Immortal Beethoven

ALARMED BY STRANGE NOISES EMANATING FROM THE TOMB OF COMPOSER LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN, THE CARETAKER SUMMONED TOWN AUTHORITIES.
Identifying the noises as music, and just as perplexed as the caretaker, the authorities sent an emissary to the nearby university with a request for a musicologist to come help solve the mystery. Upon arriving on the scene and listening to the musical sounds emanating from the tomb, the musicologist merely smiled and asked: “Can it be that you gentlemen do not perceive what you are hearing?” They answered in the negative. You are hearing one long note followed by three short ones - daaahhh, dot-dot-dot,” the musicologist continued. “Correct?” They agreed that this is what they were hearing. “And what is the theme from Beethoven’s most famous symphony, the Fifth?” the musicologist asked, following immediately with the answer to his own question: “Three short notes followed by a long one. Dot-dot-dot daaahhh. But now you are hearing the reverse. Daaahhh, dot-dot-dot. Well, then, gentlemen, it should be obvious to you: What you are hearing is Beethoven decomposing!”

Origin of 'gay' for homosexual

It was once in the saddle I used to go dashing;

it was once in the saddle I used to go gay.

- The Cowboy's Lament

Did you ever wonder why the Mass Miscommunications Media (MMM) consistently uses the term "gay" in lieu of homosexual? I take you back to San Francisco in the 1950's when there was persecution of homosexuals (yes, there was, even in San Francisco). One of the ways that organized homosexuals decided to take revenge was to prank society by generating the term "gay" as the substitute for homosexuals, thus establishing themselves as the cheerful people vis a vis drab heterosexuals. Until they changed it from an adjective or adverb to a noun, "gay" meant "having or showing a joyous mood" (Random House Dictionary of the English Language).

It happened this way: The leaders of homosexual organizations such as the Tavern Guild asked editors of the daily newspapers to initiate use of "gay" so that men oriented sexually toward other men would not be identified solely by that characteristic. Well, editors in San Francisco being the good liberal men and women that they are, and being opposed to the discrimination against homosexuals which still existed at the time, fell for the prank. Since the MMM consists principally of conformist copycats, the monkey see-monkey do syndrome which infests the MMM took hold and spread across the nation and then across the oceans.

I attribute the success of the prank to José more than anyone else. He was a diminutive, extremely effeminate, popular performer in drag who reigned for some time as "Empress of San Francisco" and who lit up any kind of gathering with his infectious sense of humor. He boasted to me one day: "By flaunting what I am successfully on stage before large audiences, and by inducing the media to change the way we homos are described, I have worked my revenge on society for the persecution of us." He cut loose with a big belly laugh as he gloated over his form of revenge, achieved through a MMM notorious for ridiculous terminology: "African-American," a combination geographical description converted into a "race"; Arab Muslims living in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, a small portion of the region once known as Palestine that included Israel, identified as "Palestinians" to the exclusion of Israelis who would have to be included in that term if there actually were any Palestinians today; genocide bombers called "suicide bombers"; etc. etc. As the familiar saying goes, once the people working in the MMM begin using such nonsensical terms, they "take on a life of their own."

How to compete with the slave labor countries

Unless you never read the parts of the periodicals and view the programs on tv that deal with the socio-economic problems of the times, you know that a major factor crippling American families is the growth of corporate "outsourcing" of jobs to countries where the current era equivalent of slave labor exists. That factor has resulted in job layoffs for millions of Americans. How do you stop it? One way is to slap taxes on any goods and services emanating from the countries where there is slave labor. But I have a better idea: cooperatives run by the members of them in partnership with the U.S. Government. They could be established as non-profit. There would be no stocks, hence no triple tiering of profits that characterizes the corporate structure. The cost of goods and services obtained from such cooperatives could be kept low enough to compete with those emanating from the slave labor-using countries. It is worth a try, no?

Tumors await cell phone users

Regular use of mobile telephones increases the risk of developing tumors, according to the findings of Israeli scientists published in the American Journal of Epidemiology. Among other scary results of their study is their conclusion that the risk of developing a parotid gland tumor is nearly 50 percent higher for frequent mobile phone users than for other users ("frequent" meaning those who talk on cell phones more than 22 hours a month). The risk was still higher if users clamped the phone to the same ear, did not use hands-free devices, or were in "rural areas." The study included 402 benign and 58 malignant incident cases of parotid gland tumors diagnosed in Israelis age 18 years or more. The research was led by Dr Siegal Sadetzki, a cancer and radiation expert at the Chaim Sheba Medical Centre in Israel, as part of a World Health Organization project.