"The blog has made Glab into a hip town crier, commenting on everything from local politics and cultural happenings to national and international events, all rendered in a colorful, intelligent, working-class vernacular that owes some of its style to Glab’s Chicago-hometown heroes Studs Terkel and Mike Royko." — David Brent Johnson in Bloom Magazine
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.
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.
“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” — Albert Einstein
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HAPPY N. Y.
Things I hope for this year:
◗ Barack Obama makes it through all 365 days without a serious attempt on his life.
◗ The gamesmanship between Iran and the West peters out.
◗ Someone (besides me) comes up with the bright idea of imposing an embargo on gun manufacturing for at least a year. We’ve got plenty o’guns already; let’s chill on making new ones for a while, no?
◗ Theo Epstein, Jed Hoyer, et al continue to make positive strides in their remaking of the entire Chicago Cubs organization.
Hoyer (L) & Eptsein: My Happiness Is In Their Hands
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◗ Certain friends who suffer right now from mental and emotional distress can find relief.
◗ We move significant steps closer to:
Universal affordable health care
Universal affordable safe, secure housing
Universal affordable access to education, including colleges and universities
◗ Thousands — nay, hundreds of thousands — of new visitors to this communications colossus.
The Electron Pencil Tower, Outside Beautiful Bloomington
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THE ELECTRON PENCIL COVERS THE EARTH
How cool was 2012? I’ll tell you how cool.
The Electron Pencil drew readers from 176 countries on this mad, mad planet. I mean, we even got readers from such exotic outposts as Suriname, Cameroon, Tajikistan, Papua New Guinea, and Moldova. Truth. That’s what WordPress tells us.
Our Most Loyal Tajikistani Reader
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Whoever you people are, thanks.
Our next goal? Mars.
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NICE GUYS FINISH….
The hell of professional sports is that the best people are far too often the worst coaches.
For instance, Chicago Bears head coach Lovie Smith was fired yesterday after leading the team to an overall winning record of 81-63 in his nine years at the helm. He even led the Bears to a Super Bowl, where they were demolished by some guys wearing blue from Indy in 2007.
From all accounts, Lovie Smith is one of the calmest, most compassionate, most dignified men in the entire sports world. That’s quite an accomplishment when one considers the typical NFL field boss has the morals and character of a mafia don.
“Good” Isn’t Good Enough
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But poor Lovie apparently lacked the cutthroat necessities to push his players and entire organization past the point of fairly good to that of dominant. He wasn’t a killer, as the term is defined in the uber-biz of games for pay.
Lots of folks who cheerlead for high school and college sports programs claim that participating in the games is great for the moral and character development of young men and women. Team play, they say, prepares youngsters for success in life.
My response? Man, I hope not.
Amateur sports have bought into the win-at-all-costs mentality of the pro games. Most states’ highest paid employees are the coaches of their university football or basketball programs. Character? Hah! Just win, baby.
The Next Bears’ Head Coach?
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I don’t feel sorry for Lovie Smith, the man. He made a pile of dough disappointing the very demanding Chicago football fans. Neither he nor his children will have to worry about their next meals for the rest of their lives.
Our mania for sports (of which I, a live-and-die Cubs fan, am all too much a part) teaches us too often that good, civilized men are failures. I feel sorry for us.
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PROGRESS, SORT OF
When I was a kid, my Uncle Vince and his family lived in the tony Chicago suburb of Northbrook.
Uncle Vince (who’s still alive and kicking at the age of 96, BTW) bought his home in the late 1950s when Northbrook was still ringed by farmland. He got in when the getting was good. Within 25 years, Northbrook had become one of the meccas to which extremely comfortable white families could escape from the big, bad, scary (read, increasingly black) city.
My own family was still in the city — admittedly on the outskirts, but, nonetheless, my suburban aunts and uncles would constantly pepper my parents with pleadings to “get the hell out of that shithole where people live on top of each other.”
Uncle Vince’s Northbrook house was straight out of a real estate man’s wet dream. It had a broad front lawn. A garage door that opened at the click of a button from inside the car (a wonder in that day and age.) An automatic dishwasher. Air conditioning (we had windows.) A chime doorbell, as opposed to our raucous buzzer. Uncle Vince’s backyard was more than an acre which, in my neighborhood, would have covered some half dozen homes and yards.
Seemingly every time we visited Uncle Vince, my cousin Tony would be washing his brand new Pontiac Grand Prix on the big driveway in front of the house.
A Rich Kids’ Car
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I always thought that Uncle Vince was as rich as the Rockefellers. At the age of seven, I figured his home was a mansion.
The one thing folks in Northbrook didn’t have was black neighbors.
This fact was brought home to me one day when I overheard Uncle Vince telling my father about a horrible, alarming incident that’d happened on the block the previous week. Uncle Vince spoke in hushed tones, as if loath to shake up the women and the kids.
A black man had been seen walking down the street.
Someplace Other Than Northbrook
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Neighbor had consulted with neighbor. Certain high-ranking municipal officials had been notified.
Uncle Vince tried to put a good spin on the incident. Perhaps the black man was in Northbrook to do some menial labor. Or maybe he was lost.
Then Uncle Vince and my father fell silent, as if in contemplation of a too-horrible alternative.
Not that my family’s Chicago neighborhood was an integrationist’s dream, mind you. One day, a couple of years earlier, while I was walking to the grocery store with my mother, a black man had passed us by, the first I’d ever seen in the flesh.
I gaped at him as he passed. Ma clunked me on the side of the head and hissed, “Don’t stare!”
Still, the man fascinated me. “Ma,” I asked once I was certain he was out of earshot, “what’s wrong with that guy?”
Why?
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“He’s just going to work somewhere, I guess,” she said.
“Oh.” I pondered the situation and then came to a conclusion. The man had a job that made him extremely dirty. Perhaps he dug holes somewhere nearby. Why else would his skin be black?
“Ma?”
“What?” she said, edgy, aware of the Pandora’s box lid being lifted.
“Why doesn’t he just take a bath?”
She clunked me on the side of the head again.
Only later, when I was eight, did I learn what the man’s problem was. Mr. Mitchell, our neighbor from across the alley explained it. The man, he said, was a nigger.
I went inside. “Ma,” I said, “what’s a nigger?”
She clunked me on the side of the head.
Eventually, I learned to duck when asking tough questions. I also learned that black men stayed out of places like Northbrook and Highland Park and Palatine and Glenview. It was no more likely that a black family would live in any of those places than they would on the moon.
Times change, though.
Michael Jordan lived in Highland Park when he was the toast of the town. When I was small and Ernie Banks was Chicago’s favorite black man, he had to live in the South Side neighborhood of Chatham, which was black. Progress.
Not A Good Neighbor?
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Today, I learn that the rapper Chief Keef has bought a big, comfortable home in Northbrook. Chief Keef is not white Chicago’s favorite black man. His first album, “Finally Rich,” debuted a couple of weeks ago on the Interscope Records label.
The album includes the songs “No Tomorrow,” “Hate Bein’ Sober,” “Laughin’ to the Bank,” and “Ballin’.”
Chief Keef won’t be 18 years old until August yet he’s already gained a startling reputation. He’s been busted on a weapons charge and is being investigated in connection with the shooting death of rapper “Lil Jo Jo” Coleman — a homicide which Chief Keef mocked on his Twitter page. He has posted a video of himself firing a gun at a shooting range, a violation of his juvenile court probation. He has threatened critics with violence. He has also posted an Instagram video showing him getting a blow job.
Northbrook’s Very Own, Chief Keef
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No, Chief Keef is not Chicago favorite black man. He’s not even a man yet.
He owns a home in Northbrook, though.
He’s made a lot of money in his short life so far. Money absolves a lot of sins.
“It seems that fighting is a game where everybody is the loser.” — Zora Neale Hurston
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DIGGERS
Stand by for another big book release from a Bloomington author in 2013.
Phil Ford, professor of music history at Indiana University, looks to August for the debut of his “Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture.”
Phil Ford
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Ford’s got a publisher, Oxford University Press, and is now in the process of securing his last copyright permissions — “I had a ton to manage for the book” — and correcting the odd punctuation mistake.
“Dig conceives hipness as a part of the intellectual and cultural history of the United States from the 1940s through the 1960s,” Ford says.
The hip aesthetic has structured art and thought here since the end of World War II, according to Ford. He says American intellectual life has been profoundly affected by the storied postwar alienation from society.
The beatniks and the cool jazz cats of 20-year period after 1945 saw themselves as outsiders who had nothing to do with you, yet now you act and think in ways they did more than you or they would have ever dreamed.
The larger, dominant culture, Ford explains, aims to “foreclose” on creativity, self-awareness, and self-expression.
“The hipster’s project is to imagine this system and define himself against it,” Ford says. Think Jack Kerouac or Timothy Leary. “While hipsters have always used clothing, hairstyle, gesture, and slang to mark their distance from the consensus culture, it is music that has always been the privileged means of cultural disaffiliation.”
Studs Terkel With Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, & Peter Orlovsky
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Ford tries to define the concept of hip in the book and then follows its path from what he deems its birth year, 1948. For instance, Ford has found rare recordings of Beat Poets singing along to jazz records in 1949. “You can hear them trying on the hipster persona like a new suit,” Ford says.
Ford enshrines Norman Mailer, author of the seminal “White Negro” essay in Dissent magazine, into the hipster pantheon. “He couldn’t carry a tune in a Hefty bag but he developed a notion of writing as existential challenge that remodels the act of writing to something more like the act of sounding, something like a musical performance,” Ford says.
The City Lights Book-Length Edition Of Mailer’s Essay
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Ford has been published in the academic journals Representations, Journal of Musicology, Jazz Perspectives, Musical Quarterly, and others. Dig is his first book.
One of the jazz titans Ford covers in Dig is the late pianist, songwriter, arranger, composer, and Zelig-like figure, John Benson Brooks. He worked with everyone from Zoot Sims and Cannonball Adderley to Tommy Dorsey and Les Brown but remains unknown today. Ford feels Brooks’ life in New York City’s arts scene from the 1940s through the ’60s would serve as a great basis for a history of that capital of hipness. Ford just might start writing that book once he gets the final Dig manuscript out the door.
So, be cool until August and then dig Dig.
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HAPPINESS IS A GUN
You know it had to happen.
A Bloomington High School South kid has been overhead saying he’d pull off a Sandy Hook-type incident at the school tomorrow. Bloomington cops have found a small arsenal at his house and the kid’s been suspended. The guns belonged to adults in the home but the BPD confiscated the artillery nonetheless.
BHSS
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And a kid at Batchelor Middle School has been suspended for bringing a BB gun to class.
Hard to know if the kids were just being, well, kids, or they were real threats to their classmates and teachers. Just this moment, though, no one’s taking any chances.
One observer has said that the BHSS kid needs immediate psychiatric treatment. Maybe.
Let me tell you a little story.
When I was 16 and 17, my circle of hippies and ne-er-do-wells that hung out day and night at Amundsen Park on Chicago’s Northwest Side faced a migration of gangbangers from the near West Side.
A Polish and Puerto Rican gang, the Almighty Jousters, started hanging around the park after they’d been rousted from their turf farther east by the cops and rival gangs. These guys were tough. They thought nothing of bloodying someone up for the slightest imagined insult. One of the Jousters, Little Willie, found himself in competition for an Amundsen Park girl with a guy from the neighborhood. Little Willie settled the dispute by breaking the guy’s jaw, ribs, and arm in an impromptu negotiating session held during the midnight showing of the movie “Gimme Shelter” at the Mercury Theater.
Backdrop For A Beating
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The Jousters also liked to pack heat.
Even though I was a devoted peacenik, there was something about the Jousters’ hard coolness that attracted me. I became friendly with several of them. I even fantasized what I’d feel like carrying a pistol, as they did. In my fantasy, I’d feel important.
By and by, a consortium of neighborhood demi-gangs — the North & Nagle Boys, the Corner Boys, the Bank Boys, the Stompers, and others — agreed to join forces and try to evict the Jousters. The issue would be settled the old fashioned way, with a war. A date was set. It was a chilly Wednesday night in October. The park was packed with grim-looking teenagers from the area. The Jousters were due to arrive at about 8:00.
We had any number of guys in our midst who could handle their fists quite well. All told, we had about 50 guys ready to rumble. We smoked and chattered nervously, waiting for the Jousters.
At eight sharp, a couple of cars full of Jousters squealed up in the front of the park. “Let’s fuck these guys up,” someone said.
My pal Whitey and I had felt obligated to join the local army, even though neither of us was particularly noted for toughness. We glanced at each other, a wordless reminder that we’d previously agreed to run around the periphery of action and do our level best to avoid inflicting or suffering any kind of pain.
The Jousters exited their cars and stood gazing at our little army for a brief moment. We had them outnumbered five to one. “This is gonna be sweet,” another guy said.
At that moment, one of the Jousters named Crate — a guy even Little Willie gave a wide berth to — reached under his long coat and pointed a sawed-off shotgun at us. None of us budged — not because we were brave and tough, but because we were petrified. Whitey and I were on the verge of tears.
Respect
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Like that, Crate squeezed off several blasts. The 50 of us local guys turned and ran like deer when we saw the first flash from Crate’s shotgun. I clearly remember hearing the pellets screeching and clattering past me across the pavement as we ran. Judging by subsequent audible pops, several other Jousters had outed pistols and began firing.
Only later did I realize I was concerned about soiling my pants for a hot minute.
The Jousters beat it as soon as they heard police sirens. The cops, who’d been miffed the gang had settled in our neighborhood but seemed to tolerate their presence to that point, now decided to get rid of them. None of us ever saw Little Willie, Crate, and the others again.
But for a while afterward, I remained enthralled by that image of the Jousters, standing before us, confident that they possessed the means to make us run.
At the time, I was working in a hot dog stand owned by a minor Outfit figure. Let’s call him Pat. I also served for a brief period as a driver for him and his “boss,” “Mr. Martin,” an Outfit member of slightly higher standing than Pat. Whenever Pat or Mr. Martin needed to do some business down on the West Side or in Little Sicily, they’d call for me to drive them there in their Cadillacs and wait for them outside. “Keep your eyes open,” they’d advice me as they got out of the car.
I never knew what I was supposed to be on the lookout for.
Pat carried himself with a Mob mien that “Goodfellas” and “The Sopranos” aficionados today deem cool. Pat never raised his voice. When he was mad, he wore The Look — his jaw set, his lips a line, and his eyes staring. You couldn’t read any emotion on his face. That’s what was terrifying about The Look.
Fabled Hitman Harry Aleman With “The Look”
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Pat kept a small pistol in an ankle holster in the backroom of the hot dog stand. Every now and again, he’d hold it lovingly and warn me to be careful. “Don’t touch this unless you gotta,” he’d say. He never elaborated on when that would be.
As Pat came to trust me, he left me alone at the hot dog stand more often. I started formulating a plan to wear the pistol home after closing the place at night.
I wanted to feel invincible.
For a period of about two months, I’d strap the holster to my ankle and walk around the hot dog stand toward closing time, just to get the feel of it. I wore bell-bottom pants so the bulge wasn’t noticeable. I learned to position the holster just so, so that I wouldn’t brush against it with my other ankle as I strode.
I practiced standing with my leg propped up on a carton of soft drink cups so that the bottom tip of the holstered gun would be visible just beneath my pants leg. After all, what’s the point of carrying a gun if other people don’t know about it?
I couldn’t wait to summon the courage to wear it home and, naturally, to Amundsen Park. Who knows? Maybe there’d be a moment during the course of a typical evening of hanging out when I’d have to pull the pistol out, just to make a point.
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Then I’d be invincible.
Somehow, some way, the three of us — Pat, Mr. Martin, and I — all got into hot water with the cops at the same time. Pat’s and Mr. Martin’s photos ran in newspaper accounts of their troubles. Mine was kid’s stuff.
In any case, the hot dog stand was closed and I was out of a job. I never got a chance to wear that holstered pistol home or to the park.
I was lucky.
That BHSS kid who bragged about planning to shoot up the place tomorrow was lucky as well. And that middle school kid was lucky he never fired his BB gun in the Batchelor hallways.
I don’t know if these kids need psychiatric help, any more than I might have needed help when I was 16 and 17, just for wanting to carry a gun
Guns are awfully seductive, and insecure teenagers are primed to be seduced by them.
Rather than worry about putting kids who dig guns on a psychiatrist’s couch, we ought to consider treating the adults who manufacture these things by the millions in this holy land.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the Universe.” — Carl Sagan
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YOU CAN’T MAKE ME HELP A CRIPPLE!
The Republicans are now officially mentally ill.
The 2016 Republican National Convention?
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Personal to the GOP: Boys — and I do mean boys — you’ve got to cleanse yourself of the United Nations-hating nuts within your ranks. I mean, honestly, rejecting the UN disabilities advisory treaty because that world body is seen by the madmen within your ranks as some kind of threat to our national sovereignty?
Click Image For The Treaty’s Complete Text
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By 2016, the Republicans will be the third party in a land that only has two parties. You guys are running yourselves out of business.
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STILL CRAZY
And, as long as they keep having “discussions” such as this one:
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… they’re going to come no nearer to sanity than this world is to the edge of the Universe.
Dig the one guy who tells the panel that he knows “many, many people who’ve saved their own property because they had a handgun.”
Many, many people.
I’m assuming that anything under ten does not qualify as many.
Many, I would venture, means, oh say, 20 people.
Fair enough?
But he says he knows “many, many people” who’ve brandished shootin’ irons to pertekt their cabin and kin. That means he’s squaring many. Ergo, he knows upwards of 400 people who’ve pointed guns at other human beings and threatened to take their lives if they do not desist from trespassing or otherwise attempting harm.
Where the hell does this guy live, in Gaul at the time of Attila the Hun?
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EVEN CRAZIER
Then again, before we get carried away about how deranged certain folks are in this holy land, let’s consider, say, the nation of Qatar.
Until recent days, the tiny oil sheikdom has been a financial sponsor of several of the Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East.
In public, Qatar branded itself the champion of The People Throwing off the Shackles of Tyranny.
Oops. That is until the poet Muhammad Ibn al-Dheeb al-Ajami wrote a few verses praising the Arab Spring and — uh oh — referring less than glowingly to the Qatari boss-sheiks. Ajami was tried behind closed doors (and not allowed to attend his own trial) and was sentenced to life in prison.
Despite the madnesses of our Me Party brethren and sisteren, I doubt if even they’d endorse life sentences for the writing of poetry.
At least I hope not.
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THE MOTE IN GOD’S EYE
Try to wrap your mind around the concept of multiverses.
No, the term doesn’t mean a collection of poems. It’s the idea that this great big bunch of everything is really merely one of many great big bunches of everything.
Yeesh
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Maybe even an infinity of them.
And here we are worrying about Kate Middleton’s morning sickness.
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ALL I REALLY WANT…
This is now The Electron Pencil’s official, traditional Christmas/Hannukah anthem.
“When you carry a gun, you mean to harm somebody, kill somebody.” — Bill Cosby
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A LITTLE ANTHONY IN BLOOMINGTON
The stars were out yesterday afternoon in front of Williams Jewelry on Walnut Street.
Bloomington’s political heavyweights came out to dedicate an historical plaque honoring Susan B. Anthony’s appearance at the long gone Presbyterian church that once stood on the present day site of the Redmen Building.
Mayor Mark Kruzan, City Clerk Regina Moore, County Commissioners Iris Kiesling and Julie Thomas (elect), County Prosecutor Chris Gaal, County Council members Cheryl Munson (elect), Geoff McKim and Julie Thomas, Bloomington common council member Susan Sandberg, and, of course, the grande dame of local politics, Charlotte Zietlow, all made the scene in the brilliant sunshine.
A group of some fifty citizens watched as speakers told the story of Anthony speaking at the Walnut Street church back in 1877 when she toured the country pushing for women’s suffrage.
Shirley Fitzgibbons & Cathi Crabtree Unveil the Plaque
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The respective women’s commissions of Bloomington and Monroe County sponsored the plaque. The fact that Anthony spoke here only became known again in recent months. Shirley Fitzgibbons of the county commission and Cathi Crabtree of the Bloomington bunch unveiled the plaque after the pols had their say.
One sad note: Sophia Travis also worked to make the plaque a reality. After the ceremony her father offered Cathi Crabtree tearful congratulations.
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QUEER REASONING
How weird is it that satire can so easily be confused with reality these days?
Case in point: The Daily Currant, an Onion wannabe, ran a piece the other day headlined, “Santorum Claims Homosexuals Stole Election.”
What looks to be about half the commenters on the piece expressed shock and revulsion that Pennsylvania’s most notable altar boy had jumped (bare)back onto his fave bandwagon — the fag monster that hides under his bed every single night of his life.
Little Rickey: Always Thinking
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Dig: Santorum thinks about gays more than most gays think about gays; GOP loyalists insisted not only to the bitter end but beyond that their boy Mitt was going to win — this despite the fact that a total of zero independent polls showed him ahead; and, finally, much of the Republican reaction to Tuesday’s election at least hints that fraud was committed in the name of the secret Muslim, socialist, fascist abortionist who was granted a second term.
Ergo, the Cassock Kid coming out with a lavender-tinged conspiracy theory sounds perfectly reasonable. A story about Santorum telling CNN that homosexuals have staged a junta in this (formerly) holy land is no more ridiculous than, oh, Glenn Beck advising his flock to buy farms, pull their kids out of school, and stock up on guns in the wake of the president’s reelection.
Beck: Arm Yourselves, Real Americans!
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Here’s the Daily Currant “quoting” Santorum on the “plot”:
I see the hand of the homosexual in this massive election fraud. Romney was tied or leading in most polls before the election. And then he loses? Homosexual dirty tricks. It is the only explanation that makes sense.
He goes on to accuse noted gays such as David Geffen and Elton John of having the money and the power to initiate a Mattachine overthrow.
It could have been a virus in the election machines, the Currant has him saying.
It’s all a gag — something I suspect Little Rickey knows an awful lot about.
Barack Obama’s reelection seems to have caused millions of pot-bellied white men to believe their genitalia are shrinking. That’s my take on the gun sales surge.
“Experts” claim jes’ plain folks are snapping up the artillery because they fear Obama will crack down on gun ownership. The problem is, they did the same thing after he was elected in 2008 and Obama did absolutely nothing about guns during his first term.
The dwindling population of pasty-faced reactionaries who still can’t believe a brown man is their leader are arming themselves to the teeth because they honestly fear that, as a soon-to-be minority, they’ll be discriminated against, forced to live in ghettos, and denied equal rights under the law.
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Makes sense. After all, that’s the way they‘ve always treated minorities.
FAIR ◗ Holiday Inn — Bloomington’s Spirit Fair, Consult with psychics & tarot readers, Shop for New Age objects, Booths for numerology, astrology, reiki, crystal healing, and palmistry; Through Sunday, 10am-5pm
CELEBRATION ◗ Trained Eye Arts Center — The Big One: Trained Eye Arts 1-year Anniversary, Featuring live music, games, performers, studio open house; Noon
MUSIC ◗ IU Ford-Crawford Hall — Master’s Recital: Nicholas Cline, composition; 1pm
OPERA ◗ IUMusical Arts Center — “Cendrillon (Cinderella),” Presented by IU Opera Theater; 2pm
MUSIC ◗ IU Auer Hall — Doctoral Recital: Pei-San Chiu on flute; 2pm
MUSIC ◗ IU Musical Arts Center Recital Hall — Junior Recital: Caleb Wiebe on trumpet; 3pm
Ooh, we’re excited here at Bloomington’s favorite communications colossus!
First we’ve been authorized by the federal government to continue operation after President Barack Obama’s order to shut down any and all TV and radio stations, newspapers, magazines, and interwebs sites that are deemed dangerous to the newly renamed United States of the World.
Huzzah! The Electron Pencil has been named a Communications Organ of the People!
We’ve always striven to be an organ of one sort or another.
Second, the Federal Emergency Management Administration wants us to pass along some vitally important directives to The People. FEMA’s notification is reproduced, in part, below:
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Here is the gist of FEMA’s order:
♠ All guns being held by private citizens must be turned in no later than midnight, Saturday, November 10th, 2012 (that’s today, so hurry!)
♠ The new Tithing for the Poor program mandates that all working Americans must hand over 10 percent of their weekly income to the welfare queen or pimp of their choice
♠ Any and all registered Republicans must sign a loyalty oath to the New Order — it begins, “I pledge allegiance to the Social Bureaucracy of the United States of the World…”
♠ Tea Party members will be required to report to FEMA’s Attitude Readjustment camps by Wednesday, November 21st, 2012 — they will not be allowed to participate in Thanksgiving festivities as that racist, imperialist celebration has now been outlawed
♠ Grandmas of the USW will be required to report to their local Death Panels as soon as possible
♠ All American women of child-bearing age must undergo an abortion procedure by the end of the year — those who are not pregnant at this time must become pregnant by December 1st, 2012 — those women who have difficulty finding a mate can apply for assistance from the USW Social Stud Service, staffed exclusively by men of African extraction
♠ All white males in excess of 50 percent of the population must leave the country — preference for those who are allowed to remain will be shown for weak, near-sighted, flat-footed males who exhibit a proclivity to enjoy showering with other males
FAIR ◗ Holiday Inn — Bloomington’s Spirit Fair, Consult with psychics & tarot readers, Shop for New Age objects, Booths for numerology, astrology, reiki, crystal healing, and palmistry; Through Sunday, 10am-pm
ARTS & CRAFTS ◗ Bloomington Convention Center — Bloomington Handmade Market Holiday Sale, Featuring 48 regional artists & craftspeople; 10am-5pm
BOOKS ◗ Howard’s Bookstore — Author Terry Pinaud signs his book, “Chaos“; 11am-3pm
SPORTS ◗ IU Memorial Stadium — Hoosier football vs. Wisconsin; Noon
DEDICATION ◗ Monroe County Courthouse Square, East Side, The Redmen Building — Ceremony for the installation of the Susan B. Anthony historical marker plaque; 1pm
MUSIC ◗ IU Ford-Crawford Hall — Bassoon Studio Recital: Students of Bill Ludwig & Kathleen McLean; 1pm
MUSIC ◗ IU Musical Arts Center Recital Hall — Master’s Recital: Steven Marquardt on trumpet; 1pm
STAGE ◗ IU Halls Theatre — Drama, “Spring Awakening“; 2pm
CELEBRATION ◗ Trained Eye Arts Center — The Big One: Trained Eye Arts 1-year Anniversary, Featuring live music, games, performers, studio open house; 3pm-Midnight
MUSIC ◗ IU Musical Arts Center Recital Hall — Senior Recital: Rico D. Hamilton, tenor; 3pm
STAGE ◗ IU Ivy Tech Waldron Center, Auditorium — Comedy, “Alfred Hitchcock’s 39 Steps“; 3pm
MUSIC ◗ IU Ford-Crawford Hall — Voice Studio Recital: Students of Teresa Kubiak; 3pm
FILM ◗ IU Cinema — “Beau Travail,” Filmmaker Claire Denis will be present; 3pm
MUSIC ◗ IU Auer Hall — Artist Diploma Recital: Eun Young Seo on piano; 4pm
MUSIC ◗ IU Sweeney Hall — Master’s Recital: Matthew Peterson on jazz piano; 4pm
PERFORMANCE ◗ Buskirk Chumley Theater — “A Potpourri of Arts in the African American Tradition,” Featuring the African American Dance Company, the African American Chorale Ensemble, and the IU Soul Revue; 8pm
“Who’s gonna take me seriously with this on my head?” — Leanza Cornett
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WHO’S THE FAIREST OF THEM ALL?
I never watch the televised presidential debates for the same reason I’ve never cared about the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.
Or even any human beauty pageant, for that matter.
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You know, these TV debates became important only because of what happened in the fall of 1960. Sen. John F. Kennedy, the Dem nominee for president that year came into the scheduled series of debates — the first time the events would be televised nationally — as the punk kid trying to elbow his way past the sitting vice president and foreign policy maven Dick Nixon.
The wags figured the debates would be a slaughter, with the wily Nixon taking the brash rich boy out for a spanking.
Things didn’t turn out that way.
JFK won the election because, during that first debate, held at the WBBM-TV studios in Chicago, he appeared cool, calm, sun-tanned and healthy. Whereas Nixon was gaunt and pale, having recently suffered through some health issues.
Not only that, Nixon fidgeted and sweated. Kennedy was charming and composed.
Beauty And The Beast
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Boom — knockout for the challenger. So Kennedy won the beauty pageant and the White House.
Seems a rather silly criterion upon which to base a vote for the leader of the western world, no?
Anyway, don’t cry for Nixon, America, because he capitalized on his dorky, dweeby, homeliness and his loss to the uber-wealthy, elite Kennedy, to vault into the presidency eight years later. Nixon basically told the voting public, Hey, I’m a schlub — just like you.
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The electorate bought it and, coupled with the fact that the Democratic Party was in the midst of a five year long suicide attempt, we elected ourselves a paranoid, self-loathing, suspicious, unindicted co-conspirator to be our leader. As a reward, we got Watergate, an unprecedented bombing campaign in Southeast Asia, Pat Buchanan, Karl Rove, and the original Rat Fuckers.
Oh, and a couple of pandas from China for the Washington National Zoo.
But I digress.
In the 1980 presidential candidate debates, Ronald Reagan out-prettied Jimmy Carter, which wasn’t very hard to do. Carter was somber and serious, talking about nuclear weapons and energy and the Middle East. Reagan was the chipper cheerleader.
The nation was ready for a pep rally.
When Carter brought up some controversial decisions Reagan had made as California governor, Reagan good-naturedly scolded him, saying, “There you go again.”
Grumpy & Happy
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The debate would be remembered for those words as well as a line Reagan uttered during his closing comment: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
Reagan routed Carter in the election.
In 2004, John Kerry whaled on President George W. Bush in their first debate. I actually watched that show, although I can’t for the life of me remember why. Anyway, I was astounded to discover that I actually felt sorry for Bush. He looked lost, physically diminished even, as the erudite Kerry tore down his arguments one by one.
All the experts agreed: Kerry had won the debate big time.
Dopey & Doc
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What do you think happened? A large percentage of jes’ plain folks in this holy land felt Kerry was too smart, an egghead. Poor old Georgy Boy was just a guy trying to do his job running the country and some Harvard-educated snob comes along and tries to tell him what to do. Bush’s polling numbers actually improved after what I’d figured was a knockout blow.
Now, my side of the political spectrum is always honking about “issues.” The debates must be about hard facts and real problems and definitive plans, they say.
Yet many folks on the Dem/Left/Progressive team last night commented that Barack Obama wasn’t “aggressive” enough, whatever that means. Should he have slugged Mitt Romney at some point in the night?
I suppose that would send ratings through the roof. Maybe that’s the future of presidential debates. The candidates can go after each other on a remote island. Whomever captures the other wins. That would be something Americans could understand.
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But last night’s debate was a wonk-fest. Obama and Romney argued like seniors on the high school debate team. Which, I figure, is what debate is all about.
But now the Obama side wants glitz and glitter and a he-man show of strength. They want that ultimate zinger, the kind that Ronald Reagan could deliver so well and so easily.
Times and sides change.
For the last few days, wits and pundits have been predicting that Romney would narrow Obama’s lead with his performance in the first debate. How they knew this in advance I can not say (other than to point out that news creatures need to invent new angles when conventional wisdom starts getting ripe.)
