Category Archives: Republican Party

09/20/2012
4 Comments
Barack Obama, Beatles, Donald Trump, Freedom 95 Indianapolis, George W. Bush, HL Mencken, Jeff Brantley, John Bolton, Laura Ingraham, Michael Savage, Mitt Romney, Republican Party, Sean Hannity, Steve Bartman, WXLW-AM

The Pencil Today:

✍

THE QUOTE

“In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.” — HL Mencken

▲

GO OUT

Hey, GO! is back home.

✍

Yeah, we were scheduled to start running our indispensable events listings on the new Ryder Magazine and Film Series website ages ago but, like all construction projects, it’s running late. Way, way late.

So we’ve decided to run the listings on The Pencil until the Ryder’s ready to go.

We know you’re ready to go — so go to GO! and figure out what you’re going to do today.

▲

FREEDOM IS DEPRESSING

Indy radio station WXLW-AM switched to conservative talk from sports talk on September 10th.

The station, which billed itself as XL 950 until ten days ago, now calls itself Freedom 95. It features such deep thinkers as Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and Michael Savage.

Laura Ingraham: Ann Coulter-Lite

✍

Now, normally I’d run from political talk radio as swiftly as I would from the skunk that’s been hanging around my front yard in the middle of the night recently. That goes for liberal talk as well as conservative talk, although there isn’t much liberal talk radio in this holy land and it’s an especially rare commodity in these parts.

But I’ve been catching bits and pieces of Freedom 95’s new act because the station is programmed into my car radio. See, XL 95 was part of the Cincinnati Reds radio network until the programming shift.

Anybody who’s read this space knows I’m a rabid Cubs fan. “Rabid” being the operative word — I foam at the mouth and exhibit other signs of madness at the mere mention of the night of October 14th, 2003. But as much as I am a Cubs partisan, I’m equally devoted to the sport of baseball in general.

The Bartman Moment

✍

I have absolutely zero rooting interest in the Reds. In fact, a vestigial distaste for them still lingers from the early 1970s when they were positioned as the short-haired, beardless, mustache-less, clean-cut, all-American boys — Nixon’s Team, as it were. Still, my passion for the game overcame my prejudice when I found that XL 950 offerede the only Major League Baseball broadcasts over the local airwaves. It had become a habit for me to tune the radio to AM 950 to see if there was a game on whenever I got into the car in the evening.

And then ten days ago, rather than hear the Texas drawl of “The Cowboy,” Reds announcer Jeff Brantley, talking balls and strikes, I was assaulted by the drone of reactionaries trying to drum up rage at the Muslim mole who now occupies the White House.

Last night I packed Steve the Dog into the car for one of our regular walks at Lake Monroe. As usual, I flicked on the radio and pressed the button for 950, hoping to catch the Reds playing, coincidentally enough, at Wrigley Field.

The Cubs’ David DeJesus Misplays A Ball In Last Night’s Loss

✍

And again, I was reminded that my little diversion has been snatched away. The grating, agitating voice of Michael Savage spewed out of the speakers. Before I had a chance to reflexively flip the station, I became drawn in by his tales.

Savage was speculating on the make-up of the Mitt Romney cabinet. Romney, Savage is certain, will triumph (along with goodness, wholesomeness, whiteness, and unfettered capitalism) over Barack Obama in the November election. Savage threw out dozens of names for the various cabinet departments, including that of John Bolton for Secretary of State.

Bolton, you may recall, was George W. Bush’s ambassador to to United Nations. He is to diplomacy what a bacon double-cheeseburger is to good nutrition.

Bang — You’re Dead!

✍

Anyway, once Savage cleaned up at State, he turned to the putative next president’s financial consigliere. Why haven’t we all been hearing, Savage wondered aloud, the name Donald Trump?

Trump, Savage explained, was the only Republican who could have whomped Obama. Truth. I heard him say this with my own fouled ears.

Romney will edge the best the Kanyan takeover conspiracy has to offer, sure, Savage allowed. But Trump would have mauled Obama with a good 20 percent plurality.

You Had Your Chance, America

✍

Now, the sane among us recall Trump being unable to garner even ten percent support among likely Republican voters when he dropped out of the race in the spring. I’d imagine a poll of all Americans would indicate fewer than ten percent wonder what the point of existence is when it allows for the presence in it of Trump himself.

But Savage is certain Trump would wrest the nation from the clutches of the imams, with whom Barack Obama is inextricably tied.

And here’s why. Obama has tanked the American economy, Savage asserts, conveniently forgetting a few little things like the real estate crash, the stock market crash, and the Wall Street/big biz scandals that all occurred pre-Obama bin Laden.

Because Obama has destroyed America’s wealth, there are now scads of poor people. The poor, Savage pronounced, would welcome a Trump White House with open arms.

Again, truth. I heard these things with my own ears.

The media, Savage bleated, would have you believe the poor hate the rich. Au contraire, Savage would say if he could tolerate the existence of languages other than Ma & Pa Kettle’s sacred English.

Savage explained: The poor trust the rich to run this blessed land. The poor, he continued, know that the rich have their best interests at heart.

Everything I Do, I Do For The Poor!

✍

Yeesh.

Can the Republican Party really be this disconnected from reality?

Talk about rabid.

 ▲

BABY, YOU’RE A RICH MAN

You’ve heard of these guys, no?

▲

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.

Thursday, September 20th, 2012

MUSIC FESTIVAL ◗ Downtown Bloomington, various locations — Lotus World Music & Arts Festival; though Sunday, September 23rd, today’s acts:

  • At the Buskirk Chumley Theater — Lotus Thursday with Chris Smither & Ben Sollee; 7:30pm

MUSIC FESTIVAL ◗ Bill Monroe Memorial Music Park & Campground — 38th Annual Bill Monroe Bluegrass Hall of Fame & Uncle Pen Days; through Saturday, September 22nd, today’s acts:

  • Audie Blaylock & Redline, The Grascals, Grasstowne, Joe Mullins & The Radio Ramblers, Sisk & Ramblers Choice, Larry Efaw & Mountaineers, Karl Shiflett & The Big Country Show, Tim Graves, Daryl Mosley & Farm Country

LECTURE ◗ IU Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center, Bridgewaters Lounge — “After Global Hollywood: The Prospects and Perils of Chinese Media Capital,” presented by Michael Curtin; 4:30pm

