Chamblee54

Confederate Memorial Day

Posted in Uncategorized by chamblee54 on April 26, 2012







Today is Confederate Memorial Day in Georgia. It is an ancient question…how to honor the soldiers from the side that lost. They were just as valiant as the Union Soldiers. Considering the shortages of the Confederate Armies, the Rebels may have been just a bit braver.

The issue of Federalism is a defining conflict of the American experience. What powers do we give the Federal Government, and what powers do we cede to the States? The Confederacy was the product of this conflict. The Confederate States were a collection of individual states, with separate armies. This is one reason why the war turned out the way it did.

This is not a defense for slavery. The “Peculiar institution” was a moral horror. The after effects of slavery affect us today. Any remembrance of the Confederacy should know that. This does not make the men who fought any less brave.

It is tough to see the War Between the States through the modern eye. It was a different time, before many of the modern conveniences that are now considered necessities. Many say that the United States were divided from the start, and the fact the union lasted as long as it did was remarkable. When a conflict becomes us against them, the “causes” become unimportant.

The War was a horror, with no pain medicine, and little that could be done for the wounded. It took the south many, many years to recover. The healing continues in many ways today. Remembering the sacrifices made by our ancestors helps.
This is a repost from CMD 2010. Pictures are from the Library of Congress.






Eat Pray Love Chronicles Part Two

Posted in Book Reports by chamblee54 on April 25, 2012










Bead 019 It was a glorious Sunday afternoon. PG called Uzi, woke him up, and suggested they go to the 420 festival. This is a neighborhood shindig in painfully trendy Candler Park. Uzi is going to drive to PG, who will drive them downtown. In the half hour or so before the company arrives, PG is going to try and knock out a few beads of this book report.
PG and Uzi have a basic disagreement about how to go places. PG likes surface roads, and Uzi prefers interstates. When PG is going west on i285, he gets on at Glenridge Road. Uzi lives off Abernathy Road in Sandy Springs. The idea of taking the interstate to Uzi’s place strikes PG as insanity. To Uzi, surface roads provide access to the freeways. However, on this sunday, four lanes of I285 are shut down for road work. This is a good day to take surface roads. PG briefed Uzi on the way to go, and hopefully he will not get lost.
This is a good bead to warm up with. Miss Gilbert notes that she has not done yoga since arriving in Rome. The yoga mat will go unused until she arrives in India. It is noted that yoga rhymes with toga.

Bead 020 Gomer Pyle had a saying. His grandmother taught it to him.“Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver, and the other gold”. This bead is about the friends that Miss Gilbert has made in Rome. Her favorite is a tax accountant named Luca Spaghetti.
PG was writing something once, and did not know how to spell spaghetti. Spi and spe were the logical choices. The dictionary did not yield results with either prefix. Finally, PG got out the yellow pages. He found a restaurant called the Spaghetti Store. And he has known how to spell spaghetti ever since. Since then, spell check has made this skill obsolete

Bead 021 This bead is about the pursuit of pleasure. Italians are reputed to be better at this than uptight white americans. Miss Gilbert is trying. The only museum she has visited is the museum of pasta. There is the time when she gathers a few items at a market, takes them to her place, and conjures up a meal. This is what Italians call l’arte d’arraniarsi … making something out of nothing.
There are three basic devices for playing with text… bold, underline, and italic. PG has long exploited bold and underline for breaking up text into bite sized chunks, but has a long standing reluctance to italicize. Historically, italics have been used to set apart languages other than English. The paragraph above may be the first time PG has put anything in Italics. The fact that it is an Italian word, in a book report about Italy, is a coincidence.

Bead 022 Miss Gilbert has come to Italy to pursue pleasure, but is determined to be celibate. To some, this is a contradiction. To her, it makes sense. She is recovering from a traumatic divorce, and technically still dating a toxic bf. She has been continually in relationships for years, and needs a break.
This is one arena where PG and Miss Gilbert are dramatically different. At a discussion group on Saturday, someone asked PG when his last relationship was. It was in 1988, and PG still feels he was fortunate to have had that. When you are a Zorlack, it is tough to connect with earthlings. In that same group, someone asked PG what he thought when he got off. The answer was “where is the paper towel”. This got a good laugh, but is technically not true.

Bead 023 Luca Spaghetti took Liz Gilbert to a soccer match. This is a serious sport in Italy. She sits in front of a man who expands her knowledge of Italian cusswords.
It is ironic that the word used here to describe the sport is soccer. The word is an american abomination, short for association football. The rest of the world calls it football, or the local equivalent. It is odd that Miss Gilbert goes to Italy to wallow in the language, and then uses a clumsy american phrase to discuss the european obsession. According to answers.com, soccer is sometimes called calcio (pronounced “kahltsho”) in Italy. This answer was sponsored by a listing for a urologist.

Bead 024 Liz Gilbert sees learning Italiano as being locked into a candy store. Every day is a new treat, many of them unexpected. It turns out that tree and hotel are similar in Italiano. When Miss Gilbert says she grew up on a christmas tree farm, people wonder what a christmas hotel is, and why it is grown on a farm. The favorite words so far is attraversiamo, which means “Lets cross over”. The chance to use this word sometimes means diving into the most deadly traffic in Europe.
PG has always wondered why languages have a different name is other languages. We say spanish, until we go to Buford Hiway, where it is espanol. Italian is italiano, german is deutsch, portoguese is portogues. It is one more reason to try esparanto.

Bead 025This bead is about a walking tour of Rome. Miss Gilbert set out strolling, not knowing where she was going to go. In many cities, this can be dangerous. The finale was Augusteum, a grand mausoleum built for one of the Caesars. It has fallen into disrepair, and is now partially buried under the dirt of the ages.
April 25 is ANZAC day. This is a remembrance of the young men who were slaughtered at Gallipoli. This siege was ninety seven years ago, and not one person out of ten thousand can tell you why. Yesterday was Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. It is a shame when a people’s sacrifice is remembered in proportion to their skill at publicity.

Bead 026 The Italian postal service is not efficient. Miss Gilbert shipped a box of books to Rome, and is wondering when they will arrive. Some of her friends say not to worry, it is in the hands of G-d. Nothing humans can do will affect it.
The same can be said about the critters that regulate spam. PG got two invites to join an internet service today. They were from the same person, who is a nice man that PG is not in close contact with. One of the invites was addressed to Luther, and one to Cam. PG’s “real” name starts with Luther Campbell. Most of his life, he has been called Cam. In the last two years, he has started to use Luther. The name of the person connected to the invites is Ed, who calls PG Cam.

Bead 027 Miss Gilbert takes her friend Sophie on a day trip to Naples. The line in corny movies is see Naples and die. The ladies give it their best shot. They do to a place said to have the best pizza in Naples, and possibly the world.
There is a picture with this feature of a Checkers hamburger stand on Buford Hiway. In an act of mercy, this facility has been closed. When Miss Gilbert went to Italy to eat fabulous food, PG went to Buford Hiway to get gutbomb (spell check suggestion:gumbo) burgers.
In 1994, Richard Nixon died. The liberal media did not have him to kick around any more. One day PG noticed an enormous flag at half staff. It was at Checkers. PG was probably the only person who made the connection.

Bead 028 The rebound bf is David. Miss Gilbert can’t live with him, and can’t live without him. One day, she sends him an email to break up. Later in the day, she receives a reply, telling her that he agrees this is the best thing to do. Miss Gilbert then gets a phone call from Giovanni, wondering where she is. Miss Gilbert starts to cry hysterically when she tries to tell Giovanni the story. He is totally sweet and understanding, but does not kiss her.
One problem with writing on a computer is the distraction of the internet. You never know when you are going to miss something on facebook. Like this: I think the remains of the recent emotional cataclysm are gone. Got up, gave myself an amusing haircut, did some watering and transplanting on the Flats, and went for a long (by recent standards) run in the lovely morning. Clomped along, concentrating on the green, the growing, the flowering, the scented, and when I came to a particularly generous patch of sky, looked up and said, “Wow, And it’s all MINE.” I’ll share, of course. So, yeah, back to reasonably happy. Then a bird shat on me.
There is an old saying … I don’t know whether to shit or go blind. Ray Charles said to use ex lax.

Bead 029 Miss Gilbert has one sister. She is older, knows more things, and is named Catherine. For a long time the two did not get along, but finally are starting to bond. Catherine comes to Rome to visit Liz, and they go for an educational romp around the city.
In the last sentence, bond was originally typed bone. E is above d on the keyboard, and this is an easy mistake to make. Bonding and boning are similar concepts, but different in some crucial ways. If it turns out that the sisters are boning each other (is that possible without male participation), then the movie will be a lot more fun.

Bead 030 This bead is about children. Miss Gilbert thought for a while that she wanted them, and then decided that she did not. There is an attic apartment awaiting her in sister’s house, and a future as the family flake. This is not an appealing prospect. Perhaps she can write blog posts. It is good to remember that easy writing makes tough reading. Stream of consciousness is a lot more fun to write than to read.

Bead 031 Miss Gilbert drops out of Italiano (spell check suggestion:Totalitarian) class, and starts to travel with a vengeance. Meanwhile, at his group on saturday night, someone asked PG where he would go if money was no object. This threw PG for a loop, because travel fantasy has never been a part of his lifestyle. This might be a function of being perpetually single. If you don’t have anyone to go with, what is the point of going anywhere. The one dependable travel companion PG has is Uzi, and they are limited to road trips within a few hours of Atlanta. Finally, after stumbling and harrumphing, PG said he might enjoy going back to Seattle, to see where he had been in 1980.

Bead 032 The next stops on the tour are Florence and Venice. A friend from Seattle joins the show in Venice. In contrast to the rhapsodies about Venice that Erica Jong dispenses, Miss Gilbert seems to feel sorry for the place.
PG saw Erica Jong give a book tour talk once. It was in a former foreign car dealership in Buckhead, that enjoyed a second life as a bookstore. The audience was very feminist, full of women who got off on asking questions that included the f word. She did not say anything about Venice.
In March 1990, Tom Robbins made an appearance at the same Buckhead bookstore. PG got there after the reading, and saw the line of people getting books signed. At one point, Mr. Robbins stood up, and turned around, the the delight of manbutt admirers.
When PG got home from seeing the levis of Tom Robbins, there was a message on his machine. A longtime friend said he had something important to tell him. He had aids. Two years later, when PG got back from Amsterdam , there was a message from longtime friend’s mother.

