• The Courage Campaign pushes for marriage equality. Having now been legally wed for a couple of years now, I fully support the initiatives elsewhere.
On Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009- less than a week away- there will be critical votes on on LGBT equality in three states: Washington State, Maine, and Michigan. With so much attention devoted to other issues in the political realm, bloggers have banded together to ensure we don't forget the ones with a firm deadline next week.
For that reason, Courage Campaign staff have put together a summary of who, what, and how about these three campaigns. If you haven't heard of these campaigns, and/or haven't done anything yet to support them, please consider helping out. If you are a blogger please feel free to grab this content whole cloth and use it for your blog posts.
Last year, as Obama and Democrats were winning across the country, we lost marriage equality in California. It was a bittersweet victory. Pitch in to make sure 2009 isn't a bittersweet year. Take action to support LGBT equality TODAY. Find out more about phone banks and getting supportive voters to the polls at The Courage Campaign website.
• Absurd Inventions is the subject of a Planet Oddity entry. Everything you never thought to ask for including a bulletproof bed [the "Quantum Sleeper"]; piercings to hold eyeglasses to one's face [how's that for ick factor?]; the "Fish and Flush" toilet [the fish get a panoramic view of the sitter's back]; a hurricane proof house [a refurbished jumbo jet - the rationale being that the shape can already withstand high winds].
My hands down favorite, though, is "the human car wash." According to the blurb on Planet Oddity,
All said and done, I'd guess that these inventors marvels are not really the most absurd inventions of all time.
• Web Urbanist's Abandoned Wonders of the World.
There really is no shortage of abandoned buildings in the world and they are exciting. They stoke the imagination of many an urban spelunker. Websites such as Infiltration and Opacity freely offer advice to any neophyte explorer of abandoned buildings, sometimes with disclaimers suggesting not to traipse on property not technically your own.
The batch of sites noted at Web Urbanist provides a glimpse of the many kinds of sites that get abandoned. Most curious to me is the Chapel to Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, NY. Such famous persons as Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglas are among those buried there in everything from lawn crypts to family mausoleums. It seems strange, then, that the chapel at such an historically significant location would be abandoned to the elements, though it remains elegant even in its disrepair.
Of special interest to me is the Bethlehem Steel factory in Lackawanna, NY, located just south of Buffalo, I worked there for about a year as a laborer in the bricklayer's department. It would indeed be a treat to wander about that complex once more. The plant traversed the entire western edge of Lackawanna, and across a highway that separated that city from a most likely very polluted part of Lake Erie. At the north end were the coke ovens where we'd work on relining one oven just next to others that were operational. It was hot work.
I understand that much of that plant is no longer explorable and has, in fact, been demolished. In place of the old coke ovens are a small, and growing assortment of tall wind generator mills. Thankfully, people did manage to explore the plant before it was torn down.
• At Nightmare Hall, blood pressure rises with a TV diet of "...apocalyptic and tin foil helmet conspiracy news." This erstwhile blogger does no believe in conspiracies noting, aptly, that "...The powers that be are right in the sheeple's faces, but nobody seems to notice or care."
Arriving at a conclusion that TV can be toxic is nothing new, of course. My favorite film version of TV poisoning is the creepy Canadian produced 1983 social sci-fi flick Videodrome written and directed by David Cronenberg and starring James Woods and singer Debbie Harry. The premise is that that Videodrome is the public "face" of a political ideology movement with unspecified but apparently violent goals. Sound familiar? I'll stop here.
Universal Studios announced, last Spring, they will do a remake of the film.
Harking back to Nightmare Hall's recount, he references Druid Journal's 8 reasons why TV is evil [It is Plato's Cave "...now in Hi-Def"] and check his other links to doing away with the one-eyed face-changing monster from your home and your life.
On Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009- less than a week away- there will be critical votes on on LGBT equality in three states: Washington State, Maine, and Michigan. With so much attention devoted to other issues in the political realm, bloggers have banded together to ensure we don't forget the ones with a firm deadline next week.
For that reason, Courage Campaign staff have put together a summary of who, what, and how about these three campaigns. If you haven't heard of these campaigns, and/or haven't done anything yet to support them, please consider helping out. If you are a blogger please feel free to grab this content whole cloth and use it for your blog posts.
