Misc.

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Craig Newmark: I may buy that "POS" myself.


Stupidass Kitchen Cart For Sale – $85 (SoHo)

This thing sucks. Seriously. It takes up too much space and I’m not even sure what its function is. Apparently it’s also marketed as a “butcher block”, so I’m guessing the top can be used as a cutting board. I, however, have not done this as the cart is in mint condition. I haven’t used it…ever. Waste of space, waste of money (originally $205), waste of my time trying to sell this POS. Every time I look at this thing I get PISSED OFF. Please take this off my hands. $85 (cash and carry) is more than fair.

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Here’s another attention-grabbing TV spot from the North Carolina-based comedy duo Rhett & Link and the fine folks at I Love Local Commercials. This odd ad touts the car-selling skills of Cuban immigrant Rudy Fuentes, who was a gynecologist in his homeland. Enjoy.

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Boring Afflictor: Helping Singapore trishaw drivers sleep peacefully since 2009. (Image by Stephen Michael Barnett.)

"Looks like there are a lot of tickets to be had." (Image by Rosana Prada.)

2 Tickets to a show I could care less about – Bon Jovi – $99 (Middle 225 B)

I bought these as an Xmas gift for my fiance. I remembered she said she loved Bon Jovi. Of course I wasn’t paying attention when she said…”in high school.” Looks like there are a lot of tickets to be had. These are below cost to me (way below because, like a jackass, I bought them on Stub Hub). 

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Let's play quickly--the sun is melting the ice.

I don’t really care for hockey, but I’ll always have a look when I come across some publication from 40 years ago for a sports franchise that no longer exists. Leagues were a lot less organized in those days and TV money hadn’t become the raison d’être. You never know what interesting factoids you might find. So I recently took advantage of an opportunity to gaze upon California ’72, a periodical that was published by Maple Leaf Gardens Sports magazines.  

The Managing Editor, Ross Brewitt, wrote a bunch of hockey books, including one about Eddie Shack, a journeyman player who battled illiteracy. There are advertisements for Belvedere cigarettes, Corby Gin and Grissol Breads. And there’s lots of great color and b&w images of the Seals in action. 

The California Golden Seals were an embattled NHL franchise in the Bay area from 1967-1976, part of the first wave of the league trying to spread its market beyond cold-weather environs in Canada and the Northeast and Midwest of the America. The NHL also wanted to head off progress by a competeing outfit called the Western Hockey League.  

A demonstration of superior netminding skills.

The Seals never drew and went though a succession of owners, including Charlie Finley, who changed team colors to match those of his baseball franchise, the Oakland A’s. The Seals eventually moved to Cleveland and then merged with another franchise. An excerpt about the beleaguered franchise from the magazine:

“From the start of expanision, unrest has been the word most commonly associated with the California Golden Seals, a team which has been afflicted with trouble in the front office for four turbulent years. General managers have been changed. Coaches have been changed. There have been changes in ownership, and the results of these changes have been completely predictable. The Seals have finished out of the playoffs for two of the four years they have been in operation and when all-time standings of the National Hockey League are considered, the Seals stand alone at the bottom of the heap.”

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  • Ugandan currency with Idi Amin’s picture. (1973)
  • Tom Van Arsdale basketball card. (1970)
  • Okie from Muskogee” Sheet Music. (1969)
  • Beatles Film Festival Magazine (1978)
  • ABA Pictorial (1968-69)
  • Tom Seaver’s Baseball Is My Life. (1973)
  • Hockey Digest (1973)
  • World’s Fair Guide (1964)
  • World’s Fair Guide (1939)
  • Buffalo Braves Yearbook (1972-73)
  • New York Nets Yearbook (1976-77)
  • “Tom Dooley” sheet music.
  • Now Junior can look like a complete freak--and think of the savings!

    The DIY hair-trimming kit featured in this 1947 ad was no doubt responsible for a lot of kids getting  their hairstyles butchered by mom and dad. The item, manufactured by Miller and Co. in Chicago, came with an illustrated instruction booklet and a variety of shears and combs. The ad promised that the kit would pay for itself within a month. The whole thing cost $4.95. The big sell comes in a comic-strip conversation between father and son. They both seem to be very excitable on the subject of haircuts. Well, everyone was very giddy because we’d just defeated the Nazis. An excerpt:

    Son: Dad listen to THIS. Jimmie gets his hair trimmed at home. His Mother and Dad do it. Don’t cost ’em nothing.

