Check it out right here: Pen And Ink

The recent terrorist attacks on Mumbai, India filled Thanksgiving dinner conversations around the world. However, with the FCC regulating the mainstream media, many are unaware of the reality of these unfortunate events. Sometimes a photo can say so much more than Anderson Cooper can. Here’s a collection of photos documenting the ordeal as the story unfolded (Warning: Contains graphic content)…

All photos courtesy of AP/Reuters/Getty Images

More photos can be found here: Boston.com

After the meal, I found myself sitting at the head of the table next to Jerry Stein, one of my father’s oldest friends in Detroit and Uncle Jerry to my brothers and I.  The Old Man was quite fond of Jerry, even as he belittled his old hippie politics and lifestyle.  After all, he had shown Dad what a dresser was.  Aronchick, however, was always proud that he attended all three of Uncle Jerry’s weddings including the Jewish/Buddhist affair held in the Detroit Institute of Arts on Woodward Avenue.

Stein, like the rest of the Old Man’s intimate’s, walked a line that many would consider criminal at worst and shady at best.  Although Jerry worked for Ford, he had some sort of odd mail order pill business that was run out of Windsor, Ontario, on the Canadian side of the Detroit Metro Area. Although frowned upon by the local and federal authorities, I had heard rumors of some sort of arrest; Jerry Stein remained one of the few of my father’s friends who were allowed in the house.  When I asked Mom about that odd pill business she replied “whatever Jerry Stein did in Windsor is legal now.”  Mother was nearly indignant in her answer so I let the matter drop.

“So Alex, how do you like the Village,” Jerry asked me, as he monologued on about the few months he lived on East Tenth Street in the mid 60’s living with the other hippies the in the then ethnic slum.  I shrugged and gave a noncommittal answer about having a good time.  Whenever I was asked about my New York University antics and my parents were around I kept my mouth shut.  The less they knew about my trying to out do Lou Reed the better, I thought.

“Do they still sell LSD in the East Village,” he asked loudly. 

“Yes,” I replied.  First of all, they were selling every drug known to mankind on the East Village streets.  Secondly, my mother and Uncle Mike were sitting across from us and were engaged in some odd conversation about where my Great Aunt Wilma was.  Wilma had called to say she was coming from some turkey but never turned up.

“Have you ever taken LSD,” Jerry asked me.

“Um…” I didn’t want to answer, not with the seating proximity of my maternal uncle and mother.  I would never live it down and in all probability would be decapitated by a dull butter knife wielded by either Mike, who was in AA, or Mother, who was the head of Mother’s Against Drugs in the Bloomfield/Birmingham area. 

“So, have you dropped acid Alex,” Jerry demanded louder this time.

This time Uncle Mike and Mom overheard his question.  “So, Alex, do have you ever taken LSD,” Mother asked.

“Um…”

“Answer your Mother, Alexander,” my uncle commanded.

This left me in an odd quandary.  What was I supposed to say: if I said no, they would know I was lying.  If I said yes, I would never hear the end of it and would be subject to random searches of my pupils with a penlight by Mother, my Uncle, my grandfather and the Old Man.  “Yes, I have.  Several times,” I said. 

If Uncle Mike and Mom were shocked, they didn’t show it.  Maybe I had underestimated them.  After all, I had been in New York for nearly four years, maybe they thought I had, as it is so crudely phrased, ‘experimented’ with drugs.

“What did you think?  Did you discover something about the world, the universe or yourself,” Uncle Jerry wanted to know.

Jerry and I had used completely different drugs with same name years apart.  He was probably getting pure stuff that Owsley, the famous chemist in Haight-Ashbury, had made or taught various people all over the country to engineer.  It was the same mind expanding formula that sent CIA operatives over to the psychosis side in the late ‘50’s and that Timothy Leary peddled a decade later as a way to get closer to the divine.  The stuff I was getting at King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut on the corner of East 7^th Street and Avenue A had enough strychnine in it make you paranoid by looking at the tab.  “To tell you the truth Uncle Jerry, whenever I’ve dropped acid, I’ve discovered the universal truth in five hours, forgot it in the sixth and in the seventh, I was hungry,” I told him.

Mother laughed, as did Mike, and they went back to worrying about the whereabouts of my Great Aunt Wilma. 

