I'm sorry I've been sort of MIA lately, I'm trying to get a lot of things done at the moment, and my attempt at a news blockade has been a complete failure. First it was "I'll take a month off after the election". But of course, This Minnesota race is going to go on FOREVER, and by the time that's over, I'm going to be following the 2012 election race already... so who knows. I'd love to see Al Franken pull this off, though.

Anyway, I'm going to start catching up on the 200 emails I have been neglecting, and then I have some other stuff to post about. In the meantime, though, why not search through the photograph archives of life magazine, now accessible through google? Live has always had one of the better photo archives, and to be able to check it out at a high resolution with captions is the type of thing that makes the internet a hundred times better. I can't even get into the amount of time I've already wasted looking through this, and I'm sure the trend is far from over. I urge you to glance through, though, because if you've got the time, this is indeed a precious resource. Search here.

It looks like some of these pictures didn't format themselves correctly. Either click on them to see the whole thing or just go start your own search because it's more fun.

What I've been listening to lately:

Dirty Laundry: The Soul of Black Country
This is a compilation I found some months back that disappeared before I ever got the chance to really investigate it. I recently found it again on this site and I wanted to make a note here before I forgot about it, because it's incredible. Regular readers of this site will not be surprised of my admiration of this comp, since it was released by the incredible Trikont record label, which has been a favorite of mine for the better part of a decade.

Letters to God

I'm almost certain these weren't written by actual children, but it doesn't really matter, because they're AWESOME. Read a bunch more here.



Sorry for the disappearance, I was on an actual vacation (answer: It was without a doubt the best vacation ever, thanks for asking) and I didn't have much computer access. I'll have some fun stuff to come soon, though, including a new favorite things list, my innovative ideas for the airlines, "Obama So Crazy", and more!

Kids skating on a giant piece of plastic. Note the marquee.


yes. the Dancing Grinch that Stole Christmas.

Yeah, this looks like a good surprise..

Ain't Gonna Touch This

1. Anybody's Blues - Amos Milburn
2. Suki - Unrest
3. Me & Mary - Asobi Seksu
4. Jake Summers (BBC6 session) - Fight Like Apes
5. Inni Mer Syngur Vitleysingur - Sigur Ros
6. Barstool Blues - Neil Young
7. Billy 4 - Bob Dylan
8. Linstead Market Lord Messam & his Calypsonians
9. Get 'Er Done (ft. MF Doom) - Jake One
10 . Birds - Menahan Street Band
11. Acid Tongue - Jenny Lewis
12. I Don't Want No Stranger Sleeping In My Bed - Ray Charles
13. Jailhouse Tears (ft. Elvis Costello)- Lucinda Williams
14. Illya Kuryakin - Ike Bennett & the Crystallites
15. Rafiki (ft. Black Thought) - Zap Mama
16. They Were Doin' the Mambo - Tex Williams
17. Time Has Been Going By So Fast - Jonathan Richman
18. Start All Over Again (live) - J. Geil's Band

Lots of old songs on this one, mostly because I've been listening to old songs lately. Some fo these I've had in a folder for awhile to throw on a mix, some I scrounged up from here and there, and some I was just recently reminded of and felt like sharing. Anyway, I'm thankful for them.

Download here

aaaaaaah, nothing like a picture of a baby animal to help restore my faith in humankind.

Kitty Genovese 2008

A teenager has committed suicide live on the internet after being egged on by others.

About 1,500 people watched as 19-year-old Abraham K Biggs from Florida overdosed on pills on Justin.tv, a live video streaming websit

I've had enough interaction with others online to know that this kid probably had a lot of problems. and I'm sure this incident followed several cries for attention that more than likely bothered the hell out of this community of people. What led him to try to resolve them in an anonymous, online setting is beyond me, but it seems like this is a serious trend that unfortunately shows no sign of abating.

Conversely, I also know that there were probably several dozen people trying to outdo each other with the most caustic, devastating comments that they could think of encouraging to do it. It bothers me that there are people -no- kids, really, that take pride in how utterly despicable they can act towards someone who clearly is crying out for help. I think that the internet, where you can safely say things that society should rightly slap the face off of you for saying, is conducive to behavior like this and it truly frightens me what the social implications might be.

