American Emperor

From Wikipedia, the inspiring life of Joshua Abraham Norton, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico.

Having become fully disgruntled with the inadequacies of the political structure and state and federal governments of the United States, Norton took matters into his own hands on September 17, 1859, when, in letters to the various newspapers of the area, he summarily proclaimed himself "Emperor of These United States":

At the pre-emptory request of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I Joshua Norton, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, and now for the last nine years and ten months past of San Francisco, California, declare and proclaim myself the Emperor of These United States.

...

For all of his quirks and regardless of the precise nature of his psychological condition, it cannot be denied that Emperor Norton I was, on some occasions, a visionary, and a number of his Imperial Decrees exhibited a profound wisdom. Among his many edicts were instructions to form a League of Nations, and he explicitly forbade any form of discord or conflict between religions or their sects. The Emperor also saw fit on a number of occasions to decree the construction of a suspension bridge connecting Oakland and San Francisco...

It was during one of his Imperial inspections that Norton is reputed to have performed one of his most famous acts. During the 1860s and 1870s there were an unpleasant number of anti-Chinese demonstrations in the poorer districts of San Francisco, and ugly and fatal riots broke out on more than a handful of occasions. During one such incident, Emperor Norton I is alleged to have positioned himself between the rioters and their Chinese targets, and with a bowed head began to recite the Lord's Prayer repeatedly. Shamed, the rioters dispersed without incident.

A scandal occurred in 1867 when a police officer named Armand Barbier arrested the Imperial Majesty, for the purpose of committing him to involuntary treatment for a mental disorder. This caused monumental outrage amongst the citizens of San Francisco and sparked a number of scathing editorials in the newspapers. Police Chief Patrick Crowley speedily rectified matters by ordering the Emperor released and issuing a formal apology on behalf of the Police Force. Emperor Norton I was magnanimous enough to grant an Imperial Pardon to the errant young police officer who had committed the (perceived) act of treason. Possibly as a result of this scandal, all police officers of San Francisco thereafter would salute the Emperor as he passed in the street.

...

Emperor Norton I was clearly much loved and revered by his subjects. Although penniless, he regularly frequented the finest restaurants in San Francisco, and the proprietors of these establishments took it upon themselves to add brass plaques in their entrances that declared "By Appointment to his Imperial Majesty, Emperor Norton I of the United States".

...

Emperor Norton I did receive some small tokens of formal recognition for his station; the census of 1870 records a Joshua Norton residing at 624 Commercial St, and lists him with the occupation of "Emperor". The Emperor would also issue his own money on occasion in order to pay for certain debts, and this was an effective local currency, generally accepted as legal tender by San Francisco businesses.

...

The benevolent and largely harmless reign of Emperor Norton I came to an end on the evening of January 8, 1880, when he collapsed on the corner of California and Dupont (now Grant) streets while on his way to a lecture at the Academy of Sciences. His collapse was immediately noticed by another citizen who raised the alarm, and, according to one newspaper, "the police officer on the beat hastened for a carriage to convey him to the City Receiving Hospital". The Emperor passed away before the carriage could arrive.

The following day the San Francisco Chronicle published an obituary on its front page under the headline "Le Roi est Mort" ("the King is Dead"). With a tone tinged with sadness, the article respectfully reported that "On the reeking pavement, in the darkness of a moonless night under the dripping rain..., Norton I, by the grace of God, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, departed this life".

Enjoy yourself at The Surrealist, home of the Advertising Slogan Generator among other things.

Fun with Electron Microscopes

Is there any other kind?

The Authentic History Center has some fascinating stuff including:

Treasure Chest's This Godless Communism

Eclipse Enterprises' Trading Card Series The Iran-Contra Scandal

Marvel Comic's Spider Man: Black Issue (December 2001) and others.

It's not all comics related, in case my jejeune selection gives you that impression.

Looking for something else, I found this - it's not even slightly new:

The John Paul Sartre Cookbook

...Still working on the omelet. There have been stumbling blocks. I keep creating omelets one after another, like soldiers marching into the sea, but each one seems empty, hollow, like stone. I want to create an omelet that expresses the meaninglessness of existence, and instead they taste like cheese. I look at them on the plate, but they do not look back. Tried eating them with the lights off. It did not help. Malraux suggested paprika...

