Faster Faster
Many of us spend a lot of time driving. Here are a few thoughts.
1- Find another way to show how bad you are. This is mostly a masculinity thing, but it just might apply to a few ladies. Driving hard and fast is the easy way to prove your toughness. All you do is push the gas pedal. You don’t have to go to the gym, have lots of sex, or go into battle. Just drive fast, and with no concern for your neighbor.
2- Slow down. There is no need to go so fast. When you go somewhere, allow yourself enough time to get there. The faster you drive, the less reaction time you have in an emergency.
3- Stay far enough behind the car ahead of you to stop in an emergency. This will be less stressful for the person in front of you.
4- Pay attention to the road. This is where the cell phones become a problem. You should be focused on the road ahead of you, and not what your phone mate is telling you. Your minutes will be just as good when you get to your destination.
5- The three rules of the workplace apply here…. show up, stay awake, and don’t kill anyone.
6- Keep your car in good condition. The tires and brakes are key items, but also keep the engine running smoothly. Sometimes you need to accelerate.
7- Keep your temper. Driving while angry is a cause of many accidents, especially when combined with alcohol or religion.
8- At the risk of saying the unthinkable, some think a bit of alcohol is not that terrible. Of course, when you drink your judgment of how high you are is distorted, so it is tough to tell when too much is consumed. The law takes a much, much sterner view of this.
9- Use your turn signals.
10- Show concern for the well being of your neighbor. Use common sense.
This is a repost .
Pastor Giggly
This post was going to be about used chewing gum. However, on the way home today, radio whiner Erick Erickson said that all americans must have opinions about a certain issue. Perhaps there is a connection between the two issues.
The ABC (already been chewed) gum was left in a urinal strainer this morning. The first reaction was to think that this was gross. The second thought is to wonder why urinals need strainers anyway. The original purpose was to keep cigarette butts out of the pipes. However, people go outside to smoke now. Maybe someone is worried about men doing number two standing up.
The strainer was from a supply company called Uline, and featured the company’s utilitarian logo. Another strainer if from the festively named Swisher brand. The Swisher strainer has the motto, “say no to drugs” printed on it. These are popular at bars, where men excrete used drugs on that phrase.
The story americans are required to care about is Louie Giglio, Pastor Under Fire For Anti-Gay Sermon, Withdraws From Obama Inauguration Ceremony. According to E.W. Erickson, the preacher gave a sermon, where he said to show love and compassion to gay people. However, the Bible says to oppose the “Gay Agenda,” whatever that is.
The speech was given a few years ago, when DADT was in effect. According to the magic book, gay people are not moral enough to go kill, for G-d and country. It is not known whether the men, women, and children killed by the armies of straight americans are gay, straight, or preadolescent.
How does this compare to a piece of ABC gum in a urinal strainer? Perhaps, like the strainer, the idea of having a prayer at a Presidential inauguration is obsolete. If we are an inclusive country, why was a professional Jesus worshiper chosen to say grace over the inauguration? Why not have a Muslim speak, or a Rabbi? It is always Christians who give these meaningless, symbolic prayers.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Wednesday
This is thursday, the day after wednesday. Yesterday was not a good morning. It began, as most working days do, in the kitchen at 530 am. The plan is to make breakfast, and take half for lunch.
Three potatoes were washed and sliced. Three carrots were washed and sliced. The remaining collards were washed. The water went to the garden. The potatoes and carrots went into a steamer. This is a marvel of food preparation, as long as you do two things. You need to set a timer, this morning for 44:44. Only one timer finger works before 6am. The second, and more critical step, is to turn the stove heat down to simmer.
During the 44:44, PG looked at the internet. He gave a one star rating to a Jesus worshiper who banned him from commenting. Facebook was given it’s due. Finally, the timer went off, and PG stumbled into the kitchen. What is that burning smell? Did the burner stay at top temperature? This might not be a good wednesday.
After a breakfast of oatmeal, profanity, and air freshener, PG drove the ten miles on I285 without incident. After an hour or so, it was time for another cup of coffee. Naturally, his portion was the last one available, and another pot needed to be made.
The plastic basket was pulled away from the machine. PG grabbed the edges of the filter, and picked it up. The intention was to deposit the old coffee in the trash can. The problem was in grasping the old filter too close to the edge. The filter tore, leaving PG pinching a bit of wet filter paper. The coffee grounds fell on the floor, the counter, the sink, the unwashed cups, and the side of the cabinet. Wednesday is supposed to be hump day, not dump day. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
Slow Children Playing
Chamblee54 is not too proud to recycle posts , often more than once . This one is about ugly. If you are looking for beauty, and her mouthy stepsister truth, then look elsewhere.
Beauty is skin deep. Ugly is to the bone.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Ugly uses all five senses.
Rahsaan Roland Kirk: I don’t want to see you people, you are all too ugly.
Stevie Wonder: All I see are beautiful people.
Rahsaan Roland Kirk: You know, Stevie Wonder wants to make a lot of money, so he can have an operation and see.
Ray Charles: It’s crying time again.
She is so ugly, she could make a freight train take a dirt road.
He is so ugly, when he was born the doctor slapped his mother.
Is that your face, or did your neck throw up?
French for ugly is : laid m., laide f . Can we say irony?
There are some Jesus Worship blogs that PG likes to read. One of them recently made the lighthearted suggestion that ugly people were not welcome at the church of the other one. The recipient of this comment found this to be “the deeply offensive false accusation he keeps leveling at me.”
FromTheMorning is the one standing up for the pulchritude challenged. (Regrettably, From the Morning is no longer published.)
Pyromaniacs is the aggrieved party here. They say that ugly people “are not only welcome at my church; many of us actually participate in the ministry there”. PG believes you.
Ugly has another meaning. In fact, this is the first meaning PG heard for the U word, years before he connected it to people with unpleasant faces. It is about ugly behavior. People that are mean and cruel to each other. That is ugly.
Police are warning all men who frequent clubs, parties & local pubs to be alert and stay cautious when offered a drink by any woman. Many females use a date-rape-drug on the market called ‘Beer ‘.
The drug is found in liquid form and is available anywhere. It comes in bottles, cans, from taps, and in large kegs. ‘Beer ‘ is used by female sexual predators at parties and bars to persuade their male victims to go home and sleep with them.
A woman needs only to get a guy to consume a few units of ‘Beer’ and then simply ask him home for no-strings-attached sex. Men are rendered helpless against this approach. After several applications of ‘Beer’, men will often succumb to the desires to sleep with women to whom they would never normally be attracted. Men often awaken with only hazy memories of exactly what happened to them the night before, often with just a vague feeling that ‘something bad’ occurred.
At other times these unfortunate men are swindled out of their life’s savings, in a familiar scam known as ‘a relationship’ . In extreme cases, the female may even be shrewd enough to entrap the unsuspecting male into a longer-term form of servitude and punishment referred to as ‘marriage’. Men are much more susceptible to this scam after ‘Beer ‘ is administered and sex is offered by the predatory females.
If you fall victim to this ‘Beer ‘ scam and the women administering it, there are male support groups where you can discuss the details of your shocking encounter with similarly victimized men. For the support group nearest you, just look up ‘Golf Courses’ in the phone book.
David Bowie
This is a repost. David Bowie is 66 today, and Elvis is 78, The Falcons are the number one seed in the NFC playoffs, and will play this weekend. Sarah Palin is obsolete.
A webpage called CaptainsDead has a download of a David Bowie concert, that can only be called a Christmas present. Most Bowie live recordings are pretty dull. While the Thin White Duke is renowned for his concerts, they tend to be live events, that depend on staging and costumes as much as music. This show, from 1974, is different. Focusing on material from “Diamond Dogs”, the sound he produces comes close to matching the studio sound, and in a few cases surpasses it.
