Yes, there was a time when Nine Inch Nails weren't too-cool-for-school soundtrack creators, nearly invisible to the promotional process of the modern music industry. Instead, they were lipsyncing on a show called Dance Party USA and Trent Reznor had his hair in a ponytail.

According to a news report by the New York Times' "Bits" blog, AOL has slashed the team for its long-time instant messaging program, AIM.

Nick Bilton reported that a former AOL employee told him that “nearly all of the West Coast tech team has been killed," effectively ending the upcoming development for the software.

In the age of Facebook chat, Google Chat and Skype, AIM is a bloated, decrepit dinosaur that tries to install too much crap into your browser. Its death is long overdue, to be honest.

But at the same time, I feel like my generation owes it a debt of gratitude — particularly because I know that many of my longest friendships wouldn't exist had I not been able to connect with those people using AIM to talk outside of class (yes, I'm of the generation of kids who didn't go outside, lay off me).

And I'm pretty sure that NBC's To Catch a Predator would have had to work twice as hard to snag the same number of potential pedophiles had AIM chat rooms not been around.

So my fellow Millennials, let's take the time to pour one out for AIM — may its alert tones ring in our hearts forevermore.

[New York Times]

A sincere thank you to Chris Wagganer's YouTube page for reminding me of WREX Records on Sixth Street. No joke, if someone will reprint their t-shirts, I would gladly buy one (maybe two).

I'm not exactly sure what's so fascinating about this found footage of Disneyland from 1957, especially since I generally don't find myself nostalgic for time periods that I wasn't alive for, but the next time I'm having a rough day, I might just watch these baby boomers ride the Astro-Jets.

Here's a bit of interesting trivia. The famous Santa portrait pictured above was created in Tucson. Read on for more details:

You see his smiling face every holiday season: the jolly, rosy-cheeked, red-suited Coca-Cola Santa. This classic representation of Santa is as much a fixture of Christmas as the famous ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas poem that describes him. Yet not many know this timeless, jolly Santa was not originally thought up in a snowy landscape like his home in the North Pole, but in the warm sunshine of Tucson, Arizona at Westward Look Resort.

In the early 1930s, artist Haddon H. Sundblom was commissioned by The Coca-Cola Company to create a Santa that would be more appealing to children than the tall, thin, somewhat serious Kris Kringle of European legend. The resulting image, still popular today, was a Santa reputed to have brought cheer and a sense of optimism to a country that was struggling through the Great Depression and World War II.

Despite the snow-white beard and fur-lined red suit reminiscent of his North Pole roots, the Coca Cola Santa was first illustrated in the sunny Sonoran Desert at Westward Look Resort in Tucson. Working on his balcony at the resort, Sundblom brought Santa to life in 40 paintings for Coca-Cola.

In the late 1940’s, Lani and Sancy Nason, daughters of the resort’s owners at the time, were often used by Sundblom as models for his paintings. In one memorable illustration, Sundblom transformed Sancy into a young boy to convey the perfect Coca-Cola holiday message to both boys and girls. Though Lani and Sancy no longer live in Arizona, their mother still resides near Westward Look on three acres she and her husband retained after selling the resort in 1968.

Westward Look’s Tinaja Desert Gallery, located upstairs at the resort, still houses Sundblom’s memorabilia and drawings for visitors and locals alike to enjoy.

According to a press release issued Friday by election integrity activist John Brakey, Tucson attorneys Bill Risner and Ralph Ellinwood head back to court to carrying on the election integrity battle over the RTA election ballots and more on Monday, Dec. 12, Judge Kyle Bryson’s Courtroom, fifth floor, Pima County Superior Court, 110 W. Congress:

Since 2006 we’ve won 3 major cases[1] so far revealing how the process in Pima County works despite the county spending over a million dollars to block public records access. We filed this case several years ago to actually fix the problems found in the public records cases. More on this case here: “When A Court Is Presented With Evidence That Election Results May Have Been Tampered With, Does The Court Have Equitable Jurisdiction To Fashion Prospective Relief To Protect The Purity Of Future Election Results?”[2]

This particular case went into a coma about two years ago when Judge Harrington said that he couldn't order fixes to the election process no matter how obvious or severe the problems are.[3], [4] Well now the appeals and state SUPREME court said “not so fast” — we do have a right to ask a court to reform a broken election system regardless of what loopholes remain in state law. And that means GAME ON, before a new local judge.

In this first hearing before the new judge, we’re asking for something fairly simple: we want our money back on the 2 years of ballot storage fees racked up during our SUCCESSFUL APPEAL. In other words, the county used bad arguments to get us tossed, the previous judge tossed us out, and that cost $2,000 a year just to keep the most critical evidence (the damn ballots!) out of the shredder. That’s $4k we should now be able to spend on depositions and the like. We could use it — but more importantly, this “opening issue” for the new judge will tell us a lot about where his head and biases are. PLEASE, we need a big presence to show that this is a critical case and “we the people” are paying attention and we expect the judge to do the same.

Longer term, we're going to prove that election databases have been destroyed, election laws have been violated, our votes have been hacked and the voting systems we use are a tragic mess from both a technical and procedural standpoint. We're going to ask the court to order reforms that could serve as a model for the whole country when it come to the dangers of electronic voting.

Resolution on Election Integrity by Bill Risner and passed by AZ State Democratic Party[5]:

By our estimate the Pima County Board of Supervisors has spent more than $1.3 million on BS defenses fighting “We the People” over core issues relating to the foundation of our democracy. And if you’re reading this and saying “well, what about the hand count done by the Arizona Attorney General Goddard?” please read Significant Discrepancies in Comparison of RTA hand count Results by AZ AG,[6] a report by Ellen Theisen of Voters Unite.org.

I ask you, when does the cover-up become another crime?

Watching this video made me strangely sentimental for an era I didn't live in, but filmmaker Jeff Altman's montage of 16mm video home movies shot by his grandfather in the early 1960's might have that effect on you as well.

[@VeryShortList]

• Oh the dishes I could wash in this beauty.

I bring this up because I want all the dishwashers out there to know I have not forgotten the solemn oath I made while jet-spraying plates for $4.25 an hour. I will find a way to shed light on our profession, which is the most under-sung in the food industry. I will sing the praises of our toils. I just need to find the right vehicle to give it the proper treatment.

So hold tight my dishwashing brethren while I figure this out. I’m not sure if it will be a website, an online series or a full-length novel, but Tucson will know about the fine men and women who keep this city’s dishes clean. So help me God.

I'm already in the crowd of the wildly nostalgic that would be inclined to watch new episodes of Pop Up Video, but even if you don't feel the pangs of oversentimentalism toward pop culture events that I do, the annotated video for Britney Spears' "Till the World Ends" is still fun, if only to read about the extra who was kicked off the set for talking about "poop".

Yes, the shoes exist, but they don't actually powerlace. Regardless, 150 pairs of the shoes are on eBay now, raising money for the Michael J. Fox Foundation fighting Parkinson's Disease, which is a very good thing.