Treatment Of Coulorphobia
A word of the year short lister is coulrophobia, the fear of clowns. While searching for the pronunciation, google suggested “coulrophobia treatment.” There was a video, Lady is scared to death of Clowns, and numerous websites willing to help. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Healthtopia suggests “Exposure therapy with Relaxation methods… Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).” Ehealthwall states “Statistics shows that one out of seven persons has Coulrophobia or has a fear of clowns.” Their suggestion is “Gradual Exposure Therapy, Relaxation therapy, Free association therapy. Persons who have been dealing with Coulrophobia are suggested to consult a psychotherapist and recommended to undergo session that they call as free association therapy.”
Alive and Well Online: “Hypnotherapy Hypnotherapy helps to reprogram your subconscious “programs” that may be part of your fear. When these programs are “de-bugged” the symptoms of Coulrophobia often are minimized. However, some people don’t like the feeling of loss of control in allowing someone else to play with their personal “software”. Hypnotherapy is save and works fast. … Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) NLP is basically the study and practice of how we create our reality. From the NLP viewpoint, a phobia is the result of your programs or “constructs” that you have created that don’t work very well. With NLP, these constructs are revealed and “re-programmed” so that the Coulrophobia is minimized and often eliminated. Usually the interventions are quite rapid and effective.” There is a helpful disclaimer.
NoBullying.com takes an aggressive approach. “In order to prevent an episode that ends with you totally embarrassing yourself if you should happen to see a clown while in a public place, here are some tips that might help. Close your eyes and take long, deep breaths. Imagine that you are sitting on a relaxing beach where no clowns are present. Remind yourself that the clown that triggered your episode is not real and is only a ploy to scare—or entertain people. … Applaud yourself if you were able to successfully avert a full-fledged attack. “
Word Of The Year
If you type “word of the year” into google, you will get results. The first page has three dictionaries weighing in, and several repeat entries. A few new stories report a fourth contest. “Searches related to” turns up a fifth. This is enough. Pictures for this report are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Oxford Dictionaries gives the top spot to Post-Truth. “The compound word post-truth … seems to have been first used in this meaning in a 1992 essay by the late Serbian-American playwright Steve Tesich in The Nation magazine. Reflecting on the Iran-Contra scandal and the Persian Gulf War, Tesich lamented that ‘we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world’.” The OD shortlist: adulting, alt-right, Brexiteer,. chatbot, coulrophobia, (rare extreme or irrational fear of clowns) glass cliff, hygge, Latinx, woke.
Merriam Webster gives the prize to Surreal. The MW short list: revenant, icon, In Omnia Paratus, bigly, deplorable, irregardless, Assumpsit, Faute de Mieux, feckless. To see the short listers, you have to click on the arrow. After feckless, the next stop is 9 Christmas Words with Surprising Histories.
Dictionary.com gives us Xenophobia. “The word xenophobia is actually relatively new, and only entered English in the late 1800s. It finds its roots in two Greek words, xénos meaning “stranger, guest,” and phóbos meaning “fear, panic.” In lieu of a short list, links are provided to What Character Was Removed from the Alphabet? and What’s the Grossest-Sounding Word in English?
Collins Language gives the WOTY prize to Brexit. Rounding out the top ten: Hygge, mic drop, Trumpism, throw shade, sharenting, snowflake generation, dude food, Uberization, JOMO.
American Dialect Society honors Dumpster Fire as the WOTY. In a rather wonky press release, ADS lists contenders in a few categories. WORD OF THE YEAR: dumpster fire, woke, normalize, post-truth, #NoDAPL, POLITICAL WORD OF THE YEAR: deplorables (basket of), nasty woman, Pantsuit Nation, post-truth, unpresidented, DIGITAL WORD OF THE YEAR: fam, Harambe, tweetstorm, SLANG WORD OF THE YEAR: fire, receipts, woke MOST USEFUL/MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED: chip, gaslight, normalize, turn up MOST CREATIVE: -exit, facticide, gynotician, laissez-fairydust EUPHEMISM OF THE YEAR: alt-right, fake news, locker-room banter, small/tiny hands WTF WORD OF THE YEAR: bigly, cuck, cuckservative, pussy, yuuuge, HASHTAG OF THE YEAR: #blackgirlmagic, #NoDAPL, #OscarsSoWhite, #pussygrabsback. ATTITUDE OF THE YEAR: liberal elite nonsense ADS prejudice.
