Coexist
The custom of expressing your innermost thoughts on the back of your vehicle has taken a curious turn. One popular emblem says coexist. The seven letters are equipped with symbols, both religious and secular. One hopes that no one receiving this message has forgotten to stop, and hit the car with the coexist symbol on the bumper.
When PG was young, there was a miniature golf course on Cheshire Bridge Road called Putt Putt. The first bumper sticker he saw said “I play Putt Putt.” Is coexist an improvement?
When this post was first conceived, the i in coexist was perceived to be unadorned. It was as if the religion of i was receiving due recognition. Upon closer examination, it seems as though the tittle has a five pointed star. This means that the i is a sorcerers wand. The i apparently stands for paganism.
The c, x, and t of coexist are pretty obvious. They are symbols for the three Abrahamic religions. O is a peace sign, and e has the male and female symbols. The religions they represent are not apparent. The s is a yin yang, which is somehow related to Taoism.
Buddhism, Atheism, Communism, and Hinduism are not represented. They spell out Bach. The composer produced glorious music for the Lutheran church. He also had twenty children. Perhaps the e in coexist represents the left out denominations. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
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
The Wrong Way
PG was eating breakfast. He was sitting at the machine, where he spends most of his waking, at home, hours. He was looking at his latest blog post, and thinking how cool it was. He fed a spoonful of food in his mouth, followed by a sip of tea.
Something went wrong. Somehow, the tube for breathing was open at the wrong time, and food and beverage went into an improper medium. Immediately, the food product came out. The monitor and keyboard were decorated.
Gasping for air, trying to expel the rest of the misdirected meal, PG got up and ran to the bathroom. Coughing violently, with tears coming out of his eyes, the last of the misdirected meal exited the quivering orifice. Fright began to set in. This was very close to a fatal situation.
While the prospect of working was not pleasant, the idea of spending this day, and innumerable days to come, in a lifeless state, was worse. While the idea of living long enough to labor eight more hours is quaint to some, today it will just have to do.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Rhetoric Abuse
ditto what Gus says, except change the exclamation mark to an r ~ I heard someone say yesterday that some people don’t believe in Christmas. My thought was that Christmas is not something that you believe, it is something that you do ~ Tom Robbins said that love was like dope, and not chicken soup. It was meant to be passed around and shared. It was not made by your mother, by herself, and intended to be consumed because it was good for you. He said it better. ~ Don’t forget the Blakes and the Burkharts ~ Home churched here, with a blessed coffee sacrament. The idea of a ritual is sweet. The thought of driving down to 9MD, in the rain, is horrible. ~ I thought only dead people could win a Darwin ~ your welcome it was a fine evening when you drive past a prison to get somewhere, that makes you realize that not all destinations are the same ~ “Really, now? You peacefully barged your way into a fashion show in the same town in which Forest Whitaker peacefully attempted to buy yogurt with actual money. Guess who fared better?” The “same town” here is New York City. You can find examples of any kind of behavior in that city. You might as well say on the same continent. This type of rhetoric abuse makes the author lose credibility. ~ The checkout lines at Aldi are too long ~ black in white mans world ~ 1- “For us to demand teachable moments is a denominator of our own privilege.” amen. Kindness should be the key word in such discussions. Facebook does not lend itself to kindness. Please be aware that what people say here is not the same thing as how they deal with people in real life. 2- Can we call a moratorium on the phrase “people of color”? It lumps too many people, with too many different experiences, into one unit. Find another label. please. ~ unlike the blog update ~ Thank you Sam for that link. It made me think. It also should include people who you misunderstand, or who don’t agree with you. Social justice is not an exact science. ~ It is helpful to say things directly to a person, rather than indulging in faerie antiracist gossip (FAG). You just might have misunderstood what the person meant. Also, even if you did understand the person correctly, and even if you are in the right… two very big ifs … why do you need to spread the poison? ~ if you don’t like what I say, just skip over it and look at the pictures ~ wake up daily avoid evil church don’t get caught pay the bills avoid loud people tie your shoes question the motivator listen breathe listen to breath quiet hater jesus consume breathe produce ~ didn’t Paul Revere get the credit for something someone else did? ~ do any therapists make house calls? ~ The last thing you hear in this video…the time of the gentleman is expired. ~ I was working on a project, and took a look at fb. I saw a link to the darwin awards. I was going to read the post, google it to see if it was legitimate, and spend an hour of valuable time on it. Then I realized that the time would be better spent on my project. Maybe that is the hidden message of the darwin awards. ~ those dead guys are actually pretty responsive ~ Do you think they will make a movie out of your book? ~ We interrupt this David Bowie tribute with an emergency announcement. A person, reputed to be an entertainer, was seen using the n word on facebook. The screen shots have disappeared, and all we have is the word of the accuser. More details will be available as soon as anyone is interested. ~ The word sex is spelled out in the picture ~ Do you have a copy of the picture without the text? While I appreciate the concept, the labeling takes away from the overall beauty of the image. ~ Maybe it was hollowed out to hide his stash ~ 1-The original three drug protocol, for executions, the Kentucky protocol, was also haphazardly arrived at. It seems to be the case in this Ohio execution. 2- The drugs used in executions are manufactured by European companies. These companies do not want their products used for executions. 3- When SCOTUS ruled that “lethal injection” (I prefer to say poisoned) was constitutional, they approved the Kentucky protocol. While IANAL, it seems to me that what Ohio did was illegal. ~ I’m so dizzy My head is spinning. Like a whirlpool, it’s never ending. ~ Many of us might agree with the thought. However, many of us are older, and our eyes do not work as well as they once did. The small print caption is not agreeable to these men. ~ Pictures, for this collection of facebook comments, are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. ~ Selah
The Narco State Rag
This feature was written July 13, 2010. The situation in Afghanistan is little better. If we leave, the country falls into chaos. If we stay, we spend money we don’t have. It is a bitch.
