Category Archives: George Zimmerman

05/12/2016
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Chicago Police Department, Extraterrestrial Life, George Zimmerman, Police Brutality, Uncategorized

Hot Air: Can You Dig It?

Intelligent Or Not?

Despite my daily bellyaching about the dopes who are running for prez and the lunatics who populate this holy land, I really believe we’re living in the very coolest days.

For instance, astronomers from MIT and Belgium’s University of Liège, working together, have determined that three planets orbiting a nearby ultracool dwarf star have similar temperatures and sizes to the Earth and Venus and maybe — just maybe — can support life.

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Artist’s Conception of Nearby Dwarf Star & Its Planets

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Now, these space geeks are using the term ultracool to describe the actual thermometer readings on the little star and its planets. Me? I’ll use the term to describe…, well, how freaking ultracool the whole damned thing is.

The astronomers will study these exoplanets closely because they’re only 40 light years away, which translates to just a few blocks more than 235 trillion miles. Hell, in cosmological terms, that’s nothing, like the distance between Starbucks in [pick your town].

Now what if scientists determine there’s life on one of these hunks o’rock? Well, first, we have to establish precisely what life is. Honestly, that’s the huge philosophical quandary researchers are grappling with these days. There’s a dizzying array of criteria that various smart gals and guys insist are the real deal. For instance, the walking brains at New Mexico Tech are convinced these are the seven criteria:

  1. Living things are composed of cells. I have loads of them.
  2. Individual living things are constructed of a ascending set of organizations, from cells, to tissues, to organs, and –finally, to each organism. That latter category would include you and me.
  3. Living things use energy. Even I do, on occasion.
  4. Living things respond to their environment. Me too, except when I’m taking a nap.
  5. Living things grow. You should see my waist size.
  6. Living things reproduce. Nope, not me.
  7. Living things adapt to their environment. Except when I refuse to; remember, I’m a contrarian.

I dunno. NMT’s list of criteria seems too vague. Hell, rocks respond to their environment. Have you ever picked up a smooth pebble on a beach?

NASA’s Phoenix Mars Mission page posits its own seven properties of life:

  1. Order: Molecules in living things are arranged in specific structures.
  2. Reproduction: Living things have the ability to reproduce their own kind.
  3. Growth and Development: Living organisms grow and develop in patterns determined by heredity, the traits passed to offspring by parents.
  4. Energy Utilization: Living things need to capture and use energy, a process known as metabolism.
  5. Response to stimuli.
  6. Evolutionary adaptation.

See? Already we’ve got a debate going on. Here, lemme try to settle it; in my readings, I’ve determined these five criteria define life or, more accurately, the properties of a living thing:

  1. Ability to build DNA, ATP, Ribosomes, & proteins
  2. Active metabolism
  3. Growth
  4. Reproduction
  5. Evolution (mutation & selection)

Then again, we can’t even agree on what is life here on Earth. To wit: Is a virus alive? Is the entire planet and all living things on it really a single living entity, as put forward in the Gaia hypothesis?

In any case, what might we discover on these three planets 40 light years away? A civilization that has developed agriculture, technology, and the game of baseball? Or some slime on a rock face?

You know very well you, I, and everybody else around wants us to find a thriving civilization, just so we can show off to them our cat pix on social media. I’m afraid, though, the first ironclad proof of life on another planet will look something like this:

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Sure, I’d be excited about these guys. A little bit. Well, nah, not really. This’d pretty much be a bummer.

Anticlimax or no, we’re going to find life on another planet sooner rather than later. That, babies, is ultracool.

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Unintelligent

Well, sure, there’s life here on planet Earth but is it intelligent life?

I wonder.

Take my beloved hometown of Chicago. Acc’d’g to a recent piece in The Nation, the City of Chi. has pissed away more than $600 million on police complaint settlements in the last dozen years.

The city could have used that half a bill.-plus, funding municipal employee pensions, rebuilding infrastructure, or giving teachers a fat raise.

Instead, Chi.’s cops fire away at unarmed dark-skinned young men, beat like red-headed stepchildren others, and arrest grannies and harmless protesters with impunity. Many, many, many of these recipients of Chicago police excesses sue the city and then collect massive payouts to settle.

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Wouldn’t it be a tad more cost effective to train the goddamned police the right way and weed out the bad apples on the force?

For pity’s sake, when beings from another planet looks at the Earth — specifically, Chi. — in their own search for intelligent life, they’ll equate us all with the aforementioned slime on a rock face.

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Deranged

New World monkey George Zimmerman is back in the news. Apparently, the guy who killed Trayvon Martin  more than four years ago, got his pistol back from prosecutors because, y’know, under this holy land’s Wild, Wild, West laws, pumping a guy full of lead is no big deal. So the gun, which had been evidence, now is safely back in the hands of the racist, paranoiac, pointer of guns at girlfriends, estranged wives, and the fathers, road-rager, and otherwise teeterer on the brink of violence and mayhem.

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Simian

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Georgie-boy seems always to need money, mainly because this benighted nation does not recognize a hero in its midst and refuses to properly recompense him simply for being itchy with his trigger finger. He’s sold a bunch of jingoistic, puerile paintings and now — oh yeah — will auction off the gun.

The bidding, on a site called gunbroker.com, starts at $5000. Don’t worry, you haven’t been left in the dust — or gunpowder — as the bidding will begin this AM at 11.

My guess is a successful bid will come in at a level a hell of a lot higher than a paltry 5K. There are enough people in this nation who view Zimmerman as a great man that, if you really think about it, would cause you to toss and turn all night long.

Zimmerman’s description of the firearm includes the following lines:

Prospective bidders, I am honored and humbled to announce the sale of an American Firearm Icon. The firearm for sale is the firearm that was used to defend my life and end the brutal attack from Trayvon Martin on 2/26/2012….

Many have expressed interest in owning and displaying the firearm including The Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. This is a piece of American History….

The firearm is fully functional as the attempts by the Department of Justice on behalf of B. Hussein Obama to render the firearm inoperable were thwarted by my phenomenal Defense Attorney….

On this day, 5/11/2016 exactly one year after the shooting attempt to end my life by BLM sympathizer Matthew Apperson I am proud to announce that a portion of the proceeds will be used to: fight BLM violence against Law Enforcement officers, ensure the demise of Angela Correy’s persecution career and Hillary Clinton’s anti-firearm rhetoric….

Now is your opportunity to own a piece of American History. Good Luck. Your friend, George M. Zimmerman….

Someone soon will proudly possess this symbol of Murrica’s sheer lunacy and Georgie-boy himself will have a pocketful of blood money.

We’re nuts.

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May 12th Birthdays

Cosimo II de’ Medici — Scion of the 15th Century Florentine ruling family, Cosimo as a youngster was sent to study under the then-relatively unknown Galileo Galilei. He recognized the scientist’s genius and became Galileo’s financial patron.

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Florence Nightingale — She professionalized nursing and was instrumental in the founding of the world’s first secular nursing school at London’s St. Thomas Hospital. A tireless reformer, she pushed for programs to feed the hungry, strove to eliminate laws against sex workers, and advocated women joining the workforce.

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Dante Gabriel Rossetti — 19th Century British poet and painter and the brother of poet Christina Rossetti. His illustrations of his own and others’ poetry stood as inspiration for the development of Aestheticism, an arts movement away from social issues and toward sheer visual beauty.

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Katharine Hepburn — Named the Top Female Legend from American film history by the American Film Institute.

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Dorothy Hodgkin — 1964 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry for her development of protein crystallography. Later, she identified the structure of insulin. Her interest in wealth inequality led her to hang around the fringes of communism. She also fought for world peace, becoming president of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs.

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Mary Kay Ash — Frustrated by women’s second-class status in the workplace, she founded Mary Kay Cosmetics partly as a way to help women succeed financially and in business. Her business plans always stressed women helping women.

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Burt Bacharach — He knew the way to San Jose.

BURTBACH-DIONNE

Bacharach With Dionne Warwick In Background

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Tom Snyder — Late night talk show host described in National Lampoon magazine as the “living room gibbon.”

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George Carlin — One of the funniest — and most serious — people ever to grace a stage.

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Bebel Gilberto — Isabel Gilberto de Oliveira, Brazilian singer and composer, daughter of Joao Gilberto and Miúcha. Joao, collaborating with Antonio Carlos Jobim, was at the forefront of the development of bossa nova and Miúcha was herself a beloved Brazilian singer. Bebel has become a star in her own right and has worked with the likes of David Byrne and Stan Getz. Her style ranges from electronic bossa nova to acoustic lounge.

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And finally, ah, I didn’t care much about anybody who died on this date.

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09/30/2014
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2014 Election, Alphonso Manns, Dollie Manns, Fox News, George Zimmerman, GQ Magazine, Judge Kenneth Todd, Mike Leonard, Otis B. Phillips, Ross Gay, Sean Hannity, The Best American Poetry 2014, Trayvon Martin

Hot Air

Manns’ Act

I know nothing about Alphonso Manns other than what I read about him in the Herald Times Saturday (paywall). Manns is the Dem candidate to supplant longtime Monroe County Circuit Court Judge Kenneth Todd in the November election.

Manns, it was learned, once was whacked along with two others with a $1.3 billion judgement in a fraud case involving gold bullion. It seems Mann and his then-wife and law partner repped a kinky character named Otis Phillips who’d conjured a scheme to get investors to put earnest money down on the gold, pending approval of their qualifications to participate in the deal. The investors, in turn, would not be approved and Phillips would keep the earnest dough.

The gold never existed.

Back in 1997, the H-T‘s Mike Leonard described the set-up thusly:

[T]he investment scheme Dollie Manns represented hinged on the smuggling of gold and platinum that former Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek purportedly stashed in China and Indonesia when Communist forces led by Mao Zedong took control of the country 48 years ago.

Leonard went on to quote an Indiana Securities Division and Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission ruling in its investigation of Dollie Manns (Alphonso’s former wife):

She (Dollie Manns) exploited the investor by opportunistically initiating a conversation with her about the ‘investment’ knowing, by reason of her association with the investor’s lawyer (Al Manns) that the investor had just closed a lucrative real estate transaction. Her actions indicate a predilection to take advantage of unsuspecting clients of the firm and thus impart a strong negative implication to her fitness as a lawyer….

By converting the investor’s $20,000 to uses other than those agreed to by the investor and by failing to return the funds pursuant to the parties’ understanding and after the investor demanded return, the respondent violated Indiana Professional Conduct Rule 8.4(b). her conversion of the investor’s funds violated Professional Conduct Rule 8.4(c) in that it represents conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation.

Manns

Alphonso Manns (IDS photo)

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Phillips spent two years in the joint for the scam (not his first time as a guest of the state) and the Manns’s were named as co-respondents in the criminal case. The judgement against them was upheld by the a Texas appeals court, although the original penalty was reduced to $400 million.

The Manns’s, being neither billionaires nor hundred-millionaires, couldn’t come up with the scratch and so filed for bankruptcy. Even though the plaintiffs in the case could have pressed to collect the 400-extra-large, they didn’t, presumably because they were embarrassed nearly to death to have been taken in such a flimsy scheme.

For his part, Manns says he’s as pure as the driven snow.

Maybe. I only know I’m not voting for him. A judge, I’d hazard to opine, needs to possess better sense than to get involved in a business deal with, as the Texas appellate court described Phillips, “a shadowy figure…, (and) an ex-convict, (who) masterminded this scheme….”

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Gay’s Best

In more savory news, Indiana University verse-ologist Ross Gay‘s poem, “To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian” has been named one of the best of the year. It’s been included in the compilation The Best American Poetry 2014.

