Ayn Rand, Bloom Magazine, Camp Climax for Girls, Chicago Cubs, Doug Storm, Elizabeth Taylor, Flannery O'Connor, Interchange, Jeff Richardson, Kyle Schwarber, Michelle Richardson, Montgomery Clift, Raintree County, Richardson Studio, Ross Lockridge Jr., Shannon Zahnle, WFHB

Hot Air

Camp Is Fun!

Susie the Self-styled Clown of Chapel Hill, NC, is a pal of The Loved One and me. On any given day she’s as likely as not to uncover fascinating historical arcana such as this:

Have An Exhausting Day, Girls!

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One Q.: To whom is the “Drive Carefully” admonishment directed? Teenaged camp girls who happen to be driving while in those eponymous throes or visitors and parents who might encounter flopping, writhing camp girls at any moment?

In either case, safety first!

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Clickers

How can you not love living in Bloomington? The place is chock full of creative souls. For instance, I just came from the Richardson Studio on 6th St. for a photo shoot. Jeff Richardson is a merlin behind the shutter, cajoling, wheedling and otherwise squeezing the poses out of his subjects. From what I hear, B-town’s high school seniors are big on getting their mugs shot by JR and his lovely bride Michelle (who, BTW, is also the biz brains behind the operation.)

And then yesterday I had Shannon Zahnle over to Pencil World HQ for yet another photo shoot. Her modus operandi is different — she’s quiet, watching and waiting for the subject to come alive. Her way takes a tad longer but produces results as fine as anyone’s in town.

(l to r) Jeff Richardson, Michelle Richardson & Shannon Zahnle

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The work of all three photogs can be seen in any given issue of Bloom mag, and therein lies the reason I had appointments with the two. Keep reading Bloom to see the results thereof, and, in any case, just because you ought to.

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Kyle Watch

The Pencil is now your headquarters for monitoring the inexorable march of Kyle Schwarber to major league baseball glory.

Schwarber, of course, was one of the stars of Indiana University’s successful baseball team the last two years. He was drafted in the first round earlier this month by my beloved Chicago Cubs (number 4 overall).

Harbinger? Schwarber Being Comforted By Scott Effross Earlier This Month

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I have no religion but I have faith. Faith, natch, is an irrational thing. One of the tenets of my faith, for instance, holds that the historically unsuccessful Cubs will play in and — deep breath — win a World Series some time in my lifetime. My great hope is that I won’t have to live until the ripe old age of 248 before my faith is rewarded.

Anyway, I’m fantasizing that players like Schwarber will lead the Cubs (and me) to the mountain top.

Schwarber has only played five games as a professional and he’s already earned a promotion from the Boise Hawks to the Kane County Cougars. That’s quick, babies. Next up, possibly even later this summer, the Daytona Cubs. Should his rise through the organization continue apace, he might swing the ash for the Iowa Cubs beginning next year and then sometime around June, 2015, hit the big show at Wrigley Field.

That, of course, is a dream scenario. He’ll hit some rough patches along the way; we’ll see how he handles them. Keep your dial tuned here for further developments.

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Professional Discourtesy

Flannery O’Connor, an author who actually knew how to write, once took on a more famous author who, well, didn’t.

O’Connor, penner of such classics as Wise Blood and A Good Man Is Hard to Find, once wrote a letter to a playwright friend about contemporary scribe Ayn Rand. O’Connor, who knew of such literary injunctions as brevity, subtlety, show-don’t-tell, avoid speechifying, and try, try, try to be at least somewhat interesting, was moved to advise stage scripter Maryat Lee in her 1960 letter:

I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.

(l to r) Flannery O’Connor, Mickey Spillane & Fyodor Dostoevsky

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Generally, authors and other creatives, as well as card-carrying members of other less imagination-based vocations, tend not to slam each other no matter how slam-able one or the other is. For instance, you’ll rarely hear of a writer stating that James Patterson is a formulaic plot-pushing hack. It should be noted, though, that horror meister Stephen King last year savaged three spectacularly successful female authors, Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games), Stephenie Meyer (Twilight), and E.L. James (Fifty Shades of Grey). It is to be hoped that King wasn’t simply dissing dame authors and their predominantly female readership. Let’s assume he was criticizing for only the most pure of professional reasons.

Nevertheless, pros tend not to bash other pros. It’s bad juju, I suppose. You know, I could tear, say, Rhonda Byrne apart not only for being a bad writer but a sloppy, undisciplined, infantile thinker but I won’t — and not because I buy into her The Secret karma-payback bullshit — but because, well, oh hell, screw it all, she just blows.

Anyway, most writers don’t insult others. Then again, there’s that rare keyboard pounder who’s so bad, so worthy of pejorative that even the most sanguine of colleagues cannot resist bullying him or her in print. Such is Ayn Rand.

Yet Rand, her bizarre little cult, and her fiction are perhaps the prime philosophical touchstones for a generation of Republicans.

In that sense, O’Connor was not only a literary critic but a political one.

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Suicide Sons

If you haven’t caught Doug Storm’s three-part Interchange interviews with the Lockridge boys yet, you’re in luck — links here, here, and here.

Ernest and Larry Lockridge are the sons of Indiana’s own Ross Lockridge, Jr., who penned the sensational bestseller, Raintree County, and then offed himself at the tender age of 33 in 1948. The book became a just-as-sensational blockbuster movie starring super heavyweights Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, Eva Marie Saint, Lee Marvin, Rod Taylor, Agnes Moorehead, and even DeForest Kelley, later of Star Trek fame. Directed by Edward Dmytryk in 1957, the movie was the most expensive ever shot at the time. During the shooting Clift smashed up his car and nearly died. His life was saved by Elizabeth Taylor; she says she actually pulled his tongue out of his throat lest he die of asphyxiation. If you watch the movie closely, you’ll be able to see which scenes were shot before and after the crash as Clift suffered severe facial injuries.

Clift And Taylor In A Publicity Still From “Raintree County”

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Lockridge pere suffered from debilitating depression and then took his own life via carbon monoxide poisoning. His fils have clashed publicly over the possible reasoning for their daddy-o’s suicide. Ernest has claimed his pop’s depression was caused by molestation at the hand of his father, Ross, Sr. Larry doesn’t buy it.

So it turns out the Lockridge family was almost as fraught with scandal and drama as the antebellum Shawnessey family of Indiana and Georgia in Ross, Jr.’s novel.

WFHB’s Doug Storm gives us good three-parter on the book and the Lockridges. Catch it.

[BTW: Doug Storm won WFHB’s coveted Rookie of the Year award at the station’s annual meeting earlier this month. I’m not too modest to say I copped that very plaque in 2010, my first year here in B-town and at the station, natch. Let’s see it’s here somewhere, maybe under this pile….]

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10/05/2013

2 Comments

Ayn Rand, Bertrand Russell, F-35, Jenny Beth Martin, Lockheed Martin, NPR, Obamacare, Scott Simon, Social Darwinism, Tea Party, Vietnam War

Hot Air

Illumination

So, a guy lights himself on fire in Washington, DC. The rest of us figure the act must somehow be related to whatever lunacy Congress is up to these days.

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Back in the mid-’60s, several Buddhist monks immolated themselves in protest against the corrupt regime that was running the non-nation of South Vietnam into the ground and whom we were about to send in half a million soldiers to prop up. The monks were seen as courageous martyrs.

Will the guy in Washington yesterday be seen as a martyr?

You bet he will, no matter what side of the fence he stands on. As for me, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I stick with Bertrand Russell on this one. He said:

I would never die for my beliefs because I could be wrong.

Bertrand Russell

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Now It’s “Inefficient”

What with millions upon millions of people flooding the interwebs servers and phone lines of the bureaucracy that is running Obamacare, the Me Party-ists and their Republican coat holders in the US House of Representatives have to come up with a new fiction/myth/slander/prevarication…, er, um, lie to justify their rabid opposition to jes’ plain folks getting their hands on affordable health care.

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Prior to this week, of course, the Me Team has screeched that the American people simply do not want Obamacare. Well, kids, tell it to all those millions and millions.

So, now what do they say? I heard a Tea Party squealer talking with Scott Simon on NPR’s Weekend Edition this morning. Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots told Simon, “[T]his law is not ready for implementation. All we’re saying is don’t spend our tax money on this law that clearly isn’t ready.”

Oh. Perhaps she’s referring to the flood applicants who got busy signals and error messages. Isn’t that sweet of her? Clearly she cares for all those poor uninsured souls. No?

No.

Big Mike Pronouncement: Tea Party-ists and their pals don’t give a good goddamn about anybody but themselves.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Tea Party-ists and the like would do better if they stopped couching their terms. For instance, why don’t they just come out and say it: If you’re poor, you’re unworthy. If you haven’t won big — or at least fatly and comfortably — in this jungle economy, you should shut up and accept your lot of shit in this life.

I’m telling you, this refreshing crystal clarity wouldn’t turn off a soul who already buys into their Randist, faux-Darwinist, execrable manner of “thinking.”

Anyway, here’s the definitive slapdown to Martin et al‘s dishonesty. A war toy manufacturer by the name of Lockheed Martin has been trying to develop a brand spanking new multipurpose stealth fighter for the US Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy as well as several of our bomb-dropping allies in Europe and elsewhere. The US alone was slated to buy more than 2400 of the airplanes. They’re to be called F-35s.

Not Ready

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One of the selling points of the F-35 was that it would be inexpensive, whatever that means when one talks about the Defense Department and military contractors. Each of the fighters is expected to cost more than $150 million. Lockheed Martin’s hoped for invoice to the people of the United States would total approximately $360 billion. Sheesh, if that’s inexpensive, I’d hate to see the Cadillac version of a stealth fighter.

Anyway, the production and design of the F-35 has, natch, caused eye-popping cost overruns. Not only that, the plane has so far been found to be unsafe, not all that stealthy, and, in computerized war games run by Pentagon geeks who love this kind of stuff, was roundly defeated by old fashioned Russian fighters.

In other words, to paraphrase Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin, the F-35 is not ready for implementation.

Can we expect Martin and her cronies to sing out, All we’re saying is don’t spend our tax money on this airplane that clearly isn’t ready?

Neither Martin nor any other Me Party-ist has ever uttered such a line in reference to any war toy program. Nor will they ever.

They are as full of horseshit as anyone this mendacious holy land has yet produced.

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07/12/2013

Your Daily Hot Air

Super Quick Hits

◆ REAL MEN

The website PolitiChicks, “The Voice of the Conservative Woman,” has selected — get ready for this — The Hottest Conservative Supermen in America.

A panel of six Tory dames, all of whom appear to take cosmetics and physical esthetics tips from the Mattel Corporation, selected hot sausages from among all the talking heads, bloviators, gasbags, intentional misinterpretors, and dissemblers in the Right Wing phoni-verse. I should state here that there are plenty of reasonably intelligent male conservatives in the holy land, including, but not limited to, George Will, David Brooks, Tom Friedman, and Barack Obama. Just because a guy leans Right doesn’t mean he’s suffering from anencephaly.

PolitiChick’s Selection Panel

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OTOH, PolitiChick’s fap list leans heavily troglodytic.

And, yeah, there are some handsome hunks of cartilage on the roster, but, man….

Okay, there are a couple of handsome (or at least non-terrifying) knights on steeds for conservative princesses to fantasize coming to their collective rescue. Consider David Spady of breitbart.com or Sean Hannity of Fox News, both of whom make the list. Any reasonable straight woman or gay man might deem the two bonkable (as long as they could ignore the incipient nausea caused by the duo’s babblings.)

Red Meat: Spady & Hannity

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But get this: the list also contains the eerie specters of Tucker Carlson, Louie Gohmert, and Mike Huckabee. The Carlson tab is mildly puzzling, considering he was probably named Most Likely to Be Molested In A Holding Cell in his high school yearbook. But Huckabee is as attractive as a shift manager at a CVS on the outskirts of Little Rock. And Louie Gohmert? Louie Gohmert, for chrissakes!

