tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post5353681800601692540..comments2024-03-27T03:19:11.216-04:00Comments on Assistant Village Idiot: Little FolkiesAssistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comBlogger37125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-25809755100938405852019-10-30T22:02:10.737-04:002019-10-30T22:02:10.737-04:00"Imagine" was the song that settled if f..."Imagine" was the song that settled if for me. It was Paul. Paul was the talented one. <br /><br />At the time Ticky Tacky was popular, I wasn't woke enough to appreciate the scorn. It was enough for me to nod knowingly and smirk. But even then I sensed the song's malice. <br />Estoy_Listohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09535132933228608287noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-79833557669285325132019-10-30T16:29:50.743-04:002019-10-30T16:29:50.743-04:00Well OBH, you can comfort yourself that Lennon cou...Well OBH, you can comfort yourself that Lennon couldn't evil sustain that level of evil and ratcheted down to regular old hypocrisy pretty quickly. He couldn't quite be a true believer. "Imagine there's no countries..." which they sang at the Concert For Bangladesh.<br /><br />It has had widespreadd pernicious effect, however.Assistant Village Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-87985894294303273842019-10-30T14:35:42.101-04:002019-10-30T14:35:42.101-04:00}}} Class factotum said... Perhaps John Lennon an...}}} <i> Class factotum said... Perhaps John Lennon and "Imagine" could be #2 on this list?</i><br /><br />No, it belongs as #1 on any shitlist.<br /><br /><b>Imagine</b> is indisputably the most <b>evil</b> song ever written. No, not hyperbole.<br /><br />It is almost proof of Satan and thus God... Because it would take the capability of Satan to write a song so clearly reflecting of Hell on Earth but which is sold -- AND BOUGHT -- as a sort of Utopian vision.<br /><br />Seriously. "Nothing to kill or die for"? So, an empty existential Hell where everything was gray and passionless. No children, no family, no art, no BEAUTY of any kind in the world?<br /><br />Because all those are things to "kill and die for".<br /><br />It's Hell. The most boring, meaningless, dreary existence possible. As with Love's opposite, people confuse the spectrum. The opposite of love is not hate. It is apathy. Hate is just a different intent for your obsession. Both love and hate are obsessive in nature. APATHY is the true opposite of both. "I don't care at all. Meh." Not even an exclamation point "Meh!"... true, absolute indifference. Living in Hell, as Imagine describes, you are indifferent to everything. Nothing matters. There is no care, no love, no passion for anything at all.<br /><br />Yet this is sold as some kind of Utopian existence for people to aspire to. Just Imagine.<br /><br />:-/OBloodyhellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03498311489201990545noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-53983249610763920172019-10-30T14:25:43.292-04:002019-10-30T14:25:43.292-04:00}}} It seems like your problem isn't with libe...}}} <i>It seems like your problem isn't with liberals so much as the human condition. We all get smug. We all get superior. Especially the author of this blog post!</i><br /><br />NO. Yes, we do all get smug and superior at times. But it is the Standard Default Mode for the PostModern Liberal.<br /><br />There's a saying,<br />"Conservatives believe they have better ideas. Liberals are certain they are better people."<br />Pretty much says it all.<br /><br />For all their love of the term "nuance", liberals see nearly everything as black and white. <br />For all their exhortation of "nonbinary" thinking, liberals see only "you support us totally" or "you are the EVIL enemy, and anything that leads your utter and complete destruction is acceptable".<br /><br />Yes, those are generalizations, and there are always exceptions. But those exceptions are far far rarer than they ought to be. And the song, being so popular even back in the 60s, shows how long and deep that arrogance has run its course, leading to today's PostModern Liberal, who gets to shout you down with epithets, beat you with a bicycle lock, dox you and get you fired, or do anything whatsoever to attack you and remove you as an obstacle to their power. They are natural fascists and totalitarians.OBloodyhellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03498311489201990545noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-27766802353160936742019-10-27T17:50:39.532-04:002019-10-27T17:50:39.532-04:00Well yeah, thanks Sam, but you realise you're ...Well yeah, thanks Sam, but you realise you're complimenting yourself as well, right? Not that you don't deserve it, but you should have set up someone anonymous to say that. I posted it over a Chicago Boyz as well, and they have comments there which I think you will find gratifying as well.Assistant Village Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-15610568760799327562019-10-27T17:43:26.191-04:002019-10-27T17:43:26.191-04:00AVI, I wish to express my congratulations for this...AVI, I wish to express my congratulations for this repost, the first set of comments, the second set of comments, and the reposts (and riposts) of the posters. It's been a DELIGHTFUL weekend!