Another work in the fine tradition of Woody Allen's If The Impressionists Had Been Dentists.

Some Pre-holiday Cheer

Ten Appalling Christmas Specials That Never Happened

Ayn Rand's A Selfish Christmas (1951) Prior to broadcast, Mutual Broadcast System executives raised objections to the radio play, noting that 56 minutes of the hour-long broadcast went to a philosophical manifesto by the elf and of the four remaining minutes, three went to a love scene between Santa and the cold, practical Mrs. Claus that was rendered into radio through the use of grunts and the shattering of several dozen whiskey tumblers. In later letters, Rand sneeringly described these executives as "anti-life."

(Originally on Scalzi's blog, National Lampoon bought it for their website.)

And One That Did

The Star Wars Holiday Special The basis of the Holiday Special is a two hour long drama set on the Wookie homeworld on which Chewbacca's wife Malla, son Lumpy and father Itchy await the return of Chewie in time for Light Day- a sort of Wookie Christmas... There is good entertainment, and then there is bad entertainment. Then there is the so-bad-that-it's-good zone, but the Star Wars Holiday Special occupies a hitherto undiscovered region on the spectrum. It is so bad that it saps one's will to live. It is a malignant hydra with the faces of those we know and love and a body of pure evil.

Well, everyone's entitled to respect for their deeply held beliefs.

Mr. Gordon Prentice (Pendle) (Lab): I am still perplexed because there is no definition of religion. On the 2001 census form, 5,015 people in Sheffield gave Jedi knight as their religion. I hate "Star Wars", so should I be worried?

Mr. Blunkett {Home Secretary}: If someone incited people because of their love of "Star Wars", or against people with a love of "Star Wars", they would be caught under existing law, but not in terms of religion. That is the whole point—

Scary Baby Jesus Head

That Landover spin-off (well-wishers?) Objective: Christian Ministries produced the above creepy parodic* item. Mouseover to hear the strangled cry: "Why??!"

* I just realised, gullible schmuck that I am.

Nobody Here

More interactive web fun. Just press the curly icon for a random page.

Dog Island

Over 2,500 dogs are already enjoying a better life at Dog Island. Separated from the anxieties of urban life, dogs on Dog Island are healthy dogs who live a natural, healthy and happy life, free from the stress and hardship associated with daily live among humans.

They live with almost limitless space, and tens of thousands of rabbits, rodents, fish and other natural prey. Surrounded by thousands of other dogs, this is the only place for them to be truly social and create healthy families.

Dogs at Dog Island have another chance.

My response oscillates between "Awwww..." and "Man, that's creepy!"

Some news you may have missed.

A woman upset when police seized her three preserved snakes stormed into the Hamilton station and threw a jar of pickled kittens at the counter.

...

Hoskyn said the snakes, which she bought from an antique store, held special spiritual significance for her because she was born in the year of the snake and used them to help to celebrate Halloween.

She also kept the two kittens for Halloween celebrations, using them to give the house a scary look.

The kittens were still-born from the couple's cat.

Police communications manager Kris McGehan said that although the encounter sounded amusing, it had serious consequences.

"The jar shattered. It was full of formaldehyde, which is highly toxic. The public counter had to be closed, which caused police and the public a lot of inconvenience.

"Two phones had to be replaced and we had to monitor the health of staff who may have absorbed the chemical or its fumes."

...

Hoskyn said her trouble began on Sunday when she had an argument with her partner, Tony.

"I slipped over and cut my head, Tony panicked and called an ambulance, thinking he had caused my injury. He hadn't.

"Police were called, we think by the ambulance people. While outside they saw two cannabis plants and decided under the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Act they could search the house.

"I was taken away by ambulance and Tony was arrested. When they searched the house they came across my two snakes, preserved in jars."

The snakes were taken away by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries.

Here's something fun - a multi-user interactive flash game for moving letters about. Futilely try to write greetings while others steal your letters! Have fun preventing adolescent half-wits spelling out racial slurs! Think outside the square - maybe you can use that pair of L's to do a little leg-puppet dance! But do something interesting and don't bogart the site- it's limited to 75 users at once and OTHER PEOPLE WANT THEIR BLOODY TURN!!!

