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THE NUMBERS GAME
two years.
more than 625 israelis have been killed in a total of 14,280 attacks.
some 1,372 Palestinians have been killed by israeli military forces.
a total of 4,500 israelis have been injured in terrorist attacks.
palestinian red crescent reports a total of 19,684 palestinian wounded.
why is ariel sharon still so popular?
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TOO FAR GONE TO TURN AROUND
"oh what the hell, dubya, you go annexe the sudetenland if you want."
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TRIPLETS OR TRINITY?
i don't know, i always get these three mixed up somehow.
i know at least one of them died but then one of them came back or perhaps all three died and all three came back. (or was that just jesus?)
one of them did brave stuff by sitting in a big house during attacks by the empire or something and another had a bicycle and i think another had a pointy stick that lit up and made phwoosh noises.
anyway, my point is this: who really cares?
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INFLATED CONDOMS
now i don't know about you but there's always something a bit tee hee hee about blowing up condoms like balloons.
well i bring this up now because a girlfriend of mine once did it in the middle of a job interview. she also stretched some out and stuck them to the wall.
it was all in the best possible taste (needless to say). they asked her what work she had been doing with young women and she told them she had been teaching them about safe sex.
they asked how she did that and she said the aim was to get them using condoms and to get them used to handling them and to take away the tee hee factor. she did this by blowing them up in groups and stretching them and sticking them to the walls etc etc. and the girls would all laugh a lot while they were learning stuff.
and she reached into her handbag and showed the interview panel exactly what she meant.
the point is, she got the job. so, like, safe sex is not just about not getting diseases or pregnant, it can also get you a job.
makes you think doesn't it?
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VOX IONAM IN PISCI EST
though scorned so many and loved so much,
with both medusa and the midas touch,
should we choose to repine away
or stand to face our judgement day?
do we, straining, lift the veil of isis
or lie back: succumb to mid-life crisis?
proclaim the time dies nefasti
but croak for want of elastoplasti?
tossed on the horns of hamlet’s dilemma
declare “we are” without a tremor?
to sneer at prufrock: “eat the peach”
who are we to preach such speech?
gamble all on legs of stone
or settle on the dice now thrown?
slowly greying, tea and schmaltz:
become spectators of the waltz.
ashes to ashes, dust to dust
snowmen melt and tin men rust
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I WENT TO SCHOOL WITH GARY LINEKER
y'know, i went to school with gary lineker.
i don't suppose that means all that much, i mean, lots of kids went to school with him, i know, i saw a lot of them.
except i remember one day, for some reason, me and gary decided to have this race, like, around the total edge of the school, all the way round.
you have to understand, at that time he was this spindly little kid who, to me, seemed about half-size, with spindly little legs like a crane fly.
well we ran from about half-way through the playground (the older kids bit) and through the spinney and then round the infant school and then back through the other half of the playground (for the younger kids).
some kids were waiting for us at the finish line but i don't remember anything about them. anyway, gary won by about a football pitch and a half.
except i didn't want to tell you about that bit, i wanted to tell you that my dad now sometimes plays chess with the teacher who taught gary lineker how to play football.
small world?
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CHURCHILL KILLED MY COUSIN
as much as anything else, this is true: winston churchill killed my cousin.
it works like this, when the doodle bugs were dropping over the channel and looping into london, winston ordered that each reported hit should be given as a few miles west of the actual strike. this way, german intelligence would compensate by aiming slightly further to the east.
this meant a good many V1 and V2 rockets landed in essex instead of on london, which is probably a good thing, because, mostly, essex was farms with a few people sprinkled all higgledypiggledy.
my great uncle had a farm in essex during the war. he didn't really mind doodle bugs landing in essex, except if they hit his farm, which they didn't. except one, which nearly did but just made a great big hole in the ground nearby and rattled the plates on the welsh dresser.
after the war it made a good pond and the cows used to wander down to it and drink there. they left hoof marks all around it in the mud, in the marshy essex mud their hooves used to sink quite deep. and the sun would come up and dry those little hoof holes until they were crispy like brown sugar around the edges of little hoof-shaped pools of water that would eventually dry up in the sun or fill up again if it rained.
and my four-year-old cousin (or second cousin or whatever it is) escaped the house and went down to the pond to see the cows. and, being four, he tripped and banged his head on the edge of a hoof hole and fell with his face in that little tiny puddle inside.
my cousin drowned in a tiny hoof-shaped puddle because winston churchill was trying to save london.
