random stuff

A trio of random websites: the future, the past, the present

A few interesting and random websites I’ve come across or been linked to.

Paleo-Future: a look at the future that never was. I’m a sucker for this stuff because most predictions are hilariously wrong. We were supposed to have baby machines and flying cars by 1980, let alone 2010 (the year me make contact). Granted, some of the predictions are made based more on wish fulfillment and less on using a rigorous scientific method in asserting what is likely to come to pass. Heck, Asimov had spaceships running on nuclear power.

alt/1977 is kind of a reverse take on Paleo-Future’s predictions and instead takes four current electronic devices — an MP3 player, a laptop, a portable game machine and a cellphone and imagines what they would look like if they had been released in 1977. As the artist Alex Varanese writes, “I’ve learned that there is no greater design element than the anachronism. I’ve learned that the strongest contrast isn’t spatial or tonal but historical. I’ve learned that there’s retro, and then there’s time travel.”

Michael Wolf’s Hong Kong architecture: Having looked at how the future didn’t turn out and what the past might have looked like, the final site is a fascinating if somewhat bleak look at Hong Kong skyscrapers, with the camera in close enough to exclude everything but the sheer expanses of steel and concrete reaching into the sky. The effect is somewhat bewildering.

Paleo-Future and Michael Wolf photo links provided by Nic.

It’s random weird animated gif time!

Here it is.

I’ll have more substantive things to say soon.

I have seen this image where it is used to indicate a NSFW post. To tie into that, just imagine the eloquence of the typical Canucks fan after watching Game 6 earlier this evening. I expect the language used would be very much NSFW. (The Canucks lost the series 4-2 and game six by a score of 5-1.)

The Truth about the HOMOSEXUALS

(This is reposted from a thread I created on Quarter to Three’s forum)

Shortly after wrapping up my job at Expo 86, which is what brought me to Vancouver, I began my second job, this time at McDonald’s. It was about as exciting and enriching as you might think. I didn’t actually cook much, I was mainly the lobby guy — the person who goes around cleaning all the tables, mopping up spills and taking out the trash. As part of my duties I had to check the washrooms and occasionally people would leave literature on the counter offering the promise of a better life, a low mortgage or why are you a stinking drunk, anyway?

One of the pamphlets I found was called The Truth About the HOMOSEXUALS. The copyright date on its inside cover is from 1978, so this was written in the era of Harvey Milk and before AIDS was known. For a long time I could not find the pamphlet and had resigned myself to having lost it and the treasured wisdom contained therein. But lo, I re-discovered it while looking for something else.

Here’s the cover. 20th Century Sodomites!

The opening pages:

I’ve scanned in the first few pages:

The Truth About the HOMOSEXUALS

“And Asa did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord. .he took away the sodomites out of the land.”-I Kings 15:11,12.

“The same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.”-Luke 17: 29,30.

Hairy-chested males in frilly dresses and blonde wigs, their faces adorned with make-up, as they ride tricycles in public and dance with other perverts in San Francisco discos. Can you imagine that in a civilized society? Or the picture in the same magazine of young boys on leashes like dogs, soliciting as male prostitutes? They are called “gay slaves”! It is happening today!

Asa was obeying God when he took  away the Sodomites out of the land. The people today who stand up for the (so-called “gay”) Sodomites have missed the whole point.

The homosexual battle is not with the “bigoted fundamentalists” as they call us, but with the Great God of the universe and His holy Word.

Critics say, “They quote from First Corinthians and Leviticus,” as if that were all there was to it. Other “gay” adherents say that anti-Sodomite Scripture is to be found only in the Old Testament and that it means nothing today.

The liberal media, as usual, has grabbed on to a news-maker. They are always anxious to get a juicy tidbit that is scandalous and sensational. And they smack their lips with even keener delight when it lends itself to the opportunity to scorn the hated “fundamentalist.” It has become great fun to ignore or misquote God’s Word while vilifying those who dare to stand for what decent, God-fearing Americans have always believed in.

The very fact that we suddenly have a flood tide of abnormality sweeping in upon us in an open movement of homosexuals clamoring for attention and approval, proves the accuracy of the very Bible they seek to refute.

Decent, Civilized People Have
Always Been Against This
Monstrous Perversion

Why have we had Sodomy laws on the books of our states for so many years? Why have homosexual marriages been taboo? Why have normal people of all faiths (or of no faith) always felt revul¬sion by such activity? Why have people of culture and modesty not even wanted to discuss such a subject? Because homosexuality is totally unnatural and abnormal, and our nation was founded upon Christian decency and a high regard for God and His Word.

