Hot Links of the Apocalypse

Wednesday Morning LA Traffic

Nice video: Los Angeles sans traffic.

Mrs. Straight Six has a nice collection of retromobiles.

36 years of family photos.

How to get a wash cloth wet in zero gravity and what happens when you wring out.

Serious crappy commercials. Serious.

It’s true. ESPN = PPPP.

Classic PPPLol.

RIP Nelson Mandela, who was not always an old man, nor was he a saint.

Nelson Mandela was the head of UmKhonto we Sizwe, (MK), the terrorist wing of the ANC and South African Communist Party. At his trial, he had pleaded guilty to 156 acts of public violence including mobilising terrorist bombing campaigns, which planted bombs in public places, including the Johannesburg railway station. Many innocent people, including women and children, were killed by Nelson Mandela’s MK terrorists. [via]

But then there’s always Little Isidore to lighten the mood.

7 December 1941 – Remember Always

7 December 1941 Never Forget

[via]

Previous posts about The Day Of Infamy here.

Saturday Matinee – The Spotnicks, The Specials, Bad Manners & Buddy Guy

The Spotnicks’ “The Rocket Man” (1962). Pre-Devo awesome [via].

The Specials‘ “Ghost Town.” Too much fighting on the dance floor.

Ms. Wireways (?) a Jamaican radio DJ in Southern California in the ’80s, said this was the best reggae song ever. Bad Manners’ “Sampson & Delilah” fits the bill, even though the vid sucks donkeys. Close your eyes and listen instead – it is a pretty song.

Buddy Guy is one of the last original bluesmen. Here he is, backed up by G.E. Smith who is no slouch either.

That’s it for this edition. Have a great weekend, folks, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow.

The .Gif Friday Post No. 309 – Da Vinci WTF, Lane Changer & Vandal FAIL

Mega Da Vinci

Lane Changer 1

Lane Changer 2

Burglar FAIL

[Found here, here and here.]

Graffito. No Respect

No Respect - Cairo

December 2013, in al-Khalifa street, Old Cairo

[Found here.]

A Watched Pot…

Kitchen Commode

Ain’t nothin’ like the smell of home cookin’.

[Found here.]

The Best Crappiest Speakers Ever Made.

RCA

They looked like armadillos boinking a mailbox, and yes, they were speakers. They were virtually indestructible. They hung on the inside of your car window when it was freezing outside and wouldn’t allow you to roll it up all the way.

They were also easily stolen with a pen knife. Lupe had a wall of them in his apartment, all wired together and hooked up to his stereo for a tinny wall of sound. Listening to Led Zeppelin through a dozen drive-in rattlebuzzers was truly something to behold. Truly.

[Found here.]

Another Great Gift Idea: Diesel Books

Diesels Tomes

Diesel, aka Robert Kroese, helped me to get into Big Time Blogging with cordial honest advice. Buy his books, read them, then donate them as gifts to the homeless. –Bunk

Black Friday at Heck’s Department Store

Elevator to Hell

Escalator to 2nd Floor – Heck’s Kitchen Appliances.

[Found here.]

Crumbling Dice & Exploding Billiard Balls

decompsed dice

Cellulose nitrate was used to make dice from the late 1860s until the middle of the twentieth century, and the material remains stable for decades. Then, in a flash, they can dramatically decompose. Nitric acid is released in a process called outgassing. The dice cleave, crumble, and then implode.

From Dice: Deception, Fate & Rotten Luck by Ricky Jay and Rosamond Purcell, 2002.

[Via Wiki] Because of its explosive nature, not all applications of nitrocellulose were successful. In 1869, with elephants having been poached to near extinction, the billiards industry offered a $10,000 prize to whoever came up with the best replacement for ivory billiard balls. John Wesley Hyatt created the winning replacement, which he created with a new material he discovered called camphored nitrocellulose—the first thermoplastic, better known as celluloid. The invention enjoyed a brief popularity, but the Hyatt balls were extremely flammable, and sometimes portions of the outer shell would explode upon impact. An owner of a billiard saloon in Colorado wrote to Hyatt about the explosive tendencies, saying that he did not mind very much personally but for the fact that every man in his saloon immediately pulled a gun at the sound.

[Found here.]