Not In A Bad Way
Sometimes a story comes along that you can’t help but comment on. The story is about a pro basketball team, the Atlanta Hawks. This franchise has all the appeal of watching paint dry, but without the intoxicating fumes. This story has all the elements.
The four elements are earth, air, fire, and water. Earth and water combine to make mud. RACIST is the mudslinging term of choice in 2014 Amerika. The arena where the Hawks perform is built the empty air over the railroad tracks.
Maybe this story only has three of the four elements. If anyone cared about the Hawks, there might be fire. This team has never been past the second round of the playoffs in forty odd Georgia years. Pro basketball in Georgia is as much fun as getting pulled over by the police.
RACISM starts it off. Every story about the Hawks idiot owner has the word RACIST in the headline. Long forgotten jocks weigh in on twitter. An eyesore mayor talks to the fishwrapper.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar @kaj33 Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levenson isn’t a racist-he’s a businessman. Read my thoughts @TIME
Dominique Wilkins @DWilkins21 Thank you to all my fans and concerned Hawks community. Please be patient with me. I will be commenting on the recent Hawks news shortly.
Kasim Reed “We shouldn’t have a conversation centered on race when it’s really focused on winning … Let’s not make it about race.”
The affair started when Hawks general manager Danny Ferry was discussing which free agents to sign. This is where you offer a player lots of money to come play for your team. This player will make more money for playing a game six months than the typical ticket buyer will make in a lifetime. In this case, it was a “a highly-regarded African-American player and humanitarian” named Luol Deng. The hraapah in question is from Sudan. How he got to be african-american is tmi.
When the story broke, no one knew what was said about hraapah. Inquiring minds want to know. “he has a little African in him. Not in a bad way, but he’s like a guy who would have a nice store out front but sell you counterfeit stuff out the back.”
This comment led to an investigation. “An Atlanta law firm conducted 19 interviews and turned up more than 24,000 internal documents, including the email that Levenson cited when he announced his decision to sell the team.” This will cost enough to pay for a humanitarian free agent.
The story broke last sunday. The idiot owner of the Hawks, Bruce Levenson, “self reported” to the NBA a numbskull email about increasing attendance at Hawk games. The email may, or may not, be RACIST. Persistent rumors have it that Mr. Levenson wants to jack up the price of his team. This is a curious marketing strategy. It worked for Donald Sterling. Having your adulterous gf spill the beans is not as much fun as self reporting.
The email in question is bizarre. You are trying to sell pro basketball in a football town. The team plays downtown, across the street from the fifth most dangerous neighborhood in amerika. It is also the site of the Blank Bowl, with billions of dollars being invested in a new football stadium. You have to wonder about the values of our society.
This post is going on past the attention span of most readers. If you like, you can read the email for yourself. Do you need to know if it is RACIST? You might want to ask why you care. The pictures are from The Library of Congress The pictures are from the Farm Services Administration. America did not spend millions of dollars on humanitarian basketball players in those days.
090914
Henry Kissinger told a joke to Richard Nixon. It became known as Mr. Nixon’s favorite joke. A man asked Richard Wagner, Do you spell your name with a W. He replied, Nien, W.
)()()( oops, the shift key just loves to make trouble. Lets try this again. Be sure to leave the 9mm alone. Or use the canine squad. If you see Kay, give her love potion number nine.
090909 was a really neat day. 090909 was the last day of its type until 01/01/2101. A day expressed by three zeros and three single digits.
Nine is the largest of the single digit numbers. It is a baseball team, without the DH. A baseball game lasts nine innings, just like a pregnancy lasts nine months. A pregnancy is not considered a complete game if it is rained out after the fifth inning.
Nine is pronounced the same as No in German. Was 090909 known in Berlin as oh no, oh no? Did Yoko Ono make an appearance to celebrate? Did the mask work better for her than it did for John?
Nine is an odd number. Nine is three squared. If you multiply a number by nine, and then add the digits of the sum together, you will get nine. An example is 2×9=18, and 1+8=9.
Nine is six upside down. A pristine pastime popularized 69. Jimi Hendrix wondered if six turned out to be nine, he don’t mind. The Beatles did a song called Revolution number nine, which said “turn me on dead man” if played backwards. Number Nine, Number Nine, Number Nine.
This was originally posted 090909. It was adapted on 090913 for use in the Trifecta writing challenge. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Un Deux Trois Cat Sank
Maybe the headline should say indicate instead of prove. ~ “Suggests.” And actually, it’s the researchers who are “positing” the explanation, not their study. ~ There are conspiracy theories about the death of William McKinley. It was roughly one hundred years before nine eleven. ~ Offer available to U.S. residents only while supplies last. Limit one free pin per household/address. ~ @MZHemingway @MattWalshBlog in this episode we get tired of #ferguson ignore #gaza and two lady tweeters become “the media” ~ It is easy to photograph a church sign, and rearrange the letters to say what you like. ~ You know, I came here for bad jokes… But I left here with a little knowledge. ~ When I was about three years old I told a variation of this joke all the time. Reading it just now, I finally realized its a lot funnier than I originally thought. ~ “I think you said the joke wrong.” “I know what I said.” ~ Thank you so much, I’m glad I am not the only one that thinks this joke is hilarious. All my friends just think I am odd. Will you all be my new friends? ~ I told this joke to a random stranger once, they just turned without saying a word and walked away. I, on the other hand, could not stop laughing. ~ The thought of you just stopping random people on the street to tell then this makes me laugh more than the joke but hey, you did your part. Good job! ~ For those of you who aren’t American, coupe is pronounced coop here, and also a sedan is a saloon. ~ Oh my god. I have to tell that one to my 9 year old when I get home… ~ My 3 year old pterodactyl is gonna feel slightly offended when I tell him. ~ This one is better if you keep dragging it out as much as you can, then suddenly it just ends. ~ Actually red paint gets its color from iron oxide, whereas blue paint gets its color from copper. Iron oxide has a very distinct metallic smell, causing red and blue paint to smell very different I worked at a paint company for 12 years. And you guys, watching paint dry isn’t that bad… you just gotta love what you do ~ Telling jokes with you is about as much fun as watching paint dry. ~ The blimp used to fly directly over my attic apartment. It sounded like a lawn mower. ~ Two cats are swimming across a river. One’s name is “One two three” and the other’s name is “Un deux trois.” Who makes it across? One two three, because Un deux trois cat sank. Had to ask my roommate taking French for help on this one, because I didn’t know what came after trois. For anyone who doesn’t get it, un deux trois is one two three in French, and quatre cinq is four five (pronounced cat sank in English) ~ But… wouldn’t the navy be anti-pirate? You know, government and stuff? ~ What is a pirate’s favorite letter? R? You’d think that, but his first love will always be the C It’s actually the P. Without it they’re irate. ~ What’s the difference between a can of tuna, a piano, and a glue stick? You can tune a piano, but you can’t piano a tuna. (when asked about the glue stick) I knew you’d get stuck on that. ~ There is an arab saying … he who speaks the truth must keep one foot in the saddle. ~ You’re a smart man, Phillip, and you often post smart and quirky things that are worth reading. This isn’t one of them. ~ You confuse TMZ for TMI. ~ Actually, the police would be caught in NASCAR traffic. ~ SHARE this to expose the corruption. ~ Don’t people catch onto Zamora being a hispanic last name? ~ After Troy Aikman, this will be nothing new. ~ *NO SHOWS AND CANCELLATIONS – WE HAVE BEGUN ENFORCING A STRICT POLICY REGARDING NO SHOWS AND CANCELLATIONS. IF YOU DO NOT SHOW UP OR DO NOT GIVE NOTICE OF AN EMERGENCY WITH DOCUMENTED PROOF, YOU WILL BE TAKEN OFF OUR LISTS FOR WORK AND AUDITIONS PERMANENTLY, FOR THIS AND ANY OTHER PROJECT. UNFORTUNATELY, THIS KIND OF BEHAVIOR REFLECTS POORLY ON ALL OF YOU, AND ATLANTA’S BACKGROUND ACTORS AS A WHOLE. ~ Is he invited to the halloween party? ~ I wouldn’t want to freak out the evil aliens on the knoll. They might mistake me for an person and throw fire at me. ~ This episode is sponsored by a popup ad. “Scientific Breakthrough. Is this the end of Viagra.” ~ You say the Osteens are heretics, and they might be. Instead of burning them at the stake, you condemn them in a post sponsored by … “Vydox … originally formulated to help the adult industry.” ~ Lighten up. ~ One post is Christian on Christian insults. Another post is comedian on comedian insults. One group knows that it is entertainers, with incidental social impact. The christians think they are saying important things. In truth, they are in show biz just like the comedians. I just thought the two posts were similar. Also, there were some more comments in Chamblee54, about the Matt Walsh/ Mo/ Joel Osteen post. ~ @sydscifi @mikeliberation when you post the photo you are supporting wilson story people will see the picture and not read the text ~ Private convo of D. Sterling gets 1000x publicity of J Rivers comments on Gaza ~ Yoko Ono singing is a nightmare. ~ asking an octopus to help tie your shoes ~ pictures from The Library of Congress. ~ selah
Dr. King And Mr. King
The other day PG stumbled onto a blog post, about a speech given by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This address was deemed “the singularly most-important speech on race in the history of this country.”
