Chamblee54

PG put the final touches on fifty six points today. This was the picture project that ran in conjunction with nanowrimo. The month of November is over. This is not a minute too soon for the Republican party and the Georgia Bulldogs. Fifty six points is a lot to give up in a football game. Georgia needs to learn how to play defense. The idea that this team was considered a national championship contender shows how useless pre season predictions are.

This marriage thing is getting complicated.
Father Tony has a story posted today. FT is a retired employee of the state of Connecticut. His buddy of 25 years is registered as his domestic partner, and receives benefits as a result. Recently, same sex marriage became legal up there. It seems that the benefits deal was a union negotiated thing. This is some of the fine print:
A couple shall be eligible for domestic partner status only if the couple is unable to marry in Connecticut because Connecticut’s marriage provision’s distinguish between same sex and opposite sex couples. Should eligibility to marry in Connecticut no longer be precluded on the basis of this distinction, the following provision shall cease to be effective on that date, except that coverage for couples having already achieved domestic partner status under the terms of this provision shall cease one year from that date

In other words, if the partner of FT wants to keep the pension, they MUST get married.

Father Tony is a treasure. He wrote this recently about the ins and outs of being a Catholic Priest.
There was a comment somewhere recently….maybe it was Peach Pundit, and please don’t ask for a link…but the commenter was discussing domestic partner benefits. The commenter made a point that this really wasn’t a bad idea, but that maybe there should be a live in requirement…say two years…of the couple being a declared d.p. item, before the partner would be eligible for benefits.
PG saw this, and thought that this would be a good idea for old fashioned marriages as well. Many straight marriages are more business arrangements than love matches. The shotgun has been replaced with a claims form. If a man gets his sweetie in the family way, he often has to marry her to get insurance to cover the bundle of joy. There are many other “violations of the sanctity of traditional marriage”.

And then PG realized why this is not going to happen, and one more reason why people don’t like gay marriage. There are all sorts of legal goodies for a straight married couple. The idea that this might be compromised by the same sex couples is distressing.
Spell check suggestions for this feature:
dp-dip
boi- boil, boa, boo, bod, bop, bob, bow

Today is the last day of nanowrimo and nablopomo. It is hereby known as nomonano day. PG finished his novel, the confessions of gnarlene widget. His final word count was 58,141. With this post, he will have posted all thirty days in November. He will “win” nablopomo. PG finished his novel at the same time he read the last chapter of “Trout Fishing in America” The last word of TFIA is mayonnaise. PG now knows how to spell this word. It has two ns and only one s. Football season is roaring along. As this is written, channel forty six has the colts and the browns. Channel five has “COPS”, and tacky commercials. The pictures illustrating this nomonano day post were taken at a house on Hosea Williams Boulevard. The owner of the house does not read blogs. The truck commercial showed a pickup towing a freight container over the side of a cliff. With advertising like that, it is no wonder that the truck maker is about to go bankrupt.

Being slack sometimes comes at a cost.
PG just did not want to get going thanksgiving morning. Finally, he roused himself, got breakfast, and put his coat on. The marathon was being run on Peachtree Road. This is about two hundred yards as the mosquito buzzes, but PG walks, and Marta is in the way. The underpass at Redding Road is about a third of a mile.
At first, PG thought he had missed it. Then, he saw the flashing blue lights, and some sweat suits moving slowly towards buckhead. PG got across the street in time to see a few runners, and the phalanx of police cars, trucks, and ambulance that marks the end of the marathon. A few runners continued on the sidewalk behind the end of the parade.

JoeMyG-d posted a story yesterday where he poo pooed the controversy about BHO’s birth certificate. A site called Free Republic critiqued his story. When they did so, they listed keywords in the story. The keywords they listed were: antichristian; bigot; birthcertificate; celebratesin; certifigate; conspiracytheory; crackpot; dnctalkingpoints; gaystapotactics; hedonist; homosexualagenda; ifitfeelsgooddohim; larrysinclairslover; lavendermafia; liberalbigot; missingbirthcert; moonbat; obama; religiousintolerance; sodomite; woowoo.
Thats quite a collection. When PG went to FreeRepublic to see for himself, the site was down. There is something called a 502 proxy error in the works now. Or maybe the thesaurus at Free Republic went into hyperdrive, and took down everything in site.
Free Republic is back up now. Maybe this was a coincidence. This post had 64 comments when PG looked through. Many of them are wigged out about the word “christianist”. Very few of these people call a student of Buddha a Buddhian.
On a lighter note, it seems like the right wing is not giving up the fight. They seem determined to make as much trouble for BHO as they can. This is consistent with the reception the Clintons got in 1993.
BHO is going to have his hands full when he comes into office. The patriotic thing to do would be to support him, and try to help solve some of the problems he is going to be facing. The right wing seems determined to look for anything they can to fuss about. PG questions the patriotism of people who would undermine the president like that.

There is an official word for every letter in the alphabet. It is part of the NATO phonetic alphabet.
The words are:Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu
The current President is often called by his middle initial, W. He is known to have had a drinking problem, and is rumored to be hitting the bottle these days. How ironic that W means whiskey.
In Vietnam, the vietcong were called victor charlie. This was shortened to charlie. Thus an enemy was given the same first name as Charlie Brown.
Foxtrot and November give  new meaning to the f word and the n word.
There are also code names for numbers. These are: 0 Nadazero 1 Unaone 2 Bissotwo 3 Terrathree 4 Kartefour 5 Pantafive 6 Soxisix 7 Setteseven 8 Oktoeight 9 Novenine
HT to Puntabulous.

When PG typed in the title of this segment, he was reminded what day this was. This was the day John Kennedy went to the oval office in the sky. The legend is that Marilyn Monroe greeted him. It was forty five years ago.
The bullets hit Mr.Kennedy at 12:30. He arrived at the hospital at 12:37. He had a faint heartbeat on arrival, but quickly succumbed to his wound.
In Georgia, PG was nine years old. He was in Miss Mckenzie’s fourth grade class. There was going to be an assembly soon, and the class was going to perform. There was a rehearsal in the cafetorium, and some of the kids were acting up. They went back to the class, and PG thought they were going to be chewed out about the misbehavior in the cafetorium. Instead, Miss Mckenzie came into the room, and told the kids that President Kennedy had been shot during a parade in Dallas Texas. She did not say anything about his condition. One kid cheered the news.
School let out at the regular time, and PG walked home. His mother and brother were crying. He was told that the president had died. The cub scouts were going to meet that afternoon, but the meeting was canceled.
Later that night, a plane arrived in Washington. The tv cameras showed a gruesome looking man walk up to a microphone. He was introduced as President Lyndon Johnson. This may have been the worst moment of that day.
spell check suggestions for this feature:
cafetorium…crematorium, sanatorium, auditorium, moratorium, cafeteria

PG got an email from a former co worker. He is now known as KnowNothing. PG sent the following reply:
hey are you still in town?…as you may know, the company decided they did not have a job for me. I am enjoying the time, and trying to find something else to do. The department of labor had a listing for a wig maker, but it was filled by the time I saw it…I am doing nanowrimo…the national novel writing month. I am 37000 words into the confessions of gnarlene widget, it is an unreadable mess…. .
KnowNothing:Ya, I’m still around, they didn’t need me either. I too am enjoying the time off. I will put in a good word for you with zzz if you like. I start there on the 1st…would love to see the draft
Notice of censorship….PG may be applying for a job with one of these companies. KnowNothing already has. It is best not to rock the boat on a disco cruise.
PG:I sent * Miss Jones* an email, and never heard back…I may have to check that xxx thing. If i could go on marta that would be excellent…as for the novel….I am putting excerpts up on the blog. My role model is “trout fishing in america” which was likewise plot challenged… the novel is like a blog post on steroids. I put anything and everything in it. editing is for december… Or i may get a real job
KnowNothing:Once I get my feet wet, I’ll let you know about zzz… What was the Trout Fishing Guys name? I forget…Are you on Facebook?
PG :i have a facebook page i think, but i have never put much effort into it…the trout fishing man is richard brautigan. he was sort of a sad case, great writer who had a problem with real life. he was an alcoholic with mental problems who owned a gun. in 1984 these three things added up and he became a casualty… on a related subject, on my old blogspot blog, my slogan was “when the going gets wierd the weird turn pro” which of course is courtesy of dr thompson. I got a comment one day, from someone with the same name as someone who grew up down the street from me. The comment said i had misspelled weird. what do you expect when you quote hunter s thompson about weird?…i took a walk yesterday, and wound up walking past a long long freight train until i came out in brookhaven by the marta station. It occurred to me that I was really having a very good time, and it was going to be a shame to get a job and spoil it all.
PG hadn’t seen the man who corrected him on the spelling of weird in over thirty five years. He was a year ahead of PG in school, and told PG a lot of horror stories about eighth grade at Cross Keys. It seems the eighth grade boys gym teacher was a psycho. He was still there when PG got to the eighth grade. But PG lived, and got to go to ninth grade as his reward.
KnowNothing:Brautigan, thats it, ya I head read that…Funny you should mention HST, I am about to watch his documentary now…Also, I am re-reading my old Vonnegut books. Have one called Wampeters, Fama, and Granfallons which is a collections of essays he did. One was a review of HST’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail written (as the review) in 1972. Vonnegut talked on end about how he worried about HST’s mental health and how he would eventually die from his lust for an ideal american politico scene. Vonnegut turned out absolutely right. Only 34 years later. I wish the good doctor could have hung around one more term…Check it out, eerily true
PG:would you have a problem with me using these emails in my novel?..I would eliminate references to zzz and xxx.that seems like common sense…i also use fake names for everyone. I am still thinking of a handle for you. If you have any suggestions that would be cool… as for wampeters etc, i bought a boxed set of vonnegut stuff at a flea market once. wampeters was in it, but i can’t find my copy. the one thing i remember from it was the statement that an author can make a lot more money by giving a speech than he can by writing a book
KnowNothing:sure, no problem, you can have my Wampeters if you want. Just be sure to read “Cat’s Cradle”, the novel, very short. Vonnegut made more money doing commencements then anything. dang, commencements is a long word…my handle could be “know nothing” and i think that a compliment
PG:I may have read cat’s cradle. I think i have read all his non sci fi novels. when i read his books i get into a state where i start to think like he writes, which may or may not be a good thing..on the business of re reading books, i re read steppenwolf a few months ago. There was one passage that i was dumbfounded by the first time, and just rolled through it like it wasn’t there the second time. sometimes your reaction to a book says more about you than the book
Steppenwolf made quite the impact on the younger PG . When he re read it earlier this year, it was a fun read, but scarcely life changing. The stories about steppenwolf impressed PG as much as the text itself. When he bought his copy, there was a birth certificate and a dear john letter inside the book. There is also the story of the cheerleader. When PG was at Cross Keys, there was a very pretty girl who was three years ahead of him. She was a cheerleader. One day about a year after she graduated, This lady went to the regency hyatt house downtown. She went up to the 22nd floor, and walked over to a balcony. The Regency was the first hotel to have the indoor atrium, and it caused quite a sensation. The cheerleader jumped off the balcony and landed in the lobby 22 floors below. She left behind a copy of Steppenwolf.

Spell check suggestions for this feature:
zzz- izzy,ozzy, fuzz, razz, fizz, zee, CSS, WWW
xxx– xx, xix, zee, CSS, WWW
marta—mart, manta, maria, marts,
wampeters- saltpeter, trumpeter
fama–lama, mama, rama, fame, Obama
granfallons– rainfalls, gallons, gyrfalcons, grandsons, fallowness
steppenwolf–doorstepped, overstepped, sidestepped, misstepped, stepparent
brautigan–beautician, litigant, brigand,
blogspot…blackspot, bloodsport, bloodshot, biologist, nightspot
dr— rd dry

Yesterday, after exploring east atlanta, PG and Uzi went to dinner. They alternate between Piccadilly and S&S , and this was a Piccadilly week. PG always thinks of the antique store called Pick a Dilly. That might explain some of the clientele.
Lenny was a friend of Uzi, who had checked out of the hotel a few years ago. Lenny was inclined towards a philosophical viewpoint. He tried to write these nuggets down. The only trouble was…well, one of the troubles was…that Lenny never did understand the concept of the tab key. He would type the quote, the source, and any other information into one cell of a database. PG had time on his hands, and offered to try and straighten out the mess.
Now, one problem is a program suite, that microsoft foisted on the population, called works. The database that Lenny used was in works. The only operating system to employ works was Millennium Edition. M.E. was the edsell of the microsoft showroom. When you tried to take something in works, and move it to another microsoft system, you were liable to get a screen full of jibberish. (According to spell check, this is properly spelled gibberish)
So, the email arrived. PG tried to open the file using an open office database, and the thing closed immediately. PG thought he heard the computer laughing at him. Next was a bootleg copy of microsoft windows 97 office suite. Funny how suite is pronounced like sweet, but is anything but. The database was not amused, and word showed a screen full of gibberish.
Next, PG tried notepad. This did show some text in between the acres of code. PG copied this into a trusty wordpad file, and started to edit. After a while, there were a few quotes in legible form.
PG then sent this email to Uzi:

excellent i haven’t had a family turkey day since i had parents
as for the files, they are not opening smoothly. i might could work around some of the issues, but it might be easier if i had a copy of works
when i had my first computer, i used works, and then tried to take the files to my job to use the word based computers there. word computers do not like works ( even if it is at work, as in job. this can get confusing)
If you could find a copy of the works database file and send it to me, that might make this project easier
I opened one file with notepad, and was able to cull these from the mass of jibberish
The best things and best people rise out of their separateness ; I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise . Robert Frost
How many a dispute could have been deflated into a single paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms . Aristotle
The government of the United States is not in any sense founded upon thty . Clarence Darrow
Is this the sort of thing i can expect to find? a quote, and then a source for the quote?
PG

One of the blogs that PG follows is Puntabulous. The man is having a contest, inviting his viewers to send in self portraits. The images are to be done in MS Paint.
PG submitted an image, which may or may not be what the contest called for. The image was accompanied by this letter.
Is this a feminist program? why not miss paint, or mr paint. Or for the little boy, master paint.
I digress. I have been using mspaint for years . I make faux stained glass windows. The one pixel line drawings in paint work very well for what I do.
Many “sophisticated” image mongers look down on paint. I maintain that paint is a lovely program. While photoshop and the dozens of other brand name programs have their place, there is nothing like good old fashioned paint.
I just hope that microsoft does not do away with it like they did imaging. Now, there was a great program. The only problem was royalty issues with kodak, and greedy microsoft kicked it out.
At any rate, i am working on a project as we speak. This picture is in conjunction with nanowrimo, or national novel writing month. Since my novel does not have a plot, I am throwing everything i can think of into it. You are now a part of my novel. You will get along very well with the other characters, and maybe even get a date.
I am going to send the working drawing for my current project. It is called fifty six points. There are eight stars, with seven points each. They are in a rectangle defined by a series of interlocking border tiles.
On a technical note, I highly recommend zipping bitmap files before sending by email. You may want to mention this to your contestants. Many will already know this, but it is a good idea for those who don’t. Zipping will dramatically reduce the file size of a bitmap.
This letter is a good start for my nanowrimo output for today. I aim for 1700 words a day, for a november total of 50k. I am up to 36k now, and should make 50k with no trouble. The fact that the novel….the working title is “the confessions of gnarlene widget”…the fact that the novel is an unreadable mess is of no concern. Editing is for december.

