiber and composite materials with Italian components, and I’m a mess. So much beauty, it’s all just too much…. [faints]
[wakes up]… BTW, one thing nihilism is good for is humor. You know, black comedy. Nihilism is hysterical.
July 8, 2008 at 10:50 pm
tipping point
Hey SB- my sister has a Felt carbon fiber bike w/ shimano accessories. I think shimano sounds japanese, but I haven’t the slightest clue where it’s from. What say you? I guess I could look it up but I’d rather ask you- :>)
July 8, 2008 at 11:10 pm
EEofDC
Here’s something that could be cultured for everyone’s benefit–it might even convert Darth Cheney from a robot back into a human! N’est-ce pas?
Study Sees Benefit in Mushroom Drug
By MALCOLM RITTER, AP
Posted: 2008-07-02 20:08:23
Filed Under: Health News
NEW YORK (July 2) – In 2002, at a Johns Hopkins University laboratory, a business consultant named Dede Osborn took a psychedelic drug as part of a research project. She felt like she was taking off. She saw colors. Then it felt like her heart was ripping open.
But she called the experience joyful as well as painful, and says that it has helped her to this day.
“I feel more centered in who I am and what I’m doing,” said Osborn, now 66, of Providence, R.I. “I don’t seem to have those self-doubts like I used to have. I feel much more grounded (and feel that) we are all connected.”
Scientists reported Tuesday that when they surveyed volunteers 14 months after they took the drug, most said they were still feeling and behaving better because of the experience.
Two-thirds of them also said the drug had produced one of the five most spiritually significant experiences they’d ever had.
The drug, psilocybin, is found in so-called “magic mushrooms.” It’s illegal, but it has been used in religious ceremonies for centuries.
The study involved 36 men and women during an eight-hour lab visit. It’s one of the few such studies of a hallucinogen in the past 40 years, since research was largely shut down after widespread recreational abuse of such drugs in the 1960s.
The project made headlines in 2006 when researchers published their report on how the volunteers felt just two months after taking the drug. The new study followed them up a year after that.
Experts emphasize that people should not try psilocybin on their own because it could be harmful. Even in the controlled setting of the laboratory, nearly a third of participants felt significant fear under the effects of the drug. Without proper supervision, someone could be harmed, researchers said.
Osborn, in a telephone interview, recalled a powerful feeling of being out of control during her lab experience. “It was … like taking off, I’m being lifted up,” she said. Then came “brilliant colors and beautiful patterns, just stunningly gorgeous, more intense than normal reality.”
And then, the sensation that her heart was tearing open.
“It would come in waves,” she recalled. “I found myself doing Lamaze-type breathing as the pain came on.”
Yet “it was a joyful, ecstatic thing at the same time, like the joy of being alive,” she said. She compared it to birthing pains. “There was this sense of relief and joy and ecstasy when my heart was opened.”
With further research, psilocybin (pronounced SILL-oh-SY-bin) may prove useful in helping to treat alcoholism and drug dependence, and in aiding seriously ill patients as they deal with psychological distress, said study lead author Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins.
Griffiths also said that despite the spiritual characteristics reported for the drug experiences, the study says nothing about whether God exists.
“Is this God in a pill? Absolutely not,” he said.
The experiment was funded in part by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The results were published online Tuesday by the Journal of Psychopharmacology.
Fourteen months after taking the drug, 64 percent of the volunteers said they still felt at least a moderate increase in well-being or life satisfaction, in terms of things like feeling more creative, self-confident, flexible and optimistic. And 61 percent reported at least a moderate behavior change in what they considered positive ways.
That second question didn’t ask for details, but elsewhere the questionnaire answers indicated lasting gains in traits like being more sensitive, tolerant, loving and compassionate.
Researchers didn’t try to corroborate what the participants said about their own behavior. But in the earlier analysis at two months after the drug was given, researchers said family and friends backed up what those in the study said about behavior changes. Griffiths said he has no reason to doubt the answers at 14 months.
Dr. Charles Grob, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, called the new work an important follow-up to the first study.
He said it is helping to reopen formal study of psychedelic drugs. Grob is on the board of the Heffter Research Institute, which promotes studies of psychedelic substances and helped pay for the new work.
July 8, 2008 at 11:21 pm
tipping point
I’ve done ’shrooms and while it was enjoyable, there is nothing like ecstasy to make you feel like everyone deserves love and god is just waiting for you to realize that. OTOH that shit will fuck up your brain chemistry.
I am still confused why marijuana should remain illegal though. I miss it…
July 9, 2008 at 2:24 am
Saint Bif
Hi TP. A Felt carbon frame is indeed a really nice ride, and not cheap. Your sister must be a serious rider. Yes Shimano components are Japanese. They along with Campagnolo (Italian) are the standard of quality and durability. Components comprise everything but the frame, wheels and saddle. You provide the shrooms and love.
I’m not as obsessed with bicycles and riding like I used to be, but riding is still something I enjoy and hope to do my whole life, if that’s possible. I also hope to someday see bicycles come back as a viable and safe transportation option for lots of people.
July 9, 2008 at 2:51 am
Saint Bif
…And then, the sensation that her heart was tearing open. “It would come in waves,” she recalled. “I found myself doing Lamaze-type breathing as the pain came on.”…
I remember the same thing except it was my jaw. From laughing. Shit, its been a long time, and I’m still laughing.
July 9, 2008 at 2:53 am
JR
“is there anything to this other than replying to cultural comments?” – EEofDC
WTF? I just spent two days creating this for you. Did I design it wrong. Maybe it wasn’t you. I’m sorry, I often mix up women. I’ll check the comments. Again, I’m sorry.
Seems to be pretty popular, though. 8 comments in two days, that’s better than anybody except Nudge (she’s like a superstar). Maybe I should ban you, too.
Anyway, you’re the moderator until I figure it out who made me do this.
That means you get to say what is good culture and bad culture and tell anybody you like to fuck off. There is an editorship waiting for you. I’ve already set it up. just let me know.
To be fair, I’ve offered these to Nudge and Holmes and they have both turned me down, citing “too cool” as the reason. Their unfilled spots greet me every time I log in. You won’t be the first. and certainly not the last. I’ll approach Nicholas next. Oh yes, I have a plan. I won’t live forever. If Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton don’t take over Zulu Kilo soon, I don’t know who will.
July 9, 2008 at 2:59 am
JR
I’m just gonna say this cuz it’s three am, I just redeemed enough cans and counted my pennies so I think I can buy a pack of smokes tomorrow, so I’m super psyched. Plus that whole thing about being honest … naah, fuckit.
July 9, 2008 at 3:18 am
JR
“should they be here, too?” I have no fucking idea. what the fuck do I know. This is your problem.
Let me give you the scope of the problem:
Saint Bif, my choice to take over this blog when I die of an overdose (preferably anytime) of shrooms and X, is on this very thread – discussing bicycles.
You decide.
I only had second thoughts about annointing Bif my successor after reading this thread. I then proceeded to think about Holmes for an hour. Then remembered Holmes opted out. Then Bunn Bunn.
It sucks being King.
Bif likes bicycles. I hate being king. Bif has a family. ( I only say the things he has related). He probably works at an extremely high-paying job advising the likes of Michael Vic and The Sheik of Kuwait. Bif has the conscious of Jesus and the soul of Hound Dog Taylor. He is perfect for the job. He won’t take it. Bif is something most people aren’t. Smart.
The highest thing I ever aspired to in life was having the likes of SB read my blog every other day. Now I have 20 of you.
That’s it, I’m done. From here on out, it’s bonus time.
July 9, 2008 at 3:49 am
Holmes, I presume
JR,
At long last, I finally threw together this video of Bunn Bunn (for those of you interested in viewing the Master of Bink in a stylized mini-adventure of sorts. Two more thematically-oriented Bunn Bunn shorts are currently in post production).
I very much recommend that you click on the “watch in high quality” link (located below the “Views” field).
July 9, 2008 at 4:03 am
Saint Bif
Jeezuss. Thanks for all the kind words.
It could never work though. You are ZK. It starts and ends with you I’m afraid. Except maybe Nudge could ride shotgun for you. She is a force, I’m just a joker.
I know it sucks being king. That’s why I have told you many times I appreciate you do this blog.
July 9, 2008 at 4:30 am
Holmes, I presume
Like you said, JR, this is OUR blog. But there’s a very good reason why we all hang out here. It is YOU. I can’t be you. No one can be.
“If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoevski, all of us.”
– William Faulkner
What a load of crap.
July 9, 2008 at 5:17 am
JR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j6myIN522E
nevermind. I’m pretty much taking orders from Holmes and Bif and Momma G. These peole know how to run things.
July 9, 2008 at 7:43 am
JR
Like I said, I never read any Fauklner. Just Heller, Hemingway, and Dustoy.
It was Dustoy’s The Gambler and a certain girlfriend that gave me dollars for sex where I was able to prove some of Taleb’s Theories. This was way before Black Swan. Jesus she was the greatest. To this day I carry handcuffs in case i meet another woman like her.
It must be a literary Russian thing. The rest of you shut up. You know nothing.
July 9, 2008 at 7:49 am
JR
July 9, 2008 at 7:55 am
JR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyAgPgZGDyg
She said her name was Lucy.
She’s Crafty.
July 9, 2008 at 3:30 pm
EEofDC
“Two more thematically-oriented Bunn Bunn shorts are currently in post production).”
Holmes-
I’m impressed that BB and his Black bunny-friend/companion have not chewed the bejeesus out of your dining room table–or did I miss something?
Some bunny culture for you and Binkmaster BB…
July 9, 2008 at 10:34 pm
MOU
I love the rabbit.
I knew a dancer he would like. Her name was Bunny. She was an attractive 5-10, sandy blond haired young woman who dressed as a playboy bunny on stage, ears, tail, all of it. She liked to dance to the Gap Band’s “Party Train.” Everybody all aboard…
It sounds absurd but during one part of her act she smiled and hopped on stage. The men went nuts for it. I’m sure Bunn Bunn would throw carrots for her. Off stage she was really sweet and smart, we hung out and talked philosophy of exotic dancing quite a bit (like many 19 year old egghead dancer girls are wont to do). At an early age she had mastered the zen of bink for fun and profit. She calculated everything.
Maybe Bunn Bunn could start the Lop Band.
July 9, 2008 at 10:34 pm
MOU
Oh, that was a culture comment because it was about “Dance.”
