Showing posts with label Shelby. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shelby. Show all posts

Thursday 8 September 2022

Paul’s Son’s Nebula




(mute) 


RIKER
What the hell do they 
want with you? 


SHELBY
I thought they weren't interested 
in human life forms, only 
Our Technology

PICARD
Their priorities seem to have changed. Open. 


WORF
Channel Open. 


PICARD
We have developed 
new defence capabilities 
since our last meeting and 
we are prepared to use them 
if you do not withdraw 
from Federation space. 



LAFORGE [OC]
Captain.

[Engineering]

LAFORGE
The shields are being probed. 
I'm modulating nutation.

[Bridge]
WORF
Captain, The Borg are attempting 
to lock on to us with 
their tractor beam. 


PICARD
Load torpedo bays. 
Arm phasers. Lock coordinates on the source of the tractor beam. 


RIKER
Shield status? 


DATA
Holding, sir. 


SHELBY
The nutation modulation 
has them confused. 


RIKER
They have The Ability to Analyse 
and Adapt, Commander. 

(The Ship shakes)

[Engineering]

LAFORGE
Shield modulation has failed. 
They've locked on.

[Bridge]

WORF
Shields are being drained. 
Ninety percent. Eighty.

[Engineering]

LAFORGE
Trying to recalibrate nutation. 
Damn.

[Bridge]
WORF
Shields have failed. 


PICARD: 
Fire all weapons.

[Engineering]

LAFORGE: 
Their subspace field is intact. 
New phaser frequencies 
had no impact.

[Bridge]
RIKER: Reverse engines. 
LAFORGE [OC]: Full reverse.
[Engineering]
LAFORGE: We're not moving.
[Bridge]
PICARD: Fire at will. 


WORF: 
Launching torpedoes. 
Phaser spread continuing. 


DATA: 
Still no damage 
to The Borg vessel, sir. 


(The Borg weapon cuts through the Enterprise like a hot knife through butter, almost.) 


COMPUTER: 
WarningOuter hull breach.


WORF: 
They're cutting into The Hull. 
Engineering section. 


RIKER
Geordi, evacuate Engineering.
[Engineering]

LAFORGE: 
Computer. Evacuation sequence. 


COMPUTER: 
Sealing doors to core chamber. 


LAFORGE: 
Come on, move it, people! 
Let's go! Let's go! 


COMPUTER: 
Decompression danger, 
deck thirty six, section four.

[Bridge]

COMPUTER: 
Sealing Main Engineering. 


SHELBY: 
Data, fluctuate phaser 
resonance frequencies. 
Random settings. 
Keep them changing. 
Don't give them time to adapt. 


(Finally, boom and judder) 


WORF: 
The tractor beam has been released. 


PICARD: 
Warp nine. Course, one five one mark three three zero. Engage. 
(La Forge enters the Bridge)


WORF: 
They are in pursuit, Captain. 


PICARD: 
Maintain course. 


RIKER: 
Damage report, Geordi? 


LAFORGE: 
Hull rupture in main Engineering. The damage is pretty heavy. We lost a lot of good people down there. 


DATA: 
Eleven dead, eight more unaccounted for, Captain. 


RIKER: 
Repair teams to Engineering. 
Seal hull breach. 


LAFORGE: 
They didn't get to the core, 
I can control functions 
from here. 


WESLEY: 
Now approaching 
The Paulson Nebula, sir. 


PICARD
Drop to impulse. 
Take us in, Ensign. 


(Enterprise glides into the purple fog

WESLEY
The field is getting too dense, sir. 


PICARD
Steady. Analysis of the 
nebula cloud, Mister Data. 


DATA
82% DiLithium Hydroxyls. 
Magnesium, Chromium. 
It should provide an effective screen against their sensors, Captain. 


PICARD
Mister La Forge, prepare 
to reverse engines. Full Stop


(The Enterprise vanishes, 
and The Borg Cube halts) 


WORF: 
The Borg Ship is continuing scans, 
attempting to locate Us. 


PICARD
Good. As long as 
They're looking for Us
They won't Hurt 
anyone else.

Thursday 9 June 2022

Cubical



RIKER
We've picked up a vessel 
on the long range scanners, 
headed this way.

PICARD
Analysis.

DATA
The Vessel is traveling 
at Warp 7.6. 
Mass : 2.5 million metric tons. 
Configuration : Cubical.




The Exorcist :
Where’s Reagan?

Pazuzu :
In Here - with Us.














cubicle (n.)
mid-15c., "bedroom, bedchamber," from Latin cubiculum "bedroom," from cubare "to lie down," which is perhaps from a PIE *kub-, with cognates in Middle Welsh kyscu, Middle Cornish koska, Middle Breton cousquet "to sleep," but de Vaan regards the PIE origin of the Latin word as "uncertain." Compare cubit.

 
Obsolete from 16c. but revived by 1858 for "dormitory sleeping compartment," especially in an English public school. The sense of "any partitioned space" (such as a library carrel or, later, office work station) is attested by 1926. 

Related: Cubicular.

Entries linking to cubicle

cubit (n.)
ancient unit of measure (usually from 18 to 22 inches) based on the forearm from elbow to fingertip, early 14c., from Latin cubitum, cubitus "the elbow, the forearm," generally regarded as a derivative of PIE *keu(b)- "to bend," but de Vaan finds this dubious based on the sense of the proposed cognates and the sound changes involved. 

Also compare cubicle.

It seems much safer to assume that cubitus 'elbow' is a specific instance of the ppp. cubitus of the verb cubare 'to lie down'. People lie down on their elbow if they sleep on their side, and the Romans even reclined when dining. It matters little whether the original meaning was 'forearm' or 'the elbow joint'. One may even suggest that the verb cubitare 'to lie down' ... is not (only) a frequentative to cubare, but (also) arose as a denominative 'to rest on the elbow' to cubitus. [de Vaan]

Such a measure, known by a word meaning "forearm" or the like, was known to many peoples (compare Greek pekhys, Hebrew ammah, English ell).

The word also was used in English in the "forearm, part of the arm from the elbow downward" sense (early 15c.); hence cubital "as long as a cubit" (mid-15c.), also "pertaining to the forearm" (1610s).

concubine (n.)
c. 1300, "a paramour, a woman who cohabits with a man without being married to him;" also, in reference to Hebrew, Greek, Roman and other civilisations where the position was recognized by law, "a wife of inferior condition, a secondary wife," from Latin concubina (fem.), concubinus (masc.) "one who lives unmarried with a married man or woman.

Usually the concubine was of a lower social order, but the institution, though below matrimonium, was less reproachful than adulterium or stuprum. The word itself is from concumbere "to lie with, to lie together, to cohabit," from assimilated form of com "with, together" (see con-) + cubare "to lie down" (see cubicle).

Such concubines were allowed by the Greek and Roman laws, and for many centuries they were more or less tolerated by the church, for both priests and laymen. The concubine of a priest was sometimes called a priestess. [Century Dictionary]

In Middle English, as in Latin, sometimes used of a man who cohabits with a woman without marriage. Related: Concubinary; concubinal.



PICARD
Mister Worf, dispatch 
a subspace message 
to Admiral Hanson :
We have engaged 
The Borg. 


WORF
Captain — YOU are being hailed. 


PICARD
I am

WORF
Yes, Captain :
 By Name. 


RIKER
Data, is it the same ship 
we faced at J two five? 


DATA
Uncertain, Commander, 
but the dimensions are 
precisely the same. 


PICARD
On screen. I am Jean Luc -


(The viewscreen just shows the inside of The Cube. The voice is made up of many speaking as one) 


BORG [OC]:
 Jean Luc Picard, captain of the Starship Enterprise, registry NCC 1701D, you will lower shields and prepare to transport yourself aboard our vessel. If you do not cooperate, we will destroy your ship. 


PICARD: 
You have committed acts of aggression 
against the United Federation of Planets. 
If you do not withdraw immediately 
—

BORG: 
You will surrender yourself or we will destroy your ship. 
Your defensive capabilities are unable to withstand us. 

(mute) 


RIKER:
 What the hell do They 
want with you

SHELBY
I thought they weren't interested 
in human life forms, 
only Our Technology. 


PICARD
Their priorities seem 
to have changed

Wednesday 21 April 2021

In The Belly of The Beast




“The fact that it controls us.


I don’t know why all people aren’t fascinated with it. 


It makes beautiful sounds, and it makes a lot of times some incredible light. 


It runs many things in Our World and it’s beautiful. 


It’s sometimes Dangerous, but it’s Magical. 


It’s such a power and it can make some beautiful images… and sounds.”


- Why David  Lynch 

finds Electricity fascinating 




“Warm or Cold, 
I’m bringing you in.”



WORF: 
Sir, The Borg have halted their approach to Earth. 


SHELBY: 
I think we got their attention. 


RIKER: 
Time to intercept?


WESLEY: 
Two minutes, four seconds, sir. 


RIKER: 
They're worried.
 
They're worried because 
we've got access to Picard.
 
Mister Data, we have two minutes 
to figure out what we can do with it.

DATA:
Sir, it is clear the Borg are either 
unwilling or unable 
to terminate their subspace links. 


CRUSHER: 
That may be their Achilles heel, Captain — 
Their Interdependency.

RIKER: 
What do you mean, Doctor?


CRUSHER : 
He's part of their collective consciousness now. 
Cutting him off would like asking one of us to disconnect an arm or a foot

We can't do it.


SHELBY: 
They operate as a single mind. 


RIKER
One jumps off a cliff, 
They all jump off? 

Data, is it possible to plant a command into 
The Borg Collective consciousness?

Not all of it, obviously -- 
Not the UniMatricies back in The Delta Quadrant, or the cubes cut off from the rest of The Collective by ion storms or nebulae,
just the part of LOCAL Consciousness correspondong to the ONE Cube/Universe directly in front of you, right now --

DATA: 
It is conceivable, sir, 
but it would require altering the pathway from the root command to affect all iterative branch points in the —



RIKER: 
Make every effort, Mister Data. 


DATA : 
Sir —
What command shall I try to plant?

RIKER: 
Something straightforward, 
like disarm your weapons systems. 


WORF: 
Visual contact with The Borg. 


SHELBY: 
On screen.


RIKER: 
Magnify.


WORF: 
Sensors reading increased power generation 
from The Borg. 


RIKER: 
Red Alert. 
Load all torpedo bays. Ready phasers. 


WORF: 
Aye, Captain.


RIKER: 
Status of Borg weapons? 


WORF: 
Their weapon systems are fully charged. 


RIKER: 
Data?


DATA: 
Attempting to re-route subcommand paths, Captain. 
Defence systems are protected by access barriers.


WORF: 
Borg attempting to lock on tractor beam. 


RIKER: 
Rotate shield frequencies. 
Data, report?

DATA: 
I am unable to penetrate 
defence systems command structure, Captain. 


SHELBY: 
Try the power systems, Data. 
See if you can get them to power down. 


DATA : 
Acknowledged. 
Attempting new power subcommand path.

LAFORGE: 
Shields have Failed. 
They've Locked on, sir. 
They're pulling us in. 


RIKER: 
Fire all weapons.

DATA: 
I cannot penetrate Borg power subcommand structure, sir.
All critical subcommands are protected, Captain. 


SHELBY: 
Then it's over.
RIKER: 
Mister Crusher, ready a collision course with the Borg ship. 
You heard me. A collision course.


WESLEY: 
Yes, sir.


RIKER: 
Mister La Forge, prepare to go to warp power. 


LAFORGE : 
Aye, sir.

PICARD: 
Sleep.


CRUSHER: 
He's regaining consciousness. 


PICARD: 
Sleep.


TROI: 
It is Captain Picard speaking, 
not Locutus.


PICARD: 
Sleep, Data.


CRUSHER: 
He's exhausted.


DATA: 
Yes, Doctor, but if I may make a supposition, 
I do not believe his message was intended to express fatigue 
but to suggest a course of action.

WORF: 
Borg cutting beam activated. 


RIKER: 
Mister Crusher? 
Engage --

DATA : 
Data to Bridge. 
Stand by. 


RIKER: 
Stand by, all stations.

DATA: 
I am attempting to penetrate 
The Borg regenerative subcommand path
It is a low priority system and may be accessible. 


When you think about it, it would have to be -- 
They would need to have a KillSwitch for deactivating damaged or rogue drones -- or rouge ship, or even rogue planets of Borg, in order to disconnect them, repair them or run diagnostics, and it would HAVE to be accessible and remotely triggerable by the rest of The Network, and it would HAVE to be exposed in the uppermost levels of consciousness, but tapping directly into the underlying fundamental base of the command structure --

Like an exposed Exhaust Port Vent. 

The OTHER Borg have to be able to switch them off from a distance, should they become INFECTED.

Warning. 
Outer hull breach.


WORF: 
Sir, shall I execute evacuation sequence? 


RIKER: 
Negative, Mister Worf. 
Mister Data, your final report. 


DATA: 
Stand by. 


RIKER: 
I can't, Mister Data. 


Warning. Inner hull failure imminent 
on decks twenty three, twenty four, 
and twenty five. 

Decompression Danger. 


(Then suddenly it all goes quiet. No shaking, no cutting) 


RIKER: 
Mister Data, 
What The Hell happened?

DATA: 
I successfully planted a command into 
[ this local bit of ]
The Borg Collective consciousness, sir. 

It misdirected them to believe it was time to regenerate. 

In effect, I put them all to sleep.

RIKER: 
To sleep? 


DATA: 
Yes, sir.


RIKER: 
Status of Borg power drive?


WORF: 
Minimal power. 

RIKER: 
Electromagnetic field?

WORF: 
Nonexistent(!)

Saturday 12 September 2020

Reynard

LFC-The 51st State....YNWA...

Reynard and me would argue all the time in this little Indian restaurant they had in San Francisco. 
There was a picture of Bill Clinton on the wall. 

There's no difference between Fate and Free Will. 
Here I am; put here, come here. 
No difference. Same thing. 

Nothing ends that isn't something else starting. 
So which side are you on? Do you know yet? 

Anyhow. I've said my bit and it's your go now... so while you're thinking about it, think about this... my mate Elfayed told me something when I was little and wanking about twenty times a day: 

"We made gods and jailers because we felt small and alone," 
he said. 

"We let them try us and judge us and, like lambs to the slaughter, we allowed ourselves to be... 
sentenced. 
See! Now! Our sentence is up."


" Welcome, Fool. 

You have come of your own Free Will to the appointed place. 

The Game is over. The Game of The Hunted leading The Hunter. "





In Ken Burns's documentary The Civil War, Shelby Foote notes that historians are not quite sure how The Rebel Yell sounded, being described as 
"a foxhunt yip mixed up with sort of a banshee squall". 

He recounts the story of an old Confederate veteran invited to speak before a ladies' society dinner. 

They asked him for a demonstration of the rebel yell, but he refused on the grounds that it could only be done "at a run", and couldn't be done anyway with "a mouth full of false teeth and a stomach full of food". 

Anecdotes from former Union Soldiers described the yell with reference to "a peculiar corkscrew sensation that went up your spine when you heard it" along with the comment that "if you claim you heard it and weren't scared that means you never heard it". 

In the final episode, a sound newsreel of a 1930s meeting of Civil War veterans has a Confederate veteran giving a Rebel yell for the occasion, sounding as a "wa-woo-woohoo".

In his autobiography My Own Story, Bernard Baruch recalls how his father, a former surgeon in the Confederate army, would at the sound of the song "Dixie" jump up and give the rebel yell, no matter where he was: 
"As soon as the tune started Mother knew what was coming and so did we boys. 
Mother would catch him by the coattails and plead, 'Shush, Doctor, shush'. 
But it never did any good. I have seen Father, ordinarily a model of reserve and dignity, leap up in the Metropolitan Opera House and let loose that piercing yell."

The Confederate yell was intended to help control fear. As one soldier explained: 
"I always said if I ever went into a charge, I wouldn't holler! 
But the very first time I fired off my gun I hollered as loud as I could and I hollered every breath till we stopped." 

Jubal Early once told some troops who hesitated to charge because they were out of ammunition: 
Damn it, holler them across.

— Historian Grady McWhiney (1965)

Sunday 2 July 2017

I Want to a Lie Shipwrecked and Comatose Drinking Fresh Mango Juice


Elvis’ death shocks LV

Elvis Presley collapsed and died at his home in Memphis, Tenn. Tuesday and the tragedy sent a rippling shock through Las Vegas where he made his show business comeback and attained a popularity peak from which he never descended.

At the Hilton, where Elvis had made exclusive Las Vegs appearances since 1969, executives were caught by surprise and reacted numbly.

Barron Hilton, head of the worldwide hotel chain, had flown into Las Vegas for a late afternoon advertising conference but cancelled it after word of Presley's death was flashed at 12:30 p.m. PDT.

Hilton, who had befriended Presley here, issued a terse statement of tribute but declined press interviews. In part, his statement said, "...Presley was more than just a great talent, he was a good friend to all of us at the Las Vegas Hilton."

Henry Lewin, the Hilton's senior vice president, was more graphic. Stopping for a hallway interview in the hotel's buzzing executive suite, he referred to Presley as "...an absolute superstar who was also a very simple person."

"I am going to miss him. It makes me very sad that this could happen," Lewin said.

"The man had no season. He was unique and he was magic to our (gaming and tourism) industry," the Hilton executive stated.

Initial conflicting reports said Presley died of a heart attack, respiratory failure and an overdose of drugs.

Doctors at Baptist Hospital in Memphis, where the dead entertainer was initially taken, issued a statement in the late afternoon which said he died of an "erratic heartbeat."

Presley apparently collapsed in a bathroom of his Graceland Mansion in Memphis and was found face down on the floor by his road manager, Joe Esposito, at 3:3 p.m. Memphis time. However, Shelby county Medical Examiner Dr. Jerry Francisco said Presley may have been dead more than five hours before he was found.

Francisco told reporters after an autopsy Presley died of "cardiac arrythmia," which he described as a severely irregular heartbeat. he said it was brought about by "undetermined causes."

Both Francisco and Dr. George Nichopoulos, Presley's physician in Memphis, emphasized there was "no evidence of any illegal drug use."

Rumors had persisted for more than a year in Las Vegas that Presley was a heavy user of cocaine, but the rumors were never confirmed.

Dr. Elias Ghanem, Presley's Las Vegas physician who was also a personal friend, expressed extreme surprise when told of the entertainer's death from heart failure.

"Why, he was in perfect health," ghanem said in news interviews. "I personally gave him a physical examination for insurance reasons only recently. I can't understand this," he exclaimed.

Ghanem cancelled all late afternoon appointments at his office on Joe W. Brown Drive in the shadow of the Hilton Hotel and flew to Memphis for a firsthand review of events.

The Las Vegas doctor last year was a recipient of Presley's well known generosity. After treating the entertainer for pneumonia, Ghanem was gifted with a $42,000 Stutz racing car and a $16,000 Mercedes sedan.

Ghanem's claim that Presley's health was good contradicted other reports which alleged fame and wealth had taken its physical toll long before the singing idol's death Tuesday at the age of 42.

Noticeably overweight during the last few years, Presley was plagued with problems of hypertension and an elarged colon. He was admitted five times in the past four years for treatment at Baptist Hospital in Memphis.

In Las Vegas, Presley cut his appearances at the Hilton from eight eight times a year to twice a year and in 1976 departed from the two-shows-a-night tradition to doing only one show.

His last appearance in Las Vegas was December, 1976, but Hilton executives expected him back this fall.

When the Hilton first opened on July 2, 1969, it was the International Hotel and Barbra Streisand opened in the showroom. Presley followed her on July 31, making his first nightclub appearance in 10 years.

His salary at the hotel was never made public but unconfirmed reports said it was upwards of $200,000 for each engagement. In later years he was said to have earned $300,00 a week in Las Vegas.

He filled the 2,000 seat Hilton showroom for every performance. To see his show, reservations had to be made months in advance. Fans stood in line up to 12 hours at a stretch to catch his act.

But if Presley brought business to the Hilton, he also brought problems.

There were times, especially during the past two years, when Presley's off-stage antics rendered him immobile and he could not make his scheduled showroom appearances.

But he crowds he drew and the gamblers who followed him to Las Vegas and the Hilton's casino, more than made up for his temporary inconveniences.

his first Las Vegas appearance was at the Old Frontier Hotel on the Strip where the Frontier now stands. That was in April, 1956, and Presley was listed third on the entertainment bill behind the Freddy Martin band and comedian Shecky Greene. He didn't go over well and was not signed for a return engagement.

Years later at the Hilton, things would be different. Presley was so idolized he was forced to stay in his five room suite, except for showroom performances, or be mobbed by crowds of fans.

With such single hits as "Hound Dog" and "Don't Be Cruel", Presley became a national legend before his 25th birthday. His long-playing records were the fastest selling albums in history. They reached astronomical levels in the eight figures, and made "Elvis the Pelvis" famous in every corner of the land.

The great teenagers' idol was born in Tupelo, miss. on Jan. 8, 1935, one of a pair of twins, to Gladys and Vernon Presley.

His mother said: "We matched their names - Jesse Garon and Elvis Aron. Jesse died when he was born. Maybe that is why Elvis is so dear to us."

She often reminisced about her son's early childhood.

"When Elvis was just a little fellow," she said, "he would slide off my lap in church, run down the aisle, and scramble up to the platform. He would stand looking at the choir and try to sing with them. He was too little to know the words, but he could carry the tune."

The future musical star, with his two parents, appeared as a popular singing trio at camp meetings, revivals and church conventions. Elvis' father purchased a guitar for the boy at a cost of $12.95.

His mother recalled: "he liked the guitar best of all his things. He'd sit in front of the radio picking out melodies, or play the phonograph, trying to learn the songs he heard."

The family moved to Memphis when Elvis was 13. He attended the L.C. Humes High School, and worked as an usher in a local movie theater. After graduation, he took a job at $35 a week driving a truck.

The fabulous Presley career had its humble beginning in the summer of 1953, when Elvis dropped into the office of the Sun Record Co. in Memphis and paid out four dollars to cut a record. He took the record home and played it over and over again.

A year later he went back to Sun and cut another record, but this one was for the company rather than for himself. It was released in the summer of 1954, under the title "That's All Right, Mama" and drew some attention but was not a big hit. Listeners noted in the song a new quality - a blend of hillbilly and rock-'n-roll. His next recorded song, "Blue Moon of Kentucky" did better.

A shrewd song promoter named Col. Thomas Parker was impressed by the records. He took over management of Elvis and toured him throughout rural areas under the moniker "The Hilly Billy Cat."

Elvis' big change of fortune came in the fall of 1954 at the annual convention of the Country and Western Disc Jockeys Assn. in Nashville, Tenn.

Steve Sholes, head of RCA Victor's specialties division, heard Presley's records at this meeting - and felt that he was a winner.

Sholes approached Sam Phillips, chief of Sun Records, who had Elvis under contract. He offered him the then unheard of sum of $35,000 for the masters of all five of Presley's records for RCA-Victor.

What's more, he gave Presley a bonus which permitted the youth to buy the first of a long string of Cadillacs. Victor broke all previous precedents by releasing the five records simultaneously...and history was made.

Elvish changed the course of popular music with such hits as "Hound Dog," "Don't Be Cruel," "All Shook Up," and "It's Now or Never." The long-sideburned youth with undulating lips, snake eyes, demi-sneer, skin tight pants, gyrating pelvis, and electric guitar made a particular dent in teenage consciousness with the tune, "Heartbreak Hotel."

Some critics judge Presley to have been the most important popular musical figure fo the third quarter of the century. The well-known musicologist Alan Lomax for instance, believed Presley liberated American popular music from the European tradition.

From the years 1956 through 1958, the American Bandstand poll ranked Presley the nation's most popular male singer.

He received $1 million a piece for filming four successful movies: "Love Me Tender," "Loving You," "Jailhouse Rock", and "King Creole." The pictures, combined with his records, made his name a household word.

In 1958 Presley began a two-year hitch in the United States Army. He served in Bad Nauheim, Germany, where he rose to the rank of sergeant.

New records he had made before his induction were judiciously released while he was abroad, and his popularity still was high upon his return to civilian life.

Now came a fresh spate of movies: "GI Blues," "Blue Hawaii," "Fun in Acapulco," "Viva Las Vegas," "Harum Scarum," "Double Trouble," "Clambake," and "Change of Habit."

When his movies started to lose audience appeal, Col. Parker arranged for his protege to make special television appearances.

Presley was meantime becoming richer and richer, driving about in a Rolls Royce and five Cadillacs - painted white, pink, blue, canary yellow and goold.

His house in Memphis, and a Grecian palace he purchased in Bel Air, creaked with pinball machines, pool tables, and jukeboxes.

In 1967 he married Priscilla Ann Beaulieu, and they had a daughter the following year. The couple separated in 1972.

Presley went into semiretirement during the late 1960s, with 400 million records and 31 films to his credit.

When he made a brief reappearance in the limelight in 1972, he found his fans still faithful.


1
The Sleeping Beauty Diet

As most of us are aware, Elvis Presley, late in his life, was a whale. To make himself feel better about it, he would eat six eggs, a pound of bacon, a half-pound of sausage and 12 buttermilk biscuits for breakfast. His staple dinner sandwich was a foot-long baguette containing an entire jar of peanut butter and jelly and a pound of bacon. He would eat two of those, then follow it up later with a midnight snack of five hamburgers. Instead of, for example, cutting down to three hamburgers or half a pound of bacon, which would have been unreasonable, he had himself sedated for two weeks.

The Theory: Logically, it makes sense that if you're too sedated to move, you can't get yourself food, and if you don't eat, you won't gain weight. Coma patients don't get fat, for instance. Elvis was supervised by celebrity doctor Elias Ghanem during this time and fed a special "liquid diet," and as we all know, drinks aren't food, so you won't gain weight.

The Reality: Unfortunately, Elvis's body may have outsmarted him. Being a pretty efficient machine, the human body will shut down to a minimal level of energy consumption when asleep or extremely inactive. Even being awake and reading quietly will burn a fair amount more energy, as brain activity consumes a decent amount of calories (see below).

Calorie burn rates for various stationary activities:

  • 80 - reading (Dostoevsky)
  • 70 - reading (Dean Koontz)
  • 70 - watching TV
  • 60 - baseline, comatose, asleep
  • 55 - posting comments on the Internet

Also, common sense should tell you that it doesn't matter whether something is liquid or solid--calories are calories. A hamburger doesn't become a diet hamburger after you put it in a blender.

The Results: Elvis left the treatment 10 pounds heavier than when he'd started, and it probably wasn't muscle weight. By 1977, he had become so large that aliens were able to spot him from space, and, as we all remember, abducted him. Depending on which tabloid magazine you read, the aliens either used their advanced technology to restore his youth and figure, or to keep him alive for an eternal torment of anal probing.

Either way, the lesson is that your body is an evolutionarily adapted traitor that can't be trusted to lose weight for you while you nap for two weeks. If only liposuction had been around ...

Thursday 25 June 2015

Huey Long




"And it is here, under this oak where Evangeline waited for her lover Gabriel, who never came. This oak is an immortal spot, made so by Longfellow's poem, but Evangeline is not the only one who has waited here in disappointment.

Where are the schools that you have waited for your children to have, that have never come? Where are the roads and highways that you send your money to build, that are no nearer now than ever before? Where are the institutions to care for the sick and disabled? Your tears in this country have lasted for generations. Give me the chance to dry the eyes of those who still weep here."

— Huey Long, 
Evangeline Oak campaign speech, 
St. Martinville, La, 
1928 

"The Night Writer assault of 1930 through '31 launched a five-year campaign of frenzied promotion, during which the Agrarians were a central part of the cultural opposition to Franklin Roosevelt and the agitation for appeasing Hitler and Mussolini. Roosevelt was engaged in a campaign to revive Lincoln's age of technological progress, which had been slowed and reversed by the preceding sixty-five years of assassinations, shooting war, and cultural war. His plan to destroy Wall Street's "economic Royalists" included the invasion of the old Confederacy with such projects as the Tennessee Valley Authority, to forever destroy the Southern bastion of Feudalism. 

A key parallel to Roosevelt on this point, was Louisiana's pro-Lincoln, pro-industrial Senator and Governor, Huey Long, who was subjected to a campaign of vilification which the Agrarians continued for at least fifty years after his 1935 assassination. It was against this Roosevelt revival of the American Tradition, that our American Tory plague, with backing from their Brutish and European cousins, launched the Agrarian counterattack.

*****

Most historians of the Agrarians claim that after 1936, the group returned to "littachah" and dropped their "Agrarian" concerns, but this is a blatant lie. Each of the core members we deal with here, Democrats and Republicans, Pulitzer Prize winners, those who remained in Tennessee and those who re-located to Yale or Harvard, participated in Agrarian organizing against the Constitution of the United States, through Agrarian events and publications, until their deaths. Each of the Agrarians then living, collaborated with the Buckley-supported, openly pro-Ku Klux Klan and anti-American Southern Partisan magazine, which launched a re-birth of the movement in 1979. In 1980, the most "liberal," of them, they say, Robert Penn Warren, wrote "Jefferson Davis Gets His Citizenship Back," for The New Yorker on the occasion of the U.S. Congress' and Jimmy Critter's posthumous "exoneration" of the traitor. In it, he maintained the old Agrarian message of 1931: Davis' courageous, statesman-like resistance against the tyrant Lincoln. In 1981, they staged a highly publicized 50th anniversary celebration for I'll Take My Stand at Vanderbilt. In 1985, they publicly celebrated the assassination of Huey Long with help from Louisiana State University, which Long had built, and the Public Broadcasting System. Agrarian disciples continue to publish Southern Partisan, Southern Patriot, Modern Age, Chronicles, and books like Charles Adams' The Case for Southern Secession, with support from Cabinet members and Senators.

After the American Review period, the Night Writers continued to operate in two, related directions, which characterize their activity up till today. First, they vigorously organized for a new Global Empire under the control of Britain, in collaboration with the Wells/Russell British-American-Canadian, foreign policy, intelligence, propaganda, and psychological warfare services, official and unofficial. Secondly, they took over a commanding position in the English-language literary establishment, and a powerful position in historical—especially American History—studies. It is notably typical of this intellectual and moral corruption, that Tate's derivative and partially plagiarized biographies had already won the praise of noted historians Allan Nevins and Henry Steele Commager. Through both prongs of this offensive, the Agrarians achieved total, direct, intellectual mastery of the post-War Conservative movement in the United States—as typified by the Buckley interests and the later "Religious Right," and their Global anti-Industrialism has been integrated into the so-called "left-liberal" establishment constellation of forces and issues.

As we shall now see, the intention of the Fugitives' "littererah work," the "New Crittercism," was precisely the same as the Godzilla and Little Green Men theology of I'll Take My Stand and God Without Thunder.

*****

Within several months, Huey Long was killed by the Louisiana social set Warren and Brooks had joined. He was shot by Dr. Carl Austin Weiss, the son of Brooks family physician, Dr. Carl Adam Weiss. The shooting seriously injured Long. The medical treatment that followed killed him. Three weeks earlier, the assassin had treated Cleanth Brooks' foster brother in Brooks' home. Fifty years later, Robert Penn Warren commissioned current Public Broadcasting System superstar, Ken Burns, to produce a film celebrating the assassination, as part of the Agrarians' entertainment for Southern Review's jubilee anniversary party. 

According to statements by Mrs. Hodding Carter II and others interviewed on that film, the entire Baton Rouge and Louisiana upper crust had been openly clamoring for Long's assassination. She reports that when the shooting was announced, she started shouting, "Where's Hoddin'? Where's Hoddin'?" because she, like each of her friends, thought that her husband might have been the shooter. The aging Warren creaked out, venemously, that Long was a "Mussolini," apparently hoping that no one remembered how fond he and his friends had been of Il Duce at the time.

After the Southern Review was closed during the War, the Critter influence spread like the metastasization of a cancer. Warren and Brooks' joint effort Understanding Poetry, became the leading "Poetry 101" textbook used in America. Brooks finished out his career at the elite Yale University, as, amongst other things, the leading interpreter of novelist William Faulkner's drunken ramblings. He also was appointed for a term as U.S. Cultural Attaché, under James Branch Cabell's cousins, the Bruces, in our London Embassy.

Warren also taught, for a time, at the prestigious Yale Drama School, which continues to serve as one of Hollywood's main training centers, having produced "stars" including Jodie Foster, Meryl Streep, and Glenn Close. He won two Pulitzer Prizes, had two Hollywood movies made from his novels (most notoriously, his attack on the murdered Huey Long, All the King's Men, which won three Oscars), and he was named the first "Poet Laureate of the United States." In 1981, Democratic Gov. John Y. Brown of Kentucky arranged to fly Warren in his personal jet to the I'll Take My Stand Fiftieth Anniversary celebrations in Nashville.

The Critters' influence was also spread by protégés who may not have fully embraced the Agrarian cause. PBS "superstar" Ken Burns' fame stems largely from his Civil War series. Warren was so delighted with Burns' work on the fifth assassination of Huey Long (the second, third, and fourth being the book, play, and movie versions of Warren's All the King's Men), that he suggested Burns collaborate with Agrarian historian Shelby Foote on a like-spirited treatment of the Civil War. Though, at first glance, the series may appear to be informative and "balanced," think about it. Does it actually present the truth about the War, "testing," as Lincoln said, "whether this Nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated can long endure?" Or is this Truth buried under interminable soap-opera spinning of the personal stories of people whose life's meaning is, thereby, cheapened by Burns? 

In the film Foote declared his mystic reverence for the sword of Nathan Bedford Forrest, and in Memphis he publicly opposed a campaign initiated by Lyndon LaRouche to remove Ku Klux Klan founder Albert Pike's statue from Federal land in Washington, D.C."

Stanley Ezrol,
SEDUCED FROM VICTORY - How the Lost Corpse Subverts the American Intellectual Tradition

https://vimeo.com/117616656