More political articles on the Silent Majority

I believe the third time anyone writes an article on the same creepy topic, it is time either to cease and desist, or to make this into an ongoing series, embracing the concept whole.

Twice before, I have written with a straight face about how the dead participate in all parts of the electoral process, being both the voters, and those being voted on. And I have written more than once, that dead people have often won elections against their living opponents. While all this sounds both creepy and hilarious, these stories are utterly true. And before you think this is a liberal or conservative conspiracy, I also reiterate, that the dead benefit both sides of American politics. Since there are more dead people than living, we call them the real Silent Majority in this blog. We ought to root for them, since many of these are hard-working dead people who have never committed crimes, and don’t bother anyone.

After paying $1.50 for this issue of The Sun yesterday, I find that the cover story is an opinion piece.

Just yesterday in The Toronto Sun, the front page — yes, the front page, in the biggest screaming headlines you have ever seen in your life, decried the Liberal practice of leaving dead people on the voter rolls. So, now the silent majority have invaded the Canadian Liberal party, according to The Sun. While I understand that the Sun takes every opportunity to attack the Liberals, and have never met a politician to the right of Atilla the Hun they didn’t like, I have to say, the dead are not a voting block. I am certain that the list contains conservatives and liberals in fairly equal numbers. Regardless, no one can control the voting preferences of the Silent Majority, since you can’t speak to them, and they can’t speak to you. Even if you could speak to them, the Silent Majority will just vote as they damn well please. Or, do anything else they damn well please. You may have your perceptions and illusions about the Silent Majority, but we can both agree that you can’t tell them who to vote for. They just won’t listen, and you can’t change that.

You can call me a leading authority on the voting behavior of the Silent Majority. I have been observing them for quite a while now. And a good many years from now, I too will some day go to the Majority. To be honest, it’s pretty boring watching them, because I never see them move. I guess that’s part of their mystique.

A list of state slogans

From the responses to Chris Cillizza’s request on Twitter (@CillizzaCNN) that people submit their own state motto. Fair use, since none of these were authored by Chris Cillizza, but submitted by the general public.

Alabama: first in football, but last in everything else.
Alaska: Worst deal in history. Give it back to Russia!
Arizona: Sunny, With Sucky Senators.
Arkansas: Come dig for diamonds and leave with Cotton.
California: the land of fruits and nuts
Colorado: So fricken high they voted for Hillary
Connecticut: Just a restroom between Boston and New York.
Delaware: Have you seen Delaware? It’s more like a Dela-won’t.
Florida: underwater shark bait
Georgia: Without Atlanta, It Would Be Another Alabama
Hawaii – when you only want to be “sort of” American
Idaho: “Where did you think Vodka came from?”
Illinois – Land of the only President I rank above me.
Indiana: Where Indiana Jones comes from
Iowa: Gateway to Nebraska
Kansas: “Great band! I am delivering on my promise to bring the U.S., the whole world actually, to the ‘Point of no return.'”
Kentucky: New Jersey Charm with Mississippi Sophistication
Louisiana: We’re Alabama with Better Food
Maine: Basically Canada — except Paul LePage
Maryland: The Wire was real, you know
Massachusetts: Vegans and Massholes
Michigan – The rusted-out gauntlet of the Great Lakes.
Minnesota: Always getting out over our skis.
Mississippi: more ‘I’s than teeth
Missouri: First in meth houses.
Montana: The cool stuff died 65 million years ago.
Nebraska: First in Friendship, Second in Cat and Dog Obesity
Nevada Home of High Rollers and Low Lifers
New Hampshire: A drug-infested den (Trump)
New Jersey: ‘I don’t own it, they’re just paying to use my name’
New Mexico: the only Mexico paying for my wall
New York: “At least we’re not New Jersey.”
North Carolina: Gateway to Virginia and its many great Trump properties!
North Dakota: For when you are bored of South Dakota.
Ohio…we put the O in opiates.
Oklahoma: 1st in earthquakes and tornadoes, 49th in everything else.
Oregon: The home of the witch trials.
Pennsylvania: They said I had no chance.
Rhode Island: Small state, small hands.
South Carolina, the rusty buckle of the Bible Belt.
South Dakota: Gateway to North Dakota
Tennessee. Above Kentucky in everthing but the map
Texas: Thank God for Mississippi.
Utah-needs casinos
Vermont: communists and cows.
Virginia: Make-Believe Southern State
Washington: Too much cyber.
West Virginia – Come for my Cousin, Stay for the Coal
Wisconsin – The Curdled Milk State!
Wyoming – Not sure where it is, but I think I won there.

