"Sinnerman" (Nina Simone)

While watching Hunt for the Wilderpeople a couple nights ago, I heard this song in the soundtrack, and remembered hearing it in The Thomas Crown Affair.  Found more information at Wikipedia:

"Sinner Man" or "Sinnerman" is accepted as an African American traditional spiritual song that has been recorded by a number of performers and has been incorporated in many other of the media and arts. The lyrics describe a sinner attempting to hide from divine justice on Judgement Day. It was recorded in the 1950s by Les Baxter, the Swan Silvertones, the Weavers and others, before Nina Simone recorded an extended version in 1965...

Simone learned the lyrics of this English song in her childhood when it was used at revival meetings by her mother, a Methodist minister, to help people confess their sins. In the early days of her career during the early sixties, when she was heavily involved in the Greenwich Village scene, Simone often used the long piece to end her live performances.

Reposted from 2016 to add the lyrics;

Oh, sinnerman, where you gonna run to?
Sinnerman where you gonna run to?
Where you gonna run to?
All on that day
We got to run to the rock
Please hide me, I run to the rock
Please hide me, run to the rock
Please hide here
All on that day
But the rock cried out
I can't hide you, the rock cried out
I can't hide you, the rock cried out
I ain't gonna hide you there
All on that day
I said rock
What's the matter with you rock?
Don't you see I need you, rock?
Good Lord, Lord
All on that day
So I run to the river
It was bleedin', I run to the sea
It was bleedin', I run to the sea
It was bleedin', all on that day
So I run to the river
It was boilin', I run to the sea
It was boilin', I run to the sea
It was boilin', all on that day

So I run to the Lord
Please hide me, Lord
Don't you see me prayin'?
Don't you see me down here prayin'?
But the Lord said
Go to the Devil, the Lord said
Go to the Devil
He said go to the Devil
All on that day
So I ran to the Devil
He was waitin', I ran to the Devil
He was waitin', ran to the Devil
He was waitin', all on that day
I cried, power, power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Kingdom (power, Lord)
Kingdom (power, Lord)
Kingdom (power, Lord)
Kingdom (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)

Oh yeah
Oh yeah
Oh yeah
Well, I run to the river
It was boilin', I run to the sea
It was boilin', I run to the sea
It was boilin', all on that day
So I ran to the Lord
I said Lord, hide me
Please hide me
Please help me, all on that day
He said, hide?
Where were you?
When you oughta have been prayin'
I said Lord, Lord
Hear me prayin', Lord, Lord
Hear me prayin', Lord, Lord
Hear me prayin', all on that day
Sinnerman, you oughta be prayin'
Outghta be prayin', sinnerman
Oughta be prayin', all on that day

Up come power (power, Lord) 

Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
(Power, Lord)
Hold down (power, Lord)
Go down (power, Lord)
Kingdom (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Na-na-na, na-na-na-na
Na-na-na, na-na-na-na
Na-na-na, na-na-na-na

Woah, ho

Ha-ha-ha-ha
Ha-ha-ha-ha, oh Lord
Nu, nu, nu
No-no-no-no, ma-na-na-na-na, don't you know I need you Lord?
Don't you know that I need you?
Don't you know that I need you?

Oh, Lord
Wait
Oh, Lord
Oh, Lord, Lord

Songwriters: Nina Simone

Sinnerman lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc

I couldn't find a good YouTube video of a live performance by her that wasn't mixed with a jumble of unrelated visuals.

Reposted from 2019 to embed a different and more interesting video at the top (the original was a still photo).

"Life in a Day" - a crowdsourced movie

"What happens when you send a request out to the world to chronicle, via video, a single day on Earth? You get 80,000 submissions and 4,500 hours of footage from 192 countries. Producer Ridley Scott and Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald took this raw material -- all shot on July 24, 2010 -- and created Life in a Day, a groundbreaking, feature-length documentary that portrays this kaleidoscope of images we call life.  

