I took the grandson and great-grandson out for a short automobile drive. We followed the above vehicle for a little while. When I took them back home, the great-grandson told his mother, “I saw America’s butthole today.”
I said, “I saw America’s butthole, too. He was standing between Vance, and Elon Musk.”
The area bosses of the richest, most powerful crime syndicate in the world, recently got together to elect a new capo di tutti capi. They’re responsible for extorting billions of people, and ruining millions of lives. Nice soul you’ve got there – it’d be a shame if you lost it because you didn’t pay the weekly vig.
They locked them in a room, and the last guy standing got to be the new Boss. It was a mobster from Chicago. He knew where all the bodies were buried, because he’d buried a lot of them himself. We’re gonna start finding guys in cement overshoes at the bottom of the Tiber.
Locked together in a room grand suite, until they came to a decision??! One meal a day??! Sounds tough. The truth is an unlimited buffet, and hot and cold, running altar boys. White smoke from the chimney – no new Pope. Black smoke? New Pope. Greasy grey smoke?? They’re having steak for supper.
I’m surprised they didn’t take at least a week’s well-paid vacation, but I guess they felt they had to get back to check the bank deposit statements. The name of this posh little shindig was
No! Wait! That’s not right. The name for locking 133 guys in bright dresses in the same room – not that there’s anything wrong with that – is conclave. CATHOLICON is a panacea, or universal remedy. The cure is worse than the disease.
I’m going to say a couple of Hell, Mary, and see if I can come up with a Wednesday post theme. If not, CU Friday. 😀
This That week, Pensitivity101 wanted to know who could have written these 5 books or sung these 5 songs?
It’s a publication found in any government bureaucratic service (Hah!) department, like the DMV. By the time you read your way completely through it, you might be able to see the front of the line.
2. The Glass Mountain.
I. M. Pei, and he should be ashamed of himself. Going to the Louvre now is like going to hear a Bach concerto, and having AC/DC as the opening act.
3. The Shining.
The scullery maid in Downton Abbey, always busy polishing the silver – knives, forks, spoons, serving trays, teapots, candlesticks – it’s a never-ending job.
4. Little Women.
It is a communally-written biography by all 17 Kardashian mother and daughters. It is regarded as high satire – by everyone except them.
An embarrassment of riches
Too much of a good thing
“O, wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion.”
Donald Trump, with a preface from Vladimir Putin
Mark Zuckerberg
7. Bat out of Hell
The local idiot who just got caught by the police, doing three times the speed limit, coming into the city. Police claim that he was doing 200 Kmh in a 50 Kmh zone. His defense was that he was only doing 150. His car was impounded for 14 days. He summarily lost his driving license for 30 days. His court case may cost him $1000s in fines, and a further year’s suspension. Aside from risking his life, and everyone else on the roads, he lends unwelcome justification to the Go Slow – Be Safe, do-gooder crowd.
They’ve already profaned innumerable city streets with speed bumps, chicanes, plastic Slow Down stakes in the middle of already narrow residential roads, rows of them stealing car lanes for bicyclists, rarer than blue moons. They want to reduce the city speed limit from 50 Kmh to 40, the limit in school zones from 40 Kmh to 30, and now there’s a vocal group campaigning for, “Twenty Is Plenty.” This will be the reason I’m late for my own funeral.
8. Space Oddity
The guy who started building his own house by erecting this frame.
9. Help!
That would be me, loudly and (not so) proudly, any given day that I’m blogging. The Luddite support group called up to revoke my membership. If it’s anything more complex than putting one word behind another, or sticking a picture in a post to demonstrate what my prose leaves murky, I am thankful that the wife took advantage of a government program to learn seven different computer programs. She can make this PC sit up and beg for RAM.
10. For Your Eyes Only.
That shining scullery maid above, lied. She does have a bit of free time, and she often spends it with the studly stable-boy. She’s been known to drop her pinafore and let him curry her withers a bit. Not wanting to be thought, “loose,” she assures him that the nicely rounded view is, For Your Eyes Only. A new Papal decree says that priests and nuns can neck a little, they just can’t get into the habit.
Benny Hill! Benny Hill! Benny Hill!
What can you say about Benny Hill?
He was a mediocre actor, a funny TV comic, and a brilliant writer and comedian. To be the writer and comedian, he was also a brilliant linguist, sometimes making puns and jokes in two and three languages.
He got “Son of a bitch!” past the BBC censors by claiming that a French skit character spoke of, ‘Ze sun, over ze beach.’
He talked about having a bent wood chair in his dressing room. Not a Bentwood Chair – but a bent wood chair, because his dressing room was in the damp, BBC basement.