PG admires Dr. King. He is also suspicious of superlatives. There were some comments made by Rodney Glen King III. The comments by Mr King were briefer, and tougher to live up to.
While thinking of things to write about, PG realized that he had never seen the actual quote by Mr. King. It is embedded above. When you see this video, you might realize that Mr. King has been misquoted. The popular version has him saying “Can’t we all just get along.” He did not say just.
Mr. King was known to America as Rodney King. His friends called him Glen. His comments, at 7:01, May 1, 1992, went like this: ““People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it, making it horrible for the older people and the kids? . . . Please, we can get along here. We all can get along. I mean, we’re all stuck here for a while. Let’s try to work it out. Let’s try to beat it. Let’s try to beat it.”
The circumstances of the two comments could not be more different. Dr. King was giving the sermon of his life. There was an enormous crowd, both in person and on TV. His comments were scripted, rehearsed, and delivered with the style that he was famous for.
Mr. King, by contrast, had just seen the officers who beat him acquitted. Cities from coast to coast were in violent upheaval. Mr. King was speaking to reporters without benefit of a speech writer. What he said just might have been more important. Pictures today from The Library of Congress.
Jay Bakker And Joel Osteen
Jay Bakker was the guest on WTF podcast today. In case you are new here, Jay is the son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. He was a kid when their empire imploded, and had a tough time dealing with it.
After a few years as an alcoholic, among other vices, Mr. Bakker found some scripture that he agreed with. He decided to preach. His view of the bible is different from most mainstream believers, with an emphasis on grace and acceptance. The church is currently in Minnesota. There are plans to maybe have an online based ministry, with no geographic location.
While the teaching of Jay Bakker is different from most churches, some of the basic assumptions are the same. He talks about the teachings of Jesus, who he calls Christ. He finds what he wants to see in the bible. (The be fair, Mr. Bakker said that his view is expanding all the time. He apparently is thinking, and is open to new possibilities.)
To PG, this is mistaken. The bible is a book assembled by man, with all the mistakes that men are capable of making. It is not the complete story about G-d. It is also not the complete story about Jesus. All we know about Jesus is what the Council of Nicea wants to tell us.
In a way, this continues in the Jim and Tammy Faye tradition. The PTL club was basically a friendly place. They were about love, instead of the meanness distributed by so many other Jesus worshipers. These are not the people who taught PG that Jesus hates him. Unfortunately, there was some financial tomfoolery. Maybe money is the root of all evil.
While listening to this show, PG was editing pictures from The Library of Congress. Some of these pictures are posted here today. When WTF was over, PG checked in to see if the latest offering from Matt Walsh was up. Holy synchronicity, Batman.
The story today is a denunciation of Joel Osteen. Mr. Walsh does not think that Mr. Osteen is correct in his approach . Phrases like “wonderful blasphemy” and “indefensible teaching” are tossed around. Scripture is quoted. What you see in the bible says more about you than it does G-d, or Joel Osteen.
Here is a quote. “In more primitive times they burned heretics at the stake. Now we greet the blasphemers with applause and multi-million dollar book deals. I’m not sure if the latter response is any more enlightened than the former, but both are wrong.”
When you go to the Matt Walsh piece, you might get a popup ad (irony alert.) The headline reads Is this the end of Viagra? The product is an ED drug. “… the adult industry so excited about Vydox … to make it a mandatory supplement part of every actors pre filming routine.”
UPDATE: After this feature was published, PG went to Facebook to promote it. He learned of the passing of Joan Rivers. May she rest in peace. There was also a link to something that seems connected with a post, about a Jesus worshiper trashing a wealthier Jesus worshiper over theocratic style. The post is The 30 Harshest Comedian-on-Comedian Insults in History.
Sunday Racial Polemic
PG was spending a productive sunday morning. He created a map to the Living Walls grafitti festival. He was in a good mood. Even this link on facebook did not bring our slack blogger down.
Out of a masochistic sense of fairness, PG took a look at the link after he finished the map. “That’s Racist Against White People!” A Discussion on Power and Privilege is the usual headache producing polemic. Here is the third paragraph.
These are White folks who are claiming that the Obamacare tax on tanning beds is “racist” against White people. These are White folks who are claiming that affirmative action is racist against them. These are the White folks who honestly believe they suffer more racism than people of Color.
Lets take a look at those three links. In the first, Republican Congressman Ted Yoho complained to John Boehner about what is sometimes called the “Snooki tax”. The second link, about affirmative action, is linked to a feminist blog. The money quote “Ask any White person how they feel about Affirmative Action, and you’re almost guaranteed to hear that it is “racist against White people” and that it is “unfair” or “reverse discrimination” and that they oppose it.” This article is used as a source for the comment “These are White folks who are claiming that affirmative action is racist against them.” Is “ask any white person” prejudiced?
