Happy Birthday, Mr. Gnome de Pluehm

Today is a Benigngirl Holiday because it is Gnome de Pluehm’s birthday. Well, tomorrow, November 20, is his birthday but today I am beginning bloggerly preparations. Coincidentally, it is also Nyal William’s birthday (tomorrow, again) and, coincidentally, both are loyal readers and commenters of this blog, so — all together now,

Happy Birthday Men!

I am out of town and making this post on my lazyass, wonky, POS laptop so please forgive the odd spacing and etc. My chillmat broke and it’s overheating and as much as I love these birthday men, I am not going outside to work, though it would solve my overheating laptop complications.

Happy Birthday, Gnome de Plue------ue---uem, ....

“Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time.”
Jean Paul Richter

The beaver’s powerful jaws are capable of felling blue spruce in less than ten minutes and proved, needless to say, more than a match for the tender limbs of America’s favorite birthday boy.

“All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much.”
George Harrison

Voltaire, half smiling, appears to be looking at his thoughts–perhaps at the tragicomic failings and follies of having a birthday.

“To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent – that is to triumph over old age.”
Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Although modern birthdays (especially in America) are mainly populated with horses, carousels from earlier periods frequently included diverse varieties of animals, including dogs, cats, rabbits, pigs, and deer, to name a few.

“The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”
Rabindranath Tagore

Whenever you walk into a room remember always that you are the least important person in that room, unless it is your birthday, or you are an angry Mime.

“My mother is going to have to stop lying about her age because pretty soon I’m going to be older than she is.”
Tripp Evans

By making a Bose-Einstein condensate in a particular isotope — rubidium-85 — and then changing the magnetic field in which the BEC is sitting, researchers can adjust the wavefunction’s self-interaction between birthdays and national holiday.

“You know you are getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.”
Bob Hope

Blair: “There is a hopefulness in his contextural destruction, especially in his birthday work.”

“Age doesn’t matter, unless you are cheese.”
John Paul Getty

“I’ve pointed out to Gnome de Pluehm that he’s the person he is today because he came under the wrath of Bill Mitchell.”

To be upset over what you don’t have is to waste what you do have.
Ken Keyes, Jr.

Birthdays - It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.

So many candles… so little cake.

See the birthday clowns. From what do they flee, in their double-entendre wanders?

Plato’s ideal city-state & stubborn realities

“Stubborn realities”, how apt the phrase.

Last week I re-read Tracy Kidder’s Hometown, because I had not read it in years and it was lying about at one of my temporary house-sitting homes. This particular section struck me and I’d certainly not remembered it from my first reading and so I thought I’d share;

Reprinted here with no thought whatsoever toward obtaining permission.

“Thirty thousand souls. Plato’s ideal city state was about that size, Northampton’s size. To relieve the squalor and congestion of Renaissance Milan, Leonardo da Vinci devised a scheme for building ten new cities. Like Northampton, each was to have a population of thirty thousand. And thirty thousand was roughly the size of the famous “garden cities” drawn up by Ebenezer Howard at the end of the nineteenth century. Howard intended his ideal towns to serve as antidotes to the overcrowding of great cities such as London, and to the growing impoverishment of the English countryside. And his utopias were most unusual in that a few approximations actually got built.

Howard’s perfect garden city was neither quite a city nor a country town. It combined the best of both.  It wasn’t an American-style suburb, but a truly self-sufficient place, with farms and rural scenery, urban entertainment and variety. Northampton had become a place rather like that, where many people went weeks without leaving because they found some of everything they needed and wanted here. But Howard’s garden city depended on a collevtivist vision. The garden city itself would be the only landlord. And, Howard figured, his new city wouldn’t need more than a few cops, because, like Northampton, they would comtain only thirty thousand people, “who, for the most part, would be of the law-abiding class.” Utopias by definition ignore some stubborn realities. If a place is big enough to provide all the variety that the law-abiding want, it’s likely to be big enough to harbor most varieties of human nature unrestrained.”

And so you see, my dear Nyal, that great writers do begin sentences with “And”, making it perfectly acceptable for untrained hacks like myself to do the same.

Benigngirl does not comply

According to an article at Total Recall Info, Benigngirl has been ordered for removal by the authorities

RECALL INFORMATION
June 5—Benign Girl recalls more Toy TELEPHONE SETS—Greece

Manufacturer: See Below
Product: Kids Toys

Start Date: 2009-06-05  End Date: 2009-07-05

Product: Toy telephones – Super telephone

Brand: Benign girl

Type/number of model: Code No. 143-333

Description: A toy telephone set, comprised of a pink and white flip-top mobile telephone and a pink and white cordless telephone. The toy is operated by 3 button batteries of 1.5 V. The set is packed in a blister on cardboard bearing a picture of two dolls (girls), the CE mark and warnings.

Country of origin: China

Damage to hearing

The product poses a risk of damage to hearing because the weighted emission of acoustic pressure is 119.7 dB which exceeds the maximum permitted value of 80 dB.

The product does not comply with the Toys Directive and with the relevant European standard EN 71.

Withdrawal from the market ordered by the authorities.

Advice Columnism for hacks

Dear Mo-ie Dearest, I am just short of cutting off my ear for love, signed, ~>

“]

Wine Glass with reservoir: Two of these together might make a heart shape - making this image relevant to this post - and might help rekindle the love. [SOURCE

Dear ~>,
Hmm. Maybe something less van Gogh-ian would be better and more au courant, révolutionnaire? Perhaps cutting off some split ends for love? And weaving them into a love wreath to be framed and hung on the wall, or used as a dangerously flammable lampshade (for the danger and drama of it)? Perhaps add in some strands from ripped jeans.

Hell, make a garland and wear it around your neck like a giant neck corsage. Better yet, make the whole pile into a garland and then immortalize it in a colorful jello mold and sell it to MOMA for a million dollars, become instantly rich and famous and take a year off to travel the world staying in villas, chateaus and yurts, and rekindle the love.

Yes, that is the best plan my friend. Start weaving; figuratively and literally. I have all the best ideas. ;-)

Your pal, Mo-ie Dearest

If I were a puppet

Better yet, if I were at a puppet show I would be the child on the right, over the word “mundo”. That’s how I most often feel inside.

Fabulous Art Finds, with Essence of Existentialist Apropos(ities)

I found these FAFs over at BestWeekEver and I am just speechless. So I borrowed other bits of speech that seemed to best explain the existence of these… these inexplicabilities. In awe, your pal Mo.

THE TOP 50 CRAZIEST PAINTINGS OF ANIMALS.  See all 50 here…. [source]

“Obviously, all religions fall far short of their own ideals…” ~ Ernest Becker, 1973, The Denial of Death

"Indeed, compulsive and rigid moralism arises in given persons precisely as the result of a lack of sense of being." ~ Rollo May, 1958, "Contributions of Existential Psychotherapy" in Existence

"One must not let oneself be misled: they say 'Judge not!' but they send to Hell everything that stands in their way." ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, 1894/1990, The Anti-Christ

"The man of knowledge must not only love his enemies, he must also be able to hate his friends." ~ Nietzsche, 1892/1966, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“Science. Nietzsche had warned, is becoming a factory, and the result will be ethical nihilism.” ~ Rollo May, 1958, “The Origins of the Existential Movement in Psychology” in Existence

"...man is free, in so far as he has the power of contradicting himself and his essential nature. Man is free even from his freedom; that is, he can surrender his humanity." ~ Paul Tillich, 1957, Systematic Theology

"Man is not what he believes himself to be in his conscious decisions." ~ Paul Tillich, 1961, "Existentialism and Psychotherapy, in Review of Existential Psychology & Psychiatry, Volume 1

"if we possess our why of life we can put up with almost any how. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, 1889/1990, Twilight of the Idols

"It is interesting to note how many of the great scientific discoveries begin as myths." ~ Rollo May, 1991, The Cry for Myth

POSSIBLY RELATED POSTS, MOICALLY GENERATED….

• Uninspirational words in perhaps uninspirational times

• Donkey Kong and The Decline of Western Civilization

• They all look the same, don’t they?

You may not have a car, at all…

Monday Morning Music Gift- FOR EVALUATION PURPOSES ONLY (click link below and ’save as’)

William DeVaughn – MP3–> william-devaughn-be-thankful-for-what-you-got

Though you may not drive a great big Cadillac
Gangsta whitewalls
TV antennas in the back
You may not have a car at all
But remember brothers and sisters
You can still stand tall

Just be thankful for what you’ve got
Though you may not drive a great big Cadillac
Diamond in the back, sunroof top
Diggin’ the scene
With a gangsta lean
Gangsta whitewalls
TV antennas in the back

You may not have a car at all
But remember brothers and sisters
You can still stand tall
Just be thankful for what you’ve got

Diamond in the back, sunroof top
Diggin the scene
With a gangsta lean, wooh-ooh-ooh
Diamond in the back, sunroof top
Diggin the scene
With a gangsta lean, wooh-ooh-ooh
Diamond in the back, sunroof top
Diggin’ the scene
With a gangsta lean, wooh-ooh-ooh

Though you may not drive a great big Cadillac
Gangsta whitewalls
TV antennas in the back
You may not have a car at all
But remember brothers and sisters
You can still stand tall

Diamond in the back, sunroof top
Diggin’ the scene
With a gangsta lean, wooh-ooh-ooh

Mountains above, mountains below

London Bridges above, London Bridges below. Click pic for locale.

A few weeks ago I was emailing with a Psychic – one I’d had readings from on two occasions – and he said something about something as if to say he felt out of sorts but could not put his finger on it. So I opened the I-Ching and randomly pointed at and typed that passage into an email and sent it to him. His reply was Eureka!-ish, and about how I had nailed it exactly and so I thought hmm…. maybe that book has some seriously mystic powers.

