Chamblee54

PG  recently finished three pictures. All are back lit, made of sticker paper and tape, on a mylar base. The first one completed is 308 gift exchange. This image is 15”x19”. This is a group of seven pointed stars, with shapes and colors to fill the remaining space. This image was a lot of trouble in the assembly phase. The idea was to have an even overlap around the sides of the stars, and that was easier said than done.
The next two were done at the same time. They are 309 Argyle and 310 Ovals. These two are 13”x19”. PG took the border tiles he had used before, and enlarged them 200 percent. On 309 Argyle, he drew lines between the tiles, and diamond shapes emerged in the middle. On 310 Ovals, a mandala theme was used, albeit in simplified form.
Before long, it will be time to do another one. Or two.

David Bergman made a panorama shot of the inauguration. It is on display at gigaplan. HT to Andrew Sullivan. Mr. Sullivan is guilty of period abuse. The photograph is remarkable. It is the combination of 220 separate images. A few glitches come through.Rick Warren is reduced to an empty black hat.

PG stared out at the gray sky, and thought that the sunday before the super bowl just might be the most depressing day of the year. A cd was playing, a promotional device recorded at an ATT convention once. Bjork sang “Gloomy Sunday“. The ever cheerful PG has an idea for a post.
Billie Holiday had a hit with”Gloomy Sunday”in 1941. The legend is that people would listen to the song, and kill themselves. This happened so many times that the song was banned from the radio. Or was it?
“Gloomy Sunday” was written in 1933 by Rezső Seress. Additional lyrics were later written by László Jávor. It became known as the ” Hungarian Suicide Song”, and was reportedly banned in Hungary. An english translation ( which is said to not do justice to the original Hungarian) was rendered.
The song has a melancholy sound, even as an instrumental. The story is about a person…it is not gender specific…who decides to join a loved one who has died. A third verse was added, to the english version, where the singer says it was all a dream.
The song became popular in the United States. And the suicide stories started to spread, along with rumors that the song had been banned from the radio. ( It was indeed banned by the BBC) There are indications that these rumors were part of a publicity campaign.
The urban legend busters Snopes calls the story “undetermined”. Legends like this get a life of their own. A grieving person hearing this song on a dreary Sunday is not going to be uplifted. One thing is known for sure…the original composer did take his own life. Rezső Seress jumped off a tall building in Budapest in 1968. The legend is he had never had another hit song after writing “Gloomy Sunday”.

This video is from two ladies. Their stage name is the salad sisters. They are concerned about the use of english grammar on the internet…or is that in the onternet? HT to Avitable.
PG knew a pair of ladies once, who became known as the salad sisters. This was when he worked at Shaky Blueprints. It seems that these ladies liked to take long lunch hours. Sometimes a salesman, who did not use the restroom, went with them. PG and the production staff stayed at the plant and worked, and were not amused.
One day the lunchers left, and did not come back for three hours. PG asked where they went. “Oh, we went to the Rusty Nail. We are trying to lose weight, and they have really good salads”

The headline on the wordpress page said “”YOU DECIDE:Would You Want Terrorists In Your Back Yard?”. PG’s first thought was of the Georgia Legislature meeting downtown…Sam Adams should be required to finish his sentence term as mayor of Portland. Every time he appears in public, people will point at him and giggle. This is the punishment he deserves… Someone called Roughtype has a feature on the hegemony( for now) of google and wikipedia. It seems as though the internet created a new playing field for information, and goowi rules, at least for now. Is this digital darwinism?…the phrase 23 skiddoo has an entry in wikipedia. This was said by some to be the first national slang saying. It’s origin is is bit uncertain, which is fertile ground for mythmakers… One popular story has a place on 23rd street in New York, with a lot of wind blowing about. This would be similar to Georgia Pacific Plaza in downtown Atlanta. The legend is that men would hang out on 23rd street to see the wind pick up ladies skirts. The UrbanDictionary goes along with this story… In those days, as the song suggests, ” a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking now heaven knows, anything goes “. A lady simply did not let men look at her legs. To show how far we have gone, a recent interview with Sarah Palin ( The darling of the moral majority crowd ) shows her displaying her knee, albeit covered in a stocking…23 is a prime number. The only way to get it through multiplication is 23×1. However, using division, we see that 69/3 is 23. 69 is popular for an act that is uniquely related to two people participating. The concept of 69 divided by three is rather gruesome… The urbandictionary calls 23 the greatest number of all time. This may be the end of the research phase of this post. However, if any odd thoughts find their way into this narrative, they may have to be included. 23 is an odd number…The 23rd psalm is one of the high points of the Bible. And no, my name is not Shirley, nor is it goodness nor mercy…The number 23 in the alphabet is W. If you can’t say anything good, say it about him…2 divided by 3 is .666…. 6+6+6+2+3=23…. The legend is that Dr. Pepper is the combination of 23 flavors…Willie Shakesphere was born April 23, 1564. He died April 23, 1616…The very first morse code message was “What hath God wrought” (what hath God done) was from the Bible passage Numbers 23:23… On January 23, 1973, Richard Nixon announced a peace accord for the Vietnam War… On January 23, 1978, Terry Kath (Guitar player for the band Chicago) came home from a night of partying. He picked up a 9mm pistol, and held it to his head. He said, “ don’t worry, it’s not loaded.” He was mistaken, with fatal consequences…Human DNA has 23 chromosomes… Craigslist can be so poetic. “I am an opulent man. I have wealth beyond your wildest imaginations. Come scrub the diamond encrusted toilets on my lavish yacht. Furthermore, I am an exquisite man of great excellence and those who work for me often find themselves greatly life experience enhanced. Pay not negotiable”… If you enter 23 into google, the first answer is a wikipedia article about 23 enigma. This is the concept that all events are related to the number 23…William S. Burroughs is credited by some for first noting the 23 enigma. ” I first heard of the 23 enigma from William S Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch, Nova Express, etc. According to Burroughs, he had known a certain Captain Clark, around 1960 in Tangier, who once bragged that he had been sailing 23 years without an accident. That very day, Clark’s ship had an accident that killed him and everybody else aboard. Furthermore, while Burroughs was thinking about this crude example of the irony of the gods that evening, a bulletin on the radio announced the crash of an airliner in Florida, USA. The pilot was another captain Clark and the flight was Flight 23.” … Bonnie and Clyde were murdered on May 23, 1934. The letter B is two, and the letter C is three… On January 23, 1985, O.J. Simpson was elected to the football hall of fame…

