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Those dirty rings!

Speaking of the annular -- we're approaching another year, so it's time to reflect a bit on January. Everyone pretends to know that January was named after Janus, the two-faced worthless Roman god. But did you know that that may be false?

January (in Latin, Ianuarius) is named after the Latin word for door (ianua), since January is the door to the year. The month is conventionally thought of as being named after Janus, the god of beginnings and transitions in Roman mythology, but according to ancient Roman farmers' almanacs Juno was the tutelary deity of the month.^[1]

Interestingly, the Romans only had 10 months and each one was longer. How else to fill a full year with months? Surely I thought, the month is defined by how many times the moon orbits the earth [moon, month, get it?]. Wrong!  The moon goes around the earth 13 times in a year, not 12 as people might think. My faith in the power of words and etymology is shaken. It's a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world:

linky

n.b., that is the original "Coca-Cola" version of the song -- the one banned in the UK.

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Marlene's German lyrics closely follow the very simple English ones. Test your German familiarity. I do like one distinction, however:

Wann wird man je verstehen, [When will they ever learn,]

Wann wird man je verstehen? [When will they ever learn?]

     I put the English version in brackets, not as a translation, but for comparison. My book-learned German says that wann wird man je verstehen should translate to "when will one ever understand."  But Google translate begs to differ and translates wann wird man je verstehen as "when will we ever learn." And that's just it -- Google has vastly improved the message and the meaning of the original song. It's the pronoun, you see.

     The original phrase "when will they ever learn" grates on me because it blames others for the human condition. In the context of the original song, it was very much an "us vs. them" mentality. According to Pete Seeger and a very eager postwar generation, war was what other people did. Nowadays, war is what the US does; "others" are freedom fighters. The German version is one step closer to the truth and Google is a full measure closer to the truth:

Not "when will they ever learn"; not "when will one ever learn"; but rather -- when will we ever learn?  It's the pronoun, you see.

      Pete Seeger is credited with writing most of the song, but a lesser-known songwriter named Joe Hickerson (who is still alive?) nearly perfected it by turning the song into a circle. Another example of such a circular song is Zager and Evans' "In The Year 2525." Can anyone think of others?

The song is also an example of a now rare artistic device called Ubi Sunt.

"...Democratic Party eating itself like a snake that loves science and Planned Parenthood"

 "For many of us, it's not simply politics as usual. It's very personal.

For me, the backlash against Hillary Clinton feels very, very personal.

Can you imagine how absolutely infuriating it must be for Hillary to have to work so hard to be likable, but strong? Hip, but above the need to be seen as cool? For everything she says to be perfect because she'd be crucified otherwise, meanwhile Bernie Sanders could say pretty much anything he wants and it would be seen as the goddamn revolution? I'm so infuriated on her behalf. Because what you like about Bernie, what they like about Trump, she doesn't get to do that. She doesn't get to be all wild hair and yelling. Do I wish different? Of course. And the first female president would go a long way toward making that difference possible."

http://www.pajiba.com/politics/an-allcaps-explosion-of-feelings-regarding-the-liberal-backlash-against-hillary-clinton.php

A Polarized View

All of this talk of Trump and Hillary reminded me of a conversation I had years ago -- mostly with myself, but originally posted here. It even fits with Shouting Thomas's "Big D vs Big C" theory (Big DC?). In the following scheme, think of Trump as one pole and Hillary as the other:

The polarized ends of the spectrum are actually surrounded by smaller, oppositely charged entities:

A coterie of independent detractors surrounds each extreme. They serve an important purpose: they neutralize some of the raw charge of the extreme. They also prevent direct and destructive collisions and arcing between the polarized ends. They are part of free speech and they ultimately help to unbend the spectrum, to relax it back to a more linear shape.

 Where do you lie along the continuum connecting the extremes?

O'Malley apologizes for saying "all lives matter"

It's come to this. A Democrat candidate cannot say to a Democrat caucus that all lives matter because that abruptly deflates their united slogan that black lives matter and in that hall at this time it is the only thing this caucus is having. Netroots Nation are flat not having anything else. And so the world is treated, observers in the world are treated to the spectacle of a Netroots Nation gathering taken over by even more left leftists so that a reasonable Democratic presidential candidates ends up apologizing for something so fundamentally correct as that.

