Payton Gendron

a Bushmaster XM-15 semiautomatic rifle, the sort used by Gendron.

Ruth Whitfield (left), Pearly Young and Aaron Salter Jr.

Payton Gendron (2003- ), a White American gunman, killed 10 and injured 3 last Saturday afternoon, May 14th 2022, in upstate New York at a Tops supermarket in a Black neighbourhood of Buffalo. All but two of the victims were Black. It was shown live on the Internet for a few minutes before the feed was cut.

The dead:

1. Celestine Chaney, 65
2. Roberta A. Drury, 32
3. Andre Mackneil, 53
4. Katherine Massey, 72
5. Margus D. Morrison, 52
6. Heyward Patterson, 67
7. Aaron Salter, 55
8. Geraldine Talley, 62
9. Ruth Whitfield, 86
   
10. Pearl Young, 77

Gendron drove for three and a half hours in his parents’s car to get to the place with “the highest black population percentage and isn’t that far away,” according to a 180-page online manifesto that is almost cetainly his. Buffalo is 37% Black. His home town of Conklin, also in upstate New York, is 1% Black.

The police confronted him in front of Tops, with bodies lying on the ground. He pointed his gun to his neck but police still managed to take him alive – a courtesy not always extended to Black men, even when unarmed or back turned.

The gun: a Bushmaster XM-15 semiautomatic rifle (pictured above) with the N-word  and “14” written on it. The 14 is short for the 14 Words, a neo-Nazi slogan:

“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

Even though he threatened to shoot up his high school last year, he was still allowed to buy a high-powered rifle after police were sure that he was not sick in the head.

The motive: as the manifesto put it:

“To show to the replacers [= non-White people] that as long as the White man lives, our land will never be theirs and they will never be safe from us.

“To directly reduce immigration rates to European lands by intimidating and physically removing the replacers themselves.

“To intimidate the replacers already living on our lands to emigrate back to their home countries.

“To agitate the political enemies of my people into action, to cause them to overextend their own hand and experience the eventual and inevitable backlash as a result.

“To incite violence, retaliation and further divide between the European people and the replacers currently occupying European soil…

“To add momentum to the pendulum swings of history, further destabilizing and polarizing Western society in order to eventually destroy the current nihilistic, hedonistic, individualistic insanity that has taken control of Western thought.”

Great Replacement Theory, aka White genocide, is what all this is based on. As the manifesto explains:

“Millions of people pouring across our borders, legally. Invited by the state and corporate entities to replace the White people who have failed to reproduce, failed to create the cheap labor, failed to create new consumers and tax base that the corporations and states need to have to thrive.”

No longer a fringe belief: Although Gendron was mainly inspired by Brenton Tarrant, the New Zealand mosque shooter, Republican blowhards like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens push versions of this theory. According to an AP poll that came out last week, 42% of Republicans now believe in replacement theory.

– Abagond, 2022.

Sources: mainly Google Images, Heavy, AP.

See also:

• The three pillars of American white supremacy
• Great Replacement Theory
  • 2042
  • “very fine people”
  • Brenton Tarrant
  • Patrick Crusius
  • Tucker Carlson
  • Candace Owens
• Republicans are going over a cliff
  • The Southern strategy
• some other racist gunmen (not counting police officers)
  • Dylann Roof
  • Wade Michael Page
  • George Zimmerman
  • KKK
• “nation of immigrants”
• The N-word

578

Read Full Post »

My Chemical Romance: Welcome to the Black Parade

Remarks:

This is my favourite emo rock song. It came out in 2006, when MySpace was still a thing, going to #1 in the UK, #9 in their native US. They are from New Jersey. MTV was so impressed with the music video that in 2017 they named it the “Greatest Music Video of the Century”. How could the remaining 83 years of the century possibly top it? Only time will tell.

Colleen Atwood was the costume designer for the music video. As you might imagine, she has worked with Tim Burton and Disney. In fact, she is working on Disney’s live-action remake of “The Little Mermaid”, due out next year in 2023. Her work has appeared here twice before: she worked on Disney’s live-action “Dumbo” (2019) and Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” (2010).

Samuel Bayer was the director. He sticks to rock videos, so he has only appeared here once before: “Stupid Girl” (1996) by Garbage. But will probably appear again when I inevitably post “Zombie” (1994) by the Cranberries.

As a father, I love the opening words of the song.

See also:

• songs: the 2000s
• MTV
• emo
• rock music

Lyrics:

When I was a young boy, my father
Took me into the city to see a marching band
He said, “Son, when you grow up would you be
The savior of the broken, the beaten and the damned?”
He said, “Will you defeat them? Your demons
And all the non-believers, the plans that they have made?
Because one day, I’ll leave you a phantom
To lead you in the summer to join the black parade…”

When I was a young boy, my father
Took me into the city to see a marching band
He said, “Son, when you grow up would you be
The savior of the broken, the beaten and the damned?”

Sometimes I get the feeling she’s watching over me
And other times I feel like I should go
And through it all, the rise and fall, the bodies in the streets
And when you’re gone, we want you all to know

We’ll carry on, we’ll carry on, and though you’re
Dead and gone, believe me, your memory
Will carry on, we’ll carry on, and in my
Heart, I can’t contain it, the anthem won’t explain it

A world that sends you reeling from decimated dreams
Your misery and hate will kill us all
So paint it black and take it back, let’s shout it loud and clear
Defiant to the end we hear the call

To carry on, we’ll carry on, and though you’re
Dead and gone, believe me, your memory
Will carry on, we’ll carry on, and though you’re
Broken and defeated, your weary widow marches

On and on, we carry through the fears (Oh, oh, oh)
Disappointed faces of your peers (Oh, oh, oh)
Take a look at me, ’cause I could not care at all

Do or die, you’ll never make me
Because the world will never take my heart
Go and try, you’ll never break me
We want it all, we wanna play this part
I won’t explain or say I’m sorry
I’m unashamed, I’m gonna show my scars
Give a cheer for all the broken
Listen here, because it’s who we are
I’m just a man, I’m not a hero
Just a boy, who had to sing this song
I’m just a man, I’m not a hero
I don’t care!

We’ll carry on, we’ll carry on, and though you’re
Dead and gone, believe me, your memory
Will carry on, we’ll carry on, and though you’re
Broken and defeated, your weary widow marches

Do or die, you’ll never make me
Because the world will never take my heart
Go and try, you’ll never break me
We want it all, we wanna play this part (We’ll carry on!)
Do or die, you’ll never make me (We’ll carry on!)
Because the world will never take my heart (We’ll carry on!)
Go and try, you’ll never break me (We’ll carry-)
We want it all, we wanna play this part (We’ll carry on…)

Source: AZ Lyrics.

Read Full Post »

Moby-Dick

“Moby-Dick” (1851) by Herman Melville tells the tale of Captain Ahab’s hunt of Moby Dick, the Great White Whale.

Disclaimer: This post is written by me, a reader of books, not a literary critic.

Readability: It has a famous opening – “Call me Ishmael” – and a shattering end. In between are philosophical musings, bits of fine writing, and clear-as-mud stuff like, oh, this sentence from chapter 60 about the rope attached to a harpoon:

“From the chocks it hangs in a slight festoon over the bows, and is then passed inside the boat again; and some ten or twenty fathoms (called box-line) being coiled upon the box in the bows, it continues its way to the gunwale still a little further aft, and is then attached to the short-warp – the rope which is immediately connected with the harpoon; but previous to that connexion, the short-warp goes through sundry mystifications too tedious to detail.”

He also likes to explain one thing in terms of something even less well known.

Cultural literacy: Part of what makes it hard to read is that Melville assumes a knowledge of sailing ships and the Bible that are not common this side of 1945. Sometimes a Bible dictionary is more helpful than an ordinary dictionary. I watched a video on YouTube about the parts of a pirate ship. It was invaluable. So was seeing clips from the Gregory Peck film. But an illustrated and annotated edition would be better still.

Like the Bible it is a slog, but worth it in the end. You just have to stick with it. Do not expect to understand everything on a first reading. Especially since surface events often have a deeper meaning. Both the Bible and Melville are like that.

I can see why my English teachers gushed over it: it is full of alliterations and allusions, which they were suckers for. And it is written in that wordy, we-got-all-day way of the Victorians. It ain’t Hemingway – who, by the way, imparted knowledge about bull fights way more painlessly than Melville does about whale hunts.

Captain Ahab comes across as half mad – a “monomaniac” is Ishmael’s term for it. Ahab is bent on revenge against Moby Dick, who bit off his leg, and he puts himself on the level with the gods (always plural and lower-case from his mouth). Hardly a sympathetic character, at least from a Christian point of view. And yet somehow your heart (well, at least mine) breaks for him by the end. That is brilliant.

Race: Ahab’s three harpooners aboard the Pequod, his “knights”, are all “savages” or “heathens” – an African, a Polynesian and a Native American. Ishmael and Ahab admire them for their courage and skill. But Melville likens them to devils in hell. From chapter 96:

“the Tartarean shapes of the pagan harpooneers … With huge pronged poles they pitched hissing masses of blubber into the scalding pots, or stirred up the fires beneath … the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse [of a whale], and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander’s soul.”

– Abagond, 2022.

See also:

• books
  • those I read in 2022
  • those I was made to read at school
• cetology in Moby-Dick
• English in 1851 – quotes a bit of it
• words:
  • savage
  • heathen

529

Read Full Post »

Grank Funk Railroad: The Loco-Motion

Remarks:

This was one of the few cases where I thought a White cover was clearly better than the Black original. That was, until I wrote this post and carefully listened to different versions. Uh-oh!

The song was written by Carole King and her husband Gerry Goffin. They appeared in this space before for “Up on the Roof” (1962).

In the Anglosphere, there are main versions of “The Loco-Motion”:

• 1962: Little Eva, R&B (US #1, UK #2, Australia -)
• 1974: Grand Funk Railroad, rock, (#1, -, #5)
• 1987-88: Kylie Minogue, dance-pop (a la Stock Aitken & Waterman) (#3, #2, #1)

Grank Funk Railroad blows away the others because the guitar solo in the middle of the song is that good.