"Life in a Day is a documentary film project born out of a partnership between YouTube, Ridley Scott Associates and LG electronics, announced on July 6, 2010. Users sent in videos of themselves on July 24, 2010, and then Ridley Scott produced the film and edited the videos into a film with director Kevin MacDonald and film editor Joe Walker, consisting of footage from some of the contributors. The completed film is 94 minutes 57 seconds long and includes scenes from 4,500 hours of footage in 80,000 submissions from 140 nations. The completed film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival on January 27, 2011 and the premiere was streamed live on YouTube. The film's music was written by British composer and producer Harry Gregson-Williams, along with Matthew Herbert. The film's opening song, written by Herbert, was performed by British singer-songwriter Ellie Goulding. On January 24, 2011, National Geographic Films announced that it had received the distribution rights for the film."

The video embedded above is from the full-length movie.  Here is the Wikipedia entry.  Not super-duper great, but quite interesting for concept and for execution.

Addendum:  A tip of the blogging hat to an anonymous reader who found the video to replace the trailer I had originally embedded, and also found the 2020 Life in a Day movie online at YouTube Videos:

Age-restricted probably for the scenes of women in labor/giving birth.

Nasogastric tube insertion into the brain

A lethal complication in a patient who who had undergone microscopic transoral transsphenoidal surgery for a pituitary tumour.  That's already more information than most readers want to know, so I'll just provide the link to the Science Direct article with information from a 2021 publication in Interdisciplinary Neurosurgery.

I had to look this up

Apparently the phrase on the podium is real rathe than faked.  And it appears to be an official Homeland Security creation:

The podium sign link leads to the "Worst of the Worst" page at the Department of Homeland Security, but the phrase is not explained there.

The obvious implication would be "if you do something bad to our people, we will do worse to all of your people" but the historical context was unfamiliar to me.  Googling the phrase resulted in lots of hits.  There is a very detailed commentary at the Ask Historians subreddit; here is an excerpt -

Several variants of this post are going around online, and the majority of them seem to attribute this supposed Nazi quotation to the Lidice massacre of 1942, which was committed by the German occupation authorities in the 'Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia' in response to the assassination of the deputy governor of the province, Reinhard Heydrich, by British-backed Czech commandos in Prague ("Operation Anthropoid") on 27 May 1942. Heydrich survived the initial attack, but later succumbed to his wounds on 4 June. The (unfounded) suspicion that Heydrich's assassins had been given shelter by the villagers of Lidice led to that village's siege and subsequent sack and destruction on 9 June 1942. All male villagers aged 15 and up were executed by German forces, whereas female villagers and underage boys were fed into the concentration camps, mainly the women's concentration camp at Ravensbrück.

So this is where the "One of ours, all of yours" supposedly comes from: "[You kill] one of ours, [we kill (or capture)] all of yours". And that's where the history ends — because that phrase was never used by the German government. The Lidice massacre was not something that they particularly propagandized [EDIT: they did issue public statements notifying the public that the town was "razed to the ground", the women "interned in a concentration camp", the children "transferred to suitable institutions"; though my point was that they didn't make up fancy catchphrases to propagandize the deed.], and propaganda directed at the villagers was unnecessary, because they were to be the victims of armed force anyway. The young sketch artist and famous Holocaust victim Petr Ginz only noted the Lidice massacre in his diary on 13 June (four days late), implying that there was an information delay (through the rumor mill) that there definitely would not have been had Lidice been widely and purposefully advertised. 

There are more comments from other Redditors at that link.

There are other links, but what I have not seen is an official declaration from the Trump administration on why the phrase was chosen and what implications are intended.  If anyone sees such on Truth Social or such, please add a comment to this post.

Not a flying carpet

This photo was called an "accidental optical illusion" when it was posted at Reddit.  I think that's a very apt description.  Apart from the flag shadow paralleling the board, there's also the flagpole shadow oriented reasonably well re the microphone boom.  Very cool illusion.

Reposted from 2011 to accompany the next post.

