Many Dogecoin, much funny, wow

I'm learning about Bitcoin for two reasons - my day job involves anti-money laundering, and Bitcoin is an innovative new way to launder money. And because I'm studying Ayn Rand and her Libertarian admirers and they love Bitcoin because it is not "fiat money."

Fiat money, or as most people call it, "money", is:

• any money declared by a government to be legal tender.[1]
• state-issued money which is neither convertible by law to any other thing, nor fixed in value in terms of any objective standard.[2]
• money without intrinsic value that is used as money because of government decree.[3][4]
• The term derives from the Latin fiat ("let it become", "let it be done", "it shall be").[5]

You'll notice that each of these definitions has a reference to the gubmint, and gubmints is what Randroids and Libertarians hate the most.

Bitcoin has no truck with gubmints. Krugman reliably mocks this line of thought:

The real track record of fiat currencies is that most of them are run responsibly except in the aftermath of political chaos. If you look at the actual facts, you discover that episodes of high inflation have become quite rare, even though nobody is on the gold standard or (except in the euro area) anything like it. 

So, again, the notion that governments can’t be trusted with the printing press sounds cynical and realistic, but it’s actually a fantasy, probably brought on by reading Ayn Rand instead of Tolkien.

And he also points to this piece in the Atlantic which makes a reference to what started out as a parody of Bitcoin, called Dogecoin. This is where I first encountered doge-speak, which is as amusing and distinctive as lolcat. The entire piece is written in dogespeak and it's hysterical:

BUT I HAVE UTMOST CONFIDENCE THAT YOU ARE EVEN SMARTER THAN EVEN SMARTER INVESTORS. YOU DON'T NEED TO DIVERSIFY. YOUR SAGE SAGACITY AND KNOWLEDGE OF LUDWIG VON MISES(REDUNDANT I KNOW) WILL LET YOU PICK OUT THE BEST "ALTCOIN." 

WHAT IS THE BEST ALTCOIN IS THE QUESTION I AM SURE YOU ARE ASKING AND NOW I WILL TELL YOU ... IF YOU MAKE FOUR EASY PAYMENTS OF $19.99. JUST KIDDING THAT IS A HUMOROUS "JOKE." THIS IS NOT A SCAM. THE BEST ALTCOIN IS THE ONE WITH THE MOST LIMITED SUPPLY SO IT GOES UP THE MOST. THAT IS THE GREAT LESSON OF THE GREAT DOGECOIN CRASH OF 2013.
DOGECOIN IS A JOKE CRYPTOCURRENCY THAT WENT BOOM AND THEN BUST AND WAS THEN STOLEN. IT IS AN INSPIRATION AND A CAUTIONARY TALE THAT HAS INSPIRED AND CAUTIONED ME. IT BEGAN AS A FARCICAL COMBINATION OF THE INTERWEB MEME DOGE AND BITCOIN. THAT MEME INVOLVES "COMICAL" PICTURES OF SHIBA INUS DOGS WITH CANINE THOUGHT BUBBLES IN COMIC SANS FONT. SO DOGECOIN IS A VIRTUAL CURRENCY REPRESENTED BY DOG PICTURES WITH CUTESY CAPTIONS. WOW SUCH INNOVATE.

BUT THE INTERNET IS LIKE 10,000 DOLLARS WHEN ALL YOU NEED IS A BITCOIN. SUCH IRONIC. SO THE DOGECOIN SPOOF QUICKLY BECAME REAL. DENIZENS OF REDDIT BEGAN USING THEM TO TIP ONE ANOTHER FOR "WITTY" COMMENTS AND "GOOD" DEEDS. THEN DOGECOIN'S PRICE WENT UP 400 PERCENT IN A SINGLE DAY TO BE WORTH $10 MILLION IN TOTAL. 

BUT IT HAD A FLAW OF THE FATAL VARIETY. IT WAS TOO EASY TO "MINE" NEW DOGECOINS. NOBODY DID WHEN THE PRICE WAS SO LOW BUT EVERYBODY DID WHEN THE PRICE WAS SO HIGH. NEW ONES FLOODED THE INTERWEBS AND DOGECOIN'S PRICE COLLAPSED 80 PERCENT OVERNIGHT. BUT IT HAD ANOTHER FLAW OF THE EVEN MORE FATAL VARIETY. IT WAS TOO EASY TO STEAL DOGECOINS. DAYS AFTER THE CRASH HACKERS LOOTED 30 MILLION DOGECOINS FROM DIGITAL WALLETS. THESE WERE WORTH $6,000 IN WORTHLESS DOLLARS. 

I HAVE USED MY DEEP UNDERSTANDING OF AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS TO INVENT THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE CRYPTOCURRENCIES. IT IS CALLED PONZICOIN. WHAT MAKES IT BETTER THAN BITCOIN OR DOGECOIN OR ANY OTHER COIN IS THE QUESTION YOU ARE WONDERING AND NOW I WILL TELL YOU FREE OF CHARGE. PONZICOIN HAS THE MOST LIMITED SUPPLY POSSIBLE AND THE MOST SECURE LOCATION POSSIBLE. AT ANY TIME THERE IS AT MOST ONE PONZICOIN AND IT ALWAYS STAYS WITH ME. BUT IT IS INFINITELY DIVISIBLE SO YOU CAN BUY AS SMALL A PART AS YOU LIKE AND I WILL SEND YOU A CODE TO VERIFY YOUR HOLDING. PONZICOIN HAS LITERALLY UNLIMITED USES BUT THE PRIMARY ONES ARE SELLING IT TO THE GREATER FOOL AND BUYING STAMPS.

This piece is equal parts funny, informative and a perfect mockery of Libertarians and their get-rich-quick dreams. I love the antiquated yet still amusing reference to Alanis Morrisette's "Ironic" just as much as I love the reference to Ludwin von Mises, a right-wing economist who is worshipped by Libertarians and was an admirer, and personal acquaintance of Ayn Rand. And in spite of the doge-speak, the piece does give an accurate history of the Dogecoin phenomenon as well as an education about Ponzi schemes.

I find it fascinating that Dogecoin started out as an Internet meme. I was also amused to learn the origins of Mt. Gox, which I had assumed was a kind of Iron Mountain of digital currency, but it's a Bitcoin exchange. The interesting part is that the name has nothing to do with mountains of data as I thought, but rather is an initialism that derives from "Magic: The Gathering Online Exchange." Magic: The Gathering is a Dungeons and Dragons-inspired card game, and Mt. Gox was originally an online Magic: The Gathering trading card exchange.

There are many other crypto-currencies besides Bitcoin and Dogecoin, which you can see here.

In spite of the fact that Dogecoin is basically a mockery of Bitcoin, they actually do real-world good - like fund the poor Jamaican bobsled team.

Dogecoin founder disses Bitcoin.

Early Sprinter

I first blogged about the mini-season I named Sprinter last year. I said it usually arrived, on the years that it does, between my birthday and St. Patrick's day. Well it isn't quite my birthday yet but it's already here. While walking home from work I could smell cedar wood burning - that's always an indicator that Sprinter has arrived. Don't ask me why burning wood smells appear more during late winter than any other time, but that's what happens. It's a fleeting, ephemeral season, so don't wait until Spring is here, get out and enjoy Sprinter.

No, that is not a piece of clip art

While googling for documents about the strange case of Edward Einhorn v. Mergatroyd Productions I discovered that some Egyptian web design company took over my old tamlin-online.com domain name after I let it expire, and  kept some of the content from the 2004 production of TAM LIN (the one were we met the accursed Edward Einhorn) and helped themselves to my artwork.

This artwork reminds me that I was into the solid-color graphic design style for at least ten years - possibly before I ever saw a New Yorker cover by Heidi Goennel.

I realized that my JULIA & BUDDY tag line mentions philosophy and considering how I have two full-figures of people with their backs to the viewer, it looks like I was also influenced by the School of Practical Philosophy's subway ad campaign.

Awkward Black Girl and the discussion group

Gina McCauley at What About Our Daughters shares a very interesting video on the state of black women in media.

It includes the awesome Issa Rae, of the best web series ever made to date, the Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl. Rae gives details on the clever and creative methods she has used to get her career going. If that woman is not a major star soon I will be really pissed off.

I'm really looking forward to the HBO show that she is developing with my Facebook friend Larry Wilmore.

(Larry Wilmore is a big Beatles fan and since Lennon is a Beatle and a racist, according to Mikki Kendall, then by the Kendall associative properties of racism Larry Wilmore must therefore also be a racist. I wonder when Kendall will start Google-bombing his name, the way she did mine.)

    

Julia & Buddy 2014

I get knocked down, but I get up again, you're never going to keep me down...

So thanks to financial and medical issues (and financial issues caused by medical issues) I wasn't able to produce JULIA & BUDDY for 2013. Now that some of the issues have been resolved and my health is fine it's time to try again.

The artwork on the left is pretty much unchanged since the last version except for more and smaller stars and a new tag line - I replaced "sex" with "dysfunction" - story of my life. But also, although sex is very much fundamental to the play, there is nothing explicit and I didn't want to lose potential audience members due to fear of too much on-stage sexytime.

It's clear that my graphic approach to this image is extremely influenced by New Yorker cover artist Heidi Goenel - which is no surprise, I love her look which I talk about here. Although I have so much empty space in part so that I can put information about the production, like location, dates/times, cast, etc. Goenel's art remains pure and empty so that you can wallow in the vast, intense hue-osity of it all.

More thoughts on Edward Einhorn v. Mergatroyd Productions

Since the Strange Case of Edward Einhorn v. Mergatroyd Productions ended eight  years ago, there has been a small but steady stream of legal/scholarly documents that reference the case.

This one, Making a Federal Case for Copyrighting Stage Directions: Einhorn v. Mergatroyd Productions, 7 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 393 (2008) by Jennifer J. Maxwell ends in a particularly offensive way:

Unfortunately, Einhorn failed to produce enough evidence for the judge to find in his favor. But Einhorn, like most directors, just wanted recognition for his important contribution to the collaborative art of theater. Regardless of recognition or money, directors are entitled to copyright protection if their stage directions satisfy the requirements of the Copyright Act. The Einhorn decision gives hope to future directors by highlighting the issues crucial to proving a case of copyright infringement of stage directions. 

Furthermore, granting stage directions copyright protection would be consistent with the intentions of the Copyright Act and other areas of copyright law. Directors are largely responsible for creating the parts of a play that cannot be told by words, but are necessary to the telling of the story. Such contributions should be entitled to copyright protection. As Judge Learned Hand once observed: "[A] nod, a movement of the hand, a pause, may tell the audience more than words could tell. To be sure, not all this is always copyrighted, though there is no reason why it may not be." 

What Einhorn "just wanted" is an interesting question and one that I have never quite discerned to my satisfaction - although somehow this law student seems to think she has accomplished the feat.

Judge Kaplan opined:

I find that no such (blocking and choreography) script existed before Mr. Einhorn was fired from the show, nor was there any intention on anybody's part that any such script ever be created. Mr. Einhorn claims that during the course of his direction of the show he made handwritten notes on a copy of Ms. McClernan's script from which Plaintiff's Exhibit 52 (blocking and choreography script) was prepared... He claims these notes were made contemporaneously during the direction of the show. I'm sure at least some of them were. The script, in any case, is incomplete. It ends at page 35 whereas the entire blocking script, so-called, Plaintiff's Exhibit 52, is over 100 pages long and the material added by Mr. Einhorn accounted for very few of those pages. So, the majority of any notes that Mr. Einhorn may have taken in connection with directing the show have never been produced and no really satisfactory explanation, at least none that I credit, has been offered for that... But, Mr. Einhorn decided to parlay whatever notes he had into building up a claim here in an effort to get the $1,000 he felt he was owed or, if possible, more, and that resulted in the production of Plaintiff's Exhibit 52. Why prepare Plaintiff's Exhibit 52? Well, the reason was that Mr. Einhorn, aided and abetted by his brother, decided that they were going to file an application for registration of copyright, the filing of which is a prerequisite to a lawsuit...

Contrary to what Ms. Maxwell believes, Judge Kaplan clearly believes that Edward Einhorn's copyright claim was trumped up purely so that Edward Einhorn and his brother could create a case against Mergatroyd Productions over the disagreement of Einhorn's director's fee.

However, Edward Einhorn himself has consistently attempted to conflate the issue of getting paid $1000 for directing the 2004 production of TAM LIN and his registering a (fraudulent) copyright based on my play TAM LIN.

It's clear that Maxwell doesn't fully understand the TAM LIN case when she writes:

If stage directions are classified as derivative works, directors would receive
copyright protection for only the director's contributions to the play's script. The playwright would still have rights in the script he or she authored. Consequently, playwrights are well protected and should not fear a director's ability to copyright stage directions. Appropriate limits on directors' copyrights will also ensure that the theater industry is not unduly restrained.

If stage directions are classified as derivative works (which of course they are) then the director would have to receive permission from the playwright to register the copyright. (Did Maxwell even research the issue?) And that would strike the entire matter of a director's copyright more dead than a great reckoning in a little room. Only a complete idiot of a playwright would grant permission, knowing what someone with no sense of shame, like Edward Einhorn, might do with such a copyright.

Maxwell appears not to understand the problem with the US Copyright Office: it does not vet the scripts it registers. And so what Edward Einhorn did was to remove my name entirely from the TAM LIN script and then submit my script in its entirety, along with his stage directions scribbled on it, as evidence for his primary copyright registration for "stage direction and choreography."

If I knew then what I know now, I would have sued him for that clear violation of my copyright.

After hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees we got a US federal court judge to declare Edward Einhorn's copyright invalid - but all that could have been avoided if the Copyright Office did something to justify its existence other than simply performing data entry functions for fraudsters like Edward Einhorn. But since it will not step up its game any time soon, the entire "derivative works" issue is moot - the wealthy will take advantage of the dysfunctional copyright system to pull epic tantrums through the US courts system - which is exactly what Edward Einhorn did. Because if he wanted to take us to court for a disagreement over $1000 he could have gone to small claims court.

The rich are different from you and me.

The "appropriate limits" on a director's copyright is to have no copyright at all. And not only for legal reasons - the director interprets the playwright's script, just as (this was pointed out in the Dramatists' Guild amicus brief) a conductor interprets Mozart's music. If an argument is accepted that a director's interpretation is copyrightable then why wouldn't any conductor copyright his interpretation?

But something that gets overlooked all the time in discussions of this case is that Edward Einhorn didn't sue me for violating his copyright for the 2004 production which he directed - Edward Einhorn sued me for violating his copyright for the 2005 production, which he had nothing to do with! I directed the 2005 production myself, with a revised script and a completely different stage concept from the 2004 production. 

Clearly Einhorn believed that by ever once having had something to do with TAM LIN, all future productions of the play would owe him a fee. That is a practice that Ms. Maxwell appears to be supporting, although I don't think she thought the issue through sufficiently - or did enough homework - to understand that. 

And given the extreme difference between my staging of my play and Einhorn's, it's complete insanity to compare the case to Mantello v. Hall which the Einhorn legal team did during the trial. Jennifer J. Maxwell has this to say:

Mantello v. Hall, a case involving a theater company that had outright copied the original stage directions of the director, illustrates the importance of the amount of the work used. Mr. Mantello, a director, created stage directions, which at the end of Act I, put Gregory, a character in the play, behind a scrim, upstage left, working on a dance. Gregory was in the exact same spot, doing the exact same thing, in the Caldwell production. The director watching the infringing performance observed that ninety-five percent of the show was an exact replica of his staging, including visual images, blocking and choice of music. Hence, had the case not settled, it is likely that the court would have found in this case that Caldwell's use was not "fair" but rather an infringement of Mantello's work due to the blatant copying of such a large amount of the stage directions.

That is a huge leap there to say the court would have found the case in favor of Mantello, because Mantello's claim is utter bullshit, as I discuss here. The Caldwell Theater Company copied Terrence McNally's stage setting of LOVE! VALOR! COMPASSION! every aspect of which had to have McNally's approval. Mantello decided to claim the results of his collaboration with McNally as entirely his own property for the purposes of the Hall lawsuit.

I'm not a law student, as Ms. Maxwell was when she wrote her document, but I strongly suspect that the case settled out of court because it dawned on Mantello's legal team that in fact they could not win, because the Caldwell Theater Company was doing what they thought they were obliged to do, by the law and by theater tradition - the New York premiere production is considered the definitive version of the play.

But in any case Mantello's complaint against the Caldwell Theater Company was that they copied "his" staging so closely that it violated his creative property rights.

The fact that the Einhorn brothers would attempt to make such a comparison shows how utterly shameless they were in their efforts to punish my former partner and myself for daring to disagree with Edward Einhorn over his director's fee.

And you'll never get the truth about this from Einhorn - he claims he won because the judge ordered Mergatroyd Productions pay Einhorn $800 plus interest for directing the 2004 production. But the issue was never that Mergatroyd Productions wouldn't pay Einhorn, it was a disagreement over how much. My producer wanted to pay Einhorn $500, Einhorn wanted $1000. Einhorn getting $800 means that he dragged this entire thing through the federal court system (and boy, was Judge Kaplan sore about that) over $300. 

And of interest to playwrights - although Einhorn's disagreement was with the producer of the play (I wanted Einhorn to have the whole $1000) he held my script hostage - not the producer's script, in order to create a federal case.

The rich are different from you and me.

Thinking about this case puts me in a bad mood. So here's the evidence that the US Copyright Office finally cancelled Edward Einhorn's shameless, fraudulent, bullshit copyright registration once and for all. 

Did Mikki Kendall dox Zathlazip?

You are probably asking yourself - did who do what to what?

The heading of this post comes from the article with the same heading from the SJW - Do Not Engage web site run by Will Shetterly.

I only knew "Mikki Kendall" to start with. Mikki Kendall is the Tumblr mob bully slash yellow journalist slash internationally-renowned bigot who used her Esoterica Tumblr account to Google-bomb my name in 2011 because I disagreed with her over whether John Lennon and Yoko Ono are racists for writing this song.

"Dox" means Doxing:

an abbreviation of document tracing, is the Internet-based practice of researching and publishing personally identifiable information about an individual.[1][2] The methods employed in pursuit of this information range from searching publicly available databases and social media websites like Facebook to hacking and social engineering. It is closely related to cyber-vigilantism, hacktivism, and cyber-bullying.

According to Shetterly,

"(Kendall) joined the Angry Black Woman blog shortly before that blog was one of the SJ sites that doxxed Zathlazip, so if she didn't dox her, she was silent when she was doxxed."

So what is Zathlazip? Shetterly tells the story, and oddly the web site Something Awful figures into the story - I recently posted their mocking review of Mikki Kendall supporter Andrew Bellware's movie "Total Retribution."

Owing to my own encounter with the vicious demagogue Kendall, I would not be a bit surprised if she participated. But there doesn't seem to be hard evidence.

However, I was amused by the NPR page that Shetterly linked to - it looks like Michel Martin is doing some damage control on behalf of Kendall. It's pretty fascinating - one of the topics highlighted is "On whether Mikki Kendall considers herself a bully"

SPOILER ALERT - the answer is no. No Mikki Kendall does not consider herself a bully. Watch her excuse herself, with some help from Michel Martin.

Mikki Kendall: I think that I am someone whose anger can be intimidating. Do I think that I can be someone's bully in their mind? Yes. I can't control how people feel about what I have to say. Do I think that it is as cut and dry as, well, I don't like the way you speak to me? Everyone's coming into this big umbrella from different cultural contexts. Do I think from the standards of my community that I'm a bully? No. But I'm not doxing anyone. I'm not calling up trans women's employers. I'm not leaving comments to undermine their businesses, calling their doctors to interfere with their health care. And these are things that are actually happening to people. I am not saying in large articles and national syndicated columns that, oh, well, we're going to talk about toxic culture, but we're not going to talk about all aspects of that culture. ... And we're certainly not going to talk about how people who are feminists and in power can upset, anger and bully someone, and then say, well, I am a victim, when the people they have said something to respond. 

Michel Martin: Well, you know, people can be both. 

Kendall: People don't have to like everything... 

Martin: People can be both. 

Kendall: Yeah.

Who does Kendall consider "her community?" The Internationally Renowned Bigots Malevolent Association?

Once again a critic gets OLEANNA wrong

I knew, inevitably that the Dylan Farrow ~ Woody Allen back and forth would be compared to OLEANNA. And sure enough, the New Yorker hired "culture critic" Lee Siegel to do so.

Siegel's message is that we really can't know anything so anybody who ventures an opinion on the Farrow-Allen case is a fool. The unknowable reality argument is as good a sign as any that a segment of the New Yorker decisions-makers have had their certainty in Allen's innocence shaken. "Is he guilty? Well how can anybody really say who is guilty anyway?"

Siegel's comparing this real-world situation to OLEANNA indicates to me that he is still stacking the deck in favor of Allen. He writes:

In the early nineteen-nineties, David Mamet’s play “Oleanna,” in which a female student accuses a college professor of sexual harassment, had audiences erupting into screaming matches during the intermission. As with Farrow and Allen, there was no clear answer to the question of what actually happened between professor and student. Almost a quarter of a century later, the impossible complexity is on the other side of the stage. Instantaneous news of what happened, or might have happened, has become our art, and, like the chorus in ancient Greek tragedy, we are all part of the swelling roar.

It's staggering that OLEANNA is still being described as a play with "no clear answers." I wrote about it years ago at length, but to sum up: In OLEANNA the student, backed by a shadowy Group, threatens to bring charges of rape against the professor in an effort to censor his work. There is no uncertainty there at all - we know the professor didn't rape the student. The professor may not have been perfect but the student and the Group are meant to be evil.

It's Mamet's right-wing deck-stacking against a straw-man feminist group that caused the screaming matches, not uncertainty.

It's OLEANNA and THE CRUCIBLE and even DOUBT that has trained upper-class older men (Allen's fan base) to assume that of course we can't know if the man really did it, and in the case of the first two, that bitches are hysterical, scheming liars. In spite of the fact that sexual harassment and child molestation happen all the time, the most celebrated plays on the subjects present scenarios in which nobody is proven guilty.

Is it really a coincidence that the people most likely to commit sexual crimes also dominate a theater that presents plays in which we can't say for sure that the man really did it?

If Gawker is to be believed, Lee Siegel himself is a fool.

Happy Valentine's Day from Fox News

By way of Media Matters for America.

Hey Rasta Tambourine Man

Wesley from my music theory class turned me onto this version.

Ego surfing with friends

Ah the perils of ego surfing.

Oh, how vain!

Found Out Something By Ego Surfing

Ego Surfing: How to Perform That Daily Ritual of Googling Your Name

U R SECKSIST

A little reckoning in a little room

Hey theater people, why not check out the NYCPlaywrights web site?

