Cogitamus

Life in the USA - A Photo Album

3 Movies That Will Change Your Life

Okay, because we need some levity, and because I was reminded of one of these movies by tangential mention of the subject in news of the awful floods in Australia, which yes, are terrible, but they're a wealthy country and will come out of this just fine (is that a convoluted enough dependent clause?), here are Three Movies That Will Change Your Life.

Now I know we have an insufferably hip and sophisticated audience, many of whom may already be familiar with these magna opera, but for those of you who haven't been exposed to their beauties, subtleties, and life-enhancing properties, herewith this post.

I'm loath to include clips, because I'd hate to give anything in the, er, plots away, but this is the blabbosphere, after all, where YouTube embeds are de rigeur.  So I'll concede one only, and merely tell you the titles of the other two.

DHS and Walmart: A Match Made in Heaven

In a perfect melding of the Keystone Kops Meet O'Brien, Janet Napolitano is coming to a Walmart near you.  Her video, urging "If You See Something, Say Something," is rolling out at W emporia all across the country:

The message will be continuously looped on TV monitors at the 588 Walmarts in the U.S.  One can only imagine the hilarity that will ensue when one gun-buying customer doesn't like the looks of another.  But then maybe Napolitano doesn't really know the People of Walmart that well, after all.

"Report suspicious activity to your local police or sheriff.  If you need help, ask a Walmart manager for assistance.”  Ah, yes, ask a manager for assistance!  Next time you get in a tug-of-war with another customer over the last Game Boy in the store, just report that sucker to management for "suspicious activity."

Espionage Act: How the Government Can Engage in Serious Aggression Against the People of the United States by Naomi Wolf

Ballgame just brought this column by Naomi Wolf to our attention in another thread, but I think it deserves its own post.  Excerpt (bolds mine):

. . . These two Senators, and the rest of the Congressional and White House leadership who are coming forward in support of this appalling development, are cynically counting on Americans' ignorance of their own history -- an ignorance that is stoked and manipulated by those who wish to strip rights and freedoms from the American people. They are manipulatively counting on Americans to have no knowledge or memory of the dark history of the Espionage Act -- a history that should alert us all at once to the fact that this Act has only ever been used -- was designed deliberately to be used -- specifically and viciously to silence people like you and me.

The Espionage Act was crafted in 1917 -- because President Woodrow Wilson wanted a war and, faced with the troublesome First Amendment, wished to criminalize speech critical of his war. In the run-up to World War One, there were many ordinary citizens -- educators, journalists, publishers, civil rights leaders, union activists -- who were speaking out against US involvement in the war. The Espionage Act was used to round these citizens by the thousands for the newly minted 'crime' of their exercising their First Amendment Rights. A movie producer who showed British cruelty in a film about the Revolutionary War (since the British were our allies in World War I) got a ten-year sentence under the Espionage act in 1917, and the film was seized; poet E.E. Cummings spent three and a half months in a military detention camp under the Espionage Act for the 'crime' of saying that he did not hate Germans. Esteemed Judge Learned Hand wrote that the wording of the Espionage Act was so vague that it would threaten the American tradition of freedom itself. Many were held in prison for weeks in brutal conditions without due process; some, in Connecticut -- Lieberman's home state -- were severely beaten while they were held in prison. The arrests and beatings were widely publicized and had a profound effect, terrorizing those who would otherwise speak out.

. . . I call on all American citizens to rise up and insist on repeal of the Espionage Act immediately. We have little time to waste. The Assange assault is theater of a particularly deadly kind, and America will not recover from the use of the Espionage Act as a cudgel to threaten journalists, editors and news outlets with. I call on major funders of Feinstein's and Lieberman's campaigns to put their donations in escrow accounts and notify the staffers of those Senators that the funds willonly be released if they drop their traitorous invocation of the Espionage Act. I call on all Americans to understand once for all: this is not about Julian Assange. This, my fellow citizens, is about you . . . .

The American Dream

Welcome to Your Police State - Grand Central NYC

Uh. Does anyone know why the TSA is performing random bag searches at the Grand Central Terminal subway hub?
posted by @metalia from Twitter for iPhone 23 hours 38 mins ago

Here's the URL.

UPDATE:  Well, this has been going since April.  But I guess since so few people give a shit, as you'll see from the chipper comments in the article, it barely caused a ripple.  Oh, well.  The horse left the barn long ago.