Little Eva was Carole King’s maid. If you compare her version with Carole King’s version from 1980, their singing voice sounds amazingly alike. Too alike. It is not just me: Waterman, who worked on the Minogue version, believes it was Carole King herself who in fact sang on the record. So all three versions are White! And check out the video above – also lily-White.

See also:

• songs: the 1970s
• Gerry Goffin: Up on the Rookf
• also Stock Aitken & Waterman:
  • Donna Summer: This Time I Know It’s For Real
  • Princess: Say I’m Your Number One
  • Rick Astley: Never Gonna Give You Up
• White American music

Lyrics: 

Everybody’s doin’ a brand new dance now
(Come on baby, do the Loco-Motion)
I know you’ll get to like it if you give it a chance now
(Come on baby, do the Loco-Motion)
My little baby sister can do it with ease
It’s easier than learnin’ your ABCs
So, come on, come on, and do the Loco-Motion with me

You’ve got to swing your hips now
Come on
Jump up
Jump back
Oh well, I think you’ve got the knack

Woah, woah
Now that you can do it, well let’s make a chain now
(Come on baby, do the Loco-Motion)
A chuga-chuga motion like a railroad train, now
(Come on baby, do the Loco-Motion)
Do it nice and easy now, and don’t lose control
A little bit of rhythm and a lot of soul
So, come on, come on, and do the Loco-Motion with me

Woah, woah
Move around the floor in a loco-motion
(Come on baby, do the Loco-Motion)
Do it holdin’ hands if’n you get the notion
(Come on baby, do the Loco-Motion)
There’s never been a dance that’s so easy to do
It even makes you happy when you’re feelin’ blue
So, come on, come on, and do the Loco-Motion with me
(Come on baby, do the Loco-Motion)
So, come on, come on, and do the Loco-Motion with me
(Come on baby, do the Loco-Motion)
So, come on, come on, and do the Loco-Motion with me
(Come on baby, do the Loco-Motion)
(Come on baby, do the Loco-Motion)
(Come on baby, do the Loco-Motion)
(Come on baby, do the Loco-Motion)
(Come on baby, do the Loco-Motion)

Source: AZ Lyrics.

Read Full Post »

Audrey Hepburn

Audrey Hepburn in “Sabrina” (1954).

iconic Audrey from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961).

Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) was a Hollywood actress who was at the height of her powers in the 1950s and 1960s. A month older than Anne Frank, she too lived in the Netherlands under Nazi rule. But she was not Jewish and lived, going on to become a beauty and fashion icon of the 1900s. According to this blog, she is the ninth most beautiful White woman.

Some of her films:

• 1953: Roman Holiday – with Gregory Peck. Made her name. Won an Oscar for Best Actress.
• 1954: Sabrina – with Humphrey Bogart.
• 1957: Funny Face – with Fred Astaire.
• 1961: Breakfast at Tiffany’s – her most iconic film, based on a Truman Capote book. Capote wanted Marilyn Monroe for the lead. Monroe turned it down as too immoral. For Hepburn they sanitized it. The Library of Congress says the film is “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” – yellowface and all!
• 1963: Charade – with Cary Grant. Accidentally not copyrighted!
• 1964: My Fair Lady – with Rex Harrison (and Marni Nixon singing her parts). Beat out Julie Andrews for the lead. No matter: Andrews went on to win Best Actress anyway, for “Mary Poppins” (1964).
• 1967: Two for the Road

After that she pretty much retired from acting to bring up her sons. In 1988 she became a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, now known as the United Nations Children’s Fund.

She played pretty much the same person in her most famous films: beautiful, charming, elegant, yet modest. Unworldly yet somehow worldly.

children in a Nazi cattle car, 1940.

She was the daughter of a Dutch baroness and an Irish father. The Nazis took two uncles away and shot them. Her mother was afraid they would take her too – her boarding-school English (and terrible Dutch) made her seem foreign. Seeing the cattle trains of full of Jews was burnt into her brain. The last winter of the war they did not have enough to eat. After the war, what would become UNICEF helped to feed her. But, as she would later learn, her health was already ruined, dooming her girlhood dream of becoming a ballerina.

She did not think she was beautiful. Because all she saw were her imperfections: her big nose, big feet, small breasts, and thin figure. In the 1950s the hourglass figure was the beauty standard: Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Brigitte Bardot, Sophia Loren, etc. Part of why she looks beautiful now is because she helped shape the beauty standard.

in “Charade” (1963), dressed in Givenchy.

Givenchy: She met Givenchy, the fashion designer, in Paris in 1953 when they were young, in their middle 20s. She became his muse. His clothes looked so great on her that it helped to make them both way more famous than they already were.

Female gaze: If Marilyn Monroe was made for men to look at, then Audrey Hepburn was made for women to look at. Hers was a beauty more women could or would want to achieve. They did not need large breasts, show much skin, or wear much jewellery. And while middle-class women could not afford Givenchy, his fashions were minimalistic enough that they could afford reasonable approximations. Elements of her fashion are still in fashion two generations later, like the little black dress (LBD) and ballet flats – from her lost ballerina dream.

– Abagond, 2022.

See also:

• Welcome to White History Month 2022 – it was last month, but close enough!
• Breakfast at Tiffany’s:
  • Henry Mancini: Moon River – the opening scene
  • yellowface
• White women:
  • The most beautiful white women – she is #9.
  • The eyes of black women and white women – mentions her.
  • white beauty: a brief history
    • Marilyn Monroe
    • Elizabeth Taylor
    • Sophia Loren
    • Brigitte Bardot
      • Bette Midler: Mambo Italiano – the video features Bardot at her height.
    • Twiggy
    • Pamela Anderson
    • Kim Kardashian
• Sade – who she most reminds me of.
• Nazi Germany
  • Anne Frank
  • The Holocaust

608

Read Full Post »

The Killers: Mr Brighside

Remarks:

This has been in the top 100 in the UK for 312 non-consecutive weeks (equal to almost exactly 6 years), a record. It is currently at #65. It came out in 2003, peaking in 2004 at #10 in both the UK and their native US. They are from Las Vegas. By some measures it is one of the best rock songs this side of 2000.

The video was directed by Sophie Muller. She has appeared in this space twice before, directing Sade’s “No Ordinary Love” (1992) and “Babyfather” (2010). They are friends from art school.

Julia Robert’s brother Eric appears in the video as lead singer Brandon Flowers’s rival in love and checkers. Flowers says the song is emotionally real because it is based on true events. He is Mr Brightside.

See also:

• songs: the 2000s
• The Killers: When You Were Young
• Sade
• other songs of jealousy:
  • Rick Springfield: Jessie’s Girl

Lyrics:

Coming out of my cage
And I’ve been doing just fine
Gotta gotta be down
Because I want it all
It started out with a kiss
How did it end up like this?
It was only a kiss, it was only a kiss
Now I’m falling asleep
And she’s calling a cab
While he’s having a smoke
And she’s taking a drag
Now they’re going to bed
And my stomach is sick
And it’s all in my head
But she’s touching his chest now
He takes off her dress now
Let me go
And I just can’t look, it’s killing me
And taking control

Jealousy, turning saints into the sea
Swimming through sick lullabies
Choking on your alibis
But it’s just the price I pay
Destiny is calling me
Open up my eager eyes
‘Cause I’m Mr. Brightside

I’m coming out of my cage
And I’ve been doing just fine
Gotta gotta be down
Because I want it all
It started out with a kiss
How did it end up like this?
It was only a kiss, it was only a kiss
Now I’m falling asleep
And she’s calling a cab
While he’s having a smoke
And she’s taking a drag
Now they’re going to bed
And my stomach is sick
And it’s all in my head
But she’s touching his chest now
He takes off her dress now
Let me go
‘Cause I just can’t look, it’s killing me
And taking control

Jealousy, turning saints into the sea
Swimming through sick lullabies
Choking on your alibi
But it’s just the price I pay
Destiny is calling me
Open up my eager eyes
‘Cause I’m Mr. Brightside
I never
I never
I never
I never

Source: Songfacts.

Read Full Post »

Doris Day: Should I Surrender?

Remarks:

This was on her 1961 album “Wonderful Day”. It never charted. Her days of top-ten hits ran from 1945 to 1958. But this is the song that appears in Raoul Peck’s  2017 film about James Baldwin, “I Am Not Your Negro”. Peck has it play as he shows images of lynching, right after quoting Baldwin saying:

“In this country, for a dangerously long time, there have been two levels of experience. One, to put it cruelly, can be summed up in the images of Gary Cooper and Doris Day, two of the most grotesque appeals to innocence the world has ever seen. And the other, subterranean, indispensable, and denied, can be summed up, let us say, in the tone and face of Ray Charles. And there has never been any genuine confrontation between these two levels of experience.”

That might seem unfair to Doris Day, but as Peck told Dazed:

“I’m sure your generation knows less about Doris Day, but she was an icon for Hollywood… well, they didn’t call it ‘whiteness’ at the time, but it’s the clean, very romantic Hollywood image. I was submitted to that image as well. I loved watching Doris Day films, but it’s an illusion of real life. Baldwin deconstructs that image.”

See also:

• songs: the 1960s
• Doris Day: Sentimental Journey
• I Am Not Your Negro

Lyrics:

Should I be fire or ice
Should I be firm or tender
Should I be bad or nice
Should I surrender?

Shall I resist my heart
Shall I deny its splendor
Shall I insist we fight
Should I surrender?

His pleading words so tenderly
Entreat me
Is this the night that love finally
Defeats me

Should I avoid his touch
Should I play a shy pretender
Should I admit I’d much rather
Surrender
Surrender
Surrender
Surrender

Sources: Genius Lyrics, Dazed.

 

Read Full Post »

Bette Midler: Mambo Italiano

Remarks:

This is Bette Midler’s 2003 cover of a 1954 Rosemary Clooney song. The Midler song was produced by Barry Manilow as a tribute to Clooney shortly after her death in 2002. The Clooney song was a top ten hit in the US, UK, and France, going to #1 in the UK in 1955.

The video shows Brigitte Bardot at the height of her blonde bombshell powers in what seem to be out-takes from films made in the 1950s and 1960s. I know her mainly as a racist from the 1990s and 2000s. She is now 87.

See also:

• songs: the 2000s
• Brigitte Bardot
• Mina: Il cielo in una stanza –  an actual Italian song from this era

Lyrics:

A boy went back to Napoli,
because he missed the scenery,
the native dancers and the charming songs.
But wait a minute, something’s wrong.

Hey! Hey!
Now it’s hey Mambo, Mambo Italiano!
Hey Mambo, Mambo Italiano!
Go, go, Joe, you mixed up Sigiliano.
All you Calabrese do the mambo like crazy.

And hey Mambo! Don’t wanna tarantella,
Hey Mambo! No more-a moozzarella.
Hey Mambo! Hey Mambo Italiano.
Try an enchilada with a fish-a-barcalada.

Hey goombah!
I love-a how you dance rumba.
But take-a some advice paisano,
learn how to mambo.
If you’re gonna be a square,
you’re never gonna go nowhere.

Hey Mambo, Mambo Italiano!
Hey Mambo, hey Mambo Italiano!
Go, go, Joe, shake-a like a Gioviano.
Hello quesadicha,
you getta happy in the feets-a
when you Mambo Italiano!

Shake-a baby, shake-a,
’cause I love-a when you take-a me.

Hey Jagool!
You don’t-a have to go to school,
just make a little beef flambino.
It’s-a like-a vino.
Kid you’re good-lookin’,
but you don’t know what’s-a cookin’ till you
Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!

Shake-a baby, shake-a,
’cause I love it when you take-a me
by the pizzeria down-a where I’m gonna be-a.
Don’t ya tell your mama.
Mama’s gonna tell-a papa.
There’s-a nothin’ to it.
Come on baby let’s-a do it!

Hey Mambo, Mambo Italiano!
Hey Mambo, Mambo Italiano!
Go, go, Joe, you mixed up Sigiliano.
It’s-a so delish-a, everybody gonna preshi-ada.
Mambo Italiano!

Do the mambo!

Source: AZ Lyrics.

Read Full Post »

crucifixion

Cinematic re-enactment of the crucifixion of Jesus. (Via churchofjesuschrist.org.)

Crucifixion (fl. -519 to +341) is being put to death by being nailed to a cross. Jesus Christ is the most famous example, but he was merely one of tens of thousands crucified in ancient times. Invented by the Persians, spread by Alexander the Great, and perfected by Rome, it was a common way to deal with slaves, pirates, rebels, traitors, foreigners, Christians, political enemies – anyone uncowed by those in power.

Like lynching, it was an instrument of terror, meant to be painful, protracted and public, to keep slaves and foreigners in line. But to many Roman citizens, who were rarely crucified, it was a form of entertainment, something you might watch after the gladitorial games.

Some notable crucifixions, listed by year:

• -519: Darius I of Persia crucifies 3,000 political enemies in Babylon.
• -88: Alexander Jannaeus, Jewish king, high priest and Saducee, crucifies 800 Pharisees – as the the throats of their wives and children were cut in front of them.
• -71: 6,000 slaves along the Appian Way from Rome to Capua (190 km) in the wake of the slave uprising of Spartacus (he died in battle).
• c. 30: Pontius Pilate crucifies Jesus on Good Friday at Golgotha (aka Calvary) just outside of walls of Jerusalem. Known as the Crucifixion among Christians and Westerners.
• c. 67: St Peter on Vatican Hill in Rome, crucified upside down.
• 303: St Eulalia of Barcelona, 13-year-old girl and Christian martyr.
• 1597: 26 Christians crucified in Japan.

In 341 the practice was outlawed in the Roman Empire by Constantine I, the first Christian emperor.

In the 500s it became a common subject in Christian art to fight against the heresy that Jesus was not fully human, that he did not suffer and die on the cross.

The gospels get the Roman crucifixion more or less right:

• scourged – whipped on the back (sometimes down to the bone);
• made to carry the cross (generally just the cross-beam that went on a post or tree at the crucifixion site outside town – it weighed about 100 pounds or 45 kg);
• a Roman centurion and his soldiers take your clothes, nail you to the cross and then guard it;
• a sign stated your crime;
• death comes in a matter of hours or days (up to nine days!);
• soldiers might speed things along by breaking your legs or driving a spear through your chest.

What is unusual is that Jesus was taken down and buried. In most cases you were left to rot, to be picked apart by dogs and birds.

What Western art gets wrong: Crosses were not all that tall, only about 3 metres (10 feet). You were naked – it was meant to be humiliating. The nails went through your wrists and ankles, not hands and feet. Sometimes soldiers put you in strange poses – for their own amusement and to increase the horror of onlookers (the target audience).

Forms of the cross: some were like the Christian cross, some like a capital letter T, and some a mere post without any cross-beam. Some had a seat or foot rest.

Jews considered those crucified by Rome to be “accursed of God” (Deuteronomy 21:23), which is why St Paul says, “But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock” (1 Corinthians 1:23).

– Abagond, 2022.

See also:

• lynching
• Jesus Christ
  • Good Friday
• Roman Empire
• slaveries compared

521

 

Read Full Post »

Welcome to White History Month 2022

Black History Month was a bust – well, so was all of February for that matter. Let us do better, shall we?

White History Month is April on this blog to match Confederate History Month. It covers mainly the history of Europe and its diaspora, especially in the US. Heritage not hate!

The image at top (and also the masthead image for this month) is from my Map of White People, which some Albanians do not like.

Possible posts:

• Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• War in Ukraine
• Putin
• Jefferson Davis
• Mississippi flag
• George Washington
• Doctrine of Discovery
• 1898 Wilimington Riot
• White Jesus
• White Catholics
• gentrification of Harlem
• Harry J. Anslinger
• voter suppression
• Marie Osmond
• Ariana Grande
• Ulster
• British America
• 2042
• invention of the White race
• Titanic
• Moms for Liberty
• Jane Eyre
• Moby-Dick
• White American racism in the 1800s
• polygenism
• Guide to Slavs
• 1940s House
• Irish Potato Famine
• neo-Victorianism
• dark academia
• Manhattan Institute
• Blumenbach
• Broca
• Proud Boys
• GI Bill
• Homestead Act
• Fordlândia
• White suburbia
• Jewish Americans
• American Canadians
• Immigration Act of 1924
• 1904 St Louis World’s Fair
• National Geographic
• Eleanor Roosevelt
• Jill Biden
• Moorfield Storey
• Michael Schwerner
• swing music
• film noir
• Willis Carrier
• Ku Klux Klan
• neocolonialism
• If Europe was divided and named like Africa
• Nazi
• White feminism
• Second Enlargement of White Ameircans
• The European Expansion

Actual posts:

• (none so far)

– Abagond, 2022.

See also:

• White America: A brief history
• Why there should be a White History Month
  • Famous Whites to learn about for White History Month
  • What I was not taught about American history
  • Vine Deloria, Jr on the whiteness of American history
  • The white racist guide to writing history
  • How to write about White History
• history months past:
  • Black –  2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022
  • White – 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
  • Asian – 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 (a bust) 2021
  • Aboriginal – 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
  • Hispanic – 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
  • Native – 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

566

Read Full Post »

Led Zeppelin: Fool in the Rain

Remarks:

This is my favourite Led Zeppelin song. Unlike most of their songs it has a samba beat, a side effect of Jimmy Page watching the World Cup hosted by Argentina in 1978. In 1980 this song went to #12 in Canada, #21 in the US, their last top-40 hit there. It did not chart outside North America, not even in their native UK.

See also:

• songs: the 1980s
• pre-Zeppelin Zeppelin:
  • Dazed and Confused
  • Lulu: To Sir, With Love
  • I Can’t Quit You Baby

Lyrics:

Oh, baby
Well there’s a light in your eye that keeps shining
Like a star that can’t wait for night
I hate to think I been blinded baby
Why can’t I see you tonight?
And the warmth of your smile starts a burning
And the thrill of your touch give me fright
And I’m shaking so much, really yearning
Why don’t you show up and make it alright, yeah?
It’s alright right

And if you promised you’d love so completely
And you said you would always be true
You swore that you never would leave me baby
Whatever happened to you?
And you thought it was only in movies
As you wish all your dreams would come true, hey
It ain’t the first time believe me baby
I’m standing here feeling blue, blue ha!
Yes I’m blue
Oh, babe

Now I will stand in the rain on the corner
I watch the people go shuffling downtown
Another ten minutes no longer
And then I’m turning around, ’round
And the clock on the wall’s moving slower
Oh, my heart it sinks to the ground
And the storm that I thought would blow over
Clouds the light of the love that I found, found

Light of the love that I found
Light of the love that I found
Oh, that I found

Hey, babe, ooh

Hand that ticks on the clock
Just don’t seem to stop
When I’m thinking it over
Oh, tired of the light
I just don’t seem to find
Have you wait, yeah played
Whoa, I see it in my dreams
But I just don’t seem to be with you, you
I gotta get it all, gotta get it all, gotta get it all
I’ve got to get all

Ooh now my body is starting to quiver
And the palms of my hands getting wet, oh
I got no reason to doubt you baby
It’s all a terrible mess
And I’ll run in the rain till I’m breathless
When I’m breathless I’ll run ’til I drop, hey!
And the thoughts of a fool’s kind of careless
I’m just a fool waiting on the wrong block, oh yeah

Hey, now, oh, oh, oh
Light of the love that I found
Light of the love that I found
Light of the love that I
Light of the love that I found
Light of the hey, now light of the hey, now
Light of the love that I found
Light of the love that I found

Source: Songfacts.

Read Full Post »

Doja Cat: Woman

Remarks:

This song has been ringing in my head of late. It reached #11 worldwide in October 2021, #2 (so far) on the US R&B chart as of March 2022. The video was partly inspired by Michael Jackson’s “Remember the Time” (1992). The queen is played by Teyana Taylor, who has appeared in this space before.

See also:

• songs: the 2020s 
• Michael Jackson: Remember the Time
• Teyana Taylor: Gonna Love Me
• Major Lazer ft Vybz Kartel: Pon de Floor
• Fela Kuti: Zombie
• Kendrick Lamar ft Zacari: LOVE.

