Ancestors 'used drugs to survive'
"there is plenty of evidence that humans have sought out so-called psychotropic drugs over millions of years... These plants are rich in alkaline substances that produce a stimulant effect and may have helped to make life bearable in the most harsh of environments. Historically speaking a lot of people who did drugs seem to be from the higher socio-economic classes."
The bit about plant evolution is intruiging, as it leaves out a discussion of horticulture. I want the whole article.
Prisons offering drugs to inmates
It seems the Scottish system understands the near impossibility of actual rehabilitation from heroin, and now weans prisoners back up to a tolerance level that might help them survive their parole day score.
Wow. I suppose that's some kind of rehab, and some sort of humane... Decidedly pragmatic, at least.
Much better than that creepy AOL site, it's Jesus Pix, Revisited
Awwwww yeah let's hear it for Corpse 87.
That hunting site is #1, where I am #16, see.
The sight of a father and son moving quietly through a patch of American timber, taking a step and pausing for several long seconds as they scan the tree-tops for squirrels is far from uncommon.
Even better than the Nuge's KFK (which seems to be enjoying a web meme renaissance), it's Eder's Hunting: Get your son or daughter started in the right direction!
Billy Wilder. Milton Berle. Dudley Moore
Chuck Jones. Lawerence Tierney. Spike Milligan
What next? I say we stop with the elder statesman of entertainment and go with quantity, not quality. I say we look for tragic events involving
N'Sync - Backstreet Boys - Limp Bizkit
or at the very least
Britney - Courtney - Beyonce
I had a really creepy dream last night.
I was staying with my cousin Terry; for some reason he was supposed to be taking care of me at some school. He lived in this slick minimalist loft space, all white glossy walls and black plastic room-divider curtains. Terry took a shower, and spiders came pouring through cracks in the floor and ceiling, where the plumbing came through. Tiny shiny black spiders from the ceiling, big huge chitinous beasts from the floor. I found a bathroom down the hall; it had stalls and urinals and a continuous flow of business-suited people having trysts. A couple crossed paths with each other as they entered/exited a stall with other partners. I went to find Brendan, and we went outside. We wanted to find our way to this house owned by this couple, the wife a musician and dance teacher and the husband a curator of sorts. It was like a big wacky library, with lots of exhibitions, and tents in the living room.
As we approached the house, I saw someone drive off in my car and went to run after them. The road started to churn and crack and melt, and the car got stuck and turned over and turned out to be not my blue Miata at all but an orange Fiat. I decided to forget about looking for my car, anyway, given the weird bubbling roiling road, and we ran to the house. The stairway ascending into the place held hundreds of separate exhibits, in backlit boxes. I left the house periodically to check on the road, but it was still lavaesque so I returned and rest and wait.
Dust storm approaches from China = magnificent sunset tonight
Pirate's Booty: I suppose it can claim to be a more healthful product than its competitors, in the same way that 'Porky's' can claim to be a more artistic product than 'Porky's II'
Brilliant. Offensive. Witty. With merchandise:
Kusotare Heavy Industries
Musee Mechanique saved -- 20,000 protests deluged park service
I know what I'm doing tomorrow.
Sometimes being unemployed just rocks.
Poor Luther. There is a simple solution to your chronic problem.
You go, Mister Chaser and Ass-Kicker of High Speed Colliding Dump Truck Thieves.
Pissed Samaritan, caught on tape
Dog mauling verdict: Guilty on all counts
Hallelujah and hooray for good jurors.
He's really really cute, but don't piss him off.
I had a dream last night that I was visiting a friend on campus, at Berkeley (up the street), and had this "it's all changed and unfamiliar" experience. I got into a discussion of existentialism with my friend's professor, and was directed to write a 25 word paper supporting my thesis. She was Paglia-esque, and I wasn't going to walk away from the challenge, so I went to my friend's dorm to write it out. At first, all I could find was a manual typewriter, and it was dark and eerie and I was worried about typos. I was assured that turning in a handwritten page would be ok, really. Turned out, though, the expectation was a 3-4 page thing, not 25 words - I'd wasted half an hour already trying to boil my argument down and now had to expand it. Someone loaned me their laptop, which was great, but it didn't have the dorm's printer driver installed. Got through that hurdle, and went to print out my paper, but someone kept sticking pink paper in the printer. I tried, over and over again, to print out something presentable, but ended up turning in a little fuschia party-invitation-sized treatise of Nietzsche's work.
Flo Control
courtesy of the mighty cardhouse
I went to my favorite deli this afternoon to while away an hour or so in people-watching splendor. I was tailed, almost all the way there, by my car's twin, exchanging headlight-flipping salutations as I left the freeway. Genova is always an adventure at lunch time, packed full of sandwich gourmands all waiting for their fresh bread and oil-and-vinegar potion. It's really not as much fun without the crowd.
