Dean Ericksen's Metro Melodrama

My brother-in-law and friend, Dean Ericksen, sent me this vignette. Wow.
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I know these facts:

So this guy comes up to the bus stop on Leary and 15th. He’s a gulf war vet. He is carrying a guitar. He asks me if the tree above is an apple tree. I look at the tiny fruit and confirm, yes, it is. I ask him about his guitar. He said that he’s re-learning to play after 16 years. We talk for a while. He said he’s a songwriter. He shuffles through his large backpack and pulls out a CD player and headphones. The CD player is actively playing (it wasn’t turned off). He slaps the phones on my head. It’s a slow, R&B jam. Smooth, but lo-fi. It’s him alright. He’s singing, “I need a girl, to whet my appetite...” Whet it for what? Anyway I swayed and smiled approvingly, and then a woman comes up and pushes a bunch of Jehovah’s Witness literature into his hand. He thinks she’s cute, and pretends to show interest in the magazines as he sizes her up. She twirls her hair with a finger and acts coy. The bus rolls up, and both of them look at each other like “will this be our last chance to find love?” They part; the moment is bruised.

This happens all over the world all of the time. It’s time for God to drop the love bomb.

-Dean
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Digital painting: President Lyndon Johnson

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Photograph: LBJ and MLK meet up

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I love this photograph. It well illustrates the multi-layered, tenuous, fruitful and often strained relationship those two men had. Neither of them looks particularly happy to be there...
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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

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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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