Chamblee54

Whenever someone writes a book about religion, the writer pays tribute to mammon. Interviews are given, TED talks are given, and the printed donkey flogged within an inch of its life. The book of the moment is Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion. The author is Alain de Botton. A chat on blogginheadstv provided background noise for a productive 53 minutes of photo editing. Thank you Library of Congress.
The idea is that atheists can learn a thing or two from the believers. Mr. de Botton also gave a TED Talk about this concept. TED provides a transcript, which makes the bloggers endeavor a bit easier.
One of the most common ways of dividing the world is into those who believe and those who don’t — into the religious and the atheists. And for the last decade or so, it’s been quite clear what being an atheist means. There have been some very vocal atheists who’ve pointed out, not just that religion is wrong, but that it’s ridiculous. These people, many of whom have lived in North Oxford, have argued — they’ve argued that believing in G-d is akin to believing in fairies and essentially that the whole thing is a childish game.
We may as well began by questioning the entire belief paradigm. Christians believe G-d exists, and a few other things. Atheists do not believe G-d exists. What no one seems to be questioning is whether belief is the best way to go about the G-d issue. The word gnosis (the root of agnostic) refers to having a knowledge of G-d… to feeling her presence in your soul. There are some who say that man and G-d are one and the same. When all you have is a belief… a strongly felt thought… you just might be missing most of the picture.
Christianity is a religion based on beliefs. One of the central beliefs is the notion that having the correct beliefs will cause you to be “saved”… to go to heaven when you die, instead of hell. This is a big deal to Christians, who find it difficult to deal with someone who is not as fascinated by this belief as they are.
Atheism seems to be a reaction to Christianity. If they Christians did not tell them about G-d, how would they know what not to believe in?
“they’ve argued that believing in G-d is akin to believing in fairies and essentially that the whole thing is a childish game.” Oh my, what a terrible thing to say about faeries. Maybe faeries are not something to believe in either. Just wear the fabulous fashions, and don’t worry about that silly religion business.
Mr. de Botton laments the lack of community is atheism, and he may have a point. PG has often envied the sense of extended family that churches seem to offer. If only those pesky beliefs didn’t get in the way. Does religion fulfill a tribal need for conformity, rather than spiritual fulfillment?
“Now religions start from a very different place indeed. All religions, all major religions, at various points call us children. And like children, they believe that we are in severe need of assistance. We’re only just holding it together. Perhaps this is just me, maybe you. But anyway, we’re only just holding it together. And we need help. Of course, we need help. And we need guidance and we need learning.”
It is a common rule of public speaking… you treat children as though they were adults, and adults as though they were children. The concept of being “born again”, of having a second childhood… these are very appealing notions. Can an atheist church offer these good times? Or would it spoil the fun by treating “worshipers” as adults?
Another point about education: we tend to believe in the modern secular world that if you tell someone something once, they’ll remember it. Sit them in a classroom, tell them about Plato at the age of 20, send them out for a career in management consultancy for 40 years, and that lesson will stick with them. Religions go, “Nonsense. You need to keep repeating the lesson 10 times a day. So get on your knees and repeat it.” That’s what all religions tell us: “Get on you knees and repeat it 10 or 20 or 15 times a day.” Otherwise our minds are like sieves.
So religions are cultures of repetition. They circle the great truths again and again and again. We associate repetition with boredom. “Give us the new,” we’re always saying. “The new is better than the old.” If I said to you, “Okay, we’re not going to have new TED. We’re just going to run through all the old ones and watch them five times because they’re so true. We’re going to watch Elizabeth Gilbert five times because what she says is so clever,” you’d feel cheated.
PG listened to the embedded TED talk twice, the second time taking notes in the transcript. The idea of listening to this lecture three more times is horrific.
The other thing that religions are really aware of is: speak well — I’m not doing a very good job of this here — but oratory, oratory is absolutely key to religions. In the secular world, you can come through the university system and be a lousy speaker and still have a great career. But the religious world doesn’t think that way. What you’re saying needs to be backed up by a convincing way of saying it.
