Before 'onward and upward' became a cliché

A half century ago today, man first hurled himself at the stars.

On April 12, 1961, we called this sort of thing "the space race." Well, I didn't. I was only three weeks old, but I am reliably informed this was the case.

For all the angst and nuclear anxieties of the Cold War, for all the trauma of a developing quagmire in Vietnam -- or Viet Nam, as a lot of folks spelled it before we knew where it was -- for all the hope and horror of this nation's civil-rights struggle, "onward and upward" still meant something back then.

Man was reaching for the heavens. The first was a Russian by the name of Yuri Gagarin.

We are in his debt.

Because of Gagarin, my childhood that took flight 50 years ago was one of assumptions that tomorrow would be brighter than today -- despite the troubles and tragedies of the day.

Back then, it was a race for the stars between us and the Reds. Now, we "go where no man has gone before" together . . . more or less.

IT'S A CASE, I suppose, of more enlightenment and friendship and less ability to go it on our own as we slog through this present age of small men and stunted dreams in our respective capitals.

I'd like to think, on this milestone day, that Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard -- America's first man in space -- are somewhere taking in the heavenly view, telling good-natured lies and tall space tales, trading notes on the vanguard of human spaceflight and wondering. Wondering when those of us who lag behind, stumbling through their giant footsteps, will hit our stride.

Wondering when the small minds of our present squabbling factions will remember that humanity once saw farther than the end of its pointing fingers.

Wondering whether mankind will once again look toward heaven and aspire to great things.

3 Chords & the Truth: As I was saying. . . .

Now, where were we?

Last I remember, I was mentioning something along the lines of "the missus is sick as a dog and I ain't feeling so hot myself. Let's curl up under something warm, grab a hot cuppa tea, put on 3 Chords & the Truth and make the world go away."

That was a month ago. For much of that month's time, I was feeling something short "ain't feeling so hot myself." A bad case of influenza -- sounds classier than "the flu" -- that smoothly transitions into bronchitis (they shared a single set of coughing fits) will do that to you.

BUT THAT was then, and this is now.

I'm back, the coughing fits are under control for the most part, and I can put together a whole extra-good episode of 3 Chords & the Truth now without having to stop in the middle of a sentence to cough up a lung. I've decided to celebrate the occasion with a big show on the Big Show.

So, once again, where were we?

As I recall, I had introduced you to the exquisite music of a fine Omaha act, Brad Hoshaw and the Seven Deadlies.

This week, It's True!

What's true?

It's true that It's True, led by the astoundingly talented Adam Hawkins, just might be the best thing going here in Seattle on the Missouri. Why are all the best bands unsigned anymore, and why is it so hard to lay hands on actual CDs from them?

I guess that's why God invented iTunes.

ANYWAY, we'll have a couple of gems from It's True on the show this week, along with lots and lots of other gems from. . . . Hang on. That would just ruin the joy of discovery for you, wouldn't it?

Well, I'll tell you what. You just go up to the 3 Chords & the Truth audio player at the top of the blog, sit back, grab a cold something and indulge yourself. Or you can just download the finest music this side of Council Bluffs right here.

Come to think of it, I think I'll do the same. While not coughing . . . too much.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

It's oy veh, oy veh. . . .

Kill me now. No . . . wait. No need to. Just let this here video play out, and that should do the trick.

Is it just me, or did Christianity start to lose its savor (if not its Savior) when it stopped leading the culture -- embracing and creating art for beauty's sake, because beauty itself is a manifestation of the divine in this world -- and started following a false gospel of crass utilitarianism?

I wonder what went first, the church's mind or its heart?

You remember how, in "American Pie," Don McLean sang "the Father, Son and Holy Ghost caught the last train for the coast"? I now know why the Holy Trinity might have done that.

Sorry, guys, there's no escaping sanctified diarrhea like "Sunday," which merely rebrands the secular diarrhea of Rebecca Black's "Friday." And sadly, the fact remains that crap like this is about the best American Christianity can muster anymore.


I'D CALL crap-evangetastic mush such as this liturgical lounge lizardry if the mere association weren't totally unfair to Nick the Lounge Singer.

It ain't rocket science, brothers and sisters.

If you spend four or five decades bombarding the wretched masses with superficial garbage and calling it Christian, don't be shocked that the world isn't beating a path to the church house door. Even heathens (well, some of them, at least) have standards.

And eventually, they come to think that God is as full of crap as His people.

Public school buses for Jesus

Back in my Louisiana hometown, the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board is considering a list of $37.4 million in budget cuts as a start on tackling what officials think will end up being a $39 million budget deficit.

Class sizes will increase. Three schools will close. Staffers will face furloughs. Direct bus routes -- 62 of them -- for gifted and magnet-school students will be eliminated.

One thing that won't be cut, however, is bus service for parochial schools.

Non-Louisianians might react to this with a great big "WTF???" They might wonder what the name of "separation of church and state" are taxpayers doing funding bus service for Catholic schools.

LOUISIANIANS, however, probably would wonder why taxpayers wouldn't provide school buses for parochial-school students. They'd argue that white kids ought to have just as much access to school buses as black ones.

Absurdity, after all, is so prevalent in the Gret Stet as to not even be noticed.

In today's newspaper, The Advocate reports on the abjectly insane machinations of what passes for self-governance in Louisiana with nary an eye roll:

Carnell Washington, president of the East Baton Rouge Federation of Teachers, said parochial school children should also lose direct bus routes if magnet and gifted children lose there’s.

“If we have to give up something, they should give up something,” Washington said.

Dilworth said he struggles with some suggested cuts, including ending after just one year an experiment in year-round schooling at Claiborne and Park elementary schools, saving $4 million in the process.

“So I spend $4 million at those schools and then look at the cuts I’m going to have to make across the district … can I justify that? No,” Dilworth said.

Washington placed the blame for the cuts on Gov. Bobby Jindal whom he described as “selfish.”

“We are here because the state of Louisiana has refused to fund public schools,” Washington said.

GOD, I HOPE someone makes a federal case of this.

It probably won't be the commenters at the bottom of the article -- the one yearning for a return to "neighborhood schools" and another who wants the school system to be rid of all its "magnate" programs.

Gee, if I were in charge, I'd make every school a "magnate" school. Them magnates would have enough money to pay for their own damned school buses.

America's apprentice idiots

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

If ever you were tempted to think of Tea Party America as anything but a carbuncle on the collective arse of democracy, consider this your "come to Jesus" moment.

Two words: Donald Trump. Fully 20 percent of the "Taxed Enough Already" crowd would like the eccentric billionaire and host of The Apprentice to be our next president.

Really?

REALLY?

And there's more! Another 29 percent of NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll respondents -- for a grand total of 49 percent -- are in the camps of other assorted ignoramuses and whack jobs. And here I'm speaking of Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann.

Americans always have been an interesting lot, but never so beer-hall putsch scary as this in our modern history -- excepting (notably) just about everything that went on in the Deep South from the end of Reconstruction through the Civil Rights movement, including Strom Thurmond's third-party run for president in 1948.

IT'S ALMOST as if, during the depths of the Great Depression, your alternative to Franklin Roosevelt were either Father Charles Coughlin, Sen. Huey Long or Charles Lindbergh running as the "Nazis? Hitler makes the trains run on time!" America First candidate.

Come to think of it, the nation's various strains of tea-party politics have just about as much useful to say to us as did your average White Citizens Council somewhere in the segregated bowels of Mississippi back in the day.

There's only one thing one can say to people who've nothing better to do than throw such paranoid political hissy fits.

"You're fired!"

'Cornhusker Kickback,' my ass

Greetings from Nebraska, one of the states that pays other states' bills at considerable expense to itself.

Research by The Daily Beast this week ranked the Cornhusker State 45th on its list of "states that sponge tax dollars," with it receiving a paltry 82 cents back from the federal government for every dollar Nebraskans send to Washington.

And right-wingers enjoying disproportionate suckage at the federal teat in places like Mississippi (No. 1, $2.83 for every dollar paid) and Sarah Palin's Alaska (No. 6, $2.24) had the nerve to get all indignant and pissy about Sen. Ben Nelson's ultimately deleted "Cornhusker Kickback" in the struggle to pass health-care reform. Hell, that probably wouldn't even have gotten us back what we pay in.

AS THE unicameral frets and fights over how to close a big hole in Nebraska's biennial budget, I think we may have stumbled upon a solution here. Everything will be all right, with nary a budget cut on the horizon . . . if we just secede from the union and levy taxes at the combined state and federal rates.

We even could be generous toward the Americans and allow them to keep Offutt Air Force Base, headquarters of the Strategic Command. We know how one can get attached to one's nuclear deterrent.

But it would cost them some serious rent.

Less cowbell

There's a simple reason cowbells are for Elsie and Beauregard and not for people.

Cattle have hooves, not opposable thumbs, and therefore cannot whack one another over the head with the things, leaving 4-inch gashes that expose their bovine skulls. Or result in "a concussion, memory loss, mental and emotional distress and anguish, depression, paranoia, anxiety, loss of enjoyment of life and inability to pursue prior educational and professional goals."

This is just one of the ways in which bulls and moo cows tower over your average Mississippi State fan. Another is that bulls and moo cows never have been known to call an LSU baseball player "Buckwheat," causing him to take out after Bubba . . . all the way into the stands.

OK, Albert "Joey" Belle was nuts. But still. . . .

ANYWAY, Mississippi State fans love them some cowbell. Now it's gonna cost somebody big one way or another, it says here in the (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger:

An Alabama man wants Mississippi State University added to his lawsuit against the Southeastern Conference and the man who allegedly assaulted him with a cowbell at the 2009 Egg Bowl.

Doug Foster, attorney for William Matthew Brasher, has filed a motion in Oktibbeha County Circuit Court requesting that MSU and president Mark Keenum be added to the suit.

Brasher alleges he was assaulted by Brent Vowell during MSU's football game against the University of Mississippi on Nov. 28, 2009. He already was seeking unspecified damages from the SEC and commissioner Mike Slive because the league had a "knowing refusal," the suit says, to enforce its own rule on artificial noisemakers.

MSU was sent a claim by Brasher's attorneys on Nov. 16. It said Brasher is "willing to resolve his claim for damages" of $10 million.

MSU officials would not discuss the lawsuit Monday.

I WONDER whether the lawsuit thing will influence the SEC to, er, ring up the Bulldogs for repeated violations of its noisemaker policy?

Just a word to the wise, though -- less cowbell.

Simply '70s: Future shocked

Almost 40 years ago, we were suffering from Future Shock.

Gee, I wonder what fresh hell we're suffering from today?


Too much change in too short a time? The death of permanence?

Wonder where that leaves us four decades down the road from 1972?

No, we don't change the color of our skin, we just tattoo every inch of it. The artificial-intelligence robot that finds its way around the room? We call it the Roomba . . . a self-guided vacuum cleaner.


FUTURE SHOCK, meet Louise Brown . . . and the loss of all the philosophical and ethical qualms we had about such in 1972.

And the film nailed what was coming with gay marriage.


HOME ELECTROSHOCK therapy? Who needs that when you're popping Prozac like M&Ms?

"That is the challenge of future shock, to look clearly into today's world to understand the consequences -- that what we do today determines what tomorrow will be." Reaction No. 1: No s***, Sherlock. Reaction No. 2: We're screwed.


THIS SLICE of 1972, based on the 1970 Alvin Toffler book -- and its vision of a thoroughly shocked future -- notably has no mention of a couple of things shocking the present of 2011 and the future from here on. That would be the Internet and global warming.

Hang on, folks. The journey into infinity and beyond just might be a rough one.

Remembering

Before we end this anniversary night, let us remember. . . .

Genius is fleeting, stupidity persistent

You know how I was telling you earlier about how dumbth has overcome local TV news?

