Saturday, March 28, 2009

New Orleans Art: Things are changing since Hurricane Katrina came

"Parade Watchers" by Myrtle von Damitz, III and Mardi Gras costume by Jackie Mang

New Orleans has been an introverted bohemian draw for centuries, but recent international attention to all aspects of the city's cultural phenomenon's has delivered new energy and intensity to its visual arts community. The art scene in New Orleans is at a turning point. The world's established contemporary art market is at a turning point as well, with more focus on source and originality of work, beyond the pure numbers of the market.

Many dynamic new visual arts alliances have formed since Hurricane Katrina - not just out of the intellectual petri dish of Barrister's Gallery but as a response to a wider desire of local artists to communicate with their friends and neighbors and to broadcast their sensibilities to the rest of the world. One such group aligned with Barrister's Gallery and the Antiabecedarians is the New Orleans Airlift (www.neworleansairlift.org).

Prostitute bites ShamWow Guy's tongue! He slugs her in the chops!

   How many times have you seen an infomercial with this guy's mug? His real name is Vince Shlomi and he's a successful pitchman for absorbent towels and food choppers.

   After hiring a prostitute for a night of straight sex she started right off biting his tongue and not letting go! He slugged her in the chops and was later arrested for felony assault.

   When the cops found out about what she did, they arrested her and charged her with felony assault. As luck would have it, prosecutors decided to drop all formal charges and the two were released.

   But wait! There's more to this story. Go to thesmokinggun to get all of the juicy details and get a free thrill! Hurry...the first 200 visitors will get an autographed photo of the ShamWow guy's booking photo!

Don't delay...

Photo via www.thesmokinggun.com

Friday, March 27, 2009

Step right up folks and see the fabulous fleas flying through the air!

These clearly bizarre posters are lovingly created by David Manuel

Like People Say: 'It's not who you are, but who are you related too?'

  • Nepotism; favoritism shown to relatives, especially in appointment to desirable positions

    FROM THE LA TIMES
  • California jobs go to those with connections

Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times / File

Excerpt from article:

"Lawmakers can hire anyone they choose. Sometimes that means friends and family.

"It looks like nepotism," said Tracy Westen, chief executive of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles. "It's the kind of thing the public doesn't like: people using their power and influence to provide cushy jobs to friends and family."

Read the whole article here.

Cartoon (By Leo Cullum) via www.cartoonbank.com via The New Yorker

Senators steal taxpayer money under guise of PACs: Bailed-out banks give thanks by donating money to lawmakers

Mike Huckabee, a recent candidate for president and governor of Arkansas, is known to be a PAC porker, but even Huckabee wouldn't take PAC money from government bailed-out companies, unlike the senators mentioned in the following article from The Raw Story. The same senators who have spoke out with feigned indignity over the AIG controversy are busy collecting PAC money. House Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer, and House GOP Whip, Eric Cantor, lead the list of shame, but are followed by other senators who don't mind stealing tax payer money!  

DONATING FOR DOLLARS? MANY BAILED-OUT BANKS STILL CONTRIBUTE TO CAMPAIGN FUNDS

By Jeremy Gantz

The federal bank bailouts may be giving new meaning to the term "kickback."
Many of the banks rescued last year with taxpayer money have contributed to the campaign coffers of some politicians who approved the bailouts, according to recent filings with the Federal Election Commission.

Read the whole article here.

If you want to read more about this subject NewsWeek has a good article titled "Follow the bailout cash."

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Exporting American Jobs: IBM fires Americans and sends their jobs overseas to India!

You sure can't call IBM patriotic when it comes to employing Americans. They just eliminated 5000 jobs here and are outsourcing them to India. Sound familiar? It ought to. The newspaper industry has been outsourcing jobs to India for a couple of years now and look what it's done for them. Nothing. They're still struggling and closing down across the country. I think those economists that argue outsourcing is good for America are full of prime A bullshit! Getting rid of jobs when 12 million Americans are out of work is bad enough. Sending them overseas is down right shitty and all that I would expect from a corporate entity with no heart or soul.

Here's an interesting take on what's happening today from TIME CNN -

IBM and the Rebirth of Outsourcing

A couple of month ago, India's chief finance minister may have made calls to the heads of IBM and several other large U.S. tech companies to tell them that the huge developing nation was hemorrhaging high-end tech jobs. Whether the call happened or not, looking at statistics from India it would be easy to see that the costs of outsourcing technology work to firms based there is dropping as unemployment in the country rises.

Related

The Uptick in Home Sales Sends a False and Dangerous Signal
Still No Road to Recovery in Detroit
Nintendo Brings a New Product to the U.S. and Wants to Crush Microsoft and Sony
More Related

For a number of years, unions and members of Congress spent a great deal of time complaining about the number of U.S. jobs being sent abroad. The bitterness about the issue seems to have receded recently, especially as the recession has deepened and large American companies have been inclined to cut jobs as much or more than they have been able to export them. Perhaps with the economy losing about 600,000 jobs a month, the need for efficiency though outsourcing has become less immediate. (See pictures of the Top 10 scared traders.)

Photo by STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty

Was Abraham Lincoln Gay? Some researches, to my surprise, say he was!

I was watching the History Channel this morning and was very surprised to hear that some researchers think Abraham Lincoln was gay. At first I thought it was just some wild way to induce viewers so I did a bit of research, and here's what I found....

QUOTE FROM CAROL LLOYD FROM HER ARTICLE IN SALON-COM's

IVORY TOWER... Was Lincoln Gay?

"The 28-year-old traveler was tall, with rough hands, a chiseled jaw and unforgettable, deep-set, melancholy eyes. He arrived in town, his worldly possessions in two battered suitcases, and inquired at a general store about buying some bedding. But the price was far beyond his budget. The strikingly handsome 23-year-old merchant took pity on the man and invited him into his own bed, free of charge, which happened to be just upstairs. The traveler inspected the bed and, looking into the merchant's sparkling blue eyes, agreed on the spot. For the next four years the two men shared that bed along with their most private fears and desires.

If this sounds like the opening of a homoerotic dime-store novel whose subsequent scenes feature fiery loins and ecstatic eruptions, hold your panting."

Read this whole story here.

Image via salon.com.

Here's some more information from Wikipedia.

FROM ABRAHAM LINCOLN ONLINE - SPEECHES & WRITINGS...LINCOLN'S LETTER TO SPEED:

"Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed met in Springfield, Illinois, during the 1830s. Although Speed returned to his native Kentucky, they remained friends throughout life. In this letter, Lincoln expresses his thinking about slavery, which contrasted with Speed, who grew up on a plantation and owned slaves.

The year before Lincoln wrote this letter, the Kansas-Nebraska Act passed Congress, repealing the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and opened the territories to slavery. The passage of this bill proved a turning point in Lincoln's career. As he observed, "I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again."

Springfield, Illinois
August 24, 1855

READ THE REST HERE.

THERE'S MORE INFORMATION FROM "THE STRAIGHT DOPE"

Dear Cecil:

In the recent debate around gay marriage, the Log Cabin Republicans have come up. I understand their deal is that Abraham Lincoln was gay and grew up in a log cabin, so they align themselves with his sexuality through endorsing his upbringing. Whatever. My question is, how valid is the allegation of Honest Abe being gay? I realize that "we may never really know," but my impression is that he was a rowdy skirt chaser in his youth. What evidence do we have that he chased pants as well? Surely having a harridan for a wife isn't evidence enough?

— Bill in Connecticut

READ THE REST HERE.

READ THIS 2005 REVIEW BY RICHARD BROOKHISER OF THE NEW YORK TIMES. HERE'S AN EXERPT...from C.A. Trip's book "Was Lincoln Gay?"

"Tripp surveys seven of Lincoln's relationships, four with men and three with women, as well as two episodes from his early life. The discussion of Lincoln's youth is worthless. Relying on Lincoln's law partner and earliest biographer, William Herndon, Tripp decides that Lincoln reached puberty when he was 9 years old. Since Kinsey concluded that early maturing boys tended to become witty masturbators with lots of homosexual experience, Tripp concludes the same of Lincoln. He claims even more for Lincoln's adolescence, including a source for his religious heterodoxy. ''Since Lincoln had already arrived on his own at the powerful pleasures of orgasm . . . one can be sure that like most precocious youngsters he was in no mood to give it all up for bookish or Bible reasons.'' One can be sure, if one is as credulous as Tripp."

READ THE REST HERE.

 

Billy had a bad hangover and needed another shot of sake!

Okay that's not what really happened here, but looking at him you could be excused for thinking he was suffering a bad hangover! Actually, according to Yahoo's Most Emailed Photos:

"With facecloth on the head, male Baikal Seal Billy performs 'a dip in a hot spring' as he holds a sake bottle in a basin with forefoot at a pool of Hakone-en aquarium in Hakone, west of Tokyo, Tuesday, March 17, 2009.

It took some three months for six-year-old Billy to master this performance, a traditional Japanese style of soaking in a hot spring."

(AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Happiness is a warm earlobe on a cold day....

(image credit: farkkelt)

Don't tell me work can't be fun...

No autographs please!

Who are these three mysterious women and why are they smiling?

I'm married to one of these revelers.
She tells me that she goes to work everyday and doesn't play.
But now I have photo evidence that it's party time in the office she "works" in.
There's another photo of my wife on this blog if you want to look at it and make an educated guess as to which one of these party girls are mine!

Trump's Lowest Grift Ever Saved for Holy Week

This is a story about how the devil's puppet, aka Donald Trump, mocked Christianity by selling a book combining the Bible, the Constitu...