J.G. Ballard speaking the truth in 1986. Seemingly even more spot-on today, though exhibitionism is now as much of a diversion as violence.
Tags: J.G. Ballard
“The Boy in the Bubble”
It was a slow day
And the sun was beating
On the soldiers by the side of the road
There was a bright light
A shattering of shop windows
The bomb in the baby carriage
Was wired to the radio
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That’s dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don’t cry baby, don’t cry
Don’t cry
"The bomb in the baby carriage is wired to the radio." (Image by Malene Thyssen.)
It was a dry wind
And it swept across the desert
And it curled into the circle of birth
And the dead sand
Falling on the children
The mothers and the fathers
And the automatic earth
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That’s dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don’t cry baby, don’t cry
Don’t cry
It’s a turn-around jump shot
It’s everybody jump start
It’s every generation throws a hero up the pop charts
Medicine is magical and magical is art
The boy in the bubble
And the baby with the baboon heart
And I believe
These are the days of lasers in the jungle
Lasers in the jungle somewhere
Staccato signals of constant information
A loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires and baby
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That’s dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don’t cry baby, don’t cry
Don’t cry
Tags: Paul Simon
"Nice content and easily readable."
SIDESHOW ARMLESS/LEGLESS MAN WRITES LETTER WITH HIS MOUTH 1868 – $400 (NEW JERSEY)
This is a two-page letter written by Walter H. Stuart of Brownfield, Maine dated 1868, Stuart had no arms or legs and worked the Sideshows and Carnivals in the years after the Civil War. He was also known as “Texas Jack the One-Armed Whittler” His performance would include him writing a letter or signing autographs with his mouth. A real unique piece of Americana. I have included a scanned photo of Stuart with a comparison autograph on the reverse. I do not possess the photo, just the letter. CDV photo’s of Stuart are frequently available on EBAY, which is where I copied this photo. This letter details his summer shedule for the year 1868. Nice content and easily readable. This is a “Must Have” for the collector or historian of Sideshow memorabilia. This letter comes with it’s original envelope, also addressed by Stuart. This letter is suitable for framing along with the many other scanned photos of Stuart which I will provide with the sale of this document.
Tags: Walter H. Stuart
For some reason in 1973, more Americans than usual imagined they were seeing UFOs. Maybe after trips to the moon, we thought we were due a visit of our own? Maybe the Vietnam-and-Watergate era was so surreal that everything felt alien anyway? Governor John Gilligan of Ohio, who thought he saw a saucer, is, of course, the father of Kathleen Sebilius, the current Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Tags: John Gilligan, Kathleen Sebilius, Walter, Walter Cronkite
Much like team owner Fred Wilpon, Mr. Met is a balloon-headed symbol of mediocrity. (Image by richiek.)
Madoff-mired Mets owner Fred Wilpon, the handsomely attired and hapless dummkopf who, with help from his jugheaded scion, Jeff, has run the New York baseball team into the ground for half his adult life, is the focus of a new profile in the New Yorker by the reliably excellent Jeffrey Toobin. An excerpt:
“In the game against the Astros, Jose Reyes, leading off for the Mets, singled sharply up the middle, then stole second. ‘He’s a racehorse,’ Wilpon said. When Reyes started with the Mets, in 2003, just before his twentieth birthday, he was pegged as a future star. Injuries have limited him to a more pedestrian career, though he’s off to a good start this season. ‘He thinks he’s going to get Carl Crawford money,’ Wilpon said, referring to the Red Sox’ signing of the former Tampa Bay player to a seven-year, $142-million contract. ‘He’s had everything wrong with him,’ Wilpon said of Reyes. ‘He won’t get it.’
After the catcher, Josh Thole, struck out, David Wright came to the plate. Wright, the team’s marquee attraction, has started the season dreadfully at the plate. ‘He’s pressing,’ Wilpon said. ‘A really good kid. A very good player. Not a superstar.’
Wright walked.
When Carlos Beltran came up, I mentioned his prodigious post-season with the Astros in 2004, when he hit eight home runs, just before he went to the Mets as a free agent. Wilpon laughed, not happily. ‘We had some schmuck in New York who paid him based on that one series,’ he said, referring to himself. In the course of playing out his seven-year, $119-million contract with the Mets, Beltran, too, has been hobbled by injuries. ‘He’s sixty-five to seventy per cent of what he was.’ Beltran singled, loading the bases with one out.
Ike Davis, the sophomore first baseman and the one pleasant surprise for the Mets so far this season, was up next. ‘Good hitter,’ Wilpon said. ‘Shitty team—good hitter.’ Davis struck out. Angel Pagan flied out to right, ending the Mets’ threat. ‘Lousy clubs—that’s what happens.’ Wilpon sighed. The Astros put three runs on the board in the top of the second.
‘We’re snakebitten, baby,’ Wilpon said.”
••••••••••
Tags: Bernie Madoff, Fred Wilpon, Jeff Wilpon, Jeffrey Toobin, Mr. Met
The Musalman, a four-page evening paper, published in India since 1927.
I have no love for science fiction as art or entertainment, but I really like the cultural visionary aspect of it. The Independent feeds that interest with an article by Simmy Richman about a sci-fi writer named Geoffrey Hoyle, who was asked in 1972 to write a book (2011: Living in the Future) for children that would predict what life would be like this year. His prognostications were amazingly correct. In the piece, Hoyle discusses what he got right and the aspects of contemporary life he simply doesn’t understand. An excerpt:
“‘Over the years politicians have added new thing to new thing and nobody has the intellect to wipe the slate clean and say, ‘What do we need?’ What have changed over the decades are the levels of bureaucracy, the control over our lives and the rise of the career politician with pop-star status. We live in a time where there’s a huge amount of disinformation and facts can be twisted to alarm or control. The original draft of the US constitution is 20 pages long; Brussels turns out thousands and thousands of pages – which says to me that no one knows how to make law [any more].’
So while Hoyle predicted both the large (the ubiquity of the computer, the invention of the smartphone and the microwave) and the small (Skype, home supermarket delivery, touchscreens and webcams) ways our lives have changed, he has no idea why the social model of Europe is still ‘tailored to the way people were living in 1947.'”
Tags: Geoffrey Hoyle, Simmy Richman
Dropping acid, making pottery, surfing waves, studying Tarot, etc. A thoughtful look at California hippies, particularly one named Tom, in 1973.
Tags: Tom
Long tail. (Image by megan ann.)
The opening of Chris Anderson’s “The Long Tail,” his famous 2004 Wired article about a shift in consumerism, propelled by the Internet, which the author later expanded into a best seller of the same name:
“In 1988, a British mountain climber named Joe Simpson wrote a book called Touching the Void a harrowing account of near death in the Peruvian Andes. It got good reviews but, only a modest success, it was soon forgotten. Then, a decade later, a strange thing happened. Jon Krakauer wrote Into Thin Air, another book about a mountain-climbing tragedy, which became a publishing sensation. Suddenly Touching the Void started to sell again.
Random House rushed out a new edition to keep up with demand. Booksellers began to promote it next to their Into Thin Air displays, and sales rose further. A revised paperback edition, which came out in January, spent 14 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. That same month, IFC Films released a docudrama of the story to critical acclaim. Now Touching the Void outsells Into Thin Air more than two to one.
What happened? In short, Amazon.com recommendations. The online bookseller’s software noted patterns in buying behavior and suggested that readers who liked Into Thin Air would also like Touching the Void. People took the suggestion, agreed wholeheartedly, wrote rhapsodic reviews. More sales, more algorithm-fueled recommendations, and the positive feedback loop kicked in.
Particularly notable is that when Krakauer’s book hit shelves, Simpson’s was nearly out of print. A few years ago, readers of Krakauer would never even have learned about Simpson’s book – and if they had, they wouldn’t have been able to find it. Amazon changed that. It created the Touching the Void phenomenon by combining infinite shelf space with real-time information about buying trends and public opinion. The result: rising demand for an obscure book.
This is not just a virtue of online booksellers; it is an example of an entirely new economic model for the media and entertainment industries, one that is just beginning to show its power. Unlimited selection is revealing truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it in service after service, from DVDs at Netflix to music videos on Yahoo! Launch to songs in the iTunes Music Store and Rhapsody. People are going deep into the catalog, down the long, long list of available titles, far past what’s available at Blockbuster Video, Tower Records, and Barnes & Noble. And the more they find, the more they like. As they wander further from the beaten path, they discover their taste is not as mainstream as they thought (or as they had been led to believe by marketing, a lack of alternatives, and a hit-driven culture).”
••••••••••
Chris Anderson’s TED Talk about The Long Tail:
Tags: Chris Anderson
"Ever since I was a little boy I always wanted to be rich."
Help Dominic make his American Dream come true (Upper East Side)
Hello everyone! My name is Dominic Light and I am 17 years old and I am from New York City. Ever since I was a little boy I always wanted to be rich. I started working when I was 11 years old to try and save money to open a business. I have had many jobs which include dish washer,bus boy,waiter,cook,landscaper,paper boy,and many other small jobs. I wasn’t able to save all of my money because my parents are not doing well financially. I have managed to save $20,000 but I know that ain’t nearly enough to open a nice establishment. I plan on opening many restaurants and stores and hopefully become a millionaire. With all of your contributes it will bring me one step closer to making my American Dream come true. Thank you and may God Bless you.
Kentucky Fried Chicken was oddly allowed to briefly operate two restaurants in Russia during the frost of the Cold War in the 1960s.
"He thinks things are going in a bad direction."
From “The Elephant in the Green Room,” Gabriel Sherman’s just-published New York magazine piece about FOX News honcho Roger Ailes, a ghastly man whose face looks as if it should be attached the hull of a ship:
“So it must have been disturbing to Ailes when the wheels started to come off Fox’s presidential-circus caravan. (Coincidentally or not, this happened more or less when Donald Trump jumped on: ‘They like me on the network,’ Trump told me. ‘I get ratings.’) The problem wasn’t that ratings had been slipping that much—Beck’s show declined by 30 percent from record highs, but the ratings were still nearly double those from before he joined the network. It was that, with an actual presidential election on the horizon, the Fox candidates’ poll numbers remain dismally low (Sarah Palin is polling 12 percent; Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, 10 percent and 2 percent, respectively). Ailes’s candidates-in- waiting were coming up small. And, for all his programming genius, he was more interested in a real narrative than a television narrative—he wanted to elect a president. All he had to do was watch Fox’s May 5 debate in South Carolina to see what a mess the field was—a mess partly created by the loudmouths he’d given airtime to and a tea party he’d nurtured. And, not incidentally, a strong Republican candidate would be good for his business, too. A few months ago, Ailes called Chris Christie and encouraged him to jump into the race. Last summer, he’d invited Christie to dinner at his upstate compound along with Rush Limbaugh, and like much of the GOP Establishment, he fell hard for Christie, who nevertheless politely turned down Ailes’s calls to run. Ailes had also hoped that David Petraeus would run for president, but Petraeus too has decided to sit this election out, choosing to stay on the counterterrorism front lines as the head of Barack Obama’s CIA. The truth is, for all the antics that often appear on his network, there is a seriousness that underlies Ailes’s own politics. He still speaks almost daily with George H. W. Bush, one of the GOP’s last great moderates, and a war hero, which especially impresses Ailes.
All the 2012 candidates know that Ailes is a crucial constituency. ‘You can’t run for the Republican nomination without talking to Roger,’ one GOPer told me. ‘Every single candidate has consulted with Roger.’ But he hasn’t found any of them, including the adults in the room—Jon Huntsman, Mitch Daniels, Mitt Romney—compelling. ‘He finds flaws in every one,’ says a person familiar with his thinking.
