Chamblee54

PG read The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler. Having the library book in the house coincided with a digital virus episode. If you are going to be without your computer, a book is a good companion.
TLG is a time travel, to the Los Angeles of the early fifties. It is full of overdressed characters, whiskey, cynical cops and even more cynical criminals. The dialog is like nothing PG has ever heard. Have you ever heard anyone say “magoozlum”?
The plot is a bit sketchy. It is the adventures of Philip Marlowe, a “private dick”. His peaceful life is interrupted by an unlikely friendship with a man named Terry Lennoxx. The first question an ornery reader might ask is, just why does Mr. Marlowe hang out with Mr. Lennoxx? We never get a good answer, as Mr. Lennoxx turns out to have multiple names, and more than one death.
If you don’t ask too many questions, you can have a good time. Cops make speeches about corruption. Trophy wives collect dust. Mr. Marlowe has more escapes than Indiana Jones, and insults everyone he meets. Another question might be how Mr. Marlowe pays the rent on his office, seeing as how he never accepts payment.
Raymond Chandler published the story in 1953. At the time, his wife was deathly ill. When she died, he never got around to interring her cremated remains. They stayed in a storage locker until Valentines Day, 2011, when she was placed next to her husband.
When PG was writing this, he found a link on Facebook to a video, with Keith Jarrett music in the background. Mr. Jarrett played a show one night at the Great Southeast Music Hall, with PG in the audience. After the show started, PG sat down in front of the stage. Later, people told him that Mr. Jarrett had been giving him dirty looks. PG saw the player, and walked over to ask him about this. Mr. Jarrett said that PG had interfered with his concentration.
Pictures today are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.

There is a thing going around Facebook now, “Cleaning out my friends list in the next few days… Do you wanna stay?”. A google search of the phrase had a few interesting results, but first a few thoughts on the “Facebook Friends” issue.
The English language does not have many levels of friend. There is little ground between acquaintance and friend. There is a difference between someone who shakes your hand at parties, and someone who would co sign a loan. There are people you smile at, and people who will tell you the painful truth. It can be tricky to tell the difference. When you can fake sincerity, you have got it made.
The business of having a collection of online contacts, and calling them friends, has always made PG uneasy. Friendship should not be commodity. Add to this a lifelong difficulty in making and keeping friends. As this is written, PG has 125 friends. While this is small compared to some, PG does not feel bad about it. If a few people decide that he does not make the cut, then so be it.
Of 3.2 million results at Google city, the top one is ” best likes “. This seems to be a collection of sayings that get “like” clicked. The top saying, as we speak, is “Why is it that if a guy does football, then he is manly, but if he does cheerleading, then he is gay”. A picture of bobblehead dolls is above this question.
The next choice is How to not suck at Facebook Questions. It seems that if you answer you answer one of those quizzes ( quizi? quizzies? quizzers? quizostomy?) you are likely to get a LOT more sent your way. As you might have guessed, there is a setting you can check that will, allegedly, correct this.
The next result is Cleaning out clothes – stay or throw-away? This clean out the friends business is getting personal. This site advertises hair care products.
The last result we will consider now is How to get THC out of your system Fast. This page has numerous ads, including Green Bay Drug Testing. “Just fallow my simple steps and you will be just fine im positive.” They might not have your best interests at heart.
Pictures for this demonstration are from The Library of Congress. They were taken by Dorethea Lange during the depression, on behalf of the US Government. These people did not make an electronic list of their friends.

Police are warning all men who frequent clubs, parties & local pubs to be alert and stay cautious when offered a drink by any woman. Many females use a date-rape-drug on the market called ‘Beer ‘.
The drug is found in liquid form and is available anywhere. It comes in bottles, cans, from taps, and in large kegs. ‘Beer ‘ is used by female sexual predators at parties and bars to persuade their male victims to go home and sleep with them.
A woman needs only to get a guy to consume a few units of ‘Beer’ and then simply ask him home for no-strings-attached sex. Men are rendered helpless against this approach. After several applications of ‘Beer ‘, men will often succumb to the desires to sleep with women to whom they would never normally be attracted. Men often awaken with only hazy memories of exactly what happened to them the night before, often with just a vague feeling that ‘something bad’ occurred.
At other times these unfortunate men are swindled out of their life’s savings, in a familiar scam known as ‘a relationship’ . In extreme cases, the female may even be shrewd enough to entrap the unsuspecting male into a longer-term form of servitude and punishment referred to as ‘marriage’. Men are much more susceptible to this scam after ‘Beer ‘ is administered and sex is offered by the predatory females.
If you fall victim to this ‘Beer ‘ scam and the women administering it, there are male support groups where you can discuss the details of your shocking encounter with similarly victimized men. For the support group nearest you, just look up ‘Golf Courses’ in the phone book.
This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. Gender modification, for contemporary society, is available by appointment. Here is a more graphic warning demonstration.

