Monday, June 13, 2016

Orlando shootings: things fall apart





THE SECOND COMING


Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.







Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)


Given the fact that mass bloodletting has become standard fare on the daily news, this viscerally terrifying piece of literature has become eerily prescient. We've all conditioned ourselves to that reaction, the sickening gut-drop that goes along with the revelation that there has been "another one". Oh no. Where is it this time? Who got it, a school, a church, a club? How many? I no longer want to hear statistics because, to tell you the truth, I'd rather not fall into a clinical depression that I might not come out of.





Silly of me, isn't it? That I should care that much? (When I was part of the anti-nuclear crusade in the '80s, I was repeatedly told I "cared too much" and should stop.) Yes, I care that much, because I am tired of denial and playing down the facts, tired of forcing blood-soaked chaos into the comforting box of statistics - and, most of all, tired of the way I view the gun fanatics, yahooing and going "pow! pow!" on their rearing horses while brandishing semi-automatic rifles. "We have the right to bear arms!"

It is the constitutional right of Americans to legally own weapons that allow them to open fire and massacre dozens and dozens of human beings, civilians, for the simple reason that they are having the "wrong" sort of fun in the "wrong" sort of place.





Or, for that matter, for no reason at all.

I am tired of all this atrocity and feel overwhelmed and wrung-out. But I am even more tired of the thugs who claim this is all the fault of those goddamn Muslims. Keep them out of the country, they're clearly a threat! (Somebody has already gotten a lot of mileage out of that one.) No matter if the terrorists, from without or within the country, follow the most twisted, corrupted, even unrecognizable form of Islam ever invented, worse even than the "Christianity" practiced by Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan. 

And I am VERY tired of reading this in the news: "Converted to Islam and joined Isis." "Converted to Islam and became radicalized/murdered/bombed/raped" - and so on, and so on. Though no one will ever listen to me about this, I think it should be "Converted to Islam, BUT joined Isis." In other words, "converted" - though not in any meaningful sense of the word - and then proceeded to violate every law and precept that Islam stands for.





I can't deal with this, so I try to push it away. It's a common strategy. I do this not just for myself, but because I don't want to present a pale, anxious face to my grandkids, who are only trying to experience a "normal" childhood. But this is a new normal, isn't it? What do we say to our children and our grandchildren about the world they are about to inherit?

Somebody keeps posting a stupid meme on Facebook, one of those "hey, folks, it's really not that bad, because people are basically decent and kind" types. In the meme, Mr. Rogers is asking his Mommy why bad things have to happen. "Don't worry, Freddie," she tells him. "You must look to the helpers. In any bad situation, there are always helpers nearby to pitch in and make everything all right again." It's not exactly a lie, but why are so many people being forced into service to mop up all the blood? Yet this is the kind of thing people eat up now, perhaps because they're terrified down to their guts, but more likely because they're just numb.





I've never had much of a gift for numbness, if gift it is. I'm reminded of the Joan Baez song I recently posted (Diamonds and Rust). To paraphrase, "I could use some of that vagueness now, because it's all so clear to me. . ." 

Do we really think that we, here in pallid, passive Canada, can do anything to stop all this? It is escalating, and that fucking asshole Trump continues to congratulate himself for being "right about the terrorists". Score another point for yourself, Donald. He could win, you know. He could. What will happen then, if Donald Trump is President of the United States? Aren't things  bad enough as they are?

I will have to leave climate change aside for now, though Trump is a full-scale denier who has the worst priorities on the planet. The one time I wrote an honest piece about climate change and how I see the future, I lost four long-time followers in the space of a few hours. This had never happened before, and it opened my eyes. For one thing, I never thought I had many steady readers - hey, listen, I do appreciate the ones I have, though I'd probably keep posting if no one read this because I enjoy doing it. I mostly keep this on the side of satire and oddity, because to be honest it makes ME feel better, releases a few particles of endorphins to get me through my long and often weary day.





So I don't write many pieces like this, because they don't really help, do they? They don't make me feel better, don't make ANYONE feel better, and do nothing to alter the situation. The same thing will happen all over again, only I can predict it will be far worse. If I seem like a party pooper and you'd rather not read this, OK, I get it, because my predictions tend to be a little dark. We don't know if these attacks on innocent civilians are organized (though Isis boasts about them whether they are or not), or the act of individual "nut cases" (as people with mental illness are sometimes called - well, it's better than "whack job", isn't it?). But they are having the desired effect of throwing everyone off-balance, especially children who are expected to grow up stable and productive in an atmosphere of wariness and chronic tension. Not just tension, but fear for their lives. The helpers may be there, to be sure, but why, in God's name, do we need so goddamn many of them?






http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2016/06/im_gonna_die_son_texts_mother.html

Mina Justice was sound asleep when she received the first text from her son, Eddie Justice, who was in the gay nightclub when a gunman opened fire and slaughtered 50 and wounded more than 50 others. Here is the conversation she had over text message with her 30-year-old son.

"Mommy I love you," the first message said. It was 2:06 a.m.

"In club they shooting."

Mina Justice tried calling her 30-year-old son. No answer.

Alarmed and half awake, she tapped out a response.

"U ok"

At 2:07 a.m., he wrote: "Trapp in bathroom."

Justice asked what club, and he responded: "Pulse. Downtown. Call police."

Then at 2:08: "I'm gonna die."

Now wide awake, Justice dialed 911.

She sent a flurry of texts over the next several minutes.

"I'm calling them now.

U still in there

Answer our damn phone

Call them

Call me."

The 911 dispatcher wanted her to stay on the line. She wondered what kind of danger her son was in. He was normally a homebody who liked to eat and work out. He liked to make everyone laugh. He worked as an accountant and lived in a condo in downtown Orlando.

"Lives in a sky house, like the Jeffersons," she would say. "He lives rich."

She knew he was gay and at a club — and all the complications that might entail. Fear surged through her as she waited for his next message.




At 2:39 a.m., he responded:

"Call them mommy

Now."

He wrote that he was in the bathroom.

"He's coming

I'm gonna die."

Justice asked her son if anyone was hurt and which bathroom he was in.

"Lots. Yes," he responded at 2:42 a.m.

When he didn't text back, she sent several more messages. Was he with police?

"Text me please," she wrote.

"No," he wrote four minutes later. "Still here in bathroom. He has us. They need to come get us."

At 2:49 a.m., she told him the police were there and to let her know when he saw them.

"Hurry," he wrote. "He's in the bathroom with us."

She asked, "Is the man in the bathroom wit u?"

At 2:50 a.m.: "He's a terror."

Then, a final text from her son a minute later: "Yes."

More than 15 hours after that text, Justice still hasn't heard from her son. She and a dozen family and friends are at a hotel that has become a staging area for relatives awaiting news. Any news.

"His name has not come up yet and that's scary. It's just ..." she paused and patted hear heart. "It's just, I got this feeling. I got a bad feeling."

Updated June 13 at 12:55 p.m. It was confirmed Eddie Justice was killed in the attack.




Capybaras in the news





One of two fugitive capybaras captured


PROVINCIAL

by 570NEWS STAFF

Posted Jun 13, 2016 6:00 am EDT

Last Updated Jun 13, 2016 at 6:00 am EDT

One fugitive caught. One to go.

After a two and a half week taste of freedom, one of the High Park capybaras has been caught.

A High Park Zoo official confirmed the capture on Sunday but has not yet provided any further details.

A video posted by Renda on Instagram shows staff taking the capybara away in a crate.





The search continues for the second capybara.

The two female capybaras escaped from their pen at the High Park Zoo on May 24, as zoo workers were moving a third capybara into the enclosure.

One of them was spotted on June 5, but was not captured. City staff said traps were set the next morning.






Capybaras are the world’s largest rodents. Fully grown, they can reach over four feet in height and can weigh as much as 140 pounds – they also look like large guinea pigs. They enjoy swimming and don’t like children.

The escape led to a parody Twitter account, an online video game, and joking comments from Mayor John Tory about forming a search party.





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Sunday, June 12, 2016

The perpetually burning building



A white doe on the green grass






A white doe on the green grass 
appeared to me, with two golden horns, 
between two rivers, 
in the shade of a laurel, 
when the sun was rising in an unripe season.




Her look was so sweet and proud 
that to follow her I left every task, 
like the miser who as he seeks treasure 
sweetens his trouble with delight.




"Let no one touch me," she bore 
written with diamonds and topazes 
around her lovely neck. 
"It has pleased my Caesar to make me free."



And the sun had already turned at midday
my eyes were tired
by looking but not sated, 
when I fell into the water, and she
disappeared.


Friday, June 10, 2016

Don't Stay Too Fat! and other stupid Friday things





























OK, Corpula. Now comes something even more strange. . .




Ew. I don't know what's more creepy: "toilet mask" or "face glove". To be Worn Three Times in the Week, it says. Just don't wear it in public, particularly not when banking.




Throw your truss away! Get cured for $15. Farmers and Teamsters. "Cured My Rupture Without Cutting". THESE HUNDRED MEN insist, but I can't see how this wouldn't hurt. 




The flesh brush might be one of those vibrator-thingies they used on Victorian women to cure their "hysteria". If it was me, I think it would CAUSE hysteria, or at least some sort of sexual spasm. But maybe that was the cure. The flesh brush sends out little pinpricks of electricity. This was seen as a cure for everything. I can't read the rest of the copy, unfortunately.




