Monster Kid Chronicles Part 3
It had started when packages of Universal Pictures’ horror films were released to TV stations, in those pre-video, pre-cable, pre-digital days. To see something then you had to wait for it to come on....
View ArticleThe endurance of Ray Bradbury
At his death at age 92, Ray Bradbury’s status as an American writer is assured. He managed to live long enough to outlast most of a once-dominant critical establishment who prided themselves on being...
View ArticleThe story of Jay 2Pay-Z and Joe’s garage — Part One
Last Friday afternoon, our next-door neighbor Joe found two baby birds in his driveway — one dead and drawing flies in the sun, one in the shade of his Jeep, still alive, but barely. Joe looked...
View ArticleThe story of Jay 2Pay-Z and Joe’s garage — Part Two
But Joe had to go to bed early Friday night and work all day Saturday! We are old friends, so we took on the bird-feeding job until he could get back to it on Saturday night. I knew as soon as I saw...
View ArticleWhat happens when you take prime California farm land and turn it into...
An ode to Stockton, California — courtesy of Joni Mitchell:
View ArticleThe story of Jay 2Pay-Z and Joe’s garage Part Three
During the night, 2Pay-Z appeared to have doubled in size. In fact we calculated during Saturday morning that he was doubling in size approximately every four hours. According to my figuring, by Sunday...
View ArticleThe best antidote to that KONY2012 madness
Last week, “Dancing Matt” Harding released his latest video:
View ArticleThe story of Jay 2Pay-Z and Joe’s garage — Conclusion
But, as I’d predicted, we couldn’t let go that easily — luckily for 2Pay-Z. Against Wei’s advice I wanted to go get a closer look and make sure 2Pay-Z was okay on the ground. I strolled over to the...
View ArticleWhat good is Twitter? How a telltale tic is twitching us into twits
It’s now thought that the reason CNN and Fox mistakenly reported, at first, that the ACA mandate had been struck down by the Supreme Court… was simply because some chucklehead pseudo-reporter in the...
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Voyage to see what’s on the bottom
I am perplexed that as I scan the news, not more has been made of an amazing event that took place about three months ago. Amazing because of what happened– something never done before in human...
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John Law and Last Gasp announce Cacophony Society history book
Finally, those on the West Coast who’ve memorized the genealogy of pranksterism and how it spills out continuously into the mainstream can rest their flapping gums: A book concerning The Cacophony...
View ArticleCan you beat him?
The eloquent remark from the YouTube channel this comes from bears repeating, here : “Rainbow Bunchie aka. Final Boss of Internet jumping for 10 hours ..Can you beat him?” Of course, if one cannot...
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(You can’t) meet the Billboard Liberation Front
In the mid-’90s, one day soon after having migrated from Dixie to San Francisco, this writer stumbled upon an odd and interesting advertisement whilst strolling the Mission District near the armory. A...
View ArticleGuthrie-inspired Roots-Folk fest
In honor of the Woody Guthrie centennial, we’ve put together a little Raw Story music fest. Hopefully, it won’t sound too much like your local PBS pledge night. First up — The Seekers. My mother had...
View ArticleBatman and the painful irony of the Colorado movie theater shooting
The painful irony… All those people, including children, were shot dead by an armed lunatic at a Dark Knight screening. Many others were maimed and some more may die. It’s a cruel tragedy—and...
View ArticleWho is ‘Bandar Bush’ ?
Bob Woodward laid it out in State of Denial: George W. pulled Bandar aside. “Bandar, I guess you’re the best asshole who knows about the world. Explain to me one thing.” “Governor, what is it?” “Why...
View ArticleThe secret life of TV commercials
TV commercials that reveal a sickness A couple of dandelions force their way up through cracks in the sidewalk—just two yellow wildflowers looking for the sun. A tall, rawboned white guy stalks up;...
