Thursday, July 30, 2009

A piece of chalk


I remember one splendid morning, all blue and silver, in the summer holidays when I reluctantly tore myself away from the task of doing nothing in particular, and put on a hat of some sort and picked up a walking-stick, and put six very bright-colored chalks in my pocket [and took with me some brown paper to draw on].
. . . . . . * * * * *
But as I sat scrawling these silly figures on the brown paper, it began to dawn on me, to my great disgust, that I had left one chalk, and that a most exquisite and essential chalk, behind. I searched all of my pockets, but I could not find any white chalk. Now, those who are acquainted with philosophy (nay, religion) which is typified in the art of drawing on brown paper, know that white is positive and essential. I cannot avoid remarking here on a moral significance. One of the wise and awful truths which this brown-paper art reveals, is this, that white is a color. It is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. When, so to speak, your pencil grows red-hot, it draws roses; when it grows white-hot, it draws stars. And one of the two or three defiant verities of the best religious morality, of real Christianity, for example, is exactly this same thing; the chief assertion of religious morality is that white is a color. Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell. Mercy does not mean not being cruel or sparing people revenge or punishment; it means a plain and positive thing like the sun, which one has either seen or not seen. Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc. In a word, God paints in many colors; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.
In a sense our age has realized this fact, and expressed it in our sullen costume. For if it were really true that white was a blank and colorless thing, negative and non-committal, then white would be used instead of black and grey for the funeral of this pessimistic period. We should see city gentlemen in frock coats of spotless silver linen, with top hats as white as wonderful arum lilies. Which is not the case.
Meanwhile, I could not find my chalk.
--G.K. Chesterton

Saturday, July 25, 2009

nice video about Truman Madsen


http://www.mormontimes.com/people_news/newsmakers/?id=8026

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Shakespeare Insult Kit


In an effort to elevate the level of discourse on Irene's Mustache, we offer the following aid. Simply combine a modifier from each of columns 1 and 2 with a noun from column 3, then preface your insult with "Thou" and add exclamation point. (Example: "Thou gorbellied hedge-born varlet!") Practice on family members. No more of this "Hey, like, you're such a LOSER."

COLUMN 1
artless
bawdy
beslubbering
bootless
churlish
cockered
clouted
craven
currish
dankish
dissembling
droning
errant
fawning
fobbing
froward
frothy
gleeking
goatish
gorbellied
impertinent
infectious
jarring
loggerheaded
lumpish
mammering
mangled
mewling
paunchy
pribbling
puking
puny
qualling
rank
reeky
roguish
ruttish
saucy
spleeny
spongy
surly
tottering
unmuzzled
vain
venomed
villainous
warped
wayward
weedy
yeasty
cullionly
fusty
caluminous
wimpled
burly-boned
misbegotten
odiferous
poisonous
fishified
wart-necked

COLUMN 2
base-court
bat-fowling
beef-witted
beetle-headed
boil-brained
clapper-clawed
clay-brained
common-kissing
crook-pated
dismal-dreaming
dizzy-eyed
doghearted
dread-bolted
earth-vexing
elf-skinned
fat-kidneyed
fen-sucked
flap-mouthed
fly-bitten
folly-fallen
fool-born
full-gorged
guts-griping
half-faced
hasty-witted
hedge-born
hell-hated
idle-headed
ill-breeding
ill-nurtured
knotty-pated
milk-livered
motley-minded
onion-eyed
plume-plucked
pottle-deep
pox-marked
reeling-ripe
rough-hewn
rude-growing
rump-fed
shard-borne
sheep-biting
spur-galled
swag-bellied
tardy-gaited
tickle-brained
toad-spotted
unchin-snouted
weather-bitten
whoreson
malmsey-nosed
rampallian
lily-livered
scurvy-valiant
brazen-faced
unwash'd
bunch-back'd
leaden-footed
muddy-mettled
pigeon-liver'd
scale-sided