Lyrics:

Hey, woman
Hey, woman

Woman
Let me be your woman
Woman, woman, woman (Ayy)
I can be your woman
Woman, woman, woman (Ayy)
Let me be your woman
Woman, woman, woman (Ayy)
I can be your woman
Woman, woman, woman (Ayy)

What you need?
She give tenfold, come here, papa, plant your seed
She can grow it from her womb, a family
Provide lovin’ overlooked and unappreciated, you see (Yeah)
You can reciprocate
I got delicious taste, you need a woman’s touch in your place
Just protect her and keep her safe
Baby, worship my hips and waist
So feminine with grace
I touch your soul when you hear me say, “Boy”
Let me be your woman

Woman
Let me be your woman
Woman, woman, woman
I can be your woman
Woman, woman, woman
Let me be your woman
Woman, woman, woman (Ayy)
I can be your woman
Woman, woman, woman

I can be your lady, I’m a woman
I’m a motherfucker, but they got a problem
Put some babies in your life and take away the drama
Put that paper in the picture like a diorama
Gotta face a lot of people of the opposite
‘Cause the world told me, “We ain’t got the common sense”
Gotta prove it to myself that I’m on top of shit
And you will never know a god without the goddesses
Honest, it’s fuckin’ honest, get
And I could be on everything
I mean I could be the leader, head of all the states
I could smile and jiggle it ’til his pockets empty
I could be the CEO, just look at Robyn Fenty
And I’ma be there for you ’cause you on my team, girl
Don’t ever think you ain’t hella these niggas dream girl
They wanna pit us against each other
When we succeedin’ for no reasons
They wanna see us end up like we Regina on Mean Girls
Princess or queen, tomboy or king (Yeah)
You’ve heard a lot, you’ve never seen (Nah)
Mother Earth, Mother Mary rise to the top
Divine feminine, I’m feminine (Why?)

Woman (Daddy)
Let me be your woman (Let me be your—)
Woman, woman, woman (Let me be your—)
I can be your woman
Woman, woman, woman (Daddy)
Let me be your woman (I know)
Woman, woman, woman (Daddy)
I can be your woman (I know)
Woman, woman, woman

Eee, eee, eee (Hey, woman)
(Woman)
Eee, eee, eee (Hey, woman)
Hey (Hey woman)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm (Woman)
(Hey, woman)
(Hey, woman)

Source: AZ Lyrics.

Read Full Post »

cetology in Moby-Dick

Chapter 32 of “Moby-Dick” (1851) is called “Cetology”. It is where Herman Melville lays out his classification of whales. It has two drawbacks:

1. No pictures.
2. Out-of-date names.

This post provides a cheat sheet. His classification is in bold, the quoted text is his. The rest was added by me based on the Wikipedia of 2022 and a picture (the next one) from WIRED.

Definition:

• “a whale is a spouting fish with a horizontal tail.”

Melville divides his whales by size into Folio whales (huge), Octavo whales (large) and Duodecimo whales (small) – naming them after book sizes! Scientists divide cetaceans by anatomy, not size.

1. Folio whales (huge whales):

Sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus), pictured above and at top, is what most people this side of 1851 think of when they think of a whale, thanks in part to Melville. Moby-Dick was a sperm whale. So was Monstro in Disney’s “Pinocchio” (1940). And the whale in VeggieTale’s “Jonah” (2002) and the one on Twitter. They were the largest known whales in Melville’s time, the most dangerous but also the most sought after by whalers because of their huge quantities of high-quality oil. The oil, thought to be sperm, was mainly used in lamps and made into candles.

Right whale (genus Eubalaena) – what the Greeks and Romans knew as a whale and probably what is meant by “whale” in the King James Bible (and thus is the whale of Jonah). Sperm whales were rare in the Mediterranean. “Right” means it is a whale in the right or true sense. It is what the Basques hunted. It is where whale bone (aka baleen) and “whale oil” originally came from. In Melville’s time, the British and Dutch mainly hunted right whales in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans while US Americans mainly hunted sperm whales in the South Seas (South Pacific).

Fin-back whale (Balaenoptera physalus) – now known as a fin whale. Melville says it “is commonly the whale whose distant jet is so often descried by passengers crossing the Atlantic, in the New York packet-tracks.” – the sort of whale New Yorkers would be familiar with.

Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae)

Razor-back whale – “eludes both hunters and philosophers”. Probably a fin-back whale. See above.

Suphur-bottom whale (Balaenoptera musculus) – now known as the blue whale. The largest whale, but they were so little known in Melville’s day that people thought sperm whales were larger.

2. Octavo whales (small whales):

Grampus (Orcinus orca) – now known as an orca or a killer whale.

Black Fish (genus Globicephala) – now known as a pilot whale.

Narwhal (Monodon monoceros) – a unicorn whale!

Killer – probably the orca. See above.

Thrasher – probably also the orca. See above.

3. Duodecimo whales (dolphins):

Huzza porpoise (genus Tursiops) – now known as the bottlenose dolphin. What most people think of when they think of a dolphin because they are the most common worldwide. Despite their small size, their body is designed like a whale.

Algerine porpoise – unclear what Melville had in mind. Maybe a pygmy killer whale (Feresa attenuata) or (pictured above) a false killer whale (Pseudorca crassidens).

Mealy-mouthed porpoise (Lissodelphis peronii) – now known as a southern right whale dolphin.

