International Women’s Day
PG heard about International Women’s Day on facebook. A fbf friend posted a link to the event. A picture went along with that link. A lady was holding up a sign, “DISCOVER BP’S FEMININE SIDE”. The lady was smiling, and the picture was cropped so that the fingers were seen holding the picture. These fingers were in the same position, on opposite sides of the sign, pointing in. Slick.
This is not getting off to a good start. Fortunately, twitter nation is onto this. Whle BP has facebook, Chevron has the top spot on twitter. @Chevron Happy Intl Women’s Day! How will you celebrate women’s achievements? We help women start businesses. Watch:http://spr.ly/6013neXV #IWD 
@WomensHumor Happy International Women’s Day! Let us remember that we may have a long way to go, but we will always have men by the balls. #IWD
@whitehouse Statement from the President on International #WomensDay: http://at.wh.gov/izQ1H #IWD
@AnnieLennox Please watch & share: @AnnieLennox personal video message: End Gender Based Violence #IWD #MakeItHappen
@safeworld4women #IWD Child brides, female foeticide, genital mutilation: what has changed in 100 years?
@lindatheactor A man just said “Happy Women’s Day Madam” to me. I explained why I would be happy when we no longer need an #IWD. It ain’t Christmas, is it?
@DaveMc99TA :( RT @peterdaou This stat is horrendous beyond words: leading cause of death for pregnant women is homicide http://po.st/nxTsHR #IWD
@yoisthisracist khyros asked: Happy International Women’s day, dogg.
@YourAnonNewsThank the earth for women, especially on this, International Women’s Day. Thanks for everything comrades! We salute you! | #Anonymous #IWD
@BarbieStyle Happy #WomensDay, dolls! Remember… If you can dream it, you can do it. If you believe it, you can be it! #IWD pic.twitter.com/JrI5A9xr5l
@GOPunplugged Mitt Romney celebrated International Women’s Day by only firing women today.
@UNDP In some parts of the world a girl is more likely to be raped than to learn how to read. #stoptheviolence http://on.undp.org/ilA6W #IWD
And so on and so forth. Maybe the best way to celebrate International Women’s Day is to reclaim it from the oil companies and politicians. Celebrate by having a life. A woman played a key role in giving it to you. The pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Pacific Trash Vortex
It was an ISM…internet synchronicity manifestation. There was a much praised video about a plastic bag, that winds up in the Pacific Trash Vortex. The bag has a voice (supplied by uberkraut Werner Herzog), and goes looking for it’s “maker” (silently played by an unknown actress).
The bag has a remarkable existence. First, it is used to carry tennis balls, then dog food, then to pick up the by product of dog food. This is remarkable in itself… the typical krogerbag, if it doesn’t get thrown away on arrival at home, will not be used for more than one chore. But this is a special bag.
After the secondary canine duty, the bag is thrashed. Somehow, it escapes from the municipal destination, and begins a wind propelled odyssey in search of “my maker”. After a while, it is on the beach, and the wind takes it into the ocean. It floats in the sea, has pieces bitten off my non nutrition conscious fish, and heads off for a legendary garbage nirvana.
Before long, the bag is in the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”. The GPGP is a bit north of Hawaii, and west of California. The bag movie was filmed in Wilmington, N.C. You should not think about this too long. At any rate, the bag is not happy in the GPGP, and moves on to greener pastures.
The feature linked above has a good description of the GPGP. “In the broad expanse of the northern Pacific Ocean, there exists the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a slowly moving, clockwise spiral of currents created by a high-pressure system of air currents. The area is an oceanic desert, filled with tiny phytoplankton but few big fish or mammals. Due to its lack of large fish and gentle breezes, fishermen and sailors rarely travel through the gyre. But the area is filled with something besides plankton: trash, millions of pounds of it, most of it plastic. It’s the largest landfill in the world, and it floats in the middle of the ocean.”
The next day, PG goes to a site called Listverse. The feature of the day is “top ten places you don’t want to visit”. Number ten on the list is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. GPGP is either the size of Texas or twice the size of the lower 48. It is a collection of debris, largely plastic, from the world. It is held in place by a gyre. This is a place where swirling ocean currents bump up against each other.
A visit to google led to a trip to wikipedia. There is an article at Wikipedia about GPGP that is an almost verbatim source for listverse. This takes recycling a bit too far. There is also a band called Pacific Trash Vortex. The link is to MySpace, which apparently is never going away.
Plastic is a petroleum by product, and has many benefits to our world. It’s durability is one of them, and also one of it’s negatives. (The fact that plastic is so cheap to make is another.) A plastic bag cast off into the environment simply does not disappear. Fish eat them, thinking it is good food, and die of starvation. (Does this affect the food chain?) While the film about the plastic bag is an exaggeration, the fact is that plastic is forever.
The vintage photographs are from the “Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. The poster is from Treehugger.com. This is a repost from three years ago. Very little has changed in the world of perpetual plastic pollution. It is not known whether, or not, the Pacific Trash location of the Vortex has a no idiot policy.
Poetry Saves Time
There is another Marilyn Monroe story floating around. “Someone told me that Marilyn Monroe once remarked that she enjoyed reading poetry “because it saves time.” I like this quotation so much that I’ve never dared to confirm it; I’d feel disenchanted to learn it was bogus.”
Poetry Daily seems to think the quote is legitimate. “That great aesthete and reader Marilyn Monroe once said: “I read poetry because it saves time.” In the age of Twitter, and other tweet-like utterances from all sorts of birdies, not to mention attention deficit disorder on an epidemic national scale, it’s refreshing to find poetry that both saves time and enlarges it. “
PG applied the wikiquotes test. Miss Monroe said in Look Magazine, March 5, 1957, “I’ve been on a calendar, but never on time.” Many people who worked with her agree.
Wikiquots also has a telegram, sent to Bobby and Ethel Kennedy. Marilyn was widely rumored to be seeing Bobby. This was a few weeks before her untimely death. “”I am involved in a freedom ride protesting the loss of the minority rights belonging to the few remaining earthbound stars. All we demanded was our right to twinkle.” (Telegram from Marilyn Monroe declining a party invitation from Bobby and Ethel Kennedy. June 13, 1962.)
A google investigation into the poetry quote led to Did Marilyn Monroe really say all those philosophical quotes? This is in DataLounge, where you “… get your fix of gay gossip, news and pointless bitchery.” The question on top of the thread was “I notice that the must fucked up of my female friends absolutely worship Marilyn Monroe, and are forever quoting her. What’s up with that, and are all those quotes real?? by: Mrs. Johnstone”
There are 148 comments in the thread. Some say Marilyn was an airhead, and some say she was bright. There are some quotes, many of which are probably made up. There is a letter, supposedly written to Albert Einstein. Shelly Winters says the two might have had a special relationship.
“Were I to pursue physics instead of my first love, acting, I would attempt to solve these problems by understanding the reason for these discrete energy states, which are probably due to the fact that standing waves only exist at discrete frequencies. My theory would predict that energy exchanges will be discrete, as observed;… But as I said, I want to be an actress.”
Once, on the set of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell discussed embryological parallelism. Marilyn Monroe: Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Jane Russell: I was about to say the same thing.
One of the comments had a link to a fun story. Film legend Marilyn Monroe went to bed with fellow actress Joan Crawford – but the lesbian sexual experience only reaffirmed her attraction to men. Monroe left Joan gasping for more liaisons, much to Marilyn’s chagrin. Monroe described the encounter herself in conversations taped by her psychiatrist Dr. Ralph Greeson, recordings which were obtained by the Los Angeles Times newspaper from former prosecutor John Miner, who helped investigate her death. Monroe said, “We went to Joan’s bedroom… Crawford had a gigantic orgasm and shrieked like a maniac. “Next time I saw Crawford she wanted another round. I told her straight I didn’t much enjoy doing it with a woman.”
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. HT to Andrew Sullivan.
Douche
Backstory recently presented a feature, Rinse and Repeat: Cleanliness in America. As the title might suggest, it is about cleanliness. The location of this concept with regard to G-dliness was not discussed. While researching this story, a listener named Micheal Gambil sent a letter to the studio. This letter was read as part of the broadcast.
“This one is going to be great! My comment/suggestion may sound a little strange, but I was having a talk with my 70 year old aunt regarding female hygiene recently. She is still a believer in what is known as doucheing. YUCK! It got awkward…but it really made me think about the history of “lady products”. Flower scented sprays etc…I think there has been change on this issue. Or not…maybe it is just me and my quasi-hippy friends!”
Douching became popular in the nineteenth century. It was originally thought to be useful as contraception. As other methods of controlling fertility became available, douching became more of a cosmetic item. The corporate marketers are good at creating demand for a product.
More recently, the dangers of using this product have come to light. This awareness came into public consciousness at roughly the same time that douche started to be used as an insult. No one knows if the two developments are connected.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is written like David Foster Wallace.
What American Accent Do You Have?
One of those quiz websites has a feature, What American accent do you have? The page is sponsored by Delta and Georgia Natural Gas. There is something icky about those two sharing a link.
The quiz is 13 questions. Most of them give you two words, like cot/caught and don/dawn. You are asked in they sound the same, different, and “Same, no wait I mean different, well, I don’t know…” Other pairs include stock/stalk, collar/caller, pen/pin, and feel/fill.
The result was the South. “That’s a Southern accent you’ve got there. You may love it, you may hate it, you may swear you don’t have it, but whatever the case, we can hear it.” The answers matched 84%.
Curiously, the answers given today were an 81% match for Philadelphia and The Midland. The biggest difference was with Boston (26%) and North Central(20%).
That was so much fun, PG decided to take another one. Youthink has “version 4 of the famous quiz that tells you what accent you have. But it still won`t tell you if you have a Pittsburgh or Vermont accent (sorry).” This one is also sponsored by the gruesome twosome, Delta and Georgia Natural Gas.
The second result was Neutral. You`re not Northern, Southern, or Western, you`re just plain -American-. Your national identity is more important than your local identity, because you don`t really have a local identity. You might be from the region in that map, which is defined by this kind of accent, but you could easily not be. Or maybe you just moved around a lot growing up."
A third alternative is What Kind of American English Do You Speak? This is sponsored by Methproject.org, which should get you up to speed. This is 20 multiple choice questions, like “You call sweetened, carbonated beverages: Coke Soda Pop.”
This quiz said that the tongue spoken here is General American English. This was a 55% match. Other scores include: 30% Dixie, 10% Yankee, 5% Upper Midwestern, 0% Midwestern. These results are followed by a link: “God chose your birthday for a reason. Instantly learn 12 shocking secrets your birthday reveals about your future!”
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is written like Dan Brown.
Having An Unusual Name
PG would rather work on his computer than watch the oscars. This is a choice. It is made less dangerous by facebook, which can alert PG to every twitch of the ism police. It seems like some racist, sexist, misogynist, and ablist things were said Sunday night. PG would be a terrible person if he were not offended by this behavior.
One of the players is Quvenzhané Wallis, who is getting scads of career boost at the moment. Some speakers did not want to pronounce her name, and got in trouble as a result.
An observer throws this opinion out there: “Give your daughters difficult names. Give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue. My name makes you want to tell me the truth. My name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right … Give your children difficult names, so the world may learn how to unfurl its tongue in the direction of our stolen languages.”
PG was known for most of his life as Cam. This is short for Campbell, his middle name. Whenever he was introduced to someone, he had to explain this name. Yes, it is just like a car cam, whatever that is. No, it is not Cal or Kim. It is Cam, C A M. After a while, it became a giant pain in the ass.
