Archive for the ‘History’ Category
❤Limerick Alert❤ Leave a comment
😏Weekly Quote😏 Leave a comment
“By working faithfully eight hours a day
you may eventually get to be boss and
work twelve hours a day.”
Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in the United States. He was well known for his realistic depictions of rural life in New England. He was honored frequently during his lifetime and is the only poet to receive four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry.
Criticize the Critics Leave a comment
For most of my life I’ve been an aspiring artist with my share of successes and failures. It’s really not about being successful or being a failure, it’s having the ability to create something that others find interesting. Regardless of a person’s ability, be it good or bad, there’s always a bevy of critics to look at your work, and then spend a great deal of time and effort cutting it to pieces with little or no concern about the work itself, or the effort and concentration you spent during its creation. I’m not really complaining about the critics because they’re a fact of life no matter what you do artistically or otherwise. Today I’ll offer up some blurbs made by some relatively famous critics about other artists and their work. They’re a bit sarcastic and a little nasty at times but that’s life. Here they are. . .
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
‘Still life with the Bulls Head’ “My little granddaughter of six could do as well.” Norman Rockwell
“If I met Picasso in the street, I would kick him in the pants.” Sir Alfred Munnings 1949
“Picasso finding new ways of avoiding maturity.” Clive James 1984
Michelangelo (1475-1564)
“If Michelangelo had been a heterosexual, the Sistine Chapel would have been painted basic white and with a roller.” Rita Mae Brown 1988
“He was a good man, but he did not know how to paint.” El Greco
Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
“Faced with a virtual complete record of the old phony’s unswerving bathos, it was impossible not to burst out in yawning . . . the uproar of banality numbed the mind.” Clive James 1984
“Senor Dali, more than delirious, considers it folly to be serious.” Phyllis McGinley 1960
“The naked truth about me is to the naked truth about Salvador Dali as an old ukulele in the attic is to a piano in a tree, and I mean piano with breasts.” James Thurber 1945
Andy Warhol (1930-1980)
“The most famous living artist in America is Andrew Warhol, unfortunately.” John Heilpern 1979
“Warhol’s art belongs less to the history of painting than to the history of publicity.” Hilton Kramer
“The only genius with an IQ of 60.” Gore Vidal
As you can see, even the most famous artists have people lined up to ridicule their art and everything else about them. I guess if you want to be famous, this is the price you must pay, listening to a bunch of jealous and envious critics. Even a chump like me has been criticized for virtually everything I’ve ever done artistically and truthfully that’s part of the fun for me.
I JUST LOVE IRRITATING PEOPLE
01/30/2022 Who is Dumbest? Leave a comment
Marion Shepilov Barry was an American politician who served as the second and fourth mayor of the District of Columbia from 1979 to 1991 and 1995 to 1999.
Who is the dumbest? This might be the stupidest question ever asked by anyone including myself. There is so much dumb going around in recent years, it would take me forever to put a coherent list together of the worst of them. I’ve been alive a long time and I’ve seen dumb, heard dumb, and on occasion spoke dumb myself. It’s only right that I’ve chosen to honor former mayor Marion Barry of Washington D.C. fame. He had problems putting together an eight-word sentence and if you don’t believe me, read on. His dumbness was also all too obvious when it came to hookers and crack cocaine. Someone at his level of stupid deserves to be memorialized by me, today and here are his tidbits of wisdom . . .
- “I am providing you with a copulation of answers to several questions raised . . .”
- “What we have here is an egregemous miscarriagement of taxitude.”
- “The contagious people of Washington have stood firm against adversity during this long period of increment weather.”
- “I promise you a police car on every sidewalk.”
- “I am making this trip to Africa because Washington is an international city, just like Tokyo, Nigeria, or Israel. As mayor, I am an international symbol, can you deny that Africa?”
- “What right does Congress have to go around making laws just because they deem it necessary?”
- “Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.”
- “People blame me because these water mains break, but I ask you, if the water mains didn’t break, would it be my responsibility to fix them than? Would it?”
- “There are two kinds of truth. There are real truths, and there are made up truths.”
- “I am a great mayor, I am an upstanding Christian man, I am an intelligent man, I am a deeply educated man, and I’m a humble man.”
How could we possibly go wrong when this is the standard someone has to meet to be elected in the nation’s capitol. Is it any wonder Washington D.C. and Congress are eternally screwed up? Instead of firing and prosecuting Mayor Barry, we should have elected him President, it worked so well for Bill Clinton, so why not. I shouldn’t complain, I guess. If all politicians were actually what they claimed to be I wouldn’t have anything to write about.
IT’S TOO BAD ABOUT BARRY, BUT HE WAS NO DAN QUAYLE
📣Quotation Alert📣 Leave a comment
“Between two evils, I always pick
the one I never tried before.”
Mae West (August 17, 1893 – November 22, 1980) was an American actress who worked in vaudeville and later in movies. She is best remembered for her dirty jokes and comedy movies. Her name when she was born was Mary Jane West. She was born in Brooklyn, New York City, and died in Hollywood, California.
📣Quotation Alert📣 Leave a comment
“A diplomat is a man who thinks
twice before saying nothing.”
Frederick Adolphus Sawyer (December 12, 1822 – July 31, 1891) was a United States Senator from South Carolina. Born in Bolton, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University in 1844. On the night of April 14, 1865, Sawyer was at Ford’s Theater in Washington D.C. and witnessed the assassination of President Lincoln.
Interrogation-Old School Leave a comment
Today’s the day for another somewhat gross and disgusting posting in line with my Crime and Punishment post from a few days ago. I’m not trying to be morbid, but exploring the human condition is interesting. In these days of Islamic terrorism where 10% of Muslims (rough estimate) want to kill us, I thought a historical review of torture techniques might be in order.
There was such an uproar made about the United States allowing waterboarding a few years back that the following list of torture techniques might have some of those terrorists praying for waterboarding. I’m a firm believer if somebody’s out kill you it is within your rights to do anything (and I mean anything) to protect yourself and an absolute requirement that you kill them back. If waterboarding helps keep me and mine safe, so be it. This list should let everyone know that things could be a helluva lot worse.
- Foot Roasting – Victim immobilized on a frame and his bare soles coated with lard or oil and roasted over an open fire.
- Pitch Capping – Boiling hot tar is poured into a bowl, which is then poured onto the bound victim. This boils the scalp. Then when the cap is ripped off it brings the scalp with it.
- Denailing – Finger and toenails are ripped off by forcing flaming skewers tipped with sulphur under them.
- The Rack – The victim is stretched over a rack with ropes ties to the hands and feet. The body is slowly stretched until the cords cut through the flesh of the arms.
- Water Cure – Using a funnel the victim is forced to drink large quantities of water or nastier liquids. This causes great pain and vomiting when the stomach is distended. It is repeated as often as necessary.
- Foot Beating – Beating the soles of the feet with a metal bar or stick.
And last but not least for the more liberal of our citizens and preapproved by the Democratic Party, intense tickling till they scream and a serious threat of calling their mother, should keep those terrorists awake nights. Brutal but necessary.
I ALWAYS LIKED THAT INTENSE TICKLING
01/25/2022 Crime and Punishment 2 comments
Being a former police officer, I still maintain interest in all things criminal, crime related, and punishment. I’m also a big fan of almost any book, fiction or nonfiction, about investigations concerning any crime you can think of. That makes today Crime and Punishment Trivia Day and I’ll pass along a few tidbits you may find interesting.
Let’s go back in history a few hundred years to examine methods of punishment for murderers, rapists, and traitors. From what I can see they were a little harsher with punishment than we seem to be these days.
- First on the list is the wheel. Criminals were lashed to a wagon wheel and their limbs bludgeoned or broken by brute force. Ugly but effective.
- Next, we have boiling. The criminals were immersed in boiling water, oil, or hot tar and fried to death. Yuck! Soups on.
- Another favorite was flaying. That involves the removal of a person’s skin which could keep the criminal alive for a day or two until he died from shock. I’d say this is really cruel and really unusual punishment.
- This is a Chinese favorite called “The Death of a Thousand Cuts”. It is where the criminal was lashed to a frame and over a period of days pieces of their body were severed and removed with a knife. Had to be the Mongolians who started this trend.
- This crowd-pleaser is called disembowelment. The criminal’s abdomen was opened while alive with a knife, and his organs were individually removed, particularly the bowels. No comment on this disgusting method since I had it done to me but with an anesthesia.
- Impalement involves driving a pointed stake through the victim’s body from the rectum up through the breast and shoulder. Ouch!!!!!
- Stoning is when a large group of people were gathered together to throw stones at the criminal. The point here is that no single person is responsible for the death, it’s a group act. What a Sharia loving group.
- Decapitation is the removal of the victims’ head by knife, sword, ax, or guillotine. One way to keep ahead of the criminals.
- Burning at the stake involves exposing the criminal to direct flames or heat until death occurs. Barbecues had to start somewhere.
- Hanging, drawn, and quartering requires criminals to be dragged behind a horse to a platform where they were then hanged, removed just before the moment of death, and then castrated, disemboweled, beheaded, and quartered. That’s like killing the criminal three times over.
- And last but not least an unusual punishment popular in Southeast Asia from the 11th – 18th centuries. The criminal is tied up, placed under the foot of an elephant, and then crushed. No more circus visits for me, I’ll have nightmares.
I think all of the criminals living in this country should count their blessings and except Life Imprisonment Without Chance of Parole as being mighty generous and merciful. It’s hard to imagine how many of these methods were used often and without hesitation. It’s also hard to imagine how they had any crime rate whatsoever when the criminals knew these kinds of punishments were being handed out. But to quote an expert, “Stupid is as Stupid Does”.
THANKS GO OUT TO FORREST GUMP FOR THE QUOTE
01/22/2022 The Seven Wonders X 4 Leave a comment
The first mention of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World was in the 5th century BCE. They were some of the greatest human achievements at that time. The list was used over the centuries by many medieval writers but was mainly concerned with the accomplishments of the Greek or Roman empires. At that time very little was known of faraway cultures and their creations. Here is the traditional list of seven:
Giza Pyramids (Egypt), The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (Iraq), Temple of Artemis (Turkey), Statue of Zeus (Greece), the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus (Turkey), the Colossus of Rhodes (Greece), and the Pharos of Alexandria (Egypt).
While these seven were indeed a wonder, there were many other places elsewhere on the globe with achievements worthy of mention. Here are just a few to make my point:
The Great Wall (China), Angkor Wat (Cambodia), Machu Picchu (Peru), the Taj Mahal (India), the Moai Statues (Easter Island), the Aztec Temple of Tenochtitlan (Mexico), the Shwedagon Pagoda (Myanmar), and the Coliseum (Italy).
These were just a few. I could easily have named at least two dozen more. Let’s change categories now to name the Seven Wonders of the Industrial Age.
The Transcontinental Railroad (USA), the London Sewer System England), the Panama Canal (Panama), Hoover Dam (USA), the Three Gorges Dam (China), the Banaue Rice Terraces (Philippines), and the Bell Rock Lighthouse (Scotland).
What about the modern world and it’s wonders? Here are seven more to consider:
Itaipu Dam (Brazil), the Channel Tunnel (England/France), the Twin Towers (USA), the Zuider Zee Dam (Netherlands), the Petronas Towers (Indonesia), the CN Tower (Canada), and the Burj Khalifa (UAE).
I’ve offered up a lot of information here and many will likely disagree with some of my choices. The point of this historical rampage was to show that creativity and wonder aren’t limited to one country or one continent. The wonders of the world are too numerous to list, and every country has their own favorites. I find it amazing that as a species we have so many similarities and so little understanding of each other. Maybe someday it will improve.
WE CAN ONLY HOPE
💥Daily Quote💥 Leave a comment
“The price of hating other human beings
is loving oneself less.”
Leroy Eldridge Cleaver (August 31, 1935 – May 1, 1998) was
an American writer and political activist who became an early
leader of the Black Panther Party.
everyuselessthing.com 