Chamblee54

Today is the 202nd birthday of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin. This used to be a holiday in the US, along with Washington’s BD on February 22. The two were combined into President’s Day.
It is unlikely that the two met, or knew much about the other. ” On the origin of species ” was published in 1859, as the United States teetered on the brink of catastrophe. There is a certain “Darwinism” in the way the unpleasantness of the eighteen sixties went down. The northeast quadrant of the United States gained dominance over a large chunk of North America, at a horrible cost. The concept that a human being could literally own another human being was banished.
There are two other anniversaries of note today. On February 12 , 1733, James Oglethorpe landed a boatload of debtors on the future site of Savannah. This was the start of the Colony/State of Georgia.
There is another that continues the symmetry of Darwin/Lincoln, and was exactly 100 years later. On February 12, 1909, the NAACP was founded. On February 12 1904, Ted Mack, host of the Original Amateur Hour, was born. To make room for all this talent, on February 12, 1942, Grant Wood (painter of “American Gothic”) went to that village in the sky. He left the pitchfork behind.
This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress

1. Ever wonder about those people who spend $2.00 a piece on those little bottles of Evian water? Try spelling Evian backwards: NAIVE 2. Isn’t making a smoking section in a restaurant like making a peeing section in a swimming pool? 3. OK ….. so if the Jacksonville Jaguars are known as the ‘Jags’ and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are known as the ‘Bucs,’ what does that make the Tennessee Titans? (Will it fit in the Atlanta Braves?) 4. If 4 out of 5 people SUFFER from diarrhea does that mean that one enjoys it? 5. There are three religious truths: a. Jews do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah..b. Protestants do not recognize the Pope as the leader of the Christian faith. c. Baptists do not recognize each other in the liquor store or Hooters. 6. If people from Poland are called Poles, why aren’t people from Holland called Holes? (The same reason there are no topless women in Brazil.) 7. If a pig loses its voice, is it disgruntled? 8. Why do croutons come in airtight packages? Aren’t they just stale bread to begin with? 9 Why is a person who plays the piano called a pianist but a person who drives a race car is not called a racist? 10. Why isn’t the number 11 pronounced onety one? (Because on a football team, only the quarterback gets to say onety one?) 11. If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn’t it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted, cowboys deranged, models deposed, tree surgeons debarked, and dry cleaners depressed? ( If the motel in “Psycho” were shut down, the town would be deBatesed). 12. If Fed Ex and UPS were to merge, would they call it Fed UP? 13. Do Lipton Tea employees take coffee breaks? 14. What hair color do they put on the driver’s licenses of bald men? 15. I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older; then it dawned on me … they’re cramming for their final exam. 16. I thought about how mothers feed their babies with tiny little spoons and forks, so I wondered what do Chinese mothers use? Toothpicks? 17. Why do they put pictures of criminals up in the Post Office? What are we supposed to do, write to them? Why don’t they just put their pictures on the postage stamps so the mailmen can look for them while they deliver the mail? 18. If it’s true that we are here to help others, then what exactly are the others here for? ( To talk on cellphones.) 19. You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive. 21. Ever wonder what the speed of lightning would be if it didn’t zigzag?
22. If a cow laughed, would she spew milk out of her nose? 23. Whatever happened to Preparations A through G? ( Or Preparation EZ?) 24. At income tax time, did you ever notice: When you put the two words ‘The’ and ‘IRS’ together it spells … ‘THEIRS’? 25. These thoughts were borrowed from Gartalker’s blog PG added a few thoughts in parentheses.

PG spends a lot of time working on images, and listening to entertainments on the internet. It is usually more productive than watching soap operas. Sometimes there is something to write about.
Dangerousminds has a rather hokey “virtual interview” with Kurt Vonnegut. While you can snicker about the format, Mr. Vonnegut can be counted on to say some smart things. In a bit of irony, he “came out” as a Luddite…who loves his cell phone.
The part of the chat that hit home with PG was about the payoff for being “creative”. It is not about being famous, or making money, but the reward for creating something is that it makes your soul grow. This is at about the 25:00 minute mark on the video. ( PG was looking for this section while writing this paragraph. To his delight, the verbatim phrase that Mr. Vonnegut used was “make your soul grow”.)
Of course, Kurt Vonnegut has known fame and fortune. Perhaps, the octogenarian author can take this view, without seeming bitter. And writing has always been a low investment activity. The only thing invested in a book is the time of the author. Compared to other forms of expression, like buying paint, or meals for a traveling band, or film stock, there is little capital to pay back when you write a book.
The other piece of work to engage PG was a diavlog on bloggingheadstv. It had a quote about Mitt Romney that PG captured, and made a comment about. This was the second comment on this diavlog. The first comment was the same sound bite, captured by another listener. It was that obvious.
At some point in the discussion, someone talked about a speech Rand Paul made in the senate. Senator typewriter talked about two Kentuckians, Henry Clay and Cassius Clay. The only Cassius Clay that PG knows is the retired boxer, known as Muhammad Ali. For a man who was uncertain whether he would vote for the cival rights act, this was a curious subject for a speech. PG felt compelled to comment. When you can fake sincerity , you have got it made.
Regarding the Rand Paul speech (comparing Henry Clay to Cassius Clay to Rand Paul)…
1- Someone should tell our younger viewers who Cassius Clay was.
2- When Clay the younger converted to Islam, and changed his name to Muhammed Ali, didn’t he denounce his birth name as a “slave name”?
3- Someone should ask Sen. Paul if he would have voted to end slavery. This is about as relevant as asking him if he would have voted for the civil rights act.
4- With the current demonization (spell check suggestions:demonetization, harmonization ,decolonization ,demobilization) of Islam, this is a curious line of rhetoric.
POSTSCRIPT I have looked at the speech from Sen. Paul. Apparently, it is a different Cassius Clay.
Yes, PG should have read the speech, by Sen. Paul, before he expressed his opinions. There was a Cassius Clay that was a cousin of Henry Henry Clay. While Senator Clay compromised, and kept the Union together, Cassius Clay was an abolitionist through and through. Sometimes you have to wonder which is the best course to take.
Arguably, if the war had come in 1820, the south would have won. The fact that the Union was intact until 1860 allowed the North to grow strong enough to whip the South. But, this came at the cost of thirty years of slavery. And no one knew this in 1820, or 1850, or at the Constitutional Convention.
When PG was in the fourth grade ( and Rand Paul in diapers), three events took place that history would remember. John Kennedy was killed. The Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan Show. Cassius Clay defeated Sonny Liston, for the World Heavyweight Championship. Mr. Clay soon revealed that he was a Black Muslim, and his new name was Muhammed Ali. He was in the spotlights, with controversy close behind, for the next fifteen years.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.

It is a question for the ages…why do telephones have 123 on the top row of the keypad, while computers have 789? The best answer is , we don’t know.
Calculator/computer keypads were an improvement on cash registers. These devices had a matrix of buttons, with the 9 row on top. The row at the far right had single digits, and the row next to them had digits ending in one zero. To ring up a sale for $1.95, you had to push 100, 90, and 5. This evolved into the adding machine configuration of three rows of three buttons, with 0 on the bottom row and 789 on the top row.
When we got started, the telephone used a dial. 1 was at the top, and 0 was at the bottom. The early phone systems used letters as part of the phone number. The first three letters of the seven digit code were two letters and five numbers. (This is what PG remembers from childhood. It may have been different before then).
The two letters referred to an exchange, or part of town where the number was located. The two letters referred to a word. An example would be PG’s grandmother. Her number was TR2 2345. The TR stood for Trinity. Many numbers in midtown Atlanta still start with 87.
In the sixties, ma bell started to develop a keypad to use for what were then called push button phones. In a break with the adding machine tradition, the numbers 123 went on the top row. There are a few ideas why this is, but nothing is certain.
In the early days, the phone switching equipment was not as fast as today. Some thought that by switching the numbers to the top of the keypad, people would have to slow down a bit to “dial” the number. This answer does not make sense to those of us who have grown up with these keypads, and who learned to punch in numbers fast, no matter what system is used. (Anyone using a rotary phone, after getting used to touch tone, is shocked at how slow it is.)
Another concept is the phone company wanting to model the new keypad after the dial phones. This would mean putting the 1 at the top, and 0 at the bottom. Also, with the letters assigned to each number, it would make a lot more sense to have 123/abc def ghi on the top row.
It was suggested that the calculator keypad was patented in the 789-on-top format. Western Electric did not want to pay royalties on this important piece of equipment, so it designed another one. There is also the thought that the calculator was on a desk shelf, where the lower numbers should be at the bottom of the keypad. At the same time, the telephone was on the lower part of the desk, and having 123 on top would be easier to use.
Pictures are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library” This is a repost. .

