29
June 2011
Letter
“Censorship. It’s an ugly
word, especially when it’s
particed by a newspaper...”
ASK
Cosmo
Censorship. It’s an ugly word, especially --Robert Baillie
when it’s practiced by a newspaper like the Dear Cosmo,
Centre Daily Times. Is it true we eat seven spiders a year in
Prior to the recent election, the CDT our sleep?
refused to print letters that were critical of Conservative Political Action Committee’s Signed, Sleepless in State College
candidates. Their policy said that they wel- annual convention.
comed letters in support of The CDT’s letter policy seems to be Dear Insomniac in Slap Happy Valley,
candidates. There’s nothing wrong with based on the rather childish view that one You mean cars like the Triumph Spider or
that. But it’s quite another matter to refuse should say only nice things about candi- bikes like the Can-Am Spyder? I suspect extension on a deadline, but I don’t think
to print letters that are critical of candidates. dates. you’re talking about arachnids, and my first it’s fair for them to move it up.
One such candidate was Samuel The voters deserve better. We were enti- thoughts were, “Only seven?” And “Only Signed, Apocalypse Later
Settle. He, a right-wing activist and global tled to information about candidates that the in our sleep?” And if you sleepwalk, does Dear Apoplectic Now,
warming denier, has been promoting the CDT had and refused to print. If govern- your diet become more varied? What about Different strokes for different folks. I
smear campaign against Penn State profes- ment tried to censor information, the CDT lifestyle? don’t know who the “they” are that you
sor Michael Mann. would rightly complain. When a newspa- I would think that people like fly fisher- claim are responsible for moving up
The voters were entitled to know about per censors information, that’s the height of men or motorcycle riders have a higher Armageddon. Talk radio hosts? Bumper
Mr. Settle’s background. This information hypocrisy. Worse, it’s dangerous to our intake of bugs than couch potatoes do. I sticker salesmen? Rapture wannabes?
was submitted to the CDT in a number of electoral system when newspapers hide enjoy the occasional bumblebee and crick- People who are just sick of talking about
letters to the editor. information from voters who need to make et, but I’m most partial to moths. Fun to the weather or American Idol? Predicting
However, the CDT censored all such let- informed decisions. chase, easy to catch, and they have a nice, the end of times has been a cottage industry
ters. There was one article about the candi- robust, dusty bouquet. Of course, I get for centuries. At the turn of the twentieth
dates on Saturday, May 14 which men- Robert Baillie fleas, ticks and occasionally worms, but I century, it was alleged that the West’s
tioned only that Settle had spoken to the Ferguson Township don’t usually eat them. But being a dog, my imminent adoption of the metric system
particular expertise is on barking spiders. was a final sign. Maybe it still is yet to
Whitey Blue on Osama
And I get blamed for them even when come, since more locals quaff pounders,
they’re not mine. forties, pints and fifths, burn gallons of gas
and act as if they ten feet tall. Looks like
by David M. Silverman They just want to claim they got him to Dear Cosmo, only the dopers have gone metric, with all
enhance their political status. He’s probably What’s the deal with them moving up the their talk of grams and kilos, and 2-litre bot-
I was talking the other day to Whitey hidden somewhere chortling over this sub- end of the world to May 21, 2011? First it tles of Mountain Dew. They celebrate rap-
Blue, longtime Centre Region resident and terfuge and planning where to hit the U.S. was supposed to be December 21, 2012, ture on a pretty regular basis.
hard-nose. next.” and then they moved it up seven months to
Whitey, I know this isn’t a local issue, May 21, 2011. Then they moved it up a
see Cosmo, pg. 30
peace
but PA is directly involved because of the whole year! As a student, I appreciate an
heroic passenger rebellion that led to the
airliner crash in Shanksville, PA, instead
of the Pentagon, in 2001. What do you
think of the assassination of Osama bin
Laden?
“I don’t think they really got him.”
How can you say that? They shot him and
threw his washed body into the sea per
Muslim tradition?
Stand for Peace at the Allen Street Gates
“C’mon! They didn’t know if they really College Ave. and Allen Streets
had him, so they killed any Arab guy they
could find and threw the body in the ocean
Wednesdays, 5:00-6:00
so noone could identify the corpse.” Saturdays, 1:30-2:30
The sea burial was in accordance with
Muslim tradition! and in Millheim on Wednesdays, 6:00-7:00
“Sure! They have refused to release any http://www.scpeacecenter.org
pictures of the shooting or of the sea burial.
30 June 2011
German Pope, the eighth German Pope was
from Cosmo, pg. 29 “Predicting the end times has been a cottage industry for also the third-to-last non-Italian Pope,
centuries. At the turn of the twentieh cenutry, it was Adrian VI, who served 1522-23.
I trust that the June 2011 edition of alleged that the West’s imminent adoption of the mertic I’m always impressed by foreign news
Voices of Central Pennsylvania came out, clips because they show us a whole differ-
system was a final sign.”
and that the newsprint held up pretty well in ent range of file footage than what we usu-
the post-apocalyptic wasteland. And since -- Cosmo ally get: different war footage, different
the paper’s free, you didn’t have to use your perspectives, different architecture and dif-
Crap-it-all One Mark of the Beast Visa ferent pop icons. And the foreign coverage
card, which is accepted everywhere…like ing your campsites early at Worlds End from asbestos-induced mesothelioma, or of J-P II’s beatification had a great beauty
nothing else… I bet some folks are not State Park, in Sullivan County, PA. You Zoloft-associated birth defects, they’re shot of entire racks of different Pope John-
feeling so economically smug now that the pick the date and form of payment. looking for testimonies for lifting up the Paul II bobbleheads for sale overseas. The
sure-fired liquidity of certain booty has pontiff. foreign issue shows John-Paul II in a
evaporated. I suspect there are many fallow Dear Cosmo, As far as an American-born Pope goes, Roman Legion helmet, with the empire’s
stockpiles of Franklin Mint commemora- I heard there is a movement to “fast- I’d recommend you hold your holy water. moniker, SPQR (Senatus Populusque
tive plates of Gone With The Wind, pallets track” the canonization of Pope John-Paul John-Paul II, elected in 1978, was the first
of Princess Di Beanie Babies, fleets of II to sainthood, but there is a lot of resist- non-Italian Pope since 1523. Although the
mint-condition, original-issue Millennium ance in the United States. What is the prob- current Pope, Benedict XVI, is the ninth see Cosmo, pg. 31
Falcons, mountains of Dale Earnhardt, Sr. lem? Are they waiting for an American
Coke machines and several miles of pope? How likely is that to happen? If he Instructions:
Michael Vick rookie rabies tags. Looks like deserves it, I say, Git-R-Dun! Fill in the grid so Sudoku
they over-produced way too much Hannah every row, every
Montana stuff for it to ever get scarce. Dear Verily, the Sable Guy, column and every
Elvis gear, on the other hand, is always a It’s not like inducting someone into the three-by-three box
solid performer. baseball Hall of Fame. For one thing, they contains the digits
Sure, it stinks when they move the goal don’t dole out asterisks for players who 1 through 9. There
posts, but most folks don’t pay that much used performance-enhancing drugs to break is no math
attention to deadlines anyway. So you miss batting records, or olive-branches to pray- involved. You solve
the April 15 tax deadline, or don’t get all ers who used perversion-hiding dialogs to the puzzle with rea-
your Christmas shopping done in time, or bring on the beatitudes. Some folks say that son and logic.
you send out belated birthday cards. It’s not the Vatican’s awareness and non-action
like it’s the end of the world. But look on concerning priests molesting parishioners Thanks to Peter
the bright side, you’ll have until the next casts this era in a dim light, and that it’s best Morris for con-
End of the World scare to pay CASH to get to wait. Many recognitions of sainthood tributing this puz-
your Arme-get-on on, and it looks like a take centuries. zle.
bunch of the 5/21/11 stuff should be dirt- Others are putting out the cattle call for
cheap and just as quaint as a “Dewey Wins” any unreported miracles performed by Pope The solution to this
headline, or an ad with Ronnie Reagan John-Paul (whose friends nicknamed him month’s puzzle can
hawking healthful Chesterfield cigarettes. Pope John-Paul-George-Ringo). The plea be found on page
But if you’re smart and want to be in the almost looks like a class-action suit ad, but 29 of this issue.
right place at the right time, I suggest book- instead of digging up plaintiffs suffering
A Musician’s
Most Valuable
New Inner Ear Test
We now offer the most
sensitive test of damage
Love Voices?
to the inner ear.
Instrument. This provides an early
warning of loss of the
ear’s precise frequency-
Know Penn State?
tuning capacity.
Musicians’ Products
• Musicians’ ear plugs
The University editor
• In-ear monitors
• Custom ear pieces for iPods
position is open.
Contact managing editor Lucy Bryan Green at
Albrecht Audiology
814-867-HEAR (4327) • www.albrechtaudiology.com voiceseditor11@gmail.com for more details.
June 2011 31
A word from your new opinion editor
by Kevin Handwerk for Voices. This led to my position as dis- Locally, we have seen the gun issue show I could go on, but there are no end of
tribution coordinator. its face at the State College Borough meet- attacks on someone’s values and morals
Now is the time I should let all the read- Low and behold, after contributing to ing. We have the University promoting the taking place here. So please express yours,
ers know who I am. I’m your paper boy. I many opinion pieces,letters and several Marcellus Shale “play.” We have a libertar- and write, contribute time or donate money.
have officially been delivering the paper or articles, I found that Voices, because of ian type movement to privatize the state The Opinion Editor position is available to
placing papers in convenient located loca- turnover, was in need again. So here I am, down to basically the military and the anyone who might like it, and I always need
tions about the Valley since 2006. serving as the Opinion editor. police (you know what that leaves us with). volunteers to expand our delivery. I know
I have been involved as a reader since I would like you to consider the transi- We have growing and expanding this sounds very self-serving (and it is), but
1994, when I came to the college looking tion this paper is in and will probably Republican welfare program at Rockview do you ever listen to the religious stations?
for paper that fit my views and to finish my always be in given the nature of this college (pay half of the poor masses to guard the They ask for money every 15 minutes, and
often procrastinated undergrad degree. town. It’s not just turnover we need to con- other misbhaving half). they get it.
