"This Has Been a Sad Week"

I'm reposting this directly from Kirk Douglas' MySpace page. I'm taking such a liberty only because it's so well written I thought it worth sharing.

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=171170276&blogID=497099489

June 26, 2009 - Friday

Tragedies

"This has been a sad week.

"We don't like to think about it, but we all know that someday we will die. But, when someone dies young it makes us think about the preciousness of life.

"I did a movie with Farrah Fawcett in London. What a beautiful girl with a great sense of humor. Michael Jackson gave millions of people all over the world enjoyment. Yes, he had his problems. It's sad to think of such a great talent extinguished when his light was burning so brightly. It makes me think of the people in my profession that have died too young: Steve McQueen, Natalie Wood, Marilyn Monroe. I know the pain of personal tragedy, my son Eric died at 46. When I visit his grave every week I see fresh flowers at the gravesite of Marilyn Monroe (Joe DiMaggio arranged for their delivery every week after her death).

"While we mourn for the deaths of young people like Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, let us think about how precious life is and resolve to make it worthwhile."

Please Choose (A)Tits or (B)Titillation

A few pictures from last weekend at the Fremont Solstice Parade:

Under Washington State’s Indecent Exposure Law public nudity in itself is not illegal. The law specifies that “A person is guilty of indecent exposure if he or she intentionally makes any open and obscene exposure of his or her person or the person of another knowing that such conduct is likely to cause reasonable affront or alarm.” (Also, the city of Seattle doesn't have any laws regulating nudity.)


Meanwhile, that Friday night the club 'El Corazõn' on Capitol Hill was hosting the "Air Sex Championships".

http://www.airsexworldchampionships.com/?page_id=2

"It’s a lot like Air Guitar, but instead of rocking out with an imaginary guitar, you’re making sweet and/or filthy love with an imaginary sex partner.

"The only rules we have are the laws laid down by the state we’re in. Since El Corazõn serves alcohol, you can’t get naked. And since they serve food as well, all orgasms have to be simulated.
Other than that, you’re free to do whatever it takes to impress the judges, the audience in the theater, and the world!"

(Here's some photos from that night's contestants, courtesy of 'The Stranger'):
http://lineout.thestranger.com/lineout/archives/2009/06/22/air-sex-championchips


So in Seattle you can be naked in public as long as it's not for any sexual reason, or you can be as sexual as a fake-orgasm can be, in public, as long as you're fully clothed.
Not exactly sure what that says about us, but I'm sure it says something....

Seriously?

"Scientists Build Anti-Mosquito Laser"
http://www.physorg.com/news156423566.html

"Astrophysicists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory . . . have developed a handheld laser that can locate individual mosquitoes and kill them one by one.
The developers hope that the technology might be used to create a laser barrier around a house or village that could kill or blind the insects.
Alternatively, flying drones equipped with anti-mosquito lasers could track the insects with radar and then sweep the sky with the laser."

Okay, I get the idea of finding new & novel ways of eliminating mosquitoes, and by extension, malaria and other insect-born diseases, but tell me I'm not the only one who finds this idea borderline absurd.

"In experiments, the system could target mosquitoes with a flashlight, and then uses a zoom lens to feed the data to the computer, which fires at the insect. Each time the laser strikes a mosquito, the computer makes a gunshot sound. When the mosquito is hit, it bursts into flame and falls to the ground, and a thin plume of smoke rises."

Really?

"There's some good left in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for."

Pixar grants girl's dying wish to see 'Up'
"Company sent DVD so Huntington Beach girl, 10, could watch it."

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/pixar-up-movie-2468059-home-show

I'm reposting this from Mike's blog because it's the kind of story that shows some of the real power of film. Seriously, go read the whole article. It's also the kinda story that makes me hate humans slightly less.

All the Nabbys Down in Whoville....

From "Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel" by Judith and Neil Morgan:

"When an invitation came from Professor Brewster Ghiselin at the University of Utah to lecture at a ten-day writers' conference at Salt Lake City in July of 1949, Ted [Theodore Geisel] accepted with uncharacteristic alacrity.
The company was lively: the Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov, who had moved to America nine years earlier; a budding American novelist, the forty-year-old Wallace Stegner; and poets William Carlos Williams and John Crowe Ransom."

And this:

"One night the Stegners thirteen-year-old son Page and the Nabokovs' son, Dmitri, fifteen, were late returning from a movie. Nabokov paced the front porch and finally called the police. The boys appeared after eleven, explaining that they had stayed for a second feature and had missed the last streetcar.
Ted had tried to distract Nabokov by drawing a grotesque vacuum cup sucking up a wizened Page Stegner into a machine called the Stegner Junior Reducifier. Forty lears later as a university professor, Page Stegner kept the drawing framed on his wall.
"When Dmitri crashed in flames over a little California sexpot," Wallace Stegner recalled, "Ted was urged to make a Nabokov Junior Reducifier too, but refrained."


During the conference Geisel wrote a butterfly poem for Nabokov (who besides being a novelist & lecturer was also a respected lepidopterist):

'To a Butterfly With Fallen Womb'

No surgic band, no metal truss
is on the market, little cuss,
quite small enough to fit your groin,
to gird your microscopic loin.
You're destined til the day of doom
to tote a badly fallen womb.
But cheer up lass! Don't feel so low.
The damned thing really doesn't show!

And from "Verses and Versions" By Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, edited by Brian Boyd & Stanislav Shvab:

"Years later in 'Horton Hears a Who!' he introduced an incidental "black-bottomed eagle named Vlad Vlad-i-koff" after Vladimir Nabokoff (as Nabokov once spelled his name)."


There really is no point to this blog, I just like the idea of Dr. Seuss and Nabokov meeting and becoming friends, and the thought of a Dr. Seuss character being based (even partly) on old V. N.

Lost in Translation?

I was looking for the Bhutanese phrase for "Thank You" with the idea of being a bit more polite to my friend from Bhutan who works graveyard at 7-11.

Didn't find a translation I could verify, but I did stumble across a site with the following advice (http://www.travelphrases.info/languages/dzongkha.htm):

I can't tell if this counts as 'indicative', 'bizarre', 'suggestive', 'sublime', 'alarming'....
Pinch of each?


"The four essential travel phrases in English:

1) Where is my room?
2) Where is the beach?
3) Where is the bar?
4) Don't touch me there!"


One can only assume the "four essential travel phrases in English" were chosen by regretful revellers returning from some sad 'Spring Break' in Cancun, sporting sunburns, blackouts, and "Girls Gone Wild" t-shirts....

"Daddy, daddy, daddy get up."/"They should have killed me together with my father."

Find it. Watch it.

http://www.shineglobal.org/?page_id=11

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0912599/

"For the past two decades, the children of the Acholi tribe in northern Uganda have been caught in the middle of a horrific war between the country’s leadership and a rebel force, the Lord’s Resistance Army.
But when the camp’s primary school unexpectedly wins a regional music competition, the opportunity to compete nationally in Kampala brings with it the forgotten chance to dream.
We follow 3 remarkable children, Nancy, Dominic, and Rose as they transform from victims of war into triumphant young adults."


Despite how much I hate humans I still find them fascinating, even occasionally wonderful. And for some reason I am most attracted to docs about 'em that raise tears in my eyes. Tears of joy, tears of horror, tears of hope, tears of anger. This film brings them all.

When America's free market runs amok....

From Armory Airbrush; "when blending in matters".
http://www.armoryairbrush.com/CLIENT%20DESIGNS.html

"Our goal for Armory Airbrush is to be one of the country's most popular firearm finishers. Using DuraCoat the very latest in firearm finishing technology. I hope you like what you see as much as we like helping you create them."

For the modern, on-the-go Serial Killer!

Gerber Folding KICK Axe™
http://www.gerbergear.com/index.php/product/id/338#image/442

"Using our knowledge and long history of designing and manufacturing folding knives, Gerber brings the KICK Axe to life. Employing innovative, reliable and strong locking mechanisms, the design of the KICK Axe is sure to compliment any outdoor activity." (heh heh heh....)

• Axe folds for ease of carrying and storage
• 1.15 lbs. (18.4oz)
• Black Teflon coated axe head for corrosion resistance
• Metal bodied construction with plastic over-molded handle for comfort and non-slip
• Light-duty, compact size great for chopping limbs up to 2.5" in diameter. (Limbs?)
• Webbing holster included for safe and secure carrying


Will be available for purchase July 1st. I expect it to appear in a straight-to-video slasher by Bastille Day.

"Twin Bricks"

"Directed by Duplo Lynch and music by Angelo Brickalamenti."

(I wish I'd thought of this....)

I ♥ Washington State.

"Mystery structure hidden in Quilcene woods"

"Jefferson County Commissioner John Austin crawls out of the hatch leading into a mysterious dome-like structure, believed to be part of an abandoned U.S. Navy installation, near Quilcene. No one seems to know the purpose of the site or the origins of the equipment it contains."

Read the whole wonderful article here:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009282096_quilcene31m.html