Pork Barrel Degrees Of Kevin Bacon
When you get start to follow links on the innertubes, there is no telling where you will wind up. Today’s rabbit hole started with Peach Pundit.
It seems that Kevin Bacon made a video about reproductive rights. Six degree dude mentions a “Lawmaker in Georgia calling women farm animals”. This is supposed to make people angry enough to sign an online petition.
Here is the speech that Terry England gave to the lesterslature. Dr. England is a veterinarian, and talked about the heartbreak of delivering a stillborn cow. Next, there is a discussion with a “salt of the earth” person. “You tell those folks down there, when they quit killing babies, they can have every chicken I’ve got” Dr. England notes “If that don’t put it in perspective for you real quick, your bread ain’t gonna rise and your eggs ain’t gonna cook”. This leads into a bit of talk about abortion.
The last quote is from the book of Jeremiah. “He doesn’t stutter, he doesn’t stammer”. The quote Dr. England uses was “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee.”
Peach Pundit says that Kevin Bacon quotes Terry England out of context, and perhaps he does. Quoting out of context is a rhetorical tradition, beloved by both liberals and conservatives. The bible is quoted out of context all the time.
In his speech before the lesterslature, Dr. England did not read the entire bible verse. The complete verse of Jeremiah 1:5 is “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.”
It seems that Jeremiah is some sort of minister. (Note: PG is not a bible scholar, and this interpretation might not be good enough for some people.) The next few verses are fun.
6 Then said I, Ah, Lord GOD! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child. 7 But the LORD said unto me, Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak. 8 Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the LORD. 9 Then the LORD put forth his hand, and touched my mouth. And the LORD said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth.
So, the person G-d knew before birth was a minister. Jeremiah was not a cow, a pig, nor abortion collateral damage.
One thing that liberal actors have in common with Georgia lawmakers is saying foolish things. Whether they are in or out of context, these ravings should be taken with a bit of independent thought. You should beware of people trying to get you fired up.
On March 22, PG wrote Corruption In Georgia. The comments of Dr. England are discussed. The post has a link to a site called Atlanta Unfiltered. PG does not visit AU regularly, but decided to drop in.
AU has an amusing post. Report: Paul Broun among ‘most corrupt’ Congress-persons. Dr. Broun was in the news recently about his “testimony” in a Baptist church.
This was written like William Shakespeare. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
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 repost was written like Chuck Palahniuk.
10/11/12
Today is October 11, 2012. In the six digit shorthand for dates, this is 10/11/12. If you enter this into google with the slash marks, it will read it as 10 divided by 11, with the result divided by 12. The answer for this is 0.07575757, with the fives and sevens dancing off to the horizon. If you multiply 10x11x12, the correct answer is 1320.
There is a pleasing symnetry to 10-11-12. It happens every year for twelve years at the start of the century, between January 2, 2003 and December 13, 2014. If you really want to party, remember to set your clocks to buzz at 7:08:09 p.m. If you woke up at that time this morning, you get bonus points. If you want to celebrate again, there is 8:09 10-11-12.
USA Today reports that today is a big day for lottery tickets and wedding chapels. (More google results show this AP feature is appearing in a number of publications.) “It basically happens in the early years of a new century,” says Geoff Chester, public affairs officer at the U.S. Naval Observatory. “Really, this is just a numerological curiosity,People find it amusing. But there is no cosmic significance. It’s an artifact of the calendar and time system that we use.”
Geoff Chester probably does not know Philadelphia writer Peter Mucha. With the miracle of copy paste, Mr. Mucha makes the job of a slack blogger much easier.
“As numbers freaks know, however, such sequences are fairly common, especially in the first decade or so of a century. Include repeat sequences (1-1-01), descending ones (3-2-01), consider the order preferred in Europe (20-01-2001, or Jan. 20, 2001), and include palindromes (10-1-01, 10-2-01, 10-02-2001, etc.) among the so-called patterns, and, why, more than a dozen possibilities popped up in just the century’s first year. … Ever since 12-11-10, descending sequences have disappeared, and next year, the repeats will vanish, too, since there’s no 13th month. 12-13-14 will put an end to ascending strings as well – unless you count by odds or evens and like the likes of 5:07:09 on 11-13-15 – a Friday the 13th, by the way. No matter. People will still see patterns, just as they did on 9-9-99. … Every year, March 14 or 3-14 is Pi Day, since the circumference/diameter constant is 3.14159 etc. So, expect extra hoopla in 2015 (when adding seconds after the date makes for a Pi Second accurate to 10 decimals, with 3-14-15 9:26:54, according to a Princeton Web page). Pi Day 2016 might be even bigger, when 3-14-16 rounds the constant off to four decimal places.”
