50th Anniversary of the Death of James Dean

“Dream as if you’ll live forever, Live as if you’ll die today.” -James Dean

With that quote we will pay our respects to a 24 year old actor and legend that was tragically killed in a car accident on September 30 1955.

The Facts:

James Dean was driving his Posche Spyder to a race in Salinas, California. It was September 30, 1955. At 3:30 that afternoon, Dean had received a speeding ticket for going 65 in a 45 mile zone.
A few minutes after dusk, and Dean and Rolf Wutherich, his friend and mechanic, were headed to Paso Robles to spend the night before the race. Donald Turnupseed, driving a Ford sedan, tried to make a left turn off Highway 41, north onto Highway 466.

Just before the impact, Dean remarked to Wutherich that the other vehicle was bound to see them, that it had to stop. It did not stop. The autopsy said James Dean died of a broken neck and other injuries, either immediately or shortly after being extricated from the Porsche. Wutherich was thrown clear but badly injured. Turnupseed had only minor injuries.

At this time of year at 5 pm, every year people stand at the intersection and see what Dean couldn’t, the portion of the road he was traveling on is completely blind to a person making a left onto it because to the position of the sun, the guy never saw him coming…

Crowds gather at the spot where Highway 41 and Highway 466 (now 46) meet outside Cholame California (near Paso Robles), Some dressed in Poodle Skirts others looking just like Dean did in his films, while others claim to have seen his ghost hitch hiking up the road from the accident…Ok and the person I transported down there for the 40th anniversary to deposit her COUSINS ASHES in the exact spot of the collision…In the land of FREAK SHOWS this one rates 5 STARS on the FARNHAM METER..

James Dean was buried in his hometown of Fairmount Indiana and laid to rest in the Winslow family plot in Park Cemetery, Fairmount, is a short distance from the farm on which he grew up.

Funeral services were held at the Fairmount Friends Church on October 8, 1955.

James Dean’s ironic PSA for Driver Safety, done to settle a speeding ticket can be watched HERE. In it Mr. Dean tells young kids to “drive safely and that the life you might save, could be his”…

WEBCASTS FOR ALL THE JAMES DEAN ANNIVERSARY ACTIVITIES CAN BE SEEN HERE.

And the actual intersection has its OWN website right HERE.

Women bypass sex in favour of ‘"instant pregnancies"

Women are increasingly seeking inappropriate IVF treatment because they do not have the time or inclination for a sex life and want to “diarise” their busy lives.

The cost of a single IVF treatment is at least £2,500

Wealthy career women in their 30s and early 40s, some of whom have given up regular sex altogether, are turning to “medicalised conception” – despite being fertile and long before they have exhausted the possibility of a natural conception.

They are prepared to pay thousands of pounds for private IVF treatments – even though they have unpleasant and potentially harmful side effects – because they believe it offers them the best chance of “instant” pregnancy.

Many fertility experts believe that IVF offers women the best chance of pregnancy – a one in three chance of success or better in one cycle if the woman is under 35, whereas natural conception has no better than a one in four chance for a woman of the same age even if a couple have an active sex life.

An active sex life aimed at pregnancy is considered to be unprotected sex at least once every three days.

Each year about 43,000 women receive IVF treatment, most of them privately. The cost of a single treatment – and often several are needed – is at least £2,500.

Government guidelines on when women should receive treatment (on the NHS) say IVF should be given only to those aged between 23 and 39 who have an identified cause for the fertility problem or who have suffered unexplained fertility problems for at least three years.”
Michael Dooley, a gynaecologist, obstetrician and fertility expert, said that in the past five years he has seen a 20 per cent increase in the number of patients seeking “inappropriate or premature” IVF treatment.
“Many of these couples are simply not having sex or not having enough sex,” he said. “Conception has become medicalised. It’s too clinical. There has been a trend away from having sex and loving relationships towards medicalised conception.”

Mr Dooley practises at Westover House clinic and the Lister Hospital, both in south-west London, and a clinic in Poundbury, Dorset. He said: “I have people who come to me for IVF who haven’t got time for sex. Those people don’t care about looking for a lifestyle or maximising their natural potential.”