This is so great that I must transcribe it word-for-word (though I hate doing that!):

"JOY'S CIGARETTES afford immediate relief in cases of ASTHMA, WHEEZING, and WINTER COUGH, and a little perseverence will effect a permanent cure. Universally recommended by the most eminent physicians and medical authors. Agreeable to use, certain in their effects, and harmless in their action, they may be safely smoked by ladies and children."




This one is even creepier: "Comfort, health and fashion demand right physical proportions. You can reduce the flesh on your entire body, or any part, by wearing one of Dr. Jeanne Walter's famous rubber garments for men and women a few hours a day."




Sorta like this, I guess. You'd lose weight, all right, and keel over from dehydration.




This Smedley guy is "THE KING" of CURES, and claims to be able to cure just about anything with his famous Chillie Paste. I can't read the ingredients, which probably aren't listed anyway, but could this be ordinary chili pepper extract of some kind, something that merely brings a sort of glow to the skin?




Kind of like when you rub your meat.


POST-POST: It's nearly Saturday now, and here I sit. What is the purpose of life? Surely not to sit on your ass blogging at midnight. There HAS to be more to it than that. But I can't afford romantic vacations or thrilling international adventures. Such things will be forever out of my reach. 

I do like ads, though - have always liked them, and the older they are the better. As a sort of caboose to the last bunch of them, I found some extremely gruesome corset ads that nevertheless boast of "ease", "comfort" and "fit". 














Is that a cellphone in your pocket, or are you just from another dimension?





This is a little piece I borrowed from a site called Waffles at Noon (link below). Who knows where I saw the original photo, probably when I was looking fruitlessly for something else.

Though the article debunks the photo, I think they're just a bunch of killjoys who are not worthy of their waffles. But as with all these controversial/conspiracy-theory-oriented topics - you decide.

Classic Urban Legend: The Time Traveling Hipster






DECEMBER 10, 2015

A photo allegedly shows a modern hipster who traveled back in time to the 1940’s. Is the photo real or fake?

The photograph has been circulating since around 2010, with suggestions that the casually-dressed man’s appearance is too modern to fit into the a 1940’s setting. Here is one caption which has circulated with the photo in 2013:

In 1940, a mysterious man was photographed in Canada wearing what seems to be modern clothing and carrying a camera. Its authenticity was proven by NTV in Russia in 2010.

Is this a man with incredibly modern style? Or evidence of time travel?






THE PHOTO

The image is not Photoshopped, and the original can be found at the Bralorne Pioneer Museum in British Columbia, Canada. The people in the photo were attending the re-opening of the South Fork Bridge in British Columbia.

CLOTHING

The logo on the “modern” shirt worn by the man in the image is probably that of the Montreal Maroons hockey team, an NHL team which existed until 1938. Thus, it would be more likely to see someone wearing that shirt in 1940 than in the 2010’s.





One would expect to see this shirt in 1940.

The man’s knitted sweater also doesn’t indicate anything out of the ordinary for the 1940’s.

THE CAMERA

The “modern” camera in the man’s hands is not clearly shown, but Kodak did produce cameras of this size at the time. Another man in the image is also holding a camera.

NTV VIDEO

The caption above is correct in stating that the photo was deemed authentic by NTV in Russia, as seen in the video below:

SUNGLASSES, AND THE ERRONEOUS STANWYCK COMPARISON

Sunglasses with side shades were common in 1940, so these would not have been unusual.

In their attempts to debunk the time traveler theory, some writers have used a photo of Barbara Stanwyck wearing sunglasses in the 1940 film Double Indemnity. If you look closely, however, the glasses are not the same. Stanwyck’s glasses are actually casting a shadow on the side of her face, which – from a distance – resemble the side shades in the sunglasses worn by the man in the 1940 photo.




Barbara Stanwyck’s sunglasses are merely casting a shadow which resemble the man’s side shades.

GOOGLE TRENDS

In chart below shows search interest in this story. As you can see, it was around December 2011 when the story first went viral online. It has had several peaks in interest since that time.

OH, FUCK THAT! WE still believe in the Hipster Time Traveller! WE still believe that such a thing is possible! WE still believe a man from 1970 (or whenever) could appear in a crowd in 1940, doing whatever! WE still believe - no, the Stanwyck thing is just too ridiculous to believe.

But this! What about this??




This is a few seconds of authentic footage taken on Blackfriars Bridge, London, around 1900. The man walking casually with his coat open, pulling his hand out of his pocket, with no hat, does not fit anyone or anything around him. Look at the people walking behind him, in their stiff Edwardian garb. People did their coats up then, and ALWAYS wore hats when outside - it was considered extremely vulgar not to. Newsboys and stableboys and prostitutes wore hats. This guy is bareheaded as he swings along, perhaps tucking something (his cellphone?) into his pocket before walking casually out of frame.

