Above Rep. Eric Cantor and Pamela Geller in a photo I’ll bet Cantor seriously wishes didn’t exist!

Anti-Islam blogger Pamela Getter is a marginal, hateful freak who would have stayed that way had not Fox News and MSNBC decided to give her credibility a boost during that whole stupid “Ground Zero Mosque” debate/nonsense. Remember that? Me neither.

This hateful harpie should be shunned from civil society, anyway, but shouldn’t her clumsy editing of her alleged communication with Anders Breivik make her a seriously untrustworthy, not to mention undesirable TV talking head?

Why aren’t the FBI all over this woman???

Even Roger Ailes must be giving Geller second thoughts after this latest matter. I really hope that the Norwegian government calls her in as a witness in Brevik’s trial. It would be her just desserts, truly.

Geller’s latest toxic idiocy is an actual JUSTIFICATION of the mass murder in Norway. If this shit doesn’t disqualify her as a credible TV pundit—or even as one of Andrew Breitbart’s top bloggers at his Big Government site—I don’t know what would, because this will be pretty hard to top, even for an shithead of Geller’s caliber. Via Think Progress:

Popular hate blogger Pam Geller has received scrutiny in recent days as the public became aware that the right-wing terrorist in Norway, Anders Behring Breivik, had praised her blog and thoroughly cited her writing in his political manifesto. After a number of blogs made the connection, as well as the New York Times, The Atlantic, and other major outlets, Geller became incensed and began lashing out at her critics.

In a post defending herself yesterday, Geller — who has called Obama “President Jihad” and claimed that Arab language classes are a plot to subvert the United States — reached a new low. Geller justifies Breivik’s attack on the Norwegian Labour Party summer youth camp because she says the camp is part of an anti-Israel “indoctrination training center.” She says the victims would have grown up to become “future leaders of the party responsible for flooding Norway with Muslims who refuse to assimilate, who commit major violence against Norwegian natives including violent gang rapes, with impunity, and who live on the dole.”

To get her point across, Geller posts a picture of the youth camp children Breivik targeted. The picture was taken on the Utøya island camp about 24 hours before Breivik killed over 30 children, so it is likely Geller is mocking many of the victims. Under the picture, Geller writes: “Note the faces which are more MIddle [sic] Eastern or mixed than pure Norwegian.”

Could Geller’s outburst of smears be a distraction against mounting evidence that she might have communicated with Breivik in the past? A post from Geller in 2007 reprints a reader-submitted letter in which an anonymous Norwegian complains of Muslim immigration and boasts that he is “stockpiling and caching weapons, ammunition and equipment.” In the comment section, Geller claims that she provided anonymity to the reader to protect him from being prosecuted. Although Geller recently deleted the ammunition line from her post, a cached version is available. As Glenn Greenwald notes, “If this were an attack by a Muslim group, and a Muslim had something like this on his/her website, the FBI and multiple other groups would be swarming.”

Yep. So where are they?

She’s such a mean person that she thought it was okay to post that?!? She thought about this, she typed it our and she published it. Incredible. What is wrong with this woman’s mind? Below, a screenshot of Geller’s blog post, with her original repulsive caption, which she edited.
 

 
Kudos to Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs for his stellar reporting on Geller’s embarrassing folly.

Now having said that I never want to see her on television ever again, I will admit to getting a good laugh from seeing her put on the defensive and lose her cool on Russia Today recently. RT’s Lauren Lyster really, really let her have it. I laughed out loud several times. Humiliating and hilarious. THIS is the way this woman SHOULD be treated, with utter contempt. If you love to hate Geller, this is a bit of a laff-fest.
 

 
Going through old correspondence, I came across a collection of cards and letters from a personal hero - J G Ballard.

It’s always amazed me that Ballard took the time to respond to my daft letters full questions and queries he must have answered innumerable times. It said much about Ballard’s great humility and character.

The first, dated April 27 1993, was written on a postcard of Carel Willink De Zeppelin, the blue ink (probably a Pentel pen) has faded somewhat, but still visible are his kind words and enthusiasm for a short story I’d sent him, which he over-praised as “a powerful + original piece of work”, and his explanation of the biographical elements of The Kindness of Women:

‘...which is about my writing as much as my life - my life seen through the spectrum of everything I’ve written.’

During the 10 years of our intermittent correspondence, Ballard was always kind, gracious, encouraging and helpful - an example we all can learn from.
 

