click image to enlarge. (Recent Britney Spears photographs added by All This Is That)
---o0o---
Friday, February 23, 2007
Britneyspears.com
click image to enlarge. (Recent Britney Spears photographs added by All This Is That)
---o0o---
Thursday, February 22, 2007
My Elementary School Teachers, Part 1: As The Twig Is Bent
"As the twig is bent the tree inclines," Virgil wrote. Schoolteachers do just about more twig-bending than anyone. Mine were no exception. In elementary school, the teachers were mostly benign; I didn't get into the real sadist, misfit, misanthropic, lecherous, dried-up, bitter, shell-shocked, racist and jingoistic types until I hit junior- and senior-high school.
My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Crowley, was a warm and kindly woman. She wore plaid. She had a reassuring smile, auburn hair, full lips, and a light dusting of freckles. My memories of her circle around reading, singing, drawing, and graham crackers and milk. I remember no traumas or anything untoward—a few tantrums by my fellow pupils, and an angry father bursting in once, fuming over some imagined injury to Sally or Billy's chrysalis psyche.
Mrs. Crowley had the joy, humor, patience and understanding that should be a job requirement for teachers. I was called on the carpet once, in an incident I wrote about earlier, for returning from a camping trip, and peppering my "Show And Tell" speech with a few f**ks, c********rs, and s**ts, capped off with the interesting hand gesture I'd learned to perform on the trip. My father got in more hot water than I did over that weekend.
The nine months I florished in Mrs. Crowley's warm benevolence was the calm before the storm. Those happy days would soon fade away—when I was savagely flung into the charge of Miss Echo, the very terrestrial personification of Sycorax. Her classroom was my Bastille or Tower of London.
click to enlarge Jack, and John, Sr. at the Bumping River
Miss Echo, my first grade teacher, was a hirsute, cranky, unsettling, misanthropic, foul smelling battleaxe a few months from retirement. As she ground out the last few months before her pension kicked in, she was determined to ricochet every slight and indignity she had suffered in her forty-year career back at the miscreants she fingered as the authors of her miserable life.
illustration from http://www.fearofflyingdoctor.com/
Even with a brother and father dying, a plunge into poverty, the many hazards and heartbreaks of adolescence, and a life at odds with the police, I was more traumatized by my first grade teacher than by anyone or everything else during my elementary years, and maybe everything and anyone since. At the very least Mrs. Echo instilled in me a life-long "issue" *cough cough* with authority figures [1] ranging from policemen to teachers,bank clerks, meter maids, foremen, shop stewards, union reps, counselors, principals, bosses, government clerks, principals, border guards, benefit screeners, poetry and art juries, insurance adjusters, Priests, televangelists, politicians, pontiffs, Judges, and maybe even pilots.
I just did a G.I.S. for "authority figures" and it brought me to The Fear of Flying Doctor website where I learned that my fear of flying, a/k/a aviophobia, may stem from a problem with authority figures! Can I blame that on Mrs. Echo too?
Miss Echo's voice could curdle milk, and perhaps even gasoline. Fingernails raked across a slate blackboard were mellifluous compared to the brittle, quavering rasp of her voice. She was a last vestige of the school of thought that punished southpaws to "cure" them. I was a rightie, but she never failed to belittle my handwriting, nor my parents for their genes, and for tolerating my slovenly hand.
The words "poor coordination" were etched into my brain until I came to believe it. I received no credit for being able to read at the fifth grade level, nor for the actual content of my writing. She treated me as borderline retarded due to my difficulties in executing cursive script via the long since discredited Palmer Method. This entire year of school was unique for me—it was the only time in my 16 year education that I didn't actually enjoy going to school. I can only guess at how many other young souls she twisted and even destroyed in her forty miserable years of teaching? How many serial killers, petty criminals and wife-beaters had she unleashed on society in her four decades at the helm? In the end, my handwriting didn't matter at all, and in the end, perhaps she was the one who taught me 1) how to not worry; 2) how to amble through life as if it were made for me; and 3) that maybe a healthy disdain of authority figures was not such a bad thing at all.
[1] Perhaps a problem with authority figures is not the deviant behavior we've been lead to believe. After all, the Milgram experiment showed that over 60% of a sample of Americans demonstrated willingness to severely torture another person when given orders from an "appropriate" authority figure.
_________________________________
Now, let's have an Amazon moment. If you liked this story, you might like these other stories appearing in All This Is That about Jack Brummet growing up, and having grown:
Fishing With The Old Man Uncle Romey Uncle Guy, more hillbilly cred, and living a good life My Grandma's tavern in Carnation, Wash. My Dog Slugger Hucking Eggs in Kent, Washington
Square Dance At Valley Elementary
Foot Washing Baptists & The Catholic Devils
Hillbilly Cred
Growing Up In Kent, Washington: Tarheels, Hayseeds, Hillbillies, and Crackers
Cruising the Renton loop with a keg of nails
The Time I Got Drunk With Roy Rogers
My Worst Jobs: 50 Tons of Sand
My Worst Jobs: McGoo
My Pathetic Political Career
The Month They Tried To Kill Me
My Worst Jobs - Brewburger
Stopping By Richard Nixon's
Defensive Daydreaming
My Worst Jobs - Design Insanity - Hype, Shuck, and Jive In The Dot-Com Years
My Worst Jobs - SALSA
Jerry Melin, still missing, still missed
18,906 Days On Turtle Island
The Day I went Bald My Jobs (List Number 9)
My Favorite Rock and Jazz Shows
More Shows I've seen over the years
---o0o---
My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Crowley, was a warm and kindly woman. She wore plaid. She had a reassuring smile, auburn hair, full lips, and a light dusting of freckles. My memories of her circle around reading, singing, drawing, and graham crackers and milk. I remember no traumas or anything untoward—a few tantrums by my fellow pupils, and an angry father bursting in once, fuming over some imagined injury to Sally or Billy's chrysalis psyche.
Mrs. Crowley had the joy, humor, patience and understanding that should be a job requirement for teachers. I was called on the carpet once, in an incident I wrote about earlier, for returning from a camping trip, and peppering my "Show And Tell" speech with a few f**ks, c********rs, and s**ts, capped off with the interesting hand gesture I'd learned to perform on the trip. My father got in more hot water than I did over that weekend.
The nine months I florished in Mrs. Crowley's warm benevolence was the calm before the storm. Those happy days would soon fade away—when I was savagely flung into the charge of Miss Echo, the very terrestrial personification of Sycorax. Her classroom was my Bastille or Tower of London.
click to enlarge Jack, and John, Sr. at the Bumping River
Miss Echo, my first grade teacher, was a hirsute, cranky, unsettling, misanthropic, foul smelling battleaxe a few months from retirement. As she ground out the last few months before her pension kicked in, she was determined to ricochet every slight and indignity she had suffered in her forty-year career back at the miscreants she fingered as the authors of her miserable life.
illustration from http://www.fearofflyingdoctor.com/
Even with a brother and father dying, a plunge into poverty, the many hazards and heartbreaks of adolescence, and a life at odds with the police, I was more traumatized by my first grade teacher than by anyone or everything else during my elementary years, and maybe everything and anyone since. At the very least Mrs. Echo instilled in me a life-long "issue" *cough cough* with authority figures [1] ranging from policemen to teachers,bank clerks, meter maids, foremen, shop stewards, union reps, counselors, principals, bosses, government clerks, principals, border guards, benefit screeners, poetry and art juries, insurance adjusters, Priests, televangelists, politicians, pontiffs, Judges, and maybe even pilots.
I just did a G.I.S. for "authority figures" and it brought me to The Fear of Flying Doctor website where I learned that my fear of flying, a/k/a aviophobia, may stem from a problem with authority figures! Can I blame that on Mrs. Echo too?
Miss Echo's voice could curdle milk, and perhaps even gasoline. Fingernails raked across a slate blackboard were mellifluous compared to the brittle, quavering rasp of her voice. She was a last vestige of the school of thought that punished southpaws to "cure" them. I was a rightie, but she never failed to belittle my handwriting, nor my parents for their genes, and for tolerating my slovenly hand.
The words "poor coordination" were etched into my brain until I came to believe it. I received no credit for being able to read at the fifth grade level, nor for the actual content of my writing. She treated me as borderline retarded due to my difficulties in executing cursive script via the long since discredited Palmer Method. This entire year of school was unique for me—it was the only time in my 16 year education that I didn't actually enjoy going to school. I can only guess at how many other young souls she twisted and even destroyed in her forty miserable years of teaching? How many serial killers, petty criminals and wife-beaters had she unleashed on society in her four decades at the helm? In the end, my handwriting didn't matter at all, and in the end, perhaps she was the one who taught me 1) how to not worry; 2) how to amble through life as if it were made for me; and 3) that maybe a healthy disdain of authority figures was not such a bad thing at all.
[1] Perhaps a problem with authority figures is not the deviant behavior we've been lead to believe. After all, the Milgram experiment showed that over 60% of a sample of Americans demonstrated willingness to severely torture another person when given orders from an "appropriate" authority figure.
_________________________________
Now, let's have an Amazon moment. If you liked this story, you might like these other stories appearing in All This Is That about Jack Brummet growing up, and having grown:
Fishing With The Old Man Uncle Romey Uncle Guy, more hillbilly cred, and living a good life My Grandma's tavern in Carnation, Wash. My Dog Slugger Hucking Eggs in Kent, Washington
Square Dance At Valley Elementary
Foot Washing Baptists & The Catholic Devils
Hillbilly Cred
Growing Up In Kent, Washington: Tarheels, Hayseeds, Hillbillies, and Crackers
Cruising the Renton loop with a keg of nails
The Time I Got Drunk With Roy Rogers
My Worst Jobs: 50 Tons of Sand
My Worst Jobs: McGoo
My Pathetic Political Career
The Month They Tried To Kill Me
My Worst Jobs - Brewburger
Stopping By Richard Nixon's
Defensive Daydreaming
My Worst Jobs - Design Insanity - Hype, Shuck, and Jive In The Dot-Com Years
My Worst Jobs - SALSA
Jerry Melin, still missing, still missed
18,906 Days On Turtle Island
The Day I went Bald My Jobs (List Number 9)
My Favorite Rock and Jazz Shows
More Shows I've seen over the years
---o0o---
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Poem: Changes 36/How to keep moving in the darkening of the light
1
The sun sinks
Beneath the earth
The sky darkens
2
You keep the inner light aflame
While outwardly yielding
Hide the light under a bushel no
You're going to let it shine
And not be shaken or swept
By circumstance
Play dumb play slow play luckless
Power is like fastening
A target to your back
When difficulty surrounds
You like a moat
You persevere
Spoof lie omit mislead spin
Don't awaken enmity
Be the stealthy smiler
With the knife beneath your cloak
Let things pass
Because all things must pass
3
With grandiose resolve
A man endeavors
To soar above all obstacles
The Lord of Light is subordinate to
And wounded by the Lord of Darkness
The injury is not fatal
But a hindrance
Help is on the way
The wounded man ignores himself
And thinks only of saving the others
Their great leader is captured
There is no longer hope
And you are able
To leave the scene of disaster
before the storm breaks
4
First he climbed up to heaven,
Then plunged into the depths of the earth.
Here the climax of the darkening is reached
The dark power
held so high a place
it could wound all on the side of the light.
5
In the end evil perishes in its own darkness
Like a squid simmered in its own ink
Because evil must fall at the moment
It has overcome the good,
And consumed the energy
To which it owed its duration.
---o0o---
The sun sinks
Beneath the earth
The sky darkens
2
You keep the inner light aflame
While outwardly yielding
Hide the light under a bushel no
You're going to let it shine
And not be shaken or swept
By circumstance
Play dumb play slow play luckless
Power is like fastening
A target to your back
When difficulty surrounds
You like a moat
You persevere
Spoof lie omit mislead spin
Don't awaken enmity
Be the stealthy smiler
With the knife beneath your cloak
Let things pass
Because all things must pass
3
With grandiose resolve
A man endeavors
To soar above all obstacles
The Lord of Light is subordinate to
And wounded by the Lord of Darkness
The injury is not fatal
But a hindrance
Help is on the way
The wounded man ignores himself
And thinks only of saving the others
Their great leader is captured
There is no longer hope
And you are able
To leave the scene of disaster
before the storm breaks
4
First he climbed up to heaven,
Then plunged into the depths of the earth.
Here the climax of the darkening is reached
The dark power
held so high a place
it could wound all on the side of the light.
5
In the end evil perishes in its own darkness
Like a squid simmered in its own ink
Because evil must fall at the moment
It has overcome the good,
And consumed the energy
To which it owed its duration.
---o0o---
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
G.O.P. in league with Taliban and Al Qaeda?
click photo to enlarge
A New York man sometimes called Michael Mixon, and also known as Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari, is accused of trying to help terrorists in Afghanistan, according to the Associated Press. Over the last several years he has donated $15,000 to the House Republicans' campaign committee.
From 2002 into 2004, Michael Mixon gave donations ranging from $500 to $5,000 to the Republican Congressional Committee. At the same time, Mixon a/k/a Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari accepted money to transfer $152,000 to Pakistan and Afghanistan to support an Afghanistan terrorist training camp.
Does this mean that the Republican Party are in league with terrorists? I'm not sure, but let's make them deny it! After all, in April, 2006, a National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Bush's Iraq War had become the "cause celebre" that helped spread and germinate Islamic extremism around the globe.
---o0o---
The Donner Party Was Rescued 160 Years Ago Today (Albeit A Little Late For A Few Members Of The Party)
click etching to enlarge
160 years ago today, in 1847, the first rescuers reached the surviving members of the Donner Party. These California-bound emigrants were stranded by snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and famously resorted to cannibalism. The story appears today on History.com's This Day On History.---o0o---
Monday, February 19, 2007
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Video: The Beatles last performance--Get Back on a London rooftop (with Billy Preston on keyboards)
The Beatles final performance took place on a London rooftop outside their recording studio, with a few dozen people watching. Fortunately it was filmed, and it's on You Tube (at least until Apple Corps pulls it!).
The Beatles recorded Get Back (and performed this concert) with Billy Preston in April, 1969. The single—one of their last—was on the charts 23 weeks, and peaked at No. 1 for six weeks.
You may need to click play 2x
Get Back
by John Lennon and Paul McCartney
Jo Jo was a man
Who thought he was a loner
But he knew it couldn't last
Jo Jo left his home in Tuscon, Arizona
For some California grass
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back Jo Jo
Go home
Get back, get back
Back to where you once belonged
Get back, get back
Back to where you once belonged
Ooh, get back Jo
Sweet Loretta Modern thought she was a woman
But she was another man
All the girls around her said she's got it comin'
But she gets it while she can
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back Loretta
Go home
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Yeah get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
whoooo
Get back Loretta
Your mummy's waiting for you
Wearing her high heel shoes
And her low neck sweater
Get back home Loretta
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Yeah get back, get back
---o0o---
The Beatles recorded Get Back (and performed this concert) with Billy Preston in April, 1969. The single—one of their last—was on the charts 23 weeks, and peaked at No. 1 for six weeks.
You may need to click play 2x
Get Back
by John Lennon and Paul McCartney
Jo Jo was a man
Who thought he was a loner
But he knew it couldn't last
Jo Jo left his home in Tuscon, Arizona
For some California grass
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back Jo Jo
Go home
Get back, get back
Back to where you once belonged
Get back, get back
Back to where you once belonged
Ooh, get back Jo
Sweet Loretta Modern thought she was a woman
But she was another man
All the girls around her said she's got it comin'
But she gets it while she can
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back Loretta
Go home
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Yeah get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
whoooo
Get back Loretta
Your mummy's waiting for you
Wearing her high heel shoes
And her low neck sweater
Get back home Loretta
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Yeah get back, get back
---o0o---
The folk song "Side By Side"
Oh! We ain't got a barrel of money
Maybe we're ragged and funny
But we'll travel along
Singing a song, side by side
Maybe we're ragged and funny
But we'll travel along
Singing a song, side by side
Don't know what's comin' tomorrow
Maybe it's trouble and sorrow
But we'll travel the road
Sharin' our load, side by side
Maybe it's trouble and sorrow
But we'll travel the road
Sharin' our load, side by side
Through all kinds of weather
What if the sky should fall
Just as long as we're together
It doesn't matter at all
When they've all had their quarrels and parted
We'll be the same as we started
Just travellin' along, singing a song
Side by side; side by side
________________________________
And then, there is a twisted British version:Side By Side
We got married on, Sunday,
The party didn't finish till, Monday,
And when the guests had gone home,
We were all alone, Side by side.
Well we got ready for bed then,
And I very nearly dropped dead when,
Her teeth and her hair, she placed on the chair,
Side by side.
Well the shock did very near kill me,
When a glass eye did fall,
Then her leg and then her arm,
She placed against the chair (wall?),
Well this left me broken hearted,
For most of my wife had departed,
So I slept on the chair,
There was more of her there,
Side by side.
---o0o---
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Video and Lyrics: Elvis Costello Performs Nick Lowe's (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, And Understanding?
(What's So Funny 'Bout)Peace, Love And Understanding?
by Nick Lowe
As I walk through <---o0o--->
This wicked world
Searchin' for light in the darkness of insanity.
I ask myself
Is all hope lost?
Is there only pain and hatred, and misery?
And each time I feel like this inside,
There's one thing I wanna know:
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?
And as I walked on
Through troubled times
My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes
So where are the strong
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony.
'Cause each time I feel it slippin' away, just makes me wanna cry.
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?
So where are the strong?
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony.
'Cause each time I feel it slippin' away, just makes me wanna cry.
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?
Harry Potter: Hey mates! Look at me bum! Daniel Radcliffe Nude Onstage In Equus
click on Daniel Radcliffe's bum to zoom in
"Warner Bros have been building up their publicity machine for Harry's first - chaste - screen kiss when the next Potter film (Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix) comes out in the summer. "Now our star is out there doing full-frontal sex. We've been blown completely out of the water by this."In what is one of the most memorable examples of career suicide ever committed, Daniel Radcliffe began starring in Equus in the U.K., appearing nude in a long scene. Executives at Warner Bros, the studio behind the film versions of the Potter books, were"utterly dismayed" by publicity shots of Radcliffe naked. Studio chiefs are petrified this could possibly put the skids to their multi-million-dollar cash cow. Some folks even alluded to Radcliffe being replaced as the young wizard. His naked sex partner in the play, Joanna Christie, 24, plays the stablegirl with whom he has a relationship.
You think the suits at Warner freaked out about the publicity stills? How do they feel abut Radcliffe airing out his willie for a full ten minutes on stage?
Equus previewed in London last night, and opens February 27th.
---o0o---
Friday, February 16, 2007
House of Representatives Tells The President To Take His Surge, And. . .Uh. . .Insert It Into A Place Where "The Sun Don't Shine"
Click The White House Bummer Flag To Enlarge
The Democratic-controlled House lobbed a toothless, but still stinging, rejection of President Bush's Surge™ into Iraq today, according to the AP.
So begins a potentially hairy showdown between the executive and legislative branches over The President's madness prosecuting an unpopular war and unjust war, with acceptable losses of 3,100 American boys and girls (and climbing).
It was a bi-partisan and non-binding vote: 246-182.
---o0o---
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