May 192009
 

San Francisco can be foggy. Foggy enough that big things vanish.

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Fortunately, the fog burns off, and the Golden Gate Bridge cleans up pretty well.

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Damned sky rats…

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 Posted by at 11:57 pm
May 162009
 

Before the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous concept came along and produced the LEM, the Apollo Command and Service Modules were going to land directly onto the Moon. Below is a General Dynamics concept for one such lander, dating from October, 1961. This is part of a larger drawing that I’m working on cleaning up.

Once again… I’ll be traveling shortly, so blogging will be reduced for roughly two weeks. CD-ROM orders will be delayed, but download orders should still be filled in relatively short order (assuming WiFi connections are to be had).

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 Posted by at 11:44 pm
May 132009
 

OK, now THIS was freaking hilarious. Iowahawk wins another one.

http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2009/05/i-guess-you-had-to-be-there.html

Liz Windsor

Thanks for that swell intro, Shecky. By the way, I know how much you love our infidel nuclear technology, but we’ve got another 1940’s invention you should really check out. It’s called deodorant.

(rimshot)

Listen folks, I know you came here expecting me to start hurling some tasteless insults at Barack Obama. But, seriously, I just can’t bring myself to do it. Barack is almost like another son to me.

(audience: awwwww)

Yeah, another jug eared idiot with a hard-on for horsefaced women. Barack was in London a couple weeks ago and rang me up, asked if he could drop by for tea. So he comes in, and I’m thinking, whoa — those Yanks have really stepped up their space program, he’s brought along a real live Klingon. Turns out it was his wife.

I wish I could be that funny.

 Posted by at 7:58 pm
May 132009
 

Now *this* was an uplifting news story:

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/19365762/detail.html

“They just came in and separated the men from the women and said, ‘Give me your wallets and cell phones,’” said George Williams of the College Park Police Department.Bailey said the gunmen started counting bullets. “The other guy asked how many (bullets) he had. He said he had enough,” said Bailey. That’s when one student grabbed a gun out of a backpack and shot at the invader who was watching the men. The gunman ran out of the apartment.

The student then ran to the room where the second gunman, identified by police as 23-year-old Calvin Lavant, was holding the women.“Apparently the guy was getting ready to rape his girlfriend. So he told the girls to get down and he started shooting. The guy jumped out of the window,” said Bailey.

Bravo, good sir.

 Posted by at 12:45 pm
May 132009
 

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25473694-5013016,00.html

Doncha just hate when this happens?

A TAIWAN carpenter bought a porn DVD only to find secretly taped motel footage of his wife having sex with his friend, whom the husband later stabbed.

The husband, identified only by his surname Lee, discovered the illicit sex on the DVD in 2002.

The sexual acts apparently had been recorded using a hidden camera and were on a pornographic DVD, titled Affairs with Others’ Wives, which the husband bought from a vendor to watch at home.

Ooops.

 Posted by at 12:20 pm
May 132009
 

Once again, reality trumps fiction in the WTF department. Via the Telegraph:

The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, has launched the Vergatorio, one of the world’s cheapest mobile phones and probably the only one with a rude name.

Costing $15 (about £10), and rivalled for price only by the very cheapest phones on sale in Asia, the Vergatorio’s name has its origins in a venezuelan slang term for penis.

“This telephone will be the biggest seller not only in Venezuela but the world. Whoever doesn’t have a Vergatario is nothing.”

Hmmm. “Whoever doesn’t have a *penis* is nothing.” One is left to wonder what the National Organization of Women is going to have to say about this.

NEWS FLASH! The Unwanted Blog has received a secret photo showing Hugo’s very own personal phone prototype!

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 Posted by at 12:04 pm
May 122009
 

A somewhat cropped, B&W version of promotional artwork for a (probably) 1960’s heavy lift helicopter design. The sum total of what I have on this design is wrapped up in this single image. I would guess that it’s Sikorsky, but that’s just a guess.

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Sometimes these odd bits of art come from even odder sources. Did I find it in an archive? No. In a book? No. Magazine? Nope. It’s a screenshot from the classic (as in “classicly bad”) movie “Flash Gordon.” In the scene where Dr. Zarkov’s mind is being erased, a series of images are flashed onscreen for precisely one frame each (though for some reason the same images of tigers kept being flashed over and over). And somehow this image was included. Also included was a photo of a mockup of the Lockeed CL-1700, an attack helicopter that competed for the role won by the AH-64 Apache. Why these? Dunno. I guess the art-guy for “Flash Gordon” just happened to have them lying around. Other aircraft images were clearly Grumman and General Dynamics promo shots, so there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of logic to it. But then, this was “Flash Gordon.”

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Without getting into a review of “Flash,” I’ll say this: It had way too many shots like Zarkov getting zapped in the head…

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… and not near enough of Princess Aura in her “Jabba The Hutt brand slavewear fashion line” outfit.

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 Posted by at 3:18 pm