25 December 2011

 

 

American Airlines saved $ 40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first class.

 

Mohandas Gandhi married at the age of thirteen.

 

On the Steely Dan song Reelin’ In The Years, Jeff Baxter plays the rippling two part harmony lines in the instrumental bridge, and Elliott Randall contributes the fuzzed out responses to Donald Fagen’s vocals in the chorus. Elliott is playing a 1963 Stratocaster sraight into an Ampeg SVT bass amp.

 

Properly dried peas and corn should shatter when hit with a hammer.

 

Dr. John plays The Mess Around in Ab. Ray Charles does it in Eb, and he plays Swanee River Rock in Ab. Piano players like the flat keys.

 

“I then called for my Lord at a Mrs. Carwardine’s, where he was sitting for his picture in miniature. She is a very good-looking, agreeable woman; unmarried, but I imagine virtuous. I was again in pleasant spirits. The fine arts enliven me exceedingly. I never went into a good painter’s but I became happy. There is a sweetness and gentleness in this art which most of all soothes the mind to peaceful tranquility.”

James Boswell     15 March 1763

 

Inu ga arimasuka? (Japanese) Do you have a dog?

 

Zeyer ongenehm. Tsi hot ir den azoy fil arbet? (Yiddish)

Pleased to meet you. Do you have that much work?

 

So, is Australia an island or a continent? It’s as wide as the USA and about twenty million people live there.

 

Latin vanity plate:  Litoralis  (Beach Bum)

 

Everything is natural… in its own way, even polyester and oil slicks. Still, it might be good to search continually for a way to live that conforms more closely to a more basic and fundamental mode of living.

 

“I think one could say that a certain modesty toward understanding nature  is a precondition to the continued pursuit of science.”

Subramanyan Chandrasekbar    Nobel laureate, Physics, 1983.

 

The Japanese, in their time measuring and earth measuring, go from big to small. Begin with the year, the month, the day. Begin with the country, the region, the city, the block. It’s like watching a GPS map, and far more logical than our own system, which begins with the smallest and procceds to the largest. Number, Street, City, Country.

 

Japanese and Chinese begin with their surname (largest group) and go on to their first name (smaller group). Ozawa Seiji. Andrew Sam.

 

Togae atrae lepidae sunt. (Latin)

Black togas are cool.

 

When your toilet won’t stop running, and you put your hand in the tank to fix the drain, do you every wonder where that water has been?

 

“Now I am again in such a period of patience and impatience. Mauve himself says that I shall at least spoil about ten drawings before I shall know how to handle the brush well. But back of it is a better future, so I work with as much composure as I can collect, and am not disheartened even by my mistakes.”

Vincent van Gogh   letter to his brother Theo     The Hague  December 1881.

 

In German “dur” (hard) is a major key and “moll” (soft) is minor. This is how one culture looks at the qualities of a key.

 

“Major” and “minor,” our terms for the same phenomena, mean larger and smaller. Also informative. French, Spanish and Italian terms are similar to English. Majeur, mineur, Mayor, menor, maggiore, minore.

 

Da terra si può vedere la Stazione spaziale?

La Stazione spaziale internazionale appare come un puntino piuttosto luminoso che, nel volgere di qualche minuto, attraversa la volta celeste.

(Can you see the space station from earth? The international space station appears as a small shiny point, in the flight of several minutes, across the arch of the skies.)

 

Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy. All who draw and paint know that the darkest dark sits next to the lightest light.

 

Can you imagine Jesus at the debates in Iowa? Or Grover Cleveland wh0 said this:

“He mocks the public who proposes that the government shall protect the rich and that they in turn will care for the laboring poor.”

 

i love heavy metal. A lot of white suburban kids telling us how pissed off they are about everything.

 

“Sell our country! Why not sell the air, the clouds, and the great sea? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?”

Tecumseh (Shawnee chief) speaking to General William Henry Harrison, 1810)

 

El Jarabe Tapatío (the Mexican hat dance) is often played in C.

 

A sempiterno merito di mio padre, bisogna dire che lui non pensò  mai seriamente, nemmeno per un momento, di vendere i figli e di scappare.

(To the eternal credit of my father, be it said that never did he think even for a moment of selling his children and escaping.)

 

Yesterday was originally called Scrambled Eggs.

 

If you can be enthusiastic, warm, generous and can keep your sense of cool and proportion at the same time, you can do great things.

 

If you would thrive,

Get up at five.

 

Kurt Cobain was cremated. His ashes were scattered passim, as the scholars say, here and there and everywhere.

 

Noodles, pasta, dough wrapped around a vegetable or beef ingredient are staples all around the world. Tamale, ravioli, a garden burger, pirogi, wonton, enchilada, spring rolls crêpes, piroshki, pork rolls, hot dogs, sandwiches of all kinds.

 

Tea is made from the young leaves and the leaf buds of the tea plant, a species of evergreen (Camellia sinensis) . Ancient Chinese and Japanese legends refer to a beverage made from the infusion of dried tea leaves, the introduction of tea being sometimes attributed to the emperor Shen Nung (2737 before the common era).

 

The term “rosary,” meaning “wreath of roses” first appeared in fifteenth century Europe. But the practice of reciting prayers on a string of knots or beads goes back to the Indic priests of the Middle East prior to 500 years before the common era.

 

Togo, a West African republic, has a 32-mile coast and extends northward for about 320 miles between Ghana to the west and Dahomey to the east.

 

Alexis de Toqueville wrote the classic De la démocratie en Amérique (Democracy in America) 1840, a close and often prophetic observation of American culture in the early 19th century.

 

Tocharian is an Indo-European language that was spoken in northern Chinese Turkistan (Tarim Basin) during the latter half of the first millennium of the common era. The language is fascinating, since it shows more affinity with western branches of Indo-European than with Iranian or indo-Aryan.

 

Torts is a legal term used in both common- and civil- law systems to describe various wrongs that may give rise to civil proceedings, mainly in the form of an action for damages.

 

Italian: Ho torto   I am wrong.

Forse Lei pensa che ho torto.       Perhaps you think that I am wrong.

 

Henri-Marie-Raymoond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa was born 24 November 1864. His family lineage extended without interruption back to the time of Charlemagne.

 

Toulouse-Lautrec could capture the likeness of a person with fewer lines than many, many other artists before or since.

 

When Ben Nieves and I were last in Paris, we went to the Musée d’Orsay across the Seine from the Louvre where there were many works by Toulouse-Lautrec. Very beautiful and accomplished, his drawings and paintings were often done on cardboard and the most ephemeral of materials, but were all the more interesting for that.

 

Toulouse-Lautrec’s own father took slight interest in his son after his disabling injuries and regarded his son’s work as only “rough sketches.”

 

“Tragedy” came from the words “goat” and “song.” The word could have referred either to the prize, a goat that was awarded to the best dramatists whose plays won the earliest competitions in Greece, or to the dress, goat skins of the performers, or to the goat which was sacrificed in the primitive rituals from which tragedy developed.

 

Trajan (Marcus Ulpius Traianus) was the first Roman emperor not born in Italy, but in the provinces, near Sevilla, Spain.

 

A group of finches is called a charm.

 

James Cagney never said “You dirty rat,” and Captain Kirk never said “Beam me up, Scottie.”

 

The Sitka spruce is Britain’s most commonly planted tree.

 

“I am sorry I have not learned to play at cards. It is very useful in life: it generates kindness and consolidates society.”      Samuel Johnson.

 

Tweety used to be a baby bird without feathers until the censoras decided he looked naked.

 

The 1997 Doublespeak Award went to President Bill Clinton, Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich for obfuscating language in the balanced budget agreement.

 

Pound for pound hamburgers cost more than new cars.

 

Names considered before settling on Monty Python’s Flying Circus:

It’s…

A Toad-Elevating Moment

A Horse, A Bucket and a Spoon

Bun, Whackett, Buzzard, Stubble and Boot

Owl-Stretching Time

The Venus de Milo Panic Show

 

Gold was the first metal to be discovered.

 

John Malkovich plays the tuba.

 

A jumbo jet uses four thousand gallons of fuel to take off.

 

When CBS broadcast the first television show in color, no one other than CBS owned a color television set.

 

Documentary film makers should plan on shooting ten times the footage that will end up in the finished film.

 

Onaji kokoro desu. (Japanese)  We are of the same mind (heart).

 

Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem.                       Virgil.

Begin, baby boy, to recognize your mother with a smile.

 

From The Life of Johnson:      James Boswell.

Johnson:   Well, we had a good talk.

Boswell:     Yes, Sir; you tossed and gored several persons.

 

The only mother and daughter to be nominated for Oscars in the same year: Diane Ladd and her daughter Laura Dern for Rambling Rose (1991).

 

“On n’est jamais si malheuruex qu’on croit, ni si heureux qu’on espère.”

Duc de la Rochefoucauld 1613-1680

One is never as unhappy as one thinks, nor as happy as one hopes.

 

It’s called a capo in English and a capo d’astro in Italian. Germans call it ein Kapotaster and in Spain it’s known as una cejilla or un cejuelo.

 

This only happened to me once but it was enough:

“The American girl makes a servant of her husband and then finds him contemptible for being a servant.”          John Steinbeck.

 

“At all costs try to avoid granting yourself the status of the victim… No matter how abominable your condition may be, try not to blame anything or anybody.”         Joseph Brodsky.

 

Or, as Jimmy Buffet might say, “Some people say there’s a woman to blame, but I know… it’s my own damn fault.”

 

Ikh heys Freyde.   (Yiddish)    My name is Freyde.

 

“To be the father of a nation is a great honor, but to be the father of a family is a greater joy.”          Nelson Mandela.

 

Southerners speak very differently from Northerners all over the world. If a European were to fetch up on our Gulf shore, she might be charmed to hear, “Honey, sweet darlin’, y’all want some pah with yo grits.” Charmed, but perhaps puzzled.

 

In Italy, the southern speech is quite different from the northern. The person in Milano who says “Il mio compadre” might be surprised to hear the person from Naples say, “Mi gumba.” “Pasta e fagioli” in a northerner’s mouth might be “past’e fagiol’ “ in the southern tongue. Pasta and beans.

 

In Germany, which became a nation very late, as Italy did, there are many interesting dialects, and the Southern German is quite interesting, especially die Münchner, the way of speaking in Munich. Here are a few examples.

 

Munich dialect   English                            standard German:

A Mo                     a person                           Ein Mann

Wos is a?             What does he do?         Was hat er für einen Beruf?

Kummt a aa?       Is he coming too?         Wird er auch kommen?

Ami                        American                        Amerikaner

Augnglasl             eyeglasses                      Brille

Bams                       child                                Kind

 

“People at that time lived like there was no tomorrow,” says JJ, lead singer of Murasaki, a band that played the Okinawa Koza rock scene in the 1970s, a time when Okinawa was a launch pad for the Vietnam war. Rock and Roll nights in Koza were a celebration, a farewell party, but for JJ there must have been complicated emotions. JJ stood between two very different worlds, and yet he managed to build a bridge between them with charm, talent and intelligence.

 

There was always a public face and a private face in Okinawan lives.

 

Ten is a satisfying number, probably because we have ten fingers. Twenty was used in the numbering system of the Celts. Fingers and toes. In fact, still in French today, you don’t say “octante” for eighty, you say “quatre vingt,” four twentys. It’s a Celtic remnant in modern French.

 

For the same reason, “seventy” isn’t “septante,” but “soixante-dix,” sixty (three  twentys) plus ten. it’s unwieldy, especially, say, 77, which is soixante-dix-sept, sixty seventeen. This in the language of a people who pride themselves on their clarity and reason. I love the French language, though, and the French people.

 

People never liked stinky underarms. The early Egyptians recommended following a scented bath with an underarm application of perfumed oils. They developed special citrus and cinnamon preparations that could withstand the semitropical climate.

 

Bacteria thrive in secretions of the apocrine glands. Deprived of moisture by an “antiperspirant,” bacteria cannot multiply.

 

L’amore non è mai stato troppo facile per l’uomo preistorico. E non lo è nemmeno adesso.

Love was never too easy for prehistoric man. And it isn’t even now.

 

Sammy Davis began in show business at age three as Silent Sam, the Dancing Midget, alongside his father and uncle in vaudeville. He had no formal education whatsoever. In 1946, at 21, he recorded “The Way You Look Tonight,” which was named Record of the Year.

 

A wise person’s country is the world.

 

Ideograms looked like this near the beginning of their development. This one means bad, incorrect, and by itself is pronounced HI (hee) in Japanese.

 

HI is based on the image of flapping wings. Still, to this day, when a Japanese does not want to relate to something, she will wave her hand in front of her face in rapid motion… like the flapping of wings.

 

When used with other characters, as here, this ideogram is pronounced arazu.

 

Freedom is all, to heed every call. Freedom to do wrong, to make a bad song.

Freedom to err, to be a cur. Freedom to soar… or else, what for?

