Ringing The Pastor Bell

By now, the story of the Applebee’s tip has gone megaviral. The server who posted the reciept got fired. The Professional Jesus Worshiper who wrote a tacky note on that reciept has her picture all over the internet. The PJW is getting tons of attention for her stunt.
A few years ago, Pastor was a job description. It was not used as a title. To introduce yourself as Pastor Jones would be like saying Plumber Smith. People in both occupations should not bite their fingernails.
The practice of placing “Pastor” in front of your name is showy and pretentious. The PJW works at a storefront church with fifteen members. One wonders why the mother of three can afford a $34.93 meal every Friday night, with or without the tip.
The person that introduced PG to this custom was a coworker at Redo Blue. At first, this person called himself “Minister Jefferson”. (The surname has been changed.) Later, this became “Pastor Jefferson”.
One day, there was something stinking in the refrigerator. PG looked, and found a styrofoam plate with rotten food inside. On the lid of the plate were the words “Minister Jefferson”.
The third commandment says not to use the name of the LORD in vain. Writing a snarky note on a restaurant receipt would seem to be a good illustration of this.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.

Whale Tale

Memory Palace has a new episode,
Fifty Words Written After Learning
the Arctic Bowhead Whale Can Live up to Two Hundred Years.
One mythical whale escaped the Nantucket whalers in 1850,
and heard thousands of animals singing. .
The episode was 89 seconds,
disappointing some Memory Palacites.

Cluster Bombs

During the 2008 campaign, there was a little bit of discussion of cluster bombs. Supposedly, BHO wants to ban the use of such weapons.
WHAT ARE CLUSTER BOMBS? Cluster bombs or cluster munitions are large weapons which are deployed from the air and from the ground and release dozens or hundreds of smaller submunitions. Submunitions released by air-dropped cluster bombs are most often called “bomblets,” while those delivered from the ground by artillery or rockets are usually referred to as “grenades.”
Evidence that BHO is opposed to the use of these weapons is here: “In the autumn of 2006, Diane Feinstein (D-CA) submitted an amendment (No. 4882) to a Pentagon appropriations bill to the Senate. It banned neither the manufacturing, stockpiling nor the use of cluster bombs. It merely forbade their use in “any concentrated population of civilians, whether permanent or temporary, including inhabited parts of cities or villages, camps or columns of refugees or evacuees, or camps or groups of nomads.” Senator Feinstein couldn’t have made voting for the bill more pain-free. Senator Obama voted yea, McCain, predictably, nay.
These reports are five years old. Is the United States still using cluster bombs? That is a silly question. “Cluster munitions have demonstrated military utility. Their elimination from U.S. stockpiles would put the lives of its soldiers and those of its coalition partners at risk. Moreover, cluster munitions can often result in much less collateral damage than unitary weapons, such as a larger bomb or larger artillery shell would cause, if used for the same mission.”
Pictures are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.

Boiler Room

The house dick at the Carson Hotel did not like the boiler room.
“It smells like the smelliest hobo to ever stink up G-ds green earth died there,
And rotted right into the concrete floor. The lighting is bad too.”

The Nine Horse

The storm was moving in, so there would be no bicycle riding today. There was a Charles Bukowski file to listen to. A collection called “70 minutes in hell” played, and a few pictures from The Library of Congress were converted. This is not going to be an afternoon to make sense. Making sense is overrated.
The pictures were Union soldiers from the War Between the States. The idea was to kill Confederates, or die trying. That is another thing which makes no sense at all. We don’t know what it was about 150 years ago. It might have made sense then.
When the decision to write this feature was made, the first thought was to find a link to Mr. Bukowski. (Spell check suggestion: Buckskin) The thing would be easy enough to find, but a certain attitude crept into the picture. If a person wants to find the file, then Mr. Google can work for them just as easily as it can work for this slack blogger.
Poetry comes into the room like water, pouring though the mouth of a river flows into the Gulf of Mexico. When a cup of water moves from fresh water into salt, no one cares where it comes from. All that a body of water knows is that it is one cup larger.
These files are fun to listen to, without the cigarettes and beer spills. When you are tired of listening, you click on the spot and the noise goes away. Mr. Bukowski was talented, and prolific. If you keep the quantity up, the quality takes care of itself. The problem is, for every Charles Bukowski, there are a million useless urinal feeders.
Mr. Bukowski was at the racetrack, and took an emergency bowel movement. Before it was too late, he saw his wallet in the bowl, floating on top of the waste product. The billfold was extracted from the zip file. Mr. Bukowski took a ten dollar bill out, and bet it on the nine horse.

