Voight-Kampff Test
A facebook friend posted this: “New hobby: giving chat bots a Voight-Kampff test. It goes something like this: “hey stud u wnt 2 see my webcam XOXOX???” “A tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun beating its legs trying to turn itself over but it can’t, not without your help, but you’re not helping. Why is that?”
The VK test is designed to determine if someone is a human being, or another critter imitating a human. Once, Batman had a simple test for telling if someone was human or robot. He told the being a super funny joke. BM knew that robots don’t have a sense of humor. When the body inhabitant did not respond to the humor, BM knew it was a robot.
OK Cupid has a device, The Blade Runner Voight-Kampff Test. “A new life awaits you in the Off-World colonies…or does it? Can you prove your human, or even “more than human”? Pass, and you’ll be given your freedom; fail, and you just might get “aired out”. Reaction time is a factor in this.
The quiz is a number of multiple choice questions about the movie “Blade Runner”. Here are two.
6- What film had Harrison Ford finished before he began working on Blade Runner?
The Empire Strikes Back ~ Mosquito Coast
he was still working as a carpenter, like Jesus ~ Raiders of the Lost Ark
9- What does the Voight-Kampff machine register?
sexual preference ~ it’s a lie detector ~ psychic ability ~ empathy
There are 45 questions. PG has never seen “Blade Runner”, so he gave what seemed like reasonable answers. There was an opportunity to sign up for OK Cupid. PG chose to get the answers only.
Your result for The Blade Runner Voight-Kampff Test … Nexus 4.5. It’s too bad she won’t live, but then again who does? If you know what a Spinner is, and understand the implications of memory transfer, you are on your way! But you still have some distance to go. Mabey you can be trusted with designing eyes for “skin jobs”. You scored 43% on Blade points, higher than 8% of your peers.
This was written like Isaac Asimov. Pictures for this repost are from The Library of Congress. The test is not connected to actor Jon Voight.
Fourth Floor
AC
A recent podcast dealt with the New York accent. Someone did a study, where sales clerks were encouraged to say the phrase “fourth floor”. “He knew where the men’s suits were but he was trying to get people to say the words “fourth floor” to see if they dropped the Rs and said “fawth flaw.”
Twenty years later, and eight hundred miles south, PG was driving a truck for Redo Blue. One of the leading customers was a firm on West Peachtree Street. If you listened to the delivery radio, you would hear people say “Eerie eerie foth flow, eerie eerie sack and flow.” The driver knew to go to Heery Heery, both on the fourth floor, and the second floor.
In Georgia, people have their own way of saying four. The black people say fo, as in friend or foe. The white people make up for the R dropping elsewhere, and say fo-er.
Pictures for this repost are from The Library of Congress. Spell check suggestion for fawth: faith.
Give Up The Funk
PG was stumbling through another morning in the real world. Keep moving, get breakfast, survive i285, and maybe by Sunday you will get out of this funk. Those of you with any sense will skip this text, and look at the pictures. They are from The Library of Congress.
A twitterlady caught his eye. @Flyswatter “Feminists calling each other out for various offenses. At any rate, it’s an interesting and thoughtful article.”
Upon arrival, the page visitor is greeted by a fundraising as for “EMILY’s List.” This is an effort to raise money for select moving lips. EMILY is an acronym. Early Money Is Like Yeast.
Once upon a time, some feminists had a conference, #femfuture. They started to snipe at each other. A hashtag was hatched, #solidarityisforwhitewomen.
Before long, one cornerstone of correctness had an article, 5 Ways White Feminists Can Address Our Own Racism. The article had a header ad from an auto insurance agency. Your suggested next post was I Threw Away My Scale and I’ve Never Felt Better About My Body.
The article about #femfuture is long, and might cause brain damage. The authors are not talking to cismale crackers like PG. Today is going to require a few brain cells to negotiate, and reading these posts might wipe them out.
Classified As An Illness
Adolph Hitler was a terrible strategist. If Germany had someone else in charge, they might have won that war. ~ most misguided self-righteousness is obnoxious ~ fair is a baseball hit between first base and third base ~ Miss Hathaway is a performer I am not familiar with. How is it my fault if she does not get parts? ~ This article is misleading. Miss Hathaway’s career is far from finished. Also, the gloss left out part of the quote that the story is based on. Here is the complete quote. “Hathaway: My impression is that people needed a break from me [laughs].” ~ Keith Emerson, Ray Manzarek, Cindy Wilson, pigpen ~ The Neil Boortz award ~ I think you are better looking clean shaven ~ You could have put the period in that first sentence after television. ~ Maybe we should call a general moratorium on the use of the words racism and racist. They are used much too carelessly.~ A lady on television said once that it is a misperception that an actor puts on a mask to perform. In reality, the opposite is true. We wear masks all the time. The actor takes this mask off to perform. ~ The BS quote is at 4:48. What Mary J. Blidge says next is better At least this quote is real ~ Few things are more ridiculous than hand wringing about #racism by privileged white people ~ Isn’t that what they do to people who vote in Iraq? ~ Janet Jackson did not lip snync ~ There are a lot of adjectives and qualifications in that bit of semantic stew. I would have to think about it for a while, and I am not sure I want to make the effort. I was all set to write a graphic poem, and I made the mistake of looking at facebook. My poem may not be more important, but it will be more fun to write. ~ Not to go all ad hominem on this, but Mr. Freeberg admires Sarah Palin. His blog is still being published, which is saying something. ~ The New Supremes ~ ” I would wager that, of the people behind the incorporation’s not one, once said to themselves “if we do this it will keep the blacks away” If that was the intention, it did not work. There are plenty of POC in the new cities, as well as the counties that declined to participate in MARTA. ~ We could go to Pittsburgh and see drag shows ~ what is that smell? ~ they wear masks all the time. how can anyone be sure who is in the band? ~ maybe jesus said it ~ This may be nit picking, but Mrs. Palin actually said “our founders … would create law based on the God of the bible” ~ #8 Question motivational slogans, especially those with ugly graphics. #7CardinalRules ~ as a native, I have heard this many, many times. complaining about Atlanta is part of living here. I am used to it ~ We get a lot of oil from Nigeria. The oceans there make the gulf of mexico look pristine. ~ If you drive a car, or eat food transported by truck, then you can thank yourself ~ homosexuality was classified as an illness in sweden swedes protested by calling into work sick, saying they felt gay ~ I would leave the word “your” out of that sentence ~ but they lead other people ~ Your is often confused for you’re. One is a second person possessive. One is a contraction of you are. It is good to keep theology, if you must deal with it, as your theology, and not you’re theology.~ Substitute the name of an religion that encourages extremism for the word theology in my sentences above ~ love glove sad bad tears fears wept crept heart bart pain sane ~ On a night like this, you may as well be in California ~ “I have never met a snob who is not a born liar” unknown ~ But when Turney reached the boudoir, she was met by an unsettling sight. Her husband–from whom she is apparently estranged–and Vickie Lynn Morgan, 38, “were both naked, smoking pot, drinking liquor and having anal sex.” The Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office report does not specify whether the pair was engaging in these activities simultaneously. ~ This is an advantage when a book is terrible and needs to be thrown at something ~ I hope you don’t fly out badly ~ Conflict resolution is something you do. It is not something you believe. ~ You could make a blank where the words have compassion are. There are lots of nouns and verbs you could put in those blanks. ~ Are you saving money this way? ~ IANAL This does raise some interesting issues. MM marriage is not recognized as valid in Georgia. Is the federal government now in the business of regulating marriage? ~ I have mixed feelings about this. The federal government has so much power already. .@JoeMyGod Rosie O’Donnell Reveals Weight Surgery : Speaking at a Chicago event for the American Heart Association, Rosie ~ @JoeMyGod tmi When will her fifteen minutes be over? ~ Goodbyes hurt, no matter the cause ~ whether it works with fingers or paws ~ To those lost I wish us both wells ~ tighten up archie bell and the drells ~ have this ache to remember you by ~ just know that wysiwyg is a lie ~ I think the dancers in the video are family ~ People believe translations of what foriegn leaders say ~ no matter how ugly the graphics ~ I just a one word email. It said sup. I just learned that it stands for Sole Ultimate Panjandrum ~ @mbsycamore do sex workers offer a think piece ? ~ @mbsycamore @chamblee54 Let me think about that ~ @TinyPterosaur @amandapalmer @Chumplet maybe you can say Flame Dame ~ @chamblee54 @amandapalmer @Chumplet now THAT has some class ~ Dr. Loury says that Rand Paul has not been messing around with interns. Maybe Dr. Paul just hasn’t been caught. If the scrutiny that Bill Clinton endured was focused on Dr. Paul, there is no telling what they would find. Furthermore, why are you saying that Monica Lewinsky was exploited? She was an adult when the affair took place. She probably wanted it to happen. Maybe Bill Clinton was the one who was exploited. ~ pictures are from The Library of Congress. ~ selah
Peachtree Street 2014
PG finished a book, Peachtree Street-Atlanta. The author is William Bailey Williford, and it was published by the University of Georgia Press in 1962. PG found this at the Chamblee library, and this is probably the best way to find this book today. (Reissued by UGA Press.)
How this road got the name Peachtree is a good question. Most peaches grow south of the fall line. The story goes that there was a Creek Indian village called Standing Peachtree, located where Peachtree Creek runs into the Chattahoochee. During the war of 1812 Fort Peachtree was built on this site.
There was a trail that ran from Buckhead to an intersection with the Sandtown Trail, at what is now Five Points. A short distance south of this intersection was a settlement known as White Hall. For many years, Peachtree Street south of Five Points was known as Whitehall Road. At some point in the last thirty years, a decision was made to change Whitehall to Peachtree. It did not help the rundown condition of Whitehall Street.
In 1835 Governor Wilson Lumpkin decided that Georgia should build a Railroad that would be centered near the junction of Peachtree Trail and Sandtown Trail. The new town was named “Marthasville”, after the youngest daughter of the Governor. Martha Lumpkin is a resident of Oakland Cemetery today.
The village was soon renamed Atlanta, which was a feminine form of Atlantic. Houses, churches, and businesses were soon built on Peachtree Road. In 1856, Richard Peters built a flour mill. To insure a steady supply of firewood, he bought four hundred acres of land, for five dollars an acre. The land was between Eighth Street, North Avenue, Argonne Avenue, and Atlantic Drive.
Another pioneer citizen with a large landholding was George Washington (Wash) Collier. Mr. Collier bought 202 acres for $150 in 1847. The land was between West Peachtree, Fourteenth Street, Piedmont Road, Montgomery Ferry Road, and the Rhodes Center. Much of the land was used for the development of Ansley Park.
In 1854, Atlanta entertained, for the first time, a man who had been President. On May 2, Millard Fillmore arrived from Augusta on a private rail car.
There was some unpleasantness in 1864, which we will not concern ourselves with.
In 1866, there was a shocking murder. John Plaster was found dead, in an area known as “tight squeeze”. This was an area of shanties, at the present location of Crescent Avenue and Tenth Street. A hundred years later, this was near “the strip”, Atlanta’s hippie district, also called “Tight Squeeze”.
As the nineteenth century rolled along, many mansions were built on Peachtree Street. The road was paved, and streetcars ran up and down. Automobiles came, and came, and came. An expressway was built in the 1950’s, and quickly became obsolete. One by one, the mansions were torn down and replaced with businesses and churches.
The book was written in 1962, when the party was just getting started. The High Museum was known then as the Atlanta Art Association. In June of 1962, a plane full of prominent Atlanta residents crashed in Paris, killing all on board. As a memorial to those people, the Memorial Arts Center on Peachtree, at Fifteenth Street, was built.
Another phenomenon which is not explained by the book is the custom of naming everything here Peachtree. There are countless streets and institutions named for a fruit tree that likes warmer climates. Atlanta has a one street skyline, that stretches from Five Points to Peachtree Dunwoody Road, almost at the city limits. PG lives a quarter mile off Peachtree, in Dekalb County, and has no idea why Peachtree is a magic word.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. and The Library of Congress. This is the annual repost.
Tales of Ordinary Madness
PG sat in the workplace cafeteria and read the last line of Tales of Ordinary Madness. TOOM is a book of short stories and underground press columns, allegedly written by Charles Bukowski. This collection was published by City Lights Books, the facility of Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The poet-businessman was not admired by Mr. Bukowski.
The author was born Heinrich Karl Bukowski, on August 16, 1920, in Andernach, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. His Catholic parents moved to America in 1923. The name was americanized to Henry Charles Bukowski. Friends called him Hank, and his literary alter ego was Hank Chinaski. Somebody decided that Charles would look better in print.
Hank Chinaski was a hard boiled character, or so he would have you believe. He was not a teetotaler. In spite of his many excesses, Hank lived to be 74, when leukemia sent him to the likkastow in the sky. This was March 9, 1994. Eleven days later, Lewis Grizzard met his maker. Lewis was 47, the same age as Hank in much of TOOM.
You should always separate the creator from the creation. Enjoy the product, and don’t worry about the ingredients. That is the case with TOOM. The stories are reputed to be little autobiographies. (An Amazon one star commenter thinks the stories are the result of “some kind of posthumous ghost writer, and not a very good one.”)
Hank, if nothing else, was productive. He wrote thousands of poems. It is not known if they have all been published, or if anyone is drunk enough to read them. Here is a quote from a previous Chamblee54 feature, The On Time Charles Bukowski.
The writer/drunk had always been a bit of a fascination to PG. Out of the millions of useless drunks feeding the urinals of planet earth, at least one will turn out to have had literary merit… this leads to a newyorker piece about the gentleman. After nine paragraphs, and two poems, there is the phrase that set off PG…graphomaniacal fecundity. (spell check suggestion:nymphomaniac)
As best as we can figure, g.f. means that Hank wrote a lot of stuff. This is a good thing. PG operates on the notion that if you keep your quantity up, the quality will take care of itself. Hank seems to agree, spitting out product “like hot turds the morning after a good beer drunk.” He seemed to take pride in doing what Truman Capote said about Jack Kerouac…he doesn’t write, he types.
Holy drunken author synchronicity. Last summer, PG was working third shift in a midtown sweatshop. He would read a couple of stories of TOOM, then shift gears and read a bit of The Dharma Bums. At some point in the procedure, there was a collection of output from Truman Capote.
Hank Chinaski might not like PG. There is the rhyming poetry. There is buying a book of repackaged prose at a yard sale. There is the twenty five year retirement from alcohol use. This is beside the point. You have to live for what is important to you, not what a deceased barfly might think.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
30 Million Hits
Matt Walsh is a blogger. He used to have a radio show, but now intends to make his fortune as a writer. The product today is The two steps to getting 30 million hits on your blog. Yes, he has 30mil hits on his facility. This is 28,821,568 more than Chamblee54.
He has two suggestions for blogging success. Have good content, and plan to be a success. The first is common sense, which is usually a rare commodity. The second is motivational speaker pablum. Raw ambition is seldom fun to read.
Mr. Walsh is a self proclaimed conservative. The last post, before the 30 mil thing, was about abortion. It was textbook straw man rhetoric. He said that some people, who oppose policemen killing puppies, are pro choice. An entire post was spent calling both of these people hypocrites. At last glance, there were 1029 comments. Yes, this sort of thing is popular.
The first time PG heard about Mr. Walsh was a couple of weeks ago. A facebook friend posted a link to a story about people who have great confidence in themselves, and base it on having great confidence in themselves. They are planning to be successful. The post featured a quote, allegedly by Marilyn Monroe. The quote is phony. PG has not seen a comment by Mr. Walsh about the dubious quote. Maybe, if you admit making an error, you are not planning to be a success.
Towards the end of today’s post, Mr. Walsh sells his scheme. “If you don’t have these two covered, I guarantee that your blogging exploits will fail, and fail spectacularly.” It depends on what you mean by failure. PG does not consider himself a failure. He is doing something that he enjoys. A handful of readers enjoy it. His skills as a photo editor have improved spectacularly. Maybe the 30 million hits will come some day. Maybe not. It has been a good ride so far, and it is far from over.
If anyone is interested, Chamblee54 has a page on How To Blog. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This are Union Soldiers from The War Between The States. They did what they thought was right, and did not worry about being popular.
Fixing The Flag
PG had been by the house ten thousand times over the last fifty years. It had been vacant since last summer. There was a flag out front, on display 24/7. PG did not think this continuous display was a good idea. Eventually, the flag would come down, into a respectful retirement.
This afternoon saw something different. The rope that attached the bottom grommet to the flag pole was broken. Instead of being tied down one side to the pole, the flag was hanging from the top grommet like a red, white, and blue dishrag. PG saw this while riding by on his bike, and realized that it could be fixed in two jerks of a sheep’s tail.
There were some things the flag rescue person did not count on. The first mistake was getting some four inch cable ties. They were not long enough. String would have worked better, but sometimes the desire to go high tech wins out.
When PG got back to his bike, the next door neighbor was in the road, staring. “What are you doing?” “Trying to fix the flag” “It’s not broken. That is not your yard, and you should not be there messing with it.” ” I have known the family for fifty years” “They sold the house, it doesn’t belong to them”
Sometimes, what you are doing is right, or at least not wrong. It is also not worth fighting about. You need to know the difference. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. UPDATE The house was torn down. It is being replaced by a McMansion. This is a repost.
Theology Worse
As with so many discussions, it began with a facebook meme. “If your theology doesn’t lead you to love people more, you should question your theology.” The graphics leave room for improvement.
I would leave the word “your” out of that sentence ~ Other people’s ideologies don’t lead me to do anything. ~ they lead other people ~ Right.. so this would be addressed to them as well. ~ Your is often confused for you’re. One is a second person possessive. One is a contraction of you are. It is good to keep theology, if you must deal with it, as your theology, and not you’re theology. ~ It is so good that I’ve never seen it done. ~ Will I see you at the potluck? ~ I hope so. ~ Substitute the name of an religion that encourages extremism for the word theology in my sentence above
Very few people would use the phrase “my theology.” They would say “my faith,” “my religion,” or something else. As religion has become a dirty word, people are substituting faith. If enough people are hurt by the faith of others, then that too will be seen as a dirty word. Theology stands above the battlefield, which is probably just as well.
One of the philosophical side roads of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is the concept of mythos vs. logos. The idea is that when people see a contradiction between a legend (mythos) and knowledge (logos,) they will usually choose the legend.
Theology is basically a combination of theo, or G-d, and logos. Is this the contradictory combination of mythos and logos? Or is Theo the caretaker brother of Vincent Van Gogh? Should believers cut an ear off if they hear something that offends them?
In America, we tend to see theology in Christian terms. One of the fundamental beliefs of this affair is the concept that the bible is “the word of G-d.” A spin off of this belief is an abundant interest in semantics. Saved or not, the obsession with what words mean is tough to get away from.
Too much food for thought can lead to mental indigestion. Or is that spiritual diarrhea? Maybe this chat should end at this point. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Which David Bowie Are You?
