The Charles Mingus Record Club

By Charles Mingus

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Painting: I could never keep straight if it was the yellow, black, or red wire I needed to cut

By Jack Brummet

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Poem: Recurring Dream

By Jack Brummet

Recurring Dream

I drag my wooden leg
Up a shattered staircase,

Across the sagging boards
Of a crumbling porch.

Light filters in
Through banks of cloud and fog

Radiating in waves from
A cockeyed half moon.

I hear sounds
In the dark basement.

The door is shut.
I turn the knob.

The door groans open.
I take a breath and shuffle in.

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Happy 204th Birthday to Abraham Lincoln

By Jack Brummet, Presidents Editor

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Faces No. 360 - Where were you when you heard about The Pope's resignation?

By Jack Brummet

[hard drawn/digital hybrid]

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Alien Lore No. 244 - President Dwight D. Eisenhower Met With Aliens?

By Jack Brummet, Alien Lore Ed.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower Met With Aliens, according to testimony by former New Hampshire State Representative Henry W. McElroy Jr.

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The ruins of Six Flags amusement park in New Orleans

LoveThesePics has a pretty amazing article with photographs by several photographers of the abandoned Six Flags amusement park in New Orleans.

Go here to read the article and see the images...

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The Japanese Monster?

We don't know what the provenance of this image is (Tineye returned no matches), but we like it.  

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The paintings of Ex-President George W. Bush

By Jack Brummet, Painting and Drawings Editor

The artist at work [Guccifer is the hacker who stole these photos]

A hacker recently broke into some of the Bush family's email accounts.  From GWB's sisters account, comes images of paintings that Dubyah has created...  A report from The Smoking Gun is here.

For my part, the best revelations were of George W. Bush, the artist--one shows him naked in the shower, the other of his legs and feet in a bath, with the tap running. The Smoking Gun said that Dubyyah  sent them to his sister, Dorothy Bush Koch.  There was also a photograph showing him at his easel working.

 George W. Bush, self portrait in the shower

 George W. Bush, self portrait in the bath
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The etymology of "blowing smoke up your a**"

By Jack Brummet, Technology Editor


[thanks to Jeff Clinton for the news tip!]

The Tobacco Smoke Enema seems to have had some popularity in the mid to late eighteenth century.  It's hard to source this one because dozens of websites and blogs use the same exact wording:

"The tobacco enema was used to infuse tobacco smoke into a patient’s rectum for various medical purposes, primarily the resuscitation of drowning victims. A rectal tube inserted into the anus was connected to a fumigator and bellows that forced the smoke towards the rectum. The warmth of the smoke was thought to promote respiration, but doubts about the credibility of tobacco enemas led to the popular phrase “blow smoke up one’s ass.” 

The Wikipedia claims a book by Eric Burns, The Smoke of the Gods as the source of the quote and photographs, however that book doesn't actually say that this contraption led to the phrase. That book says "To blow smoke up one's ass. Today it means to compliment in a crude and obvious manner; in the past it meant to cure in a manner even more crude." 

A simpler, more portable device: A: Pig's bladder; F-G: Smoking pipe; D: Mouthpiece to which the pipe is attached; E: Tap; K: Cone for rectal insertion. Medical monograph of 1773. Reproduced in The History of Cardiothoracic Surgery from Early Times

The Tobacco Smoke Enema was just another of the many hundreds of quack medical devices contrived over the years, often involving magnetics, the healing properties of copper, machines to jiggle pounds off, all of which ended up being just about as effective as blood-letting.    These days, our miracle cures tend to be not mechanical, but pharmaceutical.

This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.

Cassell's Dictionary of Slang claims that "to blow smoke" as an older phrase, from the mid-19th Century or later, and the phrase "to blow smoke up someone's ass" dates from the 1950s and is a modern addition to the older phrase.  A related (and great) phrase, is used less commonly: "blowing sunshine up your skirt."

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Painting: bearded Commie

By Jack Brummet

[Karl Marx portrait on silk with acrylic, pencil, Sharpie, and pen and ink]

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A database geek's rant on Mongo (NSFW, and seriously cranky)

Using the Xtranormal tool, a user with an obvious ax to grind about databases created this foul mouthed and hilarious debate about database architecture.  Yeah, it's pretty serious inside baseball.   And a little difficult to understand how worked up he gets. . .

Mongo DB Is Web Scale
by: gar1t

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