Some people euphemize bitch by saying that something is a bear. Across the frontier from Afghanistan, the Russian bear is dealing with a heroin epidemic. Some say the United States suckered the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan in 1979. The disastrous war that followed led to the fall of the Soviet Union. We are still dealing with the karma.
Tom Dispatch has an audio feature about Afghanistan, and the many unanswered questions about our war there. We invaded Afghanistan to get revenge for 911, and looked for a reason later.
At the 3:06 mark on the tape, when Tom makes a comment Afghanistan being a narco state. PG had a flash of understanding about the reason behind this war. This may even have been powerful enough to ignore the reports about a terror strike in September 2001, and let 911 happen.
The rumors of CIA involvement in drug trafficking are wide spread and long term. When planes went to Central America in the eighties to bring arms to the contras, they came back to the United States loaded with cocaine. There are stories of collusion with the government in Cuba. There are many, many more stories about connections between the US government and the drug trade.
When the Taliban took over Afghanistan, they cracked down on the poppy farmers. Much of the raw opium for heroin/morphine/opium is grown in Afghanistan. This was not a pleasing for the CIA.
Could it be that the real reason for our involvement in Afghanistan is to ensure the flow of narcotics into the hungry world? This would be a big cash cow for the CIA, although not enough to justify the amounts of money being spent on the conflict.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
What City
The facebook crowd has been all atwitter about a new quiz, What City Should You Actually Live In? (The twitter crowd has not returned the compliment.) PG thought he would check it out. It is a colorful affair. The first question is “How do you take your coffee?”. There are nine options. This test is 100% graphics, which means you cannot copy the possible answers. Typing them all is too much work.
The second question is “Whats your jam?” Apparently, strawberry is not an option. This is about a favorite song. There is only one the PG recognizes, and it is far from his “jam.” While the heroic substance intake of Guns and Roses is to be admired, this should not be confused with wanting to hear that song more than once every five years.
PG is eating leftover pizza while reading question three, “What could you eat forever?” This comfort level is destroyed on the next two, “Pick a #hashtag” and “Pick a Beyonce?” Pick your nose does not seem to be an option for either.
People don’t like to hear this, but PG does not have a bucket list. He is also a retired drunk. So much for questions six and seven. None of the above is not listed as an option anywhere.
The answer: London. Let’s be honest, you probably look pretty good in a Burberry trench coat. You’re the type of person who loves city life, but without all the hype. Your ideal day consists of the Tate Modern, a pleasant evening at a nice restaurant, and a hot cup of tea before bed.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
More Death Penalty Drug Problems
The state of Ohio conducted an experiment. The idea was to execute Dennis McGuire. Since the agents of death used previously were not available, the state used “an injection of midazolam, a sedative, and hydromorphone, a morphine derivative.”
While Mr. McGuire did perish, it was not a smooth departure. “After being injected at 10:29 a.m., about four minutes later McGuire started struggling and gasping loudly for air, making snorting and choking sounds which lasted for at least 10 minutes. His chest heaved and his left fist clinched as deep, snorting sounds emanated from his mouth. However, for the last several minutes before he was pronounced dead, he was still.”