July 9, 2008 at 11:40 pm
EEofDC
MOU-
For you:
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/comic-relief-elaine-boosler-stand-up-comedy/3305611133
I’ll try to find a clip from her “Live, Nude Girls Tour”
July 10, 2008 at 12:12 am
Saint Bif
Holmes. Alright! I was trying to see the little lap top in his cage, but oh well. What does he do inside that giant tower?
July 11, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Saint Bif
“If I should fall from grace with god
Where no doctor can relieve me
If I’m buried neath the sod
But the angels won’t receive me
Let me go, boys
Let me go, boys
Let me go down in the mud
Where the rivers all run dry”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrBLqp-s__o
Bloody Irish bastards. I am one. So let me go, boys. Let me go down in the mud. Drink up.
July 11, 2008 at 7:44 pm
tipping point
slainte
July 11, 2008 at 8:04 pm
Saint Bif
heh, slainte deary.
July 11, 2008 at 8:12 pm
tipping point
I wish I had a beer, Bif, in the worst way. Have one for me.
BTW, my sis is an Iron(wo)man. How cool is that? She is hoping to qualify for the championship in Kona this year.
July 12, 2008 at 2:43 am
Saint Bif
TP, yep, your sis is serious business alright. She’s a very hard worker and probably gifted if she is competing at that level. Good for her!
Sorry about your beerless condition TP. Your comment made me sad. I hate to hear that sort of thing.
July 12, 2008 at 11:11 am
Holmes, I presume
“Who would you rather follow, a man or a god?”
“You won’t tell them, will you Billy?”
July 12, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Saint Bif
As we see in King Lear for example, Shakespeare’s revenge tragedies consisted of the following elements: “ghosts, a hero’s quest for vengeance, scenes of real or feigned insanity, scenes in graveyards, severed limbs, carnage and mutilation, a corpse-strewn stage, and then the restoration of order after chaos.”
http://www.rsc.org.uk/lear/tragedy/tragedies.html
July 12, 2008 at 3:20 pm
EEofDC
Bif-
Bless you–You’ve connected a dot for me!
In late summer 1984, I saw Roger Rees in the production of Hamlet at SOA. It was mind-boggling. There is nothing that has come close–and I’ve seen a bunch of fab productions done here in DC by our own renowned “The Shakespeare Theatre Company.” The only Hamlet that has approached it was Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 film (Mel Gibson’s Hamlet was a totally overacted potboiler) of the same name.
July 12, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Saint Bif
Always glad to help!
Did you see Kenneth Branagh’s film version of ‘Much Ado About Nothing’? I very much enjoyed that.
July 12, 2008 at 5:33 pm
EEofDC
Was that the one with Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves?
That was fun!
I first saw Branaugh (and his later wife, Emma Thompson) in the film version of Henry V–I wanted to be Henry after this speech:
July 12, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Saint Bif
Holmes, I always thought that if they made a movie about the Iranian hostage crisis, Sean Connery would have been an excellent choice for portraying Ayatollah Khomeni.
Apparently someone else also picked up on the similarity, and I was astonished to find this:
http://www.aref-adib.com/archives/khomeini_connery2.jpg
July 12, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Holmes, I presume
Bif, a strong casting choice to be sure. I think these days Mr. Connery is paying some attention to the sometimes fascinating issue of proposed Scottish independence.
How about that! XER showed up at CFN. It’s almost as if Bunn Bunn’s brief career as a medium paid a delayed dividend. At a minimum, for those of you paying attention (MOU), it is clear that XER has been lurking or at least catching up on his reading.
July 12, 2008 at 8:43 pm
MOU
Saint Bif,
Sean’s Hot, Khomeni Not!
Holmes,
Just got here. Saw Xer post and posted as quick as I could before I had to leave. Could be a sign that things are really fucked up.
EE,
On Harvey, I was surprised at how nice he looked in the buff. I saw it as part of the symbolism of some of their relationship, that in the clothes he ain’t much and nude he was really nice, the beauty being in the vulnerability and all. I think that our TP may be at an age where the range of what works is pretty narrow still. And of course there is just “taste.” For instance, I don’t have patience with “pretty” men. No use for them. They are pretty. And…? So I guess my “tastebuds” have always been for men who are strong, smart, creative, and a little off the beaten path, much like the beautiful men that post here at ZQ.
Saint Biff,
Nice complement last night! I’ll say thanks on behalf of all of us. Girls are beautiful, no question of it. Women now…as JR might say, we are the schnitz (hope I got that right). We may have baggage, but some of it is really good stuff. And if you can use the rest of it, combined with your own, as grist for the mill, something beautiful can happen. I love to flirt, but I have something awesome with my hubby. Boys hit on me (hazard of my job) and it is flattering, but unappealing. My husband is so damn interesting that the idea of one of those boys is very wrong. I do not have needs they fill. They are underbaked, it is incest or something. Throw him back! Let him grow, don’t fuck him up! Mostly, not interesting.
EE is an awesome flirt, BTW. Depth of field.
Peace
July 12, 2008 at 8:49 pm
MOU
TP
Never heard of John Leguizamo. Spent some time with him on Youtube last night with my wine watching SEXAHOLIX or something titled like that. It was fun. Thanks!
July 12, 2008 at 9:32 pm
tipping point
Hey MOU- are you calling me shallow? ’sokay, I guess I am when it comes to certain things. You’re right that I am not yet at the point in life where I can accept gravity’s effects with equanamity. I will fight the good fight as long as I can though (that does not include plastic surgery though). As far as my appreciation for other men goes, I’m spoiled, so my viewpoint may be skewed.
I think schnitz might be a Jewish pastry, at least it sounds like it : ) Do you mean shiznit(or shizzle)? Don’t ask me for a definition though…
July 12, 2008 at 9:39 pm
tipping point
I’m glad you liked the Leguizamo thing-
I don’t remember much about the guy to be honest. But in my dream, I knew that’s who JR was. I haven’t had an operational flash player in a month or else I would check it out myself.
July 12, 2008 at 11:02 pm
EEofDC
Maybe you young folks can tell me who’s doing the “score” in these videos.
August 2007
http://jumpcut.com/view?id=406EE7144B9A11DCBEF6000423CF037A
July 4, 2008
http://s153.photobucket.com/albums/s239/svveetlou/?action=view¤t=DunkinBrothersVolume2.flv
These are my bro’s kids. The young lady is Maureen EE and named after me and is about your height, MOU. If you can’t tell by the vids, she’s a real soccer jock. She works In NYC and her co-workers suggested that the “E” Family members desperately needed tans. (Too much Irish blood in the mix for that.)
She and her boyfriend both have Bunnies, Holmes! And have gone vegan on me. Yikes!
Leguizamo is a complete hoot… he’s part Puerto Rican and a bunch of other nationalities and doesn’t give a flying sh!t about what he says. He played a transvestite in that (can’t remember the title) “…..Queen of the Desert Movie.” The other two were Patrick Swayze and Wesley Snipes.
On that happy note, I’m off to tap into DC fire hydrants and water some trees that the Saudi Embassy planted between their building and Watergate East. Never a a dull moment.
July 12, 2008 at 11:38 pm
tipping point
JR- do you see what happens when you leave? I have resorted to comparing your virtual ass to Harvey Keitel’s. I hope we’ll still be friends in the morning.
Well I’m finally getting a vacation so I won’t be around. I know, I know, some of you are thinking good riddance. But, for the rest, I’ll think of you often as I down a few by the campfire.
July 12, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Holmes, I presume
Well, JR… you really know how to whip the girlies into a frenzy. Before long, they’ll be creatin’ a virtual wardrobe for you, accessorizing your Harvey Keitel silhouette with an Ozzy lunchbox, Megadeth scooter, etc., etc.
EE, tell the nephews and niece to stay calm and hold their respective poolside positions. I’ll get a C-17 laden with SPF6000 airborne shortly.
Tipping, we love you. Have a great time in the woods. You are the [what bears do in the woods]!
July 13, 2008 at 1:27 am
Saint Bif
Yeah, and this cultural area is pretty good JR. Kinda like a virtual beanbag chair.
And thank you for noticing MOU. Not that there was anything wrong with those junge frau schnitzels in the photo. Mind you. And did you see the size of those steins?
The men of ZQ. I caught that MOU. You women may be the schnitz, but yes, we are the men of ZQ. Look for the pictorial calendar in time for the holidays, and at online stores everywhere.
Anyway, women have become a growing force in the CFN/ZK villages. I think that’s an interesting trend.
I hope XER sticks around, but sounds like he might be in a transient mode. We’ll see. XER likes to talk about Russian novels, which are also some of my favorites.
Tip, you are wonderful. Hope you have a fun vacation. And some beer!
Now to the EE vids.
July 13, 2008 at 2:07 am
Holmes, I presume
JR, I sincerely ask you not to ban me for this. (Bunn Bunn is very pissed right now, and he’s busting up the place.) I have nowhere else to turn but pixilated entertainment. My nerves are completely shot, especially with you disappearing in such a huff. I’m sure you did what you had to do and had your reasons. I’m gonna go watch Alan Shore. Good night.
http://www.stardoll.com/en/dolls/787/Johnny_Knoxville.html
July 14, 2008 at 12:02 am
Holmes, I presume
[Excerpt from the Martin Amis wikipedia entry]
In 2002, Amis published Koba the Dread, a book about the crimes of Stalinism. The book provoked a literary controversy for its approach to the material, and for its attack on his longtime friend Christopher Hitchens, who rebuked his charges in a stinging review in The Atlantic. Asked recently if they were still friends, Amis responded “We never needed to make up. We had an adult exchange of views, mostly in print, and that was that (or, more exactly, that goes on being that). My friendship with the Hitch has always been perfectly cloudless. It is a love whose month is ever May.”
July 17, 2008 at 1:00 am
MOU
Hi,
This is kinda corny. I am trying to find the lyrics to a song or a Youtube of it and I am doing horribly in my search. The only place I ever heard it was in a strip bar. Was 1984. I thought the band was called Taxi (probably a hair band), but I may have gotten that wrong. The chorus goes “I don’t know how to say I’m leaving.” There are some powerful guitar riffs that I loved and just got lost in. Don’t remember the rest of the lyrics too well at all. Something about city streets, ambition, and dreams.
Does anyone remember this song?