Emma Cannon, who runs the fertility programme at Westover House, said: “I have patients who diary sex in. When the they don’t fall pregnant they panic and think they need IVF.
“People want everything now. If they can’t have a baby now, they want IVF. They think it’s no different from putting your name down for a handbag. Some people are horrified by the idea that they have to have sex two to three times a week. About 10 per cent of people I see don’t have time to have sex. It’s usually when you have two professionals who are based in the city and are very busy.

“Mothers might be working or their children sleep in their bed. I told one of my patients who is going through IVF that another IVF patient had just conceived naturally. She said: ‘What? She’s having sex? Bloody Luddite’.”

Dr Tim Evans, the founder of Westover House and the Queen’s GP, said: “People are increasingly trying to control it [conception]. They are testing, testing, testing when they should just have sex.”

Prof Gedis Grudzinskas, the medical director of the London Bridge Fertility, Gynaecology and Genetics Centre, said: “If a woman over the age of 40 says she has been trying to conceive for six to 12 months and wants IVF, it would be a silly person who said ‘no’. In my view, it’s wise to go straight to IVF even though it’s not without its complications.

“Many people in their late 30s or early 40s without children are completely absorbed in their professional lives and have less opportunities to conceive. Many couples I see have one of them working abroad and the most they see each other is at weekends.”

Prof Bill Ledger, a specialist in fertility problems at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital, in Sheffield, said that the number of women seeking a “fast track” to IVF was increasing rapidly. He estimates one woman of about 40 seeks urgent IVF treatment each week from the hospital.

“I am reluctant to put anyone on an IVF programme unless they have tried for at least six months to conceive naturally,” he said.

“But the older a woman is the less is the window of opportunity and fast tracking [to an IVF programme] has to be an option.”

Christian School Expels Girl Because Parents Are Lesbians

ONTARIO, Calif. — A 14-year-old student was expelled from a Christian school because her parents are lesbians, the school’s superintendent said in a letter.

Shay Clark was expelled from Ontario Christian School on Thursday.
“Your family does not meet the policies of admission,” Superintendent Leonard Stob wrote to Tina Clark, the girl’s biological mother.

Stob wrote that school policy requires that at least one parent may not engage in practices “immoral or inconsistent with a positive Christian life style, such as cohabitating without marriage or in a homosexual relationship,” The Los Angeles Times reported in Friday’s edition.

Stob could not be reached for comment by the newspaper. Shay and her parents said they won’t fight the ruling.

School administrators learned of the parents’ relationship this week after Shay was reprimanded for talking to the crowd during a football game, Tina Clark said.

Clark and her partner have been together 22 years and have two other daughters, ages 9 and 19.

Censored in the Name of the Lord

What are decent-minded, US Christian conservatives to do if they want to watch a film without upsetting their sensibilities? Now they can watch their favorite blockbuster stripped of any sex and violence, thanks to two new companies.

A few years ago, it dawned on American food manufacturers there was an intriguing hole in the market to fill: vegetarians who wanted to eat hamburgers while remaining vegetarian, or vegans who had a craving for egg salad.

Today, the supermarkets are filled with bean curd-based meatless burgers and eggless egg salads, and they are hot sellers. Vegan cafés boast menus filled with bacon, steak and all manner of other forbidden items that have been made safe for the meat-averse.

As with food, so it is with films.

What are decent-minded middle-American Christian conservatives to do if they abhor sex, bad language, illicit drug use and gut-spilling violence but still have an urge to see Saving Private Ryan? Or Goodfellas? Or The Amityville Horror? The beginnings of an answer came a few years ago with the advent of CleanFlicks, a kitchen-sized Utah company that decided to offer videos and DVD for rental – after they had been edited to remove all content likely to be offensive to the local Mormon population.

Today, that kitchen-sized enterprise has turned into a veritable industry, spanning numerous states and attracting the attention of both lawyers and politicians all the way to Washington. CleanFlicks is going from strength to strength, offering its services on a monthly subscription basis much like the wildly successful mainstream company Netflix. And a second, even more sophisticated, company called ClearPlay, also based in Utah, has sprung up.

ClearPlay doesn’t edit the films as such, but rather offers a series of filters so individual consumers can decide how much sex or violence they want to tolerate. Fancy seeing A Mighty Wind, the gentle Christopher Guest satire spoofing folk music, but without the “revealing clothing”? No problem. Want to see a gritty urban drama like the recently released Crash, which examines racism in Los Angeles, but without the “implied premarital sex”? Just press the appropriate button on your DVD menu and you can relax in the knowledge that all suggestions of illicit nookie have been purged ahead of time.

