Dozens of altar boys on their way to church and college mob-attack commuters on an Oakland BART train, beating and robbing passengers.

BART acknowledges that it was probably scary n stuff and hopes it doesn't happen again.

"The images cannot be shared publicly, she said, because the attackers appear to be minors."

We have to protect the children so of course we can't show their faces.

I'm pretty sure this means they're going straight to Hades...

Three Islamic State jihadis have reportedly been killed by rampaging wild boars near Iraqi farmland.

The three Islamic State militants were cut down by the feral boar known to inhabit Kirkuk in the the al-Rashad region, a local news site claims.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4439418/Three-ISIS-fighters-killed-wild-boars-Kirkuk.html

Headline at Reason:

SCOTUS Says States Have No Right to Money Taken Based on Overturned Convictions

If making people prove their innocence to get their property back violates due process, what about civil forfeiture?

https://reason.com/blog/2017/04/21/scotus-says-states-have-no-right-to-mone

Oh! Noes!

How can I live every night without watching these shows take things out of context?

http://www.mediaite.com/online/writers-guild-of-america-strike-could-shut-down-late-night-shows/

I do gonna miss Jimmy Fallon though, the video of him and Metallica playing Enter Sandman with kids'toys is priceless

I'm not surprised. Of course, due to my white male privilege, I am all sorts of isms, so nothing new.

Trans-activist Riley J. Dennis says having ‘genital preferences’ in dating is transphobic.

Yes, you read that correctly. If you’re a man who wants your woman to have a vagina you’re a bigot.

http://www.redstate.com/kiradavis/2017/04/24/activist-says-genital-preferences-dating-transphobic/c

This is genuine aviation, and not a Pixar cartoon.

These other little countries get on my nerves, even if we only use them for our vacations.

One of your better Shafers.

Hey, are we still tormenting Canvasback?

This is the kind of current-events analysis Cback should have been reading over the past quarter of a century, in every field, but hasn't made time for.

You don't want to be like Cback, do you?

Of course not.

Follow the link and enjoy!





Y'know, ten years ago it was said (correctly, I believe) that one reason American diplomatic and military efforts were going so badly in Middle Eastern and other venues was that there were so few young people who wanted to learn those difficult languages in those distant, unpleasant cultures.

Well, jeez, that's how journalists feel about the non-urban, non-upscale United States nowadays.

NASA's Peggy Whitson breaks the American record for most time spent in space.

Climate change distortions.

It's been forty years since the day I met The Man and heard Terry play it live, but this puts tears in my eyes.

Those pesky russkies.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/world/europe/macron-russian-hacking.html

That Shafer piece is responsibly self-aggrandizing. Consider this passage:

Journalism tends toward the autobiographical unless reporters and editors make a determined effort to separate themselves from the frame of their own experiences. 

These fuckers should understand that all we want is for them to put the truth somewhere in their reporting. After that, we'll make peace with whatever self-flattering bullshit they choose to include.

And by "bullshit," I mean horseshit.

"Mr Comey, wearing sunglasses, a light blue shirt and chino pants, arrived on an FBI chartered Gulfstream Aerospace." *His hair was PERFECT.*

Former San Francisco Chronicle reporter, I'm guessing.

Taking a page from the Clinton playbook, Obama takes a $400,000 check from Wall Street.

In return they receive a, um, an, unh .. uh .. speech! Yeah, a speech. That's what they're buying.

Dust your pandas, people.

Boomers: Please take note of this industrial milestone.

Because this is the only non-Los Angeles-centric audience to which I have regular access, I'be been thinking of asking you, Amy's readers, whether you know anyone who's life has been touched by the opioid crisis.... Because as it happens, I don't know that I do.

But then I read this.

> *His hair was PERFECT.*

Well, notice also the inclusion of the brand name, specifically the American brand name: Gulfstream Aerospace™ of Savannah, Georgia, USA.

Here's the thing, and I think it's more pathetic than you could possibly comprehend at a glance, and it was Amy Alkon's early 21st Century Goddam Chartreuse Fucking Weblog that clued me into this pervasive truth most poignantly:

Around this big blue marble of ours, hundreds of millions and perhaps billions of aspirational turdpucks spin through their lives [breakfast, work, lunch, work, drinking with pals, bad sex with unloved spouses, shallow sleep and then again and again] watching us, the truly free & courageous people, living our colorful rewarding fates in the United States of America.

...And they want to be part of it so badly they can taste it. They pantomime our excellence with boneless simulacra of our cultural dressings— Trite television being an important example. But even then, genuine American programming from the States is so inexpensively priced that it —with its pandering narratives of social justice and individual pluck and achievement— crowds out any attention for their own lackluster heritage or accomplishments. They'd rather dream of living in Cincinnati than get their shit together in Christchurch.

