Zombie Hop - Zombina & the Skeletones

It's All Gray on the Inside

Zombie Pinup Calendar
Zombie chicks are just hot !
ok, technically more like ambient/room temperature or something like that.
The whole zombie scene is hot. A search on Blockbuster.com's website for "zombie" came up with several pages and over a hundred hits for zombie movies. Many were made in the last few years. It's amazing and amusing. One of the the aspects of the zombie craze is it's popularity amongst the womenfolk. Girls, all over, are taking to painting themselves ghastly shades of blue and gray and spattering themselves with blood and gore.
And curse me for being a weird-oh, BUT I LIKE IT !
Probably the closest thing to a zombie Miss Kitty was Ed Harris' comic book character, Grub Girl, published by Glenn Danzig's Verotik Comics.

Grub Girl was a drug addicted STD infected hooker who, after being zapped with radiation, died and came back to life as an de-addicted, disease-free zombie and proceeded to take charge of her new life. She crushed her pimps skull with a toilet tank and ate his guts. Later she went on and found a nice zombie boy and settled down. As hollywood likes to use comic books for movie projects, a porno house hired Brittney Skye to take the part and totally fucked it up. Skye seemed to actually like the concept and was the only thing good about the movie.
I am fairly baffled as to the popularity of the shambling brain craving zombie and why itseems to appeal to girls so much but, hey, I am all for it.
So, if you are an exsanguinated, semi-rotten female zombie who enjoys quiet groaning and long shambles in the moonlight, eating brains and drinking blood
and are interested in a long term relationship or just dating a warmie, please contact me.
kids - ok
especially if they are milk fed

West Hollywood Misogynist Out in the Open

LA Times is reporting his name as ChadMichael Morrisette.
Link
There are no words that can express my level of disgust at this "man". I wonder if he went to the Obama rally and was welcomed?
Yes, Cincinnati, there is open sexism in West Hollywood. Yes, there is open sexism in the city too, just nothing we've seen this bad. What I fear we will get from many from the left wing is not defense of what he says, but his right to say it. All of that without forcefully condemning the pure hate Morrisette has.
Related Story

VOTE NO ON 7
Well, after nearly getting clobbered by a red light runner at an intersection I was crossing, I decided it was time to make another post about red light cameras and Issue 7
Red light running is rampant from my perspective. I see people run red lights every time I go out at almost every intersection I cross. Something needs to be done.
The cameras are pretty good at recording violations and the photographic evidence is always reviewed by a police officer before a citation is issued. Citations can always be challenged. Dangerous police chases are avoided.
10 cameras operating 24/7/365 vs paying police to do the same task ?
The cameras are installed for free and maintained at a set rate. They catch every violation. Valuable trained, skilled police officers and their expensive to maintain vehicles doing the same task would cost over $3,000,000 a year and wouldn't catch even half of the violations since they have to chase and write out citations on the spot - taking them away from their monitoring position. Their patrol cars burning gas the whole time.
Since the cameras were introduced, their use has improved.
Evidence suggests that a minor increase in rear end collisions may result from the use of the cameras as motorists have last minute second thoughts about running the light and slam on their brakes causing the driver behind them (who, presumably has not left a safe and assured distance between himself and the guy in front of him) runs into him. Blaming the camera for this would be the same s blaming someone crossing the street and causing the motorist, intent on breaking the law, to slam on his brakes.
Other arguments against the cameras tend to involve paranoid fear mongering.
Overall, the majority of studies show the cameras lead people to modify their behavior and the instances of very dangerous "T-Bone" collisions are reduced.
The damage wrought by collisions caused by running red lights are more extensive, cause more injuries, permanent disabilities and death than by any minor increase in low impact rear-end collisions one tries to blame on the monitoring devices.
Vote for safety. Vote for fiscal responsibility.
Vote NO on issue 7.

Fuck China
As much as I dislike Micro$oft for crappy business practices regarding competition, they certainly have the right to profit from their work and should not be ripped off. China is probably one of the worst countries in regards to rampant piracy and ignoring intellectual copyrights. They can bitch about M$ofts anti-piracy measures all they want. They need to crack down on criminal, unethical behavior amongst their own people. If they think the price of the Windows OS is too high, well, welcome to the club. But if they paid their workers a decent wage and charged American companies, like Wal Mart, a logical price for goods, then, maybe, more Chinese could afford the product. If they still don't want to pay, load up Ubuntu and make do.
To actually sue Micro$oft is insane. Sue the charlatan who sold you the pirated software, dumbass.

El Reg story here.
Yahoo story here.

I dunno, maybe I will vote for Nader. This is pretty cool. There's gotta be a reason Halloween, elections and Guy Fawkes day are all at about the same time.

The Porktown Fishwrap has a page, here, dedicated to explaining how to watch a political debate.
They have tips for what to do before after and during the debate. They explain what a debate is and offer some blather about the importance of the political debate in American history.
Here's my advice. Get drunk. Get fucked up as hell. Use whatever ya got. Get wasted and sit in front of your TV in your underwear and scream and holler at the damn box. Feel free to heave empties at the thing. You might consider putting some chicken wire up in front of the screen if you have an expensive set or just use a cheap old TV that you won't mind smashing or throwing out the window.
It's just not that difficult.

Faith and Politics forum at Wittenberg University
"On Sunday, Oct. 26, representatives of the local Christian, Muslim and Jewish community will join a multi-generational panel to discuss how people of faith form political world views, frame issues and support candidates."
I guess it's just for mainstream religions. I can't imagine Wittenberg won't have a Luthie rep & being held in the Shouvlin center, a Catholic rep would be in order.
I guess that, even with the rise of India and China as major economic world powers, there is no reason to invite Hindus or Buddhists. Considering how Martin Luther's split from the Catholic church kinda opened the floodgates on a lot of occult teachings previously hidden from Catholic scrutiny, there is still no reason to have any occultist/Kabbbalist types. Hell, just the timing being so close to Halloween, you'd think they would want a witch.....
oh well, it's free and open to all.

Noose Son story here.

Avetec opens in NextEdge Applied Research and Technology Park in Springfield, Ohio.
On Oct 20, Springfield business leaders gathered to watch Congressman Dave Hobson (OH-R) cut the ceremonial ribbon on the doors of Avetec’s new $9.9M National Center for Advanced Modeling and Simulation.
Avetec's goal is to conduct modeling and simulation research that aims to reduce the cost and time it takes to design, develop and test new jet turbine engines for commerce and the military.
Rep. Hobson claims it is probably the only place in the state that has a similar technology park, connected to the national labs and doing high performance modeling and simulation.

Noose Son story here.

Has the "Bailout" ushered in a new socialist era in America and signalled the end of capitalism as we know it or is it just another step along the way ?
The "10 Planks" from Karl Marx' Communist Manifesto:
1. Abolition of private property and the application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communications and transportation in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state, the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries, gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of population over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production.
Looks like we were well on the way already.
1. 30%
2. 100%
3. 30%
4. 50%
5. 70%
6. 100%
7. 50%
8. 30%
9. 30%
10. 100%

OpenOffice 3 Native on Mac OS X
OpenOffice.org has been released to run natively on Mac OS X Intel computers with the release of version 3. There is also a PPC version but it seems kind of unofficial. Previous versions of OpenOffice required Mac users to use X11 and it was slowernHell. NeoOffice worked natively just fine, tho. A quick and dirty startup test had OpenOffice 3 running a tad quicker than NeoOffice 2.2.3 on an old 450 G4 x2/1G RAM.
OpenOfffice is an office suite like Micro$oft Office with a word processor, spreadsheet, database and presentation application. It opens and saves most of the MS file formats and has PDF and Flash export built in. It is freely available for Linux, Mac, Solaris and Windows.

You can download the Intel and PPC versionshere

Wall Street Investments That Pay Off
An article in The American Conservative outlines how Wall St's FIREmen (Financia, Insurance and Real Estate lobbyists) investment in our elected officials paid off.
The hard lesson here will be that hard lessons are for chumps who can’t afford otherwise.
and
The finance/insurance/real estate (FIRE) sector has given approximately $180 million to House and Senate candidates in the current election cycle, and $116 million to presidential candidates, including $25 million to Barack Obama and $22 million to John McCain.
yeppers, we got the best democracy money can buy. it's no wonder the legislators who voted for the initial bailout plan were the ones receiving the most FIRE money.

American Conservative article here.

Baymiller Bridge R.I.P.
The pedestrian bridge over Central Parkway at Baymiller is slated for demolition this weekend. The bridge has connected Central and McMicken for decades.
This demolition was instigated by the citizens of the West End to curtail loitering and vice activity. Walking over the bridge there is plenty of evidence to these accusations. The discarded condoms, drug and alcohol containers and paraphernalia and general litter are all evidence of this behavior.
This demolition is shortsighted to the development of these areas, however, because a strong point for them is their pedestrian accessibility. Destroying this pedestrian conduit is, to a great degree, cutting off the nose to spite the face.
On the other hand, with the upcoming development of CityLink, it's demolition will probably be of greater benefit to the residents of Over the Rhine and CUF.
Some pics from the bridge.
Looking east from the bridge towards McMicken
Looking south over Central Parkway
Same view circa 1940 (Hamilton Co Library)

Springfield Civic Theatre, one of the oldest theater groups in the state, begins it's 77th season with "Into the Woods".
For many years the theatre was on Main Street.

That place was later (rightfully - although with many fond memories) demolished and the theater group moved to the Turner Studio Theater at the Clark State Performing Arts Center.
"Into the Woods" ushers in a new era of "less quantity and higher quality," board president, Ed Sisler said.

Noose Son story here.

Batman Theme Composer Dies

Batman by The Jam

Trumpeter and composer Neal Heft died at the age of 85. Hefti wrote numerous film scores and played with Woody Herman and worked with Count Basie but boomers probably know him best for his theme to the TV show, Batman.
It was, Hefti later said, the hardest piece of music he ever wrote.

LA Times story here.

Black Cemetery Vandalized
Black Cemetery, Clark County's oldest cemetery, was recently vandalized.
A $500 reward has been offered for the arrest of the culprits who desecrated this small and old cemetery.

WHIO story here.

The Trouble With Trees
The Fishwrap reports Spring Grove Cemetery an Arboretum has lost 300 trees this year due to drought and the havoc wreaked by the recent windstorm (Ike) on the weakened trees.

Spring Grove loses 300 trees this year
By Rebecca Goodman
Spring Grove Cemetery & Arboretum lost 300 trees this year - 151 of them on Sept. 14, when an unprecedented windstorm swept through Greater Cincinnati. The rest have slowly succumbed to thirst after last year's record-breaking heat and drought.
One of the trees damaged by the storm was named a national champion tree by the nonprofit conservation group American Forests.
At about 40 feet tall, the two-wing silverbell was the largest known specimen of its kind in the country.
It cannot be saved, but horticulturists at Spring Grove will attempt to propagate the tree, according to Whitney Huang, manager of horticulture at Spring Grove.
Also damaged in the storm were more than 50 monuments - about a dozen of which were shattered. Those that were merely toppled from their bases will be uprighted by cemetery workers. Those lost or damaged are the responsibility of the owners, according to Gary M. Freytag, president and CEO of Spring Grove.
The Davey Tree Expert Co. was hired to help clean up the debris at Spring Grove. Huang said she hopes the cleanup will be finished by year's end.
Some of the trees are being sold for lumber. Others are being chipped and will be used as mulch for the cemetery's flower beds, Freytag said. So far, $150,000 has been spent on the cleanup.
"That doesn't include our own people's time," Freytag said. "That's just outside services."
The winds "did a lot of damage in areas that are in the 100- to 150-year-old age," Freytag said. "There are areas of the cemetery where there's a big open space now and open sky because there used to be a canopy of trees and it just isn't there anymore."
Spring Grove had two national champion trees. The two-wing silverbell won't be removed while the cemetery tries to propagate it.
"It has three main trunks and two of them are just stubs, and one has just a little small branch on there that is still green," Huang said.
The other national champion - a little silverbell that stands about 15 feet - is unharmed.
Thirty-four species of trees were lost in the storm, Huang said. Most were red oaks, which tended to be tall. Their trunks snapped in the middle. Also gone are many maples and ash trees. The drought-damaged trees were mostly evergreens.
Huang estimated the cost of replacing the 151 trees lost in the windstorm at $60,000.
"We're not going to be able to replant all of this in a year or two," she said. "We want to bring back native species and shade trees because we lost a ton."

