THE INFORMATION #1012 SEPTEMBER 28, 2018

THE INFORMATION #1012
SEPTEMBER 28, 2018
Copyright 2018 FRANCIS DIMENNO*
dimenno@gmail.com
https://dimenno.wordpress.com

Almost all people are hypnotics. The proper authority saw to it that the proper belief should be induced, and the people believed properly.
―Charles Fort

WHEN THIS WORLD CATCHES FIRE
BOOK THREE: SAVAGE NOXTOWN
CHAPTER TWELVE: PART TWENTY-NINE: THE EASTERN GATE OF PARADISE

I was telling you about Agustino, the Calabrian Strong Boy. As it turns out, having to lug the big stiff around turned out to be a positive asset. You see, I had gotten some tips from the Swami at the Red & Black Carnival about something known as “mystical mesmerism.” It wouldn’t work on people who were very smart, like Colonel Gentleman, or very dumb, like Miss Big Tiny Small, the fat lady. But it worked just fine on the Calabrian Strong Boy. All I had to do, it turns out, is to appeal to a higher authority. “God gives you permission to do this thing,” was usually all it took for me to make the Strong Boy go against his strongly-held scruples and do anything I suggested. “You must always obey the Master,” is what I told him. I would then act all mysterious-like and look around me, as though the Master Himself were hiding in plain sight.

And whenever the Strong Boy managed to score some minor triumph, I would follow it up with the phrase, “The thought of your heart is fulfilled, is it not?”

Another mark in my favor is that one time, when we were walking through the streets of Blowtown, we were accosted by a policeman. And small wonder. I myself was relatively inconspicuous in my Sunday best, which consisted of a derby, a light coat, a starched white shirt, neatly pressed trousers, dress shoes, spats, and a gold-headed cane. But the Strong Boy was another matter. He was dressed in his conical clown hat, a checkered jacket and checkered pants which didn’t quite match, which made it even worse–and sandals. With socks. His very presence screamed “greenhorn”. A Fly Cop tapped him with his nightstick and the Strong Boy froze. Guess he must have had a run-in with the Carabinieri back in the old country, because he was absolutely terrorized at the sight of a uniformed official. I suppose he imaged that he had to show his papers or something, and, of course, he didn’t have any. Well, now, even the dumbest rookie would have smelt the fear pouring off the Strong Boy. But me, I kept my head. Before the Fly Copper could start into questioning the big lug, I took him aside and pressed a fiver in his hand that Colonel Gentleman had given me in case of an emergency just like this one. Hust to impress the Strong Boy, I tipped the Copper the wink and said to him, “Sir, why do you harass my good friend? Don’t you know he’s under my protection? I don’t want to have to speak to the Mayor. Well–all right then. I’ll let it go this time officer–but see that it doesn’t happen again.”

In that way, I managed to make the Strong Boy nearly completely dependent on my good will for his entire sense of well-being.

After that incident, the Strong Boy gave me a look like a dog adoring his master. From that day to the next, I could pretty much get him to do anything I said. But I did not abuse this privilege. At least, not at first. I wanted to get my hooks into him a little deeper before I asked him to do something spectacular. And that’s where the swami’s tips on mystical mesmerism came in. The Strong Boy was profoundly superstitious. He saw everything around him as a possible omen, and looked to me to interpret the ways of this strange new land. And that made it easier still. Any grifter with half a brain could have jollied him along. But the Swami was a learned man, and, for a certain consideration, he taught me how to put a geas upon the Strong Boy, which would not only compel him to do my bidding, but also make him not care about the consequences of his deeds.

I started out slow. I told Agustino Baldassare Calebrese–I always called him by his full name, because the Swami said that this would give me more control over him–try it some time, and see–refer to your acquaintance by his full name and see if he doesn’t respect you more, the more you do it. I told Agustino the Calabrian Strong Boy that I would like him to take a walk around my old neighborhood with me. I carefully instructed him to hang back several yards behind me, and to appear only at my signal. I knew that there were some desperados lounging on street corners who were terrorizing shopkeepers and annoying women. The Coppers couldn’t do anything because the fix was in with the Mayor, who didn’t give a hoot in hell about anything that happened in Blowtown.

And so then I go up to the strongest of the toughs, who fancied himself quite the b’hoy–oh, he was in his full regalia that day, which consisted of a flaming bright red shirt, black pantaloons, black boots, and a black silk stovepipe hat. He had on his putty-pale Irish face a contemptuous sneer, and his muttonchops grew nearly down to the line where his chin met his ears. He was the son of the local Grocer, and thought he was some punkins. His forearms were the size of small hams, and he was noted all through Blowtown for his strength and his pugilistic ability.

Being long a stranger to those parts, I waited for him to accost me and ask me what my business was. It didn’t take long. They was always particular about strangers in Blowtown.

Says the B’hoy, “Hopen your dummy, and let’s see wot’s in it! And let’s have a look at your thimble, in the bargain.”

He was asking me to hand over my wallet and my watch. That’s the way it was in Blowtown–if you didn’t have protection, you would be robbed in broad daylight.

“I think not. I am not accustomed to pattering hash with thieves. Good day to you, Sir,” says I, and I gave the signal.

And nothing happened.

I gave the signal again.

And nothing happened.

The B’hoy looked at me and laughed.

“Looking after your pal? We coshed ‘im, we did. Now hopen your dummy! Stand and deliver, Pikey!”

With a roar, the Strong Boy shook off three stout grown men who were trying to hold him back and made for the leader of the B’hoys. The leader took one look at his crazed and red-faced expression and ran away so fast he nearly lost his hat. “I ain’t fightin’ no black,” one of tye other B’hoys said, and the three of them ran off in three different directions.

No matter. I wasn’t any too inclined to follow them. The Strong Boy was willing…but I didn’t want to tax his strength. How he managed to shake off being coshed by a lead sap is a mystery to me. But I suppose a man can accomplish a great many unusual things–when his mind is not entirely his own.

1* SALUTATION
KEITH
98.6

THE ZOMBIES
CARE OF CELL 44

THE LEFT BANKE
IN THE MORNING LIGHT

2* REFERENCE
POETRY
Slopping random words on a page does not make you a poet. Regardless of your “message”.

SEE:
THE WORST POEMS BY SEVEN GREAT WRITERS
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/the-worst-poems-by-7-great-writers/

3*HUMOR
HOW DID WE DO?
Rule of thumb: The worse an artist is, the more he longs for you to praise him.

4*NOVELTY
COMA BUMS
Fear of premature burial haunted the 19th century.

“Fear of burial alive was deeply rooted in Western culture in the nineteenth century, and Poe was taking advantage of the public’s fascination with it. Hundreds of cases were reported in which doctors mistakenly pronounced people dead. In this period, coffins occasionally were equipped with emergency devices to allow the “corpse” to call for help, should he or she turn out to be still living. It was such a strong concern, Victorians even organized a Society for the Prevention of People Being Buried Alive. Belief in the vampire, an animated corpse that remains in its grave by day and emerges to prey on the living at night, has sometimes been attributed to premature burial. Folklorist Paul Barber has argued that the incidence of burial alive has been overestimated, and that the normal effects of decomposition are mistaken for signs of life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Premature_Burial

5*AVATAR OF THE ZEITGEIST
OFFICIALLY CHANGING THE NAME OF THE WHITE HOUSE. BECAUSE RACISM.

Officially change it to what? The White House isn’t even its official name. Such ahistoricism is typical among people who make a quasi-superstitious fuss about things they don’t even really understand.
https://247sports.com/college/hawaii/Board/103415/Contents/Is-the-name-White-House-racist-70464761/

6* DAILY UTILITY
GENIUS
I think that with few exceptions—those people who I refer to as “spooky-smart”—there are very few real geniuses. But there are more of those people who I would say have “a genius” for some field of endeavor. What is it like to be such a person? Well, they tend to be singleminded in their focus and determination. They tend to have what I would call a drive for perfection. And, unless they are aberrant in some way, they tend to be humble about what they do, realizing that it is only a very small part of the overall picture. They also tend to be well aware (though not in all cases) that there is still a great deal that they do not know.

SEE:
2018 SECRET GENIUS AWARDS
https://newsroom.spotify.com/2018-08-22/spotify-announces-nominees-for-2018-secret-genius-awards/

7*CARTOON
CHESTER GOULD
There is a rumor that a sequel to the movie Dick Tracy is forthcoming.

I missed the great era of the Dick Tracy comic strip by quite a few years. By the 70s, Gould’s strip was running on fumes. His successors have been essentially running a zombie enterprise for too many of the ensuing years. The consensus seems to be (and I concur) that Gould’s great era was from ca. 1942 to about the mid-1950s. It was an odd strip, in which the villains were the true stars, and Tracy and his growing cast of characters (Pat, and then later, Sam Catchem and Policewoman Lizz) largely served merely as their foil. Chet Gould constantly pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable in a comic strip. An early 1940s continuity evoked outrage among anti-comics crusaders for the unusually gruesome demise of Jerome Trohs at the vindictive hands of Big Mamma.
http://thegreatcomicbookheroes.blogspot.com/2014/02/dick-tracy-timeless-comic-noir.html

In the early 1960s, Gould became more pronounced in his overtly political proselytizing. Fly Face, a venal lawyer, provoked outrage among readers because both his mother and the toddler, “Little Doc,” was also seen as having flies hovering around their faces.
https://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/comic-strip-art/chester-gould-dick-tracy-daily-comic-strip-original-art-dated-12-28-59-chicago-tribune-1959-flyface-his-mom-and-wil/a/818-4183.s

Gould has few disciples. The most notable is the Spanish cartoonist Marti, whose astonishing strip “The Cabbie” ups the ante on both the violence and depraved sex.
http://www.fantagraphics.com/cabbie1/
http://www.fantagraphics.com/images/stories/previews/cabbi1-preview.pdf

ALSO SEE:
BATMAN’S DICK

8*PRESCRIPTION
ARTHUR C. FIFIELD’S RESPONSE TO GERTRUDE STEIN
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-8eef134c51626704e7a7cc723dcbf69a

ALSO SEE:
11 GREATEST LITERARY FEUDS
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-11-greatest-literary-feuds

TOP TEN LITERARY FEUDS
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/apr/04/michael-crummey-top-10-literary-feuds

TEN NOTORIOUS LITERARY SPATS
10 Notorious Literary Spats

SEVEN GREAT LITERARY FEUDS
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/19/literary-feuds_n_3619103.html

9* RUMOR PATROL
WERE THE JACKSONS RAPED IN BOB HOPE SEX RING?

Bob Hope, from what I understand, was a horrible and powerful man who had MK Ultra sex slaves at the ready. He was an MI6 British agent who was a part of a psyop to abuse kids sexually and see how they turned out. Allegedly.

I believe the Jacksons were traumatized early, especially Michael and Latoya and I believe Joe abused them and also allowed others to abuse them. Similar stories have been told about Tiger Woods. When Tiger made his TV debut at three or four years old, Bob Hope was a guest on the same show and I’m sure it was no coincidence.

I just recently learned of this disturbing fact. I also learned that long noses is another term for pedophile and Hope did have a long nose.
http://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/were-the-jacksons-raped-in-bob-hope-sex-ring.1312631/

ALSO SEE:
BOB HOPE CAMEO IN EYES WIDE SHUT

10*LAGNIAPPE
PERRY COMO
Como was known as “the Singing Barber from Canonsburg Pennsylvania.” (My Uncle Joe says he knew him when.) He was phenomenally popular in the late 1950s, as these unpublished drawings intended for Trump #3 attest:
https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1165578

11*DEVIATIONS FROM THE PREPARED TEXT: A REVIEW OF OTHER MEDIA
CONTRA TROLLS
Me and my fam high key want to turn up savage here and be woke and U R harsh AF and U turnt my game. U R so v extra. Pls be done FR.

TRANSLATION:
I am showboating and you are distracting people from the greatness which is me as I showboat. Why must you always be the one who punctures my self-aggrandizing statements and banal borrowed opinions with your irreverent jollity? If only you would go away, then I can proceed to bloviate to my heart’s content without some mischievous troublemaker coming in here and upsetting the apple cart and distracting people from the greatness which is me.

12* CONTROVERSIES IN POPULAR CULTURE

BAYARD RUSTIN

According to William Manchester, President Kennedy expressed concern that Martin Luther King Jr. was being advised by Rustin.

