Chamblee54

The path journal from last week, Losing IQ Points, was published this morning. The walk today happened. 36 minutes, some dizziness, and the knowledge that the heat was coming. The show was “Star Witness: Paul Skalnik, the Jailhouse Informant Who Sent Innocent Men to Death Row” on Gone South. Paul Skalnik was a cop, conman, and jailhouse snitch. Pinellas County FL used his services a lot, sending men to death row in questionable cases. At one point, the show mentioned that Mr. Skalnik had been sent to prison for grand theft. Right after that, there was a commercial for Chumba Casino. A story about grand theft, sponsored by grand theft.
0718-0840 – The walk today was different. I walked up to the MARTA underpass on Peachtree Road, and took the long way home. It took 40:00 to do 1.31 miles, with no problems whatsoever from the feet. The first podcast was Drabblecast 510 – Storage Spaces on The Drabblecast. DC is a delight when it appears, and this was one of the good stories. A kid makes friends with a man in his building. Mr. Denison hooks hard drives up to a cut in his arm. The kid proceeds to steal a data card out of his dad’s camera. He bites down hard on the card, and sees pictures from last summer’s vacation. The next show was Manuel’s Tavern (Interview w/ Megan Maloof) on Archive Atlanta. Manuel’s tavern is an Atlanta institution, currently managed by Manuel’s granddaughter. The episode was a tad boring, with few quirky details to remember.
The walk today was hot. I did 44 minutes, with minimal foot problems. The first show was Min Jin Lee Reads “Testing” at The New Yorker: The Writer’s Voice. A young man in Korea is taking scholastic tests, with unsatisfactory results. A girl wants to be his gf. He wants to wait until after they are accepted at the schools they want. After the second test score is bad, he breaks up with her. After a couple of laps, “Testing” became unlistenable. The second story was Riverwalk on Criminal. Zac Brettler is a troubled teenager in London. He makes friends with shady mentors.
Zac’s parents “Rachelle and Matthew check Zac’s bank account. They had saved checks from his grandparents over the years, and money he’d gotten from his bar mitzvah and put it in a savings account. They’d given it all to him after he turned 18. It was about 18,000 pounds. · He had kind of blown through that money, it turns out, pretending that he was the Son of an oligarch, paying for meals, doing this and that kind of here and there to seem credibly like a rich person. And in the days before he died, Zac, in his bank account, had only 4 pounds. He was close to empty.” This is the first indication that Zac is Jewish.
0720-0818 – The walk went well. I started early, and saw the early sunlight floating through the mist in the leaves. The show was Episode 317: Literally Knitler (with Jessica the ’80s Baby) on Blocked and Reported. The guest was Jessica the 80’s Baby, who is a researcher for the show. JT8B lives in a lot of cool (and not so cool) places, out of a London base. “Do they eat dogs in Vietnam? · Uh they do, but only in the north. I was living in the south. And people in the south are quite proud of the fact that they don’t eat dogs.” The show covered wokeness in the knitting community, which is about as interesting as it sounds. The accent did not help.
Today’s walk happened. There was mild dizziness, and I quit soon after the 36 minute buzzer. The show today was Dolly Parton: How the Country Icon Nearly Became the Subject of Her Own Murder Ballad on Disgraceland. Disgraceland is about entertainers who behave badly. In Dolly’s case, they had to rely on outsiders for the dirty deeds.
Did Dolly really write “Jolene” and “I will always love you” on the same day? In an appearance on @BobbyBonesShow, the conversation went like this: “you wrote the song how long ago · in 1972 I think I wrote it at the same time I wrote Jolene. It was a good writing day.” A few years later, Dolly said to TED speaker Adam Grant, “Well I don’t really know if they were written in the same night. When we found an old tape, they were on the same cassette. That could have been a few days apart.”
0722-1059 – There was no walk on the path today. The lawn needed attention. Cutting a white trash lawn is enough exercise for one morning. My feet had no problems at all, which is normal. When the dizziness has been at its worst, the feet never have a problem with cutting the lawn.
