quotes

There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
           -- Oscar Levant

The conception of two people living together for twenty-five years without having a cross word suggests a lack of spirit only to be admired in sheep.
           -- Alan Patrick Herbert

I loathe the expression "What makes him tick." It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solution, that uses the foolish expression. A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm.
           -- James Thurber

The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.
           -- Hannah Arendt

Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then--we elected them.
           -- Lily Tomli

After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been removed.
           -- De La Lastra's Law

Those who welcome death have only tried it from the ears up.
           -- Wilson Mizner

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; In practice, there is.
           -- Chuck Reid

Charm is the quality in others that makes us more satisfied with ourselves.
           -- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Actions lie louder than words.
           -- Carolyn Wells

Always get married early in the morning. That way, if it doesn't work out, you haven't wasted a whole day.
           -- Mickey Rooney

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.
           -- Albert Camus

I have long been of the opinion that if work were such a splendid thing the rich would have kept more of it for themselves.
           -- Bruce Grocott

Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.
           -- E. B. White, Some Remarks on Humor, introduction

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
           -- Michel de Montaigne

A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world.
           -- John le Carre

A girl phoned me the other day and said "Come on over, there's nobody home." I went over. Nobody was home.
           -- Rodney Dangerfield

My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.
           -- Ronald Reagan, Said during a radio microphone test, 1984

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.
           -- Galileo Galilei

I have given two cousins to war and I stand ready to sacrifice my wife's brother.
           -- Artemus Ward

No wise man ever wished to be younger.
           -- Jonathan Swift

a charlie brown christmas

In today's encore excerpt - in
December 1965 came A Charlie Brown
Christmas, the most successful special in
television history. In a simple story from
Peanuts' creator Charles Schulz where Charlie
Brown looks for genuine meaning in Christmas
while Snoopy and Lucy revel in its glitter,
the show defied convention by using real
kids' voices, no laugh track, sophisticated
original music and uncluttered graphics:

"No one was more ready than Charles Schulz to
write a parable about commercialism when [his
agent] Lee Mendelson telephoned one Wednesday
in May 1965 to announce that he had just sold
a Christmas show to Coca-Cola. ... He brought
in Bill Melendez, the Disney animator who had
earned Schulz's respect by not Disneyfying
the Peanuts gang ... [by] changing their
essential qualities, either as 'flat'
characters or as his cartoon characters.
...
"[Schulz left] Lee and Bill to audition some
forty-five kids, ages six to nine, then train
the cast of seven principles, some of them
too young to read ... [to deliver] their
lines with startling clarity and feeling.
...
"Schulz loathed the hyena hilarity of canned
merriment and rightly judged that an audience
would not have to be told when and where to
laugh; Mendelson countered that all comedy
shows used such tracks. 'Well, this one
won't,' said [Schulz] firmly. 'Let the people
at home enjoy the show at their own speed, in
their own way.' Then he rose and walked out,
closing the door behind him. ...

"On the subject of scoring and music,
however, Schulz put aside his own tastes ...
[and his producer hired] Grammy Award-winning
composer Vince Guaraldi. The catchy rhythm of
'Linus and Lucy' ... became the centerpiece
of A Charlie Brown Christmas, and
eventually a pop music standard. But it was
the slower, mixed-mood, improvisational
pieces in Guaraldi's jazz suite, especially
'Christmas Time is Here,' that elicited the
unarticulated emotions lying below the
holiday's joyful surface. ...

"Lee and his wife had read Hans Christian
Andersen's 'The Fir Tree' to their children
the previous year, and when he suggested that
the show somehow involve a comparable motif,
[Schulz] seized upon the idea: 'We need a
Charlie-Brown-like tree.' ... [And Schulz]
insisted that the season's true meaning could
be found in the Gospel according to St. Luke,
and they agreed that the show would somehow
work in the Nativity story. ... When the
script was finished in June 1965, Lee
Mendelson made a stand against Linus's
recitation of the Nativity story, insisting
that religion and entertainment did not mix
on television. '[Schulz] just smiled,'
Mendelson later wrote, 'patted me on the
head, and left the room.' ...

"In a screening room at network headquarters
in New York, two CBS vice presidents watched
the show in silence. 'Neither of them laughed
once,' Mendelson recalled. When the lights
came on, the executives shook their heads and
shrugged. 'Well,' said one, 'you gave it a
good try.' 'It seems a little flat,' said the
other. 'Too slow,' said the first, 'and the
script is too innocent.' 'The Bible thing
scares us,' said the other. The animation was
crude - couldn't it be jazzed up a bit? The
voice talent was unprofessional - they should
have used adults. The music didn't fit - who
ever heard of a jazz score on an animated
special? And where were the laughs?"