Bead 033 There is a concept that you can choose one word to describe a major city. For Stockholm, conform. For New York, achieve. For Atlanta, marketing. For Rome, sex. All caps are used in this chapter, but PG is tired of shouting. When everyone is shouting, nobody is heard. People think that their wonderful opinions become more true when they express them with more volume.
The original version of this paragraph ended with the words “PG begs to differ.” When the image was saved and previewed, the word differ was on a line by itself. This is known as a widow, and looks bad. PG decided to eliminate the phrase, “PG begs to differ”. When someone begs to differ, that phrase can usually be eliminated without affecting the meaning of the paragraph.
The images for this feature were originally edited to a four to three format. They were intended to fit the monitor of PG’s computer, which was set to 1024×768. In the time since then, PG has discovered the joys of the golden rectangle. This means that pictures 720 pixels wide will be 447 pixels tall. This is the golden mean, a size which mathematicians sing the praises of. The golden mean is quite possibly an Italian discovery.

Bead 034 The nickname for Silvio Berlusconi is l’idiota. When an American talks about George Bush, Italians say they have one too. In this chapter, Luca Spaghetti has an american style thanksgiving for his birthday. It turns into a tearful, drunken feast.
The pictures for today’s post come from a variety of places. PG takes his camera wherever he goes, and then edits the results. Sometimes the folders are full of usable material. Other folders have a good picture or two. A few months ago, PG reviewed the list of folders, and put an x beside the ones that did not have a lot of good material. While picking pics for this post, PG took images from seven folders deemed not worthy of use. It is a dog’s breakfast, with shots taken in Piedmont Park, the Flying Biscuit, the Norfolk Southern tracks, and a restricted property.

Bead 035 All of this decadent eating has a cost. Miss Gilbert cannot fit into any of her clothes. She buys some jeans for the remaining time she will be in Italy. Soon, she will be an Indian ascetic, and losing weight will be relatively easy.
While assembling this feature, PG dropped by an arrogant Jesus worship blog. The blog has a device where you can check on a star, or number of stars, to “rate” the post. Since PG is banned from commenting at this facility, he clicks one star, usually without the unpleasant experience of reading the post. Nothing personal, just business. The blogger is question (or is that questionable blogger?) observed this rating. “And the first rating: 1 star! I’m looking forward to the one-star rating army to come and tell me how shameful this post is — I hope they can enumerate the shamefulness for me so I can improve myself in the future.”
PG sent a tweet in reply “@Frank_Turk Maybe if you allow one star reviewers to speak they could tell you why.” The absolute worst thing that could happen is for the ban on commenting to be lifted, and to invite PG to “enumerate the shamefulness.” If this was to happen, then PG would be required to read the post in question.

Bead 036 In the last bead about Italy, Miss Gilbert goes to Sicily and eats fabulous food. Part one of this cycle was posted a few days ago. PG is beginning to wonder if this chapter by chapter business is really a good idea.









Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day

Posted in Uncategorized by chamblee54 on April 24, 2012







Today is Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. According to wikipedia , “The starting date of the genocide is conventionally held to be April 24, 1915, the day when Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople”
A site called The Straight Dope has an overview of the affair, Was there genocide in early 20th century Armenia? Here are a few excerpts.

It tells you something about human nature and the century just past that the typical response to this question is: What Armenian genocide? Hardly anyone remembers this appalling crime, even though at a million-plus deaths it was the first modern holocaust, ranking eighth on the list of high-body-count butcherings 1900-’87 compiled by genocide historian R. J. Rummel.
Few can even tell you where Armenia is. (The traditional Armenian homeland covers the modern republic of Armenia plus some of Turkey, Iran, and Iraq, but the killings were confined to Turkey and other parts of the old Ottoman empire.) It’s not like the murders were conducted in secret or were over before anybody noticed — on the contrary, they spanned 30 years and received sustained worldwide publicity. So why the amnesia? Turkey’s adamant refusal to acknowledge the massacres is part of it, but equally important is the West’s agreement to forget…
What had the Armenians done to deserve all this? Not much — their main offense was to be a Christian minority in a crumbling Islamic empire. Like another much-persecuted Middle Eastern ethnic group whose sufferings are better known, the Armenians had an ancient language and culture plus a reputation for clannishness and a knack for finance, and they became the target of a similar type of unreasoning bigotry…
A massacre of 15,000 to 25,000 Armenians in 1909 set the table for the main event during World War I. Blaming the supposedly disloyal Christian minority for an early defeat by the Russians, the Turkish government starting in 1915 rounded up Armenians throughout the country, murdered vast numbers outright and deported the rest, with many dying on forced marches or in refugee camps. The brutal work was carried out by an elaborate bureaucracy that some historians consider a model for the extermination program of the Nazis. Add in a couple of additional massacres in the early 1920s and the Armenian death toll for 1915-1922 totals a million to a million and a half.

Another site, devoted to history, has a page, The Armenians.

The Turkish government viewed all Armenians with suspicion and instituted programs of relocation and mass murder. Beginning in June 1915, non-Muslim peoples were forced to move away from areas deemed to have military sensitivity. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were forced to march to new homes, some to the Syrian desert, others to Mesopotamia. Little preparation had been made for this exodus and the toll from exhaustion, disease and starvation was staggering. Bands of Turks and Kurds would descend upon Armenian villages and slaughter entire populations.
The treatment of the Armenians was not unknown in the outside world. The Allied governments and even Germany issued protests, but the Turkish government was intent on cleansing their lands of all Armenian influence. Persecution continued into the early 1920s. For years afterward, parents in the West would evoke images of starving Armenians as a means to encourage their children to clean their plates.
It is impossible to assign accurate numbers to the slaughter. Reports provided by Armenian groups are usually regarded by historians as too high, but the official Turkish numbers appear too low. Mid-range figures indicate that perhaps between 600,000 and one million Armenians died during this period, out of a pre-war population estimated at 1.5 million.

