Weekly Picture 112
Man Sitting, Austin, TX, 3.16.2008
dear clusterflock
Stranded on a plane in Oklahoma City. Hi, Brandon.
Geert Wilders’ Fitna Movie: Bill O’Reilly Declares Jihad
Amsterdam, The Netherlands — Controversial far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders’ provocative dissertation Fitna hit the Internet March 27. Even before the seventeen-minute film’s release, protests erupted due to the incendiary subject matter contained within.
The movie is a documentary-style exposé of American trash-journalist Bill O’Reilly’s militant calls for violent demonstrations and reprisals against “unbelievers” who dare to oppose his dogma.
George Bush is Greeted Warmly at the Nationals Season Opener
He really did pity that fool.
Thus saith, Mr. T:
Somebody told the doctors I was in town, so they called me down there. I closed the curtains and prayed. Then, as I was walking down the hall, the kid suddenly came out of the coma and hollered out.
That was my supernatural moment.
Typography
speaking of chili
Everyone has a ’secret’ ingredient in their chili recipe, what’s yours?
I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.
‘tsure is quiet in here today
Be well and happy, y’all.
Tonight, At the Pit…
From a collection of ‘Gig Posters.’
via Coudal
Sunday Senryu
Hanna-Barbera
taught me all I need to know
mice are immortal
truck stops, climate change, and unintended consequences
Carl’s Corner, Texas, population 134, occupies a unique place in the history of climate change. Founded by the owner of a local truck stop in 1984, the establishment of the little municipality was a legal sleight of hand to enable liquor sales in an otherwise dry county. The truck stop aspired to serve truckers as an oasis on the hot, tedious runs between Dallas and Austin. A woman named “Treasure Chest” called out to the truckers on their CB radios to come have a drink, a soak in the swimming pool, a visit to the girlie bar… all of the delights a tired, thirsty trucker might want. Somewhere along the way, though, Carl’s Corner took an interesting turn.
Iwase Yoshiyuki
(via Squidocto of Muss My Hair)
solitary bees, 14
Do you like the way the water tastes? It’s kind of sweet, I think. It comes from a well on the property. I’ve heard from people that water with lead in it has a sweetness to it. I can turn the television on if you want or we can sit here quietly. When you’re ready to say something I’d be interested in hearing you talk.
Neverland Flickr Photos
(click the picture for more)
two of my favorite things
Eddie Izzard and Legos:
Dream Song 50
Clusterflock: Creator, practitioner, or appreciator?
When it comes to art? Whatever the form. Like with music…one, with natural talent or with learning, creates it. One can play / sing it, if one learns the code. One can listen and understand the piece played whether or not they have the code in their bag of tricks.
design coding
SEO rapper m0serious explains best practices in web design. See the other offerings on his YouTube Channel for advice on linking, paid search, and social media.
(via)
Black Box Errand
Today I had occasion to recall an errand I undertook for a Chicago friend a dozen years ago. My friend: a musician in hock up to his eyeballs on account of — well, you know the kind of guy. A ruby stylus set in a cartridge that cost him $17K. Black-box equipment — no manufacturers’ logos — just sleek tech-noir boxes adorned with two toggle switches each, max. Anyway. he ran into problems with one of his black boxes (the pre-sub-capacitor that connected to the knee-bone of the back-up woofer, I think it was), and the Only Person in the World who could make it right worked out of a basement in Garland, Texas. So I hauled the black box down to Texas one Christmas and drove way the fuck to some suburban block in Garland. It’s mid-afternoon, I knock on the door, and no sooner has the Wizard of Garland opened his door an inch and a half than he asks me, “You’re not wearing perfume, are you?” No preliminaries. No opportunity, really, to sniff the air and detect any whiff of perfume. I assured him that I wasn’t; he opened the door another few inches and added, “Because I have a glass lung.”
It was only after I’d handed over the black box, chatted a bit, and bade him farewell that it occurred to me he’d probably said, “Collapsed lung.”
The Watering Hole
The commentary by the peanut gallery is almost as fun as the actual video. (via my roommate)
Tom Waits– Best Tango Ever
The part I like best, with the hard tango, starts at about the three minute mark in this clip. I have the whole 1981 concert (Montreal Fest) on a grainy old vhs tape, but a former student sent me this link (thanks Jordan).
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEyu-kX1C_s[/youtube]
A Pre-Edison Recording from 1860
Said recording of Au Clair de la Lune, the voice is singing, “Au clair de la lune, Pierrot répondit”:
Here is a clear snippet of the tune dated in the early 1900s:
The recording, however, is not in the least bit usual, the NY Times writes:
It was made, the researchers say, on April 9, 1860, on a phonautograph, a machine designed to record sounds visually, not to play them back. But the phonautograph recording, or phonautogram, was made playable — converted from squiggles on paper to sound — by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.
(Not) Born Yesterday
The last thing I read Thursday night was India’s Craigslist post; the first thing I read this morning was an emailed request from a friend, a filmmaker and video artist based in New Orleans. Pinning his hopes on a Chicago Craigslist post, he hopes to trade a computer monitor for a video deck and wrote to ask whether, if he ships the monitor to me here in northern Illinois, I’ll execute the trade with the Chicago dude.
I told my friend I’d act as his mule, but I warned him that he’d better not set me up to walk into a trap. ‘Cause if he’s looking to hand me over to white slavers, he needs to know that I am not gun-shy and that over the years I have learned how to shoot. I wasn’t born yesterday.
solitary bees, 13
You would have liked my mother, I think. She would have gotten along with you. Are you through with that? Do you want to say something?
The Atomic Patent
While riding to work this morning I heard this curious story on NPR:
The U.S. atomic bomb was such a secret, scientists and engineers sometimes talked in code. It was the Manhattan Project, not “The Atomic Bomb Project.” Plutonium was referred to as “copper,” and the bomb itself as “the gadget.”
But at the same time, scientists and engineers were furiously filing secret patent applications that described many of the parts in exquisite detail. Those patents sat not behind the fences at Los Alamos, but in a vault at the U.S. Patent Office.
