Definition Of Racist
The unpronounceable one, Carl Hiassen, had a feature recently, “Another boondoggle in the works.” Someone wants to government to contribute eight, or nine digits to the renovation of a football stadium. A lot of people don’t think this is a good idea, but their opinions don’t matter. The role of the taxpayer is to pay the bills, and keep quiet.
Eight degrees north, a similar discussion is going on. The forces of evil want the taxpayers to help pay for the Blank Bowl. Jim Galloway noted a few days ago that this affair has gone through a subtle shift. The talks have gone to the Atlanta City Council, away from the Georgia Lesterslature. When a deal is too odious for the gold dome bandits, the public should be concerned.
The affair has also moved away from the attention of the press. This is where the players want the deal to be done. Arthur Blank is on the board of directors of Cox enterprises. He can turn the publicity spigot off when he wants to. Stadium deals are like mushrooms: they flourish in the dark, and live on a diet of animal waste.
The second part of this double feature is borrowed from WTF Japan Seriously. HT to World Class Stupid. The facility has a picture of a woman in a mask shop, holding up some product. This is a white woman, holding up a mask with POC features. People in the comments are buzzing. Most of these thoughts are from AnonymousFebruary. It is not noted where AF lives.
One of the comments has a super sentence. The definition of racist does not encapsulate the entirety of what racism is. It is not known if the commenter is a POC. Some say that only POC are qualified to render judgements on the racisisicity of a entity, so this is an important distinction. 
yes you are a racist if you think this is racist, like the chick in the picture holding it up, ignoring the other types of masks of the the types of races
Its a Bobby Ologun Mask. He is kind of famous in Japan. So i wouldn´t call it racist.
Look up the definition of “racist” and explain how it pertains to this photo. Some people are just way too uptight and would probably crap a diamond if you shoved coal up their bums.
I don’t understand what people see racist in these things, its just a caricature. It simply exaggerates the obvious visual charakteristics of somebody, here of a black person. Yes, some are just stereotypes, like the hooknose in caricatures of jews, but so what? Is somebody less of a human being because he or she has prominent lips, epicanthic folds or freckles? It’s just comedy, these are carnival masks, if somebody finds that racist they are either oversensitive or closet racists, I can’t think of any other reason why one would find offense in these.
100% racist. The japanese barely tolerate the “white devil”, so it is no surprise they do stuff like this with the “black shit”.
Yes, this is a mask of Bobby Ologun. Can’t make somebody’s mask? Aren’t there lots of Obama’s in US?
In the eyes of some sort of bleeding-heart, liberal, vegan, pro-life, white american softee then, yes, unfortunately this is probably seen as terrible and racist. To the rest of us, its funny, harmless and the last thing in our minds is skin color. (This comment got a reply.) “pro-life” is not like the others
i want a mask of her face. its hilarious and just as ‘offensive.’
yeah, let’s go to a country with a completely different culture and a different view on lot of things like humor and racism, and complain that it’s not the same like ours… i don’t see a problem, stop being oversensitive PC wussies…
After reading these replies, I wonder if the people crying “racist” even know what that word means or are they just the overly-sensitive, politically correct fools who are ruining society?
It’s racist. The definition of racist does not encapsulate the entirety of what racism is. This mask is an example of what’s known as blackface.
It’s Racist. The character that is well known is also a racist depiction. A hooked nose depiction of jews is also racist. Just because it maybe done for comedic effect, or its a carnival mask doesn’t make it not racist. It’s essential a mask of character done up like an American minstrel show.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Bathtubs In The US Capitol
Two days ago, 99invisible posted a show, The Bathtubs or the Boiler Room . It seems as though an NPR reporter likes to go places she is not supposed to be in. In the basement of the US Capitol, she found a bathtub, carved out of a chunk of Italian marble.
“The bathtubs were installed around 1860 during the expansion of the Capitol. DC is known for its swampy summers, and legend has it that senators could be banished from the chamber if they were too smelly. But lawmakers—like most Americans at the time—didn’t have indoor plumbing at home. They needed a place where they could wash up. So, the Architect of the Capitol ordered six marble bath tubs, each three by seven feet and carved by hand in Italy, to be installed in the Capitol basement—three on the House side, three on the senate.”
The tubs were imported from Italy, and sent to the port of Baltimore. They arrived just in time for the War Between The States. They were quite a luxurious item. Today, they are forgotten, surrounded by HVAC machines, with one covered with plywood and file cabinets.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
Listen To The Gut
There is a festive graphic going around on facebook. It is about bullying, which no one is going to say they like. Like gossiping, it is a custom which few will admit to, but many practice. The definition is elastic, and gets bigger every day.
PG agrees with the first part of the graphic. He has been humiliated by Jesus worshipers. The problem with the graphic is the last two sentences. “Re-post if you are against bullying. I bet 99% of you won’t, but repost this if you’re that 1% with a heart.” Can we say passive aggressive bullying? 
The good news is that what can be displayed can be altered. A few minutes with an image manipulation program, and you can doctor the graphic into a more palatable message. It still goes on too long, but that is a problem for someone else. If you want to see the uncensored graphic, go here.
Teddy Roosevelt is a popular former POTUS. He reportedly was fond of saying “bully”. Only that isn’t what he really said. The rough rider used an eight letter word for bovine excrement.
It is said that if a man isn’t a liberal when he is twenty, he doesn’t have a heart, and if he is not a conservative when he is forty he doesn’t have a brain. PG is moving in on twenty plus forty. The possession of a heart, and a brain, is uncertain.
What is evident beyond doubt is the ownership of a gut. When someone tells PG to repost a message to prove he is not a terrible person, it does not agree with his gut.
This is written like H. P. Lovecraft. Pictures are by Chamblee54.
Hate Our Freedom
Angry Arab said this. “A friend wrote that on Facebook: “”Dear US government: We don’t hate you because we hate your freedom; we hate you because you hate our freedom.”
If you have a few minutes, here is the long version. Pictures of Egyptians are here. Pictures of Americans are from The Library of Congress.
This was first posted as TKS Lina on February 6, 2011. At the time, Egypt was in turmoil. Within a week, Mr. Mubarek would be out of power.
Today, the transition in Egypt continues. The battle against the Arab establishment has moved to Syria. The government there is less squeamish about killing it’s citizens. No one really knows for sure how that will turn out, except that more will die.
Most readers will not follow the link to the “long version”. Here is one key paragraph. “The tail has long wagged the dog in American Middle East policy. The rotten order of the modern Middle East has been based on wily local elites stealing their way to billions while they took all the aid they could from the United States, even as they bit the hand that fed them. First the justification was the putative threat of International Communism … More recently the cover story has been the supposed threat of radical Islam, which is a tiny fringe phenomenon in most of the Middle East that in some large part was sowed by US support for the extremists in the Cold War as a foil to the phantom of International Communism. And then there is the set of myths around Israel, that it is necessary for the well-being of the world’s Jews, that it is an asset to US security, that it is a great ethical enterprise– all of which are false.”
The long version was posted in Informed Comment. This is an excellent source of information about the Middle East. Today’s headline is about a Palestinian prisoner who died in Israeli custody.
There was another story. “Meanwhile, militant, armed Jewish supremacists on Saturday attacked the Palestinian village of Kusra shooting two residents with live ammunition and chopping down olive trees and causing other property damage.”
In the two years since this post first appeared, BHO has been reelected POTUS. This is despite right ring criticism that he did not support Israel sufficiently. How he will deal with the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East remains to be seen.
Gruß
take a growl
add a vowel
finish with a hiss
make a word
before dinner say grace
the front yard grows grass
lubricate the gears with grease
take a vacation in Greece
144 count is a gross
greet Germans with Gruß
The Grease Of G-d
A longtime friend of PG wrote: The death of Mindy McCready has given me pause to stop and think. I wonder who thought it would be okay for a grieving woman with suicidal tendencies to stay in a house where her significant other killed himself just a month before? I read an outcry by people who blamed the lack of gun control as the cause. Her weapon of choice was not a gun, it was her depression. If pills had been close I guarantee she would have chosen that path of destruction taken to it’s end result. When she was thrown in jail for her drug fueled probation violation, I knew that was not the action to take. But who am I to say anything other than, but by the grace of God, there could go I.
