Foto by tgw, New York City, 2003--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Say Goodbye to: Paul Fussell, who wrote one of the best books I've ever read: The Great War and Modern Memory. World War I told from the point of view of poets and writers. Paul Fussell, 88, American literary scholar and social critic, natural causes.
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Check Out What This Old Fart Alan Simpson (He's Intent on Cutting Social Security Payments in Order to Balance the Budget) Thinks About Seniors on Social Security, a Plan They Paid Into--Meaning, You Old Fart, It's Their Money Not Yours or The Government's--God-Damn I Hate Alan Simpson--He's an 80-Year-Old Idiot From the Great Backward State of Wyoming Who's Never Had to Work Honestly a Day in His Privileged Life. Read His Obscene Note to California Seniors, Who Also Hate His Old Rotten Guts:
To Whom It May Concern:Hey, Alan, Those Young People You Are Trying to Save Are Idiots--If They're Not Working (Due to High Unemployment) and Paying Into Social Security, How Is It That Seniors Currently on Social Security Are Stealing Future SS Money From Them?--Why Aren't Our Young People Working? Or If They Are Working, Why Are Their Incomes So Low They Are Paying Less Into Social Security Than Seniors Currently on Social Security Did? Why Are Seniors Currently on Social Security, Which Is Not in Any Trouble of Running Out, Taking Monies Away From These Young People? Young People, By the Way, Who You Care Not One Plugged Nickel About If the Truth Be Known--You Are Simply Asserting What Power You Have Left to Make a Name for Yourself--Seems Like It's Old Congressional Farts Like You Who Have Turned This Nation Into a Corporate-Fascist State Who Are Out to Gut Social Security In Order to Repair a Deficit G.W. Bush, That Little Rat Bastard, Got Us Into With His Endless War on Terror and His Tax Breaks For Millionaires and Billionaires Like Yourself--You've Lived Off the Public All Your Worthless Life, You Phony Old Asshole, As Did Your Father Before You. Why Don't You Drop Dead and Get Out of the Lives of We the People of the USA Who've Paid Your Salary All Your Worthless Life? Go Back to the Backward "Little" Pissant State of Wyoming and Croak Already.
Erskine Bowles and I thoroughly enjoyed our time on the West Coast and received an excellent reception from folks — at least those who are using their heads and have given up using emotion, fear, guilt or racism to juice up their troops. Your little flyer entitled “Bowles! Simpson! Stop using the deficit as a phony excuse to gut our Social Security!” is one of the phoniest excuses for a “flyer” I have ever seen. You use the faces of young people, who are the ones who are going to get gutted while you continue to push out your blather and drivel. My suggestion to you — an honest one — read the damn report. The Moment of Truth — 67 pages, and then tell me if we’re not doing the right thing with Social Security. What a wretched group of seniors you must be to use the faces of the very people that we are trying to save, while the “greedy geezers” like you use them as a tool and a front for your nefarious bunch of crap. You must feel some sense of shame for shoveling out this bulls**t. Read the latest news from the Social Security Trustees. The Social Security System will not “hit the skids” in 2033 instead of 2036. If you can’t understand all of this you need a pane of glass in your naval so you can see out during the day! Read the report. Get back to me. My address is below.
If you don’t read the report, — as Ebenezer Scrooge said in the Christmas Carol, “Haunt me no longer!”
Best regards,
Alan Simpson
Question to President Obama: Why in the hell did you pick this old goat for your economic recovery committee?--and why in the next hell don't you throw him out on his old-fart ear? Send him back to Wyoming and get him out of We the People's hair. Come on, Obama, listen to the American people and not these old farts who've never held a decent job in their lives--and that includes that fop Erskine Bowles, too. The way to recover the economy is to end this stupid War on Terror--cut the budget of the Defense Department; cut the budget of the Pentagon; gut the budgets of Homeland Security and the National Defense Agency and the FBI and the CIA. Those cuts would solve our economic problems overnight.
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Awakened By a Strange Noise in My Room
I take seven different pharmaceutical drugs during my days these days. I pass out usually after taking them. I sleep pretty soundly at night and was sleeping that way this morning when something, a noise, bothered me while I was still asleep, bothered me so much I came up into a half-sleep, and then woke solidly awake on clearly hearing it, a tapping sort of noise, like the sound perhaps a mouse makes gnawing on something. I have mice problems this time of year. For some reason mice race across my room diagonally following what must be a mouse trail. They have been doing it for years. Not often but let's say maybe three times a year I'll see one skipping friskily along that trail. I'll be working at my computer and my eye will catch a movement and next thing I know I'll see one of the dirty filthy creatures sprinting like mad down this trail that originates under my radiator, an old iron radiator with a prominent hole under it. I have filled the hole with steel wool; I have laid a layer of bricks over it; I have put a board over it; yet, the mice still manage to exit it and dash across my room. So naturally this morning on being awakened by this strange noise, the first thing I thought of was, "oh crap, a god-damn mouse is in the room."