These cubes are NOT MOVING

An incredible optical illlusion.  I tried covering up the arrow prompts with paper, but the cubes still "move".

Sadly I've never understood how to embed a gif, so I have to settle for embedding a YouTube video of this gif.  Gif at Cliff Pickover's X page, via Nag on the Lake.  The resolution (and duration) are better at the original.

If you enjoyed this, spend an hour or two browsing my other 89 optical illusion posts.

William Faulkner disagrees with Cormac McCarthy's prose style. And vice-versa.

I'm posting this for any other English majors who may be followers of this blog.  I've been an avid reader of Faulkner since my collegiate years (1960s) and of Cormac McCarthy in my adult years.  The obviously contrived but clever "conversation" in this video will be enjoyed mostly by those familiar with both prose styles.

A tip of my blogging cap to John Farrier at Neatorama.  Leave it to a librarian to find cool stuff like this.

Related old posts:

"My mother is a fish" (my 2014 review of the movie adaptation of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying)

The Powerful Prose of Cormac McCarthy (excerpts from Blood Meridian)

Cormac McCarthy's incredible vocabulary 

ICE immigration officers are detaining NATIVE AMERICANS in Minnesota

For fox ache.  

The president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe (OST) in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, says that four of its tribal members were recently detained by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Minneapolis.

OST President Frank Star Comes Out issued a statement Friday saying ICE agents detained four men who are homeless and living near the Little Earth housing project in south Minneapolis.  The statement continues to say that another OST tribal member witnessed their detainment and was able to confirm their tribal affiliation...

It comes amid an ongoing occupation of the Twin Cities by the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which has escalated under the auspices of targeting undocumented immigrants and fraud, but is increasingly seeing U.S. citizens detained and residents of the Twin Cities profiled based on their appearance or accent...

An incident that went viral on social media saw a Somali-American man working as an Uber driver at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport pulled over by CBP agents who demanded he prove his immigration status, with one agent saying: "I'm an immigration officer, I can hear you don't have the same accent as me ... I want to know where you're born."

It is literally and genetically impossible to be more American than a Native American.

How many martinis is too many ?

In this "immortal quatrain," Dorothy Parker explained that her limit was two:

“I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most.
After three I'm under the table,
After four I'm under my host.” 

I wish we could resurrect Dorothy Parker.  She was a widely quoted author in the 1920s, known for her wit.  A collection of her work was released in the United States in 1944 under the title The Portable Dorothy Parker.  Parker's is one of only three of the Portable series (the other two being William Shakespeare and The Bible) to remain continuously in print."  I'm sure she would have some choice words to offer regarding the current situation in the U.S.  Here are some of her famous quotes:

“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.”

“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”

“What fresh hell is this?”

“Tell him I was too fucking busy-- or vice versa.”

“This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it.”

“I had been fed, in my youth, a lot of old wives' tales about the way men would instantly forsake a beautiful woman to flock around a brilliant one. It is but fair to say that, after getting out in the world, I had never seen this happen.”

“So, you're the man who can't spell 'fuck.'" (Dorothy Parker to Norman Mailer after publishers had convinced Mailer to replace the word with a euphemism, 'fug,' in "The Naked and the Dead.”) Addendum: Note this is possibly a misattribution, perhaps said by Tallulah Bankhead (hat tip to reader Michael Skeet).

“Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.”

“The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant, and let the air out of the tires.”

For her epitaph, she suggested 'Excuse my dust.'  Ironically "her ashes remained unclaimed in various places, including her attorney Paul O'Dwyer's filing cabinet, for approximately 17 years."  I've requested The Portable Dorothy Parker from the library.

Reposted from 2012 to provide some levity in the midst of pandemic and political news.  I would add, however, that however witty her epigrammatic quotes are, the collected poetry is mostly morose, suitable primarily for an emo book club.

Addendum:  Here's a link for the Dorothy Parker Society.