I think we've all experienced the scadenfreude of seeing someone slip on ice, or get hit in the face with something, or whatever. Of course, if you have a soul, you follow this up by running over and making sure they're not hurt. On the internet you can spend whole days finding examples of this, and never even have to think about the consequences. They can't see you, or hear you. Besides, it already happened. You can watch for weeks on end people slipping, falling, cringing, etc... (youtube search for "hit in the nuts": 25,600) and quite possibly laugh yourself to death. It's an easy laugh, sure, but it can be funny as hell. But this is different. When it's taking place in real time, and there is a living, breathing person on the recieving end of the taunts, it's no longer guilty pleasure, it's just torture. These sadistic fucks taunted this kid into killing himself.

This reminds me of those really dark experiments that they perform (I can't remember the name of the one in particular I'm reminded of, but the Milgram and Stanford Prison Experiments will do in a pinch) that reveal all of these terrifying undertones in human nature and the outright cruelty that's always lurking right beneath it. It's frightening that these experiments are taking place all the time in the living rooms and bedrooms of our homes every day.

I don't know, it's no really the kind of thing I want to write about at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon, an I'm positive it's not the sort of thing you want to read. It's just something that caught my eye and really made me sick to my stomach and I had to mention it. I'll try to scrounge up that picture of the baby hippo to help make up for it.

via Riotclitshave

Above is half of the British artist William Hogarth's engraving titled "Beer Street and Gin Lane", a commentary on the gin craze that overtook England in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The first of the series, Beer Lane, depicts a thriving and merry functioning town, while the picture above shows a prostituted mother dropping her baby, a soldier who was hired to pass out anti-gin pamphlets starved to death, a dead baby on a spike, beggars trying to kill each other, tradesmen trying to sell their tools for gin... go check out the wiki page for more details, but it's like a Where's Waldo of drunken insanity and recklessness. It's pretty frightening, actually, especially compared to the idyllic (on the surface, at least) revelry of Beer Street. The craze itself is pretty astonishing, and I had no idea of some of its ramifications until I stumbled actoss this work.
I came across Hogarth after doing some research on Goya's later works, and as a fan of totally effed up lithographs and depictions of old-time insanity, of course I was drawn to it.
I mean, seriously, feast your eyes on this. or this! Niiiice.
I wonder if Hogarth would print a "Joint Avenue and Crack Blvd" were he to look at the most recent drug outbreaks. Better yet, "Rural Route Meth".

Alleged "douchebag" sues author.

I just thought reading the actual affidavit was funny.

...and the nominations are rolling in!

Daschle for Secretary of Health (did Tommy Thompson's head just droop a little?), Eric Holder for Atty General... Sure, the big ones don't come until next week at the earliest, but it's fun to watch this administration form. I'm wondering how much Daschle wanted that position, though. You figure it's going to be a key role in the healthcare reformation, and it's a huge amount of work with a potential sword over your head. Well, I wish him the best.

Far more entertaining, the wicked witch of Ted Stevens is dead. Happy Birthday, Ted! I reckon there's probaby a trroupe of singing and dancing dwarves somewhere in Alaska. Probably moreso at the prospect of not seeing a Senator Palin anytime soon. Oh, and Harry Reid still bothers me.

that's all I got for now.

Where I've been: the Loooooooong Version.

