Sammy And Gnarlene
Sammy Snoutfair was given to pussyvans over his wonder-wench, Gnarlene. The latest set him to lunting crack, over the tortured realization that Gnarlene was a California widow. Sammy did not own the key to Gnarlene’s heart, just a weekend lease. He would groak as she ate a roadkill souffle’, and jirble a drink of the rankest rotgut. After dinner, Sammy tried to get Gnarlene into bed, and succeeded. He soon failed ignominiously in his manly duties.
The hot water heater was broken when Sammy chose to clean up. The curglaff when he jumped in the bathtub made him question, once again, his excuse for living. Soon Sammy remembered the good times, at the bar, playing team trivia. Sammy’s talents as a spermolger won his teammates, the men who say ni, pitcher after pitcher of beer. Since the bar was in the back of a pizza parlor, with a penchant for home made cheese, Sammy could add tyromancy to his talents. Sammy was so beef witted that he thought getting to cut the cheese was an honor.
The men who say ni lost at team trivia the night that Sammy learned the truth about Gnarlene. They became a crew of queerplungers, and all were duly rescued. The lake next to the pizza parlor was not very deep, and only the most beef witted would drown in it.
The same could be said about those concerned about their well being of the men who say ni. The people who rescued them were the Englishable gentry of the village. They were all as queer as a showroom of crochet bathtubs. The men who say ni were not without sex appeal, to a certain category of degenerate. It makes you proud to be British.
After the bout of queerplunging, Sammy was taken in by Armistead. When they tried to get into Armistead’s attic dwelling, the lock on the door refused the charms of the key. This residentialism was not unexpected by Armistead, who made an impecunious living as a bookwright. It paid better than being a soda squirt, even if the bennies were slow.
Sammy was also a burglar, and was able to install himself in Armistead’s attic dwelling. This was a good thing. There was a text message for Sammy when he checked his I phone. Careless Gnarlene was with squirrel, and saying that the baby belonged to Sammy. Zafty Armistead eagerly took responsibility for the pregnancy, and started to call abortion clinics. Sodomizing Sammy would have to wait for Gnarlene’s honor to be restored.
The vocabulary for this story was supplied by Death and Taxes. The enabling post was 18 obsolete words, which never should have gone out of style. Pictures are from Gwinnett County.
Bret Easton Ellis Or Dr. Seuss?
@BretEastonEllis I failed this: Bret Easton Ellis—Or Dr. Seuss? The Quiz. You can find curious things while trolling twitter. There really is a test comparing quotes from Bret Easton Ellis and Dr. Seuss.
There are seventeen quotes. They include: “You have brains in your head.” “The better you look, the more you see.” “We buy balloons, we let them go.” “I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.” “These things are fun.” “But this road doesn’t go anywhere.” “There’s no use in denying it: this has been a bad week. I’ve started drinking my own urine.”
PG got fifty three percent correct. The one about drinking urine was properly credited to Mr. Ellis. Was he eating green eggs and ham? We don’t know. Rumors of people scoring less than zero have not been confirmed. The spell check suggestion for BretEastonEllis: Breastbones.
Twerk Off
There is a bit of likeme trolling on facebook this morning. It is a link, Miley Cyrus Points Out Something Wrong With America — And She’s Absolutely Right. It is from a facility called upworthy. These missives usually have a popup ad, encouraging you to like uw on fb. The message today was a poll. “It’s nice to be reminded of the good in the world. And it should happen more often. I Agree I Disagree” PG clicked disagree, and was sent through to the headline post.
Miley Cyrus has gotten attention lately. She performed at an awards show, and got people excited. PG does not pay to watch TV, and missed the spectacle. Maybe this is the best approach.
The message from miss achy breaky heart is not that great. She says that some nasty things are on television, but you can’t say fuck. This is the same observation about double standards that has been around since the top half of Elvis was on the Ed Sullivan show. It is just as meaningless today as ever.
