Jordan Peterson Sex Party
This is a repost from 2023. Jordan Peterson is coming to State Farm Arena for the We Who Wrestle With God Tour on March 15. … @jordanbpeterson “And the immature impulsive hedonism continue, unabated: possession by basic biological drive elevated into object of unconscious worship. The worst of an emergent polytheistic paganism. With all the requisite pseudo-intellectual jargon.” @trogmignon I can think of few people less qualified to speak on this matter than JBP.”
Dr. Peterson has a way with words. The author of the seminal piece, @MichelleLhooq, replied “The worst of an emergent polytheistic paganism” is definitely the most based epithet anyone has ever blessed me with, and for that I will be forever grateful to fellow pseudo-intellectual JP.”
We need to talk about chemsex is the feature at the amphetaminated heart of this kerfluffle. Before pasting purple party prose, a note on usage is in order. I have long been aware of gay men using drugs to speed up the process. The phrase I always hear is pnp, or party and play. (When you see pnp in a profile, you can assume two things. They take drugs, and you are buying.) In none of these profiles do you see “chemsex.” Maybe chemsex is an LA thing.
The article that triggered Dr. Benzos was not your traditional pearl-clutching. The author, Michelle Lhooq (Pronounced Michelle Luke) is the author of the RaveNewWorld.Substack and Weed: Everything You Want to Know But Are Always Too Stoned to Ask. Lady Lhooq was up to the task, and had receipts. One especially lurid link was “Critical chemsex studies: Interrogating cultures of sexualized drug use beyond risk paradigm.”
“What was remarkable was the diversity of not just age, gender, and racial identities in the room, but the breadth of psychoactive experiences across the sober-using spectrum — from former heroin junkies to professionals who’ve never touched a drug, devout AA members to party-loving recreational ravers, underground psychedelic healers to sober-curious skaters. …
“AA’s dogma of total drug abstinence does not appeal to everybody, and many are hungry for alternatives. New groups such as The Infernal Grove now cater to those seeking more sustainable relationships to substance use beyond the established orthodoxy of traditional sobriety paradigms. Despite the necessity of these alternative paths, I had been afraid that the chemsex discussion would be seen as problematic or triggering. Conversations about drugs usually play out as a moral drama of extremes: the anti-drug abstinence of AA vs the drug-positive enthusiasm of recreational settings. It is still so rare to enter a thought space where sobriety is discussed as more of a spectrum, where the ambiguous zones of druggie disinhibition can be untangled by people from all over the drug-sober continuum. It felt like the future.”
“The movement to destigmatise chemsex is … still in its infancy. As a woman, I am also not the traditional demographic that is typically “allowed” to even discuss this concept … In fact, Stuart has accused folks who use this term but do not identify as gay men of cultural appropriation … It could also help us to understand how this practice reflects the historical and social contexts from which they emerge — including the pharmaceuticalisation of sexuality, contemporary culture of endless self-enhancement, and crisis of intimacy under neoliberal individualism.”
“THE WORST OF AN EMERGENT POLYTHEISTIC PAGANISM” “How my essay on druggy orgies triggered Jordan Peterson/FOX News’ latest satanic spiral.” After @jordanbpeterson scored a few FOX points, Lady Lhooq published a reply at her Substack, RaveNewWorld. “When an editor from UnHerd reached out to me in December asking if I could turn my latest RaveNewWorld post on chemsex into an essay for their site, my main concern was whether I’d be able to squeeze the assignment in between building a pussy portal for my shroom rave.”
“The reply-guys seemed to fall into three camps: people who think chemsex should stay stigmatized (white Christians and dudes with lots of numbers in their usernames); people who couldn’t believe that “drug journalist” was a real beat (mostly meme shitposters); and homophobic monkeypox truthers slinging incel slurs about my fuckability (my personal fave). … That this assignment for an outlet that claims to be post-partisan turned out to be the ultimate trigger for satanic-slaying conservative cucks was the ultimate irony.”
michellelhooq “SO MUSH LOVE 2 MY 2 SURROGATE MOMS Ophelia and Teresa for building @enter.the.mushwomb’s beautiful pussy portal!!! Incredible to have two mothers with Hollywood film backgrounds working on this together; I just told them “I don’t want this to be a perfect porn pussy and I DEFINITELY want it to be hairy” and they took it from there – even adding a magical clit (now you really have no excuse not to find it 😂) Plus, since these are moms who always think about safety, they also made sure the portal didn’t block the exit in case there was an emergency. T+O YALL ARE MY SOUL MODELS TYSM FOR THIS PERFECT PUSSY!!!”
The pictures today are from The Library of Congress. These details are from picture #06666, documenting “First Internation[al] Pageant of Pulchritude & Seventh Annual Bathing Girl Review at Galveston, Texas.” It was taken in 1926.
