Goodbye Nuclear Flowerpot

Nine seconds end Trojan era: "Under dappled skies and amid taut anticipation, the Trojan Nuclear Plant's 499-foot cooling tower flashed with explosives early Sunday morning, let off a deep farewell kaboom and collapsed.

A huge cloud of pulverized concrete settled within minutes, leveling one of the Northwest's most visible manmade landmarks and leaving only memories of Oregon's brief and troubled experience with nuclear power generation.

The implosion occurred on schedule and as planned, blasting off at 7 a.m. and ending about nine seconds later."

Snakes on a Plane @%$&*!!

MTV.com - Movies - Snakes on a Plane: 'Everyone I mention it to loves the title,' the film's Rachel Blanchard ('Without a Paddle') grins while discussing the most memorable film moniker since 'Electric Boogaloo.' The film has generated some of the biggest Internet-bred movie speculation since 'The Blair Witch Project,' and even mainstream audiences seem obsessed with the question of how many times Samuel L. Jackson will label his co-stars, the snakes and the plane itself as entities that would have sex with their own mothers. To even describe the plot seems nonsensical, so we'll let Blanchard deliver the good news: 'It's got these enormous, 17-foot pythons and black mambas. It's got a lot of humor, and it doesn't take itself seriously,' she laughs. We're in.

SNAKES ON A PLANE!!!!!

GIANT SQUID WATCH

MTV.com - Movies - Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest: the oh-so-cool trailer taps into the original film's unique mix of thrills, humor and fantasy while also providing a quick glimpse of a spectacularly slimy new threat. Remembers Knightley: 'I was being dragged across the deck by an invisible giant squid; invisible because it was being put in by CGI afterwards. I just spent the entire time pretending that there were tentacles everywhere, and the director was running around going 'I'm a tentacle! I'm a tentacle!'

RIP MIX BURN: 10,000 Days

Tool: 10,000 Days

TOOL

Tool's '10,000 Days' Recalls the Good Old Days of CD's - New York Times

GIANT SHARK WATCH: JAWS Unleashed

this can't be good for tourism...




JAWS Unleashed
"Amity Island is growing, making corporate connections with prestigious companies like Environplus to improve the Island's economy. Unfortunately the increased population around the Island and recent industrial activity has also attracted one of Earth's most fearsome creatures -- YOU, a Great White Shark.

JAWS Unleashed delivers a free-roaming experience in an underwater environment teaming with life. As JAWS, players will connect with the primal instinct to continually feed or risk starvation. JAWS can perform a variety of underwater, surface and air attacks to terrorize the island community and destroy everything in its path. In addition, gamers can enjoy the thrill of the hunt to the instantly recognizable John Williams score from the original film."

Edward Gorey

Goreyography : The West Wing : The Works of Edward Gorey

RIP MIX BURN

Magnolia Electric Co - What Comes After the Blues



Willie Nelson - Stardust

RIP MIX BURN

Handsome Boy Modeling School - So...How's Your Girl?

Peter Case - Thank You St. Jude

Matthew Sweet - Altered Beast

INDUSTORIOUS CLOCK ||| MONO*CRAFTS3.0

eeeeeeeeeeeeleven

RIP MIX BURN

Queensrÿche - Operation: Mindcrime II

Mission of Burma: Signals, Calls and Marches

The Legend of Johnny Cash

"On this day in 1961, the Soviets put the first man in space."

Spaceship Junkyard - photos by Jonas Bendiksen


KAZAKHSTAN — The flaming wreck of a rocket after crashing, 2000.




ALTAI, Russia — Villagers collect scrap from a crashed spacecraft, surrounded by thousands of white butterflies, 2000. Environmentalists fear for the region's future due to toxic rocket fuel.

NPR : Project Gives Forgotten NYC Rail Line New, Lush Life: All Things Considered, April 10, 2006 · "In New York City, construction has begun on one of the most unusual and innovative parks in the nation. The High Line is an abandoned railroad overpass that spans 22 blocks on Manhattan's West Side and will become the nation's first elevated park.

