Where have all the hippies gone? Long time passing - They sold out before they were even aware of it

             Good Day Humboldt County!

I still hear conversations among baby boomers like myself about how we “sold out” and went “establishment.”

Pretty funny eh? It’s been about 50 years since people danced with flowers in their hair in the parks amid clouds of marijuana smoke.

We all thought we were the original “drop outs” and were really cool customers. We touted free love and sang about expanding our minds on drugs. We re-invented the Victory sign from WWII to mean “Peace,” and flashed two wide spread fingers like it was a secret sign. How naïve we were. How dumb. How idealistic. What dreamers. We all sold out way before we admitted it! Read on:

The Misconception: Both consumerism and capitalism are sustained by corporations and advertising.

The Truth: Both consumerism and capitalism are driven by competition among consumers for status.

“Beatniks, hippies, punk rockers, grunge rats, metal heads, goth kids, hipsters – see a pattern forming here? It goes back farther than these examples, the baton of counter culture – the mantle of anti…whatever the mainstream is doing – it gets passed from generation to generation.

Whether you lived through Freedom Summer or “Jem and the Holograms” – somewhere in your youth you started to realize who was in control, and you rebelled. You started to discover the paradigms of censorship and consumerism – and they repulsed you.

You needed to self actualize, to find your own way, and you sought out something real, something with meaning. You waved your hand at popular music, popular movies, and popular television. You dug deeper and disparaged all those mindless sheeple who gobbled up pop culture.

Yet, you still listened to music and bought shirts and went to see movies. Someone was appealing to you despite your dissent. If you think you can buy your way to individuality, well, you are not so smart.

Since the 1940s, when capitalism and marketing married psychology and public relations, the market has been getting much better and more efficient at offering you something to purchase no matter your taste.

See the punk rocker on the left? Yeah, he bought all of those clothes. Someone is making money off of his revolt. That’s the strange paradox – everything is part of the system. There is no such thing as selling out, because there is no one to sell out to.

Every niche opened by rebellion against the mainstream is immediately filled by entrepreneurs who figure out how to make a buck off those who are trying to avoid what the majority of people are buying. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, there were many stabs at trying to thwart this through artistic gesture  – “Fight Club,” “American Beauty,” “Fast Food Nation,” “The Corporation,” etc.

The creators of these works may have had the best intentions, but their work still became a product designed for profit. Their cries against consumption were consumed. Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Kurt Cobain, Andy Kaufman – they may have been solely concerned with creating art or illustrating academic principles, but once their output fell into the marketplace it found its audience, and that audience made them wealthy.

Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, both philosophers, wrote a book about this in 2004 called “The Rebel Sell.” It’s available in the United States as “Nation of Rebels.” The central theme of the book is you can’t rage against “the system,” or “the man” or “the culture” through rebellious consumption.

Here’s the conventional thinking most counter cultures are founded upon:

All the interconnected institutions in the marketplace need everyone to conform in order to sell the most products to the most people. The media through press releases, advertising, entertainment and so on works to bring everyone into homogeneity by altering desires.

To escape consumerism and conformity, you must turn your back and ignore the mainstream culture. The shackles will then fall away, the machines will grind to a halt, the filters will dissolve, and you will see the world for what it really is.

Finally, the illusory nature of existence will end and we will all, finally, be real. The problem, say Heath and Potter, is “the system” doesn’t give a shit about conformity. In fact, it loves diversity and needs people like hipsters and music snobs so it can thrive.

For example, say there is this awesome band no one knows about except you and a few others. They don’t have a record contract or an album. They just go out there and play, and they are great.

You tell everyone about them as they build a decent fan base. They make an album which sells enough copies to allow them to quit their jobs. That album gets them more gigs and more fans. Soon, they have a huge fan base and get a record contract and get on the radio and play on “The Tonight Show.”

Now, they’ve sold out. So you hate them. You abandon the band and go looking for someone more authentic, and it all starts over again. This is the pump by which artists rise from the depths into the mainstream. It never stops, and over time it gets faster and more efficient.

Unknown bands are a special sort of commodity. Living in a loft downtown, wearing clothes from the thrift store, watching the independent film no one has heard of – these provide a special social status which can’t be bought as easily as the things offered to the mainstream.

In the 1960s, it took months before someone figured out they could sell tie-dyed shirts and bell bottoms to anyone who wanted to rebel. In the 1990s, it took weeks to start selling flannel shirts and Doc Martens to people in the Deep South. Now, people are hired by corporations to go to bars and clubs and predict what the counter culture is into and have it on the shelves in the cool stores right as it becomes popular.

The counter-culture, the indie fans and the underground stars – they are the driving force behind capitalism. They are the engine.

This brings us to the point – competition among consumers is the turbine of capitalism. Everyone who lives above the poverty line but isn’t wealthy pretty much has no choice but to work for a living doing something which rewards them with survival tokens.

Working as a telemarketer, for example, allows you to have food, clothing and shelter, but doesn’t put you directly in charge of creating, growing or killing those things you need for sustenance. Instead, you trade in tokens for those things. As a result, you have a lot of free time and some leftover tokens.

We don’t directly compete with each other for resources like we did for the millennia before mass production. Before this setup, people were often defined by their work, by their output. The things they owned were usually things either they handmade, or were things other people made by hand. There was a weight, an infusion of soul, in everything a person owned, used and lived in.

Today, everyone is a consumer, and has to pick from the same selection of goods as everyone else, and because of this people now define their personalities on how good their taste is, or how clever, or how obscure, or how ironic their choices are.

As Christian Lander, author of “Stuff White People Like,” pointed out in an interview with NPR, you compete with your peers by one-upping them. You attain status by having better taste in movies and music, by owning more authentic furniture and clothing.

There are 100 million copies of every item or intellectual property you can own, so you reveal your unique character through how you consume.

Having a dissenting opinion on movies, music or clothes, or owning clever or obscure possessions is the way middle-class people fight each other for status. They can’t out-consume each other because they can’t afford it, but they can out-taste each other.

Since everything is mass-produced, and often for a mass audience, finding and consuming things which appeal to your desire for authenticity is what moves these items and artists and services up from the bottom to the top – where it can be mass consumed.

 Hipsters, then, are the direct result of this cycle of indie, authentic, obscure, ironic, clever consumerism. Which is ironic – but not like a trucker hat or Pabst Blue Ribbon. It is ironic in the sense the very act of trying to run counter to the culture is what creates the next wave of culture people will in turn attempt to counter.

“I think ‘sell out’ is yelled by those who, when they were selling, didn’t have anything that anyone wanted to buy.” – Patton Oswalt

Wait long enough, and what was once mainstream will fall into obscurity. When that happens, it will become valuable again to those looking for authenticity or irony or cleverness. The value, then, is not intrinsic. The thing itself doesn’t have as much value as the perception of how it was obtained, or why it is possessed, does.

Once enough people join in, like with trucker hats or slap bracelets, the status gained from owning the item or being a fan of the band is lost, and the search begins again. You would compete like this no matter how society was constructed. Competition for status is built into the human experience at the biological level.

Poor people compete with resources. The middle class competes with selection. The wealthy compete with possessions. If you live in a jungle and forage for food between spear-sharpening sessions, you compete for status with talent or prowess or…something.

If you get a paycheck, someone out there is buying what you are offering. You are selling – they are buying. You sold out long ago in one way or another. The specifics of who you sell to and how much you make – those are only details.” (source)

Time for me to walk on down the road…

AS IT STANDS: Politicians aren’t talking about America’s gang problem

                                      

          By Dave Stancliff?For The Times Standard
Politics dominate the airwaves and cyberspace, perhaps rightly so in an election year,  but there’s a subject I’m not hearing about during the campaign and it bothers me: the gang problem in our country.
 We do have a gang problem in case you haven’t noticed or live in a good neighborhood. The FBI reports there are now 1.4 million gang members involved in the 33,000 different gangs active inside the United States. The number of gang members in the U.S. has increased by 40 percent since 2009.
Some communities have pretty much been taken over by the gangs, but instead of addressing the problem, the federal government continues to ignore it. It seems, during a campaign year, politicians are afraid of alienating any segment of voters.