View ArticleMars ‘Curiosity’: Empty Pipelines and Promises
This Sunday night millions of people worldwide will be glued to their media delivery systems watching not (just) the Olympics, but the most ambitious and daring interplanetary landing ever. The Mars...
View ArticleNerds don’t need you
Last night nerds shut down the Internet. To be accurate, some clouds of sport and p0rn remained online, but the only tubes that mattered went through NASA, or to be more specific, the Jet Propulsion...
View ArticleRhetorical Address to Gun-loving Bunker Hunkerers
So it’s happened again. But it can, after all, be reliably predicted. Soon, once again, a psychopath, armed to the teeth, will kill a large number of people, trending to be a larger number each time....
View ArticleWe Are All Hillbillies Now
I blame sportscasters, mostly. As the dumbing down of intellectual discourse in the U.S. continues to occur, the era is marked by certain characteristic grammatical mistakes. Solecisms which would have...
View Article… for a man
Neil Armstrong turned 82 three weeks ago, on the day that the Curiosity Rover landed safely on Mars. Two days later he underwent surgery on blocked coronary arteries, the procedure led to complications...
View ArticleTime Traveling Journalism, Two Articles from 2014: Trickle Down Eatonomics &...
Time travel news channeling? Yes. Don’t smirk, I did it. Here’s the inarguable proof: February 10, 2014: TRICKLE DOWN FEEDING A 2014 Wall Street Journal excerpt, in consequence of Mitt Romney’s...
View ArticleMicrolife Stew Report
It’s already Halloween in a little jar on my dining room table. Earlier this week I started breeding tiny monsters in earnest so that I’d have plenty of protist-porn to watch through my two...
View ArticleIt’s the Congress, stupid
Now that Mitt-flop has pretty much put the nail in his political coffin, it’s time for the nation to turn to what’s been painfully obvious to many of us since the minute we heard Willard “Mitt” Romney...
View ArticleThe Deadly Desert of Burning Man
I go to Burning Man each year, and I went this year. Yes, it’s difficult to explain the experience. Moreover, although non-attending acquaintances may politely ask you how it was, their eyes glaze with...
View ArticleHow to say goodbye to Endeavour and NASA’s space shuttle program
The parking lot on Twin Peaks is no place for a San Francisco resident from September to October. Huge tourist buses and shiny new rental minivans disgorge hundreds of visitors from England, France,...
View ArticleThe Bee Man of Union Square, NY
Recently on a Fall day in Manhattan, I found myself at the Farmer’s Market at Union Square. For a few blocks the white tents of the vendors make an arcade where one can stroll, browse and shop. I was...
View ArticleThis Isn’t the ’90s: Why Obama Won Last Night’s Debate
Could we take exception to this blanket disparaging of President Obama’s debate performance last night? The very fact that some people thought a very calm Obama “lost” is exactly why I’m for him, in my...
View ArticleThe Biden-Ryan debate: Tarzan and Pinocchio meet the Blue Fairy
We’ve now thrilled to the thrilling showdown between Joe Biden (or Tarzan: virile, sincere, not-exactly-a-spoken-wordmeister, long-haircut-in-the-back) and Paul Ryan (or Pinocchio: no need explaining...
View ArticlePhoning it in: Obama-Romney-Crowley debate boring as f*ck
I grew up in Los Angeles. So, I’m going to do a “company town” thing on you. Tonight’s much-anticipated presidential debate was THIS: …meets THIS: I’m hard-pressed to recall a more lazy, impotent and...
View ArticleThe 2nd Presidential Debate: Obama and Romney Cut a Very Red Rug
The two Presidential candidates danced around in front of an audience this Tuesday last on an extremely red carpet at New York’s Hofstra University. In High Definition television that carpet really...
View ArticleSecret Emails From Resigned CIA Director David Petraeus To His Mistress by...
– as imagined by John Shirley… My darling winky dinky pretty puss-puss, how this new job weighs on me, everyone is “oh we have to be so secret”, even more than when I was a General, what are they...