MUSIC ◗ Bear’s Place — Tribute to John Coltrane; 5:30pm

MUSIC ◗ The Player’s Pub — Built for Comfort; 6:30pm

BOOKS ◗ IU Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center — John Edgar Wideman reads from his works, free & open to the public; 6:30pm

POETRY & MUSIC ◗ Blue Studio Gallery — Poets Tony Brewer * Travers Marks read from their works, Jazz by Kyle Quass; 6:30pm

FREE CLASSES ◗ Hinkle-Garton Farmstead Historic Site — Introduction to Irish Gaelic, 1st of eight weekly sessions through November 15th; 6:30pm

POLITICS ◗ Monroe County Public Library — League of Women Voters Candidate Forum: State SEnate, District 40, and General Assembly, District 46, candidates; 7pm

LECTURE ◗ ISU University Hall Theater, Terre Haute — University Speakers Series: Lee Hamilton; 7pm

NATURE ◗ Monroe County Public Library — “The Monarch MIgration,” presented by Rachel Gliesmann; 7pm

PANEL DISCUSSION ◗ IU Asian Cultural Center — “A Changed America,” the effect of Asian & Latino immigrants on American culture, co-presented by the ACC & the Latino Cultural Center; 7pm

MUSIC ◗ Cafe Django — Quinn Sternberg Quartet; 7:30pm

MUSIC ◗ Rachael’s Cafe — Yer Heart, Wringer, The Shell Corp., Neal Meyer; 8pm

MUSIC ◗ Max’s Place — Tarpaper Turley; 8pm

FILM ◗ IU Memorial Union — UB Films: “The Amazing Spiderman;” 8pm

GAMES ◗ Serendipity Martini Bar — Team trivia; 8:30pm

MUSIC ◗ The Bluebird — Three Story Hill, Elephant Quiz; 9pm

MUSIC ◗ The Bishop — Mono, Chris Brokaw; 9:30pm

MUSIC ◗ Max’s Place — Elsie White; 10pm

FILM ◗ IU Memorial Union — UB Films: “The Amazing Spiderman;”11pm

ONGOING:

ART ◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:

  • “The Bolognese School,” by Annibale & Agostino Carracci, through September 16th
  • “New Acquisitions,” David Hockney; through October 21st
  • “Paragons of Filial Piety,” by Utagawa Kuniyoshi; through December 31st
  • “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers,” by Julia Margaret, Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan; through December 31st
  • “French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century;” through December 31st
  • Celebration of Cuban Art & Film: Pop-art by Joe Tilson; through December 31st
  • “Workers of the World, Unite!” through December 31st

ART ◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits:

  • “What It Means to Be Human,” by Michele Heather Pollock; through September 29th
  • “Land and Water,” by Ruth Kelly; through September 29th

ART ◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibit:

  • “Samenwerken,” Interdisciplinary collaborative multi-media works, Opening September 21st

ART ◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery — Exhibit:

  • “Ephemeral Ink: Selections of Tattoo Art from the Kinsey Institute Collection;” through September 21st

PHOTOGRAPHY ◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Exhibit:

  • “CUBAmistad” photos

ART ◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Exhibits:

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

BOOKS ◗ IU Lilly Library — Exhibit:

  • “Outsiders and Others:Arkham House, Weird Fiction, and the Legacy of HP Lovecraft;” through November 1st
  • “A World of Puzzles,” selections form the Slocum Puzzle Collection

PHOTOGRAPHY ◗ Soup’s On — Exhibit:

  • Celebration of Cuban Art & Culture: “CUBAmistad photos; through October

ART ◗ Boxcar Books — Exhibit:

  • Celebration of Cuban Art & Film: Papercuts by Ned Powell; through September

PHOTOGRAPHY ◗ Monroe County History Center — Exhibit:

  • “Bloomington: Then and Now,” presented by Bloomington Fading; through October 27th

ARTIFACTS ◗ Monroe County History Center — Exhibit:

  • “Doctors and Dentists: A Look into the Monroe County Medical professions“

▼

The Electron Pencil. Go there. Read. Like. Share.

08/29/2012
1 Comment
Bill Clinton, Dirty Harry, George W. Bush, Hurricane Katrina, Jimmy Carter, Julie Christie, Kristen Stewart, Margaret Thatcher, Meryl Streep, Michael D. Brown, Morning in America, Republican Party, Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Soviet Union, Tip O'Neill, Vietnam War

The Pencil Today:

✍

THE QUOTE

“I was born with a need to be the center of attention and, of course, you’re the center of the world when you’re acting.” — Julie Christie

▲

IT WAS SEVEN YEARS AGO TODAY

Former House Speaker Tip O’Neill once famously said, “All politics is local.”

I, less famously, counter: “All politics is theater.”

Most of the Republican Party’s formula for success since the late 1960s has been its ability to present its standard-bearers as tough guys, strong men, and decisive generals. The GOP has acted more as a talent agent than a producer of statesmen for the last 45 years.

Richard Nixon won the 1968 presidential election because he told the nation he would stand firm against the madness in the streets. He’d beat down the savage blacks who were threatening to explode out of their ghettos. And he’d swiftly kick the crap out of the North Vietnamese and bring the boys home.

Save Us, Dick

✍

We believed him. Just as many of us have believed pro wrestling is on the up and up and Judge Judy is our nation’s top jurist.

Ronald Reagan won the 1980 presidential election because he told us we were terrific and the 1984 campaign by telling us it was Morning in America. Ham that he was, he knew the Soviet Union was on its way out so he talked tough and thereby snatched all the credit for that empire’s inevitable collapse.

Make Us Feel Good About Ourselves, Ronnie

✍

Theater.

George W. Bush’s role as resolute CEO of the Great United States, Inc. propelled him to victory over a couple of namby pamby Dem opponents in 2000 and 2004. The nation was terrified of presidents who liked blow jobs, college educated eggheads who’d ponder us into paralysis, and crazy Arabs who’d blow up our cities. Bush was the antidote to all those existential threats.

Be The Boss, George

✍

But then came Hurricane Katrina and the theater went dark.

The worst natural disaster in America’s history presented Bush with a dramatic challenge he was unable to play. It was as if Kristen Stewart were cast in the role of Margaret Thatcher.

Streep As Thatcher; Stewart As, Um, Stewart

✍

Katrina’s president was a role that was written for Bill Clinton. He’d have set up a second White House in New Orleans. He’d have hugged the storm’s victims until his arms ached. Had Clinton been in office when Katrina hit, people would have been marveling to this day about how fabulous the federal government’s response was to the tragedy.

And in the most practical sense, Clinton wouldn’t have done a thing different than Bush did.

Bush knew how to play the business executive and the military commander. He had a feel for the role of the manly hero who saves the day.

His greatest line before his downfall was, “They hate us for our freedoms.”

Which was, of course, as phony a line as, say, “Go ahead, make my day,” or “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”

“Well, do ya, punk?”

✍

But we in this holy land have always been a cooperative audience. We’ll forgive any political actor for chewing the scenery as long as it makes us feel good. It’s only when pols don’t make us feel all tingly and warm or bold and adventurous that we turn on them.

Witness Jimmy Carter’s malaise speech. Bye bye, Jimmy.

✍

Bush’s Carter moment came when he uttered those unforgettable words, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

People were still sitting on rooftops waiting to be rescued when Bush said that. The Superdome was filled with refugees at the time of the quote. New Orleans cops were shooting up citizens.

Yet Bush found it important to bestow frat boy bonhomie upon his emergency response point man at that moment in time.

Bush Takes It All In From Above

✍

And like that, Bush was finished. No matter that no government could ever have responded adequately to Katrina. Nothing like it had ever happened before in America.

But when nature sucker punches us in the belly, we have to blame someone. And it’s not just Americans who react that way. Be it an earthquake in Afghanistan or a flood in India, people will shriek “Where’s our government?” even as the government is digging itself out of the rubble.

At times like that, the first and best thing government can do is assure us everything will turn out alright. The boys in charge must tell us that they’ll move heaven and Earth to set our lives right again.

Bush didn’t know that. He was the wrong actor for the part.

Theater.

▲

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

❏ I Love Charts — Life as seen through charts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

❏ Mental Floss — Facts.

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

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

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

❏ The Daily Puppy — So shoot me.

▲

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

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Music: Barbara McGuire; 6-8:30pm

◗ Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center — Buddhism in Everyday Life Series: Ani Choekye presents “What Are Realizations?”; 6:30pm

◗ Unity Church — Bloomington Peace Choir weekly meeting, new members welcome; 7pm

◗ The Player’s Pub — Music: Stardusters; 7:30pm

◗ Max’s Place — Open mic; 7:30pm

◗ Harmony School — Contra dancing; 8-10:30pm

◗ The Bluebird — Music: Rod Tufcurls & the Benchpress; 9pm

◗ IU Kirkwood Observatory — Open house, public viewing through the main telescope; 9:30pm

◗ The Bishop — Music: Kentucky Nightmare, Panic Strikes a Chord, Dead Beach; 9:30pm

ONGOING

◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits:

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

◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:

  • “A Tribute to William Zimmerman,” wildlife artist; through September 9th

  • Willi Baumeister, “Baumeister in Print”; through September 9th

  • Annibale and Agostino Carracci, “The Bolognese School”; through September 16th

  • “Contemporary Explorations: Paintings by Contemporary Native American Artists”; through October 14th

  • David Hockney, “New Acquisitions”; through October 21st

  • Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “Paragons of Filial Piety”; through fall semester 2012

  • Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan, “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers”; through December 31st

  • “French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century”; through December 31st

◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibits:

  • “Media Life,” drawings and animation by Miek von Dongen; through September 15th

  • “Axe of Vengeance: Ghanaian Film Posters and Film Viewing Culture”; through September 15th

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

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

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

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

▲

08/27/2012
Leave a comment
Flavorwire, Guns, Hondo Thompson, Indiana State University Shooting, Indianapolis Star, Lewis Black, Martin Amis, Muslim Extermists, Nuclear Weapons, Orson Welles, Republican Party, Terre Haute, Vigo County, Zager and Evans

The Pencil Today:

✍

THE QUOTE

“I don’t say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could.” — Orson Welles

▲

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

✍

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.

▲

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

✍

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.

Anyway, Flavorwire on the Brit’s birthday ran a list of “10 Things Martin Amis Loves to Hate.” Here are a few of them:

  • Growing old
  • Television and the media
  • Religion

I don’t know about you but so far he seems perfectly reasonable.

▲

PRIVATE PARTY

How can you not love the one-in-a-million Hondo Thompson?

He posted this howler this morning:

▲

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.

▲

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

❏ I Love Charts — Life as seen through charts.

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

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

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

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

From I Fucking Love Science

✍

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

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

❏ Mental Floss — Facts.

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

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

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

❏ The Daily Puppy — So shoot me.

The Daily Puppy: Liv, The Border Collie Mix

▲

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

Monday, August 27, 2012

◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Music: Rich Groner; 6-8:30pm

◗ Western Skateland — Bleeding Heartland Rollergirls Roller Derby Skills Camp, audition for Bloomington’s WFTDA teams; 6:30pm

◗ City Hall, City Council chambers — State Superintendent of Public Instruction Candidates Forum; 7-9pm

◗ IU Cinema — Film: “Inglorious Basterds”; 7pm

◗ The Player’s Pub — Music: Songwriter Showcase; 8pm

◗ IU Memorial Union, Georgian Room — Free lessons, IU Swing Dance Club; 8pm

◗ The Bishop — Music: Sundress, Living Well; 9pm

◗ The Bluebird — Dave Walters karaoke; 9pm

ONGOING

◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits:

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

◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:

  • “A Tribute to William Zimmerman,” wildlife artist; through September 9th

  • Willi Baumeister, “Baumeister in Print”; through September 9th

  • Annibale and Agostino Carracci, “The Bolognese School”; through September 16th

  • “Contemporary Explorations: Paintings by Contemporary Native American Artists”; through October 14th

  • David Hockney, “New Acquisitions”; through October 21st

  • Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “Paragons of Filial Piety”; through fall semester 2012

  • Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan, “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers”; through December 31st

  • “French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century”; through December 31st

◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibits:

  • “Media Life,” drawings and animation by Miek von Dongen; through September 15th

  • “Axe of Vengeance: Ghanaian Film Posters and Film Viewing Culture”; through September 15th

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

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

◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Reopens Tuesday, August 21st

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

▲

08/23/2012
Leave a comment
Chaz Bono, Cunnilingus, David Lacks, Donna Summer, Elizabeth Warren, Fellatio, Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Karl Rove, Planned Parenthood, Rape, Republican Party, Robert Gibbs, Sodomy Laws, Todd Akin, Werner Herzog

The Pencil Today:

✍

THE QUOTE

“The agenda of the Republican Party is to limit access to health care services. It’s to deny women equal pay for equal work. It’s to cut funding for Planned Parenthood. And it’s to select as a vice presidential nominee someone who co-sponsored legislation with Representative [Todd] Akin to redefine ‘rape’.” — Elizabeth Warren

▲

KEEP TALKING, WOMAN!

