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We step back from the disorders and idiocies of the moment to wish Bob Dylan a happy 80th birthday. He entered the scene in a previous moment of national disorder, the Sixties, as we call that wild era when we Boomers came of age and turned the world inside out for a while, flinging our ids into a raging zeitgeist. Bob was actually a little older, not quite a boomer, born seven months before the US entered World War Two.

This is important because he was poised perfectly on the front end of that breaking wave in a particular way that I will try to explain. When he stole into New York City from his Midwest Nowheresville in the winter of 1961, he was unformed, ambitious, intelligent, cunning, and not yet grown up. He did his growing up in public over the next decade. He acted it out in the songs he wrote. It was the essence of what he meant to those of us who trailed behind him. He instructed us in the mystery of what it means to come through adolescence into consciousness, and he did it with a matchless artistry that, once he got traction, made his competitors look barely adequate. It’s easy to understand how being cast in that role irked him, but that’s how it was.

It was Bob who turned the long-playing record album into the art-form of my generation. Before that, the pop music scene in America just amounted to different sorts of adolescent fluff, clichéd hormonal yearnings of boys and girls for each other. It was a long way from the Everlys’ “Wake Up Little Susie” to Bob’s “Visions of Johanna.” He was twenty-four when he wrote it in late 1965 (and then recorded it in February, 1966). Twenty-four is about the age when the judgment region of the human brain finally develops, and the song spells out vividly the jarring wonder of becoming a fully-equipped adult — and recognizing it! The subject of the song isn’t a girl anymore, she’s a woman, with such cosmic ramifications that “the ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face.”

Lyrics like that — and Bob generated them by the bale then — just made everybody else’s songs seem a little lightweight and silly. The Beatles came close around exactly the same time with their venture into songs of full-fledged adulthood in the album Rubber Soul, but they were not able to bring the focus of a single sensibility to it the way Bob did, and they knew it.

Anyway, Bob had been leading up to that for years lyrically. He had a comfortable childhood back in Minnesota, but it was a harsh place. He absorbed that and summed it up with dazzling concision and specificity in songs like “North Country Blues” about a failing family in a failing town where the iron ore mines are shutting down and there is no such thing anymore as the future. Similarly, “The Ballad of Hollis Brown,” which is the story of a despairing farmer who kills himself and his family of six out on the lonesome South Dakota prairie. These were stories about other people and other lives, reportage from the scene, with more resonance than Walter Cronkite could ever hope to bring to it.

When Bob wrote about himself and his own strange journey, more and more he populated that dreamscape with a hallucinatory cast of characters: dwarves, madonnas, hermit monks, cowboy angels, drunken politicians, Napoleon-in-Rags, the mystery tramp…. Imagine how weird it was to be Bob in those few years. He barely had to struggle to become famous, was rolling in dough before he was twenty-five, and had every jerk-off workaday Johnny journalist tugging at sleeve whenever he left the house begging him to explain how the world worked. No wonder he played cute with them, claimed he was “just a song-and-dance man,” when everybody knew better. And amazingly, he pulled it off.

Once he completed that transformation into adulthood, he had pretty much done his duty, and everything after that has been a long coda, with not a few flashes of the old brilliance like these stupendous lyrics from his 1985 song “Dark Eyes”:

 A cock is crowing far away and another soldier’s deep in prayer,
Some mother’s child has gone astray, she can’t find him anywhere.
But I can hear another drum beating for the dead that rise,
Whom nature’s beast fears as they come and all I see are dark eyes

Sounds like what’s going on ‘out there’ right now, don’t you think? He deserved that Nobel Prize. I’m glad he’s persevered through all these years and still goes on stage and keeps putting out tunes. I met him once back in 1975 when I worked for Rolling Stone Magazine. It was after a benefit concert in San Francisco in the Fairmont Hotel. I couldn’t help greeting him like an old friend, and was foolishly surprised to realize that he didn’t know me from a hole in the wall. Anyway, I’m glad we shared these decades together on this marvelous planet and I salute him on his birthday for what he gave that has lived inside me all these years.


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About James Howard Kunstler

View all posts by James Howard Kunstler
James Howard Kunstler is the author of many books including (non-fiction) The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency and the four-book series of World Made By Hand novels, set in a post economic crash American future. His most recent book is Living in the Long Emergency; Global Crisis, the Failure of the Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who Are Showing Us the Way Forward. Jim lives on a homestead in Washington County, New. York, where he tends his garden and communes with his chickens.

1,221 Responses to “Happy Birthday”

  1. messianicdruid May 24, 2021 at 9:56 am #

    An excellent tribute. Thank You.

    • Beryl of Oyl May 24, 2021 at 10:22 am #

      It was very nice, wasn’t it?

    • Ishabaka May 24, 2021 at 10:34 am #

      Hear hear!

    • Not_GeorgeT May 24, 2021 at 12:01 pm #

      Excellent, Yes

      Very well done, thank you.

    • MC Hammerabi May 24, 2021 at 1:52 pm #

      The pump don’t work cuz the Vandals stole the handle…

  2. malthuss May 24, 2021 at 9:57 am #

    The party of President Biden,

    (1) child drag queens
    (2) “drag queen storybook hour” for children at local libraries
    (3) sexually explicit material as required reading in grade schools
    (4) children as young as 8 being allowed to lop off their genitals because an instagram “influencer” told them they were “assigned the wrong gender” at birth
    (5) abortion on demand for minors with no parental consent
    (6) “transgender” education starting in kindergarten
    (7) the abolition of the nuclear family because mommies and daddies are “oppressive”.

    etc

    • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 10:11 am #

      Big Pharma wants those patients for life.

      Now they are vaxxing the kiddies for a virus that died out last year and some will die or be maimed, guaranteeing even more patients for life.

      • JohnAZ May 24, 2021 at 10:21 am #

        MaryV

        As long as the Side effects and deaths from vaccines are much less than the actual disease, the vaxx attack will continue. Little by little, the herd immunity will take over. The decline has already started.

        Good news. Texas is banning critical race theory in the schools. Yay! Now if the Reds follow, it will die in force. Let the psycho cities
        Have their race baiting.

        • Beryl of Oyl May 24, 2021 at 10:25 am #

          They aren’t, with children.

          Karl Denninger has an inspired rant on that topic today.

          Stop The Death Cult

          https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=242492

          • JohnAZ May 24, 2021 at 10:47 am #

            One comment, he said that the spike protein showed up in the blood of one quarter of the one hundred person group

            ????

            I certainly hope so, that is the purpose of this vaxx. In two weeks, three quarters of the immune systems had already eliminated the spikes. Where was the data point at three, four weeks to see what continued to happen.

            When I was in nursing school, we were required to take a statistics course that tipped you off on bogus studies. Most happen because the experimenter has a bias on results expectation. Most studies are bogus. When it does not happen as expected, funding gets cut. So, many exercises in cherry picked data occur to spin the results.

          • aibohphobia May 24, 2021 at 10:59 am #

            This is a good summary rant, BoA, but I would add to it the things that should have been done by Big Pharma, but are not being done because of potential liability.

            I wonder how many of us are aware that computer hackers who also have diabetes have already created working artificial pancreases? That’s right–For several years now, it has been possible to link an insulin pump to a diabetes monitor so that a diabetic can have the same insulin characteristics as a non-diabetic.

            Hobbyists did this with no government grants by voiding warranties with their soldering irons and getting together to build their rigs. They work, and they work right now.

            And the response from pump and meter manufacturers? They engineer their new meters so that the connections are more difficult, because they are afraid of possible lawsuits.

            Read more about it here, for example:

            https://www.bcdiabetes.ca/welcome-to-loop/

            You may have to bypass the study signup link to get to the text–Unless you are a diabetic living in British Columbia, Canada, which seems to be helping people get this working for themselves.

            Sorry if I have violated the genteel, polite tone of this blog, but I am completely furious about it.

          • Yohannon May 24, 2021 at 11:47 am #

            Read the article, John. The thing is a disaster from a to z. These people deserve the death penalty.

            Have you lived in abject terror your entire life, or only recently?

          • JohnAZ May 24, 2021 at 11:56 am #

            Who is living in terror here? Not me, I got jabbed, I do not wear a mask, I did something pro-active to obsolete a threat.

            You seem to be very afraid of the effects of a vaccine that by a vast majority, will not even affect you at all.

            Who is living in fear? Not me.

          • Beryl of Oyl May 24, 2021 at 12:24 pm #

            My only “fear” is what this push for an untested vaccine is being used to usher in a totalitarian system where you have to meet certain government “requirements” before being allowed any freedoms.

            I see young Americans forced to labor with rags on their faces, still, because of the fear tactics used to scare people into getting a shot that most do not need.

            Right now “the unvaccinated” are sitting in workplaces with their breath restricted.

            Rod Rosenstein’s sister colluded with Randi Weingarten, to dictate that American children will not receive their entitlement to an education, unless they get a vaccine that to them is stratospherically more dangerous than a virus, or else be smothered in a germy rag all day!

            That isn’t fear of a damn vaccine! That’s the guts to stand up to oppression, and guess what? The brains to see what’s going on here!

            The fearful ones are still pretending it’s about a virus.

          • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 12:33 pm #

            JAZ you bet we’re living in fear.

            Fear of being unemployable, unless we submit to a fucking EXPERIMENTAL gene therapy poison. It’s NOT a vaccine.

            I’m fearful of losing my ability to work, here. This is a LEGITIMATE threat. I just posted how OSHA now won’t protect the unvaxxed any more from employer demands.

            Businesses are practicing MEDICINE without a license. This is FASCISM. This is EUGENICS in action. That you refuse to acknowledge it means you live in woo woo fairytale land.

            If you aren’t worried, then there is something wrong with you.

          • Night Owl May 24, 2021 at 2:57 pm #

            No fear?

            Here in Germany they are about to make the experimental shots mandatory for children, after terrorizing them with a year of masking and self testing.

            And they just annouced a “green passport” for travel, after claiming they wouldn’t.

            Fuck you and every person who aided and abetted this hoax.

            If Nuremberg II rolls around, I want you on the list, too. Spineless coward.

          • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 3:59 pm #

            @Night Owl I am astounded and disgusted that people still don’t see the hoax.

            And that Germans are willing to re-create the Holocaust and learned nothing from it.

          • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 4:04 pm #

            Governors who get hailed as heroes for not having vaxx mandates or passports but then allow businesses to require them are weasels. They know exactly what they are doing.

            And they are allowing unelected corporations and institution heads to practice experiments on the populace under coercion.

            This is fucking war crime. Why is anyone defending it??

          • Night Owl May 24, 2021 at 4:20 pm #

            Mary, many Germans are not, unfortunately we have several WEF prodigies who somehow “emerged” into key positions (surprise, surprise) and are simply passing laws, including changing the German Constitution twice nearly spontaneously and with no oversight.

            Most of the population is against what is happening here, but the levers of power are in the hands of those who some believe are fictional movie villains with no power whatsoever.

            We are one decision away from moving to Switzerland, that being the forced vaccination of children.

            This is the greatest crime in history, not just for what is about to happen, but for what is to come.

          • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 6:24 pm #

            @Night Owl, and also what has already happened, which destroyed so many lives, businesses and our entire way of life.

            In any case, a tipping point is approaching, one way or another.

        • Ron Anselmo May 24, 2021 at 10:40 am #

          Why the rush for “vaccination” to prevent a virus that has a 99.7% survival rate? Simple question.

          When asked, no one has an answer. It’s as if they never thought about it – which they haven’t.

          • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 10:43 am #

            Must be asking the wrong people…

          • JohnAZ May 24, 2021 at 11:11 am #

            Why have flu shots? Because people do not want to get the disease in the first place. Same with Covid.

            Older people were afraid of dying from Covid and statistics bore out their fear.

            People do not want to get sick! Mortality does not even enter the equation for most people. Especially when the vaccine has better results by magnitudes of orders than getting the disease.

            We hear for decades about how the flu eats up national productivity due to absence from work, or school. Covid is worse, it infects more people easier. Flu shots were developed to help folks not get the flu. And it historically works. Covid vaccine development was accelerated as a panic reaction due to the production of BS from the CDC and its impact on the elderly.

            The Covid vaccine was brought out quickly because it WAS killing older folks at a significant rate. Should have it been limited to older folks upon release? Not in our new Liberal world where the government yearns to control our lives. Personally, I believe that the elders should have been given the initial lots, data gathered and decisions made on dissemination to younger folks.

            Not in this country right now, Big Pharma and the Biden mob made sure of that.

          • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 11:39 am #

            Also, bad news…. OSHA was gotten to. Our protections from Big Pharma are being removed.

            https://www.stltoday.com/business/local/osha-wont-enforce-ruling-on-counting-vaccine-reactions-as-recordable-injuries/article_0da29162-9c3c-5746-83cc-2204664b7e9f.html

          • Yohannon May 24, 2021 at 11:53 am #

            So John – any chance these horrible people might have lied about the statistics? The case numbers, the death numbers, the effectivity rate of the vaccines, the death and injury numbers from the vaccines, etc. You know, like everything?

          • Beryl of Oyl May 24, 2021 at 11:57 am #

            The Ticker Guy answers questions about his posts.

          • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 12:11 pm #

            Even the CDC admitted last year that only 6K people died of only Covid19.

            And then there are the hundreds of thousands of deaths by other causes that doctors got paid to call Covid19. No shortage of nurses and others calling it out.

            But mainstream media is directed by the people who have taken over, so it’s not reported.

          • JohnAZ May 24, 2021 at 12:23 pm #

            Y

            Maybe?

            I watch one thing. The first order effect. The surges, why have they happened? Why are there surges then level offs? Not just here, Europe, India, China.

            We get no help trying to get answers. That is why I too am suspicious of the PTB of stirring the pot.

            Trump realized that the surges happened without control and spent his time working the vaccine side, a good decision whether agree with the executions of the plans or not.

            Surges are not lies, they are documented in hospitalizations and deaths. A death of a compromised patient because the virus attacks them is a death caused by the virus, if it has not been there the patient would still be alive.

            Surges are real, the virus is real, the virus is being manipulated horribly by the PTB.

            Think about this, what would have happened in the US if the control methodologies and the vaccines had not been brought on, what if it had been allowed to go full bore on. India?

            No thanks!

          • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 12:29 pm #

            JAZ, ask yourself why people are now afraid to get sick when they weren’t 14 months ago.

            WHY.

          • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 4:01 pm #

            Another question, JAZ, why is OSHA caving on holding businesses liable if they force someone to get the jab and that person is disabled?

        • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 12:09 pm #

          It isn’t, though.

          NO kids got sick or died from Covid19.

          But they are experimenting on them anyway.

          Sad to see you on the side of Big Pharma and their profit at any cost agenda.

          • Night Owl May 24, 2021 at 4:31 pm #

            One of the most prominent virologists in France, the man who discovered HIV says the virus was manmade and that Corona vaccines are creating Corona variants that are deadly.

            TBH, if he ends up correct, I have no sympathy for the affected. They have aided and abetted one of the greatest crimes in history.

          • Night Owl May 24, 2021 at 4:35 pm #

            Third try for the link.

            No censorship at WordPress, no siree.

            tinyurl.com/2s6m8ass

          • abbybwood May 24, 2021 at 5:23 pm #

            This is interesting:

            https://www.cracknewz.com/2021/05/federal-law-prohibits-mandates-of.html?m=1

            All college students and their parents need to be aware of this.

          • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 6:12 pm #

            I saw that the other day, but didn’t watch it yet, so thank you.

            I have zero sympathy for the vaxxed adults, either. They had the better part of a year to do their homework and instead spent it acting like Karens on steroids, judging and attacking their neighbors and torturing their kids.

            The kids though – THAT upsets me no end. If this guy is correct, think of all the kids left homeless. That is, if they aren’t vaxxed and the parents are.

          • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 6:14 pm #

            @abby thank you! Putting it in the vault.

            Don’t think they won’t try to change the law, though. Look at what OSHA did.

          • Night Owl May 25, 2021 at 5:12 pm #

            Fuellmich never ceases to impress. He is one of the best possible individuals to be leading the charge.

            What I appreciate is that he focuses on the provable facts from a legal perspective, but clearly indicates that he understands the plan.

            His interviews should be required viewing.

          • MaryV May 25, 2021 at 9:48 pm #

            @Night Owl, I also have nothing but contempt for anyone who is pro-testing this experimental poison on children.

            They have lost all credibility and their minds.

        • Wizard of the Saddle May 24, 2021 at 11:14 pm #

          God bless my native Texas.

      • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 7:45 pm #

        > Big Pharma wants those patients for life <

        Hope that's an accurate quote, because The System now oddly doesn't let me comment or quote inline.

        I'd say The Situation is quite a bit direr than what's suggested in the above quote, though the estimable, extemely well-spoken GA- as one example- should soon be along very soon to fully disabuse All of such notions..

        • GreenAlba May 25, 2021 at 10:33 am #

          How sweet that you missed me when I was minding my own business.

          “[…]the estimable, extemely well-spoken GA […]”

          My grovelling apologies. This is the mischief you find when you take the children of the post-war hoi polloi (who left school at 14), put them through the 11-plus, and allow them to benefit from 7 years in grammar school. Should never have been allowed.

          I blame the parents. Or the government. Somebody, anyway.

          “[…] should soon be along very soon to fully disabuse All of such notions..”

          I doubt I’ve ever disabused anyone of anything. But it never ceases to amaze me how often you can say some things, yet some people will continue to speak as if you’d never said them, according to some template they have in their head of things you are presumed to believe.

          Big Pharma has been The Devil since I emerged into adulthood. I treat them much the way I would treat a second-hand car dealer. That is, I don’t much trust them as a group, but I will buy their product when I judge it is in my interest. And I know that those very long lists of hypothetical side effects on the folded paper aren’t there to protect me, but to cover them against my hypothetical lawyers.

          I take an oestrogen blocker to help prevent my cancer coming back. With the oestrogen blocker, plus the radiotherapy, the chance of it coming back is down around 5%. I’m OK with those odds, so I’ll take the oestrogen blocker that Big Pharma is no doubt happy to sell me (via the NHS).

          Same with the vaxx. I’ve looked at the odds, at my age, and my risk factors, and I’ve taken the vaxx.

          I don’t even think my daughters should take it. I’d be horrified at the thought of my grandson being given it. But I’m OK with my own decision, while monitoring the situation generally.

          I don’t want anyone to take it if they don’t want it, and I don’t want either hard or soft coercion to persuade anyone to take it, let alone any kind of sanction if they don’t.

          I hope I’ve covered everything. Not that it will make the slightest difference the next time.

          • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 3:57 pm #

            I doubt I’ve ever disabused anyone of anything. But it never ceases to amaze me how often you can say some things, yet some people will continue to speak as if you’d never said them, according to some template they have in their head of things you are presumed to believe.

            Pot … Kettle.

            Kettle … Pot.

          • GreenAlba May 25, 2021 at 4:46 pm #

            We have what you said on record.

            You can pretend words don’t mean what they mean as much as you like, Humpty Dumpty.

          • O.G. Hawkins May 26, 2021 at 9:06 am #

            You have one ambigous sentence on record … and you will not take the authour’s clarification … and who gives a shit?

          • GreenAlba May 26, 2021 at 11:16 am #

            I didn’t find it ambiguous at all, but I do realise you wish you hadn’t been quite to forthright and will endlessly try to walk back from what you said. Perhaps it will teach you to think before you speak.

            “Ooh look, annoying lady is giving me pissy postnominals when I wanted that to be entirely my prerogative, because I know everything.’

            Diddums.

          • O.G. Hawkins May 28, 2021 at 12:23 am #

            I don’t give a shit if you found ambiguous or not, GA. It was. I am the authour, surely I am allowed to clarify my own anbiguity!

          • GreenAlba May 28, 2021 at 7:04 am #

            And I am the author of all I write on her, yet you took the liberty of making multiple statements to the gallery regarding things I had never said.

            Because you are like that.

            I acknowledge that you apologised for that, but it would have been better if you’d weaned yourself off your love of the sound of your own voice earlier and LISTENED instead.

            You also made false assumptions about the earlier matter, but I think we’ve all had enough of that.

        • MaryV May 25, 2021 at 10:39 am #

          Agree. Even the Covid19 catastrophe is only ONE of the attacks on humanity now.

          Geoengineering, the destruction and poisoning of the biosphere, and they are leaving lots of hints that they will be pulling some sort of new ‘live event’ my guess is UFOs or something (DARPA has quite an arsenal of stuff that people wouldn’t believe exist).

          Here was a little toe in the water. They claimed it was the Space X launch from Vandenberg – 200 miles away – riiiiight. I think it was a test. Just like AIDS was the test for COVID19.

          It’s amazing what a few billionaires can pull off.

          https://youtu.be/ieJQHe0QXuQ

    • JohnAZ May 24, 2021 at 10:33 am #

      The main place where the trans target are girls in the early stages of puberty. “Lucky” girls develop early, and their chests show it very markedly. Later girls really suffer in school, and trans advocates feed on it. Early childhood trans is so sick it should be criminal.

      We couldn’t have a boy, so we will make one. Sick psycho parents.

      Kids do not even type onto their same sex parent for modeling until the startup of hormones around age 7 or 8.

      Trans psychology is a sickness. Drag queens in elementary school and writing books to encourage trans psychology are symptoms of a pervading sickness in our society.

      I read in Deuteronomy that God says that men dressing as women and vice versa is an abomination. In the early years of Man, we know what God did to abominations.

      • SW May 24, 2021 at 12:22 pm #

        While I think the media giving a loudspeaker to unhinged people accounts in a large part for a lot of this focus on transgenderism. And the impressive amount of cowardice our educational system and government have shown hasn’t helped.

        I do think there are some people (and I don’t pretend to know what percentage) that this is real. The reason I say this is b/c of all the endocrine disrupters pregnant women are exposed to and the evidence this has a cumulative effect. That doesn’t mean I think men should be allowed in girl’s bathrooms or to compete in women’s sports. Babies are born either XY or XX — I just wonder if these chemicals have a feminizing effect.

        • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 12:47 pm #

          Atrazine is an endocrine disruptor, sprayed all over corn, lawns and golf courses. As a result, I expect hormone imbalances are much higher among the US population now than 100 years ago. Same with neurotoxins (e.g., glyphosate) and cognitive disorders. Then we’re deluged with propaganda telling us that gender is just a “construct”. We are intentionally being twisted into a macabre new sick and sterile organism.

          • SW May 24, 2021 at 1:29 pm #

            I don’t understand where the idea that gender is a construct came from & what purpose it could serve. What’s wrong with there being 2 sexes? That’s what’s kept the human race going after all.

            In our everyday diet is a high level of corn. It’s fed to all the livestock, in a lot of snack food & also hidden as corn syrup in a variety of foods. We’re probably getting more than we suspect.

          • beantownbill. May 24, 2021 at 2:14 pm #

            Remember the theory that the Roman Empire ended because the Romans ate and drank from lead-lined plates, glasses and utensils, thus causing widespread brain damage and madness?

            Hmm. You think that’s what’s happening today with all the chemicals we’re ingesting? It would explain a lot. Maybe in 1,500 years future historians will marvel at the end of the great American Empire because we willingly poisoned ourselves. And maybe self-pollution is why empires die in general.

          • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 2:40 pm #

            I will argue that gender IS a construct, sex is not.

            Sex is (mostly) binary, despite a teensy part of the population who are intersex. Which is also not a gender.

            There are potentially 7 billion genders! According to the logic of the trans agenda folx.

          • SW May 24, 2021 at 4:41 pm #

            @beantownbill — I think, and have no way of proving, there’s a lot more polluting the soil and water than we understand. It’s only been since the end of WW2 that wide spread use of nitrogen fertilizer has been used on crops and big agribusiness got going. And what have we seen? Explosions in obesity and all the problems that go with it. I’ve never heard of any studies that link artificially adding nitrogen is different than naturally occurring nitrogen (such as composted soil) and its effect on human bodies. And maybe there is none.

            Our water supply can’t be tested for everything and it’s also being doused in some cities with chlorine and added flouride. I spent several years growing up in Lubbock, TX where the fluoride level in local water is naturally high. The dentist who got the idea to add it to toothpaste had lived there and of course, it was a big success. But is there a difference in the way our bodies process the natural flouride as opposed to artificial? I don’t know.

            It’s only been fairly recently too that the harmful effects of BPA have been acknowledged and people warned against heating plastic. Teflon is in all our bodies and has even been found in fish. Yes, I think we’re poisoning ourselves, slowly but surely.

          • benr May 24, 2021 at 5:24 pm #

            @sw

            The natural occurring fluoride is calcium fluoride the man added version is Sodium fluoride which is toxic.

          • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 7:34 pm #

            @SW, it’s Post Modernism bullshit started by Judith Butler, among others… the PTB saw a way to use it to their advantage as yet more social engineering.

          • SW May 25, 2021 at 3:10 pm #

            @ Mary — didn’t do anyone any favors, did she?! Added to kids natural confusion and anxiety about adolescence and here we are.

          • MaryV May 27, 2021 at 5:02 pm #

            “YOU WILL RESPECT US”

            https://twitter.com/thejeffreymarsh/status/1338602192429744128

    • bluedog May 24, 2021 at 10:47 am #

      As Mark Twain once said, “there isn’t a nickles worth of difference between the two parties” as they party on, so the only thing left to do is join them or fight them.

      This has been going on for years, clear back to Reagan and his appointee to head the high court Sandra Day O’Conner, who came out of nowhere to make the attack on religion and usher in the gay right movement and both parties have been stanch supporters of it ever since

    • draupnir May 24, 2021 at 12:10 pm #

      Malthus, Teen Vogue, a magazine for 12 to 17-year-old girls, is running a series on “practical magic.” The latest article instructs them on the use of menstrual blood in casting spells. They’ve also recently run an article instructing them on the techniques of anal sex. It apparently had to be revised because the earliest one didn’t even caution about the necessity of using condoms. I don’t understand why their offices haven’t been fire bombed yet.

      • SW May 24, 2021 at 12:29 pm #

        B/c, sir, they’re “cutting edge”!! Just like WAP by Cardi B is Song of the Year on PBS. Ya gotta see it to believe it —

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10cRNiXlWRQ

        Yes, in a few decades we’ve gone from Dylan, the Beatles, Jim Morrison to Cardi B.

        • draupnir May 24, 2021 at 2:40 pm #

          That’s beyond vile.

          • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 3:21 pm #

            Right? It’s almost a parody of itself.

          • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 7:55 pm #

            This might be even worse. And the ‘music’ just as bad.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6swmTBVI83k&ab_channel=LilNasXVEVO

          • draupnir May 25, 2021 at 3:56 pm #

            MaryV, I have a tin ear, so I hardly heard the music on the video or even the lyrics, as it was absolutely visually stunning. Dangerously so. It was filled with symbolism that was disturbing to say the least, with a building sense of the heretical and shocking as it traveled to its revolting denouement. What a depraved use of such artistry. I couldn’t tear my eyes away, and it’s probably a mortal sin to watch it. It would take several more viewings than I intend to give it to attempt to analyze the thing. It really is much worse than the Cardi B piece, which is merely childish, vulgar, and disgusting in comparison.

          • volodya May 25, 2021 at 8:25 pm #

            Is this what they mean by “keepin’ it real”?

          • Ishabaka May 26, 2021 at 2:51 pm #

            The folks who enjoy that worship Saint George of Floyd.

          • MaryV May 26, 2021 at 5:57 pm #

            @draupnir, Hollywood’s satanic cult has been exposing themselves more and more. All of the half-time superbowl ‘shows’ are satanic ritual now too. This guy really wants a career, and he’s not very talented so he got tongues wagging by making this disgusting satanic video. He also admits he knows his audience is young kids, and claims to be a Christian.

            Hwood is full of nutcases.

      • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 12:55 pm #

        Teen Vogue’s offices have not been firebombed because responsible people who care about their family, their community, and their country do not act out like spoiled children. An unfortunate side effect of this stoicism will be their daughters scouring Marina Abramovi?’s cookbook for recipes and selling their used panties online, while their sons become the new daughters.

        • draupnir May 24, 2021 at 2:47 pm #

          I suspect it more likely that parents have no idea what their children are doing online.

          • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 2:59 pm #

            That too!

          • Ishabaka May 26, 2021 at 2:52 pm #

            I suspect the parents know, and don’t care, or think it’s stunning and brave.

    • taoistonthecross May 24, 2021 at 12:57 pm #

      yeah and bob dylan last song “murder most foul’ was likely his freemasonic contribution to the Solve et Coagula plan to do in a george floyd to destroy civilization and built it back in a commune hive way. Doesn’t hindsight show Jhk that bobby D. turned out to be a bad guy? why doesn’t the 60’s showman tell today’s people that they can’t re-do the 60’s? dylan was just a commee that pretended to intelligence and made people feel less dumb if they listened to him, but in reality, it was all crap. only known in 2020 hindsight

    • mumbai May 25, 2021 at 8:16 am #

      You couldn’t give it a rest just once and celebrate the Bob’s oeuvre?

  3. malthuss May 24, 2021 at 10:00 am #

    Bob Dylan. Insiders say he is crazy.
    A friend owned the house next to his on Point Dume.
    Friend said he saw cars at the place but the Dylans did not walk around the neighborhood.

    • Yohannon May 24, 2021 at 11:49 am #

      They probably drove “the cars” instead.

  4. HowardBeale May 24, 2021 at 10:01 am #

    Today’s blog reminds me of something I might read in Rolling Stone…

    • Beryl of Oyl May 24, 2021 at 10:09 am #

      Heh.

  5. Bilejones@hotmail.com May 24, 2021 at 10:01 am #

    You be less congratulatory if you’d been paying attention to what the grifter was doing in Washington.
    He was co-sponsor of the The Bayh–Dole Act or Patent and Trademark Law Amendments Act of 1980 which made it possible for individuals paid by the Federal Government to register Patents in their own name and get paid for them. Faucii has over 50 .

    This was the law that turned the CDC into the marketing arm of big Pharma, Dole is responsible to more death and disability in America than anyone since Lincoln.

    Fuck him.

    • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 10:09 am #

      Are you confusing Bob Dylan with Bob Dole?

      • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 10:29 am #

        Bob had to tune his guitar really low due to his withered right arm – B flat if I remember correctly. He auditioned for Polka Tulk (which later morphed into Black Sabbath) but as Dole was unwilling to switch to bass, he was muscled out by Tony Iommi. Dejected, he ran for the U.S. Senate. War Pigs was written in his honor.

        • Tate May 24, 2021 at 10:48 am #

          LOL.

        • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 10:49 am #

          Ozzie later quipped, “Oy couldn’t roitly hoir a bloke what had to say “I’m Bob Dole” before every bleedin’ song, could oy?”

          • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 11:09 am #

            Thanks for the translation. Yandex doesn’t handle Ozzyspeak very well…

      • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 10:50 am #

        Agree the Bayh-Dole act is a disaster though.

      • Bilejones@hotmail.com May 24, 2021 at 10:53 am #

        Opps. I are!

        • Mostly Disagreeable May 24, 2021 at 3:22 pm #

          At least once everyone has an Emily Litella moment: Never Mind!

      • malthuss May 24, 2021 at 11:09 am #

        FUNNY

    • Beryl of Oyl May 24, 2021 at 10:11 am #

      Okay I’m confused.

  6. Paul May 24, 2021 at 10:05 am #

    Jim,

    Beautiful. Such a refreshing break from the demoralizing shenanigans of Dog Patch!

    Your ode to Dylan reminds me that for every lazy, despicable, greedy, manipulative, self-serving, corrupt, venal, malignant, vile, contemptible, bitter, dishonest, nasty, criminal, stupid, crazy and insane American, there are probably two or more who are energetic, laudable, generous, helpful, honest, cooperative, kind, intelligent, calm and wise. Thank you for reminding me of that this day!

    Lo! Behold the light! How he shines!

    • SvrzoH May 24, 2021 at 10:25 am #

      Your ratio is way too generous.
      Look around.

      • SvrzoH May 24, 2021 at 10:30 am #

        Had to look. Hunting tune.
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NbQkyvbw18

      • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 10:33 am #

        Blame the edgemacational system. Maffs be wayciss.

      • Paul May 24, 2021 at 11:03 am #

        I’m not so sure, SvrzoH. Every time I visit the U.S. I’m impressed with the many, many positive attributes exhibited by the people. Look around, yes; look deeper too; it’s still there.

        • SvrzoH May 24, 2021 at 11:11 am #

          Then, with “your ratio” there would not have been Jim’s blog in this format?
          I am, too, fully aware of what is good about the US and holding to it

    • Beryl of Oyl May 24, 2021 at 10:40 am #

      Someone else who thinks along those lines-

      Sean Ono Lennon

      I have lived in many cities and countries and I can say from experience that there is an EQUAL distribution of shitty ppl and good ppl in EVERY human population. Most are good, some aren’t great, and a very small number are clinical sociopaths you absolutely need to avoid.

      • Yohannon May 24, 2021 at 11:59 am #

        And the sociopaths work together very well since all they care about is power – and they take the society, almost invariably.

        The natural greed of the ordinary man – called getting ahead – serve them completely. The competition creates the desperate conditions that always emerge in Capitalist society.

      • SW May 24, 2021 at 12:02 pm #

        @ Beryl — I agree with you completely. It’s the old bell curve over and over again and I’ve seen it repeated with people’s character as well as IQ. 1 to 2% are saints, geniuses, artists, 95% generally good people, and 3 to 4% are to be avoided at all costs.

  7. Beryl of Oyl May 24, 2021 at 10:21 am #

    I was just thinking of Bob recently, in a political context.

    I remember Lyin’ Brian Williams (along with the other network anchors) voicing his dismay that ‘the 60s are really over’ due to the claim that Bob allowed the Chinese government to make suggestions as to their preferences for his playlist, when he toured that country.

    He didn’t play some of his most popular protest songs.

    I couldn’t figure out why the MSM was pushing the censorship story so heavy.

    Maybe as a cover for so many other public figures busy selling out to China?

    • malthuss May 24, 2021 at 11:10 am #

      dylan was in commercials.

      cadillac.
      victorias secret?

      • Beryl of Oyl May 24, 2021 at 11:41 am #

        That Victoria’s Secret one was just plain creepy.

        • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 12:27 pm #

          The fact that Victoria’s Secret has prisoners making their lingerie is pretty creepy too. Lady’s wash them knickers real good before ya try ’em on.

          • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 9:20 pm #

            Dylan should clearly, clearly be permanently cancelled for his Sins.

            /s

            fools’ game

          • elysianfield May 25, 2021 at 10:10 pm #

            “Lady’s wash them knickers real good before ya try ’em on.”

            Bird,
            Yes, and remember…Wednesday means Wednesday….

      • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 12:37 pm #

        OMG had no idea.

        https://youtu.be/QsFrFQ-F64Y

        • Beryl of Oyl May 24, 2021 at 12:53 pm #

          Yeah.

        • Linda May 27, 2021 at 1:11 am #

          What a really creepy commercial. I have never liked Dylan.

  8. tom clark May 24, 2021 at 10:22 am #

    Nice retrospective…thanks.

    Dylan still gets lots of press on the frozen tundra, deservedly so.

    So does George Floyd (first anniversary tomorrow), maybe not so deservedly so.

    • Yohannon May 24, 2021 at 12:00 pm #

      Maybe not? Our Tom is growing….

    • taoistonthecross May 24, 2021 at 1:02 pm #

      co-incidentally, Bob’s “murder most foul” came out just before the Floyd incident. was he called up to make a long stupid song to signal the chaos so the order would be imposed? dylan is a sell out.

  9. Rodster May 24, 2021 at 10:30 am #

    Nice tribute by JHK but I never found Dylans work as enlightening as Jim wrote. I guess i’m not as big a fan of Dylan as JHK and i’m in my early 60’s.

    There’s one artist who’s work and songwriting who I really like and also has deep meaning and that’s British icon, Morrissey. I hold him in the same regard as Jim does with Dylan.

    • cbeard May 24, 2021 at 10:52 am #

      I have a few Dylan albums in the collection. Amazing wordsmith for sure. Personally, I liked John Prine a lot more. A friend of mine who worships Dylan went to a concert in Savannah, last year I think. He said the band was too loud with keyboards and synthesizers and the songs were un-recognizable from the original versions and he didn’t understand a word that Dylan sang.

      • malthuss May 24, 2021 at 11:12 am #

        see a book called–The Dylanologists.

        he has been reworking his stuff live since ‘Before the Flood’ and that tour was in 1974.

        • O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 11:32 am #

          That is the genius of Dylan. Everyone talks about his culture-changing lyrics but he rarely gets mentioned for being the most successful band leader ever. Dylan’s music is even more brilliant than are his lyrics as he changes every song every night.

      • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 11:28 am #

        John Prine was great. Also a fan.

        • Redneck Liberal May 24, 2021 at 6:50 pm #

          Me too, for a very long time. Pity the Covid got him…oh, wait…

          • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 8:29 pm #

            You I’m sure know this, but for those who might not, John Prine
            had been ill with late-stage cancer for a long time before the OMG! Cobid! trope came around.

            s/ big John Prine fan

            ‘Far From Me’

    • O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 11:27 am #

      To each their own … but Yeesh!

      • cbeard May 24, 2021 at 12:00 pm #

        Dylan being the best band leader ever. Yeesh!

        • cbeard May 24, 2021 at 12:00 pm #

          To each his own.

        • O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 11:11 pm #

          I actually didn’t say, “Best.” I said, “Most successful.”

        • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 11:34 pm #

          Not getting into the “best band evah!” stuff, but his with Larry Campbell on gitfiddle and David Kemper on drums seemed real good to me.
          And of course Tony Garnier; still with him, and probably best of the lot.
          What a musician..

    • taoistonthecross May 24, 2021 at 1:04 pm #

      i used to love dylan when i was a young idealist pseudo-intellectual – he appeals to commee dimwits. it took a long time to burst the bubble. after he came up with murder most foul, i realized he is dangerous. and connected.

      • malthuss May 24, 2021 at 1:15 pm #

        after he came up with murder most foul, i realized he is dangerous. and connected.

        Whats it about?

        after 1976, he went into a huge artistic decline.

        • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 2:50 pm #

          JFK’s murder I believe.

          • taoistonthecross May 25, 2021 at 2:36 am #

            only ostensibly…turns out it was more like the call for the G. Floyd thing – he is and always was a commee rat

        • taoistonthecross May 24, 2021 at 2:57 pm #

          he suffers from the green eyed monster of Envy, which you can clearly see in “Don’t Look Back” against both Lennon, and Donavan…..i was blinded by his cuteness, backed his seeming insecurity, but now that I am over 50 he just disgusts me – if one is mature they will phase the phases.

          • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 3:03 pm #

            Yup, Don’t Look Back solidified my opinion of “Dylan” as envious attention-seeker. A disgusting display of rats clawing each other to get out of the box.

          • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 1:59 am #

            Do you only appreciate art from artists that you respect as people?

          • Blackbird May 25, 2021 at 9:55 am #

            If you’re asking me, O.G., the answer is “no”. Great art is often created by terrible people.

    • Night Owl May 24, 2021 at 2:59 pm #

      Indeed. The Moz is one of my favs.

      Saw him live in Cologne a few years back. As good as he ever was, even in The Smiths days.

      • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 3:10 pm #

        Seems to me that without the uplifting influence of Johnny Marr, Morrissey naturally descends too far into himself and shares too much.

        • Night Owl May 24, 2021 at 4:14 pm #

          Marr is one of my favorite guitarists, and a huge influence on my own playing, but most of his opinions are shit.

          I don’t care for Moz’s militant anti-meat stance, but I understand it to a degree, and I love that he shares “too much.”

          There are few things more pathetic than individuals who self censor out of fear of what others will think.

          • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 7:20 pm #

            Owl, I agree with your last comment, but I have to say, there are those who share too much. George Lucas is a good example. I have always felt, while watching Star Wars movies, that I was peering into George Lucas’ fantasy world. I don’t want to see that George, please pull the curtains down. Or I can just look away – probably easier.

          • Night Owl May 25, 2021 at 4:58 pm #

            Are you talking about the Prequels? And the revised versions of the original films?

            As I understand it GL had almost no real input on the first three films. Lots of interesting info. out there.

            These facts helped me understand why everything that came afterward was such a pile of steaming shit.

          • Blackbird May 25, 2021 at 5:58 pm #

            I’ve only seen the first 3 Star Wars – I was a kid, didn’t know any better – and the 3 with Natalie Portman – because, well obviously. It was the first time I saw Natalie Portman play a piece of cardboard – and quite convincingly. George Lucas is truly some kind of master if he can make Natalie Portman look like a high school drama class washout.

          • Night Owl May 25, 2021 at 6:19 pm #

            I am a sucker for the first film, but I generally agree. They were all pretty bad.

            The Prequels are not even worth discussing other than to say that there are some hilarious reviews of them from a guy called Red Letter Media on YouTube.

            I would highly recommend if you need a laugh.

    • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 7:53 pm #

      Seeing the word ‘Icon’ these days, especially on this darpaNet, makes me want to quickly head the other way.

      Same with the phrase ‘Making History’ – see Ms. Kamala™ Harris.

      YMMV

  10. MaryV May 24, 2021 at 10:38 am #

    This interview excerpt from 2009 on 60 Minutes with Bob Dylan reveals a person who seems at least somewhat disappointed and disturbed with life, rather than happy with success.

    In it, he says he made a deal with someone (the chief?) to achieve success, and that he no longer has the magic abililty that it took to write songs, as he was able to when a young man. When he describes the talent he had so young, he seems to not even understand where it came from, as if it were just given to him.

    To me, the attitude in the interview is very striking. I have to say, it’s rare to hear an artist say they have lost all ability to do what they did as a youth.

    https://youtu.be/m_wAZ02JUtM

    • Beryl of Oyl May 24, 2021 at 10:49 am #

      I have seen it described as they are done expressing themselves.

      I always wondered what gives a young person out in the hinterlands the drive and interest to learn so much about obscure forms of music?

      That seemed to be the way, they would have a dream, hone their talent, and then take it to someplace like NYC to be with like-minded people.

      Nowadays with access to everything at your fingertips, it doesn’t seem to have increased the talent pool or raised the level of art, does it?

      Just yesterday I was asking another music lover, “where are the bands?”

      • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 10:52 am #

        Technology has ruined creativity and schools are indoctrination centers, for starters.

        We used to have artists creating songs, now we have Cardi B and WAP winning awards.

        Depressing.

      • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 10:55 am #

        I think the trappings of wealth distract people and that’s why they ‘lose’ their creativity.

        Sad to see it happen.

        Selling one’s soul, indeed.

        • Paul May 24, 2021 at 11:40 am #

          Aye that.

        • O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 12:11 pm #

          Soul-selling aside for a moment, it is rare that musical genius continues into later years.

          Neil Young could keep releasing albums because his genius was based on simplicity. The Rolling Stones could because Keef can keep inventing riffs. Paul McCartney has enough money to surround himself with brilliance.

          All the rest are nostalgia acts. Van Halen to Van Morrison.

          Rock n roll was the music of the young by the young for the young. Now it is catered corporate boxes for the jabbed.

          Anyway, the reason why there were so many one-hit wonders and second-LP disappointments is because brilliance of that magnitude burns itself out. Quickly.

          As I alluded to on another posting this morning, Dylan continues to release relevant LPs that may not be worthy of a Noble prize but still have clever twists and turns from the brow of the Super-Brain.*

          Nobody has ever written lyrics like Bob Dylan and it is not surprising that his later works are less regarded but he also sold himself short in that 2009 60 Minutes interview, imho.

          ——

          Of course, there is the Crossroads myth. Young Robert Zimmerman left Hibbings, Minnesota and, when he came back a few months later, nobody could fathom how much he had improved on the guitar.

          If he did make a deal with the Devil, he also released Slow Train Coming and Saved, 2 of the very Best Gospel albums ever.

          Dylan found Jesus in the mid-1970s, released incredible Gospel and then ceased speaking publicly about it. It is unknown if he remains a Christian to this day.

          As always, an enigma.

          *David Bowie

        • Night Owl May 25, 2021 at 5:00 pm #

          There is no art without struggle.

      • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 12:17 pm #

        The young person in the hinterlands is touched by those wizards of the airwaves, and envisions a life far removed from the surrounding privation. For a poor kid, that star hangs a lot higher – and is a lot shinier – than it is for a rich kid who only has to step out onto the balcony to bask in starlight. The less privileged have more to gain and less to lose.

        I knew someone so motivated to learn music that he used to break into an old country church to play the piano late at night. Played in the dark to avoid notice. Couldn’t see the keys, but they turned into animals and told him where to put his fingers. Ya gotta pay the dues if ya wanna play the blues.

        Some people need to channel creative energy, others want to be idolized. The “music industry” serves the latter group. The New American Consumer don’t want talent, they want WAP. Thousands of wannabe starlets are twerkin’ their way up that pole, enthusiastically blowing the piper’s horn for the promise of adulation and millions of followers and dollars.

        • Beryl of Oyl May 24, 2021 at 12:31 pm #

          Well said BB.

        • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 12:40 pm #

          Yes, extremely well said.

          • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 7:55 pm #

            Depends on one’s POV, I think.

      • taoistonthecross May 25, 2021 at 2:39 am #

        we are in a contrived epoch.

    • Tate May 24, 2021 at 10:51 am #

      He was in tune with the “Zeitgeist”. Puffed-out ego.

    • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 11:02 am #

      Interesting interview. I seem to see flashes of candid honesty amidst the mumbled jumbled facade of the aloof Dylan image – but are they real or just part of the act? Bob may have lost the magic of his early days when songs were handed down to him from above, but he still has a persona to maintain and a master to serve. Since I am a guest in Mr. K’s garden, I won’t slap Mr. Zimmerman around too much.

      • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 11:31 am #

        Well, the songs are still out there making people joyful so there is that.

        I was never a big Dylan fan, but I can appreciate his body of work.

    • Yohannon May 24, 2021 at 12:03 pm #

      The Devil. But he turned away to save his soul.

      All the great say the same. Inspiration comes to us from above. From our own soul, or God.

      • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 12:42 pm #

        “You’ll have to serve somebody

        It may be the devil, or it may be the lord”

        https://youtu.be/0MzyBv4yOPU

        • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 7:18 pm #

          He’s right.

          B7

      • taoistonthecross May 24, 2021 at 2:58 pm #

        Dylan was a sellout Freemason. Enough said!

    • taoistonthecross May 24, 2021 at 1:05 pm #

      dylan was jealous of lennon so he introduced the beatles to pot.

      • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 3:40 pm #

        Zing!

    • Billingsgate May 24, 2021 at 1:11 pm #

      Sam Shepard also admitted he was washed up as a playwright in his later years.

    • malthuss May 24, 2021 at 1:17 pm #

      Joni Mitchell claims finding her lost daughter completed things for Joni.

      That her songwriting was a way of trying to fill the void.
      Maybe but her genius went south around 1980.

      Also she says she started writing songs because other folkies told her the traditional songs ‘belonged to them and she should not perform them.’

    • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 7:10 pm #

      I like that interview that MaryV linked quite a lot- have had it saved for some time, in fact. Not that Dylan isn’t doing plenty of dissembling there, but he’s sprinkling some truth-oids, too. Liked the bit about the Chief Commander, and as I head into my dotage, I think Dylan’s not far
      off in his thinking.

      • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 7:31 pm #

        Adding: Dylan looks like he’s suffering from Clincal Depression- perhaps the main product of late-stage Capitalism and its consequent, inevitable social atomization- in that interview, as well as in many of his concert performances from the 80s on.

        I hear ya, dude.

        • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 7:58 pm #

          Check out the photos from the “We are the World” nonsense of the mid-80’s. Dylan looks like he is about to puke on the constellation of stars surrounding him. Is he “too cool for school”, or is he disgusted at being used? I can’t tell, but subsequent history provides clues…

          • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 8:32 pm #

            I will have a look, when my ultra-superb ISP finally cooperates.

          • MaryV May 26, 2021 at 6:03 pm #

            Wow you’re not kidding… lol.

      • taoistonthecross May 25, 2021 at 2:41 am #

        he is talking about Lucifer the great architect. as it turns out.

  11. wm5135 May 24, 2021 at 10:44 am #

    “And there are no truths outside the Gates of Eden” Dylan 1965

    however some do need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows

    “Anyway, I’m glad we shared these decades together on this marvelous planet and I salute him on his birthday for what he gave that has lived inside me all these years.” JHK

    yessir!

  12. O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 10:48 am #

    These were stories about other people and other lives, reportage from the scene, with more resonance than Walter Cronkite could ever hope to bring to it.

    I was born Just months before Dylan turned 24. Not only was his reportage from the scene more resonant than Cronkite’s in your day, he vastly exceeded his importance and timeliness for us stuck at the Wrong end of Boomerdom and were looking back at the recent history of the 1960s with such longing from the Ozzy Osbourne / Iron Maiden 1980s.

    From a historical perspective, Cronkite was the old guy in the clip you’d see every few years taking off his glasses in an unprecedented Human moment in Nov. 1963 while Dylan was a fabric of my house every bit as much as the living room furniture.

    My parents (b. 1946 & 1947) were into Dylan before I was born. Bob Dylan and Gordon Lighfoot LPs were the soundtrack of my early childhood.

    I sort of met Bob one night. Nov. 14, 2012. Air Canada Centre in Toronto. I saw him live 4 times but this time, we were Row 4 … and the 2 seats Right in front of us were vacant all night! What a view! There he was – Right there! – for the next 2 hours. Our eyes met several times. We shared smoke with a older woman from Boston who was there seeing Dylan for her 104th time.

    I was fortunate enough to attend many Great concerts. Seeing Bob Dylan like that was Truly one of the very Best.

    Your writing was a fantastic diversion this morning, Mr K. Thank you.

    ———-

    Happy Birthday, Bob!

    • Beryl of Oyl May 24, 2021 at 10:59 am #

      I was supposed to go see Bob with a friend of mine at SUNY Albany.

      This was back when he and his band were dressing in matching costumes with sashes and stuff, so it was easy to get in because who wants to see that?

      We didn’t go, I think it got canceled.

    • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 7:37 pm #

      Commenters who are glib, well-spoken, and give lots and lots of Personal™ Details™ make me wary.

      That is all.

      • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 7:59 pm #

        Yup, I don’t know you – keep your pants on.

      • O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 10:47 pm #

        Wary of what?

  13. 100th Avatar May 24, 2021 at 11:01 am #

    Woody Guthrie was way ahead of Dylan.

    In fact Dylan lifted a lot from Woody, including the midwestern scamp shtick.

    The exception being that Guthrie was a genuine hobo.

    There is a lot of plagiarism in Dylan’s history.

    Alas, he’s an act.

    • O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 3:12 pm #

      He idolized Woody. He took trains forever to go visit him in a hospital somewhere in New Jersey, I think.

      Sure he stole. All poets steal.

      • taoistonthecross May 25, 2021 at 2:45 am #

        poets don’t steal. who but blake said that grain of sand thing?

        Thieves, copycats and co-opters, and the jealous steal. real poets only come to similar conclusions, but the poet must come from pain and authenticity of experience, not a theory. theorists and voyeurs are the fake poets

        • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 3:51 pm #

          poets don’t steal. who but blake said that grain of sand thing?

          I’m not sure that I like your Police work, there Tao.

          There’s no such thing as car theft! My car is in my driveway.

          Besides, Dylan comes from the final frontier of folk music where songs evolved organically for decades without copyright concerns.

          It wasn’t even considered theft when Woody was a young man.

          Artists gonna art.

  14. Beryl of Oyl May 24, 2021 at 11:09 am #

    Something else I admired about Bob, he supposedly said that Jimi Hendrix’ version of All Along The Watchtower is the definitive one.

    It so is.

    He also gave the Beach Boys credit for being good, when they were kind of going out of sytle so it wasn’t ‘cool’ to say so.

  15. zekesdad May 24, 2021 at 11:10 am #

    IMO “Bringing It All Back Home” is Dylan’s finest album, and indeed one of the finest folk/rock (or however you want to classify it) albums of all time. The number of great songs on that album were rarely produced over the entire career of most artists. “She Belongs to Me”, “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, “Mr. Tamborine Man”, “Gates of Eden”, “It’s Alright Ma”, and the incomparable “Baby Blue”are all masterpieces that somehow both defined and reflected the zeitgeist of that era. I’m not one of those who thought Dylan a sell-out when he went electric, but with rare exceptions (“Like a Rolling Stone”, etc.) he rarely topped that early work.

    • malthuss May 24, 2021 at 11:14 am #

      he did 3 good albums in 12 months. as did the Beatles.
      the good old days.

      now ‘singers’ [autotuned] may take a year to do a song or songs, at huge costs.

      see credits for various people, with 3-8 or more people credited for writing the song.

    • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 4:19 pm #

      Agree that ‘Bringing it All Back Home’ is Dylan’s finest work (IMO).
      ‘Blonde on Blonde’ gets the accolades, and it would’ve made a
      really fine single disc, but it starts feeling formulaic to me.

  16. Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 11:16 am #

    Thanks for so evocatively noting Dylan’s 80th birthday, Mr. Kunster.
    He is a truly remarkable human- warts and all, like the rest of us- and a
    touchstone.

    I’ll mention a few works of his that mean a lot and don’t seem to get
    due notice: his songs ‘Abandoned Love’ and (especially!) ‘Up to Me’,
    both found on the excellent ‘Biograph’ set; and the 2003 movie
    ‘Masked and Anonymous’, worth a watch in these so-curious times.

  17. James Kuehl May 24, 2021 at 11:19 am #

    May I recommend “Positively 4th Street” by David Hajdu, which describes Dylan and his friends during some of his most prolific times. I was always grateful to him for giving those of us with crappy voices a license to sing out anyway.

  18. hmuller May 24, 2021 at 11:34 am #

    Is my Mandela Effect scrambled brain playing tricks on me? It seems not long ago people were labelled whacko conspiracy nuts for thinking the virus was engineered in a lab in Wuhan. Now everyone is admitting it and that some non-Chinese institutions paid for the development.

    What’s next? Obama admitting the existence of UFO’s and nearly admitting they are not of this world? https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/everything-keeps-getting-weirder-and-weirder

    Conspiracy theory is not about unquestioning belief in any and every weird idea that someone dreams up. It’s about critically thinking for yourself, weighing the evidence, and not trusting the Powers That Be (who have plenty of reason to lie to us). There are plenty of conspiracy theories that I have dismissed after a fair hearing, e.g. flat earth.

    I recommend the book “Everything You Know is Still Wrong” by Lloyd Pye. (2017) The author (who is very anti-religious, by the way) uses a purely scientific factual approach to poke holes in the Theory of Evolution.

    And he points out what many of us have long known. The scientific and academic authorities in any field are not open minded. They see themselves as the high priests of the accepted dogma. If the dogma falls, they are discredited. Consider how that applies to – oh say – the AGW crowd and its brilliant spokes-girl Greta Thunberg.

    • JohnAZ May 24, 2021 at 11:50 am #

      The latest bouncing around on Fox, is that three Wuhan lane employees became very sick, weeks prior to the first reports of Covid.

      I remember the escaped virus that wiped out most of America in “The Stand” was an escapee from a lab. Someone over in China better sign up to the fact that an escaped bug from their labs could obliterate mankind and start acting responsibly.

      Unless of course this whole thing was planned by the sociopaths in the New World Order.

      • benr May 24, 2021 at 12:16 pm #

        Alex Jones reported this within weeks of covid lock downs.

      • O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 12:30 pm #

        Unless of course this whole thing was planned by the sociopaths in the New World Order.

        Indeed. That is far more likely than any Chinese to start acting responsibly.

        The Chinese want their money while the USA exports soy beans and scrap metal. How to make it worth their while. Hmmmm … Let’s see …

        • O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 6:44 pm #

          Oh! And smut. I forgot. The USA exports soy beans, scrap metal and smut.

          Sad but True.

      • Redneck Liberal May 24, 2021 at 7:08 pm #

        “The latest bouncing around on Fox, is that three Wuhan lane employees became very sick, weeks prior to the first reports of Covid.

        David Gonigam has noted doubts on the validity of this story, on account of its source:

        “Three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report that could add weight to growing calls for a fuller probe of whether the COVID-19 virus may have escaped from the laboratory.”

        We’re immediately suspicious because the first name on the article’s byline is that of Michael Gordon.

        Nearly two decades ago, writing for The New York Times, Gordon retailed some of the Bush administration’s most egregious lies during the run-up to the Iraq War — the ones about Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” and “ties to al-Qaida.” Somehow, Gordon’s reputation remained intact while Judith Miller, his colleague on many of the worst stories, was drummed out of the Times in 2005.

        • benr May 27, 2021 at 7:12 am #

          I have always found it amazing how the left will lie in order to damage their opponents even if it actually hurts our country in the doing.
          Not only were WMD found but they were burned and blown up as well as transported out of country.
          The CBRN ALARMS went off a hell of a lot as a result of all this destruction.
          Nor do they want to discuss the tons and tons of high explosives that went missing or the 500+ tons of yellow cake flown out to Canada but hey your narrative is more important than the truth.

          Most of all would be the REQUIREMENT we admit that a lot of those weapons had made in the USA and that would never do.
          I understood at the time to admit the existence of such would cause the terrorist types to double down on trying to find this stuff but here we are two decades later its time to admit not only was all this shit found but the staggering amount of it that was destroyed.

          Saddam was legendary for the amount of guns, bullets, bombs and assorted weapons he would buy no matter how old.

    • SW May 24, 2021 at 11:52 am #

      I’m not convinced that the sudden release of information about aliens visiting earth is real. It has the feel (to me) of a red herring. If in fact it’s true, publish all the evidence and ask other countries to co-operate in sharing their information, if any. While we scan the skies for flying saucers, people who have been arrested for the January 6th demonstration at the Capital and some of them are in solitary confinement. Why isn’t that in the news?

      “The jail allows them to leave their cells for an hour a day. Religious services are not allowed; they can’t exercise and access to personal hygiene such as showers is nearly nonexistent, according to defense lawyers and relatives I’ve spoken with.”

      https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/17/shawshank-for-january-6-detainees/

      • Yohannon May 24, 2021 at 12:31 pm #

        Ample grounds for a lawsuit here.

      • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 12:58 pm #

        Political prisoners, much like we’ve always seen in so-called banana republics and third world ‘shit holes’.

        We are there. SMH.

        I am 100% certain that the vast majority of the left is OK with this, to boot.

        • MiddlePeninsula May 24, 2021 at 1:34 pm #

          MaryV,
          I got a kick out of the community member who filmed inside the Capitol and was recently arrested. I guess he was BLM. They took the $90K he earned on selling the footage. His mug shot looked like a deer in the headlights. I am sure he was saying, “Wait, wait, I am BLM. You can’t arrest me.” I wonder if his charges will be dropped. Maybe they just wanted his $90k,

          • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 2:56 pm #

            That’s exactly what the ‘progressives’ don’t get. That they are next. They somehow believe all the rules will apply to conservatives, and ‘others’ but not themselves. They are in for a rude awakening.

          • Night Owl May 24, 2021 at 5:54 pm #

            He was in there with a CNN reporter. There is another vid where he asks her to kiss him.

            Fake News and BLM working together to stage another hoax.

          • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 6:32 pm #

            You all talking about “John Sullivan” and the documentary being made about him (and his “right wing” brother) during the Capital protest? This is no Mohammad Atta passport, don’t let it disappear, forgotten on a DC sidewalk…

          • Night Owl May 25, 2021 at 4:55 pm #

            Yes, that would be Mr. Sullivan.

            One of the many Antifa/BLMers who worked hand in glove with the McMedia in one of the most disappointing “attempted coups” in recorded history.

            Just another day in clown world.

        • Redneck Liberal May 24, 2021 at 7:10 pm #

          These guys are “political prisoners”? I thought most of them are Antifa & BLM agitators who were attempting to blacken the name of the MAGAverse.

          • Night Owl May 25, 2021 at 6:15 pm #

            No worries, my chubby friend.

            Aliens will soon destroy us all, and the memories of the January 6 Attempted Overthrow of the United States Goberment and the Great Chlorox Debacle will just be a speck in the Clown Historical Record.

        • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 8:02 pm #

          The so-called “left” is utterly gotten-to, as became clear in March 2020,
          with its capitulation to the elites’ OMG Cobid! narrative.

          Ms. Rania Khalek was the one who made this perfectly clear, with her™ people-friendly “STAY THE FUCK HOME!!! WEAR A FUCKING MASK!!!” messaging..

          My guess is that the Intelligence Agencies have owned the mole, so-called “left” for a very long time- a very clever move from the former.

          • MaryV May 25, 2021 at 12:56 pm #

            Well they don’t even try to hide it any more. Record number of spooks ran for Dem party seats in 2020.

      • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 4:21 pm #

        Yeah, the UFO bidness feels like yet another misdirection by those Few
        who rule us.

        • Night Owl May 24, 2021 at 5:53 pm #

          It is the cherry on top of the extra large Fake News sundae of the past 5 years.

          Aliens.

          LOL.

          • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 7:00 pm #

            Our Friendly™ Intelligence Agencies: keep the ground shifting beneath our feet since 1947 (or well before)..

            “Remember the Maine!..”

            what a country, what a time.

        • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 7:03 pm #

          Adding: the only good part is this shows that they’re (maybe) scratchin’
          a bit. U-effing-FOs? Or, it could show their utter contempt for the Many..

          Hmm.

          • Night Owl May 25, 2021 at 5:10 pm #

            TBH, I sometimes think that contempt might be warranted.

            I suspect only the vaxxed will be seeing UFOs everywhere in the near future.

            The IQ test does not lie.

          • Blackbird May 25, 2021 at 5:50 pm #

            The Team D True Beliebers I know are also very pro-Vax, and believe that the human race was seeded on this planet by “Ancient Aliens” who are watching over us and will rescue us if necessary. (And they tell me to “trust the science”! Haha!!)

            It appears a selective singularity may be on the horizon for a segment of our population.

          • Night Owl May 25, 2021 at 5:57 pm #

            “Beliebers.”

            Nice.

          • Blackbird May 25, 2021 at 6:00 pm #

            Borrowed it from Justin Bieber. Seemed an appropriate post-it note to slap on the back of Team D.

          • Night Owl May 25, 2021 at 6:07 pm #

            I know where it comes from. Nice usage.

            🙂

    • Yohannon May 24, 2021 at 12:23 pm #

      The Scumbag himself (Fauci) is calling for an investigation, lol. If you don’t learn to roll with the punches, you don’t rise or last. Fauci is a Master and hopefully we will see him in the dock along with Gates at Nuremberg 2.

      • O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 12:33 pm #

        Do you think that that is possible, Yoho?

        As you know, I believe that this is headed towards The Mark of the Beast. That is, I believe that Gates & Fauci will prevail over these next few years.

        • Yohannon May 24, 2021 at 12:48 pm #

          I have to agree. Why should the World Court be any more honest than the American one? As Rammstein says, We’re all living in America. It’s Wundervoll!

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mndU2380diE

          Is not Gotham (NY) the Great City? The epicenter of this entire Global Civilization of buying and selling?

          Some Catholic Prophecy says that we are now in the Chastisement and that there will be a miraculous recovery and Renaissance, with the Muslims defeated and driven out of Europe.
          We’ll see! I don’t see it now and not all Catholics believe it. Barnhardt thinks we’re near the End and Bergoglio is the forerunner, the False Prophet of the Antichrist.

          In the other version, the Antichrist comes, but later, after the reprieve.

          • O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 1:06 pm #

            I believe that President Barrack Obama is the anti-Christ.

          • malthuss May 24, 2021 at 1:22 pm #

            Muslims defeated and driven out of Europe. really?

            in 1990s a nut told me Bill Clinton was the anti christ.

          • Yohannon May 24, 2021 at 1:37 pm #

            I don’t know if he’s attractive enough or brilliant enough to fulfill that role. The Antichrist will be a universal genius, who knows something about every field. No one will leave his presence uninspired. A great Man of Peace – and War.

            Obama has cunning to burn and have been very effective. But he’s still a dope and unliked by many. Putin stared him down to boot.

          • O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 1:45 pm #

            Why did Barry change his name?

            Are you familar with barq obama is the phonetics of what Jesus literally said, in Aramaic, when speaking of Satan? Something to do with lightning and the fallen angel – I’m obviously no expert on the topic.

        • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 1:01 pm #

          Yeah, I don’t see Thelma and Louise slammin’ on the brakes. Hold onto your hat and take your seatbelt off – it ain’t gonna do ya no good.

        • abbybwood May 24, 2021 at 2:06 pm #

          I think this human rights lawyer who spoke at an Orange County school board meeting is on the right track about what should be done:

          https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/leigh-dundus-telling-the-orange-county-school-board-that-they-are-violating-nuremburg-codes-and-will-be-held-accountable/

          • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 3:00 pm #

            She is. And she is a powerhouse. In OC they have Leigh and also Peggy Hall, another powerhouse. Those women are highly motivated and not taking any of this sitting down.

          • Night Owl May 24, 2021 at 5:51 pm #

            The Shit That Matters.

            Right here.

          • MaryV May 25, 2021 at 1:10 pm #

            What matters is that we don’t fear death. None of the people fighting the PTB fear death, and that’s what is required.

      • Beryl of Oyl May 24, 2021 at 12:36 pm #

        I think all the governors and other political figures who didn’t/don’t follow their own edicts belong there too.

        Whitmer, Cuomo, Newsom, Birx, Pelosi, Kerry, the list goes on and on.

      • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 4:23 pm #

        FauciGates “in the dock”?

        Not gonna happen. Who’ll adjudicate?

        yeesh.

  19. SW May 24, 2021 at 11:39 am #

    He was great in the sixties and I spent many a night with friends, roommates or alone listening to his albums. A one of a kind original which is pretty rare in any decade. I haven’t kept up with any of his recent work but it sounds like some long-time fans have.

    A funny story about one of his songs (or at least I thought it was). Years ago Dave Berry said he wanted to have a contest to see what was the WORST song ever written and that Lay, Lady, Lay was automatically disqualified b/c his secretary had voted for it 16,492 times. I guess she didn’t like it.

    • Beryl of Oyl May 24, 2021 at 11:54 am #

      I had to go check out the winner.

      • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 12:36 pm #

        And you came back without telling us?

        The winner: MacArthur Park as sung by the inimitable (thankfully) Richard Harris (peaked at #2 on Billboard’s Top 100 on June 22, 1968).

        • malthuss May 24, 2021 at 1:22 pm #

          that was a good song.

          • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 3:18 pm #

            Or at least, not the “worst” – ever…

        • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 3:04 pm #

          I loved making fun of that song. My sister’s comedy troupe back in the 1980s did a music video to it and it was hysterical. I wish I had a copy.

        • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 3:07 pm #

          Not “Afternoon Delight”?

          Color me disappointed.

          • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 3:17 pm #

            Didn’t even make the list… But then again, Yummy, yummy, yummy, I’ve got love in my tummy came in at Number 2, so it’s a pretty well-supported list.

            But remember, the book came out in ’97, and candidates had to be at least 10 years old. Would MacArthur Park be able to maintain the title of King of the Hill today? After 24 years, might be time for a re-vote…

          • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 9:01 pm #

            Hey, now- ‘Afternoon Delight’ was a fine piece of Product, as I recall.

            Terry Jacks’s stuff was better, though.

          • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 9:53 pm #

            Hey Bill, ya thinkin’ Seasons in the Sun?

  20. JohnAZ May 24, 2021 at 11:43 am #

    For the Covid crew,

    A new virus has been uncovered in Malaysia. This one showed up in 8 patients out of 301 pneumonia patients tested. It is transmitted to humans through dogs, cats and primarily dogs. The patients are all under 5, and live in close quarters. The virus is a coronavirus and is labeled as CCoV-HuPn-2018.

    All kids were released within a week. Human to human transmission did not occur.

    It is good to know someone now seems to be monitoring the virus factories in Asia.

    • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 3:06 pm #

      This is another toe dipped into the water testing us. Then they can justify coming to kill your pets. It’s been done in China many times in order to instill fear in the population.

      They’ve been toying with it in the press isnce the start of this, saying tigers, cats and dogs spread it.

      It’s total absolute bullshit.

      • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 3:20 pm #

        First they came to kill my dog…

        • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 9:10 pm #

          MANY friends of mine say this is where they get out the AK 47s. When the gov’t/Great Resetters come for our critters.

          • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 9:55 pm #

            I’m thinkin’ guns come first. Lotsa wokies with Yorkies ‘n’ ferrets ‘n’ stuff…

  21. Epicur May 24, 2021 at 12:15 pm #

    Personally, I love “My Back Pages” and nothing beats this version.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGEIMCWob3U

    • Beryl of Oyl May 24, 2021 at 12:39 pm #

      Unusual, often when a bunch of “stars” get together like that, the result is nowhere near excellent.

  22. Prospero May 24, 2021 at 12:15 pm #

    Happy birthday Robert Allen Zimmerman!

    I’ll never understand why Mr. Zimmerman changed his name to Bob Dylan.

    Anyway, my favorite Bob Dylan song is “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.”
    But only the Peter, Paul and Mary version.

    “I give her my heart but she wanted my soul,
    But don’t think twice, it’s all right.”

  23. Opie May 24, 2021 at 12:24 pm #

    Nice tribute James. Ya either get Dylan or you don’t. I think his mid 60’s stuff is amazing. I always thought he’d be an interesting guy to talk to in the right circumstance. In particular his view of his tribe as someone outside looking in. I’ve always had a hunch that his sarcasm at media people and of the folks that booed him for not following their vision of what they wanted him to be was founded on that in part.

  24. Yohannon May 24, 2021 at 12:38 pm #

    The later Dylan wore dark glasses and played bit roles in weird movies. He escaped from the Devil, but he didn’t take refuge in God. In other words, he lingered in the no-man’s-land of the Sinai. The desert.

    As Whitman said, either the Work must remain incomplete or the Man. Both Whitman and Dylan chose to complete the Work and remain incomplete as Men.

    If they had chosen otherwise, they wouldn’t be as famous – or famous at all. So it goes.

  25. lizharmon May 24, 2021 at 12:54 pm #

    I have always liked Zimmerman. Saw him live years ago when he stil had it. That said, every cover Jimmy LaFave ever did was better than the original. Not Dark Yet was perhaps the best of the bunch.

  26. O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 12:56 pm #

    Song for Bob Dylan

    Oh, hear this Robert Zimmerman
    I wrote a song for you
    About a strange young man called Dylan
    With a voice like sand and glue

    Some words had truthful vengeance
    That could pin us to the floor
    Brought a few more people on
    And put the fear in a whole lot more

    Ah, here she comes
    Here she comes, here she comes again
    The same old painted lady
    From the brow of the superbrain

    She’ll scratch this world to pieces
    As she comes on like a friend
    Couple of songs from your old scrapbook
    Could send her home again

    Gave your heart to every bedsit room, at least a
    Picture on my wall
    And you sat behind a million pair of eyes
    And told them how they saw

    Then we lost your train of thought
    Your paintings are all your own
    While troubles are rising, we’d rather be scared
    Together than alone

    Ah, here she comes
    Here she comes, here she comes again
    The same old painted lady
    From the brow of the superbrain

    She’ll scratch this world to pieces
    As she comes on like a friend
    But a couple of songs from your old scrapbook
    Could send her home again

    Now hear this, Robert Zimmerman
    Though I don’t suppose we’ll meet
    Ask your good friend Dylan
    If he’d gaze a while down the old street

    Tell him we’ve lost his poems
    So we’re writing on the walls
    Give us back our unity
    Give us back our family
    You’re every nation’s refugee
    Don’t leave us with their sanity

    Ah, here she comes
    Here she comes, here she comes again
    The same old painted lady
    From the brow of the superbrain

    She’ll scratch this world to pieces
    As she comes on like a friend
    But a couple of songs from your old scrapbook
    Could send her home again

    Ah, couple of songs from your old scrapbook
    Could send her home again
    Oh, here she comes
    Here she comes, and here she comes

    Source: LyricFind
    Songwriters: David Bowie
    Song for Bob Dylan lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

  27. gustafson.robert.22 May 24, 2021 at 12:57 pm #

    Happy bday bob.

    I like his recent albums, especially Tempest

    • O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 5:46 pm #

      https://truvinyl.tv/free

      • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 9:01 pm #

        How many albums have you uploaded?

        • O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 10:28 pm #

          971 Albums in the database.
          2,211 Sides
          10,705 Tracks

          30 Dylan Albums (incl. Basement Tapes Dylan w/ The Band)
          2 Travelling Wilburies Albums

  28. Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 1:08 pm #

    Interesting how today’s comments tend to hover around Mr. K’s original post – as opposed to the more typical assemblage of soap boxes. He throws us a curveball and we go running for it. Good times at Clusterfuck Nation.

    • Beryl of Oyl May 24, 2021 at 1:21 pm #

      I confess to having infected it with the Wuhan flu, somewhat.

      I can’t help it, I am on a crusade.

      • O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 2:15 pm #

        And … beyond that … nothing else comes to mind, BB.

      • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 2:31 pm #

        And yet, posting about Bob Dylan is almost (?) as divisive as posting about Covid, or the election, or any of the other interlinked eschatological subjects.