I circled for a few minutes, looking for parking, then scored a spot behind the building. As I was walking towards the front, I passed a number of construction-worker looking guys, who greeted me in Italian around mouths full of sandwich. Nice to be able to answer back appropriately in these situations - that tends to stifle the impending whistle. Whatever, they were all very nice. As soon as I made it through that gauntlet, though, I tripped over something. Something big. The wooden heel of my boot, which had decided this would be an opportune moment to fall off.
The heel is 4" high; I was pretty much hobbled, and in more visible distress than I felt. A passel of men with epoxy and clamps came to my rescue. They were all very gentlemanly, but it wasn't like I could hang out for 2hr waiting for the adhesion to firm up. I had to go home, sandwichless. But with faith in humanity = +5.
Everyone go bask in the beatific glow of Melly and The Bean
"Make me one with everything!"
How do you say "all the standard condiments and veggies," where you live/stay/at?
In CA, it's "with everything." In LA, "dressed." In TX, it's "all the way."
via IdealRhombus
Psilocybin legal in Japan?
The alternative news sources were abuzz today with news that psilocybin mushrooms are not contraband in Japan. They never have been - not even dried specimens - not until just now. Stoners need to pay attention to the real story - and backstory. In Japan today the mushrooms (emblematic of party culture) are illegal, but the chemical psilocybin is not. So what now, fungus in pill form? Tea bags? In cute Hello Kitty and Domo-kun packaging? Someone's gonna make a mint on this.
In related news, the legend and theory that the Oracle at Delphi was high on fumes, long entertained by archaeologists and geologists, is ready for publication in Clinical Toxicology.
People of Houston: start filling those buckets
As she was being sentenced, her husband, Russell Yates, and members of his family who had been at the courthouse each day of her trial were in New York to appear on NBC's "Today Show."
...the prosecutor gave final arguments that led the judge to threaten a defense attorney with jail...
Why stop there? How about a psychological evaluation, then review for disbarrment?
Because it's not a party until you run out of tissue.
Sure, right there in the fhj archive.
Or you could just ask for it by name.
Last night I had the weirdest dreams, interrupted by a very strange noise. It sounded, at first, like a car parked out front with very quietly buzzing bassbins. Then it sounded like really heavy breathing -it was deeply resonant - but the rhythm was not human, nor cat. I think it might have been a flock of beetle larvae.
I'm redecorating the cozy-couch-fireplace-antique-lab-specimens room of our house, see (gardening? decorating? housewife alert!), having mounted an ancient Maxfield Parrish print that I've dragged around everywhere I went since 1987. I pulled down all the curios that have piled up over the years, organizing them somewhat thematically, until I got to this triptych that looked like it'd been recently trampled in some mud. There were greasy looking streaks in the matting, and matching splotches in the actual painting, and the edges of the frame were all curled up. Then Brendan spotted a larva.
And another. And about 50 others. Slithery little cretins ate my painting! There was a gaggle of them hanging out in the base of a Shiva statue, around which was scattered some old jewelry. Piles of scalings are heaped in the plate-display grooves. It is REALLY CREEPY and provoking of great quantities of heebie jeebies.
Hey looky here: I'm .:Blog Babe of the Week:.
Godzilla vs. Mothra is on tv in a couple minutes. One Christmas, Santa brought a plush Mothra hand puppet to Chris Gore's daughter. That was everyone's favorite toy that year. All I can find, now, is a MOTHRA beanie.
Two actors from 'America's Most Wanted' pleaded guilty Wednesday to having sex with a 14-year-old girl living at an abused children's shelter. They climbed through her window, coerced her into the alley. From a shelter for sexually abused kids. AND THEY GOT PROBATION.
Last week, our nextdoor neighbor wrote an article for the local paper about See's Candy. Yesterday, the family spent the day touring the factory - the little boy who catsits for us got the day off school and everything. Brendan spent the night doing tech support for them, and was rewarded with a big-assed box of peanut brittle. It's so good, it's evil.
Turns out the factory is only about 40% automated; there are actual candy makers making actual candy, and they're nice and solicitous and do things like give writers tours and huge heaps of fresh amazing candy and a lifetime supply of gift certificates. Aw!
Mmm, roasted salty goodness arghdroolmmph...
Also: your best Easter candy value. If you care about Easter candy.
Text-Based Pong
I just wasted 20 whole seconds.
Wacky Russian Horoscopes with crazy artwork.
The English translations are even better.
Today you will have an opportunity to approve or to reject a rather serious offer and they will obey your word. So think for three times (or may be more) before to speak something.
It occurs to me that it's been ages since I looked at a horoscope. It might have saved me some time if I'd paid attention, but then I would not have already fulfilled my annual absurdity quota.
