All posts by Headly Westerfield

About Headly Westerfield

Calling himself “A liberally progressive, sarcastically cynical, iconoclastic polymath,” Headly Westerfield has been a professional writer all his adult life.

Where Did July Go? ► Unpacking The Writer

, , , , ,

As July almost comes to a close, it’s time to look back on what has been an especially exciting month for me. A website I read and respect has seen fit to publish a few of my articles this month. 

My more faithful readers may have already found Why Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law Has Got To Go and Detroit is the New Conservative Wet Dream over at PoliticusUSA. If you’ve not been over there, take a look and let me know what you think. Thanks go to Managing Editor Sarah Jones who recognized my writing ability. While I will still keep updating Not Now Silly several times a week, I will also be freelancing for other publications, such as PoliticusUSA. I already know this writer/editor relationship won’t be the total disaster WebVee Guide turned out to be.

However, by far the best new thing on the internet this month — maybe the entire year — is what happens when you plug “Flying Monkey Squad” into the Googalizer Image Search Engine:

For the uninitiated, The Flying Monkey Squad™ is the name I’ve given to Mark Koldys, aka Johnny Dollar, Ashley Graham, aka Grayhammy, and the entire crew of J$’s ass-kissing sychophants. I don’t know of any of those fancy, schmancy SEO tricks, but clearly I must be doing something right.

Facts & Figures: Top Ten for July

Another thing I must be doing right is delivering words people want to read. The Top 10 for the month are, for the most part, blog posts I’m quite proud of. You can compare how this month stacks up with my All Time Top Ten by taking a gander at the column on the right.

The Top Ten For July

  1. The Detroit Riots ► Unpacking My Detroit ► Part Five
  2. Another Dispatch From Detroit, ‘Merka’s First Throwaway City
  3. Loofah Lad’s Attack Dog Jesse Watters Attacks LGBT Folk
  4. The First Three Stooges ► Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used To Be
  5. Brian Jones ► A Musical Appreciation [My all time most popular post]
  6. No Skin In The Game ► Part One
  7. How Jamaica Conquered The World ► The Day I Met Bob Marley
  8. Happy Birthday Doc Pomus ► A Musical Appreciation
  9. The Case of the Growing Child ► Perry Mason and Me
  10. Dance Music To Change The World ► Happy Birthday Nelson Mandela

If you’ve gotten this far, it’s because you care. Show you truly care by clicking on one of the adverts in the right column on this page. It won’t cost you a thing, but I make a few pennies, and I do mean few. Show you really, really care by clicking two adverts.

Advertising makes the world go round.

Another Dispatch From Detroit, ‘Merka’s First Throwaway City

, , , , , , ,

Once upon a time Detroit was called “The Arsenal of Democracy.” However, the consequences of 60 years of White Flight — systemic racism, to be blunt — finally came home to roost in Detroit, my hometown. On July 18, 2013, at approximately 4:06 PM EDT, Detroit’s unelected, possibly illegal, Emergency Manager Kevin Orr filed for bankruptcy. 

It’s conventional wisdom — conventional, but completely wrong — that Detroit’s White Flight began after the 1967 riot. White Flight had already been going on for almost 20 years at that point. The ’67 riot only accelerated the exodus.

Detroit: The Arsenal of Democracy

Detroit’s race problems go right back to the earliest days of the city. In my earlier [very long] essay The Detroit Riots I report on the little known 1943 riot and the far lesser known 1863 riot. Understanding these earlier riots is the key to understanding Detroit’s current demographics. Both of these earlier riots not only set the table for the 1967 riot, but also set the table for the Detroit’s systemic racism, which manifested itself in the White Flight that eventually killed the Motor City.

The 1863 Detroit riot exploded in the wake of Lincoln’s Emancipation Declaration. There had already been tensions between Blacks and Whites, and the openly racist Detroit Free Press was happy to fan the flames for months on end. When a rumour swept through the neighbourhoods that a Black man did something, something, something to a White person, White folks went crazy. [Isn’t that always the way? See: May 31, 1921 ► When Whites Went Crazy In Tulsa] They roamed the streets screaming, “Kill all the niggers,” beating people on sight. At the time it became known as “the bloodiest day that ever dawned on Detroit.”

Prior to that day Detroit did not have a police force. However, one was quickly formed and in the original incorporating documents the city fathers of Detroit made it clear that one of its primary jobs would be to keep the Blacks folk in line.

A sign in Detroit during the war, when the Feds proposed
to build Black housing to relieve overcrowding

The 1943 Detroit riot came during war time, but it also came in the midst of what has been called The Great Migration, when rural and southern Blacks made their way to cities in the north. Detroit was clamoring for unskilled workers and Black folk came by the tens of thousands. However, that didn’t mean anyone wanted to share their neighbourhoods with Black folk, nor work side-by-side with them. The 1943 riot was a result of these tensions and more.

[This is the simplified version. The conditions that led to these 3 riots are explained in much greater detail in The Detroit Riots, my earlier article on these topics.]

As soon as World War Two was over, prosperity reigned, in Detroit and across the nation. Part of that prosperity was due to the fact that all across the country houses had to be built for all the returning soldiers. ‘Merka saw a housing boom like no other. This was great for the economy and for the growing White Middle Class. However, it didn’t trickle down to Black folk.

In the Detroit area, developers started building north of 8 Mile, the city limits made famous by Eminem’s 2002 movie. These suburbs grew exponentially during the ’50s and ’60s and were attractive to the people with the same mindset as those who refused to share their neighbourhoods and work places with Blacks during the 40s.

The last remnant of a vibrant Black
neighbourhood and business district

Black families were redlined out of the suburbs, just as they were from most of the neighbourhoods in north Detroit. During the ’40s and ’50s Blacks were unable to expand much beyond Black Bottom and Paradise Valley, the neighbourhoods they already occupied. During the early ’50s a few Middle Class Blacks moved to the 12th Street area, which had been predominantly White. That’s when the first Whites started leaving because — you guessed it — they didn’t want to live in the same neighbourhood as Blacks. By the time Black Bottom and Paradise Valley were razed for I-75, the die was cast. The only area accepting Black folk was surrounding 12th Street, because the first Blacks had already “busted the blocks,” in the parlance of the day. White folk fucked off in droves. The entire demographics of the neighbourhood reversed itself in a single decade. [This is also told in greater detail in The Detroit Riots.]

Then came several decades of terrible local government, which just made
everything in Detroit a whole lot worse. But, let’s be clear. What these
politicians made worse was already there: an absolute division of Black
and White and the continued blighting of a once great city. Systemic
racism is the foundation on which it was built. The White folk of Wayne
County moved across 8 Mile and, quite literally, turned their back on
Detroit.

That, dear reader, has been the story of Detroit from the very beginning. As soon as Black folk gained a small toehold in a neighbourhood, that neighbourhood eventually turned all Black. Block by block. Neighbourhood by neighbourhood. Until the entire city was virtually Black, while the suburbs became predominantly White. Eventually integration came to the suburbs, but it never had a chance in the City of Detroit.

IRONY ALERT:
Detroit’s seal, which represents the fire of 1803
Speramus Meliora = We hope for better things
Resurcet Cineribus = It will rise from the ashes

This White Flight to the suburbs reduced Detroit’s population and ‘Merka’s systemic racism kept it low. At one
time there were almost 2 million people in Detroit proper. When I was
growing up in Detroit, we were proud to call Detroit the 5th largest
city in the country. Now it’s the 18th, sandwiched between Charlotte,
North Carolina, and El Paso, Texas. Its population of just over 700,000
is about a 3rd of what it was during the go go ’50s. As the city’s
population shrank, so did it’s tax base. These are the conditions that led to Detroit’s bankruptcy.

This would be as good a time to remind people that Detroit is responsible for two things that not only made ‘Merka better, but made ‘Merka great: Cars and Motown. These products of Detroit have been bought and sold all around the country during the same 6 decades that Detroit has slid into decline. Detroit cars and Motown — and it almost seems like they were made for each other — were bought and sold all around the world over the last 6 decades.

The people north of 8 Mile, the greater country at large, and the rest of the world took ittle notice of the problems facing Detroit until recently. During the last 6 decades they couldn’t have cared less what was happening to the city. That’s why I call Detroit ‘Merka’s first throwaway city.

