go to school.

"Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it'll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it'll fit and, maybe, what it won't. Ater a while, you'll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particluar size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don't suit you, aren't becoming to you. You'l begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly."

So go to school, you little peoples of the world. Go to some goddamn school.

All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.

commaless

1. Though controversial subliminal learning appeals to many people.

2. Using specially prepared tape recorders communicate hidden messages to listeners.

2.5. Some people who want to learn supposedly without effort by listening to the tape.

3. To prevent shoplifting twenty major department stores started using subliminal tapes.

4. Of the twenty nine reported pilferage had decreased by about 37 percent.

5. Many people worrry that governments or businesses might use subliminal learning to control people against their will.

Knock yourselves out.

Live humbly.

Then he came back and sat down with the paper in his hand. "Oddly enough, this wasn't written by a practicing poet. It was written by a psychoanalyst name Wilhelm Stekel. Here's what he- Are you still with me?"
"Yes, sure I am."
"Here's what he said: 'The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.' "

O the rest.

and then I searched it online and found the poem in its entirety. O, the wonder.

Some say that love's a little boy,
And some say it's a bird,
Some say it makes the world go round,
And some say that's absurd,
And when I asked the man next-door,
Who looked as if he knew,
His wife got very cross indeed,
And said it wouldn't do.

Does it look like a pair of pajamas,
Or the ham in a temperance hotel?
Does it's odour remind one of llamas,
Or has it a comforting smell?
Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is,
Or soft as eiderdown fluff?
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
O tell me the truth about love.

Our history books refer to it
In cryptic little notes,
It's quite a common topic on
The Transatlantic boats;
I've found the subject mentioned in
Accounts of suicides,
And even seen it scribbled on
The backs of railway-guides.

Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian,
Or boom like a military band?
Could one give a first-rate imitation
On a saw or a Steinway Grand?
Is its singing at parties a riot?
Does it only like Classical stuff?
Will it stop when one wants to be quiet?
O tell me the truth about love.

I looked inside the summer-house;
it wasn't ever there:
I tried the Thames at Maidenhead,
And Brighton's bracing air.
I don't know what the blackbird sang,
Or what the tulip said;
But it wasn't in the chicken-run,
Or underneath the bed.

Can it pull extraordinary faces?
Is it usually sick on a swing?
Does it spend all it's time at the races,
Or fiddling with pieces of string?
Has it views of it's own about money?
Does it think Patriotism enough?
Are its stories vulgar but funny?
O tell me the truth about love.

O do tell!

When it comes, will it come without warning
Just as I'm picking my nose?
Will it knock on my door in the morning,
Or tread in the bus on my shoes?
Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.

W.H. Auden

Kathy

I know that I am like the rain
There but for the grace of you go I.

goddamn Actors

In the first place, I hate actors. They never act like people. They just think they do. Some of the good ones do, in a very slight way, but not in a way that's fun to watch. And if any actor's really good, you can always tell he knows he's good, and that spoils it.

Todah!

Katuv, sheBesha'at HaDchak, efshar lismoch al Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai.

Boy, am I glad he's coming around...

on Relig.

Utopus (founder of Utopia) made this law*, not only to preserve the peace, which he saw being completely destroyed by endless disputes and implacable feuds, but also because he thought it was in the best interests of religion itself. He didn't' presume to say which creed was right. Apparently he considered it possible that God made different people believe different things, because He wanted to be worshiped in many different ways. But he was evidently quite certain that it was stupid and arrogant to bully everyone else into adopting one's own particular creed. It seemed to him perfectly obvious that , even if there only one true religion, and all the rest were nonsense, truth would eventually prevail of its own accord- as long as the matter was discussed calmly and reasonably. But if it was decided by force of arms, the best and most spiritual type of religion would go down before the silliest forms of superstition, just as corn is liable to be overgrown by thorns and brambles- for the worst people are always the most obstinate.

*So immediately after his victory he made a law, by which everyone was free to practise what religion he liked, and to try and convert other people to his own faith, provided he did it it quitetly and politely, by rational argument. But, if he failed to convince them, he was not allowed to make bitter attacks on other religions, nor to employ violence or personal abuse.

ahhhh. yummmm.

There are three ways to bring unity between two opposites:

The first is by introducing a power that transcends both of them and to which they both utterly surrender their entire being. They are then at peace with each other because they are both under the influence of the same force. But their being is not at peace -- their being is simply ignored.

The second way is by finding a middle ground where the two beings meet. The two are at peace where they meet on that middle ground -- but the rest of their territory remains apart and distant.

The third way is to reveal that the essence of every aspect of the two beings is one and the same.

"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who matter don't mind and those who mind don't matter!"

tx SILAWIP, for not minding.

There was peace.

First there was One. There was no peace, because there was nothing with which to make peace. There was only One.

Then there was Two. There was Plurality. From this point on, an infinite cacophony of conflict extended in all directions and forever.

And on the third day G-d created peace.Peace is not homogeneity. Peace does not mean that everyone thinks the same way. Peace is when there is plurality that finds a higher Oneness.

-Daily Dose of Wisdom:)

to Constitutional Law

They have very few laws, because, with their social system, very few laws are required. Indeed, one of their great complaints against other countries is that, although they've already got books and books of laws and interpretations of laws, they never seem to have enough. For, according to the Utopians, it's quite unjust for anyone to be bound by a legal code which is too long for an ordinary person to read right through, or too difficult for him to understand.

What's more, they have no barristers to be over-ingenious about individual cases and point of law. They think it better for each man to plead his own cause, and tell the judge the same story as he'd otherwise tell his lawyer. Under such conditions, the point at issue is less likey to be obscured, and it's easier to get at the truth- for, if nobody's telling the sort of lies that one learns from lawyers, the judge can aply all his shrwedness to weighing the facts aof the case, and protecting simple-minded characters aginst the unscrupulous attacks of clever ones.

This arrangement wouldn't work very well in other countries, because there's such a mass of complicated legislation to deal with. But in Utopia everyone's a legal expert, for the simple reason that they are, as I said, very few laws, and the crudest interpretation is always assumed to be the best one. They say the only purpose of a law is to remind people what they ought to do, so the more ingenious the interpretation, the less effective the law, since proportionately fewer people will understand it- whereas the simple and obvious meaning stares everyone in the face.

Respect, respect.

Talking of respect, isn't it equally idiotic to attach such importance to a lot of empty gestures which do nobody any good? For what real pleasure can you get out of the sight of a bared head or a bent knee? Will it cure the rheumatism in you own knee, or make you any less weak in the head?

Of ourse, the great believers in this type of artificial pleasure are those who pride themselves on their 'nobility'. Nowadays that merely means tghat they happen to belong to a family which has been rich for several generations, preferably in landed property. And yet they feel every bit as 'noble' even if they've failed to inherit any of the said property, or if they have inherited it and then frittered it all away.

re: Jah?

On the other hand... it could just be the taste.

Yes, I finally sat at the other end of the car, so I could see the rest of the ad:')

Pascal's Wager

Pascal's Wager is the application by the French philosopher, Blaise Pascal, of decision theory to the belief in God.

If you care, you'll wiki it. if you don't, you'll burn:/

on History

Leonardo Bruni

First amongst such studies I place History: a subject which must not on any account be neglected by one who aspires to true cultivation. For it is our duty to understand the origins of our own history and its development; and the achievements of Peoples and of Kings.

For the careful study of the past enlarges our foresight in contemporary affairs and affords to citizens and to monarchs lessons of incitement or warning in the ordering of public policy. From History, also, we draw our store of examples of moral precepts.

In the monuments of ancient literature which have come down to us History holds a position fo great distinction. We specially prize such [Roman] authors as Livy, Sallust and Curtius*; and, prhaps even above these, Julius Caesar; teh style of wohse Commentaries, so elegant and so limpid (I love that wordddd), entitles them to our warm admiration...

*Curtius Rufus, a Roman historian and rhetorician of the mid-first century A,D., composed a biography of Alexander the Great.

on Learning and Literature

by Leonardo Bruni
a Florentine Humanist

The foundation osf all true learning must be laid in the sound and thorough knowledge of Latin, which implies study marked by a broad spirt, accurate scholarship, and careful attention to details.

To attain this essential knowledge we must never relax our carful attenion to teh grammar of the language, but perpetually confirm and extend our acquaintance with it until it is thorughly our own...to this end we must be supremely careful in our choice of authors, lest an inartistic and debased style infect our own writing and degrade our taste...

An actuary can tell you how many people will die from a certain disease in a certain amount of time. Italian actuaries can tell you which ones.

hulking behemoth

"Questions? Comment? Hysteria?"
Professor History

"... just as the curses of well-spoken persons count for more than those of the customarily foul-mouthed do."
Writer's Handbook

"You are not post modern. You need to write things in order, first things first, then second, then third, then fourth."
Professor English

Skates.

One thing about packing depressed me a little. I had to pack these brand-new ice skates my mother had practcially just sent me a couple of days before. That depressed me. I could see my mother going in Spaulding's and asking the salesman a million dopy questions- and here I was getting the ax again. It made me feel pretty sad. She bought me the wrong kind of skates- I wanted racing skates and she bought me hockey- but it made me sad anyways.

Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad.

who's this GOD again?

Two little OT kids got a playful smirk from me when they realized that I noticed one was trying to keep the other from ripping leaves of the barely green bushes on Crown. The do gooder looked up at me with the hugest eyes and said, "God's looking, right?"

Listen, at this point, I just hope He is.

in Ode to a reader

by Camus
excerpt from The Plague that struck a chord:)

"...None of us was capable any longer of an exalted emotion; all had trite monotonous feelings. "It's high time it stopped," people would say, because in time of calamity the obvious thing is to desire its end. But when making such remarks, we felt none of the passionate yearning or fierce resentment of the early phase; we merely voiced one of the few clear ideas that lingered in the twilight of our minds. The furious revolt of the first weeks had given place to a vast despondency, not to be taken for resignation, though it was none the less a sort of passive and provisional acquiescence.

"Our fellow citizens had fallen into line, adapted themselves, as people say, to the situation, because there was no way of doing otherwise. Naturally they retained the attitudes of sadness and suffering, but they had ceased to feel their sting. Indeed, to some, Dr, Rieux among them, this precisely was the most disheartening thing: that the habit of despair is worse than despair itself."

-The Plague

obedience.

"[I]t is only the person dwelling in isolation who is not forced to respond with defiance or submission, to the commands of others."

-Stanley Milgram
The Milgrim Experiment

The Destruction of Tenochtitlan

"...so great was the bloodshed that rivers of blood ran through the courtyard like water in a heavy rain. So great was the slime of blood and entrails in the courtyard and so great was the stench that it was both terrifying and heartrending. Now that nearly all were fallen and dead, the Spaniards went searching for those who had climbed up the temple and thos who had hidden among the dead, killing all those they found alive..."

excerpt from an account of the brutal destruction of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan from the native perspective.
by Bernardino de Sahagun

Jah?

Maybe people like Jameson because the ads give you something to stare at on the train whn you don't know where to look.

Maybe because whiskey is the nectar of the gods. Right after wine and milk and maybe honey.

Maybe because "nextroundonme" is easier to understand than "standclearclosindoorsplease."

say wha?

When is G-d?

G-d is found at two poles of Time. He is found outside Time and beyond. And He is found here within the moment now.

From that point beyond, G-d looks within and says, "From this, I will have delight." And from that choice, all things, past and future, are made.

Here's what I want to know:





.

occupied

like octupus?