American Name Society (Promoting the study of onomastics) is a sibling organization of the ADS. “Aleppo was chosen the Name of the Year for 2016 by the American Name Society at its annual meeting in Austin, Texas on January 6, 2017.” Other winners include Personal NOTY Drumpf, Fictional NOTY Hamilton, Trade NOTY (tie) Brexit, Uber.
David Bowie
It has been a strange week for a David Bowie fan. On Friday, I was looking for a rerun to post, and was reminded that January 8 was his birthday. (Along with Elvis and Shirley Bassey) I put up a piece about Mr. Bowie, and fashioned a poem out of his song titles. Aquarian Drunkard reissued a collection of the “best and most interesting Bowie oddities”. A new album was released, with a lot of comments about how strange it was. Strange is something Bowie fans turn to face.
On Monday, I woke up. Go on the internet. MSN news says that David Bowie has died. This is surprising. I know what people are going to talk about for a few days.
I typically download the new wtf podcast on Monday. The show is “supported” by Columbia records, presenting David Bowie’s new album “Blackstar.” Marc Maron gushes on about how ” DAVID BOWIE I LOVE DAVID BOWIE. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” The single is called “Lazarus.”
The timing of the whole thing is bizarre. Was this planned? To release a puzzling new work on your sixty ninth birthday, and then die two days later. With the master media manipulator involved, prior planning cannot be ruled out. Or was it just a parting shot of synchronicity? We will never know.
In what might be a new move for celebrity deaths, sex scandal rumors emerged. A lady named Lori Maddox claims that Mr. Bowie “devirginized” her. Miss Maddox was underage at the time. Some people think that this incident makes Mr. Bowie a terrible person, whose artistic output should be ignored. One made the inevitable comment “As someone who sees White stars get a pass for things that celebrities of color get crucified for.”
I learned a long time ago to separate the performer from the performance. I also apply this rule to David Robert Jones. (David Bowie was a stage name. The legal name was never changed.) In 1976, there was an interview, where the artist said “Don’t believe anything you hear me say.” While the creative/marketing genius can be enjoyed, there was always a bit of coldness behind the mask. Some press reports say that this softened as the years went by. In the end David Bowie was human. Ziggy Stardust was a character played by an actor. Does it matter that they were a Cracked Actor?
It is ironic that David Bowie played Andy Warhol in Basquiat. Both combined creation of art, and the marketing of art product, into a seamless unit. The two did not have a good first meeting. “Remember, David Bowie was not a big star. He was just some guy off the street as far as Andy Warhol was concerned. They found a common ground in David’s shoes. David was wearing yellow Mary Janes and Andy had been a shoe illustrator, which David knew so they began talking about shoes.”
This would have been in 1971. Mr. Bowie discusses his adventures in between songs of this show. There is another story from that first tour: “I think that must’ve been part of the Mercury Records publicity tour in early 1971, Gus. Ted Vigodsky, if I remember correctly, brought Bowie by The Great Speckled Bird’s offices on North Avenue where Moe Slotin and I met him. Bowie was dressed in an ill-fitting gingham dress and looked something like a gaunt, poverty-stricken woman in one of those Walker Evans photos from the Depression. He informed Moe and me that he was gonna be the next big star in rock-n-roll. It took all of our will power not to laugh in his face. This was before anyone in America had heard of him and he had no records out yet (“Space Oddity,” a hit in England in 1969, was not released in the USA until 1973). Six months later Moe and I realised we had completely underestimated him. I had forgotten Charlie had called you about interviewing him.” Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
David Bowie is 69 today. Elvis is ageless, and Sarah Palin is obsolete. This Bowie tribute is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
A webpage called CaptainsDead had a download of a David Bowie concert. (It is here on “A Portrait In Flesh” (Full show L.A. Sept. 5th 1974)) Most Bowie live recordings are pretty dull. While the Thin White Duke is renowned for his concerts, they tend to be live events, that depend on staging and costumes as much as music. This show, from 1974, is different. Focusing on material from “Diamond Dogs”, the sound he produces comes close to matching the studio sound.
