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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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“Life is a waste of time, and time is a waste of life.
Get wasted all the time, and you'll have the time of your life!”
- Billy Connolly
Last edited by Bazr; 07/29/2014 9:59 AM.
live in the moment
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Wasted years wasted years
It's too late to turn back now
Turn around turn around love is calling
It's calling you from a life of wasted years
Bobby Carlton Davis
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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No cupie doll this time Jenny J.
Thufferin` thuccotash! - M__ B____
Last edited by Bazr; 07/29/2014 10:07 AM.
live in the moment
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No cupie doll this time Jenny J.
Thufferin` thuccotash! - Mel Blanc Cartoon quiz: With what letter does Sylvester The Cat begin?
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This poem is not addressed to you.
You may come into it briefly,
But no one will find you here, no one.
You will have changed before the poem will.
Even while you sit there, unmovable,
You have begun to vanish. And it does no matter.
The poem will go on without you.
It has the spurious glamor of certain voids.
It is not sad, really, only empty.
Once perhaps it was sad, no one knows why.
It prefers to remember nothing.
Nostalgias were peeled from it long ago.
Your type of beauty has no place here.
Night is the sky over this poem.
It is too black for stars.
And do not look for any illumination.
You neither can nor should understand what it means.
Listen, it comes with out guitar,
Neither in rags nor any purple fashion.
And there is nothing in it to comfort you.
Close your eyes, yawn. It will be over soon.
You will forge the poem, but not before
It has forgotten you. And it does not matter.
It has been most beautiful in its erasures.
O bleached mirrors! Oceans of the drowned!
Nor is one silence equal to another.
And it does not matter what you think.
This poem is not addressed to you.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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Donald Justice
Name of Poem & Poet please.......
The briny tears have dried
The sounding knells are stilled
The grieving crowd, dispersed
The parting pain, allayed
V____ G_____
live in the moment
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Valsa George wrote Dust To Dust What a unlifting poem. I rue the curiosity that made me look it up. 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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...
Thou shalt not kill
But needst not strive
Officiously
To keep alive
...
A_____ H___ C_____
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Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861)
The Latest Decalogue
Thou shalt have one God only; who
Would tax himself to worship two?
God's image nowhere shalt thou see,
Save haply in the currency:
Swear not at all; since for thy curse
Thine enemy is not the worse:
At church on Sunday to attend
Will help to keep the world thy friend:
Honor thy parents; that is, all
From whom promotion may befall:
Thou shalt not kill; but needst not strive
Officiously to keep alive:
Adultery it is not fit
Or safe, for women, to commit:
Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat,
When 'tis so lucrative to cheat:
False witness not to bear be strict;
And cautious, ere you contradict.
Thou shalt not covet; but tradition
Sanctions the keenest competition.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Yes. You see what I meant by "out of context"?
I first came across that couplet as a "filler" in a medical journal while I was wrestling with the issue of futile medical care in the ICU, keeping patients' bodies breathing on a ventilator when their functions were gone, not guaranteed irretrievablly lost but with a 99.9+ % probability of no recovery at all, much less meaningful recovery. Was this sustaining life, or just painfully prolonging the dying? After years of practice I still don't have a satisfactory answer. That snippet seemed to encapsulate the issue....
It took me a long time to track down and identify the quote -- and see that it's incredibly cynical, and painful, and dismissive, and indeed not sensitive at all. Written in the 1850s by a 30-odd-year-old !
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Here's a slightly different version of it. This is from Bartleby's, and is the version I have seen more commonly.
THOU shalt have one God only; who
Would be at the expense of two?
No graven images may be
Worshipped, except the currency.
Swear not at all; for, for thy curse
Thine enemy is none the worse.
At church on Sunday to attend
Will serve to keep the world thy friend.
Honor thy parents; that is, all
From whom advancement may befall.
Thou shalt not kill; but need’st not strive
Officiously to keep alive.
Do not adultery commit;
Advantage rarely comes of it.
Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat,
When it’s so lucrative to cheat.
Bear not false witness; let the lie
Have time on its own wings to fly.
Thou shalt not covet, but tradition
Approves all forms of competition.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Thou shalt have one God to adore,
Or maybe fewer, but not more.
Worship no idols, for we know
The Lord's a jealous so-and-so.
Thou shalt not take his name in vain,
But other oaths incur no stain.
On Sundays, if engaged in sports,
Keep half thy mind on holy thoughts.
Thy parents merit thy respect,
But if they nag, thou mayst object.
Thou shalt not kill, unless thy king
Proclaims that war's a noble thing.
Adultery's a moral flaw,
But, strangely, not against the law.
Thou shalt not steal; but on the Left
They say that property is theft.
False witness thou shalt never bear;
CCTV is everywhere.
And covet not; but if this should
Prove hard, explain that greed is good.
Last edited by A C Bowden; 08/13/2014 1:51 AM.
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Thou shalt not kill; but need’st not strive
officiously to keep alive.
What is life? Don't be silly, life doesn't begin and end with the individual. Life is a progressive process to eventually effect the purpose of being. People don't die. They live on through the people who follow them. Therefore...
life can be considered dead only when it stops contributing new information to the long living clade.
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veteran
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Say AC, good show. Are you sure that you aren't a renowned somebody? Your writings seem much too polished for folks of the local ilk. Except for maybe Wofa and Tromboniator and three others.  Just kidding but your post above is brilliant.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Well done, A C.
You have a real flair for this :-) !
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veteran
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veteran
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No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.
- Robin Williams
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veteran
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"The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave,
and is a traitor to himself and his fellow men."
Robert G. I_______
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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It's been almost a week. I looked it up. Sorry. "The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave,
and is a traitor to himself and his fellow men."
Robert G. Ingersoll ------------------------- "These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard, And there may be many others but they haven't been discovered," -- Tom L______ (There were 104 at the time, and I think we're now up to 119. It's truly elementary.)
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old hand
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old hand
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"These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard,
And there may be many others but they haven't been discovered," It's an extraordinary feat of cleverness. For something in the neighborhood of fifty years I've been meaning to memorize that whole thing, but I'm always too busy learning lines for some play, or music for a concert. Now is no exception.
Last edited by Tromboniator; 08/22/2014 10:59 AM.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Somehow there's nothing elegant or even remotely attractive about rhyming " Ununenium " in the Major-General's song, as Tom Lehrer did with the first 104 elements.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Somehow there's nothing elegant or even remotely attractive about rhyming " Ununenium " in the Major-General's song, as Tom Lehrer did with the first 104 elements. ("Unune nnium," actually, but who's counting ? Or maybe eka-francium. Whatever.)
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