To begin with, PG does not follow country music. The first time he had heard of Mindy McCready was the news of her suicide. It is like turning the tv onto a movie in the last five minutes.
That said, and with a certain ignorance of the story affirmed, there are a few comments springing out of the discussion. One is the comparison of guns to pills. Most pills have a medical purpose. The misuse of these substances through self medication seems to happen, no matter how many rules get made. A pistol, on the other hand, is designed to kill or intimidate.
A pistol is much more efficient at delivering death than a pill bottle. Yes, excessive consumption of substances can lead to an early grave, but there is always the chance that you can sober up, get detoxed, and live a few more decayed decades. If you decide that your troubles are too much, and you use a pistol, then the odds of recovery are slim. It should be noted that the judgement used to make this decision is often clouded by the pills in question. The decision to end your life is usually not made with a clear head.
There was one more saying that caught PG… “but by the grace of G-d, there could go I.” As readers of Chamblee54 know, PG has conflicted views about G-d. Religion can be a source of misery, and making excuses for the spirit at the center can get old.
There is another, broader view of this saying. If you see G-d as being the feng shui of the planet, then it makes a bit more sense. PG has taken more than his share of chances. Some of them have been incredibly foolish. He has been caught a few times. Still, he is here, writing this post, fifty nine years after it started. Maybe it is the grease of G-d that lubricates life, so that the gears continue to turn.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Umbrage
The kitchen pricked him,
discovering mother’s need to devour her life
with comforting quiescence.
A sense of umbrage,
a hanging pink impatiens plant,
and spray remnants of corporeality
were wrapped around the rifle.
Liberal Conservative
Liberal and conservative are meaningless labels.
This is true with capital, or small letters.
The use of these words as insults says more about the talker,
than the object of derision.
The same goes for terrorist.
Hypocrisy is in the eye of the beholder.
Is Georgia Smart Enough To Kill People?
The fishwrapper has two stories this morning. Both confirm the notion that the State of Georgia is not smart enough to handle capital punishment.
Warren Hill stay of execution stands deals with the black man scheduled for execution this week. ” A psychiatrist and two psychologists who worked for the state recently told Hill’s lawyer that they had been rushed to make an evaluation 13 years ago, that they are now more experienced than they were then and there had been advances made in the profession’s understanding of mental retardation.” If the court had waited a half hour to act, it would have been too late.
Court of Appeals stays execution scheduled for Thursday deals with the white man scheduled to die. (The GDC seems to keep a white-black equality of prisoners executed.) ” the appellate judges are considering whether a prison pharmacy must first have a doctor’s prescription before it can dispense pentobarbital, the sedative that the state has opted to use as its only drug in lethal injections.”
For some reason, when states decided to poison death row inmates, a three drug protocol was chosen. When the inevitable lawsuit went to the Supreme Court, this was the method of execution that was ruled on. As time went on, some of the substances used were no longer available.
In the “Kentucky Protocol”, the first of three drugs was a sedative. The second paralyzed the prisoner, and the third stopped the heart. The third substance caused excruciating pain, which is why the first two substances were used. In several executions in Georgia, there were indications that the sedative used was not effective. The prisoner was aware that a substance causing a “caustic burning sensation” was being injected into his body. Since the second drug paralyzed the prisoner, witnesses did not have to see the prisoner writhe in pain.
The executions this week were to be the first to use a deliberate overdose of pentobarbital. Anesthetizing the public conscience: lethal injection and animal euthanasia has more to say about this.
In the late 1970s, when Texas was considering whether to adopt Oklahoma’s three-drug lethal injection formula for the execution of prisoners, Dr. Ralph Gray, the doctor in charge of medical care in Texas prisons, consulted with a Texas veterinarian named Dr. Gerry Etheredge. Dr. Etheredge told Dr. Gray that veterinarians used an overdose of one drug, an anesthetic called sodium pentobarbital, to euthanize animals and that it was a “very safe, very effective, and very cheap” method of euthanasia. Dr. Etheredge remembers that Dr. Gray had only one objection to using a similar method to execute human beings. “He said it was a great idea,” Dr. Etheredge recalled, “except that people would think we are treating people the same way that we’re treating animals. He was afraid of a hue and cry.” Texas rejected Dr. Etheredge’s one-drug, anesthetic-only recommendation and, in 1982, became the first state to actually use lethal injection–via the three-drug formula–as a method of execution.
