The Burning Of Atlanta
Around this time 150 years ago, Atlanta was on fire. General Sherman was preparing for his March to the sea, and wanted to destroy anything of value in the city. The fire is reported as being on 11-15 of November, depending on what source you use.
The November fire was the second great fire in Atlanta that year. On September 2, the city was conquered by the Union Army. The fleeing Confederates blew up a munitions depot, and set a large part of the city on fire. This is the fire Scarlet O’Hara flees in “Gone With The Wind”.
After a series of bloody battles, the city was shelled by Yankee forces for forty days. There were many civilian casualties. General Sherman was tired of the war, angry at Atlanta, and ready for action. This is despite the fact that many in Atlanta were opposed to secession.
Click here to hear a lecture by Marc Wortman at the Atlanta History Center. Mr Wortman is the author of “The Bonfire: The Siege and Burning of Atlanta”. The hour of talk is fascinating. The pictures are from The Library of Congress This is a repost.
Random Trivia Questions
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5:52 am. Breakfast is cooking. A day out in the world awaits. Can You Answer 13 RANDOM Trivia Questions? The header ad is the Pillsbury doughboy. Apparently those funeral rumors were just somebody’s idea of a joke. Pop Tart, and Aunt Jemima, will be relieved.
5:54 am “How many innings does a baseball game have?” These things always start easy. Maybe, with the popularity of useless honesty, the question should be how many outings a game will have. 5:56 am “What is the name of Mickey Mouse’s pet dog?” These things make me goofy. Pluto is a buddy of Socrates, and Donald is a duck. All are cartoon characters.
5:57 am “What is the general name for a group of wolves?” Why are wolves compared to a box of playing cards? The ad here is Consumer Reports, which also comes in a pack. Is writing down those times too much work? Should you go take a look at breakfast? Cleaning up a burned out pot is not going to be helpful. “Which two fairytale characters ended up in a house made of gingerbread?” If the gb house was on a hill, it would be Jack and Jill. Johnny Carson has a routine about censorship. He honked a horn at the dirty parts. Jack and Jill went up the hill, honk, honk, honk.
“Which movie actor uttered the famous words, “I’ll be back.”” Three famous Hollywood tough guys, with only one American in the crew. Sooner or later there is going to be a wrong answer. “Which bird was commonly used by humans to send messages?” “TRUE or FALSE: In Greek mythology, Hades is the God of The underworld.” “What is the longest river in the world?” “Who said “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”?” The last one is a misquote. The astronaut said it was a small step for a man. The product here is a toilet bowl scrubber. “TRUE or FALSE: Earth is the 3rd closest planet to the sun?””Scurvy is the result of a deficiency in which vitamin?”
“Steven Tyler is the singer of which famous band?” The pharmaceutical ad, with the scrolling side effects in fine print, has been replaced with the soft scrub toilet bowl cleaner. “The Statue of Liberty was given to the United States as a gift from which country? Somehow, the guessing game was good for 10 correct answers, Goofy, Hades, and Scurvy were the only things to fail. The fourteenth correct answer is to say no, do not post this to facebook or twitter.
Jeopardy Ready! From Mickey Mouse to Pigeon carriers, you know your absolutely random trivia! You need to have an exceedingly diverse knowledge range to be able to succeed on a quiz like this – and you did! We don’t know where along your life you picked up information on scurvy, or what Aerosmith song you listen to that reminds of Steven Tyler… you dominated this quiz! Share this quiz with your friends and family. Let’s see how well they do on these super random trivia questions!
Whoever wrote the winners notes did not pay attention to the results. Questions about Mickey Mouse, and Scurvy, were missed. Maybe Mickey’s dog was named Scurvy. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. 6:32 am Breakfast finished cooking without incident.
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 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”.
Turn Turn Turn
The word Ecclesiastes has a poetic tingle. It’s place in the Old Testament is between the poetry of Proverbs, and the enticements of the Song of Soloman. Richard Brautigan counted the punctuation marks in Ecclesiastes, and found no errors. Ecclesiastes 3 was even the lyrics for a top forty song.
Turn Turn Turn is taken almost verbatim from the book of Ecclesiastes. Pete Seeger wrote a melody, and added a line. “There is a time for peace, I swear its not too late”. TTT became a hit for the Byrds in 1965, as the escalation of the Vietnam war was in full bloom.
TTT is about the dualities of life, and how there is a place for all these things. When PG was collecting rocks from destroyed houses, it was a time to gather stones together. TTT can serve as a companion to the vibrations of day to day living.
Pete Seeger died January 27, 2014. PG first heard of him when he was on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. It was during Vietnam, and Mr. Seeger did a song…”Waist deep in the big muddy”… about how “The big fool said to push on, push on”. The CBS censors did not allow this the first time he appeared. Many thought he was talking about Lyndon Johnson.
“Pete Bowers” was a stage name for a young Pete Seeger. This was to avoid making trouble for his father. The band he played in, the Weavers, popularized a gullah spiritual, “Kumbaya”. This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Stop Getting Racisted At
Once upon a time, cigarettes were advertised on television. One new brand was a cigarette for women, Virginia Slims. The ability to kill yourself with tobacco was presented as being a privilege. Some wondered why women would want to take up this filthy habit.
Today, African Americans have the “privilege” of using the n-word. What a deal. A nasty word, which degrades both the speaker, and the spoken of. Why would anyone want to use that word?
Apparently, millions of people do. Recently, an individual named Piers Morgan wrote a piece in an English newspaper about the n-word. Mr. Morgan calls those six letters “a grotesque, odious, evil stain on the English language. It symbolises everything multi-cultural America has fought so hard to move on from – white-run, imperialist, violent, sexually malevolent barbarism.” As the lady in Ferguson, MO, said, “I CANNOT BELIEVE I STILL HAVE TO PROTEST THIS SHIT!!”
@aamer_rahman In other news today: White Guy Blames Black People for Centuries of Racism. Lol #PiersMorgan #GotItAllFiguredOut
@DakShepard God, please let me live free from the need to tell POC what they should do to stop getting racisted at. Please let #PiersMorgan, too. Amen.
@tariqnasheed So #PiersMorgan is running the ol “the-reason-we-practice-white-supremacy-is-because-Black-people-use-the #NWord ” con game I see
@kim_tastiic #PiersMorgan is liberalism personified. ‘Nuff said..
@Adam_M_Ali#PiersMorgan’ “article” confirming the ignorance of Whiteness to the INTERNAL discourse within the Black community, it’s now dictating to.
@Virtuous_Queen_Show me the statistical data and research that proves eliminating the Nword will dismantle racism n inequalities. @piersmorgan #PiersMorgan
@BriannaChevonneShow positive black families on prime time tv and not the Good Times struggling ones…then you’ll be equal…NOT! #PiersMorgan
Sometime between the last cigarette commercial, and the first dark skinned POTUS, America was charmed by “The Bill Cosby Show.” Here was a “positive black family on prime time tv.” As @BriannaChevonne could have told you, we are equal…NOT!
Bill Cosby has been interesting. PG grew up listening to the comedy albums. Mr. Cosby earned lots of money selling Jell-O, and with a hit tv show. Mr. Cosby, it is whispered, is a mean, crotchety old bastard. There are also those troubling stories about sexual assault.
Asking for “public input” is always a risky business. This is even more true when the beloved entertainer is accused of rape. This didn’t stop Bill Cosby Inc. from putting out the Cosby Meme Generator. People were invited to paste comments onto charming pictures of America’s favorite funnyman. What happened could have been predicted. Thus was born #cosbymeme. The spell check suggestion for #cosbymeme is #cosmetology. You can’t make this up.
@NarcoVelvet I will now be participating in the #CosbyMeme fun. Because I cannot even believe this is being allowed to happen right now.
@Dukeweiser Cmon Bruh At least his app asks for consent. #CosbyMeme ”
@elonjames I think Bill Cosby still thinks he’s America’s Dad and not America’s creepy Uncle who’s not allowed to visit anymore… #CosbyMeme
@InsaneBHawksFan @_poeia “I put the bibity bopity in her drink and then my boopity doopity in her poopity.” -Bill Cosby #cosbymeme
@ritchtp #fact more Blacks wrote a #CosbyMeme than were employed to write a cosby show.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Broke In Three Places
A young ventriloquist is touring the clubs and one night he’s doing a show in Arkansas.
With his dummy on his knee, he’s going through his usual dumb blonde jokes when a blonde woman in the fourth row stands on her chair and starts shouting: ”I’ve heard enough of your stupid blonde jokes. What makes you think you can stereotype women that way? What does the color of a person’s hair have to do with her worth as a human being? It’s guys like you who keep women like me from being respected at work and in the community and from reaching our full potential as a person, because you and your kind continue to perpetuate discrimination against, not only blondes, but women in general…and all in the name of humor!”
The ventriloquist is embarrassed and begins to apologize, when the blonde yells, ”You stay out of this, mister! I’m talking to that little jerk on your knee!”
A man goes into the doctor.He says, “Doc, you gotta check my leg. Something’s wrong. Just put your ear up to my thigh, you’ll hear it!”The doctor cautiously placed his ear to the man’s thigh, only to hear, “Gimme 20 bucks. I really need 20 bucks.””I’ve never seen or heard anything like this before. How long has this been going on?” The doctor asked.”That’s nothing Doc. Put your ear to my knee.”The doctor put his ear to the man’s knee and heard it say, “Man, I really need 10 dollars. Just lend me 10 bucks!!””Sir, I really don’t know what to tell you. I’ve never seen anything like this.” The doctor was dumbfounded.”Wait Doc, that’s not all. There’s more, just put your ear up to my ankle,” the man urged him.The doctor did as the man said and was blown away to hear his ankle plead, “Please, I just need 5 dollars. Lend me 5 bucks, please, if you will.””I have no idea what to tell you. There’s nothing about it in my books,” he said, as he frantically searched all his medical reference books.”I can make a well educated guess though,” he continued. “Based on life and all my previous experience, I can tell you that your leg seems to be broke in three places.”
This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
The Docket Book
twitter synchronicity ~ The third commandment says not to make a political football out of a sacred name. ~ Has the Atlanta Board of Education tweaked the Georgia statistics? ~ @Jizismyname Rose McGowan said gays are shallow & misogynistic? Please, what does that useless hole know? Did ya see what she’s wearing? Go make a baby. ~ When you click on the link, you have to sit through a pop up ad for master charge which you cannot turn off. ~ The Sheriff’s Department is required by law to provide certain information to the public regarding inmate admissions and releases from the Detention Center. Originally, a written docket book or log located in the facility’s lobby was the access point for this information. This docket book was replaced with a public computer terminal in the lobby and is now available on-line via the Internet. ~ Our commenting rules are pretty simple: If you make any overly offensive comment (racist, bigoted, etc..) or go way off topic when not in an Open Post, your comments will be deleted and you will be banned. If you see an offensive or spammy comment you think should be deleted, flag it for the mods and they’ll be forever grateful and give you their first born (although, you probably don’t want that). ~ Stuff the ballot box. ~ I’m listening to an ambient station on Jango, and one of the suggested similar stations is “Thomas Kinkade Radio.” I can’t even imagine. ~ Statistics are like bikinis. They look good but they don’t show everything. ~ lord funkbottom go piss up a rope then get back on your medication ~ Luther, You Can Help Stop Ebola Support organizations working in West Africa so they can stop the disease and save lives. ~ Editing pictures, with the Falcons game in the background. Trying to decide if the company of faeries is worth the effort of driving across town. ~ Tetanus vaccines found spiked with sterilization chemical to carry out race-based genocide against Africans ~ Top APS employee suspended w/o pay after some donated cans of food, toiletry items went missing from a charity event. ~ Read your Bible, Steelers! “And the Lord said, ‘Let not Bieber into your inner circle, or thou will be smitten by the lowliest of enemies.'” ~ @MobyDickatSea those entrails seemed swallowed over and over again by the same mouth, to be oppositely voided by the gaping wound. ~ pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. ~ selah
Eighty Percent
It is a T shirt treasure, and a coffee cup classic. “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” This gem is blamed on Allan Steward 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.
The second part of today’s entertainment is an encore presentation, Inspiration Is For Amateurs. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
PG was listening to an interview with a fiction writer. Someone said “Inspiration is for amateurs.” PG has always been more impressed by action than beliefs, and this phrase made sense. This repost is a good excuse to post some more pictures from The Library of Congress.
The phrase is from a painter named Chuck Close. His output is expensive, and widely enjoyed. A spinal injury left him paralyzed, but did not stop him from producing. Here is the full quote:
“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.”
A man once made pottery. It was said that the man only worked with passion, and that if he didn’t feel this passion he did not work. When PG heard that, his thought was that if PG worked that way, he would never finish anything. Most of the sticker pictures take a while to finish. PG always gets tired of the picture before it is through. The idea is to go to the studio, start to do stuff, and before long the enthusiasm will return. Any image requires a certain amount of time with the belly pressed against the work table, or the digital equivalent.
The formula for writing is ass plus chair. A teacher once said to not stare at the blank page, waiting for a bolt of lightening. Start to write something, and the ideas will start to sputter out of the pipeline.
