Friday, June 30, 2006
Okay. Gotta give it up to the man with the S ...
I hear good things and I hear bad ...
If you've seen it, please comment
I want to see what y'all thought.
dr phibes
" Look, up in the sky! "
" You gotta know how to get hit in the balls, know how to catch a bat in your teeth ... " Kenny Roger's The Gambler, Part Deux ....
Now if they can do Willie Nelson hostin' Punk'd!
dr phibes
How many scented candles DOES a ninja need, anyway ???
Lee Van Cleef would turn over in his grave ...
Okay. For those of you who don't know, he was " The Master ".
dr phibes
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Hip Hop in " Little D " ... " to the beat, y'all " ...
FROM
http://www.230publicity.com/astronautalis.html
When he stepped off the stage of the world famous Scribble Jam Battle (proving grounds for such rappers as: eminem, slug, and sage francis), Astronautalis knew it was time for a change. After spending the last 8 years as a well-respected battle rapper, and rising from lunchrooms to concert halls, the thrill was gone. His famous freestyle skill was all there, but the creative void was no longer filled by the braggadocio and machismo of the battle circuit, he needed something more.
On the long ride home from Cincinnati to Dallas, his headphones full of outlaw country and ’shoegazer’ rock, he began to shape his new path, and pen the words of the new Astronautalis. Blending styles of indie rock, electro, and talkin’ blues into hip-hop, this rapper has developed a sound like no other. He traded in his verbal weapons of mass destruction for songs about the railroad, lost love, and surreal dreams of sharing doughnuts with tupac and grapes with fat joe. His music has become an amalgam of synthesizers, old funk drum samples, and what can only be classified as ‘an unnatural obsession’ with slide guitar. Making the audience question, ‘is this rap?’
His live show is a theatrical mix of music and performance art, a lecture and stand up comedy, audience guided freestyles and well crafted songs. A show that has shared the stage with everyone from A Tribe Called Quest to The Polyphonic Spree, and taken Astronautalis all the way from the back porch at a 30 year-old texas Bar-B-Que to the Van’s Warped Tour, and all points in between. It makes you wonder how a bow-legged, colorblind suburbanite with a mohawk could ever learn to rap like this.
230 Publicity Website's review of " You and Yer Good Ideas "
Tommorow night, I cannot wait for! I will give y'all a review of it. I am takin' a good bud with me, so I can hardly wait to see if he likes it too. And I will be soakin' up the atmosphere [no pun intended] and tellin' ya how off the chain it will be, i believe
Till next blog
Isn't it ironic that BLOG and GLOB use the same letters from the alphabet?
dr phibes
p.s. I will also review Pikhasso, Picnic & Tahiti ... I'm sure they are off the
chain also !!!
http://www.230publicity.com/astronautalis.html
When he stepped off the stage of the world famous Scribble Jam Battle (proving grounds for such rappers as: eminem, slug, and sage francis), Astronautalis knew it was time for a change. After spending the last 8 years as a well-respected battle rapper, and rising from lunchrooms to concert halls, the thrill was gone. His famous freestyle skill was all there, but the creative void was no longer filled by the braggadocio and machismo of the battle circuit, he needed something more.
On the long ride home from Cincinnati to Dallas, his headphones full of outlaw country and ’shoegazer’ rock, he began to shape his new path, and pen the words of the new Astronautalis. Blending styles of indie rock, electro, and talkin’ blues into hip-hop, this rapper has developed a sound like no other. He traded in his verbal weapons of mass destruction for songs about the railroad, lost love, and surreal dreams of sharing doughnuts with tupac and grapes with fat joe. His music has become an amalgam of synthesizers, old funk drum samples, and what can only be classified as ‘an unnatural obsession’ with slide guitar. Making the audience question, ‘is this rap?’
His live show is a theatrical mix of music and performance art, a lecture and stand up comedy, audience guided freestyles and well crafted songs. A show that has shared the stage with everyone from A Tribe Called Quest to The Polyphonic Spree, and taken Astronautalis all the way from the back porch at a 30 year-old texas Bar-B-Que to the Van’s Warped Tour, and all points in between. It makes you wonder how a bow-legged, colorblind suburbanite with a mohawk could ever learn to rap like this.
230 Publicity Website's review of " You and Yer Good Ideas "
Tommorow night, I cannot wait for! I will give y'all a review of it. I am takin' a good bud with me, so I can hardly wait to see if he likes it too. And I will be soakin' up the atmosphere [no pun intended] and tellin' ya how off the chain it will be, i believe
Till next blog
Isn't it ironic that BLOG and GLOB use the same letters from the alphabet?
dr phibes
p.s. I will also review Pikhasso, Picnic & Tahiti ... I'm sure they are off the
chain also !!!
Must See Thursday !!!
For anyone who falls into this blog, welcome. The previous entries have had a very hardcore political slant or were to get you off with lightweight humour. If you read it and liked it, or not, please feel free to comment and add your intelligent reaction to the mix. I am thankful for the Blogger (tm) for its allowable ability for me to write like the days back when I used to write to a bud of mine about my life, things I observe and some things that people might enjoy ...
1. check out THE DEVIL'S MISCHIEF, on Radio Free Satan ... Bill M is not only a kickass host, but also it has " carnal comedy clips and netherworld novelty numbers " that make you laugh for hours [ ex : the Patton Oswalt special ]
http://www.radiofreesatan.com
2. DJ Lady Tribe. A hot babe who models, dj's and tags. She is a homeboys wet dream,meant in the most respectful taste.
http://www.djladytribe.com
3. Disinformation :: The gateway to the underground has as the item of the day ....Disinformation - The Complete Series Two-Disc, 6+ hour DVD set in discerning stores everywhere and HERE now! How far do you have to go to go too far for television? Disinformation found out! Featuring Illuminatus! author Robert Anton Wilson, Lucifer Principle author Howard Bloom, X-Men scribe and comics-genius Grant Morrison, underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger – the people you rarely see on TV. ... the kind of website Noam would be proud of.
http://www.disinfo.com/site
4. Mashups ...the greatest music for a bastard, like me ... Bastard pop is a musical genre which, in its purest form, consists of the combination (usually by digital means) of the music from one song with the a cappella from another. Typically, the music and vocals belong to completely different genres. At their best, bastard pop songs strive for musical epiphanies that add up to considerably more than the sum of their parts. ... the best known site that promotes actual events with it is Bootie, the first bootleg mashup club in the United States [also known as mashups in the UK] ... Though the term "bastard pop" first became popular in 2001, the practice of assembling new songs from purloined elements of other tracks stretches back at least to the 1950s, and, if one extends the definition beyond the realm of pop, precursors can be found in Musique concrète, as well as the classical practice of (re-)arranging traditional folk material and the jazz tradition of reinterpreting standards. In addition, many elements of bastard pop culture have antecedents in hip hop and the DIY ethic of punk.
http://www.mashculture.nl/mash.html
If I may :
Notable bootleg albums include:
* The Kleptones: A Night At The Hip-Hopera (Queen)
* Lushlife: West Sounds(Kanye West vs Pet Sounds)
* Various Artists: Always Outsiders, Never Outdone (Prodigy)
* Various Artists: Flip The Switch (The Chemical Brothers)
* Dean Gray: American Edit (Green Day)
* DJ Z-Trip: Uneasy Listening
* The Who Boys: Tales of Townshend & Wilson and For Mash Get Smashed (The Who vs The Beach Boys (TTW) and various bands (FMGS))
This stuff is most of the time pretty damn good. There are a few that need tweaking and some that appear like they were thrown together at the last minute. And a few, you can't even get to. But for the most part, most of them kick major @$$ ...
So if you see this blog, check out these things [or even other things I've added earlier ]
My baby is in Los Angeles. I drove her to the airport, so I was kinda interested, since I've never been to DFW International before. It was pretty cool. But why no ATMs? They had automatic urinals and faucets, soda machines and even phones, but no ATMs? Jeez. I have been listening to All In Family album snippets and George Carlin tonight. I bought Jedi Mind Tricks and Atmosphere, so I can hardly wait to listen to all of those albums. And tonight, I am catching up on a few things.
Till next blog,
Tommy Chong should get an honorary degree in medicinal marijuana
dr phibes
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
darkness is my only confidant it seems ...
22:22 PM CST
Just got to this. This blog is dedicated to my need to understand that in the scheme of things, impatience is not needed in the speck of the fraction of the universe. I feel refreshed with my Mountain Dew by my side, my mind sorting out the information that has been fed to it as up to this point. I note that life is hard when you are threatened of your life by others, when they fail to realize that all living beings eventually die, due to the evolution of time. Time eventually gets to all men and women, be they deep pocketed industrialists and owners of power or be they street sweepers or street soldiers, mindlessly watching the days pass with an endless persistence and persecution ... I read an article on Beautiful People. What defines beauty? Visual context most of the time. One man's idea of beauty may be inside the Sistine Chapel, which I hope to visit someday in my life; then others think of beauty as Carmen Electra or Jessica Alba; then some see beauty as excellently developed music, like Jimi Hendrix's complex version of the Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock or Miles creating Kind Of Blue or even Erykah Badu's Mama's Gun ... I honestly don't know my definition of it yet. I have been asked " Do you love me? " I don't know the entirety of love yet. I am trying to learn and accept and set limits and to learn. I know that in order to experience and savour life, I need to set up a sense of order and neatness, to allow me to catch up on put-off, procrastinated projects and open my world.
I am listening to The World Today on NPR radio; the only radio I can even stand now. Commercial radio has turned into the prostitute found in the old Moulin Rouge days, awaiting to be cut at the jugular by independent music that is rich in flavour and style, but not yet commercial or sold out, yet willing to spread its legs for the easy pop of A&R reps who work for the Major League of radio and music, soliciting cheap pop, easy hook songs that are as disposable as the very albums/cds they are burned on, like Mephistopheles decided that the easy way to corrupt the youth would be thru this drivel. Any archtypical god help us if she has a " herpe " sore or worse ...
My job is a very interesting thing. I work in one of the worst type of jobs that a person can do : debt collection. I don't prefer it and to a point, I wish I could go back to art creation and development of imagination and creativity ... I love to design and fiddle with drawing constantly, daily ... but like everyone in the United States that fall in my caste and lower ... bills are the nature of the beast. I feel the push of the economy and the thirst of the needy to seek relief and can only watch and weep spiritually with tired, overworked, underpaid eyes. Like those hopeless souls leaning quietly under the hum of the transit bus in the city, I am crammed into a sardine can-like lifestyle that allows for only a few creature comforts sporadically strewn throughout life, that to the wealthy seem normal : food, gas and clothing, if available. We drown in a scene of helpless dispair, waiting for the crunch of the end of the day to hit us ... its those days where cigarette smoking and drinking seem like the American Dream ... to us, our lives are the American Nightmare ...
The enthusiam of the sports that have been displayed lately ... mainly the Mavs and the Heat playoffs for the Finals ... well, I think that the Mavs lost simply because they ran out of gas ... their " A game " just lost and for Cuban to blame officials is justified if the officials did make mistakes that were later admitted and were rectified, but under the way the structure of the game is made, it may all be spilled milk at this time, without the justified corrections they now express in football with instant replay relayed immediately to the officials ... but some people, who have opinions, may interpret it as " sour grapes " ... I make no translation or interpretation, I'm just responding to an overly emotional response, rather than a businesslike, thoughtful and well versed response ...
Then again, he does own the team.
Well, no offense given ...
Till next blog
Rodney King may have been the pre-millineal American Socrates after all ...
dr phibes
going from hump day to astronautalis' cd release party ... nice !
I love hump day. It's a change of pace.
This Friday Astronautalis has a CD release party , accompanied by Pikhasso, Picnic & Tahiti @ Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studio, in Denton, Texas. The show starts at 21:00 PM CST [ 9:00 PM ] and is $ 6.00/person.
I've been to Rubber Gloves before. It is a pretty cool venue for music. Not too big and not cramped. It reminds me of a more subdued Trees or ever moreso, like Blind Lemon on Friday nights, during slam night.
It's been a very lightweight week so far, not too much going on, which I like. I am trying so hard to get my priorities set and staying, without just forgetting to allow flexability into the picture.
Till next blog
[Yeah, I realize its light. But that's okay.]
Listen to what you feel is true.
dr phibes
This Friday Astronautalis has a CD release party , accompanied by Pikhasso, Picnic & Tahiti @ Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studio, in Denton, Texas. The show starts at 21:00 PM CST [ 9:00 PM ] and is $ 6.00/person.
I've been to Rubber Gloves before. It is a pretty cool venue for music. Not too big and not cramped. It reminds me of a more subdued Trees or ever moreso, like Blind Lemon on Friday nights, during slam night.
It's been a very lightweight week so far, not too much going on, which I like. I am trying so hard to get my priorities set and staying, without just forgetting to allow flexability into the picture.
Till next blog
[Yeah, I realize its light. But that's okay.]
Listen to what you feel is true.
dr phibes
Monday, June 26, 2006
Sir Christopher John Frayling ... and bits of Once Upon A Time In The West
Sir Christopher John Frayling (born 25 December 1946) is a British educationalist and writer, known for his study of popular culture.
He read history at Churchill College, Cambridge and gained a PhD in the study of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
He taught history at Bath University and in 1979 was appointed Professor of Cultural History at London's post-graduate art and design school, the Royal College of Art. Since 1996 he has been Rector in charge of the College.
His is the Chairman of Arts Council England, Chairman of the Design Council, Chairman of the Royal Mint Advisory Committee, and a Trustee of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Christopher Frayling was awarded a knighthood in 2001 for "Services to Art and Design Education".
He has had a wide output as a writer and critic on subjects ranging from vampires to westerns. He has written and presented television series such as The Art of Persuasion on advertising and Strange Landscape on the Middle Ages.
He has conducted a series of radio and television interviews with figures from the world of film, including Audrey Hepburn, Deborah Kerr, Ken Adam, Francis Ford Coppola and Clint Eastwood. He has also written and presented several television series, including The Face of Tutankhamun and Nightmare: Birth of Horror.
He is especially known for his study of spaghetti westerns and specifically director Sergio Leone. He has written a very popular biography of Leone, Something To Do With Death (2000); helped run the Los Angeles-based Gene Autry Museum's exhibit on Leone in the summer of 2005; and has appeared in numerous documentaries about Leone and his films, particularly the DVD documentaries of Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).
Literature
* Napoleon Wrote Fiction (1972)
* Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula (1978, revised 1992)
* Nightmare: Birth of Horror (1996)
History
* The Face of Tutankhamun (1992)
* Strange Landscape: Journey Through the Middle Ages (1995)
Film
* Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone (1981)
* American Westerners (1984)
* Clint Eastwood (1992)
* Sergio Leone: Something To Do With Death (2000)
* Mad, Bad and Dangerous?: The Scientist and the Cinema (2005)
* Sergio Leone: Once Upon a Time in Italy (2005)
* Ken Adam: The Art of Production Design (2005)
Education
* The Royal College of Art: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Art and Design (1987)
* Design of the Times: One Hundred Years of the Royal College of Art (1996)
* The Art Pack (1998)
External links
* Guardian profile
* Frayling on BBC Desert Island Discs
Christopher Frayling
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Frayling
Once Upon a Time in the West (originally released in Italy under the title C'era una volta il West) is a 1968 Western film directed by Sergio Leone, considered by many to be his "greatest film". Its critical acclaim has led some to declare it the greatest "Western ever made". The epic film stars Henry Fonda unusually cast as the villain Frank, Charles Bronson as his nemesis Harmonica, Jason Robards, as the generally benign bandit Cheyenne, and Claudia Cardinale, as a newly-widowed homesteader with a past.
Leone said that his last three films, Once Upon a Time in the West, A Fistful of Dynamite and Once Upon A Time In America, were a trilogy based on "the three periods that touched America".
After making The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Leone had intended to retire from making Westerns. He had come across the novel The Hoods by "Harry Grey" (a pseudonym), an autobiographical book based on the author's own experiences as a Jewish hood during Prohibition, and planned to adapt it into a film (this would eventually, seventeen years later, become his final film, Once Upon A Time In America). However, Leone was offered only Westerns by the studios. MGM/UA (who had produced the Dollars Trilogy) offered him the opportunity to make a film starring Charlton Heston, Kirk Douglas, and Gregory Peck, but Leone refused. However, when Paramount offered Leone a generous budget along with access to Henry Fonda, his favorite actor whom he had wanted to work with for virtually all of his career, Leone accepted this offer.
Leone commissioned then-film critics (and future directors) Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento to help him develop the film in late 1966. The men spent much of the following year watching and discussing numerous classic Westerns at Leone's house, and constructed a story made up almost entirely of "quotations" from American Westerns (see below). (see Frayling)
Leone later commissioned Sergio Donati, who had worked on several of Leone's other films, to help him refine the screenplay, largely to curb the length of the film towards the end of production. Many of the film's most memorable lines of dialogue came from Donati, or from the film's English dialogue director, expatriate American actor Mickey Knox.
Why can't we have movies like these anymore? Movies with depth and wit and intelligence. Movies that have been thought over, not only in the screenplay, but also in the direction. We still do have spots of brillance appear off in the distance sporadically, but mostly we are subjugated to all frills, no freethinking fluff pieces of cotton-candy for us, to dumb us down in the cinema and insult us, as an audience and as a ticket-payer.
The lesson : Be selective. Always.
Till the next blog,
dr phibes
I reserve the right to be ignorant. That's the Western way of life. - Alec Leamas
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965)
another blanket-like surreal day in purgatory ...
I figure if you can't have one day that you can laugh at and sit back and enjoy, why have a week?
dr phibes
dr phibes
monday morning humour ...
THE WEDDING NIGHT
There was a young woman, it seems, that was getting married. So she went and asked her mother for some advice about the Honeymoon night. "Mummy, what should I do on that night?" "What ever do you mean, dear?" her mother asked. "Well, I mean ... I'm imbarrased to ... you know ... undress infront of Charles." "Oh," her mother said, "That's not a problem. Men just "know" what to do when it comes to that sort of thing. I mean, your father knew and I suppose your grandfather knew ... When they have you in the room they'll say, ' Oh, I seem to have run out of cigarettes ...' and then they'll leave and you can get yourself all prettied up."
So, when the girl and her husband arrived in the hotel room she was waiting when suddendly the man said, "Hmmm. I seem to have run out of cigarettes. I'll go down and get some." No sooner had the door shut than she jumped and grabbed her suitcase, ripped off her clothes, put on her nightgown, fixed her make-up and hopped into bed, puffing up the pillows and spreading out the covers, all nice-like. Soon as she'd finished in walked the groom. He looked at her and said, "What are you doing there? We haven't even had lunch yet?"
- David Tynan O'Mahoney (July 6, 1936 – March 10, 2005), better known as Dave Allen, was an Irish comedian, popular in Britain and Australia in the 1960s and 1970s. His act was typified by a very relaxed, intimate style — he would sit on a chair, smoking and holding a glass of whiskey — and would often make jokes about the Catholic church. Along with his seated stand-up routines, his television shows were interspersed with sketch comedy.
http://members.tripod.com/~DaveAllenFan/Stories3.html
Till next blog,
Reader's Digest is right. Laughter is the best medicene.
dr phibes
There was a young woman, it seems, that was getting married. So she went and asked her mother for some advice about the Honeymoon night. "Mummy, what should I do on that night?" "What ever do you mean, dear?" her mother asked. "Well, I mean ... I'm imbarrased to ... you know ... undress infront of Charles." "Oh," her mother said, "That's not a problem. Men just "know" what to do when it comes to that sort of thing. I mean, your father knew and I suppose your grandfather knew ... When they have you in the room they'll say, ' Oh, I seem to have run out of cigarettes ...' and then they'll leave and you can get yourself all prettied up."
So, when the girl and her husband arrived in the hotel room she was waiting when suddendly the man said, "Hmmm. I seem to have run out of cigarettes. I'll go down and get some." No sooner had the door shut than she jumped and grabbed her suitcase, ripped off her clothes, put on her nightgown, fixed her make-up and hopped into bed, puffing up the pillows and spreading out the covers, all nice-like. Soon as she'd finished in walked the groom. He looked at her and said, "What are you doing there? We haven't even had lunch yet?"
- David Tynan O'Mahoney (July 6, 1936 – March 10, 2005), better known as Dave Allen, was an Irish comedian, popular in Britain and Australia in the 1960s and 1970s. His act was typified by a very relaxed, intimate style — he would sit on a chair, smoking and holding a glass of whiskey — and would often make jokes about the Catholic church. Along with his seated stand-up routines, his television shows were interspersed with sketch comedy.
http://members.tripod.com/~DaveAllenFan/Stories3.html
Till next blog,
Reader's Digest is right. Laughter is the best medicene.
dr phibes
Sunday, June 25, 2006
A Fistful Of Penalties ... a late-Leone remake? pt . 1 ....
Per un pugno di dollari (1964)
Joe: I don't think it's nice, you laughin'. You see, my mule don't like people laughing. He gets the crazy idea you're laughin' at him. Now if you apologize, like I know you're going to, I might convince him that you really didn't mean it.
The film's US release was delayed when Yojimbo (1961) screenwriters Akira Kurosawa and Ryuzo Kikushima sued the filmmakers for breach of copyright. Kurosawa and Kikushima won and as a result received 15
percent of the film's worldwide gross and exclusive distribution rights for Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. Kurosawa said later he made more money off of this project than "Yojimbo".
INFLUENCE -
Although the film was advertised in trailers as "the first film of its kind", the plot and even the cinematography was based almost entirely on Akira Kurosawa's film Yojimbo (written by Kurosawa and Ryuzo Kikushima). Yojimbo itself is believed to have been based on Dashiell Hammett's novel Red Harvest, although Kurosawa never credited the author, despite acknowledging the source. Kurosawa himself reportedly liked Leone's film, but remained insistent that he receive compensation. He wrote Leone: "It is a very fine film, but it is my film." The producers of Yojimbo successfully sued the production of A Fistful of Dollars for copyright infringement, and gained an apology, $100,000 dollars and 15% of the box office totals in Asia to the movie in compensation. Kurosawa later admitted he quite liked A Fistful of Dollars and considered it a worthy remake.
from A Fistful of Dollars
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fistful_of_Dollars
_______________________________________
Watchdog protests blogger conviction
By MARTA FALCONI, Associated Press WriterFri Jun 23, 3:00 PM ET
A media watchdog group protested the conviction of an Italian blogger for defamation, warning Friday that such a verdict could lead to censorship of blogs in Italy.
Blogger Roberto Mancini, 59, was convicted of defamation last month in Aosta, northern Italy, and sentenced to pay $16,900 in fines and damages.
Four people, including two journalists, had filed a complaint against him over the content of his blog, which reports on local news in sarcastic and sometimes crude terms.
"It looks like the blogger is being punished for his bad language and not because he posted false information, which is unacceptable," Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said in a statement Friday.
The group also said Mancini wrongly was held responsible for comments posted by readers.
Mancini denies writing the incriminating comments, according to his defense lawyer, Caterina Malavenda. She said he would appeal the verdict.
In Italy, explanations of rulings generally are made public weeks after the ruling is issued, and the grounds for the verdict against Mancini have not yet been released.
Blogs, short for Web logs, are Web sites that allow one or more people to mix opinion, reporting, gossip and even musings about daily life, usually with links to news stories and other items on the Web.
They have become popular in recent years because they are easy to use and give bloggers, many of whom remain anonymous, a relatively wide freedom of expression and a potentially wide audience.
According to court documents, messages posted on the blog made clear, unflattering references to the four who filed the complaint, in one case mentioning that one of them had taken part in a bank robbery.
Malavenda, Mancini's lawyer, argued that the author of the defaming pieces could not be identified with certainty. She said authorities had seized in a raid photographs that appear on the blog, books on blogging and passwords.
"All the material shows he can be someone who used the blog, but there's no evidence that he is the author of those defaming pieces," she said.
Reporters Without Borders added "the complainants were not able to show (the reports) were untrue" and warned that the verdict might induce people who manage blogs to censor messages posted by visitors.
________________________
TECHNEWS
Media watchdog protests defamation ruling vs blogger
Sat Jun 24, 2006
ROME (AP) -- A media watchdog protested the conviction of an Italian blogger for defamation, warning Friday that such a verdict could lead to censorship of blogs in Italy.
Blogger Roberto Mancini, 59, was convicted of defamation last month in Aosta, northern Italy, and sentenced to pay euro13,500 (US$ 16,900) in fines and damages.
Four people, including two journalists, had filed a complaint against him over the content of his blog, which reports on local news in sarcastic and sometimes crude terms.
``It looks like the blogger is being punished for his bad language and not because he posted false information, which is unacceptable,'' Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said in a statement Friday.
The group also said Mancini wrongly was held responsible for comments posted by readers.
Mancini denies writing the incriminating comments, according to his defense lawyer, Caterina Malavenda. She said he would appeal the verdict.
In Italy, explanations of rulings generally are made public weeks after the ruling is issued, and the grounds for the verdict against Mancini have not yet been released.
Blogs, short for Web logs, are Web sites that allow one or more people to mix opinion, reporting, gossip and even musings about daily life, usually with links to news stories and other items on the Web.
They have become popular in recent years because they are easy to use and give bloggers, many of whom remain anonymous, a relatively wide freedom of expression and a potentially wide audience.
``This is the first time I hear of a case of a blogger who's been found responsible for what is posted on his blog,'' said Julien Pain, the head of the Internet Freedom desk for the watchdog, speaking from Paris.
According to court documents, messages posted on the blog made clear, unflattering references to the four who filed the complaint, in one case mentioning that one of them had taken part in a bank robbery.
Reporters Without Borders warned that the verdict might induce people who manage blogs to censor messages posted by visitors.
____________________________
Press freedom group criticizes Singapore over blogger
Fri Jun 23, 3:30 AM ET
Singapore's police investigation of an Internet blogger who posted cartoons mocking Jesus Christ shows the city-state has scant regard for media independence, a press freedom group says.
"It is not the job of the police to intervene in this kind of case. By targeting this blogger, the authorities have once again shown they attribute scant importance to media diversity and independence," the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in a statement.
"In their view, the role of press is simply to educate and orientate the public, a position not very dissimilar to the one taken by the Chinese and Vietnamese regimes."
The Straits Times has reported that the 21-year-old blogger, who described himself as a "free thinker", first posted a cartoon in January depicting Jesus Christ as a zombie biting a boy's head.
He ignored an online message asking for the cartoon's removal and went on to post more caricatures of Christ to spite the sender.
"I never thought anyone would complain to the police because the pictures were not insidious," he told the newspaper, adding that the cartoons had already been removed from his site.
Police told AFP Friday they are continuing to investigate the blogger after first questioning him in March.
The blogger could be jailed for up to three years or fined 5,000 Singapore (3,148 US) dollars or both if convicted under the Sedition Act.
"It is a serious offence for any person to distribute or reproduce any seditious publication which may cause feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes," an earlier police statement said.
RSF said it understood that sections of the community might find cartoons relating to religious symbols shocking, "but they should be tolerated for the sake of free expression."
Singapore, a multi-racial island nation, clamps down hard on anyone inciting communal tensions. Two ethnic Chinese men were jailed last year for anti-Muslim blogs.
Ethnic Chinese make up 76 percent of Singapore's resident population of 3.4 million. Malay Muslims account for 13.7 percent followed by ethnic Indians and other racial groups.
In April, RSF condemned Singapore's restrictions on political discussions in blogs and websites ahead of general elections held in May.
Last year the group ranked Singapore 140th out of 167 countries in its annual press freedom index, alongside the likes of Egypt and Syria.
Singapore's ruling party is credited with turning the city-state into one of Asia's richest and most modern societies, but condemned by critics for restrictions on dissent.
Foreign publications have paid heavy damages or suffered circulation restrictions after publishing articles critical of Singapore's leaders.
But in a forum with foreign correspondents in April, Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew defended the country's record.
"We're not going to allow foreign correspondents or foreign journalists or anybody else to tell us what to do," said Lee, 82, the former prime minister who holds the position of minister mentor in the government of his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
________________________________
Dropping the F-Bomb
By Joel Achenbach Sunday, June 25, 2006; Page B01
The most versatile word in our language can do almost anything, other than be printed in a family newspaper. It can be a noun, a verb, a gerund, an adjective or just an expletive. It can be literal or figurative. Although it has an explicit sexual meaning, it's usually used figuratively these days, as an all-purpose intensifier.
The F-word remains taboo. But just barely. We may be entering an era in which this fabled vulgarity is on its way to becoming just another word -- its transgressive energy steadily sapped by overuse.
From hip-hop artists to bloggers to the vice president of the United States, everyone's dropping the F-bomb. Young people in particular may not grasp how special this word has been in the past. They may not realize how, like an old sourdough starter, the word has been lovingly preserved over the centuries and passed from generation to generation. For the good of human communication we must come together, as a people, to protect this word, and ensure that, years from now, it remains obscene.
Our leaders aren't helping. Before he was elected president, George W. Bush used the word repeatedly during an interview with Tucker Carlson. Dick Cheney on the Senate floor told a Democratic senator to eff himself. Presidential candidate John F. Kerry said of Bush and the war, "Did I expect George Bush to [mess] it up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did." No one is shocked that these people use such language, but as statesmanship it's not exactly Lincolnesque.
More generally, the word is imperiled by the profusion of communications technologies. Everyone's talking, e-mailing, blogging and commenting on everyone else's comments. Combine that with partisan rancor and a general desperation to get one's message across, and naturally the word gets overtaxed. In Blogworld there are no idiots anymore, only [blithering] idiots. The most opportunistic move in the corporate realm may have been the decision by a retailer to call itself French Connection United Kingdom, which allowed it to put the company's initials on T-shirts everywhere. Jeepers, that's clever!
I don't want to make a federal case out of all of this -- but that's what the government is doing. The Federal Communications Commission in recent years has cracked down on "indecency" in general and this word specifically. The FCC's fines for indecency have risen steadily: a mere $4,000 in 1995, then $48,000 in 2000, then $440,000 in 2003 and finally a whopping $7.9 million in 2004. President Bush signed a bill last week increasing by tenfold the maximum fine for indecency on radio or TV, to $325,000. Broadcasters have sued to overturn recent FCC rulings, arguing that broadcasters shouldn't have to abide by laws that don't affect cable and satellite providers (which is why HBO's "Deadwood" can clock, by one Web site's calculation, 1.48 F-words per minute). The inability to be indecent is, for broadcasters, a competitive disadvantage.
In any case, government fines for indecency are something of a rearguard action, unlikely to stem the tide. It's like trying to fight rising sea levels one sandbag at a time.
A landmark case revolves around the word used by Bono, the rock star, at the 2003 Golden Globe Awards. He blurted out that winning an award was "[bleepin'] brilliant." The FCC first ruled that his comment wasn't indecent, because it didn't describe a sexual act. But in 2004, after the Janet Jackson breast exposure during the Super Bowl halftime show, the commission reversed the Bono ruling, saying the singer's comment was indeed profane and indecent.
The FCC's logic, however, was a stretch. It argued that any use of the word "inherently has a sexual connotation." But that's just not true. In fact, the reason it is used so often is because it has escaped the bonds of its sexual origin. It's now used as a generic intensifier. It makes plain language more colorful and emphatic.
The reason it must be suppressed in polite society is not because it's a bad word, but because, in certain circumstances, it is a very good word. It is a solidly built word of just four letters, bracketed by rock-hard consonants. It is not a mushy word, but one with sharp edges. Consider how clunky the term "the F-word" is. The authentic article, by contrast, explodes into space from a gate formed by the upper incisors and the lower lip. Then it slams to a dramatic glottal cough.
I'd even argue that it has therapeutic properties. Ponder, if you will, how critically important this word can be when you stub a toe. It serves as an instant palliative. It's like verbal morphine. You can't hop around the dining room, holding your foot, shouting "Drat!" or "Dagnabbit!" or "Heavens to Betsy!" Those words don't work.
"It's a sexual word in origin but it's not used that way very often," says Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary and editor of the 1995 book "The F-Word," a 224-page dictionary in which some of the permutations of the word are absofreakin'lutely ridiculous.
"It does not have the sting that it used to," he says. "For young people, it just doesn't have that much power for them."
The word has been around since at least the 15th century. The English word with which we are familiar is related to similar words found in the Germanic languages, such as Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish and German. These words meant "to thrust" or "to strike" or "to copulate." The first known printed appearance, Sheidlower says, comes from a text around 1475, in a poem that more or less said the monks of Cambridge did not go to heaven because of their sexual dalliances with women. For the next four centuries it was almost always used in a literal sexual sense. The figurative uses so common today didn't arise until the late 19th century, Sheidlower says.
The word was not openly printed in the United States until 1926, when it appeared once in Howard Vincent O'Brien's memoir "Wine, Women and War," according to Sheidlower's book. After World War II, writer Norman Mailer negotiated his way around the taboo by using the made-up word "fug" in the dialogue of the book "The Naked and the Dead." This spring, Andrew Crocker, a Harvard senior, turned in his thesis on the use of the word in post-World War II America, and he relates the famous story that Tallulah Bankhead (or, in some tellings, Dorothy Parker, or Mae West) said to Mailer at a cocktail party, "So you're the man who can't spell f -- ." Nice line, though Crocker says it's apocryphal.
James Jones used the word in his 1951 novel "From Here to Eternity." Like Mailer, Jones was reflecting the speech of American soldiers during the war. This point is key: The word was routinely used by real people, it just was rarely published and never broadcast. It was still taboo.
Liberating the word became a dubious triumph of the 1960s counterculture. At Woodstock, Country Joe and the Fish led a rousing cheer that began with "Give me an F!" and continued on through "K," finally asking, "What's that spell?" Now it sounds silly. Wow. They said a bad word out loud! What revolutionaries!
Soon, the word became common in popular culture, but still retained some of its sizzle. Consider the classic line by Otter in the 1978 movie "Animal House" after the fraternity brothers have wrecked Flounder's car: "Flounder, you can't spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You [effed] up -- you trusted us!" Drift a few years forward to 1989, and Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing," and the word gets a real workout in the mouth of Sal, who at one point uses it six times in the space of five sentences.
Today it still has enough power to be memorable, as when Jack and Miles in the movie "Sideways" discuss the possibility of drinking merlot:
Jack: "If they want to drink merlot, we're drinking merlot."
Miles: "No, if anyone orders merlot, I'm leaving. I am NOT drinking any [expletive deleted] merlot!"
Just to clarify: This is funny not because Miles used a bad word, but because of the juxtaposition of the bad word with the one that follows. We do not expect to hear a person express such strong feelings -- to the point of vulgarity -- when discussing a particular kind of grape .
We must not overharvest the swear words that are part of the commons of our language. It is an adults-only commons, of course. Kids need to be told that they still can't use it. How can a 13-year-old be transgressively vulgar with the word if his 5-year-old sister already uses it? This word is supposed to be a reward of adulthood. We have to conserve it, so that our children and our children's children can use it when we're gone.
There is a wonderful scene in the 1987 movie "Hope and Glory." A gang of boys is rambling through the rubble of London during the Blitz. The new boy, Bill, wants to join. They ask if he knows any swear words. He says he does. Say them, the boys insist. He hesitates. He admits finally that he knows only one swear word. After much delay and agonizing, he says it, loudly.
The word.
The other boys are shocked into silence. "That word is special," the gang leader finally says. "That word is only for something really important."
Precisely.
achenbachj@washpost.com
Joel Achenbach is a staff writer for the Washington Post magazine.
For those of you who scan and surf the blogs like a mild reader, this should either scare you or incite you. Why ?
Cause they lose the point.
1. To get an idea or concept across hot button celebrities like Howard Stern, Jerry Springer, Maury Povich or Eminem,don't use profanity or shock all the time to get their thoughts across. All they have to do is allow their minds to think through issues and create a nexus of opinion that will cause us to react with or without thinking. For someone to use point blank cursing to cut down is too easy. It's the difference we have allowed ourselves to cultivate, from All In The Family to South Park. The insecurities that force those to use vulgarity replace those days when sarcasm and cynicism could allow the same insecure person to overcome, simply by using a Miriam Webster Dictionary and the human mind.
2. We have gone 1000% politically correct ... and its enough to make any logical human have a migraine. We alter the history to make it less sensitive to the new kids having kids.
3. Religion is getting to be a pedestal on which the fears of age old preconception can slap us against the cheek time and time again with their righteous anger. When taught to love those who are against them, they turn instead to Old Testament "eye for an eye" tentament.
4. When kids eight and under get a chance to slip into a R rated movie, with their parents in tow, F is the least sensitive word with which they are bombarded.
Sweeping off the issue under the rug doesn't cut it.
Till the next blog
Restriction is just Constriction's ugly as a stick brother
dr phibes
Joe: I don't think it's nice, you laughin'. You see, my mule don't like people laughing. He gets the crazy idea you're laughin' at him. Now if you apologize, like I know you're going to, I might convince him that you really didn't mean it.
The film's US release was delayed when Yojimbo (1961) screenwriters Akira Kurosawa and Ryuzo Kikushima sued the filmmakers for breach of copyright. Kurosawa and Kikushima won and as a result received 15
percent of the film's worldwide gross and exclusive distribution rights for Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. Kurosawa said later he made more money off of this project than "Yojimbo".
INFLUENCE -
Although the film was advertised in trailers as "the first film of its kind", the plot and even the cinematography was based almost entirely on Akira Kurosawa's film Yojimbo (written by Kurosawa and Ryuzo Kikushima). Yojimbo itself is believed to have been based on Dashiell Hammett's novel Red Harvest, although Kurosawa never credited the author, despite acknowledging the source. Kurosawa himself reportedly liked Leone's film, but remained insistent that he receive compensation. He wrote Leone: "It is a very fine film, but it is my film." The producers of Yojimbo successfully sued the production of A Fistful of Dollars for copyright infringement, and gained an apology, $100,000 dollars and 15% of the box office totals in Asia to the movie in compensation. Kurosawa later admitted he quite liked A Fistful of Dollars and considered it a worthy remake.
from A Fistful of Dollars
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fistful_of_Dollars
_______________________________________
Watchdog protests blogger conviction
By MARTA FALCONI, Associated Press WriterFri Jun 23, 3:00 PM ET
A media watchdog group protested the conviction of an Italian blogger for defamation, warning Friday that such a verdict could lead to censorship of blogs in Italy.
Blogger Roberto Mancini, 59, was convicted of defamation last month in Aosta, northern Italy, and sentenced to pay $16,900 in fines and damages.
Four people, including two journalists, had filed a complaint against him over the content of his blog, which reports on local news in sarcastic and sometimes crude terms.
"It looks like the blogger is being punished for his bad language and not because he posted false information, which is unacceptable," Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said in a statement Friday.
The group also said Mancini wrongly was held responsible for comments posted by readers.
Mancini denies writing the incriminating comments, according to his defense lawyer, Caterina Malavenda. She said he would appeal the verdict.
In Italy, explanations of rulings generally are made public weeks after the ruling is issued, and the grounds for the verdict against Mancini have not yet been released.
Blogs, short for Web logs, are Web sites that allow one or more people to mix opinion, reporting, gossip and even musings about daily life, usually with links to news stories and other items on the Web.
They have become popular in recent years because they are easy to use and give bloggers, many of whom remain anonymous, a relatively wide freedom of expression and a potentially wide audience.
According to court documents, messages posted on the blog made clear, unflattering references to the four who filed the complaint, in one case mentioning that one of them had taken part in a bank robbery.
Malavenda, Mancini's lawyer, argued that the author of the defaming pieces could not be identified with certainty. She said authorities had seized in a raid photographs that appear on the blog, books on blogging and passwords.
"All the material shows he can be someone who used the blog, but there's no evidence that he is the author of those defaming pieces," she said.
