Tommy Rotten
In 1977, Rolling Stone did a piece about a “counterculture writer” named Thomas Eugene Robbins. This should not be confused for Harold Robbins, a mainstream wordchunker who died in 1997. “Tommy Rotten is known for colorful phrasing. It is as if Vladimir Nabokov caught butterflies with psychedelic juice in their wings, and made a lepidopterist stew that allowed him behind the looking glass.” As it is, we have, a stylistic seraphim from the time of the Carter administration. “You can tell people that my goal is to write novels that are like a basket of cherry tomatoes—when you bite into a paragraph, you don’t know which way the juice is going to squirt.”
Part one of the chamblee54 regurgitation of Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life hit the ether nine days ago. Since then, I have taken to writing down the page number of phrases that catch my eye, tickle my ears, pull my leg, and punch me in the gut. Since a Tom Robbins book is an anarchic army of swinging sentences, only nominally regulated by the discipline of plot, this may be the best way to approach this subject.
On page 25, TER was on an asian honeymoon. A Sing snake crossed their path, and was invited to dinner. The reptile was prepared with enough red chili paste to give heartburn to the human blowtorch. TER felt as though he had gargled napalm. On page 145, TER would describe “many a hot, sticky summer night, when a restless Richmond felt like the interior of a napalmed watermelon.”
Page 63 sees TER at thirteen years old. He has not joined the church, given his soul to Jesus, and been assured of salvation. These are important items on the Southern Baptist bucket list. I went through sunday after painful sunday, every time the congregation sang “Just as I am” as an invitation to eternal life with Jesus. I never did take that walk down the aisle, and have come to see the Baptist ritual of pressuring pre pubescent youth as being just a little bit weird. Yes, this is better than what the Roman Pedophile Church likes to do with little boys, but that’s a technicality.
The man assigned to win the soul of TER was Dr. Peters. “tall, gaunt, and pale, with a weak damp smile and cold damp palms: shaking hands with him was like being forced to grasp the flaccid penis of a hypothermic zombie….more creepy than refrigerated possum slobber.”
By page 125, TER is out of school, married, and has a son. This is the early fifties, and I will not appear on planet earth for a little while. In those days, there was a war going on in Korea. TER decided that the Air Force would be more pleasant than the army. If he had waited much longer Uncle Sam would have made the choice for him.
TER at some point is on a ship, and editing a newspaper. “… the paper’s adviser, a Roman Catholic chaplain who possessed the purplish physiognomy and perpetually petulant pucker of the overly zealous censor.” Soon TER is in Nebraska, and buys his first automobile, a “1947 Kaiser … looked like the illegitimate child of a sperm whale and a pizza oven.” The gender is not specified.
Six pages later, TER is out of the service, about the divorce wife number one, and living in a hood called the Fan. This was the hippie district of Richmond VA, although the 1954 version was considerably tamer than the summer of love variety. (This is roughly the time when I burst onto the landscape of Atlanta GA) TER was reading books about zen. Learning zen, by reading a book, was similar to learning how to swim by reading a magazine. Or telling time by reading a newspaper. As Ben Hecht put it, “Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.”
The convergence of zen, swimming, and reading material made TER think of a poem by William Blake. Mr. Blake was a hallucinatory inspiration on Allen Ginsberg, who would later be the only man to ever kiss TER on the lips. (I have doubts about that one, but will have to take the his word.) Anyway, the poem has the Southern Baptist approved title of “Eternity.” “He who binds to himself a joy, Does the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies, Lives in eternity’s sun rise.”
Maybe this is a good time to edit this, and go forth into the world. Or go second, or third, but not in a Southern Baptist lifetime should I go fifth. As TER said in High Times, “I’d better shut up now before the woo-woo alarms go off.” … Tom’s lifetime subscription to High Times ran out February 9, 2025. Pictures today are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library. The social media picture was taken in the 1940s. “Buses full of soldiers outside Fox Theater (“colored entrance” sign visible)” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Our Bohemian Lifestyle
This content was published October 31, 2008. … Ten Clues you are too old to Trick or Treat: 1 – You get winded from knocking on the door. 2 – You have to have another kid chew the candy for you. 3 – You ask for high fiber candy only. 4 – You keep having to go home to pee. 5 – People say: “Great Boris Karloff Mask,”And you’re not wearing a mask. 6 – When the door opens you yell, “Trick or…”And can’t remember the rest. 7 – By the end of the night,you have a bag full of restraining orders. 8 – You have to carefully choose a costume that won’t dislodge your hairpiece. 9 – You’re the only Power Ranger in the neighborhood with a walker. 10 – When someone drops a candy bar in your bag,you lose your balance and fall over.
This content was published October 19, 2008. … The answering machine was flashing when I got out of the shower. Even though the internal caller id told me it was Uzi, I listened to the messages before calling. The scheduled entertainment for the afternoon was a walk through little five points. … After a while, the honda was parked behind Manuel’s, and the walk to ElfivePee began. Is the Halloween Festival over, and could we tell the difference? Coming down Seminole Avenue, into the closed off street by the pizza places, the thought came to go to the Vortex. No, that is a bad idea, they may be enforcing the no idiot policy.
The artist was urging the sunday visitors to Buy Art, and help support our bohemian lifestyle. I needed to use a restroom, and thought the Euclid Avenue Yacht Club would be atmospheric enough. Past that was the former Bass High School, now a loft community. When WRFG went on the air, their transmitter was so weak that they could not be heard north of the high school. … Crossing Euclid Avenue required waiting for the cars to pass by. The former Sevananda/A&P/Piggly Wiggly of Miss Daisy fame is now a Rag store. They have stenciled parking spots, across from the mural infested wall of the Variety Playhouse. Uzi was once going to pay to park for a concert there. The parking attendant recognized his friend and gave them a prime spot for free. He does not remember who was playing.
The parade of the hairstyle enhanced trendoids continued down the well trod sidewalks. Uzi was in the mood for a chocolate ice cream from Zestos. I waited outside, and took pictures of ivy falling down in front of a brick wall. We crossed Moreland, and found a bench to sit on. It was across from the former fountain, which now has cactus growing inside. A dog got loose, and scampered down Moreland Avenue, while the traffic screeched to a halt. The pet went down Euclid into oblivion, as Uzi finished his ice cream. Deciding that they had enough hipness for the day, we went back to Manuels, and to the S&S cafeteria in the relative safety of Embry Hills.
This content was published October 28, 2009. … I finished part two of the David Crosby autobiography, “Since Then“. This book is evidence that truth is stranger than fiction. For those who just tuned in, David Crosby was one of the Byrds, and is the Crosby of Crosby, Stills, Nash and (sometimes) Young. … David Crosby (no relation to Bing Crosby) is a part of the counterculture. The hair, the fringe jacket, the drugs, the sex, these are the surface parts of the puzzle. The man has been described as a complex bottle of red wine, taking a long time to mature. The hair is still there, he is in love with his wife (and probably would be dead without her), and smokes the occasional doobie. With any luck at all, the fringe jacket is in a landfill, and not reproducing.
The book has three fonts. The primary one is the voice of Crosby. Comments from third parties are indented, and the co author, Carl Gottlieb, speaks in italics. The story moves in more or less chronological fashion, although there is a bit of cutting back and forth between scenes. … At the start of the book, LA is hit by a major earthquake. This destroys a house Crosby has. If the earthquake doesn’t get the house, the IRS will. An accountant has not done his job, and Crosby owes major bucks to Uncle Sam. If its not one thing, its another.
Moving along, a son given up for adoption finds Crosby, and winds up playing guitar in a band called CPR. Crosby wrecks his motorcycle and nearly croaks. Crosby’s liver goes haywire, and he almost croaks. Ditto heart attack, and arrest for felony gun possession. … One of the last visitors before the liver transplant was Graham Nash. As he is leaving, Nash tells Crosby ”If you leave me alone with Stills, I’ll f***ing kill you”. For all the pretty music in CSN, there are some strong personalities. Stephen Stills is renowned for his attitude. David Crosby is known to have an opinion or two.
Getting back to the David Crosby story…there is just too much to sum up here. At the end of the story, Crosby is still going. He stopped at two artificially inseminated babies, to go with four (at least) kids produced the old fashioned way. The opinions have not stopped coming out. Crosby likes World War W as much as I do. Crosby has always held doomsday views about the American experiment. … David Van Cortlandt Crosby met his maker January 18, 2023. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the social media picture in February 1942. “Meeker County, Minnesota. Farmers’ dance in crossroads store” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
The Four Agreements
This post was published October 8, 2023. … The Four Agreements were put into words by Don Miguel Ruiz, aka Miguel Ángel Ruiz Macías. I do not claim to practice these ideas. Number two is especially tough for me. The main thing is to try, and to always do your best. This is not about what you believe or think, it is about what you do. This is about you. If you fall short in some way, work on improving yourself, instead of looking at someone else. This is about you.
Agreement 1–Be impeccable with your word – Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.
Agreement 2–Don’t take anything personally – Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.
Agreement 3–Don’t make assumptions – Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.
Agreement 4–Always do your best – Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.
These ideas are presented as agreements, rather than beliefs. According to the AI Overview: “The Four Agreements are presented as a path to personal freedom, not beliefs, because they are intended to be active choices rather than passive convictions. The key distinction lies in the nature of beliefs versus agreements: Beliefs are passively accepted; agreements are actively chosen. … Beliefs are convictions you hold as true, often without ever questioning or examining them. … Agreements, in Ruiz’s usage, are active choices you make with yourself. The Four Agreements are a conscious decision to operate differently, liberating you from the unconscious beliefs that cause suffering. … The shift from living by unconsciously inherited beliefs to consciously chosen agreements is the central transformative process of Ruiz’s book. The agreements are not just concepts to be mentally accepted; they are practical tools that require daily effort and action to reshape your life.”
This feature was written like David Foster Wallace. Pictures today are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library. The social media picture was taken in 1954. “Loew’s Grand Theatre marquee and ticket line for the fifteenth anniversary rerelease of “Gone With The Wind.” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Post Office
This content was published September 15, 2018. … Post Office, a novel by Charles Bukowski, was on sale at a “Friends of the Chamblee Library” book sale. The author would not like this. You cannot complain when you died 24 years ago. I paid a dollar, and read the story. Hank Chinaski, the stand in for the author, got a lousy job at the post office in Los Angeles. For 196 pages, Hank drinks, works, screws, admires women’s bodies, drinks, bets on horses, fights with supervisors, has hangovers, and drinks more. The story is easy to read, suggesting the helping hand of an editor.
PO stands for both post office and pissed off. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive. To hear Hank tell the story, life at the PO was an endless cycle of sadistic bosses, and brain damaged co-workers. Administrative wanks rule over everyone. Somehow Hank made it through 11 years as a clerk. The institution survived. Mr. Bukowski perished in 1994. The headstone reads “Don’t Try.”
‘I Never Saw Him Drunk’: An Interview with Bukowski’s Longtime Publisher is an interview with John Martin, the owner of Black Sparrow press. Mr. Martin thought Hank was the next Whitman, and started Black Sparrow (initials are not always convenient) to distribute Hank’s product. When Hank quit the post office in 1969, Mr. Martin agreed to give him $100 a month. This later became $10,000 every two weeks, with more at the end of the year.
“How did his first novel, Post Office, come about? This is a good story. So we made that deal in December for $100 a month—early December, as I recall—and so he gave notice to the post office, and his last day there was going to be December 31. He said, “OK, I’m going to work for you on January 2, because January 1 is New Year’s Day and I’m going to take that as a holiday. We thought that was really funny. About three or four weeks went by, I think it was still in January, or at worst the first week in February, and he called me—oh, and I had told him earlier, “If you ever think of writing a novel, that’s easier to sell than poetry; it would help if you could write a novel”—so he called me up at the very end of January or the first week of February, out of the blue, and said, “I got it; come and get it.” I said, “What?” And he said, “My novel.” I said, “You’ve written a novel since I saw you last?” And he said, “Yes.” I asked how that was possible, and he said, “Fear can accomplish a lot.” And that novel was Post Office.” The novel includes a near fatal party in that month.
Mr. Martin has a take on Hank which differs from his image. “Hank was not comfortable among people, in a crowd, even at a small gathering; he was a real loner. He wanted to get up in the morning, have a quick breakfast with his wife, read the paper, leave the house about noon, go to the track, come home at 6:00, have dinner about 7:00, go upstairs at 8:00, and write until two in the morning, and he wanted nothing to interfere with that routine. … he was the most polite man I’ve ever known, and the most honest man I’ve ever known. He was so deferential and polite and so concerned for your comfort, and whether you were happy or not, when you were with him.”
“I went to the bathroom and threw some water on my face, combed my hair. If I could only comb that face, I thought, but I can’t.” This may be the best line in PO. There are a lot to choose from. PO is a guilty pleasure. It is sexist and misogynistic to the max. The writing is basic, and easy to consume. It is tough to believe that Hank wrote this in a month by himself, but it is also tough to believe that someone that ugly got laid all the time. If only Hank could have combed that face.
I have written about Hank one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight times, with some reruns thrown in for efficient blogging. I have written two poems about Hank. (A B) B is basically A in sonnet form. Never mind that Hank hated rhyming poems, to say nothing of posting the lines over pictures of dogs. Hank was a cat person, as if rhyme scheme blasphemy was not enough.
@bukowski_quote is a twitter facility dedicated to distributing 240 character bits of Buk. These tweets/quotes (twoats) have been packaged as two more sonnets, published in two parts each. (C D E F) Sometimes, I see this is a bit of post mortem cultural appropriation. The Hank of Tales of Ordinary Madness would have hated seeing his work used this way. How the millionaire, wine sipping Hank felt is a good question. Then, I found a quote that made me feel better.
“I got into Bukowski about five years ago on a trip to New York from North Carolina. I swallowed Ham on Rye in a single sitting while riding in the back of some clunker-type Honda thing racing north on I-95 in what I think was June of 2005. Since then I’ve read all of his novels and much of his poetry (which is a lot, do you know how much poetry he wrote?) and don’t give a shit about the literary ball bags at the Vice office who say he’s a boring, repetitive, pompous, fake-macho, southern-California-weather-system-addled boozehole, partly because I agree, and partly because I don’t read him for some sort of illumination on the haggard life of the proletariat. I just see his writing as a quick source of thrills, spills, and funny things to call women that you’re angry at but also still want to fuck.”
A book report about Post Office would not be complete without one star reviews. patricia neumannon August 8, 2014 “One star for the fact that this was even published. I was offended by Mr. Bukowski’s low regard for women. Pehaps his target audience is adolescent boys, who might twitter at Bukkowski’s vulger attempt at humor.” Auntie Mon September 1, 2014 “A book about a pathetic, selfish White man? No thanks.” gammyrayeon February 8, 2013 ” … The narrator Henry Chenaski is a low-life alcoholic who spends his life getting drunk, having sex with girlfriends and chance acquaintances, and betting at the race track, all while working at the post office. Finally he resigns from the post office. End of story. All this is written in an arrogant tone, as if the narrator feels himself to be superior to all the other characters, especially to his fellow workers. Bukowski has stated that the novel is autobiographical, and he seemed to take pride in the tumble-down life that he led. I have known guys like this–he is every drunk or drug addict who ever excused his addiction as an indication that he is too intelligent and sensitive to deal with the angst of living among the clods and drudges. Alcoholism is not hilarious and entertaining, even to the alcoholic, eventually. And it is not hilarious and entertaining to read about.” … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Marjory Collins took the social media picture in August 1942. “New York, New York O’Reilly’s bar on Third Avenue in the “Fifties”” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
How To Choose A Guru
I found How To Choose A Guru, by Rick Chapman at a yard sale in 1978. HTCAG is a look at spirituality of all sorts. A special emphasis is placed on Meher Baba. HTCAG was republished as Introduction to Reality.
HTCAG can be a frustrating book. The main focus is on finding a “perfect master”, and the path to enlightenment under his guidance. If one is not inclined to this level of dedication, you can be left feeling inferior. This is similar to the despair people feel when they think they are going to go to hell, because they don’t have the correct ideas about Jesus.
HTCAG takes a look at spirit from the perspective of all religions. A central concept is the avatar, the idea of God become man. (This was long before the movie with a similar title.) The avatars of recorded history include Zoroaster, Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammad. Some say Meher Baba is the modern avatar.
Mr. Chapman has a knack for phrasing. There are expressions that I remember from reading HTCAG in 1978. They are still there, 47 years later.
Creation “First, there was God. Then, there’s you. Then, there is God.”
Speculation “The average person’s speculation about consciousness …
has “the stink but not the weight of his turd”
Evangelism “An authentic Master will encourage you to let your life itself be his message.”
Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds “Don’t be sidetracked by elaborate creeds and doctrines- the truth is as simple as it is profound. From the ancient teachings of Zoroaster to today, these three principles have been the heart of the message of every God realized Master.”
Books “Excellent guides until you find the Way.” Abu Sa’id
Books Part Two “… the scriptures of the past compare to the writings of a present-day Perfect Master just about the way that dust compares to honey.”
Satan Worship “If you have been toying with the thought that any form of Satan worship can lead you to higher consciousness, sober up by reading the story of Dr. Faustus. There are many paths to enlightenment, but this back alley isn’t one of them.”
Sex “A real guru never has any form of sexual relations with his followers. If a person posing as a guru tries to seduce you in the physical sense, then you can have no clearer indication that he is a phony, a pathetic and hypocritical collection of unresolved desires.”
Truth, Old and New “One time the Buddha was approached by a young man who was skeptical about Gautama’s renowned divine status. “Does the Blessed One teach a path that is new and original?” One of the Buddha’s close disciples, Sariputta, turned his gaze from the Master to the skeptic and replied, “If the Blessed One taught a path that was new and original, He would not be the Blessed One!”
Several of these quotes were available in copy/paste form at Meher Baba Information. These quotes may be difficult to find at the “improved” website. This site says that Rick Chapman is a follower of Meher Baba, and met him in 1966. This relationship is never made explicit in HTCAG. A glowing chapter is devoted to Meher Baba, and this information is not surprising. Still, HTCAG would be more upfront if this connection was clearly spelled out.
Meher Baba was born February 25, 1894 with the name Merwan Sheriar Irani. The name Meher Baba means “compassionate father”. From July 10, 1925 until his death January 31, 1969, he maintained silence, and communicated by gestures that were interpreted by his followers. Meher Baba believed that he was the avatar of our age.
With all of it’s human imperfections, HTCAG is a valuable book. It is easy to read, will expose you to ideas about spirit, and get you to think. When you grow up in the Christian tradition, one can be aware of a spirit within. At the same time, you get tired of the obsession with life after death. HTCAG teaches that there is more to God than scheming to live after you die.
This is a repost. It is written like Vladimir Nabokov. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the social media picture in June 1941. “Commission merchant examining produce at fruit warehouse. Chicago, Illinois” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Brian Eno Rick Rubin
I had ran out of podcasts, and went into the archive. I found an interview Rick Rubin did with Brian Peter George Eno, released June 8, 2021. I had heard it before, but might enjoy a repeat listening. … I found a youtube copy, which had a transcript, the lazy bloggers friend. Later, while trying to find the release date, I stumbled onto an Extended Cut, with an extra half hour of content . I am going to listen to the longer version, take notes, write about it, and then absolutely never listen to this again. …
“Yes, and incidentally, I think that’s the power of religion as well. The power of religion is not the connection with God, but the connection with the rest of the congregation. I think the connection with all of the people who also believe in that particular story. I’m not really religious myself, but I really respond to that idea.”
A few years ago, Christopher Isherwood gave an interview with a magazine. (I have never found the source online.) Mr. Isherwood said that it was not the content of the religion that converted a person, but the person who introduces you to that religion. Mr. Isherwood said that if a Catholic had been the right person at the right time, then he might have become a Catholic.
In 1939, after living as an exuberant skeptic, Mr. Isherwood was converted. “Forty-five years ago, on a sultry July afternoon, 35-year old Christopher Isherwood met and embraced Ramakrishna Vedanta in downtown Hollywood, California. Aldous Huxley, writer extraordinaire and ardent explorer of Hindu interior consciousness, had just introduced Isherwood to his guru, Swami Prabhavananda, founder of the Hollywood Ramakrishna Mission Vedanta Society.” … The linked article is worth reading. …
There was a quote that I remembered. “I like being in unfamiliar surroundings. I always used to say that artists are either cowboys or farmers, and they’re both both ways of being an artist are fine. The farmer wants to find a piece of territory and fully explore it and exploit it.” … A talk like this can inspire you to further thinking. You can go paddling up the river, and spend all day exploring the tributary creeks. This is the cowboy side … to follow the thought wherever it goes. OTOH, you can stick to the quotes that capture your attention, let them speak for themselves, and FINISH WRITING YOUR PIECE. This is the farmer side, and is mostly what is going to happen here. …
BPGE was absolutely devastated by hearing It’s Gonna Rain, by Steve Reich. By amazing coincidence, I heard IGR twice on WREK, the Georgia Tech student station. This was many years ago. Both times I heard IGR, large amounts of rain fell the next day. …
I listened to the Extended Cut, and did not suffer any epiphanies. There was one quote. “During the war, when lots of GIs were coming over to England, somebody interviewed an old farmer from Devon and said, so, how do you feel about the Americans coming over here? And the farmer said, well, they’re all right, aren’t they, except for the white ones.” …
One day in the Köln airport, ambient music was born. It was a beautiful day and the airport was nearly empty, and I was sitting there bathing in light, and it was one of those cases like we were talking about earlier, where you think I wish there was another kind of music for this situation, and I started thinking, so what would that be? Like? You know, it’s an airport, so you can’t be too loud. Obviously, people have to hear announcements. It has to be interruptible for the same reason it shouldn’t dominate the vocal register, because people need to communicate. So I just was sort of thinking this out, and quite soon I thought, right, I think I know what I could make that music. I know how I could do that. And that’s how that first ambient record came about. I mean, it wasn’t unprecedented. I had been working on music a little bit like that before, but I suddenly realized what its role in life could be. If you like, what the place of this music could be. I knew it wasn’t dance music. I knew it wasn’t radio music. It was functional, but I hadn’t yet discovered the function. It was then that I thought, I know what this music could be for.” …
BPGE worked with Harold Budd, and created some of the prettiest music ever recorded. This fits in with the ambient music concept. … “I didn’t want drama. I just wanted something like nature, subtle variations. Subtle variations, yes, and variations that stay within a kind of range of possibilities and explore that range rather randomly. I just wanted the thing to be what Harold Budd used to call eternally pretty. That was his way of putting it. Dear Harold. He died about two months ago from COVID, very sad. So I dedicate this thought to Harold. So. Yes, So when Harold and I met, we were both pretty much on this groove of thinking, what about making music that isn’t designed to upset anybody? Now, of course that sounds pretty uncontroversial now, but in the mid to late seventies that was considered to be the biggest sell out of all time. You know, music was supposed to shake the world and create revolutions and upset your parents and all sorts of things like that. And we thought, what about making music that is just really comfortable? Comfortable was probably the most controversial word you could use.” …
I have one last question to ask, just because I’m really curious, what’s your relationship to spirituality? … Well, as you can tell from the way I talk too much, I think about this kind of thing quite a lot. What I always want to do is to cut away as much of the shit as possible and see what’s left. So I don’t want to be a believer. I want to be somebody who, as far as possible, understands and knows things. Believing things leaves me a little bit unsatisfied. If I find myself believing something, I want to test the belief. I want to say, how do I find out how valid this is? How true this is? How? In real belief, in proper faith, you’re not supposed to do that. Faith is supposed to be, by definition, the acceptance of something that you cannot find evidence for. If you can find evidence for, it’s not faith anymore. It’s called knowledge. Then. So this is a long way round of saying that I’m not anti spiritual, I’m not anti religion. Actually, in fact, I can see how religion really cements some communities together and really helps people in their lives. But I’m not by nature a believer, So it’s difficult for me to use that kind of cement. My cement has to come from trying to understand things and to see how they work, and to share those ideas with other people. Yeah so, I think one one of the other things that surrendering prepares you for is the experience of uncertainty, the experience of not knowing the answer but still having to do something. You know, the fact that you don’t know the answer can’t cripple you. And of course a lot of people are crippled by not knowing the answer, and so they just choose an inappropriate answer just for the want of an answer.”