This post started out as a comment to another post. While assembling links to include, it becomes clear that there is enough material for a stand alone post. When you declare a book to be the “word of G-d”, you tend to view G-d in verbal terms. A side effect is that many get started writing, and don’t know how to stop. ( And lets don’t even consider talking.)
For those who just joined us, lets bring you up to date. There is a blogger named Frank Turk. PG has had issues with him, and is banned from commenting on his work. While the verbal exchanges with Mr. Turk have been thoroughly unpleasant, the fact remains that Mr. Turk told PG about GIMP, an open source image manipulation program. PG is a devoted user of GIMP, and his blog shows the product of GIMP every day.
Frank Turk is the type of Jesus worshiper who enjoys a good argument. He wades in with weapons blazing from both hands, and a nuclear tongue. When you have been in battle with Frank Turk, you will want revenge when it is over. PG suspects that the verbal combat is what motivates Mr. Turk, and the religious opinions are just a handy excuse.
It should be noted at this point that PG is not a Jesus worshiper, and has two beliefs regarding this religion. G-d does not write books. Opinions about Jesus have nothing to do with what happens after you die. When PG observes these religious battles, he gets the sense that these silly children should put their toys up, and learn to get along. It is similar to the impression PG has of the Shia and Sunnis, who murder each other, because of something that happened 1400 years ago.
Getting back to Mr. Turk, he wrote an “open letter” to a man named John Piper. ( John Piper is the father of Abraham Piper, who writes twenty two words, a highly entertaining blog.). This post begat (at least) two more posts. These are from Mike Ratliff and Karen Butler.
It seems that PG is not the only one offended by the meanness of Mr. Turk’s. At some point in the comment thread at Mike Ratliff’s post, he writes: “To everyone wanting to comment on this post. While I did not know it when I posted it, there was obviously some opened and ugly wounds opened up from some previous battle that I had nothing to do with. I would appreciate it if you would refrain from any more of that arguing here. It is pitiful when viewed 3rd party. It looks childish and is fleshly to the max. In any case, I will not post any more comments on this thread not directly related to the subject of this post.” When you have been in battle with Frank Turk, you want revenge later.
This brings us to the second post by Karen Butler. This post started out as a comment to that post, and got out of control. As always, if you tire of the text, you can skip over it and look at the pictures, from The Library of Congress. .
The second chapter from Mrs. Butler is a fine piece of work, part of which PG agrees with, and some of which he does not. Maybe the best way to approach this is by “fisking”.
“I have to speak up one last time for the Retards–those like me, those escaping Charismania, who through a lengthy period of having our minds continually offended so that our hearts might be revealed, are thus a little delayed in our critical thinking skills.” This is also true for those who were raised in a Christian tradition, but decided that they do not agree. It can be a painful process, and you can expect little sympathy or support.
“We are also, unfortunately, usually overfond of rhetoric.” There is a difference between wisdom and a clever phrase. It is good to know the difference.
“We come with a deep distrust of cessationists, and have been trained to think of them as heartless whitewashed Pharisees, who love their doctrines more than the actual people of God. TeamPyro seems to delight in skewering our logical deficiencies but does nothing to erase the caricatures we have already formed about you all. The focus here seems to be all about who is going to score FTW, but with your curt dismissals and rude behavior to those without your theological training and vast reasoning skills, you sometimes seem to have… forgotten the most important thing. It is edification.”
There are several issues here. As for cessationist/charismatic, that is inside baseball. When you see your religion as a fight for victory, you forget that there are going to be losers, and that these losers are just as much G-d’s children as you are. And, when you have scored your rhetorical victory over this loser, you create ill will, both for yourself, and for Jesus. The production of trust and goodwill should be the most important thing, not edification. When you place edification ahead of good will, you are playing the same game as the doctrine happy folks.
“Please do not forget that some may actually be in dangerous mind-control cults, like IHOP.” You might want to remember that many people see IHOP and think of pancakes.
“Forget about who scores the winning goal. Win your reader’s hearts. Teach them what a wonderful and exciting thing it is to adore the Lord Our God with all of their mind.” Amen.
PG read an interview with Christopher Isherwood once. ( There is no link available) Mr. Isherwood said that religion is a matter of people, not of doctrine. It is the person that converts you, not the teachings of the idol. If a Catholic had influenced him in the same manner as the follower of Vedanta, he would have been a Catholic.
By the same token, if a person makes a negative impression on you regarding a religion, then conversion to that religion will be impossible. The people who have made the largest impressions on PG have been uniformly negative. They love to argue and vanquish, and leave you having lost, crying for revenge. If you want to impress someone with the virtues of a religion, the essential first step is to gain that person’s trust and good will. If you speak without good will, then you are speaking in vain.