BAP 2014

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The Best… books are a neat series that gather together some of the finest writing of the year. The books come out annually and include titles such as The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Travel Writing, and The Best American Essays. [Shameless plug alert] A piece I wrote about women boxers in the Chicago Reader back in 1994 was named a notable work in The Best American Sports Writing 1995. Read the piece here.

Once you’re finished with that make sure you check out Gay’s poem. It appeared originally in the American Poetry Review.

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Those Zany Zimmermans

GQ mag yesterday released a story online from its October, 2014, issue detailing the sheer lunacy of the Zimmerman family. You remember George Zimmerman don’t you? Got into a scrape with a kid he was stalking, found himself on the losing end, and so shot the kid in the heart, killing him.

The kid’s name, natch, was Trayvon Martin.

Honestly, you knew from the start — as did I — that George himself was as mentally stable as a 17-year-old on his 30th crystal meth booty bump. Bet you didn’t know, though, that he comes from a clan that makes the Bluths look like the Huxtables.

The apple, babies, fell directly under the tree.

Zimmerman

Yay! It’s Okay That I Killed A Kid!

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Anyway, read the piece and try to understand the sheer weirdness of the family that has inspired love, devotion, and loyalty from the likes of Sean Hannity and his Fox News audience.

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07/27/2013
3 Comments
Ask Rufus, Barack Obama, Chaka Khan, Dave Hoekstra, George Zimmerman, Grant Park Bandshell, Lincoln Memorial, Sly and the Family Stone, Ted Nugent, There's A Riot Goin' On, Tom Fitzpatrick

Your Daily Hot Air

There’s A Riot Goin’ On

It’s an anniversary of sorts. This day, 43 years ago, Sly and the Family Stone was scheduled to play at the old Grant Park Bandshell, just north of the Field Museum on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive. Tens of thousands of people showed up for the free show, many of them, no doubt, veterans of the street violence that had beset the city over the previous couple of years.

S&TFS

Sly And The Family Stone

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In April 1968, there’d been the Martin Luther King riots and, later that month, an unprovoked police attack upon peaceful anti-war protesters in the Loop. Toss in the Democratic National Convention in August, the shooting war between the local Black Panthers and the cops throughout the spring and summer of ’69, and the Days of Rage in October, and you’ve got some battle hardened folks who likely were present that day on Chicago’s lakefront. That is, both uniformed and not.

S&TFS had disappointed their Chicago fans three times already in 1970, repeatedly cancelling shows at the last minute. More specifically, Sly Stone had let ticket holders down. See, Sly had fallen in love with cocaine and PCP, going so far as to carry around a violin case stuffed with the illegal drugs. He’d come under the influence of certain members of the LA Black Panthers who told him he should make more revolutionary-oriented music and to get rid of the white members of his group. Sly also hired a mobster and his drug dealer to be his bodyguards. He became paranoid, convinced that his bandmates were conspiring against him.

All in all, Sly’s life was going to hell and, natch, his productivity suffered.

[MG Note, April, 2018: A reader points out that Kahn and Rufus (or Ask Rufus) was not the opening act (see comments). Unfortunately, I can’t find my original source although I recall it being a dependable one. For the sake of good journalism, let’s ignore the Kahn/Rufus part of this story unless someone else out there can cite a good source for it.]

But all might be forgiven that July afternoon in 1970 because Sly et al would be playing for free. The lead-off act was the West Side funk band Ask Rufus, who’d been playing recently with a dynamic new singer named Chaka Khan. She’d eventually become a member of the group and go on to make gold and platinum reords and win Grammy awards.

Khan

The Young Chaka Khan

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Even as Khan and Ask Rufus were playing, the crowd (estimates range from 40-75,000 people) pushed forward, threatening to overtake the stage. Tempers became short, the cops on hand got antsy, the late afternoon sun grew hotter, and — wouldn’t you know it? — Sly and the Family Stone was late. Many in the crowd wondered if the band would blow them off yet a fourth time.

Next thing anybody knew, a riot broke out. The police unleashed their dogs and unholstered their service revolvers. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Tom Fitzpatrick wrote the fighting was worse than that during the ’68 Convention. According to Khan, the helicopter carrying Sly and his band neared the bandshell and when Sly saw the mayhem, he directed the pilot to turn back.

Photo by Gene Reynolds

The Wrath After Khan

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Other reports have it that the Chicago police stopped the car carrying the band as they were heading to the Bandshell, leading to their late arrival.

BTW: Topflight newspaperman Dave Hoekstra has a neat little piece about the riot and Chaka Khan in today’s Sun-Times.

Anyway, the Bandshell riot seemed to be one of the mournful codas of the Sixties. along with the Kent State and Jackson State killings, the Manson Family, and Altamont. All the dreams and dynamism were swept away in orgies of drugs and violence.

I wanted so much to be part of the counterculture back then but I was a tad young for it. I wanted to protest the war, work for social justice, push for civil rights, and hang with all the cool hippies.

Maybe I was lucky.

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Vandal In Chief

So, somebody splashed green paint on the statue of Lincoln at his eponymous Memorial. Many people think it was actually nail polish. And, it seems, everybody has an opinion as to whodunit.

Lincoln Vandalism

Photo By Scott Applewhite/AP

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You know how this works. Depending on what side of the fence you stand, you know in your heart it was someone on the other side who did it.

I so very much want the perpetrator(s) to be Right Wingers, Me Party-ists, or fans of Ted Nugent. Better yet, George Zimmerman.

The other side, of course, wants the vandal(s) to be my people. Some already are saying that because the paint-or-polish is green, it’s got to be those crazy eco-maniacs. You know, tree-huggers and owl-lovers.

So I went to The Blaze, the interwebs home of the likes of Glenn Beck and other yipping hyenas, to see what the zeitgeist is on that side of the sanity demarcation line. And — whaddya know? — they’ve got the villain sussed!

