Lemony Snicket And His Money
PG was trolling twitter when he found this: @Number13Press Lemony Snicket pledges up to $100,000 in racist joke apology. Who/what is Lemony Snicket? What did this person say? How can this joke be worth $100,000? Did he ever fork out the change?
Lemony Snicket is the pen name of Daniel Handler. Apparently he is not related to Chelsea Handler. Mr. Handler told a “joke” at the National Book Award affair about a black lady who was “allergic to watermelon.” Toothpaste flavor was not involved.
Knickers were twisted coast to coast. Mr. Handler was called out, and out, and out. Mr. Snicket took to twitter, and said my bad.
@DanielHandler My remarks on Wednesday night at #NBAwards were monstrously inappropriate and yes, racist. -DH [1/4]
@DanielHandler It would be heartbreaking for the #NBAwards conversation to focus on my behavior instead of great books. So can we do this? -DH [2/4]
@DanielHandler Let’s donate to #WeNeedDiverseBooks to #CelebrateJackie. I’m in for $10,000, and matching your money for 24 hours up to $100,000. -DH [3/4[
@DanielHandler Brown Girl Dreaming is an amazing novel and we need more voices like Jacqueline Woodson. -DH [4/4]
The mea culpa tweets were dated November 21. It is now November 24. Presumably, the 24 hours are over. A check on google does not reveal how much money Mr. Handler will need to match. It also is not known whether the money was ever sent. This is a problem when people make a show about donating money in the future. There is seldom any proof that the donation took place.
When googling Daniel Handler, the first suggested search is “net worth.” He wrote an article for the New York Times in 2007. It began: “Let’s start by saying I have a lot of money. I’ve acquired it by writing children’s books about terrible things happening to orphans, and this seems like such a crazy and possibly monstrous way of acquiring money that I give a lot of it away.”
The tweet at the top of the page linked to The Guardian. It has a lively comment section. ArkEton “A paltry $100k and an apology? It’s time we stop letting these people off so lightly. Making a racist joke is the worst thing in the world. It should be highly illegal and they should go to prison for a very long time. An apology? Like that makes it okay? Damn you racists.”
Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Fifty One Years
Fifty one years ago, John Kennedy went to the oval office in the sky. Did Marilyn Monroe greet him?
The bullets hit Mr.Kennedy at 12:30. He arrived at the hospital at 12:37. He had a faint heartbeat on arrival, but quickly succumbed to his wounds.
In Georgia, PG was nine years old. He was in Miss Mckenzie’s fourth grade class. There was going to be an assembly soon, and the class was going to perform. There was a rehearsal in the cafetorium, and some of the kids were acting up. They went back to the class, and PG thought they were going to be chewed out about the misbehavior in the cafetorium. Instead, Miss Mckenzie came into the room, and told the kids that President Kennedy had been shot during a parade in Dallas Texas. She did not say anything about his condition. One kid cheered the news.
School let out at the regular time, and PG walked home. His mother and brother were crying. He was told that the president had died. The cub scouts meeting that afternoon was canceled.
Later that night, a plane arrived in Washington. The tv cameras showed a gruesome looking man walk up to a microphone. He was introduced as President Lyndon Johnson. This may have been the worst moment of that day. Pictures by “Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
The Silly Remarks Of The President
Wednesday, November 19, was the 151st anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. This is seven score, and eleven years, ago. This is not as poetic as four score and seven. The famous speech was written on White House stationary, not the back of an envelope. The train ride to the battlefield was too bumpy to write on, so it was written elsewhere. No one is sure what happened to the original.
The text was published in newspapers, and became famous. Relatively few people heard the actual speech. Not everyone was impressed. The Harrisburg Patriot & Union said “We pass over the silly remarks of the President. For the credit of the nation we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them and that they shall be no more repeated or thought of.” The descendent of this paper, The Patriot-News, printed a retraction in 2013. Better late than never.
Other contemporaries were critical. Presidents are politicians, with allies and enemies, and are not often beloved in their own time. The New York World accused Lincoln of “gross ignorance or willful misstatement” with his declaration of “four score and seven years ago.” The Democratic Chicago Times called the address “a perversion of history so flagrant that the extended charity cannot regard it as otherwise than willful.”
H.L. Mencken had a few unkind things to say about the affair. “But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination—”that government of the people, by the people, for the people,” should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. “
As the rest of the linked essay points out, one motivation for the Confederates desire for self determination is to maintain the ability to own other human beings. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. These are Union Soldiers from the War Between the States. UPDATE There is a Fibonuccian synchronicity to Wednesday’s anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. The original is famous for the phrase four score and seven. If you add four and seven, you get eleven. Wednesday was 151 years after the original address, or seven score and eleven.
Jyoti Joan Tarshis
People are talking about Bill Cosby. More women are coming out of the woodwork to accuse him. One of them spoke, to a man with the strangely appropriate name Lemon. The video is embedded above. Mr. Lemon discusses oral sex strategy. This does not totally jibe with the original story.
The accuser is Joan Tarshis. On facebook, she is Jyoti Joan Tarshis. There is a resume, of sorts, at media bistro. The resume shows her “Total Media Industry Experience” as being 30 years. Ms. Tarshis met Bill Cosby 45 years ago. The story of the incident was told in Hollywood Elsewhere.
“I was 19 years old in autumn of 1969. I had flown to Los Angeles from New York to work on a monologue with Godfrey Cambridge. Two women I was staying with were friends of Bill Cosby, and they took me to have lunch with him in his cottage at Universal Studios, where he was shooting The Bill Cosby Show. He was always generous with his food and drinks, though he never drank alcohol. But he always topped my Bloody Mary’s with beer, which he called a ‘redeye.’
“Cosby seemed to take a liking to me, and so I was invited back a few times. … One day he asked me to stay after the shooting and work on some material with him. … In his bungalow he made me a redeye, … The next thing I remember was coming to on his couch while being undressed. Through the haze I thought I was being clever when I told him I had an infection and he would catch it and his wife would know he had sex with someone. But he just found another orifice to use. …So the day that he called, she (her mother) answered the phone and he told her he was inviting me to The Westbury Music Theater. … He sent a limo to pick me up and I was dropped off at the Sherry Netherland Hotel and went up to his suite. I remember noticing that his leather shaving kit was filled with bottles of pills, and thinking that this seemed odd. He was, of course, very friendly and I, of course, was very uncomfortable. He made me a redeye, and I, being nervous and dealing at the time with an alcohol problem (I’ve been in recovery since 1988), drank it. In the car I had something else to drink, but was already beginning to feel a bit stoned.
“When we got to Westbury and he went on, there was no seat for me. I stood in the back of the theater with his chauffeur, feeling insulted that I wasn’t respected enough to be given a reserved seat. But soon after, I remember feeling very, very stoned and asking his chauffeur to take me back to the car. I was having trouble standing up. The next thing I remember was waking up in his bed back at the Sherry, naked. I remember thinking ‘You old shit, I guess you got me this time, but it’s the last time you’ll ever see me.” The theater is on Long Island. The hotel is in Manhattan.
Lots of people are saying nasty things about Mr. Cosby these days. Some of them are probably true. This does not mean that every accuser is telling the truth. This lady comes forward 45 years later. She went to see Mr. Cosby several times, and accepted drinks from him. She was underage, for drinking, at the time. After the first rape, she went out with him again, in a different state.
One internet story is Joan Tarshis: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know. “Her Facebook page shows her to be passionate about her cats, and she also writes that she worked at Tantra to Love, a company that teaches about tantric sex.” There is a comment. Jyoti Joan Tarshis · Follow · Woodstock, New York “I have never taught Tantric sex!! haha You have me confused with Sting.”
The lady, allegedly, is a professional writer. “But during those years as I grew into adulthood, I watched Cosby be praised by everyone from Presidents to Oprah to the Jello Corporation.” Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
World Toilet Day
World Toilet Day is celebrated November 19 this year. A billion people, mostly in third world countries, do not have access to commodes. They are forced to defecate in the open. This does not help people lead healthy lives.
An article about commodes was found in the chamblee54 archive. It is presented today for your enjoyment. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
This is a two part post. The first part is a list of 15. It is fun facts about the commode. These are borrowed from a site called Listserve. LS has lots of lists. The Chamblee 54 addendum is part two.
01 The film “Psycho” was the first movie to show a toilet flushing – the scene caused an inpouring of complaints about indecency.
02 Pomegranates studded with cloves were used as the first attempt at making toilet air-freshner.
03 Hermann Goering refused to use regulation toilet paper – instead he bought soft white handkerchiefs in bulk and used them.
04 Over $100,000 was spent on a study to determine whether most people put their toilet paper on the holder with the flap in front or behind. Three out of four people have the flap in the front.
05 King George II of Great Britain died falling off a toilet on the 25th of October 1760.
06 The average person spends three whole years of their life sitting on the toilet
07 The first toilet cubicle in a row is the least used (and consequently cleanes.t)
08 An estimated 2.6 billion people worldwide do not have access to proper toilet facilities, particularly in rural areas of China and India.
09 The Roman army didn’t have toilet paper. They used a water soaked sponge on the end of a stick.
10 The toilet is flushed more times during the super bowl halftime than at any time during the year.
11 90% of pharmaceuticals taken by people are excreted through urination. Therefore our sewer systems contain heavy doses of drugs. A recent study by the EPA has found fish containing trace amounts of estrogen, cholesterol-lowering drugs, pain relievers, antibiotics, caffeine and even anti-depressants. Modern urine is expensive.
12 Lack of suitable sanitation kills approximately 1.8 million people a year, many of them children.
13 The toilet handle in a public restroom can have up to 40,000 germs per square inch.
14 While he didn’t invent the toilet, Thomas Crapper perfected the siphon flush system we use today. He was born in the village of Thorne – which is an anagram of throne.
15 In a 1992 survey, British public toilets were voted the worst in the world. Following quickly behind were Thailand, Greece, and France.
Add.1 An amusing feature of the water closet is the tendency of people to die there. Elvis comes to mind immediately. Some say he was stricken on the throne, fell off, and perished on the floor. Judy Garland is also known to have met her maker while doing number two.
Add.2 It seems that this is a real problem with older people that have constipation issues. When you are in delivery mode, and you push too hard, you can cause something called Valsalva’s maneuver. To make a long story short, all that squeezing can pinch the arteries going into the heart. This is not good for you. According to a commenter here, it is .06% of all deaths.
Turkey Talk
Ben Franklin thought the turkey should be america’s national bird. It is identified with Thanksgiving, the holiday in November before Christmas. Mr. Franklin would not recognize the old bird today.
Turkeys have a tough life these days. Raised in factories where the lights are on 24/7, their beaks and claws are routinely broken off early on. For more details, read this piece in the New York Times, or a tasteful blog, What Would Jesus Eat.
PETA sometimes goes too far, and sometimes violates good taste. The commercial here was rejected by NBC. It uses the cliche of the little girl praying to call attention to the sorry state of the turkey. While annoying and easy to dismiss, the commercial does tell a tale.
PG should fess up at this point, and admit that he is a party to these horrors. A full blown carnivore (except for vienna sausages, which are gross), PG has no room to talk about the horrors of industrial meat production. It is Babylon…the government borrows trillions of dollars from the Chinese to pay for a war in Iraq, a book assembled by a Catholic Committee is called “The word of G-d”, and meat producing animals are raised in squalor.
A person, who is sometimes called a turkey, gave a press conference in 2008. The photo op was in front of a device that mutilates turkeys, and the meat processing continued while she talked. “At least this is fun”. This is a repost.
Cards Against Humanity
After generating your meme, it will be submitted for review.Upon approval, you’ll receive an email containing a link to your #CosbyMeme By clicking “submit”, you agree to the terms of use. ~ Ten Days Or Whatever of Kwanzaa by Cards Against Humanity ~ And I told my youth poet if he didn’t write the poem, I was gonna write the poem. He wrote the poem. ~The only word that rhymes with poem is jeroboam. Definitions: a large wine bottle (holds 4/5 of a gallon) (Old Testament) first king of the northern kingdom of Israel who led Israel into sin (10th century BC) ~ There was an article in RFD years ago. It was about a restaurant in backwoods Kentucky that was a regional hangout. The owner said, in so many words, that you could have a hundred gay men, and they would have a good time. If you have a dozen lesbians, there would be a fight. ~ @pourmecoffee Retweeting haters to get others to attack on your behalf makes you the Aquaman of Twitter. ~ “What does reality tv tell us” turn the idiot box off ~ What about the bystanders who have no interest in the quarell, and just want to work/play/live in harmony? ~ This responsibility includes determining that you are being told the truth. ~ In September, the Confederates abandoned the city. There was a fire at this time. This was the fire in “Gone with the Wind.” As for the Yankee naysayers in this comment thread … y’all are not much better, and in some cases worse. The civil rights movement was largely a southern movement, with significant white support. ~ Ok, I am through with my blog post, so I could participate in this facebook fracas. It is better to stay out of discussions, and produce something. This is especially true when the topic of discussion is none of your business. Just because a rabble rouser has your attention is no reason to wrestle with a hog. The wrestling hog does not care that you are covered in mud. All he knows is that he had a good time. ~ Many of these trouble makers have more rhetorical skills than integrity. ~ please be careful. Recovery from major surgery is recovery from major surgery. Don’t push too fast. ~ I thought this was an open thread about being an open thread ~ Now I know this is an official ARF thread. ~ I used to work for someone with a love of cliches. When he heard you say me, he would interrupt you and say this is a we company, not a me company. Does this mean that a meme should be more properly called a wewe? ~ The problem is that the haters spoil it for a lot of others. When hate is being spread behind your back, you don’t know who is infected and who is not. It is easier to just stay away. ~ You’ve reached the end of the Top Tweets for #WhyIWasFiredFromWalmart. View all Tweets. ~ This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. It in no way reflects the thoughts of Deepak Chopra. ~ @JesusIsAJerk I swear to drunk I’m not God, but seriously, stay in drugs, eat school, and don’t do vegetables.. ~ Oh, I remember. You are the French guy. ~ @punsquad Stop using mental illness symptoms as insults dear goodness ~ @punsquad @steveroggenbuck you prefer to use body parts and hygiene appliances as insults? ~ Dealing with our current healthcare mess might be a job for Satan. ~ Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. ~ selah
The Powers Of Government
“The only way in which our people can increase their power over the big corporation that does wrong, the only way in which they can protect the working man in his conditions of work and life, the only way in which the people can prevent children working in industry or secure women an eight-hour day in industry, or secure compensation for men killed or crippled in industry, is by extending, instead of limiting, the powers of government.” Theodore Roosevelt San Francisco (14 Sep 1912)
This quote comes from WIST on Thursday the thirteenth. It is interesting on a number of levels. The most obvious is the call for expansion of government by a one time Republican.
At the time of this speech, Mr. Roosevelt was running as a third party candidate. His entry into the race split the Republican vote, and allowed Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win. In less than a year, the Federal Reserve Bank was created.
The race for President almost cost Mr. Roosevelt his life. On October 14, 1912, in Milwaukee WI, the candidate was shot. Mr. Roosevelt gave his speech, rather than go to the hospital. An x-ray showed the bullet to be lodged in a non-threatening place. It was not removed.
In 1917, five years after the call for government expansion, the United States entered World War I. Sending a million troops to Europe is, by definition, big government. Mr.Roosevelt was an enthusiastic supporter of American participation in the conflict. On July 23, 1918, Quinton Roosevelt, youngest son of the former President, was killed in France.
The quoted speech was given in San Francisco. Eleven years later, after taking ill on a trip to Alaska, President Warren Harding died in San Francisco. Mr. Roosevelt took office after the demise of President William McKinley. This is probably not what Mr. Roosevelt meant by expanding the role of government. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
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