Is Prayer That Great?
Prayer is not always a good idea.
That is up there with G-d and Motherhood, but somebody has to say it.
Many of my objections are in the phrase, “Prayer is talking to G-d, and Meditation is Listening.”. In our culture, we love to talk, and don’t have time to listen. Talking is yang, active, power. Listening is ying, receptive, passive, and indicates respect for the person you are paying attention to. This is difficult for many.
No one ever says “I am going to meditate for you”. Although maybe you should.
Prayer is used as an aggressive weapon. “I am going to pray for you” is the condescending conclusion of many a religious argument. I have had it shouted at me like a curse.
There is the matter of prayer as entertainment. While this may be cool to those who are on the program, it can be repulsive to others. Once I volunteered to lead the prayer before a dinner. The story is repeated below.
Now, prayer is not a completely bad thing. One of the cherished memories of my father is the brief, commonsense blessings he would give before meals. In the context of a church service, prayer plays a useful function. Some famous prayers are beautiful poetry. In Islam, the daily prayers are an important part of the observance. Who am I to say it is wrong? (A note to the Muslim haters, and opportunistic republicans …We are all G-d’s children.)
When someone is in a bad way, people want to think they can help. Arguably it does not hurt to pray for someone, but it is nothing to boast about.
My problem is when people are proud of their prayers. There are few as prideful as a “humble servant”. While it may mean something to you, not everyone is impressed. And in a religion obsessed with converting others, you should care what man thinks.
So much for world affairs. It is time to tell a story, with no moral and no redeeming social value.
In 1980, I was staying at a place called the Sea Haven Hostel, affectionately known as Sleaze Haven. This was in Seattle WA, as far as you can get from Atlanta, and still be in the lower 48. I was working through Manpower, and staying in a semi private room for $68 a month.
There was a Christian group that met in the basement on Sunday Night. Now, as some of you may know, I am a recovering baptist, who hasn’t been to church since 1971. However, the lure of a free meal was hard to resist, so I went to a few meetings.
One night, after doing quality control work on the local beer supply, I cheerfully joined in the discussion. This was the night when I realized that the Bible is not the Word of G-d. This concept has been very handy in dealing with the ravings of our Jesus-mad culture.
They seemed to like me, though, and welcomed me back. Maybe it was the southern accent.
One Sunday, after the dinner was finished , it was time to have a prayer to begin the meeting. I raised my hand. Now, Jesus Worshipers enjoy prayer as entertainment. When they bow their heads, you see them stretching and deep breathing, in anticipation of a good, lengthy, message to G-d.
My message was a bit of a disappointment. Instead of a long winded lecture about Jesus and the magic book, I said what was on my mind. “Lord, thank you for letting us be here today.” What else do you need to say? This double repost has pictures from The Library of Congress.
I’m Here To Help
Two popular quotes have surprising back stories. One is by President Ronald W. Reagan: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” The other is from Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.: “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.”
@HayesBrown “the funny thing about this quote: Reagan said it during a press conference where he was calling for more federal funding to help out struggling farmers” @HayesBrown “Reagan giving that quote was literally him going “okay, yeah, i’m for smaller govt, but until we get my ideas passed, we are gonna spend SO MUCH MONEY helping out farmers” and now it gets trotted out… to argue against federal aid, period”
“Some sectors of our farm economy are hurting … Our ultimate goal, of course, is economic independence for agriculture and, through steps like the tax-reform bill, we seek to return farming to real farmers. But until we make that transition, the government must act compassionately and responsibly. … In order to see farmers through these tough times, our administration has committed record amounts of assistance, spending more in this year alone than any previous administration spent during its entire tenure. … The message in all this is very simple: America’s farmers should know that our commitment to helping them is unshakable. As long as I’m in Washington, their concerns are going to be heard and acted upon.”
The rest of the prepared statement features a fun quote. “One other brief point: tomorrow, the Senate will cast a crucial vote. The question is that of assistance to the freedom fighters, who are trying to bring democracy to Nicaragua where a communist regime, a client state of the Soviet Union, has taken over. The question before the Senate is: Will it vote for democracy in Central America and the security of our own borders, or will it vote to passively sit by while the Soviets make permanent their military beachhead on the mainland of North America?”
The press conference took place August 12, 1986, in Chicago IL. On November 3, 1986, “the Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa … reported that the United States had been secretly selling arms to Iran … in a bid to secure the release of seven American hostages being held by pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon.” On November 25, 1986, “Attorney General Edwin Meese revealed that, on White House orders, the proceeds of secret arms sales to Iran were illegally diverted to fund the Contras — Nicaraguan rebels waging a guerrilla war to overthrow that country’s elected leftist regime.” The resulting Iran-Contra scandal dominated the Reagan administration for the next few months.
@ggreenwald The pro-censorship cliché “can’t yell fire in a crowded theater” comes from a now-discredited 1919 SupCt case upholding Woodrow Wilson prosecution of socialists under *The Espionage Act* for the “crime” of opposing a US role WW1. Why would you want to attach yourself to that? @ggreenwald The set of cases from which that cliché emerged is one of the most shameful in US Supreme Court history, designed to criminalize dissent. For that reason, it’s embarrassing but revealing when censors invoke it because that’s their real mentality.
SCHENCK v. UNITED STATES was the case. “During World War I, socialists Charles Schenck and Elizabeth Baer distributed leaflets declaring that the draft violated the Thirteenth Amendment prohibition against involuntary servitude. The leaflets urged the public to disobey the draft, but advised only peaceful action. Schenck was charged with conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act of 1917 by attempting to cause insubordination in the military and to obstruct recruitment. Schenck and Baer were convicted of violating this law and appealed …
The Court held that the Espionage Act did not violate the First Amendment and was an appropriate exercise of Congress’ wartime authority. Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes concluded that courts owed greater deference to the government during wartime, even when constitutional rights were at stake. … Holmes reasoned that the widespread dissemination of the leaflets was sufficiently likely to disrupt the conscription process. Famously, he compared the leaflets to falsely shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theatre, which is not permitted under the First Amendment.”
