Lady Magnolia

Fictional 1930s runway model, real present-day burlesque artist, or Piero Umiliani muse?



(Fingers crossed, fingers crossed...)

The Champion

Naoto Matsumura, Guardian of Fukushima's Animals:

Naoto isn’t a normal person, of course. He initially fled south with his parents during the nuclear disaster, but he ended up leaving them in Iwaki and returning to Tomioka. His reason for doing so wasn’t a sentimental love for home or a middle-aged man’s refusal to change, however. It was simple: he couldn’t abandon the animals on his family farm. “I was scared at first because I knew the radiation had spread everywhere,” he said of his initial days back home. “The next thought in my head was that if I stayed too long, I’d end up with cancer or leukemia. But, the longer I was with the animals, the more I came to see that we were all still healthy and that we would be OK.” Matsumura now cares for the cattle, pigs, cats, dogs, and even ostriches that are now ownerless, a responsibility he took on partly by accident. “Our dogs didn’t get fed for the first few days. When I did eventually feed them, the neighbors’ dogs started going crazy. I went over to check on them and found that they were all still tied up. Everyone in town left thinking they would be back home in a week or so, I guess. From then on, I fed all the cats and dogs every day. They couldn’t stand the wait, so they’d all gather around barking up a storm as soon as they heard my truck. Everywhere I went there was always barking. Like, ‘we’re thirsty’ or, ‘we don’t have any food.’ So I just kept making the rounds.”

Read the rest of this touching story (titled "Radioactive Man") at Vice.com

Stoner's Plumbing Problem

Kudos to the excellent staff at UM Hospital, especially Dr. Narasimham Dasika, and to Stoner's friends and family who were so generous and compassionate and loving through these last few weeks. Pictured are the critically-wounded (yet somehow still devilishly handsome) Stoner, his angelic R.N. Chelsea, and dedicated friends Jill and Jen.
...

Huge Falls That weren't Fatal

from WIRED (June 2011).

220 feet: Leap Off a Bridge
While on a class trip this past March, 17-year-old Luhe Vilagomez jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge—just for kicks. Unlike 98 percent of those who make that plunge, he lived (to brag about it). A surfer picked him up, and they paddled to shore together.

9,500 feet: Parachute Fail
In 1991, skydiver Jill Shields fell to earth when her parachute failed to deploy. She landed on wet ground, where rescuers found her conscious and able to talk. She left a foot-deep impression in the mud.

12,000 feet: Double Parachute Fail
Michael Holmes, a resident of Jersey, England, was skydiving in New Zealand in 2006 when both his main chute and backup failed to deploy. He crashed into a dense thicket of blackberry bushes, sustaining only a punctured lung and a broken ankle.

22,000 feet: Fighter Plane Ditch
In 1943, Alan Magee, a WWII Air Force gunner, jumped out of his plunging B-17 without a chute. Losing consciousness, he crashed through the skylight of France’s St. Nazaire train station. He had a broken leg and ankle, a nearly severed right arm, and 28 wounds from the glass.

33,330 feet: Commercial Jet Crash
Vesna Vulović, a Serbian flight attendant, holds the Guinness world record for the longest fall. She plummeted in a piece of fuselage when a 1972 flight she was on exploded in midair. Vulović suffered a fractured skull, two broken legs, three broken vertebrae, and a broken pelvis but eventually recovered fully.

Feral Boy, rocky and Stoner Cheat Death

Intrepid explorers miss fanged demise by a mere 19 month margin.

Jaguar mauls U.S. man after cage smashed in hurricane

A Denver Post Wire Report:

BELIZE CITY — A jaguar that escaped from its cage at a Belize animal-rescue center [where the Clock members took in a tour and spent the night] during Hurricane Richard has been blamed in the mauling death of a U.S. citizen Tuesday. The 4-year-old male jaguar escaped when a tree fell on his cage Sunday. Authorities found the victim's mauled body nearby. He was identified as Bruce Cullerton, an American who also held Belize citizenship.

Too Much Awesome! Fact!

One giant step for the Giants, one small leap for potheads:


It's great to have a performance artist as your closer:

Suicide Watch

Time's running out, rocky.
From The New York Times:
Bay Area moves ahead with plans for suicide net

SAN FRANCISCO — For 73 years, people have poured onto the picturesque Golden Gate Bridge to... jump to their deaths — an act transportation officials moved to stop Wednesday by authorizing money for a suicide barrier.

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which oversees transportation financing in the Bay Area, approved $5 million in federal money for the final engineering and design of a steel-mesh net to hang 20 feet below the span and catch would-be jumpers. Officials estimate the net system will cost an additional $45 million to build and install.

Found on Facebook

...and reprinted here without permission:

(There appears to only be one hiker still being restrained, so Rex's t-shirt must be working!)

****

Easy Money

The rich fucking us over again:

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2009/10/17/how-wall-street-is-making-its-billions/

....

Year-End (Stoner)

Movies:
Burn After Reading
Iron Man
Transsiberian

DVD:
Stuck
Idiocracy
The Ruins

Fiction:
Christopher’s Ghosts, Charles McCarry
Gun Work, David J. Schow
Small Crimes, Dave Zeltserman

Nonfiction:
Art of the Slow Cooker, Andrew Schloss
Born Standing Up, Steve Martin
Human Smoke, Nicholson Baker

Music, Rock:
Howlin Rain – Magnificent Fiend
Left Lane Cruiser – Bring Yo Ass To The Table
The Whigs – Mission Control

Music, Other:
Duffy – Rockferry
Hot Club of Detroit – Night Town
Pine Leaf Boys – Blues de Musicien

Singles:
“Fake Empire” The National, Boxer
“Too Drunk To Dream” Magnetic Fields, Distortion
“City Livin’” G. Love & Special Sauce, Superhero Brother

Television:
Kath & Kim, NBC
Metalocalypse, Adult Swim (Cartoon Network)
Scream Queens, VH1

Honorable Mention:
We Own The Night (DVD)
Brad Mehldau Trio Live (CD)
Kill All Your Darlings, Luc Sante (Paperback)

Best “Discovery”:
Fuschia Swing Song, Sam Rivers (Blue Note, 1964)

Oh, The Irony

BELOIT, Wis. - The 91st richest man in the U.S., a roofing company billionaire, has died after falling through his home garage's roof, local authorities said Friday.

Ken Hendricks, 66, was checking on construction on the roof over his garage at his home in the town of Rock Thursday night when he fell through, Rock County Sheriff's Department commander Troy Knudson said. He suffered massive head injuries, according to his company, ABC Supply Co.

Hendricks had a net worth of $3.5 billion in September, according to Forbes magazine. That made him the country's 91st richest person, according to the magazine's ranking of American billionaires.

But he seemed unfazed by his wealth.

"It doesn't make any difference to me: I can't spend it," Hendricks said in an interview with Inc.com in September 2006. "I'd have to sell the company, and I'll sell the company over my dead body."

Favorite headline of 2007 so far

From Reuters on Yahoo news service:

"Maliki orders security forces to crush foes"


Is this the last-ditch, desparate command by an impotent leader about to lose it all, like Dr. Evil directing his henchmen to "crush him, crush him" as Austin Powers is about to upend his world-domination plot?