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Where are the golden ponds
of righteousness?
Oh lead me to those ponds
Where heaven’s fish dart
silver, gold and blue
And bitter sweetness lies
ajar and honey nights are
back to back with
Angel fish and silver
garden flowers
Let me sink into those
ponds and drown beneath
the flowers
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CAT ATTACK
if nextdoor's cat was a person not a cat and if it played loud music instead of crapping in my yard, it'd get an ASBO.
but it's a cat. it's not even nextdoor's cat, it's overtheroadandupabit's cat. and it's taken to taunting me.
it sleeps under my car. it saunters out, real slow, when i start the engine, and then kinda glides away, warning me with its wriggly hips.
it's wriggly hips say this: yeah sucker, run me over one day. no-one will believe it was an accident. they'll know it was a professional whack because of the crapping thing.
i can't get into my car now without checking underneath it thoroughly. next door think i'm under-going some kind of terrorist psychosis. overtheroadandupabit don't even know the psychological torture their cat is causing.
i think he's doing it because i rescued a toady-froggy thing from him late one night. perhaps he'll forget about it soon. how long is a cat's memory?
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ON PINK
i wouldn't want anyone to think i've got something against pink. or even tassels. or even pink tassels. just lampshades.
in fact, if you study the scale above you can see just how much i like pink. the two black pointers show the range of pink i really like. the little grey pointer shows the additional range of pink i quite like.
i think you'll agree, that's a pretty wide range of liking pink.
however, if you examine the picture right, you'll see a kind of pink i don't like much. oh i don't mind the colour (which is red anyway) - i mind its particular pinkishness.
incidentally, pink is a remarkably versatile word.
dictionary.com gives 15 definitions: that's eight nouns, four verbs, two adjectives and an idiom. wow.
pink. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Retrieved June 01, 2007, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pink
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THE LAMPSHADE CONUNDRUM
i've decided it's time to talk about lampshades. it's something that's troubled me for many years. i've protected you from it long enough, you are going to have to shoulder your share of the burden. i can do it alone no longer.
there are many ways to approach this thing but i'm going to try to do it using only two scenarios, for the sake of simplicity (and your sanity).
so - bear these two things in mind:
one
when lightning strikes, the air around the charge is heated to 30,000o C in milliseconds. there are something like 5,000 strikes cracking off and hitting the ground at various places around the Earth at any given moment (i haven't checked the facts exactly but that's about right).
if we're err on the side of generosity, human beings can exist (if only briefly) at temperatures between, say, -30o C and 80o C. that's a very narrow margin with all those sizzling storms zapping away around our heads.
two
the nearest star to Earth (apart from the Sun) is proxima centauri. it's 4.22 light years away (that's roughly 25ish trillion miles, 40ish trillion kilometres).
a million has this many noughts - 000,000
a billion has this many noughts - 000,000,000
a trillion has this many noughts - 000,000,000,000
any way you look at it, that's pretty far away. so what's between here and there? mostly nothing (no little chefs, no happy eaters), in fact, on average, there's absolutely nothing between here and there. nothing. nothing at all.
and, worse than that, if you consider the whole wide universe - all the stars, black-holes, comets, asteroids, planets, exploding gas clouds etc etc - most of it is missing.
if e=mc2 then something like 80% of the universe is either dark matter or dark energy - which means we think it's something somewhere but we can't detect it in any way.
and so
on this unbelievably friendly, temperate and benevolent planet we call home (because we've nowhere else to go), we are dodging 5,000 killer zaps at 30,000o C every moment of our global existence.
furthermore, this sympathetic and convivial lump of rock and water is, comparatively, less than a speck of dust in the great scheme of things.
therefore
just considering these two things (and there are many, many others we could throw into the equation) - what, in heaven, hell, Earth and nirvana, are lampshades about?
(conceptually, not decoratively)
i mean to say, electric light has got to be a pretty useful thing in anybody's book. but why why why do we make light and then mask it with a lampshade when a) our planet is trying to wipe us out and b) most of the universe is missing?
and that, dearly beloved, is without even considering the particular lampshades which have those little pink tassels.
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I
i thought i’d write a little ditty -
how come life turns out so shitty?
but then i stopped to really think:
it is because the others stink
(as well)
II
this prompts the use of far more lines.
the muse, enchanted, now defines
a chant of truly epic grace
where gods make battle for a place
(again)
to speak a lesser means of verse
must unleash the doggerel curse -
thoughts intended for great splendour
slurred by drunks out on a bender
(tiresome drunks at that)
the form required so realises
a lilt the layman oft despises
where "o’er" and "ne’er" are frequent guests
and heroes slain in dragon quests
(temporarily at least)
thus did prometheus entangle
zeus in a domestic wrangle,
thus was achilles brought to heel
by homer in that trojan deal
(paris done it)
the epic style, so unfettered,
is a voice cannot be bettered.
so why should any lesser art
restrain the beat of modern heart?
(it shouldn't)
III
so lo! tho’ not of stable bred,
altho’ not raiséd from the dead,
tho’ not graced with prophet power
i choose this voice upon my hour.
IV
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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EULOGY
i heard, on the radio, kurt vonnegut jr had died.
it sounded as if it was some time ago, last year perhaps, but i couldn't bring myself to check it out.
ian curtis, joe strummer, joey ramone. and now this.
we are running short of angels.
"poo-tee-weet?"
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as i was saying...
sometimes, y'know, words are just not enough. so i did without them for sometime. now, i think, i might do with them for a while again. who knows?
VIRTUAL PHILANTHROPIST
so i was debating with this chap about the problems of the world and all of a sudden he says to me 'over population'. well. i was dumbstruck for a minute because i'd never really thought of it like that. but then, y'know, the more i thought about it, the more sense it seemed to make.
and i've never talked with anyone who showed such philanthropy. i mean, i've put a few coins in collection tins and done the decent thing with comic relief and all that. but it struck me that this person i was talking to was probably an angel or a saint or something.
i mean, you meet people who say 'car emissions' and ride a bicycle and you meet people who say 'make poverty history' and collect money to balance things up again. but this was the first person i'd met who thought he should contribute by making there be less population.
and so i agreed and said i would be proud to watch him do his part to depopulate the world right there and then.
but it seems he meant 'over-population' was someone else's problem.
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