It was 2am on super bowl monday. PG had gone to a sb party the night before, and ate, and ate, and ate. By the time Ben Steeler through his final incomplete pass, PG scooped the last bit of chicken salad on a piece of garlic toast, and called it a night. When he got home,PG tried to sleep, but the undigested mass of food in his belly tried to keep coming up. It was time to work on the blog.
Some well meaning soul put up a note on facebook about 97 Things You Didn’t Know About William S. Burroughs . The irony of WSB being the intials of Mr. Burroughs and the Atlanta media oligarchy is not lost of PG, who wonders if the writer was am, fm, tv, or all three. PG said “tmi”.
The following is a rendering of Cat’s Cradle. Parts one, two,and three are previously published.
42-bicycles for Afghanistan This is the chapter title that made PG decide to take Cat’s Cradle home, before the idea of this rendering came along. It is like the concept of the paradigm. Or a train, which goes where the tracks tell it to go. This production is a train, always threatening to go out of control, that runs on the tracks of Cat’s Cradle. There was a movie director once name Louis Malle, who was married to Candice Bergen. He said something to a journalist once…There is the thesis, and the antithesis. I provide the synthesis. He was no relation to an exotic dancer named Anna Malle.
43- the demonstrator John is on his way to San Lorenzo, and a life changing vacation. Two of his fellow travelers are Hazel and H. Lowe Crosby. They have odd ideas, although that may be the impression they made in the imagination of Mr. Vonnegut. Hazel thinks everyone from Indiana is a special person, a hoosier. A friend of PG, who was from Indiana, told him that hoosier originally was a question, who’s your daddy. This caused confusion in some parts of town. Cars from Indiana used to have the word WANDER on the license plates. There is a powerful AM station in Fort Wayne IN, WOWO. When PG was a kid, he liked to listen to his mom’s clock radio, to see what AM stations he could pick up. One winter night, he left the radio set to WOWO. When his mom got up the next day, the radio said it was ten degrees below zero.
44- communist sympathizers The ambassador, Mr. Minton, was once fired for pessimism. H. Lowe Crosby heard this, and thought it was communism. The two have more in common than you might think. PG has frequently been accused of having a negative attitude, When this charge is made, one is guilty until proven innocent. After years of observation and calibration, PG decided that the negative attitude label boils down to “I don’t like you”. You could just as easily say communist, liberal, the devil, or poopyhead. These are things that someone says to insult someone they do not like, but need a reasonable excuse.
The number 44 merits a bonus paragraph. A coven of hippies at PG’s high school thought that 44 was a magic number. It was Hank Aaron’s number. It is the product of 2x2x11. The number 44 has many uses and abuses, and is a worthy paradigm for the train of synchronicity to travel down these tracks.
45-why americans are hated George W. Bush said we were hated because of our freedom. Others say because we contribute to the enslavement of others. As this is written, Egypt is in turmoil. Those who oppose the dictator have spoken out, made themselves known, and now the authorities are counterattacking. It is the same game that was played in Iran a few months ago. Since the USA maintains  high profile support of evil regimes, it gets the blame when these regimes start to crumble.
46 the bokonist method for handling caesar This dreary tale continues to talk about the would be holy man named Bokonon. This was written years before anyone knew who Yoko Ono was. That is a name, seven letters long, with one vowel repeated four times, and three consonants. None of these factors helps anyone who has to listen to her singing. As to caesar, there was an episode of the Beverly Hillbillies, where someone said something about caesar. Jethro said, caesar, all we did was hold hands. In any event, when dealing with caesar, make him a salad.

47-dynamic tensionJohn is reading a book about Bokonon on the flight to San Lorenzo, and comes to a passage about what Mr. Bo calls dynamic tension. To him, it is the symbiotic interplay between good and evil. Now, as all Rocky Horror show fans know, Rocky, bless his heart, thinks dynamic tension is hard work. Charles Atlas was busy with the funeral for Jack La Lanne.
48-just like saint augustine The book is telling the story of Bokonon, which is of minimal interest to his followers. A good fable is much more inspiring than the truth.
49 a fish pitched up by an angry sea Mr. Johnson, aka Bokonon, had many adventures before he settles on San Lorenzo. Some will read this and wonder why they can’t have adventures, write a holy book, and become the center of a Kurt Vonnegut novel. PG would rather be in an Erica Jong novel. Her characters get laid a lot. Anything is better than being in a Carl Hiassen novel, where you get killed in painful and unusual ways, unless you are the former governor of Florida. Maybe the ideal situation would be a character in the Bible. Then you could edit and translate your life the way you want it.
50 a nice midget The plane stops in Puerto Rico, and Newt Hoenikker and Angela Hoenikker Conners get on. This is noticed by the Indiana lady as the arrival of two more hoosiers. Newt has been in touch with John before, but strictly through correspondence. Now they meet in the flesh, or whatever you call a regular sized man meeting a midget. PG had a midget for a friend of a friend once. The intermediate friend got tired of the midget, and would pretend to not be home when she came to his apartment. This was thirty plus years ago, and PG wonders what ever happened to those people.
51-o.k. mom Newt and Angela are going to San Lorenzo to see their brother get married to the most beautiful woman in the world. Other than that, they agree to call the hoosier lady mom. Mom is a curious word. Upside down it is Wow. If you spell it different, it is omm, which is pronounced the same as om, the combination of all sounds. If you spell mom alphabetically it is mmo, which sounds like a health insurance option. It is a custom for people who are on camera to mouth the words hi mom. Once PG was taking phone calls for a public television fundraiser. He learned the secret was to keep a finger on the button, so the phone was able to take calls, look like you were talking on the phone, and keep an eye on the monitor. The camera only focuses on people who are talking, which encourages the viewers at home to call in, and pledge money for public television. This night was a Wednesday, and PG’s mom always got home from choir practice about 10 o’clock. After he knew she would be there, PG called home and said he was on TV. When the next break came, PG saw himself on the monitor, and said hi mom.
52-no pain This chapter dwells on the death of Felix Hoenikker, whose handiwork sent thousands of Japanese to meet their maker. In total contravention of the laws of karma, Dr. Hoenikker passed away in a chair, while facing the ocean. It was snowing, which is tough for southern beach people to understand, but apparently it does happen at beaches in Massachusetts. It was summertime when the bomb fell on Japan. Summertime, and the living is over. Fish are boiling, boiling now. George Gershwin was sometimes caught without the right thing to say.
53- the president of fabr-tek After Felix Hoenikker died, his daughter met a man, and married him. It turns out that she was not happy in the marriage, but we don’t know that yet.