Reporters Without Borders added "the complainants were not able to show (the reports) were untrue" and warned that the verdict might induce people who manage blogs to censor messages posted by visitors.
________________________
TECHNEWS
Media watchdog protests defamation ruling vs blogger
Sat Jun 24, 2006
ROME (AP) -- A media watchdog protested the conviction of an Italian blogger for defamation, warning Friday that such a verdict could lead to censorship of blogs in Italy.
Blogger Roberto Mancini, 59, was convicted of defamation last month in Aosta, northern Italy, and sentenced to pay euro13,500 (US$ 16,900) in fines and damages.
Four people, including two journalists, had filed a complaint against him over the content of his blog, which reports on local news in sarcastic and sometimes crude terms.
``It looks like the blogger is being punished for his bad language and not because he posted false information, which is unacceptable,'' Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said in a statement Friday.
The group also said Mancini wrongly was held responsible for comments posted by readers.
Mancini denies writing the incriminating comments, according to his defense lawyer, Caterina Malavenda. She said he would appeal the verdict.
In Italy, explanations of rulings generally are made public weeks after the ruling is issued, and the grounds for the verdict against Mancini have not yet been released.
Blogs, short for Web logs, are Web sites that allow one or more people to mix opinion, reporting, gossip and even musings about daily life, usually with links to news stories and other items on the Web.
They have become popular in recent years because they are easy to use and give bloggers, many of whom remain anonymous, a relatively wide freedom of expression and a potentially wide audience.
``This is the first time I hear of a case of a blogger who's been found responsible for what is posted on his blog,'' said Julien Pain, the head of the Internet Freedom desk for the watchdog, speaking from Paris.
According to court documents, messages posted on the blog made clear, unflattering references to the four who filed the complaint, in one case mentioning that one of them had taken part in a bank robbery.
Reporters Without Borders warned that the verdict might induce people who manage blogs to censor messages posted by visitors.
____________________________
Press freedom group criticizes Singapore over blogger
Fri Jun 23, 3:30 AM ET
Singapore's police investigation of an Internet blogger who posted cartoons mocking Jesus Christ shows the city-state has scant regard for media independence, a press freedom group says.
"It is not the job of the police to intervene in this kind of case. By targeting this blogger, the authorities have once again shown they attribute scant importance to media diversity and independence," the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in a statement.
"In their view, the role of press is simply to educate and orientate the public, a position not very dissimilar to the one taken by the Chinese and Vietnamese regimes."
The Straits Times has reported that the 21-year-old blogger, who described himself as a "free thinker", first posted a cartoon in January depicting Jesus Christ as a zombie biting a boy's head.
He ignored an online message asking for the cartoon's removal and went on to post more caricatures of Christ to spite the sender.
"I never thought anyone would complain to the police because the pictures were not insidious," he told the newspaper, adding that the cartoons had already been removed from his site.
Police told AFP Friday they are continuing to investigate the blogger after first questioning him in March.
The blogger could be jailed for up to three years or fined 5,000 Singapore (3,148 US) dollars or both if convicted under the Sedition Act.
"It is a serious offence for any person to distribute or reproduce any seditious publication which may cause feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes," an earlier police statement said.
RSF said it understood that sections of the community might find cartoons relating to religious symbols shocking, "but they should be tolerated for the sake of free expression."
Singapore, a multi-racial island nation, clamps down hard on anyone inciting communal tensions. Two ethnic Chinese men were jailed last year for anti-Muslim blogs.
Ethnic Chinese make up 76 percent of Singapore's resident population of 3.4 million. Malay Muslims account for 13.7 percent followed by ethnic Indians and other racial groups.
In April, RSF condemned Singapore's restrictions on political discussions in blogs and websites ahead of general elections held in May.
Last year the group ranked Singapore 140th out of 167 countries in its annual press freedom index, alongside the likes of Egypt and Syria.
Singapore's ruling party is credited with turning the city-state into one of Asia's richest and most modern societies, but condemned by critics for restrictions on dissent.
Foreign publications have paid heavy damages or suffered circulation restrictions after publishing articles critical of Singapore's leaders.
But in a forum with foreign correspondents in April, Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew defended the country's record.
"We're not going to allow foreign correspondents or foreign journalists or anybody else to tell us what to do," said Lee, 82, the former prime minister who holds the position of minister mentor in the government of his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
________________________________
Dropping the F-Bomb
By Joel Achenbach Sunday, June 25, 2006; Page B01
The most versatile word in our language can do almost anything, other than be printed in a family newspaper. It can be a noun, a verb, a gerund, an adjective or just an expletive. It can be literal or figurative. Although it has an explicit sexual meaning, it's usually used figuratively these days, as an all-purpose intensifier.
The F-word remains taboo. But just barely. We may be entering an era in which this fabled vulgarity is on its way to becoming just another word -- its transgressive energy steadily sapped by overuse.
From hip-hop artists to bloggers to the vice president of the United States, everyone's dropping the F-bomb. Young people in particular may not grasp how special this word has been in the past. They may not realize how, like an old sourdough starter, the word has been lovingly preserved over the centuries and passed from generation to generation. For the good of human communication we must come together, as a people, to protect this word, and ensure that, years from now, it remains obscene.
Our leaders aren't helping. Before he was elected president, George W. Bush used the word repeatedly during an interview with Tucker Carlson. Dick Cheney on the Senate floor told a Democratic senator to eff himself. Presidential candidate John F. Kerry said of Bush and the war, "Did I expect George Bush to [mess] it up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did." No one is shocked that these people use such language, but as statesmanship it's not exactly Lincolnesque.
More generally, the word is imperiled by the profusion of communications technologies. Everyone's talking, e-mailing, blogging and commenting on everyone else's comments. Combine that with partisan rancor and a general desperation to get one's message across, and naturally the word gets overtaxed. In Blogworld there are no idiots anymore, only [blithering] idiots. The most opportunistic move in the corporate realm may have been the decision by a retailer to call itself French Connection United Kingdom, which allowed it to put the company's initials on T-shirts everywhere. Jeepers, that's clever!
I don't want to make a federal case out of all of this -- but that's what the government is doing. The Federal Communications Commission in recent years has cracked down on "indecency" in general and this word specifically. The FCC's fines for indecency have risen steadily: a mere $4,000 in 1995, then $48,000 in 2000, then $440,000 in 2003 and finally a whopping $7.9 million in 2004. President Bush signed a bill last week increasing by tenfold the maximum fine for indecency on radio or TV, to $325,000. Broadcasters have sued to overturn recent FCC rulings, arguing that broadcasters shouldn't have to abide by laws that don't affect cable and satellite providers (which is why HBO's "Deadwood" can clock, by one Web site's calculation, 1.48 F-words per minute). The inability to be indecent is, for broadcasters, a competitive disadvantage.
In any case, government fines for indecency are something of a rearguard action, unlikely to stem the tide. It's like trying to fight rising sea levels one sandbag at a time.
A landmark case revolves around the word used by Bono, the rock star, at the 2003 Golden Globe Awards. He blurted out that winning an award was "[bleepin'] brilliant." The FCC first ruled that his comment wasn't indecent, because it didn't describe a sexual act. But in 2004, after the Janet Jackson breast exposure during the Super Bowl halftime show, the commission reversed the Bono ruling, saying the singer's comment was indeed profane and indecent.
The FCC's logic, however, was a stretch. It argued that any use of the word "inherently has a sexual connotation." But that's just not true. In fact, the reason it is used so often is because it has escaped the bonds of its sexual origin. It's now used as a generic intensifier. It makes plain language more colorful and emphatic.
The reason it must be suppressed in polite society is not because it's a bad word, but because, in certain circumstances, it is a very good word. It is a solidly built word of just four letters, bracketed by rock-hard consonants. It is not a mushy word, but one with sharp edges. Consider how clunky the term "the F-word" is. The authentic article, by contrast, explodes into space from a gate formed by the upper incisors and the lower lip. Then it slams to a dramatic glottal cough.
I'd even argue that it has therapeutic properties. Ponder, if you will, how critically important this word can be when you stub a toe. It serves as an instant palliative. It's like verbal morphine. You can't hop around the dining room, holding your foot, shouting "Drat!" or "Dagnabbit!" or "Heavens to Betsy!" Those words don't work.
"It's a sexual word in origin but it's not used that way very often," says Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary and editor of the 1995 book "The F-Word," a 224-page dictionary in which some of the permutations of the word are absofreakin'lutely ridiculous.
"It does not have the sting that it used to," he says. "For young people, it just doesn't have that much power for them."
The word has been around since at least the 15th century. The English word with which we are familiar is related to similar words found in the Germanic languages, such as Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish and German. These words meant "to thrust" or "to strike" or "to copulate." The first known printed appearance, Sheidlower says, comes from a text around 1475, in a poem that more or less said the monks of Cambridge did not go to heaven because of their sexual dalliances with women. For the next four centuries it was almost always used in a literal sexual sense. The figurative uses so common today didn't arise until the late 19th century, Sheidlower says.
The word was not openly printed in the United States until 1926, when it appeared once in Howard Vincent O'Brien's memoir "Wine, Women and War," according to Sheidlower's book. After World War II, writer Norman Mailer negotiated his way around the taboo by using the made-up word "fug" in the dialogue of the book "The Naked and the Dead." This spring, Andrew Crocker, a Harvard senior, turned in his thesis on the use of the word in post-World War II America, and he relates the famous story that Tallulah Bankhead (or, in some tellings, Dorothy Parker, or Mae West) said to Mailer at a cocktail party, "So you're the man who can't spell f -- ." Nice line, though Crocker says it's apocryphal.
James Jones used the word in his 1951 novel "From Here to Eternity." Like Mailer, Jones was reflecting the speech of American soldiers during the war. This point is key: The word was routinely used by real people, it just was rarely published and never broadcast. It was still taboo.
Liberating the word became a dubious triumph of the 1960s counterculture. At Woodstock, Country Joe and the Fish led a rousing cheer that began with "Give me an F!" and continued on through "K," finally asking, "What's that spell?" Now it sounds silly. Wow. They said a bad word out loud! What revolutionaries!
Soon, the word became common in popular culture, but still retained some of its sizzle. Consider the classic line by Otter in the 1978 movie "Animal House" after the fraternity brothers have wrecked Flounder's car: "Flounder, you can't spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You [effed] up -- you trusted us!" Drift a few years forward to 1989, and Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing," and the word gets a real workout in the mouth of Sal, who at one point uses it six times in the space of five sentences.
Today it still has enough power to be memorable, as when Jack and Miles in the movie "Sideways" discuss the possibility of drinking merlot:
Jack: "If they want to drink merlot, we're drinking merlot."
Miles: "No, if anyone orders merlot, I'm leaving. I am NOT drinking any [expletive deleted] merlot!"
Just to clarify: This is funny not because Miles used a bad word, but because of the juxtaposition of the bad word with the one that follows. We do not expect to hear a person express such strong feelings -- to the point of vulgarity -- when discussing a particular kind of grape .
We must not overharvest the swear words that are part of the commons of our language. It is an adults-only commons, of course. Kids need to be told that they still can't use it. How can a 13-year-old be transgressively vulgar with the word if his 5-year-old sister already uses it? This word is supposed to be a reward of adulthood. We have to conserve it, so that our children and our children's children can use it when we're gone.
There is a wonderful scene in the 1987 movie "Hope and Glory." A gang of boys is rambling through the rubble of London during the Blitz. The new boy, Bill, wants to join. They ask if he knows any swear words. He says he does. Say them, the boys insist. He hesitates. He admits finally that he knows only one swear word. After much delay and agonizing, he says it, loudly.
The word.
The other boys are shocked into silence. "That word is special," the gang leader finally says. "That word is only for something really important."
Precisely.
achenbachj@washpost.com
Joel Achenbach is a staff writer for the Washington Post magazine.
For those of you who scan and surf the blogs like a mild reader, this should either scare you or incite you. Why ?
Cause they lose the point.
1. To get an idea or concept across hot button celebrities like Howard Stern, Jerry Springer, Maury Povich or Eminem,don't use profanity or shock all the time to get their thoughts across. All they have to do is allow their minds to think through issues and create a nexus of opinion that will cause us to react with or without thinking. For someone to use point blank cursing to cut down is too easy. It's the difference we have allowed ourselves to cultivate, from All In The Family to South Park. The insecurities that force those to use vulgarity replace those days when sarcasm and cynicism could allow the same insecure person to overcome, simply by using a Miriam Webster Dictionary and the human mind.
2. We have gone 1000% politically correct ... and its enough to make any logical human have a migraine. We alter the history to make it less sensitive to the new kids having kids.
3. Religion is getting to be a pedestal on which the fears of age old preconception can slap us against the cheek time and time again with their righteous anger. When taught to love those who are against them, they turn instead to Old Testament "eye for an eye" tentament.
4. When kids eight and under get a chance to slip into a R rated movie, with their parents in tow, F is the least sensitive word with which they are bombarded.
Sweeping off the issue under the rug doesn't cut it.
Till the next blog
Restriction is just Constriction's ugly as a stick brother
dr phibes
Grosse Pointe Blank & The Residents ... just a blog to clear out the cobwebs and promote smart thinking ....
The Residents blank out on new release - Reuters via Yahoo! News - Jun 24 3:59 PM
The Residents blank out on new release
By Ed ChristmanSat Jun 24, 6:59 PM ET
Cult band the Residents and the Cordless e-label have teamed up to create something that is either a unique multimedia experience that will link the physical, digital and mobile worlds -- or is just plain wacky.
