I need to get away from AGW for a day or so. So I thought I’d ruminate briefly on the media hype surrounding what would have been John Lennon’s seventieth birthday today.
It’s been said that if you can remember the sixties, you weren’t there. I was there all right, as a young boy, the eldest child of a growing, suburban, middle-class family. My dad was a sober, hard-working, conservative Catholic public servant, and the Beatles, flower-power, hippies and Woodstock were just things we saw on the evening news on our black-and-white television. Many of my school friends had older brothers and sisters with LP records and posters on their bedroom walls, and my own experience of the zeitgeist of the times came largely from them.
And I remember. I recall as clearly as yesterday the day when, as a first-grade student at our local convent school, the nuns at lunchtime gathered the entire school into the one classroom with a television set. Sitting in the front row, with wide eyes and open mouth, I watched those famous grainy pictures live, as a man in a spacesuit climbed down a small ladder, pronounced a brief, immortal speech and planted the American flag in the soil of another world. I remember watching the Vietnam War every night on television. Gun battles in rice paddies and anti-war protests in city streets. What’s the domino theory, Dad?
Back then, I admired the hippies. More specifically, I envied them. They didn’t have to shine their shoes or cut their hair, they played the guitar, they appeared to answer to no authority, they appended man to every sentence and generally behaved in the sorts of ways that would have earned me and my contemporaries an instant backhander from our parents or teachers. The baby boomers, I concluded, had it made. The ones who weren’t sent overseas to die, anyway.
I’m afraid to tell you my attitude has changed over the decades since. Never knowing the peril of foreign invasion, disdaining history books as political artefacts of their conservative parents, the Boomers concluded all war was immoral, cast their own times into a never-ending now and proceeded to embark upon a life of self-indulgence, drug-taking, sexual abandon and contempt for generations past and to come.
Filling the demographic gap left behind by the blood of recent wars, they found work easy to come by and career paths smooth and easy (and as I can attest, burned many of their corporate bridges behind them to keep out their younger rivals). They convinced themselves that it had always been thus, and always would be. It is a measure of the freedom bought so dearly for them by their parents’ generation that the baby boomers could not even imagine the poverty endured by their grandparents’ generation, and dismissed their own childrens’ futures as something that would look after itself as naturally as they fondly imagined their own to be.
Which brings me to the aforesaid Mr. Lennon. I had a poster of him on my own bedroom wall as a teenager, and held the distinction of being able to play every Beatles song on the guitar. I had just completed my high school final exams when he was shot, and I remember my own granny-glasses-wearing girlfriend at the time crying for weeks afterwards. Death had elevated him into martyrdom.
Musical giant - moral pygmy. Born 70 years ago today.
But the more I read about the bloke, the less he impresses me. Sure, he was a fine singer and songwriter, but being the same age as his son Julian, I tend to hear the truth in his words: the main lesson he gave me was how not to be a dad. Abandoning himself to every excess which fame afforded him, John Lennon, the idol of the age, became in reality a profligate, philandering, drug-addled cad who very nearly joined his contemporaries Janis Joplin, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison as casualties of the self-indulgence of the era. His music remains as a testament to his undoubted talent. But a prophet? Someone give me a bucket.
I don’t mean to throw every individual from that age under the bus. Every negative generalization has its honourable exceptions (like those who’ve found their way to LibertyGibbert, for instance :-)). But folks, it is really any coincidence that the generation who forty years ago proclaimed, if we just throw down our guns and stop fighting, war will be over and we will all live in peace and harmony, are now trying to persuade us, if you just cut your carbon emissions and pay higher taxes, the earth’s climate will cease careering on its catastrophic course, and humanity will live forever in clean-aired fairness?
Al Gore’s generation clearly believes my generation has a very short memory.
As the cynic once suggested, Imagine John Lennon with no possessions.
Be Responsible - Be Free! 
The universe was only available in black and white in the 1960’s, I’m glad colour was invented in the 1970’s. As a mere sprog I barely remember those years.
THE most icnic song from that era…. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WANNqr-vcx0
bb
Grace Slick slept with every male member of that band became addled on drugs and booze says it all really.
Oz if I remember we are nearly the same age and had the anti hippy attitude for me it was Maggie who came down from the mountain to save us all and cleaned house of all the idiots she could find with her right hand enforcer Norman Tebbit. Unfortunately they were followed by the boomers who came into political power and they have brought us Great Depression the sequel.
Hi guys
Never could stand Lennon. Hated the Beatles too! They were just junkie hippies taliking codswallop…..a bit like watermelons really.
It’s so funny that in our day it was paranoid to think one was always under surveillance. Now we accept 24/365 surveillance, indeed embrace it, via the InterNet. As someone put it, Big Brother isn’t watching us, we are watching Big Brother. Any chainsaw maniac can find anyone anywhere and every last detail of their life to do with as they so choose.
This is the legacy and creation of peace and love and dope and entirely ethically unqualified assumption of positions of leadership by us Boomers’ peers. Substance abuse is no longer really a serious crime, it’s a disease now. Being and staying clean makes you the enemy.
The world was taken apart in 1968 with the idea it would be put together again into better form. It’s not happened yet, nowhere near. The solutions provided are worse than the pre-existing problems they were meant to solve, of which AGW is but one small example. The view that all war and thus military training is evil has left us with two consecutive generations of males who are crowding our prisons because they never went to “finishing school for wayward fatherless boys” for two to four years, nor picked up a dual-use military/civilian-sector trade there. IMHO, there was never a women’s revolution, they were abandoned by virtue-free males not equal to the task of discharging their responsibilities to the fair sex, so the ladies are making do on their own quite well, thank you, where and when they have to.
Bankrupt values are finally yielding a bankrupt civilization. The only reason it’s not happened earlier is the invention of the credit cards (and futures trading in energy and non-central bank currency commencing in 1986). With no EZ credit, we would have reached this impasse in 1990 or so.
What is frightening is what blank slates many youth are now respecting right and wrong and the lack of curiosity they possess, but I also don’t wish to put the past on a pedestal because there were many things done then which are not now which were insanely wrong and obviously so even to those who lived with them and perpetrated them.
Three things we weren’t though: fat, lazy nor trapped by our own addiction to diversions and “fun.” Kids and young adults we thought were fat then are acceptably trim by today’s standards. It’s odd to see a young man now with his shoulder wider than his arse unless he is either a policeman, a serviceman or an ex-convict who has had ten years in the prison weight room to refine his muscle tone.
The other thing eerie is how ripped nearly half the people you meet are, and yet you cannot tell they are except by their weight or if you talk to them for a bit and realize “This person is on goofy pills from the doc.”
I wanted desperately to respond to those who stated they hated Lennon. But I thought it might be better if, instead, I got a full night’s sleep lest I suggest that that they probably remained virgins until their late 20s and even then their sisters didn’t enjoy the experience.
Oz,
Another very fine post I think, Lennon was nothing without McCartney and vice versa, they fell in love with two junkies and that was that.
Wrong Icons, I never got the Che T-shirt brigade, he was a murderous thug end of story.
Wrong on social responsibilities and welfare, the Ultimate Peter Pan of the boomers was Tony Bliar – a first class A1 tosser and fanatasist, who decided he was gonna save the world.
There is no doubt the Russians ‘got to’ many of our Socialist Politicians, they didn’t need to do this with Bliar, he was programmed by his loopy (very sharp – yes true) mad, bad and dangerous scouse. badge wearing Marxist engineering wife.
They have all bought into the club of Rome thing and AGW too and some of these mentally incontinent misfits traduced just about all of the major institutions, including the Church.
In Britain, the education system was good, now it is a disaster – unless you can afford school fees.
The baby boomers have kept their hold on power through the ‘old boys network’, buy their offspring houses, arrange jobs for them and the network is maintained, on the left and right, the Socialists have their fiefdoms in the metropolitan and town Councils, the right in banking and very big business. Politics in Britain is now run by the boomer’s sprogs, who all went to Orrrxford and they all booze and gather together and soon enough they found they all think alike – no shit!
Big shit for our nation, they are fucking clueless to a man and woman, this is why they now leave the big decisions to the boys with the real cojones in the EU commission.
Ed.
If it was only one Decade of Hype we might have shrugged it off as some sort of aberration, but we’ve now had almost 50 years of this self-gratification mind-set and it’s altered our DNA, passed on to successive generations.
I always said I skipped my teenage years in the ’60s – I couldn’t understand my peers then and I don’t understand them now.
There’s no doubt I’m seen by many as a Wowser (Aussie slang for someone who doesn’t get drunk, doesn’t gamble, doesn’t own a fistful of maxed out credit cards) but I’m OK with that, same as I was an “outsider” in the ’60s & ’70s when I wouldn’t try drugs and loathed discos and ear-splitting “music”.
Ozboy, you described your childhood impressions.
As a very small child I was always listening-in to the adult conversations around me, and it seemed that their world hinged around…..The War. Everything was Before, During or After the War.
What’s a War?
I asked my Dad and he told me a few of his experiences, nothing untoward there, sounded like a Boy Scout Camp to me – sleeping in bunks in barracks or camping out with your mates. There had to be more to this War business than that.
The other thing often referred to was The Great Depression. It seemed everyone was poor and wore no shoes to school, keeping them only for church on Sundays. It was also the reason we had to eat everything on our dinner plates, to leave good food to waste was disgraceful as “During the Depression….” everyone would have been grateful for it.
Being a child consumed with curiosity I was always asking “Why?” and, as adults in those days weren’t inclined to be very forthcoming (Children should be seen and not heard), I made it my business to find out about these pivotal issues in the world.
I did, and I paid attention and I have remembered.
Somewhere along the way I read that “If we don’t learn from history, we are destined to repeat it” (one of the B&G patrons will remind who said it). George Santayana – Oz I don’t want bare feet except on Sundays and I don’t want to spend years camping out with my mates afraid someone will shoot me.
The Legacy left by the Baby Boomers generation is one that should bring us shame, not think it’s funny to call themselves SKINs – Spending the Kids Inheritance Now as they cash-up for their travel junkets, designer labels, gourmet restaurants and it’s all OK because “I deserve it”.
Really?
Walt as a chain saw wielding maniac I resemble that remark where do you live again.
Blackswan I was fortunate to have a friend whose dad served in Burma and was not troubled by his war experiences and regaled us both with tales of the war and he did not spare the details, mud mules and the Japs being psychotic bastards. My friends aunt dated one of the guys from the dam busters raid.
My own father did his national service at the end of empire and after a few beers we tell us of experiences dealing with the Wogs and even taking pot shots at arab gun runners in Yemen. What stayed with me was how one old ww2 soldier nailed his own hand to a post in Crater in Yemen when the past came flooding back and he went nuts.
My father grew up in the great depression and the war and gave me my work ethic although sadly attenuated now having to work for baby boomer managers with BS ideas about how to run companies. Hard work is not rewarded just ass kissing, no loyalty to employees anymore.
Rant over.
Oh and my missus who understands the Obama care bill as she read it and one of the few whom did the reward for the baby boomers is denial of life saving care for anybody over 55. You try to save granny as a Doctor you get fined no matter if the patient is rich or not. Isn’t socialism wonderful.
Thanks Oz
Dr. Dave says:
October 9, 2010 at 5:46 pm
Hope you slept well.
I loathed Lennon and his ilk, I wasn’t a virgin and my sisters made their own arrangements.
I liked John Lennon and the Beatles (I Feel Fine/She’s a Woman, along with a Kinks single, were the first records I bought).
I’m the first to say that John was an extremely naughty boy though. No dummy, a bit malevolent, a bit malicious. But not as bad as Paul.
Heady, exciting, utterly naive and ridiculous days. Which was how John managed to unleash this unspeakably malevolent and malicious contrivance upon the World:
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be one
Imagine no possesions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will live as one
Now if you really want to unleash Hell on Earth (it for sure won’t be below you), follow that plan.
Sad to say, the UN, and down, are on precisely that course.
I won’t explain exactly why that song is as bad as it is, because the journey involved in finding that out for yourself, is a very important journey.
Suffice to say, as a starting point, the only ‘peace’ humanity ever gets, is the ‘peace’ of the grave.
Morning All. I’m (nearly) back. Last of this seasons visitors gone now – just the clearing-up and masses of laundry to do.
I was born at the end of WW2 ( my dad said they heard I was coming and promptly surrendered) so I can remember arrival of a thing called “teenagers”. Before that we were all just children or young adults and dressed accordingly. Rock-n-Roll burst onto the scene and wiped Frankie Laine and Johnny Ray off, Skiffle came and went, and by the 60’s we were all ready for the influx of new groups but as I recall the Beatles were bigger than all of them (even the Stones). Their music was fun, even my dad liked them (which was probably the kiss of death) and for a few years everything they produced was really good, but gradually they went “weird” as the drugs took their toll, as happens to many musicians. The music was still interesting but somehow not “popular & mainstream” any more, and they all seemed to lose the plot, John more than the rest.
That whole scenario seems to be the story of the “baby-boomer” generation. I was married with 2 kids by the mid-60’s which is my excuse for missing most of them. (Pre-pill generation – we married young!) Loved the 70’s, couldn’t get the hang of the 80’s and worked through them and the 90’s/00’s until we retired a couple of years ago. I look back at society when I was young and compare it with today and feel that while so much today is better, but we seem to have lost a great deal of what made life good. We mouth platitudes about “caring” but we are all really interested in looking after ourselves and it all comes down to Money!!
I can’t quite put a finger on where it went wrong, or whether every generation feels this way, but I do know society’s problems mostly come down to what we learned from our parents.
Sorry – seem to have gone on a bit, and not altogether OT.
Oz – any luck with PayPal yet? Don’t forget to let me know when it’s sorted out.
rastech says:
October 9, 2010 at 7:49 pm
The only Lennon quote to which I paid much attention is “Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans”, and my life experience has taught me that it’s largely true.
For all the times we imagine that we’ve been prudent and have it all “sorted” for our families and our future, some son-of-a-bitch will come along to sort it out for us – like CAGW for instance.
And don’t you love the jargon that goes along with it – Roll with the punches, Get with the program, Get on board, Don’t miss the bus, Get with it – all to absolve the individual of personal responsibility and enhance Group Think.
Come to think of it…….. I’m still astonished that I can walk about with a telephone in my pocket. How could I possibly relate to the modern world?
http://thegwpf.org/ipcc-news/1670-hal-lewis-my-resignation-from-the-american-physical-society.html
Rastech has just posted this on JD. I think it sums up everything that is wrong with the APS (and many more “scientists” organisations.
I was there as an art student. I didn’t understand the Vietnam war. I remember the moon landing of course, in black and white, (and so easier to understand). I remember the riots at Grosvenor square (I was not there) I remember the little red book waving, from China. The concerns about nuclear war. The mods and rockers. Followed by the skin heads and hippies. Concerns about over population and world starvation that worried me. I discovered CO2 (in greenhouses, on Jersey) and believed it would save us, as the extra growth in tomatoes and strawberries was amazing. It could surely feed the world I thought? I read lots of Science fiction short stories, much of it written in the fifties. Hazy crystal ball views of how things would be now. Some of it correct. Some of it wasn’t absurd enough. Most of it assumed we would be further forward in space travel. None of it imagined I would be able to communicate like this now without having to travel at all.
Billy Joel seems to cover quite a lot of “All Our Yesterdays”
Sorry Oz – I know I’m not supposed to embed videos here but I haven’t worked out how to do the other link. Help anyone?
Meltemian
The link you provided will not work for me, Vevo have blocked it on copyright grounds.
It can be seen at the above link.
To prevent embedding, I hope you just have to type something after the link.
NI
NoIdea
That’s strange – I can see my link but yours is blocked to me. Must be different in different countries I suppose.
So I just have to type something after I’ve pasted the code?
Thanks, I’ll give it a go next time.
Meltemian
I thought I would go find the lyrics to the song after hearing it again.
Billy Joel We Didn’t Start The Fire (c) (C) 1989 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT
Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio
Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe
Rosenbergs, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, “The King and I” and “The Catcher in the Rye”
Eisenhower, vaccine, England’s got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye
CHORUS
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it
Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser aand Prokofiev
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc
Roy hn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, dacron
Dien Bien Phu falls, “Rock Around the Clock”
Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn’s got a winning team
Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland
Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Krushchev
Princess Grace, “Peyton Place”, trouble in the Suez
CHORUS
Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac
Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, “Bridge on the River Kwai”
Lebanon, Charlse de Gaulle, California baseball
Starkweather, homicide, children of thalidomide
Buddy Holly, “Ben Hur”, space monkey, Mafia
Hula hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go
U-2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, “Psycho”, Belgians in the Congo
CHORUS
Hemingway, Eichmann, “Stranger in a Strange Land”
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion
“Lawrence of Arabia”, British Beatlemania
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson
Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British politician sex
JFK, blown away, what else do I have to say
CHORUS
Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline
Ayatollah’s in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan
“Wheel of Fortune”, Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide
Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz
Hypodermics on the shores, China’s under martial law
Rock and roller cola wars, I can’t take it anymore
CHORUS
We didn’t start the fire
But when we are gone
Will it still burn on, and on, and on, and on…
NI
NI
Thanks for the lyrics – I remembered a lot of them again when I read them. They read like the story of the world for the last 50 yrs.
I DO like all Billy Joel’s lyrics.
James Lee of the Discovery Channel hostage crisis, Cho of the Virginia Tech massacre, Unabomber, today’s PETA bombers, gyrocopter murderers and building burners, the Weather Underground who burned many university chemistry and mechanical engineering departments on campuses nationwide until Kent State taught them some manners, all were leftards, greentards and are John Lennon’s spiritual fatherless children. Those are the chainsaw maniacs I am referring to, Crownarmourer LOL The more passive aggressive and close-lipped of them are always first in line for the sinecured government jobs, to this day, oddly. As they dominate the medical field, and as those sorts have no problem embracing triage and euthanasia on economic grounds, they will do everything in their power to make Obamacide a “success” by their lights.
I rather prefer the two man manual saws meself, if you can even find one anymore. They work really well if both “operators” are working together. Dad couldn’t stop laughing while watching me and a pal go at it as teenagers in rural Michigan with one.
My take is the USA has become progressively more fragmented and divided along class and income lines than prior to 1968, and that the 68’ers are the most brutal enforcers of that class divide. It’s old money aristos who plunk down from their own resources to aid communities; when they die out, the institutions the aristos founded get taken over by the leftards “carers” who sort out how to mutate these institutions into the monster factories many of them are now, using taxpayer-funded grant money, no less. It is profoundly less livable than once it was, and more rife with the triumph of true inequity.
The civil rights movement was so miserably mishandled by leftist leadership that now it is three times more likely a black man will be unemployed than was the case in 1949, the year of my birth. There is now even a massive black movement which gets no press whatever that totally rejects the leftard 1968 approach which is storefront church-based that exists for no other reason but to accommodate those black families who completely reject the idiot communist tenets of perpetual state dependency; that movement was Tea Party in principle 20 years before the present movement amongst the white community. Syracuse’s former Republican and now Independent mayoral candidate Otis Jennings was a prime example of those ow whom I speak, and he was forced off the map by leftards when the elections came around when he started talking about balancing the city budget through cutting the umbilical cord to Federal and state indebtedness.
The most thoroughgoing campaign of leftard destruction was waged against the churches. If I wanted to have anything to do now with the US Episcopal Church, I would ideologically have to embrace Roe vs Wade, GLBT pink swastika based entitlement programmes, dope and alcohol dependency as diseases rather than as character flaws, the inherent superiority of anyone associated with “oppressed” minority and gender groups, to include Hamas, Hizbullah and the PA, the presumed ethical superiority of leftism in general, and the presumed right of the state to dictate and enforce family law, as well as support the overseas leftard recruitment and support campaigns by missionaries of what comes down to being led by principles of Christian Maoism. I demanded in writing instead that I be excommunicated in 1989 when our local church got a new mutton chop sideburn sporting leftard reverend who was obviously gay, smoked dope, and was deeply affiliated with the anti-war movement.
The other thing which I had not seen prior to Lennonism becoming the state religion was millions of men going to jail and thereby being relegated forever to the criminal class because they made babies they could not afford to raise, yet the money for alleviating this state of affairs did not go toward creating employment and traianing programmes or specialty subcontract manufacturing or service facilities, but instead to creating a massive new police force element de facto entirely devoted to running around in flak jackets with Glocks to collect child support, most often from men who are working yet are staying at homeless shelters (they aren’t homeless shelters, they are divorce shelters) who are paying on homes they cannot visit much less live in for their ex, and are trapped there until their earnings are enough to pay for two living spaces, one for their ex and their kids and one for themselves. I never married or even thought of raising a family when this became the American style family around 1980 or so. It affects millions and millions of American men. If you aren’t making six digits and you are a married man or close to that between you and your wife, one of those places is where you end up eventually for some period in your life. Even if the woman wants to work around it, the state will not let them, as to do so sets an example that is a threat to leftard employment prospects.
This structure of family law is also what is bankrupting our counties and Federal government, and never a word is broached on the subject in the press. You could make from scratch an automobile or machinery parts factory in every county in the USA with the money and resources wasted every year on this zero-benefit taxpayer-leeching social construct. The children which come out of these social arrangements are monsters beyond one’s wildest imaginings. You have only to refer to the Justice Department’s pedo tracking site to see the products of this insanity. Re-introducing a national service draft so that these men are continuously employed at something directly serving their country while paying down this debt would be the better option. You would probably not be surprised to know that during Viet Nam the largest component of married men who enlisted did so as then as now there was definitely not a surfeit of employment options, as the WW II generation nearing retirement were not leaving the workplace fast enough to provide work for the new generation.
This is never addressed by the leftards in the press. It is part of the secret nasty underbelly of American life which leftards control entirely. I do not know how it is in the UK. I would imagine it is worse.
One world. Three chords. America would do it for another twenty years, except fortunately we are running out of money. Interesting times ahead.
Actually, I am profoundly grateful to the leftard greenie-weenies for bringing all this to a head by bankrupting the West with the carbon fraud. It is in effect the tool which makes possible driving the leftards out for good and forever.
The biggest lies are perpetrated by leftard TV entertainment. Re the Simpsons and Family Guy, etc. etc., the number of nuclear families left, but for immigrant families you cannot pry apart with a crowbar who fled societies where the state was master of all, less than 5% of American households are such that the husband works and the wife stays home to raise the kids. If they didn’t have the advertising revenues to cover production, the State would step in to make sure the BS would continue to flow to coat the minds of the American public.
Nuclear families do not exist as a significant part of our culture. They are de facto a threat to the State, so the State has dealt with them accordingly to suit its own purposes. The only reason the State does not criminalize the formation of nuclear families is if they did so, the number of nuclear families would quadruple overnight LOL
Walt: See previous thread, sir.
—
Dave re: liking or not liking Lennon: what’s sex got to do with it? Just wondering.
A few of the people I’ve known with the most questionable judgement were the ones that started early and often.
Interesting posts, all. (Hi Meltemian!)
Gosh this is making me feel quite the spring chicken. I wasn’t even in high school when Lennon was shot, and was even shorter than I am now!
Oz’s point about the easy path to good careers and good money is well made. I have at times, in reading about boomers in their early 20s becoming the head of this or in charge of that, wondered what the hell was wrong with me, until I twigged that of course there was no one ahead to block them and no one coming up behind. Nice work if you can hold on to it for 30 years and keep my generation scrambling. Have you noticed that it’s boomer gurus who tell you that you can have what you want if you visualize it, etc.? Well of course, being (Americans really) of their generation, that’s what their experience has taught them. Rather Garden-of-Edeny and not a situation that can really last, nor does it widely apply. I believe in positive thinking — finding the silver lining — but that doesn’t mean I expect my thinking to conjure up what is either not there or is running away from me! In general I think my generation is more realistic than the boomers because we’ve had to be (children of their divorces etc. — that’s me also). I think that realism may be in decline with the high school generation that my husband is teaching. They simply are not learning enough about the world as it is, and about human nature — the liberal teaching establishment doesn’t want them to — so it will be messy when they have to find out for themselves.
The ecofascists are really frothing over this lmao!
“US physics professor: ‘Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life’ ”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100058265/us-physics-professor-global-warming-is-the-greatest-and-most-successful-pseudoscientific-fraud-i-have-seen-in-my-long-life/
Originally from here:
http://thegwpf.org/ipcc-news/1670-hal-lewis-my-resignation-from-the-american-physical-society.html
Rastech, thanks for the heads-up: I’ve now sent the letter on Delingpole’s to a my non-skeptical scientist friend. I think he should see it. Cheers.
Rastech,
The nice thing is about this unraveling is all other elements of the ecotards’ agendae will be made subject to review as well, including all of the above I listed respecting Lennonism.
http://www.gwpf.org ‘s News page also lists a mountain of other elements of the carbon fraud coming into question and also lists huge budgets already being pulled…right in the UK!
I can’t actually in good faith put it all onto one man, or even on one group: my g-generation were all spoiling to smash anything and everything that seemed somehow twee or harmless because to our g-generation, if it wasn’t edgy, bent, radical, anarchistic and gauntly, fashionably cruel in content, to our g-generation it had no right to continue to exist.
The end result of the leftard cultural transformation process is now (tell me if you haven’t been through this moment) I occasionally receive from often perfect strangers, invariably ex-convict wife-beater dope and alcohol fiends in-recovery divorced skipdebts, lectures on how I must straighten out my life, either while minding my own business in a TarTrucks or most often at lunch at my worksite.
All it takes for leftardism to go kaflutz forever is for the US Social Security Administration cheque-writing mechanism to be disabled for two months. Unlike the recent past, I would hazard a directly informed guess that the clear majority of recipients of taxpayer largesse in this sphere are ex-offenders or current criminals under house arrest.
I don’t see why ex-offenders ought to be eligible for any social benefit at all. It is bad enough that ex-offending or worse, currently detained criminal veterans go to the front of the line for receipt of social benefits. They ought to get nothing for disgracing their uniform as civilians.
It is a clear bribe to prevent a popular revolt by those out to destroy society. Cut off the cowards’ bribes and let’s get it on, please.
The problem with those “do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” times, is that they translated straight into selfishness. Once you got past the ‘caring’ words coming out of peoples’ gobs, the message was clear – it was all about them and screw everyone else. The party would continue for as long and as hard as possible and someone else would pick up the bill. Well, the party ended in drug induced nightmares and the hard times of the seventies. I do love a party but I always know there’s a living to be made on Monday morning.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, anyone whose ambitions didn’t begin at their mouth and end at their genitalia, had to decide whether getting through life was exclusively about them or about other people. BlackSwan nutshelled it a few blogs back, “I choose to give a damn”.
As for Lennon, his murder ended the embarrassment he’d become to the working class background that produced him – sitting on top of a mountain of money lecturing us on how we didn’t need it.
When he was good though, he was good.
Pointman
Dr. Dave says:
October 9, 2010 at 5:46 pm
This isn’t the DT blog.
Pointman
Amanda.
Glad we’ve managed to make you feel young today.
By the way how did you get the M & S socks?
Make a great avatar don’t they!
Hello Mel. For a lady, some Lady Day. Care for a dance?
Pointman
Hi Meltemian. May I ask, where does that lovely fluid name come from? Oughter be a character in some grand tale: the Lady Meltemian. Or is it already?
The socks are all patriotic, in dark blue, red and white, and one of them says ‘England’. Maybe that will be my next avatar!
Pointman, re morality and definition thereof: most people think they are moral. The question is whether one’s morality is truly just or only feels like justice.
Melt:
M&S delivers to the USA now. At long last. I’ve been querying them about it for years.
That’s part of why living in America feels comfier for me now more than ever: most English things are within reach. Except for Bendicks mints and Jacob’s Cornish Wafers. Then I have to ask my mum to send them.
Coal’s winning out, in any event. Here’s the latest from Hatfield:
http://www.energyglobal.com/sectors/coal/articles/Fuel_cell_technology_to_be_installed_in_UK.aspx
D.H. Lawrence would be please LOL
Pleased.
Pointman.
Great music for a smooch…… I also do a mean samba!
I have the dubious honour of once doing a Paso-Doble on “Come Dancing”. I don’t often own up to that though.
Amanda says:
October 10, 2010 at 4:43 am
If whatever you’re doing is costing you, then it’s probably moral …
Pointman
Amanda.
Glad you like the name.
My house here is called “Villa Meltemi”, we chose the name as the meltemi is one of the Greek winds from the north which is the way the front faces. Lady Meltemian sounds lovely though. I used to be “oldbat” until we all had to re-name ourselves, but I have to admit meltemian is classier.
M & S get everywhere now don’t they, we even have one here.
Pointman, yes I’m sure it *is* moral. What I mean is, what is the content of the morality? Men who stone other men for an infraction of their own rules (i.e. placing themselves as gods above other men under cover of God) are behaving morally. But you and I think that they are immoral. My point is that humans often place a premium on morality without inquiring deeply enough into the basis of their morality, the justification for it, the need for it. They’re so concerned with seeing justice done that they don’t look to see whether their justice is good.
Mel, not quite a Samba (any footage of you cutting the rug on the Internet BTW?) more of a waltz but it deals with a prevailing wind !
Pointman
Oh, what a lovely place to live: Villa Meltemi in Greece! No wonder (apart from your own personal charm) you have visitors flocking in.
Pointman, my dad used to listen to Piaf. That was also in his Barbra Streisand, Nina Simone and Carly Simon phase. I think he was sad, and the ladies spoke to him.
Amanda says:
October 10, 2010 at 5:00 am
There really isn’t such a thing as an absolute morality. It’s all uncomfortably relative and your only hope of being somehow ‘right’ boils down to your own belief. In general, I believe it’s a sin to kill other people but if they are in my opinion , harming others with the best of intentions, then it’s justified. Only time will tell and maybe not even then.
Pointman
You will all be relieved to know there is NO footage available showing me dancing. Too long ago, thank heavens!
Pointman.
You’re right about ‘absolute morality’, it’s always subjective and easier to see rights and wrongs retrospectively. At the time you just have to do the best you can with what you have.
Mel, I’m sure your dad wasn’t sad, he was just enjoying the company of women and he obviously had good taste too. Men singing are … okay. A woman singing brings something else to the table and I’m not quite sure what it is but I like it. They don’t even have to have good voices.
Pointman
Pointman, I’m sure her dad wasn’t sad, either. It was me that mentioned him. :^)
As for bringing something else to the table, you’re obviously a man that likes women. Perhaps that has something to do with it. I love men’s voices (the deeper the better) but not in the same way I like birdsong.
