Moliendo Cafe

Get ready for a granulated weekend with Martin Zarzar.

 

Ma Xiaowei's watercolors

Click any image to enlarge

Ma Xiaowei is a Chinese artist who works in ink and watercolors. He draws his inspiration from the old buildings in Suzhou in Southern China. He likes the architecture and foliage of the area. These images are from his Instagram feed which frequently shows the stages of his works in progress, as well as details from some of his artwork.

A liquid computer

Above is a video of a digital adder that uses water instead of electrons. I know Boolean logic and binary math so I understood how the binary addition worked. I'm not sure how easy it would be to understand if you didn't know that stuff, but it is interesting.

 

Blitzkrieg Baby (You Can't Bomb Me)

Get ready for a belligerent weekend with JazzMaTazz.

 

Remembering our veterans

Over the top
(click image to enlarge)

Below is an excerpt from the diary of Sgt. Reese Melvin Russell, Company E, 317th Infantry Regiment, 80th Division. It is from the Library of Congress' Veterans History Project Collection, World War I: Diaries and Memoirs archive. He was gassed during his tour but made it home. His daughter Frances found the diary long after he died. He was haunted by the war and for the rest of his life he slept poorly and drank too much. On this Veterans Day give a thought to all our veterans, each with their own stories to tell.  

I stepped over one [of our wounded] and he said, 'Sgt, can't you please do something for me for I am killed.'... He had a grenade in his pocket and he got it out with his good hand, one hand was torn up pretty bad. He handed the grenade to one of the men and said, 'Give them [the enemy] this. I wish I could.'

  

For those that need a drink today

He was a wise man who invented beer.

- Plato -

Vote

Dewey vs Truman
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One of the most annoying things in this year's election has been the proliferation of campaign text messages. My phone has been bombarded with the idiotic things. Anyway, unless you're one of those boobs who early voted by mail, good luck with your vote today. May your side win. That is, unless it is the side I'm voting against. 

 

A motorcycle ride in India

Rather than my usual Walking in Cities video, this is a clip of a fellow riding a motorcycle in Bhubaneshwar, India. The traffic is insane, who knows what the rules of the road are, but I gather the road's lanes are more theoretical than something strictly adhered to. The guy is also riding his bike pretty fast, I would be terrified to be on the back of it. I wonder how many traffic accidents a day happen in that place.

Speaking of accidents (have you ever seen such a subtle segue?) I once read a Slashdot post where a fellow from Bangladesh said that, if you were ever driving on a rural road and accidentally whacked into a pedestrian, your best move was to step on the gas and get away as fast as possible. The other posters in the thread were horrified by what a callous monster he was. He defended himself by pointing out that if you did stop the locals would demand an outrageously high compensation after first beating you to a pulp or worse. He had a point I suppose, but still...

    

Don't Fence Me In

Get ready for a unfettered weekend with Labrinth.

 

Old Japanese matchbooks

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It used to be that most public establishments would have ashtrays with matchbooks laid next to them. The matchbooks would have advertisements on them, for either the business itself or some other service. Of course, since the matchbooks were small, the ads were tiny as well. As a result, the graphics and ad copy were minimal.

With the decline of public smoking promotional matchbooks have faded into the past. These images, and those after the jump, are of some old Japanese matchbook covers. There are more at the Flikr stream Japanese matchbox labels.

Trick or treating

Dorothy and her friends go trick or treating

It's that time of the year for underage mooches to pester people for free candy. The only thing the little panhandlers have to do is dress up in costumes that will offend nobody, including the ghost of Jeffrey Dahmer, and grab as much sugary loot as they can.

Above we have one group of trick or treaters. I must say the guys have fine costumes, but the little girl's costume is pretty low effort. Along with the usual witches, there is another popular costume this year -- the flying monkey. I hear that there are scads of those little goobers running around smashing pumpkins and what-not. 

