substitute

mendel : This is neat but morbid:

mendel : There is a cemetery in WA which has a bell: http://flickr.com/photos/travels_of_a_taphophile/494278720/in/photostream/

mendel : Inside the bell this person found a jar: http://flickr.com/photos/travels_of_a_taphophile/494279440/in/photostream/

mendel : Which was stuck on with magnets and uhm well http://flickr.com/photos/travels_of_a_taphophile/494279180/in/photostream/

(I also hope that every time they get a "customer" at the cemetery they ring the bell, like when they make a sale at a car dealership. --Ed.)

THE SENATOR THEN DIED

My great-uncle Lee spent his last few months in a well-run County hospital in the California high desert.

At least once a week we'd make the drive there to see him. The hospital was a few miles out of town, next door to a prison. Lee was in the quietest part of a quiet hospital, both inside and outside his room. Gardeners worked on the landscaping outside, but that's all the activity I saw. The grounds were very well-kept.

After I talked to Lee, I'd go outside and wait for the others. Nothing ever happened at that place, so I have no idea how long I'd been there. It was just me, the constant desert wind, and some plants and flowers flopping gently around. I could hear the lines clanking on the flag pole. Periodically there would be an engine noise, or a gardener would go by with some machine or tool.

This week i've spent some time ill. Because my back and shoulder went out on me, I am in a different bed and bedroom than usual to get the big flat bed. It's a quieter and darker end of the house, and the big window opens onto the back yard. The weather has been very warm. My neighborhood is quiet, and not much at all happens there. I found myself flat on my back, not wanting to move, and listening to the clink and clank of hanging plants, wind chimes at near dead stop, rustling leaves, and distant suburban background noises like lawnmowers and pool parties.

I felt as though Death Himself had arrived. Time to sit up, stand up, move into the other room, and hurt more. I know what happens if you get stuck in a slow, warm, quiet, breezy Southern California day full of manicured plants and long silences. YOU DIE, THAT'S WHAT.

Courtesy crowleycrow. You may visit manogram.org for the full story, or not, as you wish. And no, I don't know what's up with the

I had a nice dinner with sooz in which we arrived very early like retirees and ate a reasonable amount of tasty food. It took me forever to find the place because it was in a hellish HB strip mall the size of a town, but I enjoyed my pasta carbonara.

After BSing with Bob for a bit, I went for an aimless drive. I do this a lot on weekend nights if I'm not reading or staring into space. As usual I ended up on Newport Coast Drive because it's a nice pretty zoom up a hill. I needed a couple things and I went to the fancy people grocery store at the top of the grade.

This is a "Pavilions" supermarket, and it's huge. Suburban supermarkets are big, but this one is gigantic. Two-story ceiling, too many square feet. They have all the normal stuff plus all the fancy stuff, with little islands of excess containing quick meals and luxuries strewn about. I'm only there late in the evening when it's almost empty, and I am captivated by its perfect emptiness and luxury. It reminds me of the TRAINS OF THE FUTURE I rode in Paris as a kid, which went from nowhere to nowhere at high speed, silently, and only rose from the depths to bask under gigantic perfect skyscrapers.

I got a bottle of vodka, some pumpernickel bread, and some cold cuts.

The cold cuts were good Italian-style stuff: capicolla and real mortadella. They also had pancetta in the same rack, next to the smoked turkey and the pastrami and salami etc. Pancetta is different from the others. It's bacon, and not ham, though it looks more like ham. Unlike everything else in that fridge box, it has to be cooked. Admittedly the package says it has to be cooked, but it's not in huge type.

I wonder how many wealthy customers only know that "pancetta" means fancy and not that it's cured but raw pork? Oops.

At the checkout, the workers were discussing a bad car wreck that had occurred earlier. Some high school kids had wiped out in front of the fire station next door and chopped their car in half. Discussion was had about the problems of children and horsepower. There had been another recent case where a kid had died on his 16th birthday because dad gave him a very fast sports car, and more recently an 18 year old girl had checked out after the Porsche she was piloting struck a fixed object at 100 mph.

Someone needs to talk to Dad. While he's choking down his raw pork sandwich, Junior is out there being burned beyond recognition because Dad thinks it's an awesome idea to buy Junior $75,000 worth of death. Who can blame the kids? They're teenagers dying of their parents' affluenza.

I'll stick with the fully cooked carbonara, the salad and iced tea, and the Japanese-made sports coupé. Moderation, he died old.

I should probably get over my resistance and go see the doc for x-rays. I just stretched out my achy shoulder/neck/ribs on the right and my foot kicked a chair two feet.

Bodies: overrated.

My dad told the one in which Lawrence's widow Frieda and her Fascist Italian army officer lover left Lawrence's ashes at a railway station platform in an excess of passionate disorganization. Some of the other stories are below.

1. LAWRENCE was buried in the old Vence cemetery on a March 1930. His remains were exhumed in March 1935 in the presence of Mrs Gordon CROTCH, an English resident, and incinerated at Marseille on March 13. A wooden box holding a sealed zinc container in which were his ashes, was then delivered, together with the appropriate transatlantic transport authorization by the Prefecture, dated 14 March, to the former captain of Bersaglieri Angelo RAVAGLI, at that time the factotum and lover of Lawrence's widow. His mission was to take the ashes to Taos (New Mexico) in "a beautiful vase" specially ordered by Frieda for this purpose. The ashes brought to Taos by RAVAGLI in grotesque cicumstances were cast by him into the concrete slab of a "shrine" which he built at the KIOWA ranch at San Cristobal near Taos.
   
   
2. When Baron de HAULLEVILLE and his sister-in-law Rose NYS-de HAULLEVILLE (who knew Ravagli through the Huxleys) were Ravagli's guests atTaos, Ravagli after partaking from a bottle of bourbon, confessed late one night to having dumped the box and ashes between Marseille and Villefranche (where he was due to sail on the Conde di Savoia), so as to avoid the expense and trouble of transporting them to the USA. When in New York he collected Frieda's vase, mailed "to be called for" from Marseille, and put into it some locally procured ashes which he took to Taos.
   
   
3. The following year Frieda had his body exhumed, cremated and the ashes brought to Taos. Her plan was to have the ashes housed in an urn in the memorial but Brett and Mabel Dodge Luhan wanted to scatter the ashes over the ranch (while Lawrence was alive the three women often competed for his attention). In response, Frieda dumped the ashes into a wheelbarrow containing wet cement and exclaimed, "now let's see them steal this!" The cement was used to make the memorial's altar. There are other stories concerning the whereabouts of Lawrence's ashes but this one is the most widely accepted.

Oh Frieda. Oh Captain Ravagli. Oh dear.

To master the challenges of the future, I require a Hyper Lethal Mini Robotic Attack Helicopter or two.

Enjoy the breathless prose of the war-machine lover:

Developed to be utilized as a tactical hunter/killer unmanned helicopter (mini-helicopter) a.k.a. unmanned combat armed rotorcraft (UCAR) for search-and-destroy missions and convoy security/force protection missions, the weaponized NRI AutoCopter Explorer robotic helicopter is a high-tech, high-speed, hyper-maneuverable and highly-weaponized harbinger of death and destruction from above--for the enemy, that is. It will be able to fly in in on enemy targets--both ground and aerial targets--at over 100 mph and engage those targets with forty (40) 12-gauge shotgun rounds or various types of 3-inch (3”) fin-stabilized FRAG-12 HE (High Explosive) grenade rounds at 300 RPM (Rounds Per Minute) out of the twin-AA-12s. The operator/pilot will be able to fire each gun individually or both guns simultaneously, depending on the situation. Oh, and did we mention that it (AutoCopter Explorer) will also be easily transportable in the back of your van (or SUV)?

Of course because of various dumb rules I can't get one, so they'll just be sent to suppress urban uprisings abroad and at home. Ho, hum.

Mom gets junk mail with message on the outside: "FREE PREPAID CREMATION! DETAILS INSIDE."

Her: "I can't wait to find out how this deal works!"

Me: "For chrissakes don't open that envelope until you're ready to be cremated!"

Not only did I not really get that a couple got shot at the Montage Resort, but it took Moxley's LA Weekly blog to show what a ridiculously noir mess has been made of the investigation. Long story short, the cops killed them, and the story is murky as hell.