There were a couple of other cases. If you have a lot of free time, you can read about it here. Included is one charming quote: “Famed socialist Eugene V. Debs was sentenced to ten years in prison for a speech that Holmes summarized at length (are there any short socialist speeches?) in support of the basis for Debs’ conviction.”
Pictures, of soldiers in the War Between the States, are from The Library of Congress. On April 2, 2021, Radiolab presented What Up Holmes, about free speech opinions written by Justice Holmes. The show did not mention “falsely shouting fire in a theatre.” This is a repost.
There Is No I In Denial
There’s no I in denial. ~ What does a house wear? A dress.
What did the buffalo say to his son as he left for college? Bison.
I asked a Frenchman if he played video games. He said “wii”.
I ate a clock yesterday, it was so time consuming.
Why was Santa’s little helper feeling depressed? Because he has low Elf esteem
How many optometrists does it take to change a light bulb?… 1 or 2? 1… or 2?
Just read a few facts about frogs. They were ribbiting.
Want to hear a word I just made up? Plagiarism.
What did the hungry clock do? Went back four seconds!
Becoming a vegetarian is a huge missed steak.
Have you seen that new movie about trees in love? …Yeah, it’s pretty sappy…
I don’t like atoms, they’re liars. They make up everything.
I was thinking about moving to Moscow but there is no point Russian into things.
First rule of Thesaurus Club: You don’t talk, converse, discuss, speak, chat,
deliberate, confer, gab, gossip or natter about Thesaurus Club.
There is a new disease found in margarine… Apparently it spreading very easily.
People are making apocalypse jokes like there’s no tomorrow.
Need an ark to save two of every animal? I Noah guy.
What’s the advantage of living in Switzerland? Well, the flag is a big plus.
“I saw a documentary on how ships are kept together. Riveting!”
It’s so hard to think of another chemistry joke… All the good ones Argon.
Breaking news! Energizer Bunny arrested – charged with battery.
I’m off to Nairobi in the Summer. Kenya believe it?
A baker was caught bonking his bread loaves. They say he was inbread.
I enjoy using the comedy technique of self-deprecation – but I’m not very good at it.
This is a repost. Pictures are from “Special Collections, Georgia State University Library.”
I Used To Be Charming Part Four
What follows is the fourth installment of the chamblee54 deconstruction of I Used to Be Charming, by Eve Babitz. Pictures today are by “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.” Other features in this cycle are available. one two three five
Sober Virgins of the Eighties (Smart Fall 1988) was published in late 1988, at about the time I quit drinking. IUTBC is in chronological order. The pieces covered today are from Eve’s overboogie recovery days. Many are written for Esquire. “Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. We may earn a commission from these links.” Eve may be counterculture, but by 1990 she was writing for the emperors tailor.
By 1988, aids was hitting like a ton of bricks. While some still partied, many started to clean up their act. SVOTE is about this. “Of course, now that it’s the eighties, most desirable members of the opposite sex give rise to dark wanderings like “If they’re so cute, why aren’t they dead?”—which for me really put a damper on sex and made me actually take up chastity for almost two years. … The great thing about the eighties is that if you’re still alive, there’s hope. That, anyway, has changed.”
SVOTE was in the first edition of Smart, in the “Love and Science” column. “One smart reader is worth a thousand boneheads” HL Mencken “Terry McDonell, the now legendary magazine editor, was starting his own magazine, Smart, in 1989. When he said he wanted to evoke The Smart Set, the stylish, literary monthly edited by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan in the Roaring Twenties, I thought of Lucian Bernhard’s Bauer typeface from 1929, Lucian. That resulted in another early Font Bureau digitzation of a vintage foundry type, Belucian. At that point David Berlow was thinking of a adding a “Be-” to the names of all his revivals (cf. Belizio), but we talked him out of that later.”
Ronstadt For President (Smart May-June 1989) returns to Eve’s friendship with Linda Ronstadt. Eve is sometimes credited with designing the album ocver for “Heart Like a Wheel.” Other sources say that Eve was the photographer on the inner sleeve. Very little is said about Eve as a photographer. Mostly, artist Eve paints, and assembles collages.
RFP is about Linda’s struggles to make it as a singer. Her looks got in the way. “… men like Hugh Hefner would be propositioning her with “Let’s just shoot you with no clothes on, why don’t we?” and casting directors were trying to interest her in movies. “That’s not what I am, Eve,” she said, laughing and laughing. “Me with no clothes, imagine!” …
“I mean, Linda is just your normal good-time overeater type of person, whereas Jane Fonda, as she mentions in her book, was a bulimic—one of those sneaky people who eat and eat and then throw up. And bulimia is not what I want in a politician at all. I want things to stay down. And I want Linda to sing a slow, sexy double-entendre version of “You’re Just Too Marvelous” to Gorbachev.”
Rapture of the Shallows (Smart July-August 1989) was about Walter Hopps. He created an art gallery called Ferus, despite the NY notion that LA was a wasteland for art. Mr. Hopps was also Eve’s extramarital bf, and the motivation for the chess photograph with Marcel Duchamp.
“Ephemera mattered at Ferus. Founded by curator Walter Hopps and artist Ed Kienholz in March 1957, the “Ferus” honorific was designed to commemorate an unknown artist named James Farris who shot himself; the peculiar variant spelling of the gallery’s name got transposed, however, when Robert Alexander (a.k.a. “Baza”), the collage artist and poet who executed the gallery’s earliest typography, proposed “F-e-r-u-s” instead. Why? “Because it has more strength typographically,” Hopps remembers. Hopps’ response? “Let’s do it.” And thus, the gallery’s founding identity was composed with an ephemeral sensibility and by a typographic twist of fate.”