Before yesterday morning (May 21, 2012), I had been working on a beautifully raw diatribe against the whole Kennedy clan. It was brought on by the hanging death of Bobby, Jr's, estranged wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy. What got me pissed off and on the backs of the (worthless, spoiled brat) Kennedys was the fact that when you clicked on Mary's Wikipedia Death List entry, you got Bobby, Jr's Wikipedia encyclopedia entry. I began to hunt for information on Mary and found out she was born in Dublin, Ireland, and before getting involved with a Kennedy (spoiled brat but handsome devil) man, she had been a teacher in France and then a television personality in Dublin. That led me to investigating just how many women all the Kennedy men went through in the course of their privileged freely mafficking lives. Women by the scores and after marrying some of them and knocking them up several times (they're Catholics, you know) they usually leave them (estranged) abandoned to drink and drugs. Kennedy men, including Bobby, Jr., have problems with drink and drugs, too, but they seem to get away with it unscathed. One might say they come out of their drug and drink dilemmas smelling like a Kennedy. Bobby, Jr., after being caught with a bagfull of his personal drug supply (heroin?) in South Dakota got off by doing community service as an environmentalist. None of the Kennedy drug and drink abusing men have ever had to go to prison. Anyway, to make a long story short, my Kennedy post got so involved I was preparing to turn it into a book when I went to my mail box yesterday (May 21, 2012) morning and discovered a piece of mail that suddenly moved my focus off the "scumbag" Kennedy men and turned it instead to face a brick wall, a brick wall so high, I am now spending most of my "literary" time trying to figure out how the hell I'm going to get over it. The brick wall was a multithousand-dollar bill from Bellevue Hospital for outpatient services (like liver tests, blood work ups, clinics, etc.), all due to my recent heart attack. I now seem to be burdened with a $2,000-a-month bill every three months.
I sat in the Coumadin clinic waiting room for four hours Monday (May 21, 2012). Usually on a Monday there aren't that many patients around but this Monday, a wild rainy Monday to boot, something must have been in the air because every chair in the waiting area was packed and new patients were coming in by the droves. At the peak of the action I counted at least 100 patients either sitting or standing around waiting to be called by the nurses or assistant nurses. Because I'm an advanced patient I had to sit and wait while all the newer patients were seen first. I began to characterize all these characters who were sitting around waiting with me.
The majority of them are Black and Latino; even some of the Black folks turn out to be Latinos. Nearly every name called out is a Latino name. When an English-sounding name is called it's usually a Black person. Some of these characters I knew from my many past Coumadin-clinic adventures. Like the elderly geezer-looking White man with the huge extended belly who plugs his cell phone into one of the wifi sockets that are all over the floor and plays games for hours at a time. This time he was having to sit without being called for the same amount of hours as I was and it began to bother him and he started talking out loud. "When in Jesus name are you calling me?" he asked, not loud enough for the nurses to hear him. The nurses don't tolerate complainers. Like if he'd'a said that loudly, a nurse would have mean-stared him down. When he finally got called, the nurse that called him I knew and I simply shrugged my shoulders and pointed to myself. That didn't make her mad and she said, "You'll be after this man," as she led the big bellied game player off for his blood pressure test, the first test you get once they call you into the clinic area.
There are a lot of huge fat Black women always in this waiting area. One sitting on her walker was also being ignored, though she never complains. She is so fat she lobs all over that thin-metal-looking walker that looks as if it's gonna collapse under her enormous weight at any minute.
There was a new fat Black woman, a little woman with a huge ass, who I'd never seen there before. She had a caretaker with her but she wouldn't sit with the caretaker and instead started wobbling up and down, eventually coming over and sitting by me. As she sat there she started making animal noises. A kind of mushy mouthed mumbling that sounded as if she didn't have a tongue and was trying to talk but couldn't. I avoided contact with her. Then she got up and wobbled off up the floor a bit and a huge tall fat Black woman came and sat where she'd been sitting. When she wobbled back down towards her old seat she noticed the huge tall fat Black woman had got her seat and she froze in wobble, looking right at the woman, and started fumble-mumbling with vindictive rapidity at this woman.
The Latinos, except for the extremely sick ones, are very vociferous. They gang together and they spiel long lines of Spanish conversation amongst each other. That is when they aren't on their cell phones. The great majority of these people have cell phones. Even the smattering of Muslims among us have cell phones. There was a confrontation due to a Latino guy jabbering away loudly on his cell phone. A plump and scraggly looking White woman got up and angrily told this gentleman to move away from her, which he did, moving across the walkway to the railing that hangs precariously high over the Bellevue modern vast entrance area or lobby to continue jabbering away on his cell phone, a conversation that extended on for nearly twenty minutes, me getting my call and going inside the clinic to get my blood pressure taken and then coming back out and taking the seat he formerly occupied when the White woman made him move...and he was still jabbering away.