So about seventy-nine percent of what you see returned to us online through the computer internet (a miraculous American invention, and not the most recent one) reflects the desperation they have to communicate with people like us in our own language, and to pass for one of us. ALL the desperation, NONE of the articulation. Because they simply do not know what it takes to really make it happen.

A favorite recent exemplar of the pattern is this this twitterer. He's apparently Australian, and seems tremendously sophisticated about computer communication... My admiration for him is not ironic. But when he starts yammering about American culture and politics, it just feels sad. He's engaged at a level of detail, and of social signalling ('Trump's goofy!'), that's completely inappropriate.

Can you name the Prime Minister of Australia? The one before this one? The political party of either? Look at the first two place names of that web page: Otago & Dunedin. Do you know the location of either? Does it matter?

The Third World attitude toward the United States is also easy to understand if you think of it in terms of adolescence. The citizens of the Third World are in a teenage muddle about us--full of envy, imitation, anger and blind puppy love. I have been held at gunpoint by a Shi'ite youth in West Beirut who told me in one breath that America was "pig Satan devil" and that he planned to go to dental school in Dearborn as soon as he got his green card. In Ulundi, in Zululand, I talked to a young man who, as usual, blamed apartheid on the United States. However, he had just visited the U.S. with a church group and also told me, "Everything is so wonderful there. The race relations are so good. And everyone is rich." Just what part of America had he visited, I asked. "The South Side of Chicago," he said.

We are a beautiful twenty-year-old woman and they are a wildly infatuated thirteen-year-old boy. They think of us every moment of the day and we take no notice of them whatsoever. If they can't have a chance to love us, a chance to pester us will do--by becoming "Communists," for example. Anything for attention.

PJ O'Rourke
Give War a Chance
©1992, First Grove Press

Which side of the opioid crisis Crid?

I don't recall any family members being unable to get pain meds who needed them. I accept that such people exist. I just don't think I know any.

On the general drug abuse side, yeah there are several. Not just opioids but a number of high school friends are essentially vegetables due to the various chemical enhancements they used. A number of family members are a waste of skin in part due to drugs. It is tragic but there really is nothing I can do for them.

On the flip side I have a number of friends who used to abuse various drugs and don't anymore. It leaves a mark but you can mostly recover if you want to. Even cocaine and heroin can be beat. Marijuana just about beats itself.

Whoops forgot the link earlier:

Boomers: Please take note of this industrial milestone.

> friends who used to abuse

Me too, and some even closer than friends.

The scope of this crisis is just amazing. I had no idea of the scale of it until recently. I don't move in especially wealthy or resistant circles, and am surprised not to have heard about it through friends or family.

Meanwhile...

For Bob in Texas.

Thanks Crid.

A woman smiling naturally into the camera is a beautiful image to behold.

Although Herb Alpert's 1965 album cover has equal playfulness and something, something else.

Maine Democrat lauds and laughs at increased rates of suicide amongst a certain demographic of people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l7Yli3sJyo

She was pregnant, you know

http://tralfaz-archives.com/coverart/A/Alpert/herb_whip_esq.jpg

Left knee ripples for two frames at his zenith: Boyfriend was OUT.

(Unless there's a rule about catchers having to have meant to do that, etc.)

That probably counted for some "essence" in the cover, perhaps subliminally. Early pregnant women seem to "glow".

No one I know with those problems is rich Crid. The price of Vicodin and such has come down. So just like how the meth crisis was set off by cheap meth when Percocet got cheap you got an opioid crisis.

One relative who ended up with a Vicodin problem was in the military. He got injured and ended up with persistent back problems. He was retired and hooked up with a beautiful woman. Unfortunately that lovely lady loved drama. So a mixture of drug abuse and attempted suicide ensued for several years. Eventually she left him and had a kid from another man, which probably saved his life. After she was out of his life he kicked his drug habit, tobacco habit too, got a high paying job, and generally moved on with his life. Thankfully when things fell through for her and her new men he didn't take her back. My relative is now trying to get custody of his kids. But who knows how the courts will work. 50/50 chance she will end up ODing and dying before he gets custody.

Only two significant parts to the story.
1. The drug isn't the issue. It is a symptom of bigger issues elsewhere. Resolve the main issue and the drugs go away. Take away the drug without fixing the issue and some other self destructive behavior happens.
2. This isn't an issue for the rich. You can't get high and hold down a day job more difficult than stock boy. Movie and music stars are outliers.

"Left knee ripples for two frames at his zenith:..."

Can you tag the runner with anything other than your glove with the ball in it?

That was my thought as well Rad.

Yeah, Reddit says it has to be the glove or the whole body if he can get in the way or something it's complicated.

He's safe.