Sophianotloren

…this one, perhaps,covered in cover up? A hero soldier dies and his family is told it was “drug intoxication”…when he had never had any history of substance abuse? Is this the latest tack to deny survivors death benefits?

But then we know America really doesn’t give a shit about the military, don’t we?  Nor about veterans, specially pregnant ones.  Yes, why is it always Fucking Texas?

And what is it, a new form of infanticide? To “forget” your child in the car while at work? The first case this month that I saw has only gotten uglier, as it is found that dad was “sexting” multiple females while his toddler died in the parked car; and in addition? He had been visiting websites on “surviving prison” and “childless living” and a video of an animal in a hot car. (Ok, when I stop shuddering over that revelation, I’ll let you know.)

And America has a new religion? What? Worshiping Mammon wasn’t sufficient?

And someone just TRY to tell me that homophobic Utah isn’t emboldened by the “religious freedom” granted to Hobby Lobby, ok? Cause yeah, striking while the iron is hot, much?

And while we are on the topic of love and gender…what do you do when as a parent you don’t know whether to buy blue or pink?  The controversy is rising about intersex children – those born with “unclear” determination of genitals.  What seems unfortunate to me, as a parent?  First, why can’t be some time to see how the child itself acts, and second?  If they are hellbent on doing surgery on a tiny baby, then go with the damned highest hormones at least instead of the likely cheaper surgery of making most of them into girls.  And parents are being LIED to in order to force the rapid decision upon them.  I think operating on wee babies LEADS to issues, sloppiness that causes problems down the road.  (Yes, I know what micro-surgery is, but I have to wonder if the botching-bastards doing these operations do!)

And finally?  I think we need to look at what the fuck we are doing to our planet.  If frogs began having mixed genitalia and we took no notice, when ARE we going to pay attention?  When EVERY baby born is what used to be called hermaphroditic?

Filed under: Politics, Religious Nuts & Bolts, War & No Peace, WTUnholyF? Tagged: death, freedom from religion, gender-assignment surgery, hermaphrodites, homophobia, intersex, military life, murder, nsa, parenthood, SCOTUS, security theater

Click image to enlarge:

 

***

Notes on this collage:

• This was actually one of the first collages I made this year. It’s one of the few where I’ve used a framing sort of technique.
• I almost ran this collage last week but thought it might’ve been early to spring nudity on you. Since this is the third installment of Paper Trumpets (our third date!), I decided that now is the time. I hope you still respect me in the morning.
• I don’t actually use nudity very often in my collages but I would like to find more interesting and evocative ways to use it, such as in the early work of James Gallagher or the punk styling of Linder Sterling.
• The words “Try telling the lady” are straight from an early 60s advertisement. I can’t remember what the rest of the ad said, but it’s interesting to see how the roles of men and women were so stringent in these old magazines. The statement probably ended with something about washing clothes or cooking dinner. I’ve noticed in the women’s magazines of that era (such as Good Housekeeping or Woman’s Own), women are portrayed as less subservient. Their facial expressions vary a bit more. They’re not as smiley and robotic as in the magazines that were also read by men.
• The dudes’ faces are from an advertisement for an insurance agency. Would you buy insurance from them?
• The woman in the coat is from a story on anti-war demonstrations that ran in the Saturday Evening Post. In the context of the images in this collage, the text—the “war”—is about the current battle on women’s bodies.
• I recently took an online collage class with collage champion, Randal Plowman. He’s teaching another one soon. Check it out. I recommend it.
• The featured collage this time around is Kieron Cropper aka CUR3ES, a thirty-year-old collage artist and designer based in Brighton, England who uses analogue and digital collage techniques.​ CUR3ES’s art is inspired by the occult, science fiction, and geometrical shapes. His Society 6 page includes his work on iPhone cases, throw pillows, and shower curtains. He has done a lot of album cover artwork and is a member of Kollektiv Gallery.

Related Posts:

• Paper Trumpets #2: Little Martyr Big Victory
• Paper Trumpets #1: Strange Horizon
• The Beats and Their Women
• Famous Rapes #1: Old Master Paintings
• About That Whole “Men Are Sex Fiends” Thing…

My interest in political-based poetry of American history means I find all sorts of weird stuff, or more accurately, I report on what others have found if I don’t find it myself. Such as this slight bit of rhyme from the papers of forester David Mason. One of the founders of sustainable forestry, Mason was involved in the New Deal attempts to bring forestry into an era that meant something other than rampant exploitation. Anyway, during the era of the National Recovery Administration, before the National Industrial Recovery Act was ruled unconstitutional in 1935, someone wrote this small bit about the lumber code:

“NRA me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord my Code to keep.
If I should bust before I wake.
The AFL my plant will take.”

As it would turn out, it would mostly be the CIO their plant would take, as the International Woodworkers of America would step into the breach, although certainly in some areas, it would be the United Brotherhood of Carpenters. In any case, while timber interests originally had some support for the NRA, it quickly faded once it meant not decimating workers’ lives. And then came the National Labor Relations Act and their world was never quite the same.

This is taken from Rodney C. Loehr, ed., Forests for the Future: The Story of Sustained Yield as Told in the Diaries and Papers of David T. Mason, 1907-1950 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1952). And yes, looking at this sort of thing is what I spend the non-LGM part of my days doing.

A Matisse painting valued at $3 million was returned to Venezuela yesterday, after disappearing from an art museum there at least a decade prior, Reuters reported.  “Odalisque in Red Pants” (1925) was stolen from the Museum of Contemporary Art of Caracas sometime between 1999 and 2000, but its disappearance wasn’t discovered until 2002 because the thieves replaced it with a “crudely executed” fake. The FBI recovered the painting in Miami Beach in 2012, after a man named Pedro Marcuello Guzman offered to sell it to undercover agents for $740,000. Guzman was sentenced to 33 months in prison; his accomplice, Maria Martha Elisa Ornelas Lazo, was sentenced to 21 months.

The work apparently remains in “extraordinary condition” and was brought home to great enthusiasm in Venezuela. “This is another achievement of the Bolivarian revolution, of a government in touch with the arts,” Culture Minister Fidel Barbarito told TV reporters at Caracas airport, where the painting was briefly shown off upon arrival.

I grew up in a household that turned on the evening news every night.  In my household, this habit had died a good while back —back in the mid-nineties when we got online!  But in the 2 1/2 years I’ve lived out in my little Haven, I was often lonely as evening came and I began turning on the news again.  What a difference! And not in a good way.  And I am not alone in noticing the degradation. People cannot make decisions in politics, or about even the minor details of their own lives without good information.  Don’t be taken in, don’t give up on participating in your world.  FIND good sources of REAL information that you need to know.  And never, ever, ever watch Fox News.

Oh, and speaking of media morons? Heavens forfend!  ABC couldn’t be THAT stupid, right?

Oh, and as to need to know, and things the news does not talk about?  How’s about a little rant: What the fuck ARE we good at these days?

Filed under: Life, Media Morons, Politics Tagged: activism, media, politics

No, not of sin, silly!  Oh, wait…well, depending upon how you look at it — and your definition of sin, maybe.

Filed under: Politics Tagged: economy, labor rights, veterans

 

Chemical Imbalance:

Thoughts & Feelings Of A Woman Experiencing The Depletion Of Estrogen.

My thoughts scattered.

A GPS without a satellite.

Being directed to enter and exit from the same on ramp.

This form of travel is unclear, distorted,

and unpleasant.

The road is uneven gravel.

As tires rotate bits of crushed concrete

spew in all

directions.

Disposition of emotions run rabid.

Exhibiting bared teeth,

an accumulation of dripping saliva that emanates into

effervescence, and

varied tones of inflection that escaped as each breath is exhaled.

To warn those around me.

My Mind and Body

are Depleted,

and are being Manipulated by the loss of

Estrogen.

I am over powered by the natural

process of aging.

What happened to that 17-year-old girl?

I feel her maiden within,

yet the mirror reflects

a middle-aged Woman

not yet a

Crone.

Who is this Woman?

Who cry’s for no reason?

Who is over whelmed by the intensity of

heat,

that no one else feels.

Her Mind & Body

deprived from sleep.

She dreams of the past,

fantasizing about her

future.

Trying to accept and embrace

this new phase of

Womanhood.

She lovingly embraces her Loved Ones

and Warns them.

Careful the edges of the eggshells are

sharp and jagged.

I’m trying my best to pick them up as they drop,

except as I pick up one

two drop.

I just want to be Me

Again.

It's time for the Popehat Signal — the call for pro bono assistance for a blogger threatened with frivolous and censorious litigation. This time the victim in need of help is Stephanie Yoder of www.twenty-somethingtravel.com. She needs your help to face a thoroughly bogus and repugnant threat by multi-level marketing scheme "WorldVentures."

WorldVentures: The Would-Be Censor

WorldVentures describes itself as "the world’s largest direct seller of curated group travel, with more than 120,000 Independent Representatives in over 24 countries and we are still growing." WorldVentures associates recruit other WorldVentures associates, and so on and so on, to sell allegedly well-priced vacations. It costs money — up front and per month — to become a WorldVentures salesperson, but if you recruit enough people, your fees are waived. Of course, if you want to go to one of the WorldVentures training events, or get extra business development materials, those cost more. If you go, you will be treated to slick, well-produced, somewhat creepy and cultish rah-rah speeches about how swell WorldVentures is and how it will let you find success.

But other people describe WorldVentures differently. Some press has been unflattering. Bloggers and commentators openly call it a scam or a scheme. The Better Business Bureau gives it a B-.

Complaints are regarding misrepresentation of the promised savings on travel, slow or non delivery of promised refunds and dissatisfaction with customer service. Specifically, customers complain that paying the company fee and following the company business model does not provide promised savings as stated by company representatives. The company resolves complaints by offering refunds or refering to the agreement for explanation. However, customers complain that the refund was delayed or not received. Additionally, customers indicate that they have difficulty contacting the company.

Moreover World Ventures' own documents show that it's a ridiculously bad deal for the vast majority of their "sales associates." Their 2009 disclosures showed that 72.3% of their associates did not earn a commission, about 7.5% earned a mean of about $550, and less than one percent earned more. The median for all associates was a paltry $100. And that doesn't even take into account the associates' expenses. By 2012 the numbers were worse: more than 80% didn't earn commissions and the median income for commission-earners was $40.

On the other hand, there are plenty of blogs out there arguing that WorldVentures is not a scam. If you write a blog post questioning WorldVentures, you will very likely draw a crowd of very enthusiastic, very intense, somewhat off-putting WorldVenture supporters.

That's what happened to Stephanie Yoder.

Stephanie at Twenty-Something Travel: The Target Of Censorship

Stephanie Yoder writes at Twenty-Something Travel, a travel blog. Back in July 2013, after an unpleasant encounter with a WorldVentures marketeer, Stephanie wrote a post about the company entitled "WorldVentures: This Is NOT The Way To Travel The World." Stephanie described her experience with the marketeer, explained her research into WorldVentures, and offered her opinion about this and other multi-level marketing schemes. She did so with links and references to a story in the New York Observer, WorldVenture's own financial disclosure documents, and links to other commentary on the internet.

Two things happened to Stephanie as a result.

First, she got a flood of 248 comments both criticizing and angrily defending WorldVentures (and MLMs in general.)

Second, last week she got a legal threat from Texas attorney Shawn E. Tuma of Britton Tuma. I've uploaded the threat letter here. I hate to overuse the word "bumptious," but nothing else suits. Blustery? Blowhardish? Meh. Bumptious is le mote juste.

Mr. Tuma asserts that Stephanie has published "in graphical form, false, misleading, defamatory and disparaging statements about WorldVentures." Tellingly, Mr. Tuma does not specify a single, solitary false statement. Say the mantra with me: vagueness in legal threats is the hallmark of meritless thuggery.

Mr. Tuma asserts that the post is "misappropriating, misusing, and disparaging [sic] WorldVenture's intellectual property in violation of state and federal law." Once again, Mr. Tuma utterly fails to specify what property he means or how it is being infringed upon.

Finally Mr. Tuma asserts that Stephanie Yoder is "engaging in unfair competition and deceptive trade practices," because a travel blog is totally in market competition with a multilevel marketing scheme. Lawyer, please.

Mr. Tuma finishes with flourishes typical of meritless and malicious threat letters: a scary demand that Stephanie preserve documents, a statement that WorldVentures is not waiving any rights, and a statement that "this communication is without prejudice to any facts," which is totally true but not in the way I think he means it. Mr. Tuma's demand is also typical: one meeelyeeeon dollars. No wait. He demands that Stephanie not only take down her post, but "immediately cease and desist from publishing any further statements or information about WorldVentures in any form."

Ask yourself: why would a legitimate business demand that a post about it be taken down, but not be able to articulate what is wrong with the post? Why would a legitimate business see fit to demand that a blogger stop mentioning them at all? Should you trust such a company?

