Chamblee54

PG was going to write about some depressing subject. People that are not kind to each other. People in Israel and people in Gaza just don’t seem to get along. Somebody driving a “faded red F-150 pickup truck” in Livonia MI was mean to a little girl. (HT to Neo Prodigy.) This is a repost.
There is a saying, “if a story seems too bad to be true, it probably isn’t”. PG tried to google that phrase, and got confused. Then he seemed to remember reading it in a column by Molly Ivins. Another google adventure, and there was this film. Miss Ivins, who met her maker January 31, 2007, was promoting a book. She sat down with a bald headed man to talk about it. PG could only listen to 24:30 of this video before being seized with the urge to write a story. There is a transcript, which makes “borrowing” so much easier. This film has 34 minutes to go, which just might yield another story or two.
Molly Ivins was a Texas woman. These days there is a lot of talk about Texas, with Governor Big Hair aiming to be the next POTUS. Mr. Perry claims that his record as Texas Governor qualifies him to have his finger on the nuclear trigger. Miss Ivins repeats something that PG has heard before… “in our state we have the weak governor system, so that really not a great deal is required of the governor, not necessarily to know much or do much. And we’ve had a lot of governors who did neither. “ It makes you wonder how much of that “economic miracle” is because of hair spray.
Texas politics makes about as much sense as Georgia politics. For a lady, with a way with words, it is a gold mine. “the need you have for descriptive terms for stupid when you write about Texas politics is practically infinite. Now I’m not claiming that our state Legislature is dumber than the average state Legislature, but it tends to be dumb in such an outstanding way. It’s, again, that Texas quality of exaggeration and being slightly larger than life. And there are a fair number of people in the Texas Legislature of whom it could fairly be said, `If dumb was dirt, they would cover about an acre.’ And I’m not necessarily opposed to that. I’m–agree with an old state senator who always said that, `If you took all the fools out of the Legislature, it would not be a representative body anymore.'”
We could go through this conversation for a long time, but you probably want to skip ahead and look at pictures. ( Which are from The Library of Congress ) There is one story in this transcript that is too good not to borrow. For some reason, Molly Ivins went to work for The New York Times, aka the gray lady. In August of 1977, she was in the right place at the right time.

Mr. LAMB: And how long did you spend with The New York Times as a reporter?
Ms. IVINS: Six years with The New York Times. Some of it in New York as a political reporter at City Hall in Albany and then later as bureau chief out in the Rocky Mountains.
Mr. LAMB: Would you take a little time and tell us about reporting on the funeral of Elvis Presley?
Ms. IVINS: Oh, now there is something that when I’ve been standing in the checkout line at the grocery store and if I really need to impress people, I just let fall that I covered Elvis’ funeral. And, boy, people just practically draw back with awe. It may yet turn out to be my greatest claim to fame.
I was sitting in The New York City Times one day when I noticed a whole no–knot of editors up around the desk having a–a great scrum of concern, you could tell. It looked sort of like an anthill that had just been stepped on. And it turns out–The New York Times has a large obituary desk, and they prepare obituaries for anybody of prominence who might croak. But it turns out–you may recall that Elvis Presley died untimely and they were completely unprepared.
Now this is an enormous news organization. They have rock music critics and classical music critics and opera critics, but they didn’t have anybody who knew about Elvis Presley’s kind of music. So they’re lookin’ across a whole acre of reporters, and you could see them decide, `Ah-ha, Ivins. She talks funny. She’ll know about Mr. Presley.’
So I wound up writing Elvis’ obituary for The New York Times. I had to refer to him throughout as Mr. Presley. It was agonizing. That’s the style at The New York Times–Mr. Presley. Give me a break. And the next day they sold more newspapers than they did after John Kennedy was assassinated, so that even the editors of The New York Times, who had not quite, you know, been culturally aton–tuned to Elvis, decided that we should send someone to report on the funeral. And I drew that assignment. What a scene it was.
Mr. LAMB: You–you say in the book that you got in the cab and you said, `Take me to Graceland.’ The cabbie peels out of the airport doing 80 and then turns full around to the backseat and drawls, `Ain’t it a shame Elvis had to die while the Shriners are in town?’
Ms. IVINS: That’s exactly what he said. `Shame Elvis had to die while the Shriners are in town.’ And I kind of raised by eyebrows. And sure enough, I realized what he–what he meant after I had been there for awhile because, you know, Shriners in convention–I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a whole lot of Shriners in convention, but they were having a huge national convention that very week in Memphis. And they tend to wear their little red fezzes, and sometimes they drink too much and they march around the hotel hallways tooting on New Year’s Eve horns and riding those funny little tricycles and generally cutting up and having a good time. That’s your Shriners in convention, always something very edifying and enjoyable to watch. But they–every–every hotel room in Memphis was occupied with celebrating Shriners, and then Elvis dies and all these tens of thousands of grieving, hysterical Elvis Presley fans descend on the town.
So you got a whole bunch of sobbing, hysterical Elvis fans, you got a whole bunch of cavorting Shriners. And on top of that they were holding a cheerleading camp. And the cheerleading camp–I don’t know if your memory–with the ethos of the cheerleading camp, but the deal is that every school sends its team–team of cheerleaders to cheerleading camp.
And your effort there at the camp is to win the spirit stick, which looks, to the uninitiated eye, a whole lot like a broom handle painted red, white and blue. But it is the spirit stick. And should your team win it for three days running, you get to keep it. But that has never happened. And the way you earn the spirit stick is you show most spirit. You cheer for breakfast, lunch and dinner. You cheer when the pizza man brings the pizza. You do handsprings end over end down the hallway to the bathroom. I tell you, those young people will throw–show an amount of spirit that would just astonish you in an effort to win that stick.
So here I was for an entire week, dealing with these three groups of people: the young cheerleaders trying to win the spirit stick, the cavorting Shriners and the grieving, hysterical Elvis fans. And I want to assure you that The New York Times is not the kind of newspaper that will let you write about that kind of rich human comedy.
Mr. LAMB: Why?
Ms. IVINS: Because The New York Times, at least in my day, was a very stuffy, pompous newspaper.
Mr. LAMB: What about today?
Ms. IVINS: A little bit better, little bit better than it was.
Mr. LAMB: And…
Ms. IVINS: Has–has–it has a tendency, recidivist tendencies, though. You–you will notice if you read The Times, it–it collapses into pomposity and stuffiness with some regularity.
Mr. LAMB: Why did you leave it?
Ms. IVINS: Well, I–I actually got into trouble at The New York City Times for describing a community chu–chicken killing out West as a gang pluck. Abe Rosenthal was then the editor of the Times and he was not amused.
Mr. LAMB: Did–but did they let it go? Did they let it…
Ms. IVINS: Oh, no. It never made it in the paper. Good heavens, no. Such a thing would never get in The Times in my day.
POSTSCRIPT PG found some pictures, marked up the text, and was ready to post the story. He decided to listen to a bit more of the discussion between Molly Ivins and the bald headed man. When he got to this point, it became apparent that he could listen to Molly Ivins talk, or he could post his story, but he could not do both at the same time.
Ms. IVINS: Oh, well, of course, I’m gonna make fun of it. I mean, Berkeley, California, if you are from Texas, is just hilarious.
Mr. LAMB: Why?
Ms. IVINS: Well, of course, it is just the absolute center of liberalism and political correctness. And it is a veritable hotbed of people, of–bless their hearts, who all think alike, in a liberal way. And, of course, I’m sometimes called a liberal myself, and you would think I would have felt right at home there. But I just am so used to–I’m so used to Texas that I found the culture at Berkeley hysterical.

One year, I decided to buy my mother-in-law a cemetery plot as a Christmas gift… The next year, I didn’t buy her a gift. When she asked me why, I replied, “Well, you still haven’t used the gift I bought you last year!”
My wife and I were watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire while we were in bed. I turned to her and said, ‘Do you want to have Sex?’ ‘No,’ she answered. I then said, ‘Is that your final answer?’ She didn’t even look at me this time, simply saying, ‘Yes..’ So I said, “Then I’d like to phone a friend.”
I took my wife to a restaurant.The waiter, for some reason, took my order first. “I’ll have the rump steak, rare, please.” He said, “Aren’t you worried about the mad cow?” “Nah, she can order for herself.”
My wife sat down next to me as I was flipping channels. She asked, “What’s on TV?” I said, “Dust.”
My wife was hinting about what she wanted for our upcoming anniversary. She said, “I want something shiny that goes from 0 to 150 in about 3 seconds .” I bought her a bathroom scale.
My wife and I were sitting at a table at her high school reunion, and she kept staring at a drunken man swigging his drink as he sat alone at a nearby table. I asked her, “Do you know him?” “Yes”, she sighed, “He’s my old boyfriend…. I understand he took to drinking right after we split up those many years ago and I hear he hasn’t been sober since.” “My God!” I said, “Who would think a person could go on celebrating that long?”
When our lawn mower broke and wouldn’t run, my wife kept hinting to me that I should get it fixed. But, somehow I always had something else to take care of first, the shed, the boat, making beer. It was always something more important to me. Finally she thought of a clever way to make her point. When I arrived home one day, I found her seated in the tall grass, busily snipping away with a tiny pair of sewing scissors. I watched silently for a short time and then went into the house… When I came out again I handed her a toothbrush. I said, “When you finish cutting the grass, you might as well sweep the driveway.” The doctors say I will walk again, but I will always have a limp.
Saturday morning I got up early, quietly dressed, made my lunch and slipped quietly into the garage. I hooked up the boat up to the van and proceeded to back out into a torrential downpour. The wind was blowing 50 mph, so I pulled back into the garage, turned on the radio and then I discovered that the weather would be bad all day. I went back into the house, quietly undressed and slipped back into bed.. I cuddled up to my wife’s back, now with a different anticipation and whispered, “The weather out there is terrible.” My loving wife of 5 years replied, “And, can you believe my stupid husband is out fishing in that?”
After retiring, I went to the Social Security office to apply for Social Security. The woman behind the counter asked me for my driver’s License to verify my age. I looked in my pockets and realized I had left my wallet at home. I told the woman that I was very sorry, but I would have to go home and come back later. The woman said, ‘Unbutton your shirt’. So I opened my shirt revealing my curly silver hair. She said, ‘That silver hair on your chest is proof enough for me’ and she processed my Social Security application. When I got home, I excitedly told my wife about my experience at the Social Security office… She said, ‘You should have dropped your pants. You might have gotten disability, too.’
These human interest stories are borrowed from Expressing Myself. Pictures for this entertainment are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”

This is part five of an appreciation of Catch 22. Parts one, two, three, four, six, and seven precede it.
XXV The Chaplain This is another existential quandary chapter. There is not a lot of action. The saving grace is that it makes fun of religion.
Chaplain Tappman is seen as a pathetic source of ridicule. The other men do not think he is wonderful, which always makes professional Jesus worshipers uncomfortable. Chaplain T is also having weird ideas. He sees a naked Yossarian in a tree during the memorial service for Snowdon, and thinks it is a vision. This is sort of like that lady in Rockdale county who kept having the Virgin Mary visit her. However, no one is under the impression that Yossarian is a virgin, or that he is the mother of Jesus.
So the Chaplain mopes about his uselessness, and decides to go see Major Major, who never sees anyone. The Chaplain takes a sneaky route back to his tent. He finds a man living in the woods. Flume is there because he thinks his tentmate is going to kill him.
After another humiliating encounter with tentmate Whitcomb, whose rank keeps changing, the Chaplain goes to see Colonel Cathcart. The Colonel is in no mood to talk to the Chaplain, and says the flyers are going to go to Avignon again so they can get some casualties.
One of the online cheat sheets has a good quote. “Complex questions of ontology perplex him, but “they never [seem] nearly as crucial to him as the question of kindness and good manners.” PG had never encountered the phrase ontology before. It seems to have something to do with existential questions about the nature of G-d and man. If you change the t to a c, you get oncology. This is the branch of medicine dealing with the treatment of cancer. As one practitioner said, it is the branch of medicine that no one makes jokes about.
With a c, you get oncology. This is the war against runaway cell growth, where the treatment is often treacherous and debilitating. The treatment is said to be as bad as the disease, which is saying something for a fatal malady. With a t, you get ontology. This is where you ask questions that no one really knows the answer to, although many make the claim. Instead of runaway cell growth, you have runaway rhetoric. One chemotherapeutic protocol for ontology is substantial applications of alcohol, which can make the disease worse, can make you puke, but will usually not make your hair fall out. At least there are no insurance hassles.
XXVI Aarfy Aarfy is really named aardvark, although it is unlikely that is on his driver’s license. He should be first on any list of characters, except that the online cheat sheets don’t list the characters alphabetically. In a story like this, there are a lot of characters. It is tough for a simple minded southerner like PG to keep up, and tools are needed.
In this chapter, Dunbar plays a key role. PG seemed to remember good things about him, but could not be sure. The first list of characters does not mention him. This is frustrating, since it is not alphabetized, and you have to go through the entire thing to see that Dunbar is not there.
Another character list does show something:Dunbar – A friend of Yossarian and the only other person who seems to understand that there is a war going on. Dunbar has decided to live as long as possible by making time pass as slowly as possible, so he treasures boredom and discomfort.”
There is some action in this chapter, and Aarfy is a key player. In the first part, Aarfy, Nately, and Yossarian are in a building in Rome. Nately confesses his love for a whore, and is ridiculed by Aarfy. Later, there is a mission, where Aarfy’s incompetence leads the plane into enemy fire. Yossarian is hit in the leg by flak, and winds up in the hospital.
When Yossarian tries to get out of bed, Nurse Cramer asks if he wants to lose his leg. “It’s my leg””It’s certainly not your leg. That leg belongs to the U.S. Government. It’s no different than a gear or a bedpan. The army has invested a lot of money to make you an airplane pilot, and you’ve no right to disobey the doctor’s orders.”
XXVII Nurse Duckett Sometimes you have to stop dilly dallying and finish the job at hand. This series on Catch 22 has gone on since June, and has three more parts to go.
When PG decided to do a series on Yossarian, it was using two good eyes. A couple of weeks into July, there was an extra sensitivity to bright white light. When the right eye was covered, the left eye was a mass of blurred vision. Action needed to be taken. Research was done about ophthalmologists, insurance coverage was secured, and an appointment was made.
The first appointment revealed a broken blood vessel in the eye. The fancy name is branch retinal vein occlusion. The doctor lectured PG on the need for a medical exam, to determine the cause of this spillage. On the way home, PG made an appointment for a physical.
When the nurse takes your blood pressure, makes a face, and decides to take a reading from your other arm, that is not a good sign. Yes, the blood work came out fine, and hypertension is a less severe problem than diabetes or hiv. Clearly, some lifestyle changes were in order.
The second visit to the eye clinic was horrible. The nurse told PG that the dilation drops were going to be strong, and that his eyes would be dilated the next day when he woke up. Then, the retina specialist had to deal with an emergency, and PG had to wait, with compromised eyes, for what seemed like forever.
When PG got to see the retina specialist, there was a new name for the condition. Cystoid Macular Edema is not an improvement. The doctor said that she could not start treatment with the blood pressure as high as it was. The treatment she proposed was an intraocular injection of a cancer drug. An appointment was made for four weeks in the future.
On the way home from the eye clinic, PG stopped at the office of the other primary care dude. He was out of the office for two more days. PG sent an email explaining his situation, and the primary care dude called in a prescription for amlodipine.
PG had started to decipher the proposed diet, and made an effort to follow it. When you are skinny growing up, you get into the habit of trying to gain weight. Then you get older, and develop a pot belly. The concept of thinking about what to eat is new to PG, but he is trying.
The blood pressure readings began to improve. Better yet, the blurring in the left eye is improving. The next appointment at the eye clinic is the day after labor day. PG is hoping that an intraocular injection of a cancer drug will not be needed.
Ok, back to Yossarian. This chapter starts out with him in the hospital, taking liberties with a nurse. There is trouble, and a shrink is called in. The head doctor is crazier than Yossarian.
There is a tradition on english tests. You are given a quote, and you have to explain it. There are two wiki worthy quotes for chapter XXVII.
“Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that in your promiscuous pursuit of women you are merely trying to assuage your subconscious fears of sexual impotence?” “Yes, sir, it has.” “Then why do you do it?” “To assuage my fears of sexual impotence.” This is an exchange between the shrink and Yossarian.
BTW, not all therapists, or other rapists, appreciate being called shrink. One such person said to PG “I am not a shrinker, I am a grower”. He did not charge PG for that.
The last paragraph has a fun bit of wordplay. It has long been known that if you put a space three letters into therapist that you get the rapist. PG tried to make a joke about this, and said or other rapist. When he saw those letters on the screen, he realized that the, and or, is an anagram for other. Therapist spelled backwards is tsipareht. This will inhibit palindromic applications of this word.
“You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. You’re dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot!” Major Sanderson, the shrink, says this to Yossarian. This is another example of the satire in this book. It is not as heavy handed here as elsewhere, and consequently is more enjoyable. Satire can tire is applied without fire.
XXVIII Dobbs When PG was in sixth grade, a popular insult was Dob. Since it was a verbal insult, no one knew whether it had one bee or two. Hamlet said something about two bees or not two bees.
It turns out the special education teacher at Cross Keys was named Beatrice Dobbins. She was morbidly obese. The special ed students were called dobs. This tidbit of knowledge made its way to the sixth grade at Ashford Park.
The character Dobbs wants Yossarian to help him kill Colonel Cathcart. In this chapter, Yossarian agrees to help. Dobbs is now unwilling to kill the Colonel. Opportunity is a funny thing, as are most things with tuna in the middle.
This chapter is really about Orr, who is Yossarian’s tentmate. Orr is a tinkerer, which upsets Yossarian while it is going on. In later chapters, Yossarian will reap the benefits of Orr’s tinkering.
This is the last chapter that Orr appears in. He is flying a mission, and his plane goes into water. All the other men are in one lifeboat, and it is rescued. Somehow, the boat with Orr is never rescued.
There is a curious bit of cultural anthropology here. The life jackets the men carried were called Mae Wests. There was a movie star at that time who used that name. She had big boobs, which were probably real. There were rumors that Mae West was a man in drag. Miss West made a movie with W.C. Fields, where he was drunk all the time, and they had to shoot the movie around him.
There was a plane crash, and when the men tried to use the Mae Wests, they did not work. The MWs had a CO2 canister, which made them inflate. MiloHamilton Minderbinder borrowed these canisters to make whipped cream. There were no other comments about the syndicate in this chapter.
The Orr who perishes in this chapter had a double r last name. If you add Orr to the, you will get a nonsense word. Do not try this when on a Scrabble board.
There was a football player named Jimmy Orr. He caught passes from Johnny Unitas. Mr. Orr, with a double r, had a nightclub in the Peachtree Battle shopping center called “Jimmy Orr’s End Zone”.
In Super Bowl III, the Baltimore Colts tried a trick play called a flea flicker, The quarterback gives the ball to a running back, who tosses it back to the quarterback. Jimmy Orr was by himself in the end zone, and the quarterback threw an interception. This was the year Joe Namath, and the New York Jets, won the Super Bowl. They had no business winning, but they did. People who suspect that the Super Bowl is rigged point to this game as the first obvious example.
XXIX Peckum There is not much action in this chapter. Just of bunch of self important officers trying to impress each other. They all think they are succeeding, and that the others are failing. There is a synchronicity of stupidity.
When PG was at Redo Blue, he heard someone, named George, say “Frank thinks Phil is a fuckup”. The names have been changed to protect the guilty and the sensitive, even though it is unlikely that any of the three men involved will ever read this. It is not even certain that all three can read.
So, PG got to thinking about what George had said. You could take that statement, and insert blanks where the names are. _____ said that ____ thinks that ____ is a fuckup. You could take any of those three names, and insert it into any spot in the formula. All combinations of names would be true.
XXX Dunbar This chapter was made for the movies. There is a pilot named McWatt. He likes to fly low over people and scare them. At first, it is a harmless little habit. Then it annoys Yossarian so much that murder is contemplated.
Yossarian, it turns out, would rather make love than war. He starts to spend afternoons on the beach with Nurse Duckett. They both enjoy the company of the other.
While Yossarian and Nurse Duckett are making whoopee, the other men are swimming. One afternoon, McWatt decides to buzz the swimmers. Kid Sampson waves at him. For some reason, this distracts McWatt just enough to dip the plane a bit lower. Kid Sampson is cut in half. After McWatt sees what he has done, McWatt flies into a mountain.
Paywall capitalist bookrags has an interesting take: McWatt dips his wings in one final salute and flies into… (read more.)
Another facebooker contributes a bit of commodity wisdom: “Work isn’t to make money; you work to justify life.” ~ Marc Chagall
I think Chagall’s words speak to those who find passion in their work–or that their work sustains their passion. I am privileged to be in that class of folks, but on this labor day I am mindful of those who work to survive and in doing so often find themselves endangered by the exploitation and greed of others.
There is a little bit of… there is a great word that describes this phenomenon that PG cannot remember … commodity wisdom that usually annoys PG. It sounds so good, is a clever turn of words, but is totally without meaning when you think about it. The platitude is “I work to live, I don’t live to work.”
The word is sophistry.
Does your heart stop beating when you go to work? We all know people whose brain ceases to function on the clock, but they continue to breathe. Often, when they exhale, these people make obnoxious noise, which is also part of being alive. The thing is, when you are at work, you are alive.
Work is a part of life. When you are a living human critter, you are going to do things that you don’t enjoy. But you do them because you have to. When PG is editing this, he will try to think of a good analogy for this silly saying. But don’t bet on it. This has gone on too long, and part five is finally, mercifully, finished. Pictures are by The Library of Congress. This was written like Dan Brown.

Once upon a time, there was a writer named Edward Bulwer-Lytton. While some of his product is acceptable, Lord Lytton is responsible for the opening line “It was a dark and stormy night”. Years after his timely demise, an English professor, at San Jose State University, chose to name a contest for bad writing after Lord Lytton. Scott Rice recently overcame his embarrassment to announce the selections of the 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.
PG has written about BLFC before. The announcement of a new crop of perps is a good excuse for text to go between the pictures. These pictures today are courtesy of “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. This post is written in the style of Margaret Mitchell. After the 4800 word clunkathon published yesterday, the contest selections will be edited. If you want to see it raw and uncut, go here.
A special category, neglected by the Grand Panjandrum, is the funny names that some of the typists own. The use of pseudonyms has a long, cherished history. Some could benefit from using a pen name. Leah Sitkoff, New York, NY, Amy Torchinsky, Greensboro, NC, D. M. Dunn, Bloomington, IN, Emma DeZordi, Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Quebec, Mark Wisnewski, Flanders, NJ, Jeff Coleburn, West Chester, PA, Guy Foisy, Orleans, Ontario, Leslie Craven, Hataitai, New Zealand, Jon Maddalena, Mesick, MI.
There is a writer from Atlanta GA this year. This piece would be included even is it was not geographically advantaged. ~ ~ Ronald left this world as he entered it: on a frigid winter night, amid frantic screams and blood-soaked linens, while relatives stood nearby and muttered furious promises to find and punish the man responsible. — Rebecca Oas, Atlanta, GA
The official first place this year (somehow, it doesn’t seem right to say winner) is from England. This might say more about the contest judges than they realize. ~ ~ As he told her that he loved her she gazed into his eyes, wondering, as she noted the infestation of eyelash mites, the tiny deodicids burrowing into his follicles to eat the greasy sebum therein, each female laying up to 25 eggs in a single follicle, causing inflammation, whether the eyes are truly the windows of the soul; and, if so, his soul needed regrouting.
Cathy Bryant, Manchester, England
And the world turns. Here are the rest of the entries that PG was amused by. There is at least one more bad writing contest, Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award. They don’t announce the results until December, so you can relax.
As an ornithologist, George was fascinated by the fact that urine and feces mix in birds’ rectums to form a unified, homogeneous slurry that is expelled through defecation, although eying Greta’s face, and sensing the reaction of the congregation, he immediately realized he should have used a different analogy to describe their relationship in his wedding vows. — David Pepper, Hermosa Beach, CA
The shallow cave behind the mighty river’s thundering waterfall seemed more like a damp, cold, misty, poorly lit hallway leading from the shower room in some cheap-dive gym under the Elevated train where mugs who couldn’t crack the glass jaw of some washed-up palooka on their best sober day still deluded themselves that they could be somebody; and yet, Bill thought, “at least it’s got runnin’ water.” Warren Blair, Ashburn, VA
She slinked through my door wearing a dress that looked like it had been painted on … not with good paint, like Behr or Sherwin-Williams, but with that watered-down stuff that bubbles up right away if you don’t prime the surface before you slap it on, and – just like that cheap paint – the dress needed two more coats to cover her. — Sue Fondrie, Appleton, WI
Inspector Murphy stood up when he saw me, then looked down at the lifeless body, crumpled like a forlorn Snicker’s candy wrapper, and after a knowing glance at Detective Wilson pointed to the darkening crimson pool spreading from the stiff’s shattered noggin, and said, “You settle it, Gibson; does that puddle look more like a duck or a cow?” — Carl Stich, Mariemont, Ohio
The blood seeped out of the body like bad peach juice from a peach that had been left on one side so long the bottom became rotten while it still looked fine on the top but had started to attract fruit flies, and this had the same effect, but with regular flies, that is not say there weren’t some fruit flies around because, after all, this was Miami. — Howard Eugene Whitright, Seal Beach, CA
Primum non nocere, from the Latin for “first, do no harm,” one of the principal tenets of the Hippocratic oath taken by physicians, was far from David’s mind (as he strode, sling in hand, to face Goliath) in part because Hippocrates was born about 100 years after David, in part because David wasn’t even a physician, but mainly because David wanted to kill the sucker.
David Larson, San Francisco, CA
William, his senses roused by a warm fetid breeze, hoped it was an early spring’s equinoxal thaw causing rivers to swell like the blood-engorged gumlines of gingivitis, loosening winter’s plaque, exposing decay, and allowing the seasonal pot-pouris of Mother Nature’s morning breath to permeate the surrounding ether, but then he awoke to the unrelenting waves of his wife’s halitosis.
Guy Foisy, Orleans, Ontario
“I’ll never get over him,” she said to herself and the truth of that statement settled into her brain the way glitter settles on to a plastic landscape in a Christmas snow globe when she accepted the fact that she was trapped in bed between her half-ton boyfriend and the wall when he rolled over on to her nightgown and passed out, leaving her no way to climb out. — Karen Hamilton, Seabrook, TX
Tucked in a dim corner of The Ample Bounty Bar & Grille, Alice welcomed the fervent touch of the mysterious stranger’s experienced hands because she had not been this close with a man in an achingly long time and, quivering breathlessly, began to think that this could be the beginning of something real, something forever, and not just a one-time encounter with a good Samaritan who was skilled at the Heimlich Maneuver. — Mark Wisnewski, Flanders, NJ
Their love began as a tailor, quickly measuring the nooks and crannies of their personalities, but it soon became the seamstress of subterfuge, each of them aware of the others lingual haberdashery: Mindy trying to create a perfectly suited garment to display in public and Stan only concerned with the inseam. — D. M. Dunn, Bloomington, IN
Though they were merely strangers on a train, as she looked North by Northwest though the rear window, Marnie knew beyond a shadow of a doubt the trouble with Harry was that he was a psycho – his left and right hand middle fingers (formerly extended in the birds position) were menacingly twisting a rope in the form of a noose; certain of her impending death as surely as she could dial M for Murder, she was overcome by intense vertigo. — Amy Torchinsky, Greensboro, NC
Professor Lemieux had anticipated that his latest paper would be received with skepticism within the small, fractious circle of professional cosmologists, few of whom were prepared to accept his hypothesis that our universe had been created in a marijuana-induced industrial accident by insectoid aliens; nevertheless, he was stung when Hawking airily dismissed it as the Bug Bong Theory.
Alan Follett, Hercules, CA
Milton’s quest for the love of Ms. Bradley was a risk but no sorry trivial pursuit yet he hadn’t a clue why she had a monopoly on his heart’s desires – in fact, it boggled his mind and caused him great aggravation because, in his checkered and troubled careers, he had always scrabbled hard and it drove him bonkers that she considered life just a game. — Linda Boatright, Omaha, NE
Her skin was like flocked wallpaper and her eyes had seen better days, but when her bloodless lips murmured “Hi, Sailor,” my heart melted from the inside out like one of those chocolate-covered ice cream bars on a summer day that runs down your arm and gets all over your new shirt.
James Macdonald, Vancouver, B.C.
The syncopated sound of the single-cylinder steam motor, designed by Mier Vander, reminded Mier of the time his father took him to the Mollen Bros travelling circus to see the “Corpulent Lady” and to sit upon her lap immediately following her lunch of sauerbraten and ale. — Jim Tierney, Murrieta, CA

This is part four of a homage to Catch 22. Parts one, two, three five, six, and seven are also available. Pictures are by Chamblee54, and have nothing to do with the text. The quoted text was copied off Wikiqotes.
XIX Colonel Cathcart This chapter centers on Colonel Cathcart, as you may have guessed. It starts out with a personality sketch, complete with raging ego and a cigarette holder. This was Mr. Roosevelt’s war, and he was well known for his cigarette holder.
It just shows how the standards of discourse change. The press never reported on Mr. Roosevelt’s disability, and many people did not know that he used a wheel chair. On the other hand, the cigarette holder was a part of his image. It is not known if he ever smoked marijuana in that cigarette holder. Moving on to today, BHO has every jot and tittle of his life open to public consumption, with the exception of his nicotine addiction. Yes, BHO does smoke, but you never see a photograph of it.
After a while, the Colonel has a discussion with the Chaplain. It seems the Colonel wants to have a prayer before missions. Not just any prayer… “Haven’t you got anything humorous that stays away from . . . G-d? I’d like to keep away from the subject of religion altogether if we can.” The chaplain hems and haws, and the Colonel talks himself out of the idea of pre mission prayer.
One of the online cheat sheets has a link to an uplifting feature, “The 5 All-Time Grossest Bug Stories.” Since your time is valuable, we will only repeat number two.
2. “Ants in the Beehive” The story goes that, back in the 1960s, a stylish girl was primping herself for the following day at school. The hairstyle that was popular at the time was The Beehive (which if you’re not familiar, is an outrageously tall, poofy ‘do that’s shaped just the way it sounds) and she would commonly go to great lengths to achieve this look. Well one evening she decided to wash her hair in sugar water so it could harden just the way she wanted. She awoke suddenly in the early morning with a strange, tingling sensation. Sensing something was wrong she arose and as her head tilted upwards, hundred of huge CARPENTER ANTS began spilling from her hair and onto her nightgown!
This story has several variations. The first one PG heard involved a high school girl with big hair. Apparently, she never washed this hair, but just added a layer of hair spray every morning. One day, she passed out in class, and slumped over in her desk. The hairdo cracked open, and a flood of insects and rodents poured out of her hairdo.
Apparently, sometimes it happens to boys. . There’s this guy who you might have seen walking around town with two huge dreadlocks, one on each side of his head. One day he decides to get them cut off. So he’s off to the hair dresser, and of course they can’t get the clippers through his hair, so out come the biggest pair of scissors you’ve ever seen. They start to hack into one of the dreads and get about halfway through when he starts screaming and runs out of the shop. His girlfriend finds him dead in their flat the next day. The coroner found that a nest of red-backed spiders had moved into his hair and started biting him when the scissors cut the nest to bits.
XX Corporal Whitcomb The chaplain lives in a tent, away from the busy parts of the base. His roommate is Corporal Whitcomb, who hates the chaplain. The Corporal plays mind games with the Chaplain in this chapter, and wins effortlessly.
The chaplain had “failed miserably, had choked up once again in the face of opposition from a stronger personality. It was a familiar, ignominious experience, and his opinion of himself was low.”
Catch 22 is revered. But, in the age of Amazon, there are going to be those who disagree. Actually, there have always been the nay sayers, but they keep quiet. It is no fun to be the kid at the emperors parade … people will think you lack fashion sense. But now, the one star reviewers are out in the open.
OUCH!!! Glad I didn’t pay full price!!! March 25, 2012 Jerome Fuller
I bought this book because of all the “good” reviews it recieved. I am always interested when an author’s work trancends it own era, there by being relevant at anytime in the future. However, this is not one of those. Aside from the obsurd and unbelievable situation Yosarrian is in, the book was, in a word….MONOTONOUS! It is not the amount of characters, nor the repetative back story of each character that Heller takes every opportunity tell us, but it is more the repetive, cliche’ discussions that yossarian has with just about every character he come across. It goes like this, “Your crazy. No I am not. Maybe I am. Maybe you are too becuase you are here and you think I am crazy. Oh yeah, maybe I am crazy too, blah blah blah.” I really wish I would have spent the money on cookbook instead, or really anything other than this. If you can find this book at a garage sale, do not pay more than a quarter for it. But..If you like unbelievable war stories, long drawn out repetative character back stories, shallow dialog, and no real point, then this book is for you!
