President Trump: are you ready for this?

President Trump: the way the bee buzzes

Call this an extreme example of internet strangeness. This is an excerpt (a short one, at that) from something called Vaught's Practical Character Reader. Someone apparently found/scanned this very old and dusty book about - what? Phrenology? That's the assessment of character by feeling bumps on a person's head. So it can't be that. This is more like - well, what IS it? Face-reading? Making stuff up, more-like, based on a whole lot of strange drawings of heads and faces.

So if someone's face is a certain shape, well, good. They're obviously a worthwhile person. If not, get away from them! A woman is plainly a rotten mother because she has a sort of dip or curve in her head. On the other hand, HE would make a good husband because of the shape of his ears.

And if a bee buzzes around your head, you're going to be President.

A number of people in these illustrations have holes in their heads, or what looks like tape wrapped around them. Strange things, words, spring out of the heads of others. Eyeballs sprout out of someone's scalp. Very little is explained, though a lot of it is described as "needs no explanation".

None of this makes a damn bit of sense!

What this does point to however is something we still do, consciously or otherwise. We assess, or, more likely, judge others by their appearance, particularly facially. This usually happens in a split-second, upon meeting someone for the first time. We file away that impression and may stick to it, unless something else dissuades us.

In the case of Vaught's Practical Character Reader (and who is this Vaught, anyway? I don't like the look of this guy), it's all set in stone, unchangeable. Even if the fat man lost weight, he'd still be evil.

We now know that not one jot of this is true. People with big heads aren't evil. People with small heads aren't evil. (Note. Donald Trump IS evil - Ed.) Steam doesn't come out of people's skulls (too often). An "honest head and face" isn't necessarily a perfect oval. This is something that someone made up, perhaps to reassure themselves and/or others that their prejudices were correct.

This last one, not explained at all, has to be the strangest of all, but perhaps it's saying that if you set a bee loose in a room full of politicians, it will make a bee-line to the most suitable candidate. This system is more logical than democracy, or at least yields more favorable results. It might have worked in our favour last night. Instead, we had a stampede of barbarians at the gates, and all was lost for those who live by reason.

By many people's reckoning, this means that racism, a low grumble in a huge part of the world, might just rise to a mighty roar (as it has so many times before in history), unchecked by the counterforce of reason. It's a grim fact that the KKK voted Trump, and celebrated mightily last night.

What does this have to do with an old brown-paged book about face-reading? There is a connection.

The so-called innocent analysis of character by facial features isn't really innocent at all. It led to atrocities such as the dismissal of both Irish and African peoples as basically worthless, of "low type". If you're of low type, obviously you can't hope for anything better (so get away and keep your hands off MY resources).

The Iberians are believed to have been originally an African race, who thousands of years ago spread themselves through Spain over Western Europe. These remains are found in the barrows, or burying places, in sundry parts of these countries. The skulls are of low prognathous type. They came to Ireland and mixed with the natives of the South and West, who themselves are supposed to have been of low type and descendents of savages of the Stone Age who, in consequence of isolation from the rest of the world, had never been (?) competed in the healthy struggle of life, and thus made way according to the laws of nature for superior races.

I don't like what I'm seeing now, I don't like how the White Right just seized back power from the so-called liberals. There's a kind of civil war going on. Maybe we'll be drawing up facial comparison charts again. Or taking measurements of facial features. They did that once, remember? It kind of had something to do with your future. Or lack of one.

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If you love your country

Election hell: we need another miracle

I didn't particularly feel like writing this today. It's a horrible grey day out there, merciless. We just had Halloween, and it freaked out my cat so badly that he's still anxious, with huge eyes. Now it's plain rotten out.

I hate it when something partially comes to me. Yesterday I couldn't remember the name Joyce Carol Oates. I kept thinking of the name Cornelia. I was thinking of another author, Cordelia Strube. . . Another name was Robert Fulford, the Canadian literary critic, and all I could come up with was "Bob".

My mind plays these games with me, chasing itself. Like charades, it will give me one syllable, then two. . . then take them away again. I am reminded of my favorite scene in one of my most beloved movies, Young Frankenstein: "SED-A-GIVE??"

But this isn't a can't-remember thing so much as a CAN-remember-and-can't-find-it. This is rare on the internet. As with Alice's Restaurant, you can get anything you want. At first I thought it was a song by a Canadian group, which would partially explain it.

One of the other songs I couldn't track down was called Africa and was by a Canadian group called Thundermug. Until I found the name Thundermug, I couldn't find it anywhere on YouTube.

This played incessantly all during one summer when I had just left home, so it evokes both excitement and utter terror. Now I realize it must only have been "Canadian-famous" (like Robert Fulford, who may not even be alive any more). It's a unique sound, with all those kazoos and bird calls. For years, I thought the lyrics were, "South Africa, ah-AH-ah." Doing a bit of digging, it turns out to be "LOVE Africa, ah-AH-ah."

Africa

written by Bill Durst and Joe De Angelis

Love Africa (ah-ah-ah)
Beautiful land (ah-ah-ah)
Hot is the sun, cold is the night
You're mine!

Thunder saw savanna
I can look out to the sea, look at me

Live off the land (ah-ah-ah)
Smoke Mashmakhan (ah-ah-ah)
Forests so green, jungles so deep
Sublime!

Up the great Zambezi
Sail the Congo to the sea

You're my father, you're my mother
You're my sister and my brother
You're my friend

Soft rolling sand (ah-ah-ah)
Where life began (ah-ah-ah)
Song of the bird, roar of the beast
Sublime!

???? ???? ??? Turkana
Tanganyika call to me, call to me

------ kazoo solo ------

You're my father, you're my mother
You're my sister and my brother
You're my friend

Love Africa (ah-ah-ah)
Beautiful land (ah-ah-ah)
Love Africa (ah-ah-ah)
Sing coloured man (ah-ah-ah)

Love Africa (ah-ah-ah)
Beautiful land (ah-ah-ah)
Love Africa (ah-ah-ah)
Beautiful land (ah-ah-ah)
Love Africa (ah-ah-ah)
Beautiful land (ah-ah-ah)
Love Africa (ah-ah-ah)
Beautiful land (ah-ah-ah)
Love Africa

These are the only lyrics I can find, and I think there are several mondegreens in them, but it's hard for me to correct them. "Sing coloured man" sounds pretty racist to me, even though it came out in the early '70s. I always thought it was "sin-coloured land", which is more poetic, even if it doesn't make much sense.

But that is NOT what I am talking about now! I am talking about the chorus of a song I heard one billion times on the radio - a long time ago, probably in the '70s when so many cheesy-but-memorable songs came out. ("And honey, I miss you. . . ") It's a gospel number, and over and over again I am hearing the chorus in my head:

Hey Lord, don't you think it's time

Hey Lord, don't you think it's time

Don't you think it's time

We had another miracle

Lord, don't you think it's time 

That's all. No verses. No name of group. But I can hear that spirited chorus singing in four-part harmony, hands clapping, organ playing. I want to find this! I want to hear it again. At first I thought it might have been recorded by a Canadian group, The Bells, who had a few mainstream hits before fizzling out like most '70s groups did. But when I traced it down, it was a different Don't You Think It's Time. There are a lot of songs with similar titles, and none of them are "it".

If I could get the name of the group. . . Until I somehow found the highly questionable name Thundermug, I could find nothing of Africa, because I kept calling it South Africa (which is exactly what it sounds like - a serious mondegreen). So if I could get a little more of it - 

I've tried all the million-and-one lyric sites. Nothing. I've beaten the YouTube bushes, which always seem to yield something up sooner or later, even some pathetic cover with a drunk guy on an out-of-tune guitar.

Yet I hear it, rollicking, spirited - I want to hear it, and guess why?

I think it's time.

I think it's time we.

I think it's time we had.

I think it's time we had another.

I think it's time we had another MIRACLE so we could get through the swamp of horror that is the American Presidential election. My stomach queases, I feel not only downcast but doomed. It just doesn't seem to want to go any way that could be good.

I've had a lot of thoughts. Trump is a cancer on the body politic, no doubt, but what about Hillary Clinton? I think she's tough, astute, and has the capacity to lead the free world. She's more than capable. The email scandal is nothing but blowing smoke. It's a non-story.

But like Nixon in the infamous Kennedy-Nixon debate, Clinton has no camera presence.

This isn't something she can help or change. And I did not fully realize it until I saw Michelle Obama's recent speech - the one that took my breath away.

You know what I mean. Unless you're Republicans, in which case, you may kindly take a hike.

Michelle Obama glows with charisma. Her speaking voice is warm and expressive. She is full of passion. Hillary Clinton's voice - and again, this is not something she can help or change - is rough and monotone. It just has no emotion in it, is almost croaking. She isn't always grim, and some of her facial expressions are quite delightful - but TV is merciless, and insists on a certain kind of vibe, and she doesn't got it. 

Doesn't got it, my friends.

What does Dump-truck have? Nothing, as far as I am concerned. He's just a rich asshole who tapped into something, a seething unrest in a large group of people who felt powerless and saw him as the way out.

Or, The Way. 

I won't say who this reminds me of. I don't have to.

So all this leads back to a rollicking gospel number that I cannot find anywhere. It's as if it never existed. That never happens on the internet. It's all there, always. Even Thundermug was there, for God's sake! I didn't hear this song in church, by the way. No. I heard it on the radio. Over and over and over again. And I want to hear it now, so badly! So, so, so badly:

Don't you think it's time

we had another miracle?

Lord, don't you think it's time?

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My candidate for President (no, really)

 

. . . and his staff. . .