Chamblee54

It was another day of converting pictures, and listening to the internet. Fiction was called for. Mr. Google supplied the Pulp Fiction Podcast.
The pictures today are by Chamblee54. They were taken at Short Mountain Sanctuary, during the 2012 fall gathering. SMS is an “intentional community”, located in Cannon County, TN. You will find the salt of the earth here, as well as various other condiments.
The night before featured a live person speaking, instead of the disembodied sputter of the computer. It was strange to not be multi tasking, but to focus on the speaker. The time was well spent, but no pictures were produced that evening.
After a while the stories were not fun. An interview with Elaine Steinbeck was next. The author of John Steinbeck, she talked about the impact of “The Grapes of Wrath”. It also was revealed that the dog in “Travels with Charley” had belonged to Elaine.
In 1980, PG lived in a hostel in Seattle WA. One of his roommates was Peter DeGroot, a PhD candidate from the University of Utah. Mr. DeGroot had just read “The Grapes of Wrath”, and went out picking strawberries one day. That afternoon, the bus stopped at a store, and all the pickers went inside and bought wine. Mr. DeGroot bought a beer. “I thought it would be good form.”
After this, it was time to get out. Put a few layers on, and ride the bike through the cold air. Before leaving, PG looked at the blog stats. By 4pm, 19 people had clicked on Migrant Mother. This post is about a famous photograph from the Great Depression. The Pretty Bad Depression continues.

Q:Why do they never serve beer at a math party?
A: Because you can’t drink and derive.
Q: Why won’t Goldilocks drink a glass of water with 8 pieces of ice in it?
A: It’s too cubed.
Q: What did Al Gore play on his guitar?
A: An Algorithm
Q: Why was the Calculus teacher bad at baseball?
A: He was better at fitting curves than hitting them.
Q: Why do you rarely find mathematicians spending time at the beach?
A: Because they have sine and cosine to get a tan and don’t need the sun.
Jokes are from facebook. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.

Of course you know who he is. He is the most famous bicycle racer in America. Who is number two? Of course you don’t know. Bicycles are a participant sport. Racing might be a big deal in Europe, but this is America. The next question is, why should people in America care whether bike racers in Europe use “performance enhancing drugs”.
A player using these substances is hurting himself. (apologies are extended to female users) Yes, steroids will turn your grapes into raisins. Just like knee injuries will make you walk funny. Repeated head injuries make you want to kill yourself. When you choose to participate in an activity, there are going to be side effects. It is just that some side effects create more hullabaloo than others.
This internet commentary was interrupted to listen to Mike Gallagher and Chris Wallace on the radio. It seems as though Gallagher is a mother’s maiden name, used as a stage name. Mr. Gallagher’s birth name was Smelster.
Getting back to the hysteria over drug use, in a boutique sport. This is step with the overall societal reaction to drugs, except alcohol. FBI agents recently interviewed Sheryl Crow, the former gf of Lance Who. (Black Sports Online says Sheryl Crow Snitched To The Feds About Lance Armstrong’s Doping.) The overkill of the War on Drugs has been extended into the mania about pedal pushers on steroids.
Lance Who has been accused of being an overall terrible human being in this affair. There are reports of throwing teammates under the bus, in an effort to keep his own star shining. This is the same competitive spirit that is acclaimed when someone wins, but denounced when the star is no longer in fashion. It is all about me winning.
This scandal will fade away. Oprah will find another spotlight to shine on her rotund face. Athletes will continue to be tested for a wide range of substances, so they can go on television and sell beer commercials. This was written like David Foster Wallace.

PG notices details, sometimes. One thing is the time on clocks and watches in ads. The time is 10:09:36. Sometimes, it is 01:51:25. There are occasional exceptions, but 10:09:36 seems to be an industry standard. This is a repost.
It focuses attention on the top part of the watch, and makes the bottom part visible. Typically, the logo of the manufacturer is framed by the hands. The manufacturer wants the logo to be visible in the ads.
The hands lifted upward make a welcoming gesture. If you hold your arms out at the 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock positions, it will look like you are about to hug someone. This shape also looks like a smile.
After this, we get into the myths. At this particular time (10:09:36) US deployed the atom bomb on Japan. This particular time is used to remind people of the US dominance. A bit of research into pre atom bomb advertising might disprove that, but PG thinks that is too much work.
Another hypothesis is that Abraham Lincoln was shot at 10:15 pm on April 14, 1865, and died at 7:22 the next day. How this translates into 10:09:36 is anyone’s guess. However, standard time was not used in the United States until 1883. The precise “time” of Mr. Lincolns retirement is not known.
Someone wrote the Timex company about this issue.
A: WE CALLED TIMEX FOR YOUR ANSWER AND IT SAYS THE HANDS ON A CLOCK ARE PLACED AT TEN-TEN BECAUSE IT’S A CREATIVE STANDARD INDUSTRY. TIMEX SAYS THE HANDS ON TIMEPIECES ARE PLACED AT TEN-TEN SO THE COMPANY LOGO ON THE FACE WILL BE FRAMED AND NOT BLOCKED BY THE HANDS.
TIMEX SAYS THE INDUSTRY STANDARD USED TO BE EIGHT-TWENTY BUT THAT LOOKED TOO MUCH LIKE A FROWN AND CREATED AN UNHAPPY LOOK. TIMEX SAYS IN ITS ADS, THE CLOCK HANDS ARE PLACED AT TEN-NINE AND THIRTY SIX SECONDS, EXACTLY.”
Another source discusses this issue when the “creative standard industry” was 8:20. At that time people still said it was the time that Abe Lincoln was shot and or died.
Yet another source, the poetically named stupidquestion.net, has a few more tidbits. It seems like in the 1880’s, pocket watches became popular. In ads, the case was shown more than the face. The omega watchmaker established the 10:08:35 standard in 1915, and the industry followed suit. This would also seem to contradict the atom bomb theory given above.
PG has always wondered something else. Are all photographs for watch ads shot at 10:09:36? If not, then the ads are a lie. According to StupidQuestions, watchmakers send out non functioning dummy watches that are frozen at a certain time. PG ( who does not wear a watch, but uses wall clocks) says this makes him question the honesty of the ad.