At about 1:30, PG called Uzi, and said to meet behind the waffle house. Today, the sunday walk was going to be in East Atlanta.
PG was true to form in making a wrong turn on the freeway, forcing a drive down Spring Street to North Avenue. There was little traffic, and soon the men were on Moreland, crossing I 20, and making that weird turn off Moreland onto Flat Shoals.
The East Atlanta shopping district is not very big. It can be covered on foot in a few minutes. There are plenty of unused buildings, and former parking lots with a fence in front. The transitionality of the neighborhood is a work in progress.
There are plenty of places to get a drink in East Atlanta. While PG was taking pictures of graffiti on the side of the Earl, Uzi said that he never did care to be in a bar on Sunday afternoon. PG thought back to his drinking days and agreed. Sundays are for riding bikes, hiking, watching football, but not to be spent inside with cigarette smoking drunks.
On the way back to the car, Uzi saw a tree stump in a vacant lot. He decided to count the rings on the stump. By his reckoning, the tree was 130 years old when it was murdered. There was some serious fighting in this area during the War between the States. This would have been 144 years ago, or before the tree was planted.
There was once a fill in band leader on the Tonight show named Tommy Newsome. Johnny Carson made comments about Mr. Newsome going to Central Park, and taking charisma lessons from a tree stump. The stump in East Atlanta is utterly lacking in charisma. It was not in Central Park forty years ago. Reports of local musicians taking charisma lessons from this tree stump are not to be believed.

PG– Good Morning
Poovis Widget– Good Morning to you, sir
PG– how is Gnarlene?
PW– mean as ever. lord, i don’t know what it takes to make her happy
PG– well, what do you expect. she married you
PW– yea, but you do what you have to do
PG– I always think of you too when i hear that gays can’t marry. Lord knows, enough do, it is just to females who play the role of beard
PW–well, this one is dangerously close to getting shaved
PG– so, what do you think of this whole prop 8 mess
PW– this is what you can expect from lawyers and supreme courts. things were fine and dandy until some lawyer with too much time filed a suit so some queens could marry each other. As many fag hags as they have in california, you would think that would not be necessary. Just marry a woman that will play the game, and keep your mouth shut
PG– dude, telling a queen to keep her mouth shut is dangerous business. What galls me is the backlash from this after the election. Anyone with any sense could have told you that prop 8 was going to pass. There has been a lot of finger pointing, and the whole thing is so unpleasant.
PW– people just have to play the blame game
PG–so, they had this rally in los angeles after the election. Some of the bois were upset about prop 8 passing, and there were some reports of the bois shouting the n word
PW– what would that be, nail polish
PG– no, the other n word. you know, the six letter one that refers to african americans.
PW– oh that one. so some folks said the n word at a rally. What happened next
PG– word got out in the blogs about this rally. When the news got to some hot heads in the south, the thing had blown up into a glorified klan rally. i think  about the people at the rally who were not shouting race slurs, but got tagged as bigots because they were in the same crowd as a few people who don’t know when to shut up.
PW– you know, these things happen. When you go talking about racism, it is best to look in the mirror and see who is doing the talking.
PG–so, there is going to be a rally at the state capitol tomorrow about this prop 8 business. how do you feel about meeting up and going down there.
PW– that might be hot. maybe we could out later and have some real fun
PG– thats the spirit. I am sure Gnarlene would understand. They will have reruns of “The real housewives of Atlanta” on tomorrow.
PW– Yes, Gnarly is hooked on that show. She was so upset when that fundraising party turned out to be a flop.
PG– so, getting back to the rally at the capitol, there are going to be some people in costume. That should add a festive touch to the day.
PW–I know what I want to do. I am going to wear a bedsheet and pointed hat, and be a klansman. If we are going to have a glorified klan rally, then I want to dress the part.
PG– dude, i wonder about you sometimes.