Pointman, when I was little in school, our teacher played Melanie and Cat Stevens for us. She asked whether we had a preference, and — shocker! — the boys all liked Cat and the girls all liked Mel. Including me. Now, of course, you know what my answer would be.
OK…I’m well rested now. I’ve warmed up some leftover sausage and green chili pizza for lunch and I’m in a much better mood. I realize that I spew musical blasphemy all the time. I was never impressed with Jimi Hendrix and to this day do not own a single album or CD of a Hendrix recording. Most of what the Rolling Stones have recorded sucks. Michael Jackson was nothing but an androgynous freak. I’m even amazed that Elvis Presley was such a big star.
I’m not such a John Lennon fan as I am a Beatles fan. Their music defined my youth. People read too much into things. Lennon wasn’t some sort of cultural icon…he was a singer/songwriter and when teamed up with McCartney produced some great songs. The Beatles broke up in 1970 when I was in Jr. High. In December of 1980 I was in San Francisco for a clinical meeting. I was about 6 months away from graduating. One night my pals decided to go out drinking and I chose to stay in the room and catch up on sleep. In the morning they told me about what I missed. John Lennon had been killed so they went from bar to bar and drank and sang Lennon songs. I couldn’t believe it! I felt a strange sense of loss and finality.
Thirteen years later I was attending this same meeting which was being held in Atlanta. I got up one morning and turned the TV news on. I learned that Frank Zappa had died the night before. I decided I needed to stop attending this meeting.
I guess musical tastes are like everything else. My girlfriend hates garlic. To me garlic is the stuff that keeps up alive (along with beer). I love asparagus and Brussels sprouts but I don’t like peas. I’m not even especially fond of Chocolate. I’ve actually met mouth breathing, knuckle draggers who don’t care for pedal steel guitar or bagpipes but think an electric guitar amped up with +13dB of distortion/sustain is the sound of angels.
In the end it doesn’t matter if you liked or disliked Lennon and the Beatles. The Beatles haven’t been around in 40 years. Now I suppose Blackswan is gonna tell me that he always hated Motown…
Amanda, Mel apologies. I’m still in recovery from the party last night. Ended up in the kitchen singing Abba’s greatest hits into makeshift microphones (ladles) with the rest of the maniacs. A few million brain cells bit the dust …
Pointman
Pointman: Did you really? And where was this party, may I ask?
Dave: I understand everything except not liking chocolate. However, I don’t think it’s something that should stand in the way of our friendship. When you tell me that your nurgles are retractable and you’re still communicating with Zorkon, then I may have to reconsider.
Amanda, that was a strange result from the poll. Cat was vacuous and Melanie somehow sang beyond her years. I grew up knee deep in ‘wimmin’ so I managed to grasp life’s subtleties a bit earlier in life. Against you lot, what chance does a mere mortal man stand?
Pointman
Pointman, but don’t you think Cat had some enchanting melodies? I don’t mean the words or lyrics to ‘Wild World’. I mean other ones (not his whole oeuvre). Last time I listened to Melanie I found her icky (‘we bled inside each other’s wound’s and ‘we had all caught the same disease’).
As for mere mortals, fortunately or unfortunately the susceptibility also works the other way around. So has Nature decreed it!
Amanda says:
October 10, 2010 at 5:48 am
Wallawoora, obviously.
Pointman
Meltemian, Amanda….Not like either of you to get comments removed from JD’s blog. What have you been up to?
Hi Fen.
My excuse is that it wasn’t really a removal – I tried to reply to JD’s already removed comment and Disqus had a nervous breakdown.
Amanda was obviously drunk and swearing ……………….
(can I be removed for libellous untruths)
Amanda,
Zorkon hasn’t been in touch in ages. Nurgles set on “normal”…phasers on stun.
Dave
“you think Cat had some enchanting melodies?” – Naw, always thought he was pure elevator music. As for Melanie, I thought she was a good interpreter of other peoples’ music. She was billed as a singer/songwriter but it should have been only singer as your snatch of her songwriting amply demonstrates. Please don’t share any more lyrics like that with me BTW.
I was a Stones man and will always be. Their songs actually meant something to people who lived in the real world.
Pointman
DrDave, as a purveyor and creator of weird crap, with electric guitars turned up way past your paltry 13dB, and being a “mouth breathing” type (I am sorry Miss, I have a cold.) May I be the first to say, that I detest everything I have ever heard described as “Motown” A tune that conveys my feelings…
I must be away to go drag my knuckles… in the meantime DrDave, to quote the great Homer Simpson, don’t quit your day job… whatever that is…
NoIdea
Dr. Dave,
Each to his own Dave, we all of us, can agree some of the time – on many tastes and moods.
Taste is eclectic in Musica, idiosyncratic – yours only, no one else’s, like your retinal print – exclusive to you and the skies reflection in them.
Music, is one of my great safety valves and with it, I find I can release steam and in other moods, cherished memories, some of these I can share but even with my mostest bosom buddies, we argue like spitting cats, till the dawn creeps slowly over the horizon, about or on particular bands and sounds.
Best is, the moment that you are listening to it and you are transported, then transcended.
Great Classical music, can take me round the Universe, no substances necessary – the high is natural.
And, I have always promised myself to listen to more Opera, the magic of theatre and music, human chorus, rolled into one, Lord! Father talked of the spectacle,”e della maestà della Scala.”
One day maybe.
And then there is metal.
Ed.
@pointy,
Last half decent Stones was in 75 and 78.
Ed.
Ed, agreed and it was http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO5d13S1hcw&feature=related
Pointman
NoIdea,
Perhaps I think in terms of electronics too much. A 13 dB gain over output is an eleven-fold increase in absolute RMS power. I’ve got my obligatory Les Paul and Marshall amp as well as a collection of electronical gadgets (distortion, sustain, flangers, reverb, etc). In fact, my favorite electric is a no-name knock-off of a Les Paul made somewhere like Singapore that’s a 12-string. I lost my vintage Telecaster as part of a post-nuptial agreement (along with a few guns). But my favorite guitars remain my trusty Guild D-40 and D-55 acoustics. I’ve been playing guitar for 42 years…and, no, I won’t quit my “day job”…it pays remarkably more.
Hi guys,
Well we are all at least talking about music. Just not John Lennon’s.
Pointman: Don’t please think that I am a Cat Stevens person. I’m not. But I don’t listen to people to be their best musical pals and wear them like a badge (I’m not saying that you’re saying I do; I’m just saying). I like to nibble, not necessarily eat the whole bag. There are times when rai or reggae is the only music that will do, and other times when I just want to hear Wes Montgomery or Oscar Peterson. So if someone said to me, ‘Ewwww, you listen to that?’ I’d have to reply: ‘When the moon is waxing and the orchid is blooming and the cat is grooming on a hot night, yes. All other times, no’.
—
Fenbeagle: Was a comment of mine removed? The cheeky buggers! Also, touchy buggers as all I said today was that we need a P*ss Off Room where we can go to tell the trolls to p*ss off, and then come back to the main discussion. Rather like’s Ed music to blow off steam, except you go into the cedar-panelled rooms and say F off instead. I also, in imagination, provided the room with picture windows and port decanters, but possibly that’s over-furnishing.
room, singular. One P-O Room would be sufficient.
what’s going on?
like Ed’s music. Please edit mentally at will.
Dave: Well that’s all right, then.
Here’s what Msher wrote on Delingpole’s:
Well, we all know amanda – swearing, insulting, libelling, giving away state secrets everytime she posts. Certainly if anyone should be removed, it would be her.
NOT! 🙂
Ooooo, DiB’s going to have company soon in the wilderness …
Pointman
Credit where it’s due meltemian, the original link to the article was from a posting by daveedinburgh. I was so gobsmacked at how explosive it was, I posted sections of it with a link, to help get the maximum number of people to read it.
Hi rastech,
I realised it was originally his post when I read further into the blog.
Whoever started it – it was a terrific find!