The project will transform the rusting, forgotten structure into an urban promenade of lush parkland. It will run a mile and half through the city -- from Greenwich Village to Midtown Manhattan -- and hover three stories above the street.

On top of the elevated rail line, the sky opens up and the sounds of the city drop away. The rails are overgrown in sections with wild grasses and trees."

Salon.com News | Paris is burning

Demonstrations against the CPE - a photoset on Flickr

RIP MIX BURN

Nadine: Downtown, Saturday

And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead: Source Tags and Codes

The The: Mind Bomb

Is It...Man or Astro-Man?



The Warriors (1979)

The FADER Magazine - New York Mythology
To coincide with today's release of the "Ultimate Director's Cut" of The Warriors on DVD, we're giving you a director's cut, web-exclusive version of the "Oral History Of The Warriors" piece by editor Eric Ducker, which originally ran last year in F26. Can you dig it? Can you diiiiig iiiiit?!

On Friday February 9, 1979 the front page of the New York Times Weekend section ran the headline “Six Films Open With A Galaxy Of Stars.” The movies highlighted were Murder By Decree, Hardcore, In Praise Of Older Women, Agatha, Quintet and When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder? There was also a seventh, unmentioned film that opened: The Warriors. It not only became the surprise box office winner of the weekend, but the film that went on to find the greatest cultural impact. 25 years later its surreal vision of New York has had an influence not only in film, but also in realms including music, fashion and art. Through constant showings on basic cable, midnight movie screenings and word-of-mouth rentals its audience has transcended generations. It’s a thrilling, brutal, vibrant and sometimes hilarious movie. It’s also weird as shit. Still, The Warriors is one of the few cult classics whose quality actually surpasses its kitsch appeal.

The movie tells the story of nine Coney Island gang members, and the girl they pick up along the way, who must bop their way back to their home turf after they are falsely accused of killing a powerful leader named Cyrus at a city wide meeting of the gangs in the Bronx. The film is loosely based on the novel by Sol Yurick that takes its inspiration from the Greek tale of Anabasis by Xenephon.