Quite frankly, I haven’t had enough of Elizabeth Warren, candidate for the US Senate from Massachusetts. So here’s more:

▲

FREE SPEECH

Here are some of the guests speakers at IU this fall, straight from the Themester announcement page:

  • Werner Herzog, filmmaker — Friday, September 14th
  • Chaz Bono, LGBTQ activist — Wednesday October 4th
  • Robert Gibbs, former White House press secretary, & Karl Rove, Republican political strategist — Thursday, October 16th
  • David Lacks, son of the subject of the bestseller, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” — Wednesday, November 14th

Rove

✍

All are open to the public.

▲

ORAL ARGUMENTS

Have you checked your state’s statutes recently?

If not, you may find that you broke the law last night. Or this morning. Or even as you read this.

That’s because as many as 18 of these great United States have laws on the books banning the catch-all “sodomy,” which includes the giving and receiving of fellatio and cunnilingus.

So the next time you hear the phrase, “Pitchers and catchers report,” it might not mean baseball spring training is about to begin. It may mean you’d better start packing your toothbrush for an extended stay in your state’s correctional inn.

Enjoy Your Stay!

✍

Teehee — I’ll bet there’s a mad dash of Pencillistas doing Google searches right now.

▲

LOVE TO LOVE YOU, BABY

Something for you to listen to while you flout the laws of this holy land.

▲

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

❏ I Love Charts — Life as seen through charts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

❏ Mental Floss — Facts.

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

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

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

❏ The Daily Puppy — So shoot me.

▲

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

Thursday, August 23, 2012

◗ Bear’s Place — Al Cobine Big Band; 5:30pm

◗ Malibu Grill — Steve Johnson Trio; 6-9pm

◗ Rachael’s Cafe — Rick Hornyak; 7pm

◗ IU Cinema — Film: “Silver Bullets”; 7pm

◗ IU Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center — Auditions Soul Revue; 7pm

◗ The Player’s Pub — Open mic, hosted my Martina Samm; 8pm

◗ IU Memorial Union, Whittenberger Auditorium — UB Films: “The Avengers”; 8pm

◗ Serendipity Martini Bar — Team trivia; 8:30pm

◗ The Bluebird — Three Story Hill; 9pm

◗ Max’s Place — Stuttering Ducks; 9pm

◗ The Bishop — Psychic Twin, Brownie Mountain; 9:30pm

◗ Max’s Place — 220 Breakers; 10pm

◗ IU Memorial Union, Whittenberger Auditorium — UB Films: “The Avengers”; 11pm

◗ Max’s Place — Fifth on the Floor; 11pm

ONGOING

◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits:

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

◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:

  • “A Tribute to William Zimmerman,” wildlife artist; through September 9th

  • Willi Baumeister, “Baumeister in Print”; through September 9th

  • Annibale and Agostino Carracci, “The Bolognese School”; through September 16th

  • “Contemporary Explorations: Paintings by Contemporary Native American Artists”; through October 14th

  • David Hockney, “New Acquisitions”; through October 21st

  • Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “Paragons of Filial Piety”; through fall semester 2012

  • Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan, “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers”; through December 31st

  • “French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century”; through December 31st

◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibits:

  • Coming — Media Life; August 24th through September 15th

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

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

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

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

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

▲

08/22/2012
4 Comments
Colleen Sikorski, IDS, Jessica Valenti, Politico, Rape, Republican Party, Todd Akin, Tucker Max

The Pencil Today:

✍

THE QUOTE

“Women don’t get raped because they were drinking or took drugs. Women do not get raped because they weren’t careful enough. Women get raped because someone raped them.” — Jessica Valenti

▲

IT HAPPENED — MAYBE

A young woman reported that she was raped late Friday night/early Saturday morning after attending a fraternity party.

The Indiana Daily Student newspaper carried the story yesterday. Reporter Colleen Sikorski, whom I’ll assume is a woman, wrote the piece. Sikorski twice referred to the incident as an “alleged rape.”

From IDS Online: Click For Full Story

✍

Do our journalism schools teach students to doubt women who report rape?

Hanging out with frat boys when they’re ingesting alcohol (or even when they’re not), is ill-advised for all sentient humans, no matter their sex. Nevertheless, females who choose to surround themselves with hard-drinking privileged young white males who view Tucker Max as a role model don’t deserve to be physically violated.

The young woman was violated after that party.

How do we know? She said so. That’s enough, isn’t it?

Had she called campus police and reported her wallet stolen, would IDS reporters doubt her story? Would the paper have run a piece saying, “Student reports alleged theft”?

We’re still not getting it on the issue of rape.

▲

HEY, I’M THE VICTIM HERE!

Speaking of not getting rape, the Republican Party is in a tizzy over the rhetorical emesis spewed by Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin the other day.

Akin, if you’ve been living under a rock of late, said women who suffer “legitimate” rape most likely won’t get pregnant because the “female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.”

The sane among us agree — Akin is a dope of the highest order.

Not Only That, He Wears A Comb Over

✍

Even Willard Romney shuddered when he heard of Akin’s blatherings. Big shots within the POG have leaned on Akin to quit his race but, scientifically illiterate tough guy that he is, the candidate refused to go quietly into the dark night of stupidity whence he came.

In fact, in the grand tradition of the Republican Party, he’s painting himself as the wronged one. “You misspeak one word in one sentence on one day — don’t you think that there’s a little hyperbole going on here?”

Yeah, Todd, we’re the assholes.

BTW: This isn’t the first time Akin has gorged on his foot. Not by a long shot. Politico lists five goofy statements uttered by the current Congressman from Missouri’s 2nd District. Here are three of them:

  • Regarding the student loan program: “America has got the equivalent of the stage three cancer of socialism because the federal government is tampering in all kinds of stuff that it has no business tampering in.”
  • “I think NBC has a long record of being very liberal and at the heart of liberalism really is a hatred for god and a belief that government should replace god.”
  • When asked about an uninsured person who contracts a catastrophic disease: “People have to start being held accountable for their decisions. If somebody’s not buying insurance, then they’re going to have to be selling their car or whatever it is to try to help cover that.”