David Michaelis, Schulz and Peanuts,
Harper Collins, Copyright 2007 by David
Michaelis, pp. 346- 358.

Van Gogh

Why did Van Gogh cut off his ear? 

Vincent van Gogh was a brilliant but emotionally troubled artist who suffered from depression and epileptoid seizures. He spent a particularly prolific and successful year in Arles, France; in October 1888, his friend and fellow painter Paul Gauguin joined him there. After a couple of months, though, the two began arguing. After one particularly bitter quarrel, Gauguin left Arles, and in a fit of anger and remorse, on this date in 1888, Van Gogh sliced off the lower half of his left ear with a razor. Though he was under doctors' care, Van Gogh's turbulent behavior didn't improve. In July 1890, after arguing with one of his physicians, he shot himself in the chest. Van Gogh died two days later. He had produced over a thousand paintings and drawings, but only managed to sell one in his lifetime. 

from answers.com

'Take your time, son. Take your time

Here
Paul Shaffer frantically tries to reach Sammy
Davis, Jr., to select a song and schedule
rehearsal before his appearance on the David
Letterman show:
"Every time I called [Sammy Davis, Jr., to
try and select a song or discuss rehearsal],
he was either
working or sleeping. He never did return my
calls.
The morning of the show I was feeling some
panic. Sammy
was flying in, and we still didn't know what
he wanted to sing.
At 10 a.m., the floor manager said I had a
backstage call. It was
Sammy calling from the plane.

' 'Once in My Life' will be fine, Paul,' he
said. 'Key of E
going into F.'

'Great!' I was relieved.

I was also eager to work out an arrangement.
We whipped
up a chart, nursed it, rehearsed it, and put
it on tape. That way
when Sammy arrived, he could hear it.

Then another backstage call. Sammy's plane
had landed
early, and he was on his way over. When I
greeted him at the
backstage door with a big 'We're thrilled you're
here,' I was a little taken aback. He looked
extremely tired and
frail. He walked with a cane.

'We have an arrangement, Sam. You can
rehearse it with the band.'

'No need, baby. Gotta conserve my energy. I'm
just gonna go
to my room and shower.'

'I wanna make it easy for you. So I'll just
play you
a tape of the arrangement on the boom box.
That way you'll
hear what we've done and tell me if it's
okay.'
'Man, I know the song.'

'I know, Sam,' I said, 'but what if you don't
like the chart?'

'I'll like it, I'll like it.'

'But what if the key's not right?'

'Okay, if you insist.'

I slipped the cassette in the boom box and
hit 'play.' To my
ears, the chart sounded great. Sammy closed
his eyes and, in
Sammy style, nodded his head up and down to
the groove. He
smiled.


'It's swinging, man,' he said, 'but think of
how much more
fun we could have had if I hadn't heard this
tape.'

His words still resonate in my ears; the
notion still haunts
me. Sammy swung that night, but as he was
performing, I
couldn't help thinking that his carefree
feeling about time - as
opposed to my lifelong notion of the pressure
of the
time - was
coming from a higher spiritual plane. As a
musician, I've always
thought I rushed. I still think I rush. The
great players never
rush.




It reminds me of that moment when I watched
Ray Charles
turn to his guitarist, just as the young guy
was about to solo, and
say, 'Take your time, son. Take your time.'
"




Paul Shaffer, We'll Be Here for the Rest
of Our Lives, Flying Dolphin Press,
Copyright 2009 by Paul Shaffer Enterprises,
Inc., pp. 234-235.

quotes

A lot of fellows nowadays have a B.A., M.D., or Ph.D. Unfortunately, they don't have a J.O.B.

-- Fats Domino

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

-- Douglas Adams, "Last Chance to See"

As a matter of principle, I never attend the first annual anything.

-- George Carlin

Everybody hates me because I'm so universally liked.