The last one, about PWOC thinking they suffer more discrimination than POC, is linked to an article in a British tabloid newspaper. Somebody did a study once, and that was one of the results. The study also showed “Blacks also perceived that racism against themselves had steeply declined from 9.7 in the 1950s to 6.1 in the 90s.”
One of the main points in the Everyday Feminism post was that the word racist is often misused. PG will not argue against that. The article was posted two days before a curious tweet by Chris Brown. “N**** done 6 months community service wit police and the DA racist ass crying to the judge that I didn’t do it. Fuck the SYSTEM! “
The entertainer, who is a POC, got in trouble for publicly beating up his girlfriend. He has had problems with his community service requirment. The amusing thing about this tweet is that the “DA racist ass” is a POC.
This is a repost. Very few things needed to be changed. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. These images are Union soldiers from the War Between the States. The primary justification for that gruesome conflict was the abolition of slavery.
The Funeral Of Elvis





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






Mr. LAMB: And how long did you spend with The New York Times as a reporter?
Ms. IVINS: Six years with The New York Times. Some of it in New York as a political reporter at City Hall in Albany and then later as bureau chief out in the Rocky Mountains.
Mr. LAMB: Would you take a little time and tell us about reporting on the funeral of Elvis Presley?
Ms. IVINS: Oh, now there is something that when I’ve been standing in the checkout line at the grocery store and if I really need to impress people, I just let fall that I covered Elvis’ funeral. And, boy, people just practically draw back with awe. It may yet turn out to be my greatest claim to fame.
I was sitting in The New York City Times one day when I noticed a whole no–knot of editors up around the desk having a–a great scrum of concern, you could tell. It looked sort of like an anthill that had just been stepped on. And it turns out–The New York Times has a large obituary desk, and they prepare obituaries for anybody of prominence who might croak. But it turns out–you may recall that Elvis Presley died untimely and they were completely unprepared.
Now this is an enormous news organization. They have rock music critics and classical music critics and opera critics, but they didn’t have anybody who knew about Elvis Presley’s kind of music. So they’re lookin’ across a whole acre of reporters, and you could see them decide, `Ah-ha, Ivins. She talks funny. She’ll know about Mr. Presley.’
So I wound up writing Elvis’ obituary for The New York Times. I had to refer to him throughout as Mr. Presley. It was agonizing. That’s the style at The New York Times–Mr. Presley. Give me a break. And the next day they sold more newspapers than they did after John Kennedy was assassinated, so that even the editors of The New York Times, who had not quite, you know, been culturally aton–tuned to Elvis, decided that we should send someone to report on the funeral. And I drew that assignment. What a scene it was.
Mr. LAMB: You–you say in the book that you got in the cab and you said, `Take me to Graceland.’ The cabbie peels out of the airport doing 80 and then turns full around to the backseat and drawls, `Ain’t it a shame Elvis had to die while the Shriners are in town?’
Ms. IVINS: That’s exactly what he said. `Shame Elvis had to die while the Shriners are in town.’ And I kind of raised by eyebrows. And sure enough, I realized what he–what he meant after I had been there for awhile because, you know, Shriners in convention–I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a whole lot of Shriners in convention, but they were having a huge national convention that very week in Memphis. And they tend to wear their little red fezzes, and sometimes they drink too much and they march around the hotel hallways tooting on New Year’s Eve horns and riding those funny little tricycles and generally cutting up and having a good time. That’s your Shriners in convention, always something very edifying and enjoyable to watch. But they–every–every hotel room in Memphis was occupied with celebrating Shriners, and then Elvis dies and all these tens of thousands of grieving, hysterical Elvis Presley fans descend on the town.
So you got a whole bunch of sobbing, hysterical Elvis fans, you got a whole bunch of cavorting Shriners. And on top of that they were holding a cheerleading camp. And the cheerleading camp–I don’t know if your memory–with the ethos of the cheerleading camp, but the deal is that every school sends its team–team of cheerleaders to cheerleading camp.
And your effort there at the camp is to win the spirit stick, which looks, to the uninitiated eye, a whole lot like a broom handle painted red, white and blue. But it is the spirit stick. And should your team win it for three days running, you get to keep it. But that has never happened. And the way you earn the spirit stick is you show most spirit. You cheer for breakfast, lunch and dinner. You cheer when the pizza man brings the pizza. You do handsprings end over end down the hallway to the bathroom. I tell you, those young people will throw–show an amount of spirit that would just astonish you in an effort to win that stick.
So here I was for an entire week, dealing with these three groups of people: the young cheerleaders trying to win the spirit stick, the cavorting Shriners and the grieving, hysterical Elvis fans. And I want to assure you that The New York Times is not the kind of newspaper that will let you write about that kind of rich human comedy.
Mr. LAMB: Why?
Ms. IVINS: Because The New York Times, at least in my day, was a very stuffy, pompous newspaper.
Mr. LAMB: What about today?
Ms. IVINS: A little bit better, little bit better than it was.
Mr. LAMB: And…
Ms. IVINS: Has–has–it has a tendency, recidivist tendencies, though. You–you will notice if you read The Times, it–it collapses into pomposity and stuffiness with some regularity.
Mr. LAMB: Why did you leave it?
Ms. IVINS: Well, I–I actually got into trouble at The New York City Times for describing a community chu–chicken killing out West as a gang pluck. Abe Rosenthal was then the editor of the Times and he was not amused.
Mr. LAMB: Did–but did they let it go? Did they let it…
Ms. IVINS: Oh, no. It never made it in the paper. Good heavens, no. Such a thing would never get in The Times in my day.
POSTSCRIPT PG found some pictures, marked up the text, and was ready to post the story. He decided to listen to a bit more of the discussion between Molly Ivins and the bald headed man. When he got to this point, it became apparent that he could listen to Molly Ivins talk, or he could post his story, but he could not do both at the same time.
Ms. IVINS: Oh, well, of course, I’m gonna make fun of it. I mean, Berkeley, California, if you are from Texas, is just hilarious.
Mr. LAMB: Why?
Ms. IVINS: Well, of course, it is just the absolute center of liberalism and political correctness. And it is a veritable hotbed of people, of–bless their hearts, who all think alike, in a liberal way. And, of course, I’m sometimes called a liberal myself, and you would think I would have felt right at home there. But I just am so used to–I’m so used to Texas that I found the culture at Berkeley hysterical.
#FirstWorldProblems
An Englishman, a Scotsman, an Irishman, a Welshman, a Latvian, a Turk, a German, an Indian, several Americans (including a Hawaiian and an Alaskan), an Argentinean, a Dane, an Australian, a Slovak, an Egyptian, a Japanese, a Moroccan, a Frenchman, a New Zealander, a Spaniard, a Russian, a Guatemalan, a Colombian, a Pakistani, a Malaysian, a Croatian, an Uzbek, a Cypriot, a Pole, a Lithuanian, a Chinese, a Sri Lankan, a Lebanese, a Cayman Islander, an Ugandan, a Vietnamese, a Korean, an Uruguayan, a Czech, an Icelander, a Mexican, a Finn, a Honduran, a Panamanian, an Andorran, an Israeli, a Venezuelan, an Iranian, a Fijian, a Peruvian, an Estonian, a Syrian, a Brazilian, a Portuguese, a Liechtensteiner, a Mongolian, a Hungarian, a Canadian, a Moldovan, a Haitian, a Norfolk Islander, a Macedonian, a Bolivian, a Cook Islander, a Tajikistani, a Samoan, an Armenian, an Aruban, an Albanian, a Greenlander, a Micronesian, a Virgin Islander, a Georgian, a Bahaman, a Belarusian, a Cuban, a Tongan, a Cambodian, a Canadian, a Qatari, an Azerbaijani, a Romanian, a Chilean, a Jamaican, a Filipino, an Ukrainian, a Dutchman, an Ecuadorian, a Costa Rican, a Swede, a Bulgarian, a Serb, a Swiss, a Greek, a Belgian, a Singaporean, an Italian, a Norwegian and 2 Africans walk into a very fine restaurant.”I’m sorry,” says the maître d’, after scrutinizing the group, “You can’t come in here without a Thai. ”
A teenage boy is getting ready to take his girlfriend to the prom. First he goes to rent a tux, but there’s a long tux line at the shop and it takes forever. Next, he has to get some flowers, so he heads over to the florist and there’s a huge flower line there. He waits forever but eventually gets the flowers. Then he heads out to rent a limo. Unfortunately, there’s a large limo line at the rental office, but he’s patient and gets the job done. Finally, the day of the prom comes. The two are dancing happily and his girlfriend is having a great time. When the song is over, she asks him to get her some punch, so he heads over to the punch table and there’s no punchline.
So, a penguin is driving down the road in his truck. His truck starts to sputter, so he pulls into a town and finds a mechanic shop. The mechanic says, “Well Mr. Penguin you should go downtown and get something to eat while I see what is wrong with your truck here.” “Great idea!” says Mr. Penguin, “I am famished.” So, the penguin starts walking do- well, waddling down town, and he sees an ice cream shop. Everyone knows that penguins fuckin’ love ice cream so he orders an ice cream cone. He starts to eat it, but it gets all over his beak and face, because he doesn’t have any opposable thumbs, he is a penguin. He starts to wal- ddle back to the mechanic shop. The mechanic, who is just finishing up, rolls out from under the truck and says to the penguin, “Well Mr. Penguin, it looks like you blew a seal.” The penguin shrugs and replies, “Nah, that is just a bit of ice cream.”
A cop is sitting on the side of the highway when all of a sudden he sees a guy driving a truck full of penguins. Confused he pulls the truck over. “What seems to be the problem officer?” “Well you have a truck full of penguins, i’m just going to give you a warning but you need to take these penguins to the zoo immediately.” The next day, the truck passes again, still filled with penguins. This time they are wearing sunglasses. So again the officer pulls the man over. “I thought I told you to take these penguins to the zoo!” “I did, and they loved it. Now we’re going to the beach. !”
Most jokes are, as a lot of them aren’t truly understood as a kid. I once told this joke at the dinner table when I was around 11: Why don’t blondes use vibrators? It chips their teeth. I had no idea what it meant. I thought it was referring to that exercise machine with the strap that goes around your waist and shakes you (It’s an old machine(it was for weight loss)) . I thought the blondes were just rattling their teeth from the vibration of the machine. If it wasn’t for a Betty Boop cartoon I wouldn’t have understood the joke at all. ~ I did this too when I was about 12 (I should have known by then). Asked my mom “what do you call a blonde with pigtails?” -“a blow job with handles” she didnt even get mad. She just asked if I knew what it meant and I said no. Then I proceeded to ask her to tell me but she kept saying she didn’t know.
Three guys are trapped on an island with cannibals. The cannibals tell them that if they want to survive, they must each find ten of the same fruit and return to the cannibals to receiver their next instruction. The first man returns with ten apples and the cannibals tell him he must shove all ten apples up his butt without any changing facial expression and they won’t eat him. After about eight apples, the man’s face becomes strained, and the cannibals eat him. The second man return with ten berries and he is given the same instruction. Upon inserting the tenth berry with no struggle, the man bursts out laughing, so the cannibals eat him. Up in heaven, the first man asks “You were so close to living, how could you just laugh and throw it all away?!” “The other guy brought back pineapples.”
So this guy walks into a bar on a busy night. Everybody is noticing him, and it is all good attention. All the women are swooning over him. But there is one very noticeable thing about him that is odd… his head is an orange. So the guy walks up to the bar and announces, “All drinks are on me tonight!” as he starts making it rain with $100 bills. So the bartender gets the man’s attention and asks him, “So what’s your deal?” The man replies, “Oh, well… I found one of those genie lamps on the beach the other day! He gave me three wishes.” “That’s pretty neat,” replied the bartender. “So what did you wish for?” “Well, the first wish was endless $100 bills in my wallet” The bartender replies, “I guess that explains the money. Good choice. What else did you wish for?” “I then asked him to make me irresistible to women.” “Again, not a bad move. So how about that third wish?” said the bartender.”Ah, the third wish… now here is where I think I may have gone wrong… I asked the genie to turn my head into an orange.” Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
The Cost Of Football




Football is just around the corner. The teams are busy with the pre season, and soon weekends will be full of hitting and drinking. Perhaps this is a good time to wonder whether football is worth the human cost. Especially now, with a national debate raging about the future of our health care. Football injuries keep hospitals hopping during the autumn.
This is the annual post about the down side of football. There is a helping of hypocrisy here, as PG enjoys watching the hits. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Football season is here. While the games are fun to watch, the players are paying the price. Your health insurance premiums just might be affected.
Football is a contact sport. On every play, the linemen block other lineman to keep them from tackling a back. Someone gets hit on every play. Most of these hits are “clean” and cause only bruises. Some are “dirty”, and cause injuries. Even the clean hits can hurt someone.
It is estimated that 187,000 emergency room visits every year are due to football. What if an illegal drug sent 187k to the er annually? There would be a hue and cry to kill the pushers.
Knee injuries are especially prevalent. An estimated 45,000 knee operations are performed each year due to football injuries. Arthroscopy is a wonderful invention.
With all those helmets slamming into each other, head injuries occur. “The researchers found that there is approximately one catastrophic head injury per every 150,000 athletes playing, or 7 catastrophic injuries yearly. There were 0.67 injuries per 100,000 players at the high school level and 0.21 injuries per 100,000 for college level football players.” Often, the coaches get caught up in the do or die spirit of a big game, and don’t get the player the medical attention that he needs. “Football is a very macho sport. Athletes are taught to play through pain,” …“But concussions range in severity and symptoms, so all a player may experience is a headache several hours after impact. High school players need to be educated in these symptoms and encouraged to self report.”
Even cheerleading squads are reporting more injuries, due to botched stunts.
When you see the players in their youthful glory, you don’t think what they will look like after they quit playing. Many players know this, but the lure of today’s glory justifies the pain of tomorrow. The heroes of yesterday often walk with pain today.
Coat Of Many Colors
This feature was originally posted in 2012. At the time where Mr. Romney was taken seriously. Out of kindness to the readers, that part has been left out today. The pictures, from The Library of Congress, are a year older. Dolly Parton is a year younger.
When PG saw this, he thought about the song, “Coat of many colors”. The b side was by Porter Wagoner, “Coat of many sequins”. COMC is about a woman who is too poor to buy her little girl a coat at the store, so she makes a quilt. The other kids make fun of her, but little Dolly knows that the coat is really made of love. Mitt Romney never had a coat of many colors.
The song talks about a story in the Bible. PG had heard about the story, but didn’t remember the details. He must have been daydreaming in Sunday School when that story was taught. With the help of google, Genesis 37 appears, as if by magic. Pass the popcorn.
2 These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brethren; and the lad was with the sons of Bilhah, and with the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives: and Joseph brought unto his father their evil report.
3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours.
4 And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him.
Ok, hold on for a minute. Israel had at least two wives. The Biblical definition of marriage must be between a man and two women.
The story gets a bit weird here. Joseph has this dream, where he becomes the boss hog brother. The other brothers decide something needs to be done, that Joseph needs to die. Reuben tries to help Joseph, and has a plan to save him. Joseph is stripped of the coat of many colors, and placed in a pit, with no water. Before Reuben can sneak Joseph out of the pit, a camel caravan comes by. Twenty pieces of silver change hands, and Joseph is sold into slavery. The brothers decide to pull a cover up, and make it look like Joseph was dead. Reuben made another sandwich.
31 And they took Joseph’s coat, and killed a kid of the goats, and dipped the coat in the blood;
32 And they sent the coat of many colours, and they brought it to their father; and said, This have we found: know now whether it be thy son’s coat or no.
33 And he knew it, and said, It is my son’s coat; an evil beast hath devoured him; Joseph is without doubt rent in pieces.
34 And Jacob rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days.
35 And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said, For I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him.
Bulwer-Lytton 2014 Part Four
This is the fourth, and final, report on the 2014 Bulwer-Lytton fiction writing contest, at least for 2014. Parts one, two, and three were previously published. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Dr. Fulton Crisp DMD, stoic superintendent of the prestigious Northwoods Dental College, entered the symposium for new students, took the dais amid the clamor of the first day of classes, produced a #6 dental pick from a pocket, held it aloft for all to see and spoke the immortal words, “May I have your attention please, this is not a drill, repeat this is not a drill.” — Jim Biggie, Melrose MA
As Farmer Brown’s train pulled out of the station at 10:00am traveling east at 50 mph, he had no idea that at that very same moment Farmer Green was 100 miles away on a west-bound train heading straight for him at 60mph and that because of a tragic track-switching mistake he was going to die in a fiery head-on train crash at exactly … uhm … well … err … sometime later that day.
Shanon Conner, San Angelo TX
This is a tale of love, pain, loss, and redemption – and of a baboon, Amelia.
Talha bin Hamid, Karachi, Pakistan
There it stood regally atop the marble counter, the clear, sensuously curvaceous container, with its golden cargo, crowned with a spherical stopper, with its tapered base in intimate contact with the neck of the vessel, a vitreous phallus waiting to deprive the oleaginous content of its extra-virginity.
Anthony Newman, Collinsville CT
Long, sleek legs protruded from her tantalizingly round abdomen; thick, bristly hairs clung to his skin, communicating “I need you” in her innocent, nymphean way; wide, multifaceted eyes stared lustrously into him – yes, the little maggot he’d taken in but weeks before had blossomed into a voluptuous young housefly, and he feared he could no longer resist her beauty.
Zachary Bezemek, West Bloomfield MI
Perhaps it was the unnatural angle of her neck that bothered Clint, or perhaps it was the fact that she was beautiful – far too beautiful to be having a body bag zipped up over her, but he knew one thing for certain: the untouched chocolate mud cake on the counter was looking more appetizing by the minute. — Dave Roberts, Oatley, NSW, Australia
Fearing his subordinates were after his job, and having denied their requests for promotions, Edgar Bergen felt the first pangs of job insecurity upon discovering Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd poring intently over dog-eared and well-worn copies of Ventriloquism for Dummies.
John Tracy, Shoreline WA
The full moon over distant hill bathed the lovers in joyful radiance, glowworms merrily winked and glimmered, swamp gas emanated an ethereal shimmer, and fireflies twinkled, flickered and fluttered – pinging their pinprick flashes like optical exclamation points, the whole light show engendering a veritable cornucopian cacophony of Kinkadesque scintillation. — Kenneth Leake, Fairbanks AK
The cheesemonger’s wares reminded me of the days of my feckless youth – the soft white clouds of paneer encapsulated my leisurely summer in Gujarat, the block of sweet, caramel-brown Brunost made my autumn sojourn in Oslo float to mind, and the pungent scent of Stilton, its yellowish-white wedges embellished with veins of blue-green mould, brought back memories of discovering the Staffordshire Strangler’s first five corpses. — Vina Prasad, Singapore
It was cool but muggy – I was schvitzing like a mohel at his first bris – and one thing was for certain: that Rosetta Stone course in Yiddish was worth the gelt. — Kelben Graf, Milwaukie OR
Bulwer-Lytton 2014 Part Three
This is part three of the chamblee54 exhibition of the 2014 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Parts one, and two, were previously published. There will be a part three, sometime. The writers will be forgiven. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
He was a stolid man, prone to excessive and extended bursts of emotionlessness; but when Maurice loved, he loved with the passion of a dog itching its face against the grain of a firm pile carpet.
Stephen Sanford, Seattle WA
Cole kissed Anastasia, not in a lingering manner as a connoisseur might sip a glass of ‘82 La Pin, but open-mouthed and desperate, like a hobo wrapping his mouth around a bottle of Strawberry Ripple in the alley behind the 7-11. — Terri Meeker, Nixa MO
The Contessa’s heart was pounding hard and fast, like an out-of-balance clothes washer, which can get that way if you mix jeans with a lot of light things, though the new ones have some sensor thing to counteract that or shut off, but the Contessa’s heart didn’t have anything like that, so she had to sit down and tell Don Rolando to keep his hands to himself for a while. — John Hardi, Falls Church VA
The young lovers’ lips latched to each other not unlike the way in which two coital snails would, with much slime and suction, frothing as if someone had just poured salt on them.
Peter S. Bjorkman, Rocklin CA
His ex-wife’s personality was like chocolate – not the smoky, tangy, exquisitely rich and full-bodied type, but the over-sweet, tooth-cracking, factory-processed, made-with-vegetable-oil kind that leaves one with diabetes and an aneurysm the size of a grape. — Shalom Chung, Hong Kong
It seemed fair to say that her werewolfism was putting a strain on their relationship, the way she had earned the ire of the neighbors by devouring their pets and howling far past the bedtimes of their children, but bring it up to her, and she’d just snarl, “Why do you keep harping on this?” around a mouthful of the Smiths’ cat. — Eva Niessner, Cockeysville MD
Raoul’s deep slate eyes sucked Natalie in, and there she remained lodged like the wadded knee-hi clogging the tube of her Hoover Electrosuction Model 612 that once belonged to her grandmother, or some other dead relative, its vacuum bag so overstuffed with gunk, shed skin cells, and insect exoskeletons it nearly exploded like Natalie’s heart bursting with love for Raoul.
Wendy White Lees, Ho-Ho-Kus NJ
Over KFC, Raul broke up with Sheila a second time (the first time shrinking her heart until it was only fit for a tiny doll), tearing what was left of her heart to shreds, like the shreds of coleslaw now clinging to Raul’s beard; a fitting analogy since the aforementioned doll Sheila was thinking of was a Cabbage Patch doll. — Amelia Kynaston, Las Vegas NV
Pet detective Drake Leghorn ducked reporters at the entrance to the small hobby farm and headed down to the tiny pond where a lone goose was frantically calling for her mate and he wondered why – when so many come to look upon the graceful mating pair – why would someone want to take a gander?— Howie McLennon, Ottawa ON
Six months old, and already their love had picked up memories like lint, which, now that Maddie thought about it, was appropriate, since she and Brian met at the laundromat, when Maddie found herself hampered by a stubborn washing machine coin slot, but then snickered at the thought of being “hampered” while doing laundry, and then found herself explaining her snicker to the nearest laundromat patron, who turned out to be Brian and who, better yet, turned out to have a sense of humor even, well, dryer than her own. — Kirsten Wilson, Superior CO
Some stories are so compelling they almost seem to write themselves, but not this one.
Elizabeth (Betsy) Dorfman, Bainbridge Island WA




































































































































































































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