A day to remember a lost friend: D Boon

d.boon

Dennes Dale Boon died on this day in 1985. Some people like to remember John Lennon on his death day, for me it’s D. Boon and the end of the Minutemen.

D. Boon was a fat guy in a uniquely weird punk band. He was a working class guy with a great mind and a huge heart. I went to countless Minutemen shows for the two years I had the privilege of being his fan. To me he meant a whole world view: resistance to Reaganism, the DIY ethic, punk rock that was passionate for change, and just plain old big sweaty fun.

I saw the Minutemen at colleges, in bars, on big stages, in record stores, on the street, in the middle of nowhere, anywhere they played. I jumped up and down and shouted and sang the lyrics with them, dived for the set list after shows, yelled out requests and got them played. Double Nickels on the Dime was a life-changing record for me.

I want to thank D. Boon for teaching me that resistance is possible, that art is for everyone to make, and that you can dance your ass off and make your point at the same time. I’ve missed him for 20 years now, but he gave me that.

Here’s the first of their songs I ever heard, in 1983 on KPFK:

Little Man with a Gun in his Hand (MP3, 4.5M)

Revisiting Jump Out of Limo Woman Story

The autopsy report is out, revealing she was really drunk. The best details are about her date and his life of lame. Best quote:

He said in the interview that he was deeply in love with Rowe, and also still very much in love with his wife, Whitney Vincent, 22, who lives in Knoxville, Tenn., and Lisa Atkinson, 21, of Placentia, whom he enticed into a string of car dealership thefts and persuaded to use her job at a private mail center in Orange to wire him a $25,000 money order.

Register story

UCI Medical School keeps getting better and better

Latest hoot: The two docs who head up their Cardiology Division are neither board certified nor California licensed.

May require bugmenot to read. Short version:

The men who run UCI’s cardiology program, Jagat Narula and Mani Vannan, have not been certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine either in internal medicine or in cardiology. Most cardiologists meet those prerequisites before setting up a practice.

In addition, neither Narula, the division chief, nor Vannan, the associate chief, have California medical licenses. They are among a small group of doctors who practice in the state under a legal provision intended to give universities flexibility in hiring professors temporarily. They are licensed in Pennsylvania.

It just wouldn’t be Christmas without .40 hollowpoints

Santa Claus Uses Handgun to Protect Children From Terrorists

Here’s the Christmas card sent out by the Citizens Committee to Keep and Bear Arms:

blam

I have some concerns. First of all, Santa is not using an approved grip or stance for handgun shooting. One-hand shooting is not recommended, and the loose grasp he has on the firearm is going to result in instability, poor aim, and possibly total loss of control.

Second, although he has the children pushed behind him, there is an infant directly below the handgun. Not only could a terrible mishap occur if his gun somehow went off while pointed down, but raining hot brass from an autopistol on infants is very poor form.

Third, the terrorist does not appear to have any firearms himself and is soletly armed with explosives. Santa is not only risking everyone’s life in that room by pointing a firearm at the explosives, but he’s missing the opportunity either to shoot the bomber directly in the head — thus ending the terrorist mission — or to physically assault the bomber and remove him from the area so that he cannot demolish the tree or kill the children. Merely threatening him with the firearm may result in far worse results than either shooting him in the head or tackling him. Since the terrorist is very clumsily using dynamite sticks with fuses, there is unlikely to be any dead man’s switch or trip wire that would frustrate this attempt, and a terrorist taken alive is far more valuable to the international community than a corpse.

Therefore I cannot support arming poorly trained Santa Clauses. Even though the threat to Christmas may be very serious, reflexively arming previously unarmed sectors of society is likely to result in more harm than good.

A bigger version of the card is available from the url above; I resized it.

We are such stuff as dweebs are made of

  1. Only the power of drugs can put a submarine in the mountains. Shades of Fitzcarraldo!
  2. From several sources, the Headline of the Year: STALIN’S HALF-MAN, HALF-APE SUPER-WARRIORS.
  3. O Christmas Toad, O Christmas Toad, you take from the undeserving.
  4. New horrors of mobile phones: the woman next to you on the train may be testing out her smelltones.
  5. Uh. Mel. Uh. WHAT? Mayans… what?
  6. Ever wondered what happens when you give a baseball 19,000 coats of paint?

Timeline, with Mac & Cheese

1965: Milk

1968: Nilla wafers, punch, mac and cheese

1972: Baguette, cheese, ham, café au lait

1974: Rice Krispies, peanut butter sandwiches, mac and cheese, chocolate milk

1977: Curry chicken sandwiches, ginger beer, Pop Rocks, Wil Wrights ice cream, Chef Boyardee Ravioli

1980: Mac and cheese, Carls Jr. fries, Szechuan Beef, André “champagne”

1983: Tommy’s chili cheeseburgers, Pepsi, Captain Crunch, pizza, pad thai

1986: Cuban roast chicken, Bohemia beer, Thai peanut chicken & spinach

1991: Subway sandwich special of the day, Jack Daniels, spicy peanut dumplings, ramen

1993: Subway sandwich special of the day, spaghetti, cheap Dutch beer from TJs

1994: Special of the day at hospital cafeteria, Cassell’s burger, Tommy’s burger, Guinness, supermarket roast chicken, mac and cheese.

1996: Los Primos burritos, potato fritters, quiche, potato salad, Seghesio Zinfandel

1998: Maker’s Mark, Glacier Vodka, sautéed scallops, Lundberg Wild Blend Rice, Pilsner Urquell, Pepcid AC, fettucine alfredo, blackout cake, mac and cheese.

2003: Brita filtered water, eggplant & cashew stirfry, sweet red pepper salad, chicken Marsala, clementines, nonfat yogurt with berries, homemade bread.

2005: Aberlour A’Bunadh, lamb curry, mac and cheese, TJs frozen tamales, pasta e fagiole, cornbread, coleslaw, San Pellegrino, tomato/artichoke salad.

MEAT HELMET

I SAID: MEAT HELMET.

Pneumatic ‘air muscles’ control the helmet, forcing the user to eat at intervals specified by a CPU located on a belt. The on-board program sends out commands to an electronic valve, which controls the supply of compressed air to the air muscles. A keypad allows the user to punch-in the amount of calories about to be consumed (Big Mac = 560), where the program will calculate how many chews are needed to burn them off (chewing = 70 calories/hour), commencing the forced-chewing upon the user (8 hour workout!).