Free Bacon
There was a tweet. Perspicacious One @JessSmith_TPC LOLOLOL Can’t make this stuff up @EWErickson President’s Speech Defending Obamacare Nearly Kills Innocent Woman http://shar.es/ES3kQ. The link is to a story, President’s Speech Defending Obamacare Nearly Kills Innocent Woman. The medium is something called The Washington Free Beacon. Free Bacon is a typo.
TWFB has some interesting stories. When PG was a kid, his mother said story when she meant lie. One entertaining example is Pro-Iranian Regime Journalist Defends Controversial Tweet Former translator for Ahmadinejad called WSJ editor ‘Iranian House Negro’. The offending tweeter owns a fashion blog, the house of Majd. Rumors that Mr. Ahmadinejad is a model cannot be confirmed.
A more believable story is Netanyahu’s Mission: To Head Off Iran Sanctions Relief. The thought of a deal between Iran and the West is very troubling to Israel. An important distraction to the Palestinian tragedy would be removed by the rehabilitation of Iran. One interesting section of the story mentions 911 labor supplier Saudi Arabia. “Saudi Arabia, another key U.S. ally in the Middle East, is also deeply worried about any sign of a deal between Washington and the kingdom’s arch-rival, Iran.”
Free Bacon is the order of the day in the last story we will look at. USDA Celebrates Forcing Kids to Try Kale, Chard, Collard Greens. “The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) extolled a local elementary school in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. for making its students try broccoli gratin, Tuscan kale, and beet hummus, as an example of the department’s efforts to fight obesity.” Photographs today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Brookhaven Arts Festival
It was a lovely Sunday afternoon. The air was cool. The Falcons won. Before you knew it four o’clock arrived. It was too late to go the festival downtown. PG threw a few layers on, put air in his tires, and took off to downtown Brookhaven.
The Brookhaven Arts Festival is not that big. PG chained his bike to a telephone pole, and took off on foot. Before long, he heard the band, GLOW. They were playing “Joy to the world”. A few nights before, PG met someone named Jeremiah at a party. “You don’t look like a bullfrog”.
The stage was the site of a pre-Marta recording studio. A phantom mirrored ball spun overhead as the band played “Boogie Oogie Oogie”. GLOW is a gaggle of singers, backed by guitar, bass, and keyboards. The third number was “Bohemian Rhapsody”. The lady singer got higher than Freddie Mercury ever dared. Mama, life has just begun.
GLOW finished playing. The MC said the festival was over. PG started to ride down Peachtree View, past the site of the purple house. A parking garage is under construction now. The purple house had a purple van in front, with big green letters that said “Greedy Developers Suck”.
Dinner, at the Swallow and Suffer, followed the festival. There was an unexpected twist. PG got veal parmesan, instead of chicken fingers. Sometimes, you need to try new things. Uzi said the next step would be signing up for cable television.
PG had looked for the health department paperwork on the way in, and found an open Bible instead. The HD score was behind the cash register. You don’t see it until you are ready to leave. The score, eighty one, should have been ninety. The cook was wearing a watch. Nine points were taken off.
Read It Four Times
In 1956, William Faulkner gave an interview, William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12. If you have the time, the entire interview is worth reading. The story of his experience as a Hollywood screenwriter is worth the price of admission. Here are a few quotes to go between the pictures.
PR: Then what would be the best environment for a writer?
FAULKNER: Art is not concerned with environment either; it doesn’t care where it is. If you mean me, the best job that was ever offered to me was to become a landlord in a brothel. In my opinion it’s the perfect milieu for an artist to work in. It gives him perfect economic freedom; he’s free of fear and hunger; he has a roof over his head and nothing whatever to do except keep a few simple accounts and to go once every month and pay off the local police. The place is quiet during the morning hours, which is the best time of the day to work. There’s enough social life in the evening, if he wishes to participate, to keep him from being bored; it gives him a certain standing in his society; he has nothing to do because the madam keeps the books; all the inmates of the house are females and would defer to him and call him “sir.” All the bootleggers in the neighborhood would call him “sir.” And he could call the police by their first names.
So the only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost. All the wrong environment will do is run his blood pressure up; he will spend more time being frustrated or outraged. My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey…
PR: Some people say they can’t understand your writing, even after they read it two or three times. What approach would you suggest for them?
FAULKNER: Read it four times.
PR: You mentioned experience, observation, and imagination as being important for the writer. Would you include inspiration?
FAULKNER: I don’t know anything about inspiration because I don’t know what inspiration is—I’ve heard about it, but I never saw it.
PR: As a writer you are said to be obsessed with violence.
FAULKNER: That’s like saying the carpenter is obsessed with his hammer. Violence is simply one of the carpenter’s tools. The writer can no more build with one tool than the carpenter can…
PR: What about the European writers of that period?
FAULKNER: The two great men in my time were Mann and Joyce. You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith…
PR: Would you comment on the future of the novel?
FAULKNER: I imagine as long as people will continue to read novels, people will continue to write them, unless of course the pictorial magazines and comic strips finally atrophy man’s capacity to read, and literature really is on its way back to the picture writing in the Neanderthal cave…
PR: You gave a statement to the papers at the time of the Emmett Till killing. Have you anything to add to it here?
FAULKNER: No, only to repeat what I said before: that if we Americans are to survive it will have to be because we choose and elect and defend to be first of all Americans; to present to the world one homogeneous and unbroken front, whether of white Americans or black ones or purple or blue or green. Maybe the purpose of this sorry and tragic error committed in my native Mississippi by two white adults on an afflicted Negro child is to prove to us whether or not we deserve to survive. Because if we in America have reached that point in our desperate culture when we must murder children, no matter for what reason or what color, we don’t deserve to survive, and probably won’t.
Winching The Dead
A recent post included the phrase “getting severely overweight dead people out of an apartment building.” Those are googling words. Most of the results are hand wringing about the number of overweight people. A couple of the results were worth clicking out.
The headline result is from Merry Olde England, which is becoming known as the fattest country in Europe. Fire service called in 50 times to winch fat people out.
“Paramedics in the West Midlands have had to call on their heavy-lifting emergency service colleagues, despite having extra equipment to help move extremely heavy patients themselves. Over a three-year period they called in West Midlands Fire and Rescue Service on 50 occasions, so the patients could be winched out with apparatus designed for lifting car wrecks. Sometimes morbidly obese patients, … can only be extracted from their homes after a window is taken out, say firefighters.
… Nick Harrison, chairman of the West Midlands Fire Brigades Union, said: “In most cases these people are quite elderly and are suffering from serious medical issues which have left them bedridden for a long time, and they have put on a lot of weight. “Many times we have to remove the whole window frame and get them out that way. It’s a lot safer both for them and for the rescuers.”
… Official statistics show the West Midlands to be the fattest region in Britain, which is itself the fattest major country in Europe. According to the Association of Public Health Observatories, about 25 per cent of adults in Britain are now clinically obese. In the West Midlands, the figure is 29 per cent. By comparison, across the European Union as a whole it is just 14 per cent. “
One of the commenters had a constructive suggestion: “The ‘feeders’ should be brought to court and punished. For every obese person there is one or more ‘feeders’, who shop, supply the food, help the person eat it etc. Being a ‘feeder’ should be a criminal offense.”
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
Brain Test
The home page of Sommer+Sommer has text in German. They have an english language test, Which side of your brain is more dominant? They call it “The 30-Second Brain Test.” PG is a cracker, and took a bit longer. They should wait until after football season.
The test is kind of strange. The first question is a video of a dancer going in circles. You are given two buttons, The one of the left is counter clockwise, and the one on the right is clockwise. Next is “Choose the color, not the word. You have 4 seconds for each task.” The name of a color is on top, in all caps and no serif. There are two colors below, with the name of the color matching the text. You look at the text on top, and click on the correct color. It is not as easy as it sounds.
You then choose between some line drawings.” Of the following, which picture appeals to you most?” “This picture is most similar to … ” “Of the following, which picture best fits the theme of friendship?”
