CULTURE QUEST THE COTTON AVENUE RENAISSANCE
PART 2

FROM THE PAGES OF THE ELEVENTH HOUR


As much as I was tempted to write about D.A. Simms’ recent, electrifying news conference, this column will pick up where it left off, hot on the trail of genuine culture in downtown Macon.

Please remember the rules: we are looking for smaller, relatively intimate places that fairly breath ‘culture’ and culture is what yours truly says it is. That way we avoid unnecessary conflict. Culture Quest is a ‘park and walk’ kind of thing, where your destination is ‘downtown’ and you are secure in the certainty that you will find plenty to do and lots to see.

To give you just one idea, a favorite destination for me is the Metropolitan Opera whenever I visit the Big Apple. That’s culture. But so are the gun shows held regularly at the Macon Centreplex. One should be able to slip easily out of his tuxedo into ratty shorts. ‘Culture’ is intensely personal.

Last outing found us smack dab in the middle of what might be termed ‘The Cotton Avenue Renaissance’.

Let’s start with the new kid on the block, a beautifully appointed little shop featuring antiques and collectables called simply HIGH COTTON, and located so far up Cotton Ave. that it is actually listed as being on First Street. So what do postal authorities know?

I was lucky to visit this delightful little shop shortly after it opened. It was, in fact, one of several sites that provided the inspiration for this series. The feeling one gets when entering the store is that of a loft, a lovingly restored loft, complete with scarred, ancient hard wood floors, exposed beams, lots of old brick, and a high ceiling that recalls an earlier Macon in the days before air conditioning tamed building interiors.

Hi Cotton is a Mother/Son affair where good taste and common sense are paramount. It is a shop for browsing, for handling (carefully, of course), and for asking lots and lots of questions. The items are unique, largely one of a kind, culled from exotic sources the rest of us can only dream of. Expensive? No, not at all. Tasteful, definitely; lots of somethings for the discriminating buyer looking for just the right object to accent a special corner of the house. You won’t find this level of quality or customer service in any mall or chain store.

While there, be sure to ask about Hannibal’s ‘elephant spikes’.

More...

WE RETURN TO SPACE
HO HUM

THE LATEST FROM THE SCEPTERED ISLE: No, nothing more on the elusive wannabe bombers, not yet anyway. But one new idea has come out of Her Majesty’s Education System which, it appears, is just as bad as ours. Brit Kids don’t have any more of a clue about who Winston Churchill was and who were their enemies and allies in WWII than American kids about who FDR (That’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt for you high school ‘social studies’ teachers) and our enemies and allies in the same conflict. By the way, The Brits and Americans were on the same side in that conflict in case you missed it.)

So from the land of Plum Pudding, Shakespeare, tea, Dickens, and the Beatles one prominent educator is proposing that schools substitute the term ‘DEFERRED SUCCESS’ for good old fashioned ‘FAILURE’, to avoid hurting the feelings of the little bastards who never open a book.

It will pass, of course, the modern incarnation of Parliament is a PC legislature run amok. Then this moronic idea will cross the great Atlantic and land upon our shores with a bang if it first hits the coast of Massachusetts or a whimper if it reaches Georgia’s Golden Isles.

How long would these people ‘delay success’? A year or two, a decade, a lifetime?

A SURVEY TAKEN IN LA BELLE FRANCE recently indicated that fully eighty per cent of all Frenchmen (and women, presumably) look into a mirror daily and like what they see.

There are some beautiful people in France, true. But if Jacques Chirac likes what he sees when gazing into a full-length inside the presidential palace, he’s either blind or more senile than his countrymen suspect.

THE UNITED STATES RETURNED TO SPACE TODAY:

Ho Hum!!!

I can’t get excited about it. Not at all. Of course

Of course I’m grateful that the crew is safe and that lift-off went off without an apparent hitch. Even watched five minutes of the launch.

But I don’t share the elation of some of our citizens with this ‘return’. It is not as if the current space program has any real focus.

We’re back in space!! So what? What next. Back to the moon? Hell we got there in 1969. Dropped by for a few visits. Left some junk on the surface and retreated to near orbit. President Kennedy promised that we would beat the Ruskies to the lunar surface. We did. They never got there. And the whole Apollo program just stopped. We never built on what we did.