The service has not only proved popular in conservative states such as Utah. There is some evidence it appeals to a much broader range of movie consumers, particularly families concerned about the content Hollywood is throwing at their children, even at a tender age. The sanitizing companies have even set to work on Shrek and Shrek II, finding the animated smash hits replete with squirm-inducing sexual innuendo and language that may not be cursing as such but is still too salty for their puritan tastes.

The film industry, as might be expected, has not reacted well. Starting three years ago, when CleanFlicks started making its first serious commercial inroads, the Directors Guild and the Writers Guild have been railing at what they see as a straightforward infringement of intellectual property.

For while their work is modified and edited all the time – for broadcast on television or on commercial plane flights, for example – the difference is that these modifications are done with their permission, through formal licensing agreements. CleanFlicks and ClearPlay don’t ask for permission from anyone, arguing instead that their adjustments and amendments fall under the category of “fair use”.

The two sides quickly fell into a predictable legal dispute, which dragged on until earlier this year when the Bush administration itself decided to get involved and passed the Family Movie Act, which sanctioned what the sanitizers were doing and was signed into law explicitly to make the legal challenge from the Hollywood bigwigs – among them Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and a host of other first-rank directors – vanish into the judicial ether.

As far as the White House was concerned, the law was an easy way of appealing to the Republican Party’s fundamentalist Christian base and bashing one of its favorite targets – Hollywood’s free-speech liberals. Quite a few Democrats jumped on board as well, partly because of a perceived need to defer to the conservative “family values” agenda and partly because the Bill also embraced a handful of anti-piracy provisions that the film industry was keen to see entered into law.

From a cultural point of view, though, the debate has left several questions unanswered. One, if people really don’t like watching films where characters behave badly, drink alcohol, have sex or slice each other with carving knives, why don’t they simply avoid them altogether? Two, aren’t they conflating the very different issues of protecting children from Hollywood inanity and mauling the work of genuine film artists who have a specific vision to express, and a specific way to express it? And three, if Christian fundamentalists are really so sensitive about entertainment products featuring distinctly non-Christian behavior, how come the Bible Belt watches television shows like Desperate Housewives – about a group of bored, drug-addled, adulterous suburban women – more avidly than any other region in the country?

The hypocrisies of excessive puritanism have been an irresistible spectator sport for centuries, not just in the United States, and the advent of the DVD profanity police is no exception. Part of the fun of visiting the ClearPlay website, over and above the intriguing categories available for censorship (what, one wonders, qualifies as a “non-graphic injury/wound”?), is seeing where the content police were forced to give up. The site’s listing for Crash, for example, includes this line: “Filter settings not available: ethnic and social slurs.” In a film preoccupied to the point of obsession with racist attitudes and behavior, one would think not. But surely someone somewhere will still take offense? The CleanFlicks site (“It’s about choice!” screams the banner headline) is even funnier when it delves into the technical minutiae of censorship. The list of profanities the company says it systematically excises includes “the B-words, the H-word when not referring to the place, the D-word, the S-word, the F-word etc …” It also includes references to deity (G-word and JC-words etc), only when these words are used in a “non-religious context”. One could spend an afternoon figuring out exactly what all these forbidden terms are, or else marvel at how conversant those easily offended clearly are with the objects of their offense

The criteria for violence are intriguing, not least because the puritan right wing in the United States has clearly had much less of a problem over the years with blood and guts than it has, say, with teenage kissing. (Pain being a much less problematic category for them than pleasure.) Sure enough, CleanFlicks tells us it doesn’t edit all violence – “only the graphic depictions of decapitation, impalements, dismemberment, excessive blood, gore etc.”

The founder of CleanFlicks, Ray Lines, first had the idea for his business in the late 1990s, when he prepared a sanitized version of Titanic for his Mormon neighbors minus the relatively brief moments of nudity and sex. Soon he was taking it upon himself to decide all kinds of sensitive cultural questions. He once told The New York Times about Schindler’s List, the Oscar-winning Holocaust drama: “Every teenager in America should see that film. But I don’t think my daughters should see naked old men running around in circles.”

