Dinner conversation gone wrong ...
WIFE: "What would you do if I died? Would you get married again?"
HUSBAND: "Definitely not!"
WIFE: "Why not - don't you like being married?"
HUSBAND: "Of course I do."
WIFE: "Then why wouldn't you remarry?"
HUSBAND: "Okay, I'd get married again."
WIFE: "You would? (with a hurtful look on her face)"
HUSBAND: (makes audible groan).
WIFE: "Would you sleep with her in our bed?"
HUSBAND: "Where else would we sleep?"
WIFE: "Would you replace my pictures with hers?"
HUSBAND: "That would seem like the proper thing to do."
WIFE: "Would you play golf with her?"
HUSBAND: "I guess so."
WIFE: "Would she use my golf clubs?"
HUSBAND: "No, she's left-handed."
WIFE: - - - silence - - -
HUSBAND: "Shit."
Friday 14 March 2008
Thursday 13 March 2008
walking on the lake
Mike heard a rumor that his father, grandfather and great-grandfather had all walked on water on their 21st birthdays. So, on his 21st birthday, Mike and his good friend Brian went out to the lake."If they did it, I can too!" he insisted. When they arrived at the lake, they rented a boat and began padding. When they got to the middle of the lake, Mike stepped off the side of the boat . . . and nearly drowned. Furious and somewhat ashemed, he and Brian headed for home. When he arrived back at the family farm, Mike asked his grandmother for an explanation. "Grandma, why can't I walk on the water like my father and his father, and his father before him?"
The feeble old grandmother took Mike by his hands, looked into his eyes and explained, "That's because your father, grandfather and great-grandfather were born in January . . . you were born in July, dear."
Alberto Manguel - A History of Reading / Eine Geschichte des Lesens
Manguel takes us through the history of reading as if leading us room by room
through the infinite library Borges constructed in one of his famous stories.
Ein AUSERGEWÖHNLICHES Buch. Ein Meta-Buch - ein Buch über die Bücher.
Lies, um zu leben. - Gustave Flaubert [Brief an Mll. de Chantepie, Juni 1857].
Ein Genuß, von Kapitel zu Kapitel - für die ohne zu lesen, nicht leben können.
my recommendation,
Wednesday 12 March 2008
snowball message
(roughly transliterated, this says that even though the doctor has very sloppy handwriting, the druggist is able to read the prescription anyway, almost by magic!)
Tuesday 11 March 2008
Perfect Teamwork - Everybody, Somebody, Nobody and Anybody
Once upon a time, there were four people:
Everybody, Somebody, Nobody and Anybody.
Wherever there was an important job to be done,
Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.
Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.
When Nobody did it, Everybody got angry because
it was Everybody's job.
Everybody thought that Somebody would do it, but
Nobody realized that Nobody would do it.
Consequently, Everybody blamed Somebody when
Nobody did what Anybody could have done in the
first place.
Monday 10 March 2008
Sunday 9 March 2008
'the nearest to poetry that cinema can ever aspire'
my recommandation: the film "Nostalghia" (1983) by Andrei Tarkovsky.
see the comments in www.imdb.com
and
Transcendental Images of Time and Memory
in Andrei Tarkovsky’s NOSTALGHIA
by Michael Vesia
from where I quote:
A sensation, in other words, activates forgotten memories. It helps recall not only an antecedent sensation but, more importantly, the entire ambience surrounding the sensation: the feelings, thoughts, impressions, and mood of the self that experienced these things long ago.
In his book Gilles Deleuze’s Time Machine, scholar D.N. Rodowick describes the Deleuzian time-image as follows:
Since the linking of images is no longer motivated by action, space changes in nature, becoming a disconnected or emptied space. Acts of seeing and hearing replace the linking of images through motor actions; pure description replaces referential anchoring.
Saturday 8 March 2008
Lateral Thinking
have fun ...
man
------------
board
Answer = man overboard
Let’s see how you can manage …
stand
------------
i
Answer = I understand
You got it? Next one:
/r/e/a/d/i/n/g/
Answer = reading between the lines
r
road
a
d
Answer = cross road
cycle cycle cycle
Answer = tricycle
0
------------
M.D.
Ph.D.
Answer = two degrees below zero
knee
------------
light
Answer = neon light (knee-on-light)
ground
---------------------------------
feet feet feet feet feet feet
Answer = six feet underground
he's X himself
Answer = he's by himself
ecnalg
Answer = backward glance
death ..... life
Answer = life after death
THINK
Answer = think big !!
and the last one, also not so simple ...
ababaaabbbbaaaabbbbababaabbaaabbbb....
Answer = long time no 'C' (see) ;-)
ﻉ√٥ﺎ, a
Friday 7 March 2008
Thursday 6 March 2008
only monkeys ...
Once upon a time in a village, a man appeared and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each. The villagers seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest, and started catching them. The man bought thousands at $10 and as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort.
He further announced that he would now buy at $20. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.
Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms. The offer increased to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so little that it was an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catch it!
The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50!
However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on behalf of him.
In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers.
"Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each."
The villagers rounded up with all their savings and bought all the monkeys.
Then they never saw the man nor his assistant, only monkeys everywhere!
Now you have a better understanding of how the stock market works.
He further announced that he would now buy at $20. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.
Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms. The offer increased to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so little that it was an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catch it!
The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50!
However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on behalf of him.
In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers.
"Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each."
The villagers rounded up with all their savings and bought all the monkeys.
Then they never saw the man nor his assistant, only monkeys everywhere!
Now you have a better understanding of how the stock market works.
Wednesday 5 March 2008
Tuesday 4 March 2008
Monday 3 March 2008
Saturday 1 March 2008
We – Yevgeny Zamyatain
Freedom and Criminality
“Liberation?” Astonishing how the criminal instincts do survive in the human species. I choose the word criminal advisedly. Freedom and criminality are just as indissolubly linked as . . . well, as the movement of an aero and its velocity. When the velocity of an aero is reduced to 0, it is not in motion; when a man’s freedom is reduced to zero, he commits no crimes. That’s clear. The only means to rid man of crime is to rid of it …
Paradise
“Paradise,” he began, and the p meant spray. “The old legend about Paradise-that was about us, about right now. Yes! Just think about it. Those two Paradise, they were offered a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness, nothing else. Those idiots chose freedom. And then what? Then for centuries they were homesick for the chains. That’s why the world was so miserable, see? They missed the chains. For ages! And we were the first to hit on the way to get back to happiness. No, wait . . . listen to me. The ancient God and us, side by side, at the same table. Yes! We helped God finally overcome the Devil-because that’s who it was that pushed people to break the commandment and taste freedom and be ruined. It was him, the wily serpent. But we give him a boot to the head! Crack! And it was all over: Paradise was back. And we’re simple and innocent again, like Adam and Eve. None of those complications about good and evil: Everything is very simple, childishly simple-Paradise! The Benefactor, the Machine, the Cube, the Gas Bell, the Guardians: All those things represent good, all that is sublime, splendid, noble, elevated, crystal pure. Because that is what protects our nonfreedom, which is to say, our happiness. Here’s where the ancients would stand around discussing things, weighing this and that, racking their brains: is this etichal, unetichal? . . . Well, you get the point. What I’m saying is, there’s this great poem of Paradise, right?
Limit of Function
Well, of course, it’s clear that you can’t establish a function without taking into account what its limit is. And it’s also clear that what I felt yesterday, the stupid “dissolving in the universe” if you take it to its limit, is death. Because that’s exactly what death is-the fullest possible dissolving of myself into the universe. Hence, if we let L stand for love and D for death, then L = f (D), i.e. love and death. . . .
Yes, that’s it, that’s it. That’s why I’m afraid of I-330, why I fight against her, why I don’t want . . . But why do those two exist side by side in me: I don’t want and I want? That’s just what’s so horrible: What I want is that blissful death of yesterday. What’s so horrible is that even now, when the logical function has been integrated, when it’s obvious that is contains, as a hidden component, death itself, I still want her, my lips, my arms, my chest, every millimetre of me wants her . . .
Who you really are
“Who knows who you really are? A person is like a novel: Up to the very last page you don’t know how it’s going to end. Otherwise, there’d be no point in reading. . . .”
Entropy and Energy
. . . Or, no, I’d better put it in your language so you’ll understand it sooner. Look – there are two forces in the world, entropy and energy. One of them leads to blissful disruption of equilibrium, to the torment of perpetual movement. Our – or rather, yours – ancestors, the Christians, worshipped entropy as they worshipped God, But we anti-Christians, we . . . “
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