Monthly Archives: April 2011

Best Experienced With:          Cee Lo;                 F-You

(Please right click on the link below to open the suggested background music for this evening’s dance party in a new browser window.     All hail Cee-Lo.   Turn it up to one louder….turn it up to 11.   Welcome to the Holy Thursday Sweater Vest Dance Party)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAV0XrbEwNc

Read a vocabulastic and wordsmithmasterish Ken Kesey quote a few weeks back:  “You get your visions through whatever gates you are granted”.     Holy Thursday is the ideal spring day to count your blessings and give thanks for your blessings.   Am blessed with the most amazing and diverse aquarium of friends in the galaxy.    Am also blessed with the most amazing and diverse group of granted gates in the galaxy.

If you have Good Friday as a holiday, Holy Thursday is also the ideal spring day for a sweater vest dance party.   Welcome to the Holy Thursday Sweater Vest Dance Party.   Shoes, as always, are optional.

Beer break!              Resume sweater vest dance party on three.    One.   Two.  Three….

“You get your visions through whatever gates you are granted”.

Amen

 

Best Experienced With:           Fine Young Cannibals;  Suspicious Minds 

(Right click on the link below to open the suggested tune for this evening in a new browser window.    Tasty tune)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBjsWGw6SQM

 

La Bella Donna Mia Mente (Oscar Wilde)

My limbs are wasted with a flame,
My feet are sore with travelling,
For, calling on my Lady’s name,
My lips have now forgot to sing.

O Linnet in the wild-rose brake
Strain for my Love thy melody,
O Lark sing louder for love’s sake,
My gentle Lady passeth by.

She is too fair for any man
To see or hold his heart’s delight,
Fairer than Queen or courtesan
Or moonlit water in the night.

Her hair is bound with myrtle leaves,
(Green leaves upon her golden hair!)
Green grasses through the yellow sheaves
Of autumn corn are not more fair.

Her little lips, more made to kiss
Than to cry bitterly for pain,
Are tremulous as brook-water is,
Or roses after evening rain.

Her neck is like white melilote
Flushing for pleasure of the sun,
The throbbing of the linnet’s throat
Is not so sweet to look upon.

As a pomegranate, cut in twain,
White-seeded, is her crimson mouth,
Her cheeks are as the fading stain
Where the peach reddens to the south.

O twining hands! O delicate
White body made for love and pain!
O House of love! O desolate
Pale flower beaten by the rain!

Oh, my…..Oscar Wilde backed by Roland Gift.     That’s better than a Reese’s Cup.   How about some Lord Byron for dessert?

She Walks in Beauty:  Lord Byron

Oh, my.

 

 

 

Best Experienced With:           Bright Eyes;         First Day of My Life

(please right click on the link below to open the suggested background music in a new browser window.   You’ll need to have the music open because we’re going to have a hum along at the end, towards the bottom)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5rhhQbyYV0

 

 

 

 

 

Sir Francis Bacon:   “It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion; for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate, and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.”  I’d like to get knighted and called “Sir” by everyone.     I’d have sandwiches with bacon at the cermony thing.   Bacon makes any sandwich tastier.  

Albert Einstein:  “A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty – it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.

 

Isaac Newton:  “The most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion on an intelligent and powerful Being.”

 

John Parr’s Man in Motion from “Saint Elmo’s Fire” was blasting on the Citroen G3’s radio as I careened towards Schaffhausen’s Germany/Switzerland border checkpoint, clocking in at just under 267 kilometers per hour and swerving from the car lane into the truck lane…truck lane into car lane…car lane into truck lane, the gaping mouths of the other drivers my silent compatriots as I braced for a collision, potentially unable to slip the thread of my rental Citroen through the needle of the too close together border agent booths.   As it often does, this evening’s adventure began with the German version of gummy bears, a confection one might believe to be universal all over the world, but, oh no.     The German version of gummy bears are seventeen times more gummy than in other countries and exponentially more tasty than elsewhere because Hans Reigle and the brilliant Haribo astrophysicist candyologists have more than just the standard galaxian lemon, orange, strawberry, pineapple, and lemon flavors here in Germany.    As I pulled out of Tuttlingen this afternoon, Cee Lo crooning the unedited, European version of F You on 107.3 FM, the unopened gummy bear bag sat upon the Citroen’s passenger seat, mocking me with crinkling noises as I plowed the southern Germany highways, speedometer pinned and G-forces rocking, strapped loosely into the Strasbourg Avis office’s version of a “knock knock” joke of a rental car.   The Franco Avis counter person never figured on me having my Tuttlingen car mechanic friends drop a Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C turbocharged two-stroke diesel engine into the Citroen while I was in meetings, and they most certainly underestimated the depths of my determination to not show my passport to the Swiss border guards…high on gummy bear sugar and positively giddy about having the opportunity to watch Reese Witherspoon’s  “How Do You Know” three more times on the Zurich Atlanta leg tomorrow; just like I did on the way to Paris what seems like years ago, yet is only days.  Play the game:  you know you can’t quit until it’s done.  The Swiss flag marks the end of the faux Faulker.   End faux Faulker.

Stephen Hawking:  “Then we shall… be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we would know the mind of God.”

CS Lewis:  “A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.”

 

Max Planck: “the holiness of the unintelligible Godhead is conveyed by the holiness of symbols.”   God is present everywhere.

The brilliant folks above spent years and countless Number 2 pencils postulating on the existence of some sort of deity when all they had to do was turn on some Conor Oberst.  Music like the one you right clicked on above proves the existence of some sort of a deity.   Get out this weekend.    Go see some deity driven music.   Group Bright Eyes hum….key it back up to this part:

“..and I wondered if I could come home.   Hmmmm…..mmmmm…hmmmm.”

 

Thanks for visiting this evening.   Leave your carpet square over there on the way out.   Keep the cup as a souvenir.   You are welcome.   

Bonus!    Watch the video now.    That’s one of the coolest videos ever…great for a date night video.  Grab your significant or relatively significant other:  bring them over and sit together.    Rewind the video.    Watch it together and canoodle.   Rinse.   Repeat.     Again, you are welcome.

“Uh-huh.  Mmmm….mmmmmm.  Besides, maybe this time it’s different.   I mean, I really think you’ll like meeeeeeeee.  Eeeeeeee.    Eeeeeeeee.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Best Experienced With:      Band of Horses;       The Funeral

(Please right click on the link below to open the suggested background music for this evening’s gathering to read some poetry and celebrate the laughter of my Aunt Barb and my mom.)

 

My mother and my Aunt Barbara, together in a room, laughing, could cause the most disciplined of Carthusian monks to break out in uncontrollable laughter.   Mom and Barb, as a tag team, could draw the same French monk into conversation, despite the Carthusian monk’s vow of silence.  Because my mom and her sister Barb embodied vivaciousness and good will.   Was always a pleasure to watch the two of them laugh together.

My full head of hair and blue eyes come from my father.   My distaste of authority comes from the Westlake, Ohio police department and certain other intangible factors documented through several Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventories.   My loud, off-putting hyena laugh comes from the same genetic code as Aunt Barb and mom:  it’s on the twenty-third exon on the fourteenth twist in the helix.   The exon on the left, not the one on the right.

Two nights ago, when mom called to tell me that Aunt Barb had passed away, hung up the hotel phone and pictured the two of them laughing throughout the years.  Closed my eyes and pictured Saint Peter welcoming Barb with open arms and saying “we have been waiting for your laughter to light things up around here.”   Damn fine image.

Something for Aunt Barb from Henry Scott Holland, a Canon at Saint Paul’s Cathedral in the early 1900’s.    A poem, titled “Death is Nothing at All”.   Damn fine poem.

Was blessed to watch two sisters have the friendship and love that Barb and mom had for years and years.    Damn fine sisterly love.

Death is Nothing at All

Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away to the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
That, we still are.

Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak to me in the easy way
which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed
at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me. Pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word
that it always was.
Let it be spoken without effect.
Without the trace of a shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same that it ever was.
There is absolute unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind
because I am out of sight?

I am but waiting for you.
For an interval.
Somewhere. Very near.
Just around the corner.

All is well.