Chamblee54

PG wrote a post yesterday. One of the topics was the “Siamese Twins”, James Buchanan and William Rufus King. While researching the feature, PG googled his way to a Time magazine article about the Worst Vice Presidents in American History. PG is well known for his negative attitude, and writing about the worst things in life always appeals to him. (To see the feature, you have to click through a popup ad for Amway. Good times.) This is a repost, with pictures from The Library of Congress
The first name on the list is Aaron Burr. He had a problem with Alexander Hamilton, and shot him dead in a duel. Elbridge Gerry (the namesake of Gerrymandering) served under James Madison for twenty months, and died. John C. Calhoun served under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, and managed to get Mr. Jackson so upset that Mr. Calhoun was fired.
Richard M. Johnson served under Martin Van Buren, and was bad at PR. “Johnson scandalized his colleagues by taking one of his slaves as his common-law wife; as a result, he barely garnered enough support to serve in Martin van Buren’s administration. While in office, he proposed an expedition to the North Pole so Americans could drill to the center of the Earth, believing the planet was hollow (his resolution was defeated). Evidently van Buren’s experience with Johnson soured him on vice presidents altogether — when he ran for re-election he dropped Johnson from his ticket and didn’t bother replacing him. Instead, he ran alone.”
William Rufus King was VP under Franklin Pierce a mere six weeks before he died. There is no word on the status of his relationship with James Buchanan at the time. The Time magazine article has a picture of Fernando Wood , which was mistakenly thought to be of Mr. King. (Wikipedia uses the same picture to illustrate an article about Mr. King.)
The VP under James Buchanan (there is no word on who was top or bottom in the Buchanan-King household) was John Breckinridge. During the War Between the States, he left the Union to fight for the Confederacy. Mr. Breckinridge was charged with treason after the war. “The town of Breckenridge, Colorado is named in his honor — although it altered the spelling of its name after the Civil War, so as not to be associated with a traitor.”
Andrew Johnson did not make the list, but maybe should have. He was drunk at his inauguration, and made a fool of himself. Mr. Lincoln had nothing to do with him, until a meeting on April 14. This was Good Friday. Mr. Lincoln went to the theater that night.
Johnson had been marked for death by the conspiracy, but Wilkes Booth had little confidence in the man assigned to kill Mr. Johnson. The afternoon of the assassination, Mr. Booth was at the Kirkwood House, where Mr. Johnson stayed. Mr. Booth left a note for Mr. Johnson at the desk of the hotel… “Don’t wish to disturb you. Are you at home. J. Wilkes Booth”. The idea was for the police to find the note, and implicate Mr. Johnson in the killing of Mr. Lincoln. This mini plot was spoiled by the secretary for the Vice President, who collected the mail that afternoon. He took the card with him. The secretary had met Mr. Booth a few years earlier, and thought the note was for him.
The other three Vice Presidents who took office after the boss was murdered… Chester Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson… were not mentioned in the Time article. All three are mentioned in conspiracy theories about the killings that promoted them into office.
When Theodore Roosevelt was elected to a full term as President, his VP was Charles Fairbanks. “Teddy once ordered a noisy and distracting crystal chandelier removed from his office because it disturbed him. He ordered it to be installed in the office of the Vice President to keep him awake.”
Getting back to Time’s honor roll, Hannibal Hamlin was Lincoln’s first VP. Thomas A. Hendricks survived nine months under Grover Cleveland, before passing away. Thomas Marshall served two terms with Woodrow Wilson, and refused to take over the office when Mr. Wilson had a stroke. Calvin Coolidge did little while waiting for Warren Harding to die. Henry Wallace was, and will be, the only third term VP in our history. He acquired a few enemies, and was replaced by Harry Truman.
Richard Nixon was ok once he got elected, but almost managed to blow that. There were charges of financial shenanigans, and some thought he should be kicked off the ticket. After the Checkers Speech he was on his way to stardom. (After Mr. Nixon died, PG saw a large flag flying at half staff. The flag belonged to a hamburger chain called Checkers.) When Mr. Nixon became President, his VP was Spiro Agnew. Once again, there were charges of financial shenanigans, and much, much more. While the nation wallowed in Watergate, Mr. Nixon needed a diversion. It was suddenly discovered that Mr. Agnew had taken bribes. He was pressured into resigning.
Dan Quayle was VP for George H.W. Bush. He was widely regarded as an idiot, although his damage as VP was minimal. The last VPOTUS on the list is Dick Chaney. For some reason, he was regarded as having more power than the President, George W. Bush. Mr. Chaney was said to be one of the major promoters of the wars which have damaged America so much during the last ten years.

This is part two of a homage to Catch 22. Parts one, three, four, five, six, and seven are also available.
VII McWatt The first thunderstorm after the heat wave was falling. The first impulse was to hang out on the front porch, smell the sweet rain air, feel the cool enveloping the scorched earth like, well something. PG likes to write, he feels good about himself when he does, but sometimes wonders if he is any good. Evidently, once Catch 22 was anointed the great american novel, humility was not an issue for Joseph Heller. It also took him thirteen years to write another book. By this time he was a star on the college lecture circuit, and it is well known that an author can make more money giving lectures than he can writing.
This chapter is named McWatt, who is the pilot on the plane that Yossarian rides. Like all the other characters, he is a character. Still he does not contribute much action here. The chapter is more about Milo Minderbinder. He is the mess hall director, having gotten the job when Corporal Snark put soap in the mashed potatoes.
PG’s dad was from a farm in North Carolina. One time, an Indian girl working for the family confused sugar with the detergent used to clean the milking machine. It cleaned everyone out, except for those who don’t put sugar in coffee.
In addition to his other quirks, PG drinks coffee the way it comes out of the pot, without any adulteration. He came to coffee at the age of 30, after he had discovered the joys of unsweetened iced tea. Maybe that could be the subject for a digression, or maybe not. So, when PG started with coffee, he did not put sugar in everything, and powdered dairy substitute food product was just as gross as curdled milk. When you learn to consume without adulteration… which, in the case of milk and sugaring to death a fine cup of coffee, should more properly be called childification…it is a tough habit to break.
Getting back to Milo Minderbinder, he is described in the book as a rather nerdy looking man, with a prominent mustache that does nothing for his beauty. In the movie, Milo Minderbinder was played by Jon Voight, a superstar. He hit the big time in “Midnight Cowboy”, and was the prettified dreamboy of hollywood. He did not have an unfortunate mustache. Daughter Angelina Jolie was not born until 1975, which may be a factor in his good looks during the movie. Mr. Voight is currently a right wing wackadoodle. He likes to whine that liberals get all the good parts, and ignores the obvious fact that few parts are available for men over the age of seventy.
There is an onine source of information, SparkNotes, being utilized in this presentation. They say this chapter is a satire on capitalism. There is a sentence or two after that, and a link to read more. You have to pay to read more.
While editing this chapter, PG went to the Joseph Heller wikipedia entry. The question was, how long did it take Mr. Heller to produce a second novel. While looking this up. PG saw that Mr. Heller wrote the script for an episode of “McHale’s Navy”. Ernest Borgnine, who played McHale, died this afternoon.
VIII Lieutenant Scheisskopf Just the title will be good for a couple of paragraphs here. PG is not a military type, and words like Lieutenant have always been tough to spell. If you take a look, it breaks down into Lie U Tenant. Some big tough long words are pretty easy if you break them down like that. Take the fashion icon making noise in Iran. Mah Moud Ah Ma Dine Jad.
Or the county just east of DeKalb. Once PG had a lot of jobs to run for this county, with a very slow computer that did not like to scroll. He needed to learn how to spell Gwinnett. The key to this spelling is to remember there are two n’s and two t’s in Gwinnett. Two n’s, two t’s, and two hundred thousand undocumented people.
Getting back to the name of chapter eight, Lieutenant needs a name to the right, or it is just a title without a name. (We will get to Major Major later.) The name to claim this title is special. As wikipedia puts it: “Scheisskopf” literally translated means “shithead” in German, though such an insult is not common in that language. “ On one of the talking head discussions celebrated on the 50th anniversary of Catch 22, someone said that there was one other naughty name that Mr. Heller slipped into his book. the spell check suggestion for Schiesskopf is Schwarzkopf.
The story to this chapter takes place in a training camp in California. Lt. Schiesskopf is in some sort of command there. One exception to this is his wife, who is fucking Yossarian. The Lt. is interested in having neat parades with his men, and is not interested in the parade through his bedroom.
At some point the Lt. gets mad at Clevinger, and has a sort of court martial for him. It is one of the parts of the book where the satire gets a bit tiresome. The man is on trial on obviously phony charges, but whenever he says anything in his defense, he gets in more trouble. Yes, this is a satire, we get that. Parts like the monkey trial of Clevinger are the parts of this book where you have to soldier on, and hope that it gets better. The spell check suggestion for Clevinger is Clinger.
You have to read the book before you can write your criticism of it. This is a guiding principle of the critic craft, and is as often as not disregarded. The way PG sees it, if Yossarian can fly missions, and almost die, then the least PG can do is read a few boring pages of a heavy handed satire. It is only fair. The fact that Yossarian is a fictional character does not change the fact that the war was real.
IX Major Major Major Major In June of 1968, Robert Kennedy was killed by a man named Sirhan Sirhan. This was sort of a novelty, to have the same first and last name. There have since been conspiracy theories about this affair, which is strange because the shooting was in a crowded kitchen, with dozens of witnesses. The good news is that the concept of using the same handle for a first and last name never did catch on.
This chapter is about Major 4x. The first and middle names were given to him by his father, who had a sick sense of humor. This triple naming literally killed his mother, Pectoralis. When Mr. MMM was inducted into the army, an IBM machine mistakenly added the rank of major to his act. This was both a blessing and a curse.
Note the phrasing of the last sentence. Computers, as we know them today, were the result of theories spawned by Alan Turing. During WW2, he was busy cracking the German code. The marvel machines were invented later, Now, in describing this chapter, bookrags says “In the military, a computer error promotes Major Major to the rank of Major”. SparkNotes calls it “an IBM computer error” , which is marginally more accurate. The truth is, both the US and Germany used IBM machines during the war.
As it turns out, chapter IX is another example of heavy handed satire. Major Major starts to sign documents “Washington Irving”, which attracts the attention of the army smart people. There is a meeting about the matter, where they go back and forth and accomplish nothing. The temptation to skip over a few pages is strong during moments like this.
X Wintergreen This is not named for a bathroom air freshening spray, or a type of chewing gum. PFC Wintergreen is a person. He loses messages that he does not like, and thus has a lot of influence. He gets in trouble, and his punishment is to dig holes and fill them in.
The name Wintergreen may have been the name of a product. PG had a stupidvisor at redo blue, who was euphemistically known as wild man. The stupidvisor liked to discuss his oral activities with the wife. One day, wild man told PG that his wife used a mint flavored douche.
There is going to be a raid soon, on Bologna. The men are afraid. The men are not allowed to get sick, because that would keep them out of the raid. There is a sign on the medical tent: CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, DEATH IN THE FAMILY.
The movie of Catch 22 was a big deal. It was supposed to be a big hit, but it wasn’t. Theaters who showed it had to agree to play it for a long run, at great expense, and they lost money. In Atlanta, it played at a musty old theater on Peachtree at 13th Street. The lobby smelled of popcorn, which kept getting funkier and funkier. The lighting in the lobby had a yellow glow, as if years of cigarette smoke had accumulated on the lampshades. This was the movie house Margaret Mitchell was going to go to when she was run over by a taxi.
The movie house was eventually taken over by a theater group, which was very good at making deals. When the movie house was torn down, to make way for a high rise, the developer had to build a state of the art performance house. The overhead of the new facility drove the theater group into bankruptcy.
XI Captain Black Not much happens in this mercifully short chapter. Some officer goes on a binge of requiring loyalty oaths. It goes on until an officer who outranks him puts a stop to it.
The concept of the Catch 22 is ancient. The one that PG has noticed lately is the catch 22 of racism. It seems like the only people who are qualified to judge whether or not something is or is not racist is a person of color, or POC. This is everyone except white people. One “faq” about racism even called white people PWOC, or people without color. Since red is a color, this must leave out rednecks.
So a PWOC is not only automatically guilty of racism, he does not have the right to protest his innocence. He is guilty by birth. And since only a POC is qualified to determine what is racism, the PWOC is screwed.
When the book was written, the catch was numbered 18. A famous author had a book coming out with 18 in the title. The smart publishing people decided that two books with number 18 would confuse the book buying public. A search was held to determine what was a funny number to use, and it was determined that 22 was a funny number.
One of the sources used to prepare this document is CliffNotes. The style of writing in Cliff Notes is familiar to English teachers everywhere. Here is the history of this institution.
Clifton Keith Hillegass, the founder of CliffsNotes, was born in Rising City, Nebraska, on April 18, 1918. After graduating from college, he worked as a college bookstore representative for Long’s College Bookstore (now the Nebraska Book Company).
One of the contacts Cliff developed while at Long’s was Jack Cole, owner of Coles, The Book People. Cole’s business produced study guides called Cole’s Notes, published in Canada. Cole suggested to Cliff that American students would welcome a U.S. version of the notes. With that idea, Cliff launched CliffsNotes in August 1958, with a line of 16 Shakespeare study guides. Working out of Lincoln, Nebraska, Cliff built the company that produced study guides destined to become a multi-generational icon. In 1998, Cliff sold CliffsNotes, Inc., and the brand lives on today as part of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and its stable of educational and reference books. On May 5, 2001, Mr. Hillegass passed away at the age of 83.
XII Bologna Balogna is a city in northern Italy. It is pronounced baLONEah. There is a popular meat product called balogna, and sometimes spelled baloney. This is how it is pronounced. Baloney is a mystery meat, made up of whatever was leftover in the butcher factory. Bologna food product is named for Balogna the town.
There is supposed to be a bombing run on Balogna. The ground troops cannot get the Germans out, and the bombers are supposed to make this happen. The men know it is heavily defended, and that this will be a very dangerous mission.
Clevinger was reported as being killed a couple of chapters ago. He turns up in this chapter, lecturing Yossarian on his duty to die for his country. This goal is almost achieved when Chief White Halfoat takes the men on a drunken jeep ride, with the headlights turned off.
There are three usable quotes from this chapter. In the best english test tradition, we will offer a commentary on these quotes. Or maybe we won’t, if there is nothing good to say about them.
“Open your eyes, Clevinger. It doesn’t make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who’s dead.” In a previous chapter, that was named for him, Clevinger was said to be intelligent, but have no sense. Or something like that. It is getting late, and it is too much trouble to find the exact quote. There are people like that in the world, and probably in other dimensions. Another take is the person who was educated beyond his ability to use the knowledge that was thrust upon him.
Clevinger believes that it is the soldiers duty to die for his country. Even General Patton disagrees. You don’t win wars by dying for your country, you win them by making the other guy die for his country. Clevinger is alive on one page, dead on another, and back alive later. It can be confusing.
“The enemy,” retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, “is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he’s on, and that includes Colonel Cathcart. And don’t you forget that, because the longer you remember it, the longer you might live.” Like General Patton said, they’ll lose their fear of the Germans. I just hope they never lose their fear of me.
Yossarian sidled up drunkenly to Colonel Korn at the officers’ club one night to kid with him about the new Lepage gun that the Germans had moved in. “What Lepage gun?” Colonel Korn inquired with curiosity. “The new three hundred and forty four millimeter Lepage glue gun,” Yossarian answered. “It glues a whole formation of planes together in mid-air.”
The idea of gluing a formation of planes together in midair is silly. This is something out of a monty python routine. But innovation … and twenty million dead Soviets … is what won the war for the allies.
This is the end of part two of this series. Part one is previously published. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.