This is thursday, the day after wednesday. Yesterday was not a good morning. It began, as most working days do, in the kitchen at 530 am. The plan is to make breakfast, and take half for lunch.
Three potatoes were washed and sliced. Three carrots were washed and sliced. The remaining collards were washed. The water went to the garden. The potatoes and carrots went into a steamer. This is a marvel of food preparation, as long as you do two things. You need to set a timer, this morning for 44:44. Only one timer finger works before 6am. The second, and more critical step, is to turn the stove heat down to simmer.
During the 44:44, PG looked at the internet. He gave a one star rating to a Jesus worshiper who banned him from commenting. Facebook was given it’s due. Finally, the timer went off, and PG stumbled into the kitchen. What is that burning smell? Did the burner stay at top temperature? This might not be a good wednesday.
After a breakfast of oatmeal, profanity, and air freshener, PG drove the ten miles on I285 without incident. After an hour or so, it was time for another cup of coffee. Naturally, his portion was the last one available, and another pot needed to be made.
The plastic basket was pulled away from the machine. PG grabbed the edges of the filter, and picked it up. The intention was to deposit the old coffee in the trash can. The problem was in grasping the old filter too close to the edge. The filter tore, leaving PG pinching a bit of wet filter paper. The coffee grounds fell on the floor, the counter, the sink, the unwashed cups, and the side of the cabinet. Wednesday is supposed to be hump day, not dump day. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.

Chamblee54 is not too proud to recycle posts , often more than once . This one is about ugly. If you are looking for beauty, and her mouthy stepsister truth, then look elsewhere.
Beauty is skin deep. Ugly is to the bone.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Ugly uses all five senses.
Rahsaan Roland Kirk: I don’t want to see you people, you are all too ugly.
Stevie Wonder: All I see are beautiful people.
Rahsaan Roland Kirk: You know, Stevie Wonder wants to make a lot of money, so he can have an operation and see.
Ray Charles: It’s crying time again.
She is so ugly, she could make a freight train take a dirt road.
He is so ugly, when he was born the doctor slapped his mother.
Is that your face, or did your neck throw up?
French for ugly is : laid m., laide f . Can we say irony?
There are some Jesus Worship blogs that PG likes to read. One of them recently made the lighthearted suggestion that ugly people were not welcome at the church of the other one. The recipient of this comment found this to be “the deeply offensive false accusation he keeps leveling at me.”
FromTheMorning is the one standing up for the pulchritude challenged. (Regrettably, From the Morning is no longer published.)
Pyromaniacs is the aggrieved party here. They say that ugly people “are not only welcome at my church; many of us actually participate in the ministry there”. PG believes you.
Ugly has another meaning. In fact, this is the first meaning PG heard for the U word, years before he connected it to people with unpleasant faces. It is about ugly behavior. People that are mean and cruel to each other. That is ugly.

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.

There is a popular internet feature, I am Adam Lanza’s Mother. It is about the nightmare of having a son with mental issues. No doubt the writerlady had good intentions.
“I am sharing this story because I am Adam Lanza’s mother. I am Dylan Klebold’s and Eric Harris’s mother. I am James Holmes’s mother. I am Jared Loughner’s mother. I am Seung-Hui Cho’s mother.” Actually, with all due respect to your unpleasant situation, you are not the mother of those other six men. You are the mother of “Micheal”.
We will probably never know what set off Adam Lanza. We do know that Ma Lanza owned guns… in fact, it was her guns that were used in the rampage. She was not the type of person to be denied legal ownership of deadly force. It turns out that this weapon worked well when turned on her.
The odds are that all five of the men listed above took a different path to their day of destiny. It is tough to tell what could have been done. It would have been tough to tell the difference between them and other young people with problems. It is always going to be tough to guess, in advance, who is a killer, and who is a harmless jerk.
It is not known where the concept of saying “I am ___” got started. Presumably, the intention is to show solidarity. You might want to say that the person in the blank is a human being just like you. It is a good idea, sort of, but it gets worn out when you claim to be six different mothers.
A while back, the phrase of the day was “I am Troy Davis.” The Davis case lasted for 22 years. This is not the time to revisit that case. The point is, the people who wore T shirts saying “I am Troy Davis” are still alive today. Solidarity only goes so far.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.