Dr Dave ” I’m not even especially fond of Chocolate. ”
I hated chocolate for most of my life.
Then I had La Bomba. A Spanish friend asked if I wanted one, it sounded good at about 5:00 am or whatever later it was, and it turned out to be drinking chocolate with Spanish Brandy in it.
I was immediately hooked.
Amanda,
You would be amazed at the stuff I listen to. I have absolutely no rap or hip-hop and very little metal, but I’ve got nearly every other genre covered. I’ve loved the Grateful Dead since I was 13. I’ve got bluegrass by folks you never heard of. I love Reggae. I even have very old Harry Belfonte Calypso music and 1940’s era college drinking songs. I’ve got all kinds of jazz but I’m partial to the 50s era Miles Davis type of stuff.
Almost anybody, I daresay even NoIdea could find something to suit their taste from my music collection. If people were honest, they would have to admit than a good proportion of the the music produced by even their most favorite artists is crap. Nobody bats 1000.
For those of you who like BBQs (and I seriously do) and are also partial to a dessert, I can recommend barbequed bananas. At first sight, this may appear strange but bear with me on this one. Split them, insert pieces of your favourite chocolate, close them up again, wrap in foil and sling on the grill for a few minutes. A dab of Zambuca also helps. Heaven on Earth.
Pointman
Hi Dave,
Or, if not crap, then not what they appreciate. I think most Neil Young is great even though I hardly ever listen to him these days.
I have absolutely no rap or hip-hop and very little metal Same here. In fact I was put off from buying a favourite rai album because I knew it had a sprinkling of rap in two or three songs. But nothing offensive, it’s just one aspect of the whole cake, so glad I overcame that objection.
Now bluegrass: that’s a stretcher for me. However, I’m a grower, so maybe one day I’ll come to appreciate it.
Pointman, that does sound absolutely heavenly. When you say a dab of Zambuca, you mean in with the chocolate? And what about more than a dab? Over the outside?
Okay so you ARE from Australia or regions thereof.
Don’t worry, babes, I’m not going to come there and carry you off. Heh heh
There are exceptions to most rules.
Personally, I have never heard a song that I did not like by Motörhead.
I have most of their stuff and in my opinion it’s all good.
NI
“A dab of Zambuca also helps”
Agreed about the bananas. *grins*
I bet you would like the red label Vicente Bosch Anise from Spain. Delicious.
Avoid the green label like the plague though. http://iberianature.com/spain_culture/2009/03/15/anis-del-mono/
Spanish Absinthe is something else as well. I had a large quantity of that poured into me by a great Spanish bar crew in Benidorm.
“You MUST try this!” Yeah right, lmao!
Amanda says:
October 10, 2010 at 7:37 am
You’re getting out of control Pandora. Wallawoora is between my ears, where all the important things happen and all the rest is meat. Have some Rai…
Pointman
Interesting, I’d heard that rai was often politically charged, indeed angry…. If I were Muslim I think there would be a lot to be angry about.
Everyone’s Wallawoora is between their ears. And I’m not Pandora, I’m the Priestess. :^)
rastech says:
October 10, 2010 at 7:41 am
Love the pictures in that video. Is Absinthe still banned in France I wonder?
Pointman
As Pointman says, great pictures, Rastech. Where can I get that white outfit with the gold jewellery? I hope those actors had a good shot of Binaca before the close-ups. The guy who’s kneeling was muttering ‘this floor is killing my knees’. Incidentally, one of my two very favourite Shakespeare plays is Antony and Cleopatra (the other is Julius Caesar).
Pure romantic that I am, I’d go for Romeo and Juliet.
Pointman
“Is Absinthe still banned in France I wonder?”
No, it’s very available now, in different grades.
However I still prefer Pastis.
Genius as a word no longer has import. This man has, despite what the pill pusher says.
Pointman
What an odd, strange and confused visual…
Love that picture of Jimi on your link, Pointman.
I also like this one:
A
Hood my unmanned blood bating in my cheeks With thy black mantle
Dr. Dave says:
October 10, 2010 at 5:35 am
“I suppose Blackswan is gonna tell me that he always hated Motown…”
Mo-who?
Jes joshin Doc – ize messin witch yo haid………
What people don’t know abou Jimi was that when he played the following tune, he meant it. He was airborne cavalry and one bad drop and two smashed ankles later, he was jobless but still airborne. Eric Burden of the Animals said he met him in the decade of hype and he was stunned to be talking to a GI. Air cav, thru and thru.
Pointman
Today’s topical word — Science
Would that the Royal Society represented the pinnacle of science as it once did, but now it does not, science is very much in the doldrums like a boat without a sail or a ship without a rudder.
Obvious branches of science.
Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology (Standard school topics)
From these basics we get
Astronomy, Electronics, Medicine, Geology, Aeronautics, Architects and Engineers (These activities are usually based upon University topics)
I have deliberately omitted a number of activities
Particularly Statistics, Computer Science, Economics and Climate Science, since these are the ‘sciences’ which are most in ‘disrepute’
Unfortunately it is the misuse of Computer Science which is the primary cause of this ‘disrepute’, yes the computer/pc in all its various guises which is the basis for bad science.
Each computer system comprises three major elements:-
Hardware – The electronic bits which can be touched and kicked (Very clever science and electronics)
Software – Computer programs and simulators to make use of the hardware facilities. (Sometimes very flaky – Ever wondered why updates keep being required. – Some people get very rich with support updates of firmware and software)
Data – Computers consume data like humans consume food. If the food is contaminated then illness or even death can be the result. In the case of computers the answers are often wrong, illogical and sometimes cause the whole system to crash.
This data problem is correctly described as Rubbish In – Rubbish Out. Clearly if the original data is corrupt then not way can the computed result be valid, the situation is actually much worse however since if the software or particularly the simulation is faulty then the results can equally be rubbish.
Now we come to Statistics, Economics and Climate Science. These three disciplines are based on manipulating data and the use of often flaky models which are often little more than a black art closely related to a fortune teller.
So what is the point of this diatribe? Vast amounts of money have been pored into data collection, data manipulation, software, simulations to make financial predictions, weather forecasts and climate forecasts, using computers to ‘validate’ these results.
In simple terms these results are not worth a row of beans, be it unemployment data, trade data, financial risk, temperature data, CO2 impact etc. since these have all been manipulated for the politicians and the financial suits by the connivance of the bankers and climate scientists.
As others have already recognised the current AGW scam is a swindle of massive proportions exceeding the combined damage of the south sea bubble the Dutch tulips and the Great Depression all rolled into one.
This AGW scam is unwinding
The financial scam is unwinding
Like the computers there is the potential for a massive crash
The CO2 causes global warming model is flawed
The Economic Growth model/solution is probably flawed
How will science, politics and finance EVER be trusted by the population again.
Manonthemoor
Pointman says:
October 10, 2010 at 9:15 am
Speaking of which, Dick Cavett was impressed by it which is why (he said in an interview) he asked this question:
A
NoIdea says:
October 10, 2010 at 8:51 am
Leftards have always seen anyone who disagrees with them in principle as crosses between a physical threat and village idiots, when in point of fact few of them ever sit down and talk with people who politely dissent from their view. It is typical of their capacity for inverted logic to presume that people one normally hires to run a power plant or a factory or a service providing firm which requires bonding and/or a security clearance to be morally reprehensible people.
Don’t forget, NI, everything that’s wrong with your life is Bush’s fault. Everything, including the weather LOL!
NI, do you remember the lyrics to “Working Class Hero?”
A working class hero is something to be,
Yer so f**king stoopid you can’t even see….
My, how people forget their roots and heritage. Wonder if John went to those folks in the UK to research and create a family crest and “history” for when he would eventually get knighted? Barnett’s is it? Thought it started with an H, though.
Some interviewer should ask Yoko about that, or better yet Sean. I bet Sean could produce the research doc’s.
Thet’s awl the aristos talk about in C-ville. “Ah’m related to General Crispus Aloysius Beaugoober who done fit at the Battle of Twisted Hemmorhoids Creek in 1863…” and all that bilge.
Two busgers just broke into “Dueling Banjos” to amuse the Mall crowd and got some donations, lots of giggles and a couple of “Y’all quit that raht now!” type of joshingly friendly remarks en passant.
Mmmmm Shakespeare, I like. The Tempest, is stunning.
“O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!…”
Says it all really. 😉
“Joshing” is a wonderful verb. I thought it had passed into oblivion, like pushing a sabre strike away with your hand. There’s hope after all.
Pointman
New AGW post here. Those who want to go on discussing the sixties can stay on this thread. And given the topic, I’ll relax the YouTube rule for this thread and push the Juke box out into the front bar.
Cheers
Oz
Pointman says:
October 10, 2010 at 8:02 am
pointy,
Always (personally) been able to buy Absinthe in France and Spain, didn’t know it was banned, it was banned in Blighty was it not?
Calvados is the stuff.
Ed.
DiB has just sent me an eMail. Why me Lord,why me?
Pointman
And how the f**k did she get my email addrews.
Pointman
Pointman says:
October 10, 2010 at 10:33 am
Ow did dib get your email?
Aye people watching pointy.
I do know it wasn’t from me sir.
OzBoy,
This is amusing. You can have the most urbane and enlightened discussions of politics, AGW and religion here at the Bar & Grill, but a discussion of music damn near precipitates a bar fight. It’s interesting where folks’ passions lie.
NoIdea,
I don’t know if you’re an analog guy or not but you might be interested in a little project I have. In the basement of my parents’ home I discovered the head to a vintage (circa) 1964 Silvertone Twin-Twelve amp. This amp belonged to my older brother. The fiberboard case essentially fell apart and the speakers were shot and blown years ago. I shipped it to myself. I tore it apart and cleaned it up, replaced a couple of pots and then replaced every tube with new, matched pairs. I even bought replacements for the original 12″ Jensen speakers. I have yet to find a replacement spring reverb for it and I have yet to decide on how I want to rebuild the case, but I have to admit…it sounds real “tubey”. A perfect retro sound. Mostly I’m a solid state, digital or acoustic guy but this old tube amp is gonna be a blast to play around with.
Pointman.
Good point, man, about Jimi being Air Cav. Most folks don’t know that Jimi actually supported the war in Vietnam. Had he lived he would probably be a big USO hit today. Jimi was a great guitarist but he wasn’t “the great virtuoso” he’s made out to be. There were a LOT of innovative and excellent guitar players back in those days…many nobody ever heard of. Jimi’s death was a loss. I wonder what he’d sound like if he were alive today. Equally as tragic were the deaths of Janis Joplin and Gram Parsons right about the same time. One can only imagine the music they could have made in the last few decades.
Blackswan,
I actually can’t stand most Motown. What I like I like a LOT. Lately I’ve found I like a lot more of the Chicago fusion of rock and gospel from bands like Sonia Dada or the Cajun flavored offering of the Subdudes. But we all have our unique tastes. Ain’t nobody “right” in this discussion.
Dave
I consider being contacted by a personage such as DiB an oblique honor. There’s always a faint hope but as a bloke, those pink boots are a worry, I must admit.
Pointman
Pointman:
What did the e-mail say?
Rastech: I have heard great things about The Tempest. Students of philosophy love it; indeed they say it is about philosophy. Haven’t read it yet. Too busy blogging. Oh dear.
Pointman, old bean, I am a bit on the geriatric side and make no bones about it. You ought not to be surprised if the odd archaic phrase (the term “obsolete” is what the new OED uses for words their editorial team decides enable people to express themselves too clearly) sneaks into my syntax.
Even the Merriam Webster from 1980 has words I do not think you shall find ever again to be allowed in today’s dumbed-down parlance. I was once chastised by a parent not to use expressions like “evanescent translucency” in front of her 11 year old as it made her feel stupid.
That ended up another night alone without dinner, but it was worth the cost of delivery of the proper rejoinder while her daughter was there. Erm, I think.
Amanda, they’ve just released a film of it recently. I fink Dame Helen and Russell Brand are in’t, forsooth and verily.
It’s a Disney production, and from the trailer the special effects are stunning.
Is DiB from Quebec? Maybe you should forward on the e-mail to Captain Sherlock.
Dr. Dave says:
October 10, 2010 at 10:40 am
You’re a boring f
aww, that’s probably a bit too insulting for the front bar Pointy – try Crown’s place for that maybe? – Oz
but perhaps I may be misstaken. It’s one of those tricky morality calls …
Pointman
Ahem, I’m not geriatric at all and I use ‘josh’, ‘joshing’, ‘josh’ and even ‘groovy’ quite frequently.
Didn’t think it was anything rare or special, either. Obviously it is in Wallawoora :^)
Bear: Helen looked lovely at the last boring Hollywood awards I didn’t watch. Did see her in her dress, though.
What Dave thinks about Jimi, I think about Eric Clapton. In particular, I’m not impressed by the songs Clapton has chosen to ‘showcase’ his acclaimed ‘virtuosity’ in. Layla — mm, very good, till he stops singing — and even then, hardly a song to take one’s grave. Never understood the adulation.
take TO one’s grave, I mean.
I used to do things before the Internet. Same things I do now I suppose, only more so. What happened? I got connected and now it pulls me like Saruman and the Ring calling from Mordor….
G’day Bored Bear
“anyone who disagrees with them in principle as crosses between a physical threat and village idiots”
Having mostly been regarded in those terms, I’d like to add Humourless, Stick-in-the-mud, Doesn’t know how to have “fun” to those descriptions.
But hey, if our idea of fun, humour, integrity, responsibility and justice is different from Group Think, never fear – we’ll be “edjacated” within an inch of our lives and persuaded to “conform”.
Bear, you said earlier you thought women, especially those left alone with children to raise were doing the best they could – true, and that your gaols are full of dead-beat dads who fail to pay child support or can’t afford to maintain two households – all true.
I think you’re being too kind to many of the women in today’s society. What about the vacuous, self-centred, immature, high-maintenance and predatory individuals who only see men as a meal-ticket, their children as an impediment to “having a good time” and an inconvenient chore?
Women who regarded their stay-at-home mothers’ role with contempt, as domestic drudgery, as not-too-bright, and demanded something different for themselves – at any cost – to anyone.
Oooops, I forgot – we must never speak ill of the “fairer sex”.
It was generally the women of earlier days who kept their families together, maintained the home and hearth in the face of widowhood or desertion, working at often menial jobs to put food on the table and going without themselves so their kids didn’t. Nobody gave them a medal.
What happened to their daughters?
Feminism and Affirmative Action has convinced them they are in control. Someone whispered in their little shell-pink ears and told them they could have-it-all. The penny still hasn’t dropped. Take women out of the home into the paid work force and they pay tax whereas their mothers were just an entry as “dependent” on a tax return. Put some cash (better still, a brace of credit cards) in their pockets and they are a marketing guru’s dream consumer.
As the nuclear family has faded into oblivion (you said 5% in the US and probably the same here) so the fabric that held society together has been shredded. And into the breach steps – the Nanny State. These guys and gals will take care of everything.
And what a splendid job they’re doing. No? Gee, we might have to rethink what constitutes a healthy Society and think of another 20 Questions that don’t begin…
“Who’s yer Daddy?”
Jesus! Pointman. What the hell did I say to set you off? Whatever it was I apologize. Dial back on the caffeine and stop taking those shithead pills.
Books Bear
“another night alone without dinner” – but you were in the best company. Shouldn’t let a sour date stand between you and a good dinner. Was this the same one who kept her affection for kids and dogs?
Early on I made a note to myself – never date anyone with children. Too much “baggage”, before they’d invented wheels on suitcases…LOL
Walt: Blackswan doesn’t know what the lady in question would have to say about it. Neither do I. But fact is — damn her — we’re both on your side.
Amanda says:
October 10, 2010 at 12:24 pm
I know what the lady in question would have to say about it.
There are many people of either sex who feel threatened by anyone capable of stringing more than two syllables together. Instead of grabbing a dictionary, or asking what a word means, they’re too arrogant to acknowledge their ignorance of the language and only feel comfortable when everyone has dumbed-down to the lowest common denominator.
You either conform to the new “wisdom” or you eat solo a lot…lol
Blackswan says:
October 10, 2010 at 11:25 am
You have said what I cannot, but of which I am also a keen observer. I might add it is also a bit thick to think that 40 million women entering the American workforce in peacetime since 1980 would not impact general employment prospects for men. What they’ve done is reserve the quota compliance permanent hires for women and minorities while bringing in temps to do their job for them on a rotating disposable workforce basis.
Temp contract managers and temporary employment agencies are typically owned and operated by women also. Funny that, wot?
Blackswan, if you really want to see the lowest type of monsters the US male has devolved into as a result of this anti-family system, cast a gander here:
http://www.nsopw.gov/Core/Conditions.aspx For zip code just enter 13901, and make up a name. I think you can get in if you have a proxy server activated.
The draft needs to be re-introduced. There is no other option. These monsters have rendered whole neighborhoods uninhabitable.
Amanda, you are so spot on, yes, that was her. I rather prefer my own cooking anyway, thanks. It’s the price of freedom. Anyone who has ever seen my project history generally gets bit angry and says “You can’t have done all that,” and persists in that view until they call around on those jobs.
Anyway, thanks for your support. Let’s see if it all works.
Whoever ran that video “Under Cover of the Night,” that is quite funny and synchronistic. It’s not completely different from what my scope of work is for down here, except I am trying to round up my money, and the crookess is Hispanic. I’m getting too old for this silly stuff. I don’t even have a white suit and a moustache anymore; might grow it back after this. I might have to LOL
I fink I will order some of those truffles, Amanda.
The Net’s not a bad thing. It’s made my rent since 1996.
Back to your lyrics: are there any local bar bands you and Mr. Amanda like? Do you get out at all in that fashion? It might be fun to have some pro’s do your lyrics just for larfs and see if they catch on. I feel sure the right band would be up for it.
I would be looking for a three piece combo with a torch singer up front playing the dinner club circuit, a place with dress codes and a floor for dancing fox trots and sambas and the like. Hispanics are really big on that; they are big on dressing up and going out as married couples to places that are not barracho but rather made for polite and pleasant nights out. Your stuff is nicely suited to a Latin beat, just like No Idea’s. They love lyrics of substance. They can also do their own translations, if they want to or if you ask them. It would be fun, and they may pay you, too, especially if they are AF of M union musicians. Most nice dinner clubs only book union musicians.
Amanda says:
October 10, 2010 at 7:08 am
msher’s comments are bizarre and ludicrous. I think she has been Vulcan mindmelded with silqworm.
Walt, that sounds ominous, dear. I hope you would give the money up as robbed rather than risk your self.
Blackswan. The only way all this will sort out is if the West goes broke yet again, as in the 1930’s. Those of worth shall shine, those of little worth shall rot in ignominy. We’ve had our Roaring Noughties, now it is time for the Weimar Republic Teens.
No hazard, no gain. Erm, Monday I see a local lawyer, too, whom I respect and trust. Old school Virginia, as in “infinite probity” and “Thomas Jefferson’s ghost is looking over his shoulder.”
Old T.J. had his grape orchard hijacked from him, and he almost lost Monticello to other crooks, too, which is also in C-ville. Fightin’ to git yer stuff ba-yak is an olde C-ville tradition. Even Dave Matthews, born and raised in these parts, has been burned purty bad here, on occasion.
Walt, did you note the NOT! Msher put at the end. I respect Msher totally. She is a complete sweetheart, too. She was standing up for me — as she has done before. Msher and I are ‘brothers in arms’.
Pointman, now you see why I left Michigan LOL
Oh, my. I thought you had added that. My apologies, msher1 LOL :>p
That’s fine, Walt, just as long as you don’t lose any body parts in the process :^”
Well, a third of the take if my mouthpiece wins. Still….
I’m sure Msher will forgive you. I do!
You’re a real gent, Walt. And not geriatric at all, if I may say so.
Bear
“You have said what I cannot”
I say what isn’t popular with the Sisterhood – but then I don’t seek their permission or approval.
I’ve seen a lot of good men left thoroughly bankrupt, financially, spiritually and every other which-way by self-serving cows for whom “self” is all.
On the other hand I’ve seen some wonderful women left destitute and abandoned by some self-serving creep for whom “self” is all.
But I don’t discriminate – I’m an equal-opportunity critic of bad behaviour in any group or minority, regardless of gender, race or religion.
Funny thing though – the Sisters who most object to my observations are generally the ones for whom the cap fits most snugly.
Walt, just saw your earlier remarks about Hispanics and clubs. (Have been caught up in the music I’m grooving to.) I have wondered about selling my words/melodies to others, but it always comes back to the same things: 1) I can’t play an instrument (even though I can read music in the rough and, when in practice, could sing from sheet music); 2) I’m a nobody. Also 3) how can you be the one person with the one thing that someone happens to fancy that morning? I’d rather be a success in something else first and THEN say, I’m _____, you know me from _________, and now I’d like to suggest _____.
Amanda, thanks for the kind words. There’s no substitute. No one is nobody, too. Every one has had to brave their own blushes to get their stuff heard or seen. you don’t have to sing, either. Ask the local AF of M union hall if they know someone looking for a lyricist. New bands form every day. Your venue is called, in the business, a “variety show band for dress-code dinner clubs with dancing,” and your target audience is middle class Latino but English lyrics which would translate well into Spanish, Cubano or Castilian. Type it up neatly, copyright them in batches of twenty or so, then go at ‘er.
Besides, it is a great way for you and Mr. Amanda to get out and about for some dancing and to meet new friends, and maybe pick up a new language and culture which is also the wave of one future (not all of the future; I still don’t see immigrants as a threat but more as new friends; um, you’re an immigrant LOL, which proves my point).
Another money-making project could be to do what college grads do when they can’t find work in the States: they go to Japan or South Korea to teach English, not written but how to literally speak the language properly. With a British accent, you wold be in high demand with successful Spanish-speaking immigrants who wish to emulate a more refined version of English. The going rate with Vietnamese in NY State for English teachers is around $25-35/hour.
Go online first and check out English as a Second Language pronunciation course material though. The local library should have tonnes of that stuff. What they want you for is as a live person to be there to correct their diction and pronunciation, read along with them poetry and stories in English, so they get the feel of the form of the language as it rolls off the tongue.
Bear in Graham Greeneland says:
October 10, 2010 at 2:08 pm
I do indeed.
Pointman
Everyone who stayed there mentally is that way. It’s why it is still such a violent and counter-productive state: a complete absence of any identifiable shred of goodwill.
Hello BiblioBear !
on October 10, 2010 at 10:59 am
/// Even the Merriam Webster from 1980 has words I do not think you shall find ever again to be allowed in today’s dumbed-down parlance. I was once chastised by a parent not to use expressions like “evanescent translucency” in front of her 11 year old as it made her feel stupid. ///
(grin)
Remember the most recent ‘niggardly’ affair, a while back ?
Hadn’t laughed so hard in a donkey’s age !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niggardly
(wider grin)
Best,
L’Amerloque
Amerloque,
I just went through the entire Sickopedophiles link you sent above. Amazing. Why would anyone teach school, I wonder.