A Gallup poll states that a great majority of Americans are convinced that homosexuality is more prevalent today than twenty-five years ago. Letters quoted in popular and liberal news magazines are almost all pro-homo¬sexual, which means that either decent Americans are too disgusted with the whole filthy business to want to discuss it, or the magazines are purposely picking the twisted paragraphs from the pro¬-gays to further their cause.

The phenomenum is not entirely new, of course. There have always been some perverted people around. Otherwise, there would have been no need for God to warn us about it in His Word, and no need to list it with other sins from which God can save a man (I Cor. 6:9).

Charles Goetz, a freelance writer and actor, writing in the Cincinnati Enquirer magazine, while reminding us that Henry VIII’s England decreed homosexuality a capital crime, states that if they think they have trouble with Anita Bryant today, they don’t know what trouble is. They’re lucky they’re not living in ancient Persia. Under Zoroastrian law anyone working with an ax and coming upon a couple engaged in an “unnatural art” was obliged either to behead the riders or to rip them open.

Hindus and Mohammedans also took a dim view of homosexuality, although their punishments were not as severe as the Persians. Many classical Greeks were somewhat notorious for their homosexual life styles, believing that the unnatural act was something of a prelude to a natural sex life later on.

Goetz quotes doctors who say that homosexuality is usually more prevalent among males than females, and that “gay” pairs “most frequently consist of a young male and a somewhat older partner.”

Our Permissive Society Lets
Crime Go Unpunished, So
It Becomes More Bold

Terrifying telecasts on the evening news recently revealed that hordes of young boys are working as boy prostitutes in California cities. One San Francisco man was jailed after being charged with sexual involvement with boys as young as seven years of age in male prostitution and pornography. The charges included pimping, pandering, contributing to the delinquency of minors and molesting young boys.

A Farmington, Michigan Catholic priest was arrested on charges of second-degree criminal sexual conduct involving a fourteen-year-old boy. At the same time Oakland, California, police were investigating the kidnap murders of four young Oakland County boys who had been sexually molested.

After the defeat of the Gay-Rights ordinance in Miami, Sodomites danced in the streets and declared that they will come back stronger than ever, even singing the Civil Rights hymn, “We Shall Overcome.” My brother, Pastor Norman Pyle, in declaring that they have almost destroyed a good word, “gay,” suggests that we go back to calling them “queers.” When I was a boy, any men who were “effeminate” or who engaged in unnatural sexual activities were labeled either “queers,” “fairies” or “pansies.”

One of them smashed a cream pie in the face of Anita Bryant in a midwestern city. She continues to be threatened and harrassed, and had to cancel a news conference in New York as thousands of perverts (or “gay” sympathizers) picketed the NBC Today Show.

Johnny Carson and other entertainers take delight in ridiculing Anita Bryant and others who stand for normal deceny. After a pointed effort to embarrass and defeat Anita on the Phil Donahue show, she won the battle by boldly reading Romans 1:21-28 from the Bible as millions watched and cheered her on. Donahue couldn’t wait to conclude the program!

The booklet appears to still be available in its unaltered 1978 form, serving as a kind of historical text documenting what might be described as a colorful point of view.

This has always provided me with excellent entertainment value, the kind of thing that is nearly impossible to parody. According to Amazon there is a revised August 2000 edition. Perhaps it has a bonus section on the joy of conversion therapy.

This is why I defrost my fridge

My fridge is one of those that has the freezer-box inside the main fridge, with one door on the fridge itself then another smaller door inside for the freezer-box. A problem with this design is that the freezer-box tends to accumulate ice the same way Oprah accumulates brownies (Oprah, if you’re reading this, no offense. I like brownies, too). Eventually, the freezer-box becomes encased in ice, not unlike some hapless animal found frozen in a glacier 10,000 years ago. At this point the door is fused shut and the ice build up starts dripping onto the shelves below, turning the fridge into a miniature rain forest simulation.

It is annoying.

I defrost the fridge, let the ice melt enough to chip it away, sponge up the excess water and declare temporary victory yet again.

Then I take a picture of the collected ice in my sink to remind myself to not let it go quite so long next time. See below.

Ironically, I bought four ice cube trays the next day in order to make ice for my tender shin.

Nothing improves a neighborhood like a used car lot

That is, like a used car lot that goes out of business.

At the corner of Kingway and Inverness, which is just a block away, there is a used car dealer called Super Choice Auto. As you might expect, this is not the most glamorous of places and I’ve always kind of hoped that maybe one day it would be replaced by a nice ethnic restaurant, even if the neighborhood needs another one like Vancouver needs another Starbucks.

Two days ago when walking by it on the way to buy groceries I noticed they had the large sign out front partially dismantled and i assumed they were just changing the bulbs in it. But lo, yesterday half the compound was behind a locked gate and every car and most of the signs were gone. The dealership had apparently gone kaput.

Normally I would not wish ill on those eking out a living in these recessionary times but a year ago when we were up to our armpits in regular snowfalls these guys never shoveled the sidewalk around their lot, not even to clear a path for themselves. They did actually clear part of the lot itself to presumably get cars in and out. One of the bright lads in its employ thought it would be a good idea to use a kettle of hot water to help melt the snow on said lot.

I’m sure that turned out well.

So here’s to 2010 and whatever might be going in at that corner in the coming year. Hopefully it won’t just be a vacant lot for ages, though that may be just as likely.

One of these things is not like the other, Part 1

The other day while jogging the song “All For Leyna” came up on my Sansa Clip and it took me back to when Billy Joel was lean, kind of angry and had hair. It is perhaps fitting but sad that he has become what he wrote about in “I’ve Loved These Days”, a song penned for 1976’s Turnstiles album and which his Wikipedia entry refers to as “a tongue-in-cheek expression of regret at leaving behind Hollywood’s decadence”:

We light our lamps for atmosphere,
And hang our hopes on chandeliers.
We’re going wrong, we’re gaining weight,
We’re sleeping long and far too late.
And so it’s time to change our ways …
But I’ve loved these days.

…

We drown our doubts in dry champagne,
And soothe our souls with fine cocaine.
I don’t know why I even care
We’ll get so high and get nowhere.
We’ll have to change our jaded ways
But I’ve loved these days.

None of which is directly related to the trivial thing I’m about to discuss, which is the incongruity seen in the video of Uptown Girl. The video, like the song and album it is from (An Innocent Man), is an homage to early 1960s pop. You can see this in evidence here with the old-fashioned neon sign:

uptown1

And again here:

uptown2

The mechanics, greasers and others all fit the theme, then about two-thirds of the way through the video you get this:

uptown3

Two young guys robot dancing in belly shirts. This is the exact sort of thing the expression “WTF?” was invented for. The only thing I can think of is they were trying to compete somehow with Thriller, which was out around the same time. Still, it is a minor blemish on an otherwise fine video. Okay, one other blemish would be when Billy Joel tries to dance but you can forgive him for that because he did not wear a belly shirt.

Also, how did we grow used to watching small, artifact-riddled videos, anyway?

There be tin men here

Today as I was enjoying a beverage with a date at Melriches on Davie Street I had a guy come up and ask me if I liked hip hop. I asked him to repeat the question because my brain was pretty sure he had not just asked me if I liked hip hop. He repeated it and sure enough, he had asked me if I liked hip hop. I don’t really think of myself as the hip hop type but I was wearing a black baseball cap. Maybe that’s some code I was unaware of that says “big fan of hip hop here!” It turns out he was trying to sell or generate interest in his own CDs, several of which he held out for me to see. I truthfully told him that no, I was not into hip hop, so he moved on to the nice old ladies at the next table.

After having said beverage, we strolled down to Stanley Park because it was another gorgeously sunny and warm day. It’s weird because I normally expect June to be largely soggy (that may happen this coming week). We ventured as far as Third Beach then instead of reversing back along the seawall we cut across the park, following one of the main trails (mostly a service road, from the looks of it) to Lost Lagoon. Along the way we passed women pushing strollers, joggers, bikers, all the usual sorts you’d expect to see. And then off to the left I noticed some tin foil wrapped in sections around a tree. There was a large video camera resting on the ground nearby and someone with a shirt that read “Stunt Crew” on the back was holding a container of tin foil and was wrapping it around a person standing in front of him. By the time we arrived, this tin man was almost completely covered from head to toe. As we walked by and looked back, the wrapper looked to us and we all kind of chuckled and kept walking. The wrapper, well, kept wrapping.

I have no idea what they were doing. Were the strips on the tree just for practice? Did the guy getting wrapped up lose a bet? Was it the world’s lowest budget science fiction movie? The worst part is I had my camera in my man purse* but totally forgot about it. Then again, if I had taken pictures, they may have come after us with ray guns or something.

After leaving the park we found ourselves in the middle of the Denman Car-free day, featuring an assortment of festivities ranging from a band performing “Only the lonely” to kids playing chess on the street using pieces about half a meter tall to a Hedy Fry re-election booth. Since there is currently no election, perhaps she knows something and isn’t telling. Either that or it was just easier to haul out the election stuff rather than make new “Hedy Fry Denman Car-free Day” signs. Lord knows with all the elections the paint on those signs is probably still tacky.

It was a pretty good day, in all.

* I am told this is the correct nomenclature, although some will also accept “murse”. It’s really just a small shoulder pack. A manly shoulder pack.