Eve: “I’m going to write a piece about John Goode and maybe Ed Ruscha and Laddie Dill and …” I told my friend Aaron, a New York collector who lives here but hates it. “Those phony-baloney bulshit artists … they all suck. They’re just for restaurant openings, tea at Trumps.”
In the Bret-Lili podcast, Trumps came up. It seems to have been quite the trendy place. In The Shards, Bret meets at Trumps with this semi-closeted producer, (and father of Bret’s gf.) He pretends to be interested in Bret’s script, but is really after Bret. If you like, you can buy a matchbook, and a small plate, from Trumps.
The Sexual Politics of Fashion (The Washington Post Book World July 30, 1989) is about books, (one two) that people wrote about fashion. Eve was not impressed with either. “But the Luscious photographs and illustrations are given a continuous cold shower by the prose: Every time you get a romance or fantasy going in your head … you are smacked into rectitude by phrases like “gender-specific” or just the very word “gender” itself which is enough to keep me from wanting to hear more, no matter how cute the people in the pictures are.” Eve had an eye, however badly focused, on the future. In 1989, gender meant boy and girl. Today, gender is the new civils rights movement, more third-railish than even race or football.
Gotta Dance (Playboy October 1989) was written for Playboy magazine. It’s mind blowing to think of Eve working in concert with Hugh Hefner. Apparently, when sex/drugs/rock/roll not longer did it, Eve started to dance.
“My only recommendation to a man who is even remotely thinking about ballroom dancing is to be careful. Unless you have a very large trust fund or a very strong character, don’t begin at Arthur Murray. Once they hook you, they have you for life. … “Me?” you say. “Hooked? On ballroom dancing? Come on!” … “I know. The only reason you’d take ballroom dancing at all would be as a joke. So that’s why I’m telling you: Don’t. Like a newborn duck, you’ll get imprinted on your teacher and your classmates, and then they’ll sign you up for lifetime lessons. Later, when you ask around, you’ll discover that you could get the same lessons for less from someone who used to teach at Arthur Murray and now gives lessons himself.”
I got a email before writing this. A young lady we knew, back in the day, passed away. For purposes of this story, we are going to call her Aspen. She drank the kool aid, and signed a mega-bucks contract with Fred Astaire dance studio. One time Aspen got me to go to a party, with “champagne ladies” trying to sell you dance lessons. I declined the kool aid.
The Soup Can as Big as the Ritz (Movieline November 1989) is about Andy Warhol. Walter Hopps brought the soup can paintings to California in 1962. Andy made it to the infamous Duchamp opening in 1963, which promted the photo of a naked Eve playing chess with Mr. Duchamp.
Walter Hopps: “… we may have also seen, in Warhol’s studio, work in progress that included one of his first Campbell’s Soup cans. … I said to Warhol, ‘Absolutely, I want to take some of this work for a show in Los Angeles.’ Warhol, who had never been to California, answered with some excitement, ‘Oh, that’s where Hollywood is!’ In the sea of magazines and fanzines scattered on the floor, so deep it was hard to walk around, were all those Photoplay and old-fashioned glamour magazines out of the Hollywood publicity mill. So a show in L.A. sounded great to Warhol. He agreed, and thus the multiple-image soup can show came to Ferus in 1962. Warhol missed that first exhibition of his Pop images, but he finally made it to California in September 1963 for the opening of the Marcel Duchamp retrospective at the Pasadena Art Museum and his own second Ferus show.”
Andy Warhol: “Marcel Duchamp was having a retrospective at the Pasadena Museum and we were invited to that opening … They served pink champagne at the party, which tasted so good that I made the mistake of drinking a lot of it, and on the way home we had to pull over to the side of the road so I could throw up on the flora and fauna. In California, in the cool night air, you even felt healthy when you puked – it was so different from New York.”
Eve gets talking about Edie Sedgwick here. “The next time I saw Edie she was sitting at the bar at Max’s Kansas City with Bob Neuwirth, the famous hippest coolest art type guy of his generation, and again she was crying this time into a gin and tonic. … Suddenly my ambition was to look gorgeous and miserable, but I’m always so thrilled to be anything and do anything in those days. … If you weren’t on speed you weren’t in New York City in the sixties. I was certainly on it. In fact, if you took the speed out of New York in the sixties, it would have been Des Moines. …”
“The world’s most fabulous people were dancing everywhere, and on stage was Nico, the girl lead singer of the Velvets looking down at the audience with eyes that’s all nothing but apolcalyptic collapse and the voice that did nothing but omit a bagpipe like drone.”
“On October 23, 1967, in New York, singer Nico sang with The Velvet Underground. … Nico’s delivery of her material was very flat, deadpan, and expressionless, and she played as though all of her songs were dirges. She seemed as though she was trying to resurrect the ennui and decadence of Weimar, pre-Hitler Germany. Her icy, Nordic image also added to the detachment of her delivery. … In between sets, Frank Zappa got up from his seat and walked up on the stage and sat behind the keyboard of Nico’s B-3 organ. He proceeded to place his hands indiscriminately on the keyboard in a total, atonal fashion and screamed at the top of his lungs, doing a caricature of Nico’s set, the one he had just seen. The words to his impromptu song were the names of vegetables like broccolli, cabbage, asparagus… This “song” kept going for about a minute or so and then suddenly stopped. He walked off the stage and the show moved on.”
Blame it on the VCRs (Smart June 1990) “In the meantime, the gay men and the feminists were in the background, girding their loins against the Farrah Fawcett spun-gold hair of the seventies, trying to ruin everything. And they succeeded. Yes, men were pigs, women were exploited—yet gay men were, well, out of the closet and staying out and up till three in the morning, having more fun than anyone else ever did in the history of mankind. They made straight people jealous.”
Jim Morrison is Dead and Living in Hollywood (Esquire March 1991) Part of the Eve Legend was that she was Jim Morrison’s girlfriend for a while. Nobody is sure how much of that is real. Eve doesn’t really seem to be too terribly impressed with Mr Morrison, who she calls the Bing Crosby from hell. Jimbo was basically a fat drunken asshole. Pamela, the heroin Juliet to Jimbo’s whiskey Romeo, does not seem to be a very nice person.
No matter how chummy Eve was to Jimbo, she did not design any of the Door’s album covers. Eve did do the cover for the Elektra reissue, The Best of Lord Buckley, who may have been the strangest neo-celebrity that ever lived.
I was a Naked Pawn for Art (Esquire September 1991) returns to the infamous picture of naked Eve playing chess with Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp. “The trouble was, I had been taking birth control pills for the first and only time in my life, and not only had I puffed up like a blimp but my breasts had swollen to look like two pink footballs. Plus they hurt. On the other hand it would be a great contrast — this large too-LA surfer girl with an extremely tiny old man in a French suit. Playing chess.”
On page 243, there is a typo. This is something that you see in hard copy. I treasure the moments when I catch a typo. and there he was it was just that they were changing suddenly the had eyes to see.
Life at Chateau Marmont (Esquire January 1992) Then she has a story about Chateau Marmont. of which many stories could be told and hopefully they spray Down the Walls of that hotel and they were doing a renovation of it. “In L.A., the impulse to tear down anything good but old and rebuild it crummy and different is so rampant that the only things anyone tries to restore are women’s faces.”
They Might be Giants Esquire May 1992 (Esquire May 1992) features a photo shoot of four hot, photogenic young actors. Thirty years later, none is a superstar. Being called the next James Dean is somewhat of a curse.
“James Dean was rock and roll before anyone knew it wasn’t a fad, and he was rock and roll before it was Disneyized and turned into role-model material. He was the role model for people who hated role models, and what we still want is more James Dean’s and no one will ever be James Dean enough.”
The trouble with James Byron Dean was that he lived the image, and it f****** killed him. When I was a kid, the one person that “they” held up as a bad example was Joe Namath. When you’re a kid growing up in Georgia, you need bad examples. Today, Broadway Joe is on cable tv, on commercials for medicare insurance. The kids he was a bad example to are buying medicare insurance.
Always Take Sides
“… always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.” This meme, illustrated by the gnomic face of Elie Wiesel, turns up on facebook a lot. (Elie Wiesel is pronounced like Elly Mae Clampett) Some find it inspiring. Others think it is simplistic and manipulative.
There are two questions. Did Mr. Wiesel say that? What was the context? The quote appears in the acceptance speech for the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize. The next sentence is “Sometimes we must interfere.” We immediately go from the absolute always, to the conditional sometimes. That is progress, even if it does not fit on a bumper sticker.
“Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet, Romania, in 1928. … In May 1944, Wiesel was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp along with his parents and his sisters. Wiesel and his father were slave laborers at Auschwitz. His father died in January 1945 during a forced march to another camp, Buchenwald, and his mother and younger sister were murdered as well. After the war, Wiesel moved to France, where he worked as a journalist.”
The Israel-Palestine problem was just as vexing in 1986 as today. Here is what Mr. Wiesel said in his speech. “More people are oppressed than free. And then, too, there are the Palestinians to whose plight I am sensitive but whose methods I deplore. Violence and terrorism are not the answer. Something must be done about their suffering, and soon. I trust Israel, for I have faith in the Jewish people. Let Israel be given a chance, let hatred and danger be removed from her horizons, and there will be peace in and around the Holy Land.”
Who is the oppressor in the Middle East, and who is the victim? Many sides can make a case for their cause. Who is the better at persuasion? Who is better at playing the shady game of influence, and money. Often, more noise encourages the tormentor. The answer to age old conflicts is seldom found in bumper stickers, or facebook memes.
“… to whose plight I am sensitive but whose methods I deplore.” “Always take sides” means that you pick one side in a conflict, and use the tools of rhetoric to promote that cause. It can be tough to tell the good guys from the bad guys. Human suffering is human suffering. Simplistic rhetoric is *never* the answer.
In 1986, the Iran-Iraq war was raging. Hundreds of thousands of men died. Many said the war was allowed to go on intentionally. Allegedly, if Iran and Iraq were not fighting each other, they would be fighting Israel. The United States was allied with Iraq, while making arms deals with Iran. Israeli dealers participated in the United States-Iran arms trading. The profits from those deals went to supply terrorists in Central America. “Sometimes we must interfere.”
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
Explaining Fake News
The display of a link on this page does not indicate approval of content.
Internet Crimes Unit Arrests Suspect for Encouraging Child Sex Abuse
The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art opens exhibit featuring Oklahoma expatriate artists
Madison Cawthorn Releases Video Explaining ‘Fake News’ Articles About Him
Recommended Revisions to Standards 501 and 503 for Council Approval for …
I’m longing to be the mother I never had May 06, 2022 Alysia Abbott
“he was an addict, so sex is sex” Jami Cassady, talking about her father Neal
Fact check: Clarence Darrow, not Mark Twain, said quote about enjoying some obituaries
Should We Keep Singing Hillsong? … allegations of scandal and abuse …
88 people arrested in illegal street racing sting in Gwinnett County
The Supreme Court: last line of defense for the ruling class by Stefanie Fisher
Sociology of Calamity Before Russia can speak out against atrocities in Ukraine …
If Roe V. Wade Draft Decision Holds, Stricter Abortion Laws in GA Could Prevail
@CountDankulaTV Of course all of this is just total assumption. I wasn’t there.
Azov Battalion founder Biletsky explained why Mariupol is so important for Russia
Sen. Ossoff Presses Biden Administration to Strengthen Border Security
U.S. intel helped Ukraine sink Russian flagship Moskva, officials say
The Reaction to the Harper’s Letter on Cancel Culture Proves Why It Was Necessary
Judge sets no bond for man accused of leaving infant daughter to die in hot car
Democratic megadonor Soros puts $1 million into Abrams’ campaign
Dark Money Group Brags About Writing GOP Voter Suppression Bills Across the Country
All The Times Folks Got Called Out For Their Bogus Posts
Politics of Overturning Roe Are Bad for Republicans polling is conclusive, overwhelming.
King Of The Cats: Lord Buckley Was a Cult Hero and Atomic Age High Priest
The Selfish Meme: The Theory of Everything that Nobody Believes
black sabbath video ~ starwood ~ vic romero ~ greene.house.gov ~ @repMTG
brookhaven bolt ~ neal cassady ~ @CawthornforNC ~ the tape ~ firemadison
cynthia plaster caster ~ @Cringetopia_ ~ pulchritude ~ paul ruscha ~ lip sync fail
tubby boots ~ louis daniel igo ~ john igo ~ apd ~ queerserial
mattachinepod ~ good at heart ~ starship ~ pfizer ~ cleveland criminals
nina turner ~ Mirandi ~ evangelical ~ draft opinion ~ road rage
ts madison ~ leary rfk ~ rfk lsd ~ lsd ~ tim leary
Excerpts from Hearings of the Subcommittee on the Executive Reorganization of the Senate Committee on Government Operations [concerning federal research and regulation of LSD-25] May 24, 1966 ~ @CountDankulaTV From my experience as a bouncer, given that the guys face is fine, but his arm is mangled leads me to believe that Chapelles security didn’t “fuck him up backstage” (maybe, but let me explain). But this was down to a standard under the shoulder restraining arm hold mostly used ~ @PamelaDesBarres displays a bit of rock memorabilia. “this right here is jimi hendrix isn’t that just beyond special he had some girth” ~ Madison Cawthorn Confirms Tape Showing Him Naked And Engaged In Physical Activity With Another Man Is Real ~ @libsoftiktok This is what pro-abortionists think of aborted babies. These are the same people furious at the thought of #RoeVWade being overturned. @LiveAction ~ Jack Groves 10-25-2014, Don Hutcheson 07-06-1980, John Igo 02-17-2018, Sue Kolakowski January 1994 ~ pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.” ~ selah
Jean D. McKinnon
The first picture in this episode is a family portrait of the Quin family in Washington Georgia. The nine surviving children of Hugh Pharr Quin are sitting for the camera. Mr. Quin had joined the Georgia State Troops of the Army of the Confederacy at the age of 16, and after the war went to Washington to live with his sister. Mr. Quin was in the church choir of the First Methodist Church when he met the organist, Betty Lou DuBose. They were married January 22, 1879.
The original name of Mrs. Quin was Louisa Toombs DuBose. She was the daughter of James Rembert DuBose. His brother in law was Robert Toombs, the Secretary of State of the Confederacy, and a man of whom many stories are told.
In this picture, Mrs. Quin is holding the hand of her second youngest daughter so she will not run away. This is Martha (Mattie) Vance Quin. She is my grandmother.
After the Great War, Mattie Quin was living in Memphis Tennessee, where she met Arthur Dunaway. Mr. Dunaway was a veteran of the war, and was from Paragould, Arkansas. On July 23, 1922 her first Daughter, Jean, was born. This is my mother.
Mr. Dunaway died in 1930, shortly after the birth of his son Arthur. There were hard times and upheaval after this, with the family settling in Atlanta. There her third child Helen Ann Moffat was born on December 12, 1933. This is my Aunt Helen and my mother’s best friend.
Jean lived for many years with her mother and sister at 939 Piedmont, among other locations. She joined the First Baptist Church and sang in the choir. She got a job with the C&S bank, and was working at the Tenth Street Branch when she met Luther McKinnon. He was a native of Rowland, North Carolina. They were married October 6, 1951.
They moved into the Skyland Apartments, which in those days was out in the country. Mom told a story about Dad taking her home from Choir practice, and going home on the two lane Buford Hiway. There was a man who went to the restaurants to get scraps to feed his pigs, and his truck was always in front of them. This was a serious matter in the summer without air conditioning.
Soon, they moved into a house, and Luther junior was born on May 6, 1954. This is me. Malcolm was born May 10, 1956, which did it for the children.
The fifties were spent on Wimberly Road, a street of always pregnant women just outside Brookhaven. It was a great place to be a little kid.
In 1960, we moved to Parkridge Drive, to the house where my brother and I stay today. The note payment was $88 a month. Ashford Park School is a short walk away…the lady who sold us the house said “you slap you kid on the fanny and he is at school”.
In 1962, our family followed the choir director from First Baptist to Briarcliff Baptist, which is where my parents remained.
In 1964, Mom went back to work. She ran the drive in window at Lenox Square for the Trust Company of Georgia until it was time to retire. She became a talk radio fan when RING radio started, and was a friend of her customer Ludlow Porch. She gave dog biscuits to customers with dogs.
During this era of change, Mom taught me that all people were good people, be they black or white. This was rare in the south. She later became disgusted with the War in Vietnam, and liked to quote a man she heard on the radio. “How will we get out of Vietnam?””By ship and by plane”.
Eventually, it was time to retire. Her and Dad did the requisite traveling, until Dad got sick and passed away February 7, 1992. Mom stuck around for a few more years, until her time came December 18, 1998. This is a repost.
May 6, 2022
May 6 is a day in spring, with 35% of the year gone by. It has it’s fair share of history, some of which did not turn out well. In 1861, the Confederate Congress declared war on the United States. In 1937, a German zeppelin named “Hindenburg” exploded while trying to land in New Jersey. In 1940, Bob Hope did his first show for the USO, somewhere in California.
