Chamblee54

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.

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.