Posts Tagged Richard Nixon
Danzig Escapes From The Atlanta Zoo
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on April 19, 2013
This Never Gets Old
If you are anywhere near a television, a radio, the internet, your phone, your Blackberry, or a noisy colleague who spent most of the night in a cough medicine induced stupor watching news broadcasts on one of 68,032 news channels, you have probably heard about Danzig’s harrowing escape last night from the Atlanta Zoo. Here’s a quick timeline of how the events transpired…
5:10 PM-Radio station 640 WGST reported that Danzig gnawed through the bars of his cage and ran through a crowd of terrified onlookers on his way to the Dippin’ Dots stand. He knocked the stand over and began to howl in a bluesy voice about how ice cream used to mean something.
5:20 PM-CBS News reported Danzig was surrounded by police. Desperate and frightened, Danzig took a three-foot marmoset hostage at gunpoint.
5:47 PM-ABC News reported that Danzig threw the marmoset at police officers. The marmoset exploded into giant ball of light temporarily blinding the officers and allowing Danzig to escape the park.
6:08 PM-Several witnesses claimed Danzig ripped his shirt off and stole a broken down 1995 charcoal grey Ford Focus with a “Who Is John Galt?” sticker on the bumper.
6:09 PM-CNN reported that the Ford broke down and Danzig was left to escape on foot.
6:16 PM-Witnesses spotted Danzig in a BP station stealing boxes of beef jerky while bellowing the lyrics to “Sistinas”.
6:25 PM-Danzig stated unequivocally that there will be no Misfits reunion.
7:26 PM-Fox News reported that MARTA cameras identified a well-built, naked man fitting Danzig’s description running through the Vine City station. Fox anchor Brit Hume went on to conclude from the footage that it is clear that Danzig is a Muslim terrorist.
7:34 PM-Fox retracted the earlier MARTA story and confirmed that the naked man was former Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue. However, they continued to claim Danzig is affiliated with Al Queda.
7:46 PM-CNN reported a SWAT team has surrounded a Waffle House in Downtown Decatur and that Danzig was eating a plate of hash browns and talking to the waiter about the occult roots of Nazism.
7:58 PM-A SWAT team stormed the Waffle House and arrested the suspect.
8:09 PM-CNN reported that the man in police custody is actually Arnold Horseschaker, a Danzig impersonator who had, hours earlier, played a 5-year-old’s birthday party in Alpharetta.
10:38 PM-AP reported that Danzig was spotted on a Vincent Blackshadow motorcycle riding up I-85 at speeds of up to 120 miles per hour, his hair gently cascading in the wind.
10:43 PM- According to AP, Danzig’s flaming motorcycle leapt over 25 police cars while flipping multiple times through the air. He escaped again, unharmed.
10:56 PM-AP changed its earlier story and claimed only that Danzig was photographed on a motorcycle in 1985.
11:07 PM-Danzig’s apartment on Stewart Avenue in Hapeville was raided. Several highlighted copies of Catcher in The Rye were found along with 45 fishnet shirts.
11:13 PM-According to Fox News, a man fitting Danzig’s description was arrested in Osaka, Japan. The man was carrying a copy of the Koran, 5,000 pounds of plastic explosives and Bill Ayers autobiography. Fox announced it is a “100 percent certainty” that the man arrested is Danzig.
11:17 PM-Fox News announced the capture of Danzig in a bar in Tupelo, Mississippi. He was carrying a small nuclear bomb in a suitcase, reading out loud from a copy of Das Kapital and wearing an Obama for President tee shirt.
11:19 PM-The Drudge Report announced that Danzig is actually a Kenyan national named Hussein Abdul-Jihad.
11:38 PM-Various media outlets reported that Danzig and an unnamed accomplice, Glenn Doe Number Two as he’s referred to, were seen breaking into an exotic pet store in Marietta in order to liberate all the pythons, ferrets and tropical fish. The two quickly left the store with several animals and were chased by police.
11:54 PM-WSB-TV in Atlanta reported that police have shot a suspect fitting Danzig’s description only feet away from the Chattahoochee River. The man, who authorities are referring to as “the guy who probably isn’t Danzig but looks slightly like him”, was attempting to throw a bag of tropical fish into the water.