    Dad: How can that be? It takes a barber to trim hair, doesn’t it?

    Son: They sent for a home barbering set and they already saved the cost of it. Jimmie likes it because now he gets more spending money out of what they used to pay the barber. He treated me to an ice cream cone again today.

    Dad: Ha! That sounds good but where do you send for this barbering set?

    Son: Why there’s a coupon, Dad. All ready for you to put your name and address on and mail it.

    Judge Judy: Presided over the landmark case of the missing donut. (Image by Susan Roberts.)

    Jury duty service is over, so Afflictor.com no longer has any reason to suck. Don’t get me wrong: It will still suck. There’s just no excuse for it anymore.

    New things at jury duty in Brooklyn: Lounge has free wi-fi, about a dozen public computers with Internet access, a half-dozen large-screen TVs tuned to MSNBC. There’s no more sitting around for nine days if you haven’t been assigned to a trial; most people are dismissed after one day of service. Once you complete your service, you will not be called again for jury duty for eight years. The whole thing is managed very well; no more bureaucratic nightmare.

    Old things at jury duty in Brooklyn: I saw a judge wandering around the halls who must have been 200 years old. I assume he has emeritus status and was there for minor proceedings. He might have been on loan from a judge museum. When he spoke, sawdust come out of his mouth.

    The bill's designer wisely made Amin appear slimmer than he really was.

    I got my hands on a Ugandan ten-shilling note that bears a portrait of Idi Amin. There’s no date marking, but I think it’s from 1973. That was two years after the erstwhile boxer and soldier had seized power of the country while President Obote was abroad. Soon, Amin had declared himself ruler for life.

    For a long time, the world either didn’t know or didn’t care to know of the atrocities that Amin was committing inside the African nation. He was considered a clown, a buffoon, but manageable. But before his reign of terror ended, as many as 500,000 Ugandans had been brutally and senselessly murdered for imagined slights.  

    Beneath his remarkable hubris and deep-seated paranoia, Amin was also an undiluted sociopath. He reputedly cannibalized his enemies and shared their flesh with crocodiles. Who knows if that’s true, but the body count was very real. There are quite a number of books and films about the dictator who died in 2003 while in exile in Saudi Arabia, but this brief series of clips of Amin bragging, grinning, laughing and lecturing is chilling enough. 


      

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    Judge Learned Hand: I served on the United State Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and I also had the coolest fucking name ever.

    I begin jury duty on Tuesday morning, so there won’t be any posts till later in the afternoon. Since most Afflictor readers are known criminals, perhaps I will see some of you at the Brooklyn Supreme Court building. I’ll be happy to shake hands with all of you who aren’t cuffed.

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    Alan Shepard: I'm not a gorilla, and please stop trying to squeeze my hands.

    GORILLA IN SPACESUIT–SQUEEZE HIS HANDS & HE TALKS – $10 (BAYSIDE, QUEENS)

    Adorable. Wears silver spacesuit and helmet. When you squeeze his hands, he will talk. Excellent condition.


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    Afflictor: Helping Tokyo salarymen sleep soundly since December 2009. (Image by M. from Somerville.)

    Give Peter Finch a blackboard and he could have his own Fox News show.

    It’s puzzling that the 1976 Sidney Lumet-Paddy Chayefsky media satire, Network, isn’t revived and revisited more often since it’s among the most prophetic films ever made. Movies, even futuristic ones, aren’t usually much more than a reflection of their times, but Network saw the future–and it was a reality show starring you and me.

    Aging network news anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch) is being forced out of his job, but he causes a stir when he uses one of his final telecasts to announce that he’s going to blow his brains out. The shocking pronouncement gets huge attention and pretty soon Beale is a maniac of the people, urging his viewers to get mad as hell and not take it anymore. While the news vets are outraged, enterprising young exec Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) is only too happy to blend entertainment and journalism, filling the airwaves with terrorists, reality shows and telepsychics. As ethics decline, ratings rise.

    Satires can either exaggerate or diminish their targets and Network decided to go large, imagining a media landscape littered with agressive theatrics and brazen manipulation. The sad truth is that the film may be revered merely as a museum piece because in the most essential ways the world it satirized went larger still.•

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    Air rifles will help your sons build confidence.

     

    This 1948 pocket-size comic book (priced at 10 cents), produced by the Plymouth, Michigan, air-rifle seller known as Daisy, offered a variety of heroic tales (Captain Marvel, Robotman, Red Ryder) and cartoon histories (Leonardo Da Vinci, German mechanical engineer Rudolph Diesel, Cleveland Indians pitcher Bob Feller). And of course, it contained an 8-page catalog of Daisy Air Rifles, including the 1,000-shot repeater Cowboy Carbine and the Daisy Pump Gun, both available for purchase. But wait, there’s more, and some of it involves cows! An excerpt: 

    “ALSO: Camping Tips, Fishing Lore, Marksmanship Manual, How To Be A Cowboy, Jokes, Quizzes, How To Read Cow Brands, Wood Carving, many others! Limited supply. Mail coupon with thin dime (10c in coin) plus unused 3c stamp–we’ll rush your copy postpaid! Do it now–this very minute–send coupon.” 

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    According to his website, attorney Steve Miller is happily married, although he doesn’t seem to think very highly about your crap marriage. The Florida divorce attorney doesn’t sugarcoat the way he feels about your terrible domestic situation in this brazen TV commercial. Trial separations are for the weak, people!

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    Also from "SI": "When the brothers were juniors at Indiana, Warner Brothers saw their pictures in 'Life' and offered them seven-year contracts."

    I briefly got my greasy, grimy hands on a 1970 basketball card of Tom Van Arsdale, a talented cager out of Indiana who was then playing for the Cincinnati Royals. The back of the card notes that “Tom is interested in the stock brokerage business.” It also provides his impressive offensive stats.

    It doesn’t mention that Tom had an identical twin named Dick, who also played hoops, and that the two were especially close. An excerpt about the brothers  from a 1972 Sports Illustrated article titled “A Slight Case Of Unmistakable Identity“:

    “From the time of their premature births on Feb. 22, 1943 (Tom is the older by 15 minutes) until they graduated from Indiana, they spent only two nights apart. Their toys were identical, and only after they left high school did they wear unlike clothes. ‘If we had orange juice for breakfast, Mom would measure the glasses precisely to make sure they contained the same amount,’ says Tom. ‘That way neither one of us would get mad at her.’

    The Van Arsdales’ closeness almost knocked Tom out of the pros before he stepped on a court. Drafted in succession in 1965 at the beginning of the second round by New York and Detroit, the twins were separated for the first time when they left for their rookie camps. Tom quit the Pistons soon after and returned home with the excuse that he wanted to go to law school. He bought his law books but never went to class. ‘The sole reason for leaving Detroit was because Dick wasn’t around,’ he recalled last week. ‘It was a case of acute loneliness. It was like when you have a girl friend in high school and for some reason you can’t be with her. All you want is to be with her, and nothing else and no one else can make you happy. I called Dick in New York and he convinced me that things weren’t going to be any better if I didn’t play, so I went back to the Pistons.'”

    When you say "meat," what exactly are we talking about? (Image by Pearson Scott Foresman.)

    Quail (long island)

    I have Tibetian Quail these are a hybred quail used for pets, dog training and meat. I have birds for sale ages 2, 3 and 4 weeks old. A full grown bird is 7 to 8 weeks old. These birds will lay eggs this season.

    The birds are $4 each.

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    Due to incompetence on both ends, Man vs. Machine ends in a tie.

    Due to computer problems, posts have been few and sloppy over the last week or so. Everything should return to normal by Wednesday at the latest. Until then, I’ll post as much as possible. Thanks for your relentless, uninvited patience. I know you’re doing it just to spite me.

    For six years running, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek has been voted the country's best-looking man. (Image by Mariusz Kubik.)

    It was an exciting day in the Brooklyn offices of Afflictor.com yesterday when we examined the data and realized that Slovenia had checked in with its first visitor. Slovenia is perhaps most famous for not being Slovakia. (Similarly, Slovakia is most famous for not being Slovenia.) The Central European country apparently has a lot of free time on its hands if it can waste precious moments on idiotic Afflictor. What is wrong, Slovenia? Is there no other way to kill the pain or get your kicks or find solace? Whatever. Now that you have been properly hazed, Slovenia, Afflictor Nation sends you a warm welcome!

    Afflictor: Helping Federica dream about birdies since December 2009.

    Virginia Tighe told the truth as far as she knew it, but it really wasn’t far enough.

