Dr. Woody's Fascinating Factoid: "Harlot"

Here's one I betcha you didn't know: The first times the word "harlot" was heard in English, it was in reference to men.

According to my trusty Barnhart's, the etymologically, "harlot" as an English word was first used in the Middle Ages to describe masterless men-at-arms.

The key word being "masterless."

Particularly: To violent, unprincipled, unscrupulous, ungovernable men who were essentially mercenaries. Men with blood on their hands, and no aversion to shedding more. Unemployed soldiers hanging around medieval cities waiting for the next war. They were never long in coming or in short supply. The history of the middle ages is one long, continuous, bloody conflict after another: Hundred-Years' wars, and 30 years' wars, and 20 Years' wars, and crusades and invasions and repulses, and conquests by the dozens. The dogs of war were abroad, and they looked like men, and they were called "harlots."


You have to understand: If I had been born in 1346, instead of 1946, and by the VERY best luck and fortune, had survived to 1412, almost ANYWHERE in Europe, I almost CERTAINLY would have had to survive an international conflict or a civil war. That would likely have meant having had to kill to preserve my own life. On the blog, I've copied a list of the wars which history notes having occurred at the comparable time: 1370-1412.  There were 18 of them in just those 40-odd years, spanning the continent from Russia to Kosovo. Plus, between 1347 and 1453, the 100 Year's war ravaged the whole continent between Sweeden and Italy.

(Here's the list: of just the wars which began in the span:

• 1356–1375 War of the Two Peters

• 1362 Battle of Helsingborg

• 1366–1369 Castilian Civil War

• 1366–1526 Ottoman–Hungarian Wars

• 1369–1370 First Ferdinand War

• 1371–1381 War of Chioggia

• 1372–1373 Second Ferdinand War

• 1373–1379 Byzantine civil war of 1373–1379

• 1375–1378 War of the Eight Saints

• 1381 Peasants' Revolt

• 1381–1382 Third Ferdinand War

• 1381–1384 Lithuanian Civil War

• 1382 Harelle and Maillotins Revolt

• 1389 Battle of Kosovo

• 1389–1392 Lithuanian Civil War

• 1395 Battle of Nicopolis

• 1409–1411 Polish–Lithuanian–Teutonic War

• 1410–1435 War of Slesvig

Nearly ALL men had gone to war, and had faced the necessity of killing. They were inured to it. They also had the most advanced weapons of the day, and they were expert with them. And they were fearless, having survived medieval battles, which were fearsome things; bloody butchery, mainly. The injured were normally dispatched without benefit of either clergy or of surgery.

And so, when they congregated in medieval cities like London, and Paris, and Verona, between immewdiate local conflicts or wars, they preyed on ordinary citizens, often committing robberies, even murders. Blooded, used to killing, civic authorities were often powerless against them.

It was only a little while later that that sense of menace, of danger, to the polis which those merciless, blooded, armed warriors posed began to be ascribed to the women who 'serviced' them; whereby their "easy virtue" was seen, by the clergy, and thje "civis" as the equivalent danger to the souls of their parishioners as the weapons of the warriors they serviced were to the unsuspecting populace.

And of course, nowadays, "harlot" is a term only assigned to women.

Next time, I'll tell you how algebra relates to screams of pain...See varlets and harlots at the beach, hippies...

WWH/CJE SoapBox: Political Potlatch

In which Yr. Intr'p'd Inv's'g'tr intrerprets the apparent, incredible, hundred-million-dollar largess of the Owners in their campaign expenditures, NOT as a serious effort to achieve a particular political end, but as the sort of ceremonial generosity of Arctic hetmen by the Owners, returning some of the wealth to their satraps and functionaries.

A piece on the Huff-Post last week reported that a small majority of USers still remember that The Chimperor Bush was responsible for the recent financial unpleasantness.

I take that as evidence that Prez Obomber's second term is in the bag.

That's because he won't be removed until he finishes the job, and "average Murkin" blames him and the Dims for all their troubles. That'll take another four years.

Plus, we got "Teh Great Austerity" coming down the road...You thought the "Great Recession" was bad? You ain't seen NUTHIN yet.

THAT's gonna be bad enough to make the folks forget ALL about the Chimperor Bush, and his minions, lackeys and lickspittles, their failures and predations.

Sir Barry and the Dims are gonna take the fall for that. That's what they're there for. Obomber's MAIN job in the second term is going to be to sell "Austerity" to the people, and then take the blame for it: Ain't no WHITE folks could sell it, and they don't WANT the responsibility.

When the First Black President is deemed responsible for all the pain and suffering, then and ONLY then will it be "safe" for the White Folx to step back in and take over the Gummint again...

2016: Bush/Cheney (Jeb and Lizzie)

Mark my words...

But if that is so, folks wonder aloud, why are the Owners--like the Koch Brothers and the rest of the rightard Billionaires--spending hundreds of million dollars on the campaign?

Well, here's ol' Dr. Woody's take:

It's a form of pay-off.

The really rich guys don't care a stinky shit WHO the president is.

It's irrelevant.

Nothing changes for 'em.

But the campaign gives 'em the opportunity to spread their money around in ways which, without the campaign, would probably LOOK "illegal." It's like a quadrennial, political potlatch.

("Potlatch" is a ceremonial tradition practices mainly among indigenes of the Arctic/North, At potlatch gatherings, a family or hereditary leader hosts guests in their family's house and holds a feast for their guests. The main purpose of the potlatch is the re-distribution and reciprocity of wealth.

The owners are more interested in controlling Congress (which I predict they'll accomplish this fall: Hold the House, narrowly--less than 60 seats--take the Senate). Spreading the wealth around assists in this.

But, out little plebian, pedestrian minds rebel. They're spending hundreds of millions of dollars.

True! But one can't think about these things like a prole, as if money actually MATTERS. It doesn't.

The dozens, even HUNDREDS of millions they's spend is chickenfeed. Pocket change. Running-around money.

If you have a BILLION dollars, that's a THOUSAND MILLION. Every additional billion is another THOUSAND million. The KockBros sit on around FIFTY BILLION between 'em. That's FIFTY THOUSAND MILLION!

You can drop a hundred million and not even NOTICE!

The election, properly understood, is yet another "act" in the national "kabuki," whose end is already known but the playing out of which is the necessary part.

Bring you costumes with you when we gather at the beach, Hippies...
Citizen Journalist Dr. John Konopak answers those who wonder, if the fix is--as he believes-"in," why then  do the Rich Rightrards spend so much money in a "losing cause." In an effort to clarify the matter, Konopak compares the situation with the ancienmt, arctic tradition of "potlatch," in which the wealthiest, most successful leaders of the community return much of their wealth to the less successful, less prominent members of the group, thereby strengthening group solidarity. 

As The Cookie Crumbles: Chicken Feed

The GLBT community and its supporters have mounted a propaganda effort against the now-notoriously homophobic ownership of the fast-food franchise, Chic-Fil-A. The chicken sandwich business was already known to support of anti-gay initiatives and endorse for anti-gay candidates. But until recently, mostly, they kept their support of the Fundie-wackloon American Family Association and its ilk mostly under wraps. They didn't flaunt it.

But recently Chi-Fil-A's outspoken  CEO, the chubby, beady-eyed, unhealthily flushed Dan Cathy uped the ante, bu declaring publically that his Corporation stood four-square with "traditional Biblical mores," and condemned outright the Marriage Equality movement.


Now, nationally, the GLBT "community" seems to be making Cathy an offer he either or cannot refuse: withdraw/retract your ignorant, "bible-based" slanders against GLBT people, or else.

The "Else" being to have the company name and the CEO's identity blackened for public bigotry, with the attendant withdrawal of trade, advertizing, and association from the more tolerant elements of society.

This is not, as some of the Fucktards always assert, a "freedom-of-speech" issue.

Because the censure of Dan Cathy/ChicFilA is occurring in the public sphere, and is in no way  affected--pro or con--by "govt" policy, the 1st Amendment is not at issue.

The issue is: Does "speech" have 'consequences?'

Yes!

Can those customers aggrieved by the specter of a corporation using revenues derived from the purchases of the aggrieved to insult and further oppress those same customers create and maintain a sufficient presence to cost Chik-Fil-A anything, either financially or in terms of the CorpoRat reputation?

That remains to be seen.

Can Cathy be "silenced" by critics?

No.

He can silence HIMSELF, if he chooses, when he sees that the consequences of his speech--denigrating gays, etc--have ill or adverse effects on his business.

But he can also choose to ignore the criticism and continue.

And those whom he offends may continue to remind him they destest his bigotry.

The fate of Chik-Fil-A does not rest with the State, or the Government. It rests with the "people" and the "market." I don't expect Cathy to change his stand, personally.

And even if he did, I wouldn't trust any retraction to be more than pro forma.

And I won't consume his product again.

And if you want to make your feelings on the matter known, there are three of Cathy's restaurants in Albuquerque for you to avoid...One on the West Side, one in the WHeights, and the last in Nob Hill by the University...

Just sayin.

WWH/CJE Soap Box: Wrong Place, Wrong Time

On nearly successive nights, two groups of nearly identical numbers of people were tragically killed while scores of others were injured; but the flags are flying at half-mast for one group of victims and La Migra is rounding up the survivors of the other. Citizen Journalist John Konopak poses the rhetorical question: What's the difference?

The capriciousness of fate is the mainspring of an endless number of novels and other imagined dramas. Think of Wilder's (1927) The Bridge at San Luis Rey, which (spoil alert) collapses with a a number of diverse people on it who are there almost by accident. Or the far more pedestrian, but more familiar saga of the Titanic.


Life doesn't imitate art; life reifies art. 


For example: In Colorado, the other night, a bunch of people went to a certain movie-house to watch a certain show.
In a flash, many of them were injured and some killed by an accident.

Because it apparently was just an accident that a homicidal, probably psychotic mad-man chose THAT movie, at THAT theater, at THAT hour to act out his psychopathic fantasies, or answer the voices in his head, or some-other-how go right off the fucking rails.  


Nothing that ANY of them had EVER done made them candidates to die that way that night. They were victims of the caprices of fate. None was COMPELLED to be there by external constraints. It just happened.
But the CorpoRat/SCUM "press" is, of course obsessed. This is a lead story even three or four days later.  Both Stewart and Colbert will lead with it  (if they're not on vacation...)

There were the usual, somber pronouncements from all concerned quarters. The normal outcries of pain, loss and suffering in the community and among the family members. Much was said about the armory the killer had amassed, but it was QUICKLY revealed he'd gotten it all legally. Nothing to see here...

The quest to name an ideological scapegoat was fierce and immediate, but ultimately unsatisfied, so far. The man in custody seems to have the affect and/or the convictions of Beavis or Butthead. The setting (A Batman midnight showing) and the outlandish, stagey way the attack was carried out, plus later clues linking the alleged shooter to the "Batman" oeuvre, plus the amount and extent of the carnage make GREAT AS HELL TV. This is PRECISELY the kind of stuff TV is designed to purvey. Hell, the President even came to town to lend moral support--and if there were foto-ops to be had, well that's just the way things are, innit?  (The whole tone of the proceedings was captured VERY funnily in an extremely well-written piece in the Onion, on Sunday, which I've linked here on my blog.)


The shootings occurred Saturday night. By Sunday Obomber--relentless and resourceful ravager of the "heathen Pash-too" in the wilds of central Asia, besetting them with drone and hum-vee and probably depleted uranium--had decided THIS Colorado slaughter was worthy of NATIONAL acknowledgment, and ordered the US flag to be lowered to half-mast, and flown there until July 25. There was universal, orchestrated grief, sympathy and compassion, and astonished outrage. The gunman killed or injured nearly 80 people.


There things stood until last night or early this morning when, down near Goliad, Tx (a name fraught with Texan symbolism already), a Ford F-250 pick-up carrying perhaps 25 passengers in the cab and in the bed, left the highway at speed and crashed, killing 13 people--two of whom, it turns out, were infants.

But there hasn't been an out-pouring of humane concern for the victims in the truck. No days of mourning, no lowered flags. Indeed, La Migra has been called, and you know what that means.

Yet, he fates of the dead and injured in the theater is no different from that of the 20 poor workers hitching a ride to town with an amigo who happened to have wheels, and somehow they wind up wedged between a couple of stout trees, having come suddenly to rest from 60 or 70 mph. Dead and injured.

What makes one more due the nation's "respect" that you were unlucky enough to be in one place but not in the other? 

Why should the flags be flying at half staff for the victims in Colorado, while in Texas, the locals are complaining about having to care for the survivors?

What IS the difference?

If you'll forgive a rhetorical question...

And that's another thing:

Flag Etiquette!

In my humblest of opinions, ordering the flag flown at half-mast for the Denver victims is a case of sheer, opportunistic, political grandstanding, and an affront to what the gesture has always been meant to convey: NATIONAL mourning at the death of a figure of national significance. 


When did the Flag start to be lowered on whim? Or on the deaths of "ordinary folks?"

It wasn't all that long ago that that gesture was reserved to domestic political and/or military leaders. Ted Kennedy. Ronald Reagan. Robert Byrd. Jesse Helms. People of stature and consequence.
Now, of course, like everything else, the gesture has been cheapened and trivialized. The Chimperor Bush ordered flags flown at half-mast after the killings on the Virginia Tech campus. Gov. Tub-o'-Guts of New Jersey lowered NJ flags to half-mast for that singer. 


But, traditionally, the flag LOWERED to half-staff on the event of the death of ordinary citizens, no matter the gravity of the tragedy, or the number of the victims.. 

It's an honor reserved for the deaths of ex-presidents and the like. It is a gesture of national respect. 


Nothing in the deaths in Denver commands our RESPECT. Sympathy, yes; regret, or course; condolence, naturally. And recognition.

But unless they're willing to lower the flag in honor of ALL shooting victims, everyday, everywhere, it's just a horse-shit gesture, insincere, and highly visible. Election-year politics of the most obvious kind.

You can't BUY a better photo-op.

As the Cookie Crumbles: Patriotic Poison

I am not a big fan of "patriotism." Behind it's bloody flags and booming drums are conducted the most egregiously and self-consciously evil acts of which men are capable.

Not only the killing and the maiming and the destruction, but the conniving and the thievery and the profiteering and the cowardice, too.

Oscar Wilde thought of it that "Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious."

At Nuremberg, the Nazi war criminal Hermann Goering opined: "... the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."

The redoubtable Julius Ceasar recorded his thoughts on the matter:: ""Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind."

The first important American sociologist, Thorsten Veblen said of patriotism: "Sensational appeals to patriotic pride and animosity made by victories and defeats...[helps] direct the popular interest to other, nobler, institutionally less hazardous matters than the unequal distribution of wealth or of creature comforts. Warlike and patriotic preoccupations fortify the barbarian virtues of subordination and prescriptive authority."

World renowned psychologist Erich Fromm held patriotism in low esteem: "Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. "Patriotism" is its cult. It should hardly be necessary to say, that by "patriotism" I mean that attitude which puts the own nation above humanity, above the principles of truth and justice."

Neither of the contemporaries George Bernard Shaw nor Bertrand Russell had much good to say about it. Shaw, ever irascible, thought "Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy." Russel wrote: "Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons."

And of course, that is the subject of Wilfred Owen's wrenching, poetic account of the deadly costs of trench warfare and the "glories" of perishing for God and Country: "Dulce et Decorum Est." In one of those freakish flickers of fate, Owen was killed on NEARLY the last day of World War One. Read it here: http://www.english.emory.edu/LostPoets/Dulce.html

Perhaps most tellingly and famously, according to Dr. Johnson, lo these many hundreds of years ago,  "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."

Times change: Today, oftener, it is the FIRST refuge of the scoundrel, the pernicious pettifogger, the draft-dodging militant, and the precious poseur.

There is an extensive debate over who first said, When  fascism came to the USofA, it would be carrying a cross and be wrapped in the flag, and would be called "Americanism." It probably wasn't either Sinclair Lewis or Huey Long; it might have been a fellow named Haford Luccock, sometime in the early 30s, according to the New York Times of the day. Though the sentiment has long been a familiar one.

But none can doubt its truth, any longer, I think, since that dread arrival has already occurred. Flag-wrapped fascism is on radio, every day, and cable television; likewise it's arrival been celebrated from thousands of pulpits, where it's been widely heralded as a necessary restorative to American primacy.


(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041113/)

"Snake, Boss!" "Kill it, boy!" A World-wide Hippies Soap-Box Proclamation

Hola Hippies and friends around the world. This is John Konopak, citizen journalist in Albuquerque, New Mexico, climbing the World-Wide Hippies Soap box to deliver

An Open Letter to the Anarcho/Libertarian Revolutionary Cube-Rats of the Globe, who yearn for a world free from ALL the constraints of "Government":

Esteemed fellow citizens:

Lemme see if I got this straight...

Amid a life lived beginning daily when you drag your weary, objecting carcass out of bed so you can be there when your BOSSES tells you when to begin work;

And the Bosses telling you what clothes you must, may, may not, or can wear;

And the Bosses telling you what tasks you must perform, and at what rate;

Them saying how long you must, may, or can work, and for what pay;

Saying when you may eat, and break  and how long you may take;

Saying when you may relieve your bodily functions and how long that may occupy;

The Bosses declaring unilaterally what wage you will receive, and under what conditions you will receive it;

Deciding, mainly on whim or prejudice, whether your lot will improve, or decline, your pay rate grow or shrink;

Them deciding what supervisory/regulatory intrusions you must accept, up to and including self-incriminatory drug tests and spying on your on-line communications;

Authorizing or forbidding when you may take a holiday;

Authorizing what medical procedures you may or may not have, including birth control;

Your BOSSES decreeing when you may--or may not--go home;

Approving or disapproving of with whom you may share your life and home, including which benefits they may participate in, and how you may spend such idle time as you are permitted,...

What you're telling me izzat, after absorbing and tolerating all that OVERT, obvious, oppressive, manipulative, unjustified, abusive intrusion and manipulation of your life-world by your BOSSES, still you and your co-workers are complaining about all the control the GOVERNMENT exerts over your lives?

Really?

(A Facebook correspondent, Jeff Mincey, inscribed the first version of this; I'v ecribbed some of his points, and added my own.)

I Take Two Votes...

In which Y'r Obs'r'v't P'rt'c'p't extols the virtues of "wasting your vote" on "unelectables" as a way of getting TWO votes for the price of one...

"At my back I always here Time's wing'ed chariot hurrying near." That was the Cavalier poet, sir Andrew Marvell, beseeching his coy mistress to relinquish her favors and succumb to his ardor. It is the archetype of that trope named "Carpe Diem," or "sieze the day." But it also, I think, might characterize how many American voters feel, with the inevitable necessity of voting for President looming ever larger. The choices are horrible and time is running out. It will be on us in a twinkling, though it will seem like an eternity.

Of course, since 2000, there have been apparent, and largely uninvestigated irregularities in the conduct and the counting of the vote--in numerous states, in at least two out of the last three presidential elections. These imputations of "dishonesty, if not out-right vote rigging and miscounting, have somewhat tarnished the luster of our "American birthright," the right to vote, which our bombs and soldiers have carried abroad now to benighted countries all over the world for more than 50 years!  It's a sacred trust...No, really...

So it occurred to me that, when all is said and done, it is the ACT of voting, itself, which matters, is meaningful; not for whom the vote is cast--especially in national 'elections,' where at least two of the last three were stolen by vote-counting software and corrupt officials in different states.

It's a myth that any single ballot "matters." They "count" only in the aggregate, and the importance is regulated by the degree of dispersion. Nobody's single ballot makes a shitting-bit of difference, nationally. It's utterly symbolic.

 That's why, this year, I am encouraging people to "vote" ABD! ("Anybody But Duopolists,");  anybody OTHER than the "approved" candidate of the GOPhux or the DIMS.

So, if you REALLY REALLY wanna vote for Ron Paul, do it! Let me encourage you. Or Rocky Anderson, or Cynthia McKinney, or Jill Stein, or your local weatherman. I'd write-in Budreaux, the dog, if I could.

This tactic seems to me to be preferable to abstaining, for the single reason that, as things stand, nobody NOTICES when you just blow it off.  There's no RECORD of your disenchantment.

 What I'd REALLY like to see is a "significant" turn-out of "Neither of these fuckers." Or None of the above, as it's known in polite company. That expedient is on ballots in Nevada. If just one STATE were to "Just say NO!"

TEN percent would be a huge number. But it's incredibly unlikely. The four top, non-duopoly vote-getters in 2008 managed to capture fewer than TWO million votes, total, out of more than 131 MILLION ballots (allegedly) cast; the total of votes cast for ALL non-Duopolist candidates amounted to less that about one-and-a-half percent of the total.

The beauty of this plan, from the individual voter's perspective is that it amounts to having two votes, legally.
One for your favorite dreamy idealist or racist scumbag, and one explicltly and unambiguously AGAINST the candidates of Empire.

SO go forth, hippies. SWING THAT BALLOT! VOTE your conscience!

Vote enthusiastically for the Flying Monkey Party, or the Tree-hugger Party. Or Ron Paul. Here's your chance. It's the only way to GO on record as being disgusted with the "choices" they give you, and be secure in the knowledge that it doesn't really matter, at all...

We can follow the returns at a bistro near the beach...