Chamblee54

This may come as a surprise, but tabloids don’t always tell the truth. A website called Gawker did a study recently on five checkout line favorites, Us Weekly, Star, Life & Style, In Touch, and OK!. The fearless five was studied on coverage of rumors about breakups, pregnancies, marriages, engagements, adoptions, and reconciliations.
In the publications studied, US Weekly rated as the most accurate. 35% of her cover stories were true, while 59% of her overall tales passed the smell test. Star and OK! were in a virtual tie for last place.
The study focused on those five dead tree publications. The grocery store champion People is mostly a venue for press releases, and does not play the gossip game. The online world was ignored (As Perez Hilton should be), as was the corporate “lamestream media”. The so called legitimate newspapers slant stories through spin and selective reporting, rather than outright falsehood. They also report on issues like wars and the economy, while Star is concerned with when Brad Pitt last took a shower. As for the advertising in these various outlets, let the buyer beware.
If you really want to know, notes about the methodology of the gawker are available. HT for this matter goes to kikoshouse. The pictures, full of truth and beauty, are from The Library of Congress.

In the previous post, PG wrote about synchronicity, and connected subjects. Before long, he visited Mr. Google to see what others had to say. While picking and choosing, the idea light bulb went on. Why not look up quotes about quotes?
Many people have bright ideas. It is a few that can express them in a memorable way. It should be noted that not every clever phrase is the truth, or especially profound. In a sound bite culture, the clever phrase gets the attention that the thought deserves.
There are also misquotes and misunderstandings. Or, the correct quote, with credit given to the wrong person. The title of quote magnet goes to the Ben Franklins and Mark Twains of history, who really didn’t say all those things. It is also not known how many of those credited with famous quotes actually thought of them, and how many are good listeners and repeaters. ( In the case of politicians, with paid speechwriters, the answer is obvious.)
So here we go, with a collection of quotes about quotes. As for the originator, we will trust the source . When PG adds something, it will be in a different color. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
After all, all he did was string together a lot of old well-known quotations. — H.L. Mencken on Shakespeare //A half truth is a whole lie. — Yiddish Proverb//A witty saying proves nothing. — Voltaire// Actions speak louder than words.– Theodore Roosevelt// ( A gram of practice is worth a pound of belief.) Copy from one, it’s plagiarism; copy from two, it’s research.– Wilson Mizner, Unknown , 1876-1933// Godwin’s Law: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. — Mike Godwin // He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know. — Abraham Lincoln // (There is one thing that is true about newspapers the world over. They print lies. — Bob Geldof, onstage rant, The Capri Ballroom, Atlanta GA, 1979) // He who trains his tongue to quote the learned sages, will be known far and wide as a smart ass. — Howard Kandel // He who would pun would pick a pocket. — Dr. Maturin, Master and Commander ( And he will go to the punitentiary.) // I got so tired of hearing those proverbs when I was a child. Now I use them all the time. Sometimes they are the best way to say what needs to be said. I teach them to my students. I have a collection of proverbs for class discussion and writing assignments. — Marva Collins // I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things. — Dorothy Parker // If a student submits a paper that is good enough to be published, maybe it has. — Dr. Jefferson D. Caskey // ( You have two ears, and one mouth. You should listen twice, and talk once.)

In places, this book is a little over-written because Mr. Blunden is no more able to resist a quotation than some people are to refuse a drink. — George Orwell, on Edmund Blunden // In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman. — Margaret Thatcher // In the matter of soliloquies we cannot accept Hamlet as an unbiased authority. We merely find in him the possible origin of the belief that talking to oneself is a bad sign. — Max Beerbohm // It is a good thing for an educated man to read books of quotations. — Winston Churchill, Unknown , 1874-1965 // It is better to be quotable than to be honest. — Tom Stoppard, (One should know the difference between wisdom and a clever phrase.) // It is not so much the content of what one says as the way in which one says it. However important the thing you say, what’s the good of it if not heard or, being heard, not felt? — Sylvia Ashton-Warner // Light travels faster than sound–isn’t that why some people appear bright until you hear them speak? — Steven Wright // Misquotation is the pride and privilege of the learned — Hesketh Pearson ( Push push in the bush — Disco Lyrics ) // Originality is the art of concealing your sources. — Unknown // Quoting: the act of repeating erroneously the words of another. — Ambrose Bierce // Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider — Francis Bacon, Of Studies, 1605 ( Francis Bacon was never in a movie with Kevin Bacon.) // The cleverly expressed opposite of any generally accepted idea is worth a fortune to somebody. — F. Scott Fitzgerald // The cruelest lies are often told in silence. — Adlai Stevenson // The man who doesn’t read has no advantage over the man who can’t read. — Mark Twain // (This feature on quotes will not use Oscar Wilde, Will Rogers, or George Bernard Shaw.) // The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do. — Thomas Jefferson, ( Mr. Jefferson was quoted as saying there should be a revolution every thirty years. He was POTUS in 1806, and would not have appreciated a revolution.) // There’s a difference between philosophy and a bumper sticker. — Charles Schulz // To generalize is to be an idiot. — William Blake // Truth fears no questions. — Unknown ( Whoever said this has never been interviewed by the police.) // We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at each other; until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices. — Richard M. Nixon // (Just because someone gets credit for the quote, this does not mean that he actually practiced what he said.) Wise men make proverbs, but fools repeat them. — Samuel Palmer // (Names of fools, like monkey faces, are often seen in public places) //You ain’t learnin’ nothin’ when you’re talkin’. — Lyndon B. Johnson // You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be misquoted, then used against you. — Unknown ( Unknown was a very clever person, who spoke many languages.) // …one of the great ironies of Western philosophy. Its founding practitioner, Socrates, wrote nothing down–no philosophy, anyway; and his greatest pupil so distrusted writing that he wrote dialogues, a form that mimics the life of the spoken word. — John Churchill, From the Secretary: Inspiring Conversations in The Key Reporter. Vol 67, Number 4. P. 2., Summer 2002 // In July of 2011, PG noted this post getting a lot of hits. He looked at it, to see what he had written. He found two mistakes which needed correction.

PG found a post by a blogger called oldereyes. ( PG has depended on glasses since third grade. The idea that his eyes might get less efficient is scary.) The story is about a senior citizen, who asks G-d to help him find parking spaces. The author thought this was silly, but decided to try it on the way home. He let a driver onto a busy road, and the stranger pointed out an empty parking spot. The commentary was:
Now, do I routinely charge into busy mall parking lots, ask G-d for help … and get a parking place? No. Do I believe that G-d follows me around, waiting to be a Cosmic Parking Lot Attendant at my behest? No. But I do believe that G-d sometimes aligns events … such as an elderly man in need of a parking place and an exhausted shopper on the way home … to help out. I call that synchronicity. Larry taught me something about the way life … and G-d … work. I don’t always get what I ask for but if I don’t open myself to the possibility of help, I may miss the very synchronicity that G-d sends my way.