54-communists, nazis, royalists, parachutists, and draft dodgers We have five groups of people here. Three of these groups end in ist, one in i, and one in er. Istististier, this could be a European name. The only one of these groups that still performs a service is parachutists. Royalists are forgotten, and communists and nazis live on as meaningless insults. That leaves draft dodger, and with the elevation of Bill Clinton to elder statesman status, soon draft dodger will be the answer to a trivia question. Someone threw a beer at Bill Clinton once. It was a draft, and he dodged it.
55- never index your own book John looks through the index of his book, and for some reason he shows it to the ambassador’s wife. It turns out that Mrs. Ambassador is a professional indexer. She has a low opinion of people who index their own book. This is probably the ancestor of the nifty algorithm that Mr.Google has ridden to internet dominance. The index can be a fun way to read a book. Look for something fun in the index, and go to that section.
56-a self supporting squirrel cage By various twists and turns, Bokonon…then known as Mr. Johnson…and a fellow named McCabe washed up on the island of San Lorenzo. The island was a mess of poverty and corruption. Just like the golf course of North Druid Hills road that PG caddied at, except that the players were not poor. One day, this elderly man missed a putt. He shouted out, shit,piss, and corruption. Those words have stayed in PG’s mind ever since.
57 the queasy dream McCabe and Johnson landed on an island without value. The land was worthless, and the people useless, except for reproduction. Every time a conqueror appears, the previous rulers hand him the keys, and run away screaming. These people have negative attitudes.
58- tyranny with a difference John puts down the book about Bokonon to go drink with Newt Hoenikker. Apparently, the little man had a taste for alcohol. When he was engaged to the Russian dancer, they had happy afternoons in the house on Cape Cod where Felix Hoenikker met eternity.
59-fasten your seat belts When a plane is ready to land, the passengers need to be in their seats. This does not apply to crash landings. In the flight described here, the passengers are well lubricated with booze, and dangerously generous with helpful opinions. Seat belts can be useful here.
60- an underprivileged nation This is another chapter about the worthlessness of San Lorenzo. It is noteworthy for the use of the word “feculence”. This either derives from feces or fecund. Fecundity is frequently fueled by feces, fanning flames for freedom.

Angry Arab said this. “A friend wrote that on Facebook: “”Dear US government: We don’t hate you because we hate your freedom; we hate you because you hate our freedom.” tks Lina”. (thanks As`ad–not me)”
If you have a few minutes, here is the long version.
Pictures of Egyptians are here. Pictures of Americans are from The Library of Congress.

There was a snarky commentary about the demise of UGA VIII. It mentions an Athletic director arrested for DUI, with red panties in his lap. There are comments about PETA, and animatronic mascots. The genetic issues of inbred white bulldogs were considered. A delighful comment from the fishwrapper was copied in all it’s 86 proof glory. Then it was time to close a few windows on the computer. “Save changes to Template?” So what does PG do but click no, and waste a half hour of work? When Nancy Reagan said “just say no”, she had never worked with windows. The good news is, the comment by Greg Garious is intact in the fishwrapper ether. Pictures are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”
they slobber they stink and you need to wash your hands after everytime you touch one, it’s white, has poor and snaggled teeth and inbred to a fault, wait, hey, perfect mascot for UGA. I’m joking, c’mon…but without a doubt, the mascot should be the American Bulldog. better dog, healthier dog, beautiful dog and key word here, American…the English Bulldog would be a good mascot for say the University of Buckingham(don’t look it up folks, doesn’t exist) where inbred genetic defects are embraced like family, the royal family! hey did you hear the one about the English Bulldog that tried to cross the street? didn’t make it, dropped dead of a congenital heart defect before he even got off the curb…hey why does it take 10 English Bulldogs to screw in a light bulb? because a large percentage of them will have hip dyspasia before at the first rung of the ladder… I mean, damn! go to Wik and look up English Bulldog the section on health, the poor things sound like my grandfather and he’s been dead 20 years!…the things are put together like a Mexican-built house….the Bubble Boy is least likely to need a hospital visit….when you pick a mascot it should be strong, fierce and worthy of respect. not something that would quickly be denied health insurance at the initial exam…hell it can’t even woof worth a damn, the fans even have to do that for him…but seriously though folks, UGA goes though those dogs like george bush goes through crayons.u-g-l-y your dog ain’t got no alibi…
ok, ok, a Labrador Retriever, a Doberman and an English Bulldog start to walk into a pet store and…man, for the love of God already, the English Bulldog with cherry eye, c-section complications, patellar luxation and interdigital cysts has fainted and lapsed into a coma after being scared again by another Auburn football player scoring a touchdown. what’s that? oh, the word’s t-o-u-c-h-d-o-w-n, it’s what winning teams try to do against their opponents, kinda the object of the game. I know guys, it’s math, now don’t you get startled too. math isn’t really all that hard to pass at UGA. all you have to do is never study, show up for class whenever you feel like it and join the football team and wah-bam 4.0 baby! we all know that whole math thing is just another passing fad, like the hula hoop or the virtual pet, it never last, ya know no real staying power…..kinda like those sickly mascots y’all got. what ya need is an English Bulldog puppy mill located just under the bleachers with a new future veterinary dissection candidate for your ag dept. spit out after the end of every class then maybe you can come close to keeping up with the attrition rate at the front. but whatever you do don’t use you agricultural dept. to help with the problem, how silly would that be, right. besides, that would put a quick end to the half price specials at the Oriental Cuisine restaurant just ’round the corner.