Canned Spam: Huckabee & Gohmert

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And here, all this time, I thought the fringe right was wingnutty only in their political thinking.

(h/t to Wonkette.)

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REAL BABIES

Swear to god, liberals and conservatives name their spawn differently, reflecting their political orientations.

This is science, man. A researcher at the University of Chicago, Eric Oliver has discovered that conservatives tend to dub their unfortunate offspring with more traditional names. Not only that, they tend to prefer names with harsh consonant sounds, like Kurt.

Future Republican

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Liberals, on the other hand, dig more vowelly monikers — cool, huh? I just made that adjective up — leading them to hang names like Ella and Sophia on their trophy children. Also, libs like names that have L sounds in them. Duh, right? Ls can be found in the words lesbian and homosexual; whaddya expect?

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REAL EVIL

If you don’t know that Ayn Rand is the single most important figure in American politics today, you don’t know nuffin’.

The US House of Representatives has been commandeered by a pack of ideologues who rode the Me Party wave back in 2010. And because these ideologues refuse to compromise on anything due to the fact that doing so will turn them into commie, fag, Muslim abortionists and (worst of all) RINOs, Congress has ground to a halt. Thanks, pals.

In case you haven’t guessed by now, Ayn Rand, before whom the Paul Ryans of the world genuflect, embodies every single thing in the world I find repellant.

The only thing she did in her entire life that I even slightly approve of is smoke — and that’s because I detest people who don’t have at least one good vice.

Rand, Smoking

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Not that I don’t detest Ayn Rand. I do. As should everyone with even the slightest shred of human decency, compassion, agape, and good sense.

There.

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06/14/2013

Your Daily Hot Air

The Right Way To Kill

Here is the second (natch) of the 10 Commandments of the Holy American Empire, Inc.:

Thou shalt not kill, unless it is with bullets or factory-made bombs, then kill away.

Our Pontiff…, er, President, Barack Obama yesterday issued a bull from the Domus Alba (hehe, I’m getting all Catholic-y and Latin-y on you) saying that those nasty Syrian thugs under Bashar al-Assad have just gone too far, what with whacking their own citizens with sarin gas.

We, the faithful, won’t stand for this!

See, we’re a very moral people. We have faith in mass-produced piercing projectiles and explosive compounds (once again, made only in free market-, 2nd Amendment-anointed enterprise facilities). They are sacred and can be used for any purpose their purchasers desire (although most pious Americans use them to free their fellow human beings from the chains of this Earthly realm.)

Holy Killing Machines

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Whew.

Glad we’ve got that all cleared up. The Syrian civil war has thus far claimed upwards of 100,000 people. Most have been killed, of course, by bullets and bombs. And although their premature leave-takings are somewhat regrettable (they are, after all, only brown people), we Americans have always found a way to excuse the air-conditioning of human bodies by means of ammo.

But sarin gas? My god, man! What kind of animals are these Syrians?

We’ll stand for a hundred thousand or even a million bodies being blown to kingdom come by high speed hunks of metal but any madmen who dare to take 150 lives by dropping pellets of poison gas near them must be stopped before the whole of the human race is wiped out.

That’s it for today’s sermon. Go in peace.

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Credit Where Credit Is Due

The Reagan/Bush/Bush Supreme Court, which usually swoons and bats its eyelashes at big corporations, dealt Myriad Genetics a huge blow yesterday when the justices ruled unanimously that human DNA cannot be patented.

Not So Fast

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Imagine. Myriad and several other mad scientist outfits wanted to put patents on the human genes they’d isolated and identified, forcing other researchers to pay them hefty royalty fees should they decide to delve into those genes themselves. Clarence Thomas, whose utterances I generally take as seriously as those of a ranting street corner preacher, wrote the decision. “Myriad did not create anything,” he wrote, exhibiting a wisdom I’ve found lacking in him since his elevation to the Court by George H.W. Bush in 1991.

Let’s be frank, this decision is a shocker. SCOTUS just last month ruled that Monsanto had the right to squeeze every penny it could out of family farmers who dare to harvest a second generation of soybeans originally planted with the evil agribusiness empire’s pesticide-resistant seeds. In other words, that same unanimous court had ruled that Monsanto will own the rights to all the soybean plantings on Earth within a few years, considering the fact that pretty much every farmer who wants to make a buck on soybeans will use the company’s Frankenseeds.

The Monsanto decision coupled with the work of the company’s legislation-writing lobbyists are prima facie evidence that Big Business is the real government of this holy land.

So, what’s with Myriad? All it wanted to do was own the genetic encoding of every human being on Earth. What could be more entrepreneurial than that? Ayn Rand would have had a string of spontaneous orgasms just thinking about it.

Own Me, Myriad, Make Me Your Slave!

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So here’s the latest scoreboard of the Age of Reagan Supreme Court:

1 — The Good, Decent, and Friendly People of the Earth

998 — Corporate pirates, banksters, war profiteers, polluters, etc.

Well, it’s a start.

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The Business Of Piece

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06/08/2013

Your Daily Hot Air

You Say You Want A…

Okay, if you want to overthrow…, um, what- or whomever, I’m with you. Count me in for the revolution as long as certain global archcriminals get scalped.

Case in point: Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia. I wish I had his address. I’d throw eggs at his front window, at the very least.

Evil Prince

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The Prince has sued Forbes Magazine in a British court for libel. The editors of that biweekly paean to wealth and two of its reporters, according to the Prince’s filing, wronged him when they stated that his net worth is $20 billion, rather than the more accurate (or so he claims) $29 billion. The bastards!

Honestly, what can you expect from a guy whose bazillions are laundered through a corporate entity known as Kingdom Holding Company? Really? Kingdom? He owns a hefty chunk of the right-wing media colossus News Corp. as well as slices of Apple and Citigroup. As the (alleged) 26th richest human on Earth, he’s not just part of the 1 percent, he’s of the .000000004 percent. Four freaking millionths of one goddamn percent!

Revolution, my friends, now.