So if you go to an African American Pentecostalist church in the American South and you listen to how they talk, my goodness, they talk well. After every convincing point, people will go, “Amen, amen, amen.” At the end of a really rousing paragraph, they’ll all stand up, and they’ll go, “Thank you Jesus, thank you Christ, thank you Savior.” If we were doing it like they do it — let’s not do it, but if we were to do it — I would tell you something like, “Culture should replace scripture.” And you would go, “Amen, amen, amen.” And at the end of my talk, you would all stand up and you would go, “Thank you Plato, thank you Shakespeare, thank you Jane Austen.” And we’d know that we had a real rhythm going. All right, all right. We’re getting there. We’re getting there.
This is one issue where PG has a big, big problem. Jesus worship is an emotional affair. Powerful feelings are stirred up. This power, and fury, can be a terrifying thing if it is used against you.
In 1999, PG was working with an aggressive Jesus worshiper. One day, PG came out of the bathroom, and heard something on a radio the preacher was playing. What he heard disturbed PG. When he asked the preacher to turn his radio down, hell broke loose. The preacher turned loose the power of Jesus against PG, in righteous anger, because he wanted to play a religious radio station at work. An experience like that will give you a sense of what George Zimmerman is facing today.
This use of Jesus driven emotions is an issue in American politics today. The force and thunder of a screaming Jesus worshiper, leading his flock of angry sheep, is a terrible thing to have used against you. It is hoped that an Atheist church would be more “humanistic”.
No, we need to be polite about differences. Politeness is a much-overlooked virtue. It’s seen as hypocrisy. But we need to get to a stage when you’re an atheist and someone says, “Well you know, I did pray the other day,” you politely ignore it. You move on. Because you’ve agreed on 90 percent of things, because you have a shared view on so many things, and you politely differ… That’s what the religious wars of late have ignored. They’ve ignored the possibility of harmonious disagreement.
Two wrongs do not make a right. Jesus worshipers are notorious for interrupting you if something is said they do not like. Perhaps this is another function of the belief based religion. When you believe something, and do not understand why someone does not share your belief, you don’t have time to listen. This rudeness does not speak well for Jesus. Hopefully, atheists can be a bit better.

There is a dandy feature at the Atlantic today, The White Savior Industrial Complex. It is written by Teju Cole, who is becoming a legend in the twitterverse. It was a seven part tweetpoem, written after the viral plague of KONY2012, that starts off the story.
1- From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex. 2- The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening. 3- The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm. 4- This world exists simply to satisfy the needs—including, importantly, the sentimental needs—of white people and Oprah. 5- The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege. 6- Feverish worry over that awful African warlord. But close to 1.5 million Iraqis died from an American war of choice. Worry about that. 7- I deeply respect American sentimentality, the way one respects a wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it, for you know it is deadly.
The media sensation this week is Trayvon Martin. Angry mobs are demanding justice. 5- The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege. (Are all white people caucasians?) The backwards police in Florida just don’t get it. The enlightened folk of America are going to straighten them out. The Jesus worshipers are demanding what they call justice. The word forgiveness is seldom heard.
There is a sentence in Mr. Cole’s story. “What Africa needs more pressingly than Kony’s indictment is more equitable civil society, more robust democracy, and a fairer system of justice.” Substitute America for Africa, and Zimmerman for Kony.
We live in a society that benefits from the suffering of others. A person who speaks about helping these suffering people should be aware of this. As Mr. Cole says: “I write all this from multiple positions. I write as an African, a black man living in America. I am every day subject to the many microaggressions of American racism. I also write this as an American, enjoying the many privileges that the American passport affords and that residence in this country makes possible. I involve myself in this critique of privilege: my own privileges of class, gender, and sexuality are insufficiently examined. My cell phone was likely manufactured by poorly treated workers in a Chinese factory. The coltan in the phone can probably be traced to the conflict-riven Congo. I don’t fool myself that I am not implicated in these transnational networks of oppressive practices.”
Mr. Cole speaks about Nigeria. Much of the oil we power our automobiles with comes from Nigeria. The people of that country are. mostly, poor. The waters they used to fish have been poisoned by oil spills. The world does not pay much environmental attention to the oil wells in Nigeria.
Let me draw into this discussion an example from an African country I know very well. Earlier this year, hundreds of thousands of Nigerians took to their country’s streets to protest the government’s decision to remove a subsidy on petrol. This subsidy was widely seen as one of the few blessings of the country’s otherwise catastrophic oil wealth. But what made these protests so heartening is that they were about more than the subsidy removal. Nigeria has one of the most corrupt governments in the world and protesters clearly demanded that something be done about this. The protests went on for days, at considerable personal risk to the protesters. Several young people were shot dead, and the movement was eventually doused when union leaders capitulated and the army deployed on the streets. The movement did not “succeed” in conventional terms. But something important had changed in the political consciousness of the Nigerian populace. For me and for a number of people I know, the protests gave us an opportunity to be proud of Nigeria…
This is not the sort of story that is easy to summarize in an article, much less make a viral video about. After all, there is no simple demand to be made and — since corruption is endemic — no single villain to topple. There is certainly no “bridge character,” Kristof’s euphemism for white saviors in Third World narratives who make the story more palatable to American viewers. And yet, the story of Nigeria’s protest movement is one of the most important from sub-Saharan Africa so far this year. Men and women, of all classes and ages, stood up for what they felt was right; they marched peacefully; they defended each other, and gave each other food and drink; Christians stood guard while Muslims prayed and vice-versa; and they spoke without fear to their leaders about the kind of country they wanted to see. All of it happened with no cool American 20-something heroes in sight…
If Americans want to care about Africa, maybe they should consider evaluating American foreign policy, which they already play a direct role in through elections, before they impose themselves on Africa itself. The fact of the matter is that Nigeria is one of the top five oil suppliers to the U.S., and American policy is interested first and foremost in the flow of that oil. The American government did not see fit to support the Nigeria protests. (Though the State Department issued a supportive statement — “our view on that is that the Nigerian people have the right to peaceful protest, we want to see them protest peacefully, and we’re also urging the Nigerian security services to respect the right of popular protest and conduct themselves professionally in dealing with the strikes” — it reeked of boilerplate rhetoric and, unsurprisingly, nothing tangible came of it.) This was as expected; under the banner of “American interests,” the oil comes first. Under that same banner, the livelihood of corn farmers in Mexico has been destroyed by NAFTA. Haitian rice farmers have suffered appalling losses due to Haiti being flooded with subsidized American rice. A nightmare has been playing out in Honduras in the past three years: an American-backed coup and American militarization of that country have contributed to a conflict in which hundreds of activists and journalists have already been murdered. The Egyptian military, which is now suppressing the country’s once-hopeful movement for democracy and killing dozens of activists in the process, subsists on $1.3 billion in annual U.S. aid. This is a litany that will be familiar to some. To others, it will be news. But, familiar or not, it has a bearing on our notions of innocence and our right to “help.”
The White Savior Industrial Complex should be read. Be forewarned … too much food for thought can lead to mental indigestion.

1 – A stand your ground law becomes an issue during an incident on Retreat View Circle. You can’t make this stuff up.
2 – Perhaps the dispatcher should have been more explicit about what Mr. Zimmerman should do. “We don’t need you to do that” can be taken different ways.
3 – It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog. While Mr. Zimmerman was bigger than Mr. Martin, he apparently did not do well in their physical confrontation. Mr. Zimmerman “was found bleeding from the nose and the back of the head”.
4 – A 9mm handgun is larger than either dog, or the fight in either dog. Attacking a man with this weapon is not a good idea.
5 – The City of Sanford has issued a statement regarding their conduct in this case. They claim that Florida law prohibited them from arresting Mr. Zimmerman. This is the case is going to be profitable for some attorneys to figure out.
6 – The American gun lust has caused more than one person to die before their time. There are better ways to prove your masculinity.
7 – Justice is not a popularity contest. This is now going to be in the hands of the grand jury. We should not allow a mob to “demand justice”. If Mr. Zimmerman is prosecuted only because a howling mob demands it, then justice has not been served.
8 – One more time. Justice is not a popularity contest. If this case goes to trial, and Mr. Zimmerman is acquited, will we see mob violence? It happened in 1992, when a jury in California delivered an unpopular verdict in the Rodney King trial. The rabble rousers need to have responsibility for what they are bringing down.
9 – Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. These are Union soldiers from the War Between the States.

On April 4, 2011. Crazy Owl went to the sweat lodge in the sky. The last few years of his life, he had a web page, Crazy Owls Perch. When you go to that address today, you will see something else.