‘He thinks things are going in a bad direction,’ another Republican close to Ailes told me. ‘Roger is worried about the future of the country. He thinks the election of Obama is a disaster. He thinks Palin is an idiot. He thinks she’s stupid. He helped boost her up. People like Sarah Palin haven’t elevated the conservative movement.'”
Tags: Domald Trump, Gabriel Sherman, Glenn Beck, Roger Ailes
An experimental 17-minute BBC version. Better than Cronenberg’s 1996 adaptation, I think.
From a piece about Ballard in the Los Angeles Times by David L. Ulin: “If J.G. Ballard — the visionary British novelist who died Sunday of prostate cancer at age 78 — ends up being remembered, it will likely be as a science fiction writer who aspired to use genre as a vehicle for art. That’s true enough, in a certain small-bore manner, but it’s ultimately reductive, a way of categorizing Ballard that his entire career stood against.
A member of the New Wave science fiction movement of the 1960s, Ballard started out writing proto-environmental thrillers that highlighted the prescience of his imagination: The Wind From Nowhere posits a world-wide windstorm that becomes apocalyptic, while The Drowned World is about a planet swamped by risen sIt was really in the 1970s, however, that Ballard found his voice as a writer, focusing on the dangers of mechanization and socialization, the tension between the veneer of civilization and the animal brutality it sought to conceal. “
"Everybody has seen these little waifs at watering places, on cars, steamers, and to every crowd of people where there was a chance to earn a few pennies." (Image by Lewis Hine.)
The August 21, 1873 edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle published a disturbing story about a child-smuggling ring that supplied New York City ringleaders with waifs to play music on the street and earn money. An excerpt:
“The examination of the case of Vincenzo Motto, of 45 Crosby Street, New York, who is charged with violation of the Civil Rights bill by kidnapping Italian children, bringing them to this country and compelling them to earn a living for him by performing on instruments in the streets, was resumed yesterday before Commissioner Osborn, in the United States District Court, New York. Everybody has seen these little waifs at watering places, on cars, steamers, and to every crowd of people where there was a chance to earn a few pennies by rasping “Old Dog Tray” and kindred tunes out of a cracked violin in the most persistent manner. It is only recently, however, that public attention has been called to the secret history of their lives here and the cause of their presence.
Some time since one of these little musicians ran away from the ‘padrone’ with whom he lived, and by whom he was brought to the country, and from the statements made by him to authorities, it appeared that all these little musicians were owned by a company in New York. They had agents in Italy, who purchased the children from their parents, and when that was not possible, kidnapped them, and sent them out here consigned to some padrone who was a member of the fraternity, and who owned when as much as any slaveholder ever owned his negro.
The unfortunate children, who were subjected by the lazy padrones in order to make them return so much money every day, excited a storm of public indignation, and it is expected that the present proceedings will result in breaking up the whole thing and emancipating hundreds of these unfortunate little fellows, from their brutal taskmasters.
In the examination yesterday, the principal witness was the boy Joseph, one of the complainants against Motto, and his testimony which shows the working of the system was as follows:
"He sent me out in the streets with other children to play the triangle."
I am twelve years old; I came to the United States three years ago, and have been here during that time; I came to this country with my master Vincenzo Motto; I used to live at Cavalli, Italy; the defendant is here (points him out); I left Naples to come to this country; I first met the defendant at my mother’s house; he said to me, ‘You come to my house, and I will let you come back in the evening’; he made me walk all night to Naples, and there I was put on board the steamer, and I came to New York with the defendant; as soon as we got to New York I was taken to Crosby Street, and he kept me one day at the house; the defendant brought three more boys with me; after the first day he sent me out in the streets with other children to play the triangle; he told me to stick with the other children; he afterwards told me to bring home money; he told me this the next week; he sent me out as early as seven o’clock in the morning; he gave me bread for breakfast and told me to come back with the other children at night; I never come home without bringing money; Motto gave me bread and cheese; he did not give me my clothes; he was kind to me at first; then he beat me in the morning and in the evening; he beat me and kicked me; he tied me up with a big cord and kept me in the cellar all day; he bit me; he bit my ear one year ago because I did not bring home much money; I left my master one year ago because I had no money to bring home; I went to sleep in the cars at the depot; a lady, Mrs. McMonoho, now present, took care of me; I do not remember my home.”