This is a double repost. For better or worse ( it’s ok to curse), the tea party is a part of the scene. The seminal event was the Boston Tea Party in 1775. The first post below is a look at what really happened in Boston harbor. It is tough to discern truth from fable at a distance of 236 years, but we will try. The tea party metaphor gets worked over this post, would you like a refill?
The second part is a look at the phrase “founding fathers”. This phrase is “liberally” sprinkled into rhetoric of all persuasions. This author sees a square peg being forced into round holes. Pictures this morning are from The Library of Congress.
In the first year of the Obama regime, America has seen the rise of the “Tea Party”. These affairs are usually right wing, and have lots of clever signs. The general idea is that taxes are too high, government is too big, and that the people need to do something.
The namesake event was the Boston Tea Party. On December 16, 1773, crowds of people ( some dressed as Mohawk indians) went on board the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver. The crowds threw overboard 342 chests, containing 90,000 pounds of tea. The crowds were unhappy because the East India Company was importing the tea into America, with a 3 pence per pound tax.
A website called listverse plays the contrarian. According to them : “American colonists did not protest the Tea Tax with the Boston Tea Party because it raised the price of tea.
The American colonists preferred Dutch tea to English tea. The English Parliament placed an embargo on Dutch tea in the colonies, so a huge smuggling profession developed. To combat this, the English government LOWERED the tax on tea so that the English tea would be price competitive with Dutch teas. The colonists (actually some colonists led by the chief smugglers) protested by dumping the tea into Boston Harbor.”
According to Wikipedia, the Dutch tea had been smuggled into the colonies for some time. The Dutch government had given their companies a tax advantage, which allowed them to sell their product cheaper. Finally, the British government cut their taxes, but kept a tax in place. The “Townsend Tax” was to be used to pay governing colonial officials, and make them less dependent on the colonists.
In Charleston, New York, and Philadelphia, the tea boats were turned around, and returned to England with their merchandise. In Massachusetts, Governor Thomas Hutchinson insisted that the tea be unloaded. Two of the Governor’s sons were tea dealers, and stood to make a profit from the taxed tea. There are also reports that the smugglers were in the crowd dumping tea into the harbor.
The photogenic tea party movement seems to be destined to stay a while. The question remains, how much does it have to do with the namesake event?