Get happy! Here's a cut-up of George W. Bush singing Sunday Bloody Sunday, over at Audio Street; or go straight to the artists' site: The Party Party. Toe-tapping, soul-chilling fun.

The inevitable Apologies Accepted website.

Number Stations

Being strange short-wave radio frequencies on which lists of numbers are broadcasted - almost certainly espionage related. Now available on CD.

NPR Report

The Conet Project

Zoomquilt
Tres cool. Probably not dial-up friendly.

Part of America Apologises

This is what you are.

A collection of man-hole covers

Hey, it's what you wanted!

What is it with geeks and cats?

It all began innocently enough when a user on an Apple help forum posted a picture of his cat, Frankie, contemplating the beauty of a flower. Shortly afterwards another user posted a picture of his cat bristling at the image of Frankie on the monitor. I decided this was too much fun and advanced the concept as The Infinite Cat Project which is, simply, cats regarding cats regarding cats in an electronic melieu.

And a small compendium of backmasking.

Feeling poor? Hah! If you can read this, you're a rich bastard and here's your proof.

And here's a more comprehensive method of working out how quickly you are hastening our fair planet to its doom.

Enjoy!

Perhaps I'm easily amused

The Poor Man and their comments thread explore a meme

For those of you who never visit boingboing (or The Guardian)

Police in Paris have discovered a fully equipped cinema-cum-restaurant in a large and previously uncharted cavern underneath the capital's chic 16th arrondissement.

...

After entering the network through a drain next to the Trocadero, the officers came across a tarpaulin marked: Building site, No access.

Behind that, a tunnel held a desk and a closed-circuit TV camera set to automatically record images of anyone passing. The mechanism also triggered a tape of dogs barking, "clearly designed to frighten people off," the spokesman said.

Further along, the tunnel opened into a vast 400 sq metre cave some 18m underground, "like an underground amphitheatre, with terraces cut into the rock and chairs".

There the police found a full-sized cinema screen, projection equipment, and tapes of a wide variety of films, including 1950s film noir classics and more recent thrillers. None of the films were banned or even offensive, the spokesman said.

A smaller cave next door had been turned into an informal restaurant and bar. "There were bottles of whisky and other spirits behind a bar, tables and chairs, a pressure-cooker for making couscous," the spokesman said.

"The whole thing ran off a professionally installed electricity system and there were at least three phone lines down there."

The Guardian 8 September 2004

There are, at most, 15 of them. Their ages range from 19 to 42, their professions from nurse to window dresser, mason to film director. And in a cave beneath the streets of Paris, they built a subterranean cinema whose discovery this week sent the city's police into a frenzy.

"They freaked out completely," Lazar, their spokesman, said happily. "They called in the bomb squad, the sniffer dogs, army security, the anti-terrorist squad, the serious crimes unit. They said it was skinheads or subversives. They got it on to national TV news. They hadn't a clue."

To be fair, until recently very few people did have a clue about La Mexicaine de la Perforation, a clandestine cell of "urban explorers" which claims its mission is to "reclaim and transform disused city spaces for the creation of zones of expression for free and independent art".

...

The cinema, with restaurant and bar annexe, was open for a seven-week season this summer, showing a suitably subversive programme which included works by Chinese and Korean directors but also Alex Proyas' Dark City, Coppola's Rumble Fish, David Lynch's Eraserhead, and Terry Gilliam's Brazil.

It was constructed in a series of interconnected caves totalling some 400 square metres beneath the Palais de Chaillot, across the Seine from the Eiffel tower. Former quarries, they were partly refurbished during the 1900 Universal Exposition when one of the galleries was clad with concrete to represent a future Channel tunnel and a wall was artfully terraced.

But the caves were sealed off for the last time at least 20 years ago and subsequently "ceased to exist officially", Lazar said. "We knew them well because we used them to get into the Palais de Chaillot every Bastille Day. The roof is the perfect place from which to watch the fireworks."

Indeed most of the LMDP's underground happenings are organised in places the city authorities are not aware of, he added. "There are so many underground networks - the quarries, the metro, the collective heating, the electricity, the sewers - and each is the responsibility of a different bureaucracy," he said.

"Urban explorers are the only people who, between us, know it all. We move between each network. We know where they link up - often, it's us who made the link. The authorities, the police, town hall, they don't know a hundredth, a thousandth, of what's down there."

