W.O.S. - "What's Op, Sammy?" - Sam Amidon's Tumblr

If you're not following Sam Amidon's new tumblr blog, I recommend it. It's good to see him bloggifying again. Mr Amidon is a folksinger, movie star, and mid-level Virgin Airlines executive. (He & I were in the legendary Liberal Arts college band Radiohead a decade ago - not to be confused with the British band - so if you ever see posters around Westchester County maintaining "RADIOHEAD WILL REUNITE!" that's the reason.)

This was a good series from W.O.S. (which I believe stands for "What's Op, Sammy?") He responded to several e-mails he received intended for other S. Amidons:

Listen to Harold Camping's full response to May 21st 2011 Sort-of-Rapture

The global earthquakes that were scheduled for Judgment Day, May 21st 2011, of course didn't happen, and neither were the saved removed from the planet. (My pet rat Blakey was missing Saturday Morning, & we were worried she was Rat-tured, but we eventually found her.) Harold Camping eventually re-appeared on Monday, and gave a full press conference / special broadcast of his daily show Open Forum, that was widely reported on. The whole thing is up on the Family Radio website now, here.

Our friend & symbologist Dr Benway explained in an e-mail Camping's new stance:

My understanding is that it didn't happen yet and he made a miscalculation,

This is actually not quite his present position, and differs from it mainly in not having cojones the size of ripe grapefruit hanging out of its bushy ears. In a stunning tour de force characterized by the artful admixture of jovial arrogance and aw-shucks humility, Camping turned his twin .50 caliber machine guns of gospel truth on an incongruously hostile group of secular (probably homosexual) press without any discernible regret or consciousness of having done anything wrong.

What he's saying, as near as I can make out, is that he was and is still right about everything, except insofar as he had expected tangible rather than spiritual correlates to Christ's return. He actually said, in so many words, that he had been too cacognostic ("we took it too literally") and proposed an orthognostic reading of his original predictions ("the marvelous proofs...are more spiritual than I had supposed" or words to that effect.) Thus, everything is still on schedule: the day of Judgement came, God's Salvation Plan is over, and the wheat has been separated from the chaff. Correspondingly, Family Radio are decomissioning all their billboards and other public outreach campaigns, (after all, why waste time and energy proselytizing the damned?) and will be restricting their operations to programs like The Open Forum basically just to kill time until the utter annihilation of all things (except the Elect) which is still set to happen in nearly five months.

In my knowledge, Camping is unique here in promulgating what amounts to an apophatic eschatology. You can tell that the world is ending, but only through inference from negatives. Judgement Day is a spiritual rather than tangible phenomenon because we predicted giant earthquakes and they didn't materialize...

So, the October 21st date will not be as widely publicized, so therefore will probably not be as widely mocked by the secular world. But I still propose we meet again for Mimosas.

I've been reading a lot of the Christian response to this fiasco... And there will often be a sort of marginalizing of Camping as a loon, and worry that he is making the rest of Christianity look goofy for their beliefs. Tim LaHaye, who wrote the Left Behind novels, called Camping "bizarre" and "100% wrong." A very articulate scholar speaking on NPR even ended his segment about this with a disclaimer like "now don't get me wrong, I totally believe the rapture is coming soon." The point is, even if most of mainstream Christians take the Bible at its word that "of that day & hour knows no man" (see last week's Doonesbury), there is still a surprisingly high percentage of Americans who are expecting an apocalypse soon-ish, with a destruction of the Earth similar to the poetic descriptions in Revelations, a belief in Hell as a physical place with real fire in caves beneath the earth, et cetera, et cetera. Camping may have had a relatively small following, but the fears he was praying on are a mainstream part of American culture.

Coming Soon: ideas for questions to call & ask on Camping's Open Forum show.

From the Archives: "Makes No Sense"

In a comment below, Grainne requested more correspondence from our mothers. This comment on the facebooks has become an oft-quoted classic.

(If the screengrab is too small to read, I described the Bucureşti photo as such: "Werzog [the character I was playing in the video we were shooting] reacting to the grand Parisian/soviet architecture covered in Time Square flash & trash", & my mother responded "Makes no sense.")

NEW DEPARTMENT: HIYA! I'm INNA EDINBURGH

As you all know, I am inna Edinburgh now.
I will be here for two years.
Why not start a separate blog you ask.
Because most of the people who would read it already read this blog.
I am saving you time.
I am saving me time.

Anyway.

For my first installment: an email from my kind, loving mother who is caught in a whirlwind of my forgetting my toiletries etc...

