man, i don’t know what is sadder; this story or me blogging about it. you know you don’t need your street cred anymore when you cash in your chips to play at a 14 year old girl’s bar miztvah party. david brooks, a man who makes his money as a defense contractor (makes a killing at making a killing) reportedly paid $10,000,000 to throw his daughter’s bat miztvah, flying in via private jets such performers like don henley, tom petty, stevie nicks, aerosmith, ciara, and 50 cent. damn, homie. now that’s retarded. kind of like hiring a clown to make balloon animals, only different ’cause the clowns are really famous. reading about 50 cent’s bodyguards doing their best to block any photographs from being taken made me laugh. he must have known how lame this would come across if photos got out. so then how many more times will 50 cent have to get shot to reclaim any of his street cred? a lot. a whole lot.
UPDATE - 12/2/2005
apparently, the defense contractor david brooks made his money on big $ contracts for body armor and bulletproof vests. and it’s that same armor that is faulty and defective. it’s the same armor given to our military and law enforcement, and then recalled. leaving many families with soldiers in iraq to improvise and fend for themselves. whatta guy! mazel tov!
Monthly Archive for November, 2005
when i can’t find anything funny to regurgitate, there’s always politics. how about this: the United States is secretly paying Iraqi press to run favourable war stories & news.
Many of the articles are presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. The stories trumpet the work of U.S. and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents, and tout U.S.-led efforts to rebuild the country.
so is that how to teach iraq about democracy and freedom? by controlling the press and planting in the media only the stories that benefit those in control? sounds like the fox news network to me.
say, have you heard of awesometown? it’s the place to be. actually, it’s pretty darn comedic with some of the silly-funny thrown in as well. it’s a pilot skit done by the funny lads from the lonely island. you can read just who are the lonely island lads. or, watch some awesometown skit segments. or, yes - even better, watch a full uncut pilot episode for awesometown (links to mpg file)! your choice.
… yes i am. not feeling like posting much these last few days. been stacking up links & gems. but the less time i am in front of a computer, the better. hey - ever wonder how helicopters work?
you will like this. i know i did. therefore, you will like. please check out let them sing it for you. type in whatever you want and you’ll hear it read/sung back to you via snippets & words from a growing audio song database. pretty impressive. link via the blog of russ lichter.
in between a massive caloric intake & food coma over thanksgiving weekend and remembering to not buy anything on the 25th, i missed something. something … very special. when else will there be a time to break out all that hot vintage DC Cab crew gear? perhaps next year … (ps - this site is r-a-d)
you can get your recommended dose of the lovely and funny sarah silverman via two recent & decent interviews. first, a long one from rolling stone Dirty Rotten Princess and the second more recent one from the onion AV club easily titled Sarah Silverman. go read them now.
“we’ve recently tested several models of deep-fat turkey friers and find that this method of cooking can be very hazardous.” a quote like that can only lead into a deep-fat turkey frier safety video! remember: safety first, turkey second.
wanted to give a shout about a great website: greasecar.com. convert any diesel car to run on 100% vegetable oil and/or waste oil. yes! check out their conversion kits - very nice, yes. and their info on setting up your own grease fuel filter system. just pick up all your grease from local restaraunts and drive on. completely avoid buying gas again. very great resource.
great read in th new york observer on media coverage prior, during, and up until now. the six page article is called While We Were Sleeping: Where Was the Media Between Invasion and Murtha? very true. the article points out that the average monthly war coverage on the ABC, NBC and CBS evening newscasts, combined, has been cut in half—from 388 minutes in 2003, to 274 in 2004, to 166 in 2005.
“I don’t think the networks have been able to create a narrative or mythology for the war,†said Ron Simon, the television curator for the Museum of Television and Radio. “For a narrative, you have to have an answer to Norman Mailer’s famous question, ‘Why are we here?’ Two years later, they’re still struggling to ask that question.â€
to me, i think the answer to that question is quite glaringly obvious. and no one wants to say it.
radness! a student in utah named Brent Singleton is undertaking the task of building a 1932 classic ford coupe into a hybrid vehicle!!! i’m soo happy to hear people doing this! also, brent & other students are working on a system they can then develope into a kit so other folks can make the conversion! link found via treehugger.
awesome photos. seriously - you will like the photography of bob elsdale. the site is in flash so i can’t link to any photos directly. but check it out.
more fun with meat! please take a minute to read the article on common dreams titled Chemical Farm. something to think about:
Eighty percent all antibiotics in the United States are given not to people to cure disease but to animals to make them fatten up and enable them to survive unhygienic confinement in factory farms
also, for insight into the factory chicken farms, check out the book titled Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America’s Favorite Food by steve striffler. you can also read an excerpt from the book. the point of all my posting about food these last few days is basically in terms of your health it would be best to only eat organic meats and organic dairy or just go off of eating meat and dairy (or just non-organic dairy) altogether.
two british civil servants are on trial for leaking a memo that reveals bush intended to bomb the al-Jazeera offices in the allied region of qatar. al-Jazeera is the main news and information source for most of the arab world. that is serious, especially since the united states has ‘accidentally’ bombed different al-Jazeera offices twice now - once in 2001 and again in 2003.
are you prepared for the second coming? no? well now you can be - with jesus thongs, silly! there’s lots to choose from. like ‘jesus was a liberal‘ and ‘jesus was a liberal jew.’ makes a good stocking stuffer! i’m filing this under art and politics.
my friend claudine just hooked me up with some great video clips! as i find myself a little precarious with bandwidth this month, i will post some of them up soon-ish (probably in december). but - more importantly - thank you claudine!!