Whoever recycles old domains has a sense of humor. The top two links seen today are Elite Pest Control & Wildlife Removal and $1249 Stomach Liposuction. The latter offers other services, including LipoLite, Brazilian Butt Lift, and Male Breast Reduction.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. The video is from WTF Japan Seriously.

An outfit with the oxymoronic name State Integrity Investigation has put out a report. Georgia is the most corrupt state in America. Here is how they stack up. To the surprise of cable tv fans, New Jersey is the least corrupt state.
The STI is a collaboration of The Center For Public Integrity, Global Integrity, and Public Radio International. According to Peach Pundit, “The research done to determine Georgia fails with ethics was done by former Atlanta Journal and Constitution investigative reporter Jim Walls, among the best in the business. He now runs his own website, AtlantaUnfiltered.com, and I encourage you to read his full report here“. (Some of the struck dogs say he is “just a blogger”.)
Peach Pundit is considered to be a conservative, republican blog. Her democratic cousin, Blog For Democracy, does not have this story on the front page. BFD does have a video, Rep. Terry England compares women to cows, pigs and chickens. This is how politics works… you work up the unwashed, about issues that you have no control over, while scraping the gold off the dome.
In its original report,Georgia Receives Deserved Dubious Distinction For Ethics Laws, Pundit has some grisly details. In the last 4 years, Georgia has had a House Speaker who had an affair with a lobbyist for whom he sponsored a bill that would have granted her employer hundreds of millions of dollars for a natural gas pipeline. We had a candidate for Governor with 10 Political Action Committees set up in Alabama to illegally launder campaign funds from a single donor whom he regulated as insurance commissioner. We had a state legislator who dated a lobbyist and got her client a new building at the University she represented, and then threatened the University when they later fired her. He now is the State Labor Commissioner.
We have a Governor who had to file and re-file required disclosures throughout his campaign because critical information was either omitted or incorrect. When the director of the ethics commission prepared subpoenas to serve on the Governor and sought help from the FBI for forensic accounting, her staff was gutted and she was replaced.
We have a Senate Rules Chairman who has traveled to Israel with a lobbyist whom he listed on the official program as a Senate staffer. He uses his campaign account to fund a $2,100 per month condo just 30 miles from his home, yet continues to bill taxpayers for per diem for over 100 days when the legislature is in session. He bills for mileage to and from his home every working day, including the days he is not even in the state.
And we have a current Speaker, elected by his peers after scandal brought down the entire former House leadership team, who took his family on a Thanksgiving vacation to Europe at the expense of lobbyists which went unreported for months. The $17,000 expenditure – roughly the same amount of a base legislator’s pay – was so that the Speaker could learn about trains and transit.
For years the Democrats ruled the state. The Republicans screamed about the corruption. When the GOP took over the state, they showed how much they had learned from the Democrats. It will be interesting to see what “issues” are used as a smokescreen. (Maybe we need a new state flag. If we make it round, we could sell advertising space to Coca Cola.) Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. The image above the text shows Herman Talmadge and Marvin Griffin.

PG was gifted with a link to an article, Silence Is Not a Vow. The concept is to compare a monk’s vow of silence to a wedding vow. It is a good comparison, if the vows are taken for the proper reason.
Silence can have many benefits for the soul. It is said that prayer is talking to G-d, and meditation is listening. Does anyone know a Jesus worshiper who talks too much?
People who spend time outdoors might have come to a time, during a hike, when no one has anything to say. The majesty of the world is overwhelming, and it is time to be quiet. There is nothing you can say that is as worthy as the sound of the outdoors. Soon, you will hear things… wind whistling through trees, birds chirping, or the pounding of feet. The earth is not a quiet place.
Even the city is full of pleasant sounds. How often do you see someone listening to earplugs, when the birds are singing their feathers off? Dogs barking, planes flying, insects chirping, and cars coming and going… the world is a symphony, and you miss it all when you give your time to itunes.
Light pollution is an issue… with so much light in the enviornment, living things do not have the darkness their nature requires. The same could be said for too much sound. Having too much sound to deal with … either by listening or ignoring… is toxic for the soul. There is an innate need for darkness, and silence.
