I'm very irritated right now! A friend of mine is house-sitting in this ultra rich, ultra conservative, ULTRA white neighborhood, Last night they went outside to the yard sometime after midnight to smoke a little pot, 20 minutes later they get a call from one of the neighbors.
"Hello, this is a courtesy call, i smelled grass in my window, and i want to let you know if i smell it again i'm calling the police"
Snobbish people. I'm sure they're stereotyping all pot smokers to be drug dealers and thief's. Not just average joes who work their asses off and want to un-wind with a little cannabis. Some people smoke cigarettes, some people drink and some people smoke weed. It shouldn't be any big deal.
"At various times throughout history, certain freaks have been so admired by the public and the powerful, the latter been so intent on possessing one or several of them, and those who exploit deformities have been so anxious to become wealthy, that nature's supply of them was deemed insufficient. The French novelist Guy De Maupassant perhaps thought he was using poetic license when he wrote of pregnant women deliberately tying their corsets so tight that their children would be born deformed, in order that they could be sold to freak show entrepreneurs. He was probably unaware that throughout history there has been a demand for freaks, and ways to satisfy that demand."
A passage from "Human Oddities-nature's anomalies"
"The Mongel conqueror Tamerlane appears to have been indirectly responsible for the artificial production of monsters in Europe. Among the refugees who fled to Europe when his troops invaded India in 1400 were the ancestors of the modern-day Gypsies. With them they brought their rites, customs and skills, notably those of metal working, horsemanship, fortune telling......and monster making. The Gypsies soon acquired a reputation, which lasted for centuries, as kidnappers of children for this sinister purpose (even today, mothers threaten their wayward children with this fate.) By the seventeenth century the gypsies had become well-established in Spain, France, Germany and the Yorkshire region of England. Victor Hugo described them in detail in his book The Laughing Man, wherein they are referred to as 'Comprapequenos' and 'Comprachicos,' which literally means "those who buy children." Dr. Carlos Garcia, in a treatise published in 1619, wrote that "the Gypsies abduct children three or four years of age and then break their arms and legs, in order to sell them as beggars." Skilled and patient craftsman in the art of making monsters, the Gypsies could deliver them hunchbacked or misshapen by dislocating, stretching or compressing any or all parts of the body. Gyspies also specialized in a particularly nasty surgical procedure known as denatsate, which consisted of slitting the cheeks from ear to ear, removing the gums-but not the teeth-and cutting off the nose. The face from then on wore a hideous and permanent grin, and was for all practical purposes unrecognizable. Dentatsate was a surprisingly popular operation, for in Renaissance Europe it was often preferable in matters of succession, inheritance and intrigue to render an inopportune individual unidentifiable rather then kill him. It was thus possible, should the need arise at a later date, to restore the victim to his position, title or estate. Finally, Gypsies were also the official suppliers of "cocks" to the english court. From the middle ages until the reign of george II, There was a tradition of having a human cock at court, who would crow like the king of the barnyard, every hour on the hour. This ersatz creature was created by a delicate operation on the larynx, which rendered impossible all forms of of oral expression other then the shrill crowing sound of a rooster. The "King's Cock" was paid about ten pounds per year out of the privy purse. The tradition was briefly interrupted during the reign of Charles II when his mistress, the duchess of Portsmouth, objected to the creature's constant drooling, an inevitable consequence of the operation. A mere imitator was temporarily substituted. When George II succeeded to the throne, he lost no time in executing the "cock" that had irritated him for so many years. The tradition has yet to be revived."
I love this book!
Edit: The novel 'The laughing man' by Victor Hugo was made into a movie in 1928- 'The man who laughs' starring Conrad Veidt.
current music: "I got a radio, put it on soft and low, baby let's go...."
just rightclick on any of the options in the green box titled "download" click on "save target as..." and there ya go! i always use MPEG1 for windows media player.
"leisure has become a primary component to American life- coequal with the necessities and not merely a random gratuity of hard work. but less then a hundred years ago it was not even an expectation; in fact, the meaning of leisure was not clearly understood. for the working masses, vacations did not exist. for those above subsistence level, ideology got in the way, their imperative of success producing a tireless rhythm of life where relaxation was tantamount to laziness, a cardinal sin in the land of sweat and gold. As Thoms Iow Nichols observed:" in no country is there so much toilsome, unremitting labor- in none so little of recreation and enjoyment of life."
Because leisure did not belong in the american scheme of things, facilities for it were meager. and did exist tended to appeal to rough and vulgar tastes. gambling was widespread and crooked, sports unregulated and cruel; sportsmanship as we practice it today was not understood.
certain cultural pursuits, such as theater and music, were accessible to middle-class city dwellers, but their single-minded devotion to making money left little time for renewal "in the byways of life." Charles Dudley Warner, who with Mark Twain wrote the Gilded Age, found Americans unfit for leisure because they applied to it "a form of serious energy used to build a railroad."
-"the good old days-they were terrible!" by Otto L. Bettmann.
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lochka's journal
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