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Saddo

There are quite a few familiarity markers in English – words which take on an ending to make the word sound much more familiar, or everyday, or down to earth. Ammunition becomes ‘ammo’; a weird person becomes ‘weirdo’; aggravation becomes ‘aggro’. They like it in Australia a lot – “good afternoon”, they don’t say that so often, but ‘arvo’, ‘arvo’ is the abbreviation for afternoon in Australia. 

And in the 1990s you had this rather interesting word ’saddo’ – that’s the adjective sad with this ‘o’ ending, spelt with two ds: s-a-d-d-o. It came in as a kind of a rude word really, a mocking word for somebody seen as socially inadequate, or somehow rather unfashionable, or contemptible in some way. You might hear somebody say, “oh, he’s a real saddo” or “she’s a real saddo” – it can be for male or for females. 

It’s from the word sad of course, from oh, way back in the 1930s, where ’sad’ here doesn’t mean miserable, it means pathetic, and that was a use of sad that came in at that time. It’s a sense in other words that’s been developing for quite a long time. In actual fact, you can take that sense of sad and trace it all the way back to Shakespeare, although he never said ’saddo’.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/radio/specials/1728_uptodate/page23.shtml

Japan, Inc.: Winning the Most Important Battle

IN 1953, a young businessman named Akio Morita made his first trip outside Japan to investigate export prospects for his struggling little electronics company. He was dismayed to find that in the sophisticated markets of the U.S. and Europe, the words Made in Japan were a mocking phrase for shoddiness. But in The Netherlands, he recalls, “I saw an agricultural country with many windmills and many bicycles, and yet it was producing goods of excellent quality and had worldwide sales power. I thought that maybe we Japanese could do it too.”

Indeed, they could. A month ago, Morita took off on his 94th or 95th transpacific trip (he has lost exact count). This time he came as the self-assured export chief and primary owner of Sony Corp., the firm that as much as any other has made Japanese goods synonymous with high quality as well as low price. In Chicago, he told security analysts that Sony last year rang up sales of $414 million, more than half from exports to 147 countries of radios, tape recorders, TV sets and other products. In London, he went over sales projections for the color TV sets that Sony began marketing in Britain last month: the company expects to sell 50,000 the first year at $480 each, v. $600 for the lowest-priced British-made sets. On the Continent, Morita checked on construction plans for a multimillion-dollar Sony distribution and service center to be located, fittingly, in The Netherlands.

The trip was not all triumphal procession, however. In the U.S., Morita ran into a storm of ill will, stirred up by a Government finding that “Japanese manufacturers” have been dumping TV sets—selling them in the U.S. at prices below those charged in Japan. For the time being, Morita says, Sony must post a 9% deposit with Washington on every TV set that it imports. Morita concedes that some Japanese TV makers practice dumping, but he insists that his company is not among them and contends that ‘U.S. Treasury officials admitted as much to him. “Although we are innocent,” he says, “we are being forced to act as if we were guilty.”

The Babysitter

A must see movie. 

http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/132051/ff902859/gs_korte_film.html 

9 o’clock

10 ways you might be breaking the law with your computer

Most Americans are aware of the protections afforded by the U.S. Constitution’s fourth amendment against unreasonable searches and seizures. In general, this means that the government cannot search your person, home, vehicle, or computer without probable cause to believe that you’ve engaged in some criminal act.

What many don’t know is that there are quite a few circumstances that the Courts, over the years, have deemed to be exempt from this requirement. One of those occurs when you enter the United States at the border. In April of this year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the right of Customs officers to search laptops and other digital devices at the border (the definition of which extends to any international airport when you are coming into the country) without probable cause or even the lesser standard of reasonable suspicion. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and other groups strongly disagree with the ruling. You can read more on the EFF Web site (http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/04/no-cause-needed-search-laptops-border).

Meanwhile, be aware that even though you’ve done nothing illegal and are not even suspected of such, the entire contents of your portable computer, PDA, or smart phone can be accessed by government agents when you enter the United States. So if you have anything on your hard drive that might be embarrassing, you might want to delete it before crossing the border.

See the article (pdf) from TechRepublic: 10 ways you might be breaking the law with your computer

 

The sister

I was a very happy man. My wonderful girlfriend and I had been dating for over a year, and so we decided to get married. There was only one little thing bothering me. It was her beautiful younger sister.

My prospective sister-in-law was twenty-two, wore very tight miniskirts, and generally was bra-less. She would regularly bend down when she was near me, and I always got more than a nice view. It had to be deliberate. Because she never did it when she was near anyone else.

One day her ‘little’ sister called and asked me to come over to check the wedding invitations. She was alone when I arrived, and she whispered to me that she had feelings and desires for me that she couldn’t overcome. She told me that she wanted me just once before I got married and committed my life to her sister.  Well, I was in total shock, and couldn’t say a word. She said, ‘I’m going upstairs to my bedroom, and if you want one last wild fling, just come up and

get me.’ I was stunned and frozen in shock as I watched her go up the stairs. I stood there for a moment, then turned and made a beeline straight to the front door. I opened the door, and headed straight towards my car.  Lo and behold, my entire future family was standing outside, all clapping!

With tears in his eyes, my father-in-law hugged me and said, ‘We are very happy that you have passed our little test. We couldn’t ask for a better man for our daughter . Welcome to the family.’

And the moral of this story is:

Always keep your condoms in your car.

How to get drunk without drinking

World History Database of events in day 21st May

 

1912	ArmamentTheobald, Bethmann Hollweg von
Berlin   The new Naval Law is passed by the Reichstag in order to expand the German navy
1913	ArmamentChurchill, Winston Leonard Spencer
The new Naval Law is passed by the Reichstag in order to expand the German navy
1968	ArrestJones, Lewis Brian Hopkin
Jones is arrested a second time, for marijuana possession
The Stones wanted to tour the United States in 1969 for the first time in three years, but Jones ’ second arrest exacerbates problems with USAimmigration, Jones is unable to acquire a work visa
1471	AssassinationHenry VI
London   Murdered in the Tower of London, found dead in the oratory
1991	AssassinationGandhi, Rajiv
Killed in a bomb attack during an election campaign by a Tamil suicide bomber
1940	Battle of ArrasRommel, Erwin Johannes Eugen
Arras   5 British Brigades stop the SS Totenkopf & manage to create a retreat to Dunkirk
Arras   Rommel engages the British with 88-mm anti-tank guns

Google Talk shortcuts

 

CTRL + Mouse wheel up/down   Change the font size in a conversation window

CTRL + E          Center text

CTRL + R          Right justify text

CTRL + L or CTRL+J      Left justify text

F9        Open Gmail to send an email to the person you talk to

F11       Start a call

F12       Stop the current call

How to emulate the Out of Office Assistant in Microsoft Outlook

The Out of Office Assistant feature in Microsoft Outlook is a Microsoft Exchange Server service. It is available only when the Exchange Server transport service is included in an Outlook user’s profile. You can emulate this feature by creating an e-mail template and defining a rule in the Rules Wizard to automatically reply with the template.

How to define an automatic reply template

Use one of the following methods:

Method 1: Microsoft Office Outlook 2007

1. Open a new Outlook message.
2. On the Options tab, click Plain Text.
3. Type the information that you want to have in your reply message.
4. Click the Microsoft Office Button, and then click Save As.
5. In the Save As dialog box, click to select the Outlook Template check box in the Save as type list.
6. Type a name for your reply template in the File name box, and then click Save.

Method 2: Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 and earlier versions of Outlook

1. Open a new Outlook message formatted as plain text. (NOTE: Do not use Microsoft Word as your e-mail editor).
2. Type the information that you want to have in your reply message.
3. On the File menu, click Save As.
4. In the Save As dialog box, click to select the Outlook Template check box in the Save As Type list.
5. Type a name for your reply template in the File Name box, and then click Save.

How to define a rule to send an automatic reply in Outlook 98, in Outlook 2000, and in Outlook 2002

1. On the Tools menu, click Rules Wizard.
2. In the Rules Wizard dialog box, click New.
3. Under Which type of rule do you want to create?, click Start from a blank rule, click Check messages when they arrive, and then click Next.
4. Under Which condition(s) do you want to check?, click to select the Sent Only To Me check box or any other criteria that you want, and then click Next.
5. Under What do you want to do with the message?, click to select the Reply using a specific template check box.
6. Under Rule Description, click the underlined phrase, a specific template.
7. In the Select A Reply Template dialog box, click the template that you saved in step 5 of “How to Define an Automatic Reply Template,” and then click Open.
8. Complete the Rule Wizard instructions, click Finish, and then click OK.

How to define a rule to send an automatic reply in Outlook 2003

1. On the Tools menu, click Rules and Alerts.
2. In the Rules and Alerts dialog box, click the New Rule button on the E-mail Rules tab.
3. In the Rules Wizard, click the Start from a blank rule button, click Check messages when they arrive, and then click Next.
4. Under Which condition(s) do you want to check?, click to select the Sent Only To Me check box or any other check box that you want, and then click Next.
5. Under What do you want to do with the message?, click to select the Reply using a specific template check box.
6. On the Step 2: Edit the Rule Description page of the wizard, click the underlined phrase a specific template.
7. In the Select A Reply Template dialog box, click the template that you saved in step 5 of the “How to Define an Automatic Reply Template” section, and then click Open.
8. Complete the Rules Wizard instructions, click Finish, and then click OK.

How to define a rule to send an automatic reply in Outlook 2007

1. On the Tools menu, click Rules and Alerts.
2. In the Rules and Alerts dialog box, click the New Rule button on the E-mail Rules tab.
3. In the Rules Wizard under Start from a blank rule, click Check messages when they arrive, and then click Next.
4. Under Which condition(s) do you want to check?, click to select the Sent Only To Me check box or any other check box that you want, and then click Next.
5. Under What do you want to do with the message?, click to select the Reply using a specific template check box.
6. Under Step 2: Edit the Rule Description, click the underlined phrase a specific template.
7. In the Select A Reply Template dialog box, click the template that you saved in step 6 of the “How to Define an Automatic Reply Template” section, and then click Open.
8. Complete the Rules Wizard instructions, click Finish, and then click OK.

The Rules Wizard rule to “reply using a specific template” is designed to send the reply only one time to each sender during a session. This prevents Outlook from sending repetitive replies to a sender from whom you receive multiple messages.

During a session, Outlook remembers the list of users to whom it has responded. When you restart Outlook, this list is deleted and the rule is reset to start again for each sender.

NOTE: Outlook must be running for the Rules Wizard to automatically reply. Additionally, Outlook 2007 must be running and configured to check periodically for new messages. 

 

Microsoft Help and Support | KB311107

 

Looser

Drink without prejudice

If you were  around in 1919 (just before prohibition started) you might have seen  the following poster.  

 

 

Now honestly,  would you quit drinking?

Bush Blair Endless Love

Some people say that this is the best video ever with George W. Bush

Bubba J and Jeff Dunham

 

AA is for quitters :))

Smell me

Baby face… wtf?

Warning

Laptop Screens – Glossy versus Matte

The discussions between glossy and matte laptop screens are almost as heated as Apple versus Microsoft and XBox versus PlayStation. Many people considering purchasing a laptop are frustrated by the matter. 

Glossy screens have a reflective coating underneath the screen. This reflective nature gives higher degrees of brightness and contrast. Colors really seem to “pop” with glossy screens. However, due to their reflective nature, the view on a glossy screen will frequently be polluted by glare from other light sources. 

With matte screens the user can almost visualize darkness between individual white pixels. To many people they perceive this as a “grainy” appearance. Glare is greatly decreased, at the cost of reduction in contrast and brightness. Subtle degrees of saturation are better perceived with the matte screens. 

For some people the higher brightness and contrast of the glossy screen actually causes eye strain. Other people find that the lower, diffusing contrast with a matte screen is more likely to cause issues. Improving backlight technology is balancing out the brightness and contrast issues on both sides of the argument. 

Complicating the issue more is that fact that some manufacturers are using glossy displays to hide cheaper LCDs. In the right conditions, glossy displays hide many, but not all, weaknesses in substandard LCD screens. This is why many inexpensive laptops now come standard with glossy screens. 

In a dark, glare-free room, the glossy screen will look better than the matte screen. However, most people do not always use laptops in ideal conditions. Fingerprints and smudges also show up on glossy screens more than matte.

My first laptop had a matte screen. Back then I am not sure I knew I had an option. For my second lappie, I purchased the glossy screen because the images and video in the demo room looked the best. However, after day-to-day use, I eventually decided that matte was best for me. 

I use my laptop everywhere. Frequently this includes bright lighting conditions that cause high glare situations. With my matte screen glare is never an issue. Do glossy screens look better? In perfect conditions they do indeed. However, matte screens offer me much more flexibility. Plus, with my glossy screen I was constantly having to clean it to remove fingerprints and smudges. With the matte they are barely noticeable. 

Obviously in the end it is a personal choice. Hopefully this article has helped to express the arguments on both sides. 

Good luck with your laptop purchase.

Source: Tech-Recipes.com

Latest Gadget

Dirty Mind

Jewish Divorce

 

A Jewish woman says to her mother: ” I’m divorcing Sheldon, all he wants is anal sex and my asshole is now the size of a 50 cent piece when it used to be the size of a 5 cent piece.”

Jewish Mother says: ”You are married to a multi-millionaire businessman, you live in an 8 bedroom mansion, you drive a Ferrari, you get $2000 a week allowance, you take 6 vacations a year and you want to throw all that away for 45 cents?

 

No comment

Where the Easter Eggs come from

Japanese Rice Art

 

The residents of Inakadate have been drawing pictures with rice since 1993.  Each year farmers in the town of Inakadatein Aomori prefecture create works of crop art by growing a little purple and yellow-leafed kodaimai rice along with their local green-leafed tsugaru-roman variety.

This year’s creation — a pair of grassy reproductions of famous woodblock prints from Hokusai’s 36 Views of Mount Fuji — has begun to appear and will be visible until the rice is harvested in September.

While Inakadate is Japan’s most famous rice paddy decorating town, there practice is spreading further ‘afield.’

 

 

Giveaway of the day

Giveaway of the Day project, the new initiative in the software distribution world! Every day they offer for FREE licensed software you’d have to buy otherwise!

For game giveaways check out Game Giveaway of the Day.

 

The battle between hairy LABIA and shaved LABIA

Boycott Beijing 2008

Elections | Vote for NOBODY

This is the best candidate ever for all kind of elections:

Larry’s tattoo

Larry gets home late one night and his wife, Linda, says, “Where in the hell have you been?”
Larry replies, “I was out getting a tattoo.”

“A tattoo?” she frowned. “What kind of tattoo did you get?”
“I got a hundred Euro note on my privates,” he said proudly.
“What the hell were you thinking?” she said, shaking her head in disdain. “Why on earth would an accountant get a hundred Euro note tattooed on his privates?”
“Well, for one…I like to watch my money grow. Two…once in a while I like to play with my money. Three…I like how money feels in my hand. And, lastly…instead of you going out wasting money on shopping, you can stay right here at home and blow 100 Euro anytime you want.”

Larry is recovering nicely in hospital

Death to America | Positively Priceless!!!

Read the following explanation before looking at the picture! 

Most Syrians struggle to even read Arabic, much less have a clue about English. So, how do a group of Syrian protest leaders create the most impact with their signs by having the standard “Death To Americans” (etc.) slogans printed in English?

Answer: They simply hire an English-speaking civilian to translate and write their statements into English.

Unfortunately, in this case, they were unaware that the “civilian” insurance company employee hired for the job was a retired US Army Sergeant! Obviously, pictures of this protest rally never made their way to Arab TV networks, but the results were PRICELESS! 

 

 

Wi-Fi tools

I was browsing through Yahoo Widgets and I’ve found a nice wi-fi tool provided by Xirrus. It is called Wi-Fi Monitor Widget and provides access to information about all available Wi-Fi networks and your current Wi-Fi connections. You can download it from: http://widgets.yahoo.com/widgets/xirrus-wifi-monitor 

I’ve seen that they also have a Vista Gadget pretty much the same with the Yahoo Widget called Wi-Fi Monitor Gadget available on Live Gallery

For more information you should check: http://www.xirrus.com/library/wifitools.php 

Updated Web Browsers: Which One Works Best?

Apple’s Safari, Mozilla’s Firefox 3, and Micorosoft’s Internet Explorer 8 duke it out to be the program you use most on your PC.

Back when the earliest programs for viewing Web content simply browsed flat pages of images and text, the name browser truly fit the software.

But yesterday’s amateur pages have evolved into dynamic, content-rich portals and powerful online programs. For many online habitués, the do-it-all browser has become a PC’s single most important program.

Recognizing that fact, Apple’s Safari, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and Mozilla’s Firefox are battling to win the nod as your browser of choice. So which one should you use–Safari 3.1, Firefox 3, or Internet Explorer 8?

Apple’s latest offering, Safari 3.1, preserves the company’s signature focus on clean design and smooth usability, but it lacks any phishing or malware filters.

For its part, Mozilla should have applied the finishing touches to Firefox 3 by the time you read this (I tested the feature-complete beta 5 release). From under-the-hood memory improvements to a major reworking for bookmarks, version 3 represents a big step forward.

Whereas the new Firefox and Safari browsers are ready to roll, Microsoft’s early beta of Internet Explorer 8 remains a work in progress. Bugs and rough edges are to be expected in a first beta intended for developers and testers. But IE 8 beta 1 provides a glimpse of new features such as WebSlices (which let sites create widgety snippets of information that you can view by clicking a bookmark button) and Activities (which add right-click menu options for looking up selected text and pages on map, translation and other sites) that will distinguish the browser Microsoft eventually releases.

Firefox, IE, and Safari are the three most popular browsers, according to Internet usage statistics, but they aren’t the only ones available. So I also took a separate look at two worthwhile, free programs–Flock and Opera.  

Author: Erik Larkin | PC World

Lesbian Needs

Erin let her hand roam over Vanna’s tight ass as the two lesbian lovers kissed passionately underneath the stinging rays of their morning shower!!! The two women couldn’t have been more different, with Erin tall and lean with almost a dancer’s body, perfect 36B cup breasts and short blonde hair that framed her beautiful face, while Vanna was much shorter, and not quite fat, she certainly was on the chubby side with her 38DD breasts and wide plump bottom coupled with a nice round tummy that capped her wildly hairy dark brunette vagina!!! Both girls appreciated the others attributes as Erin would have killed for Vanna’s big chest, while on the other hand just once Vanna would like to slip into a perfect size six dress instead of her usual size twelve!!! As the intensity of their kiss grew, automatically each one slipped a finger into the others vagina and quickly frigged her to a stunning orgasm, leaving them both shaken and satiated before leaving for work!!! After leaving the apartment building arm in arm, they gave each other a quick peck on the cheek, and then went off in opposite directions on there way to work!!!