The next move for Bowie in 1974 was the “white soul” sound of “Young Americans”. He is moving in that direction in this show, even while he lingers in the glitter apocalypse. This tour included a stop at the Fox Theater, the first Atlanta show for Mr.Bowie. On the way to Florida for the next show, the truck with the sets and costumes crashed into a swamp full of rattlesnakes. The show in Tampa was performed in street clothes.
Maybe it is time for a Chamblee54 tribute to David Bowie. The Falcons and the Saints is on the box, and hopefully the Falcons can quit fumbling and score some points. The Georgia Dome has not hosted that many concerts…hopefully, the era of concerts in football stadiums is fading away. (The Saints wound up winning. At least PG did not have to see the obnoxious “Rise Up” commercial.)
The first album by David Bowie that PG heard about was “Hunky Dory”. At the time, Mr. Bowie had generated some buzz by admitting that he fancies blokes, or some uber british expression for being queer. In time, this would be seen as more publicity stunt than brave confession. The RCA debut got some good reviews, but not much else.
The next year produced “Ziggy Stardust”, a concept album. At about this time he did a tour of the United States, with costumes and onstage antics that generated even more publicity. More and more people started listening, some in spite of his outrageous image, and quite a few more because of it. He broke up his band, the spiders from mars, and announced his retirement. The band learned about this while standing on stage behind him. Mr. Bowie, for all his genius, is not always a nice man.
In 1974 there was an album, “Diamond Dogs”, about the decadent urban life in the scifi future. A stage show based on this album…the source of the download mentioned above…marked a return to the concert stage. The next year gave us “Young Americans”, and the year after that “Station to Station”. Every year was a different sound and vision.
Meanwhile, the artist was not doing so good as a human being. According to all reports, he was doing mountains of cocaine. (There is a story of going to meet the parents of Ava Cherry, one of his girlfriends. He shows up at 3am, and does coke on the dining room table.) There was an interview in Playboy( or maybe it was Rolling Stone ) where the first thing he says is, don’t believe anything I say. He went on to say that he admired Adolf Hitler. Have we mentioned the physical appearance of David Bowie in 1975? He looked like he was dead, and nobody bothered to tell him.( By contrast, in recent photo collections of rock stars, Mr. Bowie looks pretty good for a man who is 63 y.o.)
This was the era of Rocky Horror show. At one point, Riff Raff sings (Tim O’Brien wrote the show, and gave himself some darn good lines ) Frank n furter, it’s all over, your mission is a failure, your lifestyle’s too extreme.I’m your new commander you now are my prisoner we return to transylvania prepare the transit beam While this may not have been directed at David Bowie, he took the hint.
We interrupt this David Bowie tribute with an emergency announcement. The new orleans quarterback likes to make these silly little passes when he is in trouble. The falcons just intercepted one, and ran it back for a touchdown.
So David Bowie saw himself at a dead end, and possibly a dead life. He moved into a little apartment in West Berlin, on top of a garage. Brian Eno offered his assistance, and a series of electronic albums was the result. The next few years saw rock and roll, dance music, and finally, crap. PG bought a Bowie album in 1984, the first time he saw it on sale, and was immensely disappointed. The last David Bowie album that PG got was a free cd that was given to people buying a magazine.
Around 1981, MTV was born, and radio was suddenly obsolete. A visual artiste like David Bowie was a natural for video. Unfortunately, many of these videos are not available for embedding in blogs. Ashes to Ashes was a staple of early MTV. Boys Keep Swinging , off the “Lodger” album, is a return to the gender bender Bowie of younger days.
David Bowie continued to do tours, and PG got to see two of the shows. In 1987, something called the “Glass Spider Tour” came to the Omni. (In a later interview, it turns out Mr. Bowie was extremely unhappy during this tour, and close to suicide at some points.) The Glass Spider was this mass of lighting effects that hovered over the stage, and was used to best advantage during “Scary Monsters”. The show featured Peter Frampton on guitar, and had a pack of dancers. (One apparent female took her drag off during the finale.) A good time was had by all.
