Kellyanne Conway pose fuels Trump impeachment talk

Via Drudge: Kellyanne Conway has been caught on camera kneeling on a couch in the Oval Office with her high heels on, while President Donald Trump posed for a photograph with the leaders from some of the country's historically black colleges and universities.

The White House adviser has come under fierce criticism on Twitter with many calling her out for how disrespectful the pose is.

At one point, with her heels digging into the delicate fabric of the couch, Conway is seen to be texting on her phone while President Trump met with his invited guests.

Check out meme extraordinare EBL's creation, as seen at the Daily Mail

Kellyanne Conway is fast and furiously becoming a meme sensation

What turns your rage meter up to 99.9?

Reddit top voted comments...

Lists that can only be viewed as slideshows

People getting on trains before everyone has got off.

People without any awareness of where they are fucking standing. Particularly at the grocery store where there are aisles and only a certain amount of space for others to get through.

People who stop at the end of an escalator to think about what direction they are going, I am going to walk into you, I'm sorry but I'm not sorry since I don't have a choice.

People texting and driving... they're always going a good 10+ mph slower than rest of traffic or swerving or missing a green light but the second you honk at them, you're the bad guy.

When I do a web search for something that can be answered in a single sentence, and all the results are 10 minute videos.

When a supervisor harshly reprimands and humiliates an employee in front of coworkers.

WKRLEM: Waiting for April

Everybody is waiting for April.

April the giraffe.

She is knocked up and going to drop a baby. They are live streaming it on the Internet.

The nation is mesmerized.

This is not a joke

This is not a joke is the theme of everything going on today

What are you too old for?

Reddit top voted comments....

Asking to use the restroom at work.

Party like a rock star and still be expected to get up the next day and function at all.

Pub crawls. You find a pub, it's warm and comfy, you have somewhere to sit, and in an hour you have to get up and walk somewhere. Normally the second place won't have any seats. I'd rather just find a place and stick with it.

Drinking heavily on a Friday night. I only get 2 days off a week, and I'll be buggered if I'm going to spend them feeling like crap.

Negativity from so called friends. People who just can't be happy for other people and their achievements, and treat such things like direct competition.

WKRLEM: See what happens when you mock the God Emperor?

 

Nate Silver counted the votes! 

Of course the crap movie about the black gay drug dealer had to get the affirmative action Oscar!

Thank God I was watching the giraffe giving birth live stream all night.

You can't make this crap up.

Marcia...Marcia....Marcia!

WKRLEM: Great new show on CMT.......Sun Records

It has everything. Sam Philips. BB King. Ike Turner. Carl Perkins. Jerry Lee. Johnny Cash. Elvis.

The only put out the first episode on YouTube. It looks great.

If someone says "Tell me a joke", what is the first joke you tell them?

Reddit top voted comments...

A sailor sits down at the bar and orders a drink.
He looks to his left and there's a pirate with a peg leg, hook hand, and eye patch.
The sailor asks how the leg was lost. "A gator ripped off me leg while burying gold in Florida." He asks next how he lost his hand. "A shark bit ma hand off while I was throwing the gator into the sea."
Amazed at the pirate's bravery, he asked how the man lost his eye. "A seagull shit in me eye." The sailor was shocked and asked, "a bird shit in your eye and you lost it??"
The pirate said, "it was my first day with the hook."

****

A Buddhist walks up to a hot dog vendor and says, "make me one with everything."

^(If this doesn't work on its own, there is an extension:)

The vendor gives him a hot dog and the Buddhist gives him a twenty dollar bill. After a moment of waiting, the Buddhist asks, "Where's my change?" The vendor smiles and says, "Ahh, change must come from within."

****

An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. Bartender asks, "what can I get you guys"? First mathematician says "I'd like a pint of beer please." The second one says "I just want a half pint." The third one says "a quarter pint". The bartender listens for a while and then stops them. He pours out two pints and says "you know, you guys really ought to know your limits."

It's just paper

But it's fantastic.

I mentioned earlier the box of paper given to me at age six and what a tremendous gift that trash paper was for me. Had I been offered a pirate's treasure, keys to a new car, a house, or that box of paper then I'd have no concept of value, none whatsoever, and I'd choose the paper and feel like a paper king.

So it wasn't that big of a gamble to buy some for a nephew that age going through coloring books at a fast pace, as projects. But I wasn't expecting him to be overjoyed. My brother reports he keeps freaking out repeatedly.

Hi Bo, if you were the one that sent some card sheets to Daniel you hit the ball out of the park, he was surprisingly overjoyed on several occasions. He's always coming into the office here at home and grabbing paper to staple together for a book creation or taping sheets together and making a long story paper. I very surprised how happy he was to get some stiff paper to draw and put onto the walls here at home.

Score!

That was the second email that day. In the first one he said he felt bad for not mentioning earlier how the boy fixated on the animals coloring book, obsessed, until the book was done then went straight to the book about birds.

A ream of card paper and suddenly whole worlds of creative expression open up.

That made me happy. My brother is going to have card paper all over his house, put up on all the walls. His whole house will be wallpapered with children's drawings.

Thinking about this presented an idea for another book-card apropos of nothing in particular, one depicting the early development of paper. People by the river among papyrus rushes, people stripping plants, cutting stems, smashing the stems with rocks. People arranging smashed stems in rows and laminating criss-crossing in layers and smashing together damaged stems, drying, bleaching, grading, bundling.  A page devoted to early writing. And the point of the whole project, a deflection, a page of boys flying papyrus kites, that for some reason, isn't a reality. (Probably a devotion to national projects at the expense of idle experimentation and general goofing around.)

Shame and shun, distance and denounce.

I had the oddest exchange with someone the other day. As an example he brought up OJ Simpson. As OJ Simpson is about as neutral as it's possible to get these days, I'll just stick with him.

The example was... Would you hire OJ Simpson to be your crime reporter? (Okay, he mentioned an actual news company, but that's not neutral, so I'm skipping it.)

My response was supposed to be "Oh dear GAWD, NO!"

And I've been trying to figure out why. So I asked why.

And the response was that clearly I did not believe that OJ was guilty, or I would react with horror. And I ought to read up about the murders.

I do think he's guilty. I also think that the idea, the concept, of a really awful criminal becoming a crime reporter is a profoundly interesting one. It's a *job* after all, and people do need to find jobs after they're done with prison. Provided someone has skill as a writer, why not? OJ might be too well known, but maybe some other felon.

Had the guy asked "Would you allow your friend to *date* OJ Simpson?" my response would still not be outrage, it would simply be "No." So I really did try to figure out why this person thought that this example would make his point. There are people I don't trust, that I know are thieves (arrested and convicted) and I'm not going to put them in charge of the books. People I know with morals I disapprove of, but we give understanding where we can, advice if it's requested. If something doesn't require a call to the police, then apart from topically appropriate caution, what do people expect, what did this guy expect?

I suppose that there is a social context where people of good virtue made a point of crossing the street to avoid the woman with the painted face, that a reputation required that one did not associate with sinners or even appear to notice that those without social approval existed on the edges of your world. Where allowing your children to play with the children of the wrong family (or race) or where some shame made you and yours untouchable socially. One out of wedlock birth and your whole family could be ostracized.

Because even speaking to the wrong person could destroy your social standing, and no one could risk it.

And I thought we were past that a long time ago.

But I'm seeing it now, more often, in more situations. This or that person has an unapproved lifestyle, a belief that Good People no longer believe, something in their past, an association with someone else unapproved. And you are supposed to shame, supposed to shun, supposed to distance, and supposed to denounce.

ALL decent human beings are horrified by OJ Simpson's horrifying murders. The expectation is, that of *course* you will gasp in horror, and insist that this monster should never be allowed any place, forever, in society. Matrons should raise their hems and cross the street and shake the dust from their skirts, making sure that everyone knows that they feel properly.

And I refuse. If OJ Simpson can write, hire him as a crime reporter.

My Oscar Picks!

Best Picture: The Quiet Man
Best Actor:   John Wayne
Best Actress: Maureen O'Hara
Best Supporting Actor: Barry Fitzgerald
Best Supporting Actor: Mildred Natwick
Best Screenplay: Frank S Nugent and Maurice Walsh
Best Director: John Ford.

Of course you don't agree but that is fine. You see I pick the same people every year.

The God Emperor of the Cherry Blossom Throne shows his genius......because he agreed with me...again!

President Trump decided to agree with me and announced today that he will blow off the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Donald J. Trump 

✔@realDonaldTrump

I will not be attending the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner this year. Please wish everyone well and have a great evening!

4:53 PM - 25 Feb 2017

 
•  11,70011,700 Retweets
 
•  43,95843,958 likes
• 
  

exhibitionists for a cause

It's sort of like gay for pay in the porn industry, whatever excuse you need to let your freak flag fly. Whatever works.

I heard people hooting outside but thought only, "Jeeze, some people come out of character just being downtown." Then opened the the window Levolor blinds and saw the streets were flooded these people outside again. They do this every year even on days when it's cold.

"Today I Turned 162 Years Old. And There's No Sign of Stopping"

Via Reddit/NoSleep:  When I was born in London, the sewing machine had just been introduced into the world. Before I was in my teens, dynamite became a reality. And when I married my first wife, the only things with wings were natural, with airplanes far in the future. I fought the first world war with grey hair, and I watched the second one pass with a cane in my hands. By the time the nuclear bomb had dropped, I’d thought I’d seen it all, and that soon I’d be joining the fallen soldiers in the afterlife.

I was wrong. And I found that out on the day my wife died, in 1947.

We’d both exceeded our life expectancies, until one winter morning her body grew cold next to me, her breathing stilled, the light in her eyes extinguished. From the back of her grey hair, I could almost pretend she was still alive. And for an hour I did, my eyes welling up in tears as I realized that without her, my life was no longer worth living.

So I walked to my dresser, and I reached into the top drawer, my wrinkled hands searching towards the back, shaking as they found the cold metal wrapped in old rags. And pulling out the loaded revolver, I made my way back to my bed, slipping back on the covers. Laying next to my wife, this time forever.

Raising the gun to my temple, I felt no hesitation. I was done here on earth, finished. My purpose complete, and with the failing of my physical and slowing of my mental facilities, I’d prefer to die than deteriorate.

I was almost excited to pull the trigger. And when I did, I was met with only one sound.

Click.

I frowned, checking the cylinder to make sure each of the slots had a bullet. A dud, I thought, and raised the gun again. And once more I pulled the trigger.

Click.

Click, click, click, click, click, click- one for each of the bullets, all of them failing their duty.

So I moved on to the medication the doctors had prescribed to me in my final years, downing several multiples of their recommendations until darkness overtook me. But then I awoke in my own vomit, the remains of medication strewn over my bed, and my body weakened but still very alive.

At my wife’s funeral, I decided to let nature run its course. To wait for death the typical way, until old age claimed me. But then a decade passed, and another, and another. Every few months I attempted suicide once more, but each time failure awaited me.

Jumping off a bridge onto concrete yielded broken bones, but no death. Drowning only resulted in me awakening face up and sputtering on the shoreline. Suffocating myself always ended in an unexpected leak where fresh air was able to enter, and revive my starving cells.

No reputable scientist believed my claims. Nor did doctors, though often perplexed. And every year more of me deteriorated- I lost a foot to diabetes, the nerves on my right hand failed, my eyes have long lost their once sharp vision. By the eighties I was completely deaf, by eighty five I could no longer stand, and by the early two thousands my thoughts came slow but still conscious. Simply writing this took three weeks, my focus waning in and out, my misspellings so frequent that my friend could barely transcribe this passage.

And it wasn’t until just last week that I finally heard a scientific explanation of what was occurring to me, explained by the same friend who transcribed this for me.

