Friday, November 4, 2016
Trump's white trash army
A bullet from the back of a bush took Medgar Evers’ blood
A finger fired the trigger to his name
A handle hid out in the dark
A hand set the spark
Two eyes took the aim
Behind a man’s brain
But he can’t be blamed
He’s only a pawn in their game
A South politician preaches to the poor white man
“You got more than the blacks, don’t complain.
You’re better than them, you been born with white skin,” they explain.
And the Negro’s name
Is used it is plain
For the politician’s gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game
The deputy sheriffs, the soldiers, the governors get paid
And the marshals and cops get the same
But the poor white man’s used in the hands of them all like a tool
He’s taught in his school
From the start by the rule
That the laws are with him
To protect his white skin
To keep up his hate
So he never thinks straight
’Bout the shape that he’s in
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game
From the poverty shacks, he looks from the cracks to the tracks
And the hoofbeats pound in his brain
And he’s taught how to walk in a pack
Shoot in the back
With his fist in a clinch
To hang and to lynch
To hide ’neath the hood
To kill with no pain
Like a dog on a chain
He ain’t got no name
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game.
The day Medgar Evers was buried from the bullet he caught
They lowered him down as a king
But when the shadowy sun sets on the one
That fired the gun
He’ll see by his grave
On the stone that remains
Carved next to his name
His epitaph plain:
Only a pawn in their game
Copyright © 1963, 1964 by Warner Brothers
There were those, back in 1963-64, who felt Bob Dylan was being too sympathetic towards the "poor white man" who was indoctrinated into the ways of hate, so that he became a powerless, easily- manipulated "pawn in their game".
But look at the way it is.
If anyone believes Dylan did not deserve his Nobel Prize, they should LISTEN to the lyrics of something he wrote more than half a century ago.
These lines are eerily prescient:
A South politician preaches to the poor white man
“You got more than the blacks, don’t complain.
You’re better than them, you been born with white skin,” they explain.
And the Negro’s name
Is used it is plain
For the politician’s gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game
If this bellowing tyrant actually wins, will the "poor white" ever reap the rewards they have been promised? Well, what do YOU think? Or are these people, like everyone else Trump engages with, merely pawns in his toxic, terrifying game?
It is depressing to me that after all the hard work of the 1960s, things could be even worse, all progress undone and kicked backwards. But how else would an evil man like this have ascended to gain control an entire political party?
"White trash"/ "trailer park trash" - poor whites, mostly men, mostly down South - are being blamed for this frightening ascendency. But is it their fault? Doesn't the rise of this despot indicate the desperation and powerlessness of his supporters?
But if they think Trump is a remedy for all this, they had better guess again.
Trump exists only for himself, and does not give one good goddamn about anyone who does not further his single cause - which is Donald Trump. The day of reckoning is terrifyingly close, and at this point there is absolutely no getting away from it (and I live in Canada!). His win could be the death of democracy as we have known it. I never wanted to write about this! Never. I try not to let this blog get political, because in the best of times I am almost apolitical. But not now, no matter how much I long to be.
And even if the tyrant "loses", will he go away? He will whip up his ignorant forces with even more vehemence, urging his white trash troops onward to ever more heinous acts of violence, while Trump does not sustain so much as a single bruise.
Only a pawn in his game.
Thursday, November 3, 2016
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
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.
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?
Creepy, creepy stuff
I just realized that throughout my adult life, I kept trying to forget about "Sonovox", the miraculous sound phenomenon of the 1940s. Until just now, I didn't know exactly how it was done, maybe because I didn't want to think about it at all.
But now I just found out.
Here is what it said on a music site dedicated to sound aberrations: "You could make just about any musical instrument 'talk' with Sonovox. The sound of the instrument was fed into two small speakers placed on the sides of the throat. Those sounds were transmitted to the larynx, so that they came out of the throat almost as if they were produced there." Thus if you shoved speakers blasting the sound of a clarinet against your larynx and mouthed the words "scoobie doo", you'd have a "scoobie-doo-saying" clarinet. The miracle of the ages.
I don't know why this didn't seem to bother people then, but the Sonovox produced the most ungodly spectral whining sound. Really, it's impossible to describe, except to say that it is not quite like anything else you've heard, or would want to hear again. The only thing it remotely resembles is the robotic vocal effect of autotune. Most of the instruments don't sound like themselves at all. They just sound weird.
I've been here before, I know I have. I've suffered from Rusty poisoning. This was the recording I was required to listen to ad nauseam as a child, so that I could be indoctrinated into the Joys of Classical Music. I listened to it again recently (for old recordings never die - they just keep getting reissued), and it was, if anything, worse than I remembered. This recording was probably the first widely-known use of the Sonovox, and it became a sensation. Or at least, it wouldn't go away. The different instruments whined and gulped and sounded like bees trapped in a bottle. Most of what they said to Rusty was unintelligible, in spite of the slow robotic way they said it.
I don't know why the people who invented this didn't realize, or perhaps care, that their invention was incredibly creepy and that they would be scaring little children and making it impossible for them to sleep. (Or was it that Civil Defense "this is only a test" thing on TV?)
But to find out that others had used or abused Sonovox - or their listeners - was quite a revelation to me, a painful one, because then I sort of had to listen to some of it. It gave me flashbacks.
This must have been some kind of fad. People must have gee-whizzed over it. There is a talking guitar on YouTube that is so bad, I won't subject you to it here (except for the silent gif above), but people loved it back then. They loved it so much that they completely dropped it a few years later. Disney used Sonovox as the voice of Casey Junior, the circus train in Dumbo, but he only says "all aboard" in a not-too-obnoxious way.
All the same, trains aren't supposed to talk.
(Rusty outtakes)
Rusty: the REAL story!
Monday, October 31, 2016
Sunday, October 30, 2016
Saturday, October 29, 2016
Friday, October 28, 2016
Be my little fruit dove
Before last night, did I know anything at all about the fruit dove?
Did I know there WAS such a thing as the fruit dove?
This is the kind of thing I learn from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology .It's overwhelming, is what it is, because when you decide to study just one variety of one kind of bird, this is what you get. And this list is by no means a complete list. There are some fifty (or: there were some fifty, until mankind in his infinite wisdom wiped them out forever) kinds of fruit dove, and if you want to know more about any of them, just click on the links below.
I made this little gif slide-show to demonstrate just the tip of the iceberg. I'm not going to tell you which fruit dove is shown in each photo, because that would take me all day! But if you're interested - and I swear I did not give two hoots about the fruit dove until last night - this information will get you started.
Species
Dwarf fruit dove (Ptilinopus nainus), Lobo, New Guinea, 1828
Banded fruit dove, Ptilinopus cinctus
Black-banded fruit dove, Ptilinopus alligator
Red-naped fruit dove, Ptilinopus dohertyi
Pink-headed fruit dove, Ptilinopus porphyreus
Flame-breasted fruit dove, Ptilinopus marchei
Cream-breasted fruit dove, Ptilinopus merrilli
Yellow-breasted fruit dove, Ptilinopus occipitalis
Red-eared fruit dove, Ptilinopus fischeri
Jambu fruit dove, Ptilinopus jambu
Oberholser's fruit dove, Ptilinopus epia
Banggai fruit dove, Ptilinopus subgularis
Sula fruit dove, Ptilinopus mangoliensis
Black-chinned fruit dove, Ptilinopus leclancheri
Scarlet-breasted fruit dove, Ptilinopus bernsteinii
Wompoo fruit dove, Ptilinopus magnificus
Pink-spotted fruit dove, Ptilinopus perlatus
Ornate fruit dove, Ptilinopus ornatus
Tanna fruit dove, Ptilinopus tannensis
Orange-fronted fruit dove, Ptilinopus aurantiifrons
Wallace's fruit dove, Ptilinopus wallacii
Superb fruit dove, Ptilinopus superbus
Many-coloured fruit dove, Ptilinopus perousii
Crimson-crowned fruit dove, Ptilinopus porphyraceus
Ebon purple-capped fruit dove, Ptilinopus porphyraceus marshallianus - doubtfully distinct; extinct (late 19th century)?