It may not be as cool a song as I remember. This has happened to me before. Here is why I loved it:
There was a girl I used to dance with who danced to this song. No one would go near her. On stage she danced without any gusto and she had a vacant stare. Watching her dance to this song made me really sad. She was obviously “leaving” when she was up there. Cute girl, but she didn’t belong. Later, I heard that she had just gotten out of prison. The song became transformed for me, she was leaving prison, perhaps, or was she? Is the mind a prison? Was her existence as a dancer a prison and she was leaving us? Anyway, I just saw this article on pole dancing becoming more common in the economic collapse and thought of her:
Women turn to pole dancing due to rising gas & food prices, other expenses
http://www.wafb.com/global/story.asp?s=8684852
Let me know if this rings a bell. Many of you are in my age range and could know it. I was 19 when the song came out, may be a sucky song.
Wish I had more lyrics, I remember the music really well.
At the end of the song it repeats, “I’m leaving…I’m leaving…”
July 18, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Saint Bif
MOU, I tried but no luck.
July 18, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Saint Bif
Someone may appreciate this. Here’s Lori Carson, formerly of the Golden Palominos.
July 18, 2008 at 8:43 pm
MOU
Saint Bif,
Thanks for trying! I think it is lost forever, though I did something like this elsewhere and was able to track down an old Manhattan Transfer number. Turned out they owned everything they had ever done. Don’t like the band that much, just the song. You never know till you ask.
BTW,
Great bike porn you are posting over at CFN for Nick. I am not biking as much because of this damned journal.
Dave,
You remember that 100 push ups thing you posted? I am into week 4, day 2, level 3 of the program. It is working! I am becoming queen of the pushup! Thanks for the link.
July 20, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Saint Bif
Give it a chance. This tune rocks. New Order. Crystal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxcuCADYLYI&feature=related
Party tonight. Yeah!
July 21, 2008 at 11:16 am
dave
wow, i didn’t know that all this was here until about 2 minutes ago.
i have to read some of this stuff. but i can’t right now.
July 21, 2008 at 8:06 pm
dave
god holmes, don’t know where to start..
you have to remember, when push come to shove, i’m down with phenomenology. so, feeling(a phenom), of a being (an epiphinom) is primary. however, all phenomena are connected. if you pull a blade of grass, the roots are connected to the rest of the universe.
anyhoo, that’s all beside the point.
you’re sounding kind of hegel. thesis, antithesis, resolution, or something like that. in my mind, it’s much more random. there is no resolution, perse, that leads neccisarily to to some higher order, there is only whatever happens next.
for example, the closest thing that i can find within the western cannon to a great man is diogenes. to surpase diogenes in greatness, we must become precolonial tasmanians. we must give up the use of fire.
don’t know if that makes sense to you, makes perfect sense to me. got to go find something to eat.
July 21, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Dr. Doom
dave, tell us more about this diogenes dude. ancient Greek, right? I always thought that the Buddha and Jesus H. Christ were cool dudes, had their shits together. (i’m serious, dave).
July 21, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Holmes, I presume
dave, I’m hearing you on connectedness. I freely admit that I didn’t get very far into “Intro to Metaphysics” before putting it down. That said and probably aside bearing in mind the connectedness of all of course, I merely offer some commentary as to the point N might have been trying to make with his comment about “greatmen”. Whether N’s comment makes any sense to someone who has rigorously studied philosophy, I can’t say at the present. I shall think and reflect further on diogenes and the large diameter concrete pipe.
July 22, 2008 at 9:17 am
dave
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes_of_Sinope
July 22, 2008 at 9:26 am
dave
holmes, my entire life has been an exercise of the ad hoc. don’t think i’ve ever rigorously studied anything. except maybe aikido, i enjoy that.
anyhoo, i think that N’s take on greatness is pretty “standard”(?). individual will and striving and blahblahblah, that kind of thing.
it hink he was right in pointing out the whole master/slave thing; but wrong in assigning value to either(i think i’ve said that). in my mind, they’re just two sides of the same coin. they’re just parts of an emergent social system. there may be some material advantage in being a master, but only within some certain contex, and everything changes. so…
July 22, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Saint Bif
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/pressclips/hunter-dalai399.jpg
July 22, 2008 at 10:34 pm
EEofDC
Bif-
Luv it!!!! My Sri Lankan friends refer to the DL as Buddhism Lite–affectionately, of course.
Dave and Holmes-
There’s a very short chapter in Thom Hartmann’s book, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, on Slavery and Freedom.
Just a few thoughts from Hartmann:
“Slavery is another way of taking the stored sunlight in somebody else’s body and ‘harnessing’ it for the benefit of the exploiter.”
“There are also written records of slaves being central to the cultures of Egypt, Persia, Babylonia, and Assyria, as well as extensive mentions (and approvals) of slavery in the Bible (both Old and New Testament).”
“By attempting to justify slaveholding as tool-keeping, Aristotle missed the essential point of the contribution that slaves made to the Younger Culture civilizations: slaves were not tools, they were power sources, kinetic energy, stored energy, expendable energy.”
“….slaves have done more that what Aristotle called the ‘good life’ for their captors….slaves have been a source of power, as in horsepower or energy.”
“It’s interesting to note that the end of slavery in the United States coincided with the advent of widely-available oil.”
“….the Native Americans of the plains states were pedestrians for 10,000 years, until the introduction of the horse by the Spanish after the failed revolt of Tewa medicine man Pope in 1698.”
“The Native Americans’ ’sacred dog’ (their name for the horse) became the pack animal and transportation system of tribes….. this led to a 100-year-long Golden Age among these tribes…. that came to a terrible and bloody end when Europeans from the east, under Manifest Destiny, decided they wanted the land for themselves.”
“…the introduction of a new power source…. has always dramatically transformed civilizations…. we see that the loss of these power sources is equally transformational. for they led directly to the decline and destruction of every civilization in our known history, right back to Sumeria.”
It was thought-provoking–to me at least–for Hartmann to equate slavery with energy.
July 22, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Holmes, I presume
Shit EE… my twisted mother-in-law just said the other day that slavery “isn’t such a bad deal”. BTW, she’s 100% extrovert — perhaps the only one I’ve ever met. Thank god my wife takes after her father in this regard. And a FAR-inspired PUI double shot “thank you Jebus” for all things fermented!!!
Doom, I’m saving as fast as I can for the ocean-going yacht and sailing lessons or their functional equivalent. Actually, I already know how to sail, or at least I used to, but that’s beside the point.
July 22, 2008 at 11:43 pm
EEofDC
“BTW, she’s 100% extrovert — perhaps the only one I’ve ever met.”
Holmes-
Is that like Myers-Briggs extrovert or like dysfunctional, no-boundaries extrovert?
July 23, 2008 at 12:49 am
Holmes, I presume
EE, the Jung extroverted attitude is what I’m referring to…
http://philosophy.lander.edu/ethics/jung.html
MaryW, you get this week’s nod from JHK via his “mullet” homage. For those of you paying attention, JHK does this every week. It’s a bit like a Where’s Waldo-memory test that I look forward to each week.
July 23, 2008 at 1:21 am
Dr.Doom
Holmes, I’m wondering, per JHK’s recent quote, as amended by St. Bif, “J.P. Sartre’s quaint notion that Hell is other people [at breakfast]”, that your own personal Hell might just be on a yacht with family and the mother-in-law in tow.
I don’t want to give you any homicidal ideas, but “Up jumped the devil” is one of my favorite Night Gallery episodes.
July 23, 2008 at 1:40 am
Holmes, I presume
If I’m ever crucified (which isn’t to suggest that I’m Christ- or even Bif-like), I will suggest to the fine young Romans in attendance — who pulled the unfortunate duty of having to swing a hammer whilst listening to my soliloquized final musings on an otherwise delightful spring day — that they humor me by inscribing INTP on my cross.
July 23, 2008 at 3:01 am
Dr.Doom
INTP (Introversion, iNtuition, Thinking, Perceiving) ????
July 23, 2008 at 10:06 am
dave
mou, as long as you’re not doing girl pushups, you’ll be just fine.
kill all the extroverts. it’s the only way. no fooling.
July 23, 2008 at 10:07 am
dave
don’t try to classify them, just kill them.
July 23, 2008 at 11:07 am
EEofDC
<>
They’d be stupid to crucify you since INTP’s–less than 12% of the population–are the only ones capable of getting the other 88% through this mess!
July 23, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Saint Bif
Hahahahahaha. I took Carlos Sastre to win the TDF with 12:1 odds. Still a few days to go before the run into Paris but it seems in the bag. I’m not usually this lucky. Go Carlos Go! Allez you bastard!
July 23, 2008 at 1:31 pm
EEofDC
St. Bif-
If you haven’t seen “The Triplets of Belleville” yet, you must.
July 23, 2008 at 4:39 pm
FARfetched
EE, I would guess that it would be merely coincidence that slavery ended here after the age of oil. Like our stubborn refusal to adopt the metric system, we were the last Euro-descendent to ditch slavery, and we had to tear the country apart to do it. There was plenty of coal back then, after all.
I seem to remember some historian writing that the (re-)invention of the cotton gin spelled the end to slavery: one person turning the crank on a gin could process more cotton than dozens doing it by hand, so fewer slaves were needed to run a plantation. Again, people act against their self-interest in their refusal to let go of obsolete practices… the slaveholders would have been better off to replace their slaves with machinery, while the Confederate soldiers who fought the Civil War were fighting to preserve a system that kept them impoverished (keeping a slave is cheaper than paying a worker).
Sure, HIP, slavery is a great deal… for the owners. Not so much for the “property.”
July 23, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Holmes, I presume
Well FAR, like you commented over at CFN about 3 hot and a cot, when things get desperate enough, a good number of people are likely to agree to just about any personal servitude to avoid starving. “Sign on line, if you want this piece of bread.” Maybe that’s what dearest mother-in-law had in mind, but I shudder to give her that much credit. I suspect that her comment on slavery was more of an attempt at comedy than anything else. Well, she did also recommend the Rome series on dvd to me, so who knows.
July 23, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Saint Bif
EE, thanks! Too bizarre. That one goes on my list.
July 23, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Dr.Doom
“the slaveholders would have been better off to replace their slaves with machinery”–FAR
How so? Was Eli Witney giving away cotton gins? What about the capital costs of equipment purchase and maintenance/use training of new machinery versus the sunk investment of purchased slaves?
Slaves could be purchased in variable amounts, to fit your plantation budget. Did they have various sized and priced gin models for the budget-minded slave owners? From a purely business perspective, how could you argue against the status quo?
Disclosure: relatives on my father’s side were cotton farmers and slave owners in Louisiana prior to the Civil War. Rumor has it that they were prosperous.
July 24, 2008 at 7:42 pm
tipping point
JR- I don’t know if you have already seen this re Kaboom
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/23/AR2008072303970.html
July 24, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Saint Bif
Hi TP, are you tan and rested?