PG was recently reading a list of rules for writing , when he began to think of a few. A wordpad was opened, and before long 11 suggestions appeared. Many are only marginally about writing.
When you publish a list like this, you are placing a target on your back, with the word hypocrite written above. PG does not claim to take all of these suggestions. What follows is a goal to work for, not a script for situation comedy.
The pictures for today’s entertainment are from the ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library” This is a repost.
When in doubt, shut up.
A halo is best worn over one ear.
If you want to be forgiven, forgive. If you want to be understood, understand.
There are few situations that cannot be made worse with anger and loud talk.
You have two ears and one mouth. Listen twice as much as you talk.
A douche is a hygiene appliance. The verb form refers to using this device for cleaning purposes. Neither the noun, nor the verb, is appropriate as an insult.
A sentence has one period, placed at the end. Do not place a period after every word to make a point. You should find another way to show that you really, really mean it.
Not everyone enjoys the sound of your voice as much as you do.
Do not place “ass” between an adjective and an noun. “Ass” is a noun. It refers to either a donkey, or a butt. An adverb is used to modify an adjective, and is placed before the adjective. Using “ass” as an modifier is improper.
Before you “call out” somebody for “racism”, drape a towel over your mirror.
The third commandment says to not use the word G-d “in vain”. The G word should only be used for worship, and respectful discussion. Improper uses include expressing anger, swearing, selling life insurance, and pledging “allegiance” to a symbol of nationalism.

PG is taking the Merriam-Webster Vocabulary Quiz. “How strong is your vocabulary? Take our 10-question quiz to find out — and maybe learn some new words along the way. You can try it as often as you’d like (we have dozens of different versions).” The front page ads are from American Public University, and a company offering the opportunity to buy “The season’s HOTTEST SHOES picked by Hollywood’s HOTTEST STYLISTS!”
For each word, the instruction is to “Click the best definition of _____”. There are four words to choose from. You have ten seconds, and then you get your score. The more difficult the word, the more points you get. There is a speed bonus for answering fast. After a couple of questions, you get a sense how the game is played, and get better as you go along.
1. Click the best definition of Conjure: Summon ~ Warn ~ Lose ~ Approve
Correct: 300 Points! ~ Difficulty: Medium ~ Speed Bonus: 100
The next four words were: 2- Autonomy, 3- Cajole, 4- Apprehensive, 5- Repartee. PG got the first five correct with little thought. Number six, Adventitious, was a word PG had never seen before. With one second left, he took a guess, and got the correct answer.
Seven was the one word PG got wrong. The word was Facilitate. The choices were play, confuse, ease, manage. PG was thinking of facilitator, who is the leader of a group. With this in mind, he chose manage. The correct answer was ease.
The last three words : 8- Apparent, 9- Beguile, 10- Appeal. PG got all three correct. The final score was 3040. The “average” score was 2480 for the general population, and 2770 for “fifty somethings”. (Teens: 1830, 20-somethings: 2260, 30-somethings: 2470, 40-somethings: 2630, 50-somethings: 2770, 60-somethings: 2880, 70 and above: 2760)
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. The video was gleaned from a comment on a story at Thought Catalog, 10 Simple Ways To Avoid Getting Laid. The comment was : 11- Be in this video.

If bad writing does not make you smile, what is the point? PG thought that the The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest was fun, and that another post of the participants would be festive. This was before he copied the 2011 “winners”, and started to edit. Yes, a few were enjoyable, but after a while they were, mostly just dumb. While stupid does have a place in the world, it is asking a lot to expect someone to read through 3000 words of bad writing.
The plan was to go through the pile, and mark the ones that made the cut. When the first runner up was disposed of, PG wondered if there was going to be enough bad writing to compile a respectable post. The category winners turned out to have little meaning. Despair was setting in, when the winner of the Romance category appeared.
As the dark and mysterious stranger approached, Angela bit her lip anxiously, hoping with every nerve, cell, and fiber of her being that this would be the one man who would understand – who would take her away from all this – and who would not just squeeze her boob and make a loud honking noise, as all the others had. Ali Kawashima, Greensboro, NC
Anyone from Georgia was to be admitted, but none were present. North Carolina had an abundance of awful, and somebody from Seattle was a repeat offender. Geography may or may not influence bad writing. On the next go round of editing, names of the offenders will be reviewed. It has been noted how many people in obituaries have funny names. Will this hold true for people whose writing makes you wish they were dead?
Here is the honor roll, of bad writers with funny names. Patty Liverance, Grand Rapids, MI, Betsy Replogle, Nichols Hills, OK, Lisa Kluber, San Francisco, CA, Andrew Allingham, Fairfax, VA, Marvin Veto, Greensboro, NC, Donna P. Titus, Freeland, PA, Mark Wisnewski, Flanders, NJ, D. Drake Daggett, Omro, WI. Now, without any further ado, here are the chosen samples. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Winner Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories.
Sue Fondrie,Oshkosh, WI
From the limbs of ancient live oaks moccasins hung like fat black sausages – which are sometimes called boudin noir, black pudding or blood pudding, though why anyone would refer to a sausage as pudding is hard to understand and it is even more difficult to divine why a person would knowingly eat something made from dried blood in the first place – but be that as it may, our tale is of voodoo and foul murder, not disgusting food. Jack Barry, Shelby, NC
Wearily approaching the murder scene of Jeannie and Quentin Rose and needing to determine if this was the handiwork of the Scented Strangler – who had a twisted affinity for spraying his victims with his signature raspberry cologne – or that of a copycat, burnt-out insomniac detective Sonny Kirkland was sure of one thing: he’d have to stop and smell the Roses.
Mark Wisnewski, Flanders, NJ
The victim was a short man, with a face full of contradictions: amalgam, composite, dental porcelain, with both precious and non-precious metals all competing for space in a mouth that was open, bloody, terrifying, gaping, exposing a clean set of asymptomatic impacted wisdom teeth, but clearly the object of some very comprehensive dental care, thought Dirk Graply, world-famous womanizer, tough guy, detective, and former dentist. Terri Daniel, Seattle, WA
The executioner sneered as the young queen ascended the stairs to the guillotine; in the old days, he thought, at least there was some buildup, a little time on the rack or some disemboweling, but nowadays everyone wants instant gratification. Andrea Rossi, Wilmington, NC
LaTrina – knowing he must live – let her hot, wet tongue slide slowly over Gladiator’s injured ear, the taste reminding her of the late June flavor of a snow chain that had been removed from a tire and left to rust on the garage floor without being rinsed off. Betsy Replogle, Nichols Hills, OK
Like a bird gliding over the surface of a Wyoming river rippled by a gentle Spring breeze, his hand passed over her stretch marks. Patty Liverance, Grand Rapids, MI
Deep into that particular wet Saturday night ugly blues screamed out from the old man’s horn like a hooker being hauled down a flight of stairs, regular thick loud thumps punctuated by nasty and erratic sharp barks. John Benson, Carthage, MO
She held my hand as if she were having a swollen barrel of fun which was off considering that my teeth were sitting on my bathroom cabinet (eight miles away, no less) and my elbow was peeling like a soggy coconut, the fine hairs of which were standing on edge in fear, as if the coconut had been reading “Dracula.” James Hearn, Canterbury, Kent, U.K.
As the dark and mysterious stranger approached, Angela bit her lip anxiously, hoping with every nerve, cell, and fiber of her being that this would be the one man who would understand – who would take her away from all this – and who would not just squeeze her boob and make a loud honking noise, as all the others had.  Ali Kawashima, Greensboro, NC
Deanna waited for him in a deliberate pose on the sailor-striped chaise lounge of the newly-remodeled Ramada, her bustier revealing the tops of her white breasts like eggs – eggs of the slightly undercooked, hard-boiled variety, showing a nascent jiggle with her apprehensive breath, eggs that were then peeled ever-so-carefully so as not to pierce the jellied, opaque albumen and unleash the longing, viscous yolk within – yes, she lay there, oblong and waiting to be deviled.
Meredith K. Gray, Ithaca, NY
They called her The Cat, because she made love the way she fought, rolling rapidly across the floor in a big, blurry ball of shrieking hair, fury, and dander, which usually solicited a “Shut up!” and flung shoe from one of the neighbors, and left her exhilarated lover with serious patchy bald spots and the occasional nicked ear.  Lisa Kluber, San Francisco, CA
She gazed smolderingly at the mysterious rider, his body cloaked in enough shining black leather to outfit an Italian furniture store, wrapped so tightly each muscle stood out like a flamboyant Mexican hairdresser at an Alabamian monster truck rally; and he met her gaze with an intensity that couldn’t have been matched by even a starving junkyard dog in the meat aisle of a suburban supermarket.  Chris Kemp, Annapolis, MD
Morgan “Bamboo” Barnes, Star Pilot of the Galaxia (flagship of the Solar Brigade), accepted an hors d’oeuvre from the triangular-shaped platter offered to him from the Princess Qwillia – lavender-skinned she was and busty, with two of her four eyes what Barnes called “bedroom eyes” – and marveled at how on her planet, Chlamydia-5, these snacks were called “Hi-Dee-Hoes” but on Earth they were simply called Ritz Crackers with Velveeta.  Greg Homer, Placerville, CA
Sterben counted calcium bars in the storage chamber, wondering why women back on Earth paid him little attention, but up here they seem to adore him, in fact, six fraichemaidens had already shown him their blinka.  Elizabeth Muenster, Columbia, PA
Within the smoking ruins of Keister Castle, Princess Gwendolyn stared in horror at the limp form of the loyal Centaur who died defending her very honor; “You may force me to wed,” she cried at the leering and victorious Goblin King, “but you’ll never be half the man he was.”Terri Daniel, Seattle, WA
Monroe Mills’ innovative new fabric-dyeing technique was a huge improvement over stone-washing: denim apparel was soaked in color and cured in an 800-degree oven, and the company’s valued young dye department supervisor was as skilled as they came; yes, no one could say Marilyn was a normal jean baker.  Marvin Veto, Greensboro, NC
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
The laser-blue eyes of the lone horseman tracked the slowly lengthening lariat of a Laredo dawn as it snaked its way through Dead Man’s Pass into the valley below and snared the still sleeping town’s tiny church steeple in a noose of light with the oh-so-familiar glow of a Dodge City virgin’s last maiden blush.  Graham Thomas, St. Albans, Hertfordshire, U.K
Sunburned and lost, Jake tightened the noose around Randy’s diaper-white neck and growled, “Any last words, varmint?” to which Randy replied, “Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb, Jake – that’s where all the fruit is!” which marked the first and last time Jake and the boys hired a life coach to lead one of their cattle drives.  Lisa Kluber, San Francisco, CA
Business was kinda slow at the “If You Build It” sperm bank.
Simon Petrie, Hawker ACT, AUSTRALIA
No one walked down Bleak Street at night – not where hobgoblins hobnobbed, skeletons skulked, vampires vamped, and the dumpster behind the Chinese buffet smelled like zombies.
Bill Hartmann, Dallas, TX
The beast lumbered toward the maiden, its fetid breath announcing its presence to her (since she couldn’t see him due to the blindfold her captors had tied around her head), its jaws gaping open like a sub sandwich with too much meat, so that no matter how hard you try, you can’t possibly keep the lettuce or the tomatoes from squeezing out onto the table or, worse, your lap.
Donna P. Titus, Freeland, PA
All the signs, both actual and imagined, made it immensely clear there was trouble ahead for Marlene and, yet, her childlike sense of hope that maybe he was “the one” kept her foot on the accelerator pedal of life even when she came to the “bridge out” warning handwritten in Magic Marker on Myron’s Polident cup.  Karen Arutunoff, Tulsa, OK
Maggie said they were birthmarks and they very well could be, but the three very small black moles in a horizontal line just above her right eyebrow looked like an ellipsis to some, but to others who did not know what an ellipsis was, they looked like three very small black moles in a horizontal line just above Maggie’s right eyebrow.  Betty Jean Murray, Richland, TX
As she downed the last Dixie cup of Listerine and let every drop of its 21.6 percent alcohol content hit her like an icy mint anti-cavity brickbat, Karen squinted at the breasts dangling like two electrocuted ospreys from the powerline of her heart and, with a despondency born of a thousand nights spent gaining a decent skill level at internet mahjong, wondered how she and they had all three sunk so low.  Anna Springfield, Raleigh, NC
Her flaming red hair whipped in the wind like a campfire, stroking the embers of passion hidden within the hearth of my heart and I began to burn with a desire that seared me to my very core – oh the things that I would do if only I weren’t incarcerated for arson!
Aubrey Johnson, Edmonton, AB, Canada
Carmela’s knees buckled and she (a responsible consumer) collapsed down onto the sidewalk, as her environmentally green grocery bag bounced – spewing forth organic mixed lettuces, crispy eco-friendly cucumbers, juicy natural cherry tomatoes, home-grown herbs – while in perfect synchronization, a recyclable plastic bottle burst open, spraying droplets of Lite-Italian dressing upon the freshly tossed salad.  Margie Parker, Weeki Wachee, FL
After five years as a freelance writer, Greg finally managed to double his income, letting him add a processed cheese product slice to the baloney sandwiches he had for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Lawrence Person, Austin, TX
They kissed with the fury and suction of a dart that was shot onto the back of the bus driver’s fat bald head by the red-headed kid that was too big for his age (the rumor was he was “held back”) and everyone knew was going to end up in prison, or perhaps a prop comic if he straightened out in time. D. Drake Daggett, Omro, WI
Urgh the howler monkey was sort of the leader of his troop, though not old enough to be a silverback and not having fathered more than a couple of sons, but he did know where the good berries were and how to avoid the leopards, anacondas, and especially the hairless apes, the ones who crashed through the forest only to stand behind a tree and breathe noisily, and watch them and sometimes leave bunches of those disgusting bananas. David S. Nelson, Falls Church, VA

This is not about George Zimmerman. His case has not been tried yet. No matter what the outcome, many angry people will not be happy. In this post, the worst sentence is the “winner” of a contest sponsored by a University English department. It is about a prose unit, with a noun, a verb, and assorted other implements of linguistic horror. If you are getting scared, it is ok to skip over the text and look at the pictures.
PG was trolling the archives, trying to copy and paste his way out of writer’s block. He settled on some text, which will probably be posted before July 4th. You have been warned. It is about patriotism, so watch your wallet. But, getting back to the second hottest day in Atlanta history, there were some pictures from ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”, that PG wanted to use. Now, using old pictures a second time is less work than posting images for the first time. When PG saw the text that went with these pictures, he decided that patriotism would have to wait until later.
The text was about the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest. (Where “WWW” means “Wretched Writers Welcome”) It is named for the writer who coined “the great unwashed”,”pursuit of the almighty dollar”, “the pen is mightier than the sword”, and “It was a dark and stormy night”. Maybe he has been forgiven. The winner of the 2012 contest has not been announced, but should be soon. As a service to the reader(s), this post has been reformatted from the original.
To paraphrase Ru Paul, the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest is. A function of the english department of San Jose State University, in California, the contest awards “a pittance” to the winner. The idea is to submit the opening sentence to a horrible novel, and give the winner to the worst of the worst, the scum of the the skimmer, the Milhous of the Nixon. Email entries are accepted, preferably in Arial 12.
The award is named for Edward_Bulwer-Lytton . Mr. B-L was the model for Monty Python’s English Upper Class Twit. The opening words of his novel “Paul Clifford” are “It was a dark and stormy night”. Entrants in the contest are discouraged from saying ” It was a stark and dorky night”.
As a public service, chamblee54 has reviewed all of the entries on the web page, and selected a handful to reproduce below. If you want to see who won this year, go to the bottom of the barrel. HT to Andrew Sullivan . Pictures are from the ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library” The beauty queen is Miss Agricultural Ammonia for 1957.
Through the verdant plains of North Umbria walked Waylon Ogglethorpe and, as he walked, the clouds whispered his name, the birds of the air sang his praises, and the beasts of the fields from smallest to greatest said, “There goes the most noble among men” — in other words, a typical stroll for a schizophrenic ventriloquist with delusions of grandeur.
When Hru-Kar, the alpha-ranking male of the silver-backed gorilla tribe finished unleashing simian hell on Lt. Cavendish, the once handsome young soldier from Her Majesty’s 47th Regiment resembled nothing so much as a crumpled up piece of khaki-colored construction paper that had been dipped in La Victoria chunky salsa.
She walked into my office wearing a body that would make a man write bad checks, but in this paperless age you would first have to obtain her ABA Routing Transit Number and Account Number and then disable your own Overdraft Protection in order to do so.
The band of pre-humans departed the cave in search of solace from the omnipresent dangers found there knowing that it meant survival of their kind, though they probably didn’t understand it intellectually since their brains were so small and undeveloped but fundamentally they understood that they didn’t like big animals that ate them.
The dark, drafty old house was lopsided and decrepit, leaning in on itself, the way an aging possum carrying a very heavy, overcooked drumstick in his mouth might list to one side if he were also favoring a torn Achilles tendon, assuming possums have them.
The wind whispering through the pine trees and the sun reflecting off the surface of Lake Tahoe like a scattering of diamonds was an idyllic setting, while to the south the same sun struggled to penetrate a sky choked with farm dust and car exhaust over Bakersfield, a town spread over the lower San Joaquin Valley like a brown stain on a wino’s trousers, which is where, unfortunately, this story takes place.
The Zinfandel poured pinkly from the bottle, like a stream of urine seven hours after eating a bowl of borscht.
She purred sensually, oozing allure that was resisted only by his realization as an entomologist that the protein dust on the couch from the filing of her crimson nails was now being devoured by dust mites in a clicking, ferocious, ecstatic frenzy.
Cynthia had washed her hands of Philip McIntyre – not like you wash your hands in a public restroom when everyone is watching you to see if you washed your hands but like washing your hands after you have been working in the garden and there is dirt under your fingernails — dirt like Philip McIntyre.
T’Bleen and Golxxm squelched their way romantically along the slough beach beneath the three Sommodian moons, their eye-stalks occasionally touching, and tenderly belched sweet nothings like, “I don’t think I’ve ever had such a charming evening,” and, “Say, would you like to gnaw that hunk of suppurating tissue off my dorsal appendage—it really itches.”
Wearing his new slacks from L.L. Bean, and entering the pen to feed his three big dogs their usual three cans of dog food, some of which ended up on his new pants, Kevin then left the house to attend a revival screening of ‘Serpico’ with Alpo chinos.
He walked into the bar and bristled when all eyes fell upon him — perhaps because his build was so short and so wide, or maybe it was the odor that lingered about him from so many days and nights spent in the wilds, but it may just have been because no one had ever seen a porcupine in a bar before
His chest glistened like a pumpkin seed, either one fresh out of the pumpkin but with all the orange strands of pumpkin flesh removed, or one straight out of the oven after being coated in just the right amount of oil and then baked; the point is that it was smooth, fairly shiny, and that color.
Living next door to the Lesters for nearly twelve years now, Mrs. Nestor, fully aware of her husband’s fondness for pulchritudinous posteriors, was unable to deter Chester Nestor’s constant quest for Mr. Lester’s sister Hester’s monster keister.
And the winner is… For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss–a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity’s mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world’s thirstiest gerbil.

This is part one of a homage to Catch 22. Parts two, three, four, five, six, and seven are also available.
I The Texan How can you not like a story that begins “It was love at first sight”. Somehow, this had always happened to PG with Catch 22. He was beginning his third attempt at reading it, and thought that maybe writing about it would improve the chances of finishing the damn thing.
PG does not remember when he bought the book. It is a nice hardback edition, with grocery bag paper scotch taped around the cover. Whether or not the original dust cover was there is irrelevant at this time, although it would decrease the value to a collector. The copyright page says 1961, and there is no indication of a subsequent printing.
After the first attempt at reading, PG used the book as a tool. He operated a blueprint machine, with an electric sensor. The sensor would cut the machine off if a piece of paper did not go over it every minute. This was annoying, as PG sometimes used the developer on the machine, without feeding paper into the front. The book would tell the sensor that paper was over it, and the machine would not cut off. It worked very well.
PG had the good fortune to bring the book with him when he left the job. Several things got left behind. There was an architects rendering of a Christian Science church n 15th street downtown, that was a source of great pride and pleasure. The day when PG stormed out of shaky reprographics the print got left behind.
So begins the chapter by chapter breakdown of the great american novel. It may go unfinished. The last time PG tried this was Eat, Pray, Love, which nobody considers the Great American Novel. By the middle of the book, the lady writer was in the bathroom writing notes to G-d. PG wondered why he was fooling with a book like that, but felt the need to finish what he started. No such constrictions will apply to this series. It is about war, and modern americans wars are not supposed to be finished.
The first chapter starts with Yossarian in the hospital. Whether he is sick, or goofing off, is a matter of conjecture. After a while, you realize there is very little difference between the two. He decides the spend the rest of the war in the hospital, until a Texan moves into the ward. He does not like the Texan, does not have a good reason for not liking him, but does not need one. Yossarian is soon out of the hospital.
At this point it is essential to know how to spell Yossarian. He is the most important character, and some say the hero. Spell check can be used, but that is cheating. It is easy to break down. Yo is obvious. SS is a popular set of initials, especially for someone being shot at by Nazis. ARIAN can be tricky. If you take the Nazi theme a bit further, you can say that it is Aryan, with an I in the middle. This would be the American version anyway, to have the I in the middle of the master race, but to deny that you are a racist. Or crazyist, (spell check suggestion:Craigslist) which would be a genuine handicap while reading this book.
II Clevinger PG is beginning to think that Catch 22 is a bunch of crazy people having ironic interior conversations, and not doing much of anything. Now, in a war, this is not a bad thing. If nothing is happening, that means you have not been killed. This is a downside of war. Maybe a plot will hatch if we stick with it long enough. The style of writing is fun, even if there is no plot to sustain it. We will see. The original plan was to read fifty pages, and if it was not a barrel of laughs to consider putting it down. This is not a library book, so there is no deadline.
Not much happened in chapter two. Yossarian and Clevinger called each other crazy, and they were both correct. Towards the end of this chapter, someone says something about the Colonel wanting fifty missions from his flyers. This book might have a plot after all.
When writing this chapter, it would appear helpful to mention what Clevinger does. The first two chapters do not say what the man does, but they do mention that he used to live in a tent near Yossarian. While trying to track down the function of Clevenger, PG decided to underline the names of the characters, with a red pencil, the first time they appear in the story. After that, if PG wants to underline them, then he can. This should make it a bit easier to determine what the swarm of characters in this story do. These red pencil marks will further undermine the resale value of this book, what resale value it has left with a grocery store bag dust cover.
In 1992, PG had a downstairs neighbor named Ron Clevinger. He was a nice guy. His boyfriend, named Keith Maffey, was a jerk. They had violent quarrels, which was disturbing to someone living upstairs. If the house caught fire, then PG’s apartment upstairs would be affected. One night, they were wrestling in the living room, and the tv fell to the ground with a spectacular crash.
The guys downstairs were trying to start a remodeling business. They did not know what they were doing. The landlord let them put a new roof on the house, and it leaked. The roof was finally replaced a couple of years later. After a few months, they didn’t pay their rent, and were evicted. PG did not miss them. In the winter of 1993, there was a snow jam, which is a once every ten years big deal in Atlanta. A few days after the snow melted, PG read a funeral notice for Keith Maffey. Someone shot him dead during the storm. PG never did hear the details.
III Havermeyer This peace story about a war story is being written, at first, on a laptop. PG has long been a desktop only kind of guy, but the advantages of having a second machine were piling up. Finally, the computer store in Doraville had a sale, where they offered laptops that had been leased out. When PG got his it was $20 off, which paid part of the sales tax.
This is a fun device to use, but it takes a bit of getting used to. The touchpad is very different from a mouse, and this model does not have a number pad to the right of the letters. PG is trying to train himself to use the numbers at the top of the keyboard, and one day he will learn how. The most troubling thing about this machine is the tendency of the cursor to drift to another spot on the screen without warning. You will be typing merrily away, put the machine down, and when you get back the letters are going in a place halfway up the document. It is very annoying.
Chapter three is part crazy person noodling, and part plot action. Yossarian and Orr, his roommate, get into a discussion about why Orr likes to stuff crab apples in his cheeks. The reason is that they are better than chestnuts. They go round and round, talk about a whore that beat up Orr, but never get to the bottom of his love for big cheeks.
A couple of characters with funny names are introduced. General P.P. Peckum is a pretentious prick, which is a bit redundant. At least the pretentious part, unless it is a female, in which case a different body part is used. All prick implies is the masculine gender of the individual. Captain Aardvark is Yossarian’s navigator, and is usually the first name called at roll.
The plot part involves Yossarians desire to get out of the war alive. He takes evasive action when he flies, and is not overly concerned if the target is hit. Havermeyer, by contrast, never takes evasive action, and hangs around the crime scene to make sure the target is hit.
“Havermeyer was a lead bombardier who never missed. Yossarian was a lead bombardier who had been demoted because he no longer gave a damn whether he missed or not. He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up was to come down alive.”
Yossarian is thought of as a good guy. However, when he went on missions, he dumped bombs wherever it felt right, without concern about hitting the target. It is probable that some of these bombs landed on Italian civilians. Our hero murdered people whose only crime was having a dictator who was buddies with Hitler. The fact that all armies do the same thing does not make the barbequed Italians any less dead.
IV Doc Daneeka Doc Daneeka is a character with a lot to say. He was setting up a profitable practice in New York, involving crooked pharmacists and abortions. The war got in the way. Doc has little sympathy for any airman with problems, because his are worse.
Chapter four is a bunch of people hanging out talking nonsense. Except that it is all men, but it is still nonsense. Somebody asks if any poet ever made money, and someone says that T.S. Eliot did. Soon, General Dreedle, and his idiot son in law Colonel Moodus, thought that T.S. Eliot was one of their men.
There are some online resources that are going to make this project a lot easier. One is SparkNotes It is like CliffNotes, only digital. It tells us that Colonel Peckum thinks that T.S. Eliot is a coded message, and worries because he does not know the meaning.
Another handy device is wikiqotes. It has quotes from the text, and is easier than copying passages on file cards. “This literary-work article needs cleanup. Please review Wikiquote:Templates, especially the standard format of literary-work articles, to determine how to edit this article to conform to a higher standard of article quality. This page has been listed as needing cleanup since 2008-09-11.”
V Chief White Halfoat The namesake of this chapter is Doc Daneeka’s roommate. CWH was from a tribe in Oklahoma. His family had a way of settling where oil was going to be found, so they were followed from site to site by oil company men. The term native american had not been invented when this was written, so CWH is called Indian. He likes to drink, which is another unfortunate stereotype. Catch 22 probably would not be helped by being politically correct.
CWH staggers into the tent while Yossarian is having a chat with Doc Daneeka. In this chapter, Doc is happy that the war came when it did, because his practice was broke. After CWH retires to his bottle, Yossarian gets down to business with the Doc. He wants to be grounded from flight duty. The reason for this is a desire to not be killed, and the excuse is that he was crazy.
There is a difference between an excuse and a reason. In Iraq, the reasons for wanting to invade were multiple: oil access, making Israel happy, revenge for the survival of Saddam after the first oil war, and a desire to make money for the military industrial complex. None of these were thought to be very convincing, so a decision was made to say that Iraq had WMD, and was about to give them to terrorists. A committee made a decision to use this as the rationale for the war. It was the excuse. An excuse does not have to be true, it just has to convince the people who need to be convinced.
Getting back to Yossarian, he had sane reasons for claiming he was crazy. The army was wise to him. WW2 was a serious struggle for survival, and excuses like insanity or homosexuality were not accepted. On page 41, the title of the book is mentioned for the first time.
“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
“That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed.
“It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed.
VI Hungry Joe Hungry Joe is an airman. He has screaming nightmares, which disturb his neighbors. He has flown more than enough missions, but the order to send him home never comes. The number of missions needed to complete a tour of duty keeps going up. It is now set at fifty five.
Fifty five became a notorious number during the seventies. There was a gas shortage, followed by a very convenient war, and the price of gasoline went up. One of the ideas for reducing the use of gasoline was to lower the speed limit on the interstates. This had been set at seventy, which people regarded as their right as free americans. The speed limit was lowered to fifty five, and people were not happy.
The interstate system was not finished yet. There were gaps, where you had to get off the freeway and go for a while on surface roads. One notorious bypass was in Cobb County, where I75 stopped just a bit past the Big Chicken. You had to get off, and travel north on highway 41 for a while, until you could get back on the interstate. This was when roads in Cobb county were fun to drive. There was a one lane bridge over the river on Akers Mill Road. You had to wait until it was clear to go across. On the other side was the Riverbend apartments, widely regarded as the king of swinging singles apartment complexes. Those were the days. And people wonder why the Big Chicken rolls his eyes.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”

PG went out on his bike, and saw something disturbing. A small American flag was laying in the dirt. PG leaned his bike against a mailbox, which might be illegal, and looked at the situation. The pole was broken in half, and the flag was filthy. Before you could say Supreme Court Decision, the flag was in the luggage box on the bike.
Burning a worn out flag is the proper way to dispose of it. “When a flag is so worn it is no longer fit to serve as a symbol of our country, it should be destroyed by burning in a dignified manner.” A splash of rubbing alcohol, and a kitchen match were applied. The flag was made of a flame resistant material. Maybe that was part of the Supreme Court ruling, or perhaps another helpful regulation. PG turned the remains over and lit it again. Finally, the embers were doused in water, and the ashes buried next to the driveway.
Going inside, there was a post to be considered, The Seven Deadly Spelling Sins. The first sentence should send any sane person running… “Because I am a writing teacher and a former editor, I am constantly exposed to the most egregious mistakes in writing, grammar, and spelling.” PG is not a sane person. Here is the post, with supplemental comments for your reading pleasure.
1. There, Their, and They’re These are three different words, and they are not interchangeable. “There” refers to a place and is the opposite of “here.” “Their” refers to ownership of something. “They’re” is a contraction that means “they are,” as in: They are having a spelling party.
This is what is known as a homophone. You might have thought that was a communications device in midtown. If you think about it a bit, you realize that one is possessive, one is a place, and one is a clumsy third person plural verb. They’re going to take their ice cream and go there with it.
2. To and Too “To” is the beginning of any infinitive form of a verb: to run, to be, to smile, to write, to blog. Taking foreign language classes is the best way to drive this one home. It is also a preposition. “Too” means “also” or “in addition to.” It can also mean “in excess,” as in: There are too many shoes in my closet. (Well, that’s simply not possible, but you get the idea.)
This forgets two, which is a number, but the spelling is so different that usually the distinction is made. Just like spelling, as in bee, is different from Aaron Spelling. He was the father of Tori Spelling, and a Hollywood producer. Aaron Spelling made lots of money, built the biggest house in California, and was married to Morticia Addams.
3. You’re and Your “You’re” is a contraction form of “you are.” “Your” again refers to ownership.
Words like this are a problem with spell check. If the word is spelled conventionally, it will not set off the device. This also happens when you mean to say to, but type do instead. This is a normal word, and spell check will not know the difference. The possibility exists of a grammar program that will catch mistakes like this.
4. Judgment This word never ever (in the United States) has an “e” in the middle.
Words like this are pronounced in different ways by white people and black people. White people say “munt”, and accent the first syllable. Black people say “mint”, and accent the second syllable. The mint sounds like a brand of gum, like spearmint or double mint. Did you know that the doublemint twins have had substance abuse issues? They are currently in a twenty four step program.
5. Definitely I don’t know why, but some 90 percent of my students have difficulty spelling this word. There is it, in black and white. Memorize it. I have seen it misspelled as: Defiantly, Definately, Definetley, Definitly And so on. I’m sure there are numerous variations to a bad spelling.
PG is part of the ninety percent here. This is a toughie. Maybe if you break it down into parts, it will make sense. De Finite Ly. De is pronounced duh, which is smart. Finite means only so many, all there is and there ain’t no more. Ly is one of those suffixes that gets tacked onto everything.
6. Its and It’s Again, we have a contraction. The contraction means that two words have been combined, so “it’s” means “it is.” Now, the tricky part is the fact that possession usually uses an apostrophe. However, because this apostrophe is already taken for “it is,” “its” refers to possession in this case.
This is one of those things that make you think English was invented by a race of drunks who call soccer football. To any reasonable person, a word meaning possession should have an apostrophe and s. Here, it’s means it is. Sometimes, the best thing to do is play along and don’t wonder why things are so screwed up.
7. Lightning This one is my personal pet peeve. This refers to that giant flash of light in the sky that usually occurs during a rainstorm and is always followed by thunder. However, I see many people spell it as “lightening,” which can refer to making something lighter, in color or weight. However, it also means the dropping of the baby before a woman gives birth, and that’s what I always think of. So, when people write on Facebook, “The lightening was fantastic last night,” I can’t help but wonder if they are relieved to have finally given birth.
PG was going to end with a comment about religion, but was afraid of being hit by lightning.

These author insults were borrowed from flavorwire. HT to Andrew Sullivan The pictures are from The Library of Congress This is a repost. 25. Gertrude Stein on Ezra Pound “A village explainer. Excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not.” 24. Virginia Woolf on Aldous Huxley “All raw, uncooked, protesting.” 23. H. G. Wells on George Bernard Shaw “An idiot child screaming in a hospital.” 22. Joseph Conrad on D.H. Lawrence “Filth. Nothing but obscenities.” 21. Lord Byron on John Keats (1820) “Here are Johnny Keats’ piss-a-bed poetry, and three novels by God knows whom… No more Keats, I entreat: flay him alive; if some of you don’t I must skin him myself: there is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the Mankin.” 20. Vladimir Nabokov on Joseph Conrad “I cannot abide Conrad’s souvenir shop style and bottled ships and shell necklaces of romanticist cliches.” 19. Dylan Thomas on Rudyard Kipling “Mr Kipling … stands for everything in this cankered world which I would wish were otherwise.” 18. Ralph Waldo Emerson on Jane Austen “Miss Austen’s novels . . . seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in the wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. The one problem in the mind of the writer . . . is marriageableness.” 17. Martin Amis on Miguel Cervantes “Reading Don Quixote can be compared to an indefinite visit from your most impossible senior relative, with all his pranks, dirty habits, unstoppable reminiscences, and terrible cronies. When the experience is over, and the old boy checks out at last (on page 846 — the prose wedged tight, with no breaks for dialogue), you will shed tears all right; not tears of relief or regret but tears of pride. You made it, despite all that ‘Don Quixote’ could do.” 16. Charles Baudelaire on Voltaire (1864) “I grow bored in France — and the main reason is that everybody here resembles Voltaire…the king of nincompoops, the prince of the superficial, the anti-artist, the spokesman of janitresses, the Father Gigone of the editors of Siecle.” 15. William Faulkner on Ernest Hemingway “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” 14. Ernest Hemingway on William Faulkner “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?” 13. Gore Vidal on Truman Capote “He’s a full-fledged housewife from Kansas with all the prejudices.” 12. Oscar Wilde on Alexander Pope “There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.” 11. Vladimir Nabokov on Ernest Hemingway (1972) “As to Hemingway, I read him for the first time in the early ‘forties, something about bells, balls and bulls, and loathed it.” 10. Henry James on Edgar Allan Poe (1876) “An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.” 09. Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac “That’s not writing, that’s typing.” 08. Elizabeth Bishop on J.D. Salinger “I HATED [Catcher in the Rye]. It took me days to go through it, gingerly, a page at a time, and blushing with embarrassment for him every ridiculous sentence of the way. How can they let him do it?” 07. D.H. Lawrence on Herman Melville (1923) “Nobody can be more clownish, more clumsy and sententiously in bad taste, than Herman Melville, even in a great book like ‘Moby Dick’….One wearies of the grand serieux. There’s something false about it. And that’s Melville. Oh dear, when the solemn ass brays! brays! brays!” 06. W. H. Auden on Robert Browning “I don’t think Robert Browning was very good in bed. His wife probably didn’t care for him very much. He snored and had fantasies about twelve-year-old girls.” 05. Evelyn Waugh on Marcel Proust (1948) “I am reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective.” 04. Mark Twain on Jane Austen (1898) “I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.” 03. Virginia Woolf on James Joyce “[Ulysses is] the work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.” 02. William Faulkner on Mark Twain (1922) “A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven sure fire literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.” 01. D.H. Lawrence on James Joyce (1928) “My God, what a clumsy olla putrida James Joyce is! Nothing but old fags and cabbage stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest stewed in the juice of deliberate, journalistic dirty-mindedness.” Bonus. Mary McCarthy on Lillian Hellman “Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the.” Bonus two, a comment to the original post.: RomanHans Re “The Cardinal’s Mistress” by Benito Mussolini, Dorothy Parker wrote one of my favorite bon mots: “This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AKDw2hwi5I%5D

PG recently used a few hours of his life to read The Lady in the Lake . It is a story by Raymond Chandler. As you might expect, the central figure is Philip Marlowe. It is set in Southern California at the start of World War II.
Mr. Marlowe is hired by a wealthy man to find his no good wife. When Mr. Marlowe starts nosing around, bodies start to show up. Mr. Marlowe almost becomes one of the deceased. After a few plot twists, a meeting is held in a mountain cabin, and a finger is pointed at a suspect. This person storms out of the meeting, and dies.
This may not be the best plot ever. There are a few too many coincidences. One character is Mildred Haviland. First, she is the wife of a drunken caretaker who drowns. Then we learn she was the nurse/gf of a doctor who specializes in narcotics. This doctor lives across the street from a boyfriend of the rich man’s wife. A crooked policeman gets involved in the story. It turns out he was married to Mildred Haviland. After a while, you wonder just how small Los Angeles was in 1942.
You don’t read Mr. Chandler for the logical plots. You read him for the way he massages the language. Take this description of Chris Lavery, the ill fated lover of the runaway bride: “The man was a hefty dark handsome lad with fine shoulders and legs, sleek dark hair and white teeth. Six feet of a standard type of homewrecker. Arms to hold you close and all his brains in his face. He was holding a pair of dark glasses in his hand and smiling at the camera with a practised and easy smile.”
The story was made into a movie in 1947. Robert Montgomery played Mr. Marlowe. The text is available online. Pictures today are from the The Library of Congress.

Jimmy Breslin wrote a book, Damon Runyon. As you might guess, it is about the journalist and story teller. Mr. Breslin appeared on the CBS radio network to promote the book. The interview he gave is available on Wired for Books.
Even if Mr. Breslin did not write the book, he should have given this interview. He sounds like a New Yorker, with the rough edges intact. As it turns out, Mr. Runyon was from Manhattan KS, and only moved to New York after a wild career out west. He covered Pancho Villa, and had a cigarette lighter given to him by the raider. William Randolph Hearst, the employer of Damon Runyon, was fond of Pancho Villa, until 600 head of cattle was stolen from a Hearst owned ranch. At that point, Pancho Villa became a terrorist.
W.R. Hearst is a player in another story. It seems like “Citizen Kane” supported Germany at the start of World War One. After the armistice was signed, Mr. Hearst wanted to welcome a ship of soldiers to New York. The fighting men did not like this idea, and threatened to make trouble.
Damon Runyon was asked to serve as a go between. He knew George Patton, from his days of fighting Pancho Villa. Mr. Runyon spoke to the General, who ordered his men to wave politely to William Randolph Hearst.
Damon Runyon flourished during the roaring twenties. Jimmy Breslin argues that Mr. Runyon invented much of the mystique of that era. Mr. Runyon wrote for the Hearst Newspapers. He thrilled America with stories about gangsters, horse players, and the “colorful characters” that populated Broadway. Mr. Runyon wrote short stories. These formed the basis for the show “Guys and Dolls”.
This was a time before movies and radio took over, and newspapers had a monopoly. At one time New York had sixteen daily papers, many of which were horrible. There is a story about a writer who was describing some shooting, and coined the phrase “innocent bystander”. He was so proud of himself that he went to a bar to celebrate. He got to talking to a young lady. She said that someone she knew was a “stuffed shirt”. The writer put his drink down, went to the newspaper office, and typed a story with the phrase “stuffed shirt” in it. Another cliche was born.
To hear Mr. Breslin tell it, the best thing that Damon Runyon did was when he died. Mr. Runyon used his Pancho Villa lighter many, many times. The smoking caught up with him, and he developed throat cancer. In 1946, cancer was never mentioned. People died after a “long illness”. When Damon Runyon perished, the cause of death was listed as cancer. He may have been the first famous person to openly die of cancer.

The post above this is Who Pushed Humpty Dumpty?. If you look at the URL, you will see a -2 after the title. This means that there has been another post at Chamblee54 with this conspiracy oriented title. A trip to google city shows that PG is not the only person to have pondered this issue.
A book, Who Pushed Humpty Dumpty?, gets prominent placement. You get what you pay for. “It looked like a horrible accident, but upon further investigation, it turned out to be an even more horrible crime. Local businessman Humpty Dumpty was indeed dead of a fall from his wall. With the assistance of Officer’s O’Ham, Bacon and McSwiney (The 3 Little Pigs) and Officer Jack (The one with a beanstalk in his yard), Storybookland Police detectives Sgt. Joe Bundy and Rookie detective Bill Gimble have their work cut out for them. The suspects include The Big Bad Wolf (Storybookland’s Crime Boss), Jack and Jill (who were suing Mr. Dumpty for their fall), Wee Willie Winkie, The Spider (of Little Miss Muffet fame), The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe… not to mention Mrs. Dumpty, herself. Who Pushed Humpty Dumpty?”
There is another book, Who Pushed Humpty Dumpty? : “Break-in at the Three Bears family home? It could only be one dame. Wicked witch gone missing from her candied cottage? Hansel and Gretel claim it was self-defense. Did Humpty Dumpty really just fall off that wall, or was he pushed? Here are five fairy-tale stories with a twist, all told from the point of view of a streetwise police officer called Binky, who just happens to be a toad in a suit and a fedora. When Snow White doesn’t make it to the beauty pageant, Officer Binky is the first to find the apple core lying by her bed. When an awful giant mysteriously crashes to the ground, upsetting the whole town, Binky discovers exactly who is responsible. Author David Levinthal and illustrator John Nickle retell these classic stories in the style of a 1940s noir detective novel—for kids! “
Before we get much further in this murky mystery, lets take a look at the original.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall; Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King’s horses And all the King’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again!
Humpty Dumpty Sentado en un muro.
Humpty Dumpty Se ha caído muy duro.
Todos los caballeros Y jinetes del rey,
Fueron a levantarlo Y no pudieron con él.
HD is typically thought of as being a giant egg. It is not known why it was sitting on a wall. Eggs usually lay on their side, unless they are sitting in an egg holder. The gender of this giant egg is unknown. Why was a team of horses expected to reassemble a broken egg ?
A character named Humpty Dumpty appears in Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll. He has a conversation with Alice, which implies that it is a different HD. Alice is a suspect in the content distribution of HD.
The Chicago Sun-Times published an essay in 2011, The men who pushed Humpty Dumpty. It turned out to be an appreciation of the movie “All The President’s Men”. There was a phrase in that movie, “follow the money”, which might prove helpful in solving this mystery. Maybe the question should be, who paid to have HD pushed off the wall? Maybe a real estate agent was having a tough time selling the property. Who would want to buy a house, with a giant egg sitting on a wall? It might have been a prudent business decision.
The HD metaphor has been used many times. Foreign Policy published a feature, Humpty Dumpty Was Pushed (The Sun-Times essay was published September 16, 2011. The Foriegn Policy article was published September 20, 2011.) The FP article was about Palestine. Newt Gingrich was quoted recently as saying that the Palestinean people do not exist. Perhaps Mr. Gingrich should be considered a suspect in the HD case.
“In his commentary anticipating a Palestinian initiative to promote statehood at the United Nations, Aaron David Miller chooses to focus almost exclusively upon the realities of Palestinian political and demographic fragmentation. But rather than providing an explanation of how these divisions have come about, or recommending means to overcome them, Miller instead suggests that on their account Palestinians remain unworthy of freedom.
“The fact of the matter is that Humpty Abu Dumpty did not accidentally fall off a wall; he was purposefully shoved off the edge of a cliff, beaten to a pulp, and then bombed to smithereens. As for the king’s men, as Miller well knows, they made no effort to put him back together again, instead providing the gang responsible  a steady supply of crack and endless rounds of ecstatic applause.”
Four years ago, someone at Yahoo answers had too much free time. There was a post, Did humpty dumpty fall of that wall or was he pushed??? The issue of who offed HD remains a mystery. Some of the answers in this forum try to “explain” the legend of HD. Some fundamentalist Christians will tell you that things are to be taken literally, and that scholarly interpretation is the work of the devil. In spite of these nay sayers, some of the reader supplied answers make sense.
“I’m not sure if this is true but someone once told me that humpty dumpty is about a woman losing her virginity. “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.” is a woman who is a virgin. (high up in society) “Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.” Is about a woman losing it. “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men Couldn’t put Humpty together again ” once you lose it it’s gone, your never be looked at the same again in society.”
“Actually there is real history behind what we call nursery rhymes. Yes I know I’m cutting and pasting, but here is Humpty Dumpty’s: Humpty Dumpty was a colloquial term used in fifteenth century England describing someone who was obese. This has given rise to various, but inaccurate, theories surrounding the identity of Humpty Dumpty. The image of Humpty Dumpty was made famous by the illustrations included in the ‘Alice through the looking glass’ novel by Lewis Carroll. However, Humpty Dumpty was not a person pilloried in the famous rhyme!
Humpty Dumpty was in fact believed to be a large cannon! It was used during the English Civil War ( 1642 – 1649) in the Siege of Colchester (13 Jun 1648 – 27 Aug 1648). Colchester was strongly fortified by the Royalists and was laid to siege by the Parliamentarians (Roundheads). In 1648 the town of Colchester was a walled town with a castle and several churches and was protected by the city wall. Standing immediately adjacent the city wall, was St Mary’s Church. A huge cannon, colloquially called Humpty Dumpty, was strategically placed on the wall next to St Mary’s Church. The historical events detailing the siege of Colchester are well documented – references to the cannon ( Humpty Dumpty) are as follows:
June 15th 1648 – St Mary’s Church is fortified and a large cannon is placed on the roof which was fired by ‘One-Eyed Jack Thompson’. July 14th / July 15th 1648 – The Royalist fort within the walls at St Mary’s church is blown to pieces and their main cannon battery ( Humpty Dumpty) is destroyed. August 28th 1648 – The Royalists lay down their arms, open the gates of Colchester and surrender to the Parliamentarians
A shot from a Parliamentary cannon succeeded in damaging the wall beneath Humpty Dumpty which caused the cannon to tumble to the ground. The Royalists, or Cavaliers, ‘all the King’s men’ attempted to raise Humpty Dumpty on to another part of the wall. However, because the cannon , or Humpty Dumpty, was so heavy ‘ All the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again!’ This had a drastic consequence for the Royalists as the strategically important town of Colchester fell to the Parliamentarians after a siege lasting eleven weeks.”
Pictures are from ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.