 

“The uneven division of power and wealth, the wide differences of health and comfort among the nations of mankind, are the sources of discord in the modern world, its major challenge and, unrelieved, its moral doom.”

Patrick Blackett    Nobel laureate, physics,1948.

 

My first job was delivering newspapers by bicycle. I had to collect from all the customers at the end of the month. All of the poor people paid on time, in cash. The more well off paid with a check, often very late, with many sweet excuses, and promises for next time, a check that was sometimes irredeemable. This was my introduction to the American “classless” society.

 

I would never ask Jean Jacques Rousseau,

Whether animals can talk or no,

Nor ask Monsieur Voltaire,

If lions know how to swear.

Curse and roar, and roar and curse,

So many questions on this earth.

 

Hannah Adams (1755-1831) was the first American woman to make a living by writing. She published a number of books on religious subjects and A Summary History of New-England (1799).

 

The biggest-selling restaurant food is french fries, which were invented in Louisiana in 1853.

 

Well, as they say in grade school, I’ll see you next year!

Sam Andrew

Big Brother and the Holding Company

__________________________________________________________

18 December 2011

 

Elise took us out sailing on the Bay yesterday.

 

When I was a little boy, I knew a little bit,

That was a while ago, I don’t know much more yet,

And maybe never shall till the day that i die,

For the longer time I live, the bigger fool am I.

 

“Nugatory” means of little importance, ineffective, dull.

 

In an episode of The Simpsons, Sideshow Bob’s criminal number is 24601, the same as the criminal number of Jean Valjean in Les Misérables.

 

 

“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”     Albert Einstein

A “degringolade” is a disintegration, a falling apart.

 

A man can wear the same clothes for days on end without being at all depressed by their shabbiness.

 

An empty box makes a louder sound than a full box.

 

‘ey, there, matey, any signs of a Westerly?

 

Colds:  Adam had’em, and Eve, I believe.

 

We left Sausalito, sailed by The Trident, now Horizons, and on out into the Bay.

 

Cet animal est très méchant, Quand on l’attaque il se défend.

(This animal is very wicked. When you attack it, it defends itself.)

 

Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan.  (The eternal feminine pulls us upward.)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

 

The humminngbird’s tiny brain, 4.2 % of its body weight, is proportionately the largest in the bird kingdom.

 

Take it to the bridge.

 

According to Pope Innocent III, it was not a crime to kill someone after a game of chess.

 

Of the 266 men who have been pope, 33 have died violently.

 

“Lagan” is anything sunk in the sea, but attached to a buoy or the like so that it may be recovered. (1525-35, <MF laganum prob. <Gmc, cf. ON lagn, net laid in the sea)

 

Percentage of men who say they are happier after their divorce or separation: 58 percent.

 

Percentage of women who say they are happier after their divorce or separation: 85 percent.

 

Jimmy Carter was the first president to be born in a hospital.

 

My early and invincible love of reading, which i would not exchange for the treasures of India.              Edward Gibbon 1737-1794.

 

“Costive” means slow or reluctant in action, close, reticent, uncommunicative, niggardly, stingy.

 

Bats always turn left when they fly out of a cave.

 

Suicide note from the 18th century:

“All this buttoning and unbuttoning.”

 

Before there was jet lag there was boat lag.

 

“Lirks” are wrinkles or creases in the skin.

 

The shortest intercontinental commercial flight in the world is from Gibralter in Europe to Tangier in Africa at a distance of thirty-four miles and a flight time of twenty minutes.

 

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward got married in Las Vegas. So did Elise and I. So did Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson. And a few other people too.

 

Diana, Princess of Wales, would be fifty this year.

 

I am a totally original artist and I never borrow anything from anyone. You can see that, can’t you?

 

A mamzer or momzer (1555-65 <Yiddish <Hebrew) is

1. a bastard child,

2. slang for rascal, or

3. a child born of a marriage forbidden in Judaism.

 

An adult sleeping with another adult in a a full size bed, four feet, six inches wide, and six feet, two inches long, has less personal space than a baby in a crib.

 

The practice of virtue is a joy and happiness in itself. It needs no religion nor philosophy to confer these benefits.

 

“Vagile” means free to move about. (From Latin vagus “wandering.”) “Vague” is from this same root, but I much prefer being vagile to being vague.

 

It was a beautiful day for sailing.

 

We are each here for a short trip to we know not where nor when the end. Make your map of this trip and know that it can change at any minute. Help your fellow travelers enjoy the ride.

Elise and Captain Chuck Rudy.

 

A “dingle” is a small wooded valley.

Trayf is the opposite of kosher.

 

Never give up. Hope and action are your duties when hard times come.

 

A viator is a traveler. (Latin via.)

 

The crazy passion of feelings just might, in the long run, be better than the serenity of being reasonable and not really caring one way or the other.

 

This is a vatic woman. (In Latin a “vates” is a seer, a prophet, an oracle.)

 

He continued to be a child long after he had ceased to be a prodigy.

 

Wall Street, meet your master:

Parker Brothers prints up about $ 50 billion worth of Monopoly money in a year.

 

Pecunia non olet.   (Money doesn’t smell.)

Emperor Vespasian said this answering Titus’ objection to the tax on public toilets.

 

Junk mail is, in a way, the happiest mail of all. it requires no action other than immediate disposal.

 

Sic transit gloria mundi.       (Thus passes the glory of the world.)

 

When I was in my 20s, I rode the bus a lot, traveling all over San Francisco to tutor my way through university. There was an advertisement on all the buses at that time which was a clever restatement of the above Latin sentence. It read “Sick transit? Gloria Monday!” and it meant that if your car was ill, you could still get to work on the first day of the week by taking the bus.

 

This is Haight and Scott Street at about that time.

 

Page and Fillmore, very near to where Peter Albin and I founded Big Brother and the Holding Company.

 

The Fillmore was a happening district long before the counterculture moved in. In the 30s, 40s, all the musicians played there, including Bird and Diz.

 

My 22 Fillmore bus, the one with the Sick Transit? Gloria Monday advert,  passed this spot every day. The Fillmore Auditorium, before it was THE FILLMORE.

 

A jamb is the post and lintel framework around a door where the hinges and locks attach. Believe it or not, “kick out the jambs” is an old carpenters’ phrase.

 

When friends gather and share their stories, the whole world becomes home.

 

Listen to everyone carefully and with respect, but don’t believe everything you hear. Don’t trust anything beyond your own perceptions.

 

There is a lady sweet and kind,

Was never face so pleased my mind,

I did but see her passing by,

And yet I love her till I die.

 

Leptosomes are ectomorphs, bear in mind.

 

Genius is deep feeling expressed vividly by a high intelligence.

 

An ablutomaniac is obsessed with washing, bathing.

 

Imagination is more important than knowledge, by far.

 

The narthex (Latin, Greek, giant fennel) is the enclosed passage in a church between the main entrance and the nave. You usually see reading matter and collection boxes there.

 

It was only after the year 440 in the Common Era that 25 December was celebrated as the birth date of Jesus Christ. Anything to liven up that Winter Solstice.

 

I drew these on Hawaii. It’s curious how I always remember the table, the environment, the smells, the people where I drew something. For that alone, it is worth keeping these drawings. They are more eloquent than a  word stuffed diary.

 

“Galeanthropy”  is the delusion of being a cat.

 

Where the brightest light is, right next to it is the most profound darkness. This is one of the first things the drawer learns.

 

All the things you put behind the doors of oblivion in daily life, come to visit you most dramatically in your dreams.

 

Science is an exclamation point! Philosophy is a question?

 

It might be best if students graduate from high school and then work in the real world for two years, and then go to university. More perspective that way.

 

A drawing is a philosophy expressed in images.

 

“Lapara” (Greek “loins”) is a combining form relating to the intestines or internal organs, as in laparoscopy.

 

Why do I create?

To teach myself something.

 

The word “samba” means to rub navels together.

 

The first work of fiction was done by the first person who told lies, who said something that wasn’t the way it really was.

 

A poem is a love letter to the world despite knowledge of all the world’s sad history.

 

A real work of art tells you something before you even understand what it is saying.

 

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

 

In Latin “hallex” is the big toe, so “hallucal” ia an anatomical term referring to that digit.

 

Television has proved that people love simple tales of conflict, cheap stories of love, gossip, and the lowest contests of physical and political prowess interlarded with the most inane sales pitches conceived by the mind of man repeated ad nauseam. There is also a dark side to it.

 

You are more of an étranger in France than you are in any other country.

 

Poets sing, painters limn and patriots waterboard.

 

This note is for my friend Max Clarke:

Georges Charpak, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1992, writes

“The official photographer informed me that I was the 137th Nobel laureate of whom he has had to make a portrait.

