Splash du Jour: Thursday

Tragedy… is the consequence of man’s total compulsion to evaluate himself.
-- Arthur Miller --

Have a great Thursday!

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Poets are simply those who have made a profession and a lifestyle of being in touch with their bliss.
-- Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth --

Have a great Wednesday!

Where I Stood

I heard this song while driving home, and just had to look it up when I got here.
Not only do I love the lyrics and think that this is terrific poetry, but it’s the phrasings, the style of the way she’s singing, that I truly dig.
It was just one of those moments when you are listening to the radio, and when the song is done you wish you could rewind and hear it again. On YouTube, I found this terrific LIVE unplugged version of Missy Higgins, singing Where I Stood.
Awesome.

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Give me a couple of years, and I’ll make that actress an overnight success.
-- Samuel Goldwyn –

Have a great Tuesday!

Splash du Jour: Monday

Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.
-- Anonymous --

Have a great Monday!

A Word Is Born

← This was my first stop in the neighborhood trek today!
It’s the best Shawarma place in town, really it is.
At the corner of Dalhousie and York! [Come on, you all know where that is!]
It’s known as Joey’s Corner.

Went in there for a nice lunchtime chicken shawarma.
Plus I had some exciting news to deliver to the management.
But they had already heard about it.
Apparently, “shawarma” has now been added as an official word, into the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
If you don’t believe me, check it out HERE.
Just last Thursday it was announced.
The word has apparently been in use since 1953, but not officially recognized. Or something.
And for those nutritionally impoverished souls out there who currently have not had the pleasure of experiencing shawarma, the official definition is as follows:

A sandwich esp. of sliced lamb or chicken, vegetables, and often tahini wrapped in pita bread.

Personally, even though I am as carnivorous as the next guy, I’m not familiar with the “lamb” format of the shawarma…. I was under the impression that the lamb shawarma was known as “gyros”…. sometimes prefaced with the phrase “Chicago-style” and voraciously consumed by Yours Truly with very little necessary provocation, and the restraint of a rabid mongoose!

No, the shawarma I usually eat is either beef or chicken.
But hey, I'll eat a lamb too, if I have to!
Mmmmmm…. meat!
← And so now shawarma is a universally-accepted word, and shall fit very nicely between “shaving” and “shawl” in the next edition of the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary!
I don't know about you, but I’m excited!
Now all we’ve got to do is work on getting “poutine” in there, too!
Mmmmm, it too shall look terrific one day, modestly nestled in its yummy little artery-clogging place, between “pout” and “poverty”.

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Old Bucket: A Saturday Poem

Old Bucket

All my life I’ve carried things.
So many falls so many springs.

Frosty mornings, cooler eves.
Boots below me kicking leaves.

Crooked handle, dented in.
Squeaks against the rusted tin.

Target practice, I’ve been there.
Years in barns with not a care.

Rediscovered, then re-used.
Refilled, hammered, and abused.

From this truth I have rebelled.
I’ve carried nothing. I was held.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2009

Lunchtime!

Here is what I had for lunch today!
Seriously, I actually ate this while reading Ian McEwan.
If you can identify what the correct term is, for the thing in the upper left corner of the tray, OR identify the animalian origin of the three hunks of "stuff" in the bottom left portion.... if you can do either of these things, I, or a representative of Bookpuddle Inc.© will send you an Ian McEwan book in the mail.

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Splash du Jour: Friday

Reading in our family was a private activity and there was nothing particularly commendable about it. It was a pesky sort of infirmity like hay fever, from which we might be expected to succumb; anyone who managed to stay clear of it would have been the one to be congratulated. But once the addiction was established, no one thought of interfering with it.
-- Alice Munro --

Have a great Friday!
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Anticipation...

Wow, I have not been around the ol’ blogworld as much as I would like to be!
Just wanted to drop by tonight and tell you about my own Most Personally Anticipated Book of 2009!
← This one.
It’s by Bishop John Shelby Spong, entitled Eternal Life: A New Vision. Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell.

It’s due to be released on September 1st, and I am counting down the days!
I have read so many books by Bishop Spong, I cannot recount them all here.
Suffice it to say, I think he speaks the clearest, of any of the hmmmm…. post-Christian authors, about Christianity. Specifically, about what it means to approach the Bible from a rational, non-literal perspective. He makes it [the Bible] all make sense, while retaining the value of what it was always intended to engender – spiritual experience.
For a long while, in previous volumes, Spong has spoken of how his last book would be about life’s final breath, and what possibly comes afterward.
The beauty of this upcoming book, [I will say it in advance], is that Spong will conclude that no one has the final word on the religious specifics of the afterlife.
Read this book with me, come September, and see if I am right.

