Saturday 26 April 2008

What your morning paper says about YOU...

The Times is read by the people who run the country.

The Guardian is read by the people who know things would be better for everyone if they were running the country.

The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who remember how they used to run the country (and the empire).

The Financial Times is read by the people who own the country.

The Independent is read by the people who do not know who runs the country but they are sure they are doing it wrong.

The Daily Mail is read by the spouses of the people who are running the country.

The Daily Express is read by the people who think the country should be run the way it used to be.

The Daily Mirror is read by the people who know that they, the working class, really run the country.

The Star is read by the people who think the Sun is a bit too upmarket.

The Sun is read by the people who don't care who runs the country, as long as they do it topless.

The Sport is read by the people who think that Elvis is running the country from his secret lunar bunker assisted by a team of topless aliens.

Saturday 19 April 2008

Are You Normal?

~ Are You Normal? ~

Carry out this test. Just follow the instructions as
quickly as possible, but do not carry on reading the
following questions before you finish the previous one.
You do not need to write out the answers; just do it using your mind.

You'll be overwhelmed by the results...

How much does:

15+6=

3+56=

89+2=

12+53=

75+26=

25+52=

63+32=

I know! Calculations are hard work,
but this is the real thing! Come on, a few more.

123+ 5 =

QUICK! THINK ABOUT A TOOL AND A COLOR!

Scroll further to the bottom...

A bit more...

Just a little further...

You have just thought about a red hammer, haven't you????

If this is not the case, you are among 2% of the people who
have a "different," if not "abnormal," mind.

98% of the folks would answer a "red hammer" while doing this exercise.

If you do not believe this, pass it around and you'll see!

Saturday 12 April 2008

Some there are...

Some there are who are nothing else than a passage for food and augmentors of excrement and fillers of privies, because through them no other things in the world, nor any good effects are produced, since nothing but full privies results from them. Leonardo da Vinci.

Saturday 5 April 2008

Kubla Khan

Kubla Khan, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
___________________________________________________________________________________

Coleridge claimed that the poem came to him in an dream induced by opium. (He was in fact an opium addict.). On waking from the dream he began to write down the poem from memory, but was called upon by a man from Porlock and detained by him on business for over an hour. At the end of this time Coleridge could only remember scattered fragments of the remaining part of the poem.

In Coleridge's own words, "This fragment with a good deal more, not recoverable, composed, in a sort of Reverie brought on by two grains of Opium, taken to check a dysentery, at a Farm House between Porlock & Linton, a quarter of a mile from Culbone Church, in the fall of the year, 1797."