Faith
People say religion is bad.
They say faith instead.
Now faith is a dirty word.
Faith is loud, vulgar boasting.
Faith is verbal abuse, humiliation.
Faith is fighting because of Jesus.
Faith is obsession with life after death.
Pictures from The Library of Congress.
Math Jokes
Q:Why do they never serve beer at a math party?
A: Because you can’t drink and derive.
Q: Why won’t Goldilocks drink a glass of water with 8 pieces of ice in it?
A: It’s too cubed.
Q: What did Al Gore play on his guitar?
A: An Algorithm
Q: Why was the Calculus teacher bad at baseball?
A: He was better at fitting curves than hitting them.
Q: Why do you rarely find mathematicians spending time at the beach?
A: Because they have sine and cosine to get a tan and don’t need the sun.
Jokes are from facebook. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Lance Who
Of course you know who he is. He is the most famous bicycle racer in America. Who is number two? Of course you don’t know. Bicycles are a participant sport. Racing might be a big deal in Europe, but this is America. The next question is, why should people in America care whether bike racers in Europe use “performance enhancing drugs”.
A player using these substances is hurting himself. (apologies are extended to female users) Yes, steroids will turn your grapes into raisins. Just like knee injuries will make you walk funny. Repeated head injuries make you want to kill yourself. When you choose to participate in an activity, there are going to be side effects. It is just that some side effects create more hullabaloo than others.
This internet commentary was interrupted to listen to Mike Gallagher and Chris Wallace on the radio. It seems as though Gallagher is a mother’s maiden name, used as a stage name. Mr. Gallagher’s birth name was Smelster.
Getting back to the hysteria over drug use, in a boutique sport. This is step with the overall societal reaction to drugs, except alcohol. FBI agents recently interviewed Sheryl Crow, the former gf of Lance Who. (Black Sports Online says Sheryl Crow Snitched To The Feds About Lance Armstrong’s Doping.) The overkill of the War on Drugs has been extended into the mania about pedal pushers on steroids.
Lance Who has been accused of being an overall terrible human being in this affair. There are reports of throwing teammates under the bus, in an effort to keep his own star shining. This is the same competitive spirit that is acclaimed when someone wins, but denounced when the star is no longer in fashion. It is all about me winning.
This scandal will fade away. Oprah will find another spotlight to shine on her rotund face. Athletes will continue to be tested for a wide range of substances, so they can go on television and sell beer commercials. This was written like David Foster Wallace.
Open Letter About The New Stadium Project
This is a message for Scott Holcomb. He represents the 81st district in the Georgia House of Representatives. This body is going to be asked to allow The Georgia World Congress Center Authority to raise the limit on money they can borrow. If the Legislature does not pass this, the stadium will not be built under the present plan. In my opinion, it would be best for the citizens of Georgia to not pass this enabling legislation.
I have looked over the Memorandum of Understanding between the GWCCA and the Atlanta Falcons. I am a slack blogger, and not a lawyer, and my comprehension of this document is limited. There is language enabling both the Falcons, and the GWCCA, to back out of the deal if either party does not live up to their obligations.
What I could not find is whether the GWCCA is responsible to finish building the New Stadium Project (NSP), if the Falcons fall short on their end of the financing. I have not seen a plan for the Falcons to finance their part of the deal. This is an estimated $700 million. If the State is going to participate in this scheme, then we need to know how the Falcons plan to come up with $700 million.
The GWCCA portion of the NSP budget is estimated to be $300 million. It is assured that there will be much more money needed for infrastructure improvements. Some say the government part of the tab will be half a billion dollars. This is at a time when State, City, and County governments are having financial problems.
This brings us to another reason to not use tax revenue to finance the NSP. It is about our basic values as a society. At this time schools, roads, MARTA, water and sewer systems are out of money, and need basic maintenance. If we cannot provide people with a basic standard of living, then we have no business using public money to build a football stadium.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
New Blog
There is a new blog, It will start out on WordPress, but may go somewhere else later. It is called Forty Four Words. The posts will have a limit of forty four words.
The word counting began with 22 words. 22W is still in delightful business, but they long ago gave up on the 22 word limit. PG thinks this is a shame. The 22 word limit forced you to think, to concentrate your thoughts into a tight format. The owner of 22W chose to run his blog differently.
The owner of 22W is Abraham Piper, the son of famous preacher John Piper. Many of the comment threads at the old 22W were about religion. One day PG tried to express his beliefs in 22 words.
PG decided that this label thing was not going to work. Labels belong on jars, and PG’s hair is a half inch over jarhead level. The best solution was to write a list of beliefs. The good news here is that numbers do not count against the total of 22 words. 1. My beliefs are my business. 2. Practice outweighs belief. 3. G-d probably exists. 4. G-d does not write books. 5. Jesus has nothing to do with Life after death.
This is 25 words. Three words need to go. Line 4 states that G-d does not write books. This implies that G-d does, indeed, exist. Line 3 can be eliminated, and the answer reduced to 22 words.
As you may have guessed, this post is not regulated by a forty four word limit. Chamblee 54 is not going anywhere, except maybe to a privately hosted domain. There are lots of issues that do not lend themselves to short posts.
PG has been entering the Trifecta writing challenge. Many of the posts here specify 33 words. PG wrote a few, and was impressed at how quickly such a post could be knocked out. You can express yourself very well in 33 words. There is a sense of poetry in short posts.
Forty Two years ago, a few hippies at Cross Keys High School decided that forty four was a magic number. It was the uniform number of Hank Aaron. Forty four is two times two times eleven. The second lowest even number, squared, multiplied by the lowest two digit prime number. Eleven is two ones, that add up to two. You can go on and on about this, probably for more than forty four words.
So the blog has joined the blogosphere, along with a few thousand more today. Very few of those will make more than ten posts. The hope is that Forty Four Words will hold up, and be a good compliment to Chamblee 54. The new template is going to take a bit of getting used to, and will only handle pictures 700 pixels wide. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Still Life With Woodpecker
The last paragraph of Still Life With Woodpecker begins “Even with aids, their hearing was only partially restored”. This refers to hearing aids, not HIV.
SLWW was written during the Carter administration, and yet talks about the last quarter of the twentieth century. PG recently re read SLWW. With the exception of the Tea Party, we are thirteen percent into the twenty first century. The book, however visionary, wrote about the last quarter, etc, while discos were considered the latest innovation in entertainment. The eighties and nineties had a few surprises. AIDS was science fiction when SLWW was written.
One is cocaine. In SLWW, many of the leading characters thought tootski was great fun. A few years later, a Republican administration pulled a double whammy on the patriotic public. On the one hand a war on drugs was trumpeted, with many liberties counted as casualties. While this was going on, another branch of big government was using cocaine importers to take guns to terrorists in Central America. PG remembers those days as the time when he quit trying to make sense of current events.
Another theme of this book… despite it’s flaws, it is still tons of fun to read … are the hidden messages embedded in the package for Camel Cigarettes. This package was introduced in 1913, according to SLWW. This was the same year as the start of the Federal Reserve Bank. In 1914, a horrendous war started in Europe. American managed to get dragged into this conflict, and the modern era started.
1913 was the first year of Woodrow Wilson as POTUS. His election was facilitated by a third party run by Teddy Roosevelt. He had previously been promoted to POTUS by the suspicious murder of William McKinley. This was followed shortly by the mysterious Camel package, and the Federal Reserve Bank.
The 1992 election also featured a third party helping to elect a Democrat. Bill Clinton balanced the budget, and got impeached over a blow job. You can’t make this stuff up. It is understandable that SLWW did not see it coming. This was written like David Foster Wallace. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
Idle
Over at the one star blog, there is a post this morning, If you’re going to snip, you should snip this verse. The thesis here is that if you are going to edit the Bible, that you should redact Genesis 1:1.
“A well-known actor… tries to ameliorate his guilt over pursuing his slavery to unnatural desires by snipping out unwelcome passages from Gideon’s Bibles in motel rooms. This is vandalism as therapy, evidently yet another pursuit of the idle rich.”
The link is to a 2007 article in a production called LifeSiteNews. “British Actor Ian McKellen who has used the mega-stardom he achieved playing Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings films to promote homosexuality, has admitted to ripping out pages of hotel bibles that refer to homosexuality… “Yes it is true,” responded McKellen it’s even tones. “Its Leviticus 18:22 that I object to, or is it 22:18, I’ve always got to look it up. … “I think it’s rather obscene and pornographic, and shouldn’t be there, so I remove it.”
Now, whatever one thinks of snipping and clipping by Sir Ian, one word that should not be used is idle. A movie actor spends long days on the set. He is up early for makeup, must wear an uncomfortable costume, and every scene is filmed at least a dozen times. Nor is the road to movie stardom an easy one. Sir Ian started out in live theater, with long hours spent in rehearsal, and eight performances a week. For every Sir Ian who hits the big time, there are a thousand players, of equal talent, who wait tables during the day, so they can perform at night. This is not the lifestyle of “the idle rich.”
Why The Time Is Always 10:09:36
PG notices details, sometimes. One thing is the time on clocks and watches in ads. The time is 10:09:36. Sometimes, it is 01:51:25. There are occasional exceptions, but 10:09:36 seems to be an industry standard. This is a repost.
It focuses attention on the top part of the watch, and makes the bottom part visible. Typically, the logo of the manufacturer is framed by the hands. The manufacturer wants the logo to be visible in the ads.
The hands lifted upward make a welcoming gesture. If you hold your arms out at the 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock positions, it will look like you are about to hug someone. This shape also looks like a smile.
After this, we get into the myths. At this particular time (10:09:36) US deployed the atom bomb on Japan. This particular time is used to remind people of the US dominance. A bit of research into pre atom bomb advertising might disprove that, but PG thinks that is too much work.
Another hypothesis is that Abraham Lincoln was shot at 10:15 pm on April 14, 1865, and died at 7:22 the next day. How this translates into 10:09:36 is anyone’s guess. However, standard time was not used in the United States until 1883. The precise “time” of Mr. Lincolns retirement is not known.
Someone wrote the Timex company about this issue.
A: WE CALLED TIMEX FOR YOUR ANSWER AND IT SAYS THE HANDS ON A CLOCK ARE PLACED AT TEN-TEN BECAUSE IT’S A CREATIVE STANDARD INDUSTRY. TIMEX SAYS THE HANDS ON TIMEPIECES ARE PLACED AT TEN-TEN SO THE COMPANY LOGO ON THE FACE WILL BE FRAMED AND NOT BLOCKED BY THE HANDS.
TIMEX SAYS THE INDUSTRY STANDARD USED TO BE EIGHT-TWENTY BUT THAT LOOKED TOO MUCH LIKE A FROWN AND CREATED AN UNHAPPY LOOK. TIMEX SAYS IN ITS ADS, THE CLOCK HANDS ARE PLACED AT TEN-NINE AND THIRTY SIX SECONDS, EXACTLY.”
Another source discusses this issue when the “creative standard industry” was 8:20. At that time people still said it was the time that Abe Lincoln was shot and or died.
Yet another source, the poetically named stupidquestion.net, has a few more tidbits. It seems like in the 1880’s, pocket watches became popular. In ads, the case was shown more than the face. The omega watchmaker established the 10:08:35 standard in 1915, and the industry followed suit. This would also seem to contradict the atom bomb theory given above.
PG has always wondered something else. Are all photographs for watch ads shot at 10:09:36? If not, then the ads are a lie. According to StupidQuestions, watchmakers send out non functioning dummy watches that are frozen at a certain time. PG ( who does not wear a watch, but uses wall clocks) says this makes him question the honesty of the ad.
Such A Pansy
Louie Giglio was being discussed on the Allen Hunt Show Sunday night. A lady did not think Mr. Giglio should nothave withdrawn from his chore of praying at the BHO inauguration. The lady said “He was such a pansy about it”.
PG called the show to make a comment about the lady. After getting the busy signal a few times, PG talked to the screener. The comment was that the lady, when discussing Louie Giglio, said “he was such a pansy about it.” Pansies, in fact, are very tough plants. They thrive in cold, nasty weather. Mr. Giglio, in withdrawing from consideration of doing the prayer, was the opposite of acting like a pansy.
At first the screener said he would pass along the comment to Mr. Hunt. PG said he would not mind waiting, and the screener said he would have to wait for a half hour. PG said this was not a problem. The screener said to keep the radio turned off, and to get quickly to the comment.
After a few minutes of chatter, Mr. Hunt went to a commercial break. He said that the subject would be Lance Armstrong when he got back. The screener got back to PG, and said that the show would not be discussing Louie Giglio any more. PG said that Mr. Hunt just didn’t want to hear any opposing viewpoints. The screener said we are not like that, and hung up.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
This was written like Arthur Clarke.
What Is Dirty About Louie Louie?