“That’s the problem with you kids today, all you get is the mass produced chemical shit,” Jerry reflected.  I nodded and breathed a sigh of relief.  My acid truth was apparently a good stand up routine.

One of many stampedes from Black Friday ‘07:

(via Newsday)

Bobby Trendy and Phoebe Price out for an afternoon stroll and some retail therapy. I know you have to have an opinion on this so let’s hear it!

Bold, fierce and fabulous or hideous, hot mess?

Here’s a list of ways to say “I love you” in over 100 languages:

1. English - I love you
2. Afrikaans - Ek het jou lief
3. Albanian - Te dua
4. Arabic - Ana behibak (to male)
5. Arabic - Ana behibek (to female)
6. Armenian - Yes kez sirumem
7. Bambara - M’bi fe
8. Bengali - Ami tomake bhalobashi (pronounced: Amee toe-ma-kee bhalo-bashee)
9. Belarusian - Ya tabe kahayu
10. Bisaya - Nahigugma ako kanimo
11. Bulgarian - Obicham te
12. Cambodian - Soro lahn nhee ah
13. Catalan - T’estimo
14. Cherokee - Tsi ge yu i
15. Cheyenne - Ne mohotatse
16. Chichewa - Ndimakukonda
17. Chinese
    Cantonese - Ngo oiy ney a
    Mandarin - Wo ai ni
18. Comanche - U kamakutu nu
    (pronounced oo——ka-ma-koo-too——-nu) — Thx Tony
19. Corsican - Ti tengu caru (to male)
20. Cree - Kisakihitin
21. Creol - Mi aime jou
22. Croatian - Volim te
23. Czech - Miluji te
24. Danish - Jeg Elsker Dig
25. Dutch - Ik hou van jou
26. Elvish - Amin mela lle (from The Lord of The Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien)
27. Esperanto - Mi amas vin
28. Estonian - Ma armastan sind
29. Ethiopian - Afgreki’
30. Faroese - Eg elski teg
31. Farsi - Doset daram
32. Filipino - Mahal kita
33. Finnish - Mina rakastan sinua
34. French - Je t’aime, Je t’adore
35. Frisian - Ik hald fan dy
36. Gaelic - Ta gra agam ort
37. Georgian - Mikvarhar
38. German - Ich liebe dich
39. Greek - S’agapo
40. Gujarati - Hoo thunay prem karoo choo
41. Hiligaynon - Palangga ko ikaw
42. Hawaiian - Aloha Au Ia`oe
43. Hebrew
    To female - “ani ohev otach” (said by male) “ohevet Otach” (said by female)
    To male - “ani ohev otcha” (said by male) “Ohevet ot’cha” (said by female)
44. Hiligaynon - Guina higugma ko ikaw
45. Hindi - Hum Tumhe Pyar Karte hae
46. Hmong - Kuv hlub koj
47. Hopi - Nu’ umi unangwa’ta
48. Hungarian - Szeretlek
49. Icelandic - Eg elska tig
50. Ilonggo - Palangga ko ikaw
51. Indonesian - Saya cinta padamu
52. Inuit - Negligevapse
53. Irish - Taim i’ ngra leat
54. Italian - Ti amo
55. Japanese - Aishiteru or Anata ga daisuki desu
56. Kannada - Naanu ninna preetisuttene
57. Kapampangan - Kaluguran daka
58. Kiswahili - Nakupenda
59. Konkani - Tu magel moga cho
60. Korean - Sarang Heyo or Nanun tangshinul sarang hamnida
61. Latin - Te amo
62. Latvian - Es tevi miilu
63. Lebanese - Bahibak
64. Lithuanian - Tave myliu
65. Luxembourgeois - Ech hun dech gaer
66. Macedonian - Te Sakam
67. Malay - Saya cintakan mu / Aku cinta padamu
68. Malayalam - Njan Ninne Premikunnu
69. Maltese - Inhobbok
70. Marathi - Me tula prem karto
71. Mohawk - Kanbhik
72. Moroccan - Ana moajaba bik
73. Nahuatl - Ni mits neki
74. Navaho - Ayor anosh’ni
75. Ndebele - Niyakutanda
76. Norwegian
    Bokmaal - Jeg elsker deg
    Nyonrsk - Eg elskar deg
77. Pandacan - Syota na kita!!
78. Pangasinan - Inaru Taka
79. Papiamento - Mi ta stimabo
80. Persian - Doo-set daaram
81. Pig Latin - Iay ovlay ouyay
82. Polish - Kocham Ciebie
83. Portuguese - Eu te amo
84. Romanian - Te iubesc
85. Russian - Ya tebya liubliu
86. Scot Gaelic - Tha gra\dh agam ort
87. Serbian - Volim te
88. Setswana - Ke a go rata
89. Sign Language - „,/ (represents position of fingers when signing ‘I Love You’)
90. Sindhi - Maa tokhe pyar kendo ahyan
91. Sioux - Techihhila
92. Slovak - Lu`bim ta
93. Slovenian - Ljubim te
94. Spanish - Te quiero / Te amo
95. Swahili - Ninapenda wewe
96. Swedish - Jag alskar dig
97. Swiss-German - Ich lieb Di
98. Surinam - Mi lobi joe
99. Tagalog - Mahal kita
100. Taiwanese - Wa ga ei li
101. Tahitian - Ua Here Vau Ia Oe
102. Tamil - Nan unnai kathalikaraen
103. Telugu - Nenu ninnu premistunnanu
104. Thai - Phom rak khun
105. Tunisian - Ha eh bak
106. Turkish - Seni Seviyorum
107. Ukrainian - Ya tebe kahayu
108. Urdu - mai aap say pyaar karta hoo
109. Vietnamese - To female - Anh ye^u em
110. Welsh - ‘Rwy’n dy garu di
111. Yiddish - Ikh hob dikh
112. Yoruba - Mo ni fe
113. Zazi - Ezhele hezdege
114. Zuni - Tom ho’ ichema

