Woody's Fascinating Factoid, #6: "Fiasco" Ain't Nothing But A Bottle

In which Y'r Ob'd't S'v't tracks the progress of the word "fiasco" from its origins in the medieval, glass-blowers art to its current meaning: an utter, total, humiliating failure.

In English the word "fiasco" means an absolute, abject or utterly humiliating failure.

The financial/housing/credit meltdown in 2007-09 could be understood in such a term. The BP/Macondo well oil catastrophe of 2010 comes to mind for another example. And of course the whole Bushevik "reply" to the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans is a classic of the kind. Tipping over that cruise ship recently, in plain sight of the harbor mouth would be another obvious example.

In the original Italian, 'fiasco' means "flask."

So, you might inquire, how did the Italian word for "little bottle" come to signify a complete and utter disaster?

The answer is Dr. Woody's Fascinating Factoid #6. It's like this.

It goes to the glass-blower's art, which is as delicate and fragile as the material itself.

Glass blowing is a delicate, exacting, unforgiving art, and it was practiced at somewhere approaching its highest form in Renaissance Italy. It requires dexterity, technique, experience, knowledge, patience, courage, and no small amount of luck to tease out of base silicates the intricate designs, radiant colors, and expressive shapes which skilled artisans can craft in the searing flames of their kilns.

And as happens fairly regularly in such a delicate and sensitive enterprises as glass blowing, accidents happen.

And when they did, and the other artisans in the guild witnessed this sad event, they'd holler and tease the unfortunate glassblower about it.


And the fellow whose 'bubble' burst, so to speak, to camouflage his own disappointment and the disgrace of the failed work would reply to the taunts that, in effect, the broken or failed piece was nothing important, but was only a "fiasco," a little bottle of no importance.

Apropos of nothing, really: I have a sterling "flask" in which I used once upon a time to transport whiskey when I was going out drinking on the cheap. Even cheap whiskey tastes okay when it's pouring out of a sterling silver flask, hippies... we can try it when I see you at the beach.

Hippie News & Stuff: "Race" Riots

In light of the threats and charges, and counter-threats and counter-charges circulating in the tumultuous wake of the shooting death in February of Trayvon Martin, a young black man who appears to have been ambushed and assassinated by a "neighborhood watch" fanatic in a community in Sanford, Florida, the ugly rhetoric of "race riot" is again ricocheting around.

White-supremacists are conspicuously puffing themselves up to "defend" themselves (and "all white people") from hotly imagined (and not-so-secretly anticipated) assaults by marauding squadrons of black, urban gangstas who, they believe, will be prowling white neighborhoods seeking to extract revenge for Trayvon's murder.

I think that, when nowadays, folks hear and/or bandy about the term "race riots," the first image many people would evoke would be something from the inflammations of the ghettos and inner cities of the 1960s and '70s; or possibly, more recently, the violent outbreaks after the Rodney King incident in Los Angeles, and the lenient treatment of his accused abusers in the police.

But in the harsh realities of history, the truth of the matter is and has always been that, based on the numbers and the violence of the incidents, the vast, really overwhelming majority of racial violence on these shores has been perpetrated by people who said and thought they were "white" against others. During the 19the and early 20th centuries, blacks were the most likely group most likely to be lynched, but Italians were the SECOND most likely.

Still, organized, often state-supported violence against black people is the most common. From Thibodeaux, LA (1887), to Atlanta, Ga (1906), to East St. Louis, Il (1917), Chicago, Il, and Omaha, Neb (1919), to Greenwood, OK, 1921) to Rosewood, Fl, to others too numerous to catalogue here, White mobs descended upon either small groups, and even individuals, as well as whole blak communities, and systematically destroyed them. In Greenwood, OK, the "Black Wall Street" until 1921, the Governor ordered out aircraft to strafe the fire-gutted ruins.

Susan Faludi, a very smart lady, and author of numerous, provocative and thoughtful books, argues that--to the extent that such a thing actually exists (and our stereotypes suggest it does)--the historico-psychological profile of the "dominant" class male in this country includes a deep and abiding fear of two things: slave revoilt and indian raid. They could defend the shores, but were vulnerable from within. In the belligerence of the 'supremacists,' we may hear the echoes of those fears.

Citizen's Dispatch: "War on Women"? Really?

In which Y'r Ob'd't S'v't essay to unpack the deep significance of the apparently suicidal plunge by the GOPhux into Gender warfare.

In The Nation/blog, the other day, one could detect a hint of bewilderment as well as braggadocio (or it's 'feminine' cognate) in a piece which asks, almost incredulously, "Do the Republicans Think They Can Win Without Women?" It's by Carol Gilligan, a renowned feminist on the public and academic stages. She semi-smugly declares: "If they believe that in exercising control over women's reproductive functions, they will also control women's voices, they are wrong."

Well, of COURSE they're wrong. Duh! Doncha get it? They're COUNTING on being wrong. They're eager to drive women away. And Latinos, Blacks, and sane people.

The purpose of this campaign for the GOP is "pragmatically" ideological and monetary. It isn't to win the WhiteHouse. What they really want is to take the Senate and to hold the House. This is a table-setter, prep for two and four-years hence. Under its guise, the fuckloon Rightards blanket the land in overlapping layers of malodorous, feculent GOPhux bullshit; plus campaigning provides very accessible ways to financially reward loyal sponsors and adjuncts from the spoils of the campaign war-chests. It spreads the wealth, buys loyalty for the future. .

I cannot escape the almost fell certainty that the GOPhux' top owner/managers don't want to win, NOT this time... Just as in 2008, they didn't want it, at all. Too much baggage! By 2008, even WHITE people were disgusted with Bush-Cheney. The economy was dissolving before their eyes, on account of their policies. Unemployment was rampant, and getting worse. Health care costs were out of control. The real-estate bubble had burst, and was having a reaction in all its peripheral markets. People were losing their homes. Ruin was EVERYWHERE!

Worse, the USofA, which had long nourished its exceptionality with its increasingly delusional image by being the beacon to the world's oppressed peoples, had become an international pariah state, guilty of inflicting countless, cruel, undeserved casualties, death, and mayhem on nations and peoples which were not guilty of anything but of being unable to defend themselves against us.

That was then. It was too toxic. So they dropped Sarah Palin onto McCain's ticket and watched as it fluttered gaily out to sea and sank into the storms of economic collapse...

This is NOW, and if ANY of the clown-car leads the ticket, it's tantamount ot the same thing as the Palin nomination--other than RMoney, and his Mormonism will block his aspirations. The Owners/Oners still don't want even any NOMINAL responsibility. Not for the past, this time, but for what's gonna happen--for the NEXT four years, when the REAL "austerity program" sets in.

What? You thought it already HAD? Aren't you cute!

Bbbbbbaby, you ain't seen nuthin yet...The Dims and AFBP will officially preside over that capitalistic miracle. "New jobs" will pay pay scant and have crap benefits. So even if the "numbers" go up, quality of life won't. Can't.

And even at that, of the people who were dis-employed by the Bosses in the Great Recession--STILL more than 13 MILLION of them-- only a small fraction of them will EVER recover the same standard of living they once enjoyed--FYI, here in the US, depending on your age, only between one in five, if you're "older," and one in three, for "younger" workers.

Would you like fries with that McChemical, ma'am?

HOWEVER: the market is making money. The Dow was recently above 13 THOUSAND for the first time in several years. And the banks are awash in cash. The members of the interlocking directorates of ALL the nation and the WORLD's largest and wealthiest corporations are extremely pleased that Tiger Woods seems to be making a comeback, and re-invigorating the game. And there are at least TWO, new-generation derivative-style bubbles being grown even as we speak, to extract the next trillion or so from our collective pockets.

