Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

THE ATOMIC KID opened Dec 8, 1954.


A uranium prospector is eating a peanut butter sandwich in the desert where atom bomb tests are being done. He becomes radioactive, and helps the FBI break up an enemy spy ring. LOL!

This film is advertised on the marquee of the Hill Valley Town Theater on November 12, 1955 in Back to the Future (1985). It can briefly be seen after the DeLorean is sent back to October 26, 1985.


Dec 8, 1982: nuclear freeze activist Norman Mayer held the Washington Monument hostage by claiming, falsely, that he had a 1,000 pounds of dynamite. Mayer was shot to death by U.S. Park Police when he attempted to drive off in his van. Ashes interred in Arlington National Cemetary.


The Norman Mayer story thou shall not copy:

"An Edge in My Voice, Installment 55" copyright 1982, 1985 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.

This work appears online via special arrangement with the the author, Harlan Ellison. You can thank him by visiting the HERC Store. Copying or distributing any part of this piece for personal use, commercial use, or any other use you can come up with is strictly forbidden.  Breaking this rule will result in the author coming down on you like the proverbial Hand of God or, barring the author finding out, your being forced to spend 15,000 years in Purgatory watching the same three episodes of "Perfect Strangers".

An Edge in My Voice

Harlan Ellison, a Jewish atheist died back in 2018, but I'm not taking any chances. His literary estate is currently executed by Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski.



Another story:

    On Monday, Dec.6, two days before the monument siege, Mayer, was seen in his motel trying on a new snowsuit that still had price tags an it. On Tuesday, he told William Thomas in an abrupt phone conversation, "I have decided what I'm going to do and I'm going to do it."

    At 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, in the costume of a B-movie villain, Mayer drove his van to the base of the Washington Monument and executed his bluff.

    Ever meticulous, he had prepared a cue card for himself listing his demands. Ever belligerent, he refused to negotiate and pulled off what U.S. Park Police Capt. Robert H. Hines said was the longest terrorist bluff in U.S. history. Ever skeptical of the human race, Mayer watched a portable Panasonic television to make sure he had reached the world.

    Shortly after the evening network newscast, he drove off to his death.

Nuclear Foe, Eccentric Idealist Was Victim of Unyielding Will (The Washington Post December 19, 1982)

As a side note, I read a few of sources that stated this was the longest recorded police sniper killing in U.S. history at about 480 yards. And also, it is the earliest recorded use of night vision scopes by police snipers.

Ghosts of DC - Three Things That Happened at the Washington Monument

Norman Mayer trivia: He was responsible for a turning point in the life and career of political strategist/journalist George Stephanopoulos. Then 21-year-old intern at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Stephanopoulos writes about the experience in his memoir "All Too Human" (1999).




New Chipotle social phenomenon just dropped - sentenced to Chipotle. Ohio on the cutting edge once again.


Burrito bowl in face hits payday

"Your sentence is living on minimum wage."

"I once served two months in an Ohio Chipotle."

So, Emily quit, asked to come back, gets a pay raise plus promotion, And from this USA Today story:

The victim has since quit her job at Chipotle, she told the Washington Post, saying that she was only struck because she stepped in to protect a 17-year-old employee who Hayne was screaming at.

"I was so embarrassed and in shock," Russell told the outlet. "I couldn't believe my customers had to witness that," adding that the food was hot and burned her face.

A GoFundMe page was created to support Russell until she finds a new job. The page has surpassed its goal of $1,500, raising nearly $10,000 as of Thursday.

20%. One-fifth of the workforce. This is what 'Peak' collapse looks like.
What would be worse for their egos:
Replaced by A.I. or Replaced by *nothing*?

Despite the now-resolved writers and actors strikes shutting down Hollywood production for several months, the loss of tens of thousands of Tinseltown jobs this year actually is part of a larger economic contraction, a just-released study claims — and those gigs might not be coming back.

“Entertainment Industry employment in Los Angeles this year peaked in April, when 142,652 workers were employed by the Industry,” says Otis College of Art and Design’s “The Day After Tomorrow” study, produced by Westwood Economics and Planning Associates. “As of October, there were 24,799 fewer workers employed by the Industry than there were in April,” the California-centric report states of the 17% drop.

