The Maine Coon

November 12, 2017 Markozen.com Animals

coon

The Maine Coon is one of the largest domesticated breeds of cat. It has a distinctive physical appearance and valuable hunting skills. It is one of the oldest natural breeds in North America, specifically “native” to the state of Maine (though the feline was simply introduced there), where it is the official state cat.

No records of the Maine Coon’s exact origins and date of introduction to the United States exist, so several competing hypotheses have been suggested. The breed was popular in cat shows in the late 19th century, but its existence became threatened when long-haired breeds from overseas were introduced in the early 20th century. The Maine Coon has since made a comeback and is now one of the more popular cat breeds in the world.
The Maine Coon is a large and sociable cat, hence its nickname, “the gentle giant.” It is characterized by a prominent ruff along its chest, robust bone structure, triangular body shape, an uneven two layered coat with longer guard hairs with a silky satin under layer undercoat, and a long, bushy tail. The breed’s colors vary widely, with only lilac and chocolate disallowed for pedigree. Reputed for its intelligence and playful, gentle personality, the Maine Coon is often cited as having “dog-like” characteristics.

Ice Road Truckers: Behind the Scenes

November 11, 2017November 11, 2017 Markozen.com Fake News

Ice Road Truckers is a reality television series that premiered on History on June 17, 2007. It features the activities of drivers who operate trucks on seasonal routes crossing frozen lakes and rivers in remote frozen territories in Canada and Alaska. In the first few seasons the long haul semi trucks operated mainly in Alaska and the Canadian Northwest Territories. But in the last few seasons the truckers have discovered the area of North America with the most ice roads and also the most treacherous. The Canadian province of Manitoba.

Many of Manitoba’s isolated Native communities in the central and northern part of the province do not have access to year round roads or rail lines. The Native reserves are located in areas of thick forest and thousands of lakes. Therefore the winter roads are the only way to get supplies up to those communities. Thousands of tons of freight is hauled to the communities during the short winter road season, usually January, February and the first half of March. Once the melt starts, the roads disintegrate. Hundreds of kilometres of the ice roads are just that, roads running on frozen lakes. When the lake ice starts to melt it can be quite hazardous.

Manitoba Winter Road Map

ice map

I have always wondered what kind of support the truckers receive when they are out in the bush hundreds of miles from nowhere. When old grizzled God-fearing trucker Alex Debogorski is hauling across a frozen lake what back-up does he have when the ice starts cracking? While Alex is praying to the heavens to keep him dry there is always cameras shooting his movement from many different angles, some from outside his semi truck.

And when foul mouthed trucker Art Burke is swearing like a drunken sailor because he took a wrong turn and is 300 miles in the opposite direction of where he should be, a helicopter is filming his semi’s movement from a thousand feet up. When Art starts getting bleeped out by the program censors because of his obscene and indescribably vulgar diatribes he is talking to somebody who is riding with him. And when Art runs out of fuel and he is pacing around in the snow there are two different cameras capturing his every lewd gesture.

How isolated and in potential peril are the Ice Road Truckers? A recent photo seems to shed some light on this question.

ice11

The back-up and support package that shadows the Ice Trucks is extensive. Middle: Polar Industries truck driven by swear-master Art Burke; middle left: two F-350 Ford pick-ups providing mobile camera footage from different angles outside the truck; top left: Jet ranger helicopter that doubles as a camera platform and air ambulance; bottom left: the main satellite receiving central processing television truck; bottom right; 4-wheel drive ambulance with defibrillators, body thaw-out receptacles and neuro-cryogenicist surgeons; middle right: super-heavy X-1000 Mack telescopic arm tow recovery vehicle, and for good measure, a high-speed all-terrain mobile crane. Just in case a semi needs to be plucked out of a very deep lake.

In my opinion I’d say the Ice Truckers are covered pretty good for any contingency.

Henri The Noir Chat has a new Caretaker

November 10, 2017 Markozen.com Animals, Offbeat

What is wrong with these men, why can’t they keep it in their pants!!?

November 9, 2017 Markozen.com Celebrities, Sex

First it was Harvey Weinstein, then Kevin Spacey and now Louis C.K., not to mention Fox News bully Bill O’Reilly, filmmaker James Toback and celebrity chef John Besh, to name but a few. All alleged to have committed sexual advances on unsuspecting victims. Oh I forgot one, President Donald Trump has 5 accusers alleging that he committed unwanted sexual advances towards them. And ‘The Donald’ admitted on tape that he grabbed women’s crotches, because since he was rich and powerful he could do anything to women.

weinstein

Is there not an antithesis drug to Viagra? When the libido of the harassers starts to boil, leading to a possible eruption, they could pop a pill that makes the cockeyed urges deflate. Keep it in your pants you idiots!!

trump

Fedex: when it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight

November 9, 2017 Markozen.com Aviation, Language

fedex

Below is a FedEx commercial from the 1980’s starring a speed talking actor.