Gotta write a fugue

J. S. Bach, the fuguemeister himself

I should not be spending my time blogging. I have to write a fugue for my music theory class. Here are some resources I have found:

Fugue at Wikipedia

The Art of the Fugue by J. S. Bach

The Fugue Explained on Youtube

What is a Fugue? on Youtube

The 10K Subscribers Fugue by RatBoyGenius

Fugue Analysis - created for a course at my old alma mater the University of the Arts.

Musical Forms: The Fugue

Cmaj Fugue pt1 "Composition Lessons with JS Bach" lecture

This explains so much...

Never mind that, now I finally know what a "Montelimart" is.

Not that I was ever a big fan of this song - I almost always find Harrison's songs dreary and uninspired, both musically and lyrically, except for "I Need You" and "It's All Too Much" and this one is no exception. I found "Here Comes the Sun" just OK, and apparently Eric Clapton was practically a co-composer for that one. And "While My Guitar Gently Sleeps" - so many people claim to love that and I will never ever get it. It's so droning and boring and long. With every mistake we must surely be learning. Yeah whatever, blah blah blah. I'd rather listen to "Taxman" a song about a rich guy complaining about his taxes. Absolutely riveting.

The article this image is from is 10 Very British References in Beatles Songs from the ever informative  BBCAmerica web site. I knew most of the references thanks to years of reading Beatles lore, although I don't recall hearing about "Polythene Pat." And it hardly seems fair that only John and Paul's homes are National Trust sites.

Speaking of Beatle homes, I just saw "Good Ol' Freda" about the Beatles secretary, who ran the Beatles fan club, Freda Kelly - she's name-checked in the Beatles 1963 Christmas messages as "good ol' Freda". In the movie Freda tells an amusing story of Ringo (Or "Richie" - she naturally used his real name) when he first joined the Beatles - only getting 9 fan letters. They turned this into a joke in "Hard Day's Night." There's a scene where the Beatles' fan letters are delivered to them and at first it looks as though Ringo gets none, but then his fan letters arrive and he has more than the other three Beatles.

Freda suggested to Ringo that he have his mother answer his fan mail and Ringo asked her to show his mother how to do it, and so Freda went to the house to show her and she and Ringo's mum Elsie ended up the best of friends.

There's a scene in "Good Ol' Freda" where Freda, in the present time, goes into Ringo's family home and has a look around. She knew all the Beatles' parents - George's father tried to teach her how to ballroom dance - but she was especially close to Elsie, sharing her "girlhood secrets" with her. At the end of the movie Ringo appears, expressing his appreciation for Freda.

Dylan Farrow responds

From Hollywood Reporter:

Once again, Woody Allen is attacking me and my family in an effort to discredit and silence me - but nothing he says or writes can change the truth. For 20 years, I have never wavered in describing what he did to me. I will carry the memories of surviving these experiences for the rest of my life.
His op-ed is the latest rehash of the same legalese, distortions, and outright lies he has leveled at me for the past 20 years. He insists my mother brought criminal charges - in fact, it was a pediatrician who reported the incident to the police based on my firsthand account. He suggests that no one complained of his misconduct prior to his assault on me - court documents show that he was in treatment for what his own therapist described as “inappropriate” behavior with me from as early as 1991. He offers a carefully worded claim that he passed a lie detector test - in fact, he refused to take the test administered by the state police (he hired someone to administer his own test, which authorities refused to accept as evidence). These and other misrepresentations have been rebutted in more detail by independent, highly respected journalists, including this most recent article here:
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/02/woody-allen-sex-abuse-10-facts
With all the attempts to misrepresent the facts, it is important to be reminded of the truth contained in court documents from the only final ruling in this case, by the New York Supreme Court in 1992. In denying my father all access to me, that court:  

• Debunked the "experts" my father claims exonerated him, calling them "colored by their loyalty to Mr. Allen", criticizing the author of their report (who never met me) for destroying all supporting documentation, and calling their conclusions "sanitized and therefore less credible".

• Included testimony from babysitters who witnessed inappropriate sexual behavior by my father toward me.

• Found that “there is no credible evidence to support Mr. Allen's contention that Ms. Farrow coached Dylan or that Ms. Farrow acted upon a desire for revenge against him for seducing Soon-Yi. Mr. Allen's resort to the stereotypical ‘woman scorned’ defense is an injudicious attempt to divert attention from his failure to act as a responsible parent and adult.”

• Concluded that the evidence "...proves that Mr. Allen's behavior toward Dylan was grossly inappropriate and that measures must be taken to protect her.”

• Finally, the Connecticut State prosecutor found "probable cause" to prosecute, but made the decision not to in an effort to protect "the child victim", given my fragile state.

From the bottom of my heart, I will be forever grateful for the outpouring of support I have received from survivors and countless others. If speaking out about my experience can help others stand up to their tormentors, it will be worth the pain and suffering my father continues to inflict on me. Woody Allen has an arsenal of lawyers and publicists but the one thing he does not have on his side is the truth. I hope this is the end of his vicious attacks and of the media campaign by his lawyers and publicists, as he’s promised. I won't let the truth be buried and I won't be silenced.

Something Awful is hysterical

Oh wow it was such a bad idea to read Something Awful's review of Andrew Bellware's Total Retribution (AKA "Earthkiller") at work. I laughed so hard I had to leave the office to avoid total embarrassment.

Not a lot of people, I assume, have a reason to despise Andrew Bellware as much as I do, but it doesn't matter - Bellware's work speaks for itself - and these guys are hysterically funny.

In this part they are talking about Bellware's friend David Ian Lee - when I blogged about this movie a while ago I described his character as a "manic pixie psychotic" - but "Full Glover" is great.

Trillaphon: Goddamn, that guy went Full Glover on us out of nowhere. 

Hydrogen: He's the epitome of Bad Movie Cardinal Sin #5: casting your one zany buddy because everyone in your circle of friends thinks he's so hilarious and should be in the movies. He is not, and you are wrong. Do not put him in front of a fucking camera, idiot. 

Trillaphon: I think everyone in this entire movie is the epitome of that. Except the fat unwashed virgin zombies, they're actually hilarious. 

Hydrogen: So did he call her a "glumpcunt", or did I just have a stroke halfway through that clip? Is that even a word? 

Trillaphon: The random unlikely two word edgy insult generator 9000 really did a good job writing this movie and its transcendently bad dialogue. "Glumpcunt", "Fuckclown", "Gashtickler," "Jugg Fucklers"...normal, sane people would have to brainstorm for hours to come up with anything approaching th- 

Hydrogen: PEEL THIS, CUNTPICKLE! 

Trillaphon: TASTE ON THESE, BUNG GUZZLER 

Hydrogen: INSUFFLATE THAT, FUCK KNUCKLE! 

Trillaphon: SUCKLE ON THIS, BUTT SMUGGLERS! 

Hydrogen: Hey now, "butt smuggler" is a superb insult which doesn't belong anywhere near this movie.

When they got to the part about "glumpcunt" I completely lost it. Even now I can't read that without laughing.

I still say the actors who I've worked with who are also in this movie get a bad rap. Don't get me wrong - my opinion of them as human beings is no higher than my opinion of Bellware - but while Bellware is rightfully known as a bad director, the actors are actually very good - at least when anybody but Bellware is directing them.

And amazingly, the Something Awful reviewers overestimate what Bellware pays his actors by about $50. At least last time I checked Bellware was offering no money to his actors.

Other Internet reviewers have just as low an opinion of Bellware's work as these guys, but nobody else is this funny.

• Letterboxd
• Forced Viewing
• Zombiehall
• IMDB

The clip they are talking about can be seen here. The "glumpcunt" shows up at 00:50.

