One of the greatest pieces of American political criticism of the late 20th Century. I urge you to listen carefully, and repeatedly, particularly as the American Thanksgiving approaches, and to ponder the truths and untruths of Burroughs’ powerful statement.
Category Archives: Lush Life
ika!
Darkness on the Sea of Japan!! What lurks???
comment o’ the day: counting on the Count
The Count is, bar none, the coolest character on Sesame Street. Forget your Leftys, forget your Oscars, the Count, Count von Count, was the only one who would have sneaked into your bedroom in the middle of the night and turned you into a numerically-obssessed, undead creature of the shadows. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the bar for cool around the ol’ raincoaster blog, and that is the secret behind Keith Richards’ enduring popularity; the threat of supernatural eroticism.
Where’s your Big Bird now?
Sesame Street is, as we have noted time and time and time again around these parts (even without getting into Grover is Bitter, which we will some day we’re really stuck for a post) an endlessly fascinating topic and a true microcosm of the urban reality which surrounds us, pervading every aspect of our lives. Truly there is no contemporary city experience which cannot be examined through the lens of this iconic children’s program.
Jimmy Canuck is on to this; he’s currently enjoying a long run in WordPress’s Top Posts for his 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Sesame Street, and I am proud to report I did, in fact, know most of them, including Guy Smiley’s real name. I even know Grover’s! It’s an interesting post, for who among us can say they already knew Baby Bear was Jewish?
He doesn’t look it.
But deep in the comments section I found this little gem from cole. Read it and weep laughing.
I actually know the guy who did the orginal Count voice. He is in a fiddler band and one night while I was cocktail waitressing I asked him to do the voice and he said…
“Fuck off” and “No”
I said , please oh please, not detered…he said,
“I only work for money.”
I offered a dollar, he said “Fuck you, two.” I agreed and he said,
“I see von green eye, two green eye…ah, ah, ah, ah, ah! Now go and get me a fucking drink.”
I love Sesame Street.
do ya wanna get lucky? Here’s how!
It’s big news in England that a bunch of amateur math nerds recently won the lottery. They’re pleased, of course, and rather proud of themselves for being so smart as to figure out an algorithm that turns out to be worth quite a lot, although that is, of course, in some dispute from math professionals and fearful lottery officials. It appears that you have to play the system a long time before you’re likely to hit a payout, if you get one at all and the result wasn’t, as most people imagine it to be, pure luck in the first place.
Here in Canada we prefer sure things to probable things, so we’ve developed a fool-proof system. Be related to the guy checking the tickets.
Lottery ‘insiders’ win big bucks
Odds of Ontario results are astronomical, investigation by CBC program reports
SHANNON KARIMore than two hundred lottery “insiders” have won prizes of $50,000 or more in Ontario since 1999, and more than two-thirds of these wins may have involved the deception of a customer who bought the ticket.
The allegation is made by the CBC program the fifth estate, after an investigation into the number of “insider wins” in the province in the past seven years.
A statistical analysis of the number of insider wins concluded that fewer than 60 insiders, such as ticket retailers or clerks, should have won major prizes during the period that was investigated.
The odds that the 214 insiders who claimed major prizes — $50,000 or more — since 1999 won as a result of pure luck, is one in a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, said University of Toronto professor Jeffrey Rosenthal, who conducted the analysis.
Now THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is what I call a system.
the biggest, bestest Bond Girl of all
And with the best chest, if you ask me.
In the realm of carnal beauty there is no shortage of icons. From Helen of Troy to Brigitte Bardot to Carmen Electra, the competition has always been brutal and the loser taken hindmost…or, wait…you know what I mean.
At the very pinnacle of sexual desirability are the Bond Girls. From the blonde, slinky Honey Ryder to the brunette, slinky Vesper Lynd, Bond Girls have always been seen as the very definition of female hotness, driving men cooler than Bond into raging hormone frenzies and irrationally long wait times at NetFlix. Their faces and bodies have launched a million suavetés, convincing Red State palookas and sub-Arctic lumberjacks alike that all they need to do is look good in the monkey suit and drink Martinis and the ladies will come swarming.
And we will, you know.
I was at the Urban Mixer West End Martini Tour, along with a hundred perfect, and perfectly friendly, strangers, and quite a variety of garb was on display; we had some people in jeans, we had many in suits and cocktail dresses, and we had one man in a tuxedo.
And he was surrounded by women, all night. Are you taking notes, boys?
For the record, my Bond Girl name is Faith Mountain. Dayum, I could do better than that; lessee, um, uh, well, how about Jeanine Tonique? Butter Tartt? Pandora Box?
In any case, I ran across this on the Guardian site, and it’s one of the funniest things I’ve read in ages. As always with Jeanette Winterson, I’m not sure I agree but I do enjoy. It’s well-written, it’s witty, and it is very well-informed. The research must have been gruelling, poor thing.
And as anyone ’round these parts could tell you, if you want an honest evaluation of girls, ask a lesbian.
My mission, and I chose to accept it, was to watch Bond movies and summon up some firepower on the Bond women. I could gun down the pathetic sexism of early Bond, or the patronising raised eyebrow of mid-Bond, and we could detonate the tortured hero of Brosnan Bond, and, guess what? I will. But first, let’s agree that Bond movies are fabulous fun.
I don’t know which I enjoy more – the cars or the girls. I didn’t buy my 3-litre BMW because I saw Goldeneye, but I was very upset when Bond got the Z8 in The World Is Not Enough. Why? I can’t afford to spend £80,000 on a car, even though I long for a champagne cooler under the handbrake. Driving round Cheltenham without one is a mini-roundabout too far. If I knew there was a Dom Perignon ’53 ready to drink on touchdown in the multistorey car park, I would feel less like machine-gunning Burger King, as I pass it for the 20th time in a traffic labyrinth that could have been devised by Dr No…
