TERMS STARTING WITH
racketed ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Racket
racketer ::: n. --> One who makes, or engages in, a racket.
racketing ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Racket
racket ::: n. --> A thin strip of wood, having the ends brought together, forming a somewhat elliptical hoop, across which a network of catgut or cord is stretched. It is furnished with a handle, and is used for catching or striking a ball in tennis and similar games.
A variety of the game of tennis played with peculiar long-handled rackets; -- chiefly in the plural.
A snowshoe formed of cords stretched across a long and narrow frame of light wood.
racket-tailed ::: a. --> Having long and spatulate, or racket-shaped, tail feathers.
racket-tail ::: n. --> Any one of several species of humming birds of the genus Steganura, having two of the tail feathers very long and racket-shaped.
rackett ::: n. --> An old wind instrument of the double bassoon kind, having ventages but not keys.
rackety ::: a. --> Making a tumultuous noise.
TERMS ANYWHERE
abstraction 1. Generalisation; ignoring or hiding details to capture some kind of commonality between different instances. Examples are {abstract data types} (the representation details are hidden), {abstract syntax} (the details of the {concrete syntax} are ignored), {abstract interpretation} (details are ignored to analyse specific properties). 2. "programming" Parameterisation, making something a function of something else. Examples are {lambda abstractions} (making a term into a function of some variable), {higher-order functions} (parameters are functions), {bracket abstraction} (making a term into a function of a variable). Opposite of {concretisation}. (1998-06-04)
abstraction ::: 1. Generalisation; ignoring or hiding details to capture some kind of commonality between different instances. Examples are abstract data types (the syntax are ignored), abstract interpretation (details are ignored to analyse specific properties).2. (programming) Parameterisation, making something a function of something else. Examples are lambda abstractions (making a term into a function of some variable), higher-order functions (parameters are functions), bracket abstraction (making a term into a function of a variable).Opposite of concretisation. (1998-06-04)
Ada "language" (After {Ada Lovelace}) A {Pascal}-descended language, designed by Jean Ichbiah's team at {CII Honeywell} in 1979, made mandatory for Department of Defense software projects by the Pentagon. The original language was standardised as "Ada 83", the latest is "{Ada 95}". Ada is a large, complex, {block-structured} language aimed primarily at {embedded} applications. It has facilities for {real-time} response, {concurrency}, hardware access and reliable run-time error handling. In support of large-scale {software engineering}, it emphasises {strong typing}, {data abstraction} and {encapsulation}. The type system uses {name equivalence} and includes both {subtypes} and {derived types}. Both fixed and {floating-point} numerical types are supported. {Control flow} is fully bracketed: if-then-elsif-end if, case-is-when-end case, loop-exit-end loop, goto. Subprogram parameters are in, out, or inout. Variables imported from other packages may be hidden or directly visible. Operators may be {overloaded} and so may {enumeration} literals. There are user-defined {exceptions} and {exception handlers}. An Ada program consists of a set of packages encapsulating data objects and their related operations. A package has a separately compilable body and interface. Ada permits {generic packages} and subroutines, possibly parametrised. Ada support {single inheritance}, using "tagged types" which are types that can be extended via {inheritance}. Ada programming places a heavy emphasis on {multitasking}. Tasks are synchronised by the {rendezvous}, in which a task waits for one of its subroutines to be executed by another. The conditional entry makes it possible for a task to test whether an entry is ready. The selective wait waits for either of two entries or waits for a limited time. Ada is often criticised, especially for its size and complexity, and this is attributed to its having been designed by committee. In fact, both Ada 83 and Ada 95 were designed by small design teams to be internally consistent and tightly integrated. By contrast, two possible competitors, {Fortran 90} and {C++} have both become products designed by large and disparate volunteer committees. See also {Ada/Ed}, {Toy/Ada}. {Home of the Brave Ada Programmers (http://lglwww.epfl.ch/Ada/)}. {Ada FAQs (http://lglwww.epfl.ch/Ada/FAQ/)} (hypertext), {text only (ftp://lglftp.epfl.ch/pub/Ada/FAQ)}. {(http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/languages/ada/)}, {(ftp://ajpo.sei.cmu.edu/)}, {(ftp://stars.rosslyn.unisys.com/pub/ACE_8.0)}. E-mail: "adainfo@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu". {Usenet} newsgroup: {news:comp.lang.ada}. {An Ada grammar (ftp://primost.cs.wisc.edu/)} including a lex scanner and yacc parser is available. E-mail: "masticol@dumas.rutgers.edu". {Another yacc grammar and parser for Ada by Herman Fischer (ftp://wsmr-simtel20.army.mil/PD2:"ADA.EXTERNAL-TOOLS"GRAM2.SRC)}. An {LR parser} and {pretty-printer} for {Ada} from NASA is available from the {Ada Software Repository}. {Adamakegen} generates {makefiles} for {Ada} programs. ["Reference Manual for the Ada Programming Language", ANSI/MIL STD 1815A, US DoD (Jan 1983)]. Earlier draft versions appeared in July 1980 and July 1982. ISO 1987. [{Jargon File}] (2000-08-12)
Ada ::: (language) (After Ada Lovelace) A Pascal-descended language, designed by Jean Ichbiah's team at CII Honeywell in 1979, made mandatory for Department of Defense software projects by the Pentagon. The original language was standardised as Ada 83, the latest is Ada 95.Ada is a large, complex, block-structured language aimed primarily at embedded applications. It has facilities for real-time response, concurrency, hardware The type system uses name equivalence and includes both subtypes and derived types. Both fixed and floating-point numerical types are supported.Control flow is fully bracketed: if-then-elsif-end if, case-is-when-end case, loop-exit-end loop, goto. Subprogram parameters are in, out, or inout. Variables overloaded and so may enumeration literals. There are user-defined exceptions and exception handlers.An Ada program consists of a set of packages encapsulating data objects and their related operations. A package has a separately compilable body and interface. Ada permits generic packages and subroutines, possibly parametrised.Ada support single inheritance, using tagged types which are types that can be extended via inheritance.Ada programming places a heavy emphasis on multitasking. Tasks are synchronised by the rendezvous, in which a task waits for one of its subroutines to be whether an entry is ready. The selective wait waits for either of two entries or waits for a limited time.Ada is often criticised, especially for its size and complexity, and this is attributed to its having been designed by committee. In fact, both Ada 83 and tightly integrated. By contrast, two possible competitors, Fortran 90 and C++ have both become products designed by large and disparate volunteer committees.See also Ada/Ed, Toy/Ada. . , , .E-mail: .Usenet newsgroup: comp.lang.ada. including a lex scanner and yacc parser is available. E-mail: . .An LR parser and pretty-printer for Ada from NASA is available from the Ada Software Repository.Adamakegen generates makefiles for Ada programs.[Reference Manual for the Ada Programming Language, ANSI/MIL STD 1815A, US DoD (Jan 1983)]. Earlier draft versions appeared in July 1980 and July 1982. ISO 1987.[Jargon File](2000-08-12)
American Standard Code for Information Interchange "character, standard" The basis of {character sets} used in almost all present-day computers. {US-ASCII} uses only the lower seven {bits} ({character points} 0 to 127) to convey some {control codes}, {space}, numbers, most basic punctuation, and unaccented letters a-z and A-Z. More modern {coded character sets} (e.g., {Latin-1}, {Unicode}) define extensions to ASCII for values above 127 for conveying special {Latin characters} (like accented characters, or {German} ess-tsett), characters from non-Latin writing systems (e.g., {Cyrillic}, or {Han characters}), and such desirable {glyphs} as distinct open- and close-{quotation marks}. ASCII replaced earlier systems such as {EBCDIC} and {Baudot}, which used fewer bytes, but were each {broken} in their own way. Computers are much pickier about spelling than humans; thus, {hackers} need to be very precise when talking about characters, and have developed a considerable amount of verbal shorthand for them. Every character has one or more names - some formal, some concise, some silly. Individual characters are listed in this dictionary with alternative names from revision 2.3 of the {Usenet} ASCII pronunciation guide in rough order of popularity, including their official {ITU-T} names and the particularly silly names introduced by {INTERCAL}. See {V} {ampersand}, {asterisk}, {back quote}, {backslash}, {caret}, {colon}, {comma}, {commercial at}, {control-C}, {dollar}, {dot}, {double quote}, {equals}, {exclamation mark}, {greater than}, {hash}, {left bracket}, {left parenthesis}, {less than}, {minus}, {parentheses}, {oblique stroke}, {percent}, {plus}, {question mark}, {right brace}, {right brace}, {right bracket}, {right parenthesis}, {semicolon}, {single quote}, {space}, {tilde}, {underscore}, {vertical bar}, {zero}. Some other common usages cause odd overlaps. The "
American Standard Code for Information Interchange ::: The basis of character sets used in almost all present-day computers. US-ASCII uses only the lower seven bits (character points 0 to 127) to convey some as EBCDIC and Baudot, which used fewer bytes, but were each broken in their own way.Computers are much pickier about spelling than humans; thus, hackers need to be very precise when talking about characters, and have developed a considerable amount of verbal shorthand for them. Every character has one or more names - some formal, some concise, some silly.Individual characters are listed in this dictionary with alternative names from revision 2.3 of the Usenet ASCII pronunciation guide in rough order of popularity, including their official ITU-T names and the particularly silly names introduced by INTERCAL.See V ampersand, asterisk, back quote, backslash, caret, colon, comma, commercial at, control-C, dollar, dot, double quote, equals, exclamation mark, brace, right bracket, right parenthesis, semicolon, single quote, space, tilde, underscore, vertical bar, zero.Some other common usages cause odd overlaps. The
ancone ::: n. --> The corner or quoin of a wall, cross-beam, or rafter.
A bracket supporting a cornice; a console.
angle bracket "character" Either of the characters """ (less-than, {ASCII} 60) and """ (greater-than, ASCII 62). Typographers in the {Real World} use angle brackets which are either taller and slimmer (the {ISO} "{Bra}" and "{Ket}" characters), or significantly smaller (single or double guillemets) than the less-than and greater-than signs. See {broket}. (1995-11-24)
angle bracket ::: (character) Either of the characters (less-than, ASCII 60) and > (greater-than, ASCII 62). Typographers in the Real World use angle brackets significantly smaller (single or double guillemets) than the less-than and greater-than signs.See broket. (1995-11-24)
array 1. "programming" A collection of identically typed data items distinguished by their indices (or "subscripts"). The number of dimensions an array can have depends on the language but is usually unlimited. An array is a kind of {aggregate} data type. A single ordinary variable (a "{scalar}") could be considered as a zero-dimensional array. A one-dimensional array is also known as a "{vector}". A reference to an array element is written something like A[i,j,k] where A is the array name and i, j and k are the indices. The {C} language is peculiar in that each index is written in separate brackets, e.g. A[i][j][k]. This expresses the fact that, in C, an N-dimensional array is actually a vector, each of whose elements is an N-1 dimensional array. Elements of an array are usually stored contiguously. Languages differ as to whether the leftmost or rightmost index varies most rapidly, i.e. whether each row is stored contiguously or each column (for a 2D array). Arrays are appropriate for storing data which must be accessed in an unpredictable order, in contrast to {lists} which are best when accessed sequentially. Array indices are {integers}, usually {natural numbers}, whereas the elements of an {associative array} are identified by strings. 2. "architecture" A {processor array}, not to be confused with an {array processor}. (2007-10-12)
ASCII character table "character" The following list gives the {octal}, decimal and {hexadecimal} {ASCII} codes for each character along with its printed representation and common name(s). Oct Dec Hex Name 000 0 0x00 NUL 001 1 0x01 SOH, Control-A 002 2 0x02 STX, Control-B 003 3 0x03 ETX, Control-C 004 4 0x04 EOT, Control-D 005 5 0x05 ENQ, Control-E 006 6 0x06 ACK, Control-F 007 7 0x07 BEL, Control-G 010 8 0x08 BS, backspace, Control-H 011 9 0x09 HT, tab, Control-I 012 10 0x0a LF, line feed, newline, Control-J 013 11 0x0b VT, Control-K 014 12 0x0c FF, form feed, NP, Control-L 015 13 0x0d CR, carriage return, Control-M 016 14 0x0e SO, Control-N 017 15 0x0f SI, Control-O 020 16 0x10 DLE, Control-P 021 17 0x11 DC1, XON, Control-Q 022 18 0x12 DC2, Control-R 023 19 0x13 DC3, XOFF, Control-S 024 20 0x14 DC4, Control-T 025 21 0x15 NAK, Control-U 026 22 0x16 SYN, Control-V 027 23 0x17 ETB, Control-W 030 24 0x18 CAN, Control-X 031 25 0x19 EM, Control-Y 032 26 0x1a SUB, Control-Z 033 27 0x1b ESC, escape 034 28 0x1c FS 035 29 0x1d GS 036 30 0x1e RS 037 31 0x1f US 040 32 0x20 space 041 33 0x21 !, exclamation mark 042 34 0x22 ", double quote 043 35 0x23
ASCII character table ::: (character) The following list gives the octal, decimal and hexadecimal ASCII codes for each character along with its printed representation and common name(s). Oct Dec Hex Name000 0 0x00 NUL bracket, vertical bar, close curly bracket, tilde, delete. (1996-06-24)
balcony ::: n. --> A platform projecting from the wall of a building, usually resting on brackets or consoles, and inclosed by a parapet; as, a balcony in front of a window. Also, a projecting gallery in places of amusement; as, the balcony in a theater.
A projecting gallery once common at the stern of large ships.
Batching (accounting) - The collecting and organising of incoming invoices before processing. 2. (marketing) A form of price discrimination where products are joined or packaged together in order increase sales i.e. a tennis rackets player with tennis balls.
bracket abstraction ::: (compiler) An algorithm which turns a term into a function of some variable. The result of using bracket abstraction on T with respect to variable bracket abstraction and currying we can define a language without bound variables in which the only operation is monadic function application.See combinator. (1995-03-07)
bracket abstraction "compiler" An {algorithm} which turns a term into a function of some variable. The result of using bracket abstraction on T with respect to variable v, written as [v]T, is a term containing no occurrences of v and denoting a function f such that f v = T. This defines the function f = (\ v . T). Using bracket abstraction and {currying} we can define a language without {bound variables} in which the only operation is {monadic} function application. See {combinator}. (1995-03-07)
bracket "character" (Or square bracket) A {left bracket} or {right bracket}. Often used loosely for {parentheses}, {square brackets}, {braces}, {angle brackets}, or any other kind of unequal paired {delimiters}. (1996-09-08)
bracket ::: (character) (Or square bracket) A left bracket or right bracket.Often used loosely for parentheses, square brackets, braces, angle brackets, or any other kind of unequal paired delimiters. (1996-09-08)
bracketed ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Bracket
bracketing ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Bracket ::: n. --> A series or group of brackets; brackets, collectively.
bracket ::: n. --> An architectural member, plain or ornamental, projecting from a wall or pier, to support weight falling outside of the same; also, a decorative feature seeming to discharge such an office.
A piece or combination of pieces, usually triangular in general shape, projecting from, or fastened to, a wall, or other surface, to support heavy bodies or to strengthen angles.
A shot, crooked timber, resembling a knee, used as a support.
brackets: Symbols [ and ] commonly used to represent the order of operations, along with parentheses and braces. (And other less common types.) Informally, all 3 pairs of symbols are referred to as brackets. Brackets are also used to represent matrices amongst other mathematical objects.
BCPL ::: (language) (Basic CPL) A British systems language developed by Richards in 1969 and descended from CPL (Combined Programming Language). BCPL is command' and functions: 'Let foo(bar) = expression'. 'Valof $(..Resultis..$)' causes a compound command to produce a value. Parameters are call-by-value.Program segments communicate via the global vector where system and user variables are stored in fixed numerical locations in a single array.The first BCPL compiler was written in AED. BCPL was used to implement the TRIPOS operating system, which was subsequently reincarnated as AmigaDOS.[BCPL - The Language and its Compiler, Martin Richards & Colin Whitby-Stevens, Cambridge U Press 1979].See OCODE, INTCODE.Oxford BCPL differed slightly: Test-Ifso-Ifnot, and section brackets in place of $( $).The original INTCODE interpreter for BCPL is available for Amiga, Unix, MS-DOS .A BCPL compiler bootstrap kit with an INTCODE interpreter in C was written by Ken Yap . (1995-03-26)
BCPL "language" (Basic CPL) A British systems language developed by Richards in 1969 and descended from {CPL} (Combined Programming Language). BCPL is low-level, typeless and block-structured, and provides only one-dimensional {arrays}. Case is not significant, but conventionally reserved words begin with a capital. Flow control constructs include: If-Then, Test-Then-Else, Unless-Do, While-Do, Until-Do, Repeat, Repeatwhile, Repeatuntil, For-to-By-Do, Loop, Break and Switchon-Into-Case-Default-Endcase. BCPL has conditional expressions, pointers, and manifest constants. It has both procedures: 'Let foo(bar) Be command' and functions: 'Let foo(bar) = expression'. 'Valof $(..Resultis..$)' causes a compound command to produce a value. Parameters are {call-by-value}. Program segments communicate via the global vector where system and user variables are stored in fixed numerical locations in a single array. The first BCPL {compiler} was written in {AED}. BCPL was used to implement the {TRIPOS} {operating system}, which was subsequently reincarnated as {AmigaDOS}. ["BCPL - The Language and its Compiler", Martin Richards & Colin Whitby-Stevens, Cambridge U Press 1979]. See {OCODE}, {INTCODE}. Oxford BCPL differed slightly: Test-Ifso-Ifnot, and section brackets in place of $( $). The original {INTCODE} {interpreter} for BCPL is available for {Amiga}, {Unix}, {MS-DOS} {(ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/systems/amiga/programming/languages/BCPL/)}. A BCPL compiler {bootstrap} kit with an {INTCODE} {interpreter} in {C} was written by Ken Yap "ken@syd.dit.csiro.au". (1995-03-26)
becket ::: n. --> A small grommet, or a ring or loop of rope / metal for holding things in position, as spars, ropes, etc.; also a bracket, a pocket, or a handle made of rope.
A spade for digging turf.
braces: Symbols { and } commonly used to represent the order of operations along with parentheses and brackets. (And other less common types.) They're also used to represent sets.
racketed ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Racket
racketer ::: n. --> One who makes, or engages in, a racket.
racketing ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Racket
racket ::: n. --> A thin strip of wood, having the ends brought together, forming a somewhat elliptical hoop, across which a network of catgut or cord is stretched. It is furnished with a handle, and is used for catching or striking a ball in tennis and similar games.
A variety of the game of tennis played with peculiar long-handled rackets; -- chiefly in the plural.
A snowshoe formed of cords stretched across a long and narrow frame of light wood.
racket-tailed ::: a. --> Having long and spatulate, or racket-shaped, tail feathers.
racket-tail ::: n. --> Any one of several species of humming birds of the genus Steganura, having two of the tail feathers very long and racket-shaped.
rackett ::: n. --> An old wind instrument of the double bassoon kind, having ventages but not keys.
rackety ::: a. --> Making a tumultuous noise.
broket ::: (character) /broh'k*t/ or /broh'ket/ (From broken bracket) Either of the characters or > when used as paired enclosing delimiters (angle brackets).[Jargon File] (1997-07-21)
broket "character" /broh'k*t/ or /broh'ket/ (From broken bracket) Either of the characters """ or """ when used as paired enclosing {delimiters} ({angle brackets}). [{Jargon File}] (1997-07-21)
cantalever ::: n. --> A bracket to support a balcony, a cornice, or the like.
A projecting beam, truss, or bridge unsupported at the outer end; one which overhangs.
Celeron ::: (processor) Intel Corporation's trade name for its family of Pentium II microprocessors meant for use in low-end computers.The Celeron is constructed on the 0.25 micron Deschutes base. Clock rates of 266, 300 and 333 MHz are supported. It is built on the same daughterboard as the Pentium II CPUs without the Level 2 cache RAM. The 300A and 333 MHz Celerons include 128k of Level 2 cache.A special mounting bracket on the motherboard is used to secure the Celeron in place in its standard 242-pin Slot 1 socket. Intel calls the caseless design mounting configurations is to prevent users from placing lower cost processors onto Pentium II motherboards.A Celeron is about one third the cost of a similar speed Pentium II. Hardware hackers claim that the Celeron 300 without Level 2 cache could be overclocked to perform as well as a Pentium II at a fraction of the price. . . (1998-10-06)
Celeron "processor" {Intel Corporation}'s trade name for its family of {Pentium II} {microprocessors} meant for use in low-end computers. The Celeron is constructed on the 0.25 micron Deschutes base. {Clock rates} of 266, 300 and 333 {MHz} are supported. It is built on the same {daughterboard} as the Pentium II without the black plastic case and {heat sink}. Four Celeron models are in production as of October 1998. The 266 and 300 MHz models are essentially Pentium II {CPUs} without the Level 2 {cache} {RAM}. The 300A and 333 MHz Celerons include 128k of Level 2 cache. A special mounting bracket on the motherboard is used to secure the Celeron in place in its standard 242-pin Slot 1 socket. Intel calls the caseless design SEPP (Single Edge Processor Package) to differentiate it from the Pentium II SEC (Single Edge Cartridge). Some believe that the real purpose for the different mounting configurations is to prevent users from placing lower cost processors onto Pentium II motherboards. A Celeron is about one third the cost of a similar speed Pentium II. Hardware {hackers} claim that the Celeron 300 without Level 2 cache could be {overclocked} to perform as well as a Pentium II at a fraction of the price. {(http://intel.com/Celeron/)}. {Tom's Hardware (http://www2.tomshardware.com/cpuslot1.html)}. (1998-10-06)
clatter ::: 1. A rattling noise or a series of rattling noises. 2. Noisy disturbance; din; racket.
Commonwealth Hackish ::: Hacker jargon as spoken outside the US, especially in the British Commonwealth. It is reported that Commonwealth speakers are more likely to pronounce frodo, and bilbo; wibble, wobble, and in emergencies wubble; banana, tom, dick, harry, wombat, frog, fish, and so on and on (see foo).Alternatives to verb doubling include suffixes -o-rama, frenzy (as in feeding frenzy), and city (examples: barf city! hack-o-rama! core dump brackets, square brackets, and curly brackets. Also, the use of pling for bang is common outside the United States.See also attoparsec, calculator, chemist, console jockey, fish, go-faster stripes, grunge, hakspek, heavy metal, leaky heap, lord high fixer, loose bytes, crippleware, crunch, dodgy, gonk, hamster, hardwarily, mess-dos, nibble, proglet, root, SEX, tweak, and xyzzy.[Jargon File] (1995-01-18)
Commonwealth Hackish "jargon" Hacker jargon as spoken outside the US, especially in the British Commonwealth. It is reported that Commonwealth speakers are more likely to pronounce truncations like "char" and "soc", etc., as spelled (/char/, /sok/), as opposed to American /keir/ and /sohsh/. Dots in {newsgroup} names (especially two-component names) tend to be pronounced more often (so soc.wibble is /sok dot wib'l/ rather than /sohsh wib'l/). The prefix {meta} may be pronounced /mee't*/; similarly, Greek letter beta is usually /bee't*/, zeta is usually /zee't*/, and so forth. Preferred {metasyntactic variables} include {blurgle}, "eek", "ook", "frodo", and "bilbo"; "wibble", "wobble", and in emergencies "wubble"; "banana", "tom", "dick", "harry", "wombat", "frog", {fish}, and so on and on (see {foo}). Alternatives to verb doubling include suffixes "-o-rama", "frenzy" (as in feeding frenzy), and "city" (examples: "barf city!" "hack-o-rama!" "core dump frenzy!"). Finally, note that the American terms "parens", "brackets", and "braces" for (), [], and {} are uncommon; Commonwealth hackish prefers "brackets", "square brackets", and "curly brackets". Also, the use of "pling" for {bang} is common outside the United States. See also {attoparsec}, {calculator}, {chemist}, {console jockey}, {fish}, {go-faster stripes}, {grunge}, {hakspek}, {heavy metal}, {leaky heap}, {lord high fixer}, {loose bytes}, {muddie}, {nadger}, {noddy}, {psychedelicware}, {plingnet}, {raster blaster}, {RTBM}, {seggie}, {spod}, {sun lounge}, {terminal junkie}, {tick-list features}, {weeble}, {weasel}, {YABA}, and notes or definitions under {Bad Thing}, {barf}, {bum}, {chase pointers}, {cosmic rays}, {crippleware}, {crunch}, {dodgy}, {gonk}, {hamster}, {hardwarily}, {mess-dos}, {nibble}, {proglet}, {root}, {SEX}, {tweak} and {xyzzy}. [{Jargon File}] (1995-01-18)
console ::: v. t. --> To cheer in distress or depression; to alleviate the grief and raise the spirits of; to relieve; to comfort; to soothe. ::: n. --> A bracket whose projection is not more than half its height.
Any small bracket; also, a console table.
corbel ::: n. --> A bracket supporting a superincumbent object, or receiving the spring of an arch. Corbels were employed largely in Gothic architecture. ::: v. t. --> To furnish with a corbel or corbels; to support by a corbel; to make in the form of a corbel.
curly bracket ::: brace
curly bracket brace
egrep ::: (tool) An extended version of the Unix grep command. Egrep accepts extended regular expressions (REs) including * following multi-character REs; matches either. REs may be bracketed with (). Despite its additional complexity, egrep is usually faster than fgrep or grep.(2004-07-20)
egrep "tool" An extended version of the {Unix} {grep} command. Egrep accepts extended {regular expressions} (REs) including "*" following multi-character REs; "+" (one or more matches); "?" (zero or one matches); "|" separating two REs matches either. REs may be bracketed with (). Despite its additional complexity, egrep is usually faster than {fgrep} or {grep}. (2004-07-20)
Egyptian brackets "programming, humour" A humourous term for {K&R} {indent style}, referring to the "one hand up in front, one down behind" pose which popular culture inexplicably associates with Egypt. [{Dodgy Coder (http://www.dodgycoder.net/2011/11/yoda-conditions-pokemon-exception.html)}]. (2011-11-30)
Extended Backus-Naur Form ::: (language) Any variation on the basic Backus-Naur Form (BNF) meta-syntax notation with (some of) the following additional constructs: square brackets enclosing a list of alternatives, and super/subscripts indicating between n and m occurrences.All these constructs can be expressed in plain BNF using extra productions and have been added for readability and succinctness. (1995-04-28)
Extended Backus-Naur Form "language" Any variation on the basic {Backus-Naur Form} (BNF) {meta-syntax} notation with (some of) the following additional constructs: {square brackets} "[..]" surrounding optional items, suffix "*" for {Kleene closure} (a sequence of zero or more of an item), suffix "+" for one or more of an item, {curly brackets} enclosing a list of alternatives, and super/subscripts indicating between n and m occurrences. All these constructs can be expressed in plain BNF using extra {productions} and have been added for readability and succinctness. (1995-04-28)
Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code "character, standard" /eb's*-dik/, /eb'see`dik/, /eb'k*-dik/, /ee`bik'dik`/, /*-bik'dik`/ (EBCDIC) A proprietary 8-bit {character set} used on {IBM} {dinosaurs}, the {AS/400}, and {e-Server}. EBCDIC is an extension to 8 bits of BCDIC (Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code), an earlier 6-bit character set used on IBM computers. EBCDIC was [first?] used on the successful {System/360}, anounced on 1964-04-07, and survived for many years despite the almost universal adoption of {ASCII} elsewhere. Was this concern for {backward compatibility} or, as many believe, a marketing strategy to lock in IBM customers? IBM created 57 national EBCDIC character sets and an International Reference Version (IRV) based on {ISO 646} (and hence ASCII compatible). Documentation on these was not easily accessible making international exchange of data even between IBM mainframes a tricky task. US EBCDIC uses more or less the same characters as {ASCII}, but different {code points}. It has non-contiguous letter sequences, some ASCII characters do not exist in EBCDIC (e.g. {square brackets}), and EBCDIC has some ({cent sign}, {not sign}) not in ASCII. As a consequence, the translation between ASCII and EBCDIC was never officially completely defined. Users defined one translation which resulted in a so-called de-facto EBCDIC containing all the characters of ASCII, that all ASCII-related programs use. Some printers, telex machines, and even electronic cash registers can speak EBCDIC, but only so they can converse with IBM mainframes. For an in-depth discussion of character code sets, and full translation tables, see {Guidelines on 8-bit character codes (ftp://ftp.ulg.ac.be/pub/docs/iso8859/iso8859.networking)}. {A history of character codes (http://tronweb.super-nova.co.jp/characcodehist.html)}. (2002-03-03)
foil method: A restrictive method that serves as a first point of introduction to the concept of expanding brackets. The mnemonic FOIL stands for First(s), Outside(s), Inside(s) and Last(s), referring to the four combinations to multiply out in the case of expanding two brackets each with two terms inside. Thus this method does not apply to cases when there are more than two brackets or when there are more than two terms in one of the brackets (e.g. a trinomial.).
Functional variables and functional constants are together called functional symbols (the adjective functional being here understood to refer to propositional functions). Functional symbols are called n-adic if they are either functional variables with subscript n or functional constants denoting n-adic propositional functions of individuals. The formulas of the functional calculus of first order (relative to the given lists of symbols (1), (2), (3), (4)) are all the expressions determined by the eight following rules: all the propositional variables are formulas; if F is a monadic functional symbol and X is an individual variable, [F](X) is a formula; if F is an n-adic functional symbol and X1, X2, . . . , Xn are individual variables (which may or may not be all different), [F](X1, X2, . . . , Xn) is a formula; if A is a formula, ∼[A] is a formula; if A nnd B are formulas, [A][B] is a formula; if A and B are formulas, [A] ∨ [B] is a formula; if A is a formula and X is an individual variable, (X)[A] is a formula; if A is a formula and X is an individual variable, (EX)[A] is a formula. In practice, we omit superfluous brackets and braces (but not parentheses) in writing formulas, nnd we omit subscripts on functional variables in cases where the subscript is sufficiently indicated by the form of the formula in which the functional variable appears. The sentential connectives |, ⊃, ≡, +, are introduced as abbreviations in the same way as in § 1 for the propositional calculus. We make further the following definitions, which are also to be construed as abbreviations, the arrow being read "stands for": [A] ⊃x [B] → (X)[[A] ⊃ [B]]. [A] ≡x [B] → (X)[[A] ≡ [B]]. [A] ∧x [B] → (EX)[[A][B]]. (Here A and B are any formulas, and X is any individual variable. Brackets may be omitted when superfluous.) If F and G denote monadic propositional functions, we say that F(X) ⊃x G(X) expresses formal implication of the function G by the function F, and F(X) ≡x G(X) expresses formal equivalence of the two functions (the adjective formal is perhaps not well chosen here but has become established in use).
gallery ::: a. --> A long and narrow corridor, or place for walking; a connecting passageway, as between one room and another; also, a long hole or passage excavated by a boring or burrowing animal.
A room for the exhibition of works of art; as, a picture gallery; hence, also, a large or important collection of paintings, sculptures, etc.
A long and narrow platform attached to one or more sides of public hall or the interior of a church, and supported by brackets
Gandhāra. (T. Sa 'dzin; C. Jiantuoluo; J. Kendara; K. Kondara 健馱羅). An ancient center of Indic Buddhism, located in the northwest of the subcontinent in the region of present-day northern Pakistan and southeastern Afghanistan. The Gandhāra region included the entire Peshawar valley up to its border along the Indus River to the east and also extended to include the Swat valley and the region around Gandhāra's central city of TAKsAsILA (Taxila), located near what is today Peshawar, Pakistan. For the five centuries bracketing the beginning of the Common Era, Gandhāra was a cosmopolitan cultural center and a crossroads of the major trade routes between Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, China, and the Indian subcontinent (see SILK ROAD). As traders from these various areas moved through Gandhāra, the region became a place of cultural exchange. Four major empires were centered in Gandhāra: the Indo-Greek, Indo-Scythian, Indo-Parthian, and KUSHAN. Tradition claims that AsOKA supported Buddhism in the Gandhāra region during the third century BCE, although the first physical evidence of Buddhism in the region dates from the second and first centuries CE. Gandhāra was conquered by Demetrius I of Bactria around 185 BCE and, although Greek rule in the region was brief, Greek art and culture had an enduring effect on the Gandhāran community. Some of the oldest known Buddhist art comes from this region, more specifically the "Greco-Buddhist" style of sculpture that was a product of this period. The earliest iconographic representations of the Buddha, in fact, are thought by some art historians to come from second century BCE Gandhāra. During the first and second centuries CE, Gandhāra became the principal gateway through which Buddhism traveled to Persia, China, and the rest of Asia. Between the years 50 and 320 CE, the KUSHANs were pushed south out of Central Asia and occupied Gandhāra. Gandhāra, along with KASHMIR, supported and housed a large SARVĀSTIVĀDA community, and Gandhāra was long recognized as a principal bastion of this important MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOL. Around the first or second century CE, when the Sarvāstivāda school was at its peak, the fourth Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, FIRST) is said to have taken place in Gandhāra, sponsored by KANIsKA I, the third king of the Kushan dynasty. According to traditional accounts, there were 499 monks in attendance, although that large number is probably intended to represent the importance of the convention rather than a literal count of the number of people present. VASUMITRA presided over the fourth council, with the noted poet and scholarly exegete AsVAGHOsA assisting him. In addition to recording a new VINAYA, the council also resulted in the compilation of a massive collection of Sarvāstivāda ABHIDHARMA philosophy, known as the ABHIDHARMAMAHĀVIBHĀsĀ, or "Great Exegesis of Abhidharma," which functions as a virtual encyclopedia of different scholastic perspectives on Buddhism of the time. The VAIBHĀsIKA school of Sarvāstivāda abhidharma exegesis, which based itself on this compilation, was centered in the regions of Gandhāra and Kashmir. The KĀsYAPĪYA and BAHUsRUTĪYA schools added to the significant presence of Buddhism in the region.
greater than "character" """ {ASCII} character 62. Common names: {ITU-T}: greater than; ket (""" = bra); right angle; right angle bracket; right broket. Rare: into, toward; write to; blow (""" = suck); gozinta; out; zap (all from {Unix} {I/O redirection}); {INTERCAL}: right angle. See also {less than}. (1995-03-17)
greater than ::: (character) > ASCII character 62.Common names: ITU-T: greater than; ket ( = bra); right angle; right angle bracket; right broket. Rare: into, toward; write to; blow ( = suck); gozinta; out; zap (all from Unix I/O redirection); INTERCAL: right angle.See also less than. (1995-03-17)
gusset ::: n. --> A small piece of cloth inserted in a garment, for the purpose of strengthening some part or giving it a tapering enlargement.
Anything resembling a gusset in a garment
A small piece of chain mail at the openings of the joints beneath the arms.
A kind of bracket, or angular piece of iron, fastened in the angles of a structure to give strength or stiffness; esp., the part joining the barrel and the fire box of a locomotive boiler.
In cases where the information given is taken from a Laurency text that is not literally quoted, this is shown by putting the reference in brackets (K 1.2.15).
Kobold The German name for the fairy of the hearth or the elemental beings or nature sprites of the character of the earth element. Popularly believed to inhabit mines and other underground places, corresponding to the gnomes. When such a being dwells in a house it is sometimes mistakenly called a poltergeist or racket sprite.
Kondāne. Early Buddhist monastic cave site located in western India, which dates from the early decades of the first century CE. The highly ornamented, four-story facade of its CAITYA hall has projecting balconies supported by curved brackets and deeply recessed windows with latticed screens. Although carved in stone, the architectural form is modeled after earlier wooden designs and accords well with the real woodwork of the main arch, fragments of which are still in situ. This style of architecture is related to the slightly earlier hall at BHĀJĀ. In the third row of balconies are panels depicting pairs of dancers, who display ease of movement and considerable rhythmic grace. In this cave, there is also an inscription in BRAHMĪ script that records the name of one Balaka, a student of Kanha (or Kṛsna), who constructed the cave. The record is carved near the head of a statue that probably represents Balaka.
K&R style "programming" An ugly, obsolete, deprecated {source code} {indent style} that looks like this: if (cond) { "body" } The basic indent is eight spaces (or one tab) per level; less commonly four. It is named after {Kernighan} & {Ritchie} because the examples in {K&R} are formatted this way. It is also called "kernel style" (because the {Unix} {kernel} was written in it) or {Egyptian brackets}. This style was popular when programmers worked on small displays, or when printing code on paper, becuase it saves vertical space. It should be avoided because the opening brace is easy to miss at the end of a long condition in an "if" or "while" statement and it makes it hard to pair up braces. (2014-09-28)
lacrosse ::: n. --> A game of ball, originating among the North American Indians, now the popular field sport of Canada, and played also in England and the United States. Each player carries a long-handled racket, called a "crosse". The ball is not handled but caught with the crosse and carried on it, or tossed from it, the object being to carry it or throw it through one of the goals placed at opposite ends of the field.
left bracket ::: (character) [. ASCII character 91.Common: left square bracket; ITU-T: opening bracket; bracket. Rare: square; INTERCAL: U turn.Paired with right bracket (]). (1995-03-16)
left bracket "character" "[". {ASCII} character 91. Common: left square bracket; {ITU-T}: opening bracket; bracket. Rare: square; {INTERCAL}: U turn. Paired with {right bracket} ("]"). (1995-03-16)
left brace ::: (character) {. ASCII character 123.Common names: open brace; left brace; left squiggly; left squiggly bracket/brace; left curly bracket/brace; ITU-T: opening brace. Rare: brace (} = unbrace); curly (} = uncurly); leftit (} = rytit); left squirrelly; INTERCAL: embrace (} = bracelet).Paired with right brace (}). (1995-03-16)
left brace "character" "{". {ASCII} character 123. Common names: open brace; left brace; left squiggly; left squiggly bracket/brace; left curly bracket/brace; {ITU-T}: opening brace. Rare: brace ("}" = unbrace); curly ("}" = uncurly); leftit ("}" = rytit); left squirrelly; {INTERCAL}: embrace ("}" = bracelet). Paired with {right brace} ("}"). (1995-03-16)
left parenthesis "character" "(". {ASCII} character 40. Common names: left paren; left parenthesis; left; {open}; paren (")" = thesis); open paren; open parenthesis; left parenthesis; left banana. Rare: so (")" = already); lparen; {ITU-T}: opening parenthesis; open round bracket, left round bracket, {INTERCAL}: wax (")" = wane); parenthisey (")" = unparenthisey); left ear. Paired with {right parenthesis} (")"). (1995-03-06)
left parenthesis ::: (character) (. ASCII character 40.Common names: left paren; left parenthesis; left; open; paren () = thesis); open paren; open parenthesis; left parenthesis; left banana. Rare: so () = bracket, INTERCAL: wax () = wane); parenthisey () = unparenthisey); left ear.Paired with right parenthesis ()). (1995-03-06)
less than ::: (character) ASCII character 60.Common names: ITU-T: less than; bra (> = ket); left angle; left angle bracket; left broket. Rare: from; read from; suck (> = blow); comes-from; in; crunch (all from Unix); INTERCAL: angle.See also greater than. (1995-03-20)
less than "character" """ {ASCII} character 60. Common names: {ITU-T}: less than; bra (""" = ket); left angle; left angle bracket; left broket. Rare: from; read from; suck (""" = blow); comes-from; in; crunch (all from Unix); {INTERCAL}: angle. See also {greater than}. (1995-03-20)
Meinong, Alexius: (1853-1921) Was originally a disciple of Brentano, who however emphatically rejected many of Meinong's later contentions. He claimed to have discovered a new a priori science, the "theory of objects" (to be distinguished from metaphysics which is an empirical science concerning reality, but was never worked out by Meinong). Anything "intended" by thought is an "object". Objects may either "exist" (such as physical objects) or "subsist" (such as facts which Meinong unfortunately termed "objectives", or mathematical entities), they may either be possible or impossible and they may belong either to a lower or to a higher level (such as "relations" and "complexions", "founded" on their simple terms or elements). In the "theory of objects," the existence of objects is abstracted from (or as Husserl later said it may be "bracketed") and their essence alone has to be considered. Objects are apprehended either by self-evident judgments or by "assumptions", that is, by "imaginary judgments". In the field of emotions there is an analogous division since there are also "imaginary" emotions (such as those of the spectator in a tragedy). Much of Meinong's work was of a psychological rather than of a metaphysical or epistemological character. -- H.G.
miserere ::: n. --> The psalm usually appointed for penitential acts, being the 50th psalm in the Latin version. It commences with the word miserere.
A musical composition adapted to the 50th psalm.
A small projecting boss or bracket, on the under side of the hinged seat of a church stall (see Stall). It was intended, the seat being turned up, to give some support to a worshiper when standing. Called also misericordia.
modillion ::: n. --> The enriched block or horizontal bracket generally found under the cornice of the Corinthian and Composite entablature, and sometimes, less ornamented, in the Ionic and other orders; -- so called because of its arrangement at regulated distances.
motmot ::: n. --> Any one of several species of long-tailed, passerine birds of the genus Momotus, having a strong serrated beak. In most of the species the two long middle tail feathers are racket-shaped at the tip, when mature. The bird itself is said by some writers to trim them into this shape. They feed on insects, reptiles, and fruit, and are found from Mexico to Brazil. The name is derived from its note.
Non-being Used to express the condition of things in pralaya, preceding manifestation. It corresponds to the Sanskrit asat, while sat corresponds to Being. Yet both non-being and a-sat are frequently used for non-existence. It is philosophically questionable to bracket non-being with the Absolute, or again to bracket Absolute with Being (though the latter is often justifiable) as the words absolute, being, and non-being do not correspond to infinity; for Absolute corresponds to the Sanskrit mukti or moksha, that which is freed from manifested existence; whereas infinitude comprehends both nonmanifestation and manifestation, being and non-being, sat and asat, the absolute and the bound. One of the best correspondences to infinity is the term coined by Blavatsky: Be-ness, or pure abstract attributeless esse.
Objective Modula-2 "language" (Or "ObjM2") An extension to {Modula-2} for {Cocoa} and {GNUstep} software development. Objective Modula-2 follows the {Objective-C} {object model} and retains the bracketed {Smalltalk} {message passing} {syntax} used in Objective-C. Classes written in ObjM2 can be used within ObjC and vice versa. ObjM2 also retains Modula-2's {data encapsulation} features, namely {nested modules} with explicit {import} and export lists. Due to the strict {type checking} in Modula-2, ObjM2 can be considered a much safer programming language than is ObjC, yet losing none of the capabilities of ObjC. (2005-08-15)
parathesis ::: n. --> The placing of two or more nouns in the same case; apposition.
A parenthetical notice, usually of matter to be afterward expanded.
The matter contained within brackets.
A commendatory prayer.
parentheses: Pairs of symbols ( ) used to indicate the priority in calculations that may break away from conventions (e.g. left to right, multiplications before additions), or provides information into the preferred grouping of multiple objects. (e.g. a x b x c for the vector triple product) Often known as brackets or round brackets.
PLASMA ::: PLAnner-like System Modelled on Actors. Carl Hewitt, 1975. The first actor language. Originally called Planner-73, and implemented in MacLisp. Lisp-like syntax, but with several kinds of parentheses and brackets.[A PLASMA Primer, B. Smith et al, AI Lab Working Paper 92, MIT Oct 1975].[Viewing Control Structures as Patterns of Passing Messages, C. Hewitt, AI Lab Memo 410, MIT 1976].
PLASMA PLAnner-like System Modelled on Actors. {Carl Hewitt}, 1975. The first {actor} language. Originally called Planner-73, and implemented in MacLisp. Lisp-like syntax, but with several kinds of parentheses and brackets. ["A PLASMA Primer", B. Smith et al, AI Lab Working Paper 92, MIT Oct 1975]. ["Viewing Control Structures as Patterns of Passing Messages", C. Hewitt, AI Lab Memo 410, MIT 1976].
polymorphic lambda-calculus ::: (language, types) (Or second order typed lambda-calculus, System F, Lambda-2). An extension of typed lambda-calculus allowing functions which take types as parameters. E.g. the polymorphic function twice may be written: twice = /\ t . \ (f :: t -> t) . \ (x :: t) . f (f x) be bound to the type to which twice is applied, e.g.: twice Int are often written in square brackets [ ]). Function twice itself has a higher type: twice :: Delta t . (t -> t) -> (t -> t) which is a function of a type and Delta introduces a type which is a function of a type.Polymorphic lambda-calculus was invented by Jean-Yves Girard in 1971 and independently by John C. Reynolds in 1974.[Proofs and Types, J-Y. Girard, Cambridge U Press 1989].(2005-03-07)
polymorphic lambda-calculus "language, types" (Or "second order typed lambda-calculus", "System F", "Lambda-2"). An extension of {typed lambda-calculus} allowing functions which take types as parameters. E.g. the {polymorphic} function "twice" may be written: twice = /\ t . \ (f :: t -" t) . \ (x :: t) . f (f x) (where "/\" is an upper case Greek lambda and "(v :: T)" is usually written as v with subscript T). The parameter t will be bound to the type to which twice is applied, e.g.: twice Int takes and returns a function of type Int -" Int. (Actual type arguments are often written in square brackets [ ]). Function twice itself has a higher type: twice :: Delta t . (t -" t) -" (t -" t) (where Delta is an upper case Greek delta). Thus /\ introduces an object which is a function of a type and Delta introduces a type which is a function of a type. Polymorphic lambda-calculus was invented by Jean-Yves Girard in 1971 and independently by John C. Reynolds in 1974. ["Proofs and Types", J-Y. Girard, Cambridge U Press 1989]. (2005-03-07)
prefix notation: Also known as Polish notations, where the operator is expressed before the operands. Such a system has as its advantage simpler structure requiring very few brackets (or none at all), but may cause confusion unless other ways are used to indicate multiplication, such as 2x to mean the product of 2 and x, and for the positional system of representing numbers where 34 means the sum of thirty and four.
Pronunciation In this dictionary slashes (/../) bracket phonetic pronunciations of words not found in a standard English dictionary. The notation, and many of the pronunciations, were adapted from the Hacker's {Jargon File}. Syllables are separated by {dash} or followed {single quote} or {back quote}. Single quote means the preceding syllable is stressed (louder), back quote follows a syllable with intermediate stress (slightly louder), otherwise all syllables are equally stressed. Consonants are pronounced as in English but note: ch soft, as in "church" g hard, as in "got" gh aspirated g+h of "bughouse" or "ragheap" j voiced, as in "judge" kh guttural of "loch" or "l'chaim" s unvoiced, as in "pass" zh as "s" in "pleasure" Uppercase letters are pronounced as their English letter names; thus (for example) /H-L-L/ is equivalent to /aych el el/. /Z/ is pronounced /zee/ in the US and /zed/ in the UK (elsewhere?). Vowels are represented as follows: a back, that ah father, palm (see note) ar far, mark aw flaw, caught ay bake, rain e less, men ee easy, ski eir their, software i trip, hit i: life, sky o block, stock (see note) oh flow, sew oo loot, through or more, door ow out, how oy boy, coin uh but, some u put, foot *r fur, insert (only in stressed syllables; otherwise use just "r") y yet, young yoo few, chew [y]oo /oo/ with optional fronting as in `news' (/nooz/ or /nyooz/) A /*/ is used for the `schwa' sound of unstressed or occluded vowels (often written with an upside-down `e'). The schwa vowel is omitted in unstressed syllables containing vocalic l, m, n or r; that is, "kitten" and "colour" would be rendered /kit'n/ and /kuhl'r/, not /kit'*n/ and /kuhl'*r/. The above table reflects mainly distinctions found in standard American English (that is, the neutral dialect spoken by TV network announcers and typical of educated speech in the Upper Midwest, Chicago, Minneapolis/St.Paul and Philadelphia). However, we separate /o/ from /ah/, which tend to merge in standard American. This may help readers accustomed to accents resembling British Received Pronunciation. Entries with a pronunciation of `//' are written-only. (1997-12-10)
Pronunciation ::: In this dictionary slashes (/../) bracket phonetic pronunciations of words not found in a standard English dictionary. The notation, and many of the pronunciations, were adapted from the Hacker's Jargon File.Syllables are separated by dash or followed single quote or back quote. Single quote means the preceding syllable is stressed (louder), back quote follows a syllable with intermediate stress (slightly louder), otherwise all syllables are equally stressed.Consonants are pronounced as in English but note: ch soft, as in churchg hard, as in got is pronounced /zee/ in the US and /zed/ in the UK (elsewhere?).Vowels are represented as follows: a back, thatah father, palm (see note) would be rendered /kit'n/ and /kuhl'r/, not /kit'*n/ and /kuhl'*r/.The above table reflects mainly distinctions found in standard American English (that is, the neutral dialect spoken by TV network announcers and typical of standard American. This may help readers accustomed to accents resembling British Received Pronunciation.Entries with a pronunciation of `//' are written-only. (1997-12-10)
racquet ::: n. --> See Racket.
right bracket ::: (character) ]. ASCII character 93.Common names: right square bracket; ITU-T: closing bracket; unbracket. Rare: unsquare; INTERCAL: U turn back.Paired with left bracket. (1997-11-23)
right bracket "character" "]". {ASCII} character 93. Common names: right square bracket; {ITU-T}: closing bracket; unbracket. Rare: unsquare; {INTERCAL}: U turn back. Paired with {left bracket}. (1997-11-23)
right brace ::: (character) }. ASCII character 125.Common names: close brace; right brace; right squiggly; right squiggly bracket/brace; right curly bracket/brace; ITU-T: closing brace. Rare: unbrace; uncurly; rytit ({ = leftit); right squirrelly; INTERCAL: bracelet ({ = embrace).Paired with left brace (1995-03-30)
right brace "character" "}". {ASCII} character 125. Common names: close brace; right brace; right squiggly; right squiggly bracket/brace; right curly bracket/brace; {ITU-T}: closing brace. Rare: unbrace; uncurly; rytit ("{" = leftit); right squirrelly; {INTERCAL}: bracelet ("{" = embrace). Paired with {left brace} (1995-03-30)
right parenthesis "character" ")". {ASCII} character 41. Common names: right paren; right parenthesis; right; close; thesis ("(" = paren); close paren; close parenthesis; right parenthesis; right banana. Rare: already ("(" = so); rparen; {ITU-T}: closing parenthesis; close round bracket, right round bracket, {INTERCAL}: wane ("(" = wax); unparenthisey ("(" = parenthisey); right ear. Paired with {left parenthesis}. (1995-03-06)
right parenthesis ::: (character) ). ASCII character 41.Common names: right paren; right parenthesis; right; close; thesis (( = paren); close paren; close parenthesis; right parenthesis; right banana. Rare: right round bracket, INTERCAL: wane (( = wax); unparenthisey (( = parenthisey); right ear.Paired with left parenthesis. (1995-03-06)
statement "programming" A single instruction in a {computer program} written in a {procedural language}. Typical examples are an {assignment statement}, an {if statement} (conditional), a {loop} statement ("while", "for", "repeat", "until", etc.), a {procedure call}, a procedure {exit}, {function} {return statement}, {switch statement} or {goto statement}. In many languages, one or more simple statements can be executed sequentially as a {compound statement}, e.g. bracketed between "begin" and "end" or "{" and "}" which can then appear in place of a simple statement in an "if" or loop. Each statement in a {high-level language} will typically be translated into several {machine code} instructions by a {compiler} or, alternatively, executed by an {interpreter}. (2009-10-23)
Sudoksa. (修德寺). In Korean, "Cultivating Merit Monastery"; the seventh district monastery (PONSA) of the contemporary CHOGYE CHONG of Korean Buddhism, located on the slopes of Toksung (Virtue Exalted) mountain in South Ch'ungch'ong province. According to Sudoksa's monastic records, the monastery was first constructed at the end of the Paekche dynasty by Sungje (d.u.). During the reign of the Paekche king Mu (r. 600-641) the monk Hyehyon (d.u.) is said to have lectured there on the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"). Alternate records state, however, that the monastery was founded by Chimyong (d.u.) during the reign of the Paekche king Pop (r. 599-600). The monastery was subsequently repaired by the renowned Koryo-dynasty Son monk NAONG HYEGŬN (1320-1376), and since that time Sudoksa has been one of the major centers of SoN (C. CHAN) practice in Korea. Sudoksa is best known for its TAEUNG CHoN, the main shrine hall. The taeung chon was rebuilt in 1308 and is presumed to be the oldest wooden building in Korea, having been spared the conflagrations that struck many Korean monasteries during the Japanese Hideyoshi invasions (1592-1598). It was constructed in the Chusimp'o style, so that its support pillars are wider in the middle than they are at the bottom or top. The Tap'o-style bracketing, imported from Fujian during the Southern Song dynasty, is similar to other Koryo-era monasteries, such as Pongjongsa and PUSoKSA. Inside the hall are images of three buddhas, sĀKYAMUNI, AMITĀBHA and BHAIsAJYAGURU, and two bodhisattvas, MANJUsRĪ and SAMANTABHADRA. Paintings depict KsITIGARBHA, the ten kings of hell (see SHIWANG; YAMA), and some indigenous Korean divinities. Many of the oldest original wall paintings were damaged during the Korean War and have now been removed to the safety of the monastery's museum. The courtyard holds two STuPAs, a three-story stone pagoda probably from the Koryo dynasty, and an older seven-story granite pagoda from the late Paekche dynasty, with typical upward curving corners. There is a thirty-three foot high statue of Maitreya a short walk up the mountain; the statue is unusual in that it is wearing Korean clothes, including a double cylindrical hat. It was erected by the Son master MAN'GONG WoLMYoN (1872-1946), one of the renowned Son teachers of the modern era who taught at Sudoksa; other famous masters associated with the monastery include KYoNGHo SoNGU (1849-1912), the nun KIM IRYoP (1869-1971), and Hyeam Hyonmun (1884-1985). Sudoksa recently opened a museum near its entrance to hold the large number of important historical artistic and written works the monastery owns, such as the exquisite wall paintings that formerly were located in the taeung chon. In 1996, Sudoksa was elevated to the status of an ecumenical monastery (CH'ONGNIM), and is one of the five such centers in the contemporary Chogye order, which are all expected to provide training in the full range of practices that exemplify the major strands of the Korean Buddhist tradition; the monastery is thus also known as the Toksung Ch'ongnim.
Summary Object Interchange Format "web, protocol" (SOIF) The attribute-value pair record format which {Harvest Brokers} use to exchange {Harvest} content summaries. SOIF provides a means of bracketing collections of summary objects, allowing {Harvest Brokers} to retrieve SOIF content summaries for many objects in a single, efficient compressed stream. Harvest Brokers provide support for querying SOIF data using structured attribute-value queries and many other types of queries. {(http://ust.hk/Harvest/brokers/soifhelp.html)}. (1996-09-16)
Summary Object Interchange Format ::: (World-Wide Web, protocol) (SOIF) The attribute-value pair record format which Harvest Brokers use to exchange Harvest content summaries.SOIF provides a means of bracketing collections of summary objects, allowing Harvest Brokers to retrieve SOIF content summaries for many objects in a single, efficient compressed stream. Harvest Brokers provide support for querying SOIF data using structured attribute-value queries and many other types of queries. . (1996-09-16)
Tax effect - 1. the impact on taxes of a taxable revenue or expense item. For instance, an interest expense itemised deduction of $2000 will result in tax savings of $560 at the 28% tax bracket. OR 2. general term describing the consequences of a specific tax scenario with respect to a particular tax paying entity. Many factors are considered such as time elements, projections and estimates of revenues, expenses, deductions, acquisitions, disposals, and the like and their relationship upon present and future tax liability .
Tax indexing – Is a method using a form of indexation to decrease the overall impact of the erosion of purchasing power in periods of inflation and subsequent "bracket creep."
template "text" A {document} that contains {parameters}, identified by some special {syntax}, that are replaced by {actual arguments} by the template processing system. For example: Dear "guest", "host" would like to invite you to a party at "location" on "date" at "time". Where the words in angle brackets are the parameters to be replaced by the name of an actual guest, etc. More sophisticated systems allow repetition, where a section is repeated in a single output document using a list of inputs; conditional sections or (nested) inclusion of other templates. See also {class template}. (2007-10-14)
tennis ::: n. --> A play in which a ball is driven to and fro, or kept in motion by striking it with a racket or with the open hand. ::: v. t. --> To drive backward and forward, as a ball in playing tennis.
The capital roman letters here denote arbitrary formulas of the propositional calculus (in the technical sense defined below) and the arrow is to be read "stands for" or "is an abbreviation for." Suppose that we have given some specific list of propositional symbols, which may be infinite in number, and to which we shall refer as the fundamental propositional symbols. These are not necessarily single letters or characters, but may be expressions taken from any language or system of notation; they may denote particular propositions, or they may contain variables and denote ambiguously any proposition of a certain form or class. Certain restrictions are also necessary upon the way in which the fundamental propositional symbols can contain square brackets [ ]; for the present purpose it will suffice to suppose that they do not contain square brackets at all, although they may contain parentheses or other kinds of brackets. We call formulas of the propositional calculus (relative to the given list of fundamental propositional symbols) all the expressions determined by the four following rules: all the fundamental propositional symbols are formulas if A is a formula, ∼[A] is a formula; if A and B are formulas [A][B] is a formula; if A and B are formulas [A] ∨ [B] is a formula. The formulas of the propositional calculus as thus defined will in general contain more brackets than are necessary for clarity or freedom from ambiguity; in practice we omit superfluous brackets and regard the shortened expressions as abbreviations for the full formulas. It will be noted also that, if A and B are formulas, we regard [A] | [B], [A] ⊃ [B], [A] ≡ [B], and [A] + [B], not as formulas, but as abbreviations for certain formulas in accordance with the above given definitions.
The dual of a formula is obtained by interchanging conjunction and (inclusive) disjunction throughout and at the same time interchanging universal quantification and existential quantification throughout. (In doing this the different symbols, e.g., functional constants, although they may consist of several characters in succession rather than a single character, shall be treated as units, and no change shall be made inside a symbol. A similar remark, applies at all places where we speak of occurrences of a particular symbol or sequence of symbols in a formula, and the like.) It can be shown that the following principles of duality hold (where A* and B* denote the duals of. the formulas A and B respectively): if A is a theorem, then ∼A* is a theorem; if A ⊃ B is a theorem, then B* ⊃ A* is a theorem; if A ≡ B is a theorem, then A* ≡ B* is a theorem. A formula is said to be in prenex normal form if all the quantifiers which it contains stand together at the beginning, unseparated by negations (or other sentential connectives), and the scope of each quantifier (i.e., the extent of the bracket [ ] following the quantifier) is to the end of the entire formula. In the case of a formula in prenex normal form, the succession of quantifiers at the beginning is called the prefix; the remaining portion contains no quantifiers and is the matrix of the formula. It can be proved that for every formula A there is a formula B in prenex normal form such that A ≡ B is a theorem; and B is then called a prenex normal form of A.
tilde ::: (character) ~ ASCII character 126.Common names are: ITU-T: tilde; squiggle; twiddle; not. Rare: approx; wiggle; swung dash; enyay; INTERCAL: sqiggle (sic).Used as C's prefix bitwise negation operator; and in Unix csh, GNU Emacs, and elsewhere, to stand for the current user's home directory, or, when prefixed to a login name, for the given user's home directory.The swung dash or approximation sign is not quite the same as tilde in typeset material but the ASCII tilde serves for both (compare angle brackets).[Has anyone else heard this called tidal (as in wave)?] (1996-10-18)
tilde "character" "~" {ASCII} character 126. Common names are: {ITU-T}: tilde; squiggle; {twiddle}; not. Rare: approx; wiggle; {swung dash}; enyay; {INTERCAL}: sqiggle (sic). Used as {C}'s prefix {bitwise negation} {operator}; and in {Unix} {csh}, {GNU Emacs}, and elsewhere, to stand for the current user's {home directory}, or, when prefixed to a {login name}, for the given user's home directory. The "swung dash" or "approximation" sign is not quite the same as {tilde} in typeset material but the ASCII tilde serves for both (compare {angle brackets}). [Has anyone else heard this called "tidal" (as in wave)?] (1996-10-18)
triplet (shown with a horizontal bracket and a '3'): Three notes in the place of two, used to subdivide a beat.
Vanavāsin. (P. Vanavāsī; T. Nags na gnas; C. Fanaposi zunzhe; J. Batsunabashi sonja; K. Pollabasa chonja 伐那婆斯尊者). Sanskrit proper name of the fourteenth of the sixteen ARHAT elders (sOdAsASTHAVIRA), who were charged by the Buddha with protecting his dispensation until the advent of the next buddha, MAITREYA. He abides on Habitable Mountain (C. Kezhushan) with 1,400 disciples. In the Chinese tradition, he was said to have been born during a heavy downpour, which made a racket as the raindrops hit the plantain leaves. After ordaining, he also often diligently studied under the plantain trees, thus earning him the nickname "Plantain Arhat" (Bajiao Luohan). In CHANYUE GUANXIU's standard Chinese depiction, Vanavāsin sits in meditation in a cave, with his eyes closed, wearing a robe across his shoulders with both hands hidden in the sleeves. East Asian images also portray him seated next to a vase, his hands together in ANJALIMUDRĀ. In Tibetan iconography, he holds a chowrie (VĀLAVYAJANA).
World-Wide Web ::: (World-Wide Web, networking, hypertext) (WWW, W3, The Web) An Internet client-server hypertext distributed information retrieval system which originated from the CERN High-Energy Physics laboratories in Geneva, Switzerland.An extensive user community has developed on the Web since its public introduction in 1991. In the early 1990s, the developers at CERN spread word of share of Web traffic traversing the NSFNET Internet backbone reached 75 gigabytes per month or one percent. By July 1994 it was one terabyte per month.On the WWW everything (documents, menus, indices) is represented to the user as a hypertext object in HTML format. Hypertext links refer to other documents by Gopher, Telnet or news, as well as those available via the http protocol used to transfer hypertext documents.The client program (known as a browser), e.g. NCSA Mosaic, Netscape Navigator, runs on the user's computer and provides two basic navigation operations: to follow a link or to send a query to a server. A variety of client and server software is freely available.Most clients and servers also support forms which allow the user to enter arbitrary text as well as selecting options from customisable menus and on/off switches.Following the widespread availability of web browsers and servers, many companies from about 1995 realised they could use the same software and protocols on their own private internal TCP/IP networks giving rise to the term intranet.If you don't have a WWW browser, but you are on the Internet, you can access the Web using the command: telnet www.w3.org (Internet address 128.141.201.74) but it's much better if you install a browser on your own computer.The World Wide Web Consortium is the main standards body for the web. . . .Mailing list: .Usenet newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.misc, comp.infosystems.www.providers, comp.infosystems.www.users, comp.infosystems.announce.The best way to access this dictionary is via the Web since you will get the latest version and be able to follow cross-references easily. If you are reading a plain text version of this dictionary then you will see lots of curly brackets and strings like {(http://hostname/here/there/page.html)}. These are transformed into hypertext links when you access it via the Web.See also Java, webhead. (1996-10-28)
Yunjusi. (雲居寺). In Chinese, "Cloud Dwelling Monastery"; monastery that is the home of the FANGSHAN SHIJING (stone scriptures). The monk Jingwan (?-639) allegedly founded this monastery in 631, but a stone inscription dated to 669 is the earliest written record of its existence. The monastery was also known as Xiyusi (Western Valley or Western Region Monastery), and in the seventh-century Mingbaoji ("Records of Miraculous Retribution") it is called Zhichuansi (Fount of Wisdom Monastery). On the nearby hill of Shijingshan (Stone Scriptures Hill) just to the east of Yunjusi, nine cave libraries stored the Fangshan lithic canon: its total of 14,278 lithic blocks of 1,122 Buddhist scriptures represent textual lineages that derive from recensions that circulated during the Tang and Khitan Liao dynasties. The carving of the lithic scriptures started during the Sui dynasty under the monk Jingwan with the support of Empress Xiao (r. 604-617), and continued through the late Ming dynasty. The monastery itself is famous for its pagodas, which were closely associated with the engraving of the lithographs. Seven stone pagodas date from the Tang, of which the single-story one at the top of Stone Scriptures Hill, with an inscription dated to 898, is noted for both its architecture and carved decorations. Two of the five pagodas from the Liao are especially significant. Built in 1117, the octagonal Southern Pagoda has eleven stories and pointed eaves and includes a depository of Buddhist scriptures beneath it. The Northern Pagoda is uniquely shaped: the bottom half is octagonal with bracketed eaves and carved niches, while the upper half is cone-shaped and decorated with nine circular bands. Its surface is decorated with more than thirty groups of brick reliefs depicting scenes of dancing and singing, the most interesting example of which is a goddess strumming a three-stringed instrument, one of the rare extant examples for the study of Liao musical culture. The Northern Pagoda is surrounded by smaller stone pagodas dating from the Tang dynasty, several of which resemble the Xiaoyanta (Small Wild Goose Pagoda; see DACI'ENSI) in the ancient Chinese capital of Chang'an (modern Xi'an).
KEYS (10k)
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
27 Leigh Brackett
6 Smedley D Butler
5 Al Capone
4 Eric Hoffer
3 Christopher McDougall
3 Adam Kokesh
2 Zadie Smith
2 William Shakespeare
2 Terry Pratchett
2 Rod Laver
2 Robert A Heinlein
2 Raymond Chandler
2 Philip K Dick
2 Novak Djokovic
2 M Scott Peck
2 Lynne Truss
2 Lisa Kleypas
2 Libba Bray
2 Lee Child
2 John Bradshaw
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:I don't think I've ever held a racket in my hand ... There's got to be somebody in the US who isn't trying to play tennis and stinking up the court. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 2:Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 3:Boys have their soft and gentle moods too. You would suppose by the morning racket that nothing could be more foreign to their nature than romance and vague sadness. . . . But boys have hours of great sinking and sadness, when kindness and fondness are peculiarly needful to them. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 4:The only way to combat the murder that is war is to show the dirty combinations that make it and the criminals and swine that hope for it and the idiotic way they run it when they get it so that an honest man will distrust it as he would distrust a racket and refuse to be enslaved into it. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 5:The city is loveliest when the sweet death racket begins. Her own life lived in defiance of nature, her electricity, her frigidaires, her soundproof walls, the glint of lacquered nails, the plumes that wave across the corrugated sky. Here in the coffin depths grow the everlasting flowers sent by telegraph. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 6:Don't you understand anything? Isn't it absolutely essential to keep a fierce Left and a fierce Right, both on their toes and each terrified of the other? That's how we get things done. Any opposition to the N.I.C.E. is represented as a Left racket in the Right papers and a Right racket in the Left papers. If it's properly done, you get each side outbidding the other in support of us-to refute the enemy slanders. Of course we're non-political. The real power always is. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 7:Our feelings provide meaning not only for our private lives, but also for social and political processes. When we want to know who should rule the country, what foreign policy to adopt and what economic steps to take, we don’t look for the answers in scriptures. Nor do we obey the commands of the Pope or the Council of Nobel Laureates. Rather, in most countries, we hold democratic elections and ask people what they think about the matter at hand. We believe that the voter knows best, and that the free choices of individual humans are the ultimate political authority. Yet how does the voter know what to choose? Theoretically at least, the voter is supposed to consult his or her innermost feelings, and follow their lead. It is not always easy. In order to get in touch with my feelings, I need to filter out the empty propaganda slogans, the endless lies of ruthless politicians, the distracting noise created by cunning spin doctors, and the learned opinions of hired pundits. I need to ignore all this racket, and attend only to my authentic inner voice. And then my authentic inner voice whispers in my ear ‘Vote Cameron’ or ‘Vote Modi’ or ‘Vote Clinton’ or whomever, and I put a cross against that name on the ballot paper – and that’s how we know who should rule the country. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:I'll let the racket do the talking. ~ John McEnroe, #NFDB
2:I like to let my racket do the talking. ~ Rod Laver, #NFDB
3:Once in the racket you're always in it. ~ Al Capone, #NFDB
4:Thou shalt not horn in on thy husbands racket ~ Homer, #NFDB
5:Religion is a Snare and a Racket. ~ Charles Taze Russell, #NFDB
6:War is a racket. The few profit, the many pay. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
7:It's a racket. Those stock market guys are crooked. ~ Al Capone, #NFDB
8:racket, terrorized by a threat against himself and his ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
9:Your madness is silent and your sanity makes a racket. ~ C D Reiss, #NFDB
10:Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class. ~ Al Capone, #NFDB
11:Lyrics are my racket; music is play - the fluff stuff. ~ Cass McCombs, #NFDB
12:I'm in the wrong racket if I didn't want a public life. ~ Joe Mantegna, #NFDB
13:Wherever there's a system, there's a racket to beat it. ~ Jerome Ravetz, #NFDB
14:I could hear my abandoned dreams making a racket in my soul. ~ Joy Harjo, #NFDB
15:I used to play a lot of racket sports, tennis and squash. ~ Jason Statham, #NFDB
16:Crying when feeling angry is a common female feeling racket. ~ John Bradshaw, #NFDB
17:I'm one injury away from hanging up the racket at any time. ~ Lleyton Hewitt, #NFDB
18:I had not picked up a tennis racket in 15 years, so I tried. ~ Matthew Ashford, #NFDB
19:I killed a squirrel once with a car. Twice with a tennis racket. ~ Anthony Jeselnik, #NFDB
20:I'm not in the business. 'Liking people' is often just another racket. ~ Philip Roth, #NFDB
21:Where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. ~ Sojourner Truth, #NFDB
22:Our media and political system has turned into a mutual protection racket. ~ Bill Moyers, #NFDB
23:He had the polite yet aggressive air of a man who enjoys competitive racket sports. ~ Hari Kunzru, #NFDB
24:Printing currency for foreigners to buy is the best racket a government can get into. ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
25:Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and turns into a racket. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
26:Be careful, darling. Your footsteps land heavy here. Your racket will wake the dragons. ~ Sarah Kay, #NFDB
27:War's a racket. No doubt. But war is a racket for the politicians, not the soldiers. ~ Sean Beaudoin, #NFDB
28:I have a much greater ambition to be the best racket player than the best prose writer. ~ William Hazlitt, #NFDB
29:Racket beer, sonny,” he said sadly. “Tasteless as a roadhouse blonde.” (Spanish Blood) ~ Raymond Chandler, #NFDB
30:Everybody is on something these days. It's a racket. Overprescribing, masking the problem. ~ Keith Donohue, #NFDB
31:Intelligence is silence, truth is being invisible. But what a racket I make in declaring this. ~ Ned Rorem, #NFDB
32:Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and turns into a racket. ~ Christopher McDougall, #NFDB
33:and beeping, obviously sure that I was either too stupid or too deaf to hear the racket. ~ Mary Higgins Clark, #NFDB
34:A racket is a family-authorized feeling used to replace an unacceptable and shameful feeling. ~ John Bradshaw, #NFDB
35:Oh what was the racket that backeted and smashed in raging might, to make this oil-puddle world?-- ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
36:Scriptwriting is the toughest part of the whole racket... the least understood and the least noticed ~ Frank Capra, #NFDB
37:Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
38:I love you Contessa, Your madness is silent and your sanity makes a racket. Now is the time for madness. ~ C D Reiss, #NFDB
39:I don't mind being called tough, since I find in this racket it's the tough guys who lead the survivors. ~ Curtis LeMay, #NFDB
40:If you live in America, you don't have to work. You can just drift along in the smiling and nodding racket. ~ Quentin Crisp, #NFDB
41:late capitalism is a pyramid racket on a global scale, the kind of pyramid you do human sacrifices up on top of, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
42:I grew up in the 1950s at the beginning of rock n' roll, and would strum a tennis racket in front of the mirror. ~ Jonathan Pryce, #NFDB
43:First something is a great idea, then it becomes a cause, then it becomes a business and finally it becomes a racket. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
44:There’s a baseball bat in the corner. A tennis racket. But badminton? What were you gonna do, pelt the intruder with birdies? ~ Gregg Hurwitz, #NFDB
45:When I was a freelancer, I thought this journalism thing was a racket, and now that I'm where I am now, I know it's a racket. ~ Tabitha Soren, #NFDB
46:Journalism is a kind of profession, or craft, or racket, for people who never wanted to grow up and go out into the real world. ~ Harry Reasoner, #NFDB
47:Power leads to more power, no matter what your racket, and not only were they rich and influential but they were smart as hell, too. ~ Jimmy Hoffa, #NFDB
48:The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before the nations manhood can be conscripted. ~ Smedley D Butler, #NFDB
49:I was just another long-haired teenage kid with visions of grandeur, strumming a tennis racket or a broom in front of his bedroom mirror. ~ Jon Bon Jovi, #NFDB
50:When I want to go to sleep, I must first get a whole menagerie of voices to shut up. You wouldn't believe what a racket they make in my room. ~ Karl Kraus, #NFDB
51:what other job you could fail at for years and still get paid for, other than therapist or weatherman, and maybe politician. What a racket. ~ Russell Blake, #NFDB
52:History is full of really good stories. That's the main reason I got into this racket: I want to make the argument that history is interesting. ~ Sarah Vowell, #NFDB
53:I don't think I've ever held a racket in my hand ... There's got to be somebody in the US who isn't trying to play tennis and stinking up the court. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
54:The words of the social critic Eric Hoffer were ringing true: "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and turns into a racket. ~ Christopher McDougall, #NFDB
55:The words of the social critic Eric Hoffer were ringing true: "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and turns into a racket." ~ Christopher McDougall, #NFDB
56:I had one good racket, a Wilson Javelin. It was my favorite racket, and I made the mistake of putting it next to the heater. It just got so hot that it melted. ~ Stefan Edberg, #NFDB
57:The first time at age 5 and a half, when I took a racket in my hands and my father fed me some balls, I made 50 backhands in a row - didn't miss a single one. ~ Marion Bartoli, #NFDB
58:Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
59:I got my first tennis racket on my seventh birthday. And because we had a tennis court in our backyard, I played every day. By ten I was playing competitively. ~ Tullian Tchividjian, #NFDB
60:The wind from the Caribbean blew in the windows along with the racket made by the birds, and Fermina Daza felt in her blood the wild beating of her free will. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB
61:Is it true you’re James Adams?’ a puffed-out little grey shirt holding a tennis racket asked. ‘The guy who started the food fight and had sex in the campus fountain? ~ Robert Muchamore, #NFDB
62:Humility
Great poets fire the world with fagots big
That make a crackling racket,
But I'm content with but a whispering twig
To warm some single jacket.
~ Ambrose Bierce,#NFDB
63:Make as much racket as you like people. Noise is life and an excess of noise is a sign that life is good. There will be time for us all to be quiet when we are safely dead. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
64:Feb. 1, 1965
Storm late at night, heavy rain, a thunderous racket, the windows shaking. I heard my name called. A woman’s voice in hell pleading with me to join her. ~ Leonard Michaels,#NFDB
65:What a racket,’ she said as she walked up, theatrically clamping her hands over her ears. ‘Noise, everywhere you go. We ought to call ourselves Homo clamorans. Noisemaking Man. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
66:What we have to do now is to make the public at large aware that what we're looking at is not a historical event but - and I have to be brutal and I am going to say it - a racket. ~ Ernst Zundel, #NFDB
67:Thudding racket of the rock crushers pulverizing ore. The sound of the stamps in operation is the sound of money being made, and only two things will stop them—Christmas and tragedy. ~ Blake Crouch, #NFDB
68:Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
69:I don't think there is a good reason for an abortion, but Dr. Jasper made me really realize it was just a racket. He was just doing it for the money. He didn't care about the women. ~ Norma McCorvey, #NFDB
70:Oh Freddy don’t talk like that!” she said, and her big eyes filled with tears. When Mrs. Wiggins cried, she made almost as much racket as when she laughed. You could hear her for miles. ~ Walter R Brooks, #NFDB
71:I can´t help it. You´re just so sexy in those baggy-ass pants. I got to get me a pair, ´cause nothing says hotness like wearing what looks like two Heftys stitched together at your racket and balls.´ ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
72:For God's sake stop making people in your image. Harry was real. He wasn't just your hero and my lover. He was Harry. He was in a racket. He did bad things. What about it? He was the man we knew. ~ Graham Greene, #NFDB
73:I'm furious about the Women's Liberationists. They keep getting up on soap-boxes and proclaiming that women are brighter than men. That's true, but it should be kept very quiet or it ruins the whole racket. ~ Anita Loos, #NFDB
74:I follow the teachings of Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, United States Marine Corps. He won two Congressional Medals of Honor, and he wrote the highly controversial antiwar book 'War is a Racket.' ~ Jesse Ventura, #NFDB
75:As for the tank, not only is it unAmerican and probably subversive to eat without watching stereo but also the racket from it would interfere even with a directional mike aimed at us from a distance . . . ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
76:And then it was like, wait, you can go to college and study theater? And act in plays? This is almost a racket, you know. And then when the opportunity came along to do it professionally, I thought I'd won the lottery. ~ Tom Hanks, #NFDB
77:Steven Alan Green is ONE funny writer ---- Everything I read of yours makes me laugh and think - Not just the kind words about meBut the insights you have for the Comedy racket.You're Barbara Hershey, we are beaches. ~ Taylor Negron, #NFDB
78:I started rooting - you know, sticking up joints - with some older guys. By now I had gotten a taste of what the racket world really was - the glamour, the way they dressed, the way they always had a pocketful of money. ~ Mickey Cohen, #NFDB
79:My father had never watched tennis, never liked tennis too much. He said, 'OK, we buy a racket, we watch together,' because we didn't know anything. It was a process of learning together that made it more interesting. ~ Novak Djokovic, #NFDB
80:Sure. I’d like to live regular. Go home to a good looking wife, a hot dinner, and a husky kid. But I guess I got film in my blood. I love this racket. It’s exciting. It’s dangerous. It’s funny. It’s tough. It’s heartbreaking. ~ Weegee, #NFDB
81:Neighbours complaining about someone’s dog making an awful racket. You could hardly blame the poor beast, its owner had died in her bed at least a fortnight before and there hadn’t been much left of the old girl worth eating. ~ James Oswald, #NFDB
82:What you mons making all the racket about? You wake me again and I’ll put the voodoo hex on you. All you only call me Tuberculosis behind my back now. You want the real thing?” Sergeant "T. B" Tinkerbelle Bettina Jones. ~ Ellen Dawn Benefield, #NFDB
83:How much more tuneful are the birds of the woods than the birds of the water. Ducks and geese make their raucous racket without once finding a note of sweetness, whilst these tree dwellers are practiced in the art of melody. I ~ Paula Brackston, #NFDB
84:My grandfather told me that I should have a series of headshots, one with a tennis racket, one dressed as a naval officer, and one dressed as a cheeky chappie. He said, "If you have those headshots, the world is your oyster." ~ Henry Lloyd Hughes, #NFDB
85:Out on the street, you never know what you're getting, and suddenly two days later you're beating yourself in the head with a tennis racket, wearing a towel, quoting Poe. You don't want that for your kid. You really don't want that. ~ Johnny Depp, #NFDB
86:I am creating an atmosphere! Oh, Unc, we’ve finally got bodies in this joint! Paying bodies. We could have a good racket going here.” “I’m not interested in a ‘racket.’ I’m an academic.” “That’s okay, Unc. I won’t hold it against you. ~ Libba Bray, #NFDB
87:Vidal gives the impression of believing that the entire heterosexual edifice - registry offices, 'Romeo and Juliet,' the disposable diaper - is just a sorry story of self-hypnosis and mass hysteria: a hoax, a racket, or sheer propaganda. ~ Martin Amis, #NFDB
88:The earth is speaking to us, but we can't hear because of all the racket our senses are making. Sometimes we need to erase them, erase our senses. Then - maybe - the earth will touch us. The universe will speak. The stars will whisper. ~ Jerry Spinelli, #NFDB
89:It's all a big racket; they're playing it on themselves. I mean, a gun goes through a famous battle, like the Meuse-Argonne, and it's the same as if it hadn't, unless you know. It's in here.' He tapped his head. 'In the mind, not the gun. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
90:Some will say prohibition is futile because it doesn’t achieve its stated objectives, and many governments can’t even keep drugs out of prisons. They are missing the point: prohibition works exactly as intended and is a very profitable racket. ~ Adam Kokesh, #NFDB
91:Being a Negro writer these days is a racket and I'm going to make the most of it while it lasts. About twice a year I sell a story. It is acclaimed. I am a genius in the making. Thank God for this Negro literary renaissance. Long may it flourish ~ Wallace Thurman, #NFDB
92:I am creating an atmosphere! Oh, Unc, we’ve finally got bodies in this joint! Paying bodies. We could have a good racket going here.”
“I’m not interested in a ‘racket.’ I’m an academic.”
“That’s okay, Unc. I won’t hold it against you. ~ Libba Bray,#NFDB
93:Thanks for helping back there,” I told him. “And Raeya, you totally had the game point. Thanks.” “I was so scared, Rissy,” she said, looking back at me quickly. “So I did what I thought you would do.” “You thought I’d hit a zombie with a tennis racket? ~ Emily Goodwin, #NFDB
94:We were always about the rebellion at the heart of America not only because we lived that way but also because rock-and-roll has always been salvation for horny, aggressive teenagers as much as it's always been nothing but a fucking racket to their parents. ~ Tommy Lee, #NFDB
95:You seem a lot like me," he said. "You don't gawk at me like I'm a freak."
"I'll kick anyone who does."
"I think you already did. Or at least smacked him with a tennis racket."
-Alexander and Raven, Vampire Kisses, Pg.127, The Beginning ~ Ellen Schreiber,#NFDB
96:WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one
international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the
losses in lives. ~ Smedley D Butler,#NFDB
97:Football is not, in my view, a sport: it is somewhere between a business racket and a mental illness. I associate it with all the worst aspects of our society - violence, drunkenness, drugs, racism, exploitation, greed and stupidity; and that's just for starters. ~ Simon Heffer, #NFDB
98:CHARLES: I believe that any professional bears the shame of the questionable worth of his ministrations. I know of my racket what you know of yours: that, for the most part, we are paid for the ability to keep a straight face. While accomplishing little or nothing. ~ David Mamet, #NFDB
99:My three favorite travel writers of all time are Robert Louis Stevenson, Graham Greene, and Chuck Thompson. Smile When You're Lying not only tells the truth about the travel-writing racket, it gets to the heart of some of the travel industry's best-kept secrets. ~ Kinky Friedman, #NFDB
100:I never spoke — unless addressed —
And then, 'twas brief and low —
I could not bear to live — aloud —
The Racket shamed me so —
And if it had not been so far —
And any one I knew
Were going — I had often thought
How noteless — I could die — ~ Emily Dickinson,#NFDB
101:To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket. 1. We must take the profit out of war. 2. We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war. 3. We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes. ~ Smedley D Butler, #NFDB
102:week, listening to the horrible racket of tumbling, grinding stone, and when they came out, they'd morphed from rocks to treasure? That's what Jessica Morrell does for my books. She's the polisher, my manuscripts are the stones, and the grinding sound is me complaining because ~ Jess Lourey, #NFDB
103:To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket. We must take the profit out of war. We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war. We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes. ~ Smedley D Butler, #NFDB
104:A miracle happened. Right there and then, in amongst the lunchtime diners and tourists, with the sweeping views of San Francisco Bay outside the window and the sea lions making a racket on the wharf below, a miracle happened. And Samuel lost any hope of recovery. Lily laughed. ~ Lexxie Couper, #NFDB
105:Mangling my racket and an odd swearword on the court is not something I am proud of and it shouldn't happen, but even my coaches have told me that it's sometimes better to let it all out, the anger inside you, because keeping it bottled would just eat you up in the long term. ~ Novak Djokovic, #NFDB
106:Manners are manners. Jimmy Connors and Ilie Nastase have no respect. I don't want my kid seeing Nastase play. The demeanor you show on the court is important to tennis.... Maybe we (yesterday's stars) were too stereotyped. But we were told to behave or they'd take our racket away. ~ Rod Laver, #NFDB
107:Matthew hereby declares that Katherine Galloway is retroactively responsible for all embarrassing and painful incidents that have occurred in his life to date. Including, but not limited to, that time he broke his own nose with a tennis racket in eighth grade. KATHERINE’S FAULT. ~ Lauren James, #NFDB
108:It was strange to have his parents needing something from him. Something this big. In the past, they needed silence from him if he was making a racket. They needed him to apply himself. “I need you to be sensible, Tom.” But not this need. Not the need to make everything right. ~ Melina Marchetta, #NFDB
109:Boys have their soft and gentle moods too. You would suppose by the morning racket that nothing could be more foreign to their nature than romance and vague sadness. . . . But boys have hours of great sinking and sadness, when kindness and fondness are peculiarly needful to them. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
110:In the system of chivalry, men protect women against men. This is not unlike the protection relationship which [organized crime] established with small businesses in the early part of this century. Indeed, chivalry is an age-old protection racket which depends for its existence on rape. ~ Susan Griffin, #NFDB
111:I let go of the pump as well now. I registered a sense of fatigue. And regret. It was the same fatigue and regret you feel when you miss a tennis ball. You were planning to smash it, but you swing hard and miss; the arm holding the racket meets no resistance and lashes wildly through the air. ~ Herman Koch, #NFDB
112:I'm trained as an actor for the stage - classically trained, believe it or not - and I worked closely with Stella Adler for years. People don't know that much about it. They just think I am these people. But I've been in this comedy racket, because it's just how everybody wants to see me. ~ Michael Richards, #NFDB
113:I have been....moved to wonder whether my job is a job or a racket, whether economists, and particularly economic theorists, may not be in the position that Cicero, citing Cato, ascribed to the augurs of Rome-that they should cover their faces or burst into laugher when they met on the street. ~ Frank Knight, #NFDB
114:The only way to combat the murder that is war is to show the dirty combinations that make it and the criminals and swine that hope for it and the idiotic way they run it when they get it so that an honest man will distrust it as he would distrust a racket and refuse to be enslaved into it. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
115:A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. In ~ Smedley D Butler, #NFDB
116:For a split second, Harry thought how absurd it was for Tonks to expect the dummy to hear her talking that quietly through a sheet of glass, when there were buses rumbling along behind her and all the racket of street full of shoppers. Then he reminded himself that dummies could not hear anyway. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
117:Another Pole landed one afternoon in the grounds of a very respectable lawn tennis club. He was signed in as a guest, given a racket, lent some white flannels and invited to take part in a match. His opponents were thrashed and left totally exhausted by the time an RAF vehicle came to collect him. ~ Antony Beevor, #NFDB
118:It's goddamned funny in this police racket how an old woman can look out of a window and see a guy running and pick him out of a line-up six months later, but we can show hotel help a clear photo and they just can't be sure.'
'That's one of the qualifications for good hotel help,' I said. ~ Raymond Chandler,#NFDB
119:There are only two reasons why you should ever be asked to give your youngsters. One is defense of our homes. The other is the defense of our Bill of Rights and particularly the right to worship God as we see fit. Every other reason advanced for the murder of young men is a racket, pure and simple. ~ Smedley D Butler, #NFDB
120:We've created this cottage industry in which it pays to be un-objective. It pays to be subjective as much as possible. It's a great way to have your cake and eat it too. Criticize other people for not being objective. Be as subjective as you want. It's a great little racket. I'm glad we found it actually. ~ Matt Labash, #NFDB
121:The city is loveliest when the sweet death racket begins. Her own life lived in defiance of nature, her electricity, her frigidaires, her soundproof walls, the glint of lacquered nails, the plumes that wave across the corrugated sky. Here in the coffin depths grow the everlasting flowers sent by telegraph. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
122:There’s something obscene in this love of the past which ends in breadlines and dugouts. Something obscene about this spiritual racket which permits an idiot to sprinkle holy water over Big Berthas and dreadnoughts and high explosives. Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
123:were either staying on there or going to different boarding schools. Her trunk was packed full. On the side was painted in big black letters DARRELL RIVERS. On the labels were the letters MT for Malory Towers. Darrell had only to carry her tennis racket in its press, and her small bag in which her mother had ~ Enid Blyton, #NFDB
124:Memory couldn’t be counted on. Time was unreliable and everything dissolved and died—even or especially when it looked like life. Like spring. All around us, the grass grew. Birds made a living racket in the trees. The sun beat down with promise. From that moment forward, Ernest would always hate the spring. ~ Paula McLain, #NFDB
125:My daddy says that when you do somethin' to distract you from your worstest fears, it's like whistlin' past the graveyard. You know, making a racket to keep the scaredness and the ghosts away. He says that's how we get by sometimes. But it's not weak, like hidin'...it's strong. It means you're able to go on. ~ Susan Crandall, #NFDB
126:I did not weep for the six million Jews or the two million Poles or the one million Serbs or the five million Russians -- I was unprepared to weep for all humanity -- but I did weep for these others who in one way or another had become dear to me, and my sobs made an unashamed racket across the abandoned beach ~ William Styron, #NFDB
127:This whole celebrity racket, it's not really my bag. I don't really do that stuff, and I am not looking to get famous myself. I would love it if my characters get famous, my work was well known and appreciated. But I'm an actor, not a spokes model or a celebrity or whatever that is. I don't know how to be that. ~ John C Reilly, #NFDB
128:To dine, drink champagne, raise a racket and make speeches about the people's consciousness, the people's conscience, freedom andso forth while servants in tails are scurrying around your table, just like serfs, and out in the severe cold on the street await coachmen--this is the same as lying to the holy spirit. ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
129:The government enforces a monopoly over the production and distribution of its alleged 'services' and brings violence to bear against would-be competitors. In so doing, it reveals the fraud at the heart of its impudent claims and gives sufficient proof that it is not a genuine protector, but a mere protection racket. ~ Robert Higgs, #NFDB
130:These people say free markets are the way to go, but wink, wink, the markets aren't really free. They're just a protectionist racket, and we have to pay for it all on every level. It's really quite extraordinary, and immoral, and illegal. These things need to be named, and shamed, and outed, and mocked, and prosecuted. ~ John Cusack, #NFDB
131:The whole thing [life] is a ‘Racket,’ so get a few laughs, do the best you can, take nothing serious, for nothing is certainly depending on this generation. Each one lives in spite of the previous one and not because of it. And don’t start “seeking knowledge,” for the more you seek the nearer the “Booby Hatch” you get. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
132:The mere fact that you belong to a certain ethnic group makes you eternally guilty, according to the twisted logic of Zionism. If Germans who were not even born before 1945 must pay reparations to the State of Israel, which did not exist until 1948, then you can be included in the Zionist racket of reparations and revenge. ~ Ernst Zundel, #NFDB
133:Dispute resolution is too important to be entrusted to governments. When we accept arbitrary authority from a violent monopoly protection racket, the authority is soon used to make us submit. Then that authority is for sale to the highest bidder and courts are used to get us to go along with all kinds of disastrous policies. ~ Adam Kokesh, #NFDB
134:Taxation is an inescapable part of the government racket. If governments never stole, they would cease to be governments. If we could withdraw our financial support from them at any time, they would be voluntary cooperatives, or service providers. Because taxation is backed up with the threat of force, it is theft, plain and simple. ~ Adam Kokesh, #NFDB
135:Perhaps this general degradation was the result of too much crowding, too little privacy, too much noise. You couldn't be decent if you weren't intelligent; you couldn't be intelligent if you couldn't think—and who could think in all this racket? Add the stench to the confusion of cramped quarters, and who could be self-respecting? ~ Lloyd C Douglas, #NFDB
136:In that moment she hated him, loathed him, this good man she had married. There was really nothing so terrible on the reverse side of his goodness, his steadiness, his mild good humor – just the belief, apparently grounded in the bedrock of his soul, that everybody was looking out for number one, each with his or her own little racket. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
137:The two dozen commonplace childhood photographs - snowsuit, pony, tennis racket, looming fender of a Dodge - were an inexhaustible source of wonder for him, at her having existed before he met her, and of sadness for his possessing nothing of the ten million minutes of that black-and-white scallop-edged existence save these few proofs. ~ Michael Chabon, #NFDB
138:Governments have been operating the infrastructure racket for so long that many people assume we couldn’t have electricity, water, airports, telephones, railroads, gas, subways, waste disposal, or internet without their coercion. All these functions will be better without the threat of violence involved, as is true of all cooperative endeavors. ~ Adam Kokesh, #NFDB
139:think we would like to kill you ourselves before seeing you killed by the streets that America made. That is a philosophy of the disembodied, of a people who control nothing, who can protect nothing, who are made to fear not just the criminals among them but the police who lord over them with all the moral authority of a protection racket. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
140:decline, and I can almost feel the air growing more damp with each passing second. There are several forks in the tunnel, but nothing slows Rutger down. He drives madly, swerving left and right, barely making the turns. I grip the seat. Craig leans over and touches the youth’s arm, but I can’t hear his voice over the deafening racket of the truck’s ~ A G Riddle, #NFDB
141:Liberty may be an uncomfortable blessing unless you know what to do with it. That is why so many freed slaves returned to their masters, why so many emancipated women are only too glad to give up the racket and settle down. For between announcing that you will live your own life, and the living of it lie the real difficulties of any awakening. ~ Walter Lippmann, #NFDB
142:For centuries, the mystics of spirit had existed by running a protection racket - by making life on earth unbearable, then charging you for consolation and relief, by forbidding all the virtues that make existence possible, then riding on the shoulders of your guilt, by declaring production and joy to be sins, then collecting blackmail from the sinners. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
143:The problem with listening, of course, is that we don't. There's too much noise going on in our heads, so we never hear anything. The inner conversation simply never stops. It can be our voice or whatever voices we want to supply, but it's a constant racket. In the same way we don't see, and in the same way we don't feel, we don't touch, we don't taste. ~ Philip Glass, #NFDB
144:Somewhere out there are a few men with more innate talent at golf than Jack Nicklaus, or women with greater ability at tennis than Chris Evert or Martina Navratilova, but they will never lift a club or swing a racket and therefore will never find out how great they could have been. Instead, they'll be content to sit and watch stars perform on television. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
145:Can he?” Margaux said. I shrugged. “He wouldn’t be the first racket boss to get taken down in Vegas, not by a long shot, but he’s got access to the kind of resources no human gangster could dream of. Bugsy Siegel didn’t have a direct hotline to hell.” “Actually,” Bentley started to say, then shook his head and fluttered his hand in the air. “Never mind. ~ Craig Schaefer, #NFDB
146:War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.” —War Is a Racket, 1935 Major General Smedley D. Butler, USMC (ret.) Two-time recipient of the Medal of Honor ~ Elliott Kay, #NFDB
147:Let's take my truck," Jim said as he hit the gravel. "Less noise."
And it has a radio, right?" With tragic concentration Adrian started warming up his voice, sounding like a moose being backstroked by a chesse grater.
Jim shook his head at Eddie as the doors opened "How can you stand that racket?"
Selective deafness"
Teach me,master. ~ J R Ward,#NFDB
148:As things get worse and the State seems powerless to help, the State will seem less and less legitimate. People will lose their moral connection to it. Laws will seem more like revenue traps and shakedowns. The state will start to seem more like another extortion racket, and, as in Mexico, people will have a harder time telling the good guys from the bad guys. ~ Jack Donovan, #NFDB
149:You could always hear Mom coming down the long hallway. Even though the hall was covered with carpet, the floor creaked in predictable spots.
She’d thundered down it so many times to stop us from wrestling over a toy or making a racket that when we heard the first footfall, we knew exactly how much time we had before she reached the bedroom to murder us both. ~ Melissa Francis,#NFDB
150:...you, the privileged, the chosen, the pampered, with nothing to do but go to school, hang out, do a little studying, go to college, get into a money-making racket, grow into your fat forties, still whining, still complaining, when there are millions around the world who'd offer fingers and toes to be in your seats, nicely clothed, well fed, with the world by the balls. ~ Frank McCourt, #NFDB
151:By claiming control of our outlook, we can make ourselves impervious to emotional manipulation from individuals and governments. Imagine how much better the world would be if no one succumbed to government fear! Without fear, the racket wouldn’t be possible. Governments couldn’t convince us to support wars, or the policies of the police state, or the idea of government itself. ~ Adam Kokesh, #NFDB
152:Just then, a little hopped-up Japanese car zips up next to us. It’s bright yellow with loud, high-pitched exhaust pipes and a big air spoiler on the back. I look over at the driver to see who’s making all the racket. I’m surprised to see a teenage girl there. After a moment, she gooses it and whinnies on past. On her back window, there’s a sticker: NO FEAR.
I think, good girl. ~ Michael Zadoorian,#NFDB
153:The book was not new. Dates were stamped on the front endpaper, in and out dates. A rent book. A lending library of elaborate smut.
I rewrapped the book and locked it up behind the seat. A racket like that, out in the open on the boulevard, seemed to mean plenty of protection. I sat there and poisoned myself with cigarette smoke and listened to the rain and thought about it. ~ Raymond Chandler,#NFDB
154:First, it is providing a means whereby key individuals on its payroll are able to obtain both power and wealth through granting special favors to certain politically influential groups that are subject to its regulation. This activity is similar to the 'protection racket' of organized crime: for a price, one can induce FDA administrators to provide 'protection' from the FDA itself. ~ G Edward Griffin, #NFDB
155:I racket di protezione, abituali e persistenti, sono una strategia a lungo periodo rispetto al saccheggio occasionale e quindi dipendono da un ambiente politico e militare ragionevolmente stabile. E sono difficilmente distinguibili dallo stesso stato arcaico che, come loro, si appropria del surplus sostenibile di comunità sedentarie e respinge attacchi esterni per proteggere la sua base. ~ James C Scott, #NFDB
156:There's the hum of the bee drone two blocks away the racket of it you'd think it was right over the roof, when the bee drone swirls nearer and nearer (gulp again) you retreat into the cabin and wait, maybe they got a message to come and see you all two thousand of em- but gettin used to the bee drone finally which seem to happen like a big party once a week- and so everything is eventually marvelous. ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
157:In this mob of I's inside, which one is me? Hear me out. I know I'm wandering, but don't start putting a lid on this racket. No telling what I'll do then. Every moment I'm thrown by your story. One moment it's happy, and I'm singing. One moment it's sad, and I'm weeping. It turns bitter, and I pull away. But then you spill a little grace, and just like that, I'm all light. It's not so bad, this arrangement, actually. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
158:...Even just sitting here, like this, our bodies are churning, our minds are chattering. There's a whole commotion going on inside us.'...'sometimes they just get in the way. The earth is speaking to us, but we can't hear because of all the racket our senses are making. Sometimes we need to erase them, erase our sense. Then -- maybe -- the earth will touch us. The universe will speak. The stars will whisper. ~ Jerry Spinelli, #NFDB
159:Much has been written on the excellence of bats' navigation equipment. It is all false. Tropical bats spend their entire time flying into obstacles with a horrible thudding noise. They specialize in slamming into walls and falling, fluttering onto your face. As my own 'piece of equipment essential for the field' I would strongly recommend a tennis racket; it is devastatingly effective in clearing a room of bats. ~ Nigel Barley, #NFDB
160:Wives are good on paper, at least. until they turn into harpies with sharp claws and open check books. Then they're kind of frightening. And they put on all kinds of makeup and parade around the street with their shopping cart yelling "Sale on aisle seven!" at anyone who will listen. Their wooden clog sandals make a helluva racket on linoleum tile. Their plastic jewelry clatters like the bones of little children. ~ Rob Campbell, #NFDB
161:Right," I said. My ears were still ringing slightly. "Did you just wake me with a policemen's rattle? You can hear those things from two blocks away."
"A what? No, this is a grogger--it's an old Judaic instrument. It's used during Purim to make a deafening racket during special readings. Charming, isn't it? Marvelously raucous custom."
"Knocking gently also works."
"You have no appreciation for culture. ~ William Ritter,#NFDB
162:Are we talking a white dress and reception? Because I’ve been to loads of weddings, and I’ve had it. Friends resent the plane tickets and hotel bills; the happy couple resents the catering. Both parties think they’re doing the other a huge favor. The hoo-ha is over before you know it, and all anyone’s got to show for it is a hangover. Weddings are a racket, and the only people who profit are florists and bartenders. ~ Lionel Shriver, #NFDB
163:We have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world. But in the lovely white kitchen the average [person] can’t produce a meal fit to eat, and the lovely shining bathroom is mostly a receptacle for deodorants, laxatives, sleeping pills, and the products of that confidence racket called the cosmetic industry. We make the finest packages in the world, Mr Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk. ~ Raymond Chandler, #NFDB
164:I think it would be funny to have one of those family decals showing a really skinny teenage girl barfing into a little chalk-outline bag (the bulimic in the family) or the dad figure dressed in the woman's underwear that he truly enjoys slipping into when no one's looking. Or the wife figure smiling with her exaggerated curly hair and tennis skirt, clutching a racket in one hand and a bottle of Stoli' in the other. ~ Celia Rivenbark, #NFDB
165:We have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world. But in the lovely white kitchen the average [person] can’t produce a meal fit to eat, and the lovely shining bathroom is mostly a receptacle for deodorants, laxatives, sleeping pills, and the products of that confidence racket called the cosmetic industry. We make the finest packages in the world, Mr Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk." — ~ Raymond Chandler, #NFDB
166:If you take away the state’s monopoly over the means of economic interaction, then you take away one of the three principal ingredients of the state. In the model of the state as a mafia, where the state is a protection racket, the state shakes people down for money in every possible way. Controlling currency flows is important for revenue-raising by the state, but it is also important for simply controlling what people do... ~ Julian Assange, #NFDB
167:he said. “I remember very well. Because of our student loans, Michelle and I could never catch up. So, some months, we paid our bills with credit cards. I went to refinance our condo and I was kind of surprised when they said, ‘You can get cash, too.’ So all of a sudden, my condo is worth fifty thousand dollars more and I can take forty thousand dollars in cash as a loan? I did it, but it seemed too good to be true. It was a racket. ~ David Axelrod, #NFDB
168:(From where I sit and write at this moment, I look out the window, across the quiet guest-house garden, with the four banana trees and the big red and yellow flowers around Our Lady’s statue. I can see the door where Dan entered and where I entered. Beyond the Porter’s Lodge is a low green hill where there was wheat this summer. And out there, yonder, I can hear the racket of the diesel tractor: I don’t know what they are ploughing.) ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
169:Dix laughed, setting down his beer glass. It was time to go. Time to put space between himself and the Nicolais. “Brub should have taken up my racket.” To their questioning eyebrows, he elucidated, “Like ninety-three and one-half per cent of the ex-armed forces, I’m writing a book.” “Another author,” Sylvia mused. “Unlike ninety-two and one-half per cent I’m not writing a book on the war. Or even my autobiography. Just trying to do a novel. ~ Dorothy B Hughes, #NFDB
170:They say your muscles have memory. Once you've trained your arms to swing a tennis racket or your legs to ride a bike, you can quit for a while - years even - and all it takes is picking up a racket or jumping on a bike again and your muscles remember what to do. They snap right back to performing the way you taught them.
The heart is a muscle, too. And I've been training mine since I was a kid to fall in love with one particular person. ~ Robin Brande,#NFDB
171:When governments take over education, young minds suffer. The exploitation of the education racket is particularly vicious because to miseducate or under-educate a child is to cripple their future. Young minds naturally absorb information and seek the skills most essential to their happiness and prosperity. Threatening young people with consequences to ensure obedience stifles free-thinking and teaches the way of government: to accept rule by force. ~ Adam Kokesh, #NFDB
172:It wasn't about opening her mind, it was about closing down the racket of thoughts and opening up her body.
She was tingling and throbbing and hot, not so much from her desire specifically for rick, as from a very physical yearning for human touch, to be wanted and ravished by another person after such a long period without. His attention, his hunger, was the thrill; it was an ego massage which in itself was better than her breasts being fondled. ~ Freya North,#NFDB
173:Darling, my darling, don't think that I don't love you or that I didn't love you, but it's precisely because I love you that I couldn't have become what I am today if you were still here. It's impossible to have a child and despise the world as it is, because that's the world we've put the child into. The child makes us care about the world, think about it's future, willingly join in its racket and its turmoils, take its incurable stupidity seriously. ~ Milan Kundera, #NFDB
174:protected businesses never, never become competitive ... Halliburton, Bechtel, Parsons, KPMG, RTI, Blackwater and all other U.S. corporations that were in Iraq to take advantage of the reconstruction were part of a vast protectionist racket whereby the U.S. government had created their markets with war, barred their competitors from even entering the race, then paid them to do the work, while guaranteeing them a profit to boot - all at taxpayer expense. ~ Naomi Klein, #NFDB
175:Wind rips through the crags a thousand feet above, nothing moving in this godforsaken town, and the mule skinner knows that something is wrong. Two miles south stands Bartholomew Packer’s mine, the Godsend, a twenty-stamp mill that should be filling this box canyon with the thudding racket of the rock crushers pulverizing ore. The sound of the stamps in operation is the sound of money being made, and only two things will stop them—Christmas and tragedy. ~ Blake Crouch, #NFDB
176:Black people love their children with a kind of obsession. You are all we have, and you come to us endangered. I think we would like to kill you ourselves before seeing you killed by the streets that America made. That is a philosophy of the disembodied, of a people who control nothing, who can protect nothing, who are made to fear not just the criminals among them but the police who lord over them with all the moral authority of a protection racket. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
177:Frankness and courage are luxuries confined to the more comic varieties of runners-up at national conventions. Thus it is pleasant to remember Cleveland, and to speak of him from time to time. He was the last of the Romans. If pedagogy were anything save the puerile racket that it is he would loom large in the schoolbooks. As it is, he is subordinated to Lincoln, Roosevelt I and Wilson. This is one of the things that are the matter with the United States. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
178:For five years I played ping-pong with Bella. I learned how to touch—not strike—the ball with a sponge racket, and how to return sidespin, and how to start my serve by tossing the ball at least six inches above the table from an open hand, as mandated by the International Table Tennis Federation. Bella was a straightforward person who gave straightforward advice: move your feet, spin the ball, don't be so lazy. She told me about playing table tennis in Ukraine. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
179:Are you kind enough, on your little planet, not to shut that rhythm down? Not to crush underfoot the singers of songs and tellers of tales and wearers of silk? Because it’s monsters who do that. Who extinguish art. Who burn books. Who ban music. Who yell at anyone with ears to turn off that racket. Who cannot see outside themselves clearly enough to sing their truth to the heavens. Do you have enough goodness in your world to let the music play? Do you have soul? ~ Catherynne M Valente, #NFDB
180:Don't you understand anything? Isn't it absolutely essential to keep a fierce Left and a fierce Right, both on their toes and each terrified of the other? That's how we get things done. Any opposition to the N.I.C.E. is represented as a Left racket in the Right papers and a Right racket in the Left papers. If it's properly done, you get each side outbidding the other in support of us-to refute the enemy slanders. Of course we're non-political. The real power always is. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
181:Esperanza sat back and looked at him for several beats. “Do you remember when Suzze won the US Open?” “Of course. What does that have to do with anything?” “She’d cleaned up her act. She focused solely on her tennis, and bam, right away, Suzze wins a major. I never saw someone want something so badly. I can still see that final cross-court forehand to win, the look of pure undiluted joy on her face, the way she threw her racket up in the air and turned and pointed at you.” “At ~ Harlan Coben, #NFDB
182:Are you kind enough, on your little planet, not to shut that rhythm down? Not to crush underfoot the singers of songs and tellers of tales and wearers of silk? Because it's monsters who do that. Who extinguish art. Who burn books. Who ban music. Who yell at anyone with ears to turn off that racket. Who cannot see outside themselves clearly enough to sing their truth to the heavens. Do you have enough goodness in your world to let the music play?
Do you have soul? ~ Catherynne M Valente,#NFDB
183:When a territory is taken over by a foreign government, the first priority is to seize control of the tax base. The invading government wants to expand its protection racket. If it tries to take over an area that costs more to control than it produces in taxes, it will soon abandon the effort. The best defense against invasion is to have no government. An invader would need to build tax collection mechanisms from scratch and they would be extremely difficult and costly to maintain. ~ Adam Kokesh, #NFDB
184:A protection racket cannot claim to have a moral foundation. Justice is far too important to be trusted to government. In many ways, we have become dependent on government, so in the transition to a free society, many peaceful systems of justice will first resemble current government models and meet current expectations. However, with the innovation made possible in the absence of coercion, those expectations will soon be exceeded with far more righteous and efficient systems of justice. ~ Adam Kokesh, #NFDB
185:She heard a clip-clop, clip-clop sound coming from around the corner, and suddenly she found herself face to face with one of the massive athletes. It was his wooden sandals that were making the racket. The enormous man was dressed only in a thin silk robe, his long black hair pulled up into a tight topknot. His dark brown eyes shifted to Heather’s face, only for a split second, his puffy features showing no expression whatsoever, and he continued on. It was like watching a barge sail by. ~ Mike Wells, #NFDB
186:I don't make music to make money. I make music because that's what I like to do. You would think, "Yeah, of course, that's what an artist does," but there ain't too many artists around anymore. I see a lot of people who, if they thought they wouldn't profit, would find an easier hustle. It's a racket now, like everything else, but we're in a capitalistic country - everything's a racket. Take what you can. I think the difference between that line of thinking and me is obvious. ~ Del tha Funkee Homosapien, #NFDB
187:My Lolita had a way of raising her bent left knee at the ample and springy start of the service cycle when there would develop and hang in the sun for a second a vital web of balance between toed foot, pristine armpit, burnished arm and far back-flung racket, as she smiled up with gleaming teeth at the small globe suspended so high in the zenith of the powerful and graceful cosmos she had created for the express purpose of falling upon it with a clean resounding crack of her golden whip. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
188:To the extent that threats against which a given government protects its citizens are imaginary or are consequences of its own activities, the government has organized a protection racket. Since governments themselves commonly timulate, or even fabricate threats of external war, and since the repressive and extractive activities of governments often constitute the largest current threats to the livelihoods of their own citizens, many governments operate in essentially the same ways as racketeers. ~ Charles Tilly, #NFDB
189:Tate saw the bronze arrow of the elevator moving then. It was already down to four. Tate roared over the racket, “Hold it! Guard mount double up at your outside posts, first squad stays with me. Berry and Howard cover that fucking elevator if it comes—” The needle stopped at three. “First squad, here we go. Don’t pass a door without checking it. Bobby, outside—get a shotgun and the vests and bring ’em up.” Tate’s mind was racing on the first flight of stairs. Caution fought with the terrible need to ~ Thomas Harris, #NFDB
190:The conservative media game was neatly summarized by Matt Labash, a former senior writer for The Weekly Standard, in a 2003 interview on the website journalismjobs.com. Labash explained: 'The conservative media likes to rap the liberal media on the knuckles for not being objective. We've created this cottage industry in which it pays to be un-objective. It's a great way to have your cake and eat it too. Criticize other people for not being objective. Be as subjective as you want. It's a great little racket.' ~ Matt Labash, #NFDB
191:They had riled a hornet’s nest. In the next few hours the Sharpshooters, reinforced by more of their own men and the 3rd Maine, played havoc with the Confederates who had been massing to the rear of Pitzer’s Woods. They did not have it all their own way, though. Private Bailey George McClelen of the 10th Alabama was lying down with the rest of the regiment listening to the racket between our skirmishers and the enemy. The orders were to reserve our first shots until the enemy advanced close enough to make our shots effective. ~ Peter G Tsouras, #NFDB
192:Government is control. Government is exploitation. Government is a protection racket. Government is disorder, violence, and conflict! Government is an idea “so good” that it has to be forced on us. Government is a group of people claiming a monopoly on the initiation of force in a specific territory. Government is the institutionalization of our worst desires to control, dominate, and take advantage of others by force. Governments reflect our tolerance for oppression, and all we need to do to defeat them is demand self-government. ~ Adam Kokesh, #NFDB
193:To the extent that the threats against which a given government protects its citizens are imaginary or are consequences of its own activities, the government has organized a protection racket. Since governments themselves commonly timulate, or even fabricate threats of external war, and since the repressive and extractive activities of governments often constitute the largest current threats to the livelihoods of their own citizens, many governments operate in essentially the same ways as racketeers.
- "War Making and State Making as Organized Crime ~ Charles Tilly,#NFDB
194:The best way to get quiet, other than the combination of extensive therapy, Prozac, and a lobotomy, is first to notice that the station is on. KFKD [K-Fucked] is on every single morning when I sit down at my desk. So I sit for a moment and then say a small prayer--please help me get out of the way so I can write what wants to be written. Sometimes ritual quiets the racket. Try it. Any number of things may work for you--an altar, for instance, or votive candles, sage smudges, small-animal sacrifices, especially now that the Supreme Court has legalized them. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
195:To the extent that the threats against which a given government protects its citizens are imaginary or are consequences of its own activities, the government has organized a protection racket. Since governments themselves commonly stimulate, or even fabricate, threats of external war, and since the repressive and extractive activities of governments often constitute the largest current threats to the livelihoods of their own citizens, many governments operate in essentially the same ways as racketeers.
- "War Making and State Making as Organized Crime ~ Charles Tilly,#NFDB
196:Tell me a story, he says, wrapping his arms around me.
Yesterday, I begin, I was waiting in the car for time to pass. A woman pulled in and started to park her car facing mine. Our eyes met and what passed passed as quickly as the look away. She backed up and parked on the other side of the lot. I could have followed her to worry my question but I had to go, I was expected on the court, I grabbed my racket.
The sunrise is slow and cloudy, dragging the light in, but barely.
Did you win? he asks.
It wasn't a match, I say. It was a lesson. ~ Claudia Rankine,#NFDB
197:He was twenty years old, and he had fallen in love with Rosa Saks, in the wild scholastic manner of twenty-year-old men, seeing, in the tiniest minutiae, evidence of the systematic perfection of the whole and proof of a benign creation.... The two dozen commonplace childhood photographs -- snowsuit, pony, tennis racket, looming fender of a Dodge -- were an inexhaustible source of wonder for him, at her having existed before he met her, and of sadness for his possessing nothing of the ten million minutes of that black-and-white scallop-edged existence save these few proofs. ~ Michael Chabon, #NFDB
198:few months ago, even—he would have weighed his life against another’s. Calculated pros and cons. Made a deal. He was good at deals. He’d spent years making them; he’d learned all about them at Harvard Business School. But there was nothing here to negotiate. It was refreshing. He was flooded with a resolve so strong, so sure and clear, that it was painless. He didn’t regret it, even as the torn, rotten hands scrabbled inches away from his boots. The racket they kicked up brought more down the alley. The Lexers on the other side of the fence, the one everyone had escaped ~ Sarah Lyons Fleming, #NFDB
199:You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, "No, I don't want to watch TV!" Raise your voice -- they won't hear you otherwise -- "I'm reading! I don't want to be disturbed!" Maybe they haven't heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell: "I'm beginning to read Italo Calvino's new novel!" Or if you prefer, don't say anything: just hope they'll leave you alone. ~ Italo Calvino, #NFDB
200:the old mantra—“Either I can beat him or the police.” I understood it all—the cable wires, the extension cords, the ritual switch. Black people love their children with a kind of obsession. You are all we have, and you come to us endangered. I think we would like to kill you ourselves before seeing you killed by the streets that America made. That is a philosophy of the disembodied, of a people who control nothing, who can protect nothing, who are made to fear not just the criminals among them but the police who lord over them with all the moral authority of a protection racket. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
201:Jazz. Here in Germany it become something worse than a virus. We was all of us damn fleas, us Negroes and Jews and low-life hoodlums, set on playing that vulgar racket, seducing sweet blond kids into corruption and sex. It was a plague sent out by the dread black hordes, engineered by the Jews. Us Negroes, see, we was only half to blame - we just can't help it. Savages just got a natural feel for filthy rhythms, no self-control to speak of. But the Jews, brother, now they cooked up this jungle music on purpose. All part of their master plan to weaken Aryan youth, corrupt its janes, dilute its bloodlines. ~ Esi Edugyan, #NFDB
202:Never had the pleasure.” “Every fall the female elk releases this musk in her urine, see. Tells the bull elks she’s ready to mate. The bull elks can smell the musk, and they start fighting each other over the female. Charge at each other, butting heads, locking antlers, making this unbelievable racket, this loud bugling, until one of them gives up, and the winner gets the girl.” “I’ve seen bar fights like that.” “That’s how the females can tell which bulls are the fittest. They mate with the winners. Otherwise, the weak genes get passed on, and the elks are gonna die out. This is how it works in nature. ~ Joseph Finder, #NFDB
203:I woke up to an ache in my chest, the smell of chocolate, and the sound of the ghost making a racket in the kitchen. Now, I'm not the sort to dwell on doom and sorrow. Life is too short for that. But I should at least try to describe the ache briefly: It is not the kind that comes from eating tacos too late at night. It's the kind that comes from being left behind. I think my heart is smart enough to know there's a place I should be filling with new memories, new jokes, and wondrous adventures with the one person I loved most of all. But that person is gone now. And so, my heart has a giant hole. I call it The Big Empty. ~ Natalie Lloyd, #NFDB
204:Every Dog Has His Night
The drawing room in his house is filled with animals.
Animals cast in bronze, steel and brass.
Trained to remain quiet, they
turned to quite a noisy racket last night.
It was the turn of the dogs yesterday.
One's bark sparks off the rest.
Restless, on hearing that, the foxes begin to howl.
The brass lion rose up to roar.
Roar's the word in the textbook;
tried, but having caught a cold, forsook
returned to the cave itself.
When the singers were settled after the symphony
I too dozed, but
couldn't bark.
So that's all for now, isn't it enough.
~ Ayyappa Paniker,#NFDB
205:The “Florida bail bond racket” was, according to a former Orlando newspaper editor, the “most lucrative business in the state.” The bondsmen worked hand in glove with employers to secure labor in exchange for fines and bond costs. Citrus grove foremen informed bondsmen how many men were needed, and workers were “secured from the stockades.” If workers attempted to flee across state lines, they could be recaptured “without the formality of extradition proceedings.” They had no choice but to work to pay off their fines at whatever grove or camp they were taken to, and they often worked under the supervision of armed guards, as they might on a chain gang. ~ Gilbert King, #NFDB
206:When Reiko left, I stretched out on the sofa and closed my eyes. I lay there steeping myself into silence when, out of nowhere, I thought of the time Kizuki and I took a motorcycle trip. That had been autumn too, I realized. Autumn how many years ago? Yes, four years ago. I recalled the small of Kizuki's leather jacket and the racket made by that red Yamaha 125cc bike. We went to a spot far down the coast, and came back the same evening, exhausted. Nothing special happened on that trip, but I remembered it well. the sharp autumn wind moaned in my ears, and looking up at the sky, my hands clutching Kizuki's jacket, I felt as if I might be swept into outer space. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
207:Except in a very few matches, usually with world-class performers, there is a point in every match (and in some cases it's right at the beginning) when the loser decides he's going to lose. And after that, everything he does will be aimed at providing an explanation of why he will have lost. He may throw himself at the ball (so he will be able to say he's done his best against a superior opponent). He may dispute calls (so he will be able to say he's been robbed). He may swear at himself and throw his racket (so he can say it was apparent all along he wasn't in top form). His energies go not into winning but into producing an explanation, an excuse, a justification for losing. ~ C Terry Warner, #NFDB
208:Black people love their children with a kind of obsession. You are all we have, and you come to us endangered. I think we would like to kill you ourselves before seeing you killed by the streets that America made. That is a philosophy of the disembodied, of a people who control nothing, who can protect nothing, who are made to fear not just the criminals among them but the police who lord over them with all the moral authority of a protection racket. It was only after you that I understood love, that I understood the grip of my mother's hand. She knew that the galaxy itself could kill me, that all of me could be shattered and all of her legacy spilled upon the curb like bum wine. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
209:I Was The Slightest In The House
486
I was the slightest in the House—
I took the smallest Room—
At night, my little Lamp, and Book—
And one Geranium—
So stationed I could catch the Mint
That never ceased to fall—
And just my Basket—
Let me think—I'm sure—
That this was all—
I never spoke—unless addressed—
And then, 'twas brief and low—
I could not bear to live—aloud—
The Racket shamed me so—
And if it had not been so far—
And any one I knew
Were going—I had often thought
How noteless—I could die—
~ Emily Dickinson,#NFDB
210:Perhaps
Perhaps I need a normaliser.
Would you like one? Now?
The moods induced
by a drunken sun
thumping the rooftops
pose questions too abstruse,
odd friend, for my gentle ears.
I just amble along sideways,
pretending not to notice.
Perhaps I need to be in orbit,
or in the obit pages — though
only in a supporting role,
like sole conniving
heir to a vast fortune
telling racket. First this,
then that. Reporters flopping
about in my wake, can you hear
what I’m dictating to you? It was all
very exciting people talked about
for weeks, though they all had
sons and daughters. First
these, then those.
~ Chris Edwards,#NFDB
211:Most of the profit from a box of Swisher Sweets doesn’t go to the company that manufactures them or the store owner who sells them. The bulk of profit goes to the government that aggressively taxes them. That’s quite a racket. President Obama signed the largest tobacco tax increase in history in one of his first acts in office. The feds took about a nickel per cigar when the president took his oath. They now take 52.75 percent of the sale up to $402 per 1,000 cigars. “More lower-income people than higher-income people will quit,” Eric Lindblom of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids paternalistically reasoned to USA Today in 2009. Instead of a tobacco-free kid, Michael Brown became a free-tobacco kid. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
212:Gus’s features twisted, wondering what in the hell he’d gotten into? The air traced the edges of his cuts, the cuts that Alice made, and he moaned at the fire in his poor belly. “You’re probably wondering why I cut you so many times?” She asked idly. Then, without warning, she yanked the scalpel out of his belly, getting a hiss out of him, and slashed open his right arm with one flick. That tungsten jolt of pain caused Gus to buck against his bonds. “It’s because, they smell you see,” Alice told him. She slashed the other white arm, as neatly as opening a fish. “That’s why they’re making a racket. My babies are hungry. Sooooooooo hungry. Am I bad for doing this? I don’t think so. I’m cleaning the ~ Keith C Blackmore, #NFDB
213:Big Jason walked into the club, stared at the band beginning their sound check and quickly walked over to the bar. Lily looked up from her rinsing and smiled.
"Big Jason Gulliver, back in town. Raquel said Godzilla returned to Tokyo, I wondered how soon you'd drop by here".
"Front me a soda, Lily. How's the night club racket?" Jason barked over the noisy band.
"Guys still hitting on me, including your stupid friend King Steve", Lily shot a jet of soda pop from her beverage gun into a water glass.
Jason chortled. "He's slow on the draw. You're a fuckin' dyke but a cool fuckin' dyke. I don't even care if you sleep with my girl".
"Why thank you, Caveman", Lily smiled, handing him the soda with a cherry on top. ~ Andy Seven,#NFDB
214:Song
At her Junior High School graduation,
she sings alone
in front of the lot of us-her voice soprano, surprising,
almost a woman's. It is
the Our Father in French,
the new language
making her strange, out there,
fully fledged and
ready for anything. Sitting
together -- her separated
mother and father -- we can
hear the racket of traffic
shaking the main streets
of Jersey City as she sings
Deliver us from evil,
and I wonder can she see me
in the dark here, years
from belief, on the edge
of tears. It doesn't matter. She
doesn't miss a beat, keeps
in time, in tune, while into
our common silence I whisper,
Sing, love, sing your heart out!
~ Eamon Grennan,#NFDB
215:Some rooftop, water-tank looming, street-racket strangely quelled
and other known and unknown there, long sweet summer evening
on the tarred roof:
leaned back your head to the nightvault swarming with stars
the Pleiades broken loose, not seven but thousands
every known constellation flinging out fiery threads
and you could distinguish all
-cobwebs, tendrils, anatomies of stars
coherently hammocked, blueblack avenues between…
It was New York, the dream-site
the lost city the city of dreadful light…we
went striding the avenues in our fiery hair
in our bodies young and ordinary riding the subways reading
or pressed against other bodies
feeling in them the maps of Brooklyn Queens Manhattan… ~ Adrienne Rich,#NFDB
216:Your biggest problem would be getting the victim up to the roof with no one seeing it. Unless you had some way of tricking him into meeting you on a rooftop or otherwise knowing in advance that he was going to be there, you’d have to transport him yourself. If he were conscious for that journey, he’d be making a hell of a racket. Also, if he were fighting you, there would be evidence of a struggle. Your skin under his nails. Maybe a clump of your hair in his stiff fingers. Other items incommensurate with a voluntary act. And he’d be fighting with no regard for his own safety, no regard to pain, so there would be evidence of a struggle all over you, as well. You have no idea the way a man will fight when he understands he’s fighting for his life. ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB
217:I was executive vice president of the discounters’ trade association, working in my New York office one day in 1967. My secretary said there was a man out front who wanted to join our group. I said I would give him ten minutes. So in comes this short, wiry man with a deep tan and a tennis racket under his arm. He introduced himself as Sam Walton from Arkansas. I didn’t know what to think. When he meets you, he looks at you—head cocked to one side, forehead slightly creased—and he proceeds to extract every piece of information in your possession. He always makes little notes. And he pushes on and on. After two and a half hours, he left, and I was totally drained. I wasn’t sure what I had just met, but I was sure we would hear more from him.” Looking ~ Sam Walton, #NFDB
218:their mother.” All over England, other citadels of the British class system were falling to the Poles. One 303 Squadron pilot, shot down during the Battle of Britain, parachuted onto an exclusive golf course, landing near the eighth tee. The men playing the hole insisted on carting the dazed flier off to the clubhouse for drinks. Another parachuting pilot drifted into a copse near a private tennis club in the London suburbs. Three club members observed his descent as they awaited the arrival of a fourth for their weekly doubles match. They helped extricate the Pole from the trees and, giving up on their expected fourth, asked if he played. When the young pilot said he did, he was dressed in borrowed white flannels and was soon on the court, borrowed racket in hand. ~ Lynne Olson, #NFDB
219:Art with a big “A” is for museums, galleries, critics, and collectors. art with a small “a” is for the rest of us. Art is a business, an industry, a racket. art is about passion, love, life, humanity— everything that is truly valuable. Art is sold, resold, put under the gavel, and insured up the wazoo. art with a small “a” is not a product. It’s a point of view. It’s a way of life. Art is made by trained professionals and experts. art is made by accountants, farmers, and stay-at-home moms at restaurant tables, in parking lots, and laundry rooms. Art takes Art School and Talent and years of Suffering and Sacrifice. art just takes desire and 15 minutes a day. You may not be an Artist. Big whoop. But I know you can make art— with a wonderful, expressive, teeny, tiny a. ~ Danny Gregory, #NFDB
220:I want to hear a million robins making a frightful racket. I sort of like birds." "All women are birds," he ventured. "What kind am I?"—quick and eager. "A swallow, I think, and sometimes a bird of paradise. Most girls are sparrows, of course—see that row of nurse-maids over there? They're sparrows—or are they magpies? And of course you've met canary girls—and robin girls." "And swan girls and parrot girls. All grown women are hawks, I think, or owls." "What am I—a buzzard?" She laughed and shook her head. "Oh, no, you're not a bird at all, do you think? You're a Russian wolfhound." Anthony remembered that they were white and always looked unnaturally hungry. But then they were usually photographed with dukes and princesses, so he was properly flattered. "Dick's ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
221:Eleventh Avenue Racket
There is something terrible
about a hurdy-gurdy,
a gipsy man and woman,
and a monkey in red flannel
all stopping in front of a big house
with a sign “For Rent” on the door
and the blinds hanging loose
and nobody home.
I never saw this.
I hope to God I never will.
Whoop-de-doodle-de-doo.
Hoodle-de-harr-de-hum.
Nobody home? Everybody home.
Whoop-de-doodle-de-doo.
Mamie Riley married Jimmy Higgins last night: Eddie Jones died of whooping
cough: George Hacks got a job on the police force: the Rosenheims bought a
brass bed: Lena Hart giggled at a jackie: a pushcart man called tomaytoes,
tomaytoes.
Whoop-de-doodle-de-doo.
Hoodle-de-harr-de-hum.
Nobody home? Everybody home.
~ Carl Sandburg,#NFDB
222:...I was not born with enough fuel. My anger
often melts into sadness, it will just
disintegrate into shame or fear, my
clenched teeth release into chatter.
But you have found the right mix of
arrogance and alcohol. Place your hands
on me one more time, then again, exhale
the cigarette into my eyes, tell me again
how I’m just not understanding the point,
remind me how you are an expert, touch
my knee, my thigh, my lower back, ignore
me twice, three times, continue talking over
me with the man to my right. There is a
beast in my veins that was birthed by my
father. It is quiet, it sleeps through most
nights. Tonight, sir, my tail twitches in
the darkest caves. Be careful, darling.
Your footsteps land heavy here. Your
racket will wake the dragons. ~ Sarah Kay,#NFDB
223:He sat there among them, listened to the buzz of their conversation. He was captivated by them. In that racket every voice touched a key in his soul. He didn’t understand life. He had no conception of why he had been born into the world. As he saw it, anyone to whose lot fell this adventure, the purpose of which was unknown but the end of which was annihilation, that person was absolved from all responsibility and had the right to do as he pleased—for example, to lie full length in the street and begin to moan without any reason—without deserving the slightest censure. But precisely because he considered his life as a whole an incomprehensible thing, he understood its little details individually—every person without exception, every elevated and lowly point of view, every concept—and those he assimilated at once. ~ Dezs Kosztol nyi, #NFDB
224:Didn't you just turn eighteen, Jen?" Vasile asked her.
Jen looked a little confused at his choice of response. "Umm, yes. I believe that loud racket you heard a couple of weeks ago was Sally and Jacque's idea of a birthday party. What does that have to do with me leaving?"
"If you are eighteen, Jen, you are an adult. I can't make you stay here. If you want to leave, if you really think that is the best thing for you, then you can go. I will allow you to use the pack plane to get back to the U.S. if that is truly what you want," Vasile explained.
Jen cocked her head to the side, eyes narrowed at the Alpha sitting calmly in front of her. "Just like that? No trying to convince me to stay, or telling me not to give up, or yada yada yada bull crap?"
"No 'yada yada yada bull crap'," he agreed.
"Huh, okay then. ~ Quinn Loftis,#NFDB
225:She pinned him to the bulkhead with a kiss that was pure alchemy, and his hands found their way down her tunic, down to her breeches, where he unhitched her weapons belt with as much gratuitous fondling of the areas not covered by it as he could manage.