Kennedy maintained that [Rustin] was a member of the communist party. King’s defense of Rustin was rather eloquent. “Look, Jack–just because a fella likes to smoke a log or two in a public restroom, that doesn’t make him a commie. Look at Eddie and Clyde! Are you telling me they’re commies, too? For that matter, howzabout you and that roommate of yours at Choate, Lem Billings? Don’t tell me that he wasn’t sucking your choad on those long winter nights! So leave Bayard alone! He was risking his life on Freedom Rides while you will still dinging around with Inga-Binga!”
http://www.ep.tc/realist/74/

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THE INFORMATION #1011

THE INFORMATION #1011
SEPTEMBER 21, 2018
Copyright 2018 FRANCIS DIMENNO*
dimenno@gmail.com

https://dimenno.wordpress.com

Some people only express their opinions as part of mob shaming, when it is safe to do so, and, in the bargain, think that they are displaying virtue. This is not virtue but vice, a mixture of bullying and cowardice.–Nassim Nicholas Taleb

WHEN THIS WORLD CATCHES FIRE
BOOK THREE: SAVAGE NOXTOWN
CHAPTER TWELVE: PART TWENTY-EIGHT: THE EASTERN GATE OF PARADISE

During the cold-weather months, when there wasn’t much call for his services, the Strong Boy, whose full name was Agustino Baldassare Calebrese, took it into his head to see America. Specifically, he had a mind to take a trip to see Noxtown, and, eventually, Madport. And he asked me if I wanted to come along, all expenses paid. At first I wondered why he would ask a puny fella like me to come along. To be sure, I practically worshipped him. I was still at that age when feats of strength and derring-do left a big impression on me. I recall that when I first met him, I up and said to him, “Gee, Strong Boy–how does it feel like, to be you?” And he said, “It feels swell, little fella–it feels swell.” And he tipped me a wink. I’m guessing he got that reaction a lot.

It wasn’t long before I sussed out the real reason he wanted me to come along. Namely, he was practically blind as a bat. And far too vain and protective of his image to wear cheaters, or even consider them. Like I mentioned before, he had an old-fashioned Italian peasant’s fear of doctors. I think he was also afraid that the glasses might break and the glass would get into his eyes. Or that people would consider him unmanly because his vision was weak.

His eyesight wasn’t as bad as all that. He could still see things real close right out in front of him, but once you got about twenty paces away, you became a blur to him. That’s one reason he wasn’t very good with names. He’d call everybody either “Miss” or “Little fella.”

He also thought that I, more knowing in the ways of Americans, would prevent him from being robbed or cheated. Which was probably so. So I said I would accompany him.

He may have been a carny, and with it and for it, but I still had to show him the ropes, and at nearly every turn.

First we set out from Mistake Island, where the Carnival was based, to the big city of Noxtown, and it’s a lucky thing we did, and had a sort of a trial run there, because the Strong Boy was not fully domesticated. I’m sure he knew how to behave in the big cities of Italy, where he performed daring feats of strength for the crowned heads of Europe as well as the canaille. But not in the great cities of North America, much less the small towns, where totally different rules apply.

Who knows what really runs through the empty heads of those crazy dagoes? They have some of the beatenest habits. Totally inexplicable to any white man. And the strong boy was no different. He seemed to have no respect for the sanctity of womanhood. I say this because the first thing Agustino did when we entered the Seven Stars Saloon was to try to pinch the barmaid on her derrière. I told him it was all right to pinch a serving wench in a low dive such as this, but I strongly cautioned him against making this his practice on the stret, explaining to him that, here in America, this sort of behavior is heavily frowned upon. Particularly in the Southron, where you’re taking your very life in your hands by such a deed.

I noticed when we dined out at a swell restaurant that he always, always, peeled his fruit, even if it was an apple or a pear. Though sometimes he would eat a portion of an orange peel.

Talk about backwards! Not only did he spit on the sidewalk, which is to be expected, but he also used to blow his nose–each nostril–without using a snotrag, and he didn’t always blow it in the gutter, either.

He was an excitable fellow, too—when we were in the fancy restaurant he forgot himself and start screeching at me in his gibble-gabble Italian dialect.

I later learned that his household habits were also rather peculiar. He had a fear amounting to absolute terror about walking around with wet hair, or catching a sudden breeze in his bed and dying in his sleep. I suppose he had this in common with a lot of his countrymen. Maybe that’s why your average spaghetti-bender will always sleep with all the doors and windows closed, and covered himself with blankets even when the weather is warm. Agustino would sometimes even sleep on the floor, lest he be assassinated by a stray breeze seeping through a crack in the windowpane. And if there was even the slightest breeze, he would wear a thick woolen scarf that his aged mother knitted for him, lest he catch an ill wind and it lay him low.

I will say this for him–he would always dress sharp whenever he went out, even to wearing a conical hat made of soft felt. I told him not to wear the hat but to throw it away; I explained to him that it made him look like a greenhorn. When he finally understood what I was getting it, he acted as though I had stung him to the quick. But when I told him that greenhorns tend to get robbed and are always handed the shitty end of the stick by native-born Americans, he wised up quick.

One habit I couldn’t break him of–he always had to polish his shoes before going out. Always. And if he happened to get the least speck of dust on them, he always had to go looking for a shoeshine boy. That men spent more money on shoeshines than most men spend on beer. But, as he didn’t drink beer, I suppose it all evened out.

Like I mentioned before, he was very religious, but it’s not like he got down on his prayer dukes an awful lot. It was more or less like a superstition to him. He would always cross himself when passing a church. I told him to stop doing that, because he would be taken for a mark by the sharpers, but he wouldn’t listen. He would always greet a priest with servile, almost dog-like respect. But he would also knock on wood to avert a catastrophe. He was a combination of a devout mackerel-snapper and a wild pagan. I’d never seen the like, as here in America, most fellers is generally one or the other but hardly ever both.

When we first arrived in Noxtown, Agustino wanted to walk with me hand-in-hand through the hilly streets and down the cobblestoned thoroughfares. I had to tell him that it wasn’t a good idea; that, unlike in the old country, people might get the wrong idea. He asked me to elaborate. I explained. He was utterly shocked. He had no idea such people existed. He lapsed into Italian. Called it an “infame”. He also used to greet me with a kiss, until I gently discouraged the habit. It had to be gentle. His feelings were badly hurt. He even went so far as to querulously ask, “Brek…opp?” I assured him that our friendship was unbroken. But I also explained to him that here in America, such displays between two men were considered very unusual. I urged him to be more sedate in his shows of affection, lest people decide we were more than just friends. Again, he declared “Infame!” and said that all Americans must have “very, very dirty minds! Disgrazia!”

1* SALUTATION
MILES DAVIS
AIREGIN

ALSO SEE:
HOW AM I TO KNOW?

SEE ALSO:
LIST OF JAZZ CONTRAFACTS
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_jazz_contrafacts

2* REFERENCE
TWELVE LETTERS THAT DIDN’T MAKE THE ALPHABET
http://mentalfloss.com/article/31904/12-letters-didnt-make-alphabet

3*HUMOR
HILARIOUS THINGS PEOPLE PUT ON THEIR RESUMES
https://twentytwowords.com/hilarious-things-put-on-peoples-resumes/

4*NOVELTY
Pat Robertson Casts Magic Spell Against Hurricane Florence, Declares ‘Shield Of Protection’
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2018/09/pat-robertson-casts-magic-spell-against-hurricane-florence-declares-shield-of-protection/

5*AVATAR OF THE ZEITGEIST
HUNTER S. THOMPSON ON THE POLITICS OF ALIENATION
https://www.thenation.com/article/this-political-theorist-predicted-the-rise-of-trumpism-his-name-was-hunter-s-thompson/

6* DAILY UTILITY
WHAT IF?
what-if.xkcd.com/14/

7*CARTOON
TOM & JERRY
BLUE CAT BLUES (1956)

ALSO SEE:
COLONEL BLEEP

8*PRESCRIPTION
BEAT THE MEATLES
BY CHRIS MILLER
https://exquisitelyboredinnacogdoches.blogspot.com/2005/07/beat-meatles.html

ALSO SEE:
NEW YORK POST: BEAT THE MEATLES
Note that Paul has on his ‘O’ face
adage.com/article/media/york-post-outdone-beatles-cover/314903/

9* RUMOR PATROL
Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead.
http://www.snopes.com/fact-check/come-alive/

10*LAGNIAPPE
PITCHFORK’S DUBIOUS LIST OF THE BEST 200 ALBUMS OF THE 1980S
pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/

ALSO SEE:
50 LGBTQ PRIDE SONGS
pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/50-songs-that-define-the-last-50-years-of-lgbtq-pride/

11*DEVIATIONS FROM THE PREPARED TEXT: A REVIEW OF OTHER MEDIA
9-1-1 Was an Inside Job
(The result of listening to way too much Wu Tang Clan and Nas:)

9-1-1 was an inside job
I heard it from a friend of a friend named Bob
The towers tumbled
And we was humbled
Al-Quada flier
They caught on fire
You better bet fool
That wasn’t jet fuel
’cause that’s too easy
It doesn’t please me
No, 9-1-1 was an inside job
I heard it from a friend of a friend named Bob

12* CONTROVERSIES IN POPULAR CULTURE
TOP TEN DUBIOUS CELEBRITY ENDORSEMENTS
10. Marilyn Monroe for Sominex
9. Tiger Woods for Trojan Condoms
8. Girolamo Savonarola for Duraflame Logs.
7. Anne Frank for Hide-Away Beds.
6. Jack Kerouac for Thunderbird Wine
5. Morris the Cat for Taco Bell
4. Isadora Duncan for Hermès scarves.
3. Adolf Hitler for Sharp’s Non-Alcoholic beer.
2. “Jane Roe” for Absorbine Jr.
1. Fatty Arbuckle for Louis Roederer Champagne.

THE INFORMATION #1010 SEPTEMBER 14, 2018

THE INFORMATION #1010
SEPTEMBER 14, 2018
Copyright 2018 FRANCIS DIMENNO
dimenno@gmail.com
https://dimenno.wordpress.com

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.-Shakespeare

WHEN THIS WORLD CATCHES FIRE
BOOK THREE: SAVAGE NOXTOWN
CHAPTER TWELVE: PART TWENTY-SEVEN: THE EASTERN GATE OF PARADISE

As for the Calabrian Strong Boy who I mentioned before,” said Sam Floyd to the young Victor Justin, “well, he was a most bitter enemy of Miss Big Tiny Small.”

I never got the gen on how this enmity arose. I’ve heard that he
gave Miss Big Tiny Small a hearty greeting when the Red & Black Carnival took her on, and she gave him the razz, and the high hat on top of that, as though she thought he was very much beneath her station and not even worth talking to. There seems to be no other way to account for why he disliked her so much.

Now, the Strong Boy was a very tender-hearted man, very kind to children and to animals–he had a small wire-haired terrier he doted on, and if anyone dast kick the little dog around or otherwise mistreat it, his great wrath would descend upon them, and it was most fearsome to behold. But otherwise, he was gentle, kind, and most considerate of others–not a blood-thirsty man at all, even though he lived mostly on a diet of fresh raw vegetables and
nearly raw meat, which he mostly paid for it himself, as he didn’t want to cause any inconvenience to the other carnies on the lot by glauming their provender. I would say he ate about one or two pounds of steak a day. He never put any butter ner salt on it, neither. He also had the cook prepare it rare, just barely scorched on either side. He hardly ever ate bread, ner rice–“I had ebnugh of beans and rice back in the old country” said he–but
very often, just before he put on a show–an “exhibition of strength” as he called it–he would eat a big plate of spaghetti, accompanied by a special tomato, basil, and raw garlic sauce that he prepared hisself.

He never was never seen to drink anything but wine, almost always with his meals, and he would always water it down so that it was not even half wine. He very seldom drank to excess, and eschewed the use of tobacco and coffee altogether. And he never even went near sweets, and for that reason his teeth were very strong and
healthy, and he had an iron jaw. Very often he would perform feats of strength which required him to clench some heavy article with his choppers. He once won a tug of war with three strong savages that way–on a bet. Just him and a rope.