David Rector, Still Alive, For Now

It's been almost three months since I wrote about my friend David Rector, and since then little has changed.  The judge threw Roz a bone by allowing her to care for David for a few months, with all kinds of hand-tying restrictions applied.  Roz did succeed, after jumping through more hoops than you would have the patience to read about, in taking David to a movie.  The nursing home tried to prevent that, too, at the last minute, even after receiving the reams of required documentation.  David chose the movie himself (though the hired guns don't, of course, acknowledge that he can choose anything for himself).  He's an Anne Hathaway fan, so he chose her latest film.

I'll copy and paste one of Roz's recent updates after the jump.  I only remind folks that this fate is potentially that of any of us, no matter how carefully we plan or how much we'd rather not think about it.

Oh, well . . .

Well, I've been saying it from the beginning.  But what the hell.

Next step for scanners trains, bus, metro, says Napolitano

By Jordy Yager - 11/23/10 02:09 PM ET

Man Arrested for Videotaping TSA Officials While Stripping Down to his Underwear

Another brave soul.  Bravo!

Man Arrested for Videotaping TSA Officials While Stripping Down to his Underwear

In clear contradiction of what Transportation Security Administration officials have stated in the past, a man was arrested for videotaping TSA officials at San Diego International Airport Friday.

Sam Wolanyk was also charged with "failing to complete the security process" - even though he seemed more than happy to allow them to search him when he stripped down to his underwear.

Wolanyk initially was asked to step into the see-through scanner, but opted to have them pat him down instead.

That was when he stripped down to his underwear . . . 

Wolanyk was then paraded through two terminals in his underwear. At one point during this interaction, he videotaped TSA officials with his iPhone, which was confiscated.

The incident was confirmed by Harbor Police Sergeant Rakos who said Wolanyk was arrested on two misdemeanors, “failing to complete the security process; violation code 7.01 and illegally recording the San Diego Airport Authority (they confiscated his iPhone); violation number 7.14 (a).”

 It is not clear which "violation codes" he violated. A search though severalSan Diego city and county codes did not produce anything remotely close to what is listed above . . . .

Young Boy Searched (though not "stripsearched" as header says)

Quoting videographer:  

****** THIS VIDEO OCCURRED AT SALT LAKE CITY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT ON NOVEMBER 19TH AT AROUND THE TIME OF 12 PM **********

Lets get the facts straight first. Before the video started the boy went through a metal detector and didn't set it off but was selected for a pat down. The boy was shy so the TSA couldn't complete the full pat on the young boy. The father tried several times to just hold the boys arms out for the TSA agent but i guess it didn't end up being enough for the guy. I was about 30 ft away so i couldn't hear their conversation if there was any. The enraged father pulled his son shirt off and gave it to the TSA agent to search, thats when this video begins. 

FIVE WORDS

FIVE WORDS:

Philip Zimbardo.

Stanford Prison Experiment.

Welcome to Baltimore, Hon

 
When people from other parts of the country ask me what Baltimore is like, I always refer to John Waters movies.  "It's just like that," I say.  "His movies aren't fiction; they're real.  That's Baltimore."

I've always reveled in my adopted city's wonderful wackiness, its eccentricities, its characters.  And hoo-boy, are there characters.  (One of them, Divine, lived in my house, long before I moved to Baltimore; I still use the original tub in which his divinity bathed.)

Our Fair City's charms are so inspiring, apparently, that Second City has come to town to check them out.  The fruits of the troupe's labors will be on display from December 30th to February 20th.  I, for one, can't wait to see what they come up with.

More TSA Abuses: Woman Beaten; 71-year-old man & 16-year-old girl groped, stripped

Just another day in the USA!

I Shot the Serif

Created by graphic designer Tom Gabor.

Great Depression Cooking with Clara

She's the newest hot babe on the internet (and though this has nothing to do with anything, observant women out there will notice that even at age 93, Clara's skin is beautiful and looks years younger -- that's from not frying herself in the sun!). 

Her grandson started taping her two years ago, when she was 91, just for the family, but then posted the videos on YouTube.  She's become a sensation.  CBS did this charming story on her recently; sample video below.  (I confess that, being the daughter of a Depression-era mother, I grew up with this kind of cooking, and still practice it today.)

