Chamblee54

PG went to the Candler Park festival, and spent a lovely Indian Summer day outdoors. This is exactly the right thing to do after obsessing in the dead of night about the hatred Jesus has for PG. Sunday afternoons are a gift, and to waste this gift worrying about religion is wrong.
PG entered “Jesus Hates Me” into google. The search yielded 3,420,000 results in 0.27 seconds. There is a site, Jesushatesme.org, that is “under construction”. There are the lyrics to a song, and the opportunity to download a Jesus Hates Me ringtone to your cell phone.
The song is to the tune of “Jesus Loves Me”. A remarkable feature of this tune is the second line, “for the bible tells me so”. Any name with four syllables can be substituted in place of “for the bible”. By amazing coincidence, PJW has four syllables in his first and last name.
A play has been written with this twelve letter title. The author of this play is a man named Wayne Lemon. One of the googloids is an article written by him. His story is rather amazing. Mr. Lemon attended a screening of “The Passion of the Christ”. One of his neighbors has tourettes syndrome, and provided a running commentary on the film.
Mr. Lemon is the son of a preacher. He talks about that in this feature. It is a miracle that Mr. Lemon is able to function as well as he does. PG thinks that excessive exposure to Jesus is a grotesque form of child abuse.
The other feature on the first google page is from The i***k,( the handle is copyrighted) Michael Spencer. He is a battle veteran in the Jesus Worship blog community. His post was “The Suburban Jesus Hates Me”.
To PG’s understanding, the i***k is saying that someone who follows the real Jesus is not going to be able to preach at a mega church and grow wealthy. PG wonders why i***k’s version of Jesus is better than the wealthy megapreacher. After all, it is the same bible, just different interpretations.
The bible is a book written, copied, edited, and translated by people. G-d does not write books. And even if she did, the Jesus that man screams about today has almost nothing to do with the historic Jesus. Modern Jesus is a man made device, which the first commandment tells us not to worship.

PG woke up unable to sleep. One day, he will learn not to go to bed so early, if he expects to sleep until the next morning. At the moment, the only thing on his mind is the realization that Jesus Hates PG.
This is a by product of the years PG spent at Redo Blue, across the room from Professional Jesus Worshiper. PJW would humiliate PG, then boast ” I never felt better in my life”. Finally, one day, PG was doing his job, while PJW conducted his toxic ministry in PG’s face. Something needed to be done. PG wrote the words “Jesus Hates Me” on a piece of paper, and left it in a place where PJW might find it.
The more PG thought, the more he realized the truth of those 12 letters. Jesus is a man made spirit, a modern day golden calf. Jesus means something different to everyone. PG knew that the best way to know Jesus is through the words and deeds of his believers. And many of these believers showed hatred and abuse to PG. This hatred…both by Jesus and his believers…made PG unhappy. Jesus is a source of unhappiness to PG.
The first commandment says “Thou shalt have no other G-ds before me“. This does not include the so called son of G-d. The practice of Jesus worship is a violation of the first commandment. ( As is regarding the Bible as the word of G-d, but that is a subject for another day) All the unhappiness that Jesus worship causes results from violating the first commandment. And you can’t have Jesus worship without Jesus, nor Jesus without Jesus worshipers.
There probably was a man named “Jesus”, who lived in what is now Palestine. He possibly was an Avatar, or G-d became man. What is known for sure about Jesus is sketchy, which is to be expected for someone who lived 21 centuries ago. This “historic Jesus” has little in common from what is worshiped today as Jesus. Modern Jesus lives in the hearts of his Believers, and this is the force that hates PG.
There is a great deal more that can be said about this. PG entered “Jesus hates me” into google, and got results. It is also a glorious October sunday afternoon in Georgia. A tie dyed collection of people is gathering in Candler Park for an afternoon festival. PG just got the call from Uzi, wanting to know when they were going to go down to the park. The hatred of Jesus will have to wait.

PG hears the word “racist” tossed casually so much, he suspects it has lost it’s meaning. Dictionary definitions are of little use. The meaning of the word depends on who is saying it.
The modest suggestion here is for a seven point scale to measure racism. Zero would be totally colorblind, and six would be metaphysical hate. For the sake of simplicity, this scale, in the beginning, will only apply to white-black relations in the United States.
The model for this is the Kinsey scale. In his books on human sexuality, Dr. Kinsey described a seven point scale. Zero was totally heterosexual, and six was totally homosexual.
PG does not have a clue how to write a test for this scale, or how to score this test. White people see racism differently than black people. White people are affected by racism in different ways than black people. Different cultures view racism in different ways.
How would PG score on this scale? He has black friends and black enemies. Certain parts of black culture are enjoyable, and certain parts make him want to turn the radio off.
PG does not like people that do not like PG. When it is us against them, you need to remember which one you are. How does this register on this racism scale? It depends on who does the judging.