-- Peter de Vries

J.F.K.--The Man and the Airport
           -- Unknown, Suggested book title

Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
           -- Sir Winston Churchill

I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.
           -- George Best

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
           -- John Kenneth Galbraith

The great tragedy of Science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
           -- Thomas H. Huxley

Everybody tells jokes, but we still need comedians.
           -- Jimmy Wales, Keynote Speech, SXSW 2006

the huddle

In today's encore excerpt - the
football huddle is invented at a college for
the deaf - Gallaudet University in
Washington, DC - as a means of hiding signals
from other deaf teams. It is
institutionalized at the University of
Chicago as a means of bringing control and
Christian fellowship to the game:

"When Gallaudet played nondeaf clubs or
schools, Hubbard merely used hand signals -
American Sign Language - to call a play at
the line of scrimmage, imitating what was
done in football from Harvard to Michigan.
Both teams approached the line of scrimmage.
The signal caller - whether it was the left
halfback or quarterback - barked out the
plays at the line of scrimmage. Nothing was
hidden from the defense. There was no
huddle.

"Hand signals against nondeaf schools gave
Gallaudet an advantage. But other deaf
schools could read [quarterback Paul]
Hubbard's sign language. So, beginning in
1894, Hubbard came up with a plan. He decided
to conceal the signals by gathering his
offensive players in a huddle prior to the
snap of the ball. ... Hubbard's innovation in
1894 worked brilliantly. 'From that point on,
the huddle became a habit during regular
season games,' cites a school history of the
football program. ...

"In 1896, the huddle started showing up on
other college campuses, particularly the
University of Georgia and the University of
Chicago. At Chicago, it was Amos Alonzo
Stagg, the man credited with nurturing
American football into the modern age and
barnstorming across the country to sell the
game, who popularized the use of the huddle
and made the best case for it. ...

"At the time, coaches were not permitted to
send in plays from the sideline. So, while
Stagg clearly understood the benefit of
concealing the signals from the opposition,
he was more interested in the huddle as a way
of introducing far more reaching reforms to
the game. Before becoming a coach, Stagg
wanted to be a minister. At Yale, he was a
divinity student from 1885 to 1889.

"Thoughtful, pious, and righteous, Stagg
brought innovations football as an attempt to
bring a Christian fellowship to the game. He
wanted his players to play under control, to
control the pace, the course, and the conduct
of what had been a game of mass movement that
often broke out into fisticuffs. Stagg viewed
the huddle as a vital aspect of helping to
teach sportsmanship. He viewed the huddle as
a kind of religious congregation on the
field, a place where the players could, if
you will, minister to each other, make a
plan, and promise to keep faith in that plan
and one another."

Sal Palantonio, How Football Explains
America, Triumph, Copyright 2008 by Sal
Palantonio, pp. 38-41.

2012: Beginning of the End or Why the World Won't End?

Remember the Y2K scare? It came and went without much of a whimper because of adequate planning and analysis of the situation. Impressive movie special effects aside, Dec. 21, 2012, won't be the end of the world as we know. It will, however, be another winter solstice.

Much like Y2K, 2012 has been analyzed and the science of the end of the Earth thoroughly studied. Contrary to some of the common beliefs out there, the science behind the end of the world quickly unravels when pinned down to the 2012 timeline. Below, NASA Scientists answer several questions that we're frequently asked regarding 2012.

Question (Q): Are there any threats to the Earth in 2012? Many Internet websites say the world will end in December 2012.
Answer (A): Nothing bad will happen to the Earth in 2012. Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012.

Q: What is the origin of the prediction that the world will end in 2012?
A: The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012. Then these two fables were linked to the end of one of the cycles in the ancient Mayan calendar at the winter solstice in 2012 -- hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21, 2012.

Q: Does the Mayan calendar end in December 2012?
A: Just as the calendar you have on your kitchen wall does not cease to exist after December 31, the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012. This date is the end of the Mayan long-count period but then -- just as your calendar begins again on January 1 -- another long-count period begins for the Mayan calendar.

Q: Could a phenomena occur where planets align in a way that impacts Earth?
A: There are no planetary alignments in the next few decades, Earth will not cross the galactic plane in 2012, and even if these alignments were to occur, their effects on the Earth would be negligible. Each December the Earth and sun align with the approximate center of the Milky Way Galaxy but that is an annual event of no consequence.
Q: Is there a planet or brown dwarf called Nibiru or Planet X or Eris that is approaching the Earth and threatening our planet with widespread destruction?
A: Nibiru and other stories about wayward planets are an Internet hoax. There is no factual basis for these claims. If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth in 2012, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye. Obviously, it does not exist. Eris is real, but it is a dwarf planet similar to Pluto that will remain in the outer solar system; the closest it can come to Earth is about 4 billion miles.