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Brilliant

This just hit me.

I want to sell T-shirts, buttons, and bumper stickers with this motto on it. Maybe even have it inscribed on my head stone. It is the single truest, most direct, punchiest thing any of us can ever say.

Here it is:

This’ll Make Me Bazillions!

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Of course, you can have your choice of jerk photos. Ayn Rand. Chris Brown. Lloyd Blankfein. Kim Kardashian. Anyone in power at Monsanto. You get the idea.

Simple. Straightforward. Don’t be a jerk.

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Tarnished Genius

I’m no big fan of Bobby Kennedy. He and his bros had their political careers bought and paid for by Big Daddy Joe, whose fondest dream was to become the Boss of America through them. The Kennedy boys were entitlement personified. They treated women like dirt. They were so sexually acquisitive that they verged on being predators. They were in thrall to mobsters and wannabes. They were liberal when liberalism could get them votes, then they turned around and were conservative for the same reason.

But they were smart. And they did care about blacks and the poor. So I won’t throw the babies out with the bathwater.

After the whacking of JFK (by L.H. Oswald, alone, natch — I’m no conspiracy theorist), Bobby essentially had a nervous breakdown. He came out on the other side a different man. A better man, I might add. A man who had the courage to speak to what could have been an angry, potentially violent crowd one night here in Indiana.

Bobby Kennedy Breaks The News

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It was April 4, 1968. RFK was flying into Indy for a quick campaign stop. As the plane was about to touch down, the captain informed Kennedy and his staff that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated. Bobby’s handlers told him it would be suicide for a white man to tell a crowd of black people that one of their leaders, one of their heroes, had been killed. Let’s not land, they begged him. Let’s go somewhere safe.

And Bobby said no. The plane landed and he gave this speech on the tarmac, completely extemporaneous and without notes, one of the finest in the history of this very, very imperfect nation:

Ladies and gentlemen.

I’m only going to talk to you for just a minute or so this evening, because I have some, some very sad news for all of you. Could you lower those signs, please? I have some very sad news for all of you, and, I think, sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world; and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause for the effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it’s perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black — considering the evidence, evidently, is that there were white people who were responsible — you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.

We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization — black people amongst blacks and white people amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust, of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.

But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond, or go beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poem, my favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote:

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget

falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair,

against our will,

comes wisdom

through the awful grace of god.

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King — yeah, it’s true — but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love, a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We’ve had difficult times in the past, and we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.

And let’s dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.

Thank you very much.

Kennedy died of a gunshot wound to the head 45 years ago Thursday.

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Revolution

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06/04/2013

1 Comment

Ayn Rand, Barack Obama, Bill Bryson, breitbart.com, Living for the City, Made in America, Paul Ryan, Rand Paul, Rick Santorum, Stevie Wonder, Tea Party/IRS, The Pencil Today, WND, WorldNetDaily

Your Daily Hot Air

Woe Is Them

So, the Me Party-ists will form a conga line before the House Appropriations Committee beginning today to tell the world how mean and rotten the feds have been to them.

The poor things had to fill out extra forms in order to receive tax exempt status for their efforts to feed the hungry, house the homeless, and heal the sick. It’s tyranny, I tell you! Hitler was a wuss compared to the Kenyan freedom-hater whose name we shall not even breathe [and it’s probably phony anyway.]

Social Service

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See what I’m doing here? Just trying to be as full of horseshit as the Tea Party-ists and their fellow mollycoddlers and squealers.

Natch, breitbart.com and WND are shrieking to high heaven that the Muslim, commie, fag, abortionist who currently occupies the White House illegally is trying to crush the Tea Party and other saintly patriots not via guns or imprisonment but — worse, far worse — through red tape. Oh, the humanity!

Alright, people, looks like I have to say this again. Those right wing conservative groups were trying to game the system by applying for tax exempt status. They are not — repeat, not! — social service organizations.

In fact, their raison d’être is not to feed the hungry, house the homeless, or heal the sick. Quite the contrary. According to the Tea Punks and their philosophical patron saint Ayn Rand, the hungry, the homeless, and the sick deserve to be that way. Rick Santorum and Paul Ryan and Rand Paul are leaders — successes — not because they were born on third base but because they hit a triple.

Rand: “Me. Me. Me. Me. But, On The Other Hand, Me.”

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The sooner this holy land rids itself of the lamprey eels that are the hungry, homeless, and sick, the better we’ll all be.

Why do you think these Radical Right-ists are four-square in favor of slashing funds for social service agencies? The only honest social service agency is the one that recognizes that the mud people and the undesirables have no place in this great free market heaven that once was and will be again.

Tax exempt, huh? Like I’m gonna pay with my tax dollars for them to spread their hork-ish, self-centered, whitey-jive without a fight.

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If You’re Unhappy, I’m Happy

Not that the excessive self-love of the Me Party-ists is anything new in these great United States. I was thumbing through Bill Bryson’s neat book, Made in America, last night and came upon this passage:

By 1990, America’s sense of declining economic prowess generated a volume of disquiet that sometimes verged on the irrational. When a professor of economics at Yale polled his students as to which they would prefer, a situation in which America had 1 percent economic growth while Japan experienced 1.5 percent growth, or one in which America suffered a 1 percent downturn but Japan fell by even more, 1.5 percent, the majority voted for the latter. They preferred America to be poorer if Japan were poorer still, rather than a situation in which both became more prosperous.

Honestly, they’d rather suffer as long as the dirty Japs were suffering, too? That’s not schadenfreude; that’s lunacy.

This Ought To Make Those Students Happy

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It’s also telling that the poll’s respondents were students in an economics course, meaning they were most likely business students. As in future leaders who, for their very own benefit, will lay off tens of thousands, sully the air and the water, sabotage the success of others, and, overall, commit countless crimes against humanity.

Future Tea Party-ists, in other words.

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Living For The City

For a brief, precious moment, we actually gave a damn about the problems of other people. How quaint!

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11/06/2012

1 Comment

Ayn Rand, Barack Obama, Chicago Cubs, Electoral College, John F. Kennedy, Liberals, Lyndon B. Johnson, Molly Ivins, Ray Charles, Saul Alinsky

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There’s nothing to do but to stand there and take it.” — Lyndon B. Johnson

Johnson & Kennedy

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AT LAST!

This is it, kiddies. Who’s your hero: Ayn Rand or Saul Alinsky?

Time to put up or shut up. If you haven’t voted yet, get going.

In Monroe County, you may vote at The Curry Building, 214, W. Seventh St. Or you can go old school and vote at your precinct polling place.

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BIG MIKE MAKES THE CALL

Alright, let’s get down to cases.

Here’s what’s going to happen today. I’ve already told you Barack Obama’s going to win. Now I’ll give you the margin.

We’ll Do It Again In January

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The winning margin for the Democratic candidate for President of the United States in the popular vote will approach five percentage points.

That’s right. My guy will be reelected by a rounded-off plurality of 52-47 percent. That odd one percent will go to the usual lineup of perennial candidates and write-ins for Mickey Mouse.

A number of states have broken their own records for number of early voters. Big voter turnout is good news for Obama.

Here’s the dramatic prediction, though: Obama will win the electoral college contest in a landslide with some 300 votes.

I feel confident in these projections, as confident as I felt when I predicted the Chicago Cubs would go to the World Series in 2004.

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NICE MEME

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… THE BEAUTIFUL

There’s plenty to be outraged and disgusted about in this holy land. Still, hidden somewhere deep beneath the the jingoism, the greed, the entitlement, the delusion, the willful ignorance, and the maddening piety, lies a republic of the people.

Had he been alive when this whole crazy American idea got off the ground, Ray Charles would have been a slave, considered to be somewhat less than fully human. By the time he died in 2004 he’d become the designated psalmist for the nation.

It’s worth thinking about the truest quote I’ve ever read about this nation. It was written by another person who’d been written out of America’s charter, a woman, Molly Ivins. By the time she died in 2007, she’d become the plain-speaking conscience of the nation.

“It is possible,” she wrote, “to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America.”

That’s why I vote.

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The only events listings you need in Bloomington.

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Tuesday, November 6th, 2012

VOTE ◗ The Curry Building, 214 W. Seventh St. or your local polling place; 6am-6pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Auer Hall — Doctoral Recital: Namanja Ostojic on guitar; 5pm

POETRY ◗ The Venue Fine Art & Gifts — Reading, “The Art of Poetry,” By Jenny Kander; 5:30pm

MUSIC ◗ The Bishop — Election Viewing Party; 7pm

FILM ◗ IU Cinema — “Nenette and Boni“; 7pm

MUSIC ◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — The Indiana Boys All-Star Jam; 7-9pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Musical Arts Center, Recital Hall — Guitar Studio Recital: Students of Petar Jankovic; 7pm

STAGE ◗ IU Halls Theatre — Drama, “Spring Awakening“; 7:30pm

MUSIC ◗ The Player’s Pub — Blues Jam; 8pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Auer Hall — Wind Ensemble, Stephen W. Pratt, conductor; 8pm

GAMES ◗ The Root Cellar at Farm Bloomington — Team trivia; 8pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Ford-Crawford Hall — Hot Tuesdays Series: Jazz Combo; 8:30pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Musical Arts Center, Recital Hall — Doctoral Recital: Yuan-Yuan Wang on violin; 8:30pm

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ONGOING:

ART ◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:

“Paragons of Filial Piety,” by Utagawa Kuniyoshi; through December 31st
“Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers,” by Julia Margaret, Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan; through December 31st
“French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century;” through December 31st
Celebration of Cuban Art & Film: Pop-art by Joe Tilson; through December 31st
“Threads of Love: Baby Carriers from China’s Minority Nationalities“; through December 23rd
“Workers of the World, Unite!” through December 31st
“Embracing Nature,” by Barry Gealt; through December 23rd
“Pioneers & Exiles: German Expressionism,” through December 23rd

ART ◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits through December 1st:

“Essentially Human,” By William Fillmore
“Two Sides to Every Story,” By Barry Barnes
“Horizons in Pencil and Wax,” By Carol Myers

ART ◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibits through November 16th:

Buzz Spector: Off the Shelf
Small Is Big

ART ◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery — Exhibits through December 20th:

“A Place Aside: Artists and Their Partners“
“Gender Expressions“

ART ◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Exhibits:

“¡Cuba Si! Posters from the Revolution: 1960s and 1970s”
“From the Big Bang to the World Wide Web: The Origins of Everything”
“Thoughts, Things, and Theories… What Is Culture?”
“Picturing Archaeology”
“Personal Accents: Accessories from Around the World”
“Blended Harmonies: Music and Religion in Nepal”
“The Day in Its Color: A Hoosier Photographer’s Journey through Mid-century America”
“TOYing with Ideas”
“Living Heritage: Performing Arts of Southeast Asia”
“On a Wing and a Prayer”

BOOKS ◗ IU Lilly Library — Exhibits:

“The War of 1812 in the Collections of the Lilly Library“; through December 15th
“A World of Puzzles,” selections from the Slocum Puzzle Collection

ARTIFACTS ◗ Monroe County History Center — Exhibits:

Doctors & Dentists: A Look into the Monroe County Medical Professions
What Is Your Quilting Story?
Garden Glamour: Floral Fashion Frenzy
Bloomington Then & Now
World War II Uniforms
Limestone Industry in Monroe County

The Ryder & The Electron Pencil. All Bloomington. All the time.

09/10/2012

1 Comment

All in the Family, Anatole Broyard, Apollo 11, Archie Bunker, Ayn Rand, Carl Sagan, Chicago Teachers Union, Lake Monroe, Melvin Tumin, Philip Roth, Richard M. Nixon, The Human Stain, The New Yorker, Wikipedia

The Pencil Today:

✍

THE QUOTE

“For me, the most ironic token of that moment in history is the plaque signed by President Richard M. Nixon that Apollo 11 took to the moon. It reads: ‘We came in peace for all mankind.’ As the United States was dropping 7.5 megatons of conventional explosives on small nations in Southeast Asia, we congratulated ourselves on our humanity: We would harm no one on a lifeless rock.” — Carl Sagan

▲

PAY ‘EM: DAY 1

Give teachers the dough they deserve. Do not increase class sizes. Do not extend the school day.

