Daily Archives: January 15, 2012

I’m on picture :-)

Posted by lieven001 on

The sun sought thy dim bed and brought forth light,
The sciences were sucklings at thy breast;
When all the world was young in pregnant night
Thy slaves toiled at thy monumental best.
Thou ancient treasure-land, thou modern prize,
New peoples marvel at thy pyramids!
The years roll on, thy sphinx of riddle eyes
Watches the mad world with immobile lids.
The Hebrews humbled them at Pharaoh’s name.
Cradle of Power! Yet all things were in vain!
Honor and Glory, Arrogance and Fame!
They went. The darkness swallowed thee again.
Thou art the harlot, now thy time is done,
Of all the mighty nations of the sun.

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Brew

Posted by lieven001 on

had spent the night in the watch-house —
My head was the size of three —
So I went and asked the chemist
To fix up a drink for me;
And he brewed it from various bottles
With soda and plenty of ice,
With something that smelt like lemon,
And something that seemed like spice.
It fell on my parching palate
Like the dew on a sunbaked plain,
And my system began to flourish
Like the grass in the soft spring rain;
It wandered throughout my being,
Suffusing my soul with rest,
And I felt as I “scoffed” that liquid
That life had a new-found zest.

I have been on the razzle-dazzle
Full many a time since then
But I never could get the chemist
To brew me that drink again.
He says he’s forgotten the notion —
‘Twas only by chance it came —
He’s tried me with various liquids
But oh! they are not the same.

We have sought, but we sought it vainly,
That one lost drink divine;
We have sampled his various bottles,
But somehow they don’t combine:
Yet I know when I cross the River
And stand on the Golden Shore
I shall meet with an angel chemist
To brew me that drink once more.

Ode to Rosy.

Posted by raburcke on

Rosy was an enigma, a delightful mystery to all.

Each of her petals held a secret that was more wonderful than the next. She was vibrant and effervescent and I loved her dearly(I still do!).

Our first meeting was strange, to say the least. She inadvertently bumped into me from behind and when we both turned and saw each other, we spontaneously embraced. It was as if I had found a long-lost twin sister.

But her free spirit was a thorn in the eye of society and one day someone, whom I shall not mention by name, decided to take it upon himself to have her sequestered in an asylum, to cure her of her sinful ways.

For a long time I did not see her again. When she showed up next, I was struck dumb by the sight of her. I almost did not recognise her! The psychiatrists had given her a clean bill of health and pronounced her fit to take up her rightful place in our oh-so-loving society.

I salute you, Messrs Psychiatrists, for realising what I thought could not be done. Where Rosy had formerly been a force of nature that was impossible to tame, a life force ready to love anyone and everyone, you have succeeded in breaking her steel-springed spirit.

You have managed  to reduce her to a shadow of her former self. She sits there now bleak and quiet, with eyes that are almost dead and a nervous tic in her left cheek. She jumps at every sound and movement, for fear of upsetting someone, anyone!? For fear of being taken back by you, her saviours?

She used to be a true artist: a wonderful painter and an person, who knew how to live life to the fullest, and now? She has learned to behave, as you think she should, no longer herself, twisted and broken. She no longer paints. What a cruel waste of humanity and of sisterhood of man!

Shame on you for your administering of pills and for your shock treatment! Shame on me for allowing it to happen. I should have fought to the death for her, but the law stood in my way and I was too cowardly… Maybe you can forgive me Rosy, but I will never forgive myself!

Word Connotations?

Posted by raburcke on

The Good Ones: 

Have you had it happen to you that you heard a word and you didn’t know what it meant, but you absolutely loved it? “Mellifluous” is one of those words for me! It means sweet sounding and to me it does, in and of itself.

From the Oxford English Dictionary:

Adjective – (of a sound) pleasingly smooth and musical to hear:
her low mellifluous voice 

It that not music to your ears, just to hear this word? It makes me go all mellow and woozy inside(and a bit wobbly at the knees)!

More examples of some exquisite words are: “shenanigans, troglodyte and tintinnabulations”

The Messed-up Ones:

Then there are words that get me all confused, like the verb “to stroke”.  Don’t you get mixed up feelings, when you hear that? For example: He stroked her silken hair and forthwith got a heart attack! The conflicting images that this word conjures up, should not be allowed in the English language. I move we strike that term from the record. And there is the added discomfort of those three consonants together: str-, which is called a cluster, if I remember correctly(should be called a clusterfuck, in my considered opinion!)

‘to caress’ sounds a lot better and there is no ambiguity about this term in my poor mind, but it can not hold a candle to the Spanish word for it: acariciar, where the second ‘c’ is pronounced like ‘th’. Does this not languidly slide off the tongue?

More examples of messed-up ones: to sue?(what has Sue ever done to you?), suitcase(tied up in a lawsuit?), palpable(sounds yucky to me!)

The Bad Ones: 

I have a fundamental distrust of the word “date”. Oh, they are alright for eating, when they happen to grow on trees! BUT… I can not wrap my head around the concept of dating. I have been with women and we have had good times together and we even did and saw some interesting things together. It is the confining aspect of this word, one that conjures up all sorts of rules and regulation, which upsets me. Most people think that going on a date, should go according to a certain script. Who, I ask you, wrote this script? Who laid down these rules, because one thing is for certain and that is that they did definitely NOT consult yours truly.

Should not the whole idea of “a date” be, to have a good time with someone who you like and/or love and this without having to think of how you should behave? Or in other words, should you not be allowed to be yourself. As a matter of fact, if you are not being yourself, are you then not in effect misrepresenting your own persona or lying to your partner(to be). Is it considered a good thing now, to start off a relationship with lies?

Let’s say, I’m in a restaurant and I suddenly get a fancy to take my knife in my left hand and my fork in my right one to eat, would this be against the rules? Would I severely traumatise the lady I took to dinner? Would it leave her scarred for the rest of her life? Would the other diners get up in shock, throw their arms up in the air and leave? If they did, I’d say: “Sorry, but that’s just me being me!”

I shall tell you a sordid secret about me. If after reading this, you choose never to read any of my Tittbits ever again, I shall quite understand. I have been known to kiss on the first date! Isn’t that an outrage, an utter breach of decorum, a violation of the rules that hold together our society? Should I perhaps be excommunicated and turned into a pariah for this aberrant behaviour? I have also been known only to kiss a certain lady, whom I still love with all my heart, after having known her for five years, but that was my decision and of course hers!

Methinks that Hollywood has indoctrinated a significant segment of the world’s population into acting out their lives and not really living them! I have one golden rule: If it doesn’t physically hurt or mentally harm those around me, it’s alright to do it! This with the proviso that I will not live my life to appease the narrow-minded or mentally straight-jacketed amongst you! Alright, I shall go to a certain length to try not to upset the apple cart, but I will not let it go to the extent, where I start to feel confined to a social jail. One of my favourite sayings is: Let’s agree to disagree! And this is all I will say on this subject for now.

Some more words I have issues with:

Why is it considered inappropriate to use the word “FUCK”, but not the word “KILL”(or rape, war, and so on)?

Alright, I shall shut my trap, before this gets out of hand.

P.S.: I can not resist! I love the word: hypocrisy!