It is not enough to have a bright idea. You have to work the problems out. Sometimes, you spend more time finding out what does not work, than what does. You have to do it wrong before you can do it right. Genius is ninety nine percent perspiration and one percent inspiration. If any cliches have been overlooked, please add them to the comments.
One thing that is helpful is to be focused. The internet can be a problem. When you should be thinking about your product, it is very tempting to see the latest on Facebook or Twitter.
The Rose And Bret Show
After the media stormette about Rose Arianna McGowan this week, PG decided to give the Bret Easton Ellis Podcast episode a second listen. In the opening monolog, BEE discusses a quote he was blamed for. It was about women who direct movies. BEE was mistakenly quoted as saying half the population cannot direct films. He learned to never give an interview over drinks.
The monolog rambled over something called the male gaze, or the male oriented viewpoint of most movie makers. Soon, RAM was in the show, and talking misogyny. “I can tell you stories that would curl your hair.” RAM then mentioned the time when she called out a young man for calling “Golden Girl” Blanche a slut. This is a story that RAM likes to tell.
The first movie RAM worked was six weeks after her boyfriend was murdered. “I had never acted before. I was discovered standing on a street corner. I never tell that part of the story.” The director was Gregg Araki. RAM noted that “gays can be as misogynistic as …” She would return to that theme later. “I have an indictment of the gay community.” BEE “I do too.”
The Beverly Hills Hotel issue soon came up. For those who are new here, BHH is owned by the Sultan of Brunei. A proposal to enact Sharia law was enacted over there. “Armchair activists” in Southern California decided not to do business with the BHH. The trendy people went elsewhere for their $20 martinis, to the delight of people who work elsewhere.
RAM is not pleased. She mentions Richard Branson denouncing BHH, after making a deal with Saudi Arabia. As someone who puts Arab gasoline in his vehicle, PG is loath to throw stones.
No such inhibitions were on display during the podcast. At the 32 minute mark, RAM says “I have heard nobody in the gay community, no gay male, standing up for women on any level.” At 35 minutes, “no help for the African American community, no help for lesbians.”
At the 44 minute mark is a commercial break. Larry King, and his ?th wife, have a podcast. They invite you to see what it is like to live with him, and her. It is a material world.
After the break, BEE and RAM talked shop. The film industry is not as much fun as it never was. At the 57:29 mark, RAM says “I digress. Damn, I digress so much I forgot what I was talking about. … you know, Tom Cruise’s q rating isn’t what it used to be.” PG wonders what RAM’s q rating is today.
The poem today is adapted from Psalm 51. Pictures by chamblee54.
Rose McGowan Misogygate
The headline in the fb feed was not subtle. Rose McGowan: ‘Gay Men Are As Misogynistic As Straight Men, If Not More So’ PG had heard the little known celebrity say similar things on the Bret Easton Ellis Podcast a month earlier. Why was she flogging the same donkey twenty eight days later?
It turns out the barrage of McGowan media mulch is based on the podcast. When PG heard them the first time, it was dismissed as somebody with too many opinions. Now these same offerings were broadcast with wider distribution. Are we supposed to care what Rose McGowan thinks?
One issue is the Beverly Hills Hotel. It is owned by someone the community deems unworthy. A boycott was announced. The people working at the BHH were financially hurt by this boycott.
What Miss McGowan does not mention is the zero sum nature of the game. When the trendy people quit going to one facility, they find another one. The people who work at the new designated watering hole will make more money. The chances are good that the next legal drug emporium is owned by someone with opinions contrary to popular fashion. When one service industry employee loses, another service industry employee wins. It is not fair.
It is curious that misogygate is getting attention now. It is as if a press agent hit on a story, and all the media outlets on the chain got the call. Does Miss McGowan have some product that needs publicity? Is a more important story being pushed into the background? Why was this interview not the center of attention a month ago? Inquiring minds want to know.
Another ironic touch is the spectacle of a woman crying “gay misogyny” on the Bret Easton Ellis Podcast. Mr. Ellis, a gay man, has been dogged by charges of misogyny since the publication of “American Psycho.” He takes it in stride. *Insert profound comment about public figure dealing with accusations of incorrect thinking.*
Miss McGowan has issued an apology of sorts. Miss McGowan references a comment, by a gay man, about a character in a fictional tv show. It is tough to see how the comment justifies trash talk by a neo-celebrity. These things too shall pass away. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. Here is part two of the story.
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