Addendum:  As reported by NPR:

Dorothy Parker died in 1967 at the age of 73. She left no family and directed that her estate and any future royalties go to a man she had never met but admired, The Reverend Martin Luther King; and on his death, to the NAACP. 

She designated that her friend, the playwright Lillian Hellmann, be her literary executor. But Lillian Hellmann thought that Dr. King was a pompous stuffed shirt, and she didn't think much of the NAACP. 

Seemingly out of spite, [Hellmann] made it difficult for those who wanted to reprint Dorothy Parker's poems or turn her works into plays and movies. 

Marion Meade has written about the saga of Dorothy Parker and Lillian Hellmann in the April-May issue of Book Forum magazine. She joins us from our studios in New York... [continues at the link]

Reposted again to highlight the "What fresh hell is this" sentiment. 

Trevi fountain

Photo cropped for size and emphasis from the original posted in The Guardian.

Selling flowers on the streets of Aleppo

"A woman peddles bouquets of flowers outside the ruins of the passport office in Aleppo. "

Photographs from Syria, January 2025, by Victor J. Blue.

I found this image, from a Harper's photoessay about Syria, strongly evocative.  Photos of children selling flowers seem to have become increasingly prevalent, I think because the activity sanitizes and makes ethically acceptable the age-old necessity of begging (it takes no stretch of the imagination to compare this image with Hans Christian Andersen's nineteenth-century story The Little Match Girl.)  And some of these children are trafficked or forced into this activity.

If nothing else, the apposition of her image against the structural devastation of Aleppo serves as a reminder of the unutterable horror some people nowadays face as they are forced to live in an ongoing dystopic present, none of which is their fault.

Updated Monopoly cards

"Things you may not know" about Peter Pan

Over the past 15 years I have blogged items about the flying corset, the eternal "man-child" concept, and about Captain Hook's collegiate background, but I never thought to check any background on J. M. Barrie or the origins of the "Peter Pan" story.  So I offer a tip of my blogging cap to Miss Cellania, who has posted at Neatorama the video embedded above.

Trigger warning: the contents are not cheerful, uplifting, or designed as a pleasant diversion from your usual doomscrolling.  Quite the contrary... 

Old Reader's Digest puzzle

Assume the goose (as pictured) is on the bed.  Via Australia Reader's Digest.  Answer below the fold...

Apple iPhone upgrade warning

Everyone who has a phone understands about the need for upgrading the system periodically, but I was surprised by the urgency implied in this latest communication:

"Take this seriously. If your iPhone does not have Apple’s new update, you must install it now. We know attacks on iPhones have started. We have been warned the threat will extend well beyond those highly targeted initial attacks. And hundreds of millions of iPhone users are also now facing down an unwelcome surprise.

The last available analyst data says hundreds of millions of iPhone users with devices eligible for Apple’s current iOS 26 firmware have yet to upgrade. Those users had expected to be offered the update to iOS 18.7.3, avoiding iOS 26 for a little longer. But Apple withdrew that update for all but iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR.

It’s now a choice between upgrading to iOS 26.2 or no security update. A quick scan of online forums a week after all this was confirmed is a nasty surprise. Plenty of users say they intend to stick with iOS 18.7.2 and avoid the update altogether. That’s bad news...

Do not run your iPhone without these critical WebKit security fixes. “Users should urgently update all their impacted Apple devices,” James Maude from BeyondTrust told me. “Even though this only appears to be linked to a small number of targeted attacks it will quickly become a must have exploit for a range of threat actors."..

Check your iPhone. If you’re running iOS 18.7.2, you should update to iOS 26.2 assuming iOS 18.7.3 is not available. The period of maximum risk for vulnerabilities is the time between public disclosure and extensive patching. That’s right now."

The embedded text is from Forbes, which is not a fearmongering site, so I presume the threat is in fact serious.  I upgraded to 26.2 last night after receiving this notification.  There is some additional information at the link.  Readers of TYWKIWDBI tend to be well informed and may have insight and comments to offer.