MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
In fiction, folklore, and popular culture, a doppelgänger ( pronunciation (help·info)) is a tangible double of a living person that typically represents evil. In the vernacular, the word doppelgänger has come to refer (as in German) to any double or look-alike of a person. The word is also used to describe the sensation of having glimpsed oneself in peripheral vision, in a position where there is no chance that it could have been a reflection. Doppelgängers are often perceived as a sinister form of bilocation and generally regarded as harbingers of bad luck. In some traditions, a doppelgänger seen by a person's friends or relatives portends illness or danger, while seeing one's own doppelgänger is an omen of death. In Norse mythology, a vardøger is a ghostly double who precedes a living person and is seen performing their actions in advance. In Ancient Egyptian mythology, a "ka" was a tangible "spirit double" having the same memories and feeling as the original person. In one Egyptian myth entitled "The Greek Princess", an Egyptian view of the Trojan War, a ka of Helen was used to mislead Paris of Troy, helping to stop the war.
Spooky stuff.
I mean Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman was my favorite movie as a kid.
But I understood the Wolfman.
I mean in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a good citizen drinks some beverage and turns into a raving lunatic. Well, we can find that sort of result in any bar or pub on the planet; especially around closing time.
And watching Lon Cheney, Jr. wake up with few memories of the night before as well as a mighty hangover, brings to mind similar conclusions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0thH3qnHTbI
Vampires were never ‘my thing’ as they like to say.
It bothered me greatly as a child that church goers arrived at their local meeting place to feast on body and blood; even though it was somehow symbolic, my priest guaranteed that we really were feasting on body and blood. Yuck.
But there has been a tendency for some members of the species called Homo Sapiens to feast upon the bodies of slain enemies; and sometimes even slain friends.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGNdvKvbxYQ
Ghosts never meant much to me. Shakespeare uses a ghost as a device in Hamlet. And he does so with a little mystery and intrigue.
Does the Dane see his father’s dead spirit, or not?
And who can forget Our Town for chrissakes?
Well others have just taken this literary device and made it into something else; dead spirits running rampant across the screen.
The concept of the ghost is problematic anyway. If you are immaterial, how can you affect the material?
The Zombie which is nothing but an outgrowth from the Mummy movies has taken over the silver screen.
I just can’t understand the concept. Dead people rot. I suppose the mummy is different because the Egyptians took the inner organs out of the body. The corpse is then covered in magical ointments and such so that the shell remains in tact.
How this hollow man could become a threat has always been beyond me.
And the Zombies? Their organs are rotting. I mean we, the living, get a tiny viral infection in our lungs and we are helpless. But these zombies in the movies just keep on keeping on, anyway.
The Woody Harrelson movie and the English films about zombies are funny. I mean beating these dead monsters with baseball bats is hilarious at times.
It is kind of like letting a part of us loose.
I am a peaceful sort of person; probably because I am a coward at heart.
But the vision of the rotting corpses of Sarah Palin, Sharon Angle, Michelle Bachmann, Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorlini, Jim DeMint, Jim Inhofe, and countless others of the inhumane persuasion, wandering through the streets while my friends and I beat them back with baseball bats….but I digress.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=071KqJu7WVo
This post is supposed to be about doppelgangers anyway.
Like the paragraph in Wiki demonstrates, these ghost walkers do not represent the dead, as such.
The Egyptians had the concepts of the Ba and the Ka. And let me tell you, these are confusing concepts because I have read at least fifty versions of what the Ba and the Ka are supposed to be. There is no consensus among the experts.
The Ba is kind of a shadow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5hXtGkzZ9k
Whatever you do, the Ba does.
But when you die, so does your Ba.
Not so for the Ka.
I frankly believe that we have the concept of the Trinity because of the Ba and the Ka. But that is a subject for another post.
Anyway, the Pharaoh’s Ka traverses the heavens to the Star Sirius in Canis Major following his death. The Ba just evaporates into nothingness.
So the Ka is kind of like our concept of the soul.
But the doppelganger is something else.
I watched The Broken again last night; chills me to the bone. I mean it is difficult to keep this movie on without changing channels. Doppelgangers fall out of a broken mirror and run amok.
The closest metaphor I can come up with here vis a vis the doppelganger is the idea of another earth traveling in our orbit. The twin earth is always hidden from our view by the Sun. The orb is there, we just will never see it; experience it. But since the introduction of our ships traveling into space, the concept of a twin earth evaporated like the ba of your deceased grandmother.
The idea is that each of us has a twin; sometimes ephemeral and sometimes not so ephemeral.
You look into the mirror one day and your reflection does not seem like it is cooperating. You are expressing confusion and your reflection is smiling.
You are walking down the street and peripherally you see yourself walking down another artery.
Stories about doppelgangers gleaned from google are fun. You see your brother washing dishes in the family abode when you know he is in Paris. You see your mother in the supermarket just after you spoke with her on the phone as she rested in Miami.
Of course, we as human beings must splain things. We really know very little as a species. I mean Sarah Palin almost became Vice President of the United States—and you thought Dan Quail was bad!!
So the non compis mentis among us will assume there really are doppelgangers and then get into the quantum mechanics theories to explain it. Using string theory, idiots will posit parallel universes and then posit that we have doubles residing in some twin universe.
Others simply take a psychological view of all this. We find ourselves in REM sleep where doppelgangers abound. We see ourselves doing things.
Then there is the psychiatric view of the doppelganger. We have two sides of our brain and doctors have actually electrically fucked with one side of the brain and the subject reports the doppelganger affect.
The doppelganger is not just our ‘twin’ but our evil twin. If the doppelganger manages to replace us, our persona in this universe perpetrates evil.
I think this idea has promise.
Now this Avlon guy from Daily Beast is one of those ‘fair’ fellas. In covering the left’s open air meeting in Washington D.C., he just lumps these people with the tea partiers; they are all wingnuts.
Jon Stewart has compared Ed Shultz to Rush and this sickens me greatly. Stewart is pretending that he is another of those ‘fair’ fellas and so I will not watch him anymore.
Rick Sanchez is a nice enough ‘journalist’. But he has this chip on his shoulder. He is Hispanic and likes to roll his ‘r’ s while pronouncing Hispanic surnames and locations. He feels put upon. He feels that there are not enough Hispanics in MSM. Except he is one of those caucasian Hispanics and caucasian Hispanics are harldy discriminated against.
So his diarrhea of the mouth recently got him fired. All he was attempting to say was that Hispanics are discriminated against and Jews are not. It came out as JEWS CONTROL THE MEDIA. Hahahahaah. I really do not think Rupert is Jewish. If he is part Jewish, he certainly does not fit the category of ‘Liberal Jew’. ha
But Sanchez, who should be embracing the Democratic Party as the only party that does not step on the face of the Hispanics, always wished to be one of those ‘fair’ fellas. Oh the repubs have much to say just as the dems do.
Fuck you Sanchez.
And the Wolfman on CNN. Jesus H. Christ.
I mean he might say something like:
So you do like to read all sorts of papers Governor Palin?
So you feel America is being threatened by Iraqi Muslims Mr. Vice-President?
So you feel that it is better not to disclose the amount spent on the military while we are at war Mr. Rumsfeld?
The Wolfman definitely feels he is one of those ‘fair’ fellas.
I have to admit that I did not like Tim Russert. He reminded me too much of Ethel Merman.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHj9NKgdW8s
But Timmy liked to embarrass assholes like DeMint. So at the least he was entertaining.
Fuck fairness. I think the problem in this universe is doppelgangers.
Take Michael Moore. Michael is a good man. Mr. Moore seeks universal health care. Mr. Moore seeks to abolish graft on Wall Street. Mr. Moore seeks aid and comfort for the poor. Mr. Moore seeks peace and a reexamination of our military industrial complex. Mr. Moore is concerned with the growing gap between the rich and the poor.
Michael Moore’s doppelganger is rush Limbaugh.
The latest from rush:
Limbaugh claims Obama "respects" New Black Panthers
Limbaugh says he hopes Dems "lose 100 seats" and are "wiped out" in "a tsunami"
Rush is "not going to sit here and put up with" caller informing him that Obama cut taxes
The streets are going to burn in this country if something doesn’t happen.
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201010010019
Dick Cheney is easily the most corrupt and evil politician I have ever set my eyes upon.
I think cheney is Biden’s doppelganger. I mean Joe Biden has dedicated his life to public service. Joe Biden never funneled even thousands of dollars to some mysterious corporation let alone a hundred billion dollars. Joe Biden worked for the interests of the working man and woman, the poor and dispossessed, and against the corrupt influences of big business his entire life.
Beck is definitely the doppelganger of Martin Luther King, Jr. for obvious reasons.
Sean Hannity is the doppelganger of Chet Huntley I should think.
Sarah Palin is the doppelganger of Eleanor Roosevelt.
Michelle Bachman is the doppelganger of Ann Frank.
Mud Wrestler Meg Whitman is the doppelganger of Harriet Tubman.
Carly Fiorlini is the doppelganger of Sister Theresa.
Well I have rambled on much too long here.
The end.
Comments
Oh what a beautiful post!
A work of art...
by David Seaton on Mon, 10/04/2010 - 5:11am
Well it appears I have one friend in Spain. hahaha. Nobody else appeared to like this blog. hahaah six hours I spent on this. hahaha
by Richard Day on Mon, 10/04/2010 - 4:59pm
I was trying to figure out if they cast Headey her for her name.
by Donal on Mon, 10/04/2010 - 5:16pm
Remember Heady Lemar?
This was one freaky flick Donal. haahaha
by Richard Day on Mon, 10/04/2010 - 6:31pm
I have been putting up my halloween decorations this week end. Lots of ghosts around here right now. Nice piece for this time of the year.
by trkingmomoe on Mon, 10/04/2010 - 5:12pm
Well thank you Momoe.
It is fun having kids around sometimes. I miss the Halloween tryst with the younguns. ha
by Richard Day on Mon, 10/04/2010 - 6:24pm
"Rrick Sanchez is a nice enough ‘journalist’. But he has this chip on his shoulder. He is Hispanic and likes to roll his ‘r’ s"
Reefers?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM_vLk1I6G4
Sanchez went Mad, Do you suppose?
SCARY
by Resistance on Mon, 10/04/2010 - 8:32pm
hahahhaahh
Got me laughing Resistance.
Per usual. hahaahah
reefer madness for sure. hahah
by Richard Day on Mon, 10/04/2010 - 9:14pm
I just spotted this blog. I have to remember to watch the left hand list here in dag town.
Just to be contrary, I will throw in some CG Jung who said
In this context, characters like Rush and Beck pretend to have a double when they do not. They both call for ethics and traditional values but they actually only serve the mass man as comforters and facilitators. CG Jung again:
So maybe there is a condition where one pretends to have a double but does not. The zombie motif is not a second existence but rather a half life. Division instead of multiplication.
by moat on Mon, 10/04/2010 - 8:40pm
Oh Moat thank you for the comment and sending me back here. Gave up really.
Jung is my hero. Over the decades they will call him passe and then they start quoting him again. I majored in cultural anthropology.
But there has to be some link, I mean so many civilizations just ended up with so many paralells. And we were told, no--each culture came up with their own tech, their own stories...blah blah blah
Jung might have been a diffusionist like me, but he stressed that there was commonality in how we think, in how we act, in how we act as a community.
Anyway, thank you for this.
This blog was dead. just like some parrots. hahahahah
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npjOSLCR2hE
by Richard Day on Mon, 10/04/2010 - 9:21pm
I've got a Troppelganger.
The dude watches both me, and my Doppel-dude.
I donno if I can trust him or not. I mean, I know my lil Doppel-dude is evil.
But this guy? He just watches the Doppel do his evil, and never once steps in. So what does that make him? I donno.
Oh yeah. You may know my Doppel.
Merv.... Griffin.
Yeah. Scares me too.
by quinn esq on Mon, 10/04/2010 - 8:43pm
I've got a Ted Koppelganger. He does a running commentary on everything I do, in my head. It's driving me crazy. I'm making a quilt about it.
by Rootman on Mon, 10/04/2010 - 8:58pm
I just got this. hahahaha. I took it to chat. hahahahaha
Ted Koppelganger.
I hereby render unto Rootman the Dayly Line of the Day Award for this here Dagblog Site, given to all of you from all of me. hahahaah
by Richard Day on Mon, 10/04/2010 - 9:38pm
Line of the Year candidate, I think.
Though, since it IS Rootman and all, we should probably give the award to someone who could knows how to use cutlery, instead of some cassava-grubbing wolfen fiend.
Hey Dick, I got an idea. Let's give Seaton a special award for coining "Jew Fatigue." I swear to God, I'm gonna use that line on all my Jewish friends. If we all do it, the big-time comics will pick it up, and soon, Dagblog will be inundated with readers looking for new Jewish jokes. It'll drive Genghis nuts.
I wonder if Ted's Koppelganger is Jewish?
by quinn esq on Mon, 10/04/2010 - 10:41pm
Q you already know this. But Mr. Seaton cannot help himself. hahahahahah
I love the guy, I swear I do. hahahahahahah
But I think that eventually he will give us more landscapes of Spain and such.
But he has to, I mean he has to piss people off. hahahahaha
by Richard Day on Mon, 10/04/2010 - 11:02pm
Sorry, sorry; double double post post; double double toil toil and trouble trouble.
by we are stardust on Mon, 10/04/2010 - 9:28pm
Can't tell if you're Quinn, Quinn or Quinn...tried to leave you an MLB memory, but your Dickish, mega-byte-heavy, fatwad Posterous thingie froze my fucking computer again. Here it is: (not that you deserve it by now:)
We were watching Ken Burns' "The Tenth Inning" the other night. He had a portion on Randy Johnson; it reminded me of the time you listed Rockies who were Canadians... tra la la...Anyway: In the 1997 All-Star game, Larry Walker was at bat; he was batting some insane number like .389 or something, and was (ahem) reportedly a wee bit nervous about facing The Big Unit.
I forget the sequence of the count, but at some point Johnson threw a pitch that totally got away from him, sailed up, up, and away...high onto the screen, or into the seats...can't find anyone who really remembers....but, in response:
Walker turned his batting helmet around, walked around to the other side of the plate, and batted right-handed! The crowd, of course, went wild!!!! Gotta love his spontaneous response to TBU.
That's all.
by we are stardust on Mon, 10/04/2010 - 9:02pm
Will the real, (non-doppelganger), "we are stardust" get his doppelganger who's double posting under control!
by miguelitoh2o on Mon, 10/04/2010 - 9:25pm
Oh even Miguel shows up. ha!!!
We are golden Miguel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGrjiVxZFU8&feature=fvst
by Richard Day on Mon, 10/04/2010 - 9:35pm
My freaking doppleganger knocked me on the bean, shoved me onto the floor, and musta cut and pasted my comment in again. It's this blog's fault, too; never ever ever had a visitation from it before. God; was it uglee!! Scared the crap outta me, if ya want to know the truth.
by we are stardust on Mon, 10/04/2010 - 9:36pm
JUST....OUTSIDE. HAHAHAHAHAH
Thanks for joining in. hahahah
I loved Randy Johnson.
by Richard Day on Mon, 10/04/2010 - 9:26pm
Oh Q, you and Moat made my day!!! for sure
Yeah, watching myself and my doppelganger. For sure.
Just don't tell my shrink about these dreams.
They will put me in a 'special living situation' as they say.
I wont be able to just sleep on my airmattress and move to my desk chair. hahahahahahahahah
by Richard Day on Mon, 10/04/2010 - 9:24pm