PG has seen gnarly religion. He has also seen synchronicity. Carl Jung coined the phrase to describe meaningful coincidences. Mr. Jung also said “Religion is a defense against the experience of G-d.”
The moonies used to teach that G-d is the difference between a human being, and six dollars worth of chemicals. Some say  G-d is the whirlwind, that creates a jet engine out of a junkyard. In the process from the big bang to Lady Gaga, there have been many parts of the puzzle that fell into place, as though an unseen hand was guiding them. Is it synchronicity, is it G-d, the sum of the parts, or all of the above? PG does not know.
The page of quotes on synchronicity has more nuggets. (The color breaks were every three lines. The last section is purple.) The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it Intuition or what you will, the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why. Albert Einstein … Coincidences are spiritual puns. G.K. Chesterton … Chance favors the prepared mind. Louis Pasteur … There is no such thing as chance; and what seem to us merest accident springs from the deepest source of destiny.Friedrich Schiller … Did blind chance know that there was light and what was its refraction, and fit the eyes of all creatures after the most curious manner to make use of it? These and other suchlike considerations, always have, and always will prevail with mankind, to believe that there is a Being who made all things, who has all things in his power, and who is therefore to be feared. Isaac Newton … And some quotes by the man himself, Carl G. Jung (1875 – 1961): Synchronicity reveals the meaningful connections between the subjective and objective world … Synchronistic events provide an immediate religious experience as a direct encounter with the compensatory patterning of events in nature as a whole, both inwardly and outwardly … The connection between cause and effect turns out to be only statistically valid and only relatively true. … I define synchronicity as a psychically conditioned relativity of time and space … By far the greatest number of spontaneous synchronistic phenomena that I have had occasion to observe and analyze can easily be shown to have a direct connection with an archetype … Synchronicity means a ‘meaningful coincidence’ of outer and inner events that are not themselves causally connected. The emphasis lies on the word ‘meaningful’… The characteristic feature of … synchronistic occurrences is meaningful coincidence, and as such I have defined the synchronistic principle. This principle suggests that there is an inter-connection or unity of causally unrelated events, and thus postulates a unitary aspect of being which can very well be described as the ‘unus mundus’ [one world]… Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves…Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble…As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being…The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed … It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are themselves…In studying the history of the human mind one is impressed again and again by the fact that the growth of the mind is the widening of the range of consciousness, and that each step forward has been a most painful and laborious achievement. One could almost say that nothing is more hateful to man than to give up even a particle of his unconsciousness. Ask those who have tried to introduce a new idea!..All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination?..There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion…I could not say I believe. I know! I have had the experience of being gripped by something that is stronger than myself, something that people call G-d…The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong…Religion is a defense against the experience of G-d…C. G. Jung
A video embedded with this tale is by The Police. PG was in the Omni audience. The show was filmed for television, and the house lights kept up to film crowd shots. To ensure a fuller house, tickets behind the stage were sold for five dollars. PG was not nearly hip enough to cop tickets to a popular band like The Police, but he could show up with five dollars. PG got a great view of the drummer, and saw bits of the Sting spectacle. A lady in the next row was seen reading a newspaper, while the band played “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da”. (PG went to youtube to find the correct title of the second tune. While there, he found a video of the band on Japanese TV.)

