Tommy Rotten
This is a repost from 2015. It was a simpler time. … In 1977, Rolling Stone did a piece about a “counterculture writer” named Thomas Eugene Robbins. “Tommy Rotten,” is known for colorful phrasing. It is as if Vladimir Nabokov caught butterflies with psychedelic juice in their wings, and made a lepidopterist stew that allowed him behind the looking glass. … You can tell people that my goal is to write novels that are like a basket of cherry tomatoes—when you bite into a paragraph, you don’t know which way the juice is going to squirt.” Pictures today are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library
Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life is a TER autobiography. This accounts for the page references. … On page 25, TER was on an Asian honeymoon. A Sing snake crossed their path. A guide invited the snake to dinner. The reptile was prepared with enough red chili paste to give heartburn to the human blowtorch. TER felt as though he had gargled napalm. Later, on page 145, TER would describe “many a hot, sticky summer night, when a restless Richmond felt like the interior of a napalmed watermelon.”
TER is thirteen years old on page 63. He has not joined the church, given his soul to Jesus, and been assured of salvation. These are important items on the Southern Baptist bucket list. At the end of the service, the congregation sings “Just as I am,” and kids are shamed into salvation. The Baptist ritual of pressuring pre pubescent youth into a “commitment of faith” is morally dubious. Yes, this is better than what the Roman Pedophile Church likes to do with little boys, but that’s a technicality. … The man assigned to win the soul of TER was Dr. Peters. “tall, gaunt, and pale, with a weak damp smile and cold damp palms: shaking hands with him was like being forced to grasp the flaccid penis of a hypothermic zombie….more creepy than refrigerated possum slobber.”
At some point TER is on a ship, and editing a newspaper. “…the paper’s adviser, a Roman Catholic chaplain who possessed the purplish physiognomy and perpetually petulant pucker of the overly zealous censor.” Soon TER is in Nebraska, and buys his first automobile, a “1947 Kaiser … looked like the illegitimate child of a sperm whale and a pizza oven.” TER did not specify the gender.
The Fan was the hippie district of Richmond VA, although the 1954 version was considerably tamer than the summer of love variety. TER was reading books about zen. Learning zen, by reading a book, was similar to learning how to swim by reading a magazine. Or telling time by reading a newspaper. As Ben Hecht put it, “Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.” … “I’d better shut up now before the woo-woo alarms go off.”
The edited version of this nonsense ended before a purple paragraph. Purple prose has long been a derogatory phrase for overwrought wordsmithery. It is now the sunday after turkey day, in the year of our satan 2023. As TER liked to say in “Cowgirls,” the state of the world is desperate as usual. TER is either 91 or 87, depending on what mood google is in. We probably will not get another novel out of him. … There is probably a good quote to end this with, but I am too lazy to look for it.
Tony Hovater
This is a double repost from 2017. It was a simpler time. … New York Times reporter Richard Fausset went to smalltown Ohio to meet Tony Hovater. “In 2015, he helped start the Traditionalist Worker Party, one of the extreme right-wing groups that marched in Charlottesville, Va. … The mission is to “fight for the interests of White Americans.’’ Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Virtual America is not pleased. Twitter screeds by @magi_jay and @bessbell have been widely shared. This facebook comment speaks for many: “The article serves to humanize and normalize him/far-right extremism/Nazism — which was one of Tony Havater’s stated desires/goals re: his present involvement in the white nationalist/Nazi movement. By normalizing them, they are given a seat at the table of political discourse which is absolutely a back-asswards step.”
When you see a tweetstorm like this, the first step is to find the original material. Read the article, not what @ShaunKing says about it. When you read the original, you wonder if it is the same article. The original is full of snide references, and logical fallacies. Maybe what the masses want is a ritual denunciation of the anointed poopyhead. As one online publication put it, “ensure that white supremacists and Nazis are thought of and treated the same way you might treat a roach scurrying across a kitchen counter.” Lets look at some quotes from the NYT article.
“Mr. Hovater’s face is narrow and punctuated with sharply peaked eyebrows, like a pair of air quotes, and he tends to deliver his favorite adjective, “edgy,” with a flat affect and maximum sarcastic intent. It is a sort of implicit running assertion that the edges of acceptable American political discourse — edges set by previous generations, like the one that fought the Nazis — are laughable.”
The previous generations of America are a mixed bag. Yes, they fought the Germans in WW2. They also fought Native Americans, and said “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.” “The edges of acceptable American political discourse” once included Jim Crow laws. American political discourse is an ever-changing work in progress.
“After he attended the Charlottesville rally, in which a white nationalist plowed his car into a group of left-wing protesters, killing one of them, Mr. Hovater wrote that he was proud of the comrades who joined him there: “We made history. Hail victory.” In German, “Hail victory” is “Sieg heil.””
James Alex Fields is accused of killing Heather Meyer with a Dodge Challenger. We don’t know if he was acting on orders, where those orders came from, or if he is a loose cannon, acting on his own. While the march organizers certainly bear some responsibility for that tragedy, we do not know the entire story. In any event, that has nothing to do with the German translation of “Hail Victory.” That interjection is a red herring.
I Interviewed a White Nationalist and Fascist. What Was I Left With? was published after the backlash hit. It is a commentary by the author, in which he laments not finding the “rosebud” to this story. There is a revealing quote near the end. “…I saw, on his bookshelf, two volumes of Helena Blavatsky’s “The Secret Doctrine,” 19th-century work of esoteric spiritualism whose anti-Semitism influenced Nazi thinking. But even if I had called Mr. Hovater yet again — even if we had discussed Blavatsky at length, the way we did his ideas about the Federal Reserve Bank — I’m not sure it would have answered the question. What makes a man start fires?”
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (Еле́на Петро́вна Блава́тская) is a 19th century Russian that few people know about. This obscurity allows Mr. Fausset to fill in the blanks with a gratuitous comment about anti-Semitism. This inclusion also assumes that Mr. Hovater has read the books.
The reference to the Federal Reserve Bank is more telling. If you listen to this podcast, you learn that Mr. Hovater is more concerned with economics than white nationalism. You will also learn that many of his ideas are not well thought out. Mr. Hovater, a former drummer in a heavy metal band, is similar to that libertarian in the break room … the one who will not shut up, and go back to work.
Tony Hovater is a walking, talking illustration of the Dunning-Kruger effect. (The spell check suggestion for Hovater is Overate.) He simply does not know what he is talking about. People who call him a Nazi are missing the point. The Nazis were smart, and tough. Mr. Hovater has his good points, much to the disappointment of sjw-twitter. Unfortunately, he simply is not that smart. The NYT obscures this proud ignorance with snarky comments about Charlottesville, and swastikas.
Saying Tony Hovater is stupid will not satisfy the keyboard warrior. Talking about economics is not as much fun as denouncing the third reich … as if the LARP-tikitorch crowd is the same as the Schutzstaffel. SJW twitter does not like subtlety. This is what they want to hear: “Of course, profiles on the people directly harmed by this hate speech and violence would be much more compelling. But that would require whiteness—white maleness, specifically—to be uncentered. And uncentering whiteness is harder than eating just one Lay’s potato chip, apparently.”
Did Socrates Read And Write?
This story starts with a facebook meme. A fbf posted a picture of a thoughtful statue. The text read ‘When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.’ Socrates. PG thought that Socrates never wrote anything that survived. All of what we attribute to Socrates was written by Plato. People reading this blog should know what happened next. This is a repost.
Did Socrates Say Slander Is ‘The Tool of the Losers”? is one of several results. They all said the same thing … the quote is bogus. A tweet from Eric Trump is not evidence of authenticity.
PG began to think, which is never a good sign. Was Socrates able to read and write? was on the screen a few minutes later. The speculation is mixed. Some say that that Socrates was stone illiterate.
Thomas Musselman “Socrates served in the government on juries. Historians now know that legal proceedings were common over business matters of great sophistication and the the juries were well-educated concerning such matters. General literacy existed by the late 400s BC for the general pubic in primary school. Upper class males even in Socrates’ day would have been literate and there was an active book-seller market. To function in the world that Socrates functioned in required literacy.”
Google turned up a curious document. It is a passage written by Plato,“Phaedrus.” Pp. 551-552 in Compete Works. An Egyptian G-d is talking to a King, about an invention … writing.
“In fact, it (writing) will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own. You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so.”
SOCRATES: “But, my friend, the priests of the temple of Zeus at Dodona say that the first prophecies were the words of an oak. Everyone who lived at that time, not being as wise as you young ones are today, found it rewarding enough in their simplicity to listen to an oak or even a stone, so long as it was telling the truth, while it seems to make a difference to you, Phaedrus, who is speaking and where he comes from. Why, though, don’t you just consider whether what he says is right or wrong?”
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
RuPaul
RuPaul Andre Charles was born on November 17. He or she? Ally or enemy? Racist or whatever? Labels are part of the packaging, and have little to do with the product inside the box.
A facebook friend put up a link to a RuPaul interview, Real Talk With RuPaul. The FBF is over RuPaul. PG read the interview, and found many things that he agreed with. Is it possible to be a conservative because you like RuPaul?
The Vulture feature is similar to the WTF podcast that RuPaul did. Chamblee54 wrote about that interview. The Vulture chat is better for bloggers, since it is a copy friendly text affair. When you see quotes, you can include them verbatim.
RuPaul has a talent for snappy sayings, to be remembered for later use. An example would be “I’d rather have an enema than have an Emmy.” Some unkind people say that if you were to give RuPaul an enema, you could bury him in a shoebox.
A persistent theme of RuPaul’s moving lips is “the matrix.” “Because you get to a point where if you’re smart and you’re sensitive, you see how this all works on this planet. It’s like when Dorothy looks behind the curtain. Like, “Wait a minute. You’re the wizard?” And you figure out the hoax. That this is all an illusion. There’s only a few areas you can go. First, you get angry that you’ve been hoaxed and you get bitter. But then, take more steps beyond the bitterness and you realize, “Oh, I get it. Let’s have fun with it. It’s all a joke.”
The Bosslady of “RuPaul’s Drag Race’ is an African American. Duh. In the Vulture piece, there are 4355 words. Racism/racist is not included. Could it be that America’s obsession with other people’s racial attitudes is part of the illusion? “Derogatory slurs are ALWAYS an outward projection of a person’s own poisonous self-loathing.”
RuPaul is not always politically correct. She supports Shirley Q. Liquor. RPDR was instrumental in the rise to fame/descent into the abyss of Sharon Needles. “But if you are trigger-happy and you’re looking for a reason to reinforce your own victimhood, your own perception of yourself as a victim, you’ll look for anything that will reinforce that.”
Years ago, PG worked with someone who liked to say “and a ru hu hu.” This was shortened to ru, and was usually said very loud. Ru became a greeting.
About this time, RuPaul was living in Atlanta. Many people remember a spectacular self promoter. RuPaul would sit in an apartment balcony, and wave at cars passing by. Posters for his band, Wee Wee Pole, were on telephone poles up and down Ponce de Leon Avenue.
One night, Ru Paul was working as a gogo dancer in a club called Weekends. During a break, PG went over to talk to him. The use of ru as a greeting was mentioned. Soon, people came over, and PG started to leave. Before PG could get away, RuPaul turned to PG, lifted an index finger, and said “Keep on saying my name.”
RuPaul went on to become famous. Weekends was torn down, and is the site of the Federal Reserve Bank. PG does not watch much TV, and has never seen an episode of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” This is a TV show about a TV.