A real sweetheart, no?

▲

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

❏ I Love Charts — Life as seen through charts.

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

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

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

Indexed

✍

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

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

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

❏ Mental Floss — Facts.

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

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

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

Click For Full Story

✍

❏ The Daily Puppy — So shoot me.

▲

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

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

◗ Malibu Grill — Alki Scopelitis; 6-9pm

◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Laura Connalion; 6-8:30pm

◗ Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center — Buddhism in Everyday Life Series: “What Is Enlightenment?”, workshop presented by Ani Choekye; 6:30pm

◗ Unity Church — Auditions for Bloomington Peace Choir; 7pm

◗ IU Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center — Auditions for the African American Dance Company; 7pm

◗ The Player’s Pub — Bottom Road Blues Band; 8pm

◗ Max’s Place — Open mic; 8pm

◗ Boys & Girls Clubs of Bloomington — Contra dancing; 8pm

◗ The Bishop — Waxeater, Monogamy Party, Braver, Dead Beach; 9pm

◗ Bear’s Place — The Smooth Jazz Trio, The Brothers Hertel, Eric Wells, Mark Keller; 9pm

◗ The Bluebird — Hairbanger’s Ball; 9pm

◗ IU Kirkwood Observatory — Open house, public viewing through the main telescope; 9:30pm

ONGOING

◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits:

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

◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:

  • “A Tribute to William Zimmerman,” wildlife artist; through September 9th

  • Willi Baumeister, “Baumeister in Print”; through September 9th

  • Annibale and Agostino Carracci, “The Bolognese School”; through September 16th

  • “Contemporary Explorations: Paintings by Contemporary Native American Artists”; through October 14th

  • David Hockney, “New Acquisitions”; through October 21st

  • Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “Paragons of Filial Piety”; through fall semester 2012

  • Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan, “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers”; through December 31st

  • “French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century”; through December 31st

◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibits:

  • Coming — Media Life; August 24th through September 15th

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

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

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

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

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

▲

08/20/2012
1 Comment
Al Jazeera English, Barack Obama, Dave Mustaine, Hank Williams Jr., HL Mencken, Human Reproduction, Indiana University, Jane Mayer, Koch Brothers, Mitt Romney, New Yorker, Rape, Republican Party, Ted Nugent, Todd Akin, US Geological Survey, War on Science

The Pencil Today:

THE QUOTE

“There has been no great political movement in the United States since Jefferson’s day without some purely moral balderdash at its center.” — H.L. Mencken

▲

GO!

OUR TOWN’S BEST EVENTS LISTINGS — SCROLL DOWN

▲

MY CALENDAR IS STOPPED ON AUGUST

It’s Fall today.

At least it is according to the Indiana University calendar. Fall semester classes begin this morning.

▲

QUACKS

Now, how about this dangerous goof, Todd Akin? The Senate candidate from Missouri has said “legitimate” rape does not generally result in pregnancy.

She’s Asking For It; Ergo, She’ll Get Pregnant

✍

Akin — a Republican, as if you had to ask — claims doctors he knows have informed him that women’s bodies have an internally-produced magic elixir that makes pregnancy in such instances nearly impossible.

Let’s take Akin at his word — not, of course, about anything having to do with the human reproductive process; he’s an idiot on that subject — but about him having spoken with doctors.

Medical doctors, presumably.

If so, each and every one of them should have his medical license revoked forthwith.

BTW, folks, here’s yet another chicken coming home to roost thanks to the Republican War on Science.

BTW II: Fox News online at 8:15am EDT has not even mentioned the story.

▲

SUDDENLY, I’M THIRSTY

How cool is this?

The Earth’s Water

✍

The image is from the US Geological Survey;the blue bead represents all the water on the Earth.

According to the USGS, that bead also includes all the “groundwater, atmospheric water, and even the water in you, your dog, and your tomato plant.”

Yikes!

So all our deepest lakes, seas, and oceans make up the flimsiest skin of H20 hugging our planet’s surface.

Of course, when your boat’s going down in the middle of Lake Monroe, it doesn’t feel that way.

Nevertheless, this is just another illustration of how insignificant we are.

You know how people who want to persuade you to accept Jesus or Allah or Zoroaster hit you with the You have to give yourself over to something bigger than you are line?

Well, guess what — everything‘s bigger than we are.

▲

FLAT NOTES

Seems as though musicians are going hog wild these days, oinking about Barack Obama. First it was Dave Mustaine, then Hank Williams, Jr., and now Ted Nugent jumps into the slop.

My lefty and lib friends are all aflutter that Nugent was quoted as saying, “…Obama represents everything bad about humanity….”

Okay, that’s pretty deranged but it’s got nuffin’ on the line that followed: “…and Romney pretty much all that is good. It is really that stark.”

Willard Romney represents all that is good about humanity?

Honestly, Ted?

Really?

The Best Our Species Has To Offer?

✍

You know, Nugent also commented after the Supreme Court decision on the Obama health care reforms, “I’m beginning to wonder it it would have been best had the South won the Civil War.”

So really, can’t we can stop pussyfooting around and say it like it is? Ted Nugent not only spouts a controversial political opinion or two, but he’s a racist jerk.

▲

AMERICAN MASTERS

Al Jazeera English takes on the Koch boys.

A Couple Of Kochs

✍

Read it. If a media outlet targeting the Arab world scares the poo out of you, then read Jane Mayer’s New Yorker piece on the Billionaire Boner Boys from a couple of years ago.

Of course, you may think all Arabs and liberals are against good, rich American boys like Davey and Chuckie who pretty much own the nation. If so, I ask you this: after studying their positions and their tactics, do you really want to be on their side?

And are you certain they’re on yours?

▲

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

❏ I Love Charts — Life as seen through charts.

I Love Charts

✍

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

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

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

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

I Fucking Love Science: Closeups Of A Leaf And Human Blood Vessels, And A Satellite View Of The Amazon Basin

✍

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

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

❏ Mental Floss — Facts.

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

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

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

❏ The Daily Puppy — So shoot me.