Bible Gateway has a page for Mark 10:11-12 11 He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. 12 And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.” The page has an ad for Christian Mingle. “Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. -Psalm 37:4”
Today is the fourth day of Mental Illness Awareness Week, with graphics coming to a facebook near you. For those who are tired of wrestling with coat hangers, this is National Coming Out Day. The ghost of Keith Haring wants a royalty payment.
October 11 is not a popular day for history, birthdays, or holidays. The best October 11 can do for a historic event is the 1975 premiere of Saturday Night Live. On this day in 1912, Betty Noyes was born. She was the ghost singer for Debbie Reynolds in Singin’ in the Rain. 1932 saw the birth, in McMinnville TN, of Dottie West. There were four deaths on October 11 that catch the eye: Chico Marx (1961), Edith Piaf (1963), 1963, Dorothea Lange, (1965) and Redd Foxx (1991).
Pictures today are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”
Picture 076
This post is going to be a breakdown of an image. We are going to start with an original, and go through the steps to get the finished product. The raw picture is -076, in folder wed0829b. This image was shot 2:06 pm, August 29, 2012. The camera is a COOLPIX L24. The original is 2048×1536, and has 709kb in memory. The image manipulation program is GIMP. The computer is a PC. The location is Atlanta GA.
This image was taken during an emergency trip to record images from Living Walls. One image generated controversy, and if pictures were going to be taken the recorder needed to hurry up. There were a few more images in that neighborhood. One was under a railroad bridge, with the beltline on top. This was on the border between Cabbagetown and Reynoldstown. Just east of the bridge mural was a building, covered in unauthorized art. This building is the scene for this picture.
For the purposes of this tutorial, keyboard shortcuts will be used. On the machine that created these images, most of these functions have keyboard shortcuts. These allow the manipulator to command an action with one keystroke, as opposed to two or three keystrokes, or even a few mouse clicks. The keyboard is almost always faster than the mouse. Some functions require the mouse, and some are easier using a mouse. For the rest, the keyboard is the way to go.
01- This is the original. It is reduced to 720×540 so it will fit in this column. Go to Scale Image (alt+I, S.) The width field will be highlighted. Type in 720. Hit Scale (alt+S.) You need to save this image as a separate file. Hit ctrl+shift+S, and type 01 in the highlighted field. If you want to save the file in a different format, you can type in that format extension. Hit enter, and then “Save as JPEG” by hitting alt+S. The file size is now 111 kb.
We will want to use the full size original to create our final image. Hit ctrl+Z to undo the scale change. This will give you the original image. Cntrl+Z is your friend. It is the only thing you really need to know to work with images.
You very seldom want to use the entire picture. Most raw images have parts that are not interesting. For this picture, we are going to focus on the symbols in the center of the picture. To crop this out, you will use the Rectangle.(R) The only box to have clicked in the tool options is Fixed. The option chosen should be Aspect Ratio. For the Aspect Ratio, the “golden rectangle” is used. This is 161:100. This is the golden mean, which math nerds can tell you about.
Click R, and draw a rectangle over the section you want to select. Take your finger off the mouse button. (PG uses a trackball mouse, and will try to be understanding of those using a different device.) Move the cursor into the middle of the rectangle, push the mouse button, and move the rectangle into the position you want. Go to Image/Crop. (alt+I, C) Reduce this image to 720×447, using Scale Image (alt+I, S.). Save this as 02.
This image is painted on a cement block wall. This means that there are lots of lines you can use to level the image off. This image is fairly level, so Rotate (shift+R) will not be used. Taking pictures of flat images is more difficult than you might think. There is always some angle somewhere throwing things out of kilter. Unless the image is totally flat, at a 90 degree angle to the floor, and the camera is in the middle and focused dead on straight ahead, there is going to be distortion. This is where your image manipulation program comes in.
In this image, there is a couple of inches of mural showing above the cement block line. Perspective (shift+P) will drag that cement black line over to the edge of the picture. When this happens, it will make the left side of the picture level with the right side. Drag the two top sides of the picture to where the cement block line is flush with the top of the image. Go to the Perspective window, and click transform. The letters on top of the image window will say (RGB, 2 layers). Ignore the RGB part. You should anchor the two layers. Hit cntrl+H, and 2 layers will become 1 layer. This is image 03.
On the bottom part of the image, there is another cement block line. It is about 50 pixels above the bottom on the left side, and 60 pixels above the bottom on the right side. Use Rectangle to crop the image. Draw your crop line where the cement block line on the left goes out of the image. Use Perspective to drag the cement block line on the right side to the bottom of the page.
Right now, the image is 720×401. It is best to bring it back to the golden rectangle dimensions. Open Scale Image (alt+I, S.) . Hit the tab key. This will shift the selection from the width field, to the chain symbol. Hit enter while the chain symbol is selected. This will enable you to choose a height size that is a different proportion that what is now used. Hit tab again to select the height field. Type 447 in the height field. Hit shift, alt+S. This is image 04.
