AdamSmith

LOL Last of the big spenders! That ad is extravagant. The ones I remember were these cramped little 1-column-inch buys:

A couple of times when I lived there, I should have taken a bar pickup to one of these fleabags instead of back to my apartment. The upshot was losing a Garmin GPS (~$150) and a digital camera ($200) to some sticky fingers. But, never having lost any vital body parts, can't complain!

The Rosicrucians! I always wanted to send away for whatever it was they advertised in their little bitty, sloppily typeset ads in the back of Popular Science magazine. Attn: Scribe A.M.O.R.C. ...whoever that was. But mamacita, fearing I suppose some pamphlet straight from the printing presses of Hell, ever forbade.

Ah, and tidbits. Had my second-to-last fuck before moving out of NYC in that hotel, with a black TS dom encountered earlier that evening in this all-night pool hall... http://spacebilliards.com ...where, after a certain hour, everyone there is on the DL one way or another. One of my very favorite spots in the city.

For better or worse I don't know any of those firsthand, but I have stayed here: http://www.uspacifichotelnyc.com ...on Bowery in Chinatown. $62/night for a room with shared baths down the hall. Scrupulously clean though.

Droll & nasty & accurate-sounding (how would I know? ) rundown: http://www.askmen.com/top_10/travel/top-10-hourly-hotels-in-nyc.html

Yum. So What Really Is In A McDonald's Chicken McNugget? Chicken McPoison Author unknown 5-14-7 The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan is a fascinating book that details the changing eating habits of Americans. I can't recommend it highly enough. It explains how, over the last 30 years, we have become a nation that eats vast quantities of corn ­ much more so than Mexicans, the original "corn people." Most folks assume that a chicken nugget is just a piece of fried chicken, right? Wrong! Did you know, for example, that a McDonald's Chicken McNugget is 56% corn? What else is in a McDonald's Chicken McNugget? Besides corn, and to a lesser extent, chicken, The Omnivore's Dilemma describes all of the thirty-eight ingredients that make up a McNugget ­ one of which I'll bet you'll never guess. During this part of the book, the author has just ordered a meal from McDonald's with his family and taken one of the flyers available at McDonald's called "A Full Serving of Nutrition Facts: Choose the Best Meal for You." These two paragraphs are taken directly from The Omnivore's Dilemma: "The ingredients listed in the flyer suggest a lot of thought goes into a nugget, that and a lot of corn. Of the thirty-eight ingredients it takes to make a McNugget, I counted thirteen that can be derived from corn: the corn-fed chicken itself; modified cornstarch (to bind the pulverized chicken meat); mono-, tri-, and diglycerides (emulsifiers, which keep the fats and water from separating); dextrose; lecithin (another emulsifier); chicken broth (to restore some of the flavor that processing leeches out); yellow corn flour and more modified cornstarch (for the batter); cornstarch (a filler); vegetable shortening; partially hydrogenated corn oil; and citric acid as a preservative. A couple of other plants take part in the nugget: There's some wheat in the batter, and on any given day the hydrogenated oil could come from soybeans, canola, or cotton rather than corn, depending on the market price and availability. According to the handout, McNuggets also contain several completely synthetic ingredients, quasiedible substances that ultimately come not from a corn or soybean field but form a petroleum refinery or chemical plant. These chemicals are what make modern processed food possible, by keeping the organic materials in them from going bad or looking strange after months in the freezer or on the road. Listed first are the "leavening agents": sodium aluminum phosphate, mono-calcium phosphate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, and calcium lactate. These are antioxidants added to keep the various animal and vegetable fats involved in a nugget from turning rancid. Then there are "anti-foaming agents" like dimethylpolysiloxene, added to the cooking oil to keep the starches from binding to air molecules, so as to produce foam during the fry. The problem is evidently grave enough to warrant adding a toxic chemical to the food: According to the Handbook of Food Additives, dimethylpolysiloxene is a suspected carcinogen and an established mutagen, tumorigen, and reproductive effector; it's also flammable. But perhaps the most alarming ingredient in a Chicken McNugget is tertiary butylhydroquinone, or TBHQ, an antioxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed directly on the nugget or the inside of the box it comes in to "help preserve freshness." According to A Consumer's Dictionary of Food Additives, TBHQ is a form of butane (i.e. lighter fluid) the FDA allows processors to use sparingly in our food: It can comprise no more than 0.02 percent of the oil in a nugget. Which is probably just as well, considering that ingesting a single gram of TBHQ can cause "nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse." Ingesting five grams of TBHQ can kill." Bet you never thought that was in your chicken McNuggets! http://www.rense.com/general76/chk.htm

Or as a first step.

Given the longstanding speculations about Crist's orientation, I'm surprised not to have seen any snarkery about blow jobs yet.

Crazy like a fox? Pope Francis' Machiavellian strategy to liberalize the Catholic Church The Vatican's synod on the family hasn't changed church doctrine. But it could slyly lay the groundwork for a major upheaval down the road. By Damon Linker | October 15, 2014 The Week He's a crafty one. (Franco Origlia/Getty Images) Maybe you can help me. I'm confused. The Catechism of the Catholic Church declares as a matter of binding doctrine that homosexual acts are "acts of grave depravity," "contrary to the natural law," and "intrinsically" as well as "objectively disordered." "Under no circumstances" can those acts "be approved." Although people who feel same-sex attractions "must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity," they are called by the church to take up "the Lord's cross" and embrace a life of "chastity" through "self-mastery" of their desires. That is the only way for them to "gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection." That sounds pretty unequivocal, wouldn't you say? Now let's look at Tuesday's edition of The New York Times, which contains an above-the-fold front-page story about a 12-page document released on Monday by the synod on marriage and the family that Pope Francis has convened at the Vatican. In the second paragraph of the story, we are informed (quite accurately) that the document "does not change church doctrine or teaching." And yet the story also states (in the third paragraph) that the document is "the first signal that the institutional church may follow the direction Francis has set in the first 18 months of his papacy, away from condemnation of unconventional family situations and toward understanding, openness, and mercy." And indeed, the document does say some nice things about homosexual relationships, but also about "cohabitation" among heterosexual couples. If you're a noncelibate gay Catholic, or a Catholic who's divorced and remarried and so technically excluded from receiving the sacrament of Communion at Mass, these words no doubt come as a comfort. But how significant are they? The answer to that question depends in large part on what the pope has in mind. And that's where I become confused. Even if the language of the document released on Monday is approved in total at the conclusion of the synod, it will still change nothing at all in church doctrine or teaching. Homosexual acts will still be deemed intrinsically and objectively disordered. It's just that the Vatican will now be urging pastors to soft-peddle the doctrine to parishioners. Priests and bishops will be urged to accentuate the positive, to talk about the "gifts and qualities" that gay people "offer to the Christian community," and to acknowledge that gay couples often provide each other "mutual aid" and "precious support." That sounds like a modest expansion on or elaboration of the Catechism's injunction to accept gay people "with respect, compassion, and sensitivity," combined with a suggestion that priests and bishops not shove down people's throats the much harsher official doctrine about homosexual acts. But the doctrine itself will remain unchanged. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this makes no sense whatsoever. To see why, consider the fate of Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke. Burke was a major player in the Catholic hierarchy under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, spearheading the move to deny Communion to Catholic politicians who support abortion rights (including Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry) during the 2004 election. His long history of stringent statements has continued right down to the present, with remarks in the past few weeks about how the church's teachings about marriage and annulment, and the "intrinsically disordered" character of homosexual acts, cannot change. Whereas Benedict rewarded Burke's combativeness by elevating him to the College of Cardinals in November 2010, Francis has gone in the opposite direction, removing Burke in December 2013 from the Congregation for Bishops, a position from which he exercised influence on the future leadership of the church. Liberal Catholics were understandably cheered and encouraged by the demotion. And if Francis were poised to change the doctrines that Burke so fervently upholds, his sacking would make perfect sense as an act of ecclesiastical power politics. But once again, there has been and looks to be no imminent change in those doctrines. In sum, Burke appears to have been punished for forthrightly stating and defending in public the authoritative teachings of the Catholic Church — just as the pope appears prepared to reward those who deliberately refrain from stating and defending those same teachings. That seems like an exceedingly odd way for the head of an institutional church to behave. I submit that there is only one way to make sense of the pope's actions, and it goes like this: Francis would like to liberalize church doctrine on marriage, the family, and homosexuality, but he knows that he lacks the support and institutional power to do it. So he's decided on a course of stealth reform that involves sowing seeds of future doctrinal change by undermining the enforcement of doctrine today. The hope would be that a generation or two from now, the gap between official doctrine and the behavior that's informally accepted in Catholic parishes across the world would grow so vast that a global grassroots movement in favor of liberalizing change would rise up at long last to sweep aside the old, musty, already-ignored rules. If this is what Pope Francis is going for, I don't blame conservatives for beginning to express serious misgivings. It's a brilliant, clever, supremely Machiavellian strategy — one that promises to produce far-reaching reforms down the road while permitting the present pope both to claim plausible deniability ("I haven't changed church doctrine!") and to enjoy nearly constant effusive coverage in the secular press. What's happening in Rome isn't yet "revolutionary change." But it just may be what eventually prepares the way for exactly that. http://theweek.com/article/index/269891/pope-francis-machiavellian-strategy-to-liberalize-the-catholic-church

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Not exactly art but theatre maybe. Interesting anyway. The picture that proves why iconic photograph of workers eating their lunch on Rockefeller beam was all a publicity stunt Shot of 11 workers eating and smoking 69 floors up was staged for promotion of the nearly finished building By Sara Malm Published: 07:29 EST, 20 September 2012 | Updated: 05:43 EST, 21 September 2012 dailymail.co.uk It is one of the most iconic photographs of all time but as it celebrates its 80th anniversary it has emerged that ‘Lunch atop a Skyscraper’ may not have been as impromptu as previously thought. Archivists say the shot showing 11 construction workers enjoying their break on a suspended beam, high above the streets of Manhattan, was in fact a publicity stunt. Although the models were real workers, the moment was staged by the Rockefeller Center to promote their new skyscraper 80 years ago today. The claim is supported by a second - and rarely seen - image from the same organised shoot which shows the crew in a different pose lying down on the girder. Staged: The iconic photograph of workers enjoying their break whilst perched on a beam 69 floors up was, in fact, just a publicity stunt Taken on September 20, 1932 it was intended to look like a natural break during the construction of the RCA Building (later renamed the GE Building in 1986), which forms part of the Rockefeller Center. The image of the 11 workers perched on a beam 69 floors above Manhattan eating lunch, sharing banter and lighting cigarettes is one of the world’s most reproduced. ‘The image was a publicity effort by the Rockefeller Center. It seems pretty clear they were real workers, but the event was organised with a number of photographers.’ Ken Johnston, chief historian for Corbis Images, which owns the rights to the photo, told the Independent. He added that it is Corbis Images’ biggest selling historical image and tops other iconic historical photographs in the Corbis catalogue, including those of Albert Einstein and Martin Luther King. The original negative of the photograph is stored in a temperature-controlled facility under Pennsylvania’s Iron Mountain. Johnston described the world famous black and white photograph as 'a piece of American history.' 'The other one': It is this image, of four construction workers take a nap on the same beam shot on the same day which, according to archives, prove it was all just a set-up The image first appeared in the New York Herald Tribune a few weeks after it was taken on October 2, 1932. Although the photo it is commonly credited to photographer Charles C Ebbets, information which was uncovered by a private investigation firm in 2003, Corbis say that after it emerged that there were multiple photographers at the shoot, they are no longer certain Mr Ebbets took it. The iconic image has frequently been wrongly attibuted to Lewis Hine, who was famous for documenting the rise of the Empire State Building in 1931. The Rock: The construction of the 14 Rockefeller Center towers was the largest private building project undertaken in modern times As well as the photographer, the names of the construction workers also remain a mystery. Corbis attempted to track them down 12 years ago but were not able to establish conclusive identities for any of them. However, over the years family members have come forward to identify the men and it's been claimed that the majority of the workers are Irish immigrants. The man sitting fourth from the right is allegedly Francis Michael Rafferty with his lifelong best friend, Stretch Donahue, sitting to his right. Recently arrived in the city, the Irish natives came to Manhattan seeking employment at a grim economic time. Indeed, the photo was taken while the city was in the depths of the Great Depression when one in four New Yorkers were unemployed. Nevertheless, huge-scale construction projects begun during the boom years of the 1920s were nearing completion. Commentators have suggested that during the economic depression men were willing for to take on any work regardless of safety issues. Seemingly echoing this, one of the most striking points about the photograph is the mens' lack of safety harnesses despite the 840 feet drop beneath them. With safety issues in place, the photograph has been re-created multiple times with copycat snaps taken all over the world from a group of workers 800ft above the streets of London to a less risky cartoon version on U.S. show The Simpsons. The 80-year-old photograph is also the subject of a new film titled Men At Lunch, which was shown at the Toronto Film Festival earlier this month and puts forward evidence that the some of workers hail from the small Irish town of Shanaglish. When it began, the construction of the 14 Rockefeller Center towers was the largest private building project undertaken in modern times. The building began in May 1930 and took nine years to complete.‘Lunch atop a Skyscraper’ was taken during the final few months of construction. In the 60s and 70s a new complex was built with four new towers, one of which houses News Corporation and Fox News. The building where ‘Lunch atop a Skyscraper’ was taken is the centrepiece of the Rockefeller Center complex. The RCA, now renamed the GE Building after the General Electric acquisition, has 70 floors, including a spectacular observation deck on the roof. It is home to the headquarters of television company NBC which produces shows such as Saturday Night live and is featured in popular American comedy show 30 Rock, named after the building’s address 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2206050/The-picture-proves-iconic-photograph-workers-eating-lunch-Rockefeller-beam-publicity-stunt.html#ixzz3GJRYOOvN

Whatchoo talkin? We love CVS. Like, for the privilege of paying them 4X what my statin turns out to cost at Rite-Aid.

No fears. hito is an escape artist.

At least no one called them horny.