mistakes in branding
What do you get when Russian energy company Gazprom invests in a joint venture with Nigeria’s state run NNPC?
The new firm, to be called Nigaz, is set to build refineries, pipelines and gas power stations in Nigeria.
these are not the droids you’re looking for
A former mayor found sitting naked and holding a beer at a Rabun County campsite told police he wasn’t the same naked man seen walking around earlier.
Collecting
Daryl’s remembery, sparked by Phil’s post, really got me. It really got me. Now.
Religious views: I got a million of ‘em.
So me and a friend from the wayback days had plugged back in thanks to The Google and to clusterflock and we had emailed for a while and then it dropped off but then I got one of them Facebook requests.
Let’s be friends. We know we’re friends, but let’s make it official. Like one of them civil unions or gay marriages.
(Damn Facebook. I love it. I hate it. I love it. I hate it. My sister. My daughter. My sister. My daughter.)
Eh, well, here is something I really like from what they call his profile.
Religious views: I got a million of ‘em.
(A gloss for the youngsters: This is a reference to a catchphrase associated with the American pianist, actor, comedian, composer, and singer Jimmy Durante, who was old before my time.)
A Rat’s Nest of Hippies
Anonymous, courtesy of the Seattle Municipal Archives.
Seattle Parks Department employees, 1955
Says the Seattle Municipal Archives, “We have no idea what’s going on here. Caption contest, anyone?”
assault with cheetos x 2
Googling more information on this:
Authorities said a couple got into a fight using Cheetos. The Bedford County Sheriff’s Department said a 40-year-old man and 44-year-old woman became involved in a ‘verbal altercation.’ Somehow, the orange puffy snacks were used in the assault.
Led to this:
Twenty-two-year-old Patrick Hamman was arrested after the bag of cheesy chips hit his father, Michael Hamman, in the face.
Police said the bag hit his father’s glasses, causing a cut to the bridge of his nose.
The police report said — quote— “Michael’s T-shirt was also covered in Cheeto dust.”
For Deron
thanks to Shamone, sorry, Simone for screenshot.
Terry thought of something that Ray Davies had said recently . . .
. . . about how he felt like sobbing his heart out whenever he looked at anyone’s record collection, because it was just so moving to see that personal soundtrack laid out before you, naked and open and fading with the years, because if you cared about this kind of thing then it was all there among the scratched vinyl and the cracked gatefold sleeves, as plain as could be, all the hopes and yearnings of someone’s private universe, and everything that a young heart could possibly want or need or yearn for.
Tony Parsons – Stories We Could Tell
View from the ISS
Roads and circular fields in the desert in Egypt.
this just in
A woman sentenced to five years in prison for using a stun gun on a high school cheerleading sponsor called the ruling unfair as she was led to jail in handcuffs.
“I love my children, my family, my friends. I don’t deserve this,” LeShawn Cathlene Fisher said after sentencing Wednesday, tears streaming down her face.
Pentax Optio W80
The PENTAX Optio W80’s waterproof design withstands depths of up to 16 feet (5 meters) to protect from rain and spills, as well as allowing full underwater photos and video for up to two hours. On dry land, the rugged, shockproof design protects against drops of up to 3.3 feet to protect the camera from hard use and occasional spills.
this just in (eight days ago)
A jury has found Julie Ann Bell not guilty of conspiring to attack a Putnam City cheerleading sponsor with a stun gun.
What is Transhumanism?
Kyle Munkittrick wrote to Marginal Revolution about the three characteristics that would signal a shift to transhumanism. If I excerpt any part of it, it will distort the scope of the argument, so better to read it in whole.
Cheerleading
The most dangerous sport in America.
quote out of context
“Does the federal government really need to know our phone numbers?” she asked. “Do they really need to know, like you said, the date and time that we leave mental stability?”
State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations
Legislators in Rhode Island are attempting to shorten its official name to disassociate it from a history of slavery.
Banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his unorthodox religious views, minister Roger Williams set out in 1636 and settled at the northern tip of Narragansett Bay, which he called Providence Plantations. Williams founded the first Baptist church in America and became famous for embracing the separation of church and state, a legal principle enshrined in the Bill of Rights a century later.
Other settlers made their homes in modern-day Portsmouth and Newport on Aquidneck Island, then known as the Isle of Rhodes.
In 1663, English King Charles II granted a royal charter joining all the settlements into a single colony called “The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.” The name stuck. Rhode Island used that royal charter as its governing document until 1843.
Opponents of the name charge argue that “plantations” was used at the time to describe any farming settlements, regardless of slavery.
Rhode Island merchants did, however, make their fortunes off the slave trade. Slaves helped construct Brown University in Providence, and a prominent slave trader paid half the cost of its first library.
Haruto Hoshi Gallery
Scream
Andrew Spitz recorded the screams of bungee jumpers. The result is pretty amusing.
Do Earwigs Crawl in People’s Ears and Bore into Their Brains?
No. But, thanks to the unending media coverage of Michael Jackson’s unfortunate death, the first few riffs of Thriller, have done just that. Why oh why am I hearing the Kingston Trio version?
June 26, 1498
The emperor of China patents the toothbrush: hogback bristles set into a piece of bone or bamboo. Dental hygiene takes a step up.
How — or if — you cleaned your teeth before this time depended on culture and class. The chew stick, or chewing stick or toothstick, was a piece of twig. One could chew one end of the stick until it was quite frayed and then use the frayed end to brush and scrape one’s teeth.
If you had a knife handy, you could carve the other end of the stick to a sharp point to pick at the larger specks of oral detritus. And if the twig came from an aromatic tree or shrub, all the better, because you got some breath freshener in the bargain.
Dear clusterflock: Mastic ambrosia
Ephemeral and insubstantial food of the gods.
“It makes you immortal,” says Flickr contributor ghostbore of this exquisite confection.
Is there an almost extinct treat that drives you mad with desire and longing?
Will he ever return?
Maybe, like the unfortunate Charlie of the Kingston Trio’s “M.T.A.”, Jesus is riding forever ‘neath the streets of Boston.
And he will never return.
Update: Everything you might want to know (and more) about the saga of Charlie and the M.T.A. may be found here.
The Jesus Question
You’re cute
Or, alternatively, I love you.
[http://www.clusterflock.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Lloyd.mp3] Download
A snippet of Lloyd’s reflections from yesterday evening on the porch.
