“I know a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and rich food. He was healthy right up to the day he killed himself.”
Johnny Carson
Category Archives: CHEAP THRILLS
A charlatan makes obscure what is clear; a thinker makes clear what is obscure. H. Kingsmill
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
The Charlatan
Jean de La Fontaine
The world has never lack’d its charlatans,
More than themselves have lack’d their plans.
One sees them on the stage at tricks
Which mock the claims of sullen Styx.
What talents in the streets they post!
One of them used to boast
Such mastership of eloquence
That he could make the greatest dunce
Another Tully Cicero
In all the arts that lawyers know.
‘Ay, sirs, a dunce, a country clown,
The greatest blockhead of your town,–
Nay more, an animal, an ass,–
The stupidest that nibbles grass,–
Needs only through my course to pass,
And he shall wear the gown
With credit, honour, and renown.’
The prince heard of it, call’d the man, thus spake:
‘My stable holds a steed
Of the Arcadian breed,
Of which an orator I wish to make.’
‘Well, sire, you can,’
Replied our man.
At once his majesty
Paid the tuition fee.
Ten years must roll, and then the learned ass
Should his examination pass,
According to the rules
Adopted in the schools;
If not, his teacher was to tread the air,
With halter’d neck, above the public square,–
His rhetoric bound on his back,
And on his head the ears of jack.
A courtier told the rhetorician,
With bows and terms polite,
He would not miss the sight
Of that last pendent exhibition;
For that his grace and dignity
Would well become such high degree;
And, on the point of being hung,
He would bethink him of his tongue,
And show the glory of his art,–
The power to melt the hardest heart,–
And wage a war with time
By periods sublime–
A pattern speech for orators thus leaving,
Whose work is vulgarly call’d thieving.
‘Ah!’ was the charlatan’s reply,
‘Ere that, the king, the ass, or I,
Shall, one or other of us, die.’
And reason good had he;
We count on life most foolishly,
Though hale and hearty we may be.
In each ten years, death cuts down one in three.
[The end]
Jean de La Fontaine’s poem: Charlatan
One is never over-dressed or underdressed with a Little Black Dress. Karl Lagerfeld
(The spirit likes to dress up)
Mary Oliver
The spirit
likes to dress up like this:
ten fingers,
ten toes,
shoulders, and all the rest
at night
in the black branches,
in the morning
in the blue branches
of the world.
It could float, of course,
but would rather
plumb rough matter.
Airy and shapeless thing,
it needs
the metaphor of the body,
lime and appetite,
the oceanic fluids;
it needs the body’s world,
instinct
and imagination
and the dark hug of time,
sweetness
and tangibility,
to be understood,
to be more than pure light
that burns
where no one is —
so it enters us —
in the morning
shines from brute comfort
like a stitch of lightning;
and at night
lights up the deep and wondrous
drownings of the body
like a star.
Queensland Times (Ipswich) (Qld. : 1909 – 1954), Friday 17 February 1950
Beer, of course, is actually a depressant, but poor people will never stop hoping otherwise. — Curt Vonnegut, Jr., Hocus Pocus, 1990
Telling an introvert to go to a party is like telling a saint to go to Hell.
― Criss Jami
Queensland Figaro (Brisbane, Qld. : 1901 – 1936), Saturday 20 September 1930,
Bir musibet, yuz tembihten iyidir. – (Beauty passes, wisdom remains.) Used to make a point that wisdom matters more than physical beauty.
http://www.turkishculture.org/pages.php?SearchID=133
Khizr chose the path to Kabul in order to reach Paradise
For her mountains brought him close to the delights of heaven
From the fort with sprawling walls, A Dragon of protection
Each stone is there more precious than the treasure of Shayagan
Every street of Kabul is enthralling to the eye
Through the bazaars, caravans of Egypt pass
One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs
And the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls …
Saib-e-Tabrizi, 17th century poet
http://stevemccurry.wordpress.com/2011/01/29/proverbs-and-poems-from-afghanistan/
“You scour the Bowery, ransack the Bronx,/ Through funeral parlours and honky-tonks./ From river to river you comb the town/ For a place to lay your family down.”
Ogden Nash
Bowery Blues
The story of man
Makes me sick
Inside, outside,
I don’t know why
Something so conditional
And all talk
Should hurt me so.
I am hurt
I am scared
I want to live
I want to die
I don’t know
Where to turn
In the Void
And when
To cut
Out
For no Church told me
No Guru holds me
No advice
Just stone
Of New York
And on the cafeteria
We hear
The saxophone
O dead Ruby
Died of Shot
In Thirty Two,
Sounding like old times
And de bombed
Empty decapitated
Murder by the clock.
And I see Shadows
Dancing into Doom
In love, holding
Tight the lovely asses
Of the little girls
In love with sex
Showing themselves
In white undergarments
At elevated windows
Hoping for the Worst.
I can’t take it
Anymore
If I can’t hold
My little behind
To me in my room
Then it’s goodbye
Sangsara
For me
Besides
Girls aren’t as good
As they look
And Samadhi
Is better
Than you think
When it starts in
Hitting your head
In with Buzz
Of glittergold
Heaven’s Angels
Wailing
Saying
We’ve been waiting for you
Since Morning, Jack
Why were you so long
Dallying in the sooty room?
This transcendental Brilliance
Is the better part
(of Nothingness
I sing)
Okay.
Quit.
Mad.
Stop.
Kerouac Jack
Vicious as a tigress can be, she never eats her own cubs.
Not all have the tigress for an overbearing friend, for she scratches.
This was their third bar since Piccadilly and they were both agreed that the two of them were very drunk but had the capacity to get a good deal drunker yet.” ―
Kate Atkinson, Life After Life
I’m on whiskey diet… I’ve lost three days already!
Beer: So much more than just a breakfast drink.”
-Whitstran Brewery sign
“I’m a lifeguard at a brewery. When someone falls in a vat, I jump in after them and start gulping. It makes me feel good after letting people drown.”
― Bauvard, Evergreens Are Prudish
I was much further out than you thought, and not waving but drowning.”
-Margaret Smith
“Would I drown saving him?”
― Ellen Hopkins, Crank
Weaving a net is better than praying for fish at the edge of the water.
CHINESE.
You carry your snare everywhere and spread your nets in all places. You allege that you never invited others to sin. You did not, indeed, by your words, but you have done so by your dress and your deportment, and much more effectively than you could by your voice. When you have made another sin in his heart, how can you be innocent? Tell me, whom does this world condemn? Whom do judges in court punish? Those who drink poison or those who prepare it and administer the fatal potion? You have prepared the abominable cup, you have given the death-dealing drink, and you are more criminal than are those who poison the body; you murder not the body, but the soul. And it is not to enemies that you do this, nor are you urged on by any imaginary necessity, nor provoked by injury, but out of foolish vanity and pride. ~St. John Chrysostom
"Prosperity destroys fools and endangers the wise."
"Curiosities in Proverbs: A Collection of Unusual Adages, Maxims, Aphorisms, Phrases and Other …"
When he was born, Solomon passed by his door and would not go in. (Spanish).
"The rat says, ‘Put plenty of food in the trap, for he takes his neck and goes.’ He risks his neck.
"Curiosities in Proverbs: A Collection of Unusual Adages, Maxims, Aphorisms, Phrases and Other …"
Why would you trade enduring intimacies for cheap thrills with a whore?
Proverbs 5
Nothing but Sin and Bones
foto – chooks on vernadah
Prov 21:17 You’re addicted to thrills? What an empty life! The pursuit of pleasure is never satisfied.
The Thrill Seekers
On the verandah rail, inquisitive Willie Wagtails,
dressed ready for a black tie dinner,
dance, twist, flit in a flash to perch teasingly
on a magpie’s back, saucy tale upright.
Do they hope perhaps, for a free flight?
With a sudden song—burst they dash through water spray,
wing span maximised to ride the wind, surf air waves,
ski the skies, in flight so free assistance is superfluous.
http://leswicks.tripod.com/apcarchive.htm
foto – clarence river at ulmarra
I get no kick from champagne. Mere alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all, So tell me why should it be true That I get a kick out of you. Cole Albert Porter 1891 – 1964 Anything Goes 1934. I Get a Kick Out of You
Sun Before the Long Wait
Jill Jones
Break gods on the steps under a forgotten sun
unwind what goes along, and what is led
fears that can’t approve or anxieties listen
time toughs the excuses out
having been released from the long wait.
site 2c – http://homepages.tig.com.au/~jpjones/brokenopen.html
foto – bello champagne dec 09
THE OLD PROVERBIAL RECOVERY 