And if necessary, raise taxes.

Let’s cut the bullshit now.

The Chicago Teachers Union strike is everybody’s business.

▲

LUCKY US

Steve the Dog and I took a walk at dusk yesterday on the shore of Lake Monroe in the Paynetown State Recreation Area.

A blue heron flapped past a few hundred yards off, probably heading home for the night. Fish feeding on surface bugs splashed in the water around the marina.

This Is Minutes From Home

✍

Paynetown was a bit lonelier than it’s been for months. The temperature hung around 64 degrees.

We walked fast — well, as fast as my creaky ticker would allow us. I may have to wear a long-sleeved shirt tonight.

Our hellish summer is nothing more than a memory.

▲

KNOW THINE SELF

Author Philip Roth takes Wikipedia to task in the New Yorker this week.

Philip Roth

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Apparently, the Wikipedia entry on his novel, “The Human Stain,” recently contained faulty info on the inspiration behind the story. Wikipedia says the book is based on an incident in the life of Manhattan writer Anatole Broyard. Roth says it’s really based on something that happened to Melvin Tumin, a noted researcher in race relations in America.

Roth states in an open letter to Wikipedia that when he contacted Wikipedia in an effort to get the entry corrected, he was told he was not a credible source.

Hah!

✍

Apparently, Wikipedia needs its info verified by third-party independent sources. Roth, per the online encyclopedia’s own guidelines, is not.

All this makes a whisper of sense, when you think about it for a moment. Wikipedia doesn’t want people editing their own entries. Hell, I’ve been tempted more times than I can remember to create my own Wikipedia entry, describing myself as the Midwest’s greatest unheard-of writer. My newspaper and magazine articles, my books, my online posts have thrilled readers and moved them to tears. History, my fantasy entry would read, will recognize Mr. Glab in much the same way that Van Gogh in the art world was celebrated after his death.

Vince And Me

✍

But then I remember that Wikipedia won’t allow me to define myself in its database at all.

Can you imagine, for instance, how noted self-admirers like Richard Nixon or Donald Trump would portray themselves?

I’ll let you in on a little secret: I’ve occasionally fantasized hinting to someone I know and trust that I really deserve a Wikipedia entry. Now, I wouldn’t suggest anything outright, but if the person whose ear I bent might take it upon her- or himself to immortalize me thusly, well, who am I to protest?

Anyway, Roth goes on for 2677 words to correct the bit of false information. I suppose that’s what a prolific writer would do. The Philip Roth bibliography entry in Wikipedia states he’s penned 27 novels. He hasn’t challenged that bit of data.

A “writer” such as Ayn Rand could have easily dashed off, say, half a million distorted, specious, and borderline psychotic words correcting some minor point in her Wikipedia entry.

“Writer”

✍

Writers write. Even “writers” write.

Roth’s open letter is fascinating because it reveals a bit about the life of Melvin Tumin, who was grilled for using “hate speech” in a classroom once. It seems he’d discovered in the middle of a semester that two students had not attended one of his classes. Taking roll one day, he asked the class if anyone knew the students. “Does anyone know these people?” he asked. “Do they exist or are they spooks?”

Ha ha. Spooks, meaning phantoms or wraiths. But at the time Tumin uttered the word, it also was a more “palatable” substitute for “nigger.” Archie Bunker on “All in the Family” regularly referred to black men as spooks.

Lovable Hater

✍

Tumin was subjected to a grueling inquisition, even thought he’d been known for years for his sensitive work in race relations.

Roth’s letter, like the novel, explores the issues of character assassination, hysteria, and groupthink. In the letter, he also ruminates on what it means to be black.

So it’s much more than a run of the mill letter to the editor demanding a correction. It’s a neat little look at us.

Aren’t you glad writers write?

▲

✍

THE LITTLE THINGS

Here’s a picture of sand, magnified 250 times.

From I Fucking Love Science

▲

08/11/2012

1 Comment

Ayn Rand, Bain Capital, Democracy Now!, Diversity, Mitt Romney, Monroe Anderson, Paul Ryan, Salvadoran Death Squads, Sikh Temple Shooting, Wade Page

The Pencil Today:

✍

THE QUOTE

“The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I have to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.” — Paul Ryan

♢

THE ME PARTY

So, Willard opts for one of America’s biggest Ayn Rand groupies.

True Love

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Frankly, I’m glad. Romney’s vice presidential tab provides us with a necessary referendum on where we want to go.

Will the Great United States, Inc. be the land of the mythical rugged individualist? Will the number two man in the nation be a profit-oriented slave to economic theory? Or will we cast our lot for four more years of a man who pays exquisite lip service to hope and change?

Yeah, I’m fabulously unimpressed with the choices I’ll have this November. But I’ve still got my c-note on Barack. And he’s still got my vote.

♢

THE LAST STAND

Indiana’s second-greatest writer, Monroe Anderson of Gary, has the Sikh Temple Shooting all doped out.

Monroe Anderson

✍

Wade Page is the canary in America’s racial coalmine. Anderson points out that this holy land already has passed a point of no return.

To wit: just over a year ago, minority births for an entire year in the US exceeded those of whites.

And that train ain’t slowin’ down, babies.

The End Is Near

✍

Guys like Page, who immerse themselves in thoughts of white and black and brown and oh dear god what’ll happen to us all when the mud races take over, are doing doing what little they can to delay the inevitable.

Those of us who are sane don’t care what color our progeny will be in 50, 100, and 200 years. The Page gang thinks about it constantly.

They think they’re losing the battle but they’re not going down without a fight.

Expect more guys like Wade Page to pop up over the next few years.

Oh, and don’t kid yourself. It’s one of the driving forces behind the monolithic force of the gun lobby.

