RISK!
RISK! is a story telling podcast. Every week, an hour of tales comes out, hosted by @TheKevinAllison. PG has been a fan, often listening to the show while editing the historic pictures that illustrate this blog. There was even a post once, Binge Listening To RISK! PG eventually recovered.
The last time RISK! was in Atlanta, they played a sold out club in East Atlanta. The show last night was at The Masquerade. This is located in Underground Atlanta, in the middle of downtown. PG remembers an entrance across the street from the Marta station. Tickets were available at the door. PG decided “Today’s the day, take a risk.”
The ride downtown was uneventful. PG walks across Peachtree, to the Underground entrance. The door is locked. The stairs nearby have a barricade in front of the doors. Door after door is locked. PG can see people downstairs, and knew they got in there somehow.
PG began to wonder how he was going to get back to the train station, after the show. Downtown can be a scary, intimidating place. One time, panhandlers got in his face, and screamed bloody murder. When PG found the entrance, it was on a side street, and down a catwalk. What was that going to be like after dark? PG considered turning around, and taking the train back to Brookhaven.
The Masquerade takes up most of the entertainment area at Underground. PG talked to a security dude, who explained that most of Underground was closed. Would it be safe to walk back to the Marta station? Security dude says that police are everywhere, and that it would be OK. PG decides to get in line. Soon, a man is going through the line. If you want to drink, you can show your ID, and get a wrist band. PG, who retired from alcohol in 1988, decided that a drinkers wrist band was a tasteful accessory for the evening.
The performance space is a big room, with folding chairs instead of tables. PG finds an empty seat on the second row. Soon, he was talking to his neighbor, about all the fun we had when we were younger. At a bit after eight, the PA announcer welcomes you to the show, and Kevin Allison came out walks on stage. No, he did not sing the Stamps.com song, but he did urge you to pre-order his book. SPOILER ALERT These next few paragraphs may have spoilers, if you are going to listen to the show later. Since PG did not completely get the names of the storytellers, he will call them something else. The exception to this is TS Madison, who is already something else. A spell check suggestion for pre-order is pee-order.
Kevin told the first story of the evening. As a young man from Ohio, Kevin went to college in New York. One night, there was an adventurous visit to a sex club. Kevin took a man home. The man turned out to be a jerk, making Kevin do painful things involving Converse sneakers. At kink camp, a few years later, another jerk forced the same issue with Doc Martens.
Lady01 took the stage first. She is an Indian/Catholic, with a double load of family nonsense. There was a trip home to discuss an arranged marriage, which did not include her Muslim boyfriend. The discussion did not go well. The lady is a confident performer … as were all the storytellers this night … and was easy to hear. The sound system, and lighting, were superb throughout.
Man01 was next. Every storytelling session in Georgia needs to have a story about a mobile home. Man01 had a father, with a fondness for alcohol. One night, the drinking, and fighting, got out of hand. Father’s boss got killed. The father is now doing life in prison.
@TsMadisonatl1, the third performer, is a force of nature. PG was excited when he learned she was appearing. “Big Dick Bitch” is a pre-operative transsexual, currently living in Conyers, GA. Wearing six inch heels, green hair, and a tight fitting outfit, TSM told a story she calls “Turkish Delight.” At the start of her performance, TSM made a snapchat video. PG is in the second row. He wore a red shirt, which went very well with his red neck.
Miss Madison, in a normal world, would be the headliner. How can you follow that hair? Man02 took the challenge. He told a story involving an eclipse, pringles potato chips, and a very brief career in show business. A friendship with Mitch Hedberg added a few laughs, and a chance to open a show, at the 40 Watt club, in Athens GA.
Man03 was the final story of the night. He told of a love story, that seemed too good to end well. It didn’t. While all these stories were told, PG was listening, and mostly enjoying. The thought was still in his mind… how am I going to get back to Marta? Upper Alabama street looked so barren when he walked down it, and could only be worse after the sun went down.
Going to the front of the room, PG met Kevin Allison. They had been exchanging tweets, and PG was eager to meet him in the flesh. Kevin said that he saw PG in the crowd, and thought he recognized him. PG has a bag over his head on twitter.
The security lady said to go up the stairs, and walk down Upper Alabama Street to the train station. When PG got there, there were lots of people. A barber shop was open, and had a few customers. PG got to Marta without any complications, except, when he was waiting to get on the train. A man, getting off the train, looked at PG with an evil, vacant stare. PG ignored him, and went home.
Pictures are from the Library of Congress. “Farm Security Administration (FSA) camp for migratory agriculture workers. Farmersville, California. Meeting of camp council.” Dorothea Lange, photographer. May 1939. This is a repost. RISK continues to put out two virtual shows a week, with live streams replacing in-person performances. PG is no longer in the good graces of the RISK community. Don’t Yuck on My Yum and Another Story About Race tell the tale. Social Justice Dogpile Part Two tells the sad story of Man03.
Marilyn Truther
Marilyn Monroe was photographed reading Ulysses, the famously difficult book by James Joyce. 63 years later, a man posted the picture on twitter, while promoting a study course on Ulysses. If Marilyn read it, then you can too! PG said something uncooperative, and a brief twitter fight broke out. Since the Ulysses dude, and his tweeting buddy, did not give permission, they will not be quoted here. One exception, the titular “Marilyn Truther,” was coined by the study course promoter.
@chamblee54 It was a joke, at one time, to give models a book to pose with. It was considered funny to give them a difficult book like “Ulysses” ~ Who needs to show a citation? I may be wrong. I asked Mr. Google, and found this. ~ According to photographer, she did not read it from start to finish. A more accurate answer is that she read parts of it Story by photographer should not be taken as unchallenged truth, but it is all we have I should have researched this before i spoke. Did you? ~ I had read that about other models. I also read numerous quotes, attributed to Marilyn, that proved to be phony. Photography is a medium open to manipulation, and creation of fantasy. Just because you see a picture, that does not mean it happened. ~ Eve Arnold… a woman … took that picture. How do we know Marilyn told the truth? Maybe Marilyn was just trying to make a good impression on the lady. Would Marilyn have said the same thing if the photographer was a man?
PG disputed that Marilyn Monroe had read Ulysses, and will never know for sure either way. He was not the first person to wonder about this. “Richard Brown, a Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Leeds with a special interest in James Joyce, was intrigued by Eve Arnold’s photos of Marilyn. Curious to know if Marilyn was indeed reading Joyce’s novel or if she was merely posing for the photo, Brown wrote Arnold a letter, which she replied on 20 July 1993. Unfortunately, I don’t have Arnold’s complete letter to show you … In any case, the excerpt from Arnold’s letter is interesting as she was telling Brown exactly what he wanted to know”:
“We worked on a beach on Long Island. She was visiting Norman Rosten the poet…. I asked her what she was reading when I went to pick her up (I was trying to get an idea of how she spent her time). She said she kept Ulysses in her car and had been reading it for a long time. She said she loved the sound of it and would read it aloud to herself to try to make sense of it — but she found it hard going. She couldn’t read it consecutively. When we stopped at a local playground to photograph she got out the book and started to read while I loaded the film. So, of course, I photographed her. It was always a collaborative effort of photographer and subject where she was concerned — but almost more her input.” “Quoted in Richard Brown, “Marilyn Monroe Reading Ulysses: Goddess or Postcultural Cyborg?”, in R. B. Kershner (Ed), Joyce and Popular Culture, p. 174.”
“Monroe is reading the 1934 Random House edition, with the dust jacket removed. This is the edition that was famously set from a pirate version containing numerous errors. This defect notwithstanding, the dust-jacket artwork and typographic design by Ernst Reichl constitute one of the great works in the history of book design.”
What does this say about a screen icon who died in 1962? Maybe she was smarter than your typical dumb blonde. Maybe not. Marilyn had an instinct for the camera, and looking good on the screen brought joy to millions of fans. Is this post mortem resurrection, as an intellectual philosopher, merely another fantasy concocted by well meaning fans? Pictures never lie, and there is a picture of Marilyn, reading Ulysses, with a serious look on her pretty face. Of course it is real! A fantasy involving Norma Jean Baker Marilyn Monroe? How absurd! As long as the merchandise is paid for, and the instagrammers inspired, should we even care?
The cult of Marilyn has shown up on chamblee54 before. “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.” This search for authenticity led to a forum called Data Lounge… “… get your fix of gay gossip, news and pointless bitchery.” The “Marilyn: Smart or Stupid” debate rages through 200 comments, reaching a peak at comment 196. “Yes MM said every one of those quotes by herself! … But I’m worried for her, cause She’s my main spirit guide and Saviour and she recently commanded me to share this message! …
In 2014, a facebook notice appeared. It was promoting a blog post by known idiot Matt Walsh. “If you can’t accept me at my worst, then you don’t deserve me at my best.”… “the original quote is from Marilyn Monroe. It’s even more vapid and nauseating when taken in its full context: “I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.” Out of all the profundities ever uttered, what does it say about our society that THIS is the quote we’ve decided to take to heart?” It is generally accepted that Marilyn did not say that. The top debunker is now a malware distributor, and not available for viewing. Somehow, that seems appropriate.
Pictures today are from the Library of Congress. “Listening to speeches at mass meeting of Works Progress Administration (WPA) workers protesting congressional cut of relief appropriations. San Francisco, California.” Photographer: Dorothea Lange February 1939. This is a repost
Cary Grant Took LSD
There is a nifty article about Cary Grant and LSD on the web now. It seems Mr. Grant, the onetime Archibald Leach, had a few issues. Duh. Married five times. Widely rumored to the the bf of Randolph Scott. A talented actor, but a mess in the real world.
In 1956, Mr. Grant was with third wife Betsy Drake, who had a tough summer. “It was an open secret between cast and crew alike that the married Cary Grant was sleeping with Sophia Loren during their filming of The Pride and The Passion. Drake had flown to Italy to be by her husband’s side during the shoot only to find Grant ignoring her. Distraught, she fled on what was to be a quiet voyage on the SS Andrea Doria. On July 25, 1956 her quiescent journey turned into a nightmare. The ship collided with a Swedish ocean liner off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, sinking to the bottom of the Sea and claiming fifty-one lives.2 Betsy survived but was traumatized. The incident, coupled with the estrangement of her husband, haunted her in her sleep.”
Betsy Drake had a friend named Sally Brophy, an actress. Miss Brophy also received help from a psychiatrist, which included taking LSD. Eventually, Cary Grant started to go see this doctor.
Taking a legal trip, in a Hollywood doctor’s office, is not like going to a rave. It was seen as therapy, a way of learning how to deal with your problems. According to Cary Grant, it worked very well. He talked about it to a reporter, and then confirmed that he wanted this to go out to the public.
“The shock of each revelation brings with it an anguish of sadness for what was not known before … I learned many things in the quiet of that room … In one LSD dream I shit all over the rug and shit all over the floor. Another time I imagined myself as a giant penis launching off from earth like a spaceship … As a philosopher once said, you cannot judge the day until the night ..”
The only problem was, Mr. Grant had a movie coming out, “Operation Petticoat”. The studio “tripped out” when it heard the star of the show was praising LSD in the press. Mr. Grant had a share in the profits of the film, and was persuaded to call the reporter and recant on the interview.
Not everyone was impressed by the doctors that Mr. Grant used. “Aldous Huxley had encountered the clinic prior to his death, but had sought his LSD experiences from the parallel practice of Dr. Oscar Janiger, the other acid doctor to the stars. Huxley witnessed Chandler and Hartman’s work and was unnerved by their approach. “We met two Beverly Hills psychiatrists the other day,” he wrote, “who specialise in LSD therapy at $100 a shot – and, really, I have seldom met people of lower sensitivity, more vulgar mind! To think of people made vulnerable by LSD being exposed to such people is profoundly disturbing.”
In any event, LSD became criminalized, Doctors Chandler and Hartman got in trouble, and Cary Grant got married two more times. While Grant never renounced LSD, he refused to use any other illegal drug, even marijuana. He was a conservative old fogey.
Maureen Donaldson was the lover of Cary Grant in the seventies, and was a friend of Alice Cooper. She finally persuaded Mr. Grant to go to an Alice Cooper concert with her. He wore sunglasses, gold chains, and dressed like a “seedy agent”. He sat through the entire show, wearing earplugs, hating every minute of it.
As Miss Donaldson recalled the evening “Driving back to Los Angeles, I congratulated Cary for being such a good sport … He’d made an extraordinary effort to please me … [I asked him] ‘You really hated it, didn’t you?’ ‘It’s…’ he said, struggling for words, ‘you know what it’s like? Remember I told you about the time I took LSD in my doctor’s office and shat all over his rug and floor?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well now I know how that poor doctor felt.”
This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Fat Or Racist
@jimchines Could we just stop with the use of “fat” as an insult already? You’re trying to hit the person you’re insulting, but you’re hurting a lot of other people in the process. Grow the hell up. @jimchines Yeah, Shakespeare also made his share of fat jokes/insults too, unfortunately. Do better. Get creative, and scrub that particular tired, lazy insult from your repertoire.
@chamblee54 What about the use of anything as an insult. I would start with racist.
@jimchines Racism is something we can choose to support, or we can choose to push back against. Too many people simply choose to ignore it. Which means accepting it. Don’t want to be described as racist? Stop doing/supporting/accepting racist shit. Seems simple enough to me. @jimchines Usually when I see people saying “racist” is an insult, all they’re trying to do is shut down criticism and silence conversation about race and racism. It’s tiresome.
@chamblee54 “Don’t want to be described as racist? Stop doing/supporting/accepting racist shit.” That is a lie. Even if you do quit being racist, how will your haters know? That lie is used to justify prejudice. Out of respect for our mental health, this thread should end now.
@jimchines Consider it ended. But in the future, perhaps don’t stir up conversations you’re unable or unwilling to have.
@chamblee54 Point taken. That was not my intention, however. Unfortunately, that is how it turned out. Fat compares to racist, in the third party conception that it is something the insultee has control over. In the case of fat, the change is measurable and apparent.
As twitterspats go, this was mercifully brief. One could go on about the relative merits of using fat, or racist, as weapons of verbal destruction. Both epithets usually have elements of bullying, and hypocrisy, in their use. Many language custodians, who would be appalled by fat, feel virtuous in calling someone racist. It would be better to retire both insults. That probably is not going to happen.
What makes this episode noteworthy is the connection between @jimchines and @chamblee54. There is a third party, who we will call @duh. This is not his name, but does incorporate his initials.
@chamblee54 and @duh quit communicating in 2008, after quarreling at @duh’s LiveJournal. @chamblee54 developed a distaste for online combat, and has tried, with varying degrees of success, to stay out of trouble. @duh, otoh, seems to glory in digital feuds. If a person goes to his facebook feed, they will see many examples of this.
One of these disputes included @jimchines. If you have a lot of free time, you can read about it. (one two three four) The beginning, and end, of one @jimchines post says a great deal. “Well, this has been quite the week. … My thanks to everyone for their patience while I worked through this.”
What makes yesterday’s episode ironic is that @duh is an aggressive pro-black pundit. He will call someone RACIST at the slightest provocation. To see the target of white-shaming defend the use of racist is quite the spectacle.
FWIW, @chamblee54, who sports an old man”s pot-belly, has only seen face pictures of @jimchines. @duh is flamboyantly skinny. @chamblee54 has never met either gentleman irl. Judgements about waistlines, or racial attitudes, are not appropriate.
While finishing this post, a tweet turned up. @melaninbarbie “Ma’Khia Bryant being fat matters. The violence that young fat Black girls experience contributed to her death and if you don’t understand why, y’all need to start cracking open some fucking books on fatphobia.” Pictures are from The Library of Congress. The men are Union soldiers, from the War Between the States.
SB 202 Part 420
The sb202 story just gets weirder and weirder. Maybe the lesterslature meant to call it sb420.
