Chamblee54

This is a double repost. There are quotes from a defunct site, Owldolatrous. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This was written in the style of H. P. Lovecraft.
What is a snob? PG always thought it was someone who thought he was better than others. This is one of the “sins” that most people denounce, and then practice. Who doesn’t see someone that is just a few notches below you on the scale of human coolness?
A trip to the dictionary yields this: 1-a person who imitates, cultivates, or slavishly admires social superiors and is condescending or overbearing to others. 2-a person who believes himself or herself an expert or connoisseur in a given field and is condescending toward or disdainful of those who hold other opinions or have different tastes regarding this field: a musical snob.
The origin of the word is amusing. Snob was a nickname for a cobbler, or someone who makes shoes. This is a working class occupation, but one that is needed by all people. How this would become a label for someone who “puts on airs” is a mystery.
There are snobs in a book PG is reading, “The city of falling angels” by John Berendt. An American writer goes to live in Venice, and has tales to tell. At one point, there is a dispute in an organization devoted to restoring stuff in Venice, and some of the players are labeled snobs. On page 318, there is a definition of a snob. You can be a snob upwards, by working the people on a level above you. Or, you can be a snob downwards, by being rude to those on a level below you.
The reader may have figured out by now that this post is going to ramble for a few paragraphs and not really go anywhere. The practice of “uppity”, or “putting on airs”, is hard wired into the consciousness of almost everyone. Like telling the truth and lying, no one wants to admit to being a snob, and yet almost everyone plays the game on some level.

“Supremacy is the habit of believing or acting as if your life, your love, your culture has more intrinsic worth than those of people who differ from you. Supremacy can be about race, but it doesn’t have to be. Supremacy and hate aren’t identical, but they often go together. Some people turn supremacy into an over-arching philosophy. For most, it’s just a habit of mind. As a habit of mind, supremacist ideas can spring up in anyone. Being liberal doesn’t make you immune. Being gay doesn’t make you immune. Being a minority doesn’t make you immune.”
There is more, but this is enough for our morning discussion. Supreme, Supremacy, Supremacism, Supremacist. It is not just for white people. The whole business of thinking that you are somehow better than your neighbor is part of being a human being. Think about it, aren’t there some people that you think you are better than? Of course there are. You are a competitive animal, and you have to win sometimes. You, and your tribe, are just better than that other tribe.
PG saw a sign over a desk once. I have never met a snob who was not a born liar. Above this sign was a plastic case. In the plastic case was a white dress shirt, with an ink stain in the front pocket. Like telling the truth and lying, no one wants to admit to being a snob. Still, almost everyone plays the game. Maybe the sign should have read “I have never met a human being who was not a born liar.“ Many of those lies begin with “I am not a ___.”
There is a concept, mythos over logos. The idea is, when you present people with information that contradicts a long held belief, the person will ignore the information and stick to the belief. This is related to the concept of supremacy. What happens when you think you are better than a person, and you get evidence that the person is better than you? You will ignore that evidence, and continue to believe the person is inferior to you. It helps when your magic book agrees with you.
Is Anti-Racism a form of supremacy? PG associates with a so called “radical community”. There has recently been a rabid discussion about racism. Now, this is a pretty enlightened bunch. The type of virulent racism that PG saw growing up in Georgia is simply not there. This does not stop the Anti Racist Supremacist Egophile (ARSE) from looking for racism to combat. The ARSE will expand the definition of racism to include every PWOC, except him them and his their immediate tribe.

