MAINE NEWS

TALES FROM THE ATTIC

ABOUT THE REVIEW

MULTITUDES: The unauthorized memoirs of Sam Smith

SAM'S MUSIC

November 11, 2017

Just wondering...

What is more dangerous in Alabama? Having your daughter in a public bathroom with a transgendered person or having her in a private space with a pedophile running for Senate?

2 comments:

  1. The US public is practically comatose when it comes to their government daily killing and maiming innocents somewhere in the world, but people are up in arms over this hot issue of where it is proper for transgenders to pee.

    Of all the stupid edicts laid upon society in the US, has there ever one stupider than this unisex transgender bathroom shit?

    It is an open invitation for pedophiles and creeps of all stripes to accost females in their powder rooms.

    The US is truly a cretinocracy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. When I come across questions like this - which moment or scenario is worse, or wasn't that
    a terrible incident, I'm always reminded of the thoughts expressed in Kurt Vonnegut's
    Slaughterhouse Five, below.

    Short of listening to or reading the novel in its entirety, here are some of the best
    quotes from the book: http://tinyurl.com/KV-SH5-Quotes

    Anyone finding themselves in any type of situation might ask:
    Billy Pilgrim: Why me?
    Tranfamadorian: That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim.
    Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is.
    Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?
    Billy Pilgrim: Yes.
    Tranfamadorian: Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment.
    There is no why.

    So why pose such questions when:
    Tranfamadorian: That's one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough:
    Ignore the awful times and concentrate on the good ones.
    Billy Pilgrim: If I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that,
    I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.

    And, since it was Armistice Day yesterday, Kurt's birthday:

    I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my
    birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover
    was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were
    silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the
    eleventh day of the eleventh month.

    It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of
    human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on
    battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden
    silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God
    spoke clearly to mankind.

    Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not.

    So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep.
    I don't want to throw away any sacred things. What else is sacred?
    Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance. And all music is.

    Kurt Vonnegut -- Breakfast of Champions (1973)

    Again, from Slaughterhouse Five:
    It was a movie about American bombers in World War II and the gallant men who flew them.
    Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this:
    American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an
    airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards,
    sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same
    for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the
    formation.

    The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames.
    The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the
    fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the
    bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had
    miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more
    fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans though
    and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France though, German fighters came up
    again, made everything and everybody as good as new.

    When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and
    shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day,
    dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it
    was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote
    areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they
    would never hurt anybody ever again.

    The nicest veterans...the kindest and funniest ones, the ones who hated war the most, were
    the ones who'd really fought.

    ReplyDelete