Last year, as Obama and Democrats were winning across the country, we lost marriage equality in California. It was a bittersweet victory. Pitch in to make sure 2009 isn't a bittersweet year. Take action to support LGBT equality TODAY. Find out more about phone banks and getting supportive voters to the polls at The Courage Campaign website.
• Absurd Inventions is the subject of a Planet Oddity entry. Everything you never thought to ask for including a bulletproof bed [the "Quantum Sleeper"]; piercings to hold eyeglasses to one's face [how's that for ick factor?]; the "Fish and Flush" toilet [the fish get a panoramic view of the sitter's back]; a hurricane proof house [a refurbished jumbo jet - the rationale being that the shape can already withstand high winds].
My hands down favorite, though, is "the human car wash." According to the blurb on Planet Oddity,
Hospital patients [and prisoners, as well] need bathing and to speed up this process, may we suggest the Human Car Wash? The HCW eliminates slipping and falling because the washees are strapped into a hanging harness and merely need to stand or dangle in a fixed position while the conveyor belt moves them from station to station. First the wetting station, then the soapy spray station, next the rinsing station and at the end, no towels are needed because there’s a blow drying station!Yeah, there's a few things that might be said about violations of personal dignity and the like, but with a contraption like this, it may cut down on rapes in the prison shower.
Developed in 1969 during the cold war, the inventor suggests the Human Car Wash can be built into a mobile trailer “to cope with the mass bathing requirements after an atomic bomb”.
All said and done, I'd guess that these inventors marvels are not really the most absurd inventions of all time.
• Web Urbanist's Abandoned Wonders of the World.
There really is no shortage of abandoned buildings in the world and they are exciting. They stoke the imagination of many an urban spelunker. Websites such as Infiltration and Opacity freely offer advice to any neophyte explorer of abandoned buildings, sometimes with disclaimers suggesting not to traipse on property not technically your own.
The batch of sites noted at Web Urbanist provides a glimpse of the many kinds of sites that get abandoned. Most curious to me is the Chapel to Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, NY. Such famous persons as Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglas are among those buried there in everything from lawn crypts to family mausoleums. It seems strange, then, that the chapel at such an historically significant location would be abandoned to the elements, though it remains elegant even in its disrepair.
Of special interest to me is the Bethlehem Steel factory in Lackawanna, NY, located just south of Buffalo, I worked there for about a year as a laborer in the bricklayer's department. It would indeed be a treat to wander about that complex once more. The plant traversed the entire western edge of Lackawanna, and across a highway that separated that city from a most likely very polluted part of Lake Erie. At the north end were the coke ovens where we'd work on relining one oven just next to others that were operational. It was hot work.
I understand that much of that plant is no longer explorable and has, in fact, been demolished. In place of the old coke ovens are a small, and growing assortment of tall wind generator mills. Thankfully, people did manage to explore the plant before it was torn down.
• At Nightmare Hall, blood pressure rises with a TV diet of "...apocalyptic and tin foil helmet conspiracy news." This erstwhile blogger does no believe in conspiracies noting, aptly, that "...The powers that be are right in the sheeple's faces, but nobody seems to notice or care."
Arriving at a conclusion that TV can be toxic is nothing new, of course. My favorite film version of TV poisoning is the creepy Canadian produced 1983 social sci-fi flick Videodrome written and directed by David Cronenberg and starring James Woods and singer Debbie Harry. The premise is that that Videodrome is the public "face" of a political ideology movement with unspecified but apparently violent goals. Sound familiar? I'll stop here.
Universal Studios announced, last Spring, they will do a remake of the film.
Harking back to Nightmare Hall's recount, he references Druid Journal's 8 reasons why TV is evil [It is Plato's Cave "...now in Hi-Def"] and check his other links to doing away with the one-eyed face-changing monster from your home and your life.
IMAGE SOURCES: Equal Rights map from The Courage Campaign; bulletproof bed and human conveyor shower found at Planet Oddity; Rusted doorway is an entry to a building that once housed the "criminally insane" and the rocking chair was in the basement of the same building. Those photos I took myself; Intestinal TV from Running Downhill
This post first appeared on Short Notes: Will Brady's Ruminations, please read the originial post: here