Zimbio is yet another entertainment websites. Marshall McLuhan is rolling over in his grave over the message medium mix. The eyeball snatcher on the screen now is a quiz, Which David Bowie Are You? The affair is sponsored by an ad for “Brain on Fire, My month of madness,” a book. If you are lucky, you can “win 10 FREE copies for your book club!”
PG has written about David Bowie before. To find that link, he used google advanced search. The logo for google today is winter athletes, against a rainbow background. Good grief.
The first question is “What causes you the most anxiety? ~ Societal decay. ~ Americans. ~ Fear of losing control. ~ Love, or the lack thereof. ~ My job. ~ Nothing. I sleep very well. ” Multiple choice queries are easy to score. They also force the test taker to choose the least bad answer. Now, PG does sleep well, which is not the same as saying that day to day living does not fill him with anxiety. Between I 285, jesus run amok, commercial exploitation of amateur athletics, and not having a book club to give 10 free copies to, life can be downright challenging.
“Pick a breakfast food” and “How much time, on average, do you spend on your hair?” were good excuses for subliminal advertising, making the digital world go round. Then we come to a real head scratcher, “What’s your relationship with reality?” PG is more or less detoxed from substances, which should leave reality. It doesn’t always work that way. One of the happiest moments of life was the blissful discovery that a person could be a degenerate, without alcohol. Maybe it is best to just move on to “Do you consider yourself popular?”
Each question is illustated with a pupop popup ad. For “You’re involved in a major scandal. How do you handle it?,” the sponsor is Charmin toilet paper. For “Spandex: How does it make you feel?,” Charlie the tuna promotes Star Kist gourmet tuna fillets. Are you in good taste, or do you taste good?
The answer was “Thin White Duke.” This was druggie Bowie. After the tour, he moved to Berlin, and Enooodled with electronics. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Union soldiers, from the War Between the States, did not take an internet quiz sponsored by Charmin toilet paper.
The Doe Family
A doe is a female deer. There is also a human Doe family.
John Doe is rather slow. Not much is known about him.
How does a man without an face get in wikipedia?
Sha Dow is a mysterious figure. Why he changed his name, no one knows.
Jane Doe is the ex wife of Sha Dow. She is having an identity crisis.
Juan Doe is undocumented.
Bro Doe is on the down Low.
TaeKwonDoh is the asian of the family. She will kick your ass.
Do Si Doe likes to dance. She thinks being called square as a compliment.
According to science and legend, there was once a bird, the Dodo.
This is doe-doe, not doo doo.
Which will bring us back to Doe.
This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Jesus Gets A New Nickname
There is a video making the rounds now. The title involves Jesus, and a certain racial slur, delicately known as the N word. The video is embedded above. You can feel the magic for yourself.
Here is a story about the song, with the edgy language bleeped. “One pastor is trying to spread the word of God with an edgy rap song. The rapping pastor and his wife claim they have “Christian swag” while tossing around the n-word. … The video of the rapping pastor was recently uploaded to YouTube but it’s not clear when it was filmed. It was taken at a church in Iowa which closed in 2004.” Another helpful interneter has the lyrics.
In case you didn’t know, Pastor Jim Colerick, and Mrs Mary-Sue Colerick, are melanin deficient. They are, as Bette Midler once said about Karen Carpenter, so white they are invisible. It is not considered good manners for Caucasians to use this word, with or without salvation.
There is another angle to this equation. Many Jesus worshipers see not using cusswords as a sign of righteousness. As a result, many Jesus worshipers use the words G-d, and Jesus Christ, as tools of their anger. This violates the third commandment. Now, this use of a sacred name, as profanity, is being extended to using a sacred name as a racial slur. Someone is always ready to manipulate language to serve an agenda.
When you call a book “the word of G-d”, you give certain words too much power. When you designate the lazy way of saying black as a super duper naughty word, you give those six letters way too much power. Now, we see the convergence of these two taboos. Let the party begin.
Pictures of Pastor and Mrs. Colerick are taken from the video. The other images are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
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