Tag: doom

Westwood Memory (I may have posted this before)

Some time in the late 1980s I was in Westwood Village, which is the part of L.A. just south of UCLA. It had been a big entertainment district, the place to be on Friday and Saturday Night, but was in a steep decline. Most of the fancy stores and restaurants had gone, things were dirty, and most of the pedestrians were lost souls. I was among them, since I was taking the bus from my unsuccessful psychotherapist back to my grimy Hollywood apartment.

It was maybe 9 pm, cold and blustery, and the first drops of rain were moistening the blowing trash so it stuck to people and objects unpleasantly. Coming up towards the bus stop, I came upon this scene:

In the doorway to an office building, one of the local homeless poor had set up camp. He was about 35, dressed in what had once been a decent suit which was torn and stained and shedding buttons. He himself had a mop of blonde hair and a dirty face wreathed in a joyous smile. He had a boom box going full blast and was singing along lustily, with a cap on the ground in hopes that someone would reward this piece of impromptu street karaoke.

The song he was performing? Barry Manilow’s 1976 hit “Looks Like We Made It“.

I still wonder about that guy. He certainly wasn’t seeing the dingy, damp, urban failure in front of him, or the RTD bus or the other bums or me in my jeans & jacket & backpack looking at him in horror. He was in heaven, maybe onstage in Vegas. Maybe he even was Barry. Looks like we maaaaaaaade it! I wonder what happened to him?

Elliot Valenstein, the history of lobotomy, and more

“Physicians get neither name nor fame by the pricking of wheals or the picking out thistles, or by laying of plaisters to the scratch of a pin; every old woman can do this. But if they would have a name and a fame, if they will have it quickly, they must do some great and desperate cures.” —John Bunyan

Great and Desperate Cures: The Rise and Decline of Psychosurgery and Other Radical Treatments for Mental Illness

Interview with Elliot Valenstein on the History of Lobotomy

Elliot Valenstein’s page at umich

The War of the Soups and Sparks, The Discovery of Neurotransmitters and the Dispute Over How Nerves Communicate, by Elliot Valenstein.

Every Man a King

When the inevitable economic collapse occurs, will we get a pleasantly technocratic National Uncle like FDR, or a nativist religious populist, an American Franco/Peron?

What a nasty set of dice we’ll have to roll. I wish I was an optimist about politics.

Guaranteed not to contain any chicken jizz

While at Mother’s Market (local health food nut store) today I was browsing around in the My Abdomen Hurts section for charcoal, which I found. I also found all the other stuff that may or may not make one’s abdomen stop hurting: licorice root, ginger, dragon’s foot oil, chelated monkulare niblets, etc. One of these products was listed as being contained in “hexane-free caplets”.

Okay. Hexane is what we usually call “gasoline”. Who the fuck puts gasoline in their medicines? Is this some health food store nutcase fear, or should I be concerned that the Tylenol or the K-Y Jelly or the inferior-brand Daily Vitamins I’m guzzling have Chevron Mid-Grade in them?

Little Tykes… …OF DOOM!

The Little Tikes Co. Recalls Animal-Shaped Flashlights Containing Lead Paint Sold at Target

Name of Product: Glowin’ Dino and Glowin’ Doggy Animal Flashlights

Hazard: The light green paint on the dinosaur-shaped flashlight and the brown paint on the dog-shaped flashlight could contain excess levels of lead. Lead is toxic if ingested by young children and can cause adverse health effects.

BEHOLD THE AGENT OF OUR DESTRUCTION: