"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
The new NASA astronaut training class is 50 percent female.
Yup. Four of the eight members of next two-year training program are women. And get this: the NASA guy in charge of spin, Jay Bolden, tells us, “The selection is about qualifications. It has nothing to do with their genders.”
Imagine that.
Newest Astronauts (l to r):
Christina Hammock, Nicole Aunapu Mann, Anne McClain, Dr. Jessica Meir
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We’re becoming more and more genital-blind. We’ll have a woman president sooner rather than later. The fact that a woman, Marissa Mayer, runs a big outfit like Yahoo, isn’t breathtaking news anymore. And, with Mayer calling the shots, Yahoo now has liberalized its maternity leave policy.
Prior to these enlightened days, male company bosses preferred their female employees to squat in the field behind the factory, drop their babies, and get right back on the assembly line just as soon as they washed their hands.
So things are changing. We forget that when we fixate on the crypto-sociopaths who populate the loon wing of the Republican party.
Anyway, this is an appropriate day for NASA’s announcement. It was thirty years ago today that Sally Ride became the first American woman in space. She rode aboard STS-7, the Space Shuttle Challenger.
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BTW: Sally Ride was a lesbian. Sadly, she felt compelled to participate in a beard marriage in the 1980s, presumably to protect her career.
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Frustration
Grrr.
So, I’m listening to NPR’s Morning Edition as I pound this post out on my keyboard. And I’m thinking I’m pretty smart, tying in the four new female astronauts with the Sally Ride anniversary. Just as I’m correcting some misspellings, whaddya think happens?
Those commie NPR rats (I know this about them because the aforementioned crypto-sociopathic Republican loons have told me so) run a piece about Sally Ride’s ride, leading it off with a mention of the new female space cadets. As if that isn’t bad enough, while I’m patting myself on the back for the song vid I’m going insert at the end of the entry, NPR plays that very song as a bumper after its story!
The jerks.
Well, I don’t care. I’m nothing if not a stubborn old bear. I’m still gonna insert a vid of the fab song “Mustang Sally.” Only this version is by blues bossman Buddy Guy. I’m way cooler than you are, NPR.
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Nepotism
This seems as good a time as any to shill for my very talented and cool cousin who runs the eponymous Paul Parello’s Blues Power radio, video, and live performance operation.
And, hey, here’s cuz (on the left) in a bit part as a tough guy in the movie, “The Dark Knight.” That’s Eric Roberts on the right.
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What, you thought I was the only one with talent to emerge from the Parello gene strain?
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Abortion: It’s A Laff Riot!
Um, uh, yeah, I s’pose…, if you’re a member of — you guessed it — that gang of crypto-sociopathic Republican loons I twice mention above.
Alex Seitz-Wald in yesterday’s Salon tells us that the Repugnicans are thinking of flooding the interwebs with baby-killing humor just so’s they can attract that snark-loving younger crowd (who haven’t voted for the GOP since, er, um, ever.)
Stop It, Your Killin’ Me!
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Seitz-Wald quotes a member of the Hitler Youth…, er, sorry, Students for Life, Kristan Hawkins telling a panel at last weekend’s gathering of the Ku Klux Klan…, oops, sorry again, Faith and Freedom Coalition, “You can engage with sarcasm. It’s hard in the abortion issue, but you have to.”
Surprised? Need I remind you that many Republicans still hold to the terrifying belief that Sarah Palin would have made an acceptable Vice President of the United States of America?
“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Sure, and Apache helicopters don’t kill people but we cannot have those either.”
He also points out the fallacy of the argument that good people with guns can defend themselves against crazies with guns:
“It sounds like a great argument, until you realize that the good people with guns are awful at defending society from bad people with guns. Mother Jones put together a big, terrible list of all the mass-murders of the last 30 years, and not a single one ends with, ‘And then a person with a concealed weapon killed the shooter before the shooter could inflict anymore damage.’ None. Zero.”
I Got Somethin’ For Ya Right Here, Psycho!
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Charlie Pierce in Esquire magazine’s politics blog quotes a Tweet from X-tian loon, the Rev. Bryan Fischer: “Shooters attack an elementary school in CT — another ‘gun-free zone.’ Makes children sitting ducks.”
Pierce answers in the only possible rational way: “Go fuck yourself, pal. Sometimes I dearly wish I believed more strongly in a hell.”
Rev. Bryan Fischer, Security & Education Expert
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Naturally, the babbling idiot of the US Congress, Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), has plenty to say. He referred to the Sandy Hook principal on — what else? — Fox News Sunday: “I wish to god she had an M-4 in her office locked up so when she heard gunfire she pulls it out and she didn’t have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands but she takes him out, takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids.”
To borrow a quote from a very articulate man, Go fuck yourself, pal.
Cool idea, huh? So, next time a psycho barges into a school, he pops the armed guy and then goes ahead and wipes out a few dozen kids and teachers.
You know what to do with yourself, Bill.
I’m gonna stop now. I’m getting depressed.
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GOD THE EDUCATOR
Oh, by the way, the god who’s so enraged because we don’t allow public school kids to sing hosannas to him in the classroom that he sent an armed psychotic in to wipe a few dozen of them out? He’s hot for another reason these days, again having to do with public schools.
NPR reports that some Texas kid and her old man are suing a local San Antonio school district for forcing her to wear a radio frequency ID badge. See, these badges help school administrators keep track of students to make sure they’re not wandering off campus to do what teenagers like to do other than study mitosis.
The kid, who’s 15, told her daddy-0 that she was going to refuse to wear the ID tag when it was given her at the start of the school year because the Bible has something to say about it. “Daddy, I’m not going to do this,” she said. “Dad, That’s exactly what it talks about about in the Book of Revelation that you were teaching us about taking the mark of the beast. This is the exact same thing.”
Not Only In Our Schools
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The mark of the beast, in case you didn’t know (and I wish I didn’t), is mentioned in Revelation 13:15-18. It has to do with some evil being who comes down and pretends to be the Christ but is really the Anti-Christ and will somehow mark all people for some fercockter reason and then all hell will break loose. Or something. Look, I tried to figure it all out but it’s in the Bible, see, and if you want to get your head screwed completely around, try reading half a page of that thing.
Anyway, loads of folks believe in this stuff and are constantly on the lookout for the beast-mark. And this Texas kid, apparently, has put her finger on it and now she and daddy-o are making a federal case about it.
The local San Antonio school district told her she has to wear the ID badge and she responded by saying Whoa, Nilly, you’re violating my freedom of religion.
Now the whole affair is being played out this morning before the Federal district court in S.A.
Funny thing is, the school district has told the kid she can wear a badge without the radio frequency chip in it but she told them where they could stick that idea. She says she’ll only wear her old school ID from last year, which the Bible apparently approves of, although I was unable to find a reference therein for it.
Hagee, you may recall, got presidential candidate John McCain in hot water back in 2008, after JM accepted the preacher’s endorsement. Hagee, it was learned, had written that the Catholic church is “a godless theology of hate” and a “great whore.” He’d also stated that the goal of Islam was to “kill Christians and Jews.” He has stated that it was the Jews who were responsible for the Holocaust — and believe me, his “reasoning” behind this makes the Bible read like a kindergarten primer. He has stated that Hitler himself was an apostate Jew and that the Jews run the Federal Reserve System.
A-a-and the good Rev. Hagee is four-square in favor of a US preemptive strike on Iran using nuclear weapons. A real sweetheart, no?
Now Who’s The Boss, Iran?
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All that said, Hagee calls himself a “Christian Zionist” and works tirelessly with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to support radical pro-Israel legislation.
Weird, huh?
You wanna know how weird? Pick up Matt Taibbi’s book, “The Great Derangement.” He goes undercover in Hagee’s church to find out who peoples his flock. Trust me, you’ll be torn between laughing out loud and wanting to slash your wrists.
In any case, this fellow, god, seems fixated on the goings on in our schools. Funny, no? You’d think he’d fix it so students would learn more and teachers wouldn’t burn out so quickly and legislators wouldn’t be so eager to cut education funding. Seems as though god’s priorities in education are about as screwed up as ours.
“You, what are you? The brat of lucky parents who were related to a childless king. There is no such thing as royal blood. I believe we are what we make of ourselves, and as such, you, Crown Princess, are nothing.” — Shannon Hale, The Goose Girl
That is, some firm is trying to develop a technology that’ll erase all those embarrassing pix you put up on Facebook when you were 15.
The idea being, mainly, that future employers might espy those frozen-in-time antics and frolics and rule you out for that dream job.
Ministry Of Fear
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Sounds reasonable, no?
No.
Answer this: Do you really want to work for an outfit that’s concerned about your non-felonious activities as a dopey kid?
And how much would said outfit have to be willing to pay you so that you retroactively become circumspect about posting that shot of you guzzling cheap beer?
May They Never Be Hired For The Rest Of Their Lives!
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A-a-a-nd, let’s just say you felt strongly enough about a certain topic to Tweet “Ashley is a bitch.” Would I be correct in concluding that seven years later some constipated HR professional might study this communique and conclude that its author shall be disqualified for a treasured entry-level position in the Abasement & Indentured Servitude Department?
Just wondering.
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PHONUS-BOLONUS
I don’t know if you’ve noticed this stupid Facebook scam wherein the poster “likes” something and then it turns out that some “sexy” pic of an Asian chick gets posted on her/his Timeline.
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I put sexy in quotes because I don’t find the image of a woman whose buttocks and mammary glands are not, shall we say, nature’s own attractive in any way.
Another Bloomington soul who got taken in by this is a female artist of unimpeachable repute. My Newsfeed Sunday night carried a post, allegedly from her Wall, showing a thonged Asian chick on all fours with her afterburner poked high in the air.
Somehow I knew this female artist wasn’t endorsing this kind of frat-boy-oriented sex trade imagery.
Anyway, my solution is this: Don’t “Like” or “Share” any more news stories. I know this will cut many of my FB sisteren & brethren to their very souls, but look, folks, we all know how the 1% is screwing us, how corporations are out to stuff us full of cheap, toxic chemicals, and how our representatives in Washington don’t have our best interests at heart.
There comes a time when we have to stop beating dead horses. And when that dead horse comes back to life as some silicon-pumped bimbo, well then, that’s as good an indication as any that the time has come.
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PRIORITIES
Do I need to remind my faithful readers that I don’t give the slightest shit about British royalty? The big news these days, apparently, is that Kate Middleton — or Windsor, or Saxe-Coburg, or whatever her new noble surname is — is pregnant.
And if you care, you need to reassess the priorities and interests in your life.
“Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.” — Jimmy Breslin
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GOD’S PISSED, AS USUAL
You had to know this was coming: Some whacked-out preacher says Big Sandy is God’s way of saying FU to America.
No, he didn’t actually drop the F-bomb. I wish he would have; I would have had more respect for the dumb bastard if he had.
O, Heavenly Father, Please Count To Ten
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I’m not going to link to the story or reveal the preacher’s name. He doesn’t need me to pimp for him. And no one other than his deluded flock has heard of him before this. Now, of course, his name has gone national.
I’ll only say it’s his fervent belief that the god he prays to on his knees each and every night has thrown the gargantuan storm at the Eastern Seaboard because this land is full of lesbians, gays, and other miscreants. Not only that but President Obama is as thick as thieves with the Muslim Brotherhood and together they aim to destroy this holy land.
Which is weird because I thought he’d just finished saying god was in the process of doing that very thing. So, wouldn’t he figure that Obama and the Muslim boys are doing god’s work?
Oh, and somehow Mitt Romney has teed off the creator of the universe big time, too, only I didn’t quite catch how.
Take That, Queers And Arabs!
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You know, this god needs to have a nice glass of wine or go for a massage. He’s constantly suffering from the red ass.
Maybe the prayers of the faithful should go something like, “Chill, Big Guy. It’ll all be cool. Take a breath.”
Funny how things like the Holocaust or Joseph Stalin’s purges or this nation wiping out the Amerinds failed to elicit a peep from the almighty daddy-o but a couple of guys making out makes him insane. I think he’s repressing something.
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REAL REPORTERS
I just subscribed to a muckraking website that was recommended to me by a loyal Book Corner customer. FairWarning describes itself as a purveyor of “news of safety, health, and corporate conduct.” Which means it ought to be in business for at least the rest of this millennium.
Myron Levin: A Reporter, Not A Movie Star
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Here’s a sample of headlines it has run recently:
Oil companies Rarely Punished for North Sea Spills
Senate Report Points to Medtronic’s Manipulation of “Independent” Medical Research
Young Blacks Awash in Alcohol Ads, Study Says
Commentary: A Strange Indifference to Highway Carnage
Libertarian Group Prepares Bogus “Addendum” to Undermine Federal Climate Science Report
Founder Myron Levin founded the site after working as an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times for 20 years. Photos of his staff portray a gang that’s decidedly seriously and flamboyantly non-glamorous. That’s cool by me — of the several billion brain cells I possess I’ve assigned perhaps six to the maniacal grin of Katie Couric and the rest of her colleagues in the corporate media “news” industry.
Please Stop It, Katie
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In any case Levin and company are less polemic than the likes of Democracy Now! and far less precious than NPR. They are pure journalists, and isn’t that refreshing?
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NIGHTMARE, NOW
Here’s today’s CNN online headline:
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Let’s get serious about things now. This is the nightmare we’ve been dreading ever since the two words “climate” and “change” were first put together by scientists.
You wonder why I’m so dismissive of corporate media news? This is the prime case in point. They insist on presenting the faux arguments of climate change deniers in the interest of some weird view of journalistic balance. It’d be like Walter Cronkite interviewing a representative of the Flat Earth Society while the Gemini astronauts circled the globe.
That Curved Surface Is Merely An Illusion, Walter
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IT’S RAINING MEN
In honor of Sandy and dedicated to the loon preacher mentioned above, here are The Weathergirls, AKA Two Tons of Fun, with the biggest gay anthem of all time.
My club pals and I would go to the cavernous boy dance bars after hours back when we were young, trim, and loathe to ever go to sleep. The DJs would boost the bass and volume on this track to the point that I’m surprised the foundations and masonry of nearby structures didn’t crack. The joint would smell of leather, sweat, poppers, and Clinique. And we’d dance ourselves into delirium.
Don’t ask me how we survived it all.
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The only events listings you need in Bloomington.
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Tuesday, October 30th, 2012
VOTE ◗ Two locations for early voting in Monroe County today:
The Curry Building, 214 W. Seventh St.; 8am-6pm
Indiana University Assembly Hall, South Lobby, 1001 E. 17th St.; 10am-6pm
STUDIO TOUR ◗ Brown County, various locations — The Backroads of Brown County Studio Tour, free, self-guided tour of 16 local artists’ & craftspersons’ studios; 10am-5pm, through October
MUSIC ◗ IU Ford-Crawford Hall — Doctoral Recital: Ji Hyun Kim on piano; 5pm
MIXER ◗ Coaches Bar & Grill — Young Professionals of Blooomington, monthly event; 5:30-8:30pm
SCIENCE ◗ Lake Monroe, Paynetown SRA Activity Center — Citizen Scientist Quarterly Meeting, Help collect data to track animal populations and monitor habitats; 6-8pm
MUSIC ◗ Cafe Django — Jazz Jam, Featuring Bloomington’s young artists; 7pm
FILM & DISCUSSION ◗ IUCinema — “The Healthcare Movie,” Followed by discussion led by Rob Stone, MD, Director of Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan, Kosali Simon, PhD, & Beth Cate, JD; 7-9pm
COMMUNITY MEETING ◗ Monroe County Public Library — After Incarceration: Employment Matters, Presented by Decarcerate Monroe County; 7pm
MUSIC ◗ The Player’s Pub — Blues Jam, Hosted by Bottom Road Blues Band; 8pm
GAMES ◗ The Root Cellar at Farm Bloomington — Team trivia; 8pm
MUSIC ◗ IU Ford-Crawford Hall — Hot Tuesdays: Jazz Combos, Wataru Niimori Group & Chris Knight Group; 8:30pm
The deep thinkers who run the outfit say nicknames are the gateway to bullying.
Nicknames.
Apparently, the Scouts believe bullies often start their nefarious work the moment they label a kid. Which is true.
If I recall correctly from my days at school, bullies also often begin terrorizing their victims at lunch time. Therefore I propose we crack down on eating.
Curly was right.
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PAY YOUR BILLS
The Loved One phoned in our annual contribution to WFIU Saturday morning.
Have you thrown a little green the station’s way yet?
See, competing groups of playwrights, directors, and actors were given a theme, a prop, and a line Friday night. They were to turn these simple raw materials into 10-minute plays, all shined-up, spiffied, and ready for the stage a mere 24 hours later.
The group deemed best Saturday night was called the Far-Off Broadway Bombers. Their playlet, “The Games,” was written by C. Neil Parsons, directed by Brian Donnelly and Benita Brown, and performed by Anthony Bradburn, Katie Becker, and David Sheehan.
The Far-Off Broadway Bombers
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What? You missed it?
Your penance is to attend at least one BPP production this coming year. The next play up is “Lemonade” by Mark Krause. It has won the Woodward/Newman Drama Award and runs from November 30th through December 15th.
Go and sin no more.
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SKY BLINDNESS
Believe me, folks, this is all too true:
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Bloomington proper seems to straddle the border between the suburban sky and the rural sky. The sky above Chez Pencil gets a tad closer to the brilliance of the dark sky.
Any time you get a chance, go out to a real dark sky area — the region south of Paoli and French Lick, for example — and simply look up.
You won’t need a fancy telescope or even binoculars, only your eyes.
You’ll be reminded that we’re essentially nothing in this Universe.
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The only events listings you need in Bloomington.
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Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012
VOTE TODAY ◗ Two Locations, Bloomington:
The Curry Building, 214 W. Seventh St.; 8am-6pm
Evangelical Community Church, 503 S. High St.; 10am-6pm
STUDIO TOUR ◗ Brown County, various locations — The Backroads of Brown County Studio Tour, free, self-guided tour of 16 local artists’ & craftspersons’ studios; 10am-5pm, through October
PHOTOGRAPHY ◗ IU Lilly Library, Slocum Room — Special exhibit: “Violentology: A Manual of the Colombian Conflict“; 10:30am
MUSIC ◗ IU Auer Hall — Doctoral Recital: Eunice Park on piano; 5pm
LECTURE ◗ ◗ IU Memorial Union — “After They’re Gone: Afghanistan After 2014,” Presnted by Timor Sharan of the USAID project; 5:30pm
MUSIC ◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Lloyd Wood; 7-9pm
DISCUSSION ◗ Monroe County Public Library — “Organizing to Combat Wage Theft,” Led by Sung Yeon Choi-Morrow & Dianne Enriquez of Interfaith Worker Justice; 7pm
LECTURE ◗ IU Maurer School of Law, Moot Court Room — Patten Lecture: “Whats Does Genocide Look Like? And How Do We Know It When We See It?“; 7:30-9pm
LECTURE ◗ IU Kelley School of Business, Rm. 223, Auditorium — “From Auschwitz to Forgiveness,” Presented by Eva Kor as part of the IU Holocaust Awareness Program; 7:30-9:30pm
MUSIC ◗ IU Auer Hall — Octubafest: Guest Recital, Roland Szentpali; 8pm
GAMES ◗ The Root Cellar at Farm Bloomington — Team trivia; 8pm
MUSIC ◗ The Player’s Pub — Blues Jam hosted by Fistful of Bacon; 8pm
MUSIC ◗ IU Ford-Crawford Hall — Hot Tuesdays: Jazz Combos: Nate Anderson Group, Alejandro Papachryssanthou Group; 8:30pm
MUSIC ◗ The Bishop — Hallowe’en Celebration: The Gantle Shades, Apollo Quad, Dingo Duster; 9pm
“I think we ought to move tanks, the whole goddamned thing. Put a division in there, if necessary. It’s time for action on it. If some Indians get shot, that’s too goddamned bad. If some Americans get shot, that too bad, too.” — Richard M. Nixon on the Wounded Knee protest, 1973.
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A LIFE: JULY 19, 1922 — OCTOBER 21, 2012
George McGovern
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PUBLIC BROADCASTING’S NEWEST STAR
I had a chat with one of the big shots from the shakedown department at a large Midwest NPR station this past week.
This person said the station had just completed its fall fund drive and it was a smash this year.
The station, according to the nabob, breezed way past its fundraising goal.
“Hmm, why do you suppose?” I asked.
“Oh, simple,” the person said. “The minute Mitt Romney started talking about Big Bird the calls started coming in. And this was even before the fund drive began.”
Fundraisers: Ray Magliozzi, Mitt Romney, & Tom Magliozzi
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Thanks, Mitt.
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LOVE AND MARRIAGE
As you know, plaster saints from coast to coast can hardly pray themselves to sleep at night for fear that gay marriage will be imposed upon them tomorrow morning.
Because, you know, all heterosexual marriages will be declared null and void and everyone will be compelled to marry and get naked with a member of their own gender. I wonder who my government-mandated new spouse will be. Pat Murphy?
Murph & Big Mike: Dear God, Please, No
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Yeesh, no wonder the pious of this holy land are petrified.
Anyway, they’re fighting gay marriage like the deranged tigers they are. For instance, the town of Springfield, Missouri, this summer considered adding sexual orientation and gender identity to its boilerplate human rights ordinance. Natch, the righteous of Springfield started quaking and hollering that the world was hurtling toward hell.
The Springfield City Council held hearings during which the public was allowed to comment on the whole shebang. Some pastor got up and began railing about “the word of god” and “the immorality and lawlessness that will be characteristic of the last days.”
He went on to say…, oh, just watch it.
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Hehehe. Neat, huh?
By the way, Springfield’s official nickname is “The Queen City of the Ozarks.”
Is there any need for comedy writers anymore?
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The only events listings you need in Bloomington.
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Sunday, October 21st, 2012
MUSIC ◗ IU Ford-Crawford Hall — 3rd Annual Indiana International Guitar Festival & Competition, Semi-finals of competition; 10am-1pm
MUSIC ◗ IU Sweeney Hall — 3rd Annual Indiana International Guitar Festival & Competition, Youth competition; 10am-3pm
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
SPORTS ◗ IU Field Hockey Complex — Hoosier women’s field hockey vs. Villanova; Noon
MUSIC ◗ IU Ford-Crawford Hall — Octubafest, Daniel Perantoni, director; 7pm
STAGE ◗ Bloomington Playwrights Project — Ike & Julie Arnov PlayOffs, Writers, directors, & actors stage original mini-plays using themes, props, and single lines given to them 24 hours previously, Mayor Mark Kruzan will open the proceedings; 7:30pm
“You want to know whether we’re better off? I’ve got a little bumper sticker for you: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.” — Vice President Joe Biden
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UNION
The day after Labor Day.
Up in Chicago, the city’s Daley Center Plaza was chock full of people showing support for the Chicago Teachers Union yesterday.
Here’s one picture of the scene from radical attorney Jerry Boyle:
Chicago’s Daley Center Plaza, Labor Day, 2012
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And I’ll bet you thought nobody cared about unions anymore.
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THE RYDER AND US
Peter LoPilato’s Ryder Film Series and magazine get wrapped up in a spanking new website today.
And your fave Bloomington events listings move to that address.
What used to be known as The Electron Pencil’s “GO!” now is a daily blog on The Ryder’s shiny internet home.
So get your mouse-clicking, touchpad mashing finger limbered up: From now on you can get Bloomington’s finest hot air here and then click over to The Ryder to help you make the day’s plans. Oh, and you can read about the movies Peter will be showing this coming weekend and you can peruse current and past editions of The Ryder mag online.
What more do you need in life?
[At the time this post was published, the Runskip bosses had not put the new Ryder site up yet. So be patient. I’ll get a link to you as soon as it’s released to me.]
A Stanford University study indicates that there is scant evidence organic foods have much added benefit. That is, if you’re an organic foodie, your health isn’t more likely to be better, you’re not getting more nutrients from what you eat, and your grub doesn’t necessarily taste better.
Worth It?
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Don’t get me wrong, I like eating food that’s free of chemical pesticides. And keep in mind I used to be part of the Whole Foods Market education department. It was my job to explain the federal organic program and WFM’s efforts to operate within that law.
So I had intimate knowledge of organics.
Knowing what I knew, I decided very early on that I needn’t waste my dough buying only organic fruits and vegetables or even potato chips. And yes, you can get organic junk food.
That was one of the things that turned me off organics. They are costly. Organics are privileged white people’s way of telling themselves they’re eating better the the rest of the sweaty crowd.
That’s the kind of attitude Right Wingers love to focus on and exaggerate when they’re trying to convince the public that liberals and progressives rank below peeping toms on the social scale.
I’ve long felt that the whole organics thing is the Left’s vestige of Puritanism. My food is holy and clean, the foodies seem to be saying.
I’m Gonna Live Forever!
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Me? I know the world is filthy and full of peril. I do my best to avoid risk, still keeping in mind that some microorganism, some parasite, some tornado or flood, or some wild eyed religious fundamentalist just might kick the crap out of me.
There is no guarantee of anything. And organics are no guarantee of better food.
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BIDEN BITIN’
A couple of things about today’s quote.
Generally, I avoid quoting current politicians spouting their partisan bull. But with the 2012 presidential campaign racing into the homestretch, I’ll be wearing my colors until the first Tuesday in November. It’s bull season.
The site is dedicated to amassing pix of the Veep working as a trencherman.
Someone even sneaked in a shot of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attacking a submarine. Here it is:
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Sure, it’s probably a campaign photo op but, still, ya gotta love a woman who’s not afraid to get her hands greasy.
I have a pal who’s been married for more than 30 years. He says he knew his future blushing bride was the one for him on their very first date: They went out to eat and she mopped up her plate in record time and then reached over to spear morsels from his dish.
“She was a champion eater,” he says proudly.
And the best part is, according to my pal, she’s as svelte now as she was when she was a callow 24-year-old.
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PHILOSOPHICAL DIFFERENCES?
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THINK
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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.
“That’s one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.” — Neil Armstrong (1930-2012)
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STEEL WILL
Forget Columbus. Forget all the rest of the pirates and rapists and genocide artists and pathological acquisitors we were force-fed as heroes in elementary school.
Neil Armstrong and his mates, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, rode in a shiny white tin can a quarter million miles away from Earth to a place where there was no air, no water, no natives to beg for help from (then kill) — I mean, honestly, can you imagine any more audacious, courageous thing to do?
Aldrin, Collins & Armstrong
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Farewell, explorer.
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THE CAPITOL OF LIES
Make sure to catch this weekend’s edition of “On the Media.” Host Bob Garfield interviews former NPR Congressional Correspondent Andrea Seabrook, who quit her job, basically because she was sick of the bullshit spewing from the mouths of politicians these days.
Andrea Seabrook
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Which is admirable — to an extent.
Seabrook tells Garfield she’s running from lies. “The lies that I’m talking about are just the complete and total disingenuousness of almost everything that’s said all day long in the US Capitol.”
She gives examples of how pols from both parties break the 8th Commandment as a matter of course.
The obvious question is, why do Seabrook and her colleagues let the bums get away with it? She acknowledges their complicity in the great lies. Journalists, she says, collude with pols “by covering what politicians say all day every day, rather than what they don’t say. As journalists, walking into a situation where we know it’s political theater and then recording those words and playing them back to the American people as if they were news plays into the game that they’re playing.”
House Of Lies
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Still, she doesn’t say why she continued to play the game even after recognizing that she’d been drawn in. Why, for instance, did Seabrook never say to a pol who was lying, bald-faced, to her, “That’s not true! Why do you say such things?”
Seabrook is starting a new website called DecodeDC which, she promises, will dig beneath the lies.
The problem is only political geeks and policy wonks will go to her site. The vast majority of the citizenry will be stuck with commercial media reporters who not only play the game, but love it.
Maybe Seabrook is heroic for chucking it all. Maybe it would have been more heroic had she stuck it out with NPR and rebelled from within.
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THIS. IS. SCARY.
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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.
◗ First United Methodist Church — Voices United: Benefit for Interfaith Winter Shelter, featuring Heidi Grant Murphy, Kevin Murphy, Grey Larsen & Cindy Kallet, Rachel Caswell, Tom Walsh, Jeremy Allen, Steve Zegree; 4pm
“I look at an ant and I see myself: a native South African, endowed by nature with a strength much greater than my size so I might cope with the weight of a racism that crushes my spirit.” — Miriam Makeba
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THE COLOR OF FEAR
NPR’s Linda Wertheimer this morning on Weekend Edition Sunday pointed out that this year’s presidential election will be the first in our history in which no one on the major parties’ tickets is a WASP.
Perhaps that explains why so many people are freaked out — still — about Barack Obama.
See? See? That’s The Nazi Salute!
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The world that every American once knew and too many are terrified to leave, is gone.
And speaking of terrifying, yet another music star has blown verbal chunks about the Prez. Hank Williams, Jr., who last year compared Barack Obama to Hitler (natch, they were both half-black men who studied at Harvard Law), now ups the ante. Yesterday, the man who once asked Are you ready for some football?,declared the President of the United States to be a Muslim who not only hates the military but the rest of the nation, for good measure.
Proof!
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Williams, Jr. sings something called “Take Back Our Country.” He needn’t add, …From all those scary brown people.
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LET’S GO TO INDIANA!
Lauren Spierer’s disappearance last year raised a puzzler.
Why do so many Indiana University students come from suburban New York City?
IU’s Prep School Attendance Boundaries
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With a record 7590 freshmen expected to attend IU this semester, many of them will come from the tri-state area including New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. The Spierer family hails from Edgemont, north of the big city.
Edgemont is a part of the town of Greenville in Westchester County, a tony enclave that through the years has been home to the likes of Linda McCartney, Bugsy Seigel, Walter Winchell, and Billy Collins, the former US poet laureate.
It’s funny how certain campuses become desirable destinations for specific matriculate populations. For instance, it was well-known in my old Chicago area that the University of Wisconsin in Madison drew a disproportionate number of northwest suburban Jewish kids.
I suppose the Madison thing makes sense because it falls into that Goldilocks zone for college students: far enough away from mom and dad to not worry that they can drop in at a moment’s notice but near enough to dash back home for a laundry run and a good warm meal, PRN.
Bloomington, Indiana seems an odd choice for Eastern Seaboard kids and their megalopolis classmates who might want to run back home in a six-hour or less drive.
Any ideas?
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GLEE
Indulge me for a moment. Today is the 43rd anniversary of the most exciting moment I’ve ever experienced as a rabid Chicago Cubs fan.
The Braves that afternoon were led by one Henry Louis Aaron, who’d go on to become baseball’s all-time home run king.
The sun was bright, a pleasant lake wind blew in from the northeast, and the Cubs were in first place, on their way to their first World Series since World War II and — fingers crossed — their first championship since the Peloponnesian War.
In a summer during which two human beings had stepped on the moon and nearly half a million people jammed Max Yasgur’s farm just to be able to brag to their grandchildren that they’d attended Woodstock, the Cubs racing for a World Series was the most jaw-dropping miracle yet.
And the high point of the season was Kenny’s gem.
Basking In The Glory
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I watched that game from a bleacher seat under the centerfield scoreboard at Wrigley Field.
I was 13 years old.
Even now, nearly half a century later, I still believe had I died that afternoon, I’d have gone happy.
Have pity on this aching soul: don’t ask me to recount the ensuing weeks. Nor, for that matter, the ensuing decades.
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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.
So, this week’s hypothetical is “What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?”
Not Even The Cuban Missile, Aroldis Chapman, Can Throw That Fast
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As you know, the speed of light is unimaginably fast, almost as fast as Regina Moore‘s crew of parking ticket scribblers (and, yeah, I’m sitting on a double-sawbuck scold slip from Friday, so that’s why the Moore Militia is on my mind.)
Anyway, you couldn’t begin to guess what would happen in such a hyper-fastball scenario unless you’d spent the last 15 years of your life holed up working out ciphers and avoiding any meaningful contact with the opposite sex.
Suffice it to say if a human baseball pitcher had the physical capability to accelerate an approximately 3-inch-diameter spheroid made of horsehide wrapped around coiled yarn centered on a cork core to a velocity of around 167,653.8 miles per hour (the speed of light, c, times .9), the immediate vicinity around the pitcher’s mound and batter’s box would be transformed indeed.
As in, oh, say, Hiroshima at 8:16 am, August 6th, 1945.
Hit By Pitch, Batter Entitled To First Base
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The happy news is the team at bat now has a rally going.
Who sez science isn’t fun?
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KEEPING IN TOUCH
Am I gonna have to make this a regular feature?
Last week I ran a screed about the gossipy, reality-show-like news that CNN has been foisting upon the public during these momentous times.
Wars, the potential for economic collapse, dramatic global climate change events, and even the political fight over women’s wombs all seem to be below-the-fold fodder for cable TV’s most venerable news outfit.
Yeah, It’s Dry — Hey, Did That Magazine Really Photoshop Kate Middleton?
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At the time, I didn’t think CNN’s editorial choices could get any more ludicrous.
I was wrong.
These are among the most important happenings and issues on planet Earth within the last 24 hours, according to the Cable News Network of Atlanta, USA:
Billionaire’s son charged in wife’s death
Shark attacks: Is “Jaws” back?
Mash up: Jealousy in time of drought
Obamas find spotlight on “kiss cam”
New diet drug approved by FDA
Car falls into elevator shaft
Sex with ex helps her lose weight
It may be OK to get sick in July
Bobcat breaks into prison
Michael Vick: I won’t get a pit bull
Tattoos: How young is too young?
Stunt driver’s video goes viral
Parents, let your kids play
Daughter’s in love, Dad feels jilted
Now not only are CNN’s stories vacuous, they’re getting downright creepy. I mean, honestly, “Dad feels jilted”?
Sorta reminds me of Cary Grant as the newspaper publisher Walter Burns, shouting orders on the phone to his editors in “His Girl Friday.” (Please click — it’s the entire movie.)
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No, no, never mind the Chinese earthquake for heaven’s sake….
Look, I don’t care if there’s a million dead….
No, no, junk the Polish Corridor….
Take all those Miss America pictures off Page Six….
Take Hitler and stick him on the funny page….
No, no, leave the rooster story alone — that’s human interest.
Of course, that was farce. How, then, to describe CNN?
Just in case you’re tempted to swallow it, take some advice from a man whose girth rivals that of a cement mixer.
Hi!
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The only “secret” for losing weight is eat less and exercise more.
End of sermon.
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“WASN’T THAT A PERFECT, PERFECT SHOT!”
Finally, speaking of things that go boom, wait’ll you see this vid.
Apparently, the government of this holy land became concerned in the 1950s about the citizenry’s troublesome fears of nuclear annihilation. And, if we weren’t experiencing existential angst over the end of civilization, we were fretting at the very least that a nearby nuclear explosion might muss up our hair.
Ergo, the feds put together some propaganda to dispel such silly talk.
Like this:
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Yup. The five knuckleheads clustered underneath the unleashing of the primal forces of the universe actually volunteered to do so. As in, “Sure, I’ll do it. Why not?”
Presumably, they kissed their wives and children goodbye before they dashed off to work that day.
Of even greater fascination is the reaction of the voiceover announcer, who also was present. I’d swear the man is experiencing an orgasm.
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