– Abagond, 2022.

See also:

• B-52’s: Rock Lobster – also mentions narwhals
• Basque whalers
• Linnaeus

512

Read Full Post »

The Original Caste: One Tin Soldier

Remarks:

Over 50 years old but not out-of-date. So so so sad. The song is from 1969, the video from “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour” in 1971.

This song has been covered many times, but this is the original by the Original Caste in 1969. It went to #6 in their native Canada, #34 in the US. It never charted outside North America. Part of the song comes from Pachelbel: Canon in D, which appeared in this space just last month.

See also:

• songs: the 1960s
• Pachelbel: Canon in D
• Vietnam War
  • Martin Luther King, Jr’s Riverside speech against the Vietnam War
  • Niger ’66 – A Peace Corps Diary
• Ukraine (Україна)
• somehow related songs:
  • Dion: Abraham, Martin and John
  • Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
  • Edwin Hawkins Singers: Oh Happy Day
• Us and Them

Lyrics:

One tin soldier
Listen people to a story
That was written long ago,
’bout a kingdom on a mountain
And the valley folks below.
On the mountain was a treasure
Hidden deep beneath a stone,
And the valley people swore
They’d have it for their very own.

Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won’t be any trumpets blowing,
Come the judgment day,
On the bloody morning after
One tin soldier rides away.

So the people of the valley
Sent a message up the hill,
Asking for the buried treasure
Tons of gold for which they’d kill.
Came the answer from the kingdom,
With our brothers we will share,
All the riches of the mountain,
All the treasure buried there.

Now the valley cried with anger,
Mount your horses, draw your swords
And they killed the mountain people,
So they won their just rewards
Now they stood before the treasure
On the mountain dark and red
Turned the stone and looked beneath it
Peace on earth, was all it said.

Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat and friend,
Do it in the name of heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won’t be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgment day,
On the bloody morning after
One tin soldier rides away.

Source: Lyrics.com.

Read Full Post »

Ketanji Brown Jackson

Ketanji Brown Jackson (1970- ) is the first Black woman ever named to the US Supreme Court. If confirmed by the Senate (hearings are now ongoing), she would become the 1st Black woman, Floridian and former public defence lawyer on the Court, the 3rd Black person, and the 6th woman. Of the 115 people who have been on the Court in the past 232 years, 108 or 94% have been White men.

She replaces Justice Stephen Breyer, a fellow Democrat chosen by President Clinton in 1994, so she will not change the 6-to-3 conservative majority. If confirmed she would start on October 3rd 2022, making the liberal minority all-female.

Child porn: You know she is a solid pick because the main thing Republicans have against her is the invented issue that she is soft on child porn. The laws on child porn need to be updated for the Internet age – the fault of Congress – but on sentencing she is no worse than judges the Senate has confirmed before, including herself! She has been confirmed by the Senate three times before, the last time in June 2021.

LSAT scores: Tucker Carlson wants to know what she got on the LSAT, the entrance exam for law school. He apparently thinks she has coasted by on affirmative action (racial quotas) – even though she graduated from Harvard magna cum laude! She was one of the top students at one of the top universities in the nation – unlike Carlson, who has arguably coasted by on his family’s wealth (the Swanson frozen food fortune).

Relative of Paul Ryan: In 2012 Republican Paul Ryan (who married into the Papermate pen fortune) said, “Our politics may differ, but my praise for Ketanji’s intellect, for her character, for her integrity, it is unequivocal.” She is related to him by marriage.

Police approved: she was immediately endorsed by the national Fraternal Order of Police, the labour union for police officers. Her brother and two of her uncles have been police officers. Her brother is a Baltimore police detective.

Unwoke: Despite her more than 500 written decisions, Republicans have been unable to uncover any direct proof that she is “woke” (now a Republican slur for anti-racists) or has been informed by critical race theory. During the Senate hearings she has been talking about the US as if she believes in Apple Pie America, not unlike Obama when he ran for president in 2008. It is hard to believe a grown Black person can be that unworldly. Maybe she is playing to her largely Sheltered White Male audience (senators). Or maybe she has lived a charmed life. Or is just a sell-out.

Originalist: She refuses to speak on her judicial philosophy, but her way of making court decisions is originalism in all but name. She looks at the original meaning of laws, she does not see the constitution as “a living document” to be reinterpreted to change with the times. Originalism comes from slave times, used to preserve slavery, and has been championed by the Federalist Society since the 1980s to overturn abortion laws and preserve plutocracy. She is more of an originalist than even Amy Coney Barrett.

– Abagond, 2022.

See also:

• originalism / Federalist Society
  • Antonin Scalia
  • Amy Coney Barrett
    • The Amy Coney Barrett hearings
  • Neil Gorsuch
  • Brett Kavanaugh
• Tucker Carlson
• Paul Ryan
• Baltimore
  • The DOJ report on the Baltimore police
  • The Baltimore power structure
  • police brutality in Baltimore
  • Michael Wood
  • #CVSmatters
• Apple-pie America
• Sheltered White Men
• Is Obama a Rented Negro?
• Obama retrospective
• wokery
  • critical race theory
  • John McWhorter: Woke Racism
• Black Liberals

565

Read Full Post »