On June 13, Cordless issued the Residents' "River of Crime" -- a 1940s-style radio serial with a band-composed musical score -- in a cardboard double-CD package with artwork that reinforces the band's trademark eyeball, all for $14.99.
The catch? It contains two blank CDs so that the five episodes, which will be released sequentially during a 10-week period, can be burned after the last one becomes available. A unique code for each package allows users to unlock the subscription at riverofcrime.com.
The package is exclusively available at Virgin Megastore locations in the brick-and-mortar world and at idealcopy.com in cyberspace. A prerecorded version of the project is planned for wider release next year.
The episodes also can be downloaded individually as they are released at all digital music stores. Each episode is priced at $1.99.
Cordless and the Residents created a unique vehicle to issue "River of Crime" because they wanted to make it available on an episodic, subscription basis.
"It is a bit wacky, but so are the Residents," Cordless president Jason Fiber says. "The Residents are always pushing the limits, whether it's music, art or technology."
Customers purchasing the limited-edition digital subscription will also receive digital extras like ringtones and mobile wallpaper as well as materials that can be burned onto the blank CD-Rs, including alternate versions of the "River of Crime" artwork, scripts and instrumental soundtrack elements.
And Fiber asks, "How can a digital-only release be (positioned) as a collectible? Residents fans are collectors, and this gives them something tangible to add to their collection."
Through the effort Cordless, Warner Music Group's e-label, can help brick-and-mortar stores sell digital product in physical form.
"It is an experiment, but we think it is something that is relatively easy to understand," Fiber says. The package comes with a red sticker on the cover warning that it contains blank media and telling buyers not to burn "River of Crime" until all episodes are retrieved. Inside the package is an instruction card.
On the other hand, Fiber says it may also be confusing. If the helpline rings off the hook, he says he'll know the effort was too ambitious.
Reuters/Billboard
It's a free plug. They are awesome. And free thinkers ...
http://members.aol.com/Mungs/
http://www.nobeliefs.com/
Closing, but When?
By Pierre Marcelle
Libération
Friday 23 June 2006
Let's get real here: when George W. Bush (that is, the boss) declares to his European Union partners on a trip to Vienna: "I'd like to close Guantanamo, I'd like it to be over with," he's not announcing that he's going to close the loathsome camp, exemplary symbol of all that is arbitrary and lawless. When George W. Bush (that is, the boss), asserts that he "understands" the protests of his interlocutors, they themselves pressured by human rights defenders, he only does it to immediately pull an irrefutable argument out of his hat, and one irrefutably legal: "there should be no legal void [...] for individuals" (he's talking about prisoners who don't even have that status oen) who must be guaranteed "their individual rights and their freedom." Thus George W. Bush (that is, the boss) pronounces that the law prevents him from exiting lawlessness. And that in order to escape this "gray zone" that he, George W. Bush (that is, the boss) himself established, the absolute exigency consists above all in not replacing the "legal void" that defines that gray zone with a legal void. Each person will assess, in the speech of George W. Bush (that is, the boss), the share of malice, moral weakness, candor or impotence that inspires it [1]; and each person will measure against the yardstick of his own war intelligence whether George W. Bush (that is, the boss) will or can - for decent or dirty reasons, but for reasons which in any case are his alone - close the Guantanamo shop where American democracy leaves itself exposed. It is nonetheless necessary that a camp be open or closed, but, between "I'd like it to be over with" and "I'm getting it over with," there is the difference that distinguishes a desire from an act. By seeming to deliberate, George W. Bush (that is, the boss) gives the feeling that he himself is a prisoner of Guantanamo. And, in so doing, that he is no longer altogether the boss.
[1] It being understood that neither malice, nor moral weakness, nor candor, nor impotence - whether of a strategic or a tactical order - are mutually exclusive. That's even what identifies a state of war.
Translation: t r u t h o u t French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/062306E.shtml
Mr. Grocer: This is Durazac 15, kid. It makes Prozac seem like de-caf latte.
Marty: I don't do that stuff anymore.
Mr. Grocer: Don't say "do it," because I don't "do it," I *ingest* it, on orders of my neurophysiologist. This stuff is legal. In five years they'll be putting it in the water for citizens, just like fluoride.
Mr. Grocer: Easy there Chief, I don't see Hollow-Point Wound Care on the menu.
Marty: Why are you in Detroit? Redwings need a new goon?
Mr. Grocer: [Marty and Grocer are shooting eachother] Comrade! Comrade!
Marty: What?
Mr. Grocer: Why don't you just join the union, we'll go upstairs together and cap daddy!
Marty: This union, there's gonna be meetings?
Mr. Grocer: Of course!
Marty: No meetings.
[They continue shooting]
Mr. Grocer : Workers of the world, unite!
Author: Noir-5 from London
Good movie. Particularly the part where John Cusack is using the frying pan to put his point across to the bad guy on the kitchen floor. It's hard not to belly laugh. I thought it took cues from 'Blue Velvet', with its uncommon blend of humour and ultra-violence.
I read that parts of the dialogue were contributed by Cusack and a couple of [real-life] school friends, though cannot confirm this. It's believeable though - for example when he meets the legal guy propping up the bar at the re-union. His offering of the pen, the aside that Cusack should 'read the cap' and asking to use the funny quip - 'they all seem kinda related' - must have been based on a real person. Too sad to be fiction.
Minnie [cab] Driver, Joan Cusack and Dan Ackroyd personalise their performances very well. The support cast were excellent too. The music was an oddly enjoyable mix and the fight sequence with the pen was the most realistic (and exhausting) I'd seen. It was the attention to small detail which swung it in the end though. Cusack's buddy's coke-fuelled, paranoid banter was spot on ("Jenny Slater, Jenny Slater") as was the burning the fingers on the furnace, to name just two random details. The effect of this, is that they all add up to a movie which you can enjoy watching many times. And that makes it a rare gem.
Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119229/
Okay. A FREE plug for a group I love ...
and a review of a movie that was unacknowledged as a cult classic.
dr phibes
p.s.
if you read my blog and find it even mildly interesting, it's okay to let others know ... they are allowed to tell me what I'm doing that's on the target and what I'm f*in ' up on ...
Till next blog ...
trust that all the great musicians will die , but their souls live through their maesterpieces ...
The Residents blank out on new release
By Ed ChristmanSat Jun 24, 6:59 PM ET
Cult band the Residents and the Cordless e-label have teamed up to create something that is either a unique multimedia experience that will link the physical, digital and mobile worlds -- or is just plain wacky.
On June 13, Cordless issued the Residents' "River of Crime" -- a 1940s-style radio serial with a band-composed musical score -- in a cardboard double-CD package with artwork that reinforces the band's trademark eyeball, all for $14.99.
The catch? It contains two blank CDs so that the five episodes, which will be released sequentially during a 10-week period, can be burned after the last one becomes available. A unique code for each package allows users to unlock the subscription at riverofcrime.com.
The package is exclusively available at Virgin Megastore locations in the brick-and-mortar world and at idealcopy.com in cyberspace. A prerecorded version of the project is planned for wider release next year.
The episodes also can be downloaded individually as they are released at all digital music stores. Each episode is priced at $1.99.
Cordless and the Residents created a unique vehicle to issue "River of Crime" because they wanted to make it available on an episodic, subscription basis.
"It is a bit wacky, but so are the Residents," Cordless president Jason Fiber says. "The Residents are always pushing the limits, whether it's music, art or technology."
Customers purchasing the limited-edition digital subscription will also receive digital extras like ringtones and mobile wallpaper as well as materials that can be burned onto the blank CD-Rs, including alternate versions of the "River of Crime" artwork, scripts and instrumental soundtrack elements.
And Fiber asks, "How can a digital-only release be (positioned) as a collectible? Residents fans are collectors, and this gives them something tangible to add to their collection."
Through the effort Cordless, Warner Music Group's e-label, can help brick-and-mortar stores sell digital product in physical form.
"It is an experiment, but we think it is something that is relatively easy to understand," Fiber says. The package comes with a red sticker on the cover warning that it contains blank media and telling buyers not to burn "River of Crime" until all episodes are retrieved. Inside the package is an instruction card.
On the other hand, Fiber says it may also be confusing. If the helpline rings off the hook, he says he'll know the effort was too ambitious.
Reuters/Billboard
It's a free plug. They are awesome. And free thinkers ...
http://members.aol.com/Mungs/
http://www.nobeliefs.com/
Closing, but When?
By Pierre Marcelle
Libération
Friday 23 June 2006
Let's get real here: when George W. Bush (that is, the boss) declares to his European Union partners on a trip to Vienna: "I'd like to close Guantanamo, I'd like it to be over with," he's not announcing that he's going to close the loathsome camp, exemplary symbol of all that is arbitrary and lawless. When George W. Bush (that is, the boss), asserts that he "understands" the protests of his interlocutors, they themselves pressured by human rights defenders, he only does it to immediately pull an irrefutable argument out of his hat, and one irrefutably legal: "there should be no legal void [...] for individuals" (he's talking about prisoners who don't even have that status oen) who must be guaranteed "their individual rights and their freedom." Thus George W. Bush (that is, the boss) pronounces that the law prevents him from exiting lawlessness. And that in order to escape this "gray zone" that he, George W. Bush (that is, the boss) himself established, the absolute exigency consists above all in not replacing the "legal void" that defines that gray zone with a legal void. Each person will assess, in the speech of George W. Bush (that is, the boss), the share of malice, moral weakness, candor or impotence that inspires it [1]; and each person will measure against the yardstick of his own war intelligence whether George W. Bush (that is, the boss) will or can - for decent or dirty reasons, but for reasons which in any case are his alone - close the Guantanamo shop where American democracy leaves itself exposed. It is nonetheless necessary that a camp be open or closed, but, between "I'd like it to be over with" and "I'm getting it over with," there is the difference that distinguishes a desire from an act. By seeming to deliberate, George W. Bush (that is, the boss) gives the feeling that he himself is a prisoner of Guantanamo. And, in so doing, that he is no longer altogether the boss.
[1] It being understood that neither malice, nor moral weakness, nor candor, nor impotence - whether of a strategic or a tactical order - are mutually exclusive. That's even what identifies a state of war.
Translation: t r u t h o u t French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/062306E.shtml
Mr. Grocer: This is Durazac 15, kid. It makes Prozac seem like de-caf latte.
Marty: I don't do that stuff anymore.
Mr. Grocer: Don't say "do it," because I don't "do it," I *ingest* it, on orders of my neurophysiologist. This stuff is legal. In five years they'll be putting it in the water for citizens, just like fluoride.
Mr. Grocer: Easy there Chief, I don't see Hollow-Point Wound Care on the menu.
Marty: Why are you in Detroit? Redwings need a new goon?
Mr. Grocer: [Marty and Grocer are shooting eachother] Comrade! Comrade!
Marty: What?
Mr. Grocer: Why don't you just join the union, we'll go upstairs together and cap daddy!
Marty: This union, there's gonna be meetings?
Mr. Grocer: Of course!
Marty: No meetings.
[They continue shooting]
Mr. Grocer : Workers of the world, unite!
Author: Noir-5 from London
Good movie. Particularly the part where John Cusack is using the frying pan to put his point across to the bad guy on the kitchen floor. It's hard not to belly laugh. I thought it took cues from 'Blue Velvet', with its uncommon blend of humour and ultra-violence.
I read that parts of the dialogue were contributed by Cusack and a couple of [real-life] school friends, though cannot confirm this. It's believeable though - for example when he meets the legal guy propping up the bar at the re-union. His offering of the pen, the aside that Cusack should 'read the cap' and asking to use the funny quip - 'they all seem kinda related' - must have been based on a real person. Too sad to be fiction.
Minnie [cab] Driver, Joan Cusack and Dan Ackroyd personalise their performances very well. The support cast were excellent too. The music was an oddly enjoyable mix and the fight sequence with the pen was the most realistic (and exhausting) I'd seen. It was the attention to small detail which swung it in the end though. Cusack's buddy's coke-fuelled, paranoid banter was spot on ("Jenny Slater, Jenny Slater") as was the burning the fingers on the furnace, to name just two random details. The effect of this, is that they all add up to a movie which you can enjoy watching many times. And that makes it a rare gem.
Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119229/
Okay. A FREE plug for a group I love ...
and a review of a movie that was unacknowledged as a cult classic.
dr phibes
p.s.
if you read my blog and find it even mildly interesting, it's okay to let others know ... they are allowed to tell me what I'm doing that's on the target and what I'm f*in ' up on ...
Till next blog ...
trust that all the great musicians will die , but their souls live through their maesterpieces ...
The Body Without The Mind ... A Horror Film That Exists In REALITY !!!
The voting terms and the Voting Rights Act are outdated, like a dinosaur of outdated, outmoded democracy. We are controlled by politicians through a " matrix of termination rules " [Tavis Smiley Show 6.25.06] ... politicians in the pockets of lobbyists and corporations, who are looking to soak our monetary freedom and bind us in invisible manipulation that does not allow us to audit the liberties of those hcarpetbaggers, as we are audited by the Internal Revenue Services for our taxes, which we pay to see roads that are never fixed, armies that are undersupplied and overworked and education that will leave us with more and more McDonald's employees, rather than Intel employees [ or to be poetically similiar in names, McDonnell Douglas [[ which, with Bell Helicopters ]], a major manufacturer of military supply
www.helis.com/timeline/mcddh.php
{{lest we also forget Boeing either )) ...