I wonder if we’ll have to wait until the election is over before the media turns its attention to the growing problem of gangs in our society? The ten people who were killed during the Memorial Day weekend this year in Chicago underscore the continuing struggle to control criminal gangs.
There have been 200 murders in Chicago so far this year - up from 139 at this time last year. Local police say about 80 percent were gang-related in a city whose gang membership is estimated at 100,000.
  Chicago's gang problem is a reflection of a troubling national trend in which criminal gangs have been expanded in number and reach throughout the country, according to the National Gang Center (NGC), an arm of the Justice Department.
  James "Buddy" Howell, a senior research associate at the gang center, told USA Today (9/4) that gangs have become so "entrenched" in some of the nation's largest cities that gang-related crime is largely immune to forces that have driven down overall crime.
Violent crime has declined throughout the nation, according to the Justice Department. The irony of this is obvious. Americans live with their own brand of domestic terrorists while being taxed to wage a war against international terrorists.

 We may pride ourselves on being a superpower, not a third world country, but what’s happening in the streets of America puts us in a similar place as those struggling nations.
  For too long now, the growing threat of gangs to innocent people in America has been virtually ignored. If the federal government would stop busting people for smoking pot,  they’d see gangs are a much larger problem.
 I’m not saying everyone ignores this encroaching threat to our society. There are gang task forces in nearly every city and county across the nation, but most are struggling for funding to keep up with the growth of organized gangs. (Here’s a list of gangs in America today: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gangs_in_the_United_States)

 What monies do come down from the federal government to fight gangs are limited because it’s not a priority. The wrong-headed War on Drugs eats up millions of dollars that should go toward a national approach to deal with the growing gang problem.

 Gangs are everywhere. Even here in Humboldt County. I’ve watched their growth over the last two decades with dismay. Couple those gangs with the recent influx of Mexican cartels and Humboldt County might as well be in Southern California.
 Many of the areas along our border with Mexico are open war zones. Just across the U.S. border lies the city of Juarez, Mexico. Juarez is considered one of the most dangerous cities on the entire planet because of the brutal drug war being waged there.

Border patrol agents have reported that Mexican drug cartels now openly conduct military operations inside Arizona and Texas. Their association with American gangs is no secret. A large part of the cartel’s success can be attributed to the help American gangs provide.
Enough is enough. Let’s get over the wrong-headed thinking employed in the past. We need to prioritize fighting our own domestic terrorists today. Be it political correctness, fear, or a national case of hoping the problem will go away, gangs can’t continue to be accepted as a way of life in America.
As It Stands, I’m a firm believer in taking care of my own house before I go elsewhere to help others clean theirs.

Reader response to this column via email

Mr. Stancliff:

“Your very cogent column in the Times-Standard only glanced on what I believe is the center of the gangs issue. Pot. Pot profits are a tax free subsidy program for more crime and violence.

More important to the campaigns is the fact that about 55 million Americans smoke pot*. And many of those Americans are middle class people who can afford the high price of today's pot.  At least 18% of the U.S. population. With pot law liberalization on the ballot in several more states politicians are taking caution because these initiatives bring out voters and those voters have no reason to love either of the two dominant parties. Fact is the day after the election both parties will be arresting American pot smokers just as aggressively as they do any other time. These voters know this.

Its all in the numbers for the campaigns. The Massachusetts special election for liberal icon Teddy Kennedy's senate seat is the most significant example. In 2008 Barack Obama won MA with 62% of the vote. On the same ballot was a pot liberalization initiative. It received more than 65% of the vote. Come forward to 2010. The Democrats put on the ballot Martha Coakley who was the state attorney general who also led the effort AGAINST the winning 2008 pot initiative. She lost to a Republican political neophyte by more than 5 percentage points. It is obvious, to me, that Coakley could not draw the pot reform voters to the polls.

There are other electoral upset examples that I am sure are keeping the Democrats and Republicans walking on eggs rather than broach the Drug War issue in this election. They know that they will change nothing That would be a major turnoff for pot smoking American voters. A voting constituency of less than 20% of these 55 million American pot smokers would be greater than the number of people that gave Barack Obama his majority in 2008. The margin in this election is much tighter than in 2008. The voters among these Americans feel betrayed and misled by President Obama. He can't afford to remind them or their feelings now, this close to the election.”

Pat Rogers, Allentown, PA

Marijuana And Cancer: Scientists Find Cannabis Compound Stops Metastasis In Aggressive Cancers

   Good Day Humboldt County!

I’ve been following news on medicinal marijuana for years and this study is a culmination of others I’ve read that indicates marijuana helps treat cancer.

