Fourteen Opportunities To Share This
Fourteen Opportunities to Share Wisdom This is another episode of things you are supposed to share. There are fourteen graphics today. They are a mixed bag. Some have an agreeable message. Just don’t tell people to “share” your pet message and nobody gets hurt.
There is one about bulletproof vests for police dogs that wouldn’t make much sense if you took the order to like off. It is left intact. And if the man didn’t abuse Fido, to catch people with pot in their cars, then no one would want to shoot the pooch.
Some have a quote, with a celebrity given credit, even though he never said it. One truly gruesome image gives the Human Rights Campaign credit for the coming out of a has been NBA dribbler. Credit is given to people who have an illness that is not apparent to other people. Being nice to such humans is a good idea, even if a tacky graphic annoys you.
The rest of facebook is getting gnarly. Recently, PG got a message from OD. He tried to respond, and got this screen. “OD is using an app to chat. To message OD you need to change your settings to let friends who use apps see if you’re online. Would you like to allow friends using other apps to see your online state?” How do you say hell no in zeros and ones?
In the interest of giving credit where it is due, even if it is for doo doo, here are the links to the originals. 01 cispa, 02 glow, 03 Ali, 04 go broke, 06 hey, 07 canine, 08 come out, 09 tax, 10 welfare, 11 eye test, 12 zappa, 14 normalcy, 15 sister, 16 silent killer.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. These are shots of soldiers returning from World War One, which didn’t need a number in 1919. While editing these pictures, PG listened to a tape of James Broughton reading poems. A lawn mower, at work four yards down, came in through the window. It was a lovely May afternoon. No one suggested that you share that on facebook.
English Double Feature
Chamblee54 presents a double feature, borrowed from other sources on the internet. One is 21 Reasons Why English is Hard to Learn. There is a similar feature in the Chamblee54 archive, with better pictures. Part two is 10 Words You Mispronounce That Make People Think You’re an Idiot. The commentary is left out today, but is available by following the link, Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.</a
1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish silverware.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) After a number of injections my jaw got number.
19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
ATHLETE
Incorrect pronunciation: ath – a – leet
Correct pronunciation: ath – leet
ESCAPE / ESPRESSO / ET CETERA
Incorrect pronunciation: ex – cape / ex – presso / ex – set – err – uh
Correct pronunciation: ess – cape / ess – presso / ett – set – err – uh
NUCLEAR
Incorrect pronunciation: nuke – you – lerr
Correct pronunciation: new – clee – err
PRESCRIPTION / PREROGATIVE
Incorrect pronunciation: purr – scrip – shun / purr – ogg – uh – tiv
Correct pronunciation: pre – scrip – shun / pre – rogg – uh – tiv
UTMOST
Incorrect pronunciation: up – most
Correct pronunciation: utt – most
CANDIDATE
Incorrect pronunciation: can – uh – dett
Correct pronunciation: can – da – dett
SHERBET
Incorrect pronunciation: sherr – berrt
Correct pronunciation: sherr – bet
AWRY
Incorrect pronunciation: aww – ree
Correct pronunciation: uh – rye
FOR ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES
Incorrect pronunciation: “for all intensive purposes”
Correct pronunciation: “for all intents and purposes”
OFTEN
Incorrect pronunciation: off – ten
Correct pronunciation: off – en
Watering Hole Story
PG and his neighbor DA went out to drink beer and shoot pool. The destination was a place called the Watering Hole. The Watering Hole used to be a VFW. There was a TV repair store next door. When the county legalized bars, the VFW went somewhere else. The TV repair store became the game room. You could see on the floor where the counter used to be.
This was a weeknight. The other customer was past his limit. The drunk was fussing at the bartender when PG and DA walked in.
PG got lucky and hit a good shot on the pool table. He got a bit cocky, and said “and now for my next trick”. The drunk staggered into the game room, and lay down on an empty pool table. DA replied, “Is that your next trick?”
Before long, it was time to go home. As PG and DA were leaving, the drunk was arguing with the bartender. He wanted to buy a twelve pack to take home. The drunk won the argument, and started walking up Clairmont Road with his prize.
