He was an underrated and overlooked genius; it’s not hyperbole to call him the Polish Borges. His body of work included some of the funniest and most inventive science fiction, mysteries, other novels, and essays. He wrote about space exploration, the horrors of war, the mathematical patterns of life, and the insides of our very strange brains.
I would give my left nut to write like him.
http://www.lem.pl/cyberiadinfo/english/main.htm official site
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislaw_Lem
New Launches has a fairly terrifying/neato post about the latest death gadget from real-life Qs: The Phone Gun, via techeblog.
Ow.
I love the CPSC Recall Reports.
Incidents/Injuries: Milton Bradley has received 46 reports of the Chicken Limbo party game collapsing unexpectedly. This includes 23 reports of injuries including bumps, bruises, welts and red marks, four reports of cuts, one chipped tooth and one fractured foot.
For those who need a machine gun that just keeps on firing, and firing, and firing, and firing, we present the E4 Revision of the M60 Machine Gun
Looks like it would be particularly handy if you were covering a general retreat from the mall and the zombies were surging out of the food court by the score.
Sometimes the kids and their subcultures should be ignored. I mean, you know, your kid is gonna be a goth or something, it happens, they’re all angsty, and then they get their AA and learn drywall or something and just start drinking like you.
Or then there’s the other times, when the neo-nazi gaybashing satanic evil clown rap/metal stupidocrat ultraviolence culture they’re immersed in turns out to be for real.
Do not eat any seafood that you know to have been distributed by Pacific Seafood of San Diego, California. Here’s why!
Via this bulletin from promed.
From 1983 to about 1993, the Rhino Records store on Westwood Boulevard in Los Angeles was my second home. When i was a student I’d walk down there at least once a week and look through the new releases and imports and all the used stuff. The employees became my friends, too. Big John Breckow, who also did a great bebop radio show on KPFK. Scott, who always had a big friendly smile and a good suggestion, and now works at my local Trader Joe’s. Nels Cline. Gladys aka Laura, my college friend and fellow music freak, now the bassist in Third Grade Teacher. Phast Phreddie. It wasn’t a record store, it was quite seriously a family. When I was a rock critic for a while I’d go down there and sell back my promo crap and Big John would make me promise over and over again not to write about jazz, and maybe someone else there would have a correction or a compliment about my writing, so I knew someone gave a shit.
There was a time when I was a 19-year-old music idiot and I’d buy just about anything imported from England, especially all that death rock 4AD/Beggars Banquet crap, or stuff on Demon. And I’d just buy anything new on SST or Twin/Tone or Restless. I spent way too much damn money there and it was all worth it.
Later on, in the early 90s, I was poor and no longer cool and my life sucked. Bit by bit I had to sell back my CDs and vinyl for cash. I was a mess, and a lot of my friends and even the other people at the church I was attending weren’t being so helpful. But the Rhino people could tell what was up, and they’d look both ways and grossly overpay me for my tradeins. They were solid people.
This is the last weekend for that store. They moved a few years ago and never really recovered. They changed the focus of the place and even the name and flailed and now they’re gone. This weekend is the last ever parking lot sale. If you’re in the area I suggest you go. Details at the Rhino Westwood site.
Chris Morris, my former coworker and one of the few music writers who consistently makes sense, wrote a fitting eulogy to the store in the Reporter.
Thanks to LA Observed for pointing me to this story that I somehow didn’t see.
I probably won’t make it to the last day tomorrow, but that’s probably as it should be. I hate funerals. Never thought I’d cry about a retail store, but there you have it.
From Phast Phreddie, via my friend Julie DuBrow:
Dear Friends,
This morning my brother, who works in the Richmond, Virginia area, called and asked me if I knew Bryan Harvey.
I was familiar with The House of Freaks when the group was based in LA, and Gutterball with Steve Wynn; and I ran into Bryan and his wife from time to time when I was down in the Richmond area visiting my brother and/or Stephen McCarthy (of The Long Ryders, who has played in several bands with Bryan since they both moved back to Richmond in the late eighties). Twice I saw Harvey dressed as Presley when he sang in the band Fat Elvis–with McCarthy (it may have been Fat Elvis’ only two shows).
My brother told me that he had just read in the paper that Bryan and his family were found dead in their home.
Thanks to zebulon_y, today’s phrase is:
“total morselization of body due to being pulled by a gloved hand into a commercial wood chipper.”
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