April | 2019 | Chamblee54

Knows How To Aim Part One

Posted in Poem by chamblee54 on April 10, 2019

Thomas Jefferson Said What?

Posted in History, Library of Congress, Quotes by chamblee54 on April 10, 2019

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, they are the ones under attack. It is tough to tell the good guys from the bad guys. 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.
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.

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Critical Becky Studies

Posted in Commodity Wisdom, Library of Congress, Undogegorized by chamblee54 on April 9, 2019

Becky is a generic insult for *some* white women. If you don’t know what a Becky is, you might not understand the feature below. Chad is the equivalent expression for *some* white men. He is not important enough to be studied critically.
It started out with a tweet, about a symposium, Critical Becky Studies: Critical Explorations of Gender, Race, and the Pedagogies of Whiteness. Soon, PG was googling CBS. The paywall protected Wall Street Journal had an article on CBS. The seminal article was at City Journal, Racial Resentment As Pedagogy. The CBS flap originated at 2019 AERA Annual Meeting, sponsored by American Educational Research Association.
@chamblee54 @CityJournal @maxeden99 There was no link to this event in your article. I suspect this is a hoax. Please provide a link to the location on the event guide, for “critical becky studies.” The AERA conference guide is a confusing academic labyrinth. After a while, PG clicked on the correct link, and found a way to search for whiteness pedagogy.
CBS is real. “In the tradition of speculative fiction, parable, and counterstorytelling within critical race theory, this session aims to problematize the characterization of “Becky,” a term specific to white women who engage whiteness, often in gendered ways. This characterization is relevant to education by critically examining who is Becky and how she is characterized, her positionality in education, and how the hope for diversity, inclusion, equity, and racial justice within the P-20 educational pipeline is impacted by Becky. … tied to the gendered and raced mechanisms of whiteness enacted by Becky. ”
The symposium featured the presentation of several papers. If, after reading this feature, you want to learn more about these papers, you can follow the links.
This Ain’t No “Wizard of Oz,” Becky “The chapter is a parable in the spirit of speculative fiction, about the fictional (mis)adventures of Becky in the land of Ny as she faces obstacles that she can only overcome by grappling with her own whiteness.”
Two Woke Beckys? “Although both Sheila and Erika slip into different whiteness performances during their conversation, including passive aggressiveness and tone policing, white innocence, and white saviority, they check each other and delve into how they each have and are employing whiteness, despite their desires to rid themselves of whiteness, albeit through different means. …”
Love in the Time of Beckyism “… a particular white heterofeminine citizen-subject popularly known as “Becky,” … Despite “progressive” commitments such as equality, and social justice; and sentimental responses to historical atrocities and current social events, these (conditional) protestations made by Becky serve as a hedonistic mechanism for image management that hinges on the exploitation and social death of people of color. …” How can a teacher preparation program work to rethink the episteme and ethos that socializes Beckyism?”
Book Club Becky: White Racial Bonding in the Living Room “Many liberal white women gather monthly for book clubs … This paper reveals the more insidious workings of these spaces, as they are places where white women bond in order to maintain their place in white patriarchy, what Christine Sleeter named white racial bonding. The conversations that take place, the women who are included as “educated,” and the spaces where they meet are laced with white supremacy and surveillance.”
Border Becky “… why white women still invest in whiteness. Using the term “Becky” establishes an academic backing that can be applied and analyzed when researching the pathology of whiteness. … whiteness manifests in classrooms riddled with white women seeking to prove how they are not like other racist white people. Becky in the counterstories demonstrates the character-like roles white women play in a white supremacist folklore.”
It was a busy weekend for whiteness pedagogy. Ekemini Uwan shocked a Christian conference with her remarks about whiteness. “So then when we talk about white identity, then we have to talk about what whiteness is. Well, the reality is that whiteness is rooted in plunder, in theft, in slavery, in enslavement of Africans, genocide of Native Americans, … It’s a power structure, that is what whiteness is, and so that the thing for white women to do is you have to divest from whiteness because what happened was that your ancestors actually made a deliberate choice to rid themselves of their ethnic identity and by doing so they actually stripped Africans in America of their ethnic identity. … Because we have to understand something – whiteness is wicked. It is wicked. It’s rooted in violence, it’s rooted in theft, it’s rooted in plunder, it’s rooted in power, in privilege … ”
“Inter city beauties, Atlantic City Pageant, 1925” illustrate this feature. These images are from The Library of Congress. We do not know if any were named Becky. UPDATE @chamblee54 I found the link. My apologies for doubting you. @maxeden99 No worries. I couldn’t have made it up if I tried :)