The situation has rotten optics. The state of Georgia is dispensing drugs without a prescription. If you do this on the street, you are breaking the law. If you do get a Doctor to write a prescription, then he is *probably* violating some medical ethics. (PG is not a lawyer, nor a doctor.) Some say that the criminals on death row deserve having a “caustic burning sensation” injected in the right arm, or wherever they can find a good vein. The question is why the state doesn’t have to obey it’s own laws.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. UPDATE The stay of execution has been lifted. Mr. Cook is scheduled to die at 7:00 pm. UPDATE TWO The Guardian reports Georgia rushes to carry out executions before lethal drug supply expires. It seems as though the official state stash of pentobarbital will expire on March 1. The state does not know where it will get a new supply. UPDATE THREE The top tweet at #AndrewCook is a sponsored tweet promoting the Art Institute of Atlanta. Apparently AIA made an award winning Doritos commercial, and they thought this was the place to boast. UPDATE FOUR Andrew Cook died at 11:22 pm, February 21, 2013.
Peachtree Street 2013
PG finished a book, Peachtree Street-Atlanta. The author is William Bailey Williford, and it was published by the University of Georgia Press in 1962. PG found this at the Chamblee library, and this is probably the best way to find this book today.
How this road got the name Peachtree is a good question. Most peaches grow south of the fall line. The story goes that there was a Creek Indian village called Standing Peachtree, located where Peachtree Creek runs into the Chattahoochee. During the war of 1812 Fort Peachtree was built on this site.
There was a trail that ran from Buckhead to an intersection with the Sandtown Trail, at what is now Five Points. A short distance south of this intersection was a settlement known as White Hall. For many years, Peachtree Street south of Five Points was known as Whitehall Road. At some point in the last thirty years, a decision was made to change Whitehall to Peachtree. It did not help the rundown condition of Whitehall Street.
In 1835 Governor Wilson Lumpkin decided that Georgia should build a Railroad that would be centered near the junction of Peachtree Trail and Sandtown Trail. The new town was named “Marthasville”, after the youngest daughter of the Governor. Martha Lumpkin is a resident of Oakland Cemetery today.
The village was soon renamed Atlanta, which was a feminine form of Atlantic. Houses, churches, and businesses were soon built on Peachtree Road. In 1856, Richard Peters built a flour mill. To insure a steady supply of firewood, he bought four hundred acres of land, for five dollars an acre. The land was between Eighth Street, North Avenue, Argonne Avenue, and Atlantic Drive.
Another pioneer citizen with a large landholding was George Washington (Wash) Collier. Mr. Collier bought 202 acres for $150 in 1847. The land was between West Peachtree, Fourteenth Street, Piedmont Road, Montgomery Ferry Road, and the Rhodes Center. Much of the land was used for the development of Ansley Park.
In 1854, Atlanta entertained, for the first time, a man who had been President. On May 2, Millard Fillmore arrived from Augusta on a private rail car.
There was some unpleasantness in 1864, which we will not concern ourselves with.
In 1866, there was a shocking murder. John Plaster was found dead, in an area known as “tight squeeze”. This was an area of shanties, at the present location of Crescent Avenue and Tenth Street. A hundred years later, this was near “the strip”, Atlanta’s hippie district, also called “Tight Squeeze”.
As the nineteenth century rolled along, many mansions were built on Peachtree Street. The road was paved, and streetcars ran up and down. Automobiles came, and came, and came. An expressway was built in the 1950’s, and quickly became obsolete. One by one, the mansions were torn down and replaced with businesses and churches.
The book was written in 1962, when the party was just getting started. The High Museum was known then as the Atlanta Art Association. In June of 1962, a plane full of prominent Atlanta residents crashed in Paris, killing all on board. As a memorial to those people, the Memorial Arts Center on Peachtree, at Fifteenth Street, was built.
