sunday funnies

from white ninja:

austrailian prisoner photography

i love these vintage photographs by an unknown french photographer. the models are all inmates of the australian penal system. original article at la boite verte. i found them via coilhouse. be sure to check the rest out at either mentioned site.




working on a new short story after scrapping a review i was working on of the local taco. i found it wasn't very fun to write a negative review. i'll just say save your money go to lopez and buy yourself some real tacos.

ps sticking with the french. check the comments for some serge.

sunday funnies

click to enlarge. from achewood.com

pho(k) yeah

Woke up this morning at 5:00 am. Still groggy I take a look out my bedroom window still snowing and still dark. I Walk to the bathroom and blow my nose for like ten minutes and coughed up phlegm for another ten after that. I hate winter. Everyday I wake up sick. Every thing is dead, gray, and so goddamn cold.

What could possibly make this day enjoyable (aside from that chickenshit sun showing itself)? I can't go back to bed because I have to go to work. I can't get drunk because I have to go to work. I can't even go look for a suitable bridge to go jump off because I have to go to work. Oh and to top things off I have to go to goddamn work.

And then I have a revelation.

Pho. I can have Pho for lunch.

Pho (pronounced fa) is a Vietnamese soup made with rice noodles with a beef broth. Mouth searingly spicy and yet so comforting with its fresh Thai basil, lime, and cilantro. Typical to Vietnamese dishes the herbs and lime are served on the side along with nuclear red chili paste, raw chilies, sugar, and fish sauce all to be used and abused at the discretion of the diner (hint if it doesn't hurt a little you aren't doing it right).

I got my fix at Thai Star's new location on Thompson Lane. Whats that Sam, Thai place for Vietnamese? Hey Sam, isn't their chef from Laos? Yes and yes. But guess what people? They have amazing food and more importantly amazing pho.

I mean just look at this folks!

I enlist my friend Gattis for the trip, both being a big fan of Thai Star and in town for the weekend. This a first time for both of us at the new local (when we roomed together we both frequented the E. Thompson store). We arrived at restaurant at 3:30. Typically this is a very slow time for any restaurant and I am surprised to still see plenty of people in the dining room. I Take this as a good sign. Our server seated us promptly and as a bonus was pretty funny. After taking our drinks she asked us if we were ready to order.

"Beef Pho please!" I say maybe a little too quickly.

Gattis orders the yum neu (a very very spicy beef salad) and a small bowl a of tom yum (a seafood stock soup with lemon grass.) While we wait for our food I check out the new digs. The dinning room is much larger than the previous building's. The decor is tasteful if a little sparse with a nice hand made bamboo entrance at the main door. A small shrine to Buddha sits in the corner and at the register a TV plays Thai music videos with English subtitles. The only thing I miss from the old place is a calender with Thai pin up girls.

Our food arrives and I quickly get to work making the Pho my own. Adding a generous amount of Siracha, a spoon full of sugar, some lovely but smelly fish sauce, and of course the chili paste, herbs, and lime but leaving out ice berg lettuce and hoisin sauce. The first bite is both heaven and hell.

I say to John, "May have been a little too heavy handed with the chili."

Even the steam from this stuff is unstopping my once impenetrable nasal passage. Hints of anise and coriander make it past the lava like heat and the freshness of the basil and cilantro. The beef is tender and not overcooked. The noodles soak up the broth and round out everything nicely.

The pleasure centers in my brain seem to be running on over time. Endorphins are starting to kick in from the heat and I have to stop myself from picking up the bowl and drinking the broth like cereal milk. This shit is that good.

I suddenly realize why I go to work. Like a junkie it's cop. Shoot. Cop.

Go to work to make money for pho.

Eat Pho.

Start all over again.

a mix for winter

its snowing and i'm trapped at home. the car is still on the fuzz and chanda is at work. i made a mix for any of you in similar situation. hope you enjoy.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/7xxz87l9pv4epb0/amixforwinter.zip

Out At The Pictures - Hot Chip
Mystereality - Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
Winter Time - Drug Rug
Fake Palindromes - Andrew Bird
Waitin' For A Superman - The Flaming Lips
We've Been Had - The Walkmen
5 - 4 = Unity - Pavement
Weekend Wars - MGMT
Plateau - Meat Puppets
Save It For Later - English Beat
Web In Front - Archers Of Loaf
Cherry Blossom Girl - Air
The Second Line - Clinic
Running Up That Hill - Kate Bush
Black Cab - Jens Lekman
The Chauffeur - Duran Duran

the witch walks out on john

"God dammmit!" Cynthia yelled, as she threw her flattening iron through the bathroom door and into the living room. Her boyfriend John looked up from his beer as it landed at feet.

"You OK?" said John.

"No, I just burnt my fucking hand!" Cynthia looked at her hand. Little blisters were already starting to form. She saw John walk to door frame still holding his beer. She twitched her nose and the door slammed in his face.

"Dammit, babe! Why do you have to be that way?" John yelled from behind the door.

"Just leave me alone for a minute!" she shouted back. "Just fuck off, John."

"Fine, whatever." he muttered.

Cynthia thought about twitching her nose again and turning John's skin inside out, but managed to keep her composure. She could still hear him muttering under his breath from the other room. With her uninjured hand she turned on the sink and ran cold water over the burn. After staring at the medicine cabinet door for a moment, it popped open and a box of bandages flew over to her. She dressed her wound and put the bandages back up without using her powers. The throbbing was beginning to ease off and she was starting to feel a little guilty for snapping at John, he had meant well after all. Suddenly, Cynthia realized it hadn't really been the pain. She no longer loved him and that hurt much more than the burn.

"John, I'm sorry. You can come in now." she called though the door.

He came in quicker than she expected. His face was blank and he wouldn't look directly at her.

"I didn't mean to yell like that. I apologize." said Cynthia

"It's OK. Is your hand all right?" He asked without looking up.

"I'm alright." she said holding up the bandaged hand. "I never really wanted to play the violin anyway."

He smiled a little at that. She had fallen for that smile. For a second she remembered why she had once loved him.

"Would you care to dance?" Cynthia asked him. She held out her hand and John took it. She twitched her nose once more. Suddenly, their tiny apartment was a ballroom. A pianist sat in the corner. He began to play Chopin's "Minute Waltz". Without her powers neither Cynthia nor John would have been very good dancers, but in that moment they were gliding around the room like a couple of old pros. When the music stopped, Cynthia said, "John I don't want to do this anymore."

"You're the one who asked me to dance, Cynthia." John replied, still smiling.

"No. This. Us. I don't love you anymore." Cynthia said quietly. John's smile faded and became a glare of contempt. For a moment they just stood there still holding each other.

"Fuck you, Cynthia." John said quietly.

She thought for a moment that he may hit her, but instead he squeezed her injured hand hard and then spat on the floor. The pain shot through her body and the ballroom began to melt away. Soon enough they were in the tiny apartment again and John wouldn't look at her. Instead of dancers they were just two people.

"I'm leaving you, John." said Cynthia.

"I'm sorry I squeezed your hand." He said, still not looking at her.

"No, you're not." She replied coolly.

John finally looked her in the eye.

"No, I'm not." He said with a wicked smile. That smile made her shutter.

"I hope it hurts for days!" He screamed.

With that, she got up and walked out the door without bothering to pack. The few things that meant anything to her she could send for later. Right now all she wanted was to be any where but this tiny apartment and with this man who already felt like a stranger.

While in the hallway, she heard a mighty crash against the door, followed by a muffled "Fuck you!". Probably the bottle of beer John had been drinking. It was hard for her to imagine him displaying that kind of passion, and ever harder to imagine him wasting a beer. People were starting to poke their noses through cracked doors, trying to discover what the commotion was. She glared at Mrs. Adams from 301, who quickly ducked back into her apartment.

On her way down to the lobby, she began to think about how many times she had walked up and down this flight of stairs and how odd it felt that this would be the last. She passed by Peter Rigginhouse, who smiled at her wanly. Peter was a dumpy little man who had always given Cynthia the creeps. Just to be mean, she wiggled her nose and the bag of groceries that Peter had been carrying became a bag of snakes. Peter dropped the bag in horror. His girlish scream reverberating in the stair well. Cynthia had to bite her lip, almost to the point of bleeding, to keep from laughing out loud. She twitched her nose again and the bag returned to an ordinary sack of groceries. "Everything OK, Mr. Rigginhouse?" She asked the terrified man. It was becoming harder and harder for her to suppress her laughter.

Peter was starring at the bag not knowing what to expect.
"That was a cruel trick, Cynthia..." He stammered. "I have a bad heart you know!"

"Trick, Mr. Rigginhouse?" She was no longer able to contain herself. "I don't know what you could be talking about," She said through the laughter.
Cynthia was now feeling much better. Soon my life with John will be a distant memory, she thought to herself. She continued through the lobby, leaving Mr. Riggenhouse to collect his groceries. Before walking through the doors one last time, she stopped to take once last look around. Plastic potted plants covered in dust and a threadbare couch in the one corner. She would not miss this place.

In the parking lot stood the beat up old Buick she and John shared. The car was in his name. She had been paying the rent for last six months and had made no attempt to pay her back. "This is collateral, John." Cynthia said out loud to herself. She wrapped her coat tightly around her arm and busted the glass out of the window with her elbow. Being careful not to cut herself, she reached through the broken glass, unlocked the door, and climbed in. Somethings were just more satisfying the hard way, she mused. She wiggled her nose and the engine roared to life. Without looking in the rear view mirror, she threw the car in reverse and backed out into the street, leaving the shattered glass glittering on the asphalt.

study linking vaccine to autism was fraud

working on a new short story. here is a very important story.

Journal: Study linking vaccine to autism was fraud

(AP) – 17 hours ago

LONDON (AP) — The first study to link a childhood vaccine to autism was based on doctored information about the children involved, according to a new report on the widely discredited research.

The conclusions of the 1998 paper by Andrew Wakefield and colleagues was renounced by 10 of its 13 authors and later retracted by the medical journal Lancet, where it was published. Still, the suggestion the MMR shot was connected to autism spooked parents worldwide and immunization rates for measles, mumps and rubella have never fully recovered.

A new examination found, by comparing the reported diagnoses in the paper to hospital records, that Wakefield and colleagues altered facts about patients in their study.

The analysis, by British journalist Brian Deer, found that despite the claim in Wakefield's paper that the 12 children studied were normal until they had the MMR shot, five had previously documented developmental problems. Deer also found that all the cases were somehow misrepresented when he compared data from medical records and the children's parents.

Wakefield could not be reached for comment despite repeated calls and requests to the publisher of his recent book, which claims there is a connection between vaccines and autism that has been ignored by the medical establishment. Wakefield now lives in the U.S. where he enjoys a vocal following including celebrity supporters like Jenny McCarthy.

Deer's article was paid for by the Sunday Times of London and Britain's Channel 4 television network. It was published online Thursday in the medical journal, BMJ.

In an accompanying editorial, BMJ editor Fiona Godlee and colleagues called Wakefield's study "an elaborate fraud." They said Wakefield's work in other journals should be examined to see if it should be retracted.

Last May, Wakefield was stripped of his right to practice medicine in Britain. Many other published studies have shown no connection between the MMR vaccination and autism.

But measles has surged since Wakefield's paper was published and there are sporadic outbreaks in Europe and the U.S. In 2008, measles was deemed endemic in England and Wales.

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.