It is now time to work on the colors. Open Levels (alt+C, L.) Hit auto (alt+A), and then hit OK (alt+0.) This is image 05.
Some of the dark portions of this image are too dark. To correct this, use Curves. (alt+C, C) Place the cursor over one of the gray blocks, and click. A straight line will go up in the box. Put your cursor over where the straight line crosses the diagonal line, and push the dot up a couple of cat hairs. Hit OK. This will make the darker parts of the image a bit less dark. This is image 06.
The colors can be saturated. Hit alt+C, S, and Hue-Saturation will appear. The third line is saturation. Push that as far to the right as it will go, and click OK. This is image 07.
The colors can be balanced. Hit alt+C, B, and Color Balance will appear. Under Select Range To Adjust, hit shadows. Under Adjust Color Levels, choose red 10, magenta -10, and yellow-40. If you hit the line with you cursor, the marker will move ten points towards the side you click on. Hit OK. This is image 08. Some people would quit here.
It is now time to use a filter. Start by using Gaussian Blur. (alt+R, B, G) Under Blur Radius, type 22.0 in the horizontal field. Click OK. Next, go to Fade Gaussian Blur. Hit alt+E, then click on fade gaussian blur. Click on the little triangle next to the mode window, and select darken only. Hit fade, alt+F. This is image 09. We are almost through.
Saturate the colors another 100 points. Open Color Balance,, hit shadows, and give it 10 points red and -30 yellow. This is image 10. This is the final image.
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 simpler and 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.”
For some algorithmically correct reason, Minute mysteries was a result. “The object of minute mysteries (aka lateral thinking puzzles) is for you to unravel the mystery, based on very limited and somewhat ambiguous clues. You are given a scenario (usually involving a death of some sort), and you have to deduce what has happened. Someone must look at the solution so that you can ask them questions to try and figure it out. The questions have to be phrased so that the only possible answers are yes, no or not relevant. There is no limit to the number of questions, and it can be helpful to have multiple people working on the case.”
Evidently, number 71 was the connection. “71. Three heavy people try to crowd under one umbrella, and nobody gets wet.” The answer is “71. It is sunny and hot.”
PG heard someone telling these stories years ago. There are some on the list he remembers. “5. A man lives on the twelfth floor of an apartment building. Every morning he wakes up, gets dressed, eats, goes to the elevator, takes it down to the lobby, and leaves the building for work. In the evening, he goes through the lobby to the elevator, and, if there is someone else in the elevator (or if it was raining that day) he goes back to his floor directly. However, if there is nobody else in the elevator and it hasn’t rained, he goes to the 10th floor and walks up two flights of stairs to his room. ~ ~ The man is a midget. He can’t reach the upper elevator buttons, but he can ask people to push them for him. He can also push them with his umbrella. ~ ~ 7. A man walks into a bar and asks for a drink. The bartender pulls out a gun and points it at him. The man says, “Thank you,” and walks out. ~ ~ The man has hiccups; the bartender scares them away by pulling a gun.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Self Portraits On Drugs
A person, Bryan Lewis Saunders, conducted an experiment. “After experiencing drastic changes in my environment, I looked for other experiences that might profoundly affect my perception of the self. So I devised another experiment where everyday I took a different drug and drew myself under the influence. Within weeks I became lethargic and suffered mild brain damage. I am still conducting this experiment but over greater lapses of time. I only take drugs that are given to me.”
Abilify / Xanax / Ativan ~ 90mg Abilify ~ 1 sm Glass of “real” Absinth ~ 10mg Adderall ~ 10mg Ambien ~ Bath Salts ~ 15mg Buspar (snorted) ~ 4 Butalbitals ~ Butane Honey Oil ~ 250mg Cephalexin ~ 1/2 gram Cocaine ~ Computer Duster (2 squirts) ~ 2 bottles of Cough Syrup ~ 1 “Bump” of Crystalmeth ~ 4mg Dilaudid ~ 1 shot of Dilaudid / 3 shots of Morphine ~ DMT ~ 60mg Geodon ~ Hash ~ Huffing Gas ~ Huffing Lighter Fluid ~ 7.5mg Hydrocodone / 7.5mg Oxycodone / 3mg Xanax ~ 3mg Klonopin~ 10mg Loritab ~ Marijuana (Kine Bud) ~ G13 Marijuana ~ Morphine IV ~ Psilocybin Mushrooms (2 caps onset) ~ 2mg Nicotine Gum ~ Nitrous Oxide ~ Nitrous Oxide / Valium I.V. ~ PCP ~ 7.5mg Percocet ~ 2 Pot Brownies ~ 1 Glass of Pruno ~ Marijuana Resin ~ 4mg Risperdol ~ Ritilin (doseage unknown-snorted) ~ Salvia Divinorum (right before but mostly right after) ~ 100mg Seroquel ~ 100mg Trazadone ~ 20mg Valium ~ Valium I.V. (doseage unknown in hospital) ~ Valium IV, (Albuterol, Saline & Oxygen) mixture ~ 2mg Xanax ~ 50mg Zoloft (after 2 weeks prescribed) ~ 10mg Zyprexa ~ Ativan / Haloperidol (doseage unknown in hospital)
Mr. Saunders is a piece of work. He has done a self portrait every day for years, and performs something called “stand up tragedy”. His website has a massive interview page. The rest of this post will be selections from that.