Calling someone a hypocrite is a cheap argument. Whenever someone says something, you can be sure that the standards of someone else are violated. Hypocrisy is in the eye of the beholder. Two wrongs do not make a right. Not everybody agrees with you. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Reveal Your Character
There is an online quiz, Reveal Your Character! It is ten multiple choice questions. There is a statement, and you finish it with your selection. An example is question number three. My ideal job would be… A detective or an FBI investigator. ~ A skydiving instructor or some type of adventure leader. ~ The ultimate dictator of the world. ~ Helping those who are deprived. ~ Being in the military or as a spy. ~ What job? I do what I want!
At the end, you are told what literary character you most resemble. The answers don’t always fit, and PG found himself choosing the least bad answer several times. This is typical of online personality evaluations. This one had fewer bad choices than most such exercises. The fact the PG had not read the winning book does not help. You take the test and get the results.
You are Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. You are a visionary with grand ideas and courage to match. You are thoughtful and spend more time thinking about the future than the present. Pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
This Green Thing
There is an amusing monolog on the innertubes these days. It is a grumpy old person talking about the old days. It starts out like this:
Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. The woman apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days.” The young clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.”
Plastic bags ARE bad for the earth. There is a spot in the Pacific Ocean where non degradable junk collects. This saltwater trashpile is the size of the Atlantic Coast Conference, and, like the ACC, gets bigger all the time. It dribbles and shoots year round.
In a perfect world, people might bring their own bags, and those bags would be made of environmentally friendly materials. However, a lot of us are not that organized. A lot of those tote bags are made of materials that degrade the environment. And then there is the paper versus plastic dilemma. Yes, paper is a renewable resource, and is buddies with that part of the environment that is not downwind from a paper mill. The problem is that paper bags weigh a lot more than plastic bags. When you ship these bags from the factory to the store, you use more fuel to ship the paper bags.
Getting back to the battle of the generations, PG finds himself caught in the middle. He remembers black and white television, jim crow, and cigarettes smoked everywhere. There are a few things things the oldtimers seem to forget. It wasn’t that long ago that PG was a kid, and hearing people say they feel sorry for your generation. Now, PG is the old fogie, and can see the points made by both sides.
The first earth day was in 1970. The concern over the ecology was something that hippies did when the war in Vietnam started to wind down. A lot of these people … i.e. the ones who cared about the earth … are the old generation that the young clerk is fussing about.
“Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.”
In the fifties, gas powered lawn mowers were everywhere. Electric mixers were in a lot of kitchens. Just how old is this lady?
Black and white TV was not all that great. There were frequent breaks in the transmission due to technical problems. The sets had something called fine tuning. If that knob went a cat’s hair too far to the right, the picture tube would have a bunch of bars, followed by the picture, followed by a bunch of bars, followed by the picture. This kinetic parade would roll down the viewing area, until someone walked over to the tv and moved the fine tuning a cat’s hair to the left.
Meanwhile, someone in the living room was either lighting, smoking, or putting out a cigarette. Back in those days, people smoked whenever and whereever they wanted to. The idea of second hand smoke had not been invented. Even if it had, few would have cared. There were reports about lung cancer, but they were laughed off.
The lady in the photograph is white. This probably helps her memories of how good the old days were. In the pre civil rights era, people that were not white did not have it so good.
Here again, PG finds himself in the middle. In the early sixties, PG was horrified by the anti-black racism in Georgia. If you said that maybe negroes are not all that bad, you would hear about it for the next hour. These days, if PG does not vigorously condemn the racial attitudes of certain people, he is considered racist. Sometimes you just can’t win. Bullies will be bullies.
It is easy to make fun of political correctness. Sometimes people get carried away, and forget to look in the mirror. The thing is, all people are G-d’s children. Sometimes, what you thoughtlessly say can hurt someone. Which generation gets the credit, and the debit, for caring about their neighbors?
In a sense, the fifties were the test tube generation. Nuclear bombs were tested in the desert, with little regard for the radiation. Powerful drugs were coming on the market, and doctors were eager to prescribe them. The side effects became known later, after the damage was done. The gas guzzling cars spewed poison into the air, and no one cared. Maybe it was because the drivers were bombed. Drunk driving was not seen as a problem.
To be fair, many of the old ladies points are valid. The same is true of the young clerk. One day, if she is lucky, the young clerk will be the old lady. This is a repost.
The I Word
During a recent facebook deterioration, on social issues, someone posted a 410 word statement. PG noted the promiscuous use of first person singular. A study ensued.
1- I, or verb contractions using I, occurs 27 times in this statement.
2- I was used in the first seven sentences. The eighth sentence did not have I, but did contain me.
3- The tenth sentence does not have I, but does contain my. These are the only two sentences without I.
4- The last sentence has I five times. The first two have I three times each. Six sentences use I two times.
5- There are 410 words in this statement. There are 15 sentences. Six percent of these words are I.
6- I is the shortest word in the English language. It is also possibly the least important.
Many people use the word I too often. The use of this word implies that the listener is interested in what the speaker thinks or does. When someone says I, the lips are usually moving. I is the central letter in both lie and believe. (As another FBF noted, I statements can be useful.)
This does not take away the controversy over what word, in the language, is the shortest. A British facility, the Daily Mail, ran a story,The shortest word in English? Depends on how you measure it
Q. We all know that the longest word in the English language is Floccinaucinihili-pilification, (Spell check suggestion:Oversimplification) meaning inconsiderable or trifling. But what is the shortest word in the English language?
A. This is a controversy that has divided the English-speaking community for more than a century. One faction, headed by Dr Robert Beauchamp from the Oxford English Dictionary, believes that the shortest word in the English language is ‘a’, while another faction, headed by Professor Melanie Kurtz from Chicago University, contends that it is ‘I’.
In his most recent book on the subject, Further Arguments In Favour Of A (OUP, £19.99), Dr Beauchamp claims that, though ‘I’ is arguably the thinnest word in the English language, ‘a’ is the shortest, in the sense that it is not as high.
Professor Kurtz, on the other hand, has argued in a number of pamphlets that, if one unravels the various loops and curls that form a single ‘a’, and stretch it into a single horizontal or perpendicular line, then the letter in question is undoubtedly longer than ‘I’.
Meanwhile, dissident scholars continue to argue the case for ‘o’ and for small ‘i’, though in broader academic circles the first is generally dismissed as not really a word and the second is felt to be questionable: they maintain that the gap between the little dot and the main body of the word/letter is a constituent part of the whole and cannot be discounted when it comes to the full measurement.
One of the comments is highly repeatable. “is it true…..the shortest sentence is ..I am. and the longest sentence…I do.?” – Tommy Atkins Blighty, 02/10/2009 18:45
In the digital age, capital letters are used less and less. If the lower case i is used as a first person singular, then it is both the shortest and the skinniest. The dot on the lower case i is known as the tittle. It is not known what the tittle thinks of the jot, or whether they believe each other.
For those not suffering platitude fatigue, here are the 21 Most Important Words in the English Language. The most important word: We ~ The two most important words: Thank You ~ The three most important words: All is forgiven ~ The four most important words: What is your opinion ~ The Five most important words: You did a good job ~ The six most important words: I want to understand you better ~ The least important word: I.”
A site called vocabula has a feature on the worst words in english. There are two phrases using I.
I mean Meaningless formula (a verbal tic, if you will) used habitually by many to begin nearly every sentence, especially those that are not intended to clarify anything preceding them. I need you to … A completely unacceptable replacement for “please.”
Since we cannot say, for certain, that I is the shortest word in the language, the uncertainty about the longest word should not be surprising. The longest word in German would be a short story by itself. According to Los Angeles Trade-Technical College “The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis. The only other word with the same amount of letters ispneumonoultra-microscopicsilicovolcanoconioses, its plural.” (Spell check suggestion:ultramontane-microscopicsilicovolcanoconioses)
Part two of this feature is about a popular contender for the longest word. It is known here as The S Word. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
There is a feature today on NPR discussing ” “What’s The Longest Word In The English Language?”. The old crowd pleaser antidisestablishmentarianism was dismissed as “Just a bundle of suffixes and prefixes piled up into a little attention-grabbing hummock.” It also has 28 letters, which won’t even get it into the playoffs.
When it comes to big words, there is nothing like science. In 1964, a book called “Chemical Abstracts” published a 1,185 letter word, referring to a protein found in the tobacco mosaic virus. It starts with glu and ends with sine. This word is 8.44 tweets long.
Words like glu…sine are not used often, which brings us to the obvious winner, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. It is the theme song for a dance routine in a movie starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke , and a few dozen animated characters.
According to the urban dictionary, Miss Andrews was not fond of Rob Petrie. “It’s reported that Ms. Andrews replied, “Fuck you! I hate you!! You’re a ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidouchebag’!!!! And get away from my door!! Why don’t you go eat “A Spoonful of Feces “!!!” (This problem might have been caused by SupercalifragilisticexpiHalitosis )
At 34 letters, the s word is the longest english word that most of us have heard of. While it probably was made up by over-imaginative songwriters, it is defined by a reputed dictionary. It translates as superkalifragilistikexpialigetisch (German), supercalifragilistichespiralidoso(Italian) and supercalifragilisticoespialidoso (Spanish). The French are too cool to use it.
A website called Straightdope has a highly entertaining feature called Is “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” a real word referring to Irish hookers? . “Our research first took us to a lawsuit that was filed after the movie came out by Life Music, Inc., against Wonderland Music, the publisher of the Mary Poppins song. It was a copyright infringement suit brought by Barney Young and Gloria Parker, who had written a song in 1949 entitled “Supercalafajaistickespeealadojus” and shown it to Disney in 1951. They asked for twelve million dollars in damages. The suit was decided in the Shermans’ favor because, among other reasons, affidavits were produced from two New Yorkers, Stanley Eichenbaum and Clara Colclaster, who claimed that “variants of the word were known to and used by them many years prior to 1949.”
The decision makes for fairly humorous reading. Apparently the judge got tired of writing out the whole word, so every time it had to be mentioned it was replaced by the phrase “the word” as if it were some loathsome artifact that had to be held at arm’s length. “
There is another story that has the s word appearing in a humor magazine at Syracuse University. An archivist named Mary O’Brien says that rumor surfaces every ten years or so, and is not true. Another old husbands tale has children in summer camps taught a song super-cadja-flawjalistic-espealedojus. This cannot be confirmed or denied.
As for the tale about Irish entrepreneurs , there is a story in Maxim magazine. It says “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, the word supposedly coined by Mary Poppins to make kids sound “precocious,” was actually invented by turn-of-the-century Scottish coal miners. It was used to request “the works” from prostitutes by men too shy to recite specific acts.” The link supplied by StraightDope does not work.
An Old Farmer’s Advice
Many of you have heard “An Old Farmer’s Advice”.
Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and bull-strong. Keep skunks and bankers and lawyers at a distance. Life is simpler when you plow around the stump. A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor. Words that soak into your ears are whispered…not yelled. Meanness don’t jes’ happen overnight. Forgive your enemies. It messes up their heads. Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you. It don’t take a very big person to carry a grudge. You cannot unsay a cruel word. Every path has a few puddles. When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty. The best sermons are lived, not preached. Most of the stuff people worry about ain’t never gonna happen anyway. Don’t judge folks by their relatives. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you’ll enjoy it a second time. Don’t interfere with somethin’ that ain’t botherin’ you none. Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance. If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin’. Sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got. The biggest troublemaker you’ll probably ever have to deal with, watches you from the mirror every mornin’. Always drink upstream from the herd. Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment. Lettin’ the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin’ it back in. If you get to thinkin’ you’re a person of some influence, try orderin’ somebody else’s dog around. Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly. Leave the rest to G-d!
Know one knows who the old farmer is, or what he grew. Some say he really worked in an office writing ads for Massey Ferguson. Some say he had a bull farm, and believed in the product. In this age of industrial strength commodity wisdom, or glurge, the first reaction of some is to look to google. In this case, you can go to a forum at Snopes. No one claims to be the grandson of the old farmer. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
My father in law is an old farmer. He’s given me some advice. It was more like: Don’t try to fix a broken porchlight in a rainstorm. corrolary: Disconnect power to the sprinkler system before fiddling with the wiring. If you wear longer socks, the chiggers won’t bite you. Cool Whip makes everything taste better. Do whatever your mother in law says.
quote: A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor. ~ Yeah, but you try getting a bumble bee to plow your fields. With the tiny little plows attached to their wings, it could take days.
quote: Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly… ~ And above all else, verb adverbly … There’s my problem, I’ve been living deeply, loving simply and speaking generously.
quote: Life is simpler when you plow around the stump. ~ I’m not sure of the lesson here…you should leave a bunch of tree stumps in your farm fields? But then you lose valuable real estate, the crops have to compete with the tree roots, and combine harvesting is significantly more dangerous. Maybe, if you take just a little time to remove the stump properly, it pays dividends and saves you time and energy in the long run. … But life is a lot cooler, and more productive if you go down to the general store, buy a few blasting caps, and blow that mother to kingdom come.
The sentiments aren’t too bad, but they missed “Now get orf moy laaand!” from the end…
quote:Most of the stuff people worry about ain’t never gonna happen anyway. ~ Oh, so I shouldn’t worry about not being able outrun a bumble bee on my John Deere tractor? Thanks.
quote: Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer. ~ But not when the waitress is asking what you’d like on your pizza. … Unless the question is “what’s the maximum decibel level a human can stand.” … Especially if you are passive-aggressive.
quote: Always drink upstream from the herd. ~ But, unless your at the absolute source of the river, there’s always another herd further upstream.
This reminds me of the episode of Frasier where he first got paired up with the Standard Issue Sassy Black Woman (SISBW) who kept trotting out mindless aphorisms from her fictional uncle. Never have I felt so much sympathy for the character.
quote: The biggest troublemaker you’ll probably ever have to deal with, watches you from the mirror every mornin’. ~ I knew it. I knew that SOB had a camera in there. I’m going to the police.
Seven Brilliant Quotes
There is a little graphic floating around, Seven Brilliant Quotes. Some find these sayings to be inspirational. PG smells a rat. Here are the seven quotes:
William Shakespeare – Never play with the feelings of others because you may win the game but the risk is that you will surely lose the person for a life time.
Napoleon Bonaparte – The world suffers a lot. Not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people.
Albert Einstein – I am thankful to all those who said NO to me. Its because of them I did it myself.
Abraham Lincoln – If friendship is your weakest point then you are the strongest person in the world.
Martin Luther King Jr. – We must learn to live together as brothers or we will perish together as fools.
Mahatma Gandhi – The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
Abdul Kalaam – It is very easy to defeat someone, but it is very hard to win someone.
If nothing else, research into the veracity of these quotes should provide some amusing text to go between the pictures. When you go looking in the land of google, there is no telling what you will find. During this expedition, the first page rule will be in effect. Only results on the first google page will be considered. The NB quote has 1.7 million results, which is too much work.
Lets begin with Willie the shake. Did he really say “Never play with the feelings of others because you may win the game but the risk is that you will surely lose the person for a life time.”? Or, as they say in the Yahoo village, Does anyone know where this Shakespeare quote comes from?
hugeshantz Does anyone know where this Shakespeare quote comes from? I’ve seen this quote all over the internet, always attributed to Shakespeare, but I can’t find a legitimate source of where it comes from (i.e. a specific sonnet, play, speech, etc.): “Never play….” Can anyone help me out here?
Dude the Obscure This is 20th/21st century psychobabble. Shakespeare never wrote anything remotely resembling that. Please never trust any of these idiotic “internet quote sites.” They are all, all, all crap. I can’t believe that any intelligent person could think for a minute that this was written by Shakespeare. Really. Get some critical-thinking skills, child.
The next quote is by Napoleon Bonaparte, not Napoleon Dynamite. “The world suffers a lot. Not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people.”
Before we consider the veracity of this quote, lets consider two things. NB did not speak english, so there is likely to be translation confusion. Second, the wars NB started caused widepread suffering. Little of this suffering was caused by the silence of good people.
The sources on page one do little except show the quote, usually with the credit going to NB. No one shows when or where he said it, or in what context. Brainyquotes doea not show it on the NB pages.
Number three is from Albert Einstein.” I am thankful to all those who said NO to me. Its because of them I did it myself.” According to Shelly Winters, Marilyn Monroe did not say no to Dr. Einstein. Google has a doozy of a forum, Misquoting Einstein?.
Jimmy Snyder says the quote has been attributed to Dorothy Parker, Yogi Berra, William Shakespeare, The Bible, Benjamin Franklin, and Groucho Marx. This is a clue that the quote is bogus.
zoobyshoe’s I just found this an another wiki page discussing the quote page: “I am thankful …” This is being attributed to Einstein on the Internet, but it appears to come from Wayne W. Dyer’s book You’ll See It When You Believe It, page 54, according to Google Books. Dyer does not attribute it to Einstein, but mentions Einstein in the same paragraph. “In my office I have two framed posters. One is a picture of Albert Einstein, beneath which are the words “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” The other poster is made up solely of words: “I am grateful to all those people who said no. It is because of them I did it myself.” Great thoughts!”
Ryan_m_b’s “Never believe quotes you read on the internet” – Winston Churchill zoobyshoe’s His actual words were: “The internet has nothing to offer, but blood, tears, toil, and misquotes.”
It should not be surprising that Winston Churchill finds his way into this discussion. He has a taste for the spotlight, even 47 years after his demise. He is an example of how truthiness is sometimes all you need. His most famous speech was a radio address during a bad part of World War Two. The speech was read by an actor. England was inspired, and went on to win the war. Why should anyone worry if an actor gave his speech for him?
This is enough fun for one day. There will be a part two soon, and it will probably be full of number two. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Welcome to part two of the Chamblee54 due diligence report on the Seven Brilliant Quotes. In part one, we checked out the first three. At no time was a source for the quote found. All three are suspect, with “misunderstanding” indicated in the Albert Einstein quote. It is amazing how quickly accepted these sayings are by the inspiration hungry public.
Getting back to business, did Abraham Lincoln say “If friendship is your weakest point then you are the strongest person in the world.” There are lots of links to this quote, in a variety of fonts and colors. Some have spectacular photography in the background. However, none of these links has a source for this quote, or any indication of the context.
Wikiquotes has 43,444 words about Abraham Lincoln. PG copied these words, and did a search for the word “friendship”. The quote from the poster was not found. The meme is missing. This wikiquotes test has been very useful for checking out quotes. It is not authoritative, but is a good place to start.
This type of research can be frustrating. Being inspired by beautiful words can give you strength and purpose. It can also make you feel foolish, when the lovely words are revealed to be lies. Being a cynic gets lonely. Children of all ages don’t like to be told that there is no Santa Claus.
The good news is that number five is for real. Martin Luther King gave a speech at Western Michigan University in 1963. There is a probably his standard speech, given many times. The second section of the speech is “Call for action.”
“The world in which we live is geographically one. Now we are challenged to make it one in terms of brotherhood. Now through our ethical and moral commitment, we must make of it a brotherhood. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will perish together as fools. This is the great challenge of the hour. This is true of individuals. It is true of nations. No individual can live alone. No nation can live alone.”
“I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality. [W]e’re challenged after working in the realm of ideas, to move out into the arena of social action and to work passionately and unrelentingly to make racial justice a reality.”
“[W]e must never substitute a doctrine of Black supremacy for white supremacy. For the doctrine of Black supremacy is as dangerous as white supremacy. God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men and brown men and yellow men but God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race, the creation of a society where all men will live together as brothers.”
PG has written about the problem of quoting Mohandas Gandhi before. Supposedly he said “I love your Christ, but I dislike your Christianity.” PG thinks this is a fabrication.
The quote on the poster is “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” Wikiquotes has a link to Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi Online. The next stop is page 302 of this section. Mr. Gandhi gave an “Interview to the press” in Karachi, on March 26, 1931. A freedom fighter named Bhagat Singh had been executed by the British three days earlier.
Do you not think it impolitic to forgive a government which has been guilty of a thousand murders?
I do not know a single instance where forgiveness has been found so wanting as to be impolitic.
But no country has ever shown such forgiveness as India is showing to Britain?
That does not affect my reply. What is true of individuals is true of nations. One cannot forgive too much. The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
The bottom line is from Dr. Abdul Kalam. (The name is misspelled on the poster.) The phrase is “It is very easy to defeat someone, but it is very hard to win someone.” Many viewers have no idea who this person is. Once again, Wikiquotes comes to the rescue. “Dr. Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam (born 15 October 1931) Indian scientist and engineer; 11th President of India; generally referred to as Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.” The quotes are from Wings of Fire: An Autobiography of APJ Abdul Kalam.
A search for the word “defeat” did not show results. A search for “win” shows a few, but not the poster child. The phrase on the poster is also credited to John Keats. There is also the story of the student who argues with an atheist professor, and ultimately wins. The student is sometimes said to be Albert Einstein. In this version, Argumnent : What, Who is GOD?, the coda is “This seems to be a true story, and the student was none other than APJ Abdul Kalam, the former President of India “.
The research for part one consisted of entering the quote into a search engine. It was not until the Lincoln investigation that the method of copying wikiquote, and searching for a key word, was discovered. Out of a sense of fairness, the first three quotes will be investigated using this method.
For William Shakespeare, the search word was risk. There were no results. For Napoleon Bonaparte, the search word was violence. There was one result. “There is no such thing as an absolute despotism; it is only relative. A man cannot wholly free himself from obligation to his fellows, and not the one on the poster. For Albert Einstein, the search word was thankful. There were no results.
So, there are seven quotes in the motivational poster. Only two of the seven have a apparent source. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The 2013 edition is a repost. This version is edited, out of concern for the attention span of the audience.
Social Attitude Test
PG took the Social Attitude Test. It is 46 statements, with a five point scale that goes from disagree strongly to agree strongly. This type of question makes the data crunching much easier. The SAT is better designed than what you might find at Quizilla.
Starting with number 44, here are the last three statements. 44) Eugenics is tantamount to Nazism, and both ideologies are severely flawed. 45) People should always be willing to seriously question what they believe. 46) If people weren’t so mushy and sentimental, they’d see things more clearly.
Here is the results. Political Values Radicalism 72 Socialism 31.25 Tenderness 31.25 These scores indicate that you are a tough-minded moderate progressive; this is the political profile one might associate with a liberated atheist. It appears that you are cynical towards religion, and have a suspicious and unsympathetic attitude towards humanity in general. Your attitudes towards economics appear capitalist, and combined with your social attitudes this creates the picture of someone who would generally be described as libertarian. To round out the picture you appear to be, political preference aside, an idealist with very few strong opinions.
This concludes our analysis; we hope you found your results accurate, useful, and interesting. Unlike many other political tests found on the Internet which base themselves on untested (and usually ideologically motivated) ideas, this inventory is adapted from Hans Eysenck’s own political inventory which was developed after extensive empirical investigations in the 20th Century. Pictures for this waste of bandwidth are from The Library of Congress.
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.”
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.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. These images are Union soldiers from the War Between the States.
Meme Abuse
Last Sunday, PG had his peace of mind torpedoed by a tacky graphic on facebook. Some would say to just ignore it. While this is a good course of action sometimes, it will leave you unable to appreciate the good messages that are broadcast. It can be tough to tell the difference between the good, and the bad. This post is a proposal for responsibility on the part of the meme monger.
This comment was made: ” I respectfully suggest you read the book or at least a precis before you opine on this issue Luther. You do not know the facts and your ignorance of them is painful to me.” Maybe the person who posted the graphic is the guilty party. When you post something, you should be prepared to back up your statements. You should supply easy to navigate links, to show people where you get your information. The messenger should do a bit of heavy lifting. It is the responsibility of the meme monger to back up the claims that are made.
If someone challenges what you say, they are taking you seriously. This is a compliment, whether you realize it or not. When someone asks for a link, this means that they want some evidence that the statement presented is, in fact, the truth. It is easy to say, oh that’s just so and so talking. When you ask for evidence, it means you are paying attention. (A side note: If you are going to insult someone, do not start your statement by saying “I respectfully suggest”.)
The proliferation of memes is a problem. There are so many graphics with a message, and it is so easy to share. Thought is not required. The deplorable graphic quality of many memes is another issue. This post is about the message, not the medium. Pictures for today’s graphic extravaganza are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
What World Do You Live In LOL
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It was a lovely sunday morning, until this graphic appeared on facebook. The all caps text proclaims “5 TIMES AS MANY WHITES ARE USING DRUGS AS AFRICAN AMERICANS, YET AFRICAN AMERICANS ARE SENT TO PRISON ON DRUG OFFENSES AT 10 TIMES THE RATE OF WHITES.” Somebody did not want “WHITES” to have peace of mind on this sunday morning. A facebook smackdown comment discussion followed.
Statistics, semantics, and rhetoric are a formula for disrupting a peaceful sunday morning. ~ Mass incarceration can ruin your whole day (Like · 1) ~ See The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander (massive documentation) (Like · 2) ~ This should not be a race issue. The war on drugs affects all americans. When you make something a race issue, you make enemies of the white people who should be your allies. ~ I respectfully suggest you read the book or at least a precis before you opine on this issue Luther. You do not know the facts and your ignorance of them is painful to me. (Like · 1) ~ Luther, what world do you live in? LOL
By this time PG was very angry. The sign offended him on a number of levels. All caps is considered yelling. The statistics are tough to believe, and probably improperly used. The semantics of the text are annoying. (Is alcohol considered a drug? If not, why not? Your liver does not know that it is legal.) The text has an insulting racial slant. Why is one group hyphenated americans, and the other group the absence of color? Two wrongs do not make a right.
The racial events of the last year probably multiplied the impact of the sign. Also, the criminalization of some drugs has long offended PG. The fact that tax money is used to house drug criminals affects everyone. The disrespect for other laws that is created by the drug laws is a major problem. To have this seemingly blamed on “WHITES” is just a bit much.
Lets break it down. Is that per capita usage, or the totals consumed by the population? Is that the total numbers sent to prison, or the percentage of the population? Why were the handy numbers five and ten used? How was the data collected and tweaked? Were averages involved? If there were averages used, was it the mean, the median, or the mode? Were any inconvenient numbers ignored by the author of the “massive documentation”? How do we know that Michelle Alexander is a person of integrity? Who paid for the study? Is there another study that came to a different conclusion?
The statistics might be accurate. Black people are incarcerated more than white people. This is a problem for everyone. The people who are “out of town” suffer. The tax payers pay to support them. When the prisoners get out, they are going to be better criminals. The criminalization of drugs has too many problems to list here. While black people may be affected worse than white people, there is plenty of suffering to go around.
Nonetheless, this meme is not helpful. There is little benefit to going for the divide and conquer tactics of race war. The people that will benefit are the ones who support the war on drugs. This includes the alcohol industry, media that sells alcohol advertising, and the prison industrial complex.
White people are tired of being “called out”. While we are not perfect, we are not the devil. When you introduce race into an issue, you are going to alienate white people. If the drug laws are going to be changed, then the support of white people will be needed. You will lose this support when you shout about race. Even if the statistics are accurate, and properly used.
The facebook exchange was starting to get out of control. PG wrote another comment, but chose not to post it. 1- I was a serious pothead for thirty years. All that time I was an outlaw because of the war on drugs. To suggest that I am at fault for this useless endeavor, or that I somehow benefit from it, because I am European American is appalling. 2- I was having a pleasant sunday morning until I saw that horrific graphic. It pushes all my buttons. It is sleazy use of semantics and statistics. It is in all caps, which is shouting. I do not have the time, or the interest, to read a book about this depressing subject. 3- If you consider alcohol as a drug, then the figures will probably be very different. 4- “Luther. You do not know the facts and your ignorance of them is painful to me.” This is an insult. 5- I have seen the damage done by the war on drugs except alcohol. I have quit using the one legal drug, that is endlessly promoted in the corporate media. I do not need to read a book to know this. It is not my fault because I am european american. I do not benefit from it because I am european american.
Chamblee54 
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