Erin sat quietly on the bus reading the morning paper, but try as she might she couldn’t keep her mind on her reading as a gnawing ache which had been slowly building for weeks bubbled to the surface, dampening her vagina and flushing her

Watch Free PORN

Nice and free:

RedTube.com 

Because walking sucks

Japanese Pac Man

The Nubile Nymph

Virna Reynolds was lonely and depressed! Her best friend Alicia was vacationing in Europe, and coupled with the fact that her husband of forty years had been gone for less that six months, and you had a woman who wasn’t used to being alone for such a long period of time! After wandering around her apartment for about a week, she dialed the number Alicia had given to her before she left! After two rings, a sultry feminine voice on the other end of the line answered, “Sensations Unlimited, how may I help you, this is Miranda speaking!?!” A pang of fear shot through her, but since she had already made the call she replied, “This is Mrs. Reynolds, I’m a friend of Alicia Donner, she recommended your establishment, and I was just wondering if you had any openings for today!?!” “Mmmmmm, Mrs. Reynolds,” Miranda said in a silky voice, “how is Mrs. Donner, we haven’t seen her in few weeks?” “Uh, she’s in Europe,” Virna replied, “she should be home in a couple of weeks, though!” “Well,” Miranda went on, “we have an opening at two this afternoon if that’s agreeable with you, should I put you down for it?” It was now or never, “Yes, two will be just fine,” she replied, “see you then, and thank you!”

“Hello, Mrs. Reynolds, it’s so nice to meet you, won’t you please come in and have a seat,” Miranda said graciously while shaking Virna’s hand! “Alicia’s told me so much about the place,” Virna offered, “that I decided to see it for myself so to speak!” “Well, I very happy that you did,” Miranda replied smoothly, “I hope your time here will be more than enjoyable!” After both of them had taken a seat in Miranda’s sumptuously appointed, office she asked casually, “Have you given any thought as to what sort of, shall we say, entertainment you had in mind!?!” “Well,” Virna said slowly, “I-I’m not exactly sure, what have you got?” “Just about anything you could ask for,” Miranda replied, “but may I make a suggestion!?!” Glad that she didn’t have to go into any details herself, Virna replied gratefully, “Please, I’m open to any suggestions!” “Well,” Miranda continued on, “it’s been my experience, that with our more mature female clients, such as yourself, have a much more relaxing and enjoyable experience, if they start out with a young female, now that may sound strange, but two women together always seems to generate much less pressure than if you were to begin with a man!”

A Slave’s Reward

 

I pushed a little to sit him back on the bed. “I have a little…present for you,” I said, and spread my arms wide in front of me. “All you have to do is unwrap it.” He looked at me quizzically, a half-smirk smile on his face, and reached out for the tie on my black cloak. As he loosened the tie I shrugged back with my shoulders and dropped it to the floor behind me. My sub stared. I stood before him in a Black and Red Demi bra I had bought the day before at a specialty shop, one which fitted me perfectly, lifting my breasts up and out, my nipples clearly visible through the thin material. Around my waist was a matching garter belt that was clipped to thigh-high stockings, a touch designed to appeal to my identity and pronounced sexuality. Where my panties should have been was the cock I had purchased so long ago; gleaming slightly after the soapy scrubbing I had given it. Wisps of what little dark pubic hair I allow to remain on my shaved pussy escaping from behind the black leather patch that held it in place.

 

David’s eyes widened in disbelief, and I imagined that he had turned a shade paler in the dim light. I spoke to him caressingly, soothingly in the sexiest contralto I could muster up. “I want to reward you….you have been a good sub,” I said in a low whisper, “and I lust your entire body so much. I want to devour you for a change, to take you, every way, to do things to you that you never imagined.” I was running out of patience and genuinely wondered if you would receive my gift willingly. “But…if you don’t want to…I would have to take you!”

More Family Guy Sex

No one has had bad sex like the cast of Family Guy )

http://www.adultswim.com/americaloveslists/fg_sex/

Lois Kills Stewie – episode #103

Returning from her presumed death, Lois reveals her attempted killer to be Stewie. Stewie then takes his family hostage, slowly gaining more power until the world itself is at its knees. Desperate to put an end to Stewie’s reign of terror, Lois realizes what she must do

http://www.familyguyx.net/watch/103/Lois_Kills_Stewie_(2)/

Devil’s Mark

During the time of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, it was believed that the Devil placed upon his human brides, the witches, a special mark that was insensitive to pain. Because it was supposed that such a mark might be well hidden somewhere on the witch’s body, one of the first of the many degrading and painful ordeals of the Inquisition began when the accused woman was turned over to the torturers to have her body shaved in search of the “Devil’s Mark.”

The Spanish Inquisition was ordered to rid Europe of heretics. By 1257, the Church officially sanctioned torture as a means of forcing witches, sorcerers, and shape shifters to confess their alliance with Satan.

Once the alleged spot—which could well have been a mole or a birthmark—was found, the torturers would insert long, sharp pins into the victim’s flesh or sear the mark with red-hot branding irons in order to test its resistance to pain. The fact that the suspected area gave no indication of being immune to pain did nothing to absolve the woman accused of witchcraft from later being burned at the stake.

In 1486, two devout priests, Jakob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer, published Malleus Maleficarum (A Hammer for Witches), the book that became the handbook of the professional witch hunters. Charles Williams, writing in his Witchcraft, believes that Sprenger and Kramer proceeded with great care to examine the nature of witchcraft and to analyze the best methods of operating against its menace. They perceived the witches as making use of their unholy alliance with Satan to corrupt the generative powers of humankind. In addition, they believed that witches sought to depopulate Christendom by demanding the sacrifice of children and babies.

Heart to Heart

“So, how was the honeymoon,” Fay Vickers asked her just married daughter, Katie!?! “Really good, mom,” she replied, “everything as just great, and we’re both hoping we get to go back to Cancun again someday, it was incredibly beautiful!!!” “Sit down, dear,” her mother said while pouring them both a cup of coffee, “and tell me all about it!!!” Katie took the steaming hot cup from her mother’s hand, situated herself in the kitchen chair, and after taking a sip, she replied softly, “I can’t begin to tell you how wonderful the whole honeymoon was, mom, we played golf, went on a boat ride, pigged out on the food like there was no tomorrow, and took moon lit walks on the beach!!!” “It sounds wonderful, dear,” Fay replied smiling, “I’m sure that you and Jack will be very happy together!!!”

The two women had been gabbing about Katie’s new apartment and Jack’s new job as a civil engineer when Katie cleared her throat, and in a low voice said, “Uh mom, can I ask you a question!?!” “Sure, dear,” Fay replied, “ask away!!!” “Well this is really personal,” Katie said softly!!! Fay reached over and touched her daughter on the hand and offered, “Don’t worry, honey, you can ask me anything, after all, I am your mother!!!” “Yeah,” Katie replied, “I know, it’s just a little embarrassing that’s all!!!” Fay smiled gently at her eldest daughter while waiting patiently for her to get to the point!!! After taking a deep breath and another drink of coffee, Katie looked her mother in the eye and began, “Well, uh, I think that you know that I was a virgin on my wedding night, and I’m really glad that I waited, cuz it was real special and all, but now I have some questions I need answered!!!”

Prince Yasuhiko Asaka and Matsui Iwane

Kill tally: 200,000-350,000 Chinese killed during the ‘Rape of Nanking’.

Background: The final collapse of the Chinese Imperial Government at the start of the 20th Century brings in a 30-year period of instability to China during which the nationalist Guomindang (Kuomintang or KMT – the National People’s Party, or Nationalist Party), headed by Chiang Kai-shek, battle the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), headed by Mao Tse-Tung, for ultimate control.

Across the East China Sea, Japan becomes progressively more nationalistic and militaristic, seeing in China an opportunity to expand on territory occupied in Manchuria (now Dongbei Pingyuan, north of Korea) and Shandong Province (across the Yellow Sea from Korea) after the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) and during the First World War.

The Japanese military is seeped in the tradition of unquestioning loyalty to the emperor. Commands from superior officers are regarded as equivalent to commands from the emperor himself. Military leaders have direct access to the emperor and the authority to transmit his pronouncements directly to the troops. The emperor is considered divine and the seat of ultimate power.

Mini biography: Born on 2 October 1887 in Kyoto, Japan. He is a member of the Japanese imperial family and uncle-in-law to Emperor Hirohito.

1908 – He graduates from the Japanese military academy and is commissioned into the army as a sub-lieutenant.

1920-23 – He travels to France to further his military studies.

1927-29 – Japanese troops are sent to China to obstruct attempts by the Guomindang to unify the country. In June 1928 officers in the Guandong Army, the Japanese Army unit stationed in Manchuria, begin an unauthorised campaign to secure Japanese interests and precipitate a war with China. Both the Japanese high command and the Chinese refuse to mobilise.

AUM SHINRIKYO

Undoubtedly the most violent modern cult was Aum Shinrikyo, or ‘supreme truth’, the ten thousand strong cult headquartered on the slopes of Mount Fuji, Japan, and headed by Shoko Asahara.
Determined to bring about Armageddon so that he could rule everyone, Aum Shinrikyo became a mixture of Buddhism, occultism and fascism.
Fat, bearded and partially sighted, Asahara was born poor and was a bully, building up a huge stockpile of weapons and chemicals for his war. His cult was rounded up by armed police following a series of major crimes, the most infamous being his Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo underground on 20 March 1995, killing twelve and injuring thousands.
The Japanese authorities later discovered that his cult was based on his committing sexual and physical atrocities on his own members.

The Stigmata

One of the most rare and disturbing religious paranormal phenomena is the stigmata, or the manifestation of the wounds of the passion of Christ on the body. These wounds can range from a seemingly psychosomatic feeling of the wounds and the associated pain, but with no corresponding visible damage to the skin, to full blown unexplainable wounds that bleed and cause great discomfort to the stigmatic. The 20th century saw one of the most famous stigmatics, Padre Pio of Italy, who bore the bleeding wounds for decades and has since been declared a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.

St. Pio had been surrounded by paranormal phenomena since childhood. As a youngster, he was believed to be able to see apparitions of Jesus and Mary, and even went so far as to assume that every person could see them.  These continued into adulthood, until eventually Pio became a capuchin friar. During his time as a novice waiting to become a capuchin, the paranormal phenomena seem to have become more dark and increasingly powerful. In once incidence, the devil appeared to him in his room in the form of a large black dog with glowing red eyes. As early as 1911, he first manifested the stigmata, which he described in a letter as red marks on his hands and feet that caused severe pain. The wounds eventually became visible, sometimes bleeding profusely and would continue the rest of his life. He often prayed for the wounds to dissappear, but not the pain, as he found the marks to be an embarrassment. They would never completely dissappear, so he was known to hide them.  The visions of the devil continued as well, appearing to Pio as everything from a dancing naked girl, Pope Pius X, St. Francis and most disturbingly, the virgin Mary. One wonders how difficult of a time he had in distinguishing between visions from heaven, and apparitions from hell. Pio died in 1968, still afflicted with the stigmata.

 About 300 or so stigmatics have been reported over the last two millennium. The first was St. Paul, who claimed to have them in a letter to the Galatians. St. Francis of Assisi also exhibited them in the 13th century, and cases continue to this day. A number of explanations have been given for the stigmata, ranging from fraud to the wounds somehow being created by the sufferer’s own mind. The phenomena is usually restricted to catholics, however, in the case of the hindu holy man Chaitanya Mahaprabu (1486-1534) he was said to spontaneously bleed from multiple areas of his body.

 Often, stigmatics also exhibit a separate phenomena called inedia, which is the act of going without food or water, other than the daily Eucharist host, for extended and impossible periods of time. This was seen with Padre Pio, who abstained from eating or drinking for long periods, and even stopped sleeping for a time. The phenomena was most pronounced with the sigmatic Therese Neumann, who is said to have eaten nothing but a single communion host each day from 1922 until she died in 1962. Its also said that she did not drink water during this period either, and suffered no ill health affects. Oddly, the stigmata is known to vary significantly in the location of the wounds. Sometimes they appear at the wrists, or directly in the hands, and the damage from the lance varies between stigmatics on which side of the body it appears.

The bizarre phenomena of the stigmata is something that one might expect from a medieval text, but not in modern times. Yet it almost seems that it is increasing. Never the less, it is likely to remain unexplainable any time soon, as those who suffer from it are still few and far between. The stigmata remains one of the strangest and most frightening phenomena noted in the annals of the paranormal.

 

Mary, My First

It was summer time in Scotland and I stood comfortably surrounded by green hills in the distance and the dockyards. It was all new to me, an American lad on his first trip outside his homeland, my thoughts were all centered on the knot of fear that lay in my stomach; the fear of being alone in a foreign country, fear of the dangers that may lay about the dockyard, and fear of the unknown.

My older and more experienced friends from the ship had gone off a few blocks away to drink and make out with the local lassies as I was left behind. Since I didn’t drink much and since I was lacking in confidence and shy, I was left alone to face the unknown.

As I walked the streets up from the dockyard, I was careful to memorize my return route and check for whatever possible evil might befall a young lad, alone and scared as he walked the streets of a strange country. As I met people on the sidewalk, I greeted each of them.

“Good Day Yank,” usually came back in reply. It was a friendly greeting and did much to alleviate my fears. Soon I was in a residential neighborhood of modest, well kept houses with tiny yards and occasionally a car parked in front. As darkness approached, I sensed I’d find little of interest there.

Full Service

“May I help you, sir,” the attractive young saleswoman asked while Ryan Majors scanned the display of night gowns that were marked at twenty percent off!?! “Uh, yes, maybe,” he replied while feeling the material on one of the gowns! “Is it a present for your wife,” the lady asked? “Yes,” he replied, “it’s our fifth wedding anniversary and I just thought that maybe she might like something like this!” The saleslady, who introduced herself as Dawn answered quickly, “These might be a little on the old side for someone her age, follow me and I’ll show you something a little more appropriate!” Just grateful that he didn’t have to say anymore, Ryan followed Dawn to the rear portion of the store where she stopped before a large selection of shortie night gowns!

I think that these might be a little more to her liking,” Dawn offered, “can you tell me what size she wears!?!” Now growing a little flummoxed, he turned a little red and replied, “Well, uh, I think she’s about your size, but her, you know, her breasts are maybe a little bigger!” “I wear a size eight and wear a 34C-cup bra, is she a D cup!?!” “Well, er,” he stammered, “I think so, she has very large breasts!” Leaning closer to Ryan so that no one else could hear her, Dawn asked in a husky voice, “Does she like getting them sucked, I absolutely love it!?!” Ryan ears actually burned at the sound of such an intimate question, but incredibly he heard himself reply softly, “She loves having them sucked, and she has big pink nipples!”

Ferdinand Marcos

Country: Philippines.

Kill tally: No reliable figures but the Philippines democracy and economy ruined and possibly thousands killed.

Background: Spain colonises the Philippine archipelago during the 16th Century, naming the islands after King Philip II and establishing Manila (on the northern island of Luzon) as the capital in 1571. The indigenous population is converted to Roman Catholicism, although Muslim Filipinos in the south and upland tribes in the north resist any challenge to their traditional religious beliefs.

When the United States takes control of the archipelago following the 1898 Spanish-American War independence activists wage a guerrilla war against the new colonialists. The rebels are brought under control and political reforms introduced as the country prepares for independence.

The self-governing Commonwealth of the Philippines is established in 1935. Full independence is scheduled for introduction after a further 10 years, but the timetable is interrupted by the Japanese occupation of the country during the Second World War. Independence is finally achieved on 4 July 1946, though as the date would imply, the US retains significant influence.

Mini biography: Born on 11 September 1917 in Sarrat in the llocos Norte Province at the northwestern tip of Luzon. Both his parents are teachers. After completing his schooling, Marcos enrols to study law at the University of the Philippines.

1939 – In April Marcos is arrested in connection with the 1933 murder of a political rival of his father and has to complete his law degree while in custody. He stands trial in September and is and found guilty.

A shave and a suck

Connie Eubanks was feeling a little low that morning, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get into her job, and constantly had to remind herself to get back to work! Even while taking phone calls, her mind would wander and she had to ask several clients to repeat what they had just said because she wasn’t paying any attention! At about 11:15 her phone rang and it was her best friend Millie calling to see if they could have lunch together. “Sure Mil,” Connie replied, “why not, I’ll meet you by the elevators in five minutes.” When they hit the lobby Millie asked where Connie wanted to go for lunch. Connie thought about it for a second and replied, “Ya know Mil, I’m feeling a little blue this morning, so what I’d really like to do is go for a quick shave if that’s all right with you!?!” Millie laughed and answered quickly, “Fine by me, let’s go!”

The two women entered the salon and went directly to the hostess who was busy taking reservations. “Do you think you could get two of us in for quick shaves,” asked Connie hopefully?” Do you have a reservation,” asked the hostess? “No,” Connie shot back quickly, “we hoped you could slip us in, it’s really important!” “Let me see,” said the hostess, while glancing over her reservation book, “okay girls, follow me, I think we can squeeze you in!” When they got to the shaving room, the hostess called out to two barbers, “Jane, Erica, can you take care of these two right now, they really need it bad!?!” “Jane nodded yes, and motioned both Connie and Millie into the two reclining barbers chairs. Both women quickly seated themselves, leaned back, and then waited for the two barbers to begin. “Okay, hon” said Jane, “lift your butt!” Connie lifted her ass off the chair and Jane reached under her dress and tugged off her panty hose and panties in one quick motion. Connie looked over at Millie, who also was having her under things removed by Erica! Both women then hiked their skirts up around their waists exposing their vaginas to watchful eyes of the two barbers, Jane and Erica.

We fit together

Dale and I went to dinner Friday night and everything was so perfect, but I couldn’t wait to get him back to my place. He was so damn handsome and sexy. His tanned body and bronze colored hair made my stomach do flip-flops. I felt like I was a teenager around him and couldn’t stop myself from aching for him.

“Dinner was nice,” Dale said, “But I can’t wait to get you back to your house.”

