I did it for Johnny

 art, awesomeness, history, humor, youtube  No Responses »
Dec 082019
 

Alright, children, gather around, and let me regale you with a tale of the 80’s.

See, back then we still had a sense of humor about things that, today, would get you shut down REAL fast. Sure, we were in the beginning phases of the end of western civilization, what with “Stranger Danger” and “Satanic Panic” and the paradoxical responses to AIDS (“Kids! Panic! If you touch a girl, yer gonna diiiiiiiiieeeee!!!!!” but then also “Actually do something like shutting down bath houses and quarantining the infected? Pshaw!“), coupled with whacko laws like House Amendment 777 to H.R. 4332 and the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, but at the time we didn’t really *know* that we were on a steep decline to cultural oblivion, and we certainly hadn’t ceded control of culture entirely over to the panicmongers, fear merchants and the mentally ill. Consequently, we could still laugh at things without having roaming packs of screeching harpies try to destroy our lives over wrongthink.

A case in point: “Homecoming Queen’s Got A Gun.” This has several features that would make it stand out today:

1: It’s a “novelty song.” Today “novelty” is pretty much dead, and “songs” have been replaced by talent-free autotuned a-melodious crap written by low-end AI algorithms with all the soul of solar powered Casio digital watches

2: The comedian here is a woman who:

2A: Is actually funny

2B: Isn’t focusing her “humor” on raging against the patriarchy

3: The subject matter is distinctly non-P.C.

You kids will never know the struggle of trying to listen to the Dr. Demento Show when it came on long after your bedtime.

 Posted by at 1:50 pm

Progress on the USSF

 awesomeness, news, politics  No Responses »
Dec 082019
 

Congress Agrees Space Force; 2020 NDAA Vote Next Week

The House, Senate and the White House have struck a deal that will establish a Space Force as a sixth branch of the military…

Under the deal, the Democrats in Congress okayed the force in exchange for acquiescence by the Republicans to providing 12 weeks of paid maternity leave for federal workers.

The USSF will, unsurprisingly, be underneath the Air Force (as the Marines are under the Navy) and will at least initially draw its personnel from the Air Force. I’m honestly somewhat surprised that the House Dems can accomplish *anything* right now.

 

 Posted by at 7:13 am

Ghostbusters: Afterlife

 art, Hmm..., news, science fiction  No Responses »
Dec 072019
 

It appears that Ghostbusters may have a life after the monumentally disastrous 2016 abortion of a film:

First Look at Ghostbusters: Afterlife

“Ghostbusters: Afterlife” centers not on New York City, but somewhere objectively better: rural Oklahoma. The main cast is a single mom and her two kids; there is some mystery about who the dad is/was. It might be that Egon was the absent father (or perhaps grandfather, given that the mom is played by a woman born in 1981, about the time when the original cast were of marryin’ and breedin’ age). The trailer is to be released on Monday.

With luck G:A will pick up the tone of the original, something that G2 failed at and G:2016 utterly failed to even try to do. Ghostbusters was not at its heart a comedy, certainly not a slapstick one; it was very much a Lovecraftian horrorshow with comedy expertly tacked onto it by people who were experts at it and who knew what they were doing. Given that one of the kids is played by “Stranger Things/It” alum Finn Wolfhard, it certain seems not unlikely that they’ll try to do it right. Some of the images released seem to back that hope up. But we’ll have to wait until summer to know for sure… unless, of course revelations are made before then that the lessons of G:2016 were not learned.

 Posted by at 8:08 pm

Lockheed Composite Aircraft Art

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, projects  No Responses »
Dec 072019
 

Some years ago I scored some aerospace concept art off ebay. This is not an unusual occurrence; I’ve procured a great many lithographs there. But this one was different… it was the *actual* original painting created in the mid-60’s. At the time I couldn’t really get a good scan of it, but a change in scanners a while back, coupled with the recent move and revival of the “scan everything” project allowed me to finally digitize the thing.

The image depicted a composite aircraft that used stowable rotors for VTOL and hover like a helicopter, and turbofan engines for efficient fast forward speed. As shown here it is operating in Viet Nam in a combat search and rescue role, something the Lockheed CL-945 (a very similar design) was intended for.

The full image is far bigger (a bit bigger than 10X the linear dimensions than the version above) and has been made available as a thank-you to APR Patreon and Historical Documents Program patrons. If interested in this piece or if you are interested in helping to fund the preservation of this sort of thing, please consider becoming a patron, either through the APR Patreon or the Monthly Historical Document Program.

 Posted by at 6:52 pm

That Peloton Ad

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, Hmm..., humor, Meh., youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Dec 072019
 

As will probably come as a surprise to nobody by this point, this ad for the very expensive Peloton stationary bike has garnered a whole lot of negative feedback:

I have to admit that while I, too, reacted with disdain the first time I saw the ad a few weeks ago, my reaction was different than the Standard Accepted Response. While the bulk of the Woke Internet seems to see this ad as depicting a wife who is under the thumb of a domineering husband, working her keister off with slatherings of fake enthusiasm in the hopes of meeting his high expectations… I saw it as a horribly vain Instagrammer-Influencer-type who goes to great lengths to constantly film herself pretending to work out, all in hopes of gaining likes from her audience, and who then makes her doubtless put-upon husband sit there and watch what is surely hours and hours of banal vanity. Because she looks no different at the end of the supposed year of workouts than she does at the beginning, so it sure looks to me like her actions are all about *appearing* to be working out rather than actually working out. It’s not like they show someone actually losing weight; she starts of just as fit as she ends up.

But as I said, it seems that the vast majority of folks see it rather differently, that she’s got Stockholm Syndrome and a bad relationship. I’ve always had a bit of difficulty in picking up on some cues like this, so I’ll just shrug and so “ok, sure, maybe.” So, building on the idea that the wife in the ad is in a bad relationship, “Aviation Gin” hired the same actress for an ad for their product. It does not directly address the Peloton ad (apart from the very obvious title), but… see if it looks like a possible sequel to you.

Aviation Gin is partially owner by “Deadpool” actor Ryan Reynolds, which may go some way towards explaining why the company has a sense of humor.

 Posted by at 12:03 pm

Large format scanning in progress

 aircraft, drawings, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Dec 062019
 

As hinted at here and there, I’ve recently moved from rural Utah to non-rural elsewhere. One of the benefits of the move was that it put me a LOT closer to large format scanning services. Previously getting a large blueprint scanned meant several hours on the road and then a return several days later to pick it up; now the drive is a matter of a few minutes. Consequently, my rather extensive backlog of large format aerospace art and diagrams is finally getting scanned in bulk.

Behold some recent results, mostly involving early Titan III, Saturn and Dyna Soar studies:

Some of these will end up in the monthly “catalogs” for the APR patrons to vote on… and some will end up as “extras” for patrons, particularly for above $10-level patrons. If these sort of images are of interest, or if you are interested in helping to fund the preservation of this sort of thing, please consider becoming a patron, either through the APR Patreon or the Monthly Historical Document Program.

Additionally: if you have large format diagrams that you feel are of aerospace historical interest, let me know. I’m always in the market to buy, rent, borrow such things.

 Posted by at 2:46 pm

Clearly a business genius

 Hmm..., news, politics  No Responses »
Dec 062019
 

Feminist comedy club owner shuts down show because she was mad about the jokes: ‘I have never felt more alive than right now’

So, the comedy club owner didn’t like the comedy and shut down the event. Well, it is her right to do so. But here’s the bit that made me chortle… silently, without cracking a smile, but still, you know…

There were about 17 people in the crowd, according to the outlet, of which 13 were the comedian’s friends. …  She went on to refund the four paying customers their entry fees.

Ummmm…..

 Posted by at 8:47 am
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