There is a recent controversy about RPDR. It seems that the phrase shemale has been used. Some people are offended by this. The expression is no longer used on the show. Holly/Diane/Sashia, a transcritter, introduced PG to the term “shemale” in 1998.
The use of offensive language is to be avoided. If you know something is going to hurt people, then you should avoid saying it. There is a good possibility that Ru Paul knew what she was doing, and just didn’t care. The problem comes when you haven’t received the latest update from the language authorities. Keeping up with what is cool to say can be a full time job. Is it still ok to say ru?
RuPaul is no stranger to attention being thought strange. The latest bit of publicity… there is no bad publicity, and they spell the name right … is an article in the eyeball grabbing HuffPo, RuPaul Responds To Controversy Over The Word ‘Tranny’. (Spell check suggestion: Granny) PG gave into temptation, and clicked on the link. It seems as though there was an appearance on the WTF podcast. Why settle for a sensational sample, when you can hear the entire show?
If you have an hour and twenty four minutes to spare, listen to this show. If you like, you can skip the first thirteen minutes, which is host Mark Maron talking about himself. The show is highly entertaining. A theme is that the world is the matrix, a fake construction. Some people look behind the curtain and see the wizard. Some people believe the matrix is reality. You should already know which side RuPaul takes. He was not born blonde.
The quote about the T-word comes toward the end of the show. PG has mixed feelings about the whole affair, and does not completely agree with RuPaul. However, this human being is entitled to an opinion. He is going to share it anyway. RuPaul does not suffer from false modesty.
For a show that gets attention about language, it is a bit strange at times. While describing his career trajectory, RuPaul says he went through a phase of “gender f-word.” The show is called WTF. Twice a week, the host says fuck a dozen times in the first sixty seconds. And RuPaul said “gender f-word.”
Even more amazingly, RuPaul said that things were “n-word rigged”. RuPaul did break down and say the ultimate dirty word. When his mother saw his act on television, she said “N****** you crazy.”
RuPaul has had quite a career. He mentions that he has been sober for fifteen years, and had some therapy to get there. This was not the case when he lived in Atlanta. Many stories from those days are in the show. The bs detector went off a couple of times. PG saw the Now Explosion, and did not remember seeing a tall black guy.
This is a rich seventy five minutes. Like saying that Madonna is a curator, that most fashion designers don’t know how to sew. The part that is getting the attention is towards the end of the show, and is just a small part. It is all part of the matrix.
This feature is a repost. Some of the pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. Other pictures are from The Library of Congress. The images are of women, training to be bus drivers and taxi drivers. This was in Washington DC, November 1942. The photographer was Andreas Feininger, working for the Office of War Information. The picture of a dipstick demonstration is #8d36666.
Desiderata
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A poem, of unknown origin, was found in a Baltimore church. It was revived by a Lawyer, who lived in Terre Haute, IN. He liked to read it his friends, and his lips were moving. The attorney, Max Ehrmann, copyrighted this poem in 1927. Rumor has it that the manuscript was in an ambulance Mr. Ehrmann was following. How the accident victim came to possess this document is a mystery.
Mr. Ehrmann, the poet laureate of Terre Haute, wrote in his diary “I should like, if I could, to leave a humble gift — a bit of chaste prose that had caught up some noble moods”. The poem is Desiderata and is a favorite of gift shops the world over.
In 1956, Rev. Frederick Kates became the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Baltimore, MD. He had found a copy of “Desiderata”, without the copyright notice. He printed a handout for his congregation on church stationary. At the top of the page was the notation “Old St. Paul’s Church, Baltimore A.C. 1692.” As the sixties devolved, the poem became famous.
Desiderata was the text of a recording. The entertainer, Les Crane, found a poster, in a Baltimore church gift shop. He thought the text was in the public domain, when in fact it is copyrighted. Mr. Crane was taken to court, and forced to pay the owners of the copyright. It seems that Mr. Ehrmann used “Desiderata” in a Christmas greeting, without citing the copyright. Later,during World War II, Ehrmann allowed a friend – Army psychiatrist Dr. Merrill Moore – to hand out more than 1,000 copies of the poem to his soldier-patients, without the copyright.
Don’t copyrights expire, get renewed, and then expire again? If a work was written in 1927, doesn’t it go into the public domain 83 years later. Fleurdelis says the copywright question depends on your point of view, and place of residence. Robinsweb tells of being forced to remove “Desiderata” from her site, because of a complaint by the copyright owner. Remember, we are dealing with a legal concept, as it relates to a poem, allegedly written by a lawyer.
National Lampoon produced a new translation, Deteriorata. This is a repost. Pictures are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library
Inspiration Is For Amateurs
It is a T shirt treasure, and a coffee cup classic. “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” This gem is blamed on Allan Stewart Konigsberg, better known as Woody Allen. The percentage goes up and down, and life is sometimes substituted for success.
The quote was recently featured at WIST, or Wish I’d Said That. This quote site is known for giving a source, unlike the sites featuring purring platitudes in front of a cultural kitten. The current top offering is “Bach almost persuades me to be a Christian.” Virginia Woolf attributes the baroque comment to Roger Fry who was not afraid of the author.
Getting back to Mr. Allen and success statistics. He accepts full responsibility for the remark. In 1989, notorious conservative columnist William Safire asked Mr. Allen about whether he said life or success. The answer was rather surprising.
“The quote you refer to is a quote of mine which occurred during an interview while we were discussing advice to young writers, and more specifically young playwrights. My observation was that once a person actually completed a play or a novel he was well on his way to getting it produced or published, as opposed to a vast majority of people who tell me their ambition is to write, but who strike out on the very first level and indeed never write the play or book.”
In other words, you don’t just show up empty handed. If you have an idea, you have to employ the writing formula, ass + chair. You have to turn the tv off, leave the beer in the refrigerator, sit down, and push buttons on the keyboard. … Pictures for this repost are from The Library of Congress.
Words To Ban In 2015
TIME magazine has been around a while. It issues product every week, hopefully accompanied by paid advertising. When they run out of news to report, it is time to get creative. This is the spirit of Which Word Should Be Banned in 2015? This is a repost.
This is the fourth time for the contest. The previous winners are OMG, YOLO and twerk. These expressions are still with us. TIME magazine readers voting to ban a word does not mean very much.
This reality is lost on Blogher. Infuriating: TIME Puts ‘Feminist’ on List of Words to Ban in 2015. There was a tweet, alerting chamblee54 to the situation. @lanceburson Let’s ban @TIME instead RT @BlogHer: Infuriating: TIME Puts ‘Feminist’ on List of Words to Ban in 2015
“ARE. YOU. KIDDING. ME? … I’ll stop “throwing this label around” when the pay gap disappears, when mothers aren’t systematically punished in the workplace for caring for children, when men can access paternity leave freely, when women aren’t asked what they were wearing before getting raped.”
The first quoted sentence is in all caps. There are four words, three periods, and one question mark. Maybe this will help eliminate rape culture and the pay gap.
So, TIME is voting on what words to ban in 2015. The contestants are bae, basic, bossy, disrupt, feminist, I can’t even, influencer, kale, literally, om nom nom nom, obvi, said no one ever, sorry not sorry, turnt, yaaasssss. The terms are helpfully provided in alphabetical order.
According to the Urban Dictionary, bae is a Danish word for feces. Feminist is the only word ending in ist, to the relief of the ban-worthy racist and terrorist. Kale is literally om nom nom nom. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Bridget Phetasy
This is a repost from 2019. @BridgetPhetasy had a baby, and enthusiastically supports Israel in the dispute over Gaza. … Joe Rogan Experience #1367 – Bridget Phetasy hit the ether last week. Miss Phetasy bills herself as Writer, Comedian, Verified Nobody. Her real name is Bridget Anna Walsh. The Rogan appearance was impressive. At 03:00, Miss Phetasy made a comment.