Fishwrap story was here.
Pictures I took shortly after the storm here.

WBC

When Bloggers Collide
Met up with Geebee and Djinn in Springfield this past weekend. Hit the Westcott House, Groeber's Lounge, O'Connor's Pub, Leonardo's, Schuler's and John's train set and patio where we caught up with John and Giles and got a chance to reacquaint ourselves with some of Mary's beautiful paintings.
Rollicking good time for a bunch of old geezers. It sounds like Portland's Mississippi district and Cincinnati's Northside neighborhood have a lot in common. I don't think I will be converting Djinn to libertarianism any time soon, nor will she be converting me to communism any time soon. My driver and I left the Portland commies stranded in suburbia with nothing but a bottle of orange juice and a New York Times due to Springfield's archaic blue laws. Hopefully they will make it back home and not have to resort to squatting in a foreclosed ranch in Greenlawn Village.

Buying an Election
In what is shaping up to be the first billion dollar presidential campaign, Obama has outspent McCain almost 2 to 1 overall. McCain has outspent Obama in Minnesota and Iowa.
Obama has outspent McCain 3 to 1 in Pennsylvania. Obama has outspent McCain 3 to 1 in Virginia. Obama has outspent McCain 3 to 1 in Florida. Obama has outspent McCain more than 8 to 1 in North Carolina. Obama has outspent McCain almost 9 to 1 in Indiana. Obama has only slightly outspent McCain in Ohio on TV spots, Obama's being largely positive to McCains being almost entirely negative.
Selling a candidate is like selling a can of beans. A can of beans is a can of beans. We all know the famous Bush dog who plots against his loyal master to reveal the "secret recipe". This piques our interest and while our first and only can of Bush beans might result in us spitting out the first mouthful, we have purchased a can. The first purchase is always done through advertising and salesmanship. Subsequent purchases require the product to be worth a crap. More and better advertising can lead us to purchase one product over another once.
The thing is, our choosing a president is something we only do once and then we have to put up with the goombah for four years. And we have to swallow - repeatedly.
Obama and Palin are clearly the exciting personalities of this race. Similarly, do you purchase Joe Camel, the Marlboro Man, the Virginia Slims chick, the White Owl chick (I'm really dating myself now...), or do you just roll up some dried weeds, stick 'em in your mouth, set 'em on fire and suck ?
Ultimately, they all make you gag.
My recommendation ?
Choose none of the above.

Queer as a Clockwork Orange
Shades of A Clockwork Orange in Urbana
Champaign County Municipal Court Judge Susan J. Fornof-Lippencott sentenced a guy to listen to classical music (Beethoven, Chopin, Bach, DeBussy) for 20 hours as an alternative to paying a $150 fine.
After 15 minutes, Mr Vactor opted to pay the fine.
This seems a lot like the "therapy" young Alex received in the book/movie A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.

