I watched the notorious Goldman Sachs gang testify to the Congress. I'm always amazed when I see a well groomed, cleancut group like this, knowing they have committed anti-social acts. All they need are pinstripe suits, black shirts, white ties, and tommy guns. A couple of gun molls would complete the picture.
In the past decade or so we've seen some audacious acts committed by business people, Enron, Bernard Madoff, Goldman Sachs. Not of the men who commit these acts would walk into a convenience store and at the point of a gun order the clerk to give them money. Maybe it's the anonymity of their victims that makes it easier. I think if I were a person who stole, I'd find it easier, more soothing to my conscience, to do it long distance rather than up close. That way I wouldn't have to see the terrified looks of my victims.
I'm not letting Congress off the hook. Too many members of this legislative body have used their seats to get money. Has there ever been a congressman or senator who died poor? I don't know, but I don't think so. They bear some responsibility for not passing legislation against the (legal but immoral) acts that allowed the crime to be committed.
I got conflicting messages from my parents about crime. My mom didn't want me to watch crime programs on television, or read books about criminals lest I become one. My dad, who was a businessman, told me, "Never steal anything small." I'm pretty sure he was joking. I hope so, anyway. But even Dad would have been aghast at what modern day criminals can steal. "White collar crime" is a misnomer. Crime is crime. I like the old Woody Guthrie song, "The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd." I don't care for him romanticizing a criminal, but there is a verse in the song that's appropriate:
Yes, as through this world I've wandered I've seen lots of funny men; Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen.
Here's a version of the song I like, sung by Tracy Clark:
An article from the October 28, 1946 issue of Life explains movie censorship of the time. The picture on the first page is a joking example of what couldn't be shown in a movie in 1946. We've come a long way in 65 years, and depending on your outlook, maybe not for the better.
On one hand I believe in censorship. I wouldn't want my grandkids looking at sexually explicit or violent material, but on the other hand I don't believe in censoring what I see or what any other adult sees. I think it's up to us to make our own decisions. Movies, which in the 1960s abandoned an overall self-censoring policy, went to a ratings system. It doesn't censor, but doesn't always work in what I think is a logical fashion. It's constantly being tinkered with, and I think it has to do with whomever is sitting on the ratings board and their interpretation.
I find violence much more distasteful than sex, and I always wonder why movies like the Saw franchise, with gory tortures, can get an R-rating. It isn't logical to me. I have always wondered why, as a society, we condone violence, making murder into entertainment, and yet sex, which is a legal activity between consenting people of legal age, is relegated to the forbidden.
The article is interesting because of the inroads that sex and pornography have made in the past five or sex decades. It's now widely and instantly available, with no need to hang out at sleazy adult bookstores or XXX movie theaters to see it. The article also shows that for decades Americans were widely, and rightly, viewed as prudish by Europeans, who have a much more adult view of adult activities.
This sexy shave cream ad followed the article on movie censorship. Life magazine was a popular mainstream publication, going into millions of homes where anyone in the family could look at it. Their standards of what was acceptable to be seen by the general public was different than movie standards.
It's Alan Price's birthday today; Alan was one of the founders of the Animals, an important group from the British Invasion during the time of Beatlemania in 1964 and '65.
That's Alan whipping out the incomparable electric organ solo on "House Of the Rising Sun," a huge hit of the day. Unfortunately, his solo was edited from the single played on radio, but you can see it here from a color film of the song.
Eric Burdon is singing lead. The big guy is Chas Chandler, who went into producing music and introduced Jimi Hendrix to the world. The Animals was an all-around great band, with three elements I think keep their songs sounding great even today: Burdon's powerful voice, Chandler's great bass lines, and Price's inspired playing.
Vocally, Price could belt it out, too, as shown in his version of Screamin' Jay Hawkins' "I Put A Spell On You." Price was also one of the first artists to cover the uniquely eccentric American songwriter Randy Newman, here with "Simon Smith and The Amazing Dancing Bear."
I like looking at old magazines for a look at the way we Americans were as a culture, especially in the early half of the Twentieth Century. I found these looks at the future in 1940s issues of Life, made available on Google Books online. An ad asks the reader to, "Imagine Bob Hope on television!" At that time television was right around the corner. Work on bringing television to the public had been going on since the 1920s, but was suspended during the war. The postwar world was ready for television, not just to see Bob Hope.
I believe many people in this country were like my mother, who, bless her, didn't have interest in anything that might be coming down the pike, affecting her future. As she put it, "Television...I didn't know anything about it. Hadn't heard anything about it. Then one day I looked and it was just there."
Television technology of the 1940s is long gone, replaced by digital.
There was a certain optimism to the future in those postwar days. A lot of predictions were fanciful: paper clothes, or personal helicopter/cars zipping us to work (both ideas abandoned, apparently). Rocket ships to the moon were a topic, and that happened. When I was growing up in the 1950s I was impatient for humans to go into space, but didn't think they'd land on the moon for decades to come. Nowadays we have a debate on whether or not to go back to the moon, or what our longterm goals are for space. We use space to do things on earth: communication, weather, spy satellites etc., telescopes to see into the past with light reaching us from millions of years ago, helping our understanding of the universe.
