Caitlyn
When you type “Caitlyn Jenner is” into google, the two options are Bruce Jenner and Who. PG was looking for something else. On this weeks Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, B.E.E. – Sean Baker – 8/10/15, trans issues are discussed. BEE discussed an online post, Caitlyn Jenner Is A Dumb Cunt. Technically, stupid prick is probably more anatomically accurate.
PG has tried to ignore Caitlyn Jenner. The step grandmother of Kayne’s baby is everywhere. People are praising her for courage, saying she is pretty, or denouncing her as a terrible person. What PG heard from Sick Of Your Crap was not praise.
“So now that we all seem to finally be winding down from the exhausting, weeks-long Insincerity Parade, celebrating Caitlyn Jenner’s “coming out”, while tripping over each other in a rush to prove just how uber-modern, accepting, and progressive we all are towards a meticulously media-packaged, celebrity transsexual, I say we all get back to addressing the fact that Caitlyn Jenner is a dumb cunt. … You really want to know who Caitlyn Jenner is? Caitlyn Jenner is that driver that aggressively tailgates you on the freeway when you’re in the right-hand lane, but still chooses not to pass. … You know, that driver that you’d like to pull out of their fucking car and beat with a tire iron? Right. Caitlyn Jenner is THAT asshole. … Sure, trans people have it rough, and by conservative numbers, they’re the victims of at least 150-200 violent crimes a year – … Last year there were over 30,000 deaths via auto accidents. Auto accidents caused by assholes like Caitlyn Jenner. Maybe she should be speaking out about THAT. “
The February car crash has not gotten as much publicity as the sex change. PG just now heard about it. A surveillance video does not really show much. Mr. Jenner denies texting while driving. This type of aggressive driving is traditionally blamed on having too much testosterone in the system.
There are only a few comments at SOYC. Heidi Honeycutt You are disgusting! I seriously hope you know how degrading this is to all trans people who have fought hard for what they have. I hope you enjoy diminishing Caitlyn’s accomplishments. Mitchell Boone Just wait until she runs over your loved ones. Lou Rusconi You are a HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE, VILE man!! (way to start the blog off with a BANG) JLH I am a transgender woman (fully transitioned in my early 20’s) and I completely agree with this post 100%. In fact let me go further in saying that Ms. Jenner is one of the worst possible public faces of our community that I can imagine. In addition to the fact that she is 65 years old (why did you wait until 65 to transition, Caitlyn?!?) and I don’t think anyone should transition that late for a host of reasons I won’t go into now, she is a fame-obsessed narcissist and an abject idiot. I have been beyond annoyed with the fact that she KILLED SOMEONE and she seems utterly unconcerned about it. The media also is utterly unconcerned about it for obvious reasons. I knew the moment she started the process that she was becoming a woman despite the lies that everyone told about it at the time, and I also sighed a deep sigh because I knew our community was in for a long and bumpy ride. I only hope that she will fade into obscurity sooner rather than later. This is not at all the person who I want to be the face of our community.
The SOYC piece is tasteful compared to Disgusted By Amusement. ” JESUS, look at those horrible fake tits cemented to that chest. And let’s not even speculate on what’s down below. A dick and shriveled scrotum with no balls? No dick? A tattoo of Kris Jenner’s face for a cunt? JENNER, YOU ARE A GRUESOME, LOATHESOME, DETESTABLE EXAMPLE OF BARELY SOLID PUTRESENCE. If you GO AWAY I wish you luck. If you stay a cinder in the public eye, I wish you a fatal car accident from a driver just as self-involved and twisted as yourself.”
There will be just one more, before we go back to the pictures. A house in Massachusetts has a sign. “Caitlyn Jenner Donates Testicles To Cowardly Obama,” Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Slaughterhouse-Five Part Seven
This is part seven of the chamblee54 circumnavigational retrospective of Kurt Vonnegut’s anti glacier classic, Slaughterhouse-Five. Parts one, two, three, four, five, and six have already seen the light of day. This installment will cover chapters nine and ten, and will probably be the end. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. The man in the last three pictures was Frank Gordy, the owner of The Varsity.
At the start of chapter nine, Billy Pilgrim has been in a plane crash. His wife, Valencia, is trying to get to the hospital. While en route, there is an accident. The Cadillac Valencia is driving is rear ended by a Mercedes. The trunk of the Caddy looked like ” the mouth of a village idiot who was explaining that he didn’t know anything about anything”.
The Caddy had bumper stickers, given to BP by someone in the John Birch Society. One said “Reagan for President.” In 1968, Ronnie had been Governor of California for less than two years. The idea of the former actor as POTUS was a conservative fantasy. Did KV have the imagination to see the future? In 12 years, Ronald Reagan would run for POTUS, against the former Governor of Georgia. Ronnie would win, and be re-elected in 1984. In 2015, Nancy’s husband would be revered as Saint Ronnie by the Republican party. The future is a strange place, if you haven’t time traveled through it.
Back in 1968, Valencia Pilgrim was in a hurry to get to the hospital. She continued to drive the Cadillac, even though the exhaust system was wasted. Valencia made it to the hospital, and collapsed in the parking lot. She died of carbon monoxide poisoning. This is the first time KV says “So it goes” in chapter nine. SIG081. It is not the last.
BP is, physically, in a hospital bed while all this is going on. His roommate is a dreadful fellow named Bertram Copeland Rumfoord. Dr. Rumfoord is a history professor, who is fascinated by war. Any actual combat service is not mentioned. Dr. Rumfoord does not suffer from false modesty. Nor is he impressed by BP … “I could carve a better man out of a banana.”
Dr. Rumfoord is researching a history of World War II. He has his wife read papers to him, while BP passively listens behind a white screen. The foreword to a book about the Dresden raid is read. The author laments the lives lost that night, but reminds us that two wrongs make a right, and that Germany killed a lot of the good guys. SIG082.
Another author compared the deaths in Dresden to Hiroshima and Toyko. SIG083. Comparing casualty statistics of the combatants in a war can give you a headache. The USA lost 415,000, mostly soldiers, which is nothing to be happy about. However, the Amerikan losses were a rounding error when considering the 25,000,000 men, women, and children believed lost by the Soviet Union.
Meanwhile, Barbara, the daughter of BP, is visiting her father in the hospital. She is not in good shape, which can be expected under the circumstances. Some doctor gave her medication, and she has a glassy eyed look. SIG084. Soon Robert Pilgrim, without the nacreous pink guitar, is back from Vietnam. This scene was in the movie. Robert Pilgrim says he is sorry about what happened in the graveyard. That incident was mentioned in the book one time.
Dr. Rumfoord is going to include Dresden in his book. The raid was little known in Amerika. According to Dr. Rumfoord, the military did not want to upset the bleeding hearts. At this point, BP speaks up. “I was there.” Dr. Rumfoord does not believe BP, and feels euthanasia is appropriate.
At some point in the proceedings BP is back in Dresden, on the morning after. He finds a horse cart, and then goes for a ride. Soon, an elderly German couple sees BP. The elderly Germans talk to BP in tones that might have been spoken to Jesus, as he was taken down from the cross. SIG085. The elderly Germans made BP aware of the wretched condition of the horses. When BP sees this, he cries for the only time during the war.
In a few days, BP is on his way back to Amerika. He is on board a freighter, Lucretia A. Mott. Miss Mott was a famous suffragette, who was dead. SIG086. Before long, BP is home from the hospital. We don’t know what vehicle took him there. BP sneaks out of the house, and goes to New York City. BP wants to find a tv show, that will have him as a guest. BP wants to share what he learned on Tralfamadore. When he starts to look at New York television, all the shows were about silliness and murder. SIG087. BP was used to having only 3 channels, and was perplexed by the abundance of choice in New York. He might have missed the good stuff.
BP goes out for a walk. There is a sign, with the news displayed in a streaming marquee. SIG088. There is a dirty book store, with Kilgore Trout novels in the window. This is another theme of KV…Kilgore Trout novels in front of dirty bookstores, to lend redeeming social value to the smut.
One of these novels is about a planet called Zircon-212. This was a few years before Frank Zappa recorded the dental floss anthem “Montana,” with the invitation to purchase zircon encrusted tweezers. This is possibly connected to a house PG once stayed in. The house was on Zircon Place, in a neighborhood was called Diamond Heights.
Another novel by Mr. Trout returned to the Jesus theme. It involves a 12 year old boy, who is being taught carpentry by his dad. Roman soldiers come in. They want a cross built, for an emergency crucifixion the next day. The carpenter is happy to get the work. SIG089. Another Jesus book involves a time traveler named Lance Corwin. He takes a stethoscope back to Cavalry, to see if Jesus was really dead on that not so good Friday. The heart was still, and Jesus was certifiably deceased. SIG090. One fact in this story corresponds to the information on the Shroud of Turin. Jesus was 5″3″ tall. The Shroud also suggests that Jesus did not have a navel.
Soon, the porn clerks wonder why BP is reading the redeeming social value books. They steer him to a magazine, with the lurid cover “Whatever happened to Montana Wildhack?” BP knows, but also knows enough to keep this knowledge to himself. The magazine says Montana Wildhack was killed by Lenny Bruce. He caught her stepping out one too many times. SIG091.
BP soon tires of the dirty bookstore. He finds a radio show that will have him as a guest. The question of the evening is whether, or not, the novel is dead. SIG092. BP tries to say that the novel was never alive on Tralfamadore, and is ushered off the show. To confirm this, BP time travels back to Tralfamadore. Montana Wildhack who is nursing their baby, is tired of BP.
That is the end of chapter nine. In the first part of chapter ten, KV mentions Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Vietnam, KV Sr., and Charles Darwin. SIG093. SIG094. SIG095. SIG096. SIG097. Another Kilgore Trout story comes up. The aliens ask the earth people about golf.
The story ends where it started, with KV going to German with war buddy Bernard O’Hare. Mr. O’Hare was not mentioned in the rest of the book. There is a passage from a book, that KV shows to the reader. So many babies are born every day. SIG098. So many people die every day. SIG099. The population of the world will be 7 billion in 2000. This speculation was before the internet. The current story estimates the number of earthlings at 7,359,240,848.
The story is almost over. BP makes one final trip to Dresden. It is after the raid, and BP is working with a Maori POW, helping to clean up. They find a hole, with a lot of dead Germans. The dead Germans stink. The Maori POW dies of the dry heaves. Edgar Derby steals something from the ruins, and is shot by a German. SIG100. SIG101. SIG102. SIG103. There are supposed to be 106 SIG in this text, which means that PG missed 3. Any reader worried about this can get over it.
Sanctuary
These people are the closest to the war than anyone else, and they are stuck in a yucky grey area while everyone else sees it as black and white. ~ World’s most patient sheriff arrests the world’s most self-righteous young woman ~ Chechen women swindle ISIS via social media: ‘We need roubles to join you xx’ ~ The Crimson Tide poster in the background is an ironic touch. ~ Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions, and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destruction. ~ Rachel Carson (1952) ~ Girl Thinks She Knows The Law But Ends Up Getting Arrested! ~ Thank goodness for corporate-mandated classes. Otherwise I’d never have known that it’s bad form to call disabled people “crippled” or “retarded.” ~ Is it acceptable to refer to corporate-mandated classes as “crippled” or “retarded”? ~ Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock. ~Ben Hecht ~ I read his autobiography years ago, and I seem to remember this quote, Of course this is not the same standard of verification I expect from others, but it is better than goodquotes dot com. This was inspired by a twitter comment, and getting this down to 140 characters, minus the address of the original commenter, changed the meaning a little bit. When in doubt take out “the” & “and.” Btw, the zen idea meme you put up a few minutes ago is a potential poem in the making. ~ If only I wasn’t dead then I could run for President of the United States. But you are, Blanche, you are dead as a doornail. ~ @postcrunk pizza is a story of successful immigration and assimilation ~ I thought it was the clown bus. ~ That is not what parents said in 1964. ~ Can you put a moratorium on new members? ~ We could call it the boozy cougars ~ the legend goes that when faeries started to manifest that various people began creating different groups … Out of the Woods ~ What You Mean By #AllLivesMatter ~ Wild Fermentation: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Cultural Manipulation (DIY) ~ one group called itself the radical faeries to distinguish that group from the other group ~ “we are not a fad like the latest trend in fashion” no, but we do like to wear them ~ ride my bike, walk, work with pictures, read, write, stay out of facebook discussions ~ You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life. Jiddu Krishnamurti ~ Household Income 48k, Property Value 29k, Local Ethnicity 88% Caucasian ~ A lady told William Faulkner that she had read Sanctuary three times, and did not understand it. Mr. Faulkner said to read it a fourth time. …. I heard a teacher tell this story. Mr. Faulkner said something similar in an interview with the Paris Review. ~ @ethicistforhire #FunFact: Bobby McFerrin’s original song title was: Don’t Worry, Be a Nihilist… ~ A person who does not feel appreciated will frequently do less than is expected. ~ @SlavojTweezek Commentary of transcendental brilliance from the world’s sexiest living Marxist social theorist and cultural critic. Is this thing on? ~ Putting the sin back in synonym. ~ “a blaze of egomania” Glenn Beck’s website is called The Blaze. ~ pictures from The Library of Congress. ~ selah
Slaughterhouse-Five Part Six
This is part six of the chamblee54 disposable dissertation on Slaughterhouse-Five, a novel by Kurt Vonnegut. Parts one, two, three, four, and five are available for viewing, and gentle criticism. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
This is a sunday morning in August. The sun is out, and the heat will be tough to take soon. PG is not in a good mood, which should surprise nobody. He realizes, on some level, that he should be grateful for a chore to give him something to do. The notes indicate that the first “so it goes” to be recorded in this segment will provide the opportunity to make cheap, smutty jokes.
Billy Pilgrim is on a plane that is going to crash. He knows the plane is going into the ski resort, but is helpless to do anything about it. A barbershop quartet is entertaining the optometrists, which should not be confused with optimism. The quartet is singing cheerful songs that are insulting to Polacks. This is another word that was popular in 1968, that is considered politically incorrect today.
Three days after arriving in Dresden, BP saw the public execution of a Pole. He was hanged for the crime of fucking a German woman. SIG067. The German lady was not inclined to disclose whether the Polish gentleman was, in fact, hung. Polack jokes were popular in 1968, when SF was written. PG did not know any Polish people, but thought the jokes were pretty funny.
The barbershop quartet is singing “Wait till the sun shines Nellie” when the airplane crashes into the side of a Vermont mountain. Everyone is killed, except for BP and the co-pilot. SIG068. The barbershop quartet performs at a party BP gave, which upsets BP. Time travel will do that to you. Especially when you are having brain surgery to save your life, and you go, uncontrollably, back to Schlachthöf-funf. The cart you are pushing is greased with the fat of dead animals. SIG069.
A young German named Werner Gluck was in charge of the POW. They were looking for the kitchen, and stumbled into a strange room. It was a communal shower, and was filled with naked German girls. They didn’t know to be wary when a Nazi said anything about taking a shower. The sight of these naked girls was educational for BP and Werner Gluck. Soon, the men found the kitchen. An old woman worked there. She was a war widow. SIG070. The old woman thought it peculiar that armies had young men, like BP and Werner Gluck, and old fogies like Edgar Derby. But she made sense of it all. “All the real soldiers are dead.” SIG071.
When BP was in pre-fire Dresden, he helped out in a factory that made malt syrup. BP helped himself to spoonfuls. His digestive system did not like malt syrup. This is the end of chapter seven.
At the start of chapter eight, the POW are entertained by Howard Campbell. He was discussed in a previous installment of this series, and in a later book by KV. In this scene, Mr. Campbell is recruiting American soldiers to go fight the Russians. A lot of people, including General George Patton, wanted to have it out with the Russkies after the Germans were dealt with. General Patton was in a convenient auto accident a few months after the war ended.
At some point during the remarks by Mr. Campbell, the air raid siren went off. Even though Dresden was thought to be unworthy of Allied attack, the POW went into an underground meat locker. A few dead horses were hanging from metal hooks. SIG072. Meanwhile, Howard Campbell stays upstairs, talking to the guards. It turns out he speaks excellent German, and was married to a German actress. The actress was killed, entertaining troops in the Crimea. SIG073.
The next night was the Allied bombing raid on Dresden. It is much discussed elsewhere. A lot of people were killed. SIG074. While hiding in a subterranean meat locker, BP time travels to his home in 1968. He is arguing with his well meaning daughter, who would like to murder Kilgore Trout.
This is when the reader gets to know the man behind the books. Kilgore Trout lives in Ilium NY. A horrible man, he makes money by supervising boys who deliver newspapers on bicycle. This is another concept that will seem novel to some… the custom of teenage boys having a paper route.
Kilgore Trout write a lot of books. BP is one of the few people who read them. One of these books was about a money tree. Twenty dollar bills grew on its branches. People would kill each other fighting over these twenties, and their blood would fertilize the tree. SIG075.
