Wake up, Useless!

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It's time for another cartoon!



In which we discover the secret of Ring-A-Ding Spring. Sorry about the "spoiler" in the YouTube preview thumbnail above.

Hoppity's hometown, Foggy Bogg, Wisconsin, shares a bucolic Great Lakes vibe with Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, but sounds much more inviting to me (preferring temperate swamps to gangrenous toes). Waldo and Fillmore are itinerant swindlers, but adopt the town as their hideout/headquarters.

From what I read, this set of episodes was the Ward/Scott pilot for the series. The fist two episodes were produced in 1960, with Alan "Fred Flintstone" Reed voicing Fillmore before being contracted to portray the Kramdenesque caveman for ABC. Bill "Bullwinkle" Scott took over Fillmore duties in parts 3 and 4, but I don't detect any jarring change in the bear's tone or manner with that change.

Surprisingly to me, Hoppity is not voiced by June "Rocky" Foray, but by a woman named Chris Allen. I can find little about her with my limited search engine skills (partially due to her very common name), but most of her credits seem to be with the Hanna-Barbera studio. I think she's pretty good.

Hans Conreid, a Hollywood character actor whose career was extended by Ward for the benefit of all of us, creates a perfect maniac in Professor Wigglesworth. Another thing I like about the character is the percussion accompaniment to his brainstorms, starting in this episode at about 1:20 in the background and rising to a crescendo (with reprise!) over the next 25 seconds or so. This sound effect appears in most Ward/Scott creations, but only very briefly. I wonder if it was created by Spike Jones or an associate. It really should be a standard ringtone for the iPhone. (And I'm gonna make it one or my name isn't Lattimore!)

This episode is music-heavy, which I've noticed in a handful of shorts from this era of the studio's output. It may have been experimentation; to my ears it sounds somewhat awkward. I assume they went sparser in the sound bed for economic reasons, though, as opposed to purely aesthetic ones. Also take note of the general style of art, especially the backgrounds, which is very similar to the landscapes featured in the Metal Munching Moon Mice story on Rocky and His Friends around that time.

"Ring-A-Ding Spring, Part 2," Hoppity Hooper (1962, Jay Ward Productions), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.

Saturday Night Fish Fry!!!

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I don't think anybody plays the role of comical ultraviolent maniac like Louis Jordan.



I don't know about you, but to me this guy sounds scarier than any rap-chart "gangsta" I've ever heard. There's no preening here; he's a natural-born Method Actor. In the right time---meaning at least 15 years after his prime, unfortunately---I think Jordan might have been a very successful mainstream comic actor.

(Editor's note: not my fault, but I apologize for the crappy visuals that the poster attached to the front end of the video. At least he uploaded a masterpiece for us to enjoy, though.)

Dad Gum Ya Hide, Boy, Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five (1954, from "One Guy Named Louis: The Complete Aladdin Sessions"; CD reissue Capitol Jazz CDP 7 96804 2 [1992]), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.

Fascists always get the best stuff

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For us progressive amateur aesthetes, it's always been somewhat unsettling that so much top-drawer design has emerged from 20th century European fascist regimes. Does anybody have any insight into why that might be? My first guess would have something to do with repressed homoerotic urges.

Meanwhile, Behold the 1938 Hispano-Suiza Dubonnet Xenia:

I wonder what Franco's army tanks looked like. We do know that his son, a military pilot, thought that the bombs he dropped on unarmed Ethiopians looked like flower blossoms when they exploded.

The only company I'm aware of that consistently produces world-class industrial design today is Apple, which thrust itself into the public mind with it's "iconic" (and in my opinion overrated) 1984 Superbowl commercial. Old-timers will remember that the archetypal living symbol of Freedom and Justice For All---noted war hero, business executive, and human-rights crusader Ronald Reagan---was presiding over the American Experiment at that very moment in history.

It may be hard to believe that, at one time, high design in computer technology could be achieved with putty-colored plastic, a 9 in. monochrome TV picture tube, and a handful of simple picto-glyphs and 16-bit screen fonts. You had to be there; your mainstream business-grade alternative was an IBM (or clone) PC box about the size of Francisco Franco's tombstone displaying its data on a bile-green 8-bit VGA monitor, or amber if you were really uptown. No mouse necessary, or available! (And, yes, Amiga fascists, I do know about your pet machine. Highly respectable, but no design awards from this amateur aesthete.)

Mac 128 image above ganked from this blog, but it certainly doesn't belong to him!

Wake up, Useless!

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It's time for a cartoon!



I think everyone can agree that Hoppity Hooper had about the hippest opening title theme ever. Wikipedia says it's called "Fight Fiercely, Young Teddy!" (!!!?), composed by Dennis Farnon.

Also, keep your eye on Uncle Waldo through this series (which I will continue). He's somewhat more picaresque than most Jay Ward / Bill Scott characters, including Boris Badenov. At least Boris had ideological reasons---not to mention a high motivation in avoiding his own liquidation at the hands of Fearless Leader or Mister Big---to keel Moose and Squirrel. If I remember correctly (haven't actually re-watched this one before embedding), at some point during this story Uncle Waldo casually plots to waste Hoppity purely for material gain. A kiddie-show sociopath who speaks to our times!

"Ring-A-Ding Spring, Part 1," Hoppity Hooper (1962, Jay Ward Productions), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.

Concerning pawns and corporate theft

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Hasbro Corp., heir to the Parker Brothers board game portfolio, was in the news this week for a group-participation publicity stunt having the goal of stimulating sales of back stock and endless permutations of new, special-edition merchandise to shut-ins.

If I cared about this, I'd say that cats do not belong on the Monopoly board. Prowling the estate to ambush rodents and squirrels, yes. Purring in your grandmother's lap, swaddled in her paisley shawl, sure. (On YouTube? Hell no!) I'll interrupt myself by adding that the Monopoly board is no place for a Scotty dog, either. And, too, I'm not so partial to the battleship. The animal kingdom should be represented on the board by, say, a lead-based vulture and a water moccasin.

Predictably, intrepid journalist types will eat up an "exciting campaign" like this, and in the current particular case may even pretend to look for deeper social meaning:

Consider the kitty cat’s victory as both an expression of what economics should really be about – supporting our ability to do what the heck we want with our time – and as a vote of confidence in our national need to relax a bit.

True. Economics should really be about doing "what the heck we want". For instance, packing a Glock 17 in a tavern, or not paying any taxes to support the amenities of US citizenship, or paying your lawmaker's campaign committee to help make sure minorities and old people can't vote in the next election.

Monopoly is a game that transforms bloodthirsty, exploitative conduct into cute fun. And a good time is had by all! (Boomp boomp!) The domestic clothes-pressing iron has, on at least one documented occasion, been used as a weapon of cold-blooded murder (by a killer cartoonist!). And so, both as a symbol of the forced domestication of modern females and the weaponization of consumerism, the iron befits the Monopoly board well, being equally at home on Baltic Avenue, Boardwalk, or in Jail.

Personally, I think there's a much more fascinating story about Monopoly that isn't widely known. We could argue that an economic monopoly is corporate theft through application of The Law Of The Jungle. But one author argues with dead certainty that the board game Monopoly is theft---that is, it became private "intellectual property" through an act of theft from the public domain.

According to this outstanding article I read in Harper's a few months ago, called "Monopoly is Theft," the "official" history of the game began in 1933, "invented" by "an unemployed steam-radiator repairman and part-time dog walker" named Charles Darrow. It's a stirring saga of an irrepressible entrepreneur and a scrappy-but-failing board game company, except (as author Christopher Ketcham informs us) it's not true. One obvious problem with the corporate history of Monopoly is that the game had already been around for 30 years, under a different name---The Landlord's Game---but very similar design:

The game’s true origins, however, go unmentioned in the official literature. Three decades before Darrow’s patent, in 1903, a Maryland actress named Lizzie Magie created a proto-Monopoly as a tool for teaching the philosophy of Henry George, a nineteenth-century writer who had popularized the notion that no single person could claim to “own” land. 

Yes, ladies and gentlemen: Monopoly began life as an "open source" educational tool for teaching people the economic philosophy of a 19th century socialist! And the objective of the game was to thwart the monopolist, not to become one. Then the game was shoplifted from the public domain by Depression-era capitalists, and eventually mutated into such lucrative niche varietals as "University of Illinois Monopoly" and "Rockopoly". The article is quite long, but really informative and captivating if you have any interest in economics, intellectual property law, or American history. I definitely recommend printing the article out, in full, preferably on your company's laser printer.

Image retrieved from http://www.slowfamilyonline.com/tag/landlords-game/, reproduced here for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.

Special to Gurlitzer

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Concerning your remark about the Trillion-Dollar Doubloon:

I never thought of it that way, but I think "economic semantics" is a very fitting metaphor for the concept. Unless you're talking hard currency, which is basically no different than any other form of barter, I think it's generally accurate to say money is a symbol of value, taken on faith in the probability of new wealth being created in the future through the extraction of raw materials and/or labor to be performed. The acceptance of a national fiat currency in return for work performed might be seen as an implicit investment---whether willingly or not---in growth of the economy.

A government may wisely "run the printing presses" if there isn't enough money in circulation to support consumption and productive investment. The objective is to increase the nation's money supply---a completely reasonable and even necessary duty under certain circumstances. A Congressionally imposed "debt ceiling" means that the Treasury cannot "run the printing presses" without Congressional approval, not even for spending that Congress has already authorized with appropriations. This is a stupid policy that should not be on the books. The Trillion-Dollar Doubloon would be an alternate way for the Treasury to increase the money supply, but without Congressional approval. It's widely been judged to be a legal option, and the specific workflow for doing it has been described elsewhere.

For reasons he and his advisers know best, Bronco Bummer declared that he wouldn't invoke that executive prerogative. I'm not clear whether or not he took it off the table for the duration of his reign, but I'd guess he has. So now we get another sequester. (Notice how no one is calling it a "fiscal cliff" this time? I wonder why.)

Status report

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Here are some overlong remarks from your host pertaining to recent events, and how blog posting has been temporarily overcome by them:

My email notification for new replies to posts has been broken for about a month, so I haven't known when you are checking in. My ISP has been worthless in helping me to unlock the mailbox I use for that, so I'm going to have to set up a new one.

My wireless net has been making a maniac out of me for a few weeks, having refused to connect my computers to my printers, and I've wasted some prime blogging time over two weekends cocking around with every alternate mode of configuring these devices. Here's a "pro tip": before you spend days repeating the same procedures that haven't worked any previous time, check the firmware on your router and update it, then reboot the router. Idiot.

I've slowly brought what should have been a relatively simple kitchen repair (19 years overdue!) close to a thrilling conclusion. Back in November I found some usable replacement parts for a pair of woodwork fixtures that I thought I'd have to order custom-milled. Installing these parts and making them work correctly in the allotted physical space has required a series of adaptations at each and every miserable step, with several decisions to be made between doing a fast job, a half-assed job, or perfection. After a month of dithering I figured out how to do an 80%-assed job, and after another month I forced myself to postpone my worry about fucking it up and dealing with that at the appropriate time, if necessary. I'm actually thorough all the work that could have imperiled the quality of the final result, and it's turned out reasonably well. Moral: there ain't a job in the world that's impossible if you have a cellar full of booze and fistfuls of pills! I'll post a photo and description after I get the last mounting holes drilled and all the screws driven.

Regressing in time by a month or two, a vicious workplace conflict that had been tamped down by a previous supervisor about 8 years ago suddenly ripped its way back through the fabric of reality, keeping me off balance and unsettled for several weeks. My newish boss, whose office is located 650 miles away (a great amenity in most cases, but not this one), seems to have finally gotten a handle on this decades-old situation and has banished my antagonist to the forbidden netherworld of ceasing hostile workplace communications and following instructions that he has been given. But for how long?

Further back, through an illness and typical holiday-season distractions, my mother passed away. She left this world the day after the presidential election, and her memorial service and burial involved a trip through Paul Ryan Country to Nowheresville, Wisconsin, where she was raised. I spoke at her funeral; it was an interesting task to (write and) speak both candidly and kindly of her, because she was a very difficult person for most of the time we siblings knew of her. I've had a memorial post prepared in my head since that time, but have delayed uploading it for no other reason than preoccupation with mundane challenges and wanting to have my mind fully present when I do that. I reckon that will finally happen this weekend. (Don't worry, siblings: I'll give each of you the same slow-cooked consideration if you make it to the other side before I do.)

Trillion-dollar doubloon

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This Business Insider article gives the clearest explanation of the economics in back of that trillion-dollar platinum coin that is proposed as a way to ignore the (probably unconstitutional) deficit ceiling. If you have any interest in "the deficit" or "the unsustainable national debt," it is worth reading in full (not overlong).

The author, Joe Wiesenthal, does a good job explaining what money really is. The minting of a trillion-dollar coin by Treasury would be---except for one insignificant detail---exactly the same action as "injecting money" into the supply through quantitative easing or "running the printing presses" by the Federal Reserve. The only difference is that the Fed doesn't first strike a denomination of currency to represent the money-supply expansion. Whether it has Treasury strike that trillion-dollar doubloon or not makes no economic difference other than the amount of metal and labor that go into the coin. That's it---it really is.


It's a separate question as to whether expanding the money supply at any given time is constructive or reckless. Both Democratic and Republican administrations do it as a matter of course. In fact, that's how the Bush administration paid for two unfunded wars! Regardless, as a matter of practice, minting the coin would be no different from any other monetary stimulus---the wisdom or foolishness of it arises from the policy objectives (or lack of them), nothing else. The only reason this policy lever is even being talked about, of course, is that a loophole in the commemorative coin law makes this a feasible way to avoid an illegal default on the national debt as threatened by kamikaze GOP congressmen.

An interesting detail is that the coin law was drafted by a former director of the US Mint (Clinton era), who provided key technical information for Wiesenthal's article. I'd bet anybody a tall beer that this gentleman knew exactly what he was doing when he helped to craft the language of the law, loophole and all.

Overheard

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...on a call-in show on my local university public radio station, on which two veterinary medicine doctors were guests:

"Many people don't have health insurance for their pets."

Laid to waste

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Happy New Year. I've been practically housebound since last Sunday with a malady resembling the flu, and it started a few days before that. Today is the first day I've been moving around without misery or discomfort.

A prolonged, disabling illness is rare for me. When I am afflicted, for some reason I spend most of my otherwise-idle brain cycles to perform self critique and consider my current location along the stream of life. This time has been no different, so my brain is stocked with all kinds of resolution fodder. What convenient timing.

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...or so say those lovable, rapidly aging Gen-X'ers at Married To The Sea. Go visit them. The kids can still knock one out of the park a few times a month.

Friday Night Fish Fry (!)

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Been awhile. Happy birthday, Frank! (21 December 1940).



This is the wider world's introduction to FZ and the Mothers of Invention. First tune---grand slam in every way, from attitude to lyrics to arrangement to teen beat. I wonder whether the US counterculture would have been different had Zappa's management and the Verve label had invested several-thousand bucks in strategic payola and disc jockey blowjobs to get this track on the AM radio in fall 1966 (and backed by "Trouble Every Day"). There's a lot on this album that sounds not unlike the Stones. But... fat chance. Have you ever heard lyrics like this on any commercial or NPR radio station?

You know the routine---jam in the earbuds and crank it up to where snot starts running down your upper lip. My first version of this tune and the album it's on was vinyl:

Hungry Freaks, Daddy, The Mothers of Invention (1966, from "Freak Out," Verve V6-5005-2X), embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.

"As the nation searches for answers..."

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The title of this post quotes a rhetorical formulation that I'd already heard too many times long before the nation once again began last week to "search for answers" to the problem of "evil." The media love this formulation because it suggests that mass murders committed with military-style firearms are mysteries (like superstorms!!!) that not even reporters and celebrity pundits can shed light upon. It's convenient---helps editors avoid the assaults that right-wing thought leaders launch against facts, logic, and human decency.

Just because "Wayne LaPierre" goes on TV and presents his vile, deranged point of view, like he did this morning, it does not follow that such opinions "complicate" the task of legislating sane and reasonable arms-control policies. In fact, the NRA company line helps to clarify the matter. The fetishism his organization promotes for the benefit of the gun-peddling syndicate it serves verifies everybody's hunch (including LaPierre's) that some form of mental illness is at the root of gun violence. Josh Marshall assessed the contents of a recent SEC filing by a gun-manufacturing consortium like this:

You’ve got fairly candid discussions of male insecurity as a decent on-going growth opportunity, women as a new source of gun purchases and a general migration from hunting and target shooting toward gun ownership as a way of simply feeling more awesome.

In order that the public doesn't get suckered into turning an impulse to formulate civilized gun-control policy into an amateur witch hunt for the "mentally ill," I'd suggest trying to focus the mental-health piece of the discussion on gun-related mental illness.

In that connection---and considering that a new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is being prepared---I think it should be a high priority for the mental health community of practice to identify and quantify the particular variety of paranoia that might be called something like "firearms obsession disorder." Yellow flags that indicate the probable need for counseling might include a subject's frequent verbal conflation of "gun rights" and "freedom," or "gun ownership" and "masculinity." Red flags that indicate the urgent need for immediate psychiatric supervision and possible involuntary confinement might include a subject's hoarding of firearms that have no inherent historic, aesthetic, or collectible value (and especially the hoarding of ammunition for such guns), or the repeated public expression that the solution to gun violence is yet more gun violence:

The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

...

I call on Congress today to act immediately, to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every school — and to do it now, to make sure that blanket of safety is in place when our children return to school in January.

Individuals with Firearms Obsession Disorder believe that "the only way to fight fire is with fire." Most of us regular people think that it is more rational to fight fire with water.

Saturday night

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No fish fry tonight; an elegy.



Christo Redemptor, Charlie Musselwhite (1967, from "Stand Back: Here Comes Charlie Musselwhite's South Side Band," Vanguard Records VSD-79232), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.

Monsters

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Wanton marquee-grade killing, whether the media label it as "terrorism" or "tragedy," understandably raises the eternal question of where "evil" comes from, and why. Opinions are diverse, understandably, because this is arguably the central mystery of existence to anyone who believes that life has a moral or spiritual dimension (in other words, that the universe is more than a bin of particles that follows "laws of science" to move from chaos toward order). My opinions on that aren't important; they're as unimportant as, say, Mike Huckabee's.

But around these events, the question of what to do about them always struggles to be considered. Predictably to anyone who knows something about post-70s America, Second Amendment enthusiasts and the politicians who exploit their preoccupation tell everyone else that "now is not the time" to talk about gun carnage because, after all, it is people who kill people. Everyone else is also admonished not to "politicize" tragedy, even though it's legitimate and imperative to discuss whether public policy is partially to blame or whether changes in public policy could reduce the frequency and carnage of mass shootings. Corporate media always propagate this conservative admonition, and are its foremost adherents.

I've got nothing profound to offer, but here is a small survey of media response with a comment or two.

This whole Charlie Pierce piece is worth reading. He ties any discussion of gun "tragedies" to the fundamental conservative fallacy---that (to borrow Margaret Thatcher's radical confession of global conservative principles) "there is no such thing as society":

There are things we must do together, in a political context, because these things are too big — and, in this case, too monstrous — for us to handle alone. Self-government and its institutions — public schools, police and fire departments, the ridiculously underfunded mental-health facilities, and all the people to whom we increasingly begrudge their salaries — are the only things keeping us from falling back into barbarism, and the only things keeping us safe and sane when one of us falls back into it on their own.

I agree. The absolute minimal conversation we should be having about gun violence, whether or not conservatives think any time is an appropriate time, is about the necessity of understanding that America needs fully funded and professional education, law enforcement, emergency response, and healthcare institutions... period. If the well off and the Job Creators don't want to pay for the privilege of enjoying an orderly society, they should repatriate their warty asses to China or Haiti.

Second, there is this piece by Maggie Koerth-Baker about "what science says" about gun control. Here is her profound takeaway:

Some studies are funded by biased institutions. Some studies aren't peer reviewed. Some studies feature poorly thought-out methodology.

All of that leads to a mess of frequently contradictory conclusions that can, frankly, be used to support just about any position you'd like to put forward. So, basically, just because you can support your position, don't think that makes you absolutely correct.

As so-called science writers go, Koerth-Baker is especially useless to me, with her patronizing and pseudo-profundities. But I think her conclusion is typical corporate media treatment: it's all just too complicated for us poor journalists and citizens to make heads or tails of, so let's all just love one another. Thanks for nothing, Maggie.

Speaking of the "media role" in public tragedy, the following is something I stumbled across this morning. It's a Roger Ebert anecdote about an interview he gave to NBC news (never aired) after Columbine (via BoingBoing again) in which the reporter was looking to cherry-pick quotes about violent movies causing gun violence. Ebert wouldn't play along:

The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. "Events like this," I said, "if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn't have messed with me. I'll go out in a blaze of glory."

In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of "explaining" them.

As much as public policy, this is a piece of the problem that needs to be discussed. Logos and branding---bullseye. Personally, I wouldn't dismiss the media's normalization of violence as sensual and pre-political entertainment as quickly as Ebert seems to, but Hollywood is not directly responsible for Columbine or Tucson or Newtown.

And finally, there's this last word on the topic, straight from the mouth of a genuine monster:

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee attributed the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in part to restrictions on school prayer and religious materials in the classroom. 

"We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools," Huckabee said on Fox News, discussing the murder spree that took the lives of 20 children and 6 adults in Newtown, CT that morning. "Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?"

As Rob Bechizza said about Huckabee's comments back on BoingBoing: "Don't be angry. Just understand what he understands: that this is political."

I think the conversation needs to be much more far-reaching than the topic of gun control. It needs to examine how this society has become so detached from its own collective humanity that even a discussion of gun control is taboo within both of our major political parties while kids are slaughtered on their mats in kindergarten.

Coming back soon

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Well, hello there! How are you? I am fine!

Life intervened for awhile, and so I likewise decided to stay away from here for awhile.

A small factor has been a small learning curve related to my obtaining a new MacBook Pro 15 in. job, which came with OS X 10.8, which really, really wants users to work from the computer's touchpad. It's a little different, but I've already decomissioned my wireless mouse because I really like the feel of the glassy touchpad. The interface works very much like an iPhone, but in a good way as opposed to being a change for the sake of change.

I'll document an event or two that has occurred since I was last here. So come back soon if you like.

Sheltering in place

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I'm going to close the clamshell in a few minutes. I should probably stay offline until tomorrow, but I may check before I retire for the evening.

About the only thing I feel like saying right now is about what Gurlitzer said in a comment about the Mingus song posted below. So I'm delegating the bulk of tonight's writing chore to her (i.e., I'm plagiarizing her work):

Fuck the GOP and their just plain criminal behavior. And fuck the justice dept. for not doing anything about it. And fuck the corporate media who say no tax returns, Mitt? Well shucks, that's just fine with us. And while we know you are lying about everything, it's not our place to call you on it.

And Husted in Ohio now changes the rules on provisional ballots as just the latest in a string of attempts to curtail the vote. And no one will call it for what it is, blatant cheating. AND WE LET THEM ALL GET AWAY WITH IT.

And by the way, Watergate never really ended. These bastards will still do anything to win. 

Before I turned off the radio half an hour ago I heard an NPR news reader announce that his network projects a win for Bernie Sanders, an "independent" senator representing New Hampshire (he's a Socialist). I also heard two NPR newsgirls --- honestly, that's how they were behaving --- all giddy about the silly Republican county Supervisor of Elections in Florida who "accidentally" activated a voter turnout robocall a day late, possibly misleading some people to think they could vote on Wednesday. "Even ex-governor Charlie Crist's wife got a call!" one of them tittered. They were just tickled pink.

None of the accounts of election ratfucking in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania (especially Philadelphia) seemed to be making it in any detail to NPR --- the general impression given by them is that other than a few hiccups everything is going fairly well, or something. So all the news about this I'm seeing comes from new media, basically, and Esquire online. All of those sources are well known to be skewed by liberal bias, so their reports can't be true. Phew! (Sorry about the lazy sourcing for the above; I want to get offline asap.)

I fear that there's a nontrivial probability that unsubtle attempts to steal the election have now moved from the planning to the execution stage, and that I will wake up tomorrow morning to a spectacle of drama where there should be a clear winner... and in which the corporate media give an Oscar performance of dumb-all-over. If that happens, it is feasible that we might not be looking merely at another 2000 in Florida or 2004 in Ohio (yes, it happened): a constitutional crisis could loom... one much bigger than the Sandra Day O'Connor Y2K junta.

Saturday Evening Prayer Meeting

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First, read this. Read it all, including this.

Then, listen to this:



...while reading the following (provided by YouTube uploader Charles Van Driel, whomever he may be):

"Original Faubus Fables" performed by Charles Mingus. Taken from the 1960 "Charles Mingus presents Charles Mingus" record. Composed by Charles Mingus.

It was written as a direct protest against Arkansas governor Orval E. Faubus, who in 1957 sent out the National Guard to prevent the integration of Little Rock Central High School by nine African American teenagers. This composition was also released a year earlier on the "Mingus Ah Um" record as "Fables Of Faubus" but only instrumental as record company Columbia refused the lyrics.

Lyrics:
Oh, Lord, don't let 'em shoot us!
Oh, Lord, don't let 'em stab us!
Oh, Lord, don't let 'em tar and feather us!
Oh, Lord, no more swastikas!
Oh, Lord, no more Ku Klux Klan!

Name me someone who's ridiculous, Dannie.
Governor Faubus!
Why is he so sick and ridiculous?
He won't permit integrated schools.

Then he's a fool! Boo! Nazi Fascist supremists!
Boo! Ku Klux Klan (with your Jim Crow plan)

Name me a handful that's ridiculous, Dannie Richmond.
Faubus, Rockefeller, Eisenhower
Why are they so sick and ridiculous?

Two, four, six, eight:
They brainwash and teach you hate.
H-E-L-L-O, Hello.

Charity toward all and malice toward none, my foot. In 5 years all we will have on the national political stage is Republicans and dissidents.

Original Faubus Fables, Charles Mingus (1960, from "Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus," Candid CCD 79005), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Miscellany [updated]

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I've been "falling back" all day---what have you slugs been doing?