The Future of Trump Parodies

Humor can be a place where we celebrate what we as a human race value: honesty, love, safety, racial equality, fairness, peacefulness. We usually do this by poking fun at the times when any of these values are violated by public figures such as world leaders or celebrities. Usually these violations happen once or twice, but what if it happens all the time … ?

It’s been an amazing month on the talk show circuit regarding how Trump and his administration have been lampooned by seemingly every stand-up comedian and talk show host — and don’t forget Saturday Night Live. It will also be interesting to note how much mileage you would get out of the political satire.

Melissa McCarthy will have to work hard to try to make the caricaturing of Sean Spicer fresh for the next four years. The same can be said for Alec Baldwin, or anyone charged with hosting a nighttime talk show, like Bill Maher or Stephen Colbert.

But I guess, it is not just Trump that is a laughingstock. It is also a large swath of his administration and his appointees. It looks comedians are already lampooning Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Chief Strategist (and probably the real (unelected) president) Steve Bannon (who right now appears on SNL as a kind of Grim Reaper), Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, and of course Mike Pence (the Vice President), Jeff Sessions, the list goes on. The field is so ripe with those who shall be referred to as “characters”, that it could also turn out that the supply of satirical material will be nearly unlimited. It would be a surprise if somewhere there is a quiet, boring place in government where things just go on as usual, under this administration. A department inside of a department that no one has ever paid attention to and no politician cares about. Oh, the hilarious possibilities in that!

It is worth noting that I have not really been a fan of SNL for some time now, as many haven’t, but seeing that their ratings have been the best since the days of Wayne’s World, and possibly since the days of The Blues Brothers, it doesn’t look like they are going to slow down the pace any time soon, and it might be high time I start tuning in.

Answering Machine Message From Queensland Maroochydore High School

This answering machine message is rumored to come from Maroochydore High School in Queensland, Australia for use on their telephone answering system. It is likely a fake, since I have seen this same video where the Brits take the credit for it. The start of the message does not say the name of the school, also adding to the suspicion that it’s fake. Anyway nothing is lost in the homour value of this vid:

 

T-Shirts I’d like to see

The following image is rumored to exist on recent T-shirts, the latest of many “Che” fashion statements:

whothef-k

… well, at least something like it. I haven’t seen it on any shirt, but some are saying that they saw it on some people at one time. But this is the web, and in the spirit of showing rather than telling, I cooked this one up on Photoshop. I would love to have a T-shirt with this image on it. Too bad I couldn’t wear it to work though… 🙁

[Video] DHMO: The ultimate conspiracy theory

In answer to Bunk Strutt’s re-broadcast of a conspiracy-nut video about rainbows oozing out of our ground and taking away our rights, here is a notable response in the same vein which heretofore has been under-viewed.

First, you must view the original video:

Then, view this particular response to the video (which in my opinion was the best out of several responses):

I understand that, according to a site I visited (link below), the answer to what is oozing out of our ground, and the answer is DHMO, or something called “Dihydrogen Monoxide”, alternatively known as “Hydric acid” or “Hydroxyl acid”. Inhalation of its liquid form can cause death in minutes, and exposure to its gas form can cause second-degree burns. It is also a principal ingredient in acid rain, and is also used in nuclear power plants as a coolant. It has been found in excised tumors of terminal cancer patients. In fact all diseased people seem to be loaded with the stuff. DHMO is also used in cruel animal experiments.

To precisely explain the shocking truth of both phenomena above, experiments have shown that fine sprays of DHMO will cause it to diffract sunlight, causing the presence of rainbows. In addition, the second video was wrong in implicating sulfur as being the cause of “yellow snow”. The scientific community is unanimous in that, after repeated experiements and scientific papers, in the shocking conclusion that the addition of diluted urea to one of the solid forms of DHMO will actually cause it to turn yellow, and melt somewhat, exactly as you saw in the video.

DHMO’s solid form has been known to cause automotive brakes to fail by reducing the degree of friction between tires and the road to almost zero. DHMO concentrates itself in huge areas of our sky on a daily basis worldwide, sometimes even blocking out our sun and interfering with radio waves. DHMO also seems to concentrate itself in many junk foods as well. Yet, the government feels that it is safe for us, and they do not seem to feel that by blocking our radio signals that DHMO is tampering with freedom of the press. It is time to stand up for our rights! Say NO to DHMO! Thank you.