This blog tries to publish something everyday. This blog has a huge archive. Today, we are going to try something. We have three posts, all of which were posted on May 30. (2009, 2014, 2015) Text will be edited, out of concern for the reader’s tolerance of gratuitous ranting. Pictures are from The Library of Congress, and are better than the text. The topics for discussion are race and religion. Some things never go out of style.
PG found a thingie on the internet today. It is a list of twenty reasons why the person at BEattitude is no longer a Jesus Worshiper. It has 331 comments. Does anyone the time them all? (The link does not work in 2018) The man is in what you might call phase one post Jesus. He sees things in terms of the Christian Experience. The further you get from Jesus Worship, the more you see that Jesus is not the only game in town. The free for all going on in the comments thread is much more pleasant in digital form. In person, you would have 300 people interrupting and screaming at each other. Some think that the louder you talk, the more truth your words have.
Jesus is a touchy subject for many people. Many people have been verbally assaulted, in the name of spreading salvation. The fact that you don’t agree with these ideas does not stop people from feeling obligated to tell you about one more time. It serves to create ill will for Jesus. It does not help when this Jesus-fix is delivered as a ceremonial part of a government meeting.
Once, a man saw his child get excited when there was a prayer on TV. The kid said that the prayer meant the cartoons would start soon. There was a religious program, before the cartoons. The prayer was at the end of the show, meaning the cartoons were about to start. That is about what prayers before a public event are worth. Prayer is reduced to a meaningless gesture, when used in this manner. This does not speak well for the custom of prayer.
Jesus reportedly said this. “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”
Whenever you hear the word G-d, the word believe is not far behind. The two seem to go together. PG wonders if belief is really the proper way to “know” G-d. Remember, the middle three letters of beLIEve is LIE. The symbolism of the cross is rather distasteful. A cross was a method of capital punishment, and a rather gruesome method at that. If Jesus were to be offed in prison today, would future generations worship a syringe?

A popular link on facebook these days is to an article in Slate magazine, Why Do Millennials Not Understand Racism? It is written by Jamelle Bouie, and is based on the MTV Survey on Millenials and Race. Mr. Bouie does not like the results. One question might be why he is paying attention. The results are broken down in two groups, white and POC. The study was conducted in English. The respondents were 14-24 years old, with the under 18 crowd needing parental permission. Only people who watch MTV were interviewed. The questionnaire is not included in the report. The study does not go into the family income, or level of education in the family. The only breakdown is white vs. POC.
Some questions were asked about “microaggressions” … “brief and commonplace actions or words that are subtle examples of bias. Microaggressions can be intentional or unintentional, and often communicate negative feelings towards people of color.” POC report having more problems with microaggressions than white people. One possible reason for this is the fact many white people have never heard of microaggressions.The use of microaggression is one reason for using English only.
Mr. Bouie makes a few broad comments. Remember, he is talking about a group of MTV watchers. “More jarring is the 48 percent of white millennials who say discrimination against whites is as big a problem as discrimination against racial minorities. … But while this reaction doesn’t seem to have a basis in reality, it makes perfect sense given what millennials writ large believe about racism.” Maybe this is white privilege. Many white people are not sensitive to being discriminated against. What is a microaggression to one person is a rude comment (or misunderstood look) to another.
Maybe this is another case of the younger generation being misunderstood by the old fogeys. The study makes the shaky claim that “The majority of millennials believe that their generation is post-racial.” Perhaps … and this just might be a good thing … there are people coming along who are more interested in solving problems, than in worrying whether the problem affects white people more than POC. Maybe, just maybe, the divide and conquer tactics of the ruling class are being seen as the foolish distractions that they are. Those who enjoy screaming about racism could find themselves obsolete in a few years. This might not be such a bad thing.

Walking the labyrinth is a practice in many traditions. “The labyrinth is a tool for personal, psychological and spiritual transformation. … It combines the imagery of the circle and the spiral into a meandering but purposeful path from the edge to the center and back out again. A labyrinth is unicursal – it is only one path. The way in is the way out. The path leads you on a circuitous path to the center and out again.” Last Saturday, I walked into, and out of, a labyrinth.
There are similarities between the labyrinth, and her sister, the maze. Both labyrinth, and maze, have four parts. There is the path you walk on. The path has several layers. The largest layer is on the outside, and the smallest one in the center. Most, though not all, labyrinths are circular.
The layers of path are separated by a wall, which is the second part. There is an opening in this wall, which enables you to go from one layer, of path, to another one. Finally, there is a barrier across the path, which does not allow you to go any further. This is a section of wall, which crosses the path at a ninety degree angle.
Both the labyrinth and the maze consist of these four parts. The difference is the way that the openings, and the barriers, are used. In the labyrinth, you walk the entire length of the course, in an orderly manner. In the maze, you must make choices. If you make the correct choice, you can move on to the next level. If you make the wrong choice, you will come to a dead end.
Saturday’s labyrinth walk was led by a man, who we will call the Guide. He talked to the group before walking the labyrinth. I got a late start, and missed most of his comments.
Later, I spoke to the Guide, and mentioned some of the similarities between the labyrinth and the maze. The Guide became angry at my observation. He said something about sacred geometry. The Guide also mentioned that most labyrinths are on the ground only, where the maze often has walls that physically prevent you from walking over.
”Labyrinths and mazes have often been confused. When most people hear of a labyrinth they think of a maze. A labyrinth is not a maze. A maze is like a puzzle to be solved. It has twists, turns, and blind alleys. It is a left brain task that requires logical, sequential, analytical activity to find the correct path into the maze and out.”
“A labyrinth has only one path. It is unicursal. The way in is the way out. There are no blind alleys. The path leads you on a circuitous path to the center and out again. A labyrinth is a right brain task. It involves intuition, creativity, and imagery. With a maze many choices must be made and an active mind is needed to solve the problem of finding the center. With a labyrinth there is only one choice to be made. The choice is to enter or not. A more passive, receptive mindset is needed. The choice is whether or not to walk a spiritual path.”
Is it possible to change a labyrinth into a maze, or a maze into a labyrinth? You would leave the basic path, and walls, in place. You would then re-arrange the openings, and barriers, so that the walls and path become either a labyrinth, or a maze. It is a binary choice. Your course is a labyrinth, with a logical unicursal direction. Or, it is a maze, with both correct choices, and dead ends.
The labyrinth walk is a well established spiritual tradition. There is also the possibility of using the maze as a alternative. In the labyrinth, there are no choices, and you are free to focus on your spirit.
In the maze, you will need to make choices. You will not have any clue about which choice is correct, and which one will lead to a dead end. You will have to maintain your enlightened state, while dealing with adversity. This is life … dealing with incorrect choices, while maintaining a level of grace.
There are many labyrinths available. The labyrinth locator can direct you to one, with information about how much public access is available.
Old Men is a portable labyrinth, which frequently appears at Burning Man events. It is made of tent stakes, and fabric walls. “The labyrinth is a modification of a 15th century design. It is octagonal, with four entrances leading to the center. Each path splits and rejoins twice before reaching the center. The participant can then choose which of the four paths to exit from.”
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.

In the next quarter century, the surplus grew, thanks to Bukowski’s nearly graphomaniacal fecundity. “I usually write ten or fifteen [poems] at once,” he said, and he imagined the act of writing as a kind of entranced combat with the typewriter, as in his poem “cool black air”: “now I sit down to it and I bang it, I don’t use the light / touch, I bang it.”
As could have been predicted, it started with a post at Dangerous Minds. The feature was about the late Charles Bukowski, who was called Hank by those who knew him. The writer/drunk had always been a bit of a fascination to PG. Out of the millions of useless drunks feeding the urinals of planet earth, at least one will turn out to have had literary merit.
A trip to Google city is made, and quotes from the bard are found, along with the wikipedia page. All of this leads to a New Yorker piece about the gentleman. After nine paragraphs, and two poems, there is the phrase that set off PG…graphomaniacal fecundity.(spell check suggestion:nymphomaniac)
As best as we can figure, g.f. means that Hank wrote a lot of stuff. This is a good thing. PG operates on the notion that if you keep your quantity up, the quality will take care of itself. Hank seems to agree, spitting out product “like hot turds the morning after a good beer drunk.” He seemed to take pride in doing what Truman Capote said about Jack Kerouac…he doesn’t write, he types.
If you google the phrase graphomaniacal fecundity, you can choose from 71 results. The top six apparently quote the article in New Yorker. A blogspot facility called poemanias quotes the paragraph from the New Yorker, with the title “On Bukowski’s afterlife”, while Fourhourhardon reprints the entire thing. Neither provide a link back to the original.
Goliath and Petey Luvs Blog take the same copy-paste approach. The first tries to get you to pay for more reading material. This forum also does the control A-C-V approach, but yields this comment : “He was a contemporary of the Beats, but not quite one of them because he was darker and not as willing to smoke a joint and sing Phil Ochs songs on the lower east side.” The truth is, Hank hated marijuana, and had the classic alcoholic attitude about it. So it goes. Keep and share copies the complete New Yorker feature, but has some other thumbsuckers about Mr. Bukowski.

