Fillyjonk Archives - Page 3 of 5 - Ramblin' with Roger

In the deluded mindset of Trumpworld’s denizens, wearing a mask is: a) a sign of weakness, and b) a sign of, somehow, being a woman—which is itself seen, by them, as equivalent to weakness.

He Confides His Feelings About ‘A Female President’

Columbia University study shows that over 130,000 COVID-19 deaths could have been avoided with a more robust pandemic response

Got the Best COVID Treatment. For the Rest of Us He Wants “Herd Immunity.”

He’s their monster. But suddenly Senate Republicans have never heard of him

A Radical Proposal for Dealing with His Supporters After Biden Wins

The Administration’s Racial Bias — As a Black veteran, I can’t remain silent

The NYT’s shocking report on family separation

British Writer Pens The Best Description Of Trump I’ve Read

MUSIC

Eddie Van Halen, Hall of Famer Who Revolutionized the Guitar, Dead at 65

Coverville: 1329: The Eddie Van Halen Tribute and 1330: John Lennon Cover Story V

Live From SpragueLand Episode 11: Peter Sprague Plays The Beatles

Rhythm’s In the Melody – Soulsha

i carry your heart by Eric Whitacre.

Pop Psalms: Once in a Lifetime – Talking Heads

Italian folksong The Carnival of Venice, played by Wynton Marsalis and the Eastman Wind Ensemble

Sounds from St. Olaf – Episode 2: Cubano Be, Cubano Bop Jazz at St. Olaf

My Old Flame – Spike Jones, with Paul Frees imitating Peter Lorre

Tom Lehrer is officially releasing the lyrics to many of his songs into the public domain.

Sean Ono Lennon talks with Elton John, Julian Lennon, and Paul McCarney about John Lennon. Part 1 and Part 2

January rambling: surreal logic

conductor and pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy

4 Ways to Detect Media Bias and Step Out of the Partisan Bubble.

Virtually All Major US Drinking Water Sources Likely Contaminated With PFAS.

Can Bankers Become Allies Against Climate Change?

The forgotten assassination of MLK’s mother Alberta King in 1974.

How do you keep that Christmas Eve feeling?

The Day That Changed Everything. The subhead: “They lost the biggest N.J. high school football game ever played.”

How to treat tennis elbow.

Komodo dragon destroyed BBC camera by trying to have sex with it.

The Critical Importance of Church Choirs.

Can’t find a marriage record? Try looking for a “Gretna Green” marriage location.

Jack Burns, R.I.P.

Every guest star on the TV series Cannon, starring William Conrad. CBS, 1971 to 1976, 122 episodes.

Inequality

World’s 2,153 billionaires hold more wealth than poorest 4.6 billion combined.

Rising inequality affecting 70% of the world.

Americans’ Drinking, Drug Use, Despair Wiping Out Life Expectancy Gains.

Structural Racism in Medicine Worsens the Health of Black Women and Infants.

Healthcare Algorithms Are Biased, and the Results Can Be Deadly.

IRS grabs the money.

The Liberation of Auschwitz: January 27, 1945.

Recommended reading: Joe Kubert’s Yossel.

Work

Illegal Interview Questions You Thought Were Harmless.

Were Your Rights Violated at the Workplace?

FTC Received Nearly 1.7 Million Fraud Reports, and FTC Lawsuits Returned $232 Million to Consumers in 2019.

Astrogate.

Language… has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone.
– Paul Tillich

Books, language, and librarians

Proposed Book Banning Bill in Missouri Could Imprison Librarians.

How One Librarian Tried to Squash Goodnight Moon.

Writing a book series.

You can write “embedded” but you can’t write “imbedded.”

English Needs a Word for the Relationship Between Your Parents and Your In-Laws.

The 5th Annual Tucker Awards for Excellence in Swearing.

IMPOTUS

Expansive Executive Privilege Claims Pose Serious Constitutional Crisis.

The Imperial Presidency Is Alive and Well.

He Boasts Of Obstruction At Davos Press Conference.

Doral Resort Spikes Its Room Rates Ahead Of His RNC Visit.

The Surreal Logic of the China Trade Deal.

“Reckless” Decision to Loosen Firearm Exports Regulations.

The Cost of an Incoherent Foreign Policy.

His Supporters And The Denial Of Reality.

Ten Principles that Unify Democrats (and most of the country).

Now I Know

This Is The Poem That Never Ends. It Just Goes On And On, My Friends. and The Town With No Name and What To Do When Iguanas Fall From the Sky and How a Rock Band Helped Runaway Kids Find Their Way Home and It’s Art Because Someone Says It Is and Why Do Bakers Have Bigger Dozens? and Behold the Power of Dried Plums.

MUSIC

That Don – Randy Rainbow.

On the retirement of conductor and pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy: conducting Debussy’s La Mer; playing Rach and Bach and more.

Coverville 1293: The Neil Peart Tribute and Rush Cover Story III.

The Golden Spinning Wheel by Antonin Dvorak.

Tall Skinny Papa– Annie & The Hedonists [Caffè Lena Late Night Sessions]

All About Falling In Love – MonaLisa Twins

Fiddler on the Roof: Dear, Sweet Sewing Machine – Motel (Adam Kantor) and Tzeitel (Alexandra Silber) and Tradition – Tevye is Anthony Warlow, production done in Australia.

How Long Has This Been Going On – Audrey Hepburn, from Funny Face.

The Inner Light – The Beatles.

The true dwelling of the holy

something in the here and now

true identity of the holy This being Advent, that period roughly between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I’m thinking a lot of theology. As it turns out, fillyjonk wrote about what I have experienced and what I believe.

“The ‘true dwelling of the holy’ – I was thinking today of how there seem to be competing ideas in Christianity that I’ve seen; where some groups within it are bent on withdrawing from the ‘”world’ as much as possible, and, I guess, waiting on either the Second Coming* or the Afterlife, because that’s the Kingdom of Heaven, and then things will be right.

“And others – and this is more traditionally the congregations I’ve been a part of – have tried to do what they can to bring a little bit of the Kingdom of Heaven here and now. And I admit, with all the loss in my life lately, and some sad old doubts reawakening….well, if maybe the here and now is all we have, shouldn’t we strive to make it as good for everyone around us, and ourselves as well? All we know we have is this day, and so it probably behooves us to be both happy and kind in it.”

The Dustbury connection

I should note that fillyjonk lost her father this year. She was a friend and follower of the late blogger Dustbury. In fact, I became aware of her blog from him.

“(*At one point in my childhood, we briefly attended a church where a lot of the members were really hot on the “End Times” ideas, where the faithful would be raptured and the rest of us would be left to wait out the horrible things that were to come… I admit as an anxious child, that thing scared me a lot – what if I was one of the people who realized one day ‘Hey where is this person? And that person?’ and then realized with dawning horror that they had been raptured away and I hadn’t been ‘good enough.'”

I had received that Rapture message, which ultimately drove me AWAY from the church, ironically.

“And based on my Bible reading as an adult, that doesn’t seem a terribly Biblical thing, or at least, it’s a stretch of stuff John of Patmos wrote, but….I remember being uncomfortable with it as a child. And I would so much rather be the person working in a food bank or welcoming a newcomer or doing something in the here and now to try to make someone’s life here and now better, and not to build up Good Place points for myself so much as….well, because I would like other people to do the same for me.)”

That Matthew 25 message of feeding the hungry, et al., is what helped draw me back to the church. That is, for me, the “true dwelling of the holy.”

Dec. rambling: Lean on Me

I Love Trash

UN: Climate Change Will Create “New Great Divergence” Between Rich and Poor.

Were Other Human Species the First Victims of the Sixth Mass Extinction?

three years running Suicides and overdoses among factors fueling drop in U.S. life expectancy.

The Illusions Underlying our Foreign Policy Discussions.

ALEC Is an Incubator for Efforts to Protect White Supremacy.

“Calvin and the Colonel” – a kids’ cartoon with a shady past.

James Ussher, polyglot, prolific scholar, a man of the church and the man responsible for what we know today as ‘creationism’.

How gender-neutral pronouns can change a culture.

When America Starts to Feel a Little More Soviet.

Articles of Impeachment: Broad or Narrow? – they went narrow.

What Does Trump’s Inner Party Believe?

Letter to the editor: Pattern of misbehavior – Roger Green, Scottsbluff, NE.

Plan to Strip Food Aid From 750,000 Low-Income People by 2020.

He wanted to ban feeding homeless people. Now he’s about to lead a federal homeless agency.

Even if a Democrat wins in 2020, the next president isn’t likely to resurrect a Pax Americana.

The US-Mexico-Canada Trade Deal Is Not as Good as Nafta.

Devin Nunes may regret SLAPPing his critics.

