Chamblee54

When you have written a blog for five years, you have an archive. When the events of the day are too depressing to discuss, you can cheerfully live in the past. With war without end in Babylon, and an Governors election in Georgia, this is one of those times.
A trip back to the happier, simpler (and employed) times of 2008 uncovered this gem. When PG went back to the source to copy it, he found a sequel. Pictures for today’s festival are from The Library of Congress.

Heather Has a Mommy and a Daddy
Deep in the heart of Dullsville, at the end of a cul-de-sac, behind a lawn of scratchy brown grass dotted with giant plastic butterflies, three flaking cement deer, and a philodendron the size of Bob Hoskins though with fewer decorative parts, lives Heather Thompson. Heather has a mommy and a daddy. Heather’s daddy is an accountant. Her mommy is a homemaker. Before Heather was born they met, fell in love, and got married. “I love you very much and I’m having your child,” Heather’s mom said.
Danitra is Heather’s best friend. One of Danitra’s dads is an empowerment facilitator. The other is an aura consultant. Danitra doesn’t know what they do at work, except they don’t need briefcases. Before Danitra was born her daddies met and fell in love, and after seventeen years spent discussing caring and support, handling acceptance, and negotiating intimacy, they had a commitment ceremony. “I love you very much and I’m designing the rings,” Danitra’s Daddy Mike said.
One day in school Heather’s teacher, Mrs. Weinberg-Lopez, tells the class to draw pictures of their families. Danitra draws two men, Julio draws two women, and Heather draws a man and a woman. Keanu points at the woman Heather drew, with squiggly yellow hair, a crude red dress and simple brown shoes. “This dad here’s got some ugly drag going on,” he says.
At lunchtime Danitra sits on the bench next to Heather and pulls a sandwich out of a brown paper bag.“Want to trade?” Danitra asks. “I’ve got grilled eggplant and goat cheese on marjoram foccacia.” “Um, I didn’t bring lunch,” Heather stammers, kicking her brown paper bag out of sight. “I’m . . . uh . . . on a diet.”
“Diet?” Danitra asks. “Haven’t your dads told you not to buy into that patriarchal looks-based chauvinism? And anyway, what’s this then?” she asks, holding up the bag with “HAVE A SUPER DAY!” written in sparkle marker on it.
Julio, who was listening nearby, runs up and grabs Heather’s lunch. “Yeah, what’s this? It’s somebody’s lunch!” Heather jumps at the bag but Julio holds it out of reach. “You give that back!” Heather yells. “Try and make me!” Julio chides. He pulls Heather’s sandwich apart and drops it like it was electrified. He wobbles away, holding his stomach.
“Oh my God!” he cries. “There’s like dead stuff in there!” Danitra looks at the sandwich lying on the cement. “Is that MEAT? Is that like SPAM?” Claudia, sitting quietly at the other end of the bench, bursts into tears. “Heather’s eating BAMBI!” “It’s friggin’ Wonder Bread!” Julio scoffs. Keanu walks toward the bread and peers at it. “And it’s got LUBE all over it!” “You idiot, that’s MAYONNAISE.” “What’s mayonnaise?” “It’s like goat cheese for heterosexuals.”
“Heterosexuals?” Keanu asks. “Heather’s mommy and daddy are heterosexuals?” Heather starts to yell. “No! I don’t have a mommy and a daddy. I’ve got two daddies!” “Hell-OOOO!” Danitra says, drawing the word out to twelve syllables. “We can see your clothes!” “Um . . . “ Heather stalls, “then I’ve got two mommies.” “And we’ve seen you play baseball,” Julio answers.
Heather, unable to think of a response, sits on the bench and starts to cry. Danitra pulls a robin’s egg blue bandana from her pocket and dabs at Heather’s face. “Maybe your mom’s not really a woman,” Danitra offers. “Well,” Heather says, sniffing, “she cleans the house, and cooks, and does the laundry.” Danitra fumes. “We’re trying to establish that she’s female, not that she’s an idiot.”
“Maybe your dad’s not really a man,” Julio suggests.“Well,” Heather answers, wiping her nose. “He’s big and strong and he’s got a mustache.” Several of the children wonder what this proves but nobody says anything.
“So let’s say you’ve got a mom and a dad,” Keanu says. “Then where did you come from?”Heather thinks for a minute. “They went to bed together, and then I was born.” Some of her friends express further interest, but Heather doesn’t have a brochure. “Daddy put his thing in mommy — “
“Oh, man,” Keanu interjects. “Is that legal?” “HelLLLLO!” sings Danitra, who gets the word up to eighteen syllables this time. “We’re in CaliFORnia!”
“And nine months later I came out of my mommy’s tummy,” Heather adds. Several of the children wonder why they didn’t hire a surrogate with a vagina but nobody says anything.