I'm listening to Lenny Bernstein conduct "The Firebird" (1919 version) while preparing to announce the identity of Rodan, the avian raptor who visited final hell on a squirrel in my back yard the other morning. Bernstein's interpretation of the final triumphal theme (not sure what it's called, but it's what most of us rubes think of as the "famous firebird theme") is really kind of tacky, in my opinion---weird melodramatic "stutter steps" thrown in during the first woodwind leg of the lyrical melody, presumably so Bernstein could majestically profile for the society ladies and gentlemen. Then, as the brass join for the thrilling climax, he turns the thing into some kind of stilted, wooden march with approximately zero excitement or soul. It's the only version I have at this point, so I guess I'll shop for another.

Anyway, after poking around on Cornell University's bird site (home page here) I found a specimen of juvenile red-tail hawk that resembles my local guy. The juveniles have little or no red in the tail. What did surprise me, though, is how many "morphs" of this species there are---not only white-breasted ones, but some that are almost entirely a graphite color. Even though they are present around the year, the do migrate as Gurlitzer pointed out, so new individuals pass through.

Update: I just discovered that I've been wearing one brown and one black shoe most of the night. I suppose this phenomenon closely complements the increasing amount of drool that I'm finding on my pillow case these days.

The dawn of Rodan

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Look at this monster. This is what greeted me when I raised the honeycomb-type window shade in my bedchamber this morning.

I see hawks in the yard fairly often owing to all the hawk feeding stations (i.e., songbird feeders) I have deployed throughout Moronica International State Park, the confines within which I live. But when I raised the shade, this juggernaut startled me all the way from the back of the property, at least 50 ft away from the window. My best guess is that his body alone, excluding his head and tail, was the size of a football.

Naturally, the battery was dead in the Nikon D-80 I've hung by the windows for such occasions. But Rodan seemed to be taking his time, so I was able to load a fresh cell, open the special non-screened shooting gallery window in the so-called breakfast nook adjoining the master suite, and began firing off snapshots. The zoom lens, extending only to a maximum of 200 mm, is barely adequate for capturing detail at such a distance.

After spazzing out just to make sure I captured something, I slowed down to start watching in order to select shots. The raptor's head was pretty mobile while eviscerating his breakfast, so timing matters. (I've never used a motor drive to capture "the decisive moment" through an accident of statistical probability since I consider it to be lazy.) While watching more closely I noticed some interesting detail accompanying nature's majestic pageant of evisceration. Pictured is an example.

After capturing about a dozen shots I put the camera away. And then, a minute later it occurred to me that I was stupid for not trying to sneak up on him for a closer view. So I got out the D-80 once more and sneaked out the quiet way---out the front door and around the west side. I couldn't get any closer, but I was able to shoot from a different angle. Obligingly, Rodan pivoted clockwise to show me a couple of profiles. Here is the best:

After this shot, I moved closer and Rodan effortlessly hopped over a 5 ft. fence with a partial squirrel carcass in its talon. Neither a Cooper's hawk nor the sharp-shinned hawk is large or strong enough to own a squirrel like this; I've watched and photographed one (either/or) be thwarted by your typical, everyday d-bag squirrel for several minutes. I have never seen this species before at close range, and my quick effort to identify it using my phone app turned up nothing. I think this is the same bird I pointed out to Beer-D recently, looking every bit the monster soaring lazily at 200 or 300 feet aloft. Apart from his size, I can't find any hawk species native to this area that has a clear, white breast. Also distinct from the local populations is the eye color---almost a light green-gold---and the rufous-brown shading behind the eye and around the beak. (However, the color around the beak might also be a swab of squirrel blood.) Judging from the tail so nicely displayed in this photo, he's (she's?) obviously not a red-tail. But then, there are differences in species based on gender, age, and even subspecies variants.

It will be a day or two before I can identify this beast. Maybe there's a bird watcher reading who knows what it is. If you click on either photo, it should display itself much larger.