Really Bad Horror Movies

November 9, 2017 Markozen.com Movies

Brief list of bad horror flicks. I thought the Amityville Horror franchise flicks were really bad. But these appear to be a heck of a lot worse according to the reviewers.

Basket Case

In Basket Case, a baby is born with a parasitic twin. A small, evil parasitic twin the size of a basket ball. It grows out of the boy’s shoulder. The boys parents decide to save the “normal” twin by having the parasitic twin surgically removed.

Fast forward a few years and now the twins are all grown up. And like all siamese twins separated at birth, in which one twin was brutally removed from the other and thrown into the garbage to die, they dream of nothing else than revenge against the surgical team that separated them. Murderous mayhem ensues.

Frankenhooker

“She’s hot. She’s Sexy. And she’s sutured to please.” When a mad scientist loses his girlfriend to a freak lawn mower accident he decides that the best way to get a new girlfriend is to chop up some prostitutes and make a new one out of spare parts. Stupid mysogynistic trash masquerading as a horror comedy.

Cannibal Ferox (a.k.a Make Them Die Slowly)

The subtitle of this movie is “make them die slowly” and the movie certainly lives up to its name. The mindless plot involves some Americans captured by cannibals in the Amazon. There is not much plot except a series of mutilations, eye removals, and gory torture.

Eaten Alive

This is yet another Italian horror movie with a cannibal theme. Americans venture into the jungle where they encounter cannibals. Eating ensues.

Erotic Nights of the Living Dead (1979)

A sleazy zombie cheesefest with horrible dubbing of English over the original Italian dialogue. The mouths are out of synch with the sound which adds to the fun.

A classic in the Euro-Horror zombie genre. Gratuitous sex and horrible acting. So bad its almost good.

A Night to Dismember

A female murderer is released from an insane assylum, suposedly cured. Then the body count begins. The film is dreadful on almost every level: the sound is awful (where are the foley artists when you need them?), the cinematography is lousy, the plot and acting are D-grade. The whole mess doesn’t make sense, so the director added a narrator that valiantly tries to make sense of the movie and explain the plot to you. The movie must be seen in order to appreciate just how brilliantly awful it is.

Night of the Bloody Apes

It’s the night of the Bloody Apes – well, actually, only one bloody ape. And he’s not really all ape, either.

You see, it seems that a mad scientist had a son with a heart defect. So he gives his son a heart from an ape, which naturally turns his meek, weakling son into a ferocious, murdering, sex crazed monkey man. What else would you expect? 🙂

Cannibal! The Musical

You may think that the title says it all. But no, there’s more.

The movie tells the fictionalized story of Alfred Packer, a real life 1890s pioneer who got lost in the Colorado wilderness and ended up eating his fellow expedition members. The story shifts incongruously from schmaltzy musical numbers to gory scenes of human hors d’oeuvres. One reviewer described the movie as “The Musical is Oklahoma meets Bloodsucking Freaks.”

Gingerdread Man

The ashes from an excuted killer are mixed into some cookie dough and naturally the killer comes back as a huge knife wielding murdering Ginger Bread Man. Awesome schlock, made even “better” by the fact that Gary Busey plays the part of the Gingerbread Man. Just try to picture it. The horror, the horror.

Santa’s Slay

It seems that truly bad horror movies always try to be clever by using an obvious pun in their title. For example: Gingerdread Man, or the awful Santa’s Slay, about a murderous Santa Claus.

What’s even funnier is that the killer Santa is played by talented actor and former wrestling star Bill Goldberg. Need I say more?

That’s all folks!

Man’s Life Magazine covers from the 1950’s

November 8, 2017 Markozen.com Art, Media

Men’s adventure is a genre of magazines that had its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s. Catering to a male audience, these magazines featured glamour photography and lurid tales of adventure that typically featured wartime feats of daring, exotic travel or conflict with wild animals.

These magazines are generally considered the last of the true pulp magazines. They reached their circulation peaks long after the genre-fiction pulps had begun to fade. These magazines were also colloquially called “armpit slicks”, “men’s sweat magazines” or “the sweats”, especially by people in the magazine publishing or distribution trades.

Notable men’s adventure magazines included Argosy, the longest-running and best regarded of the genre, as well as Adventure, Real, True, Saga, Stag, Swank and For Men Only. During their peak in the late 1950s, approximately 130 men’s adventure magazines were being published simultaneously.