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Somebody Read “America”

Posted in Library of Congress, Weekly Notes by chamblee54 on April 8, 2019

The Meaning of Slaughterhouse-Five, 50 Years Later The Atlantic has a feature today about Slaughterhouse Five. As we know, this is about an American POW, held in an underground facility while Dresden burns above him. There is a quote in today’s story. While originally about the experience of writing a war story, I think it also may apply to the soldiers of a long ago conflict. “I suppose that flowers, when they’re through blooming, have some sort of awareness of some purpose having been served,” he mused horticulturally to a Playboy interviewer in 1973. “Flowers didn’t ask to be flowers and I didn’t ask to be me.”
when will we end the war This article talks about a poem, “America.” A few years ago, GSV held an event in Chicago, where people were invited to bring something to read. Somebody read “America.” When the reader said the N-word out loud, the one POC in the group went ballistic.
“those are not grounds for airstrikes which kill people and violate international law” you interrupt my multi tasking when you say these pithy things, and force me to make a dingle link
I wrote a story that became a legend. Then I discovered it wasn’t true.
Police bust marijuana products at a Trenton shop
Grammy-Nominated Rapper Nipsey Hussle Shot and Killed Outside Store
Brookhaven police use confiscated funds to buy Tesla for $45K
5 people shot, 1 dead; police searching for shooter
Bret Easton Ellis Has Calmed Down. He Thinks You Should, Too.
How Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” Became a Lightning Rod
This History of Gay Bars Is Also a Tale of LGBTQ Liberation
Philip K. Dick – Being Possessed By a Higher Mind
Our 9 Favorite Episodes of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast
Microsoft announces it will shut down ebook program and confiscate its customers’ libraries
This is not satire. Customers will receive refunds.
Kabbalah, Occultism, Freemasonry and Jordan Peterson – Stop Being Silly
Sequoyah’s syllabary for the Cherokee language
300 New Words Were Added To Dictionary.Com This Year
1. (The) male gaze 2. White fragility: 3. Safe space: 4. Textlationship: 5. Deep dive: 6. Bromosexual: 7. Dad joke: 8: Womp womp 9. Brain fart: 10. JOMO:
We’ve Added Over 300 New Words To Dictionary.com!
I am not always very attached to being alive
7 Knee-Strengthening Exercises That Prevent Pesky Knee Pain
Stacy Abrams calls Georgia’s GOP governor an “architect of voter suppression”
HELL NO, NOT IN OUR NAME: solidarity with #StopLightfoot
17-hour hostage situation ends with 3 people dead
Bringing Up Baby – I Just Went Gay All of a Sudden (1938)
After 40 Years, the Black Party Is a Testament to Our Survival
The Complex Geometry of Islamic Art & Design: A Short Introduction
The complex geometry of Islamic design – Eric Broug
Listen to a new podcast about The Clash, narrated by Chuck D
Things Stacey Abrams and Pete Buttigieg get that most other pols don’t
The McClure Twins’ racist dad and why white caretakers terrifies me
Notes of a native son: the world according to James Baldwin
Weaponized Social Media Is Driving the Explosion of Fascism
Skinny White Boy (Anorexic)Dancing Daddy Long Neck
When did America’s heart turn cold on buffet chains?
How Trump Betrayed the General Who Defeated ISIS
the old internet ~ david sedaris ~ violate international law ~ Dorothy Ashby – Hip Harp (1958).
planning a new lodge ~ spying through a keyhole ~ debunking aa
ayn rand is a _____ ~ welcome to airspace ~ the chinese burner
@STACEYNIGHTMARE I shake a man’s hand only to see how much it weighs so I can determine the cooking time. ~ Joe Rogan: It’s actually pig shit. People come into contact with pig shit, and they get this parasite. Ben Shapiro: Thats not kosher. ~ The Confederate soldiers are not very different from Nazi soldiers” With the exception of Gettysburg, the war was fought on Confederate soil. The Germans invaded many countries outside their borders, and killed millions of people. That is a big, big difference. ~ There is an expression for apathy in our culture, “doesn’t give a shit.” At one point in this story, *mom* is walking through the store, with a *special* cup. She is “acting like she doesn’t give a shit.” In truth, she just did. ~ I was disappointed when Georgia Tech tore down the Pickrick. If you are going to tell a story, you need to include the villains as well as the heroes. ~ pictures for this compendium of digital foolishness are from The Library of Congress. ~ selah

