The content/word cloud generator used to provide “related” links to posts made at Globalsecurity.Org always provides unintentionally great found humor.
When such software is used to crunch the words of your standard dullard it’s not worth a second look.
Now, munching through a DD word mass produces another thing entirely.
Here’s the one the software spat out after analyzing a syndicated copy of my post on the Predator drone virus story earlier today.
Gustavo Fring, Walter White’s boss in meth manufacturing, is one of the finest characters on current television.
Let’s give Giancarlo Esposito, the fellow who plays him, a big round of applause.
However, for last night’s episode it pains me slightly to note a lapse in reality in scripting.
Jesse Pinkman thinks the little boy, Brock, has been poisoned by his vial of ricin, produced by Walter, secreted away in a cigarette, for use at some future date on Gus.
The entire episode revolves around this. And at one point Jesse pleads with Brock’s mother, Andrea, to tell the doctors at the hospital about ricin.
In the real US, the moment she does, the jig is up for Jesse, Walter and Gus’s meth operation.
That’s because suspicion of ricin reported in the hospital at any state activates the national security network. Homeland Security and the FBI get called in, no matter how small the connection.
Five years ago I wrote about how it works here, for the Register.
In this case, an Arizona man named Casey Cutler was rounded up and convicted on a terror charge when his roommate went to the emergency ward with a respiratory illness, but reported he thought he might have been poisoned with ricin because Cutler was fiddling around with castor oil.
It doesn’t even really matter if no ricin is present. When the national security infrastructure is tripped, all Hell breaks loose.
I wrote:
[Once] the word ricin was uttered, it had to be reported to the federal network. When that happens, an array of responses is tripped, including the summoning of a Phoenix SWAT team, and WMD units from the Arizona National Guard and the FBI.
And that standard overwhelming federal response would assuredly mean the end for Jesse Pinkman, Walter White, Gus Fring and the high tech super meth production facility they run.
The only way out for the script writers: Having Andrea never mention ricin to Brock’s doctors at hospital. Or leaving the question in limbo for the final episode, probably a cliff-hanger, next week.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is writing a memoir for release in October 2012, according to a statement from Simon & Schuster. Tentatively titled Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story, the book will discuss the breakup of his marriage to Maria Shriver in addition to his youth in Austria and his work in bodybuilding, film, and politics. A source told PEOPLE that the book will “not be a tell-all.???
Of course, to really spice the promotion, a record company should immediately release the two Dick Destiny tunes devoted to Arnold’s hobby of bonking and pawing unfortunate women he’s not married to.
Quite unique, they’re the only rock songs, ever, documenting this celebrity sleaze sex action with various famous Arnold movie bon mots .
[The song] is taken from a description in the The Times of an alleged movie set incident in which Schwarzenegger and his stand-in trapped [a stand-in named Carla] next to a food service table. Schwarzenegger supposedly said: ‘I think we should make a Carla sandwich,’ and the men squeezed her between them. After they released [the woman] … Schwarzenegger stuck his tongue in her mouth.???
In the old days — like mebbe forty years ago — Chuck Eddy would write something amusing as a small bit for the next issue of Creem magazine.
[Migrated from the old blog. It still attracts commenters who wish to share their memories and Blogger discontinued support for FTP remote blogs over a year ago. Ergo, now it’s here. And if you’re seeing this and have a story to tell about the old Professor, feel free to post.]
DD’s parents had a record collection, one which demonstrated how much they hated music.
The stuff they were into: Assorted records by piano hacks Ferrante & Teicher, a duo who turned popular tunes into muzak; a collection of the Ray Coniff Singers, a vocal group which turned pop hits into muzak, the complete works of Robert Goulet and crap from Mitch Miller’s Sing Along With Mitch show.
When it came to 45’s, their taste was almost as dire. Think novelties like Rolf Harris’s “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport,” “Sukiyaki” by Kyu Sakamoto and the absolute pinnacle of elevator music, “The Girl from Ipanema.”
However, the neighbors — who were Pennsylvania Dutch — were another matter.
The Musselmans introduced me to Professor Schnitzel’s records. Schnitzel was a stand-up comedian from Lancaster who traded on humorous foibles particular to the Pennsylvania Dutch country, which my hometown, Pine Grove, was smack dab in the middle of.
The Pennsylvania Dutch were good at three things: beer, potato chips and sausage. The chip companies in Lebanon and Lancaster counties were the best in the world. By way of example, nothing made in California, or by the food giant Lay’s, compared or compares favorably with Utz.
Interestingly, it took the Pennsylvania Dutch a bit to get sausage right. The natives tended to undercook their pork, the result being that the PA Dutch country had the highest rates of trichinosis infection in the country well into the Eighties. Tastes good, though!
But back to Professor Schnitzel, who issued his jokes on 45’s, of which DD believes there are four: “As I Was Saying…”, “Schussel Along with Schnitzel,” “Imagine That” and his first, “Pennsylvania Dutch Spoken Hereabouts” — all on Buch Records of Lancaster, PA.
“As I Was Saying… is another in a series of records giving you a taste of Pennsylvania Dutch flavored humor and stories,” reads the jacket copy from 1962. “Ingredients: a bit of spice, logic and tall stories of the gay Dutch, served to you platter style by none other than the famous Professor Schnitzel, one of Pennsylvania’s outstanding humorists for more than three decades. He bubbles with humor and friendliness, and dispenses corn, comedy and nonsense in a thick Pennsylvania Dutch accent … [Professor Schnitzel] has become our local ambassador of goodwill to millions of people throughout the nation.”
The last sentence may overstate the case somewhat.
For “As I Was Saying…”, Schnitzel expounds on his “courting days” as well as his Uncle Louie, who seemed either to be always having sex or knocking on doors answered by nude women. [See also What Do You Say to a Naked Lady? by Alan Funt.]
Another prominent feature of Pennsylvania Dutch humor is the shit joke.
A good Pennsylvania Dutchman thinks there is nothing quite so funny as a mess in someone else’s pants. Indeed, the love of brown humor was and is so ingrained, copy editors at the Morning Call newspaper in Allentown used to have to regularly purge it from columns contributed by a local pastor, prior to publication.
Professor Schnitzel contributes his own gentle version of the shit joke, one containing absolutely no four letter words. The fifty second routine, from an old copy of “As I Was Saying…” is here.
The astute listener will immediately notice the crowd laughter appears to be from a women’s social event.
[Big thanks and a tip o’ the hat to Rick Noll of Bona Fide Records in Pennsyltucky for reuniting DD with the old professor.]
KarenAnn said…
Just for some clarification on Professor Schnitzel who was my great uncle. He was from Berks County and considered the tiny residential area of Turkey Hollow between Shillington, Pennwyn and Mohnton as his home as an adult. My uncle Ted (for his real name was Theodore Rickenbach) performed live for quite a few years, enjoying venues such as the Kutztown Folk Festival, but he also had a radio show on WHUM in Reading. I was just a child when he had that radio show and don’t remember much about it. He passed away in 1969. By the way, he was a hoot at family reunions!
Anonymous said…
My Grandad “COXY” ran a bar in Berkshire Heights Wyomissing and used to play the records on the side of serving drinks. Got all the workers in Rockwell and Burlington Indus. roaring. So of course he brought the records to our house and my brothers and I would play them continuously, and die laughing. I remember most of the jokes still….(Prof) “You know, the Dutch speak fewunny. Instead of saying feed the horse some hay, they say things like throw the horse over the fence some hay. Or instead of turn off the light they say “outen the light”. There are so many more, especially the story of going to New York City to find Don to write his Momma a letter. (Prof pulls up to a gas station) “Do you know where there is a little white house? (Garage Man) Why yes, there’s one around in the back. (Prof) So I went out back and by golly there it was. I saw a feller coming out putting on his coat. So I said, “are you Don?”. (Man) Why yes. (Prof) So why don’t you write your Mum a letter (sounds like why don’t you wipe your bum a little). Course, maybe he had no paper. God did we love this stuff. A BIG part of my growing up, trying to understand what much of it (the tongue in cheek) meant.
Anonymous said …
Growing up in the 50s and the 60s in the heart of the Pennsylvania “Dutch Country”, I remember only too well the humor of Professor Schnitzel.When listening to this humor, one must pay close attention to the Professnor speaking, or one will miss the humor. It was a very sad day when my sister told me that a group of nonEnglish speaking people lodged a complaint with the local police and the county goverment about the people who were speaking a language that they did not understand. The non-English speaking people said they felt threatened by these people and wanted it to stop. A language (Pennsylvania Dutch/German) that has/had been spoken for over 250 years in Berks County and survived two World Wars, may some day be against the law. And look who’s calling the kettle black?????
Anonymous said …
FYI,there was an LP of “The Best of PS”,Buch BLP 3311,with a 1964 date.Liners refer to a total of four 45EPs originally released.My wife’s family(paternal grandparents?)were neighbors(possibly next door) of Ted and their names show up in some of the routines.
870 views/listens as of this post. Which isn’t bad for relatively no publicity and the subject matter. So thanks if you gave it a listen!
One DD colleague commented that he didn’t attribute our economic and national fail to just one person.
Neither do I.
But so far I’ve found it impossible to fit everyone deserving mention into something between 2:30 and 3 minutes long. And make it catchy and amusing enough to get a laugh from those who still have a sense of humor.
And I get a kick out of “Lloyd Blankfein,” as a rock ‘n’ roll song with a lot less voltage, being better than Ted Nugent’s “I Still Believe.”
In Anaheim earlier this summer.
Glorified heavy metal bar band.
Ted’s big song on his faith in the USA, the title of his tour, and this is a
lyric sample: “I’m so [f——‘] alive; I’m so in love with this…
That’s it, along with “I believe in America”? It’s to laugh. He doesn’t even know he’s phoned it in.
“Sing that motherfucker!” Ted yells. The crowd doesn’t. Someone from the bar, in silhouette, hoists a drink to teetotal Ted. At least he still looks like he’s having a lot of fun. Mostly.
Next up — “Motor City Madhouse” — four and change decades old.
Can’t have a week without another slice of GOP Presidential hopeful Thaddeus McCotter on guitar.
McCotter doggedly takes his message, with guitar, to the people. I admire his determination.
Guitar players have to stick together, even when one of the clan plays with shorts-wearing certified pantywaists, as during this performance of Tommy Tutone’s “867-5309/Jenny,” in Ames.
The special appeal phenom of male classic cock rock performed by distaff tribute bands — illustrated.
My impression is that it’s always been about leering and moentizing small to medium crowds of leerers. An impression this semi-pro video capture backs up in spades.
The first half of which is focused exclusively on the butts of the ladies onstage. And the rutching around in of tight denim.
The cries of mockingbird young have filled the courtyard of my apartment complex. I hear them all day.
It’s a distinctive high cheep — relatively loud — signaling the parent that it’s time to fill the crop.
Pasadena is filled with mockingbirds. Every breeding season you can hear the young all over town.
Mockingbirds don’t put their nests particularly high. Think anywhere from seven to sixteen off the ground. It makes them easy to spot, particularly if the parents view anything threatening in the vicinity. It also makes them easy prey for cats and prone to disruption by the activities of people.
Still, mockingbirds persevere and do well in Pasadena’s urban environment.
When the parents spy a menace they let out a series of angry clicks. These increase in intensity and frequency the closer the ‘menace’ gets to the nest. If this is you, you’ll often feel one of the parents diving at the top of your head, pulling up at the last instant. You might even get a soft peck.
You can often see mockingbirds taking on much larger birds during breeding season. If there’s a crow in the vicinity of a nest the mockingbirds will be after it. This behavior led to an amusing scene in one of the Karate Kid movie sequels.
In The Next Karate Kid, Hilary Swank cares for an injured hawk. The hawk is eventually released. In this scene, footage is shown of the hawk being continuously badgered in flight by a mockingbird. It’s a bit amusing and must have been famously annoying to the cameramen and producer.
I know all this because the enclosed yard of a Pasadena residence I once lived in was a regular place for mockingbirds and their nests.
As a consequence, I also learned how to raise the small ones.
One summer a mockingbird family had put its nest a little too low in a tree next to a neighbor’s driveway. The young hatched and the neighbors subsequently threw a rowdy evening party right next to it.
The next morning the young birds were found to have been frightened out of the nest and into the yard, where they were discovered by our cat. Surprisingly, he was not interested in eating them.
We had been sitting outside in the afternoon listening to the agitated parents and the cat had focused on a point on the ground under some nearby bushes. We looked and there was a baby mockingbird.
Into a shoebox lined with a soft cloth it went.
The cat then took up point next to another scrub bush where a second chick was found.
