A momentary loss of reason ...

Fetish website asked to supply medical uniforms to real doctors and nurses

Fetish website asked to supply medical uniforms to real doctors and nurses

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/ny-fetish-site-donates-medical-uniforms-to-real-doctors-and-nurses-20200329-f7kbqucwhjbxpalx3q5aopdtte-story.html#nt=interstitial-auto

By Brian Niemietz
New York Daily News |
Mar 29, 2020 | 6:01 PM



So much for playing doctor.

<snip>

MedFetUK said it was contacted by the National Health Services representatives searching for masks, scrubs and whatever else they might have on hand.

“Today we donated our entire stock of disposable scrubs to an NHS hospital. It was just a few sets, because we don’t carry large stocks, but they were desperate, so we sent them free of charge. We don’t usually do politics on Twitter, but here’s a short thread,” the site for hospital-loving hobbyists tweeted.

<snip>

MedFetUK said in its five-part Twitter story that the fact they were contacted indicates British officials are not being truthful when they claim medical workers have the supplies they need to fight a deadly pandemic.

“When we, a tiny company set up to serve a small section of the kink community, find ourselves being sought out as a last-resort supplier to our National Health Service in a time of crisis, something is seriously wrong. In fact, it’s scandalous,” they wrote.

Not only do workers at MedFetUK have a thing for medical garb; they also have a soft spot for the people who wear it. The company blamed government cuts and underfunding for the shortage of supplies and called for those responsible to be punished for leaving medical workers ill-equipped to go to war.

“So when it’s all over...and the doctors, nurses and other staff have done an amazing job (as they undoubtedly will despite the circumstances)... let’s not forget, or forgive, the ones who sent the NHS into this battle with inadequate armour and one hand tied behind its back,” the final tweet in that series reads.

German finance minister commits suicide as coronavirus blitzes economy

German finance minister commits suicide as coronavirus blitzes economy

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/ny-german-finance-minister-commits-suicide-coronavirus-economy-20200329-bnrvo77ulnd7pcmwhiq5tzpexi-story.html#nt=latestnews&rt=chartbeat-flt

By Brian Niemietz
New York Daily News |
Mar 29, 2020 | 2:10 PM




<snip>

The body of Thomas Schäfer, from the central German state Hesse, was found on railroad tracks near Frankfurt over the weekend, according to DW News.

Police reportedly believe suicide was to blame for the 54-year-old finance expert’s death. German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung claims a suicide note was left behind.

The state’s premier Volker Bouffier said Schäfer, who had been the finance minister for nearly a decade, was worried about Hesse’s ability to react to the economic devastation felt from the coronavirus.

“His main concern was whether he could manage to fulfill the huge expectations of the population, especially in terms of financial aid," Bouffier said on Sunday. "For him, there was clearly no way out. He was disappointed and so he had to leave us. That has shocked us, has shocked me.”

<snip>

Schäfer, like Chancellor Angela Merkel, was a member of Germany’s CDU party.


<snip>

On the soundtrack for these plague years ...

Something I wrote to a friend last night.

H.

The nearer our destination, the more we're slip-sliding away.


I always felt we would live forever. Never felt older after 35. Just looked it, but still never as old as I was.

It's become the "my later age" occupation, fingering the beads of the "those I know" rosary. Fewer now with the gaps of the missing I do not need to see: a touch is all it takes. And the prayers have changed - from "Lord protect us", to "Lord let us not forget or be forgotten," another sort of protection. A rear guard action now, to cover the charges into life I planned and never got quite mounted.

And I know my place: on other's strings of beads. I have some of the same sort on my string: a cautionary one here, an inspirational there and the special "don't it beat fuck all" squeezed in.

Sometimes it goes with a soundtrack, the music of our lives, the beads are cues for memories, dreams, and occasional disappointments. The danger being of course that while an uncontemplated life is sad the over contemplated life is pathetic.

Happiness in a person's history is a cusp between sadness and pathos. I aim for that sweet spot in the middle and mostly I've achieved it.

A saving grace in my life was realizing every sort of bad thing that happened to me was periphery and just a splash of terribly bad things that were happening to those who meant and mean a lot to me. The pain I owned was only partial and out of my commitment and obligation to people I loved and respected. It hurts to see it burning someone down, but its the pain assumed out of connection. I'm still standing.

I understand that when I looked away time snuck in. But that's just a function of what it does and on the whole I've had a wonderful life filled with opportunities: some taken, some wasted, some paying off handily, some cracked and fallen like a personal Ozymandias:

And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

I have had a good life and I am satisfied with it. I am not anxious to to cut my string of beads. But I am cognizant the the string is wearing out.

No mater what or when, I am happy to be here and I would be glad to have been here when I am gone.

h.

Soupy Sales and the naked lady

Soupy Sales Famous ‘Stripper Surprise’ Backstory
On June 28, 2012 - Broadcast History

https://eyesofageneration.com/soupy-sales-famous-stripper-surprise-backstorylet-me-let-you-in-on-a-little/

Soupy Sales Famous ‘Stripper Surprise’ Backstory

Let me let you in on a little secret. Lunch with Soupy Sales, Detroit’s most popular TV kid’s show, wasn’t really a kid’s show at all. Oh sure, Soupy always reminded the kiddies to take their vitaminnies and eat Silvercup Bread, “the best bread in Dee-troit,” but the show always relied on more adult oriented humor. In a 1958 Detroit Times article Sales even admitted, “There’s really no message to this show. It’s actually a kid’s show for adults.”

Soupy and his straight man, puppeteer Clyde Adler, were basically a modern day vaudeville team. The show never had a live studio audience, except for a very vocal stage crew. Soupy always tried to crack up the crew, and they were more than happy to reciprocate. For example, Soupy’s orange juice was on more than one occasion spiked with 100 proof vodka, courtesy of the stagehands. Another crew prank involved the placing of dirty notes between the buns of Soupy’s hamburger. When Soupy lifted the top of the bun to put ketchup on his burger he’d see the dirty note, which would invariably break him up.

<snip>

There never was a written script for the show; Soupy and Clyde would just work out what they were going to do, giving the director a bare-bones outline for camera angles and sound cues. The bit was for the audio man to play a recording of a woman screaming. Soupy would then run to the door, open it, and look down to see a pair of women’s shoes being pulled by fishing line, running from a pair of men’s shoes. Blackout, cut to commercial.

The studio that day was filled with curious onlookers who were in on the joke. Soupy knew that something was up, but he wasn’t quite sure what. The show started precisely at noon, and ran smoothly. At about 12:27 Soupy, as rehearsed, heard a woman’s scream. He ran to the door, opened it, and instead of a pair of women’s shoes saw a nude woman wearing nothing but a smile. Soupy stole a quick glance at the master monitor, hoping that the curvaceous cutie’s image wasn’t being broadcast live over the airwaves. Sure enough, to his horror the monitor showed exactly what Soupy had feared- a smiling nude woman. The engineers were clever enough to patch a different camera angle into the monitor, making Soupy think that thousands of Detroit kiddies were at home eating their lunches in front of the TV while getting a lesson in female anatomy. In reality, what the kids saw was a speechless Soupy standing next to an open door, nothing more. Soupy saw what he thought was his career passing before his eyes.

<snip>

How Pie-Throwing Became a Comedy Standard

How Pie-Throwing Became a Comedy Standard
One film studio in Los Angeles pioneered the trope of flying pies.
by Anne Ewbank July 10, 2018

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-do-people-throw-pies



One of the last places you might expect to find a commemorative plaque is on a concrete self-storage building in Los Angeles. But there, on 1712 Glendale Blvd., a plaque memorializes what was once a sprawling film lot known as Keystone Studios. The film company, now located in present-day Echo Park, was famed for its uproarious slapstick comedies—particularly those involving tossed pies.

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This phenomenon can be traced back before the earliest days of pre-1920s silent film. Tossing a pie into someone’s face for comedic effect first existed on the vaudeville circuit. The hilarity of seeing an elegant dessert hit an an actor, and watching them react with either anger or bewilderment, soon made its way to the screen. In 1913, Sennett’s muse Mabel Normand and Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle “launched the first such missile in a Keystone film,” notes The Oxford Companion to Food. Soon, the studio became known for pie-tossing shenanigans, and the high-flying desserts flew so freely that the studio needed its own bakery to make them.

The answer turned out to be right across the street. One Sarah Brener owned a variety store there, but she also supplied the studio with its pies. Sometimes, they were delicious. Charlie Chaplin said that Brener’s pies were the best in town (he once gave her one of his trademark canes as a memento, too). But often, they had to be specially formulated for films. The ones Keystone used were “a special ballistic version of the pie, with heavy-duty pastry and especially slurpy ‘custard.’” As pie fights in film grew more elaborate, Brener’s bakery was soon making nothing else.

<snip>

For a time, Keystone Studios was a powerful studio, launching stars like Charlie Chaplin to prominence. But by the time the 1920s rolled around, people had grown tired of the custard-pie shtick. It wasn’t long before comedies were being advertised on their pie-less merits: one ad trumpeted that “a custard pie and a pretty girl or two in a bathing suit do not make a comedy.” Pieing was so commonplace that Sennett had even developed rules for what characters could be taken down a notch with an ignominious pie to the face: mothers-in law, yes, mothers, no. (The humbling effect of a pie to the face has also made them a tool of political commentary.)

Widespread pie-throwing faded, but it didn’t die completely: Comedic films and animation alike have been peppered with pieing ever since, from Bugs Bunny to the Three Stooges. In 2015, The New York Times even reported that a “holy grail” of film history had been re-discovered: the second reel of the Laurel and Hardy 1927 short “The Battle of the Century”, where 3,000 pies sail through the air. It was supposed to be the pie fight to end all others, but in 1965 the film “The Great Race” promised viewers “the greatest pie fight in history.” Thousands of real pies were used, and after filming, the entire set stank of the rotting dessert.

<snip>



There's been some confusion here: No. That is not EarlG, Skinner and Elat during a meeting in the photo.

It just looks kinda like them. Or so I'm told.

L.A. Artists Recreated These Iconic Album Covers To Be In Line With Quarantine Rules

L.A. Artists Recreated These Iconic Album Covers To Be In Line With Quarantine Rules

https://www.boredpanda.com/activista-iconic-album-covers-quarantine-edition/?utm_source=democraticunderground&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=organic

Judita Kusaitytė
BoredPanda staff
Add Image

As the novel coronavirus rapidly spreads all across the globe, doctors and other health officials are recommending people to go by self- distancing rules and go into self-isolation if possible. While people are trying to follow them as best as possible and still get a pretty decent experience out of this all, some are trying out a little bit more of a creative approach to this new self-distancing life.

Artists from L.A., California, Paco Conde and Roberto Fernandez, came up with an ingenious idea to recreate famous album covers according to our current situation and make them quarantine-appropriate.

Trump wants this ad pulled - only quotes him ...

Amazon removes more than 3,900 seller accounts from US store due to 'coronavirus-based price gouging

Amazon removes more than 3,900 seller accounts from US store due to 'coronavirus-based price gouging'

Josh Rivera, USA TODAY
USA TODAYMarch 24, 2020, 12:41 PM CDT

<snip>

As coronavirus fears began to spread in early March, the company said it was investigating. On Monday, the retail giant also said in a blog post it has removed more than half a million items from its stores because of "coronavirus-based price gouging," about half the amount it had previously said it removed in response to price gouging or misleading claims.

"We began taking these enforcement actions promptly upon discovering this kind of misconduct, and we've been partnering directly with law enforcement agencies to combat price gougers and hold them accountable," Amazon said in the post.

<snip>

According to a report by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group released March 11, nearly 1 in 6 of the products sold directly by Amazon had prices spike 50% higher than the 90-day average.

The company reinforced its claim that it "has proactively reached out to every state attorney general in the country" to ensure bad actors were being held accountable.

Although the post did not mention Amazon's own pricing changes, it added its platform "strictly prohibits sellers from exploiting an emergency by charging excessively high prices on products and shipping" and that it is "issuing regular reminders to our sellers about these longstanding policies."

<snip>

Follow Josh Rivera on Twitter: @Josh1Rivera

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Amazon: Coronavirus price gouging leads to removal of 3,900 accounts