Well, Channel 7 here is nothing if not persistent in its ignorance. Here's a brand new promo -- with the main-man anchor, no less -- repeating the same idiotic error on tonight's upcoming antibiotic-resistant "virus" story.

Consider that a news promo has to rely on information from the original reporter, who got it wrong. It then is shaped by a promotions copywriter who didn't know any better than the reporter.

Then the Cro-Magnon mess goes to the TelePrompter operator, who sets it up for the "talent" -- the ones who do other promos telling you what great journalists they are . . . "the ones you trust" -- who also don't know a Petri dish from a pot to piss in.

THEN IT gets put together by an editor who also doesn't catch the glaring Biology I error, and then (presumably) gets signed off on by some "grown-up" at KETV.

And there you go . . . you're sitting in front of the boob tube, beer in hand, watching boobs tell you about those scawy, scawy "viruses" that antibiotics can't put a dent in.

In other words, the idiots are ascendant and we are doomed.

You knew this was coming

This had to happen eventually, and Jimmy Fallon made it so with a little help from Stephen Colbert and. . . .

TV news . . . for dummies, by dummies?

This is a partial transcript of a news promo aired on an Omaha TV station Sunday night:

"Microscopic . . . and deadly. A new virus that's resistant to almost every antibiotic."

A new virus that's resistant to almost every antibiotic is a piss-poor virus, indeed. What, is Barack Obama going to launch a No Virus Left Behind initiative?

Repètez après moi: Antibiotics are for bacteria; antivirals are for viruses. I think Bert and Ernie have a ditty that explains that to your average 6-year-old.

I DON'T KNOW what to say about the future of democracy when "professional journalists" are about on the ball as your average high-school dropout. And I am pretty much despondent about the state of American education, being that the vast majority of these nincompoops came to ActionNewsWatchOnYourSide with college degrees.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of dumbth . . . I will be scared spitless. For the idiots are with me. Thy rod, thy staff, they provoke prurient giggles during the happy-talk segments of ActionNewsWatchOnYourSide. Because somebody said "rod." And "staff."

My cup runneth over. Film at 11.

Failing but . . . winning!

You've just paid $150 for a couple of seats to a stage show by Charlie Sheen, who's three-quarters out of his mind -- maybe more.

You've shelled out this much cash even though the wittiest thing Sheen has ever said during a weekslong Web assault is . . . "Duh, winning!"

What could go wrong?

Well, nothing for Sheen. After all, he -- as he pointed out in Detroit on Saturday night -- already has your money. Once again, "Duh, winning!"

Then again, maybe he's not as crazy as you think. And maybe you're more crazy than you think -- that is, if you've given Sheen even a dime of your hard-earned money.

In other words, "Duh, MORONS!" Maybe you just need some "tiger blood." That was for sale outside the Fox theater.

AFTER READING this on MSNBC.com, my sympathies are with the Vatican-assassin warlock with Adonis DNA:

Charlie Sheen and his "goddesses" took the stage to thunderous applause Saturday night for the first leg of his "Torpedo of Truth" tour. The 70-minute show hadn't even ended when the first reviews were in, and they were brutal.

The former "Two and a Half Men" star showed that comedic success on the screen doesn't necessarily translate to the stage, and the capacity crowd at the 5,100-seat Fox Theatre rebelled before he left the stage, chanting "refund!" and walking out in droves.

Linda Fugate, 47, of the Detroit suburb of Lincoln Park, walked outside and up the block yelling, "I want my money back!"

She said she paid $150 for two seats.

"I was hoping for something. I didn't think it would be this bad."

Fans who gathered outside the theater before the doors opened Saturday — some who had to fly in for the show — said they were hoping to see the increasingly eccentric actor deliver some of the colorful rants that have made him an Internet star since his ugly falling out with CBS and the producers of "Two and a Half Men."

They got the ranting. It just wasn't funny.

"I expected him to at least entertainment a little bit. It was just a bunch of ranting," said Rodney Gagnon, 34, of Windsor, Ontario.

AMERICANS always have had more money than sense, never more so than today. That being what it is, I expect history to rectify that situation eventually.

Welcome to Trollsville . . . losers.

Terror by proxy, fulfilled

When moronic "Christian" asshats in the bowels of central Florida do senseless things like this . . .


. . . moronic "Muslim" asshats in the bowels of another failed state -- this one, Afghanistan -- do senseless things like this.

To be clear, the enraged mob in Afghanistan is a terrorist one. People whose descent into madness comes amid the wreckage of a country that long ago descended into madness.

But what we also have to realize is that the terrorist mob in southwestern Asia is nothing more than the proxy of a lunatic pastor in Florida. The unwitting tool of a little band of lunatic, Bible-believin' bumpkins who think unleashing the fires of hell is a fine idea just so long as it's done in the name of Jesus Christ.

THE LUNATIC PASTOR, the Rev. Terry Jones, knew exactly what would happen in parts of the Muslim world when word got out that he torched a Koran. He especially knew what would happen in Afghanistan -- where 100,000 American troops are already in the line of fire -- when word got out that he and his Bible-thumpin', Jesus-jumpin' gaggle of grotesque humanity had torched an Islamic holy book March 20.

And Friday, it happened. In Masar-I-Sharif, Afghanistan's Islamic answer to America's lunatic fringe of evangelicalism killed seven United Nations workers in the name of Allah.

They were the business end of the metaphorical, geopolitical gun. Thousands of miles away, in a crappy little church full of crappy little people, Terry Jones pulled the trigger.

The tragedy of Islam is that too many of its adherents believe God is so small that He needs an enraged mob to defend His honor. The tragedy of America is that the constitutional guarantees that safeguard Americans' freedom of conscience render the republic largely defenseless against those whose consciences have been freely deformed into grotesque spectacles demanding mayhem much as a vampire demands blood.

Jones hates Islam because he is convinced it's of the devil. You have to give the devil his due for using such a committed "enemy of Satan" to ensure there will be hell to pay.

Give me a latté and some paper. Ding.

Amazing.

See, like I always say, if you hang on to something long enough, you'll eventually become cool again. Now all I have to do is find a 1950s-vintage Underwood manual.

FROM THE Omaha Bee-News:

This is one coffeehouse where you won't find free wi-fi.

You won't find expensive wi-fi, either. Or dial-up at any price.

As a matter of fact, you'll be asked to check your laptop at the counter. And your cell phone or tablet computer, too.

You see, RetroGrounds in Omaha's Old Market district is a no-tech zone. It's all an outgrowth of the slow-food and slow-tech movements, says owner and chief barista Ole Lud-Dytes.

"If you want a good cup of coffee, it something you just can't rush. It's the same thing with a good meal, and it's the same with communicating with one another," he says. "You just have to take your time."

To walk into RetroGrounds is to step out of time -- and into history. There is a 1936 Zenith radio sitting on a corner counter, tuned to a local "standards" station. AM, of course. And if you have to stay in touch with the world while you enjoy a latté or brèvé, manual typewriters -- circa anywhere from the 1930s to the 1960s -- sit on tables around the establishment.

Chasity Lemuels sits at one of those tables, hunting and pecking at a 1962 Royal. It's the first time the 20-year-old has used a typewriter, and only one of a handful of times she's even laid eyes on one.

"It's so . . . tactile," she muses. "It's fun -- very different from using my laptop. I feel like I'm writing with authority, but my fingers hurt.

"I think I know why my grandparents have arthritis," she says, giggling.

RetroGrounds opened about a year ago, and Lud-Dytes says business has been growing steadily.

"I started this with no more than a gut feeling that people just might want to step off the modern treadmill," he says as he foams yet another latté for a customer who has checked his iPad and stepped out of cyberspace and into. . . ?

"Peace. Contemplation. The world where the physical and the realm of communication have once again become one," Lud-Dytes says.

"That's the yearning I just felt people had in this hyperconnected, overly technological world. So far, business is good and tells me I just might be on to something here."