One problem PG has with this feature is a sentence… “But I’m taking the risk of sharing these thoughts anyway, for I believe that the silence of monastics is a reminder to all people of faith—even those of us who do not live in a cloister—to make room in our lives for at least a modicum of silence, hopefully every day.” The noxious phrase is “people of faith”. We have decided that religion is a bad word, and use faith as a substitute. When you do this, you confuse the meaning of faith, which is a pretty neat concept. (The sentence has 54 words. To write a feature about silence, and include a sentence like that, is ironic.)
Another issue with the phrase “people of faith” is the antonym, “people of no faith”. How can you label one of G-d’s children with a tag like that? How can you know what is in another man’s soul, to say that he has no faith in anything? The semantics of a religion, based on the concept that one book is “the word of G-d”, can make you lose faith in the speaker.
There is a story of a monk, who was allowed to say two words every five years. After five years, he said “bad food”. After ten years, he said “hard bed”. After fifteen years, he said “I quit”. His superior replied, “Good. All you ever do is complain.”
While looking for the videos that go with this feature, PG saw some suggestions from youtube. These include: Jack Kerouac Voice off the Road2:30 Good Times- Jon Schmidt – piano instrumental4:42 Doris Day & Friends talk about the real Doris Day5:51 How Gay Marriage Could End Humanity1:48 It Gets Better: Google Employees7:36 Jack Kerouac American Haiku4:45 A TED speaker’s worst nightmare3:51.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.

PG saw a link to Do You Live in a Bubble? A Quiz. The “bubble” of the title refers to the concept that “the super wealthy, super educated and super snobby live in so-called super-ZIPs: cloistered together, with little to no exposure to American culture at large.” PG decided that taking the test would be a good excuse for some text to go between the pictures. (The pictures are from The Library of Congress ).
When he typed the date, PG noticed a symmetry of the digits 032112. If he could describe this mathematically, he would be in the top .01%. The fact that he noticed it separates him from 98% percent of the population. This does not include the .7% who became tired of date trivia after y2k. The zip code 32112 is located in Crescent City, FL.
The test is 25 questions. Most are answered yes or no. Others have a list of things you may have done, like see movies or eat at chain restaurants. One showed the symbols for different military ranks, and asked if you knew what they meant.
PG didn’t know what to expect. He seldom watches tv, does not go to church, and tends to stick to a few friends. PG had a blue collar job for 25 years.
The final score, for PG, was 31. The lower the score, the more of a “bubble” you live in. If the test had asked “Will you write a blog post about taking this test”, a yes answer would have lowered your score.
A possible problem with this test is the phrase “close friend” People define this term in different ways. There are other questions with some semantic pitfalls. Question 12 asks if you know who Jimmie Johnson is. (The alternative question is whether you have bought Avon products.) PG remembers a football coach named Jimmie Johnson, which is an extremely common name. A visit to Mr. Google says that Jimmie Johnson is a NASCAR driver.
PG decided to retake the test, with all the answers the same, except for number 7, Have you ever had a close friend who was an evangelical Christian? PG does not have close friends in this dreaded category, but has had family members and co workers. With a yes answer to question seven (and no to the follow up, Are you an evangelical Christian yourself?), PG gained two points, to 33. (Remember, the lower the score, the more of a “bubble” you live in.) Maybe they should have an option for “No thank you”.

The facebook friend (who PG has never met in person) had a link to a story, Bisher’s career ends, as does an era. Sure enough, on the front page, was another link… Furman Bisher dies at 93.
There was a picture of Mr. Bisher, taken from the press box of the newly completed Atlanta Stadium. Below this was a picture of a black woman with blonde hair. The headline was “‘RHOA:’ NeNe meets with divorce attorney.” There is a comment about changing times in that image.
PG posted a feature, The Last Furman Bisher Column, after the retirement of the writer. It was suggested that the fishwrapper might not outlive Mr. Bisher. The newspaper lives on, even if it is a greatly reduced affair.

When he was a kid, PG had different interests. He would get into something for a while, then move on to something else. In 1965, it was baseball and football. The Atlanta Journal had a column every day by Furman Bisher. PG thought he was a very good, very funny writer.
Yesterday, the fishwrapper printed the last column by Furman Bisher. Many, many things had changed in those 44 years. The well crafted prose of Furman Bisher remained the same.
In 1965, Mr. Bisher produced six columns a week for the afternoon paper. Typically, five of them would be on a single subject. The sixth one would be a collection of one or two liners, separated by three dots. These mix and match columns were always signed “selah”. Selah is an untranslatable Hebrew word from Psalms. When asked why, Mr. Bisher said “your guess is as good as mine”.
