Karakuri

Karakuri from Matthew Allard on Vimeo.

Via Mary Mitsuda

Black and WTF

Black and WTF

Drunk History

Sokeripupu just sent me Drunk history, which is funny. I especially like the one about Oney Judge.

Fake Wood Paneling

When I bought my house, it had this fake wood paneling on every wall. It was a little darker than what you see here, sort of more of a chocolate brown. I'd call the paneling in the video more of a butterscotch. I mean, it was really everywhere, on every surface, including the ceiling. It was Masonite, I think, with a rough side, and a shiny side with a wood pattern printed onto it. We tore it all out. We considered keeping it, maybe leaving it as is, or painting it, but we decided that we should just rip it all out and put up gypsum board. It made the house feel smaller, having dark textured walls. White walls sort of fall away. So we tore it out, and it came off in big 1/4 inch 4x8 sheets. The bugs were kind of eating it, so this turned out to be a good move. Also--all of the kitchen cabinets were constructed of the stuff. This was the really strange bit. There was some plywood for structure, but mostly all of the drawers and doors and shelves were made of leftover Masonite. Even the drawer runners, the slats that the drawers slid on, were made of Masonite cut into strips and sandwiched together. We ended up ripping every last bit of the stuff out and reducing the interior of the house to bare studs. Since all that Masonite was so flat, we were able to dispose of it all pretty easily. Three or four runs to the dump in a pickup truck, that's all it took to get rid of a house full of the stuff.

My apologies if you've heard this story before. This story is 100% true.

That Day Today

Again, an amazing set of photos from The Boston Globe.

Abraham Fucking Lincoln

I just finished reading a biography of Abraham Lincoln, and I thought I'd share some of his lesser-known exploits with you.

• In 1831, a 22-year-old Lincoln arrived in New Salem, Illinois—a real podunk frontier town—and quickly established himself as a skilled raconteur and japesman. But he was no buffoon. Old Abe (as he was known even as a young man, due to his craggy face and Ichabodish frame) could out-philosophize your ass, and kick it six ways from Sunday to boot. He was a real comer. Naturally, this earned him some enemies, most notably a group of rough-and-tumble prairie roisterers known as the Clary's Grove Boys. Just on general cussed principle, they didn't like this new fella coming into their town and making a name for himself. So when Lincoln's boss at the ol' general store started into boasting about how his boy could lick anyone in the county, why, the Clary's Grove Boys couldn't let that slide. Their leader, a murderous little man with sourmash breath and a wooden eye (probably), challenged Lincoln to a knock-down, drag-out rasslin match. It was on, motherfucker, and it promised to be a real humdinger: http://home.att.net/~rjnorton/Lincoln48.html
  
  
• Early on in the Civil War, Lincoln was constantly frustrated by the procrastinations of that yellow-bellied pussyfoot of a commanding general, George McClellan. This goldbricking poltroon of a guttersnipe always managed to find an excuse not to launch a massive attack on Confederate forces. In May of 1862, McClellan wired Lincoln that a safe and suitable landing spot for his army could not be found in Norfolk, VA, where Lincoln had ordered him to attack. Enough was enough. Lincoln went down there his motherfucking self, taking Secretary of War Stanton and Secretary of the Treasury Chase along with him. Unguarded, the President of the United States reconnoitered a landing spot behind enemy lines, even going so far as to walk up and down the beach to prove that he was right. Fuckin McClellan.
  
  
• And finally, a story guaranteed to summon a lump even in the most Confederate-apologizing, racist one of you's throat. Early in 1861, just before setting off for Washington, D.C. to take the oath of office, Lincoln paid a visit to his good friend and law partner, Thomas Herndon, with some final instructions on how he wanted the practice to be maintained in his absence. It was clear by then that the country was falling apart, and that old Abe was inheriting a whirlwind. His final words to Herndon: "If I live I'm coming back sometime, and then we'll go right on practicing law as if nothing had ever happened." He never returned to Springfield.
  

Secret Leaders of the Rebellion

I refer to this document a lot, and I finally remembered to post it. Or maybe I've already posted it, and couldn't find it. Anyway. Using new information in the Star Wars prequels, the author, one Keith Martin, reinterprets the original trilogy--most interestingly by suggesting that R2-D2 and Chewbacca are the ones really running the show. Excerpt:

Chewie persuaded Han to do business with Jabba the Hutt so he could make regular runs to Tattoine, where Chewie could pass messages between Kenobi and Organa. When R2's urgent message came through only days before, the only way for Chewie to get back to Tattoine in time was to make the "mistake" that forced Han to dump his cargo to avoid capture. As a down side, this led to Solo's getting a death mark out on him from Jabba the Hutt. Chewie was a bit upset about the need for that but figured they weren't going to be dealing with Tattoine for much longer.

En route to Alderaan, R2 and Chewie play stop-motion chess. This is the latest in a series of games they've played over the year in the back rooms of space stations and cantinas across the galaxy, but this is the first time they've done it in front of their respective straight men, so they put on a big show.