The next series of questions is a bit unfair. “Put your hand on your head. Which hand did you use?” If you are working the mouse with your right hand, you probably use the left hand. “Cross your hands over your chest. Which hand is on top?” “Cross your legs. Which leg is on top?” People working at a desk might find that one a challenge. “Look at an object and close one eye. Which eye is still open?”
PG took the test twice. The first time he gave honest answers. The second time he was taking notes, and gave dishonest answers. The results were the same both times. “Congratulations You use your brain equally.” You can click through to a page that explains the answers.
A Trillion Dollars
This piece is selections from previously published material. The full post of part one is available, if you are interested in stories about Richard Nixon and Antonin Scalia. One part we are using today is about Ronald Reagan, and the federal budget. Federal finances have been in the news lately, and Congress has made a bad situation worse. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
… The last quote is from another POTUS who is no longer with us, Ronald Reagan. “I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.” Mr. Reagan was a professional actor, and he knew the value of a good script.
This slogan is another one that Mr. Obama may find handy. It should be noted that it was a big deal when the national debt (the grand total of the deficits) went over a trillion dollars. This was during the first term of Mr. Reagan. Today, under Mr. Obama, the annual deficit is over a trillion dollars. Sooner or later, you are talking about real money.
PG suffered brain damage trying to find out more about the quote from Mr. Reagan. He went through six pages of google. There must be 25 sites which have lists of quotes from Mr. Reagan, and all of them feature this quote. None have an actual source.
What was the context? When did he first say it? One site says it was “(during the latter years of his administration)”. Another site says it was “Said often during his presidency, 1981-1989”. Maybe this is an urban legend. As Mr. Reagan said, don’t believe everything you read on the internet.
Those of a certain age remember Everett Dirksen. A Republican Senator from Illinois, he was blessed with an operatic voice, and cursed with a face that could stop a clock. He is credited (or blamed) for the quote ” A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” The Dirksen Congressional Center can neither confirm nor deny if he really said that. The discussion of this reputed quote does turn up a passage, that is germane to today’s conversation.
“One time in the House of Representatives [a colleague] told me a story about a proposition that a teacher put to a boy. He said, ‘Johnny, a cat fell in a well 100 feet deep. Suppose that cat climbed up 1 foot and then fell back 2 feet. How long would it take the cat to get out of the well?’
“Johnny worked assiduously with his slate and slate pencil for quite a while, and then when the teacher came down and said, ‘How are you getting along?’ Johnny said, ‘Teacher, if you give me another slate and a couple of slate pencils, I am pretty sure that in the next 30 minutes I can land that cat in hell. If some people get any cheer out of a $328 billion debt ceiling, I do not find much to cheer about concerning it.” [Congressional Record, June 16, 1965, p. 13884].
Senator Dirksen went to the fundraising dinner in the sky September 7, 1969. Twelve years later, the Reagan revolution was getting started. Taxes were cut, and spending increased. In a couple of years, the national debt went over a trillion dollars. (The annual budget deficit is now over a trillion dollars.) For those new to the game, a trillion is a billion, multiplied by a thousand. For all the numbers above, multiply by a thousand, to get a trillion.
In 1965, Senator Dirksen was losing sleep, over raising the national debt to $328 billion. The current national debt is estimated at $16,964,687,666,420. This is 5171% of 328 billion.
In 1965, the national debt was $328 billion, and we were losing 100 men every week in Vietnam. One of the more expensive things the government does is fight wars. Currently we are officially killing people in Afghanistan, and several more countries that no one knows about (nudge wink).
On September 11, 2001, The United States was attacked. Revenge was the order of the day. There are now indications that this was one of the goals of Al Queda. The Soviet Union imploded, in large part, because of the strain of fighting a war in Afghanistan. Now, the United States is waist deep in the same big muddy. Whoever is elected in 2016 will have to deal with this matter.
Afghanistan has a gross national product of $27billion. The Congressional Research Service estimates the cost of American operations in Afghanistan for 2011 to be $119 billion. This is over four times the gross national product of Afghanistan. Pretty soon, you are talking about real money.
The Church Sign
Religion is very personal. When you have a miserable experience with Jesus, it will not go away because of glib expressions of someone else’s beliefs. When you put a sign by the road, you don’t know who is going to see it. You don’t know how they are going to be feeling.
