![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Italian reissue of the Codex
and each year it appears more true
Dec. 24th, 2008 05:21 pmI post this each year. It's E.B. White from 1952, writing in the New Yorker.
And this year especially to friends who are facing the worst life has to offer with particular courage and strength. You know who you are.
From this high midtown hall, undecked with boughs, unfortified with mistletoe, we send forth our tinselled greetings as of old, to friends, to readers, to strangers of many conditions in many places. Merry Christmas to uncertified accountants, to tellers who have made a mistake in addition, to girls who have made a mistake in judgment, to grounded airline passengers, and to all those who can't eat clams! We greet with particular warmth people who wake and smell smoke. To captains of river boats on snowy mornings we send an answering toot at this holiday time. Merry Christmas to intellectuals and other despised minorities! Merry Christmas to the musicians of Muzak and men whose shoes don't fit! Greetings of the season to unemployed actors and the blacklisted everywhere who suffer for sins uncommitted; a holly thorn in the thumb of compilers of lists! Greetings to wives who can't find their glasses and to poets who can't find their rhymes! Merry Christmas to the unloved, the misunderstood, the overweight. Joy to the authors of books whose titles begin with the word "How" (as though they knew!). Greetings to people with a ringing in their ears; greetings to growers of gourds, to shearers of sheep, and to makers of change in the lonely underground booths! Merry Christmas to old men asleep in libraries! Merry Christmas to people who can't stay in the same room with a cat! We greet, too, the boarders in boarding houses on 25 December, the duennas in Central Park in fair weather and foul, and young lovers who got nothing in the mail. Merry Christmas to people who plant trees in city streets; merry Christmas to people who save prairie chickens from extinction! Greetings of a purely mechanical sort to machines that think--plus a sprig of artificial holly. Joyous Yule to Cadillac owners whose conduct is unworthy of their car! Merry Christmas to the defeated, the forgotten, the inept; joy to all dandiprats and bunglers! We send, most particularly and most hopefully, our greetings and our prayers to soldiers and guardsmen on land and sea and in the air--the young men doing the hardest things at the hardest time of life. To all such, Merry Christmas, blessings, and good luck! We greet the Secretaries-designate, the President-elect; Merry Christmas to our new leaders, peace on earth, good will, and good management! Merry Christmas to couples unhappy in doorways! Merry Christmas to all who think they are in love but aren't sure! Greetings to people waiting for trains that will take them in the wrong direction, to people doing up a bundle and the string is too short, to children with sleds and no snow! We greet ministers who can't think of a moral, gagmen who can't think of a joke. Greetings, too, to the inhabitants of other planets; see you soon! And last, we greet all skaters on small natural ponds at the edge of woods toward the end of afternoon. Merry Christmas, skaters! Ring, steel! Grow red, sky! Die down, wind! Merry Christmas to all and to all a good morrow!
And this year especially to friends who are facing the worst life has to offer with particular courage and strength. You know who you are.
There's a slow poison out there that's severely damaging our children and threatening to tear apart our culture.
So,
I took on a mission to bring![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
salome_st_john coffee in order to get cookies.[1] On the way I needed to visit the 7-11 to get antacids, because I require them to avoid choking up and vomiting, always[2], and I was out.
I got the two coffees at Peet's, secured them, and headed to the 7-11. I was nearly sick in the car on the way; past time to fix this problem. Delaying the inevitable with a long drink of water from the bottle in the car, I took a deep breath and charged in.
I got my Pepcid Complete[3] and trotted back out to the car to take it.
Pepcid Complete, as purchased in the 7-11, comes in a matchbook-like cardboard foldover. Inside there are two little envelopes, each containing one pill.
The envelopes are made from a foil-like substance[4] with a paper backing. On one edge of the envelope there is a line drawn, with a scissors icon next to it. The type says "fold on this line, then tear at the slit."
I folded along the line, which was difficult; it was very close to the edge. Nothing like a slit was evident. Tearing at the line was fruitless. The situation was still urgent, and I used increasing force. Coarse words passed my lips. I bit and tore in a canine way, heaved at the thing with fingers and nails, repeated these things. A tear did open along the line, but this was too far from the center of the envelope to release the pill, which still sat swaddled and safe. The canine tearing resumed, with appropriate snarling included. No joy.
I now understood my fate. Modern medicine had been defeated by modern packaging, and I was in a suburban postmodern wasteland rotting from the inside, unable to reach my salvation, as in a bad short story.
Guzzling water and praying not to lose it again, I drove the mile tosalome_st_john's place and rushed in, demanding scissors. I was saved.
Notes
[1] This is a very good way to spend two bucks.
[2] Since puberty I have had acidic stomach and GERD beyond belief. It's crummy. Nothing fixes it. Oh well!
[3] This is a combination of chewable antacid and a dose of famotidine which is an ideal quick-acting solution to sudden acid indigestion. I recommend it.
[4] I have nothing but admiration for the inventors of this remarkable substance. At first it appears to be simply paper and aluminum foil. Fifteen minutes into the process I realized that I had in my hands some miracle of materials science, developed perhaps for the Stealth Bomber, which managed to be soft and ductile yet completely untearable; it could only be cut by a sharp blade. Kudos!
I took on a mission to bring
salome_st_john coffee in order to get cookies.[1] On the way I needed to visit the 7-11 to get antacids, because I require them to avoid choking up and vomiting, always[2], and I was out. I got the two coffees at Peet's, secured them, and headed to the 7-11. I was nearly sick in the car on the way; past time to fix this problem. Delaying the inevitable with a long drink of water from the bottle in the car, I took a deep breath and charged in.
I got my Pepcid Complete[3] and trotted back out to the car to take it.
Pepcid Complete, as purchased in the 7-11, comes in a matchbook-like cardboard foldover. Inside there are two little envelopes, each containing one pill.
The envelopes are made from a foil-like substance[4] with a paper backing. On one edge of the envelope there is a line drawn, with a scissors icon next to it. The type says "fold on this line, then tear at the slit."
I folded along the line, which was difficult; it was very close to the edge. Nothing like a slit was evident. Tearing at the line was fruitless. The situation was still urgent, and I used increasing force. Coarse words passed my lips. I bit and tore in a canine way, heaved at the thing with fingers and nails, repeated these things. A tear did open along the line, but this was too far from the center of the envelope to release the pill, which still sat swaddled and safe. The canine tearing resumed, with appropriate snarling included. No joy.
I now understood my fate. Modern medicine had been defeated by modern packaging, and I was in a suburban postmodern wasteland rotting from the inside, unable to reach my salvation, as in a bad short story.
Guzzling water and praying not to lose it again, I drove the mile to
salome_st_john's place and rushed in, demanding scissors. I was saved. Notes
[1] This is a very good way to spend two bucks.
[2] Since puberty I have had acidic stomach and GERD beyond belief. It's crummy. Nothing fixes it. Oh well!
[3] This is a combination of chewable antacid and a dose of famotidine which is an ideal quick-acting solution to sudden acid indigestion. I recommend it.
[4] I have nothing but admiration for the inventors of this remarkable substance. At first it appears to be simply paper and aluminum foil. Fifteen minutes into the process I realized that I had in my hands some miracle of materials science, developed perhaps for the Stealth Bomber, which managed to be soft and ductile yet completely untearable; it could only be cut by a sharp blade. Kudos!
- Terence Jolley, he warned, made a habit of turning up at funerals and memorials of people with whom he was not really familiar, bringing a large group, in the hope of...
- Robert Burns may also have been suffering from a rather nasty STD, according to a collection of explicit writing apparently by Scotland's national bard
- "B. Traven," the author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, is an anonymous mystery.
- maps drawn by Leonardo da Vinci scanned and posted in a Google maps interface
cards shirts etc from Gorey art
find and clean up dead links in your delicious bookmarks
The Vancouver Supercomputing Apartment sent me wonderful things, including a ROASTING PAN which will ROAST all kinds of things! Many thanks to stimps!
mendel and nyxie sure know how to pick a holiday card.
My sainted family gave me a little Canon digital camera, which will make it much easier to catalog horrible ads, ugly people, and cute animals.
I received books, which I shall read! Including some Paul Auster, Umberto Eco, and other delights for HI-BROW FOLKS such as me.
I did not get a rock.
stimps!mendel and nyxie sure know how to pick a holiday card. My sainted family gave me a little Canon digital camera, which will make it much easier to catalog horrible ads, ugly people, and cute animals.
I received books, which I shall read! Including some Paul Auster, Umberto Eco, and other delights for HI-BROW FOLKS such as me.
I did not get a rock.
- Tom Johnson and Bill Lobdell are working on a new paper for the Newport/Mesa area
- Archie does Pulp's "Common People", NICE work.
- Hilarious fighting over the lyrics. "Michael Jackson then proposed to keep his original line "Sha-lim sha-lingay" but after a few rehearsals, it too ran into opposition, because it does not have a meaning."
- Club where members make wine
- Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" Barbie Doll
- "Looks like rusty tap water. Smells like cigarettes. Awful. Tastes like V8 from a Hungry Tiger ashtray. This is what hate tastes like"
- Little JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell and Adolf Hitler Campbell cannot have the personalized cakes they want.
- classes in circuitbending, crafts, animatronic ghosts, etc
- HAMSTER CAM
- Why not have bees in your life?
- This is exactly the problem with Green. It's lifestyle marketing, which is part of the problem.
- add yakety sax to any youtube video
(no subject)
Dec. 15th, 2008 12:01 amFOLKS I AM FORTY-FOUR YEARS OLD AND NONE OF THIS WAS IN THE BROCHURE
- "In May, the 5th Bomb Wing at Minot Air Force Base flunked its test, when security personnel couldn't be bothered to stop playing videogames on their cellphones."
- SAQ in Grimeton, the only remaining pre-electronic transmitter for transatlantic work, on the Unesco World Heritage List. PDF article about the station.
- Ultra low frequency (17.2 KHz) electro-mechanical radio station with no tubes or transmitters. Last one in the world: The Alexanderson Alternator.
- my tumblr
- paste text and it attempts to tell you if it's plagiarized
