Roll Model Biscuit Model
An internet facility (IF) called Mind Openerz recently posted a feature, Charles Bukowski’s Top 10 Tips for Living a Kick-Ass Life. Hank writes enjoyable stories and poems. This does not make him a role model. Even if the tales of degenerate lifestyle were exageratted for public consumption, as many suspect, the butt ugly drunkard is nothing to aspire to.
One thing to admire about Hank (a publisher thought that Charles would be a better selling pen name) was the volume of product. He would write dozens of poems, with the lines popping out “like hot turds the morning after a good beer drunk.” Keep the quantity up, and the quality takes care of itself.
Many of the rules for living were taken from his short stories. PG recently stumbled through Tales of Ordinary Madness, and recognized a few. Hank would toss words of wisdom into stories about being arrested. One time, it was for threatening to rape a lady with a codfish. You can’t beat fun at the old ballpark. Of course, Hank hated baseball, and hated poetry that rhymes. PG writes rhyming poems, with pictures of dogs in the background. Hank is dead, and his opinion doesn’t count.
The fun starts with rule number eight. “8. Have confidence in yourself. “The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts.” You are awesome, and all you have to do to let your true talents shine is believe that fact. Have complete confidence in yourself and you might be surprised with all you can achieve.”
Several of the stories of ordinary madness involve people who think they are poets, show work to Hank, and are insulted for the lousy ouput. The line in number eight was familiar, but PG was too slack to go looking through ordinary madness to find it. This is where you ask Mr. Google for help. The full quote: “The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
Execution Friday
This is a double repost, from april of 2009. It deals with the dominant religion of our culture, Jesus Worship. This is a religion of beliefs, not practices. There is a love of argument, and attempts at conversion. Jesus Worshipers believe that their ideas about life after death justify this abuse. Sometimes, the death part starts a bit sooner than necessary. Pictures today are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”
The other day Father Tony posted a video at Bilerico (ba LAIR i co) about how to argue. He acknowledged that he is a venomous person. FT used to be employed by the Catholic church. That is how he got his handle. PG thought on this for a while, and saw a connection. A little more thinking, and PG pondered that crowd pleaser, the religious argument.
Jesus Worship is a religion of beliefs, rather than practices. One of their key beliefs is the notion that you should convert those who disagree with you. If these people don’t agree with you about certain things, they go to hell. This lust to “evangelize” leads to a lot of arguments.
One of the rules for living/arguing that Father Tony expresses is that, yes, you are going to argue. This is especially true for romantic partnerships, but includes all sorts of human relating. How does this relate to religion? If you believe in a religion, does this mean you are compelled to argue with those who you disagree with?
Religious belief can be a source of strength and comfort to those lucky enough to be in the loop. For many of the rest of us, Religion (especially the Jesus Worship variety) is a source of venom. The endless arguments that believers loudly put forth spoil whatever benefits these beliefs can have. It is enough to make you wish you would never hear the word Jesus again.
PG got wound up today about a report involving super glue eight time zones away. Meanwhile, an 11 year old man, who stayed a few exits down the perimeter, hung himself.
The story was that the other kids at school gave him a tough time. “They called him gay and a snitch,” his stepfather said. Jaheem Herrera was from St. Croix in the American Virgin Islands. The picture shows that he had light skin. Dunaire Elementary School is on South Indian Creek Road in Stone Mountain. The area is predominantly African American.
PG does not know any of the kids who bullied Mr. Herrera. He suspects that many are Jesus Worshipers. The Jesus Worship Church has preachers that verbally abuse the congregation. The Jesus Worship Church has a book which teaches the hatred of homosexuals. They call it “The Word of G-d”.
The Jesus Worship Church has a phrase…”shame the devil”. PG wonders if “devil” was one of the things Mr. Herrera was called, along with gay and snitch. He looked different than his abusers, and was from a different place.
PG worked for seven years with an abusive professional Jesus Worshiper. He clearly remembers the time that “Pastor” streaked in front of him.
