It is a miserable day in the USA's largest metropolis. It's misty. "Look at me/I'm as helpless as a kitten up a tree." A pianist named Errol Garner wrote the tune "Misty." And I know of what he speaks when he speaks of a kitten being up a tree. Even though it's a miserable day we still have to keep kicking against the pricks to survive...
The irritating aspect of the nation's economy having already crashed is pitching me outside the boundaries of my literary context, making me face reality in the jokey political context...and once again I'm deliriously amazed at how our representatives in Congress continue to "let be" (let it be, let it be), without any blame even, free from any threat of punishment or threat of P time, the ruinous rulership of this Power Elite numbskull egomaniac spoiled-brat rich kid son of a wimpy ex-president faux president to still wallow lasciviously in the pigsty mess he's made of his time in office--ruling with rude ineptitude and following backward-thinking--and our spoiled brat rich boy "president," this AWOL coward in his military career, continues to fuck us up as a failed military leader and diplomat, continues to get people throwing their shoes at We the People of the USA--a shoe thrown at you, by the way, even where I come from means get the fuck out of here--absolutely the worst president ever in a long line of, I think, mediocre presidents, not being blamed for any of his "wrongs"--his actions excused simply because he's a member of the Power Elite, folks, and as Veblen said, to these people, one of them fucking up is covered by the traditional nobility bestowed on them by society as members of the Power Elite thus making them blameless for whatever their mistakes--in the Power Elite, there is no such thing as mistakes--that's why you'll hear these Wall Street bastards talking about "It was a good plan but it had too many regulations on it"--the blame, you see, being projected on the weaker force...
...and I just can't ignore the agony this little pissant has brought to the world! He's wrecked our economy and put us in an irretrievable state of debt--he and his crooked pals at Goldman Sachs, like Hank Paulson, that rat pack of Wall Street Power Elite cronies--and believe me, these assholes have had their greedy noses deep in the asscrack of their legendary Wall Street wizard, Bernie Madoff--and oh how they all know each other--the Power Elite are all intertwined--each linked with each other's asshole--noses up asses!
I keep harping on the Power Elite. I read the Internet news and pundit blogs looking for intelligence but all I find is meaning well but going nowhere hypotheses--bullshitters so caught up in their own philosophies--their own out-of-touch deductions--that I find most of what they are writing stacking bullshit upon bullshit, writing as though they are so more insidely informed than the rest of us...which after you read their thoughts you realize they know no more about what's happening than a well-informed high school senior does.
I suppose any journalist whose column has made it regularly into the NYTimes is making big bucks--I mean, you ain't no joke in journalism when you are a byline-journalist with the NYTimes or Washington Post--you gotta be living a comfortable life--I mean drinks every night with some other pundits in "the know"--or a party at the Lehrers's, or a dinner at Martha Stewart's, or maybe a date with Katie Couric--or cigars over champagne and fresh shrimp with some Hollywood producer thinking maybe of making a film out of your latest investigative-reporting expose book...
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- em·u·la·tion
- Pronunciation:
- \ˌem-yə-ˈlā-shən, -yü-\
- Function:
- noun
- Date:
- 1542
\ˈem-yə-ˌlā-tiv\ adjective __________________________from Merriam-Webster Collegeate Dictionary online__
The Power Elite seek emulation--I refer to a statement in Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class--emulation leads to competition which leads to contests--and life is a series of competitions and contests--we are challenged several times a day in terms of this emulation...
Goes back to our predatory days--the predatory stage of class development--
When men became the hunters, the priests, the owners of property, the chiefs, the boogiemen--
When women became these men's property--
Yes, a part of our original states of masculine mind see women as necessary possessions--
Women are industrious. They are industry. The men are warriors, commanders, hunters, great wrestlers, great arrowshooters, great killers of mass destruction...
Women are practical--they do the industry work--they build the homes, they plant and tend the crops, they have the tons of babies needed for a family to survive in primitive times--and in a way, we are still in primitive times--
In terms of Earth time--sidereal time--we are but babies.
The Power Elite has a firm control on us. It's a control they've built up for hundreds of years now in this country--and the world--like Henry Kissingassinger's consulting firm having an office in Beijing.
Take the Kennedy Family. Why are they so admired by us? They are considered to be rich of course but they weren't always rich--they didn't get rich until Joe Kennedy's bootlegger business took off in Irish shanty Boston and gained him wealth enough to venture into Honey Fitzsimmons's domain and eventually seduce his virgin-daughter Rose!
