Just running around and doing some thinking for a forthcoming blog post. In the meantime, here’s something we hope you’ll really like.
Ernest Hemmingway Memorial, near Sun Valley Resort, Ketchum, Idaho.
Grave of Ernest Hemmingway, Ketchum Cemetary, Ketchum, Idaho.
Spent all day yesterday on planes or waiting on planes. Today looks busy. Blogging will be catch as catch can.
If anyone knows the Boise area, feel free to drop restaurant recommendations in comments. So far I’ve been favorably impressed by Bar Gernika and Moxie Java on Chinden.
This is:
a) Odd.
2) Makes you go “Hmmmmmmm.” when you start thinking about certain racehorses that may or may not have had a chance to win the Triple Crown.
Dermorphin apparently originated “from the backs of a type of South American frog” though the version of the substance currently in use is believed to be synthetic. (“There’s a lot out there, and that would be an awful lot of frogs that would have to be squeezed,” he said, adding, “There are a lot of unemployed chemists out there.”)
(“A lot of unemployed chemists out there.” I suddenly have this image of Walter White synthesizing frog juice.)
11 horse in Louisiana, 15 in Oklahoma, and six in New Mexico have allegedly tested positive. Note that there’s no evidence yet that any Triple Crown competitors may have used the substance; but also note that there’s no discussion about whether any of those horses have been tested for dermorphin.
Barton Lidice Benes died on May 30th, but his obit shows up in today’s NYT.
Mr. Benes was a sculptor “who worked in materials that he called artifacts of everyday life”. For example, he did sculptures using shredded cash. He also did a series of sculptures called “Flood”, using damaged property donated by victims of the 1997 North Dakota floods.
One of the interesting aspects of this obit is the detail that Mr. Benes, who lived in Greenwich Village, apparently had a close relationship with the North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks. NDMA exhibited his work in the 1990s, and…
I’m curious how the relationship between Mr. Benes and NDMA developed. It just seems odd that he’d be that close to an art museum in what New Yorkers consider “flyover country”. It also seems odd that he had so much trouble exhibiting his “transgressive” art in NYC.
I don’t have anything to say about Rodney King.
I do, however, have a Bell update: Robert “Ratso” Rizzo and Angela Spaccia lost five years of pension credit. CALPERS, the people who regulate state pensions, ruled that the five years of credit Rizzo and Spaccia had purchased was bought using city funds. This is a) not legal, and 2) CALPERS “found no evidence that the Bell City Council had approved making payments”.
According to the LAT, Ratso’s pension has been cut from $650,000 a year to $50,000 a year. Spaccia went from $250,000 to $34,000. Neither of these figures include money both could have received from “Bell’s supplementary retirement program”.
I was eight years old in 1973.
I have vague memories of hearing about the Wounded Knee standoff on the network news, but not much more than that.
What does this have to do with the price of beer in Whiteclay?
Glad you asked.
The NYT cites several odd deaths: a man found with “stab wounds to his face and neck” was ruled to have committed suicide. A woman who was found with a stab wound in her burnt home was ruled to have died of “carbon monoxide poisoning, acute alcoholism ‘and other factors'”. Another man was killed with a hatchet, but the killer was never prosecuted “because of impairment caused by a mental condition”.
Here’s another good one:
Should you be planning to head out to Las Vegas for DEFCON, to get married, or any other reason, the Gun Store is offering $5 off any machine gun rental.
(Hattip: Lawrence.)
Cast your mind back, way back, to those halcyon days of June, 2011. Remember those times?
Disco was the rage. People were discovering that you could get food out of trailers. And in Liberty County, police were digging up someone’s house based on the claims of a self-proclaimed “psychic” that there were 30 or more bodies buried on the property.
Really. I’m not making this stuff up.
Why this flashback to the era of Herman Cain and Casey Anthony?
As we often say at WCD, “Quel fromage!”
Henry Hill has passed away. In a hospital. Of what I guess could be called “natural causes”.
(You know, I still have not seen “Goodfellas”, though I do have it and want to sit down and watch it soon. I have read Wiseguy
Also worth noting: Ann Rutherford, Scarlett O’Hara’s sister.
Long and fascinating article in the NYT. Apparently, the Zeta cartel has been laundering drug profits by purchasing quarter horses in the United States.
Way to keep a low freaking profile there, guys.
Edited to add: More from the Statesman.