03:00 “I don’t blame myself for that happening but I do have to take responsibility for the fact that when you’re a woman or a girl and you’re out getting blacked out … bad things happen.” Where was this voice of reason during the Brock Turner circus? A young lady, with a history of blackout drinking, passes out behind a dumpster. This was scarcely mentioned in all the outrage about Brock Turner.
Before going further with this, we can mention a couple of youtube gadgets. If you look under the viewing window, you see three dots. If you click on those dots, you will be able to see a transcript of the show. You copy some of this text, and make a comment. If you put the time of the text in your comment, youtube will make a link to the text. That is how the link, at the start of the paragraph above, was made. The link goes directly to the “don’t blame myself” comment.
Bridget Phetasy is a cool person. She has a youtube show, Dumpster Fire. She likes to make fun of sjw goofiness … a topic that never runs out of material. At 3:48 of the latest episode, she dropped this tidbit: “moving on … clapping banned at Oxford University to stop people from being triggered” She ranted for a few minutes, leading up to this: “around this they banned clapping banned it like I’m gonna end up in the gulag someday fucking clapping I know by these people.”
PG had never heard of this, and wanted to know more. There were several tabloid articles, and this: ‘University of Oxford Clapping Ban’ Rumor. This is the danger of saying “google it.” Someone might find information that you don’t want them to find.
“The first Student Council meeting of the academic year, … passed the motion to mandate the Sabbatical Officers to encourage the use of British Sign Language (BSL) clapping, otherwise known as ‘silent jazz hands’ at Student Council meetings and other official SU events. … BSL clapping is used by the National Union of Students since loud noises, including whooping and traditional applause, are argued to present an access issue for some disabled students who have anxiety disorders, sensory sensitivity, and/or those who use hearing impairment aids.”
Clapping out loud is not banned. Nobody is going to the gulag for applauding. While some noise-weary people might appreciate the use of jazz hands, this ban is simply not going to happen. Bridget Phetasy does not always know what she is talking about. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The spell check suggestion for Phetasy is Pheasant.
Punzi Scheme
1. The fattest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi. 2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian. 3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still. 4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption. 5. No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery. 6. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering. 7. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart. 8. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie. 9. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it. 10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. 11. Atheism is a non-prophet organization. 12. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other: ‘You stay here; I’ll go on a head. ’13. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me. 14. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: ‘Keep off the Grass.’ 15. The midget fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large. 16. The soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran. 17. A backward poet writes inverse. 18. In a democracy it’s your vote that counts. In feudalism it’s your count that votes. 19. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion. 20. If you jumped off the bridge in Paris, you’d be in Seine. 21. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, ‘I’m sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.’ 22. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says ‘Dam!’ 23. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can’t have your kayak and heat it too. 24. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, ‘I’ve lost my electron.’ The other says ‘Are you sure?’ The first replies, ‘Yes, I’m positive.’ 25. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? His goal: transcend dental medication. 26. There was the person who sent ten puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did. 27. Pictures for this entertainment are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost..
One Man Heart Circle
This is a repost from 2015. It was a simpler time. … It is the first full day back in town, after the 2015 fall gathering. If you have to ask where I was, you don’t need to know. Today, the custom of the morning circle is brought back. This is where anyone, who wants to, can talk about the gathering.
Since this is the return to solitary city life, rather than in an improvised community, this will be a one man morning circle. I’m Luther, and my preferred pronoun is he. Pronouns are not a big deal to me. Since this is a one man circle, a singular pronoun is preferred. The concept of using they, as a non-binary alternative to he/she, is confusing and yucky.
Some things are so much easier in this life. One of the chores I assigned myself was clearing weeds off a stone staircase. One of the tools needed an adjustment. I spent a half hour trying to find a phillips head screwdriver. Just now, I needed a flat head screwdriver to pry open a zipper. I found one in less than a minute. City life has advantages.