man, this is crazy, but you know you’re a terrible leader when the socialist neighbor you always fight with outclasses you. president hugo chavez of venezuela is moving forward on a promise to help poor communities in the united states (!) by selling heating oil at discount prices to communities in the cities of Boston and New York.
it’s been 13 weeks since hurricane katrina. so as new orleans and katrina fade from the media & public attention, you might be wondering: what’s going on with new orleans these days. alarmingly it’s still not good. volunteer relief workers are still being harrassed. over a 1,000 children still missing. and even though the official body recovery efforts in New Orleans were called off on October 3rd (despite over 100 homes in the Ninth Ward unsearched) and then again reinstated after much public outcry, people returning are still finding bodies, many of them loved ones. side note: the governmnt contract for counting/recovering bodies in NOLA was given to a friend of the Bush family.
yet another glaringly obvious reason to go organic, or at least never use genetically modified foods. research has found that genetically modified peas cause allergic damage in mice. specifically lung damage. GM foods are bad. studies show that animals actually avoid eating GM grain if given choice. GM foods are based on maximizing profit and are meant to benefit factory farms and factory farming techniques. your best source for food is to shop at local farmers markets (find one in california) and food co-ops, or buy certified organic foods from your grocer. more on avoiding GM foods here and the campaign to identify and label GM foods.
i’ve been really digging the paintings and illustrations by the highly talented shawn barber lately. you should check out his work. slighty twisted and very lovely.
wow! the very beautiful metal sculpture titled flock by michael christian has been recently installed in front of SF city hall. flock stands 42 feet high and will be on display for 3 months (all of winter). i first learned of michael christian and saw ‘flock’ when i went to burning man in 2001. it is very powerful and moving (especially at night) and i’m really happy to be able to see it again, this time in SF. laughing squid has a great photoset on flickr of the flock dedication ceremony from november 17th. more photos on the raising of flock via sfmike and yet even more on flickr via thepartycow. & thanks black rock arts foundation for making this happen!
i’m really liking the words and action by congressman John Murtha. granted, yes, he was retarded enough to vote in favor of the iraq war resolution. that’s not good (doesn’t anyone remember we were bombing iraq for 11+ years prior?). but, what i am liking about John Murtha is his brave stance on calling for pulling US troops out of iraq, that he is speaking up with ideas and solutions for getting out of iraq (where others remain conveniently silent and complacent), and how he fights for veterans & veterans rights - on both public and personal issues. it is sad that republicans are playing politics and rewording Murtha’s resolution (to guarantee it’s failure). and hearing dick ‘i got 5 deferments to avoid serving in the military‘ cheney attack murtha is pathetic. but that is the right wing neoconservative christian corporate chickenhawk republican party for you.
you can’t make this stuff up. you just can’t make this fucking stuff up. this is not a spoof. how about a rock song by a group called the right brothers titled ‘bush was right!‘ to show america that, well, bush was right. no - it’s really real. here’s the mp3 file. and keith oberman put together a quick video for it too. repeat: it’s not a spoof. they meant to do this. wtf? has andy kaufman returned as a two man act? no - wait, i forgot - it’s real! it’s real!!
it’s friday. time to head down to the arcade and stack up some quarters! i may cut third period to see if my high score is still up. this post is dedicated to the all-powerful 1980s video game nerd champions of stargate, centipede, moon patrol, donkey kong jr, & joust, and donkey kong, defender, tutankham, tempest, & ms pac man. dooode - i think i knew most of those guys. i see vivid fragments of my nerd-laden childhood in the fellas holdin’ down centipede, defender, and joust. scary. all i need is my members only jacket. personally, i put so much money into those machines! no joke. i scanned these photos from an old dynamite magazine i found in some old toy boxes.
from the live science website, this interesting story regarding giant ape pals of early man. neat! from the article, “A gigantic ape standing 10 feet tall and weighing up to 1,200 pounds lived alongside humans for over a million years, according to a new study.” called Gigantopithecus blackii. sounds like bigfoot if you ask me. speaking of bigfoot, did anybody go to this?
trouble waking up? then bring the clocky! “Clocky is an alarm clock in development for people who have trouble getting out of bed. When you hit the snooze button, Clocky will roll off of the nightstand, fall to the floor, and run around the room, searching for a place to hide.” you can also view clocky in action. link from brad - thanks!
okay, weird story time. at Industrial Light and Magic, the ‘M’ in ‘ILM’ may now stand for movement, as in bowel movement. apparently not enough toilets were built into the new, expansive, state of the art Letterman Digital Arts Center to accomodate all the worker bees crammed into ILM’s new sweatshop, i mean, home. no really - it’s quite frustrating. there’s always a wait and sometimes even a line outside of the toilets for those who need to relieve themselves of an episode1 or an episode2. the phrase around the campus to describe the bathroom situation is “the seat is always warm.” magic! so someone decided to take action in the form of a protest poop! i shit you not. here you can read the email from the head of ILM that went out to the entire company - (and then subsequently the whole world) describing this very special edition, err - i mean, event.
feast your eyes on these very cool retro robots made at bennett robot works. they look rad and there are quite a number of robots to look at! made by gordon bennett out of brooklyn, new york.
you now can take down the empire with a butter knife and some warm toast - no millenium falcon required. witness this 1,000lb butter sculpture of both darth vader and yoda! i don’t know if they were sculpted back to back to economically save on butter or to artistically convey the ying & yang. but i do know that’s a lot of butter. these were sculpted for the Tulsa State Fair in Oklahoma. link found via a welsh view.
dark photo of graphs chronicling 30 months in iraq. sad but accurate. soldiers still have to buy their own body armor. disgusting. but hey, i may be off track. when it comes to honestly and concern for this country, dick cheney is someone america can totally trust. right?