<br /><br />Ya done GOOD.Sam L.https://www.blogger.com/profile/00996809377798862214noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-22578371490503458942019-10-27T13:18:39.978-04:002019-10-27T13:18:39.978-04:00Those ticky tacky houses are going for well north ...<i>Those ticky tacky houses are going for well north of a half a mil today</i><br />Which translates into ~$450-$800 per square foot. Big ones have a lower per square foot cost such was 2,647 square feet @$450/sq ft. Above $600 per square feet is the norm.Condos of less than 500 square feet are going north of $800 per square foot.<br /><br />While those ticky tacky houses may have looked all the same when Malvina composed the song, 50 years later there is a lot of variety in their appearance. The firemen who purchased those houses 50 years ago couldn't afford them today without some inherited home equity.RichardJohnsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07490819511630683969noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-78769705723118253372019-10-27T13:17:05.312-04:002019-10-27T13:17:05.312-04:00T99 and Unknown - not where I thought comments wer...T99 and Unknown - not where I thought comments were going to go, but really excellent additions. I was thinking primarily about hippie communist smugness, and only secondarily about housing, but those two thoughts really do tell us something new about 1962 and reality/attitudes six decades later, don't they?Assistant Village Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-62372751781693059192019-10-27T09:30:47.005-04:002019-10-27T09:30:47.005-04:00Those ticky tacky houses are going for well north ...Those ticky tacky houses are going for well north of a half a mil today. And considering RE price/value ratio in the rest of the Bay Area, they seem like a bargain.<br /><br />https://www.trulia.com/CA/Daly_City/CapitalistRoaderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16384602146508155408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-73497717690893567462019-10-27T08:51:48.775-04:002019-10-27T08:51:48.775-04:00"Rained" on."Rained" on.Texan99https://www.blogger.com/profile/10479561573903660086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-84615693155232471292019-10-27T08:50:10.174-04:002019-10-27T08:50:10.174-04:00I've taken an aging hippie under my wing, a ne...I've taken an aging hippie under my wing, a neighbor and constituent who's delightfully quirky, but unfortunately her quirkiness extended to buying a ramshackle house on a lot in an area with deed restrictions that later filled in with more neighbors. They no longer think her increasing hoarding tendencies are quite as charming, and for the last two years she's exasperated a long list of people who tried to help her rebuild a new house after her noncompliant one fell to pieces in the 2017 hurricane. When I talk to her it's obvious that her eye for the unusual is a lovely trait. I don't really wish she were more ordinary. Nevertheless, she's indulged all that counter-culturalism to the point where she's a huge burden on everyone around her and her neighbors don't trust her to shape up and take care of business.<br /><br />I've patched things up with the alienated charity group, which still won't send volunteers onto her property, but they will apparently write a big check to my contractor (how I hope they're about to accept his bid) to rebuild her house under my supervision. I've told her she can't talk to them any more, no more funny jokes about guns or suicide in anyone's presence but mine, and for the next 6-8 months she's June Cleaver. No eccentricity. Just keep a lid on it until I can get this new house over your head, and then you go back to being as eccentric as you think you can get away with. I like being eccentric, too, but my house didn't fall down and I have money in the bank.<br /><br />Her new house will be Coastal Standard, but perfectly useful and humane, with porches front and back and lots of windows. It will be built to code and will not fall down in a storm. When the dust settles she can paint murals all over it if she wants, but the bulldozers are coming for all those sheds full of priceless whatever that got raised on for two years and are full of rats.<br /><br />This is private money making all this happen, by the way, not a benevolent government. Yesterday I introduced her to an acquaintance who I thought might agree to take custody of her giant orange offshore platform escape pod. Even though she wouldn't agree to let him have it (sigh), he immediately offered her a free place to live while her house is being rebuilt. He has a free place to live that he can offer her because he stays employed and pays his bills and doesn't let his own quirky individuality make him into a basket case.Texan99https://www.blogger.com/profile/10479561573903660086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-71238306270397801582019-10-26T22:14:57.575-04:002019-10-26T22:14:57.575-04:00Belated reply to Dr. Mercury's comment:
You s...Belated reply to Dr. Mercury's comment:<br /><i> You seem very desirous to portray the author of the song as a Communist. ("Reynolds was a PhD in English from Berkeley, and a communist organizer left over from the 30's. Just regular folk, y'know?") <br /><br />Do us a favor. Next time write about something you understand. Unless you're over 55 and were living in the S.F. Bay Area back in the late 60's, you really have no idea what went on back then.</i><br /><br />AVI took care of Dr. Merc's knowledge- or lack of it- of Malvina Reynolds.<br /><br />As I spent a year in Berserkeley back in the day, I do have an idea about what went on there. As a hippie freak eco-activist, lefty politics wasn't my thing. I grew up with too many Iron Curtain refugees and knew too much of Soviet history to fall for the Commie line. Nonetheless it wasn't difficult to find in Berkeley among those of my generation any flavor of socialism or communism you wanted. SDS, PL, Spartacists (Trotskyite), or simple unattached Marxist, what have you. <br /><br />At the same time, evidence of the Old Left crept up from time to time during my year in Berserkeley. At one meeting I organized, a fifty-something woman said, "In the 30s we were all Communists." IIRC, someone made some mention of "Little Boxes" and Malvina at that meeting, but my memory could be wrong.From my eco-activism, I knew Haakon Chevalier. I saw in some newspaper a petition against the Vietnam War.One of the signers was Haakon Chehvalier, Sr. I asked Haakon if that signer was his father. Yes, he was, came the reply. Years later I found out that Haakon Chevalier Sr. had lost his French professor job at Berkeley circa 1950 for his Communist ties, and moved to France. He was friends with Robert Oppenheimer. At one time Oppenheimer said that Chevalier had attempted to get him to pass on atomic research secrets to a Russian agent. The truth of that can be debated. What is much less debatable is that Haakon Sr. was a Commie. <br /><br /><br />It is interesting that a posting from 2007 attracted comments from those whose blob anme/e-mail date from 2015 or 2016.RichardJohnsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07490819511630683969noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-28915127428453157062019-10-26T14:40:21.227-04:002019-10-26T14:40:21.227-04:00I recommend this version: https://www.youtube.com...I recommend this version: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=The+groobers%2C+little+boxes which I first heard live in late '75 or late '76. (And yes, I was in all 15 of them where I was.) In late '75 I'd bought a house, but the houses around were mostly different. Moved to California, bought a house in a subdivision which was 10-15-maybe 20 years old. Took me a year or so to realize that there were only three designs and their mirror-images--plantings, trees, bushes, flowers made the differences between them.<br /><br />I have always thought this was about Levittown, but Levitt did wonders for building houses for all the men coming home from the war.<br /><br />Ok, this is my THIRD post, but after all, there were "green ones and green ones and green ones", but I started out in gray ones, and gray ones, and gray ones. And they had three levels, not just one.Sam L.https://www.blogger.com/profile/00996809377798862214noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-6938569992726603082016-06-21T21:38:13.711-04:002016-06-21T21:38:13.711-04:00Somewhere in that collection of cliches there'...Somewhere in that collection of cliches there's a point, Mike. But I suspect not a very good one.<br /><br />No, my complaint is actually a little different. You use words inaccurately. Assistant Village Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-79773608844918454892016-06-21T21:26:22.429-04:002016-06-21T21:26:22.429-04:00The original song is about social conformity, howe...The original song is about social conformity, however manifested, and the relinquishment of individualism. <br />We are all told what to do since the second we break ties with the womb...what to wear, how to speak, how to act, how to live in chronological order. The author of this editorial is an idiot.mikehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17862523631759422299noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-85734793912953797792016-04-09T09:55:13.304-04:002016-04-09T09:55:13.304-04:00Hey, Pauly, I've had thousands of comments her...Hey, Pauly, I've had thousands of comments here. Every time someone signs off with "peace," they really mean "Fuck you, but I'm a nice person and you're not." Just a little something I picked up over the years. It's been 100% accurate whenever I have tried to pursue further discussion with them. <br /><br />As for being partisan, I started as a full-socialist liberal, and left them because of their meanness. And the coolness of something being "damn catchy song" is exactly what draws them in. Whether I became partisan in the other direction is another matter - one that may be true, but you are in no position to answer from reading 1 of 5000 posts. I am at least writing from inside knowledge.<br /><br />I've been in this discussion many times before, and have a clear idea how partisan, blind, destructive and how smug I am. You are just guessing and showing off. Your danger is greater than mine.Assistant Village Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-68652430113304895872016-04-09T04:13:10.664-04:002016-04-09T04:13:10.664-04:00It seems like your problem isn't with liberals...It seems like your problem isn't with liberals so much as the human condition. We all get smug. We all get superior. Especially the author of this blog post!<br /><br />Really though, it's a damn catchy song, and I just learned to play it on guitar even though I'm an ignorant business student from the boonies.<br /><br />Anyway, have fun with your silly partisan politics that only serves to blind you to truth and destroy my once great nation.<br /><br />Peace!Pauly Shorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12427238145241834832noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-36002845721242521742011-03-22T21:14:20.913-04:002011-03-22T21:14:20.913-04:00I think what this is, is the typical response of t...I think what this is, is the typical response of those who think they have better/more-refined/superior taste than those tacky people who have made something popular or fairly wide-spread. (I remember, suddenly, a guy who played jazz piano--though I never heard him do it--complaining about someone who was currently popular [making money with a hit tune] as being "commercial").<br /><br />This is the "we're so intelligent and highly-educated and know better than most, so if you don't agree with us you must be a hick from the sticks" schtick. Assumed superiority of the "in" crowd.Sam L.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-15333620556018416792011-03-21T11:14:56.922-04:002011-03-21T11:14:56.922-04:00I started to read the comments and saw that I had ...I started to read the comments and saw that I had commented. Four years ago--hadn't realized I've been reading here that long.<br /><br />I liked Dubbadee's rewrite.<br /><br />I now live in Oregon where we have a LOT of unreconstructed hippies and other lefties. They don't age well.Sam L.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-7864775332236243062007-09-23T11:23:00.000-04:002007-09-23T11:23:00.000-04:00As Col. Neville said:"I find that too many of the ...As Col. Neville said:<BR/>"I find that too many of the people who believe themselves artists, musicians and actors, are often not as special as they imagine. In fact, they can quite frustratingly often be well, dumb, bigoted and dull, but in the approved way, so it seems ok to them and there circle."<BR/><BR/>Echo chambers make small groups sound so much larger--and don't admit other opinions.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-62723966270228802007-09-21T09:14:00.000-04:002007-09-21T09:14:00.000-04:00Dear Dr Mercury;Who do you imagine you are to judg...Dear Dr Mercury;<BR/><BR/>Who do you imagine you are to judge, jury and ridicule ordinary working people who have never harmed you and that you will never want to meet? <BR/><BR/>Oh, that's right, a Left, Liberal and stale old deluded 'once was radical', bursting with over ripe arrogance, conceit and smug assumptions. Yeah, they should put petty potential semi martinets like you in charge, right? <BR/><BR/>Yeah, the anti Vietnam crowd were a real success story. Not to my Vietnamese friends. 2 million refugees, half a million dead and drowned in the South China Sea, thousands tortured and murdered. I thought ya said it would be better when the Americans went? That was the WHOLE premise wasn't it? <BR/><BR/>It wasn't true, it was a clear lie. But why should they care? They were affluent and free in LA, California and New York, not a dump in Saigon. <BR/><BR/>How many hippies that said they 'cared' so much about the Vietnamese, went to Vietnam to 'help out' after 1975? Zero. Why? Because it was all fake, and no longer all about them. Phony to the core. <BR/><BR/>All platitudes, posture, guff, wind, theory, fashion, moral vanity and narcissism, that's the Left Liberal of today. Those with such bankrupt views are Fisked royally on dissectleft.blogspot.com <BR/><BR/>Smile and right on!<BR/>colonelrobertneville.blogspot.com<BR/>Melbourne AustraliaColonel Robert Nevillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03846514965728659622noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-71180617459455031552007-09-21T08:49:00.000-04:002007-09-21T08:49:00.000-04:00Dear cousin dave; loved your post and would love t...Dear cousin dave; loved your post and would love to hear from you. We dig the same clarity I believe.<BR/><BR/>colonelrobertneville.blogspot.comColonel Robert Nevillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03846514965728659622noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-70236212127342558372007-09-21T08:45:00.000-04:002007-09-21T08:45:00.000-04:00Dear Assistant: You are old sport, completely corr...Dear Assistant: <BR/><BR/>You are old sport, completely correct in your analysis. Bloody great and starkly, profoundly sad.<BR/><BR/>When the Beatles were still young hard rockers, they and the other energetic lads used to call folkies the 'La dee dah crowd'. <BR/><BR/>"It was all fucking middle class, with cider, bleeding scarves and songs about going to New South Wales. We all thought it was total bollocks and naff". (Naff meaning Twee, faux, contrived, embarrassing and utterly pointless.) In short, museum piece shite.