She took the belt from his hands and flung it against one of the stiffened canvas walls, where it struck with a clattering racket and slid to the floor. "If there is no way, make a way, Jean Tannen. Losers don't fuck in this particular cabin."
He picked her up, making a seat for her from his crossed arms, and whirled her around so that her back was against the bulkhead and her feet were dangling. He kissed her breasts through her tunic, grinning at her reaction. He stopped to put his head against her chest; felt the rapid flutter of her heart against his left cheek. ~ Scott Lynch,#NFDB
226:It’s still possible for an American to make a fortune on his own.” “Sure—provided somebody tells him when he’s young enough that there is a Money River, that there’s nothing fair about it, that he had damn well better forget about hard work and the merit system and honesty and all that crap, and get to where the river is. ‘Go where the rich and the powerful are,’ I’d tell him, ‘and learn their ways. They can be flattered and they can be scared. Please them enormously or scare them enormously, and one moonless night they will put their fingers to their lips, warning you not to make a sound. And they will lead you through the dark to the widest, deepest river of wealth ever known to man. You’ll be shown your place on the riverbank, and handed a bucket all your own. Slurp as much as you want, but try to keep the racket of your slurping down. A poor man might hear. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
227:To be a full-blooded hillbilly was to be a living koan. Half of you wanted to be dignified and half of you couldn’t tolerate any restraint. You could see it in the regional art and hear it in the music. Wood carving with chainsaws. Cloggers who danced up a storm with the lower half of their bodies, but held the upper half perfectly still and stared off into the distance stone-faced. Or a group of bluegrass musicians who’d be playing the most raucous tunes imaginable, looking around at each other with bemused expressions that seemed to say where’s all that racket comin from?
Phoebe believed that nearly all the adult males everywhere were pretty much the same way. Most of them could manage to keep the top half of themselves under a semblance of control, but the bottom half tended to run wild. As she continued to descend the trail she couldn’t help but think that most men were mentally ill below the waist. ~ Carolyn Jourdan,#NFDB
228:My uncle used to make tennis rackets. His rackets were made in the exact same factory as a name-brand racket. They were made of the same material on the same machine. The only difference was that when my uncle’s rackets came off the assembly line, they didn’t put the well-known brand logo on the product. My uncle’s rackets sold for less money, in the same big-box retailer, next to the name-brand rackets. Month after month, the name-brand rackets outsold the generic-brand ones. Why? Because people perceived greater value from the name-brand rackets and felt just fine paying a premium for that feeling. On a strictly rational scale, the generic rackets offered better value. But again, value is a perception, not a calculation, which is the reason companies make such a big deal about investing in their brand. But a strong brand, like all other intangible factors that contribute to the perception of value, starts with a clear sense of WHY. ~ Simon Sinek, #NFDB
229:Demon pox, oh demon pox
Just how is it acquired?
One must go down to the bad part of town
Until one is very tired.
Demon pox, oh demon pox, I had it all along—
Not the pox, you foolish blocks,
I mean this very song—
For I was right, and you were wrong!"
"Will!" Charlotte shouted over the noise, "Have you LOST YOUR MIND? CEASE THAT INFERNAL RACKET! Jem—"
Jem, rising to his feet, clapped his hands over Will's mouth. "Do you promise to be quiet?" he hissed into his friend's ear.
Will nodded, blue eyes blazing. Tessa was staring at him in amazement; they all were. She had seen Will many things—amused, bitter, condescending, angry, pitying—but never giddy before.
Jem let him go. "All right, then."
Will slid to the floor, his back against the armchair, and threw up his arms. "A demon pox on all your houses!" he announced, and yawned.
"Oh, God, weeks of pox jokes," said Jem. "We're in for it now. ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
230:Bedlam Town
Do you want to peep into Bedlam Town?
Then come with me, when the day swings down,
Into the cradle, whose rockers rim,
Some people call the horizon dim.
All the mischief of all the fates
Seems to center in four little pates,
Just one hour before we say,
'It is time for bed now, stop your play.'
O, the racket and noise, and roar
As they prance like a caravan over the floor,
With never a thought of the head that aches,
And never a heed to the 'mercy sakes.'
And 'Pity, save us,' and 'Oh! dear, dear,'
Which all but the culprits plainly hear.
A dog, a parrot, a guinea hen,
Warriors, elephants, Indian men,
A salvation army, a grizzly bear,
Are all at once in the nursery there.
And when the clock in the hall strikes seven
It sounds to us like a voice from heaven;
And each of the elves in a warm nightgown,
March away out of Bedlam Town.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,#NFDB
231:I'd long felt these mountains and lakes beckoning, and wouldn't have thought twice, but my family and friends couldn't bear talk of living apart. Then one lucky day a strange feeling came over me, and I left, walking-stick in hand, for my western farm. No one was going back home: on those outland roads, farm after farm lay in empty ruins, but our thatch hut's already good as ever, and you'd think our new fields had been tended for years. When valley winds turn cold, spring wine eases hunger and work, and though it isn't strong, just baby-girl wine, it's better than nothing for worry. Distant -- as months and years pass away here, the bustling world's racket grows distant. Plowing and weaving provide all we use. Who needs anything more? Away, ever away into this hundred-year life and beyond, my story and I vanish together like this. [2225.jpg] -- from The Selected Poems of T'ao Ch'ien, Translated by David Hinton
~ Tao Chien, After Liu Chai-Sangs Poem
,#NFDB
232:A: Absorbed in our discussion of immortality, we had let night fall without lighting the lamp, and we couldn't see each other's faces. With an offhandedness or gentleness more convincing than passion would have been, Macedonio Fernandez' voice said once more that the soul is immortal. He assured me that the death of the body is altogether insignificant, and that dying has to be the most unimportant thing that can happen to a man. I was playing with Macedonio's pocketknife, opening and closing it. A nearby accordion was infinitely dispatching La Comparsita, that dismaying trifle that so many people like because it's been misrepresented to them as being old... I suggested to Macedonio that we kill ourselves, so we might have our discussion without all that racket.
Z: (mockingly) But I suspect that at the last moment you reconsidered.
A: (now deep in mysticism) Quite frankly, I don't remember whether we committed suicide that night or not. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
233:You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, “No, I don’t want to watch TV!” Raise your voice—they won’t hear you otherwise—“I’m reading! I don’t want to be disturbed!” Maybe they haven’t heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell: “I’m beginning to read Italo Calvino’s new novel!” Or if you prefer, don’t say anything; just hope they’ll leave you alone. Find the most comfortable position: seated, stretched out, curled up, or lying flat. Flat on your back, on your side, on your stomach. In an easy chair, on the sofa, in the rocker, the deck chair, on the hassock. In the hammock, if you have a hammock. On top of your bed, of course, or in the bed. You can even stand on your hands, head down, in the yoga position. With the book upside down, naturally. ~ Italo Calvino, #NFDB
234:That’s why I’m saying it! Because that’s not what I did! ... Look, Roark, there’s one thing about you, the thing I’m afraid of. It’s not just the kind of work you do; I wouldn’t care, if you were an exhibitionist who’s being different as a stunt, as a lark, just to attract attention to himself. It’s a smart racket, to oppose the crowd and amuse it and collect admission to the side show. If you did that, I wouldn’t worry. But it’s not that. You love your work. God help you, you love it! And that’s the curse. That’s the brand on your forehead for all of them to see. You love it, and they know it, and they know they have you. Do you ever look at the people in the street? Aren’t you afraid of them? I am. They move past you and they wear hats and they carry bundles. But that’s not the substance of them. The substance of them is hatred for any man who loves his work. That’s the only kind they fear. I don’t know why. You’re opening yourself up, Roark, for each and every one of them. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
235:The Sometime Sportsman Greets the Spring
by John Updike
When winter's glaze is lifted from the greens,
And cups are freshly cut, and birdies sing,
Triumphantly the stifled golfer preens
In cleats and slacks once more, and checks his swing.
This year, he vows, his head will steady be,
His weight-shift smooth, his grip and stance ideal;
And so they are, until upon the tee
Befall the old contortions of the real.
So, too, the tennis-player, torpid from
Hibernal months of television sports,
Perfects his serve and feels his knees become
Sheer muscle in their unaccustomed shorts.
Right arm relaxed, the left controls the toss,
Which shall be high, so that the racket face
Shall at a certain angle sweep across
The floated sphere with gutty strings—an ace!
The mind's eye sees it all until upon
The courts of life the faulty way we played
In other summers rolls back with the sun.
Hope springs eternally, but spring hopes fade. ~ John Updike,#NFDB
236:a) A letter was received from a former employee of the organization seeking arrears of salary for the part of the month in which he was relieved on acceptance of his resignation. While trying to take some reference number from the old pay bill, it turned out that somebody was collecting pay in the name of the resigned employee continuously for several months after the said employee resigned from service.(b) A representation was received from an employee stating that his name was missing in the seniority list of group ‘D’ employees of the organization. While attempting to check the reasons for this omission, it emerged that the employee in question and several others were appointed through forged appointment orders issued by a racket.2. What is the first action on receipt of a complaint? On receipt of a complaint, it is checked whether it has a vigilance angle. If it has vigilance angle, it is entered in the appropriate part of the register prescribed by the Vigilance Manual.3. What is Vigilance Angle? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
237:Let the workers in these plants get the same wages -- all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers -- yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders -- everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches! Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business and all those workers in industry and all our senators and governors and majors pay half of their monthly $30 wage to their families and pay war risk insurance and buy Liberty Bonds. Why shouldn't they? They aren't running any risk of being killed or of having their bodies mangled or their minds shattered. They aren't sleeping in muddy trenches. They aren't hungry. The soldiers are! Give capital and industry and labor thirty days to think it over and you will find, by that time, there will be no war. That will smash the war racket -- that and nothing else. Maybe ~ Smedley D Butler, #NFDB
238:I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents. ~ Smedley D Butler, #NFDB
239:Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Carly stopped, pencil hovering over the page for a minute before she frowned and crossed the repeat offender off her shopping list. For God's sake, how was she supposed to get anything done with all that racket going on outside? Not to mention the racket her libido was making every time the man she swore she'd avoid crossed her line of sight.
Looks like there's something inside the house that needs fixing. Betcha he's got all the right power tools for the job.
Carly sent a panicked look around the room, as if her dirty subconscious had broadcast the unexpected thought out loud. It wasn't her fault that no matter where she went in the bungalow, Contractor Guy ended up in her line of sight, hard at work. And she could forget turning a blind eye, because staring at the man was just a foregone conclusion. Carly might still be irritated that he'd embarrassed her, but let's face it, she was aggravated, not dead. And Contractor Guy was 100 percent red-blooded man. ~ Kimberly Kincaid,#NFDB
240:Y.T. is bored. She gets on her plank. The wheels blossom and become circular.
She guides a tight wobbly course around the cars, coasts down into the street.
The spotlight follows her for a moment, maybe picking up some stock footage.
Videotape is cheap. You never know when something will be useful, so you might
as well videotape it.
People make their living that way -- people in the intel business. People like
Hiro Protagonist. They just know stuff, or they just go around and videotape
stuff. They put it in the Library. When people want to know the particular
things that they know or watch their videotapes, they pay them money and check
it out of the Library, or just buy it outright. This is a weird racket, but
Y.T. likes the idea of it. Usually, the CIC won't pay any attention to a
Kourier. But apparently Hiro has a deal with them. Maybe she can make a deal
with Hiro. Because Y.T. knows a lot of interesting little things.
One little thing she knows is that the Mafia owes her a favor. ~ Neal Stephenson,#NFDB
241:A Choice
Sure, they get stubborn at times; they worry and
fret us a lot,
But I'd rather be crossed by a glad little boy
and frequently worried than not.
There are hours when they get on my nerves
and set my poor brain all awhirl,
But I'd rather be troubled that way than to be
the man who has no little girl.
There are times they're a nuisance, that's true,
with all of their racket and noise,
But I'd rather my personal pleasures be lost than
to give up my girls and my boys.
Not always they're perfectly good; there are
times when they're wilfully bad,
But I'd rather be worried by youngsters of mine
than lonely and childless and sad.
So I try to be patient and calm whenever they're
having their fling;
For the sum of their laughter and love is more
than the worry they bring.
And each night when sweet peace settles down
and I see them asleep in their cot,
I chuckle and say: 'They upset me to-day, but
I'd rather be that way than not.'
~ Edgar Albert Guest,#NFDB
242:His Room
His room is as it used to be
Before he went away,
The walls still keep the pennants he
Brought home but yesterday.
The picture of his baseball team
Still holds its favored spot,
And oh, it seems a dreadful dream
This age of shell and shot!
His golf clubs in the corner stand;
His tennis racket, too,
That once the pressure of his hand
In times of laughter knew
Is in the place it long has kept
For us to look upon.
The room is as it was, except
The boy, himself, has gone.
The pictures of his girls are here,
Still smiling as of yore,
And everything that he held dear
Is treasured as before.
Into his room his mother goes
As usual, day by day,
And cares for it, although she knows
Our boy is far away.
We keep it as he left it, when
He bade us all good-bye,
Though I confess that, now and then,
We view it with a sigh.
For never night shall thrill with joy
Nor day be free from gloom
Until once more our soldier boy
Shall occupy his room.
~ Edgar Albert Guest,#NFDB
243:You clumsy wench—Gods above! Are you trying to rob me, girl?” The nobleman seizes my wrist and yanks it from his pocket. My hand comes up with the pipe clenched in it. I stare at him, horrified.
“I . . .”
“I’ll have your head for this!” the man rages. “I’ll have you whipped!”
***
“I got the pipe,” I say, holding it up.
He stares for a minute, blinking, and then bursts into laughter. A few curious deer stick their heads through the shrubs to see what the racket is. Aladdin doubles over, laughing loud enough to startle birds from the trees overhead, and after a moment, I start laughing too. I haven’t laughed this hard in a long, long while, and it feels wonderful. We sit on the grass and laugh until our faces are red and we’re out of breath.
“You are the worst thief I have ever seen,” declares Aladdin.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I got it, didn’t I?”
“My grandmother could pick pockets better than that! Though that’s not quite fair; my grandmother was the best pickpocket in Parthenia. She taught me all her tricks. Drove my mother crazy. ~ Jessica Khoury,#NFDB
244:When you're responsible for half the planet's military spending, and 80 percent of its military R&D, certain things can be said with confidence: No one is going to get into a nuclear war with the United States, or a large-scale tank battle, or even a dogfight. You're the Microsoft, the Standard Oil of conventional warfare: Were they interested in competing in this field, second-tier military powers would probably have filed an antitrust suit with the Department of Justice by now. When you're the only guy in town with a tennis racket, don't be surprised if no one wants to join you on center court--or that provocateurs look for other fields on which to play. If you've got uniformed infantryman and tanks and battleships and jet fighters, you're too weak to take on the hyperpower. But, if you've got illiterate goatherds with string and hacksaws and fertilizer, you can tie him down for a decade. An IED is an "improvised" explosive device. Can we still improvise? Or does the planet's most lavishly funded military assume it has the luxury of declining to adapt to the world it's living in? ~ Mark Steyn, #NFDB
245:That Boy
Is the house turned topsy-turvy?
Does it ring from street to roof?
Will the racket still continue,
Spite of all your mild reproof?
Are you often in a flutter?
Are you sometimes thrilled with joy?
Then I have my grave suspicions
That you have at home--that Boy.
Are your walls and tables hammered?
Are your nerves and ink upset?
Have two eyes, so bright and roguish,
Made you every care forget?
Have your garden beds a prowler,
Who delights but to destroy?
These are well-known indications
That you have at home--that Boy.
Have you seen him playing circus
With his head upon the mat,
And his heels in mid-arm twinkling-For his audience, the cat?
Do you ever stop to listen,
When his merry planks annoy,-Listen to a voice that whispers,
You were once just like--that Boy?
Have you heard of broken windows,
And with nobody to blame?
Have you seen a trousered urchin
Quite unconscious of the same?
Do you love a teasing mixture
Of perplexity and joy?
You may have a dozen daughters,
But I know you've got--that Boy.
~ Anonymous Americas,#NFDB
246:Do you think we're being robbed?" I whispered.
He nodded gravely, then crawled over to my closet and opened it.
"Did you want to borrow something more formal to wear for the robbery? I'm not sure I have anything in your size."
"Shh," he whispered. "Don't you at least have a tennis racket or anything?"
"You think they came here looking for a doubles partner?"
He turned quickly and gave me a look, then whipped a Wiffle bat out of the mess.
"Wow," I said. "You jock-type people really are single-minded, aren't you? Uh-oh, we're being robbed. Let's play ball!"
"It's for a weapon," Carson whispered.
"You're gonna hit them with a Wiffle bat?"
"What else you got?"
"Um...A pillow"
"Exactly" ... "Stay behind me," he whispered.
"Can I just say that I never knew this about me before, but weirdly enough this whole protective he-man thing actually turns me on."
"Josie."
"What," I asked.
"Shut Up."
I grabbed my pillow, just in case, so to speak, and tiptoed behind him around the mussed-up bed. "Maybe we should just hide in the closet."
He turned around, rolled his eyes and kissed me. "Shh," he repeated. ~ Rachel Vail,#NFDB
247:Man has always been a venal animal. The growth of populations, the huge costs of war, the incessant pressure of confiscatory taxation – all these things make him more and more venal. The average man is tired and scared, and a tired, scared man can’t afford ideals. He has to buy food for his family. In our time we have seen a shocking decline in both public and private morals. You can’t expect quality from people whose lives are a subjection to a lack of quality. You can’t have quality with mass production. You don’t want it because it lasts too long. So you substitute styling, which is a commercial swindle intended to produce artificial obsolescence. Mass production couldn’t sell its goods next year unless it made what is sold this year look unfashionable a year from now. We have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world. But in the lovely white kitchen the average [person] can’t produce a meal fit to eat, and the lovely shining bathroom is mostly a receptacle for deodorants, laxatives, sleeping pills, and the products of that confidence racket called the cosmetic industry. We make the finest packages in the world, Mr Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk. ~ Raymond Chandler, #NFDB
248:As the pair of them kept talking, Rhage sucked the white stick clean and found himself sizing up the Shadow.
Cutting into the convo, he demanded, “Why don’t you come to Last Meal anymore.”
V’s diamond-hard glare swung around. “My brother, focus.”
“No, I’m serious.” He propped his hip on the black wall. “What’s up, Trez. I mean, our food not good enough for you?”
Cue the throat clearing on the Shadow’s side. “Oh, no, yeah, I’m just … busy, you know. Opening this…”
“And when was the last time you fed? You look like shit.”
Vishous threw up his hands. “Hollywood, will you get in the game—”
“You know, I used Selena tonight and her blood is amazing—”
It all happened so fast. One minute V was jawing at him while he was bringing up the very salient point that the Shadow needed to take a vein.
The next, Trez’s racket-size palm was locked on his neck, cutting off all his air supply.
While the guy bared his teeth and snarled like Rhage was the enemy.
In the blink of an eye, and in spite of that nasty shoulder wound, Vishous counter-attacked the Shadow, tackling him in a total body slam as Rhage grabbed at that thick wrist to pull the grip free. Incredibly, it got them nowhere. ~ J R Ward,#NFDB
249:It was, of course, the memory of Sophie and Nathan's long-ago plunge that set loose this flood [of tears], but it was also a letting go of rage and sorrow for the many others who during these past months had battered at my mind and now demanded my mourning: Sophie and Nathan, yes, but also Jan and Eva -- Eva with her one-eyed mis -- and Eddie Farrell, and Bobby Weed, and my young black savior Artiste, and Maria Hunt, and Nat Turner, and Wanda Muck-Horch von Kretschmann, who were but a few of the beaten and butchered and betrayed and martyred children of the earth. I did not weep for the six million Jews or the two million Poles or the one million Serbs or the five million Russians -- I was unprepared to weep for all humanity -- but I did weep for these others who in one way or another had become dear to me, and my sobs made an unashamed racket across the abandoned beach; then I had no more tears to shed, I lowered myself to the sand...and slept...When I awoke it was nearly morning...I heard children chattering nearby. I stirred...Blessing my resurrection, I realized that the children had covered me with sand, protectively, and that I lay as safe as a mummy beneath this fine, enveloping overcoat. ~ William Styron, #NFDB
250:Now at night, I held you and a great fear, wide as all our American generations, took me. Now I personally understood my father and the old mantra - 'Either I can beat him or the police.' I understood it all - the cable wires, the extension cords, the ritual switch. Black people love their children with a kind of obsession. You are all we have, and you come to us endangered. I think we would like to kill you ourselves before seeing you killed by the streets that America made. This is a philosophy of the disembodied, of a people who control nothing, who can protect nothing, who are made to fear not just the criminals among them but the police who lord over them with all the moral authority of a protection racket. It was only after you that I understood this love, that I understood the grip of my mother's hand. She knew that the galaxy itself could kill me, that all of me could be shattered and all of her legacy spilled upon the curb like bum wine. And no one wold be brought to account for this destruction, because my death would not be the fault of any human but the fault of some unfortunate but immutable fact of 'race,' imposed upon an innocent country by the inscrutable judgment of invisible gods. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
251:In short order, I became America’s foremost “irregardless” apologist. I recorded a short video for Merriam-Webster’s website refuting the notion that “irregardless” wasn’t a word; I took to Twitter and Facebook and booed naysayers who set “irregardless” up as the straw man for the demise of English. I continued to find evidence of the emphatic “irregardless” in all sorts of places—even in the oral arguments of a Supreme Court case. One incredulous e-mail response to my video continued to claim “irregardless” wasn’t a real word. “It’s a made-up word that made it into the dictionary through constant use!” the correspondent said, and I cackled gleefully before responding. Of course “irregardless” is a made-up word that was entered into the dictionary through constant use; that’s pretty much how this racket works. All words are made-up: Do you think we find them fully formed on the ocean floor, or mine for them in some remote part of Wales? I began telling correspondents that “irregardless” was much more complex than people thought, and it deserved a little respectful respite, even if it still was not part of Standard English. My mother was duly horrified. “Oh, Kory,” she tutted. “So much for that college education.” — ~ Kory Stamper, #NFDB
252:If I’ve got to take down a couple of rogue city girls for you to get your happily ever after, I’ll do it.” Shane scrubbed a hand over his jaw and gave her a slow once-over. “She might actually be able to take them on.” “She’s very persistent,” James added dryly. Gracie scowled. “You’re not still mad about that, are you?” “I don’t get mad,” James said, but a muscle in his cheek jumped, belying his words. Gracie snorted, waving a hand. “Whatever, Professor. I still think you’re being a baby.” James cocked his head to the side and studied her. “You just don’t know when to shut up, do you?” Mitch glanced at Shane, who shook his head. “It’s been a fun drive.” “Hey—” Gracie started to speak, but Mitch cut her off. “Can you save it for another time?” The front door flew open and Sophie came storming out. “What is all the racket out here?” “Hey, Soph,” Shane said. “It’s three in the fucking morning and I’m not in the mood.” Penelope wandered out, much more slowly. “This is giving me a headache.” Shane shifted his gaze on her. “We’re coming in.” Penelope smirked. “I don’t take orders after work hours.” Maddie’s mom crowded onto the porch. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—get in here or the neighbors are going to have a fit.” Mitch ~ Jennifer Dawson, #NFDB
253:1098
What Home's Intended For
When the young folks gather 'round in the good old-fashioned way,
Singin' all the latest songs gathered from the newest play,
Or they start the phonograph an' shove the chairs back to the wall
An' hold a little party dance, I'm happiest of all.
Then I sorter settle back, plumb contented to the core,
An' I tell myself most proudly, that's what home's intended for.
When the laughter's gaily ringin' an' the room is filled with song,
I like, to sit an' watch 'em, all that glad an' merry throng,
For the ragtime they are playin' on the old piano there
Beats any high-toned music where the bright lights shine an' glare,
An' the racket they are makin' stirs my pulses more and more,
So I whisper in my gladness: that's what home's intended for.
Then I smile an' say to Mother, let 'em move the chairs about,
Let 'em frolic in the parlor, let 'em shove the tables out,
Jus' so long as they are near us, jus' so long as they will stay
By the fireplace we are keepin', harm will never come their way,
An' you'll never hear me grumble at the bills that keep me poor,
It's the finest part o' livin'- that's what home's intended for.
~ Edgar Albert Guest,#NFDB
254:When does the enchantment start?
We were sitting side by side, facing the mountains.
"It started when the earth was born." Her eyes was closed. Her face was golden in the setting sun. "It never stops. It is, always. It's just here."
So what do we do?"
She smiled. "That's the secret." Her cupped hands rested in her lap. "We do nothing. Or as close to nothing as we can." Her face turned slowly to me, though her eyes remained closed. "Have you ever done nothing?"
I laughed. "My mother thinks I do it all the time."
"Don't tell her I said so, but your mother is wrong." She turned back to the sun. "It's really hard to do nothing totally. Even just sitting here, like this, our bodies are churning, our minds are chattering. There's a whole commotion going on inside of us."
"That's bad?" I said.
"It's bad if we want to know what's going on outside ourselves."
"Don't we have eyes and ears for that?"
She nodded. "They're okay most of the time. But sometimes they just get in the way. The earth is speaking to us, but we can't hear because of all the racket our senses are making. Sometimes we need to erase them, erase our senses. Then maybe the earth will touch us. The universe will speak. The stars will whisper. ~ Jerry Spinelli,#NFDB
255:Our House
WE play at our house and have all sorts of fun,
An' there's always a game when supper is done;
An' at our house there's marks on the walls an' the stairs,
An' some terrible scratches on some of the chairs;
An' ma says that our house is surely a fright,
But pa and I say that our house is all right.
At our house we laugh an' we sing an' we shout,
An' whirl all the chairs and the tables about,
An' I rassle my pa an' I get him down too,
An' he's all out of breath when the fightin' is through;
An' ma says our house is surely a sight,
But pa an' I say that our house is all right.
I've been to houses with pa where I had
To sit in a chair like a good little lad,
An' there wasn't a mark on the walls an' the chairs,
An' the stuff that we have couldn't come up to theirs;
An' pa said to ma that for all of their joy
He wouldn't change places and give up his boy.
They never have races nor rassles nor fights,
Coz they have no children to play with at nights;
An' their walls are all clean and their curtains hang straight,
An' everything's shiny an' right up to date;
But pa says with all of its racket an' fuss,
He'd rather by far live at our house with us.
~ Edgar Albert Guest,#NFDB
256:Animal Funerals, 1964
That summer, we did not simply walk through
the valley of the shadow of death; we set up camp there,
orchestrating funerals for the anonymous,
found dead: a drowned mole—its small, naked palms
still pink—a crushed box turtle, green snake, even
a lowly toad. The last and most elaborate
of the burials was for a common jay,
identifiable but light and dry,
its eyes vacant orbits. We built a delicate
lichgate of willow fronds, supple, green—laced
through with chains of clover. Straggling congregation,
we recited what we could of the psalm
about green pastures as we lowered the shoebox
and its wilted pall of dandelions into the shallow
grave one of us had dug with a serving spoon.
That afternoon, just before September and school,
when we would again become children, and blind
to all but the blackboard's chalky lessons, the back
of someone's head, and what was, for a while longer,
the rarer, human death—there, in the heat-shimmered
trees, in the matted grasses where we stood,
even in the slant of humid shade—
we heard wingbeat, slither, buzz, and birdsong—
a green racket rising to fall as though
in a joyous dirge that was real,
and not part of our many, necessary rehearsals
~ Claudia Emerson,#NFDB
257:The Blossoming Of Love Is Strange And Wondrous
The blossoming of love is strange and wondrous!
When I acquired the knowledge of love,
I dreaded the mosque.
I fled to my lord’s dwelling,
Where a thousand sounds reverberate.
When love revealed its mystery to me,
The parroted words vanished.
Inside and out, I was cleansed.
I saw my beloved wherever I looked.
Heer and Ranjha are already one.
But Heer, deluded, still searches the woods.
Her Ranjha is with her,
And she doesn’t even know it.
I am tired of reading the Vedas and the Koran!
Obeisance has only abraded my forehead .
God was not in Mecca, nor any holy place.
But who ever found him became brightly illuminated.
Burn the prayer rug, break the clay pot,
Divest yourself of rosary, bowl and staff.
Those who love proclaim repeatedly and loudly,
‘Eat the forbidden! Forsake halaal!’
You have spent your life in the mosque,
Your heart still filled with filth.
Not once did you declare that god is one!
What is the point of making this racket now?
Your devotion was loveless.
Now your protestations are worthless.
Bulla says, I would have remained silent,
It is love that compels me to speak forcefully.
The blossoming of love is strange and wonderful
43
~ Bulleh Shah,#NFDB
258:awake that she climbed out of bed and went to the window. She pulled the curtains aside, but the Kanes’ house was in darkness. She went back to bed, switched on her bedside lamp and picked up the crossword she had been trying to finish before she had grown too sleepy. One of down clues was ‘Together, the top and bottom of the world are manic’. The answer was ‘bipolar’. *** Next morning, as she came back with Barney from his early-morning walk, she found David Kane standing in her porch with the collar of his grey raincoat turned up. It was raining hard now and Barney had been stopping every few yards to shake himself. ‘Good morning, Katie,’ said David. ‘That’s the trouble with dogs, isn’it? You have to take them out to do the necessary, whatever the weather.’ Katie lowered her umbrella and shook it. ‘Don’t you have a dog?’ she asked him. ‘No, I couldn’t. If my patients smelled another dog in the house, whether they were dogs themselves or cats or whatever, they’d find it very disturbing.’ He stood close beside her as she unlocked her front door. ‘Talking of disturbing, the reason I’ve come over is to apologize for all the racket we were making last night, Sorcha and me. Sorcha was having one of her episodes.’ Katie stepped into the hallway and Barney followed her. David stayed in the porch as she hung up her raincoat. ‘Has she been back to her doctor?’ she said. ~ Graham Masterton, #NFDB
259:Oh Finn, thought Maia, I know I should be glad you’re free and happy, and I am glad. Only I really don’t know what to do here anymore.
But Finn wasn’t happy. Both he and the boat seemed somehow sluggish, and he couldn’t quite get rid of the knot in his stomach.
He had moored by a huge dyewood tree. The water flowed quietly in a deep channel; nowhere better could be found.
So why? He’d had his supper of beans and roasted maize; the deck was piled with chopped wood; the dog had gone ashore to find his own supper and came back with a smug expression and blood on his jaws.
Everything was fine.
A group of howler monkeys came swinging through the trees, making their evening racket, half screech, half laughter, and stopped when they saw the Arabella.
Perhaps I should have gone to Westwood, thought Finn. “They’d have knocked all this rubbish out of me. Foreseeing disasters…”
What did he think could happen to Maia in the Carters’ bungalow? The whole point about the Carters’ bungalow was that nothing happened in it. It was the most boring house in the world--and the Indians had promised to look after her. “No harm will come to your friend,” Furo had said.
So why did the unease get worse all the time?
He remembered saying good-bye to Maia. She had come out of the house in her dressing gown; she ran so lightly, but when he’d hugged her she felt wonderfully solid.
No, Maia would be all right.
“I’m not going back,” said Finn aloud. And in the trees, the monkeys threw back their heads and roared. ~ Eva Ibbotson,#NFDB
260:―When you kick out for yourself, Stephen―as I daresay you will one of these days―rememer, whatever you do, to mix with gentlemen. When I was a young fellow I tell you I enjoyed myself. I mixed with fine decent fellows. Everyone of us could lo something. One fellow had a good voice, another fellow was a good actor, another could sing a good comic song, another was a good oarsman or a good racket player, another could tell a good story and so on. We kept the ball rolling anyhow and enjoyed ourselves and saw a bit of life and we were none the worse of it either. But we were all gentlemen, Stephen―at least I hope we were―and bloody good honest Irishmen too. That's the kind of fellows I want you to associate with, fellows of the right kidney. I'm talking to you as a friend, Stephen. I don't believe a son should be afraid of his father. No, I treat you as your grandfather treated me when I was a young chap. We were more like brothers than father and son. I`ll never forget the first day he caught me smoking. I was standing at the end of the South Terrace one day with some maneens like myself and sure we thought we were grand fellows because we had pipes stuck in the corners of our mouths. Suddenly the governor passed. He didn't say a word, or stop even. But the next day, Sunday, we were out for a walk together and when we were coming home he took out his cigar case and said:―By the by, Simon, I didn't know you smoked, or something like that.―Of course I tried to carry it off as best I could.―If you want a good smoke, he said, try one of these cigars. An American captain made me a present of them last night in Queenstown. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
261:The Summer Girl
She's the jauntiest of creatures, she's the daintiest of misses,
With her pretty patent leathers or her alligator ties,
With her eyes inviting glances and her lips inviting kisses,
As she wanders by the ocean or strolls under country skies.
She's a captivating dresser, and her parasols are stunning,
Her fads will-take your breath away, her hats are dreams of style;
She is not so very bookish, but with repartee and punning
She can set the savants laughing and make even dudelets smile.
She has no attacks of talent, she is not a stage-struck maiden;
She is wholly free from hobbies, and she dreams of no 'career;'
She is mostly gay and happy, never sad or care-beladen,
Though she sometimes sighs a little if a gentleman is near.
She's a sturdy little walker and she braves all kinds of weather,
And when the rain or fog or mist drive rival crimps a-wreck,
Her fluffy hair goes curling like a kinked-up ostrich feather
Around her ears and forehead and the white nape of her neck.
She is like a fish in water; she can handle reins and racket;
From head to toe and finger-tips she's thoroughly alive;
When she goes promenading in a most distracting jacket,
The rustle round her feet suggests how laundresses may thrive.
She can dare the wind and sunshine in the most bravado manner,
And after hours of sailing she has merely cheeks of rose;
Old Sol himself seems smitten and at most will only tan her,
Though to everybody else he gives a danger-signal nose.
She's a trifle sentimental, and she's fond of admiration,
And she sometimes flirts a little in the season's giddy whirl;
But win her if you can, sir, she may prove your life's salvation,
689
For an angel masquerading oft is she, the summer girl.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,#NFDB
262:So, doing nothing, he simply remained on the alert, careful to preserve his failing memory against the decay that consumed everything around him, much as he had done from the moment that he — once the closing of the estate had been announced and he personally had decided to stay behind and survive on what remained until “the decision to reverse the closure should be taken” — had gone up to the mill with the elder Horgos girl to observe the terrible racket of the abandonment of the place, with everyone rushing round and shouting, the trucks in the distance like refugees fleeing the scene, when it seemed to him that the mill’s death-sentence had brought the whole estate to a condition of near collapse, and from that day on he felt too weak to halt by himself the triumphal progress of the wrecking process, however he might try, there being nothing he could do in the face of the power that ruined houses, walls, trees and fields, the birds that dived from their high stations, the beasts that scurried forth, and all human bodies, desires and hopes, knowing he wouldn’t, in any case, have the strength, however he tried, to resist this treacherous assault on humanity; and, knowing this, he understood, just in time, that the best he could do was to use his memory to fend off the sinister, underhanded process of decay, trusting in the fact that since all that mason might build, carpenter might construct, woman might stitch, indeed all that men and women had brought forth with bitter tears was bound to turn to an undifferentiated, runny, underground, mysteriously ordained mush, his memory would remain lively and clear, right until his organs surrendered and “conformed to the contract whereby their business affairs were wound up,” that is to say until his bones and flesh fell prey to the vultures hovering over death and decay. ~ L szl Krasznahorkai, #NFDB
263:It's hard to do nothing totally. Even just sitting here, like this, our bodies are churning, our minds are chattering. There's a whole commotion going on inside us."
"That's bad?" I said.
"It's bad if we want to know what's going on outside ourselves."
"Don't we have eyes and ears for that?"
She nodded. "They're okay most of the time. But sometimes they just get in the way. The earth is speaking to us, but we can't hear because of all the racket our senses are shaking. Sometimes we need to erase them, erase our senses. Then-maybe- the earth will touch us. The universe will speak. The stars will whisper."
The sun was glowing orange now, clipping the mountains' purple crests.
"So how do I become this nothing?"
"I'm not sure,"she said "There's no one answer to that. You have to find your own way. Sometimes I try to erase myself. I imagine a big pink soft soap eraser, and it's going back and forth, back and forth, and it starts down at my toes, back and forth, back and forth, and there they go-poof!-my toes are gone. And then my feet. And then my ankles. But that's the easy part. The hard part is erasing my senses-my eyes,my ears,my nose, my tongue. And last to go is my brain. My thoughts, memories, all the voices inside my head. That's the hardest, erasing my thoughts." She chuckled faintly. "My pumpkin. And then, if I've done a good job, I'm erased. I'm gone. I'm nothing. And then the world is free to flow into me like water into and empty bowl."
"And?" I said.
"And I see. I hear. But not with eyes and ears. I'm not outside my world anymore, and I'm not really inside it either. The thing is, there's no difference anymore between me and the universe. The boundary is gone. I am it and it is me. I am a stone, a cactus thorn. I am rain." She smiled dreamily. "I like that most of all, being rain. ~ Jerry Spinelli,#NFDB
264:Good-bye," he muttered harshly. "Good-bye! Good-bye, mamma!" A wild, strange cry, like that of a beast in pain, was torn from his throat. His eyes were blind with tears; he tried to speak, to get into a word, a phrase, all the pain, the beauty, and the wonder of their lives—every step of that terrible voyage which his incredible memory and intuition took back to the dwelling of her womb. But no word came, no word could come; he kept crying hoarsely again and again, "Good-bye, good-bye." She understood, she knew all he felt and wanted to say, her small weak eyes were wet as his with tears, her face was twisted in the painful grimace of sorrow, and she kept saying:
"Poor child! Poor child! Poor child!" Then she whispered huskily, faintly: "We must try to love one another." The terrible and beautiful sentence, the last, the final wisdom that the earth can give, is remembered at the end, is spoken too late, wearily. It stands there, awful and untraduced, above the dusty racket of our lives. No forgetting, no forgiving, no denying, no explaining, no hating. O mortal and perishing love, born with this flesh and dying with this brain, your memory will haunt the earth forever. And now the voyage out. Where? XL The Square lay under blazing moonlight. The fountain pulsed with a steady breezeless jet: the water fell upon the pool with a punctual slap. No one came into the Square.
The chimes of the bank's clock struck the quarter after three as Eugene entered from the northern edge, by Academy Street.
He came slowly over past the fire department and the City Hall. On Gant's corner, the Square dipped sharply down toward Niggertown, as if it had been bent at the edge.
Eugene saw his father's name, faded, on the old brick in moonlight. On the stone porch of the shop, the angels held their marble posture. They seemed to have frozen, in the moonlight. ~ Thomas Wolfe,#NFDB
265:When I want to move, I remember death, how it is ultimate and inevitable, and pure. Then I am free to move properly in life. It's like a man who wants to think, going and standing in front of a window. The space purifys ones' soul. And death is a window to me, with the darkness outside. And when I stand there, looking out, then the world and its active life seems only like a roomful of racket and light behind me, where I am taking part for a time, but not staying for long. It does not contain me and confine me. When I stand peacefully looking out on death, what is true in my soul disengages itself and is free and clear and untrammeled, I know what to do, I am sure, and free, and glad. Then I can turn into the world again"...
"When one stands in front of the darkness, and knows that one's own life will pass away there also, into the darkness...then, in the peace that accompanies this knowledge, one can declare simply that the existing world of man is base and wrong, and must go, we know that our lives contain the inception of a new earth.."
..."Remembering death, I know the life of the world as it is now is not living, it is a bad process of dying. And what we must live for is a new world of life. It doesn't matter when we die, so long as we live fulfilling the deepest desire that is in us. And a life which is a denial of the deepest desire is much worse than any death, it is a sheer lie."
"If one accepts death and knows that nothing can take us away from that, one has the freedom and strength to live in truth, putting down the lies that pretend they own our living. But one must have the pure knowledge of death behind one, before one has really faith to tackle life and falsity. Being sure in death I am strong in life. And so, in life, and in all the world of man, I have no master, save the deepest desire of my own soul, in which death and life are one. ~ D H Lawrence,#NFDB
266:The Yellow-Covered Almanac
I left the farm when mother died and changed my place of dwelling
To daughter Susie’s stylish house right on the city street:
And there was them before I came that sort of scared me, telling
How I would find the town folks’ ways so difficult to meet;
They said I’d have no comfort in the rustling, fixed-up throng,
And I’d have to wear stiff collars every weekday, right along.
I find I take to city ways just like a duck to water;
I like the racket and the noise and never tire of shows;
And there’s no end of comfort in the mansion of my daughter,
And everything is right at hand and money freely flows;
And hired help is all about, just listenin’ to my call –
But I miss the yellow almanac off my old kitchen wall.
The house is full of calendars from the attic to the cellar,
They’re painted in all colours and are fancy like to see,
But in this one in particular I’m not a modern feller,
And the yellow-covered almanac is good enough for me.
I’m used to it, I’ve seen it round from boyhood to old age,
And I rather like the jokin’ at the bottom of the page.
I like the way its ‘S’ stood out to show the week’s beginning,
(In these new-fangled calendars the days seem sort of mixed) ,
And the man upon the cover, though he wa’n’t exactly winnin’,
With lungs and liver all exposed, still showed how we are fixed;
And the letters and credentials hat was writ to Mr. Ayer
I’ve often on a rainy day found readin’ pretty fair.
I tried to buy one recently; there wa’n’t none in the city!
They toted out great calendars, in every shape and style.
I looked at them in cold disdain, and answered ‘em in pity –
‘I’d rather have my almanac than all that costly pile.’
And though I take to city life, I’m lonesome after all
For that old yellow almanac upon my kitchen wall.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,#NFDB
267:The Shanty
THERE ARE tracks through the scrub, there’s a track down the hill,
And a track round the bend from M‘Courteney’s mill,
Where they slyly emerge from the bush and converge,
You’ll discover the humpy—the theme of this dirge—
That is used for the sale of O’Sullivan’s ‘purge.’
And if curses and cries,
And a blasting of eyes,
And a series of blasphemies fearful arise,
And a lunatic din,
And a racket like sin,
You can bet all you own the O’Sullivan’s in.
It’s a bark and slab hut, with a bar and a bunk,
And a man propped before it disgustingly drunk,
And a nameless galoot in a hand-me-down suit,
Straddling out on the grass, grim as death, and as mute,
Trapping millions of rabbits that run from his boot.
When eleven lie round
In all shapes on the mound,
And two navvies are fighting like fiends on the ground,
’Tisn’t needful to say
It’s the sweet Sabbath day,
And that trade at the shanty’s uncommonly gay.
Mrs. O’. makes the drinks, and O’Sullivan’s dart
Is to drink all he can to keep others in heart.
Though he’s old in the hoof, and he reckons he’s proof
’Gainst infernalest liquors, in warp and in woof,
He’s quite frequently seen howling out on the roof.
For from fungus or fruits,
From old rags or from roots,
Grass, cabbages, pickles, old bedding or boots,
Or the leaves of the gum,
Or whatever may come,
Mrs. O’. can extract the most illigant’ rum.
They’ve no peace in the hut and no peace on the hill,
Mrs. O’. never sleeps and her hand’s never still;
And old constable Mack cannot hit on the track
153
As a man of the law. As a stranger in black
When he finds his way there he can’t find his way back.
There’s no signboard to see,
But those fools on the spree,
Or a man in his shirt shrieking prayers to a tree.
As for licenses—yar!
They don’t know what they are,
For they drink without license at Sullivan’s bar.
~ Edward George Dyson,#NFDB
268:Speculators, meanwhile, have seized control of the global economy and the levers of political power. They have weakened and emasculated governments to serve their lust for profit. They have turned the press into courtiers, corrupted the courts, and hollowed out public institutions, including universities. They peddle spurious ideologies—neoliberal economics and globalization—to justify their rapacious looting and greed. They create grotesque financial mechanisms, from usurious interest rates on loans to legalized accounting fraud, to plunge citizens into crippling forms of debt peonage. And they have been stealing staggering sums of public funds, such as the $65 billion of mortgage-backed securities and bonds, many of them toxic, that have been unloaded each month on the Federal Reserve in return for cash.21 They feed like parasites off of the state and the resources of the planet. Speculators at megabanks and investment firms such as Goldman Sachs are not, in a strict sense, capitalists. They do not make money from the means of production. Rather, they ignore or rewrite the law—ostensibly put in place to protect the weak from the powerful—to steal from everyone, including their own shareholders. They produce nothing. They make nothing. They only manipulate money. They are no different from the detested speculators who were hanged in the seventeenth century, when speculation was a capital offense. The obscenity of their wealth is matched by their utter lack of concern for the growing numbers of the destitute. In early 2014, the world’s 200 richest people made $13.9 billion, in one day, according to Bloomberg’s billionaires index.22 This hoarding of money by the elites, according to the ruling economic model, is supposed to make us all better off, but in fact the opposite happens when wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals and corporations, as economist Thomas Piketty documents in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century.23 The rest of us have little or no influence over how we are governed, and our wages stagnate or decline. Underemployment and unemployment become chronic. Social services, from welfare to Social Security, are slashed in the name of austerity. Government, in the hands of speculators, is a protection racket for corporations and a small group of oligarchs. And the longer we play by their rules the more impoverished and oppressed we become. Yet, like ~ Chris Hedges, #NFDB
269:The Pig
In ev'ry age, and each profession,
Men err the most by prepossession;
But when the thing is clearly shown,
And fairly stated, fully known,
We soon applaud what we deride,
And penitence succeeds to pride.-A certain Baron on a day
Having a mind to show away,
Invited all the wits and wags,
Foot, Massey, Shuter, Yates, and Skeggs,
And built a large commodious stage,
For the Choice Spirits of the age;
But above all, among the rest,
There came a Genius who profess'd
To have a curious trick in store,
Which never was perform'd before.
Thro' all the town this soon got air,
And the whole house was like a fair;
But soon his entry as he made,
Without a prompter, or parade,
'Twas all expectance, all suspense,
And silence gagg'd the audience.
He hid his head behind his wig,
With with such truth took off* a Pig, [imitated]
All swore 'twas serious, and no joke,
For doubtless underneath his cloak,
He had conceal'd some grunting elf,
Or was a real hog himself.
A search was made, no pig was found-With thund'ring claps the seats resound,
And pit and box and galleries roar,
With--"O rare! bravo!" and "Encore!"
Old Roger Grouse, a country clown,
Who yet knew something of the town,
Beheld the mimic and his whim,
And on the morrow challeng'd him.
Declaring to each beau and bunter
That he'd out-grunt th'egregious grunter.
The morrow came--the crowd was greater--
110
But prejudice and rank ill-nature
Usurp'd the minds of men and wenches,
Who came to hiss, and break the benches.
The mimic took his usual station,
And squeak'd with general approbation.
"Again, encore! encore!" they cry-'Twas quite the thing--'twas very high;
Old Grouse conceal'd, amidst the racket,
A real Pig berneath his jacket-Then forth he came--and with his nail
He pinch'd the urchin by the tail.
The tortur'd Pig from out his throat,
Produc'd the genuine nat'ral note.
All bellow'd out--"'Twas very sad!
Sure never stuff was half so bad!
That like a Pig!"--each cry'd in scoff,
"Pshaw! Nonsense! Blockhead! Off! Off! Off!"
The mimic was extoll'd, and Grouse
Was hiss'd and catcall'd from the house.-"Soft ye, a word before I go,"
Quoth honest Hodge--and stooping low
Produc'd the Pig, and thus aloud
Bespoke the stupid, partial crowd:
"Behold, and learn from this poor creature,
How much you Critics know of Nature."
~ Christopher Smart,#NFDB
270:When Mama leaned over to kiss me, I hugged her so tight she could hardly breathe. “I’ll never forget you,” I whispered.
Mama drew back. “What did you say?”
“Nothing,” I mumbled. “I love you, Mama.”
She smiled. “Well, for goodness sake, you little jackanapes, I love you too.”
Smoothing the quilt over me, she turned to the others. “What Andrew needs is a good night’s sleep. In the morning, he’ll be himself again, just wait and see.”
“I hope so,” Andrew said.
Papa frowned. “No one will get any sleep, good or bad, with Buster making such a racket. I don’t know what ails that animal.”
While we’d been talking, Andrew had gone to the window and whistled for the dog. Though the Tylers hadn’t heard the loud two-fingered blast, Buster definitely had. His howls made the hair on my neck prickle. Even Andrew looked frightened. He backed away from the window and sat quietly in the rocker.
“Edward told me a dog howls when somebody in the family is about to die,” Theo said uneasily.
Papa shook his head. “That’s superstitious nonsense, Theodore. Surely you know better than to believe someone as well known for mendacity as your cousin.”
Muttering to himself, Papa left the room. Taking Theo with her, Mama followed, but Hannah lingered by the bed.
I reached out and grabbed her hand. “Don’t leave yet,” I begged. “Stay a while.”
Hannah hesitated for a moment, her face solemn, her eyes worried. “Mama’s right, Andrew,” she said softly. “You need to rest, you’ve overexcited yourself again. We’ve got all day tomorrow to sit in the tree and talk.”
When Hannah reached up to turn off the gas jet, I glanced at Andrew. He was watching his sister from the rocker, his eyes fixed longingly on her face. A little wave of jealousy swept over me. He’d get to be with her for years, but all I had were a few more minutes.
In the darkness, Hannah smiled down at me. “Close your eyes,” she said. “Go to sleep.”
“But I’ll never see you again.”
Hannah’s smile vanished. “Don’t talk nonsense,” she whispered. “You’ll see me tomorrow and every day after that.”
In the corner, Andrew stared at his sister and rocked the chair harder. In the silent room I heard it creak, saw it move back and forth.
Startled by the sound, Hannah glanced at the rocker and drew in her breath. Turning to me, she said, “Lord, the moon’s making me as fanciful as you. I thought I saw--”
She shook her head. “I must need a good night’s sleep myself.” Kissing me lightly on the nose, Hannah left the room without looking at the rocking chair again. ~ Mary Downing Hahn,#NFDB
271:At Half-Mast
You didn't know Billy, did you? Well, Bill was one of the boys,
The greatest fellow you ever seen to racket an' raise a noise,-An' sing! say, you never heard singing 'nless you heard Billy sing.
I used to say to him, "Billy, that voice that you've got there'd bring
A mighty sight more bank-notes to tuck away in your vest,
If only you'd go on the concert stage instead of a-ranchin' West."
An' Billy he'd jist go laughin', and say as I didn't know
A robin's whistle in springtime from a barnyard rooster's crow.
But Billy could sing, an' I sometimes think that voice lives anyhow,-That perhaps Bill helps with the music in the place he's gone to now.
The last time that I seen him was the day he rode away;
He was goin' acrost the plain to catch the train for the East next day.
'Twas the only time I ever seen poor Bill that he didn't laugh
Or sing, an' kick up a rumpus an' racket around, and chaff,
For he'd got a letter from his folks that said for to hurry home,
For his mother was dyin' away down East an' she wanted Bill to come.
Say, but the feller took it hard, but he saddled up right away,
An' started across the plains to take the train for the East, next day.
Sometimes I lie awake a-nights jist a-thinkin' of the rest,
For that was the great big blizzard day, when the wind come down from west,
An' the snow piled up like mountains an' we couldn't put foot outside,
But jist set into the shack an' talked of Bill on his lonely ride.
We talked of the laugh he threw us as he went at the break o' day,
An' we talked of the poor old woman dyin' a thousand mile away.
Well, Dan O'Connell an' I went out to search at the end of the week,
Fer all of us fellers thought a lot,--a lot that we darsn't speak.
We'd been up the trail about forty mile, an' was talkin' of turnin' back,
But Dan, well, he wouldn't give in, so we kep' right on to the railroad track.
As soon as we sighted them telegraph wires says Dan, "Say, bless my soul!
Ain't that there Bill's red handkerchief tied half way up that pole?"
Yes, sir, there she was, with her ends a-flippin' an' flyin' in the wind,
An' underneath was the envelope of Bill's letter tightly pinned.
"Why, he must a-boarded the train right here," says Dan, but I kinder knew
That underneath them snowdrifts we would find a thing or two;
Fer he'd writ on that there paper, "Been lost fer hours,--all hope is past.
You'll find me, boys, where my handkerchief is flyin' at half-mast."
18
~ Emily Pauline Johnson,#NFDB
272:The man who had him pinned kicked him over again and pointed down at the tire. "Stay down, you little bastard, or we'll rape your mum and skin her alive." Chris clamped his hands over Michael's ears. When Dean edged the truck forwards, Tommy's eyes jumped from his face. "Mum! Mummy! Help me, Mummy! Mum!" The engine bellowed, Tommy cried, Marie screamed, Frank roared, and Chris' pulse thumped in his ears. Locked in a maniacal fit, Dean cackled at the sky, his pointy nose and gaunt face making him look like a satanic Mr. Punch. He edged forward again. As Michael fought against Chris' restraint, he eased off a little. Should he just let him go? Were the images in his mind worse than those outside? When the truck moved forward again, the thick treads of the huge tires biting into the back of Tommy's head, he squeezed tightly once more. No mind could create anything worse than that. Chris looked away too. Tommy's scream was so shrill Chris thought all of the glass in the cul-de-sac would crack, and he fought harder against his thrashing son to keep him restrained. When he felt like he couldn't fight the boy's will any more, he let go. Instead of looking outside, Michael fell to the floor in a ball, scuttled beneath some blankets, and covered his ears. From beneath the sheets, Chris heard his small voice singing, "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." Nudging his boy, Chris waited for him to resurface and put a finger to his lips again. They couldn't afford for the looters to hear them no matter how much it took his son away from their dark reality. The sound of a beeping horn was accompanied by Dean howling and laughing, the vehicle's engine releasing a war cry under the weight of his heavy foot. The cacophony of chaos outside got louder. Frank wailed, Marie let out louder screams, the engine roared, the horn beeped, Dean laughed, and Tommy shrieked. Looking outside again, Chris kept his eyes away from Tommy. Instead, he watched George. If there was anyone who would save them, it was him. Crunch! Crash! The truck dropped by six inches. Tommy stopped screaming. When Dean cut the engine, silence settled over the cul-de-sac, spreading outwards like the thick pool of blood from Tommy's crushed head. Marie's face was locked in a silent scream. Frank slumped further and shook with inaudible sobs. The men, even the weasel with the tennis racket, stood frozen. None of them looked at the dead boy. Turning away from the murder, Chris looked down to find Michael staring back at him. What could he say to him? Tommy was his best friend. Then, starting low like a distant air-raid siren, Marie began to wail. After rapidly increasing in volume, it turned into a sustained and brutal cry as if she was being torn in two. Chilled ~ Michael Robertson, #NFDB
273:One day, because I was bored in our usual spot, next to the merry-go-round, Françoise had taken me on an excursion – beyond the frontier guarded at equal intervals by the little bastions of the barley-sugar sellers – into those neighbouring but foreign regions where the faces are unfamiliar, where the goat cart passes; then she had gone back to get her things from her chair, which stood with its back to a clump of laurels; as I waited for her, I was trampling the broad lawn, sparse and shorn, yellowed by the sun, at the far end of which a statue stands above the pool, when, from the path, addressing a little girl with red hair playing with a shuttlecock in front of the basin, another girl, while putting on her cloak and stowing her racket, shouted to her, in a sharp voice: ‘Good-bye, Gilberte, I’m going home, don’t forget we’re coming to your house tonight after dinner.’ That name, Gilberte, passed by close to me, evoking all the more forcefully the existence of the girl it designated in that it did not merely name her as an absent person to whom one is referring, but hailed her directly; thus it passed close by me, in action so to speak, with a power that increased with the curve of its trajectory and the approach of its goal; – transporting along with it, I felt, the knowledge, the notions about the girl to whom it was addressed, that belonged not to me, but to the friend who was calling her, everything that, as she uttered it, she could see again or at least held in her memory, of their daily companionship, of the visits they paid to each other, and all that unknown experience which was even more inaccessible and painful to me because conversely it was so familiar and so tractable to that happy girl who grazed me with it without my being able to penetrate it and hurled it up in the air in a shout; – letting float in the air the delicious emanation it had already, by touching them precisely, released from several invisible points in the life of Mlle Swann, from the evening to come, such as it might be, after dinner, at her house; – forming, in its celestial passage among the children and maids, a little cloud of precious colour, like that which, curling over a lovely garden by Poussin,15 reflects minutely like a cloud in an opera, full of horses and chariots, some manifestation of the life of the gods; – casting finally, on that bald grass, at the spot where it was at once a patch of withered lawn and a moment in the afternoon of the blonde shuttlecock player (who did not stop launching the shuttlecock and catching it again until a governess wearing a blue ostrich feather called her), a marvellous little band the colour of heliotrope as impalpable as a reflection and laid down like a carpet over which I did not tire of walking back and forth with lingering, nostalgic and desecrating steps, while Françoise cried out to me: ‘Come on now, button up your coat and let’s make ourselves scarce’, and I noticed for the first time with irritation that she had a vulgar way of speaking, and alas, no blue feather in her hat. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
274:Dog Talk
…
I have seen Ben place his nose meticulously
into the shallow dampness of a deer’s hoofprint and shut his eyes
as if listening. But it is smell he is listening to. The wild, high
music of smell, that we know so little about.
Tonight Ben charges up the yard; Bear follows. They run into the
field and are gone. A soft wind, like a belt of silk, wraps the house.
I follow them to the end of the field where I hear the long-eared
owl, at wood’s edge, in one of the tall pines. All night the owl will
sit there inventing his catty racket, except when he opens pale
wings and drifts moth-like over the grass. I have seen both dogs
look up as the bird floats by, and I suppose the field mouse hears
it too, in the pebble of his tiny heart. Though I hear nothing.
Bear is small and white with a curly tail. He was meant to be idle
and pretty but learned instead to love the world, and to romp
roughly with the big dogs. The brotherliness of the two, Ben and
Bear, increases with each year. They have their separate habits,
their own favorite sleeping places, for example, yet each worries
without letup if the other is missing. They both bark rapturously
and in support of each other. They both sneeze to express plea-
sure, and yawn in humorous admittance of embarrassment. In the
car, when we are getting close to home and the smell of the ocean
begins to surround them, they both sit bolt upright and hum.
With what vigor
and intention to please himself
the little white dog
flings himself into every puddle
on the muddy road.
Somethings are unchangeably wild, others are stolid tame. The
tiger is wild, the coyote, and the owl. I am tame, you are
tame. The wild things that have been altered, but only into
a semblance of tameness, it is no real change. But the dog lives in
both worlds. Ben is devoted, he hates the door between us, is
afraid of separation. But he had, for a number of years, a dog
friend to whom he was also loyal. Every day they and a few others
gathered into a noisy gang, and some of their games were bloody.
Dog is docile, and then forgets. Dog promises then forgets. Voices
call him. Wolf faces appear in dreams. He finds himself running
over incredible lush or barren stretches of land, nothing any of us
has ever seen. Deep in the dream, his paws twitch, his lip lifts.
The dreaming dog leaps through the underbrush, enters the earth
through a narrow tunnel, and is home. The dog wakes and the
disturbance in his eyes when you say his name is a recognizable
cloud. How glad he is to see you, and he sneezes a little to tell
you so.
But ah! the falling-back, fading dream where he was almost
there again, in the pure, rocky weather-ruled beginning. Where
he was almost wild again, and knew nothing else but that life, no
other possibility. A world of trees and dogs and the white moon,
the nest, the breast, the heart-warming milk! The thick-mantled
ferocity at the end of the tunnel, known as father, a warrior he
himself would grow to be.
… ~ Mary Oliver,#NFDB
275:Jonah’s Luck
OUT OF LUCK, mate? Have a liquor. Hang it, where’s the use complaining?
Take your fancy, I’m in funds now—I can stand the racket, Dan.
Dump your bluey in the corner; camp here for the night, it’s raining;
Bet your life I’m glad to see you—glad to see a Daylesford man.
Swell? Correct, Dan. Spot the get up; and I own this blooming shanty,
Me the fellows christened ‘Jonah’ at Jim Crow and Blanket Flat,
’Cause my luck was so infernal—you remember me and Canty?
Rough times, those—the very memory keeps a chap from getting fat.
Where’d I strike it? That’s a yarn. The fire’s a comfort—sit up nearer.
Hoist your heels, man; take it easy till Kate’s ready with the stew.
Yes, I’ll tell my little story; ’tain’t a long one, but it’s queerer
Than those lies that Tullock pitched us on The Flat in ’52.
Fancy Phil a parson now! He’s smug as grease, the Reverend Tullock.
Yes, he’s big—his wife and fam’ly are a high and mighty lot.
Didn’t I say his jaw would keep him when he tired of punching mullock?
Well, it has—he’s made his pile here. How d’you like your whisky—hot?
Luck! Well, now, I like your cheek, Dan. You had luck, there’s no denying.
I in thirty years had averaged just a wage of twenty bob—
Why, at Alma there I saw men making fortunes without trying,
While for days I lived on ’possums, and then had to take a job.
Bah! you talk about misfortune—my ill-luck was always thorough:
Gold once ran away before me if I chased it for a week.
I was starved at Tarrangower—lived on tick at Maryborough—
And I fell and broke my thigh-bone at the start of Fiery Creek.
At Avoca Canty left me. Jim, you know, was not a croaker,
But he jacked the whole arrangement—found we couldn’t make a do:
Said he loved me like a brother, but ’twas rough upon a joker
When he’d got to fight the devil, and find luck enough for two.
Jim was off. I didn’t blame him, seeing what he’d had to suffer
When Maginnis, just beside us, panned out fifty to the tub.
‘We had pegged out hours before him, and had struck another duffer,
And each store upon the lead, my lad, had laid us up for grub.
After that I picked up Barlow, but we parted at Dunolly
When we’d struggled through at Alma, Adelaide Lead, and Ararat.
See, my luck was hard upon him; he contracted melancholy,
63
And he hung himself one morning in the shaft at Parrot Flat.
Ding it? No. Where gold was getting I was on the job, and early,—
Struck some tucker dirt at Armstrong’s, and just lived at Pleasant Creek,
Always grafting like a good ’un, never hopeless-like or surly,
Living partly on my earnings, Dan, but largely on my cheek.
Good old days, they like to call them—they were tough old days to many:
I was through them, and they left me still the choice to graft or beg—
Left me gray, and worn, and wrinkled, aged and stumped—without a penny—
With a chronic rheumatism and this darned old twisted leg.
Other work? That’s true—in plenty. But you know the real old stager
Who has followed up the diggings, how he hangs on to the pan,
How he hates to leave the pipeclay. Though you mention it I’ll wager
That you never worked on top until you couldn’t help it, Dan.
Years went by. On many fields I worked, and often missed a meal, and
Then I found Victoria played out, and the yields were very slack,
So I took a turn up Northward, tried Tasmania and New Zealand,—
Dan, I worked my passage over, and I sneaked the journey back.
Times were worse. I made a cradle, and went fossicking old places;
But the Chows had been before me, and had scraped the country bare;
There was talk of splendid patches ’mongst the creeks and round the races,
But ’twas not my luck to strike them, and I think I lived on air.
Rough? That’s not the word. So help me, Dan, I hadn’t got a stiver
‘When I caved in one fine Sunday—found I couldn’t lift my head.
They removed me, and the doctor said I’d got rheumatic fever,
And for seven months I lingered in a ward upon a bed.
Came out crippled, feeling done-up, hopeless-like and very lonely,
And dead-beat right down to bed rock as I’d never felt before.
Bitter? Just! Those hopeful years of honest graft had left me only
This bent leg; and some asylum was the prospect I’d in store.
You’ll be knowing how I felt then—cleaned-out, lame, completely gravelled—
All the friends I’d known were scattered widely north, and east, and west:
There seemed nothing there for my sort, and no chances if I travelled;
No, my digging days were over, and I had to give it best.
Though ’twas hard, I tried to meet it like a man in digger fashion:
’Twasn’t good enough—I funked it; I was fairly on the shelf,
Cursed my bitter fortune daily, and was always in a passion
With the Lord, sir, and with everyone, but mostly with myself.
64
I was older twenty years then than I am this blessed minute,
But I got a job one morning, knapping rock at Ballarat;
Two-and-three for two-inch metal. You may say there’s nothing in it,
To the man who’s been through Eaglehawk and mined at Blanket Flat.
Wait—you’d better let me finish. We and ill, I bucked in gladly,
But to get the tools I needed I was forced to pawn my swag.
I’d no hope of golden patches, but I needed tucker badly,
And this job, I think, just saved me being lumbered on the vag.
Fortune is a fickle party, but in spite of all her failings,
Don’t revile her, Dan, as I did, while you’ve still a little rope.
Well, the heap that I was put on was some heavy quartz and tailings,
That was carted from a local mine, I think the Band of Hope.
Take the lesson that is coming to your heart, old man, and hug it:
For I started on the heap with scarce a soul to call my own,
And in less than twenty minutes I’d raked out a bouncing nugget
Scaling close on ninety ounces, and just frosted round with stone.
How is that for high, my hearty? Miracle! It was, by thunder!
After forty years of following the rushes up and down,
Getting old, and past all prospect, and about to knuckle under,
Struck it lucky knapping metal in the middle of a town!