I’ve been ridiculed many times when I run an article about the connection of marijuana and cancer treatment, but the negative “nellies” are starting to fade away these days. Perhaps it’s information like this that is finally turning the tide on how important a medicine marijuana is. See what you think:

“A pair of scientists at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco has found that a compound derived from marijuana could stop metastasis in many kinds of aggressive cancer, potentially altering the fatality of the disease forever.

"It took us about 20 years of research to figure this out, but we are very excited," said Pierre Desprez, one of the scientists behind the discovery, to The Huffington Post. "We want to get started with trials as soon as possible." The Daily Beast first reported on the finding, which has already undergone both laboratory and animal testing, and is awaiting permission for clinical trials in humans.

Desprez, a molecular biologist, spent decades studying ID-1, the gene that causes cancer to spread. Meanwhile, fellow researcher Sean McAllister was studying the effects of Cannabidiol, or CBD, a non-toxic, non-psychoactive chemical compound found in the cannabis plant. Finally, the pair collaborated, combining CBD and cells containing high levels of ID-1 in a petri dish.

"What we found was that his Cannabidiol could essentially 'turn off' the ID-1," Desprez told HuffPost. The cells stopped spreading and returned to normal. "We likely would not have found this on our own," he added. "That's why collaboration is so essential to scientific discovery." Desprez and McAllister first published a paper about the finding in 2007. Since then, their team has found that CBD works both in the lab and in animals. And now, they've found even more good news.

"We started by researching breast cancer," said Desprez. "But now we've found that Cannabidiol works with many kinds of aggressive cancers--brain, prostate--any kind in which these high levels of ID-1 are present." Desprez hopes that clinical trials will begin immediately.

"We've found no toxicity in the animals we've tested, and Cannabidiol is already used in humans for a variety of other ailments," he said. Indeed, the compound is used to relieve anxiety and nausea, and, since it is non-psychoactive, does not cause the "high" associated with THC.

While marijuana advocates will surely praise the discovery, Desprez explained that it's not so easy as just lighting up. "We used injections in the animal testing and are also testing pills," he said. "But you could never get enough Cannabidiol for it to be effective just from smoking."

Furthermore, the team has started synthesizing the compound in the lab instead of using the plant in an effort to make it more potent. "It's a common practice," explained Desprez. "But hopefully it will also keep us clear of any obstacles while seeking approval." (source)

Time for me to walk on down the road…

The Republican War On Chairs: We Are All Chairs Now!

 The entire Progdom is up in arms since the Chair Wars started with Clint Eastwood's unprovoked attack on an innocent chair at the RNC. Instead of acting as a policy expert like all the Prog actors do, Mr. Eastwood presumed to act as an actor and delivered an acting performance. What a bizarre idea!
Unbeknownst to Eastwood, that was actually the 5th or the 6th most interesting chair in the room. It had enough capacity to seat not just our invisible president, but also millions of jobs that had been saved or created, as well as undocumented voters, necroproxies, and all the fake Twitter followers.

Implying that Obama was an empty chair was as nonsensical as saying "The Emperor has no clothes!" But the Emperor "episode" has been thoroughly debunked by the progressive historians, who proved that the Emperor was, in fact, wearing a magnificent dress, visible only to the smart and the enlightened, and that the boy's heckling was manufactured by the Republican machine, paid for by the Koch brothers. Just like that non-story, Eastwood's attack on all chairs is bound to the ash heap of history, along with capitalist greed and American imperialism in general.

                                                      We are all chairs now!
Below are some helpful visuals prepared by our Department of Visual Agitation to be used in the fight. No Pasaran!
~
                                                                UPDATE:
The incumbent chair - COTUS (Chair of the United States) - is now available on transparent background, for you Photoshoppers to use in your own tactical maneuvers.

 

Drill, Baby, Drill Regardless of the Consequences - Fueling the Addiction

             Good Day Humboldt County!

Thirty national parks face the prospect of future oil and gas drilling within their borders.

The BNP Petroleum Corporation's gas rig (shown below) on Padre Island National Seashore, Texas. Oil and gas drilling in national parks has the potential to be devastating to natural wildlife and poses risks to environmental safety and public health.

See more: Drilling Could Threaten Our National Parks by Jessica Goad

Cartoon By Ann Telnaes, the Cartoonist Group

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Patriotic Pause: Homer Simpson casts his vote for president

Homer Simpson is doing his civic duty once again this election season.