There are your crazies in the mix. Nearly every Coumadin clinic I've attended this one crazy has showed up. She's a White woman, a little on the plump side, who walks with a limp. She wears jogging suits and at times appears wearing a white nurse's smock, though she's a patient and not a nurse. She has the privilege of knowing a lot of the staff and of going up to them and saying things like, "Hey, I like those shoes. Are they new?" One day she suddenly plopped herself down across from me and got out her cell phone and fiddled around with it, mumbling to herself as she did for a considerable length of time. Then she got up and wandered off and I didn't see her again. She's never called into one of the clinics so I assume she just wanders the hallways of the Ambucare units. She maybe one of the permanent residents of the hospital--from the psycho ward, I unfairly assume. There are a lot of familiar wanderers I see, one guy on a walker who wears a Marlboro jacket who comes and goes up and down the walkway continuously.
And then there's this crazy White guy I call Disco Stu. He has a boombox built into his walker and sometimes he lets it boom away, always playing the same disco classics--his special favorite being K.C. and the Sunshine Band's "That's the Way I Like It," which he seems to have looped to where it plays in continuous stretches while he occasionally gives out with a whoop and then smacks his hands loudly together while carrying out some disco steps. He, too, wears jogging suits, a very popular apparel in this particular clinic area. When his boombox is turned down, or he's using his earphones, he still gives out his whoops and his hand claps, some coming when you least expect them, catching you by surprise, his booming hand claps sometimes even shocking you nervously--you know, making you jump from not expecting them. He has another habit of repeating the names when the nurses come out and call out the names of the next patients they are ready to see (or "care for," as the nurses put it).
Mostly though most of these weary patients who sit for hours waiting for their names to be called sit like zombies, stunned sort of, not talking. Asian men, and there are usually one or two of them in attendance, tend to pass out and sleep while waiting for their names to be called. One Asian guy, Mr. Bong Bap I call him because that's what his name sounds like, has slept through his name being called a couple of times, snoring loudly away, missing his turn.
I sit there not laughing at these people but rather getting angry at a nation full of billionaires and multibillion dollar corporations with money to waste and a bunch of well-paid politicians who give themselves raises quit regularly and who and their families get the finest healthcare known to man--these politicians paid by our tax monies--and we are taxed throughout every day on the food we buy, on the bridges we use, on the throughways we use, on the beers we drink, on the tunnels we use, on the property we own, on the clothes we buy, on the cars we buy, on our phone bills--and in return for our generosity to them these public servants slam us back by using the enormous privileges and powers we give them to make laws against us--and my train of thought here is on track to ask the question why don't we have universal healthcare in this country, this Land of the Free (Hell) and Home of the Brave? Why? Why are we burdened with this pay-or-die healthcare? Why are we burdened with hospitals trying to make huge profits off our sicknesses? Hospitals practicing pharmaceutical solutional medicine [Fact: one of the drugs I'm having to take, warfarin (Coumadin's its brand name), is rat poison] rather than preventive medicine? I mean though Bellevue doctors and nurses saved my life, Bellevue finance is going to take my life back. My outpatient bill right now is running $2,000 a month! Doesn't that sound ridiculous? And there are thousands upon thousands of New York City just-plain-folks sitting in the waiting rooms of city hospitals all over the 5 boroughs being drained of their time and life and incomes, some being ruined; yet this city's ruled by a sorry-ass billionaire who hates poor people and who was recently caught using a city-owned helicopter pad for his own private helicopter's use, taking off on personal trips with his gal pal and his pedigreed dogs in the middle of the night, which is illegal according to a New York City law that says helicopters can't use that pad after the sun goes down--this is the same mayor who recently fought tooth-and-nail against giving the city workers who do the shit work a $2.00-an-hour raise, from $8-an-hour to $10-an-hour, saying such a raise would put the city into debt. In the meantime, this bastard has a staff and all kinds of city administration workers making hundreds of thousands a year. Even his worthless daughter is on the city payroll as the city's ambassador to the UN, a job that sounds superfluous to me. This is what I'm thinking of as I sit in Bellevue Hospital's Ambucare clinic waiting areas for hours upon hours amongst the other poor ripped off souls of the down and out.
I'm currently sitting here listening to Beethoven's 6th Symphony trying to find peace in my disrupted life.
thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler
From nasa/gov.com/ :
Black Holes
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| Artist's concept of a black hole. |
Still more X-ray light is generated when some of the material swirling into the black hole doesn't fall in but rather is spit out at incredibly fast speeds (close to the speed of light). To understand why some material is spit out, think of the analogy of someone trying to eat too much food at once. Such a messy eater will have food fall from their mouth.
Black holes are like such messy eaters. Some material won't reach the event horizon but instead is caught up in powerful magnetic fields existing around the black hole. These "jets" not only shoot some material away. They also emit prolific amounts of energy from radio waves to visible light to X-ray light.
The jets of material shooting out from the central black hole of the Perseus cluster have blown out large holes (cavities) in the nearby gaseous medium and -- like waves propagating on a pond surface -- have set up ripples throughout the entire cluster medium. These ripples are the sound waves.
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