For your pleasure

Let two of the Friends guide you through the exciting new features of the revolutionary Windows 95! Like "right-clicking"! Seriously, though, life lesson: When I got switched to Win95 from Win3.1 I was pissed - I had Win3.1 all figured out, and this new fangled Windows was pointless and stupid! Lo, after getting used to it, it was of course far superior to Win 3.1 and so Redshirt learned a lesson: Don't fear change!

Sadly, I could not find any music to install Win95 by - and it was a chore, since it was disk based. That is - "INSERT DISK 12 of 19". Lot's o' tedium. So, while you're inserting disks, check out the fetching songs of Ms. Janet Greene!

Some really catchy beats that are fun to dance to!

Music to

I have no idea what such music might sound like, and now I don't want to know. I'll fancy a world of the Night Pastor and his Seven Friends cooing and making... bread noises? Such strange imaginings. And to lure? Is the Good Pastor capturing these pigeons? For what nefarious and/or sonorous purpose, one wonders?

Speaking of nefarious,

It's a real thing, apparently. Look!

Surely, no internet wag went to the trouble of printing a CD label? More proof:

You start the CD the same moment the Windows 98 setup screen loads. Fucking mind blowing!

Eat my okra

Sanford and Son is a really fun show - if you haven't seen it in a while, or ever, go find it. So much 70's.

Speaking of fashion disasters - white socks with black shoes is a recognized no-no. But you see what this gent thinks of that!

Another Inconvenient Truth

Homeless people dying in our streets all the time. Do we care? As a society? Above, an abandoned Detroit tenement elevator shaft. Dude fell in, died, then got frozen over. Hope they buried/burned him later, right?

Right? Everyone deserves a certain standard of life, and death. Right? Or is it that this truth is only true for Fox News viewers?

LOL, right? What do you want to bet that dead frozen dude is African American? And what do you want to bet a majority of white America doesn't care? We're the land of Slavery in its worst incarnation. What do you think the former slaveholders would be saying but a 100 years afterward?

Spitting venom - are we purging it? Or is it surging?

Al Gore is Fat and Also Flies in Aeroplanes

He heats his "Mansion" as well. Wonder how much that costs? 'Nuff said!

Where's your Global Warming now?

Snow Demon

Of course, as soon as it gets cold or snows in the Winter, your witty Wingnut will mockingly ask "What happened to Global Warming"? I tell them that Snow Demon is unpredictable and easily offended. And boy has he been offended this Winter!

Portland ME after 30 plus inches in early February.

Skiing to work! Up here in Gondolin it started snowing in early December and hasn't really stopped. Producing scenes like:

Redshirt photos. So yeah, funny story - Global Warming can cause all kinds of different weather conditions, including increased snowfall amounts. Warming temperatures worldwide will cause more extreme variations of weather in different locales, but yes, there could be far more snow in certain areas because of GW. Good luck trying to explain this to Mr. Wingnut. But then, maybe I will. Tomorrow.

Until then, pray with me to the Snow Demon to accept our offerings and mercifully stop sending snow. My back beseeches you!

Our Beautiful Apocalypse

A glacial whirlpool, beautiful but deadly. A living dagger to a glacier as its life force is drained away. Happening every day, across the planet.

Methane bubbles waiting to break the ice. Once we get a bit warmer, all sorts of gasses will be released and tipping points reached across the board. Our end will be collective.

Greenland and the clouds around her. Which will change every day it gets warmer and warmer, and more ice melts into the sea, until another tipping point is reached.

We walk on thin ice, loudly.

Defenders of the Poles

Send back your War Machine, man!

Santa exploits his elves, just like Keebler. In fact, Santa and Keebler are both members of the EBB. Co-incidence? I think not!

We, the Defenders of the Poles, shall expose these gross injustices of justice and root out the corrupt elfsploitation that is all too rampant in the cold nether regions of planet Earth. Join us! The link is in the upper right.

Poles (North and South), Represent!

I hope the Russians love walruses too

Fashion Walrus is ready for his closeup.

Ready for some sun! Your Russian Navy at work in the Arctic. And in the Antarctic?

Bust o' Lenin, chilling out. Never forget, comrades:

For men and walruses.

Bonus question: Any common derivation of Rus (tribe of, founders of Russia) and wal-rus? They're both from the cold part of the world. What if they're like related or something? Weird!

In a saner world

Thank you Russian dashboard cams! The best recorded meteor event of all time happened recently, and should be a wakeup call for us all. This tiny piece of rock - which explodes as you see above - caused fairly extensive damage over the city below mostly due to the pressure wave of the explosion, which blew out windows and knocked down some rickety walls.

And this was just a tiny rock. Here's (possibly) the final impact spot:

Get some learnin' in slick modern inforgraphic form!

Click for big. The takeaway lesson here, friends, is we are in great peril. From a variety of sources. Meteors/asteroids are one of these threats - and something we could do something about, if we had the collective will. And we should - it is INEVITABLE that a large rock will hit the Earth again and send everything into collective turmoil. This has happened many, many times in the past and WILL happen again. Only a question of when. We might be able to see it coming, but we might not. Isn't the entire existence of humanity worth trying to protect? I think so, and so look forward to the day the leading nations of Earth agree to jointly fund a peaceful program of monitoring and engagement of space rocks.

Bonus extra feature: Space mining. We could make it happen right now, if we wanted to. But I guess we (some) don't.

Vladimir's ready to save the world!

Church and State

 

In order to improve morale during WW2, Stalin brought back a "Stalin'd up!" version of the Orthodox Church which had been hitherto crushed by official Soviet policy. And why not? In 1942 Russia, all things go better with Stalin!

I really dig this style and the medieval shout outs. I'm not sure what book Stalin is selling here, since I don't think the Bible made it back into this brief version of the Church (Khrushchev later crushed it once again). Might be a blank journal so you can record your most patriotic thoughts about how awesome Stalin is.

Stalin cares. House visits for the grieving widows of the war. A Saint, I tells ya!

Pussy Riot

Apparently this "Pussy Riot" is a real thing. Check it.

Like, seriously: Hot chicks protesting HARDCORE. Boobies below the fold:

Choose the next Pope!

So the Pope's resigning, which is kind of weird. Hasn't happened in 600 years. And on the night of the resignation, LIGHTNING! Message from above, y'all. So it's time to choose a new Pope as per ancient tradition: Photoshop. From the good folks at Something Awful, here's some possible candidates.

Space Pope. He's got my vote, if I had one.

Owl Bear Jesus. He controls the Ironic Hipster voting bloc, but few others. Unlikely.

The first AI candidates - times are changing! Number 5 has made a lot of friends with his engaging style, while The Terminator is not a natural politician, to say the least. He does have some influence with the Inquisition wing of the Church.

A dark horse contender from South America, Weedlord Bonerhitler. He might serve as a compromise candidate other groups rally round to support.

Watch out for that white smoke, brahs! Gonna be exciting!

Here I sit

Graffiti from Pompeii. If you don't know about Pompeii, read the Wiki first. Here's how it looks today:

The volcano, Mount Vesuvius, in the background. Not my picture, and for that I am ashamed. The mountain plays a big part in Spartacus's revolt by the way. Anyways, the destruction of Pompeii and the manner of the destruction has been a blessing for humanity, as it gives us our best preserved example of Roman life from the period. Not so awesome for the poor folks who lived there at the time, of course: