From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Wednesday Vonnegut Blogging
Kurt Vonnegut died ten years ago this week at 84. A good time to remind ourselves why he was…well…Kurt Vonnegut:
“Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.”
“Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?”
"There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia."
I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”
“Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.”
“It’s perfectly ordinary to be a socialist. It’s perfectly normal to be in favor of fire departments.”
"I've been smoking Pall Mall unfiltered cigarettes since I was 12 or 14. So I'm going to sue the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company, who manufactured them. And do you know why? Because I'm 83 years old. The lying bastards! On the package Brown & Williamson promised to kill me."
“Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don't you wish you could have something named after you?”
“Let us devote to unselfishness the frenzy we once gave gold and underpants.”
“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.”
And apparently foreseeing the rise of the Jared & Ivanka co-presidency:
"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."
PolitiFact rates this claim: TRUE. So it goes.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, April 12, 2017
Note: Hellooooo!!! Well, chemo session #1 is almost in the rear-view mirror. Later this morning I'll get unhooked from this portable two-pound "Mini Me" pump that's kept the pharma juice (with extra pulp!) flowing for the last 46 hours and be given the green light to skip freely among the daffodils. (Disclaimer: plastic daffodils, since the real ones won’t be up for another month, and probably more like trudging since our energy level has been downgraded from "Red Bull" to "Rex Tillerson.") C&J intends to post tomorrow and Friday, but the only way we could possibly post today is if we pushed ourselves beyond all reasonable boundaries of human endurance and dug deep into our soul to will a column onto this site, pixel by pixel, using only our toes and a toothpick. Personally, I wouldn’t bet on it. ---Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the special election in Georgia'a 6th District: 6
Days 'til the Tax March in D.C. and cities across the country: 3
Minimum value loss in United Airlines stock after yesterday's close two days after the Dr. David Dao incident: $1 billion
Amount that the Kentucky Coal Museum will save when it adds solar panels to its roof: $8,000-$10,000
Rounds of golf that Trump and Obama had played by this point in their presidencies: 16 / 0
Percent of the beer industry's retail value last year that was accounted for by small and independent craft brewers, according to the Brewers Association: 21.9%
Amount by which the two sides of the St. Louis Gateway Arch had to be accurate during construction: 1/64 inch
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Mid-week Rapture Index:
182 (including 4 Satanisms and 1 rudely-stolen rainbow). Soul Protection Factor 20 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: 3-D---it ain't just for movies anymore…
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CHEERS to telling your boss to piss off. Mike Cox is a 25-year EPA staffer who worked in the upper northwest and just resigned from his job. I dunno---something about not preferring to work for a boss who seems intent on tossing the agency's 45-year legacy into the shredder. But before his departure, Mike made his opinion known:
“I, along with many EPA staff, are becoming increasing alarmed about the direction of EPA under your leadership…” Cox said in a letter to [Scott] Pruitt.
“The policies this Administration is advancing are contrary to what the majority of the American people, who pay our salaries, want EPA to accomplish, which are to ensure the air their children breath is safe; the land they live, play, and hunt on to be free of toxic chemicals; and the water they drink, the lakes they swim in, and the rivers they fish in to be clean.” […]
To see the effects of climate change, Cox invited Pruitt to “visit the Pacific Northwest and see where the streams are too warm for our salmon to survive in the summer; visit the oyster farmers in Puget Sound whose stocks are being altered from the oceans becoming more acidic; talk to the ski area operators who are seeing less snowpack and worrying about their future; and talk to the farmers in Eastern Washington who are struggling to have enough water to grow their crops and water their cattle. The changes I am referencing are not impacts projected for the future, but are happening now.”
Pruitt declined the invitation, but thanked Cox profusely for reminding him to clear his stock portfolio of anything related to the northeast salmon, oyster, ski area and agriculture sectors.
CHEERS to masters of the quill and the inquisitive mind. The Pulitzer Prizes were announced this week. You can see the whole list here. Daily Kos was thrilled to see that one of the finalists in the cartooning category was none other than Kossack Jen Sorensen. (We trust this was just a warm-up to when she wins the real thing, which she deserves to.) Other familiar names on this year's list:
> National reporting: David A. Fahrenthold of the Washington Post, for his coverage of Donald Trump’s virtually non-existent philanthropy activities that he lied about.
> Public Service: Pro Publica & New York Daily News for their joint investigation on abuses in the New York City Police Department’s enforcement of the nuisance abatement law.
> Explanatory reporting: International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, McClatchy and Miami Herald, for the Panama Papers.
> Investigative reporting: Eric Eyre of the Charleston Gazette-Mail, for hiscoverage of the West Virginia opioid epidemic
> History: Blood in the Water: The Attica PrisonUprising of 1971, by Heather AnnThompson
> Editorial cartooning: Jim Morin of the Miami Herald
The top prize in fiction went to The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. He barely edged out Replacement for Obamacare by House Republicans and I Will Build the Most Beautiful Wall and Make Mexico Pay For It I Can Tell You That by Donald Trump. C&J got recognition, too---our restraining order was renewed for another 6 months. Aww...we blush.
