As weird as the bat bombs were, somebody in the US Department of Finding Obscure Ways to Win The War discovered a Japanese folk legend that, if you saw a glowing fox, it was an omen of death, and . . .
Foxes. Luminous paint. Submarine delivery. Do the math.
It's not that we try to get animals to fight for us (war dogs go way back), it's that we try to get militarized animals to do bizarre things.
The version of the Boucher story I've always heard (from people who were close friends of the man himself) is that a story arrived containing a puzzle mystery, a nun, some gourmet cooking, and so forth, and he sent it back with the comment, "Dear Sir: you have pushed all my buttons, but in the wrong order." I've never heard that Boucher bought the story.
Indian Gaming, the Anti-Drug.
Grand Theft Auto, the Anti-Drug.
Maybe the BLM found that some pot growers are sitting on top of a uranium mine in South Dakota?
The Bureau of Doper Affairs. It's a perfectly logical step for this crowd, when you think about it.
THE EDISON LABORATORIES
Scientia Gratia Pecuniam
Announce Their Greatest Technical Advance In Nearly A Week
MyGram(tm) is a device for playing cylindrical wax records that is wholly contained within a gentleman's top hat. Now, no formal occasion need be without the charms of music, no matter how confined it may be. Puccini in the Pullman berth, Borodin in the boudoir, Sousa in the showerbath! Business Executives may play Hortatory Messages throughout the Working Day, both increasing productivity and reminding the Lackeys of Industry that they are under surveillance. The mechanism, once primed with a Recording, is Rewound by the simple act of tipping the Hat to a passing Lady. (The Habitually Shy Gent may wish to peruse our catalog of Witty Repartee Cylinders for All Occasions, available in plain wrapper for the sum of $5 cash or stamps.)
Chip, while I'm pretty that you know all this and are being ironic, the list of rockers who've written SF music is, to turn a phrase, not a short one.
Donald Fagen's "IGY" is SF without stretching at all. So is Blue Oyster Cult's "ETI." Elton's "Rocket Man" puts me in mind of Malzberg in his less bitter mode. Quite a bit of Hawkwind has SF themes, though considering that Mike Moorcock was in the group, that's not much of a surprise. (Moorcock also played on Robert Calvert's "Lucky Leif and the Longships," which is a concept album of pop music from an alternate universe where the Norse settled North America.) Eurythmics did "Sexcrime," partially in Newspeak, for the most recent film version of 1984, though it was cut from the release. Bowie, of course. Alan Parsons (even if you count "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" as fantasy). Warren Zevon. Thomas Dolby.
Xopher, I suppose it's not spam in the strict sense of "robotic* mass imbecility." Because of its sheer irrelevancy -- what "data?" what "theory?" which "poofter**?" -- my guess was (and still is) that the twit was messaging down randomly selected links, in the same way that twits of an earlier generation dialed random phone numbers and offered their deep understanding of life, the universe, and canned princes to whoever answered.
*Nothing against robots. They only send spam because it's a Second Law thing.
**Is there anyplace that Gannon bleepwad hasn't been?
You know, they used to say things like "Wonderful site! Maybe you'd like to see mine!"
Though we should all reflect with pleasure on how useless our theory was to infantile Tory swots.
I get the distinct impression that the neenerconservatives are, at the absolute peak, Flash villains -- Captain Boomerang, Mirror Master, Captain Cold, The Top (who is of the spinning variety, not, well, you know). Though come to think of it, their level of competence puts them in the category of Tick villains.
Why does the photo of the couple looking at Mr. "Maybe You Can Be Too Thin" look like a still from Alphaville?
Oh, I forgot. The Nouvelle Vague was right all along.
The extreme north end of Hammond -- Robertsdale, a subdivision that existed so that the larger city could get water from the lake, and was correspondingly last in its mind and its appropriations schedule. I grew up at approximately 116th Street (the numbers actually count from downtown Chicago) and Indianapolis Blvd. (aka US 41). It was almost entirely industrial -- seven oil refineries, five steel mills, other plants in various degrees of noxiousness (Lever Brothers was a breath of fresh soap on inversion days). The Dorson book calls it the most industrialized patch of ground in the US, which is not hard to believe. He does have a fascinating (for me, anyway) bit where he's being driven around my old neighborhood, and is counting the ethnic influences from the successive waves of employment-seeking immigrants -- East Europeans before the war, southern blacks during, poor Appalachian whites just after. It's called Land of the Millrats, and it's in print in an iUniverse edition that's . . . okay; you might be able to find a used copy of the Harvard hardcover for about the same price.
