Max Raabe - Viagra (Needs no translation)

"Im Schreibtischfach ganz hinten
der Vorrat von Bill Clinton!"

Max Raabe - Oops... I Did It Again

The Nation's Top Stories - October 31, 2011

October 31, 2011

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NEW AT THENATION.COM David Strathairn: Stop Keystone XL PETER ROTHBERG | The celebrated actor explains why he's coming to Washington, DC on November 6 to join a symbolically powerful encircling of the White House. The 'War on Halloween': A Trick or a Treat for Conservatives? LESLIE SAVAN | The right wing must decide if candy corn is cursed by demons, or blessed enough to send to Gretchen Carlson. Letter From Iraq: As the US Military Withdraws, Sectarian Tensions Continue to Smolder DAVID ENDERS | Iraqis overwhelmingly support the end of the US occupation. But they still suffer from the divisions it engendered. What Should Be Done About Campaign Finance? JAMELLE BOUIE | Restricting the flow of money doesn't work. So what comes next? House Democrats Upset With Supercommittee Negotiations GEORGE ZORNICK | While the supercommittee pursues a "grand bargain" on deficit reduction, progressive members of the House are speaking out against deep cuts.

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Donovan - Ballad of Geraldine

'Universal Soldier' by Buffy Sainte-Marie on QTV

World war 1 Poem "The happy warrior"

Learn How to Break Down a Door (Without Hurting Yourself) [Evil Week]

 

 

Sent to you by Thelma via Google Reader:

 

 

Learn How to Break Down a Door (Without Hurting Yourself) [Evil Week]

via Lifehacker by Whitson Gordon on 10/27/11

Perhaps you're saving a child from a burning building, or perhaps you're up to more nefarious schemes—but one way or another, you have to break down a door. Weblog The Art of Manliness shows us how to do it effectively and safely. More »

 

 

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THE LADY LAUGHS

 

 

Sent to you by terry via Google Reader:

 

 

THE LADY LAUGHS

via peterwesleysblog by PeterWesley'sBlog on 10/23/11

for Danielle DiGiacomo

Like cracked dominoes
the pompous find themselves together,
face to face, back to back, wearing
their insecurities like used clothing.
Each stand, caught in their own onuses,
their too willing desire not to be mocked,
and yet perfectly picked to be pushed
over with a mocking tongue,
the chance comment voicing truth
with a laugh.  At times all of us
wear those used clothes, those mantles
of self importance, self impotence;
a world created for self-defense in bluster.
The lady laughs; she shows me
their simple garments cover quivering
minds, a feeling of weakness,
a humility each deserve and is shown.

In the Tarot the Joker is number zero.
A perfect number, no value unless
added to or subtracted from
by life's careening babbles, it's sad
and funny scenes of empty rooms
full of the howls of babies
in grown-up suits, each hurrying to be heard.
They name themselves for avocations
they cannot hope to achieve, and yet,
in circle jerk fashion they praise each other;
awarding each other a promise of love
or a free dinner of nervous bravado.
The lady laughs; she shows me
a world beyond fragile ego, beyond the cries
of "Pick Me! Pick Me!"; the lonely
crowd that gathers around itself, it's needs
to be shown and not shown an image
in the funhouse's honest mirror.

Those who govern us, those who control
the clutched purses and empty wallets, becoming
the littering lost finding our cities as ruins.
They know to pull every string, right, wrong,
every definition that can be conceived
or cannot; they dance none too closely
to an edge outside their human awareness,
their wish to possess and yet not hold.
The run our world like chipmunks playing chess;
without rudder, the large ship
becomes a weapon without guidance,
a floundering of souls each wanting to leave
but without the tickets to the next show.
The lady laughs; she shows me
a row of picked flowers with titles,
the elect and the controlled, each by itself
equal, together a blaze of colors with
the loudest seen garish and first.

For those who listen life becomes
a punch line, each move timed well,
or poorly; chance becomes a lead in,
a set up of sorts, to the grandest joke
we all live daily but cannot perceive, cannot
admit through our own used clothes,
our own desire to be recognized in the mirror.
The lady laughs; for us she shows
a deepening truth in a smile, the wonderment
of our own folly, our own greasepaint faces,
our willingness to live beyond our abilities.
There is hope in that laugh, a dream
of a life without pretence, without
a withering glare of defense too easily placed
in the eyes of the less secure, the less
than what we need to be. She laughs and
in her laughter I have found a truth:
All of us can be funny.

 

 

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The Writer's Almanac for October 28, 2011

Audio prompt is directly above the title "IN THE PLAZA."   View this message on the Web Friday Oct. 28, 2011  LISTEN In the Plaza by Louise Gluck For two weeks he's been watching the same girl, someone he sees in the plaza. In her twenties maybe, drinking coffee in the afternoon, the little dark head bent over a magazine. He watches from across the square, pretending to be buying something, cigarettes, maybe a bouquet of flowers. Because she doesn't know it exists, her power is very great now, fused to the needs of his imagination. He is her prisoner. She says the words he gives her in a voice he imagines, low-pitched and soft, a voice from the south as the dark hair must be from the south. Soon she will recognize him, then begin to expect him. And perhaps then every day her hair will be freshly washed, she will gaze outward across the plaza before looking down. and after that they will become lovers. But he hopes this will not happen immediately since whatever power she exerts now over his body, over his emotions, she will have no power once she commits herself— she will withdraw into that private world of feeling women enter when they love. And living there, she will become like a person who casts no shadow, who is not present in the world; in that sense, so little use to him it hardly matters whether she lives or dies. "In the Plaza" by Louise Glück, from A Village Life. © Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009. Reprinted with permission. (buy now) It was on this day in 1919 that Congress overrode President Woodrow Wilson's veto and passed the Volstead Act, which provided for enforcement of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting the sale of alcohol. The prohibition movement had been led largely by women, who still had a hard time making a living on their own, and many had seen their lives ruined when their husbands squandered the family income on alcohol. It's commonly believed that prohibition didn't really stop anyone from drinking and merely gave a boost to organized crime. That was true in big cities, because they refused to enforce the law, but in rural America, prohibition was extremely effective. Both Cirrhosis death rates and admissions to state mental hospitals for alcoholism fell by more than fifty percent, and arrests for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct went way down. But city newspapers focused on how easy it was to find alcohol. Even members of the United States Congress had a private country club where they drank liquor openly. By 1932, prohibition was deemed a complete failure. The 18th amendment had been the first amendment ever passed to limit the rights of American citizens, and it became the first and only amendment so far to have been repealed. It was on this day in 1886 that the Statue of Liberty was officially unveiled and opened to the public. It was gift from France intended to celebrate the two countries' shared love of freedom, shipped to the U.S. in pieces packed into 214 crates. Workers put it back together in New York. The day of the dedication was cold and rainy, but huge crowds came out for the celebration anyway. The statue was under veil, and the sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi was alone in the statue's crown, waiting for the signal to drop the veil. A boy down below was supposed to wave a white handkerchief at the end of the big speech. The boy accidentally waved his handkerchief before the speech was over and Bartholdi let the curtain drop, revealing the huge bronze lady, and gunshots rang out from all the ships in the harbor. The speaker, who had been boring everybody, just sat down. It's the birthday of Evelyn Waugh (books by this author), born in London, England in 1903. His family was affluent, and he was upset when he found out that he couldn't attend the same prestigious school as his father and brother. He wasn't allowed in because his brother, Alec Waugh, had a homosexual relationship, was dismissed from the school, and then wrote a book about it. So Evelyn went to a less prestigious school, where he thought all his classmates were unsophisticated. Then he went to Hertford, one of the Oxford Colleges, where he did art and wrote and drank, and neglected his academics. When someone asked him if he'd done any sports at college, he replied, "I drank for Hertford." He left Oxford without a degree. He tried teaching and he hated it, he was in debt, so he attempted suicide by drowning himself in the ocean, but he got stung by a jellyfish so he ran back out. He decided to give his life another chance, and he wrote his first novel, Decline and Fall (1928). It's about an innocent schoolteacher named Paul Pennyfeather who is expelled from Oxford for running across campus without his trousers, and has no choice but to become a schoolteacher. He's surrounded by bigots, drunks, and pedophiles, and he almost marries the mother of one of his students, but it turns out she makes her money trafficking in brothels in South America. Evelyn Waugh went on to write many novels, including Brideshead Revisited (1945). Evelyn Waugh said, "The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish." It's the birthday of the man who developed the polio vaccine, Dr. Jonas Salk, born in New York City (1914) who developed a polio vaccine at the height of a polio epidemic in the mid 1950s, when parents were so worried about their children that they kept them home from swimming pools in the summer. Salk's discovery was that a vaccine could be developed from a dead virus, and he tested the vaccine on himself, his family, and the staff of his laboratory to prove it was safe. The vaccine was finally released to the public in 1955, the number of people infected by polio went down from more than 10,000 a year to less than 100. Salk was declared a national hero. Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® sponsor The Poetry Foundation National broadcasts of The Writer's Almanac are supported by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine for over 90 years. The Writer's Almanac is produced by Prairie Home Productions and presented by American Public Media. sponsor Contribute $75 or more today and we'll thank you with the official Writer's Almanac mug. Good Poems for Hard Times selected by Garrison Keillor Order your copy today. On the Radio Podcast Web Archive Title Author Date Read highlighted interviews of poets heard on the show. Featured interview: Joyce Sutphen Visit the bookshelf now You received this free e-mail newsletter because you previously subscribed or because it was sent to you by a friend. This e-mail was sent to the following address: wtqd@verizon.net Unsubscribe | Contact Us | © 2011 American Public Media 480 Cedar Street, Saint Paul, MN 55101 USA Privacy policy