Chamblee54

This is a repost. Pictures are from the Library of Congress.

The other day Father Tony posted a video at Bilerico (ba LAIR i co) about how to argue. He acknowledged that he is a venomous person.
FT used to be employed by the Catholic church. That is how he got his handle. PG thought on this for a while, and saw a connection. A little more thinking, and PG pondered that crowd pleaser, the religious argument.
Jesus Worship is a religion of beliefs, rather than practices. One of their key beliefs is the notion that you should convert those who disagree with you. If these people don’t agree with you about certain things, they go to hell. This lust to “evangelize” leads to a lot of arguments.
One of the rules for living/arguing that Father Tony expresses is that, yes, you are going to argue. This is especially true for romantic partnerships, but includes all sorts of human relating. How does this relate to religion? If you believe in a religion, does this mean you are compelled to argue with those who you disagree with?
Religious belief can be a source of strength and comfort to those lucky enough to be in the loop. For many of the rest of us, Religion (especially the Jesus Worship variety) is a source of venom. The endless arguments that believers loudly put forth spoil whatever benefits these beliefs can have. It is enough to make you wish you would never hear the word Jesus again.

There was a phone call, and a decision to answer. Uzi was on the line. He had won dugout level tickets to a Braves game, to be played tomorrow. PG didn’t want to face the crowds, contrived fun, and outdoor heat, but felt that the seats were too good to turn down.
The next day, the ride pulled into the blue lot, and it was braves country. Or so the countless ushers, funmakers, and people watchers employed by the club told you. Walking 120 degrees around the mall under the stands, the place with the seats was found, 15 rows behind the visiting dugout.
There was a waitress to take your food order, and bring it to your seat. There was the man from north georgia, to make sure it was your assigned seat, and ask you repeatedly if you had a good time. There was the huge screen in the outfield, where the entertainment never stops. There were the light up panels in front of the stands, alternating between paid advertising and instructions to make more noise. And yes, there was indeed a baseball game to go with it.
On this sunday, the game lived up to the hype. Going into the bottom of the ninth inning, the Braves copped a two run single on the last play of the day and won. Even the motivation weary PG stood up and cheered. He didn’t have to be told.

The appropriately named dangerousminds has a video up about Iggy Stooge, who still has a full set of teeth at 62. The video is worth watching, even if it is mostly people like Henry Rollins telling how Raw Power changed his life. I guess the jokes on Henry, he thought they were talking about The Eagles, and the video folks cleverly edited in the references to Mr. Osterberg.(spell check suggestion:posterior)
Getting back to Iggy , and music merchandising, he has a new collection of music coming out. Included in this package is a show he did at Richards, across the street from Grady Stadium. One night Iggy was singing at Richards, when Elton John appeared onstage wearing a gorilla suit.
The greatest achievement of Mr. Pop is living so long. ( He was born April 21, 1947). He has done heroin by the kilo, jumps off stage into crowds of punk rock fans, and is a general mess. As the video shows, he still has a great smile, although it is not known how many of those teeth are his own.
One night in 1980, PG saw a performance by Iggy Pop. The site was the 688 club, a storefront on Spring Street across the expressway from Georgia Tech. 688 Spring Street had been the site of Roses Cantina, where PG had seen George Thorogood, The Fans, and some blues band that did Amphetamine Annie with the original lyrics…instead of speed kills, they said love gun.
Roses was a cool place, a long narrow space with the performers in the middle, and a pool table behind the stage. Yes, it was way cool, but nightclubs are a tough business for capitalists, and Roses shut down.
At any rate, by the time PG got back from Seattle, some brave investors decided to have a punk rock club at 688 Spring Street. Soon, Iggy Pop would be playing a week there. In the seventies, the bands would play for five days at the great southeast music hall or the electric ballroom, two shows a night, and if you were really cool you would go on a weeknight before it got too crowded. Soon after that, it was one night in town only, and you either saw it or you didn’t.
PG had a friend at the Martinique apartments on Buford Hiway. There was someone living in the complex known as ZenDen, who sold acid. You would go to his place, wade through the living room full of grown men listening to Suzi Quatro, and purchase the commodity.
On to the the 23 Oglethorpe bus, and downtown to 688 Spring Street. Before anyone knew it, the band was on the stage. A veteran of the Patti Smith Group, named Ivan Kral, was playing bass. Mr. Kral sneezed, and a huge cocaine booger fell across his face. He was not playing when the show ended.
There was a white wall next to the stage, and someone wrote the song list on that wall. That list of songs stayed on the wall as long as 688 was open. “I want to be your dog” was on the list, as well as the number where Iggy pulled his pants off and performed in his underwear. Supposedly, in New York the drawers came off, but the TMI police were off duty that night.
The show was loud and long, and had the feel of an endurance event…either you go or the band does. Finally, the show was over, and PG got on the 23 Oglethorpe bus to go home. In those days, you got the northbound bus on West Peachtree Street. You could look down the street and see the Coca Cola sign downtown.
Thirty years later,PG, like Iggy Pop, has a full head of teeth, which, in PG’s case are his own. PG has a full head of white care, as apparently does Mr. Pop, although he does appear to touch up his hair. Maybe he really is a blond. This post should be over, but if there are 37 more words then we will have 688. The space on Spring Street is still standing, which is pretty good for Atlanta. It is now an emergency room, or something .