“Pastor” shouted down and humiliated PG one day, in the name of Jesus. After the mugging was over, “Pastor” got a phone call. He picked up the phone and screamed ” I never felt better in my life”.
Jesus Worship is an aggressive, angry business. Sometimes the results are fatal.
Lewis Grizzard
In the time between 1980 and 1994, if you lived in Atlanta you heard about Lewis Grizzard. Some people loved him. Some did not. He told good old boy stories about growing up in rural Georgia. Many of them were enjoyable. He also made social and political commentaries, which upset a few people.
PG had mixed feelings about Lewis. The stories about Kathy Sue Loudermilk and Catfish were funny. His opinions about gays, feminists, and anything non redneck could get on your nerves. His column for the fishwrapper upset PG at least twice a week.
In 1982, Lewis (he reached the level of celebrity where he was known by his first name only) wrote a column about John Lennon. Lewis did not understand why Mr. Ono was such a big deal. PG cut the column out of the fishwrapper, and put it in a box. Every few years, PG would be looking for something, find that column, and get mad all over again.
The New Georgia Encyclopedia has a page about Lewis, which expresses some of these contradictions. If Grizzard’s humor revealed the ambivalence amid affluence of the Sunbelt South, it reflected its conservative and increasingly angry politics as well. He was fond of reminding fault-finding Yankee immigrants that “Delta is ready when you are,” and, tired of assaults on the Confederate flag, he suggested sarcastically that white southerners should destroy every relic and reminder of the Civil War (1861-65), swear off molasses and grits, drop all references to the South, and begin instead to refer to their region as the “Lower East.” Grizzard also wore his homophobia and hatred for feminists on his sleeve, and one of the last of his books summed up his reaction to contemporary trends in its title, Haven’t Understood Anything since 1962 and Other Nekkid Truths (1992).
In the end, which came in 1994, when he was only forty-seven, the lonely, insecure, oft-divorced, hard-drinking Grizzard proved to be the archetypal comic who could make everyone laugh but himself. He chronicled this decline and his various heart surgeries in I Took a Lickin’ and Kept on Tickin’, and Now I Believe in Miracles (1993), published just before his final, fatal heart failure.
As you may have discerned, Lewis McDonald Grizzard Jr. met his maker on March 20, 1994. He was 47. There was a valve in his heart that wasn’t right. The good news is that he stayed out of the army. At the time, Vietnam was the destination for most enlistees. The bad news is that his heart problems got worse and worse, until it finally killed him.
Sixteen years later, PG found a website, Wired for Books. It is a collection of author interviews by Don Swaim, who ran many of them on a CBS radio show called Book Beat. There are two interviews with Lewis Grizzard. The first one was done to promote My Daddy Was a Pistol and I’m a Son of A Gun. This was the story of Lewis Grizzard Senior, who was another mixed bag.
PG found himself listening to this chat, and wondered what he had been missing all those years. The stories and one liners came flowing out like the Chattahoochee going under the perimeter highway. Daddy Grizzard was a soldier, who went to war in Europe and Korea. The second one did something to his mind, and he took to drinking. He was never quite right the rest of his life. His son from adored him anyway. When you put yourself in those loafers for a while, you began to taste the ingredients in that stew we called Lewis Grizzard.
PG still remembers the anger that those columns caused … he has his own story, and knows when his toes are stepped on. The thing is, after listening to this show, PG has an idea of why Lewis Grizzard wrote the things that he did. Maybe PG and Lewis aren’t all that different after all.
The pictures for this feature are from The Library of Congress. While picking out the pictures, PG listened to the other Lewis Grizzard show with Don Swaim. They both have last names that are often mispronounced. When Lewis wondered where Klansmen get those pointy hats… at the KKK mart, perhaps… PG had to stop the broadcast and write a postscript. This is a repost.
Jury Duty
April 15 is the day income tax returns are due. Many self anointed conservatives make noise on this day. 364 days a year they loudly celebrate American exceptionalism. When it is time to pay for it… One popular blogger had a story along those lines today. The chamblee54 comment: In paragraph one you say “full paragraphs necessitate the formation of full thoughts, which only come to those who write because they actually have something to say.” Paragraph five was “Fine. Maybe not.”
PG spent this April 15 with another tacky, but necessary, civic obligation: jury duty. During the educational video, SCOTUS parasite Samuel Alito said, in effect, that if you were on trial you would want someone, like yourself, on the jury. PG has a functioning BS detector. The average lawyer would not want PG in the same zip code as the jury room, if his client were on trial.
The day started at 5am. PG made breakfast, took the week’s trash to the street, and published a blog post about drones. This is the sort of expensive, big government activity that the conservatives don’t seem to mind. Drones kill children, and right to lifers say nothing.
The plan was to take marta to Dickhater. PG gets tired of driving all the time. When the time came to go to the station, PG slipped off the driveway, and tore up a slice of earth. He stopped to cover the skid mark with mulch. He got to the marta station in time to see the train leaving for downtown. The plan then became a drive to Dickhater. The parking deck was reached at 7:53am. The summons said to arrive at 8:15 am. Spell check suggestion for Dickhater: eradicate.
The entertainment did not begin until 8:37 am. PG probably could have caught the next train. There was little to do except watch the video, read a book, and wait. At 9:20 am, the MC asked a list of people if they had Safeway insurance. At 9:25 am, they were led to the courtroom, and the rest of the jurors were given a break until 10 am. At 10:21 am, the rest of the jury room was sent home.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a wonderful facility, offering downloads of thousands of public domain photographs. The LOC is a function of big government, and is supported with tax revenues. It’s annual budget would pay for a three drone strikes. The last statement was a made up statistic, and should not be used in any serious discussion. This collection of working women was taken in Philadelphia, PA. The photographer was Jack Delano, and the time was June 1943.
Drones
A giant art installation in Pakistan got some attention. An international committee displayed a large picture of a child, in an area that receives many drone strikes. The idea is to make drone controllers more aware of the human life on the ground.
A few days later, a commentary appeared, This Giant Art Piece in Pakistan Won’t Be Making Drone Pilots Feel Empathy. The author said the *target audience* of the piece was the empathetic public, not the drone controllers. There is a link to an article, where the psychological impact of drone warfare, on the controllers, is discussed. People in Yemen have a different perspective.
The drone war has been going on for some time now. It began under George W. Bush, and was intensified under Barack H. Obama. The “right to life” moving lips have been strangely silent. There are indications that fewer children are being killed now than before. Since the drone war is conducted by the secrecy oriented C.I.A., there is little way to *confirm or deny* these reports. Nor is it possible to determine the financial cost of this program. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Hawaiian Good Luck Sign
Dear Grand-daughter, The other day I went up to our local Christian book store and saw a ‘Honk if you love Jesus’ bumper sticker . I was feeling particularly sassy that day because I had just come from a thrilling choir performance, followed by a thunderous prayer meeting.
So, I bought the sticker and put it on my bumper. Boy, am I glad I did; what an uplifting experience that followed. I was stopped at a red light at a busy intersection, just lost in thought about the Lord and how good he is, and I didn’t notice that the light had changed. It is a good thing someone else loves Jesus because if he hadn’t honked, I’d never have noticed. I found that lots of people love Jesus!
While I was sitting there, the guy behind started honking like crazy, and then he leaned out of his window and screamed, ‘For the love of God!’ ‘Go! Go! Go! Jesus Christ, GO!’ What an exuberant cheerleader he was for Jesus! Everyone started honking! I just leaned out my window and started waving and smiling at all those loving people. I even honked my horn a few times to share in the love!
