Category: Arts and Letters

God Wants Me to Have the Women and the Air Conditioner

The first thing he claimed — even though he already had a wife, a 14-year-old girl, pushing legal limits in Texas, but she had her parents permission so the marriage was legal — he announced that God now wanted him to have wives, multiple wives. He pointed out some scriptural passages that he said backed this up, and he claimed that he needed multiple wives because it was his job to sire 24 children who would become elders and help rule after the kingdom of God’s reestablished, at the end times. Then he further announces that among all the women at Mount Carmel, every woman of childbearing age — and that would be, say, from 12 up — were now his wives and could have sex only with him for procreation purposes. The husbands of these women were forbidden to have sex at all anymore. And Koresh said this was a blessing to them because now they could focus their energies on studying the Bible more and becoming more worthy of the Lord. So it was sex. It was everyone else’s wives. And he even decided God wanted him to have the only unit air conditioning in Mount Carmel.

30 years after the siege, ‘Waco’ examines what led to the catastrophe

Interview was regarding:
Waco: David Koresh, The Branch Davidians and a Legacy of Rage
Jeff Guinn

Turn Every Page – The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb

Turn Every Page explores the remarkable fifty-year relationship between two literary legends, writer Robert Caro and his longtime editor Robert Gottlieb. Now 86, Caro is working to complete the final volume of his masterwork, The Years of Lyndon Johnson; Gottlieb, 91, waits to edit it. The task of finishing their life’s work looms before them. With humor and insight, this unique double portrait reveals the work habits, peculiarities and professional joys of these two ferocious intellects at the culmination of a journey that has consumed both their lives and impacted generations of politicians, activists, writers, and readers.

What is the all time greatest driving song?

The_Fat_Man_Jams
Radar Love. Golden Earring.

Hershie23
Highway Star [Deep Purple]

whigger
For late night driving, Riders on the Storm by The Doors.

the_cat_fancier
Kickstart my heart by Motley Crue

Wrathofkala
Panama – Van Halen

dem0074
Born to be Wild. – Steppenwolf

latenightdrive_
move bitch, get out the way – Ludacris

ibided
The Passenger [Iggy Pop]. Even people who don’t know it will sing the chorus by the second time it comes around

Occupational Psychosis, Trained Incapacity, Nerdview

If there is a thesis that unites the essays in “Professing Criticism,” it is that professional formation entails a corresponding “déformation professionnelle.” Any kind of occupational training imparts to its recipients both a sense of mastery and a certain obliviousness to what this mastery costs—namely, the loss of other ways of perceiving the world. Related terms are “occupational psychosis” (John Dewey), “trained incapacity” (Thorstein Veblen), and, most recently, “nerdview” (Geoffrey K. Pullum), all more openly pejorative than “deformation.” Yet they get at the anxious and somewhat pitiable aspects of professional scholars (especially when one encounters them in herds) that Guillory, a model of courtesy and tact, sidesteps. A professional is not unlike a racehorse that has worn blinders long enough to have grown numb to the feel of them.

Has Academia Ruined Literary Criticism?
Literature departments seem to provide a haven for studying books, but they may have painted themselves into a corner.
By Merve Emre

Martin Luther King – 1960

Georgia governor Ernest Vandiver expressed open hostility towards King’s return to his hometown in late 1959. He claimed that “wherever M. L. King, Jr., has been there has followed in his wake a wave of crimes”, and vowed to keep King under surveillance. On May 4, 1960, several months after his return, King drove writer Lillian Smith to Emory University when police stopped them. King was cited for “driving without a license” because he had not yet been issued a Georgia license. King’s Alabama license was still valid, and Georgia law did not mandate any time limit for issuing a local license. King paid a fine but was unaware that his lawyer agreed to a plea deal that also included a probationary sentence.

Meanwhile, the Atlanta Student Movement had been acting to desegregate businesses and public spaces in the city, organizing the Atlanta sit-ins from March 1960 onwards. In August the movement asked King to participate in a mass October sit-in, timed to highlight how 1960’s Presidential election campaign had ignored civil rights. The coordinated day of action took place on October 19. King participated in a sit-in at the restaurant inside Rich’s, Atlanta’s largest department store, and was among the many arrested that day. The authorities released everyone over the next few days, except for King. Invoking his probationary plea deal, judge J. Oscar Mitchell sentenced King on October 25 to four months of hard labor. Before dawn the next day, King was taken from his county jail cell and transported to Georgia State Prison.

wikipedia

RIP Jeff Beck

Jeff Beck anecdote from Duff McKagan’s book:

I arranged for a friend of mine, drummer Slam Thunderhide of the band Zodiac Mindwarp, to have my mom over to his flat for a proper English tea and then to bring her down to the studio where Jeff and I were recording. Jeff had already been playing for a little while when my mom arrived. He’s a virtuoso, and watching him play is like seeing musical butter melt.

After Jeff had played some blistering passes at one song, my mom said, “Jeff, you play really nice guitar.”

My mom was not aware of Jeff Beck’s iconic status—she didn’t know about the Yardbirds or his influential albums like Wired and Blow by Blow.

Unfazed, Jeff answered, “Oh, well, thank you so much, Marie. I thought I messed up that last pass pretty good. Did you like it, then?”

That guy will forever be my hero.

It’s So Easy: and other lies
Duff McKagan

Visiting a Long-imagined Place, Flaubert Quote

Cairo, January 5, 1850
You ask me whether the Orient is up to what I imagined it to be. Yes, it is, and more than that it extends far beyond the narrow idea I had of it. I have found, clearly delineated, everything that was hazy in my mind. Facts have taken the place of suppositions – so excellently that it is often as though I were suddenly coming upon old and forgotten dreams.

Flaubert and Madame Bovary
Francis Steegmuller