Chamblee54

The digital  medium listverse posted a list of “10 Rock Bands You Either Hate Or Love“. What follows is a commentary by PG about these acts. If you are not interested in his opinions, skip to the pictures. Picture are from the Library of Congress, and regard The War Between the States.
10- Captain Beefheart and his magic band-There was a sampler LP by Warner Brothers around 1970 or so. Available only by mail order, the LP had songs by a variety of Warner Brothers artists. Captain Beefheart was represented by “Hiella guru”, which had a sort of catchy sound. A voice said something like ” Damascus estate”, which fit the overall dada sound of the band.
Years later, a groupie wrote a tell all book about her youthful adventures. It turns out the voice said “The mascara snake”
In between the sampler LP and the groupie tell all book, Captain Beefheart played a show at the Great Southeast Music Hall, then located in Cherokee Plaza. PG liked to show up after the second set had started, and the ticket takers left the door open. The night CB played, PG mistimed his visit, and got to talk to a high school classmate, but did not see the show.
09-Metallica- There was a saying in “The electric kool aid acid test” ( which was not the origin of the phrase “drink the kool aid). The merry pranksters set off on a trip around america, and someone said “you are either on the bus or off the bus”. Those might not be the exact words, and they don’t sound as profound without the acid to drive home the emblematic attitude.
Getting back to Metallica, PG has never been on the bus for heavy metal. He heard a thing by Metallica on the radio that was pretty cool, and he read an interview with them in a magazine, that made Metallica look like a bunch of alcoholic right wing jerks. They are staggering all the way to the bank.
08-U2- Paydirt. The favorite band of millions, and the only thing that can make PG switch radio stations faster than a used car dealer commercial. Incriminating evidence of Payola in the radio industry,the U stands for Ugh. The guitar player only seems to know one riff. If autos could run on Bono’s ego, there would be no energy crisis ever. (Did you know that Bono is a vocal Jesus Worshiper?)
07-Aerosmith- These guys are famous today because they didn’t OD, despite the best efforts of Stephen Tyler. The simply are not that good.
06-Sonic Youth-PG quit being hip a long time ago. Once he saw a comment about Bono, and thought it was about Sonny. He does not know enough about Sonic Youth to have an opinion. And, for once, that is going to stop him.
05-Elvis Presley- There was a story about Elvis and Natalie Wood. She wanted him to be in a movie she was making, and he did a screen test. To the surprise of many, Elvis could act when he wanted to. The only trouble was, Colonel Tom Parker did not want him to do the film, and so it didn’t happen.
Elvis is an American phenomenon. He was the union of hype and talent. He was also watched over by Colonel Tom Parker, and never stepped out of the role that was chosen for him. Elvis also had the musicians gift for self destruction.
PG heard a racist rant about Elvis once, to the effect that Elvis stole his music from black people. Which only means that it was worth taking.
04-The Beach Boys-Like Elvis, The Beach Boys are tough to not like. Even Nancy Reagan was a fan, and Brian Wilson did not just say no. Maybe they became a self parody, but when they were in the early sixties prime, there was no one who could sing like them.
03-The Velvet Underground-The Velvets existed before recording technology could handle them. There recorded output sucks. The Andy Warhol days were essentially an audition for John Cale, Lou Reed, and Nico. All of them did outstanding work after the demise of the VU. When PG saw Lou Reed doing car commercials…
02-The Eagles- PG read the tell all book by Don Felder. This was the meanest, most selfish bunch around. They made some good records, did mountains of drugs, and wrote songs that are endlessly quoted by people trying to appear intuitive.
PG stood outside the Omni one night, trying to get a ticket to see The Eagles inside. One of the scalpers had a t shirt, with the phrase “DISCO SUCKS” in six inch tall letters. This negativity is what PG associates with The Eagles.
01- The Grateful Dead-PG has written about the Dead before. Lots of people think they are groovy. What is usually not said out loud is the “other ones”, who are not on the bus.
The Dead liked to be loose on stage. Sometimes, this translated into shows that were horrible. Many people, not indoctrinated into the cult of Jerry, went to one of these shows and decided that yes, they were dead, or at least smelled like it.
Dead heads can also be a problem. Like some of the other units in this list, there are fanatic followers of the GD. Like many fanatics, they sometimes turn as many people away from the object of adoration, as the do towards it.

Once again, there is little to say. It is time to borrow. The source today is Gartalker.
The original author was a woman.
There is a saying, beg, borrow, or steal. They all involve the transfer of something, presumably of some value, to another party. The receiving party probably will not compensate the distributor. Another option is purchase, which is not considered in this case. Once money changes accounts, taxes are usually involved. If their is one thing that Gartalker and PG agree on, it is generating less tax revenue for our various governments.
The best verb for the transfer of this story is steal. It is a story about a beggar. The pictures are from the Atlanta Beltline corridor, taken 01-23-10. One of the pictures has a cussword.
I was walking down the street when I was accosted by a particularly dirty and shabby-looking homeless woman who asked me for a couple of dollars for dinner.
I took out my wallet, got out ten dollars and asked, ‘If I give you this money, will you buy chocolate with it instead of dinner?’
‘No, I had to stop eating chocolate years ago’, the homeless woman told me.
‘Will you use it to go shopping instead of buying food?’ I asked.
‘No, I don’t waste time shopping,’ the homeless woman said. ‘I need to spend all my time trying to stay alive.’
‘Will you spend this on a beauty salon instead of food?’ I asked.
‘Are you NUTS!’ replied the homeless woman. I haven’t had my hair done in 20 years!’
‘Well, I said, ‘I’m not going to give you the money. Instead, I’m going to take you out for dinner with my husband and me tonight.’
The homeless Woman was shocked. ‘Won’t your husband be furious with you for doing that? I know I’m dirty, and I probably smell pretty disgusting.’
I said, ‘That’s okay. It’s important for him to see what a woman looks like after she has given up shopping, hair appointments, and chocolate.’

The lady at the Firestone said it would be at least 1:30 before the car was ready. PG put his book up, put a hat on, and went walking north on Peachtree Industrial Boulevard.
He had driven this way hundreds of times, but never walked it. When you walk, you notice details that you miss when you whiz by at 45 mph. Many, like the granite contraption a creek goes through, are not that great to look at.
The porno video store could not be passed up, in this day of time wasting. It felt odd to get bored so quickly…even the fat black lesbian movies didn’t do it. The dildos, modeled on porn stars, remained on the shelf, forlornly waiting to have the shrink wrap torn off.
When PG was a kid, PIB (spell check suggestions:pie,pig,pin,pit,pis) only went as far as the GM plant. You drove down that access road, to Buford Hiway, to go further north. At some point after that, I285 came through, and PIB was expanded into Gwinnett County. For today’s journey of discovery, the perimeter hiway was the destination.
The interchange of PIB and I285 was torn up and worked over for many years in the early nineties. After the perimeter, PIB becomes a mini interstate. PG was curious how far the sidewalks went, where PIB becomes pedestrian unfriendly.
This stretch of road is dotted with car dealerships. While walking is not a priority, there are sidewalks all the way under I285, until the start of an entrance ramp. At this point, the sidewalks end. If one wants to continue to walk, he must use the shoulder of the road, which is no doubt discouraged, if not out and out illegal.
Coming back, a shut down Waffle House was on the right. PG is not surprised that it is closed…this is one horrible location, with the only way to get in being fresh off the perimeter. Still, the wall, with the letters saying “ALWAYS OPEN” removed, is a poignant sight.
A check at the cell phone said that it was 1:30, and even allowing for run overs, the vehicle should be ready soon. The drops of rain became more frequent, until you get seriously wet by being outside. With not a minute to spare, PG walked into the dry comfort of the waiting room.

If you go to google, and type in “singers that wear wigs”, the first name to appear is Mary J. Blige. PG does not follow her closely, but went to youtube and found this video. Yes, this is probably not her real hair in all these shots.
Dolly Parton is known for a lot of things, at least two of which are real. The hair is not. She is famous for her answer to the question, “How long does it take to do your hair?” ” I don’t know, I’m never there”
If anyone is known for enhancing her natural attributes, it would be Cher. Her fondness for plastic surgery is well known, as is the way her head fits in a hairpiece. In this number, Miss Cher talks about some of her favorite people.
Grace Slick is basically retired these days. In her hey day, she never appeared in public in her real hair. PG saw her at the Omni once, and was horrified by her wig.
No, RuPaul is not really blonde. That is a part of her wardrobe. In this video, she co stars with Martha Wash, in a remake of “It’s Raining Men”. The working title for this video was Piggly Wiggly.
It is a bit of show business wisdom that you put the horses at the end of a parade. For the same reason, Deaundra Peek finishes this post with “Supermodel”. The song was made famous by RuPaul. Still pictures for this episode are from the ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”

There is a point where the medium and the message become one. No jokes please, about medium being something that is neither rare nor well done.
PG was listening to a Bloggingheads episode. The dueling wits were Ann Althouse and Matt Welch. There were some comments about tea partiers, and the N Word . This cohabited with some thoughts PG had, and a post was inseminated.
The rest of the conversation had a few gems. At the 5:50 mark, Ms. Althouse said “They’re just making up numbers, the numbers have lost all meaning… I fear for our country when we just don’t believe numbers anymore. Numbers can be just made up out of nothing.” Ms. Althouse is a tenured ( since “89) law school professor. And she just now sees that statistics are lies.
The husband of Ms. Althouse got on a bus, in Madison WI, sometime Friday. He rode 24 hours, sleeping on the bus, and arrived in Washington DC. The husband tea partied for a few hours, got on another bus, rode 24 hours, sleeping on the bus, and arrived back in Madison WI. This is where Ms. Althouse gets her inside information about the Killthebill crowd. Does anyone know how to Madison?
There were reports from Washington that “killthebill” protesters may have slipped in a couple of other choice phrases. On the eve of a vote about an incredibly important law, many news reports were focused on someone shouting the N Word at John Lewis.
The attached video was posted at Rodonline, and says to listen closely at :12. When PG listened, all he heard was noise. This is not to say it did not happen, or that it is right or wrong, but it does say that this particular video does not prove anything.
Ann Althouse at blogginheads had a few more choice comments about this. She says the tea partiers are much more friendly and polite than they are given credit for. With a dark skinned man in the White House, maybe playing the race card is not a smart move anymore. “very powerful people posing as victims is not a pretty sight, it’s a weird use of race”. As to the issue of *a few individuals in the crowd* shouting racial epithets, Ms. Althouse says “so what”.
It does seem interesting that such a big deal is made out of this on the day before a major vote. Is it not possible that some of the supporters of the bill did the epithet shouting? Just get near some reporters and microphones, and scream something disgusting as loud as possible. It will reflect poorly on your opponents.

What follows is a repost. The pictures are from the ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. Recently, it was announced that Central State Hospital would be closing.
PG remembers the first time the name Flannery O’Connor sank in. He was visiting some friends, in a little house across from the federal prison.
Rick(?) was the buddy of a character known as Harry Bowers. PG was never sure what Harry’s real name was. One night, Rick was talking about Southern Gothic writers, and he said that Flannery O’Connor was just plain weird ” Who else would have a bible salesman show up at a farm, take the girl up into a hayloft, unscrew her wooden leg and leave her there? Weird”
Flannery O’Connor was recently the subject of a biography written by Brad Gooch. The book is getting a bit of publicity. Apparently, the Milledgeville resident was a piece of work.
PG read some reviews of this biography, and found a collection of short stories at the library. The book included ” Good Country People”, the tale about the bible salesman. Apparently, this story was inspired by a real life incident. ( Miss O’Connor had lupus the last fifteen years of her life. She used crutches.) And yes, it is weird. Not like hollywood , but in the way of rural, post world war two Georgia.
Some of the reviews try to deal with her attitudes about Black people. On a certain level, she is a racist. She uses the n word freely, and her black characters are not inspiring people. The thing is, the white characters are hardly any better, and in some cases much worse.
The stories are well crafted, with vivid descriptions of people and places. The reader floats along with the flow of the story, until he realizes that Grandma has made a mistake on a road trip. The house she got her son to look for is in Tennessee, not Georgia. She makes him drive the family car into a ditch. Some drifting killers come by. Grandma asks one if he prays, while his partner is shooting her grandchildren. Weird.
In another story, a drifter happens upon a pair of women in the country. The daughter is thirty years old, is deaf, and has never spoken a word. The drifter teaches her to say bird and sugarpie. The mother gives him fifteen dollars for a honeymoon, if he will marry her. He takes the fifteen dollars and leaves her asleep in a roadside diner.
PG was looking for yard sales one Saturday afternoon. He came to a house off Lavista Road, between Briarcliff and Cheshire Bridge. The house had apparently not been painted in the last forty years. Thousands and thousands of paperback books were on the shelves. The lady taking the money said that the lady who lived there was the friend, and correspondent of, the “Milledgeville writer” Flannery O’Connor. This is apparently Betty Hester, who is mentioned in many of the biography reviews.
PG told the estate sale lady that she should be careful how she said that. There used to be a large mental hospital in Milledgeville, and the name is synonymous in Georgia with mental illness. The estate sale lady had never heard that.

It was an ISM…internet synchronicity manifestation. There was a much praised video about a plastic bag, that winds up in the Pacific Trash Vortex. The bag has a voice ( supplied by uberkraut Werner Herzog), and goes looking for it’s “maker” (silently played by an unknown actress).
The bag has a remarkable existence. First, it is used to carry tennis balls, then dog food, then to pick up the by product of dog food. This is remarkable in itself… the typical krogerbag, if it doesn’t get thrown away on arrival at home, will not be used for more than one chore. But this is a special bag.
After the secondary canine duty, the bag is thrashed. Somehow, it escapes from the municipal destination, and begins a wind propelled odyssey in search of “my maker”. After a while, it is on the beach, and the wind takes it into the ocean. It floats in the sea, has pieces bitten off my non nutrition conscious fish, and heads off for a legendary garbage nirvana.
Before long, the bag is in the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”. The GPGP is a bit north of Hawaii, and west of California. The bag movie was filmed in Wilmington, N.C. You should not think about this too long. At any rate, the bag is not happy in the GPGP, and moves on to greener pastures.
The next day, PG goes to a site called “Listserve”. The letterman of the day is “top ten places you don’t want to visit”. Number ten on the list is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. GPGP is either the size of Texas or twice the size of the lower 48. It is a collection of debris, largely plastic, from the world. It is held in place by something called a gyre, which is a place where swirling ocean currents bump up against each other. Greenpeace has a neat little visual that illustrates this.
A visit to google led to a trip to Wikipedia. There is an article at Wikipedia about GPGP that is an almost verbatim source for listverse. This takes recycling a bit too far. There is also a band called Pacific Trash Vortex.
Plastic is a petroleum by product, and has many benefits to our world. It’s durability is one of them, and also one of it’s negatives. (The fact that plastic is so cheap to make is another.) A plastic bag cast off into the environment simply does not disappear. Fish eat them, thinking it is good food, and die of starvation. (Does this affect the food chain?) While the film about the plastic bag is an exaggeration, the fact is that plastic is forever.
The vintage photographs are from the ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. The poster is from Treehugger.com.

There is a bumper sticker which says you cannot have peace and plan for war, or something like that. There is a bit of truth to that. ( This same concept applies to abortion and capital punishment. When you provide a facility for something, you make its usage more likely).If you are going to fight a war, you need the biggest, best equipped army. When you train this army, and build those weapons, you are going to start for a reason to use it. And so the merry go round goes on and on.
A site called Tom’s Dispatch offers up a feature today about the way the military servant is bossing the American people. At a time of bitter debate over providing health care to Americans, a military that spends much more money gets what it wants. Corruption and cost overruns are rampant. A few may question the spending, but they are ignored.
One reason for the silence is the fact that so many of us work for the emperor’s tailor. The spending on weapons manufacturing is spread into every congressional district. The job of a congressman is not to question the pork, but to get his district a share of the bacon.
Pictures are from ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.

It was a story that PG wanted to believe. The headline was that Sean Hannity’s “Freedom Concert“,spent way too much on expenses, and way too little on the charities.
There are many bad things you can say about Sean Hannity. He is loud, aggressive, and tough to listen to. His “conservative” politics go against much of what PG sees as truth. To hear that he is a crook, that his much vaunted “Freedom Concert” is a scam, would be just what a lot of people want to hear. It may yet turn out to be the truth…only trouble is, his accuser is about as obnoxious as the “Great American”.
PG had not heard of Debbie Schulussel before today. She describes herself as a conservative, and claims to be an attorney. A look at her site reveals her to be a fanatic follower of Israel, and hater of Islam. ( She refers to CNN as the Crescent News Network) In one piece, she blames Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton for sparking the third Intifada.
Whether or not the “Freedom Concert” is a legitimate charity may never be known. PG did learn a bit about Mr. Hannity, in what PG heard on the Hannity show.
The way to support the troops, and the wars they fight, has traditionally been by paying taxes. In World War II, paying taxes and buying war bonds were seen as a patriotic duty. And yet, in time of war, the one thing Mr. Hannity consistently shouts for is “making the Bush Tax cuts permanent”.
In the run up to the invasion of Babylon, congress cut taxes. To cut taxes when you are preparing for war is unprecedented, and shows a stunning lack of responsibility. The result was budget deficits of a half trillion dollars a year. ( To be “fair” about this, it must be admitted that the current regime in Washington has increased the deficits considerably.)
Getting back to “support the troops” Hannity, it seems apparent that he wants to have his war, and his circus, at the same time. You do not pay for a war by cutting taxes.

One of the results of “Operation Iraqi Freedom” has been refugees. In the ethnic fighting after the invasion, millions of people have left their homes. Many have moved out of their homes, into parts of Iraq where they can live. Many more have left the country entirely. Here are some
statistics.
When one begins to research this business, he is surprised by the story of the Christians in Iraq. This is ironic, considering the “Christian Conservative” support for the war in America, and the outbreak of anti-Islamic feeling. Apparently, the Christian community in Iraq is not worthy of concern.
Christians once made up an estimated five percent of Iraq. Some of the oldest communities in the country were Christian. With the “ethnic cleansing” after the invasion, the Sunni/Shia militias apparently take a dim view of Christians. Many have found asylum in Syria.
An estimated 1.4 million Iraqi refugees are now in Syria. A country of twenty million, in a space the size of South Dakota, this must be a burden. Syria is a neighbor, and enemy, of Israel, and is routinely condemned in the American press as a result.
It is believed, though not provable, that Israel has taken in zero refugees from Iraq. The United States, a country bearing a great responsibility for the refugee crisis, had taken in an estimated 19,800 at the time the statistics were compiled.
Many of the Iraqis in Syria have become sex workers . Many of their customers are wealthy Saudis on holiday. Apparently, Syria is not as strict about Islamic rules as other countries in that region.
Pictures are from the ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”

Saturday is Shock and Awe Day VIII. On March 20, 2003, the United States invaded Iraq. The occupation continues, at great cost. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died, and over a million are in exile. Thousands of American soldiers were killed or disabled, and the American economy is badly wounded.
There was a great deal of opposition to this invasion. PG went on record as being opposed. He sent letters to his three representatives in Congress to this effect.
His representative in the House at the time was a lady named Denise Majette. She had defeated Cynthia McKinney in the 2002 election, to the delight of many. Ms. Majette only served one term in Congress, before an ill advised run for the US Senate.
PG recieved a letter from Denise Majette after the start of the war. Ms. Majette wrote that the previous House had committed the United States to military action against Iraq. While she did not explicitly say so, she gave the impression that she agreed that going to war was a bad move.
US Senator Saxby Chambliss wrote a few months later. He said the world was a safer place without Saddam Hussein in power, and that the invasion was a success. PG wonders if Mr. Chambliss, or his staff, even read the original letter.
The other Senator at the time was “ZigZag” Zell Miller. Mr. Miller did not reply. This is understandable, because the original letter used the phrase ” you were elected to represent me”. Mr. Miller was appointed by the Governor to complete the term of a Senator who died in office.

As the saying goes, if you can’t say anything good about someone, don’t say anything at all. With that in mind, we will start this inquisition by saying that Christopher Hitchens is a good writer. He can choreograph nouns and verbs into chorus lines that are immensely entertaining, even when you want to slap his drunken face.
He also has the mixed blessing of working in the internet age. When Joe Blow says such and such, it is an easy matter to go to an archive and see what he said about this and that a few years ago. When you write a regular feature for Slate magazine, as Mr. Hitchens does, your searching is even easier.
The most recent bit of grandstanding by the drunken one regards the Catholic church. It seems as though the pedophile priest scandal has spread to Germany, and may involve Pope Benedict 16. ( PG is shocked, shocked I tell you, shocked.) Hitchens, who is a loud atheist, has a few choice opinions on the matter.
PG remembers a few things that Hitchens said about the war in Babylon. The idea at first was to build a case, using the rhetoric about Saddam, that the United States should invade Vatican City and implement regime change. This, of course, will not happen soon, any more than Germany will be punished for having 911 planned in Hamburg. There are different standards for Europe than for west asia. Nonetheless, it might be a fun bit of rhetoric, and a good excuse to show more pictures from the ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”
The post was surprisingly easy to find. In the Fall of 2002, America was debating the concept of an invasion of Iraq. ( At this time the sister war, in Afghanistan, was a year old. Afghanistan was invaded, without discussion, as an act of revenge for 911. We are still there, with no hope of getting out in the near future.) Regardless of what some say, there was considerable opposition to the war in Iraq. (*PG raises hand*).
In may have been his first piece for Slate, Mr. Hitchens supported the invasion. A key paragraph:
However—and here is the clinching and obvious point—Saddam Hussein is not going to survive. His regime is on the verge of implosion. It has long passed the point of diminishing returns. Like the Ceausescu edifice in Romania, it is a pyramid balanced on its apex (its powerbase a minority of the Sunni minority), and when it falls, all the consequences of a post-Saddam Iraq will be with us anyway. To suggest that these consequences—Sunni-Shi’a rivalry, conflict over the boundaries of Kurdistan, possible meddling from Turkey or Iran, vertiginous fluctuations in oil prices and production, social chaos—are attributable only to intervention is to be completely blind to the impending reality. The choices are two and only two—to experience these consequences with an American or international presence or to watch them unfold as if they were none of our business.
Now, it is eight years later. The Sunni-Shi’a rivalry became a savage civil war, with thousands of deaths and over a million refugees. Meddling from Iran has become a possible union between the two states. Fluctuations in oil prices have been a factor in a near economic meltdown in the USA. The choices of “two and only two” became one….we saw the horror in Iraq unfold, with a costly American presence, and yet had to helplessly watch from a distance, as if it was none of our business.
PG was going to engage in a bit of internet mischief, and suggest that the Catholic church is on the verge of collapse. An American invasion of Vatican City was needed, to implement the inevitable regime change on a manageable basis. However, after seeing how this worked out in Iraq, PG doesn’t think the joke would be very funny.