The next move for Bowie in 1974 was the “white soul” sound of “Young Americans”. He is moving in that direction in this show, even while he lingers in the glitter apocalypse. This tour included a stop at the Fox Theater, the first Atlanta show for Mr.Bowie. On the way to Florida for the next show, the truck with the sets and costumes crashed into a swamp full of rattlesnakes. The show in Tampa was performed in street clothes.
Maybe it is time for a Chamblee54 tribute to David Bowie. It is six am, and PG has stumbled into a job. The time and energy required to write new material is not always available.
The first album by David Bowie that PG heard about was “Hunky Dory”. At the time, Mr. Bowie had generated some buzz by admitting that he fancies blokes, or some uber british expression for being queer. In time, this would be seen as more publicity stunt than brave confession. The RCA debut got some good reviews, but not much else.
The next year produced “Ziggy Stardust”, a concept album. At about this time he did a tour of the United States, with costumes and onstage antics that generated even more publicity. More and more people started listening, some in spite of his outrageous image, and quite a few more because of it. He broke up his band, the spiders from mars, and announced his retirement. The band, according to reports, learned about this while standing on stage behind him. Mr. Bowie, for all his genius, is not always a nice man.
In 1974 there was an album, “Diamond Dogs”, about the decadent urban life in the scifi future. A stage show based on this album…the source of the download mentioned above…marked a return to the concert stage. The next year gave us “Young Americans”, and the year after that “Station to Station”. Every year was a different sound and vision.
Meanwhile, the artist was not doing so good as a human being. According to all reports, he was doing mountains of cocaine. (There is a story of going to meet the parents of Ava Cherry, one of his girlfriends. He shows up at 3am, and does coke on the dining room table.) There was an interview in Playboy (or maybe it was Rolling Stone ) where the first thing he says is, don’t believe anything I say. He went on to say that he admired Adolf Hitler. Have we mentioned the physical appearance of David Bowie in 1975? He looked like he was dead, and nobody bothered to tell him. (By contrast, in recent photo collections of rock stars, Mr. Bowie looks pretty good for a man who is 69 yo.)
This was the era of Rocky Horror show. At one point, Riff Raff sings (Tim O’Brien wrote the show, and gave himself some darn good lines) Frank n furter, it’s all over, your mission is a failure, your lifestyle’s too extreme.I’m your new commander you now are my prisoner we return to transylvania prepare the transit beam While this may not have been directed at David Bowie, he took the hint.
We interrupt this David Bowie tribute with an emergency announcement. A person, reputed to be an entertainer, was seen using the n word on facebook. The screen shots have disappeared, and all we have is the word of the accuser. More details will be available as soon as anyone is interested.
David Bowie saw himself at a dead end, and possibly a dead life. He moved into a little apartment in West Berlin, on top of a garage. Brian Eno offered his assistance, and a series of electronic albums was the result. The next few years saw rock and roll, dance music, and finally, crap. PG bought a Bowie album in 1984, the first time he saw it on sale, and was immensely disappointed. The last David Bowie album that PG got was a free cd that was given to people buying a magazine.
Around 1981, MTV was born, and radio was suddenly obsolete. A visual artiste like David Bowie was a natural for video. Unfortunately, many of these videos are not available for embedding in blogs. Ashes to Ashes was a staple of early MTV. Boys Keep Swinging , off the “Lodger” album, is a return to the gender bender Bowie of younger days.