Verily, with St. Barry, the Spelunker, in charge, the duopoly is safely, immovably ensconced. The GOP will move back into Oval Office in 2016, when the Dims and AFBP have collared all the blame and obloquy for the "decline of the Empire,"...They'll then rally the troops with stertorous cries to restore THE USOFA to our former GLO-RAY!, and push BACK the barbarians clamoring at the gates. You want security, you shall have SE-CUR-I-TAY!

As long as the white majority survives, that "RECLAIM AMERICA'S PLACE rhetoric will keep 'em in power. They'll grow more and more indistinguishable totalitarian regimes of the past.

I doubt you or I will out-live it, though, hippies.

No matter how preservative is life down here at the beach...

As The Cookie Crumbles: Losing Is Winning...

In which Y'r Ob'd't S'v't explores the reality and the rhetoric of those who proclaim that the defeat of Obama/Romney/Heritage/Nixon-care will pave the way for the "inevitable" emergence of "singlepayer" health care in the USofA, and finds it "unpersuasive."

Comes another somebody in the lefty-blogosphere (TalkingPointsMemo) protesting that defeating "Obama/Romney/Heritage-care" will be a Pyrrhic victory for the GOPhux, a "Short-term success but long-term disaster!"

Statements like that make my asshole tighten with trepidation. Can he be serious?

Jeezus KEERYST! I mean! REALLY??!!

This is the United fucking States of A..merica....for the love of crap...Nothing is "permanent," and next to nothing is ever "long-term" (except mortgages...)

Not investment, not jobs, not marriage, not NOTHING! "Eat, drink, and be merry"--that from Ecclesiastes--"for tomorrow, we die" (Isaiah)...Should be on the currency!

Every social instrument is set to ensure that NOTHING is likely to be remembered very long. If there were long-term consequences, in USer politis, would Neut Gingrich dare to pose as a serious candidate?

I mean, this is the Land of the Quarterly fucking REPORT! We INVENTED the fucking thing. Our entire fucking economy HANGS on quarterly reports. The wealth of the Zillionaires depends on quarterly reports!

One FOURTH of a YEAR. Ninety fucking days, more or less.

The GOPhux are the "party" of the bottom line. There is no morality but profit; and loss is the ONLY sin.

So, answer me! Why the FUCK does anybody think the GOPhux will shrink from destroying what's left of the social safety net? They've been gunn8ng for it since about 1933. What fucking EVIDENCE is there? What sort of daft, delusional drivel? The catastrophic collapse of any vestige of the social safety net is NOT bad for them.

Unlike YOU, THey don't need it.

When has the "common good" ONCE been served by these fuckwhistles in the last 30 fucking years?

What you don't seem yet to have actually inhabited, like a suit, or a new car, most--a LOT anyway--of y'all, izzat that the Owners/Oners WANT your lives to collapse into turmoil, pain, loss and despair, cuz that where the real money is.
That's why we have recessions.

No, really.

Every dozen or so years, the real owners of all the shit you have decide it's time to call in all their markers. They decide the time is right, and they just take back what you thought YOU owned...but never did, cuz it was collateral on the MONEY you borrowed to get whatever the fuck it was.

They then reclaim what they'e basically leased to you at pennies on the dollar, and if you ever scramble out again, they'll "sell" (LEASE!) it back to you, taking your money TWICE!

You can watch a video of this column on my Anosognosia blog.

Hippie News & Stuff: Beaten, but Unbrowed

In Which Y'r Ob'd't S'v't observes that, while the rightard/fuckloons have indeed led the country down the "primrose path" toward rankest, loathsome authoritarianism (at best!), they had plenty of assistance, encouragement and eager compliance from folks to whom you, hippies, are probably related.

Katrina van den Heuvel, in a WaPo column I the other day, heaped scorn and obloquy on "the right wing" for "browbeating their fellow citizens" into submission with their "scorched womb/school/union/senoirs/health (etc) policies" (my phrase) camouflaging their odious, militantly anti-social/anti-democratic (small d) agenda as an almost sacred crusade "battling" against the "moral crises" of gay marriage, social safety nets, contraception, green energy and organized labor.