Certainly you know that 137 is a magic, quasi-mystical number in physics. It is equal to the velocity of light times the reduced Planck constant divided by the square of the electron charge! This number governs the size of all objects in the Universe. Some people claim that if this value were to be slightly different liife would not be possible.”

 

“Frass” is insect excrement. (German fressen, to eat.)

 

I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens.         Isaac Bashevis Singer  1978.

 

The word “lustral” comes from Latin “lustrare” which in turn came from “lucere” to shine. “Lustral” means purificatory.

 

See that blissful idiot,

He doesn’t give a damn,

I wish I were that idiot,

Uh, oh, Perhaps I am.

 

Mike Love married nine times.

 

“All By Myself” (Eric Carmen) is based on

Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2.

 

Matt Groening’s son is named Homer.

 

The word “agog” comes from Old French “en gogues,” meaning “in jest, good humor, joyfulness,” from “gogue” fun. “Gogue” also may be the root of “go-go,” dancers.

 

Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie

Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum.                 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

(Gray, dear friend, is all theory,

and green the golden tree of life.)

 

“When theory outstrips performance, watch out.”    Leonardo da Vinci.

 

“Feeling is quicker than thinking.”                             Sam Andrew.

 

She was born Joan Molinsky but she became Joan Rivers.

 

You should make a point of trying everything once, except for incest and folk dancing.

 

The armhole in clothing is called an armsaye.

 

Knackered is British slang for exhausted, very tired. The word comes from Scandinavian “hnakkr,” nape of the neck, saddle.

 

A female ferret will die if she goes into heat and cannot find a mate.

 

Traveling by air is the safest means of transportation. More people are killed by donkeys annually than are killed in plane crashes.

 

Aztec emperor Moctezuma had a nephew, Cuitlahac, whose name meant “plenty of excrement.”

 

A primitive steam engine invented by Greek engineer Hero about two thousand years ago is used today as a rotating lawn sprinkler.

 

A cockroach’s favorite food is the glue on the back of stamps.

 

Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.

 

“Feesks” are tufts of unruly hair.

 

“Cop” is an acronym for Constable on Patrol.

 

During the American Revolution many brides used to wear the color red instead of white as a symbol of rebellion.

 

Note to Jim Wall:

The hundred billionth crayon made by Crayola was Periwinkle Blue.

 

The most common name for a goldfish is Jaws.

 

Our house is too small to live in and too large to hang on a keychain.

 

The final cover for the Big Brother and the Holding Company CD Hold Me. There is a song there called Hold Me, very good ballad sung by Sohpia Ramos.

 

Clans long ago who desired to be rid of their unwanted people without killing them used to burn their houses down. Hence the expression “to fire” someone.

 

The expression “What in tarnation?” comes from the original phrase “What in eternal damnation?”

 

An assistant to a magician or scholar is a “famulus.”

 

More than one hundred descendants of Johann Sebastian Bach have been organists. In fact, for a long time in Germany to say “a musician” you could say “ein Bach.”

 

We know far less than one millionth of a percent of everything. We very likely know far less than one millionth of one millionth of a percent of everything.

 

When your sink is full, the little slot that lets the water drain, instead of overflowing, is called a porcelator.

 

If you want monogamy, marry a pigeon.

 

The trouble with the hereafter is that it is supposed to last forever. I mean, who has that long of an attention span?

 

Why is there so much month left at the end of the money?

 

Natura il fece, e poi roppe la stampa.

(Nature made him and then broke the mould.)

 

It’s better to be vivid than to be accurate. Never let the facts get in the way of a good drawing.

 

A “barcarole” is a Venetian boat song, usually in 6/8 or 12/8 time.

 

Andrew Jackson was the only president to believe that the world is flat.

 

It is possilbe, although, thank heavens, not probable, that we will soon have a president who doesn’t believe in evolution.

 

Note to Pizza Man. Here is what people from Libya look like. They have a dignity that you will never possess.

 

A Boeing 747’s wingspan is longer than the distance of the Wright Brothers’ first flight.

 

A reformed rake makes the best husband.

 

Ringo Starr was born during a World War II air raid.

 

I love the beauty and order of the lines and proportions in the body. It really is a kind of magic how they all fit together.

 

“Exiguous” means “scanty” or “meager.” I first encountered this word in Samuel Johnson, and it always makes me think of him even though his output was rather the opposite of exiguous. It wasn’t a dearth; it was a plethora.