Botched executions are an old story. They predate the chemical executions, with grossout stories about hanging and electrocution. The architect of the current method of pharmaceutical elimination, Dr. Jay Chapman, reports “He added that he’s heard reports that in one execution, the IV needle was inserted incorrectly, pointing toward the prisoner’s hand rather than his body. “You have to be an idiot to do that,” said Chapman, who’s a forensic pathologist… He also criticized prison officials for inserting the IV inside the death chamber rather than beforehand. “It seems ridiculous to me to be trying to find a vein when everyone’s inside the chamber, feeling nervous and fiddling around trying to find the vein,” he said. “That’s just ludicrous to me.” These quotes are from an interview, where Dr. Chapman says, of the execution protocol, “It may be time to change it. There are many problems that can arise … given the concerns people are raising with the protocol it should be re-examined.”
Here is the story about the creation of the chemical injection protocol. Ohio is not the first state to stumble blindly into the business of dispatching inmates with an inter venous injection.
In 1977, Oklahoma enacted the first lethal injection statute. Its history illustrates the minimal inquiry legislators conducted before selecting a specific method of lethal injection. Facing the expensive prospect of fixing the state’s broken electric chair, the Oklahoma legislature was looking for a cheaper and more humane way to execute its condemned inmates. State Assembly member Bill Wiseman wanted to introduce a bill in the Oklahoma House of Representatives allowing for lethal injection executions in Oklahoma. In 1976, he approached the Oklahoma Medical Association for help developing a drug protocol, but it refused to get involved based on ethical concerns about the cooperation of medical professionals in the development of execution methods. Wiseman approached Dr. Jay Chapman, the state’s medical examiner, and asked for his help in drafting a lethal injection statute. Despite having “no experience with this sort of thing,” Chapman agreed to help Wiseman. Sitting in Wiseman’s office in the Capitol, Chapman dictated the following lines, which Wiseman jotted down on a yellow legal pad: “An intravenous saline drip shall be started in the prisoner’s arm, into which shall be introduced a lethal injection consisting of an ultra-short-acting barbiturate in combination with a chemical paralytic.” Meanwhile, State Senator Bill Dawson, concerned about the cost of replacing Oklahoma’s broken electric chair, was also interested in introducing a lethal injection bill in the Oklahoma Senate. Senator Dawson consulted with his friend, Dr. Stanley Deutsch, then head of the Oklahoma Medical School’s Anesthesiology Department. After reviewing the language Chapman had composed for Assembly member Wiseman, Deutsch noted, in a letter to Senator Dawson, that anesthetizing condemned inmates would be a “rapidly pleasant way of producing unconsciousness.”
Oklahoma’s state statute copies nearly word-for-word the methods proposed by Chapman and approved in Deutsch’s brief letter, stating that “the punishment of death must be inflicted by continuous, intravenous administration of a lethal quantity of an ultra-short-acting barbiturate” in “combination with a chemical paralytic agent until death is pronounced by a licensed physician according to accepted standards of medical practice.” There is no evidence that Oklahoma state legislators consulted any other medical experts before adopting their lethal injection statute. Human Rights Watch asked Chapman why he chose the two drugs (an ultra-short-acting barbiturate and a paralytic agent) for lethal injection executions. He stated: “I didn’t do any research. I just knew from having been placed under anesthesia myself, what we needed. I wanted to have at least two drugs in doses that would each kill the prisoner … if one didn’t kill him, the other would.” …
In addition to his work on the statute, Chapman developed the original three-drug protocol used by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections. Although Oklahoma’s statute specifies two drugs, Chapman included a third drug, potassium chloride. When Human Rights Watch asked Chapman why he added a third drug to the two drugs specified in the statute, he replied, “Why not?” He went on to explain that, even though the other chemicals, in the dosages called for, would kill the prisoner, “You just wanted to make sure the prisoner was dead at the end, so why not just add a third lethal drug?” He is not sure why he picked potassium chloride. “I didn’t do any research … it’s just common knowledge. Doctors know potassium chloride is lethal. Why does it matter why I chose it?”
This story illustrates the way states went about doing things. “We were getting ready to hang up the phone, and I said, ‘I have but just one question I need to ask you,” Courts said. “Every other state I have spoken to is using 2 grams of sodium pentothal. Why are y’all using five?’ And he started laughing and said, ‘Well, you see, when we did our very first execution, the only thing I had on hand was a 5-gram vial. And rather than do the paperwork on wasting 3 grams, we just gave all five.’”
The Oklahoma plan was copied by the other states looking for a different way to execute the condemned. It became known as the Kentucky Protocol, and was approved for use by SCOTUS. PG is not a lawyer, and does not know if this ruling applies to the Ohio method. The Buckeye state has several executions scheduled in the next two years. No executions are scheduled in Georgia.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Rumi Said What?
