Details
the little girl with a ponytail
becomes a round head with short hair
the hairdo is a person in the steam
more details do not always improve the way
you experience a picture
The Girls’ Guide To Hunting And Fishing
PG was riding his bike one afternoon. He rode by a house with trash at the curb. Part of the loot was paperback books. A few months later, the time to read had come. The amazon one stars would say not to buy The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, that it was not worth the hype. When you find a book that is thrown away, this is not a factor. PG had never even heard the phrase “chick lit”.
GGTHF got off to a slow start. The hero, Jane, goes to the beach with her parents, and meets her brother’s gf. PG was about to put the story down, until dad said, “Hair is the roof of the soul”.
There are seven sections to this book. They are loosely connected by the participation of Jane Rosenal, the daughter of a Philadelphia doctor. In one chapter, her only participation is living in an apartment upstairs from the action. This chapter is confusing. Someone’s son shows up for dinner with a new gf. The son announces that the gf is pregnant, as is his ex wife, and he is the daddy for both babies.
The author of this tale is Melissa Bank. The book is copyrighted 1999, and took twelve years to write. Ms. Bank is still alive, and stays in East Hampton, NY. At the 96 minute mark of this video, she explains why her continued existence is remarkable. While riding a bike home from radiation treatment, Ms. Bank was hit by a car. She landed on her head, and forgot vocabulary. This is a problem for a writer.
The last two chapters of GGTHF have a different feel from the first five. PG speculated they were written by a another person. After hearing about the bike wreck, this different style makes a bit of sense.
The last chapter is puzzling. Jane gets a book on manipulating men, and talks to the authors. In the end, she ignores the book, and gets kissed.
Is This Racist?
Andrew Ti
an Asian man
writes Yo is this racist?
Andrew takes questions
and usually says yes
Andrew calls people “Dogg”
things are “wack”
Andrew throws many a stone from his glass house
KIDS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS
I saw the sign about
KIDS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS.
The sign said to repost in honor of KWSN.
I felt ill.
I doctored the sign.
I no longer felt ill.
I felt accepted.
Listen To The Gut
There is a festive graphic going around on facebook. It is about bullying, which no one is going to say they like. Like gossiping, it is a custom which few will admit to, but many practice. The definition is elastic, and gets bigger every day.
PG agrees with the first part of the graphic. He has been humiliated by Jesus worshipers. The problem with the graphic is the last two sentences. “Re-post if you are against bullying. I bet 99% of you won’t, but repost this if you’re that 1% with a heart.” Can we say passive aggressive bullying? 
The good news is that what can be displayed can be altered. A few minutes with an image manipulation program, and you can doctor the graphic into a more palatable message. It still goes on too long, but that is a problem for someone else. If you want to see the uncensored graphic, go here.
Teddy Roosevelt is a popular former POTUS. He reportedly was fond of saying “bully”. Only that isn’t what he really said. The rough rider used an eight letter word for bovine excrement.
It is said that if a man isn’t a liberal when he is twenty, he doesn’t have a heart, and if he is not a conservative when he is forty he doesn’t have a brain. PG is moving in on twenty plus forty. The possession of a heart, and a brain, is uncertain.
What is evident beyond doubt is the ownership of a gut. When someone tells PG to repost a message to prove he is not a terrible person, it does not agree with his gut.
This is written like H. P. Lovecraft. Pictures are by Chamblee54.
Umbrage
The kitchen pricked him,
discovering mother’s need to devour her life
with comforting quiescence.
A sense of umbrage,
a hanging pink impatiens plant,
and spray remnants of corporeality
were wrapped around the rifle.
Two Executions In One Week
The state of Georgia is going to execute two men this week. Being strapped onto the goner gurney does not mean you are a threat to society. You reach this point of no return because the various lawyers have done everything to exhaust the appeal possibilities. This does not speak well for our style of justice.
The case of Warren Hill is puzzling. The family of his victim does not want him executed. The IQ of Mr. Hill is estimated to be between 69 and 77. Why is there such a mad rush to poison this man?
The last execution by Georgia was Troy Davis. It turned into a circus. His guilt is a good possibility, but there was lots of room for doubt. When the state decides it wants to poison someone, millions of dollars worth of billable hours will be exhausted.
This blog has written about the death penalty on several occasions. Some of the crimes are “fist clinchers” … you read what they did, and you get mad. The problem is, these are not always the cases that get the overdose of pentobarbital. It is a bit of a mystery which cases wind up with a notch on the Governor’s desk.
This execution will be the first with a new method of poisoning the guest of honor. The old way was a three drug cocktail. Unfortunately, the manufacturer of one of the drugs did not approve of it’s use for killing prisoners. The modern method involves a deliberate overdose of pentobarbital. While this sounds a bit crude, it is probably more humane than the “Kentucky protocol.”
The opinion here is that capital punishment is strong medicine. Our current system of justice is not smart enough to use it wisely. Given the political climate in Georgia, the death penalty is here to stay. It is a sad state of affairs. It will exhaust your faith in government.
UPDATEPictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
Message In The Cheesecake
The Greatest Thirty Three Words
this is the greatest
thirty three words ever written
adjectives with attitude
participles dangling in the
idiomatic obsolescence
metaphysical metaphors
volcanic vowels powering verbs
raging in ironic perpetuity
read this
change your life
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 continous display was a good idea, but did not want to dwell on it. 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 anymore”
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.
Dear Old Basil
much less than a friend.
A sort of brother, I suppose?
Oh, brothers! I don’t care for brothers.
My elder brother won’t die,
and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else.
These 33 words are from “The Portrait of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde.
The text is from The Gutenberg Project.
The pasting project is facilitated by Trifecta.
This selection is written like Kurt Vonnegut.
Alcohol Fueled Automobiles
Sometimes not knowing what you are talking about can be fun. When you say what you would have done, you don’t have to face the consequences. When you speculate about the past, all you do is produce food for thought. This can be a tasty snack, or gluttonous indigestion.
There is a radio show/podcast called 99 percent invisible. It is facilitated by Roman Mars, who went to grad school in Athens GA. Last year, another podcaster interviewed him. In the resulting audio tract, the lady asked Mr. Mars if there was anything he would like to redesign. A light bulb went on in PG’s head.
When the motorcar was being developed, there was a question on how to fuel it. At the time, America was in the grip of a temperance movement. It was feared that if automobiles were fueled by alcohol, then there would be a still on every street corner. At some point, the decision was made to use gasoline. At the time, gasoline was the useless byproduct of refining crude oil into kerosene.
So it goes. The world went on the path of fossil fuel consumption. The cost to mankind, in terms of wars and environment damage, has been staggering. What if we could go back, and choose a different path for the motorized vehicle?
If laboratories were to research the uses of alcohol fuel, maybe they could find a way to make it more powerful. Even if they didn’t, and people were accustomed to cars that did not go as fast, maybe the roads would be safer. There are possible down sides, but you only learn about them as you go down the path. Often there is no going back.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This feature is written like Chuck Palahniuk.
Chamblee54 
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