I know haven't been around lately. I had to get ready for a test, take said test, receive less than savory scores of the test, wallow in misery over said scores, etc... Plus, I've been outside most of the day for the past few days.
But the truth of the matter may be that I've been listening to audio books lately. Namely Stephen King audio books. Which really make no sense, since I can divide the mans work into books I love and books I loathe into a 1:3 ratio or so. But there are a few of his books I've never bothered with (The Stand and It) that I never even bothered with, mostly because they were so large and I knew if I spend the time reading them and didn't like them, I'd never forgive myself. At 10:30 last night, I finished listening to all 34.4 hours of The Stand. I'm still not certain what I think of it. I've always thought King's writing lends itself best to short stories. Sure, books like The Shining and 'Salem's Lot and even The Green Mile all hold a special place with me, and it's true that many of the movies made from his works make them seem much, much worse than they actually are. But his longer form work always tended to start with an amazing first act and then sort of peter out towards the end of the second. This is especially true of the Dark Tower books, which I absolutely loved until maybe the fourth or fifth book and then I was wasn't interested in finishing the story. I did, of course, but only because I'd already gotten that far into it and kept thinking "It's gonna get better than this, right? It's got to." But it didn't. I just got madder. and madder. and madder. You can see my apprehension to start something so voluminous as The Stand. If I start it...
It's the short stories and novellas that have always hit me the hardest. It might be that as a format it's more suited to someone of my...attention span. Or that I tend to lose interest when the story begins to drift towards the same macabre interests or worse, characters*. His first three books of short stories are among my favorites ever opened. I mean, Night Shift has at least 5 or 6 stories that are still capable of scaring the crap out of me. I mean, even if you discount all of the really bad ones, you get what, 5 or 6 good movies made out of the stories in this. No, I'm not counting Maximum Overdrive here. Or the Lawnmower Man, which is possibly the worst adaptation of any story I've ever read. Both of those stories were really good by me, though.
So here I am, just having finished The Stand. It performed a lot like the way I described Kings other long work, and yet I have no regret of listening it through to the end. In fact, I'm sure I'll start listening to the apparently longer It sooner than later. And I'm sure somewhere towards the end I'll just wondering when he'll get it over with. But I guess in this case, the first half or so is compelling enough for me to have to continue on to the end. I think if I'd been reading The Stand rather than listen to it, I'm sure I would have a bigger chip on my shoulder here.
So, I just realized that this is the longest, most useless excuse for my lack of recent posts that I've ever comitted to this site. Which says a lot. I'll be around, and I should have a mix up in the next week, although how I've pieced one together in the mess of my listening lately is beyond me. We'll see if it's any good.

*There are a number of recurring characters in his body of work, and while I really like this idea -forming your own little universe between a number of seemingly interrelated stories- sometimes it results in SK bending the premises of his stories a bit to far to link them all together. Hearts in Atlantis, which I liked, seems a bit tied too closely to the bleed between his stories and really just sort of hindered what was an interesting story on its own. It's fun, to see these people making strange cameos in other books, and as a comic book reader, I know this better than anyone.
But I'm prone to believe that in this instance, as it all too often is in comics, that many of Stephen King's superfans really just read through these stories oohing and aahing and feeling smart because they recognize a name or two.

Obviously I'm not a superfan of his. And it's obvious that I really like some of his work. I don't know why I feel the need to reiterate this now, but there it is...

Edit: It's been pointed out to me that stories about isolation madness, doomsday flus, and post-apocalyptic societies might not be the best material for someone who doesn't see many people and talks to even less. I think it makes perfect sense. Besides, now all I have to worry about is homocidal dream clowns.

Benedict Campbell fun

Mutant Dog-Man

here's the link, with a bunch more pictures.
via Warren Ellis, who people tend to send stuff like this to.

My cups cost more than fifteen cents!

Say hello to "Renegade", "Renaissance", "Radiance", and "Rosebud".

and "Celtic".

So, the secret service's secret code names get leaked before the President takes office?
that's.... huh.

I'm trying to think of what kind of awesome code name I'd get. While sure, I'd love it to be something awesome like "Mr. Big" or "Fly Guy" (pretty much any character from I'm Gonna Git You Sucka works here). Sadly, I'm sure I'd get something a bit less heroic:
"Recliner". "Batroc the Leaper". "Beastmaster II"
Or my personal favorite: "Sourdough"

fluff, fluff, Biden piece.

Prometheus

Click me.

Ad campaign for an Argentinean rock magazine. It looks like a pretty good magazine, so go check it out if you can read it.

Lest you think this thing is devolving into some sort of baby animal museum, I just found the website for the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at the Cornell University Library, and it's ripe with weirdness and backwards scientific and spiritual beliefs of past eras. Pictures of werewolves and gorgons? check. Crazy elephant people? check.

creepy witchcraft stuff? You better believe it.
ummmm, yeah.
I wish I could recommend a section, but they're all pretty fun and odd. Make sure you read the captions, because there's some cool stuff in there. My favorite would probably be the danse macabre stuff, but really, there's enough crazy to go around.

okay, so I'm not going to be posting for the next few days because I have a lot of studying to do, but I'll try to put up some things now since it's already been almost a week and I'm starting to feel neglectful.

I just dropped by a puppy cam and I couldn't help it. So comforting. It sucked me in for a full ten minutes. One of those little guys is a jerk. Try to guess which one!

and over at boingboing, there's footage of a baby pygmy hippopotamus. and -damnit this is getting out of control- a cat that chases boxes. They claim he's a Scottish Fold, but I'm not believing it.