People often try to justify their opinions by saying that the “founding fathers” agree with them. They often are guilty of selective use of history. A good place to start would be to define what we mean by the phrase founding fathers.
The FF word was not used before 1916. A senator from Ohio named Warren Harding used the phrase in the keynote address of the 1916 Republican convention. Mr. Harding was elected President in 1920, and is regarded as perhaps the most corrupt man to ever hold the office.
There are two groups of men who could be considered the founding fathers. ( The fathers part is correct. Both groups are 100% male.) The Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence, which cut the ties to England. Eleven years later, the Constitutional Convention wrote the Constitution that governs America today. While the Continental Congress was braver than the Constitution writers ( We must hang together, or we will hang separately), the Constitution is the document that tells our government how to function. For the purposes of this feature, the men of the Constitutional Convention are the founding fathers.
Before moving on, we should remember eight men who signed the Declaration of Independence, and later attended the Constitutional Convention. Both documents were signed by George Clymer, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris, George Read, Roger Sherman, and James Wilson. George Wythe left the Convention without signing the new document. Elbridge Gerry ( the namesake of gerrymandering) refused to sign the Constitution because it did not have a Bill of Rights.
The original topic of this discussion was about whether the founding fathers owned slaves. Apparently, PG is not the only person to wonder about this. If you go to google, and type in “did the founding fathers”, the first four answers are owned slaves, believed in G-d, have a death wish, and smoke weed.
The answer, to the obvious question, is an obvious answer. Yes, many of the founding fathers owned slaves. A name by name rundown of the 39 signatories of the Constitution was not done for this blogpost. There is this revealing comment at wiki answers about the prevalence of slave ownership. “John Adams, his second cousin Samuel Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Paine were the only men who are traditionally known as founding fathers who did not own slaves.
Benjamin Franklin was indeed a founder of the Abolitionist Society, but he owned two slaves, named King and George. Franklin’s newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette routinely ran ads for sale or purchase of slaves.
Patrick Henry is another founding father who owned slaves, although his speeches would make one think otherwise. Despite his “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech, he had up to 70 slaves at a time, apologizing a few times along the way, saying he knew it was wrong, that he was accountable to his God, and citing the “general inconvenience of living without them.”
Patrick Henry was a star of the Revolution, but not present at the Constitutional Convention. The author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, was in Europe during the convention. Mr. Jefferson not only owned slaves, he took one to be his mistress and kidsmama.
One of the more controversial features of the Constitution is the 3/5 rule. Here are the original words “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.” In other words, a slave was only considered to be 60% of a person.
That seems rather harsh. The truth is, it was a compromise. The agricultural southern states did not want to give up their slaves. The northern states did not want to give up Congressional representation. This was the first of many compromises made about slavery, ending with the War between the States. This webpage goes into more detail about the nature of slavery at the start of the U.S.A.
The research for this feature turned up a rather cynical document called The myth of the “Founding Fathers” . It is written by Adolph Nixon. He asks : “most rational persons realize that such political mythology is sheer nonsense, but it begs the question, who were the Founding Fathers and what makes them so great that they’re wiser than you are?”
Mr. Nixon reviews the 39 white men who signed the Constitution. He does not follow the rule, if you can’t say anything nice about someone, then don’t say anything at all. Of the 39, 12 were specified as slave owners, with many tagged as “slave breeders”.
The Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, have served America well. However it was intended, it was written so that it could be amended, and to grow with the young republic. It has on occasion been ignored ( when was the last time Congress declared war?). However fine a document it is, it was created by men. These were men of their time, who could not have foreseen the changes that America has gone through. It can also be assumed that those who talk the most about the founding fathers know the least about them.
A big thank you goes to wikipedia Pictures are from The Library of Congress.

The facebook (spell check suggestions: casebook, facetious, facecloth) friend posted an entry from a facebook application called G-d wants You to Know. Before we consider some of the implications of this, lets take a look at the message: On this day, G-d wants you to know… that most of your words are unnecessary. All too often you speak simply to fill the space with sound, because you feel too uncomfortable with the silence. But this silence is golden. Only in silence you can hear G-d speak to you. Only in silence can a real prayer, a heart prayer be born. Next time you start chattering, stop and feel into the silence, feel its shape, its texture, and then  say only what really has to be said.
PG agrees with this particular message. The shouting, and emotion mongering, of Jesus worship is repulsive. One must wonder what these shouters are afraid of, when they cannot let their tongues rest. Many confuse noise for truth. ( Prayer is talking to G-d. Meditation is listening to her.)
Even if a particular message is agreeable, sometimes you must question the medium. Where do these facebook applicators get off in claiming to speak for G-d? Even if 645,898 “like” the page. And what were they thinking of when they posted this… APP UPDATE: You can now add a God’s Message tab to your facebook profile that includes your last message from God. Just go to your facebook profile, click on that “+” sign near the top, and search available tabs for “G-d wants you to know”. Enjoy :)
Exodus 20:3-7 3Thou shalt have no other g-ds before me. 4Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy G-d am a jealous G-d, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; 6And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. 7 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy G-d in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
Man has been playing this game for a long time. The first,second, third commandments would seem to forbid labeling the product of man’s labor as “the word of G-d”. And yet, over a billion people make this claim about the Bible. It is a slippery slope…one day you claim the output of a Catholic committee is ” the word of G-d”, then soon a social media computer tells you what “G-d wants you to know”.
Pictures of Confederate soldiers are from The Library of Congress. HT to joemyg-d for the video below.

PG was listening to Ricard Brautigan read. He wanted to hear more. Mr. Google showed him more files, but a download was needed to run them. PG is nervous about loading new stuff on his machine, but the thought of hearing Mr. Brautigan count the punctuation marks in Ecclesiastes was too good to pass over.
Mr. Brautigan…hereafter called RB…doesn’t sound like you think he would. A tall man, with a walrus mustache, his voice is kinda nasal, and a bit high pitched. Maybe, if he sang, he would be a tenor.
Back to the download. It was an apple player, and it would play some music files that would not work on the windows music box. However, it would not work on the RB files. At least not in firefox, but in internet explorer it works fine. Maybe the apple download was not needed.
The first story is “The Hunchback Trout”, which was in “Trout Fishing In America” . PG seems to remember this as the part that caught his interest, when he read  TFIA 27 years ago. Meanwhile, the pictures from the past of Georgia were flopping across the screen, to be sized and contrast adjusted, for internet consumption.
The visual counterfuzz was from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library” , a section called corporate bodies. The last box to be worked on was number 22, means that the thrills tonight come from box 23 , Central to Charles. The Central part was the Central of Georgia railroad, and had a shot of Mayor Hartsfield, wearing a double breasted coat, in a lounge car. The mayor is talking on the phone, and not smiling for the camera. This is out of character for him.
On the RB sound page, a group of people read a poem, called “Love Poem”. Its so nice to wake up in the morning all alone and not have to tell somebody you love them when you don’t love them anymore. One man is yawning, another tries to be ironic, a radio station announces itself, two voices read in harmony…you get the idea.
These 26 words ground themselves into PG’s brain, despite the experience he had with email. Someone wanted PG to send out an email message. The correct response is to send this person the list of email addresses. The only trouble was a quirk in open office. If you try to copy a list of addresses, off an open office spreadsheet, into email, then chaos will ensue. The only answer is to close all the affected programs, copy the addresses into wordpad, and then copy the addresses into the email. Tonight is a night of quirky technology, while listening to an alcoholic writer who died in 1984.
When writing about books, it is a cool thing to supply a link to the book on amazon . You need to be careful what field you type in when you are searching. PG entered B, before he shifted over to the proper field. The search engine got the wrong idea from this. “Your search “brautigan” did not match any products in: Baby Products”. Picky, picky, picky.
The next thing by RB is the reason PG wanted to hear this stuff bad enough to download apple software ( when what he really needed to do was switch browsers). The story is ” The Rivets of Ecclesiastes”. It is about a man who reads the Bible by lantern light, and counts the punctuation marks in Ecclesiastes. The first chapter of the E book has 22 commas, 8 semicolons,8 colons, 2 question marks, and 17 periods. It is said that the Bible gains something when read by lantern light, that the book has never adjusted to electricity. ( Later this evening, PG finds a picture from 1954. It is of a construction site. A sign says “Quiet Please. Listen to the Riveters Symphony”.)
Moving along, the spoken word gives us a series of poems from The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster. These poems are in the video embedded here, and were responsible for this adventure. Whether this is credit or blame is a matter for the individual to decide.

As you may have heard, Egypt is having a revolution. The latest from Al Jazeera is that “pro Mubarek forces” are staging a counterattack against the protesters, and that things are getting ugly. ( A word of warning. If you click on Al Jazeera, you might find it difficult to turn away. )
There is other coverage from websites that are not corporate media. Palestinian Pundit has a picture, at the top, of Khalid Sa’id. He is a young man killed by authorities in Alexandria. There is a video of the violence in Cairo, with this comment ” IT APPEARS THAT A COUNTER OPERATION VERY SIMILAR TO OPERATION AJAX, WHICH SUCCEEDED IN TOPPLING MOUSSADEQ IN IRAN IN 1953 AND IN RESTORING THE SHAH, IS UNDER WAY! IT LOOKS THE SAME AND FEELS THE SAME. NO DOUBT, ISRAEL AND THE US CIA HAVE PUT THIS NEW PLAN INTO ACTION!”
With regards to BHO, he appears to be making a lot of people mad. Some say he is propping up a corrupt dictator. Others take another view. “One comment by Aviad Pohoryles in the daily Maariv was entitled “A Bullet in the Back from Uncle Sam.” It accused Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of pursuing a naive, smug, and insular diplomacy heedless of the risks. Who is advising them, he asked, “to fuel the mob raging in the streets of Egypt and to demand the head of the person who five minutes ago was the bold ally of the president … an almost lone voice of sanity in a Middle East?” “The politically correct diplomacy of American presidents throughout the generations … is painfully naive.”
Some see the Middle East as being all about Israel. Many of these are in congress . “Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R) of Florida, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that only parties who support Israel should be allowed to compete in fall elections.“The U.S. should learn from past mistakes and support a process which only includes candidates who meet basic standards for leaders of responsible nations – candidates who have publicly renounced terrorism, uphold the rule of law, recognize Egypt’s international commitments including its nonproliferation obligations and its peace agreement with the Jewish state of Israel, and who ensure security and peace with its neighbors.”
Another source of information is Angry Arab . A sampling of his recent comments include:
Protesters determined Aljazeera is reporting that protesters are now about to control all entrances to Tahrir Square. The counter-revolutionary plot of Obama-Netanyahu is way too clear to people. Another Zionist is freaking out“We are concerned. We are watching this very anxiously,” says Dan Gillerman, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations. “This is a very, very tough neighbourhood,” he says. “We are already facing Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and the prospect of, God forbid, an autocratic, fundamentalist, Islamic organisation taking over in Egypt is obviously not something we can ignore.””A plea to the Egyptian Army Why don’t you perform for the us the walk of surrender that you were most famous for in 1967?”
Pictures from Egypt are from arabs48