Saturday, March 10, 2007

Cursing the Cursed in Words and Symbols

More From "The Inscription Set Upon the Great Gate of Theleme"
Continuing from where it was discontinued several posts back:
"Here enter not base pinching usurers,
Pelf-lickers, everlasting gatherers,
Gold-graspers, coin-gripers, gulpers of mists,
Niggish deformed sots, who, though your chests
Vast sums of money should to you afford,
Would ne'ertheless add more unto that hoard,
And yet not be content, --you clinchfist dastards,
Insatiable fiends, and Pluto's bastards,
Greedy devourers, chichy sneakbill rogues,
Hell-mastiffs gnaw your bones, you ravenous dogs.

You beastly-looking fellows,
Reason doth plainly tell us
That we should not
To you alot
Room here, but at the gallows,
You beastly-looking fellows."

From: Gargantua and Pantagruel, Chapter 50, Rabelais, Modern Library Edition, 1928.

The above "Insatiable fiends," "Pluto's bastards," "Greedy devourers," "Chichy sneakbill rogues," sound like most of our politicians, especially those who seem to be in power for life in this country; yet, no one else seems to see it that way--I've been reading the news today--it is so sordid and vile it turns your stomach as you read it and remember while you're reading it that what you are reading is reality and not what Hollywood says it is or our phony "president" says it is. These creeps are in power for life--and you know the opposite of that statement...don't you? I can't spell it out for you.

No
If asked "did I go to The Daily Growler-sponsored blogger party last night?" the answer is given in the subtitle. Always check the subtitles. Sometimes a lot of truth lies hidden in subtitles.

Again I quote Philip Wylie:
"When man evolved from an apelike ancestor to a creature capable of creating images in his brain, of making mental relationships, and of expressing these vocally, he became a user of symbols. The very sounds he uttered were symbols--for trees or tigers, bad dreams or a big wind. Man needed, also, symbols to express the inward compulsions that drove him, often incomprehensibly (as they still do), to acts of violence or of altruisms and into moods of ecstasy or depression. His instincts, that is to say, required symbols and he gradually personified them. His beastlinesses became beastlike men--horned men--devils. His virtues became gods. In his earliest days his legends, myths and demonologies were populated by these animal-like personifications. But, as his sophistication increased, man's gods and legends--his "archetypal images"--became more sophisticated. Venus is less naive than, say, Thoth. Nevertheless, the stories in all the myths presented unconscious but parallel attempts by all degrees of men to illustrate allegorically the patterns and processes of human instincts." [Philip Wylie, An Essay on Morals, Giant Cardinal Edition, Pocket Books, 1961 edition, p xii.]

We are animals and we are acting like animals in every country in the world today. Where there is peace there is also horrible war; where there is plenty there is NOTHING--animals with NOTHING get nothing; animals with everything get everything; that's the way of instincts, whether described by Rabelais in his gruelingly viciously animal-punishing tome or by the intellectual Philip Wylie in his passionate plea with dumb animals to wake up and use their developed brains to think in terms of paradisiacal ideas rather than ideas that spell out the certain destruction of the world and that there is nothing we can do about it since we are suddenly controlled by our base instincts, which we've turned into gods or devils, and are too lazy to think our ways out of our turmoils. The world has become a battleground of gods versus devils. God spelled backwards is Dog; devil spelled backwards is Lived. I just thought I'd throw that in.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

Another Dead Musician--This Time It's Dick Cavett's Drummer (He Did Do "Big Noise From Winnetka" With Bob Haggard, Too, After Ray Baduc Died)

Original Tonight Show drummer dead at 82

Percussionist Bobby Rosengarden died on Tuesday, February 27, of kidney failure. He was born April 23, 1924, and began playing the drums at age four. He performed in Army bands during World War II, then moved to New York City, playing in nightclubs with groups led by Duke Ellington, Quincy Jones, Skitch Henderson, Gerry Mulligan, and Benny Goodman, and backed up singers such as Billie Holiday, Carmen McRae, and Tony Bennett. As an NBC network orchestra member, Rosengarden played on The Steve Allen Show, The Ernie Kovacs Show and in the early years of Johnny Carson's version of The Tonight Show. He moved to ABC to lead the band on The Dick Cavett Show from 1969 to 1974. A versatile performer, Rosengarden played the triangle on Ben E. King's hit Stand By Me, the conga on She Cried by Jay and the Americans, and made the hooting hyena sound for a radio-ready version of the theme to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. He was 82.

Sources: MiamiHerald.com, spaceagepop.com, sfgate.com

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