Well, it’s Wuesday everyone. I just invented it. It’s when you have so much to do on Tuesday that you end up doing it on Wednesday.
Now at first, I’ll grant, that inventing a new day might seem extreme, but I’ve been busier than an adult diaper kiosk in a nursing home for the last few days. Besides, if Homer Simpson can discover a meal between breakfast and brunch, I can write eight days a week, can’t I?
Upon reflection, that last sentence might be unwise, and could bring about a big lawsuit from Yoko Ono. Forget it, and proceed to our usual, unusual Wuesday Trash Day roundup. A day late and a dollar short is better’n nothing.
The Album Art of Phil Hartmann
You might remember him from such roles as Troy McClure or Lionel Hutz, but in the years before legendary comic Phil Hartman shaved the second ‘n’ from his name, he was designing album art for some West Coast rock bands.
Funny dude. Died less humorously, IIRC. Lots of actors were waiters before they found a Weinstein soft spot and became household names. Looks like Phil skipped restaurant work altogether, and had additional talents besides getting laughs, although his album design work is pretty funny, too, if you ask me. Take a look at this one:
Every girl in America had one of these on the shelf in her apartment next to her Janis Ian LP and Cat Stevens disc. That makes it instantly familiar to guys who were desperately trying to make time with said girls, while assiduously avoiding mentioning how much you hated America, Janis Ian, and Cat Stevens. You know, lest you find yourself out on the welcome mat with the door against your nose. So you’ll forgive me if I never noticed this before:
America did a cover of “Muskrat Love”? That Muskrat Love? You know, the Capstan and Toenail Muskrat Love? I shudder to think of it. Or maybe it was just a joke by Phil, and nobody noticed. Because I definitely would have noticed, and ended up out in the hallway, holding my clothes, if a girl had put that record on the turntable on side two.
Google dropping continuous scroll in search results
Google Search will stop its continuous scroll user experience where Google loads more results as you scroll past the first page of the search results. Instead, you will see see the classic and old pagination bar at the footer of the Google Search results.
I do believe Google used to call that Mobile Results, because pagination on a cell phone was considered too tough for your fat thumbs to handle. The article struggles to explain the reasoning behind the change, so I will. On searches for important keywords, Google puts four ads at the top of the page, and three more at the bottom. They ram in Maps results, and “people also asked” stuff, too, and other Google litter. So Google has dropped the mask, and the entire front page of Google results will be GOOGLE RESULTS, and that’s that.
There’s an old joke in the search engine optimization industry:
Q: Where’s the best place to hide a dead body?
A: On the second page of Google results.
Google is just making it official.
Stalin, Eisenstein, Walt Disney and Ivan the Terrible
For decades most Western intellectuals with an interest in cinema (generally regarded by academics as an inferior art-form) praised the movies of Eisenstein as daring and innovative , while rejecting the animated work of his near-contemporary Walt Disney as puerile, commercial and superficial. But the Russian director idolised the movies of Disney, whose style and technique can be seen especially clearly in Part Two of Ivan the Terrible, for which Snow White and the Seven Dwarves served as inspiration for some of its imagery.
In the early 1930s when Eisenstein visited Hollywood he became friends with Disney, whose work he continued to admire until his death. Disney, the Russian believed, “achieves absolute perfrection [sic]in what he does.”
I agree with historian Paul Johnson. Walt Disney was the only true genius that Hollywood ever produced. It’s easy to forget that, because the house of mouse is such a shabby wreck these days.
Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco
We’ve been operating in San Francisco for years now, deliberately scaling our service over time. With tens of thousands of weekly trips, our Waymo One service provides safe, sustainable, and reliable transportation to locals and visitors to the city alike.
You can imagine the sort of hijinks that the denizens of San Francisco will get up to in the back seat of a car with no driver present to tell them to knock it off, but if I were you, I wouldn’t. Nightmare fuel. Perhaps Waymo can go into a partnership deal with some chemical company that makes those disinfectant wipes. Because you’re going to need them.
Besides, Seinfeld solved the problem of interacting with a driver years ago:
Well, almost.
“It will be almost impossible to tell. It will feel like you’re in a simulation. Because everything will look manufactured, everything will look produced. It’s very important that you shift your mindset or attempt to shift your mindset to verify the things that you feel you need through your experience and your intuition.”
Well, since we’re of a traditional frame of mind here at the Cottage, I’ll point out to “Smith Brother” Jack that we’ve felt that way about everything already, even before the first time we saw a pickup truck explode on the news. So we’re good, thanks. Do try to keep up.
Vintage Wooden Homes on Wheels: Photos of Mobile Living From the Early 20th Century
In the early 20th century, a unique and mobile form of housing emerged —the so-called wooden homes on wheels.
These structures, colloquially known as mobile homes, offer a captivating glimpse into a bygone era, when flexibility, craftsmanship, and the open road beckoned to a generation yearning for adventure.
Great photos at the link. Make sure you scroll down far enough to see the “Jungle Yachts.” Man, I want a Jungle Yacht!
To the Bored All Things Are Boring
Half of the sins of humankind, Bertrand Russell wryly quipped, are because of our “fear of boredom.” Russell’s observation holds true: boredom avoidance is causally correlated with things like addiction, overeating, gambling, student misconduct, poor academic performance, and dropping out of school. Boredom avoidance also prompts subtler moral infractions, including half-listening—often as we check our phones—and frittering away time on trivial pursuits.
I can’t work up the enthusiasm to say anything pithy about the article. But I will point out that you can just drink booze to make other people more interesting, and forestall boredom. It works for me.
Paramount Erases Archives of MTV Website, Wipes Music, Culture History After 30 Plus Years
Parent company Paramount, formerly Viacom, has tossed twenty plus years of news archives. All that’s left is a placeholder site for reality shows. The M in MTV – music — is gone, and so is all the reporting and all the journalism performed by music and political writers ever written. It’s as if MTV never existed.
Well, it’s a bit of a stretch to call it “journalism,” but still, it does seem a shame. Where will future generations go to find out about asymmetrical hairdos?
Well, that’s the Wuesday Trash Day links for today. Er, yesterday. Bah, whatever. Feel free to make fun of them in the comments. I have to paint the porch railing. Ed in Texas told me to.
3 Responses
In the early 20th century, a unique and mobile form of housing emerged —the so-called wooden homes on wheels.
In the 1930s. my grandfather built a wooden house trailer. In later decades it was called “the peanut roaster.” Sides were curved. It did not have an engine attached to it, so it was made for being hauled behind a vehicle.
SMACK!
That left a mark. I am reproached.
You know, if you didn’t want to do it, you wouldn’t. So there.
(slinks away…)
I find most bored folks to be boring, themselves.