Author: Jeff Milner

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Eyewitnesses to Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Four witnesses recount their harrowing experiences in Hiroshima and Nagaski in 1945 when the US began dropping the atomic bomb.

Well, it was like a white magnesium flash. I lost consciousness right after or almost at the same time I saw the flash. When I regained consciousness, I found myself in the dark. I heard my friends, Ms. Asami, crying for her mother. Soon after, I found out that we actually had been attacked. Afraid of being caught by a fire, I told Ms. Asami to run out of the building. Ms. Asami, however, just told me to leave her and to try to escape by myself because she thought that she couldn’t make it anywhere. She said she couldn’t move. I said to her that I couldn’t leave her, but she said that she couldn’t even stand up. While we were talking, the sky started to grow lighter. Then, I heard water running in the lavatory. Apparently the water pipes had exploded. So I drew water with my helmet to pour over Ms. Asami’s head again and again. She finally regained consciousness fully and went out of the building with me. We first thought to escape to the parade grounds, but we couldn’t because there was a huge sheet of fire in front of us. So instead, we squatted down in the street next to a big water pool for fighting fires, which was about the size of this table. Since Hiroshima was completely enveloped in flames, we felt terribly hot and could not breathe well at all. After a while, a whirlpool of fire approached us from the south. It was like a big tornado of fire spreading over the full width of the street.”

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The Devil’s in the Details

I came across a  BoingBoing post about the so-called Devil’s Interval, a musical form suppressed by the Church in the Middle Ages.

The post also talks about a new heavy metal documentary which ties the Devil’s Interval, a specific kind of musical interval that spans three whole tones, with the history of heavy metal.

See the BBC’s report called The Devil’s Music (with mp3 examples), and if it floats your boat, the metal history site (with documentary trailer) Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey.

Oh, and for the record, I’m pretty sure Xeni was just joking when she said, “When you play Wagner backwards, it goes, ‘I LOVE SATAN’. But nevertheless if that’s what you want to hear…

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My Playlist

  1. Adam’s Song
  2. Needle in the Hay
  3. So Alone
  4. Hurt
  5. Bullet with Butterfly Wings
  6. Bohemian Rhapsody
  7. Creep
  8. Deep
  9. Jeremy
  10. Motion Picture Soundtrack
  11. Today
  12. Suicide is Painless

I remember posting this list in 2006, I was feeling extremely down that day… I guess it was too subtle for anyone* to notice. Discovering this list again today made me wish I could go back in time and tell myself that life gets so much better. And worse. But for better or worse, life is wonderful.

*Ok, at least one person noticed. Thanks Sherri S.

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Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation

Back in 1982 a group of three kids from Mississippi began a project to recreate, shot-for-shot, Stephen Spielberg’s classic, “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. They were 12 years old when they started. It took them a little over six years to finish it, and while that alone is noteworthy, their story is now being considered to be turned into amovie with a screenplay by Dan Clowes of “Ghost World” fame. He talks about it near the end of a recent Wired News article.

The picture itself has become somewhat of an underground hit, garnering a lot of attention lately from the mainstream media. The three creators, known as the Indy guys, are now taking their show on the road. There isn’t a whole lot of the remake footage in it, but if you feel compelled, check out the trailer.

(via Pete’s Linklog)

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In Praise of Loopholes

I’m a fan of Matthew Baldwin’s Defective Yeti. Today at lunch I read some of his published work in the zine The Morning News, and I recommend you check out his short article, In Praise of Loopholes and the collaborative piece, New Fathers, Round III—they’re hilarious.

MB: One mistake I guess we’ve made is in encouraging our son to be completely fearless. My wife and I were raised in the 70’s, when Sesame Street and albums like “Free to Be You and Me” were all “rah-rah, build up your self-esteem, you can do anything, don’t be afraid!”

We’ve now passed that mentality on to our child, who now suffers from the illusion that he is bulletproof. The other day after his bath I put him on our bed to dress him in his jim-jams and then, on a lark, threw the towel over his head. He reacted by laughing, leaping to his feet, and running full-bore in a random direction. When he went over the edge of the bed he hung there for a moment, Elmer Fudd style, legs bicycling in mid-air, before hitting the ground with a heart-stopping Wa-UMP! Tears were shed, hugs were administered, bruises were admired…and then, when I put him back on the bed, he was off like a shot, looking over his shoulder like, “OK, but can you catch me NOW?”

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Spumco’s Boo Boo Runs Wild

Fans of Ren and Stimpy will probably enjoy this Yogi Bear parody by John Kricfalusi. It’s a parody of the old Hanna Barbara Ranger Smith/Yogi Bear cartoons in which Boo Boo finally snaps after years of being such a straight arrow.

Get it while it lasts because knowing YouTube, this won’t be online long, once it gets noticed.

Rated TV7, which I’m guessing means for seven year olds? Well, whatever, it aired on Adult Swim, so your mileage may vary.

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Bush Best President Since Clinton

This month’s Rolling Stone magazine reports on the United States’ worst president ever:

According to the Treasury Department, the forty-two presidents who held office between 1789 and 2000 borrowed a combined total of $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions. But between 2001 and 2005 alone, the Bush White House borrowed $1.05 trillion, more than all of the previous presidencies combined. Having inherited the largest federal surplus in American history in 2001, he has turned it into the largest deficit ever—with an even higher deficit, $423 billion, forecast for fiscal year 2006. Yet Bush—sounding much like Herbert Hoover in 1930 predicting that “prosperity is just around the corner”—insists that he will cut federal deficits in half by 2009, and that the best way to guarantee this would be to make permanent his tax cuts, which helped cause the deficit in the first place!

Last weekend I went to Drayton Valley to celebrate Easter with my sister and her family. I car-pooled with my parents for the 6 hour drive and had a chance to talk about the American national debt problem with my dad. (It’s one of our favourite recurring topics of discussion).

I wondered what will happen to the highly dependant Canadian economy if/when the American dollar/economy collapses. Carrying the tremendous weight of almost $8.4 trillion, it seems to me only a matter of time before somebody (maybe China?) comes asking for their money back. And if it’s not the other countries that have money invested, maybe it will be a large portion of the population that come to the realization that, “hey the government can’t actually back up those bonds for my lifesavings — maybe I should try and get it now before it’s too late!”

It’s obvious that such a scenario would be catastrophic for the States, but I was curious how it would affect “The Great White North”. I’m guessing the biggest impact on the Canadian economy (other than lost money invested in the States) will be the inability to sell our products to the massive consumer giant to the south. In turn, massive layoffs; then an economic depression. Simply saying it’s going to be ugly really doesn’t approach the magnitude of hardships we’re going to be up against.

Attempting to save the world, one dictator at a time aside, the economic decisions of the United States affect everyone, and it’s something that is cause for grave concern. Luckily, China and the US are on such great terms. Oh, wait… never mind.

(Rolling Stone link via Waxy)

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Make Me Watch TV

Make Me Watch TV, is a site where you get to force me, (well actually not me, actually Aric McKeown), watch whatever TV show you please.

Internet viewers vote on what shows Aric should watch and then he blogs about it. More fun than actually watching the crappy shows he has to endure—he’s actually quite entertaining.

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The Vector Trout

For your viewing pleasure, here is some original artwork I did for an online stock photo place, but unfortunately it got denied because I did it in Photoshop instead of Illustrator and well, long story short: it’s the wrong format.

But what’s bad for me is good for you, because now I’m just going to post it here! Enjoy:

Vector Trout done in Photoshop