He was what you might call a squat feller–weighed about
220 and stood only five feet five, but every part of him was muscle, and he was tough as a bull. He claimed he was never sick a day in his life, and he could easily lift and tote three hundred pounds without ever getting winded or even tired. He loved the kiddies, and he would often seat as many as six of them across his outstretched arms for as long as five minutes–someone timed it once. Not as easy as it looks. I guess he studied under some sort
of Indian Fakir, which is where he got some of his stamina. The rest he chalked up to regular sleep…and no gallivantin’ around at all hours with floozies or zooks.

It’s not that he wasn’t fond of the ladies, like every one of them Dagos seem to be. It’s just that he was, how do you say it, circumspect about just whom he bestowed his favors upon. There was a malicious rumor going about that he had a tiny pecker, and that he fucked like a jackrabbit, but if that was the case, then why were the zooks always hanging around him, hoping to catch his eye? But he had no truck with any of them scarlet women. He was deathly afraid of picking up the clap, and the calomel treatment. That’s mercury, in case you didn’t know it. He hated all quack doctors, and medical people in general. And he’d never go near a sickroom ner a hospital. Say what you will about his quirks, but maybe he knew something. Like I said, he was never sick a day in his life.

Strange to say, he often took up with older ladies–maiden aunts and the like. He said it was because he knew they were clean, and, anyway, all cats look alike in the dark, and, besides, they were always mighty grateful. And they knew how to keep their traps closed. All the same, I wouldn’t be surprised if, in his day,
he left a string of bastards from the Carolinas to the Gold Rush Country and back.

They dressed him up in a lion skin, like the mythical Hercules. He himself insisted on his billing–“The Calabrian Strong Boy.” Lord help you if you mistook him for a Sicilian. You would be treated to an angry rant about how Sicilians weren’t even true Italians at all, but a mongrel race composed of Moors, Turks, Greeks, “and other such trash.” Bending horseshoes and breaking chains by expanding his chest were parlor tricks for him. Child’s play. Kid stuff. He was phenomenally strong. One time, just to win a bet,
he carried a grown horse from one end of the lot to the other. He had other talents as well. He could juggle kettlebells that most men could barely lift. He could heft a five-hundred pound barbell with just the two fingers of his hands. He knew how to do all sorts of tricks with weights–double-handed snatches, the two-hands slow curl, the two-hands kettlebell press, the two hands holdout, the rectangular fix, deadlifts, ‘Plank’ stunts, lifting a bull calf, toting a Piano, single and double-handed swings–he could even tear a deck of cards in two, and I know this because I seen him do it once, to win a bet. A sucker bet, to be sure. Any man who tells you he can do it is a liar, or the cards are gaffed. But the Calabrian Strong Boy done it. The cards were real–I saw them myself. I
tell you, he was a physical marvel!

One time the girl trapeze artist was performing without a net
and fell, and the Calabrian Strong Boy caught her right in his arms in a dead run. I tell you, you’ve never seen nothing like
it. Naturally, after a feat like that, and him saving her life and all, she was more than willing to be his love-slave. But he wouldn’t take advantage. Besides, the knife-thrower was sweet on her, and the Calabrian Strong Boy was no coward, but he was no dummy either. He never went looking for trouble if he could avoid it.

He was, however, rather sweet on the Moss-Haired Girl. As was I,
and just about all the other cazarnies. But she wouldn’t give any of us a tumble. She was saving herself, she said, though for who or what, she would never say.

Now, a man like him. he could of been a captain of industry or
a figure of respect anywhere he went. But he chose the Carny life, for reasons known only to him. I think it was because, in a very strange way, he was very shy of ordinary people. Also, he was devoutly religious and would attend Mass and confession at any town that had a Catholic Church. Maybe he felt that his great strength was a gift from God, and if he tried to take advantage or push himself up into the front, God might punish him for his pride. There’s no accounting for human nature. Let me tell you–if I had his muscles, I wouldn’t be working the savages and the cross-roads clowns–I’d be the best strong-arm man there ever was.

But some folks, why, they just ain’t built that way. That’s all.

1* SALUTATION*
MIKE BERRY & THE OUTLAWS
TRIBUTE TO BUDDY HOLLY

ALSO SEE:
TOMMY ROE
SHEILA

2* REFERENCE
HARVARD VS. ASIANS
Asian-Americans are 5.6% of the U.S. population.
But Harvard’s class of 2021 isn’t 80% Asian-American. In fact, it is only about 24% Asian-American.
Discrimination!
https://features.thecrimson.com/2017/freshman-survey/makeup/

3*HUMOR
CAT AND RAT RANCH
*Glorious Opportunity To Get Rich!!! — We are starting a cat ranch in Lacon with 100,000 cats. Each cat will average 12 kittens a year. The cat skins will sell for 30 cents each. One hundred men can skin 5,000 cats a day. We figure a daily net profit of over $10,000. Now what shall we feed the cats? We will start a rat farm next door with 1,000,000 rats. The rats breed 12 times faster than the cats. So we will have four rats to feed each day to each cat. Now what shall we feed the rats? We will feed the rats the
carcasses of the cats after they have been skinned. Now Get This! We feed the rats to the cats and the cats to the rats and get the cat skins for nothing!
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cat-and-rat-ranch-hoax/

4*NOVELTY
MATTIS VS. SPICER
http://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/09/05/mattis-to-spicer-ive-killed-people-for-a-living-if-you-call-me-again-im-going-to-f-king-send-you-to-afghanistan/

5*AVATAR OF THE ZEITGEIST
LOW-COST HELP FOR SICK PETS
You don’t have to abandon your sick pet if you can’t afford a
veterinarian.
http://www.wpri.com/news/local-news/providence/owner-of-dog-abandoned-with-massive-tumor-turns-himself-in/1407455141

*6* DAILY UTILITY*
A WORD TO THE WISE
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xwknn7/reminder-george-w-bush-is-still-very-very-bad

7*CARTOON
S. CLAY WILSON
SPIDER JOY (NSFW)
https://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/s-clay-wilson-spider-joy-one-page-story-original-art-undated-the-spiders-are-gone-while-that-may-sound-like-a-goo/a/812-4251.s#

8*PRESCRIPTION
THE FACTS OF LIFE

ALSO SEE:
DRIVE-IN EXPLOITATION TRASH

9* RUMOR PATROL
YOU CAN’T GET COLOGNE IN PRISON
http://www.quora.com/Does-prison-allow-inmates-to-have-things-like-deodorants-colognes-or-shampoos

10*LAGNIAPPE
MILES DAVIS
OUT OF THE BLUE
LIVE AT BIRDLAND 1953

11*DEVIATIONS FROM THE PREPARED TEXT: A REVIEW OF OTHER MEDIA
THE WICKER MAN
It has been said that the original version of the Wicker Man is one of the scariest movies ever made. And that the remake is one of the funniest.
WICKER MAN 1973 TRAILER

12* CONTROVERSIES IN POPULAR CULTURE
WHO WAS THE ORIGINAL “GENT’S ROOM JOURNALIST”?
Drew Pearson? Walter Winchell? Whom do we believe?
https://books.google.com/books?id=s2mhAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT144&lpg=PT144&dq=%22gent%27s+room+journalist%22&source=bl&ots=xDcy0I9w6b&sig=Aqwtlr9MJBWEgfDope49aSa34uU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiczpio2pfdAhWhzVkKHQ1YAV4Q6AEwAHoECAMQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22gent’s%20room%20journalist%22&f=false

https://books.google.com/books?id=tjkhCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA413&lpg=PA413&dq=%22gent%27s+room+journalist%22+peglar&source=bl&ots=KYODF0LPrz&sig=_JL_0J9bRH_LlopGFea-oAXXYAU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjm9YnX2pfdAhXiw1kKHcSvC4QQ6AEwAXoECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22gent’s%20room%20journalist%22%20peglar&f=false

PRNDL

PRNDL
A PLAY in One Act
By

Francis DiMenno

I-a

THE SCENE: An employee’s lounge in a veteran’s hospital. The setting is Spartan: a wooden table, a few folding metal chairs and a broom leaning against a wall. The year is 1984.

THE CHARACTER: Anthony D’Amato, 37. In the course of the monologue he assumes the voices of several characters, including a RADIO DJ, his former wife, LOTTE, his former commanding officer THE SARGE, a JUDGE, and a LAWYER. At the discretion of the director, these parts could be played by separate characters.

I-i
(ANTHONY D’AMATO, a man in his late thirties, is seated at a small wooden table, with a glass of water and a package of birthday candles. As the play begins, he tears open a package of muffins, takes one out, and sets it on the table. He then takes out a birthday candle, sticks it into the muffin, and lights the wick of the candle. He watches it for a second or two, takes a tattered photograph out of his wallet, sets it on the table, picks up a long-handled broom, and begins sweeping. )

…………………………………………ANTHONY
…………………………………………(Singing softly)
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday little Tony….

(He sets the broom aside and gazes at the photograph on the table.)

Happy birthday to…
(Softly)
I left a love child at home.
(Looking at the candle.)
I was young then, I thought I knew. I left a love child at home. We all fall down, and go figure. When it’s time to go, it’s time to go.
(He takes a drink of water and wipes his mouth on his sleeve.)
I was young, I thought I knew.
(A pause.)
They threw me out. They threw me right out of the dining room. They threw me out.
(Heatedly.)
It was all over the counter, it was all over—there was no more soup, it was all over the counter. They wanted to give me eggs. I said eggs are bad. They wanted to give me eggs. I don’t eat eggs. I break eggs is what I do. I break eggs.
I-ii
(He smiles.)
But I never break for work. I used to drive a cab. It was a favor for the Sarge. Me and the Sarge, we were on the bum. Now I’m a bum. I’m a bum, I’m a bum, I’m on my bum and I’m a bum.
(He picks up the broom and holds it bristle-side up, speaking to it as though it were a person.)
First time I met the Sarge? D’Amato, said the Sarge. D’Amato, clean! Yes, Sarge! D’Amato, clean that! Yes, Sarge! D’Amato, clean that garbage can! YES, SARGE! Not like that D’Amato, you’re spraying me with that effin’ hose! Can’t you follow simple instructions? Yes, Sarge, I said, yes Sarge.
(A pause.)
What for, Sarge, I should have said. What for? I’ll give you the what for, I should have said, I’ll give you the what for for that.
(He hurls his broom to the floor.)
I never should of gone back.
(He sits. A pause. He stands.)
There were eight top ten songs back then, there were eight top ten songs I used to sing.
(Using the broom as a microphone.)
Well, then, uh, Anthony, we’ll play that song for you, Anthony. And who’s it going out to? Little Tony. Well, all right then. This song is going out to little Tony, from his dad.
(He sings.)
Hey, baby….
(A pause.)
Listen, dear, they’re playing our song. Listen, listen.
(A pause. Softly.)
I should have said I won’t go back. I should of never gone back. I…should have gone back. I should have gone back to her. I left a love child at home. I left a love child.
(As though speaking to his wife.)
A lot you know, Lotte, a lot you know. You’re my wife, but a lot you know.
(Shouting.)
The kid is sick, Lotte! The kid is sick, he needs a doctor! Go get a doctor, the kid is sick! “Who’s gonna pay for a doctor?”

I-iii
(Calmly.)
I need you back, Lotte, I need you back. I like your hair, Lotte, I like your hair. Just lemme, just lemme kiss you Lotte. Lemme hold you lemme touch you lemme just kiss you on the neck.
(Talking like a lawyer.)
I look forward to discussing this matter, I look—
(As though talking to his wife.)
Do I disgust you, my dear? Do I disgust you? C’mon, don’t talk that way. I’m not drunk, I’m not! Just let me, just, I’m not drunk, let me kiss you, just let me kiss you, I’m not drunk.
(Calmly.)
Our magic drugs! Our magic drugs! I was young then. I was gung-ho! Join up, you’ll never go over, they said, join up, you’ll never go. I was in tenth grade then, it was in tenth grade I joined up.
(In the voice of a Disc Jockey.)
Someone named Anthony just called and asked us to play this song for his son, so we’re going to play this song for little Tony.
(In his natural voice.)
I aid, Listen Honey, they’re playing, listen Honey, they’re playing our song. And she said “Don’t you ‘Honey’ me, I’m not your Honey, don’t you call me ‘Honey’. I said I’ll call you Honey, I’ll call you Honey. Just let me hug you Honey, let me hug you like a Honey bear. “Don’t you call me Honey, I don’t want none of your Honey, don’t you call me Honey.”
(Calmly.)
Well, there’s no use to drag it out then.
(Shouting.)
Call the doctor, the kid is sick, he needs a doctor, go call the doctor! “The doctor ain’t gonna come, you didn’t pay him for the last time.” Go call the doctor, the kid is sick. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what.
(A long pause.)
I’m looking at you!
(He peers from between his fingers.)
I’m looking at you! Don’t you look at me, she said. It’s alright! We’re married now! “I’ll put out the light you keep lookin’ at me.”