Those fun lovers at Listverse recently published a feature about “10 extremely weird religions”. This goes along with Hunter S. Thompson’s observation that “when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro”. Back when Chamblee54 was on blogspot, that was the motto here. One day, there was a comment that weird was not spelled wierd. What do you expect from someone quoting Hunter S. Thompson?
Back to the “matter” at hand, people have some strange ways of talking to/about/with G-d. The miracle is that things are not worse than they already are. The dominant religion in our culture is Jesus Worship, and those folks see moderation, in religion, as a sin.
Number Ten is Scientology. If you want a link to them, you can find it yourself, and might also want to look for professional help. Scientology is only included because commenters would be offended. As it is, the comments that PG saw asked about rastafarianism, the flying spaghetti monster, Islam, atheism, and Jesus Worship. The title clearly said that this was a top ten list, and not an encyclopedia. If you want an encyclopedia of religions, try Hinduism.
Nine through Five is pretty boring, as nine to five usually is. There is white supremacy, black supremacy, ufo admirers, burned out hippies, and people who take “Stranger in a Strange Land” too seriously. PG thought that “My Favorite Martian” was the best commentary on that book.
Number four is the Church of the Subgenius. While PG has never officially participated in CotS, he admires the consecration of slack. If PG can ever get motivated to attend a devival, the world will be a better place.
Number Three is the Prince Philip movement. It seems like the residents of an island somewhere think the Queen’s hubby is a pretty cool dude. It is safe to assume the Princess Diana was not a believer.
Number Two…in more ways than one… is the Church of Euthanasia. It is popular with young people in China. ( Youth in Asia ) Given the popularity of war and capital punishment in the Jesus worship community, the CoE may become very popular. They are based in Boston, MA.
According to the church’s website, the one commandment is “Thou shalt not procreate”. The CoE further asserts four principal pillars: suicide, abortion, cannibalism (”strictly limited to consumption of the already dead”), and sodomy (”any sexual act not intended for procreation”).
The number one spot on this list is sometimes called Nuwaubianism. The travelers on this path do not use that term, preferring “factology”, and numerous other terms. The founder is Dwight York, who is currently in prison.( He is center in the last picture) The Nuwaubs had a facility in Putnam County, Georgia at one time.
The afrocentric beliefs of this group are difficult for outsiders to appreciate. The original post listed eight beliefs, among the man teachings of Mr. York. These three caught PG’s eye:
2. Furthermore, some aborted fetuses survive their abortion to live in the sewers, where they are being gathered and organized to take over the world
5. Women existed for many generations before they invented men through genetic manipulation
8. The Illuminati have nurtured a child, Satan’s son, who was born on 6 June 1966 at the Dakota House on 72nd Street in New York to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis of the Rothschild/Kennedy families. The Pope was present at the birth and performed necromantic ceremonies. The child was raised by former U.S. president Richard Nixon and now lives in Belgium, where it is hooked up bodily to a computer called “The Beast 3M” or “3666.”

PG made a mistake. The preacher in front of the GP plaza held a picture board, which was poorly rendered. PG made the mistake of assuming it was abortion pictures. It turns out to be an image of Jesus on the cross.
The Georgia Pacific building is on the site of the Lowes Grand Theater. On December 15, 1939, Gone With The Wind had its world premiere there. In a church choir was the ten year old Martin Luther King Jr. GWTW was about as real about the ante bellum south as the starship troopers were about intergalactic warfare.
The GP plaza is where Forsyth Street comes into Peachtree. For some reason, the wind on Forsyth Street is very strong, and this volume of air beats against the GP plaza. On DragonCon parade Saturday, the wind coming back from the plaza was a measure of revenge.
A theme of the post yesterday (see comments) was the importance of knowing fantasy from reality. The preacher was living a fantasy. Few are impressed by his rhetoric. He creates ill will for Jesus. The grossout pictures of the crucifixion do the same. PG posted last week about the damage that selfish preachers do to Jesus.
It should be noted that photography did not exist when Jesus lived. Nor did people speak English. That does not prevent people from believing that an English translation, of a Greek rendering, of Aramaic lessons is the inerrant word of G-d. If you believe the Bible is the inerrant word of G-d, then it is not much of a leap to believe those pictures were real.
Another problem is the placement of the spikes. The spike that held feet to a cross was driven into a spot between the Achilles heel and the bone. No bones were broken, and the feet were secured to the cross.
The spikes that held the arms were driven through a space in the wrist. Here again, no bones were broken, and the arms were not going to be pulled away from the cross. In the picture, there was a rope tying Jesus to the cross at this spot, and the spike was going to go in a couple of inches up the arm.
But when you believe your fantasy, details like this are not important.

