Cruising the Renton loop with a keg of nails

This must have happened in about 1969. On weekends, you drove to Renton, Wash., and cruised the loop. It was a scene straight from American Graffiti with beer, Vietnam, protests, drugs, and birth control and the "SEXUAL REVOLUTION" thrown into the mix--not that we were often able to avail ourselves of the opportunities birth control might afford.

As we often did on weekends, when we didn't go into Seattle to eat at the Outrageous Burrito Company or wander around Seattle Center, we went to Renton to cruise the loop, a/k/a drag the gut, along with hundreds of other kids in cars. You drove around and around a two mile loop, and pulled in various parking lots to meet various people, preferably girls.

This particular weekend our vehicle was an aqua 1968 Dodge 3/4 ton pickup, piloted by Les Teichert. The truck had OTTO'S ROOFING emblazoned on the side. Three of us sat in the cab, and three more sat in the bed of the pickup, amidst the roofing felt, blocks of tar, and tools. The Beatles' White Album or Chicago Transit Authority or Led Zeppelin played on the 8 track stereo. . .probably with another tune in the background (if the azimuth of the head became mis-adjusted, there was a faint audio bleed of adjacent tracks into the currently playing track).

We drove around a few times, stopped at Herfy's for burgers and got back on The Loop. In the pickup bed we discovered, among the tools and tarpaper, a 100 pound keg of 1 1/2 inch roofing nails.

Three of us began merrily flinging double-handfuls over the tailgate as we tooled along the loop. We even brazenly began to huck out pounds of nails in front of the cars right behind us.

As we approached the point we first began deploying the nails, someone thought we should tell Les. "You gotta get off the loop. . .we've been tossing the nails."

"The roofing nails! What am I going to say--someone stole them!?'

Why not? Indeed. By the time we decided to warn Les about trouble ahead, we had tossed the entire 100 pounds of nails out in a continuous circle, all along the loop. It was time to get out of Renton.
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North Korea dares U.S. to supply them Shock & Awe

North Korea is on the precipice of test-firing a long-range missile capable of reaching the United States. The White House warned that a test firing would trigger "an appropriate response, " like Shock And Awe II.

North Korea vowed to bolster its "military deterrent" in a bellicose stream of invective carried by its state news agency.

A test launch of a Taepodong-2 missile-- or whatever new missile they've come up with lately--would inflame a region already in a snit over the North's nuclear weapons program. Our sometime good friends, Japan, in particular, are extremely nervous.

"There are signs" of an imminent missile launch, Jung Tae-ho, a spokesman at the South Korean president's office, told The Associated Press. He said they were "closely watching the situation."



North Korea conducted a test launch in August 1998, but then imposed a moratorium on testing long-range missiles in 1999. White House spokesman Tony Snow said Sunday the United States expect them keep the freeze on. "We do not want to have a missile test out of North Korea," Snow told Fox News Sunday. "The North Koreans themselves decided in 1999 that they would place a moratorium on this kind of testing, and we expect them to maintain the moratorium."

"If they go ahead with a test, then we will have to respond properly and appropriately at the time," Snow told CNN's "Late Edition." When asked to explain exactly what that meant, Snow replied, "No."
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Happy Father's Day

click photo to enlarge...

Jack and John Brummet Sr. at Cougar Flat on the Bumping River, near Natches. We were "fishing." It's been forty-two years, one month and two days since I last saw him.
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Thirty-four years ago today, The Watergate burglars were arrested. . .

Click the collage to zoom in.

Thirty-four years ago today, The Watergate burglars were arrested. . .triggering the events that lead to the indictments, prosecutions, and backstabbing that toppled President Richard M. Nixon a couple of years later and led to his resignation.

In the early morning of June 17, 1972, five men--Bernard Barker, Virgilio González, Eugenio Martínez, James W. McCord, Jr., and Frank Sturgis were arrested breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate, an office-hotel-apartment complex in Washington, D.C. They'd come with burglary tools, cameras, and pen-size tear gas guns.

Eventually, a lot of people did time for this little burglary. . .from the burglars up to and including White House Staffers.

What a litany of names! Woodward and Bernstein, Jeb Magruder, Butterfield, Jaworski, Rose Mary Woods, Herb Kalmbach, John Mitchell, Erlichman, Haldeman, Dean, McCord, Liddy, Colson, H.L. Hunt, Al Haig, Jaworski, Agnew, Father John McLaughlin, Congressman (soon to be President) Gerald Ford, Judge "Maximum John" Sirica, and The Watergate committee-- Senators Sam Ervin, Joseph Montoya, Herman Talmadge, Edward Gurney, Lowell Weicker, Howard Baker, and Daniel Inouye. The Committee's evidence led to the indictment of forty administration officials and the conviction of several of Nixon's aides for obstruction of justice and other crimes. The committee's findings prompted the articles of impeachment against the President in the House of Representatives, which led to Nixon's resignation.

On September 8, 1974, Nixon's successor, President Gerald Ford, pardoned former President Richard M. Nixon from any future criminal charges.
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VP Dick Cheney owns extensive snuff film collection, rumored to use them as a fluffer

A mid-level West Wing staffer told All This Is That yesterday that an extensive collection of "snuff films" has been discovered in Vice-President Dick Cheney's home office in the former Naval Observatory. "Holy s***t," our source said, "if it gets out I told you this. . .well, who knows?"

"Despite all this Valerie Plame nonsense, " our source said, "Cheney is in thick with the spooks. Like this [gestures]. I'm not sure I won't just disappear if you print this. But what am I going to do? The guy could be President tomorrow. I always knew he gave me the creeps. That's probably no secret to anyone who ever met the guy. But this. . .this. . .this is too much."


The source told us that a cache of snuff films and videos was discovered recently by staffers "auditing" the Vice President's papers and emails for possible evidence in the Scooter Libby investigation.

"One of the guys who saw the snuff film stash said it was extensive," he told us. "In fact, " he said, "it might even be definitive."
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Hurray for Bill Gates!

Microsoft announced after the financial markets closed today that Chairman Bill Gates will transition out of a day-to-day role (as chief technologist) to spend more time on his global health and education work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Following a two year transition, Bill will remain as the Chairman of the Board, although reading between the lines, it seems like he'll be pulling back sooner than that. . .at least unofficially.

Obviously in my "industry," that is software, he has been a monolithic influence. For all the potshots people have taken at him, he helped create much of the software that runs businesses from multinational giants to mom and pop shops, as well as most home computers. He did this while being a prominent target for all the whiners in the Apple, Unix, and Oracle camps, and while being the human pincushion for hundreds of lawsuits, as well as the central figure in any number of conspiracy delusions. . .

Somewhere in the middle of all this, he set up a fantastic foundation that is actually helping change the world. And now he wants to get more involved with that foundation's excellent work. Good for him. Good for the world.
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Photograph: LBJ howls like a dog

click image to enlarge
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Found photos!

I love this website. It's one of those sites I like to go back and check every week or so. . . You never know what you'll find.


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Prosecutor Fitzgerald Gives Rove A Pass

Karl Rove and friends

The special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has weaseled on charges against Karl Rove in the C.I.A. leak case after months of behind-the-scenes wrangling between the prosecutor and Mr. Rove's lawyer.

Prosecutor Fitzgerald

It has not been announced if any money exchanged hands. Click here to read the story in the New York Times.
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Another good LBJ photograph - circa 1960

Click the photograph to enlarge

Left to right - Lady Bird Johnson [mostly offscreen], Neva Eugene Smith, Leola May Smith Ballard, Lyndon Baines Johnson. . .I believe the Smiths are LBJ's cousins.
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Diogenes The Cynic Philosopher - My hero

When they asked Plato what sort of man Diogenes (404-323 B.C) was, he said "A Socrates gone mad." Diogenes was Gonzo. . .about 2300 years ahead of the curve.

He ignored the weather by living in a barrel (like the northwest native Americans ignored the weather by wearing bear grease and loincloths). It was just enough shelter. For eating he owned a single wooden bowl. He would later destroy the bowl when he saw a peasant boy drink using his hands. When asked how to avoid the temptations of the flesh, Diogenes began masturbating. When he was chastised for this, he answered "If only I could soothe my belly by rubbing it."

He often quibbled with Plato over philosophy. Plato defined a human as a biped and featherless animal. Diogenes plucked a fowl and brought it to the lecture-hall with the words, ‘Here is Plato’s human being.’ The definition of human was soon altered to include ‘having broad nails’” (Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book 6, Chapter 40). Diogenes regularly attacked Plato’s metaphysics and, in a way, transcended theoretical ethics.

He was called insane for reacting against convention, but Diogenes pointed out that it is convention itself that lacks reason: “Most people are so nearly mad that a finger makes all the difference. For if you go along with your middle finger stretched out, someone will think you mad, but, if it’s the little finger, he will not think so” (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book 6, Chapter 35).

Diogenes once said that "for the conduct of life we need reason or a halter.”

He avoided the pleasures of the flesh and the delusion of most human conduct. He used to stroll through the Agora (the marketplace...and the root of the word agoraphobia) with a torch during the daytime. "I am just looking for an honest man".

On a voyage, he was captured by pirates and sold as a slave to a Corinthian named Xeniades. As tutor to the two sons of Xeniades, he lived in Corinth for the rest of his life, devoted to preaching self-control. At the Isthmian Games he lectured to large audiences who turned to him from Antisthenes. At one of these festivals he met Alexander the Great. Alexander, who was thrilled to meet the famous philosopher, asked if there was anything he might do for him. Diogenes replied, “Stand out of my sunlight.” Was Big Al pissed? No: "If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes."

One great (apocryphal?) Diogenes and Alexander story has the philosopher sorting through a pile of human bones. "I am searching for the bones of your father but cannot distinguish them from those of a slave."

Diogenes may have lived until ninety. Possible causes of death passed include death by holding his breath, an illness brought on by eating raw octopus, or death by dog bite.

On his death, the Corinthians erected a pillar on which rested a marble dog. So, there is some credence to the dog bite theory...but most scholars think he probably died of old age.

What did he believe? Up front, this fantastic cat believed that virtue was the avoidance of physical pleasure; pain and hunger were helpful in the pursuit of goodness; and all the artificiality of society was incompatible with goodness.

Later, the Stoics would later say he was a perfect man. In his words, "Man has complicated every simple gift of the gods." He has been the subject of a lot of painting, sculpture, and poetry. Ed Sanders the American poet (and founder of The Fugs) has praised him often in his poems and fiction .

Diogenes is the first person known to have actually believed "I am a citizen of the whole world (cosmos)," rather than of any city or state (polis). He invented cosmopolitanism.
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My 47 Favorite Movies

A list of my favorite movies. I know I forgot some. None of these were directed by women (a fact I feel a little guilty about). Three are by Robert Altman; three by Quentin Tarantino (not Pulp Fiction); three by Coppola; four by Kubrick; and two each by Welles, Charles Chaplain, Scorsese, and Beatty. There are five or six non-American films. So, beat up on me if you want...

Reds - Warren Beatty
Nashville - Robert Altman
Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie - Luis Bunuel
Rashômon - Akira Kurosawa
The Last Picture Show - Peter Bogdanovich
Citizen Kane - Orson Welles



The Killing - Stanley Kubrick
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - Milos Forman
The Maltese Falcon - John Huston
The Great Dictator - Charles Chaplain
The Godfather - Francis Ford Coppola
Rear Window - Alfred Hitchcock
The Godfather, Part Two - Francis Ford Coppola
Raging Bull - Martin Scorsese
The Fellowship of the Ring - Peter Jackson
The Two Towers - Peter Jackson
The Return of the King - Peter Jackson



Day For Night - Francois Truffaut
À nous la liberté - René Clair
A Clockwork Orange - Stanley Kubrick
The Shining - Stanley Kubrick
Raiders of the Lost Ark - Steven Spielberg
Dog Day Afternoon - Sidney Lumet



O Brother Where Art Thou - Cohn Brothers
Sweet Smell of Success - Alexander Mackendrick
Viridiana - Luis Buñuel
Bulworth - Warren Beatty
A Night At The Opera - Sam Wood
Clerks - Kevin Smith



This Is Spinal Tap - Rob Reiner
Woodstock - Michael Wadleigh
McCabe And Mrs. Miller - Robert Altman
The Day the Earth Stood Still - Robert Wise
Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb - Stanley Kubrick
Apocalypse Now - Francis Ford Coppola
A Hard Day's Night - Richard Lester
King Kong (the first one!) - Merian C. Cooper Ernest B. Schoedsack




Psycho - Alfred Hitchcock
City Lights - Charles Chaplain
Duck Soup - Leo McCarey
Reservoir Dogs - Quentin Tarrantino
A Touch of Evil - Orson Welles
Patton - Franklin J. Schaffner
Kill Bill - Quentin Tarantino
Kill Bill 2 - Quentin Tarantino
Goodfellas - Martin Scorsese
M*A*S*H - Robert Altman
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