<BR/><BR/>I'm a performing musician, a business, student and working family man. <BR/><BR/>And as I'm no longer 17 or 22, I have left acne, polarisation, hyperbole, cant and ignorance hopefully behind, but not the ability to dream, be enthusiastic, hopeful and decent. <BR/><BR/>I don't look down on the ordinary people whom I was often desperate not to be. I have now found the lack of change, evolution, tolerance and the lack of plain good manners in my old groover friends, peculiar, hilarious, meaningless and damn stupid. <BR/><BR/>I find that too many of the people who believe themselves artists, musicians and actors, are often not as special as they imagine. In fact, they can quite frustratingly often be well, dumb, bigoted and dull, but in the approved way, so it seems ok to them and there circle. <BR/><BR/>They possess the very things that they believe much of 'untalented' and unworthy masses are. <BR/><BR/>Yep, without a moral centre or discriminating rational judgement, you merely circle back in a Left wilderness to where you started sans any strength of improvement. <BR/><BR/>Odd innit? Betraying all the good things you were, all your human potential for a mechanical package of useless ideology, posture, moral vanity and guff... <BR/><BR/>The Left and Liberal of mind can deny anything and deny what they have just denied. It's a kind of endlessly boring, empty abstracting that never touches ground. The mental gymnastics and moral gnomery required is exhausting. See Chomsky, Penn, Moore, Fonda, Gore, Kerry etc, etc. <BR/><BR/>A blogger, Gagdad Bob said: "One of the appeals of Leftism is that you can never be called a hypocrite. That is, if you have no standards, then there is no standard by which to judge you".<BR/><BR/>Even the name ‘Folk’ is instructive. It says so much about the Left and Radical fantasists. It means the people, the ordinary working class people, the one class they know nothing about, are uninterested in except as a handy cipher and ultimately despise. Lennon said we played real folk music of the time, mostly rock and roll of the working class. <BR/><BR/>Left, Liberal Radicalism is now completely bankrupt as they have had too much power, sway and influence for to long. It seems to have done what it always does, corrupts utterly. Butthat’s showbiz.<BR/><BR/>All the best from Melbourne Australia. (Not New South Wales!) colonelrobertneville.blogspot.com<BR/><BR/>Any chance of adding my shabby blog to your roll? I’d very much appreciate it.Colonel Robert Nevillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03846514965728659622noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-34948877539100308632007-09-20T15:30:00.000-04:002007-09-20T15:30:00.000-04:00dubbadee, I guess goverment should just buy for yo...dubbadee, I guess goverment should just buy for you anything your little heart desires, shouldn't it? Maybe it should buy you a dictionary, so you can look up the definition of "meter".<BR/><BR/>granddaddy: It's evident to me that whenever a leftist uses the word "neocon" in an out-of-context manner, it means they are using it as a code word for "Jew". Now, I have no clue as to the AVI's religious preferences... but, like the word "Nazi", the leftists today don't much care who they smear with it. They just use the word to refer to anyone they don't like. <BR/><BR/>And, regarding pastor jeff's excellent comment, and the question as to why Reynolds would critize the supposedly communist ideal of Daly City: I think the word "homeowner" explains it all. Had Daly City been built and owned by govermnent, and its occupants been government dependents, it would be proclaimed a "project" and praised to high heaven, and the only criticism that the Left would have ever levied was that it didn't get more money. In the topsy-turvy world of leftism, the absolute worst sin a human being can commit is to own property. The Left has been fighting a war against suburbia since it began, and is still fighting that war today ("suburban sprawl"). Why? Because it turned urban renters, utterly dependent on the whims of their "betters", into independent homeowners. For many of the people who bought into Levittown and Daly City, they were the first people in 4-5 generations of their family to be able to own property -- their parents and grandparents lived in the slums of New York and San Francisco, while their great-grandparents hailed from the slums of London, Paris, or Rome. It wasn't supposed to happen that Levittowns provided them with an economic escape hatch and put them on the road to middle-classhood. Those people were all supposed to be confined to "workers' paradise" hovels for the rest of eternity. The Left was completely blind-sided by Levittown. Hence their visceral rage, which they've now spent a half-century trying to rationalize.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-74169549389052035812007-09-19T20:13:00.000-04:002007-09-19T20:13:00.000-04:00Or...it might sound like this:Little neocons on th...Or...it might sound like this:<BR/><BR/>Little neocons on the hillside, little neocons made of ticky tacky, little neocons on the hillside and they all look just the same.<BR/>They are frothing at the mouth and they might just have rabies and if they bite us we’ll get infected and then we all will die.<BR/>And we can’t afford the healthcare, cuz government didn’t buy us any so we’ll all get put in boxes and be buried just the same.Dubbahdeehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00075702513873912334noreply@blogger.com