David Bowie continued to do tours, and PG got to see two of the shows. In 1987, something called the “Glass Spider Tour” came to the Omni. (In a later interview, it turns out Mr. Bowie was extremely unhappy during this tour, and close to suicide at some points.) The Glass Spider was this mass of lighting effects that hovered over the stage, and was used to best advantage during “Scary Monsters”. The show featured Peter Frampton on guitar, and had a pack of dancers. (One apparent female took her drag off during the finale.) A good time was had by all.
In 1990, another retirement tour came to the Omni. This one had movies projected on a screen behind the stage, and featured guitar hero Adrian Bellew. The night had the feel of a contractual obligation. David Bowie is too professional to give a bad show, but this one did not have the fire of “Glass Spider”. PG had a new set of contact lenses, and his eyes were painfully dry most of the night.
This David Bowie Death Day tribute is a triple repost.
Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Tag some others who might enjoy this. You can’t use the band I used. Try not to repeat a song title. It’s a lot harder than you think! Re-post as “my life according to (band name)”Pick your Artist: David Bowie
Are you a male or female: The Bewley Brothers
Describe yourself: Quicksand
How do you feel:Always crashing in the same car
Describe where you currently live: Life on Mars
If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Width of a circle
Your favorite form of transportation: Queen Bitch
Your best friend is: Young Americans
You and your best friends are: Kooks
What’s the weather like: Changes
Favorite time of day: Eight Line Poem
If your life was a TV show, what would it be called: Scary Monsters
What is life to you: Panic in Detroit
Your relationship: Fame
Your fear: Sound and Vision
What is the best advice you have to give:Somebody up there likes me
Thought for the Day: Hang onto yourself
How I would like to die: Ashes to Ashes
My soul’s present condition: Moonage Daydream
My motto: Andy Warhol
Reflections In A Dirty Pond
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ENQUIRING Minds NEED to know! ~ homophobia, racist sexism feces, misogyny dude ~ @Rosie DONALD TRUMP IS MENTALLY UNSTABLE #potmeetkettle ~ making this election about racism was a mistake… you get DJT in white house & further alienate african america ~ The words to go are below. Spell check suggestions are in parentheses. focus, bête noire, (bite noise) historic, town hall meeting, post truth, 831, guesstimate, manicured, disruption, on fleek, (leek) bigly, (billy, bitingly) ghost, dadbod, (deadbolt) listicle, (legalistic, testicle, stylistic) drone, get your dandruff up, selfie, frankenfruit, echo chamber, you, sir ~ @SlavojTweezek And I know a lot of idiots. ~ Maybe you could include the Wednesday night thing in the one group. ~ @AlexPrime Some people think that I’m a contrarian. I disagree with them…. ~ Something is technically wrong. Thanks for noticing—we’re going to fix it up and have things back to normal soon. ~ LETS MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! If you support Donald Trump hit the LIKE BUTTON! Donald Trump News Facebook deleted our official MagaFeed fan page, please support us by LIKING our new one! Donald Trump News Follow us for the latest breaking Trump news! ~ Joe when did you start working for the onion? ~ @OneWingedChris Everyone, upgrade your life and follow @chescaleigh, @kat_blaque, @brokeymcpoverty, @heavenrants and @rgay. You’ll thank them later. ~ @kidjunie unnamed. they/them. i don’t care about white opinions. im not arguing w any of y’all dusty niggas. ~ This account’s Tweets are protected. Only confirmed followers have access to @kidjunie’s Tweets and complete profile. Click the “Follow” button to send a follow request. ~ That kind of divide and conquer thinking keeps the drug laws in place. Get white people fighting the black people, and the government screws everyone. ~ Does anyone know who said #blmkidnapping first, and why it caught on? Maybe it was AA looking for a distraction ~ Firefox can’t find the server at archives.stupidquestion.net. ~ Warning — visiting this web site may harm your computer! ~ @cbanks420lol2 I hate that I’m being called racist so much lately. I dated a black girl. Her pussy looked like