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Jack Delano took the social media picture in August 1942. “Nashville, Tennessee. Welding parts for fuel pumps. Vultee Aircraft Corporation plant” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Junky
This content was published September 21, 2015. … It started out slowly. I saw a tweet. It was a promotion for a blog post, featuring William Seward Burroughs reading The Masque of the Red Death, by Edgar Allan Poe. WSB has a great voice. The wealthy Missouri background, filtered through years of high class schooling, and low class abuse, comes through whenever WSB spoke. In the helpful links, there was an opportunity to hear an audiobook of WSB reading Junky. As with other addictions, you begin slowly, and do not realize you have a problem until you are helpless to deal with it.
Junky is the first book that WSB published, using the pseudonym William Lee. It is reputed to be semi autobiographical. In Junky, WSB wallows in the gutters of New York, New Orleans, and Mexico City. For this armchair degenerate, whose worst vice is peanut butter sandwiches, Junky is a glimpse into a picturesque alternate reality. With the aid of a copy friendly peedeeoueff edition, we can enjoy samples of the nightmare.
One review of Junky is this Amazon One Star Comment. Dissapointing Tanya N. Miller March 22, 2014 “This is a book that goes nowhere. It ends up right where it started. Every line in the book is about getting drugs and doing drugs then getting off drugs and back on drugs again with some sex thrown in. The only reason why I finished this book is because of my compulsion to finish books that I start and the only reason why I picked it up in the first place is because I wanted to know just who William S. Borroughs was. What a dissapointment and what a total waste of talent.”
The story begins with a semi normal childhood. It gets interesting in New York, during the war. A person named Norton (“a hard-working thief … did not feel right unless he stole something every day from the shipyard where he worked) has a tommy gun he wants Bill to sell. When Norton arrives, he has “a flat yellow box with five one-half grain syrettes of morphine tartrate.” Bill tries one of the syrettes, then another, then another. Then there is an episode which is in the book, but not the video.
“Ronnie’s was a spot near 52nd and Sixth where musicians came for fried chicken and coffee after one p.m. We sat down in a booth and ordered coffee. Mary cracked a benzedrine tube expertly, extracting the folded paper, and handed me three strips. “Roll it up into a pill and wash it down with coffee.” The paper gave off a sickening odor of menthol. Several people sitting nearby sniffed and smiled. I nearly gagged on the wad of paper…. Mary selected some gone numbers and beat on the table with the expression of a masturbating idiot.”
The video picks up with Bill trying to sell marijuana. “Pushing weed looks good on paper, like fur fanning or raising frogs.” Tea heads turn out to be too much trouble. Bill swears to never sell pot again, but not before ranting about the drug laws. … Bill has a habit now, working mostly with prescribed medication. Doctors are known as croakers. Soon the croakers quit writing scripts, and Bill gets busted. Some technicality about giving the wrong address. The case drew a four month suspended sentence. Bill starts to sell junk.
His partner is a piece of work. “One of Bill’s most distasteful conversation routines consisted of detailed bulletins on the state of his bowels. “Sometimes it gets so I have to reach my fingers in and pull it out. Hard as porcelain, you understand. The pain is terrible.” This might be a by product of opiate consumption. … Before long, Bill thinks he is about to get busted, and leaves for Texas. By the time he gets near Lexington, he has junk sickness. He checks into an institution to receive the cure. We learn a new word… shmecker is a user of heroin.
Bill leaves the Lexington facility without completing the cure. The next stop is New Orleans . … “New Orleans was a strange town to me and I had no way of making a junk connection. Walking around the city, I spotted several junk neighborhoods: St. Charles and Poydras, the area around and above Lee Circle, Canal and Exchange Place. I don’t spot junk neighborhoods by the way they look, but by the feel, somewhat the same process by which a dowser locates hidden water. I am walking along and suddenly the junk in my cells moves and twitches like the dowser’s wand: “Junk here!”
WSB co wrote a musical, “The Black Rider.” The performer is Tom Waits, whose voice sounds like WSB. There is a song, Crossroads. This is probably not about Robert Johnson. In this song, we learn about a gun with magic bullets. In the moment of aiming, the gun turns into a dowser’s wand. The bullet goes where the bullet wants to go. Some say the magic bullet is a stand in for junk. When Junky was written, junk was not used as slang for peckers.
It has been noted that WSB is as queer as a crochet bathtub. This circumstance is not noted in Junky. But then, WSB does not speak well of drug addicts either. “In the French Quarter there are several queer bars so full every night the fags spill out on to the sidewalk. A room full of fags gives me the horrors. They jerk around like puppets on invisible strings, galvanized into hideous activity that is the negation of everything living and spontaneous. The live human being has moved out of these bodies long ago. But something moved in when the original tenant moved out. Fags are ventriloquists’ dummies who have moved in and taken over the ventriloquist. …
… The dummy sits in a queer bar nursing his beer, and uncontrollably yapping out of a rigid doll face. Occasionally, you find intact personalities in a queer bar, but fags set the tone of these joints, and it always brings me down to go into a queer bar. The bring-down piles up. After my first week in a new town I have had about all I can take of these joints, so my bar business goes somewhere else, generally to a bar in or near Skid Row.” … Before long, Bill goes into a queer bar, and gets in trouble.
It seems to be a way of life, for someone who says that junk is a way of life. Maybe the magic bullet was aimed at him all along. … We are roughly half way through Junky. The attention span is maxxing out. In case we get druggie withdrawal, a podcast with Keith Richards is freshly downloaded. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. These pictures are Union soldiers from The War Between The States. Much of the action in Junky takes place in wartime.
Yossarian Part Five
This content was published August 31, 2012. … This is part five of an appreciation of Catch 22. Parts one, two, three, four, six, and seven are available. … XXV The Chaplain This is another existential quandary chapter. There is not a lot of action. The saving grace is that it makes fun of religion. … Chaplain Tappman is seen as a pathetic source of ridicule. The other men do not think he is wonderful, which always makes professional Jesus worshipers uncomfortable. Chaplain T is also having weird ideas. He sees a naked Yossarian in a tree during the memorial service for Snowdon, and thinks it is a vision. This is sort of like that lady in Rockdale county who kept having the Virgin Mary visit her. However, no one is under the impression that Yossarian is a virgin, or that he is the mother of Jesus. … So the Chaplain mopes about his uselessness, and decides to go see Major Major, who never sees anyone. The Chaplain takes a sneaky route back to his tent. He finds a man living in the woods. Flume is there because he thinks his tentmate is going to kill him.
After another humiliating encounter with tentmate Whitcomb, whose rank keeps changing, the Chaplain goes to see Colonel Cathcart. The Colonel is in no mood to talk to the Chaplain, and says the flyers are going to go to Avignon again so they can get some casualties. … One of the online cheat sheets has a good quote. “Complex questions of ontology perplex him, but “they never [seem] nearly as crucial to him as the question of kindness and good manners.” I had never encountered “ontology” before. It seems to have something to do with existential questions about the nature of God and man. If you change the t to a c, you get oncology. This is the branch of medicine dealing with the treatment of cancer. As one practitioner said, it is the branch of medicine that no one makes jokes about.
With c, you get oncology. This is the war against runaway cell growth, where the treatment is often treacherous and debilitating. The treatment is often as bad as the disease, which is saying something for a fatal malady. With t, you get ontology. This is where you ask questions that no one really knows the answer to, although many make the claim. Instead of runaway cell growth, you have runaway rhetoric. One chemotherapeutic protocol for ontology is substantial applications of alcohol, which can make the disease worse, can make you puke, but will usually not make your hair fall out.
XXVI Aarfy Aarfy is really named aardvark, although it is unlikely that is on his driver’s license. He should be first on any list of characters, except that the online cheat sheets don’t list the characters alphabetically. In a story like this, there are a lot of characters. It is tough for a simple minded southerner to keep up, and tools are needed. … In this chapter, Dunbar plays a key role. I seem to remember good things about him, but could not be sure. The first list of characters does not mention him. This is frustrating, since it is not alphabetized, and you have to go through the entire thing to see that Dunbar is not there.
Another character list does show something: Dunbar – A friend of Yossarian and the only other person who seems to understand that there is a war going on. Dunbar has decided to live as long as possible by making time pass as slowly as possible, so he treasures boredom and discomfort.” … There is some action in this chapter, and Aarfy is a key player. In the first part, Aarfy, Nately, and Yossarian are in a building in Rome. Nately confesses his love for a whore, and is ridiculed by Aarfy. Later, there is a mission, where Aarfy’s incompetence leads the plane into enemy fire. Yossarian is hit in the leg by flak, and winds up in the hospital. … When Yossarian tries to get out of bed, Nurse Cramer asks if he wants to lose his leg. “It’s my leg” ”It’s certainly not your leg. That leg belongs to the U.S. Government. It’s no different than a gear or a bedpan. The army has invested a lot of money to make you an airplane pilot, and you’ve no right to disobey the doctor’s orders.”
XXVII Nurse Duckett Sometimes you have to stop dilly dallying and finish the job at hand. This series on Catch 22 has gone on since June, and has three more parts to go. … When I decided to do a series on Yossarian, it was using two good eyes. A couple of weeks into July, there was an extra sensitivity to bright white light. When the right eye was covered, the left eye was a mass of blurred vision. Action needed to be taken. Research was done about ophthalmologists, insurance coverage was secured, and an appointment was made with a nearby eye doctor. …
The first appointment revealed a broken blood vessel in the eye. The fancy name is branch retinal vein occlusion. The doctor lectured me on the need for a medical exam, to determine the cause of this spillage. On the way home, I made an appointment for a physical. … When the nurse takes your blood pressure, makes a face, and decides to take a reading from your other arm, that is not a good sign. Yes, the blood work came out fine, and hypertension is a less severe problem than diabetes or hiv. Clearly, some lifestyle changes were in order.
The second visit to the eye clinic was horrible. The nurse said that the dilation drops were going to be strong, and that his eyes would be dilated the next day when he woke up. Then, the retina specialist had to deal with an emergency, and I had to wait, with compromised eyes, for what seemed like forever. … When I got to see the retina specialist, there was a new name for the condition. Cystoid Macular Edema is not an improvement. The doctor said that she could not start treatment with the blood pressure as high as it was. The treatment she proposed was an intraocular injection of a cancer drug. An appointment was made for four weeks in the future.
On the way home from the eye clinic, I stopped at the office of the other primary care dude. He was out of the office for two more days. I sent an email explaining his situation, and the primary called in a prescription for amlodipine. … I had started to decipher the proposed diet, and made an effort to follow it. When you are skinny growing up, you get into the habit of trying to gain weight. Then you get older, and develop a pot belly. The concept of thinking about what to eat is new to me.
The blood pressure readings began to improve. Better yet, the blurring in the left eye is improving. The next appointment at the eye clinic is the day after labor day. I am hoping that an intraocular injection of a cancer drug will not be needed. … Ok, back to Yossarian. This chapter starts out with him in the hospital, taking liberties with a nurse. There is trouble, and a shrink is called in. The head doctor is crazier than Yossarian. … There is a tradition on english tests. You are given a quote, and you have to explain it. There are two wiki worthy quotes for chapter XXVII.
“Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that in your promiscuous pursuit of women you are merely trying to assuage your subconscious fears of sexual impotence?” “Yes, sir, it has.” “Then why do you do it?” “To assuage my fears of sexual impotence.” This is an exchange between the shrink and Yossarian. … BTW, not all therapists, or other rapists, appreciate being called shrink. One such person said “I am not a shrinker, I am a grower”. He did not charge for that. … The last paragraph has a fun bit of wordplay. It has long been known that if you put a space three letters into therapist that you get the rapist. I tried to make a joke about this, and said or other rapist. When he saw those letters on the screen, he realized that “the” and “or” is an anagram for other.
Therapist spelled backwards is tsipareht. This will inhibit palindromic applications of this word. … “You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. You’re dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot!” Major Sanderson, the shrink, says this to Yossarian. This is another example of the satire in this book. It is not as heavy handed here as elsewhere, and consequently is more enjoyable. Satire can tire is applied without fire.
XXVIII Dobbs When PG was in sixth grade, a popular insult was Dob. Since it was a verbal insult, no one knew whether it had one bee or two. … It turns out the special education teacher at Cross Keys was named Beatrice Dobbins. She was morbidly obese. The special ed students were called dobs. This tidbit of knowledge made its way to the sixth grade at Ashford Park. … The character Dobbs wants Yossarian to help him kill Colonel Cathcart. In this chapter, Yossarian agrees to help. Dobbs is now unwilling to kill the Colonel. Opportunity is a funny thing, as are most things with tuna in the middle. This chapter is really about Orr, who is Yossarian’s tentmate. Orr is a tinkerer, which upsets Yossarian while it is going on. In later chapters, Yossarian will reap the benefits of Orr’s tinkering.
This is the last chapter that Orr appears in. He is flying a mission, and his plane goes into water. All the other men are in one lifeboat, and it is rescued. Somehow, the boat with Orr is never rescued. … There is a curious bit of cultural anthropology here. The life jackets the men carried were called Mae Wests. There was a movie star at that time who used that name. She had big boobs, which were probably real. There were rumors that Mae West was was a man in drag. Miss West made a movie with W.C. Fields, where he was drunk all the time, and they had to shoot the movie around him. … There was a plane crash, and when the men tried to use the Mae Wests, they did not work. The MWs had a CO2 canister, which made them inflate. Milo Minderbinder borrowed these canisters to make whipped cream. There were no other comments about the syndicate in this chapter.
The Orr who perishes in this chapter had a double r last name. There was a football player named Jimmy Orr. He caught passes from Johnny Unitas. Mr. Orr, with a double r, had a nightclub in the Peachtree Battle shopping center called “Jimmy Orr’s End Zone”. In Super Bowl III, the Baltimore Colts tried a trick play called a flea flicker, The quarterback gives the ball to a running back, who tosses it back to the quarterback. Jimmy Orr was by himself in the end zone, and the quarterback threw an interception. This was the year Joe Namath, and the New York Jets, won the Super Bowl. They had no business winning, but they did. People who suspect that the Super Bowl is rigged point to this game as the first obvious example.
XXIX Peckum There is not much action in this chapter. Just of bunch of self important officers trying to impress each other. They all think they are succeeding, and that the others are failing. There is a synchronicity of stupidity. … When I was at Redo Blue, I heard someone, named George, say “Frank thinks Phil is a fuckup”. The names have been changed to protect the guilty and the sensitive, even though it is unlikely that any of the three men involved will ever read this. It is not even certain that all three can read. So, I got to thinking. You could take that statement, and insert blanks where the names are. _____ said that ____ thinks that ____ is a fuckup. You could take any of those three names, and insert it into any spot in the formula. All combinations of names would be true.
XXX Dunbar This chapter was made for the movies. There is a pilot named McWatt. He likes to fly low over people and scare them. At first, it is a harmless little habit. Then it annoys Yossarian so much that murder is contemplated. … Yossarian, it turns out, would rather make love than war. He starts to spend afternoons on the beach with Nurse Duckett. They both enjoy the company of the other. While Yossarian and Nurse Duckett are making whoopee, the other men are swimming. One afternoon, McWatt decides to buzz the swimmers. Kid Sampson waves at him. For some reason, this distracts McWatt just enough to dip the plane a bit lower. Kid Sampson is cut in half. After McWatt sees what he has done, McWatt flies into a mountain. … <a href=”” target=”_blank”>Bookrags has an interesting take: McWatt dips his wings in one final salute and flies into … (paywall).
Another facebooker contributes a bit of commodity wisdom: “Work isn’t to make money; you work to justify life.” Marc Chagall “I think Chagall’s words speak to those who find passion in their work–or that their work sustains their passion. I am privileged to be in that class of folks, but on this labor day I am mindful of those who work to survive and in doing so often find themselves endangered by the exploitation and greed of others.” …
There is a little bit of sophistry/commodity wisdom that usually annoys me. It sounds so good, is a clever turn of words, but is totally without meaning when you think about it. The platitude is “I work to live, I don’t live to work.” Does your heart stop beating when you go to work? We all know people whose brain ceases to function on the clock, but they continue to breathe. Often, when they exhale, these people make obnoxious noise, which is also part of being alive.
Work is a part of life. When you are a living human critter, you are going to do things that you don’t enjoy. But you do them because you have to. When I am editing this, I will try to think of a good analogy for this silly saying. But don’t bet on it. This has gone on too long, and part five is finally, mercifully, finished. … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Russell Lee took the social media picture in September 1940. “Jack Whinery and his family, homesteaders, Pie Town, New Mexico” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Chuck Palahniuk And Joe Rogan
Joe Rogan Experience #1158 – Chuck Palahniuk hit the internet recently. Mr. Palahniuk (Paula Nick) writes trendy books, most famously Fight Club. Mr. Palahniuk is pleased to hear people say “the first rule of…” It makes him think he has had an impact on the culture. This is a repost.
Inevitably, authors talk about their writing habits. Mr. Palahniuk fills up notebooks in longhand. When he gets bored, or is killing time in an airport, he begins to type these notes. To quote Truman Capote, this is not writing, this is typing.
One of the themes of this conversation is what offends people. The author of Guts knows about giving offense. Often, people are not especially offended themselves, but are offended on behalf of other people. Mr. Palahniuk uses the phrase “white knighting,” to describe this protective umbrage taking. Per urban dictionary: “White knighting Defending someone who does not wish to be defended.” White knighting is woke whitesplaining.
Two especially tasteful stories were told. If you are inclined to get offended, for any reason at all, you probably should skip over these two stories. The pictures, by The Library of Congress, are safe. Both of these stories are by well known authors, who are named in the interview. If you want to know who they are, you will have to listen to the interview. Once again, these stories are hard core, and you should take great caution in reading them. If you like these stories, there are more in the podcast.
Upon further consideration, it has been determined that one of the stories is too much. If you want to hear it, you can listen to the podcast. … The break room at a hospital was next to the room where autopsies were performed, with a glass window looking in. A twelve year old boy was on the slab, having died in a bicycle accident. The Pathologist cut away the boy’s face, and peeled it back, so that it hung over his jaw. This exposed a dark red layer of muscle, covering the face. The man looked at this, and said “that’s the color I want to paint my den.”
Mr. Palahniuk has had a lively career. A crooked business manager stole a great deal of money from him. Since he is no longer filthy rich, but merely filthy minded, he continues to produce books. Fight Club 3 is in the pipeline. It will probably be accompanied by a promotional tour, with more grossout stories for the clamoring public.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Paul Carter took the social media picture in September 1936. “Lunch hour Newport News Homesteads, Virginia” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025
Manley Pointer
Good Country People is a Flannery O’Connor story. Manley Pointer is a Bible salesman in rural Georgia. He calls on the Hopewell family. Manley doesn’t sell any Bibles, but he does get a date with Hulga Hopewell. This is a repost.
“O’Connor portrays a one-legged, unemployed female with a Ph.D. in philosophy, who has nothing to do but stay at home and irritate her mother. When a Bible salesman, Manley Pointer, … arrives at the Hopewell house, Joy, who has changed her name to Hulga, much to the annoyance of her mother, joins her new friend in an excursion to a nearby barn, complete with a romantic hayloft.” source
The first few minutes of the Hulga-Manley date are special. “Smiling, he lifted his hat which was new and wide-brimmed. He had not worn it yesterday and she wondered if he had bought it for the occasion. It was toast-colored with a red and white band around it and was slightly too large for him. He stepped from behind the bush still carrying the black valise. He had on the same suit and the same yellow socks sucked down in his shoes from walking.”
“He crossed the highway and said, “I knew you’d come!” The girl wondered acidly how he had known this. She pointed to the valise and asked, “Why did you bring your Bibles?” He took her elbow, smiling down on her as if he could not stop. “You can never tell when you’ll need the word of God, Hulga,” he said. She had a moment in which she doubted that this was actually happening and then they began to climb the embankment. They went down into the pasture toward the woods. …”
“Wait,” he said. He leaned the other way and pulled the valise toward him and opened it. It had a pale blue spotted lining and there were only two Bibles in it. He took one of these out and opened the cover of it. It was hollow and contained a pocket flask of whiskey, a pack of cards, and a small blue box with printing on it. He laid these out in front of her one at a time in an evenly-spaced row, like one presenting offerings at the shrine of a goddess. He put the blue box in her hand. THIS PRODUCT TO BE USED ONLY FOR THE PREVENTION OF DISEASE, she read, and dropped it. The boy was unscrewing the top of the flask. He stopped and pointed, with a smile, to the deck of cards. It was not an ordinary deck but one with an obscene picture on the back of each card. “Take a swig,” he said, offering her the bottle first. He held it in front of her, but like one mesmerized, she did not move.” …
“Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman, who were in the back pasture, digging up onions, saw him emerge a little later from the woods and head across the meadow toward the highway. “Why, that looks like that nice dull young man that tried to sell me a Bible yesterday,” Mrs. Hopewell said, squinting. “He must have been selling them to the Negroes back in there. He was so simple,” she said, “but I guess the world would be better off if we were all that simple.” source
Erik Langkjær is the possible inspiration for Manley Pointer. A Russian-Danish young man, Mr. Langkjær worked as a textbook salesman. “Klaus Rothstein, a literary critic and commentator for the national Danish newspaper Weekendavisen” got Mr. Langkjær to tell his story.
