Doomscrolling

Have you heard the word "doomscrolling"? Have you been doing it? It is defined as the act of scrolling on your device and reading or skimming the endless stream of bad news that hit us daily on news sites and social media. 

Image:Mote Oo Education | Pixabay

The pandemic, economic hard times, violence in the street and the Black Lives Matter protests are all important stories but seem to all be part of a doomsday scenario.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary people have recently flagged doomscrolling as one of the words it is watching for 2020 for possible inclusion into the dictionary.

The word has appeared in stories in Business Insider, and the close variation, “doomsurfing,” appeared in the New York Times.

Why are people doomscrolling if the news is so negative? It is a combination of a "fear of missing out" (FOMO), a “hurry-up-and-wait” instinct and a real desire to get information on the pandemic and other issues even if that information is incomplete, questionably accurate and depressing.

With so many sources of information at our fingertips, the temptation to doomscroll is seductive to many people.

Vaccine and vaccination

These early months of 2020 have been filled with words (coronavirus, COVID-19) and phrases (sheltering at home, social distancing) that are new or coming into wider usage. Certainly, the words vaccine and vaccination have been used for more than 200 years, but what are their origins?

Vaccine comes from the name for the cowpox virus, vaccinia, which comes from the Latin vacca meaning cow. This pox virus attacked cows. 

In 1796, the British doctor Edward Jenner gave a young patient what became known as the first “vaccinia vaccine” - a vaccine made from the cowpox virus, - in an attempt to protect him from the human form of the pox virus. These first vaccinations were crude by today's standards. Jenner took pus from the cowpox lesions on a milkmaid’s hands and introduced that fluid into a cut he made in the arm of an 8-year-old boy.

When Jenner exposed the boy to smallpox 6 weeks later (!) he did not develop the infection. He also seemed immune to subsequent exposures and lived to age 65.

A caricature by James Gillray "The Cow Pock" of Jenner vaccinating patients who feared it would make them sprout cowlike appendages - Library of Congress, Public Domain, Link

His vaccine practice was not immediately accepted. People feared the counterintuitive idea of introducing a disease into your body in order to fight disease. And the idea of using something from an animal in your body was repulsive. Jenner submitted a paper about his new procedure to the prestigious Royal Society of London, but it was rejected. The president of the Society told Jenner that it was a mistake to risk his reputation by publishing something so controversial.

Jenner published his ideas at his own expense in a short pamphlet in 1798 which was widely read and discussed. Novelist Jane Austen noted in one of her letters that she’d been at a dinner party and everyone was talking about the “Jenner pamphlet.” 

The vaccination process evolved but in that time even the idea of germs was unknown so poor sanitation and dirty needles contributed to issues from the process

Jenner used the word vaccine in his writing and his friend, Richard Dunning, used "vaccination" in 1800, but the Oxford English Dictionary credits the French for coining the term vaccine in 1800 and vaccination in 1803. There are cognates in other languages (Italian, vaccine, Portuguese, vacina, and Spanish, vacuna). 

Today, viral tissue culture methods that were developed starting in the 1950s led to the advent of the Salk (inactivated) polio vaccine and the Sabin (live attenuated oral) polio vaccine. Despite there still be a small minority of anti-vaccination critics, mass polio immunization has now eradicated the disease from many regions around the world.

Nazz

Nazz was an American rock band formed in Philadelphia in 1967 guitarist/songwriter Todd Rundgren and bassist Carson Van Osten. The drummer was Thom Mooney and the lead vocalist/keyboardist was Robert "Stewkey" Antoni. Their first gig was in 1967 opening for the Doors in 1967. 

Like the Doors, their name was just Nazz but people usually referred to them as The Nazz but it is just Nazz on their 3 albums. Their name comes from a track by The Yardbirds called "The Nazz Are Blue." That song doesn't explain the word's meaning (see lyrics below) but as far as I can find an earlier usage in 1952 was from American comedian Lord Buckley who had a monologue called "The Nazz" on one of his records. It that monologue, "Nazz" is a reference to Jesus of Nazareth. In later years, Todd Rundgren stated in an interview that they didn't know about the Lord Buckley or The Yardbirds' references. 

It turned out that another band in Phoenix, Arizona that formed around the same time also used The Nazz as their name but since the Philly band had a hit they changed their name to Alice Cooper.

Between 1968 and 1970, Nazz released three albums between 1968 - 1970 - Nazz, Nazz Nazz, and Nazz III but are best remembered for their first single "Open My Eyes" with the B side "Hello It's Me".

They actually broke up in 1969 but the third album came out the following year.

Todd Rundgren followed up with a string and continuing solo career and stints with his band Utopia. In 1972, Todd recorded a new version of "Hello It's Me" on his Something/Anything album and it reached number 5 on U.S. charts.

 

"Open Your Eyes" and the video released with it is a bit of psychedelic
with some Beatles' A Hard Day's Night as channeled through The Monkees.

The Yardbirds' "The Nazz Are Blue"

...But no matter what's done to me baby

I guess I'll always be blue

I got a hundred and fifty things

Now all I gotta find is you

I got a hundred and fifty things

Now all I gotta find is you

And if the Nazz don't help me baby

You better forget about me too

Alice Cooper

Alice Cooper   (Wikimedia)

The person we know as Alice Cooper was born Vincent Damon Furnier on February 4, 1948. But we also know Alice Cooper as a band whose stage show often included a guillotine, gallows, electric chair, fake blood, boa constrictor and butchered baby dolls.

In 1964, a sixteen-year-old Furnier wanted to enter a local Phoenix, Arizona talent show. He got some friends from his cross-country team to form a group they called The Earwigs for the show. Since they didn't know how to play any instruments at the time, they dressed up like The Beatles and lip-synced to Beatles songs. They won the talent show and were motivated to learn how to play instruments and form a real band which they called The Spiders. It featured Furnier on vocals, Glen Buxton on lead guitar, John Tatum on rhythm guitar, Dennis Dunaway on bass guitar, and John Speer on drums.

They modeled themselves on mainstream rock bands of the time - The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks, and The Yardbirds. For the next year, the band performed regularly around the Phoenix area with a huge black spider's web as their backdrop, the group's first stage prop.

In 1965 they recorded their first single, "Why Don't You Love Me" (a cover of a song originally performed by The Blackwells), with Furnier learning the harmonica for that song.

In 1966 "The Spiders" graduated from high school and they had a local radio hit with "Don't Blow Your Mind," an original composition. By 1967 the band had begun to make regular road trips to Los Angeles to play shows. They soon renamed themselves The Nazz and released the single "Wonder Who's Lovin' Her Now," with B side "Lay Down And Die, Goodbye." 

In 1968 they learned that Todd Rundgren also had a band called Nazz, so they needed a new stage name. They decided the group needed some kind of stage presence or unique stage showmanship to make their mark. Furnier chose "Alice Cooper" as the band's name and eventually adopted this stage name as his own. 

Early press releases claimed that the name was agreed upon after a session with a Ouija board, during which it was revealed that Furnier was the reincarnation of a 17th-century witch named Alice Cooper. But in later interviews, Alice has said that it was just picked because it has the sound of "a sweet little girl" or an old lady.

Two other erroneous origin stories are that it came from a character in the television sitcom Mayberry R.F.D. and that Alice Cooper is the name of Betty Cooper's mother in the Archie comic strips. Neither is the origin.

More important than the name was the idea of a male playing the role of an androgynous witch, in tattered women's clothing and wearing make-up. Cooper has said the look was influenced by the film Barbarella.

"When I saw Anita Pallenberg playing the Great Tyrant in that movie in 1968, wearing long black leather gloves with switchblades coming out of them, I thought, 'That's what Alice should look like'. That, and a little bit of Emma Peel from The Avengers".

The concept of a rock villain was unique and they continued to build their stage image which was in complete contrast to the real "Alice" off stage.

They had their breakout hit in 1971 with "I'm Eighteen" followed in 1972 by the even bigger single "School's Out." and peaked with their #1 album Billion Dollar Babies in 1973.

The music evolved from garage rock to art rock, conceptual rock, rock and roll, some jazz, new wave, and helped shape the sound and look of many metal bands.

Furnier's eventually went solo and legally adopted Alice Cooper as his name. He released a 1975 concept album Welcome to My Nightmare and continued with hit albums like 1989's Poison and Along Came a Spider.

Alice Cooper, the man, has taken up acting, celebrity golf, is a restaurateur, and in 2004 started a classic rock radio show "Nights with Alice Cooper."

The original Alice Cooper group was inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.


The Best Of Alice Cooper: Mascara and Monsters
Alice Cooper's Greatest Hits
Alice Cooper Goes to Hell
Billion Dollar Babies

Gaslighting, Gaslighter

GASLIGHT film by Trailer screenshot - Gaslight 1944 Public Domain, Link

Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person (gaslighter) or a group secretly attempts to create doubt in a person so that they doubt their memory, perception, or even their sanity.

I have been hearing the term used more lately. Just this month, I saw that the Dixie Chicks have released an album and song titled Gaslighter. The reference in the song is supposed to be to gaslighting that happened in lead singer Natalie Maines' marriage/divorce.

The term originated from the 1938 play Gas Light and was popularized by the 1940 and 1944 film adaptations (both titled Gaslight).

In the play, the scheming husband slowly dims the gas lights in their home, while pretending nothing has changed, in an effort to make his wife doubt her own perceptions.

He also dims other lights and makes noises and voices that the wife hears while he denies that these things are happening. His goal is to have her evaluated and committed to a mental institution.

Gaslighters use denial, misdirection, contradiction, and misinformation to destabilize and delegitimize the victim's beliefs.

Currently, I hear the term applied to politicians who seem to be manipulating the public by using those techniques.

The term has worked its way into popular culture. Pop group Steely Dan has a song entitled "Gaslighting Abbie" on their album Two Against Nature.