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Tuesday, November 30, 2004
( 5:11 PM ) The Rat FROM THE "MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH, HORATIO" FILE... Via JM. A man who placed a lava lamp on a hot stovetop was killed when it exploded and sent a shard of glass into his heart, police said. Philip Quinn, 24, was found dead in his trailer home Sunday night by his parents. "Why on earth he was heating a lava lamp on the stove, we don't know," Kent Police spokesman Paul Petersen said Monday. # Posted by The Rat @ 5:11 PM ( 5:09 PM ) The Rat IRAQ ADOPTS TERROR ALERT SYSTEM. Via the Onion. # Posted by The Rat @ 5:09 PM ( 5:06 PM ) The Rat I headed into the first exhibition hall I came to, the largest of eight. Instead of being surrounded by bewitching 16-year-old girls dressed as organic carrots and Japanese cucumbers in really short skirts, as you would see at American trade and agriculture fairs, I immediately found myself in the midst of cows... —Jeffrey Steingarten, It Must Have Been Something I Ate # Posted by The Rat @ 5:06 PM ( 12:05 AM ) The Rat BRAIN SCAN SHOWS DIFFERENCES IN TRUTH AND LYING. Uh-oh. # Posted by The Rat @ 12:05 AM Monday, November 29, 2004 ( 10:17 PM ) The Rat OPTIMISTS CLUB CALLS IT QUITS. Too perfect. Via LT. # Posted by The Rat @ 10:17 PM ( 4:46 AM ) The Rat MATH WHIZ BREAKS CALCULATION RECORD. # Posted by The Rat @ 4:46 AM ( 3:51 AM ) The Rat Absinthe makes the tart grow fonder. —Ernest Dowson # Posted by The Rat @ 3:51 AM ( 1:53 AM ) The Rat If God forbade drinking, would He have made wine so good? —Cardinal Richelieu # Posted by The Rat @ 1:53 AM Friday, November 26, 2004 ( 1:26 PM ) The Rat Swerving east, from rich industrial shadows And traffic all night north; swerving through fields Too thin and thistled to be called meadows, And now and then a harsh-named halt, that shields Workmen at dawn; swerving to solitude Of skies and scarecrows, haystacks, hares and pheasants, And the widening river s slow presence, The piled gold clouds, the shining gull-marked mud, Gathers to the surprise of a large town: Here domes and statues, spires and cranes cluster Beside grain-scattered streets, barge-crowded water, And residents from raw estates, brought down The dead straight miles by stealing flat-faced trolleys, Push through plate-glass swing doors to their desires— Cheap suits, red kitchen-ware, sharp shoes, iced lollies, Electric mixers, toasters, washers, driers— A cut-price crowd, urban yet simple, dwelling Where only salesmen and relations come Within a terminate and fishy-smelling Pastoral of ships up streets, the slave museum, Tattoo-shops, consulates, grim head-scarfed wives; And out beyond its mortgaged half-built edges Fast-shadowed wheat-fields, running high as hedges, Isolate villages, where removed lives Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken, Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken, Luminously-peopled air ascends; And past the poppies bluish neutral distance Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence: Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach. —"Here," Philip Larkin # Posted by The Rat @ 1:26 PM Thursday, November 25, 2004 ( 4:26 AM ) The Rat We eat turkey on Thanksgiving because turkey is an edible symbol, not because it is a valued contender at the table. It stands for the discovery of the foodstuffs of the New World and the brotherhood offered by Native Americans to those who would soon displace them. Edible symbols are rarely gastronomically rewarding, though I did once eat a superb dark-chocolate Eiffel Tower and a swan molded from first-rate chopped liver. If turkeys were not a symbol, we would never eat as many of them as we do. Their meat is nearly always bland and stringy, and their shape is entirely incorrect. The best part of a roast turkey is its skin. Modern turkey breeders, responding to an apparent demand for more white and less dark meat, have developed a bird consisting mainly of a huge, nearly spherical breast and short, skinny legs and thighs. Yet the breast of the bird is surely its least savory