        I think most of us congregating here at Clusterfuck Nation are crusaders, of one form or another.

        Per adua ad astra!

  29. BillRI May 24, 2021 at 1:16 pm #

    Wonderful post, JHK.

    It’s hard to summarize Dylan’s 60+ years of writing and performing. I often enjoy playing some of his earliest tracks, such as Let Me Die in My Footsteps, The Ballad of Donald White, Dusty Old Fairgrounds, and I’ve Been a Moonshiner — to name just a few of dozens. It’s amazing how powerful they remain. Kudos and thanks to the people who saved many of Dylan’s performances for posterity, such as Richard Alderson, who taped Dylan’s early Gaslight sessions and his 1966 world tour; the late Don Pennebaker, who recorded Dylan’s world tour on film, and the countless others who thought to turn on tape and film machines and preserve so much of Dylan’s astonishing material. The late Albert Grossman, Dylan’s often criticized manager, was a genius at promoting Dylan; without Grossman, Dylan might never have made it. Grossman was thinking in four or five dimensions at all times.

    • malthuss May 24, 2021 at 1:25 pm #

      I knew someone who introduced Bob at the copper kettle?
      in Chicago, 1962? as Bob Die-Lan and Bob corrected him as he walked on stage.

    • BillRI May 24, 2021 at 3:15 pm #

      I neglected to mention the unfortunate report a few weeks ago that Sally Grossman, the late Albert Grossman’s wife, has passed away. Sally Grossman was immortalized as the attractive lady in the red dress sitting with Dylan and a cat (feline) on the cover of Dylan’s 1965 “Bringing it All Back Home” album.

      • malthuss May 24, 2021 at 5:20 pm #

        Levon Helm, in the ‘penguin book’ later edition said,

        ‘robbie and al and now sally cashed in on The Band and cheated the 4 of us’ or something like that.

  30. Yohannon May 24, 2021 at 1:42 pm #

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/blm-activist-sasha-johnson-shot-234847762.html?.tsrc=fp_deeplink

    At a party. Another Black, probably – or we would have heard bloody murder by now. Critical condition.

    Those who live by the sword shall die by it, as a Man once said.

    • BackRowHeckler May 24, 2021 at 2:07 pm #

      This Sis-tah was more than just an activist.

      She fancied herself an historical Revolutionary and the woman who could take down the UK, and establish an African Homeland on the Island Nation. For starters, she demanded all English Statuary must go, reaching all the way back to Roman times, thru Anglo Saxon Britain, and into the Norman period. And there was no question any monuments from the times of Empire building and Victorian England must be smashed right now.

      Shot in the head in some gangland spate of violence by the people she spent her short career promoting, in a city where just mentioning the word “Gun” can get you arrested. Somehow it seems fitting. Nothing unique here either. Two mass shootings at Club Member get togethers yesterday, in Jersey and Carolina, at a birthday party and an illegal Hip Hop event, 28 shot. Chicago’s totals came in at an even 50 for the week. Shooting season usually begins with the advent of warm weather and this season is getting off to a bang, no pun attended

      • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 2:39 pm #

        This would be a good point to insert a link to the West African “soldiers” giving an AK-47 to a chimp, illustrating the 1,000 monkeys/1,000 typewriters/Tale of Two Cities hypothesis… Drop one gun – and enough ammo – into a room of monkeys, and eventually the correct person will get shot. Ya done good Sasha, less have somorra dat.

        • Yohannon May 24, 2021 at 5:34 pm #

          yet you believe in equality, right? Enough monkeys and enough typewriters and enough time, and you’re sure to get Shakespeare, right?

          • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 5:56 pm #

            Did I say that Yo?

            Recipe for success: more monkeys, more typewriters, less Shakespeare. Better yet: barrels of monkeys, truckloads of guns, and no Shakespeare.

            You’ve seen what a marginally trained chimp can do. Why shut the door on their evolution?

            Our brothers with prehensile-tailed mothers…

    • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 3:16 pm #

      “After death threats” – uh huh. At a house party at 3 a.m. Doesn’t sound too much like a ‘death threat’ was carried out at some house party, to me.

    • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 4:15 pm #

      This woman says it was a ‘rival gang’ drive by shooting kinda thing.

      https://twitter.com/vicderbyshire/status/1396785431547715588

    • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 9:03 pm #

      Janos, I’m enjoying your posts more as the years pass and we all fade further away.

      • Yohannon May 24, 2021 at 11:21 pm #

        In other words, as you become senile, I’m sounding better? Nice backhand!

        • Bill7 May 25, 2021 at 12:00 am #

          I accept your interpretation, though it’s not what was meant.

  31. Amman May 24, 2021 at 1:54 pm #

    “This place don’t make sense to me more.” – DYLAN LYRICS I

    • Amman May 24, 2021 at 1:55 pm #

      (no more)

  32. BackRowHeckler May 24, 2021 at 2:15 pm #

    Who here thinks Pat Garret and Billy the Kid is an underrated classic?

    • O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 2:32 pm #

      Der tootin’!

      • O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 2:34 pm #

        Dern tootin’, Heckler!

        [I will send an error-free post someday … If I Just keep trying and Really believe in myself!]

    • Amman May 25, 2021 at 1:33 pm #

      Never saw it. Always was curious though.

  33. BackRowHeckler May 24, 2021 at 2:27 pm #

    My favorite Bob Dylan Story is from when he lived up in Woodstock, NY. Dylan freaked out when he learned about the concert that was being planned for Woodstock, and was one of the locals who insisted the event be staged somewhere far from town. One thing Dylan didn’t like was hippies, specially ones that showed up at his house. He was very protective of his family and was mindful of the kidnapping and ransom of Frank Sinatra’s son. This was about the time Dylan had his friend the local sheriff procure him an Inland M1 Carbine, which he practiced with in his back yard. During the period of the Woodstock music festival, which happened about 50 miles from Woodstock, NY, Dylan got out of Dodge, took his family to Paris.

    • 100th Avatar May 24, 2021 at 2:34 pm #

      Nobody likes hippies in their hood

      https://youtu.be/go6K37T-un4

      • Rain Waters May 24, 2021 at 3:30 pm #

        Why he toured with Bob and Jerry in 87. To learn how good his work really was. Period.

        • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 9:07 pm #

          That Dylan was friends with and toured with Mr. Garcia is a real blemish on the former’s record. What was that horrid album called: ‘Under the Dismal Sky’, or somesuch?

          The Dead™ and their acolytes used to show up at the Ventura Fairgrounds now and then- that was way more of both of them than
          I ever wanted to hear.

      • O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 4:13 pm #

        You are correct, Avatar. I was shocked and disappointed at how much differently I was treated after growing my hair long in 2015.

        • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 6:45 pm #

          O.G., at least you had hair post-2015… Many of us are envious. But – where were you in 1975 when some of us* were havin’ our long hair flushed down the toilet? Takin’ care of business, every day.

          * Not me of course…

      • Amman May 25, 2021 at 1:35 pm #

        I don’t know about about that. I think It was that fiend M that gave them a bad name.

    • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 2:56 pm #

      Jethro Tull was invited to play at Woodstock, but Ian Andersen was so alarmed at the idea of hordes of naked hippies spawning like grunion among flowers and mud puddles, he decided to keep the band at home.

      • 100th Avatar May 24, 2021 at 3:03 pm #

        “Rock” band with a flute and he’s worried about hippies?

        • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 3:27 pm #

          Couldn’t stand ’em…

          The Tull may have had some integrity. Won a Grammy in 1989 for “Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance” – they were probably more shocked than anyone else. Came out with Kissing Willie as a response.

          • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 4:17 pm #

            I loved Jethro Tull.

          • malthuss May 24, 2021 at 5:18 pm #

            he is or was a fish farmer, killing countless fish and doing how much polluting?

            rumor is the Eagles stole a song from him.

          • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 6:07 pm #

            Yes, malt, I heard an interview on NPR way back when they played music, in which Ian Anderson talked about his salmon farming. Neither he nor the interviewer was interested in pursuing that thread – but i was. I suspect that Ian Anderson is more interested in making millions of dollars than in preserving thousands of years of evolution, or hundreds of years of culture.
            But if any English rock band of the ’70’s could convince me that they are not totally subversive, and actually gave a damn about the future, the Tull is near the top of that list.

          • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 6:54 pm #

            I liked Aqualung and Thick as a Brick very much; and Songs from the Wood, though less so.

            That band does elicit strong reactions both ways.

          • 100th Avatar May 24, 2021 at 8:40 pm #

            I saw Badly Drawn Boy in a small intimate setting in Southern California about 20 years ago.

            He brought along a flutist for the tour. A total departure from his recorded material.

            Horrendous. Just awful.

            *Silent Sigh*

          • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 9:07 pm #

            100,

            Yeah, I’m thinkin’ Dropkick Murphys and bagpipes…

            No insult to bagpipes – they made Sky Pilot – in my opinion.

  34. Q. Shtik May 24, 2021 at 3:04 pm #

    “The Bob Dylan Documentary ‘No Direction Home’ Is The Best Martin Scorsese Film Of This Century. … Originally broadcast as part of PBS’s American Masters series, and currently available for streaming on Netflix, it tracks Dylan’s life from his youth in Minnesota through his confrontational UK tour in 1966.”

    I was somewhat disappointed with this documentary on Bob Dylan because it focused almost exclusively on his music. Barely a word on his connection to Duluth, MN (where I spent 3 years in the AF) other than the fact he was born there. And nothing about his Jewishness…was he Bar Mitzvahed? Did he ever wear a yamaka? Any brothers or sisters? And what about his love life? Only now, in a Google search, did I learn that he had 4 biological children and was married twice.

    Annoyingly, Dylan seemed to take pleasure in NOT giving straight answers to the questions of interviewers. He would do what Steve, a close Jewish friend of mine, would do, viz. answer a question with a question. (Question: Steve, why do you always answer a question with a question? Answer: Why not?) I guess being extremely famous can make a person that way.

    For context, note that I am 6 months and 3 days older than Dylan and don’t have a musical bone in my body.

    • O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 3:18 pm #

      I remember seeing young Robert with another kid or two (sibling(s), I think). What made the pic memorable for me was the Christmas Tree in the background.

    • malthuss May 24, 2021 at 5:17 pm #

      rumor is he has married 3 or 4 times.
      helena springs is wife 3.

    • Yohannon May 24, 2021 at 5:30 pm #

      I went to Church today and influx of the Divinity was simply extraordinary. As the Chaldean Oracle put its, I eat fire. I drink light.

      Maybe because I was bitter that my prayers hadn’t been heard? But they still haven’t been: I asked for material grace, and just got more spiritual. Better than nuthin’….

      • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 6:50 pm #

        Interesting Yo. I’d have expected you to be a pagan or Cosmotheist – even a Lutheran! – but not a Catholic. Good luck untangling these threads and adhering them to your armor.

        • Yohannon May 24, 2021 at 8:09 pm #

          I know, right? Luckily I’m a Universalist and believe Christianity is A true religion, not The true religion. It is flawed in many ways since Christ didn’t teach about this world at all, apparently. So for things like property, war, politics, etc we have to go to the Old Testament – which isn’t for us since Judaism isn’t a universal relgion. And since Christianity is, Christians now don’t think they have the right to have their own race or nation or culture or civilization. It’s been weaponized against us.

          • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 8:26 pm #

            “Universalist”?!?! I had expected that to be a slur you’d use against me!

            It’s a voyage Yo. (The longboat has been hijacked and we sail on strange seas.) One that we must all undertake, yet one which we will not live to see the end of.

            Now grab your oar, we have leagues to go before we sleep.

          • Yohannon May 24, 2021 at 9:00 pm #

            God is on thing. Man quite another. One doesn’t argue from God to Man or his affairs. Religion is one thing, politics quite another. Of course God being God revealed Himself to all peoples. The doctrine of Providence is very, very weak in Christianity. They opted for the Semitic “every one else is doing it wrong”. Tragic.

          • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 9:09 pm #

            Yes, we have a serious course correction to make. Now grab your oar.

    • BackRowHeckler May 24, 2021 at 5:30 pm #

      Welcome back Q.

      Bob Zimmerman’s dad was an oil company executive. His mother’s family owned a successful dept store in Duluth. It was one of those downtown anchor stores that sold everything, which every medium sized city in America had before our cities were gutted.

      Brh

      • O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 5:41 pm #

        It is Better that the Walton (Walmart) family be multi-billionaires and the people who help you there get food stamps from the gov’t to make ends meet, Heckler. We all enjoy cheaper microwave ovens that way. Capitalism.

        • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 8:28 pm #

          Kill ’em all, let the dogs sort ’em out.

    • Redneck Liberal May 24, 2021 at 7:17 pm #

      Hi Q! Been a while.

    • Amman May 25, 2021 at 1:38 pm #

      Well, we know he was American Jewish. But what the hell does that imply? The country changes every generation.

  35. KappaJoe May 24, 2021 at 3:12 pm #

    R. Zimmerman, right there at the end of the alphabet, achieve or give up completely, picked a poet’s name, closer to the front, who’s gonna go through the all bins, all the way to W-X-Y-Z?

    Silent Generation pied-piper, leading the leaderless, pointing out the pointless, social criticism set to music, j’accuse!

    Everyone has a voice, but some are hard to listen to, words in a blender, a beautiful turn of phrase.

    Eighty rounds, a good game, play if you like playing, a fine line straddled, all this time.

    • O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 4:09 pm #

      That was the brilliance of ZZ Top. The last band in every rock section on Earth.

    • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 8:06 pm #

      cute / trying too hard

      -IA

  36. Roundball Shaman May 24, 2021 at 3:15 pm #

    What kind of a World is in store for the youth and all the yet-unborn generations when all the future Bob-Dylans’ of the World have been gaslighted, weaned out of, sidelined, shamed, shut down, silenced, discouraged, ‘Cancelled’, threatened, and otherwise prevented from Seeking Their Bliss and fulfilling their destiny to walk their own path and stray off the One And Only Authorized Road and to express that freedom in song and words.

    The Sixties were a time (maybe the LAST in all human history) when rebellion and creativity were not seen as being the horrible acts at worst… or simply bad taste and Cancel-Culture worthy… like rebellion and creativity and being an individual are viewed today. We are entering lock-step into the World of the One Path… the One Choice… the One Way To Think and Live… the ‘SAFE’… the ‘Inoffensive’… The ‘Un-TRIGGER-able’.

    In such a World, there is no room or place for a Bob Dylan or anyone like him who would dare to think for himself and express ideas that might run afoul of THE HOLY GROUP OF MASS CONFORMITY that the World has currently constructed and seems to relish in.

    Why does Sixties music still sound so good? Because so much of it WAS good. It carries timeless lessons about love and longing and pain and sadness and rebellion and great victories and social concern for the well-being of others. It had/has… SOUL about it. It
    came from the Heart. It came from the Mind. It had passion. It SAID something worth saying. It was not just bunch of mumbled words set to an overloud drum-beat-track that are not uttered to inspire people to greatness but to hypnotize and degrade them. It was not some Corporate Construction of synthetic people and empty mindless lyrics to keep people anesthesized consumers.

    Younger generations today like to dismiss Baby Boomers as old, out-of-touch fogeys who have nothing to say to them or to teach them. Only ‘The Youth’ now can possess the wisdom of the Ages. But in throwing out the Baby Boomer generation, they are also throwing out the Bob Dylans’ and all those like him (then as now) who have much timeless wisdom to share with the World… if the World would only listen.

    Is their a chance that Bob Dylan’s spirit will ever find a place in the World again? I’m afraid that The answer – my friend — is what he already told us… it’s just Blowin’ In The Wind.

    • beantownbill. May 24, 2021 at 4:32 pm #

      Excellent post Roundball Shaman.

    • SW May 24, 2021 at 4:58 pm #

      Sixties music was FUN to listen to and still is. Yes, some of the groups were very earnest and had a “message” but there was a spontaneity and love of life that came through. And variety too — Motown, the Beach Boys, the British invasion, Rockabilly — and love was a direct experience, not something on Tinder.

      • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 6:55 pm #

        Motown. Music that allowed us to hope that black and white could live together “in perfect harmony”. I miss that world, though I was barely aware of it at the time.

  37. 100th Avatar May 24, 2021 at 3:19 pm #

    I wonder if Bob feels the same now about

    Talkin John Birch?

    Maybe he’s singing the blues

  38. O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 3:20 pm #

    In honour of Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday, TruVinyl is running the 381 Dylan (& Travelling Wilburies) tracks in the database. These tracks span his entire career and are presented randomly.

    You can listen for free if you so choose:

    https://truvinyl.tv/free

    truvinyl.tv – “The vinylesty Classic Rock on the whole interweb!”

    truvinyl.tv – “Come for the vinyl quality … but also enjoy the rock n roll slide show.”

    truvinyl.tv – “I can’t believe it’s digital!”

    • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 4:29 pm #

      I really liked The Travelling Willburies. I even had the CD.

      • O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 5:05 pm #

        They had 2 albums. Volume 1 & Volume 3.

        Volume 2 was shelved when Roy died.

        George Harrison
        Bob Dylan
        Roy Orbison
        Tom Petty
        Jeff Lynne

        Quite a band.

    • Yohannon May 24, 2021 at 5:31 pm #

      Is the conspiracy guy right? Did Dylan contribute to the George Floyd event?

      • O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 5:53 pm #

        Huh? I always wonder where the George Floyd incident happened. Me & my son were in downtown Minny for a few days in 2017. Yeesh!

        I do remember a bldg with a Real cool Dylan mural. Minny’s a shithole, imho.

        I don’t know anything about Dylan being involved with George Floyd though. News to me.

        • BackRowHeckler May 24, 2021 at 6:34 pm #

          Blood bath in Minneapolis the past few weeks.

          Is the City Council still defunding the PD?

          About 200 Minneapolis cops quit this year, so really, the PD is defunding itself.

          • JohnAZ May 24, 2021 at 8:49 pm #

            Who cares about the cities any more? Let them sleep in their own slime. They are no longer part of the America I was raised in. The best thing that could happen, IMHO, is for the folks to finally have enough of the socialist crap, invade the City Halls and State house and execute the SOBs.

          • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 9:14 pm #

            JAZ, the zipper ain’t all the way down yet, the house has yet to be divided. Gonna be a lot more hurt before any of us get our hands anywhere near the levers of power – or the throats of those who currently wield it.

        • Yohannon May 24, 2021 at 6:51 pm #

          taoistonthecross said that Dylan’s “Murder Most Foul” came out just before the Floyd incident exploded.

          • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 1:34 am #

            I don’t see the connection. Murder Most Foul is about Nov. 22, 1963 and pop culture since. I read the extensive lyrics and didn’t see anything that ties to George Floyd.

          • Yohannon May 25, 2021 at 2:39 am #

            Ok, thanks.

  39. Rain Waters May 24, 2021 at 3:27 pm #

    Jim set the bar high today. Well cleared.

  40. Tekapo May 24, 2021 at 4:17 pm #

    Turning 17 in 1969, Dylan was an important part of musical life – particularly for someone far more interested in anything but rock ‘n’ roll – so folk, country, jazz, blues, great lyrics, simple instrumentation, and solo acts especially.

    So apart from Dylan, I much recall Woody Guthrie (and Arlo), Pete Seeger, Janis Joplin, James Taylor, John Denver, Carol King, Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Simon & Garfunkel, the Doors, CSN&Y, etc.

    When you start thinking about, there was a lot of good stuff – we lived in the best of times. Happy 80th Bob Zimmerman!

    • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 4:30 pm #

      He was born in 1941. So, not 17 in 1969. 28.

      • Tekapo May 24, 2021 at 4:46 pm #

        I can see why you read it that way – poor construction on my part. I turned 17 in 1969 – classic boomer.

        • BackRowHeckler May 24, 2021 at 5:24 pm #

          Tepako

          How ’bout Little Stevie Wright and the Easy Beats?

  41. Yohannon May 24, 2021 at 5:13 pm #

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/23/cdc-studying-reports-of-heart-inflammation-in-young-covid-vaccine-recipients

    No big deal. It might go away. And even if it doesn’t, it’s just the heart. At least they’re safe from covid. That’s the important thing.

    • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 6:47 pm #

      > No big deal. It might go away. And even if it doesn’t, it’s just the heart. At least they’re safe from covid. That’s the important thing. <

      Those who rule us and their 5-percenter minions (like the Guardian)
      are Evil, and are killing us off and sterilizing us whilst claiming to be
      saving us..

      Some of us saw this *fourteen months* ago, of course.

    • JohnAZ May 24, 2021 at 8:24 pm #

      The big variable is each individual’s personal inflammation reaction to any disease or vaccination. Spike proteins probably cause reactions anywhere the ACE receptor exists. They include, heart, lungs, blood vessels especially arteries, kidneys, liver, and probably the brain, if it crosses the barrier, also probably genetic.

      Susceptibility causes troubles.

      Kids have thymus glands to handle this stuff, they really should be allowed natural immunization.

      Did you hear about Rand Paul, refusing the vaxx because he had the disease. He is a great candidate to see how long antibodies last and if memory Bs and Ts exist. If his natural immunity lasts, great news. If not, it defines booster shot intervals.

      • JohnAZ May 24, 2021 at 8:29 pm #

        I talked to my MD a long time ago and he told me that the immune system is the least understood system in the body. He also said that improvements in treatment in the future was going to help with many diseases. We were talking about autoimmune at the time.

        Triggering the immune system to target specific antigens and cancers would be a powerful tool. mRNA has been under development for a while to do it.

        • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 9:13 pm #

          -I” be firmly in the Control Group regarding the experimental “vaccines”
          until late 2023, when the first full scale trials of said substances are
          concluded.

          Can you say “myocarditis” and such?

          “Who coulda ever, ever knowed that these untested “vaccines” were poison?”

          • JohnAZ May 24, 2021 at 10:22 pm #

            You do not get it. All vaccines are poison! They trigger the immune system, that what poisons do. That is what they are supposed to do. They cause inflammation, that is what they are supposed to do. They are not kool aid, they are supposed to trigger a reaction with your body. In 99.997% of the people, it is an inconvenience. The rest definitely have a problem.

            Your choice. You are supposed to believe in free choice. It is your choice not to take the jab. It is the choice of 160 million people to take it.

            The old saying

            You can’t make me! Well, you can’t make me not!

        • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 9:17 pm #

          I’m more interested in increasing our knowledge of the immune system, than increasing our tinkering with it.

          Nature/God got it wrong – but we will fix it! Yeah, ok…

        • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 9:19 pm #

          Still chugging the Kool-Aide in La La Land.

          • JohnAZ May 24, 2021 at 10:24 pm #

            And anyone who would rather be sick for two weeks to two months rather than take a jab that makes you feel bad for a couple of days, must be a little masochistic.

          • MaryV May 25, 2021 at 1:23 pm #

            Tell that to the people in ICU for weeks after the jab.

            And the dead ones, 4K+

  42. BackRowHeckler May 24, 2021 at 5:37 pm #

    Well, in the past week or two we have learned that our host, Jim, has met personally Hunter S Thompson and Bob Dylan. I salute you sir! What can one say, except Rolling Stone must have been an interesting place to work back in the 70s.

    Brh

    • 100th Avatar May 24, 2021 at 8:48 pm #

      More interesting times with
      More interesting people

      Today, he’d be interviewing AutoTuned BoobTube influencers or Taylor Miffed TM.

  43. Sean Coleman May 24, 2021 at 5:43 pm #

    What are you doing, Alabama?
    You got the rest of the Union
    To help you along.
    What’s going wrong?

    Different singer, same song.

    None of it touches my heart. Perhaps I might have wondered a little if it was supposed to but such a thought (if it ever passed through my mind)
    was fleeting. The music at that time was all about the notes. I barely heard the words. they were just thrown in to fill the spaces.

    The Sixties are when it really went wrong.

    I would not cross the road to listen to Dylan, or the Beatles or the Stones if I got in for free, but there is a thrilling enchantment in the s0unds the last two groups made, and indeed I even listened to the Beatles’ lyrics, even if I did not always understand them (and I would not agree with them if I did understand). That is the sound of the fantasy. The long melancholy note, I think it is described as in On Dover Beach.

    Dylan was just another artist, you could go and make a cup of tea while he was on.

    • Yohannon May 24, 2021 at 6:56 pm #

      What music (if any) moves you?

      • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 9:43 pm #

        I bet he loves traditional Irish music. Perhaps classical, or jazz.