Through all this let's not suggest black lives certainly do matter, of course, the ones that survive the gauntlet of birth control measures installed and fiercely protected precisely to prevent their existence. One sees a black child and thinks, "Oh you precious thing. You made it." 

Let's drop discussing the issue that black lives matter for merely surviving gang culture.

Mustn't talk about a social system of perpetual government lagniappes in place of crop sharing immediately next to the big houses that replaced the original plantation life. 

Nor discuss slave mentality.

Let's say black families not mattering to government cannot be discussed without serious flouncing. 

Because breaching those sub issues causes disruption. 

All you can do is not say that all lives matter. Yes it has come to this. 

This is trending today it cannot be avoided.

There is video of Netroots Nation convention coming apart.  I think O'Malley is booed off the stage, according to tweets. I don't know. How does he apologize if he is booed off? Maybe later. I don't know. Have a look if you like, [O'Malley black lives matter]

¡Cuidado!  Looking will disrupt your placidity. Serenity now!

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[Continued-in-part from my previous KLEM post]

Speaking of Joni Mitchell's song "The Circle Game," I think it anticipated the following scene in "Mad Men" in every important way:


Mad Men: The Carousel from ray3c on Vimeo.

Here's the Joni Mitchell song, "The Circle Game:"

Link in case the video doesn't load 

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Neil Young's "Sugar Mountain" always reminded me of Joni Mitchell's "The Circle Game."  If you're a fan of both songs, perhaps you've thought the same or maybe you knew it already. Not until tonight did I realize that they are explicitly related. Joni Mitchell explained:

In 1965 I was up in Canada, and there was a friend of mine up there who had just left a rock'n'roll band (...) he had just newly turned 21, and that meant he was no longer allowed into his favourite haunt, which was kind of a teeny-bopper club and once you're over 21 you couldn't get back in there anymore; so he was really feeling terrible because his girlfriends and everybody that he wanted to hang out with, his band could still go there, you know, but it's one of the things that drove him to become a folk singer was that he couldn't play in this club anymore. 'Cause he was over the hill. (...) So he wrote this song that was called "Oh to live on sugar mountain" which was a lament for his lost youth. (...) And I thought, God, you know, if we get to 21 and there's nothing after that, that's a pretty bleak future, so I wrote a song for him, and for myself just to give me some hope. It's called 'The Circle Game.' Link

Here's a video version of "Sugar Mountain" that includes some rare before and after banter by Young which usually gets deleted in compilations:

Link in case the video doesn't load

Mayor de Blasio passing through a corridor for a press conference on shooting of two NYC police officers

In the distant past when I cared to socialize in crowded places, weekend patio bars, cocktail parties, what have you, busy places I'd go to see and be seen, met up with friends, encounter new ones, stand shoulder to shoulder, this was a technique I picked up. A simple quarter turn to shut off unwanted conversation or snip undesired attention and engagement .Everybody is drinking, everybody is talking anyway. Not even a full reversal,is necessary a mere shift in posture does the trick. 

It seems de Blasio burned one bridge too many. Apparently MoveOn,org (yes, that thing is still around) started a petition asking for de Blasio's resignation and the petition already has 21,000 signatures. 

I heard, I heard it here a smatter of fact, they always do eat their own. But who would have thought so quickly?

[The gunman, Ismaayil Brinsley, said on Twitter, "I'm putting wings on pigs today. They take one of ours, Let's take two of theirs." Then shot two officers then shot himself. It is believed he also shot his previous girlfriend earlier in the day. But apparently did not kill her. That is two for two. Honestly nothing else can be expected when community organizer is elevated to national community disrupter. Yes, this is programed community agitation on a national scale. Al Sharpton's 80+ White House visits says so. #failed philosophy #failed math]

Swallow This

Chip Ahoy's curly-necked storks reminded me of a sketch I did last year. It's three scenes from an unfinished flip book called "Ouroboros For Our Times."

Ouroboros For Our Times
Ball Point Pen on 8 1/2" x 11" white copier paper