S-L-U-G

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 Even though the song is on the tragic side, it always lifts my spirits.

Problems

 

Remembering this helps make problems a little more manageable.

It also helps to remember that chucking it all and becoming a pirate is always a viable option.

My (expletive)(expletive) Up

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This is one of those songs where the expletives are essential; it wouldn't be the same song without them.

Lyrics HERE.

I met the man with the thorny crown…

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Full lyrics HERE.

My current favorite album is Life'll Kill Ya.  (You probably gathered that.)

Numbers

Roy Orbison married a 15-year-old girl.  Elvis began dating Priscilla when she was 14.  Jerry Lee Lewis married a 13-year-old girl.  Jack Kerouac wrote openly of preferring prostitutes who were between 14 and 15 years of age.

Jared Fogel is going to go to prison for having sex with a 17-year-old.

It’s just strange to me how the same act can range from acceptable to criminal.

Circles

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Life of Illusion

“Beware of maya…”  ~George Harrison

Snowflakes

Excerpt from Bugles and a Tiger by John Masters, ©1948:

But these generalizations are vague and patronizing.  It is impossible to give an idea of the Gurkha by such means, because each Gurkha is a separate man.  I have talked of "the Gurkhas" as doing this and "the Gurkhas" as being that, whereas, like other people, the Gurkhas have the sameness and the uniqueness of a snowfield.  We can say that the snow is wet or frozen or dry-powdered, but every snowflake is different from every other snowflake.

It's a nice analogy, and it could be a useful one when discussing different cultures, but since this comes immediately after he argues that Gurkhas on the whole are stupid and filthy but quite subservient it smacks of "Hey, don't get me wrong-- some of my best friends are…"

So you've got to be careful with that one.

The Prime Directive

In his autobiography Bugles and a Tiger (©1948), Lieutenant Colonel John Masters writes of being stationed along what is now the Pakistan / Afghanistan border and confronting some of the same problems in the Post-WWI era that still plague us today:

The government also tried to remove the conditions that made the Parthan such an awkward element in the Indian pattern. Its efforts never met with much success. Consent is part of democracy, and it was neither easy nor, perhaps, right to force the Parthans to attend school, give up vendettas, and become peaceful farmers, when the old bloodthirsty ways constituted for them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Pathans preferred to keep to the ancient traditions and take the consequences; that is, to be left in peace-- to fight.

I'm conflicted.

I want a more peaceful world, and I've always believed that people would choose a peaceful life if they could, but what if they don't?  Don't people have a right to choose for themselves the life they lead?

My answer here is "I don't know."

I wish I had a better one.

Sunday Morning Music

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It was written by Steve Winwood, but Warren Zevon does it better.

Full lyrics HERE.

Sans

Excerpt from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

XVIII.

I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head.

XIX.

And this delightful Herb whose tender Green
Fledges the River's Lip on which we lean--
Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen!

XXII.

And we, that now make merry in the Room
They left, and Summer dresses in new Bloom,
Ourselves must we beneath the Couch of Earth
Descend, ourselves to make a Couch--for whom?

XXIII.

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust Descend;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer and--sans End!

Not exactly a picker-upper, is it?

Jackpot!

Something I really enjoy is finding biographies (especially autobiographies) of people who used to be famous but now are largely forgotten.

I went to a book sale today put on by a local charity, and for $8 came away with autobiographies by William Allen White, Chet Huntly, and John Masters, and a biography of Alfred E. Smith.

Jackpot!

I Know

 I only knew one line from the poem below, the title of Maya Angelou's book.  Here is the poem in its entirety:

SYMPATHY
By Paul Laurence Dunbar

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting—
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!

Paul Dunbar's works are in the public domain and can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg HERE.

If/Then

"If you can’t beat fear, just do it scared."  ~Glennon Doyle Melton

Plant

"If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t."  ~ Michael Pollan (via JulesOfNature)

Magic

"I was in a place for six incredible years where winning meant a crust of bread and living another day. In my mind's eye, I see those years, and I think of those who never lived to know the magic of a boring evening at home." ~Holocaust survivor Gerda Weissmann Klein, quoted in The Holocaust: A Historical Reader

Be

Frazz is on the web HERE.