On November 13, 1787, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to William Smith. The letter is full of zesty quotes. “What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.” A few lines above that, Mr. Jefferson said “God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion.” Twenty years after he wrote this, Mr. Jefferson was President. He probably did not want to deal with a revolution.
BP met Kilgore Trout in 1964. This was around the time of the 18th anniversary of BP and Valencia Merble. The times are getting a bit fuzzy, which, acording to Tralfamadorian logic, is rational. The date of birth is anywhere from 1922 to 1925. BP was in the nuthouse in 1946, and somehow got married at the same time. At any rate, there was a big party for the anniversary, with Kilgore Trout invited. The other guests were charmed to have an author in their midst. One lady heard about a French chef that died. At the funeral they sprinkled herbs on his body. SIG076.
The barbershop quarter performed at the party, making BP physically ill. There are several possible reasons. Bad singing is must be considered. BP knew about the plane crash performance. Their were four guards in the meat locker during the Dresden raid. There were four Beatles, four horsemen of the apocalypse, four tops, and the four seasons. The barbershop quarter did a four seasons song, Sheeree, Sherree bayabee, Sher Sher Sherree, Sherree baby. It sounded better on the radio.
The next stop on the time travel was the meat locker in Dresden. A horrendous overbombing went on overhead, on the city with no war industries to bother. The fire storm was so intense that it ran out of oxygen. The German guards, except for the fab four in the meat locker, died. The German girls that BP saw naked in the shower died. Just about everyone in Dresden died. SIG077. SIG078. SIG079. The next day, Amerika sent planes to fly over the city, and shoot at people. They missed BP. SIG080. There was an inn outside of town, which somehow survived the raid. The inn took the guards and POW in, and gave them food. This is the end of chapter eight.
The Article
A facebook link woke up PG the other day.It was an article for the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Out of the Woods. It was about a place, in the Central Time Zone, where head for the hills has a new meaning. The article is about a “radical faerie” redoubt, known in the article as “the commune.” Many say the author violated the trust of the participants in researching the piece, that the privacy of the facility was compromised, and that bad things are going to happen. Others say it is part of the process, and the sun will rise tomorrow, and hopefully bring more rain. The farm is currently under noseeum occupation. The insects contacted by the NYT had no comment.
The article has a golly gee tone, while missing, or distorting, radical details. The outhouse is universally known as the chapel. You go with g-d, number two only. Number one is distributed in a place away from foot traffic. Visitors are constantly told not to pee in the chapel. If someone does pee in the chapel, everyone in the county learns why this is a bad idea.
The best feature about the place is the land. PG has been to the establishment many, many, times, and always feels a surge when he gets on the last dirt roads. The land is a collection of ridges, with steep ravines. The stream of consciousness flows through the bottoms… not the only bottom available.
Years ago, one of the ridges was reserved for wimmin who camp, and was called wimmin’s ridge. About twenty five years ago, the wimmin camping spot was moved to another ridge, and wimmin’s ridge became sex change ridge. PG hasn’t heard that expression in years. The NYT dude was charmed. The spell check suggestion for wimmin is swimming.
As was mentioned earlier, this is a bastion of radical faerie retro reality. PG does not care for the r-word (radical), and just says faeries. That is a minority opinion. Speaking of minorities, most of the folks at the oudekerk are PWOC cis males. Many are Jewish. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a fashionable presence at the resort, are a glittering by product of the Roman Pedophile Church. Recovering baptists, like PG, are tolerated.
With the internet, there is information. If one knows where to look, one can learn about the place. One portal reports “Household Income 48k, Property Value 29k, Local Ethnicity 88% Caucasian.” Someone else says “Dietary Practice: Omnivorous (plants and animals) Alcohol Use: Yes, used often. Tobacco Use: Yes, used seldomly, or ceremoniously.”
One site lists a recent tenant, “The Foundation For Fermentation Fervor, Inc.” This is probably connected to Sandor Katz. He likes to make tasty fermented food. He has written books, including Wild Fermentation: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Cultural Manipulation (DIY).
The article recieved many comments. This one stands out. Copy/paste blog journalism is wonderful. Femmy Rose Liberty, TN “Readers should know that the Board and Steward’s of “The Commune” have a years-long standing consensus of zero-visibility on the Internet. This boundary was shared with the author and photographer of this article and is in the minutes of our meetings. Publishing our location goes against this boundary and is indicative of the cultural imperialism associated with corporate media and unchecked privilege. I’m extremely disappointed in the New York Times and Alex Halberstad for exploiting “The Commune”. Changing our name to the “Commune” is not enough. By embedding us within an article that also talks about “the faeries on the mountain” you might as well have used our name. It also is EXTREMELY PROBLEMATIC that every photo is of a white person who, as far as I know, identifies as a cisgendered man. This only maintains the white privilege and sexism that plagues our community and the queer movement in general. This article invisibilizes so many people who make up our community. To associate himself with Captain Cook and compare our community to Harry Potter novels speaks to the colonial mindset of the author and the New York Times’ journalistic style. I’m devastated and disappointed and will never trust the New York Times again.” This comment was recommended 153 times. Blessed Be.
Slaughterhouse-Five Part Five
This is part five of the chamblee54 modification and reconstruction of Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut. Parts one, two, three, and four have already been published. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Chapter six begins with Paul Lazzaro making a spectacle of himself. He is mad about something, as usual. The English POW, known here as the Blue Fairy Godmother, says something. Mr. Lazzaro says to go fuck yourself. The English POW says that he has tried. Being in captivity four years has it’s downside. Mr. Lazzaro goes into detail about the revenge awaiting the English POW. This inspires KV to say “so it goes.” SIG 057. There is no connection to Heinz 57 steak sauce.
Paul Lazzaro made friends with Roland Weary on the POW train. Mr.Weary and Mr. Lazzaro had a similar approach to etiquette, before Mr. Weary died. SIG058. Roland Weary is not related to Roland Kirk, aka Rahsaan, aka the modern miracle of the tenor saxophone. PG saw Roland Kirk the night Richard Nixon resigned. Roland Kirk played three saxophones at the same time, and talked a lot. Roland Kirk was blind, and said the audience was too ugly to look at. Roland Kirk said Stevie Wonder wanted to make a lot of money, so he could have an operation and see.
Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist of SF, is also on the Paul Lazarro’s hit list. BP can time travel, and has memories of the future. BP knows how BP is going to die. It will be February 13, 1976. BP will be a celebrity, and give a speech, in Chicago, before a large crowd. The USA will have been divided into 20 smaller nations. Chicago has been nuked by “angry Chinamen,” to use a phrase considered politically incorrect in 2015. SIG059.
As some of you may know, this was not an accurate prediction of life in 1976. This was the bi-centennial year. On February 13, people were just starting to take Jimmy Carter seriously as a Presidential candidate. It is probably just as well that Amerika was not divided into 20 countries. We once had the United States, and a Confederation of 11 states that did not get along very well. That did not work out very well, at least for the Confederate states.
After BP is finished with his speech, a crazy person shoots him with a high powered laser gun. SIG060. BP is dead for a little while, and then timewarps back to 1945. Even Jesus, when he made his much ballyhooed emergence from the cave, returned to 33A.D. Billy goes back to wartime Germany. The food was better than what was available on Tralfamadore, except for Montana Wildhack.
In 1945, the Amerikans are about to be shipped out of the intermediate POW care facility. The British are overjoyed at their departure. Paul Lazzaro is running his foul mouth, like a dog that will not quit barking. If Mr. Lazzaro was a dog, a policeman would kill him, and check for rabies. SIG061.
Maybe it was the British officer. Not the Blue Fairy Godmother, but the one who gave the POW a lecture on hygiene while in captivity. It is said that men, who lose pride in their appearance, soon die. SIG062. The British officer says that the men are going to Dresden, which will never be bombed. We will hear those famous last words a few more times.
The Amerikans go to the train. The dead hobo is beside the tracks, unmoved. SIG063. The trip to Dresden takes two hours. When they get there, the narrator says it is “Oz.” Another comment is made about the safety Dresden enjoys. SIG064. The POW are paraded through the town, to the amusement of the residents. These residents will be dead soon. SIG065.
The men are taken to Schlachthöf-funf. The english version of that should be obvious. The cattle killing place was mostly empty. Most of the livestock had been eaten, digested, and excreted by this time. SIG066. The umlaut was copied into this text from the online .pdf. Accuracy in media is not just for wingnuts and moonbats. Spell check accepts wingnuts as being a real word.
