Chapter VII. A Mad Tea-Party
There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it: a Dormouse was sitting between them, fast asleep, and the other two were using it as a cushion, resting their elbows on it, and talking over its head. ‘Very uncomfortable for the Dormouse,’ thought Alice; ‘only, as it’s asleep, I suppose it doesn’t mind.’
The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at one corner of it: ‘No room! No room!’ they cried out when they saw Alice coming. ‘There’s PLENTY of room!’ said Alice indignantly, and she sat down in a large arm-chair at one end of the table.
‘Have some wine,’ the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.
Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea. ‘I don’t see any wine,’ she remarked.
‘There isn’t any,’ said the March Hare.
‘Then it wasn’t very civil of you to offer it,’ said Alice angrily.
‘It wasn’t very civil of you to sit down without being invited,’ said the March Hare.
‘I didn’t know it was YOUR table,’ said Alice; ‘it’s laid for a great many more than three.’
‘Your hair wants cutting,’ said the Hatter. He had been looking at Alice for some time with great curiosity, and this was his first speech.
‘You should learn not to make personal remarks,’ Alice said with some severity; ‘it’s very rude.’
The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he SAID was,
‘Why is a raven like a writing-desk?’
‘Come, we shall have some fun now!’ thought Alice. ‘I’m glad they’ve begun asking riddles.—I believe I can guess that,’ she added aloud.
‘Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?’ said the March Hare.
‘Exactly so,’ said Alice.
‘Then you should say what you mean,’ the March Hare went on.
‘I do,’ Alice hastily replied; ‘at least—at least I mean what I say—that’s the same thing, you know.’
‘Not the same thing a bit!’ said the Hatter. ‘You might just as well say that “I see what I eat” is the same thing as “I eat what I see”!’
‘You might just as well say,’ added the March Hare, ‘that “I like what I get” is the same thing as “I get what I like”!’
‘You might just as well say,’ added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, ‘that “I breathe when I sleep” is the same thing as “I sleep when I breathe”!’
‘It IS the same thing with you,’ said the Hatter, and here the conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a minute, while Alice thought over all she could remember about ravens and writing-desks, which wasn’t much.
The Hatter was the first to break the silence. ‘What day of the month is it?’ he said, turning to Alice: he had taken his watch out of his pocket, and was looking at it uneasily, shaking it every now and then, and holding it to his ear.
Alice considered a little, and then said ‘The fourth.’
‘Two days wrong!’ sighed the Hatter. ‘I told you butter wouldn’t suit the works!’ he added looking angrily at the March Hare.
‘It was the BEST butter,’ the March Hare meekly replied.
‘Yes, but some crumbs must have got in as well,’ the Hatter grumbled:
‘you shouldn’t have put it in with the bread-knife.’
The March Hare took the watch and looked at it gloomily: then he dipped it into his cup of tea, and looked at it again: but he could think of nothing better to say than his first remark, ‘It was the BEST butter, you know.’
Alice had been looking over his shoulder with some curiosity. ‘What a funny watch!’ she remarked. ‘It tells the day of the month, and doesn’t tell what o’clock it is!’
‘Why should it?’ muttered the Hatter. ‘Does YOUR watch tell you what year it is?’
‘Of course not,’ Alice replied very readily:
‘but that’s because it stays the same year for such a long time together.’
‘Which is just the case with MINE,’ said the Hatter.
Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter’s remark seemed to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English. ‘I don’t quite understand you,’ she said, as politely as she could.
‘The Dormouse is asleep again,’ said the Hatter, and he poured a little hot tea upon its nose.
The Dormouse shook its head impatiently, and said, without opening its eyes, ‘Of course, of course; just what I was going to remark myself.’
‘Have you guessed the riddle yet?’ the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.
‘No, I give it up,’ Alice replied: ‘what’s the answer?’
‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ said the Hatter.
‘Nor I,’ said the March Hare.
Alice sighed wearily. ‘I think you might do something better with the time,’ she said, ‘than waste it in asking riddles that have no answers.’
‘If you knew Time as well as I do,’ said the Hatter, ‘you wouldn’t talk about wasting IT. It’s HIM.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Alice.
‘Of course you don’t!’ the Hatter said, tossing his head contemptuously.
‘I dare say you never even spoke to Time!’
‘Perhaps not,’ Alice cautiously replied: ‘but I know I have to beat time when I learn music.’
‘Ah! that accounts for it,’ said the Hatter. ‘He won’t stand beating. Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, he’d do almost anything you liked with the clock. For instance, suppose it were nine o’clock in the morning, just time to begin lessons: you’d only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling! Half-past one, time for dinner!’
(‘I only wish it was,’ the March Hare said to itself in a whisper.)
‘That would be grand, certainly,’ said Alice thoughtfully:
‘but then—I shouldn’t be hungry for it, you know.’
‘Not at first, perhaps,’ said the Hatter: ‘but you could keep it to half-past one as long as you liked.’
‘Is that the way YOU manage?’ Alice asked.
The Hatter shook his head mournfully. ‘Not I!’ he replied. ‘We quarrelled last March—just before HE went mad, you know—’ (pointing with his tea spoon at the March Hare,) ‘—it was at the great concert given by the Queen of Hearts, and I had to sing
“Twinkle, twinkle, little bat! How I wonder what you’re at!”
You know the song, perhaps?’
‘I’ve heard something like it,’ said Alice.
‘It goes on, you know,’ the Hatter continued, ‘in this way:—
“Up above the world you fly, Like a tea-tray in the sky.Twinkle, twinkle—”‘
Here the Dormouse shook itself, and began singing in its sleep ‘Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle—’ and went on so long that they had to pinch it to make it stop.
‘Well, I’d hardly finished the first verse,’ said the Hatter, ‘when the Queen jumped up and bawled out, “He’s murdering the time! Off with his head!”‘
‘How dreadfully savage!’ exclaimed Alice.
‘And ever since that,’ the Hatter went on in a mournful tone, ‘he won’t do a thing I ask!
It’s always six o’clock now.’
A bright idea came into Alice’s head. ‘Is that the reason so many tea-things are put out here?’ she asked.
‘Yes, that’s it,’ said the Hatter with a sigh: ‘it’s always tea-time, and we’ve no time to wash the things between whiles.’
‘Then you keep moving round, I suppose?’ said Alice.
‘Exactly so,’ said the Hatter: ‘as the things get used up.’
‘But what happens when you come to the beginning again?’ Alice ventured to ask.
‘Suppose we change the subject,’ the March Hare interrupted, yawning. ‘I’m getting tired of this. I vote the young lady tells us a story.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know one,’ said Alice, rather alarmed at the proposal.
‘Then the Dormouse shall!’ they both cried.
‘Wake up, Dormouse!’ And they pinched it on both sides at once.
The Dormouse slowly opened his eyes. ‘I wasn’t asleep,’ he said in a hoarse, feeble voice:
‘I heard every word you fellows were saying.’
‘Tell us a story!’ said the March Hare.
‘Yes, please do!’ pleaded Alice.
‘And be quick about it,’ added the Hatter, ‘or you’ll be asleep again before it’s done.’
‘Once upon a time there were three little sisters,’ the Dormouse began in a great hurry; ‘and their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie; and they lived at the bottom of a well—’
‘What did they live on?’ said Alice, who always took a great interest in questions of eating and drinking.
‘They lived on treacle,’ said the Dormouse, after thinking a minute or two.
‘They couldn’t have done that, you know,’ Alice gently remarked; ‘they’d have been ill.’
‘So they were,’ said the Dormouse; ‘VERY ill.’
Alice tried to fancy to herself what such an extraordinary ways of living would be like, but it puzzled her too much, so she went on: ‘But why did they live at the bottom of a well?’