Tuma's and WorldVenture's claims are transparently bogus. First, Stephanie's post is an excellent example of a protected opinion based on disclosed facts. Guess what: you're allowed to say that you think WorldVentures is a scam and a shitty deal based on 72% of their associates not making money. Tuma's letter does not specify any specific false statements of fact — as any competent lawyer with a genuine claim would — because there aren't any. Second, WorldVenture's ambiguous IP claims are bogus. To the extent that Stephanie uses WorldVenture's name, it's classic nominative fair use. To the extent Stephanie uses a few pictures from WorldVenture's site to illustrate her point, it's classic fair use, just like it was when someone used a video to question the veracity of Ergun Caner or when a business made shirts critical of DHS and NSA.

But there's a difference between rights and realities. We have a system that too often allows bullying plaintiffs to censor speakers using the threat of meritless but ruinously expensive litigation.

There are three ways to deal with that.

One is for lawyers to step up to offer pro bono assistance in defense of free speech, as a dream team recently did in Texas in response to another Popehat Signal.

The second way is for those lawyers to fight for sanctions and attorney fees when censorious thugs like these file harassment suits — as pro bono lawyers just did in Texas. In addition, lawyers must make aggressive use of anti-SLAPP statutes, as they recently did in another recent Popehat Signal case. Texas, where WorldVentures is apparently based and from whence Mr. Tuma hurls his excremental threat, has a very strong anti-SLAPP statute.

You can all help with the third way. It's the Streisand Effect. When a company makes a frivolous, thuggish, vague threat like this, as many people as possible in as many places as possible should hear about it and read about what upset the company. Please do your part.

Lawyers, please consider helping Stephanie. Readers, please consider letting more people know about WorldVenture's threats. As always, potential pro bono attorneys or other helpers, please email me to connect with the victim. As always, you have my gratitude for standing up for free speech.

Popehat Signal: Help A Blogger Threatened By A Multi-Level Marketer WorldVentures © 2007-2014 by the authors of Popehat. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Using this feed on any other site is a copyright violation. No scraping.

….but I sure as hell am going to try very hard.  The Hobby Lobby bullshit is NOT to be “applauded” — and any woman doing so has not informed herself of the true meaning of the ruling.  It was NOT protecting you from “the government in your bedroom” or “the government in your pockets”.  It was PUTTING Christian churchmen in your bedrooms and YOUR tax dollars virtually in THEIR pockets.  Freedom of religion does NOT mean making OTHER folks conform to your religious peccadilloes.  As a woman and as a pagan, I simply cannot repeat this loudly or often enough.

But there is someone who does it so much better than I do…so GO READ a master wordsmith’s message for Independence Day.

Tagged: freedom-from-religion

…if I could.  This cannot be emphasized enough, shouted loudly enough, passed around enough.  ….but I sure as hell am going to try very hard.  The Hobby Lobby bullshit is NOT to be “applauded” — and any woman doing so has not informed herself of the true meaning of the ruling.  It was NOT protecting you from “the government in your bedroom” or “the government in your pockets”.  It was PUTTING Christian churchmen in your bedrooms and YOUR tax dollars virtually in THEIR pockets.  Freedom of religion does NOT mean making OTHER folks conform to your religious peccadilloes.  As a woman and as a pagan, I simply cannot repeat this loudly or often enough.

But someone does it better than I could ever hope to do: sure as hell am going to try very hard. The Hobby Lobby bullshit is NOT to be “applauded” — and any woman doing so has not informed herself of the true meaning of the ruling. It was NOT protecting your from “the government in your bedroom” or “the government in your pockets”. It was PUTTING Christian churchmen in your bedrooms and YOUR tax dollars virtually in THEIR pockets. Freedom of religion does NOT mean making OTHER folks conform to your religious peccadilloes. As a woman and as a pagan, I simply cannot repeat this loudly or often enough. GO READ and pass the word that the Bill of Rights is not to be shat upon by fanatics, as a master wordsmith says clearly and loudly.

Filed under: Politics, Religious Nuts & Bolts Tagged: freedom from religion

This is one of the legs of what I call my “library table”.  I call it that because it reminds me of tables I saw in a tiny old library in a place in Kansas more than forty years ago. It is actually a sort of trestle table. As you can see, it is finished quite darkly.  I bought this some years ago at an estate sale; the woman who had died had been nearly 80 and it was said this belonged to her mother (or aunt?).

I do not refinish antiques or near antiques willy-nilly.  In fact, I hate furniture refinishing enough that I have to be dragged kicking, screaming, and swearing to the cans of solvents, the sandpaper blocks, the steel wool, rags and all.  I was going to ignore this piece of furniture when I moved from Haven back to Big House next month by the same means I had BEEN ignoring its very damaged top — by tossing a pretty Oriental rug atop it and placing a glass almost as large as the entire table atop that.

But no, fool that I am, after I restored the damaged top of my Empire dresser and needing both over-large pieces to share space in a small bedroom?  I realized I have to close the table top — it opens up, you see, to be wider by means of a fold-out center portion.  The side portions were horridly sun faded, water-spotted and a totally different color.  The glass and rug routine would no longer work on the reduced surface area.  And the top was just a shambles.  So strip it I did, thinking it then would be similar in color.  Not so bloody much!

Astonishing, no?  The center is much more the shade of the legs, to be honest.  And it stripped bare with surprising ease, since it SHOULD have had more of the original finish upon it.  The sides — those beautiful red-toned bits that will be the revealed table-top in its soon-to-be new location?  MUCH harder to strip.  I suspect someone beat me to the “fuck-with-the-antique-finish” job.  I can discard my guilt over that, at least.

But now, what to do?  The red tone is so luxuriantly beautiful and the wood grain is lovely.  It will closely resemble the other 1957 U.S. Army chest of drawers I will be refinishing next week and it will be in the same crowded bedroom.  (Maybe I should just get a twin bed and save myself bruised hipbones?) But then again, the Empire dresser, (shown in its last Big House home) will be sharing the same space and it is as dark as the legs (to be cleaned only — not refinished) of the table.  But should I ever have room for this lovely writing table elsewhere and open it, it would be nice if it matched.  I wonder if I could split the difference — put a reddish stain on the center portions and a slightly darker stain on the red sides?

I’ve decided to doctor the mahogany toned chest of drawers when I do it by applying ‘ebony’ to the drawer fronts, while leaving the sides that gorgeous red shade.  Oh, what to do, what to do?!  The chest of drawers decision was eased by the fact that the top of that piece is a heavy dark piece of artificial something, no doubt applied after someone REALLY screwed up the top.  Since it is already as darkly gleaming as the Empire dresser, I may as well play fast and loose.  But oh….the table, the table??  (Take 2)As the brightness of mineral spirits dry, I can see some sanding ahead and that may equalize the color more.  It has a downright peculiar GREEN tone in places now — especially the center section. (Take 3) Greenish tint gone, more of a gray-brown now as it dries.  Oh, sanding, sweating, swearing…

Damn.  Teased and given NO satisfaction!  Why DO men go to strip clubs?

Tagged: antiques, furniture, householding

Being that I’m the kind of person who has his own film school and what-not, I decided to read Esquire’s interview with the now-not-but-soon-to-be-again-retired Stephen Soderbergh. “Could be edifying,” I thought to myself — and it was, especially this passage:

A real litmus test for me is how people treat someone who is waiting on them. That’s a deal-breaker for me. If I were on the verge of getting into a serious relationship and I saw that person be mean to a waiter — I’m out. That’s a core problem. You’re being mean to someone who’s helping you. What is that? Everyone knows who the assholes are, and I avoid them.

Because it’s a funny story, but in the ’90s I actually waited on Steven Soderbergh quite a bit, and if that’s his litmus test, he didn’t pass it. Not even remotely.

Because as memory serves, when Soderbergh was a regular at the used bookstore/coffee shop I worked at, his treatment of me then would’ve been a deal-breaker for him now.

One particularly memorable conversation involved his then-obsession with Ambrose Bierce. I’d placed the special orders for the books myself, so I knew they’d just come in the week before Mr. Ambrose Bierce Expert saw me reading Mason & Dixon behind the counter. He proceeded to excitedly tell me, at length and with some volume, that I was wasting my time reading Thomas Pynchon, because Ambrose Bierce was where it’s really at.

He went on and on and on, enthralled by his own love of Bierce — which, after I became an Americanist and read him, I believe is totally justifiable. But the point is, Soderbergh wouldn’t just have failed his own criterion for the measure of humanity, he would have done so spectacularly.

Which, as a friend on Facebook noted, might be the point. He might have chosen his worst character trait as the defining characteristic of humanity because it’s something he had to overcome, and given the depth of charity to the underprivileged and unvoiced evident in his work, I’m tempted to believe that.

Because as much as I despised him as a patron when I had to deal with him, I can’t help but admire — however begrudgingly — what he’s done with himself in the years since, especially Che.

I know I’m defending the film against an idiot of an ideologue at that link, but even if I had to defend it against Roger Ebert himself, I’d do so with the same vehemence…

…despite how I feel about the man personally. He’s just that talented, damn it. There’s a real humanity to his late-period work, especially in the films that everyone hated because they dealt with unsavory subjects like prostitutes or viral pandemics or Che.

So on behalf of all the baristas and book-store employees he berated before he came to understand this truth as being self-evident, I’m just going to go ahead and forgive him.

You’re welcome, Steven.

Yeah, of course, we knew - we always knew, right? - that the National Security Agency and the FBI were spying on American citizens without any cause more than "Name That Sounds Funny" and "Thinks Terrorists Might Be People." Here we go again, again, with documents provided by Edward Snowden that show that five American Muslims were the targets of months of surveillance. This would include Faisal Gill, a Republican who worked for Homeland Security under George W. Bush, and Nihad Awad, the head of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Of course, of course, no one in the government is going to confirm the FISA-approved spying, which occurred until 2008, but you know - you always knew, right? - is still going on. Of course, of course, the targets themselves can never be told why they were the subjects of FBI surveillance because that's secret. Maybe their organizations are suspected of supporting terrorists or terrorist-related groups or groups related to groups that might be related, in some vague way, to terrorism. Besides, they know. Surely, they know. Or they wouldn't be targeted by our great and mighty state security apparatus that would never overstep its bounds or behave irrationally. Just ask Mohammed Raghead.

Yeah, see, someone in the intelligence community put out a document in 2005 showing how to format memos for FISA-approved surveillance (or, you know, "surveillance"). Under "Identity," the author created a mock name, a little ha-ha joke to show where to put the name. The author could have put "John Doe." He or she could have put "Terrorist Guy," if he or she was feeling perky. No, instead, the author put "Mohammed Raghead." Because of course they did. The Obama administration has promised to investigate to discover who is the spy/D-level comedian.

What's most fun is that if you are in any way associated with someone who is under surveillance, you will get swept up in the net, like we're playing "Six Degrees of Mohammed Raghead." And when they're tossing that fishing net into the vast ocean of the web, it'll pick up everything: "[M]edical records sent from one family member to another, résumés from job hunters and academic transcripts of schoolchildren. In one photo, a young girl in religious dress beams at a camera outside a mosque. Scores of pictures show infants and toddlers in bathtubs, on swings, sprawled on their backs and kissed by their mothers. In some photos, men show off their physiques. In others, women model lingerie, leaning suggestively into a webcam or striking risque poses in shorts and bikini tops."

The Washington Post got to check these Snowden docs out, and it found a whole spank bank of material being kept by the NSA. Remember: the spooks didn't glance at it and dump it. They archived it. By the way, "The material spans President Obama’s first term, from 2009 to 2012, a period of exponential growth for the NSA’s domestic collection."

It's wearying, innit, dear, sweet lefties, in a quite profound way? Trying our hardest to support President Obama, if for no other reason than those who attack him unceasingly are such worthless dunderheads who have undermined the presidency and the Congress, with the Supreme Court pretty close behind. Goddamn, we prop him up, we attempt to defend him even when his actions are mind-boggling and aggravating.

But then some of us, at least, turn a corner and run smack into the massive expansion of spying under Obama. Sure, we can go back to the old "We knew," the quiescent "So?", the assured "We trust him," the righteous "It's for our safety." But, at the end of the day, or perhaps always and at the beginning, the spying on Americans is far, far worse than it first seemed. And we're probably at the beginning of learning just how many of us and for what thin reasons were watched by our own government.

Maybe we'll be mature enough one day to be trusted to have the debate on how far our leaders can go in undermining privacy for the chimera of security.

By now it’s become a familiar trope: Photoshop or GIF something historical, say, Old Masters or old photographs. But just because it’s been done doesn’t mean it’s finished. And the elaborate GIFs that James Kerr makes from early Northern Renaissance paintings are a hilariously new take on the idea of remixing antique art.

Working under the name of Scorpion Dagger, Kerr has been posting GIFs on his blog almost daily for more than two years. The digital collages commingle a kind of timeless absurdity and toilet humor, à la Terry Gilliam’s animations for Monty Python (as the Verge also noticed), with an arch take on contemporary life, particularly hipsterism. So, a skinny, bearded Renaissance-era man ends up dressed in jean shorts, drinking a beer, and standing barefoot by a grill at a campsite (those Photoshopped hipsters at the Louvre come to mind). He proceeds to knock over the grill and start a forest fire. From 15th-century man to 21st-century problems.