It is a truism that new media borrows content from old media. Stories, told orally from genration to generation, are compiled into books, which are then made into movies. Plastic panels try to look like wood. The newest new media that old fogey PG knows about is twitter. People tell little stories in 140 characters or less, which go around the world in seconds. With this abundance of media, there are not always enough messages to feed the beast.
On twitter, there are people producing twitter feeds from dead authors. Maybe these wordmongers went to a place with internet access. Kurt Vonnegut (three hours ago) “Busy, busy, busy”. Mark Twain (three hours ago) “Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint”. Brautigan’s Ghost (twenty two hours ago) “I cannot say to the one I love, “Hi, flower-wonderful bird-love sweet.”
The deceased content maker best suited to twitter might be Conway Twitty. One slow day two years ago, Yahoo asked peeps Do you think Conway Twitty would have used Twitter? ~ He gave them the idea ~ I think Twitty would tweet, Twitter would be Conway’s, way of of communicating to the world, Twitty would be tweeting his little Twitty head off, ~ I better send out a Twitty Tweet ~ Cute, but a serious answer, probably. A media hound, he’d want to get his name plastered everywhere. ~ If he did that would have made him a ‘Twitty Twitter” ~ Who cares, he’s a twit anyway”.
There are four Twitty Twitter feeds. @ConwayTwitty (Oct. 21,2009) “The Conway Twitty Musical is getting great reviews in Branson!!! . @TwittyTweats (January 12, 2012) “In Twitty City, it never snows. All the men wear gold medallions and blazers. And the women never cry. Unless you hold them.” @Conway_Twitty (February 20, 2012) “My cock is an amphibious assault vehicle” @conwaytwittier (April 28, 2012). “@JasonIsbell How’s the English weather treating your hair? I had the hardest time keeping my pompadour in tiptop shape there.” @twittybirdmoda is written in Japanese. We’ve never been this far before.
The original concept for this post was to spotlight twitter feeds borrowing material from Charles Bukowski. Hank is the beer bard of Los Angeles. He is a hero to many. Out of the millions of worthless drunks populating bars, at least one could write poems. It gives you hope for mankind.
The front page of a google search for “charles bukowski on twitter” yields eight feeds. The original plan was to ignore any that were not updated in 2012. An exception will be for @hank_bukowski (Yeah it’s good to be back). (January 25, 2009) “Yesterday I met Adolf H. in hell. He is fuckin stupid.” “too lazzy these days, too drunk to twitter”.
With the 2012-only rule in effect, we are left with three Bukowski thieves. @BukowskiDiz (May 1) “Curiosidades sobre Charles Bukowski http://migre.me/8UhRf“. @bukquotes (May 8) “all the mules and drunken ladies gone the bad novels march…”. ~ “I always read when I shit and the worse the book the better the bowel movement.” @bukowski_lives (one hour ago) “Basically, that’s why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself.”
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is a double repost. Another repost may be published later. This is probably it for this year.