So enter the Shuttle Program. Big cargo plane for putting mega payloads in orbit. Sounds like a winner for the Military Industrial guys. We can get our weapons way up there where they can threaten the entire world. Satellites. Lasers. Ray guns we peasants never even dream of, so fecund the scientific-military mind. Nukes. God we got the whole planet covered.

Now two shuttles imploded killing all aboard. Made us a little squeamish, I guess, afraid to be bold and forward.

And now we launch our secret weapons not from the shuttle, but under the power of their own rockets. We have enough top secret hardware up there to destroy all life on this planet for the next thirty-million years.

Not even the cockroach and the rat would survive if the order were given. God are we great!!!

So why the shuttle? Damned if I know. Folks!!

There was purpose to the early space program once we got over the fear of a Soviet Space Race. And, originally, there was purpose to the Shuttle. But why do we keep on doing it? No. Twenty-five years later? Over and over, boosting the damn things into orbit, space walking around, repairing a telescope or an obsolescent bit of military junk, sending back pictures of astronauts cavorting in a weightless playground? What’s the goddamn purpose?

“Space is way out there”. The wisdom of the early writers of space science fiction had us mastering first the moon, then the nearer planets, followed by the outer planets, and finally propelling man from the confines of his solar system. These steps are logical, consecutive, and rely on steady advances in technology.

My guess is that NASA has become a typical, governmental, bloated bureaucracy. Bureaucracies tend to lack vision. Bureaucracies like the status quo.

Which is why we continue to send astronauts into two week orbits around the home planet. The ‘international space station’. Yeah, there is somebody up there alright. Probably a couple of Russians and an American. And what are they doing? They probably play a lot of chess and watch internet porn.

LETTER READ THIS MORNING ON THE KENNY B and JAMI G SHOW
re: RECALL ELLIS

Kenny and Jami,

Recall Ellis was doomed from the start. Even if it is able to collect enough signatures to force a 'recall election', it will fail for the simple reason that the city now boasts a majority-black voter base. The pride of the Black voter will simply not allow the first African American mayor in the city's history to be cast aside by a group that is virtually one hundred percent white.

Is this 'racism'? No. But it is 'racial'. And that's a fact of modern political life.

Luke

IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT...

It’s hot in Macon this week.

Of course it’s hot over much of the US, but ‘tis summer and records are being set all over the land.

But there is something special about the deep heat of a middle Georgia summer. Having experienced the searing temperatures of North Africa and the Middle East, ours is worse. It crawls into your flesh, somehow, deep inside and stays there for well onto ninety days.

The only way to escape is to stay inside something air conditioned. But that’s not much good to anybody who lives an active life. Right now the temp hits 90 before nine in the morning. At eleven PM it’s still ninety, having peaked at over a hundred some time in the course of the afternoon.

It’s a very moist heat. High humidity only accentuates the soaring mercury. A shower offers little relief; same with the pool or beach. The cool down is temporary and we have to get right back into the breach as soon as it is over.

How hot is it? The cats go out at 6:00 AM. As a rule they like to hunt anything that crosses their path….birds, moles, mice, snakes, squirrels, This morning I saw a large squirrel walking between trees less than ten feet from Jihad’s nose. Now Jihad is a neutered male who has no idea his manhood was untimely ripp’d by a friendly vet. His is normally perky, sassy, playful, and can easily spend most of a day searching out his wily prey. Not today. The bushy tailed critter was walking slowly within an easy pounce of the feline, and all Jihad could do was watch his progress. A truce has been declared among the denizens of the back yard.

You would think the Shiites and Sunnis could do the same thing.

THE MACON MUSIC AND HERITAGE FESTIVAL 2005
WILL IT HAPPEN?????

THE MACON MUSIC AND HERITAGE FESTIVAL: Last fall, I wrote a devastating article, highly critical of Jimmy Mills head honcho and Mayor’s appointee of a disastrous fall music festival that, in three separate venues, saw less than three hundred and fifty people attend.