I don’t pay much attention to omens. If I did, I may have left after the first day. I put my tent up to a group of people who played canned music on a device. I moved my tent, further down the yurt yard. When I was putting my tarp up, I saw a seven foot non poisonous snake. This reptile made another appearance a couple of mornings later, when I was returning from my morning piss. After that, I looked where I stepped. The sticks always seemed to be moving.
Very few people send postcards from gatherings. If they did this time, they would not say “the weather is beautiful wish you were here.” It rained every day, except for the last day. It drizzled. It thundered. It splattered. It dripped. It took away the sun. The paths turned into mud. Everything got wet. It was horrible. Yes, the rain did force people to stay indoors and talk to each other.
There were some wonderful moments. The Know Talent show was not planned at first, and then a wonderful man agreed to facilitate. I brought some poems. It was the first time I had read in public. I was one of the last people to perform, and was wondering if it would happen at all, or if anyone would be left to watch. Fortunately, I did not have to follow an amazing musical act. The act before me was, literally, falling down drunk. Performance art.
Somehow, things came together. Meals were served, and were usually fabulous. The dishes got washed. The costumes were a sight. You could overlook things like saturday morning. I was making my mandatory visit to the chapel. Someone said, could you hand me some toilet paper. Another voice said, there is none here either, and no box on the top shelf.
Sunday, the sun came out. I took down my tent, and got stung by a yellow jacket. I got a wheel barrow, and almost slipped in the mud. This was the last time I would walk through the yurt yard mud, hopefully for the rest of my life. I loaded the vehicle, and started up the driveway. Someone was walking in the driveway, I lost the momentum, and had to back up and try again. The second time I made it up the hill. The rest of the journey home was uneventful.
So what did I take away from the gathering? There were moments when I looked up to the sky and said thank you g-d for letting me do this. There were moments on a dance floor surrounded by spectacular human beings. There were also moments of being wet, cold, and totally miserable. I will probably want to do it again. Blessed be.
Mick Jagger
This is a repost from October 2012. It was a simpler time. Barry was about to be re-elected. Facebook was festive. There were problems in the world, but rock and roll was more fun than social justice jihad. … There was a book at the Chamblee Library, Mick: The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Jagger. The work is credited to a man named Christopher Anderson, who has a slew of best sellers to his credit. The copyright was issued to “Anderson Productions.”
When you write about Mickie, you have to post a few videos. One of the first to come up is “Waiting on a friend.” This was the first video that PG saw on MTV. One night in early 1982, PG rode his bike to an apartment on Buford Hiway. While he was there, someone said hey watch this, music television. The video was a favorite that first winter of MTV, even though it wasn’t really that good.
Mick Jagger has been a part of many lives the last fifty years. The stones were conceded to be number two to the beatles, but stayed together longer. The era of rock concert as megaevent coincided with the reinvention of the stones, after the demise of Brian Jones. He did after all start the band. Mr. Jones had become too much of a druggie to be relied on, and was fired. The book says that Mr. Jones was drowned, by a construction worker.
Ok, we are three paragraphs in, and we have not discussed Mr. Jagger’s pecker. Most of the book is about this instrument of undetermined size. The book says Mick stuffed a sock in his pants before shows. Mick has screwed thousands of women, and more than a few men. Whether Mick is a top, or a bottom, is left to the imagination.
The phrase “fuck Mick Jagger” is seminal. One night, the B52s were playing at a toilet on Ponce De Leon Avenue called the Big Dipper. The venue was later torn down, the ground decontaminated, and an animal clinic built on it’s site. After the show, one of the girls (either Kate or Cindy, or maybe neither, since this story is possibly probably an urban legend) was hanging out in the parking lot. “Beulah” was running his mouth, as he liked to do, talking about his hero Mick Jagger. Finally, the 52-girl had heard enough. “Fuck Mick Jagger, one day Mick Jagger will come see me me me.”
