Made Myself Stupid
“So many times I’ve made myself stupid with the fear of being outsmarted.” James Richardson (b. 1950) “Vectors: 56 Aphorisms and Ten-second Essays” Michigan Quarterly Review, #17 (Spring 1999) Wish I’d Said That put this up on twitter. I made a copy of the 56AATSE. … This is a repost from 2021. Per Wikipedia, James Richardson is still alive.
It sat ignored on my desktop. until this morning. I was looking for something to work with, and started to pick out aphorisms that spoke to me. The first two to make the cut were #3 and #5, which are key players in the fibonacci sequence. Why not just eliminate all the players, except for the f-numbers? Then use those actors as a writing prompt.
First, we need to look into James Richardson. Turns out he is a recently retired English Professor at Princeton. A princeton.edu document has stories about Dr. Richardson: “Some of his colleagues in English will remember how, as department secretary, he recorded the minutes of meetings in rhyming couplets. … Jim is a philosopher-poet in the tradition of … his fellow baseball fan, Walt Whitman.” Apparently, Jim is a Yankees fan, which we can forgive.
1 “No matter how fast you travel, life walks.” Dr. Richardson is fond of semantics.
2 “Desire’s most seductive promise is not pleasure but change, not that you might possess your object but that you might become the one who belongs with it.” Ditto.
3 “There are silences harder to take back than words.” This is the first one that was noteworthy. This does not mean that I agree. Sometimes, the best thing to say is nothing at all. This goes against a commodity wisdom crowd-pleaser. “The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Say Nothing.” As Mike Hunt once said, “Don’t just do something, stand there.”
Kyle Rittenhouse might have a few things to say about this. He heard stories of angry mobs ransacking businesses, and decided to do something. Mr. Rittenhouse was severely punished for his decision to help out. Many of the people who spoke out, about the trial, should have kept their thoughts to themself. Justice is not a popularity contest.
5 “If it can be used again, it is not wisdom but theory.” 90% of the time, when people say theory, they really should say hypothesis. It is not known how this relates to reuseable wisdom.
8 “Everyone loves the Revolution. We only disagree on whether it has occurred.” There is a activist recipe. “To make an omelette, you have to break eggs.” Whenever I hear this, I feel like an egg.
13 “Like late afternoon, a pale cirrus crosses the nearly transparent moon. They are so alike, meeting, that I feel, suddenly and childishly, They like each other. Somehow I can’t help liking them for that. Somehow I can’t help feeling that they like me liking them.” Like Joni Mitchell, Dr. Richardson really doesn’t know clouds at all. We are talking about an atmospheric mass of water droplets, and a big rock traveling 403,000 kilometers away from earth.
21 “Birds are amazing, newspapers, stoves, friends. All that happens is amazing, if you think about it. All that doesn’t happen is even more amazing, because there’s so much more of it. Only habit keeps us from seeing all this. Habit is really amazing.” Is Dr. Richardson talking to newspapers, stoves, or friends? Maybe he is talking to all three. Of course, this was back when print media was much more popular than today, so maybe a newspaper was his friend. This does not account for the stove.
34 “I seem to need a larger vocabulary to talk to you than to talk to myself.” There are things that you know, that you never have to describe. When you talk to another person, you need to explain.
55 “Happiness is gratitude in search of something to be owed to.” Dr. Jim is probably grateful to the University of Michigan, for publishing his 56 Bright Ideas. When you are a high level academic, you need to publish things. UM is playing Georgia on New Years Eve. Many people in Alabama would be grateful if Georgia wins. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Selah.
If I Were A Poor Black Kid
This is a repost from 2011. It was a simpler time. … “If I Were A Poor Black Kid” was behind the paywall at Forbes magazine. One of the naysayer replies is available. Another, from Angry Black Lady Chronicles, is lost in an archive. The Root has a few selections from ABLC, between the popup ads. Pictures are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.
There is a fuss going on about an article at Forbes magazine, If I Were A Poor Black Kid. PG was reading a facebook discussion of the article, and decided he wanted to read the original. He googled white guy writing about being a poor black kid for freakin’ FORBES, and the fun began.