Well, of course, the person to blame for this outrage is none other than that noted Gay Commie Abortionist from Kenya.

From The Blaze

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Now you know.

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A Family Affair

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07/20/2013
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Barack Obama, Boston Marathon, Dumbest Man on the Internet, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, George Zimmerman, Global Public Square, Guardian UK, James O'Keefe, Jim Hoft, Marc Tschida, Rolling Stone, Sean Hannity, Terrorism, The Daily Caller, The World Is a Ghetto, Trayvon Martin, War (band)

Your Daily Hot Air

Reactions

Barack Obama yesterday spoke like a black man for the first time since he hit the national scene. He said, “You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is: Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.”

Photo by Carolyn Kaster/AP

Impromptu & Unexpected

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Now, I’ve just read about this impromptu speech on the Guardian UK website. My immediate reaction was: Guaranteed, tons of folks in this holy land are gonna say, “If only that was Barack Obama 35 years ago.”

So let me take a break for a few moments so I can go through my go-to Right wingnut sites and see if  the oh-so dependable crypto-racists of Murrica have made a seer out of me.

While you wait for me to do this pressing research, enjoy this:

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Okay, I’m back. In fact, I was finished with my search long before the above vid was over. Ya gotta love the Right; they come through every time.

The reactionary conservative world had apoplexy over the prez’ comments, natch. Among other things, they accused Obama of trying to “tear the nation apart,” they called him the “Race-baiter in Chief.” One woman wrote, “I had no idea Obama sucker-punched a watch volunteer & then bashed his head in. Who knew?” Another called him a “buffoon,” “racist,” a lyncher, and guilty of sedition. A third called him “the most irresponsible president in history.” Jim Hoft, AKA the Dumbest Man on the Internet, wrote, “Good Lord — he is stoking a race war.”

And that very sensitive deep thinker Sean Hannity wondered aloud if Obama really meant he was like Martin because he (Obama) had smoked pot and “did a little blow” when he was the age of the late Florida teenager.

Now, bingo! Here’s the magic comment by someone named OldHickory21 on the Daily Caller website: “If only Obama had run into a George Zimmerman there in Hawaii, we wouldn’t be watching our country going down the drain right now. Too bad.”

From the Daily Caller

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Good to know some things are reliable in this ever-changing world.

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Pretty Little Terrorist

Speaking of the deranged Right (and ain’t I always?), our nation’s non compos mentalists found themselves all aflutter earlier in the week when Rolling Stone put a photo of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on its cover.

Rolling Stone Cover

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For years, being on the cover of the Rolling Stone was seen as perhaps the ultimate honor a rock star or movie actor could earn. Hell, there was even a hit song about it called — what else? — “Cover of the Rolling Stone” back in 1973.

Ignoring the fact that the remaining couple of dozen people who still read Rolling Stone are those who were young and hip aways back in 1973 and now are concerned mostly with erectile dysfunction and the rising cost of cemetery plots, the hysterical Right concluded that the mag was championing young Tsarnaev and his alleged pressure cooker attack on the Boston Marathon.

For some odd reason, the unreasonable of this nation feel the rather normal-looking mug of the accused deep-fryer bomber will inspire doddering former hippies to revolt. Presumably, they’ll attack the Silent Majority with their canes and walkers.

It follows, then, that a number of drug and convenience stores had removed the publication from their shelves because…, well, because. And some guy from the Massachusetts State Police said the cover “glamorized the face of terror.”

I have no idea what they’d have preferred Jan Wenner put on the cover — perhaps a photo of a warthog or Adolf Hitler or simply a garden variety brown Arab. Now those things are ugly and/or evil. Tsarnaev the Younger can even be described as attractive. What kind of monster would attach a picture of a cute white kid to a story about a vicious terrorist act, even if the cute white kid (allegedly) did the act?

Warthog

The Face Of Terror

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Anyways, my concern here is with the retailers who took the mag off their shelves. It makes me think of my recent promises to refuse to sell certain books to people at (shameless plug here) Bloomington’s only remaining independent bookseller, the Book Corner.

Loyal readers know that I’ve promised not to participate in a transaction with any customer who wants to buy faux-pimp James O’Keefe’s memoir, anything by the execrable Glenn Beck, and anything by or on behalf of doughy vigilante George Zimmerman. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself knowing I’d helped those chuckleheads earn even a penny.

My take on those who refuse to peddle the Tsarnaev Rolling Stone is that they’re narrow minded prigs who dig censorship.

So I have to ask myself, when all is said and done: Aren’t I, too?

To be frank, I don’t know the answer yet. Either that or I do know the answer and I simply don’t want to admit it.

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It Is A Puzzle(ment)

Here’s a fun heads up. Theater and non-profit maven Marc Tschida is making, with his bare hands, a neat selection of Bloomington-oriented jigsaw puzzles.

Tschida

Marc Tschida

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Well, okay, he’s using a jigsaw, among other handy tools, but y’know.

Thus far, he’s produced a nifty Buskirk Chumley Theater puzzle as well others depicting Cardinal Stage Company productions and the face of a beloved local citizen whose identity will remain a secret until he gets all the appropriate releases signed and sealed. Look for tons more B-town landmarks and defining images to pop up in stores near you within the next few months.

Tschida Puzzle

Tschida’s “Charlotte’s Web” Puzzle

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Tschida is donating gobs of the puzzles to area non-profits for fundraising raffles and giveaways. Pencillistas, unbuckle your money belts and throw a little cash Tschida’s way.

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07/16/2013
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Apple, Asiana Airlines, Dion & The Belmonts, Dzhokar Tsarnaev, Edward Snowden, George Zimmerman, International Spy Museum, Juror B37, Nobel Peace Prize, Pornography, Runaround Sue, William Shakespeare

Your Daily Hot Air

Sue Me, Sue You Blues

I realize we’re a litigious nation and the smartest financial decision most of us could ever make is to be hit by a bus, but things are going a bit too far.

