Link Dump: Link Dumper

Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan on November 16th, 1581, Ilya Repin.

It's that time again! It's time for me to phone in a blog entry for White Guys, Square Glasses! Let's begin, shall we?

Here's a fun little website my friend sent me: I Love Bagram.

It's over six-hundred observations of why Bagram Air Base is the best air base in all of the Hindu-Kush. For example:

4.11.11- No joke, last Saturday I asked for Praline and my response was the 1,000-yard-stare. Now if you don’t know who I’m talking about, then it’s about time you reward yourself with a frozen treat tonight at Dragon DFAC. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Russians had a nickname for this guy after he massacred a company of paratroopers back in ’79, because I doubt Mister Softee got those scars from wielding the ice cream scoop… but who knows, after all he does work for Fluor. Maybe one day I’ll work up the courage to ask him... no, no I won't. This man scares me to death.

Delightful.

What I love more than Bagram is one public television host, Huell Howser. And I love him about as much as I am annoyed by him. On the one hand it's always delightful to know that there's a grown man who is still excited by the idea of somebody grinding corn to make into a tortilla and on the other hand, it's upsetting to me that he's been doing this for over twenty years and there's yet to be anything actually exciting happen to the guy.

All that said, this KCRW guest DJ spot is pretty delightful. He talks about Johnny Cash and drinking whiskey in the White House and after all of this, I am convinced that I want nothing more in life right now than to see John Waters and Howser in a one-on-one conversation.

While Roling Stone magazine has a fairly storied history in distorting the truth in order to serve a perconcieved stance and what's good for all of us, if half of the shit in this article is true, than America is in a fucked up scary place.

I don't mind religious folks, but I do mind people-- of any faith-- that see it not only as their right, but their mission, to get all up in everybody's shit. Isn't that one of the reasons why they hate Muslims? Because they have a bunch of bearded weirdos who think they can hear God and tell everyone to act accordingly? And how can you be for the Constitution and for smaller government, except when it comes to inserting the Bible into people's lives? It's madness.

Why can't we nominate Huell Howser for something? I'd be alright with that. Someone start printing out bumper stickers.



Welcome to my nightmare! Now, let's move on to a nightmare of a different kind, shall we?

"A Jurassic Park sex hotel," you say? "How is that even possible.

One word: Japan.

"Oh, okay then," you say and sit back down, staring at your iced tea, wondering where all the time has gone.

As fucked up as Japan might be right now (on account of the tsunami and the earthquake, I mean, not it's bizarre and occasionally frightening pornography), at least they aren't Russia, which is a country about which I ask "What's wrong with that place" about every other week.

With a frightening consistency, most of the time I ask this, it's about the typical Russian themes of graft and corruption. Occasionally, something new and terrible will pop out of the nation that Ivan the Terrible built. One such thing is the drug Krokodil.

It is a drug for the poor, and its effects are horrific. It was given its reptilian name because its poisonous ingredients quickly turn the skin scaly. Worse follows. Oleg and Sasha have not been using for long, but Oleg has rotting sores on the back of his neck.

"If you miss the vein, that's an abscess straight away," says Sasha. Essentially, they are injecting poison directly into their flesh.

So, I ask you, what the fuck is wrong with that place? I mean, it's not like we have that over. . . oh.

Yeah, but still.

I want to say that we rarely talk about Iran on the program, but as I think back I realize that we probably talk about Iran more than most other countries. Anyways, not too long ago the Iranian nuclear program was (thankfully) hit by a computer virus called Stuxnet which, it's safe to say, fucked their shit up quite a bit (technically speaking).

But, why take my word for it when this slick video presentation can do it much more effectively--

Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus from Patrick Clair on Vimeo.

When I went and saw Werner Herzog presnet The Treasure of the Sierra Madre at the Hollywood Forever cemetery, someone asked him if he had any work coming out. He said that, yes, he had five movies coming out there year. One of those five movies is about him going to prison.

Good for him.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to imagine Herzog screaming, "I am not locked here with you, you are locked in here with me."

Alright, if the drugs and prison weren't horrible enough for you, I've got one more bit of horror before we get to the light at the end of the tunnel.

In Libya not only does it seem that Momar Khadafi is deploying squads of soldiers to gang rape civilians, in some cases, the civilians are replying in kind by murdering the rape victims.

Because they don't want people to think poorly of them, now do they?

Now time for something light to get the taste of that out of my mouth. How about some Michael Caine? Good call. Here ya go--



Aw, yeah. That does me good.

"Joe & James Bum You Out"

Give to the Red Cross. Text REDCROSS to 90999 to automatically be billed for ten dollars that will go straight to the tsunami victims. None of us have any reason not to give.

So, lucky episode 13, "Joe and James Bum You Out." Let's get on with it then.



And to answer my own rhetorical question: Haiti is still super fucked up.