PG got a block or so away from the Watering Hole. He saw the drunk sitting in front of a seven eleven store. The drunk was sitting on the curb, drinking a beer. PG drove in front of him, and stopped the car. DA got out, and walked over to the curb. She picked up the eleven pack, and walked over to the car. Her pace was deliberate. The drunk stood up and yelled obscenities. The car drove away. off. This is a repost.
Jean D. McKinnon
The first picture in this episode is a family portrait of the Quin family in Washington Georgia. The nine surviving children of Hugh Pharr Quin are sitting for the camera. Mr. Quin had joined the Georgia State Troops of the Army of the Confederacy at the age of 16, and after the war went to Washington to live with his sister. Mr. Quin was in the church choir of the First Methodist Church when he met the organist, Betty Lou DuBose. They were married January 22, 1879.
The original name of Mrs. Quin was Louisa Toombs DuBose. She was the daughter of James Rembert DuBose. His brother in law was Robert Toombs, the Secretary of State of the Confederacy, and a man of whom many stories are told.
In this picture, Mrs. Quin is holding the hand of her second youngest daughter so she will not run away. This is Mattie Vance Quin. She is my grandmother.
After the Great War, Mattie Vance Quin was living in Memphis Tennessee, where she met Arthur Dunaway. Mr. Dunaway was a veteran of the war, and was from Paragould, Arkansas. On July 23, 1922 her first Daughter, Jean, was born. This is my mother.
Mr. Dunaway died in 1930, shortly after the birth of his son Arthur. There were hard times and upheaval after this, with the family settling in Atlanta. There her third child Helen Ann Moffat was born on December 12, 1933. This is my Aunt Helen and my mother’s best friend.
Jean lived for many years with her mother and sister at 939 Piedmont, among other locations. She joined the First Baptist Church and sang in the choir. She got a job with the C&S bank, and was working at the Tenth Street Branch when she met Luther McKinnon. He was a native of Rowland, North Carolina. They were married October 6, 1951.
They moved into the Skyland Apartments, which in those days was out in the country. Mom told a story about Dad taking her home from Choir practice, and going home on the two lane Buford Hiway. There was a man who went to the restaurants to get scraps to feed his pigs, and his truck was always in front of them. This was a serious matter in the summer without air conditioning.
Soon, they moved into a house, and Luther junior was born on May 6, 1954. This is me. Malcolm was born May 10, 1956, which did it for the children. Neither of us had children, so that is where that ends.
The fifties were spent on Wimberly Road, a street of always pregnant women just outside Brookhaven. It was a great place to be a little kid.
In 1960, we moved to Parkridge Drive, to the house where my brother and I stay today. The note payment was $88 a month. Ashford Park School is a short walk away…the lady who sold us the house said ” you slap you kid on the fanny and he is at school”.
In 1962, our family followed the choir director from First Baptist to Briarcliff Baptist, which is where my parents remained.
In 1964, Mom went back to work. She ran the drive in window at Lenox Square for the Trust Company of Georgia until it was time to retire. She became a talk radio fan when RING radio started, and was a friend of her customer Ludlow Porch. She gave dog biscuits to customers with dogs.
During this era of change, Mom taught me that all people were good people, be they black or white. This was rare in the south. She later became disgusted with the War in Vietnam, and liked to quote a man she heard on the radio. “How will we get out of Vietnam?”” By ship and by plane”.
Eventually, it was time to retire. Her and Dad did the requisite traveling, until Dad got sick and passed away February 7,1992. Mom stuck around for a few more years, until her time came December 18, 1998. This is a repost.
Top 10 Quotes Against Work
There was a post at chamblee54 a year ago called Hank Bukowski Tweets. Towards the end there is a collection of twitter accounts based on the output of Charles Bukowski. On May 7, this produced: @bukowski_lives Top 10 Quotes Against Work (Bukowski is No. 10!) They are below, in reverse order. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. Spell check suggestion:Bukowski, Buckskin.