I'd like to see us go back to the moon, or to Mars, but I think it's a way off, and perhaps some private entrepreneurs will find a way to do it cheaper than the government.
Above is a 1946 vision by artist Chesley Bonestell on what a trip to the moon would look like. He was the first artist I remember to draw earth as it would actually appear from space, and not like a classroom globe. His paintings filled me with a sense of wonder. The 1944 Canadian Whiskey ad for the fax machine/Internet/cable news channel television set seems eerily close to what happened 50 years after the ad saw print. Except for printing off our online newspapers "overnight" the ad is pretty close, close enough to call it prophetic. I never saw any of the Internet or communications technology being as big a part of our lives as it has become. But for every postwar prediction of future life that came true in some form or another, there are a hundred that didn't. That's because the predictions didn't take into account the costs, which have stopped many a project in its tracks.
This is the Peanuts daily strip from yesterday, April 15, 2010. It was first published in the early 1960s. It's also part of a synchronistic event. In the strip Sally says she's borrowed a book from the library on Sam Snead. My wife, Sally, and I were talking about Sam Snead on Sunday, while watching the golf tournament.
We weren't talking about Sam Snead, the man, but about an incident from the early years of our marriage. In 1971 we were friends with Hal and Lois (not their real names). They had a 7-year-old boy, Richie. Hal and Lois picked us up on a Saturday night for a date at Shakey's Pizza. On the way to the restaurant Hal stopped and took Richie into his mother's house, where he'd stay for a couple of hours while we ate dinner.
Shakey's was a pizza chain. Live music was played, usually some guy playing a honkytonk piano, while customers sang along. Beer was by the pitcher. Hal and Lois were both testy; they'd been grousing at each other all night over one thing or another. They weren't usually contentious around us, but either one could occasionally flare up. One pitcher of beer between the four of us became another pitcher of beer, and Lois was a bit loaded. The piano player played "God Bless America," and most of the people in the place stood up to sing along. Hal remained seated. So did we. Standing is done during the national anthem, not "God Bless America." Lois, on her feet, yelled at Hal, "Stand up, goddammit!" He said, "I don't have to. You don't stand up for this song."
They got into a shouting match over whether standing during that song was appropriate, and Lois yelled at Hal, "I hope they send you to Vietnam and shoot your ass off!" That was below the belt. Hal wasn't drafted because he had a married father deferment. Hal and Lois bickered during the ride home. Sally and I sat in the back seat, embarrassed by the display. At one point when Lois was saying something to Hal he snapped, "Shut your yap!" A funny expression, just not funny at that moment.
At Hal's mom's house both Hal and Lois went in to pick up Richie. They were in there for quite a long time. Sally and I wondered what was going on. The front door banged open and Lois came running out, followed by Hal. I don't know exactly what happened because it was dark, but the next thing we saw was Lois on the ground, screaming, and Hal standing over her yelling, "THIS AIN'T SAM SNEAD YOU'RE FOOLIN' WITH, BABY!"
Sam...Snead? Sally and I looked at each other in bewilderment. Did he say...Sam Snead? Hal and Lois went back into the house, and a few minutes later they brought out Richie. We drove the rest of the way in silence. We never did learn what Hal meant by invoking the name of golf legend Sam Snead. The closest I could come in my mind was Sam Spade, from The Maltese Falcon, a 1940 movie with Humphrey Bogart.
Every once in a while Sally will say something and I'll respond, "This ain't Sam Snead you're foolin' with, baby!"
Peanuts creator Charles Schulz could have invoked any one of a roster of golf greats, Gary Player, Arnold Palmer, Ben Hogan, et al., but he chose Sam Snead because Snead's name sounds funnier. Schulz could tweak any sort of humorous situation and give it a little extra. I'm not sure about Hal, but maybe in the heat of the moment that's what he was doing, too.
Watching Tiger Woods play at the Masters Tournament--and yeah, I sometimes watch golf on TV--I'm reminded of the cycles of sin, repentance and forgiveness in our society. Tiger, whose indiscretions with women have been getting far too much media coverage, is in the part of the cycle where he's admitted wrongdoing, "gotten help" in a rehab center (for what? No one has said exactly what the help is for. Sex addiction?) and is now back in public doing his job, playing golf. According to what I've seen, so far his return seems to be orderly, even with all the media attention.
Going to the restaurant for a bite. Tiger's restaurant hostess Mindy Lawton.
Every year public figures, celebrities, politicians, religious figures, get caught with their trousers down, and there is a process to go through after the initial scandal. Tiger's public relations blitz has gone into high gear to get his image back to what it was before he was caught prowling about with his groupies. That will be hard, but not impossible. First off, the public is more understanding about this sort of thing nowadays, since we see these stories repeated over and over. Frankly, we're titillated, but we get bored easily, so public attention moves on to the next story very quickly. Time helps.
There's the stage where the bad boy gets professional therapy and help. Tiger did that.
Then he pleads that he has repented of his evil ways. Tiger did that in February in a press conference where he looked so wooden he could have been a puppet. Every word he read from the script sounded like it had been gone over several times by media savvy advisors and lawyers. Despite his stiffness, public contrition is a good thing to help an image.
In Tiger's case, if getting caught was a bogey, then the rehab was a birdie, and the public confession was an eagle. Coming back to golf to cheers and love from his fans is like winning a tournament. It means that in the public's eyes he's gone through the proper steps to allow his readmission to respect.
Well, kind of. He'll still be the butt of jokes, and he'll hate that, but he'll just have to think back to who caused the problem in the first place and he can put the blame back where it belongs, on himself. You can't have the image of being a family man and at the same time be thought of as a superstud with a bimbo in every city. Some celebrities, rock stars, for instance, we expect that. There's no forgiveness or shock there, because that seems to be part of the business. Athletes are a mixed bag. The ones who are married have big problems when they are caught straying, we shrug off the scandal of the unmarried.
I'm thinking of American athletes who've had their images dragged through the briars and brambles of public exposure. Basketball stars Kobe Bryant, rape. Magic Johnson, HIV. Boxer Mike Tyson, a couple of stints in prison for rape and other assorted crimes. Football player O. J. Simpson, murder. In the case of the first two, Bryant and Johnson's images have been fully rehabilitated. Mike Tyson is out of prison and has a so-so reputation. The tough dumb guy, he took too many blows to the head, so he's been more-or-less accepted back to a degree. He's more of a clown, now. O. J. Simpson won a not guilty verdict in court, but not in the court of public opinion, and his image is forever tarnished.
I could go on and on. The most scandalous cheater of all was President Bill Clinton, who got oral sex from an intern. It was all over the news in pornographic detail every day. Clinton went through some of the steps of regaining public respect and it has apparently worked. When he was given the job (with former president George W. Bush) of going to Haiti to oversee aid efforts there was no mention of his past scandals. But other politicians haven't fared so well. When I wrote that the image of John F. Kennedy, legendary for his roving eye, popped into my head, but all his sexual peccadilloes came out long after his death and don't seem to have harmed his image.
The best way for any man--or woman--to avoid the scandal of extramarital affairs is to simply not have them. My other advice is just take the situation in hand, as the old joke goes. Beat off. You'll get that tension out of you and you won't get into mischief and trouble. After all, if you have sex with someone else they can tell on you; you have sex with yourself, well, then...you're the only witness.
Like a couple of hundred million other Americans, in the mid-1990s I was riveted by the story of O.J. Simpson. This former football superstar, then movie actor and television pitchman for Hertz car rentals, was being prosecuted for murdering his former wife, Nicole, and a male, Ron Goldman, who had accompanied her on the night they were killed.
I probably don't have to go through any of the details of this case, and if you're new to it or need a refresher, you can find a good overview of it here.
The book, American Tragedy by Lawrence Schiller and James Willwerth, published in 1996, is the story of the defense of O.J. Simpson, and the subsequent acquittal on the charges of murder. During the time the trial was going on we were bombarded by television and news stories discussing the trivia of the case, what witnesses said what, attorneys on Court TV blathering on for hours about evidence, testimony, blah blah blah. We were so inundated that by the time the "not guilty" verdict was read I couldn't have cared what happened to him. I just wanted it to be over.
But it's been long enough now that I can read about it. Unlike many other white people in America, I really hadn't made up my mind that Simpson was guilty of murdering his ex-wife and Ron Goldman. Nowadays I'd lean more to guilt than innocence, so one of the things I found interesting about American Tragedy is that even Simpson's staunchest supporters on the defense team had a suspicion he was guilty. But their job was to defend him and get him acquitted. The way they did it was to show that the LA Police Department had racist, rogue cops who, the defense claimed, planted evidence.
At the time the country was split into two camps: whites who were sure Simpson was guilty, and African-Americans, who, having had their own problems with the American justice system, were sure he was another black man being found guilty just because he was black. The case hung on the conduct of the police, though, and ultimately the defense was able to plant enough reasonable doubt in the (mostly black) jury that the cops, forensics lab, and prosecution witnesses were all tainted by ineptitude or corruption.
O.J. Simpson walked out of the courtroom with a "not guilty" verdict, but he wasn't found not guilty by most of the people in this country, and I doubt he had a day where he wasn't reminded of it. So his wish to not only be found not guilty but exonerated and win back his status, was only 50% realized.
A few years ago an armed Simpson and some friends broke into a hotel room in Las Vegas, and threatened some people there. Simpson said they had some of his memorabilia illegally and he wanted it back. The incident showed that Simpson, as people had said during his murder trial, was capable of violence. Simpson was sent to prison where he now sits. Read about the verdict here.
Unless Simpson were to step up and confess to murdering his wife and Ron Goldman, or someone else come forward and confess to the crimes to everyone's satisfaction, Simpson will go down in infamy as the guy who got away with murder. I'm sure 100 years from now, like the Lizzie Borden case of the 1890s, the Simpson case will still be the subject of public interest. There'll be books discussing the pros and cons of his guilt. I really believe that one of the most honest and telling books about the whole case is American Tragedy, which shows how little of American justice is actually based on a person's guilt or innocence, but on extraneous factors.
One final thing: at the time of his arrest in 1994, there was a flap over the mug shot of Simpson, shown on the covers of both Time and Newsweek magazines. Time darkened the photo, which made Simpson look more sinister.
I felt the same way when I saw the back of the dust jacket of American Tragedy. I lightened it with my photo editing software, and even so it is a disturbing portrait of Simpson.
My grandkids saw the Easter bunny...or at least a facsimile, a guy in a big bunny suit, at a store last year. They were spooked. To a 2 1/2 and 4-year-old a big rabbit wearing a vest and carrying a basket seemed pretty weird.
When David told them that the Easter bunny would be leaving them baskets of goodies, and they'd wake up to them on Easter morning, their reaction was, "He's not coming in the house, is he?"
David assured them that he'd meet the Easter bunny at the door and the bunny could hand over the baskets without coming in the house.
David called us on Skype this morning. The kids were excited about getting new dresses for Easter, and of course anticipating that Easter basket. Kids find out real quick about how cool it is to get presents on special occasions, but there wasn't any word on how they felt about the Easter bunny coming to call. They're a year older, and more into holidays, but I'm sure they'd still prefer the Easter bunny stay outside and just hand the baskets to their daddy without stepping into the house.
I don't remember a time when I believed in the Easter bunny. Maybe I had a similar experience to my granddaughters, and it was so horrific I've shut it out of memory.
My son couldn't have been more than three when I pulled out an Emmy Lou Harris vinyl LP to play on my stereo, circa 1980. "Pretty girl, Daddy!" he said when he saw the cover.
Emmy Lou, shown here in a 1977 video when she was 30, and in a 2007 video when she was 60, hasn't changed much over the years. Her hair is silver, but her voice is still gold. She gives me goosebumps no matter what she's singing, whether it's a country classic like "Together Again" or a Paul McCartney song, "For No One."
And so you know how I feel about Emmy Lou at 63, she's still a pretty girl.
What a birthday party this would be! Eric Clapton is 65 today, Tracy Chapman is 46, and Norah Jones is 31.
I found a collaboration between Clapton and Chapman, but none with Norah Jones. Clapton has played with just about everyone else on the Legends of Rock list.
Anyway, happy birthday to the three of you, and thanks for the great music.
Curtis Michael Allgier--handsome fella, wouldn't you say?--wants to get married. However, right now he's incarcerated at the Utah State Prison for killing a prison guard in 2007. The guard, Stephen Anderson, 60, had escorted him to the hospital, Allgier got the guard's gun and killed him with it.
Allgier was captured at a local Arby's restaurant. He carjacked a vehicle, led police on a chase, ending at the restaurant. A brave patron wrestled with him and got the gun. Police found Allgier hiding in the office of the store manager.
Allgier and his bride-to-be have been given permission by prison officials to be married on April 20, 2010. That's Hitler's birthday. So a guy with tattoos all over his face and body, including swastikas, a picture of Hitler on his chest, and the words SKIN HEAD tattooed on his forehead, has been given official permission to be married on the White Supremacist national holiday.
The news came out in Paul Rolly's column in the March 26, 2010 edition of The Salt Lake Tribune. I don't believe prison officials realized the significance of that day to someone like Allgier. Let's hope they take note, realize their mistake, and rescind permission. No way should a cretin like Allgier be allowed to have his way on such a day.
My second thought on the matter is, who's the woman dumb enough to marry this guy? The only thing she's got going for her is she never has to worry about him coming home to her. She'll always know just where he is.
The past couple of weeks I've showed you some ads from an 1899 issue of the short story magazine, BLACK CAT. Some of the ads are aimed at vanity, and some are quackery, and for the most part if you spent your money on the products you'd be throwing it away.
That's not true with this 1899 Quaker Oats ad, which promotes a great product, still around, still doing good. I like the advice at the bottom of the ad: "Eat more Quaker Oats, less meat." Still true.
When I was growing up my father was a salesman for the Quaker Oats Company. Their products included, besides Quaker Oats: Mother's Oats (same product, different package), Puffed Wheat, Puffed Rice, and Muffets, which was like Nabisco's shredded wheat, only compressed into a shape that I remember looked like a hockey puck.
For a while Quaker Oats had some promotional products I liked. Muffets, which came several to a box (maybe a dozen), two to a layer, were separated by 3D pictures. Do you know what those were? They were a black and white photograph, usually scenery, duplicated twice on a card. You'd place the card into the holder of a viewer, and then when the viewer was placed in front of your eyes the pictures had a 3D effect. Even in the early 1950s these stereo pictures were old hat. The stereo slide viewer was a product that was popular in a more genteel era, before television or even radio. People would get together and look at 3D photos. Wow. Big night at the Smiths tonight! They have some new pictures of Niagara Falls!
I don't know where we got the viewer. They had probably offered one as a premium: Two box tops and 50¢ or $1.00 gets you a viewer. The closest thing we have today is a Viewmaster, which puts the 3D pictures on a disk.
Some of the other premiums I remember were little Bugs Bunny comic books; they were printed in a format about 1/3 the size of a normal comic book, with one row of panels per page. We had hundreds of those laying around our house, which all got thrown out. Nowadays they're collectible. Who knew? This stuff was just disposible junk in those days.
Mornings I had a choice of cereals, all of which I hated. Puffed Wheat and Puffed Rice, for those of you who have never had the opportunity to taste them, tasted like packing material to me. I had to load a couple of tablespoons of sugar and a half cup of milk just to give them any taste at all. Muffets weren't much better. (Dad called Muffets "Stuff 'em": "Muffets spelled backwards, sorta," he once said in reaction to my quizzical look.)
Quaker Oats itself I didn't get that often, because it meant my mother had to fix it on the stove, and since she usually ran late, meant she didn't have time to prepare it before taking us to school.
Dad traveled every other week; he'd go to adjacent states, stay in motels; the life of a traveling salesman! When he was out of town I'd bug my mom until she bought us Cheerios, or Sugar Corn Pops, which had really cool premiums I wanted. Mom would hide those boxes in the pantry and occasionally Dad would find one of them, because we couldn't eat a whole box of Cheerios in the five days he was on the road. "What the hell is this box of Cheerios doing here? We have a whole house full of perfectly good cereal!" OK, Dad, define "good."
Now, almost 60 years later, most mornings I have a bowl of Quaker Oats. It's the instant kind; I fix it in the microwave oven because I can't be bothered to fix it the old fashioned way. I don't even have the excuse my mom had by being late. Mom used to say, "It sticks to your ribs," which was some old cornball saying meaning it was substantial, and you felt full after eating it. To me, my little imagination clicking away, had thoughts of human ribs with oatmeal adhering to them, dripping off in spots.
Eating a bowl of Quaker Oats every morning will keep you cleaned out. Usually about 45 minutes after eating my morning bowl I'm in the bathroom. Quaker Oats makes me a regular feller, that's for sure.
It's Nick Lowe's 61st birthday today. Lowe, from the UK, is a very important man in various forms of pop rock, including country, rockabilly, punk, new wave...writer, producer, singer.
With Dave Edmunds he was in Rockpile, where they recorded the Elvis Costello song, "Girls Talk." That's Edmunds singing on this version, but Lowe singing on "I Knew The Bride," a song that also featured Edmunds on lead vocal when they were together in Rockpile.
The song Lowe may be best known for in the U.S. is "Cruel To Be Kind." Lowe wrote "What's So Funny ('Bout Peace, Love and Understanding)," which was a hit for Elvis Costello.
Since as we've seen the past few years as our rock heroes age, 60 is no longer any impediment. As far as I know Lowe is still rocking.
People who knew her have nothing but good things to say about 55-year-old Maralee Andreason. She was a "stay-at-home Grandma," after a disability left her unable to work. She loved taking her grandkids to activities, like swimming or the circus. Maralee made friends with everybody.
Maralee made a fatal mistake when she fell in love with an ex-con named Thomas James Valdez, Jr. He had a history of violence. Last year he stabbed her and she needed surgery to repair tendons in her arm and shoulder. Apparently it wasn't enough for her to call off the relationship. A couple of weeks ago in their home in West Valley City, Utah, Andreason died of blunt force trauma and blood loss after being assaulted by Valdez, Jr. He said they had argued.
An argument isn't a reason to kill someone, but to 44-year-old Valdez, Jr., it was his way of dealing with it. Maybe he is proud that he won that argument the best way he knew how. Violence.
You can see by his tattooed face that Valdez, Jr., is someone who has chosen to live outside of society. By inking up his face he is saying fuck you to the rest of us. Valdez isn't a member of a group that tattoos faces for cultural purposes. His tattoos are meant to show his contempt. They are a permanent signal to everyone looking at him that he has something loose upstairs, something that makes him reject the commonplace or acceptable in our traditional society.
It's always been a mystery to me why women stay with men like Valdez, Jr., who have no respect for them and who treat them as punching bags. There are whole bookshelves written about women who find themselves in these intolerable relationships and there are always common markers. Even with the public becoming educated, women being told that they don't need to put up with this kind of abuse, many women every year end up dead because they chose the wrong man.
Valdez, Jr., is certainly that. I'd like to see him spend the rest of his life behind bars for his crime, so that no other woman--if there any women left out there who could stand waking up to that face--would have to go through what Maralee Andreason went through. And of course, there are many more victims than just Maralee. Her whole family is victimized, grieving because they saw this coming.
Why did a nice person end up with someone who abused her, mistreated her, then killed her? I wish Maralee had listened to someone or done something before this tattooed freak got hold of her and ended her life.
A few years ago I saw a teacher aide in one of the schools where I worked who had a terrible disfigurement to her upper lip. Half of it appeared to be burned away, and there had been surgical attempts to repair the lip, but cosmetically it still looked bad. The story was that this lady had gone to a quack who told her she had cancer of the lip, and sold her some compound she applied locally that over time ate her lip away.
If you talked to the victim of quackery, she said, "I had cancer and [the doctor] cured me." She might be disfigured, but she was cured!
In 1899 you could get your cancer cured by the application of soothing, balming oils at Dr. B. F. Bye's Sanitarium in Indianapolis. The ad is in Black Cat Magazine.* I wonder how many desperate people, in pain and with organs being eaten away from cancer, spent their last days at Dr. B. F. Bye's Sanitarium with someone applying useless balms to them. In those days the treatment of cancer was pretty terrible, "knife or burning plaster," according to the ad. Ugh. But nowadays it's probably not all that much better: knife, chemo and radiation, with the attendant side effects and problems. No one ever got better from soothing, balming oils. The only thing they'd do is make you feel better while you're getting rubbed down.
As a side benefit, you can also cure your catarrh, piles, fistula, eczema and all skin diseases at this sanitarium.
That seems to be the hallmark of a quack claim: that their treatment can cure all or any disease.
For instance, these two handsomely mustachioed gentlemen, Professor Weltmer and Professor Kelly, can teach you how to cure others by using their technique of magnetic healing, "that proves that all diseases can be cured." You see, life is a "short space" of time given to us by an "all wise God," who didn't intend for this "short space to be filled with aches and pains." Disease is caused by "humanity and can be cured by human hands." They use the typical quack technique of anecdotal evidence, with real people: "Hon. Press Irons, Mayor of Nevada [Missouri] was afflicted with kidney and bladder problems," and "in one week he was completely restored by Professor Weltner." Mrs. Jennie L. Linch, of Lakeview, Missouri, "was for two years afflicted by ulceration of the womb, heart and stomach problems," but no more. In less than 30 days she was cured by what Professor Weltmer modestly called Weltmerism.
Professor Weltmer would teach you his method of Weltmerism. After all, he's too busy curing people, and he needs to train others to assist in this "noble work."
As if Weltmerism weren't enough, we can also get cured by magnetism. Not only that, but Professor Thos. F. Adkin, of the "New York Institute of Science," claims by "combining three forces, [Adkin] discovered a new force many times more powerful than the old force, called human magnetism." And it can be had from a distance, just like wireless telegraphy. Wonders never cease in the world of quackery. "The results obtained have astonished all who tried it."
Professor Adkin will teach you how to do these long distance miracles. He has "hundreds of Students in all parts of the world. They are meeting with unbounding succcess [sic] and reaping a harvest of money as well as scores of gracious patients."
Well, perhaps I can find something of his method of long distance human magnetism and do it over the Internet. According to the ad, I can make $10 to $20 a day. That kind of money would be worth the risk of spending time in prison for quackery, don't you think?
In the first case I mentioned, the lady with the disfigured lip, the "doctor" was prosecuted, but the victim refused to cooperate with authorities. She claimed the doctor had at least cured her cancer. She had no medical diagnosis, just the word of the quack that she had cancer. So that's the final ingredient for quackery: people willing to believe these fanciful, outrageous and often dangerous claims.
*I've done a another posting featuring this magazine's ads, here.
Terrorist Osama Bin Laden's son, Khalid, claims 30 of his siblings are being held prisoner in Iran.
An Associated Press article from March 16, 2010, says that Khalid is in his twenties. He claims his family is being held under house arrest by the Iranian government, ever since they cleared out of Afghanistan ahead of the American military forces. Well, la-de-da, Bin Laden!
First of all, Khalid, the fact you have 30 siblings is startling enough, until I remembered that your daddy is a polygamist who kept a bunch of wives busy having babies. That happens when you're a rich man with nothing better to do than screw his women and plan the deaths and destruction of innocent people.
Khalid, you complaining little piece of shit, I thought about your papa just a few days ago in the Pittsburgh airport when I was getting ready to fly home. I had to stand in front of a gimlet-eyed security guard who scrutinized my boarding pass and my driver's license. I, and the hundreds of other passengers in line, had to send carry-on bags, jacket and laptop through an x-ray machine so people I don't know can peek at what's in my personal luggage, and to make sure I wasn't carrying any bombs or weapons. Weapons like box cutters, which 19 men, at the direction of your father, sent to kill crew members of airplanes. Those murdering zealots flew those airplanes into the World Trade Center, killing thousands of additional innocents. For no real reason, either, at least none that any sane or rational person can come up with.
After clearing a metal detector to make sure I wasn't hiding any box cutters or pocket knives in my clothes or in my anus I had to collect the stuff that had cleared the x-ray security. While the hundreds of people lined up behind me kept my stress level high I put on my shoes, retrieved my laptop, belt--by this time my pants were falling off and I was doing all of this with one hand gripping my waistband--and reassemble everything just so I could get on a routine flight.
So, Khalid, whilst busily engaged, once again I was reminded that in a perverse way your dad won. Yes, you read me right: Your father, may the camels chew his privates, won. His band of perverted pirates has won, because it has made it necessary for us on the other end to spend billions of dollars of taxpayer money on security, give up our privacy and jump through hoops just to get on an airplane to go anywhere.
Khalid, I've got no love for the deranged, religious, repressive idiots that govern Iran, but if they're keeping you and your brothers and sisters under lock and key somewhere in their country then that's the one thing I think they're doing right. Maybe they'll be merciful and release all of you so you can attend your daddy's funeral after American forces shoot him full of a few thousand bullets.