July 24, 2008 at 8:29 pm
tipping point
Hey Bif! tan, yes, rested, not a chance. Camping is a lot of work, especially with kids. I did manage to drink prodigous amounts of beer, though.
July 25, 2008 at 10:25 am
FARfetched
Sufficient quantities of beer provide a rest substitute, TP.
DD, I think you would have to compare the cost + ongoing maintenance (food, shelter) of a team of slaves to the cost + ongoing maintenance (oil, wrenching) of a cotton gin.
Actually, I’m surprised you missed the wider picture — a slave can also handle plowing, planting, harvesting, and weeding… a cotton gin is pretty single-issue. But the gin was only one part of the even wider picture: machinery was beginning to replace labor. The slave owners could have sold most of their slaves, perhaps, and replace them with machinery… but if they all did it at once, there would have been a “bursting slave bubble” and their investments would have been wiped out. Better to start a war to preserve the status quo, eh?
July 25, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Dr.Doom
FAR, good points. The big one I’m thinking about is that to make this jump (from human slaves to machine use), the paradigm shift, you need a catastrophe. The Civil War would qualify, especially its effects on the Old South. I think that’s what’s in store for us, and I think we many indeed see the reversal from machines back to slaves, err, serfs, same thang.
July 25, 2008 at 11:17 pm
EEofDC
Doom and FAR-
What I was throwing out from Hartmann’s writing was the fact that he was not judging “slavery” but coming up with–for me anyway–a technique for reframing and explaining it outside of a social context and on a pure “energy exchange” basis, something that hadn’t occurred to me. (Probably watched “Roots” too many times.)
In other words, slaves were valuable not because they were fellow living beings but because they were a cheap, exploitable energy source. Just like coal, oil, etc. which powerful humans viewed as the next readily-available and cheap energy sources.
August 16, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Holmes, I presume
Another of my literary commentator heroes is Martin Amis. Here’s a link to a sharply crafted example piece in today’s Wall Street Journal. (No excerpts provided. You’ll have to read it.)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121883817312745575.html
If a single sentence thesis of Amis’ article can exist, it might read: Acts of international terrorism (IT) are a consequence of “mass individual” narcissism being necessarily facilitated by media and technology.
Amis cleverly casts his net wide, but no wider than appropriate. After all, unless a literal victim, how else but through media does one learn of IT events?
Regardless, this article is masterfully constructed and written. I’ll go so far as to say it is an inspired distillation of Amis’ sustained history of attention to terrorism and a mercifully succinct chronology of attempts made since 9/11 to understand and, alas (and with apropos irony in tow), repackage IT for mass consideration.
August 16, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Dr. Doom
Ack, I see Holmes has managed to raise the 9/11 events again. Some old HS pals sent me photos of a new Navy ship the other day, the USS Liberty, made almost entirely of recycled steel from the WTC. I told them it should be tested for thermite residues.
August 16, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Holmes, I presume
One thing that seemed a bit weak about Amis’ article was the way he used that flimsily developed “convergence” crap as his point of departure. But he thought he needed it, I guess. The lengths some people will go to to cobble together unified theories on shit.
No time for the old thermite residue testing, Love. Just came to read the meter!
August 16, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Dr. Doom
I just finished reading that article, Holmes. Whilst I have immense repect and admiration for you (and think you’re cool, too) I wouldn’t want to waste 5 moron minutes of my time attempting to discuss anything of importance with that dweeb Amis. He can’t write too well, either.
August 16, 2008 at 6:38 pm
EEofDC
http://www.jewish-theatre.com/visitor/article_display.aspx?articleID=1667
Holmes is probably too young to remember this, Doom, but there was a lot of terrorism going on in the late ’60s and early ’70s.
The 1972 Olympics in Munich–the one wherein Mark Spitz achieved his seven gold medals (and I watched every one of his races on the tube)–was marred by the horrible kidnappings and killings of the Israeli wrestling team by “Black September.”
Glad to see you guys back at the CA–I was cruising around ZK yesterday and almost posted here. More later.
August 16, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Holmes, I presume
Hi EE, yes, I do remember watching (when I was a kid) Mark Spitz winning those seven gold medals. Amazing what Phelps is doing. Yeah, there’s definitely precedent (even prior to television, which I find difficult to imagine) for terrorists attempting to maximize the amount of terror generated per unit of personal effort.
Doom, you find Amis a bit dry and perhaps unduly obsessed with sentence structure? I can agree with you in that regard. As far as yuks per page go, he ain’t no HST that’s for sure, but I humbly suggest that you try reading “Money” by Martin Amis, if you have a few hours to kill on a flight or something.
August 16, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Saint Bif
Doom, the Navy ship with several tons of WTC metal in its bow is the USS New York, not the Liberty. This new ship is an amphib dock vessel used for deploying marine expeditionary forces. It will be commissioned on Sept 11 of next year.
Now off on a tangent. Interesting you mention Liberty, the last U.S. ship named Liberty was attacked by Israel in the Med in 1967 as it sat in international waters observing coastal fighting between Israel and Egypt. The ships crew said Israeli jets made multiple strafing runs on the Liberty with cannons, and even though it was clearly flying the American flag. Over 200 American casualties including many deaths. The ship was so badly torn up it was subsequently scrapped. I was just reading about the Liberty incident the other day, so your comment caught my eye.
August 16, 2008 at 9:45 pm
EEofDC
Random thoughts:
Well, Amis (who also writes for the New Yorker occasionally as I recall) seems unduly obsessed with flashing superior command of his elitist vocabulary, IMPO (In My Plebian Opinion).
Don’t know if he was intentional with this, but IT also equates to Information Technology…. there is certainly enough technology worship/addiction to go around.
Decades of life experience and observation have convinced me that all things in life are about “power” which is ultimately energy. If you have no power/energy you don’t exist.
There are lots of shiny things in life–religion, money, fame, meglomania, etc.–that hold out the illusion of power and energy but, so far, our bodies all run out of energy in the end and become compost of one sort or another.
But E=MC-squared, so our energy is not lost, just transformed, right?
August 16, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Holmes, I presume
EE, I’m not here to defend Amis as a person, or his politics, but I will always champion virtuosity, at least when purposefully deployed and when it is prima facie obvious that it took real effort for the artist, writer, musician, etc. to bring a literary (or other) work to life.
A flashing command of a big vocabulary may serve to separate a person from a herd of babbling bobbleheads. Is that what he’s doing? If so, it would indeed make him elite in a sense of the word.
An elitist vocabulary? Isn’t that a bit like saying that someone painted a portrait of Obama with a palate of elitist paints? ;-)
August 18, 2008 at 12:20 pm
JR
@Doom -
I was looking through the Martin Amis offerings on Amazon and found one of his books that might be more to your taste:
The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America
August 18, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Dr.Doom
JR, I love that book title! Maybe I was too harsh?
August 18, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Dr.Doom
dave, OK, so Hank or Dave Thoreau was a modern version of Diogenes. Got it.
Two Favorite Diogenes stories/lines:
With a lit lamp in daylight: “I’m looking for an honest man”. (None found).
To Alexander’s kind offer: “You can move out of my sunlight”.
August 18, 2008 at 11:57 pm
JR
@Doom – very nice choice of video and context on CFN.
August 19, 2008 at 12:44 am
Dr. Doom
Thanks. JR, I/we miss you terribly over at CFN. How about reappearing as “Jay Our”? It’ll take months for OEO and JHK to figure it out.
That asshole Dale attacked me today on CFN. What a pencil dick. If I ever meet him “there will be blood”.
September 10, 2008 at 4:17 pm
EEofDC
Hey, JR-
Thought I should post this here…
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2008/09/09/total-clusterfuck-at-boee/#comments
This is my hood–for any of you with any delusions that DC is anything other than a third-world backwater run by a bunch of crooks, I hope this dispels that notion.
Just got word that one resident was able to vote twice–one for a Repub candidate and one for a Democrat candidate–using the touchscreen.
September 10, 2008 at 7:40 pm
JR
Good Stuff ! So are we to assume that the EE in EEofDC is “Elections and Ethics”?
Feel free to post wherever ( I did set this Cultural Area page up for you specifically), but why not just put stuff like this on the Election 2008 thread.
September 10, 2008 at 7:45 pm
JR
How about reappearing as “Jay Our”? It’ll take months for OEO and JHK to figure it out.
I have officially picked out a new name and persona. I have also decided to let nobody know (Not even my closest friends – Dick Cheney being the one exception).
I have not decided when the product launch for the new-and-improved me will take place, but I assure you all that I will let you know at some point after the fact (a few months maybe).
September 10, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Dr.Doom
I call BS, we will know it’s you after your first string of YouTube links gets posted. Jus sayin.
It’s OK, though. CFN needs someone to shake it up. (I’d say moron, but it’ll get offensive.)
September 10, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Dr.Doom
Say Hothgar, are you posting any comments on TOD these days?
September 10, 2008 at 8:55 pm
JR
Highly unlikely. The IPs I’ll be posting from will undoubtedly be work, friend, or family related, so it is unlikely I’ll be smoking crystal meth and/or launching YouTube campaigns.
I’ll be coming fast and low out of the mist in the East with the sun in your eyes. You won’t recognize me.
You’re mixing me up with Hothgar. I believe it was actually “Hrothgar” or some other spelling, it fact I know it was some other spelling, but it’s been so long.
I know him and still have his email. I often consider writing him to see what he’s doing. I’m doing some work at another website where I could actually use his research/work from back in the day. I think I will get in touch.
Buy no, anyway. I’m not him. We have often been confused. We were at the time. He was the second to be banned. I was the first.
Actually, it was a lot easier after me, so there was a purge. He is tied with Freddy Hutter (another guy I should get back in touch with) and Dave Matthews.
September 10, 2008 at 9:03 pm
JR
I haven’t posted on TOD in a few weeks and it is kind of a weird thing, but for the first time in my life, I have no desire to.
Pitt The Elder is posting and I could read him all day. I think he’s the fucking shit. I’ve always wanted to talk to him, but he’s super stealth. I wish I could be that cool.
September 14, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Saint Bif
At present this is my favorite song to play loud.
Pixies – The Happening
September 14, 2008 at 11:23 pm
tipping point
Frank Caliendo does John Madden better than John Madden.
November 14, 2008 at 12:36 pm
MOU
This thread, is dead.
No play for 2 months.
November 14, 2008 at 2:03 pm
tipping point
I thought this was pretty funny. It’s pretty amazing that almost any false rumor or story can be picked up on the internet and become ‘fact’ pretty quickly. Who knows if Palin actually thought Africa was a country or not….
