Lost Marble Collection -- "Sleeping Race"

Weather Harp--Melbourne, Australia

Loatus

Instead of a hiatus.  Yeah, I'll be gone for a while to deal with a family crisis that has not only scaled new heights of douchebaggery...it has climbed OVER THEM. 

I'll post new blogs and pages I'm following periodically.  See you back here soon, ok?

Can I Eat A Little Somethin' First?

Robert Alton Harris, the subject of the documentary Procedure 769, shown here in a 1990 mugshot. 

Harris and his brother, Daniel, killed two 16 year-old boys in San Diego in 1978, one of whom was the son of the police officer who arrested the Harrises.  Robert Harris was executed by lethal injection on April 21, 1992.  More grisly details of their crimes here. 

If Robert Harris is not in the Guinness Book of World Records for Largest Last Meal, he ought to be.  His last meal?  A 21-piece bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, two large Domino's pizzas, a bag of jelly beans, a Pepsi six-pack and a pack of Camels.

It's A Little Hard To Pronounce, So...

Swedish parents Elisabeth Hallin and Lasse Diding, in protest of the 1982 Swedish law requiring the approval of particular child names (originally enacted as a precautionary measure against families not born into nobility giving their children noble names), named their child Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116. 

It is pronounced Albin.

A Clip From the Film "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" With Subtitles From a Dolph Lundgren Movie

Dragon Ping Pong

The sickest thing I have ever witnessed.

Bad Water

The rashes on this woman's back and the backs of her arms is not due to a reaction from a histamine release; it is from an instantaneous exposure to a physical, non-allergic stimulus.

In her case, it's water.

Her urticaria--or skin rashes that are otherwise normally caused by airborne pathogens and bacteria--is called aquagenic urticaria, resulting when she is exposed to any variation in the exposure of her skin to water.  In most cases she will have to use extreme caution when confronting an emotional situation prompting her to cry, running out to her car to retrieve something she'd forgotten while it is raining, getting really excited about kicking the soccer ball around in the backyard with her or someone else's kids and needing desperately to jump in the shower before a date.

There is no known treatment.

On A Crutch

Seiko Wa Nani??

From WTF Japan Seriously.

Are We Watching The Same Vid?

Comment found on a YouTube post of the 1987 System hit, "Don't Disturb This Groove:"

"REAL BiG-REAL BiG GAME TiME MiAMi HEAT PROFESSiONAL BASKETBALL PLAYERS & WiNNERS LBJ-DWADE-BOSH–MiLLER–CHALMERS­­­­­­­–HASLEM R STEPPiN UP & SHiNNiN BiG TiME ON THE NATiONAL & WORLD STAGE OF PROFESSiONAL CHAMPiONSHiP BASKETBALL-NO TiME 2QUiT-(MiAMi DOLPHiNS PROFESSiONAL FOOTBALL PLAYERS TAKE NOTES ON HOW 2 BECOME BiG GAME TiME WiNNERS & REAL CHAMPiONS iN THE NFL & iN MiAMi-ON & OFF OF THE PROFESSiONAL FOOTBALL FiELD) iF NOT NOW-WHEN DAMN-iT "BY ANY & ALL CAPABLE MEANS NECESSARY" BELiEVE"

I don't know what the hell this has to do with an 80's R&B song, but it's hilarious all the same.

Trust Issues

From the Hubbard Communications Office Manual of Justice, by L. Ron Hubbard:

It's a relief to a bad case to be punished. Sometimes they choose us for their executioners - worse luck. More often than not you as my representative get selected as the person to wield the axe and a criminal-type will try and try to get you to use an axe on him. It would feel so good to be punished after lives of crime. Axe him - but rehabilitate him too.

WHOM TO SUSPECT

Suspect people who have the following:

1. Criminal connections or background.
2. Communist membership or leanings (they attack all source).
3. Low OCA/APA graphs.
4. Auditors who get bad results on preclears.
5. People low on the tone scale particularly physiologically (physiology not always reliable).
6. People who don't pay their bills and who want it all free.
7. People who tell you you could reach so many people if only you'd help them or their friends.
8. Press.
9. People who can't work.
10. People who break up machinery or Mest.

It you simply swept all these out of every central organization you'd be a real winner. (Never consent to a post being filled with a bad person because the post is empty. An empty post is better than one badly filled always.)

WHOM TO TRUST

Trust the following:

1. Auditors whose good results you have actually seen on graphs (never by repute the best auditor in town - this is press agentry not results).
2. People who are able to work.
3. People who get a job done easily.
4. People whose Mest is in good shape.
5. People who are routinely in good health.
6. People whose cases run easily.
7. People with high OCA or APA graphs.
8. People in general.