♢

MITT’S BLOOD MONEY

One more thing about Mitt:

✍

And I predict this will have absolutely zero effect on the American electorate.

♢

✍

Here’s how I waste my time. How about you? Share your fave sites with us via the comments section. Just type in the name of the site, not the url; we’ll find them. If we like them, we’ll include them — if not, we’ll ignore them.

❏ I Love Charts — Life as seen through charts.

❏ XKCD — “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”

❏ Skepchick — Women scientists look at the world and the universe.

❏ Indexed — All the answers in graph form, on index cards.

❏ I Fucking Love Science — A Facebook community of science geeks.

❏ Present & Correct — Fun, compelling, gorgeous and/or scary graphic designs and visual creations throughout the years and from all over the world.

Beach House On Present/&/Correct Blog

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❏ Flip Flop Fly Ball — Baseball as seen through infographics, haikus, song lyrics, and other odd communications devices.

❏ Mental Floss — Facts.

❏ Caps Off Please — Comics & fun.

❏ Sodaplay — Create your own models or play with other people’s models.

❏ Eat Sleep Draw — An endless stream of artwork submitted by an endless stream of people.

❏ Big Think — Tapping the brains of notable intellectuals for their opinions, predictions, and diagnoses.

Click To Read Entire Article

✍

❏ The Daily Puppy — So shoot me.

♢

✍

Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, games, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.

◗ IU Gladstein Fieldhouse — Hoosier to Hoosier Community Sale, flea market for items rescued from student moveouts; 7:30am-3pm

◗ City Hall, Showers Plaza — Farmers Market; 8am-1pm

◗ Unitarian Universalist Church — Summer garage sale; 8am-1pm

◗ Bloomington American Legion Post — Back-to-School Breakfast, all you can eat, sponsore dby the Bloomington Community Band; 8-11am

◗ Discardia ReBoutique — Grand opening, non-profit gift store featuring goods made from recycled materials; 10am-6pm

◗ Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center — Workshop: Mind Training through Pain and Disability, presented by Ani Choekye; 10:30am-noon

◗ IU Art Museum — Theme tour: Exploring German Expressionism; 2-3pm

◗ Downtown Nashville — Second Saturday Village Art Walk; 5-8pm

◗ IU Fine Arts Theater — Ryder Film Series: “Kumaré: The True Story of a False Prophet”; 7pm

◗ IU Cinema — Film: “To Rome with Love”; 7pm

◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Barbara McGuire; 7-9pm

◗ IU Bill Armstrong Stadium — Hoosier Women Soccer vs. Northern Kentucky University; 7:30pm

◗ Brown County Playhouse, Nashville — Music: Area Code 812, Blue Mafia; 7:30pm

◗ IU Woodburn Hall Theater — Ryder Film Series: “The Pigeoneers”; 8pm

◗ Cafe Django — Ron Kadish Quartet; 8-10pm

◗ Max’s Place — The Groundsmen; 8pm

◗ The Comedy Attic — Tim Wilson; 8 & 10:30pm

◗ IU Fine Arts Theater — Ryder Film Series: “Polisse”; 8:30pm

◗ Bear’s Place — Dirty Kluger; 9pm

◗ The Bluebird — Sheila Steven, Bigg Country; 9pm

◗ Lake Monroe, Paynetown SRA — Perseid Meteor Shower Party at Deer Run Shelter; 9:15-10:45pm

◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — David Dwyer; 9:30pm

◗ Max’s Place — James Woodard & Friends; 10pm

Ongoing:

◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits:

“40 Years of Artists from Pygmalion’s”; through September 1st

◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:

Qiao Xiaoguang, “Urban Landscape: A Selection of Papercuts” ; through August 12th
“A Tribute to William Zimmerman,” wildlife artist; through September 9th
Willi Baumeister, “Baumeister in Print”; through September 9th
Annibale and Agostino Carracci, “The Bolognese School”; through September 16th
“Contemporary Explorations: Paintings by Contemporary Native American Artists”; through October 14th
David Hockney, “New Acquisitions”; through October 21st
Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “Paragons of Filial Piety”; through fall semester 2012
Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan, “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers”; through December 31st
“French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century”; through December 31st

◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibits:

Coming — Media Life; August 24th through September 15th
Coming — Axe of Vengeance: Ghanaian Film Posters and Film Viewing Culture; August 24th through September 15th

◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery — “Ephemeral Ink: Selections of Tattoo Art from the Kinsey Institute Collection”; through September 21st

◗ IU Lilly Library — Exhibit, “Translating the Canon: Building Special Collections in the 21st Century”; through September 1st

◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Closed for semester break, reopens Tuesday, August 21st

◗ Monroe County History Center —Photo exhibit, “Bloomington: Then and Now” by Bloomington Fading; through October 27th

♢

04/06/2012

2 Comments

American Family Association, Ayn Rand, Bullying, Charlie Dick, Christian Fundamentalists, Citizens for Community Values, Crazy, Day of Dialogue, Day of Silence, Faith 2 Action, Grand Ole Opry, Henry Adams, Henry Miller, Illinois Family Institute, James Joyce, Liberty Counsel, Loretta Lynn, Mission America, Modern Library, Patsy Cline, Save California, Theocracy, Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, Uncategorized, Willie Nelson, Woody Allen

The Pencil Today:

✍

THE QUOTE

“There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.” — Henry Miller

♢

GOD, THE BULLY

Now I ask you, are the hardcore Christian fundamentalists of this holy land just angling to become a satire of themselves?

I mean, honestly, if a funny person were to write a skit lampooning them, wouldn’t she, say, have them battling anti-bullying laws because, hell, it’s mostly homosexuals who are being bullied so who cares?

Wouldn’t that make a comedy audience roar with laughter? They’d say, How hilarious! How could that ever happen?

“Hah! That’d Never Happen In Real Life!”

✍

But that’s precisely what is happening in America today.

In two weeks, on Friday, April 20th, high school students across the country will participate in the Day of Silence, during which they’ll remain mum from morning until night to protest bullying. And, of course, the prime targets for bullies in elementary, middle, and high schools are gays or kids who exhibit even the slightest hint that they may be too effeminate (in the case of boys) or tomboyish (girls).