With the moving of a couple of letters on a sign, he turned
Dr. Johnson
the
rapist
Into
Dr. Johnson
therapist
Not only was he familiar with French and German, but quite knowledgeable about regional British accents, where, if you travelled 50 miles, the common folk could not be understood, and bread rolls had changed names. Sometimes he used words and phrases that those born on this side of the pond didn’t recognize.
Once, he wrote a bit, making fun of a commercial from Cheer detergent, which had just begun selling in the UK. We’ll take two dress shirts, and pour blackberry juice on both of them. Then we’ll wash one of them in Applaud detergent, (So no-one could accuse him of making fun of Cheer) and the other one in Ben’s Cleanso. Flash out – flash in. And there you see it friends (Both shirts still badly stained) Not a haip o’ the difference.
haip = “wattle, sheaf or heap of straw etc.”
(Therefore – something small, or inconsequential)
And you thought that the word for H was going to be Benny HILL.
I took its meaning from context, but I had to wait for Al Gore to invent the Internet, and then wait some more until stable genius (Like Mr. Ed), Donald Trump perfected it, to meet its parents online. I still haven’t, really. I finally found one word-site which gave the definition, but only said that it was British dialect, and very rare. It did not say what area dialect, although I suspect Northumbria/Yorkshire – up north, away from London and the universities, where the poor folk live. If this word were coined in the US, it would be from Appalachia.
Helpful fellow-blogger and word-nerd Daniel Digby, just introduced me to wordhistories.net, a Frenchman living in Lancashire, who blogs about etymology. At first I shook my head about a Frenchie in England but it makes as much sense as a Quebecois in Ontario. It’s 300 miles from London to Paris, and 300 miles from Toronto to Montreal. Perhaps he’s more successful wrestling search engines than I am. When I get back from Merriam-Webster on Wednesday, we can have a few laughs. 😆
For years I have been lithely and nimbly avoiding the April A To Z Challenge trap, by spreading my weight out over the entire year. This year I have been ensnared in the BEDA – Blog Every Day in April Challenge. I have decided to – not abandon my Monday, Wednesday, Friday posting schedule – but add to it.
To my 13 regularly-scheduled April posts, I will add another 17, to sate the month, and my readers. Many of the extra posts will be like little mental flickers from a 4th of July sparkler – like my 100-word Flash Fictions – a quick, bright idea, there and then gone. Others may be a little wordier. Oh good. Thanx for the warning.
I had 45 unpublished posts in the can, in a Word file, when I found out about this, and I’ve already composed a couple of short new ones. If any of my readers have an idea, a topic, a prompt, something they wish discussed, researched or satirized, feel free to submit your subject in the comments.
Why couldn’t I do this in February, when there’s only 28 days??! 😳
A Christian Apologist walked into a bar….
No he didn’t. Don’t be silly. They don’t walk into bars.
He walked into a church and had some communion wine because
Jesus turned water into wine, and said alcohol is good for you.
He made some drunken accusations about a well-known Atheist.
I accused him of Tu Quoque.
(Which means Christians do the same things, but claim to be better than everybody else)
He denied it, and claimed that I was ‘projecting.’
He said – She said
The rest is THISTORY
Frustrated and angry about the ongoing actions and attitudes of Christians, Christianity, the Christian Church, and specifically the Catholic Church, P Z Meyers indulged in a little hypothetical hyperbole. To present it as if you believed it literally, is either incredibly naïve, or an intentional lie. Likewise, to take the angry rant of one Atheist, and present it as if it were somehow The Official Atheist Position, is also naïve or a lie.
You admit that Meyers supposedly has the same actions and attitudes that some Christians do. To castigate the Atheist, and then even imply that Christians still hold the moral high ground is the Tu Quoque fallacy that I mentioned. This is not projection! This is cold, hard logic, and demonstrable fact.
You complained that Meyers advocated (he didn’t) burning down the churches of the very Indigenous People he tries to support. These are the same churches which were thrust, unwanted, upon them – which stifled and strangled their native spirituality – and treated them like shit for centuries. Meyers honestly believes that they would be better off without them. Mentioning burning them down is a bit over-the-top, for effect. I agree with Schadenfreude’s suggestion that they could be made much better use of in other, non-church ways.
As for the old Nazi-wannabe…. Meyers does not believe in Heaven or Hell. He doesn’t think that there will ever be any final punishment for this man’s evil ways. Even if God and Heaven were to exist, he can still sneak out through the Holy loophole by confessing his sins and asking for forgiveness.
Fair is where you take your pig to have it judged, but Meyers obviously feels that the universe would a little fairer place if this man suffered in retribution in the here and now – the only time and place that we can be sure that he will pay for his many transgressions.
Kevin, below, wants to write him a free pass because he wasn’t quite the asshole that Hitler was. This was only through lack of ability and lack of opportunity, not through any lack of trying. His ideology – his evil – his sin – is precisely the same. Any difference in size is irrelevant.
