Speaking of Elvis

Elvis Presley........................................................Hound Dog
(as usual, please click through to the friendly YouTube machine)

Call me sad..........................

            Elvis Kissed Me

"Elvis kissed me once, she swears,
sitting in a neon dive
ordering her drinks in pairs.

Two stools down you nurse a beer,
sensing easy pickings here.

"Back in sixty-eight," she sighs,
smoothing back her yellow hair.
Teared mascara smears her eyes.

Drawing near, you claim you've met,
offer her a cigarette.

"Call me cheap," she sobs, "or bad,
say that decent men dismissed me,
say I've lost my looks, but add,
Elvis kissed me."

-T. S. Kerrigan

There is just something special about watching Mother Nature's light shows................

Must........................................

thanks

Fifty years ago.........................................

Steve Allen............................................Gravy Waltz

Opening paragraphs.............................

Chartres, September 8, 1224, the festival of the Virgin's Birth.  For more that a week, the country roads to this cathedral town were clogged with crowds of pilgrims.  Some were pious peasants who wished to thank the Virgin for hearing their prayers.  Others were worldly merchants who came to buy and sell at the great market-fair called the Septembresce.
-David Hackett Fischer,  The Great Wave:  Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History

Good news and welcome back......................

It appears that Scott is blogging regularly again.  Do go visit.

via

Founded....................................

"All government - indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act - is founded on compromise and barter."
-Edmund Burke

via

An unmade bed.......................................

The Rolling Stones...............................Monkey Man



Lyrics here.  The drugs probably helped it make sense.

A novel theory..........................................

Headline from WRM:

Congressmen Flee Capitol Hill Before Obamacare Hits

Key Excerpt:

Under current law, the government subsidizes up to 75 percent of aides’ and lawmakers’ premiums. Obamacare, however, will force everyone on the Hill onto the exchanges created by the ACA, under the theory that lawmakers should be subject to their own laws. The fate of the traditional 75 percent federal subsidy level is uncertain on the exchanges, and many believe that if they leave now before the transition takes place, they can grandfather in the health care plan they are currently on. The result of all these factors coming together is that pols and their staffs are considering fleeing the Hill to avoid accountability.

Editorial Comment:

God bless the law of unintended consequences.

The Three Goals.............................

The first goal is to see the thing in itself
in and for itself, to see it simply and clearly
for what it is.
             No symbolism, please.

The second goal is to see each individual thing
as unified, as one, with all the other
ten thousand things.
            In this regard, a little wine helps a lot.

The third goal is to grasp the first and the second goals,
to see the universal and the particular,
simultaneously.
           Regarding this one, call me when you get it.

-David Budbill

Fifty years ago.......................................

The Seekers........................................If I Had A Hammer

Long may she wave............................

......................and long may she stand for what is good and true.   Happy Flag Day.

Opening paragraphs..................

The news exploded like a bomb around Monday noon, upon the arrival of the newspapers.  Someone in the village had won ten million liras in the national soccer sweepstakes.  The papers gave the name of Pepito Sbezzeeguti, but no one in the town was know under such an exotic name.  The bet collector, besieged by a curious mob, threw out his arms hopelessly.
-Giovanni Guareschi,  Comrade Don Camillo

Kind..............................................

From Michael, who is certainly not a nobody

This doesn't sound like the George F. Will I know and love.....................................

"Lerner, it is prudent to assume, is one among thousands like her who infest the regulatory state. She is not just a bureaucratic bully and a slithering partisan; she also is a national security problem, because she is contributing to a comprehensive distrust of government."

Full essay here.

Beg....................................................

The Animals..........................Don't Bring Me Down

Rewriting..............................

......the Greatest Country Song That Ever Was or Ever Will Be.  They found a beauty in the mail sack at McSweeney's.  Full letter is here.  Excerpt here:

"She’s right, of course. The French language might be the exact opposite of country music even though, technically, France is a country. Scratched it out."

Opening paragraphs.........................

On the afternoon of October 12, 1990, my twin brother Thomas entered the Three Rivers, Connecticut Public Library, retreated to one of the rear study carrels, and prayed to God the sacrifice he was about to commit would be deemed acceptable.  Mrs. Theresa Fenneck, the children's librarian, was officially in charge that day because the head librarian was at an all-day meeting in Hartford.  She approached my brother and told him that he'd have to keep his voice down or else leave the library.  She could hear him all the way up at the front desk.  There were other patrons to consider.  If he wanted to pray, she told him, he should go to a church, not the library.
-Wally Lamb,  I Know This Much Is True

Fifty years ago...........................