You can find the entire article online at http://expage.com/lukester403

The entire affair was a stinging slap in the face to local musicians and the general population as well. It was a sad, sad day for a city much of whose culture history is centered on its vital role in the development of multiple genres of twentieth century popular music. It was unadvertised, un-promoted, uninspired, and unacceptable.

In the first year of the reign of Mayor Ellis a crowd estimated at twenty thousand (a number selected by Hizzoner and entirely suspect as to its accuracy, assembled on the final evening of the inaugural Heritage and Music Festival. That was the affair run by Ms Karen Spellman who then returned to Washington, D.C. with an estimated one hundred and twenty thousand of Macon’s hard earned dollars. That she was inadequate to the task, ripped us off, or that the Mayor’s attendance estimates were off by a factor of sixty per-cent or so have nothing to do with the problem facing us in 2005. The sad fact is that our premier fall musical festival has fallen on hard times and is appealing to nobody. It appears ruderless, roughly on the order of utility as tits on a bull.

It is probably too late to plan an event like this for October. And what a shame that is. It can only hurt downtown business, driving one more nail in the coffin that is our fair city.

LANCE ARMSTRONG DOES IT AGAIN: And retires winning the Tour de France for the seventh time. Now maybe OLN can get back to its shiooting programs, pre-empted by hours and hours of bike shots.

Cinema SEQUELS

COMING TO ANOTHER THEATRE NEAR YOU: Dammit!! This is the summer of our sequel, “Semper Sequel!!”. Julius. Sequel, sequitur, non-sequitur. A never ending stream of the same old thing. No thing is too bland…SOS….’same old shit’

And this week it’s the Bad News Bears, wherein Billy Bob Thornton takes on the drunken bum Buttermaker role made famous by the incomparable Walter Matthau seventy-six years ago. The older version was funny despite the improbability of the plot because (1) Mr. Matthau possessed perfect comedic timing and (2) the kids were believable. I have not seen this second version but I refer to an article I wrote a few weeks ago when WAR OF THE WORLDS was being touted in the media as God’s gift to the movie going public.

I don’t like cinema remakes as a rule and won’t walk across the street to see one. Rarely do they live up to either their hype or the greatness of the original. The result is almost always a truly, insipid vanilla disappointment.

A good analogy is what happened when some idiot decided to take a fling at an updated LITTLE RASCALS, complete with a neo-Spanky, a neo-Alfalfa, and a neo-Darla. It has to rank as one of the worst movies ever made. Transplanting the he man woman haters from the depression to the terminus of the century, removing the gang from the harsh reality of an impoverished, pre-war sociology ripped the heart from the idea and left the viewer with nothing but a bunch of uninspired little kids play acting as if on the stage of a church basement. It was a meaningless exercise in cutsie-pootsie that was a total waste of time and money.

I have no idea how good or bad the Cruise movie is/ I may never find out unless it hits the tube some night and I have nothing whatsoever else to do. No, I’m not curious. And I didn’t even care about the original. I did, however, liked the book set in the sceptered isle more than a century ago. Movies rarely improve the written word. (And television never does).

Where are the intelligent movie makers? They may still be around somewhere, but as long as Hollywood remains convinced that the public can’t handle nuance and carefully crafted plot and sequence, preferring to inject it’s output with purely gratuitous sex and violence, things will only get worse.

I suspect that Billy Bob Thornton should have stayed with sling blades

THE PARKING LOT

It looks like a smudge on the tar of a Kroger parking lot.

Like somebody dropped off a few shovels-full of sand on a patch of ice.

Except this is Macon in Georgia, and the heat index all week as been over 104 degrees. This parking lot hasn’t see ice in a decade or more.

So we had to look a little more closely. Sand, yes, strewn by the shovel-full, yes, in the middle a dark crimson stain, yes. But we had to look carefully.

Outside the swatch of sand, six more traces of dried stain, smaller, no effort being made to hide what they were.

For the ugly red, sun-baked splotches were blood. Human blood. The blood of two women shot in that busy shopping hub, a quarter mile from our house. One of the women died of her wounds; the other remains in ‘stable condition’ in a local hospital. Both women were students at a strip mall Beauty School. The shooter? They had him in jail after a five (according to the media) or seven (according to a police source) siege by the local SWAT guys.

Grisley.