Fübar Watch

my jaw clenches...
Baghdad: The besieged press | Salon.com News
Upon arriving in Amman, Jordan, the main civilian gateway to Baghdad, one already has had the feeling of drawing ever nearer to an atomic reactor in meltdown. Even in Jordan, there is a palpable sense of being in the last concentric circle away from a radioactive ground zero emitting uncontrollable waves of contamination.
[snip]
As America approached the third anniversary of its involvement in Iraq, I had gone to Baghdad to observe not the war itself, but how it is being covered by the press. But, of course, the war is inescapable. It has no battle lines, no fronts, not even the rural-urban divide that has usually characterized guerrilla wars. Instead, the conflict is everywhere and nowhere.
[snip]
As the quest for greater private security increases, a new and unexpected kind of public insecurity has grown alongside it. With vehicles rerouted through an ever-diminishing number of open streets, traffic jams have become more frequent, exposing foreigners, rich Baghdadis, and anyone else out of favor with one or another group of insurgents to a greater danger of being kidnapped, shot, or blown up. It is unnerving (to say the least) to be stuck in such traffic, wedged into a welter of dilapidated sedans, vans, and pickup trucks with heavily armed Iraqis staring sullenly through the window of your expensively reinforced car, as security guards sitting next to you cradle their automatic weapons. With no possibility of escape, you can't help wondering when your unlucky moment will come. And when traffic completely stops and frustrated drivers begin to break out of line, gun their vehicles up sidewalks, veer across center dividers, or just charge up the opposite lane against the flow of oncoming traffic, it is difficult to remain calm.
[snip]
"Squeezing off a few rounds of automatic weapons fire here in Baghdad is the equivalent of honking your horn in America."
[snip]
Driving through the streets of Baghdad, one now sees members of the newly created, blue-uniformed Iraqi Police Service, extolled by the Bush administration as another hopeful sign of "Iraqization." But because police recruitment stations, training schools, and district precincts are favorite targets of the insurgents, many of these new police are afraid of being identified as collaborators with the Americans or the new Iraqi government. Their remedy is to wear black stocking caps with eye, nose, and mouth holes pulled down over their faces so they look like so many bank robbers. One sees these sinister-looking protectors of the peace at traffic circles and intersections, or brandishing automatic weapons in the back of American-bought pickup trucks, which makes them seem far more menacing than reassuring.
[snip]
Wherever in the city the news bureaus are, they have become fortified installations with their own mini-armies of private guards on duty 24 hours a day at the gates, in watch towers, and around perimeters. To reach these bureaus, one has to run through a maze of checkpoints, armed guards, blast-wall fortifications, and concertina-wired no man's lands where all visitors and their cars are repeatedly searched. The bitter truth is that doing any kind of work outside these American fortified zones has become so dangerous for foreigners as to be virtually suicidal.
[snip]
Nearly every foreign group working in Iraq has felt it necessary to hire a PSD, or "personal security detail," from more than 60 "private military firms" (PMFs) -- Triple Canopy, Erinys International Ltd., and Blackwater USA -- now doing a brisk business in Iraq. In fact, there are now reported to be at least 25,000 armed men from such private firms on duty in the country today.
[snip]
...these subterranean paramilitary PSDs form a parallel universe to America's occupation force.
[snip]
It has not escaped the attention of U.S. National Guardsmen, reservists, regular Army soldiers, and Marines that their mercenary counterparts get paid four or five times more than they do, sometimes as much as $1,000 a day. Understandably, there is a good deal of resentment about this inequity, and not a few American soldiers now aspire to nothing more than getting out of their low-paying jobs working for the military so that they can sign on with one of these companies.

Fübar

five

KILT WATCH: Jailed!

Ananova - Kilt-lifting Scotsman kicked off train: "Kilt-lifting Scotsman kicked off train

A drunk Scotsman was kicked off a train in Germany after lifting his kilt and flashing passengers in a packed dining car.

The unnamed 46-year-old, from Edinburgh, was on a train from Basel in Switzerland to Dusseldorf in Germany.

He had several drinks in the dining car but allegedly refused to pay and started arguing with the waiters.

He then reportedly lifted his kilt on both sides and clearly demonstrated to all present passengers, who included women and children, that he was not wearing any underwear.

Restaurant personnel then called the railway police and the Scotsman was forcibly removed from the train at Dusseldorf central station, where he promptly passed out.

Police took him to the nearest hospital where he spent the night sobering up.

Dusseldorf railway police spokesman Norbert Junge said: 'This is definitely not the usual sort of call we get about troublemakers on trains.

'I have to say we were all a bit amused by it. The man did not assault or grossly offend anyone, apart from showing everyone what Scotsmen wear under their kilts - namely nothing at all.

'There will be no charges against him, unless the train company decides to take legal action for his unpaid drinks.'"

RIP MIX BURN: KEXP.ORG

Time		Artist		Song		Album		Label
9:26		Macha & Bedhead		Believe		Macha Loved Bedhead		Jetset
		DJ Comments: yes, a Cher cover played on a touch-tone phone
9:23		Cat Power		The Greatest		The Greatest		Matador
----- air break -----
9:17		Tom Waits		Gun St. Girl		Rain Dogs		Island
9:11		Jim White		A Perfect Day To Chase Tornados		Wrong-Eyed Jesus!		Luaka Bop
9:08		Sodastream		Southside of the World		(v/a) I Am a Cold Rock. I Am Dull Grass. A Tribute to Will Oldham.		Tract
9:04		Luna		Great Jones Street		Bewitched		Electra
9:00		Belle & Sebastian		Another Sunny Day		The Life Pursuit		Matador