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Barbie's gotta gun. And she's heard just about enough! 
No sudden moves. And keep your hands where I can see them.
I don't know. Maybe something can be arranged.
What did you have in mind, Doctor?
Il s'est levé à mon approche
"The tenderness of the delicate American buttock is causing more environmental devastation than the country's love of gas-guzzling cars, fast food or McMansions"
If you ask me, I'd say that what those patrons heard had more to do with their subconscious mind than it had with The Wulfshead...
I value that little phrase "I don't know" so highly. It's small, but it flies on mighty wings. It expands our lives to include spaces within us as well as the outer expanses in which our tiny Earth hangs suspended.| * A Few Words On The Soul by Wislawa Szymborska We have a soul at times. No one's got it non-stop, for keeps. Day after day, year after year may pass without it. Sometimes it will settle for awhile only in childhood's fears and raptures. Sometimes only in astonishment that we are old. It rarely lends a hand in uphill tasks, like moving furniture, or lifting luggage, or going miles in shoes that pinch. It usually steps out whenever meat needs chopping or forms have to be filled. For every thousand conversations it participates in one, if even that, since it prefers silence. Just when our body goes from ache to pain, it slips off-duty. It's picky: it doesn't like seeing us in crowds, our hustling for a dubious advantage and creaky machinations make it sick. Joy and sorrow aren't two different feelings for it. It attends us only when the two are joined. We can count on it when we're sure of nothing and curious about everything. Among the material objects it favors clocks with pendulums and mirrors, which keep on working even when no one is looking. It won't say where it comes from or when it's taking off again, though it's clearly expecting such questions. We need it but apparently it needs us for some reason too. |
| Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh. Strong relativism and openness are well known to be important dimensions in the temporal sphere at the basis of Wislawa Szymborska's poetry. The way in which she links the past with the present, the present with what is to come and the event/experience of a moment with the weightless dimension of eternity is what gives her poetry its greatest strength. ---Malgorzata Anna Packalén: A Domestication of Death: The Poetic Universe of Wislawa Szymborska |
"I am preaching the gospel of 'I don't know'!" -- Bill Maher
We own a few documentaries in this house: The Corporation; Outfoxed; Fahrenheit 9/11. This last Friday, we splurged on a copy of Religulous. We had seen it at the local movie theater with a packed audience - all of them as eager as we were to see something so taboo challenged. One scene in particular really cracked me up.
In an interview with the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Cummings (a former member of Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, and not an actual doctor), Cummings tells Maher about a man he is counseling in his church. He says,"I had a young man who was about to go crazy over a woman, he was about to kill hisself, you know? I said, that kind of passion you should have for God! I said, I said, turn that to God and see what happens." The camera cuts away to a scene in the middle east; a car with, what one can only guess, a suicide bomber inside, drives by and explodes in a great black cloud.
I am certain of very little in matters of faith. The only thing that has remained unchanged in my search is doubt. Most people are afraid to examine what they believe, when confronted with the questions of someone who is sincerely uncertain. My own mother used to hang up on me because she thought I was attacking HER; even now, communications are not exactly perfect with us, but she's learned to at least stay on the phone and listen. It's been hard work to get here.
Remember the annoying religious kid in school who carried their Bible everywhere with them, wore T-shirts with scriptures and phrases like "His Pain, Your Gain"? They listened to Sandi Patti and Micheal W. Smith on their Walkman, and read all the Frank Peretti novels? They showed up to school exhausted from a church service the night before that lasted until midnight? Yeah, that was me. I was brainwashed.
Now I'm in the "great untapped minority of this nation" - the 16% of America who considers themselves unaffiliated with any religion. Maher points out that Jews comprise a minority of only 1.4%, Blacks 12.2%, Homosexuals 3%, and surprisingly, NRA members come to 1.3%. If nothing else, this information makes me feel a little less alone in the world.
Human beings are not "commodities" or "resources", but are creative and social beings in a productive enterprise.
What are you saying? No, of course not -- there isn’t any ageism at Paean Knaves Inc. Besides, we have made sure to layoff that token young new recruit -- the CEO didn’t like her very much anyway. Not his type, you know. Would you believe that she is one of those -- an environmental activist. She once suggested that we should use recycled paper - the nerve of the girl. Look people, we are not breaking any law, here. We are Paean Knaves. We are not laying off “people,” we are cutting “positions." Those are hard times for everyone. Nothing personal. It’s not us. It’s the “economy. Yes, we are currently opening a new branch in Cedar Rapids.......what has that got to do with anything?”Now corporations don’t have to go to the trouble of explaining themselves when they shed workers. They just get lumped in with the others who are also “thinking ahead.”
Some Managing Directors can hardly contain themselves:For some, it’s just a game:Layoff “B” players and hire “A” players on the cheap. “If you have B players on your team that you look at getting rid of, this is a perfect excuse to start getting rid of those folks. If there are A players that you are looking to hire, go back and put down an offer that is not necessarily what they were asking and you’ll probably get those people to join the company”.
That night, you told us how you have been creating new worlds since you were 19.
You want to throw them away, but I have been secretly saving them.
Asking, "How did I get here?"
I felt the warm wind on my cheek. I breathed deep and every bit of me inside myself said, "How beautiful!"
Those flying fish -- they're not leaping for joy. They're jumping in terror. Bigger fish want to eat them. That luminous water -- it takes its gleam from millions of tiny dead bodies. The glitter of putrescence. There's no beauty here. Only death and decay.
(A falling stars passes by)The dialogue, above, is from "I walked with a Zombie" (1943):
The movie was partially inspired by Jane Eyre and is not a "zombie movie" in the common sense of the term. Ambiguity is at the core of the film and it is never established for certain if Jessica is a zombie or not, or that Voodoo magic is really effective:I Walked with a Zombie ... presents a complex picture of human relations and offers multiple explanations for events portrayed without definitively endorsing any of them. Frequently it is not even clear whether something is real or imaginary, or whose version of events should be accepted. Even the film’s conclusion, although satisfying, leaves room for interpretation about what really happened and why.
---Sarah Boslaugh, Not coming to a theater near you
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I was an honorable man when I began my quest for ultimate power. In my youth I was a hero. I put others’ needs before my own. I sacrificed my body to protect the innocent. Lionized far and wide, I returned home after years battling my nation’s enemies, a paragon of virtue. Then I turned to politics. I married an aristocrat. I built a fortune in the beer business. And as my wealth grew, so did my quest for power. With the highest office in the land within my grasp, I was seduced into betraying my principles. I turned from the path of righteousness and fell into corruption. I sacrificed my honor in desperate lust to become king. That’s how I have played Fable II, the delightful and provocative role-playing game from Microsoft for the Xbox 360. How you play is entirely up to you. More Here: Date With Destiny of Your Choosing |
"...we came out of a cave, and we looked over the hill, and we saw fire, and we crossed the ocean, and we pioneered the West, and we took to the sky. The history of Man is hung on a timeline of exploration. And this is what’s next.”
–Sam, The West Wing, “Galileo.”
Now came spring, but not at all as he had imagined it coming. He had thought that it would deliver him from a strange and hostile world, but now it was simply a continuation of his new experiences, of something he had already conquered and made his own....
....Too-ticky was having a spring cleaning in the bathing-house.
She rubbed all the green and red panes bright for the first summer fly, she hung out the bath-gowns in the sun and tried to repair the rubber Hemulen.
"Now the bathing-house'll be a bathing-house again," she said. "When the summer's hot and green, and you lie on your tummy on the warm boards of the landing-stage and listen to the waves chuckling and clucking..."
"Why didn't you talk like that in winter," said Moomintroll. "It'd have been such a comfort. Remember, I said once: 'There were a lot of apples here.' And you just replied: 'But now here's a lot of snow.' Didn't you understand that I was melancholy?"
Too-ticky shrugged her shoulders. "One has to discover everything for oneself," she replied. "And get over it all alone."
--Tove Jansson
I have endured much to reach this place in time