I-iv
(A pause.)
She took me to court.
(A pause.)
Ten years ago. She took me to court.
(A pause.)
I’ll turn out the light, she said, you keep lookin’ at me. Oh no you don’t, I said. We’re married now. “I’ll turn out the light.”
(A pause.)
And she turned out the light.
(A long pause. At this point, he begins to imagine he’s in court.)
My name is–. My name is Anthony D’Amato, your honor, I said. I am twenty-seven years of age. I am twenty-seven. “Is that your age?” Yes, your honor, that’s your age. “I’m not your honor, I’m a lawyer, don’t call me your honor.” And they laughed at me. “Do you know why you’re here today?” My name is D’Amato, Anthony D’Amato, and them’s some tough cookies. “Do you know why you’re here? You have to answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. Do you understand? Answer yes or no.”
(A pause.)
I understand. “Where do you live, Mr. D’Amato?” I live right here in Boston. But never come back, see—I should never have come back.
(A pause.)
“Are you presently working at this time?”
(A pause.)
No, I’m not working. No, I’m not.
(A pause.)
“Can you tell us how you live if you have no job?”
(A pause.)
I mean, that’s the problem. I don’t know how I live. I don’t know.
(A pause.)
“Are you collecting unemployment? Are you collecting a weekly check?”

I-v
(A pause.)
No, I answered, no I’m not, no. “How do you live without a check, how do you live?” I get what they call a veteran’s benefit, I get what they call a, what you call. “Were you in Vietnam?” “My client went in Vietnam,” they said, “My client went to Vietnam.” “When did you get your payments? When did you start to get your check?” It was April 1975, it was in April and it was cold that year. “Stick to the question, please, stick to the question. Will you tell the court just what your background is?” I never got through High School, your honor. “Did you leave of your own free will?”
(He thrusts his broom handle at an imaginary antagonist.)
You sure like to stick it to a guy, your honor. You sure like to stick it to a guy. No disrespect. I like to tell a joke or two, you know. You know what my favorite word is? My favorite word is PRNDL.
(He motions with his broom as though shifting gears in an automobile.)
P…R…N…D…L. Purndul. I like to tell a joke or two, your honor. Can’t you take a joke or two? “The court has duly noted that you like to tell a joke or two. That fact is duly noted. Will you please answer only the questions that we ask—“
(Shouting.)
The court has duly noted this! The court has duly noted that! “Mr. D’Amato, please sit down! One more such outburst and we’ll cite you for contempt!”
(He sits.)
I’m sorry, your honor. “When you left your schooling in the middle of the term, will you tell the court just what it was you did?” I had a lot of different jobs, your honor, I did all kinds of jobs. “Will you kindly tell the court the kinds of jobs you did?” I had to take whatever came along. I had to take it. A man has to eat to stay alive. I used to like bread because it filled me up. I used to eat Jello until it made me sick to look at. I used to eat soup, maybe, for dinner. I lived that way ‘til I was seventeen. “The court…is not asking what you liked to eat…the court is asking what you did for a living.” I joined the draft. I joined the service. I wanted to march in the big parade. “Were you called for the draft? Or did you enlist on your own?” I left my parents when I was just a kid, I left my parents so what could I do? It’s a damn shame. I don’t like to swear, your honor, but that’s the way it is. “The court has no interest…in the fact that you left your parents…or whether you like to swear…just tell the court how long you served.”
(A long pause.)
I served for one long year, your honor. One long year and a day. I thought I would learn to fight or die. “The court has no interest in what you thought you learned. The court wants to know what rank you attained.” Private, your honor. I even made some friends there in the service. There was Frenchy…and Precious…and The Drifter. The best bunch of guys I ever knew and most of them died in the stink and the mud. “And what did you do when you left the service?”
I-vi
(A pause.)
As far as I’m concerned, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know a trade and never knew how to go about the learning of a trade. “Did you ever see combat when you were in the service?”
(A long pause.)
Combat was in my ears for days and days. Ever after I would pick myself up and hear what I was sayin’ and it wasn’t good. My brains went plumb to hell. And after that I had no place to go. They weren’t supposed to take me ‘cause I never finished school. All my friends went over and I never saw ‘em again. Frenchy was a lover boy, he gave the Sarge the crabs. Precious always had to have his way, he thought he was some hot stuff. The Drifter would hardly ever talk. I liked him the best. You always knew exactly where you stood with The Drifter. I never should have left and you can’t come back. I never should of tried. Before I left I was at the bottom of the anthill and when I got back I was even worse. The war is how I lost my bearings, that’s the thing about the war, the war was one big tub of shit. I’m sorry, your honor, no disrespect. “Since leaving the service, have you been employed in any gainful fashion?”
(A pause.)
You’re trying to say, did I work, you mean? “That is what the court would like to know. When is the last time you held a job?”
(A pause.)
“What is the job you held the last time you held a job?”
(A pause.)
There’s a star in the woodwork on the floor. Ain’t that funny? There’s a star on the woodwork floor. I used to think I might want to be a carpenter once, ain’t that funny? I used to think I might want to be a carpenter.
(Holding the broomstick like a microphone.)
This song goes out to little Tony…..
(He sings.)
If I were a carpenter, and you were my lady, would you marry me anyway, and have my….
(He rubs his eyes. Long pause.)
Yeah, your honor, I held a job. A job is hell. I held a job, the job got done, and no more job. It was a hospital for people in the war, a what do you call it, a hospital for veterans. Talking datewise, I really couldn’t tell you. Talking datewise, it was several years ago. “Before you started work at the hospital, the court has been given to understand that you drove a cab. Is that correct?”

I-vii
(In a kind of sing-song.)
I drove a cab, back and forth, I drove a cab. I did it as a favor for the Sarge. Two bucks an hour, twelve hours a day. I drove them all. Here and there. Now and then I took a big tip. Now and then I took a man in a dress, a woman in a robe, a woman with no hair, a man who stuck me up. Back and forth, back and forth. But you can’t go back, now, can you. Our magic drugs, they said, our magic drugs. My favorite word is PRNDL. P-R-N-D-L is my favorite word. I left a love child at home.
(Shouting.)
Call a doctor, I said, the kid is sick, go call a doctor. What, on your salary, she said. We can’t afford the last time he came.
(A long pause. Anthony licks his finger and snuffs out the candle.)
I knew it. I knew all along that guys like me were never meant to make it. It ain’t no one I blame. It ain’t no one person I blame. Where’s my buddies? Where’s Frenchy, where’s Precious, where’s good old Drifty? He’s the one I’d turn to when things got bad. “I run away from home when I was ten,” he said, “and I been runnin’ ever since.” They used to call me Little Ratty ‘cause they said I was sneaky, but I wasn’t no sneak, I was honest, even when it made me look bad, I was honest that way, I guess I got that much to be proud of I guess.
(A pause.)
All I wanted was a fair shake. No disrespect, your honor, but here I am, and all I did was nothing, and it wasn’t even what I did, it was what I didn’t do. I couldn’t get a doctor for little Tony, I couldn’t get him to a doctor….Guys like me, it don’t make no sense for us to have kids at all, the way life is. You think that maybe if it’s hard enough the kids will grow up tough. That’s what my Dad used to say and look where it got me, my little Tony, gone so soon….I never asked for nothing I couldn’t earn but some things just ain’t fair. And educated men like you don’t never have to deal with stuff that guys like me put up with, everybody just treats me like dirt. They tell you don’t give up until the other fellow blinks…but what’s the sense of trying to stare him down when he don’t even know you’re there?
(A long pause.)
He lives so far away from where you’re at that he don’t even know you’re there.
(A pause.)
Yeah, your honor, I drive a cab, maybe handle numbers on the side, take a bet, take ‘em to the track and if they win maybe they pay me for my trouble, maybe not. I don’t talk good. I know that. But still, it makes me feel kind of proud to see somebody write it down. I never knew how people felt when you tell ‘em something and they write it down. So sure, I take ‘em to the track, I don’t know, maybe scrounge some coin and place a bet or two myself, might as well, as long as I’m up there, I might as well. I used to sing a little. Go to bars, get a little liquored up. But now I can’t sing no more.
I-viii
(A pause.)
Driving a cab you get to meet a lot of people. All these years. You tell a joke or two and maybe if you got a little luck they come and see you when they put you in the ground. It’s nice to know they’ll come around and maybe look a little sad at the dirt they put you six feet under in. Maybe you think I have a lot of beefs. I don’t know. But lemme tell you something—once they slam that coffin lid, that’s all she wrote. I ain’t so hot for Bible stuff but something in there says, “To dust you shall return” and that’s just the way it is and anyone who says it ain’t, ain’t dealin’ with a deck of fifty-two.
(A pause. He stands.)
An old man at thirty-seven.
(He sings.)
I walk to myself and I talk to myself….
(In his natural voice.)
You know…the cops never picked me up for nothing I never done.
(In the voice of his wife.)
“Don’t you oh baby me,” she said, “don’t you oh baby me.”
(Flatly.)
The kid is sick. The kid is fuckin’ sick.
(In his natural voice.)
If it ain’t one damn thing it’s another.
(Shaking his head.)
Hmmm.
(Staring at the floor.)
Ain’t it funny how time slips away.
LIGHTS FADE.
(Confidingly.)
I go to Haymarket on Saturday afternoons. I go to Haymarket and they say, wait for the garbage wagon, wait for the garbage wagon, it’s on its way, wait for the swill wagon, here comes the garbage wagon, go over there and pick it up, pick up all that garbage. That’s what they say. I go to Haymarket and they say, there’s plums over there, there’s plums over there for the taking, there’s plums.

I-ix
(A pause.)
Whenever I fall asleep I think, better get on Mem. Drive, get over there on Mem. Drive, driver, there’s a bump on Mem. Drive that always wakes me up, there’s a bump over there on Mem. Drive that drives me crazy.
(A long pause.)
There is no love…without life. There is no life without love.
(A brief pause.)
In this clumsy world we all fall down in. In this clumsy world we all fall down. The world is not entirely to blame.
(A pause.)
The world…is not to blame.
(He lifts his head and smiles.)
FADE OUT.

MODERN WISDOM NUMBER 239 SEPTEMBER 2018

MODERN WISDOM: AMERICA’S ONLY HUMOR MAGAZINE
NUMBER 239
SEPTEMBER 2018

Copyright 2018 Francis DiMenno
dimenno@gmail.com
http://www.dimenno.wordpress.com

1. NOIR MISFORTUNE COOKIES: SECOND SERIES
601. You can’t sleep. And you don’t deserve to.
602. Everything is a joke to you. But God is not amused.
603. Hard work never killed anybody. But it never did you any good.
604. You are swimming in a quarry made for drowning, foolish one.
605. You are riding a rocket–a rocket to infamy.
606. Don’t follow the trials of vulgar celebrities–you have your own problems.
607. They hate you because you dragged better men down with you.
608. You are an honest citizen in a city of shame.
609. She’ll be your woman if you’ll be her man. But you are no man.
610. A dame who wears soul-crushing boots is poison to a gink like you.
611. You think you’re an individual with a life of your own. Think again.
612. A field mouse is all you are. A simple, simple field mouse.
613. You load sixteen tons and what do you get? An early grave.
614. Your subscriptions to Life magazine, and to life have both run out.
615. The Aryan Brotherhood shuns you. You are too vicious for their taste.
616. You are a puppet. And puppets can’t go to heaven.
617. Your beloved cat will gnaw on your warm corpse.
618. You are not a 98-pound weakling. You are a 298-pound weakling.
619. Your ball team will use you for second base. Literally.
620. You can neither beat them nor join them. So sorry.
621. You need a hug. But nobody will ever volunteer.
622. The God who created you is dead and will stay that way.
623. Gamble–or let your dog go hungry? You already know which.
624. You have fallen into and been felled by trouble. And you can’t get up.
625. Your dog is dead. Who will love you now?
626. You will be remembered only as a brutal object lesson.
627. Your own dog prefers the company of mangy alleycats to yours.
628. Sometimes you get what you ask for. In your case, early death.
629. Your dog is your worst enemy. Your own dog!
630. That all-day sucker you’re clutching is a lifetime supply.
631. They will find human skull’s under your grandma’s petunia bed.
632. Take off that stupid hat, baldy. Everyone knows.
633. The Big Man wants to burn his brand on your blubbery skin.
634. You are too weak to run and too fat to hide.
635. Mother said there’d be days like this. Not…years.
636. Put down the cake, Fatty. The Big Boss Man don’t like slobs.
637. Listen, Scarface–coppers in every state have memorized your ugly mug.
638. You’re red hot in this town, Crumb. Nobody will hide you.
639. You think you have it bad? Well…actually, you do.
640. Even crack whores scorn your lusty advances.
641. That woman who wrote to you in stir…is a man.
642. Don’t look in the mirror. You’ll see a dead man.
643. The Gypsy refused to read your fortune. Not a good sign.
644. You’ll be buried in a cheap suit for your funeral, Monkey Man.
645. You’ve fallen so low even the gutter doesn’t want you.
646. You will be found in a bedsitter, dead, with a half-eaten potato in your mouth.
647. Even Jesus would laugh at your ridiculous excuses.
648. It’s a dog eat dog world–but you’re a fucking rat.
649. Winos will mistake you for a fellow homeless man.
650. They no longer fear you and they will kick your ass.