I call this the Time Traveller on Blackfriars Bridge, and I got a couple of good posts out of it back when people were still reading this blog, so why not try to get a bit more juice out of it now? On the subject of hipsters, I was going to riff on this but could only think of two hipsters in all the world:




Edward Snowden, and (of course)




Still a hipster, after all these years.

Oh, you know what? It's fake. No, I mean it isn't fake, it just isn't a hipster. Look at the guy closely. He's a 1940s Joe College sort, wearing a frayed sweater (not a hoodie, as it first appears). He has a nerdy wavy slicked-back hairdo, I mean combed straight back like nobody does, and the glasses are like the glasses of a semi-blind person. I don't know what it is about the hair of men back then - you just never see it now - it was bumpy, not curly, not even wavy really, it had these bumps, and he has them. Some day someone will figure out who he is - or was, because surely he's dead by now! End of story, don't you think?

But then again. What were all those people so eager to get a glimpse of? An alien invasion, perhaps. What else would stop traffic like that?


Thursday, June 9, 2016

Louie Louie: This really IS a dirty song!





You know, not every day is a good day. Some days are crap-ass, and this is one of those days. Not that anything bad has happened. It's just that nothing has happened AT ALL.

So I look around for things to post, but mostly they look around for me, because I'm always bumping into stuff. I found a great photo, from the 1940s I think, with a modern-day time traveller in it. No doubt a masterpiece of photoshopping, but I've seen that sort of thing before, even in films, and have posted on it (see Time Traveller on Blackfriars Bridge).

time-traveller-on-blackfriars-bridge.html

This, well. If you lived through this, and let's hope you didn't, there was a great to-do about "obscene" lyrics in the song (because the words were basically indecipherable). We used to say there was a "dirty" version and a "clean" version of  Louie Louie, but I doubt that because no one ever found any evidence. I think the whole thing was a sublime example of the mondegreen, or misheard lyric, which I recently posted about. It's possible to see things, hear things, and probably even taste and touch and smell things that aren't really there: thus Finding Bigfoot and all those ridiculous ghost-hunting TV shows. But for some reason, this seems to be particularly true of hearing things.

The urban myth that the FBI spent years pursuing an investigation of the song is true. They played it forwards and backwards, upside-down and sideways, and couldn't find anything obscene (though the Kingsmen still turned out to be one-hit wonders. Just a coincidence? I. . . DON'T. . . THINK. . . SO!) I was going to post all of the FBI's smudgy, blacked-out typewritten correspondence about this, but it bored the piss out of me, so I didn't. It's even more boring than all that blacked-out shit about Roswell.




BUT! Listen to this again, and at exactly 0:55, the drummer (having fumbled his drumstick) yells "FUCK!"

Well, it might be fuck, or it might be something else. But it's Thursday, the week is dragging ass, and it should be Friday, so here it is at last, proof that Louis Lou-EYE really IS an obscene song.

POST-IT-SCRIPT: In 1972 The Kingsmen were found at the bottom of the Hudson river wearing cement overshoes, right next to Jimmy Hoffa. Just a coincidence?

You decide.

POST-POST. Oh all right. This thing would be incomplete without at least SOME examples of the kind of bullshit that went on with the FBI or the CIA or whatever (because obviously, Louie Louie posed a serious threat to national security). The reproductions of these documents are so plug-ugly that I tried to find a way to dress them up a little, paste flowers on or turn them pink or something, but it just didn't work.




This one is obviously a complaint from a citizen sent to the FBI. J. Edgar Hoover got a lot of fan mail back then, which he enjoyed reading while dressed in women's clothing. (See related post: Was Herman Goering a Transvestite?): 

was-hermann-goering-a-transvestite-you-decide





Can y'all read this? It makes for some boring reading. But this was the kind of dirty-minded thinking that led to the fracas around Louie Louie. People were hearing whatever they wanted to hear, and whatever they wanted to hear was filthy, I tell you. . . filthy!






This is sort of like, kinda-like, what they thought they heard, or maybe some people thought they heard. I can only imagine the salacious delight of these FBI agents as they listened to the thing 500 times while drinking martinis, carefully deciphering those filthy, dirty lyrics which included such words as "girl" and "park" and "awaiting". 




But as usually happens (eventually), sanity prevailed. The FBI had to admit they couldn't make out a damn thing in those lyrics, that it was just one big mush-mouthed jumble.

We could have told them that, right from the beginning! But no, J. Edgar was having a slow day and needed a project. Should've gone out and bought a hat with a veil and a new pair of heels.