There are two Catholic high schools in Fort Wayne. Bishop Dwenger, in the north end of town, is considered the academic powerhouse of the pair. Bishop Luers, on the south end? A football academy. In my time as a Hoosier, I remember the football academy being in the news when it was discovered that some of the players had something they called “The GTA Club,” with GTA standing for “grab that ass,” and we’re not talking about on the football field. In that more innocent time — it was before the Boston priest scandal — it was seen as a one-off, problematic but boys will be boys, etc.
My friend Nathan reports in an extended Xitter post that this is, it would seem, part of a pattern. In 2012, the athletic director was dismissed after he was found to be surreptitiously taking “inappropriate” photos and videos of students. In 2023, a teacher was arrested for having sex with students, and when it turned out he was having a competition with another teacher to see who could bang the most students, that guy was arrested, too. (One is in prison, the other is not.)
But it gets worse.
This week, a lawsuit was filed over, again, a scandal with sexual overtones. Overtones — what am I saying? It’s a sex scandal, but a particularly cruel one. The ledes of both stories don’t really explain fully what happened, so I’ll try:
Male students would go to porn sites and find clips where the female performer had similar hair, skin tone and body type as one of their classmates, then add her name to the clip and trade with or sell it to their friends and others, advertising it as being that student. This constitutes child pornography under state law.
The suit claims the school knew and — stop me if you’ve heard this one before — did nothing. The diocese did nothing. The principal, and dean of students/athletic director not only did nothing, they stonewalled the parents of the girls. Relevant quote:
According to the lawsuit, (the dean of students/AD) admitted to the parents that the school had been “dealing with” the pornographic videos for “some time.” He also admitted the videos had not been reported to the authorities, the suit said.
“During this confrontation at the school on September 25, (the principal) repeatedly proclaimed: ‘We don’t want to falsely accuse the boys!’” the lawsuit reads.
When I first read the story, I assumed the clips were so-called deepfakes, where AI is used to actually put a person’s face on another’s body. They don’t appear to be, but I’m sure that’s next, and I’m sure the next principal will stonewall those young women, too.
My trainer coaches at a local public high school, and says the parents of students at the Catholic football academy in these parts are fond of screaming obscenities at the officials.
I smell bullshit in this story, too:
The Trump administration has instructed federal health agencies to pause all external communications, such as health advisories, weekly scientific reports, updates to websites and social media posts, according to nearly a dozen current and former officials and other people familiar with the matter.
The instructions were delivered Tuesday to staff at agencies inside the Department of Health and Human Services, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, one day after the new administration took office, according to the people with knowledge, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Some of them acknowledged that they expected some review during a presidential transition but said they were confused by the pause’s scope and indeterminate length.
…Two others suggested the move is aimed at helping the newly installed Trump health officials understand the vast flow of information coming out of the agencies. The pause, according to one official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal agency conversations, “seemed more about letting them catch their breath and know what is going on with regard to” communications.
Catch their breath, my ass. The MMWR — Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, to you civilians, and one of the “paused” communications — is how doctors and researchers keep up with what’s killing and sickening Americans. Journalists rely on it, too. But I’m sure this is OK; it’s not like bird flu is going around or anything.
This, along with the deep freeze we’ve been stuck in all week, is not elevating my mood. At least Kate’s house hunt is a diversion. She got her pre-approval, and starts going through houses on Friday. So it begins.
Peter said on January 23, 2025 at 5:28 am
Wow – there is an upside to doom scrolling in the middle of the night because you’re upset at (fill in the blank): you get to be the first person to comment on a post!
Because I’m a glass is 1/4 full kind of guy, that’s great news about Kate! Here’s hoping she’ll find a nice abode.
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David C said on January 23, 2025 at 7:01 am
We were pre-approved for a mortgage a couple of weeks ago. Our credit score dropped 45 points almost immediately. It’s still plenty good, but goddamn. I liked it better when we had to work at finding out our credit score. Now our credit union plasters it right on our opening page to irritate us and make us wonder what we did to make it change when we’ve done nothing to make it change. Anyway, we were pre-approved for an ungodly amount. It’s way more than we’d ever consider paying.
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Joe Kobiela said on January 23, 2025 at 7:49 am
Daughter closes Friday on a 2bed 1bath newly remodeled in Belleville, between willow run and metro,perfect for her.
Lots of places for sale out on the west end.
Pilot Joe
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Jeff Gill said on January 23, 2025 at 8:04 am
I’m working on being with Peter; looking for “glass 1/4 full” moments. Nicely put.
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ROGirl said on January 23, 2025 at 9:22 am
Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.
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Jeff Borden said on January 23, 2025 at 9:53 am
ROGirl,
I was late in reading Margaret Atwood’s masterpiece, but I recognize your reference. Kudos.
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Deborah said on January 23, 2025 at 10:00 am
Where can I get a T-shirt with that on it?
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Mark P said on January 23, 2025 at 10:14 am
I’m pretty sure I have mentioned the sex scandal that took place some time around the 1980’s at my old high school, Darlington, which at the time was a fairly prestigious boys’ prep school in NW Georgia. A teacher who was also a house monitor in one of the dorms was preying on vulnerable boys. One of the boys told Worth Moser, the associate headmaster, about it, and his response was, “I’m sure you have your problems, too.” Moser was at the school from 1944 until he died in 1985. A group of boys finally sued the school. There was a secret settlement, and the school named one of the boys’ dorms after Moser.
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alex said on January 23, 2025 at 10:28 am
Back in the ’80s there was a guy I knew from college who was a pathological liar and he ended up teaching at that very same school. When he got busted for banging a student the school swept it under the rug and other than being terminated he suffered no repercussions and went on to bigger and better things career wise: https://www.broadwayworld.com/people/gallery-person/Doug-Evans/
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Peter said on January 23, 2025 at 11:57 am
I saw this on another website and I think this will be my new nighttime prayer:
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
If Trump is gone before I wake
I hope to God that news ain’t fake.
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FDChief said on January 23, 2025 at 12:54 pm
I gotta say; while I expected “stupid” from the Second Fraudulency Administration (I mean, “greedy” and “ignorant” are kind of the ingredients of “stupidity”…) so far stuff like the NIH order are…wow. WAY beyond stupidity.
I mean…who does this benefit? Not even the MAGAts get anything out of this. It seems to be pure “the Before People were Eeeeeevil Libruls and if they did it I’mma stop it” combined with “Anything Sleepy Joe and Obummer did I’mma undo”.
Raising drug prices? Kicking poor people in the health care teeth? This stuff is peanuts to Fatso’s billionaire bros but is ugly optics and foolish politics. It’d cost him nothing to DO nothing and just take credit for the “populism”.
My guess is that it’s pure revenge and spite; he can’t help himself any more than the dog has any reflection on the wisdom of butt-scooting across the carpet.
Holy Hell is this gonna be a looooong four years.
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Jeff Borden said on January 23, 2025 at 1:38 pm
Cruelty and stupidity are the point. It’s just about the only thing MAGA is about aside from taking care of our poor, suffering billionaires. Just saw a story that much of the orange harvest in California may rot in the fields as agriculture workers stay home to avoid ICE raids. So, the lower grocery prices come on was just another lie swallowed whole by the marks.
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FDChief said on January 23, 2025 at 2:10 pm
I kinda get that…but ISTM that they could get the cruelty without the stupidity. Except the produce; the crops-rot-in-the-fields is kinda baked in with the whole MAGAt “kill-the-beaners” obsession, yeah, so that’s impossible to parse out.
But stuff like the NIH order? The drug price thing? There’s literally NO political gain there. There’s no public positives. It’s pure petty personal vindictive stupidity.
I kind of feel this must be what Caligula’s household functionaries must have run into. The fucker’s nuts, we KNOW he’s nuts because he’s doing utterly nutty shit, but if for a nanosecond he even suspects we think he’s nuts he’s gonna kill us, so we’ve gotta keep up the business of doing the nutty shit and telling him how awesome he is.
Unfortunately in our case there’s no hope Cassius Chaerea will show up.
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Suzanne said on January 23, 2025 at 2:23 pm
Trump’s first call to a foreign leader was to MBS of Saudi Arabia, you know the guy who gave his ok to murder Jamal Khashoggi and saw him up. Trump has also ordered job offers for the NIH are being rescinded per Trump’s orders and study sections, where scientists meet to collaborate and decide which scientific studies are most critical have been suspended. He has also ordered Federal health agencies to pause their public health communications. I guess if there is another pandemic, if we just don’t talk about it, it will go away.
If we just allow conditions to flourish in which the weak or vulnerable to die off, it’s not really eugenics, right? I guess it’s pro-life.
The cruelty is the point.
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Dexter Friend said on January 23, 2025 at 2:33 pm
Small Indiana schools competed mostly for Sectional basketball titles, at least for schools in the Ft. Wayne region. Our school sizes usually prevented us from beating Fort Wayne schools. My school only won one Sectional, but my team played for the title when I was a junior and were defeated. The coach of the opponent was said to have been screwing a cheerleader; this came out later when scandal couldn’t be hushed when the child became pregnant. The coach moved on to coach far away we were told. The child, we never knew anything more. Decades later I discovered the team’s center was over the IHSAA age limit when they beat us. He had obtained a military deferment for being in school…high school!…and was drafted upon graduation and shipped to Viet Nam by year’s end, wounded, Purple Heart, now long-dead of old age.
A milder situation was the local band leader here. He and a student “fell in love” and married after she graduated and are still here, now a middle-aged couple. He was fired and took on a menial job. But happy as a clam. By now, everybody loves him again.
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Sherri said on January 23, 2025 at 2:41 pm
When I was in high school, there was a girl who was a senior one year, graduated, and by the time school started again in the fall she was married to a teacher and had a job in the school office.
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Julie Robinson said on January 23, 2025 at 2:50 pm
The Bishop Luers story popped up in my feed last night from another source, with even more damning details. But ask them how many state championships they’ve won; surely the glory covers all those pesky details. Yet another reason I despise football.
Bishop Mariann Budde, who dares to quote scripture to Trump in a calm and reasoned tone, has gone around with him before. Her church is where he stood up with his Bible (upside down) after having the area cleared by tear gas. She challenged him then, she challenged him Tuesday, and she’s not going to apologize.
Our daughter has been working with an agency serving immigrants, and there’s a lot of terror right now. She’s organizing a clergy group to fight back and encourage more churches to become places of sanctuary.
Our nephew by marriage (even though they’re divorced now) is running for city council in Maitland, just to our north. One more for the good guys.
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Sherri said on January 23, 2025 at 3:09 pm
Weird how so many of these so-called Christians don’t understand Love Your Neighbor.
I was contemplating the other day that despite having been raised in church, there pretty much any time the church doors were open, I didn’t learn about unconditional love until I found my way to a church basement.
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Jeff Borden said on January 23, 2025 at 3:12 pm
Hooray for your daughter, Julie. She’s joined the fight on the moral side. While working on my M.Ed. 15 years ago, I helped ESL students prepare for their citizenship tests. It was inspiring. It’s time for me to find a role standing up to the MAGA morons beyond writing checks to organizations that help those Lumpy is targeting.
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Mark P said on January 23, 2025 at 3:25 pm
When trying to explain all of Trump’s actions, I think we need to consider the principle of parsimony. Some of his actions can be attributed to pure greed, doing things that will benefit him. Some will benefit some of his billionaire supporters as well as himself. Some don’t seem to benefit anyone, but in fact seem to simply undermine the beneficial functions of government. And when you look at his other actions, they also mostly undermine the government. So, my conclusion, using the principle of parsimony, or Occam’s Razor, is that the simplest and therefore most likely explanation is that his main and underlying intent it to destroy government, at least the regulatory functions of government, but in fact, government in general. I think that is Trump’s goal. He intends to destroy the government. What will be left, is, I think, not one of his considerations. It’s easy to say that he will become a dictator, which he, of course, likes and wants, but I think his main goal is to burn everything down to the ground.
Why? Maybe he sees his end coming and doesn’t want anyone to have anything once he’s dead. Maybe it’s revenge. Maybe he is like Hitler at the end, who saw Germany in smoking ruins and figured the Germans deserved it because they failed him, and he thinks Americans failed him by not electing him in 2020. Maybe he is just pure evil.