Q: What is the polar shift theory? Is it true that the earth’s crust does a 180-degree rotation around the core in a matter of days if not hours?
A: A reversal in the rotation of Earth is impossible. There are slow movements of the continents (for example Antarctica was near the equator hundreds of millions of years ago), but that is irrelevant to claims of reversal of the rotational poles. However, many of the disaster websites pull a bait-and-shift to fool people. They claim a relationship between the rotation and the magnetic polarity of Earth, which does change irregularly, with a magnetic reversal taking place every 400,000 years on average. As far as we know, such a magnetic reversal doesn’t cause any harm to life on Earth. A magnetic reversal is very unlikely to happen in the next few millennia, anyway.

Q: Is the Earth in danger of being hit by a meteor in 2012?
A: The Earth has always been subject to impacts by comets and asteroids, although big hits are very rare. The last big impact was 65 million years ago, and that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Today NASA astronomers are carrying out a survey called the Spaceguard Survey to find any large near-Earth asteroids long before they hit. We have already determined that there are no threatening asteroids as large as the one that killed the dinosaurs. All this work is done openly with the discoveries posted every day on the NASA NEO Program Office website, so you can see for yourself that nothing is predicted to hit in 2012.

Q: How do NASA scientists feel about claims of pending doomsday?
A: For any claims of disaster or dramatic changes in 2012, where is the science? Where is the evidence? There is none, and for all the fictional assertions, whether they are made in books, movies, documentaries or over the Internet, we cannot change that simple fact. There is no credible evidence for any of the assertions made in support of unusual events taking place in December 2012.

Q: Is there a danger from giant solar storms predicted for 2012?
A: Solar activity has a regular cycle, with peaks approximately every 11 years. Near these activity peaks, solar flares can cause some interruption of satellite communications, although engineers are learning how to build electronics that are protected against most solar storms. But there is no special risk associated with 2012. The next solar maximum will occur in the 2012-2014 time frame and is predicted to be an average solar cycle, no different than previous cycles throughout history.

Addition information concerning 2012 is available on the Web, at:

• NASA Astrobiology Institute: "Nibiru and Doomsday 2012"
• Bad Astronomy: "The Planet X Saga: The Scientific Arguments in a Nutshell"
• Sky and Telescope Magazine: "2012: The Great Scare"

quotes

You can't say that civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.
           -- Will Rogers, New York Times, Dec. 23, 1929

The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.
           -- G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy; p. 14

When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion.
           -- Abraham Lincoln, (attributed)

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.
           -- George Bernard Shaw, Parents and Children (1914) "Children's Happiness"

Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.
           -- Bob Thaves, "Frank and Ernest", 1982


Government is too big and too important to be left to the politicians.
           -- Chester Bowles


Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.
           -- Christopher Morley

A man's respect for law and order exists in precise relationship to the size of his paycheck.
           -- Adam Clayton Powell Jr., "Keep the Faith, Baby!", 1967

I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.
           -- Albert Einstein

Acting is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four.
           -- Katharine Hepburn

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
           -- Voltaire

Traditions are group efforts to keep the unexpected from happening.
           -- Barbara Tober

Thirty years a lawyer- S V V -excerpt

I was a lawyer for thirty years,which,of course is nothing uncommon.But I retired from the profession some years ago,which I proudly claim is rather unusual.Lawyers seldom retire from the profession,except they be struck down with facial paralysis,struck off the rolls by the high court, or are retired from the world altogether.

I have purposely mentioned the case of facial paralysis, because nothing short of that speechless physical calamity can ever reconcile a lawyer to voluntary retirement.And in the case of other disabilities ,such,for instance ,as deafness or blindness , I don't know that there is any statutory or non-statutory power under the law governing lawyers,that can compel the disabled ones to retire from the profession,unless the clients themselves choose to forsake them.
But then they are still lawyers.

excerpt from three men and a maid - wodehouse

The year 1921, it will be remembered, was a trying one for the

inhabitants of the United States. Every boat that arrived from England
brought a fresh swarm of British lecturers to the country. Novelists,
poets, scientists, philosophers, and plain, ordinary bores; some herd
instinct seemed to affect them all simultaneously. It was like one of
those great race movements of the Middle Ages. Men and women of widely
differing views on religion, art, politics, and almost every other
subject; on this one point the intellectuals of Great Britain were
single-minded, that there was easy money to be picked up on the lecture
platforms of America and that they might just as well grab it as the
next person.