Angry Black Lady Chronicles tells of the day when her (white) mother took a day off, from her job as a copy editor, to get young ABL enrolled in a tougher math class. Freethoughblogs chimes in with Forbes’ Gene Marks Needs To Check His Priv. The last line says it all … “Or, as in your case, not so smart but privileged.”
If you want to read denunciations of the Forbes article, open your eyes and take a look. You might want to hurry up. because, soon, there will be another article, somewhere, that people don’t like. Maybe you can talk about the War on Christmas. This is an example of Christian Privilege gone awry. It is a safe bet that many of the poor black kids are Christians. Maybe one form of privilege will outweigh another. Or people will learn about a grain of salt.
It is ironic that the piece was published in Forbes. Malcolm Forbes was fond of saying that he was loaded with “sheer ability, spelled i-n-h-e-r-i-t-a-n-c-e.” The elder Forbes had a lavish lifestyle, with Elizabeth Taylor as a beard. His son, Steve Forbes, (Malcolm Stevenson Forbes Jr.) was quoted as saying “My father once spent $5 million on a birthday party for himself in Tangiers. Why can’t I spend a few more running for President?”.
A Real Jefferson Quote
“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom” Thomas Jefferson. So says an unsightly graphic on /r/QuotesPorn. As the reader(s) of this blog know, I am fond of debunking quotes. Quotes about “honesty” are particularly appealing to those who enjoy quotation pedantry.
The quote is real. Mr. Jefferson wrote a letter to Nathaniel Macon on January 12, 1819. This was a reply to a letter Mr. Macon sent January 4, 1819. The exchange is included in The papers of Thomas Jefferson Retirement series, published by Princeton University Press in 2004. The Library of Congress has a photograph of the Jefferson letter.
The letter to Mr. Macon began with a delightful quote. “Dear Sir The problem you had wished to propose to me was one which I could not have solved; for I know nothing of the facts. I read no newspaper now but Ritchie’s, and in that chiefly the advertisements, for they contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.”
Sally’s babydaddy was a man of many words. In 1784, he wrote Notes on the State of Virginia. “Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.” … The circumstance of superior beauty, is thought worthy attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs, and other domestic animals; why not in that of man? Besides those of colour, figure, and hair, there are other physical distinctions proving a difference of race. They have less hair on the face and body. They secrete less by the kidnies, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odour. This greater degree of transpiration renders them more tolerant of heat, and less so of cold, than the whites. . . . They seem to require less sleep. A black, after hard labour through the day, will be induced by the slightest amusements to sit up till midnight, or later, though knowing he must be out with the first dawn of the morning.” Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
When You Can’t Say Anything Good
Writers block is real. You have all of modern media at your beck and call, and yet you don’t have a message. TwentyTwoWords posts the story of a medical study into writers block. The study wastes no words in it a pithy treatment of this issue. It is an unspoken masterpiece, the treatment that dare not speak it’s name. The research was financed by a block grant.
The findings of this study were replicated in 2007. The report is included here, in it’s entirety. The editor noted “I did not change one word, and this is a first in my tenure as editor.” There is no word on whether the report was submitted before the deadline.
Ben Hecht tells a story in his autobiography “Child of the Century”. As a young, underpaid newspaper writer in Chicago, Mr. Hecht was hired to participate in literary debates. In 1900 Chicago, this was after dinner entertainment. One night, Mr. Hecht got together with his opponent, and hatched a plan. The topic of the debate was “People who attend literary debates are idiots”. The first speaker did not say a word, but gestured towards the crowd. The second speaker said, “you win.”
The sound that you hear is one hand clapping. Those reading with one hand can participate with the other one. Vintage pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library” This is a repost. Should writer’s block should be called writer’s tackle?
Gloria Marie Steinem
@measure7x “Been struck by how difficult it is to find a full text copy of Gloria Steinem’s CIA pamphlet, ‘A Review of Negro Segregation in the United States.’ Now I see why… Supposedly only 5 (‘known’) copies in the US. Guess some people really don’t want this going around” Sometimes opening twitter is asking for trouble. This tweet sent me on a wild goose chase, looking for information about ARONSITUS. Another thread provided a bit of information.
