Michelle Phillips is such a petite, beautiful lady.
Love You Cass Elliot et al–Wonderful Talent in This Group
What Would You Say Now Joni?
Dearest Joni, Pretty sure California has broken your Heart as it has mine. I love you Joni for this magical Song–and for ALL of your Magical Songs–You are such an important part of my life. And you will always remain, holding a very special place in my heart.
Until Death do us part. I hope I go first. I do not wish to live in a world without you, Joni Mitchell
*****
Moving on–My fawning desire over Joni, for now, sated
(But trust me: It will resurface, and probably much sooner than later)
*******
And this Saddens Me. Me, The Eternal Cock-Eyed Optimist, But Some things Are Perma-Broken and I see no Chance of Fixing Them Anytime soon:
Tropical Fish is all we sold. (and a few-odd Crustaceans–just for fun)
This Monty Python bit cracks me up.
Customer walks into my store.
“My guppy died.”
(I had a three-day guarantee on any fish I sold–it was a gimmick, but I honored it.)
“Madame did you put the chlorine removal drops into your ‘guppy-tank?”
“The whaaa? ” she said.
*Heavy sigh* from me
“Ok. I will give you a new guppy and some free chlorine removal drops. Use them this time.”
I think she then told me to go fuck myself and said something about going to Ben Franklin’s up the street.
Benny Franklin sold guppies back in them days.
(And apparently their guppies were made of sterner stuff. )
And hopefully Benny Frank would throw in some Chlorine Removal Drops—but this Broad was probably too stupid to understand how to use them—the process and procedure was above her capacity of understanding.
“Bon voyage,” I said to her back as she departed my life (Hopefully Forever.)
Added Value:
“All the Reasons Why”
Not really related, but I like it.
Not certain why.
But I drop it in–just like a chlorine-removal drop.
If you twist your mind just a little Bit– a little–Bit —
“Visit. Comment. (sincerely comment) Read. Read. Read. And Then Read some more.”
Then comment some more.
Rinse and repeat.
Then the folks will come.
Works ever’ time.
And… it’s good for the soul.
Good for Our Community of Souls, some lost, some found, and all manner of in between, but there are no more appreciative for time spent than writers / bloggers.
So, therefore, Give a Little of Yourself to your lost and found, and searching fellow souls.
If you listen to the news — pretty much any channel — it is likely that it won’t take more than a few minutes for you to hear someone say “take a listen” and then go to some video. I know it’s hardly one of the world’s big (or even little) problems, and it’s hardly a new one, but I cringe when I hear it. I’m not the only one.
The authors of the great Grammarphobia blog have been on this since 2008, and following is the post they wrote then, and updated on Saturday, Jan. 23 (which I am republishing with permission). They are Patricia T. O’Conner and Stewart Kellerman, who between them have written five books about the English language and have more than half a century of experience as writers and editors.
They include “Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English” (O’Conner), “Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language” (O’Connor and Kellerman), and “You Send Me: Getting It Right When You Write Online” (O’Connor and Kellerman).
O’Conner spent 15 years at the New York Times mostly editing at the Book Review but also writing articles and book reviews.
She also wrote The Times’s weekly columns on new video releases and paperback books. Kellerman, a foreign correspondent at United Press International, took over that column at the Times, where he worked as an editor, wrote articles on literary subjects and reviewed books.
From the Grammarphobia blog:Q: On CNN, all the anchors use the expression “take a listen” instead of just “listen” or “listen to this.”
Does that sound as caustic to you as it does to me?A: We don’t know about caustic, but it certainly sounds puffed up, condescending, and lame. We could go on, but let us quote from the entry for this “infantile phrase” in The Dimwit’s Dictionary (2d ed.), by Robert Hartwell Fiske:“As inane as it is insulting, have (take) a listen obviously says nothing that listen alone does not.
Journalists and media personalities who use this offensive phrase ought to be silenced; businesspeople, dismissed; public officials, pilloried.”Unfortunately, this horse is out of the barn. We just googled “take a listen” and got 725,000 hits.
The expression hasn’t made it yet into modern dictionaries, but The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) and Cambridge Dictionaries Online include examples of somewhat similar usages.Here’s the American Heritage example:
“Would you like to give the CD a listen before buying it?”And this is the example from Cambridge Dictionaries:
“Have a listen to this!”The word “listen,” by the way, has been used as a noun for centuries in expressions like “to be on the listen” or “to have a proper listen.”In fact, the earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary for “listen” as a noun dates from the 1300s. In an apparent reference to becoming deaf or hard of hearing, the writer wonders if someone “has losed the lysten.”
I post a lot of shit. I post a lot of off the wall shit. If you have read my ‘By Way of Introduction’ page you will know this. But, OK, most of you have not (read that). Therefore, I will be brief here (“More matter and less art,” Yeah yeah yeah…) More matter below:
I stole this from Sam Clemens. I hope you like it a lot. (I do)
I don’t know how long I was asleep, but all of a sudden there was an awful scream and I was up. There was pap looking wild, and skipping around every which way and yelling about snakes.
He said they was crawling up his legs; and then he would give a jump and scream, and say one had bit him on the cheek–but I couldn’t see no snakes.
He started and run round and round the cabin, hollering “Take him off! take him off! he’s biting me on the neck!” I never see a man look so wild in the eyes.
Pretty soon he was all fagged out, and fell down panting; then he rolled over and over wonderful fast, kicking things every which way, and striking and grabbing at the air with his hands, and screaming and saying there was devils a-hold of him.
He wore out by and by, and laid still a while, moaning. Then he laid stiller, and didn’t make a sound. I could hear the owls and the wolves away off in the woods, and it seemed terrible still. He was laying over by the corner. By and by he raised up part way and listened, with his head to one side. He says, very low:
“Tramp–tramp–tramp; that’s the dead; tramp–tramp–tramp; they’re coming after me; but I won’t go. Oh, they’re here! don’t touch me –don’t! hands off–they’re cold; let go. Oh, let a poor devil alone!”
Then he went down on all fours and crawled off, begging them to let him alone, and he rolled himself up in his blanket and wallowed in under the old pine table, still a-begging; and then he went to crying. I could hear him through the blanket.
By and by he rolled out and jumped up on his feet looking wild, and he see me and went for me. He chased me round and round the place with a clasp-knife, calling me the Angel of Death, and saying he would kill me, and then I couldn’t come for him no more.
I begged, and told him I was only Huck; but he laughed SUCH a screechy laugh, and roared and cussed, and kept on chasing me up.
Once when I turned short and dodged under his arm he made a grab and got me by the jacket between my shoulders, and I thought I was gone; but I slid out of the jacket quick as lightning, and saved myself.
Pretty soon he was all tired out, and dropped down with his back against the door, and said he would rest a minute and then kill me. He put his knife under him, and said he would sleep and get strong, and then he would see who was who.
So he dozed off pretty soon. By and by I got the old split-bottom chair and clumb up as easy as I could, not to make any noise, and got down the gun.
I slipped the ramrod down it to make sure it was loaded, then I laid it across the turnip barrel, pointing towards pap, and set down behind it to wait for him to stir. And how slow and still the time did drag along.