Roger Bannister ran the first sub four minute mile, on May 6, 1954. The current record is 3:43.13 by Hicham El Guerrouj on July 7, 1999, with a party with Prince to celebrate. Since most track meets now use 1500 meters, the mile record is obsolete.
On this day, Georgia executed two notable prisoners. In 2003, Carl Isaacs was put to death. Mr. Isaacs was the ringleader in the 1973 Alday family killing, in Donalsonville GA. Five years later, in 2008, William Earl Lynd was poisoned by the state. This was the first condemned man to die after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that execution by poisoning was constitutional.
Taurus is the sign for those whose blood starts to pump May 6. Included are:
Maximilien Robespierre (1758) Sigmund Freud (1856) Rudolph Valentino (1895)
Orson Welles (1915) Willie Mays (1931) Rubin Carter (1937)
Bob Seger (1945) Tony Blair (1953) PG (1954) George Clooney(1961)
To make room for these folks, someone has to die. For May 6 this would mean:
Henry David Thoreau (1862) L. Frank Baum (1919) Marlene Dietrich (1992)
This repost, written like H.P. Lovecraft, has pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Facts
@Atheist_Bot “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. – Aldous Huxley.” I was stumbling through my morning, when I saw this. Other than reading The Doors of Perception many years ago, I don’t know Aldous Leonard Huxley. The quote is plausible.
Atheist Quote Bot 💉💉💉 is part of the problem. “@Atheist_Bot Challenging beliefs, while respecting the believer. It’s difficult sometimes. Numbered tweets are automatic, replies are from my programmer. I don’t feed trolls” A robot, in a server, dispensing commodity wisdom on schedule. This is what passes for learning in Post-Obama America.
The Huxley wikiquote shows 14 results for “facts.” The money quote appears to be legitimate. It is from a book, published in 1927, ”Proper Studies.” “The proper study of mankind is man” The text appears to be academic and difficult. This researcher will make no effort to identify the context.
Time Must Have a Stop (1944) has another ALH fact-quote. This one may be more true than the coffee mug. “Facts are ventriloquists’ dummies. Sitting on a wise man’s knee they may be made to utter words of wisdom; elsewhere, they say nothing, or talk nonsense, or indulge in sheer diabolism.”
Time Must Have a Stop “Sebastian Barnack, a handsome English schoolboy, goes to Italy for the summer, and there his real education begins. His teachers are two quite different men: Bruno Rontini, the saintly bookseller, who teaches him about things spiritual; and Uncle Eustace, who introduces him to life’s profane pleasures.”
”The novel that Aldous Huxley himself thought was his most successful at “fusing idea with story,” Time Must Have A Stop is part of Huxley’s lifelong attempt to explore the dilemmas of twentieth-century man and to create characters who, though ill-equipped to solve the dilemmas, all go stumbling on in their painfully serious comedies (in this novel we have the dead atheist who returns in a seance to reveal what he has learned after death but is stuck with a second-rate medium who garbles his messages).” Is TMHAS about facts, or about dummies?
Bruno Rontini is the character who said the comment about facts. We do not know the context. Is this how Huxley feels, or is a foolish character speaking nonsense? The only way to know is to read Time Must Have a Stop. This sort of scholarship is too much to expect of chamblee54, or Atheist Quote Bot. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.”
I Used To Be Charming Part Three
This is the latest edition of the chamblee54 book report on I Used to Be Charming, by Eve Babitz. This feature is a bit different. Instead of focusing on IUTBC, we will look at some of the key players in the story. A catalyst for today is a 2019 episode of the Bret Easton Ellis Podcast. The guest is Lili Anolik, promoting a book, Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A.
One important name is Earl McGrath. Bret had never heard of him. A friend of many influential people, McGrath had many careers. Apparently, his main skill was a talent for being fabulous. As David Bowie said, “It’s not really work, it’s just the power to charm.”
“McGrath’s story began in Superior WI. The son of an itinerant short-order cook, it wasn’t long before the teenage Earl began to display a wanderlust of his own, dropping out of high school and leaving home, ‘hanging out with Aldous Huxley in Los Angeles and going to see Henry Miller in Big Sur’, according to Vanity Fair. In the late 1950s he served with the Merchant Marine in Africa and the Middle East, and in Italy, in 1958, he met the woman he would later marry, Camilla Pecci-Blunt — a glamorous countess, and a descendant of Pope Leo XIII … McGrath was working for 20th Century Fox in the early 1960s when he met perhaps the other most influential person in his life, the legendary co-founder and president of Atlantic Records, Ahmet Ertegun.”
“Maybe that’s why Eve fell in “friend love” with a gay man, the cattiest breed of all, if we want to be cuntily honest as well. Specifically, Earl McGrath … As any gay man not fully out would be, McGrath was married to an Italian countess. He never had an official title, per se, though, in death, he would be credited as a “writer, music executive, art collector, and gallery owner.” In short, a jack-of-no-trades. Other than knowing how to be at the right place at the right time, and network with the right people. This is how he came into Eve’s orbit in the late 60s. The two grew Siamese twin close until McGrath’s venom reared its ugly head with the line … “Is that the blue you’re using?” As Anolik interprets the phrase, it’s an easy way to make an artist (of any kind) doubt themselves and their vision.”
Eve met Earl McGrath when Eve, and possibly McGrath, was dating Peter Pilafian, the electric violin player with The Mamas and The Papas. Peter Pilafian is one of those players that is unknown today. He does not have a wikipedia page, and we do not know if he is alive. Apparently, Eve would spend the night with Pilafian, and McGrath would show up at 7am the next day.
Somehow, Eve and McGrath connected. McGrath makes a spectacle of himself in Slow Days Fast Company. McGrath also gets credit/blame for the line you always seem to hear about Eve. “In every young man’s life, there is an Eve Babitz. It is usually Eve Babitz.”
lilianolikwriter has a tasteful picture, with this caption: “Eve Babitz with frenemy, Earl McGrath, at the opening of the Black Rabbit restaurant on Melrose, at the tail-end of the 60s. Earl is in the cowboy mustache, Eve in the glasses, which she was normally too vain to wear in photographs. The brunette with the pixie hair is Diane Gardiner, Doors publicist and long-time squeeze of Chuck Berry. (Says Eve, “Diane was a mean monster but everything she said was funny so I forgave her.”) … The woman in the floppy hat and sunglasses, says Eve, doesn’t ring a bell, not even a faint one.”
Allegedly, the Eve-McGrath falling out came when Eve was dating Harrison Ford, who also caught McGrath’s eye. A posthumous article about McGrath mentions “His great friend Harrison Ford — three of whose children were among McGrath’s two-dozen godchildren — saluted him as, ‘The last of a breed, one of the last great gentlemen and bohemians.’”
Lili Anolik tells an amusing story about Mr. Ford. “I remember one of our first conversations Eve told me about Harrison Ford dealing dope out of a bass fiddle at Barney’s Beanery”…. Michelle Phillips talks about seeing Star Wars when it first came out. When Harrison Ford appeared on the screen, Michelle said “whats he doing there, that’s my dope dealer.” A less reliable source chimes in: “Harrison Ford was her weed dealer, and, briefly, her lover: “The thing about Harrison was, Harrison could fuck. Nine people a day. It’s a talent, loving nine different people in one day. Warren [Beatty] could only do six.”
Part of the Eve legend is the photograph of Eve playing chess with Marcel Duchamp. “What happened was, my boyfriend at the time, Walter Hopps [director of the Pasadena Art Museum, 31, married], had scored this great coup. He’d convinced Duchamp, who’d given up art for chess back in the 1920s, to do a retrospective with him. He threw a party for the private opening, and L.A. had never seen anything like it. Everyone, everyone, was there—Duchamp, naturally, and Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg and Dennis Hopper and, oh, just everyone. I wasn’t, though, because I wasn’t invited. I guess Walter was afraid I’d make a scene in front of his wife. I was mad, which is why when Julian asked me at the public opening to take off my clothes and pose for him, I said sure. I mean, my breasts were normally something to behold, but birth control had made them even bigger, so they were really something to behold at that particular moment. …”
The photographer, Julian Wasser, was dating Eve’s sister Mirandi. Wasser had an exhibit in 2019, so apparently he was alive 3 years ago. Wasser took his most famous picture a few years later.“One August day in 1969, I was listening to a police radio when I heard all this strange talk about something going on in this residential area next to Beverly Hills. It was the kind of neighbourhood where people would … put pillows over their heads if murders were going on.”
“That was how I first heard that Roman Polanski’s wife, Sharon Tate, had been killed, along with four others. When I went up there shortly afterwards for Life magazine, Roman asked me to take Polaroid shots of the scene as well – and give them to a psychic who could study them and find out who the killers were. You can see my Polaroid on the chair beside Roman. …”
“When I was 14, I used to steal my dad’s car and drive all over Washington listening to police radio. There was segregation then and all the best murders, robberies and bloody events were in the black part of town. I’d photograph them and give the shots to the Washington Post. I was so naïve. Of course they wouldn’t run them – it was black people. … It’s a rough world now. I think Manson started it and 9/11 finished it. Reality has fallen on us like a ton of bricks.”
Ed Ruscha and brother Paul Ruscha were longtime *friends* of Eve. After Eve died, they had a paywall protected chat. Ed Ruscha: “Oh, it was the early ’60s, but she was a great part of my growing up. I know I was with her when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. I was in bed with Eve and we were watching this on live TV, a little black-and-white set. … she lived in this house behind her parents’ house. She kept a sloppy quarters because she had a lot of cats who had their way. Her parents lived up at the front house on Bronson near Franklin. And I knew her parents well. Mae was a beautiful, sweet Texan who was an artist, and she drew pictures of the gingerbread houses on Bunker Hill. And Sol was the musician, violinist. They were very sweet people.”
Paul Ruscha: “I came to L.A. in 1973. We met at Jack’s Catch All; it was this great thrift store. I was a veteran thrift shopper and so was Danna [Ed Ruscha’s wife]. She introduced me to Eve, who said, “I’d like to have you over for dinner.” Danna said, “I think she likes you.” Eve knew that Ed and I were friends with [fashion model] Leon Bing. So she called Leon, who told Eve, “Well, no matter what you make for him, be sure that it’s loaded with cilantro because he’s just crazy about cilantro.” Eve put it in the salad and the soup, and I hate cilantro and I couldn’t eat it. All I could do is laugh. … If I spent the night with her, she’d wake up before I did and then want me to leave. So she’d throw coffee into a pot of boiling water and bang on it to make the grounds go down and to wake me up and say, “OK, here’s your coffee. Now get out of here.” And I’d laugh and then she’d say, “I think I’ve got something I’d like you to read.” Then I’d read whatever she’d written the day before. I gave her my critique, and if she liked it, she let me stay, and if she didn’t, she’d throw me out. … She just couldn’t go anywhere without ruining something. She’d knock something over or break something, and the same thing at her house. I remember a couple of fur coats I gave her, and one of them she threw over this little space heater that she had. It caught on fire and it burned up her garage.”