JEERS to cerebral hemorrhages. They suck. Franklin Roosevelt died from one 72 years ago today down in Warm Springs, Georgia. His private Secretary Grace Tully recounts what happened here. A snip:
The shock was unexpected and the actuality of the event was outside belief.
Without a word or a glance toward the others present, I walked into the bedroom, leaned over and kissed the President lightly on the forehead. Then I walked out on the porch and stood wordless and tearless. In my heart were prayers and, finally, in my mind came thoughts, a flood of them drawn from seventeen years of acquaintance, close association and reverent admiration. Through them, one recurred constantly---that the Boss had always shunned emotionalism and that I must, for the immediate present at least, behave in his pattern.
I did, for a matter of hours.
While FDR's generation got a rendezvous with destiny, ours got a rendezvous with a fuckup named Dubya and, eight years later, another fuckup named Trump, and we'll be paying for it the rest of our lives---thanks a lot, fate. Now comb your hair and go pay your respects. As always, regards to Eleanor.
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Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
This is another edition of The One Word Answer Man. Daily Kos front-page titan Mark Sumner asks: Trump's next great challenge: Can he host the White House Easter Egg Roll without screwing it up?
No.
Now back to Cheers and Jeers.
Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
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CHEERS to the calm before the storms. Atlantic hurricane season starts in 50 days, and the meteorological elves at Colorado State University are out with their 2017 forecast (pdf). They're predicting a "slightly-below-average" year, actually: eleven named storms and four hurricanes...two of them major. But more important, check to see if your name is on the 2017 storm list:
Arlene, Bret, Cindy, Don, Emily, Franklin, Gert, Harvey, Irma, Jose, Katia, Lee, Maria, Nate, Ophelia, Philippe, Rina, Sean, Tammy, Vince, Whitney
Don’t forget: if a hurricane with your name on it causes any damage, it's up to you to pay for it. Don’t blame me, I don’t make the rules, I just---[pats baseball bat]---enforce them.
JEERS to opening a can of whupass that would end very badly for the can openers. On April 12, 1861, in one of the most tragic mix-ups in American history, Confederate troops accidentally fired cannons loaded with lead projectiles---instead of their "prank" cannons loaded with confetti---at Fort Sumter, thus igniting the Civil War. Northerners...so touchy.
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Ten years ago in C&J: April 12, 2007
CHEERS to hot, wet manatee sex. It's cool to see that the gentle sea mammal (this one, I believe, is flipping you the bird) is making a comeback in Florida. Their numbers have tripled in a little over a decade to 3,200, but the feds are leaving it on the endangered list because they're scared shitless of a possible public backlash if they don’t. Meanwhile the president is sending thousands more troops to Iraq, clearly not giving a shit about the overwhelming public backlash. I'll never understand this place. [4/12/17 Update: Ten years later, the twitterpated Florida manatees now number over 6,000, which was enough for the species to recently (and, again, controversially) be taken off the endangered list. And for a helluva lot more reasons than existed ten years ago, I’ll really never understand this place.]
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And just one more…
CHEERS and JEERS to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Friday night the latest inductees were officially given their trophies and secret decoder rings. A few highlights from Ultimate Classic Rock:
» No one was surprised when Joan Baez, one of folk’s most committed activists, discussed social-justice issues---and even specifically referenced President Donald Trump in her rendition of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”
» It’s perhaps no surprise,considering how long it had taken Journey (eligible since 2000), ELO (1996), Yes (1994) and Baez (1985) to achieve this honor, but the passage of time seemed like a running theme at the Barclays Center. Lynne quipped, “Everything comes to him what waits.” Baez noted how music had evolved “from vinyl to digital and everything in between---and back to vinyl.” Journey guitarist Neal Schon confessed, “I thought [the band’s induction] would never happen.” And then there was Rick Wakeman, who specifically thanked the committee for putting Yes on early in the bill since older men sometimes experience prostate issues.
» Yes’ keyboardist began by placing the location in context, saying “less than half a mile away from this very building is where I had my very first meaningful sexual experience. … It wasn’t very good; it never is when you’re on your own.”Wakeman later remembered his father saying, “‘Son, don’t go to any of those really cheap, dirty, nasty, sleazy strip clubs, because if you do, you’ll see something you shouldn’t.’ So, of course I went. And I saw my dad.”
Congrats to them all. But, once again, C&J must object---as we have every year since inductions began in 1986---to the continued snub of musical supernova Shaun Cassidy, who made the world safe for slightly-askew painter's caps. It's becoming increasingly difficult to tamp down the bitterness. In fact, I feel another White House petition coming on. Maybe this president will listen to me.
Have a happy humpday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Bill in Portland Maine's most distant relative is probably this tiny jelly
---Gizmodo
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