STAX Stay In School

Stay in School, Don’t Be a Dropout (1967) was not a commercial release and less than 10,000 copies are known to exist in its original vinyl format.

Guess what’s in Bunk’s old vinyl collection!

This is a DJ album, distributed to R&B/Soul radio stations in urban areas. It’s got no lead-in tracks, meaning that the DJ had to pick what announcement or song he wanted to play and place the needle by hand. Stax/Volt was clever, in that the tracks of songs they were selling were preceded by public service announcements by the artists themselves.

“Hi, this is the big O, Otis Redding.
I was just standing here thinking about you,
Thought I’d write a song about you,
And dedicate it to you.
Take a listen.”

More info on this nice collectible here. Click to enlarge, check out the playlist, and read the commendation from Vice President Hubert Humphrey. There’s some great stuff on this album.

6 June 1944 – Remember the Sacrifice

[Image found here.]

Take Your Best Shot


[Calvin Demarest demonstrates the Massé in 1912. He went schizo a few years later.]

Oh yeah. I remember my best shot. Outside of Houston. Twenties on the rail in a call the shot game, and I had spots. Two spots were sitting in adjacent corners at the end of the table, and a stripe was next to the side pocket. I was blocked for the far corner, my cueball was on the wrong side of the near pocket and against the rail, and I couldn’t bank the corner shot. What could I do?

I did what any bluffer would do. Call both corners.

With my cue in the air, I jammed a Massé shot. Put so much spin on the cue ball that it hopped the rail in front of the side pocket, rode it and spun back down to the table on the other side of the side pocket and caught the side rail. It sunk Spot 1 in the near corner, then shot down the end rail to sink Spot 2. No scratch.

Of course I had to keep a poker face, so I walked to my next shot as if nothing spectacular had happened. Within seconds everyone grabbed their money and went upstairs. Game over.

THAT was my best shot.

Saturday Matinee – Escalator, The Green Men & Louie Louie

The guy had never seen an escalator, didn’t trust it for good reason. [Found here.]

The Vancouver Canucks are like the Chicago Cubs of hockey. They always come close to winning the Cup, but never quite pull it off. To be honest, I don’t follow the NHA, let alone professional sports. But I saw these guys, and I had no idea that they had earned recobanition as a National Treasure of Canada. [via]

Toots & The Maytals play Richard Berry.

George Duke and Stanley Clarke play Richard Berry.

Others played Richard Berry here, here and here.  Oh yeah, and this one’s good, too. But here is the original originator:

There you go – the originator of the classic fratparty song. Have a great weekend, folks. Be back here tomorrow for more fun stuff.

The history of trollface

Last week I posted this picture:

Then I wondered about the origin of the ubiquitous Trollface.

Trollface first appeared in 2008 on the website DeviantArt. Although the internet icon is sometimes called “coolface,” its creator, “Whynne” said:

“It’s trollface, not coolface. Eat a dick.”

And the late great Jim Varney (aka Ernest P. Worrell) shows how it’s done:


So now you know. Fun facts to know and tell, courtesy of Tacky Raccoons.

[Update: Jump to 2:40.]

Copycat

Okay, before you think you’re clever and rename it as a you-know-what, there’s more to this picture than you think. We’re talking Zen convergence.

The modern copy machine owes it’s existence to cat fur and Chester Carlson. Never heard of him? I’ll make it easy for you.  Click here.

[Image found here.]

One Easter Egg

A Kosovo Serb peels an Easter egg during an Orthodox Easter service in a fire-gutted Serbian church, burned in 2004 by ethnic Albanians, in Mitrovica, 40 kilometres (30 miles) north of the Kosovo capital Pristina, April 5, 2010.

[More great images, including this one, from here. The history of the Easter Egg may be found here.]

The FBI asks for help. [UPDATED – SOLVED?]

[26 JULY 2012 UPDATE – CODE BROKEN! SEE BELOW]

[29 JULY2012 UPDATE – LINKS TO THE ORIGINAL SPANISH IN COMMENTS.]

There was a murder in the summer of 1999, and it’s remained unsolved. The FBI recently released the cryptic notes found in the victim’s pocket, and asks for help to decipher them.

www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/march/cryptanalysis_032911

On June 30, 1999, sheriff’s officers in St. Louis, Missouri discovered the body of 41-year-old Ricky McCormick. He had been murdered and dumped in a field. The only clues regarding the homicide were two encrypted notes found in the victim’s pants pockets.

Despite extensive work by our Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit (CRRU), as well as help from the American Cryptogram Association, the meanings of those two coded notes remain a mystery to this day, and Ricky McCormick’s murderer has yet to face justice.

Here’s what I’ve got so far:

1. It’s not a sophisticated code.

2. There are no mysterious symbols, excepting what appear to be typos.

3. It’s a mnemonic code, so character/word frequency counts won’t work well.

4. The scribbled letter “n” stands for “and.”

5. Some of the characters that appear as the letter “R” are actually the letter “Q.”

6. I suspect that the character groups “WLD,” “SE” and “CBE” are the initials or references to people’s names.

7. The character group “on” means the same as the word, followed by a date.

8. “71” likely refers to July 1 1999; “74” refers to July 4; “75” refers to July 5.

9. Parentheses are parentheses. The “+” means “plus” as it’s clearly different from the capital “T” in the cryptogram.

10. The last line indicates Day-Week-Month-Year. MIL suggests the word “military.”

Have at it.

____________________________

UPDATE I: Apparently the FBI has received so many responses and tips that it’s set up a separate website for them:

http://forms.fbi.gov/code

____________________________

UPDATE II: José Galofré Manero. left a comment here with a link  to a site where he’s referred to as “Joseph from Spain.” (Gran obra, mi amigo.)

http://www.themorgandoctrine.com/2012/04/joseph-from-spain-nails-last-detail-in.html

That links to this:

http://www.themorgandoctrine.com/2011/11/fbis-best-brightest-blow-one-for-gipper.html?showComment=1335657942567#c5962089210631468045

That links to this:

http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2012-06-14/news/ricky-mccormick-code-mysterious-death-st-louis/

And also leads you to Jose’s multi-part analysis.  Here’s Part 1 of several:

http://prophecyexperimentalzone.blogspot.com/2011/12/and-who-killed-mccormick-part-one.html

His conclusions are astounding. I suggested to Jose that he write it up in his native Spanish for clarity.

Jose contends that Ricky McCormick was NOT murdered, but someone else was, and to solve THAT homicide a briefcase/satchel/package must be unearthed in the outskirts of St. Louis MO. Based upon his decryption, Jose has a good idea where it might be found. So far the FBI doesn’t seem interested, but I think that’s about to change.

____________________________

UPDATE III: José posted links to his original analysis in his native Spanish below. More to come.

Continue reading “The FBI asks for help. [UPDATED – SOLVED?]”

Breakfast of Champions

Times 11. And that’s only her second stack. Don’t laugh or she’ll kick your arse… after she finishes the third stack. Suggest you run while you still have time.

[Found here.]
________________________________

Aside from that, a spammer asked me where Tacky Raccoons links were to FaceBlook and StumbleApron.  Silly me, I’d never bothered about it, and wasn’t sure how to do it, so I emailed raincoaster because she knows everything I don’t – at least about blogging.

She pointed me to a WorpDress Forum (that she moderates as a megageek Goddess of the Internest) that answered my question, and in turn I promised to hawk her chonis online:

Transformative Social Media Training

Muchisimas grassyass, rain. You made me feel like a hundred bucks.

P.S. Rain is also author of The Longest Running Thread. Four years, and it’s not dead yet.

P.P.S. If you sign up for any of raincoaster’s seminars, be sure to tell her Bunk sent you. =)

OMG! IT’S A BIGASS MOON!

[from here, via]
As explained on this post by Coldwarrior, tonight the moon is at Perigree, and happens to be a full moon as well.

In the past 20 years, this is the closest the moon has been to the earth since

*gets out calculator, inputs mass, speed, orbital diaphonistics, trunculates spatial trig functions, opens enhanced trepanation protocol, combines the Farley model with coprolitical analysis, adds algebra*

um, last night. Whew. We’re still alive.