@marina0swald “a 1967 NYT article quoted gloria steinem as saying “I found them liberal and farsighted and open to an exchange of ideas,” when describing her close work with CIA agents to send americans to disrupt youth festivals in vienna in 1959 and helsinki in 1962” @marina0swald “another report the IRS prepared was on racial segregation in the US. it should be noted that this pamphlet is notoriously hard to find and truly doesn’t appear to be digitized anywhere. only five known copies exist. why? well the contents speak for itself” @marina0swald “published near the height of the civil rights movement, the report states that the reason racism exists is because it’s self-perpetuating, and black people simply imagine they are oppressed. the report has steinem’s name stamped across the top.” @marina0swald is a pen name, and not the widow of Lee Harvey Oswald.
A google search was not helpful. Duckduckgo came through with a handful of results. Whoever wants the document suppressed has done a good job. Even Amazon does not have access.
There is a bit more information about Ms. Steinem and the CIA. If you have a taste for conspiracy theories, there is a two hour radio show from 1986. A transcript is available.
“The first revelations of Gloria Steinem’s relationship to the CIA appeared in the New York Times in 1967, in an article that stated that Steinem had a part in launching a CIA front group which was called the “Independent Research Service.” Just prior to this exposure, Ramparts magazine had disclosed that the organization was CIA-funded. … The purpose of the IRS seems to have been to subvert communist-minded youths on an international basis. The supposedly “Independent” Research Service was, in fact, totally dependent on the CIA. It is believed to have been formed in response to the Communist World Youth festivals occurring throughout the 1950s and 1960s. These festivals were held in communist countries until 1959, when the festival for that year was scheduled to take place in Vienna — neutral territory during the Cold War. The State Department did its best to discourage American youths from attending. Some did go, though, and in the meantime the CIA covertly arranged for the Independent Research Service to organize an anti-communist delegation to attend and disrupt the festivals.” …
“Another fact exhumed by the Red Stockings is the group’s publication of a pamphlet in 1959 called, “A Review of Negro Segregation in the United States.” Steinem’s name is listed on the inside cover, this time as co-director of the Independent Research Service. The pamphlet focuses on the supposed advances made by black people in the U.S. For example: “Beyond the noisy clamor of those who would obstruct justice and fair play, no alert observer can be unaware of the concerted effort to rule out segregation from every aspect of American life.” The reason some discrimination does still occur, according to the research group, is because “it is also self-perpetuating, in that the rejected group, through continued deprivation, is hardened in the very shortcomings, real or imaginary, that are given as the reasons for the discrimination in the first place.” In other words, the oppression of blacks continues not because of white, ruling-class interests, but because black people actually have become inferior. [CN: Here Red Stocking is paraphrasing how they see the IRS pamphlet’s argument.]” This quote cannot be verified. All we have today is a picture of the cover, which might be faked.
When you talk about the CIA, there are conspiracy theories galore. It can be tough to wade through the information. The focus of this story is the pamphlet about “Negro Segregation.” One story sheds a bit of light on the Steinem-CIA-Segregation axis, along with a tasteful picture of Ronald Reagan, Rupert Murdoch, and Roy Cohn. The story does have a credibility gap. When discussing Richard Nixon, the author opines “Petty shit compared to Donald Trump, but it was a different time.”
”A youthful Gloria Steinem had just spent a year and half in India … she befriended Indira Gandhi and the widow of the “revolutionary humanist” M. N. Roy, and had met a researcher who seems to have been a C.I.A. agent or contact. Attractive and progressive, Steinem was hired to run the I.S.I. [sic] and to recruit knowledgeable young Americans who could debate effectively with the Communist organizers of the festival, defending the United States against Communist criticism of segregation and other American failings.” This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress
Tommy Rotten
This is a repost from 2015. It was a simpler time. … In 1977, Rolling Stone did a piece about a “counterculture writer” named Thomas Eugene Robbins. “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. … 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.” Pictures today are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library
Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life is a TER autobiography. This accounts for the page references. … On page 25, TER was on an Asian honeymoon. A Sing snake crossed their path. A guide invited the snake 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. Later, on page 145, TER would describe “many a hot, sticky summer night, when a restless Richmond felt like the interior of a napalmed watermelon.”
TER is thirteen years old on page 63. 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. At the end of the service, the congregation sings “Just as I am,” and kids are shamed into salvation. The Baptist ritual of pressuring pre pubescent youth into a “commitment of faith” is morally dubious. 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.”
At some point TER 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.” TER did not specify the gender.
The Fan was the hippie district of Richmond VA, although the 1954 version was considerably tamer than the summer of love variety. 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.” … “I’d better shut up now before the woo-woo alarms go off.”
The edited version of this nonsense ended before a purple paragraph. Purple prose has long been a derogatory phrase for overwrought wordsmithery. It is now the sunday after turkey day, in the year of our satan 2023. As TER liked to say in “Cowgirls,” the state of the world is desperate as usual. TER is either 91 or 87, depending on what mood google is in. We probably will not get another novel out of him. … There is probably a good quote to end this with, but I am too lazy to look for it.
Tony Hovater
This is a double repost from 2017. It was a simpler time. … New York Times reporter Richard Fausset went to smalltown Ohio to meet Tony Hovater. “In 2015, he helped start the Traditionalist Worker Party, one of the extreme right-wing groups that marched in Charlottesville, Va. … The mission is to “fight for the interests of White Americans.’’ Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Virtual America is not pleased. Twitter screeds by @magi_jay and @bessbell have been widely shared. This facebook comment speaks for many: “The article serves to humanize and normalize him/far-right extremism/Nazism — which was one of Tony Havater’s stated desires/goals re: his present involvement in the white nationalist/Nazi movement. By normalizing them, they are given a seat at the table of political discourse which is absolutely a back-asswards step.”
When you see a tweetstorm like this, the first step is to find the original material. Read the article, not what @ShaunKing says about it. When you read the original, you wonder if it is the same article. The original is full of snide references, and logical fallacies. Maybe what the masses want is a ritual denunciation of the anointed poopyhead. As one online publication put it, “ensure that white supremacists and Nazis are thought of and treated the same way you might treat a roach scurrying across a kitchen counter.” Lets look at some quotes from the NYT article.
“Mr. Hovater’s face is narrow and punctuated with sharply peaked eyebrows, like a pair of air quotes, and he tends to deliver his favorite adjective, “edgy,” with a flat affect and maximum sarcastic intent. It is a sort of implicit running assertion that the edges of acceptable American political discourse — edges set by previous generations, like the one that fought the Nazis — are laughable.”
The previous generations of America are a mixed bag. Yes, they fought the Germans in WW2. They also fought Native Americans, and said “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.” “The edges of acceptable American political discourse” once included Jim Crow laws. American political discourse is an ever-changing work in progress.
“After he attended the Charlottesville rally, in which a white nationalist plowed his car into a group of left-wing protesters, killing one of them, Mr. Hovater wrote that he was proud of the comrades who joined him there: “We made history. Hail victory.” In German, “Hail victory” is “Sieg heil.””
James Alex Fields is accused of killing Heather Meyer with a Dodge Challenger. We don’t know if he was acting on orders, where those orders came from, or if he is a loose cannon, acting on his own. While the march organizers certainly bear some responsibility for that tragedy, we do not know the entire story. In any event, that has nothing to do with the German translation of “Hail Victory.” That interjection is a red herring.
I Interviewed a White Nationalist and Fascist. What Was I Left With? was published after the backlash hit. It is a commentary by the author, in which he laments not finding the “rosebud” to this story. There is a revealing quote near the end. “…I saw, on his bookshelf, two volumes of Helena Blavatsky’s “The Secret Doctrine,” 19th-century work of esoteric spiritualism whose anti-Semitism influenced Nazi thinking. But even if I had called Mr. Hovater yet again — even if we had discussed Blavatsky at length, the way we did his ideas about the Federal Reserve Bank — I’m not sure it would have answered the question. What makes a man start fires?”
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (Еле́на Петро́вна Блава́тская) is a 19th century Russian that few people know about. This obscurity allows Mr. Fausset to fill in the blanks with a gratuitous comment about anti-Semitism. This inclusion also assumes that Mr. Hovater has read the books.
The reference to the Federal Reserve Bank is more telling. If you listen to this podcast, you learn that Mr. Hovater is more concerned with economics than white nationalism. You will also learn that many of his ideas are not well thought out. Mr. Hovater, a former drummer in a heavy metal band, is similar to that libertarian in the break room … the one who will not shut up, and go back to work.