The treatment of the Armenians ninety seven years ago remains a sensitive issue. Turkey staunchly denies that it happened. Since Asia Minor is a strategic piece of property, many governments are willing to go along with this denial. Even Israel , which knows a thing or two about ethnic cleansing, is sensitive to the need for allies.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress .






Lewis Grizzard

Posted in Uncategorized by chamblee54 on April 23, 2012








In the time between 1980 and 1994, if you lived in Atlanta you heard about Lewis Grizzard. Some people loved him. Some did not. He told good old boy stories about growing up in rural Georgia. Many of them were enjoyable. He also made social and political commentaries, which upset a few people.

PG had mixed feelings about Lewis. The stories about Kathy Sue Loudermilk and Catfish were funny. His opinions about gays, feminists, and anything non redneck could get on your nerves. His column for the fishwrapper upset PG at least twice a week.

In 1982, Lewis (he reached the level of celebrity where he was known by his first name only) wrote a column about John Lennon. Lewis did not understand why Mr. Ono was such a big deal. PG cut the column out of the fishwrapper, and put it in a box. Every few years, PG would be looking for something, find that column, and get mad all over again.

The New Georgia Encyclopedia has a page about Lewis, which expresses some of these contradictions.
If Grizzard’s humor revealed the ambivalence amid affluence of the Sunbelt South, it reflected its conservative and increasingly angry politics as well. He was fond of reminding fault-finding Yankee immigrants that “Delta is ready when you are,” and, tired of assaults on the Confederate flag, he suggested sarcastically that white southerners should destroy every relic and reminder of the Civil War (1861-65), swear off molasses and grits, drop all references to the South, and begin instead to refer to their region as the “Lower East.” Grizzard also wore his homophobia and hatred for feminists on his sleeve, and one of the last of his books summed up his reaction to contemporary trends in its title, Haven’t Understood Anything since 1962 and Other Nekkid Truths (1992).
In the end, which came in 1994, when he was only forty-seven, the lonely, insecure, oft-divorced, hard-drinking Grizzard proved to be the archetypal comic who could make everyone laugh but himself. He chronicled this decline and his various heart surgeries in I Took a Lickin’ and Kept on Tickin’, and Now I Believe in Miracles (1993), published just before his final, fatal heart failure.

As you may have discerned, Lewis McDonald Grizzard Jr. met his maker on March 20, 1994. He was 47. There was a valve in his heart that wasn’t right. The good news is that he stayed out of the army. At the time, Vietnam was the destination for most enlistees. The bad news is that his heart problems got worse and worse, until it finally killed him.

Sixteen years later, PG found a website, Wired for Books. It is a collection of author interviews by Don Swaim, who ran many of them on a CBS radio show called Book Beat. There are two interviews with Lewis Grizzard. The first one was done to promote My Daddy Was a Pistol and I’m a Son of A Gun. This was the story of Lewis Grizzard Senior, who was another mixed bag.

PG found himself listening to this chat, and wondered what he had been missing all those years. The stories and one liners came flowing out like the Chattahoochee going under the perimeter highway. Daddy Grizzard was a soldier, who went to war in Europe and Korea. The second one did something to his mind, and he took to drinking. He was never quite right the rest of his life. His son from adored him anyway. When you put yourself in those loafers for a while, you began to taste the ingredients in that stew we called Lewis Grizzard.

PG still remembers the anger that those columns caused … he has his own story, and knows when his toes are stepped on. The thing is, after listening to this show, PG has an idea of why Lewis Grizzard wrote the things that he did. Maybe PG and Lewis aren’t all that different after all.

The pictures for this feature are from The Library of Congress. While picking out the pictures, PG listened to the other Lewis Grizzard show with Don Swaim. They both have last names that are often mispronounced. When Lewis wondered where Klansmen get those pointy hats… at the KKK mart, perhaps… PG had to stop the broadcast and write a postscript.






Shut Up, Listen, Save A Life

Posted in Uncategorized by chamblee54 on April 23, 2012







This is a double repost from this time three years ago. A news story at the time was the Jaheem Herrera. He grew tired of the bullies, and hung himself.
“They called him gay and a snitch,” his stepfather said.. “All the time they’d call him this.” Many words were written about the gay bullying. Very few were said about the snitch part. We will never know which one hurt the most. Mr. Herrera would be 14 now.
The other part of this feature was based on an email from Allen Hunt. PG was added to this mailing list after he sent an email to Mr. Hunt. After a few unpleasant exchanges, Mr. Hunt removed PG from the list. The Allen Hunt radio show is still broadcast on sunday night. His motto is that it is not about right or left, but right or wrong. PG suspects that the show’s moral gyroscope needs to be calibrated.

PG got wound up today about a report involving super glue eight time zones away. Meanwhile, an 11 year old man, who stayed a few exits down the perimeter, hung himself.
“They called him gay and a snitch,” his stepfather said.. “All the time they’d call him this.”
Jaheem Herrera was from St. Croix, in the American Virgin Islands. The picture shows that he had light skin. Dunaire Elementary School is on South Indian Creek Road in Stone Mountain. The area is predominantly African American.

PG does not know any of the kids who bullied Mr. Herrera. He suspects that many are Jesus Worshipers. The Jesus Worship Church has preachers that verbally abuse the congregation. The Jesus Worship Church has a book which teaches the hatred of homosexuals. They call it “The Word of G-d”.
The Jesus Worship Church has a phrase…”shame the devil”. PG wonders if “devil” was one of the things Mr. Herrera was called, along with gay and snitch. He looked different than his abusers, and was from a different place.

PG worked for seven years with a professional Jesus Worshiper. He clearly remembers the time that “Minister” taught PG the truth about Jesus.

“Minister” shouted down and humiliated PG one day, for  Jesus. After the mugging was over, “Minister” got a phone call. He picked up the phone and screamed “I never felt better in my life”.

Jesus Worship is an aggressive, angry business. Sometimes the results are fatal.

The email was from the Allen Hunt Show. . Mr. Hunt is a radio whiner, who used to be a Minister. He still talks about religion, whenever and wherever.

The message yesterday was about “3 simple things you can to do grow forward in your faith life. “ The three items are read, pray, and talk. The reader(s) of this blog should know what is coming next.

PG “I received your letter about three words to improve your “faith life” I don’t have a problem with reading. I think more than five pages a day is indicated. I also think that any book..not just religious books…will be beneficial. Even if all you do is have fun, you have done something worthwhile.

The second two words…pray and talk…are way, way overrated. Jesus worshipers talk too much and listen too little. When you talk, you need to pay attention to your audience. You need to have the trust and respect of this person. You need to shut up and listen when it is their turn to talk.

Prayer is talking to G-d. Meditation is listening to G-d. Our culture does not value listening, and this is a serious problem.

A few days ago, an 11 year old in Stone Mountain grew tired of the abuse of his classmates, and committed suicide. How many of those bully children were Jesus Worshipers? How many of those preachers shout angry messages to those children? How many of those children were taught to hate gay people in their churches? I don’t see any of your messages about these issues.

The inability of Jesus Worshipers to quit their wonderful talking and listen to others is one of the biggest problems in our society. Your message…encouraging people to talk, after they read their five pages a day… makes the problem worse.”

AH ” If we do not talk with each other, how do we grow?”

PG ” by listening”

AH ” If no one is talking, no one can listen “

PG ” don’t worry there will always be someone who wants to talk…Right now, the focus of the Jesus Woship church should be toning down the anger and the shouting, reducing the level of venom in the church, before we lose any more 11 year old boys to suicide.”

Mr. Hunt did not reply to this last message. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.






You Was An Accident

Posted in Uncategorized by chamblee54 on April 22, 2012










These visits to alternative reality are from a variety of sources. Included are Facebook (fb), twitter (tw), Futility Closet (fucl), All Aphorisms, All The Time (Aph), Texts From Last Night (tln) , and Overheard in New York (ony). Attempts to maintain a no profanity blog will be suspended for this post. // “To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.” — Bertrand Russell (fucl) // “There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.” — George Bernard Shaw (fucl) // “Leave something to wish for, so as not to be miserable from very happiness.” — Baltasar Gracián (fucl) // Hey is there a picture of me in a trash can on your phone? (tln) // Guys with values who care about your personality don’t cum on your back the 2nd time they you sleep with you. (tln) // Sometimes when you’re feeling unsexy, unhappy, unloved, and/or unproductive, a good playlist can turn those feelings around. It’s worth a shot. (fb) // A shroud has no pockets. (Scotland) (fucl) // No one is a blacksmith at birth. (Namibia) (fucl) // The absent always bears the blame. (Netherlands) (fucl) // Please Share, Subscribe, and or Tag Yourself in these quotes. These are a few of my favorite quotes digitized. If something speaks to you, please feel free to share. Sharing gives the quotes life and meaning. As time permits, I will digitize more quotes. Be sure to check out the other albums. (fb) // Wherever there is injustice in the world, Americans will rise up against it by changing their profile pictures. (tw) // The Secret Service thing makes me wonder if the uterus is the wrong organ politicians should be trying to regulate. (tw) // Gay man #1: Yeah, he has a girlfriend. Gay man #2: Ugh. Girlfriends? That’s so middle school. (ony) // One cannot make soup out of beauty. (Estonia) (fucl) // Bad is called good when worse happens. (Norway) (fucl) // When the mouse laughs at the cat, there is a hole. (Gambia) (fucl) // If it makes this person a happy person and also more self rightgouse then so be it. He is just voicing his opinion about the past. The past no 1 in RIGHT MIND needs to remember or even think about. You want to make a museum with picture to turn your stomach. Stop and take pictures of the hungry in the mountains of western West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. We still have out houses in this country for God’s Sake. Now show those pictures, it would include all races and ethic carry overs. Now your talking current time current events current nightmares of inequity. Or better still let’s go to Compton California and show real edgy stuff. And we wonder where G-D is? We didn’t ask that question 60 years ago. DID WE? Wake UP AMERICA AND SMELL THE INJUSTICES OF OUR OWN “PRESENT DAY AMERICA”. Then see if you can sleep. (fb) // Under trees it rains twice. (Switzerland) (fucl) // Everyone is foolish until they buy land. (Ireland) (fucl) // Living with a dog does not excuse drinking out of the toilet. // Do me a HUGE favor – Un-“friend” me right now if you think that “G-d” gave you the right to sit in moral judgement of other people. You’re an asshole and your kind isn’t welcome on my page. Please go fuck yourself gently with a running chainsaw. (fb) // “There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either.” – Robert Graves (fb) // Register for your own account so you can vote on comments, save your favorites, and more. Learn more. Please stay on topic, be civil, and be brief. // “While I dance I cannot judge, I cannot hate, I cannot separate myself from life, I can only be joyful and whole. This is why I dance.” ~ Hans Bos (fb) // Apparently, my Saturdays now consist of biking around town and having a beer here, a whiskey there, a car bomb over there … I … am pretty much okay with this. (fb) // Every head is a world. (Cuba) (fucl) // The only victory over love is flight. (France) (fucl) // If I die tonight and was cremated, you could probably get high off the smoke. (tln) // do you remember when we thought we were both knocked up by the same guy like two days apart and would have half twins? Thats a best friend moment. (tln) // I feel like this is the moment of high where you have to write these texts down to remember to text them and feel that somehow this is important to the continuity of the world. (tln) // Halfway through he got an idea for a short story so he wrote it in magic marker on my boobs. Yeah, he’s a keeper. (tln) // Don’t look where you fell, but where you slipped. (Liberia) (fucl) // Many lose when they win, and others win when they lose. (Germany) (fucl) // yeah. go ahead with that thinking of yours. At least this dude is trying to live his dream and fulfill it. What exactly have you done in your life aside from wishing bad things upon others? // I just screeched at a fuckn parakeet it responded (tw) // http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=havZI_oUu7M this is my favorite version of this song it makes me want to lie still and stare at the ceiling and become a ghost (tw) // Girl: God, I hate your vibrator. Friend: Ohmigod, right? So do I! (ony) // Child, thoughtfully: Did you have a baby shower for me mommy? Mother: No. You was a accident. (ony) // “It is not economical to go to bed early to save the candles if the result is twins.” (China) (fucl) // Thank you, alliteration, for the dollar I just saved on this taco. (tw) // “A novel is a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it.” – Randall Jarrell, (fb) // Having sprained her ankle right in front of the Cornwall home of C. Van Ness, 82, Miss Wood is now his wealthy widow. (tw) // Bond, on trial for murder in Brooklyn, is not the kind of man to shoot his own daughter (the bullet was meant for his wife). (tw) // The shaft at Myrtle Avenue is deep, the boulder above it, immense, and Vonlonsky, working below, dead. (tw) // At Court Street, Mrs Flanagan and her dinner guest were found two days later, still seated. Gas leak. (tw) // you go white boy everyone who hates is just jelly you’re living the weeaboo dream //Selah