This is the last SIG of chapter six. It is SIG066, which contains 2, out of 3, of the digits in 666. It appears on page 144 in the dead tree SF used for this report. The number 144 also means gross, as a unit of measure. 144 is 12 times 12, or 6+6×6+6. If you add 1+4+4, you get 9, so 6 does turn out to be 9. Jimi Hendrix don’t mind.
OK. There are only 11 paragraphs here. If we are going to do the rainbow text thing, we need to have at least 12. If there are 13 or 14, that is even better. We can throw in the turquoise layer between the green and blue, which is pretty groovy. Originally, this filler was going to be from another blog. However, the blogger said “I’d appreciate it if you take out your reference to my blog since it’s a bit negative.” It its place we will have one star reviews from Amazon.
This was a book club selection, but always had thought of this as a classic anti-war book that I’ve heard throughout my adult life. I kept reading this hoping there would be some sort of plot line or hidden message, but didn’t seem to uncover it after reading the entire book. The end of the book was slightly easier to understand, however there didn’t seem to be a coherent paragraph in the book.
First off, in order not to offend anyone who loves this book and will rave about it at gallery openings and trendy wine book clubs, I do understand its place with readers as a literary classic. As an avid reader who cares more about quality writing, themes, plot, character development, etc this book was awful. Everything that can be complained about is why this book is acclaimed, but if you hate an incomplete story with no beginning or end, or just comprehensive storytelling, this book will make you wonder about the sanity and sobriety of its fans.
Hiroshima 70 Years Later
At 8:15 am, August 6, 1945, Hiroshima got nuked. It was the start of a new era. Since Japan is 13 hours ahead of Georgia, and standard time was used, the literal anniversary is 8:15 pm, August 5.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi was working in Hiroshima when the bomb hit. He survived, and found a train to take hime to his home town, Nagasaki.
The device dropped on Hiroshima, the Little Boy, had an estimated force of 13 kilotons of Trinitrotoluene, or TNT. A kiloton of TNT is roughly a cube whose sides are ten meters. This device is fairly tiny compared to many of the warheads developed since. Many of the modern appliances are measured in megatons, or millions of tons of TNT. The Soviet Union had a bomb with a capacity of 50 megatons, or 4,000 times the size of the Little Boy.
The largest weapon tested by The United States is the Castle Bravo. This device destroyed Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. The two piece swimsuit was named for this island. The Castle Bravo device had a yield of 15 megatons of TNT. This is roughly 1,000 times the power of the Little Boy.
The decision to drop the bomb has long been controversial. There are a lot of factors and gray areas, and the issue does not lend itself to sound bite solutions. The conventional wisdom is that Japan surrendered because of the nuclear attack. This meant the war was shortened by at least a year, there was no invasion of Japan, and many lives were saved. PG is scared by the moral calculus involved in a decision like this….do 100,000 civilian deaths prevent the deaths of 500,000 soldiers? PG suspects that even G-d herself would lose sleep over that one.
There is also evidence that the bomb was not needed. Japan was whipped in August 1945. The air raids were conducted in daylight with little resistance. A debate was going on in the Japanese government on whether to continue the fight.
An event happened the day between Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, which influenced the Japanese decision to surrender. The Soviet Union had agreed to help the United States with the war against Japan. On August 8, The Soviet Union invaded Japanese occupied Manchuria. There are indications that Japan knew the fight was hopeless at this point, and would rather surrender to The United States than The Soviet Union. This is one of the gray areas that never seems to be mentioned.
The United States wanted the war to end quickly for obvious reasons, and a few subtle ones. America did not want to share the spoils of Japanese war with The Soviet Union. There were already tensions between the two allies, and the cold war was not far off. Many felt The United States used the Little Boy as a warning to The Soviet Union.
When you get your moral software out, you might want to figure in the effect of opening the nuclear Pandora’s box. Would the nuclear bomb have been developed by other countries if America had not led the way? The science is not that complicated…after all, America hit paydirt with the Manhattan Project fairly quickly. Nonetheless, there is karma involved in using a terrible new device on a civilian population. The United States started the wind of the arms race, and has yet to feel the whirlwind.
This is a repost. The pictures are from The Library of Congress. Ansel Adams took pictures of Japanese Americans, in a World War Two internment camp. The ladies in the bridge game are Aiko Hamaguchi, Chiye Yamanaki, Catherine Yamaguchi, and Kazoko Nagahama.
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