Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Have a great Tuesday!

******

My Scar: A Reverie

There are certain things you never forget.
Like your first beer.
Your first cigarette.
The first time you had…… never mind.
Yesterday was the complete opposite of the day before. It was damn COLD out.
The day before, I was tanning with my legs up on the balcony railing. Yesterday, though, I only ventured out there a few times. And each time I wondered….. is summer really over?
Anyhoo -- at one point I heard a racket of voices down below in the park across the street. A father [presumably] was piloting a bike-riding kid along the paved pathway, and I quickly got the impression that the youngster was about to go solo.
There is a lovely clump of trees along that path, and just as father and son entered into it I heard the elder human being yell, "You're doing it, you're doing it" and a much younger voice in reply -- "I am. I'm doing it. I'm doing it."
The trees hid my view at that point, but I knew what was happening. But for those trees, I was voyeuristically witnessing history as it applied to one small, young life.
That kid was riding a bike for the first time.
I went back into my apartment before I ever saw either of them again.
But it made me recall a similar event in my own life, albeit a bit more tragic than this kid experienced.
A hundred or so years ago, my father was likewise guiding me up and down our driveway -- training wheels off for the first time ever. Then he let me go, yelling much the same thing as this father was, yesterday.
However, instead of an affirmative answer from myself, I went careening like a headless chicken into a rolled up spool of barbwire. My dad, believing at the time that he had a normal son and all, felt there was no reason I should go wobbling directly into this area of mayhem. But I did. Who could have known that his procrastination in installing that rolled up fence would involve so much bloodshed?
I gashed my leg open so bad the blood was exiting it horizontally.
I bear the scar to this day, just below my left knee.

In the summer I wear shorts at work. On my lunch break today, I took my work boots off and put on my flip flops. As I leaned down, I saw the scar, and thought of that kid yesterday.
Even though the trees hid him -- oh, how successful he sounded. So unlike me.
*******

Splash du Jour: Monday

Learning to read begins the first time an infant is held and read a story. How often this happens, or fails to happen, in the first five years of childhood turns out to be one of the best predictors of later reading. -- Children who have never heard a story read to them, who never hear words that rhyme, who never imagine fighting with dragons or marrying a prince, have the odds overwhelmingly against them.
-- Maryanne Wolf, Proust and the Squid --

Have a great Monday!
******

Saturday Snapshot

My cat, Jack. Always on the prowl for something!
Cheers!
-- Cip
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

She would have liked to sit upon a rock and listen to words, not of any man, but detached, mysterious, poetic words that she alone would interpret through some sense inherited from sleep.
-- Patrick White, Voss --

Have a great Friday!
*******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Early photo of me on a lunch break (circa 1989).

Have a great Thursday!
******

About Prayer and Stuff...

On the way to Starbucks today I saw this sign on a church lawn. I made my friend stop the car and I snapped the photo.
I thought I'd like to discuss my ideas about the thought process that might have gone into such a public advertisement.
[You have too much time on your hands, Cipriano!]
I know. I'm on vacation. So here I go…
Firstly, what I have to say is not some sort of blanket criticism of the sign. I have nothing against anyone that would drive by and think it the most profound statement they ever saw. Especially since a decade ago I would have been that person. My ideas, d'apres mon experience [as the French might put it] have definitely morphed, no doubt about that. I have nothing against faith, per se. But I do feel the urge to address some of the fridge-magnet mentality of what is being suggested here. Mostly I would pose questions.
Prayer does not change God.
Why should anyone do it, then?
Well -- because the practice of doing it will change you, we are told.
Change a person…. how?
If I asked the pastor of this church, he or she might say that it gives the person hope. It provides a sense that the situation they or someone else is facing may be altered by an intervention from on high.
Or not.
But the "or not" part is what confuses me, nowadays.
The first part of the sign's statement takes any intervening force directly off the hook. It seems that the important part of the transaction is the "hope" part. It makes me wonder if a similar effect might not be achieved by simply talking to a good friend about what one faces from day to day, vis a vis, living life. Hearing someone say, "I wish you well" or "I'll be thinking of you," etc.
Granted, such a privilege may not be afforded a person that is drowning in the Atlantic, surrounded by circling shark fins. In that situation, I too would surely call out to... something to help me. The thing is [and I know it's the glass-half-empty outlook, but] ultimately, I've come to believe that my real hope on that day would lie somewhere among only two or three real tangible scenarios:
1) How hungry those sharks are.
2) How fast can I grow gills.
3) Is there a boat passing by?

Again, I am not trying to belittle what we call "belief" or "trust" in God -- but doesn't experience sort of show us that no matter how hard we pray [or not] life is going to happen to us, regardless? Some things good, some things bad? Pretty much all the time? When it comes our time to say goodbye to it all, won't the particulars of our demise, whether peaceful or tragic, be more dependent on mitigating circumstances than on either prayer or divine intervention in response to those prayers?
Never mind death, but if we are in financial crisis -- is this the time to pray [and hope]… or is it a time to quit being stupid with your money?

So essentially, the sign on the lawn tells us we will be rewarded if we hope.
And I believe there is a measure of truth in that.
But where the sign most crucially errs is in suggesting that a) prayer has everything to do with the attainment of that hope, and b) that the change will [ipso facto] be positive or beneficial.

I would like to suggest that prayer, at best, can have a placebo effect.
Are placebos, necessarily, a bad thing? No.
But what needs to be understood is that their effectiveness is an exception to the rule. Medically speaking, placebos have been known to be a source of healing for some people because of some sort of connection between hope and health. There are cases where it is evident that through hope alone, the body itself can be cheated of its own legitimate ailments. But what if our hospitals adopted this procedure as a first [or only] course of action? It would be absurd. Placebos are nothing better than a last resort, a last ditch effort.
So what is it about the sign that bothers me?
Well, not a whole lot, really. In fact, I believe there is a lot of truth to it. For one thing, I completely believe the first part of it is truer than true. I would probably attend a church that had a sign out front that said ONLY that part.
What bothers me is the subtle nature of the negative possibilities of the second part of the sign.
Just as in medicine not all placebos are effective, neither in prayer are all hopes beneficial, in their effect. "Answers" are not only an exception to the rule, but [I maintain] they are also a manifestation of what would have happened anyway! The boost that any "answer" may have received from hope is, at best, negligible. And always questionable. Beyond this, I believe that a lot of people are actually damaged by prayer and/or the "hope" that it engenders. After faithfully living in expectation of a result that never comes, no amount of telling someone that all along it was meant to change their personality and not the circumstances, will assuage their disappointment and grief.
In the Bible, Jesus said, "Ask and it shall be given to you…" [Matt.7:7]
This sign seems to be revising that to become, "Ask, and it may possibly be considered, but most likely, not." The important thing being how much hope you've gained.
My only soapbox here is to suggest that there are other, more rational ways to live, and have hope. A god who is entitled to answer prayer[s] in several diametrically opposite ways and yet retain ascribed attributes of omnipotence and omniscience, is to me, at the very least -- self-negating.
Saying God "did" something is not very different from retrospectively saying "What happened happened."

Below is an image taken from my balcony this morning. If you click on it, you will see it in all its glory. It was a gorgeous sunrise.
It strikes me that there was a time when an entire civilization worshipped that glow to the east, as god. That very sun. The same one, even. Think about that. An exploding ball of hydrogen and helium. They addressed all of their hopes to it, in prayer.
Did "it" answer their prayers? I'm thinking not.
It certainly didn't do much for King Tut who died as a teenager, either murdered by a blow to the head or poisoned -- the jury is still out on that one, but it is pretty much affirmed that his death was accidental.
Just makes me wonder is all.
Out front of some pyramid, I envision a big sign in the sand...
Prayer does not change The Sun but it changes the one who prays.














To further investigate this issue, click --> HERE.
Cheers!
-- Cip
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

-- Thomas Carlyle --

Have a great Wednesday!
*******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory -- meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion -- is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we take.
-- William Maxwell --

Have a great Tuesday!
*******

Vacation: Day 1

Well, the first day of my second vacation of the year is going swimmingly.
Not that I've done any swimming -- but I mean, smoothly, satisfactorily.
What have I done?
NOTHING!
Just as planned!
My friend is visiting me for the next few days and so today the extent of our accomplishments was to walk down to the open air Market and buy some fresh produce, which we've already cooked and eaten.
Next, a lot of sitting around, chilling out on the balcony.
Click on the above image for an enlarged view of where I live.
Why would I go elsewhere for a vacation? It's beautiful HERE!