Then Joe went Hollywood and he really got rich and he got so fucking important Frankie Delano Roosevelt (in the Power Elite by nature of his Dutch forebears (crooks and slaveholders every damn one of 'em)) made him Ambassador to England where old Bootlegger Joe was caught up in some pretty shady affairs--some intimating that Joe was a spy--Joe the Bootlegger in London in the social world big time--in the upper echelons of the USA Power Elite--taking the Irish shanty potato-famine refugee Kennedy family to top-of-the-heap power and political presence in this country that especially blossomed after WWII--old Joe hoping it would mature in his most-prized son, Joe Jr. But Joe Jr. fucked up and got himself killed by the Japanese--and so then old Bootlegger Joe, now Ambassador Joe, picked on his weak-ass son, John Boy--made poor old backaching John Boy go to war and try and get himself a hero, which John Boy did with his PT-Boat 109 affair.
And now, currently, New York's Power Elite is gloating over Caroline Kennedy wanting to be senator in place of Hillbilly Hillary. The trouble with the Power Elite that rules us here in New York City is they know nothing about the reality of living in New York City and New York State. The real estate Goliaths and real estate developers are NYC's ruling Power Elite and most of them live in the clouds no matter where they're living--and Caroline Kennedy, I'll guar-and-damn-tee you, is highly invested in NYC hi-floor real estate and the Kennedy Foundation and the JFK Foundation have real estate interests in NYC, too--and what about all of Jackie O's prostituted wealth? and who got her brother's share of the Kennedy pie after he foolishly tried to fly his toy airplane to his family's private airport--and we just recently were forced by the Kennedy Adoration Society here in NYC to now think of the Triboro Bridge--a beautiful bridge, by the bye--quite an engineering feat if I'm to believe Robert Moses--as the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge--or the RFK bridge as it's now being referred to by the teevee "news" entertainment program talking heads--
Like why did Philadelphia name their sports arena RFK Stadium?
So the sons and daughters of these Power Elites who rule us carry on the privileges habitually expected by their forebears no matter how crookedly their wealth was made (stolen)--those who rule over us--who make laws we have to follow--who set up the habitualities we're all supposed to adhere to and keep our hands on the fucking plough so Caroline Kennedy doesn't have to get callouses on her privileged hands...I wonder if Caroline has ever cleaned a toilet bowl in her life? "Mommie, I flooded the toilet bowl...where's Rosita our illegal immigrant maid? Mommie, I think you should have Rosita deported...she's refusing to clean my shit up after me." That's a parody on the kind of life Caroline Kennedy's had. I join with Gary Ackerman (an NY politician) in asking, "Why not J Lo for the job?" I say, let Hillbilly Hill pass it on to Chelsea Clinton--Chelsea's a member of the New Power Elite--hell, she has a bottle of vintage wine on rack in the 21 Club's fabulous Power Elite wine cellar--quite an elaborate place under the 21 Club--built during Prohibition! Hell, old Bootlegger Joe Kennedy probably had a bronze-plaque on the wall at 21 back in his fornicatin' heyday! ("The Kennedy boyz on the rooftop, Kennedy boyz on the tiles, Kennedy boyz with the clap and the crabs and the piles, Kennedy boyz with their butts all wreathed in smiles, as like their father they revel in the throes of fornication.")
The noise of construction going on right next to me is double-time disruptive today. They've got their Caterpillar jackhammer tractor out again. They're tearing down a concrete wall. So far it's taken 'em over a month to tear this wall down--and they're whacking at it maddeningly today--even though it's freezing and snowing...
And then I read where the Chicago Tribune megacorp (includes the LA Times) is totally in debt and collapsing now--and I read where the Detroit Free Press is stopping home deliveries and cutting back on weekend editions. And I read where the whole town of Fairfield, Connecticut, got ripped off of all their money by good ole Wall Street goofball Bernie "Made Off With Your Money" Madoff--and, hah-hah-hah, Mort Zuckerman got taken, too--he owns the New York Daily News--a rag of a tabloid-type newspaper--the most popular newspaper in New York City--it's subway reading material and a substitute umbrella when you're caught in a sudden rainstorm--Bernie ripped Mort off big time. I'm rolling in the aisle of my own comedy club with laughter--
Bernie ripped off the Power Elite--ruined some Power Elite widows and some Power Elite show-biz folks, like Steven Spielberg. Hah-hah--oh shit, what glee such shenanigans bring me--and now Jesse Jackson Jr. (I suppose we could say Daddy Jesse Jackson is a member certainly of the black Power Elite thereby giving his son some emulational quality) is claiming he was working undercover with the Feds to bring down the Illinois governor, who to me looks like Donald Trump with his hairpiece died shoe-polish black. The old pianist, Earl "Fatha" Hines (a pianist original), used black shoe polish in his wig hat near the end of his life--a guitar player who worked with the Fatha told me that--and NYC once had a dude who played the drums over in front of what was then the Sears & Roebuck Bldg and now is the Paramount Bldg on Seventh Avenue. He played behind a big cardboard sign that said he had been featured in The Gene Krupa Story movie--and this dude was a little short dude and he wore his hair slicked flat back on his head--holding it down with black shoe polish--then there was the dude who with a pair of drumsticks played the manhole covers right out in the middle of Sixth Avenue no matter the traffic--everybody called him Buddy Poor--me and my photographer friend stopped and tried to talk to Buddy Poor one day--he was drinking something yellow looking out of a plastic bottle that my friend swore was a Clorox bottle--but Buddy didn't have much to say--he was simply taking 5 and had to get back on stage soon...