◗ George Zimmerman dodges a bullet and rather than being content with his kiss on the cheek by Seminole county prosecutors and that Florida jury, he now wants to sue those evildoers who consider him a gun-totin’, self-aggrandizing, Michelin-Man boob. Or, more specifically, a race-profiling, self-appointed neighborhood marshal who didn’t have the minimum amount of sense needed to avoid getting his beak busted and his head clunked by a guy he felt like stalking on a dark street. All of which, BTW, he is.

Zimmerman

Who, Me?

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◗ Same with Asiana Airlines. One of its jets goes down, followed by questions about the suitability of its pilots to actually, y’know, land a 777, and that outfit, too, wants to haul people into court.

What next? Is suspected Boston marathon blaster Dzhokhar Tsarnaev going to shag a process server on the manufacturer of those pressure cookers for making their products explodable?

◗ Oh wait, this is next: some obsessively-fapping doofus is suing Apple in order to force the company to install porn filters on all its home porn theate… I mean, computers. The guy sez he wouldn’ta become addicted to porn had he not accidentally typed in the name of a porn site one day and one of Apple’s finest hunks of machinery actually let him see pix of naked ladies, et cetera.

Shakespeare was right.

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Warriors & Peace (And Other Pretenders)

I don’t have a vote but if I did I’d nix Eddie Snowden for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Guardian UK Photo

Snowden

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Just as I’d have nixed the following prize winners:

  • Barack Obama, 2009: Won because he wasn’t George W. Bush.
  • Yasser Arafat, 1994: Guerrilla warrior who eventually signed a toothless peace agreement.
  • The United Nations Peacekeeping Forces, 1988: An army.
  • Lech Walesa, 1983: Won because he wasn’t communist.
  • Mother Teresa, 1979: Rabidly anti-birth control.
  • Anwar Sadat & Menachem Begin, 1978: Longtime warriors who stopped fighting because they got old.
  • Henry Kissinger, 1973: The Dark Prince of Carpet Bombing.

Nixon/Kissinger

“The Peace Prize? Me?”

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The abovementioneds cheapened the award for all those who actually led lives of peace.

As for Snowden, it appears he fancies himself the star of an espionage thriller, being played out in real time and in real locations, sort of an Ian Fleming/John LeCarre-inspired reality show.

If we’re so hot to give him a prize, lets just send him a couple of comp tix to the International Spy Museum with a note saying, “Thanks for exposing what any of us with a lick of intelligence could have assumed was going on in the first place.”

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[Pencil Update: Early on, when the Snowden affair first broke, I wrote that I might tend to agree with Steve Wozniak that the NSA leaker was the moral equivalent of Daniel Ellsberg. I take that back. Ellsberg had the spine to remain in this country and say, essentially, “Bring your ‘justice’ down on me. I did what I had to do.” Snowden, as we speak, remains hiding in a Moscow airport.]

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Blood Money

The human capacity for assholiness continues to astound.

Juror B37, thankfully, has now decided writing a book about her days on the George Zimmerman panel just might not be the most exquisite idea ever conceived.

We have no idea what Juror B37’s real name is; let’s just refer to her herewith as Miss Ghoulish Profiteer Off Murder.

CNN Screengrab

Pulp Nonfiction

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At risk of putting myself in a position of not having any books to sell, your faithful bookseller (me) has now added Juror B37’s potential book to the list of tomes he (I) will not sell.

So far, here’s the Go-buy-it-somewheres-else roll of honor:

  • Anything by Glenn Beck.

Book Cover

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  • James O’Keefe’s Breakthrough.
  • Anything written by or on behalf of Geo. Zimm.
  • And now, the so-far aborted instant classic by Miss GPOM.

Apparently, a Twitter campaign led to B37’s literary (cough) agent’s office being inundated with messages not to go ahead with the project. The agent responded by saying, Golly gee, maybe I hadn’t oughtta rep this stuff.

I will applaud neither Miss GPOM nor her agent for finally realizing that their first impulse was — shall we say? — majorly fked.

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Runaround Sue

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07/06/2013
3 Comments
Arena Rock, Barack Obama, Don Cornelius, George Zimmerman, Kansas (band), Michael Jackson, Motown, Neil Peart, Paul McCartney, Rare Earth, Rodney King, Sex Pistols, Stevie Wonder, Ted Nugent, Trayvon Martin

Your Daily Hot Air

Times Change

And often for the better. Dig this remastered blast from the past. Rare Earth was the first all -white group to have a hit on the Motown label. This album cut goes on for nearly 22 minutes, as did many anthemic and iconic tunes did back in 1969 and ’70.

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These are blue-eyed soul brothers if there ever were any, to borrow a phrase from the late, great Don Cornelius. You can cite this tune as proof if you care to make the argument that music was better three, four, five, or six decades ago. Which seems a fool’s errand as far as I’m concerned.

This track has a drum solo that goes on for — get this — more than three minutes. Hell, plenty of rock ‘n roll era songs lasted just three minutes in toto.

Here’s a confession: I detested drum solos. In fact, when I stopped going to big, arena-rock concerts sometime around 1975, one of my main reasons was the fear that I’d climb the rafters and jump off to my certain death if I was subjected to yet another drum solo.

Peart

Neil Peart Bangs Away

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I ask you, my loyal readers who are old enough to remember big shows at the International Amphitheater or the Chicago Stadium or Market Square Arena in Indy or Freedom Hall in Louisville, what was the purpose of the drum solo? Did you enjoy hearing them? Why?

Honestly, I want to know. Because I always felt they drained the life out of any concert. I recall always starting to look around the arena in a state of sheer boredom when the drummer got going. I could never understand why the people around me went apeshit at some point during the drum solo.

Anyway, I assume there aren’t drum solos anymore, which seems a huge mark in favor of today’s concert-goers.

I await your comments.

