Funerals are for the Living

Funerals are for the living.

Graveyards are for the living.

The living have attachments, dangling, with the dead. When death comes, the survivors are often unmoored. There's a industry of people ready to help.

I've had some time to think about all this recently. I choose to re-read an old art book, Blinky by Jeffrey Vallance. On the 27th, April 1978, Jeffrey Vallance went to Ralph's supermarket and purchased a frozen chicken, took some photographs, and then drove to a Los Angeles pet cemetary. He paid cash for their most expensive service, then got the chicken out of his car for the service. Later he published it all in a small art book. First edition was 550 copies, second edition 2000. Used copies, and mine was used, cost about $40 these days. The whole story was described on Letterman:

But that book wasn't the only pet cemetary project of 1978. I also took the time to watch documentarian's Errol Morris, film Gates of Heaven (1978). It was made with the encouragement of Werner Herzog, and that is described in the Les Blank short Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980).

Filmed in 1977 and completed and released in October 1978, Gates tells stories of people who operate(d) pet cemetaries, animal rendering facilities, and people who have interred pets at the cemetaries. One of the cemetaries featured is still in business, and it is a business, but their website neglects to mention the film.

Errol Morris is not cruel about the business, and seems to have genuine concern for the people. Jeffery Vallance seems a little more mocking.

My focus took me to pet death not because I have recently lost an animal, but because I am watching someone go through the complicated grief of losing a family member and it feels somewhat detached for me. There's so much paperwork for dead people, while animals need so little.

There are so many people who need to be involved but were not involved with the life. With pets, people only get involved because the owner wants it. No one stops you from just buring your animals in your yard after they die at home.

Vinegar Syndrome

Taking its name from acetate decay of old film stock, Vinegar Syndrome is a company that specializes in finding, restoring, and releases on home media films that get overlooked by other conservationists. Things like blue movies, drive-in quality B-films, exploitation titles, and things made outside the studio system.

Vinegar Syndrome

I like what they do, even if I don't want all of their titles. I have purchased a few discs from them. Their "Reviver" label, specifically to fund film restoration, has had two releases so far. They are titled on the website "One" and "Two".

There's no listing of the movie titles on the disks. I purchased "Two" as a pre-release knowing only it had two titles on it both filmed in the same non-US country. Now, post-release, they still don't list the titles. I guess I should have expected that, because "One" was post-release at the time and still didn't have the title.

For the record, "One" has Boots and the Preacher (1972) (imdb page) some shorts and related special features. The "Two" has Paradise of Terror (1965) (imdb page) and The Horror from Beyond (1965) (imdb page). So far I've watched Boots and Paradise.

Boots was considered a lost film until Vinegar Syndrome rescued it. The film has a rambling investigation into a small town murder at a church affiliated radio station. It's hick-ploitation with country music and corrupt small town stereotypes. We first see the sheriff waking up in bed with a prostitue at the local whorehouse. It's not high art.

Paradise, on the other hand, is art. Filmed in the Philippines and never released, this is a story of a military assisted evacuation for unstated purposes of a US government official from some unspecified Asian country in the midst of a conflict. Their plane is hit and everyone parachutes out. Then begins a story that's something like Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972) if it were a 84 minute Vietnam war film. Truly a delight.

But there's no mention of title on website that sells the disc. I find it hard to tell people "Yeah, this film is good, you should watch it" when you can't go to the Vinegar Syndrome website and find the disc by searching for the title. Even once you have it in hand, the slip case, both sides of the reversible box art insert, and even the disc silkscreens don't identify the contents.

In short: I like what Vinegar Syndrome has done, but I wish they would drop the secrecy now that's released.

On Cleaning Freewheels

Subject: net.bicycle.freewheel.cleaning: a reprise
From: reid@Glacier.ARPA
Date: Thu, 6-Dec-84 00:42:44 PST

In particular, a Milwaukee worm drive saw with a carbide blade will saw a freewheel clean in half. Lots of wild sparks shooting everywhere, but since it's raining they probably won't set much on fire. Ball bearings getting caught in the carbide teeth and being whipped around at 200 mph and shot across the yard, scaring the squirrels. Oh, this was great fun.

Full post in Jef Poskanzer's "Net Gems"; collection here.

Taking Apart a Locking Shopping Cart Wheel

These are old photos from something I did about ten years ago, but I thought I'd share them for people interested.

Some supermarkets around here, in order to combat people walking off with their shopping carts, have wheels that lock when they roll over a line with some sort of short range signal coming out of it. I don't really know the specifics of how the signal is sent.

I've been curious about the anti-theft shopping cart wheels for a while. It's clear that they are radio operated by a signal with a very short broadcast range. Less clear was how they actually stop the wheel from turning. My original hypothesis that the wheel contained a motor which would actively stop the wheel from moving. After finding a wheel that had broken off a cart (honest, I had been watching out for one for several years before finding one; this one was in a Target parking lot), I took it home and opened it up.

It turns out my hypothesis was far off. The center part of the wheel is fixed in place, well anchored to the axle which does not spin. Put another way: the outer part of the wheel moves, but the axle and the inner part do not. When the system receives a signal, it expands a plastic drum brake against the outer rim of the wheel, to prevent the wheel from spinng. When it receives an unlock signal, the plastic drum brake is retracted. During normal operation the only power draw is a small circuit listening for those radio(?) signals. At those times, it then switches on a motor to expand or retract the brake.

This post prompted by learing of begaydocrime.com which has more technical detail and audio files you can play to lock or unlock this sort of wheel.