a wallet, but I loved her. ~ why do people say the mexican border wall is racism when it is really nationalism? maybe demoze don’t think nationalism will fire people up ~ @SlavojTweezek We communists should, you know, cut Trump some slack. Sure he ignores facts, but what, you know, have facts ever done for us? ~ Is that most questionable, or least answerable? ~ Pledge of Social Media Responsibility: Claude Thomas NOT FOR FOLKS TO BE SO SENSITIVE ABOUT POLITICIANS THAT DONT CARE ABOUT ANYONE & NOT BE SO PETTY OVER CHILDISH THINGS LIKE MOST ON FACEBOOK Luther Mckinnon I will not use all caps Claude Thomas ITS MY COMPUTER I BOUGHT IT OR IS THAT A LAW IN THE STATES NOW WORRY ABOUT THE ISSUES THAT AFFECT US ALL NOT HOW I TYPE ON MY COMPUTER ~ is belief the correct approach to the g-d issue? why are so people so fascinated with their thoughts aka beliefs? ~ pictures for this exploration of the digital cosmos are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. ~ selah
Millard Fillmore’s Birthday
On January 7, 1800, Millard Fillmore was born. He had no middle name, so his initials were MF. He was POTUS number thirteen, serving July 9, 1850 – March 4, 1853. A member of the Whig party, Mr. Fillmore became President after the death of Zachary Taylor. This is the only death of a serving President not connected to the zero factor.
Whenever a President dies in office, there are conspiracty theries. In the case of Zachary Taylor, the body was exhumed in 1991. The investigation found that Mr. Taylor “had no more arsenic in him than you or I walking around in the environment today.”
“The details about how and why President Taylor died are still in dispute today. The president attended a ceremony at the site of the Washington Monument on July 4th on a reportedly hot summer day. He fell ill soon after with a stomach ailment after drinking iced drinks and eating a bowl of cherries. His doctors gave him relief medication that included opium and later bled the president. Taylor died five days later at the age of 65.
Officially, he died from cholera morbus, and today, the prevalent theory is that Taylor suffered from gastroenteritis, an illness exacerbated by poor sanitary conditions in Washington. There are other theories, including one where Taylor was poisoned by people who supported the South’s pro-slavery position. (In recent years, Taylor’s body was exhumed and a small, non-lethal amount of arsenic was found in samples taken from his corpse.) It was Taylor’s unexpected opposition to the expansion of slavery (he was from the South and was the last president to own slaves) that had caused an immediate crisis in 1850.”
Some naysayers claim that Millard Fillmore was the one to poison the President, but they are not taken seriously. Millard Fillmore served what was left of Mr. Taylor’s term. He is little known today, which makes one wonder why he was included in the history series American Douchebag. Which is not to say that Mr. Fillmore is completely forgotten.
@EdDarrell Happy Birthday Millard Fillmore! Born January 7, 1800. Fillmore as a young man? @fillmoremillard Thank you Ed! I was a handsome devil, wasn’t I? #Fillmore2016 @EdDarrell One story holds that when Fillmore toured England and Europe Queen Victoria said said was the handsomest man she ever met. @MonroeNumber5 Prince Albert must have loved that… Perhaps he wasn’t vain enough to let it bother him. @EdDarrell Or, more likely, Albert knew Victoria’s astounding love and devotion to him. Albert died 6 years later.
At one time, Johnny Carson thought jokes about Millard Fillmore were funny. A youtube search does not reveal any of these jokes. During a writers guild strike, Mr. Carson wrote his own monolog. “… astrology would no longer be used at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Employed instead, he said, would be “a channeler speaking through the spirit of Millard Fillmore.”
The rest of this holiday post is recycled. It was inspired by Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub, a fine blog. MFB is published today, six years after the original post. As you may have guessed, it is named for Millard Fillmore. MF was POTUS (and many POTUS are MF) between 1850 and 1853. The last whig to serve as POTUS (history does not record whether he wore one), Mr. Fillmore helped delay the War Between the States for ten years.
