Chamblee54

The state of Georgia is fixin’ to poison another killer. Unless Governor Sonny stops things, Mark Howard McClain will be strapped onto a gurney at 7 pm Tuesday, October 20. As always, the distribution will be made at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson.
The story took place in Richmond County. This quote is from the court ruling denying clemency.
At approximately 1:00 a.m. on Sunday, November 20, 1994, McClain left the house of his girlfriend, Tina Butler, drove to a nearby Domino’s Pizza store on Washington Road, and parked his blue Buick automobile beside the store. When Philip Martin Weeks Jr., a delivery man, returned to the store before 2:00 a.m., McClain approached Weeks and asked to purchase a pizza. Weeks explained that the store had stopped selling carry-out pizza at 10:00 p.m. the previous evening.
McClain protested and refused to leave. To appease McClain, Weeks said that he would ask the manager, Kevin Scott Brown, to make an exception for McClain.
McClain began yelling outside the store that he wanted a pizza. Brown released the lock of the door to the store, and Weeks opened the door.
McClain attempted to force his way into the store. Weeks initially struggled with McClain, but when McClain produced a small caliber revolver, Weeks fled through the store and out the back door. Brown, who weighed approximately 450 pounds, remained behind the counter of the store, unable to move quickly. As Weeks left the store, he heard McClain demand that Brown give him money.
Weeks ran to a pay telephone to call the police. After he realized the phone was broken, Weeks ran toward another pay telephone at a gas station across Washington Road. As he began to cross the street, Weeks saw a car leave the Domino’s parking lot at a high rate of speed and turn onto Washington Road. The driver, McClain, made eye contact with Weeks and an obscene gesture toward him.
Weeks memorized the license tag number of McClain’s car. Weeks then flagged down a passing motorist, who drove Weeks back to the store.
Weeks entered the store and found Brown lying on the floor behind the counter and bleeding from a bullet wound to his chest. The keys to the money till of the store, which Brown ordinarily kept in his pocket, were in the till and approximately $100 was missing. Weeks called 911, but Brown bled to death before paramedics arrived.

Before long, McClain was in custody. He called his gf, and told her to get rid of his stuff. Miss Butler gave the murder weapon to her nephew, Diego Davis. The gun was recovered less than a month later when Mr. Davis was involved in a shooting.
Miss Butler testified against Mr. McClain at his trial. The story was that he only intended to rob the store. Mr. McClain shot when he heard a noise, and thought Mr. Brown was chasing him. Remember, Mr. Brown weighed 450 pounds.
Mark McClain was found guilty of a bunch of charges. He was sentenced to die. Three statutory aggravating circumstances were found: the murder was committed during the commission of a burglary; the murder was committed during the commission of an armed robbery; “and the murder was committed for the purpose of receiving money or things of monetary value.” Mr. McClain later said his attorney did an inadequate job of defending him during the sentencing phase of the trial.
Tina Butler is a central character in this drama. It seems as though she told Mr. McClain that she needed money, and he went out to get it for her. According to the Georgia Department of Corrections, Tina Deresa Butler was convicted of forgery in Richmond county, for a crime committed August 1, 1996. Tina D. Butler is black, and six years older than Mark McClain.
The nephew that Tina Butler gave the murder weapon to was Diego Davis. On November 10, 2001, Diego Arturo Davis was arrested in Richmond County for possession of cocaine.

Andrew Sullivan links to a feature at cracked.com about commonly accepted ideas about psychology. Yes, the imitation Mad Magazine is still in business. The tagline at this facility is “America’s only humor & video site, since 1958”. Cracked has a nifty ad for Diet Coke at the top of the page. More than a few cocola fans consider diet coke to be an abomination.
The post in question has 6 tidbits of conventional wisdom. Cracked uses a vulgar term to describe them…think of Ted Roosevelt and “bully”. PG suspects the tough part of a post like this is narrowing it down to six items. They are:
#1.”Carl is Such a Homophobe! I Bet He’s Secretly Gay!”
#2.”We’ll Find Out if He’s Lying! Give Him a Lie Detector Test!”
#3.”Be Careful! Advertisers Use Subliminal Messages to Make Us Do Things!”
#4.”Cult Members are Stupid, Gullible Sheep!”
#5.”Just Believe in Yourself, and You’ll Succeed!”
#6.”If You Let Your Anger Out, You’ll Feel Better!
Another find at Cracked is a photo series titled “One Queen and Eleven Presidents“. Diana’s mother in law is seen with a football team of POTUS. Her majesty seems embarrassed by Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, and BHO. LBJ was missing, and the Eisenhower and Truman pictures have not been colorized. .
At no time are her hands shown without gloves, and does not wave. The empty purse is in five shots, and she wears hats in two. She has dreadful taste in hats.
George H.W. Bush makes a crude gesture with his right hand, which her highness ignores. Bill Clinton is smirking, Ronald Reagan is laughing, and Harry Truman seems to be up past his bedtime. As for which Presidents slept with the Queen, PG would vote for Clinton, Ford, Kennedy, and Eisenhower.

When you step into the world of Avitable, you never know what to expect. Today, it was  a list of things that Avitable wishes he could do. To illustrate, he posted a video of a man singing.
There is a rule in the south about wishing. You are required by law to repeat this saying about wishing whenever the concept is mentioned. You can wish in one hand, and s**t in the other, and see which hand gets full faster.
Looking at the video, PG suspects that was what Shane was doing. The viewer does not know which hand got full faster. It is best if Shane washes his hands.
There have been lots of comparisons of singing and defecation. There used to be scat singers. Playing Frank Sinatra records in a garden makes the roses grow faster.
There is a saying about being busy. “I don’t know whether to s**t or go blind”. Stevie Wonder wishes he had tried ex lax.

Atlmalcontent has put a name on something that PG has known about for a long time. He calls it frown syndrome, and says it is because of poor bone structure. PG calls it sad face, and it has had an impact on his life. If PG ever forgets that he has frown syndrome, there is always someone to remind him.
The nutshell is that PG’s face has a default setting that many see as being unhappy. PG does not know why this is, and, if he thinks about it, can make an effort to “put on a happy face”. However, if he is tired or bored, this is probably not going to happen. PG then looks like he just lost his best friend.
The ever helpful Urban Dictionary has a listing for frown syndrome. It is “A cranky little bitch whose a downer no matter what.” Wikipedia does not have an article for frown syndrome.
The suggested Wikipedia alternative that caught PG’s eye was Washlet syndrome. A washlet is a Japanese commode that shoots water up a body cavity, for hygienic purposes. It seems as though some people abuse this device, for pleasure purposes. Whether or not they smile was not discussed. The article…actually a section of a longer article about Japanese toilets…said that washlet syndrome was frowned upon by Japanese society.
Persecution of those with frown syndrome is acceptable in modern culture. Once a person is tagged with the dreaded label “negative attitude”, anything you say or do to this person is all right. Perhaps in a more enlightened society, people with a sad face will not face discrimination.

When he was a kid, PG had different interests. He would get into something for a while, then move on to something else. In 1965, it was baseball and football. The Atlanta Journal had a column every day by Furman Bisher. PG thought he was a very good, very funny writer.
Yesterday, the fishwrapper printed the last column by Furman Bisher. Many, many things had changed in those 44 years. The well crafted prose of Furman Bisher remained the same.
In 1965, Mr. Bisher produced six columns a week for the afternoon paper. Typically, five of them would be on a single subject. The sixth one would be a collection of one or two liners, separated by three dots. These mix and match columns were always signed “selah”. Selah is an untranslatable Hebrew word from Psalms. When asked why he said that, Mr. Bisher said “your guess is as good as mine”.
In one of the columns signed selah, Mr. Bisher talked about sports cliches. His least favorite one was about a ballplayer “who can do it all”. ” Lets see one of them have a baby”
While the Cox family owned both the morning Constitution and the afternoon Journal, they were separate papers then. They had a TV section on saturday printed on green paper, which made the world look red after you turned away from it. The saturday paper also had a weekly ad by a restaurant owner who dabbled in politics, named Lester Maddox. The next year, he would be elected Governor of Georgia. Lester called the Cox Newspapers “the fishwrapper”.
In 1965, the Braves played a lame duck season in Milwaukee. The Crackers played one last season in the brand new Atlanta Stadium. It did not have the hyphen Fulton County in it’s name yet, and the people of Atlanta were so proud of that facility. The next year, the Braves set up shop in Dixie, and were horrible. The Falcons played their first season, and were even worse. Before long, PG found other things to be interested in.
Furman Bisher continued to plug away. A young man named Lewis Grizzard came to work at the fishwrapper, and Mr. Bisher was his boss. Eventually, Lewis Grizzard took a job in Chicago, a frosty exile from warm Georgia. A few years later, Mr. Grizzard came home, and became an  institution. The only problem was his heart. Lewis Grizzard left us on March 20, 1994.
Mr. Bisher is 90 today, and in good health. He is leaving on his feet. The fishwrapper continues to shrink, and may not outlive one of it’s best writers.

Laura Ingraham got in a shouting match with Bill O’Reilly about the Nobel peace prize. O’Reilly thought the award was a positive move, because it shows an improvement of the way the world sees America. Miss Ingraham argued with him that America was weaker, although she was unclear how this award made America weaker. Mostly, they interrupted each other and waved their hands. HT to JoemyG-d for the video.
The lack of courtesy is one of the appalling things about Conservatives. Miss Ingraham is one of the rudest ones. This post and that post tells the story of things PG has heard Miss Ingraham say on her radio show.
While researching this post, PG went to the Laura Ingraham website. There was a link to an article about the morale of American troops in Afghanistan. It seems that the more we sacrifice, the worse things get. The war was started to get revenge for nine eleven. Now, we struggle to find a reason for the slaughter. And the murderer in chief gets a Nobel Peace Prize.
On a lighter note, Andrew Sullivan chimes in with a bit of arithmetic. “And then there was the matter of what he called COIN mathematics. If there are 10 Taliban and you kill two, how many do you have left? Eight, perhaps. Or there might be two, because six of the remaining eight decide it’s just not worth fighting anymore. Or you might have 20 because the brothers and cousins of the two dead fighters decide to take vengeance.”

PG found a link on facebook for something called the freak revolution manifesto. Things went well for the first 25 pages or so, until the inner Ethel came out. Lucy always had these great ideas, until she told Ethel about them. ” I don’t know Lucy“.
No doubt, there is room for improvement in the way we conduct our lives. The evidence is abundant. The FRM tells a tale of a control paradigm running the show, and proposes to replace it with a connect paradigm. PG has always thought cooperation works better than domination/submission. So far so good.
The devil is in the details. Change starts with the individual. The FRM has a few ideas about how the individual player can change to best “empower” itself. One of these notions is that the person should dump their friends that don’t agree with the revolution.
“Imagine sharing this manifesto with each of your friends. Would they roll their eyes and say “Those are some pretty big ideas, but it’ll never work”? Or would they be moved to tears, jump up and down excitedly, and ask “Where can I sign up?”
You need more of the up-and-down-jumpers in your life, and fewer of the eye-rollers. The eye-rollers are poisonous and will sap your energy and motivation. The up-and-down-jumpers will share their enthusiasm with you, you’ll share yours with them, and you’ll both help each other.
Don’t maintain friendships with eye-rollers because you think you can help them or fix them. You can help much more effectively when you’re buoyed up by encouragement than when you’re drained by cynicism. It’s difficult and painful to cut ties with friends who drain you, and it’s also scary to reach out and make new friends who support you, but it’s worth it.”
PG has never found it easy to make and keep friends. The idea of losing a friend because of insufficient revolutionary zeal is distressing. There is a saying among mass murderers, “ To make an omelet, you need to crack eggs“. Reading page 29 of the FRM made PG feel like an egg, hiding from the cook.
This business of kicking out friends sounds to PG like  the control paradigm. In looking for a solution, the FRM might be making a worse problem. While many of the ideas in this tract are valid, overall PG is listening to Ethel.