In a new "Simpsons" short released on YouTube Wednesday, the doughnut-loving goofball heads to the polls to decide whether to vote for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney ... and he's not too pleased with having to do so.

"Why do we have to choose our leaders?" he gripes. "Isn't that what we have the Supreme Court for?"

Oh, snap!

The digs about politics and the

Homer does it again…

elections keep on coming after that, with references to new voter ID laws, health care reform, religion and more.

Homer also targets Obama and Romney with his insightful observations.

"He promised me death panels and Grandpa's still alive!" he complains of the president.

As for Romney, "I hear he wears magic underpants," Homer says suspiciously.

But after some serious consideration, he does finally cast his vote ... and instantly regrets his choice. Check it out. (source)

Alert To All Bloggers! Are you getting comments on your posts from Anonymous sources in your mailbox with a link to bad places?

For over a week now I’ve noticed something new and troubling in my email box:

I’ve been getting comments from anonymous sources -regarding my blog posts - saying real nice things and providing a link to their website and asking me to visit them.

The first time I thought it was odd and looked up the post the email was referring to so I could see if the comment was there. Guess what? It wasn’t. I knew something was rotten in Denmark right then. The emails have been coming daily now.

Today (below) I got another suspicious email shortly after I posted something. This time the hoverlink didn’t just have garbled letters, it was an ad from the UK! I don’t know if that means the bastard who did it is from there or what.

I do know these spam emails with suspicious links could prove to be a real problem if opened. I have not opened one yet, nor will I open one at any time. I’ll just continue to be wary of them, document them, and to look for more information about them.

I mainly want to warn my blogger colleagues that this threat is out there. It’s relatively new as far as I can tell. So far, I haven’t heard or read anything about this spam approach. If you, or someone you know is experiencing the same thing please let me know. Knowledge is power. The more people who are aware of this cyber scam the better. Past this post along if you agree.

In my Email Box this morning shortly after my first post of the day:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post

"Yes, the Rich Are Different – Pew Research study shows”:
It's a shame you don't have a donate button! I'd certainly donate to this fantastic blog! I suppose for now i'll settle for book-marking and adding your RSS feed to my Google account.
I look forward to brand new updates and will talk
about this site with my Facebook group. Chat soon!
Here is my web site : Hoverlink was here leading to a bogus website

Yes, the Rich Are Different — Pew Research study breaks down the numbers

       Good Day Humboldt County!

With all the talk lately about the secret Romney tapes I thought I’d take a scientific look at the differences between the rich and the rest of us as presented in this recently taken Pew Research survey.

It’s been an uphill battle since Day One trying to convince people that Romney could relate to the common American. He’s managed to increase the gap between the haves and have nots in a short conversation with wealthy donors during a fundraiser. His view of 47 percent of Americans is pretty bleak. But among that circle of wealthy donors his attitude was par for the course for someone who can afford to pay $50,000 for a lunch.

“Pew Research has released the results of a survey done last month on the differences between the rich and the rest of us. The survey results didn't really break any new ground, but did throw some light on who Americans think the rich are and what they're like. Some highlights:

• The total U.S. median annual income for a "wealthy" family is $150,000, but that varies between $200,000 in the Northeast to $150,000 in the Midwest and South.
• 43% of respondents said the rich are more likely to be intelligent and 42% said they are more likely to be hardworking.
• 55% said the rich are more likely to be greedy and 34% said they are less likely to be honest.
• Still, 92% of the self-described middle class and 84% of the self-described lower class say they admire people who get rich by working hard.
• 58% say upper income people pay too little in taxes.
• 44% of Republicans said upper-income people pay their fair share of taxes compared with just 13% of Democrats.
• More than three-quarters of Democrats say upper-income people pay too little in taxes, and (perhaps surprisingly) 33% of Republicans say the same thing.

  A large number of respondents - 65% - say the income gap between rich and poor has gotten larger in the past 10 years and 57% say that is a "bad thing."

  Finally, on the coming elections, 71% of respondents said Mitt Romney's policies would benefit the wealthy, while just 40% said the policies would benefit the middle class and 31% said his policies would benefit the poor. According to 37% of respondents, President Obama's policies would benefit the rich, and 50% said his policies would benefit the middle class and 60% said the policies would benefit the poor.”

