HELLO!

MizBubs frequently gets forwarded emails from a friend of hers at work. You know what I'm talking about--heartwarming stuff like cute pictures of dogs that adopt fawns , or of Finnegan the squirrel pup, or natural oddities like frozen landscapes, and jokes like the elephant and the camel.

Sometimes MizBubs forwards them on to me, and they're usually a welcome diversion for a few moments.

This morning was different.

This morning she opened this email:

Subject: [Fwd: [Fwd: FW: Fwd: FW: oh no.... mom went to another of Marcos' tatoo parties]]

The email had been forwarded more than 5 or 6 times, and it took a lot of scrolling. A lot of scrolling, to get to the woman you see pictured here. I have placed a discreet black square on this photo to make it family-friendly. Because seeing a bare, tattooed septuagenarian breast is only offensive if you can also see its pierced nipple, right?

This is one of the mildest pictures in the series. Granny appears in a variety of red and black vinyl outfits, looking like, in the words of my oldest daughter, "a ho'd-up Betty White." Toward the end of the series she displays a, uh, unique set of piercings.

You can see the rest of the pictures here. They are most definitely not safe for work.

Have fun!

Friday Random Ten

Lately I've seen folks like Dale and Johnny Yen give some commentary on their shuffle choices, instead of merely throwing out ten random song titles. Dale has even been generous enough to provide the tunes themselves, through the wonders of his data bus.

There are four of us here at the compound using iTunes on the computer, so a lot of these random ten lists don't just reflect my tastes--it's really more of a glimpse of what the soundtrack to our family life sounds like.

Rains—Jim Edgar & the Roadrunners

This is one of mine, from a collection called "Rockabilly Gold."

Sweet Rockin' Baby—Sonny West

Another one of mine from the excellent Rhino collection "Rockin' Bones."

La valse d'Amelie—Yann Tiersen

This belongs to my youngest, from the soundtrack to her favorite movie Amelie. For a while now she's been on a tear where she listens almost exclusively to old and/or foreign language music. It's really cool to hear Edith Piaf or Fats Waller coming from her room.

Peace in the Valley—Johnny Cash

This was a gift to me from MizBubs' family. It's from a boxed set: The Essential Johnny Cash 1955-1983.

Pretty Boy Floyd—Woody Guthrie

MizBubs loves Woody Guthrie. This track is from a 3-disc set titled This Machine Kills Fascists.

Tainted Love—Marilyn Manson

Here we see the influence of our oldest daughter. She's listed as a contributor to this blog, and I'd love to see her write more (she's appeared as a Tromette at some horror conventions and goes to lots of cool shows that we don't have time to go see) but she tells me she has "too much of a real life" to spend time blogging. Ouch.

Ballade Von Der Sexuellen Horigkeit—Kurt Weill

I found this version of the Three Penny Opera for my youngest. It doesn't get much play because, in her words, "it sounds too new." She prefers older recordings that have some hiss and pop to them; she's especially fond of Bertholt Brecht singing "Mac the Knife" in German on a collection titled September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weill.

Ever Fallen In Love? --The Buzzcocks

From Singles Going Steady. I can't remember if I got this on CD to replace old vinyl, or if our eldest got this as part of her ongoing quest to listen to all of our old favorites from the late 70's and early 80's.

Abba Zabba—Captain Beefheart

This is a recent acquisition of mine. I've never listened to an entire Captain Beefheart album, so I figured the reissue of Safe as Milk would be a good place to start.

Stompin' The Bug—Fats Waller

Another one from our youngest. This is off the collection Young Fats at the Organ. She got this after she saw Eraserhead, and wanted some of the soundtrack music.

Now, if you want some more fun, go see Splotchy's take on the Friday Random Ten. I'll use just these four words as a teaser: pussy pussy pussy marijuana.

I had opinions that didn't matter

I had a brain that felt like pancake batter

I got a backyard
With nothing in it
Except a stick, a dog
And a box with something in it...

This is your brain on country music.

Psych Evaluation Ordered For Supernaw

In a pretrial hearing, Supernaw, 46, listed off police agencies that he said had beaten him to ruin his recording career and his chances at a baseball career.

"It has been a political economic conspiracy, and I have proved it time and time and time again," he told Brazos County Court Judge Jim Locke. Supernaw said the abuse started when he was "held hostage in Paris" in a "mentally retarded home for terrorists" for two weeks in 2002.

Country singer Doug Supernaw also claimed that he was a "test monkey" to see if someone could smoke marijuana and play baseball at the same time.

I don't know about you, but I don't think there's anything in the world, really, that's cooler than a smoking monkey. Except, as I've said before, a smoking monkey wearing a fez. Or a cowboy hat. A big cowboy hat.

**special thanks to Dream City Bureau Chief Bawb the Revelator

Let's Make a Sandwich!

"Part of the trick to entertaining unexpected guests, is keeping on hand certain generally useful foods. One of these is cheese of an easy melting type...Mother is a great believer in the aesthetic value of parsley..."

Tagged?!?

Bubs tagged me! So, this is Mizbubs, in expository mode.

A- Available or Single?

Even when I was single, I was never truly "available" to anyone but Bubs.

B- Best Friend?

Bubs, my daughters Nora and Hannah, my sister Kate, my niece Terra. It's all about family...

C- Cake or Pie?

Totally pie. You can put anything, sweet or savory in a pie, and it's fabulous. Even a moose turd, right Dad?

D- Drink of Choice?

We're talking alcohol here, right? C'mon, you know we are! Beer. Really good beer. Dark and rich, malty with a creamy head in the winter. Paler, hoppy, but still full-bodied in the summer...

E- Essential Item?

I know it sounds ingenuous, but I'm not much for essential items. Ask Bubs. Ask my kids how I react when a beautiful vase, piece of china, etc. is broken. I like to be warm, dry and well-fed, but I have low standards for all of those things.

F- Favorite Color?

Green.

G- Gummi Bears or worms?

Who can resist sour gummi worms slithering down your throat?

H- Hometown?

Chicago. I'm from an area that was called Hollywood Park when I was a kid. Now I think it's called Peterson Park for the park that used to be a tuberculosis sanitarium. I was only in grammar school, but I cried when Mayor Daley died.

I- Indulgence?

Undeserved self-pity. And chocolate, of course.

J- January or February?

February. If I make it to my birthday (February 28), the rest of the year is a piece of cake!

K- Kids?

Yes, thank god. If life were a sci-fi novel, Bubs and I would've been designated breeders. We breed easily, and produce a superior product.

L- Life is incomplete without?

Family.

M- Marriage date?

June 21, 1986. Twenty-one calendar years, and yet I haven't aged a day...

N- Number of siblings?

Oh, this can get complicated! Three much older brothers on my mothers side, one much younger sister on my fathers side. I also have a nephew and niece who are near my age, and endured much of the same childhood trauma I did. How many does that make?

O- Oranges or apples?

Apples, but fruit nirvana for me is a perfect, sweet/tart, juice-running-down-your-chin plum.

P- Phobias/fears?

Heights. Especially standing at the top of a flight of stairs. Don't ask.

Q- Favorite Quote?

"Take it easy, but take it." Woody Guthrie

R- Reasons to smile?

Family.

S- Season?

Fall. I would love ten months of October, punctuated by July and December.

T- Tag 3 people

No, it's not in my nature to tag anyone.

U- Unknown fact about me

I'm a repressed girly-girl.

V- Vegetable you hate?

I have learned there are no bad vegetables, only bad methods of preparation. What made my mother think boiled carrots and celery would be good?

W- Worst habit?

Not really listening.

X- X-rays you've had?

Chest (bike injury as a kid), left ankle (snapped the tendons jumping over a puddle), right ankle (slipped on ice down the stairs), MRI's of neck for herniated disk, obligatory mammogram when I turned 40.

Y- Your favorite foods?

Hmmm, I really like food....

Z- Zodiac?

OK, it's often accurate, but isn't that how it's written?

The Future, the way it used to be: The Bell Rocket Belt

When people think of the future the way it used to be, they almost always think of the rocket belt. Specifically, the Bell Rocket Belt. Pictured to the right is the Bell Rocket Belt Traveling Team, relaxing poolside in Williamsburg, VA. The inventor of the Rocket Belt, Wendell Moore, is the fellow leaning on the umbrella stand.

The US Army Transportation Research Command and the press got their first look at the Rocket Belt at Fort Eustis, Virginia, on June 8, 1961.

Who got to fly this masterpiece? Hal Graham. Hal Graham, who in my book is one of the 10 coolest human beings in all of history, has a fascinating website devoted to the Rocket Belt.

Here's a link to the official US Army Transportation Museum page dedicated to the Rocket Belt.
Click here to see a cool picture of another individual flying machine concept, the solar copter imagined in 1957.

Now enjoy the educational video.

What percentile are you?

Believe it or not, my life is not all joy and dope fiends and sex perverts and circus clowns and alligators. Nope. Some times I try and focus on serious topics, like the economic health of our great nation. And when I do focus long enough to read stories like this one in the Boston Globe, my head hurts.

The chart at right is from the March 28 Economic Snapshots page at the Economic Policy Institute. Here's the title:

Recent income gains went to those with highest income. Here's an excerpt:

The economy expanded in 2005, with gross domestic product and productivity both posting solid gains (3.2% and 2.1%, respectively). Yet, as shown in the chart ..., real market income (i.e., income aside from government transfers) actually fell slightly (-0.6%) for those in the bottom 90% of the income scale.

Income growth for households within the 90-95th percentile was moderate in 2005, up 2.2%. But higher income households did much better. In fact, income growth among the top half of the top 1%—a group whose average annual income is already $1.8 million—was up another 16% in 2005 alone.

So, in other words, wealth distribution in this country has come to resemble Bruce Campbell's pitch in those Old Spice ads:

If you have it, you don't need it. If you need it, you don't have it. If you have it, you need more of it. If you have more of it, you don't need less of it. You need it to get it. And you certainly need it to get more of it. But if you don't already have any of it to begin with, you can't get any of it to get started...

Look around: a million Americans went bankrupt as a result of medical problems in 2004, and half of all bankruptcies in this nation are due to medical issues. Household debt continues to rise.

The subprime lending market is falling apart, having suckered millions of people into buying houses they couldn't really afford, or borrowing against the paper value of their homes.

I got an email from my friend Bawb the Revelator under the heading "And from the 'I GOT MINE, UP YOURS' desk". That caught my eye, and I opened it to find this L.A. Times story about the latest business failure:

Subprime lender New Century files for bankruptcy, fires 3,200 people

You know, you just know, that for those 3,200 drones who are now out of work, and all those thousands of foreclosures and bankruptcies, that there were quite a few people (maybe that top 1 percent?) who made out like bandits.

It seems to me that for the last 7 years there's been a conscious effort to ransack the middle of this country to enrich a handful of cronies and greedheads at the top. Enron, the subcontracting of the war in Iraq, the bungling horrors of Katrina--if we thought about it we could probably name even more examples of that predator mindset, the one that says maximize profit and f*ck the consequences. This is what happens when you have a president who's quite open about looking out for that top 1%, and doesn't care at all about the bottom 90.

Get Splotchy

I just found out that someone in Miz Bubs' extended family has started up a blog:

I, Splotchy

He's only got two entries so far, but it's clear he plans on tackling all the important issues. One of his posts explores the connections between bee colony collapse and song titles, and the other addresses one of our favorite compound topics: the relative merits of various retail outlets in the event of zombie attack. I expect that if he puts his mind to it, he could probably replace me as the world's foremost narcozoologist.

Mr. Splotchy has one of the most phenomenal and extensive music collections I've ever seen, and he's a wealth of odd pop culture information. He's responsible for my newfound love of Tropicalia, which I've been listening to a lot of lately. While you're waiting for him to put up more material, go check out his loving tribute to Lincoln Avenue hooker motels.

Take my word on this--he bears watching.

Clown O' The Week: Spring Break Edition

This magazine has valuable "tips for travelers abroad."

I imagine the first tip is, don't leave your daughter unattended.

A B C

I've been tagged by both Katie Schwartz and Johnny Yen, and if it's rude to ignore a tag, how rude would it be to ignore two? I had no choice but to comply:

A- Available or Single?

-Available nearly 24 hours a day, 7 days a week--but only to MizBubs.

B- Best Friend?

-I've got a few good friends, but I've been unbelievably lucky to marry my best friend. Sounds hokey, doesn't it? But it's true.

C- Cake or Pie?

-PIE! Sweet potato pie, pecan pie, lemon chess pie, strawberry rhubarb pie, apple pie...I could go on about pie like Forrest Gump about shrimp.

D- Drink of Choice?

-Water, lots of it. Followed closely by strong coffee, bourbon, sweet tea and nearly anything served in a festive tiki mug.

E- Essential Item?

-A gun and a smile.

F- Favorite Color?

-Black

G- Gummi Bears or worms?

-Probably the worms, if they're the really tart/sour kind.

H- Hometown?

-Louisville, Kentucky. I miss the south, and I can't wait to move somewhere below the Mason- Dixon line in the next few years.

I- Indulgence?

-My entire life is one long indulgence. I can't even begin to list them.

J- January or February?

-January, I get to rest up from the holidays, it's a new year and I have a whole new crop of vacation days to use.

K- Kids?

-Two daughters, both fine young women. I spend my time alternating between pride at how wonderful they've grown to be, and sadness that they increasingly have very full lives away from their parents, thank you.

L- Life is incomplete without?

-Adventures and bold failures.

M- Marriage date?

-June 21, the summer solstice.

N- Number of siblings?

-Two brothers. I am the oldest.

O- Oranges or apples?

-Apples. You can bake them in a pie, and one of the best smells in the world is apples frying in butter with some bourbon and cinnamon.

P- Phobias/fears?

-Heights and falling, which is why I force myself to go on roller coasters.

Q- Favorite Quote?

”Only a country as mad as ours could be such a roaring success.”

-Norman Mailer, “Tough Guys Don't Dance”

R- Reasons to smile?

-Getting over on the Man.

S- Season?

-Summertime, and the living is easy.

T- Tag 3 people

-Miz Bubs, and anyone else with time to kill.

U- Unknown fact about me

-I am an art school dropout.

V- Vegetable you hate?

-None I can think of. Canned wax beans might come close.

W- Worst habit?

-Anger, procrastination, lack of follow-through, gluttony, sloth, profligacy.

X- X-rays you've had?

-Do MRI's and other imaging count? Dental, leg (broken fibula), hand (fractured 5^th metacarpal), knees, and abdomen.

Y- Your favorite foods?

-Biscuits and sausage gravy, gumbo, pie, barbecue (PORK, not beef!), raw oysters, any hand- rolled sushi, damn near any kind of pasta, noodle or dumpling, whether it's Italian or Asian, anything soaked in butter, fried, heavily seasoned with garlic or bacon.

Z- Zodiac?

-Read the book, haven't seen the movie. I heard it's good.

Sweet Dreams

Ignore the Christmas tree, and the snow in the background through the window. Just dig the understated cool and relax...

I apologize in advance

I was looking through my clown collection for something disturbing to kick off the weekend. This is what I came up with:

Ten Friday Randoms

Sentimental Journey—Esquivel

Love Will Tear Us Apart—Nouvelle Vague

Eat My Words—Marti Brom

La Julie Jolie—Edith Piaf

What Keeps Mankind Alive—William Burroughs

Fade Together—Franz Ferdinand

Sunglasses After Dark—Dwight Pullen

I Ain't Got Nobody—Fats Waller

Parque Industrial—Caetano Veloso

The Winner Takes it All—Abba

And you thought you had a bad day at work...

Yes indeedy, no matter how bad your day at work might be, it could probably be worse:

Man's penis caught in saw mill

TOM ZED, POLICE REPORTER

March 29, 2007 03:00pm

Article from:

A WORKER was injured this afternoon when his penis became caught in machinery at a northern suburbs saw mill.

The man, 30, was working at the Parafield Gardens Saw Mill at about 1.50pm when his crotch and penis became caught in the chain of a piece of machinery.

He was taken to the Royal Adelaide Hospital. It is believed his injuries are not life threatening but he initially suffered uncontrollable bleeding.

A company spokesman said the man's injuries were not serious.

"He got caught in the log moving mechanism on one of the saws," he said.

Freak of the week

This week's Freak of the Week goes to 24 year old Garth M. Flaherty.

Mr. Flaherty was caught with 93 pounds of women's panties and bras, and was charged with multiple counts of burglary and theft. Police were able to link Mr. Flaherty to specific items of underwear "based on the unique descriptions from a couple of women" according to the story. The police are unsure if the stolen undies will be returned when the case is disposed of; here's a quote from Commander Tennant:

"Would you really want them back?" he asked. "I would say not."

First runner-up goes to an unknown Michigan woman, identified only as "Melissa", who walked into a frat house during dinner, stripped naked and masturbated. She left before the police arrived, presumably to return home to feed her pet caimans and ferrets.

Melissa didn't win first place because, according to the article, she appeared to be under the influence of drugs. Award-winning freak behavior should be the result of dark compulsions only dimly understood by the freak, not the result of some cheap high.

And now it begins

What a difference a little congressional oversight makes. Fresh from the Bloomberg.com website:

Gonzales Aide to Take Fifth About Prosecutor Firings

By James Rowley

March 26 (Bloomberg) -- An aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will invoke her constitutional right to refuse to testify before a Senate panel investigating the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, her lawyer told the committee.

Monica Goodling, who helped coordinate the dismissals as the attorney general's White House liaison, will invoke her Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination, her lawyer said in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee. She will refuse to be interviewed by committee lawyers and decline an invitation to testify at a public hearing, said attorney John M. Dowd, citing the ``legally perilous'' environment of congressional probes.

The Future, the way it used to be!

This is the first installment of a new feature here at the compound:

The Future, the way it used to be!

Today we feature the Ampex home videotape recording unit, featured in a 1966 newspaper story. Ampex also had a fancy model that came as part of a massive console television. The console model came with a pert blonde who would sit and stare longingly at the screen for hours on end.

The portable home model shown above was a huge improvement over the 1956 model pictured here.

Sunday morning coffee

The big news is that we spent the better part of Saturday afternoon dealing with dog fur.

Rio is a wonderful Shepherd/Husky/Rottweiller mix; we adopted her from some of MizBubs' family who couldn't keep her any more. I love having a big dog around again (our standard poodle Dougal MacDuff died a year ago in February) and she gets along great with our two terriers.