It’s not only the concept of the GIFs that makes them so great, it’s also their execution. Rather than simply adding or removing things from a single painting for each, Kerr takes elements from many different paintings and brings them all together in a multipart scene. As he explained to Hyperallergic over email:

There’s actually quite a few different paintings referenced in each GIF. Some people think that it’s one painting that I animate, but in reality there could be as many as 20 to 30 paintings collaged together to make one GIF. I used to straight up reference the paintings a lot more, but now I’m way more interested in creating an entirely new world for these people — with obvious critical pokes at ours. I’m fairly sure it’s fairly apparent, but there’s definitely some politics I’m trying to work out and express in there (but not always).

That new world works by drawing on both the past and present, and by being partly something we recognize and relate to and partly something far more imaginative and surreal.

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Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.  -  William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra (II, ii)

Yes, it’s been four years already, and some of you have been reading for most of that time; I’m very pleased to see how few of you have tired of me.  Pleased because, though I would certainly like to believe Enobarbus’ description of Cleopatra also applies to myself, one must always be careful to take flattery with a grain of salt, and never to fall for one’s own ad copy.  At the same time, false modesty in excess tends to make a lady look more silly than sincere; I therefore try to maintain a balance between self-promotion and self-deprecation, though I suspect you’ll forgive me if I err a bit on the side of the former on occasions like this.  Custom has not yet staled my variety for most of my regulars, and I gain new readers all the time; a look back at last year’s anniversary column will serve to illustrate that.  The Honest Courtesan now has almost 1500 posts, 92 assorted pages, almost 40,000 comments, about 1200 subscribers and 3900 Twitter followers, and 2.8 million page views from all over the world.  I write regular features for Cliterati and the Eros Guide; have seen my work published in Cato Unbound, Reason and the Washington Post; have published a book of short stories (which I’m currently promoting on a national tour); plan to release a book of essays in January; and have done so many interviews, speaking engagements, consultations and other such work that I’ve completely lost count.

So all in all, I think I can safely declare this blog a success.  I’ve got my procedures down to a science now, so I can do outside projects without too much difficulty (though a 15-week book tour is definitely testing the limits!) and I’m even starting to make a small amount of money from it.  That, however, will never be my primary motivation:  this blog exists to spread knowledge about the demimonde; to debunk propaganda spread by our enemies to demonize or infantilize us; to help people realize that whores and our clients are really just regular people and our work is regular work; to argue for self-ownership and the rights of individuals to direct their own lives without interference from tyrants and control freaks; to call attention to the awful things those tyrants do to advance their agendas; and to entertain y’all in the process.  And though I’m rarely at a loss for words, none in my vocabulary are sufficient to express the gratitude I feel for all of y’all who choose to spend some of your valuable time with me every day, and without whose attention, praise and support none of this would have been possible.

uoa:

never give up on your dreams

keep sleeping

I am a humanist.  I am an existentialist.  I am pagan in philosophy and in my spirituality — such as that is.  Note, no links.  If you don’t know what those words mean, maybe you should just go read the fucking comics.  I find myself so very appalled of late at what horrors unfold in my world in the name of religion that I envy the atheists.  I have to remind myself that spirituality also has an active role that does NOT mean killing, does not mean limiting others by my own rules; but does mean advocating for humanity in general.  But really, this Sunday?  I just want to run away to the depths of an Olympic Rainforest and not look upon anything much of human work for a while.

It’s been a long ugly week.  And I’ve cooled down from lots of physical labor by drinking ice water and reading blogs and news items.  I try REALLY hard not to shit all over someone else’s comment pages when some asshat makes what they apparently think is a really cute snappy come-back that simply reeks of idiocy, misogyny, or other smelly things.  I will discuss things in the blog with the blogger, but generally(not always) I avoid starting arguments with other commenters in a place not my own.  This is not because I want ‘home-court advantage’ — it is called “manners” and doubtless is nigh extinct like the dodo.

But here?  I don’t hold my tongue and worse, yes, I will sometimes hold the tongues (fingers) of would-be-commenters.  Just as I don’t allow the household dogs to shit on the carpet, there are some things that simply are not going to be said in my comment pages.  If you post something that doesn’t sound like an honest query, an honest disagreement looking for clarification or amplification — just throw a steaming turd in the blog punchbowl, yeah — nobody but me will see it.

I do try to be civil and I don’t always succeed (unlike my online acquaintance Blake, who IS a gentleman and a scholar), I sometimes just want to go berserker mode and rip off heads to piss down necks.  I don’t do that, but I sure wish a lot.  Especially since the ‘other side’ doesn’t pull any punches and could care less what wreckage is left in the wake of their destructive ship’s passing.  It troubles me that I sometimes am dinged for being “harsh” or “tough” or “vicious” merely for disagreeing with someone when I am being (to my mind) oh-so-restrained.  Also troubles me that I am laughed at FOR being restrained. Gee, a woman can’t win, eh?

What am I sick of? Well, there is my original list at my recently neglected political blog.  But this summer has added a lot to that list.  Since I put up my troll-me-not widget, I’ve gotten a couple emails accusing me of being a censorious bitch.  As I said, I am a blogger and I don’t have to offer every asshat a pulpit.  I don’t ACT as a shit-stirrer when I READ other blogs and will not put up with that sort of nonsense here. It is not disagreement I “censor” – I will argue a point with anyone here.  But I WILL NOT countenance vile, snide bullshit and circular arguments, appeals to authority and other crap of that like:

“The second amendment promises, and it is our right....” Any comment beginning with this will get some pretty hard look-overs since most of what follows stinks to high heaven.  And anyone feeling the need to scream it at me more than once in a comment?  Forget you.

“Religious freedom was NOT destroyed, but upheld by the Hobby Lobby ruling.” Uh huh, sure.  Take that load of shit back to the latrine.  Employees have religious freedom, too — unless they are female and working for the likes of Hobby Lobby or Eden Foods.

“Oh, you women — always the victims.”  Hmmm.  Well, now.  Yes, more men are murdered in America.  Usually BY other men.  But women? Much more likely to be assaulted or killed by a male significant other.  And raped.  But let’s not go down THAT road…or I might tear off a couple heads and piss down necks. ( I HAVE had a lot of ice water.)

“What’s the big deal, just pay for your birth-control.”  Wow.  You can almost hear the world “slut” at the end of that, can’t you?  Gee, do all men get to pay for Viagra all on their lonesome?  It should be insurable that men can get hard-ons, but NOT insurable that women don’t have to be knocked up?  Hard ons are holy, but women are only holy when pregnant and barefoot? Yeah, that isn’t sexism or anything.  Also, if the religious hypocrites who led the way in this fight win?  Do you REALLY think they will stop with merely not covering contraception?

