TBTL: Too Beautiful To Live: Give it a listen

I keep bringing this up, but you need to listen to Luke Burbank and Jen Andrews on TBTL (Too Beautiful To Live). I am not going to go into any details--if you live in Seattle, tune in Kiro 710 AM from 7-10 Weekdays (with a best of on Saturday), or go to iTunes, or to TBTL.net. These people are reinventing radio.
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Old 97's rock the Showbox in Seattle

The Old 97's played a rockin' show Saturday night in Seattle at The Showbox. The bands that opened--Hayes Carll and I Love Math were also Texas bands. I was not such a big fan of either I love math ( the Old 97's drummer is a member) or Hayes Carll's band. Musically they were very good, but neither bands had very good singing chops...especially when you knew what was to follow. But the audience and the ten people I went to the show with all loved them.

This is my 4th Old 97's show (Stubbs in Austin twice, The Gorge at George, Wash., and Seattle), and it is my favorite so far. They played five songs from their new album, Blame It On Gravity, and a lot of songs from previous albums: Lonely Holiday, Question, West Texas Teardrops, Rollerskate Skinny, Up the Devil's Pay, Designs on You, Barrier Reef, Melt Show, Big Brown Eyes, and a bunch more. Rhett Miller was his usual hip swinging, smoldering glancing self, and the girls and women in the front, near the stage treated him like a latter day Tom Jones (although no undergarments were thrown). The band was in fine fettle--great guitar and drumming, outstanding vocals, doing their dance between serious rock and roll and power pop with a tinge of country. It was a 4 1/2 show between all three acts, and then at about 12:40, the band finished up. And then came back for two encores, totalling about eight more songs. We left happy. I love these guys.

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Three photgraphs of uncontrolled landings

Flying can sometimes be better
Than not flying.

Three examples:

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Alien Lore No. 133 - The KGB UFO Files

An interesting clip from the recently released KGB UFO files. One video in the archive includes video footage of an alleged mass abduction of Russians during the mid-80's.

The declassified Russian archives include several interesting possible UFO recordings... I am trying to locate the mass abduction video right now...



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Happy Father's Day

Dean Ericksen enjoys the seat of honor at this morning's father's day brunch

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All This Is That Farked!

Our article on photographs from Mars yesterday was Farked. What does that mean? Instead of a couple hundred readers all day, a couple hundred a minute show up. It's not like they all become fans and regulars. They don't; Farkers tend to look at the article and then jump back to Fark.com. But just the fact ten thousand people show up is pretty cool. And Fark is an extremely viral site...when you DO get Farked, dozens of other sites (like Reddit, Useless Junk, Digg, etc.) also point their readers to the story, and then some of those readers flag the story). It's happened a couple times before, and it's always welcome. If you own your own domain, you can get hit with some steep charges by your ISP. But if you're on Blogger, no problem...they like all that traffic.


click to enlarge
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Mars Phoenix Lander sends photos of face gouged into Martian rock

Tucson, Arizona June 14, 2008
By Mary Houlihan,
All This Is That science editor



-Click to enlarge-

About three weeks after it landed on Mars, the Phoenix lander has transmitted new photographs of geologic features and the planet's surface, including one that appears to show a direct link between earth and Mars.

NASA's $420 million lander may have also located ice in the Martian polar region, in a photo with with rocks and hills trailing into a dusty horizon. Ice, and its parent, water, may be necessary for life, or at least life as we understand it.

"We're getting about twice the data volume we were told to expect," said Peter Smith, Phoenix principal investigator at the University of Arizona.

Mary Houlihan, discussed the photograph of what appears to be a butte, or mesa, with a smiley face gouged into the rock and dust: "Of course, the scientists at NASA and JPL have already dismissed the smiley face as a geological anomaly. However, the question may really be 'did they get the smiley face from us, or did we get it from them?'"
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Painting: George W. Bush announces abolishment of the Supreme Court

Click POTUS to enlarge

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Friends of All This Is That

click to enlarge

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President escorted, ranting and half-naked from WH Press briefing room

By Pablo Fanque,
National Affairs Editor, All This Is That
Washington, D.C. June 12, 2008

In a bizarre turn of events, President George W. Bush made an unannounced visit to the White House Press Briefing Room this morning. The President was clad only in a pair of white briefs and black socks. Although I rarely attend the highly scripted and controlled events in the Press Room, I just happened to be there, meeting a friend from Reuters.



The President stood at the podium, and began ranting about today's Supreme Court ruling that clears foreign terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts. Bush suggested new legislation may now be needed to keep the American people safe: "If it was up to me, these sons of bitches in Guantanamo would all be missing limbs by now. If I had a free hand, we'd make what Jack Bauer does look like Rebbecca of Sunnybrook farm. What a bunch of hand-wringing pansies this f***ing Supreme Court has turned out to be! Clarence and Tony--I love you f***ers!"

Two minutes into the President's rant, he was coaxed from the podium by his Chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, As his top aide edged him toward the door, The President exploded, screaming at Bolten and and throwing long, roundhouse punches and haymakers. "You get your f***ing hands off me or I'll have these agents break your f***ing arms ***hole!"



With the Chief of Staff unable to calm the President (or get him out of range of the press), two uniformed Capitol Police put a sweatsuit on Bush, and escorted him to an undisclosed location.

Needless to say, the Press Room exploded into action, between people phoning in stories and trading photographs, video and audio clips. Later, one reporter claimed a source told him President Bush had been taken to St. Elizabeth's Psychiatric Hospital in Washington for observation, and possible treatment.
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The murder case against President George W. Bush

A former Republican prosecutor, Vince Bugliosi, has written a book that lays out the full legal case for a murder prosecution of George W. Bush (!!!) in his new book, The Prosecution Of George W. Bush For Murder.

Bugliosi achieved fame (and later fortune) as the prosecutor of Charles Manson. He went on to write the boffo best-seller Helter-Skelter. Helter-Skelter was an OK book. The great book about Manson, The Family, was written by the poet and founder of the seminal band, The Fugs from Woodstock, New York, Ed Sanders.
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Homeland Security starts at the filling station

reprinted with permission of TBH Politoons - click to enlarge
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