Take it away, MC5:


CRANK IT UP!!!

Further Reading on Not Now Silly:
Unpacking My Detroit

Loofah Lad’s Attack Dog Jesse Watters Attacks LGBT Folk

, , , , ,
The advantage of still photography is you can’t hear his whining.

When Bill O’Reilly wants to annoy someone, he sends ambush producer Jesse Watters — whose IMDB and Wiki bios are scanty at best — to harass them with a camera and microphone. When Bill O’Reilly wants to annoy all of ‘Merka, he airs another segment of Watters’ World, the semi-regular Laugh Riot Video Package™ tricked up by Loofah Lad’s One Man Flying Monkey Squad™. 

Jesse Watters‘ segments are based on the oldest trick in the tee vee book — and I do mean old, and I do mean trick: Get people to make remarks on camera. During the editing process, just show the idiotic responces, with all intelligent comments left on the cutting room floor. Voila!!! Instant comedy. It never fails.

That’s why you’ve seen this style of segment repeated ad nauseum on comedy shows since time immemorial — not just the comedy shows on Fox “News.” Jay Leno has his Jaywalking videos and Jimmy Kimmel has his own HIGH-LARRY-US schtick where he interviews people on how much they enjoyed political events that have yet to happen. Hilarity ensues.

It’s a talk show staple that goes all the way back to the original Steve Allen Tonight show. However, Steve Allen had as much talent as Jesse Watters doesn’t. Steverino would stick a camera out on the street and simply riff on the people that walked past. Or, he’d stop some people and interview them for his Comedy Gold™. It was all done live in those days and the comedy had to come from the host, who had to be quick on his feet. The comedy wasn’t created in the editing room.

Let’s face facts. The truth of the matter is, when you interview any cross-section of the populace, you’re going to get some pretty stupid answers because the populace can be pretty stupid. Just look at how many people believe in ghosts, or UFOs, or Fox “News.”

There’s very little that differentiates one of Jesse Watters ambush interviews from his Watters’ World monstrosities. Both are designed from the bottom up to make fun of and humiliate people. What’s more: all the magic is done in the editing room. Where Watters’ World is pure genius (and by this I mean how he’s simply plagiarized what others have done before him, adding no redeeming quality whatsoever) is the intercutting of movie clips so that it appears that Hollywood actors are reacting to his Watters’ World interviews. Yawn.

Which brings us to Jesse Watters latest work of art, and by “art” I mean his total douchebaggery. Jesse Watters took his cameras and sound man to the Mermaid Parade, to make fun of a wide cross-section of LGBT people. I won’t even bother to summarize it. The segment simply needs to be seen to understand where The Falafel King and Jesse Watters are coming from.

Watters, Watters everywhere, but not a drop to think.

Happy Birthday Doc Pomus ► A Musical Appreciation

, , , , ,
Doc Pomus singing at the Pied Piper with Uffe Bode,
Sol Yaged, John Levy and Rex William Stuart (1947)

Light 88 candles — the same as the number of keys on a piano — for Doc Pomus, one of the greatest names in Rock and Roll you never heard of; a Founding Father and a Brill Building Blues-shouting Jew.

Born Jerome Solon Felder on June 27, 1925, in Brooklyn, he walked with crutches due to a bout of polio at the age of six. He fell in love with The Blues after hearing a Big Joe Turner tune and took the stage name Doc Pomus as a teenager when he started performing in Blues clubs as a teenager. More often than not, he was the only White person in the club. During these years he recorded some 40 songs for small labels.

Mort Shuman and Doc Pomus

According to the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame:

At first, penning songs for his own recordings, he soon became a major song source on the New York scene and a regular at the new Atlantic Records’ office, creating classics for Laverne Baker, Ruth Brown, Lil Green, Ray Charles and Big Joe Turner. He enjoyed his first rhythm and blues top ten hit with “Lonely Avenue” by Ray Charles. Hooking up with a team of two other young songwriters, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, he hit big with the Coasters’ “Young Blood.”

Pomus, by coincidence, met a talented teenaged fledgling songwriter Mort Shuman, who was dating Pomus’ cousin. He took Shuman under his wing and eventually the two became full partners despite the 15-year age difference between them.

Ultimately, the pair enjoyed a wonderful nine-year association resulting in a major body of work which, collectively, became a dominant force on the record charts and led to sales of well over one hundred million. The songs included, “This Magic Moment,” “Save The Last Dance For Me,” “Teenager in Love,” “Can’t Get Used To Losing You,” “Turn Me Loose,” “Hushabye,” “I Count The Tears,” “Sweets for My Sweet” and “Seven Day Weekend,” among many others. For Elvis Presley, they produced a series of major hit songs, including “Little Sister,” “Viva Las Vegas,” “His Latest Flame,” “Surrender,” “Suspicion,” “A Mess of Blues” and “Long, Lonely Highway,” to mention a very few.

Just last year a documentary on the great Doc Pomus was released. Making fun of his almost anonymous fame, the movie is called A.K.A. Doc Pomus:

Jeff Tamarkin, in his review of Lonely Avenue; The Unlikely Life and Times of Doc Pomus, by Alex Halberstadt, gets to the bottom of the contradictions:

It wasn’t until long after the hits, after the Beatles and Dylan made irrelevant the songwriting mills, after a 10-year writing sabbatical when high-stakes poker brought in more cash than his royalties, that Pomus began to feel comfortable in his skin. He began writing again, and though his collaborations with the likes of Dr. John and Willy DeVille never came close to the charts, he felt at home with these younger singers, who respected the same traditions he did.

By the ’80s, he had recast himself as an eccentric, ebullient man about town, dressing loudly, throwing lavish parties, turning up nightly at clubs where bouncers cleared a path for his wheelchair and set him in the prime spots. But he also became a magnet for all manner of hangers-on and hucksters, and he took to carrying a business card that read “Doc Pomus — I’ve Got My Own Problems.”

Despite the overhanging gloom, Lonely Avenue — which takes its name from the 1956 Ray Charles hit that put Pomus on the map — is anything but depressing. Halberstadt’s re-creation of period detail is rich as is his portraiture of the myriad characters who flit in and out of Pomus’s life — Muhammad Ali, Veronica Lake (with whom Halberstadt claims Pomus had an affair), Rodney Dangerfield, John Lennon. With access to family and friends, as well as to the late songwriter’s journals — he died in 1991 — Halberstadt (who never met his subject) gets at the heart of Pomus’s often conflicting personal and professional lives.

However, as always, it’s about the music. Here’s a Doc Pomus Jukebox which includes some of his early Blues sides, as well as some of his tunes made famous by others.


As always: CRANK IT UP!!!

50 Years Ago ► St. Augustine Beaches Integrated ► History Is Complicated

, , , , , , , , , ,

Florida Memory reminds us that it took blood and guts to integrate Florida beaches. On this day — June 25, 1964 — White segregationists attacked the participants of a “Wade-In” at St. Augustine, Florida:

Demonstrators held several nonviolent “wade-ins” at segregated hotel pools and beaches. This film shows footage taken by the Florida Highway Patrol of one of the largest demonstrations, a wade-in held at St. Augustine Beach on June 25, 1964 (see full-length version).

Civil rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr., came to northeast Florida to show their support for the Movement. King is said to have remarked that St. Augustine was “the most segregated city in America” at the time. He pledged to defeat segregation using nonviolence, even “if it takes all summer.”


Fort Lauderdale’s beaches were integrated a few years earlier. Two years ago Fort Lauderdale celebrated 50 years of integrated beaches, which began with illegal Wade Ins in 1961. According to CBS Miami:
On July 4, 1961, Lorraine Mizell, her sister, her uncle and some friends waded into the ocean on a beach where blacks were not allowed. Mizell would later say she didn’t know how significant her actions would be.

Fort Lauderdale’s beaches had been segregated since 1927. Civil rights pioneer Eula Johnson led wade-ins like Mizell’s over the summer of 1961 in spite of threats. A year later, a state judge ruled against the city and its whites-only beach policy.

As the Sun Sentinel tells it:

Lorraine Mizell remembers the looks of disgust and catcalls as she crossed the sand. She remembers other beachgoers fleeing from the water as she waded in.

She remembers not being afraid.

For the 19-year-old college freshman, the Fourth of July in 1961 started with a phone call from her uncle. He wanted to know if she, her sister and some of their friends would like to go to the beach with him.