So, yes, I am dreaming of mossy trees and silence from human voices.  Hungering for nature that nurtures without deciding first if one is in the ‘in-group’ of the moment.  But here I am…stuck in an ever more dystopian surround; thinking I might go back to Herlander Walking and just open the floodgates, rip off a couple heads while chugging a beer to fill my bladder.  I really did want to step away from the fray….but the fucking fray keeps chasing me.

Some of that “fray” might start thinking what to do with me when it catches me.  I already know what I do when something I don’t like grabs me.

 

Tagged: asshattery, blogging, media, misogyny, religious discrimination, religious fanaticism, snark

…but like the fox with the hounds baying hot on my heels, I don’t seem to own the option of retreating to my personal cloister.

And frankly, I don’t much like the dreck being tracked in on my rather nicer, prettier carpets over at the other blog.  Or, I should say, the dreck some have TRIED to track in there.  I slammed the comment door on their dicks in their face.  Oh, yes, I am feeling rude.

That is at best.  At worst, oh…you wouldn’t like me THAT angry.  So, I am considering dragging my own fury (Furies?) back in here where the floors are hose-downable concrete…what say you, if there are any of you left?

Filed under: Life, Politics, PTSD Journals, Religious Nuts & Bolts Tagged: fuck-it-all, fucking-again?

I've been away from the blog for a while.

There will come a time when I'll write about the circumstances of my absence, which were unpleasant. But not today. For now, I'd like to express my gratitude for the support of my family, my co-bloggers here, and the friends who have written and offered good cheer. I'm very fortunate.

I'm back. Send in those story tips, requests for free speech help, abusive and confusingly scatological emails, and thus-and-such.

Long Time, No See © 2007-2014 by the authors of Popehat. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Using this feed on any other site is a copyright violation. No scraping.

I bring good news: top-notch work by generous and dedicated lawyers has produced a free speech victory in Texas.

Last year I lit the Popehat Signal seeking help for J. Todd DeShong, a blogger and AIDS activist. DeShong, a longtime critic of the nutty and conspiratorial junk science occasionally directed at AIDS issues, ran afoul of Clark Baker, an ex-cop and full-blown AIDS denialist who offers "expert" "witness" services. You may recall my description of Baker's phone call to DeShong's mother:

I interviewed Mr. DeShong's mother, a sweet lady with a spine of Texas steel. She told me about how Mr. Baker called her out of the blue and ranted at her. Mr. Baker angrily denounced her son, and told her that, as a police officer, he knew about dangerous people, and that Ms. DeShong should fear that her son would kill her in her sleep. He also threatened that he was arranging for doctors Mr. DeShong had criticized to sue him for defamation. Ms. Deshong pointed out that such a suit would bring no joy; Todd DeShong is not a rich man. "But you have money, right? You have a house, right?" responded Mr. Baker, implying that he might put her assets at risk. "He thought he could intimidate me. He didn't know who he was dealing with," said Ms. DeShong, who sounds like a good person to have at your back.

Baker sued DeShong in federal court in Texas over DeShong's criticism of Baker's AIDS-denialist rhetoric and his "expert" "witness" service the HIV Innocence Group. Baker claimed that DeShong's criticism was not only defamation, but violation of the HIV Innocence Group's trademark rights in its name. Baker's motive may have been mixed: he may have wanted to silence DeShong, but he may also have wanted to use the federal suit to pursue his conspiracy theories about AIDS researchers. I cannot say what his lawyer was thinking, if he was.

Such federal litigation is ruinously expensive to defend; DeShong couldn't afford a defense and Baker might have succeeded in silencing critics through abuse of the legal system. Fortunately, lawyers who care about free speech rode into the breach: D. Gill Sperlein, Paul Alan Levy of Public Citizen, Gary P. Krupkin, and Neal A. Hoffman filed motions to dismiss (attacking the thoroughly specious trademark claims) and a strong motion under Texas' relatively new anti-SLAPP statute.

Last week the dream team won. United States District Judge Sam R. Cummings granted DeShong's motion to dismiss the trademark claims, and then refused to hear the state law claims and dismissed them. The court's ruling held the line on a key free speech concept: using a company's name to criticize it does not violate the company's trademark in the name. Baker had claimed that sites like "HIV Innocence Group Truth" violated trademark rights and were part of an effort to destroy him by discrediting him. But Judge Cummings pointed out "[n]o reasonable person would take one look at DeShong's website and believe that Baker authorized its content." Moreover, the court explained, trademark law doesn't protect a company from criticism. The Lanham Act protects a competitor from profiting from the misuse of another company's trademark; it does not protect a company from vigorous and even ruinous criticism employing its name. Judge Cummings also rejected Baker's argument that DeShong violated trademark rights by using a URL likely to dominate search results for "HIV Innocence Group." That theory, too, would have allowed the Bakers of the world to abuse the Lanham Act to prevent criticism.

I suspect Paul Alan Levy, who has done a lot of important work protecting "gripe sites" and critics from bogus trademark claims, had a strong hand in winning this issue.

Having dismissed the federal trademark claim, Judge Cummings declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the state claims like defamation, finding that state issues (like application of Texas' anti-SLAPP statute) would predominate over federal issues. Therefore he didn't reach the anti-SLAPP motion. That's an increasingly common approach by federal judges in such cases; it's what the judge did in the censorious Naffe case in which I was co-counsel.

Baker has appealed, and could conceivably re-file his censorious screed in Texas state court. If he does, the dream team's work on the anti-SLAPP motion is already done, and I suspect Baker will find no joy before a Texas state judge. I'd lay very good odds that Baker will lose his appeal. Meanwhile, I hope that DeShong's legal team seeks and recovers legal fees from Baker based on winning the Lanham Act claim. The suit was contemptible and represents exactly the sort of case in which federal courts should use their statutory power to award attorney fees to deter such abuse of the system.

Please join me in expressing admiration and thanks to Gil, Paul, Neal, and Gary. Their generosity with their time and talents didn't just help DeShong's free speech: it helped yours. Contributions like theirs are essential to defending free speech principles in a broken system that allows unscrupulous clients and lawyers to silence dissent by inflicting ruinous defense costs. They are heroes.

Popehat Signal Update: Dream Team Victory In Texas © 2007-2014 by the authors of Popehat. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Using this feed on any other site is a copyright violation. No scraping.

Not long ago I was chatting with some kinky friends and the subject of years of experience in the scene came up. Specifically, the way we give people more credit than they necessarily deserve just because they’ve hung around for a while. It’s absolutely normal to assume someone knows more than you do if they’ve been around for longer, but it’s also important to remember that just grimly sticking around does not make a person smarter than you, it doesn’t mean they’re amazing at everything, it doesn’t mean they know what’s right for you, and it doesn’t even mean that they’re good at much of anything. All it means is that they’ve stuck around.

