Cleveland City of Light, City of Magic

Drank this at Wonder Bar in Cleveland. On the television was a basketball game on an aircraft carrier. It's my impression that basketball games are generally not played on aircraft carriers.

Free Stamp:




Sometimes when I play with long exposures I improvise a tripod: the ground. So I set my camera on the ground on 4th Street, set the timer and let it do its thing:



While the unremarkable photo above was being taken, a foot stomped down just behind the camera. Asshole drunk guy? No, a policeman. Ha ha, funny joke policeman! But I got my shot and picked up the camera. I asked him how policing was in Cleveland. "IT SUCKS," he said. Well, I am somewhat glad I suppose.

I think it is a bad sign if your local recreation facility is named after a loan outfit. Just saying.



This is possibly the ugliest monument I have ever seen:




And on that note, the song I always think of when I think of Cleveland:

A Pilgrimage to Memphis

Naturally, when you're from a country dominated by the output of an enormous southern behemoth that owned the last century, trips down in that direction assume an atmosphere of magic. Could I really be in the place that sent men to the moon, that totally won all those wars no fooling, that invented atomic bombs and lapdances and jazz and rock and roll and goatse?

Arriving in Memphis, then, was an eye-opening voyage into the heart of the culture of America. Walking down the street from some shitty record studio I looked up and saw what I had come to see:



That's right, an entire Hostess™/Wonder™ BAKERY, smelling of the sweet stuff that dominated my dreams and taunted me from television commercials and comic books for most of my life. I cursed and adored Twinkie the Kid™; Hostess™ products were not distributed in my province.

And now, in Memphis, home of legendary food, there it was in front of me.



I opened the door and went in. There were offices but no facilities for grateful consumers. Was this some kind of joke? They gave me strange looks and told me to leave. I was CRUSHED. I left, and cried.

As I looked up, puffy-eyed, I saw another vision across the street:



Yes, an entire store full of factory-fresh Hostess™ products, waiting for me. I was saved! Fuck the blues! Memphis has saved my life! Who invented that blues crap anyway?

Breakfast porn for those so inclined:

The Giant Pistachio

From here.

Symbolism

On the flight down I watched Captain America because, you know, that should tell me what America's all about. And it did!

After that I watched a little of a Chaplin movie - ha ha hijinks in a bank that are too silly to believe! - and I gave up on that as the grids of orange streetlights started presenting themselves. So I dug through the plane's audio library - which is weirdly well chosen and thank you Air Canada - and listened to this. The plane's wheels touched down on the very last note.

Ozarks From Above

Good luck Vicky and Barbara:



Also, holy fucking shit:



This was taken somewhere above the delightful little town of Jasper, where there are wonderful apples for sale and an appetizer of fried mushrooms is a gigantic fucking bowl of tasty greasy lumps that no human should be able to finish in one sitting.

Anus... Clenching... Skin... Tightening...

Arkansas Hippie Break

"Hi Wuggytug! I am a Canadian driving around the Ozarks. Seen any Hippies around?"

And the Wuggytug showed me where the Hippies gambol and frolic:



The Wuggytug showed me what the Hippies worship:




And where the Hippies eat:




The Wisdom of the Hippies was revealed to me:



The most important lesson, though, involved Dances with Wienies:



I thought I had figured that one out already, but I was wrong.

The State of Things

From Fort Smith AK with a modest "A" fill-in that I could have totally hidden if I'd wanted to. NYAH.

Anyway, gee there sure are a lotta pawn shops and prisons and across the fruited plain.

But now it's late and I've eaten too much stuff here and here and here and tomorrow I wanna go here and here and maybe here. My conspicuous consumption will make your country great again, Yankee bastards.

This Might Be a Long Long Thread By Now

Women who say things on the internet get ridiculous abuse. Discuss. Thread should be almost closed.

Car-Commercial Soundtracks

Wikipedia informs us that someone tried to sell cars with the help of this. Hope it all worked out.

The Alien Post

In fact you should always trust Canadians, for here is the alien post.

The UFO museum in Roswell is worth a visit and worth the money; it has a lot of material and has nifty pictures of noted authorities like this:



There is quite a lot of local art and community involvement.




Yes, the Baptists are in on it.

A fairly large and interesting research library includes lovingly assembled sets of documents like this one:




There is no way I could mistake those UFOs for any other object on Earth.

As for the aliens themselves, I suspect they may be somewhat overfed library pixies absconding with some research equipment. They are ill-equipped to drive, they like hanging out in fields, they seem unable to hop a small fence and are hardly a threat.

Where I Am Now

Yes yes, Canadians dress funny. I've heard it all before.

Desert Porn

Omspiring

Casino Morongo

God I Love Shuffle Play

Also there was a section where you could ask for specific improvements to the website so I begged for more Victoria Jackson.

God Will Kill You If You Ask Nicely

BEEP! BEEP!

Expect some scheduled posting from tomorrow until around mid-month, with intermittent liveness. Road tripping. Vehicle pictured below:

America Sucks!

John Stossel, preparing for a punching:

One sign of economic ignorance is the faith that "Buy American" is the path to prosperity. My former employer, ABC News, did a week's worth of stories claiming that "buying American" would put Americans back to work.

I'm glad I don't work there anymore.

"Buy American" is a dumb idea. It would not only not create prosperity, it would cost jobs and make us all poorer. David R. Henderson, an economist at the Hoover Institution, explained why.

"Almost all economists say it's nonsense," he said. "And the reason is: We should buy things where they're cheapest. That frees up more of our resources to buy other things, and other Americans get jobs producing those things."

This is what people always forget. Anytime we can use fewer resources and less labor to produce one thing, that leaves more for other things we can't afford. If we save money buying abroad, we can make and buy other products.

That's why Americans are making so much that nobody is unemployed.

The punching:

When the Paranoiacs Fail

News from Israel:

A contract worker from the Labor and Welfare Ministry was charged with stealing the personal information of over nine million Israelis from the Population Registry, the Justice Ministry announced Monday after a media ban was lifted.

The worker electronically copied identification numbers, full names, addresses, dates of birth, information on family connections and other information in order to sell it to a private buyer.

And then the data got to someone else, and they uploaded it all...

Hey, if these guys can't get it right, who can?