Build Date: Sat Feb 28 11:30:10 2026 UTC
The future is like walking down some unlit corridor, and it gets darker and darker as you move into it.
-- Jack Valenti
Elvis sees Stalin's face
2001-02-15 19:47:51
Elvis had a vision during a cross-country road trip in 1964. Driving to Hollywood from his Tennessee Graceland mansion, Elvis looked into the clouds and saw the face of Stalin.
By 1964, the pop icon had been guzzling amphetamines since his army tour in the fifties. Surrounded by an entourage accompanying him to film Harem Scarum, Elvis experienced a religious miracle which took a peculiar form, according to the recent biography Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley.
Elvis suddenly gasped and cried, "Whoa!"
When I turned to him, he was slumped back in his seat, slack-jawed, staring at the horizon. Following his gaze, I saw a cloud, a single white mass floating in the sky. From the clouds emerged a clear, definite, recognizable image.
"Do you see what I see?" Elvis asked in a whisper. I looked again. "That's Joseph Stalin's face up there!"
Try as I might to see it any other way, there was no denying it was Stalin's face in the cloud.
"Why Stalin? Why Stalin?" Elvis asked, his voice breaking. "Of all people, what's he doing up there?"
Elvis gets a strange look in his face, pulls his bus of hangers-on to the side of the road, and shouts "Follow me!" as he runs into the desert. His spiritual advisor Larry Geller finally caught up with him in the desert.
"It's God!" Elvis cried. "It's God!" Tears streamed down his face as he hugged me tightly and said, "I thank you from the bottom of my heart. You got me here. I'll never forget, never, man. It really happened. I saw the face of Stalin and I thought to myself, Why Stalin? Is it a projection of something that's inside of me? Is God trying to show me what he thinks of me? And then it happened! The face of Stalin turned right into the face of Jesus, and he smiled at me, and every fiber of my being felt it... Oh, God. Oh, God," Elvis kept saying.Then he paused and added a peculiar aside. "Can you imagine what the fans would think if they saw me like this?"
"They'd only love you all the more," Geller said.
"Yeah," he said, "well, I hope that's true."
T O P S T O R I E S
The Crossroads are real and The Blues is a place; The enduring myth of Robert Johnson (More...)
California Glory Hole attracts huge crowds
A glory hole at Napa's Lake Berryessa is drawing huge crowds. According to Chris Lee, the general manager for the Solano County Water Agency, the glory hole hasn't been active since 2019, and only restarted operations on Feb 4. (More...)
Republican State Senator busted after soliciting a teenage girl
Republican State Senator Justin Eichorn of Minnesota was arrested for soliciting a teen girl on Monday just hours after he introduced a bill proposing "Trump derangement syndrome" (TDS) as a form of mental illness. (More...)
Parents claim measles is not that bad after having only one child die
The parents of a Texas girl who died from the measles are defending their decision not to vaccinate their daughter. "She says they would still say 'Don't do the shots,'" an unidentified translator for the parents said. "They think it’s not as bad as the media is making it out to be." (More...)
Delusional rich man tries to fire town staff
"I'm mayor now" said write-in mayoral candidate and founder of Pirate’s Booty Snacks Robert Ehrlich after losing the election for Mayor of Sea Cliff, NY. Then he tried to take over the Village Hall and fire everyone. (More...)
Musk claims Xitter security is staffed by idiots
Earlier this month Xitter experienced a massive outage. In an interview, Musk told Fox Business that he believes the attack came from "IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area." (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
It's that time of year again -- Burning Man Season -- and that means fresh SCIENCE! Here is a new lab experiment for the fruity hillbilly in all of us. (More...)
A Day in the Life of a Beverotologist
It was starting to look like a very boring Saturday, trapped as I was in the suburban wastelands of the outer Bay Area, so I called my Able Assistant (AA) and proposed that we perform some Spocktail field tests. For some time I've been working on creating the quintessential cinematic beverage and even tho' SMRL does most of its testing during nocturnal hours, this seemed an opportune time to roll up the sleeves of our labcoats and get some science done. While the beverotology creation tested this day (The Neurotoxin) must be deemed a success, this article focuses more the journey of the experimenters, rather then the science of beverotology. (More...)
The Liquidation of Hobo Junction
Albany, CA's homeless hooverville by the Bay, "Hobo Junction," is going to be torn down by The Man. Entrances are already being blocked off, and it's now difficult and dangerous to get there. Worse, these obstacles are making it hard to get to the nearby HORSE TRACK on foot. Local historian, Pao Tzu, has an overview of situation. (More...)
Absinthia: The Pigdog Interview
Absinthe is making a come back for the Millennium. Even English people are slurping it down in pubs, eschewing their normal, healthy stouts and ales. And why not? Hell, if the planet is going to explode anyway, why not ride the DEATH WAVE in, and celebrate Y2K with the most entertaining and vicious elixir you can find? Come! Explore the "Absinthe Underground" with El Snatcher, Mr. Bad, and Splicer, as they interview the notorious absinthe bootlegger, Absinthia. (More...)
High Availability Guinness Stress Test
All too often we forget the incredible depth of technology behind the weekly ritual of TNiPN@*. We tend to only become aware of the strategy of High Available Guinness (HAG) when it rises to the forefront during a complete and utter venue failure. Yet we should all be super grateful that this system exists. (More...)
Johnnie Royale's Guide to Wakes
Wakes can present problems for Bad People of the Future. (If you don't know what a BPotF is, you need to read more of the PDJ.) Sure, your friend is gone and you miss him and that really sucks; it does, I know. But all Bad People of the Future are gonna die, and they have all accepted that fact. They do deserve, however, to have one final kickass party to celebrate all the bad things they've done in the past, present and future. And you, as a friend, have to make sure that their desire for a final send off is well executed (sorry for the pun). That's just the way of BPotFdom. (More...)
