Today’s Music: Ramsey Lewis Trio: “The In Crowd”

The Ramsey Lewis Trio proved in 1966 that you could get a jazz arrangement of a pop tune, such as “The In Crowd,” on the rock charts, even though the experts of the time said it was impossible. (Of course, it helps that the ‘In Crowd’ has a hard swinging beat.) Piano virtuoso Ramsey is still going strong, movin’ and doin’ it at the age of 76. Enjoy.

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Today’s Quotes: Work

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The Official RNC Mitt Romney Xmas Card

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Today’s Quote: Even Ex-Bush Acolyte David Frum Knows the GOP Goose is Cooked

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Occupy North Pole Video from Truthdig

This was done by that other ‘Mr. Fish’ not me. As the intro says:

“Season’s greetings from Truthdig. In this year’s holiday animation by Mr. Fish, an elf confronts Santa about his exploitation of free labor.”

Copyright 2011 Truthdig.com.

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Today’s Quotes: Christmas and Religion

“How many observe Christ’s birthday! How few his precepts!
O! ’tis easier to keep holidays than commandments.”
— Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1757.

“Christmas was not widely celebrated by our founding fathers because it was considered an English tradition based on pagan rituals. In some Colonies/States it was actually illegal to celebrate Christmas.”
— Todd Smyth

“Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”
— Denis Diderot

“Obama is NOT a brown-skinned anti-war socialist who gives away free health care! You’re thinking of Jesus.”
— Seen on a protest sign.

“So in everything, do unto others what you would have them do unto you, for this sums up the law and the Prophets.”
— Jesus, Matthew 7:12, KJV.

“Jesus wasn’t a Christian, and he never preached in a church. He was also a drinker, and liked to hang out with sinners. We think of him very highly in the Church of Stop Shopping. We put him right up there with Lenny Bruce.”
— Reverend Billy

“Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.”
— Lenny Bruce

“Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to the garage makes you a car.”
— Dr. Laurence J. Peter

“Christianity [in America] is not a religion; it’s an industry.”
— Author Unknown

“There is no point in saying that one should not doubt or one should believe. Just to say ‘I believe’ does not mean that you understand and see… To force oneself to believe and to accept a thing without understanding is political, and not spiritual or intellectual.”
— Walpola Rahula, “What the Buddha Taught.”

“I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence.”
— Doug McLeod

“God has no religion.”
— Mohandas K. ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi

“If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.”
— Jewish Proverb

“God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.”
— Voltaire

“When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion.”
— Abraham Lincoln

“With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”
— Steven Weinberg

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.”
— Blaise Pascal

“Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal that has the True Religion — several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight.”
— Mark Twain

“The three great apostles of practical atheism, that make converts without persecuting, and retains them without preaching, are wealth, health and power.”
— Charles C. Colton

“Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.”
— Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary.”

“One golfer a year is hit by lightning. This may be the only evidence we have of God’s existence.”
— Steve Aylett

“Thank God I’m an atheist!”
— Luis Bunuel

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Today’s Music: Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”

I’ve read that, although Ludwig van Beethoven wasn’t particularly religious — it’s been speculated he was a Deist like contemporaries Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin — he liked the emphasis on universal brotherhood and the joy of life in the poem by Friedrich Schiller that he borrowed for the lyric. That said, he also wanted to experiment with adding the chorale style to one of his symphonies and, if you’ve ever heard Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony performed live, you know it is as loud and powerful as any modern rock concert — it makes your hair tingle and smacks you back in your seat while it astounds you with innovation in tempo and tone from beginning to end. In the last movement, the “Ode to Joy,” Big B took a note structure that sounds like something from a kid’s song and turns it inside out, developing the theme and rhythm in myriad ways as he goes along. A cruel irony that he composed this piece after he went deaf and never heard his masterpiece performed live, but a testament to his incomparable genius that he no doubt knew just what it would sound like. Humanity should be proud that we occasionally offer up a diamond like Beethoven from the mortal compost heap, although we often mistreat them while among us and make their suffering at being encircled by ass-scratching idiots more acute. At any rate, here’s an excerpt from the Ninth, the “Ode to Joy.”

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Santa Screws the GOP!

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The Guy in the Jesus Suit

The Guy in the Jesus Suit

by RS Janes

The guy in the Jesus suit
occupied space at the end of the bar
exuding waves of beneficence
and winey fumes
to all and sundry.

The suit fit comfortably,
38 Regular, relaxed-fit pleat pants,
with a seven-and-a-quarter halo
on the side.
He muttered of Old Testament doom
and it wasn’t even Sunday.

“I’m only here to fulfill prophecy,”
he remarked to the bartender,
who was taking his money from the bar.
On the jukebox Bing began to croon
‘White Christmas’ and Jesus started to say,

“I’m very disappointed in you all,”
he turned to me and glared,
“As usual, you people just got it all wrong:
I was actually born in June,
and died at the end of May.”

“I was a Jew preaching to Jews,
and so were all twelve original Apostles,
and then along comes Paul,
who was something of a loon,
and gives to the Gentiles a way…

“…to get into heaven.
Hey, the only person I said was saved
was a thief hanging next to me,
sometime before noon,
on my crucifixion day.

“And you can’t even follow
the few simple words,
that I spoke in the Sermon on the Mount,
instead you fight about theological trivia
and spread horrifying gloom
and tell people there’ll be hell to pay,

“Where any of you got the idea
you were wise enough
to judge anyone else,
I’ll never know,
I talked about humankind’s boon,
and said you should all
acknowledge your feet of clay,

“But, of course, you got it wrong again,
instead of being kinder and forgiving,
you dare use my name to
despise and complain
and drone the timeless tired human tune
of hate, vengeance,
and compelling others to obey.

“It doesn’t matter how many times you are
born again, for, in truth,
you are born only once;
and it doesn’t matter what
pious guise your words assume
nor any other homilies you bray,

“If you can’t act on my philosophy,
you can baptize yourself ’til you drown,
and sing hymns until hoarse,
and cry to the stars and moon,
and it won’t make even a whit’s difference,
whatever you pray.

“You could, indeed, make of
this world a paradise,
but you choose differently,
but maybe someday you’ll learn,
probably later rather than soon,
what a pity it is that
you could have created this world
two thousand years ago
or yesterday.”

He finished his drink
and got up to leave the bar,
then sighed deeply and said:
“Whatever webs you weave
on deception’s loom,
remember just this of what I say;
peace and love for one another
remain the only way.”

Copyright 2002-2011 RS Janes

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Cartoon: This Says It All

Copyright 2011 Bill Day. H/T to Bartcop.

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