There must have been a man from Florida back there because I heard him yelling something about a sunny beach. I saw another guy waving in a funny way with only his middle finger stuck up in the air. I asked my young teenage grandson in the back seat what that meant. He said it was probably a Hawaiian good luck sign or something. Well, I have never met anyone from Hawaii , so I leaned out the window and gave him the good luck sign right back. My grandson burst out laughing. Why even he was enjoying this religious experience!! Praise the Lord!!!
A couple of the people were so caught up in the joy of the moment that they got out of their cars and started walking towards me. I bet they wanted to pray or ask what church I attended, but this is when I noticed the light had changed. So, grinning, I waved at all my brothers and sisters, and drove on through the intersection. I noticed that I was the only car that got through the intersection before the light changed again and felt kind of sad that I had to leave them after all the love we had shared.
So I slowed the car down, leaned out the window and gave them all the Hawaiian good luck sign one last time as I drove away. Praise the Lord for such wonderful folks!! Will write again soon, Love, Grandma. This repost is written like J. D. Salinger. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
Testing Whiteness And Privilege
In certain circles, the phrase “white privilege” gets a lot of lip service. The eyeball snatchers at buzzfeed are paying attention. They recently published two quiz features, How Stereotypically White Are You? and How Privileged Are You? PG decided to see how he fits in.
Buzzfeed questionnaires are usually problematic. The “how white” form is a bit different. There is only one question, “Have you ever… (check all that apply).” There is a list of 100 things you might have done. You check all the ones that apply. Number 91-100 are: 91 Attended a film festival? 92 Wanted to live in Portland? 93 Embroidered? 94 Gone camping in a snuggie? 95 Been to Burning Man? 96 Been on a horse in the ocean? 97 Bought the clear Band-Aids because all the other ones were too dark for your skin? 98 Taken a group holiday photo shoot with your friends? 99 Used the hashtag #WhitePeopleProblems because you are white and had a problem? 100 Been personally offended by a post about white people?
PG is not a normal person. Yes, there are few things that are more common than a unique person. Still, this list gave PG problems. He still had not checked any possibilities when he reached numbers 20 and 21. 20 Gotten up to go dance because “The Macarena” came on? 21 Done the same for “The Electric Slide”? PG has run away from the dance floor when “The Macarena” came on. Of course, there was that night at the 57th when “The Electric Slide” came on, PG tried to join in, and made a total fool of himself by not knowing the steps.
There were five other possibilities that PG checked. 25 Recommended an NPR podcast? 32 Laughed out loud to Monty Python? 65 A toga party? 89 Watched Fox News? 100 Been personally offended by a post about white people? One night, PG made a beer run. He walked into a liquor store wearing a toga. This should get extra points.
“You checked off 6 out of 100 possible white people scenarios. Congratulations, you are NOT white! You’re the first of your friends to perfect a new dance move and never have to worry about what level of SPF you should use. Heck, you might not even know what SPF stands for and that’s OK because the sun is your friend and that’s cool as shit.” The result was illustrated by a picture of Colin Powell.
The privilege quiz has a similar format. “Check off all the statements that apply to you.” The statements are not numbered this time. To facilitate this post, PG copied the list of statements. This perhaps should be a privilege sensitive option, but is not.
This list is a familiar litany of statements about race, sexuality, body types, income, and religion. If you are on the good side of these things, you are presumed to have privilege. Being a white cis male is an indication of privilege.
“You live with 30 out of 100 points of privilege. You’re not privileged at all. You grew up with an intersectional, complicated identity, and life never let you forget it. You’ve had your fair share of struggles, and you’ve worked hard to overcome them. We do not live in an ideal world and you had to learn that the hard way. It is not your responsibility to educate those with more advantages than you, but if you decide you want to, go ahead and send them this quiz. Hopefully it will help.” It is not certain how this quiz will help people with too much privilege. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Golf And Shopping
One Sunday afternoon, a man was playing golf. On the third hole, he hit the tee shot, and was walking down the fairway towards the ball. The fairway was next to a road. A funeral procession was driving down the road.
The man stopped his cart, got out, took his hat off and put it over his heart. He stood still, with his head bowed, until the mourners had driven by.