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Dr. King And Mr. King

Posted in History, Library of Congress, Race by chamblee54 on April 7, 2019

PG stumbled onto a blog post about a speech. It was delivered August 28, 1963, by Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. You have probably heard the money quote many times, but how many have heard the entire 881 words. PG had not, and decided to take a look.
The speech is really a sermon. It is delivered with the cadence, and rhetorical flourishes, of the church. Dr. King was a minister. The Jesus worship church is a huge player in African America. The fact that slaves were introduced to this religion, by their owners, seems to be forgotten.
The term used is Negro. This was the polite word in 1963. The custom of saying Black started in the late sixties, at least partially inspired by James Brown. Negro began to be seen as an insult.
As the speech is working up to the climax, there is a line “But not only there; let freedom ring from the Stone Mountain of Georgia!” Today, Stone Mountain is a middle class black community. DeKalb County is mostly black, and the political leadership is African American. This was a long way from happening in 1963.
Twelve weeks after Dr. King gave his speech, President John Kennedy was killed. Part of the reaction to this tragedy was the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The next year saw the Voting Rights Act, and escalation of the war in Vietnam. It seemed that for every step forward, there was a half step back. People lost patience with non violence. America did not implode, but somehow survived. It is now fifty five years later.

The other day PG stumbled onto a blog post, about a speech given by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This address was deemed “the singularly most-important speech on race in the history of this country.”
PG admires Dr. King. He is also suspicious of superlatives. There were some comments made by Rodney Glen King III. The comments by Mr King were briefer, and tougher to live up to.
While thinking of things to write about, PG realized that he had never seen the actual quote by Mr. King. It is embedded above. When you see this video, you might realize that Mr. King has been misquoted. The popular version has him saying “Can’t we all just get along.” He did not say just.
Mr. King was known to America as Rodney King. His friends called him Glen. His comments, at 7:01, May 1, 1992, went like this: ““People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it, making it horrible for the older people and the kids? . . . Please, we can get along here. We all can get along. I mean, we’re all stuck here for a while. Let’s try to work it out. Let’s try to beat it. Let’s try to beat it.”
The circumstances of the two comments could not be more different. Dr. King was giving the sermon of his life. There was an enormous crowd, both in person and on TV. His comments were scripted, rehearsed, and delivered with the style that he was famous for.
Mr. King, by contrast, had just seen the officers who beat him acquitted. Cities from coast to coast were in violent upheaval. Mr. King was speaking to reporters, without benefit of a speech writer. What he said might be more important. This double repost has pictures from The Library of Congress.

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Crazy Owl

Posted in History, Holidays, Undogegorized by chamblee54 on April 6, 2019

It started as a rumor, and was quickly confirmed. Crazy Owl…a.k.a. Charles Emerson Hall…passed away April 4, 2011. He was my friend for many years. Many stories could be told, and here are a few. Here is the biography from his website, Crazy Owls Perch. This is a repost.
These few lines will introduce you to Crazy Owl, the author of this website. His life began August 5 1927 at 6:02 AM in Akron Ohio, USA. His mother named him Charles Emerson Hall.
In 1960 The University of Wisconsin awarded him a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree, He pursued a career in mathematical statistics and research methodology until 1975 when he predicted that a cancer epidemic would engulf one-third of the population by 1985. Thereupon he “dropped out” and went into the community lifestyle and ate organic food. In summer of 1987 he took the name Crazy Owl and accepted the Barred Owl (the original “Crazy Owl”) as his totem.
Sometime during these years he became interested in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM for short). In 1980 he started studying acupressure at the Acupressure Institute in Berkley California. Since that time he has been a Healer with TCM as the core of his practice. From 1985 to 1997 Crazy Owl taught TCM in The School For Gentle Hands in Atlanta Georgia. He had a clientele in Healing and a business in herbalism as well as students.
The School for Gentle Hands was in an old horse farm on Flat Shoals Road, just off I20 and Gresham Road. There is a subdivision there now, and the K mart is a Walmart. This space is a mile away from East Atlanta Village, and is an up and coming neighborhood now. When Owl moved there in 1985, it was run down. He had a beat up barn, a dirt driveway, and a pipe bringing county water in. Some government agency made him get a porta potty, a bright green facility with a lot of nicknames.
The School For Gentle Hands was about nine miles due south from my attic apartment. One of the events was the friday night sweat lodge. You drove down, found a place to park in the weeds, and walked down a hill to the lodge. Owl would start the fire, put the rocks in, and hope that someone was there to join him. I sometimes served as the helper, balancing the glowing rocks, on a pitchfork, while Owl held open the door to the lodge.
One friday, the sweaters were talking about the things they were grateful for. The previous friday night, I had been in a tacky bar in Tucker GA. Everyone except me chain smoked, while the band played “Melancholy Baby”. Seven days later, I was naked in a makeshift hut. I was grateful for the variety in my life. All my relations
In those days, AIDS was on a rampage, and there was little that industrial medicine could do. Crazy Owl helped quite a few people. Some did well with his treatment, and are thriving today. He taught that AIDS was not a disease, but a condition, and that it could be reversed.
Crazy Owl was a traveling companion of mine in those days. For a while, it seemed like every time we went anywhere, it would pour down rain the entire time. On a pre Thanksgiving Wednesday, this turned into ice when we arrived at the valley in North Carolina. We woke up the next day to find ourselves in an ice crystal wonderland.
He is not on this plane of existence any more. As for what he expected, I honestly don’t know. Not everyone is obsessed with life after death. I suspect that Crazy Owl is going to be all right.
Update: Here is the story of his final days. The story of the Memorial Service is here.

The jury found James Arthur Ray guilty of manslaughter , or the ending of a life. He conducted a sweat lodge ritual in Arizona, and apparently had the room too hot and too crowded. People were not encouraged to leave before the end. Three people died as a result. (James Arthur Ray is a different person than James Earl Ray, the convicted killer of Martin Luther King. This is one time when the custom of referring to perps by all three names is valuable.)
PG used to attend sweat lodges hosted by Crazy Owl. These were much smaller, and gentler, than the fatal affair in Arizona. There was always plenty of water, and an onion tea was drank before entering the lodge. As you entered, you said “all my relations”, which did not mean you looked forward to being with them for eternity.
Friday night at Crazy Owl’s was an informal affair. Once inside, prayers were offered, and songs were sung. One of the favorites was “Amazing Grace”. Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a life like me . That was the version that Crazy Owl favored. Some of the others rebelled, and sang the traditional version, which saved a wretch like me. One night, Crazy Owl said that he would preferred that we sing “Amazing Grace” with life instead of wretch. PG thought he was a crazy old man, and went on saying wretch.
A few years later, after Crazy Owl’s life had ended, PG understood what he meant. You are not a wretch, you are a life. You were made by G-d in her image. She does not make junk. Many religions do not give their flock credit for being worth very much. You are a wretch, bound for hell, and only marginally better if you adopt the correct opinions and go to heaven. To say that you are a LIFE, a sacred creation with G-d in your soul, is a much better way to see things.
Last night, PG went to a celebration of life. (Pictures are from the Midsummer Night’s Dream.) While riding down Buford Hiway, he saw a huge rainbow. Ryans steak house was the pot of gold at the end. The summer solstice had been a few days earlier, the longest day, the height of the growth cycle. How sweet the sound, that saved a life like me. This is a repost.