“It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”
Charles Bukowski, Factotum, Black Sparrow Press, 1975
“My job consists of basically masking my contempt for the assholes in charge, and, at least once a day, retiring to the men’s room so I can jerk off while I fantasize about a life that doesn’t so closely resemble Hell.” — American Beauty, 1999
“One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can’t eat eight hours a day nor drink for eight hours a day nor make love for eight hours—all you can do for eight hours is work. Which is the reason why man makes himself and everybody else so miserable and unhappy.” — William Faulkner, interview in Writers at Work, 1958
“I was called to the bathroom at the cemetery to take care of something. I walked in the bathroom and in the middle toilet right there . . . somebody didn’t shit in the toilet, somebody shat on the toilet. They shat on the wall, they shat on the floor. I had to clean it up, man, but before that, for about 10 to 15 seconds man, I just stared at somebody’s shit, man. To be totally honest with you, man, it was a really, really profound moment. Cause I was thinkin’, ‘I’m 30 years old and in about 10 seconds I gotta start cleaning up somebody’s shit, man.'” — American Movie, 1999
“Industrial man—a sentient reciprocating engine having a fluctuating output, coupled to an iron wheel revolving with uniform velocity. And then we wonder why this should be the golden age of revolution and mental derangement.” — Aldous Huxley, Time Must Have a Stop, 1944
“I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables—slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war . . . our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. ” — Fight Club, 1999
“Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do.” — Oscar Wilde
“For us to live any other way was nuts. Uh, to us, those goody-good people who worked shitty jobs for bum paychecks and took the subway to work every day, and worried about their bills, were dead. I mean they were suckers. They had no balls. If we wanted something we just took it. If anyone complained twice they got hit so bad, believe me, they never complained again.” — Goodfellas, 1990
“But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in the old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool’s life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854
“We don’t have a lot of time on this earth! We weren’t meant to spend it this way. Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about about mission statements.” — Office Space, 1999
Leave It To Beiber
does beiber sound like itself?
like smash bash
swish or slash
zappa might sound like itself
if it were alive
pictures are from
Gwinnett County
which does not sound
like a traffic jam
Controversy
Number five on the yahoo home page news items is “David Bowie Controversy”. The old boi has some product for sale, and it must not be moving fast enough. The video has some religious imagery, including a scantily glad lady with a gushing stigmata. In the end, there is a tableau, with Ziggy ascending into the ceiling. The bathrobe he wears is more appropriate for a senior citizen than his thin white duke getup.
When PG was in high school, he took Spanish. The teacher was a fundamentalist Catholic named Mrs. DiPaola. Religion and politics were more fun than verbs and nouns, and she was easy to distract. One day she was talking about an uncle of hers, a truly righteous man. When he died, these bloody spots appeared on his hands. It was the stigmata, the wounds of Jesus.
When the Romans put someone on a cross, the spike went through the wrists. There is a space between bones, and the giant nail went through without breaking one. If the nail was in the hand, the weight of the body would tear it off. The Romans were pros. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
Seek And Yea Shall Find
There is a graphic on facebook, with a message that PG agrees with. Seek, and yea shall find. (Pun not intended.) Not only does it have a good message, but the source is easy to find. Learning the context, of the message, can shine a light on dingy corners. G-d is in the details.
Without further ado, here is the message: Each of us bears a responsibility to reject hate, whatever its form, whatever its justification. A soul filled with hate can devastate a community. A nation filled with hate can devastate a people. It must start and end with each of us. George Takei
The comment is part of a blog post written August 7, 2012. It was in response to the attack on a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. Mr. Takei says that Sikhs are confused for Moslems, leading to incidents like this.
This is highly ironic. The Sikh people originated in India. Some say that Sikhs are Hindus, and others say they are not. Some say that Sikhism is a warrior branch of Hinduism, created to fight Islam. These differences can be very confusing to outsiders.
Sikh is pronounced seek, like hide and seek. Sikh is not pronounced sick, as in ill. How you say a name affects your thoughts. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Jackson Katz
There was a link to a TED talk that promised to “Turn Every Man Who Watches It Into A Feminist.” PG gave it a try, and was not impressed.
The speaker was Jackson Katz. He likes to put the letters Ph.D. after his name. You have to dig into his biography to see that his doctorate is “in cultural studies and education from UCLA.”