12:01 AM-CNN reports the man shot by the Chattahoochee River was actually Ron Ziegler, former Press Secretary to President Richard Nixon.
12:05-4:30 AM-Most media outlets, realizing the audience was quickly losing focus, began to speculate on the nuclear capabilities of North Korea and the possibility of the Ebola virus being spread through Wendy’s hamburgers.
4:33AM-CNN reported Danzig was captured only feet away from his cage at the Atlanta Zoo. He had been hiding behind a tree.
The Blankie Variations
Posted by Keith Spillett in Parenting Tips For Those With Children on September 6, 2012
(Night. Daddy, Moses and Blankie lie on a bed. All three stare into the darkness. All is quiet)
Daddy: Moses, you know that Blankie is actually your brother, right?
Moses: No. Blankie’s not my brother. Blankie is a blanket.
Daddy: Not yet. Blankie is only 5. He doesn’t become a blanket until he’s 18.
Moses: Daddy, Blankie isn’t 5.
Daddy: Sure he is. He’s very advanced for his age. Did you know that he’s an expert in archery?
Moses: What’s archery?
Daddy: Shooting a bow and arrow.
Moses: Daddy.
Daddy: Yes.
Moses: Blankie can’t shoot a bow and arrow. He doesn’t have arms.
Daddy: He uses his corners.
Moses: Oh.
Daddy: And he speaks three languages…
Moses: Really? Are you joking?
Daddy: No. He speaks English, Spanish and Cantonese. He is also semi-fluent in several regional dialects native to Ethiopia.
Moses: Oh.
Daddy: He only reads Russian and English though.
Moses: Oh.
Daddy: He’s read most of Tolstoy in the original language.
Moses: What’s Tolstoy?
Daddy: It’s a kind of medicine. For people who can’t sleep.
Moses: Blankie can’t read.
Daddy: Shhhh. You’ll hurt his feelings.
Moses: Daddy. Blankie can’t read because he doesn’t have eyes.
Daddy: Good point.
(Silence)
Daddy: Did Blankie ever tell you he was the starting fullback for Baylor on their 1995 Liberty Bowl winning team?
Moses: No.
Daddy: And did Blankie ever tell you he was the Attorney General under Richard Nixon. And that he quit rather than fire Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski?
Moses: No.
Daddy: And did Blankie ever tell you that he once saved a fishing village in Alaska from a giant squid?
Moses: No.
Daddy: And did he tell you that he was the bass player on the first and second Borknagar albums?
Moses: No.
Daddy: Oh.
Moses: Daddy?
Daddy: Yes.
Moses: He didn’t tell me because he doesn’t have a mouth.
Daddy: Oh. Well. Yeah.
Moses: Blankie isn’t real.
Daddy: You are going to give him a complex.
Moses: What’s a complex?
Daddy: A group of buildings.
Moses: Oh.
Daddy: It’s time for the two of you to go to sleep.
Moses: Blankie doesn’t sleep.
Daddy: Well, he’s going to be tired in the morning.
Moses: Yeah.
(They stare at the ceiling)
Daddy: Good night, son. Good night, Blankie.
Moses: Good night.
Blankie: Good night.
(They do not move)
New Book Claims Nixon Considered Assassinating Black Sabbath Members
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness, Pointyheaded Highbrow Stuff on March 16, 2012
For years one of the great mysteries in American political history was what President Nixon said in the missing 18-½ minutes of tape that was “accidentally” erased before it was given to investigators. A new book may just answer that question.
According to Nixon’s story, his personal secretary Rosemary Woods erased the missing section of tape when she was trying to transcribe the details of the conversation for the Watergate Hearings. In a new book, “Knowing Dick: My Mother’s Time Under President Nixon”, Petey Woods, Rosemary’s eldest son, claims that she revealed to him that Nixon had detailed discussions about assassinating members of the metal band Black Sabbath on the deleted section of the tape. He also claimed that his mother was asked by the President to destroy the section because he worried about “a wave of heavy metal coming over to the U.S. from England and spreading lawless, godless communism.”