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Blue Woman

Posted in Poem by chamblee54 on April 6, 2019

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Cary Grant Took LSD

Posted in History, Library of Congress, Undogegorized by chamblee54 on April 5, 2019

There is a nifty article about Cary Grant and LSD on the web now. It seems Mr. Grant, the onetime Archibald Leach, had a few issues. Duh. Married five times. Widely rumored to the the bf of Randolph Scott. A talented actor, but a mess in the real world.
In 1956, Mr. Grant was with third wife Betsy Drake, who had a tough summer. “It was an open secret between cast and crew alike that the married Cary Grant was sleeping with Sophia Loren during their filming of The Pride and The Passion. Drake had flown to Italy to be by her husband’s side during the shoot only to find Grant ignoring her. Distraught, she fled on what was to be a quiet voyage on the SS Andrea Doria. On July 25, 1956 her quiescent journey turned into a nightmare. The ship collided with a Swedish ocean liner off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, sinking to the bottom of the Sea and claiming fifty-one lives.2 Betsy survived but was traumatized. The incident, coupled with the estrangement of her husband, haunted her in her sleep.”
Betsy Drake had a friend named Sally Brophy, an actress. Miss Brophy also received help from a psychiatrist, which included taking LSD. Eventually, Cary Grant started to go see this doctor.
Taking a legal trip, in a Hollywood doctor’s office, is not like going to a rave. It was seen as therapy, a way of learning how to deal with your problems. According to Cary Grant, it worked very well. He talked about it to a reporter, and then confirmed that he wanted this to go out to the public.
“The shock of each revelation brings with it an anguish of sadness for what was not known before in the wasted years of ignorance and, at the same time, an ecstasy of joy at being freed from the shackles of such ignorance … I learned many things in the quiet of that room … I learned that everything is or becomes its own opposite … it releases inhibition. You know, we are all unconsciously holding our anus. In one LSD dream I shit all over the rug and shit all over the floor. Another time I imagined myself as a giant penis launching off from earth like a spaceship … I seemed to be in a world of healthy, chubby little babies’ legs and diapers, smeared blood, a sort of general menstrual activity taking place … As a philosopher once said, you cannot judge the day until the night ..”
The only problem was, Mr. Grant had a movie coming out, “Operation Petticoat”. The studio “tripped out” when it heard the star of the show was praising LSD in the press. Mr. Grant had a share in the profits of the film, and was persuaded to call the reporter and recant on the interview.
Not everyone was impressed by the doctors that Mr. Grant used. “Aldous Huxley had encountered the clinic prior to his death, but had sought his LSD experiences from the parallel practice of Dr. Oscar Janiger, the other acid doctor to the stars. Huxley witnessed Chandler and Hartman’s work and was unnerved by their approach. “We met two Beverly Hills psychiatrists the other day,” he wrote, “who specialise in LSD therapy at $100 a shot – and, really, I have seldom met people of lower sensitivity, more vulgar mind! To think of people made vulnerable by LSD being exposed to such people is profoundly disturbing.”
In any event, LSD became criminalized, Doctors Chandler and Hartman got in trouble, and Cary Grant got married two more times. While Grant never renounced LSD, he refused to use any other illegal drug, even marijuana. He was a conservative old fogey.
Maureen Donaldson was the lover of Cary Grant in the seventies, and was a friend of Alice Cooper. She finally persuaded Mr. Grant to go to an Alice Cooper concert with her. He wore sunglasses, gold chains, and dressed like a “seedy agent”. He sat through the entire show, wearing earplugs, hating every minute of it.
As Miss Donaldson recalled the evening “Driving back to Los Angeles, I congratulated Cary for being such a good sport … He’d made an extraordinary effort to please me … [I asked him] ‘You really hated it, didn’t you?’ ‘It’s…’ he said, struggling for words, ‘you know what it’s like? Remember I told you about the time I took LSD in my doctor’s office and shat all over his rug and floor?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well now I know how that poor doctor felt.”
This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.

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Shape My Destiny

Posted in Poem by chamblee54 on April 4, 2019

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Blames The Bull

Posted in Poem by chamblee54 on April 3, 2019

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Joyce Kilmer

Posted in History, Library of Congress, War by chamblee54 on April 2, 2019

Some say …It’s the Soldier, not the poet, Who has given us the freedom of speech. There is also the story of Joyce Kilmer. This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Alfred Joyce Kilmer was born December 6, 1886, in East Brunswick NJ. He grew up to be a teacher, and wrote poems on the side. After teaching, he worked for Funk and Wagnall, defining words for five cents each. Mr. Kilmer continued to write, and became a popular lecturer.
In 1913, “Trees” was published. Your english teacher probably made fun of it. Many satires have been written. It was at the end of an era in poetry, when that *simple* style was popular. In the era after World War 1, poetry went crazy. Joyce Kilmer didn’t live to see it.
A few days after the United States entered World War 1, Joyce Kilmer left his wife, and five children, and went to war. Originally he was a statistician in the 69th Infantry Regiment, but wanted action. He was promoted to Sergeant, and sent to the Regimental Intelligence Section.
On July 30, 1918, Sgt. Kilmer was scouting the location of a German machine gun. A bullet to the head ended his war.
World War 1 was a ghastly bloodbath. It set the stage for World War 2, which was even bloodier. Not one person in a thousand today can tell you why World War 1 was fought, or how the United States got drawn into it. It is tough to see how World War 1 gave us freedom of speech.