COLUMN 3
apple-john
baggage
barnacle
bladder
boar-pig
bugbear
bum-bailey
canker-blossom
clack-dish
clotpole
coxcomb
codpiece
death-token
dewberry
flap-dragon
flax-wench
flirt-gill
foot-licker
fustilarian
giglet
gudgeon
haggard
harpy
hedge-pig
horn-beast
hugger-mugger
joithead
lewdster
lout
maggot-pie
malt-worm
mammet
measle
minnow
miscreant
moldwarp
mumble-news
nut-hook
pigeon-egg
pignut
puttock
pumpion
ratsbane
scut
skainsmate
strumpet
varlot
vassal
whey-face
wagtail
knave
blind-worm
popinjay
scullian
jolt-head
malcontent
devil-monk
toad
rascal
Basket-Cockle

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Friday, July 17, 2009


This past September, six environmentalists were acquitted of having caused $50,000 worth of damage to a power station—not because they did not do it but because four witnesses, including a Greenlander, testified to the reality of global warming.

One recalls the disastrous 1878 jury acquittal in St. Petersburg of Vera Zasulich for the attempted assassination of General Trepov, on the grounds of the supposed purity of her motives. The acquittal destroyed all hope of establishing the rule of law in Russia and ushered in an age of terrorism that led directly to one of the greatest catastrophes in human history.
--Dr. Dalrymple

the question ideologists fear most


“Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?” And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, “No!” At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down. All my happiness was to have been found in the continual pursuit of this end. The end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? I seemed to have nothing left to live for.
--John Stuart Mill, Autobiography, describing a question he asked himself

Thursday, July 16, 2009

good advice from the Brown Bomber


"Everyone gets knocked down sometimes. While you’re down there you might as well pick something up."
--Joe Louis

Wednesday, July 15, 2009


Talk of mysteries! — Think of our life in nature, — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?
--H.D. Thoreau, The Maine Woods
That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
--HD Thoreau

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

today's challenge:


$5,000 cash to the one who can find the non-war criminal in this charmingly weird depiction of that great smoke-filled back room in the Sky.

Send responses to:

I. Papas
General Delivery
Molalla, OR 97038

j. golden vindicated, after all these years


A study by researchers at Keele University found volunteers were able to withstand pain for longer when they swore.

Dr Richard Stephens, who led the study, believes it may explain why swearing is common in languages all over the world.

"Swearing is quite an emotional form of language and it is an almost universal human linguistic phenomenon," he said.

"When my wife was in labour with our daughter she felt the need to f and blind at one point, but was very apologetic afterwards. The midwife said they were used to that kind of language on the delivery ward, so it got me thinking.

"Our research shows one potential reason why swearing has developed and why it persists."

The researchers, whose findings are published in the journal NeuroReport, tested 64 students' tolerance to pain by asking them to submerge their hand in a tub of ice water for as long as they could while repeating a series of swear words of their choice.

They were then asked to carry out the task again while repeating non-offensive words they would use to describe a table.

They found that volunteers who swore were able to keep their hands submerged in the water for an average of 40 seconds longer. They also rated their pain lower.

Friday, July 3, 2009


Hast thou not, yet, propos’d some certain end
To which thy life, thy every act may tend?
--John Dryden
Michael Oakeshott's admonition: "The conjunction of ruling and dreaming generates tyranny."
When Macbeth asks a physician:

Canst thou not minister to a
mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a
rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles
of the brain,
And with some sweet
oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom
of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?

The physician replies laconically: “Therein the patient / Must minister to himself.”

Every day, several patients ask me Macbeth’s question with regard to themselves—in less elevated language, to be sure—and they expect a positive answer: but four centuries before neurochemistry was even thought of, and before any of the touted advances in neurosciences that allegedly gave us a new and better understanding of ourselves, Shakespeare knew something that we are increasingly loath to acknowledge. There is no technical fix for the problems of humanity.
--Dr. Dalrymple

Each January, the American Dialect Society meets to vote on the media's most widely used word or phrase during the previous year. Last January, they voted on 2008's most used word: "bailout."