 

An iceberg contains more heat than a match.

 

Sardines aren’t a certain kind of fish, but a certain size of fish. They were originally caught around Sardinia and are any of several species of small food fish found in temperate waters. They are also known as pilchards, especially when adult. Sardines are shoaling fish that live near the surface and they feed on plankton.

 

Ave, Lucia, gratia plena, benedicta tu in mulieribus.

(Hail, Lucia, full of grace, blessed art thou among women.)

 

Cinzia:  Are Tories born wicked, or do they grow wicked afterwards?

Iolanda:  They are born wicked, and grow worse.

 

 

Little sister, won’t you pllay with me?

 

In their tomb paintings, Etruscans painted women white and men red.

 

An “epigone” is an undistinguished imitator, follower or successor of, for example, an important writer, painter. (1860-1865 <L epgonus < Gk epigonos born afterward, gignesthai to be born.)

 

In ancient Egypt, the apricot was called the egg of the sun, killing a cat was a crime punishable by death and the hieroglyph for 100,000 was a tadpole.

 

There’s so much good in the worst of us,

And so much bad in the best of us,

That it hardly becomes any of us,

To talk about the rest of us.

 

Muss es sein? Es muss sein.

(Must it be? It must be.)

 

Victor Hugo gave all the officers in the Confederate Army copies of Les Misérables. Robert E. Lee, among others, believed the book symbolized their cause. Both revolts were defeated.

 

The “chancel” is that part of the church containing the altar and seats for the clergy and choir. A “chancellor” was once a person who controlled this area. Now Angela Merkel is the Chancellor of Germany (Kanzlerin?).

 

Hyena clans are dominated by females. This is very unusual, if not unique, among carnivores.

 

I have a Greek dictionary by Liddell and Scott,

Some words are crazy, and some words are not,

Alice In Wonderland’s father was Liddell, and

He defined most of the terms in the middle.

 

She bore about with her, she could not help knowing it, the torch of her beauty; she carried it erect into any room that she entered; and, after all, veil it as she might, and shrink from the monotony of bearing that it imposed on her, her beauty was apparent. She had been admired. She had been loved.           Virginia Woolf      To The Lighthouse 1927.

 

 

He doesn’t know his glutei from his olecranon. (Olecranon = elbow.)

 

“Hispid” means rough or brisly.

 

To keep from being separated while sleeping, sea otters tie themselves together with kelp, often drifting miles out to sea during the night.

 

The Founding Fathers considered having Benjamin Franklin write  the Declaration of Independence, but they were afraid he would put a joke in there.

 

On a trip to the South Sea Islands, French painter Paul Gauguin stopped off briefly in Central America, where he worked as a laborer on the Panama Canal.

 

Sumer is icumen in,

Lhude sing cuccu!

Groweth sed, and bloweth med,

And springeth the wude nu.

 

A second rate streetsinger is a “cantabank.”

 

Two main types of dinosaurs:

Saurischia had hip and pelvic bones like lizards and were carnivorous.

Ornithischia had hip and pelvic bones like birds and were herbivorous.

Le monde est plein de fous, et qui n’en veut pas voir,

Doit se tenir tout seul, et casser son miroir.

The world is full of fools, and he who doesn’t want to see any,

Should live alone and break his mirror.

 

Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,

Sich ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt.              Goethe.

Talent is grown in still waters, Character in the flood of life.

 

Henry Ford, noted anti Semite, believed in reincarnation and flatly stated that history is bunk.

 

Did you see The Inside Job? The only one in that whole investor/Wall Street/selling what they really don’t have/traders traitors thing who did any jail time at all was the madam who supplied the bankers with “girls.”

 

The “cremaster” is the muscle that raises or lowers the testicles in response to warmth, cold or whatever other stimuli.

 

I know what my mother would say about this:

Clark Gable used to shower more than four times a day.

 

In times of extreme duress, you could always try:

Oh, god, if there be a god, save my soul, if I have a soul.

 

 

Tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse.

(Everything passes, everything breaks, everything tires.)

“Macht doch den zweiten Fensterladen auch auf,

damit mehr Licht hereinkomme.”                         Goethe’s last words.

(Open the second shutter so that more light can come in.)

 

Shabby barfday too few,

Sappy barfday do you?

Seventy barfday sheer jammies,

Snappy barfday to use.

And Michael Moore !

 

Sam Andrew

Big Brother and the Holding Company

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