  Time for me to walk on down the road…

Okay Boys and Girls let’s meet the members of the Congressional Science Committee–please don’t be alarmed that they’re all clueless

Introducing the ad campaign most likely to result in scatological jokes

Ad campaign voted most likely to result in scatological jokes.

Also: see the "person" in the Persian Siamese cat "costume" in the top panel?

Note how the shape of the cat head does not conform to the shapes of the human heads on display.

The unnatural angle of the neck. And the cat is looking with its living "costume" eyes!
Plainly, this is a encoded warning against aliens among us! (source)

Historian says piece of papyrus refers to Jesus' wife

                          Good Day Humboldt County!

For those of you who believe Jesus Christ was a virgin all of his life, news like this may seem sacrilegious. As more questions are asked about this discovery a controversy brews…

“A historian of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School has identified a scrap of papyrus that she says was written in Coptic in the fourth century and contains a phrase never seen in any piece of scripture: "Jesus said to them, 'My wife …'"

The faded papyrus fragment is smaller than a business card, with eight lines on one side, in black ink legible under a magnifying glass. Just below the line about Jesus having a wife, the papyrus includes a second provocative clause that purportedly says, “she will be able to be my disciple.”

The finding is being made public in Rome on Tuesday at an international meeting of Coptic scholars by the historian Karen L. King, who has published several books about new Gospel discoveries and is the first woman to hold the nation’s oldest endowed chair, the Hollis professor of divinity.” (Story here)

A historian of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School has identified a papyrus fragment in Coptic that she says contains the first known statement saying explicitly that Jesus was married. The fragment also refers to a female disciple.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Ain’t it a shame? Pakistani protester dies from breathing smoke of burning US flags

  Aww shucks…this makes me feel terrible…NOT!

It’s called Karma. I wish a few other idiots involved in killing Americans would take some hefty snorts from burning American flags themselves.

“A protester in Lahore, Pakistan has died after inhaling the fumes from the American flags he burned on Sunday. Abdullah Ismail was part of a demonstration protesting the Islam-trolling film "The Innocence of Muslims" in front of the U.S. Embassy. According to his fellow protesters, Ismail "complained of feeling unwell from [breathing] the smoke" of the burning American flags and was transported to Lahore's Mayo Hospital where he later died. More than 10,000 people filled the streets to protest the film and its blasphemy, blocking traffic for over six hours.” [Source]

'Bigfoot' Killed by Car in Montana Baffles Even Police

A man dressed up as Bigfoot (or Sasquatch) was struck and killed by two cars Sunday night while he was trying to provoke a sighting in Northern Montana. I am not sure whether to laugh or cry.

Randy Lee Tenley put on a full military style "Ghillie suit" and stood in a lane in the highway, waiting for someone to call in a Bigfoot sighting. WTF? Sorry, but seriously. This isn't a laughing matter as a man is dead, but come ON. These suits are specifically designed for camouflage. What did he think might happen?

As bizarre and dumb as it is on one hand, it's also sad if you look at it another way. Maybe Tenley wanted to put a little magic back in people's lives. Maybe he wanted us to believe in something. Still, he picked a dangerous way to do it. (source)

Turns out he couldn’t take it with him – Dead man found in house loaded with $7 million in gold coins

          Good Day Humboldt County!

The following story is about a recluse who dies with his gold. It reminded me of someone I knew back in the mid 1980s – Harry O’Malley. I knew Harry for the last two years of his life. I was the editor of a weekly newspaper in 29 Palms, California, and for whatever reason Harry befriended me and my family.

He was what we called a “desert rat” and lived alone in a big rambling house he built over a period of years in Wonder Valley. That was exactly in the middle of nowhere. It took about thirty minutes of driving east of 29 Palms to reach Wonder Valley.

When he died the only two friends in the world he had were me, and a lawyer named Ralph Carrel. We had been helping him out for over a year with his finances (he was suffering from dementia) and Ralph had access to his bank account as a trustee. After seeing to his funeral Ralph discovered bank books in Harry’s old house. A dozen accounts in Harry’s name. They added up to over two million dollars!

An attempt was made to contact a relative, his sister in Greece, but she didn’t want any part of his money! What a story that must have been. Meanwhile, the county and state converged upon his estate, and gobbled it up!

And now Walter Samaszko Jr.s story:

“When Walter Samaszko Jr. died at his home in Carson City, Nev., he had $200 in a bank account. But as officials later discovered, Samaszko had about $7 million stored neatly around his home, the Nevada Appeal reported.