ClearPlay, meanwhile, is the brainchild of Lee and Matt Jarman, two brothers from the heavily Mormon town of Orem, who developed the software that enables them to place filters on commercial DVDs. Copyright lawyers and entertainment executives tend to have fewer problems with their operation, because the DVD that arrives in the consumer’s hands is intact, and it is up to each individual viewer how to edit the content, much as they might on their own – albeit more crudely – with the fast-forward button on their remote.

CleanFlicks, on the other hand, not only modifies the films without permission, but then makes money on the basis of those modifications. Without the Family Movie Act, it seems likely the company would have fallen foul of the law and lost its legal battle with the Directors Guild.
Despite the passing of the Act, the federal judge who had been hearing the case indicated his displeasure at the video companies’ behavior by ordering them to meet their own costs even as he threw out the case against them. The companies had been looking for a complete vindication – in fact, back in 2002, CleanFlicks had pre-emptively sued the Directors Guild precisely to seek a declaration that what it was doing was legal. But Judge Richard Matsch (previously best known for presiding over the trial of the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh) refused to grant what they were looking for.

Troy
Brad Pitt has been summoned to kill his enemy. He raises his sword, runs towards him, and then … er, not much. CleanFlicks cuts away to another shot. “The point we would make here is that you still see the guy dies, you still see that Brad Pitt killed him, and so you don’t really take away from the story of what’s going on,” explains company founder Ray Lines.

Gosford Park
The refined world portrayed in Robert Altman’s film is even more buttoned-up after ClearPlay has done its work on Julian Fellowes’ screenplay. When one valet, describing his master, says: “He thinks he’s God almighty. They all do,” the first sentence is cut out, leaving just: “They all do.” The result? A rather cryptic comment which makes no sense whatsoever.

Braveheart
Foul language is muted rather than skipped in this stirring tale of Scottish nationalism, while close-ups of bodily contact and battle wounds are kept in. But the famous mooning scene, involving Mel Gibson’s bottom and the English army, is skipped altogether and most of the battle is eliminated. William Wallace would be turning in his grave…

Saving Private Ryan
The notorious 24-minute opening scene involving D-Day death and gore on the Normandy beaches is made far more palatable, as is the generally brutal depiction of battle throughout. Despite director Steven Spielberg’s insistence that these images are critical in showing the sacrifice of troops and the true nature of warfare, CleanFlicks finds them too much to take.

The Matrix Revolutions
For an action flick, the edited version of The Matrix Revolutions doesn’t contain much action. Viewers expecting foul-mouthed threats and a cut-throat fight between good and evil are more likely to be entertained by such dastardly warnings as: “The only way you’re getting through this door is over my big dead (muted word)!”

The Godfather
In the sanitized version of The Godfather, Sonny Corleone (played by James Caan) does not die in a hail of bullets pounding relentlessly into his car. He just… well, he’s sort of there one minute and gone the next. And the notoriously gory horse’s head bit? Eighteen seconds is cut from one of the most famous scenes in recent cinema history

LEGOS: The Church

So Amy Hughes is a little over the TOP, she has built this WHOLE church out of Legos. She purchased them at retail prices, it’s 7 feet by 5 1/2 feet by 30 inches (2.2 m x 1.7 m x .76 m) .

The following are a few quotes from folks who have viewed her little project, “I’m pretty sure this is sick.”–jpoulos, Metafilter ,”disturbingly impressive.”–sixtwenty3dc, Metafilter “This is one of those people that I’m very happy to have seen on the web, but are too scary to meet in real life.”–ZeroLogic, Slashdot” “I’m pretty sure with the cost of the Legos she could of built a REAL church” –Chuck Farnham

From 7/8/2000 – 1/8/2002 she worked and worked (yes she had a goundbreaking ceremony) , some 75,000 Legos bricks , 3976 windows and 1372 minifigs later she was done…

Shes named the “people” attending the dedication service for the church, but shes “says” she doesn’t “talk” to them. Cough ya…I’ll bet… and BTW , its dedicated to her CAT who helped her build it…

I always enjoy finding projects done by people who are obsessed with the subject matter, anyone who spends that much time as an adult with a Lego product, well my hats off to you, it shows focus, creativity,dedication and oh ya, that your NUTS….congratulations…

Who commits suicide first?

I ponder this in light of the past weeks celebrity news, Who has the better odds of killing themselves before christmas, country star Mindy McCready who has tried TWICE recently, or the waif like model Kate Moss who is living with her DRUG DEALER boyfriend rocker Pete Doherty?