PG was editing pictures for a feature on Iggy Pop, and completely forgot about taking his brother to the train station. Soon enough, it was 1:15, and the knock on the door, and soon everything goes on minimize. There is an eighth of a bowl of noodles to be finished, you don’t want to leave that out, and then the phone rings. It is an former stupidvisor, wanting to chat about the customer who got caught and is in trouble.
Finally, car keys in hand, PG heads out the door. On the way up the hill, GP ( the younger brother of PG), was talking about the troubled renovation of Cross Keys High. PG makes a joke about putting earrings on a hog, and suggests that a toxic waste dump is the best destination for Cross Keys.
After making his deposit at the Chamblee marta station, the next stop is the yard sales. There was one on Jefferson Street ( or is it drive), but first there is a sign on Clairmont. Why do people put up signs on major thoroughfares, knowing that people are driving by at 45mph, and advertise their garbage garage sale in half inch letters? As it turns out, the sign was for a sale further down Clairmont, where there is no parking, nor is there merchandise worth the trouble.
Right on eighth street, left on Jefferson, and the sale is closing down. Anyone to ever have a yard sale knows that you do the bulk of your business before 9:30 am, that the rest of the day is a social event. PG saw a thick book about how to write from the University of Chicago, and a box of vhs tapes. He paid a dollar for the book, and a video of ET and Top Hat, with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers.
Life is good. Pictures from the ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.

Andrew Sullivan has a quote today from a blog called musingsoniraq. The quote is about a Terror listing , a list of countries where terror attacks are the worst.
The report was issued by Maplecroft, a British company which sells it’s reports to companies doing business abroad. The report was issued in February, and for some reason turned up on Mr. Sullivan’s facility in April.
The report ranks 196 countries worldwide on terror attacks. Number one “with a bullet” was Iraq.
Rounding out the top ten was Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Lebanon, India, Algeria, Columbia, Thailand, and the Philippines. The United States was 46.
While the violence situation in Iraq is better, they seem to lose a lot of people to random bombings. Musings has a more current report on the violent deaths. In March, there were 12 mass casualty bombings, with 142 deaths. The total body count for March is estimated at 183-367, depending on who does the counting. This is for a country with a population estimated at 31 million, or roughly 10 percent of the United States. This means that March, for terror deaths, was the equivalent of 911 in the United States, and is considered a vast improvement.
Some say the surge is a success, and that Iraq is on the way to being a stable democracy. Others
say it is a long way away, and that the road is littered with i.e.d.s. This is what America has bought with the lives of thousands of soldiers, and a ruined local economy.

PG is 192 pages into Infinite Jest. This is on the 11th day of the second time checking it out, which is the max at the chamblee library. There are 981 pages in the main text, not counting the footnotes. This is a book not to be finished, at least by the reader with any life other than digesting this work. As publishers weekly said, on the Amazon review page, “few others will have the stamina for it.”
IJ is set in a future, estimated by some to be 2011. It was written in the early nineties, and published in 1996. There are some quaint, and confusing, terms for what we now know as the internet and computers. In this world, North American is one country, and years are sponsored by products ( like the Year of Depends Adult Undergarments, or YDAU). This cowardly new world takes a bit of getting used to.
So far, PG has been reading this like a long poem. The wordplay, and pedantic pessimism, flow out of the pages like fire hydrant dispensing endless Indian soup, with all the flavors fighting for attention in your tongue. There is no way you can get all of it in one reading, and PG is not going to try.
The Author, the late David Foster Wallace, has a style described as maximalist. At one point he channels William Burroughs, in a monolog about junkie life in Boston on Christmas Eve. In a latter segment, we learn that a trans ho has stolen the Jarvik heart out of the expensive handbag the lady carried it in. When she screamed, he stole my heart, a yankee passerby told her she had listened to too many romantic songs, get a life lady.
The junkie monolog eventually got skipped over, as did some other parts. The plot is not apparent by page 192, with 789 pages to be read in 10 days. The good news is, after 24 hours, if no one checks it out, PG can take it out for another 6 weeks. With densely written text, that one amazon reader said made her break out in sweat, it may take the rest of 2010 to finish this work.
It should be noted that this book may have been what killed the author. He committed suicide, while trying to come down off antidepressants. He felt that the legal drugs were interfering with his ability to write. New Yorker has a lengthy piece on this. The father of several of the key figures in IJ offed himself by putting his head in a microwave. Don’t try this at home. Pictures for this post are from the Library of Congress

Everybody says he is honest, but how many really mean it? As befits a word whose first two letters are HO, there are lots of quotes about honesty. Mr. Google shows a lot of lists of honesty quotes, of which this blog only got around to one and two . Does purchasing a better listing on google count for dishonesty? How about page two , which had an ad for turbo tax at the bottom. Tax and honest should not be used in the same paragraph. (In the quotes below, a ~ before the author indicates source two) ( Of the credited authors below, only one…Emily Dickinson…is a woman)
“Honesty is the cruelest game of all, because not only can you hurt someone – and hurt them to the bone – you can feel self-righteous about it at the same time” Dave Von Ronk
“The first two letters of honest are HO.” PG
“You should not use honesty as a blunt weapon. Just because something is true, does not mean that saying it out loud is a good idea.” PG
“You do not increase the wisdom or truth of what you say by saying it louder. You just make more noise. ” PG
“He who is passionate and hasty, is generally honest; it is your cool dissembling hypocrite, of whom you should beware” author unknown
“Honesty: The best of all the lost arts” Mark Twain
“Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense” author unknown
“It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.” ~Henry Louis Mencken, A Little Book in C Major, 1916
“Who lies for you will lie against you.” ~Bosnian Proverb
“A truth that’s told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.” ~William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence,” Poems from the Pickering Manuscript
“Honesty is the rarest wealth anyone can possess, and yet all the honesty in the world ain’t lawful tender for a loaf of bread.” ~Josh Billings
“Truth is the most valuable thing we have, so I try to conserve it.” ~Mark Twain
“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.” ~Winston Churchill
“The truth is more important than the facts.” ~Frank Lloyd Wright
“People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty.” ~Richard J. Needham
“Beware of the half truth. You may have gotten hold of the wrong half.” ~Author Unknown
“Truth is such a rare thing, it is delightful to tell it.” ~Emily Dickinson
“Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain’t so.” ~Mark Twain, Notebook, 1935
“Reality is bad enough. Why should I tell the truth?” ~Patrick Sky
“Speak the truth, but leave immediately after.” ~Slovenian Proverb
“Always tell the truth. Even if you have to make it up.” ~Author Unknown
“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” ~Mark Twain
(Another version) “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on.” ~Winston Churchill ( PG wonders who really said it first.)
“It takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen.” ~Homer Simpson
“There’s one way to find out if a man is honest – ask him. If he says, “Yes,” you know he is a crook. ” ~Groucho Marx

Today is April 15, the day we pay for our wars. In Baghdad, everyday is payday.
A unit called wikileaks recently released a video of a helicopter crew lighting up some people. Reactions range from how horrible, they deserved it, what do you expect of war, and unprintable (or unbloggable) others. Perhaps the choicest was in the video itself, something to the effect of What do you expect when you bring kids into a battle. ( on either side of the weapon)
Recently, Stephen Colbert hosted the big dog at wikileaks for a friendly chit chat. ( An interesting feature of the modern media is comedians making the most serious comments.) Mr. Colbert says that the wikidude is making a comment by calling the video “Collateral Murder”. It is noted that “90%” of people will not bother to watch the video. Julian Assange (spell check suggestions, assailant) , the Australian wikimaster, holds his own nicely, and even gets Mr. Colbert in deer in headlights land a couple of times.
Pictures are from the Library of Congress.