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Dexter Friend said on January 23, 2025 at 3:28 pm
Back in the 60’s, Luers was a patsy on the hardwood, hell, Central Catholic toyed with them. Then they changed to a football power.
On my leave before shipping to Viet Nam, I met a Luers graduate in a singles bar. We had a good time dancing and talking so she gave me her address to write to her when I was in the war. I got my military address, wrote to her…and, yeah…no, nothing. I even remember her name, first and last. Ain’t that a funny thing?
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Scout said on January 23, 2025 at 3:47 pm
Mark P, I’m gonna go with the last option. He’s pure evil. Full stop.
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nancy said on January 23, 2025 at 4:11 pm
A polite question for the men in the group: At one point in a man’s life does he stop being ordered around by his dick? Ahem:
An aide to House Speaker Mike Johnson advised Republican colleagues against subpoenaing former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson as part of their investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack in an effort to prevent the release of sexually explicit texts that lawmakers sent her, according to written correspondence reviewed by The Washington Post and a person familiar with the effort.
I mean, yeah, she’s a very pretty young woman. But wtaf?!?
On edit: I bet one is from Matt Gaetz.
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Alan Stamm said on January 23, 2025 at 4:14 pm
No bottom to yesterday’s coverage by CBS affiliate WANE, which keeps sinking to further depths.
Bishop Luers Principal Scott “Kreiger supposedly conceded to the parents that counsel with the diocese agreed the police should be contacted, the suit said.”
But wait . . . “The parents told both Kreiger and [Dean of Students Kevin] Mann during the Sept. 25 meeting they did not have permission to question or interrogate their daughters without the parents being present. The lawsuit alleges the complete opposite occurred in the days afterward.
“Despite the clear instruction from the parents, Mann, Kreiger and other representatives of Bishop Luers and the Diocese harassed, intimidated and publicly worsened the crisis by publicly paging (the girls) and other victims during school hours to report to school offices.”
Public walks of shame seemed the way to go, really? My mind boggles.
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Sherri said on January 23, 2025 at 4:17 pm
The price of eggs is spiking again. Good thing Trump is pausing all communications from federal government agencies and purging them of DEI. I’m sure that will solve the problem quickly.
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Jason T. said on January 23, 2025 at 4:35 pm
Cassidy Hutchinson is 28. She would have been way too old for Matt Gaetz.
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Alan Stamm said on January 23, 2025 at 4:38 pm
If Bishop John Henry Luers weren’t in a 154-year-old crypt at Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, he might wish the school had a different name.
The sexcapade lets a public high school teacher post a reminder that millions of tax dollars flow to the parochial school.
“Voucher money is given to private schools with zero fiduciary oversight from the state,” Michael Hower posts last night on Nathan’s thread. He teaches chemistry at Homestead High in Aboite Township, nine miles southwest of Fort Wayne, and adds:
“Luers was given $3.3 million of taxpayer money last year alone. Any or all of that could be used for the legal fees of these school officials.
“Even though private schools get the same money as public, they get to play by different rules. Or in this case, no rules.”
Hower describes himself as “follower of Jesus” in his Xitter bio.
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Jakash said on January 23, 2025 at 4:55 pm
At least when the Yahoos were going on about Freedom Fries, there were no executive orders trying to actually implement the insanity. Who could have imagined then that those would turn out to be the good old days?
Which is to say, I’ll start calling it the “Gulf of America” at about the same time I start referring to the orange felon and ignoramus as an esteemed diplomat.
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Deborah said on January 23, 2025 at 9:49 pm
The juvenile pettiness of calling the Gulf of Mexico anything else will be like calling Sears Tower in Chicago anything else. Nobody I know there ever calls it Willis Tower. Or like calling Twitter X. Unless it’s like Nancy using Xitter, with X pronounced sh.
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Gretchen said on January 24, 2025 at 3:14 am
MMWR was the Bible when I was a microbiology grad student 50 years – half a century -ago. The same people who compiled it last month are still there and know how to do it this month. Trump is taking a blowtorch to every part of the government he can reach to punish us for not loving him.
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Jeff Gill said on January 24, 2025 at 8:41 am
To answer Nancy’s question to those of us burdened with a Y chromosome, looking at such as Charlie Chaplin and Rupert Murdoch, the answer apparently is never for some of my brethren. Most of us I think find the lure of ogling to be less of an issue with enough decades on the odometer, but there are just enough to make it a problem for women.
On the Hutchinson story, I’m morbidly curious to find out were these Representatives making legit plays for her attention, or was it straightforward harassment? But Gaetz surely has to be in the mix, even if she’s a bit old for his tastes, as has been noted.
The year after I left high school, a fresh out of college assistant band director married a graduating senior (with forthcoming child in something less than nine months). It was a controversy around the community, but one that blew over with him keeping his job; I suspect it was about the last year such a liason could sneak under the wire — call it 1980. They had three kids together . . . and in his fifties he left her, came out as gay, and has a partner he’s been with now for over a decade, music director at a local church. Times a’ changin’.
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SusanG said on January 24, 2025 at 8:57 am
I’m not a fan of David Brooks-too pious and wordy for me. He nailed it, though, in this opinion piece. I especially like
“ The colorful menagerie of people who make up the proposed Trump cabinet all have one thing in common: They are self-identified disrupters. They aim to burn the systems down. Disruption is fine in the private sector. If Musk wants to start a car company and it flops, then all that’s been lost is investor money and some jobs. But suppose you disrupt and dismantle the Defense Department or the judicial system or the schools? Where are citizens supposed to go?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/opinion/trump-mckinley-populism.html?unlocked_article_code=1.rk4.EfyN.s-y1jZJFRWYd&smid=url-share
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alex said on January 24, 2025 at 10:17 am
Jeff, that story sounds remarkably similar to a local one and so does the time frame. Music teacher married a student upon her graduation, came out as gay decades later. Of course, the gay people around here always thought he was gay even before he came out.
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Mark P said on January 24, 2025 at 10:26 am
Brooks is usually somewhere between just off the mark, and way off the mark, but this time apparently he got it right. Trump’s appointees do want to burn the system down. That’s exactly why Trump appointed them, because that’s what he wants to do. It makes you wonder why almost the entire Republican Party is OK with that. I also wonder when the rank and file MAGAts will see what’s happening to them.
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Jeff Borden said on January 24, 2025 at 11:32 am
Isn’t this the logical outcome 44 years after St. Ronald of Reagan declared government itself was the problem?
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Suzanne said on January 24, 2025 at 12:28 pm
Brooks does hit the nail on the head (while trying to be a living thesaurus) but my question for him, and for the authors of the myriad similar pieces I have read in the past few months is this: “Where in the hell have you been??” To those of us paying close attention to politics the past 20 years or so, none of this is a surprise. The trajectory was pretty darn clear and so-called conservatives were not shy about announcing their plans.
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David C said on January 24, 2025 at 1:12 pm
Where are citizens supposed to go?
Hat in hand to the oligarchs. “Please m’lord, a shilling for my dying mum”. Brooks fucking knows this.
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Dave said on January 24, 2025 at 2:36 pm
I know I’ve said it before but the band director at my high school divorced his age-appropriate wife and married a girl a year ahead of my sister, almost freshly graduated from high school. He was about 45 years old at that time. I think he had a couple of more wives after her, a serial philanderer.
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Dexter Friend said on January 24, 2025 at 2:54 pm
Jeff G. + Alex: this reads like the template for the wonderful series, “Somebody Somewhere”, the Bridget Everett vehicle that melted the hearts of gays and straights the past two years. I absolutely loved every episode. That woman is a superstar.
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Sherri said on January 24, 2025 at 3:48 pm
I’m a huge fan of infrastructure, and so I would love to visit this valve Trump keeps talking about that we could simply turn and all of the snow melt from Canada would flow to Southern California instead of the Pacific Ocean. Maybe the aviator could tell me where it is?
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Jeff Borden said on January 24, 2025 at 3:55 pm
Not that it matters, but the national FOP rescinded its endorsement of Felon 47 over his pardoning of the J6 thugs.
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Deborah said on January 24, 2025 at 4:30 pm
Can states do anything about the J6 pardoned guys? I mean I know there is such a thing as double jeopardy and all, so not sure how that would make a difference. And probably most of those guys live in red states. I think I read somewhere that the city of DC was trying to make it so the violent guys not be allowed to go there unless they check in with the city in some way.
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David C said on January 24, 2025 at 4:49 pm
I wouldn’t doubt if some of them violated parole for earlier offenses, so states could probably go after them for that. Other than that, probably not until the commit other crimes in the states. Which they will. Recidivism rate for violent criminals is pretty high. One women turned down her pardon and good for her.
https://www.npr.org/2025/01/23/g-s1-44457/pamela-hemphill-trump-pardon-jan-6-capitol-attack
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Sherri said on January 24, 2025 at 5:01 pm
A good friend shared with me yesterday that her twenty something child has come out as trans. She’s been on HRT for a year now, but has only recently started coming out to a wider number of people.
My friend is completely supportive, and yet, her child still had some hesitation in coming out. She said she had known since she was three, and wished that she had taken puberty blockers to avoid going through male puberty, but wasn’t ready to come out. She told her mother she was grateful that they lived in an area and a state where it feels reasonably safe to be trans, and her mother told her that wasn’t an accident. (My friend grew up in Florida, and her mother and brother still live there.)
I think the notion that kids are rushing to become trans because it’s a fad is nonsense. It’s not easy to make this transition even in supportive situations. I can understand how conservative authoritarian parents freak out about it, though, because to them, children are not individuals but a reflection of the parent.
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Brandon said on January 24, 2025 at 6:14 pm
Meanwhile…
A pair of activists with the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals were arrested on Thursday while attempting to dump a truck’s worth of manure outside the Manhattan offices of a rival animal welfare group.
But the protest may have raised less of a stink than intended, as organizers acknowledged that much of the animal dung remained frozen solid to the truck bed.
“Because of the freezing temperatures, it didn’t all fall out,” explained Ashley Byrne, a PETA spokesperson. “Someone had to go up in the truck and start shoveling it out, and he was apprehended by the police before he finished.”
The stunt was the latest escalation in the group’s ongoing campaign against the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, or ASPCA, over their backing of an animal welfare certification program.
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David C said on January 24, 2025 at 6:18 pm
Did PETA use free range shit or shit from exploited animals. Seems like an important point to leave out.
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Brandon said on January 24, 2025 at 7:28 pm
@David C: It was from an animal sanctuary.
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Sherri said on January 24, 2025 at 8:27 pm
Now Trump is saying he’s going to sign an executive order to turn the pumps and valves so that water from Canada and the PNW will flow to California.
Because gravity means water flows from North to South, you know.
Through nonexistent pipelines.
All that snowmelt that we’re just wasting in the Pacific Ocean.
Why not just turn the valve on the Mississippi and have it flow to California, instead of dumping into the Gulf of Why Haven’t Egg Prices Come Down Yet?
Oh right, water flows north to south because gravity.
(It would blow his tiny brain that the major rivers near where I grew up both flowed south to north.)
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Jakash said on January 24, 2025 at 9:05 pm
What is it with this nickel-and-dime stuff? Why doesn’t he just sign an executive order that America Is Great Again and he could get right back to grifting and cheating at golf?
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tajalli said on January 25, 2025 at 12:22 pm
We’re developing a Russian sense of humor here.
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Mark P said on January 25, 2025 at 1:03 pm
Did you know that Oreos are satanic? I didn’t until someone my wife knows posted a clip on facebook that showed Elon Musk warning us about it. I didn’t get the explanation, but I’m sure it was not delusional.
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Jeff Gill said on January 25, 2025 at 1:48 pm
Phyllis Schlafly = Elon Musk
(Trying to remember how old I was when first informed of the occult meanings of Oreo design. Young, anyhow.)
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David C said on January 25, 2025 at 3:39 pm
Washing down Oreos with Starbuck’s coffee while watching a Disney movie is the satanic trifecta.
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Deborah said on January 25, 2025 at 4:25 pm
It’s been over 40 years ago when a bunch of people were terrified of McDonald’s, Colgate Palmolive and other companies I can’t remember, for being satanic. My former in-laws were into that ridiculousness. We spent one Christmas vacation listening to records played backwards and all kinds of “satanic” conspiracies. I thought the in-laws had all lost their minds, but I had to keep my mouth shut.
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Julie Robinson said on January 25, 2025 at 4:56 pm
How does one play a record backwards? Is that a special turntable only known to the most devout?
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Dave said on January 25, 2025 at 6:49 pm
Julie, I’ve been wondering about that ever since the days of hidden messages in Beatles records and the whole, “Paul is Dead”, thing that was going around circa 69 or so. How did they do that, Deborah?
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David C said on January 25, 2025 at 8:19 pm
This is one way they did it on one type of turntable. I never would have figured this out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1sH1o3T6-Y
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Deborah said on January 25, 2025 at 8:39 pm
Sorry I’ve been out at the cabin today so didn’t see the question about how to play a record backward. It was done be my former brother-in-law by using 2 turntables butted up to each other so that the vinyl records touched and the one going around forwards made the other one go backward. They did play the Beatles one which clearly said when played backwards “The music is reversible but time isn’t”. I thought that was so cool, but again I had to keep my mouth shut. I remember they also played a Led Zeppelin song backwards (I think it was Stairway to Heaven which has been one of my favorites) was supposed to say “I am satan”, it didn’t sound like anything but gobbledygook to me. They played some other ones which I don’t remember because I didn’t know at the time who the groups were and nothing I heard sounded at all like real words. I thought it was hilarious that my (former) brother-in-law, a Lutheran minister would go through so much trouble to cook up the 2 turntables method to hear these supposed backward satanic messages and then play them for the extended family on Christmas Day and we were all supposed to be horrified. It was hard to keep a straight face.
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alex said on January 26, 2025 at 9:02 am
There was a phase at the end of the Age of Vinyl where hip hop DJs would “scratch” music, by manually pausing and reversing a record while it played. The phenomenon is memorialized in this song, “Itchin’ for a Scratch”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfXX-BTp_wY
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alex said on January 26, 2025 at 9:34 am
David French, the proverbial prophet who’s unwelcome in his own hometown, has a mighty fine sermon this Sunday morning, enough to impassion even a sworn atheist like me:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/26/opinion/trump-maga-schmitt.html?smid=url-share
I was trying to get to my Wordle puzzle but I keep getting distracted by politics, goddammit.
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Jeff Borden said on January 26, 2025 at 10:34 am
This “administration” is a total flop. At the grocery yesterday, eggs were as expensive as ever. I was told the Lord High God of Orange would change this on Day One! Fail.
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alex said on January 26, 2025 at 11:05 am
Eggs are expensive because of the bird flu epidemic that’s running unchecked while Trump muzzles the CDC. Might be advisable to just give up eggs for a while.
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Deborah said on January 26, 2025 at 2:09 pm
I’ve read that feeding wild song birds out of bird feeders is not a great idea for the spread of bird flu unless you clean out the feeder regularly with bleach type cleaners, then rinse very well after cleaning. Other places I’ve read say it’s not really the back yard song birds that are the problem but poultry farms are a huge problem. I like to feed the birds especially in the winter so I think we’ll go ahead but clean out the feeder more often. My niece who is married to a serious birder says just throw the feed on the ground instead of using a feeder but then you attract other critters too.
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Sherri said on January 26, 2025 at 3:52 pm
It’s a War on Breakfast! Trump’s slapping tariffs on Columbia because they won’t cooperate with his deportation plans, so now we can watch coffee prices go up along with eggs.
There was a limit on the number of cartons of liquid egg whites I could buy at the grocery store this week. I may have to switch to protein powder to boost the protein content in my oatmeal.
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David C said on January 26, 2025 at 4:18 pm
The US imports most of its oats from Canada, so he may really mess up your breakfast, Sherri.
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Deborah said on January 26, 2025 at 4:34 pm
War on breakfast! I love it. Where does our bacon come from?
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annie said on January 26, 2025 at 4:51 pm
I add peanut butter or almond butter to my oatmeal in the morning to boost my protein intake.
(Colombia, not Columbia)
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David C said on January 26, 2025 at 5:18 pm
Our bacon is packed by a lot of undocumented workers. Oopsie. I moved all of my 401(k) to cash this morning. That dumb son of a bitch is going to tank it all.
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susan said on January 26, 2025 at 6:15 pm
Lots of peanut butter comes from Canada.
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