Friday Ephemera

How to gird your loins. Because you need to know these things. // Beer-glazed bacon. // Beautiful chemistry. // Yes, but how many crisps are in that bag? (h/t, Coudal) // That old book smell. // Hello, bunny. // How deodorant works. // Always wash your dachshund. // No singing in the rain. // Fun with stains. // Making fake Japanese food. // It absorbs oxygen. // Coffee car. // They have the technology. // Polyphonic overtones, sung by Anna-Maria Hefele. // Pringles can plus laser diodes equals sexy party. // Why toothpaste makes orange juice taste awful. // Ashtray of note. // “Teach women not to rape.” // There are penises in the lab. // There may be some heat issues as you approach Mach 7. // And finally, it isn’t clear what kicked off this suburban kangaroo street fight.

Comments

[Account Deleted]

Is it really just with orange juice, though? I've drunken soda after washing my teeth and the taste is just as awful. It's the same with other juices, milk, and etc... in my experience.

[Hal]

Singing in the lack of rain

[Sam]

They have the technology.

Yeah, it's a classic title sequence... but don't forget the version by Dusty Springfield.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03V1qxAjIlA

[David]

but don't forget the version by Dusty Springfield.

Oh dear. I don’t think even Ms Springfield could do much with that flimsy little nothing. Maybe it needs more bionic spring sounds. Di-di-di-di-di-Bo-bo-bo-bo-bo-Ti-ti-ti-ti-ti. See? Better already.

[rjmadden]

Hello, bunny.

I'm not convinced that's a rabbit, you know. There may be one inside it.

[Dr. Westerhaus]

Re: Girding of Loins - I can't help thinking that shorts (and shinpads) would have been an obvious design improvement in battle scenarios...

[sk60]

How to gird your loins.

So I've been doing it wrong all these years...

[David]

You’d think basic loin-girding would be taught in schools. Along with teaching girls which battle-heels to wear.

[Ted S., Catskill Mtns., NY, USA]

If you're going to do The Six Million Dollar Man, you also need to have Wonder Woman spinning.

[David]

One evening, years ago, The Other Half and I came home to a flat we used to rent and heard the Wonder Woman theme blaring from the flat downstairs. It was incredibly loud and someone was attempting to sing along with it. Possibly in the key of H. I knocked on the neighbour’s door, quite loudly, and a sheepish, rather high-looking bloke peered out and apologised profusely. I’m not quite sure what was going on in there but it involved dressing up.

[David]

In fairness to the chap, he did look very trashed and it is a good theme tune.

[Joan]

I’m not quite sure what was going on in there but it involved dressing up.

Satin tights? :-)

[David]

Satin tights?

Well, let’s say things were heading in a theatrical direction.

It was a fairly, um, bohemian part of town. Our landlady owned the small “members only” cinema across the road. I believe it showed some kind of special interest films.

[matt]

So, you lived across the street from a Porno theatre. I could never do that, because i'd never get any work done because i'd never go to work

One of my favourite things about Friday Ephemera are the intriguing (ephemeral!) link descriptions

The story about the Mach 7 flight i saw at Ace of Spades last week and it really is an amazing read. Really it's manned rocket flight with little guarantee of success. What mattered like so much technological development was is this better that what we had before and if it works or now we will learn from it.

This story about the first nuclear reactor for the Us Navy is very similar

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/10/what-it-was-like-to-test-the-first-submarine-nuclear-reactor/381195/

[David]

More bedlamites loose in schools. Not the children, their teachers:

Little girl points crayon at classmate, school makes her sign contract promising not to kill anyone... The little girl was also forced to take a psychological evaluation to gauge her likelihood of suicide.

[Account Deleted]

And here I thought the Brits and Aussies had bad when it came to "nannyfication" of the state. Shows how much I know.

[Sam Duncan]

So somebody made a site all about title sequences and somehow hasn't got round to The Professionals? Must be saving the best for last.

[David]

The Professionals

I miss porno wah-wah.

[svh]

"The feminist scholar Donna Haraway defined cyborg writing as "the power to survive, not on the basis of original innocence, but on the basis of seizing the tools to mark the world that marked them as other." That term describes so much digital scrawl on the Internet today — voices screaming from the margins, searching for connection. The British journalist Laurie Penny’s words seem to have secured her just that; she has found a devoted audience for her blog and three previous books."

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/books/review/laurie-pennys-unspeakable-things.html

[David]

cyborg writing… voices screaming from the margins, searching for connection.

Oh dear. Though I was amused by the attempt to portray Ms Penny as in some way marginalised and overcoming this burden of not being heard.

Yes, this privately educated middle-class leftist, lectured at Wadham by other middle-class leftists and steeped in the arrogance and presumed entitlement common to such people, and with all of the “privilege” she so readily denounces in others. A woman who was all but waved through the doors of Channel 4 and the BBC, our nation’s state broadcaster, by people who find her mouthings either titillating or congenial. A woman who is currently boosting her social status with a year at Harvard, studying journalism free of charge (thanks largely to petitioning by those same middle-class leftists in the media), and is now sitting through lectures on “economic justice” given by middle-class leftists, while surrounded by middle-class leftists. Oh yes, obviously, she’s such an outsider.

Though she has been known to scream, generally at people who dare to disagree with her. So there’s that.

[ Edited. ]

[dw]

What David said. :-D

[ftumch]

Hmmmm... bacon...

http://baconsalt.3dcartstores.com/baconlube_p_60.html

[Nikw211]

I was amused by the attempt to portray Ms Penny as in some way marginalised ...

"...at Disobedient Objects, an exhibition at the V&A* (until 1 February 2015) of the tools and totems of the last hundred years or so of political protest. The display of weapons, shields, flags and uniforms looks like a feral Imperial War Museum, an alternative military history written in rag and bone. On the wall at one end of the Porter Gallery a huge projection of Laurie Penny’s face announces that the only way to change things is by posing ‘a threat to property or power’.

*Victoria & Albert Museum, London - a more establishment kind of place it is hard to imagine.

Oh yes, obviously, she’s such an outsider.

Quite.

[David]

Quite.

You have to marvel at the extent of the self-flattery and mutual mythologizing, the relentlessness of it. For some, it’s practically a full-time job.