2. ROSEMARY
Girls. When I was seven or eight, I just didn’t like ’em. I would watch the Miss America pageant with my mother, and, when Miss Texas or Miss Kentucky would saunter down the runway. I would shock her by saying, “She’s ugly,”

“No, she isn’t,” my mother would say. “Don’t you like girls?”

So I decided I would give girls a chance. There was one who lived in a house on our alley, called Mitre Way, in the Bloomfield section of Pittsburgh. Her name was Rosemary. I have forgotten countless phone calls and baseball scores, but I have always remembered her name. She was short, freckled, slightly pudgy, with green eyes and red hair– though I might have preferred green hair and red eyes.

One hot summer day I saw her in front of her house and I told her to meet me at the flowered arbor maintained by the hillbilly family who lived on our street. She wanted to know what for, and I told her it was a surprise.

I had absorbed the information that for some reason girls expected to be given presents, It seemed like a waste of money to me. But I was determined to make her like me. So there I sat, an hour later, in the broiling sun, waiting for Rosemary, holding two nutty buddies. These were vanilla ice cream cones topped with chocolate and peanuts, Like a chump, I waited under that flowered wooden arch for about twenty minutes, though it seemed like hours. Bees buzzed by, attracted by the two rapidly melting ice cream cones I was holding in each sticky fist. I was deathly afraid of bees. But I persevered.

She never showed up.

So, of course, I ate the nutty buddies myself. And was faintly nauseous for the rest of the afternoon.

As I walked home, I thought, “My father was right. Women are just no damn good.”

3. BAD FRIDAY: A NOVEL
In the spring of 1970 Roy Gobb, a snuffling, closeted, fat, and
indifferent twenty year old, drops out of college and flees the
backwater of Hickory Hollow in the wake of an impending drug bust.

He gulps a handful of goofballs, boards a bus, falls into a stupor,
and staggers off the dirty dog on Treasure Island, where he somehow
gets swept up in a Gay Pride parade hosted by the Red and Black
Carnical and crowded with hoboes, hippies, freaks, barkers, spielers,
performing dogs, drag queens, and assorted morphodites.

As the throng crosses the bridge into Old Town, an angry red-faced man
shouts from the sidelines: “I DON’T CARE IF THEY DO IT, BUT DO THEY
GOTTA BRAG ABOUT IT? ASSFUCKERS!?”

A friendly hippie in full cowboy clown regalia slips thirsty Roy Gobb
a Coca Cola bottle laced with a hefty dose of LSD.

Roy sees the reflection of the Megalopolitan Hotel hard by the Old
Town park lake as a series of brilliantly green and yellow translucent
boxes, and fears he is losing his mind.

He breaks free of the milling throng and begins madly to frolic in a
fountain near the lake. He is convinced that he has been baptized, but
the sky becomes overcast and he begins to shiver from the unaccustomed
cold.

Late in the morning of that Good Friday, while in his delirium, he
seeks refuge in St. Augustine’s Cathedral, where he hears the
following prayer declaimed by a defiantly unreconstructed priest of
the old school.

Let us pray also for the faithless Jews: that Almighty God may remove
the veil from their hearts; so that they too may acknowledge Jesus
Christ our Lord. Almighty and eternal God, who dost not exclude from
thy mercy even Jewish faithlessness: hear our prayers, which we offer
for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy
Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness.
Through the same Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee
in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Roy Gobb becomes intoxicated on communion wine, and the following day
is born again as a devout Roman Catholic, but soon is taken in by a
sinister band of “wandering bishops”.

Various horrendous adventures ensue.

4. TOM CLANCY
…is John LeCarre for drunks.

And the moral of the espionage novel is simply this:

If the knife is twisted very deep into your back then it was probably
your very best friend.

5. GOVERNOR SQUIRT

I actually knew Governor Squirt. Knew him well. He was on the literary
magazine at Ivy.

He was an odd duck, even then.

Odder still when he went to Afghanistan to aid the Mujadheen.

And when he was an advisor to Angola UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi.

And when he compared the estate tax to the holocaust.

And when he married a woman born in Kuwait. He was 50. She was 32. As
per the Muslim formula: A bride should be half a man’s age plus seven.

The Islam thing doesn’t bother me. It ain’t nothing. It doesn’t truly
signify. Governor Squirt has always, but always, had one beady eye
open for the main chance.

People claim that I’m a little nutty. Let me pull your coat, my
brother–I am the calm epitome of rationality next to good ol’
Governor Squirt.

Dunno what happened to him back in ’78, but he has been behaving quite
erratically ever since.

Prior to ’78, he seemed pretty normal, if a bit inhibited. Maybe
that’s why he joined the college literary magazine (on the business
end). Maybe he figured he’d find him a wild bohemian gal who would
help him shed his inhibitions.

After ’78, I dunno–he started in with the weird.

“The facts are that government is not a benevolent charity,” Governor
Squirt said in 1978. “You go to city hall or the post office and what
do you see? Bureaucrats pushing papers, drinking coffee and harassing
the people.”

Sound like he’s simply parroting his Dad, right? But why so outspoken?
He didn’t strike me as anyone who had ever been oppressed as a direct
result of government policies. Why this obsession?

You can see why he veered right. I think he saw that there was going
to be a reaction against the Carter administration and he figured he
was the logical fellow to lead the charge.

It seems to me that everything about his public career simply screams
“Leave me alone!”

But he doesn’t want to be alone.

He has always paradoxically gravitated to like-minded loners.

Something must have scared the shit out of him. His choice of
metaphors reflects this.

His current staff has been keeping a mental list. “The sword of
Damocles, he likes that one a lot…”…[and recall, too] his most
famous [line]: He wants to shrink government so it’s small enough that
he could “drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

What does that tell you?

It tells me that perhaps all was not exactly shits ‘n’ giggles back at
the childhood manse of Governor Squirt.

Allegedly, “His family were financially comfortable and politically
conservative—once, [his father] took bites out of his children’s Dairy
Joy ice cream cones to demonstrate what taxes took out of the family’s
earnings.”

Um, ‘scuse me, but this type of parental imprinting sounds calculated
to create a syndrome precisely out of one of the case studies of
Krafft-Ebbing.

For instance:

CEREBRAL NEUROSES ANESTHESIA. Case 9.
F. J., aged nineteen, student; mother was
nervous, sister epileptic. At the age of four, acute brain
affection, lasting two weeks. As a child he was not
affectionate, and was cold towards his parents ; as a student
he was peculiar, retiring, preoccupied with self, and given
to much reading. Well endowed mentally. Masturbation
from fifteenth year. Eccentric after puberty, with con-
tinual vacillation between religious enthusiasm and ma-
terialism now studying theology, now natural sciences.
At the university his fellow-students took him for a fool.
He read Jean Paul almost exclusively, and wasted his
time. Absolute absence of sexual feeling toward the op-
posite sex. Once he indulged in intercourse, experienced
no sexual feeling in the act, found coitus absurd, and did
not repeat it. Without any emotional cause whatever, he
often had a thought of suicide. He made it the subject of
a philosophical dissertation, in which he contended that it
was, like masturbation, a justifiable act. After repeated
experiments which he made on himself with various poi-
sons, he attempted suicide with fifty-seven grains of opium,
but he was saved and sent to an asylum.

Patient was destitute of moral and social feelings. His
writings disclosed incredible frivolity and vulgarity. His
knowledge was of a wide range, but his logic peculiarly
distorted. There was no trace of emotionality. He treated
everything (even the sublime) with incomparable cynicism
and irony. He pleaded for the justification of suicide with
false philosophical premises and conclusions, and, as one
would speak of the most indifferent affair, he declared that
he intended to accomplish it. He regretted that his pen-
knife had been taken from him. If he had it, he would
open his veins as Seneca did in the bath. At one time
a friend had given him instead of a poison as he sup-
posed, a cathartic. Instead of sending him to the other
world, it sent him to the water-closet Only the Great
Operator could eradicate his foolish and fatal idea with the
scythe of death, etc.

By the way: “Dairy Joy…cone”?

You literally cannot make this sort of thing up. Big Daddy
government–literally–wants to take big bites out of Governor
Squirt’s manhood?

I dunno.

Seems simplistic, and yet…and yet….

Perhaps we all need to say a prayer.

God help Governor Squirt.

God help us all.

6. BOODY: THE BIZARRE COMICS OF BOODY ROGERS. CRAIG YOE, ED.
I recently read, in Craig Yoe’s newly released anthology of the work
of cartoonist Boody Rogers, the following:

Boody knew a fellow whose nickname was “Fine Comb Shit”.

“[Rogers] explained that Fine Comb Shit got this sweet name when he
and Boody and another kid were walking down a dirt road. Bill, or
whatever his given name was, leaned down and picked up a now filthy
dirty comb that someone had dropped and exclaimed, “I just found a
fine comb!” The other boy disapprovingly shot right back, “fine comb
shit!” Bill didn’t keep the comb, but the epithet stuck.”

7.THE VALUE OF A COLLEGE EDUCATION
On April 21, 2009, Boston Radio Talk Show Host Michael Graham
apparently declared that a college education is actually useless.
http://www.michaelgraham.com/archive.aspx

Why doesn’t some radio shouting head ever come up with the real truth
about a college education?

Namely, this:

Traditionally a college degree:

Indicated that you could work under a deadline.

Indicated that you could speak and behave correctly, and write a
coherent sentence.

To a great extent, it was a credential that indicated that you had, to
some degree, the potential to become socialized in the ways of the
workforce, and were a member of the middle class, or aspired to be.

For the upper classes, who presumably attended elite universities
(thanks in large part to their family connections), it was a parchment
that stated that they were eminently clubbable.

Nowadays, the paradigms have shifted.

Nonetheless, management still clings to the old ways.

Company policies require college degrees for certain job descriptions
as a matter of course. It’s apparently a way of weeding out the
so-called “undesirables,” regardless of their qualifications. If you
have neither the money nor the determination to acquire such a degree,
you operate under a crushing disadvantage.

Ours is a society that clings to the illusion that it is still, to
some degree, a meritocracy. Credentialism is the way in which an
alleged meritocracy keeps score.

It has been also been said, by others who are wiser and have more
experience in this matter, that not just any old college degree will
do. Your major, your degree-granting institution, and the influential
people there who may have acted as your mentors–all of these factors
also help to determine your initial place within the workforce
hierarchy.

But since these guidelines cannot be condensed into a 12-second
know-nothing rant, I imagine they are never even so much as mentioned,
let alone discussed.

8. THE HITLER CHANNEL
Credit Spy Magazine for coming up with the name “the Hitler Channel”
for the History Channel.

Since they went out of business circa 1994, that was quite some time ago.

Incidentally, the History Channel is to the study of History, what a
graham cracker is to a three course meal.

Inadequate.

Distorted, unsourced, and generally full of dubious assertions and
outright fabrications.

9. WHAT YOU LIKE IS WHO YOU ARE
What you like is who you are?

I suspect this is a younger person’s misapprehension of human nature.