Their outing will be commemorated on Monday as a turning point in the history of Fort Lauderdale and racial equality.

Her uncle, Von D. Mizell, and fellow civil rights activist Eula Johnson had decided the time had come to force the city to open its beaches to all people, both black and white. July 4 began a series of wade-ins that led to a court-ordered end of segregation on Fort Lauderdale beaches.

“When we did it, I didn’t realize how significant it would be,” said Lorraine Mizell, now 69. “I knew we were doing something to break down barriers. This was a beach that I had never been able to go to, never able to put my feet in the sand. But I didn’t know we were going to be able to change things.”

If this whetted your appetite read this PDF: The Long Hard Fight for Equal Rights: A History of Broward County’s Colored Beach and the Fort Lauderdale Beach ‘Wade-ins’ of the summer of 1961

Fifty years is not that long ago and fifty years later there are still inequities built into the system.

Music Brings Our World Together For The First Time

, , , , , , , , ,

Dateline June 25, 1967 – Our World is broadcast to the entire world, via the very first live, global, satellite hookup. Taking part in the broadcast were creative artists from 19 countries around the globe, including Maria Callas, Pablo Picasso, Marshall McLuhan and The Beatles. More than 350 million people tuned in.

According to the WikiWackyWoo, it took more than 10,000 technicians, producers and translators to pull off the two and a half hour broadcast. The project took 10 months to plan. The countries that participated promised that their segments would be 100% live and no politicians or heads of state could appear. A last minute problem came close to scuttling the project, when the entire Eastern Bloc, directed by the Soviet Union, pulled out in protest over response to the Six Day War.

More from the WikiWackyWoo:

The opening credits were accompanied by the Our World theme sung in 22 different languages by the Vienna Boys Choir.

Canada’s CBC Television had Marshall McLuhan being interviewed in a Toronto television control room. At 7:17 pm GMT, the show switched to the United States’ segment about the Glassboro, New Jersey, conference between American president Lyndon Johnson and Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin; since Our World insisted that no politicians be shown, only the house where the conference was being held was televised. National Educational Television’s (NET) Dick McCutcheon ended up talking about the impact of the new television technology on a global scale.

The show switched back to Canada at 7:18 pm GMT. Segments that were beamed worldwide were from a Ghost Lake, Alberta ranch, showing a rancher, and his cutting horse, cutting out a herd of cattle. The last Canadian segment was from Kitsilano Beach, located in Vancouver, British Columbia’s Point Grey district at 7:19 pm GMT.

At 7:20 pm GMT, the program shifted continents to Asia, with Tokyo, Japan being the next segment. It was 4:20 a.m. local time and NHK showed the construction of the Tokyo Subway system.

The equator was crossed for the first time in the program when it switched to the Australian contribution, which was at 5:22 a.m. Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST). This was the most technically complicated point in the broadcast, as both the Japanese and Australian satellite ground stations had to reverse their actions: Tokyo had to go from transmit mode to receive mode, while Melbourne had to switch from receive to transmit mode. The segment dealt with Trams leaving the Hanna Street Depot in Melbourne with Australian Broadcasting Commission’s Brian King explaining that sunrise was many hours away as it was winter there. A scientific segment, later on in the broadcast, was also included that dealt with the Parkes Observatory tracking a deep space object.

For the Beatles segment John Lennon wrote All You Need Is Love specifically for the broadcast (though like all their Beatles’ songs it’s credited to Lennon-McCartney). The song premiered that night to the entire world at the very same time. Watch:


The Beatles – All You Need is Love from gledson_adriel on Vimeo.

All recordings of All You Need Is Love were in black and white. This colourized version is from The Beatles Anthology series. Watch it while you can because EMI & The Beatles seem to remove any copies found on the innertubes.

The Beatles released All You Need Is Love as their next single, on July 7, 1967. However, it wasn’t the exact performance from the satellite broadcast. John had been unhappy with his vocals, so he re-recorded them and Ringo fixed a few of the drum tracks, including substituting a drum roll for a tambourine shake during the La Marseillaise section of the tune. The single went straight to the top of the charts, where it stayed for 3 weeks.