Where does one even procure porcupine faeces?
French Intellectuals to Convince Taliban of Non-Existence of God
"There is no God, and I can prove it. Take your tongue out of my ear, Juliet, I am talking."
The bulbs of mystery, it turns out, are narcissus
You laughed, you cried at the Yatta! animutation.
Well. The fabulous Victor has found the original, live action, men-with-fig-leaves Yatta!
(requires Windows Media Player)
Protesters Protest Protest (now if only someone would protest the protest protest)
Protest at Police Protest
Police Protest
recruiter hunts. bait:
creative management role
pay cut, title boost
woldwide content gig
localization, even
what a meaty job
please start tomorrow
no orientation though
nope, you shadow temp*
VP deeply fears
project management, in fact
sabotage you now!
ha ha ha, I lured
unwitting slave. stated goal:
organize, crack whip
suck the life right out
of her; I abhor concept
of efficiency
"Welcome (name mis-spelled),
new production assistant!"
Hey, what just happened?
We need lunch brought in
in 10 min for 20 staff
then clean the kitchen
You won't manage squat
not even your own desk space
- why is this exempt?
email: "hope the new
girl routes ALL invoices to
producers on time"
that's the attitude
communication skills nil
disgruntlement rife
can't walk to mail room
that is so far beneath us
extra step instead
technophobic veep
technology company
more than I can fix
Deleted email
file not emptied in a year
that's why laptop's slow
print my calendar
every time it changes
archive box at desk
You want title back?
"If it'll make you happy."
What about my JOB?
Project management
we made up to get admin
smart but submissive
PM: psychophant
overpaid dysfunctional
chaos; teams inept
you thought this might rock?
we didn't check ONE reference!
that was your first clue...
seriously, we want
a weak but uberadmin
to take heaps' abuse
Secretary job
no management potential
you may exit now.
Well, it was worth investigating.
No one smiled there. No one. Except the customer service reps, sometimes (internal customer service - how 90s!). So many grumbles: "get your game face on..." "every day that guy works on this is a day lost," right at the front desk. Those, plus the lack of any reference checking, plus the snatching of pens from my desk by this senior producer who took the time to walk over to my corner instead of the office supply cabinet (she didn't pee on the desk, but OH the dominance displays), plus the occaisional sobbing from a restroom stall, were all bad signs.
Every hour I thought "how could they hire someone to do a significant job like this without checking references?" And every hour it was more evident that the job they really offered could be done by a capuchin. It's just that they wanted a chimp. Somehow, they thought I'd fit in a hairy suit. I had to investigate, even if the lack of reference checking, 3 day delay in responding to queries about the missing offer letter email, after a demand that I start work the day I verbally accepted the offer turned into an "ok, start Monday, which is orientation day anyway, but you aren't important enough to get actual orientation, you'll be sitting with a temp who's never trained anyone, didn't know she was being fired 'til you showed up, and doesn't actually know the scope of the job we hired you for, anyway," imbued me with a deep sense of foreboding.
I gave it a chance, until the VP changed my title and job description without talking (at all, since my initial interview) to me, or to HR. I kept wondering when I'd get a "welcome, here are all the things you'll be responsible for and the teams you'll be managing" meeting, and kept getting lunch orders and requests to process invoices for contractors that had no POs on file. Then came the portion of the day spent typing in data from printed docs from finance instead of asking them to send the original spreadsheets or run the necessary report. By then, it was clear I was not the right person for that soul sucking job. When, three days in, I finally got a meeting with my boss, it was time to ask that she reintroduce me with the title and duties we discussed in my interview, the ones I was recruited for. Her answer was to declare a new set of expectations, and to swear she told me I'd be supporting, at the most basic level, over 50 spoiled dotcommers. Why on earth they wasted everyone's time recruiting me for a job that didn't exist is just mind boggling. I could have stayed, and earned my paltry keep and been miserable like almost everyone else. But 60 hour weeks of this crap? I'm not desperate. One should only work those hours at something one forgets is work. I'll take a lot of abuse, work a lot of unpaid hours, in pursuit of good animation. But not for a topheavy toy manufacturer.
melandthebean (11:11:09 PM): you make me feel like i"m on acid
executrix2000 (11:11:24 PM): thanks, now I have Leo Sayer in my head
David Bowie and Lou Reed fist-fighting. The spectacle was likened to a
couple of old ladies picking lint off each other's sweaters.
Interview with Dave Riley, the guitarist from Big Black.
He didn't try to kill himself, he had a stroke.
thankyew, mimi smartypants
Lettuce Prices Soar in the Bay Area
I'm trying to care, but I'm too busy trying to figure out why this is front page news.
He's back from the grave, and ready to party:
Spacecheese presents. . . Attack! of the Crab Monsters!
Oh, how I missed the mighty mighty Spacecheese.