Heather Has a Mommy and a Daddy, Part Two
One night there’s a dance at Heather’s school and her parents offer to chaperone. While Heather’s dancing with Danitra she sees from the corner of her eye her mom and dad moving onto the dance floor. She watches in horror as her mom just sort of stands there swaying, her gingham granny dress limply hanging to the floor. She grimaces as her dad starts chopping at the air like Jackie Chan being attacked by locusts.
Occasionally their movements coincide with the beat. Heather runs to the bathroom crying.“Heather, don’t feel so bad,” Danitra says. “Lots of kids have embarrassing parents.” She starts to lead Heather out of the bathroom, then stops. “Um, maybe we should stay in here a while longer. They just started doing the Bump.”
One day the class projects are due. Heather brings in the model she’s made. It’s a lump of brown Play-Doh with ketchup poured over it and dotted with marshmellows stuck on with toothpicks. She sets it on the table as her teacher comes over to look.
“Why, Heather! That’s . . . nice! Very very nice!”“What the hell is it?” Tommy asks. “TOMMY! Heather’s parents had me over for dinner once. This is what they call ‘Salisbury steak.’”
Heather bursts into tears. “NO IT’S NOT! It’s a VOLCANO! That’s lava, and that’s steam coming out.”
Mrs. Weinberg-Lopez comforts Heather. Danitra enters and places her project next to Heather’s on the table. “Why, Danitra, what’s this?” Danitra delicately removes the sheet protecting her project. “Versailles.”
Heather takes one look at the tiny replica of Louis XIV’s summer home, constructed by Danitra and her two dads out of two hundred cubic yards of teak plank, thirty square feet of gold leaf, sixty pounds of Italian travertine marble from the same quarry Michelangelo used, tiny topiary and functional miniature fountains, and cries even harder.
“Why did I have to have a mom and a dad?” Heather sobs. “Why can’t my family be like all the rest?”
Mrs. Weinberg-Lopez pulls Heather close. “Children,” she says,”every family is special, including those conforming to the rigid, stereotypical standard of male domination.” She starts to tell the class about her own family, including her hearing-impaired Hispanic mother, her height-challenged Israeli father, and her Gypsy recovering-substance-abusing brother-in-law and Armenian sex-addict half-sister, but stops, realizing the school year is only 4,074 hours long.
“Just because Heather’s parents are heterosexual doesn’t mean they’re slow-witted philistines, though there are strong correlations you don’t need a PhD in statistics to understand. But Heather is lucky to have a sweet mom and a wonderful dad and a dog named Molly and a hamster named Samson, and they all live together in a lovely house. They’ve got interesting avocado-colored appliances, carpet as long as your hair, and furniture that‘s by-and-large wood that must have taken them hours to assemble. There’s a big plastic sofa that turns into a bed, and a La-Z-Boy — ”
“A what?” Keanu asks. “A La-Z-Boy,” Mrs. Weinberg-Lopez repeats. “It’s a big vinyl chair that reclines.” “Oh, man!” exclaims Keanu, covering his face with his hands. “And I thought our Herman Miller reproductions were embarrassing!”
Mrs. Weinberg-Lopez continues. “But the important thing is, they’re a family. They’re a group united for a common purpose, where each individual is given a sense of empowerment and their shared bonds are formalized in a ritualistic manner.” “Oh,” the students respond in unison. Everybody hugs.
THE END