The Mark Koldys-Johnny Dollar Comment of the Day

, , , ,
Grumpy Cat, aka Johnny
Dollar, aka Mark Koldys

The Flying Money Squad strikes again!!!  How low is it to FALSELY report someone to facebook for an abuse violation, when they are the one’s guilty of abuse in the first place?

Can you say HYPOCRISY? I knew you could.

Lest you forget, The Flying Monkey Squad is the group of sycophants who worship at the altar of Johnny Dollar, aka Mark Koldys, and kiss his ass. That’s why he has such a big ass.

All one really need know about Mark Koldys is that he is a Fox “News” Truther. That alone makes him a laughingstock to thinking people everywhere. Mark Koldys claims his web site is about CABLE NEWS TRUTH, but if he were being “cable truthful” he’d be attacking Fox “News” for its lies, not supporting it as a paragon of professional journalism.

However, this post is only about Mark Koldys tangentially. Koldys is the enabler of The Flying Monkey Squad. He not only eggs them on, but he provides a safe place for them to attack without being attacked in return. It has been this way for at least 8 years as The Flying Monkey Squad has falsely attacked people from NewsHounds, because they expose Fox “News” lies. In fact, that’s how I came onto their radar. And, because I have always refused to back down from their false criticisms, they decided that they had to destroy me. I told that story in the very first post on this blog: Johnny Dollar Has Proven Himself To Be A Very Dangerous Person.

More than a year later: Mark Koldys is proving that his Flying Monkey Squad is as dangerous as ever. They are not interested in honest political debate and require an unlevel playing field before they will attack. Safety in numbers and all that. Cowardly bullies and all that.

THE LATEST INCIDENT

Last night I noticed that Ashley Graham, aka Grayhammy, showed up on the Johnny Dollar Depreciation Society facebook page and started shitting all over it again. It’s not the first time, but it will be the last time. My normal MO is to delete his messages as soon as they appear. However, last night I chose to let them stand for a while to see how abusive he would get. He didn’t disappoint, each comment was more offensive and abusive than the last.

Then another gent showed up. This (unnamed) gent has always told me that Ashley could be reasoned with if one treated him properly, so he tried. And tried. And tried. He tried many times last night to have a decent conversation with Ashley Graham, but eventually gave it up as a lost cause when he saw how his own words were being twisted to use against him. Privately he told me he was done trying to reason with people who were so unreasonable and he left.Later he posted this in a public forum:

All I was attempting to do was have reasonable conversation with Ashley. I was trying to set a respectful tone with him on how our cable news is covered today. I offered him the opportunity to talk with me privately where neither one of us would have home field advantage, back up or felt the need to impress others. Obviously he was only interested in being confrontational and it soon became apparent that it was a waste of time.

Eventually even I got bored of the game and deleted all of Grayhammy’s abusive comments.

Then I began deleting Grayhammy’s comments as soon as they arrived on the J$DS, at the rate of several per minute. They were arriving almost as fast as I could delete them. Finally after deleting DOZENS of crazy comments from GrayHammy, the head of The Flying Monkey Squad, I just chose to just ban his ass instead. There’s only so much abuse one can take.

In the interests of transparency I posted a message that I had finally tired of his shit and banned him from The Johnny Dollar Depreciation Society and attached the following screen capture:

What makes me laugh about this picture is that I plugged Mark Koldys’ college picture (the one on the upper left) into Google search and the Googlizer returned a whole bunch of lookalikes. Note the lookalike in the middle of the bottom row. Why Google thinks Johnny Dollar can be compared to infamous Nazi Josef Mengele is something you’ll have to ask Google. I don’t know. I do know why I would compare Mark Koldys and The Flying Monkey Squad to Nazis, however.

I thought banning Ashley Graham from the J$DS would FINALLY be the end of it. It was not to be.

I woke up this morning to discover that I was reported for ABUSE based on the screen capture above. Now, how sick and hypocritical is that? After well more than a year of almost non-stop abuse from The Flying Monkey Squad I finally ban Ashley Graham from my page, and I am falsely reported to facebook for abuse. What a crock.

Here’s my response to facebook this morning after discovering I have been given a 12 hour TIME OUT due to this FALSE report of abuse:

First, what you need to know is that this is all due to a difference of political opinion.

I once wrote for NewsHounds, a web site which exposes Fox “News” lies. These people are Fox “News” defenders. However, they won’t defend Fox “News” honestly and are using Facebook to do its dirty work for them by FALSELY reporting things as abuse, or as copyright violations, which is also something they have done in the past.

I was FALSELY reported for abuse last night ONLY after I finally blocked Ashley Graham from posting on one of my pages. He had been posting abuse towards me and Jim Thorpe for several hours on end at that point. I just I kept deleting his nonsense, one comment after another. After deleting dozens of offensive and abusive messages, I finally chose to BAN Ashley Graham instead. That’s the exact moment when I was reported for abuse.

Ironic, no? After I had endured hours of abuse and decided I didn’t have to take it any more, I was reported for abuse merely because I banned him from my page.

This is not the first time that Ashley Graham has been abusive to me and my friends. This is not the first time I have been falsely accused of abuse, or copyright violations where none exist, by those who are abusing me.

Facebook is being used to do their dirty work for them.

What bothers me is that Facebook does not look into the merits of a complaint. Facebook just reacts to the complaint. These people know that Facebook will react without investigating the merits of a complaint. In fact, it’s what they hope will happen when they FALSELY report abuse.

Let me repeat: Facebook is being used to do their dirty work for them. They cannot debate their political opinions in an honest manner, so they use your rules to FALSELY accuse people of abuse and copyright violations where none exist.

How does it feel to be used in this way?

I don’t know if facebook will lift my TIME OUT, or not. However, I thought I should go ON RECORD — once again — to show facebook how people are using its rules in a mendacious manner. TO BE FAIR: Mendacity is the only way The Flying Monkey Squad can win.

It’s not the first time these MoFos have FALSELY reported me to facebook. Check out the screen capture to the right.

It’s the height of hypocrisy to report that as a copyright violation because Mark Koldys has long used Ellen’s picture on his mendacious web site. He claimed it was FAIR GAME because he found the picture on the internet. Well, I found his family pictures on the internet, which should make them FAIR GAME as well, right? Of course not!!! There are different rules for Johnny Dollar and The Flying Monkey Squad.

In point of fact: Mark Koldys should care more about who decided to share his family pictures with me, as opposed to claiming copyright violations. That’s the fight I’d love to witness.

Another hypocritical thing to this entire contretemps is that Mark Koldys and Ashley Graham seem to think I broke some unwritten rule in the Politics of Personal Destruction™ by posting his family pictures. I didn’t realize there were any rules when one is playing the Politics of Personal Destruction™.

When Mark Koldys and Ashley Graham exposed my nom de plume and my sex life (a story told in Johnny Dollar Has Proven Himself To Be A Very Dangerous Person), I just naturally assumed all rules about decency went out the window. Exposing my nom de plume and sex life had NOTHING to do with CABLE NEWS TRUTH or our differences of political opinion. It was done merely in an attempt to destroy the messenger because they hated my message.

However, they seem to think that posting pictures from the Koldys Family Album is somehow beyond the pale? What sickness plagues these assholes that would even think this way? They honestly believe their shit don’t stink.

It must be noted I never attacked these MoFos until my post called Johnny Dollar Has Proven Himself To Be A Very Dangerous Person. Because I thought that Mark Koldys’ behaviour went WELL beyond the pale (as did several of his own sycophants, it must be noted) I chose to FINALLY fight back on my blog. Here’s all I do: I show them up for the mendacious hypocrites they are, using just their own words and actions, like I have done in this post.

While I need not lie about them to make them look foolish, they can only lie about me in response.

Every time I accuse these assholes of obsessive behaviour they come back to claim I am the one who is obsessed. I have never denied that. However, you’d be obsessed too after you found your sex life being splashed all over the innertubes and found yourself the subject of relentless and false attacks lasting several years. I want people to note: I only respond to those MoFos. I have never initiated an attack upon them. Furthermore I have ignored many attacks and only occasionally do I respond to their nonsense.

When will Mark Koldys come to realize that every time The Flying Monkey Squad tries to throw mud at me, he’s the only one who gets dirtied?

