To be a hero you must go home and look pensively with your S.O. at an old picture of you in the service. Every night.

If only wishing or ignorance made reality go away. I suppose to manipulate that old picture of your parents you can just go to the magically internet repository with their high quality 3d models stored in it? Or you pet cat with the funny tail, or the tree in front of your house? Or the custom carved vase?

When you actually go try and match high quality 3d models to real world objects you quickly discover just how many are unique and hard to find.

No joke, John Wayne Gacy was a clown at childrens parties when he was younger. My stepmother was also a clown at childrens parties and worked with him. She has an old picture of her and John Wayne Gacy all clowned up and smiling for the camera. It's the greatest picture I have ever seen.

Comedian Bill Burr made a great analogy the other day. Oddly enough he was not referring to the Daniel Tosh incident as this was a few days before that incident took place.

What he said was: "Watching an old woman falling down the stairs would be a HORRIBLE thing to see. Yet if you watched it happen in a Will Ferrell movie (or something) it would be hilarious"



His point being, it is possible (some say necessary) to laugh at the dark side of life and humanity.



Gilbert Gottfried also chimed in on this same topic in his editorial about the Daniel Tosh incident:



"have always felt comedy and tragedy are roommates. If you look up comedy and tragedy, you will find a very old picture of two masks. One mask is tragedy. It looks like it's crying. The other mask is comedy. It looks like it's laughing."

I'm reading Hawking's "A Brief History of Time", the 10th anniversary "updated" edition. In 1996, Hawking was unaware of any positively identified black holes, nor of the universe's accelerating expansion. It's funny to think that 15 years later, I know stuff that he didn't. It's like realizing you're older than your father was in some old pictures.

Oh, no offense taken. I'm Finnish by ancestry. I don't actually have any connection with Finland besides some old pictures, my Nokia cell-phone and the fact that I think they're awesome.

LMAO...oh man..I saw that this morning and laughed, then you said that and I laughed even harder!

Huzzah!

In reply to this comment by Fusionaut:
An old picture of you back in your sea faring days! Yaaaargh!

This is such a beautiful story...I love old pictures and this collection should be bound together and sold as a book or placed in the commons thing in congress. This is really an amazing story about someone so seemingly insignificant...I love the whole idea and I'm dying for the movie.

EDIT: They're planning a book and a movie.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/800508197/finding-vivian-maier-a-feature-length-documentary

I would love to see those old pictures. I absolutely love this movie (liked the book), and I watch it periodically and probably always will. I'd be wary of a total breakdown doc like this tho, because, why dissect the Mona Lisa? Don't think I want to see someone pull back the curtain on this one.

When Lucky migrated to the new server, this old picture came back..

In reply to this comment by enoch:
where is evil/house?

I *know* this will be long. But understanding things should never be allowed to be reduced to sound bites and short sentences.

Police raided a school as an exercise? Not even some warrents? Sounds like some individuals whom need to be held accountible for their jobs. Which could be fines, jail time, lose of job, and so on. People make mistakes, and do dumb things. Can you honestly say you haven't done dumb things in your life so far?

The narrator is trying to use fear, to get the proper response out of you, the audience. To some degree, as with posters above, he succeeds at the task. He uses a collection of words and phrases, and links them to imagery, sounds, and even old pictures. In ways, this concept is known as NLP, or, Neuro-logical programming (look it up in wikipedia, its both fascinating and scary stuff).

Police have to keep up with technology and tactics, as their duty in our country, is to up hold the law. The legistators create laws, the executive signs such law in to effect. Its the law enforcement (i.e. the police, FBI, and other local/state/federal agencies) whom maintain the law. The justices decide on whether the laws are within Consitituional limits, or if they breach them. All these sets of checks & balances do not work, if the citizens of the country let in to the fear this narrator wants you to feel. I know the police in my town. Friendly bunch whom work very hard to keep things normal and safe. They are very much studied and watched. We pay them very well, and make sure they have the proper tools to do their job correctly, honestly, lawfully, and to be responsible.