By the time I witnessed the crime scene this morning, the yellow tape had been removed and all trace evidence of the crime carefully packaged up for the Crime Lab.

Except the angry patch of blood. It will take some time for the evening thunder boomers to erase this entirely from sight. Maybe some of it will be licked up by the abandoned dogs so often left in this parking lot by the morons who won’t spay or neuter. Poor animals doomed to slow death by starvation or a quicker one at the merciful hands of a county animal control who gas ninety-three percent of the creatures committed to their care.

A senior citizen lead two small boys to the area. Wide eyed, they were full of questions which the old man did his best to answer. He tried to explain about the human tragedy that had been played out here, but they were only interested in the clotted gouts, the number of shots, caliber of the weapon, and could they find any shell casings which would make great souvenirs to show off to the neighborhood gang.

They walked away heading up a small hill, the boys talking excitedly about what they had seen and what they would have done had they witnessed the actual murder. The old fellow said nothing, obviously lost in private world of his own thoughts, trying, most likely, to reconcile his long years of life and experience with the quick, violent, and senseless death of a young women full of life and the promise thereof.

Me? I, too, walked away entering the Kroger to ask the young officer stationed there some questions. He could tell me ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘where’, and ‘who’, but had no clue as to ‘why’.

Doubt if we shall ever know. Life is a cheap commodity to so many in modern America. Hell, in the modern world. It is probably no different in the twenty-first century than it was in days of yore. Man is a creature full of rage and violence and jealousy and blind, blood lust.

See what six thousand years of civilizing have done for us?

NO, I DON'T KNOW WHO THE HELL JOHN ROBERTS IS EITHER!!!

AND JUST WHO IS JOHN ROBERTS? I don’t have a clue, but will try to find out for you. From here it looks like Mr. Bush is making a safe appointment now knowing that he will have to replace justice Rhenquist in the fullness of time.

FAITH BASED CHICANERY: This is a touchy and tricky subject, and will not be explored here. One of the likely targets of the Federal Investigation into City Hall finances is the whereabouts and/or disposition of the monies spent in ‘faith based’ programs within Black churches by Black clergy. These guys were salivating at the prospect of expanding their flocks two or three years ago. We are all aware from past experience with hit and run Televangelists that Yahweh’s clergy have been know to wallow in more than a little sin when it comes to getting their hands on ‘their share’ of that good old time root of all evil.

FROM A PSYCHIATRIST’S OFFICE SOMEWHERE IN BERLIN: “Tell me, Mr. Hitler, why do you think the whole world is out to get you?”

OUR DEAR FRIEND DEVON has just announced that he is changing genres and will now enter the music world anew as a "Christian Rap Artist". I don't know exactly what that means, but I can imagine titles like MARY WAS A FINE BITCH, and I'M GONNA GET DOWN WITH THAT GOOD OLD MUTHAH JESUS, YO. And others, of course, less suited to a family friendly web site. Well, family friendly if your family is a little older than the kids who mowed the lawn this afternoon.

QUICK NIGHT, TONIGHT……I’m in the middle of assembling a *&^&^%$%$#$# futon whose directions seem to be in Japanese and whose fixtures, screws, and bolts are a heady collection of metric and standard sizes. Been at it for three hours and you know what? THERE ARE MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP. Quite literally, my old bed is siting along the side of our fair Boulevard waiting for the trash truck to pick it up in the morning.

Ciao

DEATH OF AN OLD SOLDIER

He was an old man when he died last night.

Ninety-one by official reckoning. That’s what it said on the news. An old warrior. Passing in review one last time.

He was a national figure, a war hero, his name known to everywhere four short decades ago. He was a familiar on the flickering black/white TV screens of the day. He was as well known to us as Walter Kronkite.

And he did almost as much in undermining the military might and authority of the United States.

No unrepentant liberal this man. He stood four square for country, god, honor, and duty. Duty above all.

His name? William Westmoreland. General William Westmorland. And he led our troops into the sweating Hell Mouth that was ‘Nam. He was a soldier and fought with all the weapons at his disposal. He lost a war. We all lost that war. Trouble is. Right up to the moment of his meeting with Saint Pete, Westy never knew we got our asses kicked by a determined, effectively led little, yellow antagonist now well on the path to reconciliation with the superpower it humiliated.