So you may ask - how can anybody keep getting such scathing reviews and yet continue to keep making these movies? Besides a (probable) trust fund, the most important thing is to have a complete lack of shame.

The "woman scorned" problem

Woody Allen has responded to Dylan Farrow's allegation by blaming Mia Farrow for everything - which is what his online partisans generally do, in my experience with them. And like them, Woody Allen has a "woman scorned" problem:

I pause here for a quick word on the Ronan situation. Is he my son or, as Mia suggests, Frank Sinatra’s? Granted, he looks a lot like Frank with the blue eyes and facial features, but if so what does this say? That all during the custody hearing Mia lied under oath and falsely represented Ronan as our son? Even if he is not Frank’s, the possibility she raises that he could be, indicates she was secretly intimate with him during our years. Not to mention all the money I paid for child support. Was I supporting Frank’s son? Again, I want to call attention to the integrity and honesty of a person who conducts her life like that.

Now the "woman scorned" issue comes from the saying "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." The tacit meaning of the woman scorned argument is that Mia Farrow was so distraught over Allen rejecting her for her own daughter that she would destroy Allen at all costs. But if Farrow was seeing Sinatra, then clearly she wasn't all that invested in her relationship with Allen.

And as far as integrity, I was amazed when Allen stated:

I had been going out with Mia for 12 years and never in that time did she ever suggest to me anything resembling misconduct. 

According to Farrow's autobiography not only did she have a problem with Allen's behavior,  years before the incident, but a therapist who witnessed Allen's behavior with Dylan said it was inappropriate and Allen was seeking treatment for it, including for his compulsion to stick his thumb in her mouth. If this is not true, why doesn't Allen say it was not true? Why doesn't he claim that Farrow invented the therapist out of thin air?

And finally, Allen tries to suggest that the judge in the custody trial was biased against him:

But we did know because it had been determined and there was no equivocation about the fact that no abuse had taken place. Justice Wilk was quite rough on me and never approved of my relationship with Soon-Yi, Mia’s adopted daughter, who was then in her early 20s. He thought of me as an older man exploiting a much younger woman...

But no matter how biased the judge was, there doesn't seem to be any way for Allen to dispute what the judge states, which is a description of a trial that was recorded as it happened and is in the public record. Is Allen suggesting that Wilk was so biased against him that he would perjure himself to say this?

None of the witnesses who testified on Mr. Allen's behalf provided credible evidence that he is an appropriate custodial parent. Indeed, none would venture an opinion that he should be granted custody. When asked, even Mr. Allen could not provide an acceptable reason for a change in custody.

That hardly seems likely.

As I pointed out in a previous post, Allen's failure to get custody of the children, combined with his known inappropriate behavior towards Dylan should be enough, in themselves to tarnish his reputation.

But I suggest that even if Dylan's charges were proven true beyond a shadow of a doubt, it is unlikely it would impact Woody Allen in any significant way. As Roman Polanski has proven, even if you are a convicted child molester, you can still have a nice life and a thriving career.

And the lesson in this is that Great Men of the Arts can do anything they want, and get away with it.

Beatles and now

I am the proud owner of two signed prints by Astrid Kircherr, who was a friend of the Beatles and the fiancee of ex-Beatle Stu Sutcliff. Kircherr and the immortal Klaus Voorman, the creator of the Revolver album cover, the best album cover of all time IMO, knew the Beatles from their days playing around Hamburg.

And here is the woman herself, hanging out with Paul in 1963.

Astrid and Klaus Voorman

Speaking of Beatles there's a brief but interesting piece in the NYTimes by Andrew Rosenthal marking the fact that it's been fifty years since the Beatles came to America, and includes a link to the original NYTimes story about it.

And in this article Allan Kozinn makes an observation that really puts things in perspective, temporal-dimension-wise:

In 1964, the idea of generations of music lovers getting together to celebrate a band that became popular 50 years earlier — that is, in 1914 — would have been inconceivable.

What were the big hits of 1914?

Apparently "Aba Daba Honeymoon."

Woody Allen's precious reputation

In another chapter in the New Yorker's quest to ignore the existence of both Dylan and Ronan Farrow,  New Yorker staff writer Emily Nussbaum has been getting attention in New York Magazine thanks to her tweets about a recent Woody Allen play which contains a light-hearted reference to child molestation.

I was ready to believe that the reason for the silence is that none of the New Yorker staff writers are interested in Dylan and Ronan Farrow and so that's why neither of their names have come up in the New Yorker since 1996 in Dylan's case and never in Ronan's case.

But boy oh boy they sure like to talk about poor dead drug addict Phillip Seymour Hoffman. By my count they have 5 think pieces about Hoffman so far since he turned up dead three days ago. They even called the loathsome Daphne Merkin in from her exile out there with the makeup tips and the horoscopes at Elle magazine to contribute something: it's quite a talent to write a think piece completely devoid of any ideas.

*** STOP THE PRESSES! ***

While reviewing the New Yorker I saw they have finally posted something about the case, Listening to Dylan Farrow by Sasha Weiss. The piece ends with this:

These things are difficult to talk about, which is why they are worth talking about. While taking seriously that we don’t know all the facts—that this public discussion must be traumatic for Dylan Farrow and could utterly, and possibly unfairly, ruin Allen’s reputation—our talking about it, with sensitivity and care and journalistic rigor, is not simply prurient. It reinforces Phyllis Rose’s insight that the mysteries of family life are where politics begin. We shouldn’t look away from those mysteries.

What I have to wonder is how Allen has any reputation left to ruin. Between the fact that Allen was seeing a therapist for his weird behavior towards Dylan, including a compulsion to shove his thumb into her mouth - and his behavior was characterized by the many people who witnessed it as "obsessive" - and the fact that a judge refused to grant Allen custody of Dylan on the grounds that the judge, in essence, did not trust Allen with her, what exactly is Allen's reputation? 

And then of course there is his blatant predilection, as the New York Magazine I linked to says, for "being creepy about young girls."

Now it may be true that his admirers don't know about these things, or don't want to know, but there's also the possibility that they don't care.

Roman Polanski is a convicted child rapist and seems to have suffered from it not at all. A long list of people in the entertainment industry, including Woody Allen, signed a letter of support for Polanski a few years ago.

The fact that a certain percentage of people consider Polanski a monster is more than remediated by his continuing career, his wealth and his sweet life in France. 

What Woody Allen and Roman Polanski demonstrate is that there is nothing at all that will ruin the reputation, sufficiently to hurt him in the slightest, of a canonized Great Man of the Arts.

Dylan and Ronan Farrow - still non-persons at the New Yorker

There appears to be an editorial policy at the New Yorker prohibiting the discussion of anything that might possibly embarrass Woody Allen.

Meanwhile Jessica Valenti in the Nation, which I am beginning to like more and more, addresses the issue of the presumption that Woody Allen is innocent of molestation and the refusal by almost all Woody Allen partisans to presume the innocence of Mia and Dylan Farrow. Instead, the Woody Allen partisans feel it's a closed case - Mia Farrow was a woman scorned, and we know how hysterical bitches can get. That Mia Farrow would devote her life to a malicious evil campaign to destroy Woody Allen through charges of pedophilia is considered an absolute no-brainer by these champions of the presumption of innocence.

A much better piece on the whole presumption of innocence, and which Valenti rightfully links to, is Woody Allen's Good Name by Aaron Bady. He addresses the presumption of innocence and burden of proof issue:

What is the burden of proof for assuming that a person is lying? If you are a famous film director, it turns out to be quite high. You don’t have to say a word in your defense, in fact, and people who have directed documentaries about you will write lengthy essays in the Daily Beast tearing down the testimony of your accusers. You can just go about your life making movie after movie, and it’s fine. But if you are a woman who has accused a great film director of molesting you when you were seven, the starting point is the presumption that, without real evidence, you are not telling the truth. In the court of public opinion, a woman accusing a great film director of raping her has no credibility which his fans are bound to respect. He has something to lose, his good name. She does not, because she does not have a good name. She is living in hiding, under an assumed name. And when she is silent, the Daily Beast does not rise to her defense.

Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown

I took this screen shot at 6:50 PM on Sunday, February 2, 2014. It had been announced a few hours earlier that Phillip Seymour Hoffman had died.

Dylan Farrow's open letter in which she charges Allen with molestation was posted online by the NYTimes Saturday night. Normally the New Yorker would be all over that celebrity tragedy crap - as can be attested by the speed with which they got one of their staff writers to do a piece about Hoffman within hours. They have yet to acknowledge Dylan Farrow's unique contribution to American celebrity history.

I saw the Hoffman news pop up on Facebook while I was arguing with fans of Woody Allen over their belief that Mia Farrow had attempted to destroy their idol through a conspiracy involving her daughter, Allen's therapist and the judge who refused to grant Allen custody of Dylan and the other kids. It's pretty clear that Allen, who could not tell the judge during the custody case the birthdays of the other children and who was pretty well known not to care much about children generally only cared about getting custody of Dylan.

I am inclined to believe Dylan Farrow, considering that prior to the incident in question Allen had been seeing a therapist, at Farrow's insistence, to try to end his compulsive habit of shoving his thumb into the little girl's mouth. This is covered in Farrow's autobiography What Falls Away, published 17 years ago.

But whether you believe Dylan Farrow or not, it's on the public record that Woody Allen is a grotesque human being. Farrow included the ruling of the custody battle with Allen, in which the judge said concerning custody, in part:

None of the witnesses who testified on Mr. Allen's behalf provided credible evidence that he is an appropriate custodial parent. Indeed, none would venture an opinion that he should be granted custody. When asked, even Mr. Allen could not provide an acceptable reason for a change in custody.

And concerning visitation he said:

The common theme of the testimony by the mental health witnesses is that Mr. Allen has inflicted serious damage on the children and that healing is necessary. Because as Dr. Brodzinsky and Dr. Herman observed, this family is in an uncharted therapeutic area, where the course is uncertain and the benefits unknown, the visitation structure that will best promote the healing process and safeguard the children is elusive. What is clear is that Mr. Allen's lack of judgment, insight, and impulse control make normal noncustodial visitation with Dylan and Satchel too risky to the children's well-being to be permitted at this time. 

It is unclear whether Mr. Allen will ever develop the insight and judgment necessary for him to relate to Dylan appropriately. My causation is the product of mr Allen's demonstrated inability to understand the impact that his words and deeds have upon the emotional well being of his children.
I believe that Mr. Allen will use Satchel in an attempt to gain information about Dylan and to insinuate himself in her good graces. I believe that Mr. Allen will, if unsupervised, attempt to turn Satchel against the other members of his family. I believe Mr. Allen to be desirous of of introducing Soon-Yi into the visitation arrangement without concern for the effect on Satchel, Soon-Yi, or the other members of the Farrow family. In short, I believe Mr. Allen to be so self-absorbed, untrustworthy, and insensitive, that he should not be permitted to see Satchel without appropriate professional supervision until Mr. Allen demonstrates that supervision is no longer necessary.

Allen may not have been tried for child molestation but it's clear that based on what the judge has heard, including the refusal of Allen's own witnesses to commit to claiming he would be a good custodial parent, he did not trust Allen with Dylan.

It's not entirely surprising that the New Yorker has refused to acknowledge Dylan Farrow's existence, since the New Yorker adores Woody Allen and publishes occasional pieces by him. A search of the New Yorker web site reveals that Allen has contributed a piece to the New Yorker each year for the past four years, and is mentioned in the New Yorker at least several times a month besides. Dylan Farrow is mentioned in passing in an affectionate profile of Allen from 1996, and that's it. Even more interesting, Ronan Farrow is not mentioned a single time. Farrow now has a job with MSNBC, as this Guardian article mentions. Both the Guardian and MSNBC no doubt share a big chunk of reader/viewer demographic with the New Yorker. That the New Yorker has never seen fit to mention Ronan Farrow once cannot possibly be just a coincidence.

It seems Ronan and Dylan Farrow are Soviet dissidents to the New Yorker's PRAVDA.

One of the fascinating aspects of Facebook is that it's very possible to end up talking to - and especially in my case arguing with - celebrities with whom, in a previous technology age you would never have access to.  This weekend I have been arguing with the Allen partisans, notably in a discussion started by Letty Cottin Pogrebin. She's a feminist celebrity, which means she's not exactly a household word, but she is a celebrity in my book.

Pogrebin and I are on the same page actually, Pogrebin's comment was:

Dylan was 7-years-old when Woody Allen started violating her. He has never been punished for this horrific abuse of his little girl. Not only has he gotten away with it all these years but he continues to win awards with impunity. When will the law catch up with him? Check out Nick Kristoff's blog.

But then I got into it with a lesser celebrity, Sheila Weller. OK, she's not exactly a celebrity but I own a book by her, Girls Like Us, which I blogged about last March, although I didn't know the same Sheila Weller was that author until I googled her, well into the debate. Since I rather enjoyed the book I would normally have been favorably inclined towards Weller, but when I commented it was odd that The New Yorker hadn't mentioned Dylan Farrow's piece, Weller defended the New Yorker, as you can see here:

Apparently Weller has a problem with my defending my position by providing evidence that in fact the New Yorker often does consider celebrity scandals worthy of mention and by the fact that Allen has contributed to the New Yorker in the past year. And for my efforts Weller decided to retaliate by psycho-analyzing me, suggesting I'm "unusually angry and sarcastic."

Her viciousness was not at all unusual in Allen partisans, I found. On the same thread, those of us who believed Dylan Farrow were informed we were part of an hysterical witch hunt, and Allen's plight was compared to - and I kid you not - black men who have been lynched.

A big issue with Allen partisans is the presumption of innocence. They had to be continually reminded that a comments thread on Facebook is not the same as a court of law, and that some people stating that they believed Dylan Farrow was telling the truth was not, actually, the equivalent of a rampaging lynch mob.

I think it's very likely that Woody Allen did molest Dylan and got away with it, and even if he didn't molest Dylan in the attic there's plenty of evidence in the public record that he's a loathsome person who has nevertheless lived a wonderful life of wealth and critical adoration. Much like the Noah Cross character in Chinatown, directed by Woody Allen's soul-twin Roman Polanski. Although Noah Cross was not adored, just wealthy. 

And the take-away of the whole affair, for those of us who do believe Dylan, is portrayed by Jack Nicholson's dazed character as he's led away in the last scene of the movie and somebody says to him: "forget it Jake, it's Chinatown."

Woody and His Worshippers

I had a bunch of nasty fights with Woody Allen worshippers on Facebook this past week after Woody Allen's friend and director of the authorized documentary about Allen, Robert B. Weide wrote a piece published in the Daily Beast suggesting that Mia Farrow was lying about what Allen did to their adopted daughter Dylan.

That the author of the Beast piece, Robert B. Weide is an Allen sycophant who created a hagiography is obvious in this NYTimes review:

Everything in “Woody Allen” comes from within the bubble, and none of the actors, colleagues, family members or critics who appear have a surprising or even slightly equivocal word to say. When Mr. Weide cuts together five of them, including Diane Keaton, using the word “compartmentalize” to describe Mr. Allen’s mindset, it has a comic effect, but it also makes you wonder whether they’re all reading from a prepared script.