The interior tales usually claimed to be true stories. Women in distress were commonly featured in the painted covers or interior art, often being menaced or tortured by Nazis or, in later years, Communists. Artist Norman Saunders was the dean of illustrators for these magazines, occupying a position similar to that enjoyed by Margaret Brundage for the classic pulps. Many illustrations that were uncredited were done by Bruce Minney, Norm Eastman, Gil Cohen, Mel Crair, Basil Gogos, and Vic Prezio among others. Historical artist Mort Künstle painted many covers and illustrations for these magazines, and Playboyphotographer Mario Casilli started out shooting pinups for this market. At publisher Martin Goodman’s Magazine Management Company, future best-selling humorist and author Bruce Jay Friedman was a men’s sweat writer-editor, and Mario Puzo was a contributor before he became a well-known novelist.

Man’s Life 1950’s covers

The title of the Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention album Weasels Ripped My Flesh was borrowed from a man-against-beast cover story in the September 1956 issue of Man’s Life, and the title went through another permutation when filmmaker Nathan Schif made the horror feature Weasels Rip My Flesh (1979).

Inflatable extras in Hollywood movies

November 8, 2017 Markozen.com Movies

Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) is expensive and extras are difficult to handle, besides costing money. The Inflatable Crowd Company offers the alternative – plastic, inflatable mannequins, thirty thousands of them for use in movies where a large crowd is required. The company was formed in 2002 for creating crowd scenes for the Hollywood movie Sea Biscuit. Their inflatable crowd have since appeared in over 80 feature films including many memorable ones like The King’s Speech, Frost/Nixon, American Gangster, Spiderman 3 and many more. These plastic men and women were featured in many TV shows and commercials as well.

Blow up dolls are taken from their boxes and inflated for shooting in a commercial.

The dolls are then dressed. They still don’t have faces. These along with wig, hat etc. are fitted later.

A scene on the set of the movie American Gangster with 1,500 Inflatables.

A scene on the set of the movie Cinderella Man with 11,000 Inflatables.

A scene on the set of the movie We Are Marshall with 2,400 Inflatables.

A scene on the set of the movie The Changeling with 400 Inflatables.

A scene on the set of the movie Glory Road with 4,000 Inflatables.

550 inflatable dolls getting prepared for a scene in the movie Angels & Demons.

Nearly 200,000 US troops are currently deployed around the world — here’s where

November 8, 2017 Markozen.com Military

With Trump on his extended Asian tour the geopolitics of the region is at the forefront. Especially the Korean military dilemma. Below is a report on US overseas military deployments.

U.S. and South Korean forces during joint exercises

south-korea-US-military-exercise

There was no shortage of cuts proposed in Trump’s budget for 2018, which was released earlier this week.

However, one of the few departments that did not receive a haircut was the Department of Defense.

If the proposed budget ultimately passes in Congress, the DoD would be allocated an extra $54 billion in federal funding – a 10% increase that would be one of the largest one-year defense budget increases in American History.

To put the proposed increase in context, the United States already spends more on defense than the next seven countries combined.

Meanwhile, the additional $54 billion is about the size of the United Kingdom’s entire defense budget.

Military Spending (2015) by country

With over half of all U.S. discretionary spending being put towards the military each year, the U.S. is able to have extensive operations both at home and abroad. Our chart for this week breaks down military personnel based on the latest numbers released by the DoD on February 27, 2017.

In total, excluding civilian support staff, there are about 2.1 million troops. Of those, 1.3 million are on active duty, while about 800,000 are in reserve or part of the National Guard.

On a domestic basis, there are about 1.1 million active troops stationed in the United States, and here’s how they are grouped based on branch of service:

Active Domestic Personnel by military branch

Internationally, there are just under 200,000 troops that are stationed in 177 countries throughout the world.

Here are the top 20 countries they are stationed in, as well as an “Other” category that represents the rest:

visual capitalist us troops in countries

In 2015, Politico estimated that there are 800 U.S. bases abroad, and that it costs up to $100 billion annually to maintain this international presence.

Source: Businessinsider.com

House in the desert

November 7, 2017 Markozen.com Buildings

A couple and their two teenage daughters decided to get away from it all. They were living in the Los Angeles area and got fed up with the fast pace, noise and crazy traffic. Husband and wife are both professionals in television and commute back to L.A. a few days a week. But their home is now located dab smack in the barren desert of Death Valley, California.

There are no neighbours for over 20 miles. The nearest town is 35 miles away. They are out there with the coyotes and eagles. Complete isolation. Strangely enough, it does look quite peaceful, yet invigorating. After all, they are out there with nature in its most pure state.