In your follow-up post, you maunder on about Meyers putting someone through a wood-chipper. He would not do such a thing! He did not even advocate that anyone should do this! What he PRECISELY said was, if all that Regnery did, was put one person into a wood-chipper, as horrible and gruesome as that might be, it would still be less evil and cause less pain and suffering to others, than what Regnery has achieved over many years.
Your rants might have a firmer base if you stopped assigning thoughts and claims to others, and studied and understood satire, sarcasm, and hyperbole. But then, what’s the fun of dishing out the truth? 😯
Mark Twain, making fun of Christians’ beliefs about heaven.
The book: Captain Stormfield’s Visit To Heaven
The author: Mark Twain = Samuel Langhorne Clemens
The review: This is a short story written by Mark Twain, about 1868. It was not published until 1909 – 41 years later – because it was thought to insult all the Good Christians.
The story follows Captain Elias Stormfield on his decades-long cosmic journey to Heaven; his accidental misplacement after racing a comet; his short-lived interest in singing and playing the harp (generated by his preconceptions of heaven); and the general obsession of souls with the celebrities of Heaven such as Adam, Moses, and Elijah, who according to Twain become as distant to most people in Heaven as living celebrities are on Earth (an early parody of celebrity culture). Twain uses this story to show his view that the common conception of Heaven is ludicrous, and points out the incongruities of such beliefs with his characteristic adroit usage of hyperbole.
Much of the story’s description is given by the character Sandy McWilliams, a cranberry farmer who is very experienced in the ways of Heaven. Sandy gives Stormfield, a newcomer, the description in the form of a conversational question-and-answer session. The Heaven described by him is similar to the conventional Christian Heaven, but includes a larger version of all the locations on Earth, as well as of everywhere in the universe (which mention of, albeit as a backdrop, is the last science fiction element).
All sentient life-forms travel to Heaven, often through interplanetary or interstellar space, and land at a particular gate (which are without number), which is reserved for people from that originating planet. Each newcomer must then give his name and planet of origin to a gatekeeper, who sends him in to Heaven.
Once inside, the person spends eternity living as it thinks fit, usually according to its true (sometimes undiscovered) talent. According to one of the characters, a cobbler who “has the soul of a poet in him won’t have to make shoes here,” implying that he would instead turn to poetry and achieve perfection in it.
On special occasions a procession of the greatest people in history is formed; on the occasion of Stormfield’s arrival, this includes Buddha, William Shakespeare, Homer, Mohammed, Daniel, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah plus several otherwise unknown people whose talents far exceeded those of the world’s pivotal figures, but who were never famous on Earth.
As Stormfield proceeds through Heaven he learns that the conventional image of angels as winged, white-robed figures bearing haloes, harps, and palm leaves is a mere illusion generated for the benefit of humans, who mistake “figurative language” for accurate description (the wings are part of their uniforms, and not functionally wings); that all of Heaven’s denizens choose their ages, thus aligning themselves with the time of life at which they were most content; that anything desired is awarded to its seeker, if it does not violate any prohibition; that the prohibitions themselves are different from those envisioned on Earth; that each of the Earth-like regions of Heaven includes every human being who has ever lived on it; that families are not always together forever, because of decisions made by those who have died first; that white-skinned people are a minority in Heaven; that kings are not kings in Heaven (Charles II is a comedian while Henry VI has a religious book-stand), etc.
Making fun of slavery was one thing, but making fun of people’s cherished Christian beliefs was something else entirely. This book never did well, and even many Twain aficionados are not aware of it.
Once upon a time, I owned a car – not of my dreams, but in my dreams. It had a 1-1/2 cylinder engine, and ran on Macassar Oil. Since I was much younger when I imagined it, it was a much older make. It was a Rolls-Cunardly. It Rolls real good down hills, but Cunardly make it up the other side.
It didn’t come with all the creature comforts that today’s cars possess. In fact, I don’t remember any comfort at all. It didn’t have a windshield because, even at its top, blazing speed, the breeze flow wouldn’t equal a hot-air hand dryer.
Its balky, 5-speed gearbox was shifted with a long, floor-mounted handle, in a wide W pattern. In first gear, you could have checked what was in the glove compartment, except this car only had a shelf where, until recently, a red lantern was kept, that a footman had to precede the vehicle with.
You couldn’t put it in second gear if there was a lady in the car – although my girlfriend Muriel, said she enjoyed the vibration. Putting it in third would have allowed you to tune the radio, if it had one. Even if it did, all you’d have heard were the faint beeps that Marconi got, when someone told him to go fly a kite in Newfoundland.
Fourth gear would have allowed you to check your pocket change, but there was no need, since neither toll roads nor parking meters had been invented. Fifth gear was where it began overtaking garden snails. Care had to be taken, not to hit the simple on/off switch on the steering column, and shut it down.
Keys, and locks, and security systems were dreams for the future. Who would steal this monster? I left it running in front of a store one day, and came back to find a silver dollar and a note on the seat. You poor lad, I feel so sorry for you. Buy yourself a bicycle.
Where was reverse, you ask? Toward the top of a steep hill! The brakes were mechanical, and none too reliable. Just don’t park anywhere it was necessary to back up – or convince two husky bystanders to push it back for you. I used a crank-start system to get it going. Not the bent, metal thing. I got the grouchy old guy named Archon who lived next door, to help push me and bump-start it.
Some of the above details might not be accurate. They’re just intended to remind the Millennials about how tough we old coots had to be. Actually turn on a stove and cook food??! Ewww! My condo doesn’t even have a stove. Couldn’t you just tell your smart phone to call Skip The Dishes, or DoorDash, and have your meals delivered? 🙄
Take Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting, Lizard’s leg, and owlet’s wing,, stir well, blame it on Shakespeare, and claim you read it all, last year.
In no particular order:
One of the big books that ‘The Expanse’ TV series is based on. They broadcast one book per year, so I have to read two, to get ahead of the story arc, and stay ahead.
It’s been available for several years, so I thought that I would educate myself. It’s not Dr. Seuss level, but Hawking does a good job of making a complex theory comprehensible to non-mathematicians.
Possibly only ever published as a pulp fiction, not paperback, I didn’t have a copy of this, along with my other Hamilton books. I found this, perhaps inadvertently attached to another article that I was researching..
A men’s’ action/adventure book, good for passing time in retirement. This is the third in a series. The first was terrible. The second was so-so. The story arc is improving. If I hadn’t already bought this one, I might never have.
Mark Twain, making fun of Christians’ beliefs about heaven. I’ll post a book-review later.
Like John Grisham’s work, Robin Cook’s is also dense. I read Coma, and liked it, but this one took me a while to struggle through.
This is the second of the Expanse books that I read last year. The next TV series became available on December 18/19, but I’m saving it till summer.
Tom Clancy’s ghost keeps pumping these out, and I keep reading them.
Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness of Crowds
I’ve already done a book-review on this one. Interesting enough, but too old to be relevant.
Fun but formulaic Science Fiction. The daughter of a University professor grows up with enhanced cognitive powers.
Galileo Goes to Jail, And Other Myths
Research into Christianity vs. Secularism.
more research into Christianity vs. Secularism. The author has more than 20 books about the New Testament. I just can’t believe that he points out all the mistakes and contradictions…. yet says that he still believes.
One of two I that I read, that are the last in this series. Magic in Atlanta. I’ve already started on another series by the same authors, Magic in Red Deer, Texas.
One well-known author butted into another’s series, and wrote two books. It took the first as much time and effort to edit them, and assure that they fit in the canon, as if he’d written them himself. The other title is Sinners, which I’ll read this year.
A collection of Jack Reacher short stories.
Dan Brown’s latest – unless he’s released another one while I was publishing this list.
This author likes to play with alternate timelines & realities.
It wasn’t as interesting as I’d hoped – but then, perhaps people named Smith just aren’t interesting.
A story about space marines. The blurb sounded good, but the book was Young Adult – nothing wrong, just nothing right.
A book about how the original Star Trek was real…. or was it??!
The last in this sword and werewolves series – unless the rabid fans convince the author couple to write another. They are quite prolific, with four concurrent series, and a couple of stand-alones.
Not “Great Literature,” but a great time passer.
I’m reading these faster than Lee Child can write them. I will regret when the series ends. There are still two more ahead of me.
Science Fiction and time travel from a woman’s point of view. More suspense than action, but interesting.
I started this in Dec. but the need to read and return that next big Expanse book to the library in Jan. means that I’m just finishing it now.
Yet more Christians vs. Atheists research. Christian Apologists can be so irritating – unintentionally amusing and interesting – but irritating.
Even if you don’t have the time/energy to list all the books you read last year, do you have any specials that you’d like to mention?
PHOTO PROMPT© CEAyr
CONNECT THE DOTS
Steeped in the all-permeating Christian culture of the early Twentieth Century, Albert Einstein is said to have claimed that, “God does not play dice with the Universe.”
No less religious, but perhaps more pragmatic, Stephen Hawking insists that, “Of course God plays dice with the Universe. Just sometimes He throws them where we can’t see them.”
I don’t think that I’ve found evidence of God playing dice, but this might be proof of a minor god, or a giant, playing dominoes. (Not ordering Domino’s – all gods and giants eat at Papa John’s or Pizza Hut.) Is that a double six?
***
Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.
Archon's Den 