Thursday, October 29, 2020

Man lights fart, kills self and obliterates his house. May 20, 2014

 

Man lights fart, kills self and obliterates his house.

The National Reporter

A 36 year old Dayton Ohio man identified as Fred Freedman was playing with fire in his home last week and decided that it would be a good idea to ignite his flatulence.


Unfortunately he neglected to take into consideration the potency of the flammable gas he was about to expel after feasting on a huge Mexican dinner.


The result was horrific to say the least.

Here is an aerial photo of his home and the surrounding neighborhood after the explosion.

After hours of sifting through the ruins of his home, investigators could find no trace of Mr. Stuarts body.

After hours of sifting through the ruins of his home, investigators could find no trace of Mr. Freedman’s body.


Residents of this small suburb of Dayton were awoken to the terrible explosion in the early hours of May 13 as Mr.Freedman was amusing hundreds of viewers on Facebook with his usual fire related hijinks.


“I was watching Flaming Freddy, as he called himself on his Facebook account, doing one of his fire tricks when he stood up with a huge excited grin on his face and said, “Watch this!” He spun around and dropped his pants and exposed his naked rear end to perhaps a few hundred thousand viewers.” Jimmy Burke explained. “I watched in astonishment as he brought his hand around to his anus and flicked on a butane lighter.


He grunted a few times as his viewers waited for it.


I kind of expected him to have diarrhea, you know, the way people usually fail when they do something like this with their farts.


Especially with thousands of people watching.


I believe it is called a “shart.”


A second later the sound of a long windy fart came out of my speakers. Then there was a flash of bright light and the signal was gone, the screen went blank.”


The National Reporter – What did you think when you found out what happened to him?


“Well, I was shocked when I saw the photographs of his house on the news. He was a funny fellow and I am devastated by the news of his untimely death. I mean, he was just trying to make people laugh and this had to happen to him. It’s just not right, not right at all, damn it.” 

 

Fred (Flaming Freddy of Facebook fame) Freedman is seen here performing one of his hysterical fire tricks for his Facebook fans. This particular stunt landed him in the hospital for seven weeks where he had to endure hundreds of hours of painful skin grafts.

Fred (Flaming Freddy of Facebook fame) Freedman is seen here performing one of his hysterical fire tricks for his Facebook fans.


This particular stunt landed him in the hospital for seven weeks where he had to endure hundreds of hours of extremely painful skin grafts.

The fire department battled the fire for hours while rescuing shocked and terrified people from their homes.


The National Reporter – What was your first thought when you arrived on the scene?
“I just assumed that a boiler had exploded or maybe someone was building a big bomb in their basement and it blew up.”


The National Reporter – What did you think when you found out that it was the result of a prankster lighting his farts?


“Amazed. I mean come on,.. a fart did all this? I am absolutely amazed. Let me tell you this, from now on I am staying away from open fire when I am gassy.” 

 

Holy crap! A fart did all this?

Holy crap! A fart did all this?


The damage has been estimated to be in the millions and the insurance company’s are already calling it an act of God to avoid compensating the victims.


Instead they are raising their premiums for all the residences in the community claiming that the neighborhood is now a dangerously high risk area because of all the people lighting their farts and blowing up their houses. 


https://aceflashman.wordpress.com/2014/05/20/man-lights-fart-kills-self-and-obliterates-his-house/

Monday, October 26, 2020

Sinclair Lewis’s ‘It Can’t Happen Here’ as masterpiece radio theater - 22 Oct 2020


Sinclair Lewis’s ‘It Can’t Happen Here’ as masterpiece radio theater

Available on demand now until Sun., Nov. 8, and free to listeners (but donations gratefully accepted), is the Berkeley Rep radio theater production of It Can’t Happen Here.

Written in 1935 during the rise of fascism in Europe, Sinclair Lewis’s darkly satirical It Can’t Happen Here follows the ascent of Buzz Windrip, a demagogue who becomes president of the United States by promising to return the country to greatness. In the fall of 2016, Berkeley Rep unveiled a new stage adaptation of this prescient best-selling novel. One week after that production ended, the presidential election roiled our nation. Reality TV host and real estate mogul Donald Trump became president of the United States.

Now, Berkeley Rep reprises that production with the same director, but this time as a radio play in four episodes, just in time for the 2020 presidential election. Much of the original cast has returned, including David Kelly as the candidate Buzz Windrip, and Academy Award nominee David Strathairn joins it as the liberal protagonist, Vermont newspaperman Doremus Jessup.


It Can’t Happen Here
(text available at - https://www.fadedpage.com/books/20171242/html.php) was quickly adapted into a play and produced by the WPA’s Federal Theater Project on October 27, 1936, in 21 U.S. theaters in 17 states. To honor that event taking place on the eve of the 1936 election, and once again affirm the critical role that theater can play in the nation’s social discourse, Berkeley Rep has partnered with Los Angeles’s Center Theatre Group and over 60 theaters nationwide to broadcast this new radio play version.

The radio adaptation is by Tony Taccone and Bennett S. Cohen, liberally adapted from the novel, with sound design and music by Paul James Prendergast. Lisa Peterson directed the production, which came together in recent weeks by long-distance recording owing to the coronavirus crisis.

The broadcast has an introduction and four episodes, each about a half-hour long. It can be paused for breaks. Following the play, there is an extra feature with the authors and director explaining how the production came into being and how they interpret its present-day meaning.

Others in the cast include Elijah Alexander, Danforth Comins, Scott Coopwood, William Thomas Hodgson, Anna Ishida, Sharon Lockwood, Eddie Lopez, Alex Lydon, Tom Nelis, Greta Oglesby, Charles Shaw Robinson, Gerardo Rodriguez, Carolina Sanchez, and Mark Kenneth Smaltz.  Citizens, campaigners, soldiers, workers, radio voices, prisoners, and many others are all played by members of the company and the sound designer.

Sinclair Lewis embraces a wide cast of characters ranging from intellectuals to politicians, local officials and judges, working people and their families. The show includes a healthy mix of women’s as well as men’s voices, and a range of political outlooks, including a Communist and a Socialist, that will sound very contemporary to today’s listeners. Among the various media mentioned in the production is the Daily Worker, forerunner of today’s People’s World. Lewis delineates how some hold steadfast in their embrace of free speech and fair government, while others, some readily and others opportunistically, are seduced into the web of conformity and collaboration with the new order.

The story of It Can’t Happen Here is relatively familiar, even though a prospective film version was never produced at the time. Suffice it to say (no plot spoilers here!) that Lewis does not wrap up his tale of alarm and warning with a pretty red, white, and blue bow. The struggle for democracy is ongoing in every generation, not the least our own on the cusp of a crucial election in which the future course of America will be written.

This is a masterful production that for some of the oldtimers among us will recall the pre-television glory days of radio theater—and introduce a worthy semblance of that epoch to younger listeners.

To start listening, click here:

Berkeley Rep’s IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE: Introduction

Alt-Tech Sites

 

Web Browser - Brave, Brave.com

Search Engine - DuckDuckGo, Duckduckgo.com or Qwant, Qwant.com

DNS - Quad9, 9.9.9.9 or Quad9.com

Video Streaming - LBRY, LBRY.tv or Odysee, https://Odysee.com or Bitchute, Bitchute.com

Operating System - Linux Mint, LinuxMint.com

Social Media - Gab, https://gab.com/  Parler - https://parler.com/auth/access

Email - Protonmail, Protonmail.com

Counterpoint -

Web Browser - Brave

I'd suggest Ungoogled Chromium and Microsoft Edge (for normies) too.

Search Engine - DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is not "alt-tech". It is filled with SJWs. And for certain search terms, I have definitely seen it censoring domains/topics.

DNS - Quad9

Quad9 can literally blacklist any domain they deem "insecure" which is a very, very slippery slope. Even more slippery when you consider that it is funded by IBM (a company filled with SJWs), Packet Clearing House (the CEO is a liberal never-Trumper I think) and -->Global<-- Cyber Alliance (GCA) - literally founded by international police agencies.

I would still promote CloudFlare - they're protecting TD.WIN right now and so far have restrained themselves much more than the other SJW internet companies. And they're doing good when it comes to promoting anti-censorship tools such as DNS over HTTPS and Encrypted SNI. Their response to 8chan was sad, though.

Operating System - Linux Mint

Linux mint isn't really alt-tech, most people in the Linux/OSS community are increasingly turning into SJWs anyway. Just use a Windows bloat removal script regularly. It's tolerable with the spyware removed. I see no reason to use Linux (as user OS) when WSL works fine.


Video streaming - rumble.com

 

Sunday, October 25, 2020

Man with metal detector finds 222-year-old coin near church (AP) 25 Oct 2020

 


EMBDEN, Maine (AP) — A man with a metal detector has found a long-hidden, 222-year-old coin under a few inches of soil outside a church in Maine.

Shane Houston, of Charlotte, North Carolina, was on a metal-detecting trip with a friend from New Hampshire when he found the coin earlier this month, the Bangor Daily News reported.

The copper penny, dated 1798, comes from the first decade of American-minted money in North America.


 

He said it was found on the grounds of a church in Embden where he had permission to use his metal detector.


The penny is not in pristine condition. Houston said it might fetch $200 but he has no intentions of selling it.

On the same trip, he also found an 1818 penny, a full wagon wheel and a musket ball. The ammunition was measured at 0.75 caliber, making it British in origin.

 


https://apnews.com/article/north-america-north-carolina-maine-6796ec9adfe838c01ef84efc3ff0fb1d

Magdeline Horsfall - A Voice From 100 Years Ago Speaks to Me - 25 Oct 2020

 I was tired of listening to the news that repeated itself so I went to Project Gutenberg to find a book to listen to.  I have been very pleased over the last months after using the Microsoft Windows 10 Read Aloud feature.  I have a pleasant English woman's voice.  I don't find the reading robotic at all.  I have noticed that the reading by this computer program is often better than some of the readings by volunteers at Librivox audio book site.  I use the feature almost every day now.

Project Gutenberg - The Fairy Latchkey - by Magdaline Horsfall 

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/63535/63535-h/63535-h.htm

Today I bumped into an author I had never heard of from about a hundred years ago.   Magdaline Horsfall wrote a number of books.  But, she has not left much of a digital trace online.  I guess the book I am listening to "The Fairy Latchkey." The story seems to be about a young teen girl and aimed at that audience.  The writing seems decent.  But, I looked around online and found nothing on Wikipedia, or other places.  I did find a cover for a book about twins on Googlebooks. 


Then I found I could buy the book from the UK for about $9 but I think the shipping is $20.  I am curious though.  I could buy the book and type it up for Project Gutenberg.