Lots of curious but enjoyable things happened on Wednesday and I can't
really string them all together in a cogent post, but they covered pals, pleasure,
potential, planes, pensiveness, pooches and pints.
1 Nice emails from friends all over the place (including my pal F from
Chelts who is off on holiday to the USA)
2 Attended a funeral with my folks. It was a humanist service - no hymns, no
mention of the big man, but still a service of dignity and decency
3 Had a potter around the town where I grew up (not BS5) and just enjoyed
that. Tents and tent poles everywhere it seemed (!)
4 Had a phone-call from my Vicar offering me project management work with a
church project, short term and at a very decent hourly rate!
5 A couple of pints with my Dad and the chap next door in the evening (it had been his
mother's funeral)
6 Great dinner with the folks at home
7 My top pal Oopas texted me to say he had just landed at Stanstead Airport
and then watched Air Force 2 land right behind him. Cool!
8 A witty post about G-Dog, an American hound of my slight acquaintance
9 Rather fine chatter on google talk before bed.
Ideal.
31 comments:
Quite a list ;)
Quite a day!
‘no mention of the big man, but still a service of dignity and decency’
I would say ‘No mention of the big man, and therefore a service of dignity and decency.’
That's coz you is a bit of a see you next tuesday who likes to lob in the odd hand grenade, dood!
Hey - great news, apparently The Hostile opens tomorrow night in readiness for Christmas, so I will have a pint with you there next week when you get to the UK!
I will let G-dog know she made it into your nice weekend. :) It did sound good with a balance of a funeral in there.
Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary
The man who says he is willing to meet you halfway is usually a poor judge of distance
Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday...The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production
Travel only with thy equals or thy betters; if there are none, travel alone
God doesn't require us to succeed; he only requires that you try
He who is drowned is not troubled by the rain
The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop
It is a fine thing to establish one's own religion in one's heart, not to be dependent on tradition and second-hand ideals. Life will seem to you, later, not a lesser, but a greater thing
Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense
Do not be awe struck by other people and try to copy them. Nobody can be you as efficiently as you can
The things that one most wants to do are the things that are probably most worth doing
The guy who takes a chance, who walks the line between the known and unknown, who is unafraid of failure, will succeed
The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.
For the skeptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman law it is administered with subhuman inefficiency
Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?
We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over
debauchery
(noun) [di-BAW-chah-ree]
1. indulgence in sensual pleasures; scandalous activities involving sex, alcohol or drugs: "Jill and Mollie shuddered at memories of last night's debauchery."
When John F. Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country," he wasn't just stirring the hearts of millions of young Americans, he was also engaging in a little-known form of wordplay called chiasmus. Dr. Mardy Grothe has plumbed the depths of this form for years and catalogued hundreds of examples from ancient times to the present, in Never Let a Fool Kiss You or a Kiss Fool You (title courtesy of Joey Adams). All it takes is a repeated statement with two elements transposed between them--e.g., fool and kiss--and you get a powerful, often humorous, rhetorical prop. Collected in chapters like "Chiasmus for Lovers" and "Chiastic Compliments and Insults," the wisdom of the ages shines in gems such as Cicero's "It is as difficult for the good to suspect evil as it is for the evil to suspect good." Even better is Grothe's running commentary on the form and its masters and the often-biting humor found in the classics, for instance Dr. Johnson's "Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good." Fortunately for us, the good doctor wasn't referring to Never Let a Fool Kiss You or a Kiss Fool You, which is as fun to read as a reference as it is to refer to a reader. --Rob Lightner
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Pardon me--do you know what chiasmus means? Here's a hint: Mae West used chiasmus in her signature line "It's not the men in my life; it's the life in my men." So did John F. Kennedy: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."
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The people who do not get jobs are often the most vulnerable in our society, and joblessness is a terrible plight for anyone who suffers from it
In addition to joblessness, of course, by the working of supply and demand, when you have a larger number of people unemployed, wages do not rise at the normal level, so that we had last year a drop in real wages
Unemployment is of vital importance, particularly to the unemployed
Before any of your followers says anything like 'get a life' or similar, bothered?????????
Well, I enjoyed the JFK part but the rest left me?
I am not sure you entirely articulate a comprehensive sense of debauchery? What do you see it as distancing from: what is your compass from which you perceive a spinning away? You relate it to some few tangible things, none of which I have recently encompassed. I think that immediately ameliorates the moral 'wrong footing' you are possibly guarding?
What are you watching, Watcher, or as the Romans often have it,Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Are you Juvenal or juvenile? I am not sure...
Thank you for your comments. Apart from the Travel one which was specious codswallop.
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