Dear Liam, I went to the post office today. It turns out that packages have to be a certain size to be sent in the regular mail. If the box is large it goes slow freight. There are no choices. So one of the boxes will arrive about a week before the other. Also they kept asking me what the state or province was I said I didn't know, but that since UK was the country maybe Scotland was the province. They didn't like that. I hope you get the two boxes, let me know. I would like to know for future mailings. I also had to make an itemized list of everything in the boxes. I didn't really know so I made it up. I hope this doesn't mess things up. Also you aren't suppose to send toiletries so I didn't mention that yours were in one of the boxes. Did you play frisbee today? Love Mom

Sexting List: "of places we still need to fornicate this summer," Part Two: 61-100

The second & final installment of my series of text messages sent to my friend (with artwork from a drawing she left lying around my house.)

List of places we still need to fornicate this summer

61) Graveyard,

62) Crematorium,

63) Columbarium,

64) Dance floor,

65) Wells Fargo Wagon,

66) Mount Olympus,

[At this point, she texts me "thata 'umber 70". There was a lost text message containing her entrées for 65-69, which I received later but will include here.]

65) Broadway,

66) The Pound,

67) Safeway,

68) Academy of Sciences,

69) On a real red wagon,

67) Fortress of Solitude

68) Grant's Tomb,

69) The sky,

70) The sea,

71) The countryside,

72) The Hanging Gardens of Babylon,

73) The Leaning Tower of Pisa,

74) Calvary,

75) David's Temple,

76) Hell,

77) In the music video for "Whoomp! There It Is"

78) In the powder room,

79) The WC,

80) In the can,

81) The little girls' room,

82) The john,

83) Circus,

84) Library,

85) Bus,

86) Third rail of the G Train. The G Train, Nermal!

87) Abu Dhabi, Nermal!

88) In the closet,

89) Facebook,

90) MySpace,

91) Friendster,

92) Napster,

93) AOL,

94) Inside,

95) Outside,

96) Baseball diamond,

97) The docks,

98) The ceiling,

99) Outland,

100) The far side.

Part One, 1-60, here.

Sexting List: "of places we still need to fornicate this summer," Part One: 1-60

This was sent as a series of dozens of text messages to my girl earlier today. Spaces demarcate a new text - - It followed a reference to a lyric in R. Kelly's song "Echo", "Sex in the morning / Sex all day," as an attempt at oneupmanship. She supplied the artwork.

List of places we still need to fornicate this summer:

1) Your car,

2) A barn

3) In a forest,

4) Abattoir,

5) Outer space,

6) Prison,

7) Underground,

8) Zeppelin,

9) Top of a skyscraper,

10) Madhouse,

11) Cheap motel in New Mexico,

12) The White House,

13) Mel Gibson's backyard,

[At this point, she texts me "i'm peeing my trousers"]

14) Macy's,

15) JC Penny's,

16) A radio station,

17) High up in a redwood tree,

18) Cave,

19) Desert,

20) Your boss's bed,

21) My boss's bed,

22) On the internet,

23) In cyberspace.

24) Online,

25) Sexting,

26) The moon,

27) Uranus,

28) Middle ages,

29) The Renaissance,

30) The Enlightenment,

31) The future,

[At this point, she texts me "ooooh! cue julia child squeal"]

32) In Julia Child's kitchen

33) In the beginning,

34) In media res,

35) Happily ever after,

36) On the battlefield of love,

[She contributed the next six]

37) On the lincoln memorial,

38) On the pieta,

39) On tour,

40) On a boat,

41) On a plastic bag island,

42) On mel gibsons chopper parked in his backyard,

[At this point, I text back "Mmm, yes please"]

43) Kurdistan

44) Boys' locker room,

44) The arctic,

45) The antarctic,

46) The anti-antarctic,

47) On the Disneyland tea-cup ride,

48) In animal costumes,

49) In sports mascot costumes,

50) In Mel Gibson's hovercraft,

51) On a desert island,

53) On a dessert island,

54) In a museum at night,

54) In a museum at noon,

55) At the beach at high tide,

56) At the beach at low tide,

57) Invisible,

58) In the road,

59) In a subway tunnel,

60) In a Subway restaurant,

To be continued...

Special Report: Is there a correlation between deep-fried beer-battered octopus brains & vivid dreamscapes?

On Sunday evening, I made Irma Rombauer's beer batter recipe from The Joy of Cooking (using Rogue's Dead Guy Ale) at Cosmo Wernicky & Olaf Mary's residence in West Oakland, California. We deep-fried fresh squid, baby octopuses [sic], brussels sprouts, mushrooms & squash blossoms. (We also drank plum sake from Berkeley.) It was delicious. And it left me thoroughly wiped-out, we couldn't even get to our art project. There was some debate about whether or not to take the brains out of the baby octopuses, but, since they were fresh (from the Berkeley Bowl) and cleaned, most were left in. The following text messages are from Monday morning:

Cosmo Wernicky, 11:43:57am:

Octopus brains give me vivid dreams

Me, 11:53:39am:

No fucking way! I had the most crazy vivid dreams last night too!!