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LAST WORDS OF MY ENGLISH GRANDMOTHER
and so there she is, shallow breaths,
quietly waiting for the ambulance.
we do not say that this could be the last trip.
she does not say anything.
lying in bed she watches us and waits.
she waits for the ambulance
and watches her family around her,
perhaps measuring us.
and i must share these photographs with her,
these photographs of her great grandson,
at play, 80 years from where she is lying,
and i lie beside her, showing each to her.
she watches each carefully,
as if swallowing the contents,
absorbing. she looks up and
her warbling, pneumonic voice,
quakes out this bequest:
"when you're smiling,
when you're smiling,
the whole world smiles with you."
(with thanks to william carlos williams)
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TORTURED FRUIT
there you swine! have at you, feel the prick of my bodkin as it pierces your flesh and penetrates your seed.
wrench oh wrench my pinioned fruity. feel the cold steel.
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WE TWO BOYS TOGETHER CLINGING
my sincere apologies to david hockney and walt whitman.
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UNITED STATES OF PEQUOD
sorry, i stole the following from a lesson plan about how to teach children about moby dick...
"moby dick - ferocious, wild and mysterious - is a white whale that has fascinated story lovers for over a hundred years. it is the story of captain ahab's obsessed pursuit of the beast who cost him his leg and his peace of mind.
it is the story of the men driven by the force of ahab's maniacal mission of vengeance. it is the story of prophecies and omens, adventure and madness played out on the vast seas of the world, as men struggle with the great forces of nature: life and death."
moby dick lesson plan
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AHAB RIDES AGAIN
the following is an extract from an e-mail from american friend, with whom i once spent an enlightening afternoon walking the battlefield of chickamauga, pondering the nature of chivalry and some of the horrors of the human condition.
a few weeks ago i reread moby dick. i have decided that my timing couldn't have been better for reading this great allegorical tale of the 19th century. taking bush's present absurd fetish with saddam hussein i think it might do him well for someone to read this story to him at bed time each night with his warm milk and cookies.
i’ve been reading a lot of analysis on the novel and found the following on the net. just substitute "shrub" for "ahab" and "saddam" for "moby dick" and "the us military" for "30 sailors" and you've got the present situation in spades...
>>> in moby dick, melville recounts a whaling journey on which the monomanical captain ahab chases moby dick, the gigantic white whale who once dismembered him and thereafter became his representation of everything evil in the world. ahab brings along 30 sailors of many different origins who unknowingly enlist to pursue his solitary cause. in the end, however, the whale defeats ahab and takes the entire crew (save the narrator of course) and ship to the depths of the ocean. the key to reading this novel in relation to my comparison is ahab's character and how his single minded pursuit of justice results in failure and loss of lives.
ahab barks to his mate, "damn the devil, flask; do you suppose i'm afraid of the devil? who's afraid of him, except the old governor who daresn't catch him and put him in double-darbies, as he deserves. . . (moby dick, 373). ahab's intrepid approach is somewhat courageous, but still incredibly deranged. even after he is confronted about very personal matters, ahab refuses to steer off his one way course. his determination is ultimately ahab's downfall.<<<
as someone pointed out to me recently, bush has no strategy toward iraq. he has an ideology. the man's obsessed. sure, we can kick saddam's ass. but that leads us to...our further alienation with the non-western world (which is precisely what we need to win the war on terrorism) and to a deeper recession at home. that he is blinded to these obvious two effects is what makes me think of him as ahab. there's no difference at all.
w. keith beason (contact details available on request)
melville's moby dick
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there, i think that dealt with any more interruptions, we shouldn't need to do that again.
now, on with the blogging...
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