Types Of Intelligence
There is a book, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. The concept is that people are smart in different ways. This is not news to someone who can see the world outside. The book describes seven types of intelligence, which was expanded to nine.
1. Naturalist Intelligence (“Nature Smart”)
2. Musical Intelligence (“Musical Smart”)
3. Logical-Mathematical Intelligence (Number/Reasoning Smart)
4. Existential Intelligence
5. Interpersonal Intelligence (People Smart”)
6. Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence (“Body Smart”)
7. Linguistic Intelligence (Word Smart)
8. Intra-personal Intelligence (Self Smart”)
9. Spatial Intelligence (“Picture Smart”)
Not everyone is impressed by the book. Lemas Mitchell notes “This book is just ENTIRELY too wordy. 412 pages of text could have been cut down to 103. (This is about the same waffle-to-information ratio as an Ayn Rand book.) ” This comment was in the second paragraph of a lengthy review, where it is easily noted by the casual reader.
Another way to divvy up the mind is left side of the brain vs. the right side. The left is logical, linear, and factual, where the right side is emotional, intuitive, and random. There is possibly a connection here to the yin-yang divide in Taoist thinking.
Most of the results on the first page of google are repeats of the text above. There are two tests for the different types of smarts. PG is too slack to work on this feature, so he is going to see what the tests say.
The Learning Disabilities Resource Community has the Multiple Intelligence Inventory. There are 80 statements, like ” I can hear words in my head before I read, speak, or write them down. ~ I enjoy playing games or solving brain teasers that require logical thinking. ~ I enjoy fishing, hunting, gardening, growing plants, or cooking. ~ I sometimes think in clear, abstract, wordless, imageless concepts.” There are five possible answers: 1. very little like me, 2. a little like me, 3. somewhat like me, 4. like me, 5. a lot like me. PG scored Linguistic=32, Mathematics=32, Visual/Spatial=30, Body/Kinesthetic=33, Naturalistic=25, Music=23, Interpersonal=22, Intrapersonal=24.
The Quizilla 7 Types of Intelligence – Which is yours? test is a lot less work. It is one page of multiple choice questions. It said PG was “Linguistic”.
This is written like David Foster Wallace.
Pictures are by Chamblee54. They were taken October 7, 2012, in Oakland Cemetery.
So It Goes
A facebook friend announced that Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was born ninety years ago today. This would be four years after the end of the war to end all wars. Many of you know the rest of that story.
When you mention Kurt Vonnegut, someone will say “and so it goes”. Lately, PG has gotten into debunking famous sayings. There is a simple test involving wikiquote. You copy a persons entry into a word document, and do a search.
When you do this search for “and so it goes”, the little window says “search key not found”. When you narrow the search to “goes”, you get several results. “If I’d been born in Germany, I suppose I would have been a Nazi, bopping Jews and gypsies and Poles around, leaving boots sticking out of snowbanks, warming myself with my secretly virtuous insides. So it goes.”
“When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is “So it goes.”
“Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles away from the home I live in all year round, was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes.Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died, too. So it goes. And everyday my government gives me a count of corpses created by the military service in Vietnam. So it goes. My father died many years ago now–of natural causes. So it goes. He was a sweet man. He was a gun nut, too. He left me his guns. They rust.”
And is a coordinating conjunction. It joins things in a sentence, whether they want to be joined or not. Tralfamadorians do not see the need to waste and on a dead person.
I Write Like says that this text is written like Kurt Vonnegut. This is not surprising, considering that half of it is quotes from Mr. Vonnegut. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
The AP Race Study
The first link was from the Washington Post. The AP story is coming to a media outlet near you. The headline is AP poll: A slight majority of Americans are now expressing negative view of Blacks.
There are so many windows in that glass house. This is a 3-S problem: sampling, semantics, statistics. It is said that people will believe anything you say, if you can trot out a study that agrees with you. This *matter* requires a bit of examination.
AP reports “The explicit racism measures asked respondents whether they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements about Black and Hispanic people. In addition, the surveys asked how well respondents thought certain words, such as “friendly,” ‘’hardworking,” ‘’violent” and “lazy,” described Blacks, whites and Hispanics.
The same respondents were also administered a survey designed to measure implicit racism, in which a photo of a Black, Hispanic or white male flashed on the screen before a neutral image of a Chinese character. The respondents were then asked to rate their feelings toward the Chinese character. Previous research has shown that people transfer their feelings about the photo onto the character, allowing researchers to measure racist feelings even if a respondent does not acknowledge them.”
The AP article has a link to a 34 page report about the study. The “implicit” questions using Chinese characters were not discussed in this report. The first 12 pages are mostly about the November election.
Page 13 has a bizarre bit of data. The 2010 answers will be on the left, followed by a dash, with the 2012 percentage on the right. For Mitt Romney, only 2012 results are available. This is weird, and it calls the overall accuracy of the study into question.
IMG4. Do you happen to know the religion of each of the following people? If you don’t know, you can mark that too. Barack Obama Protestant 26-28, Catholic 4-5, Mormon 0-0, Jewish 0-18, Muslim 17-10, Some other religion 8-2, No religion 2-35, Don’t Know 41-2, Refused/not answered 1-28 Mitt Romney Protestant 2, Catholic 2, Mormon 67, Jewish 0, Muslim 0, Some other religion 1, No religion 0, Don’t Know 26, Refused/not answered 2.
There are two more pages of questions about the election, and then the race questions start. RAC7. How much do you like or dislike each of the following groups? The possible answers are Like a great deal, Like a moderate amount, Like a little, Neither like nor dislike, Dislike a little, Dislike a moderate amount, Dislike a great deal, Refused/Not answered. Whites went first, followed by Blacks and Hispanics. (The term African Americans was not seen by this reporter.)
After some more election questions, we get another race question. RAC8. When it comes to politics, would you say that each of the groups listed below has too much influence, just about the right amount of influence, or to little influence? The question was repeated for, in this order, Whites, Blacks, Elderly people, Wealthy people, Hispanics, and Immigrants.
The next question is RAC11, one of the “explicit” questions. It was asked first about Blacks, then Whites, then Hispanics. How well does each of these words describe most _____? The words were friendly, determined to succeed, law abiding, hard working, intelligent at school, smart at everyday things, good neighbors, dependable, keep up their property, violent, boastful, complaining, lazy, irresponsible.
Lets take a time out, and say a couple of things. This is a long article, and may get your blood pressure upset. If you want to skip the rest of the text, and look at the pictures, that is all right. If you want to see the results for these questions, look at this report. If you have read this far, you might agree with the author that this survey was not exactly fair, and should not be taken very seriously. Take another look at how many people think Barack Obama is a Jew.
RAC12. Please indicate how much you agree or disagree with the following statements. The choices are: Strongly disagree, Somewhat disagree, Neither agree nor disagree, Somewhat agree, Strongly agree, Refused/Not answered. The statements are:
* Irish, Italians, Jewish, and other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up.
* Blacks should do the same without special favors
* It’s really a matter of some people just not trying hard enough; if Blacks would only try harder, they could just be as well off as whites
* Generations of slavery have created conditions that make it difficult for Blacks to work their way out of the lower class
* Blacks are demanding too much from the rest of society
* Over the past few years, Blacks have gotten LESS than they deserve
* Most Blacks who receive money from welfare programs could get along without it if they tried
Government officials usually pay less attention to a request or complaint from a Black person than from a white person
* Over the past few years, Blacks have gotten more ECONOMICALLY than they deserve
RAC13. Some people say that Black leaders have been trying to push too fast. Others feel that they haven’t pushed fast enough. What do you think?
RAC14. How much of the racial tension that exists in the United States today do you think ______ are responsible for creating? This was asked first about Blacks, then Whites, then Hispanics.
RAC15. How much discrimination against ______ do you feel there is in the United States today, limiting their chances to get ahead? The possible answers were A lot, Some, Just a little, None at all, Refused/Not answered. This was asked about, in this order, Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, Asians, Men, Women, Evangelical Christians, and Immigrants.
The questions shift back to Barack Obama at this point. BKS1. How similar do you think Barack Obama is to most Black Americans? BTH1. Where was Barack Obama born, as far as you know? On page 29, the demographic information section starts. Special emphasis is given to the religion of the respondent. On page 33, the traditional demographics are covered: age, gender, education, race, census region, and marital status. The respondents were not asked about income.
The poll was taken by GFK. 1,071 adults were interviewed, August 30 – September 11, 2012. The survey was conducted online. “METHODOLOGY The survey was conducted using the web-enabled KnowledgePanel®, a probability-based panel designed to be representative of the U.S. population. Initially, participants are chosen scientifically by a random selection of telephone numbers and residential addresses. Persons in selected households are then invited by telephone or by mail to participate in the web-enabled KnowledgePanel®. For those who agree to participate, but do not already have Internet access, GfK provides at no cost a laptop and ISP connection. People who already have computers and Internet service are permitted to participate using their own equipment. Panelists then receive unique log-in information for accessing surveys online, and then are sent emails throughout each month inviting them to participate in research.”
People have been linking to the WP story on facebook, with a variety of comments. These comments probably say more about the commenter, than it does about race relations in America. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
UPDATE Page thirteen of the report has been updated. Apparently, the correct results show that 18% of respondents think BHO is a Muslim, with 0% thinking he is Jewish. HT to xdog.
Mick Jagger
There was a book at the Chamblee Library, Mick: The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Jagger. The work is credited to a man named Christopher Anderson, who has a slew of best sellers to his credit. The copyright was issued to “Anderson Productions.”
When you write about Mickie, you have to post a few videos. One of the first to come up is “Waiting on a friend.” This was the first video that PG saw on MTV. One night in early 1982, PG rode his bike to an apartment on Buford Hiway to buy MDA. While he was there, a young companion of the salesman said hey watch this, music television. The video was a favorite that first winter of MTV, even though it wasn’t really that good.
Mick Jagger has been a part of many lives the last fifty years. The stones were conceded to be number two to the beatles, but stayed together longer. The era of rock concert as megaevent coincided with the reinvention of the stones, after the demise of Brian Jones. He did after all start the band. Mr. Jones had become too much of a druggie to be relied on, and was fired. The book says that Mr. Jones was drowned, by a construction worker.
Ok, we are three paragraphs in, and we have not discussed Mr. Jagger’s pecker. Most of the book is about this instrument of undetermined size. The book says Mick stuffed a sock in his pants before shows. Mick has screwed thousands of women, and more than a few men. Whether Mick is a top, or a bottom, is left to the imagination.
The phrase “fuck Mick Jagger” is seminal. One night, the B52s were playing at a toilet on Ponce De Leon Avenue called the Big Dipper. The venue was later torn down, the ground decontaminated, and an animal clinic built on it’s site. After the show, one of the girls (either Kate or Cindy, or maybe neither, since this story is possibly an urban legend) was hanging out in the parking lot. “Beulah” was running his mouth, as he liked to do, talking about his hero Mick Jagger. Finally, the B52girl had heard enough. “Fuck Mick Jagger, one day Mick Jagger will come see me.”
The book goes into excruciating detail about the stones story. Mick grew up middle class, and was close to his parents. He bit the end of his lip playing basketball, and sounded different. While going to the London School of Economics, he connected with Keith Richard, and found that they both liked Chuck Berry. The Glimmer Twins started to hang out together, and played a few gigs at a nightclub owned by Alexis Korner. (Mr. Korner opened for Humble Pie and Edgar Winter at the Atlanta Municipal Auditorium. He was ignored by the festive pot smoking crowd.)
At this time, Mick had been introduced to sex by the other boys at his school. The first time with a woman was when Mick was an orderly at Bexley Mental Hospital. A nurse “yanked him into the linen closet where, surrounded by sheets, mops, and bedpans, Mick lost his virginity standing up”.
At some point Brian Jones came into the picture. Mick moved into a flat with Brian and Keith, and lived in picturesque squalor. At some point Mick and Brian bumped gooberheads, which left Mick confused. It is not known whether the lads could afford drugs at this point.
The story goes on and on. There are ugly moments, pretty moments, good songs written, lots of drugs, lots of sex. As Mick said in “Shattered,” “sex and sex and sex and sex and sex and sex and sex.” A few begin to wonder if he is capable of a one on one relationship, but their opinions don’t count.
One afternoon in 1978, PG was driving a truck in Decatur. He worked for a lady who did sampling projects, which means giving out samples to consumers. The product this time was Playtex Plus deodorant tampons. The truck was the rag wagon. There was an announcement on the last am rock and roll station in Atlanta. The stones were going to play the Fox Theater, and tickets were on sale now. The signal of the am station faded out at this point, with a gospel station preacher blocking out the rock and roll announcement. PG did not hear the location of the ticket sales. It turns out the tickets went on sale at the box office of the Municipal Auditorium, which was two blocks away from the rental facility the rag wagon was being returned to that afternoon. Such is life.
In 1991, PG was walking to work and noticed an army of movie trucks. Mr. Jagger was appearing in a film, “Free Jack.” PG saw a scene filmed from his perch in the Healey Building, and stood behind a chair with the name “Mick Jagger” stenciled on. There were reports of a van rocking in Cabbagetown. On January 12, 1992, Georgia May Ayeesha Jagger was born.
Mick: The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Jagger is not a bad book. It is easy to read, and does not skimp on slime. The phrase “cringe inducing” is used several times, which may be the result of a focus group. It is not worth $27.00, or $29.99 Canadian. The publisher is Simon&Schuster. The dalliance between Mr. Jagger and Carly Simon is dutifully noted. The spell check suggestions for Schuster are Schumpeter, Custer, and Chester.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This was written like David Foster Wallace.
O Sun Of Real Peace
PG was threatening to listen to a radio interview with Richard Nixon. Tricky Dick was promoting a book, Real Peace. Supposedly, the 107 page tome was self published, then issued as a trade book. It deals with issues of world peace in the nuclear age.
At the eighteen minute mark, Mr. Nixon said something. In Real Peace, the phrases in my opinion, of course, and I believe do not appear. “Its obvious when you state something that you believe it.”
Oh, if only. When a politician’s lips are moving, then whatever comes out of the mouth is suspect. POTUS 37 was a bit closer to the truth later… “every politician should be somewhat of a poet.”
The thrust of the book is to maintain the strength of your armed forces, so that the bad guys will think twice before doing something stupid. The interview was conducted January 20, 1984. At the time, the number one enemy of the United States was the Soviet Union. Both superpowers had nuclear weapons, and neither was foolish enough to use them. In a few years, the Soviet Union would collapse.
“No sane national leader is going to make a decision, I’m going to declare war to gain this territory or gain this advantage.” In 1984, two bloody conflicts were being fought in Central Asia. Both were provoked, to some degree, by the United States. The after effects of these conflicts would have an impact on the USA. These two wars were the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, and the Iran-Iraq war. This is not the only time the sanity of Saddam Hussein has been questioned.
While trying to find more information about Mr. Nixon’s book, PG found a link to a poem by Walt Whitman, O Sun of Real Peace. Mr. Whitman was a nurse during the War Between the States, and saw men suffer. Should every poet be somewhat of a politician?
O SUN of real peace! O hastening light!
O free and extatic! O what I here, preparing, warble for!
O the sun of the world will ascend, dazzling, and take his height—
and you too, O my Ideal, will surely ascend!
O so amazing and broad—up there resplendent, darting and burning!
O vision prophetic, stagger’d with weight of light! with pouring glories!
O lips of my soul, already becoming powerless!
O ample and grand Presidentiads! Now the war, the war is over!
New history! new heroes! I project you!
Visions of poets! only you really last! sweep on! sweep on!
O heights too swift and dizzy yet!
O purged and luminous! you threaten me more than I can stand!
(I must not venture—the ground under my feet menaces me—it will not support me:
O future too immense,)—O present, I return, while yet I may, to you.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is written like H. P. Lovecraft.
Whimsical Nostalgic And Down Home
PG was spending a slack morning. He was editing pictures from the GSU Library. This occupies the fingers and the eyes, which leaves the ears looking for amusement. To satisfy the aural urges, an author interview from Wired For Books was imported. Meanwhile, the brain wonders when the next dose of coffee would arrive.
Wired For Books is a treasure of the digital age. Don Swaim had a radio show for the CBS network. He would interview authors selling a new book. The interview tapes were empeethreed, and put on a website facilitated by Ohio University. PG began at the top of the list, and is working his way through the alphabet. He made it to the M section.
In the interview with Toni Morrison, Mr. Swaim mentioned having a chat with Garrison Keillor. It seems as though Mr. Keillor was not fun to interview. The reflex action for PG was to download the files.
PG has never been on the bus for Garrison Keillor. His formula is a bit too NPR precious for PG. Maybe Mr. Keillor secretly agrees, but continues to do it for the money. “Keillor also talks about his writing. He writes about his radio program mainly as a way to defend himself. Many reporters have described his show, A Prairie Home Companion, as down-home, whimsical and nostalgic, all adjectives that Keillor would never use to describe his own program. He wanted to write what it really was about.”
The radio show was interrupted to write the first four paragraphs of this post. The remaining thirteen minutes did not have many good quotes. Mr. Keillor talked about his Minnesotality, or maybe that is Minestrone. Like people from the rest of the world, Minnesotites come to Georgia.
The next show at Wired for Books is a repeat of the Richard Nixon interview. For those of a certain age, it is a visit to another age. Mr. Nixon has the deep rolling voice, and can drag you under his spell, until you wake up and realize that everything he says is a lie.
While looking for the link to the interview above, a conversation between Mr. Nixon, John D. Ehrlichman, and H. R. Haldeman came up. The tape was made May 13, 1971.
NIXON: … CBS … glorifying homosexuality.
EHRLICHMAN: A panel show?
H. R. HALDEMAN: No, it’s a regular show. It’s on every week. It’s usually just done in the guy’s home. It’s usually just that guy, who’s a hard hat.
NIXON: That’s right; he’s a hard hat.
EHRLICHMAN: He always looks like a slob.
NIXON: Looks like Jackie Gleason.
HALDEMAN: He has this hippie son-in-law, and usually the general trend is to downgrade him and upgrade the son-in-law–make the square hard hat out to be bad. But a few weeks ago, they had one in which the guy, the son-in-law, wrote a letter to you, President Nixon, to raise hell about something. And the guy said, “You will not write that letter from my home!” Then said, “I’m going to write President Nixon,” took off all those sloppy clothes, shaved, and went to his desk and got ready to write his letter to President Nixon. And apparently it was a good episode.
EHRLICHMAN: What’s it called?
NIXON: “Archie’s Guys.” Archie is sitting here with his hippie son-in-law, married to the screwball daughter. The son-in-law apparently goes both ways. This guy. He’s obviously queer–wears an ascot–but not offensively so. Very clever. Uses nice language. Shows pictures of his parents. And so Arch goes down to the bar. Sees his best friend, who used to play professional football. Virile, strong, this and that. Then the fairy comes into the bar. I don’t mind the homosexuality. I understand it. Nevertheless, goddamn, I don’t think you glorify it on public television, homosexuality, even more than you glorify whores. We all know we have weaknesses. But, goddammit, what do you think that does to kids? You know what happened to the Greeks! Homosexuality destroyed them. Sure, Aristotle was a homo. We all know that. So was Socrates.
EHRLICHMAN: But he never had the influence television had.
NIXON: You know what happened to the Romans? The last six Roman emperors were fags. Neither in a public way. You know what happened to the popes? They were layin’ the nuns; that’s been goin’ on for years, centuries. But the Catholic Church went to hell three or four centuries ago. It was homosexual, and it had to be cleaned out. That’s what’s happened to Britain. It happened earlier to France. Let’s look at the strong societies. The Russians. Goddamn, they root ’em out. They don’t let ’em around at all. I don’t know what they do with them. Look at this country. You think the Russians allow dope? Homosexuality, dope, immorality, are the enemies of strong societies. That’s why the Communists and left-wingers are clinging to one another. They’re trying to destroy us. I know Moynihan will disagree with this, Mitchell will, and Garment will. But, goddamn, we have to stand up to this.
EHRLICHMAN: It’s fatal liberality.
NIXON: Huh?
EHRLICHMAN: It’s fatal liberality. And with its use on television, it has such leverage.
NIXON: You know what’s happened [in northern California]?
EHRLICHMAN: San Francisco has just gone clear over.
NIXON: But it’s not just the ratty part of town. The upper class in San Francisco is that way. The Bohemian Grove, which I attend from time to time–it is the most faggy goddamned thing you could ever imagine, with that San Francisco crowd. I can’t shake hands with anybody from San Francisco. … Decorators. They got to do something. But we don’t have to glorify it. You know one of the reasons fashions have made women look so terrible is because the goddamned designers hate women. Designers taking it out on the women. Now they’re trying to get some more sexy things coming on again.
EHRLICHMAN: Hot pants.
NIXON: Jesus Christ.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
Two Thirds Of A Joke
1. The fattest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference.
He acquired his size from eating too much pi.
2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.
3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.
4. The teacher confiscated a rubber band pistol was confiscated from a student in an algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption.
5. No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.
6. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.
7. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.
8. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
9. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.
10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
11. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
12. A baseball cap and a beret were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. The beret said to the cap:
‘You stay here; I’ll go on a head.
13. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
14. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: ‘Keep off the Grass.’
15. The midget fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
16. The soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.
17. A backward poet writes inverse.
18. In a democracy it’s your vote that counts. In feudalism it’s your count that votes.
19. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.
20. If you jumped off the bridge in Paris, you’d be in Seine.
21. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, ‘I’m sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.’
22. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says ‘Dam!’
23. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft.
Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can’t have your kayak and heat it too.
24. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, ‘I’ve lost my electron.’ The other says ‘Are you sure?’
The first replies, ‘Yes, I’m positive.’
25. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal?
He wanted to transcend dental medication.
26. There was the person who sent ten puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.
27. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This repost was written like Chuck Palahniuk.
Winching The Dead
A recent post included the phrase “getting severely overweight dead people out of an apartment building.” Those are googling words. Most of the results are hand wringing about the number of overweight people. A couple of the results were worth clicking out.
The headline result is from Merry Olde England, which is becoming known as the fattest country in Europe. Fire service called in 50 times to winch fat people out.
“Paramedics in the West Midlands have had to call on their heavy-lifting emergency service colleagues, despite having extra equipment to help move extremely heavy patients themselves. Over a three-year period they called in West Midlands Fire and Rescue Service on 50 occasions, so the patients could be winched out with apparatus designed for lifting car wrecks. Sometimes morbidly obese patients, … can only be extracted from their homes after a window is taken out, say firefighters. …
Nick Harrison, chairman of the West Midlands Fire Brigades Union, said: “In most cases these people are quite elderly and are suffering from serious medical issues which have left them bedridden for a long time, and they have put on a lot of weight. “Many times we have to remove the whole window frame and get them out that way. It’s a lot simpler and safer both for them and for the rescuers.” …
Official statistics show the West Midlands to be the fattest region in Britain, which is itself the fattest major country in Europe. According to the Association of Public Health Observatories, about 25 per cent of adults in Britain are now clinically obese. In the West Midlands, the figure is 29 per cent. By comparison, across the European Union as a whole it is just 14 per cent. “
One of the commenters had a constructive suggestion: “The ‘feeders’ should be brought to court and punished. For every obese person there is one or more ‘feeders’, who shop, supply the food, help the person eat it etc. Being a ‘feeder’ should be a criminal offense.”
For some algorithmically correct reason, Minute mysteries was a result. “The object of minute mysteries (aka lateral thinking puzzles) is for you to unravel the mystery, based on very limited and somewhat ambiguous clues. You are given a scenario (usually involving a death of some sort), and you have to deduce what has happened. Someone must look at the solution so that you can ask them questions to try and figure it out. The questions have to be phrased so that the only possible answers are yes, no or not relevant. There is no limit to the number of questions, and it can be helpful to have multiple people working on the case.”
Evidently, number 71 was the connection. “71. Three heavy people try to crowd under one umbrella, and nobody gets wet.” The answer is “71. It is sunny and hot.”
PG heard someone telling these stories years ago. There are some on the list he remembers. “5. A man lives on the twelfth floor of an apartment building. Every morning he wakes up, gets dressed, eats, goes to the elevator, takes it down to the lobby, and leaves the building for work. In the evening, he goes through the lobby to the elevator, and, if there is someone else in the elevator (or if it was raining that day) he goes back to his floor directly. However, if there is nobody else in the elevator and it hasn’t rained, he goes to the 10th floor and walks up two flights of stairs to his room. ~ ~ The man is a midget. He can’t reach the upper elevator buttons, but he can ask people to push them for him. He can also push them with his umbrella. ~ ~ 7. A man walks into a bar and asks for a drink. The bartender pulls out a gun and points it at him. The man says, “Thank you,” and walks out. ~ ~ The man has hiccups; the bartender scares them away by pulling a gun.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Self Portraits On Drugs
A person, Bryan Lewis Saunders, conducted an experiment. “After experiencing drastic changes in my environment, I looked for other experiences that might profoundly affect my perception of the self. So I devised another experiment where everyday I took a different drug and drew myself under the influence. Within weeks I became lethargic and suffered mild brain damage. I am still conducting this experiment but over greater lapses of time. I only take drugs that are given to me.”
Abilify / Xanax / Ativan ~ 90mg Abilify ~ 1 sm Glass of “real” Absinth ~ 10mg Adderall ~ 10mg Ambien ~ Bath Salts ~ 15mg Buspar (snorted) ~ 4 Butalbitals ~ Butane Honey Oil ~ 250mg Cephalexin ~ 1/2 gram Cocaine ~ Computer Duster (2 squirts) ~ 2 bottles of Cough Syrup ~ 1 “Bump” of Crystalmeth ~ 4mg Dilaudid ~ 1 shot of Dilaudid / 3 shots of Morphine ~ DMT ~ 60mg Geodon ~ Hash ~ Huffing Gas ~ Huffing Lighter Fluid ~ 7.5mg Hydrocodone / 7.5mg Oxycodone / 3mg Xanax ~ 3mg Klonopin~ 10mg Loritab ~ Marijuana (Kine Bud) ~ G13 Marijuana ~ Morphine IV ~ Psilocybin Mushrooms (2 caps onset) ~ 2mg Nicotine Gum ~ Nitrous Oxide ~ Nitrous Oxide / Valium I.V. ~ PCP ~ 7.5mg Percocet ~ 2 Pot Brownies ~ 1 Glass of Pruno ~ Marijuana Resin ~ 4mg Risperdol ~ Ritilin (doseage unknown-snorted) ~ Salvia Divinorum (right before but mostly right after) ~ 100mg Seroquel ~ 100mg Trazadone ~ 20mg Valium ~ Valium I.V. (doseage unknown in hospital) ~ Valium IV, (Albuterol, Saline & Oxygen) mixture ~ 2mg Xanax ~ 50mg Zoloft (after 2 weeks prescribed) ~ 10mg Zyprexa ~ Ativan / Haloperidol (doseage unknown in hospital)
Mr. Saunders is a piece of work. He has done a self portrait every day for years, and performs something called “stand up tragedy”. His website has a massive interview page. The rest of this post will be selections from that.
Recently there’s been a lot of chatter on the internet about a series of self-portraits that Bryan Lewis Saunders drew/painted/etched while he was on a whole potpourri of different drugs. My friend Kelly sent me the link because the day previous, I sent her a video of some chick on YouTube describing the experience of turkey-bastering DMT up her butthole . That her brain connected Bryan Saunders with that video should give you some idea as to what his work is like.
These portraits alone, though, are hardly interesting enough to merit Bryan any additional attention. It wasn’t until I realized that these 32 paintings comprise only 1/250th of a 16 year self-portrait project that I decided to spend a Sunday afternoon Skyping him at his home in Johnson City, Tennessee. As our conversation teetered between horrifying and hilarious, I realized that–although colossal–the self-portrait project is only a fragment of his dense portfolio of other equally involved multimedia projects. Bryan’s hermitic, Appalachian livelihood fostered an unarguable talent for embarking on extremely bizarre and elaborate artistic undertakings.
What started as a simple conversation about self-portraits spiraled into a cordial chat about crystal meth, Chinese standup comedy, blood, obese girls who suck dicks for attention, the process of getting severely overweight dead people out of an apartment building, and a few other equally engaging topics. By the end of our two-hour chat, I decided that Bryan Lewis Saunders is a living manifestation of Xenia, Ohio in Harmony Korine’s film, Gummo . And now he’s my friend. ~ ~
Well I wanted to be a famous comedian in China. I was living in my aunt’s trailer in Virginia, and the family was having a lot of problems. One of my cousins was on meth. My great aunt had Alzheimer’s. Another one had a stroke. It was a lot of confusion and constant arguing back and forth, so I just thought to myself, “well I’ll be better in China.” I spent like six hours a day, seven days a week for like nine months straight teaching myself Mandarin. I thought that I’d go to some cities in communist China where they don’t have any tourism, and I would do standup comedy there. I figured within one year I’d have my own sitcom, then I’d be doing blockbuster features in China, and then I’d be a big international superstar. I went and did a Chinese wedding in New York City, and it went pretty well, so I went to Fujo to become a superstar. After like the third day, I met a guy who could speak English pretty well, and he told me that they didn’t have stand up comedy in China. I was pretty devastated, so when I was forced to leave I thought, “Well hell, Tennessee is pretty cheap, so I moved back here and decided that I’d just do standup tragedy and try to make all of these strangers cry instead. ~ ~
What were your favorite substances consumed? What were the worst? Xanax (totem poles – 4mg) would probably be one of my favorites. It made me feel real at peace with life and with the trauma, and it also made me a real social dynamo! I’m sort of a recluse but with the Xanax I could just walk up and talk to total strangers! The Butane Honey Oil was a real blast too! The worst is a toss up between PCP and Seroquel (heavy tranquilizer/anti-psychotic agent) 100 mg. I went to a doctor to hopefully get more different drugs and told him about my project and showed him my pictures on various drugs and he only wrote one prescription for 90 Seroquels thinking I was psychotic.~ ~
What’s next? Where’s the acid? As far as acid goes, I’ve tried acid 3 times in NE Tennessee and all 3 times it was really crappy. Nothing like the U.V.A. acid in the mid eighties. People here say, “I did 8 of ’em. I took 4. I did 6 of ’em.”. And I’m like, “If one doesn’t do it for you, why take 7 more? That’s ignorant!” As for what’s next, it all depends on what people give me. I don’t seek them out and there are still plenty of big ones I need to draw under the influence of; Heroin, LSD, DMT, Computer Duster, Ayahuasca, Peyote and I don’t want to die until I do a self-portrait on Crack. You see today we live in a narcissistic and obsessive culture, totally overflowing with drugs. And as an artist I am the filter. Picasso and Matisse got it right when one of them said, “Cézanne is the father of us all.” It’s not a stretch by any means to say, “On some days, my brain chemistry is my vantage point and my face is his Mont Sainte-Victoire.” For people interested in this particular body of work, my Facebook has the best and most up to date collection of drawings under the influence. And I’m a weird person, and I’m way more well known for other stuff besides the drawings and drugs… ~ ~
On your MySpace page, you say you have mental problems. How do you deal with these on a day-to-day basis? I’ve been labeled with: Antisocial Personality Disorder (as a child), Borderline (in my teens), Schizotypal (as a young adult), Paranoid Schizophrenic (at present)… but I believe all that says much more about the system of classification than it does about me as an individual. Their response to that, of course, is that I’m in denial. So I self-medicate with art, obsessively and constantly, and when things in my environment get too overwhelming, I check into a hospital and get medicated, get out, wean myself off the drugs and start over. Not a cycle I recommend, but I know myself well and have the art…I’ve been living with it forever. Sometimes when I get “woggy” and can’t understand what people are saying, I’ll go to another country and fight the (imaginary) mental language problem with a (real genuine) language problem and make art… It depends on how severe the crisis is. I’m the most rational psychotic I know, if I even am psychotic? I’m fortunate in that respect; most aren’t so lucky.
Is there anything you’d like to add or anything you’d like to tell our readers? Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share what I do! It feels good to be included here. Oh, and if you’re online sometime and come across my series of self-portraits under the influence of different drugs, know that I don’t “party” I just experiment, and I’m willing to trade art for drugs that I haven’t drawn myself on yet. But keep the jenkem to yourselves! ~ ~
Any last words? “Be leery of signs. Once I drove to Alabama, and the first fruit stand I came to across the State Line had a sign that said, “COLOREDS WELCOME”. It struck a nerve. I didn’t know if they meant it or not. With language like that – surely they didn’t. It confused me. The same with the “Free Speech Zone” sign. I’ve performed at many places here in Johnson City using the exact same material and have never had a problem with censorship. After all it’s America ? The only place that advertises FREE SPEECH here, is the only place that DOESN’T allow it. So be wary of signs, chances are – THEY ARE INSTRUCTING THE EXACT OPPOSITE !!!”
Cemetery Blues
PG and Uzi had their usual Sunday phone call, and agreed to go to “Sunday in the Park”. It is a festival in Oakland Cemetery, with live music, people in costumes, open mausoleums, and lots of good clean fun. It wasn’t until that evening that PG learned that today is Dead Poets Remembrance Day. Edgar Allan Poe met his maker on this day in 1849.
There was a Chamblee54 post about DPRD two years ago. The idea is to go to a cemetery and read a poem. An effort will be made to do that tonight, although promises about dead poets are notoriously unreliable. The 2010 post is included as part two of this feature.
The first poem read that afternoon was “Looking for the Buckhead Boys” by James Dickey. In the intervening two years, PG listened to a podcast with Christopher Dickey, the son of the writer. Sometimes bard is short for bastard.
So PG, Uzi, and Hazmat went to a festival in Oakland Cemetery. Like everything else, it is more popular and expensive. You had to pay to park, which Uzi generously took care of. The brick walls around the boneyard have been repaired, and no longer look like they are going to fall down. Those walls are important, because people are dying to get inside. This is the second time that PG and Uzi have attended the October festival in Oakland Cemetery.
There are always things that you need to see at Oakland. Margaret Mitchell, the Lion Statue, and the mausoleums are important stops. PG followed the signs to the grave of Bobby Jones. It had golf balls and a putter, which was not necessary.
Don LeVert was a member of the Atlanta Sky Hi Club for many, many years before his departure in 1997. PG and Uzi always seek him out, and it is usually a bit of an adventure finding him.
After visiting Don, PG found the marker for “Brother John Wade”. His time on earth was September 23, 1865 to January 15, 1916. This was from the autumn just after the War Between the States until 37 days before PG’s father was born in Rowland, North Carolina. There was a renewed sense of connection to the stone monuments.
The facebook friend said “Today is Dead Poets Remembrance Day, Oct. 7th, the day Edgar Allan Poe died. Be sure to visit a graveyard and read some poetry today”. PG didn’t have anything better to do.
The first obstacle was finding a book of poetry. PG is not a poetry person. A look at the shelf turned up a paperback, “125 years of Atlantic “. Poetry was to be found between those covers.
The book had two stickers, both saying 69 cents. At the old Book Nook, this meant that the book was half the price on the sticker. With tax, that would be 38 cents.
125YOA had stayed in PG’s car for a few years. Whenever he was stuck somewhere with time to kill, this book was waiting. One afternoon in 1998, there was a slow day at work. PG read a remembrance by Gertrude Stein, about life in France at the start of World War II.
The cemetery of choice was connected to the Nancy Creek Primitive Baptist Church. PG has driven by this facility thousands of times. He walked past the graves until he found a fallen tree to sit down on.
The first poem was “Looking for the Buckhead Boys” by James Dickey. PG began to read out loud, and soon could smell the drug store air of Wender and Roberts. The author bought fifty cents worth of gas at a Gulf station. Today, fifty cents might buy a tablespoon of gas, and Gulf was long ago bought out by BP. Wender and Roberts became a bar, which was torn down, to make way for a shopping destination.
Buckhead is not what it used to be. When Mr. Dickey was the bravest man in Buckhead ( he took a shit in the toilet at Tyree’s pool hall), PG was not even thought of. The traffic jams on Peachtree Street are still there, as the blue haired ladies follow poets into the ground.
When PG finished reading Mr. Dickey, he put a teal postit in the book, where the poem stood. PG looked up, and the graveyard seemed different. Maybe the sun had sank a bit in the sky, and maybe the poem had changed PG in a way he could not put into words. Maybe another poem was the answer. Take the glasses off, open the book at random, and turn the pages until a poem shows up.
On page 404…the historic Atlanta area code…was “The Wartime Journey” by Jan Struther. The 1944 work was unknown territory. A group of people are traveling on a train. The wounded vet, the untried recruit, the salesmen shared the space with a lady, taking a baby for her soldier husband to meet. The theme of the rhymes was that America was totally at war, and that war is different from peacetime. Today’s war in Babylon is not like that.
Halfway through the reading, a freight train pulled by. Today, passenger trains are a novelty, and freight rules the rails. The shipment today was double decked containers, ready to pull off and slap on an eighteen wheeler.
Deaths are said to come in threes, and reading poetry in a graveyard should be the same. PG went on a random search for a Moe, to go with the Curley and Larry already digested. A page of poems by Emily Dickinson was the result. These pages left PG unmoved. It was as if he was back in the sixth grade, with a horrible English teacher forcing him to memorize Hiawatha. It was time to go home.
Kiss Me
PG recently got two emails from a friend. One of them is serious. It is up to the reader to tell which is which. This was written like Rudyard Kipling.
Why keep Aspirin by your bedside? It’s about Heart Attacks – There are other symptoms of a heart attack, besides the pain on the left arm. One must also be aware of an intense pain on the chin, as well as nausea and lots of sweating; however, these symptoms may also occur less frequently. Note: There may be NO pain in the chest during a heart attack.
Most heart attacks occur in the day, generally between 6 A.M. and noon. Having one during the night, when the heart should be most at rest, means that something unusual happened. The majority of people (about 60%) who had a heart attack during their sleep did not wake up. However, if it occurs, the chest pain may wake you up from your deep sleep.
If that happens, immediately dissolve two aspirins in your mouth and swallow them with a bit of water. Afterwards: Call 911. Phone a neighbor or a family member who lives very close by. – Say “heart attack!” Say that you have taken 2 Aspirins. Take a seat on a chair or sofa near the front door, and wait for their arrival and …DO NOT LIE DOWN!
If you take an aspirin or a baby aspirin once a day, take it at night. The reason: Aspirin has a 24-hour “half-life”; therefore, if most heart attacks happen in the wee hours of the morning, the Aspirin would be strongest in your system. Aspirin lasts a really long time in your medicine chest for years, (when it gets old, it smells like vinegar). Bayer is making crystal aspirin to dissolve instantly on the tongue. They work much faster than the tablets.
A Cardiologist has stated that if each person after receiving this e-mail, sends it to 10 people, probably one life could be saved! I have already shared this information. What about you? Do forward this message. It may save lives!
A guy is 72 years old and loves to fish. He was sitting in his boat the other day when he heard a voice say, ‘Pick me up.’ He looked around and couldn’t see anyone. He thought he was dreaming when he heard the voice say again, ‘Pick me up.’
He looked in the water and there, floating on the top, was a frog.The man said, ‘Are you talking to me?
The frog said, ‘Yes, I’m talking to you. Pick me up, then kiss me and I’ll turn into the most beautiful woman you have ever seen. I’ll make sure that all your friends are envious and jealous, because I will be your bride!’
The man looked at the frog for a short time, reached over, picked it up, and placed it in his shirt pocket.
The frog said, “Didn’t you hear what I said? I said, “Kiss me, and I will be your beautiful bride.”‘
He opened his pocket, looked at the frog and said, ‘Nah. At my age, I’d rather have a talking frog.’
Defender
A fbf posted a link: “I am a Community Activist. What kind of Social Advocate are you?” PG is a subtractvocate. The link refers to an online test from McKinsey & Company. It is adapted from a 2009 report, Activists, Pundits, and Quiet Followers: Engaging the public in social issues.
The first question is a statement. You have six choices, ranging from disagree strongly to agree strongly. “I would be willing to lead a public debate on a social issue I’m interested in.” That is as appealing as root canal without Novocaine. Strongly disagree. PG does not want to have to kill anyone.
The second statement is “We are in this world to help others no matter how far away we are.” This is an idea that sounds good, until you do the due dilgence. Many people who try to help you help others are either incompetent or crooked. There is also the “are in this world” riff. Human beings are animals, with the goal of surviving long enough to continue the species. Disagree.
The same six options are available for all ten statements. This probably makes for easy number crunching when the survey is complete. It does not allow for nuanced answers. Here are the other eight statements, and the PG score.
I am most interested in issues that have affected me at a personal level.
It is my responsibility to find ways to help others who haven’t had the opportunities I’ve had.
When it comes to issues I care about, I won’t hesitate to take the lead.
I only engage in conversations about social issues with people I already know.
I concentrate my energy in helping my local community first.
I am very careful when choosing who I talk to about social issues.
I prefer to support social issues from home (e.g., blogging, emailing) instead of at public events.
There is not much that someone like me can do to help solve issues like world hunger or poverty.
The quiz statements are very fond of first person. Eight of the ten statements contain the word “I”, or verb contractions starting with “I”. One of the non I sentences uses the word “me”. The other non I sentence uses “we” twice.
Congratulations, you are a: Defender. This was written like David Foster Wallace
Chamblee54 
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