Thinking about my earlier post, and hoping to God that this isn't as optimistic I'll be towards the U.S. political landscape in my lifetime. I don't want to think of this as the swing of the pendulum. I don't want to consider the West Bank and how that won't change. I don't want to think about whether or not the Kyoto Accord will be a priority. I don't want to think about how easy it might be to satiate the American public without really changing anything.
It might be my fault.
As a person who never gave a rat's ass until the 2000 election (or worse, the 2001 Horror), I can't help but hold a somewhat cynical attitude to any sort of proposed change. I think of our shitty neoliberal policies in South America. Or how the Clinton administration might be considered a save, despite bombing the shit out of various foreign countries while we celebrated our financial prosperity.
On a personal level, I am one of the most blindly optimistic people I know. so why can't I convey that into genuine optimism. Obama won. We have the House, and an almost filibuster-prof majority in the Senate. and here I am, whining before it even begins.
At this point I can only hope we don't fuck things up. This can't be true. Tell me that we won. Tell me that at least for now we need to see what happens.
I'm tired. I haven't slept in over 42 hours, and I'm hoping I'm just being stupid and paranoiac. Maybe my listening to The Shining for the past 3 days has made me anxious and wan. I can only hope so. I'm listening to old Dylan albums now and wondering what he might have to say. Not the Victoria's Secret ad Dylan, in case you're wondering.
We won. that should be enough for now. And who knows, maybe it is.
Oh, God of enthusiasm, lords of righteousness and stability, help us to figure out the new order of things. Or what we think might be the new order. Or at least what's best for us next.

and help me get to sleep, because at this point I really goddamn need it.
Love you all much. and hope to hear from you sooner than later.
please take care of yourself.
luv (hey, it's not like Ringo's gonna use that from now on...)
cotton

Is Ted Stevens really gonna get re-elected?

(sigh)

Okay. So here we are. 200 years from now, school children will be taught about this. Think about that for a minute. Let it sink in. Good. Hold your head up high.
That said, remember that this is not over. At all. Obviously, I support Barack Obama. I think he was the best choice we had and I want him to succeed more than anything. and I sincerely believe that he is the best man for the job.
I also believe that he's more open to vocal opposition than McCain might have been. I trust that he will be more even handed in his choice of cabinet and yes, judges. I think that he's the voice of the future. But never forget that this could -and will- be looked at in the future as a sort of experiment in American Democracy. He is stil unproven. He still has hurdles. And even scarier, is that he (probably?) might have an utter majority to deal with. My biggest fear (and I've stated this here before) is that he will be stuck fighting his own anxious and overeager party for the next 5 years.
We need to take this slow.
Which might not be the most popular tone with the majority of America. We need to remember that he's got a couple hundred holes to dig himself out of. Having the Senate and House on his side will be huge, but this still won't solve all out problems for years and years.
I guess I'm just terrified that in 4 years that this will be seen as some great folly of the American left and will be nixed for another 20 years.
But enough of that. Enough of being a pessimist. At least until March or so, I can relax and not think about politics*. For tonight, put a smile on your face, and know that we're going to have a new president on the way. I don't mean to sound cynical. I spent an hour tonight talking to a 64 year old woman with tears in her eyes, saying she didn't think this was possible in her lifetime. Shit. I didn't think this was possible in my lifetime. We've made a huge leap forward. We just have to remember this so we don't end up taking a step back later.
So here we are, and unless Philly has overturned more cars on Broad Street, I'm proud.
But pay attention. Vote in your local elections. Write letters when things you don't like happen. We need to keep on top of things, because an out of control Dem government is just as bad as an out of control GOP Government. and frankly, as long as we're stuck with a 2 party system, we need to monitor this shit.
That said, relax and enjoy the night. I'm gonna stay up and see what happens in these MN/OR/CO/CA elections and hopefully drift into a nice, peaceful sleep and dream of a content and well-liked America. Also, to the constant mention of the Bradlehy effect in the last months, fuck you. We did it.
great speeches by all, gentlemanly behavior from everyone (after this morning, at least), and I'm happy to hear it.

*this isn't true. Remember we've got 3 more months of Bush. Don't act like you know what will happen with that.

The best wildlife photos for National Geographic* just came out, and I figured this one is pretty fitting. Okay, now I'm of to get some stuff done.

*caution: photo 3 is probably the most depressing and devastating image I've ever seen, and may in fact make you very, very, very sad. Especially if you're familiar with the Philadelphia Zoo, circa Christmas Eve in 1995.