“A major coalition of Black faith leaders in Georgia, representing more than 1,000 churches in the state, will call on Tuesday for a boycott of Home Depot …” The NYT does not link to a list of the 1000+ churches. Nor does it detail what the problems are with the legislation.
An AP story about the always visible Stacey Abrams is more helpful. “The Georgia law imposes a new voter identification requirement for mail-in ballots rather than the signature match used in 2020, a change Abrams says is burdensome for older, poorer voters …” The new requirement is writing the voters drivers license/photo ID number on the absentee ballot application.
Sen. Chuck Grassley says MLB moving the all star game will cost GA 100 million jobs. Not to be outdone, Georgia’s own @EWErickson notes: “So they picked Home Depot, the company founded by Jews, to boycott. Of course, they did.” Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
420
I got your reply text. I am back with the flip phone. Texting is a chore. It is handy for one word messages, but that is about it. An email is the way I am going to tell this story.
Trying circumstances led to me getting the iphone. It would take too much effort to document here, but is a good story. I had the IP for about four months. Finally, I got tired of the problems I was having, and went back to the flip phone. I will probably need to get an android at some time, but that is something to be put off.
What is happening with pot is amazing. It is totally legal in much of the county. I always thought that the anti-pot propaganda was being directed by forces in our government/corporate overlords, and that most people were just saying what they needed to say to get by. It is surprising how quickly all that went away.
One puzzling thing is this business of calling everything weed. We mostly said pot/grass/reefer/antiseptic, but almost never weed. For some reason, that is the official nick name now. You don’t even hear marijuana much anymore.
Greyhound took me a few places once. After you left the station, the driver would get on the intercom, and make announcements. One time, a driver with a horrible yankee accent said that if you were smoking PAHT that you would got to jail.
Not sure about going back to pot. I quit at the start of 2005. In 2012 I tried out some of my leftover stash. That ran out quickly. The next time was in a group of people. I took one hit, and got FUUUUUCKED UP. This became the pattern. About every six months or so, I would take a hit. I have to wonder if it is any fun now. Maybe I will, and maybe I won’t.
The new seasons of Cocaine and Rhinestones came out today. Have you heard this? It is by Tyler Mahan Coe, whose daddy also had three names. I passed his daddy’s tour bus on the road one time, and heard a copy of his “underground” album.
C&R is a history of country music, and is a wild ride. I should finish this email and get back to listening. I can’t write, and listen to people talking, at the same time. I sometimes listen to music, or sometimes there is recreational silence.
When I am listening to podcasts, I create graphic poems, or edit historic photos. I am working on a collection of soldiers. They fought in the War Between the States, a conflict that is suffering historic revisionism these days. This collection is totally in the public domain, which I appreciate. When this email becomes a blog post, it will be illustrated by some of these pictures.
Date Rape Drug Warning
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. Many men cannot resist the temptation.
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.
This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. Gender modification, for contemporary society, is available by appointment.
Eleanor Roosevelt Liberal
Eleanor Roosevelt has become the focus of a facebook meme. A flattering portrait illustrates a quote about “liberal.” Here is the text: “Long ago, there was a noble word, liberal, which derives from the word free. Now a strange thing happened to that word. A man named Hitler made it a term of abuse, a matter of suspicion, because those who were not with him were against him, and liberals had no use for Hitler. And then another man named McCarthy cast the same opprobrium on the word … We must cherish and honor the word free or it will cease to apply to us.”
“Did Eleanor Roosevelt Say This About the Word ‘Liberal’?” Apparently, she did. The text appears in Tomorrow Is Now. The book is the last word of Mrs. Roosevelt, who died November 7, 1962. Tomorrow Is Now was published in 1963.
The l-word has had a wild time in the last 58 years. In the sixties, it essentially meant someone who supported civil rights. Liberal came to be a favored insult of many conservatives, a role that continues to this day. As with many english words, liberal continues to evolve. Today a popular phrase is “classical liberal,” which means something to people who say it. It is safe to assume that Mrs. Roosevelt had a different concept of what liberal means, than many people today.