Day Of Silence

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Now, what kind of lunatic would find a problem with an anti-bullying campaign?

Answer: the lunatics who populate the USA’s god parties.

Groups such as Mission America, the Illinois Family Institute, the American Family Association, Citizens for Community Values, Faith 2 Action, the Liberty Counsel, Save California, and others have responded with their own anti-anti-bullying action to take place on the Day of Silence.

The god-ists are calling their action the Day of Dialogue.

And that’s weird because if there’s one thing the theocrats seem most allergic to, it’s dialogue.

“Go Ahead And Kick The Crap Out Of ‘Em — They’re Gay.”

✍

Yup, the fundamentalist Christians are falling back on their old woe-is-us canard, you know, the one where the whole world is trying steal away their rights to worship god as they please and discriminate against anybody they think god hates?

They’re saying the Day of Silence not only is fascist, natch, but it promotes the gay, lesbian, and transgender lifestyle.

Perhaps I’m giving people too much credit, but I would think nobody is so deranged that they’d believe there’s really a group of people trying to push teenaged kids into getting their genitals surgically altered.

“Please Don’t Let Them Make Us Cut Off Our Penises.”

✍

Oh, alright, I am giving people too much credit.

I suppose the only question I have for these pious folk is where in your Bible does god say, Be an asshole in my name?

♢

I SMELL A RAT

I just happened to be going through the Modern Library‘s lists of the 100 best fiction and nonfiction books. The ML puts out two lists for each category, one chosen by the organization’s board, the other open to the public.

The board has chosen James Joyce’s “Ullyses” as the greatest English language novel. That’s cool, even though I don’t have the spare 150 years to be able to read and decode Joyce’s inscrutable stylings. The board also tabs “The Education of Henry Adams” by Henry Adams as the finest nonfiction book. Again, cool, even though I haven’t read it nor do I plan to.

James Joyce

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After all, I have to get through cracked.com every day; I am a man of letters, you know.

Anyway, these are tomes that have been celebrated by the best and the brightest for decades and, while I don’t necessarily genuflect before “experts,” I’ll defer to them in this case.

Funny thing is, the public’s lists vary wildly from the board’s. In fact, the public’s greatest nonfiction book does not even appear on the board’s entire list of 100. And four of the public’s top ten fiction books were penned by an author the board saw fit not to name anywhere on its list.

These idiosyncratic choices all are the fruits of one author’s feverish mind. The public has called Ayn Rand’s “The Virtue of Selfishness” the greatest work of nonfiction in the English language. On top of that, two books about Rand and her post-traumatic stress disorder nightmare philosophy also made the public’s top ten.

“Welcome To My Nightmare.”

✍

Not bizarre enough for you? Four of Rand’s endless novels make the public’s top ten greatest fiction works. Four!

Rand famously riposted to an editor, who’d advised her to apply an eraser to huge swaths of her rambling prose, that no one edited the Bible.

The Bible, as in the word of god.

As Woody Allen once said, you have to pattern yourself after somebody.

Methinks Rand’s acolytes stuffed the ballot box, no?

♢

CRAZY

“Crazy” was penned by a then-struggling young songwriter named Willie Nelson in 1961. According to legend, he pitched it to Patsy Cline‘s husband, Charlie Dick, at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge in Nashville one night over drinks.

When Dick brought the song to his wife, she hated it because it was uptempo and its lyrics were spoken. Her producer re-worked it into a languorous ballad and the rest is history.

By the way, Loretta Lynn swears she remembers hearing Cline perform the song for the first time at the Grand Ole Opry while on crutches; Cline at the time was recovering from an auto accident that had nearly killed her.

♢

Category Archives: Ayn Rand

Camp Is Fun!

Have An Exhausting Day, Girls!

Clickers

(l to r) Jeff Richardson, Michelle Richardson & Shannon Zahnle

Kyle Watch

Harbinger? Schwarber Being Comforted By Scott Effross Earlier This Month

Professional Discourtesy

(l to r) Flannery O’Connor, Mickey Spillane & Fyodor Dostoevsky

Suicide Sons

Clift And Taylor In A Publicity Still From “Raintree County”

[BTW: Doug Storm won WFHB’s coveted Rookie of the Year award at the station’s annual meeting earlier this month. I’m not too modest to say I copped that very plaque in 2010, my first year here in B-town and at the station, natch. Let’s see it’s here somewhere, maybe under this pile….]

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Illumination

Bertrand Russell

Now It’s “Inefficient”

Big Mike Pronouncement: Tea Party-ists and their pals don’t give a good goddamn about anybody but themselves.

Not Ready

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Super Quick Hits

◆

REAL MEN

PolitiChick’s Selection Panel

Red Meat: Spady & Hannity

Canned Spam: Huckabee & Gohmert

REAL BABIES

Future Republican

REAL EVIL

Rand, Smoking

▲

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The Right Way To Kill

Holy Killing Machines

Credit Where Credit Is Due

Not So Fast

1 — The Good, Decent, and Friendly People of the Earth

998 — Corporate pirates, banksters, war profiteers, polluters, etc.

The Business Of Piece

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You Say You Want A…

Evil Prince

Brilliant

This’ll Make Me Bazillions!

Tarnished Genius

Bobby Kennedy Breaks The News

Ladies and gentlemen.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust, of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.

But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond, or go beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poem, my favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote:

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget

falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair,

against our will,

comes wisdom

through the awful grace of god.

So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King — yeah, it’s true — but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love, a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We’ve had difficult times in the past, and we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.

And let’s dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.

Thank you very much.

Revolution

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Woe Is Them

Social Service

Rand: “Me. Me. Me. Me. But, On The Other Hand, Me.”

If You’re Unhappy, I’m Happy

This Ought To Make Those Students Happy

Living For The City

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THE QUOTE

Johnson & Kennedy

AT LAST!

BIG MIKE MAKES THE CALL

We’ll Do It Again In January

NICE MEME