Set to be the first of two studies on the entertainment biz, the report released Thursday (read it here) estimates that ress”Greater Los Angeles Entertainment Industry workers lost roughly $1.4 billion in wages between April and September 2023, or roughly 0.5% of the industry’s annual economic activity.” During the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, which ended in late September and late last month respectively, the California economy overall took a $6.5 billion hit. Nationally, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, over 45,000 jobs were lost from when the 12,000-strong scribes guild hit the picket lines in early May, followed by the 160,000-strong actor’s guild in mid-July, to mid-October.
“Beyond the short-term impact, the strikes should be understood within the context of a broader restructuring of the Industry: employment was contracting in the Industry even before the strikes,” the Otis College reports declares. “Employment in the Industry peaked in May of 2016, and reached nearly the same level in August of 2022. Since this time, employment has shrunk by 26%”.

One of the primary authors of Otis College’s “Day After Tomorrow” warns that end of the strikes, which officially came on Dec 5 with SAG-AFTRA members voting to ratify their deal with the studios by just over 78%, don’t mean everything will be returning to normal. In fact, Patrick Adler, Principal at Westwood Economics and Planning Associates and Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong, says normal had left the ever-changing industry way before the strikes started.

“Almost all of Hollywood production is controlled by publicly traded companies, and Wall Street has exerted more pressure on the industry since interest rates spiked in 2022,” Dr. Adler notes. “Basically, one dollar of production money is much more expensive today than it was in 2021, and so the street expects higher return.”

Putting a spotlight on the shortcomings of streaming services as revenue streams, the18-page report itself says: “The bigger picture reveals that Peak TV, rather than the strikes, represents the more enduring threat to employment in the Industry. An arms race among streaming platforms heralded a surge in production between 2016 and 2022, as platforms pursued subscriber growth at all costs. As this business model has transitioned into one which emphasizes profitability and sustainability, we have likely reached the highwater mark in production.”

Worth noting that while the WGA and SAG-AFTRA have reached new contracts with the studios, IATSE and the Teamsters will be entering negotiations with the AMPTP next year. As the Hollywood employment contraction tightens further, both those unions will clearly have job saving as one of their top priorities as more strikes and standstills could loom.

Hollywood Jobs Down Nearly 20% This Year, & Not Just Because Of The Strikes, Study Says

Rogue Service Announcement: They're coming for your dreams:



'Halo' Device Coming in 2025 Is Designed to Induce Lucid Dreams

"Some experts are skeptical"?

CIA & SRI Project Stargate: hold our beer!

Probably venture funded by the CIA's In-Q-Tel.

Soma by day, Halo by night. Ain't life wonderful!
The new Nic Cage film "Dream Scenario" is basically a commercial for this new market.

For those working at home please report to the astral office.

Also, Jeff Bezos & Co. is or was working on a similar device to RECORD your dreams with ability to (alter) and play them back. WTF?! Not to worry though...if you experience a nightmare or irregular breathing pattern the device will 'wake' you. How many people have Amazon devices in their homes?

You: Good night Siri.

Siri: See you soon.

If one thought The Idiot Box and then the InterNet was a control device...well, this is the point of no return kind of Black Sorcery Control Device. It basically interferes with your sleep cycles and keeps you in a semiconscious/semi-hypnogogic state so you will just accept the new regime changes and be an obedient dumb slave.

In hindsight, not even remotely a new concept:

Adventures with the NovaDreamer (1995)


Meanwhile, a sitting US Senator actually claimed that imported garlic was a national security threat. Who coulda thunk it?


"In the coming days, Senator Scott is introducing the SEWAGE GARLIC Imports Act and the SEWAGE GARLIC Imports Tariff Act to address the growth practices and safety of garlic produced in China for human consumption."

Sen. Rick Scott to Commerce: Sewage Garlic Grown in Communist China Has No Place in American Grocery Stores

The letter is ridiculous, mentioning food bloggers and YouTube videos, and citing concerns that contaminated food would hurt not just Americans in generally, but also first responders, firefighters, teachers, "essential workers". But the core claim is: a health hazard, which if true sounds like a Commerce issue.

Go ahead ban it. All my garlic is homegrown.

The New Right Gets Mugged by an Old Reality

That Chinese garlic can sap our bodily fluids!



"Have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water"



There's a bizarre and fascinating episode about the Chinese-US garlic industry, local growers, and a US garlic cartel on Netflix's Rotten series (S01E03). Good informative series.