I am thrilled to be included in the ERASE RACISM Blog Carnival. Regarding my post about John Brown, Charles Modiano writes: As I was reading more of this informative piece, all I kept thinking was, how has there never been a motion picture on this man’s life!!! This was also my sentiment when I personally wrote “History’s Hit Job on Thomas Paine” (the only founding father to unequivocally denounce slavery without personal hypocrisy). What does it say that in 2007, we continue to glorify slaveholders of times past, but routinely ignore or bury the legacy of those whites who most fiercely resisted that “peculiar institution”.Incredibly, this never occurred to me! No movie about John Brown! Maybe they just don't know what to do with him?
Johnny Cash, may his soul rest in peace, perfectly played John Brown in the rather tepid miniseries NORTH AND SOUTH, based on the John Jakes novels. He properly narrows his eyes and intones "We shoot to kill," at one juncture, and you believe him.For my money, the man to play John Brown would be Tommy Lee Jones, looking all intense and grizzled and shit. Wouldn't he be GREAT? I'm sure he could glare at you and sagely warn "We shoot to kill," with the same gravitas as Johnny Cash.
I hope some Hollywood casting guru is reading this? You think? Nah.
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The new sensation in Blogdonia, BlogRush, is messing up my posts, and I think I know why. I took out the "no follow" feature on my blog, so search engines could also search comments as well as posts (this modification is called "do follow"). As a result of this twiddling of mine, BlogRush, which supposedly syndicates your "last 12 posts," has instead been syndicating the last 12 COMMENTS instead. So you get posts with titles like "Hey Daisy!" instead of the titles I have assigned.
Consequently, when I logged into the all-hailed Phase 2 of BlogRush, I discovered all of my posts have little icicles on them... which means nobody clicks on them and they are therefore NOT HAWT. :(
I hope they fix this, and I dutifully emailed them about it. Certainly, I can't be the only "do follow" blog out there? (I learned to do that from reading other people's blogs, after all!) Also, if you see goofy titles in the BlogRush widgets, you'll know why.
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Cleaning under my couch, which I do every couple of years or so, yields about a dozen books I had long ago written off as lost. Thus, it's just like shopping! I should probably do it more often.Casey Walker's MADE NOT BORN: The Troubling World of Biotechnology is definitely a Halloween-related book. O, Brave New World that has such people in it.
In this book, I discovered the following poem, by Jerry Martien:
HOW WE CHANGED
first we made a genetically
improved cat
a cat with wings
before we knew it the cat had
eaten all the birds
so we had to make a genetically
faster flying bird
only it wouldn't
sing unless we gave it
money
so we made a genetic
dog
who'd sing whenever
someone told him to
we couldn't shut him up
the dog got on all the radio and
tv talk shows
logo
the famous genetically
engineered singing
canine
cloned a new
song for every day
and while the birds
bombed the cats
we all sang along with the dog.
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Listening to: Laura Nyro - Eli's Comin'
via FoxyTunes