And, on a sad note -- this morning Jack Layton passed away after a prolonged battle with cancer. This is why the flag is at half-mast on Parliament Hill. This photo was taken again, from my balcony.
For those who may not know, Jack Layton was leader of the Opposition in Parliament. I myself am not a Laytonite, per se, but still, I was so impressed with the almost unheard-of and unprecedented [and definitely unpredicted] strides that he made in the spring 2011 Federal Election. He took The New Democratic Party to new heights in that election. Regardless of how one feels about the ideas and policies of Jack Layton, I think that his voice will be sadly missed in Canadian politics.
*******

Splash du Jour: Monday

It doesn't matter how beautiful the guess is, or how smart the guesser is, or how famous the guesser is; if the experiment disagrees with the guess, then the guess is wrong. That's all there is to it.
-- physicist Richard Feynman --

Have a great Monday!
******

Where Has He Been?

Dear Friends, please forgive me for not blogging much lately. I would not blame any of you for not even reading this current blog here, I am so inconsistent. And not only this, but I don't visit your own blogs nearly as much as I want to.
Thing is, the emergency lobotomy I received a while ago -- it didn't go as well as predicted.
Doctor says I should be ship-shape soon, though.
Amazingly, during my convalescence I have been doing some reading -- through the gauze over my eyes, as it were.

Falling Man, by Don DeLillo. What a fabulous book, maybe the best thing I have read this year. A story of how the events of September 11th, 2001 affect the lives of several New York residents. Five puddles©.
Going After Cacciato, by Tim O'Brien. A squad of American soldiers in Vietnam -- and how they end up in Paris. Or not. An artfully constructed narrative that at times lost me due to its dual possibilities -- as in, I found it difficult to differentiate between the use of realism and hallucination. [Confusion may have been caused by my recent brain operation though…]. Three puddles©.
Eclipse, by John Banville. My first reading of Banville, but not my last. A compelling first-person narrative about a washed-up actor returning to his childhood home to try and find himself. He learns a lot from the current inhabitants, some of them ghosts, others, still very much alive. Five puddles©.
Currently I am reading a wonderful book called Loving Frank, by Nancy Horan.
I have always had an interest in Frank Lloyd Wright, the famous American architect. This is a fictionalized account of his love affair with Mamah Borthwick Cheney and it is wonderfully written. Truly engaging. I'm dying to get back to it, even now. For a long while I have wanted to make a trip out to the remote wilds of Bear Run, Pennsylvania for a tour of one of Wright's most well-known buildings, the house known as Fallingwater.
Happy reading to y'all!
I'm on vacation again….. starting right now…. Yayyyyyyy!
[Oww! I shouldn't yell like that…. not until I'm fully healed….]


*******

Splash du Jour: Friday

I had jumped off the edge, and then, at the very last moment, something reached out and caught me in midair. That something is what I define as love. It is the one thing that can stop a man from falling, powerful enough to negate the laws of gravity.
-- Paul Auster, Moon Palace --
Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Happiness was different in childhood. It was so much more than a matter simply of accumulation, of taking things - new experiences, new emotions - and applying them like so many polished tiles to what would someday be the marvellously finished pavilion of the self.
-- John Banville, The Sea --


Have a great Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author's words reverberating in your head.
-- Paul Auster, The Brooklyn Follies --

Have a great Tuesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book.
-- Philip Pullman --

Have a great Monday!
******

Rascal Sleepin'

This is my niece's cat Rascal... in full window repose.

Ahhh, just looking at him makes me want to lie down on the couch!
Happy weekend to y'all!
*******

Splash du Jour: Friday

Have a great Friday!

******

The Silent "K"

When I arrived at work this morning there was a note on the door saying I had just missed a delivery from a courier company. I work all alone at a satellite building [no, we don't make things that go into outer space] but what I mean is, my warehouse is one of several in our company. So I called my supervisor at headquarters on the radio to advise him of the circumstances and he said he'd call to reschedule the delivery of the items. But he needed the reference number on the ticket. It was a long number and began with a few letters. I proceeded to rifle them off but he was like "Wait. Wait. Give me the letters slowly."
I figured I'd give him corresponding words to make sure we got it right over the radio, and was soon to find out how retarded I am when it comes to all that Alpha-Bravo-Charlie stuff.
Because, the very first letter was an "N" and I said, "N, as in…. knuckle!"
We both realized the state of my IQ at the same time and started laughing… I was so discombobulated that I could not do it for any of the other letters.
I just said them v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y.
Only now, as I sit here having coffee and doing some research do I find out that the official Phonetically-Approved representative word I should have used is, of course... Knovember.
********