Cosmo Wernicky, 11:56:37am:

What?! There's something to this...did you dream about the moon and falling out of a window and floating down to a soft bed of leaves?

Me, 12:08:15pm:

No, I dreamt about a beef "double down" sandwich ad from KFC where the bread is replaced by meat also, costing $27 & you can only buy it once.

Cosmo Wernicky, 15:18:09pm

Ewww

Apologies

I've been blogging less because my computer is so goddamn'd slow! It's a sad, slow world for me these days.

There's so much to write about these days also! Ice Dancing, teabagging, ski-jumping, aerial dog hunting, ice dancing...

Cosmo Wernicky, for instance, writes to me:

from: Cosmo Wernicky ____@gmail.com to :S. Sandrigon _____@itwaslost.org date :Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 9:27 PM subject: plane ol' sycamore mailed-by :gmail.com signed-by: gmail.com

Were we talking about this? because I just sent this email to Doug and he claims that his father was not involved:

I just came across some information that may ease your mind a bit. If you recall, we had in the recent past been discussing those knobby trees that abound in our environs. I identified them as London Planetrees, while your father claimed they are sycamores. WELL, as it turns out, London Planetrees are a cross between a sycamore and an Oriental Planetree. Hot.
If you care

I'm Engaged to be Wed on the Facebooks:

Miss Martichka & I set up this make-your-own facebook scandal. Which, I must say, didn't hit as hard as we hoped, even after we posted a few "Get me to the Church on Time" videos on each other's walls, & a link to the South Lake Tahoe's Chapel of the Bells. Anyway, this correspondence with her mom resulted:

Leah P____ December 15 at 6:04am

I understand I am to be your future Mother-in-law. Hope you're up to the job! :-)

James W____ December 15 at 11:23am

Hi Mum
I love your daughter very much. I will treat her as my little doll in my dollhouse. We may not have much in this world, but with what little I got, she will be my queen. I've got a chicken, a goat, ample semen, an heirloom collection of rare spider venoms (which have to be kept at a constant 45 degrees), and of course her father's dowry, from which we can start a life. We will only be living with you while the first baby or two is incubating, and then once my poetry career takes off, I hope to make the down payment on our very own triple-wide trailer. I love your daughter very much,
Yours Truly,
Jas. H. W____

Leah P____ December 15 at 2:40pm

Son: You'll be saving a ton not having to heat the dollhouse much, keeping the venoms cool and all! But don't feel you have to rush out of the family home. We sure don't want to stress you out and have you lose the flow of words to put to paper! And you're an ambitious type, I can tell, especially with your vision of a triple-wide!! I couldn't be happier for you two! It's great to have such kin!!! Mom-to-Be Mrs. P

Three Years Ago: E-mail: Apocalypto

This concludes our 2009 celebration of this blog's Three Year Anniversary, wherein, in a special section called Three Years Ago, we re-posted posts from Three Years Ago, exactly three years later, to the minute. Three years ago was a sparse time for www.itwaslost.org, what follows was the only post in December 2006. In celebration of this community weblog's four year anniversary, all thru 2010, we will be publishing posts from exactly Three Years Ago...! (2007 might be a more fun year to repost from anyway. Till next time. -ed.)

______________________________________________________

Date: Sat, 9 Dec 2006 20:17:33 -0800 (PST)
From: "James W____ ________@yahoo.com
Subject: A.O.Scott
To: "Gerald Nick Nelson" _________@gmail.com, "James Quill" _________@yahoo.com

And it is, all in all, a pretty good show. There is a tendency, at least among journalists, to take Mr. Gibson as either a monster or a genius, a false choice that he frequently seems intent on encouraging. Is he a madman or a visionary? Should he be shunned or embraced? Censured or forgiven?
-A.O.Scott, N.Y.Times review of Apocalypto

His life was what it was. Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child.
-Tom Stoppard, Shipwreck (The Coast of Utopia, Part II)

Correspondences: Weekly Letter No. 6 from G.F.M. to J.H.W.

Correspondences: Craziest Couchsurfing Request Ever

That there's some more classic Whales Standing Up art from Mr Olaf Mary, circa 2004.
I've had nothing but good experiences with couchsurfing.com. I've stayed with lovely hosts in Europe, & hosted lovely travelers from Europe, North & South America. Sometimes tho, I get a request from a crazy person, & I think this one wins the award for craziest request. It was from a 20-year-old girl from Nova Scotia:

Okay. I am leaving _____ and coming to Berkeley to

set up camp. I am a crazy girl but I do have a lot of

guts. I am going to run my own cafe/resto/bar and it's

going to be government funded. Why the hell not? I have

a small debt to pay but what I would like to do is pay

for a massage course which I have also done in _____.