The book claims, Nixon, who has also been rumored to have encouraged the assassination and overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile, wanted to see a similar fate for Bill Ward, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler. Nixon was much less concerned about Ozzy, who he felt was a drag on the talents of the rest of the band. However, Nixon was concerned that “Sabbath might go ahead and get someone like that fellow Dio from the band Elf. Then, they’d all have to go or they’d be unstoppable.”
Nixon believed the CIA could be enlisted in plans to get rid of Sabbath. “After all, we used them to overthrow Mossadegh in Iran and Arbenz in Guatemala. They helped get rid of Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Diem in Vietnam and Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. They even tried to kill Castro 8 times for god sakes. Getting rid of a bunch of angry, power-chord obsessed Brits should be no trouble whatsoever for the boys over at Langley.”
“The President was deeply concerned about the potential dangers of a style of music that loud and that intense,” says Woods in his book. Apparently, most of the 18-½ minutes is an anti-metal rant that featured the President raving about the future of metal. “Eventually they’ll be bands that play a style called speed or thrash metal. They’ll have names like Slayer and Demolition Hammer and they will corrupt the young. I can envision a world where kids run into each other in a dance they like to call “moshing”. They’ll be encouraged to kick their friend in the head and have a ball. Is this the type of America you want, Haldeman?”
One of the most shocking revelations about the tapes is Nixon’s Nostradamus-like ability to accurately predict the path of heavy metal. At one point, he allegedly referred to a style of metal from Scandinavia that he believed would be called “bleak metal” and would feature band members wearing corpse paint and playing fast, angry metal filled with high pitched screams. He then allegedly went into graphic detail about his concern that there might be a so-called “death metal” scene in Florida in the early 1990s where bands like Death and Morbid Angel “could completely warp the minds of an entire generation with satanic imagery and blast-beat drumming.”
Nixon even went as far as saying that if Black Sabbath isn’t killed, we’d see a future with bands like “Suffocation, Pig Destroyer, and Goatwhore telling our kids god knows what”. By “taking out Sabbath”, Nixon believed he could strike a final and decisive blow against the forces of heavy metal. “All we need are a few bullets, a little arsenic in their beer and a car bomb or two. Then the kids will start listening to positive stuff like Anita Bryant and Bing Crosby again. And just what the hell is a Goatwhore anyway?”
However, if Sabbath was successful in their metal mission young people would “fall like dominos” and eventually America would be filled with a majority of “black tee-shirt clad, long-haired maniacs who live to thrash all night and sleep all day.”
Later in Nixon’s life, he slowly began to accept heavy metal and even was rumored to have listened to Pantera’s “Cemetery Gates” on his deathbed. However, his willingness to use the power of the Presidency to kill members of a heavy metal band is deeply troubling for the remaining twenty or so Americans who believe that America doesn’t have the right to go around the world murdering people who are a perceived threat.
Dispatches From The Republican Convention September 14th, 2040
Posted by Keith Spillett in The Politics Of Catastrophe on July 19, 2011
Nixon Thrills 130,000 People In San Francisco
The Republican Party seems poised to return to power after their thrilling convention concluded in San Francisco, California last night. The keynote convention address, given by Republican Presidential Candidate LeVance Nixon, brought the house to a twenty minute standing ovation. Nixon pledged that the Republican Party is committed to “freedom now, freedom tomorrow and freedom forever” in a speech that some commentators are calling the best in the party’s history. Several polls taken within minutes of Nixon’s speech showed that Nixon picked up 8 to 12 points against his opponent, Democratic Incumbent Juan Jose Herrera and now leads in 31 of the 44 states.
Nixon’s campaign theme of entirely eliminating nearly every function of government has gained steam in the past few months. His major idea of privatizing the entire United States military and offering it to other countries as a mercenary defense force has captured the imagination of many. Nixon claimed last month that the US could have the money to re-aquire the state of Oregon and allow the Social Security Age to dip below 95 for the first time since 2030 if the program is instituted. Other Nixon programs, including the elimination of public schools by 2050, a program dismissing taxation for Americans making over 250,000 dollars a year and the immediate closing of the Food and Drug Administration, have also gained popularity since Nixon announced his intention to run for the Presidency last year.
A year ago, many of his ideas seemed far-fetched, but even the most radical ones have gained an audience. Nixon’s revolutionary re-working of the welfare system, once thought to be too radical, is a hit even now with some Democrats. His program, originally decried by many for its cruelty, would force people receiving federal benefits for more than two years to exchange a kidney for continuing benefits. “The poor have senselessly and selfishly hoarded their kidneys without regard to the harm they have caused. You can sell a functional kidney for $25,000. It’s time the poor do their part to make America great again! Even the lazy can contribute to our once great nation!” Nixon told the screaming crowd of conventioneers.
The Problem of the Moths has plagued much of the Presidency of Juan Jose Herrera. Nixon looked to capitalize on this issue through a proposal to give a ten year long tax holiday to any corporation that captures more than 100 giant man eating moths per year. According to Nixon the program will “encourage the growth of the real generators of the Great American Job Engine…corporations. It will also help to stop moths from consuming the flesh of innocent, hard-working Americans.”
The energy around the Nixon campaign is a testament to the youthful, revitalized nature of the Republican Party. Many of the parties core supporters are 18 to 34 years old. They are attracted by the Parties strong anti-government message. It was a Republican Congress and President, as most remember, that legalized all drugs in 2025 and gay marriage in 2026. Since those fateful decision, the Party has attracted a slew of gung-ho, young supporters. Hundreds of young Nixon supporters, calling themselves the Nixon Youth, staged a spontaneous rally outside of the Harvey Milk Arena after his speech. “Nixon’s for freedom and freedom is for America. Government sucks! It’s that simple!” shouted Emilia Antonia, a Nixon supporter who had travelled all the way from the ruins of Boston to be a part of the special evening.
Solutions Are Not The Answer: Political Communication For Toddlers
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness, Pointyheaded Highbrow Stuff, The Politics Of Catastrophe on July 8, 2011
Photo By Angie Hill (picture is of her son Braxton)
It has often been said that you can learn a lot from listening to a child talk. People tend to mean that you can learn a great deal about the beautiful simplicity of life and the importance of innocence. These are valuable lessons, but certainly not the only things children can teach you. What I have found from listening to my children is that they have an amazing understanding of how political communication works. It’s not that I am one of those parents who think their children are so smart they can handle molecular biology in the first grade, but my two year old and four year old have given me remarkable examples of arguments that are popular in the realm of American political discourse. Carter could have gotten a third term with some of the things my kids say in passing.
Fallacy of Extension or The Strawman Argument
My 2-year-old daughter looked at me yesterday and announced, “It’s not night daddy, it’s the morning.” She was certainly correct, it was 10 o’clock in the AM and the sun was shining brightly. The intriguing part about her statement was that I had never said anything about it being nighttime. She had ascribed to me a position that was both irrational and, more importantly, not mine. She had used this to make her own case for the fact it was daytime. Somewhere, Roger Ailes was smiling. This argument is the backbone of much of the political debate that goes on today.
In the “non-toddler world” it works like this. I accuse you of saying something you have never said and do not believe and then make my case in opposition to the illogical premise that now belongs to you. You look like a lunatic and I look like my argument is not only correct, but a common sense response to the weird stuff that you have said at another time (even though you never said it!) Richard Nixon’s Checkers speech is the most famous example. The man was accused of misusing 18 thousand dollars and ended up making an argument over how his political enemies were asking him to give a dog back that his children really loved. No one had said anything about the dog except him. Even my two-year-old couldn’t pull that off with a straight face.
Misdirection or The Old Red Herring
This one is common among children when the subject of bedtime comes up. My four-year-old son has this down to a science. He is a naturally curious boy, but this curiosity comes in spades right around the time he’s looking to stall the natural forces of parenthood.
Me: “It’s bedtime.”
Son: “Why do the leaves fall off of trees?”
Me: “Let’s talk about it tomorrow, it’s bedtime.”
Son: “Where do the stars come from?”
Me: “We can talk about that first thing tomorrow, it’s time to go to sleep.”
Son: “Why do people sleep?”
Politicians often use this one when they get in trouble. The same sort of change the subject magic can be seen at many a press conference. Here’s a made up example that should look familiar to anyone who spends more than a half hour a month watching the news.
Reporter #1: “Is it true that you took illegal contributions from the law firm of Screwed, Over and Often?”
Politician: “The question of what makes a contribution illegal is an important one. Political contributions have been the bedrock of our great political system. Without them, many great Americans wouldn’t have had the chance to become President. Lincoln took contributions from great Americans like Cornelius Vanderbilt. Lincoln was one of our greatest Presidents. He took a stand against the evils of slavery.”
My son hit me with this one yesterday and nearly ruined what was left of my barely usable brain.
Me: We’ll be here for 18 more days.
Son: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11…uhm. Daddy, it can’t be 18, 18 isn’t a number.
Basically, he was saying that if he doesn’t know what it is then it simply can’t be true. In politics, there are many bizarre variations on this hustle. The most surreal is the use of the absence of something to prove its existence. Future Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren ran this one out back in the early 1940s to justify some of the post-Pearl Harbor, anti-Japanese sentiment in California “I take the view that this lack (of enemy subversive activity in the west coast) is the most ominous sign in our whole situation. It convinces me more than perhaps any other factor that the sabotage we are to get, the Fifth Column activities are to get, are timed just like Pearl Harbor… I believe we are just being lulled into a false sense of security.”
If you observe children enough, you’ll see all sorts of interesting political communication going on. The argument from personal charm is another standard. “I’m cute and harmless, therefore, even though I have a chunk of my brothers hair in my hands, I couldn’t possibly have done that bad thing you are thinking I did.” This explains much of the political career of Ronald Reagan. The argument ad infinitum is a common tool used when politicians repeat the same expressions thousands of times to try to cement them in the minds of voters. When your 4-year-old asks you for the six thousandth time for the Thomas the Train Misty Island Rescue Set, understand that they are exhibiting traits that may one day allow them to lead this great nation.
If you are interested in more of the great strategies used to obfuscate truth and contribute to the further cheapening of language, check out this link…http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html
Bowling For Danzigs
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on June 23, 2011
Ceci n’est pas une Danzig
On some level, we are all Glenn Danzig. I’m not really sure what on earth that means, but it seems like a fair enough way to start this weird monstrosity I’m about to write. Spending a good amount of time on social media sites tends to warp one’s mind a bit. Ideas that would have made Howard Hughes blush start to seem quite normal. All right, enough with this intro….I’m just going to come out and write it…I have spent the last three days of my life trying to become friends with every single person on Facebook who claims to be Glenn Danzig.
I’ll admit, this is a bit strange. I want to be clear that I am not cyber-stalking Danzig himself, simply people who claim to be him. The Internet allows for the human identity to be hidden or warped in many unique ways. How many of us are completely who we claim to be? However, claiming to be Glenn Danzig is a whole other thing. Why would hundreds of people claim to be Glenn Danzig online? Hundreds! I need to know! According to the Tyranny of Tradition Research Department, there are now fake Danzigs on four continents. The spread of fake Danzigism is reaching nearly epidemic proportions.
A terrible thought runs through the back of my mind every time I see a fake Danzig on Facebook. I worry that they may not, in fact, be fakes. Is there some sort of virus spreading throughout the world that converts normal citizens to bloodthirsty Danzig clones? What if these are people who died while listening to Her Black Wings and, somehow, the spirit of Danzig leaped into their bodies turning them into Danzig Zombies? Is there some Boys From Brazil type mad scientist who does nothing all day but take Danzig DNA off of fishnet he wore on the Blackaciddevil Tour in the hopes of creating an army of Clone Danzigs with X-Men type powers? What if these Danzigs have already been created and are marshaling their forces for a full-scale assault on Western Civilization? Indeed, with technology all things are possible.
Another unique aspect of the Internet is that weird people are able to communicate with other weird people that they might have never met. My internet friend Kelly from Canada and I have parlayed our mutual fake Danzig obsessions into a once in a lifetime event….DANZIG BOWL I.
Basically, we are competing to see who can collect the most fake Danzigs by Sunday July 17th at 7:00 PM. I’m not really sure what we plan to do with them. I am all for the idea of putting them in a Thunderdome style cage and having them fight for faux-Danzig superiority. Maybe the real Danzig would let the winner come up on stage and sing London Dungeon or something cool like that. Maybe the real Danzig will read this and get an immediate restraining order against me. I’m going to bet the second is more likely.