In one of the columns signed selah, Mr. Bisher talked about sports cliches. His least favorite one was about a ballplayer “who can do it all”. ” Lets see one of them have a baby”
While the Cox family owned both the morning Constitution and the afternoon Journal, they were separate papers then. They had a TV section on saturday printed on green paper, which made the world look red after you turned away from it. The saturday paper also had a weekly ad by a restaurant owner who dabbled in politics, named Lester Maddox. The next year, he would be elected Governor of Georgia. Lester called the Cox Newspapers “the fishwrapper”.
In 1965, the Braves played a lame duck season in Milwaukee. The Crackers played one last season in the brand new Atlanta Stadium. It did not have the hyphen Fulton County in it’s name yet, and the people of Atlanta were so proud of that facility. The next year, the Braves set up shop in Dixie, and were horrible. The Falcons played their first season, and were even worse. Before long, PG found other things to be interested in.
Furman Bisher continued to plug away. A young man named Lewis Grizzard came to work at the fishwrapper, and Mr. Bisher was his boss. Eventually, Lewis Grizzard took a job in Chicago, a frosty exile from warm Georgia. A few years later, Mr. Grizzard came home, and became an institution. The only problem was his heart. Lewis Grizzard left us on March 20, 1994.
Mr. Bisher is 90 today, and in good health. He is leaving on his feet. The fishwrapper continues to shrink, and may not outlive one of it’s best writers.

These visits to alternative reality are from a variety of sources. Included are Facebook (fb), Futility Closet (fucl) , and All Aphorisms, All The Time (Aph) .Attempts to maintain a no profanity blog will be suspended for this post. // “Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.” ~ Rabindranath Tagore (fb) // “I have come to believe that religious traditions exist not to serve the faithful, but to help the faithful serve the world.” Brad Hirschfield (fb) // “If you remain in the present moment, you will never get hurt. Forget about your past life. Forget about your future life. Unless you open your heart, unless you jump into the inner abyss, you are not going to become enlightened. Ultimately, you have to knock on your own door; you have to beg at your own door; you have to come back to yourself.” (fb) // What doesn’t kill, oppresses. (Aph) // When I fall asleep beside you, you are condemned to resume my life (Aph) // searching for work is unpaid work (Aph) // Listen and you learn how to lie. Lie and you forget how to listen. (Aph) // I found out how to lie to hacks: I told the truth and nobody believed that. (Aph) // If you are completely attached to your ego, you perceive any criticism, disagreement with your ideas, or even analysis thereof as an attack, so of course you are compulsively defensive. Arguments, power games, judgment, and all the attendant drama in the world spring from this state. Your attempt to gain power overs via these means is insecurity, not strength. Your low cunning, “strategic” thinking, aggressiveness, competitiveness, attacking others in any form, all in vain, for they increase your fear, rather than alleviate it. Your attempts to feel substantial via the attainment of status, recognition, possessions, money, your success or that of your mate or children, a special relationship, power, your job, knowledge, education, skills, the way you look, your religious and political beliefs, your family history, or any other affiliation (what have I left out?)…are self-destructive because inauthentic. And no one else gives a crap, either. (fb) // In the absence that Which Is Not, that Which Is, Is Not.”, “Behold I say onto thee Ye Are As Gods.”, “Seek & You Shall Find.”, “As Above, So Below.”, “The Thing you are looking for is the Thing you are looking with.”Relieved yet? (fb) // A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life.-Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (fb) // A celebrity is everyone but himself. (Aph) // An introvert is happy to be no one. To be someone requires the consent of too many people. (Aph) // I’m well over sixty. That’s not always true. Sometimes I’m fairly ill over it. (Aph) // The sky never quite recovers from a fallen tree. (Aph) // I only write the lines I would highlight in a novel or essay. Why bother with the rest? (Aph) // There are no right angles in the brain, though there may be wry tangles. (Aph) // Portion out pleasure so that one can always still increase it. – Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view (fb) // No person wishes to abandon Christian terminology, but they can secretly change it so that it doesn’t require decision or action.-Soren Kierkegaard, Two Ages: A Literary Review (fb) // The public comes into existence because all its participants become spectators rather than participants.-Soren Kierkegaard, Two Ages: A Literary Review (fb) // “I wouldn’t say when you’ve seen one western you’ve seen the lot, but when you’ve seen the lot you get the feeling you’ve seen one.” — Katharine Whitehorn (fucl) // “I see that both Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum now have Secret Service with them on the campaign trail. And in Santorum’s case I think it’s the first time he’s actually ever used protection,” – Senator Scott Brown, after Conan O’Brien. // Always leave your glasses where you can see them. (Aph) // The more I try to escape, the more the arrow of Everything considers me its bull’s eye. (Aph) // When a tiger attacks you, become a jungle. (Aph) // It is often not what you take off that leaves you naked, but what you take on. (Aph) // Maine is the only one-syllable state name. (fucl) // During a newspaper interview in March 1966, John Lennon said that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus.” On August 13, radio station KLUE in Longview, Texas, organized a bonfire in which protesting Christians burned their Beatles records. The following day, the station’s broadcast tower was struck by lightning, rendering the news director unconscious and knocking the station off the air. (fucl) // The longest unhyphenated place name in the United States is Kleinfeltersville, Pennsylvania. (fucl) // “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” — Robert Frost (fucl) // “Although violence and the use of force may appear powerful and decisive, their benefits are short-lived. Violence can never bring a lasting and long term resolution to any problem, because it is unpredictable and for every problem it seems to solve, others are created. On the other hand, truth remains constant and will ultimately prevail.” ~ His Holiness the Dalai Lama (fb) // “You have a moral responsibility when you’ve been given far more than you need, to do wise things with it and give intelligently,” J.K. Rowling (fb) // Reality leaves a lot to the imagination. John Lennon // beauty is in the eye of the beholder. ugly uses all five senses. // “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but for me looking as a Christian, I just don’t see the Jesus that I follow collaborating with the persecution of an already oppressed minority group.” ~ Aussie rugby star David Pocock (fb) // An introvert is happy to be no one. To be someone requires the consent of too many people. (Aph) // I’m well over sixty. That’s not always true. Sometimes I’m fairly ill over it. (Aph) // The sky never quite recovers from a fallen tree. (Aph) // I only write the lines I would highlight in a novel or essay. Why bother with the rest? (Aph) // There are no right angles in the brain, though there may be wry tangles. (Aph) // Wine in, whine out. (Aph) // “I find all books too long.” — Voltaire (fucl) // “One always tends to overpraise a long book because one has got through it.” — E.M. Forster (fucl) // “A big book is a big nuisance.” — Callimachus (fucl) // In 1959 Bertrand Russell and Lord Russell of Liverpool wrote a joint letter to the Times: “Sir: In order to discourage confusions which have been constantly occurring, we beg herewith to state that neither of us is the other.” (fucl) // Arrogance: being wrong in a loud voice. (Aph) // The more complicated something is the greater the number of ways it can break down. (Aph) // Buy what you need and you will never want. Buy what you want and you will forever be in need. (Aph) // When you are free to choose, the choice is compulsory. (Aph) // Selah

On this day four years ago, PG put up a post about Jack Kerouac. It was inspired by this appreciation at kikoshouse. Kikos, btw, is still producing, unlike many of the 2008 blogs.
00. Allen Ginsberg asked Mr. Kerouac to define the essentials of “Spontaneous Prose.”
01. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
02. Submissive to everything, open, listening
03. Try never get drunk outside your own house
04. Be in love with your life
05. Something that you feel will find its own form
06. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
07. Blow as deep as you want to blow
08. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
09. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yrself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don’t think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You’re a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven
While researching this post, PG stumbled onto an interview of Jack Kerouac. The interview was conducted by Ben Hecht, who is mostly forgotten today, but was a character. Mr. Kerouac thinks that President Eisenhower is a smart, friendly man. He probably did not play golf with him.
At 1:30 of part two, Mr. Hecht mentions that Mr. Kerouac, and his pals, particularly Mr. Ginsberg, have an “affinity for negroes”. “Negroes have a lot of fun”, they are “full of glee”. While they no doubt meant well by this, many today would consider this kind of talk racist.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Chamblee54 posted a four part breakdown of Satori in Paris, by Jack Kerouac.

It is monday after work, and slack rules. What energy PG had is long gone. He started a nifty post about Truman Capote at lunch, but didn’t feel like finishing it.