‘Take some more tea,’ the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
‘I’ve had nothing yet,’ Alice replied in an offended tone, ‘so I can’t take more.’
‘You mean you can’t take LESS,’ said the Hatter: ‘it’s very easy to take MORE than nothing.’
‘Nobody asked YOUR opinion,’ said Alice.
‘Who’s making personal remarks now?’ the Hatter asked triumphantly.
Alice did not quite know what to say to this: so she helped herself to some tea and bread-and-butter, and then turned to the Dormouse, and repeated her question. ‘Why did they live at the bottom of a well?’
The Dormouse again took a minute or two to think about it, and then said, ‘It was a treacle-well.’
‘There’s no such thing!’ Alice was beginning very angrily, but the Hatter and the March Hare went ‘Sh! sh!’ and the Dormouse sulkily remarked, ‘If you can’t be civil, you’d better finish the story for yourself.’
‘No, please go on!’ Alice said very humbly; ‘I won’t interrupt again. I dare say there may be ONE.’
‘One, indeed!’ said the Dormouse indignantly. However, he consented to go on. ‘And so these three little sisters—they were learning to draw, you know—’
‘What did they draw?’ said Alice, quite forgetting her promise.
‘Treacle,’ said the Dormouse, without considering at all this time.
‘I want a clean cup,’ interrupted the Hatter: ‘let’s all move one place on.’
He moved on as he spoke, and the Dormouse followed him: the March Hare moved into the Dormouse’s place, and Alice rather unwillingly took the place of the March Hare. The Hatter was the only one who got any advantage from the change: and Alice was a good deal worse off than before, as the March Hare had just upset the milk-jug into his plate.
Alice did not wish to offend the Dormouse again, so she began very cautiously: ‘But I don’t understand. Where did they draw the treacle from?’
‘You can draw water out of a water-well,’ said the Hatter; ‘so I should think you could draw treacle out of a treacle-well—eh, stupid?’
‘But they were IN the well,’ Alice said to the Dormouse, not choosing to notice this last remark.
‘Of course they were’, said the Dormouse; ‘—well in.’ This answer so confused poor Alice, that she let the Dormouse go on for some time without interrupting it.
‘They were learning to draw,’ the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy; ‘and they drew all manner of things—everything that begins with an M—’
‘Why with an M?’ said Alice.
‘Why not?’ said the March Hare.
Alice was silent.
The Dormouse had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a doze; but, on being pinched by the Hatter, it woke up again with a little shriek, and went on: ‘—that begins with an M, such as mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness—you know you say things are “much of a muchness”—did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?’
‘Really, now you ask me,’ said Alice, very much confused, ‘I don’t think—’
‘Then you shouldn’t talk,’ said the Hatter.
This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: she got up in great disgust, and walked off; the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot.
‘At any rate I’ll never go THERE again!’ said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. ‘It’s the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!’ Just as she said this, she noticed that one of the trees had a door leading right into it. ‘That’s very curious!’ she thought. ‘But everything’s curious today. I think I may as well go in at once.’ And in she went.
Once more she found herself in the long hall, and close to the little glass table. ‘Now, I’ll manage better this time,’ she said to herself, and began by taking the little golden key, and unlocking the door that led into the garden. Then she went to work nibbling at the mushroom (she had kept a piece of it in her pocket) till she was about a foot high: then she walked down the little passage: and THEN—she found herself at last in the beautiful garden, among the bright flower-beds and the cool fountains.
Today’s entertainment is Chapter VII of ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND By Lewis Carroll .
The text is courtesy of Project Gutenberg. This is a repost. Video is from WTF Japan Seriously!?
Supremacy
There is a playwrite named Owldolatrous. He wrote a blog post about the chicken sandwich company that went viral. The post today is about a follow up, Aesop to the Right: Why I Believe Bristol Palin. The concept of Ms. Palin as an advocate for “traditional marriage” is kinda bizarre. When you are an attention whore, any camera is your friend.
OD says things a lot better than PG. With the miracle of copy paste, they can be easily borrowed. Here is a selection from the post.
I don’t think you hate me. I certainly don’t think you’re afraid of me. Neither is Bristol Palin. She probably even has LGBT people she calls friends. She just disagrees with them about whether they should be invited to the party (the party, in this case, being marriage). But here’s the problem: the basis of that disagreement is her belief that her relationships are intrinsically better than ours.
There’s a word for this type of statement: supremacist. … I know that the word “supremacist” makes you think of “White Supremacists,” which makes you think of the KKK and cross-burning and lynching. We think of supremacist as a Southern thing, a rural thing, a racial thing, a militia thing, a hate thing.
Here, maybe this will help: I’ve had supremacist habits too. I grew up in the rural South. I never hated African-Americans. I never knowingly said or did or voted in any way that hurt African-American people. I even had African-American friends. But I’d be lying to you if I didn’t admit that some white supremacy seeped into my thinking at a very young age. This is a painful thing to admit. Even now, I find I can’t go into specifics, from sheer shame. Fortunately I have been able to break those habits, but it has taken a while.
Supremacy is the habit of believing or acting as if your life, your love, your culture has more intrinsic worth than those of people who differ from you. Supremacy can be about race, but it doesn’t have to be. Supremacy and hate aren’t identical, but they often go together.
Some people turn supremacy into an over-arching philosophy. For most, it’s just a habit of mind. As a habit of mind, supremacist ideas can spring up in anyone. Being liberal doesn’t make you immune. Being gay doesn’t make you immune. Being a minority doesn’t make you immune.
You don’t have to hate people to feel innately superior to them. After all, what kind of threat are your inferiors to you? You may be annoyed by them, from time to time, or you may even like them. You can even have so much affection for them that you might call that affection love.
There is more, but this is enough for our morning discussion. Supreme, Supremacy, Supremacism, Supremacist. It is not just for white people. The whole business of thinking that you are somehow better than your neighbor is part of being a human being. Think about it, aren’t there some people that you think you are better than? Of course there are. You are a competitive animal, and you have to win sometimes. You, and your tribe, are just better than that other tribe.
PG saw a sign over a desk once. I have never met a snob who was not a born liar. Above this sign was a plastic case. In the plastic case was a white dress shirt, with an ink stain in the front pocket.
There is a concept, mythos over logos. The idea is, when you present people with information that contradicts a long held belief, the person will ignore the information and stick to the belief. This is related to the concept of supremacy. If you think you are better than a person, and you get evidence that the person is better than you, you will ignore that evidence and continue to believe the person is inferior to you. It helps when your magic book agrees with you.
PG was riding his bike yesterday, when the thought came to him. Anti racism is a form of supremacy. PG associates with a so called “radical community”. There has recently been a rabid discussion about racism. Now, this is a pretty enlightened bunch. The type of virulent racism that PG saw growing up in Georgia is simply not there. This does not stop the Anti Racist Supremacist Egophile (ARSE) from looking for racism to combat. The ARSE will expand the definition of racism to include every PWOC, except him and his immediate tribe.
One root word of Supremacy is Supreme. There were once three young ladies performing as “The Supremes.” Four videos are embedded into this post. That is not real hair. Diana Ross did not get to sing lead because of her vocal ability. Pictures for this episode were taken at a dance performance on July 11, 2012. This was written in the style of H. P. Lovecraft.
Where WWW Means Wretched Writers Welcome
Once upon a time, there was a writer named Edward Bulwer-Lytton. While some of his product is acceptable, Lord Lytton is responsible for the opening line “It was a dark and stormy night”. Years after his timely demise, an English professor, at San Jose State University, chose to name a contest for bad writing after Lord Lytton. Scott Rice recently overcame his embarrassment to announce the selections of the 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.