Pass the bottle! Have another! Soon we’ll get the word from Kitty—
She’s a daisy cook, I tell you. Yes, the public business pays
But my pile was made beforehand—made it ‘broking’ in the city.
That’s the yarn I pitch the neighbours. Here’s to good old now-a-days.
~ Edward George Dyson,#NFDB
276: III - THE STUDY
FAUST
(Entering, with the poodle.)
Behind me, field and meadow sleeping,
I leave in deep, prophetic night,
Within whose dread and holy keeping
The better soul awakes to light.
The wild desires no longer win us,
The deeds of passion cease to chain;
The love of Man revives within us,
The love of God revives again.
Be still, thou poodle; make not such racket and riot!
Why at the threshold wilt snuffing be?
Behind the stove repose thee in quiet!
My softest cushion I give to thee.
As thou, up yonder, with running and leaping
Amused us hast, on the mountain's crest,
So now I take thee into my keeping,
A welcome, but also a silent, guest.
Ah, when, within our narrow chamber
The lamp with friendly lustre glows,
Flames in the breast each faded ember,
And in the heart, itself that knows.
Then Hope again lends sweet assistance,
And Reason then resumes her speech:
One yearns, the rivers of existence,
The very founts of Life, to reach.
Snarl not, poodle! To the sound that rises,
The sacred tones that my soul embrace,
This bestial noise is out of place.
We are used to see, that Man despises
What he never comprehends,
And the Good and the Beautiful vilipends,
Finding them often hard to measure:
Will the dog, like man, snarl his displeasure?
But ah! I feel, though will thereto be stronger,
Contentment flows from out my breast no longer.
Why must the stream so soon run dry and fail us,
And burning thirst again assail us?
Therein I've borne so much probation!
And yet, this want may be supplied us;
We call the Supernatural to guide us;
We pine and thirst for Revelation,
Which nowhere worthier is, more nobly sent,
Than here, in our New Testament.
I feel impelled, its meaning to determine,
With honest purpose, once for all,
The hallowed Original
To change to my beloved German.
(He opens a volume, and commences.)
'Tis written: "In the Beginning was the Word."
Here am I balked: who, now can help afford?
The Word?impossible so high to rate it;
And otherwise must I translate it.
If by the Spirit I am truly taught.
Then thus: "In the Beginning was the Thought"
This first line let me weigh completely,
Lest my impatient pen proceed too fleetly.
Is it the Thought which works, creates, indeed?
"In the Beginning was the Power," I read.
Yet, as I write, a warning is suggested,
That I the sense may not have fairly tested.
The Spirit aids me: now I see the light!
"In the Beginning was the Act," I write.
If I must share my chamber with thee,
Poodle, stop that howling, prithee!
Cease to bark and bellow!
Such a noisy, disturbing fellow
I'll no longer suffer near me.
One of us, dost hear me!
Must leave, I fear me.
No longer guest-right I bestow;
The door is open, art free to go.
But what do I see in the creature?
Is that in the course of nature?
Is't actual fact? or Fancy's shows?
How long and broad my poodle grows!
He rises mightily:
A canine form that cannot be!
What a spectre I've harbored thus!
He resembles a hippopotamus,
With fiery eyes, teeth terrible to see:
O, now am I sure of thee!
For all of thy half-hellish brood
The Key of Solomon is good.
SPIRITS (in the corridor)
Some one, within, is caught!
Stay without, follow him not!
Like the fox in a snare,
Quakes the old hell-lynx there.
Take heedlook about!
Back and forth hover,
Under and over,
And he'll work himself out.
If your aid avail him,
Let it not fail him;
For he, without measure,
Has wrought for our pleasure.
FAUST
First, to encounter the beast,
The Words of the Four be addressed:
Salamander, shine glorious!
Wave, Undine, as bidden!
Sylph, be thou hidden!
Gnome, be laborious!
Who knows not their sense
(These elements),
Their properties
And power not sees,
No mastery he inherits
Over the Spirits.
Vanish in flaming ether,
Salamander!
Flow foamingly together,
Undine!
Shine in meteor-sheen,
Sylph!
Bring help to hearth and shelf.
Incubus! Incubus!
Step forward, and finish thus!
Of the Four, no feature
Lurks in the creature.
Quiet he lies, and grins disdain:
Not yet, it seems, have I given him pain.
Now, to undisguise thee,
Hear me exorcise thee!
Art thou, my gay one,
Hell's fugitive stray-one?
The sign witness now,
Before which they bow,
The cohorts of Hell!
With hair all bristling, it begins to swell.
Base Being, hearest thou?
Knowest and fearest thou
The One, unoriginate,
Named inexpressibly,
Through all Heaven impermeate,
Pierced irredressibly!
Behind the stove still banned,
See it, an elephant, expand!
It fills the space entire,
Mist-like melting, ever faster.
'Tis enough: ascend no higher,
Lay thyself at the feet of the Master!
Thou seest, not vain the threats I bring thee:
With holy fire I'll scorch and sting thee!
Wait not to know
The threefold dazzling glow!
Wait not to know
The strongest art within my hands!
MEPHISTOPHELES
(while the vapor is dissipating, steps forth from behind the
stove, in the costume of a Travelling Scholar.)
Why such a noise? What are my lord's commands?
FAUST
This was the poodle's real core,
A travelling scholar, then? The casus is diverting.
MEPHISTOPHELES
The learned gentleman I bow before:
You've made me roundly sweat, that's certain!
FAUST
What is thy name?
MEPHISTOPHELES
A question small, it seems,
For one whose mind the Word so much despises;
Who, scorning all external gleams,
The depths of being only prizes.
FAUST
With all you gentlemen, the name's a test,
Whereby the nature usually is expressed.
Clearly the latter it implies
In names like Beelzebub, Destroyer, Father of Lies.
Who art thou, then?
MEPHISTOPHELES
Part of that Power, not understood,
Which always wills the Bad, and always works the Good.
FAUST
What hidden sense in this enigma lies?
MEPHISTOPHELES
I am the Spirit that Denies!
And justly so: for all things, from the Void
Called forth, deserve to be destroyed:
'Twere better, then, were naught created.
Thus, all which you as Sin have rated,
Destruction,aught with Evil blent,
That is my proper element.
FAUST
Thou nam'st thyself a part, yet show'st complete to me?
MEPHISTOPHELES
The modest truth I speak to thee.
If Man, that microcosmic fool, can see
Himself a whole so frequently,
Part of the Part am I, once All, in primal Night,
Part of the Darkness which brought forth the Light,
The haughty Light, which now disputes the space,
And claims of Mother Night her ancient place.
And yet, the struggle fails; since Light, howe'er it weaves,
Still, fettered, unto bodies cleaves:
It flows from bodies, bodies beautifies;
By bodies is its course impeded;
And so, but little time is needed,
I hope, ere, as the bodies die, it dies!
FAUST
I see the plan thou art pursuing:
Thou canst not compass general ruin,
And hast on smaller scale begun.
MEPHISTOPHELES
And truly 'tis not much, when all is done.
That which to Naught is in resistance set,
The Something of this clumsy world,has yet,
With all that I have undertaken,
Not been by me disturbed or shaken:
From earthquake, tempest, wave, volcano's brand,
Back into quiet settle sea and land!
And that damned stuff, the bestial, human brood,
What use, in having that to play with?
How many have I made away with!
And ever circulates a newer, fresher blood.
It makes me furious, such things beholding:
From Water, Earth, and Air unfolding,
A thousand germs break forth and grow,
In dry, and wet, and warm, and chilly;
And had I not the Flame reserved, why, really,
There's nothing special of my own to show!
FAUST
So, to the actively eternal
Creative force, in cold disdain
You now oppose the fist infernal,
Whose wicked clench is all in vain!
Some other labor seek thou rather,
Queer Son of Chaos, to begin!
MEPHISTOPHELES
Well, we'll consider: thou canst gather
My views, when next I venture in.
Might I, perhaps, depart at present?
FAUST
Why thou shouldst ask, I don't perceive.
Though our acquaintance is so recent,
For further visits thou hast leave.
The window's here, the door is yonder;
A chimney, also, you behold.
MEPHISTOPHELES
I must confess that forth I may not wander,
My steps by one slight obstacle controlled,
The wizard's-foot, that on your threshold made is.
FAUST
The pentagram prohibits thee?
Why, tell me now, thou Son of Hades,
If that prevents, how cam'st thou in to me?
Could such a spirit be so cheated?
MEPHISTOPHELES
Inspect the thing: the drawing's not completed.
The outer angle, you may see,
Is open left the lines don't fit it.
FAUST
Well,Chance, this time, has fairly hit it!
And thus, thou'rt prisoner to me?
It seems the business has succeeded.
MEPHISTOPHELES
The poodle naught remarked, as after thee he speeded;
But other aspects now obtain:
The Devil can't get out again.
FAUST
Try, then, the open window-pane!
MEPHISTOPHELES
For Devils and for spectres this is law:
Where they have entered in, there also they withdraw.
The first is free to us; we're governed by the second.
FAUST
In Hell itself, then, laws are reckoned?
That's well! So might a compact be
Made with you gentlemen and binding,surely?
MEPHISTOPHELES
All that is promised shall delight thee purely;
No skinflint bargain shalt thou see.
But this is not of swift conclusion;
We'll talk about the matter soon.
And now, I do entreat this boon
Leave to withdraw from my intrusion.
FAUST
One moment more I ask thee to remain,
Some pleasant news, at least, to tell me.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Release me, now! I soon shall come again;
Then thou, at will, mayst question and compel me.
FAUST
I have not snares around thee cast;
Thyself hast led thyself into the meshes.
Who traps the Devil, hold him fast!
Not soon a second time he'll catch a prey so precious.
MEPHISTOPHELES
An't please thee, also I'm content to stay,
And serve thee in a social station;
But stipulating, that I may
With arts of mine afford thee recreation.
FAUST
Thereto I willingly agree,
If the diversion pleasant be.
MEPHISTOPHELES
My friend, thou'lt win, past all pretences,
More in this hour to soo the thy senses,
Than in the year's monotony.
That which the dainty spirits sing thee,
The lovely pictures they shall bring thee,
Are more than magic's empty show.
Thy scent will be to bliss invited;
Thy palate then with taste delighted,
Thy nerves of touch ecstatic glow!
All unprepared, the charm I spin:
We're here together, so begin!
SPIRITS
Vanish, ye darking
Arches above him!
Loveliest weather,
Born of blue ether,
Break from the sky!
O that the darkling
Clouds had departed!
Starlight is sparkling,
Tranquiller-hearted
Suns are on high.
Heaven's own children
In beauty bewildering,
Waveringly bending,
Pass as they hover;
Longing unending
Follows them over.
They, with their glowing
Garments, out-flowing,
Cover, in going,
Landscape and bower,
Where, in seclusion,
Lovers are plighted,
Lost in illusion.
Bower on bower!
Tendrils unblighted!
Lo! in a shower
Grapes that o'ercluster
Gush into must, or
Flow into rivers
Of foaming and flashing
Wine, that is dashing
Gems, as it boundeth
Down the high places,
And spreading, surroundeth
With crystalline spaces,
In happy embraces,
Blossoming forelands,
Emerald shore-lands!
And the winged races
Drink, and fly onward
Fly ever sunward
To the enticing
Islands, that flatter,
Dipping and rising
Light on the water!
Hark, the inspiring
Sound of their quiring!
See, the entrancing
Whirl of their dancing!
All in the air are
Freer and fairer.
Some of them scaling
Boldly the highlands,
Others are sailing,
Circling the islands;
Others are flying;
Life-ward all hieing,
All for the distant
Star of existent
Rapture and Love!
MEPHISTOPHELES
He sleeps! Enough, ye fays! your airy number
Have sung him truly into slumber:
For this performance I your debtor prove.
Not yet art thou the man, to catch the Fiend and hold him!
With fairest images of dreams infold him,
Plunge him in seas of sweet untruth!
Yet, for the threshold's magic which controlled him,
The Devil needs a rat's quick tooth.
I use no leng thened invocation:
Here rustles one that soon will work my liberation.
The lord of rats and eke of mice,
Of flies and bed-bugs, frogs and lice,
Summons thee hither to the door-sill,
To gnaw it where, with just a morsel
Of oil, he paints the spot for thee:
There com'st thou, hopping on to me!
To work, at once! The point which made me craven
Is forward, on the ledge, engraven.
Another bite makes free the door:
So, dream thy dreams, O Faust, until we meet once more!
FAUST (awaking)
Am I again so foully cheated?
Remains there naught of lofty spirit-sway,
But that a dream the Devil counterfeited,
And that a poodle ran away?
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, THE STUDY (The Exorcism)
,#NFDB
277:The Drunken Boat
As I drifted on a river I could not control,
No longer guided by the bargemen's ropes.
They were captured by howling Indians
Who nailed them naked to coloured posts.
I cared no more for other boats or cargoes:
Flemish wheat or English cottons, all were gone
When my bargemen could no longer haul me
I forgot about everything and drifted on.
Amid the fury of the loudly chopping tides
Last winter, deaf as a child's dark night,
Ah, how I raced! And the drifting Peninsulas
Have never known such conquering delight.
Lighter than cork, I revolved upon waves
That roll the dead forever in the deep,
Ten days, beyond the blinking eyes of land!
Lulled by storms, I drifted seaward from sleep.
Sweeter than apples to a child its pungent edge;
The wash of green water on my shell of pine.
Anchor and rudder went drifting away,
Washed in vomit and stained with blue wine.
Now I drift through the poem of the sea;
This gruel of stars mirrors the milky sky,
Devours green azures; ecstatic flotsam,
Drowned men, pale and thoughtful, sometimes drift by.
Staining the sudden blueness, the slow sounds,
Deliriums that streak the glowing sky,
Stronger than drink and the songs we sing,
It is boiling, bitter, red; it is love!
I know how lightening split the sky apart,
I know the surf and waterspouts and evening's fall,
I've seen the dawn arisen like a flock of doves;
I've seen what men have only dreamed they saw!
166
I saw the sun with mystic horrors darken
And shimmer through a violet haze;
With a shiver of shutters the waves fell
Like actors in ancient, forgotten plays!
I dreamed of green nights and glittering snow,
Slow kisses rising in the eyes of the sea,
Unknown liquids flowing, the blue and yellow
Stirring of phosphorescent melody!
For months I watched the surge of the sea,
Hysterical herds attacking the reefs;
I never thought the bright feet of Mary
Could muzzle up the heavy-breathing waves!
I have jostled - you know? - unbelievable Floridas
And seen among the flowers the wild eyes
Of panthers in the skins of men! Rainbows
Birdling blind flocks beneath the horizons!
In stinking swamps I have seen great hulks:
A Leviathan that rotted in the reeds!
Water crumbling in the midst of calm
And distances that shatter into foam.
Glaciers, silver suns, waves of pearl, fiery skies,
Giant serpents stranded where lice consume
Them, falling in the depths of dark gulfs
From contorted trees, bathed in black perfume!
I wanted to show children these fishes shining
In the blue wave, the golden fish that sing A froth of flowers cradled my wandering
And delicate winds tossed me on their wings.
Sometimes, a martyr of poles and latitudes,
The sea rocked me softly in sighing air,
And brought me dark blooms with yellow stems I remained there like a woman on her knees.
Almost an island, I balanced on my boat's sides
167
Rapacious blond-eyed birds, their dung, their screams.
I drifted on through fragile tangled lines
Drowned men, still staring up, sank down to sleep.
Now I, a little lost boat, in swirling debris,
Tossed by the storm into the birdless upper air
- All the Hansa Merchants and Monitors
Could not fish up my body drunk with the sea;
Free, smoking, touched the violet haze above,
I, who the lurid heavens breached like some rare wall
Which boasts - confection that the poets love Lichens of sunlight, and snots of bright blue sky;
Lost branch spinning in a herd of hippocamps,
Covered over with electric animals,
An everlasting July battering
The glittering sky and its fiery funnels;
Shaking at the sound of monsters roaring,
Rutting Behemoths in thick whirlpools,
Eternal weaver of unmoving blues,
I thought of Europe and its ancient walls!
I have seen archipelagos in the stars,
Feverish skies where I was free to roam!
Are these bottomless nights your exiled nests,
Swarm of golden birds, O Strength to come?
True, I've cried too much; I am heartsick at dawn.
The moon is bitter and the sun is sour…
Love burns me; I am swollen and slow.
Let my keel break! Oh, let me sink in the sea!
If I long for a shore in Europe,
It's a small pond, dark, cold, remote,
The odour of evening, and a child full of sorrow
Who stoops to launch a crumpled paper boat.
Washed in your languors, sea, I cannot trace
The wake of tankers foaming through the cold,
Nor assault the pride of pennants and flags,
168
Nor endure the slave ship's stinking hold.
____________________________________________________
Translation by Rebecca Seiferle:
As I descended impassible Rivers,
I felt no longer steered by bargemen;
they were captured by howling Redskins,
nailed as targets, naked, to painted stakes.
What did I care for cargo or crews,
bearers of English cotton or Flemish grain—
having left behind the bargemen and racket,
the Rivers let me descend where I wished.
In the furious splashing of the waves,
I — that other winter, deafer than the minds
of children — ran! And the unanchored Peninsulas
never knew a more triumphant brouhaha.
The tempest blessed my sea awakening.
Lighter than cork, I danced the waves
scrolling out the eternal roll of the dead—
ten nights, without longing for the lantern's silly eye.
Sweeter than the flesh of tart apples to children,
the green water penetrated my pine hull
and purged me of vomit and the stain of blue wines—
my rudder and grappling hooks drifting away.
Since then, I have bathed in the Poem
of the Sea, a milky way, infused with stars,
devouring the azure greens where, flotsam-pale
and ravished, drowned and pensive men float by.
Where, suddenly staining the blues, delirious
and slow rhythms under the glowing red of day,
stronger than alcohol, vaster than our lyrics,
ferment the red bitters of love!
I know heavens pierced by lightning, the waterspouts
169
and undertows and currents: I know night,
Dawn rising like a nation of doves,
and I've seen, sometimes, what men only dreamed they saw!
I've seen the sun, low, a blot of mystic dread,
illuminating with far-reaching violet coagulations,
like actors in antique tragedies,
the waves rolling away in a shiver of shutters.
I've dreamed a green night to dazzling snows,
kisses slowly rising to the eyelids of the sea,
unknown saps flowing, and the yellow and blue
rising of phosphorescent songs.
For months, I've followed the swells assaulting
the reefs like hysterical herds, without ever thinking
that the luminous feet of some Mary
could muzzle the panting Deep.
I've touched, you know, incredible Floridas
where, inside flowers, the eyes of panthers mingle
with the skins of men! And rainbows bridle
glaucous flocks beneath the rim of the sea!
I've seen fermenting— enormous marshes, nets
where a whole Leviathan rots in the rushes!
Such a ruin of water in the midst of calm,
and the distant horizon worming into whirlpools!
Glaciers, silver suns, pearly tides, ember skies!
Hideous wrecks at the bottom of muddy gulfs
where giant serpents, devoured by lice,
drop with black perfume out of twisted trees!
I wanted to show children these dorados
of the blue wave, these golden, singing fish.
A froth of flowers has cradled my vagrancies,
and ineffable winds have winged me on.
Sometimes like a martyr, tired of poles and zones,
the sea has rolled me softly in her sigh
and held out to me the yellow cups of shadow flowers,
170
and I've remained there, like a woman, kneeling . . .
Almost an island, balancing the quarrels,
the dung, the cries of blond-eyed birds on the gunnels
of my boat, I sailed on, and through my frail lines,
drowned men, falling backwards, sank to sleep.
Now, I, a boat lost in the hair of the coves,
tossed by hurricane into the birdless air,
me, whom all the Monitors and Hansa sailing ships
could not salvage, my carcass drunk with sea;
free, rising like smoke, riding violet mists,
I who pierced the sky turning red like a wall,
who bore the exquisite jam of all good poets,
lichens of sun and snots of azure,
who, spotted with electric crescents, ran on,
a foolish plank escorted by black hippocamps,
when the Julys brought down with a single blow
the ultramarine sky with its burning funnels;
I who tremble, feeling the moan fifty leagues away
of the Behemoth rutting and the dull Maelstrom,
eternal weaver of the unmovable blue—
I grieve for Europe with its ancient breastworks!
I've seen thunderstruck archipelagos! and islands
that open delirious skies for wanderers:
Are these bottomless nights your nest of exile,
O millions of gold birds, O Force to come?
True, I've cried too much! Dawns are harrowing.
All moons are cruel and all suns, bitter:
acrid love puffs me up with drunken slowness.
Let my keel burst! Give me to the sea!
If I desire any of the waters of Europe, it's the pond
black and cold, in the odor of evening,
where a child full of sorrow gets down on his knees
to launch a paperboat as frail as a May butterfly.
171
Bathed in your languors, o waves, I can no longer
wash away the wake of ships bearing cotton,
nor penetrate the arrogance of pennants and flags,
nor swim past the dreadful eyes of slave ships.
______________________________________________________
As I was floating down impassive Rivers,
I no longer felt myself steered by the haulers:
gaudy Redskins had taken them for targets,
nailing them naked to coloured stakes.
I cared nothing for all my crews,
carrying Flemish wheat or English cotton.
When, along with my haulers, those uproars stopped,
the Rivers let me sail downstream where I pleased.
Into the ferocious tide-rips, last winter,
more absorbed than the minds of children, I ran!
And the unmoored Peninsulas never
endured more triumphant clamourings.
The storm made bliss of my sea-borne awakenings.
Lighter than a cork, I danced on the waves
which men call the eternal rollers of victims,
for ten nights, without once missing the foolish eye of the harbor lights!
Sweeter than the flesh of sour apples to children,
the green water penetrated my pinewood hull
and washed me clean of the bluish wine-stains
and the splashes of vomit, carrying away both rudder and anchor.
And from that time on I bathed in the Poem
of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk,
devouring the green azures where, entranced
in pallid flotsam, a dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down;
where, suddenly dyeing the blueness,
deliriums and slow rhythms under the gleams of the daylight,
stronger than alcohol, vaster than music,
ferment the bitter rednesses of love!
172
I have come to know the skies splitting with lightning,
and the waterspouts, and the breakers and currents;
I know the evening, and dawn rising up like a flock of doves,
and sometimes I have seen what men have imagined they saw!
I have seen the low-hanging sun speckled with mystic horrors
lighting up long violet coagulations
like the performers in antique dramas;
waves rolling back into the distances their shiverings of venetian blinds!
I have dreamed of the green night of the dazzled snows,
the kiss rising slowly to the eyes of the seas,
the circulation of undreamed-of saps,
and the yellow-blue awakenings of singing phosphorus!
I have followed, for whole months on end,
the swells battering the reefs like hysterical herds of cows,
never dreaming that the luminous feet of the Marys
could muzzle by force the snorting Oceans!
I have struck, do you realize, incredible Floridas,
where mingle with flowers the eyes of panthers in human skins!
Rainbows stretched like bridles
under the sea's horizon to glaucous herds!
I have seen the enormous swamps seething,
traps where a whole leviathan rots in the reeds!
Downfalls of waters in the midst of the calm,
and distances cataracting down into abysses!
Glaciers, suns of silver, waves of pearl, skies of red-hot coals!
Hideous wrecks at the bottom of brown gulfs
where the giant snakes, devoured by vermin,
fall from the twisted trees with black odours!
I should have liked to show to children those dolphins
of the blue wave, those golden, those singing fish. -Foam of flowers rocked my driftings,
and at times ineffable winds would lend me wings.
Sometimes, a martyr weary of poles and zones,
the sea whose sobs sweetened my rollings
173
lifted my shadow-flowers with their yellow sucking disks toward me,
and I hung there like a kneeling woman...
Resembling an island, tossing on my sides the brawls
and droppings of pale-eyed, clamouring birds.
And I was scudding along when across my frayed ropes
drowned men sank backwards into sleep!...
But now I, a boat lost under the hair of coves,
hurled by the hurricane into the birdless ether;
I, whose wreck, dead-drunk and sodden with water,
neither Monitor nor Hanseatic ships would have fished up;
free, smoking, risen from violet fogs,
I who bored through the wall of the reddening sky which bears
a sweetmeat good poets find delicious:
lichens of sunlight mixed with azure snot;
who ran, speckled with tiny electric moons,
a crazy plank with black sea-horses for escort,
when Julys were crushing with cudgel blows
skies of ultramarine into burning funnels;
I who trembled to feel at fifty leagues off
the groans of Behemoths rutting, and the dense Maelstroms;
eternal spinner of blue immobilities,
I long for Europe with it's age-old parapets!
I have seen archipelagos of stars! and islands
whose delirious skies are open to sea wanderers: -Do you sleep, are you exiled in those bottomless nights,
O million golden birds, Life Force of the future?
But, truly, I have wept too much! Dawns are heartbreaking.
Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter:
sharp love has swollen me up with intoxicating torpor.
O let my keel split! O let me sink to the bottom!
If there is one water in Europe I want, it is the black
cold pool where into the scented twilight
a child squatting full of sadness launches
a boat as fragile as a butterfly in May.
174
I can no more, bathed in your langours, O waves,
sail in the wake of the carriers of cottons;
nor undergo the pride of the flags and pennants;
nor pull past the horrible eyes of prison hulks.
_____________________________________________________
Translation by Wallace Fowlie:
As I was going down impassive rivers,
I no longer felt myself guided by haulers!
Yelping redskins had taken them as targets,
And had nailed them naked to colored stakes.
I was indifferent to all crews,
The bearer of Flemish wheat or English cottons,
When with my haulers this uproar stopped,
The Rivers let me go where I wanted.
Into the furious lashing of the tides,
More heedless than children's brains, the other winter
I ran! And loosened peninsulas
Have not undergone a more triumphant hubbub.
The storm blessed my sea vigils.
Lighter than a cork I danced on the waves
That are called eternal rollers of victims,
Ten nights, without missing the stupid eye of the lighthouses!
Sweeter than the flesh of hard apples is to children,
The green water penetrated my hull of fir
And washed me of spots of blue wine
And vomit, scattering rudder and grappling-hook.
And from then on I bathed in the Poem
Of the Sea, infused with stars and lactescent,
Devouring the green azure where, like a pale elated
Piece of flotsam, a pensive drowned figure sometimes sinks;
Where, suddenly dyeing the blueness, delirium
And slow rhythms under the streaking of daylight,
Stronger than alcohol, vaster than our lyres,
175
The bitter redness of love ferments!
I know the skies bursting with lighting, and the waterspouts
And the surf and the currents; I know the evening,
And dawn as exhalted as a flock of doves,
And at times I have seen what man thought he saw!
I have seen the low sun spotted with mystic horrors,
Lighting up, with long violet clots,
Resembling actors of very ancient dramas,
The waves rolling far off their quivering of shutters!
I have dreamed of the green night with dazzled snows,
A kiss slowly rising to the eyes of the sea,
The circulation of unknown saps,
And the yellow and blue awakening of singing phosphorous!
I followed during pregnant months the swell,
Like hysterical cows, in its assault on the reefs,
Without dreaming that the luminous feet of the Marys
Could restrain the snout of the wheezing Oceans!
I struck against, you know, unbelievable Floridas
Mingling with flowers panthers' eyes and human
Skin! Rainbows stretched like bridal reins
Under the horizon of the seas to greenish herds!
I have seen enormous swamps ferment, fish-traps
Where a whole Leviathan rots in the rushes!
Avalanches of water in the midst of a calm,
And the distances cataracting toward the abyss!
Glaciers, suns of silver, nacreous waves, skies of embers!
Hideous strands at the end of brown gulfs
Where giant serpents devoured by bedbugs
Fall down from gnarled tress with black scent!
I should have liked to show children those sunfish
Of the blue wave, the fish of gold, the singing fish.
--Foam of flowers rocked my drifting
And ineffable winds winged me at times.
176
At times a martyr weary of poles and zones,
The sea, whose sob created my gentle roll,
Brought up to me her dark flowers with yellow suckers
And I remained like a woman on her knees...
Resembling an island tossing on my sides the quarrels
And droppings of noisy birds with yellow eyes.
And I sailed on, when through my fragile ropes
Drowned men sank backward to sleep!
Now I, a boat lost in the foliage of caves,
Thrown by the storm into the birdless air,
I whose water-drunk carcass would not have been rescued
By the Monitors and the Hanseatic sailboats;
Free, smoking, topped with violet fog,
I who pierced the reddening sky like a wall
Bearing--delicious jam for good poets-Lichens of sunlight and mucus of azure;
Who ran, spotted with small electric moons,
A wild plank, escorted by black seahorses,
When Julys beat down with blows of cudgels
The ultramarine skies with burning funnels;
I, who trembled, hearing at fifty leagues off
The moaning of the Behemoths in heat and the thick Maelstroms,
I, eternal spinner of the blue immobility,
Miss Europe with its ancient parapets!
I have seen sidereal archipelagos! and islands
Whose delirious skies are open to the sea-wanderer:
--Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep and exile yourself,
Million golden birds, O future Vigor?
But, in truth, I have wept too much! Dawns are heartbreaking.
Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter.
Acrid love has swollen me with intoxicating torpor.
O let my keel burst! O let me go into the sea!
If I want a water of Europe, it is the black
Cold puddle where in the sweet-smelling twilight
177
A squatting child full of sadness releases
A boat as fragile as a May butterfly.
No longer can I, bathed in your languor, O waves,
Follow in the wake of the cotton boats,
Nor cross through the pride of flags and flames,
Nor swim under the terrible eyes of prison ships.
______________________________________________________
Translation by A. S. Kline
As I floated down impassive Rivers,
I felt myself no longer pulled by ropes:
The Redskins took my hauliers for targets,
And nailed them naked to their painted posts.
Carrying Flemish wheat or English cotton,
I was indifferent to all my crews.
The Rivers let me float down as I wished,
When the victims and the sounds were through.
Into the furious breakers of the sea,
Deafer than the ears of a child, last winter,
I ran! And the Peninsulas sliding by me
Never heard a more triumphant clamour.
The tempest blessed my sea-borne arousals.
Lighter than a cork I danced those waves
They call the eternal churners of victims,
Ten nights, without regret for the lighted bays!
Sweeter than sour apples to the children
The green ooze spurting through my hull’s pine,
Washed me of vomit and the blue of wine,
Carried away my rudder and my anchor.
Then I bathed in the Poem of the Sea,
Infused with stars, the milk-white spume blends,
Grazing green azures: where ravished, bleached
Flotsam, a drowned man in dream descends.
Where, staining the blue, sudden deliriums
178
And slow tremors under the gleams of fire,
Stronger than alcohol, vaster than our rhythms,
Ferment the bitter reds of our desire!
I knew the skies split apart by lightning,
Waterspouts, breakers, tides: I knew the night,
The Dawn exalted like a crowd of doves,
I saw what men think they’ve seen in the light!
I saw the low sun, stained with mystic terrors,
Illuminate long violet coagulations,
Like actors in a play, a play that’s ancient,
Waves rolling back their trembling of shutters!
I dreamt the green night of blinded snows,
A kiss lifted slow to the eyes of seas,
The circulation of unheard-of flows,
Sung phosphorus’s blue-yellow awakenings!
For months on end, I’ve followed the swell
That batters at the reefs like terrified cattle,
Not dreaming the Three Marys’ shining feet
Could muzzle with their force the Ocean’s hell!
I’ve struck Floridas, you know, beyond belief,
Where eyes of panthers in human skins,
Merge with the flowers! Rainbow bridles, beneath
the seas’ horizon, stretched out to shadowy fins!
I’ve seen the great swamps boil, and the hiss
Where a whole whale rots among the reeds!
Downfalls of water among tranquilities,
Distances showering into the abyss.
Nacrous waves, silver suns, glaciers, ember skies!
Gaunt wrecks deep in the brown vacuities
Where the giant eels riddled with parasites
Fall, with dark perfumes, from the twisted trees!
I would have liked to show children dolphins
Of the blue wave, the golden singing fish.
– Flowering foams rocked me in my drift,
179
At times unutterable winds gave me wings.
Sometimes, a martyr tired of poles and zones,
The sea whose sobs made my roilings sweet
Showed me its shadow flowers with yellow mouths
And I rested like a woman on her knees…
Almost an isle, blowing across my sands, quarrels
And droppings of pale-eyed clamorous gulls,
And I scudded on while, over my frayed lines,
Drowned men sank back in sleep beneath my hull!…
Now I, a boat lost in the hair of bays,
Hurled by the hurricane through bird-less ether,
I, whose carcass, sodden with salt-sea water,
No Monitor or Hanseatic vessel could recover:
Freed, in smoke, risen from the violet fog,
I, who pierced the red skies like a wall,
Bearing the sweets that delight true poets,
Lichens of sunlight, gobbets of azure:
Who ran, stained with electric moonlets,
A crazed plank, companied by black sea-horses,
When Julys were crushing with cudgel blows
Skies of ultramarine in burning funnels:
I, who trembled to hear those agonies
Of rutting Behemoths and dark Maelstroms,
Eternal spinner of blue immobilities,
I regret the ancient parapets of Europe!