I started laughing out loud. “How did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Read my mind. I was just thinking the same thing. I want to be with you so much.”

“Then let’s get out of here,” he said, guiding me. I was so glad to get out of there. I couldn’t concentrate on anything but being in his arms and having his lips on me. And I really wanted to touch and suck on him.

Once we got back to my place, he eyed me. I swore I thought I saw him licking his lips, but that was okay, because I felt the same way.

“I’ve been thinking about you constantly,” he said as he held me in his arms. I had on a dress that was pretty low cut, had spaghetti straps and came to the middle of my thighs. The only undergarments that I wore were a pair of bikini panties. One of the straps fell off my shoulder and he slowly put it back up.

“I’ve been thinking about you, too. I can’t tell you how many rated X dreams that you’ve been in,” I said. Every time I thought of him, I grew wet with need.

“Now that I have you, I just want to play. Let your goosebumps guide my way.”

He kissed me so softly and sweetly that I melted right there and wrapped his arms around me and let his tongue wander into my mouth.

Addicted

“Where’s Joanna,” asked Peggy, “she’s always late?!?” Judith smirked a little and responded cattily, “Doesn’t Frank have Wednesdays off, if he does, I think we all know what she’s up to!!!” The three at the table all chuckled at that one, but it was Susan who came to Joanna’s defense when she opined, “Let’s not be too hasty with our criticism, I think we would all agree if one of our husbands had a day off we’d all be in bed with him if we could!!!” The two other women stopped laughing for a moment and then nodded their agreement, but Judith still had to give a final zinger, “Yeah, but Jo’s so hot for Frank’s cock she’d suck him off in public if he asked her to!!!” “Did I hear someone saying my name,” Joanne called out as she swept into the room, “sorry I’m late but I had to help Frank with some chores before I could leave!!!” Just hearing Jo’s excuse brought a chorus of laughter from the other three, which caused a hurt looking Joanne to reply, “What’s so funny, I said I was sorry!!!” “Honey,” Peggy said sweetly, “you’ve still got cum on your chin,” to which and embarrassed Joanne automatically reached up to wipe it clean!!! “Oh, you,” Joanne scolded, having fallen for Peggy’s trick, “that wasn’t funny!!!” “Oh relax, Jo,” Susan soothed, “we all know what a hung stud Frank is, we don’t blame you one bit, but tell us, who made the first move, you or him!?!”

Taking there good natured ribbing in stride, Joanne replied, “Well, he came into the bedroom after his shower toweling off, and although he wasn’t really hard, he was kinda semi hard if you know what I mean, really hanging down low and swing back and forth when he walked!!!” At that point Judith interrupted by saying, “God I love it when they’re hanging low and looking almost hard, jesus, I nearly cream when I see Tommy that way!!!” Joanne looked at Judith and nodded knowingly, and continued on, “Well anyway, I was sitting on the edge of the bed when he walked by, what was I supposed to do, I couldn’t very well leave him like that, so I grabbed it, pulled it to my mouth, and sucked him off!!!”

18 and Puffy

Afton groaned and rolled over trying to ignore the insistent buzzing of her snooze alarm. She glanced at the clock one more time, just to make sure that it really was seven o’clock, but the red glowing digits on the night stand indicated that now it was seven-o-two and counting! She stretched out, trying to get the circulation moving through her body, and felt her white cotton bikini panties pressing hard against her bulging vulva. The mere pressure from the thin material was enough to flood her vagina with pussy juice, causing her to automatically slip her hand inside her undies and begin massaging her now throbbing clitoris. She sighed contentedly while her left middle finger flicked back and forth across the now erect little sex organ, while her right hand cupped one of her full breasts, occasionally twisting a distended nipple between her thumb and index finger. Lately her pussy had been so easily aroused that she had to masturbate a least twice a day to keep from going crazy! She was just about to cum, when her mother rapped loudly on her door and yelled for her to get up and at ‘em! Afton struggled to reply that she was awake, when a tidal wave of pleasure swept through her, causing her teenage pussy to convulse in a numbing orgasm!!! After taking a moment or two to recover, she hopped out of bed and began getting ready for school, while thinking about her plans for the day.

The day passed by quickly until it was time for her sixth period gym class, and while Afton wasn’t really big on sports, Miss Richards, the gym teacher, kept the class interesting by having a variety of activities for the students sample. After class in the locker room, Miss Richards was passing by her stall and she stopped to ask Afton if her ankle was okay, since she had rolled it over while playing volleyball. Afton replied, “Oh, it’s not too bad, it just hurt for a few minutes, nothing to worry about!” “Well,” Miss Richards rejoined, “I want you to come to my office for a minute so I can give it one more look.” Afton, in just her bra and panties, followed the teacher into her small cubby hole of an office at the far end of the locker room and sat down in the visitors chair and extended her left leg so Miss Richards could inspect it. “See,” said the eighteen year old said, “no problem, it feels just fine!” Miss Richards was running her hand up and down the ankle and calf of the young girl, each time her hand moving a little higher until she was rubbing the inside of her thigh. Miss Richards continued her massage, and commented, “Sometime these sprains can even affect your calf and thigh muscles.” Afton just sat there and let the teacher rub her leg, even as she got closer and closer to her crotch. Miss Richards by now was not even touching her below her knee, while just concentrating on the inside of her thigh.

Magic Wand

“You mean you don’t have one?”

“Um, no. I don’t. I guess I just don’t think about it very much.”

“Oh, honey, if I didn’t have one I’d go crazy.” Katia said.

Katia and Lisa were hunched over books on opposite sides of Katia’s room. Katia was reading about ancient Japan, Lisa was reading a botany textbook. Neither of them were really reading, though, as so often would happen on a Tuesday night.

Katia was going to major in art. She was a first-generation college student whose Mom was a legal secretary. Lisa had grown up with academic parents, and she didn’t really know what she was going to major in. They had become friends rather quickly, and very close ones for all their opposite characteristics, Katia’s mercurial quickness to Lisa’s deliberation, Katia’s lithe darkness to Lisa’s soft, pale, redhead curves.

“I bet you’ve never even seen one.”

Katia was sounding unusually snotty about it, actually. Lisa felt her cheeks get a little warm.

“Yes I….ok fine, no I haven’t. Pictures, yes. Like, in a catalog. But I didn’t have the nerve to buy one.”

Katia asked, a little more kindly, as Lisa got defensive – “Would you like to see mine?”

Lisa’s brow furrowed. “Um, no.”

“Can I at least tell you about it? How good it feels, how much easier it is to fall asleep? When Bridget’s over at her boyfriend’s is the only time I can use it, though.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it makes too much noise. Come on, just take a look at it.”

Without waiting for an answer Katia opened up her closet and started digging around, various black and grey sweaters flying.

“Katia, what about Bridget?”

“Lock the door, Lisa.”

Lisa got up, padded across the room in her white athletic socks and locked the door. She wasn’t sure why she was listening to Katia, but she decided to go along.

Katia patted the space next to her on the bed, the wand vibrator, big as a lamb shank and kind of unsexily awkward, in her hand.

Lisa sat next to her, some space in between. Katia drew closer. For the first time that proximity felt really weird to Lisa. In fact this whole thing felt really weird. Not bad weird, just out of the ordinary.

“It’s so nice Lisa. It’s like if you had a hundred fluttering fingers to rub your clit with. It makes me come so hard, and so much. I have to bite the pillow so I don’t scream. It’s better than any guy I’ve ever let touch me, really.”

Katia wet her lips. As assured as she might have been at first she was really nervous. Lisa was making her wet, just sitting there, looking the way she looked, and smelling as sweet as she smelled. She was so pretty. Katia’s desire was a painful pang in her cunt, the more she looked, the more she thought about spreading Lisa’s lips and running the head of the vibrator up and down the cleft of her cunt. Then following in its wake with her tongue.

The Importance of Good Grammar

Al is getting along in years and finds that he is unable to perform sexually. He finally goes to his doctor, who tries a few things but nothing seems to work. So the doctor refers him to an American Indian medicine man.

The medicine man says, “I can cure this.” That said, he throws a white powder in a flame, and there is a flash with billowing blue smoke.

Then he says, “This is powerful medicine. You can only use it once a year. All you have to do is say ‘123′ and it shall rise for as long as you wish!”

Al asks, “What happens when it’s over, and I don’t want to continue?”

The medicine man replies: “All you or your partner has to say is 1234, and it will go down. But be warned — it will not work again for another year!”

Al rushes home, eager to try out his new powers and prowess. That night he is ready to surprise Donna. He showers, shaves, and puts on his most exotic shaving lotion. He gets into bed, and lying next to her says, “123.”

He suddenly becomes more aroused than any time in his life … just as the medicine man had promised.

Donna, who had been facing away, turns over and asks, “What did you say 123 for?”

And that, my friends, is why you shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition.

Josef Mengele

AKA ‘Angel of Death’.

Country: Germany.

Kill tally: Directly responsible for the deaths of thousands at Auschwitz concentration camp.

Background: Following the First World War, the Treaty of Versailles penalises the defeated Germany, annexing land, imposing large war reparations, limiting the size of the German Army and blaming Germany and Austria-Hungary for starting the conflict. The new German Government, a coalition of left-leaning and centrist parties, attempts to rebuild the country but faces opposition from the right and extreme left. The instability is exacerbated by the failure of the domestic and global economies.

Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist (Nazi) Party exploits the situation, advocating national pride, blaming the Treaty of Versailles, the left, and Jews for the political turmoil and claiming to have a solution to the economic crisis. The Nazis reach a position from which they can seize power on 30 January 1933 when Hitler is appointed chancellor. More background.

Mini biography: Born on 16 March 1911 in Günzburg, Germany. His upper middle-class family are the proprietors of machine tools business. He is the eldest of three sons.

1930 – After finishing his schooling he studies philosophy at the University Munich, obtaining his degree in 1935, before going on to study medicine at the University of Frankfurt am Main, where he concentrates on physical anthropology and genetics. In 1931 he joins the Stahlhelm (Steel Helmets), an extreme right-wing and antisemitic organisation.

1933 – The Nazis reach a position from which they can seize power on 30 January when Hitler is appointed chancellor. Germany’s last election until after the Second World War is held on 5 March. Though the Nazis win only 44% of the vote Hitler persuades the Reichstag to pass the Enabling Law, allowing him to govern independently of the parliament for four years.

Hitler is now the Führer, the dictator of the fascist Third Reich, an empire where the individual belongs to the state, and where the state is fully controlled by the Nazis.

Positive thinking

Family Guy Sex Marathon

Just got into this fucking funny site:

“A family that fucks together stays together lol. In this Family Guy sex orgy everyone gets into the action with Lois pulling out her sons cock after she sees he has a huge erection after seeing her in the nude.”

Stewie Kills Lois (Part 1) – episode #102

You can watch the latest episode from Family Guy (not final air version) here:

http://www.familyguyx.net/watch.php?episode_number=102

The end will let you hanging, waiting for part 2… which I hope it will be released soon (also not the final air version)

5.6 earthquake strikes California

According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) a magnitude 5.6 earthquake, lasting about 90 seconds, struck at 20:04:54 (PDT), with the epicenter being 5 miles north, northeast of Alum Rock California and 9 miles northeast of the center of San Jose. The actual coordinates given by USGS put it along the border of San Jose and Milpitas in the hills near neighborhoods in both cities. The quake was felt as far away as the California communities of Sacramento, Sonoma, and Los Banos. It was the most powerful quake in the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley since 1989.

At least ten aftershocks have been reported by 8:35 p.m with magnitudes ranging from 1.3 to 1.8.

Phone service, including cellular phone service, is reported to be down in some areas around the epicenter. Residents and business owners also report their homes shaking.

According to the USGS, damage could be “moderate to heavy” and Rafael Abreu of the USGS said that the earthquake is considered “moderate,” but so far there are “no injuries.” The quake was reported at a depth of 9.2 km (5.7 miles).

USGS predicts a 30% chance of strong (magnitude >5) aftershocks in the next 7 days, with a 5-10% probability of aftershocks stronger than the main quake. Additionally, USGS predicts approximately 15-40 small (magnitude 3-5) aftershocks.

The USGS reports that the quake was centered on the Calaveras Fault, and was the most powerful earthquake on that fault since the 1984 Morgan Hill earthquake.

 Did you feel it?

Dogs really hates Holloween

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How to get Vista for free?

Hands up, mother fuckers!

Pepsi XXX

Body signs

A construction worker on the 3rd floor of a building needs a handsaw, and spots another man on the 1st floor. He yells down to him, but the noise makes it impossible to hear anything, so he tries sign language. He points at his eye meaning “I”, points at his knee meaning, “need”, and moves his hand back and forth in a handsaw motion.

The man on the 1^st floor nods his head, pulls down his pants, and starts masturbating.

The man on the 3^rd floor gets so angry he runs down to the 1st floor and shouts: “What the fuck is wrong with you, idiot? I said I needed a handsaw!”

The other guy says: “I knew that, I was just trying to tell you I’m coming”

Girl vs. Boy Diary

Girl’s diary

Saw John in the evening and he was acting really strangely I went shopping in the afternoon with the girls and I did turn up a bit late so I thought it might be that.

The bar was really crowded and loud so I suggested we go somewhere quieter to talk. He was still very subdued and distracted so I suggested we go somewhere nice to eat. All through dinner he just didn’t seem himself; he hardly laughed, and didn’t seem to be paying any attention to me or to what I was saying. I just knew that something was wrong.

He dropped me back home. I wondered if he was going to come in; he hesitated, but followed. I asked him again if there was something the matter but he just half shook his head and turned the television on.

After about 10 minutes of silence, I said I was going upstairs to bed. I put my arms around him and told him that I loved him deeply. He just gave a sigh, and a sad sort of smile. He didn’t follow me up, but later he did, and I was surprised when we made love. He still seemed distant and a bit cold, and I started to think that he was going to leave me, and that he had found someone else.

I cried myself to sleep….

 

Boy’s diary

 

Wallabies lost to New Zealand.

Had sex though.

 

Girl Friday

“Well, I’m happy to see that your shorthand and typing skills are up to snuff, Miss Egan, now how are you on a computer,” asked the interviewer!?! “Very good,” Melanie replied, “I’ve had extensive training on all of the major business soft wear products and am familiar with all types of pc’s!” Dee Waller drummed her fingers on her desk while studying Melanie Knox’s file, set it down, and began slowly, “You realize that the position you are applying for is that of executive secretary for Stanton Ingalls, the chief operating officer of this firm?” Melanie nodded her head and replied, “Yes, I feel that I have all of the qualifications necessary to do a excellent job for Mr. Ingalls, I’ve been in the business for twelve years now, and feel I’m ready for the big time!” Leaning back in her chair with her fingers interlaced behind her head, Miss Waller continued carefully, “This is a delicate position, and one that requires the utmost in discretion, Mr. Ingalls will be entrusting you with many confidential details of the inner workings of our company!” I understand perfectly,” Melanie replied, “my behavior at my previous employment has been above reproach, so I feel Mr. Ingalls can hire me with the utmost confidence!” “I’m sure of that,” Dee went on, “but the job also requires, ah, how should I put it, a more hands on and personal relationship with Mr. Ingalls!”

“I-I’m not sure what you mean,” Melanie stammered, a little confused at the direction the conversation had taken! “Now, Miss Egan, you’re a bright young woman,” Dee Waller replied smoothly, “just how much does a top flight executive secretary make these days!?!” “I don’t know exactly,” Melanie replied slowly, “I’d say between forty and sixty thousand per year, depending on length of service and all!” “I’d say you’re about right,” Dee replied quickly, “so haven’t you wondered why this position carried a salary of over one hundred thousand dollars per year plus benefits, that’s nearly double what the position normally pays!?!” “Well, I guess I haven’t really given it much thought,” Melanie replied slowly, “so I take it these “personal duties” are what makes the job worth so much!” “Now you’re getting the picture,”

Tip of the day

Bad sex is better than a good day at work .

Lesbian Story – The Seduction

Claire finished the breakfast dishes and was on her way out the door from her upscale suburban home and into the big four wheel drive Ford Explorer. Gliding smoothly into traffic, she thought that lately shopping seemed to be her only outlet. Her husband Frank was away on business at least three nights a week, and usually more. Not to be complaining, Frank is a wonderful provider and father for her and the twins, but it seemed like they hardly ever saw each other, let alone spending any meaningful time together.

As she pulled into the mall parking garage, Claire’s thoughts turned to the ad she had seen in the local newspaper–OPENING FRIDAY! BOUDOIR LINGERIE! Claire had been taken by the ad immediately, and she really could use some new bras and panties. Even though she and Frank had been married for eight years Claire had managed to stay in good shape, and for a thirty three year old she still could turn a man’s head, and the only real change in her body was her chest size. When she graduated from college Claire was a perfect 34-C, but after the birth of her daughters, her boobs had grown to a very heavy 34-D. Although they sagged a little, she still filled out a bra like a centerfold, and when he did show some interest, Frank liked to tell her that no Playboy bunny could hold a candle to her! As she entered the mall she thought of the last time he had sucked her tits, and her nipples got getting hard just thinking about it inducing her to look down at her chest and see the two buds poking through her blouse, causing her to shiver!

Rafael Trujillo

Full name Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina. AKA ‘El Jefe’ (the chief), AKA ‘El Chivo’ (the goat), AKA ‘Chapita’ (bottle top).

Country: Dominican Republic.

Kill tally: Around 20,000 Haitians killed in 1937. (Estimates of the number of Haitians killed vary from several hundred to 30,000.) An unknown number of Dominican dissidents and opposition figures killed during his 31-year reign.

Background: The Dominican Republic (República Dominicana) is established in February 1844. The Republic occupies the eastern two-thirds of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. Haiti occupies the western third.

Despite initial optimism a tradition of dictatorial “strong-man” (or “caudillo”) rule comes to be entrenched in the Republic, reaching its zenith 100 years later during the rule of Rafael Trujillo.

At the same time, longstanding tensions between the Dominican Republic and Haiti will assume a growing racial component as the fairer-skinned Dominicans come to feel threatened by and at the same time superior to their darker-skinned neighbours.

At the start of the 20th Century the United States begins to take a greater role in Dominican affairs, culminating in a US occupation that begins in May 1916 and continues to July 1924, when Horacio Vásquez Lajara is inaugurated as president and control of the country returns to the Dominican parliament.

Kim Il Sung

AKA ‘Great Leader’, AKA ‘Eternal Leader’, AKA ‘Suryong’ (Supreme Leader).

Country: North Korea.

Kill tally: About three million killed in the Korean War. Between 600,000 and one million North Koreans needlessly starved to death due to the economic legacy of Kim’s regime. (Some reports claim that as many as three million starved.)

Background: From an early date Korean political culture is characterised by isolationism and a strong desire to maintain the country’s independence. China, though treated with deference, is kept at arm’s length and relations with other neighbours are discouraged. Among Westerners Korea comes to be known as the ‘Hermit Kingdom’.

Nevertheless, the country is unable to stop encroachment by neighbours. Korea is made a Japanese protectorate in 1905 and is turned into a full colony of the growing Japanese Empire in 1910. By the 1940s there are about 700,000 Japanese in Korea, mostly working in government service. While the Japanese policies result in substantial economic growth, Koreans become second-class citizens within their own land.

Mini biography: Born on 15 April 1912 in Mangyongdae in the Pyongyang Province of northern Korea into what was probably a middle-class family. His birth name is Kim Song Ju. He is the eldest of three sons. Kim’s younger brother dies early. His youngest brother will serve with him until the mid-1970s. Kim’s father is a Christian and Kim attends church throughout his teens.

1919 – On 1 March a group of 33 intellectuals call for independence from Japan, sparking nationwide mass protests that continue for months despite harsh repression by the Japanese (the so-called ‘March 1st Movement’). The movement fails to win independence for Korea but does cause the Japanese to reform their administration.

Slobodan Milosevic

AKA ‘Butcher of the Balkans’.

Country: Serbia.

Kill tally: Up to 230,000 killed and three million displaced.

Background: The southern Slavic states of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Macedonia begin to merge as a single nation following the First World War. But the legacy of a 400-year occupation by the Islamic Ottoman Empire and traditional tension between Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians frustrate attempts for unity. Following the Second World War, Yugoslav communists led by Marshal Josip Broz Tito take control of the government, declaring the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia on 29 November 1945.

The veneer of Yugoslav stability begins to crumble when Tito dies on 4 May 1980. The prosperous northern states of Croatia and Slovenia start to agitate for autonomy. Macedonia and the Muslim majorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Serbian province of Kosovo repeat the call. Serbia has political power under the federation and does not want change. The poorer southern state of Montenegro supports the centralised federation and backs Serbia. More background.

Mini biography: Born on 20 August 1941 in Pozarevac, 60 km southeast of Belgrade, in Serbia, Yugoslavia. He is the second son of a former Orthodox priest from Montenegro and a Serbian communist schoolmistress. Both parents commit suicide, his father in 1962, 15 years after abandoning the family to return to Montenegro, and his mother in 1973. An uncle, his mother’s brother, also takes his own life.

While attending high school in Pozarevac Milosevic meets his future wife, Mirjana Markovic. A doctrinaire Marxist who comes to be known as the ‘Red Witch’ and the ‘Lady Macbeth of the Balkans’, Markovic has family connections to the upper echelons of the Tito government. She will be a driving force behind her husband. The couple marry in 1965. They will have two children, Marija and Marko.

What’s the difference between erotic and kinky?

Erotic = using a feather
Kinky = using the whole chicken

TGIF

A businessman got on an elevator in a building. When he entered the elevator, there was a blonde already inside and she greeted him by reciting the letters, “T-G-I-F.”

He smiled at her and replied, “S-H-I-T.” She looked at him, puzzled, and said “T-G-I-F” again.

He acknowledged her remark again by answering, “S-H-I-T.”

The blonde was trying to be friendly, so she smiled her biggest smile and said, as sweetly as possible, “T-G-I-F” another time.

The man smiled back to her and once again replied with a quizzical expression, “S-H-I-T.”

The blonde finally decided to explain things, and this time she said, “T-G-I-F, Thank Goodness It’s Friday, get it?”

The man answered, “S-H-I-T: Sorry Honey, It’s Thursday.”

 

Voodoo Dick

There was a businessman who was getting ready to go on a long business trip. He knew his wife was a flirtatious sort, so he thought he’d try to get her something to keep her occupied while he was gone, because he didn’t much like the idea of her screwing someone else.

So he went to a store that sold sex toys and started looking around. He thought about a life-sized sex doll, but that was too close to another man for him. He was browsing through the dildos, looking for something special to please his wife, and started talking to the old man behind the counter. He explained his situation, to the old man.

“Well, I don’t really know of anything that will do the trick. We have vibrating dildos, special attachments, and so on, but I don’t know of anything that will keep her occupied for weeks, except …” said the old man, and then he stopped.

“Except what?” asked the businessman.

“Nothing, nothing,” said the old man.

“C’mon, tell me! I need something!” protested the businessman.

“Well, sir, I don’t usually mention this, but there is the ‘voodoo dick,’” the old man said.

“So what’s up with this voodoo dick?” the businessman asked.

Sex in the dark

A man and a woman started to have sex in the middle of a dark forest.

After 15 minutes of this, the man finally gets up and says, “Damn, I wish I had a flashlight.”

The woman says, “So do I. You’ve been eating grass for the past ten minutes!”

A matter of choice

A Mormon was seated next to an Irishman on a flight from London.  After the plane was airborne, drink orders were taken. The Irishman asked for a whiskey, which was promptly brought and placed before him.

The flight attendant then asked the Mormon if he would like a drink.  He replied in disgust, “I’d rather be savagely raped by a dozen whores than let liquor touch my lips.”

The Irishman then handed his drink back to the attendant and said, “Me too, I didn’t know that we had a choice.”

 

Francisco Franco Bahamonde

AKA ‘El Caudillo’ (The Leader).

Country: Spain.

Kill tally: Tens to hundreds of thousands. One source says 500,000 killed in the Spanish Civil War, another claims two million executed alone. More sober estimates for executions put the figure at 35,000 killed either summarily or after a hasty court martial. According to military historian Antony Beevor, the figure for non-combatants and surrendered troops killed by Franco’s Nationalists during the war “must exceed 100,000 and may be closer to 200,000.”

Background: Spain becomes a republic in 14 April 1931 when King so XIII abdicates and goes into exile. However, the country is unable to maintain any political stability. A provisional administration is replaced first by a republican left government in October 1931 then a conservative government in November 1933 and finally by the Popular Front, a coalition of socialists and left republicans, in February 1936. Spanish conservatives become concerned that the Popular Front will turn the country into a communist state. The right-wing National Bloc openly appeals to the military to save Spain. The military acts in July 1936, sparking the Spanish Civil War.

Mini biography: Born on 4 December 1892 in El Ferrol in Galicia, northwestern Spain. His full name is Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco y Bahamonde. Franco’s father is a paymaster in the Spanish naval administrative corps. His mother is a pious and conservative upper middle-class Roman Catholic.

1907 – At the age of 14 Franco enters the Infantry Academy at Toledo, graduating three years later and receiving his first commission as second lieutenant.

Pussy willow

An old man was sitting on his rocking chair when little Billy walked by carrying a roll of chicken wire. The old man asked, “Where are you going, Billy?” Little Billy replied, “To catch some chickens!” The old man told him you can’t catch chickens with chicken wire, but a little while later Billy returned with some chickens.

The next day, the old man saw Billy walk by again, this time with some duct tape. The old man asked, “Where are you going, Billy?” Little Billy replied, “To catch some ducks!” The old man told him you can’t catch ducks with duct tape, but a little while later Billy returned with some ducks.

The next day, the old man saw Billy walk by again, this time with some pussy willow.

“Hold on, son, I’m coming with you!”

The Nun Regret

A nun walks into a bus and sits behind the driver and says, “I have just one regret before I die,”

The bus driver asks “What might that be?”, she says “I have never had sex, but I can’t have sex with a married man or that would be a sin.”

The bus driver says, “I’m not married”

The nun says, “I have to die a virgin so I will have to take it in my ass”.

Being the only two in the bus they went to the back and took care of business.

When they were done the bus driver says to the nun, “I have a confession to make, I am married.”

The nun says “I also have a confession to make, My name is Tom and I’m going to a costume party!”

Adolf Hitler

AKA ‘Der Führer’ (The Leader).

Country: Germany.

Kill tally: Directly responsible for the deaths of over 46 million Europeans as a result of the Second World War.

Background: Following the First World War, the Treaty of Versailles penalises the defeated Germany, annexing land, imposing large war reparations, limiting the size of the German Army and blaming Germany and Austria-Hungary for starting the conflict. The new German Government, a coalition of left-leaning and centrist parties, attempts to rebuild the country but faces opposition from the right and extreme left. The instability is exacerbated by the failure of the domestic and global economies.

Mini biography: Born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, Austria, into a lower middle-class family of peasant origins. His father, a customs official, is 23 years older than his mother, a domestic servant.

Hitler is dominated by his father and spoilt by his mother. His father dies in 1903, his mother in 1907. He has one half-brother, one half-sister, and one full-sister. In his youth, Hitler dreams of becoming an artist.

1903 – Following his father’s death, Hitler leaves school.

1907 – He goes to Vienna, the capital of Austria, where he attempts to pursue his dream of becoming an artist. However, he has only limited talent and is unable to gain admission to the Academy of Fine Arts, failing the entrance examination twice. In 1908, following the death of his mother, he moves to Vienna to live.

Good Girls vs. Bad Girls

Good girls loosen a few buttons when it’s hot. Bad girls make it hot by loosening a few buttons.

Good girls only own one credit card and rarely use it. Bad girls only own one bra and rarely use it.

Good girls wax their floors. Bad girls wax their bikini lines.

Good girls blush during love scenes in a movie. Bad girls know they could do it better.

Good girls think they’re not fully dressed without a strand of pearls. Bad girls think they’re fully dressed with just a strand of pearls.

Good girls wear high heels to work. Bad girls wear high heels to bed.

Good girls say, “Don’t… Stop…” Bad girls say, “Don’t Stop…”

The creation of a Pussy

Seven wise men with knowledge so fine,
created a pussy to their design.
First was a butcher,
with smart wit,
using a knife,
he gave it a slit,
Second was a carpenter,
strong and bold,
with a hammer and chisel,
he gave it a hole,
Third was a tailor,
tall and thin,
by using red velvet,
he lined it within,
Fourth was a hunter,
short and stout,
with a piece of fox fur,
he lined it without,
Fifth was a fisherman,
nasty as hell,
threw in a fish and gave it a smell,
Sixth was a preacher,
whose name was McGee,
he touched it and blessed it,
and said it could pee,
Last was a sailor,
dirty little runt,
he sucked it and fucked it,
and called it a cunt.

Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic

Country: Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Kill tally: Up to 200,000.

Background: The southern Slavic states of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Macedonia begin to merge as a single nation following the First World War. But the legacy of a 400-year occupation by the Islamic Ottoman Empire and traditional tension between Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians frustrate attempts for unity. Following the Second World War, Yugoslav communists led by Marshal Josip Broz Tito take control of the government, declaring the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia on 29 November 1945.

The veneer of Yugoslav stability begins to crumble when Tito dies on 4 May 1980. The prosperous northern states of Croatia and Slovenia start to agitate for autonomy. Macedonia and the Muslim majorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Serbian province of Kosovo repeat the call. Serbia has political power under the federation and does not want change. The poorer southern state of Montenegro supports the centralised federation and backs Serbia.

Mini biography: Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic.

Radovan Karadzic: Born on 19 June 1945 in Petnijca, a village near Savnik in the mountains of Montenegro. In 1960 he moves to Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, where he studies medicine at the University of Sarajevo, graduating as a physician and psychiatrist. He also publishes poetry and books for children. In 1985 he is sentenced to three years imprisonment for embezzlement and fraud but never serves his time.

Ratko Mladic: Born on 12 March 1943 in the municipality of Kalinovik in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He pursues a military career in the Yugoslav People’s Army, rising to a command post.

The boy who can see without eyes

Huuuge Pussy

A huuuge pussy…

How to make a woman happy

It’s not difficult to make a woman happy.

A man only needs to be:

1. a friend
2. a companion
3. a lover
4. a brother
5. a father
6. a master
7. a chef
8. an electrician
9. a carpenter
10. a plumber
11. a mechanic
12. a decorator
13. a stylist
14. a sexologist
15. a gynecologist
16. a psychologist
17. a pest exterminator
18. a psychiatrist

This we need to speak out

In every Revolution, there are heroic moments when brave men stand up to tyranny and speak the truth despite an oppressive tyranny that seeks to banish the truth. The following speech by a very brave high school principal looks like one of those milestone events which mark a turning point where ordinary people begin to wake up. -Charles Coughlin

Principal Jody McLeod’s Speech Follows:

“It has always been the custom at Roane County High School football games, to say a prayer and play the National Anthem, to honor God and Country.

Due to a recent ruling by the Supreme Court, I am told that saying a Prayer is a violation of Federal Case Law. As I understand the law at this time, I can use this public facility to approve of sexual perversion and call it “an alternate lifestyle,” and if someone is offended, that’s OK.

I can use it to condone sexual promiscuity, by dispensing condoms and calling it, “safe sex.” If someone is offended, that’s OK.

I can even use this public facility to present the merits of killing an unborn baby as a “viable means of birth control.” If someone is offended, no problem…

I can designate a school day as “Earth Day” and involve students in activities to worship religiously and praise the goddess “Mother Earth” and call it “ecology.”

Saddam Hussein

Full name Saddam Hussein al-Majid al-Tikriti. AKA ‘Great Uncle’, AKA ‘Lion of Babylon’, AKA ‘Lion of Iraq’, AKA ‘Beast of Baghdad’. Saddam translates to ‘One Who Confronts’.

Country: Iraq.

Kill tally: Approaching two million, including between 150,000 and 340,000 Iraqi and between 450,000 and 730,000 Iranian combatants killed during the Iran-Iraq War. An estimated 1,000 Kuwaiti nationals killed following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. No conclusive figures for the number of Iraqis killed during the Gulf War, with estimates varying from as few as 1,500 to as many as 200,000. Over 100,000 Kurds killed or “disappeared”. No reliable figures for the number of Iraqi dissidents and Shia Muslims killed during Hussein’s reign, though estimates put the figure between 60,000 and 150,000. (Mass graves discovered following the US occupation of Iraq in 2003 suggest that the total combined figure for Kurds, Shias and dissidents killed could be as high as 300,000). Approximately 500,000 Iraqi children dead because of international trade sanctions introduced following the Gulf War.

Background: Following the First World War, Iraq is placed under British mandate. Iraqi nationalists, who believed their support for the British during the war would be rewarded with independence, rebel. Complete independence is finally granted in October 1932.

Nicolae Andruta Ceausescu

AKA ‘Genius of the Carpathians’.

Country: Romania.

Kill tally: An estimated 5,000 killed during the 1989 revolution that ousted Ceausescu. Possibly thousands of deaths per year during the 1980s from deprivations caused by an unnecessary austerity program. Tens of thousands more lives ruined during Ceausescu’s reign.

Background: Romania achieves independence in 1878, becoming a constitutional monarchy. The Romanian Communist Party is banned in 1924 because of its ties with the Soviet Union but continues to operate underground. The country is occupied by the Germans during the Second World War and falls behind the Soviet Union’s ‘Iron Curtain’ at war’s end. With Soviet backing the Romanian Communist Party takes control of the government. The king is forced to abdicate. On 13 April 1948 the government proclaims the Romanian People’s Republic and adopts a Stalinist constitution.

Mini biography: Born on 26 January 1918 in the village of Scornicesti, 130 km west of Bucharest in southern Romania. His father is a peasant. When he is 11 Ceausescu moves to Bucharest, the nation’s capital, to work as a shoemaker’s apprentice.

The Devil’s Dictionary – “Z”

ZANY, n. A popular character in old Italian plays, who imitated with

ludicrous incompetence the _buffone_, or clown, and was therefore the

ape of an ape; for the clown himself imitated the serious characters

of the play. The zany was progenitor to the specialist in humor, as

we to-day have the unhappiness to know him. In the zany we see an

example of creation; in the humorist, of transmission. Another

excellent specimen of the modern zany is the curate, who apes the

rector, who apes the bishop, who apes the archbishop, who apes the

devil.

ZANZIBARI, n. An inhabitant of the Sultanate of Zanzibar, off the

The Devil’s Dictionary – “Y”

YANKEE, n. In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our

Union, a New Englander. In the Southern States the word is unknown.

(See DAMNYANK.)

YEAR, n. A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.

YESTERDAY, n. The infancy of youth, the youth of manhood, the entire

past of age.

But yesterday I should have thought me blest

To stand high-pinnacled upon the peak

Of middle life and look adown the bleak

And unfamiliar foreslope to the West,

Where solemn shadows all the land invest

The Devil’s Dictionary – “X”

X in our alphabet being a needless letter has an added invincibility

to the attacks of the spelling reformers, and like them, will

doubtless last as long as the language. X is the sacred symbol of ten

dollars, and in such words as Xmas, Xn, etc., stands for Christ, not,

as is popular supposed, because it represents a cross, but because the

corresponding letter in the Greek alphabet is the initial of his name

– _Xristos_. If it represented a cross it would stand for St.

Andrew, who “testified” upon one of that shape. In the algebra of

psychology x stands for Woman’s mind. Words beginning with X are

Grecian and will not be defined in this standard English dictionary.

The Devil’s Dictionary – “W”

W (double U) has, of all the letters in our alphabet, the only

cumbrous name, the names of the others being monosyllabic. This

advantage of the Roman alphabet over the Grecian is the more valued

after audibly spelling out some simple Greek word, like

_epixoriambikos_. Still, it is now thought by the learned that other

agencies than the difference of the two alphabets may have been

concerned in the decline of “the glory that was Greece” and the rise

of “the grandeur that was Rome.” There can be no doubt, however, that

by simplifying the name of W (calling it “wow,” for example) our

civilization could be, if not promoted, at least better endured.

WALL STREET, n. A symbol for sin for every devil to rebuke. That

Wall Street is a den of thieves is a belief that serves every

unsuccessful thief in place of a hope in Heaven. Even the great and

good Andrew Carnegie has made his profession of faith in the matter.

The Devil’s Dictionary – “V”

VALOR, n. A soldierly compound of vanity, duty and the gambler’s

hope.

“Why have you halted?” roared the commander of a division and

Chickamauga, who had ordered a charge; “move forward, sir, at once.”

“General,” said the commander of the delinquent brigade, “I am

persuaded that any further display of valor by my troops will bring

them into collision with the enemy.”

VANITY, n. The tribute of a fool to the worth of the nearest ass.

The Devil’s Dictionary – “U”

UBIQUITY, n. The gift or power of being in all places at one time,

but not in all places at all times, which is omnipresence, an

attribute of God and the luminiferous ether only. This important

distinction between ubiquity and omnipresence was not clear to the

mediaeval Church and there was much bloodshed about it. Certain

Lutherans, who affirmed the presence everywhere of Christ’s body were

known as Ubiquitarians. For this error they were doubtless damned,

for Christ’s body is present only in the eucharist, though that

sacrament may be performed in more than one place simultaneously. In

recent times ubiquity has not always been understood — not even by

Sir Boyle Roche, for example, who held that a man cannot be in two

places at once unless he is a bird.

UGLINESS, n. A gift of the gods to certain women, entailing virtue

without humility.

The Devil’s Dictionary – “T”

T, the twentieth letter of the English alphabet, was by the Greeks

absurdly called _tau_. In the alphabet whence ours comes it had the

form of the rude corkscrew of the period, and when it stood alone

(which was more than the Phoenicians could always do) signified

_Tallegal_, translated by the learned Dr. Brownrigg, “tanglefoot.”

TABLE D’HOTE, n. A caterer’s thrifty concession to the universal

passion for irresponsibility.

Old Paunchinello, freshly wed,

The Devil’s Dictionary – “S”

SABBATH, n. A weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God

made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh. Among the

Jews observance of the day was enforced by a Commandment of which this

is the Christian version: “Remember the seventh day to make thy

neighbor keep it wholly.” To the Creator it seemed fit and expedient

that the Sabbath should be the last day of the week, but the Early

Fathers of the Church held other views. So great is the sanctity of

the day that even where the Lord holds a doubtful and precarious

jurisdiction over those who go down to (and down into) the sea it is

reverently recognized, as is manifest in the following deep-water

version of the Fourth Commandment:

Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able,

And on the seventh holystone the deck and scrape the cable.

Decks are no longer holystoned, but the cable still supplies the

captain with opportunity to attest a pious respect for the divine

ordinance.

SACERDOTALIST, n. One who holds the belief that a clergyman is a

priest. Denial of this momentous doctrine is the hardest challenge

The Devil’s Dictionary – “R”

RABBLE, n. In a republic, those who exercise a supreme authority

tempered by fraudulent elections. The rabble is like the sacred

Simurgh, of Arabian fable — omnipotent on condition that it do

nothing. (The word is Aristocratese, and has no exact equivalent in

our tongue, but means, as nearly as may be, “soaring swine.”)

RACK, n. An argumentative implement formerly much used in persuading

devotees of a false faith to embrace the living truth. As a call to

the unconverted the rack never had any particular efficacy, and is now

held in light popular esteem.

RANK, n. Relative elevation in the scale of human worth.

He held at court a rank so high

That other noblemen asked why.

The Devil’s Dictionary – “Q”

QUEEN, n. A woman by whom the realm is ruled when there is a king,

and through whom it is ruled when there is not.

QUILL, n. An implement of torture yielded by a goose and commonly

wielded by an ass. This use of the quill is now obsolete, but its

modern equivalent, the steel pen, is wielded by the same everlasting

Presence.

QUIVER, n. A portable sheath in which the ancient statesman and the

The Devil’s Dictionary – “P”

PAIN, n. An uncomfortable frame of mind that may have a physical

basis in something that is being done to the body, or may be purely

mental, caused by the good fortune of another.

PAINTING, n. The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and

exposing them to the critic.

Formerly, painting and sculpture were combined in the same work:

the ancients painted their statues. The only present alliance between

the two arts is that the modern painter chisels his patrons.

PALACE, n. A fine and costly residence, particularly that of a great

official. The residence of a high dignitary of the Christian Church

is called a palace; that of the Founder of his religion was known as a

field, or wayside. There is progress.

PALM, n. A species of tree having several varieties, of which the

familiar “itching palm” (_Palma hominis_) is most widely distributed

and sedulously cultivated. This noble vegetable exudes a kind of

invisible gum, which may be detected by applying to the bark a piece

of gold or silver. The metal will adhere with remarkable tenacity.

The fruit of the itching palm is so bitter and unsatisfying that a

considerable percentage of it is sometimes given away in what are known

as “benefactions.”

PALMISTRY, n. The 947th method (according to Mimbleshaw’s

classification) of obtaining money by false pretences. It consists in

“reading character” in the wrinkles made by closing the hand. The

pretence is not altogether false; character can really be read very

accurately in this way, for the wrinkles in every hand submitted

plainly spell the word “dupe.” The imposture consists in not reading

it aloud.

PANDEMONIUM, n. Literally, the Place of All the Demons. Most of them

have escaped into politics and finance, and the place is now used as a

lecture hall by the Audible Reformer. When disturbed by his voice the

ancient echoes clamor appropriate responses most gratifying to his

pride of distinction.

PANTALOONS, n. A nether habiliment of the adult civilized male. The

garment is tubular and unprovided with hinges at the points of

flexion. Supposed to have been invented by a humorist. Called

“trousers” by the enlightened and “pants” by the unworthy.

PANTHEISM, n. The doctrine that everything is God, in

contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.

Mao Tse-Tung

AKA Chairman Mao, AKA ‘The Great Helmsman’. (Tse-Tung can also be spelt Zedong. Translated the name means ‘To Shine on the East’.)

Country: China.

Kill tally: 14 to 20 million deaths from starvation during the ‘Great Leap Forward’. Tens of thousands killed and millions of lives ruined during the ‘Cultural Revolution’.

Background: The Chinese begin to emerge as a distinct civilisation around 2500 BC. China develops as an imperial power in 221 BC when rival states are unified under the First Emperor. The following 2,000 years will see a succession of dynasties, although strict cultural traditions will gradually suffocate innovation and development. The increased influence of Western powers during the 19th Century and expansionary incursions by the Russians and Japanese further weakens the imperial system, which is also faced with growing internal dissent.

The republican revolution begins among discontented army units in Wuchang in Hubei Province on 10 October 1911 and quickly spreads. By late November 15 of country’s the 24 provinces have declared their independence. On 12 February 1912 the last Manchu emperor, the child Puyi, abdicates. On 10 March Yuan Shikai, the commander-in-chief of the Imperial Army, is sworn in as provisional president of the Republic of China at a ceremony held in Beijing.

Mini biography: Born on 26 December 1893 in the village of Shaoshan in Hunan Province, in China’s south. His family are prosperous peasant farmers. He has two younger brothers and one sister.

Mao lives with his mother’s family in a neighbouring village until he is eight. He then returns to Shaoshan to begin his education. When he is 10 he runs away from school. Following his expulsion from at least three other schools, his father refuses to continue to pay for his education.

Benito Mussolini

AKA ‘Il Duce’ (The Leader).

Country: Italy.

Kill tally: Over 400,000 Italians killed during the Second World War. At least 30,000 Ethiopians killed during Italian occupation of Ethiopia.

Background: The factious Italian confederation emerges from the First World War on the side of the victorious Allies and with its eastern African colonies in Eritrea and Somalia in tact. But serious economic problems plague the state. Inflation escalates and unemployment climbs. The political climate is also destabilised as left and right groups from around the country resume their struggle for influence.

Mini biography: Born on 29 July 1883 near Predappio in the Forli Province of Romagna, in northeastern Italy, into a working class family. His father is a blacksmith, his mother a school teacher.

1901 – After a difficult childhood during which he is twice expelled from schools for attacking fellow students but easily passes his exams, Mussolini obtains a teaching diploma and works for a year as a schoolteacher at Gaultieri, northeast of Parma, until he is dismissed.

1902 – By now a committed socialist, he emigrates to Switzerland, where he gains a reputation as a journalist, public speaker and political agitator. He is arrested and imprisoned several times.

The Devil’s Dictionary – “O”

OATH, n. In law, a solemn appeal to the Deity, made binding upon the

conscience by a penalty for perjury.

OBLIVION, n. The state or condition in which the wicked cease from

struggling and the dreary are at rest. Fame’s eternal dumping ground.

Cold storage for high hopes. A place where ambitious authors meet

their works without pride and their betters without envy. A dormitory

without an alarm clock.

OBSERVATORY, n. A place where astronomers conjecture away the guesses

of their predecessors.

The Devil’s Dictionary – “N”

NECTAR, n. A drink served at banquets of the Olympian deities. The

secret of its preparation is lost, but the modern Kentuckians believe

that they come pretty near to a knowledge of its chief ingredient.

Juno drank a cup of nectar,

But the draught did not affect her.

Juno drank a cup of rye –

Then she bad herself good-bye.

J.G.

NEGRO, n. The _piece de resistance_ in the American political

problem. Representing him by the letter n, the Republicans begin to

build their equation thus: “Let n = the white man.”

The Devil’s Dictionary – “M”

MACE, n. A staff of office signifying authority. Its form, that of a

heavy club, indicates its original purpose and use in dissuading from

dissent.

MACHINATION, n. The method employed by one’s opponents in baffling

one’s open and honorable efforts to do the right thing.

So plain the advantages of machination

It constitutes a moral obligation,

And honest wolves who think upon’t with loathing

Feel bound to don the sheep’s deceptive clothing.

The Devil’s Dictionary – “L”

LABOR, n. One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.

LAND, n. A part of the earth’s surface, considered as property. The

theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control

is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the

superstructure. Carried to its logical conclusion, it means that some

have the right to prevent others from living; for the right to own

implies the right exclusively to occupy; and in fact laws of trespass

are enacted wherever property in land is recognized. It follows that

if the whole area of _terra firma_ is owned by A, B and C, there will

be no place for D, E, F and G to be born, or, born as trespassers, to

exist.

A life on the ocean wave,

A home on the rolling deep,

For the spark the nature gave

I have there the right to keep.

The Devil’s Dictionary – “J”

J is a consonant in English, but some nations use it as a vowel –

than which nothing could be more absurd. Its original form, which has

been but slightly modified, was that of the tail of a subdued dog, and

it was not a letter but a character, standing for a Latin verb,

_jacere_, “to throw,” because when a stone is thrown at a dog the

dog’s tail assumes that shape. This is the origin of the letter, as

expounded by the renowned Dr. Jocolpus Bumer, of the University of

Belgrade, who established his conclusions on the subject in a work of

three quarto volumes and committed suicide on being reminded that the

j in the Roman alphabet had originally no curl.

JEALOUS, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which

can be lost only if not worth keeping.

JESTER, n. An officer formerly attached to a king’s household, whose

business it was to amuse the court by ludicrous actions and

utterances, the absurdity being attested by his motley costume. The

king himself being attired with dignity, it took the world some

centuries to discover that his own conduct and decrees were

sufficiently ridiculous for the amusement not only of his court but of

all mankind. The jester was commonly called a fool, but the poets and

romancers have ever delighted to represent him as a singularly wise

and witty person. In the circus of to-day the melancholy ghost of the

court fool effects the dejection of humbler audiences with the same

jests wherewith in life he gloomed the marble hall, panged the

patrician sense of humor and tapped the tank of royal tears.

The widow-queen of Portugal

Had an audacious jester

Who entered the confessional

Disguised, and there confessed her.

“Father,” she said, “thine ear bend down –

My sins are more than scarlet:

I love my fool — blaspheming clown,

And common, base-born varlet.”

“Daughter,” the mimic priest replied,

“That sin, indeed, is awful:

The church’s pardon is denied

To love that is unlawful.

“But since thy stubborn heart will be

For him forever pleading,

Thou’dst better make him, by decree,

A man of birth and breeding.”

The Devil’s Dictionary – “H”

HABEAS CORPUS. A writ by which a man may be taken out of jail when

confined for the wrong crime.

HABIT, n. A shackle for the free.

HADES, n. The lower world; the residence of departed spirits; the

place where the dead live.

Among the ancients the idea of Hades was not synonymous with our

Hell, many of the most respectable men of antiquity residing there in

a very comfortable kind of way. Indeed, the Elysian Fields themselves

were a part of Hades, though they have since been removed to Paris.

When the Jacobean version of the New Testament was in process of

evolution the pious and learned men engaged in the work insisted by a

majority vote on translating the Greek word “Aides” as “Hell”;

The Devil’s Dictionary – “G”

GALLOWS, n. A stage for the performance of miracle plays, in which

the leading actor is translated to heaven. In this country the

gallows is chiefly remarkable for the number of persons who escape it.

Whether on the gallows high

Or where blood flows the reddest,

The noblest place for man to die –

Is where he died the deadest.

The Devil’s Dictionary – “F”

FAIRY, n. A creature, variously fashioned and endowed, that formerly

inhabited the meadows and forests. It was nocturnal in its habits,

and somewhat addicted to dancing and the theft of children. The

fairies are now believed by naturalist to be extinct, though a

clergyman of the Church of England saw three near Colchester as lately

as 1855, while passing through a park after dining with the lord of

the manor. The sight greatly staggered him, and he was so affected

that his account of it was incoherent. In the year 1807 a troop of

fairies visited a wood near Aix and carried off the daughter of a

peasant, who had been seen to enter it with a bundle of clothing. The

son of a wealthy _bourgeois_ disappeared about the same time, but

afterward returned. He had seen the abduction been in pursuit of the

fairies. Justinian Gaux, a writer of the fourteenth century, avers

that so great is the fairies’ power of transformation that he saw one

change itself into two opposing armies and fight a battle with great

slaughter, and that the next day, after it had resumed its original

shape and gone away, there were seven hundred bodies of the slain

which the villagers had to bury.

The Devil’s Dictionary – “E”

EAT, v.i. To perform successively (and successfully) the functions of

mastication, humectation, and deglutition.

“I was in the drawing-room, enjoying my dinner,” said Brillat-

Savarin, beginning an anecdote. “What!” interrupted Rochebriant;

“eating dinner in a drawing-room?” “I must beg you to observe,

monsieur,” explained the great gastronome, “that I did not say I was

eating my dinner, but enjoying it. I had dined an hour before.”

EAVESDROP, v.i. Secretly to overhear a catalogue of the crimes and

vices of another or yourself.

The Devil’s Dictionary – “I”

I is the first letter of the alphabet, the first word of the language,

the first thought of the mind, the first object of affection. In

grammar it is a pronoun of the first person and singular number. Its

plural is said to be _We_, but how there can be more than one myself

is doubtless clearer the grammarians than it is to the author of this

incomparable dictionary. Conception of two myselfs is difficult, but

fine. The frank yet graceful use of “I” distinguishes a good writer

from a bad; the latter carries it with the manner of a thief trying to

cloak his loot.

ICHOR, n. A fluid that serves the gods and goddesses in place of

blood.

Fair Venus, speared by Diomed,

Restrained the raging chief and said:

Close-to-complete Ideology and Religion Shit List

• Taoism: Shit happens.
• Confucianism: Confucius say, “Shit happens.”
• Buddhism: If shit happens, it isn’t really shit.
• Zen Buddhism: Shit is, and is not.
• Zen Buddhism #2: What is the sound of shit happening?
• Hinduism: This shit has happened before.
• Islam: If shit happens, it is the will of Allah.
• Islam #2: If shit happens, kill the person responsible.
• Islam #3: If shit happens, blame Israel.
• Catholicism: If shit happens, you deserve it.
• Protestantism: Let shit happen to someone else.
• Presbyterian: This shit was bound to happen.
• Episcopalian: It’s not so bad if shit happens, as long as you serve the right wine with it.
• Methodist: It’s not so bad if shit happens, as long as you serve grape juice with it.

Beer vs. Pussy

Pussy vs. Beer

A beer is always wet. A pussy needs encouragement.
– Advantage: Beer

A beer tastes horrible served hot. A pussy tastes better served hot.
– Advantage: Pussy

Having an ice cold beer makes you satisfied. Having an ice cold pussy makes you Hillary Clinton.
– Advantage: Beer

Beers have commercials making fun of skunky ones. Pussy does not.
– Advantage: Draw

If you get a hair in your teeth consuming pussy, you are not disgusted.
– Advantage: Pussy

24 beers come in a box. A pussy is a box you can come in.
– Advantage: Pussy

Too much head makes you mad at the person giving you a beer.
– Advantage: Pussy

If a beer is brewed with yeast, it is still edible.
– Advantage: Beer

If you come home smelling like beer,

Picasso: Protean and Prodigious, the Greatest Single Force in 70 Years of Art

There was Picasso the neoclassicist; Picasso the cubist; Picasso the surrealist; Picasso the modernist; Picasso the ceramist; Picasso the lithographer; Picasso the sculptor; Picasso the superb draftsman; Picasso the effervescent and exuberant; Picasso the saturnine and surly; Picasso the faithful and faithless lover; Picasso the cunning financial man; Picasso the publicity seeker; Picasso the smoldering Spaniard; Picasso the joker and performer of charades; Picasso the generous; Picasso the Scrooge; even Picasso the playwright.

A genius for the ages, a man who played wonderful yet sometimes outrageous changes with art, Pablo Picasso remains without doubt the most original, the most protean and the most forceful personality in the visual arts in the first three-quarters of this century. He took a prodigious gift and with it transformed the universe of art.

Henri Matisse and Georges Braque, two painters with assured stature in modern art and both his close friends, were also original; but both developed a style and stuck pretty much to it, whereas Picasso, with a feverish creativity and lavish talent lasting into old age, was a man of many styles whose artistic life revealed a continuous process of exploration. He created his own universe, investing it with his own human beings and his own forms of beasts and myths.

“For me, a picture is neither an end nor an achievement but rather a lucky chance and art experience,” he once explained. “I try to represent what I have found, not what I am seeking. I do not seek–I find.”

Handy woman, blonde joke

A blonde, wanting to earn some extra money, decided to hire herself out as a “handy woman” and started canvassing a nearby well-to-do neighborhood.

She went to the front door of the first house, and asked the owner if he had any odd jobs for her to do.
“Well, I guess I could use somebody to paint my porch (veranda)”, he said. “How much will you charge me?”
The blonde quickly responded: “How about $50?”
The man agreed and told her that the paint and everything she would need was in the garage.
The man’s wife, hearing the conversation, said to her husband: “Does she realize that our porch goes all the way around the house?”

He responded: “Thats a bit cynical, isn’t it?”
The wife replied: “You’re right. I guess I’m starting to believe all those ‘dumb blonde’ jokes we’ve been getting by e-mail lately.”