The sixties were a great time to be a kid. As long as you were too young for a Vietnam Vacation, there were kicks to be had.
One of the more enduring legends was the dirty lyrics to “Louie Louie”. Recorded by an obscure band called the Kingsmen, the song was a massive hit in 1963 ( It never was Number One). When WQXI put out lists of the greatest songs of all time, “Louie Louie” was at the top of the list. This is despite, or because of, the raucous sound. The song was recorded in one take, when the band thought they were playing a rehearsal. The vocals are difficult to make sense of, and rumored to be obscene. No one was ever quite sure why .With the garbled sound on the record, the listener could hear almost anything they wanted to.
The Governor of Indiana, Matthew Welsh, banned radio stations from playing the song in that state. On February 7, 1964, Attorney General Robert Kennedy got a letter from an outraged parent about the lyrics to “Louie Louie”. An F.B.I. investigation followed. After thirty months of investigation, the Bureau concluded that they could not make sense of the lyrics.
PG had a neighbor named Carol. A tomboy who could whip most of the boys, she had a pet skunk named Napoleon. Carol claimed to have heard a band at Lenox Square play “Louie Louie”. “He said the words real slow so you could understand them. I can’t repeat what he said,but it was dirty”.
Louie, Louie Oh no, me gotta go.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, said, ah
Louie, Louie Oh, baby, me gotta go
A fine little girl she waits for me Me
catch a ship for cross the sea.
Me sail that ship all alone Me never think how I make it home.
Ah, Louie, Louie No, no, no, no, me gotta go.
Oh, no. Said, Louie, Louie Oh, baby, said we gotta go.
Three nights and days I sail the sea Think of girl, oh, constantly.
Ah, on that ship I dream she there
I smell the rose, ah, in her hair.
Ah, Louie, Louie Oh, no, sayin’ we gotta go.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
but, ah, Louie, Louie Oh, baby, said, we gotta go.
[Yelled] Okay, let’s give it to ‘em right now! [instrumental]
Me see Jamaica, ah, moon above.
It won’t be long, me see me love.
Take her in my arms again, I got her; I’ll never leave again.
Ah, Louie, Louie Oh, no, sayin’ me gotta go.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
But, ah, Louie, Louie Oh, baby, said, ah, we gotta go.
I said we gotta go now, Let’s get on outta here.
[Yelled] Let’s go.
Transcribed by David Spector Sept. 2000 Public Domain. If anyone reading this can explain what was so dirty about this song, please leave a comment. Thank you Wikipedia for your help in assembling this. This is a repost. Pictures by The Library of Congress This was written like Vladimir Nabokov.
Leg Cramp
Pain in the right thigh.
Take a leg cramp pill.
Go for a walk.
This usually works.
No rain.
Warm for january.
The pain leaves.
It is a new beginning.
This is life.
Application For Baptism
Passion City Church has been in the spotlight recently. Pastor Louie Giglio univited himself from participation in the second inauguration of BHO. The website for the facility has an “Application for Baptism.” PG decided to answer their questions.
Please state briefly how and when you placed your faith in Christ as Savior and began to follow Him with your life.
I learned the truth about Jesus one day at work, My neighbor was an aggressive preacher. One day this aggression turned on me, and I was shouted down and humiliated. When he was through with his tirade, he went back to his desk. A minute later, the phone rang. The aggressive preacher screamed “I never felt better in my life”. It should be noted here that Jesus and Christ are two very different terms. The person known as Jesus may, or may not, have been the Christ.
Do you believe you are going to heaven? Why do you believe that?
What happens to the dead is none of living people’s business. The answer is to have faith in G-d to take care of you when you die. When you scream about salvation, you are betraying a lack of faith in G-d. Whatever G-d wants to do with me when I die is her business.
Why do you want to get baptized? Have you been baptized before? Please explain.
In the Southern Baptist Church, pre adolescent children are pressured to join the church and be baptized. The good news is that this is better than what Catholic priests like to do with children. When it was my time to be pressured into joining the church, I was uncertain that it was the right step to take. After all these years, I am curious what I was missing.
Baptism is a public declaration symbolizing death to our old way of life and an entering in to the new life we have received in Christ. Though not perfect, does your life today reflect the change Christ has made in you?
My life is the same today as it was before I learned the truth about Jesus. I try to treat my neighbor with kindness and honest compassion.
Chamblee54 
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