I present my research reference.

I will accept any donations to this cause that you are willing to give.

Crappy Album Covers #69 — Creepy Similarities IV: Music from Other Worlds

album-cover-crap-98_lpcoverlover_com Now we know where This Mortal Coil got their ideas from. The thing about a beautiful woman emerging from the sky (perhaps a visual pun on the “heavenly body”) seems to be with precedent.You can’t go much further back than this 1931 album cover by Johnny Green and His Orchestra, called “Out of Nowhere”. Johnny Green (1908-1989), a former Wall Street stockbroker became a band leader, working with the likes of Guy Lombardo, and producing many jazz albums, which, along with Out of Nowhere, became jazz standards.
thismortalcoil_itllendintears_cd This multi-artist effort, led by producer Ivo Watts-Russell, was populated by personnel from bands signed on to the 4AD record label which Watts-Russell owned at the time. It is considered an ’80s alternative classic. They did covers of other artists like Tim Buckley, The Byrds, and even Emmylou Harris, but the covers were always done the same great care they give to thier original material. Anyone who saw this package knew they were expecting to hear strangely beautiful music that seems to come from another world. 

This one is an obvious improvement on the design concept of this above album. The mood you see on the cover is exactly what you get inside. One track that is an exception to this eternally dreamy mood is the song “Not Me”, which is the only track on the album that borders on pop.

I still have this CD in my collection, and it had been released on vinyl. It is not listed on E-Bay, a sure sign that few people want to part with their copy.

Crappy Album Covers #67 — Casting Out The Demon

Before I start, I would also like to say, that you can also access my front page when there are no crappy albums for other interesting and amusing articles. They tend to be published almost every second day starting from Sunday: Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, and sometimes on Friday. Right around this time, there have been articles on The Politics of Dancing, a series of 3 articles named after a song from 1983 that I knew from the band Re-Flex. This time, I try to breathe some meaning into the title. But it shouldn’t be a heavy read.

album-cover-crap-89_coverbrowser_comSomeone, somewhere, some time ago, there was an album where someone went around with a mike and recording equipment and recorded the voices of people said to be possessed by demons.

Even if this were real, would it really matter? The only evidence of demonic possession will be the voices on an album, and for all you know they could be acting in a cushy air-conditioned studio and drinking chilled Perrier during their breaks.

Now the question is, is the guy on the album the demon or the body possessing it? To me, he just looks goofy.

album-cover-crap-90_coverbrowser_com“Satan is real unless declared integer” is a twist on an old computer programmers’ joke, known to those who programmed in FORTRAN 77 and earlier. Actually the joke was supposed to settle the theological question of God’s existence: “God is real unless declared integer”. It also was a play on the idea that the default variable type in FORTRAN was floating-point, for which FORTRAN used the keyword “real”.

Charlie and Ira Louvin are stitched into Americana about as much as apple pie. They were an integral part of The Grand Ole Opry for 8 years from 1955 to 1963, recorded with Chet Atkins, and played everything from Gospel to Waltzes. Ira Louvin died in a car crash in June 20, 1965. Charlie, now over 80 years old, has seen himself and his brother mentioned in the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.

(Images may be disturbing) Crappy Album Covers #66 — Food On Vinyl III

You know that after all that has pased through this blog, I wouldn’t have to put up a warning like that. But I do, if you scroll down.

album-cover-crap-85_normal_vinylcoversfreefr_00338 Look at that pizza. It could easily feed a small army, but these 7 adults are having it all to themselves. Where did they get an oven big enough to fit this monster?This album is called “Pizza Party”, with Joe Biviano on accordion. He, along with two other performers, Abe Goldman and Gene von Hallberg, were the first accordionists to make it to Canegie Hall, where they apparently appeared together for a 1939 performance.He was said to have gone consistently low-brow in music, to which the theme of this album testifies. He had gone as far as any accordionist can expect to go in his career. Unless your name is Weird Al Yankovic.
eulenspiegel Kraut Rockers Eulenspygel’s first album in 1971, called “2”, had a cover with a controversial design (this one) that was soon replaced by something more appetizing. They survived long enough to do a second album in 1972 called “Ausschuss”, recorded at Apple Studios in London. After a breakup, a reunion, and several lineup changes, they made a third album in 1979 and finally broke up in 1983, and haven’t been heard from.