Taking myself as an example, I’ve been part of the local scene for around seven years. Impressive, huh? Well, not so much. First of all, while I started showing up about seven years ago, that doesn’t mean I’ve been coming to events at all regularly. The organizer of those munches used to good naturedly tease me about how I would show up once a year and then go back into hibernation. Even after I started showing up to munches and parties more regularly, there were plenty of times where I was especially busy or just feeling anti-social and didn’t come to much of anything.

Not only does however many years of experience not tell you much at all about how many events someone has gone to, but it doesn’t tell you anything about how much they’ve been playing either. I played fairly regularly at parties for the first few years I was in the scene, then that tapered off for a while, then I started playing mostly privately, then I had another dry spell, and more recently I’ve been playing privately again. Even if I could come up with a rough estimate of how many scenes I’ve done, that wouldn’t tell you whether I’ve been learning from each scene or if I’ve been making the same mistakes over and over. It wouldn’t tell you how the people I’ve played with felt about the scenes we had, or whether I’ve been playing infrequently because I’m picky, shy, and kind of a dork or because I’m such an asshole that I can’t find people to play with.

Of course, having tons of play partners doesn’t necessarily mean much either. Pretty much any idiot can prey on new people who don’t know any better and look like the best thing since sliced bread unless/until they finally hurt someone who has friends and the house of cards comes down. Even having long term relationships doesn’t mean someone is a good person, let alone a good pervert. The whole birthday spankings at munches debacle in my local scene completely destroyed my respect for a number of people who have been part of the scene for longer than I’ve been living outside of my parents’ house and have had plenty of serious long term relationships.

If someone’s advice sounds reasonable to you, if you like the way they play or run their relationships and think something similar would work for you, by all means listen to them. But do not take anyone’s word as gospel just because they’ve been around longer than you have. Despite what some douchebags out there will tell you, you don’t owe any special treatment to people who have been in the scene for longer than you. If somebody wants you to hang on their every word, they can goddamn well earn it.

“Romeo can’t really be blamed for Ophelia’s death.”

-

Senior English major on a Shakespeare final. (via minininny)

WELL THEY’RE NOT WRONG

——

How about this, though?

[Editorial Note: This “theory” depends on believing the Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet take place contemporaneously. So, for the sake of argument, let’s all agree that the events of both plays occur in the Spring of 1517 (chosen because of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, and the Reformational threads that run through Hamlet).]

See, in the Second Quarto and First Folio versions of Romeo and Juliet, a[n extremely minor] character appears with Romeo, Mercutio, and Benvolio at the Capulet’s Party (where, if you recall, Romeo meets Juliet for the first time).

Like Hamlet's Horatio, this Horatio is full of well-worded philosophical advice. He tells Romeo “And to sink in it should you burden love, too great oppression for a tender thing.”

Fig. 1 - Second Quarto Printing

Fig. 2 - First Folio Printing

[The American Shakespeare Center’s Education Blog discusses the likely “real” reasons for Horatio’s presence]

Let’s imagine that Horatio has travelled down from Wittenberg (about 540 miles) to Verona for his Spring Break. He hears about some guys who like to party (because, let’s be honest, besides getting stabbed, partying is Mercutio’s main thing). So, he ends up crashing the Capulet’s ball with them.

He is then on the sidelines as Romeo and Juliet fall in love, Tybalt kills Mercutio, Romeo kills Tybalt, Romeo gets banished, and both lovers are found dead in Juliet’s tomb.

This tragedy fresh in his mind, he returns to Wittenberg at the end of what has turned out to be a decidedly un-radical Spring Break and discovers that his bestie Prince Hamlet is leaving for Elsinore Castle because he’s just gotten news that his father, the King, is dead.

On the trip up (another ~375 miles), Horatio recounts the tragic romance he just witnessed in Verona. He advises (as he is wont to do) Hamlet not to mix love and revenge.

Hamlet takes Horatio’s advice to heart, breaking up with Ophelia so that he can focus is energy on discovering and punishing his father’s killer:

HAMLET
Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner
transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the
force of honesty can translate beauty into his
likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the
time gives it proof. I did love you once.

OPHELIA

Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

HAMLET

You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot
so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it: I loved you not.

Ophelia - burdened by the perceived loss of Hamlet’s love and his murder of her father - goes mad and drowns herself.

You see, if Romeo had waited literally a minute and thirty seconds longer (31 iambic pentametrical lines) - he, Juliet, Ophelia (and possibly the rest of the Hamlet characters) would have made it.

* With thanks to roguebelle.

(via thefeminineending)

Buncha fuckin nerds in this town.

(via moriartini)

The Hamratiophelia Conspiracy Theory ftw

(via zahnie)

steampunktendencies:

Abandoned Victorian Style Greenhouse

History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us.  -  Johan Huizinga

Those of you who were paying attention in world history class may remember that the Western Roman Empire ended on September 4^th, 476 AD with the accession of Flavius Odoacer as King of Italy, and that the Eastern Roman Empire was thereafter known as the Byzantine Empire.  But this is merely a convenient lie invented by historians; to the citizens of Rome, Italy, areas of Europe still dominated by either Eastern or Western Empires and foreign governments who had dealings with the Romans, 476 was very much like 474 and 475 had been, and nobody noticed much change in the years 477-493, either.  To be sure, the Empire under Odoacer was quite a different place than it had been under Augustus, but then the same could be said of the Empire under Hadrian, Constantine, Honorius or Justinian.  The laws, structures and political realities had changed dramatically (and not for the better) since the end of the Republic, yet even when the vast territory was divided in two (temporarily, then later permanently) it was still called the Roman Empire, and its people still thought of their government as continuous with what had gone before.  The term “Byzantine Empire” for the eastern half is a total fiction; it was still referred to both officially and in popular use as the Roman Empire (even after its territory had shrunk to only part of the area of modern Turkey) until Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.  And even then, Germanic kings who had been granted the title of Roman Emperor by Papal edict continued to use it until the last of them, Francis II, abdicated the title to Napoleon in 1806.

By the 14^th century it would have been obvious to all but the dullest historians that neither the German nor the Greek pretenders to the title of “Roman Empire” were remotely the same as the original entity which had borne that name, and unconnected to it by anything other than a long and winding chain of historical events.  But it would not have been so obvious to an historian of the 10^th century, and one of the 6^th would probably have violently disputed the claim (at least in the case of the Eastern Empire).  Modern scholars looking at the events from over a millennium later decided that after 476, things began to change so dramatically and so quickly that a different name needed to be applied to the political entities existing after that date so as to make the difference clearer for purposes of study and discussion.  But the people living at that time had no such historical perspective; few of them would have agreed that the differences between Odoacer’s reign and that of Julius Nepos were any more meaningful than those between the reigns of Constantine and Constantius, and probably less significant than the difference between the reigns of Diocletian and Aurelian.  They were emotionally invested in the name “Roman”, and the changes in both the Empire and its people had been so gradual that only by viewing the events from a period completely removed from them could a meaningful line be drawn between “Roman” and “Post-Roman”.

Rome is an especially prominent and striking example, but by no means the only one; except in cases where a culture is completely overrun by wholly alien invaders (as in the case of the European conquest of the Americas), most lines drawn between historical periods and most names given them by historians are rather arbitrary and only make sense to people of later eras.  Those living at the time see no seismic shift, no change of identity; the English still considered themselves English after the Norman Conquest, and the lives of peasants were largely the same in 1067 as they had been in 1065…but historians regard the unified England of the late 11^th century as a different thing from the Anglo-Saxon realm of a generation before, and not only because the rulers were speaking a different language.

Exactly two months short of exactly 1300 years after what we now think of as the end of the Roman Empire, a group of colonies belonging to a country which had itself once been a Roman province declared themselves independent of their parent nation.  And though colonies, provinces and other dependent entities had done this sort of thing many times before, what made this one unique in world history was that the revolutionaries were not merely the followers of a rival monarch determined to wrest the territory from its legal ruler by military force; instead, they were philosophically-inclined sons of the Enlightenment who argued that human beings had certain unalienable rights which no ruler, no matter what his titles or antecedents, had the right to abrogate.  This was such a new idea that historians recognized it as a dividing line as soon as the British government did, five years later…but for the average working man, not much really changed, and for the slaves absolutely nothing did.  Even most of the laws of the states and cities of the new country were the same laws they had before the revolution…laws based on traditions dating back to the time when almost no educated person would have agreed that the Roman Empire was a thing of the past.

But less than a hundred years later, that began to change; the United States now bears more resemblance to the bloated, top-heavy, militaristic, moribund Roman state inherited by Odoacer than the lean, minimal government conceived of by the Founders.  Yet for now, the people of the US are still so emotionally invested in the label “American” and so blindly devoted to worship-words like “freedom” that they are unable to recognize that we’ve already crossed the line future historians will draw between the American Republic and the American Empire.  When did we pass from one to the other?  Alas, I’m in the same forest as you are; only the perspective of time will allow us to determine that.  Perhaps they’ll draw it at the end of the Cold War; perhaps even earlier, at the end of World War II.  Maybe they’ll make it simple for student memorization by setting it at the beginning of the 21^st century.  But one way or another, it is insulting to the Founders’ memory to associate any patriotic feelings you have for the memory of the nation they created with the repressive fascist police state that now occupies its territory; the 4^th of July is now a memorial rather than a celebration, and the Spirit of ‘76 is nothing but a ghost.

Yes, that IS what I would like for my 4th of July Jolly, ok?  No, I am not going to rave about the Hobby Lobby open-door-to-idiocy Ruling; I already did quite enough of that, thanks.

But I am concerned about how many ordinarily bright people I see sort of pooh-poohing the importance of that ruling.  They don’t seem to see it as opening a door, a Pandora’s box of misery.  Trust me, in the linked rants above are several links to better bloggers than me laying our the risks.

What worries me most is that people don’t seem to see that this ruling has already emboldened the Religious Right to ask that Obama pay “deference to religious prerogatives.”  Excuse the hell out of me; I didn’t realize that the United States of America OWED any damned deference to religious prerogatives.

Yes, THIS is what we get when we try to play nicely with the Religious Right.  Next, they will be demanding that the military terrorize and throw out gay and lesbian service members again. Of course, rolling back same-sex marriage would be somewhere on their list of “prerogatives”.

Surely I cannot be the only one who wonders what the hell is wrong with religious folk who cannot practice their religion without stomping all over people who are NOT in their religion? After all, Americans get plenty pissed off when Iranians, or Iraqis, or Afghanis, or Saudis tell us what evil ‘great Satans’ we are and who would have us know our women should veil, not drive, and oh, btw, take off that piece of idolatry that is the cross. So, here is my question for all the good Germans Christians:

If it is all right to “infringe” upon the practice of Muslims by not acceding to their demands about THEIR prerogatives, what the fuck makes your little crew of misogynistic monotheistic bossy-butts SO very special that we should all just drop to our knees in acquiescence?

Cause me? I’m not seeing one whit of difference.

Filed under: Politics, Religious Nuts & Bolts, War on Women Tagged: religious discrimination, religious fanatics

It’s been 200 years since Francis Scott Key’s poem about a shredded star-spangled flag surviving an 1814 British siege at Fort Henry was set to music. To commemorate the anniversary, the Morgan Library & Museum has put on view one of the few surviving copies of the first edition.

While you’ll likely hear the US national anthem blared throughout the day this July 4, the bombastic contemporary song is quite different from this first edition printed for Baltimore’s Carrs Music Store. The “Pariotic Song,” as the sheet music unfortunately misspells, was an adaptation of a 1770s tune by British composer John Stafford Smith, known as “The Anacreontic Song.” So, yes, the most American of songs is in a way from England — but it’s a bit more complicated than that.

Even before Keys, the ditty had been used for other patriotic proclamations, including in the French Revolution. A glance at the notes in the Morgan’s copy shows a jaunty introduction and speedier pace, as well as a whole four verses. University of Michigan Associate Professor Mark Clague, who’s leading the Star Spangled Music bicentennial initiative, told the New York Times: “Key wouldn’t recognize what we sing today. […] It’s missing a phrase of music, it’s at the wrong tempo, it’s much slower, it’s sung by a massed group of people instead of an individual soloist.” It was only in 1931 that “The Star Spangled Banner” was officially made the country’s national anthem by Congress, cementing its place of pomp ahead of then-competitors “Hail, Columbia” and “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.”

Meanwhile in Washington, DC, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History is exhibiting the original Francis Scott Key manuscript of “The Star-Spangled Banner” alongside the tattered flag that inspired it. Both that exhibition and the one at the Morgan are reminders that even the most iconic emblems of patriotism have a dense history. To celebrate Independence Day properly, listen to a recording of how “The Star-Spangled Banner” would have sounded in the 19th century.

The 1814 first edition of “The Star Spangled Banner” is on view at the Morgan Library & Museum (225 Madison Avenue, Midtown East, Manhattan) through September 7. Key’s “Star-Spangled Banner” manuscript and the inspiring flag are on view at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (14th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, DC) through July 6.