However, there's always at least one doofus on the route that makes the kids sing for their treats or some other obnoxious thing. I hear there's a guy on the route, who dresses like a wizard, that makes the kids do some sort of 'trick' for their treats. When done he still more or less stiffs the trick or treaters with some useless made-up treat like a broken alarm clock, or a participation ribbon from the 6th grade math Olympics, or some fake certificate printed off from the internet; and of course, there are always the grannies who give out some annoyingly healthy treats like apples, or Ka'chava, or some other such thing.

Anyway, have a good Halloween.

   

R.I.P. Jerry Lee Lewis

Concert video from 1964 in England. The sound and the video are bad, but the performance is electric and the crowd is wild. Early rock and roll done by a brilliant lunatic.  

The set: 

• Great Balls of Fire 
• You Win Again
• High School Confidential
• I´m on Fire
• Your Cheatin´Heart
• Whole Lot of Shakin´Goin´On

 

Hello Darlin'

Get ready for a salutational weekend with Jeff Bates.

 

Jean-Pierre Gibrat illustrations

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This is a sample of the artwork of Jean-Pierre Gibrat a French creator of graphic novels. His topics span a number of periods, WWI, the Russian Revolution, the Spanish Civil War and WWII. He also did an erotic version of Pinocchio, where the puppet was female. I was amused by how stereotypically French it was, with all the cafés, dangling cigarettes and pouting young ladies. 

Enjoy, there are more after the jump.  

Jean-Pierre Gibrat

Making electric motors

This is a small Rehan Brother Electric Industry factory in India that makes electric motors. While most of the work seems tedious, I definitely would not want to work in the area that pours the molten metal into the molds. One doesn't generally think of electric motors as being essentially hand-built, so I wonder how reliable are these motors? 

 

Dust in the Wind

Get ready for an impermanent weekend with FRANZ Rhythm.

 

Paintings of trains

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These images, and those after the jump, are paintings of trains, train yards and train stations. They primarily feature steam locomotives. In their day they were astonishing pieces of technology. We forget that for most of human history you had to walk, or at best ride a horse, to travel anywhere overland. The took a long time and trains were the first vehicles that greatly shrunk the time between two points. 

Today if we talk about trains at all it is the fetishists of high-speed rail. High-speed rail is used to move people, but in the U.S. we use our rail network to move freight, and so there is little real interest in high-speed trains. 

American meat sandwich

Who among us doesn't crave a traditional American meat sandwich? I'm not sure what it is, but whatever it is it looks tasty. There are four variations of the meat sandwiches, and each one looks like they would be worth trying. Below we have double bacon cheeseburgers and a Texas-style BBQ, and my lord, I don't know what a Texan would think of it, but the BBQ platter of brisket, ribs, chicken, home-made sausage, French fries and stew looks amazing. 

These are all Korean cooks. With the abomination of cultural appropriation properly shoved aside, this is cultural diffusion in operation. I can't wait until the day when I can go to a local restaurant and order an Americanized version of a Korean American meat sandwich. The World turns round and round. 

You Always Hurt The One You Love

Get ready for a piqued weekend with Molly Nilsson.

 

Beyond the glass

Day drinkers, photo by Tony Hall

The Outsider - A K Krueger

The outsider is inside,
Inside the house, staring from the crusted window,
The latch calls to her in rusty tones.
She stares upon its existence,
wishing nothing more than to answer.

But the outsider, she is inside,
Her back turned to what she’s built,
Her eyes upon those who are outside,
Can they save her? Would they care to try?

Her elbow rests upon the dusty sill,
Eyes glossy like Rapunzel, the Golden One,
But she has grown old inside the house,
she has grown blind and deaf and dumb.

The outsider, she once wished,
to leave the depths of her understanding,
to venture into the clashing world,
to face the blatant nature of love,

But the outsider, she is inside,
over much has cried, died and lied.
The weight of gravity holds down the fort,
and her as well; she doesn’t fight.

She holds the hope she’ll someday be tempted,
to leave that which protects her so,
to venture through the grimy view,
lifted by that which holds her low.

The outsider, she’s still inside,
Forever more, should she still hide,
You could say that she should have tried,
She wanted to, with all her pride
To leave that which keeps her inside.