Was Warren Harding A Bad President?

It is a cliche of history classes that Warren Harding was one of the worst men to occupy the oval office. (Richard Nixon was the POTUS the last time PG studied history. This cliche does not consider the last forty years.) PG is a fair minded person, who is always looking for something to write about. The question for Mr. Google was “was warren harding a terrible president?”. Answers dot com has a generous helping of biographical sketches.
Warren Gamaliel Harding was born Nov. 2, 1865, Caledonia OH, and died Aug. 2, 1923, San Francisco CA. (His birthplace is also cited as Blooming Grove OH, and Corsica OH.) He published a newspaper, got into politics, and was elected to the US Senate. In 1920, he was a compromise candidate, on the tenth ballot of the Republican convention. He clobbered James Cox, (His family firm, Cox Enterprises, owns Channel 2 and the fishwrapper.) and became President March 4, 1921.
The United States was in an economic downturn in 1921. The War in Europe ended in 1918, and a postwar depression was on. The last two years of the Wilson administration had been chaotic, with the President suffering a debilitating stroke. In a few years, the roaring twenties were on, and America was prosperous for a few years.
Mr. Harding was reputed to be a womanizer, gambler, and heavy drinker. He was not an activist President, but allowed his cronies to do what they wanted to do. This proved to be his downfall. “I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies all right. But my damn friends. They’re the ones that keep me walking the floor nights!”
There was a major scandal involving oil reserves. It centered around a place in Wyoming called Teapot Dome. The details of this affair mostly came to light after the death of President Harding. Albert B. Fall, the secretary of the interior, was convicted of a felony for his role in the affair… the first cabinet officer to become a felon while in office.
Mr. Harding went on a trip to the west, to make speeches and deals. He was the first President to go to Alaska. While in Alaska, he read some documents about the crooked dealings of his friends. In a few days, he was in San Francisco. He had been in ill health during the trip.
“On Thursday, the President’s health appeared to be improving, so his doctors went to dinner. Harding’s pulse was normal and his lung infection had subsided. Unexpectedly, during the evening, Harding shuddered and died suddenly in the middle of conversation with his wife in the hotel’s presidential suite, at 7:35 pm on August 2, 1923. Dr. Sawyer (a homeopath, and friend of the Harding family), opined that Harding had succumbed to a stroke, but doctors there disagreed. … After some discussion, the doctors issued a release indicating the cause of death to be “some brain evolvement, probably an apoplexy”. Mrs. Harding refused to allow an autopsy. In retrospect, scholars speculate that Harding had shown physical signs of cardiac insufficiency with congestive heart failure in the preceding weeks. Naval medical consultants who examined the president in San Francisco concluded he had suffered a heart attack. “
The sudden and mysterious death of a President, with reports of a scandal surfacing, is fertile ground for conspiracy theorists. Mr. Harding did appear to be in poor health, so this may have been a natural occurrence. The truth will never be completely known.
One aspect of the Harding administration that is not well known is his attitude about race. In the years after World War I, America was engulfed in race hatred. The Ku Klux Klan had a revival. “In a speech on October 26, 1921, given in segregated Birmingham, Alabama Harding advocated civil rights for African Americans; the first President to openly advocate black political, educational, and economic equality during the 20th century.” Mr. Harding supported an anti lynching bill, which a Democratic filibuster kept from passing.
Jimmysnax brings the Internet tradition of snarky commentary to the legacy of Warren Harding. Apparently, former newspaperman Harding could not write his way out of a paper bag. (In 1923, radio was a novelty. The printed word was the primary means of communication.)
Run your eyes over one of the best known examples of his waterboarding of the English tongue: “I would like the government to do all it can to mitigate, then, in understanding, in mutuality of interest, in concern for the common good, our tasks will be solved.”
Here’s what H. L. Mencken said about Harding’s speech writing and speech making: “He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.” The 20’s were a wonderful time for language!
Or as E.E. Cummings put it, announcing Harding’s death: “The only man, woman or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors is dead.”
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This repost is written like Kurt Vonnegut.

Horses On Drugs

This episode started out as a repost. Google and reality got in the way, and there is no telling where we will wind up. Pictures (except for the divas) are from The Library of Congress. Ansel Adams took these pictures at the Japanese Internment Camp, in Manzanar CA, in 1943.
Awful library books is one of the actors in this drama. It is a good waste of your time. (The link in the repost does not work, because Awful library books has a new web address.) On top of the shelf today is Lee the Rabbit with Epilepsy. Other uplifting volumes on the front page include Isn’t One Wife Enough?: the Story of Mormon Polygamy and When Cavemen Go Bowling.
The book that Awful Library Books chose to “weed” was Latawnya, the Naughty Horse, Learns to Say “No” to Drugs. The links in the original post no longer work, so google was enlisted to find a replacement. Believe it or not, this galloping tale has a wikipedia page.
The original book was targeted at African American youth. The author has daughters named Latawnya and Chrystal. The author has sued amazon, wikipedia, and urban dictionary.
A possibly illegal reproduction is found using the link. One of the comments tells a cautionary tale: ” It seems that many of these comments are viciously lampooning the work of a genius. I, however, see the visionary work of Mrs. Gibson. This insightful masterpiece presents the very real dangers of horse peer pressure. Just last week my daughter, Amber, was walking to school on a normal, idyllic day in suburbia. Then out of nowhere a Clydesdale galloped brazenly over to my precious princess and offered her a 40 oz bottle of Olde English 800 and a marijuana cigarette.”
Clydesdales have long been used to promote the products of the Anheuser-Busch company. When PG was younger, he worked on the mall maintenance crew at Northlake Mall. One day, the Budweiser Clydesdales made a visit. PG was given a shovel and bucket, and told to walk behind the horses.


One of the reasons for the drug problem is drug education. Many of these programs, while well intentioned, make the problem worse.
Courtesy of Awfullibrarybooks, we can see today “LATAWNYA, the Naughty Horse, Learns to say “No” to Drugs“. This uplifting story is about the afternoon when Latawnya goes out to play with her sisters Daisy and LaToya. Suddenly they meet four strange horses, Connie, Chrystal, Jackie, and Angie. They like to drink and smoke drugs.
The author of this tale was born in Mississippi, and lives in California. She says “Thank you, G-d”.
In 1986, there was an oversupply of cocaine coming into America, and new ways of using the product were needed. Someone had the idea of making crack. The media did its part, by running scare stories about the new drug sensation. “One puff makes your head feel like it is exploding”. The stories had the combined effect of scaring parents, and making crack cocaine irresistible to certain people. Crack became a part of the life.
The first time PG heard about oxycontin was a drug education flyer at work. It promised an overwhelming rush to the user who injected the substance. PG imagined the reaction of some of the druggies he had known to this promise…where can I get some?
PG is in the detoxed, old fogey stage of his life. Millions of others are not. When they read stories about horses who drink and smoke drugs, they learn to believe the opposite of what the drug educators tell them. Many will not live to be detoxed old fogeys.

S. Bear Bergman

PG was tired of staying at home, and accepting almost any invitation that came his way. On the Sunday before the Stupor Bowl, there was an event on Covington Highway. (Spell check suggestion: Convincing) This meant getting on I285 , and dodging people in a hurry to get somewhere. After finding the site, and having the parking spot approved by the host, PG stepped onto the front porch. Sitting there, smoking a cigarette, was the entertainer of the night.
S. Bear Bergman told stories this evening. A person, wearing a shirt that said “No one knows I am transexual”, took money. PG was not into making conversation with people he did not know, and found a seat near the front. It wasn’t until the show started that he realized that a lamp on the table next to him was shining under the shade into his eyes. This was an issue throughout the evening.
The talent stood in front of the front door to the small house. This illustrated the first story. It was about airplanes, and a well dressed woman who thought sitting next to the talent created a risk of infection. The punch line of the story also serves as a book title, “The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You”. The book was available for sale, on the table with the oppressive lamp.
At some point in the presentation, it became known that S. Bear Bergman is a transperson. Wikipedia fills in a few blanks. “S. Bear Bergman (born September 22, 1974 as Sharon Jill Bergman) is a transgender author, poet, playwright, and theater artist. Bergman identifies as neither male nor female and prefers pronouns “ze” and “hir”.
The talent is sporting a luxurious goatee. Bear did not make PG wonder about gender. (This is one matter where PG is often not paying attention.) This video features a more ambiguous appearance.
Bear used the phrase Ze in his presentation, without explanation. Does Ze mean Bear, the husband, the son, or all three? Another mystery involves the son. The spouse is another transperson. Did spouse produce the baby? Did spouse have transitional surgery? It is not just nosy housewives at Starbucks who want to know.
Another story involved the wedding planning. Bear lives in Canada, with husband and son. One partner was Jewish. The family of the non Jewish partner had a lot of questions. It all turned out ok, except for someone’s Uncle setting a tablecloth on fire. By this time, anything that could not be explained was said to be “traditional”, including a tablecloth fire.
At one time in his dumpster diving past, PG found some 3d pictures of a Jewish wedding. To a recovering baptist, this was rather exotic. The process of 3d pictures never did catch on. PG was trying to remember the last time he saw those pictures, and what box they are in today.
After the intermission, Bear told a story about karma. Part of this tale is in this video. The two dogs, of the host, barked every time the house applauded. Fortunately, the karma did not run over the dogma.
The rest of the night went smoothly, and everyone found the nearest exit with no problem. PG took the surface roads home. There is an eatery in downtown Dickhater called “Pita Pit“. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.

Sliced Bread

The best thing since sliced bread
Is the bag containing the loaf.
This plastic package keeps crumbs in,
And moisture out.
A bread sack can be used for many things
After the last slice is consumed.
It is not a toy for small children.

The Second Great Flood

Here is part one . Somewhere in his drifting around the internet, PG found a reference to the story of Noah and the Ark. A light bulb above his head switched on, and the answer was apparent: Global warming is the second great flood.
In the Biblical story, G-d was upset with the way man was doing things. She gave Noah a heads up, and he was ridiculed by the good citizens of the day. Finally, it rained forty days and forty nights, and everyone except Noah got wet.
In the modern version, G-d sees man making a wasteland of the bountiful planet. An amazing resource like oil is controlled by hateful tyrants, and burned to make cars run. The signs of dis ease are apparent to some, but they are ridiculed by the good citizens of the day.
This time, things are different. Instead of forty days and forty nights, it is two hundred years of burning fossil fuels. It is a time of war, and rumors of war.
Here is part two . PG was shooting from the hip the other day, and said that G-d was causing global warming. At first it seemed a bit goofy, but like other thoughts about her (G-d is in the details,) the more PG thinks, the more sense it makes.
A lot has to do with your idea of who G-d is. (maybe the four other w’s… what, when, where, and why… should also apply.) Although PG would not put global warming past Jehovah or Mary’sbabydaddy, those conceptions are just a bit obsolete. The idea of G-d that PG uses is the fifth element, to go with earth, air, fire and water.
The moonies have another view…that G-d is the difference between a human being and five dollars worth of chemicals. There seems to be an overall body of knowledge that makes the earth function. A DNA, or software. This framework of knowledge is how PG views G-d.
Right now, man is living in a paradise. A planet with earth, air, water and fire that is uniquely fabricated to support intelligent life. The role that G-d played in facilitating this planet is a mystery. There is a balance of life here…the right amount of gravity, the right ph balance in the oceans, the proper mix of gases in the atmosphere. Man has been granted this paradise…it was not earned, it was given out of the bounty of G-d. And man has done his best to destroy the environment. Promiscuously burning fossil fuels is just part of the damage.
There does seem to be a plan to deal with this. If the level of CO2 in the air goes above a certain level, then the temperatures will start to rise. This has been proven time and time again. There are nay sayers…some of whom are not on fossil fuel industry payrolls… who say this is a natural process, and has nothing to do with the actions of man. These people are similar to the upstanding citizens who ridiculed Noah when he built his ark.
It should be noted that the story of Noah and the ark might be a myth. That is, it is full of symbols and allegory, and is not to be taken literally. It could be that in an ancient time, G-d got fed up with the evil deeds of man, and decided to teach a lesson. This could be what is happening today.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
This repost is written like Daniel Defoe.

Choice

WT is very sick. He has cancer. After a round or two of chemotherapy, and the devastating side effects, the cancer is back. More chemo is being applied, and dialysis is being done to his kidneys. It may work, and it may not.
This feature is not about this particular struggle. It is about the refusal of our culture to accept the concept of scarcity. If a person, whose bills are covered, wants to spare no expense to live one more day, then that wish is granted. Is this really the best use of our resources?
A few more things about WT. He is a wonderful man, with a loving family and lots of friends. It is a quality life we are extending. WT is also sixty-ish, and has already lived more than many. At what point do we say, enough is enough?
With the discovery of deficit spending, our government does not choose between guns or butter. It orders both, in heaping quantities, and puts the bill on the tab. As long as the interest is paid on the money borrowed, the machine keeps churning. One of the biggest sources of government spending is health care. We spend money like there is no tomorrow, without asking if it is really a good investment.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.

Coffee Of The Day

Coffee of the Day is House, M.D.
“Bold, slightly bitter, ironic.”
South of Ponce de Leon,
It is hot, black, and strong.
Personification of Joe,
Leads to bad jokes,
Roasting the elderly comedian.