Upon a little bit of research, I found out that Mt. Fuji isn't actually dormant-- it's active and it's last eruption was in 1707-1708. Who knew?

I wouldn't take this as a rationalization that allows us to make crass jokes, but the BBC wrote a little something on why we make jokes during awful things. I know a lot of people can't even dream of that sort of a thing and I usually did kind of look down on that sort of thing until I went to a funeral for a beloved family member and I realized that joking around and remembering the good times we had was the best way to remember him. It was just in keeping with the whole rest of his existence.



We mentioned Chernobyl (and that it is used in both the videogame STALKER-- not to be confused with Tarkovskiy's Stalker (which pre-dates Chernobyl)-- and in a level of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare) and how, as fucked as it is, it wasn't the world-ending mess many believed it would be at the time. Here's a bunch of photos of it. Photos of Chernobyl and Pripyat aren't that hard to find, either, so if you're interested, give it a Google search (I'd start with English Russia. That site is pretty wonderful).

Vice Broadcasting System had a pretty fun travel documentary about the Zone of Exclusion, so. . . here it is.


I like Vice because they balance pretty well between wonder, chagrin, and fear, pretty often. They even make North Korea look like a bit of a good time.

Here's an article on the sarcophagus and its replacement. Pretty crazy, yeah? And here's another one from one of my favorite futurist/architecture/anthropology/whatever blog BLDGBLOG.

That BLDBBLOG article is fucking amazing. It really it. I won't spoil it, but it goes on to talk about the concept of an atomic priesthood trained to take care of Chernobyl. This makes an incredible amount of sense when you stop and considering that if we lived to be 100 years old, Chernobyl would still be radioactive for another 9,900 years. That's profound.

To quote Sergei A. Krasikov:

The death of a nuclear reactor has a beginning... But it doesn’t have an end," and that "one had to look at [Chernobyl] to understand the sheer tedium and exhaustion of dealing with the aftermath of a meltdown. It is a problem that does not exist on a human time frame.

ACTUALLY-- One last bit on Chernobyl and I swear I'm done. Warren Ellis found some interesting ideas about Chernobyl (and how it relates back to Stalker, which pre-dates the whole disaster and the idea of "The Zone"). He also quotes the phrase "Radiation Communism." Intruiged? Read the rest of it here.

The casualties we mentioned were 4,000 or so confirmed and 12,000 or so missing currently. I couldn't find anything more recent than this, which I guess might be a good sign.

Here's some photos from The Big Picture if you haven't seen them already. Numbers and speeches are one thing, but it's a whole other thing to actually see what Nature can do to a place.

If you want to read something a little bit heartwarming and an encouraging testament of the human spirit read about this badass dude. His name is Hideaki Akaiwa and he's the man we all wish we were, but pray that we never have to be.

I could link some 9/11 emergency phonecalls here, but I really don't want to. My heart isn't in it at the moment.

You can find those on your own.

I don't know. This whole section speaks for itself, right? It's horrible.

Here's the photo I was thinking of--

It's actually Passchendaele, which is apparently adjacent to Ypres.

Obviously we recorded this before the No-Fly Zone was introduced over Libya. That's been going on for about a day now, with no signs of any real progress (other than the number of bombs, I think).

Here's a brief thing on Libya's human rights record. Here's a bit more (not a wiki). It's not encouraging, to say the least. Qaddafi is an SOB, if nothing else. His fashion choices are also completely insane, but that's another story for another day (plus I've linked multiple stories about his sartorial. . . flare, shall we say?).

Oh, hey, here's a list of all of Libya's airports. Who knew that existed? Ain't the internet grand?

Speaking of the rebels I read this brief snippit "The Rebels Love Us Right?" Well, there's a decent chance that they do not. Benghazi sent more insurgents to kill Iraqis and Americans than any other city in the Arab world. Maybe that's Qaddafi's encouragement at work, but the fact remains, there's a sentiment behind all of this that doesn't just go away with a No-Fly Zone.



Here's another run-down of should we/shouldn't we intervene in Libya.

One last coup de grace about human dignity and struggle. I wouldn't dare use "heartwarming" or anything like that on this one, but if we're going to be in a war again-- and we are in another war no matter how it gets spun-- we should remember what it looks like.

And now, the light at the end of the tunnel: How to improve your ramen.

Play us out, X--


(Bonus: The RZA created a single for Japan. Give it a listen. Or donate. Couldn't hurt.)

This is How Libya Does It

This is the best thing I have seen all day.

(via the LA Times.)

(And more at the NY Times.)

Episode 9-- 2 Fast, 2 Darfurious

It's that time again. Here comes the notes for "Episode 9-- 2 Fast, 2 Darfurious!"

The article that topped off our discussion on MOTHER FUCKING DRONE WARS was from Wired's Danger Room, a fun little blog that I think we talk about waaaaaay to often (the article about Drones v. Genocide can be found here). Not that it isn't worth reading, but if it wasn't for us talking about comic books occasionally, one might think that our one and only source for news is the Danger Room.

I guess there's worse things. I guess you could get your news from Fox. Or talk radio. Zing!

As the conversation carried on, I think we kind of realized that drones are the big talking point about national security and war nowadays. At one point in history the discussion might have been about naval power or air superiority or hearts and minds. Now it's just UAVs. Everyone loves them. The CIA, the army, the American people.

Not Pakistanis, though. I can't figure out why that is.

They come in all shapes and sizes, too. We've got stealth drones to hummingbird drones and even miniature drones. Now, as scary as the future might look to you, this isn't anything new, not really. Unmanned drones have existed since the second World War, where they were controlled by a combination of radar, radio, and television. How crazy is that? It just wasn't until a decade or so ago that they were sophisticated enough to kill a single person five thousand miles away from the person driving it (or capable of remaining in the air for days on end).

Quick side-note-- We haven't discussed the Sudan/South-Sudan situation on the show, but considering we mentioned Darfur (which is a region within Sudan) and the ethnic conflicts that occured there, I figure it was worth linking an article about it. We should definitely try to do a follow-up episode on the region.

After we started making fun of military acronyms, I mentioned that the Marine III Corps uses Frank Frazetta's "Death Dealer" as its mascot.



Sure beats the hell out of a cougar.

And speaking of bad military badges. . .


Moving on, Iran has had some trouble over the past couple of weeks (shocking, I know). Obviously the root of the trouble is the fact that many people have grown tired with the status quo in the country (that being that the nation is simply a military junta run by a cadre of fanatical, election stealing theocrats). The recent protests, like many protests in the middle east, were spurred on by Tunis' revolution*, along with the success of Egypt's ousting of Mubarak. What's interesting is that as heavily as the powers that be in Iran are willing to come down on the protestors, despite initially praising the Egyptian peoples' will.

Idiots.

But, we'll sum it up for ya: Shit's fucked, getting fuckeder.

So, we mentioned Bahrain, as well. It's not a nation we're intensely well versed in (as indicated by the fact that neither of us knew where it was on a map or that it existed at all before three weeks ago, I mean, half of us don't even know where Hizbollah works out of). Things have gotten pretty ugly over there (but not as ugly as in Libya, mind you) in recent weeks.

Is it too nerdy to point out that those women in that video are dressed like white mages from Final Fantasy? It is, isn't it? Hold on, just compare the two. Tell me I'm wrong.

Come on. That's uncanny**.

Things were just getting started in Libya when we recorded, but things are going fucking nuts over there. Lots of violence and lots of anger seems to be culminating into a full-blown, clinical case of clusterfuckitis. Gadafi has hired a bunch of mercenaries to abuse and harass those protesting his forty year rule. He's also called in the army to shoot protestors. I was watching a report on Al Jazeera today and besides the big news story of Gadafi calling the army to drop bombs on pepole from jet fighters (and the defections that resulted), some estimates state that as many as a thousand people have been killed in the clashes. A thousand. That's madness.

Just look at how demonstrably crazy and delusional this man is. No sane man would ever look like that (and no sane man would ever surround himself with models-cum-deadly-viper-assassination-squad).

Also, the Lara Logan thing really isn't worth putting any links up about.

And while we could link some articles detailing some poorly laid out thoughts on the matter, that really isn't even worth your time, either. It's a mess and, even though it's a private thing that happened to a public figure, that hardly justifies picking over it like ghouls.

Maybe that comes off as hypocritical concerning the name of this episode and our general tone when it comes to death, murder, and all kinds of other violent acts. Our main drive when making jokes about awful events is too somehow uncover something true or important about those events. With this there isn't much to joke around with, especially considering how little information on it has actually been made available.

Which is just as well, really.

Jeese. Shit got real in the blog. Sorry.

Alright, what else have we got here? Oh yeah, fuck Anderson Cooper. I don't care if he's a good reporter or not or if he highlights human stories that often go overlooked, he can take a few hits from some anonymous internet dweebs. He'll be fine.

FUN FACT: Gloria Vanderbilt was an early pioneer of designer jeans. See? Fashion. I was almost there.

Now with that said, let's let Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds play us out--


SUB-NOTE: Dave has a much better impression of Anderson Cooper than I do-- which isn't to say that it's a good impression, but that Dave will not be asked back on the program for one-upping me. There are just some things you don't do.

* 60 Minutes, a show in which Lara Logan works for, recently had a segment about the match that literally started the fires of revolution in Tunisia. It's a pretty interesting story which has been fairly well over-shadowed by the goings on in Egypt. It's worth hunting down. (EDIT: Oh, here it is. That was easy.)

** I realize that I completely misnamed that image of the Bahrainian woman. Looks like I just pulled a Joe! Oh man, why is that the first time I've ever thought of hunting down that clip on You Tube? This is going to completely change my life.