PG has written about BLFC before. The announcement of a new crop of perps is a good excuse for text to go between the pictures. These pictures today are courtesy of “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. This post is written in the style of Margaret Mitchell. After the 4800 word clunkathon published yesterday, the contest selections will be edited. If you want to see it raw and uncut, go here.
A special category, neglected by the Grand Panjandrum, is the funny names that some of the typists own. The use of pseudonyms has a long, cherished history. Some could benefit from using a pen name. Leah Sitkoff, New York, NY, Amy Torchinsky, Greensboro, NC, D. M. Dunn, Bloomington, IN, Emma DeZordi, Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Quebec, Mark Wisnewski, Flanders, NJ, Jeff Coleburn, West Chester, PA, Guy Foisy, Orleans, Ontario, Leslie Craven, Hataitai, New Zealand, Jon Maddalena, Mesick, MI.
There is a writer from Atlanta GA this year. This piece would be included even is it was not geographically advantaged. ~ ~ Ronald left this world as he entered it: on a frigid winter night, amid frantic screams and blood-soaked linens, while relatives stood nearby and muttered furious promises to find and punish the man responsible. — Rebecca Oas, Atlanta, GA
The official first place this year (somehow, it doesn’t seem right to say winner) is from England. This might say more about the contest judges than they realize. ~ ~ As he told her that he loved her she gazed into his eyes, wondering, as she noted the infestation of eyelash mites, the tiny deodicids burrowing into his follicles to eat the greasy sebum therein, each female laying up to 25 eggs in a single follicle, causing inflammation, whether the eyes are truly the windows of the soul; and, if so, his soul needed regrouting.
Cathy Bryant, Manchester, England
And the world turns. Here are the rest of the entries that PG was amused by. There is at least one more bad writing contest, Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award. They don’t announce the results until December, so you can relax.
As an ornithologist, George was fascinated by the fact that urine and feces mix in birds’ rectums to form a unified, homogeneous slurry that is expelled through defecation, although eying Greta’s face, and sensing the reaction of the congregation, he immediately realized he should have used a different analogy to describe their relationship in his wedding vows. — David Pepper, Hermosa Beach, CA
The shallow cave behind the mighty river’s thundering waterfall seemed more like a damp, cold, misty, poorly lit hallway leading from the shower room in some cheap-dive gym under the Elevated train where mugs who couldn’t crack the glass jaw of some washed-up palooka on their best sober day still deluded themselves that they could be somebody; and yet, Bill thought, “at least it’s got runnin’ water.” Warren Blair, Ashburn, VA
She slinked through my door wearing a dress that looked like it had been painted on … not with good paint, like Behr or Sherwin-Williams, but with that watered-down stuff that bubbles up right away if you don’t prime the surface before you slap it on, and – just like that cheap paint – the dress needed two more coats to cover her. — Sue Fondrie, Appleton, WI
Inspector Murphy stood up when he saw me, then looked down at the lifeless body, crumpled like a forlorn Snicker’s candy wrapper, and after a knowing glance at Detective Wilson pointed to the darkening crimson pool spreading from the stiff’s shattered noggin, and said, “You settle it, Gibson; does that puddle look more like a duck or a cow?” — Carl Stich, Mariemont, Ohio
The blood seeped out of the body like bad peach juice from a peach that had been left on one side so long the bottom became rotten while it still looked fine on the top but had started to attract fruit flies, and this had the same effect, but with regular flies, that is not say there weren’t some fruit flies around because, after all, this was Miami. — Howard Eugene Whitright, Seal Beach, CA
Primum non nocere, from the Latin for “first, do no harm,” one of the principal tenets of the Hippocratic oath taken by physicians, was far from David’s mind (as he strode, sling in hand, to face Goliath) in part because Hippocrates was born about 100 years after David, in part because David wasn’t even a physician, but mainly because David wanted to kill the sucker.
David Larson, San Francisco, CA
William, his senses roused by a warm fetid breeze, hoped it was an early spring’s equinoxal thaw causing rivers to swell like the blood-engorged gumlines of gingivitis, loosening winter’s plaque, exposing decay, and allowing the seasonal pot-pouris of Mother Nature’s morning breath to permeate the surrounding ether, but then he awoke to the unrelenting waves of his wife’s halitosis.
Guy Foisy, Orleans, Ontario
“I’ll never get over him,” she said to herself and the truth of that statement settled into her brain the way glitter settles on to a plastic landscape in a Christmas snow globe when she accepted the fact that she was trapped in bed between her half-ton boyfriend and the wall when he rolled over on to her nightgown and passed out, leaving her no way to climb out. — Karen Hamilton, Seabrook, TX
Tucked in a dim corner of The Ample Bounty Bar & Grille, Alice welcomed the fervent touch of the mysterious stranger’s experienced hands because she had not been this close with a man in an achingly long time and, quivering breathlessly, began to think that this could be the beginning of something real, something forever, and not just a one-time encounter with a good Samaritan who was skilled at the Heimlich Maneuver. — Mark Wisnewski, Flanders, NJ
Their love began as a tailor, quickly measuring the nooks and crannies of their personalities, but it soon became the seamstress of subterfuge, each of them aware of the others lingual haberdashery: Mindy trying to create a perfectly suited garment to display in public and Stan only concerned with the inseam. — D. M. Dunn, Bloomington, IN
Though they were merely strangers on a train, as she looked North by Northwest though the rear window, Marnie knew beyond a shadow of a doubt the trouble with Harry was that he was a psycho – his left and right hand middle fingers (formerly extended in the birds position) were menacingly twisting a rope in the form of a noose; certain of her impending death as surely as she could dial M for Murder, she was overcome by intense vertigo. — Amy Torchinsky, Greensboro, NC
Professor Lemieux had anticipated that his latest paper would be received with skepticism within the small, fractious circle of professional cosmologists, few of whom were prepared to accept his hypothesis that our universe had been created in a marijuana-induced industrial accident by insectoid aliens; nevertheless, he was stung when Hawking airily dismissed it as the Bug Bong Theory.
Alan Follett, Hercules, CA
Milton’s quest for the love of Ms. Bradley was a risk but no sorry trivial pursuit yet he hadn’t a clue why she had a monopoly on his heart’s desires – in fact, it boggled his mind and caused him great aggravation because, in his checkered and troubled careers, he had always scrabbled hard and it drove him bonkers that she considered life just a game. — Linda Boatright, Omaha, NE
Her skin was like flocked wallpaper and her eyes had seen better days, but when her bloodless lips murmured “Hi, Sailor,” my heart melted from the inside out like one of those chocolate-covered ice cream bars on a summer day that runs down your arm and gets all over your new shirt.
James Macdonald, Vancouver, B.C.
The syncopated sound of the single-cylinder steam motor, designed by Mier Vander, reminded Mier of the time his father took him to the Mollen Bros travelling circus to see the “Corpulent Lady” and to sit upon her lap immediately following her lunch of sauerbraten and ale. — Jim Tierney, Murrieta, CA
Yossarian Part Four
This is part four of a homage to Catch 22. Parts one, two, three five, six, and seven are also available. Pictures are by Chamblee54, and have nothing to do with the text. The quoted text was copied off Wikiqotes.
XIX Colonel Cathcart This chapter centers on Colonel Cathcart, as you may have guessed. It starts out with a personality sketch, complete with raging ego and a cigarette holder. This was Mr. Roosevelt’s war, and he was well known for his cigarette holder.
It just shows how the standards of discourse change. The press never reported on Mr. Roosevelt’s disability, and many people did not know that he used a wheel chair. On the other hand, the cigarette holder was a part of his image. It is not known if he ever smoked marijuana in that cigarette holder. Moving on to today, BHO has every jot and tittle of his life open to public consumption, with the exception of his nicotine addiction. Yes, BHO does smoke, but you never see a photograph of it.