Purple-capped fruit dove, Ptilinopus ponapensis
Kosrae fruit dove, Ptilinopus hernsheimi
Palau fruit dove, Ptilinopus pelewensis
Lilac-crowned fruit dove, Ptilinopus rarotongensis
Mauke fruit dove, Ptilinopus rarotongensis "byronensis" - extinct (mid-/late 19th century)
Tubuai fruit dove, Ptilinopus sp. - prehistoric
Mariana fruit dove, Ptilinopus roseicapilla
Rose-crowned fruit dove(Ptilinopus regina) from Australia and Indonesia
Rose-crowned fruit dove, Ptilinopus regina
Silver-capped fruit dove, Ptilinopus richardsii
Grey-green fruit dove, Ptilinopus purpuratus
Makatea fruit dove, Ptilinopus chalcurus
Atoll fruit dove, Ptilinopus coralensis
Red-bellied fruit dove, Ptilinopus greyi
Rapa fruit dove, Ptilinopus huttoni
White-capped fruit dove, Ptilinopus dupetithouarsii
Red-moustached fruit dove, Ptilinopus mercierii - extinct (mid-20th century)
Henderson fruit dove, Ptilinopus insularis
Coroneted fruit dove, Ptilinopus coronulatus
Beautiful fruit dove, Ptilinopus pulchellus
Blue-capped fruit dove, Ptilinopus monacha
White-bibbed fruit dove, Ptilinopus rivoli
Yellow-bibbed fruit dove, Ptilinopus solomonensis
Claret-breasted fruit dove, Ptilinopus viridis
White-headed fruit dove, Ptilinopus eugeniae
Male pink-headed fruit dove, Ptilinopus porphyreus
Orange-bellied fruit dove, Ptilinopus iozonus
Knob-billed fruit dove, Ptilinopus insolitus
Grey-headed fruit dove, Ptilinopus hyogaster
Carunculated fruit dove, Ptilinopus granulifrons
Black-naped fruit dove, Ptilinopus melanospilus
Dwarf fruit dove, Ptilinopus nainus
Negros fruit dove, Ptilinopus arcanus - possibly extinct (late 20th century?)
Orange fruit dove, Ptilinopus victor
Golden fruit dove, Ptilinopus luteovirens
Whistling fruit dove, Ptilinopus layardi
Thursday, October 27, 2016
The Robot vs the Aztec Mummy (just the good parts)
For my million and one loyal followers: you're already aware that this blog is extremely gif-heavy. Ever since I learned how to make a decent 15-second gif a couple of years ago, I've decorated my blog with them, watching the action run in perfectly-executed little circles. I particularly like to boil down a movie to its bare essence, and never is this more effective than in the case of poorly-dubbed, low-budget Mexican horror films.
Can you guess which one I have in mind?
Since I'm bringing you just the good parts, and I hope these don't run slow and jerky for you as they do when the net is a little busy (they straighten out after one cycle), I'll need to explain that this movie is about a robot vs an Aztec mummy. It eventually comes down to a cage match between the two of them, and I won't tell you who wins - you'll figure it out, I think. In between all this feverish activity, there is an unbelievable number of reaction shots. People also spend a lot of time tromping through graveyards, but I left most of that out. As with most films in this genre, it's incredibly slow-moving: believe me when I tell you, this really IS the best part of it, and it comes in under less than two minutes.
This mummy kicks ass. This mummy wants revenge. He has come back from the grave to get some goodies stolen from him by some greedy archaeologist (or something like that). Something about a breastplate and bracelet, though who knows why? Must be because he's Aztec and all.