▲

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

Monday, August 20, 2012

◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Creek Dogs; 6-8:30pm

◗ IU Cinema — Film: “Surviving Life”; 7pm

◗ Cafe Django — Bloomington Short List, hosted by Marta Jasicki, ten-minute variety acts; 7-9pm

◗ Buskirk-Chumley Theater — John Hiatt & the Combo; 8pm

◗ The Bishop — Pomegranates, The Broderick; 9pm

◗ The Player’s Pub — Songwriter Showcase: Russ Baum, Jenna Epkey, La Jeder, Monika Herzig; 8pm

◗ The Bluebird — Dave Walters karaoke; 9pm

ONGOING:

◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits:

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

◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:

  • “A Tribute to William Zimmerman,” wildlife artist; through September 9th

  • Willi Baumeister, “Baumeister in Print”; through September 9th

  • Annibale and Agostino Carracci, “The Bolognese School”; through September 16th

  • “Contemporary Explorations: Paintings by Contemporary Native American Artists”; through October 14th

  • David Hockney, “New Acquisitions”; through October 21st

  • Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “Paragons of Filial Piety”; through fall semester 2012

  • Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan, “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers”; through December 31st

  • “French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century”; through December 31st

◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibits:

  • Coming — Media Life; August 24th through September 15th

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

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

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

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

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

▲

08/16/2012
1 Comment
Bo Watson, Cato Institute, Chico Marx, Chris Mooney, CSICOP, Culture Wars, Denialism, Evolution, Extinction, Foot Fetishism, Global Warming, Heritage Foundation, I Love Charts, Maureen Dowd, Nancy Sinatra, Paul Ryan, Republican Party, Skeptical Inquirer, Tennessee

The Pencil Today:

✍

THE QUOTE

“[Paul] Ryan should stop being so lovable. People who intend to hurt other people should wipe the smiles off their faces.” — Maureen Dowd

▲

FELINE FIGURES

I came across this while wasting time on I Love Charts:

✍

Sad, no?

Scroll down to Big Mike’s Playtime for more links to things you can do while you’re supposed to be doing something else.

▲

TRYING TO GET A FOOT IN THE DOOR

How weird are the interwebs?

Very.

Someone submitted a comment for my approval today. It read: “The clarity in your post is simply nice and i can assume you’re an expert on this subject.” (All sic.)

So far so good, right? The commenter seems to be a fine, perceptive, and noble soul. I like being called an expert on any subject.

The Acknowledged Expert

✍

The comment continues: “Well with your permission let me to grab your feed to keep up to date with forthcoming post. Thanks a million and please continue the gratifying work.”

Clearly the commenter is a tad iffy about certain niceties of the English language but that’s alright, he or she possesses admirable taste.

So I tried to find out who this person is. Turns out he or she is from Italy, which explains the Chico Marx patois.

Oh, Those Italians

✍

Then I noticed the commenter’s name. Feet Lovers.

Feet Lovers?

Yup, Feet Lovers runs a website called Foot Worship Fun. Its introduction reads, “There is nothing more beautiful, in a taboo sort of way, than a womans beautiful feet. [Again, all sic.] Her painted toes, the curves, her soft soles and firm heels.”

Firm heels?

The home page has tabs for pages entitled, among others, Footsie Babes, Feet in Nylons, and Beautiful Soles.

Banned In Several Countries

✍

I’m not going to link to the site because it’s hardcore porn. You’re on your own, curiosity seekers.

So great, a foot fetishist thinks I’m a terrific blogger. Or, more likely, the whole thing is just a scam to smuggle malware onto The Electron Pencil World Headquarters mainframe.

This blogging is a fascinating business.

▲

A PhD IN IGNORANCE

Author Chris Mooney in Skeptical Inquirer magazine looks at the American turn away from science in recent years.

More specifically, the Republican turn away from science.

Republicans, after all, are leading the march.

To wit: Tennessee this year passed a law allowing public school teachers to prattle in class about “alternative” theories to human evolution and climate change. The law was introduced by a conservative Republican state senator and passed by a veto-proof Republican statehouse majority.

Jesus Rides A Dinosaur

✍

Mooney says a recent study of Americans found that the more highly educated conservatives are, the more they’re likely to declare themselves mistrustful of science and its practitioners. How’s that for a stumper?

When liberals paint their broad brush stroke picture of conservative Republicans who hew to the Bible rather than the textbook, they like to conjure the image of a backwoods yokel with several teeth in his head.

The Tennessee law, after all, was introduced by a legislator whose name is Bo.

So, now liberals (including me, natch) have to rethink their stereotype. Okay, our stereotype. In fact, Tennessee State Senator Bo Watson graduated magna cum laude in biology from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

Bo Watson, Man Of Letters

✍

Mooney calls it “the smart idiot effect.” Educated conservatives who eschew science, Mooney posits, have a commensurate “higher level of political knowledge and engagement.”

So?

Mooney cites another study that indicates the Right over the last 40 or so years has become top-heavy with “‘authoritarians’ — a generally conservative personality type characterized by cognitive rigidity, viewing the world in black-and-white terms, and holding fixed beliefs, often fundamentalist Christian ones….”

And because the scientific method in its purest form is anti-authoritarian, it only made sense that the New Right would see science as the enemy.

“[N]aturally, this led to decreased trust in scientists and their institutions, especially among the most politically attuned conservatives…,” Mooney writes.

The Culture Warriors on the Right, Mooney explains, began creating alternative expert institutions to wage battle against the liberalism of colleges, universities and other scientific institutions. They set up think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute to churn out a new anti-academic, anti-liberal body of information (and misinformation).

People began to become expert, in other words, in being non-expert.

Sometimes this game we call democracy gets all too confusing.

▲

THESE BOOTS ARE MADE FOR WALKIN’

▲

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

❏ I Love Charts — Life as seen through charts.

I Love Charts

✍

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

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

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

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

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

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

❏ Mental Floss — Facts.

Mental Floss: 10 Photos Of Celebrities Jumping

✍

❏ The Universe — A Facebook community of astrophysics and astronomy geeks.

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

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

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

❏ The Daily Puppy — So shoot me.