Law and Politics and Rule and Religion ... those buckets of gasoline dumped haphazardly at the bonfires of anger and retaliation against those that leave us wondering " How the hell did we get here ?" Durante degli Alighieri understood this exile we, as patrons and citizens, have experienced by the administration and government now ... that keeps us at arm's length, despite the fact that this long, stretching arm sways like a pendelum across this nation like a sweeping saquoya fallen by years of abuse ... he was warned by his great-great-grandfather, Cacciaguida ...
. . . Tu lascerai ogne cosa diletta
più caramente; e questo è quello strale
che l'arco de lo essilio pria saetta.
Tu proverai sì come sa di sale
lo pane altrui, e come è duro calle
lo scendere e 'l salir per l'altrui scale . . .
[noted in Wikipedia]
The Divine Comedy describes Dante's journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso), guided first by the Roman epic poet Virgil and then by his beloved Beatrice. While the vision of Hell, the Inferno, is vivid for modern readers, the theological niceties presented in the other books require a certain amount of patience and scholarship to understand. Purgatorio, the most lyrical and human of the three, also has the most poets in it; Paradiso, the most heavily theological, has the most beautiful and ecstatic mystic passages, in which Dante tries to describe what he confesses he is unable to convey.
Today, we are suffering the Hell. We have been stuck in the Purgatory for so long and in the 50s, we are supposedly reminencing a Paradise that was only threatened by a supposed-Communist based Cuba and Castro. The new millineum is a hell on Earth for us and perhaps, we as satirical and cynical people deserve it. We have abandoned all the superficial things that made us identify with each other and lost our true, inner selves, that which is resound and absolute. We knew what we wanted, but allowed ourselves to be pulled around by the nose ring, much like cows led to the marketplace pens to be bought and sold, herded up the wooden ramps to shipping cars, great Industrial trains blowing hot coal, coverted into steam, carrying us by squeaky iron wheels down the tracks, past mountains, lakes, grassland and valleys to the slaughter houses of John Updike's day " slug 'em and gut 'em " warehouses that covert our carcasses into existential Soylent Green ...
If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I'm still waiting, it's all been to seduce women basically. - Jean Paul Satre
http://www.worldofquotes.com/author/Jean~paul-Satre/1
Tagline: It's the year 2022... People are still the same. They'll do anything to get what they need. And they need SOYLENT GREEN. - SOYLENT GREEN (1973)
Trivia for Soylent Green (1973)
* The technical consultant for the film was Frank R. Bowerman, who was president of the American Academy for Environmental Protection at the time.
* One of the scenes of the "beautiful earth" shown to Sol as he is dying is an opening shot from Far from the Madding Crowd (1967) (a flock of sheep on a green hillside).
* Edward G. Robinson's last film. Robinson died nine days after shooting had wrapped.
* The scene where Thorn and Roth share a meal of fresh food was not originally in the script, but was ad-libbed by Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson at director Richard Fleischer's request.
* The videogame in Simonson's apartment, "Computer Space", was one of the first coin-operated videogames, manufactured by Nutting Associates in 1971 and designed by Nolan Bushnell, who later founded Atari and designed "Pong". The videogame was painted white for the movie but the original color was either yellow, red or blue.
* One set of scenes in the original release, where a second family is housed with Thorn and Roth, was deleted from later copies of the film.
* The original title of Harry Harrison's book, "Make Room! Make Room!" was changed by the producers, who feared that audiences would confuse it with the 'Danny Thomas' TV series "Make Room for Daddy" (1953).
* Edward G. Robinson was almost totally deaf when he made this movie, and only able to hear anyone if they spoke directly into his ear. Because of this, scenes with him talking to other people had to be shot several times before he got the rhythm of the dialogue and was able to respond to people as if he could really hear them. And because he was unable to hear director Richard Fleischer yell "cut" when a scene went wrong, Robinson would often continue acting out the scene, unaware that shooting had stopped seconds earlier.
* The music which played when Edward G. Robinson was "going home":
o The overture was the principal theme from the first movement of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6, the "Pathetique."
o When the visual presentation starts, the music is the first movement of Beethoven's "Symphony #6 (The Pastoral)".
o When the flock of sheep appear, the music is "Morning" from Grieg's "Peer Gynt Suite #1".
o At the end of the presentation is "Asas Death", also from the "Peer Gynt Suite".
* The word soylent is supposed to suggest soy + lentil.
* All of the dialogue for actor Mike Henry ("Sgt. Kulozik") was dubbed. The actor's slight Southern drawl did not fit in with the New York cop character he was playing.
In the year 2022, earth's face has completely changed. New York's population, for example, has grown to 40 million mouths to feed. The greenhouse effect has risen the temperature into nearly unbearable regions, and the people are kept in the cities by law. The rich live in separated luxury apartments (with women as part of the rented furniture) but also experience the lack of natural food. Strawberries are at $150 for a glass of them. Police Detective Thorn investigates a strange murdering case of a official from the Soylent Corporation, which feeds the masses with a palette of their creations: Soylent red, yellow, or, even more nutritious, green. He soon stumbles across the real source of Soylent Green, which is not soy beans or plankton any more.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070723/trivia
We only have sixteen years. " If it bleeds, it leads " is so much a leading term not only of media, but also of this administration. Noone is taking responsibility and doing the right thing, damn the consequences. Who is to say that the Soylent Age is not upon us right now? We physically have consumed and devoured ourselves like cannibals on an island suffering from the radioactive afterthoughts of years of nuclear weaponry testing. We are not concluding thoughts or opinions sepearate of what we have been drummed upon by skewed technology that is dragging behind years of common sense and deep, transitional thought. Why is that? Are we looking to suffer intentionally? Perhaps. Perhaps we, as a society, are euthenazia-suffering patients looking for a quick out. We cannot take the pain of thinking " We are the ones who put these facists into office and running the nation like a police state, burgeoning Big Brother on us in a way that would make George Orwell gasp in horror, thinking ' My god, what did I predict? It was novel, for god's sake.' "
Till next blog,
Take an outside view from the stands to the mosh pit of humanity
... then dive in and stir up the conventionality ...
always ...
dr phibes
Fighting The Good Fight (Club)
I woke up this morning with a subtle migraine. It was about 09:15 CST AM. I remember waking up. I remember the last reminents of my dreams whisping away, like the grasps of a willowy woman's hands, white and delicate. I put a burned Office Max compact disc into a simple thirty dollar boombox, playing the Fresh Air episode that discussed Sergio Leone and his development of the Italian westerns, dubbed by harsh critics of the time as "spaghetti westerns" ... they inspired me to put A Fistful Of Dollars on the DVD/VCR player and let it play, as I feel the warmth of the apartment flow freely in the rooms. Fight Club by
It is now later in the day. I was looking for Fight Club (1996) by Chuck Palahniuk, which I couldn't even find anymore, even at Barnes & Noble. But perhaps it was because the Barnes & Noble was not the one near IH 75 and 121, which is much bigger than the one off of Preston. Perhaps also because I did not check out Borders Books.
"I want to have your abortion" - Marla
Fight Club (1996) by Chuck Palahniuk
Why do we settle for conformity and comfort? Is it because the simple thought of risk and danger keep us frozen like deer in the headlights? Are we headlight programmed? Are we cuddling up to the worst Snuggle teddy bear in all of us? We seek safe numbers in a random, chaotic timeline, which for us concludes with a proposed Armagheddon or the Earth flying orbitlessly into the sun or global warming, leading to a world under water ... frankly, I am not speculating that we are no more important than ants building underground empires under the ever imposing eye of the eight year old bully with his magnifying glass.
I did find Tristam Shandy. For a dollar. Plus tax. A triumph?
Bought a few donuts. Fried lard, yeast and flour. Paradise.
Till next blog,
Trust only in bookstores that hold books by
Thomas Paine, Adam Smith & Mark Twain ...
Thomas Paine From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the NASA administrator, see Thomas O. Paine.
Thomas Paine (January 29, 1737 – June 8, 1809) was an intellectual, scholar, revolutionary, deist and idealist. A radical pamphleteer, Paine anticipated and helped foment the American Revolution through his powerful writings, most notably Common Sense, an incendiary pamphlet advocating independence from Great Britain. An advocate of liberalism, he outlined his political philosophy in Rights of Man, written both as a reply to Edmund Burke's view of the French Revolution and as a general political philosophy treatise as well as Common Sense, a treatise on the benefits of personal liberty and limited government, in which he considers society a representation of human ideals, and government a necessary evil. Paine was also noteworthy for his support of deism, taking its form in his treatise on religion The Age of Reason, as well as for his eye-witness accounts of both the French and American Revolutions.
Biography
Paine was born on 29 January 1737, to impoverished parents: Joseph Paine, a (lapsed) Quaker, and Frances Cocke Paine, an Anglican, in Thetford, Norfolk, in eastern England. His sister Elizabeth died at seven months. Paine, who grew up around farmers and uneducated people, left school at the age of twelve. He was apprenticed to his father, a corset maker, at 13, apparently failing at this as well. At 19, Paine became a merchant seaman, serving a short time before returning to England in April 1759. There he set up a corset shop in Sandwich, Kent. In September of that year, Paine married. Following a move to Margate, his wife Mary Lambert died in 1760.
In July 1761, Paine returned to Thetford where he worked as a supernumerary officer. In December 1762 he became an excise officer in Grantham, Lincolnshire. In August 1764 he was again transferred, this time to Alford, where his salary was £50 a year. On 27 August 1765 Paine was discharged from his post for claiming to have inspected goods when in fact he had only seen the documentation. On July 3, 1766 he wrote a letter to the Board of Excise asking to be reinstated, and the next day the board granted his request to be filled upon vacancy. While waiting for an opening, Paine worked as a staymaker in Diss, Norfolk, and later as a servant (records show he worked for a Mr. Noble of Goodman's Fields and then for a Mr. Gardiner at Kensington). He also applied to become an ordained minister of the Church of England, and according to some accounts he preached in Moorfields.
On 15 May 1767 Paine was appointed to a position in Grampound, Cornwall. He was subsequently asked to leave this post to await another vacancy, and he became a schoolteacher in London. On 19 February 1768 Paine was appointed to Lewes, East Sussex. He moved into the room above the 15th-century Bull House, a building which held the snuff and tobacco shop of Samuel and Esther Ollive. Here Paine became involved for the first time in civic matters, with Samuel Ollive introducing him into the Society of Twelve, a local élite group which met twice a year to discuss town issues. In addition, Paine participated in the Vestry, the influential church group that collected taxes and tithes and distributed them to the poor.
On March 26, 1771 he married his landlord's daughter, Elizabeth Ollive.
Paine lobbied Parliament for better pay and working conditions for excisemen, and in 1772 he published The Case of the Officers of Excise, a 21-page article and his first political work. In September 1774 Paine met Benjamin Franklin in London. Franklin advised Paine to immigrate to the British colonies in America, and wrote him letters of recommendation. Paine left England in October, arriving in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on November 30. Just before he left, Paine and his second wife, with whom he did not get along, were legally separated.
Paine was also an inventor, receiving a patent in Europe for the single-span iron bridge. He developed a smokeless candle, and worked with John Fitch on the early development of steam engines. This inventiveness, coupled with his originality of thought, found an advocate more than a century later in Edison who championed Paine and helped rescue him from his relative obscurity.
Views
Some believe Paine may have begun to form his early views on natural justice while listening to the Puritan mob jeering and attacking those punished in the stocks. Others have argued that he was influenced by his Quaker father. In The Age of Reason – Paine's treatise in support of deism – he wrote:
The religion that approaches the nearest of all others to true deism, in the moral and benign part thereof, is that professed by the Quakers … though I revere their philanthropy, I cannot help smiling at [their] conceit; … if the taste of a Quaker [had] been consulted at the Creation, what a silent and drab-colored Creation it would have been! Not a flower would have blossomed its gaieties, nor a bird been permitted to sing.
Paine advocated a liberal world view, considered radical in his day. He dismissed monarchy, and viewed all government as, at best, a necessary evil. He opposed slavery and was amongst the earliest proponents of social security, universal free public education, a guaranteed minimum income, and many other radical ideas now common practice in most western democracies.
With regard to his religious views, in The Age of Reason (begun in France in 1793), Paine stated:
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
He described himself as a "Deist" and commented:
How different is [Christianity] to the pure and simple profession of Deism! The true Deist has but one Deity, and his religion consists in contemplating the power, wisdom, and benignity of the Deity in his works, and in endeavoring to imitate him in everything moral, scientifical, and mechanical.
Paine published an early anti-slavery tract [1] and was co-editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine.
American Revolution & The Declaration of Independence
Common Sense, published 1776
Common Sense, Paine's pro-independence monograph published anonymously on January 10, 1776, spread quickly among literate colonists. About 120,000 copies are alleged to have been distributed throughout the colonies which themselves totaled only a few million free inhabitants. This work convinced many colonists, including George Washington, to seek redress in political independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. The work was greatly influenced (including in its name – Paine had originally proposed the title Plain Truth) by the equally controversial pro-independence writer Benjamin Rush, and was instrumental in bringing about the Declaration of Independence.
Paine's strength lay in his ability to present complex ideas in clear and concise form, as opposed to the more philosophical approaches of his Enlightenment contemporaries in Europe, and it was Paine who proposed the name United States of America for the new nation. When the war arrived, Paine published a series of important pamphlets, The Crisis, credited with inspiring the early colonists during the ordeals faced in their long struggle with the British. The first Crisis paper, published on December 23, 1776, began with the famous words:
These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
General Washington himself found it so uplifting that he ordered it to be read to all his troops.