The story below was found at the website of James Petras . HT to palestinianpundit. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
The settlements were still being built, financed mostly by Jewish money from America, contributions from Wall Street speculators and owners of gambling dens.
“Good thing”, Joseph thought, “we have a few sheep and olive trees and Mary keeps some chickens. But Joseph worried, “cheese and olives are not enough to feed a growing boy. Mary is due to deliver our son any day”. His dreams foretold of a sturdy son working alongside of him…multiplying loaves and fish.
The settlers looked down on Joseph. He rarely attended shul, and on the high holidays, he would show up late to avoid the tithe. Their simple cottage was located in a nearby ravine with water from a stream, which flowed year round. It was choice real estate for any settlement expansion. So when Joseph fell behind on his property tax, the settlers took over their home, forcibly evicted Joseph and Mary and offered them a one-way bus ticket to Jerusalem.
Joseph, born and raised in the arid hills, fought back and bloodied not a few settlers with his labor-hardened fists. But in the end he sat, battered on their bridal bed under the olive tree, in black despair.
Mary, much the younger, felt the baby’s movements. Her time was near.
“We have to find shelter, Joseph, we have to move on …this is no time for revenge”, she pleaded.
Joseph, who believed with the Old Testament prophets in an “eye for an eye”, reluctantly agreed.
So it was that Joseph sold their sheep, chickens and other belongings to an Arab neighbor and bought a donkey and cart. He loaded up the mattress, some clothes, cheese, olives and eggs and they set out for the Holy City.
The donkey path was rocky and full of potholes. Mary winced at every bump; she worried that it would harm the baby. Worse, this was the road for the Palestinians with military checkpoints everywhere. No one ever told Joseph that, as a Jew, he could have taken a smooth paved road – forbidden to the Arabs.
At the first roadblock Joseph saw a long line of Arabs waiting. Pointing to his very pregnant wife, Joseph asked the Palestinians, half in Arabic, half in Hebrew, if they could go ahead. A path was opened and the couple went forward.
A young soldier raised his rifle and told Mary and Joseph to get down from the cart. Joseph descended and nodded to his wife’s stomach. The soldier smirked and turned to his comrades, “The old Arab knocks up the girl he bought for a dozen sheep and now he wants a free pass”.
Joseph, red with anger, shouted in rough Hebrew, “I am a Jew. But unlike you … I respect pregnant women”.
The soldier poked Joseph with his rifle and ordered him to step back: “You are worse than an Arab – you’re an old Jew who screws Arab girls”.
Mary frightened by the exchange turned to her husband and cried, “Stop Joseph or he will shoot you and our baby will be born an orphan”.
With great difficulty Mary got down from the wagon. An officer came out of the guard station, summoning a female soldier, “Hey Judi, go feel under her dress, she might be carrying bombs”.
“What’s the matter? Don’t you like to feel them yourself anymore? ” Judith barked back in Brooklyn-accented Hebrew. While the soldiers argued, Mary leaned on Joseph for support. Finally, the soldiers came to an agreement.
“Pull-up your dress and slip”, Judith ordered. Mary blanched in shame. Joseph faced the gun in disgrace. The soldiers laughed and pointed at Mary’s swollen breasts, joking about an unborn terrorist with Arab hands and a Jewish brain.
Joseph and Mary continued on the way to the Holy City. They were frequently detained at the checkpoints along the way. Each time they suffered another delay, another indignity and more gratuitous insults spouted by Sephardim and Ashkenazi, male and female, secular and religious – all soldiers of the Chosen people.
It was dusk when Mary and Joseph finally reached the Wall. The gates had closed for the night. Mary cried out in pain, “Joseph, I can feel the baby coming soon. Please do something quickly”.
Joseph panicked. He saw the lights of a small village nearby and, leaving Mary on the cart, Joseph ran to the nearest house and pounded on the door. A Palestinian woman opened the door slightly and peered into the dark, agitated face of Joseph. “Who are you? What do you want?”
“I am Joseph, a carpenter from the hills of Hebron. My wife is about to give birth and I need shelter to protect Mary and the baby”. Pointing to Mary on the donkey cart, Joseph pleaded in his strange mixture of Hebrew and Arabic.
“Well, you speak like a Jew but you look like an Arab,” the Palestinian woman said laughing as she walked back with him to the cart.
Mary’s face was contorted with pain and fear: her contractions were more frequent and intense.
The woman ordered Joseph to bring the cart around to a stable where the sheep and chickens were kept. As soon as they entered, Mary cried out in pain and the Palestinian woman, who had now been joined by a neighbor midwife, swiftly helped the young mother down onto a bed of straw.
And thus the child was born, as Joseph watched in awe.
It came to pass that shepherds, returning from their fields, heard the mingled cries of birth and joy and hurried to the stable carrying both their rifles and fresh goat milk, not knowing whether it was friend or foe, Jew or Arab. When they entered the stable and beheld the mother and infant, they put aside their weapons and offered the milk to Mary who thanked them in both Hebrew and Arabic.
And the shepherds were amazed and wondered: Who were these strange people, a poor Jewish couple, who came in peace on a donkey cart inscribed with Arabic letters?
The news quickly spread about the strange birth of a Jewish child just outside the Wall in a Palestinian’s stable. Many neighbors entered and beheld Mary, the infant and Joseph.
Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers, equipped with night vision goggles, reported from their watchtowers overlooking the Palestinian neighborhood, “The Arabs are meeting just outside the Wall, in a stable, by candle light”.
The gates under the watchtowers flew open and armored carriers with bright lights followed by heavily armed solders drove out and surrounded the stable, the assembled villagers and the Palestinian woman’s house. A loud speaker blared, “Come out with your hands up or we’ll shoot.” They all came out from the stable together with Joseph, who stepped forward with his hands stretched out to the sky and spoke, “My wife, Mary cannot comply with your order. She is nursing the baby Jesus”

