Christian Contemporary has to be the worst religious music ever – not just in the West, but anywhere in the world, a bloated, slushy pile of reeking sentiment, the only harmonic glop I’ve heard that makes elevator music sound upscale. And it’s not just because I don’t consider myself a Christian (please, no!); I love both the Gregorian Chant I grew up with in my Catholic choir, and the Black Gospel music of Clara Ward and the Staples Singers.
Considering Gospel music, I’ve wondered how Black slaves managed to absorb the rancid religion of their oppressors – often stuffed down their throats – and revolve it into its opposite, a vision of beauty. After all, one of those same white Christians wrote the book-length “The Negro, a Beast,” in the year 1900, fiddling through the bible to prove that Negroes were not human beings – an approach that hasn’t changed that much today.
(As an aside, it’s a damned shame that the white replacement conspiracy theory is a crock of shit. If there’s any hope for the country, it should take place as soon as possible.)
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A plane that crashed on a Floria highway a couple weeks back, killing 2, was a Bombardier Challenger 600. Why would anyone in their right mind chance a ride in something called a Bombardier Challenger 600?
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I’m puzzled by the number of international leaders of apparent good intention who have lost their minds once in power.
Here’s a current brief list of reformer heads of government who remain in power in their respective countries as election-manipulating dictators just like those they replaced:
Yoweri Museveni of Uganda
Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua
Paul Kagame of Rwanda
(Laurent Kabila deposed decades-long dictatorship in the Congo with his own authoritarian regime, but was removed through assassination.)
And it isn’t just heads of state who have performed a similar switcheroo.
Dmitri Medvedev served briefly as president of Russia before Putin snatched back the position he felt was rightly his. Medvedev dealt well with the West during his short term, but these days his unrestrained rants against anyone outside Russia have taken on a lunatic quality.
And of course in the U.S. there’s Senator Lindsay Graham, who matured from a centric, sensible politician to the raving asshole of today.
So how does this happen? And with little hope, I’d love to have someone send me examples of those who have moved in the opposite direction, from dipshit to decency.
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Can’t figure how anyone came up with the inspiration to drop carrots into a cake. It’s sort of like saying, “Let’s whip us up some possum ice cream.”
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I was looking up how to pronounce “taoiseach,” the supplied English transliteration of the Irish Gaelic word for “prime mister.” As usual, this train-wreck of vowels does not lead to any vaguely English noises. Instead, the proper Irish pronunciation is “tee-shuh.” In much the same way, Cú Chulainn, the windpipe-choking Anglification of Ireland’s great warrior of legend, is pronounced, roughly, “Cahoulin.” It all reinforces my belief that such supposed transliterations from Irish were another practical joke the Irish pulled on the dopey English. Check out the words ending in “dhl.” Try pronouncing that on an empty stomach.
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Most of the angst around the social media is misplaced. For now, they serve primarily as the voices for stupidity, but they’re still in their infancy, ironing the juvenile kinks out (and I stoutly refuse to pretend that “media” is a singular noun; I’ve retained at least that much from my three years of high-school Latin).
All media, social or otherwise, swing with the times and the social weather, as has always been the case. The ranting newspapers of the yellow journalism era were overwhelming portrayers of disinformation – deliberately so – yet we now bless our finest reporting with the Pulitzer Prize, named for Joseph Pulitzer, along with William Randolph Hearst, a chief purveyor of the “yellow” era.
And the halcyon nostalgia for “honest reporting” looks back to WWII and post-WWII figures like Edward R. Murrow and Lowell Thomas, who were no more definitive than any other members of a national information-processing movement. So let’s forget the nonsense of the “good old days.” Mostly, they were just “old.”
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Terminology: “Trump is a dingleberry on America’s butt.”
lickhaven 