In 1778, Paine alluded to the then ongoing secret negotiations with France in his pamphlets, and there was a scandal which resulted in Paine being dropped from the Committee on Foreign Affairs. In 1781, however, he accompanied John Laurens during his mission to France. His services were eventually recognized by the state of New York by a grant of an estate at New Rochelle, and he received considerable gifts of money from both Pennsylvania and – at Washington's suggestion – from Congress.
Returning to Europe, Paine finished his Rights of Man on January 29, 1791. On January 31 he passed the manuscript to the publisher Joseph Johnson, who intended to have it ready for Washington's birthday on February 22. Johnson was visited on a number of occasions by agents of the government. Sensing that Paine's book would be controversial, he decided not to release it on the day it was due to be published. Paine quickly began to negotiate with another publisher, J.S. Jordan. Once a deal was secured, Paine left for Paris on the advice of William Blake, leaving three good friends, William Godwin, Thomas Brand Hollis and Thomas Holcroft, in charge of concluding the publication. The book appeared on March 13, three weeks later than originally scheduled. It was an abstract political tract published in support of the French Revolution, written as a reply to Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke. The book— which was highly critical of monarchies and European social institutions— sold briskly but was so controversial that the British government put Paine on trial in absentia for seditious libel. He later published a second edition of the Rights of Man which contained a plan for the reformation of England, including one of the first proposals for a progressive income tax.
Paine was an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution, and he was given honorary French citizenship. Despite his inability to speak French, he was elected to the National Convention, representing the district of Pas de Calais. He voted for the French Republic; but argued against the execution of Louis XVI, saying that he should instead be exiled to the United States of America: firstly, because of the way royalist France had come to the aid of the American Revolution; and secondly because of a moral objection to capital punishment in general and to revenge killings in particular.
Regarded as an ally of the Girondins, he was seen with increasing disfavour by the Montagnards who were now in power, and in particular by Robespierre. A decree was passed at the end of 1793 excluding foreigners from their places in the Convention (Anacharsis Cloots was also deprived of his place). Paine was arrested and imprisoned in December 1793.
Paine protested that he was a citizen of America, which was an ally of Revolutionary France, rather than of Great Britain, which was by that time at war with France. However, Gouverneur Morris, the American ambassador to France, did not press his claim, and Paine later wrote that Morris had connived at his imprisonment (Morris's biographers reject the accusation). Paine thought that George Washington had abandoned him, and was to quarrel with him for the rest of his life.
Imprisoned and fearing that each day might be his last, Paine escaped execution apparently by chance. A guard walked through the prison placing a chalk mark on the doors of the prisoners who were due to be condemned that day. He placed one on the door that Paine shared with three other prisoners, which happened to be open at the time. The prisoners in the cell then closed the door so that the chalk mark faced into the cell when they were due to be rounded up. They were overlooked, and survived the few vital days needed to be spared by the fall of Robespierre on 9 Thermidor (27 July 1794). Paine was released in November 1794 due in large part to the work of the new American Minister to France, James Monroe.
Prior to his arrest and imprisonment, knowing that he would likely be arrested and executed, Paine wrote the first part of The Age of Reason, an assault on organized "revealed" religion combining a compilation of inconsistencies he found in the Bible with his own advocacy of Deism. In his Autobiographical Interlude which is found in The Age of Reason between the first and second parts, Paine writes, "Thus far I had written on the 28th of December, 1793. In the evening I went to the Hotel Philadelphia . . . About four in the morning I was awakened by a rapping at my chamber door; when I opened it, I saw a guard and the master of the hotel with them. The guard told me they came to put me under arrestation and to demand the key of my papers. I desired them to walk in, and I would dress myself and go with them immediately."
In the second part of The Age of Reason, Paine writes about his illness and the fever he suffered while imprisoned in the Luxembourg. ". . . I was seized with a fever that in its progress had every symptom of becoming mortal, and from the effects of which I am not recovered. It was then that I remembered with renewed satisfaction, and congratulated myself most sincerely, on having written the former part of 'The Age of Reason.'" The content of the work can be briefly summarized in this quotation:
The opinions I have advanced… are the effect of the most clear and long-established conviction that the Bible and the Testament are impositions upon the world, that the fall of man, the account of Jesus Christ being the Son of God, and of his dying to appease the wrath of God, and of salvation by that strange means, are all fabulous inventions, dishonorable to the wisdom and power of the Almighty; that the only true religion is Deism, by which I then meant, and mean now, the belief of one God, and an imitation of his moral character, or the practice of what are called moral virtues—and that it was upon this only (so far as religion is concerned) that I rested all my hopes of happiness hereafter. So say I now—and so help me God.
Paine published his last great pamphlet, Agrarian Justice, in the winter of 1795-1796. In this pamphlet, he further developed ideas proposed in the Rights of Man concerning the way in which the institution of land ownership separated the great majority of persons from their rightful natural inheritance and means of independent survival. Paine's proposal is considered to be a form of Basic Income Guarantee. The Social Security Administration of the United States recognizes Agrarian Justice as the first American proposal for an old-age pension. In Agrarian Justice Paine writes:
In advocating the case of the persons thus dispossessed, it is a right, and not a charity… [Government must] create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property; And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.
In 1800, Paine purportedly had a meeting with Napoleon. However, Paine quickly moved from admiration to condemnation as he saw Napoleon's moves towards dictatorship. Paine remained in France until 1802 when he returned to America on an invitation from Thomas Jefferson.
Last years
Derided by the public and abandoned by his friends on account of his religious views, Paine died at 72 Grove Street in Greenwich Village, New York City, on June 8, 1809. Although the original building is no longer there, the present building has a plaque noting that Paine died at this location. At the time of his death, most US newspapers reprinted the obituary notice from the New York Citizen, which read in part: "He had lived long, did some good and much harm." Only six mourners came to his funeral, two of whom were black, most likely freedmen. A few years later, the agrarian radical William Cobbett dug up and shipped his bones back to England. The plan was to give Paine a heroic reburial on his native soil, but the bones were still among Cobbett's effects when he died over twenty years later. There is no confirmed story about what happened to them after that, although down the years various people have claimed to own parts of Paine's remains such as his skull and right hand.
Thomas Paine's writings had great influence on his contemporaries, especially the American revolutionaries. His books inspired both philosophical and working-class Radicals in the United Kingdom; and he is often claimed as an intellectual ancestor by United States liberals, libertarians, progressives and radicals. Both Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Alva Edison read him with respect. Edison said of Paine:
I have always regarded Paine as one of the greatest of all Americans. Never have we had a sounder intelligence in this republic… It was my good fortune to encounter Thomas Paine's works in my boyhood… it was, indeed, a revelation to me to read that great thinker's views on political and theological subjects. Paine educated me then about many matters of which I had never before thought. I remember very vividly the flash of enlightenment that shone from Paine's writings and I recall thinking at that time, 'What a pity these works are not today the schoolbooks for all children!' My interest in Paine was not satisfied by my first reading of his works. I went back to them time and again, just as I have done since my boyhood days.
There is a museum in New Rochelle, New York, in his honour and a statue of him stands in King Street in Thetford, Norfolk, his place of birth. The statue holds a quill and his book, Rights of Man. The book is upside down.
[edit]
See also
* Contributions to liberal theory
* Bill of Rights
Further reading
* Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice
* Thomas Paine "Origin of Freemasonry"
* Paul Collins, The Trouble With Tom: The Strange Afterlife and Times of Thomas Paine. Boolmsbury Books. 2005. ISBN 1582345023. A book about the fate of Paine's bones after his death.
* Moncure Daniel Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine. G.P. Putnam's Sons. 1892. 2 Volumes. Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Facsimile.
* Thomas Alva Edison, "The Philosophy of Paine" (essay, 1925).
* Robert G. Ingersoll, "Thomas Paine: With His Name Left Out, the History of Liberty cannot be Written". (essay, 1870).
* Robert G. Ingersoll, "Thomas Paine" as it appeared in the North American Review. 1892.
* John Keane, Tom Paine: A Political Life. Bloomsbury Publishing, London. 1995.
* Scott Liell, Thomas Paine, Common Sense, and the Turning Point to Independence. Running Press. 2003. ISBN 0762418133. 46-page introduction to the importance of Common Sense in turning opinion against George III.
* Joseph Lewis, Thomas Paine: Author of the Declaration of Independence. Freethought Press. 1947.
* Joseph Lewis, Inspiration and Wisdom from the Writings of Thomas Paine. Freethought Press. 1954.
* David Powell, Tom Paine, The Greatest Exile. Hutchinson. 1985
* William Van Der Weyde, The Life and Works of Thomas Paine (10 Volume Set). Thomas Paine National Historical Association. 1925.
* Andrew Galambos, Sic Itur Ad Astra. The Universal Scientific Publishing Company. 1999.
* Walton Williams, The Declaration of Independence: Was It Written by Thomas Paine?
* Bertrand Russell, "The Fate of Thomas Paine". In Why I Am Not A Christian. Touchstone. 1967. ISBN 0671203231.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Thomas Paine
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Thomas Paine
Wikisource
Wikisource has original works written by or about:
Thomas Paine
* Thomas Paine National Historical Association
* Thomas Paine's writings on God, religion and Deism
* Thomas Paine Quotes at Liberty-Tree.ca
* Five statues: July 4,1950 statue dedication speech at Morristown, NJ
* There are only five statues of Thomas Paine in the world
* The Major & Minor Works, and Letters of Thomas Paine
* Free audio books of Thomas Paine's works (FreeAudio.org)
* Thomas Paine - An Unsung Hero Atheist Foundation of Australia Inc.
* Great American Death Masks, mask of Thomas Paine
* Works by Thomas Paine at Project Gutenberg
* Paine's THE AGE OF REASON paraphrased into modern english
* Tom Paine's Voucher Scheme, by Edwin G. West
dr phibes
watching out for the Brothers seeking my mind ...
It is now later in the day. I was looking for Fight Club (1996) by Chuck Palahniuk, which I couldn't even find anymore, even at Barnes & Noble. But perhaps it was because the Barnes & Noble was not the one near IH 75 and 121, which is much bigger than the one off of Preston. Perhaps also because I did not check out Borders Books.
"I want to have your abortion" - Marla
Fight Club (1996) by Chuck Palahniuk
Why do we settle for conformity and comfort? Is it because the simple thought of risk and danger keep us frozen like deer in the headlights? Are we headlight programmed? Are we cuddling up to the worst Snuggle teddy bear in all of us? We seek safe numbers in a random, chaotic timeline, which for us concludes with a proposed Armagheddon or the Earth flying orbitlessly into the sun or global warming, leading to a world under water ... frankly, I am not speculating that we are no more important than ants building underground empires under the ever imposing eye of the eight year old bully with his magnifying glass.
I did find Tristam Shandy. For a dollar. Plus tax. A triumph?
Bought a few donuts. Fried lard, yeast and flour. Paradise.
Till next blog,
Trust only in bookstores that hold books by
Thomas Paine, Adam Smith & Mark Twain ...
Thomas Paine From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the NASA administrator, see Thomas O. Paine.
Thomas Paine (January 29, 1737 – June 8, 1809) was an intellectual, scholar, revolutionary, deist and idealist. A radical pamphleteer, Paine anticipated and helped foment the American Revolution through his powerful writings, most notably Common Sense, an incendiary pamphlet advocating independence from Great Britain. An advocate of liberalism, he outlined his political philosophy in Rights of Man, written both as a reply to Edmund Burke's view of the French Revolution and as a general political philosophy treatise as well as Common Sense, a treatise on the benefits of personal liberty and limited government, in which he considers society a representation of human ideals, and government a necessary evil. Paine was also noteworthy for his support of deism, taking its form in his treatise on religion The Age of Reason, as well as for his eye-witness accounts of both the French and American Revolutions.
Biography
Paine was born on 29 January 1737, to impoverished parents: Joseph Paine, a (lapsed) Quaker, and Frances Cocke Paine, an Anglican, in Thetford, Norfolk, in eastern England. His sister Elizabeth died at seven months. Paine, who grew up around farmers and uneducated people, left school at the age of twelve. He was apprenticed to his father, a corset maker, at 13, apparently failing at this as well. At 19, Paine became a merchant seaman, serving a short time before returning to England in April 1759. There he set up a corset shop in Sandwich, Kent. In September of that year, Paine married. Following a move to Margate, his wife Mary Lambert died in 1760.
In July 1761, Paine returned to Thetford where he worked as a supernumerary officer. In December 1762 he became an excise officer in Grantham, Lincolnshire. In August 1764 he was again transferred, this time to Alford, where his salary was £50 a year. On 27 August 1765 Paine was discharged from his post for claiming to have inspected goods when in fact he had only seen the documentation. On July 3, 1766 he wrote a letter to the Board of Excise asking to be reinstated, and the next day the board granted his request to be filled upon vacancy. While waiting for an opening, Paine worked as a staymaker in Diss, Norfolk, and later as a servant (records show he worked for a Mr. Noble of Goodman's Fields and then for a Mr. Gardiner at Kensington). He also applied to become an ordained minister of the Church of England, and according to some accounts he preached in Moorfields.
