GUEST POST: L'il Nephew vs. Giant Panda

 

[Note 1: I make the world a smaller place.] 

[Note 2: That's Punch Me Panda.]

GUEST POST: Nurture Vs. Nature

[Note: Must admit, shit's funny!]

GUEST POST: Fleep

[by LilyDC]

GUEST POST: Movember Presents - "fifties Jazz, black dude thing"

 

The notorious professor says, "Here is my current mustache progress. Note the beret....I am using this picture for a journal article. Getting paid to be a kook is the best."

GUEST POST: Beasley Self-Portrait(s) on iPhone 4*

--------------------------
*Thanks to LilyDC

GUEST POST: Pascual & Keiko - Part 8 - The Movie

Pascual and Keiko, Part 8 from Otter Farm on Vimeo.

[stills from Pascual & Keiki Part 8]

[music, "Talkin' 'bout Oysters," by the Kingdom of Leisure from This is the New America Welcome To...

GUEST POST: "Thought you might enjoy this" by Gumbo the Wonder Dog

prey

repose

remains

GUEST POST: Helen from Oregon

Helen's car got busted into the other day and she recovered this gem. It says:

"THIS VEHICLE EQUIPPED WITH TOYOTA THEFT-DETERRENT SYSTEM"

Rad. Genius. Beautiful.

Speaking of beautiful, see this [clicky] and comment.

GUEST POST: 24 Hour Miami Film Race Entry by Big Dave Wave

.1 Camera / Editing from Big Dave Wave on Vimeo.

"And no one knew the plan until the last moment, that is, no one is playing to the camera for the "idea" (had to tell them before we went off shooting the entire breakdown script though. We just shot what I needed for that open. And still, some were confused. More story to come).

-BDW

By the way, I think this is the best video ever.

GUEST POST: The Two Wood(s)men by BMH

Note: Yes, my child, at eight, is learning how to capture "moments" via photography.

GUEST POST: tKoL Field Trip

GUEST POST: 12 Neat Pics in 4 sets by BMH

1. Friends Eating




2. Chloe's Dad




3. Outside Stuff




4. Pavilion Shadows




by BMH

GUEST POST: 3 Pics of My Dad by BMH

by BMH

GUEST POST: Unless Your Brennan

From the Prince of Berkeley

 

GUEST POST: Before & After

by BMH
[progeny prodigy]

GUEST POST:Dinner at the Shipbreakers By Bentan Lichtersnatch

SCENE: Inside the home of Bangladeshi shipbreaker Pravi Hippinpatalikapom, a small shack constructed of cardboard and corrugated sheets of metal, bound together with twine and tie wire. The focal point of the room is a giant, tipped over wooden spool, which serves as the family dinner table and central meeting place, filling, as it does, pretty much the whole shack. Spartan though the dwelling may be, the place has a certain hominess, with its religious icons decorating the walls and the odd nautical knick-knack pilfered from salvaged ships perched on overturned plastic buckets.

Gathered around the spool-table are Pravi's shrouded wife and his 17 children. They are about to have dinner and are eagerly awaiting the man of the house.

Enter Pravi, weary from his day's work, wiping grime from his face with one long-sleeved arm as he swings open the "door" -- an old metal Pepsi sign -- with the other.

Pravi, heavily and with no enthusiasm: Hi honey, I'm home.

Mrs. Hippinpatalikapom: Finally! Where the hell have you been? It's almost midnight!

Pravi: I told you yesterday, we are switching to 18 hour shifts now with the boom in business.

Mrs. Hippinpatalikapom: But I thought with your seniority you didn't have to go along with that?

Pravi: No, I need ten more years and then they will cut me back to 16 hours a day. I told you, it's only the guys who can operate specialized equipment, like oxen, who can draw the line on their hours.

Mrs. Hippinpatalikapom: And when are you going to get your Oxen certification?

Pravi: Can I just sit down for crying out loud?

Mrs. Hippinpatalikapom: I'm sorry, honey. It’s late and I was just worried. How was your day?

Pravi, pulling up a bucket and taking a seat : Same old shit. Me, Achmed and Prinnipatti were working on this fucking huge propeller with sledgehammers all day.

Mrs. Hippinpatalikapom: Still?

Pravi: Yeah. I figure we've got another week or so at least, before we finally get one of the blades off. I swear to God, if Achmed keeps telling me I am not beating in the proper cadence, I am going to take that sledgehammer and knock the turban off his head.

Mrs. Hippinpatalikapom gets up and starts pouring water in the unmatched cups, cans and other containers fashioned into drinking vessels for the family.

Pravi: What's new here?

Mrs. Hippinpatalikapom: Well, your fourth daughter, Prashnek, sewed her fingers together again at the Banana Republic shirt factory.

Pravi, glaring at one of the 17 children: Again??

Mrs. Hippinpatalikapom: She's trying to turn out more pieces because she's saving for an iPod Shuffle for her 26th birthday.

Pravi: Well, good luck with that. She's already, what, 12?

Mrs. Hippinpatalikapom: Honey, don't discourage her. It's important for the children to have goals. Oh, and little Mishtu had a banner day begging today!

Pravi: Yeah, what did he bring in?

Mrs. Hippinpatalikapom: Two more buttons, a Bazooka Joe comic and... [Mrs. Hippinpatalikapom pauses for dramatic effect and reaches into her folds of clothing and grandly pulls out a small can.] ... THIS!

Pravi, mouth agape: A whole tin of anchovies???

Mrs. Hippinpatalikapom: That's right dear, we’re not going to be sharing a dry saltine tonight!

Pravi, laughing, revived: And here I was just going to smash his other foot if he didn’t start bringing home something good!

GUEST POST:Heaven vs. Hell by songoman

I’ve got a problem with religion; on the whole, it seems to have done far more harm than good throughout recorded history. But on a more fundamental level, I’ve got a problem with the very NEED for it. It’s obvious that the concept of religion came about as a result of an urgent need by primitive, frightened, and let’s face it, just plain stupid people to justify and validate pretty much everything that they couldn’t explain at the time: The rising sun, the setting sun, thunder, lightning, painful rectal itch and morning wood.

But eventually, over time, along comes Galileo, Copernicus, Preparation H and hand lotion. Problems solved; conditions explained, Zeus retires to Florida. Similarly, as we struggled with and eventually answered our own questions on more perplexing issues like the Big Bang, evolution, quantum mechanics, and relativity, our need for multiple Gods diminished, and we boiled him down to one bearded, white, angry, vindictive, petty father figure who, based on His behavior, has a serious drinking problem.

Never mind Jeebus, Muhammad and the Buddha; we’ll leave them out of the discussion because they’re clearly a subset of the whole God issue and were created to help finance the military. Let’s stick with the head man, the Big Kahuna, the HNIC. We don’t need to bother with the vice presidents here.

These days, we’ve got the Hubble out there checking out eternity like Truman Burbank in his boat. We’re breaking down atoms into smaller and smaller particles; we’re down to such elemental pieces that they’re conceivable only in theory. Unless you live in Kansas or the deep south, you know where we came from, and how we got here. We have it mostly figured out.

Except death.

When it comes to death, we’re as confused as an armless teenager with a hard on. We’ve got nothing on the Big D. No one’s reported back yet, and anyone that says they are is lying like a whore in confession. Grandpa ain’t talking; neither is Lincoln, the Ayatollah Khomeini, David Carradine, or Jimi Hendrix. Not a word out of JFK, either. We have, literally, no clue.

So we invented Heaven and Hell. It’s a fairly common theme among all religions; in some form or another; you do good, you’re banging Angelina, you do bad, you’re sucking dicks in a Chelsea hotel. Or the other way around, depending on your viewpoint. We invented these things because a) we can’t live without an answer and b) we don’t trust ourselves to do good unless we’re threatened with eternal suffering. But I find it interesting that there’s such a divergent level of detail between Heaven and Hell.

We have NO problem describing hell: if you haven’t read Dante’s Inferno, please do so immediately. You’ll never find a more twisted, horrific example of human depravity than the mind that made that shit up. Every detail, right down to the color of the trails of pus, is described in vivid detail. Stinging insects, fire, blood, screaming, fecal matter; it’s all there. Sadistic demons with pitchforks, sporting wood while tossing another soul on the fire (how does one get THAT gig, anyway? They do seem to be enjoying themselves, which runs counter to the idea of being in hell in the first place. Apparently, there’s room for advancement down there). We have hell figured out pretty good.

But Heaven. That’s a tough one.

Face it; we’re talking about ETERNITY. Time without end. When you’re describing suffering, eternity is an easy concept. It sucks, and it doesn’t stop. Fine. Madoff deserves it. We can reconcile. But what the FUCK would you want to do for eternity if you could choose anything you wanted? Sex? Bullshit. Eventually, even that becomes tiresome. The 72 virgin concept doesn’t even fly; you get laid 72 times, then you’re out of virgins. Besides, you can get laid here on Earth; 72 times isn’t paradise, it’s a good month. Just sex won’t cut it.

Religious depictions of heaven involve wings (a pain in the ass for your tailor, and do you have to flap them to stay up there?), sitting around on clouds (BO-RING), and basking in God’s love. Fuck all that, right in the asshole. That sounds like a bad party at a Promise Keeper’s convention. My version of heaven would involve bongs, martinis, blowjobs, and golf courses that don’t allow Koreans. Evidently you still have to eat: you always see grapes in heaven; filet mignon seems to be in short order. Fuck grapes. Grapes suck.

There must also be things that AREN’T allowed in heaven: treadmills, taxes, that uncomfortable feeling when you’ve been sitting wrong and your dick falls asleep, mosquitoes, bad breath, vaginal discharge, Republicans, and of course, Jews. But will we still have to deal with stupid people? Those assholes that get to the top of the escalator and just fucking STAND there? As far as I’m concerned, they’re not allowed. Not in MY heaven.

And there’s the rub: Heaven can’t exist because your heaven is not MY heaven. The concept of heaven requires consensus and therefore concession. That’s contrary to the whole concept. It requires politics, government, rules and regs. Ergo, it’s not heaven.

I’m far more comfortable with the concept of nonexistence than I am with sharing my heaven with some waddling born-again tourist who wants to take away my weed and my blowjobs. I can find people like that right here, thanks.

Guestpost: BLACK BEATLE'S GUEST POST BY JANG

WELL IN THESE DAY'S OF "SASCHA GRAY" AND OTHER TYPE OF PORNOGRAPHY OF THE EXTREME [NOT THE BAND] KIND'S, I DO'NT THINK I HAVE NEED TO BE ASHAMED TO SAY THAT I HAVE A SUBSCRIBTION TO 'PLAY BOY', AND I THINK I CAN TELL YOU I DO'NT READ IT FOR THE ARTICLE'S WHICH ARE MOSTLY BORING AND LONG. WELL OF COARSE WHAT I AM LOOKING FOR ITS THE TECHNI-COLOR TITTIE ACTION, GIMME SATISFACTION! I AM BASICLY LIKE MICK JAGGER, 'GIMME THAT SATISFACTION RIGHT NOW O.K.?! AND GIVE IT WING'S!'

BUT ANY WAYS, THEY'RE SOME TIMES I AM FLIPPING THROUGH THE PAGES AND I SEE SOME THING THAT CATCH MY EYE, FOR EXAMPLE IN THE MOST RECENT 'PLAY BOY' THEIR WAS A CARTOON I SAW, I REALLY DID'NT GET IT. BECASUE OF ALL THE LEGAL TROUBLE'S WITH THE 'BLACK BEATLE'S' NAME AND LO-GO I DO'NT WANT TO JUST RE-PRODUCE THE COMIC STRIP HERE, SO I JUST DRAW IT AGAIN AND LET YOU BE THE JUDGE. HEAR IT IS:

WELL WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? I AM ASKING HOPING MAY BE A INDY-ROCKER CAN EXPLAIN IT TO ME BECASUE I DO'NT REALLY LISTEN TO THAT TYPE OF MUSIC ANY MORE SENSE I TURNED INTO MY THIRTY'S. BUT THE FACT THAT I CAN READ A 'PLAY BOY' AND NOT UNDER-STAND IT, WELL IT JUST GOES TO SHOW THAT MAY BE YOU CA'NT TEACH AN OLD FART NEW TOOT'S!!LOL

JANG @ Twitter

Guestpost: "The PCP Diaries, by Roebling"

A few months ago after reading this, I mentioned to Señor Ty that I would one day tell of my personal tales with the dust. Since I had been invited to post a guest spot over here, I figured it to be the perfect arena for drudging up the terrifying past. Prepare yourselves friends, this is no joke.

Let’s head back to the nineties. I was attending state school in a very remote area, buried deep amidst the Christian Hasidim...

I can’t speak for my friends, but this was a personal era where I was looking to consume basically anything in search of undiscovered mental portals, with no fear of repercussion; a quest I’m still on, sans the illicit drug use.

Everyone has a story about a time they smoked pot they were convinced was laced with PCP, because they got so crazy high it had to be dusted. Perhaps there was a taint. What I am here to report is that no, it almost certainly wasn’t.

When you inhale PCP, there is an unmistakable taste, one which you shall never forget; there can be no question. Even when I’ve smoked the minutest amount in a bowl with weed, there is no mistake. The metallic burn of chemicals mixed with plastic overpowers any questioning.

Even then, about 99% of the street dust I’ve ever inhaled was watered down to the point that I was questioning why it was such a big deal. I had heard the stories of naked man fighting 10 cops but each time felt nothing remotely like that. That was until the fateful day we scored the real shit....

I present to you anecdotal evidence: myself, two friends, a microphone, drum machine, and guitar...(edited down from 2+hours) roll tape 1 (pardon the insanity):



We had been making semi-regular trips to North Philadelphia at the time. It was (and probably continues to be) an almost completely lawless area where anything happens. We knew the Badlands quite well; we knew the good spots for whichever particular drug we were looking for at the time. Much has been publicized about exactly how bad North Philly is, so I’ll spare the details in lieu of linkage. Needless to say, I’m not very proud of my youth stupidity. I could write an entire book of my escapades in North Philadelphia.

Nonetheless, this particular time we ventured in right around finals week, deciding on PCP. We scored, as usual. “Yo, got the get wet?”

We always had to take it to extremes, g-ddammit…never buying a normal amount, we always bought bundles, which as my memory serves was 40 bags, though I could be mistaken. Normally, people don’t buy a bundle. As a matter of fact, when a carload of white kids asks for a bundle, people get suspicious and lives could easily be lost over misinterpretation. Like I said, it was very stupid.

We scored in the late morning, and drove back to campus, about 2 hours total. I was the sole person having a class that day. It was my last class of the semester, and I needed to go to keep the grade up. Boy did I regret it.

I decided to puff a bit before class.

The way they distributed PCP was to coat it onto parsley leaves, although there are other methods. The bags usually look small, but go a long way. Regardless, it was always the case that you could take several hits and be fucked up, but not FUCKED UP! Realizing this, I proceeded to take about 3 hits. What I didn’t realize was that, for the first time, we had some REAL shit, which only required about 1 hit to trip your face off in a PCP:acid ratio of about 100:1.

I got about ½ way to class when I realized that I was completely numb. Out of nowhere, everyone was staring at me, taunting me. I realized that I was losing my shit in a brand new manner never before seen. This was not giggly, ‘feelgood’ tripping, either. It was absolute speaking to Greek deities tripping. I spent the entire lecture thinking only one thing: “Ohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshit” and “keepittogetherkeepittogether”. Somehow, I did manage to do this.

I made it through class alright despite being so freaked out I was surprised I didn’t plant a metal compass into someone’s temple. Then, sadly, I had to take a leak and sauntered like a shady lunatic into the men’s room.

Of course as soon as the yellow began to flow, my teacher pulled up right next to me at the stall. He began talking at me, while I have no idea what happened on my end. Again, I cannot express how much further PCP is than acid in intensity. It really is acid’s acid, to say the least. My teacher proceeded to make whiz small talk, about the final, the class, everything. Again, I have absolutely no idea what I may have said to him, probably something like “HHHHUUUHHH….HUHHHUUHH…MMMMHHH”.

So I made it home alright, but now we have an ENTIRE BUNDLE of this shit to unload/smoke/deal. This was only the beginning of the most literally insane month of my entire life. If you were on a bender with this stuff, a lone bag could keep you and others tripping lunacy for a couple of days. Within our now larger group, there were many who tried it, but most of them were so freaked out they wanted nothing to do with it, so it was up to about 3-5 of us to dispose of this properly, which meant going completely off the deep end, of course.

Keep in mind this happened right at finals.

roll part 2 of the anecdotal evidence:


We proceeded to stumble everywhere on this stuff, taking it to parties, freaking everyone out. Another odd thing about our bundle was that even after you came down, it stayed with you. One way of explaining it would be to say more in sync with G-d than you will ever imagine; every fathom of your existence in tune with infinity, everything finally in its’ right place.

I wrote and recorded an entire album during this time, in probably 2 days. Perhaps I’ll post it online someday. Probably the oddest conceptual work I’ve ever done. It sounds awful, of course. Being high on dust somehow gets in the way of proper engineering.

When you would converse with someone, you fused with them, to the point that upon snapping out of a deep trance, I was convinced at one point I had actually made out with a dude. I didn’t, for the record. For this, I am glad we attended a peaceful university, because just as how good vibes fuse you in that way, bad vibes bring about this. Big Lurch best sums it up, when asked about whether or not he realized he was eating his roommate, “No, I didn’t know nothing. All I can remember, the world was gonna end. And I had to find the devil and kill the devil before the world ended.” While that could sound like a weak insanity plea, I’m telling you I can completely understand this.

All throughout finals week, I was as focused and tuned as I’ve ever been, perhaps even beyond anything possible on my end. I scored better than ever, every paper I wrote was as if G-d was speaking directly through me, and that was without smoking, 'twas all residual universal sync.

Then were the post-finals parties, and one of my very many colossal fuckups, #837 to be exact.

I was standing outside of the party, sharing a bowl with a friend when the police turned up through the bushes. My initial reaction was to palm and pocket the bowl, which I did, but then it happened:

I was absolutely prepared and willing to attack the police! I convinced myself that I was going to jail, and I would have to kill these men to prevent going to jail.

I stood there, stoic, staring right at them, ready to take bullets. I’m not sure I’ve ever been so focused or prepared in my life. It was probably akin to the feeling two young soldier enemies, virgins to the kill, feel upon stumbling into each other in the brush; both hearts dropping in the moment of realization they would have to kill one another...

Luck ‘get out of jail free’ card #348: There were about 15 people standing outside, the police ignored all of us, and headed directly into the house. I never tried PCP again.

I'm hoping the soundtrack alone will steer anyone reading away from ever considering getting down with Sherman Helmsley.

I do recommend watching all 6 parts of the Louis Theroux series "Law and Disorder in Philadelphia". I cannot begin to express what remorse I hold in the fact that I ever fed anything into this harsh reality.

Guest Post: Suburbanland House of Mercy

Suburbanland House of Mercy

by s@y
image by Ty

A few weekends ago, I was pushing my daughter's stroller—with her in it, of course—around the newest addition to downtown Bethesda, which was cleverly named by some developers and PR gurus as Bethesda Lane. Seriously, you may have heard of Bethesda as the place where the National Institute of Health or the Naval Hospital is. But if you have never heard of Bethesda, here is the lowdown. It is part of the Washington DC metropolitan area on the Maryland side. In addition to serious medical research, Bethesda is also famous for food consumption. It reportedly has the highest number of restaurants per square mile in the entire country. (Or this could be just one of those myths that gets passed from a barely-new resident to a brand new resident every year.)

I just digressed. Let me get back to the story. As I crossed one of the main streets around Bethesda Lane, I overheard a man telling his walking companion—presumably a weekend visitor: "My prediction is that this place will become a destination." What? Seriously? Maldives Islands is a destination. Versailles is a destination. Angkor Wat is a destination. Machu Picchu is a destination. Bethesda Lane—a destination? Oh please! I almost stopped crossing the street to hit that man on his head with whatever I was holding in my hand at that time (which happened to be a bag full of marmalade jars I had just bought) and say: "What did you just say?" Instead, being a model parent, who is very hard at work to set a good example for the malleable mind of my young child, I pretended not to hear this outrageously outlandish hyperbole and kept on walking.

But I kept thinking: welcome to suburbanland! So much for the House of Mercy (meaning of Bethesda in Aramaic). This definitely was payback for living in the nation's most educated small town, which also happens to be the 11th richest location in the country.

- I am Fat and I Increase Global Warming

Keep Produuucing, Man®