Diane Renay...............................................Navy Blue
(please click on through to watch on YouTube)



This song was recorded and released in late 1963.  Renay was 17 years old.  It hit the top of the charts in early 1964.

Contradictions........................

............a list of twelve from Kelly Hartland:

#12:  The question can be of more consequence than the answer.

#11:  Enabling and disabling can be the same.

#9:   Truth is not always found in honesty.

#6:  Oft-times the less we say, the more we are heard.

Thanks Ray

Show-offery...........................

...Adolescent males can do crazy, unproductive things to show off, to count coup, to bolster their ego and perceived status.  They are more prone to being violent and dangerous, to pick stupid fights to prove their alpha-maleness rather than to achieve rational goals.

     Nations often go through an adolescent phase.  Sometimes it can last for decades or centuries.  Two symptoms of this phase are 1) Imperialism and over-readiness to fight and 2) monument-building and other such show-offery.

As excerpted from the Coyote Blog.  Full post here.

A modern contradicition..............

A strong password is difficult for other people to guess and easy for you to remember.  Use a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols.

Use a different and unique password for your e-mail and on-line accounts.

Keep them a secret (and don't write them on  post-it notes kept by the computer).

Now remember them all, even the ones you use once a month.

Right.

Me too................................

Harmony..........................

Four Tops..........................Ain't No Woman Like The One I've Got

Seek.......................................

“Never fear quarrels, but seek hazardous adventures.” 
-Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers

via

On the "science" of leadership.........................

     The word that is too often missing from leadership studies is "judgment."  Everybody involved in the business is desperate to appear scientific:  academics because they want to get research grants and consultants because they want to prove that they are selling something more than just instinct.  But judgment is what matters most, and it is hard to measure.  It takes judgment to resist getting carried away with one quality (such as decisiveness) or one measure of success (such as share price).  It takes judgment to know when to modulate your virtues and when to pull out all the stops.  Unfortunately judgment is in rather shorter supply than leadership versatility indices.
-Schumpeter, as excerpted from  Too much of a good thing

Proportion.................................

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, - in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity, - in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, - in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
-Edmund Burke

Fifty years ago....................................

Bobby Vinton.......................................Blue Velvet
(as always, please kindly click through to YouTube)

Cracking my head up on a regular basis.....

......it's the Mighty E.   It's just what he does.  Do go visit.

Opening paragraphs..............................

    Nothing happens by accident.  I learned this the hard way, long before I knew that the hard way was the only path to true, certain knowledge.  Early in my life, I came to fear the power of strange conveyances.   Though I thought I always chose the safest path, I found myself powerless to avoid the small treacheries of fate.  Because I was a timid boy, I grew up fearful and knew deep in my heart the world was out to get me.  Before the summer of my senior year in high school, the real life I was always meant to lead lay coiled and ready to spring in the hot Charleston days that followed.
-Pat Conroy,  South of Broad

Trust is a scarce commodity these days.....

via

Nice coats.....................................

The Beatles.................................Don't Let Me Down

Cookie wisdom...................................

Miss.......................................

“You can't prepare for everything life's going to throw at you. And you can't avoid danger. It's there. The world is a dangerous place, and if you sit around wringing your hands about it, you'll miss out on all the adventure.” 
-Jeannette Walls, Half Broke Horses

via

The two are often confused...........................

thanks jessica

Fifty years ago..............................

Ricky Nelson.......................................I Will Follow You



It is only because of the glory known as YouTube that I learned that Ricky Nelson recorded this song.  Little Peggy March recorded the best known (to me) version of this.  It was one of the first songs I ever obsessed over.

Opening paragraphs....................

The law firm of Finley & Figg referred to itself as a "boutique firm."  This misnomer was inserted as often as possible into routine conversation, and it even appeared in print in some of the various schemes hatched by the partners to solicit business.  When used properly, it implied that Finley & Figg was something above your average two-bit operation.  Boutique, as in small, gifted, and expert in one specialized area.  Boutique, as in pretty cool and chic, right down to the Frenchness of the word itself.  Boutique, as in thoroughly happy to be small, selective, and prosperous.
-John Grisham,  The Litigators

This made me smile........................

Life Is Fine......................................

I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn't,
So I jumped in and sank.

I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn't a-been so cold
I might've sunk and died.

     But it was 
     Cold in that water! 
     It was cold!

I took the elevator
Sixteen floors above the ground.
I thought about my baby
And thought I would jump down.

I stood there and I hollered!
I stood there and I cried!
If it hadn't a-been so high
I might've jumped and died.

     But it was 
     High up there! 
     It was high!