Sure enough, the post-game commentary and the pronouncements this morning have Romney coming out ahead last night. He looked like he belonged up there, the consensus goes. As opposed, I guess, to Romney showing up in shorts and a T-shirt. Romney, the experts say, looked presidential.
Maybe Obama should have slugged him.
I bet Obama will slug Romney in the next debate. Metaphorically, of course. Then Obama will see his numbers grow again. The final debate will be a tepid affair, with both guys deking and jabbing, but neither willing to risk going for the big blow so close to the election.
My hundred bucks on Obama still looks safe.
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THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARSENALS
One thing none of the three debates will address is the issue of guns.
That matter’s been settled and put to bed. We have agreed as a nation to allow our citizens to arm themselves to the teeth against…, um, against what I don’t know.
Well not all of us have agreed. Not I, for one. And not Nikki Giovanni, the writer and commentator. Here she is on Democracy Now!, spitting into the wind (click on the image for access to the vid; sorry, I couldn’t embed it):
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SUPERSIZE ME
You’ve been reading about that news anchor in Wisconsin who lambasted an emailer for calling her fat, haven’t you? Or you’ve at least seen the vid on YouTube, right?
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The woman is being praised from all quarters for standing up to what can only be described as bullying in the guise of a faux concern for the health of nation’s youth.
I’m all for her. Only I would have saved her a lot of breath. Had I been tasked with writing the news script for her response, I would have handed her a sheet with the original email on it, which she’d read, then the instruction for her to look straight into the lens and say, “And you, sir, are an asshole.”
Simplicity is best, don’t you think?
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The only events listings you need in Bloomington.
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Thursday, October 4th, 2012
Brought to you by The Electron Pencil: Bloomington Arts, Culture, Politics, and Hot Air. Daily.
ART ◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center, outside WFHB Studios — Public participation in creating a ten-foot sculpture called “The Angel,” Rain or shine; 9am-5pm
LECTURE ◗ IU SPEA — NBC News’ Phil Lebeau talks about the auto & aviation industries; 9:30am
STUDIO TOUR ◗ Brown County, various locations — The Backroads of Brown County Studio Tour, free, self-guided tour of 16 local artists’ & craftspersons’ studios; 10am-5pm, through October
“I think that wealthy white people would like to have a country that resembles the Fifties, when all the minorities were tucked away in ghettos and paid very low wages but on the surface it was very bright and shiny and free and the rest of the world would look on it longingly.” — Alice Walker
TLRC is run by the city’s Parks & Recreation Department. It’s an enormous facility that can accommodate big roller derby crowds. There isn’t a better arena in town for the Rollergirls.
Parks & Rec, though, wants BHRG to purchase a skating surface for the hardwood floor they’ve skated on to this point. That would cost the Rollergirls some $30,000.
Funny thing is, even after the Rollergirls researched skating surfaces and reported their findings back to the city, Parks & Rec still seemed iffy about signing another commitment for 2013.
Is the city jittery about the BHRG selling beer at their bouts? Stay tuned.
A Houston cop shot and killed a man who was threatening his partner in a group home for the mentally ill Saturday.
Texas
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The threat bears examination here.
A 40-something double-amputee sitting in a wheelchair cornered a cop and appeared to be menacing the officer with, well, a pen. When the man refused to drop his pen, the cornered cop’s partner shot him once in the head, producing a sort of cinematic ending to the riveting drama.
I mean, honestly, can you imagine this incident taking place in, say, Rhode Island?
No, Texas is perfect.
A novelist couldn’t have come up with a better plot twist.
Apparently, the shooter cop took the old adage to heart: The pen is mightier than the sword.
I wonder what he would have done had the man in a wheelchair been brandishing a knife or an actual firearm. Would he have called for Air Combat Command to drop a thermonuclear weapon on him?
“Men rarely, if ever, manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.” — Robert A. Heinlein
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SOPHIA TRAVIS
From all I hear, she was universally beloved. We were Facebook friends but I’d never met her. I’ve put out the call for someone to write up a good eulogy for her in this space. Stay tuned.
Sophia & Her Four-Year-Old Son Finn
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Gun Crazy
Remember that guy found with an arsenal on the third floor of the Seventh Street municipal parking garage?
Robert Redington of Indianapolis was caught loitering six weeks ago in the garage at a spot that just happened to overlook Kilroy’s Sports Bar on Walnut Street. Police have been sensitive about Kilroy’s ever since Lauren Spierer disappeared after spending the night drinking at the place in June, 2011.
Redington, apparently, was watching people come into and out of Kilroy’s. He had with him a laser rangefinder as well as a couple of loaded automatic handguns in his waistband. Police also found a loaded shotgun in the trunk of his car nearby.
Indiana’s new carry laws don’t prohibit the average citizen from walking around so armed. But Redington has been found to be off his nut. Somehow, the NRA and other gun fetishists haven’t convinced legislators to allow every lunatic in the state to pack heat. Yet.
Anyway, Redington had a cache of 51 guns in his home. The cops seized all the weapons after he was arrested. Judge Mary Ellen Diekhoff ruled yesterday in Monroe County Circuit Court that Redington’s personal armory will not be returned to him. Indiana law allows judges to disarm those who’ve been ruled dangerously mad.
Somehow, some way, the sane among us have put at least that much of a brake on the steady trend to allow every man, woman, child, and — for all we know — household pet to own and carry firearms.
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GOD CRAZY
Salman Rushdie is the go-to guy for a personal slant on the chaotic demonstrations and riots sweeping the Muslim world in reaction to that ridiculous “Innocence of Muslims” film and the French magazine cartoon that lampoons Muhammad.
Muslim extremism is beginning to make this holy land’s god-fetishists look quaint.
God’s Soldiers
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So, Rushdie granted an interview to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria this week. It’ll air on Zakaria’s Global Public Square program Sunday. Rushdie has plenty to say about the contretemps in Muslim Southwest Asia and Africa. He feels much of the outrage and violence is being manufactured by those who hope to benefit from the chaos. That’s how he felt about the demonstrations against his book 23 years ago, as well.
Rushdie says: “…I think certainly, if we look at what’s happening now, this is very much a product of the outrage machine. Yes. there’s this stupid film, and the correct response to a stupid film on YouTube is to say it’s a stupid film on YouTube, and you get on with the rest of your life. So, to take that and to deliberately use it to inflame your troops, you know, is a political act. That’s not about religion; that’s about power.”
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Yep, we’re back here for the time being.
The spanking new Ryder website is…, well, it’s somewhere. While Peter LoPilato and his army of computer geeks perfect the new site, we’ll be running Bloomington’s best events listings here, again.
Enjoy.
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Friday, September 21st, 2012
Brought to you by The Electron Pencil: Bloomington Arts, Culture, Politics, and Hot Air. Daily.
MUSIC FESTIVAL ◗ Downtown Bloomington, various locations — Lotus World Music & Arts Festival; though Sunday, September 23rd, various times, today’s lineups:
Bobby Osborne & the Rocky Top X-Press, JD Crow & the New South, Jesse McReynolds & Virginia Boys, Newfound Road, Ralph STanley II, David Parmley & Continental Divide, Tommy Brown & County Line Grass, Wildwood Valley Boys
DISCUSSION ◗ Ivy Tech-Bloomington — Breakfast Learning Series: Affordable Care Act and Its Impact on Behaviral Health Providers; 8am
LECTURE ◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Archaeology Month Series: “Stories Told in Stone: Recording Scared and Everyday Landscapes in the Shadow of the Rocky Mountains,” presented by Laura Scheiber; Noon
ART ◗ IU Grunwald Gallery — Exhibit opening reception, Samenwerken, collaborative, team, multimedia projects; 6pm
DISCUSSION ◗ Monroe County Public Library — Global Issues Community Discussion Series: The Global City Phenomenon, presented by Stephanie Kane & Ron Walker; 7pm
MUSIC ◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Indiana Boys CD release party; 7-9pm
ART ◗ IU SoFAMcCalla School — Installation, “in transit, or to be moving to always be moving and to not stop moving,” presented by The Fuller Projects; 7:30pm
“I don’t say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could.” — Orson Welles
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ANOTHER SCHOOL SHOOTING — HO HUM
Gotta wonder why the Indiana State University shooting Friday in Terre Haute didn’t make a bigger splash.
Can it be that we’re becoming jaded about school and campus gunplay?
Let’s See — I’ve Got My Hall Pass, My Civics Book & My Pistol
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Apparently, a couple of guys got into a beef with each other at a campus tavern. Next thing anybody knew, one of them pulled out the old equalizer and filled his opponent as well as a couple of bystanders with holes. One man died.
A 21-year-old ISU student is being held in the Vigo County jail on murder charges.
Is this kind of lunacy only newsworthy when a dozen or more poor souls are shot to death per incident?
Adding to the ridiculousness of the whole thing was the Indy Star’s four-graf story yesterday about ISU officials suspending the alleged shooter. Sheesh, I was suspended any number of times when I was a schoolboy for transgressions including ditching class to go to the Cubs game and spitting on the playground (or was it on another kid — I forget which.)
Anyway, blasting a guy into the next world seems to call for something more unpleasant than suspension.
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MAD AS HELL
Martin Amis turned 63 Saturday. The author of the 1984 novel, “Money,” and many others, Amis has a well-earned rep as the most curmudgeonly — if not the angriest — man in the world.
Martin Amis
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Comic Lewis Black bills himself as the angriest man in the world. But Black’s is an act. Amis really is a bastard. Amis has raised hackles by, for instance, calling for draconian measures to be taken against people who appear to be Muslims until the Islamic world polices itself and clears its ranks of radical extremists.
Amis, on the other hand, has long been a loud voice against nuclear weaponry.
So, like the rest of us, Amis is a puzzling, contradictory being.
I don’t know about you but so far he seems perfectly reasonable.
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PRIVATE PARTY
How can you not love the one-in-a-million Hondo Thompson?
He posted this howler this morning:
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IN THE YEAR 2525
This was the Number 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.
It displaced “Love Them from Romeo and Juliet” by Henry Mancini in the top spot. Just goes to show how diverse pop radio was long, long ago. Now, of course, we can’t have such genre mixing. It isn’t “profitable.”
As a 13-year-old kid, I had to listen to a lot of horrifying crap before I could hear my fave songs like “Crystal Blue Persuasion.” Listening to Henry Mancini at that age was tantamount to hearing to a death knell. But at least I knew Henry Mancini existed.
And I knew my tastes weren’t the only ones that counted.
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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.