The book goes into excruciating detail about the stones story. Mick grew up middle class, and was close to his parents. He bit the end of his lip playing basketball, and sounded different. While going to the London School of Economics, he connected with Keith Richard, and found that they both liked Chuck Berry. The Glimmer Twins started to hang out together, and played a few gigs at a nightclub owned by Alexis Korner. (Mr. Korner opened for Humble Pie and Edgar Winter at the Atlanta Municipal Auditorium in 1972. He was ignored by the festive crowd.)
At this time, Mick had been introduced to sex by the other boys at his school. The first time with a woman was when Mick was an orderly at Bexley Mental Hospital. A nurse “yanked him into the linen closet where, surrounded by sheets, mops, and bedpans, Mick lost his virginity standing up”.
At some point Brian Jones came into the picture. Mick moved into a flat with Brian and Keith, and lived in picturesque squalor. At some point Mick and Brian bumped gooberheads, which left Mick confused. It is not known whether the lads could afford drugs at this point.
The story goes on and on. There are ugly moments, pretty moments, good songs written, lots of drugs, lots of sex. As Mick said in “Shattered,” “sex and sex and sex and sex and sex and sex and sex.” A few begin to wonder if he is capable of a one on one relationship, but those opinions don’t count.
One afternoon in 1978, PG was driving a truck in Decatur. He worked for a lady who did sampling projects, which means giving out samples to consumers. The product this time was Playtex Plus deodorant tampons. The truck was the rag wagon. There was an announcement on the last am rock and roll station in Atlanta. The stones were going to play the Fox Theater, and tickets were on sale now. The signal of the am station faded out at this point, with a gospel station preacher blocking out the rock and roll announcement. PG did not hear the location of the ticket sales. It turns out the tickets went on sale at the box office of the Municipal Auditorium, which was two blocks away from the rental facility of the rag wagon. Such is life.
In 1991, PG was walking to work and noticed an army of movie trucks. Mr. Jagger was appearing in a film, “Free Jack.” PG saw a scene filmed from his perch in the Healey Building, and stood behind a chair with the name “Mick Jagger” stenciled on. There were reports of a van rocking in Cabbagetown. On January 12, 1992, Georgia May Ayeesha Jagger was born.
Mick: The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Jagger is not a bad book. It is easy to read, and does not skimp on slime. The phrase “cringe inducing” is used several times, which may be the result of a focus group. It is not worth $27.00, or $29.99 Canadian. The publisher is Simon&Schuster. The dalliance between Mr. Jagger and Carly Simon is dutifully noted. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
</Be Kind To Your Enemy
Did Jesus say to “Love your enemy”? Some believe this, and do it. Some claim to believe this, and practice the opposite. There are others who claim to love their enemies, but you have to understand what they mean by it. It can be very confusing. This is a repost.
PG went to a source for documentation. Oh, the blessed conjunction of copy paste with public domain. When PG entered enemy (singular) in the search engine, 100 verses came up. When the request was made plural (enemies), 237 entries popped up. The last mention of enemies is Revelation 11:12 “And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them.” Loving your enemies does not include bringing them to heaven with you. There is also the star of the show.
Matthew 5:44 “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”
There is scholarly debate about what Jesus did, or did not, say. The words available to modern man have been copied by hand, edited, translated, and interpreted. PG does not know Aramaic from Alabama. Like anyone else, PG can only read and listen, and think for himself.
In a sense it does not matter what Jesus “really” said. The cult of Jesus Worship is going to believe what it wants. More important, it is going to practice what it wants. As far as the difference between what Jesus “really” said, and what his believers say and do…they can explain.
What follows is a humble suggestion. Did the translators and scribes get it wrong? Maybe Jesus did not say to love your enemy. Maybe what Jesus said was to show kindness to everyone. This is a practice thing, rather than a belief thing.
It is not as much fun to be nice to someone, as it is to scream about life after death. Kindness does not need to be justified by a quote from a magic book. You just need to do it.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Chamblee54 
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