That there was a theory in science that stated that so long as there was a chance for someone to stay alive, that they would stay alive. That due to infinite possibilities in infinite univerces, there will always be a version of me that never dies. That though 99% of the universes with me in them die with every suicide attempt, only the 1% of the times where I survived mattered. Because so long as there was a sliver of a chance that I could be alive, there was a version of me that would be alive.

That because I’m only conscious in the universes where I’m alive, none of the other universes mattered. That they collapsed somehow, that they didn’t matter.

Though I don’t quite understand it, he assured me that this theory, quantum immortality, could be very real. And with my age as proof, that it is real.

What’s terrifying for you is not that I’m experiencing immortality. It’s that you will too, but you won’t know until the years slip by and death never claims. Especially since the universe that you will experience this is astronomically not likely this one, so you never have read this. You won’t know until it happens.

And you can’t escape.

"Breakdancers pummel commuter refusing to make space for performance on Brooklyn train"

Via Drudge:  Four subway breakdancers beat up a straphanger on a Brooklyn train who objected to making room so they could do their routine, police sources said Thursday.

The dancers, four men in their 20s, asked passengers to make room so they could perform their routine for tips aboard an A train in East New York about 1:20 p.m. Wednesday. The 40-year-old victim objected, sparking an argument, sources said.

The dancers punched the 40-year-old victim several times in the face and fled when the train pulled into the Euclid Ave. station.

WKRLEM: The Press is upset....because the cool kids didn't invite them to the party

So the White House had a press gaggle in the Press Secretary's office that omitted some of the big time fake news sites. CNN. The New York Times. Politico. Instead they had people like Breitbart and a couple of other conservative sites. It was not the regular briefing. The pool was there. The only people who had a right to be there. The rest are there in a confined space by invitation only. These mooks are spinning it as the end of the First Amendment. A couple of things are going on here.

They just don't want me to follow sports at all!

More bad news. Mitt Romney is in talks to buy a piece of the Yankees. Reportedly a life long Red Sox fan he wants to buy a piece of the Yankees because it would be a better investment. According to Breitbart News:

“If the deal goes through, it is expected to be $25 million to $30 million per percentage point and thought to be interested in one or two percentage points. The Yankees are valued around $3 billion or more.

Mitt Romney, in response to an earlier version of this story about his potential involvement in a sale, denied that he’s involved in the talks in a statement, per a spokesperson. The former governor of Massachusetts, Romney is a lifelong Red Sox fan and is sensitive to being associated with the Yankees after hearing early reaction from Red Sox fans.

Romney has apparently conquered his sensitivity towards an association with the Yankees by making the purchase through his son, Tagg, as a part of the family business."

Seriously. This loser Rhino wants to be an owner of the Yankees? Not since Mike Burke has such a liberal weenie had something to do with the team. How is that going to work? The Steinbrenner family is not going to cede control to him. Is he going to be a silent partner? Is he going to insist that we forfeit the game if we are behind in the first inning? Is he going to fold if the umpire  yells at him? Why oh why would they do this?

I wish George were still alive. We would have won a few more championships and he would have nipped this bullshit in the bud.

"If a teacher says they don't want a surprise party, don't throw a surprise party"

Via Reddit

Tales of New York

So today is a beautiful spring like day. I was walking to the store and I saw a beautiful New York Scene. A little bit of a cliché but still a Tale of New York.

You see there were four motorcycle cops lazing around and joking and laughing. In front of a Donut Shop. I had to immortalize it without getting arrested. Of course they were so lazy they didn't even notice.

Listen there is nobody more Law and Order than me. No not the commie TV series but the fact that we need to keep the knuckleheads under control. But that doesn't blind me to the faults of the police. The biggest of which is that they are just lazy bastards.

The motorcycle cops are supposed to be the elite. Better trained. Used for special details. I bet they were protecting someone who was eating in the Marco Polo restaurant. Or it could be that they are just lazy bastards.

Still it isn't that often that you get to see a living breathing walking talking farting belching cliché in action. I had to immortalize it for posterity.

A long time ago, this was the BBC

Link

Has any one individual ever saved the "world" so to speak?

"It happens all the time in movies, but has there ever been a time throughout history where the day was saved by one individual. One clinching moment where they returned in the last scene to stop the world as everyone knew it from tumbling down around them?"

Reddit Top voted comments...

That guy(s) who swam through radioctive water during and prevented an even bigger explosion in the time of the Chernobyl crisis.... They saved half of Europe, including my own homeland, from becoming uninhabitable and they did it without a flashlight in the water. There were over 50 million people living in Ukraine at that time and over 35 million in Poland. Many other countries. It is easily possible it would've made more than 100 million people refugees.
These men were Valeri Bezpalov, Boris Baranov and Alexei Ananenko. I personally own them my graditude.

I'd say this guy is the closet I am aware of.

On September 26, 1983, just three weeks after the Soviet military had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile had been launched from the United States, followed by up to five more. Petrov judged the reports to be a false alarm,[2]and his decision is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that could have resulted in large-scale nuclear war.

Maybe not as dramatic as a Hollywood movie, but Jonas Salk and his Polio vaccine saved the lives of millions of children around the world.

Clair Patterson successfully fought the lead industry to make lawmakers realize it was a toxic pollutant that affected people psychologically by increasing violent tendencies, along with a myriad of other health concerns.

Norman Borlaug - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug

Borlaug is often called "the father of the Green Revolution",[5][6] and is credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation.[7][8][9][10]According to Jan Douglas, executive assistant to the president of the World Food Prize Foundation, the source of this number is Gregg Easterbrook's 1997 article "Forgotten Benefactor of Humanity", the article states that the "form of agriculture that Borlaug preaches may have prevented a billion deaths."[11] He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 in recognition of his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply.

geese vs pies

At the funeral reception last Sunday, a life celebration they called it, people were instructed to keep it short and sweet, no more than five minutes and no tears. And everyone took longer than five minutes to express why they adored the guy. And everyone choked.

A gruff old dark somewhat off-putting man of substantial weight and lumbering movement rose the steps to the stage and said, "I've probably known Bill longer than anyone else in the room." How presumptuous, all of us have known Bill most of our lives. He continued, "We met in late 1950's when we were both working on advanced degrees at Berkley."

You win.

He went on to say that his his sister, or Bill's sister urged him not to relate this story because it's too damaging to their characters and it turned out to be the best story of the day. He took us back to a time when not everybody had freezers, instead they used a town ice house were space was rented enclosed in cages secured by small locks. The man spoke of hunting trips that bagged quite a lot of birds. So many they had to be stored in an ice house. Getting to their locker they had to pass other lockers filled with farm food prepared and frozen, like a very large assortment of pies. They were college students with a superabundance of geese and a paucity of pies. They picked the locks and to assuage their guilt they left a goose in exchange for a pie.

When the dark old man choked he became human and vulnerable and sympathetic as a little boy.

On the drive home I mentioned neither the speaker nor Bill majored in economics and it showed. A goose for a pie is a terrible lopsided exchange. It should be more like ten or fifteen pies for a goose. I made my statement but didn't defend it. Others tried to explain why that was a reasonable choice.

You cannot buy a goose just anywhere. Right there is a specialty thing. The last one I saw at the general grocery store I think was $60.00 frozen and that was not a whole goose. This is Whole Foods territory, and Tony's Market and Marczyk will be even more expensive. Whole Foods uses Kristina's Natural Ranch Market for their geese. Here is their goose page, $150.00 for 10-13 LBS and $120.00 for 7-10 LBS.

That's not so bad if you're imagining preparing a fantastic and memorable meal. Something to keep in mind.

That's what I'm talking about driving me out of my mind visualizing the guys dropping a whole goose to compensate for their pie theft. They know that's a sin. But that's pie with extreme penance. Extreme interest at extreme usury level. Extreme atonement. Pies are $10 or $11.00 usually. They should have left a goose and taken fifteen pies.

Everyone thought I was being comical.

But I'm glad that I bothered checking. Because it led me to Maple Leaf Farms Duck site. Their page for whole ducks shows roasted duck but they're selling raw ones. They're priced whole at $16.00 to $22.00.

Now that is reasonable.

And you think, oh man, shipping is going to be a drag. You must buy a lot of product for the shipping to be worth it. They ship in Styrofoam containers with dry ice and that right there seals the deal for me right now. I need dry ice. Now. I'll buy it just to experiment with the dry ice. I want to use it to refill my Sodastream canisters.

One last thing about that life celebration. A slide display ran on loop as people mingled before and after, recycling some two hundred photos thereabout so that the man's entire life is recalled in photographs including groups of family and friends and all those years doing things together and involved with each other's projects and trips together, and although I did notice some faces repeating in the photographs, faces of people no longer alive, not a single photograph with me. And I realized I don't really count for that much.

There were a lot of young women that I never met. They all turned out to be nieces. All nieces and no nephews. All of them, some eight or so, each one wanted so much to express what made their uncle so fantastic. Their stories revolved about time spent together in all that goes into a hunting trip together and all the time spent in direct contact in duck blinds. That was his way of having a great relationship with each one of them. The lesson I took from that is to try to find such activities and make the most while there is time.

WKRLEM: Network TV used to be twice as good as it is now.

If they redid Battle of the Networks stars.....it would be Lena Dunham and Caitlyn Jenner.

And they would win an Emmy.

Sean Hannity commits truth....but he is still a dick

Sean Hannity is not my cup of tea. He has his head in the right place and is correct in most of what he says but he just so smug and condescending that he sets my teeth on edge. He is getting grief today about a tweet he made that committed truth.

He is getting a lot of push back from the lame stream media and the conservative cucks like Red State. They are pulling out the big guns because he termed the grumpy old man a war criminal. Now he was never an adjudicated criminal but he sure rallied behind every war that we have had in the last thirty years. He pushed these wars. He excused these wars. He wants to start new wars. With Russia no less. Hannity can get smacked around. He is a big boy. But McCain has passed his sell by date. Trump needs to smash. He will regret it if he doesn't do something soon.

‘Dead’ teen wakes up on the way to his own funeral

Via Twitter: Kumar Marewad was bitten by a stray dog one month ago and after he came down with a high fever last week, he was rushed to a hospital in Dharwab, Karnataka, India, the Times of India reported.

Kumar’s condition worsened, with an infection from the dog bite spreading throughout his body, and he was put on a ventilator.

Doctors told his family that if he was taken off life support, he wouldn’t survive.

The teen’s family made the decision to bring him home and once they presumed him dead, they quickly made arrangements for his funeral.

“We had decided to take Kumar home after doctors told us his chances of survival were bleak once taken off the ventilator,” Kumar’s brother-in-law Sharanappa Naikar told the news outlet.

On the way to his funeral in Dharwad’s Managundi village — about a mile from where the ceremony was to take place — Kumar suddenly came back to life, opening his eyes, wiggling his hands and legs, and breathing fast, according to the Times of India.

He was quickly rushed to a nearby hospital and put back on a ventilator.

Link to the whole story

"Iraq suicide bomber was former detainee at Guantanamo Bay"

Via Instapundit: The Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh, released a photo of al-Britani -- born Ronald Fiddler in Manchester, England, and known as Jamal al-Harith -- and claimed credit for the army base attack.

British and U.S. officials have not confirmed al-Britani is indeed al-Harith, however a British intelligence official told CNN they believe with "high confidence" that al-Britani is al-Harith.

"It is him, I can tell by his smile. If it is true then I've lost a brother, so another family [member] gone," al-Britani's brother told The Times of London, adding that he'd "wasted his life."

The Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh, released a photo of al-Britani -- born Ronald Fiddler in Manchester, England, and known as Jamal al-Harith -- and claimed credit for the army base attack.

British and U.S. officials have not confirmed al-Britani is indeed al-Harith, however a British intelligence official told CNN they believe with "high confidence" that al-Britani is al-Harith.