I need to be able to practise legally with a good

reputation in order to support myself while...Anyway I

am looking for a room in an artist commmunity/house.

Hippy, environmentalist. Forward mided people only no

scumbag student know it alls. No beurocratic bullshit.

I like clutter but not dirt. Not smelly. I want to be

able to pay $300 a month and be around

twenty-thirty-eight year olds. Only. If possible. Not

interested in having sex, already got somebody. But

really what I will be doing is starting a herd of wild

horses. I will be owning my own property soon and

living happily ever after. The end. Still need my

driver's liscence. Want have dogs off leashes and

outdoor cats. Goats are better lawnmowers than

lawnmowers. Etc. My mother. did this in Ohio where I

was born she did it well and I suppose she's happy

enough. I like it there. Good enough. anyway=I am

looking for a place to stay until I find my

room/roommate cafe job artist/activist housing

situation but no ugly minded people no bullies. I like

travellors but I don't want to live in a punk house.

Punk's dead happened in the 80s. We're starting new

now. Time to stop bitching and get on with it. So

anyway. If you are at all available for a chat on the

phone I am thinking of leaving on the twenty-ninth.

Could we please chat? I think I will be staying only

for three days at a time until I find what I am looking

for. I will be flying to SAn Fran and then taking the

bus to Berkeley. Will not have much stuff but will come

prepared. I'll need to buy a phone right away so if you

know of a cheap pay as you go phone right on. Let me

know if you can help me out at all. thanks a lot man.

bunches. -S_____

weekly letter #2, written on Carte Postale #1, from J.H.W to G.F.M

Correspondences: Weekly Letter No. 5 from G.F.M. to J.H.W.

If you're wondering what happened to letter No. 4 from G.F.M. to J.H.W., please refer here.

Click on the bottom of the image to read it fullscreen (F11 may help too.)

O! it was lost before it got to the post box

6:20 PM Grainne: my letter number 4 to you which was brilliant fell out of my pocket either at berkeley bowl or (!) at your house

we'll have to wait and see if someone mails it

6:21 PM if, that is, it isn't already at it's destination

: / hmmmmm

it was addressed and stamped

will some friendly neighbor put it in a mailbox?

or will it be lost forever

?

6:22 PM me: for ever

6:23 PM That's a strange tale

Grainne: its such a great letter

i hope it makes it

me: It had a stamp? Someone'll mail it

Grainne: yeah it was addressed and stamped

me: I'll keep my eyes out here, meantime

Grainne: so keep your eye out for it

6:24 PM me: I'll keep my eyes out

weekly correspondence: letter #1 from J.H.W to G.F.M

Correspondences: Weekly Letter No. 3 from G.F.M. to J.H.W.

Click on the bottom of the image to see a larger readable version.

Correspondences: Weekly Letter No. 2 from G.F.M. to J.H.W.

Correspondences: Weekly Letter No. 1 from G.F.M. to J.H.W.

News from Nevada: Bear Break-in!

In almost thirty years in their house at Lake Tahoe, my parents have never had a bear break & enter. But the population has grown in recent years - apparently, some mothers are even having three cubs - due to their accumulated intelligence on how harvest from the neighboring human abundance. Both my parents sent out e-mails today, you can compare for style:

from "Sue W____" ______@yahoo.com reply-to _____@yahoo.com to [many addresses] date Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 9:01 AM subject Bear Break-In

A bear broke into our garage last night (see photo). I actually heard him. I went to bed late, around 11:10, because I had some classwork to do, and couldn't get to sleep because of noises. I finally got to sleep about 12:10, when the noises subsided. I probably should have awakened John, but thought maybe it was just a car outside.

He cleaned out our garage refrigerator of apples, muffins, cheese, and bread. He didn't like the beer or wine. He toppled one closed trash can, and we don't know what he got there. We are pretty careful about putting any food stuff in zip lock bags. Dog bones are all over the floor. Perhaps he ate some, but certainly didn't eat them all. They were in a box on top of the fridge. He also ignored a box of oranges.

Love, Sue

from "John W_____" ______@att.net to [many addresses] date Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 8:32 AM subject new doggy door

All, last night a bear enjoyed a midnight snack of cheese, Costco muffins, and apples in our garage. It didn't like our box wine or Bud beer. John

______________________

Colbert is right - they are the number one threat to America.