Quoth the outraged Katrina: "The real crisis of public morality in the United States doesn’t lie in the private decisions Americans make in their lives or their bedrooms; it lies at the heart of an ideology — and a set of policies — that the right-wing has used to batter and browbeat their fellow Americans."

C'mon. Puh-LEEEEZ!@ I mean, I buy the indictment, but, really:

The thug/gunsel wing of the GOP didn't have to browbeat everybody.

They had PLENTY of willing acolytes, lusty volunteers, enthusiastic foot-soldiers and spear-carriers. You're probably related to a few:

All those Reagan Dims, among others.

And what about the "religious" rightloons, theocrats, and Cristards?

And the growing legions of anti-science homeschoolers, eager to eliminate the secular influences of public school?

And the welfare/immigrant/colored-people haters.

Take all the groups to whom the thugs like "Widow's Peak" Ryan, Orange Boner, Sen. Yertle, and Eric "The Man With The Six-Pack Jaw" Cantor have drawn from for their constituencies, and add to that the Limbaugh ditto-heads, and they started with fair plurality of ready allies.

Not to say that the "morality" of the bottom line is not, prima facie, itself immoral, or that those who cleave to it aren't psychopathic narcissists who should be shunned by decent folks and sent to isolated, primitive islands; but to claim they "forced" their toxic ideology upon us is a bit of an exaggeration. Many swilled the kool-aid.

Even with the calamities of the last Congress, close to HALF of the people, probably, STILL approve of the frontal assaults on the safety nets as long as it's sold as making lazy loafers go back to work, or denying "privileges" to the undeserving; MOST, most likely, if they thought that the people whom they detested as inferiors were suffering more than they as a result.

I fear this is stupid of the sort even the Ocean can cleanse. We can try, when I see you at the beach, chers...PAZ!

Back to your good self, Winstone, and the wonders of Hippie Central!

Citizen Dispatch: God & Mammon -- A Conflict of Interest?

If you're a 'minister', or a 'priest," and you win election to a law-making body, who do you serve? The "People," and the Constitution, as you are sworn by oath and affirmation to do. Or does you loyalty to your faith, and your "God" take precedence?

Case in point: Kansas State Legislator Pete DeGraaf? Along with being a first-term Kansas legislator, he's ALSO an associate pastor of some god-walloping, bible-smacking, theistic funny-farm out on the endless, tornado-ravaged plains. He recently got himself installed in Topeka, whence he has been a reliable source of the kind of bullshit that gives 'religious' legislators a bad name by the simple expedient of opening their mouths and flapping their tongues.

Item: The other week, in the midst of the hype and hoopla hysteria surrounding the newly re-activated, hot-button issues like contraception and abortion, and the (entirely valid, imho) comparison of the transvaginal sonogram probe with rape, State Rep. DeGraaf joined the debate over banning health insurance coverage for abortions of rape pregnancies, saying flippantly, in effect, that no such procedure should be included because bearing the child of a rapist might be inconvenient to the mother, but no worse than a flat-tire...No, really. He said it. There's a link on my blog.

It's the cavalier attitude, the almost disdainful disregard, verging on contempt, for what must be a horrible and horrifying event crystalized something for me, why and how deeply I truly, truly, deeply, and wholly detest these pious mountebanks.. They make my skin crawl.

What I see in this christarded, god-bothered, bible-babbling wackloon crackkker, DeGraff, is the STRONGEST POSSIBLE argument imaginable as to why preachers shouldn't be elected to representative office (pace, Berrigan freres).

Like all other elected officials of the "several States" take an oath to faithfully uphold the Constitution. But their behavior often seems to me to suggest that they swear--with reservations. They appear to me to invoke 'faith' as excuse for betraying the laws, and institutions they swore, when elected, to uphold. Who was it noted, they place their hands on the "Bible" and swear to uphold the Constitution, not the other way round?