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Life is oblivion erupting, for a brief moment, into non-oblivion in order so that oblivion may proclaim: 'I am.' The assumption being, of course, that living things are aware enough to make such a proclamation. Let us suppose that they are. Let us suppose that they are, to a degree, self-aware. This makes for the possibility of life recognizing itself, yes, but not as oblivion, only as life. In order for life to recognize itself as a fleeting pulse of oblivion, self-awareness must be refined into pure awareness, which is observation unimpaired by either ego or preconceptions.
-- Barbara Gowdy, The Romantic --

Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

A good piece of fiction, in my view, does not offer solutions. Good stories deal with our moral struggles, our uncertainties, our dreams, our blunders, our contradictions, our endless quest for understanding. Good stories do not resolve the mysteries of the human spirit but rather describe and expand upon those mysteries.
-- Tim O'Brien --

Have a great Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn't they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for a little while? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something we all hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise?
-- Don DeLillo --

Have a great Tuesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

The weird thing is, I HAVE had dreams like this!
Have a great Monday!
******

Splash du Jour: Friday

Wildflower

Nowadays, no walking is needed.
Plastic numbers will send tame ones
Around the globe at a click. Try it.
Think of someone in need, first.

Potted, wrapped, still dripping with dew.
Carded and be-ribboned, only idiots
And madmen sidestep such efficiency
Or walk somewhere.

I thought all of this before yesterday,
When… on a hillside I knelt as though
The world were a cathedral. And knew
That I can only enjoy this, by staying.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2008 --

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

We are all imprisoned by the dictionary. We choose out of that vast, paper-walled prison our convicts, the little black printed words, when in truth we need fresh sounds to utter, new enfranchised noises which would produce a new effect.
-- Mervyn Peake, The Gormenghast Trilogy, Book#1 --

Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Have a great Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

To be truthful, some writers stop you dead in your tracks by making you see your own work in the most unflattering light. Each of us will meet a different harbinger of personal failure, some innocent genius chosen by us for reasons having to do with what we see as our own inadequacies. The only remedy to this I have found is to read a writer whose work is entirely different from another, though not necessarily more like your own—a difference that will remind you of how many rooms there are in the house of art.
-- Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer --

Have a great Tuesday!
******

What I've Been Up To...

Well friends, my holiday is over. It was a wonderful two weeks of fun and frivolity on the west coast of this awesome country of mine. Tomorrow begins a stint back at the ol' salt mines! However, in three weeks or so I have another week off, so….. all is not lost, regarding this summer.
As you can see in the above moment-in-time, I read even when I am floating around on the Pacific Ocean. That's me in the final stages of a terrific book, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.

I thoroughly enjoyed it, to the extent that it makes me interested in other books by this author. This one follows the adventures of an American missionary family as they find themselves in the Belgian Congo, [early '60's] trying to foist the Word of God on the people there. To put it mildly -- things do not exactly go favourably for their evangelistic efforts. Kingsolver tells the story in such a unique style, each chapter alternating between five narrators, [the mother and the four daughters]. Interestingly enough, the main reason they are all in Africa in the first place [the father, who is divinely "called" to be there] is not allowed a stint as narrator. According to the account of the rest of his family, he is one of the most mule-headed religionists I have ever heard of, in fiction or in real life. It is agonizing to read of his stubbornness. It is impossible to summarize such an epic, sweeping story -- but I'll let the words of two of the daughters approach a summation:
You can't just sashay into the jungle aiming to change it all over to the Christian style, without expecting the jungle to change you right back.
-- Rachel
There is not justice in this world. Father, forgive me wherever you are, but this world has brought one vile abomination after another down on the heads of the gentle, and I'll not live to see the meek inherit anything. What there is in this world. I think, is a tendency for human errors to level themselves like water throughout their sphere of influence. That's pretty much the whole of what I can say, looking back.
-- Leah
This is a book I would highly recommend to my Bookpuddle friends.