Believe it or not, you used to be able to buy all sorts of crazy shit out of the back of comic books. Like Squirrel Monkeys.

There's a couple of people here talking about their experiences ordering a live monkey for $15 through the mail. It's absolutely worth reading.

Good Morning, America

Time to get up.
Now let's go vote us a new President.

(I'll update tomorrow when I can, but it won't get serious until after the polls close. Then I'm gonna stay up all night watching the Udalls and the other senate races (c'mon, Franken), as well as House hilarity and the Prop 8 stuff.

Yeah, it's gonna be the best night ever.

12 year old boy shot while Trick or Treating

Once again, Halloween is pushed further away from the holiday I grew up celebrating. It's a goddamn shame.

Studs Terkel, R.I.P.

Studs Terkel is dead. And for the second time in the past few months I find myself shocked that an elderly gentleman whose health has been declining for decades has passed on. It's not that I imagined that he would just transubstantiate into a ghost, appearing alongside Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken at the shining moments of America a la Star Wars. It's just that because he was so old you just felt he was always gonna be here for a little while longer.
It is true, though, that Studs was the embodiment of so much of what I love about this country. Sure, he was something of a popular sentimentalist. Sure, he was kind of folksy. But the people and struggles and music that he documented are more America than you will ever see on the network news. He wasn't one of these idiots that dominate the media now that project their leanings and ridiculous smarm into every interview and story and make grand assumptions about what people think and feel.
Studs was almost never the story, but rather the only person that was going to talk to the steel worker or the farmer or the convict or the soldier for more than a sound byte. He wanted their stories, not en encapsulation of their feelings. And maybe that's why he seemed more genuine than most of his contemporaries. The America Studs Terkel followed and was a part of is the same America that I would point out, were I given the chance, to the parts of the world that hate us to show them what we're really like.

He wasn't the scholar that Chomsky is or the librarian that Zinn is, but Studs Terkel was one of the greats, and it's a shame that his death will not be covered to the degree that it should because of the election. But he will be missed here. If you've never read Working, I truly suggest that you pick it up.

on City Hall, downtown.

I see this sign down the street and it makes me laugh every couple of weeks. I like the idea of someone feeling strongly enough about Perot to hold on to the sign for 12 years.

Then again, Perot never emailed me every day for 2 months...

I was actually really impressed with the celebration I saw in Media last night. Screaming, dancing, singing, naked people... while the police stood nearby keeping an eye on things. Sure, there was a some idiots and I distinctly remember seeing a guy trying to set fire to a planter, but for the most part it was wholesome and fun.
Way to go, Media.

of course, then I see this and I'm just at a loss for words.

Harry Kalas calling the entire 9th inning.

YES!

Windmill Island

So, looking through some old maps of Philadelphia (nerd subhobby 2,126), I noticed that the city used to have 2 islands in the middle of the Delaware between Spruce and Christian Streets.
From Planphilly (a/k/a the site I will spend the next few days devouring):

There was once an island right off Center City where Philadelphians went to bathe and frolic.
Rising in the middle of the river, Smith’s Island was about a block wide and extended a half-mile from Arch Street to a point below South Street. It was originally known as Windmill Island for an octagonal 1746 windmill at its northern end. In May 1800, three men were hanged on the island for piracy aboard the schooner Eliza, leading to fanciful stories that it was a haven for pirates.
By the late 19th century, the island was a summer resort. Steam ferries left the Walnut Street wharf every ten minutes, carrying day-trippers to visit baths on the island. “The island has long been used as a bathing-ground and pleasure-garden,” one author wrote in 1887, “mostly for the lower classes.” According to Jackson, Smith’s Island featured a bathhouse, restaurant, beer garden, live music and occasionally a hot air balloon ascension or tight-rope walker to entertain the crowds. Great old willow trees made it an inviting retreat from the summer heat. In 1838, a canal was cut through the island at Walnut Street to facilitate ferry traffic to Camden. In 1878, shipping interests began a campaign to remove the island altogether, calling it an impediment to larger vessels. The campaign succeeded in 1891, when the Federal government began a six-year project to remove the islands. No trace of them exists today.

huh. I wish they were still there. Obviously, the old shipping route was instrumental in keeping Philadelphia prosperous for another couple of decades. But still, it sounds like it was a blast. Except for those pirates I guess. Still, I bet everyone else at those hangings was enjoying themselves.