        • Yohannon May 24, 2021 at 11:25 pm #

          Rock was an initiation. As Plato said, introducing a new form of music is a very serious thing. The whole chakra functioning and focus is different. And above all – it blocked the old culture from being inculcated into the new generation. Laurel Canyon again.

          I took it. Almost everyone did, here at least. Most everyone in Ireland as well, if a few years later.

          • Sean Coleman May 25, 2021 at 10:46 am #

            Yoh, you nailed it there but I think it goes further. Hitchens is perceptive and he thinks the soundtrack to the Sixties was at their heart. It is not just that the tradition was no longer handed on but that we stepped into a dream.

            Rock music was the Sirens’ song which expressed the spirit of the time, the Great Fantasy, in its cadences. I appear to be unlike most music lovers as the lyrics are for me just subliminal and do no more than express a general sensibility. (Whenever I took the time to find out what they were actually singing I just laughed at how clichéd and banal it was.)

            I think I still love it but I wish I did not. What do I like? A couple of examples. The short, single version of Layla. By Dylan Knocking On Heaven’s Door, Blind Willie McTell (although he did not rate it), Subterranean Basement Blues (the one where he has the words written out on sheets of paper) and, from my younger years when we had the vinyl single, Watching The River Flow (I tried to learn how to play along on the piano and did not even get close). Bowie’s John I’m Only Dancing without the sax.

            I love All Along The Watchtower, but just Hendrix’s version and Hendrix’s Little Wing, but only by Derek And The Dominoes. There is a live version of Sympathy For The Devil which comes and goes on YoutTube. It has Lennon watching from behind the stage and it is sensational. Which reminds me. Either EMJ or Johnson referred once to a clip (which I looked up) of Dylan saying that he (as it were) sold his soul. It is ambiguous and he may well have been in jest. But they do say that the Devil has the best tunes.

            I have a playlist on my YT channel with hundreds of my favourites and I even occasionally listen to it with a beer. I used to be able to settle down for an evening at this but after half and hour now I can go no further. Music In A Doll’s House (Family)

            I Want You (She’s So Heavy), I’m Only Dreaming Let It Loose (I was 41 when I first heard that), Shine On Brightly, itchygo Park, Ashes To Ashes, Alison Moyet’s two big singles in the early 80s and on and on and on. I’ll Put A Spell On You by Credence Clearwater. I can’t stop! Blood On TheRooftops.

            “One SWEET dream…” (McCartney, Abbey Road).

          • 100th Avatar May 25, 2021 at 3:05 pm #

            Stevie Ray Vaughan’s rendition of Little Wing is something.
            He just about tripled the original

          • Sean Coleman May 25, 2021 at 4:40 pm #

            Thanks Avatar. Very nice and I have added it to my playlist, alongside a Wanda Jackson song recommended by Tate a couple of years ago (I do not really like country but this one – Pick Me UP On Your Way Down – is very nice.)

        • Sean Coleman May 25, 2021 at 10:19 am #

          Yes, I love traditional Irish music and I learnt to dance sets after I turned thirty when I came here from London. I got quite useful at it because it is in the family on both sides. (I could never have seen myself dancing before.) Classical also but not modern classical (atonal). I don’t mind trad jazz but am not keen on the rest.

    • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 7:00 pm #

      “The Sixties are when it really went wrong.”

      Yup, and most of us put the pedal to the metal once we had the chance. We are still weightless over the Grand Canyon, but once gravity reasserts its dominion – look out!

      • Tekapo May 24, 2021 at 7:28 pm #

        Dead Horse Point in Utah is a salutary spot … where they shot the Final Scene from Thelma & Louise.

        • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 7:38 pm #

          That’s the image I had in mind. Thanks

        • hmuller May 25, 2021 at 1:29 pm #

          They must have used stunt women for that final scene, because Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis turned up later alive.

      • Yohannon May 24, 2021 at 8:12 pm #

        Yes, the Lie of Freedom as Irresponsibility. Or the Personal is all that matters. You can choose your sex. Or if you’re born in America, that makes you an American just like a hamster born in an aquarium is a goldfish.

    • JohnAZ May 24, 2021 at 8:32 pm #

      One comment. The sixties were rebellious but like other rebellions, nothing really changed. We just continued down the same path toward the slime ball situation we are in today.

      • Tekapo May 24, 2021 at 9:41 pm #

        Capitalism is great at co-opting and appropriating every threat to it, and then profiting. It’s genius the way it works like that.

      • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 9:46 pm #

        I see the 60’s as the first me me me temper tantrum, actually.

        They may have wanted the end to war and were anti-establishment but they sure got co-opted the second they saw $$ signs.

        So, fake, and a tantrum.

        Just like now.

        Tantrums abound.

        • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 10:03 pm #

          I think the ’60’s started out honestly – young people reasonably concerned about the future – but it got co-opted and corrupted very quickly (If it feels good, do it!).

          The present identity rebellion was astroturf from the start.

        • Tekapo May 24, 2021 at 10:17 pm #

          They may have wanted the end to war and were anti-establishment but they sure got co-opted the second they saw $$ signs.

          No doubt true enough – but life did hugely change for boomers, and I think on balance for the better. Women, gays, blacks, Indigenous People, anti-war warriors, environmentalists – lots of different interest groups and stakeholders found a voice, and a lot of it was for the better.

          There was also an explosion in culture – art, literature, music, film … lots of stuff blossomed.

          • Bill7 May 25, 2021 at 12:08 am #

            > but life did hugely change for boomers, and I think on balance for the better. Women, gays, blacks, Indigenous People, anti-war warriors, environmentalists – lots of different interest groups and stakeholders found a voice [™], and a lot of it was for the better.

            There was also an explosion in culture – art, literature, music, film … lots of stuff blossomed. <

            oh, good… and here we effing are.

          • MaryV May 25, 2021 at 12:39 am #

            LOL.

            We always had culture.

            Now, as a result of those decades, we’re under censorship, the end of comedy because it hurts feelz, and art as money laundering.

            You live in a fucking fantasy land.

          • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 26, 2021 at 9:39 am #

            Tekapo – “…but life did hugely change for boomers, and I think on balance for the better. Women, gays, blacks, Indigenous People, anti-war warriors, environmentalists – lots of different interest groups and stakeholders found a voice, and a lot of it was for the better.”

            Wait…I thought none of those marginalized peoples had a voice today…I mean that’s what the news tells us…you mean to say these problems were already addressed 50+ years ago, but we’re just playing into a fallacy now? Huh. Interesting.

    • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 1:10 am #

      Well I heard Mr Young sing about her
      And I heard Old Neil put her down
      Well I Hope Neil Young will remember
      A Southern man don’t need him around anyhow

  44. BackRowHeckler May 24, 2021 at 5:53 pm #

    Key West is the place to be
    If you’re looking for immortality
    Stay on the road, follow the highway sign
    Key West is fine and fair
    If you lost your mind you’ll find it there
    Key West is on the horizon line.

    Key West (Philosopher Pirate)

    Bob Dylan 2020

    • Tekapo May 24, 2021 at 7:01 pm #

      As far as I’m concerned, Key West was a place for drunks, loners. meatheads – and those with more money than good taste. YMMV.

      • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 7:39 pm #

        A good place for those with neither money nor taste…

      • BackRowHeckler May 24, 2021 at 7:40 pm #

        Tennessee Williams lived in Kew West.

        • Tekapo May 24, 2021 at 9:36 pm #

          Ernest Hemingway.

  45. trypillian May 24, 2021 at 6:52 pm #

    Robert Zimmerman may be a nice person, but his poetry is not really that good and it’s not really that bad either, As anyone who has taken English Lit 101 knows; his words are merely distilled from English poets. Then Robert proceeded to transmogrify collective poetic works into the wishy-washy parse that pass as generational hymns. He saw the problem in the sixties, noted the reaction ie drugs, protests and provided a solution; ie.,conning the boomers with false ideology. He knew the boomers were suckers, stoners, acid-heads and excised his options.

    Robert even had the nerve to borrow his name from Dylan Thomas, whose real poems are lyrical and romantic. Unfortunately Robert was merely behind the curtain; not the real thing.

    • BackRowHeckler May 24, 2021 at 7:37 pm #

      Well, not for nothing Dylan got a Nobel Prize, and he’s in with Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck and Sinclair Lewis, quite a select group.

      • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 7:43 pm #

        Not to take anything away from Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck and Lewis, but Barry Soetoro also won a Nobel Prize – of course he didn’t have to do anything…

        • Tekapo May 24, 2021 at 11:03 pm #

          Actual achievement is over-rated.

        • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 11:25 pm #

          LOL, the first ‘pre-emptive’ Nobel Prize.

        • Night Owl May 25, 2021 at 4:42 pm #

          Well, there was some karmic justice in the Sotero award: He went on to be GWB in half-blackface, to the hilarity of all who saw through him.

          There are still Eurotards here that will sometimes say in conversation “Yes we can,” expecting some kind of approving laugh from this ex-pat.

          The brainwashing is impressive.

          • Blackbird May 25, 2021 at 5:42 pm #

            And it gives Barry-O’s supporters an accomplishment they can claim for their hero: “Well, he won the Nobel Prize.” Otherwise all they’d have is: “But Trump!!!”

    • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 8:12 pm #

      So many eloquent explaining-class explainers, working for ???

      snoozy.

      the bird sings /

      its feathers shine..

      Wallace Stevens

    • Yohannon May 24, 2021 at 8:15 pm #

      Poetry is one thing. Spoken word another. Sung word or lyrics, another. Lyrics are the oldest form of poetry. Did he take? Who doesn’t? Expecting otherwise is like thinking a plant can exist outside of soil, and without water or light. It’s a false ideal of existence and creativity. Fie.

    • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 8:22 pm #

      > his poetry is not really that good and it’s not really that bad either, As anyone who has taken English Lit 101 knows; his words are merely distilled from English poets. <

      That's how it's done, My Dear, for the last many, many years..
      John Donne did the same. Was he "better"? Dunno / big don't care

      Dylan speaks well enough to my condition- very well, in fact- and I'm grateful for that.

  46. volodya May 24, 2021 at 7:07 pm #

    The pre-boomers gave us Dylan, the boomers gave us disco.

  47. KesaAnna May 24, 2021 at 7:21 pm #

    Bob Dylan ?

    I HAVE heard of him.

    And that’s pretty much it.

    Believe it or not.

    But , hey , I recognize the branch of service color for combat engineers and chemical warfare troops in East German and Soviet practice ! 😀

    I could be wrong about Dylan , though ??

    Several CFN regulars are associated in my mind with ” theme songs ” .

    For example , this is GreenAlba ;

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IST-GfqUwDA

    ( When I think Scotland , I think of the ocean . )

    Yohannon ;

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcyCQLewj10

    ( Right -wingers aren’t supposed to be cosmopolitan and excessively nuanced . Sure , whatever. )

    BackrowHeckler ;

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvq9r6R6QAY

    ( Why ??! It’s a sunny , upbeat song. BRH sounds sunny and upbeat even when the news is bad. )

    Anyway , SoftStarLight is ;

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-Z3BAW7o3c

    And Elysianfield is ;

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RbvGllJGxw

    Hey , wait a minute , that’s two songs by America . And there’s another two songs by America I like , but not associated with anyone in particular.

    Anyway , up until two weeks ago I was unaware that I had been an America fan for 30 years.

    • Redneck Liberal May 24, 2021 at 8:31 pm #

      Hmm…interesting take KesaAnne. It took me to thinking of a song by America that comports to my understanding of you…

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm4BrZjY_Sg

      • Redneck Liberal May 24, 2021 at 8:33 pm #

        Not sure how’d you take that, but it was intended to be a compliment. Of all the commentators around here, you sound like you’ve had a challenging journey.

        • Tekapo May 24, 2021 at 10:22 pm #

          Of all the commentators around here, you sound like you’ve had a challenging journey.

          No doubt Kesa has had one of the tougher rides, but I suspect there’s a few here for whom it hasn’t been all free beer and nude mud-wrestling. I for one … came from a very modest background indeed.

          • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 12:43 am #

            Free beer and nude mud-wrestling gets Real old after a decade or 2.

          • Blackbird May 25, 2021 at 10:07 am #

            Yeah, if the beer and wrestlers haven’t changed in 2 decades it gets kinda stale… But keep refreshing the beer and wrestlers, and, “Hold my beer and watch this!”

          • Night Owl May 25, 2021 at 4:44 pm #

            And you are still of modest means.

            The meritocracy worked for a while.

      • GreenAlba May 25, 2021 at 9:10 am #

        “When I think Scotland , I think of the ocean.”

        This could be Scotland, but it’s actually Cornwall. 🙂

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83oi_9Dq4Nw

        Landsend, John o’Groats, same difference …

        As far as you can get from Thurso, though, for Slugoon.

        • Slugoon May 26, 2021 at 2:12 am #

          (cold sweats)

          • GreenAlba May 26, 2021 at 9:44 am #

            Going to Thurso (not that I’ve been, but my daughter has friends there) and judging Scotland by it is a bit like going to Hartlepool or Runcorn and judging England by them, although not in exactly the same way. 🙂

          • Slugoon May 26, 2021 at 10:48 am #

            I know, Alba. I’m teasing. I was sat at a tea dance in the middle of a cold-front, in winter, in northern Scotland. They were extra-ordinary circumstances.

            By the same token, you could do a lot worse than Hartlepool and Runcorn!

    • Redneck Liberal May 24, 2021 at 8:39 pm #

      BRH’s number is a favorite dance jig for my 3-year-old granddaughter…

      • MaryV May 26, 2021 at 10:08 am #

        ‘Splain please how a 36 year old has a 3 year old granddaughter.

    • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 9:27 pm #

      Love the theme songs! Also, I have an appreciation for America the band as well.

      • Blackbird May 24, 2021 at 9:35 pm #

        Tug at your heart-strings, don’t they? The manipulative bastards! The songs of America (not all of them…) instantly transport me back to the summer of ’74. Not that I want to go back there, but if I do, I’m gonna try to grab the steering wheel.

        • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 11:27 pm #

          Yes, very nostalgic of the bright orange 1970s.

        • KesaAnna May 25, 2021 at 12:17 am #

          I would go back there.

          I was in East Germany then , and 8 years old. Obviously my perspective on that was a bit different from what is typical in the West .

          And ’76 , in America , struck me as a rather good time and place to be alive too.

          No computers then , but you commonly saw ten year olds free – ranging around neighborhoods without adult supervision.

          Otherwise , the apparent shear amount of freedom generally then ?

          Hard to believe now .

          • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 12:54 am #

            People were generally decent back then. Not all, of course, but most. That provided safety as the default. When things are safe, Freedom can run wild. And it did. And it was amazing.

            When we went from putting iodine on skinned knees to engineering our society so that the scourge of the skinned knee would be a horrible artifact of a Devil-may-care past, we coddled away Freedom.

            Of course, Hollywood corrupted people and then the default safety was gone. Freedom died a slow death.

          • BackRowHeckler May 25, 2021 at 8:25 am #

            KesaAnna,

            It’d be interesting if you could return to your former German hometown, see what is like now and compare it to what you remember. Also, compare current life in that part of Germany to conditions in the South where you live now.

            Brh

    • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 11:57 pm #

      Tekapo’s theme song:

      https://youtu.be/o1eHKf-dMwo

      • Tekapo May 25, 2021 at 3:28 am #

        LOL

        No – this is more me, brings out my inner folkster-hippie: Alice’s Restaurant (Arlo Guthrie).

        • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 5:35 pm #

          I’ve Got My Head Up My Ass by The Josephines.

          • MaryV May 26, 2021 at 10:09 am #

            LMAO!

    • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 11:59 pm #

      And Blackbird’s is:

      https://youtu.be/8PVal8Fy7CM

      (I hope he realizes what an honor and tribute this is)

      • Blackbird May 25, 2021 at 10:36 am #

        Ah, you know me better than I know myself…

        The captions were great for those of us with spelink ishues.

        Now to find a theme song for Mary… Kesa’s musical library is much more expansive than mine, but I feel a certain sense of investment now.

    • elysianfield May 27, 2021 at 2:39 pm #

      Kesa,
      Offered with respect;

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxQncVvsuyg

  48. JohnAZ May 24, 2021 at 8:42 pm #

    Y

    You mentioned Barry as the AntiChrist. Nah, he is not that good.

    The Anti-Christ will unify all nations under his banner for a period of time. The globalist union will be the Evil ones domain. The people that the Biden mob are reporting to internationally will be the soldiers of the Anti-Christ. Is he alive today? ??? Will he pick a religion, you can guess which one, to unify the troops under? Is the internet going to be his Avenue? Will the Anti-Christ just be man’s inhumanity to Man and will just implode onto itself? He, or the attitude, will be worldly, humanist, power driven, hate filled, and impossible to resist. H

    • JohnAZ May 24, 2021 at 8:45 pm #

      He will unify probably a world religion, be anti nationalistic and will have no good intentions, just the defeat of what little good is left in the world.

      The result may not be salvation but extinction.

      The Earth has had 98% die offs of flora and fauna in the past. Who knows, we may drive it again.

    • Yohannon May 24, 2021 at 11:27 pm #

      That was Og. I agree with you: he’s not impressive enough.

      • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 12:20 am #

        What if they kill a bil or 2? He might become impressive enough in a changing World. He is adored globally. Knock off 80mm GOP voters and Voila!

        Yoho, are you familar that Jesus, speaking in Aramaic, would have phoenetically pronounced “baraq obama” when speaking of the fallen angel as lightning?

        Why did Barry change his name to what Jesus literally, phonetically said when Je was describing Satan?

        • Yohannon May 25, 2021 at 2:44 am #

          Barack, also spelled Barak or Baraq, is a given name of Arabic origin. … The cognate Hebrew term is Berakhah (????????) “benediction, blessing” which is related to the Biblical Hebrew given name Baruch (Hebrew: ?????????, Modern: Barukh, Tiberian: B?rû?, “blessed”

          Obama is a Luo (Kenyan tribe) name meaning to bend.

          But who knows? You may be right. It is said that “somehow” when backwardly masked, his “Yes, we can” becomes “Praise Satan”.

          • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 3:17 am #

            I read an analysis by a (claimed) expert in Aramaic back when BO was still President. He went through the structure of the sentence of Jesus telling His disciples that (paraphrased), “the fallen angel comes to the Earth like lightning” translates so that Our Saviour literally, phonetically, said the syllables baraq obama when describing Satan.

            One analysis. Once. Circa 2014ish.

            It made sense to me but my Prof. gave me a 50% pass in French 100 (i.e. what do I know?).

            Like I say, he is adored globally. He ticks all the boxes. Black? Check! Mixed race? Check! Married to a middle linebacker? Check!

            I thnk that we should keep a close eye on Baraq during this (his third) term.

          • GreenAlba May 25, 2021 at 8:37 am #

            Don’t believe everything your read, little Josephine.

            https://www.studylight.org/language-studies/aramaic-thoughts.html?article=628

          • GreenAlba May 25, 2021 at 8:39 am #

            This is the kind of utter crap that fills half the interwebz.

            And is quoted, it appears, but people who like to claim they KNOW The Truth.

            Jeez.

          • GreenAlba May 25, 2021 at 8:41 am #

            And you’re right, it ticks all the boxes. Just not the ones you mean.

          • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 11:08 am #

            Yoho, are you familar that Jesus, speaking in Aramaic, would have phoenetically pronounced “baraq obama” when speaking of the fallen angel as lightning?

            Why did Barry change his name to what Jesus literally, phonetically said when Je [sic] was describing Satan?

            I am asking questions, you troll-y dope.

            I seek The Truth while you believe in magic, explosion-proof paper passports and 6 vaxxes developed on an impossible timeline.

            don’t believe everything you read, little Josephine.

            D’uh! But is it ok to read and ask questions about it to an expert like Yoho, you troll-y dope?

            As for giving me insulting nicknames, you’re awful at it. See, the whole goal is to zing the opponent with Truth.

            You believe that Gates & Fauci are working towards a goal of 10,000,000,000 souls on our depleted planet. Santa-Claus Believer fits. GA, SCB. Get it?

            Tekapo argues like a little girl. He states his opinion as Fact then engages in a barrage of name-calling, ad homs, strawmen and then goes stomping off to her room after throwing her birthday cake on the floor. Tekapo is Josephine. Get it?

            OG, Let’s Have a Baby (thx, Yoho) makes no sense. You misinterpreted my one ambiguous sentence and now refuse to take my clarification on my thoughts and feelings you troll-y dope.

            Calling me “Josephine” when “Tomahawk” would be more fitting does not make sense.

            Ok, GA, here is the deal:

            You must give me a nickname that both fits (i.e. Elephant Feet or Bull-in-China-Shoppe (BCS)) and hurts me.

            It must fit me, Right? That’s how this works. Focus on my confidence or my arrogance or my too many personal details or something based on my many, many Real flaws, you troll-y dope.

            Thank you for the link. I will examine it as I ask questions and seek The Truth, you troll-y dope.

          • GreenAlba May 25, 2021 at 11:25 am #

            You’re so damned attractive when you’re angry. 🙂

          • GreenAlba May 25, 2021 at 11:32 am #

            And don’t tell me what to focus on, Gorgeous, that’s not the way it works.

            At the moment I’m focusing on how credulous you are, and previously I was focusing on your exact words that gave me your pissy postnominals.

          • Yohannon May 25, 2021 at 11:54 am #

            https://dailystormer.su/british-blm-activist-shot-in-the-head-by-the-blacks/

            Was it M5? The same ones who killed Diana! Perhaps a Black agent loyal to the Crown? What say you, Dame Alba?

          • GreenAlba May 25, 2021 at 12:03 pm #

            Nothing at all, I’m afraid. Never heard of her before she was shot and find myself incurious, sorry.

            It probably wouldn’t matter what I read, I’d most likely still not know what happened. So I won’t bother.

          • GreenAlba May 25, 2021 at 12:07 pm #

            You’re into nature, aren’t you, Yoho?

            I found it quite funny, given last year’s focus on them, that my daughters and I found ourselves temporary custodians of a bat at the weekend, in our rented cottage in the Borders.

            They are a protected species in the UK.

            We had to take it to a vet. 🙂

          • Yohannon May 25, 2021 at 1:13 pm #

            They are said to make ok pets. You can pet them a little. I don’t know if they’re very smart or affectionate though. Did it warm up to you, Allison and pale, dreamy Mildred?

          • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 1:31 pm #

            Oh, GA, about Baraq Obama’s box ticking:

            I get it from both the way that you think that I do as well as the way that you think that I do not.

            That is, President Obama is Super Wokeman. He ticks all the boxes for the woke and for the anti-woke.

            —–

            Gorgeous, eh? So I’ve been called “a chick magnet” a few times in my life. Big deal. I keep pointing out that I am irrelevant and that it is The Truth that matters.

            God bless you, GreenAlba. Have a Great evening!

          • GreenAlba May 25, 2021 at 1:31 pm #

            We only had it overnight. Alison, who found it, checked the bat pages on the interwebz. She eventually phoned a local bat group, who said they didn’t cover our exact area so we should take it to a vet. They took her name, so she became the Responsible Batperson.

            It didn’t look very perky and we didn’t know how long it had been in the house (it was on the kitchen floor). Per the bat pages, she soaked a paper towel and it got a drink. You can’t touch them without gloves, as they carry diseases, like rabies, so the first vet declined to take it, because of the risk of infection, but the second one relieved us of our responsibilty to Hamish or Boris (it was never finalised).

            We learned that they can’t take flight from the ground. You have to put them up high, which of course you can’t do if you don’t have any gloves. Or a ladder. 🙂

            Anyway, after driving 25 miles and back for the blessed bat, I hope it survived.

            We don’t have a Mildred, pale or otherwise.

          • GreenAlba May 25, 2021 at 1:40 pm #

            On the other hand, if the bat wasn’t male, Mildred would have done fine.

          • GreenAlba May 25, 2021 at 1:41 pm #

            “So I’ve been called “a chick magnet” a few times in my life. ”

            Men are hilarious.

            But have a good evening yourself, OG.

          • GreenAlba May 25, 2021 at 1:53 pm #

            Evening, I mean, not weekend!

          • GreenAlba May 25, 2021 at 1:54 pm #

            Oh gawd, I was right the first time. Weekend bat-tery is getting to me.

          • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 3:20 pm #

            Question: How many of the unjabbed would’ve simply popped that bat into a plastic bag, crushed it underfoot on the sidewalk and gone on about your day?

          • GreenAlba May 25, 2021 at 4:40 pm #

            I’ve no idea, OG. My daughters and my grandson are of the unjabbed, and none of them thought to put it in a plastic bag and crush the life out of it.

