"At this very moment, the President of the United States is announcing a New Age of Space to relieve unemployment. Billions of dollars are going to be spent on unmanned space ships, just to make work. The opening episode in this New Age of Space will be the firing of the Whale next Tuesday. The Whale ... will be loaded with organ-grinder monkeys, and will be fired in the general direction of Mars." - From The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut Well, why not? If the secret to prosperity is simply to permit the government to spend money it doesn't have in any quantity our rulers can name on any project that pollutes their evil imaginations, why shouldn't they commission the construction of a huge fleet of spacecraft to be filled with organ-grinder monkeys and dispatched into the void? -Space Keynesianism
I'm too tired to write a post. It requires thinking, you see, and how can you think when ALL you can think about is having your head hit that pillow again? I was going to write on near death experiences based on some nonsense I saw at a Christian website (the nonsense was not NDEs themselves-though the experiences may not be "real"-but the attempt to make them fit into an insane worldview) but that's too much thinking at the moment, and anything I tried to compose would be incoherent (though perhaps that's your view of much of what I write anyway). No, just too tired, but I am trying to post everyday now (bar unforeseen circumstances) and don't want my legions of fans, followers and return visitors to see me slacking. So this is what you get. If I didn't have to work and meet obligations to family and friends and if...if I didn't have to sleep...but I do...right now, in fact, a few more hours anyway...goodnight and good morning.
It was supposed to be a casserole of some sort for dinner last night (I never did find out what it was exactly) but my mom (I was visiting) changed her mind when the casserole started to burn. She had not checked on it and the oven temperature was set too high. I thought it would be fine, but no, she decided we would have pizza instead. She had asked earlier in the day for a "self-rising" frozen pizza. It was on her list that she sent dad and me with to the supermarket.
Dad said it was too expensive, so he didn't get one. Mom asked first thing when we returned where her pizza was. Didn't have enough in my account, said dad, without mentioning the big bag of marbles he'd purchased (something about a slingshot and squirrels). So the old casserole went in the oven (and it was old, prepared who knows when and then left in the freezer for who knows how long). But 425 degrees was too much for it. Dad said he'll have it tomorrow though. In the meantime Mom got on the phone and called the local Round Table just down the street, the one where she has a take-out pizza account (so she says). I could hear her from the living room as she ordered, asking the order-taking girl what specials they had going. A large (in Round Table speak "large" means "a very small pizza that no other pizza place would dare call large for fear of customer riots") pepperoni, two salads and two drinks was agreed on and Mom gave the girl her debit card number. After about 20 minutes Mom was pacing and looking out the window, then she opened the front door. Get ready, she declared, it's going to be here any second! When the seconds and then minutes passed without a delivery, Mom got on the phone. The girl told her the card was no good (invalid number) and Mom shouted at her to hold on a minute, it was good. It's my account I just deposited money into, of course it's good. Turns out though that Mom had read the card number wrong. Well, you should have called me and told me the card didn't go through, I've been here waiting with the front door open for the last hour! Girl claims she called. Liar! says Mom. Did you hear a phone ring? Dad and I shake our heads, as indeed we hadn't heard a phone ring at all, and there are phones all over the house, but nary a peep out of them.
"How can they lie like that?" Still, she put the order in again. When the food finally arrived, Mom had a little talk with the delivery guy, who sounded apologetic from what I could hear of the conversation.
The two salads were supposed to come with dressing. "Where's the dressing?" She ran back outside and shouted to the retreating pizza man that the dressing was missing. "I'll call later for a freebie!" she yelled. Back inside, as the food sat on the kitchen counter, Mom looked closer at the salads. "Oh, I guess the dressing is in there, I couldn't see it in this dim light."
Mom got her small (that is, a Round Table "large") pizza after all, DiGiorno and dad's wallet be damned. Was pizza her plan all along? Did she sabotage the oven setting? Will pizza delivery guy ever return? Find out in the next startling episode of Mom's House On Pizza Night.
In a hospital's Intensive Care Unit, patients always died in the same bed, on Sunday morning, at about 11:00 am , regardless of their medical condition. This puzzled the doctors and some even thought it had something to do with the supernatural. No one could solve the mystery as to why the deaths occurred around 11:00 AM Sunday, so a worldwide team of experts was assembled to investigate the cause of the incidents. The next Sunday morning, a few minutes before 11:00 AM all of the doctors and nurses nervously waited outside the ward to see for themselves what the terrible phenomenon was all about. Some were holding wooden crosses, prayer books, and other holy objects to ward off the evil spirits. Just when the clock struck 11:00 , Pookie Johnson, the part-time Sunday sweeper, entered the ward and unplugged the life support system so he could use the vacuum cleaner.