In 1990, another retirement tour came to the Omni. This one had movies projected on a screen behind the stage, and featured guitar hero Adrian Bellew. The night had the feel of a contractual obligation. David Bowie is too professional to give a bad show, but this one did not have the fire of “Glass Spider”. PG had a new set of contact lenses, and his eyes were painfully dry most of the night.
This is a repost.
Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Tag some others who might enjoy this. You can’t use the band I used. Try not to repeat a song title. It’s a lot harder than you think! Re-post as “my life according to (band name)”Pick your Artist: David Bowie
Are you a male or female: The Bewley Brothers
Describe yourself: Quicksand
How do you feel:Always crashing in the same car
Describe where you currently live: Life on Mars
If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Width of a circle
Your favorite form of transportation: Queen Bitch
Your best friend is: Young Americans
You and your best friends are: Kooks
What’s the weather like: Changes
Favorite time of day: Eight Line Poem
If your life was a TV show, what would it be called: Scary Monsters
What is life to you: Panic in Detroit
Your relationship: Fame
Your fear: Sound and Vision
What is the best advice you have to give:Somebody up there likes me
Thought for the Day: Hang onto yourself
How I would like to die: Ashes to Ashes
My soul’s present condition: Moonage Daydream
My motto: Andy Warhol
The Limits Of Solidarity
There is a popular internet feature, I am Adam Lanza’s Mother. It is about the nightmare of having a son with mental issues. No doubt the writerlady had good intentions.
“I am sharing this story because I am Adam Lanza’s mother. I am Dylan Klebold’s and Eric Harris’s mother. I am James Holmes’s mother. I am Jared Loughner’s mother. I am Seung-Hui Cho’s mother.” Actually, with all due respect to your unpleasant situation, you are not the mother of those other six men. You are the mother of “Micheal”.
We will probably never know what set off Adam Lanza. We do know that Ma Lanza owned guns… in fact, it was her guns that were used in the rampage. She was not the type of person to be denied legal ownership of deadly force. It turns out that this weapon worked well when turned on her.
The odds are that all five of the men listed above took a different path to their day of destiny. It is tough to tell what could have been done. It would have been tough to tell the difference between them and other young people with problems. It is always going to be tough to guess, in advance, who is a killer, and who is a harmless jerk.
It is not known where the concept of saying “I am ___” got started. Presumably, the intention is to show solidarity. You might want to say that the person in the blank is a human being just like you. It is a good idea, sort of, but it gets worn out when you claim to be six different mothers.
A while back, the phrase of the day was “I am Troy Davis.” The Davis case lasted for 22 years. This is not the time to revisit that case. The point is, the people who wore T shirts saying “I am Troy Davis” are still alive today. Solidarity only goes so far.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Chapter 39
Chapter 39 is a turning point of Still Life With Woodpecker. Many stories have a moment like this, where the lead actor, and the lead actress, become *buddies*. In this case, Princess Leigh-Cheri was going to turn Bernard into the police. He had set off dynamite at a do gooders conference, and caused mayhem. However, the two took legal drugs , went to a boat, and did what men and women usually do at this point of the story.
When she is leaving the boat, Princess Leigh-Cheri looks for her panties. It seems as though a mongoose found them, and ate them. This happens in Tom Robbins books. In Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, a foundation garment becomes a nylon flavored cookie, from the oven of a goat.
One of the spotlight speakers at the do gooders conference, and the hero of Princess Leigh-Cheri, is Ralph Nader. He was speaking at the conference while PL-C was falling in love on the boat. Yes, a few drinks, and a night in bed, and the young lady was in love. Meanwhile, Ralph Nader steps in the mongoose-produced panty pudding. He did not see it coming.