The speech was given at a gathering called TEDxFiDiWomen. (Spell check suggestion: Committeewomen) It is an “independently organized TED event. The speech was about what men can do to reduce violence, mostly against women. The choir Dr. Katz preached to enjoyed the sermon. Did anyone who needs to change his behavior hear this talk?
Dr. Katz is an entertaining speaker. He spoke fast and loud, and the intensity of his rhetoric grew as he went along. He seemed to get his crowd fired up. How this emotion will be channeled is a good question. It would not surprise this viewer if some of these fired up women went home, and took the frustration out on a significant other. Verbal abuse is violence.
The first part of the lecture is wondering why this is considered a men’s issue. There were a few exercises in semantic mumbo jumbo, which might prove something. The idea that this is a human problem… that bullying and aggression are not good ways to treat people … is hinted at. Then, the focus goes back on the men, and how they need a “paradigm change”.
The moment when PG almost gave up on Dr. Katz involved racism. Yes, he had to throw that boogeyman in there. He gave the example of a bunch of white men having a conversation, and someone making a “racist remark.” The enlightened man is supposed to speak up, and say that this is not acceptable.
What PG wonders is why this was assumed to be a group of white men. Are you saying that only white people say rude things about other races? Or, maybe it is alright for black men to say rude things about white men. Until saying so called racist comments is considered wrong for all people, we are going to have a problem. At the very least, Dr. Katz is not as inclusive as he wants you to believe. Or maybe he just said something the “liberal” TED audience would find acceptable.
Some people find this sort of thing entertaining. It is possible that a man listening will hear this “leadership training” and learn to treat his neighbors better. PG suspects that the former is much more likely. The link is above if you want to hear it yourself.
Remote Transmitter
The “remote transmitter” is one cool device. It enables you to lock your car door from outside the car. If you stand next to the vehicle, and use the remote to lock the door, you will NEVER lock your keys inside.
The device had not worked well. It took a few seconds holding down the button to get things to happen. One day, it did not work at all, no matter how long you held the button down. PG thought it was the start of a long decline in the viability of the vehicle, which was an unpleasant thought.
The next day, the owners manual was consulted. PG did not even know what to call the doohickey, until he found remote transmitter. There was some language about putting a new battery in. This is probably going to be cheaper than replacing the receiver.
The first stop is the tool box. A set of small screw drivers was found. None of them would get the screw on the key fob to turn. PG decided to ge out, and get a screw driver along with the battery.
The auto parts store had one man working in it. After waiting on a few people, he got to PG. They would have to take the cover off the key fob to see what battery to put inside. Three screwdrivers were tried, and none worked. The parts store man took a long phone call, from a person that did not seem to understand some simple instructions. Meanwhile, PG was feeling worse, and worse, about the situation. When the long phone call was over, PG told the man that the dealer was the next stop.
Curry Honda has had mixed results over the years. PG did not want to go there, but saw few options. He was directed into the parts department. A man tried to take the screw out, and it did not want to leave the casing. The parts man went to see a buddy in the service department, but the buddy was at the hospital with his sick wife. PG had another key, which had been resting in a box for seven years. The parts man was able to get the screw out of that key, and replace the battery. With a new screw, the total came to $16.44. The remote transmitter now works. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Thomas Jefferson Said What?
PG was wasting time with facebook when he saw a friend say “Damn I love this quote”. The passage being praised was “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Desmond Tutu.
The rhetoric alert started to flash. These days, the wolf and the sheep buy their clothes at the same Walmart. To hear some oppressors talk the talk, they are the ones under attack. It is tough to tell the good guys from the bad guys. Also, as the Kony fiasco showed, often you can make things worse by getting mixed up. Sometimes the best thing to do is mind your own business.
Ok, now that is out of the way. Some lines sound good, but don’t hold up to a bit of thinking. As for the veracity of the quote, Desmond Tutu may very well have said it. (or maybe one of his rivals said it, and Mr. Tutu copied it.) The quote has been attributed to Thomas Jefferson, Edmund Burke, Patrick Henry, and probably others. Almost no one has a source, for the quote, from the dead white guys.
