The Perfect Church
I was coming down Peachtree Dunwoody, towards the soccer fields, when the voice on the radio began to describe the storm damage. It seems as though “The Perfect Church” had taken a lightening hit on its steeple, setting off a spectacular fire. The concept of something called “The Perfect Church” being hit by lightening was just too amazing.
Before I wrote about it, I needed a bit more information. Google chose this time to let me know it would no longer work for me, at least through the front door. MSN search showed a few results for TPC, but nothing that helped.
The various news websites were no help. It was as if no one wanted to say the obvious…that a place boastful enough to call itself “The Perfect Church” had been hit by lightening. The closest I saw was a reference at venerable WSB that “the Atlanta Fire Department is battling a steeple fire on a church believed caused by lightening at McDaniel St. and Ralph David Abernathy.”
Then, an unlikely source came to my aid. WGST is the home of Rush Limbaugh, and is known for its far right agenda. It has a google powered search option, which worked for me…unlike the main google page. It also has a music player, with a David Bowie concert from 1972. I doubt Rush Limbaugh was at that show, although he might have gotten some good pills there.
The google search did provide a link to “The Perfect Church” at 670 McDaniel Street. A visit to their site shows the words “Christians are Perfect!”. Maybe that lightening strike was intentional.
As I typed that last line, Mr. Bowie was performing “Space Oddity”. The line he sang as I leaned back after typing the last line was “ May G-d’s love be with you”.
History of Religion part one
I was a southern baptist all my life. Arguably, I became a baptist when my mother converted in 1938, but really didn’t get with the program until I was born in 1954. The story is that Daddy called the choir director at six in the morning to sign me up.
First Baptist in Atlanta was a big church on Peachtree street ,about a mile north of downtown. (A few years ago, they sold the land to a developer and moved to the suburbs. I was working a block away when they tore down the building, and got some chips of brick as a souvenir.) I sang in the “cherub” choir. This was quite an experience when we performed in front of a full house. I have good memories of Sunday school, vacation bible school, and the choir program.
One thing I did not like, even at that young age, was the preacher. He was a greasy haired man who shouted a lot and had a mean streak. (Sounds like some of these bloggers). Years later, I heard persistent rumors that he was gay. ( I should note that this is not Charles Stanley. It is the man who preceded him)
There is one thing I will always remember. We were watching him preach, and he shouted, “this is the word of G-d” . He then waved a Bible in the air and slammed it into the pulpit. I thought, if that is the word of G-d, maybe he shouldn’t slam it down like that.
Around 1962, mom&dad decided to move to a church closer to home. I liked Briarcliff Baptist. About this time, I first heard about being “saved from sin”, and thought it was a pretty cool idea.
I also was in cub scouts, and since their meetings were the same day as choir practice, I quit the choir.
I attended church regularly the next few years, but never did join the church and get baptized. The custom of pressuring children to make a “commitment of faith”, and get baptized, reflects poorly on Jesus.
There are some other family issues that came up about this time. They are too personal to get into here, but they affected my attitude towards the church
After a while I was 17 years old, and working in a restaurant that was open until 1am on Saturday night. I decided one Sunday that I didn’t want to get up for church. I have only been back to that building once in the intervening 36 years.
Run Run Off Off
There is nothing to do at 4 in the morning, and yet there is everything. The only problem is staying awake at work all day, but I can fake that.
This is also election runoff day. In one hour and eight minutes, the polls will open. Maybe, just maybe, I can be the first person to vote at this precinct this morning. It might be quite the social scene waiting outside for the doors to open.
I have already had one first today. A blog hero just got back from a vacation cruise, and he had a selection of pictures. He is on a train into Manhattan as we type. I saw that no one had made a comment, so I went for it, and got in first:
I got up in the middle of the night and could not go back to sleep. After playing with the computer and eating, I decided to go grocery shopping. The store is really different at 4:30 in the morning, but I didn’t care. Then, there was the shocking discovery that my store did not have fresh corn. I had to go to another 24 hour Kroger to get my corn. This Kroger used to be an A&P. They tore down the A&P that had been there since 1960 and built a super big A&P. My mother shopped in the old A&P every Thursday afternoon for 36 years, until they tore it down to build a super big store. She went to the Kroger with no corn while this was happening. Then the new A&P was finished. My mother died a few months later, and within six weeks, A&P closed all the Atlanta stores. The supersize store became an all night Kroger, and they had fresh corn for me this morning.
Yea, the store was different. The stockerdudes were in the aisles putting product on the shelves. The only checkout available was the self scan, which I am trained on but not certified.
Leaving the Clairmont Kroger en route to the Brookhaven Kroger, I decided to see what am radio was like at four something in the morning. The first voice was talking about Skip Carey. As a non sports fan, I felt like an outsider at this. I do admit to admiration for Mr. Carey. Anyone that could watch all those Braves games in the 1980’s and not go postal was a strong man.
While I was on the computer earlier, I went to the Wikipedia page for Milo Hamilton. He was the Braves announcer when they first came to Atlanta, and I listened. Mr. Hamilton does not suffer from false modesty.
And so it goes. The runoff election will not be appealing. I have been following the Dekalb CEO race the last few days, and we seem to have a choice between Bill Campbell part two and Mr. Postcard. I will probably hold my nose. The voting is held in the cafetorium of my grammar school. I have held my nose in there before.
Spell check suggestions for this feature:
puntabulous- fabulousness, accountableness, accountability, nebulousness, insurmountably
wikipedia- pediatric, cyclopedia, hypermedia, stipendiary, impedimenta
cafetorium- crematorium, sanatorium, auditorium, moratorium, cafeteria
The BHO dilemma
The flapette continues about the postcard(s) from the Stan Watson campaign. I am going to leave that to others to sort out. This incident does illustrate a problem with the BHO campaign.
In the “concerned citizens” postcard, Mr.Watson is boasting about his endorsement of BHO. He claims that he is trying to help elect an African American President. My question is, where does this leave a white voter?
The contest between BHO and JSM is showing signs of degenerating into a black vs. white campaign. This could only benefit JSM, and may indeed be his best chance to pull out this election.
BHO is walking a fine line. On the one hand, he needs to energize the African American vote. On the other hand, he cannot scare white people. It is going to be quite a balancing act.
Over the years, I have learned one thing. When it is us against them, you need to remember which one you are. If the Black endorsements of BHO get too strident, this is going to scare white people. The wingnut end of the corporate media is already beating the drums for this. We saw this recently, when a mild comment about how ” I don’t look like the Presidents on the dollar bills ” was blown up into playing the race card from the bottom of the deck.
BHO is a sharp cookie, and he knows this. He recently said “In no way do I think that John McCain’s campaign was being racist,” …”I think they’re cynical,” …”And I think they want to distract people from talking about the real issues.” Maybe we need a semantic microscope to explore the difference between racist and cynical.
BHO has run a remarkable, savvy campaign so far. The Repubs and their buddies in the corporate media are piling up mudballs to throw at him. He needs to do what he has done so far, and not let the mud stick. And his “supporters” should let go of his coattails.
Two Postcards
The runoff elections are next Tuesday. In Dekalb County, the CEO is running for the US Senate, and there is a race ( key word here) to determine who the next CEO will be.
Peach Pundit has compared the postcards sent out by Stan Watson. He is running against Burrel Ellis for the CEO position.
I live in a white neighborhood. I received a postcard from “Stan Watson for Dekalb CEO” , with a Wesley Chapel Road address. This postcard lists his website, the prosaic stanwatson.com. ( This was an issue with Cecillia Haley. She used a goofy web address, and left CecilliaHaley.com to her opponent to use as an attack site). The postcard is a fairly nondescript affair, with the usual homilies about building a better county. All the people endorsing Mr. Watson are white. Included in the endorsers is Karla Drenner, who is openly gay.
Apparently, the black neighborhoods are getting a different message. The postcard makes some confusing charges about Burrel Ellis. It seems like he favored black officials before he ran for CEO, but appointed white officials to different positions after the decision to run. ( One wonders how Mr. Ellis got in the position to appoint officials, if he was a mere district council representative)
The other charge that Mr. Watson makes against Mr. Ellis is that Mr. Ellis did not endorse Barack Obama. To quote from the postcard: “ Stan Watson is one of the very first democrats in the state of Georgia to endorse Barack Obama in 2007 and has worked with Obama’s staff to ensure that he is elected the first African American President of the United States of America. Stan Watson was a part of the foundation that helped to anchor Barack Obama’s statewide victory and has the ties with Barack and Michelle Obama to make a difference in Dekalb County!”
The “Black” postcard does not show the Watson web address. The return address is “Concerned Dekalb Citizens”, with a Don Juan Lane address.
One wonders if BHO is aware of the coattail pulling by Mr. Watson. It is a mystery to this reporter what the race for POTUS has to do with collecting garbage in Lithonia.
Two Daughters
I knew we were in for the strangest election ever when I saw this video.
But I had no idea. This is the first youtube presidential election. From Larry Sinclair to the Snowman, we are in uncharted territory. Maybe this is the uncharted terrorist.
The Demos have a clear lead in the follies. The repubs still think it is 1952, and are looking for a dog named Checkers. This video is typical of the Gross Old Perverts:
There is satire. These make the New Yorker cover look like a boring still cartoon. It extends Chris Crocker’s fame all the way to sixteen minutes. Which is not bad for someone who acts like he is nine. (Warning: This video has bad language.) ( This video is courtesy of a link to JoemyGod. It is not on youtube that I know, and I don’t know how to embed it. Maybe I really am a Republican after all.)
And then there was JibJab. The sound you hear is Bob Dylan rolling in his…wait, he is still alive.
On a more serious note, another disturbing trend has been spotted by your slack blogger here. Three Presidents in recent memory have had two daughters, one wife, and no sons. This is the combination achieved by BHO. It is one wife fewer than JSM.
The other recent Presidents with two daughters were Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and George W. Bush. Somehow, I don’t think you are going to hear this from the BHO campaign.
Spell check suggestions for this feature:
crocker- rockers, clocker, crackers, croakers, crockery
D.O.T. Presentation
There is this really neat blog called D***CoolPics. I like to have a no profanity blog. Even though the D word is borderline, I prefer to err on the side of caution.
Back when “Gone with the Wind” was made, there was some hand wringing about the use of the D word. In those days, Hollywood flicks were heavily censored. Cooler heads prevailed, and when Rhett Butler told Scarlett O’Hara what he thought about her future, he said the D word.
When you give a D***, do you gift wrap it?
Back to DCP. I don’t know who the perp is, but this is a remarkable selection of images. As some of you know, images are a bottomless pit. I have several hundred images in the que for inclusion in my blog, and that doesn’t include the tsunami of shots from around the internet.
Today, the subject is funny road signs. I suspect photoshop is the true source of some, but they are still fun.
And, as a bonus, there is the sand hotel. It is in Great Britain, has no ceiling, and will last until the next rainstorm. At $21 a night, it is a bargain. And, there is no flashing neon sign.
u u bang bang bang
We know a bit more about Jim D. Adkisson. Allegedly, he put a shotgun in a guitar case, and went to a performance of “Annie” at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. Three shots later, two people are dead and a few more are in bad shape.
Knox News is a source for much of this feature.
It seems like Mr. Adkisson left a note behind about his hatred of “the liberal movement”. He is apparently a follower of Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage and Sean Hannity, all of whom preach hatred of liberals on a daily basis. In an ironic touch, Mr. Adkisson owned a book by Mr. Savage, “Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder“.
Some say that the evil triumphs is when good men do nothing. The same could be said when a bad man does something.
In the inevitable “He was a nice guy” article, a neighbor recalls Mr. Adkisson talking about his parents forcing him to go to church. Mr. Adkisson seemed to have a lot of anger regarding religion.
Some say that a person with a weapon could have prevented the slaughter. Lets review this step by step.
Mr. Adkisson entered the auditorium from the back and started shooting. Many in the crowd thought the first shot was a part of the play.
Lets say that someone in the crowd did have a pistol. Lets also assume he was watching the play and not the door. The first this person would have known, about a gunman, was when he heard the shots. By the time he retrieved his weapon and aimed, Mr. Adkisson would have had time for a second shot. Mr. Adkisson fired three times. In a best case scenario, the armed audience member could have prevented the third shot.
Spell check suggestions for this feature:
adkisson-dissonance, caisson, admission
Hannity- hannie, hannibal, humanity
Plug in the Cords
PG just can’t make it through the weekend without trouble of some kind.
The man doesn’t like to watch TV, but makes some exceptions. Today there were some projects to work on, and a video in the background would fit right in. He chose “The Best of the Johnny Carson show“, and it was great. Ed Ames threw the tomahawk at the cardboard indian, Dom DeLouise made a spectacle of himself, and Ed McMahon laughed. The problems started when PG had to take his brother to the train station. He put the tape on pause, instead of hitting stop. When he got back the tape was ruined.
On the way back from MARTA, PG stopped at a yard sale. Two dollars and a lot of talk later, PG took home 4 videos ( Williard, Free Jack, Fatal Attraction, and Apollo13), a cd carry case, and a gaudy silver plated icon. The lady said it was her grandfather’s house, and they did not want to pack anything.
When he got home, PG discovered the damage to Johnny, and put in “Midnight Cowboy“. Just when Joe Buck was about to hook up with Sylvia Miles, PG decided to turn up the sound. The box went quiet. After a few minutes of experiments, PG decided the vcr was toast.
By now, it was time to go to the chamblee library. There were five cd’s due back in two days. After an experience at the brookhaven library, PG knew to get a check in receipt for the cd’s.
Two years ago, PG took some cd’s home from the brookhaven library. A couple of weeks after he took them back, he got a call from the library system saying he needed to return “Shake your Booty“. It seems like the clerk checking in the cd’s overlooked that one. Why that embarrassing title was the one at issue is a mystery. At any rate, PG went to the library, found “Shake your Booty“, and all was well.
Today, at the Chamblee library, PG found a novel by Carl Hiassen that he had not read. This is like finding a twenty dollar bill in an old pair of pants. On his way home, he went back to the yard sale, and found a vcr. This old man had appeared, and would not take less than three dollars for the vcr. PG and the old man had a delightful chat about the neighborhood. The old man bought a house near there for $66 a month in 1951, and wondered how he would be able to make the payments.
PG met a friend for dinner at the Piccadilly Cafeteria. While waiting in front, a car with a handicap sticker pulled up, and had to discharge passengers and go park. The three handicap parking places were full.
Returning home, PG plugged in the recently purchased vcr and turned it on. Nothing happened. Again, there was a search for a fuse, it was plugged into a different outlet, a useless old tape was forced into the box. Still, nothing happened. PG was dismayed.
He looked at the vcr that had broken down earlier that day. There was this place to plug in patch cords, to connect the audio portion of the box to a stereo. PG found an old patch cord, plugged the vcr in to the tv, with the audio portion playing to the stereo. He put in a tape of Jimi Hendrix, and had music coming out of the stereo.
Spell check suggestion for this feature:
DeLouise- delouse
1988 was tough
There is a fine mp3 site called The Aquarium Drunkard. Today he put up some selections from a man I saw once, Roy Buchanan. His name had the dread phrase “the late” in front of it.
This is news to me, twenty years after the fact. It seems like August 14, 1988, his substance abuse issues got him locked up. A few hours later, he was found hanging by his shirt .
Mr. Buchanan opened for the Jefferson Starship at the Omni in 1976. He was a technical virtuoso, making sounds out of his guitar that were not supposed to be made. He was always on the verge of superstardom, but never seemed to get into the upper circles of fame. Meanwhile, Gracie Slick spent too much time at the hospitality table, and gave a poor performance.
At this time, I would look on the index page of New Yorker magazine at newstands. There is a list of cartoonists who had cartoons in that issue, in the order of appearance. I would look for Charles Addams, and see if I could find his cartoon.
Charles Addams drew the cartoons that were the basis for the Addams Family. He liked to say that he modeled Uncle Fester on himself. Many,many stories are told about him.
Sometime in the late eighties, I noticed that he no longer had cartoons in the magazine. I continued to look until about 1991, when I found a book about him. The reason I didn’t see cartoons anymore was that Mr. Addams died September 29, 1988.
Cynthia Ann McKinney
Going up to Kennesaw this afternoon, I was greatly amused to hear a guest on the Mike Gallagher Show. The visitor was my former Congresswoman, Cynthia McKinney.
Miss McKinney is running for president as the candidate of the Green Party. She is following in the footsteps of Zell “Zig Zag” Miller, who abandoned the Democratic Party to shill for Republicans. On the radio today, she said that the Greens were an international party, that has had a tough time getting on the ballot in Georgia.
I enjoy the convenience and innuendo of referring to Presidential hopefuls by their initials. There is a slight problem with Cynthia Ann McKinney. CAM is the first syllable of my middle name, and was chosen as my given name. I still employ it for this purpose. The bottom line is, I will refer to Cynthia Ann McKinney as Miss McKinney. She was married at one time to Mr. Coy Grandison (with whom she had a son, Coy McKinney, born in 1987). The various websites promoting her and her candidacy do not provide much personal information.
This could be a plus, IMO. I am tired of candidates running their long suffering families into the public eye. A woman who is unashamedly not married would be an political innovation .
Miss McKinney has a reputation as a loose cannon. Her visit on the Gallagher show was highly entertaining. He asked her about the incident where she slapped a security guard at the U. S. Capitol, and she refused to answer. She said what she wanted to say, including saying that the democrats and republicans were both complicit in war crimes in Babylon.
Her strong stand against the War in Babylon is most appealing. She is probably no more capable of dealing with the mess there than BHO or JSM. If you want to make a protest vote against the killing, she is your lady.
Her vice presidential candidate is Rosa Clemente. Miss Clemente is a “hip hop activist”. When questioned by Mr. Gallagher about the seamier aspects of hip hop culture, Miss McKinney replied that he was thinking about corporate hip hop.
Cynthia Ann McKinney does not have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting elected. The most she can hope to do is siphon votes away from one of the two corporate candidates. To her credit, she seems to have a new hairdo. Gone is the Alfalfa looks, replaced by a more conservative look. As far as the hair issue goes, she is a clear winner over BHO and JSM.
If you want to help her retire Miss McKinney retire her congressional campaign debt , go here.
Spell check suggestions for this feature:
kennesaw- brokenness, keenness, drunkenness, tennessean
zell- ell, sell, tell, cell, dell, hell, bell, yell, fell, well,zee
Condescending Nasty
Mr. Malcontent has a feature today about the August cover for Vanity Fair. It shows JSM and the heiress bride doing a little fist bump.
The cover is an obvious takeoff on a New Yorker cover that featured BHO and his proud wife. Lots of feathers were ruffled by that cover, mostly by the humor challenged. The current VF cover will likely result in whining about Liberal Bias.
New Yorker and Vanity Fair are both produced by Conde-Nast. The corporate name is rumored to be short for condescending nasty. There is no word on whether Vogue or Conde Nast Traveler will have political satire cartoons on the cover. Maybe Vogue could get fashion icon Nancy Reagan to do a fist bump with her husband’s tombstone.
Malcontent supplied a link to a column by Leonard Pitts in the Miami Herald. Mr. Pitts opined that as a nation we were “ignorant, irony-impaired and petrified.”
The most recent effort by Mr. Pitts was ” You Think Slavery Ended in 1865?”. It is good reading, especially for those who enjoy talk of the good old days.
One good thing did come out of chasing the link to Mr. Pitts. A bit of backtracking on the Herald page showed the list of communists columnists. The other editorial columnist on the payroll there is one of my heroes, Carl Hiaasen. If irony is going away on a cruise, then Carl Hiaasen is throwing one helluva Bon Voyage party.
The latest effort by Mr. Hiaasen (does anyone know how to pronounce that?) is about the folly of trying to solve the oil price explosion by domestic offshore drilling. This is a favorite topic for the whiners on the radio today, but a bit of research shows a bit of putrification. For instance, the drilling off the Florida coast is most likely to produce natural gas, which is not what your SUV runs on.
The fact remains that no matter how much we drill, we are going to run out of oil someday. Another source of energy is needed. The oil companies will have to find an honest way to make a living.
Spell check suggestions for this feature:
pitts- pits, mitts, putts, pints, pitas, piths
carl- carol, car, earl, marl, surl, care, call, cart, card, carp
hiaasen- baseness, unbiased, ashien, absentia
Leonard- leotard, leopard
conde- clyde, coned, code, condo,cone
nast- nat, east, last, cast, mast, past, bast, fast, vast, nasty
putrification- purification, petrification
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