            YMMV when it comes to your unjabbled.

          • GreenAlba May 25, 2021 at 4:41 pm #

            And it was the country, so no sidewalk.

          • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 5:23 pm #

            Interesting. Of course any hard, reasonably flat surface will suffice when crushing a bat underfoot. A step-stone. A piece of wood.

            I remember my Dad & Uncle dealing with bats in the cottage one 1970s spring. They got the job done with tennis rackets.

            I wouldn’t want the little guy to suffer but he’d be crushed before I had my gov’t tell me that I’m now deputized to drive all over Hell’s half acre trying to save a wounded rodent.

          • GreenAlba May 25, 2021 at 5:27 pm #

            They’re a protected species. No-one was there deputising for the government. I fully realise what you’d have done. Given your attitude to humans, I wouldn’t expect consideration for the natural world. I expect you’d kill the last badger too.

            But you can’t look at a blood clot. Got it.

          • GreenAlba May 25, 2021 at 5:34 pm #

            “I’m now deputized to drive all over Hell’s half acre ”

            Not at all given to exaggeration, are you, OG?

            Do you never tire of point scoring? Over an anecdote about a bat. It’s not as if we were doing anything else.

            And I just checked Google Maps – it wasn’t actually much over 25 miles both there and back. I recall the SatNav used kilometers, which was annoying. My error.

          • Blackbird May 25, 2021 at 6:17 pm #

            O.G.,
            What Would Jesus Do (with an inconvenient bat)?

            I suspect that Jesus would understand that the insectivorous bat (not a rodent – not even close) eats a lot of mosquitoes – probably the best natural mosquito control. So I think Jesus would take that bat from where it is unwanted and park it on the trunk of a tree, and let the bat take it from there. I’m pretty sure Jesus would never have thought of stomping the life out of God’s Little Mosquito Control Unit, just to give the finger to the government. Hopefully Jesus isn’t reading today’s comment section…

            “Jesus wept.”

          • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 10:10 pm #

            Good question, BB. WWJD should always be considered and I will be the first to admit that I did not run that test when I asked the unjabbed if they would, like me, put the little disease-ridden non-rodent out of his misery and then go on about my day.

            To be clear. I wouldn’t step on him to fuck the gov’t. I’d step on him to put him out of his misery, contain his disease-ridden little damaged body and then go on about my day.

            Anyway, I was curious what other people would do but ultimately only got more yap from GA.

            Of course, God is omni-potent. He knows our every thought and deed (including my admission that I’d’ve snuffed that life). Thankfully, He is a merciful, forgiving Father … and we are talking about a bat.

          • GreenAlba May 26, 2021 at 10:56 am #

            Yes, OG. LHB it is a bat we are talking about.

            And if you go back to the first, very short post where Hamish/Boris/Mildred is mentioned you’d see that there are two clues, obvious to anyone without cloth ears.

            One is ‘I found it quite funny’ and the other is ‘we had to take it to a vet’, followed by a smiley.

            This kind of language would generally alert the non-cloth-eared demographic to the likelihood that they are reading a passing anecdote that the author considers to be the source of some minor humour related to the apparent absurdity of the situation.

            But you seem to need to transport it to the front line of the culture wars, with your wish to claim that being jabbed or unjabbed has some relevance to whether one should save God’s Little Mosquito Control Unit (thank you, Blackbird – nice to know humour still exists beyond these shores!) or crush it to death entirely gratuitously.

            You seem joyless, OG, LHB. I’m not surprised you spend your days wishing the time when the 95% of unworthy humans can be seem to be sizzling nicely forever would come quickly.

            And nobody said the bat was damaged. It was stranded and may not have eaten for a while (the bat lady, who had a better sense of humour than you, laughed when she said not to feed it ‘unless you happen to have some moths handy’). We can leave the vet to ascertain the bat’s physical integrity, and you may go on your humourless way.

          • O.G. Hawkins May 26, 2021 at 11:38 am #

            What? Am I not allowed to ask how many unjabbed would’ve put the little non-rodent out of his misery and gone about their day? I am not allowed to Believe that there is a correlation between the jabbed and being deputized to care for a mouse with wings?

            I’ve killed my share of suffering mice and birds. I have never, ever done so gratiously and resent that statement.

            I thought the little fella was hurt so I guess the whole thing is my bad. I don’t read, GA, much. I find you pompous and boring. TruStory

            You may find me humourless. If you walked my 56 years in my shoes, you may appear humourless yourself. Who knows?

            I actually split my guts laughing on CFN most days and sometimes more than once but, as Tekapo attempts her constant mud-slinging, I am “one weird cat.” My point is, don’t you worry your little vaxxed brain corpuscles over my humour or outlook on Humanity.

            God v Satan has nothing to do with me.

            God v Satan has everything to do with me.

            I know. Those can’t both be True yet they are.

          • GreenAlba May 26, 2021 at 1:27 pm #

            “I don’t read, GA, much. I find you pompous and boring. TruStory”

            So ignore my posts. Really, please, please do.

            And I find you mega-tedious and mega-arrogant.

            True story.

            “My point is, don’t you worry your little vaxxed brain corpuscles over my humour or outlook on Humanity.”

            So, er … “I’ll tell you but don’t you tell me’.

            Arrogant *****.

          • GreenAlba May 26, 2021 at 1:35 pm #

            ” I am not allowed to Believe that there is a correlation between the jabbed and being deputized to care for a mouse with wings?”

            You may believe what you like. My daughter, who took on the responsibility for the bat, isn’t jabbed.

            Quit with your childish vendetta. It does you no credit.

  49. Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 8:48 pm #

    I don’t know anything about this dude, and we now live in an utter Hall of Mirrors, so YMMV; but I like what this man is saying:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZXPNAhsaxk

    No thank you to Tech-railroading solutions, if you please; those will not end well for almost all of us.

  50. BackRowHeckler May 24, 2021 at 8:56 pm #

    Dylan would ride his 500cc Triumph Trophy motorcycle around the perimeter of his rural property in Woodstock, NY, M1 .30 cal. carbine strapped to his back, patrolling for hippies. The Band, Tod Rundgren, Maria Muldaur, Van Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and the dozens of other musicians and artists who called Woodstock home in that period would discuss it at the one or two local bars in that town of 6000. Dylan wouldn’t socialize much, preferring to stay home with his wife and young son.

    His 3rd abiding interest other than his family and his career was investing in real estate.

    Brh

    • malthuss May 25, 2021 at 2:02 pm #

      Heroin [I have inside information on that]
      Cocaine
      money

      Someone told me, in the 1970s, He would see Bob on Rodeo Drive [shopping street in beverly hills]. Bob would drive a red caddy convertible.

      Someone else worked at the local smoke shop. BD showed up and when asked for autograph, Bob flipped him off. F— you, fan.

      • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 3:07 pm #

        It is impossible for us to even imagine what it is like to have people tugging on your sleeves and cuffs all day every day.

        Especially back in the 1970s when flipping off one of a thousand people some Thursday would not be trending on InstaFart within hours.

        • Blackbird May 26, 2021 at 8:42 pm #

          When your entire existence is built on a base of adoring fans, the least you can do is write your name on a goddamn napkin.

  51. Redneck Liberal May 24, 2021 at 9:47 pm #

    The many crimes of Joe Biden…and gay trucks!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUl5jA-cQx8

    • O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 11:50 pm #

      Gay trucks was kind of funny but, all in all, not your Best.

      • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 3:14 pm #

        Are you running into that obstacle, RL? It’s a Great character. Could’ve been a recurring character on SNL. But, interesting and comedic characters with their catch phrases grow tiresome quickly.

        Writing keeps them alive. I’ll bet that your character had a lot more “grist for the mill” with President Trump tweeting daily.

        Funny how Biden winning in 2020 was Good for your country (in your opinion) but Writer’s Block for your character.

        • MaryV May 26, 2021 at 10:19 am #

          This just in: RL has been lying to you.

          He’s not a YT influencer, he just pretends to be.

          He’s a confused grampaw with an identity crisis.

    • Tekapo May 25, 2021 at 12:40 am #

      It’s always funny when the Libs own the MAGA nutters … gay trucks LOL

  52. tom clark May 24, 2021 at 10:06 pm #

    Lil’ tommy grows up a tad:

    http://www.amazon.com/Freedom-House-Matthew-James-Rinaldi/dp/163821445X

  53. BornToKillPeace May 24, 2021 at 10:30 pm #

    Slow Train
    Bob Dylan

    Sometimes I feel so low-down and disgusted
    Can’t help but wonder what’s happenin’ to my companions
    Are they lost or are they found?
    Have they counted the cost it’ll take to bring down
    All their earthly principles they’re gonna have to abandon?
    There’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend

    I had a woman down in Alabama
    She was a backwoods girl, but she sure was realistic
    She said, “Boy, without a doubt, have to quit your mess and straighten out
    You could die down here, be just another accident statistic”
    There’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend

    All that foreign oil controlling American soil
    Look around you, it’s just bound to make you embarrassed
    Sheiks walkin’ around like kings, wearing fancy jewels and nose rings
    Deciding America’s future from Amsterdam and to Paris
    And there’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend
    Man’s ego is inflated, his laws are outdated, they don’t apply no more
    You can’t rely no more to be standin’ around waitin’
    In the home of the brave, Jefferson turnin’ over in his grave
    Fools glorifying themselves, trying to manipulate Satan
    And there’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend

    Big-time negotiators, false healers and woman haters
    Masters of the bluff and masters of the proposition
    But the enemy I see wears a cloak of decency
    All non-believers and men-stealers talkin’ in the name of religion
    And there’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend
    People starving and thirsting, grain elevators are bursting
    Oh, you know it costs more to store the food than it do to give it
    They say lose your inhibitions, follow your own ambitions
    They talk about a life of brotherly love
    Show me someone who knows how to live it
    There’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend
    Well, my baby went to Illinois with some bad-talkin’ boy she could destroy
    A real suicide case, but there was nothin’ I could do to stop it
    I don’t care about economy, I don’t care about astronomy
    But it sure do bother me to see my loved ones turning into puppets
    There’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend

    • gustafson.robert.22 May 24, 2021 at 10:55 pm #

      This is a nice lyric. Probably representing dylan’s personal outlook very honestly i think.

      My only criticism of him is of the failure to look deeply at the problem of the modern world and figure it out… I feel like, like most, he was content to rely on vague apprehensions and intuitions of problems without doing the hard work of actually dissecting true causes and effects or hammering out true possible solutions.

      So it’s kind of symptomatic of dylan’s times (age of denial) that he was looked to as a “prophet” and insightful answer-man when he himself was content to “rest” (i think) in the satisfaction, aesthetic, and popularity of vague “artistic” gesture rather than the true honesty of actual hard-earned knowledge… in fake prophecy rather than actual prophecy in other words…

      That said, i like foppy aesthete bobby d pretty well anyway…

      • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 11:23 pm #

        How would Mr. Dylan “figure it out”, exactly, and potentially provide solutions; “solutions” that would, if improbably found and somehow
        implemented, inevitably step on other more powerful persons’ toes, and likely get him, um, “defused”, if not worse?

        “You mean he’s *not* The Messiah? How Dare he!”

        We’re *damned lucky* he wrote and performed the songs.

        Thank you, Bob Dylan. That is all.

        • gustafson.robert.22 May 25, 2021 at 6:12 am #

          There’s a responsibility for people who throw mystical language around to possess truths to which the phrases purport to point. I’m just not sure dylan cared enough about that.

          But I like him. I listen to him, and I have no problem with the Nobel or anything. A great artist of his time, just a bit tainted by the time.

          For instance… later in career. He could have done more study of economics and less drawing…
          How is that unfair?

    • O.G. Hawkins May 24, 2021 at 11:24 pm #

      Enjoy vinyl-quality Dylan w/ album-artwork slide show for free:

      https://truvinyl.tv/free

  54. Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 10:32 pm #

    Something I’ve been wondering about lately is just how much the cultural product we’ve been graced with for the last fifty years or longer has been shaped by our intelligence agencies and their ilk. According
    to the late Dave McGowan their influence has been significant, though
    his take was also of the smooth, just-so manner that makes me wary.

    Who shall one trust? These days I trust only what I can verify myself;
    and if it’s on this here darpaNet, I assume it’s gotten-to until clearly shown otherwise, no matter the source.

    • MaryV May 24, 2021 at 11:29 pm #

      Bingo.

    • Tekapo May 25, 2021 at 2:25 am #

      Who shall one trust? These days I trust only what I can verify myself;
      and if it’s on this here darpaNet, I assume it’s gotten-to until clearly shown otherwise, no matter the source.

      What is this here darpaNet – is it a new organic hair shampoo?

  55. Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 10:44 pm #

    JohnAz: I know a fair number of people now that have taken the experimental, untested-in-long-term-trials Covid injection and *have been sick ever since*; not to mention the 4,138 persons in the US (according to VAERS, which is way undercounting) who’ve died shortly after taking so-called the “vaccine”. Keep your head in the sand if you want to, but many if not most here will not.

    What will be the *long-term effects* of the so-called Covid “vaccines”?

    • Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 10:48 pm #

      Adding: then there’s the explaining class’s explanation for the sicknesses post-vaccine: “you’re sick? good, that means the vaccine™ is working!”

      It sure does; but for whom?

      “It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” -Upton Sinclair

    • Tekapo May 25, 2021 at 12:17 am #

      What will be the *long-term effects* of the so-called Covid “vaccines”?

      Protection for millions from the worst effects of the Covid-19 virus, and hopefully sufficient herd immunity for the pandemic to fade away. Isn’t that a good result?

      • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 12:37 am #

        It is Just marvy, Josephine. Little girls can grow up to be whatever they set their little hearts to.

        Now lights out! Little girls need seeps. Nighty night.

  56. Wizard of the Saddle May 24, 2021 at 10:52 pm #

    I’ve never been a Bob Dylan fan, but I enjoyed reading JHK’s tribute nonetheless. Beautifully written and it was nice to veer away from the depressing train of current events that we all must normally dwell upon.

    • Yohannon May 24, 2021 at 11:43 pm #

      Yes, Mr Kunstler is a master of the short essay.

      • Bill7 May 25, 2021 at 12:25 am #

        Mr. Kunstler did a fine job here- few of the empty adjectives in this piece that have often been found on the blog (and I think The Long Emergency and Too Much Magic are great). Bravo, Sir!

  57. Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 11:08 pm #

    > it was nice to veer away from the depressing train of current events that we all must normally dwell upon. <

    Agreed, especially since we'll see no people-benefiting action on any
    of the Eternal Misdirections like:

    -Russiagate Perpetrators to be Brought to Justice!

    -Obama to be Exposed, and Real Soon!

    -Election Recount™!

    and on, and on, and on, and on, and.. no, dudes: nothing will come of any of it.

    What'd we get? Some dude named Clinesmith..

    • Tekapo May 25, 2021 at 1:01 am #

      Election Recount™!

      The election recount “audits” are nothing more than another Benghazi – flood the zone with shit that never ends … the classic MAGA / Repub / Alt-Right playbook … keep the media hyped over nothing.

      The Republicans and MAGA-type Trumpies literally cannot beleive that lots of people would vote for the Democrats … literally cannot believe it could happen. But it does – millions of Middle Americans are not consumed by the Alt-Right conspiracy jive.

      Who knows about flooding the zone with shit? It might even work … we’ll see in the 2022 Midterms I guess.

      • Slugoon May 25, 2021 at 4:46 am #

        keep the media hyped over nothing…an Alt-Right playbook

        I am more and more convinced that I’m living in a parallel universe here.

        • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 1:17 pm #

          Does it matter? It’s the only one you got.

      • Redneck Liberal May 25, 2021 at 5:13 am #

        ’ A new Gallup poll today finds that 53% of Republicans think that Trump won the 2020 election. But only 26% of Americans identify as Republicans. Journalist Richard Hine crunched the numbers and notes that those percentages boil down to about 14% of Americans who think Trump is still president. They are a minority, but they believe the former president, who continues to insist that he won the 2020 election despite all evidence to the contrary.

        Hey, the MAGAverse is shrinking, as predicted…

        • JohnAZ May 25, 2021 at 11:11 am #

          You are full of it.

          All evidence to the contrary.

          There is none. Not one piece of evidence that says they did not rig the election. The converse has tons of affidavits from people under threat of perjury that ballots were stuffed, illegal ballots were included, observers were blocked, and computers were rigged.

          The Deep State of this country unanimously blocked all investigations. They did not even address any information at all, they just blocked the investigations. Unanimously! A set up totally. I wonder how many people would be indicted if the truth ever came out.

          You are a dupe for the most corrupt political group in US history. Common sense has deserted you in favor of the thugs in the Biden mob.

          • JohnAZ May 25, 2021 at 11:35 am #

            Give one piece of evidence that the election was not rigged. Just one. It does not exist.

            If it ever gets past the blockage the Deep State has put in the way, the SHTF and the Dems and RINOs know it.

            C’mon Arizona. Not for Trump, but for removal of the corruption the Feds have foisted on the country.

            I sincerely hope that if the Arizona investigational audit, BTW, the only one, shows intentional discrepancies, heads roll.

            IMHO, the only way things will change is if people are removed from power.

          • benr May 25, 2021 at 1:45 pm #

            Looks like they are finding some evidence of election irregularities in New Hampshire as well.
            Roughly 1/3 of Republican votes were counted the other 2/3’s were not counted as a result of some fold in the ballot making the vote unreadable.
            Oh my engineered failure that only affected the Republican’s how gouache.

          • Tekapo May 25, 2021 at 2:40 pm #

            All evidence to the contrary. There is none. Not one piece of evidence that says they did not rig the election.

            You can’t do that, you know, JAZ. You can’t demand that your opponent prove the negative, because in both logical and practical terms it’s not possible.

            I can’t prove there are no fairies at the bottom of my garden, just like I can’t prove there isn’t a million ounces of gold under Tucson. It’s up to the other side to prove the positive.

            Give one piece of evidence that the election was not rigged. Just one. It does not exist.

            I’ll prove two:

            (1) Of the 50 states, 49 submitted their certified results to Congress by the legal safe-harbor date (Dec 8), including all Republican-controlled states. Wisconsin was just one day late because of a legal procedure.

            (2) Some 85 judges in 60 cases were sufficiently unimpressed by the “affidavits” and other alleged evidence that those cases couldn’t get to first base. And it is ludicrous to claim that all those judges – many Republican appointments – are all Deep State pod-people, and all primed and programmed to ensure Trump was ousted.

            The election was not rigged nor stolen. Trump followers are just being duped by the world’s biggest sore loser.

            But anyway it’s as tiresome and as pointless as re-hashing 9/11 … with the greatest argument about both conspiracies being the obvious one: far too many people with not a lot to gain had to be on it, performing perfectly, and for none of it to have leaked.

          • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 3:31 pm #

            You can’t do that, you know, JAZ. You can’t demand that your opponent prove the negative, because in both logical and practical terms it’s not possible.

            Says the little girl who knows that God does not exist!

          • Tekapo May 25, 2021 at 6:45 pm #

            Oh my engineered failure that only affected the Republican’s how gouache.

            It seems that the counting error occurred – in just one county for a state rep race – because the election officials used a folding machine they had hastily acquired to deal with the large increase in mailed ballots.

            The machine put a fold through the oval of one candidate, creating a shadow that was incorrectly counted as a vote for that person. Why the counting machine did not detect (or reject) a ballot with two marks on it – is a question I have no answer to.

            A logistical stuff-up for sure, but hardly evidence of Deep State malfeasance across the land. When you think there’s a conspiracy, check first that it isn’t just incompetence … it normally is.

          • Tekapo May 25, 2021 at 6:49 pm #

            I sincerely hope that if the Arizona investigational audit, BTW, the only one, shows intentional discrepancies, heads roll.

            IMHO, the only way things will change is if people are removed from power.

            Two points about that: (1) the evidence will need to be solid, compelling and concrete – arm-waving theorising by Cyber Ninjas isn’t going to cut it with anyone serious, and (2) all the people in power in Arizona – all those who ran and monitored the election – are Republicans. Who is going to remove them?

        • messianicdruid May 25, 2021 at 2:03 pm #

          “Hey, the MAGAverse is shrinking, as predicted…”

          Well aw-dawm,

          I’m on 14th in Ponca City, parked. It is the busiest I have seen it- here in flyover erats. The appolumi are out and about.

          I also heard 82,000 have moved from californicate to the l as nd south of the Red River.

          You making any plans?

          • Tekapo May 25, 2021 at 5:30 pm #

            Red River Oklahoma or Red River North Dakota? Whatever – you’d have to be pretty desperate to live out near either. Give me California north of Sacramento, any day.

  58. Bill7 May 24, 2021 at 11:40 pm #

    > That isn’t fear of a damn vaccine! That’s the guts to stand up to oppression, and guess what? The brains to see what’s going on here!

    The fearful ones are still pretending it’s about a virus. <

    Thanks for that, B of A, especially the apposite last sentence.

    Gotten-to Fauci: "Do as you're told!" [especially if it slowly kills you].

    No, thank you.

    B7

    • Tekapo May 25, 2021 at 1:05 am #

      That isn’t fear of a damn vaccine! That’s the guts to stand up to oppression, and guess what? The brains to see what’s going on here!

      Um … it is actually all about a nasty virus, and attempting to defeat – or at least seriously ameliorate – a viral pandemic. Everything else is just conspiracy horsefeathers, and are ruinous to that effort.

      You should be pretty ashamed, actually.

      • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 2:52 am #

        Says the little girl that believes in magic, explosion-proof passports.

        • Redneck Liberal May 25, 2021 at 5:20 am #

          Childish…give it up.

          • Tekapo May 25, 2021 at 5:35 am #

            You’re too kind RL … it’s infantile, autistic, Asperger’s OCD,

            But “childish” might cover it in summary. I wonder if the dude has a picture of the twin towers stuck to his ceiling? You know – something he can jerk off to?

          • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 11:22 am #

            The problem is not me, gentlemen. I am irrelevant. Truly we all know that.

            The problem is that you, grown men, must believe in magic, explosion-proof paper passports to protect your little noggins. The problem is that you believe that believing such ridiculousness is ok here in the Real World and that your ostrich actions will not have advserse consequences. That’s the problem. It’s got nothing to do with me.

            ———

            I’m wasting myself on pix of bldgs with the most wonderful woman in the World visiting me twice per week?

            What outlandish, inappropriate speculation, Josephine. Go to your room!

          • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 11:30 am #

            I’m childish? US Gov’t slaughters 3,000+ Americans to pass the PATRIOT Act and War forever in the Middle East.

            Looking the other way is childish, RL. Truly we all know that.

            If me, several other commentators on CFN, thousands of Architects & Engineers the World over find gaping holes in Philip Fucking Zelikow’s Official Report, then adults need address the argument.

            Children turn their heads, call the messenger of Bad News names and believe in magic, explosion-proof paper passports.

          • JohnAZ May 25, 2021 at 11:48 am #

            OG

            If you are right about 9/11, and you may be, it condemns this country to death pretty much. The American experiment of individual freedom and responsibility is over. We become just another country where the people are managed by the government. Just another USSR, another Venezuela, another Europe, another China.

            Just so a damn group of Liberal Democrats can have their little power party in DC.

            The manipulation of the people by acts such as 9/11 or JFK shows a government that is just as corrupt as the USSR was in the 20th century.

            Wait and see what tax and spend Biden and his mob do to the upper and middle class of this country. They are going to steal the wealth of haves and redistribute it to the have nots. Might work in an ideal world. Not here, ten years from now, the capital will be back in the same hands as now, and the have nots will be lobbying the government for even more handouts.

            Government control and socialism will never work for the good of the people. Yohannon’s dream of a benign government distributing the wealth fairly is a pipe dream. The power contingent will always make it fail, as it always has.

          • JohnAZ May 25, 2021 at 12:05 pm #

            Another thing.

            Wiping out 3000 folks in the WTC. Even if it was a bunch of Arabs that did it, how did we respond? We attack a bunch of herdsmen in North Afghanistan and pushed them back to Kabul. Nothing with southern and western country where the poppies grow. Nothing to clobber Iran for backing up al Queda, nothing to make SA nail one of its big families. Nothing really.

            Compare Bush to FDR. Pearl Harbor cost less people than 9/11, yet we destroyed two countries in retribution then had the wisdom to really destroy the militant spines of both in reconstruction. They have been wealthy allies ever since.

            I think our government is just plain stupid.

          • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 12:44 pm #

            OG – If you are right about 9/11, and you may be, it condemns this country to death pretty much.