What I found at first was that the campus cern ourselves with—our country and the
was littered with a little fish rapper, but world are going through several transitions, $11.95.
soon noticed an alternative paper showing from global climate change to the change in from Cosmo, pg. 30 In contrast, there’s an Elvis bobblehead
up in this rapper’s rack. So I was introduced role from citizens to consumer/investor(s) with real one-carat diamonds that goes for
to Voices and a little paper war that goes on that Robert Reich explains in People of Rome). This is an odd choice to $36,995, and dozens of pro-athlete bobbles
from time to time as free publications like “Supercaptialism.” place him in that time period, because that go for more than $1000 each. Even
The Gazette and the Bargain Sheet compete We are in another “Great despite what Mel Gibson says, it was the copies of Flo, the poufy-haired Progressive
for space and the eyes of readers’ to prove Transformation,” a book K. Polanyi wrote Roman soldiers who actually drove the Insurance lady bobbleheads average about a
to advertisers that their payments were in 1944 documenting the transformation of nails into the cross. hundred bucks each.
worth it. industrial society over two world wars. He And of course, the best place to take the So, if we’re voting with our dollars, there
Since I graduated, I’ve had a short, lus- wrote about the rise and fall of the first popular temperature in the American are only two Pope bobbleheads, and only
trous career in Weed Science, started and world market economy. social climate is on E-bay. America’s elec- one of them is actually pontiff.
procrastinated my Ecology graduate stud- A battle of ideologies is taking place. tronic auction place boasted 15,931 hits The pope up for sainthood isn’t even on
ies, started and failed two of my own busi- These ideologies range from Neo-conserva- for “bobbleheads,” but not a dang one for E-bay. And the versions on the market in
nesses and attempted to help out in a not so tive and Neo-liberal thinking to fringe Pope John-Paul II. The only Popes avail- the U.S. have him in a crimson papal
successful non-profit (who would have movements, such as Anarcho-capitalist, able were American-born soccer phenom beanie, rather than Roman executioners’
thought you need to make a profit to be a founded by libertarian Murray Rothbard, Eddie Pope, and the current Pope Benedict headgear, and instead of SPQR written on
non-profit?). which sees no need of the state and equates XVI. the pedestal, it merely says, “The Pope.”
After all that, I found myself seriously “free markets” with democracy. Now Benedict’s nickname is “God’s Related products from Bosley Bobbers
under-employed and with too much time to They are all attempting to control this Rottweiler,” which is thuggishly catchy — include bobbleheads of Billy Graham and
read and consider the political-economic transformation for their own ends and their better than God’s Pit Bull or God’s Jesse Jackson.
cliff I had already plunged off of and the own set of values and morals. I ask you to Chihuahua or God’s Teacup Poodle, or any And yet the bobblehead of Osama Bin
rest of the county was following. join in that battle of ideas and contribute Divine hybrid Peekapoo, Puggle or Laden, where he squats agreeably with a
Of course, I was not looking to deliver your values and morals, so as to let others Labradoodle. But in the American market- machine gun in his hands, usually runs
papers for a living, but knowing the need know they are not the majority and that dis- place, the soccer player’s bobblehead com- $32.00, and are flying off the shelves. So
and understanding the problem of turnover course and compromise are a part of the mands $29.95, while the reigning pontiff’s apparently, a wink isn’t as good as a nod in
in this town, I agreed to help deliver papers democratic process. goes for an impoverished and celibate bobblehead idolatry.
Voices of Central Pa PRSRT STD
P.O. Box 296 U.S. POSTAGE
State College Pa 16804 PAID
www.voicesweb.org State College, Pa
Permit No. 213
ur
et ell o
P leas isers
rt
adve em
sa w th blackwalnutbodyworks.com
you s!
in V oice Now We’ve Gone Green With Envirobase Paint From PPG!
Now We’ve Gone Green With Envirobase Paint From PPG!
We ve Gr en With Enviro
re it ir ro
Pain From PP
RENTALS
USED VEHICLE SALES
SUPERIOR DETAILING SERVICES
The highest level of quality auto repair in the region.
Th ig gh lity to re ir the regi
ep io
The highest leve of quality auto repair in th region.
level
814.355.3000
Let Us Make Your Backyard a Paradise!
BLACKHAWK HOMESTEAD
NURSERY & GARDEN CENTER
Your authority on the design, installation and
renovation of garden ponds and fountains.
blackhawkhomestead.com
389 Blackhawk Road, Centre Hall, PA 814-364-9668
HIC#PA039566