from the moderated comments
Well, Fuck me… your still as stupid as before.
Misery Bear Goes to Work
Thanks, Jenny.
The entire series is pretty great/sad, especially Misery Bear: Dawn of the Ted.
tweet of the day
The Oracle
Dear Google,
How are you? I am fine. I have a couple of queries, so back the hell off with the auto-fill answers for right now, okay?
So, seriously, how do you know so much? If I could access useless information as quickly as you do, I would get totally laid. Lightning-quick responses to trivia questions are an absolute panty-dropper—everybody understands that women can’t resist a guy who can do that.
I Thought All Was Lost…
Danny and I were watching a movie this afternoon. I jumped over the back of the couch to retrieve my pillow, turned around and toppled my cocktail over the laptop. The glass broke on the floor, ice cubes laying over my keyboard sitting next to the arm of the couch. Danny rushed the laptop up to the hair-dryer as I mopped up the floor. A few hours ago, after, the laptop would not start up. I was trying to use his netbook and feeling really unhappy about it, it not having all my stuff on it. At worst, I pictured the laptop at the spa the next few days. But just now I thought, “I’ll try it once more.” Here I am! I guess a few more hours drying time made the difference.
TG! TG, almighty!
headline of the day
Naked Man Rescued from Missouri River Wanted to Float to Library of Congress
Milton Glaser on the fear of failure
(via Ali Douglass)
Ask a law librarian
Homely old black woman, very drunk and very crazy: “Listen very carefully. I am on a secret mission for President Obama. I have a patent that will save the U.S. economy. I need to fax it to the Treasury Department. Can you give me a dollar to do that?”
headline of the day
Man gets sick benefits for heavy metal addiction
I am a cat lover and I love to run
This woman loves cats. She tells us all about it in her eharmony video. And The Gregory Brothers songified it.
(thanks, Casey)
Deadbeat Diary, 4
It’s a slow day on the internet and I guess that means it’s about damn time I write this (previously on Clusterflock).
I’ve actually been trying to write this for a few weeks now but can’t quite capture exactly how it feels. Cheap metaphors didn’t really work and a factual description fell short of what I want to convey. I tried making the investor into a villain…and the realtor and the government and the bank and myself and the builder and…
The truth is I don’t know how to write about what came next.
Our first offer was in. It was made clear to us that our only option was to accept the offer and wait. We were told not to wait for more and at the same time that the bank would probably decline such a low offer. It was about getting in the system. It was about making our intentions clear.
At this point we were still current on our mortgage. Alicia was still working. And getting in the system seemed important. How long could it take for them to decline our offer?
We waited.
The bank requested bank statements, tax returns, paystubs, a hardship letter…
We waited.
Levi was born.
We waited.
Sometime in late November the Realtor told us the investor wanted some concessions. They wanted us to sign a promissory note and bring cash to closing.
No thanks, we said.
The bank would not approve the offer.
It was time to start over.
I realized later the investor had no incentive to sell. As long as we continued making our payment, the investor continued getting a monthly check. Our mistake, perhaps, was trying to do it right – trying to anticipate the moment we wouldn’t be able to afford our payment and take action before it came to that.
We missed our first payment in November.
from Sheila’s email
A peaceful Saturday morning on Portland’s tree-lined downtown Park Blocks, the sound of a shrill female voice at an angry volume:
“I’M FIFTY-TWO YEARS OLD! THEY CAN’T PUT A WOMAN LIKE ME IN SHOES LIKE THIS!”
. . . repeated ad infinitum.
Go West
Why You Should Watch Filth
I know I’m like a cheerleader for John Waters here on clusterflock, but I really do love the man and I love the way his mind works and what he says. This is one of a series.
I always wanted a brother, and I wish John Waters had been my big brother.
(Thanks to Juanito for tipping me to this.)
where to survive the apocalypse
Property values in a small French village are skyrocketing due to a belief it is the only place that will survive the 2012 apocalypse.
Bugarach, with a population of just 200, has long been considered magical, partly due to what locals claim is an “upside-down mountain” where the top layers of rock are older than the lower ones.
The Internet is awash with myths about the place — that the mountain is surrounded by a magnetic force, that it is the site of a concealed alien base, or even that it contains an underground access to another world.
And now many have seized on it as the ultimate refuge with Doomsday rapidly approaching.
Joyce McKinney calls Pete Ashton
In honor of the impending release of Errol Morris’s Tabloid, I give you Joyce McKinney’s call to Pete Ashton.
[haiku url="http://www.clusterflock.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/joycemckinneycallspeteashton.mp3" title="" graphical="true"]
Update: clusterflock’s visit from Joyce.
The Life Zone
Three women have been kidnapped from abortion clinics and are being held for seven months–until they all give birth. The film, which appears to cut right down the middle, examining the topic from both sides, offers a powerful, anti-abortion climactic twist.
And no, this isn’t satire.
headline of the day
‘Sovereign Citizen’ Opens Fire On Store Because It Ran Out Of Crawfish
headline of the day
Octomom’s fertility doctor has license revoked
tweet of the day
For those who hate musicals…
…you might become a believer. So certainly NSFW.
Adam Curtis, It Felt Like a Kiss
Sheila suggested I check out documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis’s found footage montage, It Felt Like a Kiss. A collaboration between Curtis and improvised theater company Punchdrunk, I’m not quite sure what the immersive experience would have been like, but I have rounded up the various pieces of it available on YouTube, and if you are interested — you’ll only need to watch a few minutes to know if it’s right for you — you can take a look.
Here is what the Guardian’s Charlie Brooker had to say:
One particular segment, set to River Deep, Mountain High, feels like being repeatedly stung on the mind by a hallucinogenic jellyfish while inhaling huge clouds of history through a pipe. The marriage of Phil Spector’s wall of sound and Curtis’s wall of images is so perfect, so strange and striking, it jangled around my head for hours afterward. And I only saw it in a tiny window on an Apple Mac, in a corner of Curtis’s tape-strewn “lair” at BBC Television Centre. God knows what it’ll be like on a big screen as part of a live-action, funhouse-style experience. It’ll probably kill people.
Everything Tracy Jordan Said Season 5
Oh no! I missed it. Do it again:
Episode 3
-That’s Tracy Jordan spelled backwards.
-Don’t worry about it, Jacky D, I’m on it. Call Griz. I need someone around me who’s not just a yes man.
-So, what do we want to see on TV? I personally love cop shows. I can’t wait for Law and Order to start back up.
-Why? It was a tent pole. A tent pole!
-I’d like to see that incorporated in to your re-write. OK, meeting over.
-The only thing that worked in the read through was the dog.
-Good, and there’s a lot of buzz. Can you hear it, too? Or is my tinnitus acting up. Hey, that food is for DotCom Productions only. TGS’s food is backstage.
-Yo, Jacky D. I had dinner with Don Imus last night. He told the following joke…
-And thank you, Representative. What you’re doing is very important. I can assure you that NBC is committed to making diversity, a priority. Then just walk away, and don’t try to kiss her, Tracy. And don’t say that last part.
-I’ll kill you, white devil.
-I’m cutting that fat cracker’s head off.
-Yes! Great fix, Griz.
‘Grob’s research supports an earlier study conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins that found that 60 percent of subjects who took psilocybin in a controlled experiment later called the experience one of the five most personally meaningful and spiritually significant of their lives’
Another example in the growing body of literature on hallucinogens and the alleviation of psychological trauma:
Grob distinguished between psilocybin and standard issue antidepressants, which he said tend to dampen or suppress psychological problems without necessarily curing them. “The response rates among people with terminal cancer to conventional medications that target symptoms of anxiety and depression are not that impressive,” he said. “Psilocybin is an entirely different mechanism. It has the potential to facilitate what’s been called a psycho-spiritual epiphany.
“And it’s important to emphasize that psilocybin may only need to be administered once within the context of ongoing psychotherapy, whereas conventional medications are generally used daily for weeks, months, even years.”
Previously, on clusterflock:
Psilocybin
ibogaine for drug addiction
“It can be painful, and you can suffer, but it can also be intensely beautiful and enlightening beyond words”
if/then
Cinema Komunisto
From Cinema Komunisto, a documentary about the Yugoslav film industry. Directed by Mila Turajlic.
