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Google 2011 Japan earthquake people finder.

Had any other populous country suffered the 8.9 magnitude earthquake that shook Japan on Friday, tens of thousands of people might already be counted among the dead. So far, Japan’s confirmed death toll is in the hundreds, although it is certain to rise.

Over the years, Japan has spent billions of dollars developing the most advanced technology against earthquakes and tsunamis. The Japanese, who regularly experience smaller earthquakes and have lived through major ones, know how to react to quakes and tsunamis because of regular drills — unlike Southeast Asians, many of whom died in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami because they lingered near the coast.

(And, on an unrelated note because I could use something encouraging- the man who taught himself to see (I'd use the term "echolocate," but still.)

...I got nothin'

From the Random House "About this book" description of Chuck Palahniuk's Damned, by way of james_nicoll:

“Are you there, Satan? It’s me, Madison,” declares the whip-tongued eleven-year-old narrator of Damned, Chuck Palahniuk’s subversive new work of fiction. The daughter of a narcissistic film star and a billionaire, Madison is abandoned at her Swiss boarding school over Christmas, while her parents are off touting their new projects and adopting more orphans. She dies over the holiday of a mari­juana overdose—and the next thing she knows, she’s in Hell. Madison shares her cell with a motley crew of young sinners that is almost too good to be true: a cheerleader, a jock, a nerd, and a punk rocker, united by fate to form the six-feet-under version of everyone’s favorite detention movie. Madison and her pals trek across the Dandruff Desert and climb the treacherous Mountain of Toenail Clippings to confront Satan in his citadel. All the popcorn balls and wax lips that serve as the currency of Hell won’t buy them off.

This is the afterlife as only Chuck Palahniuk could imagine it: a twisted inferno where The English Patient plays on end­less repeat, roaming demons devour sinners limb by limb, and the damned interrupt your dinner from their sweltering call center to hard-sell you Hell. He makes eternal torment, well, simply divine.

Less braintwistingly, kradical provides this link to a 1958 conversation between Raymond Chandler and Ian Fleming.

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"I have critically high levels of chemicals in my body," 33-year-old Steven Aguinaga of Hazlehurst, Mississippi told Al Jazeera. "Yesterday I went to see another doctor to get my blood test results and the nurse said she didn't know how I even got there."

Aguinaga and his close friend Merrick Vallian went swimming at Fort Walton Beach, Florida, in July 2010.

"I swam underwater, then found I had orange slick stuff all over me," Aguinaga said. "At that time I had no knowledge of what dispersants were, but within a few hours, we were drained of energy and not feeling good. I've been extremely sick ever since."

BP's oil disaster last summer gushed at least 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, causing the largest accidental marine oil spill in history - and the largest environmental disaster in US history. Compounding the problem, BP has admitted to using at least 1.9 million gallons toxic dispersants, including one chemical that has been banned in the UK.

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Yay, running into roadnotes on the subway!~

Also: AKC- your book is in the mail!

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Via supergee: H.P. Lovecraft's First Day as a Substitute Teacher at Arkham Junior High School.

Via theweaselking: BEWARE.


...and, fuck it, here's a photo of Hunter S. Thompson, John Cusack, and Johnny Depp driving in a car with a blowup doll. You know- as one does.

Let's see, here...

March 2011: Am living in the digs in Williamsburg which have been the current Casa del Coyote for... nine years now? Ye gods.

March 2001: At this point, I lived in Astoria, in my favorite residence ever. Kaufman Astoria studios across the street; Museum of the Moving Image down the block; Socrates Park, at the end of Broadway by the river. My roommate had balls of colored glass in the window, and they would catch the light beautifully. Chester is still his ornery, living self. In a few months, I'll begin this LJ. amandakcampbell is (or soon will be) living a few blocks away; alas, we don't meet at that point (and really only get to know each other online, after she's left, although I'm pretty sure that that was her, helping with one of rm's moves).

March 1991: I'm gearing up to finish my first senior year in college. It's kind of awkward when I see people from the film department- not bad, but I'm not on that track anymore, at all.


March 1981: I'm still living in Potsdam. Our family is recovering from Mom's leaving, likes flakes of artificial snow in a paperweight, swirling now, one hopes, somewhat less agitatedly. (It could scarcely be otherwise.)

March 1971: Potsdam; Mom. I have a memory from roughly this time (I'm about two) of my sister leaning over me, dangling her hair in my face until I grab it in an unexpectedly tenacious grip, and she yelps, and backs away. (A deft foreshadowing of our interactions for the next several years, come to that.) Per my mother, I learned to read just about now, too.

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Great- now my brain is telling me that it wants to see Ennis del Mar (Heath Ledger's Brokeback Mountain character) and Llewelyn Moss from No Country for Old Men team up to put paid to Anton Chigurh (and perhaps a little slash on the side). They're set 17 years apart, brain!

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"The Outer Limits." The complete series on 7 discs, 1515 minutes, $27.50, 54% off. http://amzn.to/fbKG6d

Not enough WHUT in the world...

( In which John Waters and Divine attempt to justify Pink Flamingoes to Tom Snyder. )