On 15 May 1767 Paine was appointed to a position in Grampound, Cornwall. He was subsequently asked to leave this post to await another vacancy, and he became a schoolteacher in London. On 19 February 1768 Paine was appointed to Lewes, East Sussex. He moved into the room above the 15th-century Bull House, a building which held the snuff and tobacco shop of Samuel and Esther Ollive. Here Paine became involved for the first time in civic matters, with Samuel Ollive introducing him into the Society of Twelve, a local élite group which met twice a year to discuss town issues. In addition, Paine participated in the Vestry, the influential church group that collected taxes and tithes and distributed them to the poor.
On March 26, 1771 he married his landlord's daughter, Elizabeth Ollive.
Paine lobbied Parliament for better pay and working conditions for excisemen, and in 1772 he published The Case of the Officers of Excise, a 21-page article and his first political work. In September 1774 Paine met Benjamin Franklin in London. Franklin advised Paine to immigrate to the British colonies in America, and wrote him letters of recommendation. Paine left England in October, arriving in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on November 30. Just before he left, Paine and his second wife, with whom he did not get along, were legally separated.
Paine was also an inventor, receiving a patent in Europe for the single-span iron bridge. He developed a smokeless candle, and worked with John Fitch on the early development of steam engines. This inventiveness, coupled with his originality of thought, found an advocate more than a century later in Edison who championed Paine and helped rescue him from his relative obscurity.
Views
Some believe Paine may have begun to form his early views on natural justice while listening to the Puritan mob jeering and attacking those punished in the stocks. Others have argued that he was influenced by his Quaker father. In The Age of Reason – Paine's treatise in support of deism – he wrote:
The religion that approaches the nearest of all others to true deism, in the moral and benign part thereof, is that professed by the Quakers … though I revere their philanthropy, I cannot help smiling at [their] conceit; … if the taste of a Quaker [had] been consulted at the Creation, what a silent and drab-colored Creation it would have been! Not a flower would have blossomed its gaieties, nor a bird been permitted to sing.
Paine advocated a liberal world view, considered radical in his day. He dismissed monarchy, and viewed all government as, at best, a necessary evil. He opposed slavery and was amongst the earliest proponents of social security, universal free public education, a guaranteed minimum income, and many other radical ideas now common practice in most western democracies.
With regard to his religious views, in The Age of Reason (begun in France in 1793), Paine stated:
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
He described himself as a "Deist" and commented:
How different is [Christianity] to the pure and simple profession of Deism! The true Deist has but one Deity, and his religion consists in contemplating the power, wisdom, and benignity of the Deity in his works, and in endeavoring to imitate him in everything moral, scientifical, and mechanical.
Paine published an early anti-slavery tract [1] and was co-editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine.
American Revolution & The Declaration of Independence
Common Sense, published 1776
Common Sense, Paine's pro-independence monograph published anonymously on January 10, 1776, spread quickly among literate colonists. About 120,000 copies are alleged to have been distributed throughout the colonies which themselves totaled only a few million free inhabitants. This work convinced many colonists, including George Washington, to seek redress in political independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. The work was greatly influenced (including in its name – Paine had originally proposed the title Plain Truth) by the equally controversial pro-independence writer Benjamin Rush, and was instrumental in bringing about the Declaration of Independence.
Paine's strength lay in his ability to present complex ideas in clear and concise form, as opposed to the more philosophical approaches of his Enlightenment contemporaries in Europe, and it was Paine who proposed the name United States of America for the new nation. When the war arrived, Paine published a series of important pamphlets, The Crisis, credited with inspiring the early colonists during the ordeals faced in their long struggle with the British. The first Crisis paper, published on December 23, 1776, began with the famous words:
These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
General Washington himself found it so uplifting that he ordered it to be read to all his troops.
In 1778, Paine alluded to the then ongoing secret negotiations with France in his pamphlets, and there was a scandal which resulted in Paine being dropped from the Committee on Foreign Affairs. In 1781, however, he accompanied John Laurens during his mission to France. His services were eventually recognized by the state of New York by a grant of an estate at New Rochelle, and he received considerable gifts of money from both Pennsylvania and – at Washington's suggestion – from Congress.
Returning to Europe, Paine finished his Rights of Man on January 29, 1791. On January 31 he passed the manuscript to the publisher Joseph Johnson, who intended to have it ready for Washington's birthday on February 22. Johnson was visited on a number of occasions by agents of the government. Sensing that Paine's book would be controversial, he decided not to release it on the day it was due to be published. Paine quickly began to negotiate with another publisher, J.S. Jordan. Once a deal was secured, Paine left for Paris on the advice of William Blake, leaving three good friends, William Godwin, Thomas Brand Hollis and Thomas Holcroft, in charge of concluding the publication. The book appeared on March 13, three weeks later than originally scheduled. It was an abstract political tract published in support of the French Revolution, written as a reply to Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke. The book— which was highly critical of monarchies and European social institutions— sold briskly but was so controversial that the British government put Paine on trial in absentia for seditious libel. He later published a second edition of the Rights of Man which contained a plan for the reformation of England, including one of the first proposals for a progressive income tax.
Paine was an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution, and he was given honorary French citizenship. Despite his inability to speak French, he was elected to the National Convention, representing the district of Pas de Calais. He voted for the French Republic; but argued against the execution of Louis XVI, saying that he should instead be exiled to the United States of America: firstly, because of the way royalist France had come to the aid of the American Revolution; and secondly because of a moral objection to capital punishment in general and to revenge killings in particular.
Regarded as an ally of the Girondins, he was seen with increasing disfavour by the Montagnards who were now in power, and in particular by Robespierre. A decree was passed at the end of 1793 excluding foreigners from their places in the Convention (Anacharsis Cloots was also deprived of his place). Paine was arrested and imprisoned in December 1793.
Paine protested that he was a citizen of America, which was an ally of Revolutionary France, rather than of Great Britain, which was by that time at war with France. However, Gouverneur Morris, the American ambassador to France, did not press his claim, and Paine later wrote that Morris had connived at his imprisonment (Morris's biographers reject the accusation). Paine thought that George Washington had abandoned him, and was to quarrel with him for the rest of his life.
Imprisoned and fearing that each day might be his last, Paine escaped execution apparently by chance. A guard walked through the prison placing a chalk mark on the doors of the prisoners who were due to be condemned that day. He placed one on the door that Paine shared with three other prisoners, which happened to be open at the time. The prisoners in the cell then closed the door so that the chalk mark faced into the cell when they were due to be rounded up. They were overlooked, and survived the few vital days needed to be spared by the fall of Robespierre on 9 Thermidor (27 July 1794). Paine was released in November 1794 due in large part to the work of the new American Minister to France, James Monroe.
Prior to his arrest and imprisonment, knowing that he would likely be arrested and executed, Paine wrote the first part of The Age of Reason, an assault on organized "revealed" religion combining a compilation of inconsistencies he found in the Bible with his own advocacy of Deism. In his Autobiographical Interlude which is found in The Age of Reason between the first and second parts, Paine writes, "Thus far I had written on the 28th of December, 1793. In the evening I went to the Hotel Philadelphia . . . About four in the morning I was awakened by a rapping at my chamber door; when I opened it, I saw a guard and the master of the hotel with them. The guard told me they came to put me under arrestation and to demand the key of my papers. I desired them to walk in, and I would dress myself and go with them immediately."
In the second part of The Age of Reason, Paine writes about his illness and the fever he suffered while imprisoned in the Luxembourg. ". . . I was seized with a fever that in its progress had every symptom of becoming mortal, and from the effects of which I am not recovered. It was then that I remembered with renewed satisfaction, and congratulated myself most sincerely, on having written the former part of 'The Age of Reason.'" The content of the work can be briefly summarized in this quotation:
The opinions I have advanced… are the effect of the most clear and long-established conviction that the Bible and the Testament are impositions upon the world, that the fall of man, the account of Jesus Christ being the Son of God, and of his dying to appease the wrath of God, and of salvation by that strange means, are all fabulous inventions, dishonorable to the wisdom and power of the Almighty; that the only true religion is Deism, by which I then meant, and mean now, the belief of one God, and an imitation of his moral character, or the practice of what are called moral virtues—and that it was upon this only (so far as religion is concerned) that I rested all my hopes of happiness hereafter. So say I now—and so help me God.
Paine published his last great pamphlet, Agrarian Justice, in the winter of 1795-1796. In this pamphlet, he further developed ideas proposed in the Rights of Man concerning the way in which the institution of land ownership separated the great majority of persons from their rightful natural inheritance and means of independent survival. Paine's proposal is considered to be a form of Basic Income Guarantee. The Social Security Administration of the United States recognizes Agrarian Justice as the first American proposal for an old-age pension. In Agrarian Justice Paine writes:
In advocating the case of the persons thus dispossessed, it is a right, and not a charity… [Government must] create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property; And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.
In 1800, Paine purportedly had a meeting with Napoleon. However, Paine quickly moved from admiration to condemnation as he saw Napoleon's moves towards dictatorship. Paine remained in France until 1802 when he returned to America on an invitation from Thomas Jefferson.
Last years
Derided by the public and abandoned by his friends on account of his religious views, Paine died at 72 Grove Street in Greenwich Village, New York City, on June 8, 1809. Although the original building is no longer there, the present building has a plaque noting that Paine died at this location. At the time of his death, most US newspapers reprinted the obituary notice from the New York Citizen, which read in part: "He had lived long, did some good and much harm." Only six mourners came to his funeral, two of whom were black, most likely freedmen. A few years later, the agrarian radical William Cobbett dug up and shipped his bones back to England. The plan was to give Paine a heroic reburial on his native soil, but the bones were still among Cobbett's effects when he died over twenty years later. There is no confirmed story about what happened to them after that, although down the years various people have claimed to own parts of Paine's remains such as his skull and right hand.
Thomas Paine's writings had great influence on his contemporaries, especially the American revolutionaries. His books inspired both philosophical and working-class Radicals in the United Kingdom; and he is often claimed as an intellectual ancestor by United States liberals, libertarians, progressives and radicals. Both Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Alva Edison read him with respect. Edison said of Paine:
I have always regarded Paine as one of the greatest of all Americans. Never have we had a sounder intelligence in this republic… It was my good fortune to encounter Thomas Paine's works in my boyhood… it was, indeed, a revelation to me to read that great thinker's views on political and theological subjects. Paine educated me then about many matters of which I had never before thought. I remember very vividly the flash of enlightenment that shone from Paine's writings and I recall thinking at that time, 'What a pity these works are not today the schoolbooks for all children!' My interest in Paine was not satisfied by my first reading of his works. I went back to them time and again, just as I have done since my boyhood days.
There is a museum in New Rochelle, New York, in his honour and a statue of him stands in King Street in Thetford, Norfolk, his place of birth. The statue holds a quill and his book, Rights of Man. The book is upside down.
[edit]
See also
* Contributions to liberal theory
* Bill of Rights
Further reading
* Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice
* Thomas Paine "Origin of Freemasonry"
* Paul Collins, The Trouble With Tom: The Strange Afterlife and Times of Thomas Paine. Boolmsbury Books. 2005. ISBN 1582345023. A book about the fate of Paine's bones after his death.
* Moncure Daniel Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine. G.P. Putnam's Sons. 1892. 2 Volumes. Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Facsimile.
* Thomas Alva Edison, "The Philosophy of Paine" (essay, 1925).
* Robert G. Ingersoll, "Thomas Paine: With His Name Left Out, the History of Liberty cannot be Written". (essay, 1870).
* Robert G. Ingersoll, "Thomas Paine" as it appeared in the North American Review. 1892.
* John Keane, Tom Paine: A Political Life. Bloomsbury Publishing, London. 1995.
* Scott Liell, Thomas Paine, Common Sense, and the Turning Point to Independence. Running Press. 2003. ISBN 0762418133. 46-page introduction to the importance of Common Sense in turning opinion against George III.
* Joseph Lewis, Thomas Paine: Author of the Declaration of Independence. Freethought Press. 1947.
* Joseph Lewis, Inspiration and Wisdom from the Writings of Thomas Paine. Freethought Press. 1954.
* David Powell, Tom Paine, The Greatest Exile. Hutchinson. 1985
* William Van Der Weyde, The Life and Works of Thomas Paine (10 Volume Set). Thomas Paine National Historical Association. 1925.
* Andrew Galambos, Sic Itur Ad Astra. The Universal Scientific Publishing Company. 1999.
* Walton Williams, The Declaration of Independence: Was It Written by Thomas Paine?
* Bertrand Russell, "The Fate of Thomas Paine". In Why I Am Not A Christian. Touchstone. 1967. ISBN 0671203231.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Thomas Paine
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Thomas Paine
Wikisource
Wikisource has original works written by or about:
Thomas Paine
* Thomas Paine National Historical Association
* Thomas Paine's writings on God, religion and Deism
* Thomas Paine Quotes at Liberty-Tree.ca
* Five statues: July 4,1950 statue dedication speech at Morristown, NJ
* There are only five statues of Thomas Paine in the world
* The Major & Minor Works, and Letters of Thomas Paine
* Free audio books of Thomas Paine's works (FreeAudio.org)
* Thomas Paine - An Unsung Hero Atheist Foundation of Australia Inc.
* Great American Death Masks, mask of Thomas Paine
* Works by Thomas Paine at Project Gutenberg
* Paine's THE AGE OF REASON paraphrased into modern english
* Tom Paine's Voucher Scheme, by Edwin G. West
dr phibes
watching out for the Brothers seeking my mind ...
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