End of the World TV Gameshow

All of the above is from That Mitchell and Webb Look. A British sketch show from the same guys from Peep Show. Watching this helps you Stay Indoors.

Got the links to these from perfectgeneral in the thread 2012 Britain Sent Back to the Post-Dunkirk Battle of Britain by corditeman.

Literary and Historical Criticism of Ancient Works

The problem with many ancient works is they depend on references to missing works. The libraries they come from are gone. Some ancient authors are only known by the footnotes of other ancient authors of whom we have limited copies.

How would you interpret the following you have never seen a certain luggage brand TV ad. "Lo, did the ape pound on the Samsonite".

The End of Piano-Industrial Complex

In a Ken Burns documentary, I forget which, there was a reference to how in the late 19th century more American homes had pianos then indoor plumbing. They were aspirational object that signaled one's arrival into middle class gentility. In the TV documentary The 1900 House a piano was installed in to the parlor. A Globe & Mail story a few years back profiled a family of recent Chinese immigrants. The father was an engineer, now a factory foreman. They lived in a cramped basement apartment, with a piano but no TV. Piano sales are up in China.

Today is different. The above image is from a BBC report of a London piano restorer, Will your piano end up in the dump? The piano being dissembled was made in London's former piano district.  It was judged and found wanting. Its parts well go on to other uses, other pianos. The Image below, Elergy, is from a show The Piano as Art, by Penny Putnam and Shauna Holiman.

The newer cultural artifact of our age is the TV. Soon there won't be any cathode ray tube televisions left, there will be hauled away as trash. The factories that made them are also gone.

Here is an example of a new player piano system that can also replicate a full range of volume, from piano to forte. Looking at through the site of the people who created the modern player piano industry suffers from proprietary and shifting technological standards.

Cats, the Internet and K-Pop

The entire Internet is losing its hive mind for K-Pop genius Psy and his breakout hit, "Gangnam Style."

Noisey, Music Column for Vice Magazine, 

introducing a video of cats

 listening to Gangnam Style,

 Do Cute Cats Like Gangnam Style? - You Review.

Official Warning to All Imperial Storm Troopers

Unused Propaganda and the Earlier Drafts

I had always assumed that was an example of WWII British propaganda that has its uses in that war along with aircraft recognition  posters, "loose lips sink ships" and "is this journey really necessary?'. Not forgetting thsee misogynistic anti-VD posters,"she may look clean". I didn't know that these posters were locked away only to used in event of "aquatic feline" aka Unternehmen Seelöwe. In the nature of advertising there were earlier versions of this poster, "Keep Calm and Carry On", that didn't fully meet with client approval as seen below. It makes one wonder about what Strangelovian materials were created "in the event of" for the edification of those who remained.

 First version

 Second version

The images / screen captures of the earlier versions of KCaCO are from the documentary Ian Hislop's Stiff Upper Lip - An Emotional History Of Britain.

The South will NOT "Rise Again"

Deeply depressing overview of the American South, that is their South East, by someone who currently lives there.

"It will never, ever occur to this person that the causation just might work the other way: if you live in a blue state, with all its high taxes and regulations to try to protect people, you might be more likely to be poor.

Anyone who thinks small towns and rural areas are a "social Darwinist's paradise" doesn't deserve to be read any further than that."

I'm trying to curtail the length of my posts on this site, so maybe this won't be as complete as it should.

I am from the South, and currently live there again. Probably I'm going to leave again one day, and never go back, but that is a story for another day.

Additionally I am from the rural south. Now let me say what this post is all about:

There is literally nothing left in the rural south that is economically viable. The world of even 50 years ago is gone. Agriculture is a game that takes serious funds to operate now. You still see some guys do the little watermelon farming and whatnot, but essentially they are playing at it. The mills are gone now, and the other assorted factories that were once there are gone as well.

There are still some agriculture jobs, but not many. Mechanized agriculture has totally destroyed the world that existed as short a time ago as the 50's.

If it weren't for transfer payments like Social Security, Welfare, Food Stamps and the like it would not be financially possible to support yourself in these areas, let alone pay for things like schools (and football teams).

Even if you got the land for free.

The sad fact is that essentially no one is interested in these areas enough to even be Darwinian about it anymore.

sunbeam / Cail Corashev on Steve Sailer's 

post Dept. of Not Getting Moynihan's Joke

  about the Canadian Border.

Gandalf Style

For an explanation of how Korean Pop music is more music video and TV orientated listen to this NPR story, Gangnam Style: Three Reasons K-Pop Is Taking Over The World.

Cheney Not Darth Vader - Mark Hamill

Here is Mark Hamill discussing which various Star Wars characters most resemble which various American political figures. He discounts any resemblance between Darth Vader and Dick Cheney, see previous post How Cheney Can't be Darth Vader. Hamill then suggests that Indonesian citizen Barry Soetoro most resembles Obi-wan Kenobi.

