Making Widows Wince

The Lords Prayer translated from Aramaic into English, rather than from Aramaic to Greek to Latin to English O cosmic Birther of all radiance and vibration! Soften the ground of our being and carve out a space within us where Your Presence can abide. Fill us with your creativity so that we may be empowered to bear the fruit of your mission. Let each of our actions bear fruit in accordance with our desire. Endow us with the wisdom to produce and share what each being needs to grow and flourish. Untie the tangled threads of destiny that bind us, as we release others from the entanglement of past mistakes. Do not let us be seduced by that which would divert us from our true purpose, but illuminate the opportunities of the present moment. For you are the round and the fruitful vision, the birth-power and fulfillment, as all is gathered and made whole once again. <<< more words The Lord's Prayer in Late Modern English, Book of Common Prayer, 1928 ...

"One rule to follow when evaluating the news stories being pushed onto us by the media: If it's spectacular, world-shaking, and has the capacity to significantly alter the course of your life even though you live thousands of miles away from where it happened, then it's probably bullshit. Whenever you hear about some really big, truly world-changing phenomenon, then it is usually speculation, bullshit speculation meant to get you to stick around through the commercial break. (…) The media has calculated that people are dumb and easily tricked. Push the right buttons and you have yourself a loyal audience. Missing little kid, serial killer, robbery on video, live police chase, natural disaster, cute animal story, big panic story. Over and over again. People never get tired of it. Sell them something big to panic about and you will insert urgency in their lives, something to do, something to buy, some excuse to call or email their kids. None of it has to make sense provid...

The young don't feel any great need to wait for the Walk sign before they cross the street. They feel invulnerable. Over time, you better appreciate the consequences of each action. You see people get burned, you see friends fall apart, you go to a few heartbreaking funerals. You begin to realize that survival requires cunning, and as a hedge, as part of a long-term strategy for improving your odds, you wait on the corner until you get the signal to walk. -Joel Achenbach He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it. -Douglas Adams Ignorance of your profession is best concealed by solemnity and silence, which pass for profound knowledge upon the generality of mankind. -"Advice to Officers of the British Army", 1783 Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats. -Howard Aiken Well, he's not psyc...

One year after Hurricane Katrina I stopped in Slidell La. to eat a tasty meal with a refreshing beverage on a killer hot day. Since my sister had lived there in the nineties for a few years, I’d got a couple of names from her in advance – a menu of possibilities, mostly fishy, jambalaya kind of food. Not only were the restaurants she had recommended no longer there – some of the roads mentioned as landmarks for me were gone as well. I ended up at a crowded Carl’s Jr. drive thru right off the freeway. That was some fucking storm. While staying in an upscale hotel near the new Denver airport last week We decided to put the feedbag on and checked with the concierge (desk clerk) for a few good local ideas. With the supplied handy, preprinted map and a rental car, we picked a few choices and headed out to eat. The map was not to scale, but otherwise clear and labeled with individual eating places. All of the big names in off freeway dining – Applebee’s ’, Ruby Tuesday ’s, etc. wer...

People celebrating earth day is like a cancerous tumor giving thanks for the physics of blood transport. As we speed though our lives, and all living things around us, in a semi-uncontrolled frenzy of rape and pillage, at times, apologists among us make the small gestures that placate individuals in small intimate ways.– this is Earth Day -- let's do the sympanthy dance on it. I have a hard time seeing us as anything thing less than a conscious blight on the earth, with only the curse of our best of intentions towards it as long as the lights don’t get too dim and it doesn’t cost more than talk.

"It is always pitiful when any human being falls into a condition hardly more respectable than that of an animal. How much more pitiful it is when the person who falls has had all the advantages!" Kilgore Trout An Alabama congressman told local officials this week that he's worried about the number of socialists in Congress, and he put the number already there at 17. "Some of the men and women I work with in Congress are socialists," Rep. Spencer Bachus, the top Republican on the Financial Services Committee, said at a breakfast with city and county officials. The congressman made his comment on the heels of a Rasmussen poll that found 53 percent of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism , 20 percent favor socialism and 27 percent were not sure which is better. You can tell by the way Bachus says it that he feels he's pointing out a bad thing to sic the dogs on -- you, the public, being the dogs. I picture him beaming and proud,...

Love She tries it on, like a dress. She decides it doesn’t fit and starts to take it off. Her skin comes, too. El Amor y La Mujer Se lo prueba, como si fuera un vestido. Decide que no le queda, Y empieza a quitarselo. Su piel se desprende, tambien. Lola Haskins (2017 ed. -- I like this very much)

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090408-715806.html A Food and Drug Administration panel said Wednesday that AstraZeneca PLC's (AZN) Seroquel could be used as add-on therapy for patients with depression but said the drug shouldn't be used alone because of concerns about side effects. The FDA called a meeting of its psychopharmacologic advisory panel to discuss "concerns regarding exposing a greatly expanded population to a drug with known metabolic side effects and a possible risk of tardive dyskinesia ," a neurologic disorder that can be caused by drug exposure. The company is facing more than 9,000 lawsuits in the U.S. from people who allege the drug caused various health problems such as diabetes . This is another schizophrenic drug now approved for severe depression. The public needs to know that these drugs do not have the 'normal' side effects of anti-depressants -- prolonged ejaculation, dry mouth etc. When you see a crazy man walking...

"One of the biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract. I said, 'Wait - you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it? Who the f**k made that rule? Trent Reznor NIN "In the 17th century, when groups of men plundered the seas in ships filled with rats and scurvy, they agreed on a code to keep themselves civilly uncivil. I propose the same for BitTorrent . My code isn't necessarily the code for everyone. But it is the code for my ship, my computer, my slow-ass DSL connection that can't steal anything worth a damn anyway. Here is the code that I live by. Article One Every man shall upload half of what he downloads, with the saints filling in the rest. It's like tossing back a tiny fish so that it may grow into a great whale...only so we can hunt said whale and feast on its blubber during a later voyage. Article Two TV is to be downloaded, movies are to be at...

"It's not just the copulation. It is the whole understanding that we are irresistibly attracted to one another, and we have to deal with this. We are irresistibly lonely for each other, and we have to deal with this, and we have to deal with our bodies and with our hearts and souls and minds, and it's an urgent appetite." L. Cohen ...And jesus was a sailor When he walked upon the water And he spent a long time watching From his lonely wooden tower And when he knew for certain Only drowning men could see him He said all men will be sailors then Until the sea shall free them But he himself was broken Long before the sky would open Forsaken, almost human He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone... L. Cohen

--> "Il y a un peu de testicule au fond de nos sentiments les plus sublimes et de notre tendresse la plus épurée" Denis Diderot --> I have mentioned to people over the years that St. Paul – the one buried under the big house in Rome – was, basically, a used donkey salesman who successfully packaged and sold Christianity to the masses. This article expands on that image – making it pretty and businesslike, but still at heart, the story of a driven sales guy who could have sold hearing aides to the blind, but decided to go non-profit. And, this is a real eye opener, Jesus was not really all that nice – it was just revisionist religion and good lighting for the advertisements that allowed him to become less ethnic and more airbrushed and savior like -- much like Leaf Garrett.

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. Albert Camus “The term Walkabout comes from the Australian Aboriginal. The idea is that a person can get so caught up in one’s work, obligations and duties that the truly important parts of one’s self become lost. From there it is a downward spiral as one gets farther and farther from the true self. A crisis situation usually develops that awakens the wayward to the absent true self. It is at this time that one must go on walkabout. All possessions are left behind (except for essential items) and one starts walking. Metaphorically speaking, the journey goes on until you meet yourself. Once you find yourself, you sit down and have a long talk about what one has learned, felt and done in each other’s absence. One talks until there is nothing left to say — the truly important things cannot be said. If one is lucky, after everything has been said and unsaid, one looks up and sees only one person ins...

--> --> "After intense pressure from lawmakers and some factions of the financial industry, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) voted on Apr. 2 to make it easier for corporate management to value assets on their balance sheets with less regard for market prices. (...) The upshot, critics argue: Investors will lose even more confidence in banks' financials, exacerbating the very doubt that has helped drive the financial sector's rout in recent months. "It's downright Orwellian to protect the public. This 'oversight body' would blind them from the mistakes made by financial institutions by making accounting less transparent," Jack Ciesielski, editor of the Analyst's Accounting Observer , fumed on his blog." Mark to Market is simple. All property and money is in the now. Promise and guessing – even past hopes and dreams, all count for nothing – it’s the bird you have, not the Turkey you bought...

"Among the many annoying consequences of religion, the misunderstandings concerning morality that it fosters are among the most displeasing. … This means that a great many religious people naively assert that morality absolutely requires God’s existence. Some will even claim that if God did not exist, nothing would stop them from going about committing all sorts of crimes. Whenever someone makes such a claim, simply ask him, “S o you’d fuck your dog in the ass while ripping out and eating your wife’s eyeballs if God did not exist ?”" I was reading this very informative, straight forward and seemingly scientific article and came to the highlighted section above. My eyes opened wide; I giggled and snorted; I became a fan. A good example carries a lot of weight -- but a bat shit crazy, over the top explosion of a example stomps the weight down -- sometimes obliterating the thought, but always making the spash colorful. Kudos.

--> "Smokers are gasping at higher cigarette and cigar prices as the largest federal tobacco tax increase in history takes effect. "Oh my gosh," Bernardo Torres said Tuesday when a clerk at a CVS Pharmacy in Falls Church, Va., told him the new price, which went up in anticipation of the tax increase. Torres wanted to buy his aunt two cartons of cigarette-size cigars, but he walked away empty-handed after hearing the new price: $134. The tax on little cigars went from 4 cents to $1.01 a pack" --> I think that only an evolutionary psychologist could really explain it – but it seems that no matter what the cost or what the price, 10% of people will take 20 years off their lives to smoke cigarettes. That’s also the percentage of service people who came back from Vietnam addicted to heroin that stayed addicted after getting treatment. The bottom of the barrel or the evolutionary cream at the top? I think that maybe smokers are nature’s w...

"They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my reality." ~ Frida Kahlo This just sounds so much better in Italian -- I take back all the bad things I've said about translators over the years... La mucca da Mike Brady Il mio ampio piegate indietro da anni di portare il tipo di peso grasso persone per scontato. Forte come un bue Ossa compressa Denti terra a matrici Acres prima di andare a dormire. Affidabile, stabile rocciosa costante. Io vivo senza capire Sono come sostanziale. Mi sento con un lento legname, spostare con attenzione i passaggi, e mettere in pausa la metodica della mia vita a ruminare. Le cose cambiano e il sole sorge. Fare ciò che è davanti a me a fare fino a che non mi mangi. (or, in English) The Cow by Mike Brady My broad back bent from years of carry the type of weight fat people take for granted. Strong as an ox Bones compressed Teeth ground to st...