Recently there’s been a lot of chatter on the internet about a series of self-portraits that Bryan Lewis Saunders drew/painted/etched while he was on a whole potpourri of different drugs. My friend Kelly sent me the link because the day previous, I sent her a video of some chick on YouTube describing the experience of turkey-bastering DMT up her butthole . That her brain connected Bryan Saunders with that video should give you some idea as to what his work is like.
These portraits alone, though, are hardly interesting enough to merit Bryan any additional attention. It wasn’t until I realized that these 32 paintings comprise only 1/250th of a 16 year self-portrait project that I decided to spend a Sunday afternoon Skyping him at his home in Johnson City, Tennessee. As our conversation teetered between horrifying and hilarious, I realized that–although colossal–the self-portrait project is only a fragment of his dense portfolio of other equally involved multimedia projects. Bryan’s hermitic, Appalachian livelihood fostered an unarguable talent for embarking on extremely bizarre and elaborate artistic undertakings.
What started as a simple conversation about self-portraits spiraled into a cordial chat about crystal meth, Chinese standup comedy, blood, obese girls who suck dicks for attention, the process of getting severely overweight dead people out of an apartment building, and a few other equally engaging topics. By the end of our two-hour chat, I decided that Bryan Lewis Saunders is a living manifestation of Xenia, Ohio in Harmony Korine’s film, Gummo . And now he’s my friend. ~ ~
Well I wanted to be a famous comedian in China. I was living in my aunt’s trailer in Virginia, and the family was having a lot of problems. One of my cousins was on meth. My great aunt had Alzheimer’s. Another one had a stroke. It was a lot of confusion and constant arguing back and forth, so I just thought to myself, “well I’ll be better in China.” I spent like six hours a day, seven days a week for like nine months straight teaching myself Mandarin. I thought that I’d go to some cities in communist China where they don’t have any tourism, and I would do standup comedy there. I figured within one year I’d have my own sitcom, then I’d be doing blockbuster features in China, and then I’d be a big international superstar. I went and did a Chinese wedding in New York City, and it went pretty well, so I went to Fujo to become a superstar. After like the third day, I met a guy who could speak English pretty well, and he told me that they didn’t have stand up comedy in China. I was pretty devastated, so when I was forced to leave I thought, “Well hell, Tennessee is pretty cheap, so I moved back here and decided that I’d just do standup tragedy and try to make all of these strangers cry instead. ~ ~
What were your favorite substances consumed? What were the worst? Xanax (totem poles – 4mg) would probably be one of my favorites. It made me feel real at peace with life and with the trauma, and it also made me a real social dynamo! I’m sort of a recluse but with the Xanax I could just walk up and talk to total strangers! The Butane Honey Oil was a real blast too! The worst is a toss up between PCP and Seroquel (heavy tranquilizer/anti-psychotic agent) 100 mg. I went to a doctor to hopefully get more different drugs and told him about my project and showed him my pictures on various drugs and he only wrote one prescription for 90 Seroquels thinking I was psychotic.~ ~
What’s next? Where’s the acid? As far as acid goes, I’ve tried acid 3 times in NE Tennessee and all 3 times it was really crappy. Nothing like the U.V.A. acid in the mid eighties. People here say, “I did 8 of ’em. I took 4. I did 6 of ’em.”. And I’m like, “If one doesn’t do it for you, why take 7 more? That’s ignorant!” As for what’s next, it all depends on what people give me. I don’t seek them out and there are still plenty of big ones I need to draw under the influence of; Heroin, LSD, DMT, Computer Duster, Ayahuasca, Peyote and I don’t want to die until I do a self-portrait on Crack. You see today we live in a narcissistic and obsessive culture, totally overflowing with drugs. And as an artist I am the filter. Picasso and Matisse got it right when one of them said, “Cézanne is the father of us all.” It’s not a stretch by any means to say, “On some days, my brain chemistry is my vantage point and my face is his Mont Sainte-Victoire.” For people interested in this particular body of work, my Facebook has the best and most up to date collection of drawings under the influence. And I’m a weird person, and I’m way more well known for other stuff besides the drawings and drugs… ~ ~
On your MySpace page, you say you have mental problems. How do you deal with these on a day-to-day basis? I’ve been labeled with: Antisocial Personality Disorder (as a child), Borderline (in my teens), Schizotypal (as a young adult), Paranoid Schizophrenic (at present)… but I believe all that says much more about the system of classification than it does about me as an individual. Their response to that, of course, is that I’m in denial. So I self-medicate with art, obsessively and constantly, and when things in my environment get too overwhelming, I check into a hospital and get medicated, get out, wean myself off the drugs and start over. Not a cycle I recommend, but I know myself well and have the art…I’ve been living with it forever. Sometimes when I get “woggy” and can’t understand what people are saying, I’ll go to another country and fight the (imaginary) mental language problem with a (real genuine) language problem and make art… It depends on how severe the crisis is. I’m the most rational psychotic I know, if I even am psychotic? I’m fortunate in that respect; most aren’t so lucky.