Come See Me Sometime

Posted in Uncategorized by chamblee54 on April 22, 2012










There is a nifty article about Cary Grant and LSD on the web now. It seems Mr. Grant, the onetime Archibald Leach, had a few issues. Duh. Married five times. Widely rumored to the the bf of Randolph Scott. A talented actor, but a mess in the real world.

In 1956, Mr. Grant was with third wife Betsy Drake, who had a tough summer. 
“It was an open secret between cast and crew alike that the married Cary Grant was sleeping with Sophia Loren during their filming of The Pride and The Passion. Drake had flown to Italy to be by her husband’s side during the shoot only to find Grant ignoring her. Distraught, she fled on what was to be a quiet voyage on the SS Andrea Doria. On July 25, 1956 her quiescent journey turned into a nightmare. The ship collided with a Swedish ocean liner off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, sinking to the bottom of the Sea and claiming fifty-one lives.2 Betsy survived but was traumatized. The incident, coupled with the estrangement of her husband, haunted her in her sleep.”
Betsy Drake had a friend named Sally Brophy, an actress. Miss Brophy also received help from a psychiatrist, which included taking LSD. Eventually, Cary Grant started to go see this doctor.

Taking a legal trip, in a Hollywood doctor’s office, is not like going to a rave. It was seen as therapy, a way of learning how to deal with your problems. According to Cary Grant, it worked very well. He talked about it to a reporter, and then confirmed that he wanted this to go out to the public.

“The shock of each revelation brings with it an anguish of sadness for what was not known before in the wasted years of ignorance and, at the same time, an ecstasy of joy at being freed from the shackles of such ignorance … I learned many things in the quiet of that room … I learned that everything is or becomes its own opposite … it releases inhibition. You know, we are all unconsciously holding our anus. In one LSD dream I shit all over the rug and shit all over the floor. Another time I imagined myself as a giant penis launching off from earth like a spaceship … I seemed to be in a world of healthy, chubby little babies’ legs and diapers, smeared blood, a sort of general menstrual activity taking place … As a philosopher once said, you cannot judge the day until the night ..”

The only problem was, Mr. Grant had a movie coming out, “Operation Petticoat”. The studio “tripped out” when it heard the star of the show was praising LSD in the press. Mr. Grant had a share in the profits of the film, and was persuaded to call the reporter and recant on the interview.

Not everyone was impressed by the doctors that Mr. Grant used.
“Aldous Huxley had encountered the clinic prior to his death, but had sought his LSD experiences from the parallel practice of Dr. Oscar Janiger, the other acid doctor to the stars. Huxley witnessed Chandler and Hartman’s work and was unnerved by their approach. “We met two Beverly Hills psychiatrists the other day,” he wrote, “who specialise in LSD therapy at $100 a shot – and, really, I have seldom met people of lower sensitivity, more vulgar mind! To think of people made vulnerable by LSD being exposed to such people is profoundly disturbing.”
In any event, LSD became criminalized, Doctors Chandler and Hartman got in trouble, and Cary Grant got married two more times. While Grant never renounced LSD, he refused to use any other illegal drug, even marijuana. He was a conservative old fogey.

Maureen Donaldson was the lover of Cary Grant in the seventies, and was a friend of Alice Cooper. She finally persuaded Mr. Grant to go to an Alice Cooper concert with her. He wore sunglasses, gold chains, and dressed like a “seedy agent”. He sat through the entire show, wearing earplugs, hating every minute of it.
As Miss Donaldson recalled the evening
“Driving back to Los Angeles, I congratulated Cary for being such a good sport … He’d made an extraordinary effort to please me … [I asked him] ‘You really hated it, didn’t you?’ ‘It’s…’ he said, struggling for words, ‘you know what it’s like? Remember I told you about the time I took LSD in my doctor’s office and shat all over his rug and floor?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well now I know how that poor doctor felt.”
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost



Crossroads

Posted in Uncategorized by chamblee54 on April 21, 2012






The most recent episode of Radiolab is Crossroads. It is about Robert Johnson, who played the blues. The legend is that he went to the crossroads of Highway 61 and Highway 49 in Clarksdale MS. At midnight, the devil came down, tuned his guitar, and gave Robert Johnson the ability to play the blues like no one had ever heard. In return, the devil claimed the soul of Robert Johnson. (It was near Clarksdale, on Highway 61, that Bessie Smith was in a fatal car crash.)

Radiolab takes a look at the story. Before they are through, there are several Mr. Johnsons. One was messing around with a married woman, whose husband gave Mr. Johnson poisoned whiskey. Another one had syphilis. An old blues man tells the story of a bluesman who shows up one day with his playing incredibly improved, only it was not Robert Johnson. Another story was that Mr. Johnson married young, and his wife died in childbirth, and that was what made him a guitar superman. In the end, we really don’t know much about the man, except for the recordings he made.

Another radio show, The Delta Blues at Full Speed, asks a few questions about the recordings. Some say they are as much as 20% too fast. When you slow them down, they sound better. One commenter said that if a man was going to sell his soul to the devil, then his voice should be lower.

A later radio show, Robert Johnson and Studio Alchemy, has another “expert” who says that the recordings are probably pretty accurate. The discussion goes on to the concept that all recordings, to one degree or another, are fictions. Music recordings originally sought to record the sound of the artist. When the creative potential of the studio became apparent, the finished recording became a work of art in it’s own right, where the sound engineer was just as important as the players.

There was an ad campaign once, is it live, or is it memorex? The idea was that the tape had a sound so clear that you could not tell it from the original. The thing is, what the tv viewer heard was a recording, which was probably not on memorex. The copy embedded with this post is transferred to digital somehow, which distorts the slogan of the commercial even more.

While PG was listening to these radio shows, he was editing pictures from The Library of Congress. Some of these pictures are included in this feature. This is another example of how editing, after the fact, can affect how you perceive a unit of merchandise. Some say that the only thing that should matter is how the product makes you feel.




The Pants Of The Family

Posted in Music by chamblee54 on April 20, 2012







Ted Nugent went on a “Journey to the center of the mind”. When he got there, the lights were on, but no one was home. (Spell check suggestions: Gent, Nugget)

Theodore Anthony Nugent has had quite a career. The Amboy Dukes were leaders in music, and vocalist fashion. The “motor city madman” enjoyed a prosperous solo career. He has also become a “right wing” spokesman, expressing opinions on a variety of subjects. Some comments recently earned him a private meeting with the Secret Service. That agency has it’s own PR problems. The fly on the wall, at the Nugent – USSS meeting, is not talking.

In the comments to a report on the TAN-USSS conference, PG found this:
“Ted Nugent doesn’t have any right to salute flag draped coffins. He’s nothing but a coward. // How so? // he is a taxpayer,citizen.he has his rights // He literally shat his pants at a recruiting station just to avoid serving in Vietnam, for one.”
One thing Mr. Nugent likes to talk about is hunting. There is a difference between deer season and the Vietnam war… Charlie shot back. Mr. Nugent was born in 1948, making him the perfect age for the party. A copy of his draft record is available. Radio show notes discusses the codes.

1-In February 1967, Nugent was classified as 1-S (Deferment to complete high school).
2-In December 1967, Nugent was classified as 1-A (Available for unrestricted service)
3-In February 1968, Nugent was reclassified as 2-S (Deferment for college study)
4-In February 1969, Nugeent was reclassified as 1-A (Available for unrestricted service)
5-In August, 1969, Nugent was given an armed forces physical exam Two months later, Nugent was reclassified as 1-Y (A designation usually given to those with limiting medical conditions. He was eligible for military service, but only in case of war or National Emergency)
6-In December 1972, reclassified again. Hard to read on the document, but it may say 4-F. (Most former 1-Y registrants were reclassified 4-F, not acceptable for military service, when the 1-Y classification was abolished in late 1971)

In April of 1968, Journey to the Center of the Mind, the second album by the Amboy Dukes, was released. The title track, fueled by lead guitarist Ted Nugent, became a hit. The band toured endlessly, playing 300 shows a year. This was when Ted Nugent enjoyed a 2-S student deferment.

One show was at the Atlanta Municipal Auditorium. The headliner was Jimi Hendrix. The legend is that Mr. Nugent was playing a Hendrix song. Jimi came on stage, and told him not to play his song.

If you are eating, don’t read the rest of this post. Skip ahead and enjoy the pictures, which are from The Library of Congress . Ok, here is the best part of the story. The Rutland Herald quotes an interview Ted Nugent gave The Detroit Free Press, July 15, 1990.
“He claims that 30 days before his Draft Board Physical, he stopped all forms of personal hygiene. The last 10 days he ingested nothing but junk food and Pepsi, and a week before his physical, he stopped using the bathroom altogether, virtually living inside his pants caked with excrement and urine. That spectacle won Nugent a deferment.” In the embedded video, no one in the band wants to stand next to Mr. Nugent.
The fact that Mr. Nugent did not go to ‘Nam did not prevent him from saying what he would have done.
“… if I would have gone over there, I’d have been killed, or I’d have killed, or I’d kill all the hippies in the foxholes … I would have killed everybody,”





Are You Sick Of Possums?

Posted in Uncategorized by chamblee54 on April 19, 2012







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10 Smart People

Posted in Uncategorized by chamblee54 on April 19, 2012






The wordpress home page directs the surfer to a festive post, “10 smart people who died in really dumb ways”. The appearance of this notice on Four Twenty Eve is probably a coincidence. Also noted is the latest on Susan Boyle. Miss Boyle is reportedly planning to market a brand of lipstick.
One problem with this post (about post postmortem smarties) is the fog of history. Only three of the smarties are contemporary. The rest are legends. Take Aeschylus for instance. Around 500BC, an eagle mistook his head for a rock, and dropped a tortoise on it. Even if wikipedia were more reliable, that would be tough to prove.
The three contemporaries can be verified. Jim Fixx wrote a book about jogging, and had a heart attack while running. Jerome Irving Rodale was promoting the health benefits of organic food on the Dick Cavett show. He dropped dead during a commercial break. Tennessee Williams choked to death on an aspirin cap while intoxicated. It could have happened in one of his plays.

The list is not complete. Many famous people have made bizarre exits off the stage of life. Isadora Duncan was well known as a dancer. One night in Nice, France, she was riding in a convertible sportscar, wearing a long hand painted scarf. The scarf became entangled in the open spokes of a wheel, and Miss Duncan was thrown out of the car, and slammed to the pavement.

Even in more recent times, legend sometimes exaggerates the facts. Actress Lupe Velez was troubled about an unplanned pregnancy, and decided to end her life. According to Hollywood Babylon, Miss Velez took an overdose of pills, and then felt ill. She went to the bathroom to get sick. She passed out, fell face forward, and drowned in the commode. This version is disputed by her secretary Beulah Kinder, who claimed to find her asleep in bed.

The eddywu blog has another recent story, “Disappearances that made History”. This is similar to the other post, except that the body was not found. Included in this collection are D.B. Cooper, Judge Crater, Amelia Earhart, and Jimmy Hoffa. With the construction of a new football stadium in New Jersey, Mr. Hoffa will no longer have season tickets.

People who look at links may have seen this message: “eddywu.wordpress.com is no longer available. This blog has been archived or suspended for a violation of our Terms of Service.” Google has no more information about a Susan Boyle brand of lipstick. This is a repost.





Golf And Shopping

Posted in Uncategorized by chamblee54 on April 18, 2012





One Sunday afternoon, a man was playing golf. On the third hole, he hit the tee shot, and was walking down the fairway towards the ball. The fairway was next to a road. A funeral procession was driving down the road.
The man stopped his cart, got out, took his hat off and put it over his heart. He stood still, with his head bowed, until the mourners had driven by.
The playing partner of the man was astonished. “Don, why are you making such a big deal over that funeral procession”
“It was my wife”.

There was a small town once, with a Catholic Church, a Baptist Church, and a Jewish Synagogue.
One day the Catholics decided to give their priest a new car. They got an Audi, sprinkled a few drops of holy water on the hood, and gave it to the priest.
The Baptists thought this was a really good idea, and they decided to give their pastor a new vehicle. They got a Ford pickup truck, took it to a boat ramp, hooked a winch up to the front, and lowered the truck into the lake until it was completely covered in water.
Not to be outdone, the Jewish congregation decided their rabbi needed a new ride. They bought a Lexus, and cut half an inch off the tail pipe.

A woman was in town on a shopping trip. She began her day finding the most perfect shoes in the first shop and a beautiful dress on sale in the second. In the third, everything had just been reduced by 50 percent, when her mobile phone rang.
It was a doctor notifying her that her husband had just been in a terrible car accident and was in critical condition and in the ICU.
The woman told the doctor to inform her husband where she was and that she’d be there as soon as possible. As she hung up she realized she was leaving what was shaping up to be her best day ever in the boutiques. She decided to get in a couple of more shops before heading to the hospital.
She ended up shopping the rest of the morning, finishing her trip with a cup of coffee and a beautiful chocolate cake slice, compliments of the last shop.  Then she remembered her husband.
Feeling guilty, she dashed to the hospital. She saw the doctor in the corridor and asked about her husband’s condition. The lady doctor glared at her and shouted, “You went ahead and finished your shopping trip didn’t you! I hope you’re proud of yourself! While you were out for the past four hours enjoying yourself in town, your husband has been languishing in the Intensive Care Unit! It’s just as well you went ahead and finished, because it will more than likely be the last shopping trip you ever take! For the rest of his life he will require round-the-clock care. And he will now be your career!”
The woman was feeling so guilty she broke down and sobbed.
The lady doctor then chuckled. “I’m just pulling your leg. He’s dead. Show me what you bought.”
Thank you Gartalker for the last story. This is a repost.
Pictures are from the “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”