The first-class stamp for your first letter is free with your coffee.

COUNT ME IN. I think my coffee intake will be increasing dramatically.

In case of morons, call Charlie Brooker

NOTE: Contains one F-bomb. But it's in reference to how big
an idiot 50-Cent is, so it's probably wholly appropriate.

I think this about covers it, don't you?

Charlie Brooker explains disaster coverage for the British television audience a couple of weeks ago.

It's not April Fool's yet. Right?

I thought what I just read a little bit ago was an April Fool's joke. Then again, it isn't April 1 yet.

And I'm pretty sure this article in Variety is dead serious. I'm equally sure them what's got are convinced that them what's not are blithering idiots.

I wish I were more confident that the greedheads in charge of every level of our society were horribly wrong. After all, if they were, it would be terribly difficult to explain how we got to where we are right now in America.

IF YOU DARE, read what Variety says Hollywood has in store for us gullible simpletons. Read it and weep . . . or read it and think "COOL!" Whatever.

Warner Bros., Sony, Universal and 20th Century Fox are the first studios that have agreed to launch Home Premiere as the official brand under which the industry will offer up movies to rent for $30 two months after their theatrical bows for a viewing period of two to three days, depending on the distributor.

DirecTV will exclusively launch Home Premiere nationally to its nearly 20 million customers, while cablers including Comcast will introduce the service in certain cities for an undisclosed period of time some time around the end of this month.

The first films expected to launch include Warner Bros.' actioner "Unknown" and Sony's Adam Sandler comedy "Just Go With It," sources close to the new service say.

The launch plans come months after studios started to float the idea to experiment with higher-priced rentals of pics closer to their theatrical runs as a way to boost their homevid operations with film campaigns still fresh in people's minds.

WB, U and Fox have already succeeded in fending off companies like Netflix and Redbox, forcing them to wait 28 days after a film bows on DVD to offer those titles for rent through their online services and kiosks. Those same studios wouldn't mind lengthening that window even longer and have considered pursuing such talks.

And cue the SEC in three . . . two . . . one. . . .

I'm not a corporate lawyer, and I don't play one on the Internet, but I have been around long enough to know when something doesn't smell quite right.

And David Sokol's sudden resignation from Berkshire Hathaway when he was in the running to become Warren Buffett's successor doesn't smell quite right. Especially after he loaded up on stock in a company he then prodded Berkshire to acquire.

There isn't a bunch to this Associated Press story this afternoon, but I'm betting there will be a lot more in short order -- especially if the feds actually start doing their job for a change:

Buffett said Wednesday that he received David Sokol's resignation letter late Monday, and noted that it came as a surprise. Buffett said Sokol, who had been serving as chairman of Berkshire's MidAmerican Energy, NetJets and Johns Manville units, indicated that he wants to spend more time on philanthropy.

Buffett said he learned earlier this month that Sokol bought nearly 100,000 shares of Lubrizol stock before recommending that Berkshire buy the chemical company. Buffett said he doesn't believe those stock purchases were illegal, and didn't ask Sokol to resign.

YEP, there's more to this. And somehow, I'll wager it all leads back to Sokol's famous arrogant streak.

Simply '70s: If you can't beat 'em. . . .

Sometimes, out there in the North Sea in the '60s and '70s, "pirate radio" lived up to its name.

In this case, realizing they couldn't beat Radio Nordsee International's big pirate signal with their little pirate signal, some folks at Radio Veronica apparently thought arson on the high seas might be a winning business plan in May of 1971. As it turned out, it also made for some compelling radio -- just not for Veronica.


AS IT turned out, arson wasn't even that good of a knock-the-competition-off-the-air strategy. RNI went back on the air the next day.

It would take the Dutch government to pull the plug in 1974.

Springtime in Nebraska

Welcome to springtime in the Great State of Nebraska -- 30ish and snowing.


Molly the Dog is wondering about this . . . and missing the 70ish temperatures of a week ago for her trips outside.