Is there anything you’d like to add or anything you’d like to tell our readers? Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share what I do! It feels good to be included here. Oh, and if you’re online sometime and come across my series of self-portraits under the influence of different drugs, know that I don’t “party” I just experiment, and I’m willing to trade art for drugs that I haven’t drawn myself on yet. But keep the jenkem to yourselves! ~ ~
Any last words? “Be leery of signs. Once I drove to Alabama, and the first fruit stand I came to across the State Line had a sign that said, “COLOREDS WELCOME”. It struck a nerve. I didn’t know if they meant it or not. With language like that – surely they didn’t. It confused me. The same with the “Free Speech Zone” sign. I’ve performed at many places here in Johnson City using the exact same material and have never had a problem with censorship. After all it’s America ? The only place that advertises FREE SPEECH here, is the only place that DOESN’T allow it. So be wary of signs, chances are – THEY ARE INSTRUCTING THE EXACT OPPOSITE !!!”
Privilege
PG had heard the phrase “white privilege” a few times, and decided to ask Mr.Google about it. The top choice was White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack “This article is now considered a ‘classic’ by anti-racist educators.” It is four pages long, which might not break the attention span.
A document like this is almost impossible to read with an open mind. You are a member of a group, such as a white male like PG. There are a lot of things here which PG agrees with, a few his disagrees with, and a few that are dependent on the reader’s point of view. The sentence that PG felt obliged to copy was ” I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitudes”. It is as if the attitudes of black people did not matter.
There are more headshakers in this article. In a list of privileges white folks take for granted, number 18 was ” I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to “the person in charge,” I will be facing a person of my race.”. That might have true once, but is not today.
Getting back to White Privilege (and ignoring the White Privilege Conference results), there are lots of people thinking about this subject. The University of Dayton contributes Defining “White Privilege”. In the text, the author mentions starting a site, Whiteprivilege.com. This site is currently under construction. It does give you the opportunity to buy “Privilege Car Insurance”.
A feature, What is white privilege?, compares every person with pale skin to the Palin family. “White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.” This runs counter to line 21 of the Invisible Knapsack list, ” I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group. “
PG went looking for answers, and got more questions. He does not deny that being caucasian has advantages in our society. These advantages do not mean that one should lay down quietly and let black people get their revenge. We are all G-d’s children. You should be proud of who you are, without taking advantage of your neighbor.
After publishing a feature about white privilege , PG thought it would be fair to look into black privilege. When you visit Mr. Google, some of his suggestions are black privilege checklist, black privilege furniture, and black privilege fact or fiction. The top result is a feature in American Thinker. “Personally, I have never had a moment of white guilt in my life. Now this is a significant statement given that I am Jewish and from New York. I feel guilty about pretty much everything!”.
NPR has an audio file called Black Male Privilege? . It is downright fascinating.
Prof. LEWIS: I think youve unfortunately identified one of the central issues of black male privilege. So often, black men are used to being under attacked that when it comes to being accountable for the actions we may have, we quickly say, well, I couldnt possibly be doing anything wrong. Look at all the ways in which Im oppressed. Look at all the ways in which Im at the bottom of the barrel. What that does is rob us of an opportunity to actually build stronger community and it robs black men of a chance to actually take hold of the actions that they have so that we can empower the community.
MARTIN: What reaction do you get when you talk to people about this?
Prof. LEWIS: Among black women, in particular, I get a lot of amens and saying, thank for actually exposing this. Among black men, one of the most common ones I get is, well, this seems ridiculous. Its an oxymoron. How could black men be privileged? Its like jumbo shrimp. It doesnt add up. … And they say, you know, what did my black male privilege get me? Im unemployed. … : Initially, my first exposure was actually around the Million Man March. I felt that I was transformed by the Million Man March, and I thought it was one of the most powerful events ever. And I was having a conversation in class with a professor, Dr. Beverly Guy Sheftall, and she said that she couldnt support the Million Man March because it was very patriarchal and it put black men at the center. And I said, well, it doesnt always have to patriarchal. You dont always have to put black men at the center. And if she said, isnt it an amazing privilege to tell someone else what they dont have to take seriously? And that paused me for a moment. And I said, wow. What is it in my past that makes me say I can define what someone else would think of as important? (Here are more thoughts on this subject by Dr. L’Heureux Dumi Lewis )
Times are tough in the US of A. To an unemployed white person it is easy to say, what good has this privilege done me? And isn’t it a form of privilege to label anything you don’t like about someone as being due to privilege? Has privilege become a catch22 for anything you don’t like about a person?