Beelzebug
This sunday morning feature is a repost. The text is borrowed from this blog. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. They were taken at Arlington Farms, “a temporary housing complex for female civil servants and service members during World War II.”
Washington Post’s “Mensa Invitational” which once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.
1. Cashtration: The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent.
2. Ignoranus: A person who is both stupid and an asshole.
3. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with. The money was loaned to the government without interest.
4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
5. Bozone: The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
6. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
7. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high
8. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.
9. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
11. Karmageddon: It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer.
12. Decafalon: The grueling event of consuming only things that are good for you.
13. Glibido: All talk and no action.
14. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
15. Arachnoleptic Fit: The frantic dance performed after you’ve walked through a spider web.
16. Beelzebug: Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
17. Caterpallor: The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you’re eating.
Drinking From A Firehose
This is a repost from January 2020. The firehose has been busy the last four years. … “You’re drinking from a firehose of bullshit.” Someone is talking. They are full of confidence. The speech gets faster, and faster. They have lots of data points that support their point of view. You suspect there is something wrong with what they are saying. The logic just follows too quickly. If you stop to think about point one, you will miss points two through eleven. It is persuasion, by intellectual bullying.
Sometimes, a good phrase used to support a not-so-good cause. The FOB quote is from Sam Harris. He was on the Joe Rogan Experience, talking about Abby Martin. (The opening clip is from this compilation.) Mr. Harris says the Iraqi casualties, after Operation Iraqi Freedom, were around 200,000. Ms. Martin says the casualties are closer to 2,000,000. Either figure is too high. Mr. Harris displays a certain heartlessness in his argument.
JRE #1419 – Daryl Davis washed up on the digital shore yesterday. Mr. Davis is a black man, who somehow befriended KKK members, and showed them the error of their ways. Here is an npr segment, How One Man Convinced 200 Ku Klux Klan Members To Give Up Their Robes.
Yesterday’s appearance came at an synchronistic time for Mr. Rogan. Last week, Bernie Sanders tweeted a clip from Mr. Rogan, along with a comment. “I think I’ll probably vote for Bernie…” Joe Rogan There was a reaction. @CNN “Bernie Sanders is facing a backlash from some Democrats after his campaign trumpeted an endorsement from comedian Joe Rogan, a popular podcast and YouTube talk show host with a history of making racist, homophobic and transphobic comments”
As Rogan listeners know, Joe is all over the place. The Sanders quote is from JRE #1415 – Bari Weiss. During that show, Ms. Weiss unleashed an FOB in support of Israel. This contrasts with Abby Martin, and other JRE guests, who severely criticize Israel.
The Davis show was an FOB. There were history lectures, that leave discerning heads shaking. (The term white supremacist was first used in 1896.) The firehose kept gushing, until there was one comment that could be easily checked out. “President Warren G. Harding was sworn into the ku klux klan in the green room of the White House”
Warren Gamaliel Harding is known, with some justification, as one of our worst Presidents. “One aspect of the Harding administration that is not well known is his attitude about race. In the years after World War I, America was engulfed in race hatred. The Ku Klux Klan had a revival. “In a speech on October 26, 1921, given in segregated Birmingham, Alabama Harding advocated civil rights for African Americans; the first President to openly advocate black political, educational, and economic equality during the 20th century.” Mr. Harding supported an anti lynching bill, which a Democratic filibuster kept from passing.” (This 2012 quote is based on a wikipedia article, that has been edited.)
“Not only was Harding’s alleged membership in the KKK never mentioned in the contemporary records of anybody who knew him, his public opposition to anti-Catholic agitation and his vehement support for anti-lynching laws, make him seem like an unlikely recruit. In fact, the only evidence that Harding was a Klansman comes from the deathbed confession of a former Grand Wizard, who may have made the whole thing up to get even with Harding for the late President’s anti-racist public stance.” Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Seven
Seven Samurai – Kambei Shimada, Gorōbei Katayama, Shichirōji, Heihachi Hayashida, Katsushirō Okamoto, Kyūzō … This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
The Magnificent Seven – Chris Adams, Harry Luck, Vin, Bernardo O’Reilly, Britt, Lee, Chico
Seven Wonders of the Ancient World – Great Pyramid of Giza, Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Statue of Zeus at Olympia, Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, Mausoleum of Maussollos at Halicarnassus, Colossus of Rhodes, Lighthouse of Alexandria
Rome built on Seven hills – Palatine, Capitoline, Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, Caelian, Aventine
The Seven Sisters – Barnard College, Bryn Mawr College, Mount Holyoke College, Radcliffe College, Smith College, Vassar College, and Wellesley College
“All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion and desire.” Aristotle 384 BC-322 BC
The Magnificent Seven are seven cemeteries used by the citizens of nineteenth century London: Kensal Green Cemetery, West Norwood Cemetery, Highgate Cemetery, Abney Park Cemetery, Nunhead Cemetery, Brompton Cemetery, Tower Hamlets Cemetery
seven deadly sins – lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride
seven holy virtues – chastity, abstinence, temperance, diligence, patience, kindness
seven goddesses – isis, astarte, hecate, demeter, kali, iana, diana
seven dwarfs – bashful, doc, dopey, grumpy, happy, sleepy, sneezy
seven brides – Alice, Dorcas, Liza, Martha, Millie, Sarah, Ruth
seven brothers – Adam, Benjamin, Caleb, Daniel, Ephraim, Frank, Gideon
seven husbands of Elizabeth Taylor – Nicky Hilton, Micheal Wilding, Micheal Todd, Eddie Fisher, Richard Burton(twice), John Warner, Larry Fortensky
Matthew 18:21-22 – “21 Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? 22 Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates On WTF Podcast
Episode 878 of Marc David Maron’s WTF podcast features Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates. Chamblee54 once wrote about a video featuring Mr. Coates. This seems like a good day to listen to the show, and take notes. This is a repost from 2018.
The show starts with TPC and MDM (Is Ta-Nehisi two words?) discussing the business of writing books. The word black is not heard until 28:33 of the show. At 31 minutes in, TPC is talking about when he moved to New York, and struggled. He mentions that when you lie to other people, you begin to accept yourself as a liar.
At 53 minutes, TPC is talking about sexual harassment, and how he… a man … could never know what a woman experiences. MDM says that he … a white man … could never know what a black man feels, and how books by TPC made MDM realize this. You get the sense that this is what MDM wanted to talk about all along, and that TPC is tired of talking about race. MDM had the prominent black intellectual on the show, and MDM was going to talk about race, whether PBI wanted to, or not.
At 1:02 pm est, the show is over. PG has more respect for TPC now. Most of the show was about fatherhood, writing, and the struggle to succeed. The expressions whiteness, and white supremacy, were not heard. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Many of them were edited while listening to this show. The depression was a different era.
In This McMansion
A popular yard sign begins with “IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE:” There are some opinions expressed in this piece. It should be noted that what follows is merely one person’s opinions. You are free to agree, or disagree, as you see fit.
The ITH yard sign (ITHYS) states: “in this house, we believe: black lives matter, women’s rights are human rights, no human is illegal, science is real, love is love, kindness is everything” The sign is an aesthetic nightmare. You have seven lines of all-caps text. Every sans-serif line is a different size and color. There appear to be multiple fonts used.
ITHYS is annoying. People are too proud of their opinions, and too eager to share them. It does not matter whether you agree or not. Somebody is confronting you with their beliefs. Sometimes, it is worse when you do agree, or partially agree. ITHYS presents bumper sticker arguments, not a respectful discussion of complex issues.
ITHYS is a reminder that we live in a Christian society. This is more than just the widespread acceptance of the Christian doctrines. Christianity is a religion of beliefs and persuation, not practices and contemplation. Even if you move away from the specific doctrines of Christianism, you still accept the primacy of beliefs. It is important to persuade others to accept your beliefs. You see others as a collection of beliefs, rather than a person.
ITHYS begs for satire. Sacred cows need to be ground into hamburgers. I started to write down ideas. Soon, I had In This House Poem. (ITHP) It is embedded above. “In this house we are all God’s children, It is not what you say but how you say it, Don’t need to talk more need to listen more, Clever arguments are not always the truth, Science is the questioning not the trust, Beliefs are your thoughts with an attitude, Hate wins when you fight hate with hate, You are entitled to your opinion.”
The first four words are the same. ITHYS starts off “In this house we believe:”, followed by six beliefs. ITHP says “In this house we are all God’s children.” One is rhetoric, one is acceptance. It doesn’t matter how you read the fine print, you are still one of us. The ITHYS beliefs are presented in all-caps. (One of the rejected lines for ITHP was “Writing in all-caps is shouting.”) In ITHP, the doctrine is less important than your basic humanity. “Beliefs are your thoughts with an attitude.”
On May 1, 1992, Rodney King had seen the policeman who beat him acquitted. Cities coast to coast were in violent upheaval. Despite this, at 7:01 pm, Mr. King stood in front of a camera. “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it, making it horrible for the older people and the kids? . . . Please, we can get along here. We all can get along. I mean, we’re all stuck here for a while. Let’s try to work it out. Let’s try to beat it. Let’s try to beat it.”
Part of the religion of beliefs is persuading other people to agree with you. You get into semantics, rhetoric, and using logic as a weapon. People confuse presenting a clever argument with speaking the truth. Ideas become more important than people. Not everyone feels this is the best way to live. “You are entitled to your opinion.”
ITHP is just eight ideas. We do not mention many important issues. Black lives matter. People disagree about the existence of God. And much, much more. Many of those issues are complicated. An alternative yard sign says: “simplistic platitudes, trite tautologies, and semantically overloaded aphorisms are poor substitutes for respectful and rational discussions about complex issues”
An amazon review has the final word today. juleskywalker “Don’t buy! So CHEAP it didn’t last 3 weeks! This sign is so cheap, that after only 3 weeks outside, one side has almost entirely peeled off, and the other side isn’t much better. It’s not from the sun either, since it’s the north facing side that is pictured. For comparison, we’ve had a BLM sign next to it for the same time period, and that one looks brand new.” Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
The Sausage Vat Murder
The case of Adolph Luetgert is mostly forgotten today. In its day, the story was a sensation. “Adolph Louis Luetgert (December 27, 1845-July 7, 1899) was a German-American charged with murdering his wife and dissolving her body in acid in one of his sausage vats at the A.L. Luetgert Sausage & Packing Company in 1897. … After the news of the trial became public, rumors spread that Luetgert had actually turned his wife into sausage and sold the “sausage” to unknowing consumers.”
Is it possible to explain what is in sausages without making it erotic? A twitter thread got PG thinking about a sausage story he read in 1989. The Fairy was in Gaily, Gaily, by Ben Hecht. The story originally appeared in Playboy. “In a 1962 article for Playboy collected in his rollicking 1963 memoir Gaily, Gaily — the legendary Chicago reporter Ben Hecht recalls a murder case that sounds suspiciously similar to the Adolph Luetgert case. Hecht describes an story that apparently occurred sometime during the five years after he began working as a reporter in Chicago in 1910. He writes: “Fred Ludwig, a popular North Shore butcher, went on trial before Judge Sabath for the murder of his wife. The wedding band with its romantic inscription had turned up in one of the sausages manufactured by Ludwig and sold to one of his customers, Claude Charlus, a well-known financier and epicure.” In the Hecht story, Mr. Charlus was the bf of Mr. Ludwig. When it was time to execute Mr. Ludwig, young Mr. Hecht went to a whorehouse, to borrow a makeup kit. Mr. Ludwig painted his face before he went to the gallows.
“Adolph Luetgert (originally Adolph Ludwig Lütgert) came to New York in around 1865 or 1866 when he was about twenty years old.” … “He married his first wife, Caroline Roepke, sometime between 1870 and 1872. She died on November 17, 1877. He married his second wife Louise Bicknese, two months after Caroline’s death, on January 18, 1878. Luetgert had six children—two with Caroline and four with Louise. Only three of his children survived past the age of 2.”
“Louisa Bicknese was an attractive young woman who was ten years younger than her husband. She was a former servant from the Fox River Valley who met her new husband by chance. He was immediately taken with her, entranced by her diminutive stature and tiny frame. She was less than five feet tall and looked almost child-like next to her burly husband. … As a wedding gift, he gave her a unique, heavy gold ring. Inside of it, he had gotten her new initials inscribed, reading “L.L.”. Little did he know at the time that this ring would prove to be his undoing.”
After a while, the couple started to bicker. “Despite his coarse appearance (one writer vividly describes him as a “Falstaffian” figure with “a face of suet, pig eyes, and a large untidy moustache that was a perfect host for beer foam”), Adolph was something of an womanizer. … Claiming that he needed to keep a round-the-clock eye on his factory, he had taken to spending his nights in a little room beside his office, equipped with a bed that he frequently shared with his twenty-two-year-old housemaid, Mary Siemering, Louisa’s own cousin. … He was also conducting a surreptitious courtship of a wealthy widow, Mrs. Christina Feld, sending her amorous letters in which he rhapsodized about their rosy future.” (During the murder trial, “Mrs. Christina Feldt, … testified that Luetgert often expressed his hatred for his wife and intimated that he would get rid of her.”)
“At around 10:15 on the evening of Saturday, May 1, Louisa was seated in the kitchen, chatting with her twelve-year-old son Louis, who had attended the circus that evening. The boy was excitedly describing some of the wonders he had seen—a giant named “Monsieur Goliath” and a strongman who juggled cannon balls—when Luetgert appeared and told his son to go bed. Precisely what happened between the two adults after Louis retired to his room is unclear. Only one fact is beyond dispute. After the boy bid goodnight to his mother at about 10:30 P.M., she was left alone in the company of her husband.” … “Mrs. Luetgert wore only a light house wrapper and slippers, although the night was cold and rainy. It never was shown that she had taken with her any of her belongings.”
“When questioned by his sons, Luetgert told them that their mother had gone out the previous evening to visit her sister. After several days though, she did not come back. Finally, Diedrich Bicknese, Louisa’s brother, went to the police. The investigation fell on Captain Herman Schuettler, … “an honest but occasionally brutal detective”.
“Frank Bialk, a night watchman at the plant … saw both Luetgert and Louisa at the plant together. Apparently, Luetgert sent him out on an errand that evening and gave him the rest of the night off.” There is another version of the Bialk story. “Frank Bialk … testified … Luetgert instructed him to bring down two barrels of caustic potash and place them in the boiler room, and that Luetgert then poured the contents of both barrels in one of the vats. The watchman was instructed to keep up steam all night and at 10 p. m. he was sent by Luetgert to the drug store after some nerve medicine.”
“The police also made a shocking discovery; they came across bills that stated that Luetgert bought arsenic and potash the day before the murder. … the detective was convinced that Luetgert had killed his wife, boiled her in acid and then disposed of her in a factory furnace.”
“… Luetgert’s night watchman, Frank Bialk, approached the police and told them that, on the night Mrs. Luetgert disappeared, his boss had been acting suspiciously, busying himself with one of the large steam-vats down in the factory basement. Following up on this tip, investigators checked out the vat, which—despite having been cleaned two weeks earlier—still contained a residue of a thick, greasy fluid, reddish-brown in color and giving off a nauseous stink. When the fetid slime was drained from the vat, the detectives discovered tiny pieces of bone along with two gold rings, one of them a wedding band engraved with the initials “L. L.” More bone fragments, as well as a false tooth, a hairpin, a charred corset stay, and various scraps of cloth turned up in a nearby ash heap.”
Luetgert was arrested, and charged with the crime. “On October 18, the case was submitted to the jury and after deliberating for sixty-six hours they failed to agree, nine favoring a conviction and three voting in favor of an acquittal. On November 29, 1897, the second trial began. … The trial resulted in a conviction and on May 5 Luetgert was sent to the Joliet State prison for life.”
“July 27, 1899, Luetgert left his cell and returned shortly afterward with his breakfast in a pail, but just as he was about to eat it, he dropped dead from heart disease.”
“… Frank Pratt … asked Luetgert if he wanted his “hand read.” The latter consented and Pratt told Luetgert that he possessed a violent temper and at times was not responsible for his actions. Pratt stated that Luetgert then virtually admitted that he killed his wife when he was possessed of the devil. … It is said that Luetgert also made similar admissions to a fellow prisoner.” Pictures for this true crime story are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
Millard Fillmore’s Birthday

On January 7, 1800, Millard Fillmore was born. He had no middle name, so his initials were MF. He was POTUS number thirteen, serving July 9, 1850 – March 4, 1853. A member of the Whig party, Mr. Fillmore became President after the death of Zachary Taylor. This is the only death of a serving President not connected to the zero factor.
Whenever a President dies in office, there are conspiracty theries. In the case of Zachary Taylor, the body was exhumed in 1991. The investigation found that Mr. Taylor “had no more arsenic in him than you or I walking around in the environment today.”
“The details about how and why President Taylor died are still in dispute today. The president attended a ceremony at the site of the Washington Monument on July 4th on a reportedly hot summer day. He fell ill soon after with a stomach ailment after drinking iced drinks and eating a bowl of cherries. His doctors gave him relief medication that included opium and later bled the president. Taylor died five days later at the age of 65.
Officially, he died from cholera morbus, and today, the prevalent theory is that Taylor suffered from gastroenteritis, an illness exacerbated by poor sanitary conditions in Washington. There are other theories, including one where Taylor was poisoned by people who supported the South’s pro-slavery position. (In recent years, Taylor’s body was exhumed and a small, non-lethal amount of arsenic was found in samples taken from his corpse.) It was Taylor’s unexpected opposition to the expansion of slavery (he was from the South and was the last president to own slaves) that had caused an immediate crisis in 1850.”
Some naysayers claim that Millard Fillmore was the one to poison the President, but they are not taken seriously. Millard Fillmore served what was left of Mr. Taylor’s term. He is little known today, which makes one wonder why he was included in the history series American Douchebag. Which is not to say that Mr. Fillmore is completely forgotten.
@EdDarrell Happy Birthday Millard Fillmore! Born January 7, 1800. Fillmore as a young man? @fillmoremillard Thank you Ed! I was a handsome devil, wasn’t I? #Fillmore2016 @EdDarrell One story holds that when Fillmore toured England and Europe Queen Victoria said said was the handsomest man she ever met.
At one time, Johnny Carson thought jokes about Millard Fillmore were funny. A youtube search does not reveal any of these jokes. During a writers guild strike, Mr. Carson wrote his own monolog. “… astrology would no longer be used at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Employed instead, he said, would be “a channeler speaking through the spirit of Millard Fillmore.”
The rest of this holiday post is recycled. It was inspired by Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub, a fine blog. MFB is published today, six years after the original post. As you may have guessed, it is named for Millard Fillmore. MF was POTUS (and many POTUS are MF) between 1850 and 1853. The last whig to serve as POTUS (history does not record whether he wore one), Mr. Fillmore helped delay the War Between the States for ten years.
After he left office, Mr. Fillmore visited Atlanta GA in 1854, becoming the first POTUS to do so. A road in San Francisco was named Fillmore Street, and loaned the name to a famous concert hall. Johnny Carson made him a punch line to many jokes. And, there is the bathtub.
In 1917, with America mixed up in a European war, H.L. Mencken published a column in the New York Evening Mail. He claimed that the bathtub had been invented in 1842, and was a controversial device. (The first model was made of mahogany lined with lead.) President Millard Fillmore installed a bathtub in the White House in 1850, and greatly increased the acceptance of the invention. The story was a lie, but was believed without question by the (unwashed) public. Bathtubs were installed in the US Capitol in 1860. This may have been a factor in the Georgia’s decision to leave the Union.
Recently someone found a letter, written by Alexander Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederate States of America. In 1860, the election of Abraham Lincoln was seen by many as a disaster. Mr. Stephens disagreed: “I know the man [Lincoln] well, he is not a bad man. He will make as good a President as Fillmore did and better too in my opinion.”
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. These details are from picture #06665, “Bathing Beauty Pageant, 1925, Huntington Beach CA.” This is a repost.
Tusset Chronicles 010624
It is the anniversary of the january 6 incident. I was in limbo on 010621. The day before, I found a plumber to replace the water heater, without tearing up the wet closet floor. The next day, I had an appointment with a “genius” at the apple store to fix my Iphone7. On super wednesday, I was watching the action unfold on twitter. One comment was that this was what white supremacy looks like … POC would have been shot by the police. People on twitter make the dumbest comments.
I was looking at the weather report … a bit too late, as we will see later … when I found this item. A kid was killed by a gun that went off in the back seat of a vehicle. The incident took place on Shawn Wayne Court. It turns out I have been there before.
Between 1986 and 1998, Charles Emerson Hall, aka Crazy Owl, lived on a piece of property on Flat Shoals Road. Owl was squatting on the land, with the permission of the owner. There was no electricity, and the only water was a spigot in the front yard. The county made him get a green porta potty, which was dubbed the emerald city.
Owl was the proprietor of the School for Gentle Hands. He taught Chinese medicine. SFGH hosted a friday night sweat lodge, and other events. Eventually SFGH was no longer sustainable. Crazy Owl went to the sweat lodge in the sky April 4, 2011.
I was a regular at the friday night sweats, and a frequent visitor to SFGH. After Crazy Owl moved out, I was not in that area for many years. During this time, East Atlanta Village became a thriving operation, a mile east of SFGH on Flat Shoals Road. One time in 2010, I drove down Flat Shoals road. A cul-de-sac of townhouses occupied the former site of SFGH. That street was Shawn Wayne Court, the scene of the shooting last night.
Soon it was time take someone to the Marta station. When I got to the vehicle, I saw the windows were down. I did this yesterday to let fresh air into the vehicle. Unfortunately, I did not roll them back up later. This became an issue when it rained during the night. I had one job, and I messed it up. Pictures today from The Library of Congress.
Conversations I Am Tired Of Having
This is a repost from 2013. Privilege is no longer a popular topic, thank God. … There was a post a while back, 10 Conversations On Racism I’m Sick Of Having With White People. The original started at The Chronicle, but LiveJournal is LiveJoural, so a mirror image will have to do.
I got to thinking about “10 Conversations”, and a reply began to take shape. I started a list of conversations the I am tired of having, and before you could say toxic masculinity, there were a dozen items. Many of these incidents have involved people of color, or POC. Many others have not. Often, the ethnicity of the other person has little importance to the discussion. Therefore, the title of this feature will not be racially specific. This monolog will probably not go viral, or even bacterial. Washing your hands might be a good idea when you are finished reading.
Meetings where one person does all the talking The word conversation implies that more than one person says something. Often, this does not happen. One person will talk for a while. Before person two finishes a sentence, person one will interrupt them.
This does not work. When the other person is talking, listen. Don’t be thinking of your clever comeback, but pay attention to what the other person is saying. What the other person says is just as important as what you say.
Listening is not valued in our culture. It is seen as a loss of control, a sign of weakness. It is really a sign of strength. If you are weak, you don’t want to allow the other person to say anything. Have you ever heard anyone boast about the clever things that they say to someone? Of course you have, just like you never hear anyone talk highly about himself because he is a good listener.
My question is not an excuse to make a speech. Some people have an agenda. Whatever you say is an obstacle to the message they want to broadcast. When you ask a question, some people think you are handing them the talking stick, to do whatever they want. When your eyes glaze over, they plow on, in total disregard to your discomfort, and lack of comprehension. It is almost as if they are talking to hear the sound of their own voice.
I’m not talking to you. If you are screaming something, anyone with earshot can hear you. Do not get offended if there is a reaction to your words, especially if it is subtly directed at the person you are not talking to. This applies to the internet as well, where all of humanity is *privy* to your innermost thoughts. Keep the farmyard meaning of *privy* in mind when sharing your innermost product.
Conversations should be with people. If you are a business, and you want to tell me something, send me a written message. Please refrain from using robocall machines. I feel very foolish talking to a machine, especially one that doesn’t understand southern english.
You don’t have to shout. The amount of truth in a statement is not increased by the volume of expression. If you are standing next to me, the odds are I can hear you in a normal tone of voice. If you are across the room, come stand next to me, rather than shout across the room. If your normal tone of voice is shouting, then you have a problem.
The same principle goes to controlling your temper. When you choose not to control your temper, you show disrespect to yourself, and the person you are talking to. There is no situation that cannot be made worse by angry speech.
Privilege Racial polemic is getting more subtle these days. We are not quite post racial, although there are rumors of a PostRacial apartment community. The phrase that pays these days is Privilege. This is always something owned by the group you do not belong to. Last summer, I heard this quote in a discussion, and nearly fell out of my chair.
This is getting longer than the attention span of many readers. It might be continued at a later date. This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
M.K. Gandhi And Truth
I identify as human @pixfiber “Truth never damages a cause that is just.” – Mohandas K. Gandhi. This item appeared in my twitter feed on January 6. Being an unreconstructed pedant, I went to the Gandhi Wikiquote. “Truth” had too many search results, so I went to “just.” I found a doozy: “I have always held that social justice, even to the least and lowliest, is impossible of attainment by force.” Harijan (20 April 1940) p. 97 This is a repost.
Harijan was another word for the untouchable caste in India. “… Gandhi conducted an intensive crusade against untouchability …” “Harijan was also a newspaper that started on 11 February 1933, brought out by Gandhi from Yerwada Jail during the British rule in India. Gandhi popularized the term Harijan across the states of India but he was not the first person to use it.”
Archive.org has much of Harijan available online, including the quote above. The quote is in a tsunami of text. Gandhiji was trained as a lawyer, and could crank out a word count. His positions are well thought out and complicated. This material is more complicated than the motivational Mahatma we are familiar with.
If don’t mind wading through a pile of results, a search for “truth” on the Gandhi Wikiquotes will yield some good thoughts. Bear in mind that these quotes are without context. If you are willing to do the work, and google the source, you might find that the meaning of these thoughts is different from what you might think. The first three quotes in this list are from An Autobiography Or The Story of My Experiments With Truth By: M. K. Gandhi.
“A man of truth must also be a man of care.” Part I, Chapter 5, At the High School
“But all my life though, the very insistence on truth has taught me to appreciate the beauty of compromise. I saw in later life that this spirit was an essential part of Satyagraha. It has often meant endangering my life and incurring the displeasure of friends. But truth is hard as adamant and tender as a blossom.” Part II, Chapter 18, Colour Bar
“My uniform experience has convinced me that there is no other God than Truth.” p. 453
“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.” Young India 1924-1926 (1927), p. 1285 (context below)
“A seeker after Truth cannot afford to indulge in generalisation.”
“Generalisation”, Harijan (6 July 1940).
“If you want to give a message again to the West, it must be a message of ‘Love’, it must be a message of ‘Truth’. There must be a conquest — [audience claps] — please, please, please. That will interfere with my speech, and that will interfere with your understanding also. I want to capture your hearts and don’t want to receive your claps. Let your hearts clap in unison with what I’m saying, and I think, I shall have finished my work.”
Speech in New Delhi to the Inter-Asian Relations Conference (2 April 1947)
“Impure means result in an impure end… One cannot reach truth by untruthfulness. Truthful conduct alone can reach Truth.” Harijan (13 July 1947) p. 232
“[Government] control gives rise to fraud, suppression of truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans the people and deprives them of initiative, it undoes the teaching of self-help…It makes them spoon-fed.” Delhi Diary (3 November 1947 entry)
“It is no use trying to fight these forces [of materialism] without giving up the idea of conversion, which I assure you is the deadliest poison which ever sapped the fountain of truth.”
Mahatma Gandhi The Collected Works Vol 46, p. 203
Wikiquotes has a lively section devoted to quotes that are Disputed and Misattributed. One Disputed entry is especially festive: “Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” “The earliest attribution of this to Gandhi … is in a T-shirt advertisement in Mother Jones, Vol. 8, No. 5 (June 1983), p. 46”
Several much loved Gandhisms have a shaky history. “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” “An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.” “God has no religion.” “We need to be the change we wish to see in the world.”
Young India supplied one of the quotes above. Here is page 1285. “Some Posers: — ‘A well wisher’ sends these lines for my meditation: ‘The Bible can be read in 566 languages. In how many can the Upanishads and the Gita? How many leper asylums and institutions for the depressed and the distressed have the missionaries? How many have you?’ It is usual for me to receive such posers. ‘A well wisher’ deserves an answer, I have great regard for the missionaries for their zeal and self-sacrifice. But I have not hesitated to point out to them that both are often misplaced. What though the Bible were translated in every tongue in the world? Is a patent medicine better than the Upanishads for being advertised in more languages than the Upanishads? An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody will see it. The Bible was a greater power when the early fathers preached it than it is today. ‘A well wisher’ has little conception of the way truth works, if he thinks that the translation of the Bible in more languages than the Upanishads is any test of its superiority. Truth has to be lived if it is to fructify. But if it is any satisfaction to ‘A well wisher’ to have my answer I may gladly tell him that the Upanishads and the Gita have been translated into far fewer languages than the Bible. I have never been curious enough to know in how many languages they are translated.”
“As for the second question, too, I must own that the missionaries have founded many leper asylums and the like. I have founded none. But I stand unmoved. I am not competing with the missionaries or any body else in such matters. I am trying humbly to serve humanity as God leads me. The founding of leper asylums etc. is only one of the ways, and perhaps not the best, of serving humanity. But even such noble service loses much of its nobility when conversion is the motive behind it. That service is the noblest which is rendered for its own sake. But let me not be misunderstood. The missionaries that selflessly work away in such asylums command my respect. I am ashamed to have to confess that Hindus have become so callous as to care little for the waifs and strays of India, let alone the world.”
Chamblee54 has written about M.K. Gandhi. one two three Pictures are from Library of Congress.
Harry Hay And Joe Pyne
Joe Pyne was a notoriously abrasive TV personality. He pioneered many of the things that today’s shock jock hosts do, before his death in 1970. One of his guests was Georgia Governor Lester Maddox. While writing a blog post about Lester, PG did a bit of research on Joe Pyne.
Wikipedia had an intriguing comment. “Gay activists Harry Hay and John Burnside—who were a couple from 1962 until Hay’s death in 2002—appeared on Pyne’s show in 1967.[citation needed]” Harry Hay is a seminal figure in certain “radical” communities. Mr. Hay had a sharp tongue, and might have given the combative Pyne a bit of pushback. PG decided to look for the video.
[citation needed] is the key phrase. Youtube has a few dozen videos of the Joe Pyne Show (links below.) None of the ones here include Harry Hay. The internet archive has a collection of Pyne tapes, but no Harry Hay. A google search provides many mentions of this interview, but no more details. Many of the references were apparently copied, verbatim, from Wikipedia.
There is a possibility that Harry Hay was never on the Joe Pyne show. There are other urban legends about Joe Pyne. The most famous involves Frank Zappa. It is helpful to know that Joe Pyne had a rare form of cancer in 1955, and part of his left leg was amputated. In the story, Mr. Pyne asks Mr. Zappa if his long hair makes him a girl. Mr. Zappa replied, does your wooden leg make you a table? No record of this exchange is available.
TV Party might have a reason for the missing video. “Most, if not all, of the syndicated Joe Pyne programs still exist on videotape in the archives of Hartwest Productions, Inc. Here’s what Hartwest tells us: “The tapes are 2″ Quads, meaning that they are so ancient that you only get one pass before the oxides flake off. That one pass is fine to make a new digital master, but the cost (including two digital clones) comes to about $600 a show. So far, we have only transferred three shows, with the cost being paid for by people who were either in the show, or who were making a documentary, or who now seem to worship one of the guests (and I mean the last literally).”
The research turned up another story. It is from “Remembering Harry and John” by Mark Thompson, on the occasion of Harry’s 100th anniversary. “I remember the night we were socializing at the San Francisco Art Institute at a gala tribute for James Broughton. Harry (Hay) and James had sparked briefly as Stanford University undergraduates, but didn’t meet again until fifty years later at a faerie gathering. Few people knew that James had fathered a daughter with esteemed film critic Pauline Kael during their bohemian Berkeley days, but Harry was alert to the fact. Kael and Broughton were having their own reunion at the moment when, with typical impudence, Harry interrupted the conversation by loudly asking, “So, who was the mother and who was the father?” The stunned silence was punctured only by the whoosh of Kael’s furious departure.”
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost. Youtube has several videos from the Joe Pyne Show. There is a series, LOST JOE PYNE TALK SHOW PART 1 – PART 7 “This is from a 1967 kinescoped “demo reel”, used to sell “THE JOE PYNE SHOW” in syndication to local stations at the time.” 1 2 3 Helen Gurley Brown 4 5 7 Here are some other guests:
Amy White Fixler Christine Jorgensen Anton LaVey F. Lee Bailty
Godfrey Cambridge Lester Maddox Paul Krassner Jerry Rubin
Lewis Marvin Jack Anderson James Meredith Joel Fort M.D. Iceberg Slim


















































































































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