IT'S A MIRACLE!!!

No.

It's not.

It's science and technology, even some Rocket Science, and some brass-balled, Harry Stamper, Armegeddon, drilling motherfuckers that saved those 33 miners.

Don't get me wrong.

I have no doubt whatsoever that the religous faith of the miners and their families sustained them, gave them comfort and helped them survive this ordeal.

But all of the prayers in the world didn't penetrate a single centimeter of rock. It didn't supply them with air to breath. It didn't feed them. It didn't give them water. It didn't allow them to communicate with the outside world.

It was good, old fashioned, American high-tech drilling teams that got those miners out of that death trap.

There was nothing supernatural or miraculous about this.

It was GPS, drilling, air, water, food, cameras, psychology, technology and sheer human will power and determination that snatched 33 men from a cavity more than 2 Empire State Buildings deep in some of the hardest rock in the world after being trapped for over 2 months.


Humans, science and technology saved those men.

Their faith may have comforted and sustained them, but it was actual science and technology that saved their lives.

Left to the "The Will Of God", they would all have been dead a long time ago.

This Is Why Republicans Won't Take Control In November

In a nutshell, it's because they are running batshit crazy candidates that no swing voter is going to cast a ballot for.

Christine O'Donnel, Republican, Delaware: The Lying, Anti-Masturbation, Anti-Evolution, Palin-Endorsed Witch



Sharron Angle, Republican, Nevada: The Neo-Prohibitionist, Anti-U.N, Anti-Social Security, Anti-Education, Tea Party Republican who won the Primary against the Chicken Barterer



Carl Paladino, Republican, New York: The Sexist Fag Hater!



And last but not least...

Rich Iott, Republican, Illinois: The Nazi SS Jew Killing Renactor


"Republican congressional candidate Rich Iott, under fire for dressing as a Nazi in World War II reenactments, attacked House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) on Monday for repudiating his participation “before he had all the facts.”

In an interview on CNN, Iott defended his role in the reenactments and offered harsh criticism of Cantor, one of the highest profile Jewish lawmakers in Washington.

“Rep. Cantor did what so many career politicians do…he reacted before he had all the facts,” Iott said. “He didn't know the whole story. He didn't understand what historical reenacting is all about, or the education side of it. And he just made a decision without all the facts.”



Jesus Fucking Christ in a chicken basket!

These are the best candidates that the Republicans can field? Because every other Republican candidate was too moderate?

I'm betting on the American people to vote for the SANE candidates.

The Cosby Hotel - b. 1881 - d. ????

[click on any of the pics to embiggen and explore the luscious detail]

The 139 year old Cosby Hotel at 9th and Baltimore is one of the oldest buildings in Kansas City and deserves to be preserved.

But it seems that the current owner may be more interested in selling a vacant lot at a prime downtown location than preserving history.


Apparently the only options are finding a buyer or putting it under the wrecking ball.


This is so puzzling because the property isn't in the middle of a blighted neighborhood where all of the other buildings are falling apart.


Far from it. The 9th St. corridor west of Main is thriving. The historic facade could be preserved and incorporated into a new building.




The owner of The Cosby recently had all of the windows removed from the building. Whether that was to remove a potential flying glass hazard during demolition or merely to hasten the natural deterioration of the building is unknown.


But it did offer an unprecedented and never to be repeated ghostly view into 139 years of Kansas City history.










The other day I made swing by The Cosby and found that all of the windows were now boarded up.


Does this mean that possible preservation has trumped greed and neglect?

Let's hope so.

ACKNOWLEGMENTS: David Remley at Hyperblogal challenged me to conduct this photo essay and his encouragement and advice have been invaluable. To the extent that this essay doesn't suck, thank you Dave! To the extent that it does suck, that's all on me.

American History in GTO's Own Words

My daughter, young Galadriel Tanqueray Onassis, recently summarized for me what she has learned about American history.

********

American history synapses. (1776-present day)

"Oh hey lets fight the British so we can be cool by ourselves"

[insert revoloutionary war here]

"now lets make some laws n junk"

"oh, better idea. These people are dumb let's take all their land and put them in these lame reservations"

[insert indian wars here]

"oh, and lets enslave these people cuz they suck.

[insert civil war here]

"Just kidding! Give them rights. They're equal"

"Yeah! War! America! Beer! FOOTBALLLLLLLLLLL"

********

I think she totally gets it!

Rihanna the stylista

offers her styling services to a select group of fans at Topshop’s Oxford Circus store on October 4 in London, England.

Five lucky girls who entered a recent Topshop competition won a meet-and-greet with the 22-year-old singer and a styling session with her inside the store’s personal shopping suite.

As an added bonus, they also got to keep the outfit Rihanna selected for them.

Good for the girls, but based on this outfit, I can only imagined what pieces Rihanna put together for the five. A definite demented elf chic is going on here...

Shuffling on...

For the third time since capturing the Government in 2008, the Democratic Labour Party has reshuffled its Cabinet.

This time around, it's because ailing PM David Thompson has had to shed most of his portfolios. His role is now that of Prime Minister and Minister of National Security.

Here's the full list of Ministerial changes:

1. David Thompson – Prime Minister and Minister of National Security
• Senator Darcy Boyce – Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office with responsibility Energy, Telecommunications, Immigration and Investment.
• Senator Harry Husbands – Parliamentary Secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office


2. Freundel Stuart – Deputy Prime Minister, Attorney General and Minister of Home Affairs

3. Christopher Sinckler – Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs
• Senator Jepter Ince – Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Economic Affairs

4. Senator Haynesley Benn - Minister of Commerce and Trade

5. Ronald Jones – Minister of Education and Human Resource Development

6. Michael Lashley - Minister of Housing and Lands, Urban and Rural Development
• Patrick Todd – Minister of State in the Ministry of Housing and Lands, Urban and Rural Development with responsibilities for Urban and Rural Development

7. John Boyce - Minister of Transport and Works (In addition, Leader of the House)

8. Denis Lowe - Minister of Drainage, Water Resource Management and the Environment

9. Donville Inniss – Minister of Health
• Senator Irene Sandiford- Garner – Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Health

10. Richard Sealy - Minister of Tourism

11. Dr. David Estwick – Minister of Agriculture, Food, Fisheries, Industry and Small Business Development

12. Dr. Esther Byer- Suckoo - Minister of Labour

13. Steve Blackett – Minister of Social Care, Constituency Empowerment and Community Development

14. Stephen Lashley – Minister of Family, Culture, Sports and Youth

15. George Hutson- Minister of International Transport and International Business

16. Senator Maxine McClean – Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade


And in related news, apparently the Cabinet reshuffle didn't sit too well with former Minister of Economic Affairs, Dr. David Estwick. He had scheduled a press conference to express his thoughts on the matter, but apprently cooler heads prevailed and he was convinced not to go through with it.

I understand Estwick's pique over his perceived demotion, but really, how was he going to hold the PM to ransom over it?

Resign? He would only be cheating himself out of a place in Cabinet and relegating himself to the backbench.

Go independent? Independent Parliamentarians don't get very far in Bajan politics, and he knows it. Just ask Hammie-La...

Cross the floor? After his former colleague and leader Clyde Mascoll crossed over to the BLP anything is possible, but I somehow doubt Estwick would go that route. Though I would pay to see him and Owen Arthur trying to mesh their economic policies... Wuhloss.

Above all, Estwick would come over as the bas guy if he criticised his leader for changing his portfolio. Public sentiment is behind PM Thompson, and that's that.

Do You Recognize These People?

So, as I stated before, I'm completing my migration from analog to digital photography by working through my backlog of film rolls.

Some of them are exposed film rolls I've never processed.

Some of them are unexposed rolls of film that I am running through my legacy workhorse Nikon N80 on various creative projects.

My "serious" projects were always shot in B&W.

Shit I didn't care about I shot in color.

The B&W stuff I take to Crick Camera because my darkroom equipment is in storage and the folks at Crick are professionals who know how to do things right.

My color stuff I'll take to Walmart or whatever is convenient because I don't give a shit.

Which was the case the other day when I dropped off my last exposed roll of color film at the CVS Pharmacy near my office. It was an old roll, I had no idea what was on it so I had no emotional investment in the content. It was a fucking crap shoot.

I had them process the film straight to CD with no prints.

My first hint that something was amiss was when I pulled the contact sheet. I had absolutely no recollection of the people in the pics. But it's hard to tell from a contact sheet so I figured I'd wait until I got home and could pop in the CD and to take a closer look.

When I put in the CD, It said "...There Are No Viewable Pictures On This Disk..." and it gave me 2 options..."Install" or "Exit".

When I clicked on "Install", it locked up my PC and I had to do a hard, "power-off" reboot.

I finally pulled out the negatives and found that they didn't match the contact sheet. They appeared to be pictures of little girls and Barbie dolls, so I thought maybe they were old pictures of my daughter and her friends.

So basically, some downtown CVS photo employee grabbed a bunch of shit, threw it into an envelope, slapped a reciept on it and called it done.

I took this whole hot mess back to CVS today, explained things to the Manager, who re-explained things to the "CVS Pharmacy Photography Professional" I had dropped my film off with who promised to fix it!

She fed the negatives into her machine, stabbed at some spots on the touch-screen monitor like she'd never seen it before, exclaimed frustration many times, over and over (while muttering about another co-worker who had fucked things up and called her for advice while she was on break), and finally managed to pull up some images.

There were indeed pictures of little girls and Barbie dolls, but they weren't my daughter or any of her friends in any house I've ever lived in. This is not my film.

So let's recap.

I drop off a roll of my film for processing and I get back:

1: A contact sheet from someone else's roll of film
2: Negatives from someone else's roll of film
3: A CD that has NO PICTURES on it and locks up my computer.

COST: About 6 bucks, 2 hours of my time, and a roll of film that may or may not have been priceless.

As a result of all of this, here are a bunch of pictures I didn't take of people I don't know that I paid 6 bucks to get.

Enjoy!