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/arts/television/13hoax.html?em
Jr, can I identify myself as a fellow at the renowned ZK think tank?
November 14, 2008 at 2:05 pm
tipping point
JR- check spam filter please
November 16, 2008 at 8:15 pm
EEofDC
Don’t ever say that EEofDC puts her ZK Comrades anywhere but first in line. Saw this caption last week as I zoomed through the new exhibit at the National Gallery of Art on villa life in Pompeii and Herculaneum, and went over this afternoon to write it down:
Many proprietors of villas owned fishponds that provided a steady supply of oysters and other delicacies.
Private fish ponds were a status symbol that was pursued to absurd lengths. Cicero complained of senators who lavished more attention on their mullets than on affairs of state.
Anecdotes tell of villa owners treating their fish as pets, adorning their favorites with jewels and gold rings, and weeping over their deaths.
November 16, 2008 at 8:58 pm
JR
I’ve always meant to read that biography of Cicero that was published about 8 years ago.
November 16, 2008 at 9:03 pm
Dr.Doom
as long as you don’t mind eating your pets, i think it’s a good idea to have fish ponds and such, maybe a small herd of goats instead of those expensive yard guys with all their noisy equipment.
November 16, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Uncle Yarra
What? Some people keep pets they can’t eat?
Well lick my hairy arse…
(and JR, yes, there is such thing as a goldfish recipe).
November 16, 2008 at 9:26 pm
EEofDC
http://www.mulletsgalore.com/male_sack/history.html
Sheesh…You guys are even more literal than I am! Guess I’ll have to wait for the ladies to see if they thought Cicero’s 2000-year-old complaint was as funny as I did.
November 16, 2008 at 9:37 pm
Angus Young
Just my luck, the first douchebag is wearing an AC-DC T-shirt.
I’ve heard that biograohy of Cicero is decent.
http://www.ratemymullet.com/show.php?id=61
“Beauty is only mullet deep”
November 18, 2008 at 11:59 am
Dr. Doom
Cicero was a talkie kinda guy that got his end by being too nice to a young Augustus, who used him to gain power and then tossed him, like a wet tissue to gain a bit more.
November 22, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Uncle Remus
“The Vatican’s newspaper has finally forgiven John Lennon for declaring that the Beatles were more famous than Jesus Christ, calling the remark a “boast” by a young man grappling with sudden fame.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27857596/
December 9, 2008 at 11:46 pm
tipping point
I posted an article a few days ago and asked what the hell is going on in Greece? It might have been in one of the threads that was already deleted but I took a look at other threads- man, I have been missing a lot! I still don’t know what’s going on in Greece though.
December 10, 2008 at 10:23 pm
Saint Bif
Greece is burning
Everyone I know is missing something
Everyone I know is missing something
Everyone I know is missing something
Everyone I know is missing something
Everyone I know is missing something
Everyone I know is missing something
December 11, 2008 at 12:39 am
JR
Yeah, Tipping, I’ve been following the story and will maybe post something on it if the situation continues. The Greeks are somewhat of a unique country when it comes to all kinds of stuff. I’m not familiar with the particular area of Athens where the initial incident took place, but I’m looking into it.
December 11, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Saint Bif
Oh yeah? Well the Breeders are probably the best. Everything else just fuck off.
December 14, 2008 at 1:09 am
Saint Bif
Cleaning out my stash of Youtube toons. Here’s a shortlist of a few that I consider to be very worthy. Hope I don’t break the spam filter with this one!
The Art of Driving. There’s a lesson in here somewhere. Dave?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNjyDPOL2Ms
Good evening. I hope you enjoy this as much as have I enjoyed posting it for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsQCOPi4t1g
Flat Duo Jets did a little show on my front porch. They sure make a lotta noise for two dudes. Great way to meet the neighbors.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSvyU7flL2E
T-top firebird. You got me goin’. Tipp City. These must be Ohio girls if you know what I mean.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki3JKMF-vko&feature=related
Morcheeba. We’re getting deep without an aqualung. Ouch!! Trip hop.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf1CiLBg4qk&feature=related
My people love to sing, dance and fight. We are made of the soil, rock and wind of the steppes. We are the Cossacks.
December 14, 2008 at 1:11 am
Saint Bif
When it comes to culture, well, I’m assuming anything flies. Spam filter thinks so too.
December 14, 2008 at 9:50 am
dave
December 14, 2008 at 9:57 am
dave
dem oh girls is hot.
December 14, 2008 at 9:58 am
dave
yes cossacks. good old martial culture. high tech toys and naming highways after dead assholes just don’t cut it no more, imho.
December 21, 2008 at 1:56 pm
tipping point
“Pay close attention to Greece; at a time of world-wide economic upheaval, it might eerily presage disturbances elsewhere in 2009″
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200812u/greek-riots
December 27, 2008 at 2:45 pm
EEofDC
Saw “Slumdog Millionaire” on Christmas…. it’s a winner.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/movies/chi-slumdog-review-1112nov12,0,23299.story?obref=outbrain
January 20, 2009 at 11:19 pm
Saint Bif
Dear ZK cultural tab, I am your source for obscure late 80s techno. Context provided on request, and/or anyway.
I skiied pretty much everywhere that was great in North and South America. I never slept on anybody’s couch. I stayed in nice places. Even back then I knew full well I had an obscene carbon footprint. I can’t say I didn’t know. They kicked me out of the Green Party in 1993 for these and other reasons. Ahh, not precisely for those reasons but… but I remember listening to Act on my headphones and getting first tracks in deep powder at Alta. I wouldn’t trade that memory for anything. Bless me father for I have sinned, how was I to know life was so grand.
Act – Absolutely Immune II (Uncle Remus 12-inch vanity warning faceshot version)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1egeIeVpA0
Day by day, the welcome blow
of yesterdays and no tomorrow
from Lucifer to antichrist
the wonders of flame of passion
It’s the flame of life, the flame of life
I’m sick of all these empty words
That run through us in misery
Tomorrow there might not be a single soul left
Words must become flesh
Words must become flesh
Take it or leave it.
Nothing touches me.
Neither earthquakes or explosions, neithier riots, war, or famine
No collisions or rapt illusions
I’m absolutely immune.
Neither earthquakes or explosives, neithier riots, war, or famine
Immune
Absolutely Immune
The world explodes and I’m absolutely immune.
Absolutely
I’m apart from every sorrow,
Calamity, or misery
I’m going to spray your interface, reflexive ecstacy
I’m going to spray your interface, reflexive ecstacy
Immune
Absolutely Immune
The world explodes and I’m absolutely immune.
Absolutely
January 21, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Saint Bif
Act – Snobbery and Decay
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vckXT32ABJM
You have to remember this was the tail end of the Reagan years. You know how that worked out.
Don’t mind me.
January 31, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Saint Bif
January 31, 2009 at 10:26 pm
Saint Bif
Brainbox
February 1, 2009 at 1:14 am
Saint Bif
Lennon, Richards, Clapton, Mitchell – Yer Blues
February 7, 2009 at 10:54 pm
EEofDC
“”Ice fishing is a culture here on the Great Lakes.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090207/ap_on_re_us/ice_floe_fishermen;_ylt=Am.9y1CDPrSqX0UVmQkePQd34T0D
That’s what we all need to cheer up our day–a little gratuitous stupidity.
February 22, 2009 at 7:09 pm
tipping point
Doom,
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/29301750/?GT1=43001
Wazzup wid dat? I’ve never had spam in my life, I can only hope that is one aspect of my life that never changes.
February 22, 2009 at 7:30 pm
tipping point
JR- We need to breathe some life into this blog. I was thinking one of those live-blogs things would be cool.. I missed an opportunity in the Oscars. It’s not something I normally watch but it would do well in a live commentary type situation. BTW, F1 will not qualify, unless you only want yourself and Bif there. So pick a venue, I’ll try to make it, as long as I can get the in-laws to watch the girlies while I recuperate from my hangover…(Except I forgot, my love will be home soon- maybe I don’t need the in(out)laws after all!)
February 22, 2009 at 8:34 pm
MOU
And if your love is there, you are less likely to party with us!
February 22, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Dr. Doom
“Wazzup wid dat? I’ve never had spam in my life, I can only hope that is one aspect of my life that never changes.”
Hey, don’t knock too hard on tasty SPAM, tipper. My parents avoided it because they used to ration meat in WWII, so SPAM was a substitute and not well received. It got hot in Hawaii during the same period, as a GI ration, Hawaii (mainly Oahu) being a big base for the Pacific war. It’s also a polynesian thing, along with corned beef. Lack of refrigeration in the tropics will push any kind of canned or salted meat product. Therefore, with SPAM, you have this history that is ingrained from childhood, since grannies and aunties love to serve it. It’s also cheap here, as low as $1.49 per can on sale.
You now have such varieties, too, like hickory smoked spam, garlic spam, spam & cheese, spicy tobasco spam, spam light (25% less salt, 25% less fat), oven roasted turkey spam, regular spam, bacon spam (with real Hormel bacon), etc. Then there are the impostors, like Armour Treat, and a danish variety called Tulip–not nearly as popular.
As a kama’aina, I am a SPAM expert. Try fried SPAM and eggs for breakfast. You can get 10-12 slices per can. I bet you’ll have to pay at least $2.49 per can outside Hawaii.
February 22, 2009 at 9:00 pm
tipping point
MOU- no worries, chicky, I’ve got a lotta ME time comin’!
Doom- Hawaii kinda sounded like paradise until, “like hickory smoked spam, garlic spam, spam & cheese, spicy tobasco spam, spam light (25% less salt, 25% less fat), oven roasted turkey spam, regular spam, bacon spam”
That’s disgusting dude! OK, I guess if you want to put me and my family up, we’ll come visit, but please, please, keep the SPAM far away.
February 22, 2009 at 9:22 pm
tipping point
MOU, I should clarify; Plenty of time will be given over to the somewhat base instincts of a husband and wife, as well the more emotional components of reconnecting. However, I’ve spent the last six months caring for two very willful, independent, and savvy toddler/preschool age children. I have a pass for pretty much anything I want to do. So, hey, bring it on!
February 22, 2009 at 9:45 pm
tipping point
MOU- If it’s a terrible faux pas, forgive me. Can I get your email address for future reference? Or, JR can give you mine, I suppose, if you’re comfortable with that.
February 22, 2009 at 10:31 pm
Dr. Doom
tipper, all i can say is, you haven’t yet lived until you’ve tried tasty garlic Spam.