This is an action scene. There aren't that many of them. People fall down a lot, and cover their faces and scream, and one guy gets real scarred up because the mummy touches him (or is it the robot?)
Sorry this one is so long, but this guy kills me! He looks like Orson Welles, or a crazed opera singer or something - and the human heart, which I guess ends up inside the robot, is straight out of Frankenstein. But the special effects are a tad simpler. That old heart just kind of sits there stewing.
This is a great example of endless, tedious reaction shots. I suspect a good many of them are repeated, a common trick in the low-budget horror industry where recycling footage saves cash. It takes forever for the robot to actually DO anything, and until then all we can do is watch a lot of flashing lights.
At last, the beast is on his feet! This is a magnificent construction which appears to be made from a large spray-painted cardboard box and some furnace ducts. I'm still puzzling out why there is a thing like a mail slot in his chest. My favorite part of the ensemble is the remote control, wielded with fiendish glee by The Bad Guy.
This is really unfortunate. It's just some Mexican guy with a serape on, hanging out in the graveyard, and look what happens to him! Orson Welles just pounds on that remote, and look what it makes the robot do. I'm not sure what it does, but like a lot of people in this movie, the Mexican guy runs away screaming.
CAGE MATCH! Here is where it gets good, and it happens in the last two minutes and thirty-eight seconds. The robot is smokin' by now, and is reducing our poor mummy to pulp. Things look pretty grim for the Aztec guy.
But just when you think - ! Once more, the mummy kicks butt! Could there be hidden symbolism here, i. e. ancient spiritual tradition beating out shallow man-made technology? Or is that robot, when you think about it, just a piece of shit anyway?
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
Tuesday, October 25, 2016
Monday, October 24, 2016
Face-meld: I cannot believe this worked!
But never mind all that.
When my novel The Glass Character came out, I was a bit gobsmacked to see the cover. In spite of what the reading public thinks, authors have little or nothing to do with cover art, and the several suggestions I gave my publisher (because they asked me) had been completely disregarded. So I was left with half a green Harold-face with his hair standing up. The hair-on-end picture is almost as iconic (forgive me) as the man-on-the-clock shot, but on my novel it simply doesn't work. I don't think it represents the story very well, if at all. But the novel still holds up, as far as I am concerned, just waiting for that elusive movie deal.
So today I got looking at that half-a-Dylan face, and wondered how it might look put together with MY book's half-a-Harold-face. After all, these are both world-famous images of world-famous men from wildly different times/places.
What did I have to lose? Oh, a couple of hours I'll never get back. But I had to try it!
First I had to split the Dylan face so that it looked like this:
Then I had to convert my book cover to black and white, an easy task. I didn't have to worry about cutting faces in half because my publisher had already done it for me.
Can you see it, is it starting to take shape? But it was not as easy as it sounds. Face-scanning equipment can tell you that even if two faces look similar, features can be totally different in relation to each other. I'd never get an exact match.
But the results surprised me.
Creepy-looking, I know! But take another look at it. The hairline is very close, though it's hard to see under Bob's curly thatch. If Bob bugged out his sleepy eyes a little, they'd align almost perfectly. The nose - just look at how that nose matches up! It's incredible. And the upper lip is so exact that it scares me. I swear I did not retouch this thing in any way, just tried to match photo sizes. The biggest discrepancy is in the jaw and chin. Harold had a sort of leading-man jawline, and Bob does not. His facial features back then were almost childlike. But just look at the rest of it!
So what's the point of all this? I just had to find out what it would look like.
And take a look at this. Since the chin is the feature that matches the least, I decided to crop it out. Now you see the close harmony between eyes, nose and mouth in two men who look not even remotely like each other.
This is a negative of the original cover photo. Here is the same effect with the black-and-white of my cover:
I once had an editor who liked to say, "It doesn't matter what they say about you, so long as they spell your name right on the cheque." And I guess it doesn't matter how bad a book cover is, so long as they can still read your name.
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