A scary thought

I’m loath to bring this up, but others have done so before: should he win the election, I’m very worried about an assassination attempt on Barack Obama.

What prompted, or more correctly, re-prompted this thinking, was a piece Evanier linked to by “Frank Schaeffer, a longtime supporter of John McCain and vice-versa, [who] thinks McCain-Palin rallies are starting to resemble lynch mobs.” Schaeffer writes:
John McCain: If your campaign does not stop equating Sen. Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying Mr. Obama as “not one of us,” I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence.

At a Sarah Palin rally, someone called out, “Kill him!” At one of your rallies, someone called out, “Terrorist!” Neither was answered or denounced by you or your running mate, as the crowd laughed and cheered….

John McCain, you are no fool, and you understand the depths of hatred that surround the issue of race in this country. You also know that, post-9/11, to call someone a friend of a terrorist is a very serious matter…

John McCain and Sarah Palin, you are playing with fire, and you know it. You are unleashing the monster of American hatred and prejudice, to the peril of all of us…

…stop stirring up the lunatic fringe of haters, or risk suffering the judgment of history and the loathing of the American people – forever.

We will hold you responsible.

I’m going to assume the fact that Rensselaer County, NY printed 300 of its 4000 absentee ballots with the name of the Democrat listed as ‘Barack Osama’ as a mistake, rather than deliberate sabotage, but I’m guessing that the constant barrage of smears may have an subconscious effect on whoever made the error.

Add to this, Sarah Palin’s relationship to the Alaskan Independence Party , a group with a distinct neo-Confederacy stance. As former AIP head Mark Chryson put it, “Yes. The War of Northern Aggression, or the Civil War, or the War Between the States — however you want to refer to it — was not about slavery, it was about states’ rights.” He added that the South should have been able to secede.

Now to be fair, I also worried about Ted Kennedy in 1980, but that was based more on actuarial tables (all three of his brothers dying violent deaths – Joe in WWII; the 20-year Presidential curse that ran from 1840 to 1960) than any perceived threat.

I don’t think we live in a post-racial America yet – whatever that means – and Obama’s recent rise in the polls makes me both hopeful and fearful.

ROG

ROG

Follow the lead QUESTIONS

One of the things I learned as a librarian and as a citizen is that, much as it pains me, I can’t know everything. So it’s good to know people who you know and trust to vet things for you.

For instance, if I were suddenly to develop an interest in Doctor Who and wanted to know what book to read first, I wouldn’t bother researching it,; I’d just ask Gordon.

So it is with local politics. There’s coterie of people whose opinion I trust who I can usually count on for selecting candidates to support. In the last Democratic primary, most of them were supporting one particular candidate. But then another person, who is also a guidepost, not only backed another candidate, but noted some rather uncomplimentary things about the candidate my other friends backed.

Well, I’ve come to the same conundrum regarding some federal legislation concerning the copyright of “orphan works”. On one side of the issue is Paul Rapp, an intellectual property lawyer around here, who supports the idea of the bill. In fact, I wrote about it, and Paul, a/k/a F. Lee Harvey Blotto, drummer of the legendary band Blotto, here. I’ve known Paul since the early 1980s and trust his judgment. Also on this side is the Special Libraries association, of which I am a member, which supported these modifications to the original legislation.

But on the other side is Steve Bissette, artist extraordinaire, who has a much more negative view, to say the least, as noted here and here. I knew Steve from the mid-1980s, when he produced work that was published by my publisher, FantaCo. We have re-bonded recently in our attempt to get the FantaCo Wikipedia spost corrected. He fears the artists being ripped off.

The topic came up at work when one client of the SBDC had a piece of artwork produced by a street artist and wanted to use the art as part of a logo for her new store. Whole the art belonged to the entrepreneur, the image was copyrighted by the creator. But who is he? Where is he? Is he still alive? Based on precedent established in the library community, our librarian recommended that the business make a “good faith effort” to find the copyright holder, through paid ads in the newspaper and art newsweekly in the city where the artist had been working, describing in detail the situation.

I looked at the material Steve provided, and while I understand that the creative community fears that the legislation will create a license to steal and that people will just pretend to look for an owner before using the image, it seems to me is that this is how it’s currently working without legislation.

The bill appears to be dead this year – apparently some economic bailout seems to have been more important – but the issue will come up again.

So, my questions:

1. What topics, if any, do you tend to look to others to help inform you? Who are these information leaders?

2. What is your understanding of orphan works copyright legislation?

I’m so confused…

ROG

ROG

Of Condoms and Cough Drops

There’s a CVS drugstore just three blocks from our house, where we do much of our non-food shopping, such as for detergent, greeting cards and of course, drugs. By “drugs”, I mean that in the pharmaceutical way. You can get one of those little plastic cards that will mean savings coupons are generated at the register when you hit certain thresholds on certain products.

Yhen recently, we got in the mail another CVS card, this one co-branded by our health insurance company. The thing is that one can’t use the coupons generated by the old card for purchases made using the new card. But one does get a discount on items eligible for flex spending on the new card. So at least on one occasion, I had to split the purchase, buying some items using a coupon with the old card and others with the new card.

So what IS eligible for flex spending, besides medical payments? Obviously, over the counter medicines. Also my wife’s contact lens solution. Among other things, I discovered that condoms and cough drops are also included. Here’s the complete list.
***
The English Will Purge Their Language unless… well, read the piece. the words are:
Abstergent: Cleansing
Agrestic: Rural
Apodeictic: Unquestionably true by virtue of demonstration
Caducity: Perishableness
Caliginosity: Dimness
Compossible: Possible in coexistence with something else
Embrangle: To confuse
Exuviate: To shed
Fatidical: Prophetic
Fubsy: Squat
Griseous: Somewhat grey
Malison: A curse
Mansuetude: Gentleness
Muliebrity: The condition of being a woman
Niddering: Cowardly
Nitid: Bright
Olid: Foul-smelling
Oppugnant: Combative
Periapt: An amulet
Recrement: Refuse
Roborant: Tending to fortify
Skirr: A whirring sound, as of the wings of birds in flight
Vaticinate: Prophesy
Vilipend: To treat with contempt

Lessee, I vilpend the niddering, olid and oppugnant malison to exuviate the CED.

ROG

ROG

Oscar-Worthy Movies I’ve Seen: 1939


Finally to 1939. THE first great year in cinema, it is widely agreed.
Picture:
“GONE WITH THE WIND”, “Dark Victory”, “Goodbye, Mr. Chips”, “Love Affair”, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”, “Ninotchka”, “Of Mice and Men”, “Stagecoach”, “The Wizard of Oz”, “Wuthering Heights”
At least three different times I said, “I really MUST watch “Gone with the Wind”, the first time when it was on broadcast TV and was in the top dozen shows ever broadcast on prime time TV. But I got bored the then, and have yet to sit through the whole thing. (Yet I found the Carol Burnett parody inspiring.) It was the longest feature film released up to that point, and I’m not holding my breath to see if I’ll finally carve out nearly four hours to watch it, even though it won 8 awards out of 13 nominations, including Best Screenplay, Best Color Cinematography, Best Interior Decoration, and Best Film Editing, plus two special citations.
I definitely saw Mr. Smith, Stagecoach. I probably saw Mr. Chips, Of Mice and Men and Wuthering Heights. I almost certainly did not see Dark Victory, Love Affair (though I did see the remake, An Affair to Remember) or Ninotchka.
Then there’s The Wizard of Oz. When I was growing up in the 1960s, I watched it every year. I must have seen it seven or eight times on our BLACK AND WHITE TV. Scariest part? The damn trees. THEN we got a color TV for Christmas 1969 or 1970, and when I saw it again, it was like seeing it for the first time! What a treat! And I finally got the “horse of as different color” joke; in b&w, the horse is just different shades of gray. It got six nominations but only two wins – Best Song (Over the Rainbow – almost cut from the film!) and Best Original Score (including my favorite, music for Miss Gulch on her bicycle, which, as a bicyclist I’ve been tortured with. None of the actors got a standard Oscar, though Judy Garland received a special juvenile Oscar.
Actor:
ROBERT DONAT in “Goodbye, Mr. Chips”, Clark Gable in “Gone With The Wind”, Laurence Olivier in “Wuthering Heights”, Mickey Rooney in “Babes in Arms”, James Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”
A category where GWTW did NOT win. Donat probably won as much for earlier roles, such as in Hitchcock’s 39 Steps, as for this one. I don’t recall seeing Babes in Arms.
Actress:
VIVIEN LEIGH in “Gone With The Wind”, Bette Davis in “Dark Victory”, Irene Dunne in “Love Affair”, Greta Garbo in “Ninotchka”, Greer Garson in “Goodbye, Mr. Chips”
For the first time, both lead acting awards went to British performers.
Supporting Actor:
THOMAS MITCHELL in “Stagecoach”, Brian Aherne in “Juarez”, Harry Carey in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”, Brian Donlevy in “Beau Geste”, Claude Rains in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”
Mitchell’s sole Oscar came in a year he also played Scarlett O’Hara’s father Gerald in Gone With The Wind, a grounded flyer Kid Dabb in Howard Hawks’ Only Angels Have Wings and newspaperman Diz Moore in Mr. Smith, among other roles.
Supporting Actress:
HATTIE MCDANIEL in “Gone With The Wind”, Olivia de Havilland in “Gone With The Wind”, Geraldine Fitzgerald in “Wuthering Heights”, Edna May Oliver in “Drums Along the Mohawk”, Maria Ouspenskaya in “Love Affair”
I suppose I should see the first African-American performer to be nominated and win. Shouldn’t I?
Director:
VICTOR FLEMING for “Gone With The Wind”, Frank Capra for “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”, John Ford for “Stagecoach”, Sam Wood for “Goodbye, Mr. Chips”, William Wyler for “Wuthering Heights”
A change Academy rules meant that directors could be nominated for only one film in a single year. Fleming also directed The Wizard of Oz, thus solidifying his already huge chances.

That year, the first Oscar for Visual Effects was given, not to Gone With the Wind and its burning of Atlanta sequence, or to the Wizard of Oz with the cyclone sequence or the flying monkeys, but to something called The Rains Came, which I’d never heard of. Disney won eighth consecutive Short Subject: Cartoon Oscar for The Ugly Duckling

Other 1939 films
The Hunchback of Notre Dame – believe I saw years ago
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex – no
Golden Boy – no
Intermezzo: A Love Story – no
Young Mr. Lincoln – yes
Midnight – no
Only Angels Have Wings – no
Destry Rides Again – don’t think so
The Women (being remade in 2008) – no
The Hound of the Baskervilles – I might have
Gunga Din – almost certainly I did

ROG

ROG

ABC Wednesday: L is for Little Roger and the Goosebumps & Led Zeppelin


As is my wont, I was listening to the Coverville podcast a couple weeks ago. Brian Ibbott decided to play several covers of Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven, some straightforward, some silly. I was disappointed, though, that he didn’t play my favorite cover by Little Roger and the Goosebumps, Stairway to Gilligan’s Island. As it turns out, Brian had played it on this April 2007 episode.

I discovered that the song, recorded in March 1978, and released it as a single in May 1978, inspired Led Zeppelin’s lawyers to threaten to sue for copyright infringement and demanded that remaining copies of the recording be destroyed. This is highly ironic, given the fact that Stairway seems to be heavily copped from the 1968 song Taurus by the group Spirit, the first song on that recent Coverville episode, a snippet of which can also be found here. In fact, this website addresses many of Led Zeppelin’s “influences”.

At least I own a collector’s item.

HERE.
***
October 9 birthdays in the category: Lennon, Sean, who I saw perform last year, and his late father John, who is represeented here:
or here.

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ROG

ROG
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