Building a fully functioning subterranean cinema was, the LMDP admits, a more than usually stiff challenge. The project took some 18 months to complete, though most of the hard work - including shifting a large pile of rubble off the terraces, and shoring up a couple of walls - was done in three or four weekends.

With their long experience of such matters, the group's technicians had little difficulty piping in electricity and phone lines.

The Guardian 11 September 2004

Apropos of the above: some urban exploration related sites

Zone Tour

Spelunking the Empire of Death

Berlin Underground

Infiltration.org

Action Squad - Minneapolis

Cave Clan - Australia

Jinx Magazine

Sleepy City Photos

The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit

A bunch more sites at the Urban Exploration Ring

And apropos of sod-all:

The Internet is Psychic

Have Some Π

Sorry, those two were the lamest I could find.

The Budgie Research Group

One of the real problems with the Internet is you can never be entirely sure if someone's taking the piss even when it's hard to believe a sane person couldn't be doing anything else.

That's only one of the problems, though. Vaya con dios!

Some games:

The Skeleton Shop's A Murder of Scarecrows

A selection of games from TONYPA "Bars", "Pixelfield" & "Spots" are most diverting

Build-Your-Own Slot-car Racetrack and Race 'Em

Orisinal Games Gloriously designed, uberkawaii games from Ferry Halim

Have I mentioned Sodaplay before?

NationStates An on-line text based "strategy" game from Jennifer Government author Max Barry

An unnecessarily groovy version of the old memory game

The Crimson Room
The Viridian Room
The Blue Chamber
Seeing you got to these late, you should be able to google up some tips on how to solve the bloody things

Other ould shite:

Toogle Uses Google Image Search to create text mosaics (careful - the image search is unfiltered, so steel yourself for potential anomalous results produced by seemingly innocuous words like "bear" or "pork")

Archive of US Presidential Election TV Ads All your favourites: "Vote for Goldwater and He'll Nuke This Little Girl", "Vote for Dukakis and He'll Let This Scary Black Man Rape Your Family" and More!

Pax vobiscum.

Sorry, went out on June 30th for a bottle of raspberry schnapps to go with a Kirk Cameron video marathon and after that July was a bit of a blur. Although, I do dimly recall hanging from the awning of the Bondi Masonic Centre chanting "There is no goat but Ally Sheedy and Moe Szyslak is her small orange time-travelling friend!"

OK, that's a lie. My life isn't that interesting. And neither is yours what with this paltrey selection on offer:

One Minute Vacations A collection of soundscapes from around the world

Dale Chihuly Glassworks Just very beautiful

How Much of An Earth-Destroying Bastard Are You? One of them global-footprint calculators, as provided by the Victorian Department of the Environment, who clearly feel you don't have enough guilt in your life

English Dialects By 'eck, yarr, a goodly selection of Brit accents, guvnor

Artist on Acid Trip Notes from a U.S. government experiment

All Those Moody FoxNews Memos As saved by Wonkette

All Those My Pet Goat Reviews As saved by S.Z. at Sadly, No!

Oh, and here's something you don't see every day - Will Ferrell Being Funny

And life goes on.

Things that really annoy me lately:

George Brandis
Piers Akermann

The ABC for giving both of these repellent idiots airtime on Insiders.

The boiling blood wakes me up of a Sunday morning, though.

I bother so you don't have to.

Cthulhu for President "Why settle for a lesser evil?"

How to Dance Properly My colleague found this. He has the right priorities.

Rumsfeld Fighting Technique "You may have defeated my Southern Hook Palm technique, but can you defeat the 1000 styles of Rumsfeld?"

The Exorcist as performed by Bunnies Ah, the internet. The guys at DARPA must be so proud.

Men Who Look Like Kenny Rogers So very proud.

Baby Got Back in Latin "Domina mea exstat a tergo! My mistress stands out behind!"

The Melonheads The site of these Francophone web-designers features many pleasing animations but not their now famous version of the Beatles' Come Together which you should be able to find at this site until it gets slashdotted like all the others did. Don't bother clicking if your broadband ain't ticking. OK, I'm copyrighting that - hands off!

Mummy, Mummy, I Want A Fetus! I wonder if these plush-toy makers started this whole enterprise just so they could name one Cletus.

World's Smallest Website That's it's name, don't wear it out.