Doctor!

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At 10 seconds:  “That’s a catchy little song.”

At 30 seconds:  “Okay, that’s enough of that.”

At three weeks:  “GET OUT OF MY HEAD!”

I Do Not Know

"Earlier I was sure of so many things, now I am sure of nothing. But I have lost nothing by not knowing, because all my knowledge was false… 'I do not know' is the only true statement the mind can make."  ~Nisargadatta Maharaj

Mon Oncle wears a monocle

So I was thinking about monocles the other day, and found this at Wikipedia:

It is a myth that wearing a monocle is uncomfortable. If customised, monocles could be worn securely with little effort. However, periodic adjustment is a fact of life for monocle wearers to keep the monocle from popping.

I'm not sure I believe that.  It seems like to keep it in place you'd have to keep a perpetual scowl on your face.

I still think they're impractical.

What would you say?

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I miss the days when there was still a niche for sweet, quirky little songs.

Reflection

Reflection by Anne Emond.  Visit her online HERE.

The Wreck of the Hesperus

I've seen many literary references to the poem The Wreck of the Hesperus by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow over the years, in everything from songs by George Harrison to books by P.G. Wodehouse, so yesterday I decided to look it up and read it for myself.

If you are having a happy day and would like to put an end to such nonsense,  it is available online (complete with tragic illustrations) HERE.

If you are big enough to take it…

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George made this demo before handing it over to his friend Ringo.

Ringo took out the "Hare Krishna!," but otherwise left it pretty much the same.

Boo!

(via)

California Joe

Excerpt from Civil War in Pictures by Fletcher Pratt, ©1955:

California Joe was first heard of by the public when the army was before Yorktown.  I spent an hour yesterday in his tent.  He is a character.  I was surprised by his age.  He is past fifty, but looks a score of years younger.  He stands as straight as an arrow, has an eye as keen as a hawk, nerves as steady as can be, and an endowment of hair and whiskers Reubens would have liked for patriarchal portrait.  He has spent years of his life shooting grizzly bears in the forests and fastnesses of California, and carries a telescopic rifle that in his hand will carry a long ways and with terrific accuracy.  For several days past he has occupied as a shooting-place a hole dug in the ground just big enough for himself.  His unerring rifle has made many a rebel bite the dust.  He says he likes the sport, and means to keep it up.

Things have changed a little since the mid-nineteenth century.  I had to look up the archaic meaning of “fastnesses” (it means “remote”), and the word “score” was apparently in much more common use then than now.  A modern reporter would never reference an artist, for fear of alienating his audience.

But the biggest difference is that a soldier today would never be allowed to say “I enjoy killing people.”

Shoulder to shoulder

Excerpt from Civil War in Pictures by Fletcher Pratt, © 1955:

Just as the artists invariably pictured a charge as a line of men advancing shoulder to shoulder and in perfect step across ground that was nearly always accidented and frequently spotted with trees or brush, so the reporters nearly always spoke of the same thing.  "Did you ever charge shoulder to shoulder?"  a veteran of the war was asked.  "No," was his reply; "God don't make men who could stand that."

Yet the public continued to believe the convention rather than the reality, and there are not a few soldier diaries from the Civil War which express surprise over the discovery that it wasn't true after all; that you advanced in a ragged line, taking advantage of every feature of the landscape and often pausing to fire.

Elephants

At some point in my life people decided that I was the type of person who would appreciate a Tiny Elephant.  I currently own 31 tiny figurines and statues, not a single one of which I bought myself.  The smallest is about the size of two BBs, the largest is about the size of your hand.  All but two of them would fit comfortably in your shirt pocket.

I have also been given three elephant postcards that I hung on my wall.  This is the most recent.  It’s from Sri Lanka, and I believe it’s hand-painted fabric.

So, there’s a tiny glimpse into my world.  :)

Coincidence

My Chevy Malibu has built-in support for Satellite Radio. For a substantial fee, you can listen to music.

It also has the single worst AM/FM reception I have ever experienced.

Better Than None

Excerpted from Civil War in Pictures by Fletcher Pratt, ©1955:

Our soldiers believe in the literal interpretation of the dictum of the Wise Man that “there is a time to dance.”  But to put their faith into works is not the easiest thing in the world, owing to the lack of partners of the feminine persuasion.  However, by imagining a bearded and pantallooned fellow to be of “t’other kind,” they succeed in getting up what they call a “Stag Dance,” which is better than none.

This has been a really interesting little book that I found for $1.29 at a thrift store.  There was no way to reproduce a photograph in a newspaper at the time, so newspapers sent out sketch correspondents and reduced their drawings to woodcuts to print them in the paper.  Drawings like these are how most people got to "see" the Civil War unfold.

I'll be posting a few more over the next few weeks.

Rambo, Captain America, G.I. Joe, and Ben Carson

Ben Carson (like Monday-Morning Quarterbacks all over the country) knows exactly what he would do if confronted with an armed gunman:

"I would not just stand there and let him shoot me. I would say 'Hey, guys, everybody attack him! He may shoot me but he can't get us all!'" (source)

I once witnessed a violent crime from just a few feet away.  It was near Christmas, the mall was packed, and a man came up behind the woman next to me.  He hit her in the back of the head with one hand, pushing her chin into her chest, and with the other he grabbed her necklace and yanked backwards.  The chain snapped, and he took off running through the crowd while she clutched at her neck.

By the time any of us realized what was happening, he was gone.  There were probably dozens of us who could have stopped him, but those few seconds gave him an edge we couldn't overcome.

A semi-automatic handgun fires as fast as you can pull the trigger.  How many times can you squeeze and relax your hand in three seconds?

(And, for what it's worth, Chris Mintz did confront the gunman.  He was shot seven times, and it didn't change the outcome one iota.)

Perks

One thing I learned fairly quickly with Apple products:  Never update an app that works.  There's no way to roll back to a previous version, so wait for the reviews to come in.  Nine out of ten times you'll be glad you held out.

Well, apparently the frustration isn't just on our end, it's also hell on the software companies.  After the latest operating system update one of my most used apps, NoteSuite, threw in the towel.  They provided a free utility to export your data into whatever new app you want, but they aren't updating their program anymore.

Pretty Good Solitaire, the best of the best among solitaire games, is trying to update their software to work with the new OS, but Apple seems to delight in creating new hurdles for them to jump over.  Read their blog HERE - it's a case study in how to shut out developers.

Both programs still work for me.  There are perks to being a late-adopter.

Envy

I have Hobbit Hole Envy.

The Letter

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Joe Cocker also had a hit with this song, but I like this one just a little bit better because of the organ and the staccato horns.

Not Just Us

I have a lot of buttons, and this one is one of my all-time favorites.

You can get your own for just $1.00 at Donnelly-Colt.

Swamps

Excerpt from A Letter from Copenhagen by Garrison Keillor, ©1987:

Every time I read a book about how to be smarter, how not to be sad, how to raise children and be happy and grow old gracefully, I think, "Well, I won't make those mistakes, I won't have go through that," but we all have to go through that. Everything they went through, we'll go through. Life isn't a vicarious experience. You get it figured out and then one day life happens to you. You prepare yourself for grief and loss, arrange your ballast and then the wave swamps the boat.

Everything they went through: the loneliness, the sadness, the grief, and the tears-- it will all come to us, just as it came to them...

I was thinking about Shakespeare a few days ago-- not reading him, just thinking about him, and the times he lived in.

A lot has changed in the last 500 years.  The language he spoke is all but undecipherable now.  His clothing would get you kicked out of the finer establishments today.  Politics, food, labor and lifestyle are all different.

But when he writes about the human condition, about love and loss, trust and betrayal, sin and redemption, those things have remained constant.

And unavoidable.

People Puttin' People Down

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John Prine takes a compassionate look at mean people.