Every time I go through one of these demeaning security lines at an airport I'll be thinking of you and your siblings, Khalid, and of course, your fucking father.
I just flew in from Pennsylvania, and man, are my arms tired!
Our 10-day visit with my son and his family is over and I enjoyed it. My granddaughters, Bella and Gabby, are 5 and 3 1/2 years respectively, full of energy, sparkling with brains and creativity. Proud Grandpa, eh? Sure am.
I took a picture of one of Bella's drawings because I like to look at kid artwork, and because I noticed she has a pretty good eye for drawing. Bella's pre-school teacher has told my son and his wife that Bella is smart, but I wanted my friend Peggy to look at the drawing. Peggy has been a teacher for about three decades. She's also raised two great kids who are now in college. I figure she could tell me what she saw in Bella's drawing:
"They claim you can tell a lot by a child's drawing, heads proportion to the body, smiling, flowers, sunshine. She's a great artist, and any psychologist would tell you she's very happy and secure with her life."
Well, friendship or not, I believe Peggy would tell me the truth no matter what. She also told me about another little artist:
"Years ago, I had a 5th grader draw a picture of him stabbing his sister. Needless to say I referred him for psych testing...he ended up at in [prison] high school ....weird and scary kid."
That kind of drawing sounds like what I did as a kid. But at least I never ended up in prison.
Bella, Gabby and my son, David, at the University of Pittsburgh.
Bella and little sister, Gabby, have the same kinds of growing pains as every kid, all of the frustrations with having big people tell you what to do all day, every day. But I appreciated the nurturing environment their parents provide for them. The coffee table in the living room is Bella and Gabby's play table, where they can spend hours with their crayons and markers releasing their creative energy. I got a picture of Bella when she didn't know I was looking, caught in the act of drawing.
Bella at the beginning of her artistic career. Mark down that you saw her when!
I'm out of town, and this is a reposting of a blog from May 20, 2006:
My coworker Jeff is given to some sort of hysteria about diseases, disorders, mental and physical. It's something he shares with me. The hysteria, that is. Yesterday while we sat in our breakroom (which in the former hospital where we now work, was once an office used for blood testing) he breathlessly described a brand-new medical phenomenon, damn near the scariest one yet!
When I finally understood what the hell he was talking about, I found out it's a disease that shows in the form of lesions, and feels like bugs crawling in and under the skin. It may have small tentacles grow out of the lesions! It's got lots of other nasty symptoms, too. It's called Morgellons, and right now it's seen in South Texas and in California.
I read the article and felt those bugs crawling under my skin. It's the creepy-crawlies come to life. No one knows what causes this disease, and some doctors even think it's some form of mass hysteria, but the people who run the foundation website www.morgellons.org don't think it's hysteria.
Lots of people worry about weird diseases. The biggest worry right now is probably Swine Flu, the so-called bird flu. Probably the biggest thing about Swine Flu is how the government instills fear into the public by warning of a pandemic, like the one in 1918. I used to like to read about that pandemic and scare the crap out of myself. This is a good concise article from Stanford, and this article ties the 1918 pandemic in with the subject of Swine Flu.
Oh good! More stuff to worry about! I remember my wife and I stewing in our own paranoia juices when our son went to Vietnam in 2003 with his fiancee and the SARS epidemic was in full swing. Well, SARS killed some people in China, Canada, etc., but was probably fairly well contained once the Chinese stopped hiding the fact it was popping up in their country. My son and his future wife were stopped in Taiwan and given medical exams. If they had showed any signs of illness they would have been quarantined. Now I have the same concerns about Bird Flu, should he and his family go back to Vietnam any time soon.
But I have to keep shaking off this sort of thing...there are real risks we face every day. Exotic diseases are real sexy-sounding and get our attention, but other things are more likely to happen to us. Like having a bad accident in a car. Mine happened on December 15, 2005, when I totaled my 2002 Nissan Frontier pickup truck.
I'd been driving for 43 years and had never had an accident. Did I think I was immune? Probably. What I know now is that I won't ever forget the sick feeling of realizing I was going to crash, the airbag hitting me in the face, the smell of the gases from the bags, and the aftermath, a broken sternum. Even with that I got off light! Without a shoulder harness, lap belt and airbag I might have been impaled on the steering column, like thousands of people since cars were invented.
Unfortunately, car wrecks are considered acceptable risks. We take those risks to get to work every day. We feel safe in our cars, even though we can be hurtling down a freeway at 75 mph with nothing but a yellow line and faith separating us from doom. I don't think anyone, except someone who's suicidal, ever gets on the road and figures, "This is the day I'm going to get into a bad crash!"
What's the lesson here? I'd say that bigger risks than getting Bird Flu, Morgellons, dying in a tsunami or having Hurricane Katrina visit your town would be the everyday things we have no fear of: car wrecks, water, industrial accidents, heart attacks (lay off the burgers for a while, chums), cancer...jeez, if you think about what's really scary you won't get out of bed in the morning!
As for me...I think I'll go back to bed and count all of the things I'm paranoid about.
Omigod. Is that a zit on my forehead, or is that a Morgellon's lesion?