Though true, to a certain extent.

There’s no compelling reason to get on your aesthetic high horse if a
prospective g.f. dresses like Annie Hall, or doesn’t know what Fort
Knox is.

There’s no reason to jeer (except inwardly) if a fellow office worker
goes in for slasher flicks, or prefers Rush or Grand Funk Railroad to
XTC.

But it is human nature to sort by artificially generated categories.

Sad, but true.

I talked to a fellow the other night who told me that barbequing with
propane simply isn’t done.

It’s charcoal briquets, or nothing.

I could have pointed out that mesquite wood is better still, but I
thought that I didn’t even care enough to pursue that game.

When needed, code-shifting is the best strategy. I think that it’s
perhaps best to be at least aware of the full array of aesthetic
choices, so, if need by, you can put snobs and bigots in their
rightful place, whether silently or not.

But this whole aesthetic argument–particularly concerning
“middlebrow”– has been a part of American discourse since at least
the late 1940s. Check this out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middlebrow

Furthermore, tastemakers are far from immune from this syndrome of
wanting to sort and classify, and from consequently being called to
task for their perceived obviousness and obliviousness.

Bring the snark!
e.g.:
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2007/12/pitchforks_top_100_tracks_of_2.html

Avid partisanship is the epitome of uncool.

But to be a hipster is to be 22 forever.

It all depends on where you want to be on the high affect/low affect scale.

Yet nobody seems to want to face up to the fact that, to a certain
degree, aesthetic taste merely functions as a class marker.

The denial of lower, coarse, vulgar, venal, servile – in a word,
natural – enjoyment, which constitutes the sacred sphere of culture,
implies an affirmation of the superiority of those who can be
satisfied with the sublimated, refined, disinterested, gratuitous,
distinguished pleasures forever closed to the profane. That is why art
and cultural consumption are predisposed, consciously and deliberately
or not, to fulfill a social function of legitimating social
differences. (Bourdieu, 1984:7)

http://books.google.com/books?id=bhhtg1sz0YAC&pg=PA80&lpg=PA80&dq=aesthetic+taste+is,+to+a+certain+degree,+a+class+marker.&source=bl&ots=xlkSn0ppyL&sig=XrSj23TCXJON8Kj_5W1wQWcTPPI&hl=en&ei=K7D_SaPbDoHCtweb8f2TBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2

What it all comes down to is this:

When monkeys begin to act strange the other monkeys will bite them.

10. WORDS ASSOCIATED WITH CHRISTIANITY AND BRITISH HISTORY TAKEN OUT OF A CHILDREN’S DICTIONARY

[The children are told the same sentences regularly, while they sleep,
again and again.] “But old clothes are beastly, we always throw away
old clothes. Ending is better than mending. Ending is better …. The
more stitches, the less riches, the more stitches … I love new
clothes, I love new clothes, I love …”–Aldous Huxley, BRAVE NEW
WORLD

OUT:
Carol, cracker, holly, ivy, mistletoe

Dwarf, elf, goblin

Abbey, aisle, altar, bishop, chapel, christen, disciple, minister,
monastery, monk, nun, nunnery, parish, pew, psalm, pulpit, saint, sin,
devil, vicar

Coronation, duchess, duke, emperor, empire, monarch, decade

adder, ass, beaver, boar, budgerigar, bullock, cheetah, colt, corgi,
cygnet, doe, drake, ferret, gerbil, goldfish, guinea pig, hamster,
heron, herring, kingfisher, lark, leopard, lobster, magpie, minnow,
mussel, newt, otter, ox, oyster, panther, pelican, piglet, plaice,
poodle, porcupine, porpoise, raven, spaniel, starling, stoat, stork,
terrapin, thrush, weasel, wren.

Acorn, allotment, almond, apricot, ash, bacon, beech, beetroot,
blackberry, blacksmith, bloom, bluebell, bramble, bran, bray, bridle,
brook, buttercup, canary, canter, carnation, catkin, cauliflower,
chestnut, clover, conker, county, cowslip, crocus, dandelion, diesel,
fern, fungus, gooseberry, gorse, hazel, hazelnut, heather, holly,
horse chestnut, ivy, lavender, leek, liquorice, manger, marzipan,
melon, minnow, mint, nectar, nectarine, oats, pansy, parsnip, pasture,
poppy, porridge, poultry, primrose, prune, radish, rhubarb, sheaf,
spinach, sycamore, tulip, turnip, vine, violet, walnut, willow

IN:
Blog, broadband, MP3 player, voicemail, attachment, database, export,
chatroom, bullet point, cut and paste, analogue

Celebrity, tolerant, vandalism, negotiate, interdependent, creep,
citizenship, childhood, conflict, common sense, debate, EU, drought,
brainy, boisterous, cautionary tale, bilingual, bungee jumping,
committee, compulsory, cope, democratic, allergic, biodegradable,
emotion, dyslexic, donate, endangered, Euro

Apparatus, food chain, incisor, square number, trapezium,
alliteration, colloquial, idiom, curriculum, classify, chronological,
block graph

11. THE TYSON WIT

“I really dig Hannibal. Hannibal had real guts. He
rode elephants into Cartilage.”

“I guess I’m gonna fade into Bolivian.”

“I can sell out Madison Square Garden masturbating.”

“I’m on the Zoloft to keep from killing y’all.”

“[He] called me a ‘rapist’ and a ‘recluse.’ I’m not a
recluse.”

“Lennox Lewis, I’m coming for you man. My style is
impetuous. My defense is impregnable, and I’m just
ferocious. I want your heart. I want to eat his
children. Praise be to Allah!”

“My main objective is to be professional but to kill
him.”

“I want to rip out his heart and feed it to him
[Lennox Lewis]. I want to kill people. I want to rip
their stomachs out and eat their children.”

“This is my career. I have children to raise. I have
to retaliate. He butted me. Look at me. My kids will
be scared of me.”

To Razor Ruddock: “You’re sweet. I’m going to make
sure you kiss me good with those big lips. I’m gonna
make you my girlfriend.”

On Tyrell Biggs: “He was screaming like my wife.”

“Anyone with a grain of sense would know that if I
punched my wife I would rip her head off.”

“I left the crate on my stoop and went in to get
something and I returned to see the sanitation man put
the crate into the crusher. I rushed him and caught
him flush on the temple with a titanic right hand he
was out cold, convulsing on the floor like a infantile
retard.”

“I take my hand off to him.”

“I try to catch him right on the tip of the nose,
because I try to push the bone into the brain.”

“How dare these boxers challenge me with their
primitive skills? It makes me angry.”

“My power is discombobulatingly devastating I could
feel is muscle tissues collapse under my force. It’s
ludicrous these mortals even attempt to enter my
realm.”

“I want to throw down your kid and stomp on his
testicles, and then you will know what it is like to
experience waking up everyday as me. And only then
will you feel my pain.”

[To a female reporter] “It’s no doubt I am going to
win this fight and I feel confident about winning this
fight. I normally don’t do interviews with women
unless I fornicate with them. So you shouldn’t talk
anymore… Unless you want to, you know.”

“If I take this camera and put it in your face for 20
years, I don’t know what you might be. You might be a
homosexual if I put that camera on you since you were
13 years old. I’ve been on that camera since I was 13
years old.”

“All praise is to Allah, I’ll fight any man, any
animal, if Jesus were here I’d fight him too.”

NEXT ISSUE: “I CURED MY YELLOW TEETH”

THE INFORMATION #1009 SEPTEMBER 7, 2018

THE INFORMATION #1009
SEPTEMBER 7, 2018
Copyright 2018 FRANCIS DIMENNO
dimenno@gmail.com
https://dimenno.wordpress.com

It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.–Thomas Hardy

WHEN THIS WORLD CATCHES FIRE
BOOK THREE: SAVAGE NOXTOWN
CHAPTER TWELVE: PART TWENTY-SIX: THE EASTERN GATE OF PARADISE

“Miss Big Tiny Small, the carnival fat lady,” said Sam Floyd to young Victor Justin, “made it out in the title of her book that she was some kind of Patroness of the Fine Arts, which was a load of sheer hooey from start to finish and back again.”

The only arts she knowed of were the culinary ones, and even there she warn’t any too p’ticular, as she would shovel the most astonishing things into her gaping maw: duck’s blood soup, soft-shell crabs, grits and gravy, pickled pigs’ feet, fried green tomatoes, watermelon rinds, haggis, raw oysters, fried mushrooms, cockles and mussels, caviar, blood sausages–it was all the same to her. Watching her wolf down that slop was like watching a tornado ravage a country village. The way she tore into them vittles would surely be enough to make the angels weep, and cause the devil to beat his wife. Nor was she satisfied with her share–no, even all the while she was eating off’n her platter, she was also enviously gaping over at your’n, to see if maybe you might leave a speck of bread and gravy that she could swoop up like a chicken hawk carrying off a squirrel. Speaking of which, squirrel brains fried in scrambled eggs was one of her favorite meals. Many’s the time she sent me off with a rifle on the hunt for that particular delicacy. Just a fucking hillbilly–that’s all she was and all she ever will be, in spite of all her aristocratic sawney airs.

As for her loving the fine arts, why, that’s the biggest stretcher of them all. As for music, she listened to the sort of sentimental slop that even a careworn shop-girl would disdain as too syrupy-sweet–stuff like “We Sat Beneath the Maple on the Hill”, “Old Rosin the Bow,” and “Home Sweet Home.” Many’s the time I would see her settin’ on her big fortified chair, a-listenin’ to the gals conducting a singalong. She never contributed to these little gatherings other than to watch–thank the powers that be. For her own singin’ voice was fittin’ only to drive snakes away.

As for her taste in art masterpieces, why, if the sort of art you hanker after happens to be the kind of thing you would favor hanging on the outhouse wall so that you kin look at it while whiling away your time in dropping a heavy load, then I suppose her taste in daubings might suit you. What she liked were renditions of mewing kittens shortly before they were to be mercifully drowned. Or a picture of a snoopy angel, poking its nose into the prayer offering of a lisping infant dressed in a muslin nightshirt and kneeling beside a bed covered in a snow-white duvet. Or a loving depiction of a bowl of glistering fruit. Or a glowing portrait in which Christ Jesus, bleeding from every orifice, is hovering over the apotheosized effigies of Washington, Lincoln, and James Abram Garfield. Or ghastly chromolithographs of a sullen farmer with a gleaming pitchfork listlessly staring out at endless bales of hay. Or sickly paintings of poorly-drawn clowns whose hearts are breaking for one damn reason or t’other.

I’ll tell you all she knows about art–and how dumb she was. I once saw her eat a whole tin of Oxo bouillion cubes, with the little ox on the front, and later she remarked that “It’s funny, but in my opinion, that Ox didn’t taste very good–it was rather too salty!”

As for the other claims she makes in the title of her book–that she’s any kind of:
ENTERTAINER, LADY REPORTER, TEMPERANCE ADVOCATE, CRUSADER FOR THE RIGHTS OF WOMANKIND, BENEFACTOR OF THE POOR, DEFENDER OF THE HELPLESS, FRIEND TO ORPHANS, COMFORTER OF THE SICK, PATRON TO THE LAME AND HALT, FRIEND TO THE BLIND, SHINING LIGHT TO THE FEEBLE-MINDED, AND LOVER OF HUMANITY?

Entertainer? Let’s give her that. It was great fun watching her wheezing to beat the band as she tremulously took her place on the teeterin’ platform with all the other freaks. Lady reporter? Nellie Bly she ain’t. Crusader of the rights of womankind? Yes, if it means, “Crusader of the rights of womankind to eat more pie.” Benefactor of the poor? She wouldn’t give you the skin off a potato even if you was starvin’. Of that I’m sure. Defender of the helpless? I never saw it. Comforter of the sick? On the contrary–she MADE people sick just to look at her. Patron to the lame and halt? Why, she wouldn’t even give the time of day to a crippled-up old grandpaw. Friend to the blind? I suppose the only friends she ever had were people who couldn’t stare upon and be repulsed by her loathsome visage. Shining light to the feeble minded? Maybe. After all, she was rather feeble-minded her own self. Friend to humanity? Ha! Ho! I knew her of old. Why, if she had her way, the world could go plumb straight to hell, leaving only her in it. And three or four lackeys, maybe, to cater to her every overstuffed whim.