February 22, 2009 at 10:44 pm
tipping point
Blech! Doom, you can’t be serious! My island may not have palm trees and all that but we have really good pizza and bagels. I’ll take that over spam anyday!
February 22, 2009 at 10:51 pm
MOU
In honor of Citi imploding. Stolen from a different blog…
It’s time to “Let The Bodies (C & BAC) Hit The Floor”
February 22, 2009 at 11:29 pm
Dr. Doom
Fried Spam, cream cheese on bagels, Spam pizza with pineapple chunks, of course. Yummmm…
tipper, I’ll take photos and send them to you!
February 22, 2009 at 11:50 pm
tipping point
I counter your “Let the bodies hit the floor” with “Straight out of line”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_sxUDw4Yds
I like both of them, lots.
February 23, 2009 at 12:03 am
EEofDC
“Today, Hawaiians eat more than 6 million cans of Spam a year, the nation’s highest per capita consumption of the processed meat, which is cobbled together from a mixture of pork shoulder, ham, sugar and salt.”
Doom-
I luv-v-v it! If it were made from pork butt instead of shoulder, Dave would run your Presidential campaign. Speaking of which:
“And recently, it got a nod from the eater-in-chief. While vacationing in Hawaii in December, President Barack Obama was seen snacking on a Spam-filled sushi-like concoction while playing golf.”
Hahahah… this country has finally gotten what it needs most–a laid-back spam connoisseur.
February 23, 2009 at 12:21 am
tipping point
EE- I hope “I l-u-u-u-v it” was hyperbole. If it wasn’t, please contact anyone else on this board for real food; it’s important you not go through life thinking spam is actually food.
Doom, I can’t even stand the pictures of food at my local Chinese takeout, so please, keep your pictures of spam to yourself. Since I’ve already seen a picture of you, have you got anything in the category of Oryclolagus cuniculus? Live, that is… not as food.
February 23, 2009 at 1:39 am
EEofDC
Tip-
I was neing neither hyperbolic nor sarcastic. When you get to be Doom’s and my age (forgive me if I’m speaking out of school here, Doom), it’s the simple, familiar things that are comforting.
Also, I’m starting to worry about you. What in God’s name would you want with a bunch of “Old European Hare” pix?
Subspecies Oryctolagus cuniculus algirus (Loche, 1858)
Subspecies Oryctolagus cuniculus brachyotus Trouessart, 1917
Subspecies Oryctolagus cuniculus cnossius Bate, 1906
Subspecies Oryctolagus cuniculus cuniculus (Linnaeus, 1758)
Subspecies Oryctolagus cuniculus habetensis Cabrera, 1923
Subspecies Oryctolagus cuniculus huxleyi Haeckel, 1874
So when is hubby due back? Or should I just wait for the mushroom cloud to appear on the horizon?
February 23, 2009 at 1:56 am
Dr. Doom
EE, six million aluminum spam cans a year. assuming 5 cents per can, that’s $300,000 per year just in the recycled aluminum.
there was this trash can guy, ahead of his time, that was making about $60,000 per year picking cans and bottles out of the trash. at the time, that was about an assistant professor’s salary at UH.
i think all the recycling efforts have put him out of business. he’s probably stuck in Fiji or Tahiti now, poor slob.
February 23, 2009 at 11:20 pm
thal
i see a lotta aluminum cans go by. i’d like a handcranked machine to separate the sides from the tops and bottoms. could be useful. for boats and siding and roofing and shit. holmes, any patents for such…you know “deconstruct an aluminum can” ???
February 23, 2009 at 11:42 pm
JR
I don’t know what this thing is made of, but this guy claims it has magic spells from thousands of years ago and gets rid of leprechauns or something. I think it’s aluminum cans. I can’t imagine what else he has access to.
February 24, 2009 at 12:58 am
Dr.Doom
We’re having fried sliced garlic Spam and eggs, over easy, toasted bagels, with milk or pure Kona coffee, fresh squeezed orange juice, local papayas for breakfast tomorrow. Get out here by 6:30 AM HST and I’ll make some for you, too.
February 24, 2009 at 1:09 am
JR
HST means Hunter S. Thompson to me. It’s Okay, I’m trying to develop a code so I can show where my Jack Bauer:24 edits can be available. Fox is a wicked muddapucka. Don’t worry. I shall prevail. I’m pretty sure I can do the best scenes of the season in 24 minutes. I can see why they would be pissed about that. If I can’t everybody online, it’ll be available for those vetted on CD. (Don’t worry, Doom, you’re already on the list).
The Kona Coffee sounds great. Fresh Squeezed orange juice sounds nasty. You mix that shit with vodka. It doesn’t come from a cow. Somehow this sounds like some kind of Hawaiian sexual fantasy… Squeeze my coconuts. Hahahhaaahaha! Dumb islander. Old New England joke.
February 24, 2009 at 4:57 pm
tipping point
EE- Oryctolagus cuniculus is the scientific name for Bunnbunn. MOU had asked for pics, I just thought I would add to the chorus. “Vulgar Display of Bunn” was over three mos ago and he is just too cute, um, I mean, spectacular, of a creature to continue depriving us of his physical magnificence.
In other news, the hubby was actually due back last weekend but now we are aiming for Sunday, at the latest. No mushroom clouds, but fireworks aplenty are forecasted ; )
February 24, 2009 at 5:13 pm
tipping point
For JR and Bif- You probably read this already or, perhaps it’s nonsense but I thought of you guys…
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j49YU5Kw5WWZUOfpzIgV1lPTCNNAD96I621G0
March 16, 2009 at 8:13 pm
tipping point
I don’t want any recommendations that are actually cultural in nature. I’m just looking for a good book (read entertaining) for vacation. No ‘Black Swans” or anything else too heavy. Please weigh in! I’m waiting on a friend’s zombie book titles; I’m not interested in romance but anything else (preferably fiction) will be considered. Thanks for your input and please, come again!
March 16, 2009 at 8:45 pm
MOU
Hi Tipper!
I thought of “The Thorn Birds,” for some reason. Read it as a girl. Don’t look at the Wiki entry, it gives too much of the plot away. Seems it is a movie too.
I’ll need to check back and see what others say.
March 16, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Ernest Hemingway
can you at least give us a hint?
March 16, 2009 at 9:49 pm
William Faulkner
If I had ever clung (out of lingering affection for “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”) to doubts about Sean Penn being an idiot, reading this has tidily dispelled them.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081215/penn/single
I know that this is old news, but some fairly well-informed people that I know somehow missed it right up until today.
March 16, 2009 at 10:14 pm
tipping point
yeah, I tried to read that Bill, no go. I can’t say I was a fan of Penn before, I definitely won’t be now. He’s a freakin’ idiot.
March 16, 2009 at 11:06 pm
F. Scott Fitzgerald
How bout I give you a new spy novel that I haven’t read but want to, but I can’t since I’ve sworn off frivolous pursuits?
Saw this yesterday in the New York Times -
The Tourist
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/books/review/Stasio-t.html?_r=1&ref=books
“So Variety says George Clooney’s production company has acquired the film rights to “The Tourist,” an espionage thriller by Olen Steinhauer. Clooney himself is reported to be keen on playing the lead role of Milo Weaver, a black-ops agent with a clandestine branch of the C.I.A. that refers to its agents as Tourists and specializes in acts of extreme Tourism. Well, who wouldn’t want to play Milo?”
March 16, 2009 at 11:58 pm
MOU
Wow. I didn’t know Sean Penn was that stupid. Wow. How does he act being that stupid?
March 17, 2009 at 12:19 am
JR
Please. You’d bang him if he promised not to talk like Spicoli. He’s an award winning actor. I’d bang that chick that was in the Titanic, the Reader, and Revolutionary Road.
C’mon, c’mon, remind me. I fell asleep twice during Titanic, nobody has seen the Reader, and Revolutionary Road is a decent flick, my Mom liked it.
I saw it, not with my Mom, but I saw it and I liked it. It’s a rip-off of “Mad Men.” That’s what I told my Mom when I realized she had seen it and couldn’t figure out why. She couldn’t figure me out. It’s true, though. It’s a rip off of Mad Men. My Mom says the novel was better. whatever. It’s a decent flick.
What’s here name again? I wanna say Keira Knightly, but her photo in Vanity Fair causes me to masturbate on occasion. Otherwise, I find her uninteresting.
March 17, 2009 at 12:30 am
Saint Bif
Dear God! Sean Penn is an ass! I’m not a big Hitchens fan either but I’d like to hear his down and dirty version of this boondoggle.
Tip, develop your eccentric side, go with classic Southern Gothic novels.
March 17, 2009 at 12:51 am
The Hitch
I’ll defer to this douche who calls himself JR, but Saint Bif, you should really offer Tipping an alternative. I’d love a classic Southern Gothic novel meself, but I’ll take Tipping anytime… I’ll take her underage daughters to see Twilight, as well. But that ain’t gonna happen. They have a Dad overseas. And I’m not a douche like that..
JR is a douche. But the Hitch is not.
I’d say offer Twilight. I’ve got another. I think it was Eileen on exiled.com. That one about the good one. that was weird. but I don’t know you horror people yet. just let me catch up.
March 17, 2009 at 2:30 am
JR
tipping point set me up. We all know that. I ‘ll pay for MOU’s breakfasts for the next century. Or as long as I’m alive. Tipping set me up. You can never kill me tipping. I know my defilade. You can never fuck with me. Bif and Holmes can go play with you. I’m a spy. You are trying to kill me. You have been forever.
March 17, 2009 at 2:32 am
JR
QUANTUM OF SOLACE
March 17, 2009 at 2:43 am
Holmes
Bif, I was thinking exactly the same thing, namely, why didn’t Hitchens write about getting aced out the “promised” interview? (Unless he has, but I missed it. Although I seriously doubt that I would have missed anything significant that he might have written about it during the last three months.)
Hitch knew all along that getting a pull-string commie like Raul to subject himself to several hours of hard questions was about as likely to happen as Matt Savinar reading a book before he reviews it. (Then again, I’ve reviewed plenty of movies without seeing them, so who am I to talk?)
March 17, 2009 at 2:49 am
bunnbunn
Don’t worry. In your case, you’re on the right track. Only fairies feel the need to watch the entirety of a movie before reviewing it.
March 17, 2009 at 3:05 am
JR
Nice of you to show up. I’ve been trying to figure how I would cover all night long. Get the fuck out of here. You and Bif. I don’t need any help. . (yes I do). I need you alive later. Now get the fuck out. Take Bif and Run. I sear to God, Bunn, if I am alive when I recount this to you, I will only keep you alive if I want the good parts. woot! woot.! Niggah!
March 17, 2009 at 3:11 am
JR
Bunn, I was like a bother to you, I’m gonna fucking kill you. Causa Holmes? Dude Holmes was possibly the best thing ever happened to us. Holmes adn me and you. we coulda been Triumvirate Gods. Dude we coulda been so close. you’re tellin me it was Holmes. I don’t think so. I wanna see Bunn take the left hand flank.
March 17, 2009 at 3:26 am
Phelps Phan
Dude!!!! Easy on the crystal meth, it’s making you overly aggressive. (You’ll thank me in the morning.)
NEWS FLASH: OEO banned from CFN. Ironically, for posting a long list of Ph.D.s that don’t support global warming.
N=2. (Unless you count JJ, Wombatmissile, etc.)
March 17, 2009 at 10:25 am
Johnny Rico
I wanna respond to Holmes. But, it’s like what the point? he’s me. Holmes is me. he is so in my head.
On OEO. I want to respond, but my IP is banned from CFN, I need to get to another IP. I totally understand that shit. It is rough. My heart goes out to him. There is nothing like the feeling of getting banned. It just sucks.
OEO is totally welcome here.
I hope Yarra and Roachman and the rest of you will tell him that. ZK is a free speech zone.
I’ve always fantasized about OEO and dave having a real conversation.
Fully moderated (or unmoderated)
March 17, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Autonomous Unit
Write it here, I’ll post it there.
I’ve always fantasized about Brother Theodore and Pee Wee Herman having a real conversation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KynnZ7kddR8
March 17, 2009 at 11:57 pm
JR
“Write it here, I’ll post it there.”
You called my bluff. Maybe tomorrow. I lost my nerve. I’m such a pansy. Seemed like a good idea at the time.
I’ll be calling on you soon. Thanks, AU.
March 18, 2009 at 7:57 am
tipping point
Bif- illuminate me. I have no idea what would be considered southern Goth.
Steinhauer is not at my library yet, though it’s on request. JR, didn’t you mention some other spy novels, maybe by Le Carre or something? I’m picking up Plague of the Dead at the library later today. So please, any other suggestions would be welcome.
March 18, 2009 at 7:58 am
tipping point
btw, how did you get a picture of my legs JR? Are you stalking me?
March 18, 2009 at 9:02 am
Saint Bif
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_gothic
March 18, 2009 at 10:41 am
theroachman
I have not posted on CFN in weeks. Schooling the kids takes too much of my time and to much effort think beyond 1+1=2 or George Washington was actually the 6th President of the USA. A long thought out post can take hours to recover from. Bong hits help with the headaches.
March 18, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Dr. Doom
On OEO’s banning from CFN, he richly deserved it. On a Monday, when Jim knows most people comment on his post, OEO posts a very long comment on Global Warming (off topic) with nothing but a long, partial list of doctors (Ph.D.s) who had signed some petition. He then goes on his usual baiting and name calling troll run. Sometimes there are inane posters there that richly deserve OEO’s wrath, but not on this day or that off-topic. As GB pointed out, he just changed is moniker and IP and came right back, like kudoso, hard to kill.
March 18, 2009 at 12:42 pm
tipping point
geez bif, I feel like a dope. I’m familiar with those authors and the genre, I just didn’t realize it was called southern gothic. Not my cup of tea for a vacation though. I’ll keep looking….
March 18, 2009 at 2:38 pm
EEofDC
Tipping-
Tom Wolfe: The Right Stuff and/or Bonfire of the Vanities
Patricia Highsmith: A little darker–The Talented Mr. Ripley and/or Ripley Under Water
Tom Clancy: The Hunt for Red October
March 18, 2009 at 5:11 pm
tipping point
Thanks EE! I read Hunt for Red Oct years ago so I skipped that. I picked up both Ripley books (always wanted to see the movie but I never got around to it) and a zombie book (Plague of the Dead -ZA Recht). Now I have to decide which to read first. I get excited over the most mundane things….
March 18, 2009 at 5:31 pm
tipping point
holmes, if you’re still around, I have something funny to post for you but it will take me a little while to type it up.
March 18, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Autonomous Unit
Anne Rice’s vampire series books are great vacation reading.
I read “the thorn birds” on a bus trip from california to masachusetts, but that buying decision was based on gross weight/page number more than anything else.
March 18, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Autonomous Unit
For deep heavy reading, i suggest “the Denial of Death” by Ernest Becker . It won a Pulitzer Prize; and Alvy Singer bought the book for Annie Hall.
Psychology and philosophy, but readable.
March 18, 2009 at 6:47 pm
tipping point
AU I ‘devoured’ all of Anne Rice’s books (including the ones with the demon Lasher, I think) back when I was a pre-teen (I was naughty even then lol). I do like those suggestions though. ‘Deep, heavy reading’ is not in my immediate future. I hope ‘deep heavy breathing’ is, but, with kids that usually means I’m running after them or if I’m just a little lucky, I get to work out at the gym.
March 18, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Saint Bif
‘The Subterraneans’, by Jack Kerouac.
‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’.
For purely excellent writing but requires concentration, ‘Possession: A Love Story’ by A.S. Byatt (a personal favorite, top ten)
‘My Secret Life’, by Anonymous. If you need some Victorian deep heavy breathing.
‘The Fermata’ is absolutely the naughtiest book I ever read. By Nicholson Baker. You’ve been warned.
March 18, 2009 at 10:41 pm
tipping point
Has anybody read, “The Time Traveler’s Wife?” I Loved that book. I haven’t seen “the Curious Case of Benjamin Button” but I think it’s the same premise. Anyway, if you (or your wife, as the case may be) wants a good book, there it is. Audrey Niffennegger is the author.
March 18, 2009 at 10:57 pm
tipping point
Bif, you know I love you, and I love to read but, alas, we are not destined to meet on the literary path to happiness. It would be easy to end this by saying you’re too smart for me, but we both know that would be a lie.
Our paths have diverged and so I must seek my fortune amongst those less inclined to (smarty pantishness?) literary references past the high school level. You will remain forever in my heart, dear Bif.
March 18, 2009 at 11:07 pm
Saint Bif
Fair enough.
“It would be easy to end this by saying you’re too smart for me, but we both know that would be a lie.”
Hahahaha. It sure would be. You are so sharp I bet you have a pointy head!
Well tip, whatever you end up reading, after all this, you owe us a book report.
March 18, 2009 at 11:27 pm
EEofDC
Tipping-
On the Ripley books, read TTMR first. Ripley Under Water will make more sense–sort of–after that. You should definitely see the movie. There are distinct differences in both the book and its translation to film but they are both fascinating to me. Anthony Minghella (he made “The English Patient” so that he could fund Ripley) had an unbelieveable cast: Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Cate Blanchett, Philip Seymour Hoffman. It bombed at the box office but is an incredible feat of acting and craftsmanship.
If you like fantasy/sci fi, I just remembered Frank Herbert’s intergalactic romp series, Dune…. and Philip Jose Farmer’s “Riverworld” series. There’s a “titanthrope” with a prehensile nose who is very gentle, has a lisp and is very protective of Samuel Clemens, whom he calls “Tham”, and who is one of the main characters in the series along with Alice Liddell (model for Alice in Wonderland), British adventurer Sir Richard Burton, and various other characters–everyone who ever lived on earth until mankind produced a nuclear holocast.
Did you see “Interview with a Vampire” starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt? It got panned at the box office but I loved it… have seen it multiple times.
March 20, 2009 at 10:52 am
tipping point
I actually read the Riverworld series years ago (can’t remember much of it now). I don’t know why I never got into Dune, it’s one of those series I should have read, but just never got into. I’ve read all of Robert Jordan’s series also. George RR Martin is excellent but his last book was due out 3-4 years ago and he still hasn’t completed it. I did see Interview with a vampire but I thought the books were much better. I used to pretend I was sick when I was a kid so I could stay home from school and finish reading whatever book I was into at the time. It only takes me a day or so to read about 300 pages- that’s why I get books from the library, I can’t afford to buy a book everyday.
March 20, 2009 at 11:38 am
tipping point
oh, and I read the Zombie book yesterday- it’s was just ok. World War Z was much better.
March 20, 2009 at 7:29 pm
tipping point
Blazing Saddles is on AMC if anyone’s interested.
March 20, 2009 at 7:30 pm
tipping point
“Whad he say?”
“I think he said, the sherriff is near!
April 6, 2009 at 11:16 pm
EEofDC
“I had no idea EE. Which exit, do you know?” –St. Bif
Bif-
I’ve decided to move the Phallus-talk over to the Cultural Area.
Don’t know about the PA-NJ discoveries but it is doubtful that they are available for public viewing. The DC artifacts were discovered in a locale about 10 minutes from me on the banks of the Potomac River and Rock Creek right across from Watergate. The Feds have them locked up somewhere and are hiding behind the fact that they are burial remains to avoid public display.
Click on ROCK CREEK PARK Prehistoric Landscapes of the Nation’s Capital:
http://www.nps.gov/rocr/historyculture/index.htm
The picture on the upper right was taken from the roof of the Watergate Office Building. The phallus effigy was found in the Ramp 3 dig.
A crazy acquaintance of mine is who connected me up with the artifacts from the 1996-97 digs that were part of a federal environmental assessment. Things have gone downhill since then. The poor guy is freaking out over how bad it’s gotten and the fact that no one seems to care. This was a slice of his testimony before our hack Office of Planning back in February (the Peace Institute is also down the street from me and is under construction):
“At the construction site of the U.S. Institute of Peace in Foggy Bottom, no cultural resource investigation was conducted. According to Jan Herman, who is the naval historian at the adjacent Naval Bureau of Medicine And Surgery, Dr. Trocolli told him that the site “was one of the most archeologically significant locations in the District”. Research of the site suggests a “ non-denominational place of burial on Govt. Land used since the time of the French & Indian War.” This information conforms to Jan Herman’s discussion with a US Institute of Peace official who said that during excavation “bones had fallen out of a box”. Mr. Herman also witnessed a vintage medical bottle collection that had been displayed by a Clark Construction foreman in one of the company’s construction trailers.
His website is very interesting: http://pmop.org/
I’m bound and determined to get our phallus-stone back into the neighborhood. Time to get our rightful power back!!