So since I'm still here livin',
I guess I will live on.
I could've died for love -
But for livin' I was born

Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry--
I'll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.

     Life is fine! 
     Fine as wine! 
     Life is fine! 

-Langston Hughes

Hanging.......................................

Roberta Flack/Donny Hathaway..........Where Is The Love?

Most anxious..............................

"It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the publick to be the most anxious for its welfare."
-Edmund Burke

via

Fifty years ago...............................

The Angels.......................................My Boyfriend's Back

A blessing.............................

thanks Todd

Beautiful View.......................

"We didn’t come here on a mission - we came here to wander."

"If the internet is about distraction, this was about home. A place to sit undisturbed, surrounded by the familiar and the odd peace to be found amid words and images written then lost, and found again…"

Picture and text excerpted from this Jeff Kopito post at the View From the Ledge.

Guys and Dolls.........................

Saturday night, my Sweetie and I took the two mile trip north to Weathervane Playhouse.  There we were thoroughly entertained by the final show of the season opening Guys & Dolls.  The cast was top notch, their voices first rate, and the choreography and dancing has never been better on that stage.  Great fun was had by all.  We are looking forward to the rest of the season!

While the video below is not from Weathervane, it nicely-nicely projects the talent and energy present on stage Saturday night.

Opening paragraphs..................

On the second floor of a characterless hotel in the British Crown Colony of Gibraltar, a lithe, agile man in his late fifties restlessly paced his bedroom.  His very British features, though pleasant an plainly honourable, indicated a choleric nature brought to the limit of its endurance.  A distraught lecturer, you might have thought, observing the bookish forward lean and loping stride of the errant forelock of the salt-and-pepper hair that repeatedly had to be disciplined with jerky back-handed shoves of a bony wrist.  Certainly it would not have occurred to many people, even in their most fanciful dreams, that he was a middle-ranking British civil servant, hauled from his desk in one of the more prosaic departments of Her Majesty's Foreign and Commonwealth Office to be dispatched on a top-secret mission of acute sensitivity.
-John LeCarre,  A Delicate Truth

No reason why..............................

The Crystals............................................He's A Rebel



Better audio is here.

Fulfill..............................................

               A Prayer in Spring

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day; 
And give us not to think so far away 
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here 
All simply in the springing of the year. 

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night; 
And make us happy in the happy bees, 
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees. 

And make us happy in the darting bird 
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill, 
And off a blossom in mid air stands still. 

For this is love and nothing else is love, 
The which it is reserved for God above 
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfill. 

-Robert Frost

photo via

Woe the economist....................................

quote via
cartoon via

Forged..............................

“And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before--and thus was the Empire forged.” 
-Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

via

Opening paragraphs.....................................

In the year 1729 there appeared in the city of Dublin a rather curious publication, by an anonymous author.  It did not have the snappiest of titles:  A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public.  But, its title apart, in may ways A Modest Proposal was the prototype of the modern policy pamphlet, of a type familiar from present day think tanks the world over.
-Jesse Norman,  Edmund Burke:  The First Conservative

Fifty years ago............................

The Crystals..........................He's Sure The Boy I Love

Mankiw at Commencement.........................

"It is true that as an economist, I know precisely what the future holds. But union rules prevent me from sharing that knowledge with the general public. So we economists usually just make stuff up, and it often turns out to be wrong. I won’t burden you with those made-up stories today."

"So here is my first lesson: Communities matter. Communities influence your behavior and shape who you will become. So choose your communities wisely. What is the right community for one person is not necessarily the right community for another. Find a place that will support you and push you to be a better person, as this school has. So far in life, your parents have often chosen the communities for you. But going forward, this is going to be more of your responsibility."

"So here is my second lesson for you: You may think you are good at something, and you may think you know what you should spend your life doing, but you may well be wrong. You will learn a lot about yourself during your first few years of adulthood. Be prepared to change your mind about your path in life and about your self-image. I know I certainly did."

Full address is here.

A verse.......................

7  He that reproveth a scorner getteth to himself shame: and he that rebuketh a wicked man getteth himself a blot.

8  Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate thee: rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee.

9  Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser: teach a just man, and he will increase in learning.

10  The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.

-The Holy Bible

King James Version

Proverbs 9:7-10

While many voices in the Intertunnel....

...have ridiculed the idea of David Brooks teaching a course on "Humility" at Yale (like here, here, and here), it actually looks like a great and interesting course to me.

thanks craig

Apropos of nothing....................

I learned a long time ago that there is power in being for things and not much power in being against things.  Having said that, I'm against whatever Groucho is against..................



Hey............A big welcome back to Scott who seems to be blogging more lately.  That is always a good thing.