Most of her claims in that so-called book of hers were such brazen falsehoods on their very face that they were enough to put the blush to a brass monkey. They ain’t even worthy of refutation! And, as far as that other business of her being some kind of poetess of the midway, for all she knows about poetry, she probably thinks Browning is some kind of cooking technique. And that Suckling refers to some kind of roasted pig with an apple in its mouth. And that Whitman is a box of mouth-watering chocolate candy.

That woman was as ignorant as the day is long–and yet she thought she knew it all. Ain’t that just the way?

T’was ever thus.

As for me having to love her up, that was a farce. She wouldn’t even get undressed, so she never parted with her maidenhead. And my guess is, she hasn’t done so to this very day. It’s likely the reason she was so goddamn mean. After all, what hubby’s fond caresses could ever feel as good as demolishin’ a heapin’ helpin’ of toothsome vittles?

1* SALUTATION
THE FALL
DISNEY’S DREAM DEBASED

2* REFERENCE
GENDER QUOTES
https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/gender
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/gender
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/gender-roles
http://www.famousquotes123.com/gender-quotes.html

3*HUMOR
S.J. PERELMAN
CAPTAIN FUTURE, BLOCK THAT KICK!
“But the moon!” Elaine exclaimed, deep repulsion shadowing her eyes. “That barren, airless globe that no one ever visits!” Elaine’s dainty disgust is pardonable; Far Rockaway out of season could not have been more painfully vieux jeu.
nebushumor.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/s-j-perelman-captain-future-block-that-kick/

4*NOVELTY
CLASSIC COMICS
UNCLE TOM’S CABIN
http://atocom.blogspot.com/2012/02/reading-room-uncle-toms-cabin-part-1.html
http://atocom.blogspot.com/2012/02/reading-room-uncle-toms-cabin-part-2.html
http://atocom.blogspot.com/2012/02/reading-room-uncle-toms-cabin.html

5*AVATAR OF THE ZEITGEIST
THE JUKES AND THE KALLIKAKS
“Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr
http://www.enews.tech/feeble-minded-definition.html

THE KALLIKAK FAMILY
http://www.wikiwand.com/en/The_Kallikak_Family

THE JUKES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jukes_family

THE KALLIKAKS (SITCOM)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kallikaks

SEE ALSO:
JAKE LEG
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/09/15/jake-leg

ALSO SEE:
It Took A Eugenicist To Come Up With ‘Moron'”
At the time, psychologists lumped people with cognitive disabilities in three broad categories: “idiot,” “imbecile” and “feeble-minded” (“feeble-minded” being the least severe). Goddard thought the word was imprecise and unscientific, so he created a replacement. Borrowing a Greek root meaning “dull” or “foolish,” he coined the term “moron.” (It is worth stating the obvious: Today, none of these words are appropriate as medical terms.)”

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/02/10/267561895/it-took-a-eugenicist-to-come-up-with-moron

SEE ALSO:
LOU REED
KILL YOUR SONS

SEE:
WHITE TRASH: THE EUGENICS FAMILY STUDIES 1877-1919
https://books.google.com/books/about/White_Trash.html?id=wdgnAAAAYAAJ

War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race, Expanded Edition

6* DAILY UTILITY
WORST COLLEGES
Don’t squander money by taking out loans to go to a shitty college.
collegemeltdown.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-slow-motion-collapse-of-americas.html
collegemeltdown.blogspot.com/

7*CARTOON
NORM SAUNDERS
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10217250302716368&set=gm.1032380200264224&type=3&theater

8*PRESCRIPTION
MICKEY ROONEY’S WACKY BUSINESSES
thelifeandtimesofhollywood.com/mickey-rooneys-wacko-businesses-from-mickeys-weenie-world-to-mickeys-tip-offs-disposable-bras-how-mickey-took-100-million-in-earnings-and-ended-up-with-only-18000-at-his/

ALSO SEE:
MEN OF BOYS TOWN
https://ok.ru/video/287229414051

9* RUMOR PATROL
MUSIC BANNED IN SOVIET UNION
https://history.blogberth.com/2018/05/31/ac-dc-got-banned-for-spreading-neofascism-and-heres-a/

ALSO SEE:
KOGAR’S BIG THRILL-O-RAMA TRASH SHOW #2

10*LAGNIAPPE
ARE YOU FROM DIXIE?
I first saw this song performed by Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber (The Holy Modal Rounders) at the long-gone Idler in Harvard Square back in 1980. It’s a delightful song, in all of its iterations. It is described as “A good tune written back in 1915 for the Vaudeville era shows, by two well known writers of the time, Jack Yellen as the lyrist and George Cobb composing.”

GRANDPA JONES
ARE YOU FROM DIXIE?

BLUE RIDGE ENTERTAINERS (2014)
ARE YOU FROM DIXIE?

THE PRAIRIE RAMBLERS (1936)
ARE YOU FROM DIXIE?

BLUE SKY BOYS (1936)
ARE YOU FROM DIXIE?

JERRY REED (1969)
ARE YOU FROM DIXIE?

JOHN FAHEY (1987)
ARE YOU FROM DIXIE?

BILLY MURRAY (1916)
ARE YOU FROM DIXIE?

11*DEVIATIONS FROM THE PREPARED TEXT: A REVIEW OF OTHER MEDIA
WILLIAM BURROUGHS
[Burroughs] graduated from Harvard with a degree in English literature. He was known for being that “quiet guy” on campus who could always be found playing with his gun (a .32 revolver).
roofbeamreader.com/2013/06/07/fridays-featured-beat-william-s-burroughs/

I wish I could find the source for the following anecdote.

Someone once pulled a knife on Burroughs in a bar. He mildly said, “Don’t you know that I’m a Boy Scout?”

The response: “So what?”

Burroughs: “Do you know what the Boy Scout motto is?”

“No.”

Burroughs replies, “Be prepared.” And he pulls out a .32 revolver.

Burroughs was influenced at an early age by this fascinating book, which I heartily recommend:
http://www.amazon.com/You-Cant-Win-Jack-Black/dp/1936239612

ALSO SEE:
Advice for Young People Lyrics
William Burroughs.

I am sometimes asked if I have any words of advice for young people.
Well, here are a few simple admonitions for young and old, man and beast.

Never interfere in a boy and girl fight.

Beware of whores who say they don’t want money. The hell they don’t.

What they mean is that they want more money; much more, these are the most expensive whores what can be got.

If you’re doing business with a religious son of a bitch, get it in writing; his word isn’t worth shit, not with the good Lord telling him how to fuck you on the deal.

If, after having been exposed to someone’s presence, you feel as if you’ve lost a quart of plasma, avoid that presence. You need it like you need pernicious anemia.

We don’t like to hear the word “vampire” around here; we’re trying to improve our public image. Building a kindly, avuncular, benevolent image; “interdependence” is the keyword — “enlightened interdependence”.

Life in all its rich variety, take a little, leave a little. However, by the inexorable logistics of the vampiric process they always take more than they leave — and why, indeed, should they take any?

Avoid fuck-ups. Fools, I call them. You all know the type — no matter how good it sounds, everything they have anything to do with turns into a disaster. Trouble for themselves and everyone connected with them.
A fool is bad news, and it rubs off — don’t let it rub off on you.

Do not proffer sympathy to the mentally ill; it is a bottomless pit. Tell them firmly, “I am not paid to listen to this drivel — you are a terminal fool!” Otherwise, they make you as crazy as they are.

Above all, avoid confirmed criminals. They are a special malignant strain of fool.

*11A BOOKS READ AND REVIEWED
99 WAYS TO TELL A STORY. MADDEN. ****1/2
ALAN’S WAR. GUIBERT. ****1/2
ALGERIA IS BEAUTIFUL LIKE AMERICA, BURTON & GRAND. ****
AM I THERE YET? ANDREW. ***
ANIMUS. REVOY. ****
ASTRAL WEEKS. WALSH. ****1/2
AVENGERS. INFINITY WAR PRELUDE. ***
THE BIG EMPTY LIFE OF ALPHONSE TABOURET. ***1/2
BINGO LOVE. FRANKLIN ETAL. ***1/2
BLACK PANTHER: AVENGERS OF THE NEW WORLD PART 2. ***1/2
CAPTAIN HARLOCK: THE CLASSIC COLLECTION. MATSUMOTO. ***1/2
CHAMPIONS CLASSIC: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION. **1/2
CLOAK & DAGGER. RUNAWAYS & REVERSALS. ***
COIN-OP COMICS ANTHOLOGY. 1997-2017. ***1/2
COMPLETE DICK TRACY 17: 1957-1959. ****1/2
COMPLETE DICK TRACY 18: 1956-1957. ****1/2
COMPLETE DICK TRACY 19: 1959-1961. ****1/2
COMPLETE DICK TRACY 21: 1962-1964. ****
COMPLETE DICK TRACY 17: 1964-1965. ****
DAM KEEPER 2. WORLD WITHOUT DARKNESS. ***
THE DEAD EYE & THE DEEP BLUE SEA. PRAM. ****1/2
DEADPOOL VS. OLD MAN LOGAN. ***1/2
DEPT. H. 4. LIFEBOAT. KINDT. ****1/2
THE DOORS. MARCUS. ****
EIGHT MILLION DAYS TO DIE. BLOCK & SNYDER. ****
EVERYTHING YOU LOVE WILL BURN. TENOLD. ****
FAB 4 MANIA. TYLER. ****
FROM HELL. MOORE. *****
GEORGE ORWELL ILLUSTRATED. SMITH & MOSHER. ****1/2
THE GHOST SCRIPT. FEIFFER. ****1/2
GODHEAD. ANDERSON. ****
GOODBYE TO THE PAST. BURNETT. ****
GOTHAM CITY GARAGE 1. ***1/2
THE GRAVE DIGGERS UNION 1. CRAIG, ETAL. ***1/2
THE GREATEST MINDS & IDEAS OF ALL TIMES. DURANT. ***1/2
GREEN ALMONDS: LETTERS FROM PALESTINE. HERMANS. ****
HARDBOILED AMERICA. O’BRIEN. ****
HARROW COUNTY 7. DARK TIMES A’COMING. BUNN & CRROK. ***1/2
THE HAWK & THE DOVE: THE SILVER AGE. **1/2
HELLBOY OMNIBUS V. 2. STRANGE PLACES. MIGNOLA. ****
HOW THE BEATLES DESTROYED ROCK & ROLL. WALD. ****1/2
HUNTING CHARLES MANSON. WIEHL. ***
JESSICA JONES 3. RETURN OF THE PURPLE MAN. ****1/2
THE JETSONS 1. ***1/2
THE LIE & HOW WE TOLD IT. PARRISH. ***
LUISA, NOW & THEN. MAUREL. ***1/2
MARVEL LEGACY COMPANION. ***
MILK & CHEESE: DAIRY PRODUCTS GONER MAD. DORKIN. ***1/2
MONSTERS. DAHL. ****
THE MUSHROOM FAN CLUB. GRAVEL. ***1/2
MUST WE DEFEND NAZIS? DELGADO & STEFANCIC. ***1/2
NEW MUTANTS: DEMON BEAR. **
NIGHTWING: THE NEW ORDER. ***
NIGHTWING 5. RAPTOR’S REVENGE.***
NIOURK. VATINE. ****1/2
ORPHANS 1. THE BEGINNING. ****1/2
POLITICAL TRIBES. CHUA. ****1/2
PRANKSTERS! MCLEOD. ****
A QUICK & EASY GUIDE TO THEY/THEM PRONOUNS. ***
THE RED HOOK. HASPIEL. **
SLEEPLESS 1. VAUGHN. ****
SOCRATES: A MAN FOR OUR TIMES. JOHNSON. ****1/2
SPECTACLE 1. GEDRIS.
SPILL ZONE 2. THE BROKEN VOW. ***1/2
SPY SECRETS THAT CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE. HANSON. ***1/2
SUPER LATE BLOOMER. KAYE. ***
SUPERGIRL 1. BEING SUPER. ***1/2
SURVIVE LIKE A SPY. HANSON. ***1/2
TACITUS: THE HISTORIES. ****1/2
TEEN TITANS 2. JOHNS. ***1/2
THANOS: THE INFINITY SIBLINGS. ***1/2
TOTALLY RANDOM. BUB & BUB. ****
TRUMPOCRACY. FRUM. ****
UNCANNY AVENGERS UNITY 5. STARS & GARTERS. ***1/2
THE UNIVERSAL BASEBALL ASSN….COOVER. ****
VENOM: LETHAL PROTECTOR 1. **1/2
VENOM: LETHAL PROTECTOR 3. BLOOD IN THE WATER. ***
THE VOYEURS. BELL. ****
WE ATE WONDER BREAD. HOLLANDER. ***
WHY ART? DAVIS. ****
WONDER WOMAN 5. HEART OF THE AMAZON. ***1/2
X-MEN BLUE 4. CRY HAVOK. ***1/2
X-MEN GOLD 3. MOJO WORLDWIDE. ***1/2
X-MEN GOLD 4. THE NEGATIVE ZONE WAR. ***1/2
X-MEN GOLD 5. CRUEL & UNUSUAL. ***1/2