April 11, 2009 at 11:00 pm
EEofDC
Back to the cultural…. this year’s Peeps Salon winner!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2009/04/10/GA2009041001969.html
April 12, 2009 at 12:29 am
bunnbunn
Bravissimo! Bravissimo! This is more exciting than a reality tv show with nothing but full-body shaved tri-athletes living together in a tree house on a sinking island in the Maldives, with LYCRA® coveting Somali pirates circling in solar-powered frigates demanding contestants surrender the comfortable crescent-shaped seats from their bicycles or turn over whoever among them is still bent out of shape over youtube removing the audio component of their favorite 80’s videos, which isn’t to say that Black Flag should ever have agreed to make that stupid “Slip It In” video, as they did… so… in conclusion, I recommend that you go back and simply listen without watching the Twisted Sister homage crap.
EE, if only L.A. Times could kick ass like the Washington Post. Thank you for that. Have a wonderful Easter.
April 16, 2009 at 4:51 pm
MOU
I come bearing a gift.
Skip James – Hard time killing floor blues (1931)
April 18, 2009 at 9:46 pm
tipping point
I may have to volunteer to have the first Zulu BBQ. Bring your family, we’ll grill, swim, drink whiskey and beer, watch F1, have beer muscle competitions and reminisce about the ol’ days on CFN- who’s in?
April 19, 2009 at 9:39 pm
tipping point
I guess I’ll be barbecuing by myself then. Ah well, your loss (everyone). Nudge is dying to know who JR is, but I have wider interests. It would be interesting to meet JR but I’d love to get to know Bif and his family, Holmes and his family, MOU and her family, as well as the assorted bachelors on this site. Doom I would have included you but I can’t see you coming out to the east coast for a barbecue.
April 19, 2009 at 11:08 pm
Saint Bif
Tip. Au contraire, I bet Doom would come if you were barbecuing a black swan. As fun as a gathering of the Zulu tribes sounds, it seems logistically improbable, given that we’re not exactly neighbors.
April 20, 2009 at 12:02 am
Dr. Doom
Thanks for the thought. I sometimes indeed make it to Washington DC for grant-related business. For some reason, they also like to send me to Florida for panels and workshops. Then there’s an occasional east coast stop on the way to Europe. We’ll see.
April 20, 2009 at 12:04 am
Dr. Doom
MOU, where are our manners? Thank you for the nice gift!
April 20, 2009 at 12:22 am
KEN DEFFEYES
Holmes, that Cochella shit looks like a cross between an artsy rock concert and the circus. Did you go and take the family? Let’s see: 4 x $260/per = too much and no two-drink minimum? Assuming you take the in-laws…get mom to pay!
I’b be moron apt to hit the Date Festival in fabulous Indio. Date Shakes, yummmm.
April 20, 2009 at 12:24 am
JR
Bif, Holmes, and myself all work for a super-secret government agency even more secret than the old NSA. We have no families. They were all killed in Afghanistan. It is part of the vetting process.
If you want to meet us you have to go through a unique lie-detector/waterboarding process that sometimes takes weeks. Trust me, it’s not worth it.
April 20, 2009 at 12:31 am
Donovan
Uh-oh. Nudge, watch out!
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/boston-college-prompt-commands-are-suspicious
[cue up Buffalo Springfield]
April 20, 2009 at 1:07 am
JR
This is fucking scary and is something I have been thinking about for a few days but haven’t been able to move past the vague state into the articulate state.
Logically, this should mean that the entire intelligence organization in this country should be placed under arrest immediately.
I’ve been reading this book “The Gamble,” by Tom Ricks about the surge in Iraq the last 2-3 years.
One thing he glances over as a reason for the “success” is a small army- intel sigint unit run by a woman (I’ll look it up, and the fact that it is run by a woman means nothing, I only mentioned that for identification purposes).
I keep thinking – if this thing is so fucking great, why can’t the CIA find Bin Laden? There’s a reason why she won’t be interviewed.
It has nothing to do with “classified” information. It is because the system sucks and has an extremely high failure rate. Hence the high civilian casualty rate from Predator/Reaper-Hellfire strikes.
Ricks, who has his own blog and is pretty much set for life with the books he writes can’t seem to see this. He simply writes what the crowd wants to hear and what the obvious trend makes obvious.
Keep in mind, Petreaus and Odierno were interviewed extensively for this book.
What pisses me off is that the only person people can bring themselves to compare Ricks to is Bob Woodward. Well, of course.
If it weren’t for the historical record (New York Times articles over the last 6 years) condensed into 300 pages, and the fact that I paid 27 bucks for it, this shit would go in the trash. Plus I can burn it later and use the heat when there is no oil.
And I’m gonna go on his blog right now and tell him… just as soon as I get over what an ass I must have made of myself the last time I did that.
April 20, 2009 at 1:39 am
KEN DEFFEYES
They haven’t found bin Laden for the same reasons they let him escape from Tora Bora, they don’t want to find him.
April 20, 2009 at 1:52 am
KEN the Predictor
JR, aren’t you resting up for a marathon or something tomorrow? Thanks for stopping by.
April 20, 2009 at 3:24 am
JR
“aren’t you resting up for a marathon or something tomorrow?”
You mean today. But, yeah, I’m tan, rested, and ready as HST para-quoting Nixon would say.
Or as my favorite President, GWB, would say,”Bring it on!”
April 20, 2009 at 9:21 am
Holmes
Sure tip, we can also have a most embarrassing in-laws competition! No, but seriously… the odds of me/us being in that part of the world, absent an unforeseen ambassadorial appointment, are at least as good as OBL turning himself in at the American Embassy in Kabul. He he… I thought I wasn’t allowed to travel to your country because I’m not Cuban? If I pose as a professor that would virtually assure my incarceration, particularly with my California accent. Oh, never mind. It’s a great idea. Especially the whisky and water wings group photo ops. Those foreign devils should rightly fear us or at least our way of life. As future underlings, we can sabotage anything as fast as the best that the newly industrialized world has to offer.
April 20, 2009 at 9:59 am
JR
OMFG, you kill me dude.
April 20, 2009 at 1:15 pm
EEofDC
“They haven’t found bin Laden for the same reasons they let him escape from Tora Bora, they don’t want to find him.” KEN D.
Yeah…. and how are they going to ratchet up another profitable war over an 8-year-old corpse?
June 25, 2009 at 12:26 am
Aron
empty directory in unix
perfect cherry blossom patch
big german natural breasts
cygnet channel real estate
publius cornelius scipio africanus major
janis joplin take another little piece of my heart lyrics
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bosch 12v drill battery
bofill break it to
www womansown bingo co uk
September 15, 2009 at 8:54 pm
Autonomous Unit
JR, whudda you mean movies suck these days?
September 16, 2009 at 9:24 pm
tipping point
Has anyone seen Metallica in concert recently? Was it awesome or meh? I already have a ticket for Nov. but I don’t know if I’m into it. I haven’t heard anything about or from them in ages. My date bailed so I don’t know if I should sell the ticket or just suck it up and find someone else to go with.
September 16, 2009 at 9:44 pm
Dr. Doom
bunn bunn is into Metallica I believe, so maybe Holmes could FedEx him over to your place for the evening date?
September 16, 2009 at 10:04 pm
bunnbunn
Nahhh, I don’t have any particular interest in Metallica. Although I do like tipping and would suffer the confines of a Large FedEx Box any day to get to gaze into her baby blues. (I’m more of a Megadeth type… aka Droogies too, per Dave Mustaine, coincidentally.)
September 16, 2009 at 10:56 pm
tipping point
wow bunn- I’m kinda flattered that you remembered I have blue eyes… I think you’re pretty cute, too.
September 17, 2009 at 5:03 pm
JR
@AU -
They’ve been talking about this movie for months. I personally heard about it about six months ago. Everybody says it sucks.
I would probably love it. I’m waiting for the DVD. No chance of Nudge taking me to the premiere.
September 17, 2009 at 5:05 pm
JR
“I’m kinda flattered that you remembered I have blue eyes”
Bunn’s kindof a fag. He would probably remember the tint of the last carrot he stuck in his mouth.
September 17, 2009 at 6:26 pm
tipping point
Oh, JR, jealousy is sooo unbecoming.
September 17, 2009 at 9:45 pm
bunnbunn
Wanna borrow my carrot, JR? (the orange one) If it helps, you can pretend it’s Robert Plant.
September 17, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Saint Bif
You peeps are funny. Hey Tip check this out, I don’t know much about Metallica but I found this vid of a live performance from just one week ago in CA.
September 18, 2009 at 10:45 am
tipping point
Well Bif, that convinced me. I’m going. Thanks!
September 18, 2009 at 11:56 am
Dr. Doom
If it helps, you can pretend it’s Robert Plant.
The low rumble you hear in the west is a large groan emanating from Hawaii!
September 18, 2009 at 8:36 pm
JR
Metallica is probably over the hill. I liked their last couple albums, but I’m alone in that regard.
I last saw them in probably 1995 at the Garden… uhh, maybe it was the new Fleet Center.
I’m pretty sure (everybody I was with told me to relax, that it was part of the show) I saw one tech burned very badly by faulty pyro and another drop 30 feet onto his back when scrambling out of ceiling lighting during the emergency. I did work like this at the time, so I was pretty sure it wasn’t a malfunction. They fire-extinguished the tech on stage. I’ve asked many people about this incident for years. But let’s not talk about it. did it happen for real, or was it part of the act?
One is the song.
September 19, 2009 at 1:56 pm
EEofDC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzlG28B-R8Y
“You peeps are funny.” –St. Bif
Hey Bif-
At the exact moment you were posting this comment, I was checking out a link I had posted upstream on this thread for Holmes six months ago on the Annual Washington Post “Peeps Diorama” contest…
(http://zulukilo.wordpress.com/cultural-area/#comment-12187)
The Singularity is near!!!
September 19, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Saint Bif
Singularity is near? Hell, its here now. My home-made three-axis fluxgate magnetometer has been off the charts since last Tuesday. Yes I’ve rebooted. No it didn’t make difference. Infinite density and zero volume are now inevitable. I’d say we’ve got maybe a week, tops. Hold onto your britches, this could hurt. See you on the other side.
September 19, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Nudge
AU .. speaking of quality cinema ..
October 5, 2009 at 11:24 pm
EEofDC
For Doom, wherever he may be. This was on NPR today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anwy2MPT5RE
This I just ran across randomly (sorry, tip):
http://www.recipesource.com/main-dishes/meat/pork/spam/00/rec0025.html
October 5, 2009 at 11:27 pm
EEofDC
And for dave and AU….
October 6, 2009 at 7:25 am
dave
i used to eat spam a lot when i was a kid, but never since 9/11. this is my protest against the commission report, spam wasn’t included.