 

21/11/94

Dear Mr Gallagher,

Many thanks for your letter from LA - I think probably you should make the documentary about the city - I on the whole rather enjoyed the week i spent there some years ago - but then no one mugged me or shot at me on the freeway - part of the problem there have been too many films about LA on TV over the recent years.

Thanks for reading my stuff -

All the best,

J G Ballard

 
One more from Ballard, after the jump…
 

 
Hilarious Halloween costume of Al Pacino’s character from Cruising. I think this costume would get a lot of attention, don’t you?

Thank you, Gwendolyn Witherup!

 
There’s no information on who this guy is or what the lyrics are. I tried like hell to figure it out with no luck. Someone in the YouTube comments translated a lyric with, “There out in the stars, in pale night,far from the sun…”  I suggest just sitting back and letting his intergalactic groove overtake you.
 
Update: The man in question is René Joly and I found his version of the Star Wars theme for sale on eBay here. Knock yourself out!

 
(via Mister Honk)

 
With with the unusual volume of noise in the media lately, one major story that’s getting crowded out is the hotly contested recall election in Wisconsin, which is just a little more than a week away.

A look at the polls show a mixed slate slightly, if not mostly, favoring Democrats. So what can the Republican party do if they can’t win the election fair and square?

Here’s a plan: How about sending absentee ballots to Democrats with instructions to return the paperwork AFTER the election date? That’s exactly what Americans for Prosperity, a conservative front group for the goals of the rightwing billionaire Koch brothers did.

Is there no low these creeps won’t stoop to? Apparently not!

Politico broke the story this morning:

Americans for Prosperity is sending absentee ballots to Democrats in at least two Wisconsin state Senate recall districts with instructions to return the paperwork after the election date.

The fliers, obtained by POLITICO, ask solidly Democratic voters to return ballots for the Aug. 9 election to the city clerk “before Aug. 11.”

A Democrat on the ground in Wisconsin said the fliers were discovered to be hitting doors in District 2 and District 10 over the weekend.

“These are people who are our 1’s in the voterfile who we already knew.  They ain’t AFP members, that’s for damn sure,” the source said.

The “1s” referred to above are extremely likely Democratic voters. Along with this lowdown trickery—did they REALLY think this would not get found out? Do they not even care??—Americans for Prosperity have spent another $150,000 of the Koch’s money to buy pro-Republican television airtime in Green Bay, Milwaukee and Madison.

And here’s another item of interest. Not saying this IS suspicious until the fire department have had a proper look, but the timing for this is fortuitous for the GOP isn’t it, when their opponents’s headquarters burn to the ground just a little over a week before an election? Well, that’s what happened to the pro-labor We Are Wisconsin PAC in LaCrosse. From Crooks and Liars:

Fire officials in La Crosse are continuing to investigate a Saturday blaze that destroyed the regional offices of We Are Wisconsin, a union political action committee (PAC) that has pumped millions of dollars into supporting Democratic candidates in the upcoming recall elections.

The La Crosse Tribune reports that the cause of the fire, which started at about 9:30 a.m., remains unknown. Firefighters thought they had the blaze under control in the afternoon, however, that wasn’t the case and it continued into the evening, the newspaper reported.

We Are Wisconsin used the building at 432 Jay St. to oversee its efforts in the 32nd Senate District recall election, which will be held Aug. 9. Incumbent Republican state Sen. Dan Kapanke is being challenged by Democratic state Rep. Jennifer Shilling in that district.

A spokesman for the group told the La Crosse Tribune that the group’s office was a total loss.

Just sayin…

A final word: Don’t look on this as merely a statewide election, What happens in Wisconsin is one of the most important turning points in American life for decades to come. If the left can’t win the state where the labor movement was arguably birthed, this country is fucked.

You can help get the Democratic vote out from your own home by making canvassing calls for the Wisconsin Democratic Party’s phone bank. They could use your help

Help beat back the Reichwing in Wisconsin. If not, your state—and your job—might be next.

Via Politico/Daily Kos

 
Interesting article from The Guardian about “Scala Forever,” an ambitious 111-film tribute season to The Scala Cinema, London’s legendary, long-gone “grindhouse” movie theater. Twenty-six venues around the city will be participating in the seven-week festival.

Although the Scala was closed a long time ago and the building has been demolished, it stills hold fond memories for London film buffs of a certain age.

Like me. I remember it well and spent quite a few afternoons at the Scala Cinema, watching underground and foreign language films there when I was in my late teen years. I saw a split-screen projection of Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls. at the Scala. I saw Female Trouble for the first time there. Maîtresse with Gérard Depardieu. It’s also where I saw Curt McDowell’s then-notoriously difficult to see pan-sexual freak-out, Thundercrack.

I saw all kinds of great stuff there. To me, the Scala (and the old Brixton Ritzy) were like the greatest places I’d ever been to. In 1983-84, I positively gorged myself on all of these weird films I’d read about for years but had never had an opportunity to see. The thing is, reading this article, I have no memory of the Scala being a particularly sleazy place, just a well-run repertory cinema. I personally never saw any shenanigans there. Then again, I also can’t recall ever going there at night.

The Scala was founded by Stephen Woolley in 1979, originally at a venue on Tottenham Street in central London, and then two years later at its long-term home in King’s Cross. Woolley – who went on to found Palace Pictures and produce countless films – wanted to create a UK equivalent to the grindhouse venues of Los Angeles and San Francisco, with their eclectic, daily-changing menu of movies. The impressive building, which first opened in 1920, and its location in a neighbourhood then largely populated by prostitutes and drug addicts, added to the allure: the atmosphere was a world apart from that of the National Film Theatre.

“It was a thrilling experience,” says former programme manager Jane Giles, now head of film and video distribution at the British Film Institute. “Part of that thrill was that you walked out [of the station] into the badlands of King’s Cross. You then quite quickly found your way to this palatial building, like some sort of bonkers white castle that you see on the logo of Disney. Going up the marble staircase led you into this massive space. The rake was very steep, the seats bolt upright and I think you sat there for a moment with a sense of incredible anticipation. In addition, the auditorium was dark and, at times, illicit. There was a frisson. A lot of the films were quite explicit, so there was a sexuality about the place that was unusual in cinemas. It all added up to an incredibly potent combination.”

Stories surrounding those nights are legion: the dope-fiend projectionist who scratched a CND symbol into a Pearl & Dean army recruitment ad and got the reels in the wrong order at a horror festival; the antics at the gay-themed all-nighters. “We had to try to explain to Serena the cleaner why there were so many used latex gloves on the floor after a lesbian all-nighter,” says Giles. “I told her it was a fashion statement.”

The cinema’s biggest hits were underground classics such as Thundercrack and Cafe Flesh; John Waters’s 70s trash trilogy Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble and Desperate Living; and the work of sexploitation king Russ Meyer. These were films other venues simply would not screen; many of them will feature in the upcoming season.

Read more: Cinema of sin: London’s old Scala picturehouse (The Guardian)

Below, a scene from Curt McDowell’s Thundercrack, which is screening at the Horse Hospital as part of the Scala Forever festival on September 20. Once nearly impossible to see, now on YouTube!
 

 
Thank you Chris Campion!

Painting by Alex Grey

Probably the single most perplexing element in the fossil record is the doubling of the brain-size of Homo Sapiens over the period of just two million years (a very, very short period of time in evolutionary terms). Something caused it, but what?

In this brilliant animation, comedian Duncan Trussell gets to the bottom of it. This is the greatest thing ever, an instant classic:

This is a part of Thunderbrain, the pilot I made for Comedy Central.  It is an animation of Terrance Mckenna’s “Stoned Ape Theory”  which is the theory that protohominids munched on mushrooms and this caused the mysterious rapid expansion of the neocortex that eventually differentiated us from the other monkeys.

Animation by Will Carsola. Written by: Duncan Trussell, Will Carsola, and Tom Giannis

I hope Comedy Central pick this pilot up! And if they don’t Adult Swim should snatch it up immediately. This is what I want to watch on television.
 

 
Terence McKenna on his “Stoned Ape Theory”
 

 
Joe Rogan on Terence McKenna’s “Stoned Ape Theory”
 

 
Here’s DJ Kypski‘s impressive and lovely tribute to Amy Winehouse.

Equipment used: Rane TTM56, Vestax Contoller One

 
(via Testspiel.de)

 
(via High Definite and reddit)

 
I was planning to write a blog post about how appropriately 40% of Americans who receive Medicare deny that they get a government check, but Bill Maher really nailed it in this bit from his Real Time HBO program so I don’t have to. 

What percentage of that ill-informed 40% do you think are Tea partiers? Just asking…

Send this one to all your idiot teabagger relatives just to annoy them.