Anyway, now that spring is here Rio is in full shed. We've never owned a big shedding dog and I'm amazed at how much the fur flies. The good news is that our house is, oddly enough, cleaner since we've had her, because we have to vacuum and dust more often. The plucky and industrious MizBubs has taken on the majority of the grooming chores and she's got a heck of a way with that metal comb. Here's the output of a half hour of grooming:


Nature and human frailty continue to vex us. Tuesday was a beautiful day in the Chicagoland area, and my day started great. MizBubs and I both had the day off, we got to laze in bed like people on the welfare, and then I ran 3 miles and exorcised a week's worth of tension. Late that afternoon a nagging little cough started, and by early Wednesday morning I was doing my best Doc Holiday impersonation, feverish and hacking. Damned illness used up the rest of my days off. (Side note: I watched Gunfight at the OK Corral on cable while recuperating, which explains the Doc Holiday reference. Kirk Douglas looked damn good as a gunslinger dying of tuberculosis, but what really struck me was the fine quality of his pomade. I've got some good hair, but I would not have looked nearly as good as Kirk Douglas if I'd had to get in a gunfight this week.)

I went back to work Friday, God knows why, and after making it through the day decided to use some comp time and take this weekend off. Now our youngest is sick, sicker than I was, and having one sick kid and a semi-sick grownup alters reality to the point that you can feel like you've really accomplished something, as a household, because you cleaned up the dog fur.

There's always an upside, though--sometimes you're even lucky enough to see it. We got to catch up on some movie watching this weekend, a rare treat for all of us to be in one place for so long. We watched Idiocracy (it had its moments, but was no Office Space), The Prestige, Stranger Than Fiction, and The Devil's Backbone. I thought Stranger Than Fiction was surprisingly good, and really sweet, which was nice. Really enjoyed The Prestige, made extra-interesting by the presence of ultra-cool Michael Caine and an odd David Bowie as Nicola Tesla. Finally, The Devil's Backbone. What a good movie. Best ghost story set during the Spanish civil war I've ever seen.

Another benefit of being relatively house-bound is having the opportunity to catch up on some organizing and household paperwork, and boy did I benefit. The thrifty, thoughtful and selfless MizBubs realized, while going through her stuff, that she's racked up some serious thank you points on her credit card, and she's never redeemed any of them. She also told me I needed some new clothes (it's so sweet how she wants me to look nice). The end result? Yours truly is the lucky recipient of a couple of Macy's gift cards. Woot! Yes, I know I said I'd never patronize that store since those New York bastards killed Marshall Field, but I figure it's poor form to refuse a gift from my bride just because I'm angry at corporate America. And I finally had time to fill out the rebate forms for our cell phones, which, at some hopefully not too distant point in the future, will put $200 in our pockets.

Ah, cell phones. I finally have my own cell phone (not the electronic leash provided me by work) and all the girls got rid of their Virgin Mobile service. It had been years since I'd done any cell phone shopping, and back then I found the process of comparing various service plans to be maddening. That's really how MizBubs and the girls ended up with the Virgin Mobile pay-as-you-go phones: none of them were big talkers, and they just needed phones for emergencies. Now we're all busier, and the girls are older, and it was time to look again.

I found this place on the interwebs. Pay attention, because if you ever want to switch services or get a new phone, this place is GREAT:

LetsTalk.com

You enter your zipcode and up pops a list of all the plans available in your area. You're able to go through and compare them side-by-side, without having to bounce around through all the individual carrier's websites. We ended up with a plan from T-Mobile (whose service has been fantastic) and 4 Motorola Razr phones. The phones were free, and after the rebates I'll make money from the deal, and they threw in two Bluetooth headsets for free. And, if it matters to you, LetsTalk.com is an American company, and their call center and customer service is all right here in the US of A.

Good news!

Strindberg and Helium is back! Strindberg and Helium has been around for several years, but most of the site had been inaccessible for the past year or so because of some arrangement with Comedy Central. Now there's no longer any Comedy Central link on the page, and you can once again view all four films.

The films chronicle the interaction between grim Swedish playwright August Strindberg (here's a quote: "When they say Christ descended into Hell, they mean that he descended to earth, this penitentiary, this madhouse and morgue of a world") and a cheerful pink balloon sidekick named Helium.


I think my favorite is Absinthe and Women.