            Close, JAZ. Actually, it shines Light on the Fact that the USA is condemned to death. Worse, it shines Light on the Fact that the entire Earth is condemned to death.

            That is why we have so many Santa Claus Believers on CFN. Otherwise intelligent people cannot and, therefore, will not accept The Truth that the pyramid Capstone has engineered our very existence our whole lives and they have engineered everything against God and towards Satan.

            Also, it is not a matter of me being Right about That Tuesday. Michael Ruppert (RIP) did the investigative work. Thousands of Architects & Engineers have performed the scientific analysis of those 3 controlled demolitions that our very own bluekayak was an eye-witness to the second collapse from his vantage point on the Manhattan Bridge.

            The Truth is blatantly obvious. It is not a matter of me being Right. It is, rather, a matter of me holding feet to fire in order to force Truth-deniers to face Reality.

            Nothing with southern and western country where the poppies grow.

            “Nothing” being no US Warring because the Taliban, who were in the process of shutting down the poppy fields in Afghanistan on religious grounds when they met the House of Bush at Dubya’s ranch near Crawford, Texas in the summer of 2001, go to the mountains when under attack.

            The US military facilitated the House of Bush’s flooding of global heroin misery for the past 20 years. Sadly, Canadian military participated for many years.

            I think our government is just plain stupid.

            That’s exactly what they want you to think, JAZ. Actually, the US Government are actors, jesters and clowns doing what they are told – whether it be Maxine Waters, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mitch McConnell or JoJo Magoo.

          • Yohannon May 25, 2021 at 1:30 pm #

            Yes – stupid, but only assuming they intended to do what they’ve told you they intend to do. There’s no evidence for that assumption. And much evidence against it.

            The only way to bear the Truth is to have faith. It’s that bad. Faith in humanity? Oh, that’s a joke. Faith in God.

      • MaryV May 25, 2021 at 1:48 pm #

        Get your jab yet?

      • MaryV May 25, 2021 at 1:50 pm #

        IOW, you believe thinking for ones’ self rather than listening to the people who are criminally insane and in power, is ‘dangerous’.

        Bill Gates isn’t dangerous, but some random commenter on a blog is.

        Woo woo tinfoil, right there.

  59. KesaAnna May 25, 2021 at 1:44 am #

    More of my awkward , off – topic crap .

    ” BRH’s number is a favorite dance jig for my 3-year-old granddaughter… ”

    Like I said , BRH gives you a warm fuzzy happy feeling , even when the news is bad.

    Seems like a big compliment to Me ?

    ” Love the theme songs! Also, I have an appreciation for America the band as well. ”

    Good , because —- Plwwff ! , I forgot — yours is another America song.

    I forgot.

    Something you once said that reminded me of the opening lines of the song ,

    ” Oz never gave nothing to the Tin Man , that he didn’t , didn’t already have. ”

    But what was it you said ? It was weeks ago , and I can’t remember

    But then , too , you post a lot.

    So ;

    ” When I say I’m spinning round , round , round ,

    Smoke glass stain bright color

    Image going down , down , down ., down

    Soapsuds green like bubbles … ”

    Fits — in my way of thinking.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWgJyJNcMIQ

    NightOwl ;

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVn6b9QQZeM

    As I understand it , the author wrote the song in response to the death of a loved one.

    And , in that vein , some people , like me , think the song is beautiful.

    And some folks , like me again , think the song is creepy and frightening.

    Well , I’m an East German in exile in America.

    He’s an American in unified Germany.

    So ; A song that provokes strong reactions , for a person who provokes a strong reaction.

    ( Hey , my reaction to ALL “Germans ” is strong. )

    Sean Coleman ;

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc5qoVXfxGk

    IMO , one of the smartest people I have encountered . But I suspect he doesn’t get much credit for it . —

    — which reminds me of some old Irish song , which I know nothing about , except the line ; ” You won’t appreciate your mother until she’s gone ” —- which reminds me of this song.

    To me , the group that most expresses the Working Class experience is CCR.

    And the person here who most expresses the working class experience is Volodya .

    So ;

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDGuyGPJ_JE

    Tekapo ?

    Like Yohannon , you are really complicated.

    Yohannon actually has two songs , and I suppose you WOULD mind sharing a song with him.

    Oh well.

    A classical piece.

    A lot of folks associate it with corny horror movies.

    I have no idea what Bach was thinking about when he wrote it.

    Which is just as well , because I have always had my own take on it.

    I associate it with Prometheus . In Greek mythology , the God who arguably did the most for man , but was damned for it.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnuq9PXbywA

    And finally OGH.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktoaj1IpTbw

    WTF ?

    I don’t feel like writing an essay.

    So , briefly , what if God was like a stalker , but in this case the stalker thing was an absolute positive ?

    An idea , I suppose , many or most Christians would think is loony.

    And the bands name is coincidental irony .

    But he’s stuck with it anyway.

    And I suppose that’s enough weirdness for one day.

    • Yohannon May 25, 2021 at 2:36 am #

      I like my two songs.

      Volodya, working class? Successful trickery on his part. Rulo as well. Like Michael Moore or AOC who grew up in Westchester County.

    • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 2:48 am #

      You had better run from me
      With everything you own
      ‘Cause I am gonna come for you
      With all that I have

      I am gonna break you down
      To tiny, tiny parts
      I never believed, but I see it now
      I’m learning your lesson, I’m learning your lesson

      That’s fair, KA.

      in this case the stalker thing is an absolute positive Thank you.

      I guess that I’m kinda like CFN’s Dexter. Maybe not exactly the way that it should be done but, nevertheless, holding feet to fire to force Truth-deniers to face The Truth.

      • Yohannon May 25, 2021 at 12:01 pm #

        Yes, he was a Sheep Dog that didn’t wait for the Wolves to come for the sheep but went after them instead. Offense is the best defense. Zoroaster taught the same: Evil is to be hunted down.

    • MaryV May 25, 2021 at 11:16 am #

      Thanks, Kesa, I love my song.

      We’re definitely not in Kansas anymore.

      • Blackbird May 25, 2021 at 8:04 pm #

        I’m looking for a song for you too, Mary. I have an honor and a privilege to return…

        • MaryV May 26, 2021 at 10:34 am #

          I set a high bar.

          That song (or medley?) is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.

          • Blackbird May 26, 2021 at 6:37 pm #

            “I set a high bar.”

            Yes you do! (You are so hard to shop for.) This may end up being a birthday present…

  60. SoftStarLight May 25, 2021 at 3:51 am #

    What an interesting and very thoughtful tribute and birthday wish. If I had to pick a Dylan fave? Man in the Long Black Coat. The more things change the more they stay the same. And some things never change. It is written in the dust.

    • tucsonspur May 25, 2021 at 5:12 am #

      ‘Every girl crazy ’bout a sharp dressed man….’ 🙂

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB3SOEsk3zw

      To be serious, it’s great Dylan. Layers of mystery and meaning.

      Here’s one I was just listening to:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEWOsFH9wK4

      • SoftStarLight May 25, 2021 at 10:55 am #

        Very nice! Our very own Island of the Rising and Setting Sun. And if you want to get away from it all for real then it isn’t but a boat ride to Dry Tortugas. There it really is nothing but the sun, the sand, and the waves.

  61. BackRowHeckler May 25, 2021 at 8:41 am #

    Hunter needs to be at the big meeting at the White House between the President and the Floyd family; they could hash it out: What’s more lucrative, the brutal, drug soaked street crime of the Floyds, or high level, drug soaked influence peddling of the Biden family? It’d be like Dutch Schultz and his grimy Brooklyn number rackets having a sit down with Herman Goering, international art thief. In this case Floyd’s come out on top with their $27 million payout from the City of Minneapolis, proving crime does indeed pay.

    Incidentally, current news coverage of St George and the ‘Racial Reckoning’ doesn’t even mention the bloodbath occurring right now in Minneapolis and ‘Communitiess of Color’ across the country.

    Brh

    • JohnAZ May 25, 2021 at 12:11 pm #

      You know, you are right.

      We are trying to get the perpetrators of the illicit it trades to admit their guilt.

      Not only will they fight that to the death, they have incorporated it into their life style.

      Hunter should be doing ads on You Tube for the cartels, the CCP and its fentanyl, the Colombian cocaine lords and for the Afghani farmers and their poppy fields.

      The Big Guy will get his 10%.

  62. BackRowHeckler May 25, 2021 at 10:02 am #

    Heard anything about Cash Gernon lately?

    • malthuss May 25, 2021 at 10:36 am #

      sssh. they warn of white privilege. I just read an article in a local throwaway about such.

    • MaryV May 25, 2021 at 11:22 am #

      Who’s got time for that? The BIG news is that Rogan criticized the Wokester cancel culture silencing of white straight guys.

      • Tekapo May 25, 2021 at 1:32 pm #

        LMAO. The white straight guys have big pulpits, loud megaphones, and millions of white straight guys listening to their grunge every day … they have the MOST media power by far. The opposite of being silenced.

        The White Grievance industry is a laughing stock.

        • benr May 25, 2021 at 1:38 pm #

          The only laughing stock is you.
          Your ridiculous take on unreality shows how unhinged you really are.

          Have you actually paid attention to anything?

          The media portrayal of the white male is imbecilic at best and downright cuckolded.
          Just where is this magaphone of which you speak?

          • messianicdruid May 25, 2021 at 1:45 pm #

            Ask him if he ever heard of Ma & Pa Kettle ?

          • MaryV May 25, 2021 at 3:13 pm #

            He’s completely oblivious to reality.

          • Tekapo May 25, 2021 at 6:13 pm #

            Mark Levin, the late Rush Limbaugh, Steve Bannon, Joe Rogan, Glenn Beck, Newsmax, OANN, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson …and a thousand straight white males who fill the media (as either anchors or interviewees) in every direction you care to look, from the lunar right through to the center.

            No shortage of megaphones – but they’re still not happy.

            I heard that straight white male christians make up about 28% of the population, but they want 90% of the power and all the voice. And if they lose their grip just a little, they go batshit crazy with White Grievance.

            There’s no pleasing some people.

          • MaryV May 25, 2021 at 8:54 pm #

            Why is Agent Po only listing conservative-leaning men?

            What if I tell you to STFU Po?

            I’m a woman and I get all the say now, according to you. Or does it have to be a BIPOC?

            If you’re a white man and you believe your cult members, you should not be bossing people around on a public forum. That is a no-no.

        • Yohannon May 25, 2021 at 2:19 pm #

          So if that were the case, why are we vilified 24/7/365?

          Because we don’t, in fact, own or control the media. The Tribe does. And they have a very, very deep grudge against us.

          • Tekapo May 25, 2021 at 2:56 pm #

            LOL … and you haven’t quoted from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion for at least a week!

          • MaryV May 25, 2021 at 3:18 pm #

            All part of the infantilization of everyone.

            Agent Po is proof of the emasculation. He wants his police state gov’t to take care of him. He doesn’t even want to have a voice in anything. He’s afraid if he speaks he might be mansplaining or talking over a woman, which is verboten in their cult.

          • Night Owl May 25, 2021 at 4:47 pm #

            Hey now, he has managed to procure a unit in a low-rise apartment complex.

            I also recall him telling us he owns a set of satin sheets, prior to his ban.

            U just jelly.

        • MaryV May 25, 2021 at 3:01 pm #

          I think you can still make the 1 pm “two minutes hate” session on Twitter.

        • King of Comedy May 26, 2021 at 10:17 am #

          “The White Grievance industry is a laughing stock.”

          Topped only by the White Privilege™ industry…

          It is indeed amusing though to see the groups which can’t seem to get through a day without invoking the Perpetual Victim Olympics so upset when Whitey fields a team.

          • Yohannon May 26, 2021 at 12:27 pm #

            Blacks have totally dominated the NBA for decades. When the old Boston Celtics fielded a mostly White team (a business decision?) that was successful, Blacks were utterly mortified. It was racism! The unconscious bias of these people is complete and will never end.

      • Tekapo May 26, 2021 at 5:56 pm #

        Why is Agent Po only listing conservative-leaning men?

        Because we are talking about what Joe Rogan claimed – obviously without any irony given his own megaphone – that “Wokester cancel culture silencing of white straight guys.”

        If you wish to discuss the silencing of one-legged lesbian muslim commie blacks, then I could endeavour to find a list of those for you.

    • MaryV May 25, 2021 at 9:29 pm #

      “Brown has since been charged with kidnapping and burglary but has not yet been charged with murder as police are still awaiting the results of forensic testing.”

      Have you ever heard of a person being caught on camera but not arrested for a murder? Ever?

      I haven’t.

      I think we know why Darriynn Brown isn’t, though.

      • Blackbird May 26, 2021 at 8:45 pm #

        He’s “special”.

  63. wm5135 May 25, 2021 at 11:22 am #

    “Broken hands on broken ploughs
    Broken treaties, broken vows
    Broken pipes, broken tools

    People bending broken rules

    Hound dog howling, bullfrog croaking
    Everything is broken” Dylan -Everything is Broken

    well, we will know the results of the “you must” genetic experiment in about four years, the time for a typical trial and then will be heard

    “Standing next to me in this lonely crowd
    Is a man who swears he’s not to blame
    All day long I hear him shout so loud
    Crying out that he was framed” I Shall be Released

    • MaryV May 25, 2021 at 12:44 pm #

      I didn’t know that was a Dylan song (everything is broken). I heard some jazz singer cover it, great tune.

  64. Yohannon May 25, 2021 at 12:07 pm #

    https://freewestmedia.com/2021/05/20/jewish-licra-and-great-mosque-of-paris-join-hands-to-fight-anti-muslim-hatred/

    This is how they conquered old Spain. Muslim warriors would storm a city and once taken, a Jewish garrison would hold and administer it.

  65. Yohannon May 25, 2021 at 12:48 pm #

    The Wanderer

    ‘Often the solitary man enjoys
    The grace and mercy of the Lord, though he
    Careworn has long been forced to stir by hand
    The ice-cold sea on many waterways,
    Travel the exile’s path; fate is relentless.’
    So spoke a wanderer who called to mind
    Hardships and cruel wars and deaths of lords.
    Frequently have I had to mourn alone
    My cares each morning; now no living man
    Exists to whom I dare reveal my heart
    Openly; and I know it for a truth
    That in a man it is a noble virtue
    To hide his thoughts, lock up his private feelings,
    However he may feel. A weary heart
    Cannot oppose inexorable fate,
    And anxious thoughts can bring no remedy.
    And so those jealous of their reputation
    Often bind fast their sadness in their breasts.
    So I, careworn, deprived of fatherland,
    Far from my noble kin, have often had
    To tie in fetters my own troubled spirit,
    Since long ago I wrapped my lord’s remains
    In darkness of the earth, and sadly thence
    Journeyed by winter over icy waves,
    And suffering sought the hall of a new patron,
    If I in any land might find one willing
    To show me recognition in his mead-hall,
    Comfort my loneliness, tempt me with pleasures.
    He knows who has experienced it how bitter
    Is sorrow as a comrade to the man
    Who lacks dear human friends; fair twisted gold
    Is not for him, but rather paths of exile,
    Coldness of heart for the gay countryside.
    He calls to mind receiving gifts of treasure
    And former hall-retainers, and remembers
    How in his younger years his lordly patron
    Was wont to entertain him at the feast.
    Now all that joy has gone. He understands
    Who long must do without the kind advice
    Of his beloved lord, while sleep and sorrow
    Together often bind him, sad and lonely,
    How in his mind it seems that he embraces
    And kisses his liege lord, and on his knee
    Lays hand and head, as when he formerly
    Received as a retainer in the hall
    Gifts from the throne; but then the joyless man
    Wakes us and sees instead the yellow waves,
    The sea-birds bathing, stretching out their wings,
    While snow an hail and frost fall all together.
    The heart’s wounds seem to be yet heavier,
    Grief for the dear one gone; care is renewed,
    When memories of kinsmen fill the mind,
    He greets them gladly, contemplates them keenly,
    But his old friends swim frequently away;
    The floating spirits bring him all too few
    Of the old well-known songs; care is renewed
    For him who must continually send
    His weary spirit over icy waves.
    Therefore I see no reason in the world
    Why my heart grows not dark, when I consider
    The lives of the warriors, how they suddenly
    Have left their hall, the bold and noble thanes,
    Just as this earth and everything thereon
    Declines and weakens each and every day.
    Certainly no man may be wise before
    He’s lived his share of winters in the world.
    A wise man must be patient, not too hasty
    In speech, or passionate, impetuous
    Or timid as a fighter, not too anxious
    Or carefree or too covetous of wealth;
    Nor ever must he be too quick to boast
    Before he’s gained experience of himself.
    A man should wait, before he makes a vow,
    Until in pride he truly can assess
    How, when a crisis comes, he will re-act.
    The wise must know how awesome it will be
    When all the wealth of the earth stands desolate,
    As now in various parts of the world
    Stand wind-blown walls, frost covered, ruined buildings.
    The wine-halls crumble; monarchs lifeless lie,
    Deprived of pleasures, all the doughty troop
    Dead by the wall; some battle carried off,
    Took from this world; one the dire bird removed
    Over the ocean deep; one the grey wolf
    Consigned to death; and one a tear-stained hero
    Concealed from daylight in an earthy cave.
    Just so in days long past mankind’s Creator
    Destroyed this earth, till lacking the gay sounds
    Of citizens the ancient world of giants
    Stood desolate. He who has wisely thought
    And carefully considered this creation
    And this dark life, experienced in spirit
    Has often pondered many massacres
    In far off ages, and might say these words:
    ‘Where is the horse now, where the hero gone?
    Where is the bounteous lord, and where the benches
    For feasting? Where are all the joys of hall?
    Alas for the bright cup, the armoured warrior,
    The glory of the prince. That time is over,
    Passed into night as it had never been.
    Stands now memorial to that dear band
    The splendid lofty wall, adorned with shapes
    Of serpents; but the strong blood-greedy spear
    And mighty destiny removed the heroes,
    And storms now strike against these stony slopes.
    The falling tempest binds in winter’s vice
    The earth, and darkness comes with shades of night,
    And from the north fierce hail is felt to fall
    In malice against men. And all is hardship
    On earth, the immutable decree of fate
    Alters the world which lies beneath the heavens.
    Here property and friendship pass away,
    Here man himself and kinsmen pass away,
    And all this earthly structure comes to nought.’
    Thus spoke the thoughtful sage, he sat apart.
    Blessed is he who keeps his faith; a man
    Must never be too eager to reveal
    His cares, unless he knows already how
    To bring about a cure by his own zeal.
    Well shall it be for him who looks for grace
    And comfort from our father in the heavens,
    Where is ordained all our security.

    adapted by Tolkien from the Anglo Saxon poem

    Yoho: Did Dylan take? So did Tolkien. The question is not to take or not to take from Tradition (not other living writers), but how well you take, and use, and adapt. Of course the true scholar is careful to give credit as Tolkien did. The artist is typically less careful. He may not even know he is doing it, if the Tradition has become part of his subconscious mind.

    Parts of the above were further adapted and used in The Lord of the Rings, very artfully. Adaptation is an art in itself.

    • Blackbird May 25, 2021 at 2:03 pm #

      Interesting… Just last night I listened to The Wanderer in Anglo-Saxon/Old English. Remote viewing again, weren’t you?

      • Yohannon May 25, 2021 at 2:22 pm #

        You listened to that because you knew at some level I was gong to post this. Or we both are the same “stream” to put it neutrally.

        Ever read that one about how Christ was a Warrior Chief, and the 12 Apostles his warrior band – making him the 13th Warrior?

        This liberal culture of guilt and tolerance is dead. Adopt these values and make them your own.

        • Blackbird May 25, 2021 at 6:41 pm #

          Heard some crazy Jesus stories, but not that one.

          Ever read the story of the Flavian Caesars and how they invented a religion?

          We’re in a ditch on a dead end road, and the maps that got us here aren’t gonna get us out.

      • messianicdruid May 25, 2021 at 5:52 pm #

        Goes well with Dalton’s Wanderers:

        https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7vZPrI95Ku8

        • Yohannon May 25, 2021 at 9:46 pm #

          Nice, but a very different vibe and conceptual system. This is like Christian extraterrestrials.

    • SoftStarLight May 25, 2021 at 2:36 pm #

      And therefore it would seem life itself is art. And not all for naught. Not that one can see their name written in the heavens. But would it not be all different if not for that one? And if the river does not flow how will the willows live?

      • Yohannon May 25, 2021 at 6:22 pm #

        And when the wind blows through the willows, the good news is given.

  66. BackRowHeckler May 25, 2021 at 2:36 pm #

    I got the information about Bob Dylan’s M1 and his Triumph motorcycle from an excellent book called ‘Bob Dylan, The Band, Van Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Friends in the Wild Years of Woodstock’, by Bernard Hoskyns (who Jim probably knows)

    There’s another book out about the west coast Laurel Canyon music scene that parallels Woodstock, occurring at the same time, and involving some of the same people.

    Brh

  67. O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 4:03 pm #

    All poets steal.

    “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.”

    – T.S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood

  68. beantownbill. May 25, 2021 at 4:48 pm #

    The Great Simulator’s experiment has gone awry. His coding has a major flaw. Or maybe he designed it that way on purpose. He didn’t code in critical thinking. Leaving that out of the cosmic program has resulted in most humans refusing to see reality, and instead embracing magical thinking, global conspiracies, demonic intrusions and other such delusions.

    • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 5:00 pm #

      What is happening Right now is exactly as prophesized, Shill.

      His coding has a major flaw. Or maybe [H]e designed it that way on purpose.

      Ye of little Faith. What outstanding hubris as your puny, little Human brain questions the Word of Almighty God!

    • Tekapo May 25, 2021 at 5:59 pm #

      Leaving that out of the cosmic program has resulted in most humans refusing to see reality, and instead embracing magical thinking, global conspiracies, demonic intrusions and other such delusions.

      Indeed … although I’m not sure I would say “most” humans.

      Most humans are going about their daily lives, and if they’re lucky, living a happy and fear-free life, without jumping at shadows, dodging hobgoblins, or praying to wrathful deities. The fearful demon-freaks are far more prevalent on here than in the general population, one suspects. Or at least one very much hopes so!

      • Night Owl May 25, 2021 at 6:16 pm #

        Tell us more about the Coming Alien Invasion.

        • MaryV May 25, 2021 at 11:36 pm #

          This particular rant of his sounded a bit like he’s hearing voices or something. Maybe he got the jab.

      • beantownbill. May 25, 2021 at 6:41 pm #

        You are too idealistic, IMO. The American educational system is so bad they don’t teach critical thinking at all, so the typical American has no idea of true critical thinking methods.

        • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 25, 2021 at 6:52 pm #

          They do still teach critical thinking in school…it’s just been put in a box of late…which is not critical thinking by definition. And then when those students become adults, they get the NYT telling them critical thinking is dangerous:

          https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/opinion/fake-news-media-attention.html

        • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 7:56 pm #

          Like “How can Philip Fucking Zelikow be telling me The Truth of That Tuesday and paper passports survive an axplosion strong enough to collapse a 110-story scraper where each floor was an entire acre?”, Shill?

          Critical thinking like that?

          Or … “He’s kind of got a pont there, notwithstanding my Israel-is-always-Right bias and prejudice. It does seem strange that 7.5B people know exactly how many Jews Hitler exterminated by none of us know how many people Hitler exterminated. What is up with that? Surely Jews are not more count-worthy than are goyim!”

          We are in agreement on one thing though, Shill: There is a defecit of critical thinking in the US of A.

          • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 25, 2021 at 8:41 pm #

            Not sure why you call him Shill. I mean, I get the near alliteration and all…but beantownbill has proven himself to be a pretty clear-headed contributor here, albeit old school and a bit curmudgeonly. He is clearly reacting to your provocation…but it’s not necessary on either of your parts. Just sayin. That said, what the hell do I know, carry on.

          • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 9:47 pm #

            Thanks, Mr M. Blessed are the peace-makers.

            While you were gone, beantownbill. got his shit in a knot shilling for Israel and lobbying to have my Freedom of Speech ceased. Shill believes in Freedom of Speech that he approves. Of course, that is identical to being anti-Free Speech.

            Shill has countered with Onerous Garbagebrain. That’s fair. My Free Speech makes him uncomfortable. Discussing how 3 skyscrapers were pulverized by 2 airplanes 1 Tuesday by strip club-frequenting, coocaine-snorting Saudi jihadis with magic, explosion-proof paper passports makes him lose his marbles because, deep down, he knows who shorted airline stocks on Monday, Sept. 10, 2001.