Some say …It’s the Soldier, not the poet, Who has given us the freedom of speech. There is also the story of Joyce Kilmer.
Alfred Joyce Kilmer was born December 6, 1886, in East Brunswick NJ. He grew up to be a teacher, and wrote poems on the side. After teaching, he worked for Funk and Wagnall, defining words for five cents each. Mr. Kilmer continued to write, and became a popular lecturer.
In 1913, “Trees” was published. Your english teacher probably made fun of it. Many satires have been written. It was at the end of an era in poetry, when that *simple* style was popular. In the era after World War 1, poetry went crazy. Joyce Kilmer didn’t live to see it.
A few days after the United States entered World War 1, Joyce Kilmer left his wife, and five children, and went to war. Originally he was a statistician in the 69th Infantry Regiment, but wanted action. He was promoted to Sergeant, and sent to the Regimental Intelligence Section.
On July 30, 1918, Sgt. Kilmer was scouting the location of a German machine gun. A bullet to the head ended his war.
World War 1 was a ghastly bloodbath. It set the stage for World War 2, which was even bloodier. Not one person in a thousand today can tell you why World War 1 was fought, or how the United States got drawn into it. It is tough to see how World War 1 gave us freedom of speech.

This is the demolition of Satori in Paris, by Jack Kerouac. This is the last installment. Parts
one , two , and three have already seen the light of day. Pictures are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library” . They were taken in 1965, the year “Satori” took place.
30- Mr. K goes to a restaurant, to meet Mr. Lebris (spell check suggestions: Debris, Celebrity, Bristle), who is a distant old country relative. There are doubts, though, as Mr. K suspects that his host is Jewish. This seems to be so old country, looking at a man closely to see if he is a Jew. In modern day America, most people are so ate up by the black white controversy, there is no emotion left for antisemitism The last great controversy was a splatter film by Mel Gibson, and the charges of anti antisemitism were really a part of the publicity campaign for the movie. Fundamentalism in any faith is just another way the ego causes separation and violence between us.
31- Ulyssee Lebris and Mr. K have a conversation, which starts with one asking the other for a glass of cognac. Drunks are so boring. They think they are clever, but judgement goes away quickly. It is a common complaint of the recovered that life seems dull without booze. Mr. K never had that problem. Nothing more beautiful than a confident girl who doesn’t pretend to be something she’s not, down to earth, & lets no guy define who she is.
32- The two Lebris dudes give up on conversation, and look at a family chart. PG was spelling the name Libris, and then saw that he was mistaken. This is not something that spell check will do, the writer needs to do it manually. The business of waving a mouse over a mistaken letter, and replacing it with the correct vowel, is a marvel of technology that is taken for granted. Some people are like clouds, when they disappear, it’s a brighter day. The difference is, these useless people never create rain. Urine does not count, except in beer return facilities.
33- The conversation, and cognac drinking, continues. Maybe we need to return to 2011 for a minute. There is a nutcase preacher in Florida. He likes to burn the Quran, and send the image over the internet to the Muslim world. Now, these people have plenty of reasons to be upset with the USA, like our having 100k troops in country killing women and children. As Juan Cole sees it, that is the real cause of the riots in Afghanistan. The people are upset at the killing, and express this anger over a book burning. It is a strange world.
34-Mr. K leaves the restaurant, totes his 70# suitcase to the train station, only to miss the train to Paris by three minutes. He now has 8 hours to kill, and he does not want to take a nap where he can be robbed. He talks to a cabdrivers, who teaches him not to worry if he is big and fat, to be big and fat. That sort of self acceptance would doom an important sector of the american economy. Meanwhile, Atlanta digs out from a spring storm. The leaf blower happy neighbor had a tree fall against his house. He is out there with a chain saw, which may satisfy his need to make noise.
35- A train has left Brest with Mr. K on board. A man in uniform tells him to take his feet off of a seat. The bell goes off, telling PG that he has an email. The message…”It was announced today that Buckwheat, of Our Gang fame has converted to The Muslim faith and changed his name to Kareem of Wheat.” You can’t become a better person without making mistakes. G0, do something really stupid.
36- The morning after the train ride, and Mr. K arrives in Paris. In 1979, at about this time of year, PG rode a trailways bus from Atlanta to San Francisco. One night, the last thing he saw was the a sign, Los Angeles 378. When he woke up, the bus was pulling into a station downtown. It was very early. PG got something to eat out of a machine, and tore a piece off a styrofoam cup to make a spoon. There was a three hour layover until the next bus to San Francisco. PG got an old lady to watch his bags, and went out into the morning to explore downtown Los Angeles. He had never seen so many degenerates.
37- During the night ride, a dirty old man got on the train with a young girl. They squabbled loudly until she got to sleep in her own seat. The awkward moment when you don’t know how to continue a conversation with someone you care about and you just sound really boring Best friends see the hurt in your eyes while everyone else is fooled by your smile. If Mr. K had the internet to flesh out his work, he wouldn’t have had to type so hard.
38- This is the last chapter. This is either where Mr. K achieves satori, or we find out that we have been fooled for 118 pages. PG is going to take his coffee, sit on the front porch with the sunshine and pollen, and find out. Well, fooled again. The cabdriver stops for a beer with Mr. K, and reminds him that he has children to support. It is not known whether Mr. K gave him more of a tip after the speech. In the corner of the last page is the note, I-75. This is an interstate highway, that runs from the top of Michigan to the bottom of Florida. It goes next to the big chicken, three miles otp. There are five blank pages after the end of this story.

Carl Hiassen takes timeout from writing novels about weirdos to produce a column for the Miami Herald. It comes out on Sunday, and lately has been every other week. He usually makes more sense than many can handle.
This week the subject is a proposed cigarette tax. Some grinches want a dollar a pack state tax added onto cigarettes. The tax would raise revenue, and hopefully some folks will quit the vile habit.
However, there is opposition. A legislator is looking out for the convenience store owners, who stand to lose a bundle if fewer people buy cancer sticks.
PG has smoked roughly two cigarettes in his life. That is, by his own choice. The second hand smoke adds up. There is also the “it’s legal” sense of entitlement that the tobacconists are well known for. PG has an answer to the matter of how much cigarette tax to assess.
Cigarettes should be taxed so that a pack of cigarettes costs as much as an ounce of marijuana.
Ciggies will still be legal. You will not have to buy them from criminals, who will turn you on to “hard drugs”. You will not lose your job if you fail a urine test. Your house cannot be confiscated for possession.The cancer sticks would still be legal, but with a reasonable tax.
This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. The Georgia Lesterslature is currently debating whether, or not, to allow alcohol users access to their legal drug on Sunday.

It started as a rumor, and was quickly confirmed. Crazy Owl…a.k.a. Charles Emerson Hall…passed away April 4, 2011. He was my friend for many years. Many stories could be told, and here are a few. Here is the biography from his website, Crazy Owls Perch.
These few lines will introduce you to Crazy Owl, the author of this website. His life began August 5 1927 at 6:02 AM in Akron Ohio, USA. His mother named him Charles Emerson Hall.
In 1960 The University of Wisconsin awarded him a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree, He pursued a career in mathematical statistics and research methodology until 1975 when he predicted that a cancer epidemic would engulf one-third of the population by 1985. Thereupon he “dropped out” and went into the community lifestyle and ate organic food. In summer of 1987 he took the name Crazy Owl and accepted the Barred Owl (the original “Crazy Owl”) as his totem.
Sometime during these years he became interested in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM for short). In 1980 he started studying acupressure at the Acupressure Institute in Berkley California. Since that time he has been a Healer with TCM as the core of his practice. From 1985 to 1997 Crazy Owl taught TCM in The School For Gentle Hands in Atlanta Georgia. He had a clientele in Healing and a business in herbalism as well as students.
The School for Gentle Hands was in an old horse farm on Flat Shoals Road, just off I20 and Gresham Road. There is a subdivision there now, and the K mart is a Walmart. This space is a mile away from East Atlanta Village, and is an up and coming neighborhood now. When Owl moved there in 1985, it was run down. He had a beat up barn, a dirt driveway, and a pipe bringing county water in. Some government agency made him get a porta potty, a bright green facility with a lot of nicknames.
The School For Gentle Hands was about nine miles due south from my attic apartment. One of the events was the friday night sweat lodge. You drove down, found a place to park in the weeds, and walked down a hill to the lodge. Owl would start the fire, put the rocks in, and hope that someone was there to join him. I sometimes served as the helper, balancing the glowing rocks, on a pitchfork, while Owl held open the door to the lodge.
One friday, the sweaters were talking about the things they were grateful for. The previous friday night, I had been in a tacky bar in Tucker GA. Everyone except me chain smoked, while the band played “Melancholy Baby”. Seven days later, I was naked in a makeshift hut. I was grateful for variety in my life.
In those days, AIDS was on a rampage, and there was little that industrial medicine could do. Crazy Owl helped quite a few people. Some did well with his treatment, and are thriving today. He taught that AIDS was not a disease, but a condition, and that it could be reversed.
Crazy Owl was a traveling companion of mine in those days. For a while, it seemed like every time we went anywhere, it would pour down rain the entire time. On a pre Thanksgiving Wednesday, this turned into ice when we arrived at the valley in North Carolina. We woke up the next day to find ourselves in an ice crystal wonderland.
He is not on this plane of existence any more. As for what he expected, I honestly don’t know. This may be a surprise to some, but not everyone is obsessed with life after death. I suspect that he is going to be all right.
Update: Here is the story of his final days. The story of the Memorial Service is here.

