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 Posted: Tue Oct 16, 2007 12:44 pm Post subject: Omens and Lucky Charms |
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WELCOME!
Omens and Lucky Charms:
Burnt Water
Stories by Carlos Fuentes
Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden
Hardcover
| Quote: | It was only recently that Filiberto drowned in Acapulco. It happened during Easter Week. Even though he'd been fired from his government job, Filiberto couldn't resist the bureaucratic temptation to make his annual pilgrimage to the small German hotel, to eat sauerkraut sweetened by the sweat of the tropical cuisine, dance away Holy Saturday on La Quebrada, and feel he was one of the "beautiful people" in the dim anonymity of dusk on Hornos Beach. Of course we all knew he'd been a good swimmer when he was young, but now, at forty, and the shape he was in, to try to swim that distance, at midnight! Frau Muller wouldn't allow a wake in her hotel - steady client or not; just the opposite, she held a dance on her stifling little terrace while Filiberto, very pale in his coffin, awaited the departure of the first morning bus from the terminal, spending the first night of his new life surrounded by crates and parcels. When I arrived, early in the morning, to supervise the loading of the casket, I found Filiberto buried beneath a mound of coconuts; the driver wanted to get him in the luggage compartment as quickly as possible, covered with canvas in order not to upset the passengers and to avoid bad luck on the trip.
When we left Acapulco there was still a good breeze. Near Tierra Colorada it began to get hot and bright. As I was eating my breakfast eggs and sausage, I had opened Filiberto's satchel, collected the day before along with his other personal belongings from the Mullers' hotel. Two hundred pesos. An old newspaper; expired lottery tickets; a one-way ticket to Acapulco - one way? - and a cheap notebook with graph-paper pages and marbleized-paper binding.
On the bus I ventured to read it, in spite of the sharp curves, the stench of vomit, and a certain natural feeling of respect for the private life of a deceased friend. It should be a record - yes, it began that way - of our daily office routine; maybe I'd find out what caused him to neglect his duties, why he'd written memoranda without ghyme or reason or any authorization. The reason, in short, for his being fired, his seniority ignored and his pension lost. (Opening paragraphs of Chac-Mool) |
A word about Chac-Mool:
| Quote: | | Chac-Mool is the name given to a type of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican stone statue. The Chac-Mool depicts a human figure in a position of reclining with the head up and turned to one side, holding a tray over the stomach. The meaning of the position or the statue itself remains unknown. (From the ever-expanding, ever-improving Wikipedia) |
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| Posted: Tue Oct 16, 2007 1:40 pm Post subject: |
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Staying Alive
Real Poems for Unreal Times
Paperback
Edited by Bloodaxe founder Neil Astley
| Quote: | Signs
Threading the palm, a web of little lines
Spells out the lost money, the heart, the head,
The wagging tongues, the sudden deaths, in signs
We would smooth out, like imprints on a bed,
In signs that can't be helped, geese heading south,
In signs read anxiously, like breath that clouds
A mirror held to a barely open mouth,
Like telegrams, the gathering of crowds -
The plane's X in the sky, spelling disaster:
Before the whistle and hit, a tracer flare;
Before rubble, a hairline crack in plaster
And a housefly's panicked scribbling on the air.
Gjertrud Schnackenberg
(-- p. 102) |
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| Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2007 10:45 am Post subject: |
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The Light of Evening
Hardcover
By Edna O'Brien
| Quote: | | Mary Angela roaring her guts out and Sheila, who was not a midwife, trying to tend to her. Word had been sent up for a bed in the infirmary, but an answer came back that there was no room, as several people had been struck down with the fever and all the beds were taken. Sheila kept telling her to push, in Jesus' name to push, and the one lamp that had not blown out in the storm swung above her on its metal chain, swinging crazily, back and forth, the bowels of that ship like some inferno. Some prayed, some shouted for the roaring to stop and at the very last minute, when the screaming rent through us, a nurse appeared in a white coat carrying instruments and a bucket and Sheila hung a blanket on the handles of two brooms to serve as a sort of screen. There came then that piercing sound, with life and despair in it, the sound of an infant coming into the world and those who had been praying stopped praying and those who had been cursing stopped cursing, all now ready to rejoice, believing that the birth boded good luck for them. (-- pgs. 32-33) |
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| Posted: Fri Oct 19, 2007 8:35 am Post subject: |
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Women of Mythology
Hardcover
By Kay Retzkoff
| Quote: | At long last, the several gods who had advised the emperor revealed themselves to her (the empress): "We told him of the land to the west," said the first god.
"We revealed to him that it contained gold, silver, and gems that sparkle in the sunlight," said the second god.
"We promised him this country," said the third god.
"But he answered us haughtily," said the first god. "He said, 'There is no land to the west. One only has to climb a mountaintop to see that there is only ocean.'"
"He claimed that were deceivers," said the second god.
"For that sacrilege," said the third god, "we took his life."
"How can I undo the curse upon the land that my husband's sacrilege has brought about?" the empress asked.
"The land to the west is to be ruled by the child in your womb," said the first god.
"What child is in my womb?" asked the empress.
"If you go to seek the land to the west, you must make offerings to all the heavenly deities and all the earthly deities, to all the gods of the mountains, rivers and seas," said the first god.
"You must create a shrine at the top of the ship for us and put wood ashes into a gourd," said the second god.
"You must make many chopsticks and plates and cast them onto the ocean waves," said the third god.
"Then may you cross the waves to the land of the west," said the first god. (From the chapter, The Empress Jingo Kogo Conquers the Western Kingdom, at pgs. 152-153) |
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| Posted: Fri Oct 19, 2007 9:01 am Post subject: |
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... Is it an omen?
| Quote: | IBN LIVE
Bush announces gradual troop reductions in Iraq
Sept. 14/07
| Quote: | New Delhi: US President George Bush has endorsed the recommendations of General Petraeus on troop withdrawal in Iraq, days after the American top General and US ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, gave back-to-back testimonies in the Senate, Bush has announced a troop cut. (emphasis added)
Petreaus had said that the situation is improving and the troop surge in January helped. He had suggested that 30, 000 troops could be pulled back in a phased manner. In a television address, Bush also said that America's decision to withdraw troops was a sure sign of progress in Iraq. The troops in Iraq will be reduced by Christmas, and over 5,000 will return home. “It will soon be possible to bring home an army combat brigade. For a total force reduction a 5,700b troops by Christmas. And he expects by July, we will be able to reduce our troop levels in Iraq from 20 combat brigades to 15,” said Bush. |
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HELP! I want O-U-T OUT of the military!
| Quote: | The Nation
Magazine Subscription
About Face: Soldiers Call for Iraq Withdrawal
By Marc Cooper
Posted online Dec. 16/06
| Quote: | For the first time since Vietnam, an organized, robust movement of active-duty US military personnel has publicly surfaced to oppose a war in which they are serving. Those involved plan to petition Congress to withdraw American troops from Iraq. (Note: A complete version of this report will appear Thursday in the print and online editions of The Nation.)
After appearing only seven weeks ago on the Internet, the Appeal for Redress, brainchild of 29-year-old Navy seaman Jonathan Hutto, has already been signed by nearly 1,000 US soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen, including dozens of officers--most of whom are on active duty. Not since 1969, when some 1,300 active-duty military personnel signed an open letter in the New York Times opposing the war in Vietnam, has there been such a dramatic barometer of rising military dissent.
Interviews with two dozen signers of the Appeal reveal a mix of motives for opposing the war: ideological, practical, strategic and moral. But all those interviewed agree that it is time to start withdrawing the troops. Coming from an all-volunteer military, the Appeal was called "unprecedented" by Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice. |
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| Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2007 11:52 am Post subject: |
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The Devil's Desciples
Hitler's Inner Circle
Hardcover
By Anthony Read
| Quote: | | Hacha's surprise move was a stroke of luck for Hitler, and he grabbed it eagerly. With Goring away, he conferred with Goebbels, Ribbentrop and Keitel, none of whom was likely to contradict him, and told them he had decided to march in and smash the rump Czech state in five days' time. The two ministers were jubilant. 'Our frontiers will stretch to the Carpathians,' Geobbels crowed. 'The Fuhrer shouts for joy. This game is a dead certainty.' The invasion would take place on the Ides of March (15 March), the date Keitel had privately 'put his money on', having noted that since 1933 this had always been the date on which Hitler had chosen to act. 'Was it always coincidence,' he wondered, or was it superstition: I am inclined to believe the latter for Hitler himself often referred to it.' (footnotes omitted) (From 'I'll Cook Them a Stew that They'll Choke On', at p. 537) |
| Quote: | | When they learned of Hitler's survival, the conspirators panicked. Unfortunately for them, the Gauleiter of Berlin did not. Goebbels was in his ministry study talking to Funk and Speer about the problems of implementing his total war provisions when he received a telephone call from Otto Dietrich at Fuhrer Headquarters informing him of the failed assassination attempt. He said later that he had felt 'as though the ground beneath his feet was quaking,' but after being assured that Hitler was not seriously hurt, he ate lunch normally if somewhat more quietly than usual, and then took an afternoon nap. He was woken about an hour later, to be presented with a terse statement from Fuhrer Headquarters, supposedly dictated by Hitler himself, to be broadcast at once. Unhappy with the wording, and perhaps even wanting to hedge his bets until he knew exactly what was happening, Goebbels held on to the statement and carried on with his routine work. It was around 5 p.m. before he was galvanixed into action by a phone call from Hitler himself, telling him that a full-scale military putsch was under way throughout the Reich. (From Last Thrown of the Dice, p. 855) |
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| Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 11:01 am Post subject: |
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British House & Garden
Magazine Subscription
Chinese Puzzle
Susan Crewe is surprised and delighted by
the thriving modern cities of Shanghai and Beijing
May, 2005
| Quote: | ... It is one of the enigmas of modern China that its communist rulers are engineering a capitalist economy. In Shanghai, I stayed in the highest hotel in the world, travelled on the speediest train, looked down on the fastest-growing city, and spent a wonderful afternoon in the newly rebuilt Shanghai Museum among Tang camels, world-famous bronzes, some of which date from the twenty-first century BC, and an extraordinary suit of clothing made from salmon skin.
Not many miles away in the suburbs, live fish were being offered for sale in little bags of water. Releasing one from the Fangshen Bridge - the name means 'setting fish free' - is said to bring good luck. (-- p. 175) |
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| Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 11:55 am Post subject: |
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Blues Story
Audio CD
2 Disc Set
A classic!
| Quote: | I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man
By Willie Dixon
Recorded by Muddy Waters
View the YouTube.com video.
The gypsy woman told my mother
Before I was born
I got a boy child's comin'
He's gonna be a son of a gun
He gonna make pretty women's
Jump and shout
Then the world wanna know
What this all about
But you know I'm him
Everybody knows I'm him
Well you know I'm the hoochie coochie man
Everybody knows I'm him
I got a black cat bone
I got a mojo too
I got the Johnny Concheroo
I'm gonna mess with you
I'm gonna make you girls
Lead me by my hand
Then the world will know
The hoochie coochie man
But you know I'm him
Everybody knows I'm him
Oh you know I'm the hoochie coochie man
Everybody knows I'm him
On the seventh hours
On the seventh day
On the seventh month
The seven doctors say
He was born for good luck
And that you'll see
I got seven hundred dollars
Don't you mess with me
But you know I'm him
Everybody knows I'm him
Well you know I'm the hoochie coochie man
Everybody knows I'm him |
| Quote: | Born Under a Bad Sign
By William Bell and Booker T. Jones
Recorded by Albert King
View the YouTube.com video.
Born under a bad sign
I been down since I begin to crawl
If it wasn't for bad luck,
I wouldn't have no luck at all
Hard luck and trouble is my only friend
I been on my own ever since I was ten
Born under a bad sign
I been down since I begin to crawl
If it wasn't for bad luck,
I wouldn't have no luck at all
I can't read, haven't learned how to write
My whole life has been one big fight
Born under a bad sign
I been down since I begin to crawl
If it wasn't for bad luck,
I wouldn't have no luck at all
I ain't lyin'
If it wasn't for bad luck
I wouldn't have no kind-a luck
If it wasn't for real bad luck,
I wouldn't have no luck at all
Wine and women is all I crave
A big legged woman is
gonna carry me to my grave
Born under a bad sign
I been down since I begin to crawl
If it wasn't for bad luck,
I wouldn't have no luck at all
Yeah, my bad luck boy
Been havin' bad luck all of my days, yes |
Link to this entry
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| Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 8:40 am Post subject: |
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Wislawa Szymborska
Poems New and Collected
1957-1997
Paperback
Translated from the Polish
by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh
| Quote: | THE SUICIDE'S ROOM
I'll bet you think the room was empty.
Wrong. There were three chairs with sturdy backs.
A lamp, good for fighting the dark.
A desk, and on the desk a wallet, some newspapers.
A carefree Buddha and a worried Christ.
Seven lucky elephants, a notebook in a drawer.
You think our addresses weren't in it?
No books, no pictures, no records, you guess?
Wrong. A comforting trumpet poised in black hands.
Saskia and her cordial little flower.
Joy the spark of gods.
Odysseus stretched on the shelf in life-giving sleep
after the labors of Book Five.
The moralists
with the golden syllables of their names
inscribed on finely tanned spines.
Next to them, the politicians braced their backs.
No way out? But what about the door?
No prospects? The window had other views.
His glasses
lay on the windowsill.
And one fly buzzed -- that is, was still alive.
You think at least the note must tell us something.
But what if I say there was no note --
and he had so many friends, but all of us fit neatly
inside the empty envelope propped up against a cup.
(-- p. 167) |
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| Posted: Fri Nov 02, 2007 10:59 am Post subject: |
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Macbeth
DVD
The new gold standard, in our view,
from Down Under
According to Wikipedia:
| Quote: | While many today would simply chalk up any misfortune surrounding a production to coincidence, actors and other theatre people often consider it to be bad luck to mention Macbeth by name while inside a theatre, and usually refer to it superstitiously as The Scottish Play, "MacBee," or sometimes, "The Scottish King".
This is said to be because Shakespeare used the *spells of real witches in his text, so witches got angry and are said to have cursed the play. Thus, to say the name of the play inside a theatre is believed to doom the production to failure, and perhaps cause physical injury or worse to cast members. A large mythology has built up surrounding this superstition, with countless stories of accidents, misfortunes and even deaths, all mysteriously taking place during runs of Macbeth (or by actors who had uttered the name).
An alternative explanation for the superstition is that struggling theatres or companies would often put on this popular 'blockbuster' in an effort to save their flagging fortunes. However, it is a tall order for any single production to reverse a long-running trend of poor business. Therefore, the last play performed before a theatre shut down was often Macbeth, and thus the growth of the idea that it was an 'unlucky' play. |
| Quote: | *Note:
The Spiral Dance
A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion
of the Great Goddess
Paperback
By Starhawk
| Quote: | When you have finished casting a spell, visualize yourself tying a knot in a cord wrapped around the symbol or image on which you have focused. Tell yourself you are setting the form of the spell, as a clay pot is set when it is fired. Say,
By all the power
Of three times three,
This spell bound around
Shall be,
To cause no harm,
Nor return on me.
As I do will,
So mote it be!
(From Magical Symbols, Excercise 43: Binding a Spell, p. 114) |
| Quote: | | How powerful is this stuff? Spouting feminist theology and defending Starhawk's position as a pagan witch at a California university not long ago got recovering Catholic Matthew Fox officially silenced by the Vatican. |
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Other notable approaches:
| Quote: | Macbeth
CD Rom
Edited by A.R. Braunmuller
| Quote: | | Multimedia version of Shakespeare's Macbeth. Includes 1,500 annotations, 24,000-word commentary, audio reading by Dame Judi Dench and Sir Ian McKellen of the complete play, QuickTime video clips, essays on the history and language of the play, concordance, searching and note-taking functions, and karaoke section which allows the user to play the role of Lord or Lady Macbeth in two dramatic scenes. |
A truly fabulous compilation for students and afficionados! Happy hours have we spent as Dame Judi admonishing a dashing Sir Ian to screw his courage to the sticking place.. |
Other coolers we admire.
| Quote: | The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks
Hardcover
By Frostback Robertson Davies, alter ego of
humorist Samuel Marchbanks
| Quote: | OF THE HORSE SENSE OF CHILDREN
A child asked me today to explain a picture it had found in a magazine, which showed some mailed warriors walking toward a castle carrying branches of trees in front of them. It was an advertisement for Scotch whisky, and the picture was Malcolm's forces advancing upon Macbeth's castle - Birnam Wood moving toward Dunsinane, in fact. I explained this to the child, and gave a rough and expurgated version of the Shakespeare play, in which I happened to mention that the Witches had told Macbeth that this very thing was likely to happen. "If a witch had told me that, I'd have cut down the forest right away," said the child. I agreed that this would been a wise precaution, but that if Macbeth had done so there would have been no tragedy, and the whole course of Scots history would have been altered. She looked up at me searchingly and said: "That's silly." Sometimes I think that the reins of government should be put in the hands of children. They have remarkably direct minds, and when a witch tells them something, they pay attention. (From The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks, p. 278) |
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| Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2007 1:19 pm Post subject: |
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Horse Latitudes
Hardcover
By Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Muldoon
Even better, listen to the author read his work.
| Quote: | The Old Country
I
Where every town was tidy town
and every garden a hanging garden.
A half could be had for half a crown.
Every major artery would harden
since every meal was a square meal.
Every clothesline showed a line of undies
yet no house was in dishabille.
Every Sunday took a month of Sundays
till everyone got it off by heart
every start was a bad start
since all conclusions were foregone.
Every wood had its twist of woodbine.
Every cliff its herd of fatalistic swine.
Every runnel was a Rubicon.
II
Every runnel was a Rubicon
and every annual a hardy annual
applying itself like linen to a lawn.
Every glove compartment held a manual
and a map of the roads, major and minor.
Every major road had major roadworks.
Every wishy-washy water diviner
had stood like a bulwark
against something worth standing against.
The smell of incense left us incensed
at the firing of the fort.
Every heron was a presager
of some disaster after which, we'd wager,
every resort was a last resort.
III
Every resort was a last resort
with a harbor that harbored an old grudge.
Every sale was a selling short.
There were those who simply wouldn't budge
from the Dandy to the Rover.
That shouting was the shouting
but for which it was all over -
the weekend, I mean, we set off on an outing
with the weekday train timetable.
Every tower was a tower of Babel
that graced each corner of a bawn
where every lookout was a poor lookout.
Every rill had its unflashy trout.
Every runnel was a Rubicon.
IV
Every runnel was a Rubicon
where every ditch was a last ditch.
Every man was "a grand wee mon"
whose every pitch was another sales pitch
now every boat was a burned boat.
Every cap was a cap in hand.
Every coat a trailed coat.
Every band was a gallant band
across the broken bridge
and broken ridge after broken ridge
where you couldn't beat a stick with a big stick.
Every straight road was a straight up speed trap.
Every decision was a snap.
Every cut was to the quick.
V
Every cut was a cut to the quick
when the weasel's twist met the weasel's tooth
and Christ was somewhat impolitic
in branding as "weasels fighting in a hole," forsooth,
the petrol smugglers back on the old sod
when a vendor of red diesel
for whom every rod was a green rod
reminded one and all that the weasel
was nowhere to be found in that same quarter.
No mere mortar could withstand a ten-inch mortar.
Every hope was a forlorn hope.
So it was that the defenders
were taken in by their own blood splendour.
Every slope was a slippery slope.
VI
Every slope was a slippery slope
where every shave was a very close shave
and money was money for old rope
where every grave was a watery grave
now every boat was, again, a burned boat.
Every dime-a-dozen rat a dime-a-dozen drowned rat
except for the whitrack, or stoat,
which the very Norsemen had down pat
as a weasel-word
though we know their speech was rather slurred
Every time was time in the nick
just as every nick was a nick in time.
Every unsheathed sword was somehow sheathed in rime.
Every cut was a cut to the quick.
VII
Every cut was a cut to the quick
what with every feather a leather to ruffle.
Every whittrack was a whittrack.
Everyone was in a right kerfuffle
when from his hob some hobbledehoy
would venture the witterick was a curlew.
Every wall was a wall of Troy
and every hunt a hunt in the purlieu
of a demesne so out of bounds
every hound might have been a hellhound.
At every lane end stood a milk churn
whose every dent was a sign of indenture
to some pig wormer or cattle drencher.
Every point was a point of no return.
VII
Every point was a point of no return
for those who had signed the Covenant in blood.
Every fern was a maidenhair fern
that gave every eye an eyeful of mud
ere it was plucked out and cast into the flame.
Every rowan was a mountain ash.
Every swath-swathed mower made of his graft a game
and the hay sash
went to the kemper best fit to kemp.
Every secretary was a temp
who could shift shape
like the river goddesses Banna and Boann.
Every two-a-penny maze was, at its heart, Minoan.
Every escape was a narrow escape.
IX
Every escape was a narrow escape
where every stroke was a broad stroke
of an ax on a pig nape.
Every pig was a pig in a poke
though it scooted once through the Diamond
so unfalt -- so unfalteringly.
The threshold of pain was outlimened
by the bar raised at high tea
now every scone was a drop scone.
Every ass had an ass's jawbone
that night itself drop from grin to girn.
Every malt was single malt.
Every pillar was pillar of salt.
Every point was a point of no return.
X
Every point was a point of no return
where to make a mark was to overstep the mark.
Every brae had its own braw burn.
Every meadow had its meadowlark
that stood in for the laverock.
Those Norse had tried fjord after fjord
to find a tight wee place to dock.
When he made scourge of small whin cords,
Christ drove out the moneylenders
and all the other bitter-enders
when the thing to have done was take up the slack.
Whin was to furze as furze was to gorse.
Every hobbledehoy had his hobbledehorse.
Every track was an inside track.
XI
Every track was an inside track
where every horse had the horse sense
to know it was only a glorified hack.
Every graineen of gratitude was immense
and every platitude a familiar platitude.
Every kemple of hay was a kemple tossed in the air
by a haymaker in a hay feud.
Every chair at the barn dance a musical chair
given how every paltry poltroon
and his paltry dog could carry a tune
yet no one would carry the can
any more than Samson would carry the temple.
Every spinal column was a collapsing stemple.
Every flash was a flash in the pan.
XII
Every flash was a flash in the pan
and every border a herbaceous border
unless it happened to be an
herbaceous border as observed by the Recorder
or recorded by the Observer.
Every widdie stemmed from a willow bole.
Every fervor was a religious fervor
by which we'd fly the godforsaken hole
into which we'd been flung by it.
Every pit was a bottomless pit
out of which every pig needed a piggyback.
Every cow had subsided in its subsidy.
Biddy winked at Paddy and Paddy winked at Biddy.
Every track was an inside track.
Every track was an inside track
and every job an inside job.
Every whitterick had been a witrack
until, from his hobbledehob,
that hobbledehobbledhoy
had insisted the whitterick was a curlew.
But every boy was still "one of the boys"
and every girl "ye girl ye"
for whom every dance was a last dance
and every chance a last chance
and every letdown a terrible letdown
from the days when every list was a laundry list
in that old country where, we reminisced,
every town was a tidy town.
(-- pgs. 38-46) |
Not unlike riding horseback with an Irish fiddle keening nearby.
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| Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2007 9:58 am Post subject: |
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All Creatures Great and Small
The first Herriot omnibus
Hardcover
By James Herriot
| Quote: | There didn't seem much point in a millionaire filling up football pools coupons but it was one of the motive forces in old Harold Denham's life. It made a tremendous bond between us because, despite his devotion to the pools, Harold knew nothing about football, had never seen a match and was unable to name a single player in league football; and when he found that I could discourse knowledgeably not only about Everton and Preston North End but even about Arbroath and Cowdenbeath the respect with which he had always treated me deepened into a wide-eyed deference.
Of course we had first met over his animals. He had an assortment of dogs, cats, rabbits, budgies and goldfish which made me a frequent visitor to the dusty mansion whose Victorian turrets peeping above their sheltering woods could be seen for miles around Darrowby. When I first knew him, the circumstances of my visits were entirely normal - his fox terrier had cut its pad or the old grey tabby was having trouble with its sinusitis, but later on I began to wonder. He called me out so often on a Wednesday and the excuse was at times so trivial that I began seriously to suspect that there was nothing wrong with the animal but that Harold was in difficulties with his Nine Results or the Easy Six.
I could never be quite sure, but it was funny how he always received me with the same words. 'Ah, Mr Herriot, how are your pools?' He used to say the word in a long-drawn, loving way - pooools. This enquiry had been unvarying ever since I had won sixteen shillings one week on the Three Draws. I can never forget the awe with which he fingered the little slip from Littlewoods, looking unbelievingly from it to the postal order. That was the only time I was a winner but it made no difference - I was still the oracle, unchallenged, supreme. Harold never won anything, ever. (From Chapter 50, pgs. 317-318) |
| Quote: | All Creatures Great and Small
DVD
Series 1
ESL students might have a tough time at first as indeed Herriot did with the broad Yorkshire accent but perseverence is easy enough with this light-hearted comedy of dumb chums. |
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http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=3128#3128 |
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editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 9:49 am Post subject: |
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Samuel Marchbanks' Almanack
Hardcover
By Frostback Robertson Davies, alter ego of humorist Marchbanks
| Quote: | TELLING FORTUNES BY MOLES
(a bonus for readers of the Almanack)
There are many ways of telling fortunes, and no Almanack is complete without some allusion to a least one of them: Palmistry is the favorite, but it has been done to death; anyhow, it is hard to learn and there are too many people whose hand-lines do not conform to any known pattern. Therefore Wizard Marchbanks will confine himself to Fortune Telling By Moles, which is easy and rather dashing. Of course, there are people who are sensitive about their moles, and you had better avoid them. Here are the five easily memorized rules which will enable you to practise this fascinating branch of White Magic.
Moles on the Face: if extremely numerous and whimsically placed, the subject is likely to be unlucky in love.
Moles on the Arms: do not really count.
Moles on the Legs: should not alluded to if the fortune-teller is desirous of the continued acquaintance of his subject.
Moles on the Back: are usually visible only when evening dress is worn and should not be mentioned.
Moles Elsewhere: are rarely disclosed until the immediate future of both subject and fortune-teller is easily predictable anyhow. (From the chapter, Virgo, pgs. 111-112) |
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editor
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Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 11:19 am Post subject: |
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The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks
Hardcover
By Frostback Robertson Davies, alter ego of
humorist Samuel Marchbanks
| Quote: | SATURDAY AND OLD CHRISTMAS
Twelfth Night, and the official end of the Christmas clebrations, so I took down all the decorations and cards, and dutifully stuffed myself with mince pies and cheesecakes. There is a belief that one will have a happy month for every mince pie one eats today, and every year I gag myself trying to round out an entire year of bliss. I usually stick at June and have never gone beyond August. Some day I must bake a particularly small batch of mince pies for this special purpose, so that I shall not need to short-circuit my epigastrium in pursuit of a fine old custom... Those who do not eat twelve pies are supposed to be plagued by the Lubber Fiend - a goblin somewhat vaguely identified by folklore specialists. I know several people who might accurately be described as Lubber Fiends. (From The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks, p. 6) |
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http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=3172#3172 |
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