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History

My last arena-rock concert was Paul McCartney & Wings at the Stadium in 1975. McCartney was my least favorite Beatle and by the mid-70s his music was unlistenable. By the ’80s, when he pushed treacle like “The Girl Is Mine” and “Say Say Say” with Michael Jackson and “Ebony and Ivory” with Stevie Wonder, he should have been brought before the World Court for crimes against humanity’s ears.

Still, a guy I knew was scalping tix to see McCartney and I felt compelled to buy them for the then-princely sum of $25 the pair because of the history of the thing. Within a year and a half I’d made the full transition to punk music and more intimate venues like the Aragon Ballroom and Tut’s.

Aragon Ballroom

The Aragon

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In fact, somewhere in my box of keepsakes I still have the tickets for the Sex Pistols New Year’s Eve show at the Ivanhoe Theater, one of four stops they had to cancel because they couldn’t get visas in time. They only played seven dates on their American tour, the highlights of which being Sid Vicious carving the words “Gimme a fix” in his chest and Johnny Rotten coughing up blood due to the flu.

I get the feeling that some arena-rock aficionados and drum solo lovers might call me out on this one but I’m not claiming the Sex Pistols were anything more than a sensational middle finger directed at the pretentious prog rock of the day. As long as they helped bury Kansas, the Pistols’ll be okay by me. Suffice it to say I’ve seldom, if ever, listened to them on iTunes.

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Court & Spark

Right now my money’s teetering between conviction on a much lesser charge and a complete acquittal for King Doofus George Zimmerman in Florida.

Book it: He ain’t gonna fry for a 2nd degree rap. He was getting the bejesus kicked out of him by Trayvon Martin (not that I blame the kid) and any reasonable jury has to nix the murder call.

I don’t think the jury really wants to let the pudgy Guardian of the Neighborhood walk but they may have to. And if they do, what’s the reaction on the streets going to be? Are we in for a reprise of LA 1992?

Zimmerman

The Thick Blue Line

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Back twenty years ago after the Rodney King verdict came down South Central LA residents tore up the town, leading to 53 deaths and a billion dollars-worth of damage. But that was well before the election of Barack Obama and the resultant sense among the lower primate orders of the American electorate that “outsiders” and “aliens” (read the N-word here) were taking over their holy land. If dark-skinned folks take to the streets after a potential Zimmerman pass, are the armed-to-the-teeth Ted Nugent wannabes of America going to wade into the fray?

Nugent

Role Model

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It could happen.

Then the Prez might be pressured to send in federal troops and once that happens, the militias and tinfoil-hat gangs will really take the gloves off.

I’ve got a bad feeling about this whole thing.

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04/11/2012
1 Comment
A People's History of American Empire, Anti-war Movement, Buffalo Springfield, Colonialism, Daniel Ellsberg, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Espionage Act of 1917, FBI, Fox News, France, George Zimmerman, Green Berets, Gulf of Tonkin Incident, Harry S Truman, Howard Zinn, Lyndon B. Johnson, Monty Python's Flying Circus, My Lai, New York Times, RAND Corporation, Richard M. Nixon, Rick Santorum, Sean Hannity, Smothers Brothers, Terry Gilliam, Trayvon Martin, US Department of Defense, Vietnam War, Washington Post, Watergate

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“I got my head bashed in at a demonstration against the Vietnam War. Police were losing control because they were up against a world they really didn’t understand.” — Terry Gilliam

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AND THEN THERE WERE TWO

Gotta tell ya, folks, I hate to see Little Rickey Santorum go, for the loss of his entertainment value alone.

Now the presidential race is down to two politico-economic fraternal twins, each of whom is about as exciting as a can of beige paint.

Definitely Not Beige

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If it wasn’t for guys like Santorum, I’d have to actually take the Republicans seriously and you know how disconcerting that prospect would be for me.

Digging the Santorum campaign was like having a daredevil hobby — bungee jumping off tall bridges, say, or rowing across an ocean. Exciting, sure, but if things go wrong, you’re screwed.

In this case, the worst-case scenario would have been a Santorum presidency

So, bye-bye Rickey. We knew you all too well.

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A SIMPLE QUESTION

Does it surprise anyone that the first media creature George Zimmerman has spoken with is Fox News’ Sean Hannity?

Sympathetic Ear

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DANIEL ELLSBERG, PATRIOT

I missed this. Saturday, April 7th was Daniel Ellsberg‘s birthday.

You want a hero? You got him.

Ellsberg

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Here’s the story of Ellsberg’s heroism as told by Howard Zinn in his compelling graphic narrative book, “A People’s History of American Empire.”

Zinn and Ellsberg became friends in 1969 during the anti-war movement. Ellsberg earlier had worked for  the RAND Corporation, which was assigned by the US Department of Defense in 1967 to write up a history of the Vietnam War. Ellsberg actually did much of the grunt work researching this nation’s involvement there.

He learned that President Harry Truman authorized the funding of France’s colonial war against Vietnam independence fighters as far back as  the 1940s. President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s threw US support behind Vietnam strongmen who opposed free elections in that country.

Throw in a pile of other falsehoods, exaggerations, forgeries, and intentional inaccuracies on the parts of generals and politicians executing the slaughter in Southeast Asia, and Ellsberg understood that our stated aims there were a colossal sham.

Thanks to the study, Ellsberg saw that President Lyndon Johnson’s assertion that the North Vietnamese had started a war just for kicks in the summer of 1964 was an out and out lie.

Johnson, see, had said some North Vietnamese in a little motorboat had attacked a couple of American cruisers just sitting in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin and minding their own business. Johnson parlayed this whopper into getting Congress to sign him a blank check and the next thing you knew, a half million American soldiers were fighting for who knows what in Southeast Asia.

Johnson, Finally Grasping What Vietnam Had Become

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Ellsberg and some other RAND researchers privately agreed that they had to say something to the American public about our country’s shenanigans in Vietnam.

They figured Middle American folks would trust them, sub-contractors to the Pentagon with 7000 pages of damning documents in their hands, rather than wild-eyed hippies carrying peace placards.