"It is him, I can tell by his smile. If it is true then I've lost a brother, so another family [member] gone," al-Britani's brother told The Times of London, adding that he'd "wasted his life."

"The fact is that this was always a very difficult situation where any government would have to balance proper concern for civil liberties with desire to protect our security, and we were likely to be attacked whatever course we took," Blair said. "The reason it did take a long time for their release was precisely the anxiety over their true affiliations."

Al-Britani would not be the first detainee released from the prison who went on to commit terrorist acts or rejoin a militant group as 122 of 693 Guantanamo detainees who have been released did so, and another 86 are suspected of doing so.

"UMich students demand no-whites-allowed space"

Via Drudge:  The clamor for a segregated space for students of color to organize social justice efforts comes even as the public university builds a $10 million center for black students in the center of campus.

In their demands, students explain why the new black student center is not enough, “because we want a space solely dedicated to community organizing and social justice work specifically for people of color.”

“We want documentation of past, current, and future student activism and this should be a permanent space that is staffed, and has resources for students to organize and share resources,” the demand letter states.

Link to entire article

I thought this was settled already

scribble

This was the cover to a condolence card. 

When our group arrived exactly on time at the Brighton Armory the place was already packed in the large space in front and more so inside the larger fuller space behind the wall. It is a performing arts place now. 

The first family member I encountered said first thing, "We got your card. Thank you for that." The card preceded me. To be honest, back then when I got to the part of making a cover I thought, "What am I going to do now?" I just scribbled on scratch piece of card stock and framed it to imitate art. 

"And we looked all over but couldn't see where you signed it." 

I felt bad about not writing a message. I never know what to say. I'm hoping the card itself will say everything including who sent it without words. What would I say?

With deep affection. I don't even know what to say. Sad!

Nah. I'll just leave it naked. So long as it works. They can even recycle it if they want. But they never do. (That I know about.)

But I'm doing another related page right now that's holding my attention very well because each day I discover new things. Mostly what not to do. I have a whole pile of prototypes featuring various aspects even though in the end the thing will be fairly simple. There are various ways I can think of to have rows of wheat pop up and I zeroed in on mechanics underneath an entire layer. But that puts the goose nest lower than the wheat crop. And even geese wouldn't build their nest at the low point in drainage.  I just now landed on the idea of a mound for the nest lifting it above the level of the ground for wheat, a wide hexagram cone with a lid that's a table, so two mechanisms right there just to get the nest off the ground. Placed on the cone lid. The nest is a third mechanism, another hexagon built out with content to a nest. Placed on the twisting platform, the fourth mechanism, with a duck in the center, a fifth mechanism, with wings and tail that spread, six and seventh eight and ninth mechanisms. The background tilts back and drags with it rows of wheat, two mirrored platforms that pull back with the background, both sides tug rows of wheat and both sets of platform and flaps are  the same or similar but constructed separately, tenth and eleventh mechanisms. I guess it's not that simple.

But it seems like it is.

In the sixth grade, one of them in the mishmash of Air Force Base schools overseas, our Japanese Culture class at one point had us all folding paper cranes from paper cut into precise squares. That's the thing about origami, everything starts out as a square. The idea was to string together all the school children's folded cranes in equal lengths of crane-stings, I think, each strand 1,000 cranes each, then pull all the strings of cranes together into a hoop of dangling crane strands to 10,000 cranes. I think.

Maybe it was 1,000 but that seems way too easy. We folded A LOT of paper cranes. We folded our little fingers off. We all knew all the steps of folding cranes. We all learned the precision necessary or you'll end up with smashed crane faces and mangled legs. We could all fold a crane from a square blindfolded, by doing the same thing over and over and over again. It was ridiculous.

What an insane thing to have us do. I think it was in conjunction with schools outside the base, it was a community thing. For some reason the community wanted thousands and thousands of these cranes and apparently they wanted them by all the children of the all the schools. I think I made about ten. 

Duckduckgo images [thousands origami cranes]

      

That's what the nesting goose is like almost. I haven't tired of the project because I haven't nearly exhausted exploring. The little mound thing looks great and the slightly elevated ground for the wheat surrounding the mound looks great too, best of all the attempts, and none of the mechanics show so I'll just keep cranking out prototypes and keep experimenting, some specific repeated portions are like folding these Japanese cranes.

But that's okay, I have 2 new reams of card stock waiting to be opened and we're almost there. But that's  only 500 pages, not 1000 like two regular reams. And that's okay too because when the pile gets low then more reams are just a few days away. And the glee that I get from two new virgin reams of card stock is just amazing. It's childish. Each time I re-connect with my six-year old self presented with a whole box of white paper. It was cut wrongly and could not be used for its official purpose but I didn't care about anything like that. I'd say it was about four reams, possibly five or six. A lot of paper in a box too heavy to lift by myself. I don't recall ever actually lifting the box. I tore through that paper like a maniac drawing on page after page after page until they were gone.

That's why I sent a ream of card stock to my nephews, so they can be confronted with a pile of blank pages. And while I'm at it send some pens too. Check it out. Amazon sale. 80% off gel pens, set of 108 different colors.  Regularly $80.00, now $17.00.

I bought couple of sets, one for myself. I don't think they'll work for what I'm doing, but I need something wide to fill background. These are not wide. Acrylic paint and water colors curl and winkle the paper too badly. Colored pencils wear down very quickly. Three sets of colored felt tipped pens all ran out and dried out too quickly. Coloring large areas is a problem. Doing this high number of trials has allowed a very good comparison of approaches to adding color. I could stop it anytime, stop experimenting and switch over to higher quality coated card stock and get on with the project but I'm learning too much what not to do through this one etude.

And when I saw the kids coloring at the breakfast table and saw the whole house turned over to displaying their pictures I realized they might have as much fun with blank paper as I do.

WKRLEM: When sports programing with great.....speaking of sports!

With the great Heather Thomas and play by play by Howard Cosell.

They couldn't talk like this or even do this today. Who would they put in the tank? Lena Dunham?

Where's my time machine.