Viet Nam brought us two towering soldier figures. Westmoreland was the better known, but working hand in mailed glove with the chief was WW2 veteran, the architect of firebombing the Japanese homeland, Air Force General, Curtis LeMay.

“Bombs away with Curt LeMay,” was an often heard chant in the old hippie days when thousands of young protestors took on the cause of the Viet Nam war itself. How dare they send American lads to bleed in jungles and rice paddies just to defend the right of investors to build high rise hotels. After the big war, LeMay went on to plan and direct the notion of the Strategic Air Command, keeping bombers in the air at all times ready to enter Soviet airspace at the drop of a fail-safe. Anybody remember the brilliant movie DR. STRANGELOVE?

The General died back in 1990 appreciated by military historians; still hated by the aging liberals who reviled him in their youth.

Fighting a very a-symmetrical war such as was Southeast Asia was not fully appreciated by LeMay. Westmoreland had a much better grasp on the Vietnamese reality. The former preferred massive amounts of dropped ordinance…carpet bombing, assaults on strongholds real and imagined, expressing the desire to ‘bomb them back to the stone age’.

General LeMay would not have survived in the modern era where warfare is increasingly more political and less blow ‘em to hell.

One of Westmoreland’s major tactical innovations was the firebase. He put these all over the southern half of the ravaged land. A firebase was a strong point, with lots of artillery and troops a-plenty deep in the heart of VC territory, a thorn in the side and a tempting target. They were often attacked, but never taken.

In an earlier conflict the tactic worked, for the Cong. Back in 1954 a kind of firebase was created by the Phrench Foreign Legion at a place called Dien Bien Phu. It came under guerilla attack as was slowly squeezed until it surrendered. That battle kicked the imperial Frog out of S. E. Asia, opening the way for Americans in small numbers, non-combatant advisors we were told, to take their place. The rest is sad history.

With all the weapons and resources at his disposal, Westmoreland could not win the war in SouthEast Asia using the traditional tactics he had been schooled in. The enemy could afford to take more casualties than we and would usually fight at a time and place of his own choosing. He was intelligent, well-trained, and, above all, dedicated to the re-unification of his country. America couldn’t match that. We were high tech invaders in a primitive land and lost to a foe who relied on captured American weapons, home made mines, tunnels, camouflage, and sharpened stakes.

Westmoreland’s death last night has brought all the bitterness of that long ago war back into focus. It remains very much with us thirty years later. Think only back to the last presidential election. John Kerry portrayed himself as the epitome of the Viet Nam era vet. He overplayed that hand and went down in flames largely due to a group called ‘the swift boat vets’.

John Kerry was, perhaps, the last casualty of that nasty and stupidly waged war.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY
A TALE OF TWO PRESS CONFERENCES

This is a quickie entry. Oh, I’ll be back later with the full story of A TALE OF TWO PRESS CONFERENCES.

But first it is fitting to note an anniversary. It is a sad, sad anniversary. It marks a tragedy that left a young woman dead. Her killer was let with a very light slap on the wrist. Took his license to drive away for a few months or a year or something. The murderer spent no time in jail after pleading guilty to what amounted to a misdemeanor.

And this was not an example of Southern Justice where White Man kills Black lady and gets off with a scowl from a local judge.

No the killing in this case took place way up north in the Bay State of Massachusetts, liberal bastion of the universe.

The date was July 18th, the year 1969. The dead twenty-eight year-old political stringer was a girl named Mary Jo Kopeckne. The guy who drove her into the water and abandoned the woman trapped in the back seat of his Oldsmobile was Senator Edward Kennedy, who has been returned to the august governing body five times since by the voters of Massachusetts.

I shall return later this afternoon after I pick up a seven-year-old’s first real twenty-two rifle from a location near you.

I'M BAAAAAAAACK......

As was suggested, the imperial powers that be treated the media to a duet pf news conferences today. The first held by DA Howard Simms; the second, by Mayor Ellis.

Taking things in reverse order, at 2:00 this afternoon, Mr. Ellis told the assembled masses that Macon has been approved by the Federal Government for 6.5 million dollars to turn the aging TERMINMAL STATION into a mid state transportation center. The city administration has been working this project for at least two years now. This is the good news/

And for the bad news, or the really good news depending on which side of the Ellis Administration you stand, Howard Simms announced this morning that the investigation already wrought through three successive grand juries would now be turned over to the Federal Government for disposition.

Meaning? If there has been malfeasance in city hall, then the cap in the ass of the evildoers will be fired by the feds, who use a much larger caliber gun than do the locals.

A statement prepared by the DA’s office read in part:

THE CURSE OF FAIR AND BALANCED
LET'S HEAR THE OTHER SIDE

THE CURSE OF BEING FAIR AND BALANCED


So I’ve been a little hard on Muslims lately.

Pissed off a bunch of people according to my emails. Some of them from the myopic PC AT ALL COSTS crowd; some of them followers of Allah. And another few from right wing christians who would send every Muslim anywhere to Allah’s Paradise, a place they seem to think is the equivalent to any right-thinking Christian’s hell.

Good. Nothing like a little controversy among rabid zealots (or is that ‘zeal-louts’?): My god can beat up your god. Die infidel, die. There is no god but Yahweh and Mohammed is his oil rich prophet. (I get confused sometimes).

Actually what I have been doing is a little on-line research looking at web sites including things as extreme as the El Gazebo and iluvsnakehandling dot org. to allahisafriendofmine dot com. The object of my search is to ascertain the truth about Islam. There is so much confusion in this country. Is it a religion of peace or, as was the case in the Middle Ages on both sides, is it a matter of convert or get your balls cut off, then die. Convert to your enemy’s religion. No middle ground here.

Large segments of the followers of Allah are still bogged down in the Crusades. The old memories die hard. And there is plenty of savage brutality to go around…for ‘they did it’ and so ‘we did it’. Appears as the current war on Terror might just be payback for wrongs real or imaginary going back to 1,000 B.C. or so.

(Notice the ‘B.C.’ We don’t use that idiotic ‘CE’ so prominent in the la la land of today’s colleges and universities, where it is entirely OK to attack the heterosexual white male for every evil he has committed, is committing this very moment, or may commit in the future. Here’s to the death of Political Correctness and the negative impact it has had on the English Language, which is so emasculated in certain circles that it has become a sterile shadow of its former, vigorous self…not unlike the language spoken in La Belle France this very day. Would somebody send me a list of proscribed words and phrases published on any American campus? I would have some fun with that.)

Having put online a link to and some quotes from a website that claims it shows ‘what the Koran really says’ a couple of days ago. We offer another link to a website, this pro American Muslim, that presents a rather different slant on things like suicide bombing.

One of the complaints made by many is that Muslim leaders never stand up and loudly condemn the horrors of the random terror bombing of civilians. They, it is reasoned, should have said more about the events of 9/11, last year’s Madrid massacre, and the death of fifty-four innocents in London two weeks ago.

Well, maybe, just maybe they did….cooler Muslim heads have done so, but in the hue, cry, and rhetorical aftermath they are not always heard.

Which brings us to a web site you must visit if you have even a modicum of the fair and balanced in your soul. The site is called CAIR, acronym for COUNCIL ON AMERICAN-ISLAMIC RELATIONS and can be accessed at http://www.cair-net.com .

What follows is a quote from this website dating back to July 13th, this past week. Read it carefully. Decide for yourself whether truth is spoken here or is it a clear-cut case of covering of the old ass. Don’t be unduly influenced by the likes of Neal Boortz, Rushbo, or Sean ‘Baby Jesus’ Hannity. Don’t believe for a moment that pols such as Teddy Kennedy and Pelosi have the last word on this or any other matter. Think for yourselves….decide for yourselves…be a leader, not a follower.

Read On:

DEATH BY JESUS

Among the many, many self proclaimed Christians around here, there is one most special breed that is a plague upon human existence.

They’re not your usual proselytizers, the low lifes who would cram their personal beliefs down our unsuspecting throats. These guys are bad enough. You know the kind, the man or woman, boy or girl who wants to ‘bear witness’ to his faith always at the wrong time and in the wrong place. The checkout line at any local supermarket, for example, a classroom, the middle of a football game, bed.

Yes, damn it, bed. And don’t ask!!!

No the biggest pain in the ass has to be what might be called the ‘holier than shit’ christian, a man (or woman, usually) who lives her life in such a way that every detail of her being goes in to demonstrating her total devotion to the cause of showcasing her own piety.

She is usually middle aged, slender to the point of gaunt, rarely if ever takes a drink, refuses to play cards or indulge in other unseemly activity. At home she rules her family with a tyrant’s silken glove, controlling a compliant, long suffering husband and up to three children with large dollops of maternal guilt.

The Southern family unit has been ruled by its women since the Civil War. Johnnies went marching off, many never to return. Mama then took over the household reins and never let go.

Ben Hawkins was saddled with one of these women in his family. Not exactly his immediate family, because he had married into it. His mother-in-law, the wasp-wasted Lorna, fifty-five and a tyrant with a penchant for flowery, draped, somewhat sheer silk dresses, walked through life with the hand of Jesus himself on her left breast, so close was she to her savior.

She used to fantasize about him. Always in secret, of course, for nobody could possibly understand her intensely personal feelings for the son of god. As she grew older and her children began fleeing their mother’s domination, she turned more and more to these quasi mystical, imaginary visits from her precious Jesus. With increased frequency came added intensity. Lorna started having wonderfully auto-erotic experiences. And these on a daily basis.

Her Jesus was special, of course, he was garbed in a long robe with nothing save his obvious masculinity beneath its folds. He would sit on the edge of her bed or lie next to her at which point she let the mind games begin.

Now the Jesus of Lorna’s reverie was your classic blue-eyed, clear-skinned northern European type, cleansed all suggestion of Semitic origin and swarthy complexion.

Lorna’s Jesus was pure WASP….white, anglo-saxon protestant. Neither he nor his ancestors had ever lived in the hot Middle East.

The family was oblivious to the true nature of the woman’s fantasy. Most, Ben included, thought of her as a whacked-out religious fruitcake. But harmless.

Now Ben like his cup o’ kindness. Bourbon, of course, he a true Georgia boy. And one day after an afternoon seminar at a favorite watering hole he decided to walk the several miles to his home and soon found himself in a strange part of town, walking, and, since the day was still young, doing a bit of window shopping.

And he found it in a shabby little corner store window, He realized he had been searching for this very thing for years. Two feet tall and dressed in African Garb stood a ceramic statue of Jesus Christ, his features, his color clearly African American.

“I must have it,” mused Ben. And five minutes later he walked out of the store statue in hand, armed with directions to a familiar part of town. He was soon home.

Two days later Lorna awoke from a nap, walked the few yards to her mailbox, and found a package wrapped and tied like a birthday present.

Returning to her living room, she sat on a prized antique couch and opened the gift. It took a moment for it had been enclosed by alternating layers of masking tape and tissue that completely hid the nature of the beast.

Holding up the now naked statue up to a window’s light, she stared at it a moment, let out an entirely lady-like, stifled scream, and keeled over quite dead from a massive coronary.

ISLAM: A RELIGION OF PEACE?
DON'T BE FOOLED BY THE PC CROWD

This column will piss of a lot of readers.

Don’t blame me, guys and gals, I’m just the messenger.

Over the past several days I have begun to spend time looking into the Muslim religion.

Officially, and according to the President and the entire cadre of myopic, politically correct morons who think they can control our thought by controlling our speech, the Muslim faith is ‘a religion of peace’. We must be very careful lest we offend. Wouldn’t want to hurt feelings, would we?

And, of course, there are millions of right-thinking folk who recognize Allah as their god and Mohammed as his prophet. These people live among us, work side by side with us, pay taxes as do we. Their kids go to school with ours and, if they attend an public institution of lower education, their ability to read, write, and think is being equally diminished by a school system that is so far gone that only a complete and total top to bottom revamping can save it from its own excess.

The Liber Sacer, sacred book, of the Muslim religion is the Quoran…or Koran, more traditionally in Western Parlance. Like our own, home-grown slavish followers of the ‘word of god’ as found in the Western ‘bible’ (King james and all that…did Jesus speak Shakespearean English?) many conservative muslims tend to cleave (hey, another biblical word….when a man ‘cleaves’ to a woman it means they are having unprotected sex) to a singular, unnuanced, interpretation that is often brutal, savage, and eerily primitive.

The majority of the world’s Muslims are still living in the dark ages in many respect. Little has changed for these sons of the desert except the AK-47 and its upgrades has replaced the arrow, the lance, and the sling hurled stone. Their mantra right now is ‘get whitey’. The weapons are the ‘Jihad’ or holy war and the ‘fatwa’, the declaration by a Muslim cleric granting blanket permission to the faithful to kill anybody the cleric deems an enemy of the true faith. It might be analogous to a right-wing Baptist Preacher’s telling his parishoners to go out and kill a politician who favored a woman’s right to have an abortion. Or, just maybe, go out and bomb an abortion clinic or ambush a medical doctor who performed abortion on demand…or at least on request or suggestion.

While reading Cliff Kincaid, a conservative political columnist http://www.aim.org/media_monitor/3842_0_2_0_C , I found a link you might want to check out. It connects to a Website called THE PROPHET OF DOOM and can be found by going directly to http://www.prophetofdoom.net What is the site about? Simple, it simply quotes Muslim texts, the Koran especially, to shed some light on the Muslim attitude in several areas. These include: militants (Muslim), peace, peaceful Mislims, Jews, Christians, and women. There are many other topics ‘supported’ by the Koran…..be prepared to be offended should you take up and read.

By way of example, borrowed directly from the Prophet Of Doom Website, are these quotes on the role of women in Islamic society. I guess Mohammed would be offended by the once-popular phrase, ‘Chauvinist Pig’, given that porkers are something less than the salt of the earth to these folks.

Tabari IX:113 “Allah permits you to shut them in separate rooms and to beat them, but not severely. If they abstain, they have the right to food and clothing. Treat women well for they are like domestic animals and they possess nothing themselves. Allah has made the enjoyment of their bodies lawful in his Qur’an.”
Tabari I:280 “Allah said, ‘It is My obligation to make Eve bleed once every month as she made this tree bleed. I must also make Eve stupid, although I created her intelligent.’ Because Allah afflicted Eve, all of the women of this world menstruate and are stupid.”

Qur’an 4:3 “If you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly with orphans, marry women of your choice who seem good to you, two or three or four; but if you fear that you shall not be able to do justice (to so many), then only one, or (a slave) that you possess, that will be more suitable. And give the women their dower as a free gift; but if they, of their own good pleasure, remit any part of it to you, eat it with enjoyment, take it with right good cheer and absorb it (in your wealth).”

Qur’an 4:11 “Allah directs you in regard of your Children’s (inheritance): to the male, a portion equal to that of two females…. These are settled portions ordained by Allah.”

Bukhari:V1B22N28 “The Prophet said: ‘I was shown the Hell Fire and the majority of its dwellers were women who are disbelievers or ungrateful.’ When asked what they were ungrateful for, the Prophet answered, ‘All the favors done for them by their husbands.’”

Qur’an 4:43 “Believers, approach not prayers with a mind befogged or intoxicated until you understand what you utter. Nor when you are polluted, until after you have bathed. If you are ill, or on a journey, or come from answering the call of nature, or you have touched a woman, and you find no water, then take for yourselves clean dirt, and rub your faces and hands. Lo! Allah is Benign, Forgiving.” [The Qur’an claims women are unclean and polluted—worse than dirt.]

Qur’an 33:59 “Prophet! Tell your wives and daughters and all Muslim women to draw cloaks and veils all over their bodies (screening themselves completely except for one or two eyes to see the way). That will be better.”

Qur’an 4:15 “If any of your women are guilty of lewdness, take the evidence of four witnesses from amongst you against them; if they testify, confine them to houses until death [by starvation] claims them.”

Bukhari:V3B48N826 “The Prophet said, ‘Isn’t the witness of a woman equal to half of that of a man?’ The women said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘This is because of the deficiency of a woman’s mind.’”

We will quote from this website from time to time……but please check it out for yourself.

YES VIRGINIA
THERE IS CULTURE
in downtown Macon
Part One