A short time later, the blonde came to the door to collect her money.
“You’re finished already?” the husband asked.
“Yes”, the blonde replied, “and I had paint leftover, so I gave it two coats”.
Impressed, the man reached into his pocket for the $50 and handed it to her……

“And by the way”, the blonde added, “it’s not a Porch, it’s a Lexus”.

 

The Devil’s Dictionary – “K”

K is a consonant that we get from the Greeks, but it can be traced

away back beyond them to the Cerathians, a small commercial nation

inhabiting the peninsula of Smero. In their tongue it was called

_Klatch_, which means “destroyed.” The form of the letter was

originally precisely that of our H, but the erudite Dr. Snedeker

explains that it was altered to its present shape to commemorate the

destruction of the great temple of Jarute by an earthquake, _circa_

730 B.C. This building was famous for the two lofty columns of its

portico, one of which was broken in half by the catastrophe, the other

remaining intact. As the earlier form of the letter is supposed to

have been suggested by these pillars, so, it is thought by the great

antiquary, its later was adopted as a simple and natural — not to say

touching — means of keeping the calamity ever in the national memory.

It is not known if the name of the letter was altered as an additional

mnemonic, or if the name was always _Klatch_ and the destruction one

of nature’s puns. As each theory seems probable enough, I see no

objection to believing both — and Dr. Snedeker arrayed himself on

that side of the question.

Mao Tse-Tung: Father of Chinese Revolution

 

HONG KONG, Sept. 9, 1976–Mao Tse-tung, who began as an obscure peasant, died one of history’s great revolutionary figures.

Born at a time when China was wracked by civil strife, beset with terrible poverty and encroached on by more advanced foreign powers, he lived to fulfill his boyhood dream of restoring it to its traditional place as a great nation. In Chinese terms, he ranked with Chin Shih-huang, the first Emperor, who unified China in 221 B.C., and was the man Chairman Mao most liked to compare himself to.

With incredible perseverance and consummately conceived strategy, he harnessed the forces of agrarian discontent and nationalism to turn a tiny band of peasants into an army of millions, which he led to victory throughout China in 1949 after 20 years of fighting. Along the way the army fought battles as big as Stalingrad and suffered through a heroic march as long as Alexander’s.

Then, after establishing the Chinese People’s Republic, Mao launched a series of sweeping, sometimes convulsive campaigns to transform a semifeudal, largely illiterate and predominantly agricultural country encompassing almost four million square miles and a fifth of the world’s population into a modern, industrialized socialist state. By the time of his death China had manufactured its own nuclear bombs and guided missiles and had become a major oil producer.

With China’s resurgence, Mao also charted a new course in foreign affairs, putting an end to a century of humiliation under the “unequal treaties” imposed by the West and winning new recognition and respect. Finally, in 1972, even the United States abandoned its 20 years of implacable hostility when President Richard M. Nixon journeyed to Peking, where he was received by a smiling Mao.

At the same time he brooked no opposition to his control. To consolidate his new regime in the early 50’s he launched a campaign in which hundreds of thousands were executed. In the late 50’s, despite criticism from other party leaders, he ordered the Great Leap Forward, ultimately causing widespread disruption and food shortages. Throughout his years in power he toppled one of his rivals after another in the party. In the Cultural Revolution he risked throwing the country into chaos.

Joseph Stalin

AKA ‘Koba’, AKA ‘Uncle Joe’. Stalin translates to ‘Man of Steel’.

Country: Former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR – Soviet Union).

Kill tally: Approximately 20 million, including up to 14.5 million needlessly starved to death. At least one million executed for political “offences”. At least 9.5 million more deported, exiled or imprisoned in work camps, with many of the estimated five million sent to the ‘Gulag Archipelago’ never returning alive. Other estimates place the number of deported at 28 million, including 18 million sent to the ‘Gulag’.

Background: The vast Russian Empire is thrown into turmoil in March 1917 after Tsar Nicholas II abdicates and the Imperial Government is replaced by a Provisional Government led by moderate socialist Aleksandr Fyodorovich Kerensky.

The Bolsheviks, a network of communists headed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and inspired by the writings of Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels, are opposed to the Provisional Government’s plan to establish a bourgeois democracy in Russia. They seize government in a coup d’état staged on 6 November, the so-called ‘Bolshevik Revolution’. (By the old Julian calendar the coup took place on 24 October and is therefore also known as the ‘October Revolution’.)

Civil war follows as the anticommunist ‘White Army’ battles the communist ‘Red Army’.

Study Suggests Biological Basis for Lesbianism

Scientists reported the first strong physiological evidence that lesbian and bisexual women may be biologically different from heterosexual women.

The researchers at the University of Texas in Austin found that, compared with heterosexual women, the hearing of homosexual and bisexual women tends to be a bit more like that of men.

The findings suggest that homosexual and bisexual women develop in subtly different ways than heterosexual women. Therefore, their brains may also form differently, accounting for their sexuality, the researchers said.

“It’s an indication that other brain sites have also been masculinized,” said Dennis McFadden, a professor of experimental psychology who led the study in today’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study is the latest to come from the controversial investigation into whether homosexuality has a biological basis. Previous research has found, for example, that a part of the brain believed involved in sexuality appears smaller in homosexual men than in heterosexual men. But no such findings have been reported about homosexual or bisexual women.

The Devil’s Dictionary – “D”

DAMN, v. A word formerly much used by the Paphlagonians, the meaning

of which is lost. By the learned Dr. Dolabelly Gak it is believed to

have been a term of satisfaction, implying the highest possible degree

of mental tranquillity. Professor Groke, on the contrary, thinks it

expressed an emotion of tumultuous delight, because it so frequently

occurs in combination with the word _jod_ or _god_, meaning “joy.” It

would be with great diffidence that I should advance an opinion

conflicting with that of either of these formidable authorities.

DANCE, v.i. To leap about to the sound of tittering music, preferably

with arms about your neighbor’s wife or daughter. There are many

kinds of dances, but all those requiring the participation of the two

sexes have two characteristics in common: they are conspicuously

innocent, and warmly loved by the vicious.

DANGER, n.

A savage beast which, when it sleeps,

Man girds at and despises,

The Devil’s Dictionary – “C”

CAABA, n. A large stone presented by the archangel Gabriel to the

patriarch Abraham, and preserved at Mecca. The patriarch had perhaps

asked the archangel for bread.

CABBAGE, n. A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and

wise as a man’s head.

The cabbage is so called from Cabagius, a prince who on ascending

the throne issued a decree appointing a High Council of Empire

consisting of the members of his predecessor’s Ministry and the

cabbages in the royal garden. When any of his Majesty’s measures of

state policy miscarried conspicuously it was gravely announced that

several members of the High Council had been beheaded, and his

murmuring subjects were appeased.

CALAMITY, n. A more than commonly plain and unmistakable reminder

that the affairs of this life are not of our own ordering. Calamities

are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to

others.

The Devil’s Dictionary – “B”

BAAL, n. An old deity formerly much worshiped under various names.

As Baal he was popular with the Phoenicians; as Belus or Bel he had

the honor to be served by the priest Berosus, who wrote the famous

account of the Deluge; as Babel he had a tower partly erected to his

glory on the Plain of Shinar. From Babel comes our English word

“babble.” Under whatever name worshiped, Baal is the Sun-god. As

Beelzebub he is the god of flies, which are begotten of the sun’s rays

on the stagnant water. In Physicia Baal is still worshiped as Bolus,

and as Belly he is adored and served with abundant sacrifice by the

priests of Guttledom.

BABE or BABY, n. A misshapen creature of no particular age, sex, or

condition, chiefly remarkable for the violence of the sympathies and

antipathies it excites in others, itself without sentiment or emotion.

There have been famous babes; for example, little Moses, from whose

adventure in the bulrushes the Egyptian hierophants of seven centuries

before doubtless derived their idle tale of the child Osiris being

preserved on a floating lotus leaf.

Kakadu Dancing

LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!

Stewie drunk

Gagging Stupid Morons Society (GSMS) Commercial

The Devil’s Dictionary – “A”

ABASEMENT, n.  A decent and customary mental attitude in the presence of wealth of power.  Peculiarly appropriate in an employee when addressing an employer.

ABATIS, n.  Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside.

ABDICATION, n.  An act whereby a sovereign attests his sense of the high temperature of the throne.

Poor Isabella’s Dead, whose abdication

Set all tongues wagging in the Spanish nation.

For that performance ’twere unfair to scold her:

She wisely left a throne too hot to hold her.

To History she’ll be no royal riddle –

Merely a plain parched pea that jumped the griddle.

G.J.

ABDOMEN, n.  The temple of the god Stomach, in whose worship, with sacrificial rights, all true men engage.  From women this ancient faith commands but a stammering assent.  They sometimes minister at the altar in a half-hearted and ineffective way, but true reverence for the one deity

Passion, bitterness and feminism

‘What did you do in the revolution, Mum?’ ran the line on a 1970s poster, and the answer, ‘Oh, I danced’, nicely illustrates a mood in the Women’s Liberation Movement of the late 1960s and ’70s. In fact, joy was still swirling on the dance floors of feminism in the early 1980s and even then revolution figured in dreams. But from the mid-’70s, the Women’s Liberation Movement was also increasingly fraught with fragmentation and internal strife. Joy’s partner was often anger. Early feminists were frequently fuelled by fury. We were righteously and passionately angry about the myriad myths of women’s so-called inferiority. We shouted from the rooftops that women were oppressed and exploited throughout the world, and it was male power that benefited from the status quo. We scared ourselves with the realisation of how much needed to be changed — in society and in ourselves.

  

The Satanic Verses and the Demonic Text

Have you thought upon Lat and Uzza

And Manat, the third, the other?

Shall He have daughters and you sons?

That would be a fine division!

These are but [three] names you have dreamed of, you and your fathers.

Allah vests no authority in them.

They only follow conjecture and wish-fulfillment,

Even though guidance had come to them already from their Lord

The Satanic Verses forces us to face and experience the painful problems hidden at the limits of our individual and collective identities, as demonic elements have done in various cultures from time immemorial.

Read full article here: The Satanic Verses and the Demonic Text

The Nun

The novel is about a young girl, Susan, who searches for a convent to join. She joins Longchamp, where she is seduced by the Mother Superior. The plot centers around the physical seduction of Susan by the Superior, yet is complicated by Susan’s inherent innocence. She never realizes the implications of the sexual acts that she takes part in, and therefore, much to the Superior’s frustration, her mind retains its purity. For, in the eighteenth century, a sin could not be labeled as such unless the sinner realized the sinful qualities of their actions, within their own mind. In other words, it did not actually matter what was physically done, but rather what was thought. Therefore, although there is a physical sexual relationship between the two females within the novel, Susan has not sinned “as long as her mind stays pure.” The Superior can only be successful in her seduction if she gets Susan to realize her ‘lesbian knowledge’ and feel shame for it.

Stewie says:

When the world is mine your death shall be quick and painless

Why you sick, sick little moo cow!

Milkshake

Evil Monkey

Stewie Shoots Hooker

Where’s my money?

The Crack

I get there almost two hours early, but it doesn’t matter. I know I’ll be welcome. I ring the bell and already I can hear Susan’s delighted cry from the kitchen as I lower my finger – ‘It must be Simon’ – and see her form divided into a dozen concave images by the shell-pattern of the front-door glass, each miniature Susan stretching her arms out towards me. She opens the door and I’m drawn in and hugged, my rucksack slumped over on the step. She is wearing a pullover and a long cotton skirt. I feel her stomach and the prickle of the rough wool through my shirt. She smells of cumin and fennel seed; she must be cooking for this evening. Stepping back to look at me, she lets me go and smiles, looping her hair behind her ears, then reaches to pick up the rucksack. I follow her into the broad, uncluttered hall.

About Love

AT lunch next day there were very nice pies, crayfish, and mutton cutlets; and while we were eating, Nikanor, the cook, came up to ask what the visitors would like for dinner. He was a man of medium height, with a puffy face and little eyes; he was close-shaven, and it looked as though his moustaches had not been shaved, but had been pulled out by the roots. Alehin told us that the beautiful Pelagea was in love with this cook. As he drank and was of a violent character, she did not want to marry him, but was willing to live with him without. He was very devout, and his religious convictions would not allow him to “live in sin”; he insisted on her marrying him, and would consent to nothing else, and when he was drunk he used to abuse her and even beat her.

Stewie Mozart

Quagmires Fat and thin

Stewie accused of peeing on the carpet

Peter breast feeding Stewie

Why Stewie’s head got shaped as a foot ball

A Transgression

A collegiate assessor called Miguev stopped at a telegraph-post in the course of his evening walk and heaved a deep sigh. A week before, as he was returning home from his evening walk, he had been overtaken at that very spot by his former housemaid, Agnia, who said to him viciously:

“Wait a bit! I’ll cook you such a crab that’ll teach you to ruin innocent girls! I’ll leave the baby at your door, and I’ll have the law of you, and I’ll tell your wife, too. . . .”

And she demanded that he should put five thousand roubles into the bank in her name. Miguev remembered it, heaved a sigh, and once more reproached himself with heartfelt repentance for the momentary infatuation which had caused him so much worry and misery.

Stewie sings in a southern band

Family Guy Season 6: Quagmire Edit

Family Guy Season 6: Stewie Edit

MISERY

To whom shall I tell my grief?”

 

THE twilight of evening. Big flakes of wet snow are whirling lazily about the street lamps, which have just been lighted, and lying in a thin soft layer on roofs, horses’ backs, shoulders, caps. Iona Potapov, the sledge-driver, is all white like a ghost. He sits on the box without stirring, bent as double as the living body can be bent. If a regular snowdrift fell on him it seems as though even then he would not think it necessary to shake it off. . . . His little mare is white and motionless too. Her stillness, the angularity of her lines, and the stick-like straightness of her legs make her look like a halfpenny gingerbread horse. She is probably lost in thought. Anyone who has been torn away from the plough, from the familiar gray landscapes, and cast into this slough, full of monstrous lights, of unceasing uproar and hurrying people, is bound to think.

THE STEPPE

The Story of a Journey

EARLY one morning in July a shabby covered chaise, one of those antediluvian chaises without springs in which no one travels in Russia nowadays, except merchant’s clerks, dealers and the less well-to-do among priests, drove out of N., the principal town of the province of Z., and rumbled noisily along the posting-track. It rattled and creaked at every movement; the pail, hanging on behind, chimed in gruffly, and from these sounds alone and from the wretched rags of leather hanging loose about its peeling body one could judge of its decrepit age and readiness to drop to pieces.

Two of the inhabitants of N. were sitting in the chaise; they were a merchant of N. called Ivan Ivanitch Kuzmitchov, a man with a shaven face wearing glasses and a straw hat, more like a government clerk than a merchant, and Father Christopher Sireysky, the priest of the Church of St. Nikolay at N., a little old man with long hair, in a grey canvas cassock, a wide-brimmed top-hat and a coloured embroidered girdle. The former was absorbed in thought, and kept tossing his head to shake off drowsiness; in his countenance an habitual business-like reserve was struggling with the genial expression of a man who has just said good-bye to his relatives and has had a good drink at parting. The latter gazed with moist eyes wonderingly at God’s world, and his smile was so broad that it seemed to embrace even the brim of his hat; his face was red and looked frozen. Both of them, Father Christopher as well as Kuzmitchov, were going to sell wool. At parting with their families they had just eaten heartily of pastry puffs and cream, and although it was so early in the morning had had a glass or two. . . . Both were in the best of humours.

The Nature of Dominance

Dominance is a state of mind, like honor it is a gift one gives oneself. It is a particular way of viewing the world. To begin with it is a matter of accepting responsibility not only for your own actions but also anyone under your discipline as submissives. In the not to distant past this responsibility was expressed in the Code Duello, in which a gentleman was held responsible for not only the honor of his behavior but also for the behavior of his household. This responsibility is the source from which all Dominants, from the Old Guard to today, receive their right to dominate. Until a Dominant understands this basic principle he or she is, to my mind, not worthy of the submission of anyone. This is a very dogmatic stand, I understand, but one need not spend a lot of time in the scene to see how important this concept is.

So, how does one live with this lofty ideal? To begin with a Dom must live up to his own standards. As anyone whose life has been touched by the military knows, one cannot expect to discipline anyone until one is disciplined oneself. Sobriety, moderation and rationality are the marks of the successful Dom(me)s I’ve met over the years. While this might seem to be more the code of the vanilla Boy Scout, you have to understand it within the context of what we do. In the scene you can be all kinds of evil things and express all kinds of destructive emotions, but underneath it all you have to understand that underneath it all there is a human being who has placed their well being under your care and trusts that you will be careful of it. This trust is the wellspring of his or her submission and to violate it, by destructive, inconsistent behavior is to risk losing that trust, which will lead, inevitably, to the loss of the sub, if not worse. How can you take responsibility for his or he behavior if your own behavior is erratic and careless? How can he or she prop his or her accountability against a wall with is rotten? The wall is your control, which must be consistent and unbending. You must view the relationship, within the parameters you have set between or among yourselves, rather like the training of a child or perhaps even more cogently, an animal. The sub has placed his or her humanity at your disposal, his or her responsibility as a person, so that you can return them to the animalistic state from which subspace arises. You must make sure that no mistreatment is a part of that experience, the wall must hold firm. Now, what do you, the Dominant, get out of the experience? To begin with, there is the obedience. This sounds so simple, but for all but the most exceptional contemporary woman this is extremely difficult, particularly for women. She has been taught to break the molds of the old society, which set up an antique model of womanhood, and, finding that she wants, however temporarily, to be placed back in that mold, is something of a shock. Many women who love the physical sensations of what we do have trouble realizing that obedience is the first requirement (at least for most Dom(me)s) for anyone I’m going to play with, for safety reasons if nothing else. If your partner is having trouble understanding this I would suggest that you view this as your first assignment in training. It is rather similar to gentling a horse. Take it slowly, expect and make sure not to reinforce resistance and never let the subject divert from your goal, to get her to obey. (Ancillary to this you have to make sure you do not ask unreasonable things. Expecting someone to declares herself submissive to suck your cock on the first date certainly falls into this category.)Submission is the yin to the Dominant’s yang. It is the passive compliment to dominance and the fulfilling principle that propels the Dominance. They cannot exist without each other but their natures are not opposites. The nature of submission does not remove this responsibility; one does not become a victim. One becomes a receiver, both the sexual instrument and the audience that experiences the concert. For this reason a submissive is expected to obey, to follow the lead of the Dominant partner. Submissiveness is about giving up one’s control, one’s personhood for the time being in order to receive the reward of subspace.

Just as one must think of training a submissive rather like training an intelligent animal so one must think of oneself as a submissive as someone who seeks to return to the animal part of humanity. Not everyone’s fantasy of submission is about being turned into an animal, it is a rather specialized branch of S/m, but everyone who submits in the end wants to lose one’s control, to become an animal which only feels, doesn’t think or manipulate, just feels. It is the loss of control that is the great attraction of submission. The classic and very true cliché of the high-powered man who goes home to become a little boy is the prime example of this. I suspect that the greater empowerment of women is part of what has brought more female masochists into the scene. They make decisions all day so they like nothing better than to come home and have all the decisions taken away from them. It is the eternal paradox of S/m that some of our strongest, most powerful people are the ones who submit.

This loss of control, however, goes deeper than domestic responsibilities. Describing the submissive experience within the scene of erotic torture is very difficult. One must begin in the right frame of mind, submissive, pliant, ready to accept anything, no matter how unpleasant. You must set yourself that you will not call your safe word, no matter how unpleasant what you are feeling. Then you have to let go of your intellect, let your mind feel all those sensations and the results are climaxes that take you beyond the mundane world of sight, sound and feeling and into the nether realm of pure sensation where no culture, no society, no words stand between you and the universe. This is the understanding that is the nature of submission. This is the paradox of S/m. While the submissive receives all the sensation, the Dominant does all the work. He or she receives that sense of power that comes from being able to control. He or she receives the homage due all that work, but in the end it is the submissive who gets to touch heaven.

Source: http://www.domsubfriends.com/voye/articles/4/

 

South African Tourism Website – Damn Good Answers

These questions about South Africa were posted on a South African Tourism Website and were answered by the website owner.

Q: Does it ever get windy in South Africa? I have never seen it rain on TV, so how do the plants grow? (UK)

A: We import all plants fully grown and then just sit around watching them die.

Q: Will I be able to see elephants in the street? (USA)

A: Depends how much you’ve been drinking.

FEAR

She was afraid, she knew how much he treasured his heritage; and she had done the unthinkable, one of his treasures from the past; irreplaceable, priceless in his sight, she had destroyed.Her lord though normally a stern disciplinarian; was a loving master who delighted her so often. Now she the good girl, the respectful slave; had broken the trust he put in her.Given the care of those things dearest to his heart, she had failed to be careful and destroyed that which not only pleased him, but soothed his soul. The pottery vase was an antique created by Cherokee who never walked “the trail of tears”. She knew from lessons at his knee, that this was a grievous time for his people; as terrible a symbol of his native heritage, as “the middle passage” was of his African heritage.

Fucking weird name

Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu is the Maori name for an otherwise unremarkable hill, 305 meters high, close to Porangahu south of Waipukurau in southern Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand. The name is often shortened to Taumata by the locals for ease of conversation.

The name on the sign that marks this hill is ‘Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitan atahu’, which translates roughly as The summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the climber of mountains, the land-swallower who travelled about, played his flute to his loved one. At 85 letters, it is one of the longest place names in the world. Another even longer form has 92 letters, and has been entered into the Guinness Book of Records as such. It is apparently more recent, or perhaps more formal. There are claims that the second version of the name, which is now shown on the sign, has been in use all along by local Maori. The Welsh argue that this version has been contrived to be longer than Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, which some others argue was contrived to be the longest British place name in the first place.

Wikipedia

 

Brown or Pink?

Brown or pink… STOP and THINK!

They’ve found Popeye’s Mom

Yeap, they finally found her.

Isn’t she gorgeous?

Carmen

My name is Carmen,” she told him.
“That’s a beautiful name, he said. “Did your mother give it to you?”
“No,” she replied. “I gave it to myself. It reflects the things I like most in my life – cars and men.”
They continued to talk and finally she asked “What’s your name?”

“Beerfuck,” he replied.

Labia minora

The labia minora (singular: labium minus) are two small longitudinal cutaneous folds, situated between the labia majora, and extending from the clitoris obliquely downward, lateralward, and backward for about 4 cm on either side of the vulval vestibule, between which and the labia majora they end; in the virgin the posterior ends of the labia minora are usually joined across the middle line by a fold of skin, named the frenulum labiorum pudendi or fourchette.

Anteriorly, each labium minus (nympha) divides into two portions: the upper division passes above the clitoris to meet its fellow of the opposite side, although not necessarily its equal in size, forming a fold which overhangs the glans clitoridis, and is named the preputium clitoridis; the lower division passes beneath the glans clitoridis and becomes united to its under surface, forming, with its fellow of the opposite side, although not necessarily its equal in size, the frenulum clitoridis.On the opposed surfaces of the labia minora are numerous sebaceous follicles.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

For a more detailed information, check this sexy labia

 

Defining Bullshit

A philosophy professor says it’s a process, not a product.

“We live in an era of unprecedented bullshit production,” observes Laura Penny, author of the forthcoming (and wittily titled) Your Call Is Important to Us: The Truth About Bullshit. But what is bullshit, exactly? By which I mean: What are its defining characteristics? What is its Platonic essence? How does bullshit differ from such precursors as humbug, poppycock, tommyrot, hooey, twaddle, balderdash, claptrap, palaver, hogwash, buncombe (or “bunk”), hokum, drivel, flapdoodle, bullpucky, and all the other pejoratives favored by H.L. Mencken and his many imitators? The scholar who answers the question, “What is bullshit?” bids boldly to define the spirit of the present age. 

Enter Harry G. Frankfurt. In the fall 1986 issue of Raritan, Frankfurt, a retired professor of philosophy at Princeton, took a whack at it in an essay titled “On Bullshit.” Frankfurt reprinted the essay two years later in his book The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays. Last month he republished it a second time as a very small book. Frankfurt’s conclusion, which I caught up with in its latest repackaging, is that bullshit is defined not so much by the end product as by the process by which it is created.

Eureka! Frankfurt’s definition is one of those not-at-all-obvious insights that become blindingly obvious the moment they are expressed. Although Frankfurt doesn’t point this out, it immediately occurred to me upon closing his book that the word “bullshit” is both noun and verb, and that this duality distinguishes bullshit not only from the aforementioned Menckenesque antecedents, but also from its contemporary near-relative, horseshit. It is possible to bullshit somebody, but it is not possible to poppycock, or to twaddle, or to horseshit anyone. When we speak of bullshit, then, we speak, implicitly, of the action that brought the bullshit into being: Somebody bullshitted. In this respect the word “bullshit” is identical to the word “lie,” for when we speak of a lie we speak, implicitly, of the action that brought the lie into being: Somebody lied. 

By Timothy Noah
http://slate.com/id/2114268/

Dawn of a thirsty century

The amount of water in the world is limited. The human race, and the other species which share the planet, cannot expect an infinite supply.

Water covers about two-thirds of the Earth’s surface, admittedly. But most is too salty for use. Only 2.5% of the world’s water is not salty, and two-thirds of that is locked up in the icecaps and glaciers. Of what is left, about 20% is in remote areas, and much of the rest arrives at the wrong time and place, as monsoons and floods. Humans have available less than 0.08% of all the Earth’s water. Yet over the next two decades our use is estimated to increase by about 40%.

Water shortages set to grow
In 1999 the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) reported that 200 scientists in 50 countries had identified water shortage as one of the two most worrying problems for the new millennium (the other was global warming). We use about 70% of the water we have in agriculture.

But the World Water Council believes that by 2020 we shall need 17% more water than is available if we are to feed the world. So if we go on as we are, millions more will go to bed hungry and thirsty each night than do so already.

Today, one person in five across the world has no access to safe drinking water, and one in two lacks safe sanitation. Today, and every day, more than 30,000 children die before reaching their fifth birthdays, killed either by hunger or by easily-preventable diseases. And adequate safe water is key to good health and a proper diet. In China, for example, it takes 1,000 tonnes of water to produce one tonne of wheat.

Inefficiency behind water crisis
There are several reasons for the water crisis. One is the simple rise in population, and the desire for better living standards. In China it takes 1,000 tonnes of water to produce one tonne of wheat.Another is the inefficiency of the way we use much of our water. Irrigation allows wastage on a prodigal scale, with the water trickling away or simply evaporating before it can do any good. And pollution is making more of the water that is available to us unfit for use. The Aral Sea in central Asia is one of the starkest examples of what pollution can do, to the land as well as the water.Increasingly, governments are seeking to solve their water problems by turning away from reliance on rainfall and surface water, and using subterranean supplies of groundwater instead. But that is like making constant withdrawals from a bank account without ever paying anything into it.

Looking for solutions
And using up irreplaceable groundwater does not simply mean the depletion of a once-and-for-all resource. Rivers, wetlands and lakes that depend on it can dry out. Saline seawater can flow in to replace the fresh water that has been pumped out. Pumping groundwater is like making constant withdrawals from a bank account without ever paying anything into it. And the emptied underground aquifers can be compressed, causing surface subsidence – a problem familiar in Bangkok, Mexico City and Venice.

There are some ways to begin to tackle the problem. Irrigation systems which drip water directly onto plants are one, precision sprinklers another.There will be scope to plant less water-intensive crops, and perhaps desalination may play a part – though it is energy-hungry and leaves quantities of brine for disposal.
Climate change will probably bring more rain to some regions and less to others, and its overall impact remains uncertain.

But if we are to get through the water crisis, we should heed the UNEP report’s reminder that we have only one interdependent planet to share.
It said: “The environment remains largely outside the mainstream of everyday human consciousness, and is still considered an add-on to the fabric of life.”

By Alex Kirby
BBC News Online environment correspondent
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/755497.stm

 

“The gates of Paradise are under the shadows of the swords.”

 

 

The Mind of an Islamic Terrorist

The mind of an Islamic terrorist is difficult for a Western person to comprehend. What could lead a person to cause his or her own violent death is a question that is frequently raised. It is contrary to every human emotion that we have. Yet, we know there are hundreds of Islamic fundamentalists who are willing to kill and be killed for Allah.

An important reason is the promise that the gates of Paradise are under the shadows of the swords. During Muhammad’s life, like today, there were many individuals who eagerly anticipated killing and dying in the Cause of Allah. The following is an account from the ancient classic Islamic text by Imam Muslim.

Unmasking “An Inconvenient Truth”

An Inconvenient Truth puts Al Gore at the vanguard of a growing worldwide movement that claims there is a planetary emergency from global warming. It is claimed that the looming Armageddon is of our own doing because of the burning of fossil fuels that are causing a build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The more developed a country’s economy then the more it is to blame, and the more it behoves that country to change its profligate ways. An Inconvenient Truth is a call to arms for government and community action to fight a perceived emergency.

The planetary emergency is presented as a logical extension of recent climate change.

Dramatic photos of glacier retreat and other graphics conjure up an image that the earth is changing as it has never changed before. It is claimed that the impacts of climate change are already being felt in biosphere responses that are leading to species loss, disease explosion and landscape destruction.

Much of Al Gore’s evidence for his claims lacks credibility when examined without the emotive baggage of impending disaster, blame and simplistic political solutions.

Continue reading on: http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20070330_kininmonth.pdf

Oded Balilty wins Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography

Associated Press – April 16, 2007

NEW YORK — Associated Press photographer Oded Balilty has won The Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography for his picture of a lone Jewish woman defying Israeli security forces in the West Bank.
It’s the 49th Pulitzer for the world’s oldest and largest news cooperative and the 30th awarded for AP photos.Balilty’s photo shows a Jewish settler struggling with an Israeli security officer during clashes that erupted as authorities evacuated the West Bank settlement outpost of Amona, east of the Palestinian town of Ramallah, on Feb. 1, 2006.

Thousands of troops in riot gear and on horseback clashed with hundreds of tone-throwing Jewish settlers holed up behind barbed wire and on rooftops in this illegal West Bank settlement outpost that Wednesday, after the Supreme Court cleared the way for the demolition of nine homes at the site.”It is a stunning single image that captures the chaos and emotion of that evacuation,” said AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll. She also cited the work of an 11-photographer AP team, including Balilty, that was a Pulitzer finalist in the same category for their work covering the conflict in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah.AP President and CEO Tom Curley praised both the Pulitzer Prize winner and the AP finalist team, which included Balilty, Kevork Djansezian of Los Angeles, Matt Dunham of London, Sebastian Scheiner of Israel, Kevin Frayer of Jerusalem, Mohammed Zaatari of Lebanon, Hussein Malla of Beirut, Lefteris Pitarakis of London, Pier Paolo Cito of Rome, Baz Ratner of Israel and David Guttenfelder of Tokyo.”Their success in the breaking-news photo category enhances the truly spectacular and enduring contribution made by AP photo journalists over decades,” Curley said.

Hanzi Smatter

A site dedicated to the misuse of Chinese characters in western culture: http://hanzismatter.com/

Nobel Lecture | Orhan Pamuk – My Father’s Suitcase

December 7, 2006 | © THE NOBEL FOUNDATION 2006

 

Two years before his death, my father gave me a small suitcase filled with his writings, manuscripts and notebooks. Assuming his usual joking, mocking air, he told me he wanted me to read them after he was gone, by which he meant after he died.‘Just take a look,’ he said, looking slightly embarrassed. ‘See if there’s anything inside that you can use. Maybe after I’m gone you can make a selection and publish it.’We were in my study, surrounded by books. My father was searching for a place to set down the suitcase, wandering back and forth like a man who wished to rid himself of a painful burden.

In the end, he deposited it quietly in an unobtrusive corner. It was a shaming moment that neither of us ever forgot, but once it had passed and we had gone back into our usual roles, taking life lightly, our joking, mocking personas took over and we relaxed. We talked as we always did, about the trivial things of everyday life, and Turkey’s neverending political troubles, and my father’s mostly failed business ventures, without feeling too much sorrow.I remember that after my father left, I spent several days walking back and forth past the suitcase without once touching it. I was already familiar with this small, black, leather suitcase, and its lock, and its rounded corners. My father would take it with him on short trips and sometimes use it to carry documents to work. I remembered that when I was a child, and my father came home from a trip, I would open this little suitcase and rummage through his things, savouring the scent of cologne and foreign countries. This suitcase was a familiar friend, a powerful reminder of my childhood, my past, but now I couldn’t even touch it. Why? No doubt it was because of the mysterious weight of its contents. I am now going to speak of this weight’s meaning. It is what a person creates when he shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and retires to a corner to express his thoughts – that is, the meaning of literature.When I did touch my father’s suitcase, I still could not bring myself to open it, but I did know what was inside some of those notebooks. I had seen my father writing things in a few of them. This was not the first time I had heard of the heavy load inside the suitcase. My father had a large library; in his youth, in the late 1940s, he had wanted to be an Istanbul poet, and had translated Valéry into Turkish, but he had not wanted to live the sort of life that came with writing poetry in a poor country with few readers. My father’s father – my grandfather – had been a wealthy business man; my father had led a comfortable life as a child and a young man, and he had no wish to endure hardship for the sake of literature, for writing. He loved life with all its beauties – this I understood.The first thing that kept me distant from the contents of my father’s suitcase was, of course, the fear that I might not like what I read. Because my father knew this, he had taken the precaution of acting as if he did not take its contents seriously. After working as a writer for 25 years, it pained me to see this. But I did not even want to be angry at my father for failing to take literature seriously enough… My real fear, the crucial thing that I did not wish to know or discover, was the possibility that my father might be a good writer. I couldn’t open my father’s suitcase because I feared this. Even worse, I couldn’t even admit this myself openly. If true and great literature emerged from my father’s suitcase, I would have to acknowledge that inside my father there existed an entirely different man. This was a frightening possibility. Because even at my advanced age I wanted my father to be only my father – not a writer.

A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is: when I speak of writing, what comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or literary tradition, it is a person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and alone, turns inward; amid its shadows, he builds a new world with words. This man – or this woman – may use a typewriter, profit from the ease of a computer, or write with a pen on paper, as I have done for 30 years. As he writes, he can drink tea or coffee, or smoke cigarettes. From time to time he may rise from his table to look out through the window at the children playing in the street, and, if he is lucky, at trees and a view, or he can gaze out at a black wall. He can write poems, plays, or novels, as I do. All these differences come after the crucial task of sitting down at the table and patiently turning inwards. To write is to turn this inward gaze into words, to study the world into which that person passes when he retires into himself, and to do so with patience, obstinacy, and joy. As I sit at my table, for days, months, years, slowly adding new words to the empty page, I feel as if I am creating a new world, as if I am bringing into being that other person inside me, in the same way someone might build a bridge or a dome, stone by stone. The stones we writers use are words. As we hold them in our hands, sensing the ways in which each of them is connected to the others, looking at them sometimes from afar, sometimes almost caressing them with our fingers and the tips of our pens, weighing them, moving them around, year in and year out, patiently and hopefully, we create new worlds.

The writer’s secret is not inspiration – for it is never clear where it comes from – it is his stubbornness, his patience. That lovely Turkish saying – to dig a well with a needle – seems to me to have been said with writers in mind. In the old stories, I love the patience of Ferhat, who digs through mountains for his love – and I understand it, too. In my novel, My Name is Red, when I wrote about the old Persian miniaturists who had drawn the same horse with the same passion for so many years, memorising each stroke, that they could recreate that beautiful horse even with their eyes closed, I knew I was talking about the writing profession, and my own life. If a writer is to tell his own story – tell it slowly, and as if it were a story about other people – if he is to feel the power of the story rise up inside him, if he is to sit down at a table and patiently give himself over to this art – this craft – he must first have been given some hope. The angel of inspiration (who pays regular visits to some and rarely calls on others) favours the hopeful and the confident, and it is when a writer feels most lonely, when he feels most doubtful about his efforts, his dreams, and the value of his writing – when he thinks his story is only his story – it is at such moments that the angel chooses to reveal to him stories, images and dreams that will draw out the world he wishes to build. If I think back on the books to which I have devoted my entire life, I am most surprised by those moments when I have felt as if the sentences, dreams, and pages that have made me so ecstatically happy have not come from my own imagination – that another power has found them and generously presented them to me.