Fear the crab monsters! Long live the crab monsters!
Do not taunt the 67lb bearcat.
We live in a quintessential Berkeley neighborhood: our neighbors are mostly the old guard, politically active, intellectual elite sort. Wavy Gravy lives a few blocks away, in an archetypical Arts and Crafts manse. Lots of academics, artists, hippies and punk rockers, probably 60% of whom wear a mild-mannered exterior M-F. And their families - lots of families, every possible definition thereof. Most houses have amazing gardens - mixes of grasses, fruits, and bulbs - emblems of utopia. There's an apartment building on our block that keeps the local feathers ruffled, but between that and our house is a buffer zone of alternative (coughydroponicough) farmers.
Our house sat derelict for about a decade before we moved in; it was the local hotbed for criminal activity and, on top of that, an eyesore. The place next door is home to the local neighborhood standards and practices maven, who hates our landlady but is nearly fond of us (if we didn't own cars, we'd be in). Said place has crystal sculptures in the windows, intricate little rainbow colored beams in the eaves, and a magfnicient garden of bulbs, huge sprays of grasses and ancient looking flowering aloes. It's their fuschia that drapes over our fence.
We've done some gardening over the two years we've been here, but nothing significant until last weekend, when we pulled a bunch of ugly crappy bushes from the front yard and planted rows of blood red gladiolus bulbs. Just now we went back out to plant a bunch of irises, and found, nestled in our rolled up drip hose, a huge pile of mystery bulbs. We think they're from the neighbor lady, who made approving noises as Brendan weeded last week. So we went ahead and planted them. 20 bulbs of mystery.
Live Life Like You Don't Exist:artcoup
This Girl IS TOO a Monster
I've got nothing else to say; it's too imponderable.
But here's the affidavit.
I spent a whole hour, today, trying to decide what to do with my last weekday of freedom.
By 11am, I'd already run all the errands I could think of and gotten my hair cut. I uploaded old photos to the new photolog. I visited my tattoo artist pal, with whom I didn't spend enough time when I had it.
I panicked about the impending change in my daily life while knowing that it's time.
I congratulated myself that interactive educational toys will be as gratifying to produce as films, and certainly a tamer breed of cat to herd.
I heard from Gordon, who has two jobs and no weekend to speak of, and decided I should just enjoy my final moments of free agency and stop worrying. I know what I'm not going to do this weekend: I'm not going to watch CBS.
The posting has been pretty sparse around these parts, lately.
I've been pensive. I've been uneasy.
I've been seeking gainful, maybe even meaningful, employment.
And I found it. Or, rather, it found me:
I got an actual call from an actual recruiter who found my resume on HotJobs.
The whole thing is very 1999. Well, almost. We are still in a recession, after all.
The offer letter arrived today. I start on Monday.
Now I shall lap up what little is left of the luxury of leisure.
Voters Reject Public Safety Building That Violates Feng Shui
And they wonder where they got that reputation for flakiness?
I bet the Sausalito police/fire station would rival the Marin Civic Center.
It's been raining really hard here, for the last five minutes. Our driveway is like a stream running into the river that is the gutters. It's totally flat here, no incline, but the water is carrying small plants down to the street..
I'm gonna go build a raft, now.
"Fashion luminaries" T&A: ye$.
Bond girl booty, circa 1971: nein.
And it's not like anyone pulled sponsorship, or anything.
Porsche rolls out SUV
Hell, in a handbasket: that's where the world is going.
YOUR TAP WATER IS FULL OF DRUGS!
Or William Rudello is Rush Limbaugh on crack.
I was just spammed by a Swedish metal band.
Headline Haikus:
Real politics
has very little to do
with morality
Black Judge Reinstated 113 Years After His Removal
There are so many remarkable, heart-wrenching aspects of this story.
...Fleming stripped him of his duties, alleging Dean had given a black woman, Annie Maloney, a license to marry a white man. The groom, Antonio Gonzalez, swore in an affidavit that he was part black, but Dean's removal from the bench remained until he died in Jacksonville at the age of 52. The state auctioned his law books to pay off his debts.
Maloney and Gonzales are popular names in CA - one is my (Irish) matrilineal line, and the other is half the (Mexican) kids I went to Catholic school with - but one doesn't think of either as Southern. Neither are they big names in the black community.
Florida sure got the jump on the whole diverse cultural make-up thing.
Too bad James Dean, the South's first black judge, suffered for it.
via the lovely and talented JillMatrix
I'm glad this is considered national news, even if it is human (canine) interest filler:
Alaska Police Dog Named for Hero New York Canine
Pizzas of Death
"Remarkably, Brogan said, another Domino's Pizza delivery person arrived at the crime scene and scooped up the pizzas because customers were wondering where their food was. "Life goes on," he said. "