This is in tune with the Ralph Nader story of 2000, 20 years after the publication of Still Life With Woodpecker. By then, RN (wikipedia shows no middle name) was reduced to running for President. Few took him seriously, but lots of people didn’t take Albert Arnold Gore, or George Walker Bush, seriously. In Florida, the race between the mainstream candidates was wallpaper close. It went into legal limbo. The voters who voted for RN made the difference, and helped put an idiot in the White House.
Conversations I Am Tired Of Having
There was a post a while back, 10 Conversations On Racism I’m Sick Of Having With White People. The original started at The Chronicle, but LiveJournal is kind of weird, so a mirror image will have to do. There are comments, at the sourced post, that illustrate some of the points covered today.
I got to thinking about “10 Conversations”, and a reply began to take shape. I started a list of conversations the I am tired of having, and before you could say affirmative action, there were a dozen items. Many of these incidents have involved people of color, or POC. Many others have not. Often, the ethnicity of the other person has little importance to the discussion. Therefore, the title of this feature will not be racially specific. This monolog will probably not go viral, or even bacterial, but will enable me to express a few thoughts. Washing your hands might be a good idea when you are finished reading.
Meetings where one person does all the talking The word conversation implies that more than one person says something. Often, this does not happen. One person will talk for a while. Before person two finishes a sentence, person one will interrupt them.
This does not work. When the other person is talking, shut up and listen. Don’t be thinking of your clever comeback, but pay attention to what the other person is saying. What the other person says is just as important as what you say.
Listening is not valued in our culture. It is seen as a loss of control, a sign of weakness. It is really a sign of strength. If you are weak, you don’t want to allow the other person to say anything. Have you ever heard anyone boast about the clever things that they say to someone? Of course you have, just like you never hear anyone talk highly about himself because he is a good listener.
My question is not an excuse to make a speech. Some people have an agenda. Whatever you say is an obstacle to the message they want to broadcast. When you ask a question, some people think you are handing them the talking stick, to do whatever they want. When your eyes glaze over, they plow on, in total disregard to your discomfort, and lack of comprehension. It is almost as if they are talking to hear the sound of their own voice.
I’m not talking to you. If you are screaming something, anyone with earshot can hear you. Do not get offended if there is a reaction to your words, especially if it is subtly directed at the person you are not talking to. This applies to the internet as well, where all of humanity is *privy* to your innermost thoughts. Keep the farmyard meaning of *privy* in mind when sharing your innermost product.
Conversations should be with people. If you are a business, and you want to tell me something, send me a written message. Please refrain from using robocall machines. I feel very foolish talking to a machine, especially one that doesn’t understand southern english.
You don’t have to shout. The amount of truth in a statement is not increased by the volume of expression. If you are standing next to me, the odds are I can hear you in a normal tone of voice. If you are across the room, come stand next to me, rather than shout across the room. If your normal tone of voice is shouting, then you have a problem.
The same principal goes to controlling your temper. When you choose not to control your temper, you show disprespect to yourself, and the person you are talking to. There is no situation that cannot be made worse by angry speech.
Privilege Racial polemic is getting more subtle these days. We are not quite post racial, although there are rumors of a PostRacial apartment complex in Dickhater. The phrase that pays these days is Privilege. This is always something owned by the group you do not belong to. Last summer, I heard this quote in a discussion, and nearly fell out of my chair.
From the N word to POC. Labels for groups of people can cause problems. I have expressed myself on the N word before, and don’t have much to add. As for POC, that is even sillier. Colored people is an insult, but people of color is preferred. I am sure some of you have a terrific speech to ‘splain this, but I am not interested. My neck may be red, but that is a color. PWOC is an insult to my humanity, whether you are talking to me or not.
This is getting longer than the attention span of many readers. It might be continued at a later date. If you can’t say anything nice, say something about race. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Banished Words
JOB CREATION GURU downloaded BONELESS WINGS onto his BUCKET LIST.