There was a hearing in congress about carbon pollution. One of the reputed effects of this “global warming”. Before getting into the results of this meeting, one thing should be noted. If the problem is hot air, the last thing you want is a hearing before a committee in Washington D.C.
One of the talkers at this hearing was Richard Muller, the chair of a study group called BEST, for Berkley Earth Surface Temperature. BEST recieves funding from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, and was considered to be skeptical of claims regarding carbon pollution. To the surprise of many, Dr. Muller testified “We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups”
Anthony Watts makes a few points about the testimony. It is said that “initial assessment is based on only 2% of the 1.6 billion measurements that will eventually be examined.”The people who don’t think carbon pollution is a problem are good at having things to say.
Yesterday, PG saw a movie about tornadoes. . This regards a scientific study, with the collection of lots of data. The idea here is to see what weather events are likely to result in tornadoes. There is a lot that is not known, and wading through mountains of data is an inexact science. The same could be said about the impact of carbon pollution.
The atmosphere of the earth is a marvel. It supports an amazing planet full of life. It has evolved into what it is over an estimated four billion years. The changes in the atmosphere have taken place primarily in the industrial age, roughly the last two hundred year. What took four billion years to build has been severely damaged in two hundred. If you crunch a few numbers , two hundred years compare to four billion years like one minute compares to thirty eight years.
Pictures today are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”

PG was minding his own business when the phone rang. Uzi wants to go see an IMAX movie about tornadoes. PG was underwhelmed, but wound up going anyway.
Getting to the facility at five minutes before showtime, the only seats left were on the second row. This means leaning your neck back to see the action at the top of the screen. There was a helpful announcement to the effect that, if you felt dizzy to close your eyes and look down.
The movie was about a team of scientists who chase tornadoes, so they can study them. There was an armored vehicle, that is designed to dig into the path of a tornado and take movies. The vehicle was parked outside, with the keys in the ignition. The sign said “Do not follow during adverse weather”.
Getting the device into the path of a tornado takes perseverance and *luck*. At about the point in the movie where you expect a climax, the tank does get to film a tornado. As fate would have it, it was in a field, and about all you saw was waving vegetation. There were no flying cows.
When the movie was over it was dinner time. PG drove towards Dickhater (spell check suggestion: Dishwater). There is a lively restaurant row behind the courthouse, but PG was not in an adventurous mood. Twenty five years ago, he ate at The King and I, and bit into one of those little peppers. The experience scarred him. They wound up at the Piccadilly cafeteria on Church Street.

Donors want data…Nonprofits measure impact…Experts watch and smile
Chekov in the bay…searching hard for some space fuel..Nuclear wessels
I bit a zombie…it was ironic but the…taste was terrible.
Learn from the Jedi…Discipline, control, respect…Dangerous muppet.
Packets of photons…Streaming by our planet’s sky…their address divine
Eat Theobromine…Drink methyltheobromine…Heliophobe, I.
Why kill Wash and Book?…Are they thinking what I am?..Firefly Zombies!
Pigeon overhead…fertilizer on the way…attorney beware
Don’t argue with a…Mobius strip because it…Will be one-sided
Take me to the black…I am a leaf on the wind…My Serenity
I am all around…Yet some can’t seem to find me…I am Internet.
Obsidian wings … The Library of Congress …attribute the source

The President gave a speech about Libya the other day. Overall, BHO is getting good marks for his sales pitch. There is one section of the transcript where you need to read between the lines.
“Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as President, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”
The United States is conducting an air slaughter of people in Pakistan. Unmanned aircraft are flying over a neutral country, and sending expensive killing devices onto a defenseless population. We have not turned a blind eye to these killings. We are using state of the art images, to aim our weapons of mass destruction. We do not wait for pictures of the results before taking further action. Just as President I did not wait for a declaration of war from Congress.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.