0723-0900 – Today’s walk lasted 51:15. On the first lap, some dizziness was noticed, and my intuition told me that this might be a bad day. Fortunately, the voice in my head is often full of shit. The show was Hillbilly Heist: David Ghantt and the $17 Million Loomis Fargo Robbery on Gone South. Another bank robbery goes bad due to human stupidity. At one point, David Scott Ghantt takes two surveillance videos, but leaves a third behind.
This was followed by a break, and a commercial for Chumba Casino. Online gamers have lots of money to spend on podcast advertising. Once, there was a show about Hunter S. Thompson. HST kicked his own bucket in 2005, long before the advent of cell phone clip joints. It is fun to speculate. OTOH, online gambling is the sort of capitalist fuckery that HST despised. OTOH, those digital gangsters have lots of money, and might have been able to buy HST off. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Russell Lee took the social media picture in July 1942. “Rupert, Idaho. Former CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) camp now under FSA (Farm Security Administration) management.” ©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah

0710-0947 – The path journal episode for last week, Da Vinci Code For Morons, was posted this morning. The walk today was pretty good. The construction equipment and leaf blowers were quiet, as was the foot dizziness. I got 36 minutes in without any problems.
The first podcast was the last 15 minutes of Why Are Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s Kids Dropping “Pitt” from Their Names?, from Infamous. “Brangelina” is another reminder that celebrities are not always friendly, well adjusted individuals. The second show was Wendy O. Williams: The Shocking Final Act of a Shock Rock Provocateur, from Disgraceland. Wendy Orlean Williams (her real name) was a misfit teenager. She wound up as a domanatrix in a Times Square sex show, “Captain Kink’s Theater”. WOW and CK had many groovy adventures together. Unfortunately, this story does not have a happy ending. There was no encore at this concert.
0711-1057 – The walk was good, even if I nearly melted. July in Georgia is no joke. The podcast was “Judy Collins Reflects on Six Decades of Legendary Songwriting and Performances” on Takin’ A Walk. There were some cool stories, which might be true.
“It was 1967 and I was sound asleep. I woke up to the phone at three in the morning and it was Al Kooper. I said, why are you calling me? … So he said, I’m at the club and there’s a girl here and she said that she wrote songs. Then he put her on the phone and it was Joni Mitchell, and she sang me Both Sides Now. So I mean, that’s a very convenient way to collect songs. I guess we don’t have much control over it, but there it is. And I said I’ll be right over, which I did. I came over in the morning and I took Jack Holsmand with me and I recorded that song with my producer and it was incredible.”
“I had a job at, I forget the name of the club. … It was that hot club in the village and I was the headliner in 1961. That was amazing because I’d just been doing this since 1959, so I’d only been out on the road for a total of two and a half years. And I got to the little club and I was the headliner and my opener was a thirteen year old named Arlo Guthrie. And everybody in town was there. … I thought, Oh, they’re coming to see me. They were coming to see Arlo because Arlo was thirteen. He was having his first gig at this little club … And everybody was there.”
0712-1002 – The walk today was great. The podcast was Bryan Washington Reads “Gatekeeping” from The New Yorker. Bryan Washington is a favorite at tny. Today’s tale is about a wheelchair pusher at Houston’s airport. The actor has a collection of elderly people to propel to their flights, several of whom hit on him. The actor has an Asian “buddy,” but gets nervous when people say boyfriend. The story is an hour long, and I stayed on the path, with no foot issues, for the entire show.
@NewYorker “My brother answered the phone. He told me that there’d been an accident but not to panic.” · @chamblee54 “I listened to this on my morning walk. When brother said “your bf”, you said f*** n*****. America’s two favorite forbidden words.”
0713-0846 – The walk today was nice. Mild overcast weather, with barely noticeable foot dizziness. The first podcast was Episode 316: Graham Cracker Crumbles on Blocked and Reported. If only the show was as clever as the title. Jesse and Katie were talking about a wokeness incident in California before they talked about Graham Platner. Neither subject held much interest. The show I listened to the most was Maggie Haberman on Talk Easy. Maggie Lindsy Haberman has been covering New York, and Donald Trump, since 1996.
“They originally said that the ballroom was going to be near but not touching the East Wing. · And that’s also how he approaches his relationship to his wife.”
Re: “This whole handling of the Epstein files in the summer of 2025.” “From everyone we’ve spoken to who’s deep inside Trump’s world and our reporting, that really was the moment that he started to lose altitude with his own base. He’s so used to telling his supporters, “Believe me and not that.” And it generally has worked. Uh this one didn’t. and he is testing the limits on how long you can tell people two different things related to the same issue.”
0714-0915 – The walk today happened. The first show was For The Love Of Dogs: The Scam Shelters Abusing Animals For Clicks on Chameleon. It was about animal rescue scams based in Uganda, and it was as boring as it sounds. The host said that if you were upset by animal abuse, then you should skip the next few minutes. I decided to skip the rest of the episode. The next show was Happy Mondays: How Thieves, Drug Dealers, and Would-Be Kidnappers Took Over Madchester’s Music Scene on Disgraceland. Happy Mondays were a bunch of fun loving English deplorables. They started a band. What could possibly go wrong?
0715-0931 – The walk today was spectacular. I walked for over an hour with minimal foot discomfort. The entertainment product today was #448 – “Kirk BULLET!” – Death Investigator BREAKS SILENCE on Charlie Kirk | Joseph Scott Morgan on Julian Dorey Podcast. They were mostly discussing the Charlie Kirk case. The first hour included a detailed look at what happened to Mr. Kirk when he was hit, and about the autopsy procedure.
“One of the huge problems with this case just in general, regardless of what the truth is or isn’t, but it’s a huge problem that I think needs to be raised, is the complete fuckupery of every optic that you could have if you are trying to generate public trust in investigations.”
“But one of the things that was like, oh my god, who on earth told you to press send on this tweet was nine days afterwards or 10 days afterwards, Andrew Kolvet put out a tweet regarding what the doctors told him about Charlie’s wound.” This refers to a tweet from @AndrewKolvet This refers to a tweet from Andrew Kolvet. “His bone was so healthy and the density was so impressive that he’s like the man of steel. It should have just gone through and through.” We are entering the twilight zone.
“This is not a miracle. This is physics.” · “Like an exploding microphone. No, it’s · so you’re out on the exploding microphone. Okay, here we go. · So I think I lost points off of my IQ just by saying exploding microphone.” · “I can in fact see why people would have trouble grasping the idea that he is walking stiff-legged up that stairwell with that weapon in his pants.”
0716-0934 – The walk today happened. The feet worked, the heat and humidity were obnoxious, and the construction equipment at the school made noise. I lasted appx 44 minutes. 44 was Hank Aaron’s number, and is said by some to be a magic number. The entertainment product today was the last twenty minutes of #448 – “Kirk BULLET!” – Death Investigator BREAKS SILENCE on Charlie Kirk | Joseph Scott Morgan on Julian Dorey Podcast. JSM was throwing some DNA meganumbers around, and believes Tyler James Robinson was definitely at the crime scene. There are lots of unanswered questions. One regards the trajectory of the bullet that hit Charles James Kirk. … middle name synchronicity … These calculations have been made impossible by the renovation of the crime scene.
The inevitable comments about Lance Twiggs being trans were made. (The DOB and middle name of Mr. Twiggs are not available. Considering that all we have seen is a low-fi video of the gentleman, is it fair to speculate that Mr. Twiggs is an AI creation?) We do know that Twiggs/Robinson lived in St. George UT, 266 miles from UVU in Orem UT. · Utah Gov. Spencer Cox announced “The roommate was a romantic partner, a male transitioning to female.” I questioned this at the time. I think the Governor was trying to foment prejudice against TJR. The trans thing has been neither denied nor confirmed, but is constantly mentioned in talk about TJR.
Another bit of weirdness is George Hodgson Zinn. He is at the scene of the shooting, and announces that he is the killer. This makes no sense at all. Later, GHZ consents to a search of his phone, and LEO find “Child Sex Abuse Material.” How convenient. Julian Dorey makes a comment about this. “The George Zinn guy being there and then he finally goes down. He’s been arrested over the years for so many different things, but now they find CP on his stuff and he goes to prison for that as he should by the way, obviously.” … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Arthur Rothstein took the social media picture in July 1942. “Hayti, Missouri. Cotton carnival. Inspecting various grades of cotton” ©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah