Iggy Pop's concert rider

A huge gallery of vintage broadcast microphones

A brilliant flickr set of some steampunkish electronic sculpture things

RockTheSkillCrane
Control a prize crane online. The claw fell off as of this post, but it should be back up.

So it turns out that Japan has this sneeze fetish culture. I'm never, ever surprised by the crap coming out of Japan anymore. They've completely run out of real-life experiences, and they're just making shit up these days.

Tons of Bookplate and Ex Libris scans at Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie
(via drawn)

Army Times: Rumsfeld Must Go
Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large. His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised. And although the blame for our failures in Iraq rests with the secretary, it will be the troops who bear its brunt.

FixAVote.com
"Using state of the art technology, we overcome the challenges of competition and ensure election results for our clients"

A Country Ruled by Faith (NYTimes Review of Books)
An excellent article on how the White House subverted the separation of church and state one evangelical at a time.

The deputy undersecretary for defense intelligence, General William (Jerry) Boykin—a man leading the search for bin Laden—made headlines during the Iraq war with a slide- show lecture he gave in churches. He appeared there not in his dress uniform but in combat gear. He asked audiences (this was after the 2000 election and before the 2004 one):

Ask yourself this: why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there?... I tell you this morning he's in the White House because God put him there for such a time as this. God put him there to lead not only this nation but to lead the world, in such a time as this.

Then he asked the congregation who the enemy is. He showed slides of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Il, and Taliban leaders, asking of each, "Is this man the enemy?" He gave a resounding no to each question, and then revealed the foe's true identity:

The battle this nation is in is a spiritual battle, it's a battle for our soul. And the enemy is a guy called Satan.... Satan wants to destroy this nation. He wants to destroy us as a nation, and he wants to destroy us as a Christian army.

Some of us go to work every day. Stevie Starr swallows stuff and hocks it back up for money.

I've linked to Bob Dylan's fantastic XM Theme Time Radio Hour show in the past, but not frequently enough. WhiteManStew has links to every show broadcast here
The most recent theme is Halloween. Enjoy.

Russia's Hell House of Wax, designed to show kids the dangers of drugs.
From WFMU's Beware the Blog

A huge flickr gallery of Soviet/Eastern Euro propaganda posters

A gallery of old Northern Soul labels at thisoldsoul

The Vormator Design Challenge.

Worried that Republican-backed ventures may be lurking in your investment portfolio? Get the Blue Fund. They're not all shorts, and hey! there are even a few non-Granola companies in there! (via memepool)

Gray Kangaroo Personal Liquor Filter

Periodic Table of Funk

Pat Robertson Coloring Book
Be sure to check out the submissions of the colored pages.

A nice retro illustration flickr set

80's arcade game-inspired art at Fort90

The Beginning of the end of America
More on-spot analysis from Olbermann (youtube). Must see.

Time To Go! Inside the Worst Congress Ever (Rollingstone)
How our national legislature has become a stable of thieves and perverts -- in five easy steps

"The 109th Congress is so bad that it makes you wonder if democracy is a failed experiment," says Jonathan Turley, a noted constitutional scholar and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington Law School. "I think that if the Framers went to Capitol Hill today, it would shake their confidence in the system they created. Congress has become an exercise of raw power with no principles -- and in that environment corruption has flourished. The Republicans in Congress decided from the outset that their future would be inextricably tied to George Bush and his policies. It has become this sad session of members sitting down and drinking Kool-Aid delivered by Karl Rove. Congress became a mere extension of the White House."

The end result is a Congress that has hijacked the national treasury, frantically ceded power to the executive, and sold off the federal government in a private auction. It all happened before our very eyes. In case you missed it, here's how they did it -- in five easy steps"

Linux to ship for Sony PS3

A nice tilt-shift flickr set
A tilt shift lens gives images a distorted focal depth, often making real-world scenes look like toys.

The Residents' One Minute Movies

The Global Curse of Comic Sans
The gray sweatpants of the font world. Nothing screams "I just don't care" like comic sans.

A photographic visit to Old L.A.

Prepare for the squat, dim-witted goblin hordes!

Some beautiful steel guitar work from Tom Brumley of Buck Owen's Buckaroos. From the Buck Owens Ranch Show, 1966

Is Google Evil? (mojones)
Internet privacy? Google already knows more about you than the National Security Agency ever will. And don’t assume for a minute it can keep a secret. YouTube fans--and everybody else--beware.

Triple-vision LCD

Booker T and the MG's doin' Green Onions (youtube). Learn to dance like this and you'll be a better and happier person.

Planning an interplanetary invasion? Need weapons? Attack Robots?
Brotronic has you covered.

Another album cover gallery - this one with lots of space-age pop.

A huge page of vintage coin-op machines. Tons here.
Don't believe the donkey.

Old motel signs from all 50 states

Expo 67
Habitat 67

Battle of the album covers (via mefi)

Some great graphics and fonts on this collection of pre-50's railroad advertising blotters. (A-F)
The (G-Z) collection is here.

Get yer SHHH cards (Society for HandHeld Hushing) from coudal.
Pdf link to printable cards here.

hideous split keyboard

19 Terrific Midnight Movies from the last 10 years (onionavclub)

Am I the only Clash fanatic left that thinks Sandanista! still sucks?
"Fascinating and fun?" Please.

Quit your job and act. Everything'll work out just fine.

Description: Guys needed to get hit with pies/splashed with water for video montage. Independant video project saluting wet/messy slapstick is being done which will have a big montage of guys getting hit with pies and soaked with buckets of water - and we're looking for "targets!" If you've ever wanted to get bit with a pie and even be paid for doing it, this is your chance!

No acting ability needed - just show up, get hit a pie (or two or more), clean up/change clothes, get soaked with a bucket of water, dry off/change, do one more shot of yourself getting either pied and/or wet and/or possibly something else (like hit with a cake or slimed) - and walk away with at least $10 and a line on your resume!

So you've decided to be evil.

KevinSaysHi works on paper

Phony Xtian zealot wants to ban Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.
Irony of ironies.

Make a mad scientist light (instructables).

What do Christian millenarians, jihadists, Ivy League professors, and baby-boomers have in common? They’re all hot for the apocalypse.
(New York Mag)

Millions of people—Christian millenarians, jihadists, psychedelicized Burning Men—are straight-out wishful about The End. Of course, we have the loons with us always; their sulfurous scent if not the scale of the present fanaticism is familiar from the last third of the last century—the Weathermen and Jim Jones and the Branch Davidians. But there seem to be more of them now by orders of magnitude (60-odd million “Left Behind” novels have been sold), and they’re out of the closet, networked, reaffirming their fantasies, proselytizing. Some thousands of Muslims are working seriously to provoke the blessed Armageddon. And the Christian Rapturists’ support of a militant Israel isn’t driven mainly by principled devotion to an outpost of Western democracy but by their fervent wish to see crazy biblical fantasies realized ASAP—that is, the persecution of the Jews by the Antichrist and the Battle of Armageddon.

Hugo Chavez May have Anger Management Issues
(McSweeneys)

Scarstuff, a blog dedicated exclusively to spooky records.

Holy crap! Adams, the 100 year old comic book gag and novelty company, has a website. Why don't you clowns tell me about this stuff?

The origins of "A Day in the Life"

James Joyce Ulysses Animation (youtube)

A flickr set of 1400 Soviet Posters (found on Metafilter)

If you're going to California to join a cult, make sure you go for the good-time partying of Bubba Free John, and not the sleep deprivation of Kalindi (10 Zen Monkeys). If neither of them suit you, just check the cult yellow pages on factnet.

A ton of Smiths and Morrissey bootlegs and live recordings

Keep the Great Writ Alive (Salon)
For eight centuries, habeas corpus has shielded people from detentionwithout trial. The Senate "compromise" denies this right -- and threatens the rule of law.

For nearly five years, I've been fighting attempts by the Bush administration to sweep away the cornerstone of our justice system: habeas corpus, which protects people from being summarily detained without trial. Considered the hallmark of Western liberty, habeas corpus has its origins in the Magna Carta of 1215. The "Great Writ" ended kings' power to kidnap people at will, lock them in dungeons and never bring them to court.

WWJD? Falwell compares Hillary to Satan. Technically, she's worse:
"I certainly hope that Hillary is the candidate," Falwell said at a breakfast session Friday in Washington. "I hope she's the candidate, because nothing will energize my (constituency) like Hillary Clinton" he said. "If Lucifer ran, he wouldn't."

So let me get this straight... Lucifer himself wouldn't energize your constituency? Really? But a woman who dares to run for political office would? Interesting. These idiots must have special bibles with extra chapters that tell you how to take the Jesuslike path when slandering political opponents.

Bill Clinton HANDLES Fox News in an interview on terrorism. (thinkprogress).
"You did Fox's bidding on this show. You did your nice little conservative hit-job on me."

Fun in the workplace images done in an instructional illustration style.
(nicked from wfmu)

I usually don't like linking to commercials, but damn this McDonald's spot from 1971 is great. A bunch of long-in-the-tooth fast food workers singing about how clean the floor is. They need to get back to these kinds of basics.

If you have 5 minutes today, read Al Gore's Sept 18 speech on the immediate need for change in environmental policy.

$350,000 stereo amplifier. Use it to crank records on your $125,000 turntable

An early Bad Brains performance of 'Attitude', featuring a pre-insane, pre-dreadlocked HR (youtube). The link says it's 1979, but it may be later based on the style. Love the Brains. I've got this one on cassette!

Fake News Central: Examples of corporate-sponsored videos that are fed to news shows.

Old Time Religion, Lego-style at the Brick Testament.

One-trick ponies Vol XXI: Khaaan!

Pope asked to convert to Islam.
Seriously.
Never has the crime of offending someone been taken to such ridiculous extremes. Just stop already. We're sick of this shit. You got offended... you're mad. We get it.

Robotic boot chucker

All real criminals already caught. Police focus efforts on Willie Nelson.
73 and STILL GETTING HASSLED BY THE MAN

Google.org is launching with a profit-based philanthropy model (NYTimes)
Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, believe for-profit status will greatly increase their philanthropy’s range and flexibility. It could, for example, form a company to sell the converted cars, finance that company in partnership with venture capitalists, and even hire a lobbyist to pressure Congress to pass legislation granting a tax credit to consumers who buy the cars.

A flickr sneakpeak of Banksy's LA Warehouse show, "Barely Legal", which opens today.

Candy is dandy, but liquor is cash money.

How to make willow twig furniture. (via Make)
They look great but I once tried to get comfortable in a willow twig chair. It's not possible.

10 Highly Pretentious Musical Instruments (OnionAVClub)

A free, online book about the making of the greatest Beatles album, Revolver
(from metafilter)

Why Johnny Can't Code (Salon)
BASIC used to be on every computer a child touched -- but today there's no easy way for kids to get hooked on programming. Quietly and without fanfare, or even any comment or notice by software pundits, we have drifted into a situation where almost none of the millions of personal computers in America offers a line-programming language simple enough for kids to pick up fast.

A great video about how much energy comes from sunlight with falling batteries smashing everything (via Bifurcated Rivets).
A friend of mine thinks this is exactly what's going to happen when T.O. takes the field in Philly when Dallas plays on Oct 8.

How to steal an election with Diebold Accuvote machines from Princeton University.
Also worth reading is security researcher Avi Ruben's excellent blog post on his experiences as a voting official during Maryland's primarys.

"Throughout the early part of the day, there was a Diebold representative at our precinct. When I was setting up the poll books, he came over to "help", and I ended up explaining to him why I had to hook the ethernet cables into a hub instead of directly into all the machines (not to mention the fact that there were not enough ports on the machines to do it that way). The next few times we had problems, the judges would call him over, and then he called me over to help. After a while, I asked him how long he had been working for Diebold because he didn't seem to know anything about the equipment, and he said, "one day." I said, "You mean they hired you yesterday?" And he replied, "yes, I had 6 hours of training yesterday."

A great Keith Olbermann commentary on Bush and 9/11 from last night. It's good to see that honest journalism is getting fair play in light of the lies that ABC has been spewing lately.
(MSNBC via youtube)

The 700 Hoboes project is done and up at E-Hobo.com
(via Drawn!)

When writers attack! (NYTimes) Impudence! Irascibility! Impertinence!

Can I put my own messages on Pop Art Toaster? I've always dreamt of speaking to the world through toast.

Top 10 Stock Photography cliches
(from coudal)

A fantastic poster gallery from patent pending industries

How U.S. merchants of fear sparked a $130bn bonanza
In effect there has been a huge privatisation of the homeland security industry in the US. It extends from surveillance issues to developing technology to working in war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan, where many jobs once carried out by the military are now done by private contractors. At government hearings last year ChoicePoint said it considers itself a private intelligence agency doing the government's spying. 'After 9/11 we have seen the rise of the security-industrial complex,' said Peter Swire, a law professor at Ohio State University and former Clinton adviser.

Airplane passengers chat, prayers to be recorded and swept for suspicious content in real time. (Telegraph UK)

LA Alternative article on graphic artist Coop
Coop’s work, like that of many of our most important present-day artists, points out the dangers and hidden meanings behind consumer culture, turning the logo against the company and thereby working to reclaim the mental territory that’s been encroached upon in the battle for the “hearts and minds” of the people.
Coop's poster gallery here

Terror alerts aid terror goals; increase Bush polls
"To me this is the most novel and interesting of the findings," said Larry Beutler, director of the National Center on the Psychology of Terrorism in Palo Alto, who reviewed the Columbia team's research. "There are findings suggesting that the administration's use of the alert system increased inordinately before the election and each time it did, Bush's numbers went up about 5 percent."

The Punking of Paris Hilton (youtube).

Pretty cool 150mpg concept car from Loremo, which it hopes to put into production by 2009.
(via Wallpaper)

This week, I'm going all Victorian Slang on your Nancy

Just Try Voting Here: 11 of America's worst places to cast a ballot (or try) (Mother Jones)The dirtiest-trick award, however, goes to New Hampshire, where the state Republican Party -- its executive director, a veteran, working on the military principle of disrupting "enemy communications" -- hired a Virginia-based company named gop Marketplace to jam the Democrats' phone bank system during the 2002 U.S. Senate election. Republican John Sununu won the close contest; three men are serving prison terms as a result of the endeavor, and a fourth is under indictment, with evidence still surfacing that the action may have been approved by senior party officials in Washington.

All past issues (text only) of Jump Cut magazine are now available online

Moon Land Grab (Nature)

Why Hip-Hop Sucks [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]
He's got some good points.

Charlie Brown Has Never Knowingly Taken Steroids (McSweeneys)

Oort: A music video that I'm not sure can be described. Horrible, bouncy, prog-metal played by vikings and knights? The Estonians seem to like it.