February 14

h/t "Kitty" via celluloid blonde

The Times, They Are A-Changing, though not fast enough

As the country's first black president prepares to take office, an ignominious relic of the Old South, old thinking, and old ways has died.  William Devereux Zantzinger, 69, was buried yesterday in southern Maryland, with not too many grieving souls in attendance, if one can read between the lines of this story in today's Baltimore Sun.

In 1963, the wealthy, 24-year-old self-styled aristocrat got a bit peeved with a black waitress named Hattie Carroll when she didn't fetch his drink fast enough.  So he hit her with his cane.  She died a few hours later.  Zantzinger pranced and preened at his trial, where he was convicted of manslaughter, ordered to pay a $500 fine, and went off to serve six months in jail.  As it turned out, it wouldn't be his last brush with the law.

The case attracted national attention, and Bob Dylan immortalized it in this song:

Stand By Me

       

This is a quite amazing collaboration between street musicians from all over the world -- and I do mean all over the world -- singing, playing, performing on their own, while being joined by other musicians performing on their own, who are then all combined through the magic of technology.  Apparently this is an on-going project from a documentary called "Playing for Change: Peace Through Music."  It's quite beautiful. 

Here, I'll cut and paste the explanation posted on YouTube: 

Prepare to Be Dazzled - The World of Lord Breaulove Swells Whimsy

                              

This is a smaller-than-life-size image of one of the pages in the book The Affected Provincial's Companion, a compendium of -- how to describe it? -- aesthetic musings, sartorial suggestions, historical anecdotes, philosophical levity, personal tidbits, political implications, botanical info, witty illustrations, helpful diagrams, and general silliness.  It's the work of the sweetly twisted mind of Lord Whimsy (not to be confused with the fictional Lord Peter Wimsey of Dorothy L. Sayers fame), one of whose blogs is listed on the Cogblogroll to the left, but whose work I've long wanted to highlight yet didn't dare do during the deadly serious election season.

Lord Whimsy is actually Victor Allen Crawford who, with his wife Susan, runs the graphic design firm Plankton Art Co.  If you want to engage him professionally, you can get him there.  But if you just want to drink in his perfumed peculiarities, you're better off going to his alter ego's website, where you can find, among other things, his manifesto, pictures of strange lichens and fungi, colors, textures, and other images of beauty, and even political statements such as this:

The Great Halloween Lantern Parade, Baltimore

This is why I love Charm City.  Parade is happening this weekend, Saturday night, if you can make it:      

R.I.P. Cyd Charisse

Unquestionably the most beautiful, sexy, elegant, mesmerizing, classy dancer in Hollywood history.  I feel inadequate to express what so many us feel today upon learning of the death of this dance icon.  86 years old and a class act to the end.  Ave atque vale, beautiful lady.

Uncommon Sense

Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom.  But the tumult soon subsides.  Time makes more converts than reason.

These words open Thomas Paine's first pamphlet, published anonymously in 1776, called Common Sense, a call to action by the American colonies against the tyranny of the British monarchy.

Now, over 230 years later, Paine's words are being invoked again, against a different kind of tyranny.  Five writers who have worked on, among other things, the stellar HBO series The Wire, the finale of which will air on Sunday night, have written a column for Time magazine decrying the so-called war on drugs.  Ed Burns, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Richard Price, and David Simon declare that if they were ever to be seated on a jury in a non-violent drug case, they would automatically vote to acquit.

Yes, of course, that declaration now guarantees that none of them will ever be seated on a jury in a drug case -- or probably any other kind of case -- but the point is that they have come out publicly against the idiocy of the drug policy in this country, and will, perhaps, prompt other citizens to likewise examine it.  As they correctly point out, no politician, Democrat or Republican, has the guts to do it. 

One, I recall, though, did.  And was pilloried for it.

Give Me Beauty or Give Me Death

                                       

Since I just watched the Oscars last night for my yearly glamour fix and was drooling over Helen Mirren's spectacular Georges Chakra gown (nobody can touch her; young women, take note: this is what mature beauty looks like), I thought it an appropriate time to post a little something on a more cheery personal obsession (more cheery than misogyny and torture and the bozo in the White House, etc.).  And I trust my fellow Cogblogger and beauty aficionado litbrit will join me.