In late June, neighbors called authorities because of a smell emanating from Samaszko’s home. He was a recluse who had told them he hated the government and feared getting shots, but still, it had been a while since they had seen him, according to the Appeal.

According to the coroner, Samaszko, 69, had been dead for at least a month. He died of heart problems, the Las Vegas Sun reported. In came the cleanup crews, which discovered boxes of gold in the garage. They found gold coins and bullion, tiny dos-pesos, $20 gold pieces, Austrian ducats, Kruggerrands and English Sovereigns dating  to the 1840s – enough gold to fill two wheelbarrows.” (Read the story here)

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Spot The Object: Find the “King” among these animals

Here’s a great optical illusion puzzle by Donald Rust: Can you find the King in this painting?

When you’re done, just please don’t tell! Instead, comment you found him.

Let’s see how long it does  take before you see him!

BTW: don’t forget to check other illusions by Rusty

Nude News: San Franciscans can no longer grin and bear public nudity

                    Good Day Humboldt County!

Must be all this nice weather along the north coast because people like going places and getting naked. But people in San Francisco are tired of the nudies making a spectacle of themselves and have reversed a law that allowed them to cruise around au natural.

I can’t say I blame them. It was an odd law, unlike any one in any city that I’ve ever heard of. If people want to run around naked there’s plenty of places to go where it’s legal and discrete. Check out the link below about the nudist convention in Vegas, or the nudist colony seeking members.   

“Call it a different kind of “crack” problem: Public nudity in San Francisco’s Castro is getting old. Supervisor Scott Wiener, who represents the district, has tried to be tolerant.

Last year he drafted the “skid mark law,” which forbids nudists from using any public seating without putting down a towel first. But now locals say the nudists have crossed the line, reportedly engaging in public sex acts, charging tourists money for photos and using genital jewelry or props to draw extra attention to their area downstairs.

Wiener says the nudist problem has become the issue his constituents complain about most often, more than homelessness, and Wiener and the people he represents are sick of locals happy to grin and bare it.” [Source]

Read more:

No shirt, no pants, no problem at Vegas nudist convention

Nudist colony tries youthful tactics to flesh out membership

AS IT STANDS: Distracted pedestrians: Oops! There goes another one!

           By Dave Stancliff/For The Times-Standard
Nostalgia moment; remember the old phrase,“…so and so can’t walk and chew gum at the same time?” It’s time to update it, and bring it into the 21st Century.
Now we can say, “…so and so can’t walk and text, tweet, play video games, and talk on the phone at the same time.” And we have statistics to prove it. One more thing, it’s called “distracted walking,” but I think that’s too nice a way to put it.
 Some readers may question why I’m bringing up this subject. It’s only been a month since I complained about a new texting and driving law in California. Some of you may wonder, “What’s the deal with Dave? What does he have against technology?”
 The answer is, nothing. It’s the idiots who don’t use modern technology safely because of a lack of common sense who interest me. I’m not really worried about getting walked over by a “distracted walker” as I’m sure I’ll see him or her before they see me. I’ll get out of the way. It’s when they step out into traffic (Hey! I’ve seen it happen on Broadway in Eureka) that I can’t help cringing.
“Distracted walking” is a greater problem than I realized. Data collected by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows that pedestrian fatalities rose by 4.2 percent from 2009 to 2010, and injuries increased by 19 percent during the same period.

You may remember I pointed out a report on traffic fatalities caused by “distracted driving.” The first three months of this year saw a 13.5 percent jump in drivers dying because of distracted driving. Sobering data to say the least.
 Recent information indicates that “distracted walking” is emerging as a public health concern. In 2011 alone, 1,152 people were treated for injuries caused by distracted walking, according to data collected by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. That number is likely a gross underestimate since doctors or nurses may not have asked whether the patient was using a mobile device at the time of the accident, according to a July 30 Associated Press (AP) report.

 "We are where we were with cell phone use in cars 10 years or so ago. We knew it was a problem, but we didn't have the data," Jonathan Atkins, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Assn., told AP in an interview.
Here’s more revealing information: researchers at the University of Maryland identified 116 cases in which pedestrians were killed or seriously injured while wearing headphones. Two-thirds of those injuries involved men under the age of 30, and half of them involved trains.