a book dedication by Wodehouse

 Dear Bill
But For Whose Sympathy and Encouragement
This Book
Would Never Have Been Written
I have never been much of a lad for thetype of dedication.
It sounds so weak-minded. But in the case of Love
Among the Chickens it is unavoidable. It was not so much that you
sympathised and encouraged--where you really came out strong was that
you gave me the stuff. I like people who sympathise with me. I am
grateful to those who encourage me. But the man to whom I raise the
Wodehouse hat--owing to the increased cost of living, the same old
brown one I had last year--it is being complained of on all sides, but
the public must bear it like men till the straw hat season comes
round--I say, the man to whom I raise this venerable relic is the man
who gives me the material.
Sixteen years ago, my William, when we were young and spritely lads;
when you were a tricky centre-forward and I a fast bowler; when your
head was covered with hair and my list of "Hobbies" in Who's Who
included Boxing; I received from you one morning about thirty closelywritten
foolscap pages, giving me the details of your friend -----'s
adventures on his Devonshire chicken farm. Round these I wove as funny
a plot as I could, but the book stands or falls by the stuff you gave
me about "Ukridge"--the things that actually happened.
You will notice that I have practically re-written the book. There was
some pretty bad work in it, and it had "dated." As an instance of the
way in which the march of modern civilisation has left the 1906
edition behind, I may mention that on page twenty-one I was able to
make Ukridge speak of selling eggs at six for fivepence!
Yours ever,
P. G. WODEHOUSE
London, 1920.

quotes 13/12/09

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
           -- Mark Twain

Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
           -- Redd Foxx

Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
           -- Bernard Berenson

Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff.
           -- Frank Zappa

It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.
           -- W. Somerset Maugham

Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
           -- Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband, 1893, Act I

There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is in having lots to do and not doing it.
           -- Mary Wilson Little

In heaven all the interesting people are missing.
           -- Friedrich Nietzsche

when you thought i was not watching

A message every adult should read because children
are watching you and doing as you do, not as you say.

When you thought I wasn't looking I saw you hang my
first painting on the refrigerator, and I immediately
wanted to paint another one.

When you thought I wasn't looking I saw you feed a
stray cat, and I learned that it was good to be kind
to animals.

When you thought I wasn't looking I saw you make my
 favorite cake for me, and I learned that the little
things can be the special things in life.

When you thought I wasn't looking I heard you say a
prayer, and I knew that there is a God I could always
talk to, and I learned to trust in Him.

When you thought I wasn't looking I saw you make a
meal and take it to a friend who was sick, and I
learned that we all have to help take care of each other.

When you thought I wasn't looking I saw you take care
of our house and everyone in it, and I learned we have
to take care of what we are given.

When you thought I wasn't looking I saw how you
handled your responsibilities, even when you didn't
feel good, and I learned that I would have to be
responsible when I grow up.

When you thought I wasn't looking I saw tears come
from your eyes, and I learned that sometimes things
hurt, but it's all right to cry.

When you thought I wasn't looking I saw that you
cared, and I wanted to be everything that I could be.

When you thought I wasn't looking I learned most of
life's lessons that I need to know to be a good and
productive person when I grow up.

When you thought I wasn't looking I looked at you
and wanted to say, 'Thanks for all the things I saw
when you thought I wasn't looking'

quotes

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
           -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
           -- Horace Walpole

Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he's buying.
           -- Fran Lebowitz

I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.
           -- Rita Rudner

There are more pleasant things to do than beat up people.
           -- Muhammad Ali



Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.
           -- Bertrand Russell, Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 1

Rational arguments don't usually work on religious people. Otherwise, there wouldn't be religious people.
           -- Doris Egan, House M.D., The Right Stuff, 2007

what a letter!

A 98 year old woman in the UK wrote this to her bank. The bank manager
thought it amusing enough to have it published in the Times.
  
Dear Sir,

I am writing to thank you for bouncing my cheque with which I
endeavoured to pay my plumber last month. By my calculations, three
nanoseconds must have elapsed between his presenting the cheque and the
arrival in my account of the funds needed to honor it. I refer, of
course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my Pension, an arrangement,
which, I admit, has been in place for only thirty eight years. You are
to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity, and also
for debiting my account £30 by way of penalty for the inconvenience
caused to your bank.

My thankfulness springs from the manner in which this incident has
caused me to rethink my errant financial ways. I noticed that whereas I
personally attend to your telephone calls and letters, when I try to
contact you, I am confronted by the impersonal, overcharging,
pre-recorded, faceless entity which your bank has become.  From now on,
I, like you, choose only to deal with a flesh-and-blood person.

My mortgage and loan payments will therefore and hereafter no longer be
automatic, but will arrive at your bank by cheque, addressed personally
and confidentially to an employee at your bank whom you must
nominate. Be aware that it is an offense under the Postal Act for any
other person to open such an envelope.






Please find attached an Application Contact Status which I require your
chosen employee to complete. I am sorry it runs to eight pages, but in
order that I know as much about him or her as your bank knows about me,
there is no alternative. Please note that all copies of his or her
medical history must be countersigned by a Solicitor, and the mandatory
details of his/her financial situation (income, debts, assets and
liabilities) must be accompanied by documented proof.

In due course, I will issue your employee with PIN number which he/she
must quote in dealings with me. I regret that it cannot be shorter than
28 digits but, again, I have modelled it on the number of button presses
required of me to access my account balance on your phone bank service.
As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Let me level the playing field even further. When you call me, press
buttons as follows:

1. To make an appointment to see me.
2. To query a missing payment.
3. To transfer the call to my living room in case I am there.
4. To transfer the call to my bedroom in case I am sleeping.
5. To transfer the call to my toilet in case I am attending to nature.
6. To transfer the call to my mobile phone if I am not at home.
7. To leave a message on my computer (a password to access my computer
is required. A password will be communicated to you at a later date to
the Authorized Contact.)
8. To return to the main menu and to listen to options 1 through to 8.
9.  To make a general complaint or inquiry, the contact will then be put
on hold, pending the attention of my automated answering service. While
this may, on occasion, involve a lengthy wait, uplifting music will play
for the duration of the call.

Regrettably, but again following your example, I must also levy an
establishment fee to cover the setting up of this new arrangement.

May I wish you a happy, if ever so slightly less prosperous, New Year.


Your Humble Client

"Self Appraisal"

A little boy went into a drug store, reached for a soda carton and pulled it
over to the telephone. He climbed onto the carton so that he could reach the
buttons on the phone and proceeded to punch in seven digits (phone numbers).

The store-owner observed and listened to the conversation:

Boy: "Lady, Can you give me the job of cutting your lawn?

Woman: (at the other end of the phone line): "I already have someone to cut
my lawn."

Boy: "Lady, I will cut your lawn for half the price of the person who cuts
your lawn now."

Woman: I'm very satisfied with the person who is presently cutting my lawn.
Boy: (with more perseverance) : "Lady, I'll even sweep your house and your
sidewalk, so on Sunday you will have the prettiest lawn in all of Palm beach, Florida."

Woman: No, thank you.

With a smile on his face, the little boy replaced the receiver. The
store-owner, who was listening to all this, walked over to the boy.
Store Owner: "Son... I like your attitude; I like that positive spirit and
would like to offer you a job."

Boy: "No thanks,

Store Owner: But you were really pleading for one.

Boy: No Sir, I was just checking my performance at the job I already have. I
am the one who is working for that lady I was talking to!"

This is what we call "Self Appraisal"