Crappy Album Covers #65 — Food On Vinyl II

album-cover-crap-88_herb_alpert1 This is the original Herb Alpert album, playing mostly in-tune by the owner of A&M Records and his Tijuana Brass, called “Whipped Cream and Other delights”, released in April of 1965.There is a lot of food referred to in the song titles. There is mention of lemons, tangerines, peanuts, green peppers, lollipops, and honey.The album cover, depicting a young lady covered in whipped cream who would feel a whole lot better if ten guys came and licked it off her, was of such a borderline tasteless nature that it BEGGED for parody, and the two below are likely the most famous examples.
album-cover-crap-86_coverbrowser_com This 1966 album from The Frivolous Five called “Sour Cream and Other Delights”. This album contains lots of standard instrumentals made famous by Alpert, and from time to time they seem to go off-key. They’ve got Tijuana Taxi, A Taste of Honey, Spanish Flea, Lemon Tree, and they even cover The Beatles’ “All My Loving”.  Of course, The Frivolous Five can’t have an album cover without chicks. You have to wonder how did they get access to enough sour cream to cover these five middle-aged ladies? Also, notice one of them is holding a single long-stemmed rose, just like the lady in the original Herb Alpert album cover.
album-cover-crap-84_normal_vinylcoversfreefr_00338 During the same period, stand-up comedian Pat Cooper made this album called “Spaghetti Sauce and Other Delights”. Now, do you think he was parodying The Tijuana Brass? Naww… Can’t be …At least he isn’t holding a rose.Somebody get a fork …Cooper was doing stand-up and hit it big on The Jackie Gleason Show in 1963. His Italian-American brand of ethnic comedy got him into bigger venues, appearing with Sinatra, Steve and Edie, Tony Bennett, and Connie Francis.

He currently appears occasionally on comedy channels and has been featured on Howard Stern a few times, and has appeared on sattelite radio stations as late as 2007.

Here, Cooper takes liberties with American history:
[media id=47 width=400 height=300]

Crappy Album Covers #62 — The Dance

album-cover-crap-76_lpcoverlover_com This one is from Michelino and his Cha Cha Band. The color scheme of the album obfuscates the black lettering near the bottom. Something about “Cha Cha Cha” and secretaries. This whole thing gives me an understanding as to why lpcoverlover.com headlined this as “Banging The Secretary“. There is the secretary there with her typewriter. Either he is playing bad music and she wants Michelino to stop, or he wants to dictate a letter to her using drum signals, and she can’t keep up.
album-cover-crap-77_lpcoverlover_com I have discovered that the “Cha Cha” has within it a nearly endless goldmine of crappy album covers. Look at “Dracula Cha Cha Cha”. Well, of course one problem I have, and it goes without saying, that the cover looks like it was done in pastel by a 14-year-old.But even the mere idea of doing the “Dracula Cha Cha Cha” is quite another topic. Gone are the images of warm Spanish climes, where engage in the dance such as the Cha-Cha or the tango, or to any of the many other Latin rhythms that make travelling to Spain or Latin America a treat. Instead, you the Cha Cha, done with an element of fear. Fear that you might get caught, I’d say. Some things can never be forgiven.I guess, then, I would consider this Cha-Cha album where the themes are non-standard, a kind of “alternative Cha-Cha” album to please, say, the punks and the skinheads. Imagine punks and skinheads doing the Cha-Cha. Just imagine.
album-cover-crap-63_badhair2 It seems that everyone had tried their hand at disco during the seventies. Here, the late Danish pop-rocker keyboardist and heavy metallist Tommy Seebach (1949-2003) wants you to believe that he can do disco, with his album “Disco Tango”.It is rather surprising that in the seventies, a person like Seebach could wear his mustache and hair like that and probably still get laid. It sure was a different decade. Those who lived through those decades must admit: in the 70s, we all thought we were something. We all thought that up to that point in modern history, we had the coolest clothes, and the coolest hairstyles. I mean having a blowdryer was a cool thing, as was having one of those hair brushes with the bristles that go all the way around, so that blowdrying your hair could get you that puffy head of hair that made your head look bigger than it really was. And you felt so cool when you wore it! Now, you guys have to admit that if that was the deal with you and your immediate clique, then you didn’t look too different from Seebach over here. If you were on a date, you wore a sports jacket and one of those shirts with pointy collars, and you made sure that you left the top button undone so that the girl can see your necklace and possibly some chest hair. And since ties weren’t cool, you never wore one. Therefore, we must conclude that this album is only crappy in retrospect.This blogger seems to have dicovered in those multiple heavy metal videos he did, that they all seemed to be the same shots of the same riffs of totally different music. Even the images of the drummer hitting the cymbals were in different time with the music. The same girls were dancing the same dance out of the same forest, regardless of the music. On different songs, I saw the same shots of the same guitar riffs; the same shots of the same bass riffs, not even bothering to change the camera angle.
album-cover-crap-73_coverbrowser_com While we’re on the topic of clothing styles, I’m afraid that these guys, The Drifters, have a clothing style that is like nothing in the history of the universe.Tracking information on these folks was next to impossible. There is a polka tune called “Drifters Polka”, which seemingly everyone covered — even Roy Clark. But A band called “Drifters” and an album called “Polka ‘n’ Fun” only led to other crappy album blogs, short on straight info.

A NatLamp article at a White Supremacist site

I have been a fan of the National Lampoon since I was a teen in the 1970s. One of the most shocking articles for me to read in the mid 70s was P J O’Rourke’s “Foreigners From Around The World”, which appeared in the National Lampoon in May, 1976. The article is really a heap of ethnic jokes strung together, formulated to piss off all minorities equally. Maybe some more equally than others.

Even in my teens I realised that the humour is meant to be taken in irony. Problem is, O’Rourke dropped few hints that he was actually joking, outside of the fact that the entire article was totally outrageous. It is an orgy of stereotypes said without much apology. I felt at least a little disturbed by the article for that reason.

The reason I am bringing it up now, is because for the first time since I disposed of my NatLamp collection, I found the article using Google. Problem was, it was found at a White Supremacist site. Like most racist sites, you never actually know for sure you are at a racist site until you do some poking around. Then you begin to stumble on actual hate literature. For reasons of my own sense of ethics, I won’t post the link, but anyone can still easily Google to that site and find it easily enough if they really want to.

Now I am wondering if my willingness to be entertained by the article was actually an acceptance of hate literature, and was O’Rourke an earlier version of talk show hosts such as Ron Imus or Rush Limbaugh? O’Rourke does rescue himself, however, by lampooning his own ethnicity, which by his surname appears to be Irish. The illustration for the Irish is one of a nasty-looking lerperchaun, describing the Irish as “Pie-faced, neckless, bandy-legged sots who almost never fuck.” Maybe that gets him off the hook. For my part, I didn’t keep a scorecard.

But in addition, there is a larger idea that he appears to lampoon that is easy to miss among all of the sniping about individual ethnic groups. The United States is composed almost entirely of the ethnic groups he is making fun of. Ultimately, if we follow the logic to the end, it is America itself, his own country of residence, which he lampoons.

A shaggy dog

I have always been in stitches every time I read Peter Applebome’s imitation Hemingway in the following “shaggy dog” story:


We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength. But there was also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle Haggard song at a French restaurant. …

I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of her milk white BMW and her Jordache smile. There had been a fight. I had punched her boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls. Everyone told him, “You ride the bull, senor. You do not fight it.” But he was lean and tough like a bad rib-eye and he fought the bull. And then he fought me. And when we finished there were no winners, just men doing what men must do. …

“Stop the car,” the girl said. There was a look of terrible sadness in her eyes. She knew about the woman of the tollway. I knew not how. I started to speak, but she raised an arm and spoke with a quiet and peace I will never forget.

“I do not ask for whom’s the tollway belle,” she said, “the tollway belle’s for thee.”

The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was a lie. Life is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I poured whiskey onto my granola and faced a new day.

— Peter Applebome, International Imitation Hemingway Competition
Click here for the unedited version Once there, scroll to the bottom.

Little known books by JK Rowling

An example of an obscure JK Rowling book: Welcome Back, Potter

Harry Potter gets teacher training, graduates, and gets sent back to Hogwarts to teach. He is assigned a classroom of the worst students in the school, referred to as “sweathogs”, or to be more precise, “warthogs”. See what happens with our future witches and warlocks who have emotional and learning problems, who are unable to manage themselves in a regular witchcraft learning environment. Vinnie Barbarino is played by the son of Count Dracula. Soon to become adapted for television as a sitcom.