One of the favorite defenses of Allen is that he was never taken to court over this. Well in Farrow's autobiography What Falls Away she not only recounts what Dylan alleged happened to her, she recounts all kinds of witnesses who saw Allen acting like a freak around Dylan, including a therapist of one of Farrow's other children who told Farrow, without prompting that Allen was behaving inappropriately. If it was all a pack of vicious lies by "a woman scorned" (and I was amazed at how often people - usually older men - used that phrase in reference to Mia Farrow) why didn't Allen sue? As Weide pointed out, even convicted child rapist Roman Polanski was able to successfully sue against false allegations. And Allen is famously litigious.

From the book:

His behavior with Dylan was getting worse. "Obsessed" was the word most frequently used by my family and friends. He whispered her awake, he caressed her, and entwined his body around her as she watched television, as she played on the floor, as she ate, as she slept. He brought her into bed when he was wearing only his underpants. Twice I made him take his thumb out of her mouth.  

But even more than any of these specifics, there was a wooing quality in his approaches: a neediness, an aggressive intensity that was relentless and overpowering. Now, at the sound of the doorbell and the slam of the front door, Dylan fled from the kitchen to closets, bathrooms, under beds and desks. "Hide me... Hide me! she would scream to her older brothers and sisters. It was not a game. 

Please don't hunt her down like that I said for the umpteenth time. If you'd just let her come to you she wouldn't be so scared, it's too much. But he wouldn't listen. 

Most of the time Dylan was a bright, chatty little girl, brimming with opinions and observations. But in his presence he withdrew, her talk became sketchy and hard to follow, and instead of answering his questions, she looked around the room. When he became more insistent she hummed, talked like a baby, barked like a dog, sang, did anything to deflect his attentions; and this only made him more insistent. When she wouldn't say good-night, when she wouldn't even look at him, he pinned her shoulders to the bed and demanded a response while her head thrashed back and forth.  

"C'mon, just kiss her good-night and leave it at that." I begged, tugging him off of her. I found myself policing his behavior, which made him angry.
If there was a problem he insisted it lay with me, in my misinterpretations of his very normal paternal affection. I was accustomed to thinking he was right about everything; he had to be right about this. I couldn't accept any other explanation. 

"Spoilsport," he exploded angrily when I pulled Dylan out of the bed where he had been wrapped around her like a python in Jockey underpants.
"What sport?" I asked him. "Exactly  what sport am I spoiling?" 

A psychologist who was already helping another child in the family (Woody believed everyone would benefit from therapy) witnessed only a brief greeting between Woody and Dylan, but it was enough for her to mention it to me, and express her concern that Woody's attitude was "inappropriately intense, because it excluded everybody else; and it placed a demand on a child for a kind of acknowledgement that I felt should not be placed on a child." 

That was nothing! I told the therapist, and the years of fear, disbelief, silence and denial welled into words. I told her all of it, and I prayed she would be able to help.  

To my great relief the therapist began to work with Woody, to help him to understand that his behavior with Dylan was "inappropriate" and had to be modified. Now many of the things that so disturbed me seemed to improve. She made him stop putting his hands under Dylan's covers, stop putting his face in her lap, stop the constant caressing, stop hunting Dylan down, stop having her suck on his thumb.  

Although the therapist addressed the specifics, she was unable to modify the overall wooing quality of Woody's approaches, his own neediness expressing itself to Dylan. And if I left a room with Woody and Dylan in it, when I returned, I was still likely to find him doing those same things again.
At least now when he got mad at me, he was more likely to come around and say, "Look, I'm really sorry. You're right to tell me when this kind of thing happens. Just tell me. It's OK. 

So we had come a long way, I had articulated my concerns, he had acknowledged there was a problem, and a therapist was in place addressing the issue with him. He was making an effort.  I had to believe that everything would be all right. I had to.

Now the Woody Allen worshippers usually claim that Mia Farrow was out to get Allen and that she coached Dylan into saying all these things against Allen. But here Farrow claims that Allen was being treated by a therapist for his deeply disturbing behavior around this little girl - do they also claim that the therapist was lying? Or a figment of Mia's imagination?

In the Saturday bombshell in the NYTimes, Dylan herself tells a similar story:

For as long as I could remember, my father had been doing things to me that I didn’t like. I didn’t like how often he would take me away from my mom, siblings and friends to be alone with him. I didn’t like it when he would stick his thumb in my mouth. I didn’t like it when I had to get in bed with him under the sheets when he was in his underwear. I didn’t like it when he would place his head in my naked lap and breathe in and breathe out. I would hide under beds or lock myself in the bathroom to avoid these encounters, but he always found me. These things happened so often, so routinely, so skillfully hidden from a mother that would have protected me had she known, that I thought it was normal. I thought this was how fathers doted on their daughters. But what he did to me in the attic felt different. I couldn’t keep the secret anymore.

She also give explicit details about what he did to her in the attic, which I don't feel like reading again - follow the link if you want to read it.

As always, the Onion gets to the heart of things:

Oh, sure, you could try to defend me in an argument by saying, “Well, he was never convicted, and it’s possible that this little girl just made all that stuff up,” but, c’mon, anyone who says that is bound to sound like kind of an asshole, right? Even if your intentions are good, that line of argument does sort of make you look like you’re throwing a potential molestation victim under the bus in order to defend, at all costs, that funny, neurotic guy in the glasses who makes you laugh, doesn’t it? No, obviously you can’t do that. But then again, what are you going to do? Never watch Annie Hall again? Not to sound too conceited or anything, but you know you don’t want that.

Fun Facts about Atlas Shrugged

Thanks to a Russian web site which has placed the entirety of Atlas Shrugged on a single web page, it is now possible to do a quick search on the novel and quickly discover some fun facts:

• The word "vermin" only appears once, to my surprise. In reference to a tax collector - that was not a surprise.
• The word "parasite" appears 23 times.
• The word "moocher" appears only 7 times. Big surprise - I would have thought it showed up at least as much as parasite.
• "Looter" shows up 115 times - wow I thought looter and moocher were used almost equally. I was so wrong.
• "Sneer" appears 16 times.
• The word "chuckle" appears 133 times.
• "Contempt" appears 109 times.
• "Hate" appears 309 times.
• "Angular" appears 24 times.
• "Gold" appears 110 times.
• "Despise/despised" appear 45 times.
• "Evil" appears 236 times.
• "Cigarette" appears 98 times.

Social Justice Warriors - come out to play-ay

ELSEWHERE
by Will Shetterly

Got a shout-out from Will Shetterly who runs the web site Social Justice Warriors: Do Not Engage. I've been getting the word out about his site too - and it seems others are also starting to take notice.

Shetterly's the only social media contributor I know of who has identified what Mikki Kendall seems to be leading - the fetishizing of ethnic identity in order to punish allies and gain power. Just knowing what to call these loonies has been hugely empowering - thanks Will.

I should point out that in addition to being on the cutting edge of analyzing Internet phenomena, Shetterly is known for his science fiction authorship. Regrettably I haven't been familiar with his work because I'm not a big sci-fi reader, early Vonnegut and The Foundation series notwithstanding. I think I have some reading-up to do.

I'm actually hoping I won't have to keep tabs on Kendall too much going forward - with any luck the Nation article has caused Kendall-fever to break. But I have a nagging suspicion that we haven't heard the last ethnicity-based campaign by Kendall.

Mikki Kendall figures she can mob people without consequences

Hey mazzie's mean-girl gang! Read more about the exciting antics of you and your fellow Social Justice Warriors here!

In addition to being the social media darling of the Left, and an unethical journalist, Mikki Kendall must have the most amazing case of lack of self-awareness ever - probably a good thing if you're a demagogue.