His dog, YOLO, has a TRENDING PASSION for the SUPERFOOD.
JOB CREATION GURU will DOUBLE DOWN,
and KICK THE CAN DOWN THE ROAD,
over the FISCAL CLIFF.
SPOILER ALERT: Banished words courtesy of Lake Superior State University.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is written like David Foster Wallace.
Spell check suggestions: YOLO: SOLO POLO YOLK ~ SUPERFOOD: SUPERFLUOUS.
Doing It
the lady caller on the radio show said
“even married couples are doing it “
she meant having babies
while expecting society to help pay the bills
pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Thou Art That
It started out as joke comments. Thank G-d for secular humanism. ~ You’re welcome. PG got to thinking, and wondered what the punch line was. Is there a difference between G-d and man?
In “Zen and the art of motorcycle repair” the author contends that the division of G-d and man, subject and object, is the dirty work of Aristotle. PG is not philosophically grounded enough to know, but suspects that unity is better than division. Is the earth a unified whole, “thou art that”?
Now, the truth just might be that G-d is separate from man. While unity may sound appealing, it might not be the way things operate. Just because a belief makes you happy does not mean that it is true. Let no man bring together what G-d has rent asunder.
If there is a division between G-d and man, then where does the boundary lie?
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
This is a repost. Is it art?
April Glaspie Meets Saddam Hussein
Juan Cole at Informed Comment posts today about a document release from Wikileaks. The document is a cable sent by April Glaspie, the ambassador to Iraq, about a meeting with Saddam Hussein on July 25, 1990. This was shortly before his invasion of Kuwait.
In 1990, Iraq was recovering from a horrendous war with Iran. That war started Sept. 22, 1980, when Iraq invaded Iran, possibly with encouragement from the United States. (At the time of this invasion, Iran was holding Americans hostage in the American embassy. The United States was not pleased with Iran.) Iraq failed to get a quick victory, and the war became a bloody quagmire, with hundreds of thousands of casualties.
In 1990, Iraq was rebuilding, and Kuwait was flourishing. Oil was being over produced, driving down the price. Kuwait was accused of “slant drilling”, i.e. drilling under the border, and stealing oil from Iraq. At one point, a meeting was held between officials of Iraq and Kuwait . “Saddam…sent his foreign minister to Kuwait to meet with the Emir Al Sabah, the former leader of Kuwait, to try to resolve some of the… issues” between Kuwait and Iraq, Piro will recall. “And the Emir told the foreign minister of Iraq that he would not stop doing what he was doing until he turned every Iraqi woman into a $10 prostitute. And that really sealed it for him, to invade Kuwait.”
On July 25, 1990, Saddam Hussein summoned to American Ambassador, April Glaspie , to a meeting. The cable is Ms. Glaspie’s account of the meeting. PG cannot see a green light for invasion in this account of the meeting. Many say Ms. Glaspie could have made much more explicit the dire consequences of invading Kuwait.
The transcript of the meeting has been declassified for some time. It is available on the website of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation. It is worth noting that this transcript is not sworn testimony, and could contains lies and mistakes. It is also the POV of Ms. Glaspie, and Mr. Hussein may have gotten a different idea of what was said. Perhaps, to Mr. Hussein, it was a green light for an invasion.
The invasion of Kuwait, eight days after the meeting, on August 2, 1990, set in motion events that affect us to this day. A coalition was formed to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. There was talk of going to Baghdad and deposing Mr. Hussein at the time. The military action stopped after driving Iraq out of Kuwait, reportedly at the request of Saudi Arabia. Twelve years later, the United States attacked Iraq, and drove out the Hussein government. We are still there.
Historycommons.org has a timeline with a wealth of information about the progression of Saddam Hussein, from ally to next Hitler. The comments section for the post by Juan Cole at Informed Comment is the source of several links in this story, and has a lively commentary about this matter. This is a repost. The wikileaks links have been deactivated.
Chamblee54 
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