It's part deux of our fawning in the halls of democracy.
We get some useful bathroom etiquette from Winston Churchill before going over the new marijuana legislation passed in Massachusettes and the implications for the future of drug laws.
We also talk about Obama's potential cabinet and our hopes and fears for the new Obama Administration. I promise after this show we won't talk about politics for a while.
May the wings of freedom never lose a feather!
Time: 45 min, Size: 53 MB
Date Uploaded: November 19, 2008
Apparently, right after Sarah Palin pardoned a Thanksgiving Turkey, for the benefit of a local Alaskan news crew, she continued talking on camera while turkeys are killed in the background. Hilariously Heartless.
Dig the look on the Turkey farmer’s face while he goes about his business. He seems legitimately embarrassed that he’s on camera. To his credit he doesn’t let that slow him down. Hungry Americans need their turkey this holiday. Thanksgiving rules.
Ooooh. This is almost hard to watch. And something tells me this isn’t too far off from how he’s greeted in his soon to be not-so-presidential bed every night as well.
I took the picture above from the “Call for Service” Icon on my broken office copier.
I can’t figure out who that’s supposed to be. Is that the service guy who’s unhappy because he has to come fix the copier? Shouldn’t he be happy the copier is broken, maintaining his job security?
Or is the picture of the unhappy man a representation of the working soul of the copier that’s sad because it needs service?
The position of the icon, next to the phonenumber for service seems to suggest that this is the Service man - but then why is he unhappy? I mean, this is his job. I’m not sure I really want an unhappy serviceman coming to fix my copier. Maybe he’s got something’s going on at home? But then how would the copier know that? And if that’s true maybe he should go home and take care of whatever is upsetting him so much. If the service man is happy, would the icon have a happy face?
Perhaps it’s the machine’s attempt at commiseration and the unhappy man in the tie with the briefcase is meant to be the frustrated user who is now unable to copy.
I’d like to know the mind of the programmer who chose this icon. It’s strange, indeed.
I’ve been digging my teeth deep into this Democracy2.0 fury that’s been trodding across the internet as a result of our historic presidential elections.
“Today’s technology allows for innovative online collaboration, networking, transactional, and information visualization. Integrated together in a coherent set of solutions for the citizens of democracy, it is now possible to conceive of a single-platform which is an independent non-partisan party whose sole mandate is to harness the power of these technologies into an accessible framework that will allow citizens the ability to stay informed about complex issues and to register their votes in favor or in opposition to processes in government. Transparency will lead to a stronger, more active and informed citizenry and more accountable government.
The humble hope and ambition of this system is to give the citizens of a democracy a robust platform to become more educated and informed about our representative government and to be able to influence the machine of government in positive ways. The end game is simple: By interacting with this system over time, a user will automatically become orders of magnitude more engaged with issues of society than before she had been before becoming a user.”
In my mind, what we’re seeing with Democracy2.0 and the use of the internet to increase government transparency and accountability is the best and most valid form of Magick I’ve seen proposed in years. Put your D&D books away dickheads the whole world is already right here in your hands.
“The contours of this myth echo what my chat with the band after the Santa Cruz show confirmed: Wolves in the Throne Room are hard-core tree-huggers, with a Manichaean view of the environmental crisis and a pagan faith in the transformative powers of nature. I mostly talked to Aaron, an articulate and intelligent fellow wearing a green Tyrolean hat. After honing his politics in the Pacific Northwest’s DIY punk scene, Aaron moved to D.C. to fight the good fight as a secular lefty. It didn’t work out, and he moved back to Olympia, where a surprising series of spiritual experiences he hasn’t really talked about made him a clear-eyed seeker of earth wisdom. With his brother and their respective partners, he now lives on 10 acres of land near Evergreen State College, where his posse is painstakingly crafting a sustainable life off the grid. And finding time to play hard-core, shamanic eco-metal.”
This past weekend I spent one of the more enjoyable Saturday night’s I’ve had in Chicago in sometime at our city’s resident “Horror Theatre” experts newest production, an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Dreams in the Witch House”.
“The Dreams in the Witch House” is a short story originally published in Weird Tales 75 years ago apparently without Lovecraft’s consent. Until recently Witch House has been considered a throw away in the precocious lexicon of the 20th century’s most influential horror writer, but in recent years it’s gained some traction with critics and has seen a number of adaptations both to the stage and to the screen. Two of those adaptations include a recent retelling for the Masters of Horror series:
and a more liberal remix that happened to be one of Borris Karloff’s final films. Oddly enough “Curse of the Crimson Alter” happens to be an early imprint upon me, possibly the initial psychological push that interested my 4-year-old self to be both terrified and mesmerized by beautiful woman performing strange rituals in animal masks for the rest of my days:
“Witch House” tells the story of a young mathematics genius with a mysterious past, Walter Gilman, taking to school at the infamous Miskatonic University. Before our fated hero can even unpack his bags he’s beset by terrible omens, rat faced humans, odd foreigners, and troubling dreams encouraging geometry as a means to a rather inhabited fourth dimension. By the end of the show we’ve been treated to spirit possession, incest, baby pies, glowing pentagrams, an awesome chameo from an Old One, plenty of madness and witchery and enough murder to keep that old impotent cunt Dick Cheney horny for a week. In short, it’s a delicious trollop through the highest roads of horrors greatest riffs.
One of the truly great joys of Chicago’s boutique theatre scene is to witness how these small cadres of thespian devotees manage their often times lofty aspirations against, at times, rather troubling limitations. To this, “Witch House” is no exception. Charlie Athanas’ set design was simple and spacious allowing the story to unpack itself without clutter, offering clever reveals to punch up the story’s EVUHL! fastidiously. Athanas’s sets hung well with Paul Foster’s light design together reaching perhaps their most noticable success during Walter Gilman’s journeys into the 4th dimension.
The performances were great as well. J. David Moeller was fantastic in his multiple roles holding court with not only the best face for Lovecraft, but also the finest delivery. Chris Hainsworth seemed to pull his performance right from ‘Fire Walk With Me’ invoking Sheriff Cable with a razor timing that was a complete joy to watch. And Brian Amidei hit a couple great marks with both his short stint as Witch House super Dombrowski and also as the rather burdened priest. Satellite Viking Sean Bolger arced well between a John Hustonesque begrudged cheif of police and a effete librarian.
But what sets Wildclaw apart from other theatre groups is that they aren’t just pursuing art by way of theatre, they’re pursuing theatre by way of Horror. And this love of the wicked permeates every aspect of the show; from the obvious selection of the story, to the wonderful (and multiple) gory ejaculates, to the welcome homage to pie and David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks”. Even Adam Kozlowski’s sound design seemed to be a love letter to all that is horrorful as if it was plucked line for line from the soundtrack of WGN’s old Sunday night horror mainstay “Tales from the Dark Side”.
If you’ve you’re not totally deplete of taste or class and happen to enjoy yourself a dark yarn now and then, you’d be fool to miss the WildClaw Theatre’s production of “The Dreams in the Witch House” playing Thursday through Sunday from now until December 21st at the Atheneum Theatre in Chicago.