View ArticleSave the ‘tree lobsters’ hiding on Ball’s Pyramid!
I have hopes that the better angels of our nature as a species will prevail. On a strange island, a fantastic, isolated rock in the remote South Pacific, under a single bush, a few years ago certain...
View ArticlePlaying the Martian guessing game
The Martian Guessing Game is in full swing. Triggered by an interview with Mars Curiosity Rover P.I. John Grotzinger, NPR’s Joe Palca reported on Tuesday (11/20/2012) that a very exciting result has...
View ArticleNo ‘Little Green Men’ on Monday (?)
(Playing The Martian Guessing Game – Addendum #1) Now this is unusual: NASA has taken the extraordinary step of issuing a 2nd strong denial in a formal press release Thursday afternoon (11/29/12) and...
View ArticleThe election over? Not hardly…
I’ve been discouraged, if not surprised, to see so many postings expressing relief that “the election is finally over.” Because it’s not really over– the struggle embodied by the election is certainly...
View ArticleExciting news from Mars! Nothing ‘Earth-shaking’!
(Playing The Martian Guessing Game – Addendum #2) The American Geophysical Union 2012 Annual Meeting, a San Francisco December tradition, is one of the premier settings for presenting the latest in...
View ArticleRavi Shankar: a short journey and a music sampler
One of the most influential musicians of the 20th Century has left us. RIP, Ravi Shankar. In the summer of 2001, my husband and I escaped to India for ten-day journey that included visits to Delhi,...
View ArticleThis is not a boat accident. It’s a space station.
Following a petition that reached the White House’s We The People threshold for response, the Obama administration issued the following to a request that the U.S. government build a Death Star. Enjoy!...
View ArticleThe Purple Corkscrew
At 5:53am on the morning of February 1, 2003, Sarah and I stood on Bernal Hill in San Francisco looking west in the sky. Broken low clouds had barely parted enough for us to find what we had come for,...
View ArticleWhat NASA knew
On the tenth anniversary of the Columbia Space Shuttle accident, Raw Story published my first hand account of the Columbia accident investigation. Also published that day on Raw Story was an article...
View ArticleA tree grew in San Francisco
San Francisco, where I live, is a city with many cosmopolitan aspects. But unlike, say, New York City, where the City Never Sleeps, one problem with S.F. for nocturnally oriented types like me, is that...
View ArticleThe Newstalk Haters
Without question, the nation is undergoing a broad change in the nature of politics and the structure of representation in our traditional democracy. The emergence of a revolutionary, anti-government...
View ArticleUnsanctioned midnight sidewalk urban poetry howl
There are many forms of entertainment here in San Francisco. And those shows, those theaters sanctioned by officialdom, are not the end of the story. Much goes on here, in fact, below any level of...
View ArticleAmerica under the gun
“The right to buy weapons is the right to be free.” – The Weapon Shops of Isher, by A.E. van Vogt Well, it happened. Or, rather, “it” didn’t happen. Senator Dianne Feinstein, despite her hopes, has...
View ArticleAn affectionate tribute to Roger Ebert’s more negative reviews
Having just seen The Vampire Starfighter in IGOG 3D, the most recent and desperate attempt at directorial survival by Queequeg L. M. K-I-S-S-I-N-G Shamarintino-Nolan… I hardly know what to write about...
View ArticleThe white mantis
I see another beautiful, old tree is suddenly gone from my street. The caprice, perhaps, of a building management company or landlord may be responsible. Whatever the reason, it’s gone, for good. And...
View ArticleWhat ‘Bea Arthur Naked’ says about your deep-seated Freudian longings
Apparently, a painting of a topless Beatrice “Bea” Arthur (famed for her roles in American television’s The Golden Girls, Maude, and the major female supporting role in Broadway and filmdom’s musical...
View ArticleA death in the family
It’s late July, almost August. And I am still, like many others I know, trying to come to grips with the fact that on the 7th of May, in London, a man named Ray Harryhausen died. It’s not that his...
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