The playing partner of the man was astonished. “Don, why are you making such a big deal over that funeral procession”
“It was my wife”.
There was a small town once, with a Catholic Church, a Baptist Church, and a Jewish Synagogue.
One day the Catholics decided to give their priest a new car. They got an Audi, sprinkled a few drops of holy water on the hood, and gave it to the priest.
The Baptists thought this was a really good idea, and they decided to give their pastor a new vehicle. They got a Ford pickup truck, took it to a boat ramp, hooked a winch up to the front, and lowered the truck into the lake until it was completely covered in water.
Not to be outdone, the Jewish congregation decided their rabbi needed a new ride. They bought a Lexus, and cut half an inch off the tail pipe.
A woman was in town on a shopping trip. She began her day finding the most perfect shoes in the first shop and a beautiful dress on sale in the second. In the third, everything had just been reduced by 50 percent, when her mobile phone rang.
It was a doctor notifying her that her husband had just been in a terrible car accident and was in critical condition and in the ICU.
The woman told the doctor to inform her husband where she was and that she’d be there as soon as possible. As she hung up she realized she was leaving what was shaping up to be her best day ever in the boutiques. She decided to get in a couple of more shops before heading to the hospital.
She ended up shopping the rest of the morning, finishing her trip with a cup of coffee and a beautiful chocolate cake slice, compliments of the last shop. Then she remembered her husband.
Feeling guilty, she dashed to the hospital. She saw the doctor in the corridor and asked about her husband’s condition. The lady doctor glared at her and shouted, “You went ahead and finished your shopping trip didn’t you! I hope you’re proud of yourself! While you were out for the past four hours enjoying yourself in town, your husband has been languishing in the Intensive Care Unit! It’s just as well you went ahead and finished, because it will more than likely be the last shopping trip you ever take! For the rest of his life he will require round-the-clock care. And he will now be your career!”
The woman was feeling so guilty she broke down and sobbed.
The lady doctor then chuckled. “I’m just pulling your leg. He’s dead. Show me what you bought.”
Thank you Gartalker for the last story. This is a repost.
Pictures are from the “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”
Gasoline Tactics
This information was originally posted six years ago. PG received a chain letter email about gasoline prices, with these suggestions. With demand increasing, and supply decreasing, the price of petroleum is going to go up. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Only buy or fill up your car or truck in the early morning when the ground temperature is still cold. Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground. The colder the ground the more dense the gasoline. When it gets warmer gasoline expands. When you pump in the afternoon or in the evening… your gallon is not exactly a gallon. In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and the temperature of the gasoline plays an important role.
When you’re filling up do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to a fast mode. If you look you will see that the trigger has three (3) stages: low, middle, and high. You should be pumping on low speed, thereby minimizing the vapors that are created while you are pumping. All hoses at the pump have a vapor return. If you are pumping on the fast rate, some liquid that goes to your tank becomes vapor. Those vapors are being sucked up and back into the underground storage tank so you’re getting less fuel for your money.
Fill up when your gas tank is HALF FULL or HALF EMPTY. The more gas you have in your tank the less air is occupying the empty space. Gasoline evaporates faster than you might imagine. Gasoline storage tanks have an internal floating roof. This roof serves as zero clearance between the gas and the atmosphere, so it minimizes the evaporation.
If there is a gasoline truck pumping into the storage tanks when you stop , DO NOT fill up–most likely the gasoline is being stirred up as the gas is being delivered. You might pick up some of the dirt that normally settles on the bottom.
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 in the wasted years of ignorance and, at the same time, an ecstasy of joy at being freed from the shackles of such ignorance … I learned many things in the quiet of that room … I learned that everything is or becomes its own opposite … it releases inhibition. You know, we are all unconsciously holding our anus. 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 … I seemed to be in a world of healthy, chubby little babies’ legs and diapers, smeared blood, a sort of general menstrual activity taking place … 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.”
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
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