The most irritating thing is that these miserable miscreants and charlatans fucking ADMIT their competing loyalties. Most of them proudly fucking DECLARE, that their FIRST fucking loyalty is to their fucking GOD. Not to their District they represent, not to the Constitution, fer fucks' sake, not to their consituents, nor to the State to the governance of which they pretend to want to contribute.

You would think that some vestigial sense of integrity would hint to them that, by seeking and accepting public office, their first duty would be to the PEOPLE an their institutions. But for fucknozzles like this asslicking shitwheel, their ELECTED office is not, and never will be, their highest, dominant concern. IT is NOT their FIRST loyalty. Their "faith" is. Their fucking GOD is. And that just ain't right.!

And, for me, that disqualifies the fuckers from EVER representing ME...And that includes the likes of BISHOP/ELDER Willard "Mittens" Romney. Whose side is he on? Mine? Ours? of some imaginary "God's?" To me, they're not interchangeable.

Time was, if you were talking to "God" and happened to be pushing a shopping cart down the street in MANY cities, it 'd getcha 3 hots and a squat, a shower and someplace to refresh your meds, while they deloused ya.

Nowadays, talking to God gets you a parish, and a seat in some corn-pone legislature, and mazbe even a place in the presidential debates. If they ARE talking to "god," it sher hasn't improved the quality of the discourse.

We can swap horror stories about wackloon relatives when I see you at the beach, hippies...

Dr. Woody's Fabulous, Fascinating Factoid, #4: Gladiators Died Hard.

Because I still vividly recall the epic 1960 film, starring Kirk Douglas, Olivier and the LUSCIOUS Jean Simmons (screenplay by Dalton Trumbo, for all you buffs),the recent televised emergence--or possibly the re-emergence--of the "Spartacus phenomenon" has a couple of dimensions which are interesting, to the semiotician in me.

First, there's the revolutionary spirit-thing: Spartacus, the historical person, was a gladiator who did lead a doomed, but for a time successful slave-revolt, in the army of which were MANY other former gladiators.

When finally conquered, the defeated slaves were ordered by the Romans to turn over their leader. But, instead, the story goes, they all rose, to a man, and proclaimed themselves to be "Spartacus." There is an obvious appeal to such a figure, such a story in such times as ours. They were ALL crucified by the Romans for their troubles, every 10 yards, for a couple of miles along the Via Appia, on the way back to Rome, iirc.

But their ultimate, grisly fates notwithstanding, the refrain "We Are ALL Spartacus" resonates with certain features of the Occupy movement, because we are, actually, after all, ALL Occupiers.

Then there's the homo-erotic-stimulation-thing...Peter Graves' duet with Kareem in the cockpit scene in "Airplane" was funny, because it struck, smote, clattered a familiar meme.

Plus, since it's on cable, you get plenty of "hetero" tits and ass, too. Gasping, heaving, sensual nudity has been a staple in "classical" stories on cable since the beginning of the medium.and they have returned to these pleasant waters with a certain verve...

And there's the war-pron-thing.

Computerized graphics makes it possible to animate the imagined consequences of fierce blows struck with sharp blades and other implements with unprecedented, in-the-moment detail. Hey, boys! Just in time for next X-mas: Spartacus "action" figures! They don't just bleed, THEY SPURT! THEY GUSH! THEY SPEW BLOOD!

On the reality side, it appears, from evidence exhumed from several old Roman grave-sites for deceased gladiators uncovered in recent years, the most common, death-dealing wound with which failed combatants were dispatched was a single, violent plunge of the "gladius" (the short, straight sword for which the gladiators are named) directly down the throat of the conquered opponent.

This suggests to me that the vanquished fighters were expected to submit to their conquerors, and not to merely fall to them. A last, fatal humiliation.

I think it must be an extraordinarily unpleasant way to die.