"The blog has made Glab into a hip town crier, commenting on everything from local politics and cultural happenings to national and international events, all rendered in a colorful, intelligent, working-class vernacular that owes some of its style to Glab’s Chicago-hometown heroes Studs Terkel and Mike Royko." — David Brent Johnson in Bloom Magazine
I’m too busy writing text this morning for the Charlotte Zietlow memoir so no hot air today.
The Loved One’s birthday week continues, though, so here’s another installment in my little series of songs dedicated to her. So far, we’ve had “You’re My Best Friend” by Queen and “You Got It” by the Average White Band. Today, let’s say we go with one of my favorite tunes of all time, Astrud Gilberto’s “Goodbye Sadness (Tristeza).” Backed by tenor saxophonist Stan Getz and keyboardist Walter Wanderley, Gilberto’s charmingly unschooled vocals make this one of the happiest songs ever recorded. I’m a big fan of Sunshine Pop, mainly because I allow music to manipulate my emotions. I want songs to make me deliriously giddy, sobbingly melancholy, or anything in between. It’s great exercise for the emotional muscle. Tristeza is not actually Sunshine Pop but it surely helped pave the way for that late ’60s California sound so dubbed in retrospect. C’mon, get happy with me!
“Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.” — Bertrand Russell
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REALITY CHECK
Let’s get this out of the way right off the bat: There is no Sasquatch. AKA “Bigfoot,” the creature does not exist.
There are people who call themselves scientists — but who’ve abdicated their privilege to the title — who’d love to get you to believe nonsense.
Dr. Melba Ketchum: She’s Wrong — Trust Me
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Move on with your life. Ponder all the new exo-planets being discovered virtually every day. Stop running around and trying to do everything in the world by noon and listen to the birds in your neighborhood — all of whom are real. If you take a drive on SR 37, glance at the rock wall cutouts along the side of the road and, noting all the layers of sediment, consider that you’re actually looking at millions of years of history.
Because if you do believe in Bigfoot, you are indeed out of your mind.
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LOTTERY LOSERS
Here’s another piece of advice. The next time there’s a ginormous Powerball payout, you will not win it.
Statistically Speaking, These People Do Not Exist
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Recent calculations indicate that the odds of winning the average Powerball prize are 1 in 175,223.510. And because last week’s half-billion-buck purse attracted so many new players, those odds shot upward.
So save your dough. Or better yet, just send it to The Electron Pencil; we’ll put it to better use than you blowing it on a racket in which your chance of winning, in essence, doesn’t exist.
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DOOM
Let’s stick with the bunk. Admit it, that whole 2012/End of the World thing rattles around in your braincase every once in a while.
The Mayan Calendar
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As we approach December 21st, the target date for all our lives to go kaputnik (don’t try to find a definition for this word, I just made it up), you can be sure our corporate media newsbeings will be covering this “story” with either a smug, knowing smirk or flat-out idiotic credulity.
I’m dying to see how Fox News covers the impending apocalypse.
To that end, NASA has issued an advisory explaining why our interpretation of the Mayan calendar is screwy. Here’s space scientist David Morrison explaining why you’re a loon if you give even an iota of credence to this end of the world scenario.
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Not that this well-thought-out, expert, fact-based argument will make a molecule of difference for the credulous.
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TRUST ME
Speaking of credibility, I have next to none left after announcing several baker’s dozen times the new Ryder website and the attendant marriage of this site with that one.
Swear to the god I don’t believe in we’re only days away from that long-awaited debut.
Almost There
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I know, I know — you don’t want to hear about the labor pains, you only want to see the baby, so I won’t tell you what an heroic ordeal it’s been to get this thing off the ground. My technical and diplomatic skills have been tested to the extreme, but winners never quit, or so said someone like Dick Nixon, who eventually quit anyway.
So stay tuned and we’ll be making our grand announcement before you know it.
“In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.” — Albert Camus
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HAVE YOU VOTED YET?
Why not? Okay, but you only have one week left to do it! Here’s where you can vote today and tomorrow:
The Curry Building, 214 W. Seventh St.; 8am-6pm
IU Assembly Hall, 1001 E. 17th St.; 10am-6pm
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POG PANIC
So, the Republicans are pulling out one last pie to throw in the face of Barack Obama with a week to go before the November election.
According to them, Obama conspired with Muslim extremists to murder four Americans during the attack on this country’s diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya a couple of weeks ago. Then Obama covered up his administration’s complicity in the affair.
The whole shebang, says everybody from John McCain to Newt Gingrich, is worse than Watergate.
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
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Of course, I’m exaggerating when I say they’re actually accusing Obama of participating in the attack. About as much as they’re exaggerating about it and Watergate.
And, by the way, the GOP has been salivating for a “Democratic Watergate” for some 40 years now. It hasn’t happened yet.
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ANOTHER ENDING
This day comes every year around this time.
Baseball is finished for 2012.
Boo.
Their Joy; My Loss
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The San Francisco Giants completed a sweep of the Detroit Tigers in the World Series last night. I’ve been listening to the games on live stream. Not only do I love baseball, I love radio (even radio on my laptop.) So I get to combine two of my loves at once.
It’s like having a pizza and spaghetti party.
A Kind Of Heaven
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But it’s over.
I wanted the Giants to win. But not just yet. Not now. Not this soon. Couldn’t they have drawn it out for a few more games or, better, a few more weeks? Baseball’s done. So is summer. So is another year.
My boys, the Chicago Cubs, had one of the worst years in their long and storied history. They’re as far from the World Series as they’ve ever been in my lifetime — and that includes a lot of absolutely rotten teams.
But I’m hoping. The new brain trust led by Theo Epstein, Jed Hoyer, and John McLeod has gutted the organization, ridding it of deadwood, ne’er-do-wells, and — for all I know — Satan worshippers. That’s a good start. Now they have to gather real ballplayers.
I don’t believe in god or magic or life after death. But the thing I do believe in makes all those things seem rational. I believe the Cubs will win a World Series while I’m still alive.
Everybody with a functioning cerebrum ignored it. Except, natch, Fox News.
The Party of God’s house organ ran with it big time:
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Turns out that the Daily Mail piece was completely erroneous.
Doesn’t it scare the crap out of you that a huge percentage of this holy land’s population eats up Fox News on a daily basis?
It makes me want to throw my hands in the air and moan, “I give up!”
On the other hand, maybe Fox is coming around. Their screen headline implies that there was global warming, once. That’s better than denying it ever existed, right?
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SO NICE
How about one last blast of summer from Brazil’s Astrud Gilberto?
This song is also known as “Summer Samba.” Light and airy, hopeful and exciting — it’s the perfect metaphor for what I hope every summer will be. They never really turn out that way yet I still dream of those ideal summers in the dark of every winter.
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The only events listings you need in Bloomington.
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Monday, October 29th, 2012
VOTE ◗ Two locations for early voting in Monroe County today and tomorrow:
The Curry Building, 214 W. Seventh St.; 8am-6pm
Indiana University Assembly Hall, South Lobby, 1001 E. 17th St.; 10am-6pm
STUDIO TOUR ◗ Brown County, various locations — The Backroads of Brown County Studio Tour, free, self-guided tour of 16 local artists’ & craftspersons’ studios; 10am-5pm, through October
MUSIC ◗ IUAuer Hall — Master’s Recital: Adam Brown on guitar; 5pm
TOWN HALL MEETING ◗ IU Memorial Union — 6th Annual China Town Hall: Local Connections, National Reflections, Speakers include: Zhao Shaung, Scott Kennedy, Abassador Gary Locke; 6pm