After he left office, Mr. Fillmore visited Atlanta GA in 1854, becoming the first POTUS to do so. A road in San Francisco was named Fillmore Street, and loaned the name to a famous concert hall. Johnny Carson made him a punch line to many jokes. And, there is the bathtub.
In 1917, with America mixed up in a European war, H.L. Mencken published a column in the New York Evening Mail. He claimed that the bathtub had been invented in 1842, and was a controversial device. (The first model was made of mahogany lined with lead.) President Millard Fillmore installed a bathtub in the White House in 1850, and greatly increased the acceptance of the invention. The story was a lie, but was believed without question by the (unwashed) public.
Recently someone found a letter, written by Alexander Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederate States of America. In 1860, the election of Abraham Lincoln was seen by many as a disaster. Mr. Stephens disagreed: “I know the man [Lincoln] well, he is not a bad man. He will make as good a President as Fillmore did and better too in my opinion.”
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. These details are from picture #06665, “Bathing Beauty Pageant, 1925, Huntington Beach CA.” This is a repost.
Why The Time Is Always 10:09:36
PG notices details, sometimes. One thing is the time on clocks and watches in ads. The time is 10:09:36. Sometimes, it is 01:51:25. There are occasional exceptions, but 10:09:36 seems to be an industry standard. This is a repost. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
It focuses attention on the top part of the watch, and makes the bottom part visible. Typically, the logo of the manufacturer is framed by the hands. The manufacturer wants the logo to be visible in the ads.
The hands lifted upward make a welcoming gesture. If you hold your arms out at the 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock positions, it will look like you are about to hug someone. This shape also looks like a smile.
After this, we get into the myths. At this particular time (10:09:36) US deployed the atom bomb on Japan. This particular time is used to remind people of the US dominance. A bit of research into pre atom bomb advertising might disprove that, but PG thinks that is too much work.
Another hypothesis is that Abraham Lincoln was shot at 10:15 pm on April 14, 1865, and died at 7:22 the next day. How this translates into 10:09:36 is anyone’s guess. However, standard time was not used in the United States until 1883. The precise “time” of Mr. Lincolns retirement is not known.
Someone wrote the Timex company about this issue.
A: WE CALLED TIMEX FOR YOUR ANSWER AND IT SAYS THE HANDS ON A CLOCK ARE PLACED AT TEN-TEN BECAUSE IT’S A CREATIVE STANDARD INDUSTRY. TIMEX SAYS THE HANDS ON TIMEPIECES ARE PLACED AT TEN-TEN SO THE COMPANY LOGO ON THE FACE WILL BE FRAMED AND NOT BLOCKED BY THE HANDS.
TIMEX SAYS THE INDUSTRY STANDARD USED TO BE EIGHT-TWENTY BUT THAT LOOKED TOO MUCH LIKE A FROWN AND CREATED AN UNHAPPY LOOK. TIMEX SAYS IN ITS ADS, THE CLOCK HANDS ARE PLACED AT TEN-NINE AND THIRTY SIX SECONDS, EXACTLY.”
Another source discusses this issue when the “creative standard industry” was 8:20. At that time people still said it was the time that Abe Lincoln was shot and or died.
Yet another source, the poetically named stupidquestion.net, has a few more tidbits. It seems like in the 1880’s, pocket watches became popular. In ads, the case was shown more than the face. The omega watchmaker established the 10:08:35 standard in 1915, and the industry followed suit. This would also seem to contradict the atom bomb theory given above.
PG has always wondered something else. Are all photographs for watch ads shot at 10:09:36? If not, then the ads are a lie. According to StupidQuestions, watchmakers send out non functioning dummy watches that are frozen at a certain time. PG (who does not wear a watch, but uses wall clocks) says this makes him question the honesty of the ad.
Chamblee54 
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