Girls today apparently think they invented the ridiculous pouty “duck face”. Actually, the French actress Brigette Bardot was making this silly face in the 1950s–and she imported it to the US from France where is was already an outworn fad. Ain’t ‘no new thing under the sun’ Ecclesiastes reminds us.
Brigette Bardot, 1950s
_____________________________________________________________________
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no gold Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powderblue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesmen
covered the territory
in two-tone cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck creches
complete with plastic babe in manger
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery
and where no televised Wise Men
praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no fat handshaking stranger
in a red flannel suit
and a fake white beard
went around passing himself off
as some sort of North Pole saint
crossing the desert to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
in a Volkswagen sled
drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer
with German names
and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts
from Saks Fifth Avenue
for everybody’s imagined Christ child
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby carollers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
iceskated wingless
thru a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30
with Midnight Mass matinees
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary’s womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody’s anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable
and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest of
Second Comings
Copyright 1958 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Danger in Cell Phone La La Land, LA Progressive, by Shawn Hamilton,Â
Lately I’ve encountered a surprising number of people in public who seemed to be talking to themselves. Often when this happens, I assume these folks are talking to me, so I respond in some way as polite custom dictates, only to be ignored—or to receive a disapproving glance for having invaded someone’s privacy bubble. Usually by this point I would realize the person was talking on a cell phone or similar electronic device, and I would feel like a fool.
I first apprehended the potentially adverse social consequences of personal electronic devices in, appropriately, 1984. I was attending Humboldt State University, and I noticed a classmate wearing Walkman headphones day after day and commented in class that he seemed to be using them to tune the rest of us out. For me this was the beginning of what I now see as a deleterious trend that is getting so much worse than I initially anticipated.
In the 1990s I boarded a train in Taiwan and got a preview of the cell phone madness that would soon afflict the States. Bizarre sounds began to erupt all over the car—ringing, buzzing, beeping, Beethoven. These noises would happen, and there would be several people engaging in solo conversation, often in loud and sometimes angry voices. Acknowledging cultural relativity, I unsuccessfully resisted the feeling that imposing one’s personal conversation on others is a bit churlish.
It can happen so quickly. The man standing on the sidewalk has not yet had time to react.
The Beach Boys called it “Never Learn Not to Love”. Manson wrote it as a blues piece but the pop band naturally changed it to suit their genre, which pissed Manson off royally.
In retrospect, not a guy you would want to piss off… It’s a mediocre song at best. I say that now that he’s dead! Ha! Ha!
Key Line: “Submission is a gift”
Here’s another mediocre song he wrote:
