The State of Kentucky Basketball 2012

Post Apocalyptic Amusement Parks

This is creepy. According to this article, The Enchanted Forest was an amusement park in Maryland that has sat abandoned since 1989. Though there have been some attempts to restore it, some have had greater success transplanting and restoring the statues and buildings at another location. The place looks like I would have loved it when I was a kid, but now it kind of scares the hell out of me. I'm also reminded of one of my favorite scenes from the critically-maligned Steven Spielberg movie A.I.. The robot Haley Joel Osment is in a post-apocalyptic Coney Island...holy crap...this is the same thing. The future is here. Robots are among us...

The attempted recreation of the Enchanted Forest statues and attractions are nobly being carried on here.

And then here is a video of a similar story from Beijing where a Fantasy-themed amusement park was started and then stopped mid-way through construction. It also freaks me out.

Wonderland from catherine Hyland on Vimeo.

My Cartoons for Louisville Cardinals Basketball 2011-2012 Team

Reading List: Rolling Stone - City of Strays: Detroit's Epidemic of 50,000 Abandoned Dogs

City of Strays: Detroit's Epidemic of 50,000 Abandoned Dogs

As the city failed and its people fled, the animals took over

By

Mark Binelli

March 20, 2012 2:15 PM ET

Not long after moving back to Detroit, I stumbled across my first stray dog. This one was dead – a female pit bull, white, curled on its back. I'd been taking a walk in a depopulated industrial zone. The pit didn't appear to have been torn up in a dogfight. In fact, she looked so unharmed, I initially stopped cold, worried she might be sick and ready to spring up. Just beyond the dog, the rusted skeleton of a car, presumably stolen and abandoned, felt heavy-handed. Oliver Stone, making a movie about Detroit, would have probably said, "Eh. Let's lose the car. It's just too much." That's Detroit, though. Everything has become overly heavy symbolism, the initial purpose of things having, for the most part, faded long ago.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/city-of-strays-detroits-epidemic-of-50-000-wild-dogs-20120320#ixzz1plBuQB8k

Patty B - Agent of Insanity

Einstein's theory of relativity describes gravity as a curvature of space-time. The more massive the object, the greater this distortion will be. Black holes are so massive, that they distort space-time into a deep, bottomless well from which nothing can escape. Physicists, philosophers, and astronomers also observe that light and, possibly, reality are also distorted by these events.

Though he is not black, Pattty B is a hole of several varieties. And though he does not bend space-time or light, I have a firm belief that, either intentionally or unintentionally, he does alter reality. To be fair, there is no gauge or measuring device for reality, so scientists cannot confirm Patrick's influence on reality. But I can state that he absolutely alters our perception of reality.

When I look back and reflect, life seemed pretty normal and kind of plain before Patrick entered my orbit. In high school, I wasn't exposed to Patrick all that often. What time we did spend with each other was spent playing video games, watching wrestling, and reviewing horror movies. If there was any signal that Patrick was "off," I should have noted his enthusiastic devotion to working at Wal-Mart.

After we graduated high school, Patrick was one of the few friends that attended the same college I did. We didn't meet up much my freshman year, though when lunch needed to be procured, he knew where to find me and my food credits. It was sophomore year that things got interesting. Patrick was at the epicenter of several weird occurrences. He built a bedroom in a basement, then moved out, he joined a fraternity, he survived a semester by living on the living room couches of his acquaintances, he almost forgot a birthday, and he bit off a man's kneecap during a bar fight.

Then I decided to move in with him, sharing a small, one-room apartment. I believe he did his best to contain his demented powers, but sometimes they just slipped through the cracks and leaked out. I don't think he wanted anyone to know he was inherently mad, but things tend to escape when nobody's watching.

I'll never forget the time I explained to a friend's father that Patrick and I were going to be sharing an apartment. The wise father explained to me that this was unfortunate news because friends that live together in cramped quarters are destined to grate on each other's nerves to the point of breaking said friendship. I did not fret over the matter. In fact, I looked forward to the challenge of testing my mettle. Shortly after Patrick moved in, my mettle was indeed tested.

I came home to the apartment, tired and weary. I could hear the shower running in the small apartment. Anything that happened in that tiny living space could be heard on the opposite end. I could hear the water turn off. I had no idea how long Patrick had been in the shower for, but when the door flung open it became apparent that he had been in there for an extended duration. The steam that rolled out of the small bathroom slowly filled one room, then the next, and then the next. The light had been off in the room between us, but the bathroom light was on creating an eerie glow. Patrick emerged from the steam with the bathroom light to his back. He was clutching a towel to cover his genitals, but that was all that was covered. He was screeching his best impression of what an opera singer would sound like. Some wild animals micturate to mark their territory. Others will physically designate an area as belonging to them by scraping trees or by building walls or dams. Patrick, this cosmic weirdo, was letting me know that I had entered his realm by frightening my core. I stood my ground for three more years.

One night I was driving him home and he freestyle rapped for the entirety of a jazz song I had playing in my car. It was a rabid rhyme, and though I'll never remember his words, I'll never forget the experience. One time I caught him talking with a French accent. Had Patrick to this point ever shown an ability to rap? (no) Does Patrick speak French? (no) And then there was the time I walked into the bathroom and all but Patrick's body hair had washed down the shower drain. No other remnant of Patrick was in our home other than his body hair which was nested in the tub, staring back at me. Patrick has escaped reality, and he had forgotten to take his body hair with him.

It was also brought to my attention that Patrick recently tried to warp some of our friends' psyches by torturing them drunkenly as they tried to sleep. He knotted a pillow ribbon around his head to reveal his buttoned-third eye and he slapped them and howled late into the night, preventing his companions from sleeping. Surely his only intention was to buckle their psyches and force them into a well of insanity similar to his own.

There are numerous stories of "Big Pat" sightings. Some have witnessed him scrambling through Prestonia in only his underpants. When we lived together, I noticed him sneaking up on people while donned in black tights, a cape, and a lucha libre mask on more than one occasion. Like the mythical Louisville chupacabra, reports have surfaced of Patrick-like creatures roaming Bardstown Road some nights.

I don't know much about those agents that cause paranoia or inexplicable fear. Can anybody put their finger on what makes something (or someone, for that matter) irrational? Can anyone determine where a derangement originates? Is there an epicenter for hysterics? Simply asking the question is as maddening as trying to answer it. But if a mania had a start point, if ever there was an agitator that facilitated such lunacy, it is Patty B.

The notion, then, is to resolve if Patrick is responsible for these distortions, does he create the perception of distortions in one's mind, or does he simply attract these "wrinkles" and distortions, riding them out to their improper conclusions? I doubt anyone will ever find the truth. I can only credit my sustained exposure to Patrick's erraticism, else I might never see the blurs between the lines. I hope for your sake that you can distinguish those glitches, too.