Final Note From The Road

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

After a good night’s sleep following my whirlwind trip, here are some final observations from the road — all 2,991 miles of it. Because, if there’s one thing one can do during 46 hours of driving, that’s think:

• I did something on The Sunrise To Canton Road Trip For Research that I’ve always wanted to do, but the innertubes made it so easy. I couch surfed from home to Canton, visiting cyber-friends along the way. These are people I’ve known for years in the space of cyber, but whom I had never met;

• All the people I know who lent me a couch, bed, or just stoked me up with coffee for my next leg of the road, were all more wonderful than I had imagined from just the communication on the innertubes;

• Every family has their own shit to deal with. While it was not the topic of discussion with any of my couch-suppliers, every one of them alluded to trouble in their family that led to a current sitch-eee-ay-shun of family psycho-drama;

• TO BE FAIR: I participated in my own family drama when I saw some of my relatives this weekend between trips to Canton, Michigan;

• One gets no sense of topography from maps, which are as flat as South Florida. It was nice to be reminded that there are places not at sea level which won’t flood during the upcoming Great Glacier Melt™;

A panoramic example of topography from Morgantown, West Virginia. Note the cemetery in the far background.

 • Professional truckers still understand the courtesies of the road. I’d signal my brights at them to let them know it was safe to merge. They never failed to signal back as a “thank you;”

• Civilian drivers tend to be rude fucks who only seem to be concerned with getting there first;

• No matter where I drive I always do the speed limit, unless conditions require a slower, safer speed. I am always the slowest car on the road. In fact, there are times I feel like an impediment to the flow of traffic by hewing to the speed limit;

• The invention of car turn signals was a total waste of time;

• I had no idea Canton was so large. Because it’s an unincorporated township, as opposed to town or city, I thought it would be so much smaller. I guess at one time it was, but now it’s pretty much suburban sprawl from one end to another. Traversing Canton always took longer than I expected it would;

• No one has led a 100% exemplary life;

• Be good to your neighbours because you never know when a journalist will come sniffing around for information;

• A solution to a problem I was having in my novel jumped out at me from out of nowhere and I almost hit it with the car. I wasn’t even thinking of the book when it happened;

• One meets a lot of nice people along the road, provided one takes the time to talk to them;

• I was once able to get a much better sleep on the back seat of a car;

• I kept seeing signs that said “Trucks over 3 axles use right two lanes.” You mean straddling the line? Wouldn’t it be simpler to say “Trucks over 3 axles prohibited in left lane?”

• I had the misfortune to hit morning rush hour traffic in Jax while on the southbound I-95;

• The last 100 miles I could see the smoke of several brush fires rising into the air on both the east and west side of I-95. Yet I turned on the news and searched online and could find no reference to it;

• With approximately 10,000 tunes on my music machine playing on random shuffle, here were the Top Five Played Artists [in descending order]: The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Beatles Bootlegs [a separate category to any die-hard Beatles fan], Willie Nelson, Alberta Hunter. Oddly enough the first 4 have multiple albums on the music machine. Alberta Hunter only has 1 album on there, plus a few selected tunes from her early days singing with Eubie Blake. More proof, if any is needed, that random shuffle is quite random;

• I never thought I’d say this, but that was entirely too much Wliie Nelson. I’ll have to winnow it down a bit;

As I tell people: I love to drive, provided I have tunes. This may have been a long drive, but I enjoyed every minute of it. I would also like to thank the friends I met along the road. You were all so terrific and any time you’re in the neighbourhood, don’t hesitate to call.

Further Reading on Not Now Silly

Notes From The Road
More Notes From The Road
And Still More Notes From The Road

And Still More Notes From The Road

, ,


• IRONY ALERT: I had to get something from the trunk of the car and needed to move the First Aid kit. I managed to slice my hand open on a sharp edge of plastic. It bled like a stuck pig. Good thing I had a First Aid kit.

• After I went through Dayton, Ohio I caught an earworm of Randy Newman’s tune that lasted for hours;

• The sweetest sound you’ll even hear is “I’m going to let you off with a warning.”

• Many signs warning that bridges ice up before the roadway, but I didn’t see any ice.

• Cigarette smoking in restaurants is still allowed in South Carolina.

I’m kipping for the night. I have about 8 hours driving ahead of me tomorrow.

Night, night.