Still Having a Bad Day????
The average cost of rehabilitating a seal after the Exxon Valdez Oil spill in Alaska was $80,000.00. At a special ceremony, two of the most expensively saved animals were being released back into the wild amid cheers and applause from onlookers. A minute later, in full view, a killer whale ate them both.
Still think you are having a Bad Day????
A woman came home to find her husband in the kitchen shaking frantically, almost in a dancing frenzy, with some kind of wire running from his waist towards the electric kettle. Intending to jolt him away from the deadly current, she whacked him with a handy plank of wood, breaking his arm in two places. Up to that moment, he had been happily listening to his Walkman.
Are Ya OK Now? - No?
Two animal rights defenders were protesting the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn , Germany . Suddenly, all two thousand pigs broke loose and escaped through a broken fence, stampeding madly. The two helpless protesters were trampled to death.
What?? STILL having a Bad Day????
Iraqi terrorist Khay Rahnajet didn't pay enough postage on a letter bomb. It came back with 'Return to Sender' stamped on it. Forgetting it was the bomb, he opened it and was blown to bits.
This song is so moving, it has funny lyrics, yes, but if a person does some research, this "story" actually is quite moving. The way the music flows with its highs and lows, is so moving to me - PLUS Donna sings it with such stirring and powerful emotion that pulls me into it so much, almost as much as Richard Harris did with the original, which I of course, love.
This song, whether or not intended to be a hit, became one because of its phenomenal theatrical structure, melody and unforgettable/memorable lyrics. And the song makes perfect sense if you know what it is to have loved and lost like Jimmy Webb (and Richard Harris) did. "Awful instrumentation"?? You must be out of your mind. This song is and will always be a 20-century classic!!!
As for the metaphor "The cake is melting..... & the icing ...." could possibly be Webb's taking a phrase from one of the poems by English poet, W.H.Auden which included: "My face looks like a cake left out in the rain."
Even if you hate the lyrics, you have to admit that this song has an amazing opening melody!
Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Katherine Hepburn, Butterfly McQueen, Clarence Darrow and Richard Dawkins, what do they have in common? They were (or are, in the case of the only one living) all skeptics of religion, either atheists or agnostics or butterflies. What's more, their quotes are now appearing in buses, courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
“As my ancestors are free from slavery, I am free from the slavery of religion"-Butterfly McQueen
McQueen died in 1995 at age 84 when her clothes caught fire while attempting to light a lantern (the Mock God and Die curse in action once again?). From the flames of an exploding kerosene lamp to the eternal flames of Hell, I suppose, right Christian?
Of course, as usual, freethought free speech brings out the utter hypocrisy (and projection) of the religious fanatic:
Rep. Scott Suder, R-Abbotsford, said FFRF is spreading a message of “hate,” adding the foundation is intolerant of Wisconsinites who believe in God.
“They’re an ultra-fringe wacko organization that is desperately trying to get attention, and I would just encourage people to just ignore them,” Suder said. “No one pays attention to anything they do.”
No one pays attention, except religious wacko Scott Suder, that is. Isn't it interesting that Mr. Suder thinks that simply informing people that not everyone (including some very famous and admired figures) believes in god is the equivalent of "spreading hate". He should join the "hate speech" wackos on the left, as they are his true compatriots in crushing freedom and enslaving minds!
Unscramble an egg? It's an impossible order, it can't be done, except by magic, and there in no real magic in the world, none with the power to turn back the clock, back to that Friday evening in August, the day that I received my new eyeglasses with the blue frames, the day you glanced at the titles of the videos I was about to check-out and said "hmmm", a very friendly "hmmm". I noticed you were no longer wearing a ring, and you finally, after a good number of days, smiled at me and gave me a friendly comment. "At 10:01PM!" you said as I was on my way out, as you handed me the computerized receipt with the date stamp and your name at the very top.
Military prostitution has long been seen around U.S. bases in the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, and other countries. But since the U.S. has begun to deploy forces to many Muslim countries, it cannot be as open about enabling prostitution for its personnel. U.S. military deployments in the Gulf War, the Afghan War, and the Iraq War have reinvigorated prostitution and the trafficking of women in the Middle East.