    The Colorado housewife caused a sensation in the U.S. in 1950s when, under hypnosis, she described with a perfect brogue the details of her earlier life as “Bridey Murphy,” a 19th-century Irish woman. Tighe (who was only identified by the pseudonym “Ruth Simmons” at the time) had never visited Ireland and seemingly had no way to know the quotidian detail of life in Cork and Belfast in the previous century.

    When her hypnotist Morey Bernstein subsequently released a book about her story, The Search for Bridey Murphy, it quickly became a bestseller and a reincarnation craze swept the nation. Pretty soon the name “Bridey Murphy” was as famous as Dwight Eisenhower or Mickey Mantle, even if she never existed, at least not as Tighe’s earlier self.

    Official records were later checked and the story began to fall apart. It eventually came to light that when Tighe was a small girl, a neighbor lady named Bridey Murphy Corkell had told her stories about her childhood in Ireland. Over the years, these tales of another land had become repressed memories for Tighe. So she was relaying the past alright, just not her own. But for a while, it was mania.

    In the March 19, 1956 issue, Life offered its take with “Bridey Murphy Puts the Nation in a Hypnotizzy.” An excerpt:

    Last week a considerable part of the U.S. lay under an Irish spell and the spell was becoming deeper and wilder as fast as the written word, awed gossip and the televised image could spread it. The genie responsible was a red-haired Irishwoman named Bridey (short for Bridget) Murphy, who may or may not have lived in early 19th-century Belfast and Cork, and who made her presence known, in eerily factual detail, during a series of hypnotic sessions held some time ago in Pueblo, Colorado. Bridey spoke through the hypnotized person of an attractive young Pueblo matron whose pseudonym is “Ruth Simmons.” While deep in a trance she told how she had grown up in early 19th-century Ireland, married, died and then even watched her own funeral.

    The hypnotist was Morey Bernstein, a 36-year-old Pueblo businessman of impeccable reputation and honesty, who had taken up hypnotism as a hobby. He summoned up Bridey by a familiar technique known as hypnotic regression, whereby the hypnotist leads his subject back to adolescence or early childhood. Going one step further, Bernstein attempted to take his subject back before birth, and the next thing he knew he was listening to Bridey Murphy’s rambling discourse.•

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    Merle Haggard: Get haircuts, you filthy hippies.

    I briefly got my grimy, greasy, grubby fingers on a copy of the original sheet music of “Okie from Muskogee,” the 1969 anti-Hippie anthem that was a smash hit for Merle Haggard and the Strangers. Haggard has hinted that the song was sort of a satire, but the joke was probably lost on the residents of Muskogee, Oklahoma, and on record buyers all across America’. It inspired an answer song from Chinga Chavin called “Asshole from El Paso.”

    Haggard, who was a real-life outlaw before creating the Bakersfield sound with Buck Owens, co-wrote “Okie” with Roy Edward Burris. Here are the lyrics:

    “We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee;
    We don’t take our trips on LSD
    We don’t burn our draft cards down on Main Street;
    We like livin’ right, and bein’ free.

    I’m proud to be an Okie from Muskogee,
    A place where even squares can have a ball
    We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse,
    And white lightnin’s still the biggest thrill of all

    The sheet music cost a buck back in the day.

    We don’t make a party out of lovin’;
    We like holdin’ hands and pitchin’ woo;
    We don’t let our hair grow long and shaggy,
    Like the hippies out in San Francisco do.

    And I’m proud to be an Okie from Muskogee,
    A place where even squares can have a ball.
    We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse,
    And white lightnin’s still the biggest thrill of all.

    Leather boots are still in style for manly footwear;
    Beads and Roman sandals won’t be seen.
    Football’s still the roughest thing on campus,
    And the kids here still respect the college dean.

    We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse,
    In Muskogee, Oklahoma, USA.”

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    "We neither use steam, humbug by false pretenses, nor wear laurels won by our compeititors."

    Before Polaroid and Kodak or even inexpensive tintypes,  daguerreotypes were the original popular means of taking pictures. The process, created by French inventor Louis Daguerre with an assist from Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, combined mercury and silver to capture images of the era’s most celebrated politicians, artists and cities.

    In 1848, the daguerreotype industry had plenty of competitors and companies had to do whatever they could to get ahead. The Boston, Massachusetts, outfit known as Southworth & Hawes produced a ton of gorgeous images, but that apparently wasn’t enought ot make ends meet. They also advertised themselves as willing to create images of the recently deceased. An excerpt from the ad copy:

    “Our arrangements as such that we take miniatures of children and adults instantly, and of DECEASED persons, either at our rooms or at private residences. We take great pains to have Miniatures of deceased persons agreeable and satisfactory and they are often so natural as to seem, even to Artists, in a quiet sleep.”

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    Giant Pacman: Looks like the bastard love child of the Kool-Aid Picher and Jocelyn Wildenstein.

    In the annals of online time wasters, the Pacman variation game PacXon ranks high. It’s the most-played selection in the history of the Addicting Games arcade category. As with most successful time wasters, the game’s premise is invitingly simple: You have to use your Pacman-ish creature to chew up 80% of the game board’s segments. You can win bonus lives by reaching certain scores and you lose lives by making contact with the ghosts. The number of ghosts you must avoid increases with each new grid you encounter. At any rate, these will be moments of your life you will never get back. Enjoy your wasted time.

    One really long scarf for four people. Seems impractical.

    Got my gnarled, ink-stained hands on a copy of Beatles Film Festival, a pretty flimsy 1978 magazine about the celluloid side of the Fab Four. It’s basically a bunch of photos, some lyrics and a few old interview comments. But there is one brief article of interest about the Magical Mystery Tour.

    The Beatles didn’t make a lot of creative missteps, but the Magical Mystery Tour film is like the most boring, most annoying drug experience ever. It was supposed to be a loosely constructed series of road trip scenes alternating with videos of the group performing songs. It instead made the quartet seem like they were out of touch and lost in their own excesses. The inane attempt at avant garde style was universally panned when originally shown on the BBC.

    Even in 1978, McCartney was rationalizing this disaster in a really self-delusional way. An excerpt from the magazine article titled “Paul McCartney Talks About Magical Mystery Tour”:

    In 1978, Paul McCartney thought "Magical Mystery Tour" would be beloved in the future, but it still sucks.

    “The Mystery show was conceived way back in Los Angeles. On the plane, you know, they give you those big menus and I had a pen and everything and started drawing on this menu and I had this idea. In England they have these things called ‘mystery tours.’ And you go on them and you pay so much and you don’t know where you’re going. So the idea was to have this little thing advertised in shop windows somewhere called Magical Mystery Tours. Someone goes in and buys a ticket and rather than being the kind of normal publicity hype…well, it was magical, really…the idea of the show was that it was actually a magical run…a magical trip.

    I did a few little sketches myself and everyone also thought up a couple of things. John thought of a little thing and George thought of a scene and we just got them all along with the coach, and we said, OK, act an off-the-cuff kind of thing.

    At the time I thought: ‘Oh Blimey,’ but…eh…it started out to be one of those kinds of things like The Wild Ones, you know, Marlon Brando…at the time it couldn’t be released! The interest in it came later. The interest started to grow, you know. Magical Mystery Tour was a little bit like that…well, whatever happened to it…that’s a bit magical itself. Like the Stones’ Rock and Roll Circus. You know, what happened, to that, you know, I mean, I’d like to see that. So all these things work out well. You’ve got to be patient: everything like that works out well. I think it was a good show. It will have its day, you know.”

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      I'm not a douche. (Image by Mattes.)

      Do you own a monster costume? Have free time? Photo Shoot!

      Hey there,

      So, assuming you didn’t just click on this link for shits and giggles and you actually *have* a monster suit, consider the following: I’m an amateur photographer who loves shooting portraiture and city scapes. I’m looking to start a new photo series of someone in a monster suit doing normal things around the city. Possibly multiple people in monster suits. Aiming for an ultimate set of 24, and thus want to get shots all over the place (commuting, hot dog stand, shit faced on the LES on a Friday night wondering when it was that “that whole goddamned neighborhood became DISNEYLAND!!!”, shopping on Madison Ave., etc.)

      You get out of it :
      photos of yourself in a monster suit all over the city. Will be able to show to your grandchildern (“Yes! That was me! I had blue fur back then cause everyone thought it was hot.” “Grandpa!”) and / or print out and put up on your wall to impress fellow hipsters / bankers / rastas / Park Slope moms. Also: shit tons of fun. Drinking can be plausibly involved in this on a case by case basis.

      You are asked to:
      – have a full body, face-covering monster costume. More ridiculous and huge the better. Best is one without a recognizable face (think Cousin It from Addams Family).
      – have some free time and a flex schedule. We can do this whenever. Weekdays daytime might be ideal.
      – not be a douche (sorry, douches)

      That is all! Email me a pic / description of your monster suit and let’s get this shit started.

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