Sunday, March 29, 2015

Poem: The Broken Chord (revised)

By Jack Brummet



The rain falls
As you practice arpeggios

Running out shimmering notes
In an ever-shifting

Pattern of music sifting
Through the caesuras between the notes

Forming a counterpoint
With the drumming of the rain

Thousand of patterns and polyrhythms
Weave around and through other patterns

The rain chicanes in the wind
Breaking up and merging again

Billions of drops in midair
Bump together in a choreographed ballet

We can never reproduce
But that's nature for you

We sing paint and write the same story
Over and over and over again

And nature trumps us
With her singular snowflake.
---o0o---

Friday, March 27, 2015

Kent, Washington's Hoot Owl Band, circa 1889

By Jack Brummet, Green River Valley History Ed.

The Hoot Owl Band was a Kent, Washington ensemble that played dances in the Green River Valley. This group shot is from 1889, the same year that Washington became a state.

The band of eight local men provided music for mostly square dances and included Levy Smith (cornet), and George Crow(fiddle).  I believe Levy Smith is of the Smith Brother's family (who owned and ran a large dairy), and I grew up on Crow Street, named for George Crow's family. 
[Photograph from the collection of the Greater Kent Historical Society and Museum]
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President Barack Obama interviews The Wire's creator David Simon (and reveals his favorite character is Omar)

President Obama interviewed HBO's "The Wire" creator David Simon about the show and Simon's view on how drugs impact cities like Baltimore.  The interview was published by the White House this morning.

BHO  also reveals that Omar was his favorite character on "The Wire."  Watch the 12 minute interview below:


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Drawing: Faces # 1064 - Mug shots

By Jack Brummet

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Drawing: Faces #1063 - Off the wall

By Jack Brummet

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Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Drawing: Faces #1061 - The downsizing announcement, or, the wrong room to be in

by Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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ATIT Reheated: nude TSA scans of George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, Michele Bachmann, Glee's Dianna Agron, and Jessica Alba found online

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor 
and Mona Goldwater, Gen X Desk

From March, 2011

To no one's real surprise, an underground market for body scan images taken by the TSA has popped up.  In fact, the All This Is That editors were able to purchase explicit, nude "backscatter" images of George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, Presidential Candidate Michele Bachmann, Glee's Dianna Agron and Jessica Alba, among others.  We purchased these images 50 minutes after we began searching--from an underground, but fairly easily found website, with a room labelled "TSA's Hottest And Greatest Hits."   Jack hooked us up with an email  reference and we were in. 

Jack Brummet, our arts, paranormal, and animal husbandry editor, began this story with a sonic boom and then bugged out.  He handed it off  to us and hooked us up with his contact in TSA management, who--surprise!--denied everything.  You could tell he was lying because he really sucked at it.  Jack's contact (a guy just below the top exec, level of the TSA) told him the TSA had discovered that employees were trading high quality TSA screening scans--digitally enhanced photos of celebrities and of "hot" men and women, often in categories like "grotesque" "hot jailbait" "long dong silvers" "great racks" or "belugas."  Not long before TSA security swept in, the images began appearing online, and finally, for sale online.


The TSA and other government agencies often tout the quality of "Advanced Imaging Technology" like the Gen 2 millimeter wave scanner from Brijot Imaging Systems, Inc., while assuring customers that their operators "cannot store, print, transmit or save the image, and the image."

what you see in a digitally reversed backscatter body scan


Gizmodo busted them on that set of lies, by requesting (under the Freedom Of Information Act) 100 scans from among the 35,000 federal agents had saved on the scanner that "cannot store. . .or save the image."  The images Gizmodo released were less explicit images from the older scanning technology, not the new "backscatter" X-ray technology.  The backscatter images leave nothing to the imagination, which is how the trading and then black market for the celebrity and other images emerged. 

The TSA, natch, posits that the leaked photos on Gizmodo were fakes.  The TSA announced on their blog that the images they look at (but do not save!) look like this (click here to visit the TSA blog):

what the TSA claims you see in a body scan
---o0o---

Faces #1061 - Downsizing announcement/the wrong room

By Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

---o0o---

Monday, March 23, 2015

Stunning 16 mm home movie of Seattle shot in 1955 (includes amazing aerial island and mountain footage)

Film shot by "Jeff Altman's Grandfather"

"In 1955 my grandfather made a trip to Seattle, WA during his time with the Naval Air Reserve. He brought his 16mm camera along and captured these great images."


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Drawing: Faces No. 1053 - Much much later

By Jack Brummet

[scribe on India Ink scratchboard, with a digitally reversed version - click to enlarge]






































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Sleepy Hollow, a/k/a Kalachi: The town whose residents fall asleep for no apparent reason

By Jack Brummet, Paranormal and Unexplained Phenomena Ed.

The documentary web site, http://rtd.rt.com/, in December released a fascinating documentary on Sleepy Hollow, or, the city of Kalachi in Kazakhstan.

"They call it Sleepy Hollow. A small village in Kazakhstan which has succumbed to a mysterious ailment – its dwellers keep falling asleep for no apparent reason. The indiscriminate illness has no cure. Episodes begin without warning, and those affected never know if they will wake up again. Some blame ghosts, others – closed uranium mines located nearby. But despite multiple attempts by medics and scientists to solve the riddle, the causes and consequences of the disease remain unknown. Now the RTD team goes to Kalachi village to undertake its own investigation."


---o0o---

The end of the world, or the end of humanity?

By Jack Brummet

What we call the end of the world is really the end of humanity; those are two different propositions...the whole bright blue ball may thrive without Homo Sapiens. It could be a chimp in charge, or maybe cockroaches would run the show; It could be Eden, before God inserted Adam and Eve.
---o0o---


Sunday, March 22, 2015

The XM42™ Flamethrower soon available to the general public

By Jack Brummet, Mayhem Ed.


From XM42: "Revived from its first prototype in 2008, we’ve created a fully functioning device that’s been undergoing testing and development over the past few months"


"The XM42™ is the world’s first commercially available handheld flamethrower on the market.
You can pre-order your own by contributing to our upcoming IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign! If the campaign is funded, the XM42 will continue to be available for pre-orders on IndieGoGo."


"The device will regularly be available for sale on XM42.com once production begins."  For more information, jump here to their website. . .
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Scratchboard Drawing: Faces No. 1040 - The Fiancées

By Jack Brummet

[a) scribe on India Ink scratchboard; b) image digitally reversed - click to enlarge]



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Three eyes

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Saturday, March 21, 2015

The Magic Bus in Fremont

By Jack Brummet

I spotted this amazing adver-bus this afternoon, parked on Fremont Avenue in Fremont/Seattle. It looks like an animal crackers box without the string. . .

click to enlarge


detail:


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ATIT Reheated (from 2008): John McCain tells ATIT "OK. I drilled Vicki Iseman. So what?"

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Ed.


In an interview today with All This Is That's national affairs editor, Pablo Fanques, Senator John McCain at first mocked the New York Times recent revelations about a possible relationship he had had with the lobbyist Vicki Iseman.

Fanques: So is there any whiff of truth to the story?

Sen. McCain: Sure, I guess there's a whiff of truth. She is a woman, and a good looking woman. It's more convenient to pin her on me than it would be a male lobbyist. That's for sure. Every person on the hill deals with lobbyists.

Fanques: But the New York Times also alludes to something deeper than a drink with a lobbyist.

Sen. McCain: Sure they do. Have you read the 'paper lately? They allude to a lot of things. And the Times has a stake in getting their boy Obama elected. They shredded Hillary Clinton, and now they're coming after me.

Fanques: But that still doesn't really answer my question.

Sen. McCain: But isn't this interview supposed to be about how I would support the arts after I'm elected?

Fanques: It is, indeed. But this seems a little more important.

Sen. McCain: Than what?! This is a f***ing sideshow you're running here. Let's talk about The Issues.

Fanques: We are. This has become the issue.

Sen. McCain: Look. I've become a threat to the Democrats and to the New York Times. So you drag up a ten year old story and start flogging it. It's not relevant to the campaign.

Fanques: So just what WAS your relationship with Ms. Iseman?

Sen. McCain: I think I explained that. Several times this week.

Fanques: But the New York Times and some of your staffers seem to think otherwise.

Sen. McCain: You're talking about Pravda here. A paper that is ashamed of the United States. And some traitor staff members who will be rapidly disposed of. Pardon me for ending that sentence with a preposition.

Fanques: But Senator, you've explained that you did some business with a lobbyist. Now, it seems, you need to explain the accusations that have been lodged against you about having a romantic relationship with Ms.Iseman.

Sen. McCain: Really. OK. I drilled Vicki Iseman. So what? Do I get the same pass you gave Slick Willy? Do I get the same pass you've been giving Obama and Hillary?

Fanques: Pass? I don't recall hearing these sorts of allegations against them?

Sen. McCain: Then you have your head in the sand. Because it's all out there. This interview is over. [click].
---o0o---

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

The northern lights as seen last night from the International Space Station


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Alien Lore: Tom Waits on Aliens

By Jack Brummet, Alien Lore Ed.

"My dad was a radio expert in the army, and in addition to bicycle repair, he had me building my own radios and sending away for kits and creating my own little shortwave radios. And I picked up things when I was a child that I swore were extra-terrestrial, and maintain to this day that I made contact, or at least I was on the receiving end of a relationship with an extra-terrestrial but was unable to communicate with him because my radio couldn’t transmit...... It was a language that did not exist. It was not Russian, I was picking up Russia and Poland and Hungary and China— It was a language, but it was not from around here. And here I was unable to transmit. On earth, we never acknowledge that they exist because it doesn’t fit into our beliefs about the creation of the universe. God made the earth in seven days, then he rested. The idea that there would be creatures out there. The government is apparently keeping creatures they found, and in top secret bunkers in New Mexico, never to be viewed by the public. I believe that.[from a conversation with Jim Jarmusch recorded in 1992]

 ---o0o---

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Cooking with Jack: Irish Stew for St. Patrick's Day

By Jack Brummet

  • 2 1/2 lb. lean beef stew meat, cut into 1-inch cubes** (Or better yet, 2 1/2 pounds lamb shoulder)
  • [a lot of Irish Stew recipes use bacon, I don't, but feel free]
  • 3 tablespoons oil, divided
  • 2 tablespoons AP flour
  • 1 teaspoons salt and ground black pepper to taste
  • 1 healthy pinch cayenne or 1/2 tsp. Tabasco
  • 2 large onions, chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic, smashed
  • 3 tablespoons tomato paste
  • 2 cups stout 
  • 1 sprig fresh thyme (a teaspoon dried is OK)
  • 2 1/2 cups carrot, cut in thirds
  • 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley for garnish
  1. Toss meat with 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil. 
  2. In another bowl, mix the flour, salt, pepper, and cayenne. Dredge the beef in the flour.
  3. Heat 2 TBS oil oil in a cast iron skillet or Dutch oven on medium-high heat. Add the beef, and brown on all sides. 
  4. Add onions and garlic and lower the heat to medium, cover, and cook for 5 minutes.
  5. Pour 1/2 cup of the beer into the pan, and as it begins to boil, use a wooden spoon to loosen the brown bits from the bottom of the pan. 
  6. Pour in the other cup and a half of beer and add the thyme, and tomato paste. 
  7. Lower heat to a slow simmer, cover and cook for 1 hour 30 minutes (stirring once in a while). 
  8. Add the carrots and cook another half hour to 45 minutes.
  9. Check seasoning and garnish with chopped parsley.
  10. If you want, serve with boiled or roasted potatoes (don't cook them in the stew). 
**Note: With beef, use chuck. Other lean cuts like, say, sirloin, just don't break down right and you end up with these tight little nuggets rather than tender. chunks But your own chuck and cube it yourself rather than buy the unknown cut in generic supermarket "stew meat." For lamb, for the same reasons, use lamb shoulder.
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When Irish Eyes Are Smiling (Frank Zappa version)

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Alien Lore - How to report a UFO



A P.S.A. video from the Mutual UFO Network:

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Poem: Into The Wind

By Jack Brummet



I watch three herring gulls
Fly South into the wind
And they're losing ground,

Tumbling and righting themselves
In the shifting currents
Scouring the air.

It's not that they want
To migrate South
So much as not go North.

Something in the gull's hearts
Tells them to stay clear
Of Ketchikan, Skagway, and Nome.
---o0o---

Monday, March 16, 2015

Poem: The Quest

By Jack Brummet


It’s all one story—
                           A ragged
                                        shape-shifting tale

Of incredible coherence and constance,
                                                           encompassing all you know,
                                                           all you don’t know you know,
                                                           and all you one day will know.
There is more
                     To be
                              seen,
                              tasted,
                              heard,
                              and felt
                                           than can ever be known or told.

Our myths flourish and spread,
Person to person,

And the mysteries of the seas and skies and stars
Fill our collective conscience

With mystical scenes,
Quests, and tales of greatness.

These myths, tales, and fables
Cannot be invented, ordered, or denied.

When you strip away
The stage flats, makeup, and costumes,


It’s all one story
Starring our private heroes and dreams.
                 ---o0o--- 

Drawing: Faces No. 1039 - The Benghazi Investigators

By Jack Brummet

[Scribe on India Ink scratchboard; second image digitally reversed - click to enlarge]



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