SFFILK (Not his real name) passes along a story about Mel Torme. It seems like Mr.Torme was eating a leisurely breakfast at a food court in Los Angeles, and a quartet appeared singing Christmas songs. They wound up performing “The Christmas Song” for co- author Torme…and the singers had no idea who he was. It is a good story, better told in the link.
According to the inerrant Wikipedia, Torme collaborated with Robert Wells , until they had a falling out. One afternoon, on the hottest day of July in 1945, Mr.Torme went to visit Mr.Wells, and saw the first four lines of “The Christmas Song” (including “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose”). The lines were on a note pad, and the two agreed to beat the heat of summer by completing the song. Supposedly, Mr. Torme did not like the song very much. After three divorces, he probably didn’t see many of the royalties.
Mel Torme was the music director of the ill fated “Judy Garland Show” in the early sixties. He wrote a book about it… The Other Side of the Rainbow: With Judy Garland on the Dawn Patrol . The story is that Miss Garland would get blasted, call Mr. Torme in the middle of the night, and pour out her troubles. While the show did not last longer, there are some great youtube clips left over.

Sometimes, being slack pays off. PG saw a sign for a yard sale, one street over. The hours listed were 9-1. PG made the effort to get out of the house by 12:40, and walked up the path to the street.
The sign did not give an address for the sale. The path is in the middle of the road, across from the school. The sale was either to the right, or to the left. It is a bit of radical wisdom that, when in doubt, you should go left. In best retro fashion, PG went right.
There was an obsolete computer monitor in front of a pile of trash. PG walked over to this pile, and saw a box of VHS tapes. He started to look through.
Before long, he had a collection. “The Jungle Book”, “The Godfather Part Two”, “The Godfather Part Three”, ( an offer PG could not refuse), “American Pie” ( the uncensored version you cannot see in theaters), and “Chariots of Fire”. There were books too…a college literature text, an Edgar Allen Poe collection, a book of ghost stories, “Catcher in the Rye” (printed in 1991, with a vintage cover.) Thirty years and three days ago, Mr. Chapman (an Atlanta native) added a layer to the legend of that book. The girls in that story always knew what time it was.
The owner of the house came out for a visit. He said the sale started earlier than he thought, and that he learned a few things. PG has done yard sales, and knows that the eager buyers are there at 7:30 am. You sell more before 9:30 am than you do the rest of the day.
PG went home, and turned on the TV. The tube is a 1987 model, which looks like a computer monitor weighing 100 pounds. The sound recently died on this set. Fortunately, the digital adapter can route the sound through the computer. Now, if you click on the button that says PHONO (spell check suggestion:PHONY), you can hear the tv.
Somehow, the cable going in the back of the TV fell out. The TV had a mass of noise, and PG thought that maybe, just maybe, it was due for a date at the county landfill. A reattachment of the cable, turn the power on the VCR, insert “The Jungle Book” ( which plays without a hitch, unlike many yardsale videos), and we have an hour or so of entertainment.
Pictures for today’s entertainment are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”

These are from a book called Disorder in the American Courts, and are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and now published by court reporters, that had the torment of staying calm while these exchanges were actually taking place. Pictures from The Library of Congress (The pictures were found by entering 666 in the LOC search engine.) Atty.: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?//Witness: He said , ‘Where am I, Cathy? //Atty.: And why did that upset you? //Witness: My name is Susan! Atty.: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact? //Witness: Gucci sweats and Reeboks. //Atty.: Are you sexually active? //Witness: No , I just lie there. Atty.: This myasthenia gravis , does it affect your memory at all? // Witness: Yes.// Atty.: And in what ways does it affect your memory? //Witness: I forget..//Atty.: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot? Atty.: Do you know if your daughter has ever been involved in voodoo? //Witness: We both do.//Atty.: Voodoo? //Witness: We do..//Atty.: You do?//Witness: Yes , voodoo Atty.: Now doctor , isn’t it true that when a person dies in his sleep ,he doesn’t know about it until the next morning? //Witness: Did you actually pass the bar exam? Atty.: The youngest son , the 20-year-old , how old is he? //Witness: He’s 20 , much like your IQ. //Atty.: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?//Witness: Yes //Atty.: And what were you doing at that time? // Witness: Getting laid //Atty.: She had three children , right? //Witness: Yes.//Atty.: How many were boys? //Witness: None.//Atty.: Were there any girls? //Witness: Your Honour, I think I need a different Attorney.. Can I get a new Attorney.? Atty.: How was your first marriage terminated?// Witness: By death..// Atty.: And by whose death was it terminated?// Witness: Take a guess. Atty.: Can you describe the individual?//Witness: He was about medium height and had a beard//Atty.: Was this a male or a female? //Witness: Unless the Circus was in town I’m going with male. Atty.: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your Attorney.? //Witness: No, this is how I dress when I go to work. Atty.: Doctor , how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people? //Witness: All of them.. The live ones put up too much of a fight. Atty.: ALL your responses MUST be oral , OK? What school did you go to? //Witness: Oral… Atty.: Do you recall the time that you examined the body? //Witness: The autopsy started around 8:30 PM //Atty.: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time? //Witness: If not , he was by the time I finished. Atty.: Are you qualified to give a urine sample? //Witness: Are you qualified to ask that question? //Atty.: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse? //Witness: No.//Atty.: Did you check for blood pressure? //Witness: No.//Atty.: Did you check for breathing? //Witness: No..//Atty.: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy? //Witness: No.//Atty.: How can you be so sure, Doctor? //Witness: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.//Atty.: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless? //Witness: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

This is a repost .Pictures are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”
Some court in California is hearing appeals about a Prop. 8 lawsuit. Some say marriage was invented by G-d, but it is heavily regulated by the state. Prop. 8 was a reaction to a court ruling to a lawsuit, about a law. A voters initiative reversed the court ruling, prompting another lawsuit, which is in the appeals phase now. It can be complicated.
In other news, Father Tony renovated the kitchen to his Manhattan apartment. Apparently, his marriage survived. FT is a treasure. He wrote once about the ins and outs of the Catholic Church , his one time employer.
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.
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 marriage as well. Many 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 equal legal goodies for same sex couples, is distressing.