The following is a repost from this day two years ago. At the time, BHO was the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. He made a comment at a private fundraiser that was quoted and made common knowledge. In retrospect, it does not seem to have hurt him very much.
The pictures are from the Library of Congress. The collection is called Daguerrotypes, which was a primitive form of photography.
“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothings replaced them…And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
“And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Unless you live under Iraq a rock, or have right wing ideas on permanent brain block, you have heard about that comment from BHO. Quite possibly, you have heard more than you appreciate, unless you are looking for a reason not to like BHO, unless you haven’t heard enough. Well, if you are in the first category, just scroll through the text and enjoy the pictures. If you are in the second group, you might not like what follows. You can still like the pictures.
1- This was a secretly recorded speech made at a fundraiser. The fatcat party was in San Francisco, a factoid that delights the hate-O crowd. What sort of person donates to a campaign
(using possibly another person’s money), so he can go to the pig party and secretly record his comments? And then take the “snippet” and release it to the shocked internet.
2- The first reaction when PG read this was that the smalltown folk have felt that way for a long long time. They loved guns and Jesus back when the factories and steelmills were wide open.
3- It is not just small town Pennsylvania that is “bitter”. ( Folks seem to have a special problem with the word bitter. One “consultant” was quoted as saying it would have been better if BHO had said frustrated.) ( This is written in Georgia, where the tea is sweet and the people are bitter) What about the guys that did a high five behind Jeremiah Wright when he screamed “G-d Damn America”? If anyone has a right to be bitter, it is the folks on the south side of Chicago, or any ghetto in America. And yes, they do cling to Jesus and Guns, as well as other nasty things.
4- It is not just America that is bitter and turning to religion. The people of Palestine and Iraq are in the same boat. They feel like forces are working against them, and they just might be right. They are turning to religion and violence as an answer to their anguish. They are being led down that wretched path by cynical clerics who exploit their unhappiness, and offer a solution through G-d. Of course these clerics seldom strap on a suicide vest, just like Jeremiah Wright does not live in a housing project.
5- This is not going to hurt BHO that much. The people who are upset are not going to support him anyway. A lot of people see the truth in what he says, and just might appreciate the fact that he was unslick enough to say something with a rough edge. He just might have known that Judas with a tape recorder was in the house.
6- Batter Better Bitter Botter Butter. The only vowel that doesn’t work in that progression is O.

PG was wandering through the waves, when he saw a facebook notice ” What my parents should have named me”. A quick google search found a source of the quiz that did not involve facebook, and the fun begins.
For those who don’t know, the author of this blog is not usually called PG, nor does he answer to Chamblee54. His driver’s license reads Luther Campbell Mckinnon, to which a Junior is sometimes added. His well meaning parents decided to call him Cam, which led to a lifetime of spelling his name, and comparisons to canned soup. Growing up in civil rights era Georgia ( and the home of MLK) made him leery of Luther. The short version is, he has never liked his name.
In the last few years, PG has been using Luther more and more. It is common enough that he doesn’t have to spell it, and sounds vaguely like Lucifer. It does sound more businesslike that Cam, and is affected less by Southern accents.
There are several schools of thought on unusual names. Many children resent the “creativity” of their parents, and choose nicknames. Others enjoy the possession of something unique. As for Cam, he might have preferred to be called Joe, but it was not his choice.
The first one chosen is labeled “only for girls”, as are several of the google options. A “generator” that does not ask questions has the added benefit of being gender neutral.
This device has the option of choosing male or female, and only asks your first and last name. For the first round here, Cam Mckinnon yields Cade. Since Cam is sometimes a female name ( another source of discomfort), the female version of this test yields Fiona. And a male Luther Mckinnon should have been named Cory.
The whole naming business is one sided, with the prior generation calling the shots for the juniors. In the digital sense of anything is possible, PG looked at a program saying what you should name your baby. After twelve multiple choice questions…all of which had three bad answers…this ad venue does not give an answer! You seem to be a pretty active person…you should consider baby names that people associate with being creative, smart, active, and strong.
This quiz is for entertainment and/or educational purposes only. All content here, including advice from doctors and other health professionals, should be considered as opinion only. Always seek the direct advice of your own doctor in connection with any questions or issues you may have regarding your own health or the health of others.
Pictures are from the Library of Congress. At least, when PG got his name, it was consistent throughout his life. This is not the practice at the Library of Congress. There are several numbers given for each image, and the one PG chose to identify pictures he saved from the collection appears to change from day to day.(This would explain the duplicates noted in the Crimean War pictures). It seems as though another number will have to be used when saving these images. This is another plus for the GSU picture collection, where the numbers for the images do not change from day to day. If you want additional information about an image, it is very helpful to be able to find it.

PG was recently asked to help a friend hone her computer skills. This is a note he sent out as a preliminary action. The pictures are from the Library of Congress, and show life during the Crimean War.
I have been thinking about what we were discussing the other night, and how to make the most of this. To begin with, what do you want to learn? Maybe make a list of the things you want to know how to do. I suspect if we were to get together without an agenda, we would get bogged down on one or two things and not accomplish much.
Another thing to consider is that I am no expert. I have never taken a class, and minimal training. I have gotten a bit of advice here and there, but a lot of what I have learned is self taught. I do have a few suggestions at the outset.
1- Do you have an earpiece for a phone? If you could work with both hands easily while talking on the phone, you could do a lot over the phone.
2- A lot of programs are available for free download. The photo shop like program i use is called gimp…gnu image manipulating program. It is a free download at http://www.gimp.org/ . I have a brief tutorial on my blog, https://chamblee54.wordpress.com/gimp/ . You can do all sorts of image oriented things with this tool. While I don’t recommend throwing your paints away, you can do a lot of the same things with gimp.
3- learn to work the keyboard. The mouse ( or touchpad on a laptop) is a good tool, and is handy/essential for some things. However, there are many things you can do from the keyboard, and it is almost always faster and easier.
There are three command keys…ctrl (control), alt (alt) and shift. To perform a function, you hold down the command key and hit another key. For example, to copy some text…use you mouse to select the text, hit ctrl+c, then go to the place where you want to copy the text, and hit ctrl+v. Under the edit tab (alt+e) of many windows, you have a list of the basic functions, along with the keyboard shortcut. To get to a tab at the top of the window, hit alt +the first letter of the tab. Sometimes this target letter is underlined.
4- Find a mouse to use with the laptop. I am not fond of those touch pads, although some like them. A mouse is cheap, and you may have one in a box somewhere. Plug it in to the appropriate place, and you are in business.
5- Relax and have a good time. It is not the end of the world if you mess up, although it can be frustrating. Ctrl+z will undo a mistake, and it is your friend. If you change something, but want to keep the original intact, go to alt+f, alt+a, give it a new name, “and save as” ( on non ms programs this is frequently ctrl+shift+s).

Chamblee54 is not too proud to recycle posts. This one is about ugly. If you are looking for beauty, and her mouthy sister truth, then look elsewhere.
Beauty is skin deep. Ugly is to the bone.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Ugly uses all five senses.
Rahsaan Roland Kirk: I don’t want to see you people, you are all too ugly.
Stevie Wonder: All I see are beautiful people.
Rahsaan Roland Kirk: You know, Stevie Wonder wants to make a lot of money, so he can have an operation and see.
Ray Charles: It’s crying time again.
She is so ugly, she could make a freight train take a dirt road.
He is so ugly, when he was born the doctor slapped his mother.
Is that your face, or did your neck throw up?
French for ugly is : laid m., laide f . Can we say irony?
There are some Jesus Worship blogs that PG likes to read. One of them recently made the lighthearted suggestion that ugly people were not welcome at the church of the other one. The recipient of this comment found this to be “the deeply offensive false accusation he keeps leveling at me.”
FromTheMorning is the one standing up for the pulchritude challenged.
Pyromaniacs is the aggrieved party here. They say that ugly people “are not only welcome at my church; many of us actually participate in the ministry there”. PG believes you.
Ugly has another meaning. In fact, this is the first meaning PG heard for the U word, years before he connected it to people with unpleasant faces. It is about ugly behavior. People that are mean and cruel to each other. That is ugly.