Your Kid’s On Drugs
Apparently, doing drugs will turn you into Madonna and give you a runny nose.
“Just take a look at yourself in the mirror. I mean, you really wanna run around looking like this Madonna person?”
(via Publique)
Apparently, doing drugs will turn you into Madonna and give you a runny nose.
“Just take a look at yourself in the mirror. I mean, you really wanna run around looking like this Madonna person?”
(via Publique)
Senator Bernie Sanders (VT), the only socialist (not a “top Democrat” as the clip indicates) member of the US Senate tells it like it is. A must see-clip. I agree with him 2000%. About time someone said this. What the fuck is wrong with this country?
“Millionaires and billionaires do not need huge tax deductions, that’s the simple truth. If we’re serious about creating jobs in this country, which should be our main priority, that’s one worst way to do it. Much better to take that money, invest in our roads, bridges, railroad systems, infrastructure—you create jobs doing that.”
“Our Republican friends have got to be held accountable. The issue is the insult, the outrage that they want tax breaks for billionaires but they can’t in their heart come up with extending unemployment compensation so millions of families in this country can have a modicum of security. I believe, politically, we can rally the American people around that cause.”
Let’s hope he’s right. And fuck Obama and the Democrats, this deal is LAME. And furthermore, while they held the MAJORITY, why didn’t they CEMENT unemployment benefits into law to continue indefinitely in states where the rate of unemployment is over a certain threshold? Instead we’re being offered two more years of the Bush tax cuts on millionaires and billionaires in exchange for 13 months?? Is Obama bending over backwards—or merely bending over—to assure the Teabaggers that he doesn’t hold an anti-American, “Kenyian” viewpoint (as retardedly espoused by Newt Gingrich)?
We’re truly getting to well past the point where other countries (you know, the ones with universal healthcare and paid maternity leave and stuff like that) are just going to feel sorry for how fucking stupid we Americans are.
The beautiful and infinite geometry of our Universe is echoed in this vivid fractal journey generated by Chris Korda using the Mandelbrot set. Worlds within worlds within whorls.
Korda describes the making of the video:
This is an extremely deep dive into the Mandelbrot set, to 2^316 (binary). In decimal that’s 1E+95, or 1 with 95 zeros after it.
The video was rendered using my own fractal software, called Fractice, which supports distributed processing using a client/server architecture. The render took five months, using a cluster of up to 20 dual-core PCs on a LAN, all running the Fractice rendering server. The actual number of servers varied over the five-month period but averaged around 15. Rendering only occurred at night.
DEA agents burn a shitload of confiscated weed and the resulting cloud of cannabis smoke gets the attention of pothead dinosaur Ganjasaurus Rex in this stoner epic from 1987.
“Potzilla, Potzilla!”
Ganjasaurus Rex is out of print, but Amazon has got a copy here for $85. I’ll wait for The Criterion release.
This is what it took to make me finally appreciate the genius of Billy Joel. Fucking glorious !
Much thanks to Gregory Ward via Wonder Tonic
O, he was loved, but did he know it? And if he did, would it have made any difference? For the great comic actor Kenneth Williams was torn by the need to be loved and the fear of intimacy that love brings. Should we be surprised? For he was shaped as much by his parents as he was by the times. A gay man in a country where homosexuality was illegal and punishable by gaol. His parents formed the two poles to his world: his father - morose and homophobic; his mother - theatrical and needy. Yet, Williams was to find a halfway-house while serving in the army:
I found that if I got up on the stage to entertain the troops I could make them shut up and look.
Through performance, Williams created a persona that protected him and allowed him to live vicariously. It was how he was. He made a career out of being Kenneth Williams. Over thirty films, innumerable TV and radio shows, he perfected his comedic style of camp double entendre. The innuendo suited Williams, for it allowed him to imply without having to commit; and commitment was something Williams was unable to do.
In one recently released letter to his two close friends, Clive Dennis and Tom Waine, Williams gave a moving declaration about his frustration at ever finding true love:
“All problems have to be solved eventually by ONESELF, and that’s where all your lovely John Donne stuff turns out to be a load of crap because, in the last analysis, A MAN IS AN ISLAND.”
We were only to find out how lonely Williams was when his diaries were published posthumously. He kept a diary for over 40 years, and as writer Christopher Stevens uncovered in his recent biography on the actor, Born Brilliant, Williams coded his diary entries with a colored pen - “[He] wrote in red pen when discussing his health and in blue when he had dramatic news, for example.” More interestingly Stevens noted how Williams’ writing style would changed dramatically through the forty-three volumes, depending on his mood, whether frustrated, boyish, intellectual or depressed. Always at the heart of his life was a failure to celebrate his sexuality and find happiness with someone.
“Living with someone always means a denial of self in SOME way and I suppose I have always known it was something I couldn’t accomplish. So I’ve always stayed on the sidelines. Getting the pleasure vicariously. It’s not wholly satisfactory, but then of course no lives are, and you know what I think about indiscriminate sex and promiscuous trade. I think it’s the beginning of a long, long road to despair.”
The Kenneth Williams Diaries haven’t been out of print since their first publication in 1993, and have added an extra dimension to a talent who is best remembered for his work on the franchise of Carry On films, a series that defined British comedy through the 50s and 60s. By the 70s, the humor was tired, and the audiences demanded more explicit material, something Williams was unable to give. He returned to TV and became a fixture of chat show programs, most notably Michael Parkinson’s excellent late-night series. On the chat show, Williams was able to entertain and captivate, but without a script, without a character to play, he mined his own life, his own history, himself and TV soon ate him up. As he wrote in his diary:
“I wonder if anyone will ever know the emptiness of my life.”
Here are a selection of highlights from Kenneth Williams’ best moments on the BBC chat-show Parkinson.
Kenneth Williams on Parkinson 02/17/1973 Part One, with Maggie Smith and poet Sir John Betjeman. Here Williams describes critics as the eunuchs in the harem. “They’re there everything night. They see it done every night, but they can’t do it themselves.”
More Kenneth Williams plus bonus radio and TV clips and ‘The Vag Trick’ after the jump…
Killing Joke
Upcoming Killing Joke
12/06/2010 Cabaret Du Musee – Montreal, QC
12/07/2010 Phoenix Concert Theatre – Toronto, ON
12/09/2010 Crofoot Ballroom – Pontiac, MI
12/10/2010 Empty Bottle – Chicago, IL
12/11/2010 Empty Bottle – Chicago, IL
12/14/2010 The Venue – Vancouver, BC
12/15/2010 Showbox – Seattle, WA
12/16/2010 Wonder Ballroom – Portland, OR
12/17/2010 Regency Ballroom – San Francisco, CA
12/18/2010 Wiltern – Los Angeles, CA
Below, Bruce Alexander Prokopets interviews Jaz Coleman over the weekend in New York. Coleman reveals a few extraordinary facts about the life of one-time Killing Joke bassist, Paul Raven, who died in 2007. If you just want to cut to the chase, go to about 7:00 minutes in.
“It rubs the lotion on its skin. It does this whenever it is told.”
(via Boing Boing and Xeni!)