I wonder what a scuba hunt of the area would yield. Other than getting chopped up by a propeller.
*I should know this, but is it S.C.U.B.A? SCUBA? I feel like it's a pretty established word, right? I mean, nobody spells it U.N.I.C.E.F., right?
right?

EDIT: I just found some old newspaper articles about the island, including one bemoaning the fact that Smith Island would soon be but a "vague memory". Also, this compelling passage:

In the meantime the police force of the island, consisting of six men, aided by some of the city police, was sent to the wharf to clear the crowd off, which they signally failed to accomplish. They had hardly arrived on this side before a fight sprang up on the island and black-jacks were freely flourished in the air. The fight soon spread and the police at once returned to the park to quell the disturbance, and the harbor police tug “Stokley” was sent to their assistance. A charge was made upon the fighters and about a dozen of the ringleaders were arrested and placed in the cells upon the tug. After being allowed to perspire for a while in the cells, they were brought to this side and allowed to go free. Most of them left quietly, but one of them became very abusive and threatened to beat the officers. He was taken to the Central Station, where he gave the name of Michael O'Mealey, and his residence at 1227 Fitzgerald street. He was held for a hearing on the charge of being drunk and disorderly.

okay, 10 posts in 2 days. I'm off to have a beer and watch the game. Go Phils.

Surveillance technology is a science with more than a few terrifying applications to it. The very sci-fiety of it all is almost astounding. New tech can recognize a person out of a crowd based on their walk, or the shape of their elbow. Face-scanning and body odor identifiers might be able to single out people with sinister motives. Biometrics, micro-expressions... it's all there for identification.

Human gaits, for example, can provide a lot of information about people’s intentions. At the American Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, a team of gait analysts and psychologists led by Frank Morelli study video, much of it conveniently posted on the internet by insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq. They use special object-recognition software to lock onto particular features of a video recording (a person’s knees or elbow joints, for example) and follow them around. Correlating those movements with consequences, such as the throwing of a bomb, allows them to develop computer models that link posture and consequence reasonably reliably. The system can, for example, pick out a person in a crowd who is carrying a concealed package with the weight of a large explosives belt. According to Mr Morelli, the army plans to deploy the system at military checkpoints, on vehicles and at embassy perimeters.
...Another programme run by the Human Factors Division, Future Attributable Screening Technology, or FAST, is being developed as a complement to Project Hostile Intent. An array of sensors, at a distance of a couple of metres, measures skin temperature, blood-flow patterns, perspiration, and heart and breathing rates. In a series of tests, including a demonstration last month with 140 role-playing volunteers, the system detected about 80% of those who had been asked to try to deceive it by being hostile or trying to smuggle a weapon through it.

A number of “innocents”, though, were snagged too. The trial’s organisers are unwilling to go into detail, and are now playing down the significance of the testing statistics. But FAST began just 16 months ago. Bob Burns, the project’s leader, says its accuracy will improve next year thanks to extra sensors that can detect eye movements and body odours, both of which can provide further clues to emotional states.

So essentially what I'm asking is, why do I need to carry my driver's license with me everywhere?

So Game 5 of the 2008 World Series fits right in. It's so utterly Philadelphian, they should place a DVD of it in William Penn's hand, way up there on top of City Hall.

Modern Russia: Still looking pretty awesome and terrifying at the same time.

Pepsi: Things just got a lot uglier

There's been a lot of talk on the internet (at least on the crappy places I visit) about the new design for Pepsi products. And with good reason. It is... not good. I thought things were pretty terrible when they started letting the consumers design the can.
Now, it looks like they took the Obama logo* and tried to internet it up a bit. It's like they might as well just start advertising in lolspeak.
Is it possible that these designs came from the internet itself? Oh, man. It's gonna take me awhile to wrap my head around that one.

*As much as I like the Obama, this logo thing is creeping me out a bit. The very idea of branding political candidates (though I'm sure it isn't new by any stretch) just seems so ominous to me.
But then what the hell do I know.

Anyway, check out a look at Pepsi designs over the years. My favorite? The one that looks like motor oil:

Google image search of the day: polar bear submarine

more results than I expected.

Book Art

Wow. This is pretty impressive.

Office WAR

The Great Office War from Runawaybox on Vimeo.