PG was reading about Afghanistan while waiting for the time to go downtown. Dragon Con is in town, and the parade is at ten am. PG has decided to go downtown and see the costumes this year, so next year he can sleep late. Meanwhile, what is being said about Afghanistan ( of AfPak fame) is just as much a fantasy as DragonCon.
People are discussing the war. Perhaps not as many as needed, but it is a start. There is a two prong discussion… Should we be fighting in Afghanistan, and Are we doing it right?
Uzi just called to say he is on his way to the train station, so this needs to be wrapped up asap. There is a man named William Kristol. He writes  think pieces for various newspapers. Mr. Kristol…he had a deferment and never served in the Vietnam era military…was known as the Brains behind Dan Quayle.
Mr. Kristol discusses counterinsurgency in a recent oped piece. The classic counterinsurgency theory is that you have you have one soldier per fifty civilians in your theater of war. Afghanistan has an *estimated* population of 28 million. Do the math. Mr. Kristol observes: “But as the military historian Fred Kagan explains, counter-insurgency theory and experience suggest that if the Afghan National Army is expanded, as Gen. McChrystal proposes to do, and if there is a surge of several brigades of American forces “to bridge the gap between current Afghan capacity and their future capacity, while simultaneously reducing the insurgency’s capabilities,” then we would have roughly the number of forces necessary to carry out the strategy.”
The fantasy downtown will have more colorful costumes.

The first thing in the parade was a crew of flag totin wannabe soldiers. This struck PG as being disrespectful of the real troops. Whether you agree or disagree with the war, the fact is that these fine men and women are fighting a hot war, with real dead and wounded. It is not a fantasy. PG suspects many of the uniform models in the parade would not last ten minutes in actual combat.
That was a bit of a comedown, but PG got over it. DragonCon is about fantasy and enjoyment, and if you think too much the fun goes away. There was a lot to look at…pretty and plain, imaginative and derivative, and on and on. PG hopes that the harem girls were more suited for that activity, than the starship troopers would be in a laser fire fight.
When the real police came through, and told people to get on the sidewalk, the first part of the parade was over. A man with a bullhorn and pictures of abortion product started to scream about Jesus.
PG and Uzi went walking through the horror of Five Points to Underground, before heading north to Peachtree Center. The food court was packed, with football fans cheerfully co- existing with intergalactic trailer trash. There was no place to sit down and eat, so PG went back to the Doraville train. The ride was over.

PG points his camera at an object and pushes the button. Sometimes a good picture is the result. Sometimes the computer can salvage it, and sometimes there is no hope.
Two things that PG likes to capture are graffiti and mannequins. Both are fantasies. One hopes to move product, the other stays in place until the next spraypaintcan works over it. Politics is another fantasy. The only difference is that some confuse politics with reality.
While editing this piece, PG thought of how similar politics is to graffiti. Both are admired more by the producer than by the audience. The public forum is the medium, to be covered by sprayed on chemicals until the term of office is over. At that point, the next public official makes his or her mark on the body politics. If only politicians were quiet like mannequins, then the world would be a much better place.
Atlanta is currently trying to elect another mayor. Shirley Franklin is going to spend more time with her family, if they will have her. There are five “serious” candidates for the office. Two women, three men, one white, and four black. One has a muslim name, but is a methodist. None is likely to be elected President of the United States.
It should be noted at this time that PG lives 3 miles east of the city limit. The mayoral race is none of his business. He does, however, have space to sell on to any candidate wanting to advertise. Any candidate who would buy space on a blog with twenty readers a day should be automatically disqualified .
The two women are Mary Norwood and Lisa Borders. They are the front runners at this time. Ms. Norwood is the Caucasian. Lisa Borders has the same  name as the author of “Cloud Cuckoo Land”. PG suspects they take stands on the issues.
A memo was recently circulated by the “Black Leadership Forum”. The memo states that Lisa Borders is the one candidate who can defeat Mary Norwood, and urges people to unite behind her. The BLF does not want Atlanta to have a white mayor. Ms. Borders is obligated to denounce the memo, while secretly hoping people take the message to heart. It is good training for Mayor’s job, if she  gets elected.
Mohammed Kasim Reed, Jesse Spikes, and Glenn Thomas are the three men in the race. Mr. Reed has served in the Georgia Legislature. Mr. Reed has been quoted as being opposed to gay marriage. The Mayor of Atlanta has nothing to do with this issue.
The only candidate that PG has met is Glenda Bernadette Allen. She is an activist who fights the foreclosure of homes. Ms. Allen was at the town hall meeting in Clarkston on August 10. Glenda Bernadette Allen is the prettiest of the candidates.