Another phenomenon which is not explained by the book is the custom of naming everything here Peachtree. There are countless streets and institutions named for a fruit tree that likes warmer climates. Atlanta has a one street skyline, that stretches from Five Points to Peachtree Dunwoody Road, almost at the city limits. PG lives a quarter mile off Peachtree, in Dekalb County, and has no idea why Peachtree is a magic word.
Pictures are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library” and The Library of Congress. This is the annual repost. The book Peachtree Street-Atlanta has been reissued by the UGA Press.
Better To Be Hated
“It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not.”
Kurt Cobain is credited with that quote, and he may have been coherent enough to say it at one time or another. A French author named André Gide said it, and is given “credit”. Maybe Mr. Cobain gets the debit. Mr. Cobain played electric guitar better than Mr. Gide, who was not married to Courtney Love.
PG is not so sure about this quote. Being hated gets old, even if you still have your wonderful integrity to be proud of. There is also the possibility that are are being hated for what you are. You might think you are hated because of your idealism, when in fact people are tired of you stealing money to buy drugs.
There is a difference between true wisdom and a clever turn of words. This is the case when these wonderful words are set in sans serif glory against the Northwest sky, with Kurt Cobain wondering where his next fix is coming from.
Friends Of Hamas
There is a tasteful trending topic in Twitterland, #FriendsofHamas. If you have a life, and don’t follow all the news, you might have missed this. There is a story that a politician recieved an honorarium from a group called “Friends of Hamas”. The story was widely repeated. The fact that FOH does not exist is not a problem to many in Twitterland.
@ChuckCJohnson Naw, #Hagel’s just friends with the Jew-hating, suicide bombing Iranian regime.
@Rightwingpolok #FriendsofHamas: Hezbollah, Islam, Barry Obama, Chuck Hagel, Iran, N. Korea, Russia, China, Hillary, John Kerry, The entire Dem party.
@AlecMacGillis And here I was wasting a lot of time trying to figure out if my end-of-year donation to #FriendsofHamas was tax-deductible.
@Xultar I’ve dated all the #friendsofHamas
For a while, there was a promoted tweet, at the top of the heap, when you looked up Friends of Hamas. It is not there now, but you don’t want to miss out. Wendy’sVerified account @Wendys Which taste from the Right Price Right Size Menu is the perfect sidekick for Dave’s Hot ‘N Juicy? pic.twitter.com/Y7XxO54x
Currently of top of the heap at #FriendsofHamas is ‘Friends of Hamas’: My role in the birth of a rumor. This is a confession from a writer who set the wheels of rumor and intrigue spinning.
This is featured at the New York Daily News, an intellectual organ. One of the “editors picks” leads to an uplifting story, New York mom charged with child endangerment after hiring strippers to perform lap dances at her 16-year-old son’s birthday party. Judy Viger, 33, faces up to a year in jail after the party, which had guests as young as 13. A 15-year-old’s mother saw photos of the lap dances by Tops in Bottoms strippers on Facebook and alerted South Glens Falls authorities.
In the Daily News story, it is repeatedly mentioned that FOH is not a real organization. The person who wrote the seminal piece about FOH is quoted: “Reached Tuesday, Shapiro acknowledged “Friends of Hamas” might not exist… his story used “very, very specific language” to avoid flatly claiming it did.”
The story of FOH brings to mind an old story about Lyndon Baines Johnson. “And his sense of the bizarre knows no bounds, as in this ‘ancient and honourable’ story of how Lyndon Johnson first got elected to Congress in 1948 when his opponent was a wealthy and politically favoured pig farmer: ‘Lyndon was running about 10 points behind, with only nine days to go… He was sunk in despair. He was desperate… he called his equally depressed campaign manager and instructed him to call a press conference at two or two-thirty (just after lunch on a slow news day) and accuse his high-riding opponent (the pig farmer) of having routine carnal knowledge of his barnyard sows, despite the pleas of his wife and children… His campaign manager was shocked. ‘We can’t say that, Lyndon,’ he said. ‘It’s not true.’ ‘Of course it’s not,’ Johnson barked at him, ‘but let’s make the bastard deny it.’
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is written like Stephen King.
leave a comment