It is 3:08 pm, December 8, 2010. Yesterday was Pearl Harbor day, one of those days where you remember where you were when you heard it. PG was minus 12 on Pearl Harbor Day, and does not remember very much. The other two remember days would be when John Kennedy was killed, and 911. PG was in fourth grade for Kennedy, and in a workplace that seemed like kindergarten on 911.
PG is putting together a tribute to bloggingheads.tv BHTV ( not to be confused for the BH Surfers) has been the soundtrack for many evenings of photo mischief this past year. (HT to Andrew Sullivan ) After a while, PG started to collect screen shots of the diavlogs.
In August, PG started to distort these screen shots, and post them in the comments. This lasted only a few days, until a picture of Dave Weigel with green bumps on his face appeared. The picture was taken down, as were the ones to follow. PG did not set himself on fire. This comment notwithstanding, Mr. Weigel seems to be doing alright.
Bloggingheads TV is a website. It has diavlogs, where two people discuss stuff on camera. The dvs last about an hour, and are shot at the participant’s place. The audio and video quality varies wildly, with some dvs being totally unlistenable. There are a few regular features, like Friday’s “The week in blog”, and “Science Saturday”. The Science dvs feature these two old men, who say “Oh really” a lot.
This facility is roughly five years old. The first yakkers to appear were Bob Wright and Mickey Kaus. They still cut shows, and yell at each other a lot. Bob is somewhat of a bigshot at BHTV, and appears often, frequently rolling his eyes.
PG listened to a rather bizarre dv this afternoon, while working on the pictures. One of the participants was Bob Wright, the other a man, with a strange name, from something called the Singularity Institute . The objective of the S.I. is to create a form of artificial intelligence which will allow mankind to survive, or something like that. At one point, the discussed creating a G-d , except that G-d is a controversial concept.
The veteran listener to BHTV learns a few things quickly. The server at BHTV gets overloaded, and sometimes the talk grinds to a halt. The answer is to download an MP3 of the diavlog, and listen to it. You can get an MP4 if you want to look at it, but the grim truth is that most of the talkers here are too ugly to look at. You are better off listening, while you multitask. There are exceptions to this, and some viewers have different standards of pulchritude. You might wonder if Ann Althouse is having a bad peroxide day.

If you listen, and think of clever things to say, you might wind up in the comment section. There are usually some amusing flame wars going on, which is discouraged by the management, but tough to stop. You should not be upset if no one reacts to your comment. It is also helpful to quote from the dv, with something called a dingalink. This is a link to a specific bit of dialog, that you might want to comment about. On the home page, there is usually a selection of dingalinks, some of which were supplied by Chamblee54.
There are two ways to create a dingalink. There are some buttons on the viewer window, which you can figure out how to use. The second way was explained in a comment one time.
It Was getting late, and if I had any sense I would go to sleep. Then I saw a commenter court, and decided to stay up anyway. The good news is, I got a handful of pictures processed, which will make nice illustrations for a future blog post.
When you talk about dingalinks,(spell check suggestions :dialings ,dinginess, singalongs ,dingbats) you might mention an easier way to produce them. First, you write down the times when your quote begins and ends, and the diavlog number. It is a good idea to add a few seconds more on both ends.
Then, go to the Bloggingheads logo at the top of the screen. ( This is if the diavlog is still going on, and you don’t want to interrupt it. ) Right click on the logo, and tell the resulting new window to open in a new tab. Go to the side of the window, where they have quotes from previous diavlogs displayed. Click on one of these, with the sound cut off.
You now have the code for dingalinks. In the place for the number of the diavlog, paste in the number of the new diavlog. In the place of the times for the quote, paste in the times of the new quote. You have now created a dingalink, without having to learn how the wonderful box works. You can have lots of fun with dingalinks.
Just because you click on a diavlog and listen, there is no guarantee that it will be interesting. Some are horribly dull, and some have too much shouting. Some people argue too much, and others are too quick to agree. You pay your money and you take your chances.
One of the stars is Glenn Loury. An African American teaching at an Ivy League university, Mr. Loury goes off on highly entertaining rants. ( It will be interesting to see how PG feels when he disagrees with Mr. Loury on one of these rants.) On at least one occasion, Mr. Loury was speaking softly, so that you leaned into the speaker to hear him, and suddenly ramp up the volume in a nanosecond.
In a recent diavlog, Glenn Greenwald explained why he is living in Brazil. It seems as though his bf if from Brazil, and the American government will not give him a residence visa. Brazil will allow Mr. Greenwald to stay there permanently, so he commutes by Skype from Rio de Janeiro.
There are other chatters with fun things to say, and a few that make PG angry. However, it is getting late, and he is tired of worrying about all this. It is time to finish the text, and post the matter.

This is an important message. It is borrowed from Gartalker.
CHANGING CHRISTMAS CONTRACT:
A new contract for Santa has finally been negotiated. . . Please read the following carefully:
I regret to inform you that, effective immediately, I will no longer be able to serve Southern United States onChristmas Eve. Due to the overwhelming current population of the earth, my contract was renegotiated by North American Fairies and Elves Local 209. I now serve only certain areas of Canada and the northern boarder states.
As part of the new and better contract I also get longer breaks for milk and cookies so keep that in mind. However, I made certain that your children will be in good hands with your local replacement who happens to be my third cousin, Bubba Claus. His side of the family is from the South Pole. He shares my goal of delivering toys to all the good boys and girls; however, there are a few differences.
1. There is no danger of a Grinch stealing your presents from Bubba Claus. He has a gun rack on his sleigh and a bumper sticker that reads: These toys insured by Smith and Wesson.
2. Instead of milk and cookies, Bubba Claus prefers that children leave an RC cola and pork rinds [or a moon pie] on the fireplace. And Bubba doesn’t smoke a pipe. He dips a little snuff though, so please have an empty spit can handy.
3. Bubba Claus; sleigh is pulled by floppy-eared, flying coon dogs instead of reindeer. I made the mistake of loaning him  my reindeer one time, and Blitzen’s head now overlooks Bubba’s fireplace.
4. You won’t hear On Comet, on Cupid,  . . ., when Bubba Claus arrives. Instead, you’ll hear, On Earnhardt, on Wallace, on Gordon and Labonte. On Rudd, on Johnson, on Elliott and Petty.
5. Ho, ho, ho! has been replaced by “Yee Haw!” And you also are likely to hear “I herd dat!”
6. As required by Southern highway laws, Bubba Claus’ sleigh does have a Yosemite Sam safety triangle on the back with the words “Back off”. The last I heard it also had other decorations on the sleigh back as well. One is a Ford or Chevy logo with lights that race through the letters and the other is a caricature of me (Santa Claus) going wee-wee on the Tooth Fairy.
7. The usual Christmas movie classics such as “Miracle on 34th Street” and It’s a “Wonderful Life” will not be shown in your negotiated viewing area. Instead, you’ll see “Boss Hogg Saves Christmas” and “Smokey and the Bandit IV” featuring Burt Reynolds as Bubba Claus and dozens of state patrol cars crashing into each other.
8. Bubba Claus doesn’t wear a belt. If I were you, I’d make sure you, the wife, and the kids turn the other way when he bends over to put presents under the tree.
9. And finally, lovely Christmas songs have been sung about me like “Rudolph The Red-nosed Reindeer” and Bing Crosby’s “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”. This year songs about Bubba Claus will be played on all the AM radio stations in the South. Those song titles will be Mark Chesnutt’s “Bubba Claus Shot the Jukebox”, Cledus T. Judd“All I Want for Christmas Is My Woman and a Six Pack”, and Hank Williams Jr.’s “If You Don’t Like Bubba Claus, You can Shove It.
Sincerely Yours, Santa Claus
(member of North American Fairies and Elves Local 209)

PG was walking down Peachtree Street downtown when a man gave him what appeared to be a dollar bill. Since there were not crowds of people asking for seconds, PG assumed that it was an ad gimmick. He put it in his pocket, and did not look at it until later.
The handout was a faux million dollar bill. On the front was a picture of President James A.Garfield . Mr. Garfield had been President less than 200 days when he was shot by Charles Guiteau, a disgruntled federal office seeker, on July 2, 1881. After receiving incompetent medical attention, Mr. Garfield died in Elberon, NJ, September 19, 1881.
Today the name Garfield is associated with a cartoon cat. The cat was named for the cartoonist’s father, who was named for President Garfield. PG does not know who former Georgia Governor Lester Garfield Maddox is named for.
According to wikianswers , there has never been a million dollar bill. The gimmick handed PG is worth roughly the paper it is printed on. This is disputed by the first line of the message on the back. “It’s not real money; it’s the priceless message of the gospel. The Bible says, “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”” Yes, the million dollar bill was a gospel tract.
The text of the message is familiar to anyone living in the United States. It is the concept that you go to hell, if you don’t agree with the  scheme for life after death. PG has heard this rhetoric a million times, and is unlikely to change his mind because of a phony million dollar bill.
Wikianswers tells of others who use faux currency. (Some say conventional paper money is a FRAUD, or Federal Reserve Accounting Unit Dollar.) In 2001, a man bought a sundae at Dairy Queen with a $200 bill. The bill featured a picture of George W. Bush. The Dairy Queen gave the man $198 in change. In March 2004, Alice Regina Pike used a $1,000,000 bill, illustrated by the Statue of Liberty, to pay for $1,671.55 in merchandise at a Wal Mart in Covington, GA. She was arrested.
Pictures for today’s amusement…other than the million dollar bill…are from The Library of Congress.

The second part of this feature is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. It is evident that BHO has not learned much over the last year, at least as far as Afghanistan goes.
BHO recently made a surprise visit to Afghanistan. The fashion statement of a leather jacket, as he left the plane, was impeccable. The leather jacket has gone from motorcycle gangs to Air Force One. On his return to Washington, BHO wore a coat, tie, and flag pin.
The plan was for BHO to meet with Afghani Big Dog Hamid Karzai. As Juan Cole tells the tale, it didn’t quite work. Puppet governments can be tricky to work with.
Update: President Obama made a surprise trip to Afghanistan on Friday but is said to have gotten stuck on Bagram Base and could not meet face to face with Hamid Karzai.The press is saying that Obama cannot get to Kabul because of high winds and fog, making it impossible to fly helicopters to the capital. But CNN is saying that police in Kabul are saying that “the weather is fine.”
But Bagram is a short automobile ride away from Kabul, and what this snafu tells you is that the US does not even control the area between Bagram and Kabul sufficiently to risk putting the president in an armored vehicle to go overland. Or, maybe there was a behind the scenes tiff that made a face to face meeting diplomatically impossible (see the next entry). This interpretation is given credence by the cancellation even of a teleconference between Obama and Karzai.
I don’t think this is going well.

PG was looking for something to write about, and saw lots of options. The Georgia Republican party is in moral free fall. The debate on climate change was resisting easy answers. PG decided to edit some pictures, when he saw a bumper sticker…”Those who forget Vietnam are condemned to repeat it”.
PG was in grammar school during the escalation of that undeclared war. As the mood of the nation turned against the war, PG moved on to high school. The “Peace with Honor” agreement was signed before he got a draft lottery number.
There was a lot of bitter debate about Vietnam. As the light at the end of the tunnel got dimmer and dimmer, it became obvious that there were no good choices. It is  easier to start a war than  end one.
Listening to the talk today, and comparing it to what he heard forty years ago, PG wonders if it was the same war. “The only reason we lost in Vietnam is because they wouldn’t let our troops win”. How many more of our men would have died, and how many more Vietnamese would have died, if “they” would have “let our troops win”? And what would victory have looked like? As it stands now, 58,000 American soldiers ( a substantial percentage of whom were drafted) died, as well as untold millions of Vietnamese men, women, and children.
The reason many today do not remember Vietnam was because they never knew it to begin with. Much of what was told in the press was lies. Much of what has been repeated is filtered through layers of rhetoric. And now, we find ourselves in two wars.
BHO was born in 1961. From 1967 to 1971, he lived in Indonesia. ( Which is closer to Vietnam than Hawaii). What he heard about the war is probably in one of his books. The point is, BHO has not forgotten Vietnam, because he probably did not know much. BHO is now sending 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.
George W. Bush made the initial commitments to Afghanistan and Iraq. He was in the Texas Air National Guard during Vietnam. In that war, men were drafted into service. You were told that either you went onto the service, or you went to jail. One alternative to active duty was the National Guard.
George W. Bush did not go to Vietnam, unlike Al Gore and John Kerry. Did he knew enough, about Vietnam to forget ?