Vicki Van Meter is the youngest female pilot to have made a transatlantic flight when she was aged twelve.

Gender-neutral pronouns can nudge people to see the world a little differently.

Rejection: A Wilderness Guide for Writers, Part 25.

Memories of a map.

How Costco gained a cult following — by breaking every rule of retail.

The Easiest Way to Bike Up a Hill and The One Thing You Can’t Take Home from The Price is Right and The State of Indiana versus Robin Hood and There’s Snow Better Way to Measure and Picasso with the Sharp Elbows and The Federal Bacon Law That Protects Truth in Advertising and The Best Way to Have Your House Cleaned Out By an Intruder.

Obits

Caroll Spinney, Big Bird Muppeteer for Nearly 50 Years, Dies at 85. Check out the 2014 documentary I Am Big Bird.

René Auberjonois, ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Benson’ Actor, Dies at 79. He was also in Boston Legal and a tons of other roles.

D.C. Fontana wrote many great stories and not all of them were for Star Trek, “which is the impression you’ll probably get from some of the obits.”

Ron Leibman, Tony Winner for ‘Angels,’ Is Dead at 82. His IMDB page.

Pete Frates, A Driving Force Behind The Viral Ice Bucket Challenge, Dies At 34.

Wrecked locomotive discovered after 106 years under Lake Superior.

Former chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker, who was 92 when he died in New York City blasted ‘nihilistic’ Trumpism in final testament.

Daily syndication of Unshelved is available for free to any noncommercial web site.

MUSIC

I Love Trash – Oscar the Grouch.

ABC-DEF-GHI Song – Big Bird.

Going Home, per Dvorak – BYU choir.

Othello Overture – Dvorak.

Coverville 1287: The 15th Annual Beatles Thanksgiving Cover Story and 1288: The 40th Anniversary Tribute to Pink Floyd’s The Wall.

Baby’s in Black – MonaLisa Twins.

21st Century Schizoid Man [Radio Edit] – King Crimson at 1:55.

Lean on Me – Bill Withers.

Why you should learn about the Teskey Brothers.

These men just released their first music album — at age 102 and 88.

Advent / Christmas music 2019

I LOVE Thurl’s voice

OK, NOW I’m getting into the Advent season. Music is the linchpin for almost everything. Jaquandor has his Daily Dose of Christmas. Someone else posted The Top 100 Christmas Songs, some of which may be replicated below. I’m OK with that.

Since I finally saw Hamilton this year, I should post Hamildolph!, which is really good at what it does.

I believe these are new tunes:
Snow Falls Softly At Night -MonaLisa Twins
Merry Xmas Everybody – Robbie Williams, featuring Jamie Cullum

The Usual Suspects

Most of these I’ve posted in some prior year.

Getting Ready for Christmas Day – Paul Simon. Interesting that the sermon sampled was delivered in 1941, the same year Paul was born.

2000 Miles – Pretenders

White Christmas – the Drifters. One of my favorite bits of animation, ever.

Jingle Bells – The Fab 4. NOT the Beatles.

Linus And Lucy– Vince Guaraldi Trio. I read a bio about Vince some years back

Christmas All Over Again – Tom Petty. I still miss Petty.

What Christmas Means To Me – Stevie Wonder

The Bells of Christmas – Julie Andrews. There are at least three different versions of this on those old Firestone tire LPs my parents used to buy. One has an unnecessary one-minute instrumental in the middle, and the other has too cheery background singers. This is the best one.

The Coventry Carol – Alison Moyet. From that first A Very Special Christmas album in 1987.
Gabriel’s Message – Sting. Ditto. I had a girlfriend who HATED Sting’s voice.

The Christmas Song – Nat King Cole. My late mom LOVED Nat Cole.
Mary’s Boy Child – Harry Belafonte. My late father incorporated elements of Belafonte in his folk-singing career.
–
Every valley– Handel’s Messiah, A Soulful Celebration

Santa’s Too Fat For the Hula Hoop – The Pixies Featuring Thurl Ravenscroft. I LOVE Thurl’s voice.

I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas. A truly terrible song. Not as bad as Dominic the Donkey, but still.

More holiday stuff

The 60 Best Christmas Movies To Watch This Holiday Season

The Book of Dreams (Extended Version) – Argos Christmas advert 2019

Movie’s E.T. And Elliott Reunite 40 Years Later In A Commercial Sequel. I feel I should hate this, yet I don’t

fillyjonk’s tree

Mary and Joseph’s Battle Against the State