Are Hispanic/Latino People White?
While writing about homicide statistics and police killings, PG noted a quirk in the US government statistics. Hispanic/Latino people were listed as an ethnicity, rather than a race. The individual categories of White/Black/etc. included Hispanic/Latino people, where appropriate. This applies to US Census Bureau population statistics, as well as FBI crime statistics.
One quickly learns that there is no hard and fast rule about what racial category Hispanic/Latino people fall into. It appears to be a self determined choice. Many Hispanic/Latino people see themselves as Hispanic/Latino, and not White or Black, no matter what the Census Bureau says. There are indications that more Hispanic/Latino people chose White on the Census form in 2010, than in 2000. The numbers for 2020 are not yet available.
This is not an option for most African Americans, or for many European Americans. PG is Caucasian, with a Scottish last name. His racial identity has never been in doubt. This classification as White is not a source of pride or shame. It simply is who PG is. Most non-Hispanic Caucasians in the United States have a similar experience.
The Census questions are presented with the Hispanic question first, and the race question second. “NOTE: Please answer BOTH Question 5 about Hispanic origin and Question 6 about race. For this census, Hispanic origins are not races.”
You have to dig a bit to get the Hispanic/Latino race breakdown. You learn that Hispanic/Latino people see themselves, at least with the census bureau, as:
White – 53%
Black – 02.5%
Native American – 01.4%
Asian – 0.4%
Some other race – 36.7%
Two or more races – 06%
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
Social Justice Dogpile
Hard Knocks #1021 was a recent episode of the RISK podcast. At 46:00, we hear “Black Girl Magic” by Wanda Bowser. There are four characters, three white, one black. One of the three women is black, and the man is white. It begins with Brittany getting Wanda and Nathan to hook up, with Brittany watching. Soon Wanda and Nathan spend lots of time together. Good times are had.
One night, Wanda gets a phone call from Brittany. Nathan got in a heated argument with Laurel, and called her N$$$$$ Lover. Brittany, for some reason, felt the need to tell Wanda about this. Wanda avoids Nathan, until one night when he shows up. After an uncomfortable conversation, “I accepted his fuck boy apology and continue hooking up with him.” This goes on for a while, until Nathan finds a white lady that he likes better. Nathan drops out of school, and Wanda goes on with her life. There are more details to the story. If you like, you can use the link to hear the entire story.
Luther McKinnon Luther Mckinnon “I just listened to Wanda Bowser’s story, and I have questions. What was the context of Nathan saying NL to that girl? And why did Wanda’s gossip happy so-called friend have to tell Wanda, and everybody else?” I foolishly made a comment on facebook. If you want to see the complete comment thread, use the link above.
Wanda Wilson Bowser “Brittany was a pot stirrer. It was something I didn’t realize about her until I was older and could look back at those “friendships” reflectively. I know now that she had deep insecurities as a person and to feel better about herself, she wanted other people to hurt. She damn sure wasn’t telling me to protect my feelings, but she wanted my reaction. We ended up having a big falling out months later about something else and now, 17 years after the fact, we’ve gotten over our shared history and are still politely acquainted as Facebook friends.”
There were a few more comments back and forth. I never did learn the context of Nathan saying NL. Did Laurel lead him on? Was Brittany involved somehow, other than spreading toxic gossip? Did country boy Nathan understand just how bad the magic word was? These issues were never addressed. I was going to let the matter slide, until a fresh round of comments came in.
Raymond Christian Yea this listening to the other side crap has become an over used trop as if any one gives a damn what a bigots motivation is Luther Mckinnon So you are going to label Nathan a bigot because of one comment? Raymond Christian yes, yes I am !!!! Raymond Christian I hope no one bothers to say “but you don’t know whats in his heart” You can only judge peoples actions and words not some cosmic idea about whats in their brain and cant be seen! Luther Mckinnon So, we have a person. A country boy, who wound up hooking up with a black girl. Some how or another, he used the magic word in a conversation. When he uses the magic word, he is no longer a human being worthy of respect. He is a bigot. Did Laurel put words in his mouth? What did she say to get him to say the magic word? Maybe Laurel, and definitely Brittany, are the bigots in this story? If we use the standards of contemporary social justice, dating POC is not a defense against charges of racism. Have Laurel or Brittany ever used the magic word?
We don’t know much about Nathan. He was a tobacco chewing country boy, who had a fling with a black girl. He said the magic word. Suddenly, he is a bigot periah. Nothing else about him matters. He is heard saying a word one time, and he is less of a human being.
Wanda says that the magic word reminds her “no matter the content of my character, I am considered less than a person.” This is what happens when you label a person a racist. That person is the other. You are no longer worthy of your humanity. This label can be applied for the flimsiest of reasons. Often, the person applying the label is just as bigoted.
RISK prides itself on being uncensored. This is one issue that challenges this boast. If a story involves racial conflict, the default is to believe the POC. If a white person falls out of line, then they are deemed a racist. There are no other circumstances considered. They are to be treated as less than human. This orthodoxy must not be challenged. If you challenge this taboo, then you too are considered less than human. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. Here is part two.
Another Story About Race was the story of a facebook conversation. It got ugly after the story was published. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Kevin Allison Luther, the hundreds of thousands who died in the Civil War knew the full weight and meaning of that word. The millions who fought through the Civil Rights movement in the mid-century knew the full weight and meaning of that word. I’m not sure precisely which year Wanda’s story is set, but Rodney King, Amadou Diallo, the Central Park Five… these were stories in the news in all of our lifetimes. Does “country boy” mean “imbecile”? My father is from Meridian, Mississippi. His parents, my grandparents, were people of very modest means and did not go to the best schools. Other Allisons, cousins of my grandfather, were from the Bayou country in Louisiana. Everyone in my family has always known the full weight and meaning of that word. Because we’re Americans. Rich, poor, educated, uneducated, city person, country person… we all know that word and we know it deep down in our souls.
To pretend that calling someone out for engaging in racism is as dehumanizing as racism itself is a fantasy. It ignores all of history and the societal power dynamics we’re still swimming in. And to pretend that RISK! engages in censorship because we don’t present the “other side of the story” is also some sort of mind game. If this guy “Nathan” wanted to come on the show and could speak about these same events with the level of self-awareness and emotional intelligence we look for in the stories we present on the show, he’d be more than welcome to. We see you. We hear you. And what you’re selling, we ain’t buying.
Luther Mckinnon “To pretend that calling someone out for engaging in racism is as dehumanizing as racism itself is a fantasy.” “to pretend that RISK! engages in censorship because we don’t present the “other side of the story” I have said neither of those things. I am concerned about the dehumanizing effect of all labels, both politically correct and incorrect.
Not everyone is as excited about the magic word as you are. POC use it all the time. We still don’t know what Laurel said to Nathan, to goad him into saying something he would regret. Maybe an 18 year old, put under enough pressure, gave in and said the magic word. We have not heard that part of the story, and apparently never will. I am not selling anything. I am trying to explain why I feel the way I do. You are entitled to your opinion.
SugaBusshh Smith Hey RISK!; we all know what Luther is about now. The man is an unapologetic racist. Do you really wish to give the man even more of a platform? I’m not about eliminating free speech, but I don’t believe hate speech like what Luther propagates needs any more of a platform then the presidency.I do wish someone would choose to hit the off button on this guy because his agenda is more than obvious. He is not a casual listener of the show wishing to take part in meaningful discussion. He wishes to spill vile and venom and spread his racist ideology on your group. It’s your choice of course to let him continue this nonsense, but for the mental well being of the rest of us; i truly hope you don’t. (SugaBusshh Smith passed away in July, 2020. Rest in peace.)
It is odd to be called “unapologetic racist” after this thread. At no time did I say anything derogatory about people of color. I said two things: I asked for details about the Nathan-Laurel conversation. I said that labeling people, as racist, was dehumanizing. People feel self righteous about abusing their neighbor over racial values. If someone does not like your racial values, they feel virtuous in attacking you. If you criticize the white savior, you are opening yourself up to abuse.
Have you ever heard that racism is institutional? That you cannot be racist if you don’t have power? This discussion is not about economic opportunity, access to education or housing, or police brutality. This thread is about an 18 year old kid, who said a bad word. When I ask, 17 years later, if maybe he was goaded into saying this bad word, I am labeled a racist. Maybe if I quit asking for details about this incident, I will quit being called a racist. I somehow doubt it.
Have you ever heard someone say “If you don’t like being called a racist, quit being one.”? Don’t believe it. This incident took place 17 years ago. We know nothing of the way Nathan has lived his life. And yet, because he said one word, 17 years ago, he is considered a bigot. Nobody gives a damn what he thinks. Nathan is less than human, because he said one word, during a heated argument.
The psychology of anti racism is twisted. It is similar to the way homophobia works. It is well known that many homophobes are secretly gay, and not happy about it. To take attention away from their own unresolved issues, the lash out at others who they perceive to be faggots. It is an ugly situation, and yet many homophobes feel virtuous in their hatred.
Many people who call others racist are worried about their own racial values. They are afraid that they might be racist. To assure themselves that they are not racist, they lash out at others that they perceive as being racist. The standards of what is considered racist get lower everyday.
On a more personal level, this has been a tough conversation. It is one thing when someone you have never met, who you don’t care about, calls you a racist online. Kevin Allison is someone who produces a remarkable show, RISK. I have enjoyed many episodes online, and had the privilege of attending a live show last fall. I have, until now, had a great deal of respect for Kevin. It is very discouraging to see him participate in an internet dogpile. I will probably continue to listen to RISK, but I will always know about this incident. This is a double repost. Part two is now available.
Flannery O’Connor
With one day before it was due, PG finished reading Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor , by Brad Gooch. The author is a professor of English at William Patterson University in New Jersey. He spares no citations. You can see where he gets his information. This is a repost.
Chamblee54 has written before about Miss O’Connor , and repeated the post a year later. There is a radio broadcast of a Flannery O’Connor lecture. (The Georgia accent of Miss O’Connor is much commented on in the book. To PG, it is just another lady speaking.)
Mary Flannery O’Connor was born March 25, 1925 in Savannah GA. The local legend is that she was conceived in the shadow of St. John the Baptist Cathedral, a massive facility on Lafayette Square. Her family did leave nearby, and her first school was just a few steps away. This is also a metaphor for the role of the Catholic Church in her life. Mary Flannery was intensely Catholic, and immersed in the scholarship of the church. This learning was a large part of her life. How she got from daily mass, to writing stories about Southern Grotesque, is one mystery at the heart of Flannery O’Connor.