So they sent a letter to major newspapers around the country calling for an end to the war. The New York Times and the Washington Post both published the letter, but nobody really gave a damn about it.

Meanwhile, the United States military went on happily killing and bombing in Vietnam. Then there was a Green Beret murder scandal and the My Lai Massacre. Ellsberg already was wracked with guilt for his country over what he knew and these atrocities only pushed him over the edge.

Destroying The Town In Order To Save It

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He contacted another former RAND colleague and together they photocopied the 7000 pages with the goal of releasing the classified documents. The two agreed it was worth going to jail for exposing government secrets if it might shorten the war somehow.

Their hope was the release of the papers would turn even the most die-hard patriots against the war. They contacted the offices of a few congressmen and found no one willing to touch their hot docs.

Finally, they went to the New York Times with their bundle of papers. After a few months, the Times went ahead and published what would become known as the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg was charged with theft and violations of the Espionage Act. He faced 115 years in prison. He turned himself in to the FBI in Boston on June 28, 1971, after having run off many more copies of the Papers and distributing them to other newspapers.

Setting The Type For The New York Times Pentagon Papers Edition

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While Ellsberg was on trial, it was learned that the Nixon White House had ordered mugs to burglarize his psychiatrist’s office in hopes of finding incriminating notes against him there, and other mugs to harass him at public appearances. The federal judge declared a mistrial in Ellberg’s case due to these government interferences.

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He was lucky.

He was also, as I mentioned earlier. a hero.

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FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH

The Buffalo Springfield played this song on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, February 26th, 1967.

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04/03/2012
Leave a comment
Barack Obama, Citizens United, Disorder in the Court, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, George Zimmerman, Guns, Justice Anthony Kennedy, Lake Monroe, Mitt Romney, Ronald Reagan, Strip Search, Three Stooges, Trayvon Martin, US Supreme Court, Wikipedia, Will Rogers

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“The average citizen knows only too well that it makes no difference to him which side wins. He realizes that the Republican elephant and the Democratic donkey have come to resemble each other so closely that it is practically impossible to tell them apart; both of them make the same braying noise, and neither of them ever says anything.” — Will Rogers

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MODERN PROBLEMS?

Wait, Will Rogers said that in 1928?

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UH OH

The story behind every homicide is complicated and often contradictory.

Don’t get me wrong — this George Zimmerman character is one ultra-weird customer. Mix that with a deranged Florida gun law and you get Trayvon Martin on a slab in the morgue.

But it’s not at all hard to imagine a scared kid acting on impulse and jumping this creep who’s been following him at night in a strange neighborhood.

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It’s no capital offense, natch, but it adds a layer of nuance to the narrative.

The problem is our corporate media loath nuance. They dig black and white, good and evil, an unhinged racist versus a black teenager carrying a bag of Skittles.

Oh wait — it was an unhinged racist versus a black teenager carrying a bag of Skittles.

Here’s the real nuance the slick news stenographers are missing — Trayvon Martin died because this nation can’t let go of its Wild West mythology. High Noon, baby. The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. We aim to protect our womenfolk and churrens.

Book it — George Zimmerman saw himself as the hero saving his neighborhood from the savages. The state of Florida put the gun in his hand. He ain’t the only one unhinged in this case.

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STRIPPED DOWN JUSTICE

Your Reagan/Bush/Bush Supreme Court at work: yesterday, the Goths who make up the court’s usual 5-4 majority have affirmed the right of jailers to strip search you repeatedly should you have the misfortune to be nabbed for something even so trivial as riding your bike without a bright enough light at night.

Yeesh.

“This Is Gonna Hurt You A Lot Worse Than It’s Gonna Hurt Me.”

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Yep. Some poor schmo who was cuffed because of a clerical error and was strip searched twice while in custody for a week, sued a New Jersey county for his ordeal. The guy was arrested for not paying a petty fine (he actually had paid it but his record was mismarked) so he was thrown in with the rest of the hoodlums, gangbangers, homicidal maniacs, child molesters, arsonists, and other assorted thugs that called the county jail home in 2005.

Naturally, jail officials wished to protect their aforementioned guests from such a vicious character so they inspected his anus and rectum a couple of times to make certain he wasn’t smuggling a submachine gun into the joint.

“Yeah, We Found This Up A Jaywalker’s Ass.”

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Little did his jailers care that he was a nice, stable, professional man, a finance executive for a auto dealership with a family.

But who knows what such a man might stash in his trunk. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, cited cases of people being arrested for the likes of disorderly conduct and public nuisance hiding tobacco and lighters in their rectums. Naturally, an accused person’s dignity and and decency must be disregarded in the face of such imminent dangers.

So, the five justices who gave us the Citizens United ruling have now determined that your ass is ours should you be suspected of even the most minor transgression.

Hey, did I mention the guy who brought suit was black?

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BEER LAKE

The Loved One and I are fast approaching our two-and-a-half year mark here in the garden spot of Indiana, beautiful Bloomington.

I still don’t know my way around a lot of this sprawling megalopolis. And many things still puzzle me. For instance, why is there a That Road?

That’s why I like to read the big glossy, full-color Monroe County map that my neighbor and pal Tom Thickstun gave me about a month ago. And — swear to god — I look up Bloomington things on Wikipedia.

See, I’m a trivia junkie and I look things up at random on Wikipedia. Oh, I know it’s not an authoritative resource. Still, it’s got a lot of cool and fun things in it.

So last night I looked up Lake Monroe. I love the fact that I live five minutes up the road from this fairly good sized, pretty lake. I enjoy taking Steve the Dog down to the Cutright and Paynetown ramps at dusk so we can watch people pull boats out of the water. (Yeah, I’ll admit it — my evenings aren’t as scintillating as they once were.)

Do you realize that the entire project to dam Salt Creek, saw down all the trees in the river valley, and even buy out the town of Elkinsville in order to create the lake cost a mere $16.5M. Man, that’s nothing.