I was afraid of opening my father’s suitcase and reading his notebooks because I knew that he would not tolerate the difficulties I had endured, that it was not solitude he loved but mixing with friends, crowds, salons, jokes, company. But later my thoughts took a different turn. These thoughts, these dreams of renunciation and patience, were prejudices I had derived from my own life and my own experience as a writer. There were plenty of brilliant writers who wrote surrounded by crowds and family life, in the glow of company and happy chatter. In addition, my father had, when we were young, tired of the monotony of family life, and left us to go to Paris, where – like so many writers – he’d sat in his hotel room filling notebooks. I knew, too, that some of those very notebooks were in this suitcase, because during the years before he brought it to me, my father had finally begun to talk to me about that period in his life. He spoke about those years even when I was a child, but he would not mention his vulnerabilities, his dreams of becoming a writer, or the questions of identity that had plagued him in his hotel room. He would tell me instead about all the times he’d seen Sartre on the pavements of Paris, about the books he’d read and the films he’d seen, all with the elated sincerity of someone imparting very important news. When I became a writer, I never forgot that it was partly thanks to the fact that I had a father who would talk of world writers so much more than he spoke of pashas or great religious leaders. So perhaps I had to read my father’s notebooks with this in mind, and remembering how indebted I was to his large library. I had to bear in mind that when he was living with us, my father, like me, enjoyed being alone with his books and his thoughts – and not pay too much attention to the literary quality of his writing.

But as I gazed so anxiously at the suitcase my father had bequeathed me, I also felt that this was the very thing I would not be able to do. My father would sometimes stretch out on the divan in front of his books, abandon the book in his hand, or the magazine and drift off into a dream, lose himself for the longest time in his thoughts. When I saw on his face an expression so very different from the one he wore amid the joking, teasing, and bickering of family life – when I saw the first signs of an inward gaze – I would, especially during my childhood and my early youth, understand, with trepidation, that he was discontent. Now, so many years later, I know that this discontent is the basic trait that turns a person into a writer. To become a writer, patience and toil are not enough: we must first feel compelled to escape crowds, company, the stuff of ordinary, everyday life, and shut ourselves up in a room. We wish for patience and hope so that we can create a deep world in our writing. But the desire to shut oneself up in a room is what pushes us into action. The precursor of this sort of independent writer – who reads his books to his heart’s content, and who, by listening only to the voice of his own conscience, disputes with other’s words, who, by entering into conversation with his books develops his own thoughts, and his own world – was most certainly Montaigne, in the earliest days of modern literature. Montaigne was a writer to whom my father returned often, a writer he recommended to me. I would like to see myself as belonging to the tradition of writers who – wherever they are in the world, in the East or in the West – cut themselves off from society, and shut themselves up with their books in their room. The starting point of true literature is the man who shuts himself up in his room with his books.

But once we shut ourselves away, we soon discover that we are not as alone as we thought. We are in the company of the words of those who came before us, of other people’s stories, other people’s books, other people’s words, the thing we call tradition. I believe literature to be the most valuable hoard that humanity has gathered in its quest to understand itself. Societies, tribes, and peoples grow more intelligent, richer, and more advanced as they pay attention to the troubled words of their authors, and, as we all know, the burning of books and the denigration of writers are both signals that dark and improvident times are upon us. But literature is never just a national concern. The writer who shuts himself up in a room and first goes on a journey inside himself will, over the years, discover literature’s eternal rule: he must have the artistry to tell his own stories as if they were other people’s stories, and to tell other people’s stories as if they were his own, for this is what literature is. But we must first travel through other people’s stories and books.

My father had a good library – 1 500 volumes in all – more than enough for a writer. By the age of 22, I had perhaps not read them all, but I was familiar with each book – I knew which were important, which were light but easy to read, which were classics, which an essential part of any education, which were forgettable but amusing accounts of local history, and which French authors my father rated very highly. Sometimes I would look at this library from a distance and imagine that one day, in a different house, I would build my own library, an even better library – build myself a world. When I looked at my father’s library from afar, it seemed to me to be a small picture of the real world. But this was a world seen from our own corner, from Istanbul. The library was evidence of this. My father had built his library from his trips abroad, mostly with books from Paris and America, but also with books bought from the shops that sold books in foreign languages in the 40s and 50s and Istanbul’s old and new booksellers, whom I also knew. My world is a mixture of the local – the national – and the West. In the 70s, I, too, began, somewhat ambitiously, to build my own library. I had not quite decided to become a writer – as I related in Istanbul, I had come to feel that I would not, after all, become a painter, but I was not sure what path my life would take. There was inside me a relentless curiosity, a hope-driven desire to read and learn, but at the same time I felt that my life was in some way lacking, that I would not be able to live like others. Part of this feeling was connected to what I felt when I gazed at my father’s library – to be living far from the centre of things, as all of us who lived in Istanbul in those days were made to feel, that feeling of living in the provinces. There was another reason for feeling anxious and somehow lacking, for I knew only too well that I lived in a country that showed little interest in its artists – be they painters or writers – and that gave them no hope. In the 70s, when I would take the money my father gave me and greedily buy faded, dusty, dog-eared books from Istanbul’s old booksellers, I would be as affected by the pitiable state of these second-hand bookstores – and by the despairing dishevelment of the poor, bedraggled booksellers who laid out their wares on roadsides, in mosque courtyards, and in the niches of crumbling walls – as I was by their books.

As for my place in the world – in life, as in literature, my basic feeling was that I was ‘not in the centre’. In the centre of the world, there was a life richer and more exciting than our own, and with all of Istanbul, all of Turkey, I was outside it. Today I think that I share this feeling with most people in the world. In the same way, there was a world literature, and its centre, too, was very far away from me. Actually what I had in mind was Western, not world, literature, and we Turks were outside it. My father’s library was evidence of this. At one end, there were Istanbul’s books – our literature, our local world, in all its beloved detail – and at the other end were the books from this other, Western, world, to which our own bore no resemblance, to which our lack of resemblance gave us both pain and hope. To write, to read, was like leaving one world to find consolation in the other world’s otherness, the strange and the wondrous. I felt that my father had read novels to escape his life and flee to the West – just as I would do later. Or it seemed to me that books in those days were things we picked up to escape our own culture, which we found so lacking. It wasn’t just by reading that we left our Istanbul lives to travel West – it was by writing, too. To fill those notebooks of his, my father had gone to Paris, shut himself up in his room, and then brought his writings back to Turkey. As I gazed at my father’s suitcase, it seemed to me that this was what was causing me disquiet. After working in a room for 25 years to survive as a writer in Turkey, it galled me to see my father hide his deep thoughts inside this suitcase, to act as if writing was work that had to be done in secret, far from the eyes of society, the state, the people. Perhaps this was the main reason why I felt angry at my father for not taking literature as seriously as I did.

Actually I was angry at my father because he had not led a life like mine, because he had never quarrelled with his life, and had spent his life happily laughing with his friends and his loved ones. But part of me knew that I could also say that I was not so much ‘angry’ as ‘jealous’, that the second word was more accurate, and this, too, made me uneasy. That would be when I would ask myself in my usual scornful, angry voice: ‘What is happiness?’ Was happiness thinking that I lived a deep life in that lonely room? Or was happiness leading a comfortable life in society, believing in the same things as everyone else, or acting as if you did? Was it happiness, or unhappiness, to go through life writing in secret, while seeming to be in harmony with all around one? But these were overly ill-tempered questions. Wherever had I got this idea that the measure of a good life was happiness? People, papers, everyone acted as if the most important measure of a life was happiness. Did this alone not suggest that it might be worth trying to find out if the exact opposite was true? After all, my father had run away from his family so many times – how well did I know him, and how well could I say I understood his disquiet?

So this was what was driving me when I first opened my father’s suitcase. Did my father have a secret, an unhappiness in his life about which I knew nothing, something he could only endure by pouring it into his writing? As soon as I opened the suitcase, I recalled its scent of travel, recognised several notebooks, and noted that my father had shown them to me years earlier, but without dwelling on them very long. Most of the notebooks I now took into my hands he had filled when he had left us and gone to Paris as a young man. Whereas I, like so many writers I admired – writers whose biographies I had read – wished to know what my father had written, and what he had thought, when he was the age I was now. It did not take me long to realise that I would find nothing like that here. What caused me most disquiet was when, here and there in my father’s notebooks, I came upon a writerly voice. This was not my father’s voice, I told myself; it wasn’t authentic, or at least it did not belong to the man I’d known as my father. Underneath my fear that my father might not have been my father when he wrote, was a deeper fear: the fear that deep inside I was not authentic, that I would find nothing good in my father’s writing, this increased my fear of finding my father to have been overly influenced by other writers and plunged me into a despair that had afflicted me so badly when I was young, casting my life, my very being, my desire to write, and my work into question. During my first ten years as a writer, I felt these anxieties more deeply, and even as I fought them off, I would sometimes fear that one day, I would have to admit to defeat – just as I had done with painting – and succumbing to disquiet, give up novel writing, too.

I have already mentioned the two essential feelings that rose up in me as I closed my father’s suitcase and put it away: the sense of being marooned in the provinces, and the fear that I lacked authenticity. This was certainly not the first time they had made themselves felt. For years I had, in my reading and my writing, been studying, discovering, deepening these emotions, in all their variety and unintended consequences, their nerve endings, their triggers, and their many colours. Certainly my spirits had been jarred by the confusions, the sensitivities and the fleeting pains that life and books had sprung on me, most often as a young man. But it was only by writing books that I came to a fuller understanding of the problems of authenticity (as in My Name is Red and The Black Book) and the problems of life on the periphery (as in Snow and Istanbul). For me, to be a writer is to acknowledge the secret wounds that we carry inside us, the wounds so secret that we ourselves are barely aware of them, and to patiently explore them, know them, illuminate them, to own these pains and wounds, and to make them a conscious part of our spirits and our writing.

A writer talks of things that everyone knows but does not know they know. To explore this knowledge, and to watch it grow, is a pleasurable thing; the reader is visiting a world at once familiar and miraculous. When a writer shuts himself up in a room for years on end to hone his craft – to create a world – if he uses his secret wounds as his starting point, he is, whether he knows it or not, putting a great faith in humanity. My confidence comes from the belief that all human beings resemble each other, that others carry wounds like mine – that they will therefore understand. All true literature rises from this childish, hopeful certainty that all people resemble each other. When a writer shuts himself up in a room for years on end, with this gesture he suggests a single humanity, a world without a centre.

But as can be seen from my father’s suitcase and the pale colours of our lives in Istanbul, the world did have a centre, and it was far away from us. In my books I have described in some detail how this basic fact evoked a Checkovian sense of provinciality, and how, by another route, it led to my questioning my authenticity. I know from experience that the great majority of people on this earth live with these same feelings, and that many suffer from an even deeper sense of insufficiency, lack of security and sense of degradation, than I do. Yes, the greatest dilemmas facing humanity are still landlessness, homelessness, and hunger… But today our televisions and newspapers tell us about these fundamental problems more quickly and more simply than literature can ever do. What literature needs most to tell and investigate today are humanity’s basic fears : the fear of being left outside, and the fear of counting for nothing, and the feelings of worthlessness that come with such fears; the collective humiliations, vulnerabilities, slights, grievances, sensitivities, and imagined insults, and the nationalist boasts and inflations that are their next of kind… Whenever I am confronted by such sentiments, and by the irrational, overstated language in which they are usually expressed, I know they touch on a darkness inside me. We have often witnessed peoples, societies and nations outside the Western world – and I can identify with them easily – succumbing to fears that sometimes lead them to commit stupidities, all because of their fears of humiliation and their sensitivities. I also know that in the West – a world with which I can identify with the same ease – nations and peoples taking an excessive pride in their wealth, and in their having brought us the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and Modernism, have, from time to time, succumbed to a self-satisfaction that is almost as stupid.

This means that my father was not the only one, that we all give too much importance to the idea of a world with a centre. Whereas the thing that compels us to shut ourselves up to write in our rooms for years on end is a faith in the opposite; the belief that one day our writings will be read and understood, because people all the world over resemble each other. But this, as I know from my own and my father’s writing, is a troubled optimism, scarred by the anger of being consigned to the margins, of being left outside. The love and hate that Dostoyevsky felt towards the West all his life – I have felt this too, on many occasions. But if I have grasped an essential truth, if I have cause for optimism, it is because I have travelled with this great writer through his love-hate relationship with the West, to behold the other world he has built on the other side.

All writers who have devoted their lives to this task know this reality: whatever our original purpose, the world that we create after years and years of hopeful writing, will, in the end, move to other very different places. It will take us far away from the table at which we have worked with sadness or anger, take us to the other side of that sadness and anger, into another world. Could my father have not reached such a world himself? Like the land that slowly begins to take shape, slowly rising from the mist in all its colours like an island after a long sea journey, this other world enchants us. We are as beguiled as the western travellers who voyaged from the south to behold Istanbul rising from the mist. At the end of a journey begun in hope and curiosity, there lies before them a city of mosques and minarets, a medley of houses, streets, hills, bridges, and slopes, an entire world. Seeing it, we wish to enter into this world and lose ourselves inside it, just as we might a book. After sitting down at a table because we felt provincial, excluded, on the margins, angry, or deeply melancholic, we have found an entire world beyond these sentiments. What I feel now is the opposite of what I felt as a child and a young man: for me the centre of the world is Istanbul. This is not just because I have lived there all my life, but because, for the last 33 years, I have been narrating its streets, its bridges, its people, its dogs, its houses, its mosques, its fountains, its strange heroes, its shops, its famous characters, its dark spots, its days and its nights, making them part of me, embracing them all. A point arrived when this world I had made with my own hands, this world that existed only in my head, was more real to me than the city in which I actually lived. That was when all these people and streets, objects and buildings would seem to begin to talk amongst themselves, and begin to interact in ways I had not anticipated, as if they lived not just in my imagination or my books, but for themselves. This world that I had created like a man digging a well with a needle would then seem truer than all else.

My father might also have discovered this kind of happiness during the years he spent writing, I thought as I gazed at my father’s suitcase: I should not prejudge him. I was so grateful to him, after all: he’d never been a commanding, forbidding, overpowering, punishing, ordinary father, but a father who always left me free, always showed me the utmost respect. I had often thought that if I had, from time to time, been able to draw from my imagination, be it in freedom or childishness, it was because, unlike so many of my friends from childhood and youth, I had no fear of my father, and I had sometimes believed very deeply that I had been able to become a writer because my father had, in his youth, wished to be one, too. I had to read him with tolerance – seek to understand what he had written in those hotel rooms.

It was with these hopeful thoughts that I walked over to the suitcase, which was still sitting where my father had left it; using all my willpower, I read through a few manuscripts and notebooks. What had my father written about? I recall a few views from the windows of Parisian hotels, a few poems, paradoxes, analyses… As I write I feel like someone who has just been in a traffic accident and is struggling to remember how it happened, while at the same time dreading the prospect of remembering too much. When I was a child, and my father and mother were on the brink of a quarrel – when they fell into one of those deadly silences – my father would at once turn on the radio, to change the mood, and the music would help us forget it all faster.

Let me change the mood with a few sweet words that will, I hope, serve as well as that music. As you know, the question we writers are asked most often, the favourite question, is; why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write! I write because I can’t do normal work like other people. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at all of you, angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can only partake in real life by changing it. I write because I want others, all of us, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at all of you, so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page, I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all of life’s beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story, but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but – just as in a dream – I can’t quite get there. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy.

A week after he came to my office and left me his suitcase, my father came to pay me another visit; as always, he brought me a bar of chocolate (he had forgotten I was 48 years old). As always, we chatted and laughed about life, politics and family gossip. A moment arrived when my father’s eyes went to the corner where he had left his suitcase and saw that I had moved it. We looked each other in the eye. There followed a pressing silence. I did not tell him that I had opened the suitcase and tried to read its contents; instead I looked away. But he understood. Just as I understood that he had understood. Just as he understood that I had understood that he had understood. But all this understanding only went so far as it can go in a few seconds. Because my father was a happy, easygoing man who had faith in himself: he smiled at me the way he always did. And as he left the house, he repeated all the lovely and encouraging things that he always said to me, like a father.

As always, I watched him leave, envying his happiness, his carefree and unflappable temperament. But I remember that on that day there was also a flash of joy inside me that made me ashamed. It was prompted by the thought that maybe I wasn’t as comfortable in life as he was, maybe I had not led as happy or footloose a life as he had, but that I had devoted it to writing – you’ve understood… I was ashamed to be thinking such things at my father’s expense. Of all people, my father, who had never been the source of my pain – who had left me free. All this should remind us that writing and literature are intimately linked to a lack at the centre of our lives, and to our feelings of happiness and guilt.

But my story has a symmetry that immediately reminded me of something else that day, and that brought me an even deeper sense of guilt. Twenty-three years before my father left me his suitcase, and four years after I had decided, aged 22, to become a novelist, and, abandoning all else, shut myself up in a room, I finished my first novel, Cevdet Bey and Sons; with trembling hands I had given my father a typescript of the still unpublished novel, so that he could read it and tell me what he thought. This was not simply because I had confidence in his taste and his intellect: his opinion was very important to me because he, unlike my mother, had not opposed my wish to become a writer. At that point, my father was not with us, but far away. I waited impatiently for his return. When he arrived two weeks later, I ran to open the door. My father said nothing, but he at once threw his arms around me in a way that told me he had liked it very much. For a while, we were plunged into the sort of awkward silence that so often accompanies moments of great emotion. Then, when we had calmed down and begun to talk, my father resorted to highly charged and exaggerated language to express his confidence in me or my first novel: he told me that one day I would win the prize that I am here to receive with such great happiness.

He said this not because he was trying to convince me of his good opinion, or to set this prize as a goal; he said it like a Turkish father, giving support to his son, encouraging him by saying, ‘One day you’ll become a pasha!’ For years, whenever he saw me, he would encourage me with the same words.

My father died in December 2002.

Today, as I stand before the Swedish Academy and the distinguished members who have awarded me this great prize – this great honour – and their distinguished guests, I dearly wish he could be amongst us.

Translation from Turkish by Maureen Freely

 

Literature Held Hostage

The Holy War Against Salman Rushdie Turns 10. By Gregory McNamee

FEBRUARY 8, 1999:  IN THE FALL of 1988, the Anglo-Indian writer Salman Rushdie published what was then his fourth novel, a fantastic, sprawling allegory of the lives of immigrant Muslims in England. Like Rushdie’s earlier novels, The Satanic Verses combined literary seriousness with whimsical slapstick to criticize life in the so-called First World. The book was issued to a handful of critical notices, seemingly condemned to the quiet fate that most books that aspire to be seen as literature enjoy today.