Chamblee54

A facebook friend posted a meme this morning. There is a picture of a piece of bread, covered in peanut butter. There is forty point, sans serif, text pasted on the condiment. “If someone ever tells you that you’re putting too much peanut-butter on your bread, stop talking to them. You don’t need that kind of negativity in your life.” This is a helpful hint repost.
PG dabbles in graphics. When he saw the meme, the first thing he saw were the words “your life” at the bottom. Six longer lines of text were stacked on top of “your life.” This creates a top heavy look. PG made a comment: “A meme is different from a peanut butter sandwich. There are too many words in this meme. If they had stopped after “negativity”, there would not be two words at the bottom by themselves. The result is a top heavy graphic. The words “in your life” do not add anything to the overall message. This is not negativity, this is editing.”
There are more issues with the peanut butter meme. This is a sacred saturday, after a long week at work. If PG wants to write snarky commentaries about a facebook picture, that should be his right. No one is making you read this. If you want to skip the text, and look at the pictures (from The Library of Congress,) go ahead. The images are from the FSA depression era collection.
We live in a selfish society. It is all about “your life.” The concept of scarce goods is not considered. What if there is only enough peanut butter (without the dash) for two regular sandwiches, or one super duper helping? Is it negativity to ask someone to share?
“If someone ever tells you … stop talking to them.” Are two people talking at the same time? Or, is one person talking, and the other listening? Maybe the meme should say stop listening to them. But, we are a self oriented culture. Listening is seen as weakness. Talking is seen as confident action. If someone says something you don’t like, don’t talk to them.
You probably weren’t listening anyway. It is all about you, and your desire to pile on the peanut butter. Maybe that is why it was important to add the words “in your life” to the text. The fact that there was not enough room does not matter. It is all about your life. If this throws the overall picture out of balance, that is too bad.

A man is staying in a hotel.
He walks up to the front desk and says,
“Sorry, I forgot what room I’m in, can you help me?”
The receptionist replies, “No problem, sir. This is the lobby.”
You know, I was looking at our ceiling the other day. It’s not the best … But it’s up there.
My nickname at work is Mr. Compromise. It wasn’t my first choice but I’m ok with it.
Where does a dog go when it loses it’s tail, and needs a new one? A retail store.
I don’t trust stairs. They’re always up to something.
How do you get a country girl’s attention? A tractor.
I was attacked by 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9. The odds were against me.
When I caught my neighbor attaching a rocket engine to a deer,
I immediately reported him to the authorities.
Shame on him for trying to make a quick buck.
What did the green grape say to the purple grape. Breathe idiot, breathe.
We all know Albert Einstein was a genius … but his brother Frank was a monster.
“Officer, are you crying while writing me a ticket?” Policeman: “It’s a … moving violation.”
What do you call a helpful lemon? Lemonaid.
People say I’m a plagiarist … Their words, not mine.
I’ve just written a book about falling down a staircase. It’s a step by step guide.
I was on the phone with my wife. “I’m almost home, honey, please put the coffee maker on.”
After a twenty second pause, I asked, “You still there sweetheart?”
“Yes. But I don’t think the coffee maker wants to talk right now.”
I have a perfect memory. I can’t remember a single time I’ve ever forgotten anything.
Did you hear the one about the giant throwing up? It’s all over town.
Why shouldn’t blind people sky dive? It scares the dog.
I recently switched all the labels on my wife’s spice rack.
She hasn’t realised yet, but the thyme is cumin.
My friend keeps saying “cheer up man, it could be worse,
you could be stuck underground in a hole full of water.” I know he means well.
Apparently every country got coronavirus. But China got it right off the bat.
My son asked me what the opposite of “isolate” is. I told him “yousoearly”.
Due to the quarantine, I’ll only be telling inside jokes.
Instead of a swear jar, I have a negativity jar. Every time I have pessimistic thoughts,
I put a penny in. It’s currently half empty.
What did the cannibal’s wife say when he came home late for dinner?
I’m giving you the cold shoulder.
We’re going to need 144 rolls of toilet paper for the 14 day quarantine. 144? That’s gross.
How long do you microwave fish? Tuna half minutes!
CDC: “No handshakes” Cannibal: *shuts off blender* “Awwwwwww….”
If you get an email from the government warning not to eat canned meat,
because is contains Covid-19, just ignore it. It’s spam.
A cable TV installer walks into a bar and orders a beer.
The bartender says, “You’ll be served sometime between 7am and 2pm.”
Does anybody remember the joke I posted about my spine? It was about a weak back.
I asked my wife how to turn Alexa off. “How about walking through the room naked?”
Did you hear about the guy who’s left side was cut off? He’s all right now.
These true stories were borrowed from @Dadsaysjokes and @sodadjokes. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.

