thoughts on life

However keen some may be to say "Life's what you make it", the fact remains that some things in life are out of your control. Never mind all this "You can do anything" nonsense. The one thing that makes life a lot easier is when you accept that "It just is". 

something to ponder

I Am Really Brainy !!

Thought Provoking Questions to Ponder

When several million want a given person or party in power, but can never elect them because only Democrats and Republicans will be elected by the other 90 million voters, can they believe that this is a representative government? Would a system that allowed them to send their own representatives to congress be more fair? Is there a way to devise a system which does?

just a thought

 No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it.  It is only with your own knowledge that you can deal.  It is only your own knowledge that you can claim to possess or ask others to consider.  Your mind is your only judge of truth — and if others dissent from your verdict, reality is the court of final appeal.  Nothing but a man’s mind can perform that complex, delicate, crucial process of identification which is thinking.  Nothing can direct the process but his own judgment.  Nothing can direct his judgment but his moral integrity….A rational process is a moral process.  You may make an error at any step of it, with nothing to protect you but your own severity, or you may try to cheat, to fake the evidence and evade the effort of the quest — but if devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes responsibility for thinking. 

Hangover Rating

One Star Hangover (*)
No pain. No real feeling of illness. You're able to function relatively well. However, you are still parched. You can drink 5 sodas and still feel this way. For some reason, you are craving a steak & fries. 

Two Star Hangover (**)
No pain, but something is definitely amiss. You may look okay, but you have the mental capacity of a staple gun. The coffee you are chugging is only increasing your rumbling gut, which is still tossing around the fruity pancake from the 3:00 AM Waffle House excursion. There is some definite havoc being wreaked upon your bowels. 

Three Star Hangover (***)
Slight headache. Stomach feels crappy. You are definitely not
productive. Anytime a girl walks by you gag because her perfume reminds you of the flavored schnapps shots your alcoholic friends dared you to drink. Life would be better right now if you were home in your bed watching Lucy reruns. You've had 4 cups of coffee, a gallon of water, 3 iced teas and a diet Coke --- yet you haven't peed once. 

Four Star Hangover (****)
Life sucks. Your head is throbbing. You can't speak too quickly or else you might puke. Your boss has already lambasted you for being late and has given you a lecture for reeking of booze. You wore nice clothes, but that can't hide the fact that you only shaved one side of your face. (For the ladies, it looks like you put your make-up on while riding the bumper cars.) Your eyes look like one big red vein, and even your hair hurts. Your sphincter is in perpetual spasm, and the first of about five shits you take during the day brings water to the eyes of everyone who enters the bathroom. 

Five Star Hangover, (*****)
You have a second heartbeat in your head, which is actually annoying the employee who sits in the next cube. Vodka vapor is seeping out of every pore and making you dizzy. You still have toothpaste crust in the corners of your mouth from brushing your teeth in an attempt to get the remnants of the poop fairy out. Your body has lost the ability to generate saliva so your tongue is suffocating you. You don't have the foggiest idea who the hell the stranger was passed out in your bed this morning. Any attempt to defecate results in a fire hose like discharge of alcohol-scented fluid with a rare 'floater' thrown in. The sole purpose of this 'floater' seems to be to splash the toilet water all over your ass. Death sounds pretty good about right now....

THINGS THAT ARE DIFFICULT TO SAY WHEN YOU'RE DRUNK:

Indubitably
Innovative
Preliminary
Proliferation
Cinnamon 

THINGS THAT ARE VERY DIFFICULT TO SAY WHEN YOU'RE DRUNK:

Specificity
British Constitution
Passive-aggressive disorder
Loquacious Transubstantiate 

THINGS THAT ARE DOWNRIGHT IMPOSSIBLE TO SAY WHEN YOU'RE DRUNK:

Thanks, but I don't want to have sex
Nope, no more booze for me
Sorry, but you're not really my type
Good evening officer, isn't it lovely out tonight
Oh, I just couldn't. No one wants to hear me sing

ramdon thoughts

What mattered was not what happens to you, but how you handle it. Self-command is required to overcome the dangerous misinformation of our emotions, and because for the most part the self is the only thing that we can command. We have no control, ultimately, over what people do or think. What we can influence is our understanding of these circumstances and how we respond to them.

random thoughts

this is something worth repeating

In life you will realize that there is a purpose for everyone you meet.

