Chamblee54

PG is almost ready to take back everything he ever said about auto playing music devices. Almost. They are on a lot of blogs now, where the music starts to play when you open the site, whether you want to hear it or not.
PG left a comment at Jasmine Cannick’s facility. Ms. Cannick has a series, A White Gay’s Guide for Dealing with the Black Community for Dummies. PG thoughtfully left a comment, saying that he has learned a lot about “…the black community for dummies”. He went to the site to see if there was any reaction, and the auto start music player had a monolog by Shirley Q. Liquor.
PG let the thing play, and got himself an earful. He was starting to get tired of the whole thing after the fifth monolog, but soon the free show was over. Miss Cannick was so thoughtful to play all those comedy things.
This must just be the day for goofy women. Earlier, PG found a piece by Ann Coulter. She said that Sarah Palin was the Conservative of the Year. The hosting facility was Humanevents. PG wonders where the break should be, whether it is human events or humane vents. The site also has a history lesson from Newt Gingrich, who has gone from teaching history to being history.
Getting back to Man Ann Coulter. She does have a way with words, and I bet Sarah Palin could read them good. For example “I assume Palin was chosen because McCain had heard that she was a real conservative and he had always wanted to meet one — no, actually because he needed a conservative on the ticket, but that he had no idea that picking her would send the left into a tailspin of wanton despair.” What is that saying, when you Assume you make an ass of u and me? Of course, the party represented by a donkey won the election.
HT to Andrew Sullivan for the story by Ms. Coulter.

The email said to bring a wrapped present, costing less than ten dollars, for the gift exchange.
PG had a stack of pictures . He took one, wrapped it, and put it on the pile.
The hostess was number 18, and she chose the picture. She unwrapped it, and was not sure what it was.
She started to make fun of it. Every time a person chose a gift from the pile, she asked them to exchange their gift for the picture. That is how the gift exchange works.
PG saw this from the side of the room. He kept his composure, but will never do this again.

The following items come from a blog called s13ky. The original post has more details. The pictures are from a local archive.
In Tibet, a common drink is butter tea – it is made from yak butter, salt, and tea… The ancient Mayans made truly hot chocolate – they added chilies and corn to it… No one really knows when donuts were invented or who invented them… Apples, potatoes, and onions all taste the same when eaten with your nose plugged… When an egg floats in water, it is “off” and should not be eaten… The consumption of natural vanilla causes the body to release catecholamines (including adrenalin) – for this reason it is considered to be mildly addictive…Banana trees are not actually trees – they are giant herbs… The term “brain freeze” was invented to explain the pain one feels when drinking a slurpee too fast… Ketchup was originally a fish sauce originating in the orient… 7-Up – invented in 1920 contained Lithium – the drug commonly prescribed now to sufferers of bi-polar disorder.

For a blogger with nothing to say, an online test is a great excuse to post.
The test today is about cannibalism. The idea is, you are caught in a blizzard, you run out of food, and one of your buddies dies. Do you make a meal out of your pal?
PG is 35% likely to consume his friends. Questions include can you outrun your friends, are your friends overweight, and are you a vegetarian. Can a vegetarian eat a friend who is brain dead?
This test is sponsored by an online dating service. You have to click through a screen inviting you to join before you can get your results. One wonders if your test score is shared with your prospective sweetie.

Abraham Piper at Twenty Two words has challenged his readers to tell a children’s story in twenty two words or less.
The prize for the best story is “The big picture storybook bible” and “the jesus storybook bible”.
PG would give those to someone if he won. It probably won’t happen. The pictures he chose will not help.
PG just thought it would be a good excuse for a post. He has thousands of pictures waiting to be used.
The story is true. The brownie scout troup from PG’s second grade class was on “The Popeye Club”. Here is the story:
The brownie scout asked Officer Don, the Popeye Club host, how TV works. He uh, uh , and called on someone else.

Those fun loving Campbells are at it again. The Clan Campbell is notorious in Scottish history, and lots of people will tell you about it.
PG does not have the patience for begot-laden history, but others do. It seems as though there was a conflict with the MacDonalds, and a rather ugly incident in 1692. This might explain why the golden arch people do not serve soup.
In the years to follow, Joseph A. Campbell started a soup company, whose labels inspired Andy Warhol. A singer named Glen Campbell sold millions of records, and had perfect hair.
The latest Campbell to make the news is Adolph Hitler Campbell . The three year old resident of Holland Township, New Jersey is the sibling of JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell. The father, Heath Campbell, tried to get a birthday cake for young Adolph. The local Shop Rite store refused to put the name on the cake, saying it was inappropriate to send a birthday greeting to Adolph Hitler. A WalMart came to the rescue, and made a cake for young Adolph.
HT to JoemyG-d. Full Disclosure: PG has a close working relationship with someone who uses Campbell for a given name.

Live Apartment Fire weighs in today with an appreciation of Furman Bisher. For those who don’t know, Mr. Bisher writes about sports for the AJC, and is the former Sports Editor. The man is still producing at the age of 90.
Growing up in Atlanta meant reading his column in the Atlanta Journal. He managed to be somewhat controversial. Bear Bryant and Lewis Grizzard were not fans. In those days, the Constitution was a separate paper, with a sports editor named Jesse Outlar. PG called on Mr. Outlar one time, while selling little league raffle tickets.
Over the years, this reporter has read the fishwrapper less and less. Today, with the slow demise of dead tree journalism, the Cox monopoly paper struggles to survive. Mr. Bisher might even outlast this institution.
Furman Bisher ends his columns “selah”. Wikipedia says “Selah may be the most difficult word in the Hebrew Bible to translate.” The psalms were originally sung with musical instruments playing, and breaks in the narrative were noted with selah.

Brian Nichols will not be poisoned by the state. An extremely expensive trial is over. There was little doubt that he killed the people in the courtroom. The only thing at issue is how to punish him.
The verdict comes 45 months after the shootings. If he were to be sentenced to death, it would take at least another fifteen years for the needle to be inserted. This is not swift justice.
Arguably, Brian Nichols is a monster who deserves to die. What he did in the courtroom needs to be punished. After a while,though, you have to wonder about the cost of this trial, and the effect that this has on the overall justice system. Maybe the money spent defending Nichols could have been better utilized on other indigents.
There is a possibility of a federal death penalty trial. Mr. Nichols allegedly killed a customs officer named David Wilhelm. While there would be satisfaction for some at getting a death penalty verdict, is the cost of a new trial really worth it?
The story is that Mr. Nichols confronted Mr. Wilhelm at a house the agent was renovating in Buckhead. How Mr. Nichols wound up at a jobsite in Buckhead, after escaping the courthouse downtown, and arrived at the home improvement project of a federal agent… this is another mystery in this case.
Will an execution in 2023 will deter people from beating up a guard, stealing his weapon, and killing the judge…this is another question for wiser men to ponder.

A blog called the daily scroll posted an interview with the perp of chamblee54 the other day. PG went to see if there were any comments, and a list of 41 questions came up.
Out of consideration to casual readers, the list has been condensed. If you want to see the complete list, follow the link. There is a possibility that you have too much free time.
How important does a person have to be before they are considered assassinated instead of just murdered? Why does a round pizza come in a square box? What disease did cured ham actually have? If a deaf person has to go to court, is it still called a hearing? Why are you IN a movie, but you’re ON TV? Why do toasters always have a setting that burns the toast to a horrible crisp, which no decent human being would eat? If Jimmy cracks corn and no one cares, why is there a stupid song about him? If corn oil is made from corn, and vegetable oil is made from vegetables, what is baby oil made from? Why do the Alphabet song and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” have the same tune? Why did you just try singing the two songs above? Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion stars, but check when you say the paint is wet? Why do they use sterilized needles for death by lethal injection? Why doesn’t Tarzan have a beard? Why do Kamikaze pilots wear helmets? Whose idea was it to put an ‘S’ in the word ‘lisp’? If people evolved from apes, why are there still apes? Is there ever a day that mattresses are not on sale? How do those dead bugs get into those enclosed light fixtures? How come you never hear father-in-law jokes?

PG was looking for Andrew Sullivan. He is not tough to find. Sometimes when you do an unconventional search, you get unconventional answers. Knowing that the facility that hosts Mr. Sullivan is owned by Atlantic magazine, PG typed atlantic.com into the address bar. When the page emerged, there was a picture of a sailboat at the top. As it turns out, a man named Kevin Dowd owns the domain. As he tells the story ” I registered the domain in 1993 and used it for many years in business as Atlantic Computing Technology Corporation. It is now dedicated to Atlantic Class racing boats and wanton raving until such time as I might be able to use it in business again.”
A bit of this “wanton raving” caught the eye of PG. Did you ever doubt you were right about something because you couldn’t find proof of it after a google search? I’m tickled by two phenomena: If you can find it in a Google search, then it’s true. If you can’t find it in a Google search, then it’s not true. The universe is a spectrum of truths. Some appear absolute, like the sum of two numbers. Others are pure conjecture, such as religion. Truths can change over time, and many are the product of common agreement.
Internet searches are replacing the fog on the horizon of truth with a list of possible answers. The most credible is the one with the best web site. Queries that come up empty are no longer explorations into the unknown; they’re poorly phrased questions.
A leap of faith …If I can find it in a Google search, then it is true.
A logically consistent complement …If it is not true then i cannot find it in a Google search.
A formal fallacy …If I cannot find it in a Google search, then it is not true.
PG foolishly took a class in predicate calculus once. One day, there was a big test, and the class was nervous. The instructor walked in, wearing black from head to toe. It happened that he was a part time chaplain at a local hospital
PG heard a radio whiner…it may have been Glenn Beck…quote Osama Bin Ladin as saying that he was going to defeat the United States the same way he defeated the Soviet Union. By this, he meant he was going to continue to fight, and occupy the attention of the great power, until the great power was broken economically.
PG went on the internet to confirm this quote. He could not find it. This may meant that he was not phrasing his questions accurately. Or, it could have meant that Mr. Bin Ladin did not say this.
What he said though….that the United States is defeating itself economically…is starting to happen. If Mr. Bin Ladin did not say this, then maybe he should have.

Some things seem to come in threes. This saying makes famous people nervous when two die in a short period of time.
There are also rules that come in threes. PG can only remember two at the moment. This would seem to violate the spirit of this rule, but PG is slack. There are few rules governing slack, and fewer people to enforce them.
Without further ado, here are PG’s three rules of having a job:
show up, stay awake, don’t kill anybody
John Madden is a football coach and television personality. He was the opposing coach when the Pittsburgh Steelers jump started their dynasty with the immaculate reception. He did win a Super Bowl of his own a couple of years later.
Mr. Madden likes to travel by railroads. He noted that the odd numbered runs go east and west. He realized that the odds go to San Francisco, and never had a problem with that again.
In midtown Atlanta, the street numbers have an odd and an even side. PG had a tough time with this, until he realized that the side with the odd numbers was closer to Piedmont Park.
Back to John Madden, and rules coming in three. When he was a coach, Mr. Madden had three rules for his players. They were:
be on time, pay attention, play like hell when it is time to.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote a book called “Jailbird”. It is about a man named Walter Starbuck. The book was copywrited in 1979. This was long before overpriced coffee drinks became a franchise. Mr. Starbuck gets out of prison, and has been somewhat of a failure at life.
In the foreword, Mr.Vonnegut says there will be a character named Roy Cohn, based on the real man with that name. The real Mr. Cohn was a dreadful man. First he was the counsel for Joe McCarthy. Then he was a spectacularly crooked attorney. It remains to be seen what sort of treatment this book will give him.
On page 111, there is a severe quote. It will be paraphrased here out of kindness to copyright laws, and the tenacity of survivors. No person is so pathetic that he cannot collect as many rich ironies as possible. There is no indication of whether an irony board was needed.
So Walter Starbuck is released from prison and goes to New York. He runs into a bag lady, who turns out to be an old girlfriend. The bag lady/x is also the owner of a huge corporation, who gives Starbuck a job where he makes lots of money. Plots like that are fun to read, like a science fiction story set in New York. And about as realistic.
Mr. Vonnegut has yet to say “and so it goes”. There are a hundred pages left, so there is plenty of time. Kilgore Trout has not been heard from. There is a picture of Mr. Vonnegut smoking on the back cover. It was taken by his wife, a lady named Jill Krementz. PG had the notion that Ms. Krementz had been in Athens GA in the early seventies, and that she may have been in the same room as PG. However, wikipedia says she was born in 1940, and was from New Jersey.
This feature needs one more paragraph to be a rainbow. This is the purple paragraph. It is not about prince, or Alice Walker, or grape juice. It could be about the Governor of Illinois. He was arrested for trying to sell a senate seat. BHO is not going to need it, because he is going to be president. Maybe Governor Alphabet could throw in an irony board, at no extra charge.