            On the otherhand, Bill, asked a Good question downstream. I Hope that he has re-commenced his journey to The Truth & Light. We shall see.

      • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 25, 2021 at 6:48 pm #

        Tekapo – “Most humans are going about their daily lives, and if they’re lucky, living a happy and fear-free life, without jumping at shadows, dodging hobgoblins, or praying to wrathful deities. The fearful demon-freaks are far more prevalent on here than in the general population, one suspects.”

        What in God’s name are you blathering about again?

        You literally do the above shadow-fearing every day on this blog.

        Fearing God and fearing global media bullshit are two very different things. You might want to go back to Sunday school. They still have cookies and lemonade there. I[‘d recommend it.

        • Tekapo May 25, 2021 at 7:25 pm #

          You literally do the above shadow-fearing every day on this blog.

          Your logic is not clear.

          I fail to see how being allergic to conspiracy theories, sceptical of so much disinformation lobbed on here, and preferring to stick to fact-based and science-based realities – constitutes “shadow-fearing”; it’s the total opposite, it seems to me.

          I don’t “fear” any deities, for the obvious reason. I don’t “fear” the media either – I consume them very critically and sceptically … I understand they are big businesses in a competitive market-place, and they have to maximise audience reach.

          Their content has to appeal to whatever market they perceive is out there. That is why they do what they do, to deliver audiences to advertisers.

          • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 25, 2021 at 7:31 pm #

            Tekapo – “I don’t “fear” any deities, for the obvious reason.”

            So who created the world we live in? Stephen Hawking and his “everything started randomly from a ball the size of an atom that exploded into everything”? Kinda sounds like creation to me.

            Tekapo – “I don’t “fear” the media either – I consume them very critically and sceptically … I understand they are big businesses in a competitive market-place, and they have to maximise audience reach.”

            Haha. But you believe them, knowing what you just said about their business origin.

            Tekapo – “Their content has to appeal to whatever market they perceive is out there. That is why they do what they do, to deliver audiences to advertisers.”

            That audience = you.

          • MaryV May 25, 2021 at 8:57 pm #

            @MrMango, spot on.

            His opposite-speak is entertaining as hell.

          • JohnAZ May 25, 2021 at 9:05 pm #

            Po

            Mr. M has pointed out one thing. Here comes another.

            The Big Bang started from a singularity, a point with no dimension, infinitely smaller than an atom. The entire universe has evolved (cooled) from that point.

            0 dimension, infinite energy with the intelligence to create the universe. Sounds like a description of a Creator!

          • Tekapo May 27, 2021 at 5:49 am #

            The Big Bang started from a singularity, a point with no dimension, infinitely smaller than an atom. The entire universe has evolved (cooled) from that point.

            Yes – I’ve read a great deal about the first three seconds … it’s the greatest story ever told.

            I find it totally, endlessly intriguing – wondering where and when and how it all began. How did something the size of a grapefruit expand faster than the speed of light, and now contain over 10^80 atoms … it’s mind-numbing, but brilliant, at the same time.

            One theory is that has been a trillion universes created over a trillion trillion years, but our occurred and survived because the laws of physics it created worked just right. Could be.

            But I don’t need a god or creator to explain it – and besides – it just pushes the issue down the road a bit: where did the creator come from? So it’s not of any use.

  69. O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 4:55 pm #

    The world is going to end tomorrow, according to a totally-sound old Bible prophecy.

    But don’t run to the underground bunker just yet – scientists say the moon’s colour is simply a result of it passing through Earth’s shadow in space.

    Most people think that only that which cannot be explained by Science could even possibly be an Act of God (while Really knowing that Science Just has not quite got there yet). It never occurs that Science merely glimpses into how God works.

    https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/old-bible-prophecy-says-world-24180859

  70. BackRowHeckler May 25, 2021 at 5:10 pm #

    Rudy Vallee, one of the first pop music stars, died in 1986, but by then nobody was listening to songs like ‘Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries’, or ‘When Yuba Played the Rhumba on his Tuba’. But here’s Dylan at age 80, 60 years on the music scene, and we’re still listening to ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and ‘Tangled Up in Blue’. What explains it?

    • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 5:51 pm #

      One can only rhumba with a tuba so many times, Heckler.

    • Tekapo May 25, 2021 at 6:04 pm #

      But here’s Dylan at age 80, 60 years on the music scene, and we’re still listening to ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and ‘Tangled Up in Blue’. What explains it?

      Perhaps it’s just a function of time, and there are still enough of us wandering the planet who recall Bob Dylan pre-1970, but when we all shuffle off, those who are 30 or 40 today will not be so entranced.

      Although a few of the true greats from the past still get a little airplay. Especially in jazz, folk, and the blues, which tend to be more conservative and change much more slowly over the decades.

      • Redneck Liberal May 25, 2021 at 8:00 pm #

        I have three sons in their 20 – ranging from 29 to 23. The oldest was brought up listening to Dylan, Neil Young, Van Morrison, Jethro Tull et al, and is an accomplished musician (guitar, piano, vocal & performance).

        The other two are not so gifted but are avid followers of contemporary music. The youngest – who can recite rap till I want to puke – is also an avid fan of The Beatles…go figure.

        So, exposure to ‘good’ music (as defined by a parent) does create a receptive mind in the youngers.

        • Night Owl May 26, 2021 at 6:02 am #

          No one cares, Maj.

          What they do care about is that you now pretend to be a young YT personality known as the Liberal Redneck.

          You just gave the game away entirely.

          LOL.

          • MaryV May 26, 2021 at 9:05 am #

            Someone better break it to O.G. that the one thing he liked about RL is a big hoax.

          • GreenAlba May 26, 2021 at 10:25 am #

            I recall having a conversation with Mr Mango some time ago about this, where I pointed out that I had not seen RL claim at any time to be LR.

            What RL said at the time (to OG) was along the lines of ‘off topic, but this is funny’, not ‘off topic, but this is funny and it’s me’. And a person would hardly be likely to say ‘look at this, it’s funny’ if it was themselves.

            I don’t imagine RL or LR are particularly unique appellations in the US.

            I never at any point thought RL was LR. If people want to add 2+2 and make 5, that’s their own business.

          • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 26, 2021 at 2:02 pm #

            You are correct, Alba. I suppose I fell prey to the anonymous nature of the internet and presumed the best of someone I don’t know, nor ever will.

            Shame on me!

          • Night Owl May 26, 2021 at 2:43 pm #

            Mary, I tried to tell him.

          • MaryV May 26, 2021 at 8:50 pm #

            Redneck Liberal posted those YouTube videos and claimed to be the guy. And then when OG complimented him on his work, time after time, Redneck did not correct him.

            I didn’t really buy that he was the YouTube guy but I take people at their word until they say differently.

            RL clearly passed himself off as this guy, for weeks now.

          • GreenAlba May 27, 2021 at 8:32 am #

            Redneck did not correct him. Perhaps Redneck does not feel any obligation to put OG right when he makes 2+2=5. Perhaps Reckneck found the misunderstanding funny. I have no idea.

            But nor did Redneck claim to be the guy.

            https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-movie-follows-the-script/#comment-567211

            That took some digging back, but my memory serves me pretty well.

  71. Night Owl May 25, 2021 at 5:21 pm #

    Vox stealth edits article from March 2020 on Wuhan lab “debunking”.

    https://thenationalpulse.com/breaking/vox-revises-anti-lab-leak-article/

    Down the Memory Hole.

    Just another day in Fake News.

    • MaryV May 25, 2021 at 6:57 pm #

      That they are burying proof means something has gone awry. Also, why are they dragging Gates through the public opinion wringer? Did he piss one of the handlers off by having an illicit relationship that made his wife call it quits?

      Something is not going according to plan…

      • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 25, 2021 at 7:09 pm #

        Maybe. But it’s also become standard practice in recent decades for media outlets to publish whatever tf they want, and then later quietly issue a retraction after the damage is done. People hear it enough times and then believe it…the retraction is an unnoticed afterthought.

        Something should be done about that accountability. But it won’t.

        • MaryV May 25, 2021 at 7:58 pm #

          Agree; but the PTB are usually exempt from their treatment. Bill Gates is one of the ‘off limits’ people. Which is why I am wondering why they allowing the press to be on top of the divorce and alleged bad conduct.

          When they did it to Nipples Cuomo, it went away the second he got back in line.

          • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 25, 2021 at 8:04 pm #

            Billy G will be back before long. He just needs a standard PR break. Everyone will forget,

          • Blackbird May 25, 2021 at 8:18 pm #

            Maybe too many people were asking too loudly why the dog doesn’t bark. So the dog pretends to back. All is as it should be. We can go back to sleep.

        • Night Owl May 26, 2021 at 1:51 am #

          Exactly, MrMango.

          This is standard practice at every McMedia outlet now.

    • MaryV May 25, 2021 at 7:56 pm #

      America’s Frontline Doctors is ON IT. Thank goodness for them.

      “BIRMINGHAM, Alabama, May 21, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — A group of parents, along with America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) and written by Thomas Renz, Esq., filed a motion in federal court seeking a temporary restraining order “to prevent the expansion of the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for COVID-19 vaccines to include children under the age of 16,” according a statement released earlier today.

      The motion was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama and is directed against Secretary Xavier Becerra and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). It consists of numerous plaintiffs representing various interests and backgrounds, including “physicians and the parents of minor children who are alarmed about offering children experimental products that have not undergone long term animal or safety studies.”

      https://tinyurl.com/vfceb4jw

  72. I.G. Uana May 25, 2021 at 6:16 pm #

    Great Happy Birthday article Mr. Kunstler.
    As for Bob’s song ‘Everything is Broken’ one might want to refer to Pablo Neruda’s ‘Ode to Broken Things’ as a source of ‘inspiration.’

  73. beantownbill. May 25, 2021 at 6:37 pm #

    I love how Onerous Garbagebrain has such an in with God as to know his thoughts and actions. Oh, wait! He knows all this by reading from 2,000 year old books written by delusional men. Or is it because his drug-addled brain hallucinated it?

    If God exists, and I’m not sure either way, I bet no one knows what He is thinking. I do know, however, He would not look kindly to Garbagebrain’s insistently mocking palaver.

    • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 25, 2021 at 6:56 pm #

      Can’t comment on your rift with OG, but I will say in regards to “If God exists, and I’m not sure either way, I bet no one knows what He is thinking.”

      The general understanding of the biblical texts is that he told us exactly what he was thinking. Even if told through mere human scribes who were there or had second/third/fourth hand accounts. The message is stil lthe same.

      • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 7:34 pm #

        You are correct, Mr M. You usually are.

      • beantownbill. May 25, 2021 at 7:35 pm #

        What I don’t understand, how can anyone know if 2000-4,000 year old books were dictated by God? It’s just a matter of faith. What makes faith in one thing and not another? If you feel that the Bible is the word of God, then that’s just a feeling, and you know how accurate feelings are.

        • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 25, 2021 at 7:45 pm #

          “What makes faith in one thing and not another?”

          Faith.

          And I don’t even go to church.

          But I know this world isn’t random.

          I’ll take the word of clearly educated people from thousands of years ago over the word of prostrated video game-playing jagoffs today. Yet that is who has the microphone.

          • beantownbill. May 25, 2021 at 11:51 pm #

            I know what you’re saying, but actually the world IS random, at least according to quantum mechanics, and at the sub-microscopic level. But through astronomical observations, we can explain the entire history of the universe from less than 1 trillionth of a second after the cosmos came into being.

            However, we still don’t know what happened before that, or if time even existed. Admittedly, we really don’t know anywhere near as much about the nature of the universe. Lots and lots of surprises are left. But what we do know now doesn’t need an all-powerful God to explain how things work. It’s just that we don’t know about existence from than darn t=0 to the first fraction of a trillionth of a second.

          • O.G. Hawkins May 26, 2021 at 11:04 am #

            But what we do know now doesn’t need an all-powerful God to explain how things work.

            need of God to explain what God has done is irrelevant, Bill.

            There is God or there is not. It is binary and factual.

            need indeed! need has nothing to do with it.

            You have fallen down and believe that a scientific explanation of Moses’ parting of the waters proves that there is no God while, Really, you are simply discovering how He works.

            Follow the evidence and apply logic, Bill. Do not start with, “We do not need God, we have Newton!”

          • O.G. Hawkins May 26, 2021 at 11:06 am #

            I gotta quit turning bold on as I constantly fuck up and follow it with italics off.

            Sorry. Again.

        • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 8:16 pm #

          Bill,

          Do you think that our Almighty Father would have us read His Word corrupted or incomplete? Rest assured, The Bible is exactly as He intends.

          I’m unsure what adjective to deploy but I am _____ in the fact that I do not require Faith. I know that God & Satan Really do exist. For Reals.

          God bless you, sir.

          ——–

          I am sure that we can agree that Free Speech does, indeed, include me and mine. That’s the burr under my saddle. The hypocrisy of a guy named beantownbill. standing up against my Right to Free Speech.

          • Redneck Liberal May 25, 2021 at 9:28 pm #

            “Do you think that our Almighty Father would have us read His Word corrupted or incomplete?

            When you start an argument from an obviously self-referencing premise, you actually have no argument, O.G.

          • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 10:27 pm #

            RL, I simply point out fact. Bill was asking how we can Trust the words of the prophets, the Word of The Bible.

            The answer to Bill’s concern is that God is Almighty and everything is exactly as He intended.

            Whether you have Faith (as Bill seems to be reaching for) or confirmed knowledge (as I do), it is logical that an omni-present, omni-potent infinite Superior Being would have The Bible, read by billions, exactly how He intends.

            He is all about The Word. He is The Word.

            You can’t tell me that that is not logical because it is. In fact, it is The Truth.

          • Tekapo May 26, 2021 at 3:49 am #

            When you start an argument from an obviously self-referencing premise, you actually have no argument, O.G.

            This is undeniably, logically true RL – but we’re dealing with happy-clappin’, god-botherin, snake-eaters here – so I wouldn’t hold my breath that you’re going to get a sensible response from these pod-people. They’re all possessed.

            It’s interesting how those who believe the god-delusion are most prone to believe every other conspiracy nut-fudgery – JFK, 9/11, election, coronavirus, vaccine, the Great Reset, the NWO … it’s a hugely long list of recent nuttery.

            Those people are really really sad cases.

          • O.G. Hawkins May 26, 2021 at 10:55 am #

            The Truth marches on unabated.

        • Tekapo May 25, 2021 at 8:22 pm #

          It’s just a matter of faith. What makes faith in one thing and not another? If you feel that the Bible is the word of God, then that’s just a feeling, and you know how accurate feelings are.

          It is a circular argument that has no beginning or end. Religious texts are deemed to be religious because they claim they are texts from religious figures. QED.

          So it’s a question of faith – and all those who claim there is proof of the existence of God (and indeed Satan) – and there’s a couple on here – are missing the point terribly. Religion has to be based on faith alone … proof is the preserve of science.

          • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 25, 2021 at 8:27 pm #

            “proof is the preserve of science.”

            Which has disproven itself many times over. Try again.

          • JohnAZ May 25, 2021 at 8:54 pm #

            Proof is the preserve of science,

            You know little about science, science is at best a theory of everything. I have as much faith in the Bible as a storyteller as science. Science is the religion of the humanist.

            Have you been paying attention to the science you have been talking about. Are you aware that the cosmology physicists are now arguing about whether there was a Big Bang or whether dark matter really exists.

            It is all theory! Have faith!

            BTW, there is not much difference between science and the Bible anyway. The sequence of events is identical. Science has never answered the big questions at all.

            Why are we here?

            Where did we come from?

            What is existence?

            What is the purpose of life?

            Remember one tenet, we have as humans created many things, but God created the minds that have created all those things.

          • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 9:00 pm #

            No. You dope. There Really is God and there Really is Satan. It is not Just a mental masturbation game, Tekapo. They Really exist and they are Really battling for souls (including yours).

            There is a point in time when Faith is rewarded. When all is revealed and one understands Albert Einstein’s assertion that Science does not disprove God but, rather, gleans glimpses of how God works.

            What you cannot grasp with your little-girl brain is that, the way you state it, it would be impossible for God Himself to prove that He exists!

            Basically you are saying, “God has never revealed Himself to me, therefore, He has never revealed Himself to anyone.” Your hubris is staggering.

            You discount what I have witnessed. You know that I am Wrong? You do not, you hubric moron.

            There are no atheists in Hell, you smug atheist.

          • Tekapo May 26, 2021 at 3:55 am #

            Which has disproven itself many times over.

            Exactly, totally, and precisely!

            The whole POINT of the scientific method is that you hold something to be true only insofar that it is testable and disprovable. When it is successfully challenged, we move on.

            If you cannot test and disprove a theory then it’s just hocus-pocus or voodoo. And 90% of what you nutters on here believe in is in the hocus-pocus voodoo category. And you don’t even recognise how anti-intellectual – in fact how anti-human – they all are. Sad.

          • Tekapo May 26, 2021 at 4:04 am #

            You know little about science

            I have two science degrees (plus an arts degree) – including a post-grad science one. What the hell would you know about my scientific knowledge … talk about a nonsense statement based on nothing but prejudice – and being a deadset grumpy Trumpy.

            The OrangeManFraud lost, okay? Get over it, and move on, ffs.

          • Tekapo May 26, 2021 at 5:41 am #

            Remember one tenet, we have as humans created many things, but God created the minds that have created all those things.

            Sadly you are very wrong JAZ. Humans created a god as well, because they believed they needed one (or at least the rulers did).

            Absent these absurd anti-human deities, human beings would probably be about 2,000 years more than advanced than we are.

            It took the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason to drag humans out of the Mediaeval Darkness that had reigned since Christianity took over the Western world in the 5th Century.

            God worship (Judaism – Christianity – Islam) has been a huge tragedy for the human race … but hopefully we’re getting close to tossing it all off us. Hopefully.

          • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 26, 2021 at 7:39 am #

            Tekapo – “… but hopefully we’re getting close to tossing it all off us. Hopefully.”

            And finally, you reveal your goal.

  74. restless94110 May 25, 2021 at 6:45 pm #

    James.

    Thank you. You got it completely right. You distilled my feeling in one column. Dylan did a thing for 10 years. And that deserved richly the Nobel. He was brilliant.

    Since then? Not so much. You’re right: occasional flashes of brilliance.

    But there was extraordinary brilliance back then.

    To my mind, the best of the entire century. And beyond.

    I don’t know if his work will survive. It certainly survives with you and I.

    Nevertheless, great column. Thanks.

    • Tekapo May 25, 2021 at 8:07 pm #

      Dylan did a thing for 10 years. And that deserved richly the Nobel. He was brilliant. Since then? Not so much. You’re right: occasional flashes of brilliance.

      Albert Einstein did a thing for ten years (1905-1915) that were not only brilliant but changed the world. He is on the podium with Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.

      But after he published his General Theory of Relativity, he was pretty much done, and didn’t really do much for the rest of his pretty long life. But he had great hair.

      • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 25, 2021 at 8:17 pm #

        Yeah, what a piece of shit. Not worthy of a second thought, Tekapo.

        • Tekapo May 25, 2021 at 8:43 pm #

          You’re a very strange person – especially imputing in others things they did not say whatsoever. Stick to your knitting, I suggest.

          • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 25, 2021 at 8:55 pm #

            I am not a strange person by any stretch. I just call you on your crap.

            So Einstein did nothing in the 20s, 30s and 40s? Ever heard of the Enola Gay? The long debates with Niels Bohr? Joining the NAACP and speaking out against segregation? Being offered (and declining) the presidency of Israel? Yeah, he was a one-trick pony to be sure.

            What is your point here?

            And no, I do not knit. Though my mom is quite skilled at that craft. Do you have a skill that we should know of?

          • MaryV May 25, 2021 at 9:00 pm #

            MrMango, Blue Anon knows very little about anything and can’t wait to show it off.

          • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 25, 2021 at 9:01 pm #

            Lol. Talking shit about Albert Einstein and his pathetic lack of achievements…

          • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 25, 2021 at 9:04 pm #

            “MrMango, Blue Anon knows very little about anything and can’t wait to show it off.”

            Mary, I suppose so. Amazing after just a week and a half away, and I can’t see that when I read his comments.

            Thanks for the grounding.

          • Tekapo May 26, 2021 at 5:55 am #

            I am not a strange person by any stretch. I just call you on your crap.

            I used to think you had a bit of a brain but were just another far-right wing-nut batting on about pro-Trump shit. Now I understand you’re actually as dumb as pig-dribble.

            Good to know … it will temper what I bother to write in the future.

          • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 26, 2021 at 7:45 am #

            Nice. You didn’t reply to anything I had to say.

            I wasn’t trying to go for the win, but thanks for kindly setting it on my front stoop.

  75. MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 25, 2021 at 7:36 pm #

    Bob must be disgusted with what we’ve become as a nation. Every warning he sounded, we ignored. Every cause he highlighted, we found a way to incorporate into the mainstream disillusion.

    Oh, I’m sorry, we have drag queen story hour for toddlers now. Problem solved.

    No wonder he stays out of the spotlight. I would too, if people looked to me for wisdom. Thankfully, I don’t have that problem beyond my own family and friends.

    • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 25, 2021 at 7:41 pm #

      And even then, they rarely ask.

      Tekapo should.

      But he is on payroll, and I’m not. Bummer for me.

      • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 8:04 pm #

        I cannot fathom anybody paying for that little shit show’s brain farts.

        Surely budget would provide Better bull shit than, “Whacko! Crazy! Insane! Nut-bar! Nut-fudge! Loopy!” and then snittin’ out of the room like a sickenly spoiled little princess.

        Tekapo’s smugness in knowing that God & Satan do not exist will prove ill-founded and hubric. TruStory

        • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 25, 2021 at 8:14 pm #

          Valid points

    • MaryV May 25, 2021 at 8:11 pm #

      Well Bob didn’t listen to Bob, either.

      He sold out, as they all do. So why would anyone else listen to his warnings?

      • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 25, 2021 at 8:13 pm #

        Selling out is called “growing up” in the music business.

        I have no problem with that…

        • O.G. Hawkins May 25, 2021 at 8:38 pm #

          Ain’t singing for Pepsi
          Ain’t singing for Coke
          Ain’t singing for nobody
          Makes me look like a joke

          • malthuss May 25, 2021 at 8:43 pm #

            if you want to aggravate our local zionist, like to Brother Charles. At least I did and he went ballistic.

          • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 25, 2021 at 8:43 pm #

            You and your Canuck standards, lol…Neil cashes his checks too!

          • O.G. Hawkins May 26, 2021 at 12:56 pm #

            Mr. M, I like to think that ole Neiler still cashes his cheques.

          • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 26, 2021 at 1:57 pm #

            Touche…

  76. MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 25, 2021 at 8:26 pm #

    So I was out of town the last week and a half for my family visit road trip.

    I’m sure you all missed me immensely.

    Not one new conversation with any group we saw neglected the obligatory covid/vaccination discussion. We spent a lot of time getting up and leaving the room when everyone needed to tell their story.

    It was fine.

    But clearly, the topic is pervasive across multiple states. It has to come up in any given conversational cycle.

    As far as I can tell, everyone I visited had been vaccinated. And made sure that fact was known. Granted, there were a few that I’m sure were just playing that card because everyone else was. Is this really where we’re at, I wondered to myself. Yes.

    Hoping to fly south to visit others this coming fall holiday season…we’ll see if the govt will allow it for us “unvaxxed” then. I’m hopeful, but not expecting easy travel. We shall see.

    The world is strange right now. People don’t see straight.

    Bobby D probably didn’t get jabbed.

    • MaryV May 25, 2021 at 9:04 pm #

      I am glad it wasn’t completely insufferable for you. It would be for me.

      I agree, Bobby D probably would not get jabbed.

      Nice to see you back here!

      • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 25, 2021 at 9:34 pm #

        Good to be back with y’all…

      • Redneck Liberal May 25, 2021 at 11:23 pm #

        I don’t know about the jab, but I do know Bobby D is not a racist asshole:

        “In a rare interview that compiles conversations with Dylan over two years, the music legend spoke about […] the death of George Floyd.

        “It sickened me no end to see George tortured to death like that,” Dylan said about the events of the past two weeks, which began in his home state. “It was beyond ugly. Let’s hope that justice comes swift for the Floyd family and for the nation.”

        Esquire.

        • MaryV May 25, 2021 at 11:30 pm #

          Oh so Bobby D didn’t realize Floyd committed stupid suicide by downing all that fentanyl. Not surprising. Celebrities often speak out on things they don’t have the facts on.

          • Redneck Liberal