It is a rare thing for me to give up on a book, but I did so with the book that I picked up after the Kingsolver one. I actually regretted taking it along with me on my midnight flight home -- because I found that no matter how hard I tried, I just could not get into it.
And I had nothing else with me!
What Maisie Knew, by Henry James.
Rarely has a book resonated with me less than this one. It's right up there now in my list of Books That Blew©… alongside things like The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass, and similar ilk.
It's supposed to be the story of a young girl that is tossed about by conflicting parties in a really convoluted divorce case. I found that my devotion of a hundred pages of reading was very unrewarded. I had to put the book down and admit defeat. There was a profusion of characters that lost me.
I'm not a stranger to older novels [this one being published prior to the year 1900] but James kept using terminology that eluded me… things like the repeated use of "my companion" when I found it difficult to know who in the world he was referring to… and I mean, I recently read Thomas Hardy's The Trumpet-Major [published a decade or so before this book] and I found it excellent. So……….. not a keeper, this one.
Currently I am immersed in an outrageously good book by Francine Prose, called Goldengrove.
Don't you just love it when you stumble onto a book that draws you in?
I just wish I had taken this piece of "prose" with me on my airplane ride.
So, this is what I have been up to, lately.
Holidaying.
Reading.
Being severely lazy.
I hope I have not lost too many of my dear devoted readers by my absence from Bookpuddle blogging.
My wish for those of you who still check in here from time to time is that you enjoy the rest of this summer, reading, reading, and…. reading!
******

Splash du Jour: Friday

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Those born to wealth and who have the means of gratifying every wish know not what is the real happiness of life; just as those who have been tossed on the stormy water of the ocean on a few frail planks can alone estimate the value of a clear and serene sky.
-- Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo --

Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

My sister's cat, Lexi.
Have a great Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

"Maybe...you'll fall in love with me all over again."
"Hell," I said, "I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?"
"Yes. I want to ruin you."
"Good," I said. "That's what I want too."
-- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell To Arms --

Have a great Tuesday!
******

Now THAT'S a Bargain!

Besides a good hamburger, there are three things I really love:
1) Books.
2) Bargains.
3) Bargains on books!
<-- Check out this beauty of a deal I scored today, fulfilling category 3.
While shopping for food in the supermarket with my sister [I'm still on vacation, and LOVING it]… I wandered off to a place in the Mall where a table was spread out with books on sale. Most of them were complete junk, I must admit. But, my Spidey-Sense© was tingling.
I thought I might rifle through these things and find a gem.
I did.
Don DeLillo is one of my favourite authors ever! So you can imagine my surprise at finding a copy of Falling Man, a book I have wanted to read for a while now.
The price?
$1.00.
Even I can afford that!
So I nabbed it, of course. Which made me so happy inside [I am easily pleased] that I thought of three more things that I love:
4) Not working.
5) Beer.
6) Not working and drinking beer at the same time!
Cheers!
-- Cip
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

But I too hate long books: the better, the worse. If they're bad they merely make me pant with the effort of holding them up for a few minutes. But if they're good, I turn into a social moron for days, refusing to go out of my room, scowling and growling at interruptions, ignoring weddings and funerals, and making enemies out of friends. I still bear the scars of Middlemarch.
-- Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy --


Have a great Monday!
******

Vacation Adventures

A vacation is what you take when you can no longer take what you've been taking. And I'm……… taking one.
Dear friends, I am now on the 4th day of a 2 week vacation and I am LOVING it.
It's basically a family reunion -- all four of my siblings and their spouses [minus one] are together for a time of rest, relaxation and frivolity. And booze.
Not a lot of families could do this sort of thing and get along harmoniously. Mine can!
So far, here on day 4, we all wish it would last forever, and our only sad moments are when we realize it must end at some point.
We're staying at a beautiful place in Vernon, British Columbia.
And the word "beautiful" is an understatement. You can see more about it HERE.
I took the above photo minutes ago from the deck, as I write this.
There is so much I could say about my trip so far, but I'll focus on one humorous incident that happened yesterday.
We all went on a nature hike in the afternoon. [See picture below… yours truly is the fifth hiker from the left].
After our hike we were hungry and so we stopped at a pizza joint to order some food. The proprietor at first misinterpreted our intentions and started arranging some tables to seat all eight of us down while we still perusing the menu at the front entrance of the place. My brother-in-law and I, we noticed this and went over to say we would just be ordering the pizza as a take-out. The guy looked up and said, "Well, fuck you, then!" with this serious look on his face, and promptly added "Don't stay here, I don't give a fuck! I don't give a shit what you do" and several other things like this, all with expletives. THEN he sort of smiled and said "I'm just kidding" but by then, my bro-in-law was outside, fuming.
You don't talk to Tom that way..... he is a veteran prison guard and has no time for such……… hilarity.
It was weird as hell, I must admit.
The others had not heard this verbal exchange.
So now Tom is telling several others what the guy said to him and these factions arose.... some of us just wanting to leave the place and others [mostly unaware of what just happened] kept looking at the menu and stuff...... ordering. By now the owner was behind the counter. A bunch of us decided to leave as Tom was going to his car, thoroughly disgusted with this crazy whacko. We left about four of our crew behind and we went back to the house.
I was one that left..... on the way, Tom was all, "I would NOT give that guy any business. He's obviously deranged."
So we arrive back here and open beers and try to forget about it...... anyhoo..... half an hour later, the others arrive. They get out of the car nearly falling over [drunk] because after we had gone, the owner turned all nice and gave everyone FREE drinks...... strawberry daiquiri, beer, white wine, and then refused any money for the FOUR pizzas he had made. Pizzas that were supremely excellent. As in, there is no way he would accept any money. The bill was supposed to be something like $70 without the booze...... he would not take one cent for either thing.
Ahhh… that is British Columbian hospitality.
We've considered going back there and having a few drinks -- maybe even another pizza or two.
But then again, by now the guy has probably come down off of whatever drugs he must have been high on, and we don't want to risk even stranger adventures with his sobriety.
******

Splash du Jour: Friday

The clear awareness of having been born into a losing struggle need not lead one into despair. I do not especially like the idea that one day I shall be tapped on the shoulder and informed, not that the party is over but that it is most assuredly going on—only henceforth in my absence. (It’s the second of those thoughts: the edition of the newspaper that will come out on the day after I have gone, that is the more distressing.) Much more horrible, though, would be the announcement that the party was continuing forever, and that I was forbidden to leave. Whether it was a hellishly bad party or a party that was perfectly heavenly in every respect, the moment that it became eternal and compulsory would be the precise moment that it began to pall.
-- Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir --

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance, but live right in it, under its roof.
-- Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams --

Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Two hikers are pursued by a bear. One hiker runs away, the other stops to put on his running shoes.
"Are you crazy? Even with running shoes you can't outrun a grizzly!"
"No, but I can outrun you!"

Have a great Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries.
-- Carl Sagan --

Have a great Tuesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.
-- Richard Dawkins --

Have a great Monday!
*******

The Last Supper

Recently a friend asked me a question that I had to ponder for quite a while.
I don't take questions lightly -- I rarely give an immediate answer.
And so I really had to think, because the answer to this question could have gone in so many directions. My head was spinning. I started to salivate…
The question was this:
If you could have only one last meal, what would it be?

Being of an analytical nature, I wanted more information.
You mean after this meal I am going to die or something, be executed?
See -- to me, that clarification is important, because if this is what we're talking about, I don't think I would want to eat at all. I would be too sad.
We determined that the scenario is just that after this meal, you would be nourished in other ways that did not include food. Some sort of intravenous system. So, basically -- it is the equivalent of asking, What is your favourite meal?

This simplified things.
Visions of all manner of [mostly] unhealthy meat-related items went grilling and steaming and pan-frying through my mind -- but finally, with a smile, I hit on the very thing. [The above image is a rather blatant giveaway.]
I want turkey and mashed potatoes, with gravy all over.
Some stuffing? Hell, yes! Perhaps some glazed carrots on the side.
The kind of turkey that when you cut into the thing it just oozes. Not dry turkey, no… I don't want turkey that was running a treadmill before they lopped its head off.
No. I want the laziest turkey that ever lived.
I want to eat a couch-potato turkey WITH potatoes! [On my couch!]
My favourite meal. There you have it. Let's quit talking. Roast that bird.
Hand me the fork. The knife. The defibrillator.

Please feel free to respond in the comments with your own answer to this earth-shattering philosophical question.
Cheers!
Bon appétit!
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Splash du Jour: Friday

A home is not a museum. It doesn't have to be furnished with Picasso paintings, or Sheraton suites, or Oriental rugs, or Chinese pottery. But it does have to be furnished with things that mean something to you.
-- James M. Cain, Mildred Pierce --

Have a great Friday!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.
-- Flannery O'Connor --

Have a great Thursday!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

"Let's see… here it is… the esteemed Dr. Cowan states, 'Closely allied to food and dress, in women, as a producer of evil-thoughts, is idleness and novel reading. It is almost impossible for a woman to read the current "love and murder" literature of the day and have pure thoughts, and when the reading of such literature is associated with idleness -- as it almost invariably is -- a woman's thoughts and feelings cannot be other than impure and sensual.' There now, Charlotte. There it is in black and white. Overthinking and novel-reading causes, at the very least, fretting, nightmares and a bad complexion."
-- Ami McKay, The Birth House --
[The character, Aunt Fran, is reading from a medical journal written in the early 1900's. So you know it's gotta be true!]

Have a great Wednesday!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Have a great Tuesday!
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