After a while, the Colonel has a discussion with the Chaplain. It seems the Colonel wants to have a prayer before missions. Not just any prayer… “Haven’t you got anything humorous that stays away from . . . G-d? I’d like to keep away from the subject of religion altogether if we can.” The chaplain hems and haws, and the Colonel talks himself out of the idea of pre mission prayer.
One of the online cheat sheets has a link to an uplifting feature, “The 5 All-Time Grossest Bug Stories.” Since your time is valuable, we will only repeat number two.
2. “Ants in the Beehive” The story goes that, back in the 1960s, a stylish girl was primping herself for the following day at school. The hairstyle that was popular at the time was The Beehive (which if you’re not familiar, is an outrageously tall, poofy ‘do that’s shaped just the way it sounds) and she would commonly go to great lengths to achieve this look. Well one evening she decided to wash her hair in sugar water so it could harden just the way she wanted. She awoke suddenly in the early morning with a strange, tingling sensation. Sensing something was wrong she arose and as her head tilted upwards, hundred of huge CARPENTER ANTS began spilling from her hair and onto her nightgown!
This story has several variations. The first one PG heard involved a high school girl with big hair. Apparently, she never washed this hair, but just added a layer of hair spray every morning. One day, she passed out in class, and slumped over in her desk. The hairdo cracked open, and a flood of insects and rodents poured out of her hairdo.
Apparently, sometimes it happens to boys. . There’s this guy who you might have seen walking around town with two huge dreadlocks, one on each side of his head. One day he decides to get them cut off. So he’s off to the hair dresser, and of course they can’t get the clippers through his hair, so out come the biggest pair of scissors you’ve ever seen. They start to hack into one of the dreads and get about halfway through when he starts screaming and runs out of the shop. His girlfriend finds him dead in their flat the next day. The coroner found that a nest of red-backed spiders had moved into his hair and started biting him when the scissors cut the nest to bits.
XX Corporal Whitcomb The chaplain lives in a tent, away from the busy parts of the base. His roommate is Corporal Whitcomb, who hates the chaplain. The Corporal plays mind games with the Chaplain in this chapter, and wins effortlessly.
The chaplain had “failed miserably, had choked up once again in the face of opposition from a stronger personality. It was a familiar, ignominious experience, and his opinion of himself was low.”
Catch 22 is revered. But, in the age of Amazon, there are going to be those who disagree. Actually, there have always been the nay sayers, but they keep quiet. It is no fun to be the kid at the emperors parade … people will think you lack fashion sense. But now, the one star reviewers are out in the open.
OUCH!!! Glad I didn’t pay full price!!! March 25, 2012 Jerome Fuller
I bought this book because of all the “good” reviews it recieved. I am always interested when an author’s work trancends it own era, there by being relevant at anytime in the future. However, this is not one of those. Aside from the obsurd and unbelievable situation Yosarrian is in, the book was, in a word….MONOTONOUS! It is not the amount of characters, nor the repetative back story of each character that Heller takes every opportunity tell us, but it is more the repetive, cliche’ discussions that yossarian has with just about every character he come across. It goes like this, “Your crazy. No I am not. Maybe I am. Maybe you are too becuase you are here and you think I am crazy. Oh yeah, maybe I am crazy too, blah blah blah.” I really wish I would have spent the money on cookbook instead, or really anything other than this. If you can find this book at a garage sale, do not pay more than a quarter for it. But..If you like unbelievable war stories, long drawn out repetative character back stories, shallow dialog, and no real point, then this book is for you!
Am I the only one that hated this book?
September 22, 2000 “okwoodworker” (Owasso, OK USA)
Pathetic. I forced myself to finish this book because it was heralded as “one of the greatest novels of the century.” I found it an amazing chore to trudge through page after page of absurd, repetitive babble, replete with needless descriptions of depraved immorality. If the point is that government/military institutions are insanely inefficient and bureaucratic, ok. I got that in the first 100 pages. Were the next 400 pages simply meant to illustrate that point — making me “experience” the absurdity?. I really can’t believe I read the whole thing. In all sincerity, I can not recommend this book.
The most overhyped book in the history of literature June 21, 2011 A Critic
Another important attribute of this hype is the hipster element of Heller’s title phrase. It seems to imply that someone who read the book is deeply philosophical or understands a truth not many know. This is not just my own imagination. In college, I knew a guy who having already read the book, brought it (on a plane, cross country) seemingly to display in his dorm room. Once, apropos of nothing, he picked it up and explained that it was his favorite book. Coincidently, he also happened to be a dandy who wore (I think) satin shirts. … This is the sort of book that you might hear people discuss at snobbish cocktail parties. If you get a third way it into and you are bored to tears, drop it like a brick, or better yet, avoid reading it all together.
When PG was at Redo Blue, there were people who were into conspicuous display of books. The Bully for Jesus would ride the train into town, and carry a bag, and a Bible. He wanted to be seen carrying a Bible. When he read it, his lips moved. After a while, a man was hired to be the digital imaging manager, or DIM. He saw the BFJ and his pet bible, and started to carry his own book around. His display item was a motivational book by Og Mandino. This book was carried around for about a year after the DIM went on the payroll.
In the story about Og Mandino, there is a lovely paragraph. … In the early nineties, PG talked to a lady from Soviet Georgia. She said something that makes more sense the more you think about it. “In our country, the government and the secret police run everything. In this country, the banks and the computers run everything.”
XXI General Dreedle This chapter is named for General Dreedle, even though his entourage, subordinates, and insubordinates have most of the action. It begins with the combustible Colonel Cathcart. He is in a tizzy about Yossarian. There is a list of good events and bad, and Yossarian seems to be in the middle of all the bad ones. There is a couple of quotes about this situation: ‘A moment ago there had been no Yossarians in his life; now they were multiplying like hobgoblins. He tried to make himself grow calm. Yossarian was not a common name; perhaps there were not really three Yossarians but only two Yossarians, or maybe even only one Yossarian – but that really made no difference! The colonel was still in grave peril. Intuition warned him that he was drawing close to some immense and inscrutable cosmic climax, and his broad, meaty, towering frame tingled from head to toe at the thought that Yossarian, whoever he would turn out to be, was destined to serve as his nemesis.”
“Colonel Cathcart was not superstitious, but he did believe in omens, and he sat right back down behind his desk and made a cryptic notation on his memorandum pad to look into the whole suspicious business of the Yossarians right away. He wrote his reminder to himself in a heavy and decisive hand, amplifying it sharply with a series of coded punctuation marks and underlining the whole message twice, so that it read: Yossarian! ! ! (?) ! … Yossarian – the very sight of the name made him shudder. There were so many esses in it. It just had to be subversive. It was like the word subversive itself. It was like seditious and insidious too, and like socialist, suspicious, fascist and Communist.”
The time warp of the book gets serious here. We learn of the time that Yossarian receives a medal with no clothes on. It seems like he flubbed a mission, caused a man to die, and to punish him received a medal and promotion. Since this happened in front of General Dreedle, Colonel Cathcart looked bad,
General Dreedle is another character study. He has his son in law, Colonel Moodus, working for him. They hate each other. There is also a nurse, who attends to the General’s manly needs. She attends the briefing, for the raid on Avignon … the one where Yossarian earned his medal … and causes a bit of a commotion. This aggressive moaning is silenced by General Dreedle. The rest of the briefing is conducted by showoff Colonel Korn, who thinks he is scoring points with the General. It turns out that Colonel Korn makes General Dreedle sick.