Wendy Whitaker is back in the news. At least some of the news…the fishwrapper has not reported the latest chapter in her story. Thank you Creative Loafing, which is physically printed by the fishwrapper. ( Ever notice how skinny the paper is on Tuesday? That is when they take in outside jobs. Of course, lately it is skinny everyday) A HT goes to the unlikely team of Griftdrift and Peach Pundit. There is a recent post at Chamblee54 on this subject.
Mrs. Whitaker is the lady who gave a high school classmate a blow job, and became a registered sex offender(RSO). She is now in jail. It seems like her husbands name was on a lease, and they moved into a residence that was previously out of bounds. The authorities locked her up because she did not inform them that she had moved.
The laws on RSO have a lot of provisions. They are not allowed to live within a certain distance of schools, parks, and churches. ( Across the street from an IRS office is permitted) An RSO is not allowed to volunteer at a church. And, as Mrs. Whitaker learned, they must register every time they move. There are stories of people getting locked up because of confusion over how often they should register,or big brother not getting the note.
Many Florida communities have tough laws, establishing boundaries for places that RSO are forbidden to live. A bridge under a causeway is one place where RSO are permitted. Many feel that driving RSO out of established communities makes it difficult to monitor their activities.
A prominent Florida lobbyist, Ron Book, had a horrifying experience with a nanny. Mr. Book pushed for establishment of many of the punitive Florida laws. Mr. Book is beginning to regret his lust for revenge after seeing some of the unintended consequences.
Politicians always want to be seen as being tougher on crime than anyone else. Some of the laws they create cause more problems than they solve. It will take genuine courage to undo the damage.

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 a recycled post. There is a helping of hypocrisy here, as PG enjoys watching the hits.

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. However, football is different.
Knee injuries are especially prevalent. An estimated 45,000 knee operations are performed each year due to football injuries.
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.

On a more personal note, the Falcons had a winning season last year, and made the playoffs. In 44 years of NFL competition, the Falcons have never had back to back winning seasons. It does not look good for Rankin Blank this fall.
A few years ago, the Falcons had the top pick in the draft, and got Micheal Vick. Number Seven was the most exciting player in recent memory, and led the Falcons to the Conference championship. Before long, he was in prison for dogfighting. This is consistent with the history of the Falcons.
Not only is football dangerous to human knees, it is also puts man’s best friend in mortal danger. When you give millions of dollars to a young man from Bad News, Virginia, who plays for the Falcons, you should not be surprised at the results. It is Philadelphia’s problem now.

There is a bit of a debate going on about whether, or not, Jesus said to “Love your enemy”. There are some who profess to believe this, and proceed to practice the opposite. There are others who claim to love their enemies, but you have to understand what they mean by it. It can be very confusing.
PG went to a source for documentation. Oh, the blessed conjunction of copy paste with public domain. When PG entered enemy (singular) in the search engine, 100 verses came up. When the request was made plural ( enemies), 237 entries popped up. The last mention of enemies in the bible is… Revelation 11:12 “Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here!” And they went up to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies watched them” Loving your enemies does not include bringing them to heaven with you.
As for Jboi, he was quoted as saying Matthew 5:44 “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”.
There is a scholarly debate about what Jesus did or did not say. The words available to modern man have been copied by hand, edited, translated, and interpreted. PG does not know Greek from Geek, and cannot tell Aramaic from Alabama. Like anyone else, PG can only read and listen, and think for himself.
In a sense it does not matter what Jesus “really” said. The cult of Jesus Worship is going to believe what it wants. More important, it is going to practice what it wants. As far as the difference between what Jesus “really” said and what his (loud) believers say and do…they can explain.
What follows is a humble suggestion. Maybe the translators and scribes got it wrong. Maybe Jesus did not say to love your enemy. Maybe what Jesus said was to show kindness. This is a practice thing, rather than a belief thing.
It is not as much fun to be nice to someone, as it is to scream about life after death. Kindness does not need to be justified by a quote from a magic book. You just need to do it.