This morning our governor laid whole bunches of troubles on the backs of we folks who want to love living in New York State and especially New York City--and he really got pissed off at Saturday Night Light (Live) making fun of him--and the actor who played him did a good job of mocking his blind look, too, and of course it was offensive--television is offensive to me--and David Patterson, blind or whatever, informed We the People of New York State that due to the NY State budget being suddenly billions in the hole (unaccounted for, of course) he was cutting services to us--hospital services, nursing home services, monies to New York City--plus he's gonna put a tax on soda pop--everything but diet sodas--it's for our health you see. Why can't these government motherfuckers stay out of our lives--our morals--what the shit does the New York State governor care for the average Joe's health? Not one iota! He has not one god-damn care for the people of this state--only the wealth of this state. Aha! Gotch'ya.
And today the New York City crooked-as-snakes-at-night Manhattan Transit Authority is going to pull the wool over our stupid eyes--they are billions in the hole, too, and now they say they have to raise money or they'll have to cut services--like...
Such bullshit. They want to raise subway and bus fares--yep, make it harder on the workingclass--the workingclass that is taxed at every turn it takes--payroll taxes, state, city, and Federal taxes, taxes on food, taxes on beverages, taxes on alcohol, taxes on gasoline, tolls on highways and bridges, taxes on our clothes now--taxes on necessities--
No taxes however on the Power Elite and the little new-rich elitists. No salary cuts in Albany or in the New York City City Council or mayor's office--with all their assistants and go-fers and interns and brother-in-laws and limos and helicopters and police escorts and security staff and their own cooks and their illegal immigrant maids and nannies...though they are asking union members to take salary cuts--and they are cutting monies to education--and the governor is raising tuitions at all the state colleges.
They always cut services to We the People--and raise our taxes--and cut health services and fire houses and cut the cops back to skeleton forces--always We the People have to sacrifice, while in the meantime the criminals on Wall Street are having a ball, partying hearty in their private clubs, or still making those power lunches and those junket trips and those golf outings and getting those yachts all ready for the spring yachting season--or their moves to their private islands and Florida estates or Caribbean Island getaways--vacation homes, summer homes, NYC apartments, District of Corruption homes and apartments--
How can we have any hopes with this mess in charge of us? The same people who caused our economy to hit rock bottom and who are now telling us how to rebound--idiots!--who keep voting for wars and more wars, and trillion-dollar Pentagon budgets, and continued wasting money on the Star Wars missile system, and continuing to promote the ruining of our wilderness lands, continuing to promote the use of dirty coal and the reckless mining of coal using the blowing up of a whole mountain no matter the destruction to the local environment and the health of the local inhabitants--and the miners--and fuck the people, the Power Elite want that coal--that Rockefeller coal--oh yeah, why do you think old John D. Rockefeller the Third or Fourth is governor of West Virginia? Standard Oil was into coal mining. They were into copper mining in Montana, too.
You see the Power Elite needs slave labor--cheap labor--that's what the Repugnican Party is all about--cheap labor economics--the rich getting richer and the poor kept poor--wealth must be kept in the hands of the Power Elite--the leisure class--the class that abhors common labor--the leisure class that expects comfort and ease at the expense of a cheap-ass poorly paid labor force--that's why the Repugnicans are blocking helping the US auto industry--because of the UAW--with the Power Elite auto CEOs complaining about assembly line workers making 75 dollars an hour--and janitors making $65,000 a year! OH LAWDY LAWD--and these assholes are making multimillions a year--and they ain't taking no cuts either! Fuck you and your problems--they don't want 'em, thank you!
Veblen writes: "The motive that lies at the root of ownership is emulation...." (p. 35, Theory of the Leisure Class, Mentor Books, 1956.)
And then I relaxed at 1 am last night by checking in with Pastor Melissa Scott, the official religious guru of The Daily Growler, and Melissa was "lecturing," as she calls it, on an old bible manuscript--Dr. Gene Scott once owned the largest private collection of holy books in the world--and Pastor Melissa trotted out a manuscript page from what's called the Beatty Papyri--Melissa was using a copy of a Pauline epistle from Dr. Gene's several pages from the Beatty Papyri:
CHESTER BEATTY PAPYRI.
On November 19, 1931, a Philadelphia millionaire named Chester Beatty was vacationing in the Middle East. When an Arab offered to sell him some Old Testament papyri in Greek, he agreed to the purchase. He turned the entire collection over to two scholars to examine, F. Kenyon and H. Saunders.
A detailed study showed that these were second and third century manuscripts containing portions of Paul's epistles and the Gospels. The manuscripts are now kept at the University of Pennsylvania.
This comes from a very interesting site--check it out:
www.angelfire.com/nt/theology/Bible06.html
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What Melissa brought to bear when she had her cameraman take a close up of her Beatty Papyri copy of old mad Saul of Taursus's letter to the church at Ephesus was that in this manuscript, there was no punctuation. Brilliant woman this Melissa whatever her name really is--and she suddenly mentioned Aristophanes of Byzantium, the fourth librarian of the great library at Alexandria! She says when the Ptolemy at that time put Aristophanes in prison--to keep him from going to another library--Aristophanes wiled his time by punctuating manuscripts! Melissa said Aristophanes invented punctuation--and using comparative ancient bibles, Melissa gave what I thought was a great lecture on original punctuation--but, then, I'm prejudiced--Melissa Scott is one of the sexiest women alive to me, Praise the Lawdy Lawd!--that's the wolf in me talking--the man in me knows this woman's a mean mistreater--I mean, she could milk the life out of any man I know--and I mean that "milk the life out of a man" literally. Hell, she killed Dr. Gene Scott--he couldn't handle her--only a man like Yahweh can satisfy so mean a mistreater as Pastor Melissa--anyway, Melissa showed some interesting knowledge by explaining Aristophanes's method of punctuating--inventing full stops of 3 types which he used as dots within manuscripts. Then she says he invented the comma--and she showed three ancient examples of the different uses and periods and commas in old bibles and how different the meanings of this one "verse" from the Beatty Papyri page were in these differently punctuated bibles.
Here's Aristophanes of Byzantium's Wikipedia entry:
Aristophanes (Greek: Ἀριστοφάνης) of Byzantium (c. 257 BC–c. 185 BC/180 BC) was a Greek scholar, critic and grammarian, particularly renowned for his work in Homeric scholarship, but also for work on other classical authors such as Pindar and Hesiod. Born in Byzantium about 257 BC, he soon moved to Alexandria and studied under Zenodotus and Callimachus. He succeeded Eratosthenes as head librarian of the Library of Alexandria at the age of sixty.
Aristophanes is credited with the invention of the accent system used in Greek to designate pronunciation, as the tonal, pitched system of archaic and classical Greek was giving way (or had given way) to the stress-based system of koine. This was also a period when Greek, in the wake of Alexander's conquests, was beginning to act as a lingua franca for the Eastern Mediterranean (replacing various Semitic languages). The accents were designed to assist in the pronunciation of Greek in older literary works.
He also invented one of the first forms of punctuation in the 3rd century BCE; single dots (distinctiones) that separated verses (colometry), and indicated the amount of breath needed to complete each fragment of text when reading aloud (not to comply with rules of grammar, which were not applied to punctuation marks until thousands of years later). For a short passage (a komma), a media distinctio dot was placed mid-level (·). This is the origin of the modern comma punctuation mark, and its name. For a longer passage (a colon), a subdistinctio dot was placed level with the bottom of the text (.), similar to a modern colon or semicolon, and for very long pauses (periodos), a distinctio point near the top of the line of text (·).[1][2][3]
He died in Alexandria around 185-180 B.C.
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I'd just never thought about where punctuation came from...thanks, Melissa, for turning me on to something I'd just never even thought about--and that's still amazing me--how come I never wondered about punctuation--that I realize I hadn't is funny to me, too, since I worked for years rewriting and repunctuating the copy of writers and copywriters and wannabe writers in teevee and advertising and publishing--trying to make sense out of writers whose writing showed they knew nothing about grammar--punctuation--the meaning of commas--in fact, they really didn't know how to write--they'd all been "taught" how to write--oh they thought they were natural-born writers in the sense, "Hell, anybody can write," but they weren't.
I am however.
thegrowlingwolffor The Daily Growler
1 comment:
I remember the manhole cover drummer. I gave him a twenty dollar bill once. He still didn't talk, but he pocketed the bill. (I was a poverty stricken idealistic kid who played music myself-- maybe even a little less successfully then the manhole drummer, nobody was handing me $20's.) And I'll be in NYC for the 5th time in 13 months, coming right up. I'll raise a glass of Christmas cheer to you Old Growly-Pants while I'm there. Hope your pants are red and furry. It's Christmas, after all.
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