I’ve seen archipelagos of stars! And isles
Whose maddened skies open for the sailor:
– Is it in depths of night you sleep, exiled,
Million birds of gold, O future Vigour? –
But, truly, I’ve wept too much! The Dawns
Are heartbreaking, each moon hell, each sun bitter:
Fierce love has swallowed me in drunken torpors.
O let my keel break! Tides draw me down!
180
If I want one pool in Europe, it’s the cold
Black pond where into the scented night
A child squatting filled with sadness launches
A boat as frail as a May butterfly.
Bathed in your languor, waves, I can no longer
Cut across the wakes of cotton ships,
Or sail against the pride of flags, ensigns,
Or swim the dreadful gaze of prison ships.
~ Arthur Rimbaud,#NFDB
6 Integral Yoga
3 Occultism
2 Poetry
1 Theosophy
1 Psychology
1 Philosophy
6 Satprem
4 The Mother
2 James George Frazer
2 The Golden Bough
0 1958-12-24, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I am following Swamis instructions to the letter. Sometimes it all seems to lack warmth and spontaneity, but I am holding on. I might add that we are living right next to the bazaar, amidst a great racket 20 hours a day, which does not make things easier. So I repeat my mantra as one pounds his fists against the walls of a prison. Sometimes it opens a little, you send me a little joy, and then everything becomes better again.
Swami told me that the mantra to Durga is intended to pierce through into the subconscient. To complement this work, he does his pujas to Kali, and finally one of his friends, X, the High Priest of the temple in Rameswaram (who presided over my initiation and has great occult powers), has undertaken to say a very powerful mantra over me daily, for a period of eight days, to extirpate the dark forces from my subconscious. The operation already began four days ago. While reciting his mantra, he holds a glass of water in his hand, then he makes me drink it. It seems that on the eighth day, if the enemy has been trapped, this water turns yellow then the operation is over and the poisoned water is thrown out. (I tell you all this because I prefer that you know.) In any event, I like X very much, he is a very luminous, very good man. If I am not delivered after all this!
0 1962-10-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And these kinds of revelations happen only in a silent mindor at least a mind at rest. Unless the mind is absolutely tranquil and still, it doesnt come. Or if it does come, you dont even notice anything with all the racket youre making! And of course, these experiences help the tranquillity, the silence and receptivity to become better and better established. This sense of something utterly immobile, but not closedimmobile, but open and receptivegets more established the more you have these experiences. There is a big difference between a dead, lackluster, unresponsive silence and the receptive silence of a quieted mind. It makes a big difference. And it results from these experiences. All the progress we make is always, quite naturally, the result of truths coming down from above.
It has an effect: all these things have an effect on the way the body functions the workings of the organs, the brain, the nerves and so forth. And this will certainly take place long before there is any effect on the external form.
0 1971-04-17, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Until the year of grace 1969 [the descent of the New Consciousness], all philosophies, all religions, all isms, all spiritual paths were only the refined products of the mental circle [according to Supermanhood]. All experiences were merely on the higher planes of the mind. Those peaks of the Spirit are but self-paroxysms, p. 61; we must cleanse ourselves of the wisdoms of the past, the ascents of the past, the illuminations of the past and the whole racket of the old sanctities of the Spirit, p. 29, etc. In other words, everything that took place before 1969 is a sublimation of the old flesh, p. 28. It is quite clear. Some have touched the Secret: the Rishis, the Egyptians the reader understands that they had the intuition of it but not the experience. The same applies to Sri Aurobindo, who announced it, but his yoga extended the refinement of the mental bubble; the reader thus understands that he did not know about the key to the yoga of the superman and was merely satisfied in teaching the integral yoga.
The misconception of this enthusiastic reader is like a demonstration in reverse of precisely what the orthodox reproached Supermanhood for, i.e., of having betrayed Sri Aurobindo. Behind this so-called schism were hidden, on the one hand, those who wanted to separate Mother and Sri Aurobindo and found it more comfortable to philosophize than to do the yoga concretely, and on the other hand, those who wanted conveniently to dispense with all spiritual disciplines and live according to their fancy. Two poles of the same misconception. Here then is the letter Satprem sent in response to this enthusiastic reader:
0 1972-07-19, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(The following has already been the subject of several conversations the past year and will unfortunately come up again. It concerns the sales of my books abroad and a subsequent traffic in foreign currencies to which I was impudent or imprudent enough to call attention. But the real problem was that certain people were outrightly and openly robbing Mother. My books were in fact only a small part of a vaster racket that involved all of Sri Aurobindos works. Much like Don Quixote, then, I was pitching headlong into a battle whose outcome was foreseeable. It may be recalled that the head of SABDA, the book business, is the brother of the man who tried to appropriate Auroville. In reality I was taking on a well-organized mafia. But I was still unaware of it. This anecdote is reported here only insofar as it is symbolic of a larger whole.)
You have nothing to ask?
1.00c - DIVISION C - THE ETHERIC BODY AND PRANA, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
Second. Over-ability to tap pranic currents. The first type of functional disorder is common and widespread. Its reverse can be found where conditions of life are such that the centres (through too direct and prolonged submittal to solar emanation) become overdeveloped, vibrate too rapidly, and receive prana in too great an amount. This is rarer, but is found in some tropical countries, and is responsible for much of the troublesome debility that attacks dwellers in these lands. The etheric body receives prana or solar rays too rapidly, passes it through and out of the system with too much force, and this leaves the victim a prey to inertia and devitalisation. Putting it otherwise, the etheric body becomes lazy, is like an unstrung web, or (to use a very homely illustration) it resembles a tennis racket which has become too soft, and has lost its resilience. The inner triangle transmits the pranic emanations with too great rapidity, giving no time for the subsidiary absorption, and the whole system is thereby the loser. Later it will be found that many of the ills that Europeans, living in India, fall heir to, originate in this way; and by attention, therefore, to the spleen, and by wise control of living conditions, some of the trouble may be obviated.
In touching upon similar conditions in the planet, both these types of trouble will be found. More cannot be said, but in the wise study of solar radiation upon the surface of the planet in connection with its rotary action, some of the group rules of health may be comprehended and followed. The spirit of the planet (or the planetary entity) likewise has his cycles, and in the absorption of [108] planetary prana, and in its correct distribution, lies the secret of fertility and equable vegetation. Much of this is hidden in the fabled story of the war between fire and water, which has its basis in the reaction of the fire latent in matter, to the fire emanating outside of matter, and playing upon it. In the interval that has to elapse while the two are in process of blending, come those periods where, through karmic inheritance, reception is unstable and distribution inequable. As the point of race equilibrium is reached, so planetary equilibrium will likewise be attained, and in planetary attainment will come the equilibrium that must mutually take place between the solar planets. When they attain a mutual balance and interaction then the system is stabilised and perfection reached. The even distribution of prana will parallel this balancing in the man, in the race, in the planet and in the system. This is but another way of saying that uniform vibration will be achieved.
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
The elder gods, in totality, serve to reproduce and to noisily act. Their incessant racket and movement
upsets the divine parents; disturbs the inner parts of Tiamat.231 So Tiamat and her husb and Apsu conspire
1.03 - THE STUDY (The Exorcism), #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
Be still, thou poodle; make not such racket and riot!
Why at the threshold wilt snuffing be?
1.03 - The Sunlit Path, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
We had no need of silence, of a well-insulated room, of keeping life's tentacles at a distance. On the contrary, the tighter they grasp and try to suffocate us, the more deafened we are by all that racket of life, and the more it burns inside, the hotter it is, the greater the need to be that and only that, that other vibrating thing without which we cannot live or brea the forgetting it even for a second is to fall into total suffocation. We are treading the sunlit path amidst the world's darkness inside, outside, it's all the same, alone or in a crowd we are forever safe, nothing and nobody can take that away from us! We carry our secret royalty everywhere we go, moving ahead gropingly within another geography, which gradually reveals secret harbors and unexpected fjords and continents of peace and glimpses of unknown seas reverberating with the echo of a vaster life. There is no more wanting or not wanting in us, no more compulsion to acquire this or that, no struggle to live or become or know: we are borne by another rhythm that has its spontaneous knowledge, its clear life, its unforeseeable will and lightning effectiveness. A different kingdom begins to open up to us; we cast another look at the world, still a little blind and unknowing, but insightful, as if pregnant with a reality yet unborn, made wide by a knowledge still unformulated, a still shy wonderment. Perhaps we are like that brother ape of not so long ago who looked at his forest with a strange look, at his mates who ran and climbed and hunted so well but were not aware of the clear little vibration, the odd marvel, the sudden stillness that seemed to sunder the dark clouds and stretch far, far away, into a vastness vibrating with creative possibilities.
1.04 - The Silent Mind, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Actually, one makes all kinds of discoveries when the mental machine stops, and first of all one realizes that if the power to think is a remarkable gift, the power not to think29 is a far greater one yet; let the seeker try it for just a few minutes, and he will soon see what this means! He will realize that he lives in a surreptitious racket, an exhausting and ceaseless whirlwind exclusively filled with his thoughts, his feelings, his impulses, his reactions him, always him,
an oversized gnome intruding into everything, obscuring everything,
--
Active Meditation When we sit with our eyes closed to silence the mind, we are at first submerged by a torrent of thoughts; they crop up from every side, like frightened or even aggressive rats. There is only one way to stop this racket: to try and try again, patiently and persistently; above all, we must shift our concentration elsewhere, and not make the mistake of struggling mentally with the mind. All of us have, above the mind or deep inside ourselves, an aspiration, the very thing that has put us on the path in the first place, a yearning of our being, a password that has a special meaning for us; if we cling to that, the work becomes easier,
positively rather than negatively oriented, and the more we repeat our password, the more powerful it becomes. We can also use an image,
1.06 - MORTIFICATION, NON-ATTACHMENT, RIGHT LIVELIHOOD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
In the first seven branches of his Eightfold Path the Buddha describes the conditions that must be fulfilled by anyone who desires to come to that right contemplation which is the eighth and final branch. The fulfilment of these conditions entails the undertaking of a course of the most searching and comprehensive mortificationmortification of intellect and will, craving and emotion, thought, speech, action and, finally, means of livelihood. Certain professions are more or less completely incompatible with the achievement of mans final end; and there are certain ways of making a living which do so much physical and, above all, so much moral, intellectual and spiritual harm that, even if they could be practised in a non-attached spirit (which is generally impossible), they would still have to be eschewed by anyone dedicated to the task of liberating, not only himself, but others. The exponents of the Perennial Philosophy are not content to avoid and forbid the practice of criminal professions, such as brothel-keeping, forgery, racketeering and the like; they also avoid themselves, and warn others against, a number of ways of livelihood commonly regarded as legitimate. Thus, in many Buddhist societies, the manufacture of arms, the concoction of intoxicating liquors and the wholesale purveying of butchers meat were not, as in contemporary Christendom, rewarded by wealth, peerages and political influence; they were deplored as businesses which, it was thought, made it particularly difficult for their practitioners and for other members of the communities in which they were practised to achieve enlightenment and liberation. Similarly, in mediaeval Europe, Christians were forbidden to make a living by the taking of interest on money or by cornering the market. As Tawney and others have shown, it was only after the Reformation that coupon-clipping, usury and gambling in stocks and commodities became respectable and received ecclesiastical approval.
For the Quakers, soldiering was and is a form of wrong livelihoodwar being, in their eyes, anti-Christian, not so much because it causes suffering as because it propagates hatred, puts a premium on fraud and cruelty, infects whole societies with anger, fear, pride and uncharitableness. Such passions eclipse the Inner Light, and therefore the wars by which they are aroused and intensified, must be regarded, whatever their immediate political outcome, as crusades to make the world safe for spiritual darkness.
1.56 - The Public Expulsion of Evils, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
boys make a racket with whips, bells, pots, and pans; the women
carry censers; the dogs are unchained and run barking and yelping
1.57 - Public Scapegoats, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
prodigious row and racket of sham fighting are chased away into the
mountains." In spring, as soon as the willow-leaves were full grown
1.tc - After Liu Chai-Sangs Poem, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by David Hinton Original Language Chinese I'd long felt these mountains and lakes beckoning, and wouldn't have thought twice, but my family and friends couldn't bear talk of living apart. Then one lucky day a strange feeling came over me, and I left, walking-stick in hand, for my western farm. No one was going back home: on those outland roads, farm after farm lay in empty ruins, but our thatch hut's already good as ever, and you'd think our new fields had been tended for years. When valley winds turn cold, spring wine eases hunger and work, and though it isn't strong, just baby-girl wine, it's better than nothing for worry. Distant -- as months and years pass away here, the bustling world's racket grows distant. Plowing and weaving provide all we use. Who needs anything more? Away, ever away into this hundred-year life and beyond, my story and I vanish together like this. [2225.jpg] -- from The Selected Poems of T'ao Ch'ien, Translated by David Hinton
Book of Imaginary Beings (text), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
that it is not unusual for the sow to run along the telegraph wires, producing a deafening racket with its
chains. As yet, nobody has caught a glimpse of the
--- Overview of noun racket
The noun racket has 4 senses (first 2 from tagged texts)
1. (3) racket ::: (a loud and disturbing noise)
2. (1) racket, fraudulent scheme, illegitimate enterprise ::: (an illegal enterprise (such as extortion or fraud or drug peddling or prostitution) carried on for profit)
3. noise, dissonance, racket ::: (the auditory experience of sound that lacks musical quality; sound that is a disagreeable auditory experience; "modern music is just noise to me")
4. racket, racquet ::: (a sports implement (usually consisting of a handle and an oval frame with a tightly interlaced network of strings) used to strike a ball (or shuttlecock) in various games)
--- Overview of verb racket
The verb racket has 3 senses (no senses from tagged texts)
1. revel, racket, make whoopie, make merry, make happy, whoop it up, jollify, wassail ::: (celebrate noisily, often indulging in drinking; engage in uproarious festivities; "The members of the wedding party made merry all night"; "Let's whoop it up--the boss is gone!")
2. racket ::: (make loud and annoying noises)
3. racket ::: (hit (a ball) with a racket)
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun racket
4 senses of racket
Sense 1
racket
=> noise
=> sound
=> happening, occurrence, occurrent, natural event
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 2
racket, fraudulent scheme, illegitimate enterprise
=> enterprise, endeavor, endeavour
=> undertaking, project, task, labor
=> work
=> activity
=> act, deed, human action, human activity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 3
noise, dissonance, racket
=> sound, auditory sensation
=> sensation, esthesis, aesthesis, sense experience, sense impression, sense datum
=> perception
=> basic cognitive process
=> process, cognitive process, mental process, operation, cognitive operation
=> cognition, knowledge, noesis
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 4
racket, racquet
=> sports implement
=> implement
=> instrumentality, instrumentation
=> artifact, artefact
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun racket
1 of 4 senses of racket
Sense 4
racket, racquet
=> badminton racket, badminton racquet, battledore
=> crosse
=> squash racket, squash racquet, bat
=> tennis racket, tennis racquet
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun racket
4 senses of racket
Sense 1
racket
=> noise
Sense 2
racket, fraudulent scheme, illegitimate enterprise
=> enterprise, endeavor, endeavour
Sense 3
noise, dissonance, racket
=> sound, auditory sensation
Sense 4
racket, racquet
=> sports implement
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun racket
4 senses of racket
Sense 1
racket
-> noise
=> bang, clap, eruption, blast, bam
=> banging
=> bark
=> blare, blaring, cacophony, clamor, din
=> boom, roar, roaring, thunder
=> chatter, chattering
=> chatter, chattering
=> chug
=> clack, clap
=> clang, clangor, clangour, clangoring, clank, clash, crash
=> clatter
=> crack, cracking, snap
=> crackle, crackling, crepitation
=> creak, creaking
=> crunch
=> ding-dong
=> explosion
=> grate
=> grinding
=> grunt, oink
=> hiss, hissing, hushing, fizzle, sibilation
=> howl
=> hubbub, uproar, brouhaha, katzenjammer
=> hum, humming
=> pant
=> plonk
=> plop
=> plump
=> racket
=> rattle, rattling, rale
=> report
=> rhonchus
=> rumble, rumbling, grumble, grumbling
=> rustle, rustling, whisper, whispering
=> scrape, scraping, scratch, scratching
=> screech, screeching, shriek, shrieking, scream, screaming
=> scrunch
=> shrilling
=> sizzle
=> slam
=> snap
=> snore
=> spatter, spattering, splatter, splattering, sputter, splutter, sputtering
=> splash, plash
=> squawk
=> squeak
=> squish
=> stridulation
=> swoosh, whoosh
=> thunder
Sense 2
racket, fraudulent scheme, illegitimate enterprise
-> enterprise, endeavor, endeavour
=> racket, fraudulent scheme, illegitimate enterprise
=> forlorn hope
=> business activity, commercial activity
Sense 3
noise, dissonance, racket
-> sound, auditory sensation
=> music, euphony
=> music
=> tone, pure tone
=> noise, dissonance, racket
=> dub
Sense 4
racket, racquet
-> sports implement
=> baton
=> cue, cue stick, pool cue, pool stick
=> mallet
=> pole
=> racket, racquet
--- Grep of noun racket
age bracket
angle bracket
badminton racket
bracket
gas bracket
income bracket
income tax bracket
numbers racket
price bracket
racket
racket club
racketeer
racketeer influenced and corrupt organizations act
racketeering
racketiness
shelf bracket
square bracket
squash racket
tax bracket
tennis racket
wall bracket
Wikipedia - Albert J. Adams -- American racketeer
Wikipedia - Alberto Yarini -- Cuban racketeer and pimp
Wikipedia - Anna Brackett
Wikipedia - Bert Brackett -- American politician and rancher from Idaho
Wikipedia - Booted racket-tail -- Genus of birds
Wikipedia - Box bracket
Wikipedia - Bracketing (phenomenology)
Wikipedia - Bracket (mathematics) -- Brackets as used in mathematical notation
Wikipedia - Brackets (text editor) -- Editor for Web development
Wikipedia - Brackett Field -- Airport in California, United States
Wikipedia - Bracket (tournament)
Wikipedia - Brackett series
Wikipedia - Bracket turn -- Element found in figure skating
Wikipedia - Bracket
Wikipedia - Carola Rackete -- German ship captain and human-rights activist
Wikipedia - Curly bracket programming language
Wikipedia - Curly-bracket programming language
Wikipedia - Curly bracket
Wikipedia - Dirac bracket -- Quantization method for constrained Hamiltonian systems with second-class constraints
Wikipedia - Dyck language -- Language consisting of balanced strings of square brackets
Wikipedia - Eric John Stark -- Fictional character created by Leigh Brackett
Wikipedia - Frame story -- Story in a nested narration that brackets one or more embedded stories
Wikipedia - Frank Parkhurst Brackett -- American astronomer
Wikipedia - Frederick Sumner Brackett -- American physicist
Wikipedia - Golden-mantled racket-tail -- Species of parrot
Wikipedia - Greater racket-tailed drongo -- A medium sized Asian bird with elongated tail feathers
Wikipedia - Henry Leaf -- British rackets player
Wikipedia - Income bracket
Wikipedia - Inonotus hispidus -- Species of bracket fungus in the family Hymenochaetaceae
Wikipedia - Iverson bracket
Wikipedia - Joseph W. Brackett -- American politician
Wikipedia - Leigh Brackett -- American novelist and screenwriter
Wikipedia - List of racket sports -- Game in which players use rackets to hit a ball or other object
Wikipedia - Love Is a Racket -- 1932 film
Wikipedia - Madame Racketeer -- 1932 film
Wikipedia - Marc Brackett
Wikipedia - Michael McKay (labor leader) -- American trade union leader and convicted racketeer
Wikipedia - Moyal bracket -- Suitably normalized antisymmetrization of the phase-space star product
Wikipedia - Padel (sport) -- Racket sport
Wikipedia - Parole Racket -- 1936 film by Charles C. Coleman
Wikipedia - Peierls bracket -- Theoretical physics
Wikipedia - Peruvian racket-tail -- Species of bird
Wikipedia - Poisson bracket -- Operation in Hamiltonian mechanics
Wikipedia - Protection racket -- Scheme in which a group protects a client through illegal violence
Wikipedia - Racket Busters -- 1938 film by Lloyd Bacon
Wikipedia - Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act
Wikipedia - Racketeering -- Service that is fraudulently offered to solve a problem
Wikipedia - Racketeers in Exile -- 1937 film by Erle C. Kenton
Wikipedia - Racketeers of the Range -- 1939 film by D. Ross Lederman
Wikipedia - Racketlon -- Combination of racquet sports
Wikipedia - Racket (programming language)
Wikipedia - Rackets (sport) -- Indoor racquet sport
Wikipedia - Racket-tailed coquette -- Species of bird
Wikipedia - Rackett -- Renaissance predecessor of the bassoon
Wikipedia - Rackety Rax -- 1932 film
Wikipedia - Reymond de Montmorency -- English cricketer, golfer, and rackets player
Wikipedia - Roundnet -- Ball sport with racket and net
Wikipedia - Rubber Racketeers -- 1942 film by Harold Young
Wikipedia - Rufous-booted racket-tail -- Species of bird
Wikipedia - Sea Racketeers -- 1937 film by Hamilton MacFadden
Wikipedia - Sky Racket (film) -- 1937 film by Sam Katzman
Wikipedia - Sky Racket (video game) -- 2019 shooter game
Wikipedia - Smashing the Rackets -- 1938 film by Lew Landers
Wikipedia - Square brackets
Wikipedia - Squash Doubles -- Type of racket sport gameplay
Wikipedia - Table tennis rubber -- Rubber used as covering on a table tennis racket
Wikipedia - Table tennis -- Racket sport
Wikipedia - Tennis -- Ball sport with racket and net
Wikipedia - The Big Racket -- 1976 film
Wikipedia - The Emperor Waltz -- 1948 film by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder
Wikipedia - The Gold Racket -- 1937 film directed by Louis J. Gasnier
Wikipedia - The Love Racket -- 1929 film
Wikipedia - The Racket (1928 film) -- 1928 film
Wikipedia - The Racketeer -- 1929 film
Wikipedia - The Racket Man -- 1944 film
Wikipedia - The Woman Racket -- 1930 film
Wikipedia - Thomas Rackett
Wikipedia - Trial of the Nine Trey Gangsters -- American Criminal Case Alleging Racketeering, rape, Drug Distribution, Weapons, And Conspiracy To Commit Murder
Wikipedia - War Is a Racket -- Speech and short book by Smedley D. Butler
Wikipedia - White-booted racket-tail -- Species of bird
Leigh Brackett ::: Born: December 7, 1915; Died: March 17, 1978; Occupation: Writer;
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12468024-war-is-a-racket-with-the-war-prayer-and-the-complaint-of-peace
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13013396-war-is-a-racket
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13082712-podioracket-presents---glimpses
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13573236.The_Racketeer
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13573236-the-racketeer
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15990491-the-racketeer
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17461935-war-is-a-racket
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/198259.War_is_a_Racket
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22796340-brackett-hollister
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2465085.The_Best_of_Leigh_Brackett
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26035267-racket
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27277137-war-is-a-racket
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27394323-war-is-a-racket
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32075490-our-little-racket
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35796027-the-boyfriend-bracket
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15430224.Katherine_Brackett
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16281405.Lindsey_P_Brackett
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/22648.Leigh_Brackett
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5262184.Jeff_Brackett
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6477744.Marc_Brackett
Goodreads author - Leigh_Brackett
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/LeighBrackett
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/RacketGirls
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TheRacket
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MonsterProtectionRacket
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ProtectionRacket
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/Colonopenbracket
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/BracketedBackslash
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anna_Brackett
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anna_C._Brackett
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carola_Rackete
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Brackett
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Leigh_Brackett
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Brackett_Reed
In & Out(1997) - Life is sweet for high-school English teacher and sports coach Howard Brackett (Kevin Kline); he's still living where he grew up, he has a good relationship with his father (Wilford Brimley) and mother (Debbie Reynolds), he's respected by his community, and he's about to marry Emily (Joan Cusack), h...
Liberty Heights(1999) - In the fall of 1954 the Kurtzmans, a Jewish family, live in Forest Park, a suburban neighborhood on the northwest outskirts of Baltimore. At the beginning of the film, Nate, the father, runs a burlesque theatre, and engages in a community numbers racket. His wife Ada stays home and takes care of the...
Bushwhacked(1995) - Poor Max Grabelski doesn't have any luck at all. What little he had runs out when local racketeers set the bungling delivery man up to take the fall for their money-laundering schemes. Sure enough, when the government agents arrive, he is found holding a package filled with loot. Not only that, but...
Book of Numbers(1973) - Two waiters in Depression-era Arkansas get involved in the numbers racket.
The Private Files Of J. Edgar Hoover(1977) - The story of the late J. Edgar Hoover, who was head of the FBI from 1924-1972. The film follows Hoover from his racket-busting days through his reign under eight U.S. presidents.
Sweet Jesus, Preacherman(1973) - A Black hit man poses as a Baptist preacher in a ghetto church. He decides to take over the local rackets.
Racket Girls(1951) - A money launderer uses women's wrestling as a front for his illegal activities, but earns the enmity of a powerful mobster.
The Undertaker And His Pals(1966) - An undertaker and his two friends, who are restaurant owners, drum up business by going out on the town and killing people; the restaurant owners use parts of the bodies for their menu, and the undertaker gets paid by the families to bury the remainder. Their racket goes awry when 2 detectives suspe...
Bullets Or Ballots(1936) - After Police Captain Dan McLaren becomes police commissioner former detective Johnny Blake knocks him down convincing rackets boss Al Kruger that Blake is sincere in his effort to join the mob. "Buggs" Fenner thinks Blake is a police agent.
Rio Lobo(1970) - This film was the last film directed by Howard Hawks, from a script by Leigh Brackett. Starring John Wayne, Jorge Rivero, Jennifer O'Neill, Christopher Mitchum, Jack Elam, Victor French, Susana Dosamantes, David Huddleston, Jim Davis, and George Plimpton.
A Foreign Affair (1948) ::: 7.3/10 -- Approved | 1h 56min | Comedy, Drama, Romance | 20 August 1948 (USA) -- In occupied Berlin, an army captain is torn between an ex-Nazi caf singer and the U.S. congresswoman investigating her. Director: Billy Wilder Writers: Charles Brackett (screenplay), Billy Wilder (screenplay) | 3 more
Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938) ::: 7.3/10 -- Passed | 1h 25min | Comedy, Romance | 25 March 1938 (USA) -- After learning her multi-millionaire fianc has already been married seven times, the daughter of a penniless marquis decides to tame him. Director: Ernst Lubitsch Writers: Charles Brackett (screenplay), Billy Wilder (screenplay) | 2 more credits Stars:
Force of Evil (1948) ::: 7.3/10 -- Passed | 1h 19min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir | March 1949 (USA) -- An unethical lawyer, with an older brother he wants to help, becomes a partner with a client in the numbers racket. Director: Abraham Polonsky Writers: Abraham Polonsky (screenplay), Ira Wolfert (screenplay) | 1 more credit Stars:
Gotti (1996) ::: 7.3/10 -- R | 1h 57min | Biography, Crime, Drama | TV Movie 17 August 1996 -- John Gotti rises to head the powerful Gambino crime family before being convicted in 1992 of racketeering and murder. Director: Robert Harmon Writers: Jerry Capeci (book), Gene Mustain (book) | 1 more credit Stars:
Halloween II (1981) ::: 6.5/10 -- R | 1h 32min | Horror | 30 October 1981 (USA) -- While Sheriff Brackett and Dr. Loomis hunt for Michael Myers, a traumatized Laurie is rushed to hospital, and the serial killer is not far behind her. Director: Rick Rosenthal Writers:
Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) ::: 7.0/10 -- Approved | 2h 9min | Adventure, Family, Fantasy | December 1959 (UK) -- An Edinburgh professor and assorted colleagues follow an explorer's trail down an extinct Icelandic volcano to the earth's center. Director: Henry Levin Writers: Walter Reisch (screenplay), Charles Brackett (screenplay) | 1 more
Midnight (1939) ::: 7.9/10 -- Not Rated | 1h 34min | Comedy, Romance | 24 March 1939 (USA) -- A chorus girl stranded in Paris is set up by a millionaire to break up his wife's affair with another man, while being romantically pursued by a cab driver. Director: Mitchell Leisen Writers: Charles Brackett (screenplay), Billy Wilder (screenplay) | 2 more credits
Niagara (1953) ::: 7.0/10 -- Not Rated | 1h 32min | Film-Noir, Thriller | February 1953 (USA) -- As two couples are visiting Niagara Falls, tensions between one wife and her husband reach the level of murder. Director: Henry Hathaway Writers: Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch | 1 more credit
Ninotchka (1939) ::: 7.9/10 -- Not Rated | 1h 50min | Comedy, Romance | 23 November 1939 (USA) -- A stern Russian woman sent to Paris on official business finds herself attracted to a man who represents everything she is supposed to detest. Director: Ernst Lubitsch Writers: Charles Brackett (screen play), Billy Wilder (screen play) | 2 more
Rio Lobo (1970) ::: 6.8/10 -- G | 1h 54min | Adventure, Romance, War | 18 December 1970 (USA) -- After the Civil War, Cord McNally searches for the traitor whose treachery caused the defeat of McNally's unit and the loss of a close friend. Director: Howard Hawks Writers: Burton Wohl (screenplay), Leigh Brackett (screenplay) | 1 more credit Stars:
Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964) ::: 6.5/10 -- Approved | 2h 3min | Comedy, Crime, Musical | 24 June 1964 (USA) -- In Prohibition-era Chicago, two rival gangs compete for control of the city's rackets. Director: Gordon Douglas Writer: David R. Schwartz
Shadow of the Thin Man (1941) ::: 7.3/10 -- Passed | 1h 37min | Comedy, Crime, Mystery | November 1941 (USA) -- Nick and Nora are at their wisecracking best as they investigate murder and racketeering at a local race track. Director: W.S. Van Dyke (as Maj. W.S. Van Dyke II) Writers: Irving Brecher (screen play), Harry Kurnitz (screen play) | 2 more
Sunset Blvd. (1950) ::: 8.4/10 -- Passed | 1h 50min | Drama, Film-Noir | 29 September 1950 (Australia) -- A screenwriter develops a dangerous relationship with a faded film star determined to make a triumphant return. Director: Billy Wilder Writers: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder | 1 more credit
The Long Goodbye (1973) ::: 7.6/10 -- R | 1h 52min | Comedy, Crime, Drama | 8 March 1973 (USA) -- Private investigator Philip Marlowe helps a friend out of a jam, but in doing so gets implicated in his wife's murder. Director: Robert Altman Writers: Leigh Brackett (screenplay), Raymond Chandler (novel) Stars:
The Lost Weekend (1945) ::: 7.9/10 -- Passed | 1h 41min | Drama, Film-Noir | January 1946 (USA) -- The desperate life of a chronic alcoholic is followed through a four-day drinking bout. Director: Billy Wilder Writers: Charles R. Jackson (from the novel by), Charles Brackett (screen play)
The Vow ::: TV-MA | 1h | Documentary, Crime | TV Series (2020 ) -- A look at the experiences of the members of the NXIVM, an organization and sex cult who made headlines for being charged with sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. Stars:
Titanic (1953) ::: 7.0/10 -- Not Rated | 1h 38min | Drama, History, Romance | 13 July 1953 (UK) -- An unhappily married couple struggle to deal with their problems while on board the ill-fated ship. Director: Jean Negulesco Writers: Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch | 1 more credit Stars:
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Burn Up Excess -- -- Magic Bus -- 13 eps -- Original -- Action Adventure Comedy Ecchi Police Sci-Fi Shounen -- Burn Up Excess Burn Up Excess -- Follows the exploits of Team Warrior, a special anti-terror wing of the Neo-Tokyo Police force. Team Warrior is comprised of the habitually broke Rio, gun-crazy Maya, computer specialist Lillica, tech-expert Nanvel, piliot/voyeur Yuji, and is led by the enigmatic Maki. The team faces a number of missions, ranging from bodyguard duty, breaking up robbery and arms rackets, and providing security for a very powerful tank. Rio and company continually thwart the terrorist aims of Ruby, an operative for a shadowy cabal of powerful men. Before the final showdown, the circumstances behind the formation of Team Warrior, how the precocious Rio came to join it, and Maki's painful past will be revealed. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- ADV Films -- TV - Dec 12, 1997 -- 9,423 6.54
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