Vintage Halloween photos = See ya later, EVER SLEEPING AGAIN

My love of vintage candid and everyday life photographs has been pretty well established here by now. Part of it is that I really enjoy the glimpses into the lives of these people whose names I will ever know. Part of is that I pretty much nobody knows who most of these people were, save perhaps their name or their own blood relation to them. I like the idea that someone stumbles across an old keepsake chest or dusty box in an attic somewhere and discovers these windows into a perfect stranger's life.
I think that these people live on primarily through the viewing of these photographs. That despite not being a world leader or a millionaire or Matthew Brady, we get to look at these people more intimately than the celebrities of their era, since these images tend to capture so much more emotion than any portrait ever does.
Part of it might be that the era I tend to look at the most, from right around the invention of the camera up until the 30s, is such a different era than the one we live in. It's not just the "no TV or internet" crap, although that is a pretty large part of modern life. It's more the "no electric refrigeration" and "don't ask about the bathroom situation"-type stuff.
Part of it might be that that last, haunting scene from the Shining*, which remains one of my favorite scenes ever filmed.
Anyways, what I started this post intending to say is that the folks over at Wired have put up some vintage Halloween photos, which might well be the most terrifying images I have ever seen.
It's odd, because I'm sure these masks were about as scary as a Dora the Explora** mask would be to us. But that doesn't make it any less creepy. When I was a kid I found these clear plastic masks in my parents' loft. It's hard to describe them, but they were somewhat opaque and featureless other than light red lips and on the one a mustache (this, aptly enough, is the closest thing I could find). I guess they were leftover from a party or something, but they scared the living crap out of me***. These pictures have absolutely surpassed them as the creepiest masks of all time, as far as I'm concerned. It's pretty amazing, and I'd guess that the celebration of Halloween was stil fairly new to these people****, which makes it even crazier. Imagine just picking up a new holiday. And I don't mean your dumbass international talk-like-a-pirate day.
Anyway, go check these pictures out. They'll probably be the scariest thing you see this Halloween season.

(other than whatever lies ahead in this election season)

*Not of Nicholson frozen in the snow, which I think most people remember the ending to be, but of the photograph of Jack Torrance and everyone else trapped in the ethereal golden years of the Overlook Hotel. Despite that movie being a pretty piss-poor adaptation and having some serious plotting issues (I love that this scene was thrown into the movie with absolutely ZERO illumination of the awesome back story it depicts). I really shoulda just made this a different post. Maybe a live watching of the Shining. ugh.
**I know, I know. But it's supposed to rhyme, no?
*** Those masks remain my third greatest childhood fear, behind horseshoe crabs and the clown marionette that my parents brought back for me from Mexico
****There's great sites all over the place going into the origins, traditions, and histories of Halloween, but just to be easy go check out the wiki page. It's absolutely fascinating and will probably teach you a great deal. Go learning.

The Stockholm Metro

After seeing a picture over at Oobject, I am now totally mesmerized by the Stockholm Metro lines (birthplace of the Metro newspaper!). This is the coolest thing ever and I now have a weird desire to go see Sweden and its subway stations, wacky socialism, and ABBA museum. Anyone down?

From the Economist

SIR – I read your article on organ transplants with interest (“The gap between supply and demand”, October 11th). I am the father of a seven-year-old boy, Nicholas Green, who was shot and killed in an attempted robbery during a family vacation in Italy. My wife and I donated his organs and corneas to seven very sick Italians, four of them teenagers. We’ve watched them grow into men and women and, 14 years later, all seven are still alive. Having seen all this I cannot visualise any decision other than the one we made, though to us at the time those people were just statistics on a waiting list.

The main obstacle for most people, I suggest, is this: brain death is usually sudden death—a road accident, a stroke, violence—and people arrive at the hospital to find someone they love, who was in good health only a few hours earlier, now dead or dying. Many are too stunned to take it in, others are angry and looking to assign blame; relations between family members may be tense, almost all are confused about organ donation.

To make a major, irrevocable decision there and then in this highly emotional atmosphere, about something they have never thought about before, is just too much for many people. They say no and often regret it for the rest of their lives. On the other hand, of all the hundreds of donor families I have met, I can scarcely remember one who regretted the decision.

If this is correct, the solution is clear: just as with any other important decision, families should discuss the options in calm conditions, when death is still a distant concept. As the overwhelming majority of people in most countries say they would donate a family member’s organs if they were faced with the choice, I would expect donation rates to soar.

Reg Green
La Cañada, California

The article itself is also worth reading, but this letter really stuck out to me. Some years ago my father wrote a letter to the Inquirer saying much of the same, though from a first person standpoint. As a result, things like this always move me a little.

That's all.

A new e-mail making the rounds among Jewish voters in Pennsylvania this week falsely alleged that Mr. Obama “taught members of Acorn to commit voter registration fraud,’’ and equated a vote for Senator Barack Obama with the “tragic mistake” of their Jewish ancestors, who “ignored the warning signs in the 1930’s and 1940’s.”

Yeah... um, what?

I don't wanna come on here and whine every day about stuff like this, but that it's all happening in PA is just irritating. Fortunately, This Phillies thing has grabbed everyone's attention for a while now. Which is fantastic for me, since I don't have to keep thinking about the economy, soul-sucking job searching, or the damned election for a few more days.

I'll write a real update soon, I promise.

ATM beating a hoax

She now can't explain why she invented the story, Bryant said.

Todd also told police she believes she cut the backward "B'' onto her own cheek, but she didn't explain how or why, Bryant said.

The alleged Pittsburgh ATM beating of a John McCain supporter was revealed to be a hoax.
Turns out the "black guy" didn't do it.

future beatings unconfirmed at this point.

This is disgusting, and I'm happy her stupid plan didn't work and resulted in public disgrace, negative impact on the McCain campaign, and getting beat up. I'm also happy that Bloomfield's name is cleared.

Tama

(also on Colbert tonight)

As the economic might of Japan faces up to the global banking crisis, a single cat has boosted the finances of a small Japanese city by millions of dollars, according to a study.

Tortoiseshell Tama is the "stationmaster" of the unmanned Kishi train station where she was born and raised on the provincial Kishigawa Line.

The real story, though, is what comes up in the related articles column of the BBC page:

one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen*, fourteen*,

*only 2 results were about dogs that weren't really depressing looking. So I put in the positive ones.

"If you want to see the real John McCain, hit a ball into his yard"

-Stephen Colbert, tonight

Has this really not been said yet? no?









(note: google image search of "John McCain shaking fist" was fruitless)

V: not over yet?

I think I've rambled on here before about the impact that the sci-fi mini-series "V" had on my as a child. It ranks up there with "They Live" on the crappily made sci-fi features whose flimsy premises made me think everyone I knew as a child was an alien" list. And I guess it turns out they're gonna remake it. or continue it. Or something. The point is, Marc Singer's gonna get some work! That's right! No more waiting around for another awful Beastmaster (yet another movie I saw over 20 times as a child) sequels!

and yes, I'm painfully aware of how stupid this looks. But as a near-avid watcher of Battlestar Galactica remake, I will give this the benefit of the doubt until I see it. or at least until I see screen shots of how shoddy the production values are. I wish they'd keep the old uniforms, lizard molds, and spaceships*, but something tells me they're gonna have to mess with a good thing.

*I remember the transport ships from V looking uncannily like the old McDonald's McNugget styrofoam containers. So much so that I think I used to use one for that purpose for my action figures as a kid. Man, I should really keep stuff like that to myself.

This Week in Ewwwww

PETA urges Ben & Jerry's to use human breastmilk

You thought I was gonna go with a got milk ad, didn't you? pfffff grow up.

Okay, listen. I've attacked soy milk in the past*, but I think I could probably stomach it when faced with this option.

*only in the case of using it with cereal. Which just happens to be 95% of my milk consumption.

Did this one already make the rounds? I haven't seen it, but then unless it's about some stupid movie or the presidential race, I haven't noticed anything since like May.

Love in the Year 2000

Stolen again from RCS

Obamaman

While I wouldn't call myself the world's biggest Alex Ross fan (though he has been the artist on two of my favorite graphic novels ever), I think this shirt is pretty sharp. No, I'm not going to buy one. I don't even own band shirts anymore, I'm sure as shit not going to get a politician shirt, let alone a comic book politician shirt. But yeah, pretty sharp. Sam Jackson seems to think so, anyway.
buy one here.

In other news, I guess Gov. Palin's opening the Flyers game didn't go over as well as planned. I can't say for certain if they were booing Sarah Palin or the decision to make the game into a political statement, but it remains a rare occasion where a a Philly sports crowd's boorishness

works to its advantage. So we got that going for us.