part, and its spherical shape is surely a mistake. Remember what we learned in high school about spheres? Of all geometric figures, the sphere has the lowest ratio of surface to volume; a spherical turkey, therefore, has the lowest ratio of skin to meat. How much more gastronomically delightful would be to breed modern turkey in the shape, say, of a two-foot pizza with little wings and legs at the circumference... —Jeffrey Steingarten, The Man Who Ate Everything # Posted by The Rat @ 4:26 AM Wednesday, November 24, 2004 ( 2:19 AM ) The Rat C-SECTIONS ON THE RISE. # Posted by The Rat @ 2:19 AM Tuesday, November 23, 2004 ( 10:48 PM ) The Rat THE BAY THEATER, on Main St. in downtown Seal Beach, is showing Godfathers I and II this weekend! How cool is that. Not that anybody reading this is anywhere near it, but if you were, you could click here for showtimes. # Posted by The Rat @ 10:48 PM ( 10:45 PM ) The Rat WTF?! PT. 2. Wingwomen.com [is] a three-month-old service aimed at men who are tired of trying to figure out the best way to approach that attractive female across the room. For a fee starting at $150, they offer the company of a girl whose charms might help attract others. "Normally, you might go out ten times before you meet one girl," said Brandon, a 28-year-old investment banker who has used the service several times. "With Wingwomen, I met four girls and went home with two phone numbers in a single night." # Posted by The Rat @ 10:45 PM ( 10:40 PM ) The Rat WTF?! Nearly one in four Americans get on a plane over the holiday season hoping the person sitting in the next seat might be a future date or spouse, according to a new survey released on Monday. The survey of people planning a holiday trip found 28 per cent saw a flight as a chance to make a new friend, 24 per cent were hoping to meet a new love interest or a future spouse and 14 per cent hoped to make a business contact. The Chase United Mileage Plus Visa Card conducted the poll. # Posted by The Rat @ 10:40 PM ( 1:11 AM ) The Rat In England there are sixty different religions, and only one sauce. —Marquis Domenico Caracciolo, quoted in The Man Who Ate Everything # Posted by The Rat @ 1:11 AM Monday, November 22, 2004 ( 9:48 PM ) The Rat Paris in the winter is the best place to cultivate nostalgia. —Oscar de la Renta, quoted in Vogue # Posted by The Rat @ 9:48 PM Sunday, November 21, 2004 ( 8:51 PM ) The Rat MOMA HAS REOPENED IN MANHATTAN! # Posted by The Rat @ 8:51 PM ( 8:49 PM ) The Rat TAKE A SOLDIER TO THE MOVIES. # Posted by The Rat @ 8:49 PM ( 8:41 PM ) The Rat I improve on misquotation. —Cary Grant # Posted by The Rat @ 8:41 PM Thursday, November 18, 2004 ( 2:18 PM ) The Rat MMMMMMM... # Posted by The Rat @ 2:18 PM ( 2:02 PM ) The Rat CROSS-DRESSING OUT, CAMOUFLAGE IN in East Texas. Damn, this is funny. Students in Spurger, Texas were encouraged by school officials to wear camouflage hunting gear to class on Wednesday after they called off their annual "TWIRP Day" in which boys dressed as girls and vice versa. The cross-dressing tradition began some years back as a kind of Sadie Hawkins Day where girls ask boys to go out on dates. TWIRP stands for "The Woman Is Requested To Pay." But Delana Davies, who has two children in the Spurger school, complained this year that the tradition could promote homosexuality and got the Liberty Legal Institute, a right-wing Christian legal group, to take up the cause. "It might be fun today to dress up like a little girl—kids think it's cute and things like that. And you start playing around with it and, like drugs, you do a little here and there (and) eventually it gets you," Davies told reporters. # Posted by The Rat @ 2:02 PM ( 1:58 PM ) The Rat I was raised on James Bond and Hugh Hefner's Playboy Philosophy. Bond went through life impressing people with his gun, and Hefner went through life in a bathrobe; and the capper was that, of the two of them, Hefner was the one who actually existed. —David Mamet, Some Freaks # Posted by The Rat @ 1:58 PM Wednesday, November 17, 2004 ( 2:18 PM ) The Rat FISH EMPATHY PROJECT. # Posted by The Rat @ 2:18 PM ( 1:04 AM ) The Rat THINGS I WILL NOT DO WHEN I DIRECT A SHAKESPEARE PLAY, based on actual productions. Via Eve. 10. I will not treat A Midsummer Night's Dream as though it were Un Chien Andalou. 25. I will not use long red ribbons to represent blood, particularly if the long red ribbons bear an unnerving resemblance to pasta. 82. Olivia probably should not say "Most wonderful!" as if she's thinking "THREESOME!" 105. No matter how much I may personally be enthralled by Dadaism, I will not insert random Dadaist elements into a production of "Taming of the Shrew." I will especially not have actors carrying gigantic black bowlers through the scenes for absolutely no reason. 153. Puck should not wear a tutu. Nor should he be twins. 160. I will not add a video flashback of Hamlet as a child playing with his father. 161. If I must stage Macbeth in a modern setting, there is no reason to dress the Scottish nobles as Hare Krishnas, especially if I also arm them with machine guns. # Posted by The Rat @ 1:04 AM ( 1:02 AM ) The Rat She thanked me And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her, I should but teach him how to tell my story And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake: She loved me for the dangers I had passed And I loved her that she did pity them. —Othello # Posted by The Rat @ 1:02 AM Tuesday, November 16, 2004 ( 2:52 PM ) The Rat Or did I dream him? —The Odyssey # Posted by The Rat @ 2:52 PM Sunday, November 14, 2004 ( 4:49 AM ) The Rat THE DUNMOW FLITCH is still being awarded!! Who knew? # Posted by The Rat @ 4:49 AM Saturday, November 13, 2004 ( 10:11 PM ) The Rat A DECENT VERSION of the Myers-Brigg personality scale. # Posted by The Rat @ 10:11 PM ( 10:10 PM ) The Rat "This is great. After reading that, it’s like an excuse to be an asshole." —TCB, on seeing his results # Posted by The Rat @ 10:10 PM ( 3:49 AM ) The Rat WW2 PROPAGANDA PARODIES, via Eve. # Posted by The Rat @ 3:49 AM Monday, November 08, 2004 ( 3:25 PM ) The Rat ABORTION DEBATE FLARES IN AUSTRALIA. # Posted by The Rat @ 3:25 PM ( 3:08 PM ) The Rat Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He has loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword; His truth is marching on. Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on. I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps; His day is marching on. Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His day is marching on. I have read a fiery Gospel writ in burnished rows of steel; "As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal"; Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel, Since God is marching on. Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Since God is marching on. He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat; Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet; Our God is marching on. Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Our God is marching on. In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me: As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free; While God is marching on. Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! While God is marching on. He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave, He is wisdom to the mighty, He is honor to the brave; So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of wrong His slave, Our God is marching on. Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Our God is marching on. —Julia Ward Howe # Posted by The Rat @ 3:08 PM Saturday, November 06, 2004 ( 1:45 PM ) The Rat MOST ABBREVIATED SHAKESPEARE. These are really good—even if they are via Eve. # Posted by The Rat @ 1:45 PM Thursday, November 04, 2004 ( 1:24 AM ) The Rat WRITING'S ON THE WALL FOR LOVELORN CYPRIOT. # Posted by The Rat @ 1:24 AM Wednesday, November 03, 2004 ( 2:48 AM ) The Rat THESE are freakin' brilliant. Via Eve. # Posted by The Rat @ 2:48 AM ( 2:36 AM ) The Rat RECURRING ZHANG ZHIYI FANTASY ALWAYS INVOLVES GETTING KICKED IN THE FACE. Via the Onion. # Posted by The Rat @ 2:36 AM |
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