Legal humor website LoweringtheBar.com has reviewed the list of Official Georgia State things (specifically, "Georgia Code Title 50 Chapter 3 Article 3: Other State Symbols") and given our list of stuff the respect it deserves. (By which I mean "none.")

Of course, I had previously decried that as of 2015, the state mammal is officially the White-Tailed Deer. (You fools!) But seeing it again in print made me do a little more research.

Somehow I had missed this 2016 AJC article in which State Representative Carolyn Hugley of Columbus assured her concerned colleagues that the new amendment to the Georgia Code wouldn't "prevent anyone from eating the animal." Hooray! Venison jerky for everyone!

It's a good thing that being an Official State thing doesn't prevent consumption of that thing. Otherwise, the Vidalia Onions (State Vegetable), peanuts (State Crop), and grits (State Prepared Food) industries would be in trouble. That's not such good news for the Southern Appalachian brook trout (State Cold Water Game Fish), green tree frog (State Amphibian), or Pogo (State 'Possom — yes, the apostrophe is written into § 50-3-68 of the Georgia Code).

Naturally, this made me curious if there was any law on the books in Georgia that barred someone from eating something. I couldn't find one. There are lots of things you can't buy or sell, including substandard pecans (§ 2-14-63), unpasteurized milk (§ 26-2-242), and unregistered pacific white shrimp (§ 2-15-5), but nothing you're barred from actually chewing and swallowing. It seems even cannibalism is legal in Georgia. That's Southern hospitality for you! Eat up, ya'll.

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Patrick Reed won the Masters golf tournament in Augusta this past weekend. I wasn't familiar with Reed, so I Googled him.

Something tells me that's not the Jimmy Walker that people watching the Masters were searching for. (At least not since 1974.)

Second question: Are those really the best expressions of Marc Leishman and Henrik Stenson that Google can come up with?

Good times, man, good times.

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I've migrated to another server. This is at least the fourth host for Wriphe.com. I doubt it will be the last.

It's funny, when you stop to think about it, how the Internet has changed since I launched this site in 2003. It wasn't exactly new then. By the early 21st century, it had already outgrown its dial-up modem origins. The web 2.0 bubble had come and gone, and interactive Macromedia Flash websites were the rage. Amazon.com only sold books. Facebook didn't exist. My how things have changed.

Sigh.

Anwyay. I've poked around the new host a bit, and everything seems put together correctly. I've even made a few small improvements to the back end! As always, if you find anything out of sorts, please let me know. Assuming the contact and comment forms still work.

Thanks for sticking around.

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It's a lollipop. You put it in your mouth. Eat shit, America!

Footnote: while investigating this "candy," I discovered that its manufacturer, Flix Candy, also makes a wind-up pile of shit. "Wind him up and watch him walk and poop candy!" they say. I think I'll pass.

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Found in the lobby of my local grocery store:

There is so much to say about this, but what I keep staring at is the fact that they're "chocolate scented." That may forever destroy my relationship with chocolate.

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It has been brought to my attention that some of my readers have had difficulty with the new Google "I am not a robot" Captcha swallowing your comments. That problem may be especially common for users of the Chrome browser. (I've experienced it myself on other sites.)

If this has happened to you, please try using Chrome's incognito mode, deleting your cookies, or changing to a different browser before commenting. If none of these solutions resolves the problem for you, please contact me directly and let me know. (You all have my email address, right?)

Sorry for the trouble. If the problem continues or proves to be especially widespread, I'll see what I can do to build a better bot trap. (Again.)

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I think Atlanta Tech Edge is backsliding. From this morning's episode:

HOSTESS, cluelessly: "What is Snapchat?"

GUEST, trying not to visibly wince: "It's, um, an app that was introduced 6 years ago."

It's easy to look down on this show, but it does come on immediately after Face the Nation (the #1-rated Sunday morning news magazine). I don't have a hard time believing that the demographic watching network television at that hour has probably never heard of "the snappy chat." I will try to be less judgmental in the future.

Aw, who am I kidding? Damn Luddites!

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I'm watching Atlanta Tech Edge at 1:30AM on WXIA (though I suppose it must air some other time, because who other than me watches technology news magazines at 1:30AM Sunday morning?), and the hostess just admitted being surprised when her guest, a tech podcaster, informed her that "free" apps use data mining to strip our privacy and sell our information to other companies.

Well, duh. (Side note: paid apps do it too.)

Who is this show for? If you didn't know that, most of what Tech Edge talks about is probably going over your head. If you did know that, you didn't need to hear that the hostess has no idea what she's talking about.

(I should admit that the use of the phrase "data mining" up there in the first paragraph was mine, not hers. If she doesn't know they are doing it, she sure doesn't know what it's called.)

It's not exactly fake news, more a case of the blind leading the blind. I shouldn't complain. That's better than some "news" organizations manage these days. (I'm looking at you, Newnan Times-Herald.)

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Screenshot from my phone on election night:

When the BBC is showing a mushroom cloud, you know things are bad.

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MentalFloss.com has compiled a list of the most distinct last names by state. That's the name that appears most often in each state compared to the frequency of that name nationally. Imagine my surprise to discover that the name associated with Georgia is Stephens.

The Internet Surname Database says that Stephens means "the son of Stephen" and derives from the Greek "Stephanos," meaning "crown." It claims the name was popular in the Middle Ages because it was the name of the first Christian martyr (St. Stephen, who was stoned to death).

Maybe that's all true. Maybe Georgia is full of Greek Catholics who were named after saints. However, that has nothing to do with my last name.

Sometime in the late 19th century, probably around 1875, my great-great grandmother Rosa and her four children traveled from Lebanon to America. U.S. customs officials apparently misunderstood (or didn't care) when she told them she had come to meet her husband, Stephen Basil. No one in the family ever changed it back, so the family name has been Stephens instead of Basil ever since.

For the record, Rosa was a practicing Catholic, and most of her descendants remain so. However, you can see that my name has nothing to do with Catholic martyrs. I wonder how many of Georgia's other Stephens are descendants of my great-great grandfather?

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