Le Grande Thanksgiving By Art Buchwald

This confidential column was leaked to me by a high government official in the Plymouth colony on the condition that I not reveal his name.
One of our most important holidays is Thanksgiving Day, known in France as le Jour de Merci Donnant .
Le Jour de Merci Donnant was first started by a group of Pilgrims ( Pelerins ) who fled from l'Angleterre before the McCarran Act to found a colony in the New World ( le Nouveau Monde ) where they could shoot Indians ( les Peaux-Rouges ) and eat turkey ( dinde ) to their hearts' content.
They landed at a place called Plymouth (now a famous voiture Americaine ) in a wooden sailing ship called the Mayflower (or Fleur de Mai ) in 1620. But while the Pelerins were killing the dindes, the Peaux-Rouges were killing the Pelerins, and there were several hard winters ahead for both of them. The only way the Peaux-Rouges helped the Pelerins was when they taught them to grow corn ( mais ). The reason they did this was because they liked corn with their Pelerins.
In 1623, after another harsh year, the Pelerins' crops were so good that they decided to have a celebration and give thanks because more mais was raised by the Pelerins than Pelerins were killed by Peaux-Rouges.
Every year on the Jour de Merci Donnant, parents tell their children an amusing story about the first celebration.
It concerns a brave capitaine named Miles Standish (known in France as Kilometres Deboutish) and a young, shy lieutenant named Jean Alden. Both of them were in love with a flower of Plymouth called Priscilla Mullens (no translation). The vieux capitaine said to the jeune lieutenant :
"Go to the damsel Priscilla ( allez tres vite chez Priscilla), the loveliest maiden of Plymouth ( la plus jolie demoiselle de Plymouth). Say that a blunt old captain, a man not of words but of action ( un vieux Fanfan la Tulipe ), offers his hand and his heart, the hand and heart of a soldier. Not in these words, you know, but this, in short, is my meaning.
"I am a maker of war ( je suis un fabricant de la guerre ) and not a maker of phrases. You, bred as a scholar ( vous, qui tes pain comme un tudiant ), can say it in elegant language, such as you read in your books of the pleadings and wooings of lovers, such as you think best adapted to win the heart of the maiden."
Although Jean was fit to be tied ( convenable tre emballe ), friendship prevailed over love and he went to his duty. But instead of using elegant language, he blurted out his mission. Priscilla was muted with amazement and sorrow ( rendue muette par l'tonnement et las tristesse ).
At length she exclaimed, interrupting the ominous silence: "If the great captain of Plymouth is so very eager to wed me, why does he not come himself and take the trouble to woo me?" ( Ou est-il, le vieux Kilometres? Pourquoi ne vient-il pas aupres de moi pour tenter sa chance ?)
Jean said that Kilometres Deboutish was very busy and didn't have time for those things. He staggered on, telling what a wonderful husband Kilometres would make. Finally Priscilla arched her eyebrows and said in a tremulous voice, "Why don't you speak for yourself, Jean?" ( Chacun a son gout. )
And so, on the fourth Thursday in November, American families sit down at a large table brimming with tasty dishes and, for the only time during the year, eat better than the French do.
No one can deny that le Jour de Merci Donnant is a grande fte and no matter how well fed American families are, they never forget to give thanks to Kilometres Deboutish, who made this great day possible.

Wodehouse and photographers

I look in my glass, dear reader, and what do I see? Nothing so
frightfully hot, believe me. The face is slablike, the ears are large
and fastened on at right-angles. Above the eyebrows comes a stagnant
sea of bald forehead, stretching away into the distance with nothing
to relieve it but a few wisps of lonely hair. The nose is blobby, the
eyes dull, like those of a fish not in the best of health. A face, in
short, taking it for all in all, which should be reserved for the gaze
of my nearest and dearest who, through long habit, have got used to it
and can see through to the pure white soul beneath. At any rate, a
face not to be scattered about at random and come upon suddenly by
nervous people and invalids.
And yet, just because I am an author, I have to keep on being
photographed. It is the fault of publishers and editors, of course,
really, but it is the photographer who comes in for the author's hate.
Something has got to be done about this practice of publishing
authors' photographs. We have to submit to it, because editors and
publishers insist. They have an extraordinary superstition that it
helps an author's sales. The idea is that the public sees the
photograph, pauses spell-bound for an instant, and then with a cry of
ecstasy rushes off to the book-shop and buys copy after copy of the
gargoyle's latest novel.
Of course, in practice, it works out just the other way. People read a
review of an author's book and are told that it throbs with a passion
so intense as almost to be painful, and are on the point of digging
seven-and-sixpence out of their child's money-box to secure a copy,
when their eyes fall on the man's photograph at the side of the
review, and they find that he has a face like a rabbit and wears
spectacles and a low collar. And this man is the man who is said to
have laid bare the soul of a woman as with a scalpel.
Naturally their faith is shaken. They feel that a man like that cannot
possibly know anything about Woman or any other subject except where
to go for a vegetarian lunch, and the next moment they have put down
the hair-pin and the child is seven-and-six in hand and the author his
ten per cent., or whatever it is, to the bad. And all because of a
photograph.
For the ordinary man, the recent introduction of high-art methods into
photography has done much to diminish the unpleasantness of the
operation. In the old days of crude and direct posing, there was no
escape for the sitter. He had to stand up, backed by a rustic stile
and a flabby canvas sheet covered with exotic trees, glaring straight
into the camera. To prevent any eleventh-hour retreat, a sort of spiky
thing was shoved firmly into the back of his head leaving him with the
choice of being taken as he stood or having an inch of steel jabbed
into his skull. Modern methods have changed all that.
There are no photographs nowadays. Only "camera portraits" and "lens
impressions." The full face has been abolished. The ideal of the
present-day photographer is to eliminate the sitter as far as possible
and concentrate on a general cloudy effect. I have in my possession
two studies of my Uncle Theodore--one taken in the early 'nineties,
the other in the present year. The first shows him, evidently in pain,
staring before him with a fixed expression. In his right hand he
grasps a scroll. His left rests on a moss-covered wall. Two sea-gulls
are flying against a stormy sky.
As a likeness, it is almost brutally exact. My uncle stands forever
condemned as the wearer of a made-up tie.
The second is different in every respect. Not only has the sitter been
taken in the popular modern "one-twentieth face," showing only the
back of the head, the left ear and what is either a pimple or a flaw
in the print, but the whole thing is plunged in the deepest shadow. It
is as if my uncle had been surprised by the camera while chasing a
black cat in his coal-cellar on a moonlight night. There is no
question as to which of the two makes the more attractive picture. My
family resemble me in that respect. The less you see of us, the better
we look.

quotes 8 dec '09

Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution yet.
           -- Mae West

Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.
           -- Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea (1938) "Vendredi"

Autobiography is an unrivaled vehicle for telling the truth about other people.
           -- Philip Guedalla


I enjoy being a highly overpaid actor.
           -- Roger Moore

Time is that quality of nature which keeps events from happening all at once. Lately it doesn't seem to be working.
           -- Anonymous

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
           -- Jack London
Idleness is not doing nothing. Idleness is being free to do anything.
           -- Floyd Dell

My pessimism extends to the point of even suspecting the sincerity of the pessimists.
           -- Jean Rostand, Journal of a Character, 1931

What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn't come every day.
           -- George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, Act 2

wodehouse - excerpts

Corky was one of the artists. A portrait-painter, he called himself,
but he hadn't painted any portraits. He was sitting on the side-lines
with a blanket over his shoulders, waiting for a chance to get into the

game. You see, the catch about portrait-painting--I've looked into the
thing a bit--is that you can't start painting portraits till people
come along and ask you to, and they won't come and ask you to until
you've painted a lot first. This makes it kind of difficult for a
chappie.

Now, a great many fellows think that having a rich uncle is a pretty
soft snap: but, according to Corky, such is not the case. Corky's uncle
was a robust sort of cove, who looked like living for ever. He was
fifty-one, and it seemed as if he might go to par. It was not this,
however, that distressed poor old Corky, for he was not bigoted and had
no objection to the man going on living. What Corky kicked at was the
way the above Worple used to harry him.
Corky's uncle, you see, didn't want him to be an artist. He didn't
think he had any talent in that direction. He was always urging him to
chuck Art and go into the jute business and start at the bottom and
work his way up. Jute had apparently become a sort of obsession with
him. He seemed to attach almost a spiritual importance to it. And what
Corky said was that, while he didn't know what they did at the bottom
of the jute business, instinct told him that it was something too
beastly for words. Corky, moreover, believed in his future as an
artist. Some day, he said, he was going to make a hit. Meanwhile, by
using the utmost tact and persuasiveness, he was inducing his uncle to
cough up very grudgingly a small quarterly allowance.

He wouldn't have got this if his uncle hadn't had a hobby. Mr. Worple
was peculiar in this respect. As a rule, from what I've observed, the
American captain of industry doesn't do anything out of business hours.
When he has put the cat out and locked up the office for the night, he
just relapses into a state of coma from which he emerges only to start
being a captain of industry again. But Mr. Worple in his spare time was
what is known as an ornithologist. He had written a book called
_American Birds_, and was writing another, to be called _More
American Birds_. When he had finished that, the presumption was that
he would begin a third, and keep on till the supply of American birds
gave out. Corky used to go to him about once every three months and let
him talk about American birds. Apparently you could do what you liked

with old Worple if you gave him his head first on his pet subject, so
these little chats used to make Corky's allowance all right for the
time being. But it was pretty rotten for the poor chap. There was the
frightful suspense, you see, and, apart from that, birds, except when
broiled and in the society of a cold bottle, bored him stiff.
To complete the character-study of Mr. Worple, he was a man of
extremely uncertain temper, and his general tendency was to think that
Corky was a poor chump and that whatever step he took in any direction
on his own account, was just another proof of his innate idiocy. I
should imagine Jeeves feels very much the same about me.