I've never been able to communicate directly with Kendall about her Google-bombing smears - she did not provide contact information on her Tumblr account. Not that it would have done any good - if I had complained directly to her I have no doubt she would have doubled-down and Google-bombed me even further with her smears.

So it's funny that she would say "you can't get logic through, or facts" since I've never had direct communications with her. But you don't get to communicate with Kendall - she smears you and you can just STFU and take it, forever, as her smears appear in your Google results year after year.

It's only thanks to Twitter having such an open-door policy that I've had this much communication with Kendall, after she initially smeared me three years ago.

This is pretty amusing though -

- to be called "fixated" by somebody about whom the Nation says is:

...obsessed—she talks at length about slights made in the comment threads of blogs more than five years ago...

As the Nation article points out, Kendall has a family and graduate studies - and in spite of this she appears to spend almost every waking minute tweeting a combination of mundane trivia about her life and attacks - most often against unnamed enemies. But because I chose to devote a series of blog posts to Kendall's disgraceful career... but really, you can't expect fairness from extremist demagogues - they cannot fathom the concept.

"uncle sugar" or @mazzie is such a devoted Social Justice Warrior that she even out-Kendalled Kendall by blaming white feminists for the Patriarchy. And her tweet, about white feminists writing "hit pieces" is a reference to the Nation article.

We have a winner!

I predicted this would happen an hour or so before it did - the hashtag #PatriarchyIs turned into bashing white feminists as representative of the Patriarchy.

Apparently #PatriarchyIs was started by Mikki Kendall, so actually it took longer than I expected for this to turn into hating white feminists.

Mikki Kendall and SJWs still claim Lennon/Ono racists

Mikki Kendall has naturally not ceased her hatred of white women, because that is who she is, and she gets attention for it from liberal media and praise from fellow Social Justice Warriors.

Here we see the evidence that they still believe John Lennon and Yoko Ono are racists because they pointed out that women are on the lowest rung of any social ladder. That the song was not meant as an attack on black people in any way has been completely, deliberately ignored by SJW because Lennon/Ono used the N word to characterize the position of women.

The idea that the N-word cannot be used in any context (except in hip hop) without being racist is one of the pillars of the SJW movement. That is the same reasoning that is used to ban Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

And it was on the grounds that I defended the Lennon/Ono song as not-racist that Tumblr bully Mikki Kendall and her zombie mob smeared me.

Here is a tweet that Mikki Kendall re-tweeted on January 31.

The song is naturally the fault of white women, as we see thanks to the hashtag #WhiteFeministRants, although Lennon was a white man and Ono is an Asian woman. But Mikki Kendall is a leader of the SJW movement and she has a deranged hatred of white women, so of course...

Here we see Kendall crowing over how she "rattled some cages" with her bigotry-inspired #solidarityisforwhitewomen.

However, she also claims to have done the same thing with #fasttailedgirls and #foodgentrification, and there she is dreaming. Most people don't know what fast tailed girls are, and if they did would hardly be opposed, and as far as food gentrification - it's not a real thing and nobody is defending it. Although Kendall always like to declare there are hordes of enemies at her gate - that way her sycophants give her attention, support and praise.

But as any demagogue knows, nothing works quite as well as pure hatred aimed at a group of people based on some shared characteristic, and Kendall works that with all her might.

Currently Kendall and her gang are running a hashtag #PatriarchyIs, which is sure to be just as ignored as #foodgentrification until they find a way to blame the Patriarchy on white women - or even better, white feminists. They haven't yet, that I've seen, but give them time.

Mark my words, eventually Kendall will be shilling for a right-wing think tank.

Primo rant from Jon Stewart

This is a fine piece of work.

Yellow journalist/Tumblr/Twitter bully Mikki Kendall finally called out by liberal media

Well it looks like there's a new Twitter tag in town - #IStandWithKarnythia - because finally, one liberal media outlet, The Nation has decided that maybe, just maybe, professional hater Mikki Kendall has issues.

Mikki Kendall is unmoved by complaints about the repressive climate online. An Army veteran, graduate student and married mother of two in Chicago, Kendall is both famous and feared in Internet feminist circles. Mother Jones declared her one of the “13 Badass Women of 2013”—along with Wendy Davis and Malala Yousafzai—for her creation of the #solidarityisforwhitewomen hashtag. But as Kendall well knows, many consider her a bully, though few want to say so out loud. “I kind of have a reputation for being mean,” she says.

On the phone, Kendall isn’t mean. She seems warm and engaging, but also obsessed—she talks at length about slights made in the comment threads of blogs more than five years ago. As she sees it, feminist elites have been snubbing women with less power for years, and now that their power is being challenged, they’re crying foul. Their complaints, she argues, are yet another assertion of privilege, since they’re unmindful of how much more flak Kendall and her friends take. 

“If you look at the mentions for me, for @BlackAmazon, for @FeministaJones, for a lot of other black feminists, it’s hard for us to see this other stuff as bullying, I’ll be honest with you,” she says. “Because we are getting so much more than ‘I don’t like your article.’ And we’re getting it all day. I had someone who spent four hours last week dumping porn images into my mentions. I’ve had people send me pictures of lynchings. So then when somebody says, ‘Oh, this article is terrible,’ and a bunch of people talk about how terrible an article was, and you say that’s bullying—I’m going to side-eye your definition of bullying.” 

The problem, as she sees it, lies in mainstream white feminists’ expectations of how they deserve to be treated. “Feminism has a mammy problem, and mammy doesn’t live here anymore,” Kendall says. “I know The Help told you you was smart, you was important, you was special. The Help lied. You’re going to have to deal with anger, you’re going to have to deal with hurt.” And if it all gets to be too much? “Self-care comes into this. Sometimes you have to close the Internet.”

Look at her go - bullies always have a justification for why they are bullies. And notice how much absolute unshakeable contempt she has for white women - suggesting that white feminists are so completely stupid and ignorant that our frame of reference for racism is a recent movie, "The Help."

She just can't hide how much she despises white women even for a moment.

The only power Kendall cares about is her own - attacking feminists has made a nice career for Camille Paglia and Christina Hoff Somers and Katie Roiphe - why shouldn't Kendall try for some of that anti-feminist money, especially when she has the extra angle of attacking white feminists? I would not be at all surprised if Kendall eventually parlays her obsession into a gig at a right-wing think tank.

I was disappointed - although not surprised - that the article doesn't mention Kendall's comrade in bigotry, the Nation's own Aura Bogado.

Kendall isn't only a bully though. She also wrote a piece for Salon in which she implied that a doctor tried to kill her out of anti-abortion fervor on the basis of zero evidence. She's completely unethical and utterly unashamed of her lack of ethics. And for the most part has gotten away with it.

But on the other side it didn't say nothing - that sign was made for you and me.

I teared up at work this morning when I heard Pete Seeger died. Although more for the beauty of what he stood for rather than for his death - he lived to a ripe old age and died of natural causes. And he lived by his beliefs and got to live long enough to do this:

This performance makes me tear up every time I watch it. There's nothing more ineffably beautiful than Peter Seeger and Bruce Springsteen performing together. And for the inauguration of our first black president yet.

Even though Woody Guthrie wrote this song, it's about Pete Seeger - he lived a truly authentic life.

Nobody living can ever stop me
As I go walking on freedom highway
Nobody living can make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

Downton Abbey Spoofs

This is pretty good - the first number is just OK, but the number with "Thomas" and "O'Brian" is very good indeed, and the recurring joke with Daisy is very good.

This one has famous people in it. I enjoyed the reference to "Larkrise to Candleford" - the actor who plays Bates on Downton had a leading role in it, and the character wasn't all that different from Bates.

Sesame Street's Upside Downton Abbey

P Diddy on Downton Abbey - the funniest one I've seen.

Famous people version Part 2