Peering in at dangerousminds, PG runs across the publicity onslaught of a Christopher Hitchens memoir. In the words of a media pioneer, what hath G-d wrought?
PG first came across Mr. Hitchens after the synchronized departure of Princess Diana and Mother Theresa. Mr. Hitchens did not like either one, and became notable for trashing the beloved recently departed. Mr. Hitchens said things you were not supposed to say, but suspected were true…i.e. Mother Theresa was really a horrible person. He did so in a style that was fun to read, and would escape the blue pencil of the most ruthless english teacher.
Not only was he erudite and entertaining, he was everywhere. How the man can maintain this output, while continuously drunk, is a mystery. Not only does he crank out words by the jillion, he appears on tv and radio to promote his work/self. For a marxist, the man is a terrific capitalist.
Did you know he is an atheist? If you don’t BELIEVE it, just ask.
This was all very good and amusing until 911. Then something happened, and he became a warmonger. There is the possibility that Mr. Hitchens was paid to support the carnage in Iraq. This view was proposed by chamblee54 in the early days of this blog.
In a British hatchet job (there is no bad publicity when you have a book coming out), the author discusses the WWII vet father of Hitchens, and suggests that Christopher may be having masculinity issues about not going to war as a youth. It is an old story…the men of a certain age who think war is a dandy thing, but who are too old to take up arms ( and too fat to fit into a uniform).
The Guardian piece also details the drinking habits of Mr. Hitchens. It seems he intakes as much booze as he outputs rhetoric. Some people, no matter how amusing their public persona is, you probably don’t want to meet in person.
PG got the following item from Andrew Sullivan. It is too short for a stand alone post, and too horrible not to repeat.
There was an American citizen killed in the Israeli raid on a supply boat. “Reports in the Turkish press identified the American as Furkan Dogan, 19, who was born in the United States before returning to Turkey with his family as a young child. The Cihan news agency reported that Mr. Dogan had one bullet in the chest and four bullets fired into his head from close range.”
Here is more information about the murder of Furkan Dogan. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.

PG was reading another episode in the latest orgy of mid east punditry, when a couple of things made him think. The first was a breakdown of the Knesset. Towards the end of the tally, it came out that the two Arab parties had 7 seats, out of 120. This works out to 5.83%
According to wikipedia, 20% of Israel is Arab. So one fifth of the population is represented by 5 percent of the Knesset? This is not exactly one man one vote. If Israel is really a democracy, then something should be done about that.
The second tale is best told by a quote. “Israel’s policy-making no longer seems to me to be particularly related to concrete policy objectives at all. Neither the Lebanon war nor the Gaza war had actual military goals. Both were essentially wars for domestic consumption. Hezbollah and Hamas were firing rockets at Israel, and Israelis were understandably furious. “Something” had to be done about that, to let the Israeli public know that their leadership felt their fury. So the government did “something.””
Which is more or less why the United States is in Afghanistan. When 911 happened, the people required revenge. The plotters for 911 lived in Hamburg, Germany. 15 of the 19 attackers were from Saudi Arabia. For various reasons, revenge against those countries was not an option. That left Afghanistan, where Al Queda was based.
When we attacked Afghanistan, we did not have a goal. All we wanted was revenge for 911. We wanted to do something. Almost nine years later, we are stuck.
HT to Andrew Sullivan for the article quoted above. The pictures are from The Library of Congress.

Writerspot, in addition to some exercises that PG abuses, a selected author of the month. Today, it is Allen Ginsberg. When going to the inevitable website, PG learned that Peter Orlovsky died May 30, 2010. Mr. Orlovsky was the longtime lover of Mr. Ginsberg. Clearly, it was time to hit the keyboard.
Allen Ginsberg had a part in many new age dramas, with a few musicals and comedies thrown in for good measure. Hippie, beatnik, gay, artist, peace promoter, Buddhist convert…these are a few of the labels. He became famous for being famous, well known to people who never read a word of his poems. Two of the more famous were howl and kaddish.
Howl became scandalous in 1956 when it was busted for obscenity. It is mild by today’s standards, but almost landed Mr. Ginsberg in prison. PG heard about howl in the early nineties, and looked high and low for a copy. He could not find one. Today on the internet, not only is the print widely available, there are recordings of Mr. Ginsberg reading his work.
The original plan was to listen to Mr. Ginsberg read while editing photos. PG was going to listen to the words, and think of something to say while listening to the bard. About the seventeenth time Mr. Ginsberg shouted “Moloch”, the plan began to fall apart.
The next poem was Kaddish. This is about Naomi Ginsberg, the mother of the poet, who evidently had some issues. This was tough for PG to listen to. The other night, PG had a disturbing dream about his own late mother. In this dream, a fearsome shouter came in wearing a black suit, which meant that he intended to do some scary shouting. PG went into another room, where his recently deceased mother was laying on a table.
In the aftermath of his mother’s passing, PG worked closely with an aggressive Jesus worshiper, who enjoyed humiliation for Jesus. This person declared war on PG, when asked to turn his radio down. PG feels like Jesus let him down, and finds it difficult to forgive the so called son of G-d. As he often does, PG focused on the pictures, many of which were of Atlanta in 1956.
1956 was the year of the obscenity trial for howl. This took place on the other side of america, from the Brookhaven where PG was two years old. This was the year when his brother was born, the year when the Georgia legislature voted in a new flag, for whatever reason. The year before, President Eisenhower had a heart attack. Many people wondered if it was a good idea to have Richard Nixon as the vice president.
Finally, PG could stand no more of that voice. The player was turned off, the files stored on an external hard drive, never to be heard again. PG just is not a poetry person. The pictures, edited while listening to Allen Ginsberg in performance, are from the ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”

Tipper and Al Gore have separated after 40 years of marriage. Mr. Gore was Vice President under Bill Clinton, and won the popular vote for President in the 2000 election.
If the Gore’s had moved into the White House, then Tipper would probably continued the unfortunate tradition of celebrity First Lady. As it was, Laura Bush played a low key role. This is one of the few things that PG admires about the Bush regime.
PG saw a personal appearance once by the Gores and Hillary Clinton. It was a rally in Downtown Atlanta during the 1992 election. Tipper Gore said (not an exact quote) that Hillary is just as warm and friendly in person as she is in public.
Pictures are from the ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”

There is a lot of talk now about the flotilla to Gaza, that was attacked by Israel. Here is more.
– A lot of the pro Israel talkers use the terms Hamas and Gaza interchangeably. This is not accurate. The territory and people are Gaza. There is a political party called Hamas, that is currently in control of the territory. Food and construction supplies for the people are not the same as weapons for Hamas.
-Hamas won an election in Gaza. When you have elections, your neighbors might not like who won. Your neighbor might impose an embargo, control access to your territory, or attack you with depleted uranium and white phosphorus.
– This quote catches the eye. “The Israeli (and I am hesitant to say “IDF” here–it lets too many politicians off the hook) media spin machine was ready to go. When you see a detailed multi-page report ready to go within an hour or two of an insanely chaotic military action (of any kind), it is bull shit, plain and clear. Just try reading reports about the Normandy invasion in history books in 2010. Now imagine trying to read the same level of detail, etc. a few hours after the first wave hit the beaches. You get my point. The ‘tragic tale’ was ready to go well before the first commando slid down the rope…”
– This is in the comments of another post. “I mean, so far as I understand it, “Hamas” isn’t a country. So Israel is not “at war” with Hamas. In any case, what’s being blockaded is not “Hamas,” but an area of Gaza. Is Israel at war with Gaza? All of it? Part of it? “You are quite correct. For Israel to legally blockade Hamas, it would have to recognize Gaza as a belligerent, which would be a de facto recognition of its independence and entitle Gaza to the rights of belligerents under the Hague Convention of 1899, including, among other things, the responsibility to treat Palestinian prisoners from Gaza as prisoners of war, which Israel does not do.”
– Here are the weapons found on the boat where the fighting took place. Is this what armed terrorists use when they take on the mighty IDF? BTW, Lawrenceofcyberia is the blog name of the week.
– Is it a coincidence that this happened during the Memorial Day weekend? Many Americans were at the beach, and not watching the news.
This is enough idle chatter for this corner of the internet. If you want to read more about this affair, look anywhere current events are discussed. Keep a grain of salt handy. Pictures for this feature are from The Library of Congress.