The other day, PG was fumbling through facebook, and there was a lovely quote. “I am not this hair, I am not this skin, I am The Soul that lives within. Rumi.” The poem seemed like good words to paste in front of pictures. PG is squeamish about copyrights, and decided to see if the translation belonged to anyone. Veteran readers should know where this is going.
Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī, also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, has become popular with the meme crowd. Mr. Google says: Born: September 30, 1207, Vakhsh, Tajikistan Died: December 17, 1273, Konya, Turkey. With his name abbreviated to four easy to pronounce letters, translations of his poems are popular. Often, the words are pasted on beautiful pictures.
Some killjoys say that this is wrong. “Yet this popularization has had a price, and the price is a frequent distortion of Rumi’s words and teachings … The English “creative versions” rarely sound like Rumi to someone who can read the poems in the original Persian, and they are often shockingly altered– but few know this, and the vast majority of readers cannot but believe that such versions are faithful renderings into English of Rumi’s thoughts and teachings when they are not.”
Lets look at the quote that started this story. It has such a perfect rhythm, and such a catchy rhyme. What relation to the original does this have? Does anyone know the name of the original poem?
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could tell you a few things about the difficulty of translating Farsi into English. This is even more true when the translator has an agenda. On Fox News, some are trying to lead to war. Those translating a thirteenth century poet are trying to create peace. While the meme motives may be more noble, their integrity in using languages is equally suspect.
The killjoy article has some examples of Rumi poem “versions,” with footnotes. One is “Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion or cultural system.” The comment: ” …is especially absurd. There is no evidence Rumi knew much more about Judaism or Christianity than what is said in the Qur’an– not to speak of other religions.” (The source article goes into more detail about this quote, and about the specific so called translators.)
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. Spell check suggestion for Rumi: Rum.
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. This is a repost.
The Dharma Bums Part Four
This is part four of the Chamblee54 breakdown of As the title suggests, this is part three of a breakdown on The Dharma Bums, by Jack Kerouac. Parts one, two, and three are already online. Tdb is the 1955-1956 story of Ray Smith (Jack Kerouac) and his friend Japhy Ryder (Gary Snyder.)
Chapter Twentytwo RS is back on the road. He leaves his family in North Carolina, and starts to hitchhike west. He gets a ride to Gainesville, GA. After a night in a cheap hotel, there is a ride with a drunk west of Atlanta. RS decides to buy a bus ticket for El Paso, and get out of “chain gang Georgia.” The bus takes him to West Texas. There is a hike on railroad tracks out of town, and a idyllic camping spot in the hills. RS goes to Juarez, where a queer Mexican boy falls in love with him.
Chapter Twentythree This is the last part of this road trip. RS gets a ride to Las Cruces, where he does some temp work moving a piano. The next ride is with a Texan who brags a lot. This ride goes to Los Angeles. The driver talked a great game. He had fought enough men to form Coxie’s army.
PG’s dad used to talk about Coxie’s army. It seems as though a man named Jacob Coxey led a band of unemployed men to Washington in 1894. There were economic hard times in the land. CA was agitating for government spending, to provide public work jobs for the unemployed. How this caught the imagination of the slogan happy republic is not known to the modern reader.
RS rides freight trains from Los Angeles to San Francisco. On page 161, RS calls JR “Gary.” Apparently, the proofreader missed this.
This chapter by chapter thing is not working. The idea is to use this as a springboard for improvisation, to say whatever comes up. This does not seem to be happening. Tdb is a worthwhile read, the first time. Reading it twice, while taking notes, is not a good idea.
The rest of the story is fairly simple. RS goes to live with JR. They stay in a shack in Corte Madera, CA. It sounds rustic in the book, and may have been in 1956. If you look at a map today, it is just a few miles north of San Francisco. There is no telling what it looks like today.
While in Corte Madera, there are a lot of wild parties. It is the sort of boho thing the rest of America tittered about. Eventually it all ended. RS went up to Washington state to serve as a fire lookout. JR went to Japan. Dwight Eisenhower got reelected. He is not mentioned in tdb, but his buddy Richard Nixon is. We know how that story turned out.
In 1956, PG was two years old. This was the year the Georgia legislature decided to install the stars and bars on the state flag. There was talk of replacing Richard Nixon as Vice President. Jack Kerouac drank too much. Lots of people said so. Noted wildman Neal Cassidy told him to ease up on the booze.
In one of the chapters not to be discussed, RS and JR get into an argument about drinking. JR, like lots of other people, thought that RS was pissing his life away. It turns out they were correct. Whatever his talents as a writer/typist, and friend of famous people, Jack Keruoac was a drunk. When he was 47, it caught up with him. As Alvah Goldbook said, “it all ends in tears anyway.”
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”
Chamblee54 
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