The parents responsible for this are kind, loving people. People make mistakes. Who knows what they were thinking when they decided to name their firstborn after an automobive part.
So, go ahead and give your baby an “unusual” name. They might like it. It may also be a source of embarrassment. Being a living human being is tough business. Giving an kid a weird name just might make it a bit tougher. It might be a very selfish thing to do.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Bathtubs In The US Capitol
Two days ago, 99invisible posted a show, The Bathtubs or the Boiler Room . It seems as though an NPR reporter likes to go places she is not supposed to be in. In the basement of the US Capitol, she found a bathtub, carved out of a chunk of Italian marble.
“The bathtubs were installed around 1860 during the expansion of the Capitol. DC is known for its swampy summers, and legend has it that senators could be banished from the chamber if they were too smelly. But lawmakers—like most Americans at the time—didn’t have indoor plumbing at home. They needed a place where they could wash up. So, the Architect of the Capitol ordered six marble bath tubs, each three by seven feet and carved by hand in Italy, to be installed in the Capitol basement—three on the House side, three on the senate.”
The tubs were imported from Italy, and sent to the port of Baltimore. They arrived just in time for the War Between The States. They were quite a luxurious item. Today, they are forgotten, surrounded by HVAC machines, with one covered with plywood and file cabinets.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
Listen To The Gut
There is a festive graphic going around on facebook. It is about bullying, which no one is going to say they like. Like gossiping, it is a custom which few will admit to, but many practice. The definition is elastic, and gets bigger every day.
PG agrees with the first part of the graphic. He has been humiliated by Jesus worshipers. The problem with the graphic is the last two sentences. “Re-post if you are against bullying. I bet 99% of you won’t, but repost this if you’re that 1% with a heart.” Can we say passive aggressive bullying? 
The good news is that what can be displayed can be altered. A few minutes with an image manipulation program, and you can doctor the graphic into a more palatable message. It still goes on too long, but that is a problem for someone else. If you want to see the uncensored graphic, go here.
Teddy Roosevelt is a popular former POTUS. He reportedly was fond of saying “bully”. Only that isn’t what he really said. The rough rider used an eight letter word for bovine excrement.
It is said that if a man isn’t a liberal when he is twenty, he doesn’t have a heart, and if he is not a conservative when he is forty he doesn’t have a brain. PG is moving in on twenty plus forty. The possession of a heart, and a brain, is uncertain.
What is evident beyond doubt is the ownership of a gut. When someone tells PG to repost a message to prove he is not a terrible person, it does not agree with his gut.
This is written like H. P. Lovecraft. Pictures are by Chamblee54.
The Grease Of G-d
A longtime friend of PG wrote: The death of Mindy McCready has given me pause to stop and think. I wonder who thought it would be okay for a grieving woman with suicidal tendencies to stay in a house where her significant other killed himself just a month before? I read an outcry by people who blamed the lack of gun control as the cause. Her weapon of choice was not a gun, it was her depression. If pills had been close I guarantee she would have chosen that path of destruction taken to it’s end result. When she was thrown in jail for her drug fueled probation violation, I knew that was not the action to take. But who am I to say anything other than, but by the grace of God, there could go I.
To begin with, PG does not follow country music. The first time he had heard of Mindy McCready was the news of her suicide. It is like turning the tv onto a movie in the last five minutes.
That said, and with a certain ignorance of the story affirmed, there are a few comments springing out of the discussion. One is the comparison of guns to pills. Most pills have a medical purpose. The misuse of these substances through self medication seems to happen, no matter how many rules get made. A pistol, on the other hand, is designed to kill or intimidate.
A pistol is much more efficient at delivering death than a pill bottle. Yes, excessive consumption of substances can lead to an early grave, but there is always the chance that you can sober up, get detoxed, and live a few more decayed decades. If you decide that your troubles are too much, and you use a pistol, then the odds of recovery are slim. It should be noted that the judgement used to make this decision is often clouded by the pills in question. The decision to end your life is usually not made with a clear head.
There was one more saying that caught PG… “but by the grace of G-d, there could go I.” As readers of Chamblee54 know, PG has conflicted views about G-d. Religion can be a source of misery, and making excuses for the spirit at the center can get old.
There is another, broader view of this saying. If you see G-d as being the feng shui of the planet, then it makes a bit more sense. PG has taken more than his share of chances. Some of them have been incredibly foolish. He has been caught a few times. Still, he is here, writing this post, fifty nine years after it started. Maybe it is the grease of G-d that lubricates life, so that the gears continue to turn.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Liberal Conservative
Liberal and conservative are meaningless labels.
This is true with capital, or small letters.
The use of these words as insults says more about the talker,
than the object of derision.
The same goes for terrorist.
Hypocrisy is in the eye of the beholder.
Better To Be Hated
“It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not.”
Kurt Cobain is credited with that quote, and he may have been coherent enough to say it at one time or another. A French author named André Gide said it, and is given “credit”. Maybe Mr. Cobain gets the debit. Mr. Cobain played electric guitar better than Mr. Gide, who was not married to Courtney Love.
PG is not so sure about this quote. Being hated gets old, even if you still have your wonderful integrity to be proud of. There is also the possibility that are are being hated for what you are. You might think you are hated because of your idealism, when in fact people are tired of you stealing money to buy drugs.
There is a difference between true wisdom and a clever turn of words. This is the case when these wonderful words are set in sans serif glory against the Northwest sky, with Kurt Cobain wondering where his next fix is coming from.
Heteroflexible
There was a discussion group in a Buckhead home, and a young lady with spiked shoes spoke. (She does not play soccer in those shoes.) After a word about the monagamish relationship with her bf, she described herself as heteroflexible.
There are words that cause brain damage when you first encounter them. Heteronormative comes to mind. After the group, PG asked Mr. Google about heteroflexible. It turns out Salon has a dandy feature on this word. It might surprise you that this piece was written in 2000. The tide of heteroflexibility has been slowly creeping in for twelve years.
There is nothing like teaching college students to make a person feel hopelessly out-of-date. This fact first hit me at the tender age of 30. I was teaching what I thought was the hippest version of sociology imaginable. As part of my haute hipness, I had included readings on Elvis Presley. None of the students, however, had the faintest idea who Elvis Presley was. One thought that he might have been an actor. Another said she thought he had invented a diet because he had always been fat.
The generation gap between the students and me was bad enough, but then my teaching assistant, a nice man who was neither as young as they nor as old as I, decided to help me communicate more effectively the King’s cultural significance. “Elvis Presley,” he explained to the students, “was someone our parents used to listen to. He sang this stuff called rock ‘n’ roll. It came before rap music.” The students nodded their heads, as if they had just remembered that rap music did not always exist. I shook mine, having realized for the first time that Elvis really was dead. …
But now it’s not just popular culture that divides us. It’s sexuality as well. Oh I don’t mean straight, gay or bi. I don’t even mean queer. What I’m talking about here is heteroflexibility. If you don’t know what that is, it’s time to admit that you’re as out of it as I am. Heteroflexibility is the newest permutation of sexual identity. According to my students, a person uses heteroflexibility in the first person, as in “I’m heteroflexible.” This means that the person has or intends to have a primarily heterosexual lifestyle, with a primary sexual and emotional attachment to someone of the opposite sex. But that person remains open to sexual encounters and even relationships with persons of the same sex. ….
My reaction was predictable. I was ashamed of my own inability to stay current, and I was also deeply pissed. How could these kids go and invent yet another identity when “we” solved that problem for them in the 1980s and ’90s? The word they were looking for was “queer” or even “bisexual,” damnit. I was angry that they would throw out the politics and the struggles of naming that had come before them. And what did they throw it out for? A monstrosity of a word, a mix of sexology and yoga practices.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This was written like William Gibson.
Chamblee54 
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