We've safely stowed away the wayback machine

We got home late yesterday and have been playing catch up with a great many things.  Mr. Teeny has left our house a wreck.  CDs flung around the home and not back in their correct jewel cases.  Soiled linens (don't ask with what) wadded up and strewn about the bedrooms.  Cigar ashes abound and burns in the coffee table.

I'm not sure what if anything the following video shows



but it does make me slightly uneasy and very much in search of a good raw bar.


July 10, 1916 -
Charlie Chaplin further develops his 'Tramp' character with the release of  The Vagabond, on this date.



look for this - Charlie loses his hat outside the bar, is seen inside wearing it, then picks it up where he lost it when he leaves. When he escapes from the gypsy, he is hatless at first, but the next shot shows the hat suddenly back in place.


July 10, 1942 -
RKO Radio Pictures released Orson Welles' butchered masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons, on this date.



Orson Welles suspected that author Booth Tarkington based the lead character George on Welles himself for a variety of reasons: Tarkington was a friend of the Welles family, Welles had a reputation for being a spoiled, difficult child and Welles's full name was George Orson Welles, so he was called George or Georgie while growing up.


July 10, 1965 -
The Rolling Stones topped the pop-music charts with (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, on this date.



Mick Jagger wrote all the lyrics except the line "Can't get no satisfaction." The lyrics deal with what Jagger saw as the two sides of America, the real and phony. He sang about a man looking for authenticity but not being able to find it. Jagger experienced the vast commercialism of America in a big way on their tours, and later learned to exploit it, as The Rolling Stones made truckloads of money through sponsorships and merchandising in the US.


Today in History:
July 10, 1958 -
The first parking meter was installed in England on this date in 1958, along with the second through 625th. It took nearly two dozen years for the parking meter to travel across the Atlantic: the first American parking meter had been installed in Oklahoma City on July 16, 1935.

It was invented by Oklahoma City's Carl C. Magee, the head of that city's chamber of commerce, as part of an effort to free more parking spaces for daytime shoppers. Downtown parking spaces had typically been taken by office workers who left their cars parked on the street all day, making it difficult for shoppers to find open spaces and thereby causing incalculable pain and suffering. (Double-parking was not invented until 1963.)



I, personally, considers the parking meter one of the great instruments of totalitarian control, and cannot understand how conspiracy theorists who lose sleep over Roswell, the Masons, and black helicopters can walk blithely past dozens of parking meters every day.



Current estimates ("wild guesses") suggest there are now more than five million of these coercive devil machines deployed across the United States. They absorb millions of dollars in small change every day, and generate still more ill-gotten revenue by means of fines levied against persons who refuse to kneel before them.



I urge my readers to recall the words of Alexander Hamilton, who observed in the Federalist Papers that "no people are free who must pay for municipal parking."

The first concrete-paved street was built 113 years ago today in Bellefountaine, Ohio.

Paved streets are good. I have no problem with paved streets, unless they're lined with parking meters.


July 10, 1856 -
Inventor and electromechanical genius Nikola Tesla, the man who invented the 20th century, was born to Serbian parents in what is now Croatia on this date.



Remember, if we could only harness the free floating electricity, we could do away with the electric companies.




July 10, 1954 -
Neil Tennant, musician, singer and songwriter and the other half of the electronic dance music duo Pet Shop Boys, was born on this date (and not 1985, as I posted earlier.)




July 10, 1985 -
Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior was blown up by in Auckland Harbor, killing a photographer, on this date.



After the New Zealand government determines that French secret agents were responsible, the French Defense Minister resigns and the agents are jailed.



And so it goes.