Not to worry, Renegade Evolution has the answer. She displayed something called the Cuss-o-meter . Ren copped a 34.5% rating, which is not surprising for a sex worker.
Holy Cow, Chamblee54 got a 0% rating. Dad Gum, by Jingoes. Golly Gee.
The first question to arise is, what do they call cussing? The seven words of Carlin? Anything referring to excretion, reproduction, or the eternal destination of your soul?
The funny thing is, PG is not terribly offended by most profanity. He does try not to use cusswords, because they take attention away from the overall message.
Profanity is a social issue rather than a moral one. Certain words are not right or wrong, but when you use one inappropriately, you betray a lack of respect for the listeners.
There are words that offend PG…like Jesus…that many see as their moral duty to say as often as possible. And this eagerness to profane a sacred name is a violation of the third commandment. (That is, the eagerness of Jesus Worshipers to scream his name as often and loudly as possible. This use of a sacred name, as an annoying distraction, creates untold ill will for the object of  veneration.)
It is a matter of perception. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but ugly uses all five senses.

As the observant reader might notice, there are a lot of reruns on this blog. When you have an archive with 2000+ posts, there is a lot of material. On a slow day, a journey into the past can be a handy cure for writers block.
Part one of this feature was originally posted April 21, 2008. At the time, the Cuss-o-meter was working. When it was time to assemble this post, we made another visit. Chamblee54 got a 0% rating… “Around 0% of the pages on your website contain cussing.This is 100% LESS than other websites who took this test.” This was curious, since the no profanity policy at this blog has been relaxed for a long time.
Renegade Evolution is still in the blogging business, although she is less prolific than before. Her motto is “Damn Skippy it’s a personalized plate if your Dad made it in Prison!”. The last time we checked, damn was considered a wirty dord. Despite this, the Cuss-o-meter gave her a 0% rating.
The last test for the cuss o meter is DontEvenReply.com E – m a i l s f r o m a n a s s h o l e. This site is both copyrighted and hilarious. A person answers an ad, a business arrangement is made, and then things go horribly wrong. Inevitably, there is profane name calling. (The propriety of using a vital, productive body part as an insult will be discussed at a later date.) Despite the copious carlinality of this blog, the Cuss-o-meter rated it 0% cussing. PG has come to the scientific conclusion that the cuss o meter is no longer functioning.
The Cuss-o-meter is affiliated with a dating website. You are invited to join, or click on the fine print to get the results without joining. PG chose the latter, which might influence the results.
This post uses the name of a prominent radio whiner. This name has nothing to do with the content, other than rhyming with profanity. (Nor do the pictures, from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library” , have anything to do with the content.) 

WSB radio is 90 years old today. On March 15, 1922, The Atlanta Journal received a telegram authorizing it to broadcast weather bulletins. The telegram instructed the station to use the call letters WSB. (Later, a station in Nashville was named WSM.) While the letters were later said to stand for Welcome South Brother (as well as World Series Baseball, and We’re So Boring), they appear to have been randomly assigned at first.
WSB is a 50,000 watt, clear channel station. At night, it can be heard for hundreds of miles around. It’s transmission tower is on LaVista Road, across the street from Northlake Mall. In the seventies, you could hear broadcasts on pay phones in the area.
WSB was owned by the Atlanta Journal, and had it’s first studio in their building downtown. The radio station moved to the Biltmore Hotel when it opened in 1926. In 1926, WSB joined the NBC radio network. (Station logs show a broadcast of the inaugural NBC broadcast in November, 1926.) In 1939, the Journal, and WSB, were sold to James Middleton Cox, who founded Cox Enterprises. In 1950, Mr. Cox bought the Atlanta Constitution.
The thirties and forties were the glory days for radio. In the fifties, television started to move in. WSB-TV started to broadcast on Channel 2. A studio known as “White Columns on Peachtree” was built in 1955, and was the home for the radio and TV WSB.
When PG was old enough to listen, WSB had a format which is no longer in use. It played “middle of the road” music, and had lots of news broadcasting. As FM radio began to dominate music broadcasting, (including WSB FM), the venerable AM station evolved (devolved) into a news-talk format. This is what you hear today.
HT to Peach Pundit. Pictures are from WSB, and ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.