Just fine, thanks, but he's a biter.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
Anatole France (Jacques Anatole Thibault, 1844-1924)
"Where one is present, God is the second, and where there are two, God is the third."
Mohammed (570-632)
It was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, "God Bless Us, Every One!
--Charles Dickens
What do you call people who are afraid of Santa Claus? Claustrophobic.
--Unknown
Christmas Day
"There is another world, but it's inside this one."
Paul Éluard (1895-1952)
Boxing Day
"What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite."
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
"The pornography of violence of course far exceeds, in volume and general acceptance, sexual pornography, in this Puritan land of ours. Exploiting the apocalypse, selling the holocaust, is a pornography. For the ultimate selling job on ultimate violence one must read those works of fiction issued by our government as manuals of civil defense, in which you learn that there's nothing to be afraid of if you've stockpiled lots of dried fruit."
Ursula K. LeGuin (1929- )
Uhmmm, dried apricots.
Perhaps dear Piff...and I'm rather sure of this...you're too young to remember A-Bomb shelters and nuclear war survival food....and bomb drills in third grade where you scrunched under your desk...
Me? I know what atomic bomb shelters are and nuclear war survival food. Bomb drills? We had earthquake drills. I do love Ursula K. LeGuin... a good Oregonian. Did you hear what she said about the TV series of Earthsea?
"I realized the producers had no understanding of what the books are about and no interest in finding out. All they intended was to use the name Earthsea, and some of the scenes from the books, in a generic McMagic movie with a meaningless plot based on sex and violence." (
Slate: Dec. 16, 2004)
"There is not a nation of savages, there is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States at this very hour."
Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)
Independence Day speech, 1852
It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me. But it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.
- Martin Luther King
We've come a fair ways...
Good quote, but, oh my, what an avatar!
hmmmm...they say it's better than the black box...how much better is anyone's guess
Shocking... especially because it took me a moment to figure out what was going on.
"Our senior officers knew the war was going badly. Yet they bowed to groupthink pressure and kept up pretenses. ...Many of my generation, the career captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels seasoned in that war, vowed that when our turn came to call the shots, we would not quietly acquiesce in halfhearted warfare for half-baked reasons that the American people could not understand."
Colin Powell (1937- )
"Jews and homosexuals are the outstanding creative minorities in contemporary urban culture. Creative, that is, in the truest sense: they are creators of sensibilities. The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony."
Susan Sontag
Dec 30th:
"There's no telling how many wars it will take to secure freedom in the homeland." - George W. Bush (1946- )
Dec 31st:
"...the United States today is without a working channel of communication to the world of Muslims and of Islam." - U. S. Department of Defense, Final Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication, 23 September 2004
Jan 1st (Happy New Year!)
"There is no way to peace; peace is the way." - Abraham Johannes Muste (1885-1967)
Jan 2nd
"To rest one's case on faith means to concede that reason is on the side of one's enemies- that one has no rational arguments to offer." - Ayn Rand (1905-1982)
"Though the Book of Revelation covers this in more detail, the essentials bear mentioning: After the shout of the Archangel is heard, the living and the dead in Christ (i.e., those who have not worshipped the beast and are free of his mark upon their foreheads) shall reign with God in Heaven for one thousand years. Then, once the Rapture has ocurred and the saved are off the planet, the Democrats will regain both the House and the Senate." - Jon Stewart, America
Piff, sorry to post such a long article, but this is in honor of Panzade's new avatar.
IJMC - Liftin' With Your Packwood!And 1-2-3 and 1-2-3; now lift those weights, I don't see you WORKING! Ow. -dave _Maybe We Can Lift the Peso---With Wired Underpants_ -by Dave Barry Our topic today is: "The Mexican Peso Crisis-An Ominous Harbinger ofGlobal Monetary Instability, or What?" In evaluating the implications of any significant currency fluctuation,it is essential to consider fully the numerous ramifications of theincipient transmogrification and consequent decollaterization thatinevitably ensue insofar as such phenomena impact upon the question ofwhether any newspaper editor is still reading this column. I sincerely doubt it. Modern editors spend the bulk of their daysattending mandatory workshops on how to halt the decline in newspaperreadership; this leaves them with very little time to read what they put inthe actual newspaper. So I began this column with a disguise layer of denseprose, assuming that editors would get just far enough to write a standardunintelligible Tonto-style headline like "Big Peso Ramifications Seen" andslap the whole package in the paper without ever discovering the realtopic, which is how much weight a guy in Hong Kong can lift, and what bodypart he lifts it with. I'm hiding this topic because I've learned, over the years, that somenewspapers tend to censor this column when it deals with sensitive issues.To cite one of many examples, back in 1990 I wrote a column about politics,and the Portland, Ore., Oregonian cut outa crucial section in which Iexplained how snails have sex. Thus, because of one newspaper'ssquemishness, Oregon's voters were deprived of information that would havehelped them make informed decisions, which probably explains why Oregon isthe only state in history ever to have elected Bob Packwood. Which brings us to this guy in Hong Kong, whom I found out about thanksto alert reader Jeffrey Hantover, who sent me an article written by Alex Lofor the Feb. 8, 1995, issue of a Hong Kong newspaper, The Eastern Express.The article concerns an amazing physical feat that this guy performed,using an explicit part of his anatomy that, in the interest of decency, Iwill refer to by a randomly selected alias instead of its real name. Here'sthe first sentence of The Eastern Express article, with just that one wordchanged: "A Daosit philospher and martial art expert who has spent a lifetimemastering the art of lifting weights with his Packwood showed his prowessyesterday by lifting 159 kilograms of metal discs in one burst of masculinestrength." Above the article is a large and-if you are a male-very scary photographshowing this guy squatting over a massive pile of weights; in thebackground is an onlooker who is clearly thinking the Chinese word for"Ouch." The story (again, I am making tasteful word substitutions) goes onto state: "Chan Tze-tan, 49, attached a total of 159 kg of weights to several redropes which he tied tightly around his Packwood and Newts. He then liftedthe metal discs 12 centimeters off the floor and held on for 10-secondsbefore letting go." The article states that the audience, a dozen men, "applauded after along silence." And well they should applaud. Do you have any idea how much weight 159kilograms is? Neither do I. There's no way to tell without multiplying. Butit's definitely a lot of weight, and we know this was not a hoax, becausethe article states that "a television personality, Anthony Tang, inspectedChan's underwear to make sure there was no wiring around his body." At last: A practical use for television personalities. The article states that Chan credited his ability to the "breakthroughinsights" he had into Daoist philosophy. He claimed that he had 25disciples, "and most of them could lift up to 13 kg with their privateparts." There is no mention of a workout video. I don't know about you, but this story makes me want to know more aboutthe Daoist philosophy. I took a philosophy course in college, but all westudied were guys like Aristotle and Socrates, who droned on endlesslyabout the meaning of life and other useless topics. Whereas with yourDaoism, you apparently can develop this useful skill that has countlesspractical applications. For example, you could use it to ward off armedstreet criminals:FIRST STREET CRIMINAL: Hand over your money!DAOIST PHILOSOPHER: Oh yeah? (He drops his pants.)SECOND STREET CRIMINAL: What the heck is he...Wow!FIRST STREET CRIMINAL: He's lifting a manhole cover without using his hands!TELEVISION PERSONALITY: And there's no wiring in his underwear!(The criminals flee.)Also I believe that top Daoist philosophers would be in real demand as paidentertainers for weddings, bar mitzvahs, White House dinners, etc. Thus wesee that Daoism, practiced wisely, could provide a vital economiccounterweight to the ramifications of this darned Mexican peso crisis.Although if you think I"m going to practice it, you're Newts.
