I wish

"Rocketed to Earth as an infant to escape the destruction of his home world where his parents had been brutally murdered before his eyes one night in a dark alley, Rob’s ship crash landed in a jungle where he was adopted by a friendly gorilla and raised to learn the ways of the jungle. As a teen-ager, Rob re-joined society and quickly enlisted in the army where he was given an experimental formula designed to create the ultimate soldier. After being put on ice for a number of years, Rob ditched the military and got a job at a scientific research facility where he was unfortunately exposed to gamma radiation, beta radiation, delta radiation, cosmic radiation, and a really nasty bite from a radioactive spider."
Boy, what are the odds on that? Snap!

Ram a fish up

From Daniel Gross, writing in Slate;
"Who better summed up the argument against the welfare state than Lao Tzu, the father of Taoism: "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.""
Why don't these idiots ever google?
LT's view was
"There is no guilt greater than to sanction ambition; no calamity greater than to be discontented with one's lot; no fault greater than the wish to be getting. Therefore the sufficiency of contentment is an enduring and unchanging sufficiency."
This probably extended to fishing.

Japanese education

Story from sister Sally, dating back perhaps a decade;
She was being shown around the university, and at one stage asked "And where is the library?" Some puzzlement.
"The books?" Ah, yes, of course, the books were in the professor's office.
"Didn't that make it difficult for the students to take them out?"
Why would they wish to take them out? The professor has provided in his textbook all that they need to know about these other books.
The top history student had bought not one but two copies of the course textbook (written, of course, by his professor) and had gone through one copy whiting out every date and every proper name. He them went away and crammed. When he was able to fill every name and date in again correctly without consulting the clean version he knew he was ready for the examination.

Links

Amazon tells me
"We've noticed that customers who have purchased books by Randall Jarrell often purchased books by James D. Tabor. For this reason you might like to know that James D. Tabor's newest book, The Jesus Dynasty : The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity, is now available . You can order your copy at a savings of 37% by following the link below."
I wonder what Amazon means by 'often'?

Age WPB #12

In law, in common sense, and in the playground it is taken for granted that sticking your fingers in your ears and chanting LA LA LA I CAN’T HEEEAR YOU is proof of guilty knowledge, not a defense. Why aren’t Howard and Downer being held to the same standard?

1994 xmas poem

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and Annie's graduation and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and Xmas ho ho ho deck the halls bah humbug and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day. How was your year?



1994
On the whole, it wasn't a year about which one could get very excited;
Unlike Mr. Skase, we didn't get a verdict from a Spanish court saying we couldn't be extradited,
And we didn't win thirty-six million dollars in an English lottery jackpot.
A number of psychologists did call Rose a crackpot
And in fact if you want to be alarmist
You could say that overall, the wicked continued to flourish like the green bay tree (not, to be sure, that the bay trees of my acquaintance have ever looked particularly exceptional in their efflorescence; perhaps the genetic makeup of the species has altered somewhat since the days of the psalmist).
Rose and Chris both published books but plainly hadn't quite mastered the trick,
Given that both volumes sold not only like cold cakes but like cakes of cold sick.
Anne, having put in ten years of hard graft on her Deakin degree, was getting distinctly disillusioned with the whole academic mystique
And had to be dissuaded at weekly intervals from withdrawing from motives of principle or pique,
But it has to be said that insofar as academe has a reward it's
Graduating to thunderous plaudits,
And in May 1994 Anne attained what under the circumstances I suppose is
What the Greeks called apotheosis;
By which they meant entering like Hercules or Caligula heaven's portals
To be given a roll of parchment testifying that they'd joined the ranks of the immortals.
At the end of the day, anyway (that day being of course the thirty-first of December)
What you have to remember
Is that however much we were over the previous year cribb'd cabined, confined, frustrated and/or vexed
We nonetheless survive to face the next.

Untitled poem - c. 1992

The moving finger writes a long report and having writ
Goes home to court insomnia by fretting on revisions –
Business is business, and all the rest is shit.

Tautology, scatology, unlikeable divisions
To map a life if joy and hope remain on the agenda;
But scars remain to warn us that new love means fresh incisions.

If Dido fucks Aeneas then Carthago est delenda;
Relationships are troublesome, and will at most admit
A temporary meeting of illusions and pudenda.

Nine to five is more straightforward still than cock to clit;
A more productive way to seek fulfilment from collisions —
Business is business, and all the rest is shit.

`