Since this is Hollywood, a certain amount of skepticism is appropriate. Lili says in the BEE appearance “the modern way of being objective is a kind of hyper objectivity, it’s a reconstituted objectivity, is objectivity that acknowledges the inevitability of subjectivity.” Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.” More episodes of this series are available. one two four five
Methods Of Capital Punishment
This chamblee54 feature discusses various methods used to put condemned criminals to death. This report gets a bit gross at times. If you want to skip over the text, you will be excused. Chamblee54 has written about lethal injection problems one, two, three, four, five, six, seven times. In 2007, the New York Times published The Needle and the Damage Done, which discusses these issues in detail. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
One of the odder parts of tonight’s scheduled execution is the request of J.W. Ledford to be shot, instead of poisoned. Al Jazeera is one of many to report the story. JW Ledford Jr lawyers want firing squad, not injection “J.W. Ledford, 45, suffers from chronic nerve pain that has been treated with increasing doses of the prescription drug gabapentin for more than a decade, his lawyers said in a federal case filed on Thursday. They cited experts who said long-term exposure to gabapentin alters brain chemistry, making pentobarbital unreliable to render him unconscious and devoid of sensation or feeling. “Accordingly, there is a substantial risk that Mr Ledford will be aware and in agony as the pentobarbital attacks his respiratory system, depriving his brain, heart, and lungs of oxygen as he drowns in his own saliva,” the legal case said. That would violate the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment in the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution, Ledford’s lawyers argued.”
Is the firing squad more humane than lethal injection? One is certainly messier than the other. The appearance to the observer is important. People want executions to be neat and tidy, with the executee in minimal pain. This is one reason for chemical agent number two in the three drug lethal cocktail. A paralytic is used, so that people won’t see the soon-to-be-deceased thrashing about as the heart is chemically shut down.
The firing squad is fast. Ammunition does not need to be purchased from a compounding pharmacy. Any pain will be over very quickly. In his book “In his book ‘Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments’, Alex Boese states that in the 1938 execution of John Deering, the prison physician monitoring the inmate’s heartbeat reported that the time between the shots and complete cessation of rhythm was a mere 15 seconds.” The idea is for the marksmen to shoot the prisoner in the heart.
Hanging is another time honored method of execution. If done properly, it is very efficient. Of course this is the government at work, so things do not always go smoothly. Hanging has unfortunate visuals, and is associated with lynching. It is not well thought of today.
“The modern method of judicial hanging is called the long drop. … In the long drop, those planning the execution calculate the drop distance required to break the subject’s neck based on his or her weight, height and build. They typically aim to get the body moving quickly enough after the trap door opens to produce between 1,000 and 1,250 foot-pounds of torque on the neck when the noose jerks tight. This distance can be anywhere from 5 to 9 feet. With the knot of the noose placed at the left side of the subject’s neck, under the jaw, the jolt to the neck at the end of the drop is enough to break or dislocate a neck bone called the axis, which in turn should sever the spinal cord.”
“Unfortunately, history shows that hanging is relatively easy to botch, particularly if the executioners make a mistake in their calculations. A rope that is too long can result in decapitation, whilst one that is too short can cut off breathing and blood flow through the carotid arteries in the neck. In these circumstances loss of consciousness is not always as quick, and the condemned can end up struggling for nearly 30 minutes.”
Hanging is still used in Iran. In Iran, prisoners are usually pulled up by their necks with the use of cranes. “It takes them many minutes to die, it’s a way of torturing them along with the execution,” Amiry-Moghaddam said. “Two years ago, a man had survived 14 minutes of hanging before dying. So hanging is not intended as the standard way of momentary pain. It’s not that they just die, it is a slow strangulation.” Many death penalty advocates approve of the added suffering.
The twentieth century gave us two modern methods of offing the condemned, the gas chamber, and the electric chair. “Lethal gas takes too long; the 1992 lethal-gas execution of Donald Harding in Arizona was so long — 11 minutes — and so grotesque that the attorney general threw up and the warden threatened to quit if he were required to execute someone by gas again. The electric chair often results in horrible odors and burns; in Florida, in the 1990s, at least two inmates heads’ caught fire, and the chair routinely left the body so thoroughly cooked that officials had to let the corpse cool before it could be removed.”
“First used to execute axe-murderer William Kemmler in 1890, a high voltage alternating current is applied to the body of the criminal, typically starting at 2,000 volts and 5 amps with the voltage varying periodically. This causes instant contraction and rigidity of the muscles, leading to a cessation of heart and lung activity.
The practice figured prominently in a dispute between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse regarding the relative merits of direct vs. alternating current. Edison sought to prove that the latter was too dangerous and so decided to equip the new Electric Chair at America’s ‘Sing Sing’ prison with one of the his competitor’s AC generators. Unfortunately the inexperienced executioners drastically underestimated the amount of electricity required to effectively kill Kemmler. At first they only succeeded in burning him for 17 seconds, at the end of which he was still twitching. It took a second jolt for a further 70 seconds before he was finally pronounced dead. Westinghouse was later heard to comment, “they could have done better with an axe”.”
The Guillotine was popular in France for many years. At first glance, it would seem to be efficient, though messy. Closer examination reveals some problems. “Often the blade didn’t do its job and the victim was only injured. He would then either bleed to death or the blade would have to be cranked up and dropped again. … But even when the blade was quick and efficient, many witnesses said the victim’s head didn’t die instantly. Reports of grimacing, facial twitches, blinking eyes, mouth movements, and even speech from the severed head are numerous.” (A commenter to the linked post disputes this. Rumors that Robespierre was executed face up are probably false.)
“In 1905, Dr. Beaurieux reported on his close examination of Henri Languille’s guillotine execution. While he watched, the blade did its thing and Languille’s head dropped into the basket. Beaurieux had luck on his side when the head landed on its severed neck in an upright position. This allowed him to observe Languille’s face without having to touch the head or set it up right.
“The eyelids and lips of the guillotined man worked in irregularly rhythmic contractions for about five or six seconds” “I called in a strong, sharp voice: “Languille!” I saw the eyelids slowly lift up, without any spasmodic contractions……but with an even movement, quite distinct and normal, such as happens in everyday life, with people awakened or torn from their thoughts.” “Next Languille’s eyes very definitely fixed themselves on mine and the pupils focused themselves.”
Chamblee54 
leave a comment