Merriam-Webster has several definitions for liberal, some of which are not related to political ideology. The etymology: “Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin liberalis suitable for a freeman, generous, from liber free; perhaps akin to Old English lēodan to grow, Greek eleutheros free.” This compares to the etymology for liberty: “Middle English, from Anglo-French liberté, from Latin libertat-, libertas, from liber free — more at liberal.” As for Mrs. Roosevelt’s claim that liberal is the same as free … she appears to be taking *liberties* in her use of language.
A red flag is dragging Adolph Hitler into the quarrel. Hitler comparisons are an easy gimmick for cheap rhetoric. Mr. Hitler spoke in German. Der Liberale probably has different implications than the American term liberal. A google search for “did Hitler say liberal” did not yield helpful results.
Wikiquotes did have 2 direct quotes of Hitler using the l-word. “… We might have called ourselves the Liberal Party. We chose to call ourselves the National Socialists. … ” Interview with George Sylvester Viereck, 1923 … “The main plank in the National Socialist program is to abolish the liberalistic concept of the individual and the Marxist concept of humanity and to substitute therefore the folk community.” Speech in the German Reichstag (January 30, 1937). Neither of these quotes is the type of Republican rhetoric so familiar to modern Americans.
Citing Joe McCarthy is ironic in 2021 America. Today, one danger to freedom is social justice jihad. An insistence on ideological purity is ever present in the “woke” landscape. Radical anti-racism is plausibly considered to be the new McCarthyism. A “classical liberal” is open to a discussion of ideas, rather that condemning people for having incorrect opinions. One wonders if Eleanor Roosevelt would be considered liberal today.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The men pictured are Confederate soldiers, from The War Between the States.
Auto Tag
Getting the auto tag sticker is part of spring. Go to the emissions place, get the certificate, go to the tag office, get the sticker. Of course, nothing seems to work smoothly now.
The emissions place is a trailer, in the Plaza Fiesta parking lot. When you go there, there is a note: server down state wide. This has gone on a couple of weeks. When you call, nobody answers the phone. It is the same story at a couple of other neighborhood emission spots.
Google yielded a curious result. The oil change place does emissions. Since they do repairs, there was a bit of paranoia. Would they find a problem, that they could fix for an easy profit? This did not happen. The test was done quickly, with good results.
The next step was the county tag office. It is on Dresden Drive, with tight driveways and a tiny parking lot. When you ease around the building, there is a sign. No waiting is permitted inside. There was a group of people, waiting by the doorway. They were not socially distanced. The parking lot was not vehicularly distanced, with every space occupied. Maybe this is the year to do this by mail.
When you open the envelope with the tag notice, you see several flyers. One of these announced a tag kiosk, at the Kroger on Chamblee Dunwoody Road. You go to the machine, and tell them you want to renew your tag. The next step asks you which document you have, so you can scan it. The machine mentioned a drivers license, so PG decided to scan that. The machine did not accept it.
After several attempts with the DL, PG let another man use the kiosk. He got his sticker in less than a minute. PG took another shot at the machine, only this time, he scanned the tag notice. The kiosk said to insert your credit card, and the kiosk spit out a tag sticker. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The men are Confederate soldiers, from the War Between the States.
How Twitter Causes Brain Damage
The story starts when Sleepy Joe announces yet another attempt to become POTUS. The announcement focused on the tiki torch rave in Virginia, rather than climate change, financial foolishness, police brutality, endless war, or Donald Trump’s latest hair color. The Foxnews fuddy duddies went on email jihad, focusing on what President tiny hands did, or did not say, after the tiki torches were put out. Meanwhile, the national debt went up by a $8,000,000,000.00.
At the bottom of one of the existential emails was a tag line: “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on.” – Winston Churchill. The last time PG heard that chestnut, truth was putting her shoes on. This sounds like a job for google.
Before you can say trending topic, quote investigator has the answer. “In conclusion, there exists a family of expressions contrasting the dissemination of lies and truths, and these adages have been evolving for more than 300 years. … At this time, there is no substantive support for assigning the saying to Mark Twain or Winston Churchill.”
Google is not through creating mischief. NFL’s Colin Kaepernick incorrectly credits Winston Churchill for quote about lies It seems as though knee pad model Colin Kaepernick felt the need to quote Mr. Churchill. This is deep. A tweet, about a false quote, about spreading a lie. Pictures for this deplorable dispatch today are from The Library of Congress. Nobody forced you to read this.
This is a repost from 2019. Eleven months later, covid turned the world on its ear. Sleepy Joe was elected POTUS, despite the worst efforts of President Trump. The economy went into a covid depression, with the national debt increasing by a few trillion dollars. Colin Kaepernick became obsolete. The custom of telling lies is as popular as ever. Winston Churchill is still dead.
A Man Without a Country
A meme turned up on facebook the other day. Here is what it said: “For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, often with tears in their eyes, the demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. “Blessed are the merciful” in a courtroom? “Blessed are the peacemakers” in the Pentagon? Give me a break!”
This bit of commodity wisdom is blamed on Kurt Vonnegut. It does sound like something he would say. The copy-friendly version of the quote gives a source, A Man Without a Country. This is a memoir, which is like a meme with an oir glued on.
PG ordered AMWAC from the library, and read it. It would be fun to say that AMWAC is great, but it isn’t. It is the same stuff you heard KV saying for years. AMWAC was published in 2005, two years before KV took his dirt nap. ANWAC might have been a good idea, but just doesn’t work. Not that the humanist talk isn’t true, or inspiring. The novels had humanism, but they were window dressing for a story, with plots and characters. The novels were fun to read.
One item stands out, which is not to say that it is outstanding. “Jazz historian Albert Murray claimed that the suicide rate among American slave owners was higher than that of their slaves.” This is on page 68 of AMWAC. The source thinks that this is because the slaves could sing the blues, and slave owners could do nothing but count money.
Reddit had 22 comments devoted to this factoid. The truth is, nobody knows. It may be true. It may have been true in the Mississippi Delta, but not true in Virginia. Maybe seeing snow in the winter was the factor. There is a problem with asking why, before you are sure that the statement is true.
Classics Illustrated: The Man Without A Country #63 is a comic book version of another book titled AMWAC. (all pages are there, this is meant for reading, not collecting) In this epic, a man says that he wishes to never hear of the United States again. A judge sentences him to go on a ship, where people are forbidden to speak of America in his presence. Talk about specialty punishment! In the end, the man is so patriotic nobody can stand him. It is highly unlikely that there will be a comic book version of the Kurt Vonnegut AMWAC.
This is a repost. On January 17, 2020, Bill Maher appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience. He lamented the political divisions in America, and how obnoxious both sides were. At 58:06, Mr. Maher said: “I feel like, as I’m sure as you do sometimes, a man without a country.”
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. Dorothea Lange took the pictures in June 1937, in Texas The spell check suggestion for AMWAC is AMWAY.
This Is Your Life
Am all caps graphic washes up on the digital shores from time to time. The author, and copyright status, are not known. It was not written here. Reading it can be a chore, even though it looks cool. It is also selfish… the only opinion that matters is the individual reading it. It doesn’t have a good beat, but you can dance to it. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
This is your life.
Do what you love, and do it often.
If you don’t like something, change it.
If you don’t like your job, quit.
If you don’t have enough time, stop watching TV.
If you are looking for the love of your life, stop:
They will be waiting for you when you start doing things you love.
Stop over analyzing, life is simple
All emotions are beautiful.
When you eat, appreciate every last bite.
Open your mind, arms, and heart to new things and people,
We are united in our differences.
Ask the next person you see what their passion is,
And share your inspiring dream with them.
Travel often, getting lost will help you find yourself.
Some opportunities only come once, seize them.
Life is about the people you meet, and the things you create with them
So go out and start creating.
Life is short. Live your dream, and wear your passion.
“Do you have to be a poet? If you don’t have to be a poet, be a prose writer. You’ll get further faster. Poetry — there’s probably more poetry published today than any time in the history of the world. Nevertheless, there is this — people think they have this blindness when they see a line in the typography of poetry, and it just blocks them. So if you can say the same thing in prose, you’ll probably be better off” Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Chamblee54 
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