This feature is not a complete recap of the google results for black privilege. There were a couple of white racist sites that are best ignored. Two wrongs do not make a right. This is a double repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is written like H. P. Lovecraft.
Cemetery Blues
PG and Uzi had their usual Sunday phone call, and agreed to go to “Sunday in the Park”. It is a festival in Oakland Cemetery, with live music, people in costumes, open mausoleums, and lots of good clean fun. It wasn’t until that evening that PG learned that today is Dead Poets Remembrance Day. Edgar Allan Poe met his maker on this day in 1849.
There was a Chamblee54 post about DPRD two years ago. The idea is to go to a cemetery and read a poem. An effort will be made to do that tonight, although promises about dead poets are notoriously unreliable. The 2010 post is included as part two of this feature.
The first poem read that afternoon was “Looking for the Buckhead Boys” by James Dickey. In the intervening two years, PG listened to a podcast with Christopher Dickey, the son of the writer. Sometimes bard is short for bastard.
So PG, Uzi, and Hazmat went to a festival in Oakland Cemetery. Like everything else, it is more popular and expensive. You had to pay to park, which Uzi generously took care of. The brick walls around the boneyard have been repaired, and no longer look like they are going to fall down. Those walls are important, because people are dying to get inside. This is the second time that PG and Uzi have attended the October festival in Oakland Cemetery.
There are always things that you need to see at Oakland. Margaret Mitchell, the Lion Statue, and the mausoleums are important stops. PG followed the signs to the grave of Bobby Jones. It had golf balls and a putter, which was not necessary.
Don LeVert was a member of the Atlanta Sky Hi Club for many, many years before his departure in 1997. PG and Uzi always seek him out, and it is usually a bit of an adventure finding him.
After visiting Don, PG found the marker for “Brother John Wade”. His time on earth was September 23, 1865 to January 15, 1916. This was from the autumn just after the War Between the States until 37 days before PG’s father was born in Rowland, North Carolina. There was a renewed sense of connection to the stone monuments.
The facebook friend said “Today is Dead Poets Remembrance Day, Oct. 7th, the day Edgar Allan Poe died. Be sure to visit a graveyard and read some poetry today”. PG didn’t have anything better to do.
The first obstacle was finding a book of poetry. PG is not a poetry person. A look at the shelf turned up a paperback, “125 years of Atlantic “. Poetry was to be found between those covers.
The book had two stickers, both saying 69 cents. At the old Book Nook, this meant that the book was half the price on the sticker. With tax, that would be 38 cents.
125YOA had stayed in PG’s car for a few years. Whenever he was stuck somewhere with time to kill, this book was waiting. One afternoon in 1998, there was a slow day at work. PG read a remembrance by Gertrude Stein, about life in France at the start of World War II.
The cemetery of choice was connected to the Nancy Creek Primitive Baptist Church. PG has driven by this facility thousands of times. He walked past the graves until he found a fallen tree to sit down on.
The first poem was “Looking for the Buckhead Boys” by James Dickey. PG began to read out loud, and soon could smell the drug store air of Wender and Roberts. The author bought fifty cents worth of gas at a Gulf station. Today, fifty cents might buy a tablespoon of gas, and Gulf was long ago bought out by BP. Wender and Roberts became a bar, which was torn down, to make way for a shopping destination.
Buckhead is not what it used to be. When Mr. Dickey was the bravest man in Buckhead ( he took a shit in the toilet at Tyree’s pool hall), PG was not even thought of. The traffic jams on Peachtree Street are still there, as the blue haired ladies follow poets into the ground.
When PG finished reading Mr. Dickey, he put a teal postit in the book, where the poem stood. PG looked up, and the graveyard seemed different. Maybe the sun had sank a bit in the sky, and maybe the poem had changed PG in a way he could not put into words. Maybe another poem was the answer. Take the glasses off, open the book at random, and turn the pages until a poem shows up.
On page 404…the historic Atlanta area code…was “The Wartime Journey” by Jan Struther. The 1944 work was unknown territory. A group of people are traveling on a train. The wounded vet, the untried recruit, the salesmen shared the space with a lady, taking a baby for her soldier husband to meet. The theme of the rhymes was that America was totally at war, and that war is different from peacetime. Today’s war in Babylon is not like that.