 If you go to YouTube there are endless videos of distracted people walking into things, or off them. Great for laughs. Funny stuff, right? Cathy Cruz Marrero, the woman who tumbled into a fountain while texting and walking in a mall in Pennsylvania, didn’t think it was too funny.
She’s a star on the internet now. She wasn't injured, but she told CBS News that she cried for days after footage of the accident landed on YouTube, where it was viewed more than 2 million times.

There’s another popular YouTube video starring distracted walker Bonnie Miller, a Michigan woman who recently fell off a pier while texting and walking. "I can't let pride get in my way of warning other people to not drive and text or walk and text. It's quite dangerous," Miller told ABC 57, a local television station in South Bend, Ind.
There was nothing funny about her husband and a 19-year-old bystander jumping into the cold water to save her. She wasn’t laughing when Firefighters and the Coast Guard arrived and threw them floatation devices. Lucky for her it was just a humiliating experience and she’s alive to talk about it.
 Another lucky distracted walker whose story has gone viral since it happened in 2009, is Alexa Longueira, of Staten Island, N.Y. This teenager fell into an open manhole while reading a text on her friend’s cell phone. According to a report by WABC, she fell 6 feet into four inches of raw sewage.
As It Stands, unlike distracted driving, I don’t think there should be any laws against distracted walking; it’s probably an effective way to thin out the gene pool!

Music Appreciation Corner: Kick back and listen to a generational contrast in music

                 These two examples of generational music are literally “Day and Night” apart!

Michael Franti & Spearhead– “Hello Sunshine…”

Simon and Garfunkel - “Hello Darkness…”

 

 

 

 

 

 

What do you think? Which selection do you like the most?

Vote Online Today: Help pick this year’s ‘Hambone award’ recipient

Will it be a showdown between the Labrador who shattered a 55-gallon aquarium and the dachshund-terrier who was nearly buried alive by a skunk?

Those are just two of the nominees for this year’s Hambone Award, given out annually by Veterinary Pet Insurance to the most outrageous pet insurance claim it receives all year.

There is one nominee for each of the 12 months, and the winner is decided by the public, which can vote online for this year’s contest beginning today.

Then there’s Peanut (below), a dachshund-terrier mix from Sicklerville, N.J., who scuffled with a skunk and had to be rescued by firefighters after being buried alive at 2:30 in the morning.

Rescue workers had initially given up their search for the dog when owner Christy Wolfram grabbed a shovel and started digging in the dirt underneath the family’s backyard deck to find the dog.

“When the firefighters saw Christy continue to dig, one of them decided to take a last look,” Wolfgram’s husband, Keith, told VPI. “I remember him shouting, ‘I see her paw!’ and my heart just sank. By the time they got her out she was barely moving. I couldn’t believe she was alive.”

If pooping out rocks was a skill, a pug (top right) from Rhode Island would be the most talented dog in the country. Instead, Harley the pug won last year’s “Hambone Award,’’ given out annually by Veterinary Pet Insurance.

Another Zombie-like attack: naked bloody man tries to chew woman’s head off

              Good Day Humboldt County!

This year some of the crimes committed have been like something out of Zombie movies. In nearly ever case “bath salts” a dangerous designer drug, was involved.

One of the first reports happened on May 26, when Miami police shot and killed a homeless man who was allegedly feasting on the face of another homeless man in a daylight attack on a busy highway.

 

Before now-infamous "face-eating cannibal" Randy Eugene (bottom photo on left side) was stopped by four police bullets, say authorities, he had gnawed the face of victim Ronald Poppo down to his goatee.

Not long after that another “zombie” like attack happened in a Manatee County, Florida home, after a man under the influence of bath salts went into a fit of rage and bit a piece of someone’s arm off during a visit with his children.

According to ABC News, Charles Baker, 26, got naked, ate human flesh and wouldn’t go down without a fight, according to a Manatee County Sheriff’s Office report.

The latest candidate for Zombie Apocalypse comes from Ohio. A naked, bloody man broke into a home, jumped from a two-story window, tackled a passerby and chewed on her head while "screaming like an animal." The gory scene unfolded Friday night in Hawley, Pa., 40 miles east of Scranton, where 20-year-old Richard Cimino Jr. allegedly went ballistic on a woman and two officers, Patch reported.

Time for me to walk on down the road…carefully!