It’s so close, I’m not sure I could bring myself to place a bet, may I should add Courtney Love into this mix…even then its still to close to call…

With 3 obvious TRAIN WRECKS here one wonders WHERE ARE THEIR FRIENDS, people can stop this madness, there are ways to actually HELP PEOPLE WHO SO OBVIOUSLY NEED IT even if they don’t want it…I for one will be watching PEOPLE MAGAZINE for the results…

Armed and dangerous – Flipper

Dart firing dolphin let loose by Katrina

It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Experts who have studied the US navy’s cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying ‘toxic dart’ guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet’s smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.

Dolphins have been trained in attack-and-kill missions since the Cold War. The US Atlantic bottlenose dolphins have apparently been taught to shoot terrorists attacking military vessels.

Their coastal compound was breached during the storm, sweeping them out to sea. But those who have studied the controversial use of dolphins in the US defence programme claim it is vital they are caught quickly.

Leo Sheridan, 72, a respected accident investigator who has worked for government and industry, said he had received intelligence from sources close to the US government’s marine fisheries service confirming dolphins had escaped.

‘My concern is that they have learnt to shoot at divers in wetsuits who have simulated terrorists in exercises. If divers or windsurfers are mistaken for a spy or suicide bomber and if equipped with special harnesses carrying toxic darts, they could fire,’ he said. ‘The darts are designed to put the target to sleep so they can be interrogated later, but what happens if the victim is not found for hours?’

Usually dolphins were controlled via signals transmitted through a neck harness. ‘The question is, were these dolphins made secure before Katrina struck?’ said Sheridan.

The mystery surfaced when a separate group of dolphins was washed from a commercial oceanarium on the Mississippi coast during Katrina. Eight were found with the navy’s help, but the dolphins were not returned until US navy scientists had examined them.

Sheridan is convinced the scientists were keen to ensure the dolphins were not the navy’s, understood to be kept in training ponds in a sound in Louisiana, close to Lake Pontchartrain, whose waters devastated New Orleans.

The navy launched the classified Cetacean Intelligence Mission in San Diego in 1989, where dolphins, fitted with harnesses and small electrodes planted under their skin, were taught to patrol and protect Trident submarines in harbour and stationary warships at sea.

Criticism from animal rights groups ensured the use of dolphins became more secretive. But the project gained impetus after the Yemen terror attack on the USS Cole in 2000. Dolphins have also been used to detect mines near an Iraqi port.

Someone for EVERYONE

They say that somewhere there is someone for everyone, I guess that explains why hookers and crack addicts always seem to have boy and girlfriends , right KATE MOSS? That lovely boyfriend of hers, Ex Libertines singer Pete Doherty is a POSTERCHILD for the statement…

And then there are the dating services, Match.com, etc,etc, and of course Craigslist, and the bottom of the food chain Russian Dating services…

SO what about those Russian Mail Order places you ask?, well even they have a pecking order…

That brings us to the photo in this article and our friends at : http://frantana.ru/.

They have interesting MARKETING:

“I’ve opened this rubric first of all because it’s concerned with disabled people. I get many letters with requests to find a woman with different invalid groups. There are marriages already. Really, why not to love a disabled woman, help her to be sure in many aspects of life, love her and be a devoted friend and assistant? It’s not her head disabled and it means that everything might be changed and corrected. It’s terrible when a person has problems with his head, actions, behaviour and thoughts. It’s a real problem.

But all these women are smart and think fine. All of them have a kind heart and a strong wish to love and be loved.”

They have a FINE photo Gallery and their motto:

“Representing Russian Amputee ladies. HONEST SERVICE !”

that really says it all…

Photo from Presidents trip to New Orleans

While the Presidents mother was off suggesting the people displaced by the Katrina Hurricane were living better in the shelter at the Houston Astrodome than their homes in THE BIG EASY, a father and son fishing trip was arranged for a closer look at the destruction of the levees in Louisiana.

StormWatchers: Hurricane RITA

For those interested in tracking Hurricane Rita this weekend please click on the Storm Watchers link in the RIGHT Column.

All of the currently posted BLOGS from the area along with LIVE PODCASTS can be reached from that link or HERE.

This information will be more current that the local news as its direct from the homes of the people in the path of the weather.