Halfway through the reading, a freight train pulled by. Today, passenger trains are a novelty, and freight rules the rails. The shipment today was double decked containers, ready to pull off and slap on an eighteen wheeler.
Deaths are said to come in threes, and reading poetry in a graveyard should be the same. PG went on a random search for a Moe, to go with the Curley and Larry already digested. A page of poems by Emily Dickinson was the result. These pages left PG unmoved. It was as if he was back in the sixth grade, with a horrible English teacher forcing him to memorize Hiawatha. It was time to go home.
Pitts Of Hell
Dr. Paul Broun is the Republican Congressman from Georgia’s Tenth District. He recently gave a testimony at Liberty Baptist Church, in Hartwell, GA. Here is the headline quote:
G-d’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell. And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior. You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.
The testimony was delivered at “Hitting the Mark” Sportsman Banquet, Thursday, September 27, 2012. “There were Giveaways & Door Prizes including: GUNS & SPORTS-RELATED GIFT CERTIFICATES.” Dr. Broun’s 47 minute speech is available here.
The first twenty minutes of his remarks are about hunting. Dr. Broun shows slides of trophies. There is a bear he killed in Alaska. There are two lions that he killed in Africa. The second lion was leaping towards him when Dr. Broun shot it in the face. “I believe G-d directed that bullet.”(20:55)
The next part is his own story. Dr. Broun went to services at “two major denominations” as a child. (Neither wikipedia nor his congressional bio give denominational details.) Dr. Broun said he was sprinkled on the head as a small child. Later in his remarks, he says Pastors who baptize children in this manner are sending them to hell. (34:13)
When he got a bit older, Paul Broun left the church. He joined the Marine reserves, and did not go to Vietnam. He became a Doctor, got divorced three times, and said he was living for himself. His fourth marriage was not working. He saw a football game, and saw a man holding a John 3:16 sign. There was a Gideons bible in the waiting room of his office. (Wikipedia says his practice was exclusively house calls.) Dr. Broun read the bible, and asked G-d to straighten out his life. Once again, he was living for himself. He became a Christian.
He worked up to his headline quote by talking about his recent deployment to Afghanistan. Dr. Broun is in the reserves, and was sent to Afghanistan for 47 days to work in hospitals. It would be interesting to know how much it cost the government to send a 66 year old congressman to Afghanistan for 47 days.
There was an Afghan soldier who was injured by an IED. His sternum stopped the flak from going into his thoracic cavity. Dr. Broun said this was an example of the wonderful design that G-d had for the human body. He did not mention why these bombs were being set off eleven years after nine eleven.
At the 42 minute mark of his testimony, Dr. Broun led a prayer. He asked for anyone who had prayed to Jesus to change their life to raise their hand. “You are holding up your hand to G-d”
Pictures are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. This was written like Kurt Vonnegut.
Kiss Me
PG recently got two emails from a friend. One of them is serious. It is up to the reader to tell which is which. This was written like Rudyard Kipling.
Why keep Aspirin by your bedside? It’s about Heart Attacks – There are other symptoms of a heart attack, besides the pain on the left arm. One must also be aware of an intense pain on the chin, as well as nausea and lots of sweating; however, these symptoms may also occur less frequently. Note: There may be NO pain in the chest during a heart attack.
Most heart attacks occur in the day, generally between 6 A.M. and noon. Having one during the night, when the heart should be most at rest, means that something unusual happened. The majority of people (about 60%) who had a heart attack during their sleep did not wake up. However, if it occurs, the chest pain may wake you up from your deep sleep.
If that happens, immediately dissolve two aspirins in your mouth and swallow them with a bit of water. Afterwards: Call 911. Phone a neighbor or a family member who lives very close by. – Say “heart attack!” Say that you have taken 2 Aspirins. Take a seat on a chair or sofa near the front door, and wait for their arrival and …DO NOT LIE DOWN!
If you take an aspirin or a baby aspirin once a day, take it at night. The reason: Aspirin has a 24-hour “half-life”; therefore, if most heart attacks happen in the wee hours of the morning, the Aspirin would be strongest in your system. Aspirin lasts a really long time in your medicine chest for years, (when it gets old, it smells like vinegar). Bayer is making crystal aspirin to dissolve instantly on the tongue. They work much faster than the tablets.
A Cardiologist has stated that if each person after receiving this e-mail, sends it to 10 people, probably one life could be saved! I have already shared this information. What about you? Do forward this message. It may save lives!
A guy is 72 years old and loves to fish. He was sitting in his boat the other day when he heard a voice say, ‘Pick me up.’ He looked around and couldn’t see anyone. He thought he was dreaming when he heard the voice say again, ‘Pick me up.’
He looked in the water and there, floating on the top, was a frog.The man said, ‘Are you talking to me?
The frog said, ‘Yes, I’m talking to you. Pick me up, then kiss me and I’ll turn into the most beautiful woman you have ever seen. I’ll make sure that all your friends are envious and jealous, because I will be your bride!’
