I got this link from a friend today. It seems that someone took a publically available O’Reilly CD-ROM, which contains the text of every O’Reilly book, and put it on-line. Whoever that man or woman is, I heartily say thankee-sei.
My friend Michele knows how much I love vocabulary and sent me the list below:
a. Those who jump off a bridge in Paris are in Seine.
b. A backward poet writes inverse.
c. A man’s home is his castle, in a manor of speaking.
d. Dijon vu – the same mustard as before.
e. Practice safe eating – always use condiments.
f. Shotgun wedding: A case of wife or death.
g. A man needs a mistress just to break the monogamy.
h. A hangover is the wrath of grapes.
i. Dancing cheek-to-cheek is really a form of floor play.
j. Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
k. Condoms should be used on every conceivable occasion.
l. Reading while sunbathing makes you well red.
m. When two egotists meet, it’s an I for an I.
n. A bicycle can’t stand on its own because it is two tired.
o. What’s the definition of a will? (It’s a dead giveaway.)
p. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
q. In democracy your vote counts. In feudalism your count votes.
r. She was engaged to a boyfriend with a wooden leg but broke it off.
s. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.
t. If you don’t pay your exorcist, you get repossessed.
u. With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.
v. When a clock is hungry, it goes back four seconds.
w. The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered.
x. You feel stuck with your debt if you can’t budge it.
y. Local Area Network in Australia: the LAN down under.
z. He often broke into song because he couldn’t find the key.
aa. Every calendar’s days are numbered.
ab. A lot of money is tainted – ‘taint yours and ‘taint mine.
ac. A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.
ad. He had a photographic memory that was never developed.
ae. A plateau is a high form of flattery.
af. A midget fortune-teller who escapes from prison is a small medium at large.
ag. Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.
ah. Once you’ve seen one shopping center, you’ve seen a mall.
ai. Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis.
aj. Santa’s helpers are subordinate clauses.
ak. Acupuncture is a jab well done.
Quote of the week:
“It is a sad day in America when a coalition of states must go to federal court to defend the Clean Air Act against the misguided actions of the federal agency created to protect the environment,” the New York attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, said. “But in this matter, the E.P.A. is standing with polluters instead of with the people it is supposed to protect, and the states have no choice but to take this action.”
The United States Environmental Protection Agency, thanks to the Bush Administration, has:
* announced that it was closing pending investigations into more than 100 power plants and factories for violating the Clean Air Act
* dropping 13 cases in which it had already made a determination that the law had been violated.
Got to love that environmental PROTECTION agency!
The importance of being present is beyond belief for life is brief and a day can be spent so easily. Is it possible to be present with so much going on at once? The juggling of tasks, of events, of moments, of movements is an arduous undertaking. Can the every day be elevated higher so that every day is important? Is there meaning in the mundane, in the routine, in the rituals that we accept as annoyances and nothing more? Does a shared smile on a line in a store do anything more than improve a moment? Some days are long and boring while a few spark the soul. As the former greatly outweighs the latter are we just lurching across a desert from one oasis to the next?
Is it possible to stay in a heightened state of awareness for hours, for days, for months, for years, for decades, for a lifetime? Should life be a battle (for that is really the only time a person is truly hyperaware, when he or she is afraid that at any moment, the enemy will strike to take his or her life)
The vigilance of a scout should be the model for the level of awareness that you should have when on the phone with family, during the day at work, while in class in school. To stay alert all day every day is tiring, so the question is then how do you gain enough stamina to fight the drowsiness, to remain alert?
I ask questions not to teach in the Socratic method – I ask because I wonder and do not know. Use the comments and post your view. Though only one person usually reads these posts, namely me, if there is someone else out there I’d like to hear what you have to say.
My fiance sits on the couch finishing Return of the King as I sit typing at the computer. Having just come from Stephen King’s web site, having just watched a number of DT inspired short films and having made plans to watch The Two Towers on DVD tonight, I feel the need to reaffirm why I love books tremendously more than movies. Mr. King himself said it better than I can, at least right now, so I will lift what he wrote from the FAQ section of his site in response (it was in response to the question “Are you going to make a Dark Tower Movie?”):
“I’ve always resisted that idea because movies have a way of freezing characters and places in the audience’s mind whereas in books everybody has their own different idea of, for instance, how Roland or Susannah looks but if you do it as a movie, immediately that kind of gets frozen in place and you say ‘Oh, Billy Bob Thornton is what Roland Deschain looks like.’ Or you say ‘Brad Pitt, that’s what Eddie Dean looks like.’ You know what I’m saying, or you can say ‘Calla Bryn Sturgis from Wolves of the Calla looks like maybe the Universal back lot’, and I’ve always resisted that.”
‘Nuff said for now…
Just in time for the end of October dress-up day, here is some news related to two of the best comic book artists currently on the scene, Neil Gaiman and Alex Ross. Both are incredible in their own ways, one with words that paint lurid pictures, the other with pictures that defy words.
View the Slashdot post, which links to all sorts of goodies about our favorite Sandman creator Mr. Neil Gaiman here.
Read the article about Alex Ross here.
Keystone cops run around in a circle, around a conference table as many blank faces stare on. The clients sit baffled amid the talk – wondering why this is being discussed, why they are here, why this is happening, what thy did to deserve this role. The to-do list crawls along, inching like a worm, the time passing like slow drops on stone. I’m being worn away, my talents diminished by the elongation of time for I do not respond well to the rack, to being stretched out by all that is transpiring…
I happened to be in a Starbucks using up a gift certificate I received for giving blood (the irony of giving a diuretic and most probably then a blood thinner to reward one for giving blood is not lost on me) and I picked up a brochure that listed all the Starbucks in the New York City area.
In total, all 5 boroughs have 152 Starbucks. Not as many as I thought but still, a pretty large number. Woe to Staten Island – they only have two! The Bronx is even worse off – they only have one!
Here is the breakdown:
Upper West Side = 14
Garment District = 12
Chelsea = 8
Staten Island = 2
Morningside Heights = 2
Brooklyn = 5
Queens = 10
SoHo & TriBeCa = 5
Theatre District = 5
Harlem & Washington Heights = 3
Financial District = 13
The Bronx = 1
Chinatown = 1
Upper East Side = 12
Greenwich Village = 7
Gramercy & Murray Hill = 11
Midtown West = 14
Midtown East = 27
_________________________
TOTAL = 152
*** Most eye catching stat: Midtown East has 50% more Starbucks locations (27) than all of the outer boroughs combined (18).
Click here to read about Neal Stephenson’s new book. Personally, I cannot wait to read it…