And yes, I have Moonlight in Duneland, along with the two hundred-odd other railroad-related books.
Oh, I remember the broken exhibit buttons. (For those who've never been to the place, Science & Industry was noted for having operable exhibits; the level of hands-on varied -- mostly it was "push the button to start the demonstration." Union Carbide had a blow-molding apparatus that, for a dime, would generate a small bust of Abe Lincoln (leading to many home reenactments of Our American Cousin), and the Tribune's rather good news-technology hall had a linotype that for a similar investment spat out a still-warm lino slug, but most just did something, of variable interest. (In 1968, the US Army remodeled its hall in unimaginably bad taste -- the high point was a helicopter door-gunner "game" where one fired an M-60 at a model Vietnamese village, which would flash lights in response. I am not making this up. There were near-riots, and it was closed down very quickly.)
Okay, enough with the nostalgia trip already.
It was also open every day but Christmas, and had free admission. This meant that every bored kid in the area (Hyde Park, while it had the University of Chicago, was also seriously economic depressed, at least in my pre-1974 era) would go there, or be dumped by their parents, and run around the halls mashing buttons (an early incidence of that supposedly modern phrase) or, in a few cases, deliberately trying to break things. You know the drill. Things got fixed, but it was impossible to keep even. There's now an admission charge, and as I noted above, a new set of directors that's trying to be less commercial and more creative.
And were you in the Cal Region? I grew up just a few blocks over the Chicago line, in America's industrial armpit. I ask partly because I just acquired a copy of Richard Dorson's book on the folklore of the Region ("urban folklore" in a more classical sense) which I would recommend to anybody interested in modern mythopoesis, but particularly to fellow Region Rats. (Hey, that's not my coinage.)
Actually, the slices are of a dudess. About a centimeter thick, and not-too-garishly stained for anatomical convenience.
The last time I saw them, they had been semi-hidden in a stairwell, but that was very long ago. It is unfortunate that Chicago cons are usually a long haul from Hyde Park.
Science & Industry always struck me as a quintessentially stefnal museum, at least for certain, Astounding-to-Analog-transition-era values thereof. Some items, like the cylindrical Display of the Elements (under a giant, rotating globe) had a distinctly Trantorian quality, and the high level of corporate sponsorship (which I understand the current directorate is trying hard to move away from) was in keeping with other Golden Age qualities. Not that the Bell Labs stuff wasn't swell (fold-up wireless telephones with little bitty teevee screens! What a notion in 1964! And you could hear a Bell voder sing "Daisy" long before you know who.)
The 1.4 million is the total active-duty military personnel, all branches. Someone who can't make this distinction -- indeed, someone who doesn't make the distinction between total personnel and combat troops -- is either not competent to hold such discussions, or, well, something else.
If you're willing to accept the DoD as a source, you can find personnel statistics at:
web1.whs.osd.mil/mmid/mmidhome.htm
(Some of the recent civilian stats don't seem to be available.)
Now, I can't remember the name or the author (it sounds like Iain Banks, but isn't; might be Ursula Le Guin).
That's the nicest thing I've heard all day. And I'm very glad you liked it.
Now all the extras gotten by squeezing the publisher. . .
. . . as the otter exudes the precious otter of roses.
No, Jim, that would be the obvious solution. The vast and subtle intellects at work here (Clement VII comes particularly to mind) obviously have a half-vast and subtle-ish plan.
And on related topic, Jango Fett hasn't been posting lately. Anybody know where he is?
Customized tourism has always been with us to some degree, but there is certainly more opportunity to exploit it in an era of The More You Got, the More Pointlessly You Gotta Spend it. Those Americans who can still afford to visit Britain would probably drop a tenner at Highgate to widdle on Marx's grave. Additional income could be raised by selling American lager on the run-up.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2005 | 26 |
Total: 26 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by John M. Ford:
Show all comments by John M. Ford.