There is a discussion today at Avitable about torture. It might be a coincidence that Adolph Hitler is wearing a party hat.
There is a comment by Chamblee54. Torture is like the other moral issues that people love to debate, i.e. war, capital punishment, and abortion. IMO, they should all be allowed, but used very very sparingly.
The circumstances where such strong measures should be used are almost never in effect. I don’t believe in the ticking time bomb, or the easter bunny. And if the ticking time bomb was about to go off, would we have the time to go on the wild goose chase the “terrorist” would send us on? People will say anything to make the pain stop. Also, once this person is captured, the plans are going to change.
Yes, keep the torture stick in the tool box, but be very careful about taking it out.
That was written before going to the dentist. The plan was to replace an old filling. At one point during the procedure, I said “I’ll tell you whatever it is you want to know” So, the Doctor said “who did that filling?” I couldn’t remember the name. This is another problem with torture…if you forget something, torture is not going to help you remember. This includes the name of a dentist who filled a cavity 45 years ago.
So, I am back home now, and the novocaine is slowly fading away. I have been thinking about the ticking time bomb and the easter bunny. I am not a purist. If we determine that the easter bunny is a terrorist, and that one of the eggs he dropped off is a ticking time bomb, then we should torture the easter bunny to save thousands of lives.

There is a saying, “For G-d’s sake”. The usual meaning is that something is really important. An example would be “you need to replace that balding tire, for G-d’s sake”.
There is another meaning which comes to mind after the inauguration. We need…really really need…to get religion out of politics. For G-d’s sake.
Three ministers were prominently featured in the inauguration. Gene Robinson was seen by some as an olive branch to Gays and Lesbians offended by the antics of minister number two ( pun intended). The selection led to a few gratuitous anti gay comments. Then, when it was show time, his prayer was not a part of the telecast. Hmmm.
Minister number two is Rick Warren. Widely seen as an egomaniac and a hatemonger, his selection was praised by some as “building bridges”. He made a prayer that seemed to please few. It should be noted at this point that this reporter did not see the proceedings, but is going from the abundant internet coverage.
And what does all of this say about G-d? To use a prayer by a hatemonger for “building bridges”. Separation of church and state is a good deal for the church. When you use prayer as a decoration in a ceremony, it loses any meaning.
The last of the three ministers was Joseph Lowery. He quoted a rhyme about different colors of people. Some were pleased by this, and others were offended. Here again, what does all of this say about G-d?
In the last few years, religion has been exploited by the right wing politicians. Being a Christian is somehow supposed to make you a conservative. The semantics and Bible justification for all this is rather tiresome to this reporter.
A recent example is a internet thing called “Pray Obama Fails”. (HT to JoemyG-d).What this person does not understand is that if Obama Fails, all of us fail. It is like the war in babylon…many of us were opposed to it, but if our armies lose, then we all lose. The person who prays for Obama to fail is praying for America to fail. And what sort of G-d do you direct a prayer like that to?
Maybe it is time to get prayer for entertainment out of the public arena. For God’s sake.

PG sometimes makes a funny. Other times, he steals them. The following is from JokesFunny. While most other people are blathering about the inauguration, here is a bit of “humor”.
1. THINGY…Female……Any part under a car’s hood…Male…The strap fastener on a woman’s bra.
2. VULNERABLE…Female…..Fully opening up one’s self emotionally to another…Male…Playing football without a cup.
3. COMMUNICATION…Female..The open sharing of thoughts and feelings with one’s partner….Male….Leaving a note before taking off on a fishing trip with the boys.
4. COMMITMENT… Female…….A desire to get married and raise a family…Male………Trying not to hit on other women while out with this one.
5. FLATULENCE …Female……An Embarrassing byproduct of indigestion…Male……..A source of entertainment, self-expression, male bonding.
6. ENTERTAINMENT… Female……A good movie, concert, play or book…Male……..Anything that can be done while drinking beer.
7. MAKING LOVE …Female……The greatest expression of intimacy a couple can achieve…Male……..Call it whatever you want just as long as we do it.
8. REMOTE CONTROL …Female…..A device for changing from one TV channel to another…Male…….A device for scanning through all 375 channels every 5 minutes.

There have been nine presidential transfers of power in PG’s life. Seven of them were in January. PG typically ignores them. He goes to work/school with Mr. Crook in office, and comes home to President Thief.
The best exception was in August,1974. Richard Nixon was finally undone and forced to resign. After watching Tricky Dick’s next to last television speech , PG got in his Datsun and drove to the Great Southeast Music Hall. The entertainment that night was Rahsaan Roland Kirk.
The Music Hall was the sort of place we don’t seem to have anymore. The auditorium was a bunch of bench backs on ground level, with pillows everywhere. It was a space in a shopping center, occupied by an office depot in later years. To get there from Brookhaven, you drove on a dirt road, where Sidney Marcus Boulevard is today.
Rahsaan Roland Kirk was not modest. He was the modern miracle of the tenor saxophone. He would play three saxophones at once, getting sounds that you do not get from a single instrument. At one point, the band had been playing for about five minutes, when PG noticed that Kirk had been holding the same note the entire time without stopping to breathe.
Mr. Kirk played two ninety minute sets that night. He talked about twenty minutes out of every set. Of that twenty minutes, maybe thirty seconds would be fit for family broadcasting. Mr. Kirk…who was blind…said he did not want to see us anyway, because we were too ugly. He said that Stevie Wonder wanted to make a lot of money, so he could have an operation and see again.
The next day, Mr. Nixon got in a helicopter and left Washington. The Music Hall stayed open a few more years, and Sidney Marcus Boulevard was paved. Rahsaan Roland Kirk had a stroke in 1975. He struggled to be able to perform again. On December 5, 1977, a second stroke ended his career. He was 41 years old.

PG listened in on a conversation in October 2000. One person didn’t think the upcoming election was important. The other thought it was important to vote for Gore.
PG heard this, and started to think. He had been neutral, leaning towards Gore, but with no enthusiasm. Bush didn’t seem all that bad.
PG lived in Georgia, which everyone knew was going overwhelmingly for Bush. The electoral votes were going for Bush, rendering his opinion meaningless. This was the election where the electoral college system screwed America. In almost every election PG had voted in, this archaic plan had, in effect, stolen his vote. Now, the entire country was put at risk.
In October 2000, the government had a budget surplus. This meant that capital was not scooped up by the government, but went into the private sector. The dot com stock boom was raging, and more than a few thought that the collapse was imminent. America was not at war.
America was not at war.
So George W. Bush became President. The economy started to sputter, which happens from time to time. Then came nine eleven.
PG thought at the time of nine eleven that something was up. A product of the conspiracy happy sixties, PG thought America and the world were in for some bad times. With the new administration in power, we may finally find out what really happened on nine eleven.
There needed to be revenge for nine eleven. We invaded Afghanistan. The example of the Soviet Union was ignored, and we invaded one of the meanest places on earth.
There needed to be revenge for nine eleven. We prepared to invade Iraq. Before we invaded Iraq, the taxes were cut. We went from a surplus, to a half trillion dollar deficit.
There was an election for a second term. Between incompetent Democratic opposition, and the Republican talent for stealing elections, it was never in doubt.
At some point in all this, the banks started to lend money to people who had no business taking it. This went on for a while, until the loans started to not be repaid, and the banks started to fail.
BHO will be sworn in tomorrow. GWB should be sworn out today. The electoral college needs to be eliminated. The wars need to end.

There is a featured blog on the WordPress home today called Pakalert. They posted a feature on January 7 titled “Israel Created Hamas to Split Palestine”. The thesis is that Israel helped to start Hamas as a tool against the PLO and Fatah.
PG does not claim to know everything about Palestine. This bit of revisionism does sound a bit far fetched. But the question does arise, what role did Israel play in the creation of Hamas?
In the six day war, Israel gained control of Gaza. Israel occupied the territory for a while, and has had a great deal of control over it ever since. What did Israel do to prepare the Gazans for self government?
By all accounts, it was not a friendly occupation. Israel established settlements on Gazan territory, taking up twenty percent of the land. This is in one of the most densely populated regions on earth.
Is it suprising that a radical organization like Hamas exists? Would it exist if the Israeli treatment of the Gazans had been better during the occupation? Like many other things, the present state of affairs is a done deal. You cannot go back in time and create a better life for the Gazans…and ultimately, the Israelis.