OUTRAGE.....Fat Loudmouth Moron is in running to replace Francesa on WFAN and it ain't me!

Christie among candidates for sports radio job ( by dustin racioppie North Jersey.com)

After spending the better part of the past three years competing for a future life in politics – president, vice president or a senior role in the White House – Governor Christie could soon be in contention for a job that would give him a megaphone in the country's largest media market: sports talk radio host.

WFAN 660-AM, the region's dominant sports-talk radio station, will "be looking to do stuff" at the end of the year, when longtime afternoon drive host Mike Francesa's contract with the station ends, said Mark Chernoff, the station's program director and vice president of its parent company, CBS Radio New York. Christie, whose name has been rumored as a possible replacement for Francesa, is among "plenty of candidates" the station is contemplating to fill the void left by Francesa, Chernoff said.

It looks like Milo left his friends behind......

After a neocon nevertrumper hit job orchestrated by Evan McMuffin the Alt-right homo gadfly Milo has lost everything. He lost his book deal where he got a $250,000 advance. He lost his podcast. He lost his gig speaking at the Conservative circle jerk. And he has resigned from Breitbart which was his home base.

The fake news channels are full of reports that the Breitbart staffers demanded his resignation. Milo says that it was his decision. He said: “I would be wrong to allow my poor choice of words to detract from my colleagues’ important reporting, so today I am resigning from Breitbart, effective immediately. This decision is mine alone.When your friends have done right by you, you do right by them. For me, now, that means stepping aside so my colleagues at Breitbart can get back to the great work they do.”

Quebec funeral directors trying to curtail 'funeral selfies'

"Taking photos at funerals not new, but posing for selfies at a casket and posting to social media is"

Via Reddit:  Funeral directors in Quebec are discussing how to educate people that taking selfies over a corpse and posting it to social media may be considered disrespectful in some families.

The president of the corporation of funeral directors of Quebec, Denis Desrochers, said the act of taking photos at a funeral isn't new, but sharing those photos on social media is.

"There won't be a 'selfie police,'" he told Radio-Canada's Gravel le Matin, but said that among Quebec funeral directors there is a debate over how to educate people about what is respectful behaviour at a funeral parlour.

"In many funeral parlours we have very clear rules around limiting selfies. Or we tell the public that the families don't want selfies," he said.

Link

"NASA Announces Major Exoplanet Discovery"

Via Google News:  Astronomers from NASA and the European Southern Observatory announced Wednesday that four new Earth-sized exoplanets have been discovered orbiting a star about 40 light-years away, and that three may contain liquid water and be able to sustain life.

This star's small grouping of planets now boasts the most Earth-sized worlds of any system astronomers have discovered, and the most exoplanets that may be able to support surface life and water.

"This is an amazing planetary system, not only because we have found so many planets, but because they are all surprisingly similar in size to Earth," said Michaël Gillon, astronomer from the University of Liège in Belgium and lead author of the paper about the discovery published in the journal Nature.

All seven planets that surround the ultra cool star — which has only about 8 percent the mass of our own sun — orbit more tightly to their host than any of the planets in our system are to the sun.

"They would fit within the orbit of Mercury with oodles of room to spare," Shostak says. "A year on any of these worlds would be less than three weeks, and in the case of the innermost planet, only 36 hours. You'd have a hard time keeping up with birthdays."

Link to the whole article

Study: 90% of people DON'T want to know what their future holds

Via Drudge:  Given the choice most people would not want to know their future, even if these events could make them happy, a new study has found.

Researchers say that people would rather avoid the suffering that knowing the future could cause.

Most people wish to avoid regretting their decision to know, and want to preserve the enjoyment of suspense in their lives, the research found.

The team also found that those who prefer not to know the future are more risk averse and are more likely to buy life and legal insurance than people who want to know the future.

They claim that those who choose to be ignorant anticipate regret and so are more pessimistic.

The length of time until an event would occur played a role in participants' responses.

Deliberate ignorance was more likely the nearer the event was.

Link to full article

HP Advertises Modern Printer on Fake, Awkward ’80s Computer Show

“Computer Show” is actually an existing parody show, but this is the first time it’s been sponsored by a brand. The series has become a cult fave in tech circles, and earlier episodes featured Alexis Ohanian of Reddit and the founders of Lumi (Stephan Ango and Jesse Genet).

Link to source

FP: "California Really Has What It Takes to Secede"

Via Drudge: With the election of Donald Trump and the backlash to some of his early moves in office, Americans are rediscovering nationalism. But confusion reigns over what American nationalism really is. Does it have to be federalist, for instance? Does it have to be liberal? In one of the great ironies of the political season, these kinds of questions are thrown into sharp relief by the strangest nationalist movement now underway — in California.

Drawing inspiration from breakaway groups in Europe, organizations like the “Yes California” movement and the California National Party want to peaceably, legally transform the West Coast of the United States into a “pragmatic progressive” paradise. From one angle, California nationalism, and this particular expression of it, makes perfect sense. Despite marked divides between its northern and southern halves, the Golden State has always nourished its own identity. That stamp was apparent even when Californians played a leading role in fueling all-American patriotism, from the early days of the space program to the closing days of the Ronald Reagan administration.

But now California’s cultural and political leanings have begun to shift away from most of the rest of the country. At a time when only five states in the union boast both Democratic governors and majorities in the state legislature, California is the last place in America where the political left rules unimpeded over a society and an economy large enough to prosper as a nation. Critics warn that the state’s progressive management has grown paradoxically sclerotic, overseeing a slow-motion public pensions crisis, neglecting infrastructure, and building a budgetary house of cards hostage to fluctuating income tax levels from the resident superrich.

But mores matter even more than money, and most Californians have been more than willing put up with the state’s problems so long as their way of life is protected and perfected. Resistance from a stubborn conservative remnant in the far north and central valley has never been able to halt the libidinous, drug-friendly, welfare-statist juggernaut that is the state’s dominant culture. From climate law to immigration law (or the lack thereof), California’s elected Democrats see themselves rightly as the strongest center of opposition to American conservatives and to Trump alike, and the one with the deepest popular legitimacy.

Link to the rest of the article

"Bull Captured After Leading Police On Chase In Jamaica, Queens Has Died"

Via Twitter: The bull that was first spotted Tuesday morning on Lakewood Avenue near Sutphin and Archer in Jamaica has died.

It escaped from a slaughterhouse on Jamaica Avenue. A butcher told Bauman they were moving a large group of those cows and he believes this one may have heard a noise got scared and escaped through the fencing.

Even though it was hit with several tranquilizer darts, it managed to continue to make its way through Queens before being captured in a backyard.

After being captured alive, the bull was loaded into a trailer but sadly died en- route during transport to the Center for Animal Care and Control on Linden Blvd in Brooklyn.

The cause of death has not been determined and the bull’s remains will be cremated.

you come across a magic notebook that whatever you write in it will turn into reality, what's the first thing you write?

Reddity top voted comments...

Well first of all there are a few safety precautions I would have to write down.
- The notebook can never be taken from me.
- I will always know where the notebook is.
- No one but me can use the notebook.
- The notebook is indestructible.
- The notebook will never run out of pages to write on.
- I will always be able to summon a pen to write in the notebook with.
- I can never be harmed or restrained against my will by anything or anybody.
Then the real fun could begin.

Knowing my luck I'd write "bornwithatail is worth millions of dollars and has a 10 inch dick" and the damn book would turn me into a Kentucky Derby winner.

6 cappuccino

"This magical notebook is now obsolete. All magical properties are now transferred directly to my mind. I can now will things into existence, alter reality, etc. All wishes will come with an "are you sure you want to proceed?" safety question. Also: wish previews are a thing."

Should Trump ban pineapple as a pizza topping?

Via Reddit: President of Iceland announces that he would ban pineapple as a pizza topping

The president of Iceland, Guðni Th. Jóhannesson, threw a political bombshell into one of the national conversation today when he took sides in one of the more contentious debates of our times: The "pineapple as a pizza topping" debate.

Guðni answered questions about various personal things, including which team he rooted for in the English premiere league (which turned out to be Manchester United). He was then asked about his opinion about pineapples as a pizza topping. Guðni answered that he was fundamentally opposed to putting pineapple on top of a pizza.

Then he went one step further, announcing that he would pass a ban on pineapple as a pizza topping if he had the power to pass laws on his own. 

Bacon cheddar and pineapple pizza

To cover the head or not to cover the head?

Via Drudge: "France's Le Pen cancels meet with Lebanon grand mufti over headscarf"

"I met the grand mufti of Al-Azhar," she told reporters, referring to a visit in 2015 to Cairo's 1,000-year-old centre of Islamic learning. "The highest Sunni authority didn't have this requirement, but it doesn't matter.

"You can pass on my respects to the grand mufti, but I will not cover myself up," she said.

The cleric's press office said Le Pen's aides had been informed beforehand that a headscarf was required for the meeting and had been "surprised by her refusal".

But it was no surprise in the French political context.

Read more at the Link

Mad politics

I've been eagerly awaiting my subscription to Mad magazine and finally two issues appeared at once, the little stamp in the corner is marked 'February 2017' for one and 'April 2017' for the other.

Why would I do such a thing?

It went like this; I have my favorite sites that I think are reliable sources and then there's everyone else who are just out of their minds, wholly lacking perspective beyond their own one true perspective, incapable of identifying real issues properly nor weighing issues properly and always on about the wrong things and in the wrong ways. Then one day the writers that are left at Charlie Hebdo said they have no desire to mock Islam anymore. There was a lot of discussion about that. At that time I wondered if we had anything comparable to Charlie Hebdo and I couldn't think of anything. Maybe, possibly, per chance, it could be Mad magazine. Perhaps. I wondered how Mad magazine handled Muhammad satire so I looked and it seemed from what I could see at the time that Mad magazine wrote as much about the American boxer, Muhammad Ali.

My favorite sites discuss the same issues. As you do, I read their links in their sidebars and bookmark those places too so the sites liked by the sites that I like all appear to discuss basically the same things  usually in the same ways.

Suddenly with Trump everything is different due to split loyalties and jolting reassessments all around so the coverage being discussed about how news industry itself is a hot mess so slaphappy as to be indistinguishable from Mad magazine.

The magazine I read at 9 years of age, thinking, man, these people sure know about a lot of stuff, and then dropped abruptly at 10 years of age for being impossibly inane and stuck forever at prepubescence. Now the news I read online is the same as Mad magazine. I bet $10.00.

That is my theory.

Let's see.

*  The cover is MAGA hat filled with green slop that Alfred E. Newman is slurping without any spoon. 

* The Fundalini Pages explain things like "Reason for NFL Drop" and "The Real Reasons why Angelina Jolie is Divorcing Brad Pitt." In this section are few political items: 

**  "Why is President Obama's Approval Rating So High?" 

  1) Anyone who said they liked him got a $50.00 Amazon gift card.

  2) The poll respondents thought they were being asked about Michelle Obama.

  3) America is finally free of racism, obviously.

  4) The results were misreported: 55% of people didn't approve of Obama, it was 55 people. 

  5) He's been much more personable lately, what with him about to escape the living hell he's been trapped in since 2008.

** Features of the Clintons' new Chappaqua Home.

Text overlain photo of white frame ranch style house.

  1) Laundry room with basket of deplorables for Bill's underwear

  2) Document burning fireplace

  3) Multiple fainting couches for a pneumonia-wracked Hillary to collapse on

  4) Unused victory party supply pantry

  5) Pantsuit humidor

  6) Doomed campaign keepsake gallery

  7) Sobbing lounge

  8) Expansive, walk-in private e-mail server closet

  9) Candlestick that, when pulled, rotates Bill's swinging mancave back into a respectful-looking library

** Fundalini Asks: Why Didn't You Vote on Election Day

Text under photos of young adults

  1) "I loved both candidates so much, I didn't want to hurt eigher of thier feelings by voting for the other!"

  2) "The proposed amendment making asparagus the state vegetable didn't make it on the ballot, and sorry, I'm a single-issue voter."

  3) "I was in the hospital recovering fro burns. Thanks a lot, Samsung." 

  4) "I thought the election was December 8th and Nicki Minaj's birthday was November 8th. Well, at least she got a nice card a month early!"

  5) "I found an 'I Voted' sticker on the ground so I didn't bother going through with it." 

**  Ways that Billy Bush Celebrated his Birthday

  1) The same thing he's been doing since the Trump tape was released; slowly rocking back and forth in bed with the covers pulled over his head.

  2) Wishing someone, anyone, would take him "furniture shopping"

  3) Searching job sites for openings in the "Vapid, Grinning Sycophant" Industry

  4) Interviewing himself in the mirror, asking, "So what's next for Bill Busy?" In an increasingly hysterical voice

  5) Visiting local locker rooms for some invigorating, much-needed "banter"

* 20 Dumbest People, Events And Things 2016, a dumb thing per page for 20 pages, has a number of political entries.

#1 The Donald Trump Run for Presidency. Donald Trump was an obnoxiously rich reality-TV jackass until he became ... (cartoon of Trump stretching an eagle like a dishrag) ... The Toxic Contender

#2 The Clinton Foundation Is it Grafty in Here? A poster for a musical, "Money Girl" 

#3 Flint Michigan's Toxic Water

#4 Fox News' Roger Ailes Trouble With the Perv, a film poster Roger and Me ... and her and her and her and her.

  #5 Donald Trump's Advisors, two full pages of Republicans made up to look like Mad Max goon squad type figures with menacing names. Donald Trump's Moral Slide Squad.

  #9 Anthony Weiner Sext Scandal (continued) For Huma the Bell Tolls. The secret life of Putz.

  #11 north Carolina's Transgender Bathrooms. Keeping North Carolina Bathrooms safe from transgender persons who want to take a whizz. Governor Pat McCrory Stall Cop. 

  #13 Donald Trump's Misogyny The Piggish Loser. A (deplorabe) People magazine cover. The most Sexist Man Alive. Nobody respects women more than me. On Hillary Clinton "Such a nasty woman." On Former Miss Universe Alicia Machado "She was like an eating machine." On Carly Fiornia, "Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?" 

  #14 Hillary' Email Debacle Deletes of hHer Worries, two full pages of text displayed as if three opened books. 

  #15 Gary Johnson Stumped by Easy Questions Info A Rude Awakening. 

  #16 Donald Trump Paid No Taxes the Art of the Heel

  #20 The Trump Foundation Scam I am 

So, that's it for the political entries that I noticed in the February issue. I haven't looked through the April one yet. Pleased to see Mad magazine equal opportunity offenders. The lickspittle entry on Obama is obnoxious then I must stop and look at them for doing that and remember these people are grownups, old ones at that, attempting to be obnoxious and sarcastic as possible thinking as nine-year old males. They're sitting in their chairs trying to be sarcastic as possible. Read it in a sarcastic adolescent voice and it becomes hilarious and not the absurdly sincere drooling it appears being mocked. It reads as "Now here's or precious beloved national community project we've undertaken to successful completion, mustn't allow any soil nor taint nor foul scent to mar its communal beauty." And that is a bit funny. 

I wish I would have thought of this earlier to compare Mad magazine's coverage of Obama controversies that had our attentions so strongly. I can buy back issues to see but I'm not up to going through all 8 years. They're tearing at everything about Trump and from the liberal angles. As expected. But I still don't know how or if they treated Obama with kid gloves or simply mocked his coverage as they seem to do here. 

Gladly, this issue has a lot of other crazy stuff, a lot of caricature portraits. There is a 6-page spread on a movie featuring Tom Hanks about "Sully" the pilot who put the plane down in the Hudson River. The pictures of the crowds of people are great cartoons. They're the sort of images that some bars allow by accepting an artist's interpretation of the patrons as mural on one of the walls, except better. A couple of Spy vs. Spy where you must study the images to see what the black and white spies are up to and the lengths they go to outwit each other. There are 4 pages of cartoon panels on the subject of commuting. One Day at the Doctor's Office, a 4-panel cartoon. Planet Tad appears to be an online dairy, or a blog. More panel cartoons, "The Strip Club," featuring It only hurts when I laugh, Shishka Bob, Brown Bear, Delusions of Gran, and Scribble Mountain. And of course, their wonderful fold in feature. 

This time it's not in its usual place as inside back cover, rather, it's #19 of the Stupidest things of 2106, What Gender based change are many American stubbornly refusing to accept? The cartoon shows feminists raging with protest signs underneath Target "Our Restrooms open to All" The protest signs all get covered when the page is folded so that arrows meet so there is no point in even reading the protest signs. Everything between the arrows is irrelevant to the solution. The only thing that matters is the content in front of the A arrow and behind the B arrow. The bulk of the cartoon is folded to oblivion. The artist justifies the text at the bottom improperly so that the bulk of the text disappears when the page is folded. So that "Females fear public restrooms, they hear of ghastly things happening in there. But most-(line break) ly it's in their imaginations. The worst business is telling all this to news reporters. So all that is reduced to "Female Ghost Busters" when the page is folded so that A and B arrows touch. 

Conclusion: This first month wasn't so bad as I thought although there is an awful lot of material on presidential elections. There was nothing about Russia interfering with our elections so I cannot say that Mad takes up all progressive media claptrap and makes them identical. I expected more drubbing along those lines since its become major Democrat concern. Reading the Denver Post or NYT or Washington Post on anything political is the exact same thing as reading Mad magazine. I can stay as informed as anyone that I know, I'll have their full perspective by simply reading Mad magazine. Except for the Russian thing, but I'll give that time to sink in for Mad. It's probably in March issue or maybe even this April issue that I have here. 

This turned out to be more fun than I expected.