Sunday surprise 8: introducing “Quotes from Outer Orbits”
[ by Charles Cameron — eccentric cleanliness and uncleanness, and a righteous blast of Handel ]
.
I ran across two quotes the other day that made me decided to start a collection of what I’ll call “Quotes from Outer Orbits”. Here are the first two:
My first pick comes from the label of one of Dr Bronner’s Magical Soaps:
Replace half-true Socialist-fluoride poison & tax-slavery with full-truth, work-speech-press & profitsharing Socialaction! All-One! So, help build 4 billion Hannibal wind-power plants, charging 96 billion battery-banks, powering every car-factory-farm-home-monorail & pump, watering Babylon-roof-gardens & 800 billion Israel-Milorganite fruit trees, guarded by Swiss 6000 year Universal Military Training
My second is a lot fiercer, but no less strange — it’s from radio host Pete Santilli, speaking on air:
I want to shoot her right in the vagina and I don’t want her to die right away; I want her to feel the pain and I want to look her in the eyes and I want to say, on behalf of all Americans that you’ve killed, on behalf of the Navy SEALS, the families of Navy SEAL Team Six who were involved in the fake hunt down of this Obama, Obama bin Laden thing, that whole fake scenario, because these Navy SEALS know the truth, they killed them all. On behalf of all of those people, I’m supporting our troops by saying we need to try, convict, and shoot Hillary Clinton in the vagina.
I’ll take the literal soap box over the metaphorical one, thanks!
**
But I don’t mean to leave you depressed at the state of the world. Meanwhile the Ensemble Zaïs, led by Benoît Babel, plays one of Handel‘s Organ Concerti with a vitality that inspires me…
Who can despair at this?
October 13th, 2013 at 7:34 pm
I am afraid neither of these materially advances the dialogue in any helpful direction.
Or am I missing something?
October 13th, 2013 at 10:29 pm
Y’know, Charles, there is enough crazy around today. It’s horrifying that Santilli has a radio show. I’m not sure we need to amplify this stuff on the internets. There are far too many people doing that already.
.
Dr. Bronner is somewhat more harmless, having died. His rant is sort of amusing if you like improbable words strung together. But, as Lex says, how does it advance the dialog? One more nut, when we’ve got too many live ones.
.
Here’s a pretty devastating compilation of the nonsense far too many US citizens believe and facts they don’t know. Yes, this stuff is depressing. How do we turn it around?
.
And that makes me think that perhaps shaming people who say this stuff would be a good thing, although I just think that someone who talks about shooting a woman who is a public figure in the vagina should just perhaps have duct tape applied across his mouth permanently.
.
Horrifying that that level of sexism gets public exposure.
October 14th, 2013 at 3:28 am
Hi Cheryl, hi Lex:
.
Oh I know, I’m a bit playful and a bit oblique.
.
.
I wasn’t really aiming to contribute to the conversation, here, just to offer a slight detour into what had caught my eye recently — my Sunday surprises are meant to be a little off the track, play for a day off, snacks not meals,
.
I do have an eye for “improbable words strung together” as Cheryl puts it, and also a sense that some of the worst idiocies that fall out of human mouths are important indicators, gauges of the undertows which on occasion rise up and bite us. The religious drivers within jihadism, and the apocalyptic drivers within that sort of religion, are undertows of the sort that have concerned me, and I’m often on the lookout for the pithy quote that encapsulates a whole realm of hatred or insight, foolishness or the wisdom of the fool.
.
I put the Santilli quote in because for me it’s a kind of low-water-mark. I don’t want to discuss, debate or proimulgate such views, simply to note — somwhat as Sheila Kennedy does in the post you linked to, Cheryl — that we’re here, that this is what we put, and tolerate, on the airwaves. This single quote would be my marker for that. And I juxtaposed it with Dr Bronner because I’d run across his label twice in recent weeks, and as word-salad goes, his is some of the lightest and best.
.
I love religious imagination, remember, and he’s a sort of soap-maker William Blake in his own way.
.
But the quotes are offered as spices if you will, not as the meat of “the dialogue”.
.
.
Maybe, though, the ugliness of Santilli’s remark leaves so bad a taste in the mind that something more powerful than Dr Bronner is required to counter it. That would be where the Handel comes in. Someone recently challenged me to find a picture of Jew and Palestinian cooperating towards peace, and my mind went quickly to Daniel Barenboim, Edward Said, and their West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.
.
Music, it seems to me, might be a field beyond words, where opponents might more easily meet — at least in counterpoint, if not in harmony and final resolution.
.
.
Or maybe, maybe I simply misjudged this one.. ; )
October 14th, 2013 at 5:19 am
I’ve used Dr. Bronner’s soap -it’s excellent despite coming from a company founded by a harmless crackpot
October 14th, 2013 at 7:53 pm
Zen, you’re very gracious. This doesn’t sppear to have been one of my more successful posts!
.
And I too have been beguiled by the good doctor’s offerings on occasion — more in Oregon and Colorado than in California, I must admit, having spent more outdoors time in those two states perhaps.