12* CONTROVERSIES IN POPULAR CULTURE
THE PROBLEM WITH GUNS
There seems to be a certain mentality that is drawn to guns. Gun owners and gun-lovers, in general, constitute a distinct tribe which has its own ideology and ethos.
https://www.salon.com/2017/10/03/americas-big-problem-with-guns-our-gun-industry-profits-from-fear-and-death/

THE INFORMATION #1008 AUGUST 31, 2018

THE INFORMATION #1008
AUGUST 31, 2018
Copyright 2018 FRANCIS DIMENNO
dimenno@gmail.com
https://dimenno.wordpress.com

Oh that one would hear me! behold, my desire is, that the Almighty would answer me, and that mine adversary had written a book. –Job 31:35

WHEN THIS WORLD CATCHES FIRE
BOOK THREE: SAVAGE NOXTOWN
CHAPTER TWELVE: PART TWENTY-F1VE: THE EASTERN GATE OF PARADISE

I was telling you about that “book” the fat lady said she wrote. Turns out, she didn’t even write it herself. She dictated it in an afternoon to some drunken carpenter who had lost his flipper in the War of Northern Aggression, and he done the job for booze money. The book was full of the sort of high-flown and high-falutin’ language you might expect from a man with his head full of the fumes of strong drink. The prose was so purple it would of caused a riot in a laughing academy. It had a long, long handle–even though this was once the fashion, the title was simply.. excessive. To the best of my recollection, it went something like this:

MY LIFE AS A CELEBRATED PERFORMER, TEMPERANCE ADVOCATE, LADY REPORTER, CRUSADER FOR THE RIGHTS OF WOMANKIND, BENEFACTRESS OF THE POOR, DEFENDER OF THE HELPLESS, FRIEND TO ORPHANS, COMFORTER OF THE SICK, PATRON TO THE LAME AND HALT, SHINING LIGHT TO THE BLIND, STAUNCH DEFENDER OF THE FEEBLE-MINDED, & LOVER OF ALL HUMANITY. AND, ADDITIONALLY, AN ACCOUNT OF MY CAREER AS ENTERTAINER TO ROYALTY, COMPANION TO PRESIDENTS, COUNSELOR TO PHILANTHROPISTS, CONFIDANTE TO PRIME MINISTERS AND OTHER HIGH OFFICIALS, AND PATRONESS OF THE FINE ARTS, BY MISS SMALL, “POETESS TO THE MIDWAY,” & PROFESSIONAL SEER AND PROPHETRESS

Just about everything in that book of hers was a damnable lie, right down to the claim on the inside of the front page that it was “newly revised and expanded”. If I found out she’d added so much as three words to the so-called “second edition” I would drop dead in stupefied amazement. It’s a wonder the paper didn’t smolder and burst into flames in the printing presses and melt them to a heap of worthless slag metal, on account of all the fucking lies that were in it, just in the title alone. Where can you even start to put the test to her outrageous claims? Begin at the beginning, as philosophers like to say. Just as a preface, if she ever gave one hoot in hell about anybody other than herself, then Wuxtry Wuxtry And Stop The Presses, because it’s certainly news to me. To me, and to any other unfortunate who has ever wobbled into her queasy ambit.

“Entertainer to Kings and Queens? Haww…! The closest she ever got to a king ner a queen was on a greasy deck of playing cards, or maybe she was referring to her daily habits of putting away a king-sized feast and dozing in a queen-sized bed.

As for her claim to be some sort of “companion to Presidents,” why, she was so fat they couldn’t even roll her through the White House door. Why, even a fortified steel boxcar was once seen to tremble beneath the weight of her immense bulk! Never mind a room full of antiques! Anyway, the poor President would need nerves of steel to receive her in the Oval Office, lest she damage the floorboards of that venerable mansion with her gargantuan footfalls. And tell me something else–what would an ignorant fat lady have to say to the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces and Chief Executive of the Land? What would she have to say that would be of any profound consequence regarding the nation’s business? The high price of cake, candy, and ice-cream? Our President, as I understand it, doesn’t ordinarily take time out from his busy schedule to exchange pleasantries with a snappish fat midget-woman. Maybe fat old Chet Arthur would of wanted his photograph taken with her–a gal of her heft would make a man like him look downright puny. No, really, tell me–will the current President take such a shine to her that he will offer to ask Congress to make her the 44th State? Will this mean that Wyoming will just have to wait its turn? Maybe she could give tips to the President’s wife on how to cook a delicious meal with lard, suet, pork cracklin’s, and coconut oil.

And as for being any kind of “Counselor to Philanthropists,” why, I wouldn’t trust her to run a pie wagon without her sucking down the entire inventory in one fell swoop–let alone depend on her to tell a businessman how to invest his money to help the needy. Why, what the fat lady knew about giving to the needy would scarcely fill the thimble where you could also stuff her brains. If Andy Carnegie had listened to her, instead of building libraries he might instead of built a candy factory on every street corner, and arranged to hand out free taffy apples to all the starving masses. What I wouldn’t give for one-tenth of that woman’s sheer gall! The only counsel I ever heerd her give was that Cookie the Cook should pile still more scrumptious morsels onto her already groaning plate. It’s a wonder they don’t simply shovel her comestibles into a large trough and tell her to go at it with both hands! I would rather attend my own funeral as the guest of honor than to ever watch that woman eat.

Aand, as far as her bein’ “Confidante to Prime Ministers,” now, there’s a hot one. I can well imagine what they would make of her in old Blighty. It’s a known fact, just from lookin’ at the postcards, that all the women there start out as shapely and willowy young lasses, but the invigoratin’ cold breezes which bless that foggy isle soon turn most of ’em into chuffing blimps and torpid lumpkins and blithering porkers. I imagine that Big Tiny Small would be nominated to be the Faery Queen of the well-endowed. Or maybe she could take the lead role as Falstaff’s sister. But what am I saying, “the lead role”? With her thunderin’ around, there wouldn’t be hardly any room on the stage! The other players would all have to do their speechifyin’ from the orchestra pit. And if the audience en masse hurled eggs and rotten fruit, why, it would all be sucked into her capacious maw and welcomed as a light refreshment!

Why in the name of Lucifer did that infernal midget woman always have to give herself such airs!

1* SALUTATION
MOBY GRAPE
THE LAKE

ALSO SEE:
MOBY GRAPE [1ST LP]

SKIP SPENCE
OAR

2* REFERENCE
FIRE AND ICE: CHINESE TRANSLATION
Some people say that the world will end with flames.
Some people say ice.
From the taste I have tasted
I support those who like fire.
But if it has to die twice,
I think I know it is very annoying.
Say to destroy ice
Also great
And it is enough.

3*HUMOR
MAD: WHAT, ME FUNNY?
A remarkably realistic National Lampoon parody of the venerable satire magazine

Their art director at the time, Michael C. Gross, probably had something to do with that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_C._Gross

Full text here:
http://johnglenntaylor.blogspot.com/2009/12/what-me-funny.html

ALSO SEE:
http://kittysneezes.com/2010/01/12/what-me-funny-the-national-lampoon-mad-parody-577/

SEE ALSO:
THE LIGHTER SIDE OF COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT
http://www.tcj.com/my-friend-dave/

4*NOVELTY
BEST COVER OF “HEY JOE”

5*AVATAR OF THE ZEITGEIST
A DUM DUM FOR A DUM DUM
https://triblive.com/local/westmoreland/14000049-74/westmoreland-couples-lawsuit-against-maker-of-dum-dums-not-motivated-by-financial

SEE ALSO:
IGGY POP
DUM DUM BOYS

ALSO SEE:
COCONUT OIL IS PURE POISON
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2018/aug/22/coconut-oil-is-pure-poison-says-harvard-professor

ALSO SEE:
FEMALE OPIOID EPIDEMIC
http://www.marieclaire.com/health-fitness/a19685213/heroin-addicts-female-opioid-epidemic/

SEE ALSO:
STARBUCKS
The rituals, the jargon, the damnable expense, the cult-like slavish devotion…all are signs. Starbucks is for people who wish they still used illegal drugs.

6* DAILY UTILITY
MAXIM
Maxim is Esquire for douchebags.
But every once in a while even Maxim features something interesting.
RUSSIAN SLAPPING CONTEST
http://www.maxim.com/sports/russian-slapping-competition-2018-8

7*CARTOON
WHAT EVERY GOOD CATHOLIC SHOULD KNOW

ALSO SEE:
DR. SMITH’S INSULTS
http://irwinallen.wikia.com/wiki/Dr._Smith%27s_Insults

SEE ALSO:
JERRY LEWIS
THE DELICATE DELINQUENT [TRAILER]

8*PRESCRIPTION
HOW SCHIZOPHRENIA AFFECTS THOUGHTS AND BEHAVIORS
https://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/ss/slideshow-schizophrenia-overview?ecd=socpd_fb_nosp_1835_ss_cm1099_conmkt

9* RUMOR PATROL
WHO NEEDS DEMOCRACY WHEN YOU HAVE DATA?
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611815/who-needs-democracy-when-you-have-data/

ALSO SEE:
ONLINE SHOPPING AND THE ACCUMULATION OF JUNK
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/08/online-shopping-and-accumulation-of-junk/567985/

10*LAGNIAPPE
THE WHO IS SO OLD THAT…
They need some new song titles

1921 (I Remember it Vividly)
A Lethal Matter
Amazing Journey to My Scooter
Cobwebs and More Cobwebs
Cut What’s Left of My Hair
Did You Steal My Medication?
Doctor? Doctor? Who Is that young man?
Getting a Tube
I Can’t Even See for Inches
La-La-La-Laser Surgery
Medic
Diaper Must Change
Won’t Get Fugued Again

SEE ALSO:
THE WHO
BATMAN

ALSO SEE:
IGGY POP
BATMAN

SEE ALSO:
JAN AND DEAN
BATMAN

This is the first album I ever bought. I still have it.
JAN AND DEAN MEET BATMAN
THE JOKER IS WILD

11*DEVIATIONS FROM THE PREPARED TEXT: A REVIEW OF OTHER MEDIA
USEFUL PHRASES FOR ESL SPEAKERS
Old people belong in hell
I is someone else
It’s Not Your Grandfather’s fascism
Who Said Dat Word Fuck?
Ahoy there, Jesus!
Everything Is Love, Charlie!
Relax, Love, Messiah is Coming
My God I’m Tough
Let Love Be Obeyed
Touche, Douche
There were white slaves too, you know!
My lady boner is set to zero!
Smell My Coke Nail, Booger Boy
Tiger Hand Beats Rock!
My favorite prostitute is your wife
A Bagel With Everything, and step on it!
Show me your famous Rope Trick Mr. Gacy
Get out of the way, Fatty. Real he-men are talking.

12* CONTROVERSIES IN POPULAR CULTURE
RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION
My theory is that it’s very tribal. Righteous indignation induces a biochemical high from a combination of oxytocin and testosterone, which combine to induce aggressive action. See Ian Robertson, The Winner Effect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Robertson_(psychologist)

ALSO SEE:
POLICE MYTHS
http://www.urbo.com/content/police-myths-busted-by-real-cops/?rtg=3166-urbo-7728¶m4=urbo-fni-fbss-3166-us-de-ocpm¶m5=10154383474101186¶m6=23842927201690652

SEE ALSO:
Florida Man Arrested For Hanging On Traffic Light And Shitting On Cars Passing Underneath
http://www.huzlers.com/florida-man-arrested-for-hanging-on-traffic-light-and-shtting-on-cars-passing-underneath/