from Neatorama, circa 1926.
There’s only one possible soundtrack to this image, and here it is:
The Divine Miss M, Bette Midler, singing “Laughing Matters.”
Lyrics over the jump.
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Live at Five and CNN
keep us all abreast
of breaking stories that can tend
to make us anxious and depressed.
Problems with no answers
hang on like some chronic cough.
And every day some brand new issue
rears it’s head to piss you off.
Bad guys win.
Optimism’s wearing thin.
Things are spinning out of control.
Cynicism’s all the fad.
World events could make us mad
as hatters.
Almost every day
some underpinning slips away.
These aren’t laughing matters.
Time bombs tick.
People keep on getting sick.
And a nickel’s not worth a cent.
Wickedness and greed abound.
Just as peace is gaining ground
it shatters.
Hate is here to stay,
and justice goes to those who pay.
Friend, these aren’t laughing matters.
The truth is scarier by far
than anything that Stephen King could write.
The stories in the paper are
the daily small decline and fall
spelled out in black and white.
Oh, what to do, what to do?
how to take a brighter view
when your noodle’s totally fried.
Human spirits need to be
leavened by a little levity.
So take those blues
and bounce them off the wall.
Keep your humor please,
’cause don’t you know it times like these that
laughing matters most of all.
raincoaster 
How surreal! Also reminds me a bit of Semana Santa in Sevilla…
Yes, that’s bizarre too, although less sinister.
I’m desperately trying to convert a .wav file to an MP3 so I can upload it to go with this, but it just isn’t happening. If you can find Bette Midler’s “Laughing Matters” it makes the perfect soundtrack to this image.
Where are you finding the MP3s? Any specific site?
That one I had already. MP3s are difficult to find online unless you’re part of a P2P exchange like Bittorrent.
No! No!
If we start laughing, then the terrorists win!
You can tell because this is what passes for humour among the “loathe-thy-neighbour” set.
Whereas Biden IS a douche.
Surreal indeed. I should post it on Stormfront. They’d appreciate seeing their roots.
Yep, it’s the prototype of the Klan’s new WondeRoast machine.
It never ceases to amaze me what grown men will do.
BTW sweetie, two things:
1) I was wondering what a kick-ass, gorgeous woman (hey, not un-like myself) has for sunday dinner when living in Canada but also… in the heart of china town?
2) How do I get that track? ie. able to embed it as you have done????
Whoa! lady you blow my mind. :)
that pic is pretty wild. thanks for linking to neatorama… did you see this sushi one as well?
http://www.neatorama.com/2007/02/18/sushi-restaurant-mimics-cannibalism/
Unbelievable. Amazing. Where did you find that amazing image?
Or, I should say, HOW did you find that image? Was it serendipity, or did you actually do a search for pictures of KKK members on a ferris wheel?
No, I just surfed Neatorama like defrostindoors told me to, and poof! there t’was. Neatorama is full of useless, fun stuff.
What I had for dinner last night? I had reheated vegetarian chili with barley, an orange, a pot of Earl Grey, and two Harry Potter movies. Why, were you thinking of coming over?
And Philipa, if you’re on blogger you can’t embed videos like that, although you might be able to embed an Odeo.com podcast. This is a WordPress-specific player, but if you go to Odeo.com you should be able to get a player that will play MP3’s and embed that into your blog. They won’t, however, let you upload files from your computer; for new members it’s limited to MP3s that are already on the Internet somewhere. It’s easier, in my experience, to find a given tune on YouTube, and there are some awesome videos there.
Nursemyra, thanks for the link; I hadn’t seen that. I’m still trying to find a source for Hufu…let me know if you hear of one that delivers to Vancouver.
you’ve got me hooked on neatorama now. I want this lamp (in a good way not a Klan way)
http://www.neatorama.com/2006/12/17/ku-klux-klan-lamp/
Thanks for that raincoaster. I see others are thinking of moving to wordpress but blogspot is simple (so suits me) and I want to keep the content I’ve already got on the blog. I would love to come over but finding the bus fare to town is difficult just now. However you always give me good ideas with food and drink – Earl grey tea and two Harry Potter movies, hmn. And putting barly in the casserole tonight maybe, hmn, thankyou :-)
WordPress is simpler by far, trust me, as well as more versatile, and you can move your entire blog over with the blogger importer; you don’t even need to delete your old blog. Iain Dale has one on each platform; the only thing is, here you can’t have ads or javascript embeds, although you don’t have those anyway.
http://en.forums.wordpress.com/search.php?q=blogger+importer
Good lord, nursemyra, that’s bound to be a popular item in certain communities in the BC Interior. Where was it that Hedy Fry said they were burning crosses…hmmmm…