I'm on vacation, out of town this week. This is a reposting of a blog from May 12, 2006:
"Awesome" is such an overused word that I don't use it in my daily conversation. Still, there are things that fill me with some awe when I see them.
That's the case with the two paintings I found at a thrift store a few years ago.
There are websites devoted to thrift store art. One of the best I've found is http://www.thriftstoreart.com/ which has some truly oddball pieces.
My additions to the collections of awful (not awesome) art are by the same anonymous artist, who went crazy with an impasto technique. I use the word "technique" but I dunno...I'm not sure that dolloping on 1/2" of paint to build up texture is really a technique, but it makes for some interesting 3D effects.
"Big Pink." Unsigned, undated. 12"x16", oil on canvas.
The first painting is one I call "Big Pink," in memory of The Band, and for the house plopped into the middle of the nicely landscaped yard. The doorless mailbox, incongruously big, lumpy and yawning open, waits for a postman to fill it with some really large packages. Maybe art supplies! The driveway, without a sense of perspective, drops off like a waterfall. I have to give the artist credit for his/her impasto work on the tree blossoms and leaves, which are really built up. Hell, they are sharp! I have to be careful not to cut my fingers on this painting.
"Monster Children." Unsigned, undated. 10"x13", oil on canvas.
This painting I call "Monster Children Playing On The Lawn." Consider these poor deformed creatures, forced to play by themselves in the yard. No faces, misshapen bodies. And their toys? Some sort of shepherd's crooks, two of granddad's canes, or are they golf clubs of some sort, maybe a wood? and what looks like a pumpkin resting on the grass. Maybe they're playing a game named after their favorite band, Smashing Pumpkins, and we are observing them just before releasing their hostilities.
Really bad art has a charm of its own, because its creator is working out some sort of personal vision and has no talent whatsoever to back it up. You gotta give credit for effort, but zero points for execution. Some people who have done outsider art have become famous. I'm not holding my breath that this anonymous artist will ever be drawing crowds at SFMOMA, but I've got to admit the prices on these pieces were definitely right: $1.00 apiece! Easily an awesome bargain.
I am out of town and this is a reposting of a blog I did on May 11, 2006:
A few years ago I found a book at a thrift store. Well, that's not a big deal...I've found hundreds of books at thrift stores. I try sometimes to sell them on eBay. It took me over a year to get around to actually opening this book but when I did out fell this snapshot:
Click on picture to see it larger.
On the back of the snapshot is the notation "Taken in May, 1953. Marlene C. and me. Some gym class!"
I took the picture to my friend Sherry, who works in the school district accounting office.
"Say," I said to her after handing her the picture, "there are a couple of points of interest in this picture."
"There sure are," she snorted.
"First of all, they had some great gym outfits 50 years ago, huh? And then, isn't that Joan, who works down the hall from us in the public relations department? Joan approximately 50 years younger, that is."
Sherry said, "Sure looks like her."
I have to mention we weren't talking about the Marilyn Monroe/Mamie Van Doren/Jayne Mansfield wannabe, we were talking about the gal to her left, grinning her toothy grin, cat-eye glasses on beaky nose. We think it was the lady who had worked with us for years...who had a doctorate, was a teacher, writer, and all around smart lady.
I looked at the picture, again...hmmm. I didn't want to take it to Joan and have her say, "That's mine! I wondered where that was! Give it back to me!" so I never actually asked her if it was her, and if her booby buddy was actually a friend, or if this was someone's idea of a joke; maybe some pithecanthropus high school yearbook editor had posted it in the yearbook under the header, "Who do you think got asked to the prom?"
Over the years I've had some experiences like this. Finding things, I mean. Some mean something, some don't. Sherry's other comment about the picture was, "What's up with the pointy bra?"
What's "up," indeed! Sherry isn't old enough to remember pointy bras, courtesy of Howard Hughes, as we were always told. Nowadays the mechanical engineering on those things is amazing, but in those days it was a little more primitive.
The lady on the left, who we supposed was Joan, retired a few years ago. By my reckoning, if in 1953 she was 17 or 18 as she appears in the picture, she'd be about 70 now, which would certainly be the same age as our Joan.
As for the other girl, well...I hope gravity has been kind to her. Usually what goes up after a time comes down. Maybe I knew her, too, but at 70 wouldn't have recognized her.
As it is, I have this, once a forgotten bookmark, now a great found item, a gem of a snapshot up on a corkboard in my computer room.
I watched the notorious Goldman Sachs gang testify to the Congress. I'm always amazed when I see a well groomed, cleancut group like this, knowing they have committed anti-social acts. All they need are pinstripe suits, black shirts, white ties, and tommy guns. A couple of gun molls would complete the picture.
In the past decade or so we've seen some audacious acts committed by business people, Enron, Bernard Madoff, Goldman Sachs. Not of the men who commit these acts would walk into a convenience store and at the point of a gun order the clerk to give them money. Maybe it's the anonymity of their victims that makes it easier. I think if I were a person who stole, I'd find it easier, more soothing to my conscience, to do it long distance rather than up close. That way I wouldn't have to see the terrified looks of my victims.