We’ve covered a lot, but let us know of any we’re missing!

This Ozzy/Samsung advert is hilarious! And check it out…if I’m not amiss here, Ozzy texts the “F-bomb” to the barista at about 12 seconds in. Am I right?

You give America a bad name, Jorge. Good riddance. Try not to fall on ‘the button’ on your way out. Thanks for never once representing anything I believe in while in office. Nice work, douche. (Sorry, venting after 8 years of biting my tongue)

From Bruce Springsteen’s Telecaster to Brian May’s signature Guild and from Eddie Cochran’s Gretsch 6120 to Strawberry Alarm Clock’s custom-made green skateboard cutout Mosrite (yeah, you have to see it to believe it!), Classic Electrics is pure eye-candy for electric guitar geeks. There are over 350 guitars represented in the book and they all have brilliant photos and informative text, and some with period brochure reproductions and promotional shots. Perfect coffee table fodder and rock conversation starter.

Want to know the difference between the Fender Broadcaster and the Fender Esquire, two guitars that put Fender on the rock roadmap? Or perhaps you’re curious what makes a Gibson Les Paul Deluxe so deluxe. Or maybe you’d be interested to know who was playing Flying V’s before many of the 80’s metal bands members were even born. Well, this book is filled with that kind of trivia.

There is almost an equal amount of solid-body vs. hollow-body guitars represented here, so you’ll get to see and read about the solid-body Hofner Galaxie from the 60’s, which replaced all conventional knobs with roller controls and switches, as well as John Lennon’s original hollow-body Rickenbacker, which you’d learn had neither a f-hole nor a “slash” hole since he bought it when the Beatles were playing in Hamburg, Germany.

Walter Carter has certainly done his homework in gathering all the engrossing information and superb pictures of every one of the guitars represented in the book, and Jawbone Press has put together a beautifully well-designed package for it. Classic Electrics – A Visual History if Great Guitars is a no-brainer gift for the guitar lover in your life…and everyone has at least one of those, don’t they?

Abraham Biggs, a 19-year-old from Florida, broadcasted his suicide on Justin.tv, a popular lifecasting website. After posting a suicide note, Biggs overdosed on pills live via webcam as viewers egged him on.

When he took the pills and stopped moving, they laughed, expecting his corpse to revive and announce it was all a joke. No one called the police until hours had passed. They kept watching as officers came to the scene and verified his death. Even then, commenters wrote “OMFG” and “LOL.”

The lines defining the stage and reality have been blurred. What many thought was merely a hoax just viewed their very first snuff film. One would think that most people would find something morbidly wrong with watching someone “fake” a suicide. I love the internet, but the real world is not within the monitor you are staring into right now.

(via Valleywag)