The 'police state' effect, that the narrator talks about, did come in to effect during the Bush Administration. The US Patriot Act was passed in to law very quickly, shortly after Sept. 11, 2001. One of its passages allowed the goverment to circumvent the 4th Amendment, allowing the White House to 'spy' on over 300 million Americans. This was conducted in an effort to catch and eliminate "...those whom are a threat to our country." This narrator does not hold Mr. Bush, nor the White House accountible to each and every time, this action took place.

If I recall the issue of military 'APC's for Waco, Tx correctly. The Branch Davidians were holed up in a central structure compound with numberous fire arms. Now, this by itself was not illegal. The agents conducting the warrents and arrests initally were met with the civilian sold version of the Barrett M82A1 'light fifty' rifle. This weapon, to my knowledge, is a single shot weapon (the military version can fire rounds from a magizine....I think?). I'm sure the gun nuts on here could inform us, of the gun's name. Anyways, this weapon, like its military cousin, could blow holes through armored police cars. The APCs were used to conduct operations and hopefully bring the matter to a non-violent conclusion. As the history books show, this did not happen. But the police, and FBI, did not racket up their skills and tools in a vacuum. After the event was over, there were a number of studies on the issue, and people held properly (depending on one's viewpoint I guess) of their actions and inactions that led to the events.

If you, the citizen really are consern about the nature of the police or law enforcement, then why not go visit the police. Talk to them, become active in your community and seriously look at how a police state could be formed, and take proper, legal, honest action to oppose it. Believe it or not, the police I know, are AGAINST a police state. And they are in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (since, some of you conversatives think us Mass residents are all commie, liberal, socialistic, islamic happy, tree hugging, yuppy, homosexual liking, religios hating, psych-paths....did I leave anything out?). In fact, thsoe whom are liberal REALLY are against the police state. We voted to remove Republicans at the federal level, out of office (since the Bush admin *IS* Republican).


Finally, recall its Thomas Jefferson that said, (paraphrasingly) that if we are afraid to speak our minds in pursuit of our nations freedoms and equalities, then we allow tyranny to win.

hey thanks. I love the way the tumbnails look on my queue page. Like an old picture album.

In reply to this comment by rasch187:
I love the current theme! Just try not to get too depressed

Very nice to see all the folks are just as charming as I imagined. Apart from seeing Sift veterans on video rather than good old pictures, it was definitely satisfying to be able to put more names to faces (poolcleaner, volomptuous, darkrowan), too. Also, great props to youdiejoe for the lovely Avalanches background and the overall pleasant sift.

Last but not least, I seriously gotta commend blankfist on his blending in techniques. I never saw such a nice, well behaved chronic serial rapist/public masturbator in my life.

1. One
2. His name is Yoshi. He was named after Super Mario's pal.
3. Bought him from a Ragdoll breeder in Temecula, CA.
4. 5 human years old. (How long is a cat year?)
5. You can see some old pictures of him here with his little brother Kiko.
6. He has no interest in cat toys purchased from the store. He loves chasing crumpled up pieces of paper (like post-it notes) around. He hates soft, furry things and loves laying on cold, hard things like plastic and cardboard boxes.
7. Cats are very clean (especially where it matters most) and can be left alone, but if raised properly you can still feel like they really dig you as their daddy or mommy.
8. None. Yoshi's not on here.

^ Joedirt pretty much sums up what I was trying to say. Until two years ago, I hadn't ever heard her name. Now she's served two years as governor of the (sometimes second-) smallest state in the nation. The school I currently attend has more students than the entire Mat-Su Valley, even at Deathcow's estimate of 60,000 people. She hasn't even finished up one term as governor. At least most if not all of the other people on the ticket had a full term under their belt.

Hell, the town she served as mayor still hasn't gotten over the fact that she won their beauty pageant 24 years ago. Check out their Wiki page. A picture of the mountains, a picture of the start of the Iditarod Trail, and a 24-year-old picture of their former mayor. Caption reads "Photo of Miss Wasilla 1984, Sarah Palin, Gov. Alaska, Republican VP candidate 2008."

If that's not small-town, I don't know what is.