Poetry Interlude - The Revolution will not be Televised

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
by Gil Scott-Heron

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back after a message
about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run, Brothers;
The revolution will be live.

I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura - Libro Primo

Wet Dream Music Monday

Classic Dr Demento...

My barracuda was in the shop
So I was in a rented stingray
And it was overheating

So I pulled into a Shell Station
They said I'd blown a seal
I said, "Fix the damn thing
And leave my private life out of it
Okay pal?"

Arkansas passes bill to allow jewish underage kids to drink beer on Shabbos!

Vot a kountry!

Legislation allowing underage Jews to drink beer during religious ceremonies has sparked widespread support in the Arkansas Legislature and puzzlement, even laughter, in the Jewish community.

[full story]

Flashback

Who knows why I started thinking back about Mr. Baran, my freshman biology teacher in high school. Mr. Baran was a) an entertainer b) Polish. Students' names were typically prefaced by "Mr X! Scientist! Biologist! Please explain the Krebs cycle..." An explanation of photosynthesis would cause him to break into song - "Cool, clear water..." And evolutionary theory took on a very adversarial, Eastern European flavor - "Lamarck was a yash! Darwin should have kicked him in the dupa!"

The Payoff

When a rabbi dies, the kindness his family receives from all the people that he touched and helped and mentored throughout his life is something that gives you hope in humanity. I guess it is the payoff for a long and difficult rabbinic career.

I did a favor for a woman today. As I drove her somewhere, I thought she was kinda withdrawn and almost farbissiner. I thought she could have made more of an effort to be social.

Later I found out she had lost a son to cancer. The boy was twenty two. Now I feel like a jerk.

I'll tell you this...

working from home has the advantage of having a cold, crisp MGD with your lunch without people giving you weird stares.

"In my time of dying..."

My friend's father passed away this morning from cancer. For the past few days he was on the verge of death.

I don't know why but the fact that his family was freaking out about what would happen if he died right before Passover, somehow made me a little angry and depressed. We all know how much work and hassle it is to get ready for Passover, but it just seems wrong that this man's death is yet another inconvenience that needs to be thought of.

I am not blaming the family. They loved him very much and they are good people. It is just a sad commentary on human life. Ultimately, even your death can be an inconvenience.

If Einstein Had Studied Yoma 68b: A Thought Experiment

It's too bad this blog I found seems to be abandoned:
UPDATE: Check out this awesome blog!

[...]

On the Day of Atonement, the High Priest performs a lottery to choose two he-goats, one of which is designated to be sacrificed as a sin offering, and one of which is sent off to the wilderness as a form of collective communal expiation. The goats must be qualitatively identical – of the same appearance and size, and purchased simultaneously. (Again simultaneity! – Minkowski would be pleased.) They are distinguished from one another only from the moment that the High Priest performs a lottery—playing dice, again--to determine which one will be for the sin offering (let’s call it A), and which one will be sent off to the wilderness (B).

Until the instant the lots are drawn, A is both A and B; and B is both A and B. Or, as E.S. would have it, the goat is both alive and dead. The wave (“tenufah”) function does not collapse until the instant the lottery is performed in the Inner Innermost.

If, following the lottery, one goat dies, the other goat automatically loses its status. A is not A if not for B. They exist thus in quantum entanglement. The consequences are manifold.

[...]

Mikey Dread Music Monday - Roots and Culture

Just relax, and listen to ole Mikey...

lytdybr

Working from home today... My current client has me sitting on the trading floor. The noise is something else. Traders typically have little noises set up on their workstations which tell them when certain events happen, such as a fill on an order, etc... Imagine trying to concentrate while sitting in a room with gongs, dings, laser beam sounds, hoo-hahs, and worse going off all around you at max volume and echoing off the walls. It is like working at an arcade.

Then, after trading hours are over, junior traders huddle in a corner and practice mock trading. The last place I worked was much smaller and they didn't have too many floor traders so my first day here, I was sitting at my desk trying to get my work done when all of a sudden, there is a crowd of maybe fifteen people standing in the corner of this giant trading floor screaming, jumping and waving their hands. I thought there was a fire in the building. That lasts for about two minutes and then everyone stops. Then five minutes later it starts again. It was like being in an insane asylum...

Camille Yarbrough Music Monday

This song was sampled by Fatboy Slim a few years back, but few people have heard the original. A killer baseline, funky guitar, and the lyrics, the lyrics drip with eroticism.

Louis Prima Music Monday

The bigger the figure the better I like her
The better I like her the better I feed her
The better I feed her the bigger the figure
The bigger the figure the more I can love

Laisse tomber les fille Monday

A little Serge Gainsbourg/France Gall for this Monday...

One born every minute

I was listening to the radio while driving, and another one of those commercials on how to become successful was on the air. And I started thinking about how this seems to be just another way to take advantage of these poor suckers that are going to pay their $399.99 for a seminar on how to become rich and successful. And while the odds of these guys making it are pretty low, the odds of the seminar organizer making money off these poor saps are pretty good.

So it is a change in how the poor masses are exploited. It used to be that the exploitation was more explicit. People on the bottom were told by the people on top that they will never be successful and that their lot is to toil in their condition for those who are on top. But now, the lie is reversed. The exploiters take advantage of the exploited by telling them that they can all be successful and rich.