PG stumbled onto a blog called Vast Public Indifference. The feature being utilized today is Urban Legend Names. The blogwriter is a historian in training, and became fascinated by name stories. She did some research. The names are in bold below, with the “status” underlined.
Clitoris: Unconfirmed. Variant forms can be confirmed, viz. Clitty Jones of Somers, OH (b. 1895, married to Walter, confirmed in 1920 and 1930 census). The name “Clit” appears in several census records, but cannot be independently confirmed (ex: Clit Mangum, Commerce, GA, 1930 census).
Eczema: Possible. Three women show up in the census records as “Eczema”: Eczema Wright of Indiana, Eczema Hugey of Missouri, and Eczema James of Texas.
Male: Confirmed David Male Tiumalu (b. 8/1/1953, Alameda Co., CA), Linda Male Osmer (b. 5/8/1952, Texas), Male Joseph Cotton (b. 3/29/1974).
Latrine: Confirmed. Latrine seems to be a legitimate name. Examples: Latrine Sharmine Olive (b. 11/24/1979, Sacramento, CA), Quiana Latrine Phillips (b. 4/1/1988, Los Angeles, CA), Latrine Nicole Cook (b. 1/21/1976, Dallas, TX), Charlotte Latrine Martin (b. 2/8/1971, Wichita, TX). A variant form, Latrina, is actually quite popular, even cracking the top 1000 baby names in America for six years running during the 1970s. There are nearly 500 girls named Latrina in the Texas and California birth records alone. One unfortunate example of this name is Latrina Pickens-Brown of Nevada.
No Smoking: Confirmed. Nosmo King Cheatam (b. 11/26/1918 d. 11/10/1997). Mr. Cheatam was a veteran of the United States Navy and is buried in Texarkana, TX.
Pajama: Possible. I found several people named “Pajama” in the public phone/address records, including Pajama Ngongba of Alexandria, VA and Pajama Howanitz of Alabaster, AL, but was not able to confirm their names independently.
Placenta: Confirmed. Placenta Ann Woodard (b. 8/7/1953, Freestone Co., TX, married Rahman Hassan 11/10/1986 in Tarrant, TX), Placenta Ayala (b. 10/5/1951, Howard Co., TX), Placenta Theresa Bennett (b. 7/21/1958, Caldwell Co., TX). Others show up in the census — the picture at right is of the entry for Placenta M. Duncan of Green Bay, Iowa in the 1860 census.
Urea: Confirmed. Urea Pyle of Delaware Co., PA (married to Reece Pyle, confirmed in 1900, 1910, and 1920 census records), Elton Urea Juniel of California (married in Las Vegas 3 times: married Tish Denise Harris 6/27/1981, married Beverly Jean Mills, 8/17/1991, married Julie Marie Bossin 9/23/2003), Sophia Urea Nelson of Los Angeles, CA (b. 1/11/1991). The Texas birth records contain information for six babies named Urea:
Urine: Confirmed. Nora Urine Workman (b. 10/13/1940, Lamar Co., TX), Jonathan Urine Smith (b. 12/3/1996, Denton Co., TX), Urine Adkins of Coeburn, VA (b. 6/15/1896, d. March 1972). Urine Thibideoux, Louisiana.
Vagina: Confirmed. Vagina Ann Williams (b. 3/18/1934, Hall Co., TX), Ellen Vagina Goode (b. 9/13/1918 Lee Co., TX), Lorene Vagina Cranfield (b. 7/26/1938 Rowan Co., NC), Vagina Harper Bland (b. 1/19/1842 in Virginia, d. 5/4/1927 in Kentucky). One that caught my eye was “Vagina Glasscock” who lived in Somerville, Alabama in 1910.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is written like James Joyce.