Ed O’Connor doted on his daughter, but had to take a job in Atlanta to earn a living. His wife Regina and daughter Mary Flannery moved with him, to a house behind Christ The King Cathedral. Mr. O’Connor’s health was already fading, and Mother and Daughter moved in with family in Milledgeville. Ed O’Connor died, of Lupus Erythematosus, on February 1, 1941.
Mary Flannery went to college in Milledgeville, and on to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. She dealt with cold weather, went to Mass every day, and wrote. She was invited to live at an artists colony called Yaddo, in upstate New York. She lived for a while with Robert and Sally Fitzgerald in Connecticut, all while working on her first novel, “Wise Blood”. In 1950, she was going home to Milledgeville for Christmas, and had been feeling poorly. She went to the hometown doctor, who thought at first that the problem was rheumatoid arthritis. The illness of Flannery O’Connor was Lupus Erythematosus.
Miss O’Connor spent much of that winter in hospitals, until drugs were found that could help. She moved, with her mother, to a family farm outside Milledgeville, which she renamed Andalusia. She entered a phase of her life, with the Lupus in relative remission, and the drugs firing her creative fires, where she wrote the short stories that made her famous.
Another thing happened when she was recuperating. Flannery was reading the Florida “Market Bulletin”, and saw an ad for “peafowl”, at sixty five dollars a pair. She ordered a pair, and they soon arrived via Railway Express. This was the start of the peacocks at Andalusia, a part of the legend.
During this period of farm life and writing, Flannery had several friends and correspondents. There was the “Bible Salesmen”, Erik Langkjaer, who was probably the closest thing Flannery had to a boyfriend. Another was Betty Hester, who exchanged hundreds of letters with Miss O’Connor. This took place under the stern eye of Regina O’Connor, the no nonsense mother-caregiver of Flannery. (Mr. Gooch says that Betty Hester committed suicide in 1998. That would be consistent with PG stumbling onto an estate sale of Miss Hester in that time frame.)
The book of short stories came out, and Flannery O’Connor became famous. She was also dependent on crutches, and living with a stern mother. There were lectures out of town, and a few diverse personalities who became her friends. She went to Mass every day, and collected books by Catholic scholars. Flannery was excited by the changes in the church started by Pope John XXIII, and in some ways could be considered a liberal. (She supported Civil Rights, in severe contrast to her mother.)
In 1958, Flannery O’Connor went to Europe, including a trip to the Springs at Lourdes. Her cousin Katie Semmes (the daughter of Captain John Flannery, CSA) pushed Flannery hard to go to the springs, to see if it would help the Lupus. Flannery was reluctant…” I am one of those people who could die for his religion sooner than take a bath for it“. When the day for the visit came, Flannery took a token dip in the waters. Her condition did improve, briefly. (It is worth speculating here about the nature of Flannery’s belief, which was apparently more intellectual than emotional. Could it be that, if she was more persuaded by the mystical, emotional side of the church, and taken the healing waters more seriously, that she might have been cured?)
At some point in this story, her second novel came out, and the illness blossomed. Much of 1964 was spent in hospitals, and she got worse and worse. On August 3, 1964, Mary Flannery O’Connor died.
PG remembers the first time the name Flannery O’Connor sank in. He was visiting some friends, in a little house across from the federal prison.
Rick(?) was the buddy of a character known as Harry Bowers. PG was never sure what Harry’s real name was. One night, Rick was talking about Southern Gothic writers, and he said that Flannery O’Connor was just plain weird. ”Who else would have a bible salesman show up at a farm, take the girl up into a hayloft, unscrew her wooden leg and leave her there? Weird.”
Flannery O’Connor was recently the subject of a biography written by Brad Gooch. The book is getting a bit of publicity. Apparently, the Milledgeville resident was a piece of work.
PG read some reviews of this biography, and found a collection of short stories at the library. The book included ” Good Country People”, the tale about the bible salesman. Apparently, this story was inspired by a real life incident. (Miss O’Connor had lupus the last fifteen years of her life. She used crutches.) And yes, it is weird. Not like hollywood , but in the way of rural Georgia.
Some of the reviews try to deal with her attitudes about Black people. On a certain level, she is a racist. She uses the n word freely, and her black characters are not inspiring people. The thing is, the white characters are hardly any better, and in some cases much worse. In one story, “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” a black lady is the hero.
The stories are well crafted, with vivid descriptions of people and places. The reader floats along with the flow of the story, until he realizes that Grandma has made a mistake on a road trip. The house she got her son to look for is in Tennessee, not Georgia. She makes him drive the family car into a ditch. Some drifting killers come by. Grandma asks one if he prays, while his partner is shooting her grandchildren. Weird.
In another story, a drifter happens upon a pair of women in the country. The daughter is thirty years old, is deaf, and has never spoken a word. The drifter teaches her to say bird and sugarpie. The mother gives him fifteen dollars for a honeymoon, if he will marry her. He takes the fifteen dollars and leaves her asleep in a roadside diner.
There was a yard sale one Saturday afternoon. It was in a house off Lavista Road, between Briarcliff and Cheshire Bridge. The house had apparently not been painted in the last forty years. Thousands and thousands of paperback books were on the shelves. The lady taking the money said that the lady who lived there was the friend, and correspondent of, the “Milledgeville writer” Flannery O’Connor. This is apparently Betty Hester, who is mentioned in many of the biography reviews.
PG told the estate sale lady that she should be careful how she said that. There used to be a large mental hospital in Milledgeville, and the name is synonymous in Georgia with mental illness. The estate sale lady had never heard that.
UPDATE: PG sometimes reads poems at an open mic event. His stage name is Manly Pointer. This is the bible salesman in “Good Country People.” This is a repost. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.” It was written like James Joyce. An earlier edition of this post had comments.
Fr. J. December 10, 2009 at 3:00 pm I am glad you take an interest in Flannery, but to say baldly that she is a racist is to very much misunderstand her. For another view on Flannery and race, you might want to read her short story, “Everything that Rises Must Converge.”
chamblee54 December 10, 2009 at 3:17 pm “On a certain level, she is a racist.” That is not the same as “baldly” labeling her a racist. (And I have a full head of hair, thank you). As a native Georgian, I am aware of the many layers of nuance in race relations. I feel that the paragraph on race in the above feature is accurate.
David And Elton
On page 327 of David Bowie: A Life, the Live Aid show goes down. “There wasn’t much love lost between David and Elton–perhaps they’d fallen out at some point …” This is a repost.
Elton John says he fell out with David Bowie over ‘token queen’ remark “David and I were not the best of friends towards the end. We started out being really good friends. We used to hang out together with Marc Bolan, going to gay clubs, but I think we just drifted apart…. He once called me “rock’n’roll’s token queen” in an interview with Rolling Stone, which I thought was a bit snooty. He wasn’t my cup of tea. No; I wasn’t his cup of tea”.
1975 was a different time. David Bowie was moving out of Ziggy Stardust, and became the Thin White Duke. At some point he starting doing lots of cocaine. On page 196 of DB:AL, Jayne County has stories. “It was pretty obvious the David was taking coke. He became very skeletal in his appearance and began rattling off speeches that sounded meaningless to the rest of us–strange things about witchcraft, demons, and sexual prostitution in ancient times … weird things that made everyone nervous. He began to get paranoid and accusing people of ripping him off and stealing his drugs…. He had to have cartilage removed from one part of his body and put in his nose because the coke had eaten his nose cartilage away.”
While David was popular in 1975, and had a certain aesthetic aroma, Elton John was a phenomenon. Everything Elton touched went to Number One. Elton was one of the most popular solo acts the market ever sold. Maybe David was jealous of Elton’s success.
By all accounts, Elton did his share of “hooverizing.” In 1975, Elton was officially in the closet, although a lot of people knew otherwise. In one impossible to confirm story, a friend of PG was working in an Atlanta club called Encore, later known as Backstreet. One busy night, he was in a hurry to get somewhere, and bumped into someone. The person he knocked over was Elton John.
The infamous Rolling Stone interview was part of the damage. “Rock & roll has been really bringing me down lately. It’s in great danger of becoming an immobile, sterile fascist that constantly spews its propaganda on every arm of the media. …. I mean, disco music is great. I used disco to get my first Number One single [“Fame”] but it’s an escapist’s way out. It’s musical soma. Rock & roll too — it will occupy and destroy you that way. It lets in lower elements and shadows that I don’t think are necessary. Rock has always been the devil’s music. You can’t convince me that it isn’t.”
Cameron Crowe How about specifics? Is Mick Jagger evil? David Bowie “Mick himself? Oh Lord no. He’s not unlike Elton John, who represents the token queen — like Liberace used to. No, I don’t think Mick is evil at all. He represents the sort of harmless, bourgeois kind of evil that one can accept with a shrug…. Actually, I wonder … I think I might have been a bloody good Hitler. I’d be an excellent dictator. Very eccentric and quite mad.”
Playboy Magazine gave David another chance to talk about Hitler. “I’d love to enter politics. I will one day. I’d adore to be Prime Minister. And, yes, I believe very strongly in fascism.” “Rock stars are fascists, too. Adolf Hitler was one of the first rock stars.” “#54: PLAYBOY: How so?” BOWIE: “Think about it. Look at some of his films and see how he moved. I think he was quite as good as Jagger. It’s astounding. And, boy, when he hit that stage, he worked an audience. Good God! He was no politician. He was a media artist himself. He used politics and theatrics and created this thing that governed and controlled the show for those 12 years. The world will never see his like.”
#77: PLAYBOY: “Last question. Do you believe and stand by everything you’ve said?” BOWIE: “Everything but the inflammatory remarks.” We don’t know whether a jab at Elton was inflammatory. “I consider myself responsible for a whole new school of pretensions–they know who they are. Don’t you, Elton? Just kidding. No, I’m not.”
Seven daily grams of coke (DB:AL, p.223) did not kill David Bowie. He soon moved on to make The Man Who Fell to Earth. People magazine helped out with the publicity. “No role could have suited David Bowie better in his first major movie than that of an inscrutable interplanetary traveler outfitted with human skin, sex organs, Ronald Reagan hair and humanoid pupils to slip in over his horizontal, mismatched feline slits.” Forty years before Donald Trump made the tangerine toupee cool, Ronald Reagan was prematurely orange. Pictures for this deplorable dive into hissyfit history are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Two Thirds Of A Pun
Why did the cow cross the road ?The chicken was on vacation.
Knock knock. who’s there? boo. boo who?. Don’t cry it’s only a joke…
It’s six of one, half a dozen of the other.
A man walks up to a horse and says, “Why the long face?”
Two pretzels were walking down the street. one was a salted.
“He who laughs last thinks slowest.”
“Raise your hand if you’re here.”
Two nuns walk into a bar; the third one ducks.
Q: What did the radio say when it was dropped? A: “Ow. That hertz.”
What did the ranch say to the refrigerator door? “Close the door, I’m dressing”
Why don’t blind people skydive? It scares the heck out of their dogs…
What did the fish say when it ran into a wall? dam.
“I see.” said the blind man as he peed into the wind… “It’s all coming back to me now.”
What’s the last thing to go through a bug’s mind when it hits the windshield? Its butt.
You can tuna guitar, but you can’t tuna fish.
What do a duck and a bicycle have in common? They both have wheels… except the duck.
What’s brown and sounds like a bell? DUNGGGGG.
What’s brown and sticky? A stick
When people ask the mortician what he does for a living, he says he is a “boxer”.
What did the shy pebble say?… I wish I was a little boulder! .
What do you call an arrogant criminal falling out of a tower? Condescending.
Two guys walk into a bar… you would think the second guy woulda ducked.
A woman walks into a bar holding a duck. Bartender says, “What’s with the pig?”
Woman says, “It’s a duck.” Bartender says, “I was talking to the duck.”
Why do flamingos always lift one leg when they’re standing?
Cause if they lifted both, they’d fall over!
Q: How many Surrealists does it take to change a lightbulb? A: To get to the other side.
Did you get a haircut? Actually, I got them all cut.
One mushroom said to another mushroom, “Hey – you’re one Fungi!”
What do you call an arrogant criminal falling out of a tower? Condescending.
A dyslexic man walked into a bra …
Q: What do you call a midget, psychic, prison escapee? A: A small medium at-large.
A mule walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Hey, buddy, why the long face?”
“Because my dad is a jackass.”
I have one about the roof but its over your head.
Shall I tell you the one about the skunk? Never mind, it stinks!
There’s nothing like a good joke… and that was nothing like a good joke.
A rabbi, nun, lawyer, mime, and horse all walk into a bar.
The bartender says, “What is this, some kind of joke?”
When’s the best time to eat reindeer meat? …. When you’re hungry.
These stories are borrowed from 22 words. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Aaron Long
Shootings at 3 Georgia spas leave 8 dead; Man in custody blames ‘addiction to sex’ Most of you are familiar with the basics. Aaron Long is a super Baptist 21 y.o. He felt that his sexual urges were a problem. Mr. Long got kicked out of his parents house, and went to a gun store. He bought a 9mm handgun, and went to a massage parlor on Highway 92. Four people were killed: two Asian women, a white woman, and a white man. This is a repost.
Mr. Long went to Piedmont Road in Atlanta, just up the hill from the scene of the I85 fire. Soon, four Asian women died, in the two massage parlors where they worked. Mr. Long took off down I75. His parents called police, to tell them about a tracking device on his vehicle. The authorities caught him in Crisp County. “Yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did.”
Since six of the eight victims were Asian women, the crime was immediately assumed to be a racism motivated hate crime. Mr. Long was a twice baptized super Christian, who had severe sexual anxiety issues. The massage parlors are widely assumed to be whorehouses. To the facebook mob, this is not as important as the nationality of his victims.
Mr. Long spent a few months in Maverick Recovery, a residential, 12 step based treatment facility in Roswell GA. Mr. Long was treated for “sex addiction.” One can only imagine the things his counselors told him, to go along with the teachings of his family and church.
Did Mr. Long have same sex attractions that troubled him? Why was he unable to find a romantic partner, or even a friend with benefits? Did he have some physical limitations? Or, did he feel anger at himself for having these urges, and at those who provided an outlet? These are very powerful emotions. Mr. Long would not be the first man to kill because of sexual anxiety.
This is coming at a time of increased attacks on Asians, particularly in California and New York. Most of the reports do not specify the race of the attackers. In at least three videotaped attacks (one, two, three) the perps were black.
One high profile case is the attack on 84 y.o. Vicha Ratanapkadee, by 19 y.o. Antoine Watson. The video of the incident has been widely seen. A curious thread on twitter turned up.
@DionLimTV “WARNING: this video is hard to watch. Another shocking attack in Oakland’s Chinatown. 8th and Harrison Streets. Outside the Asian Resource Center. 20+ robbery/assault incidents in the neighborhood according to the Chinatown Chamber president.” @danieldaekim “The skyrocketing number of hate crimes against Asian Americans continues to grow, despite our repeated pleas for help. The crimes ignored and even excused. Remember Vincent Chin. #EnoughisEnough. @danielwuyanzu & I are offering a $25,000 reward.”
@but_im_kim_tran“Listen, if you don’t understand why it’s problematic to offer 25k for information about a Black man in Oakland, I need you to stay off all the goddamned panels.” @but_im_kim_tran “This is the moment we need to ask ourselves, to what end? If it was for an accountability process, okay, but I highly doubt that. Lastly, this looks a lot like a bounty on a Black person funded by Asian American celebrities. I have major, major doubts.” Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
UPDATE – Aaron Long pled guilty to the Cherokee County charges on August 27, 2021. His sentence was Life w/o Parole. Mr. Long is awaiting trial for the Atlanta shootings. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis intends to seek the death penalty. … There is an unconfirmed rumor that Mr. Long’s family spent over $50,000 to send him to a residential rehab facility for sex addiction.
Only A Part, Not The Whole
It was a turning point. I had pictures of fire hydrants, taken around my neighborhood. I was going to use them as the backgrounds for a graphic poem. A series of tests images was produced, while listening to Bret Easton Ellis and Matthew Specktor. I would work on the test images until after the show, and decide then which formula to use.
A problem arose when the time came. I had five basic styles, and all were good. Oblique Strategies might have the answer. The OS is “Only a part, not the whole.” This told me to go with the black and white fire hydrants. An important part of the pictures is color. After choosing this option, the rest of the project went quickly. The only thing missing is background entertainment.
Dan Carlin has a new episode of hardcore history. I now have five hours of entertainment. At two minutes in, I see a quote that I want to save. “history is present politics projected on to the past.”
Ask people to work against their better judgement. It is now friday. I am 9146 seconds into the HH show, Human Resources. It is about the atlantic slave trade, that produced the African-American population we have today. It is not easy to listen to. This slave trade featured cruelty on a scale that cannot be comprehended. To many, better judgement means to consume another unit of entertainment. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
BVD
Spencer Tracy’s second rule for acting is to not trip over the props. This might be a problem for Jon Hamm. In a bit of slow news day genius, his show leaked the information that the actor has been requested to wear underwear on the set. A rep for Mr. Hamm said: “It is ridiculous and not really funny at all. I’d appreciate you taking the high road and not resorting to something childish like this that’s been blogged about 1,000 times.”
This was an issue when Tallulah Bankhead was making “Lifeboat”. Other performers complained about the thespian not wearing panties. Director Alfred Hitchcock wondered if this was a matter for wardrobe, or a matter for hairdressing.
This concern about foundation garments, conveniently arising during the pre-easter shopping season, made PG wonder when men started to wear drawers. Could this be the result of manufacturers inventing demand for a product? Wikipedia says the loincloth is thousands of years old. A footnote, about the invention of the jockstrap, led to an English article, A brief history of pants: Why men’s smalls have always been a subject of concern.
“In 1935, the first Jockey briefs went on sale in Chicago. Designed by an “apparel engineer” called Arthur Kneibler (working at the time for Coopers Inc), the arrival of the first underpants denuded of any legs and featuring a Y-shaped opening has been compared with the 1913 invention of the bra, or the 1959 debut of tights. In three months, 30,000 were sold. Coopers, now known as Jockey International, sent its “Mascul-line” plane to make special deliveries of “masculine support” briefs to retailers across the United States. When the Jockeys arrived in Britain in 1938, they sold at the rate of 3,000 per week.”
One popular brand of underwear is the BVD. This was originally made by Bradley, Voorhees & Day, hence the name. They are not named for Bovine Viral Diarrhea. This is a repost, with pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Such A Society
The writing workshop announcement appeared before the event. I went to the signup, and was checked in at 7:27. Tonight’s prompt is to write a “golden shovel.” The gs poem is going to be 25 lines long. Every word in the original piece will appear at the end of a line. The seminal poem is by Dr. Doris Derby. … Pale green husks, Of corn grow, Tall and proud, As the young kernels, Of each one, Emerge from darkness, With bright faces, Bathed in Sunlight. … I finish the first draft at 7:55. I will now edit, until the workshop says to stop.
Seeking the beauty beyond the Pale, blue shimmering waves of green, another shucker looking for husks, recovering from the harvest Of, telepathic aromatic corn, after the earth is done with grow, yesterday’s yellow Tall, and wide and frangrant and, retro rainbow standing proud, wearing polyester of the nines As, whimsical overtures of the, quasi legal sticky ripe young, wallowing in the southern kernels, escaping from the yankee sludge Of, teach one reach one each, five four three two one, fighting and kicking to Emerge, out of the twilight from, the placebo darkness, driving out the donald With, fibonaccian synchronistic bright, well scrubbed faces, dark golden moonlight Bathed, over toes and behind ears in, radiant convulsive Sunlight, just, a suggestion she tells me now.
The day started with breakfast, and medications. I looked on Twitter and I saw this: @robstiles1 “All tyrannies rule through fraud and force. Once the fraud is exposed they must then rely solely on force.” – George Orwell” There are a lot of flaky Orwell quotes. The Orwell wikiquote does have a similar quote, and a source. I did a search of the TLDR document, and found the quote that uses “fraud.”
“Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable. … The mere prevalence of certain ideas can spread a kind of poison that makes one subject after another impossible for literary purposes. Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy … good writing stops. …”
The second quotable is more relevant today. “The mere prevalence of certain ideas can spread a kind of poison that makes one subject after another impossible for literary purposes. Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy … good writing stops.” The free flow of information, and entertainment, is currently under fire from many sources. The government, working in tandem with big data, has one agenda. Social Justice Jihad has a powerful ideology, upon which one trespasses at one’s own peril. With all these regulators of information, it is a miracle we hear anything other than football scores.
A poem was well on its way to completion. The soundtrack was a new episode of the Bret Easton Ellis podcast. The poem is a series of nine images, with text added at the bottom. When you finish a picture, the first reaction is to go look at facebook and twitter.
Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, and find line 4. The book is the Holy Bible, with Jean D. Mckinnon in gold letters. Page 18/line 4: Genesis 18:15 “Then Sarah denied, saying, I laughed not; for she was afraid. And he said, Nay; but thou didst laugh.” Line 4 is underlined.
18:15 is just another verse from Genesis, and did not do much for me. What made me cry was the presentation page. “Presented to Jean, by Luke, 7-23-56” This was in my father’s challenging handwriting, on my mother’s birthday. 7-23-56 was a few weeks after my brother was born.
The guest on the BEE podcast was another writer, Jarett Kobek. The desperate state of modern publishing was lamented. The chat picked up when Mr. Kobek asked BEE if he heard about the amateur American Psycho porn. The video features two women having fun, while reading, out loud, a murder scene from American Psycho. It is moments like this, when you want to see the BEE reaction, that podcasting shows a weakness. Bret recovered fast enough, and said “I hope they were hot.” Soon another image was finished, and it was back to twitter.
Kyle Rittenhouse Reveals He Intends On Suing LeBron James. Announcing intention to sue online might not be a good legal strategy. Of course, we are talking deep pockets, and a deep throat. After the televised testimony of Mr. Rittenhouse, this tweet appeared: @KingJames What tears????? I didn’t see one. Man knock it off! That boy ate some lemon heads before walking into court. 🤣🤣
Mr. James likes to express his opinions. “James also made waves back in April for suggesting … that an officer was racially motivated for fatally shooting 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant, who was, at the time, attempting to stab another girl. … I am so desperate for more ACCOUNTABILITY.” You should be careful what you wish for. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
The Cynic’s Word Book J – L
What follows are selections from The Devil’s Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce. TDD began as a newspaper column, and was later published as The Cynic’s Word Book. TDD is in the public domain. TDD is a dictionary, going from A to Z. Today’s selection covers J to L. More selections are available. (A – D E – G H – I) Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
JEALOUS Unduly concerned about preservation of what can be lost only if not worth keeping.
JUSTICE A commodity which is a more or less adulterated condition the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, taxes and personal service.
KEEP He willed away his whole estate, And then in death he fell asleep,
Murmuring:”Well, at any rate, My name unblemished I shall keep.”
But when upon the tomb ’twas wrought Whose was it?—for the dead keep naught.
KILL To create a vacancy without nominating a successor.
KILT A costume sometimes worn by Scotchmen in America and Americans in Scotland.
KING A male person commonly known in America as a “crowned head,”
although he never wears a crown and has usually no head to speak of.
KLEPTOMANIAC A rich thief.
KORAN A book Mohammedans foolishly believe to have been written by divine inspiration,
but which Christians know to be a wicked imposture, contradictory to the Holy Scriptures.
LABOR One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
LANGUAGE The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another’s treasure.
LAP One of the most important organs of the female system—an admirable provision of nature for the repose of infancy, but chiefly useful in rural festivities to support plates of cold chicken and heads of adult males. The male of our species has a rudimentary lap, imperfectly developed and in no way contributing to the animal’s substantial welfare.
LAW Once Law was sitting on the bench, And Mercy knelt a-weeping.
“Clear out!” he cried, “disordered wench! Nor come before me creeping.
Upon your knees if you appear, ‘Tis plain your have no standing here.”
Then Justice came.His Honor cried: “Your status?—devil seize you!”
“Amica curiae,” she replied— “Friend of the court, so please you.”
“Begone!” he shouted—”there’s the door— I never saw your face before!”
LAWFUL Compatible with the will of a judge having jurisdiction.
LAWYER One skilled in circumvention of the law.
LAZINESS Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.
LEAD A heavy blue-gray metal much used in giving stability to light lovers—particularly to those who love not wisely but other men’s wives. Lead is also of great service as a counterpoise to an argument of such weight that it turns the scale of debate the wrong way. An fact in the chemistry of international controversy is that at the point of contact of two patriotisms lead is precipitated in great quantities.
LECTURER One with hand in your pocket, tongue in your ear and faith in your patience.
LIAR A lawyer with a roving commission.
LIBERTY One of Imagination’s most precious possessions.
The rising People, hot and out of breath,
Roared around the palace:”Liberty or death!”
“If death will do,” the King said, “let me reign;
You’ll have, I’m sure, no reason to complain.”
LIFE “Life’s not worth living, and that’s the truth,” Carelessly caroled the golden youth.
In manhood still he maintained that view And held it more strongly the older he grew.
When kicked by a jackass at eighty-three, “Go fetch me a surgeon at once!” cried he.
LITIGANT A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.
LITIGATION A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
LOGIC The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. The basic of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion—thus:
Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man.
Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds; therefore—
Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.
This may be called the syllogism arithmetical, in which, by combining logic and mathematics, we obtain a double certainty and are twice blessed.
LOGOMACHY ‘Tis said by divers of scholar-men, Poor Salmasius died of Milton’s pen.
Alas! we cannot know if this is true, For reading Milton’s wit we perish too.
LOQUACITY Disorder which renders sufferer unable to curb his tongue when you wish to talk.
LORD In American society, an English tourist above the state of a costermonger, as, lord ‘Aberdasher, Lord Hartisan and so forth. The traveling Briton of lesser degree is addressed as “Sir,” as, Sir ‘Arry Donkiboi, or ‘Amstead ‘Eath. The word “Lord” is sometimes used, also, as a title of the Supreme Being; but this is thought to be rather flattery than true reverence.
LOSS Here Huntington’s ashes long have lain, Whose loss is our eternal gain,
For while he exercised all his powers, Whatever he gained, the loss was ours.
Dog Walking On Highway 400
I avoid going to Roswell, because it usually means getting on the dreaded Highway 400. Because of the reconstruction chaos at 285, I decided to get on the highway at Abernathy.
The soundtrack was the “punch and judy” podcast, blocked and reported. Today’s story was a subreddit called Auntie work r/antiwork. The mod, Doreen Ford, was interviewed by Fox news, with disastrous results. The mod is a dog-walker by trade, who someday wants to be a philosophy professor. Ms. Ford is a non-passing trans woman.
I get on 400 at Abernathy Road. There is a construction festival going on. You go through the intersection, and drive onto this two mile long driveway. One lane, one way, no other cars. I was convinced I was about to come to a dead end.
Meanwhile, the B&R story has gone from comedy to psycho-farce. The mod has offended people, who returned the favor. “Years before /r/antiwork rose to prominence, Doreen Ford, facing accusations of serial rape from a prior sexual partner, confessed to inebriated sex that the partner later stated was non-consensual. Soon after, Ford confessed to masturbating while lying next to “a person with whom [she] had an ongoing sexual relationship and living arrangement,” against the individual’s will, placing their hand over her boxers nonconsensually while in bed, and shutting off alarms the individual had set to avoid falling asleep together.”
The cis/trans nature of the players was not specified. “placing their hand over her boxers nonconsensually.” Were the pronouns they/their, or was the author just playing it safe? This was all very disorienting to absorb while driving down a two mile long driveway, on a freeway in progress. Maybe this was all a simulation. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Fifteen Minutes
Andy Warhol is quoted as saying that “in the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.” This has become a popular saying. If a celebrity is getting tiresome, people will wonder when their fifteen minutes will be up. After hearing about fifteen minutes his entire life, PG began to wonder if Drella really said that. If you can’t be cynical about Andy Warhol… This is a repost.
Wikipedia is a good place to start. “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes” … appeared in the program for a 1968 exhibition of his work at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden. Photographer Nat Finkelstein claimed credit for the expression, stating that he was photographing Warhol in 1966 for a proposed book. A crowd gathered trying to get into the pictures and Warhol supposedly remarked that everyone wants to be famous, to which Finkelstein replied, “Yeah, for about fifteen minutes, Andy.” Nat Finkelstein was a sketchy character, in the Warhol tradition. His version is suspect. The Swedish museum part is real.
“Andy Warhol’s first European museum solo show took place at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm from February through March 1968. Pontus Hultén curated the exhibition together with Olle Granath. The exhibition came with a catalogue that was, like the show, named ‘Andy Warhol’. Kasper König, who worked for the Moderna Museet as an intern of sorts in New York, developed a basic concept for the book. … After Warhol had given his approval to this first proposal, König proceeded to create a dummy. … When König returned his dummy to the Factory, Warhol scrutinized it carefully but made only a small number of changes. Contrary to what Warhol wanted to be popular belief, those who produced input at the Factory were carefully monitored. … The final edits on the dummy were made in Stockholm by Olle Granath. He compiled a small selection of Warhol quotes and aphorisms from a stack of books and clippings collected by Hultén and placed them in the book as an introduction before the image sections.”
“Sometime in the autumn of 1967, Pontus Hultén called and asked me if I (Olle Granath) could help him and the Moderna Museet to organize an Andy Warhol exhibition that was due to open in February…. An important part of the exhibition was the production of a book. It was not supposed to be an analytical catalog of Warhol’s work, but a book that conveyed his aesthetics without heavy texts. … One day, Pontus brought me a box, almost the size of a Brillo box, and told me that it contained everything written by and about Andy Warhol (today the equivalent would probably be two truck loads). My job was to read it all and present a proposal for a manuscript with Swedish translations. After a couple of nights of reading and taking notes I delivered a script to Pontus and awaited his reaction with great anticipation. ‘Excellent,’ Pontus said when he called me, ‘but there is a quotation missing.’ ‘Which one?’ I said. ‘In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes,’ Pontus replied. ‘If it is in the material I would have spotted it,’ I told him. The line went quiet for a moment, and then I heard Pontus say, ‘If he didn’t say it, he could very well have said it. Let’s put it in.’ So we did, and thus Warhol’s perhaps most famous quotation became a fact.”
“The exhibition in Stockholm attracted a relatively small number of visitors, due to the extremely cold winter, but also to the fact that leftist radicalization increasingly drove the Museets public to mistrust anything American or consumerist. There was no space yet for a more complex reading of Warhol’s relation to consumption. The book, however, became very popular: its enormous edition allowed it to be distributed in nightclubs and record stores, not only museums. A timeless update on the latest from New York, it first became a cult object, then a collectors item.”
Did Andy say that? Probably, but not definitely. Andy was shot by Valerie Jean Solanas on June 3, 1968, a few months after the show in Sweden. Andy survived, and had fifteen more minutes. Pictures today are from Pictures are from The Library of Congress. The 1927 pictures were taken at “California Beauty Week, Mark Hopkins Hotel, July 28 to Aug. 2, auspices of San Francisco Chronicle.”
Chamblee54 
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