I was driving to dinner one night, when I drove by Briarcliff United Methodist Church. This facility is on a busy road. They have a sign in front, with a message that changes from time to time. This night, I was in a bad mood. I was thinking about people who have humiliated me for Jesus. The sign in front of BUMC said “When was the last time you prayed?”
The concept of prayer is collateral damage in my struggle with Jesus. As I became alienated from Jesus, the idea of a person talking to G-d seems selfish and self aggrandizing. There is something about having an angry bully for Jesus snarling “I’m going to pray for you brother” that makes the concept of prayer repulsive. Prayer should not be a weapon in an argument.
There is another thing to consider here. Pushy Jesus worshipers assume that they have the right to grill you about a sensitive personal issue. The idea of saying this to passing motorists is incredibly disrespectful. It is none of your business if I pray.
I looked up BUMC on the internet when I got home. They have a modern website. The top tab on the menu said “Prayer Requests.” This is probably for people who are facing a crisis, and want someone to pray for them. Maybe you can leave a prayer non-request. Ask them to respect discomfort with their religion, and don’t put offensive messages by the roadside.
Further down on the website is an email address (church@briarcliffumc.com.) While not expecting a miracle, I decided to send them an email. Here is the text of that message.
You have a message board in front of your church. The message when I went by was “When was the last time you prayed?” I was offended by this message.
I have had a tough time with religion. I have been humiliated many, many times because of Jesus. I have heard about your scheme for life after death thousands of times, and simply do not agree with it. An intrusive roadway sign is not going to change my mind.
My belief is that my opinions about G-d, the bible, Jesus, and life after death, are none of your business. If I trust you enough to discuss these matters, then we can have a discussion. Having a rude sign by the road side is not going to enable me to trust you.
Even though it is none of your business, I am going to answer your question. Even though I was talking to G-d, and not to you, I am going to repeat what I said. “G-d please help these people to have respect for their neighbor, and take that awful sign down”.
Oscar Wilde
Today is Oscar Wilde’s birthday. On this day in 1854, he appeared in Dublin, Ireland. He is one of the most widely quoted people in the english language. Some of those quotes are real. Since he was a published author, it should be easy to verify what he really said.
One night in 1974, PG was talking to someone, and did not know who Oscar Wilde was. The conversational partner was horrified. PG became educated, and learned about a misunderstanding with the Marquess of Queensberry. Soon the “Avenge Oscar Wilde” signs made sense.
Mr. Wilde once made a speaking tour in the United States. One afternoon, in Washington D.C., the playwright met Walt Whitman. Thee and thou reportedly did the “Wilde thing”.
The tour then went to Georgia. A young black man had been hired as a valet for Mr. Wilde on this tour. On the train ride from Atlanta to Augusta, some people told Mr. Wilde that he could not ride in the same car as the valet. This was very confusing.
After his various legal difficulties, Oscar Wilde moved to Paris. He took ill, while staying in a tacky hotel. He looked up, and said “either that wallpaper goes, or I do”. Soon, Oscar Wilde passed away.
Two Thirds Of A Joke
1. The fattest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference.
He acquired his size from eating too much pi.
2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.
3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.
4. The teacher confiscated a rubber band pistol was confiscated from a student in an algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption.
5. No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.
6. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.
7. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.
8. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
9. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.
10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
11. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
12. A baseball cap and a beret were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. The beret said to the cap:
‘You stay here; I’ll go on a head.
13. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
14. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: ‘Keep off the Grass.’
15. The midget fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
16. The soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.
17. A backward poet writes inverse.
18. In a democracy it’s your vote that counts. In feudalism it’s your count that votes.
19. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.
20. If you jumped off the bridge in Paris, you’d be in Seine.
21. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, ‘I’m sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.’
22. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says ‘Dam!’
23. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft.
Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can’t have your kayak and heat it too.
24. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, ‘I’ve lost my electron.’ The other says ‘Are you sure?’
The first replies, ‘Yes, I’m positive.’
25. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal?
He wanted to transcend dental medication.
26. There was the person who sent ten puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.
27. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
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