Looking at the tweets of a Jesus worshiper who will not allow PG to comment at his blog, there was a doozy of a story. It is about the phenomenon of people looking at pornography on laptops, and smart phones, in full view of Christians, small children, and dogs. There was a great quote. “Acquiring pornographic material once required taking a public action—buying a ticket to an X-rated theater, renting a tape from an “adult” video store, asking for a magazine kept behind a store counter—and having the boldness to overcome the shame involved. It should come as no surprise, then, that as our culture becomes more accepting of pornography, those who were already comfortable with smut become even less inhibited and immune to public shaming. What once was primarily a private sin has becomes a public plague. This soul-destroying sleaze has infested our nation, and many people who call themselves Christians have allowed it to happen. At most we turn a blind eye. But more often than not, believers are consuming pornography at the same rate as non-believers—and doing so without remorse. In an age when so many Christian men have succumbed, and when Christian women brag on Facebook about reading Fifty Shades of Grey, why are we shocked to find nonbelievers bringing filth into the public square?”
XXII Milo The Mayor Parking protest. Taking a stand. Monday, after the Olympics, 11 alive. SparkNotes is a cliffnoteclone site. They do have resources available for Catch 22. The problem is, they pay for this product by having auto start advertising. This means that when you click on their site, or go to another page, the video ad starts to play automatically. They must not think their readers are very smart. If you want to listen to the ad, it is very easy to click on the triangle, or the parallel lines. (PG can never remember which one is play, and which one is stop. In real life he sometimes gets those signals, for when to play and when to stop, confused.)
It should not be confusing that Channell 11 is using sneaky internet advertising. When PG was a kid, Channell 11 was third place in Atlanta TV. Channel 2 was owned by the fishwrapper, and had the same call letters as a powerhouse radio station. Channel 5 was the CBS station. Channell 11 was ABC, had a weak signal, and played trashy shows like Dialing for Dollars. Eventually Atlanta got big enough to support a slew of stations, Channell 11 switched to NBC, and the operation was a bit more classy. Chapter 22 should be special, but it is more clumsy satire. The first part is about the botched mission to Avignon, where Snowdon is killed. This is one of the turning points of the book. The book does not follow a one two three pattern, and events are referred to first, and then take place later. This mission is a big deal, because this is where Yossarian loses what mind he has. Some of Snowdon’s blood gets on Yossarian’s uniform, and Yossarian doesn’t want to wear clothes after that. This is part of the drama, and one of the reasons why the movie was rated R.
After the mission, or maybe before the mission, but definitely not during the mission, Yossarian is asked for permission to kill Colonel Cathcart. The blessing was denied. Apparently, when this book was written, the truism about forgiveness and permission had not been verbalized. While it does sound cynical, it really is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
Where chapter 22, of Catch 22, bogs down is the buying trip that Milo Minderbinder made. The story of Milo gets more and more tiresome. You want to scream, we get it, capitalism is a joke, lets have some real action. Instead, you have this quote repeated ad nauseum: “But I make a profit of three and a quarter cents an egg by selling them for four and a quarter cents an egg to the people in Malta I buy them from for seven cents an egg. Of course, I don’t make the profit. The syndicate makes the profit. And everybody has a share.”
XXIII Nately’s Old Man What if Catch 22 had been called Catch 23? This is a funny number. It is perhaps best known for the phrase 23 skidoo. The traditional meaning is “to leave quickly, especially before a situation deteriorates (archaic, origin unknown, popularized during 1920s)” Since the origins are murky, it is an opportunity to be creative. Some possible stories include : ” In Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities, Sidney Carton is No. 23 of a multitude executed by the guillotine. “In the last act of the theatrical adaptation, ‘The Only Way,’ an old woman sits at the foot of the guillotine, calmly counting heads as they are lopped off. The only recognition or dignity afforded Carton as he meets his fate is the old woman emotionlessly saying ‘twenty-three’ as he is beheaded. ‘Twenty-three’ quickly became a popular catchphrase among the theater community in the early twentieth century, often used to mean, ‘It’s time to leave while the getting is good.”- Who Put the Butter in Butterfly? by David Feldman, Harper & Row. ~~ 23-skidoo came from an expression that construction workers used while building the Flatiron Building on 23rd Street in N.Y.C. 23rd Street is one of the wider streets in New York that is like an uninterrupted wind-tunnel between the East and Hudson Rivers. Frequently, when one is walking north or south on the avenues and comes to such an intersection, they can experience a sudden blast of wind as soon as the pass the wall of a corner building. Apparently, when the workers sat on the sidewalk to eat their lunches, they would watch women’s skirts blow up from the sudden gusts. ~~ The phrase originated in the Panimint Mountains in Death Valley in the early 1900s. The mining town of Skidoo had 23 saloons and if you were going to go get drunk you would try to get a drink at each of the saloons. This started the phrase of going 23 skidoo if you were going to have a good time. “
Getting back to Catch 22, this is one of the chapters that makes Milos meandering meaningful. Chapter 23 is tons of fun, just like some of the girls in a certain Italian apartment building. Nately takes a few of his buddies to the house where his prostigirlfriend lives. It turns into a wild scene, with naked people doing naked things in all directions. The exception to the fuckfest is a conversation between Nately and an old man. It is not known what language the chat takes place in, as it is unlikely that young Nately knew Italian, or that the geezer knew English.
The conversation is a gem. Nately believes all the nonsense he is told, and thinks he is smarter as a result. The old man has heard the same nonsense, and recognizes it for what it is. In any war, the first casualty is the truth. When you believe the propaganda of your government, you are signing your own death warrant. Wikiqotes documents part of the exchange.
“What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can’t all be worth dying for.” “Anything worth living for,” said Nately, “is worth dying for.” “And everything worth dying for,” answered the sacrilegious old man, “is certainly worth living for.”
“They are going to kill you if you don’t watch out, and I can see now that you are not going to watch out. Why don’t you use some sense and try to be more like me? You might live to be a hundred and seven, too.” “Because it’s better to die on one’s feet than live on one’s knees,” Nately retorted with triumphant and lofty conviction. “I guess you’ve heard that saying before.” “Yes, I certainly have,” mused the treacherous old man, smiling again. “But I’m afraid you have it backward. It is better to live on one’s feet than die on one’s knees. That is the way the saying goes.” “Are you sure?” Nately asked with sober confusion. “It seems to make more sense my way.” “No, it makes more sense my way. Ask your friends.”
PG swears there is a post about 23 skidoo somewhere in his archive. He was looking for it, and found this piece instead. A lady posted a list of 150 things to do before you die. Number 23 was get drunk on champagne. That inspired this story. It is written in first person, which should please grammar nazis.
Somehow, I never did do any more posts about that “been there done that” list. Mingaling, who started this episode, had a baby, which I am not capable of. I saw Crazy Owl last fall, and he is doing well. (On April 4, 2011, Crazy Owl moved on into another existence.)
There is something called the “meme” in the blogosphere. As best I understand the concept, it is a question about yourself that you send out chain letter style into the void. Like paradigm, a word that people toss about freely ,and I never have quite understood.
At any rate, mingaling has a list of 150 things that you can do. The idea is to read the list, and indicate which of these things you have done. My life has been my life. (Like Popeye and the sweet potato, I yam what I yam). There are things I have done, things I have not done, and there are regrets and gratitudes on both sides. Anyone who gets to be 53 years old and says they have no regrets is a liar. I have told lies.
I had a friend once named Crazy Owl. He lived in a tract of land on Flat Shoals road near the new Wal Mart. There are lots of houses there now, but twelve years ago he had his “monastery” there.
On certain Friday nights, he would have a sweat lodge. Like a crude outdoor sauna, you would build a fire, heat the rocks, and put them in the lodge, go inside and perspire. It is a Native American thing, and I have heard that they still have them in Candler Park.
So one friday, the people in the lodge made comments about what they were grateful for. The previous friday, I had been in a bar in Tucker, GA. The hostess of the happy hour party had made xerox copies of a coupon for cheap food. The room next to the dining room had a band, and a room full of drunks. Each and every one of those drunks was chain smoking. The band played ” Is that all there is?” I ordered a cup of coffee, and was charged $2.75 for something I would not wash a dog in.
So, when we shared our gratitudes at the sweat lodge, I said ” Last friday night I was in an unbelievably cheesy bar in Tucker Georgia. Tonight I am here. I am grateful for variety in my life.”
The song “Is that all there is” is about life experiences, and the disappointment they sometimes bring. If I ever send this meme out, item 151 will be hearing “Is that all there is” as performed by Sandra Bernhardt. The video at the end is credited to “JEM”, but sounds a lot like Ms. Bernhardt. Peggy Lee, who passed away a few years ago, made the song famous. Ms. Lee had a stroke and years of bad health, and was by all accounts a vegetable when she moved on. It is highly unlikely that she said “Is that all there is?” on her deathbed
Item 152 on this annotated meme would be staying at the Hostel in Brunswick. I stayed in a treehouse there, on the night before a trip to Cumberland Island. They had a circle before dinner, where all the visitors hold hands and say what they were grateful for. My comment was “ I am grateful for all the people at this meeting who keep there comments down to a short sentence or two.” The inability to shut up before dinner is a serious character flaw.
This meme is good, and may supply fodder for more than one post. Since lunch hour is almost over I will settle for number 23 (23 skidoo), Gotten Drunk on Champagne. One night in Seattle, I went to a bar called WREX. They were giving away bottles of Andre’ Champagne, and I tried to insure that none were left over. Quantity control is just as important as quality control.
The next day I felt worse than horrible. A champagne hangover is used by the Southern Baptist Convention to convince folks not to ever drink again. Ever. After a while, I pushed the cotton candy in my head to one side, and started to walk down Pike Street to the market. I crossed a street, oblivious to the red light in the yellow box. I also didn’t notice the two policemen waiting for me, one of whom wrote a citation for Jaywalking. Two weeks, later I went to Pedestrian Safety School. That could be item 153.
XXIV Milo In 1966, the Braves moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta. PG was twelve years old, and thought this was just about the coolest thing ever. The Braves were a mediocre team that year. This was better than the last place disaster of the seventies and eighties. At any rate, by 1967, PG found other things to pay attention to.
Part of the disappointment of major league baseball in Atlanta was the radio announcer for the team. His name was Milo Hamilton. Yea, that’s the connection to Catch 22. Milo is one of those names that is a little bit unusual, but not unheard of. Milo Hamilton was a raging egomaniac. No one else could understand what was so special about him. He had a pleasant enough voice, but did not make listening to bad baseball fun the way Skip and Ernie did.
When PG saw another chapter named for Milo, he thought this was going to be boring talk about the syndicate. Do the readers have a share in this syndicate? If everybody has a share, then the readers should be included. For the first few pages, the chapter is dull. The action picks up when Milo orders the base bombed and strafed. The Germans paid for him to do this, and they got their money’s worth. Capitalism should not let a technicality like dealing with the enemy to get in the way of profits for the syndicate. “This time Milo had gone too far. Bombing his own men and planes was more than even the most phlegmatic observer could stomach, and it looked like the end for him. … Milo was all washed up until he opened his books to the public and disclosed the tremendous profit he had made.”
Later, the funeral for Snowdon is held. Yossarian does not stand near the service, but watches from a tree in the distance. Yossarian is naked. Milo Minderbinder comes to talk to him, ignoring the funeral below. Milo has a surplus of cotton, and needs to get rid of it. The concept is to dip balls of cotton in chocolate, and eat them. Yossarian thinks it tastes horrible.
Ok, that is not enough text for this chapter. Something needs to be pasted in to pad this a bit. At the same time, there are a couple of desktop items about a brain sex test. It seems like someone in England has an internet test, to see whether you think like a man or like a woman. If you thought you were a woman, and found out you were really a man, then that would take a load off your chest.
Some researchers say that men can have ‘women’s brains’ and that women can think more like men. Find out more about ‘brain sex’ differences by taking the Sex ID test, a series of visual challenges and questions used by psychologists in the BBC One television series Secrets of the Sexes: Get a brain sex profile and find out if you think like a man or a woman. See if you can gaze into someone’s eyes and know what they’re thinking. Find out why scientists are interested in the length of your fingers. See how your results relate to theories about brain sex.
1- angles test You are about to begin the angles task. Please read the instructions carefully. This is a timed task and you won’t be able to restart once you’ve begun. You’ll be shown a line like this at the top of the next screen. Underneath it you’ll see a set of 15 lines. Identify and click on a line in the set that matches the angle of the single line. There are 20 lines to match and you’ll have 10 seconds for each line.
This task tested your ability to make spatial judgments. You correctly matched 15 line(s) out of 20. On average, men generally outperform women at this task, although it is important to note that many women score extremely well. Males may generally score higher because they tend to pay more attention to space or the geometry of the world around them. Differences such as this may reflect differences in the brain. One theory suggests that exposure to higher levels of testosterone before birth gives men an added advantage because the hormone may stimulate the development of the right hemisphere of the brain. This is the side that contributes most to spatial awareness.
PG got distracted after the first question, and did not finish the test. This is the end of Part Four of the Catch 22 meltdown. Parts one, two, and three are available elsewhere. Pictures today are by Chamblee54. This was written like David Foster Wallace.
What Did Jesus Really Say?
When religion raises its gnarly head, folks like to talk about what Jesus said. The question for today’s discussion is, how do they know?
Some say the Bible is “the word of G-d”. Some even say it is inerrant, which means there are no mistakes. (The spell check suggestion for inerrant is ignorant.) This assumes that the translation, and the understanding of that rendering, are also perfect. There are people who think this is nonsense.
PG is in the latter category. He has two beliefs about Christianty. G-d does not write books. Jesus has nothing to do with life after death. If you add the label evangelical, you get a third disagreement. To PG, evangelism means trying to convert people to your understanding of Christianity. PG thinks that what he believes is only open to discussion when PG trusts the other person.
How did we get to this point? The Bible is a collection of texts, from a variety of sources and languages. It was compiled into one text somewhere during the fourth century, give or take a hundred years. At this time, the only way to get a copy was to have a scribe copy the text by hand. As anyone who has played telephone knows, there were probably mistakes made while copying this text. It was several hundred years before the printing press was invented, and more than a tiny minority of people could read.
How to the Bible get from being a collection of texts, to the current “G-d in a book” view. Here is one hypothesis. “The deification of the Bible is a result of the Protestant reformation. Before then, the final authority, the ultimate arbiter and source of information in religious matters was the church, with its ancient traditions and living experts. When Luther and friends opposed the teaching of the Catholic hierarchy, they needed a superior authority to appeal to, which was provided by the Bible.”
Moving right along, we still have to listen to people who speculate on what Jesus said. In one sense, it does not matter. A core belief of Christianity is that having the correct beliefs about Jesus will get you into heaven, while those without this belief will go to hell. This is a big deal in JWR. Many believers are far more interested in the death of Jesus than his life. Anything Jesus said pales in importance to what is reputed to have happened forty four hours after his death.
OK, so what did Jesus say? We really don’t know. The accounts of the Bible were written many years after his life on earth. Jesus spoke a language called Aramaic. The New Testament was written in Greek. The King James Bible is in English. Whatever record we have of the words of Jesus was written down after the fact, and translated a minimum of twice.
A few years ago, some scholars began to look at the reputed words of Jesus, and decide what was really said. They published a book, The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus. “The Jesus Seminar , a group of scholars who have attempted to locate the authentic words of Jesus, made headlines two years ago by reporting that, of the entire Lord’s Prayer as found in Matthew, the only words that could conclusively be attributed to Jesus are “Our Father.” In this book they have published their results. This new translation of the four gospels, augmented by the noncanonical Gospel of Thomas, presents Jesus’ words printed in colored code: red for words Jesus almost certainly spoke, pink for his probable locutions, gray for the less than likely, and black for the implausible.” Many old favorites were said to be invented by later scribes.
The Jesus Seminar is a function of the Westar Institute. A good bit of their findings are available online. If your mind is already made up, it won’t make any difference.
As this is spoken, the 2012 is heating up. BS detectors will be buzzing nonstop. A poster is emerging, with a picture of BHO. There is a quote, attributed to Caroline Kennedy. “I can’t stand to hear his voice anymore. He’s a liar and worse.”
According to snopes, the quote is from a book, The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House. There seems to have been a bit of a personality conflict between the Obamas and the Kennedys. In addition, it was suggested that BHO was not liberal enough to suit Carolyn Kennedy.
Whatever personal problems existed between Ms. Kennedy and BHO appear to have been smoothed over. The former first daughter made an appearance on behalf of BHO in New Hampshire. “Caroline Kennedy stumped for President Obama’s reelection bid Wednesday night, highlighting the differing visions for the country held by the two parties. … “I’m a woman, a mother, a lawyer, an educator, and I really believe that Barack Obama is fighting for the America that I believe in.”
Here we have something, said in private, in the last four years. It is being used out of context, by people who hate liberals. If we cannot quote a contemporary public figure correctly, why can we assume to know what Jesus said two thousand years ago?
Pictures, of Union Soldiers, are from The Library of Congress.
The Strip
There is a nifty webcam up now. It shows the progress of a high rise going up now at 12th and Peachtree in midtown. The location of the camera itself is not certain, with the speculation centering on 999 Peachtree, two blocks south on Tenth Street.
A glance at the image reveals a curve in the road, between the two glass boxes under construction. Atlanta does not have wide, straight boulevards extending to the horizon. It is said that Atlanta did not build roads, but paved the cow paths.
People of a certain age will remember this area as the strip. The tenth street district was a neighborhood shopping area, up until the mid sixties. At some point, the old businesses started to move out and the hippies moved in. For a while, it was a festive party. Soon enough reality returned, and the area went into a crime filled decline.
The 999 complex is the neighborhood story in a nutshell. Before 1985, it was a block of small businesses. There was a hardware store, with the peace symbol set in tiles in the sidewalk. On Juniper Street stood the Langdon Court Apartments. They were named for PG’s great uncle Langdon Quin. Ru Paul used to stay there. He would sit out on a balcony, and wave to the traffic going by.
Across the street was a chinese restaurant, the House of Eng. A staircase on the side led to the Suzy Wong Lounge. Behind the building was an apartment building. It was one of the residences of Margaret Mitchell, while she wrote “Gone With The Wind”. She called it “the dump”, which was fairly accurate.
PG went to the House of Eng for lunch one day in 1985. He noticed that he was the only customer in the house, at 12:30 pm on a weekday. After finishing his lunch, PG knew why.
At some point, it was decided to build a high rise there. Heery was one of the equity partners, along with a law firm and an ad agency. The building was designed by Heery (duh).The ad agency folded before the building opened, followed within a couple of years by the law firm. Heery was sold to a British company. PG does not know who owns 999 Peachtree now.
This is a repost . The building, at 12th and Peachtree, is finished. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library” This is written like Margaret Mitchell.
RU> Romney Ryan?
Alphabet conscious voters were intrigued by the selection of Paul Ryan as the Republican Vice Presidential candidate. With Mitt Romney as the POTUS preference, this ticket gives us two candidates with names starting with R. The fact they are Republicans is a bonus. The question today, has this ever happened before? According to wikipedia, this is the third time.
In 1856, John Breckinridge ran for Vice President, serving under James Buchanan. They won. When the War Between the States broke out, Mr. Breckinridge served in the Ist Kentucky Brigade. This unit supported the Confederacy, even though Kentucky remained in the Union. This led to charges of treason. After the war, Breckenridge CO changed the spelling of its name.
In 1952, Adlai Stevenson Jr. chose John Sparkman to be his running mate. They were seriously defeated in November. With one winner and one loser, any people looking for a prediction for November should look for other omens.
The wikipedia page for the Democrats goes back to 1828. The Whig party was popular in the pre war 19th century, but they did not have any same letter tickets.
There were rumors of Mitt Romney running as a third party candidate, if he did not get the GOP nomination. One possiblity was to call this the Wig Party.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Kindness
There is a bit of a debate going on about whether, or not, Jesus said to “Love your enemy”. There are some who profess to believe this, and proceed to practice the opposite. There are others who claim to love their enemies, but you have to understand what they mean by it. It can be very confusing.
PG went to a source for documentation. Oh, the blessed conjunction of copy paste with public domain. When PG entered enemy (singular) in the search engine, 100 verses came up. When the request was made plural (enemies), 237 entries popped up. The last mention of enemies in the bible is… Revelation 11:12 “Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here!” And they went up to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies watched them” Loving your enemies does not include bringing them to heaven with you.
As for Jboi, he was quoted as saying Matthew 5:44 “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”.
There is a scholarly debate about what Jesus did or did not say. The words available to modern man have been copied by hand, edited, translated, and interpreted. PG does not know Greek from Geek, and cannot tell Aramaic from Alabama. Like anyone else, PG can only read and listen, and think for himself.
In a sense it does not matter what Jesus “really” said. The cult of Jesus Worship is going to believe what it wants. More important, it is going to practice what it wants. As far as the difference between what Jesus “really” said and what his believers say and do…they can explain.
What follows is a humble suggestion. Maybe the translators and scribes got it wrong. Maybe Jesus did not say to love your enemy. Maybe what Jesus said was to show kindness. This is a practice thing, rather than a belief thing.
It is not as much fun to be nice to someone, as it is to scream about life after death. Kindness does not need to be justified by a quote from a magic book. You just need to do it.
Pictures are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. The text of this message is a repost. This was written in the style of H. P. Lovecraft.
Does Mitt Romney Wear A Wig?
Tweeter activist Rob Delaney made a couple of comments recently about presumptive Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney. @robdelaney “Are you ready, my silken warrior ?” – Mitt Romney to his hair before a speech ~ ~ @robdelaney @MittRomney If you won’t release your tax returns, at least tell us what conditioner you use!! #sheen #lustre #body.
The greatest asset WMR may have in his run for the White House may be his hair. There have been exceptions. In the runup to the Iowa Caucuses, WMR was photographed with a few strands in disarray. Perhaps it is no coincidence that well groomed Rick Santorum won in Iowa.
Hair has been a factor in national elections since Dwight Eisenhower took his bald Republican head back to the golf course. John Kennedy and Bill Clinton gave an advantage to the Democrats in this issue. Republicans idolize the prematurely orange Ronald Reagan. In recent years. George W. Bush outgroomed Al Gore and John Kerry. It will be interesting to see how the current trans racial hair conflict will play out in November.
It is only *natural* for some naysayers to wonder if that always perfect hair is real. WMR even said, on the David Letterman show, “It’s a hairpiece”. When yahoo answers posed the question Does Mitt Romney wear a wig?, Politically Moderate Troll answered “Yes, its called a toupee, he admitted it on Letterman.”
Most of the google results to the wig question turn out to be about Donald Trump. There was one story, Rick Perry Reveals That He Has Documented Proof That Mitt Romney Wears A Toupee. Just because the site is called “The Spoof” does not mean that this story is any less truthy.
Rick Perry spoke backstage with Pico de Gallo and informed him that he was giving him an exclusive. He told him that he has documented proof that Mitt Romney’s hair is not really his own. De Gallo asked, “You mean that…” “Yes, that’s right my friend.” Perry interrupted him, “Mitt Romney wears a hairpiece, a toupee.” De Gallo asked him how he knew this to be a fact.
Governor Perry told him that he had personally interviewed six (6) of the 17 illegal aliens who installed Romney’s pool and all six of them signed a notarized document stating that they had seen Mitt Romney sitting in the kitchen of his Boston mansion chowing down on a peanut butter and clam sandwich and that he was completely bald. De Gallo asked Perry for the names of the six illegal aliens. The Texas governor replied that he could not reveal their names but that the six were currently sitting in a jail in Laredo awaiting extradition back to Mexico.
Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. Most of these pictures were taken during a sanitation workers strike in 1970. The photographer is Tom Coffin.
Mannequin Depression
Don’t call on me tonight, I’m quivering from fright
For tomorrow I will have…Rectal Anesthesia
Though this may sound Astonishing.
I have a little pricky sting,
And I’m suffering from my Rectal Anesthesia.
No never will I have to cry,
From my suppository’s sigh.
For it rids me of this Rectal Anesthesia.
Please quit, turn out the light!
I have to use a baby wipe
To clear up this …Rectal Anesthesia.
I can’t digest lactic juice
It makes me always have to poop
Because of my Rectal Anesthesia.
I must go off to surgery of defecation,
And soon to my obituary classification.
Don’t laugh when you read of my deadly ……Rectal Anesthesia.
Originally posted on August 8, 2012 by clotildajamcracker
Are You a Liberal?
Radio whiner Dennis Prager has a new hobby, a website called Prager University. There are a few youtube courses, which everyone passes. PU has one other test, Are You a Liberal? PG is always wondering which label is right correct for him. He decided to take this test.
The test is 21 statements, that you agree or disagree with. The way it is set up, liberals agree with the statements. I don’t know, more information please, or other choices are not available. It is black or white, agree or disagree. Here are the statements.
1 Because of past and present racism in America, standards for admission to public universities, and governmental institutions such as fire departments, should be lowered for people of color.
2 Bilingual education for children of immigrants, rather than immersion in English,
is good for them and good for America.
3 Marriage should be redefined from male-female to any two people.
4 Colleges should not allow ROTC programs,
and the military should not be recruiting on college campuses.
5 Assuming equally loving and competent adults, adoption agencies should not favor a husband and wife over two men or two women.
6 In the Israeli–Palestinian dispute, either both parties are equally at fault or Israel is more at fault.
7 The United Nations is a force for good in the world, and therefore America should not engage in international behavior opposed by the United Nations.
8 No abortions can be labeled immoral.
9 Cities should ban smoking everywhere – i.e., outdoors as well as indoors — except in one’s own home.
10 High schools should make condoms available to students and teach them how to use them.
11 Racism and poverty – more than, for example, a lack of fathers and a crisis of values — are the primary causes of violent crime in black America.
12 No speaker should be permitted to say “God bless you,”
to students at a public high school assembly or graduation ceremony.
13 No culture is morally superior to any other.
14 There are more similarities – moral and otherwise – than differences between fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist Muslims.
15 The earth is rapidly warming. The consequences are dire. And man, not nature, is mostly responsible.
16 Since World War II, America has made war in foreign countries such as Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, and Iraq primarily out of economic and imperialist concerns.
17 “Merry Christmas” should be replaced with “Happy Holidays,” and “Christmas Party” should be replaced by “Holiday Party” because “Merry Christmas” and “Christmas Party” offend non-Christians.
18 If a male employee decides to wear women’s clothing at work, his employer has no right ask him not to, and if the employer fires the man, the employer should be heavily fined.
19 Most Tea Party members, and most conservative opposition to President Obama,
are animated by racism.
20 No identification should be demanded of anyone who comes to vote at a voting place.
21 Capital punishment should be abolished,
meaning that no one found guilty of murder should be put to death.
PG looked at the list, and saw that while he might agree with some of these issues, the way the question was worded forced him to disagree. The semantics can obscure the genuine discussion.
There are some issues that PG simply has a conservative outlook. This is a problem with tagging people with labels. Several of the statements addressed more than one issue. Sometimes, you can agree with part of the statement, and disagree with another part. PG has long felt that liberal and conservative are meaningless phrases, meant to divide and confuse.
Another problem is the divide between what people believe, and what they do. Lets take driving. Is a conservative driver one who obeys the speed limits, and watches out for others? How many people are proud of their conservative ideology, but are flaming liberals behind the wheel? This is a matter with immediate life or death consequences, but is seldom discussed. PG has always wondered why safe driving is not considered a moral issue.
The answer for PG was You may not be a Conservative yet, but you’re not a liberal.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
The Imperfect Church
There was a link on facebook to a tasteful story last week. The incident took place last September. The first page of google does not report, with one exception, what has happened in the last year. As some people say, G-d is in the details. This is one story where it may be the devil in the details.
First, here is a TV station report on the initial incident. The link has a video report, including an interview with the pastor’s son.
A gay Gibson County couple said they were assaulted when they tried to attend church services at the Grace Fellowship Church in Fruitland last Wednesday. “I went over to take the keys out of the ignition and all the sudden I hear someone say ‘sick’em,'” said Gibson County resident, Jerry Pittman Jr. Pittman said the attacked was prompted by the pastor of the church, Jerry Pittman, his father.
“My uncle and two other deacons came over to the car per my dad’s request. My uncle smash me in the door as the other deacon knocked my boyfriend back so he couldn’t help me, punching him in his face and his chest. The other deacon came and hit me through my car window in my back,” said Pittman. He said bystanders did not offer assistance. He said the deacon yelled derogatory homosexual slurs, even after officers arrived. He said the officers never intervened to stop the deacons from yelling the slurs. Pittman said neither he nor Lee were allowed to press charges while at the church.
“If I was on the scene I would not have allowed that. The deputy should not have allowed it if he did,” said Gibson County Sheriff Chuck Arnold. “I haven’t talk to him but that would be out of character for my deputy to say unless they were causing a problem themselves.”
Friday, the couple filed assault charges against Deacons Billy Sims and Eugene McCoy. Pittman pressed additional charges against his father and Deacon Patrick Flatt. Pastor Pittman’s attorney contacted ABC 7 Eyewitness News by phone and said she had no comment and demanded we not contact the pastor. All parties are due in court October 4.
At first glance, that looks pretty gnarly. When you read the comments, the waters start to get muddy.
I’m openly gay and from this area. I received the following info from pro-gay confidants in the area.
There’s a lot more to this story than it appears in this story. The son and bf had been attending the church for 2 yrs without incident. Things got ugly between father and son when the son reported to his stepmother than his father was cheating on her. Divorce proceedings ensued (significant that, in the event the church folded, the church property reverted to the father’s name and would be part of the divorce) and the son still showed up for services on the morning in question. It couldn’t be proven that the father yelled ‘sick em’, but it became clear that, when the elders approached the son/bf to tell them to leave, the son lashed out first. Unfortunately for him this makes it self-defense in the eyes of the law and he killed his own case. Regardless, it’s also pretty clear that the elders used seriously un-Christian words – fag etc – against them in this incident, so shame on them. Can only speculate about the son’s motivation for showing up where he knew he was no longer welcome, but it’s not likely his main purpose was to worship.
This church and its founder/members are notoriously low class people. In the words of my mother when we discussed this, “What do you expect from trash?”
The story does not end there. WBBJ has another report, Gibson County Pastor Charged With Stealing. It seems as though the estranged wife of Mr. Pittman heard he was stealing from her employer. He was arrested on the charges. Chamblee54 does not know what happened to either case.
Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
Chamblee54 
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