-- A former posting of mine, about Spong. --

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Splash du Jour: Thursday

The Swiss have an interesting army. Five hundred years without a war. Pretty impressive. Also pretty lucky for them.
Ever see that little Swiss Army knife they have to fight with? Not much of a weapon there.
Corkscrews. Bottle openers. “Come on, buddy, let’s go. You get past me, the guy in back of me, he’s got a spoon. Back off! I’ve got the toe clippers right here.”
-- Jerry Seinfeld –

Have a great Thursday!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me.
Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go.
Reality doesn't impress me.
I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another.
No more walls.
-- Anais Nin --

Have a great Wednesday!
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I'm Having PMS

So after work I went to the supermarket.
Hey, by the way… I know I have not been blogging much lately.
I blame my severe mid-life crisis I am going through right now.
An extended bout of PMS.
Pre-Moving-Stress.
Thing is… I’ve been thinking 24/7 about MOVING, like from where I live, and having second and third thoughts about it, and it is causing me severe amounts of angst!
OK, so I’m at the supermarket and I bought a bunch of produce.
Yes……. produce.
The noun.
Not the verb!
The girl, the cashier, she’s ringing it through, and she grabs my potatoes [so to say!]… and these three baking potatoes are on the scale thing, and her HAND IS RESTING ON THEM!
She’s got her hand on my potatoes!
I said nothing.
But the bananas were next.
Again, she’s got her hand on my damn bananas…. so here’s me [remember now, I’ve been a bit of a broom-whacked wasp-nest lately]…. I say to her, “Umm, I’d rather not pay for the weight of your hand!”
I’m pointing.
And wow!
The look she gave me!
Maybe she too is having a hard time coming to terms with decisions involving moving?
Her look was quite withering.
Admittmedly, I could have had much more tact in this situation.
I suppose I could have said something much more politically correct, like for instance, “Hmm… is that scale there calibrated to automatically deduct the weight of your * * * * ing arm?”

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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

If you swear at fourteen it only makes you look cheap, and she’s not cheap goddamn it.
-- Alice Munro story, The Jack O’Lantern Light --

Have a great Tuesday!

Splash du Jour: Monday

I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked me for my autograph.
-- Shirley Temple --

Have a great Monday!

Her Cottage: A Saturday Poem

Her Cottage

She said that I had the key to her cottage.

So I checked my own array, no, all of these are mine.

Car. Apartment. Mailbox. Work door. Bike lock.

I’ve really only got a few.

But she’s the opposite of flippant.

As I am, also, so I knew that something else was said.

This is not about steel on a ring, or a wooden door.

It’s something pumping.

Pulsating, I realized that cottage is the wrong word.

And here is what I know. If I had such an access,

privilege, I would never press something so hard,

against her heart.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2009

Splash du Jour: Friday

Why does Sea World have a seafood restaruant? I’m halfway through my fishburger and I realize, Oh my God… I could be eating a slow learner.
-- Lynda Montgomery --

Have a great Friday!

The Epitome of Distraction

Have any of you ever been so preoccupied with certain thoughts, that the present action is forgotten?
You have a general feeling of displacement?
Happened to me today, first thing in the morning.
I walked up the four flights of stairs, to the fourth floor of my warehouse. Pressed the elevator button [I never RIDE in the elevator itself, in case something goes wrong, I will be stuck in there…] so the elevator rises….. my mind focuses on its current preoccupation…. the elevator arrives, [I have opted to RUN up the four floors, and meet my cargo there]……. then, I’m standing there, [paralyzed] I keep pressing the number “4”.
NOTHING.
No movement.
[The reason there is no movement is because it is already there, right in front of me, as the glass doors should readily reveal….] but they don’t.
Because my mind is elsewhere.
Frustrated, I begin walking down the staircases, ready to radio my supervisor and tell him the elevator is not functioning. Preparing to send a repairman.
All the way, I am contemplating how this whole problem is going to compound the already difficult aspects of my work-day!
When I get to the first floor, I see that the elevator is NOT there.
It’s on the fourth.
So I climb back up.
And there it is.
I was looking right at it, earlier, and did not see it.
That’s called the epitome of distraction.
Yesterday, a friend commented that they would like to see a "comical" posting.
But I have not been in a comical mood, lately. My apologies to one and all.
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

On the exterior many lives are impetuously lived, in constant motion, constant flux, demanding change... while on the inside, important wheels have long since stopped turning. Crucial questions languish, not so much from being already answered as from never having been asked. Another type of person floats along fairly steady, and constant diversion is not really an issue... but on the inside, they are a whirligig. Always asking and re-asking, backpedalling, and here in the unseen realm the action is taking place, like a duck's feet underwater.
-- Cipriano, Jan.26, 2002 –

Have a great Thursday!
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HAPPY CANADA DAY, CANADA!

This just flew past my apartment!
Pretty neat!
HAPPY 142nd BIRTHDAY CANADA!
For some additional footage, click → HERE.
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