There was a discussion in Prison Planet Forum about BHO, and his alleged good buddy Larry Sinclair. The signature line for one of the posts was that crowd pleaser, “All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.” Thomas Jefferson. All that needed to happen to get the party started was to highlight the quote, right click, and ask Mr. Google to help.
A post called MISQUOTING THE FOUNDERS did not mince words. “The only problem with this scene that has been repeated many times across the country is that Thomas Jefferson never said that, never wrote that, and quite possibly never thought it. Our aspiring politician had fallen victim to the perils of popular misattribution. You could fill a book with misquotes and misattributed quotes we hear repeated regularly today. Right now if I Google “All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent” the entire first page of results wrongly attribute it to Thomas Jefferson. The quote and its many variants have been attributed in the past to Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke, but no record exists of the quote in any of their writings or contemporary accounts.”
On November 13, 1787, Mr. Jefferson wrote a letter to William Smith. The letter is full of zesty quotes. “What country before ever existed a century & a half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”
A few lines above that, Mr. Jefferson said “God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion.” Twenty years after he wrote this, Mr. Jefferson was President. He probably did not want to deal with a revolution when he was President.
Getting back to the quote about tyranny, Martin Porter wrote an entertaining essay, A study of a Web quotation. He gives credit, or blame, to Edmund Burke. First, a list of different versions is presented. This is a clue that something is awry. The conclusion: “There is no original. The quote is bogus, and Burke never said it. It is a pseudo-quote, and corresponds to real quotes in the same way that urban legends about the ghost hitch-hiker vanishing in the back of the car and alligators in the sewers correspond to true news stories.”
Mr. Porter wrote a follow up essay, Four Principles of Quotation. These principles are:
Principle 1 (for readers) Whenever you see a quotation given with an author but no source assume that it is probably bogus.
Principle 2 (for readers) Whenever you see a quotation given with a full source assume that it is probably being misused, unless you find good evidence that the quoter has read it in the source.
Principle 3 (for quoters) Whenever you make a quotation, give the exact source.
Principle 4 (for quoters) Only quote from works that you have read.
If these principles were to be used, then there would be a lot less hotheaded talking on the intercom. Those who are trying to influence you to the justice of their cause will not want you to read this. Pictures for this feature are from The Library of Congress. These pictures are Union soldiers, from the War Between the States. When war is discussed, all inspiring quotes are in doubt.
This is a repost. It is written like James Joyce. In the past year, doing due diligence on alleged quotes has become a hobby. Many people don’t care who said it, if they agree with the thoughts expressed. The prevailing thought is that an idea becomes more true with a famous name at the end. If the famous person is deceased, and cannot defend his/her reputation, that is not a problem. People do not like being told that Santa Claus does not exist.
May 6
May 6is a day in spring, with 35% of the year gone by. It has it’s fair share of history, some of which did not turn out well. In 1861, the Confederate Congress declared war on the United States. In 1937, a German zeppelin named “Hindenburg” exploded while trying to land in New Jersey. In 1940, Bob Hope did his first show for the USO, somewhere in California.
Roger Bannister ran the first sub four minute mile, on May 6,1954. The current record is 3:43.13 by Hicham El Guerrouj on July 7, 1999, with a party with Prince to celebrate. Since most track meets now use 1500 meters, the mile record is more or less obsolete.
On this day, Georgia executed two notable prisoners. In 2003, Carl Isaacs was put to death. Mr. Isaacs was the ringleader in the 1973 Alday family killing, in Donalsonville GA. Five years later, in 2008, William Earl Lynd was poisoned by the state. This was the first condemned man to die after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that execution by poisoning was constitutional.
Taurus is the sign for those whose blood starts to pump May 6. Included are:
Maximilien Robespierre (1758) Sigmund Freud (1856) Rudolph Valentino (1895)
Orson Welles (1915) Willie Mays (1931) Rubin Carter (1937)
Bob Seger (1945) Tony Blair (1953) PG (1954) George Clooney(1961)
To make room for these folks, someone has to die. For May 6 this would mean:
Henry David Thoreau (1862) L. Frank Baum (1919) Marlene Dietrich (1992)
This is a repost. It ia written like H.P. Lovecraft.
Chamblee54 
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