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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November 8, 2016

After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?

The Feet, mechanical, go round –
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone –

This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –

Emily Dickinson

Do tomatoes scream when sliced?

 

Back in 1948, there was apparently nothing weird about riding across a lake on a motorized surfboard while wearing a nice suit and bowler hat and smoking a cigarette. Forget his lack of safety gear – inventor Joe Gilpin looks cool gliding along on the water.

The 20th century saw many astounding technological innovations. The automobile revolutionized the way people live and work, the internet changed the way people think about information, and the U.S. of A put a man on the moon. But some technological advances that came in the earlier part of the 20th century weren't exactly meant for the history books. Because they were stupid. Take, for example, this M3 sub-machine gun with a curved barrel for shooting around corners. It's the perfect gun for the "shoot first, look where you're shooting later" kind of guy.

You can carry it anywhere and everywhere. Like, office, public washrooms, even in public transport.

Inventor John H T Rinfret demonstrates his anti-bandit bag. To foil thieves the chain is pulled and the bottom of the case falls out so the contents are scattered over the floor. That'll stop those thieves from getting at the contents of your bag! No, wait. It won't.

President of Zeus Corp., Robert L. Stern, smoking a cigarette from his self-designed rainy day cigarette holder.

A woman adjusts her stocking by the light of the Goodyear's illuminated tires. The tire is made from a single piece of synthetic rubber and is brightly lit by bulbs mounted inside the wheel rim.

A man at a shipping exhibition in Olympia, London, demonstrating the ''Laryngaphone, '' a noise-excluding telephone which only transmits vibrations from the vocal chords when the microphone is placed against the throat or cheek. For the man who wants to annoy both his wife and his mistress.
(Blogger's note: not to be confused with Sonovox). http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2016/11/incredible-sonovox-do-not-listen.html

A nanny supervising a baby suspended in a wire cage attached to the outside of a high tenement block window. The cages were distributed to members of the Chelsea Baby Club in London who have no gardens, or qualms about putting a child in a box dangling over a busy street.

American science fiction writer and founder of the Church of Scientology L. Ron Hubbard uses his Hubbard Electrometer to determine whether tomatoes experience pain, 1968. His work led him to the conclusion that tomatoes "scream when sliced."

Can Bob Dylan paint?

Blackbird, fly

Swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim

Pied Beauty

GLORY be to God for dappled things—

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;

And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. 

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him. 

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). Poems. 1918. 

If people are their principles, who or what is Trump?

"Hubbell, people ARE their principles" - Barbra Streisand, The Way We Were. 

I just saw an article - admittedly, from a pretty shallow source, that said we should not unfriend someone "just because they support Trump". You can agree to disagree. Can't you? 

No, personally I can't. If my "friend" were a neo-Nazi, a misogynist or a KKK member, I doubt if they'd still be on my friend list. 

But what a bizarre thing to say! I can understand it under ordinary circumstances - agree to disagree - but these are NOT ordinary circumstances. Not at all. 

Katie is right.

Breast Cancer Awareness Game: HOAX!

I recently saw, from someone who has been a Facebook/actual friend for a very long time, a sudden, dramatic announcement on her status update: WE'RE MOVING TO VERMONT AT THE END OF THE YEAR! This was followed by a ton of comments from her friends: "Oh no!" "Why didn't you tell me?" "I thought you said you'd never leave (your hometown)!", etc. etc.

Then I got a message from her that made no sense at all:

Bahahahaha~~ You shouldn't have liked or commented on my last status! Now you have to pick from one of the below and post it as your status. This is the 2016 Breast Cancer Awareness game. Don't be a spoil sport. Pick your poison from one of these and post it as your status.

1. Just found a squirrel in my car!
2. Just used my kids to get out of a speeding ticket.
3. How do you get rid of foot fungus?
4. All of my bras are missing!
5. I think I just accepted a marriage proposal online?!
6. I've decided to stop wearing underwear.
7. It's confirmed I'm going to be a mommy/daddy.
8. Just won a chance audition on America's got talent!
9. I've been accepted on master chef.
10. I'm getting a pet monkey!
11. I just peed myself!
12. Really thinking about getting butt implants!
13. Just won 700 on a scratcher!
14. We're moving to Vermont at the end of the year!
15. Mayonnaise on Reese's peanut butter cups is sooo good! 

Post with no explanations. Sorry, I fell for it too. Looking forward to your post. Ahhh don't ruin it. (Don't let the secret out). And remember it's all for the 2016 Breast Cancer Awareness." Go Pink!!

This was an invitation to play a kind of Facebook tag, the kind I never participate in anyway. I'm offended by all these kinds of things, but this one. . . The fact that it was somehow (?) connected to breast cancer awareness particularly offended me. It felt as if something incredibly serious was being trivialized. I was given no choice but to be a good sport and go along with it, when it wasn't funny or constructive at all. When I checked this on Snopes, it turned out this sort of thing has been going on for years and years, with variations in the nature of the status posts. The worst of them involved women claiming to be pregnant ("Surprise!"). Not surprisingly, none of this has anything whatsoever to do with breast cancer funding or research, or even (as far as I am concerned) "awareness".

There is a sense that if people are aware of something, it's always a good thing that can only lead to MORE good things. Oh yes? The Kardashians? Donald Trump? Awareness on its own means nothing, and can lead to the kind of endless, pointless blather that is currently choking the internet.

I messaged my friend back and pointed out that this was a hoax, which she denied: she said she had researched it (in other words, she was right about it and I was wrong). Furthermore, she had a friend with breast cancer who loved it, supposedly making it not only OK but (?) desirable and effective, though no donation button existed anywhere. Then she prescribed (presumably, for my bitterness and anger in NOT playing the game)  a favorite self-help book of hers called Loving What Is.  Self-help/acceptance for someone who obviously needed it. The message seemed to be: if I didn't go along with her cancer boondoggle, I must have something wrong with my emotional health.

I cannot really describe the welter of feelings I have right now. I feel condescended to, and jerked around. It just isn't funny, but if I don't play along with it I am a "spoilsport" and don't care about all those suffering women. I wonder if any of her other (baffled?) Facebook friends are having the same reaction, but it may well be the usual Greek chorus thing: "ohhhhh, you fooled me there!" "Oh, I'm so glad you're not moving to Vermont."

The following is an excerpt from a powerful 2013 blog post by cancer warrior Lisa Bonchek Adams.
http://lisabadams.com/2013/10/04/breast-cancer-still-facebook-game/

I will not say she "lost her battle" in 2015, as everyone seems to phrase it. Rather, she lived with her disease as fully and openly as is humanly possible, and wrote magnificently while doing so. I quote her here because nobody has ever said it with more eloquence:

"Once again Facebook games about breast cancer are making the rounds now that it is October. I posted this last year and got some flack from people who thought anything that 'raised awareness' about breast cancer was good and couldn’t understand why I am critical of these messages.

My point is that this isn’t awareness.

There probably isn’t anyone on Facebook who doesn’t know that breast cancer exists. But there certainly is a lot of myth-busting to be done. This is not how to do it. . . There’s a lot of work to be done educating. Education is awareness, these Facebook posts are not.

(There follows a version of the above list of options)

The above instructions are not awareness. This is offensive. Breast cancer is not a joke, awareness does not come from sharing the color of your underwear or your marital status (the whole “tee-hee, wink-wink” attitude adds to my disgust). Even if it ended up on TV, that still would not be educating people about breast cancer they didn’t know before. All it does is show the world that lots of people are willing to post silly things as their status updates.

Just because it says it’s about breast cancer awareness doesn’t mean you have to agree. Go ahead. Ignore it. Or write back and tell them why you don’t want to be included in these things anymore. Another blogger, Susan Niebur, wrote about her take here. She was an astrophysicist, by the way. She died of metastatic breast cancer.

Anyone who has breast cancer and uses your FB status update as an indicator of whether you support their cause is not very enlightened. When I rank 'how to help those of us with cancer,' sharing one of these paragraphs as a status update is the lowest possible method of showing support. There are endless ways to do that. I think it actually is the opposite; sharing these status updates makes people feel they are doing something real for breast cancer causes when they aren’t. (emphasis mine)

I say: count me out of these Facebook games.

I have stage 4 breast cancer and it is no game to me."

LOL, YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE LIKED OR COMMENTED!!!! NOW YOU HAVE TO PICK ONE FROM THESE BELOW AND POST IT TO YOUR STATUS. THIS IS THE 2014 BREAST CANCER AWARENESS GAME. DON’T BE A SPOILSPORT, PICK YOUR POISON FROM ONE OF THESE AND CHANGE YOUR STATUS, 1) DAMN DIARRHOEA 2) JUST USED MY BOOBS TO GET OUT OF A SPEEDING TICKET 3) ANYONE HAVE A TAMPON, I’M OUT 4) HOW DO YOU GET RID OF FOOT FUNGUS? 5) WHY IS NOBODY AROUND WHEN I’M HORNY? 6) NO TOILET PAPER, GOODBYE SOCKS. 7) SOMEONE HAS OFFERED ME A JOB AS A PROSTITUTE BUT I’M HESITANT. 8) I THINK I’M IN LOVE WITH SOMEONE, WHAT SHOULD I DO? 9) I’VE DECIDED TO STOP WEARING UNDERWEAR. 10) IT’S CONFIRMED, I’M GOING TO BE A MUMMY/DADDY! 11) JUST WON £900 ON A SCRATCH CARD 12) I’VE JUST FOUND OUT I’VE BEEN CHEATED ON FOR THE LAST 5 MONTHS. POST WITH NO EXPLANATIONS. SO SORRY I FELL FOR IT TOO!!!!! LOOKING FORWARD TO YOUR POST HA HA.

I realize I take the risk of my friend seeing this and being offended. But if we are real friends, there will be a conversation about it, not just "here, read this self-help book, you obviously need it". I have no idea if she will get anything but positive feedback from her other friends on her baffling, confusing post, and I suppose it's none of my business.

People have pointed out that the "ice-bucket challenge" of a few years ago was gimmicky, too - but I seem to remember it was tied to actual donations of money. I am not "against" all awareness projects, nor am I "against" cancer research. I am not grim and humourless, nor do I believe that breast cancer can never be approached in a light-hearted way.

But there is a difference between light-hearted and goddamn stupid.

Social media, so promising at the beginning, has become a cheap and silly game, and I often wonder why I stay with it. I only opened a Facebook account because I had a book coming out and my publisher required me to do so. Especially during the American election, I've seen comments that made my hair stand on end from people I thought I knew.

It saddens me to say I had to unfollow my friend, and I may have to do more than that because my insides feel like a milkshake. Social media would say, "Don't feel that way" or "ignore it", the good old turn-off-your-feelings advice that has the world on the brink of total meltdown. Or, I guess, embrace acceptance as a way of life and never be angry again.

It's hard to unfriend someone I've known for 30 years. But I don't want to feel this way because of something she sent me. It's my life, and I can feel what I want to - and I will.

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

If you love your country

Husky Loves Blowing Bubbles

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.

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!