As you may remember his treatment had unintended consequences and his penchant for classical music only heightened his appreciation for his lifestyle which included activities much worse than blaring obnoxious, vulgar and misogynistic music from his car.
I guess we can file this under "life imitates art".

Noose Son story here.

FATBURGER EST ARRIVE !
My crack team of roving reporters have just informed me the Fatburger at Madison and Brotherton in scenic Oakley is now open.

Subprime Crisis Explained

Northside just rules.
This weekend, starting Saturday, October 4 at 9:00 AM, folks can meet in Hoffner Park for a ride to Findlay Market and back.
At 1:00 PM, the Northside Branch Library will be showing The Blob and When Worlds Collide.
Later, beginning at 5:00 PM, The Spring Grove Cemetery (ok, technically not Northside) will host it's 4th Annual Lantern Lighting Ceremony. It's an afternoon of music and crafts, then, at dusk, people float little illuminated rafts out onto a pond. Hopefully the Cincinnati Klezmer Project will be there again this year.
On Sunday, from noon to 5:00 PM you can tour some cool Cincinnati homes at the Hidden Treasures of Northside House Tour.
"Peek inside to see what homeowner elbow grease, ingenuity and sweat equity can accomplish !"
10 houses in Northside ranging from large to small, majestic to cute, houses that have been well cared for for years and houses rescued from the wrecking ball. There will be shuttle buses to help people get around and your Passport will entitle you to discounts during the day at select Northside businesses.
At 7:30 PM The North Presbyterian Church hosts "Kick Up Your Heals", featuring Appalachian music by the Rabbit Hash String Band.
As usual, there is great music and food at The Comet, Northside Tavern, The Gypsy Hut, Gajah Wong West, Boswell, Alley, Melt, The Hideaway, Honey, Art Damage Lodge, Club Bronz, Blue Rock Tavern, Portofino's, NYPD Pizza.......
whew !

To find out more about what is going on in "Cincinnati's Most Eclectic Neighborhood", click, here or subscribe to Bits & Pieces.

Search the 2001 Google Index
www.google.com/search2001.html
Some of the old pages are there under View old version on the Internet Archive
But just the descriptions are pretty funny
Some results:

Strata 3D Pro v3.0 gains AltiVec support

Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan, through his Washington attorney, complained late Monday that Palm Beach officials had not notified him of details of a ...

During a keynote speech where Steve Jobs unveiled the online Apple Store, the then interim CEO lightheartedly threatened that Apple was "coming for Dell. ...

Scitex knows that printing processes evolve. The company makes high-end information systems geared for the image-heavy printing and graphic arts markets

Apple was not the only major player taking the podium at Seybold. Executives from Microsoft, Macromedia, Kodak, and Sun Microsystems participated in the ...

The Image Proof of Deposit Document Processing System (IPOD) brings the advantages of imaging technology to organisations that process machine readable....

30 Days of Night
I have new respect for Sarah Palin. The leadership, versatility and sheer tenacity of these Alaskans was awe inspiring.
This movie also explains why she wanted to be protected "from all kinds of witchcraft".video
OK, granted, most everybody got killed, at one point the monsters were all standing around a 50 gal tank of oil & nobody thought to shoot the barrel, they thought of using crucifixes because they had seen that used in movies but they had forgotten about McLelland's Directive - "shoot 'em in the head", nevermind that the monsters had super hearing but couldn't hear people yelling and hollering when they got in fights, nevermind they had super blood smelling powers but missed a roomful of sweating warmies in the attic....
Alaskan cheese probably looks like a spider web.
Still, the scenery was beautiful with the cloudy skies and the snowy hills offering a monochromatic study of textures.

Sherriff McLelland from Night of the Living Dead (1968)
"Well, there's no problem. If you have a gun, shoot 'em in the head. That's a sure way to kill 'em. If you don't, get yourself a club or a torch. Beat 'em or burn 'em. They go up pretty easy."