▲

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

THURSDAY, AUGUST 16, 2012

◗ Monroe County Public Library — It’s Your Money series: Talk to an Expert, confidential half-hour sessions; 4:30-6:30pm

◗ IU Auditorium — Culturefest, learn about IU history and campus cultural diversity, music, dance, food, art, etc.; 4:30-7:30pm

◗ Nick’s English Hut — Fundraiser, 10% of food sales plus waitperson’s tips go to Stepping Stones; 5-8pm

◗ Bear’s Place — B-Town Bearcats; 5:30pm

◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Shelf Life; 6-8:30pm

◗ IU Cinema — Film: “Beasts of the Southern Wild”; 7pm

◗ IU Art Museum — Culturefest after-party; 6pm

◗ IU Wells-Metz Theatre — Drama, “Solana”; 7:30pm

◗ Serendipity Martini Bar — Team trivia; 8:30pm

◗ The Bluebird — Uncle Kracker; 9pm

◗ Max’s Place — Wake the Dead; 9pm

◗ The Bishop — Kink Ador, The Vorticists, Brown Bear Coalition; 9:30pm

ONGOING:

◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits:

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

◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:

  • “A Tribute to William Zimmerman,” wildlife artist; through September 9th

  • Willi Baumeister, “Baumeister in Print”; through September 9th

  • Annibale and Agostino Carracci, “The Bolognese School”; through September 16th

  • “Contemporary Explorations: Paintings by Contemporary Native American Artists”; through October 14th

  • David Hockney, “New Acquisitions”; through October 21st

  • Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “Paragons of Filial Piety”; through fall semester 2012

  • Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan, “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers”; through December 31st

  • “French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century”; through December 31st

◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibits:

  • Coming — Media Life; August 24th through September 15th

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

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

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

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

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

▲

08/09/2012
Leave a comment
ABC News, Achy Obejas, Al Jazeera English, American Family Association, Barack Obama, Bryan Fischer, BuzzFeed, Department of Homeland Security, Dr. Seuss, FBI, George Wallace, Guns, Hate Groups, Jack Webb, Jenna Jameson, Mitt Romney, Nixonland, Pornography, Ralph Nader, Republican Party, Richard J. Daley, Rick Perlstein, Ron Jeremy, Sikh Temple Shooting, Silent Majority, Spiro Agnew, Theodore Geisel

The Pencil Today:

✍

THE QUOTE

“Turn on to politics or politics will turn on you.” — Ralph Nader

♢

JENNA WANTS MITT TO LICK BARACK

Retired porn star Jenna Jameson has endorsed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Don’t you love it?

“When you’re rich,” Jenna reasons, “you want a Republican in office.”

Family Values

✍

To balance things out, the incomparable Ron Jeremy is behind the President. Poor Barack.

♢

WHOSE SIDE ARE THEY ON?

If this doesn’t scare the bejesus out of you I don’t know what will.

In a piece on the radical right in America, al Jazeera claims that Republicans quashed a 2009 Department of Homeland Security report suggesting hate groups began to proliferate in the United States after the election of Barack Obama.

✍

Not that the groups weren’t proliferating before that, mind you. Only that their rate of proliferation was bumped up dramatically by the presence of a brown man in the White House.

I’d say the GOP has some ‘splainin’ to do.

♢

HATE IS ENOUGH

We still don’t understand the meaning of hatred in this country. ABC News ran this online headline yesterday:

✍

Still No Motive?

Does the swastika have different meanings for different people even at this late date?

♢

THE NEW MACHINE

Many years ago, even the most polarizing figures in this holy land were permitted to have nuanced and even seemingly self-contradictory viewpoints. They didn’t run in fear from the Thought Crime authorities within their political parties or the punditocracy.

For instance, one of the heroes of the hard-hat, blue-collar, bungalow-belt Silent Majority was Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago. He ran a highly disciplined political machine. He tolerated little in the way of dissent. He was a tough guy.

The Boss

✍

He’d called for his police to shoot to kill arsonists and shoot to maim looters during race riots. He turned his police force loose on demonstrators during the 1968 Democratic Convention. By the early 1970s he ranked just below George Wallace, Spiro Agnew, and Jack Webb in the law and order pantheon.

Yet he was a staunch opponent of the Vietnam War and, even more surprisingly, guns. According to Rick Perlstein in “Nixonland,” Daley was in Washington, DC testifying before a congressional committee in the summer of 1972. “Take the guns away from every private citizen,” he said.

Can you imagine any darling of the right even suggesting private citizens should be limited to possessing several dozen assault rifles these days?

♢

A NEW UNDERGROUND RAILROAD?

Author and journalist Achy Obejas (say it, AH-chee oh-BAY-hahss) spent a few years at Indiana University before she dropped out and went to work covering politics, GLBTQ issues, night life, and a host of other beats.

Obejas

✍

Achy points out the latest lunatic pronouncement from a member of the holier-than-thou gang. It seems Bryan Fischer, one of the paid squealers for the American Family Association, has called for good, god-fearing citizens to save children being raised by same-sex couples.

Well, perhaps the word save isn’t quite right here. How about kidnap?

✍

Achy’s got a horse in this race. Her wife, Megan, gave birth to a son last year. Achy swears she’s never been happier.

♢

IN YEARS AHEAD, HE WOULD NOT BE TED

Here a sample of some graphic ad work a then-unknown artist named Theodore Geisel did back in the 1930s and 40s:

✍

Recognize the style? Geisel later became Dr, Seuss.

See more at “25 Advertisements by Dr. Seuss Before He Was Dr. Seuss” on BuzzFeed.

♢

✍

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

❏ I Love Charts — Life as seen through charts.

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

“What If?” From XKCD

✍

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

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

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

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

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

❏ Mental Floss — Facts.

❏ Caps Off Please — Comics & fun.

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

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

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

❏ The Daily Puppy — So shoot me.

♢

✍

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

◗ Bear’s Place — Jazz Fables: Mr. Taylor and His Dirty Dixie Band; 5:30pm

◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Americana Showcase; 6-8:30pm

◗ Monroe County Public Library — Monthly meeting, Bloomington Transportation Options for People; 6:30pm

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

◗ Cafe Django — Jeff Isaac Trio; 8-10pm

◗ The Comedy Attic — Tim Wilson; 8pm

◗ Serendipity Martini Bar — Team trivia; 8:30pm

◗ Max’s Place — Wake the Dead; 9pm

◗ The Bluebird — Apollo Quad; 9pm

◗ The Bishop — Home Blitz, Bloody Mess, The Tsunamis; 9:30pm

Ongoing:

◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits:

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

◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:

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

◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibits:

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

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

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

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

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

♢

06/17/2012
1 Comment
Chicago Style Pizza, Hondo Thompson, Isaac Asimov, Jeb Bush, Republican Party, Restaurant Opportunities Center-United, Rod Serling

The Pencil Today:

✍

THE QUOTE

“I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I’ll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.” — Isaac Asimov

♢

ARBUSTO BUSTLE

A Bush is saying the GOP is whacked out?

The Republicans are “dysfunctional” and “disturbing,” according to Jeb Bush?

At this point the only reason Rod Serling is not the spokesperson for the Republicans is that he’s long dead. Come to think of it, they ought to use old film of him anyway.

“Welcome to the 2012 Republican National Convention….”

♢

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE

h/t to Hondo Thompson for the Asimov quote above.

Hondo

♢

PUT ON YOUR SUNDAY BEST

Click.

♢

FLIPPIN’ BURGERS FOR THE MAN

Does this surprise you?

McDonald’s, Applebee’s, Wendy’s, Pizza Hut, Chuch E. Cheese, and Burger King are among the worst restaurant chains to work for, according to a poll by the Restaurant Opportunities Center-United, an advocacy group for food workers.

Nothing Like Associating Your Restaurant With A Rat

✍

At the very least, the unflattering, uncomfortable, chintzy-cheap uniforms those outfits make their wage-slaves wear is abusive enough.

I’ll scarf a Big Mac or a Whopper on occasion but I will not — repeat, will not! — allow a Pizza Hut, er, thing to touch my lips.

The inclusion of one restaurant on the list did bum me out, though. Uno Chicago Grill made it. Too bad. Excellent pizza.

♢

NINE REASONS TO KEEP ON LIVING

As long as we’re on the topic, here’s are my fave Chicago pizzas, in no particular order:

✍

Coalfire Pizza With Basil

✍

Gino’s East Deep Dish

✍

Next time you head up north, go to one of these places. Except for Uno’s. Let’s let them treat their people a little better before we toss them any more of our dough.

♢

05/14/2012
Leave a comment
Annie Corrigan, Bleeding Heartland Rollergirls, Bob Kerrey, Brewcity Bruisers, Casey McGrath, Conspiracy Theory, Debra Winger, Jerome Corsi, John Kerry, Margaret Chase Smith, Raina Palivka, Republican Party, Swiftboat Veteranms for Truth, Terms of Endearment, Tyler Ferguson, US Navy SEALs, Vietnam War

The Pencil Today:

✍

THE QUOTE

“I don’t want to see the Republican Party ride to victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny — Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.” — Margaret Chase Smith

♢

NEW POSTING SCHEDULE

We’re posting twice a day now. The first, at 7:30am, Eastern, will be our our GO! event listings. The second is Your Morning Hot Air.

GO! Has Its Own Daily Post Now

✍

Expect YMHA to appear anytime between 9am and 1pm.

The Electron Pencil, the best damned Bloomington website in the history of the interwebs!

♢

ANNIE AND BLOOMINGTON’S BIG WHEELS

Bloomington’s favorite voice (and one of the town’s favorite people, period) Annie Corrigan sat down with Bleeding Heartland Rollergirls‘ skaters Bombshell Shock, Terror D’Bits, and the fabulous Kaka Kaliente for an interview on WFIU radio this weekend.

Listen to the interview online while you wait for BHRG’s next home bout.

WFIU’s Annie Corrigan

✍

BTW: the civilian names of the above-mentioned skaters are, respectively, Casey McGrath, Raina Palivka, and, of course, Tyler Ferguson.

Tyler’s a long-time friend of the Pencil. We had a scare when the BHRG A-team, the Flatliners, took on the brutes from Milwaukee known as the Brewcity Bruisers a couple of weeks ago. Tyler was nearly flattened on several occasions during the bout.

And since she’s not a cartoon character, it’s doubtful her mates would have been able to pick up the cardboard-thin Tyler (No. 17 in the photo) and shaken her out to normal dimensions.

Yeesh!

♢

GETTING A LEG UP ON THE OPPOSITION

So, Bob Kerrey is running for US senator from Nebraska once again.

Kerrey served as that state’s US senator from 1989 through 2001. Before that, he served a term as Nebraska governor. In fact, while running the state’s affairs, Kerrey engaged in a torrid one with actress Debra Winger, who happened to be in Nebraska filming scenes for the movie, “Terms of Endearment.”

Affair Of State

✍

The two lived together for a time in the governor’s mansion, causing reporters to bay like hounds. Early on in the affair, Kerrey responded to a question about the nature of his relationship with Winger. “What can I say? She swept me off my foot.”

Look closely at the quote and note his intentional use of the singular form, foot.

See, as a lieutenant (junior grade) in the US Navy and a SEAL team member, Kerrey had participated in a firefight on an island in the Bay of Nha Trang. Hoping to surprise a Viet Cong encampment, he led a couple of SEAL teams in scaling a sheer cliff and descending upon the enemy from its heights. As the teams came under intense fire, Kerrey was thrown backward by a grenade explosion.

He was bleeding profusely and barely clinging to consciousness but still maintained control over his team and communicating with other SEAL team. The SEAL teams eventually ousted the Viet Cong encampment and Kerrey, his leg shattered, continued to direct their mop-up operations. Kerrey was evacuated by helicopter after the fighting stopped.

Kerrey was brought into surgery and awoke to find that much of his right leg had been amputated.

Ergo, “foot.”

Bob Kerrey was awarded the Medal of Honor, the Bronze Star, and the Purple Heart.

Bob Kerrey Receives The Medal Of Honor

✍

Sort of an odd coincidence, no? Kerrey’s homophonic fellow Democrat John Kerry also was injured in Vietnam and won multiple valor awards for his service. Kerry copped the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts.

You may recall that professional madman Jerome Corsi and the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth staged a notoriously mean-spirited campaign as Kerry ran for president in 2004, claiming the Dem candidate had not been injured at all in Vietnam and had lied about his actions to earn his medals.

I wonder if they’re gearing up to go after Bob Kerrey now.

Perhaps they’ll charge that Kerrey hired socialist doctors to saw his leg off back in 1969, the first step in a long, elaborate plot to infiltrate the US Senate in 2013.

We’ll keep watching for word from the lunatic asylum.

♢

← Older posts
Newer posts →