“I searched for a job in publishing, in the hope that I would be hired as an editor. I did get a job, but it was as a sales representative in the South. During these travels, I met a professor at the University of Georgia. She suggested that I pay a visit to a local woman who had had her first book published by Harcourt, Brace & Company, where I was now a sales agent in the education branch. The professor believed that this author would enjoy meeting me because of her affiliation with the publishing firm. Weakened as she was by her disease, lupus, she wasn’t in contact with many people, so it would be nice to receive a visit from outside. A few years back, her father had died from the same disease, but the doctors had told her not to worry. …”
“Flannery and I quickly became friends. I made an effort to plan my sales route in a way that made it possible for me to visit her every two or three weeks. I would arrive in my own car, and then suggest going for a ride in the surrounding countryside. She was always up for it. We talked about our family backgrounds, and she was excited to hear about my mother’s Russian heritage and my father’s career as a consul general … Flannery herself was a devout Catholic, highly conscious of living in the Protestant South. She considered it a great challenge to be surrounded by Protestants, and to belong to a minority. She had a church to go to on Sundays, but she was aware of the growing secularism, which she considered a threat.”
“I was not really in love; I simply enjoyed the company of women during my lonely travels in the South. Although Flannery was both conventional and religious, we eventually became so close that she, while the car was parked, allowed me to kiss her. At that moment, her disease revealed itself in a new way: there was no strength in her lips. I hit her teeth with my kiss, and since then I’ve thought of it as a kiss of death. …
“I visited her twelve to fourteen times, and later we started exchanging letters. As I returned to Denmark to settle down, she wrote that she would like to hear more from me, and her first letter from June 1954 ends with a reference to our drives around Milledgeville: . . . I haven’t seen any dirt roads since you left and I miss you. I think Flannery was hoping for it to be the two of us. Between April 1953 and June 1954, when my visits were frequent, there was indeed enough contact between us for her to envisage something more. Her letters might also contain a certain disappointment in the fact that the contact wasn’t as strong on my part. …”
“When I later read one of Flannery’s short stories, ‘Good Country People,’ I noticed that the main character was a travelling Bible salesman. I didn’t sell bibles, but I used to call my binder with the records of the publishing firm ‘my bible.’ Also, the salesman in the story is named Manley Pointer, which has an obvious erotic connotation.”source
Miss O’Connor wrote Mr. Langkjær many times. 13 June 54 “My mother has just attended a dairy festival in Eatonton. The governor attended and Miss America. All the cows were in rope stalls around the Courthouse and Miss America, very sunburned, my mother said and in a white strapless evening dress (11 A. M.) had to pick her way among them and admire each one while she kept the tail of the dress out of the little piles of manure. She also had to kiss a calf. Universal suffering.” 18 July 54 “Everything here is busy electing the Governor. There are 9 candidates and the ones I have heard over the radio all sound like hound dogs that have learned to declaim. They are all but one running on keep-segregation platforms and everything is geared to the boys who sit in front of the wooden stores and tell you not to run into a street car down there. (On acct. of the rotten borough system their vote is worth three or four of a city vote.”) source
“Flannery first met Erik in April 1953, she was clearly taken with him and relished their time together, especially their drives through Baldwin County in his car. When he decided to break off their friendship and return to Europe a little over a year later, O’Connor, then using a cane, felt betrayed, as revealed in their short-lived correspondence. In early 1955, O’Connor took only four days to write this story; her intense feelings about Langkjær quickly found their outlet.”source
“Unfortunately, while she may have had romantic feelings towards him, they were not reciprocated. This was especially noticeable after he returned to Denmark in 1954. Flannery would write to him, and it would be weeks before she would hear back. … Eventually, she received a letter from him stating that he had met another woman and they were intending to get married. Flannery was devastated. However, instead of wallowing in her grief she threw herself into her art, writing one of her best short stories, “Good Country People.” Shortly after this story came out, Langkjær wrote Flannery and said that he recognized himself in the character of the salesman, Manley Pointer. Flannery responded with the epistolary equivalent of Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain, telling him in essence not to flatter himself so.” source
29 April 56 “I am highly taken with the thought of your seeing yourself as the Bible salesman. Dear boy, remove this delusion from your head at once. And if you think the story is also my spiritual autobiography, remove that one too. As a matter of fact, I wrote that one not too long after your departure and wanted to send you a copy but decided that the better part of tact would be to desist. Your contribution to it was largely in the matter of properties. Never let it be said that I don’t make the most of experience and information, no matter how meager. But as to the main pattern of that story, it is one of deceit which is something I certainly never connect with you. In my modest way, I think it’s a wonderful story. I read it over and over and nobody enjoys it as much as I do—which is more or less the case with all my productions.”source
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Russell Lee took the social media picture in February 1940. “Wife of Pomp Hall, right, talking with another woman at UCAPAWA (United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America) meeting at Bristow, Oklahoma.”
One Star Jeffy
Two stories appeared here in 2011. 052811 052911 They were both based on a facebook quote … “I think we’re having a misunderstanding about what I mean by emotional truth aka “your truth.” It’s a new concept for me too.” The concept today is to assemble a collection of drabbles … 100 words stories … on the murky concept of “your truth”. The only rule is not to spend too much time, or effort, writing this thing. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. “Jewell Pathe’s Bathing Beauty Pirates capture Vitagraph Ships for “Captain Blood”, Balboa Beach, California, June 15, 1924”
Dog Jail, a substack organ, ran a story about the coming obsolescence of clickbait. Before you start cheering, what AI has planned is much worse. … “Last week, an AI-generated image of an explosion near the Pentagon went viral on social media, briefly spooking the stock market. … The AI technology that really made stocks flutter was the social media algorithms that showed the image to so many, so fast.” … Content consumers “have become vigilant against clickbait. Most now know that the link promising “One Weird Trick to Prevent Colon Cancer” is unlikely to save your life. The designers …”
“Government Official Who Makes Perfectly Valid, Well-Reasoned Point Against Israel Forced To Resign” The Onion 052011 “State Department diplomat Nelson Milstrand, who appeared on CNN last week and offered an analysis implying that Israel could perhaps exercise more restraint toward Palestinian moderates in disputed territories, was asked to resign Tuesday. … “The United States deeply regrets any harm Mr. Milstrand’s remarks may have caused our democratic partner in the Middle East,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an unequivocal condemnation of the veteran foreign-service officer’s statements. “U.S. policy toward Israel continues to be one of unconditional support and fawning sycophancy.”…
The seminal blog post appeared in 2011. Most of the links are no longer operative. Currently existing sites will have priority today. … Reality Sandwich is for people who cannot afford a nothing burger. One of the most commented on stories is “Lady Gaga: The Visionary Rebirth of the Divine Mother Monster”. The linked feature deals with flying saucers. “ … Naked Hunger talks about a woman who wants to lose weight. “Nobody said that “my truth” was going to interest anyone except me! … We enter into a war we will never, I repeat never, win: woman against her appetite.”
The me me me meme gets a further workout in Saying “Yes” to Me … I felt as if the very foundations of my life had shifted” … Some guy named Jeffy is promoting a book called Get Laid or Die Trying. There is a quote from Tupak Shakur about players and bitches. At the end, the book gets one more plug… “Hate to be such an annoying ass (not really), but if you haven’t got a copy of the book yet, get it today. It’s really good! I swear! Excellent coffee table book and perfect for the bathroom.”
The one star reviews of Jeffy’s book are a hoot. … “ this person is a sleazy airhead … His approach, style, attitudes etc. have all the charm and sex appeal of an overflowing toilet.” … I got the audiobook, narrated by the author. It’s a complete pain to listen to, because he insists on screaming regularly. If I turn the volume down, I can’t hear the regular speaking at all, and if I turn it up to a normal volume, suddenly he’s screaming again and I have to turn it down.”
More one star Jeffy: May Karma Visit Upon Jeff Allen “This guy is a narcissitic player without emotion … A really sad, selfish character who is all about himself to the bitter end. Guys, if you want to be like that, please find your own planet!” … How about you just die trying? “This is the last guy in the world that you should be getting dating advice from: […] Honestly, you’d probably get more romantic or at least creative approaches for free by driving to your local state penitentiary and interviewing a serial pedophile.”
Fear & Loathing Part Two
This is Part Two of my journey with Fear & Loathing in the New Jerusalem, a podcast series by Darryl Cooper aka @MartyrMade. Other episodes of this effort are available. 041525 042325 042625 Disclaimer This is a greatly simplified view of what happened. For more information, you can listen to FLNJ, or google one of the many histories of this era. … At the end of this post, we will see that googling for more information can have its limits.
April 15, 2025 My morning walk today was a trip to the county office to buy next year’s auto tag. It is 1.54 miles from my house to the office. When I got there, I had to go through a metal detector wielding security guard. He looked in my bag, and would not let me take my bottle of tea into the office. As soon as I got in the office, I was waited on, and got my tag business done quickly.
I am finished with FLNJ-2. The last part was about the time between roughly 1922 and 1925. More Zionist settlers are coming into Palestine. There is a debate about whether settlers should take over, or whether they should get along with their neighbors. Unfortunately the Jaffa riots took place.
According to this narrative, the trouble began when a groups of settlers were having a march somewhere, and one Zionist group attacked the other. The British police got involved, and the Arabs started to hear that the settlers were causing trouble. The Arabs got involved, and it was a great big mess. After that after that there was little talk of getting along with your neighbors. This development had unfortunate consequences for the whole Zionist project.
After posting FLNJ Part One, u/chamblee54 made a comment at r/martyrmade announcing the publication of Fear & Loathing Part One. There was a festive comment thread. HughNormousPeanus “I made this list during my last listen hope it helps” (This list was the actors in the F&L drama. It may prove helpful in the production of the series.) Chamblee54 “Thank you. I may want to borrow from this in my series. I hope your co-worker wasn’t listening at work. He might not get anything else done. Always remember, Douglas Murray could have done this in one week.” HughNormousPeanus ‘Douglas Murray is a three letter word I can’t say on Reddit starting with F ending in G with an A in the middle” Chamblee54 “Oh my. I am a gay man. I do not appreciate that. His sexual honeydew list is about the only good thing I can say about that idiot.” HughNormousPeanus “I’d tell you to appreciate these nuts but you probably would I can’t think of anything more derogatory to call Douglas Murray you’ll have to get over it.”
Later in the day. … I took a different route back from the county office, making the round trip 2.87 miles. I downloaded FLNJ-3, and listened to the whole thing on a trip to a pizza buffet on Pleasant Hill Road. FLNJ-3 is only 1:44:03, and is not a narrative history. Instead, MartyrMade discusses the honor culture among the Arab people in West Asia. Societies are not governed by institutions as much as families and tribes. This is how mankind has operated until recently. There was one quote that made me pull into a parking lot and make a note. 33:18 “what civilization does is relieve us of the burden of needing to be honest all the time.”
April 16, 2025 I started to listen to FLNJ-4 on my morning walk. Immediately after the opening montage, FLNJ-4 got very interesting. “Late one Friday afternoon in 1924, the Orthodox Jewish rabbi Yaakov Yisroel Dehan was walking back from his synagogue to his home in Jerusalem …”
Jacob de Haan a Dutchman, was a Gay Poet, an Orthodox Jew, and an all around piece of work. In 1919, he left The Netherlands for Palestine. “On the day of his departure, thousands of fans crowded Amsterdam’s train station, waving frantically and singing “Hatikvah.” At least one chronicler of the occasion joked that many present just wanted to make sure that he’d really gone.”
Rabbi de Haan soon became disillusioned by the reality of Palestine, after hearing about the high minded vision of a Jewish homeland. He began to display his talent for pissing people often. One quote seems to sum up his attitude. “Ever the polyglot, he quickly studied Arabic, and took great pleasure in upsetting the Zionists he’d meet by demanding that they speak to him in Arabic, an official language according to the British bylaws.” Eventually, he got enough people mad at him.
When the Zionists killed Yaakov Yisroel Dehan on July 1, 1924 I found an article written about YYD shortly after his death. It was republished in 2002, by a contemporary group with similar ideas about Israel. “NKI is the voice of Religious Jews world wide in their Torah-based opposition to the State of Israel” … “At a time when the first followers of the Zionist movement began streaming into the Holy Land in large numbers, defiling the holiness of the land, and by virtue of their idiotic ideas began to work to expel the Arabs who had been living there for centuries in order to establish a Zionist state.”
April 17, 2025 The process of listenting to FLNJ is turning into a war of attrition. The gee whiz phase is over. I am 69 minutes into FLNJ-4. The saga is sometime in the 1920’s, and is being overwhelmed by problems. The Arabs are not going anywhere, and have plenty of issues with the British and the settlers. The settlers are quarelling with each other about the direction of the Zionist project. There is a lot more action to come.
My life continues. Every morning in April, I repost an old picture poem for national poetry month. Today, it was something from Psalm 46. I got unwound talking about that on facebook, and decided on a possible definition for God … something that we cannot fully know or understand, but just might be real. … It is too nice a day to worry about this.
At 1:24:00, Darryl gets onto a source of support for the Zionists. They have the backing of several Western European nations, most notably Great Britain. Some cynical people said these nations just wanted to get rid of the Jews. Whatever. Another source of support is the Rothschild family.
Illuminati talk often involves the Rothschilds, and can get antisemitic quickly. Darryl mentioned the wars that were financed by the Rothschilds. There have always been rumors of the Rothschilds financing both sides of a war, and of egging on the warring parties, so as to make money from the ensuing carnage. There are rumors about the War Between the States … the London branch financing the Union, with the Paris branch financing the Confederacy. This is difficult to confirm or deny, and inevitably leads to Illuminati talk.
The Zionists had unity, and access to resources, not enjoyed by the Arabs in Palestine. It is interesting to speculate how the Zionist project would have gone, had it waited until after the influx of oil revenues into the Arab world. At this point, we might note the presence of Iran, which is Persian rather than Arab. The saga of Iran over the last 80 years is consequential … the 1953 coup, the 1979 revolution, the Iran-Iraq war, the ongoing conflict with Israel and the United States. The story of Iran is just as consequential as the story of Israel.
April 18, 2025 I finished my morning walk without incident. The stock market is closed for good friday. The last report: −527.16 (1.33%) Apr 17, 4:55PM EDT. In a few minutes, I will drive over to Drew Valley, for their community yard sale.
I am now at 4:04:09 of FLNJ-4. It is 1929 in the New Jerusalem. Radical Zionists are forcing matters, into faster action. The Arab population does not like it. The British don’t know what to do. The situation gets very, very ugly. See Disclaimer at top of post.
The yard sale will be celebrated on Saturday. While driving back, I heard the last few minutes of FLNJ-4. Darryl mentions something I had never heard before. At some point in this era, the United States and Great Britain restricted Jewish immigration. Darryl says the fear was about communist revolutionaries coming into the country. At this time, most of the Bolsheviks were Jewish, and the Russian revolution was seen by many as a Jewish revolution. When I try to find out more about this, the only google results are to sources concerned with anti-semitism. Any information about communism being a motivation are very difficult to find.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Russell Lee took the facebook photograph in July, 1941. “Lunch at carnival stand, Fourth of July, Vale, Oregon”
Chamblee54 
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