Tony Hovater is a walking, talking illustration of the Dunning-Kruger effect. (The spell check suggestion for Hovater is Overate.) He simply does not know what he is talking about. People who call him a Nazi are missing the point. The Nazis were smart, and tough. Mr. Hovater has his good points, much to the disappointment of sjw-twitter. Unfortunately, he simply is not that smart. The NYT obscures this proud ignorance with snarky comments about Charlottesville, and swastikas.
Saying Tony Hovater is stupid will not satisfy the keyboard warrior. Talking about economics is not as much fun as denouncing the third reich … as if the LARP-tikitorch crowd is the same as the Schutzstaffel. SJW twitter does not like subtlety. This is what they want to hear: “Of course, profiles on the people directly harmed by this hate speech and violence would be much more compelling. But that would require whiteness—white maleness, specifically—to be uncentered. And uncentering whiteness is harder than eating just one Lay’s potato chip, apparently.”
Did Socrates Read And Write?
This story starts with a facebook meme. A fbf posted a picture of a thoughtful statue. The text read ‘When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.’ Socrates. PG thought that Socrates never wrote anything that survived. All of what we attribute to Socrates was written by Plato. People reading this blog should know what happened next. This is a repost.
Did Socrates Say Slander Is ‘The Tool of the Losers”? is one of several results. They all said the same thing … the quote is bogus. A tweet from Eric Trump is not evidence of authenticity.
PG began to think, which is never a good sign. Was Socrates able to read and write? was on the screen a few minutes later. The speculation is mixed. Some say that that Socrates was stone illiterate.
Thomas Musselman “Socrates served in the government on juries. Historians now know that legal proceedings were common over business matters of great sophistication and the the juries were well-educated concerning such matters. General literacy existed by the late 400s BC for the general pubic in primary school. Upper class males even in Socrates’ day would have been literate and there was an active book-seller market. To function in the world that Socrates functioned in required literacy.”
Google turned up a curious document. It is a passage written by Plato,“Phaedrus.” Pp. 551-552 in Compete Works. An Egyptian G-d is talking to a King, about an invention … writing.
“In fact, it (writing) will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own. You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so.”
SOCRATES: “But, my friend, the priests of the temple of Zeus at Dodona say that the first prophecies were the words of an oak. Everyone who lived at that time, not being as wise as you young ones are today, found it rewarding enough in their simplicity to listen to an oak or even a stone, so long as it was telling the truth, while it seems to make a difference to you, Phaedrus, who is speaking and where he comes from. Why, though, don’t you just consider whether what he says is right or wrong?”
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
RuPaul
RuPaul Andre Charles was born on November 17. He or she? Ally or enemy? Racist or whatever? Labels are part of the packaging, and have little to do with the product inside the box.
A facebook friend put up a link to a RuPaul interview, Real Talk With RuPaul. The FBF is over RuPaul. PG read the interview, and found many things that he agreed with. Is it possible to be a conservative because you like RuPaul?
The Vulture feature is similar to the WTF podcast that RuPaul did. Chamblee54 wrote about that interview. The Vulture chat is better for bloggers, since it is a copy friendly text affair. When you see quotes, you can include them verbatim.
RuPaul has a talent for snappy sayings, to be remembered for later use. An example would be “I’d rather have an enema than have an Emmy.” Some unkind people say that if you were to give RuPaul an enema, you could bury him in a shoebox.
A persistent theme of RuPaul’s moving lips is “the matrix.” “Because you get to a point where if you’re smart and you’re sensitive, you see how this all works on this planet. It’s like when Dorothy looks behind the curtain. Like, “Wait a minute. You’re the wizard?” And you figure out the hoax. That this is all an illusion. There’s only a few areas you can go. First, you get angry that you’ve been hoaxed and you get bitter. But then, take more steps beyond the bitterness and you realize, “Oh, I get it. Let’s have fun with it. It’s all a joke.”
The Bosslady of “RuPaul’s Drag Race’ is an African American. Duh. In the Vulture piece, there are 4355 words. Racism/racist is not included. Could it be that America’s obsession with other people’s racial attitudes is part of the illusion? “Derogatory slurs are ALWAYS an outward projection of a person’s own poisonous self-loathing.”
RuPaul is not always politically correct. She supports Shirley Q. Liquor. RPDR was instrumental in the rise to fame/descent into the abyss of Sharon Needles. “But if you are trigger-happy and you’re looking for a reason to reinforce your own victimhood, your own perception of yourself as a victim, you’ll look for anything that will reinforce that.”
Years ago, PG worked with someone who liked to say “and a ru hu hu.” This was shortened to ru, and was usually said very loud. Ru became a greeting.
About this time, RuPaul was living in Atlanta. Many people remember a spectacular self promoter. RuPaul would sit in an apartment balcony, and wave at cars passing by. Posters for his band, Wee Wee Pole, were on telephone poles up and down Ponce de Leon Avenue.
One night, Ru Paul was working as a gogo dancer in a club called Weekends. During a break, PG went over to talk to him. The use of ru as a greeting was mentioned. Soon, people came over, and PG started to leave. Before PG could get away, RuPaul turned to PG, lifted an index finger, and said “Keep on saying my name.”
RuPaul went on to become famous. Weekends was torn down, and is the site of the Federal Reserve Bank. PG does not watch much TV, and has never seen an episode of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” This is a TV show about a TV.
There is a recent controversy about RPDR. It seems that the phrase shemale has been used. Some people are offended by this. The expression is no longer used on the show. Holly/Diane/Sashia, a transcritter, introduced PG to the term “shemale” in 1998.
The use of offensive language is to be avoided. If you know something is going to hurt people, then you should avoid saying it. There is a good possibility that Ru Paul knew what she was doing, and just didn’t care. The problem comes when you haven’t received the latest update from the language authorities. Keeping up with what is cool to say can be a full time job. Is it still ok to say ru?
RuPaul is no stranger to attention being thought strange. The latest bit of publicity… there is no bad publicity, and they spell the name right … is an article in the eyeball grabbing HuffPo, RuPaul Responds To Controversy Over The Word ‘Tranny’. (Spell check suggestion: Granny) PG gave into temptation, and clicked on the link. It seems as though there was an appearance on the WTF podcast. Why settle for a sensational sample, when you can hear the entire show?
If you have an hour and twenty four minutes to spare, listen to this show. If you like, you can skip the first thirteen minutes, which is host Mark Maron talking about himself. The show is highly entertaining. A theme is that the world is the matrix, a fake construction. Some people look behind the curtain and see the wizard. Some people believe the matrix is reality. You should already know which side RuPaul takes. He was not born blonde.
The quote about the T-word comes toward the end of the show. PG has mixed feelings about the whole affair, and does not completely agree with RuPaul. However, this human being is entitled to an opinion. He is going to share it anyway. RuPaul does not suffer from false modesty.
For a show that gets attention about language, it is a bit strange at times. While describing his career trajectory, RuPaul says he went through a phase of “gender f-word.” The show is called WTF. Twice a week, the host says fuck a dozen times in the first sixty seconds. And RuPaul said “gender f-word.”
Even more amazingly, RuPaul said that things were “n-word rigged”. RuPaul did break down and say the ultimate dirty word. When his mother saw his act on television, she said “N****** you crazy.”
RuPaul has had quite a career. He mentions that he has been sober for fifteen years, and had some therapy to get there. This was not the case when he lived in Atlanta. Many stories from those days are in the show. The bs detector went off a couple of times. PG saw the Now Explosion, and did not remember seeing a tall black guy.
This is a rich seventy five minutes. Like saying that Madonna is a curator, that most fashion designers don’t know how to sew. The part that is getting the attention is towards the end of the show, and is just a small part. It is all part of the matrix.
This feature is a repost. Some of the pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. Other pictures are from The Library of Congress. The images are of women, training to be bus drivers and taxi drivers. This was in Washington DC, November 1942. The photographer was Andreas Feininger, working for the Office of War Information. The picture of a dipstick demonstration is #8d36666.
Desiderata
.
A poem, of unknown origin, was found in a Baltimore church. It was revived by a Lawyer, who lived in Terre Haute, IN. He liked to read it his friends, and his lips were moving. The attorney, Max Ehrmann, copyrighted this poem in 1927. Rumor has it that the manuscript was in an ambulance Mr. Ehrmann was following. How the accident victim came to possess this document is a mystery.
Mr. Ehrmann, the poet laureate of Terre Haute, wrote in his diary “I should like, if I could, to leave a humble gift — a bit of chaste prose that had caught up some noble moods”. The poem is Desiderata and is a favorite of gift shops the world over.
In 1956, Rev. Frederick Kates became the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Baltimore, MD. He had found a copy of “Desiderata”, without the copyright notice. He printed a handout for his congregation on church stationary. At the top of the page was the notation “Old St. Paul’s Church, Baltimore A.C. 1692.” As the sixties devolved, the poem became famous.
Desiderata was the text of a recording. The entertainer, Les Crane, found a poster, in a Baltimore church gift shop. He thought the text was in the public domain, when in fact it is copyrighted. Mr. Crane was taken to court, and forced to pay the owners of the copyright. It seems that Mr. Ehrmann used “Desiderata” in a Christmas greeting, without citing the copyright. Later,during World War II, Ehrmann allowed a friend – Army psychiatrist Dr. Merrill Moore – to hand out more than 1,000 copies of the poem to his soldier-patients, without the copyright.
Don’t copyrights expire, get renewed, and then expire again? If a work was written in 1927, doesn’t it go into the public domain 83 years later. Fleurdelis says the copywright question depends on your point of view, and place of residence. Robinsweb tells of being forced to remove “Desiderata” from her site, because of a complaint by the copyright owner. Remember, we are dealing with a legal concept, as it relates to a poem, allegedly written by a lawyer.
National Lampoon produced a new translation, Deteriorata. This is a repost. Pictures are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library
Inspiration Is For Amateurs
It is a T shirt treasure, and a coffee cup classic. “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” This gem is blamed on Allan Stewart Konigsberg, better known as Woody Allen. The percentage goes up and down, and life is sometimes substituted for success.
The quote was recently featured at WIST, or Wish I’d Said That. This quote site is known for giving a source, unlike the sites featuring purring platitudes in front of a cultural kitten. The current top offering is “Bach almost persuades me to be a Christian.” Virginia Woolf attributes the baroque comment to Roger Fry who was not afraid of the author.
Getting back to Mr. Allen and success statistics. He accepts full responsibility for the remark. In 1989, notorious conservative columnist William Safire asked Mr. Allen about whether he said life or success. The answer was rather surprising.
“The quote you refer to is a quote of mine which occurred during an interview while we were discussing advice to young writers, and more specifically young playwrights. My observation was that once a person actually completed a play or a novel he was well on his way to getting it produced or published, as opposed to a vast majority of people who tell me their ambition is to write, but who strike out on the very first level and indeed never write the play or book.”
In other words, you don’t just show up empty handed. If you have an idea, you have to employ the writing formula, ass + chair. You have to turn the tv off, leave the beer in the refrigerator, sit down, and push buttons on the keyboard. … Pictures for this repost are from The Library of Congress.
Words To Ban In 2015
TIME magazine has been around a while. It issues product every week, hopefully accompanied by paid advertising. When they run out of news to report, it is time to get creative. This is the spirit of Which Word Should Be Banned in 2015? This is a repost.
This is the fourth time for the contest. The previous winners are OMG, YOLO and twerk. These expressions are still with us. TIME magazine readers voting to ban a word does not mean very much.
This reality is lost on Blogher. Infuriating: TIME Puts ‘Feminist’ on List of Words to Ban in 2015. There was a tweet, alerting chamblee54 to the situation. @lanceburson Let’s ban @TIME instead RT @BlogHer: Infuriating: TIME Puts ‘Feminist’ on List of Words to Ban in 2015
“ARE. YOU. KIDDING. ME? … I’ll stop “throwing this label around” when the pay gap disappears, when mothers aren’t systematically punished in the workplace for caring for children, when men can access paternity leave freely, when women aren’t asked what they were wearing before getting raped.”
The first quoted sentence is in all caps. There are four words, three periods, and one question mark. Maybe this will help eliminate rape culture and the pay gap.
So, TIME is voting on what words to ban in 2015. The contestants are bae, basic, bossy, disrupt, feminist, I can’t even, influencer, kale, literally, om nom nom nom, obvi, said no one ever, sorry not sorry, turnt, yaaasssss. The terms are helpfully provided in alphabetical order.
According to the Urban Dictionary, bae is a Danish word for feces. Feminist is the only word ending in ist, to the relief of the ban-worthy racist and terrorist. Kale is literally om nom nom nom. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Chamblee54 
leave a comment