Silenced Majority Portal

Senator Sessions: "We're Gonna Do That Crack Cocaine Thing"

Guy Lived in a Plane & More Impressively, Once Lived in IKEA

Slugbug thought she would be interested in this story so emailed it to herself: Afraid To Fly? Try Living On A Plane : NPR and found living in a IKEA much more fascinating than living in a plane with permission.  The guy reported that 1/3 of Americans fear flying, mostly because they don't understand what turbulence is.

"It was challenging, but it was pretty incredible," Malkoff says. With two bags of toiletries and clothing, Malkoff slept on the plane alone at night and used baby wipes to stay clean. In the morning, he'd take a jog in the aisles, then wash his hair in the airplane bathroom.

One of his favorite pastimes was the "toilet paper experiment." He'd stick one end of a roll in the toilet and unroll the rest down the aisle to the back of the plane. Then he'd flush and the entire roll would be sucked down in about three seconds. "Apparently mechanics do it all the time," Malkoff says.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much information about living in IKEA.  

Swearing Good For Your Health (Today's Lesson: The Basal Ganglia)

Swearing can make you feel better, lessen pain

“Swearing has been around for centuries and is an almost universal human linguistic phenomenon,” says Stephens.

“It taps into emotional brain centers and appears to arise in the right brain, whereas most language production occurs in the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain. Our research shows one potential reason why swearing developed and why it persists.”

Full article @ Reuters

Up at five AM - fuck yeah

(from "How Stuff Works")

Many studies suggest that the brain processes swearing in the lower regions, along with emotion and instinct. Scientists theorize that instead of processing a swearword as a series of phonemes, or units of sound that must be combined to form a word, the brain stores swear words as whole units [ref]. So, the brain doesn't need the left hemisphere's help to process them. Swearing specifically involves:

• The limbic system, which also houses memory, emotion and basic behavior. The limbic system also seems to govern vocalizations in primates and other animals, and some researchers have interpreted some primate vocalizations as swearing.
• The basal ganglia, which play a large role in impulse control and motor functions.

So, you can think of swearing as a motor activity with an emotional component.

Dance Floors For People Like Me With Day Jobs / Remembering P.S.1

From the Arts Section of the NY Times, reported here from Daily Radar.  It's an idea I've thought about for a long time and it's happening, since I have a job that often requires me to get up as early as 6 AM!

LAST Sunday, under a slowly revolving disco ball, a dance floor in Brooklyn was jumping. The German D.J. Losoul spun techno and house, and the crowd — many in it wearing sunglasses — moved, two-stepping and twirling with arms raised. Toward the end of the party, when he let a single beat crescendo for several minutes before abruptly cutting it off, the crowd cheered — and then booed. The fun was nearly over, and it was barely 9 p.m.In this case they were doing it along a riverbank in the afternoon, with lights strung on the trees, til moonrise.  

Aficionados of dance music are used to waiting until the wee hours to catch top-of-the-line talent. But especially in summer an array of early parties, some outdoors, offer a respite from late nights and expensive clubs, allowing people with day jobs the opportunity to hear the latest in experimental beats and still be at the office on time in the morning.

Then they have a bunch of quotes from people my age (50s) and I actually got the article from a friend in group of  "Geriatric Ravers."  One afternoon venue they mentioned is the  P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens.   Come to think of it, I actually went to one of those things when I was in NYC and I have the pictures!

Dancing Illegal in Des Moines Iowa After 2 A.M.

Huffington Post reports that dancing is illegal after 2 A.M. in Des Moines but it's more or less a "blue law."  A group found out when they sought to hold an "after hours" party in their own building.  

The city council is considering repealing the law, as Des Moines is often perceives as dull.  The ordinance dates to 1942 and there is no dancing between 2-6 AM during the week and not til 8 AM on Sunday.  This is even true for free dances.  

My son is just now reminding me of when he was six and I took him to North Dakota, where we found out that it was illegal to buy toys in grocery stores on Sunday.

The couple pictured at the left is an actual Des Moines couple dancing.

This all puts me very much in the mind of when I lived in Minnesota in the early '70s and in Mankato, there wasn't an actual gay bar but there was a disco called "Trader and Trapper" which was probably the only possible alternative.

The only possible outlets for vice were volleyball/beer parties on the local farms and the adult bookstore, which was one of the only places that was hiring.

Carlin Cartoon / Obama Teleprompter FAIL

Freepers will have fun with this:

Obama's teleprompter breaks in mid-speech

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama had just started a spirited defense of his economic stimulus plan on Monday when one of his teleprompter screens came loose, crashed to the floor and shattered into pieces.

The gadget's fall surprised Obama, who uses a teleprompter during most speeches and even brief remarks. The glass plate displaying his speech hit the floor in the auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, a massive building within the White House compound.

"Oh, goodness," Obama said. "Sorry about that, guys."

The audience — administration officials, mayors and urban policy experts — laughed as Obama went back to his text. To finish his 11-minute remarks calling for a new policy toward the nation's cities and metropolitan areas, he used notes and the remaining teleprompter screen.

Jackson-Inspired Artwork & Flash Mob / Is Michael in Heaven? Did He Really Have 10,000 Books?

See Best, Worst and Weirdest Art Inspired by MJ here. Here is a composite:

 

July 8 Flashmob

Is Michael in Heaven goes into the Top Five MJ stories I found worth reading.

Michael Jackson was raised by Jehovah’s Witnesses and flirted with Scientology and Islam. Now many Christian groups wonder if the King of Pop is residing with the King of Kings.

Seattle PI Blog reports that Michael had 10,000 books. They reported that a judge who knew him said in an interview:

"He loved to read. He had over 10,000 books at his house. And I know that because - and I hate to keep referring to the case, because I don't want the case - the case should not define him. But one of the things that we learned - the DA went through his entire library and found, for instance, a German art book from 1930-something. And it turned out that the guy who was the artist behind the book had been prosecuted by the Nazis. Nobody knew that, but then the cops get up there and say, 'We found this book with pictures of nude people in it.' But it was art, with a lot of text. It was art. And they found some other things, a briefcase that didn't belong to him that had some Playboys in it or something. But they went through the guy's entire house, 10,000 books. And it caused us to do the same thing, and look at it."

"And there were places that he liked to sit, and you could see the books with his bookmarks in it, with notes and everything in it where he liked to sit and read. And I can tell you from talking to him that he had a very - especially for someone who was self-taught, as it were, and had his own reading list - he was very well-read. And I don't want to say that I'm well-read, but I've certainly read a lot, let's put it that way, and I enjoy philosophy and history and everything myself, and it was very nice to talk to him, because he was very intellectual, and he liked to talk about those things. But he didn't flaunt it, and it was very seldom that he would initiate the conversation like that, but if you got into a conversation like that with him, he was there."

Apparently MJ was a frequenter of several bookstores and a Johny Appleseed of reading, spreading books to all children.  He would bring in vanloads of kids and buy them whatever books they wanted.  He would often wear a surgical mask and have an assistant hold an umbrealla to shield him from the glare of florescent lighting.  They contrasted him with Kanye West who doesn't like to read and discussed the disconnect between pop and intellect in America.  

Whatever Happened to Iconic Woodstock Couple?

Thanks to Kayakbiker's sister -- Woodstock Couple Keeps Festival Spirit Alive - movie poster couple are now 60

 

In a recent interview with Spinner, Woodstock performer Richie Havens cited a Martin Luther King Jr. speech, saying "It's not him or him or him, it's all of us or nothing. That was our thing, that's what we went against the war with."  Santana percussionist Michael Carabello: "It was about the music and it was about everything else, but it was more about us getting along." 

Wake Up Dead: AutoTuning the News

That's Not A Gay Rights Rally, THIS Is A Gay Rights Rally

Let me apologize in advance for my really crappy camera work here. In my defense I was caught a little off guard by the Christopher Street Rally in Munich yesterday, because I had no idea it was going on and I was in the Marienplatz shopping district on another errand and I just wasn't able to make the mental gear shift that I needed to, so I'm all over the map with this footage that I literally shot from the hip.

My wife was a bit more focused than I was, so I'll be posting some of her stuff once we go through it.

One thing I didn't notice right away until I got home and looked at it is that the thing that really stands out is the thing that doesn't.  

Not a lot of flaming flamboyant Brünö stereo types to be seen in the crowd, save for this guy I spotted while I was on the second floor of a retail store as he was passing by in the street.

I like the color coordination he's got going there, what with him using all the colors of the German Flag in his outfit.

A little irked I didn't spot him 10 seconds earlier though.

When I post some more clips later, be sure to look at the crowd and how 'normal' looking most people are. I'm beginning to form the belief that a lot of socially persecuted/ostracized so-called 'fringe' people go for outrageousness as a defense mechanism.

As in:

'Oh, yeah, you think I'm a freak, do you? Lemme show you what a freak REALLY looks like.'

More on this later in my follow up post.