So, if Scientologists can trust "people in general," then why did Tommy Davis walk off the set of his Nightline interview after Martin Bashir asked him about Xenu and the 'volcano?'

The Honey Badger

The most fearless animal on Earth...described by the most fearless commentator on Earth.

The Ross Sisters, "Solid Potato Salad," 1944

Really??

Chapter 27, a 2007 film that centers around the mental disintegration of Mark David Chapman leading up to his assassination of John Lennon, features a rather interesting casting choice.

John Lennon is played by an English actor...whose name is Mark (Lindsay) Chapman. 

This Is Going To Take A While

Johann Sebastian Bach walked a very long distance to watch one of his contemporaries perform an organ recital.  In 1705, Bach hoofed it from the central German town of Thuringia to the northern town of Lubeck so he could sit in on a performance of one among several of his influences, the German-Dutch composer Dieterich Buxtehude. 

It is 200 miles between Thuringia and Lubeck.

End of Semester Blues

PF will be back.  Just let me finish up with this semester a little and all that "sick, venal" finals crap, okay?  Thanks, guys.

I Better Not Hear Those Dishes Rattle

There was an "Original Night Stalker" suspect before Richard Ramirez; this one killed at least ten people in Southern California from 1979 to 1986.  About ten years before, however, he'd been found by linked DNA evidence to have raped about fifty married or romantically attached women.

His modus operandi?  Before proceeding to rape the women, he commanded the husbands or boyfriends to lay down on the floor and hold a stack of dishes on their stomachs.  This way, if the extremely unlucky men were to move the slightest muscle, the ONS would hear him.

At a town meeting in Sacramento (where the rapes of the previous decade had roughly taken place) a man stood up and lambasted the other men in the audience for not protecting their wives against the ONS making them hold the dishes on their stomachs while their wives were being raped in front of them.  He also warned the ONS that if he ever came into the man's house, the man would fight him.

Two or three weeks after the meeting, the wife of the man who spoke at the town meeting was also raped--while the husband lie down on their bedroom floor, holding a stack of dishes on his stomach.

Police suspected the ONS had actually attended the meeting...and had chosen the man out of the crowd.

Ariel Pink, "Deathcrush 99"

From the just recently re-released Scared Famous/FF >>.

Good Call

A bit of "French Connection" 40th Anniversary trivia: The New York Transit Authority official who told William Friedkin it was going to be difficult but not impossible to operate the elevated train at speeds over 50 miles per hour (but said he was going to be fired if the infamous chase scene was filmed Friedkin's way) proffered a request: $40,000 and a one-way ticket to Jamaica.

The official's wish came true.

A Break From Bizarre

I work in a junior high lunchroom, and I know damn good and well it doesn't serve vichysoisse or lamb fesenjan. Elsa Carmona, the esteemed principal of Chicago's Little Village Academy, has this idiotic idea (that led to an outright ban) the school's exquisite lunch fare--"breaded chicken (fried in oil, of course), cookies, cheeseburger and potato smiles (again, with the oil!), fruit cup (lots of sugar in that!), brownies, tamale pocket, cheese its (sic), cheese pizza and chips", according to Karen Garcia's article "Cafeteria Food Fight" on Ultimate Foodie--is somehow infinitely more nutrient beneficial than freshly-cut celery sticks and Ezekial bread that came on little Joey's reduced-fat smoked turkey sandwich.

YeeeeeeAH--I'll have a fried "budget shortfall", please.

(By the way, PLEASE read the blog "Fed Up With Lunch"!)

Christian Marclay, "Guitar Drag" (Pts. 1 & 2), 2000

Randomized cacophony from the distinguished Christian Marclay. An amped Fender is tied to a pickup truck's hitch and drug behind it two and a half miles through somewhere in the rural South. More symbolic background info can be scoped out here.

Awkwaaaaard

In 1987 actor Patrick Dempsey married 48 year-old Rocky Parker--the mother of his best friend and fellow actor, Corey Parker (pictured).  Patrick was 21.  Corey was 22.

Dempsey, younger than Parker by one year, was Parker's stepfather.

The Ultimate Warrior...versus PHIL COLLINS!! (1990)

My Favorite Blog

That would be Futility Closet.  And it will be yours, too.  Don't try and fight it.

The Oscar's Oscar

Oscar Hammerstein is the only Oscar winner named Oscar. 

He won two for Best Original Song:  "The Last Time I Saw Paris" from Lady Be Good (1941) and "It Might As Well Be Spring" from State Fair (1945).

"If I Were The Bus Driver", 198? school bus safety instructional video

The Nails, "The Man with the X-Ray Feet" (1981)