"Ben" Kenobi was a man in the figurative and actual wilderness. Obama on the other hand has not had a political career long enough to include time in wilderness, unlike Nixon and Churchill. Thinking back on those two, Winnie and Dick, history has proven that Communism and Nazism are both very bad ideas and those that appease or collaborate with the proponents of such political systems are traitors. Obama will probably be looked in disgust for his appeasement of jihad.

Why George Lucas "..And All His Works" Have Sucked Since 1983

I recently saw the some of the movie/art installation The Clock. What it does is point out the primacy of the editor to cinema. The editor can create almost anything out of the raw material that the director produces. Check out the posts marked mashup in this blog. These may only be "amateur" creations but show how editing can completely change everything. Editing and editors matter more in film than is immediately apparent.

There is not a day/year goes by when I do not curse George Lucas to the heavens for what he did to Howard the Duck. It was confusing that a director like Lucas could be so sensitive to his interpretation of golden age pulp sci-fi could be so ham handed when adapting a comic book. At this point the most profitable part of Hollywood is comic book adaption. But it must done right, by fans who understand and respect the material. Admittedly Howard the Duck was the first movie adaption for a long time however it be safe to say that just about everything that George Lucas has done since the last real Star Wars movie, The Return of the Jedi, sucks.

And why does everything that George Lucas has done since 1983 suck? The short answer is that he divorced his wife and film editor Marcia Lucas. Without her he was lost. Read at this long exploration of Marcia Lucas' influence on Star Wars, Tribute to Marcia Lucas at the Secret History of Star Wars.

Computers Without GUI

"...inscrutable machines used only by engineers and insurance statisticians"

Anonymous (or Timbo?)

 describing computers  before GUI in a comment at

 The Killer Within - At Microsoft.

"Gosh, We're All Really Impressed Down Here I Can Tell You"

From Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983)

Chaplain: Oh Lord...

Congregation: Oh Lord...

Chaplain: Oooh you are so big...

Congregation: Oooh you are so big...

Chaplain: So absolutely huge.

Congregation: So ab - solutely huge.

Chaplain: Gosh, we're all really impressed down here I can tell you.

Congregation: Gosh, we're all really impressed down here I can tell you.

Chaplain: Forgive Us, O Lord, for this dreadful toadying.

Congregation: And barefaced flattery.

Chaplain: But you are so strong and, well, just so ... super.

Congregation: Fan - tastic.

Congregation: Amen

Chaplain and Congregation: Oh Lord, please don't burn us, Don't grill or toast your flock, Don't put us on the barbecue, Or sim - mer us in stock, Don't braise or bake or boil us, Or stir-fry us in a wok... Oh please don't lightly poach us, Or baste us with hot fat, Don't fricassee or roast us, Or boil us in a vat, And please don't stick thy servants Lord, In a Rotissomat...

Nobody wants to be a "Job".

Fake Craiglist Ad About Barry Soetoro

(screen scrape of Craig list Ad)

Manure Spreader - $1 (Washington D.C.)

Date: 2012-10-02, 4:25PM EDT

wfwss-3311853951@sale.craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]

Fifty-year old manure spreader. Not sure of brand. Said to have been produced in Kenya. Used for a few years in Indonesia before being smuggled into the US via Hawaii. Of questionable pedigree. Does not appear to have ever been worked hard. Apparently, it was pampered by various owners over the years. It doesn't work very often, but when it does it can sling shit for amazing distances. I am hoping to retire the manure spreader this November. I really don't want it hanging around getting in the way. I would prefer a foreign buyer to relocate the manure spreader out of the country. I would be willing to trade it for a nicely framed copy of the United States Constitution.

Location: Currently being stored in a big white house in Washington, D.C.

From a link posted by revereridesagain in thread about the Muslim Brotherhood Congressman. Completely different than a story about the Muslim Brotherhood president.

The Great Man Theory and American Economic History

History has gone through many twists and turns over the past the century. The Great Man Theory has now been mostly discredited as historians of the annales school and others have examined the socio-economic conditions that give rise to the "great men" and the sea they swim in. That said it is useful to examine the captains of industry that made our near modern world and primordial ooze they crawled out of. This series seems, according to promo and this video, to be about a bunch of American "robber barons". As an aside the term "robber baron" is like "creeping barrage", it is term which is made of two synonyms.  The series is about the people who in the generations between the US Civil War an d the Great War built the industrial and technological capacity of the US.

Lately thinking of the recent Florida incarceration of Conrad Black I think how unlovable are all the press barons I have ever learned about. It made me think at first the interest in news corrupted and ink stained one's soul. Press Barons were creeps not because they saw newspapers as avenue of profit or as a venue of information but as a means of power. Using such a definition Lenin and Hitler were also Press Lords.

There have been power hungry men through out history.  They trundle over the earth exercising petty tyrannies extending over a some few generations. At certain hinge points their power can be magnified and men like Caesar, Genghis Khan and Cortez change the world forever.

Rap Battle Translated

Here is a rap battle with an overdub translation of all the posturing and braggadocio. Mostly it is "sound and fury/signifying nothing".