Becky is a generic insult for *some* white women. If you don’t know what a Becky is, you might not understand the feature below. Chad is the equivalent expression for *some* white men. He is not important enough to be studied critically. This is a repost.
It started out with a tweet, about a symposium, Critical Becky Studies: Critical Explorations of Gender, Race, and the Pedagogies of Whiteness. Soon, PG was googling CBS. The paywall protected Wall Street Journal had an article on CBS. The seminal article was at City Journal, Racial Resentment As Pedagogy. The CBS flap originated at 2019 AERA Annual Meeting, sponsored by American Educational Research Association.
@chamblee54 @CityJournal @maxeden99 There was no link to this event in your article. I suspect this is a hoax. Please provide a link to the location on the event guide, for “critical becky studies.” The AERA conference guide is a confusing academic labyrinth. After a while, PG clicked on the correct link, and found a way to search for whiteness pedagogy.
CBS is real. “In the tradition of speculative fiction, parable, and counterstorytelling within critical race theory, this session aims to problematize the characterization of “Becky,” a term specific to white women who engage whiteness, often in gendered ways. This characterization is relevant to education by critically examining who is Becky and how she is characterized, her positionality in education, and how the hope for diversity, inclusion, equity, and racial justice within the P-20 educational pipeline is impacted by Becky. … tied to the gendered and raced mechanisms of whiteness enacted by Becky. ”
The symposium featured the presentation of several papers. If, after reading this feature, you want to learn more about these papers, you can follow the links.
This Ain’t No “Wizard of Oz,” Becky “The chapter is a parable in the spirit of speculative fiction, about the fictional (mis)adventures of Becky in the land of Ny as she faces obstacles that she can only overcome by grappling with her own whiteness.”
Two Woke Beckys? “Although both Sheila and Erika slip into different whiteness performances during their conversation, including passive aggressiveness and tone policing, white innocence, and white saviority, they check each other and delve into how they each have and are employing whiteness, despite their desires to rid themselves of whiteness, albeit through different means. …”
Love in the Time of Beckyism “… a particular white heterofeminine citizen-subject popularly known as “Becky,” … Despite “progressive” commitments such as equality, and social justice; and sentimental responses to historical atrocities and current social events, these (conditional) protestations made by Becky serve as a hedonistic mechanism for image management that hinges on the exploitation and social death of people of color. …” How can a teacher preparation program work to rethink the episteme and ethos that socializes Beckyism?”
Book Club Becky: White Racial Bonding in the Living Room “Many liberal white women gather monthly for book clubs … This paper reveals the more insidious workings of these spaces, as they are places where white women bond in order to maintain their place in white patriarchy, what Christine Sleeter named white racial bonding. The conversations that take place, the women who are included as “educated,” and the spaces where they meet are laced with white supremacy and surveillance.”
Border Becky “… why white women still invest in whiteness. Using the term “Becky” establishes an academic backing that can be applied and analyzed when researching the pathology of whiteness. … whiteness manifests in classrooms riddled with white women seeking to prove how they are not like other racist white people. Becky in the counterstories demonstrates the character-like roles white women play in a white supremacist folklore.”
It was a busy weekend for whiteness pedagogy. Ekemini Uwan shocked a Christian conference with her remarks about whiteness. “So then when we talk about white identity, then we have to talk about what whiteness is. Well, the reality is that whiteness is rooted in plunder, in theft, in slavery, in enslavement of Africans, genocide of Native Americans, … It’s a power structure, that is what whiteness is, and so that the thing for white women to do is you have to divest from whiteness because what happened was that your ancestors actually made a deliberate choice to rid themselves of their ethnic identity and by doing so they actually stripped Africans in America of their ethnic identity. … Because we have to understand something – whiteness is wicked. It is wicked. It’s rooted in violence, it’s rooted in theft, it’s rooted in plunder, it’s rooted in power, in privilege … ”
Today’s images are from The Library of Congress. We do not know if any of these ladies were named Becky. UPDATE @chamblee54 I found the link. My apologies for doubting you. @maxeden99 No worries. I couldn’t have made it up if I tried :)

What follows is a repost from a few years ago. The thoughts are current. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. Esther Bubley took the pictures in April, 1943. “Washington, D.C. Jitterbugs at an Elk’s Club dance, the “cleanest dance in town””
This is written as the Sunday morning worship hour winds down. In church facilities across America, preachers scream about sin. Very few will consider the sin of dangerous driving. And yet, this is the sin that can change, or end, your life in an instant.
There is a lot of label mongering in public spaces. Liberal, conservative, and racist are three of the most popular. None of these labels deals with driving courtesy. Democrats and Republicans are united in their lack of concern about safe driving. With that in mind, here is the top nine.
1- Find another way to show how bad you are. This is mostly a masculinity thing, but it just might apply to a few ladies. Driving hard and fast is the easy way to prove your toughness. All you do is push the gas pedal. You don’t have to go to the gym, have lots of sex, or go into battle. Just drive fast, and with no concern for your neighbor.
2- Slow down. There is no need to go so fast. When you go somewhere, allow yourself enough time to get there. The faster you drive, the less reaction time you have in an emergency.
3- Stay far enough behind the car ahead of you to stop in an emergency. This will be less stressful for the person in front of you.
4- Pay attention to the road. This is where cell phones, and texting, becomes a problem. You should be focused on the road ahead of you, and not what your phone mate is telling you. Your minutes will be just as good when you get to your destination. Are people really brainless enough to text and drive?
5- The three rules of the workplace apply here…. show up, stay awake, and don’t kill anyone.
6- Keep your car in good condition. The tires and brakes are key items, but also keep the engine running smoothly. Sometimes you need to accelerate.
7- Keep your temper. Driving while angry is a cause of many accidents, especially when combined with alcohol or religion.
8- Use your turn signals.
9- Show concern for the well being of your neighbor. Use common sense.