The man looked at the frog for a short time, reached over, picked it up, and placed it in his shirt pocket.
The frog said, “Didn’t you hear what I said? I said, “Kiss me, and I will be your beautiful bride.”‘
He opened his pocket, looked at the frog and said, ‘Nah. At my age, I’d rather have a talking frog.’
Defender
A fbf posted a link: “I am a Community Activist. What kind of Social Advocate are you?” PG is a subtractvocate. The link refers to an online test from McKinsey & Company. It is adapted from a 2009 report, Activists, Pundits, and Quiet Followers: Engaging the public in social issues.
The first question is a statement. You have six choices, ranging from disagree strongly to agree strongly. “I would be willing to lead a public debate on a social issue I’m interested in.” That is as appealing as root canal without Novocaine. Strongly disagree. PG does not want to have to kill anyone.
The second statement is “We are in this world to help others no matter how far away we are.” This is an idea that sounds good, until you do the due dilgence. Many people who try to help you help others are either incompetent or crooked. There is also the “are in this world” riff. Human beings are animals, with the goal of surviving long enough to continue the species. Disagree.
The same six options are available for all ten statements. This probably makes for easy number crunching when the survey is complete. It does not allow for nuanced answers. Here are the other eight statements, and the PG score.
I am most interested in issues that have affected me at a personal level.
It is my responsibility to find ways to help others who haven’t had the opportunities I’ve had.
When it comes to issues I care about, I won’t hesitate to take the lead.
I only engage in conversations about social issues with people I already know.
I concentrate my energy in helping my local community first.
I am very careful when choosing who I talk to about social issues.
I prefer to support social issues from home (e.g., blogging, emailing) instead of at public events.
There is not much that someone like me can do to help solve issues like world hunger or poverty.
The quiz statements are very fond of first person. Eight of the ten statements contain the word “I”, or verb contractions starting with “I”. One of the non I sentences uses the word “me”. The other non I sentence uses “we” twice.
Congratulations, you are a: Defender. This was written like David Foster Wallace
The Pursuit Of Truth
There is a podcast called The Fact of the Matter. It is about a man who likes to separate fact from fiction. “The pursuit of truth properly considered shouldn’t stop short of insanity.” After an hour or so plumbing the digital depths, PG began to appreciate the truth of that comment. Does anyone have a recipe that uses a can of worms?
The show is about a photograph from the Crimean War, The valley of the shadow of death. It was taken by Roger Fenton April 23, 1855, near a place called Balaclava. Today, this is in Ukraine. Balaclava was the site of a nasty battle, in a bloody, pointless war. Today, a Balaclava is a colorful ski mask. It is the fashion statement of Pussy Riot.
PG cannot understand why this picture is a big deal. The Library of Congress has a collection of the Fenton Crimean War Photographs. This Fenton pictures were one of the first collections in the LOC that PG worked with. The picture of a road, with cannonballs, did not catch his eye.
The more historic pictures PG edits, the better he gets. One thing he learned was to download the high resolution .tif pictures. When he did the Fenton pictures before, he used the lower quality .jpg images. When he paused the podcast, and went to the LOC to see “Shadow of Death”, he decided to download a few old favorites. These are the pictures that go with this post.
The podcast is a detective story. It seems that there are two versions of the photograph. One has the cannonballs in the road, the other doesn’t. Were the cannonballs tossed on the road to make the picture more dramatic, or were they removed? They could have been removed to clear the road for wagon traffic, or to recylcle the balls. In those days, people picked up used cannonballs and fired them again.
A very good question is why anyone should care? A man named Errol Morris cares. The link is to a very long article at the New York Times about the picture. Mr. Morris went to Ukraine to investigate the pictures. It is possible that his pursuit of truth did not stop at the boundary of insanity.
So the podcast mentions this famous picture, with a second shot that casts doubts. PG went to the LOC, and found the famous picture right away. The second shot proved elusive. PG viewed all 263 pictures in the Fenton collection in a slide show, and could not find the second picture. PG began to think that maybe the second picture was the fake. The New York Times article by Errol Morris has a copy of the second picture. The possibility remains that the second picture is a fabrication.
The podcast says that the location of some rocks changes in the two pictures. In the picture without the cannonballs on the road, the rocks are higher up on a hill, than they are in the famous picture. To Mr. Morris, this is evidence that the famous picture is a fake. PG has examined the two images, and includes them here. Perhaps this search for truth will be called off before the onset of dementia.
Controversies about famous images is not new. The shot of the flag going up over Iwo Jima has long been suspected of being posed. Just today on facebook, there was a link to a feature, The Kissing Sailor, or “The Selective Blindness of Rape Culture”. The idea is that the nurse did not want the sailor to kiss her on VJ day.
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