Chapter 39
Chapter 39 is a turning point of Still Life With Woodpecker. Many stories have a moment like this, where the lead actor, and the lead actress, become *buddies*. In this case, Princess Leigh-Cheri was going to turn Bernard into the police. He had set off dynamite at a do gooders conference, and caused mayhem. However, the two took legal drugs , went to a boat, and did what men and women usually do at this point of the story.
When she is leaving the boat, Princess Leigh-Cheri looks for her panties. It seems as though a mongoose found them, and ate them. This happens in Tom Robbins books. In Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, a foundation garment becomes a nylon flavored cookie, from the oven of a goat.
One of the spotlight speakers at the do gooders conference, and the hero of Princess Leigh-Cheri, is Ralph Nader. He was speaking at the conference while PL-C was falling in love on the boat. Yes, a few drinks, and a night in bed, and the young lady was in love. Meanwhile, Ralph Nader steps in the mongoose-produced panty pudding. He did not see it coming.
This is in tune with the Ralph Nader story of 2000, 20 years after the publication of Still Life With Woodpecker. By then, RN (wikipedia shows no middle name) was reduced to running for President. Few took him seriously, but lots of people didn’t take Albert Arnold Gore, or George Walker Bush, seriously. In Florida, the race between the mainstream candidates was wallpaper close. It went into legal limbo. The voters who voted for RN made the difference, and helped put an idiot in the White House.
Banished Words
JOB CREATION GURU downloaded BONELESS WINGS onto his BUCKET LIST.
His dog, YOLO, has a TRENDING PASSION for the SUPERFOOD.
JOB CREATION GURU will DOUBLE DOWN,
and KICK THE CAN DOWN THE ROAD,
over the FISCAL CLIFF.
SPOILER ALERT: Banished words courtesy of Lake Superior State University.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is written like David Foster Wallace.
Spell check suggestions: YOLO: SOLO POLO YOLK ~ SUPERFOOD: SUPERFLUOUS.
Doing It
the lady caller on the radio show said
“even married couples are doing it “
she meant having babies
while expecting society to help pay the bills
pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Thou Art That
It started out as joke comments. Thank G-d for secular humanism. ~ You’re welcome. PG got to thinking, and wondered what the punch line was. Is there a difference between G-d and man?
In “Zen and the art of motorcycle repair” the author contends that the division of G-d and man, subject and object, is the dirty work of Aristotle. PG is not philosophically grounded enough to know, but suspects that unity is better than division. Is the earth a unified whole, “thou art that”?
Now, the truth just might be that G-d is separate from man. While unity may sound appealing, it might not be the way things operate. Just because a belief makes you happy does not mean that it is true. Let no man bring together what G-d has rent asunder.
If there is a division between G-d and man, then where does the boundary lie?
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
This is a repost. Is it art?
April Glaspie Meets Saddam Hussein
Juan Cole at Informed Comment posts today about a document release from Wikileaks. The document is a cable sent by April Glaspie, the ambassador to Iraq, about a meeting with Saddam Hussein on July 25, 1990. This was shortly before his invasion of Kuwait.
In 1990, Iraq was recovering from a horrendous war with Iran. That war started Sept. 22, 1980, when Iraq invaded Iran, possibly with encouragement from the United States. (At the time of this invasion, Iran was holding Americans hostage in the American embassy. The United States was not pleased with Iran.) Iraq failed to get a quick victory, and the war became a bloody quagmire, with hundreds of thousands of casualties.
In 1990, Iraq was rebuilding, and Kuwait was flourishing. Oil was being over produced, driving down the price. Kuwait was accused of “slant drilling”, i.e. drilling under the border, and stealing oil from Iraq. At one point, a meeting was held between officials of Iraq and Kuwait . “Saddam…sent his foreign minister to Kuwait to meet with the Emir Al Sabah, the former leader of Kuwait, to try to resolve some of the… issues” between Kuwait and Iraq, Piro will recall. “And the Emir told the foreign minister of Iraq that he would not stop doing what he was doing until he turned every Iraqi woman into a $10 prostitute. And that really sealed it for him, to invade Kuwait.”
On July 25, 1990, Saddam Hussein summoned to American Ambassador, April Glaspie , to a meeting. The cable is Ms. Glaspie’s account of the meeting. PG cannot see a green light for invasion in this account of the meeting. Many say Ms. Glaspie could have made much more explicit the dire consequences of invading Kuwait.
The transcript of the meeting has been declassified for some time. It is available on the website of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation. It is worth noting that this transcript is not sworn testimony, and could contains lies and mistakes. It is also the POV of Ms. Glaspie, and Mr. Hussein may have gotten a different idea of what was said. Perhaps, to Mr. Hussein, it was a green light for an invasion.
The invasion of Kuwait, eight days after the meeting, on August 2, 1990, set in motion events that affect us to this day. A coalition was formed to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. There was talk of going to Baghdad and deposing Mr. Hussein at the time. The military action stopped after driving Iraq out of Kuwait, reportedly at the request of Saudi Arabia. Twelve years later, the United States attacked Iraq, and drove out the Hussein government. We are still there.
Historycommons.org has a timeline with a wealth of information about the progression of Saddam Hussein, from ally to next Hitler. The comments section for the post by Juan Cole at Informed Comment is the source of several links in this story, and has a lively commentary about this matter. This is a repost. The wikileaks links have been deactivated.
Serif
This feature is about the serif. That is the thingie at the ends of a letter. The serif keeps the T from falling over. The serif recirculates the essence of the s. The serif increases the vowelness of a,i, and u. O and e and in the word vowel, and need no further glory. Little i is so puny it gets a tittle on top.
Some say the serif is old fashioned, and will be sent packing in the future. Maybe this is the case. One typophile tells of Roman stonecarvers being guided by painted on letters. The end of the stroke was bigger than the beginning, so the carver made the bottom of the letters bigger.
A graphic designer, with the nickname Helvetica, told PG something about serifs. Studies show that serifs guide the eye through text, and make it easier to read. One gentleman reviewed studies, both pro and con, and decided that sans serif is just as readable as serif.
The Fatal Wallpaper
You will be able to read, and enjoy pictures, after you finish this. Unless you are very sensitive, in which case you have should not read blogs. There are possible exceptions. You might be at work, and have your boss kill you because you are not working. You might read something that amuses, and choke on a ham sandwich. You might read this on a mobile device while crossing the street, and not see the bus. The odds of those things happening are slight. In all probability, you will survive this post.
Rhyme Zone has a survive page. If your eyes still work, then you win. RZ lists 21 words that rhyme with survive. The original list had 53, but 32 of those were combinations using one of the surviving 21. These words that jive with survive are alive, arrive, chive, clive, clyve, connive, contrive, dive, drive, five, hive, i’ve, jive, live, revive, shive, shrive, skive, strive, thrive, and vive.
Jive may the most dangerous of the survivor rhymers. PG fondly remembers a Sunday School lesson. “Boys, I’m going to tell you about that jivvy music. First, you start listening to that jivvy music. Then, you go to places where they play that jivvy music. Then, you start staggering home drunk.”
RZ has a quote, from Oscar Wilde, about survival. “”One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.” Mr. Wilde proved the truth of this, in a Paris hotel. He is reputed to have said “Either that wallpaper goes, or I do”. The wallpaper won.
Willie the Shake is another well spoken Englishmen. He did not live to see Mel Gibson play Hamlet. In Sonnet LXXXI, it is noted “Or you survive when I in earth am rotten”. This was many years before the Sex Pistols, and Johnny Rotten, had a brief moment of glory. Sid Vicious did not survive, but his reading skills were limited.
Pictures are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”
Remington SL3
In 1978, Tom Robbins had a problem. Another Roadside Attraction and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues had gone commercial, and the unwashed public demanded product. It is not known what was on his mind, but there was a need for another Tom Robbins novel. The result, Still Life With Woodpecker, has a gee whiz typewriter as a character.
The device is the Remington SL3. It is possibly the love child of the Remington Rand. That name was borrowed by Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum, more profitably known as Ayn Rand. This is the last gasp of the typewriter, before the species qwertioped into word processed obsolescence. Today, writing devices are a computer staple. Gimmicks like cut/copy/paste are assumed to have been around forever, but were startling innovations when SLWW was being whipped into shape.
So Tom claims that the Remington SL3 was the progenitor, or maybe the janitor, of SLWW. A blogspot writer, there is a girl in new york city, says I WANT A REMINGTON SL3. …aka, the greatest prologue ever, written by Tom Robbins for “Still Life with Woodpecker”: “If this typewriter can’t do it, then fuck it, it can’t be done.
This is the all-new Remington SL3, the machine that answers the question, “Which is harder, trying to read The Brothers Karamazov while listening to Stevie Wonder records or hunting easter eggs on a typewriter keyboard?” This is the cherry on top of the cowgirl. The burger served by the genius waitress. The Empress card.
I sense that the novel of my dreams is in the Remington SL3–although it writes much faster than I can spell. And no matter that my typing finger was pinched last week by a giant land crab. This baby speaks electric Shakespeare at the slightest provocation and will rap out a page and a half if you just look at it hard.” Seriously. Early Christmas present? Marriage proposal? Just wanna get me on your good side in case you ever need me down the line? Remington SL3. Circa 1980.
PG is getting the unsettling thought that the Remington SL3 is the product of an overactive imagination. There is a tumblrblog, a youtube channel, and a soundcloud song all named Remington SL3. The name is not taken yet for twitter, although that can change at any instant. Did REM write a song, “ington SL3”? Is this a carrot topped put on?
This was written like David Foster Wallace. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
The Value Of Sheep
There is a video out now, where the speaker says “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” This man must not like to wear wool.
A lion is a predator. It lurks in the jungle, and kills to eat. It does not produce anything except it’s own survival. A sheep lives in a community. Every once in a while, it gets the coat clipped, and grows another one. The fur goes to make woolen clothing, which keeps people warm in winter.
Maybe if you want to be an egophile, living on the destruction of your neighbor, then you might be better off as a lion. If you want to contribute something of value to others, it is better to be a sheep.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. When these pictures were made, there was a law about copyrights. If you worked for the federal government as a photographer, the pictures were in the public domain. You could not copyright these images.
Wonder
Wonder is a great word, one vowel away from wander. The prescribed meaning for this feature is “rapt attention or astonishment at something awesomely mysterious or new to one’s experience.” The word awesome is horribly over used. It’s popularity is a mystery, but there is no wonder there.
Today is December 25, which is celebrated as a holiday in America. It is celebrated on a specific day, like July 4, and not relegated to a convenient monday. It is odd that we are so specific about these holidays being featured on a specific day. The vote to declare independence was taken July 2. Jesus was probably born in Spring. Easter is a different day every year. Customs and traditions are not new to one’s experience. The definition of wonder tagged 3b is “a feeling of doubt or uncertainty”. Maybe this is where awesomely is used.
There has been wonder in PG’s life today. It was a no drive day, with a steady drizzle keeping the bicycle put away. PG was working on a picture, and listening to a short story. A man had the memory of William Shakespeare implanted in his mind. It was something that PG had never considered before, and probably would not want. In the story, the recipient of this memory freaked out, and gave it to someone else. The story expanded PG’s awareness of what was possible.There was wonder in that realization.
Later in the day, PG was editing pictures from The Library of Congress. Some of these pictures accompany this feature. The Windows Media Player facilitated a 1979 show by Tom Waits. There were stories told, and poems but to music. The man can do things with the English language that PG can only dream of. There was wonder at how this could be.
Hollywood Babylon
PG recently read Hollywood Babylon: The Legendary Underground Classic of Hollywood’s Darkest and Best Kept Secrets. It was the second time read the book. A yard sale last summer had a deluxe edition on sale. The man asked PG how much he thought it should cost. “If you are going by the amount of truth in it, the price should be a nickel.” In a fit of synchronicity, PG was on his way to a party, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.
HB is highly entertaining, despite those troubling concerns about the facts. The cover has an NSFW picture of Jayne Mansfield, where the top of her dress serves as a display case for her boobies. HB goes all TMI about the death of Miss Mansfield, but it is a model of good taste compared to Find a death. The bottom line is that Jayne Mansfield was not decapitated in that auto accident.
While asking Mr. Google whose jugs adorned the cover of HB, this article came up: Satan and Mummified Psychics: A Kenneth Anger Marathon at Sweat Records Tonight. Someone with too much free time was promoting an evening of the short films of Kenneth Anger. Mr. Anger, born Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer, has the copyright credit for HB. PG suspects that other scribes helped out. In some parts, the prose is purpler than in others. Of course, when writing about Hollywood, it is fitting that a committee produced a book filled with lies.
The Miami story disputes the notion that Kenneth Anger was a child star. “Almost exactly 83 years, 7 months, and 21 days ago, a little boy named Anger was born in Santa Monica, California. (Actually, the kid’s birth name was Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer.) He attended a school for child stars, did dance steps with Shirley Temple, and minced about as the changeling prince in the 1935 Warner Bros. movie version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But all that might be bullshit. There’s not much documentation of Anger’s alleged child star days. The one legit source that seems to corroborate the claim is Mickey Rooney. He played Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and he says Anger’s mommy dressed him up as the girl named “Sheila Brown” who officially played the Changeling Prince. Makes sense, right?”
A website called Vice.com managed to snag an interview with Kenneth Anger. The introduction has this story. ” He went on to recount the time Kenneth showed up at fellow director and mutual friend Curtis Harrington’s funeral at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery wearing a black raincoat, eyeliner, and fingernail polish. His shirt was opened to his navel, revealing the giant lucifer tattoo emblazoned across his chest, and he was accompanied by a boyish photographer who took pictures as Kenneth kissed Curtis’s corpse before its cremation. Before he was ejected from the premises, Kenneth handed John a small plastic vampire figurine that contained mint candies inside, clarifying its original use by saying, “It’s actually a dispenser for tickle-ribbed rubbers.”
The interview had a few high moments. VICE But it did attract the attention of sexologist Alfred Kinsey, whom you befriended. Did he encourage your work?
KA Yes. Kinsey was doing interviews for his book Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, and I don’t know… What if you are not human? The title is kind of awkward, but that was what he called his research book. He was basically a biologist, an expert on wasps, of all things. When he came to LA to do interviews, I met him. He came to see Fireworks at the Coronet Theatre at a midnight showing, and he wanted to buy a print for his collection at Indiana University. I agreed, and that was the first copy I ever sold. But I remained good friends with him until the end of his life.
VICE Do you have a favorite star from this era? Someone whom you continue to research exhaustively?
KA I love the career of Rudolph Valentino, who died at 31 and had an amazing trajectory in that short time. His life continues to fascinate me.
VICE Do you continue to find new information?
KA I have plenty of information on him. There are facts, and then there is gossip. I go for the facts, but I will listen to the gossip. [smiles]
VICE Your willingness to sift through the gossip was a point of contention with some people when Hollywood Babylon was published, especially after its second printing. Some have accused you of muckraking, and others have even gone further and claim that it contains factual inaccuracies.
KA Well, I’ve never been sued…
VICE In other words, your detractors can’t prove it.
KA No one ever came up to me and said, “Well, you made the whole thing up.” Because I didn’t.
HB is a fun book, with great pictures. The stories are mostly lies, but this is Hollywood we are talking about. With its continued popularity, there will be plenty of copies at yard sales and used book stores.
Pictures are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
This feature presentation was written like Kurt Vonnegut.
One Sick Puppy
PG woke up on sunday morning, checked his email, and found a message from Disqus. There was a comment dicussion going on at bloggingheads.tv. A commenter named right flag shared his opinion … “You are one sick puppy.”
The BHTV discussion had been about people paying large sums to own objects once used by famous people. The top item was a set of golf clubs, owned by President Kennedy. The instruments recently sold for $750,000. The headline of the discussion was “Joshua Knobe talks to George E. Newman about his research on why we value objects that have been owned by famous people.”
Maybe PG is not a contemporary person. He has never wanted a set of golf clubs owned by a philandering politician. PG does not play golf, nor does he have six digits to invest in such an artifact. His made a comment on this headline. “”why we value objects that have been owned by famous people. ” Someone somewhere might value these objects, but it is not me. “We” is a very poor word choice.”
The full reply by right flag is: “”why we value objects that have been owned by famous people. ” Someone somewhere might value these objects, but it is not me…. Really? What other ordinary sentiments you don’t share with normal humans? You are one sick puppy.”
As was said earlier, PG does not see the desire to own celebrity possessions as an ordinary sentiment. Perhaps it is a money thing. There is currently more money in our culture than there is goods and services. This is one cause of inflation. When people have money they don’t know what to do with, they spend it on silly things. They gamble. They use cocaine. They buy celebrity possessions.
The use of “we” in overheated rhetoric is another issue. People with an agenda to push love to tell us what “we” have done that is terrible. Perhaps the most flagrant example is in the urban legend email. This message comes out whenever there is a problem, asking how G-d could let some terrible thing happen. The quote is: “Then someone said let’s print magazines with pictures of nude women and call it wholesome, down-to-earth appreciation for the beauty of the female body. And we said OK. And then someone else took that appreciation a step further and published pictures of nude children and then further again by making them available on the Internet. And we said OK, they’re entitled to free speech.”
Chamblee54 
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