So I thought I’d ask the I-Ching about 2009, this brand new year. I used a hammer this time, as a symbolic nod to that previous nailing, and came up with wisdom for 2009. Maybe these words are meant to be guiding or perhaps inspirational, who knows. At any rate there are other pages in the book so I figure if I don’t like them, I can choose another page, although I never do that. And so I type as I read them, with much glancing back and forth because I can’t really type, and unveil the fate of 2009, here, in real time.

I would imagine by ‘superior’ the I-Ching means superior and not, superior. And mountains above and mountians below seems like a deeper take on the iceberg analogy. So here’s to mountains above, below, in the closet, beside themselves, forevermore, and nevermore.

52. Mountains
mountain above
mountain below

Joining Mountains. Thus do superior people think without leaving their place.

Mountains symbolize stability. With mountain above and below,

The Stop The Pike Hike organizers are politely asked to cease their “Boston Toll Party”

Tea Party

It takes 2 minutes to sign this petition. please sign it.

So the mayor asked the guys to stop their one-day boycott of the pike boycott because of it’s potential negative impact on certain geo- and demographics. But he does support their protest against the toll doublings.

I am confused as to why people don’t sign petitions more often than they do. Do we actually support the doubling of the tolls on a road that was built on a promise that it would collect tolls no longer than that day on which it would be paid for, and yet was then perpetuated to support the salaries in place?

I bet a lot of us go to Boston once in a while and will then be upset at what it costs to get through the tolls. Of course we can always set aside an extra 45 minutes and take RT 2. Or, we can take Rt 9 all the way in and allow another so many extra minutes for all the traffic and lights. The one day boycott was not random and without consideration for those it would affect – it was about demonstrating exactly what will happen if the increases do go into effect. People will take another route around. And given the current economic situation, it seems a funny time to overburden the commoners. You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille.

The Boston Tea Party opposed being under taxation by King George III to exert greater control over the colonies and pay for his government’s costly French and Indian wars. The current toll increases are an attempt to pay for the costly Big Dig.

The one day boycott could be called The Boston Toll Party and the tollbooths could be dumped in the Charles River.

smirk.
The Big Dig costs spiraled out of control as greedy people fudged their books and collected giant salaries for those at the top. Sounds like…

Uninspirational words in perhaps uninspirational times

I got an inspirational message email today. And this got me thinking of days gone by.

I am not much into inspirational messages. Yet, years ago my dog Jamoka wrote an inspirational book called, “Who moved my poop?”, which became an imaginary instant best-seller and “The [Book] Signing” was then immortalized by Hilary Price in a comic strip. You can actually buy this strip as a postcard at The Cup and Top Cafe in Florence. Those dogs are real dogs from the Arts & Industry building, including his girlfriend Prima.

"Who Moved My Poop?" by Jamoka, pictured at the book signing

Ages ago I had a job at a place that had inspirational messages sprinkled about all the walls. Every time a bunch of us walked past one of those signs in particular, at the timeclock, we’d stop, circle around, and reverently act it out chanting, “Working together… (dramatic pause) means WINNING together” and at the “winning” part we’d raise our fists in salute to something. Maybe it was poop, I can’t remember. I do recall that it had people rafting on it. And then we’d winningly, and with new found solidarity, march back to work, soldier style. It was a shitty job (ahem, timeclock?), but I treasured those inspirational moments.

Mistakes - It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.

I went white water rafting once in Colorado and we capsized and it got pretty hairy for a while as we collected various people out of the water, off of rocks, and from the opposite bank where one poor bloody guy had been flung.

One of the women on the boat was not “working together”, hence our losing battle with the elements. Every time we’d ride a rapid and water would splash she’d shriek and use her oar to cover her face so the blue eyeshadow, mascara, foundation and lip gloss would not get mussed. The extra weight of it all might have been why we capsized. Or maybe one of the guides was checking out her decolletage, which was spilling out of her very jauntily unzipped, undersized, wetsuit.

Problems - No matter how great and destructive your problems may seem now, remember, you've probably only seen the tip of them.

Or maybe they were blinded by her hair, and the contrast of it with her roots. Maybe her nails poked a leak in the boat.

Risks - If you never try anything new, you'll miss out on many of life's great disappointments.

The people we pulled from the water all banged up and bloodied were freaked out and angry and kept saying, “why isn’t everyone on the raft helping?” and then they moved to a different raft. I wanted to join them. Makeup girl was scaring me, as were the rapids.

Fear - Until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore, you will not know the terror of being forever lost at sea

We’d signed up for intermediate level but there had been heavy melting and run-off so we were really in over our heads. I mostly remember being really scared that day, in a near-drowning way – not so much in a Deliverance way. I figured if scary inbreds came along they’d go for the girl who’d picked the smallest wetsuit and not much used the zipper part of it.

Irresponsibility - No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.

Anyway, this made me think of one my favorite sites called Despair, which sells Demotivational Posters. Despair.com