It was a Sunday and the immediate problem was to figure out what to feed them and how to do it. And we had to work fast. The birds were in shock.
We reasoned that mockingbirds, being bug eaters, would probably take to a little soft liquid protein. A little bit of mushy wet cat food resuspended in lukewarm water would do until I get to the pet store on Monday for baby bird food.
However, the chicks were shocked, turned inward upon themselves and would not open their beaks to accept syringe-delivery of the food.
At this point it was necessary to get the little mouths open without harming the chicks.
I reasoned a very small sliver, made from a piece of a slightly stiff glossy magazine cover, carefully buffed a little so the edges were not sharp, just slick, might work as a miniature “pry bar.”
And it did. I could just get a little bit of it wedged between the upper and lower bills of the baby bird. When I did that, the mouth opened.
Quickly, in with the warm food. However, when doing this it’s important to slowly fill the young bird’s crop. Nothing must cause the bird to choke.
It worked! With one force feeding and filled crops the baby mockers came back to life. At that point, simply showing up with the syringe made them open up and cheep just like we were their parents.
Then came the really hard part. Feeding them every twenty minutes from sunrise to sunset for eight to ten days or until they could fly.
Because that’s what it took.
The little mockers required constant attention. After a feeding they would go relatively quiet. But as soon as the crop began to empty, the cheaping would begin.
We put the mockingbird chicks in my bedroom, in a laundry basket with a bit of branch from the tree they’d fallen out of for cover. During the first days they stayed in it. But as they grew, and they did so very quickly (you don’t get this unless you’re right on top of them constantly), they would leave it to hop about the room.
The room, of course, was tightly sealed to keep the cat who’d found them out. He was very interested in their cries and spent his days in the hall outside the door, trying to peer under the crack, hoping for a near glimpse of them reflected on the wood floor.
Poor cat. The cries and cheaps of the young birds tantalized him. Could we not see that he just wanted to be among them? Sure …
I continued to sleep in the bedroom with the birds. After sunset mockingbirds go dormant. They were always that way when I came in to lie down. And being there at sunrise made it easy to get on with the feeding as soon as they “reactivated” at the first rays of morning light.
The baby birds, being fed so often, generated a lot of crap. But it is innocuous stuff — the waste left from baby bird food of floury consistency — and one did not mind it at all. It did stain some pieces of luggage permanently, leaving marks of their rearing which can still be seen. It’s a nice memory.
At some point, late in the game, shortly before the birds can start to flutter about but well after they’re all over the rearing place, one has to wean them.
In the yard this meant the parents begin feeding them live insects and other small arthropods.
In the house this meant meal worms.
The young mockingbirds did not know what meal worms were. However, I started this the same way as with the baby bird food. I came in with the syringe. When the birds assembled and opened up, I dropped in a meal worm.
Voila!
Soon I just had to toss the meal worms in front of the chicks. That was all it took. They began exhibiting the behavior of the adults, which is to extend the wings and pulse them as they hunt for live bugs on the ground.
In case you’re wondering by now, yes — we named the chicks. Tuffy, who was the leader of the duo, or at least always making sure he was closest at first sight of an impending feed. And Fweep — an anthropomorphism of the cheeping call.
Mockingbirds are not particularly pleasant birds. They had their needs and you had to fill them. Beyond that, not much. They are not cuddly and while there is a cuteness to them, as with all young animals, they are not dear.
After about ten days of constant care the regimens of feeding were slackened. And the babies, which now were beginning to look like small adult mockingbirds — think, stumpy versions — began to flutter around the room. Our cat was now really beside himself. Such noises! Birds!
Another day passed and the birds were now always found on the top shelf on a bookcase. From there they’d fly across the room to another piece of high furniture. Back and forth they went.
It was time for them to meet the world. While I could still corral them.
Into the shoebox went Tuffy and Fweep.
Out onto the back porch and onto the garden table. The shoebox was
opened.
The birds were still. In a moment they looked up. You could almost imagine a switch closing behind the eyes. Out of the box and into the air they shot! They had their freedom, all parts in working order.
Once in the open mockingbirds are fairly difficult to distinguish from each other. Even the little ones.
Did Tuffy and Fweep stay around for a few days? Did they recognize me anymore?
There was no way to know. Nature had taken its course.
And that’s what I think of whenever I hear the calls of young mockingbird in Pasadena every summer.