Tags: Commissioner Osborn, Lewis Hine, Mrs. McMonoho, Stephen Foster, Vincenzo Motto
Douglas Coupland talking about the allure and repulsion he feels for plastics.
More Douglas Coupland posts:
Charles Darwin: gassy mess.
On May 20, 1865, chronically ill Charles Darwin recorded the symptoms of his terrible stomach problems, which may been result of something called Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome:
“For 25 years extreme spasmodic daily & nightly flatulence: occasional vomiting, on two occasions prolonged during months. Vomiting preceded by shivering (hysterical crying) dying sensations (or half-faint). . ringing in ears, treading on air and vision. (focus and black dots) . . . (nervousness when E. [Emma] leaves me)—What I vomit intensely acid slimy (sometimes bitter) consider teeth.” (Thanks Why Evolution Is True.)
Tags: Charles Darwin
Monsanto’s House of the Future was displayed at Disneyland from 1957-67.
"Please help me fight off Jesus...
Save us from the Rapture! (Timesquare)
My friend and I waited until 6pm in our room at the Four Seasons, and after 15 minutes and no rapture we decided to go to timesquare… long story short Jesus is here and he is trying to take my friend away!! Please help me fight off Jesus and his hoard of Zombies!!! I’m at the timesquare playing tug of war with Jesus over my friend, Jesus says I’m next!!!! Please come down and help!! You cant miss it in the middle of time square! I will forever be greatful for your help!! Hurry!!!!!!
...and his hoard of Zombies!!!" (Image by Amber Ragland.)
Jack Schmitt taking a tumble during the final manned lunar mission in 1972.
Tags: Jack Schmitt
Some search-engine keyphrases bringing traffic to Afflictor this week:
Afflictor: Delighting our two biggest fans--Lorna and Peggy--since 2009. (Image by christian razukas.)
- Classic Film: Salesman (1968).
- Old Print Articles: Boys shoot craps, punch each other in front of church (1902) + Brooklyn bone collector shares trade secrets (1877) + Vagrant woman insulted profusely (1849).
- Classic Photographs: Frances Densmore meets Mountain Chief (1916) + Women at the Waldorf track the Stock Market (1918).
- Featured Videos: Tom Snyder interviews Alfred Hitchcock (1973) + Hunter S. Thompson making his magic (1978) + Marlin Perkins hosting Wild Kingdom + Jon Stewart interviews George Carlin (1987) + Sagan, Hawking and Clarke tackle the big issues (1988) + Totally courteous gun enthusiast + Rare footage of blind, avant-garde “Viking” composer + Robot climbs tree + Soccer-playing robots + British troops take LSD + Richard Feynman (and his ego) remembered + Pop Art sculptor Billy Apple is profiled (1966) + Mind-blowing puppetry + The McGurk Effect explained,
- Recently Posted on NYC”s Craigslist: I’m unaware that I want to post a personal ad + We may have watched Ghostbusters too many times + Give me all your cool stuff before the world ends + Give me all your pennies + Do you know a good loan shark? + I would like my work displayed on the silver screen.
- Douglas Coupland adds his two cents about Marshall McLuhan.
- Ray Bradbury wanted corporations to turn cities into malls (1996).
- Wikipedia is the best encyclopedia in the English language.
- Yet again, Katie Couric shows how dumb Sarah Palin is.
- Oriana Fallaci asserts how stupid Muammar el-Qaddafi is (2003).
- Hunter S. Thompson investigates Los Angeles overpopulation (1965).
- Exploring the act of dying in contemporary Los Angeles.
- Laurel and Hardy hang out for the final time (1956).
- Jimmy Lai creates odd animations of tabloid news stories.
- William Gibson provides a sharp take on the Web (1997).
- Rupert Murdoch rose to prominence as New York rebounded in the 1970s.
- Robert D. Kaplan envisioned a world with few borders in 1994.
- The Rapture didn’t arrive in 1844, either.
- Why doctors order so few autopsies.
- The life and times of an Asperger patient.
- Americans trying to revive the culture of manufacturing.
- Steven Hollinger sculpts found and often unusual materials.
- An attempt to create a digital coin of the realm.
- A philippic about the downside of personalization and search filters.
- Life in London from 1500-1800.
- Champion marathoner commits suicide in Kenya.
- Some guy took too much gout medicine in 1877.
- This week’s Afflictor keyphrase searches.
"I have a lot of money tied up."
Need loan shark – $2000
I need a loan shark immediately. I need $2000-$3000.
I can repay this back within a month or two.
1. I work a full time job that pays me $1600 every 2 weeks – I can take from that (when it is not going to rent) to pay it back
2. I have a 2nd job that I am doing that pays me $1300 every 2 weeks that I just started. I can pay from that as well
3. I have this $5000 owed to me by a company who has said they will pay me at some point. This is for work already done and owed to me. It is a bunch of investment professionals who want to pay me once their company is funded in the next month.
4. My soon to be ex husband owes me $30,000 as part of our legal separation and soon to be final divorce settlement and he is paying me every couple of months $5000. He has made payments in the past.
I have a lot of money tied up and just need a loan of 2000-3000 so that I can make 2 payments in the next 24 hours.
The Millerite chart "proved" the end was near in the 1840s.
The end is coming soon or sooner, sure, but Kathryn Schulz recalls a time in 1844 when the sky was also supposedly crashing into the sea:
“On the morning of October 22, 1844, a group of people gathered to await the end of the world. They met in homes, in churches, and in outdoor revival meetings, primarily in New York and New England but also throughout the United States and Canada, and as far away as England, Australia, and South America. Nobody knows how numerous they were. Some scholars put the number at 25,000 and some put it at over a million, but most believe it was in the hundreds of thousands. Whatever the figure, the assembled group was too large to be dismissed as a cult and too diverse to be described as a sect. The believers included Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, and members of various other Christian denominations, plus a handful of unaffiliated former atheists. They also included an almost perfect cross-section of mid-nineteenth-century society. Sociologists often argue that apocalyptic creeds appeal primarily to the poor and the disenfranchised – those for whom the afterlife promises more than life itself has ever offered. But on that day in 1844, judges, lawyers and doctors, farmers and factory workers and freed slaves, the educated and the ignorant, the wealthy and the impoverished: all of them gathered as one to await the Rapture
What this otherwise diverse group of people had in common was faith in the teachings of one William Miller, a do-it-yourself preacher who had analyzed the Bible and determined the date of the Second Coming. Miller was born in Massachusetts in 1782, the eldest of sixteen children and the grandson of a Baptist minister. When he was four, his family moved to upstate New York, where the nationwide religious revival that would become known as the Second Great Awakening was just beginning to stir. In later years, the part of the state near Miller’s home would be called the Burned-Over District, because it was so ablaze with religious conviction that there was scarcely anyone left to convert.” (Thanks Longreads.)
Tags: Kathryn Schulz, William Miller
During her final broadcast as anchor of the CBS Evening News, Katie Couric takes one more righteous jab at Sarah Palin. At the 2:00 mark.
Tags: Katie Couric, Sarah Palin
The Documentarian has a brief clip from 1963’s The Moving Finger of the blind avant-garde composer and Norse-inspired NYC street character Louis Thomas Hardin (aka Moondog). Now we have the Naked Cowboy. It’s a downgrade.
Tags: Louis Thomas Hardin