One of the great aspects of this event is the preparation. We have actually discussed whether Glenn Anzalone Danzigs should be counted. Anzalone is, as most deeply committed fans know, his proper birth name. This is a critical structural matter because it means that an additional 12 Danzigs are then in play. Then, there is the issue of poorly committed Danzigs. Should a person who uses their personal picture of themselves or no picture at all but still uses the Danzig name count in the final tally? I believe in a pluralistic approach to fake Danzig stalking. It doesn’t matter if you use your picture or no picture or a picture of a Christmas ham, if you use the name, you are a Danzig at heart. Even that fake Danzig with no picture whose entire profile simply says “Glenn Danzig, Indiana State University” can be included. Just in case you are curious, I am currently trailing Kelly 5 to 4. I had a 5th Danzig but I think I may have scared him off.
I have some pretty major plans after Danzig Bowl, win or lose. I’ve thought of creating a Facebook account as Glenn Danzig and only being friends with other fake Danzigs. We could set up a support group for bogus Danzigs dealing with issues that might plague people who pretend to be Danzig online. We could band together and throw our support to political candidates who support Danzig worthy causes and boycott all non-Danzig friendly businesses. My big dream is that there will be a day where for one whole 24 hour period everyone on Facebook changes his or her name to Glenn Danzig. Kind of like in Spartacus. I admit, it’s a strange dream, but then so is drowning in orange juice while being laughed at by forty mutant clowns wearing Richard Nixon masks.
Borne Back Ceaselessly Into The Past: A Psychological Review Of Gentlemans Pistols “At Her Majesty’s Pleasure”
Posted by Keith Spillett in Pointless Music Reviews on June 20, 2011
I wish I could go back to 1972, listen to Gentlemans Pistols new record “At Her Majesties Pleasure” in the era it was meant to be recorded and stab Richard Nixon’s Chief of Staff H.R. “Bob” Haldeman in the skull with an ice pick. Okay, maybe not the last part. Haldeman wasn’t such a bad guy. He rocked that weird flat top hairdo that became the style in mid-90s rap music and became the best chemist Lompoc Federal Prison ever saw. He would have dug the new Gentlemans Pistols record for it’s pure grit and bile-ridden effluence. He was as malevolent a man as ever walked the earth. Supposedly, he tried to have Jim Nabors killed because he wouldn’t play Julie Nixon’s wedding. I heard that once from a guy in a sauna in Davenport, Iowa.
Gentlemans Pistols is a collection of outstanding British musicians including Mr. William Steer, who gave my life meaning by writing riffs for Carcass that would have made Ed Gein recite Walt Whitman poems to a crowd of smiling 3rd graders. Steer hasn’t lost a step. The riffs that he and James Atkinson put on this album are pure roll around-in-the-gutter filth. They buckle your knees like a 3-2 curveball and do not ask for your permission to continue.
Backwards in time to another place. Transported to all that was seedy and repugnantly gorgeous about 70’s bar room rock’n’roll. You are in a pool hall swilling cheap, half-flat beer being stared down by two menacing looking Hell’s Angels. Not the modern Sons of Anarchy watching yuppies who go cycling between trading soybean futures, but the old school Sonny Barger led head-mangling, spleen eater types. “Midnight Crawler” bellows in the background and you are completely there. Everything is in its place.
At some point the whole retrofitted 1970s rock thing is going to get old. The formula is, in fact, criminally simple. However, put in the hands of poets like these a 3-minute-song can feel like a shimmering vacation into the dark heart of all that is ugly and cruel. Something in their tone screams for your undying allegiance. You would crawl through glass just to hear “Into The Haze” once more. They are on the mainline, hooked into the Universal Generator and driving ceaselessly into the storm. This is the purpose for which rock’n’roll was intended. Not to be background music in the local Target or to be recited soullessly by an army of never-ending American Idol contestants, but to remind us of what visceral chaos lives just below the surface of our pristine, orderly world.
Bob Haldeman Would Have Understood
The Tyranny of Tradition 