Am I the only one that hated this book?
September 22, 2000 “okwoodworker” (Owasso, OK USA)
Pathetic. I forced myself to finish this book because it was heralded as “one of the greatest novels of the century.” I found it an amazing chore to trudge through page after page of absurd, repetitive babble, replete with needless descriptions of depraved immorality. If the point is that government/military institutions are insanely inefficient and bureaucratic, ok. I got that in the first 100 pages. Were the next 400 pages simply meant to illustrate that point — making me “experience” the absurdity?. I really can’t believe I read the whole thing. In all sincerity, I can not recommend this book.
The most overhyped book in the history of literature June 21, 2011 A Critic
Another important attribute of this hype is the hipster element of Heller’s title phrase. It seems to imply that someone who read the book is deeply philosophical or understands a truth not many know. This is not just my own imagination. In college, I knew a guy who having already read the book, brought it (on a plane, cross country) seemingly to display in his dorm room. Once, apropos of nothing, he picked it up and explained that it was his favorite book. Coincidently, he also happened to be a dandy who wore (I think) satin shirts. … This is the sort of book that you might hear people discuss at snobbish cocktail parties. If you get a third way it into and you are bored to tears, drop it like a brick, or better yet, avoid reading it all together.
When PG was at Redo Blue, there were people who were into conspicuous display of books. The Bully for Jesus would ride the train into town, and carry a bag, and a Bible. He wanted to be seen carrying a Bible. When he read it, his lips moved. After a while, a man was hired to be the digital imaging manager, or DIM. He saw the BFJ and his pet bible, and started to carry his own book around. His display item was a motivational book by Og Mandino. This book was carried around for about a year after the DIM went on the payroll.
In the story about Og Mandino, there is a lovely paragraph. … In the early nineties, PG talked to a lady from Soviet Georgia. She said something that makes more sense the more you think about it. “In our country, the government and the secret police run everything. In this country, the banks and the computers run everything.”
XXI General Dreedle This chapter is named for General Dreedle, even though his entourage, subordinates, and insubordinates have most of the action. It begins with the combustible Colonel Cathcart. He is in a tizzy about Yossarian. There is a list of good events and bad, and Yossarian seems to be in the middle of all the bad ones. There is a couple of quotes about this situation: ‘A moment ago there had been no Yossarians in his life; now they were multiplying like hobgoblins. He tried to make himself grow calm. Yossarian was not a common name; perhaps there were not really three Yossarians but only two Yossarians, or maybe even only one Yossarian – but that really made no difference! The colonel was still in grave peril. Intuition warned him that he was drawing close to some immense and inscrutable cosmic climax, and his broad, meaty, towering frame tingled from head to toe at the thought that Yossarian, whoever he would turn out to be, was destined to serve as his nemesis.”
“Colonel Cathcart was not superstitious, but he did believe in omens, and he sat right back down behind his desk and made a cryptic notation on his memorandum pad to look into the whole suspicious business of the Yossarians right away. He wrote his reminder to himself in a heavy and decisive hand, amplifying it sharply with a series of coded punctuation marks and underlining the whole message twice, so that it read: Yossarian! ! ! (?) ! … Yossarian – the very sight of the name made him shudder. There were so many esses in it. It just had to be subversive. It was like the word subversive itself. It was like seditious and insidious too, and like socialist, suspicious, fascist and Communist.”
The time warp of the book gets serious here. We learn of the time that Yossarian receives a medal with no clothes on. It seems like he flubbed a mission, caused a man to die, and to punish him received a medal and promotion. Since this happened in front of General Dreedle, Colonel Cathcart looked bad,
General Dreedle is another character study. He has his son in law, Colonel Moodus, working for him. They hate each other. There is also a nurse, who attends to the General’s manly needs. She attends the briefing, for the raid on Avignon … the one where Yossarian earned his medal … and causes a bit of a commotion. This aggressive moaning is silenced by General Dreedle. The rest of the briefing is conducted by showoff Colonel Korn, who thinks he is scoring points with the General. It turns out that Colonel Korn makes General Dreedle sick.
Looking at the tweets of a Jesus worshiper who will not allow PG to comment at his blog, there was a doozy of a story. It is about the phenomenon of people looking at pornography on laptops, and smart phones, in full view of Christians, small children, and dogs. There was a great quote. “Acquiring pornographic material once required taking a public action—buying a ticket to an X-rated theater, renting a tape from an “adult” video store, asking for a magazine kept behind a store counter—and having the boldness to overcome the shame involved. It should come as no surprise, then, that as our culture becomes more accepting of pornography, those who were already comfortable with smut become even less inhibited and immune to public shaming. What once was primarily a private sin has becomes a public plague. This soul-destroying sleaze has infested our nation, and many people who call themselves Christians have allowed it to happen. At most we turn a blind eye. But more often than not, believers are consuming pornography at the same rate as non-believers—and doing so without remorse. In an age when so many Christian men have succumbed, and when Christian women brag on Facebook about reading Fifty Shades of Grey, why are we shocked to find nonbelievers bringing filth into the public square?”
XXII Milo The Mayor Parking protest. Taking a stand. Monday, after the Olympics, 11 alive. SparkNotes is a cliffnoteclone site. They do have resources available for Catch 22. The problem is, they pay for this product by having auto start advertising. This means that when you click on their site, or go to another page, the video ad starts to play automatically. They must not think their readers are very smart. If you want to listen to the ad, it is very easy to click on the triangle, or the parallel lines. (PG can never remember which one is play, and which one is stop. In real life he sometimes gets those signals, for when to play and when to stop, confused.)
It should not be confusing that Channell 11 is using sneaky internet advertising. When PG was a kid, Channell 11 was third place in Atlanta TV. Channel 2 was owned by the fishwrapper, and had the same call letters as a powerhouse radio station. Channel 5 was the CBS station. Channell 11 was ABC, had a weak signal, and played trashy shows like Dialing for Dollars. Eventually Atlanta got big enough to support a slew of stations, Channell 11 switched to NBC, and the operation was a bit more classy. Chapter 22 should be special, but it is more clumsy satire. The first part is about the botched mission to Avignon, where Snowdon is killed. This is one of the turning points of the book. The book does not follow a one two three pattern, and events are referred to first, and then take place later. This mission is a big deal, because this is where Yossarian loses what mind he has. Some of Snowdon’s blood gets on Yossarian’s uniform, and Yossarian doesn’t want to wear clothes after that. This is part of the drama, and one of the reasons why the movie was rated R.
After the mission, or maybe before the mission, but definitely not during the mission, Yossarian is asked for permission to kill Colonel Cathcart. The blessing was denied. Apparently, when this book was written, the truism about forgiveness and permission had not been verbalized. While it does sound cynical, it really is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
Where chapter 22, of Catch 22, bogs down is the buying trip that Milo Minderbinder made. The story of Milo gets more and more tiresome. You want to scream, we get it, capitalism is a joke, lets have some real action. Instead, you have this quote repeated ad nauseum: “But I make a profit of three and a quarter cents an egg by selling them for four and a quarter cents an egg to the people in Malta I buy them from for seven cents an egg. Of course, I don’t make the profit. The syndicate makes the profit. And everybody has a share.”
XXIII Nately’s Old Man What if Catch 22 had been called Catch 23? This is a funny number. It is perhaps best known for the phrase 23 skidoo. The traditional meaning is “to leave quickly, especially before a situation deteriorates (archaic, origin unknown, popularized during 1920s)” Since the origins are murky, it is an opportunity to be creative. Some possible stories include : ” In Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities, Sidney Carton is No. 23 of a multitude executed by the guillotine. “In the last act of the theatrical adaptation, ‘The Only Way,’ an old woman sits at the foot of the guillotine, calmly counting heads as they are lopped off. The only recognition or dignity afforded Carton as he meets his fate is the old woman emotionlessly saying ‘twenty-three’ as he is beheaded. ‘Twenty-three’ quickly became a popular catchphrase among the theater community in the early twentieth century, often used to mean, ‘It’s time to leave while the getting is good.”- Who Put the Butter in Butterfly? by David Feldman, Harper & Row. ~~ 23-skidoo came from an expression that construction workers used while building the Flatiron Building on 23rd Street in N.Y.C. 23rd Street is one of the wider streets in New York that is like an uninterrupted wind-tunnel between the East and Hudson Rivers. Frequently, when one is walking north or south on the avenues and comes to such an intersection, they can experience a sudden blast of wind as soon as the pass the wall of a corner building. Apparently, when the workers sat on the sidewalk to eat their lunches, they would watch women’s skirts blow up from the sudden gusts. ~~ The phrase originated in the Panimint Mountains in Death Valley in the early 1900s. The mining town of Skidoo had 23 saloons and if you were going to go get drunk you would try to get a drink at each of the saloons. This started the phrase of going 23 skidoo if you were going to have a good time. “
Getting back to Catch 22, this is one of the chapters that makes Milos meandering meaningful. Chapter 23 is tons of fun, just like some of the girls in a certain Italian apartment building. Nately takes a few of his buddies to the house where his prostigirlfriend lives. It turns into a wild scene, with naked people doing naked things in all directions. The exception to the fuckfest is a conversation between Nately and an old man. It is not known what language the chat takes place in, as it is unlikely that young Nately knew Italian, or that the geezer knew English.
The conversation is a gem. Nately believes all the nonsense he is told, and thinks he is smarter as a result. The old man has heard the same nonsense, and recognizes it for what it is. In any war, the first casualty is the truth. When you believe the propaganda of your government, you are signing your own death warrant. Wikiqotes documents part of the exchange.
“What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can’t all be worth dying for.” “Anything worth living for,” said Nately, “is worth dying for.” “And everything worth dying for,” answered the sacrilegious old man, “is certainly worth living for.”
“They are going to kill you if you don’t watch out, and I can see now that you are not going to watch out. Why don’t you use some sense and try to be more like me? You might live to be a hundred and seven, too.” “Because it’s better to die on one’s feet than live on one’s knees,” Nately retorted with triumphant and lofty conviction. “I guess you’ve heard that saying before.” “Yes, I certainly have,” mused the treacherous old man, smiling again. “But I’m afraid you have it backward. It is better to live on one’s feet than die on one’s knees. That is the way the saying goes.” “Are you sure?” Nately asked with sober confusion. “It seems to make more sense my way.” “No, it makes more sense my way. Ask your friends.”
PG swears there is a post about 23 skidoo somewhere in his archive. He was looking for it, and found this piece instead. A lady posted a list of 150 things to do before you die. Number 23 was get drunk on champagne. That inspired this story. It is written in first person, which should please grammar nazis.
Somehow, I never did do any more posts about that “been there done that” list. Mingaling, who started this episode, had a baby, which I am not capable of. I saw Crazy Owl last fall, and he is doing well. (On April 4, 2011, Crazy Owl moved on into another existence.)
There is something called the “meme” in the blogosphere. As best I understand the concept, it is a question about yourself that you send out chain letter style into the void. Like paradigm, a word that people toss about freely ,and I never have quite understood.
At any rate, mingaling has a list of 150 things that you can do. The idea is to read the list, and indicate which of these things you have done. My life has been my life. (Like Popeye and the sweet potato, I yam what I yam). There are things I have done, things I have not done, and there are regrets and gratitudes on both sides. Anyone who gets to be 53 years old and says they have no regrets is a liar. I have told lies.
I had a friend once named Crazy Owl. He lived in a tract of land on Flat Shoals road near the new Wal Mart. There are lots of houses there now, but twelve years ago he had his “monastery” there.
On certain Friday nights, he would have a sweat lodge. Like a crude outdoor sauna, you would build a fire, heat the rocks, and put them in the lodge, go inside and perspire. It is a Native American thing, and I have heard that they still have them in Candler Park.
So one friday, the people in the lodge made comments about what they were grateful for. The previous friday, I had been in a bar in Tucker, GA. The hostess of the happy hour party had made xerox copies of a coupon for cheap food. The room next to the dining room had a band, and a room full of drunks. Each and every one of those drunks was chain smoking. The band played ” Is that all there is?” I ordered a cup of coffee, and was charged $2.75 for something I would not wash a dog in.
So, when we shared our gratitudes at the sweat lodge, I said ” Last friday night I was in an unbelievably cheesy bar in Tucker Georgia. Tonight I am here. I am grateful for variety in my life.”
The song “Is that all there is” is about life experiences, and the disappointment they sometimes bring. If I ever send this meme out, item 151 will be hearing “Is that all there is” as performed by Sandra Bernhardt. The video at the end is credited to “JEM”, but sounds a lot like Ms. Bernhardt. Peggy Lee, who passed away a few years ago, made the song famous. Ms. Lee had a stroke and years of bad health, and was by all accounts a vegetable when she moved on. It is highly unlikely that she said “Is that all there is?” on her deathbed
Item 152 on this annotated meme would be staying at the Hostel in Brunswick. I stayed in a treehouse there, on the night before a trip to Cumberland Island. They had a circle before dinner, where all the visitors hold hands and say what they were grateful for. My comment was “ I am grateful for all the people at this meeting who keep there comments down to a short sentence or two.” The inability to shut up before dinner is a serious character flaw.
This meme is good, and may supply fodder for more than one post. Since lunch hour is almost over I will settle for number 23 (23 skidoo), Gotten Drunk on Champagne. One night in Seattle, I went to a bar called WREX. They were giving away bottles of Andre’ Champagne, and I tried to insure that none were left over. Quantity control is just as important as quality control.
The next day I felt worse than horrible. A champagne hangover is used by the Southern Baptist Convention to convince folks not to ever drink again. Ever. After a while, I pushed the cotton candy in my head to one side, and started to walk down Pike Street to the market. I crossed a street, oblivious to the red light in the yellow box. I also didn’t notice the two policemen waiting for me, one of whom wrote a citation for Jaywalking. Two weeks, later I went to Pedestrian Safety School. That could be item 153.
XXIV Milo In 1966, the Braves moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta. PG was twelve years old, and thought this was just about the coolest thing ever. The Braves were a mediocre team that year. This was better than the last place disaster of the seventies and eighties. At any rate, by 1967, PG found other things to pay attention to.
Part of the disappointment of major league baseball in Atlanta was the radio announcer for the team. His name was Milo Hamilton. Yea, that’s the connection to Catch 22. Milo is one of those names that is a little bit unusual, but not unheard of. Milo Hamilton was a raging egomaniac. No one else could understand what was so special about him. He had a pleasant enough voice, but did not make listening to bad baseball fun the way Skip and Ernie did.
When PG saw another chapter named for Milo, he thought this was going to be boring talk about the syndicate. Do the readers have a share in this syndicate? If everybody has a share, then the readers should be included. For the first few pages, the chapter is dull. The action picks up when Milo orders the base bombed and strafed. The Germans paid for him to do this, and they got their money’s worth. Capitalism should not let a technicality like dealing with the enemy to get in the way of profits for the syndicate. “This time Milo had gone too far. Bombing his own men and planes was more than even the most phlegmatic observer could stomach, and it looked like the end for him. … Milo was all washed up until he opened his books to the public and disclosed the tremendous profit he had made.”
Later, the funeral for Snowdon is held. Yossarian does not stand near the service, but watches from a tree in the distance. Yossarian is naked. Milo Minderbinder comes to talk to him, ignoring the funeral below. Milo has a surplus of cotton, and needs to get rid of it. The concept is to dip balls of cotton in chocolate, and eat them. Yossarian thinks it tastes horrible.
Ok, that is not enough text for this chapter. Something needs to be pasted in to pad this a bit. At the same time, there are a couple of desktop items about a brain sex test. It seems like someone in England has an internet test, to see whether you think like a man or like a woman. If you thought you were a woman, and found out you were really a man, then that would take a load off your chest.
Some researchers say that men can have ‘women’s brains’ and that women can think more like men. Find out more about ‘brain sex’ differences by taking the Sex ID test, a series of visual challenges and questions used by psychologists in the BBC One television series Secrets of the Sexes: Get a brain sex profile and find out if you think like a man or a woman. See if you can gaze into someone’s eyes and know what they’re thinking. Find out why scientists are interested in the length of your fingers. See how your results relate to theories about brain sex.
1- angles test You are about to begin the angles task. Please read the instructions carefully. This is a timed task and you won’t be able to restart once you’ve begun. You’ll be shown a line like this at the top of the next screen. Underneath it you’ll see a set of 15 lines. Identify and click on a line in the set that matches the angle of the single line. There are 20 lines to match and you’ll have 10 seconds for each line.
This task tested your ability to make spatial judgments. You correctly matched 15 line(s) out of 20. On average, men generally outperform women at this task, although it is important to note that many women score extremely well. Males may generally score higher because they tend to pay more attention to space or the geometry of the world around them. Differences such as this may reflect differences in the brain. One theory suggests that exposure to higher levels of testosterone before birth gives men an added advantage because the hormone may stimulate the development of the right hemisphere of the brain. This is the side that contributes most to spatial awareness.
PG got distracted after the first question, and did not finish the test. This is the end of Part Four of the Catch 22 meltdown. Parts one, two, and three are available elsewhere. Pictures today are by Chamblee54. This was written like David Foster Wallace.

Don’t call on me tonight, I’m quivering from fright
For tomorrow I will have…Rectal Anesthesia
Though this may sound Astonishing.
I have a little pricky sting,
And I’m suffering from my Rectal Anesthesia.
No never will I have to cry,
From my suppository’s sigh.
For it rids me of this Rectal Anesthesia.
Please quit, turn out the light!
I have to use a baby wipe
To clear up this …Rectal Anesthesia.
I can’t digest lactic juice
It makes me always have to poop
Because of my Rectal Anesthesia.
I must go off to surgery of defecation,
And soon to my obituary classification.
Don’t laugh when you read of my deadly ……Rectal Anesthesia.
Originally posted on August 8, 2012 by clotildajamcracker

This is part three of a homage to Catch 22. Parts one, two, four, five, six, and seven are also available.
XIII Major —De Coverly PG had been slack about the Catch 22 series. It had been a couple of weeks since the last installment, and he had not written a word. Until the fateful afternoon, when he started a document, wrote the heading for chapter thirteen, looked for the online cheat sheets, and sincerely meant to start back on the project. Of course, he had to check facebook one more time, and saw that his longtime friend Dinkson was posting old pictures, that he had scanned. Which gave PG another excuse for something to do, instead of work on the Catch 22 series. After all, it is your own personal copy, possibly a first edition, albeit without a dust cover. You can take as long as you like on this project, and not worry about returning anything to the library.
The distraction was the laptop. It has proved unstable for writing text, although it may have to do someday. It has other uses. There is a work room, in the middle of the house, with lots of table space, and a computer stand already installed. There is also an old scanner. PG bought the compaq s200 back in the Tobey Road days, and when it proved incompatible with a replacement computer, PG got a scanner/printer combo unit. The s200 scanner went into storage, and seemed ready for a comeback. All that needed to happen was plug it in, install the software on the laptop, and you are in business.
Not exactly. PG found the old CD, and installed it. Then, the scanner was plugged in, and the computer asked for more software. The CD was put back in, and a message came on the screen that the software did not pass the windows logo test. The software was uninstalled, which caused the display settings on the laptop to go back to default. Some software was found on the internet, and it did not pass the windows logo test. Software with the same number was found on an external hard drive, and it too did not pass the windows logo test.
PG rebooted the laptop, and tried to install the external hard drive software. It still did not pass the windows logo test. The next step was to plug in the scanner, and try to operate it with GIMP. The little window opened, but when you clicked scan a signal came on that the device was warming up. Ten minutes later, it was still warming up. The scanner is now back on the shelf, where it will probably stay for a while.
Chaptere thirteen is named for Major —- De Coverly. He is one of those unforgettable character sketches that you forget when it is time to write about the book. In this chapter, Yossarian argues with a whore, and Major DC is charmed by fresh eggs from Milo Minderbinder. Yossarian flies a mission, gets someone else killed, and receives a medal and promotion for his efforts.
XIV Kid Sampson The long dreaded mission to Balogna is here. Yossarian says they have to turn back, because the intercom is not working. So they turn back, and the mission is smooth as silk, with no flak in sight.
PG winds up going to dinner by himself a lot. Some people don’t like to do this, but PG is used to it. He always takes something to read, which for the next few months is going to be Catch 22, complete with grocery sack dust cover. Friday, it was a chain Pizza buffet house in Tucker, GA. The lady who takes your money asked PG if his book was the Bible, which was rather amusing. The lady has probably never heard of Catch 22, the concept, movie, or book, and could not know why PG thought this was so funny.
This happened on a movie set once. PG was reading a book about a farmboy. Sambo knew someone named Moo Cow. The reason he was called Moo Cow involved a cow and a five gallon bucket. Moo Cow was standing on the five gallon bucket, trying to pleasure the bovine, when the animal decided to take a dump on the bib overalls of Moo Cow. PG was on a movie set, reading this by a spotlight between takes. In the school library room where the extras hung out, an older man said he saw PG reading, and asked if it was the Bible. Maybe in the Old Testament they would have used a camel.
This was a couple of weeks after PG went to a faerie gathering in Tennessee. He took this book with him. During the know talent show, PG read a description of an outhouse.
XV Piltchard & Wren Catch 22 is starting to be fun to read. There is a ways to go, and the heavy handed satire may return, but chapters like this make up for it. Yossarian, and crew, are sternly reprimanded for turning back from the Balogna mission. Their punishment is to go back to Balogna. The Germans are waiting on them this time, and there is heavy fire from the ground. Somehow, they make it back to the base. Yossarian immediately leaves for rest leave in Rome.
There is a lady blogger (bloggess? bloggette?) in Texas called clotildajamcracker. She “lkes” stories that PG writes, which means that he is required to read her stories. Some of them are pretty good. This one relates to Catch 22, because it is about her sister cooking for army generals. Clementine talks a good game, and somehow gets away with it. Here is the story, The Stolen Tale of the Rattlsnake Tacos.
Some people call it self-esteem. I just call it delusions of grandeur. Just look at the expression on her face. Do you see what I mean? She’s perfect. She can do no wrong. She can’t help it. It’s not her fault. She was born that way.
She’s got this special God given ability to tell these fascinating stories and keep her audience entertained. It’s too bad that she’s a compulsive liar. Nobody seems to care or to know about the fact that she’s completely full of crap. Maybe she’s lying, maybe she’s telling the truth. There’s just no way to tell. She is so believable. It is because of her amazing charisma that she got this job cooking for gourmet food for army generals. Those guys just adored her, or at least that’s what she says.
This one time they asked her to make this fabulous dinner for some important Japanese generals. You know how Japanese people are they just love to eat daring exotic foods like poisonous puffer fish. So they asked her to make rattlesnake. To us here in The Republic of Texas, it’s just food. But if you’re from Japan, it’s ethnic food.
My sister, Clementine, had never cooked a rattlesnake before in her life, and to be honest with you, she’s terrified of snakes and other slithery creatures. She had no idea what to do with this thing, so she just stuck in in a big pot of boiling water, hoping to God that she would think of something while she chopped up the jalapenos
As she was chopping, the pot foamed up and bubbled over the top and the snake started slithering out of the pot. She panicked and freaked out because she thought that maybe it was still alive. She reached for a pair of tongs and shoved it back in, but it kept slithering back out again. She boiled that thing for twenty minutes and the dad gum thing would not stay in the pot, so she pulled it out with a pair of tongs in each of her hands and threw it onto the counter. Then she chopped it’s head off and cringed.
I don’t know how she managed to rip the skin off and pull the meat off it’s bones. I guess being in the army made her tough. While she was chopping up the meat for the tacos, her hands started stinging and swelling up. This is when she remembered that rattlesnakes are poisonous. She thought for sure that she had forgotten to pull out some sort of venom pouch or something and was certain that she was about to die. She didn’t call the ambulance. She isn’t that stupid. Almost, but not quite.
Instead she did an internet search on preparing rattlesnake. She couldn’t find anything so she just laughed and figured that her hands were stinging because the jalapenos were hot. She told this story to the Japanese generals and they laughed, ha ha ha.
Clementine swore that she would never cook a rattlesnake again. She said that the next time someone asks for it, she’s just going to use chicken and say it’s rattlesnake because it tastes the like the same freaking thing and nobody will ever know.
XVI Luciana PG is writing this chapter on July 23. If his mother had lived, she would be 90 today. She passed away in 1998. Her mind was sharp until the end, but her body had been a wreck for years. There was a fear of long, drawn out illnesses. PG misses his mother, but would not want to have her spend fourteen years as an invalid.
There were three older people in PG’s life. His parents were two. Only one grandparent, his mother’s mother, stuck around long enough to know PG. Both father and grandmother died at 75. On July 23, 1998, mother was fighting the cancer that would claim her in December. At 3am, on the 76th birthday, PG got a wrong number phone call.
July 23, 1999 saw PG at work. He typed the number 0723 into his computer, and realized what day it was. PG went outside, and stood in the parking lot, trying to maintain his composure. An obnoxious salesman walked by, and snarled “What’s the matter”. The salesman got in his truck, went to the Dunwoody office, and got fired.
July 23, 2004, was a Friday afternoon. At a bit after five, PG had one job to run before he went home. A taxi was going down West Peachtree Street at seventy five miles per hour, and crashed into the building. From where PG was standing, he had to walk past the front of the building to go anywhere. It was not a bomb. PG called 911, and covered up some cash that was left on a table.
That weekend, PG’s landlord called, to say he was putting the house up for sale. On Tuesday, the Bully For Jesus, who had dropped the money to the table and ran, picked a fight with PG. The store manager threatened to fire PG, to the amusement of the Bully For Jesus, On Wednesday, the company operations manager pulled people into the office, one by one. PG was the last to go. An employee had heard the store manager use a racial slur, and was threatening legal action. There was a new store manager the next week. 7 months later, PG lost his job at Redo Blue.
Getting back to Catch 22, chapter 16 is very entertaining. Yossarian meets Luciana, who is more than a match for him in talking things out in english. “All right, I’ll dance with you,” she said, before Yossarian could even speak. “But I won’t let you sleep with me.”Who asked you?” Yossarian asked her. “You don’t want to sleep with me?” she exclaimed with surprise. “I don’t want to dance with you.”
They meet an an officers club, and Yossarian buys her dinner. He wants to play that night, but she wants/needs to go home to her mother. Luciana goes to visit Yossarian the next day, and they do the deed. Yossarian impulsively tears up her phone number, which he immediately regrets. When he gets back to base the number of required missions has been raised again. When Yossarian hears this, he feels sick, and goes back into the hospital.
XVII The Soldier In White This chapter takes place in a hospital, which is a different place from normal reality. Whenever you go into a hospital, there is a moment…usually when you go through the mechanical double doors at the entrance… where you make the journey from civilian reality to medical dysfunction. When PG went to see a doctor the other day, the moment of transition was getting into the parking deck. You punch a button on a machine, and it stamps an electronic code on a magnetic strip, and spits the card out into your hand. When you leave, you hand the card to the immigrant in the little box, who tells you how much money you need to give them. It is not negotiable.
Yossarian is beginning to enjoy life inside the house of medical care. He is not subjected to Germans trying to kill him. In fact, there is a quote about death, that is in three of the four online cheat sheets that PG is consulting for this report. It probably is supposed to go in this report.
“They couldn’t dominate Death inside the hospital, but they certainly made her behave. They had taught her manners. They couldn’t keep death out, but while she was in she had to act like a lady. People gave up the ghost with delicacy and taste inside the hospital. There was none of that crude, ugly ostentation about dying that was so common outside the hospital. They did not blow up in mid-air like Kraft or the dead man in Yossarian’s tent, or freeze to death in the blazing summertime the way Snowden had frozen to death after spilling his secret to Yossarian in the back of the plane.”
The story is beginning to get unstuck in time. One minute Clevinger is alive, and one minute he is dead. This becomes more pronounced as the book progresses. It might be another commentary about life in war… all the time is the same, the only thing that matters is whether you are dead or alive.
The soldier in white is a man who is covered in bandages. He has a hole where his mouth should be, but never says anything. There is a shot here, that PG remembers from the movie 42 years ago. The soldier has an iv feeding tube, and a catheter bottle to collect piss. A nurse comes along, and places the piss bottle where the iv bottle was, and the iv bottle where the piss bottle was. This was years before the concept of recycling caught on.
XVIII The Soldier Who Saw Everything Twice This is another chapter about time warps and hospitals. In the first part, Yossarian is back in training, and spends Thanksgiving in the hospital. He thinks this is a fine idea, and thinks he should spend every thanksgiving in a hospital.
He breaks this promise the very next year. He spends turkey day in bed with Lieutenant Scheisskopf’s wife. In between bouts of fornication, they discuss the existence of G-d. There are quotes available online, so it must be important.
“And don’t tell me G-d works in mysterious ways,” Yossarian continued. … “There’s nothing mysterious about it, He’s not working at all. He’s playing. Or else He’s forgotten all about us. That’s the kind of G-d you people talk about, a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good G-d , how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?”
“The G-d I don’t believe in is a good G-d , a just G-d , a merciful G-d . He’s not the mean and stupid G-d you make him out to be.”Lieutenant Scheisskopf’s wife
As PG said to the checkout lady at the pizza buffet, this book is not the bible. If it is, then it is the Old Testament. That was a mean motherfucking G-d. Of course, the New Testament has the result of G-d fucking a mother, so maybe it was/is the bible.
After the religious interlude… or is that a faith quaalude … Yossarian is back in a war zone hospital. There is a man in his ward who sees everything twice, which is very amusing to all concerned. Then this man, who inspired the title of this chapter, died, which was not amusing. The only problem was, his family had come to Italy to see him. Someone had the idea to wrap Yossarian up in bandages, and pretend to be the doomed son. The mother told him to keep warm as she left.
Maybe this is starting to get too serious. PG found some jokes in his archive, but thought the pictures that went with them were pretty cool, so he used them for another post. Here are the jokes.
A TRUE SOUTHERN LADY………..A very gentle Southern lady was driving across the Savannah River Bridge in Georgia one day. As she neared the top of the bridge, she noticed a young man fixing to jump. She stopped her car, rolled down the window and said, “Please don’t jump, think of your dear mother and father.””Mom and Dad are both dead; I’m going to jump.””Well, think of your wife and children.””I’m not married and I don’t have any kids.””Well, think of Robert E. Lee.” ”Who’s Robert E. Lee?””Well bless your heart, just go ahead and jump, you dumb ass Yankee.”
A blind man and his guide dog enter a Bar and find their way to a bar stool. After ordering a drink, and sitting there for a while, the blind guy yells to the bartender, “Hey, you wanna hear a blond joke?”The bar immediately becomes absolutely quiet. In a husky, deep voice, the woman next to him says, “Before you tell that joke, you should know something. The bartender is blond, the bouncer is blond and I’m a 6′ tall, 200 lb. blond with a black belt in karate. What’s more, the woman sitting next to me is blond and she’s a weight lifter. The lady to your right is a blond, and she’s a pro wrestler. Think about it seriously, Mister. You still wanna tell that joke?”The blind guy thinks a moment and says, “Nah, not if I’m gonna have to explain it five times.”
One day 2 blondes decided to drive to Disney Land. When they saw a sign that said ‘Disney Land left’ they turned around and went home.
A blonde, wanting to earn some money, decided to hire herself out as a handyman-type and started canvassing a wealthy neighborhood. She went to the front door of the first house and asked the owner if he had any jobs for her to do. “Well, you can paint my porch. How much will you charge?” The blonde said “How about 50 dollars?” The man agreed and told her that the paint and other materials that she might need were in the garage. The man’s wife, inside the house, heard the conversation and said to her husband, “Does she realize that the porch goes all the way around the house?” The man replied, “She should, she was standing on it.” A short time later, the blonde came to the door to collect her money. “You’re finished already?” he asked. “Yes,” the blonde answered, “and I had paint left over, so I gave it two coats.” Impressed, the man reached in his pocket for the $50. “And by the way,” the blonde added, “it’s not a Porch, it’s a Ferrari.”
This is the end of Yossarian Part Three. Parts one and two were published a long time ago. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. These images are Union Soldiers, from the War Between the States. Being crazy was not a good excuse in that war.