Anyway, I kept scrolling and I came to a Trivia subhead. It reads: “According to the List of countries by beer consumption per capita, the total world consumption of beer is approximately 1/3 of the volume of Lake Monroe at maximum capacity.”

Now, I so want this to be true for the simple reason that someone had to calculate the world population’s intake of beer and then compare it to the volume of Lake Monroe.

One-Third Beer

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Who in his right mind would do that?

I mean, if it were you, wouldn’t you look for a lake whose volume matched exactly the world population’s intake of beer?

And is that what’s imbibed in a year? A decade? Since the historic “Tastes great — less filling” debates?

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I clicked on the List link and saw nothing in the main article to indicate this startling factoid. If such proof exists, it must be in one of the reference articles cited at the bottom.

Believe me, I wasn’t going to click on all those links in search of this bit of hypertrivia.

Oh alright, I know it was probably some smart-assed college kid who was drunk on an amount of beer equal to 1/3 the volume of Lake Monroe at maximum capacity who pranked this Wiki edit.

And Then He Passed Out On The Back Stairs

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Still, I wish it were true.

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DISORDER IN THE COURT

Uh huh.

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03/27/2012
2 Comments
Adolf Hitler, Bruno Ganz, Crown Hall, Downfall, Frankfurt Germany, George Zimmerman, Google Doodle, Guns, Hannah Arendt, Holocaust, Hunger Games, IDS, Illinois Institute of Technology, Less Is More, Maya Rudolph, Michael Wolf, Mies van der Rohe, Minimalism, Minnie Riperton, Peter Feldmann, Saturday Night Live, Starlite Drive-In, Traudl Junge, Trayvon Martin

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” — Hannah Arendt

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OUTDOOR LOVIN’

The IDS this morning runs a story about the Starlite Drive-In, the first outdoor movie theater in the state.

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Built in 1955, it still stands at 7630 South Old State Road 37. The Starlite opened for the 2012 season this past weekend, drawing about 500 cars for a double bill of “The Hunger Games” and “Mission Impossible 4.”

The Loved One and I plan to get out to the Starlite sometime this summer so we can make out in the car.

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PISTOL LOVIN’

I’m trying not to jump on the Trayvon Martin bandwagon at this moment because, as a very, very prominent attorney in these parts reminded me the other day, we don’t know many of the facts yet.

Trayvon Martin And George Zimmerman

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Highly emotionally charged incidents like this one draw the ranters and the ravers out of the deep woods. Like that despicable New Orleans cop who tweeted, “Act like a Thug Die like one!”

Never mind the borderline illiteracy of the man’s wireless ejaculation, this officer of the law is saying if you walk around wearing what he considers to be the uniform of gangsters, you ought to have your life taken.

The cop has been suspended without pay. If I’m the chief of police, I fire his emotionally unqualified ass forthwith.

Anyway, the shooter claims he and Martin had a scuffle. Let’s assume that’s true. Should we be able to pump lead into people whenever we find ourselves in a fight? Especially when we’ve been trailing them in the dark?

See, these are the chickens that come home to roost when you’re a nation in love with guns.

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FRANKFURT LOVIN’

The German city of Frankfurt has a new mayor. Peter Feldmann, a Social Democrat, takes over the fifth largest city in Germany on July 1st.

Feldmann beat the Christian Democrat candidate with 57 percent of the vote.

Feldmann is a Jew.

Man.

Feldmann

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It’s ironic. I’d just watched the movie “Downfall” (originally “Der Untergang“) the other day. It’s a German production with English subtitles. You can get it on Netflix.

The movie recounts the last 12 days of the Nazi regime and is set primarily in Hitler’s underground bunker. It’s as powerful a piece as you’re likely to see. Much of the story is based on the recollections of Hitler’s stenographer, Traudl Junge.

The actual Junge opens the film by saying, essentially, How should I have known what those guys were doing? I was just a kid.

Junge

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The movie’s coda carries a different tune. I won’t spoil it for you by telegraphing it here.

Anyway, Hitler’s surviving boys always said Yeah, we screwed up but at least we did something about those pesky Jews.

In the movie, Hitler doesn’t allow the possibility that he screwed up but he seems most proud of the fact that he stood tall against the Jews.

Bruno Ganz As Adolf Hitler

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A few people who were forced onto cattle cars and shipped off to concentration camps are still alive to this day. Most of them wore the mandated Star of David.

It’s been only 75 years since the end of the Holocaust. And, yeah, anti-Semitism now and again makes a reappearance in Europe.

But Frankfurt has a Jewish mayor.

I thought you might appreciate some good news.

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MIES LOVIN’

Didja catch today’s Google Doodle?

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March 27th is Ludwig Mies van der Rohe‘s birthday so Google put up a stylized image of one of the architect’s most notable designs. It’s Crown Hall at the Illinois Institute of Technology‘s campus on the South Side of Chicago.

Crown Hall

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Mies, as he’s known familiarly, was perhaps the key figure in 20th Century world architecture. The simplicity of his work was stunning. His famed aphorism, “Less is More,” was the imprimatur for a generation of architects who filled the world’s big cities with box-like, prismatic skyscrapers.

Mies’s 860-880 North Lake Shore Drive Apartments (1951)

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Whereas Mies’s boxes were elegant and visually arresting, the slew of copycats who followed him turned his minimalism into a stultifying conformity.

Michael Wolf’s Photo, “tc 81”

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See? Jumping on a bandwagon rarely turns out well.

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LOVIN’ YOU

Here’s another reason I love doing this blog. Minnie Riperton‘s song “Lovin’ You” seemed a perfect wrap up for the series of headlines above. So, in the course of researching Riperton, I discovered Maya Rudolph, ex of Saturday Night Live, is her daughter.

That might be common knowledge but now I know.

Cool, huh? Now, an admission — this song really gets on my nerves.

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