writch's wramblings

Gee, is it Trademark Infringement?

Looks like it was HEAVILY influenced by Ragnarock & Roll, but then, I'm biased:

http://submedia.tv/

For My Sister

I was mentioning AdBusters culture-jamming, and I meant to put these scans up.

BTW, the reason AdBusters COSTS more is because although it looks like a regular magazine, it's not. These aren't real ads (none at all save for mentioning the 'Black Spot' label).

















Culture Jamming is psychotherapy for Societies.

http://adbusters.org

Common Set of Facts

Everyone can have their own opinion, but we MUST agree on the facts we interpret.

Here's a lovely example. This is from PrisonPlanet.com:



The full write-up is at:

http://www.prisonplanet.com/provocateurs-call-for-violence-to-demonize-legitimate-protesters-at-dnc.html

Now, I'm not taking sides on whether the guy in the green hat is a Faux News plant in order to spice Michelle Malkin's stuff up or not.

I posted this because the reports of the size of the crowd gathered in the mainstream media range from twenty to fifty.

I'm guessing there's at least five hundred people here. I counted nineteen in a close-up shot, and panning back there was that many people in most directions for quite some way.

Pity the mint didn't levitate. That would have been fun.

Here's the Raw Story version:

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Michelle_Malkin_confronted_by_Alex_Jones_0827.html

BTW, the remark Alex Jones makes about the 'Article in the New Yorker about Dick Cheney' is apparently really in the New Hampshire Gazette:

http://www.nhgazette.com/pdf/252_23.pdf

The salient text:

News Briefs

Who says there’s no such thing as good news? During a meeting in Dick “Dick” Cheney’s office back in January, the participants decided against dressing U.S. Navy SEALS in Iranian uniforms, putting them aboard American-made boats disguised to look like Iranian Navy vessels, and ordering them to open fire on U.S. Navy ships in the Straits of Hormuz.

The consensus at the meeting appears to have been that risking the probable deaths of an unknown number of American of other American service members, even for a cause as noble as illegally manufacturing a bogus excuse for a war with Iran, would be wrong.

This dainty scheme was just one of “a dozen ideas proferred [at the meeting] about how to trigger a war” with Iran, according to journalist Seymour Hersh. Hersh was speaking at a National Youth Journalism Conference organized by The Nation magazine and Campus Progress, a national organization promoting a progressive agenda (while The meeting, and the plan, were sparked by a January 6th incident in the Straits of Hormuz, in which five Iranian boats approached three U.S. Navy warships. The Navy released a videotape showing the Iranian boats— they appeared to be no more than thirty feet long, about the right size for competitive waterskiing—moving in the general vicinity of the Navy’s Ingraham, Hopper, and Port Royal. These ships range in length from 453 to 567 feet.

The soundtrack of the Navy videotape includes a radio message saying “I am coming at you. You will explode [in or after] [static] minutes.” Naval commanders on the scene said they were preparing to fire on the small boats when they disengaged and departed the scene.

The Navy described the boats at the time as “visibly armed,” though no weapons could be seen in the video. News organizations later reported that the audio portion of the video clip had apparently been recorded at another time, and spliced into the video. Native Persian-speakers and Iranians told news organizations that the speaker did not sound Iranian. The Navy Times reported that the voice was probably that of “The Filipino Monkey,” a person well-known in the area for heckling passing ships by radio.

Vice President Dick “Dick” Cheney was said to have been heartened by the American public’s apparent support for a vigorous reaction against the perceived Iranian provocation, hence the meeting a few weeks later.

The “false flag” scheme could have surfaced in Seymour Hersh’s report, “Preparing the Battlefield,” which ran in The New Yorker last month. The magazine’s editors deleted it from the story because the administration had not adopted the plan. “My attitude always towards editors,” Hersh told the students, “is they’re mice training to be rats.”

Bi-Partisan Cross-Purposes In his article in The New Yorker last month, Hersh wrote that the Bush administration had requested in a “Presidential Finding,” and Congress had granted, nearly half a billion dollars to fund CIA and Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) programs intended to destabilize the “religious leadership” of Iran, with the intention of “undermining” Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program, and the government itself.

...

Troll Says, "Splorf Warning"

Subject: funny doctor stories...

EMBARRASSING MEDICAL EXAMS

1. A man comes into the ER and yells, 'My wife's going to have her baby in the cab!' I grabbed my stuff, rushed out to the cab, lifted the lady's dress, and began to take off her under- wear. Suddenly I noticed that there were several cabs ---and I was in the wrong one.

Submitted by Dr. Mark MacDonald, San Francisco

2. At the beginning of my shift I placed a stethoscope on an elderly and Slightly deaf female patient's anterior chest wall. 'Big breaths,' I Instructed. 'Yes, they used to be,' replied the patient.

Submitted by Dr. Richard Byrnes, Seattle, WA

3. One day I had to be the bearer of bad news when I told a wife that her husband had died of a massive myocardial infarct. Not more than five minutes later, I heard her reporting to the rest of the family that he had died of a 'massive internal fart.'

Submitted by Dr. Susan Steinberg

4. During a patient's two week follow-up appointment with his cardiologist, he informed me, his doctor, that he was having trouble with one of his medications.. 'Which one?' I asked. 'The patch, the nurse told me to put on a new one every six hours and now I'm running out of places to put it!' I had him quickly undress and discovered what I hoped I wouldn't see. Yes, the man had over fifty patches on his body! Now, the instructions include removal of the old patch before applying a new one.

Submitted by Dr. Rebecca St. Clair, Norfolk , VA

5. While acquainting myself with a new elderly patient, I asked, 'How long have you been bedridden?' After a look of complete confusion she answered,.'Why, not for about twenty years - when my husband was alive.'

Submitted by Dr. Steven Swanson- Corvallis, OR

6. I was performing rounds at the hospital one morning and while checking up on a woman I asked, So how's your breakfast this morning?' 'It's very good, except for the Kentucky Jelly. I can't seem to get used to the taste', the patient replied. I then asked to see the jelly and the woman produced a foil packet labeled 'KY Jelly.'

Submitted by Dr.. Leonard Kransdorf, Detroit, MI

7. A nurse was on duty in the Emergency Room when a young woman with purple hair styled into a punk rocker Mohawk, sporting a variety of tattoos, and wearing strange clothing, entered.. It was quickly determined that the patient had acute appendicitis, so she was scheduled for immediate surgery. When she was completely disrobed on the operating table, the staff noticed that her pubic hair had been dyed green, and above it there was a tattoo that read, 'Keep off the grass.' Once the surgery was completed, the surgeon wrote a short note on the patient's dressing, which said, 'Sorry, had to mow the lawn..'

Submitted by RN no name

AND
FINALLY!!!................

8. As a new, young MD doing his residency in OB , I was quite embarrassed when performing female pelvic exams.. To cover my embarrassment I had unconsciously formed a habit of whistling softly. The middle-aged lady upon whom I was performing this exam suddenly burst out laughing and further embarrassing me. I looked up from my work and sheepishly said, 'I'm sorry. Was I tickling you?' She replied, 'No doctor, but the song you were whistling was, 'I wish I was an Oscar Meyer Wiener'.

Dr. wouldn't submit his name

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=splorf

Convention Video

Ok, this is pretty cool. Aaron (the Yippee Pieman) Kaye sent a video to Coyote, who passed it on to the church list, but it was pretty crappy, and I didn't want to show you that, but I was able to find a grainer version that actually showed Aaron's face, and offered the story as a continual shot.

Basically, the way it works out is this, Faux News reporter Griff Jenkins was trying to set up people from the 911 movement with the question, "If it was a government plot, what does that do for Ward Churchill's quote about the deserving 'little Eichmanns'?"

That question didn't sit well with the crowd. The funny part is that since Fox sounds so much like 'fucks', the audio of the actual broadcast contained some words that shouldn't have been sent over the air.

Here's the grainy full story:



Here's the report from 'Rocky Mountain News' (the story Coyote sent):



Here's another take on the crowd sending Mr. Jenkins to the edge:



Great quote at the end there. Here's a write-up from Rocky Mountain News:

Bashing the media has turned out to be an entertaining sideshow at the Democratic National Convention. And much of the bashing is coming from within the media.

First, it was Fox News scorned by Spike Lee, Re-create 68 Alliance protesters and some liberal blogs (while being praised by some conservative ones).

Then, at a breakfast with reporters Monday in Denver, Jon Stewart (The Daily Show) joined in, again slamming Fox, but also its cable news brethren, calling the networks “gerbil wheels” that create a “false sense of urgency.”

On Tuesday, it was the rest of the mainstream media’s turn. Former CBS anchor Dan Rather chastised American media and its corporate ownership for “failure of nerve” and a dereliction of duty in serving the public.

To be sure, these examples speak to different issues. But together they point to a media often perceived as partisan and arguably losing the public’s trust.

Rather, speaking in front of bloggers and other new media, said American journalism is in a “sorry state” and needs a “spine transplant.” In other words, more guts to dig for the truth.

He described political conventions as a long infomercial, and said that journalists should instead be working to uncover the “real news” by following the “vast sums of money” being raised at the parties around town.

“Who gives the big money to whom, expecting to get what?” Rather said.

The Fox News episode came during an encounter Sunday between correspondent Griff Jenkins, who likes to put himself in the middle of stories, and the Re-create 68 protesters.

Video footage shows Jenkins asking the protesters whether they had any message besides cursing him.

“You should support (the press),” he’s heard saying at one point, and “Do you not believe in freedom?” at another.

Some liberal bloggers criticized Jenkins for his approach, while conservative ones portrayed him as a hero.

Michael McDevitt, associate professor of journalism at the University of Colorado, who witnessed some of the exchange, said it was emblematic of how some media outlets today are breaking the trust with the public to be nonpartisan.

He likened the confrontational journalism more to engaging in a “performance,” with the media outlet selecting the images it wants to promote its own ideology.

Getting Closer

MSNBC reports that having a sweet tooth is directly related to whether one had ear infections as a child.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26391940/

So, now we know another 'trait' which is illness borne.

Like people who used to be thought of as 'agitated' (because they had ulcers which were caused by Helicobacter pylori).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicobacter_pylori

Or people who were thought of as incapable of dieting that were found to be infected with AD-36.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AD-36

http://www.docshop.com/2007/10/18/the-obesity-virus-convenient-crutch-or-deadly-disease/

And all those pesky heart attacks don't seem to come from smoking as much as not flossing.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/24792.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlamydophila_pneumoniae

I might add to this last bit that I find the American fascination with turning blood to syrup seems to fully explain the difference between them and the French (dry blood don't taste good to microbes--semi-brut blood is basically just liquid agar).

I'm waiting for the journal articles that will attempt to address the problem of 'carcinogens' in cigarettes, since the same stuff in pot apparently cures cancers.

The question that isn't asked (in the latter case) is "Why do pre-cancerous people seem drawn to use tobacco?"

Troll Sent Glass Harmonica music

By Donal Hinely -- Scarborough Fair



Made me look. Here's a cover of Tchaikovsky's "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" which was originally composed for Ben Franklin's Glass 'Armonica':



Here's a bit by Mozart:



Here's a more lively demo:



Here's a Wiki link for the instrument:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_harmonica