Some will test you, some will use you and some will teach you.

But most important are the ones who bring out the best in you, respect

You and accept you for who you are. Those are the ones worth keeping around. 

random thoughts

You can spend minutes, hours, days, weeks or even months over-analyzing a situation : trying to put the pieces together, justifying what could’ve, would’ve, happened … or you can just leave the pieces on the floor and move the f--- on

Word Of The Day

tony \TOH-nee\  , adjective:
High-toned; stylish.

When we ate lunch in a tony restaurant near the Empire State Building, Ricky ordered a turkey sandwich and a glass of milk. I followed suit, not really knowing what to order in a restaurant.
-- David Appleton, Son: Saved from Myself

Then she had an appointment for a massage, and was ending her day by trying on wedding gowns at a tony dress shop on Fifth Avenue that Ava had located during her visit.
-- E. Lynn Harris, Not a Day Goes By

An Americanism, tony entered the language in the 1870s. Its precise origin is unclear, but it is related to the word tone meaning "a particular quality or way of sounding."

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for tony

Word Of The Day

caparison \kuh-PAR-uh-suhn\  , verb:
1. To dress richly; deck.
2. To cover with a caparison.

noun:
1. A decorative covering for a horse or for the tack or harness of a horse; trappings.
2. Rich and sumptuous clothing or equipment.

The fruit, the fountain that's in all of us; in Edward; in Eleanor; so why caparisonourselves on top?
-- Virginia Woolf, The Years

And he followed her order, bridling and saddling the horse and making every effort to caparison it well.
-- Chrétien de Troyes, The Complete Romances of Chrétien de Troyes

Caparison originally referred to an elaborate covering for horses. It is related to the word chaperon.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for caparison

Word Of The Day

cumshaw \KUHM-shaw\  , noun:
A present; gratuity; tip.

Many had nothing to give, but the younger wives always brought a modestcumshaw—a gift—for whatever mysterious service Dr. Ransome provided.
-- J.G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun

No one in the filthy streets (but for the blessed sea breezes San Francisco would enjoy cholera every season) interfered with my movements, though many asked forcumshaw.
-- Rudyard Kipling, From Sea to Sea

You know, cumshaw is not really understood by Westerners. It is not a bribe in the Western sense. More accurately, it is like a tip that is given in advance.
-- David Desauld, Twilight in Tientsin

Cumshaw stems from the Chinese word gân xiè meaning "grateful thanks."

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for cumshaw

word of the day

apotropaic \ap-uh-truh-PEY-ik\  , adjective:
Intended to ward off evil.

Ritualistic behaviour used as an apotropaic to ward off private demons, yes. Except to Raymond there's danger everywhere.
-- Leonore Fleischer, Rain Man

In an older kind of fairy story, the magic of the flowers would be potent but unspecified, vaguely apotropaic.
-- Anthony Burgess, J.G. Ballard, "Introduction," The Best Short Stories of J.G. Ballard

Apotropaic came into common usage in the 1880s. It comes from the Greek wordapotrópai meaning "averting evil."

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for apotropaic

word of the day

pleach \pleech\  , verb:
1. To interweave branches or vines for a hedge or arbor.
2. To make or renew (a hedge, arbor, etc.) by such interweaving.
3. To braid (hair).

Robert got up very early, and went off to pleach the big hedge at the foot of the far pasture.
-- Mary Webb, Seven for a Secret

I might not be able to install plumbing fixtures or to pleach apple trees, but I know how to throw a good party.
-- Nancy Atherton, Aunt Dimity and the Family Tree

Pleach is derived from the Middle French word plais, which meant "a hedge."

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for pleach

word of the day

agley \uh-GLEE\  , adjective:
Off the right line; awry; wrong.

Reasoning closely, I deduced that her interview with LP Runkle must have gone awry or, as I much prefer to put it, agley.
-- P. G. Wodehouse, Much Obliged, Jeeves

This had been one of those agley days.
-- Alisa Craig, The Grub-and-Stakers Move a Mountain

Agley comes from the Middle English word glien meaning "a squint," as in "to look at sideways."

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for agley

word of the day

ephebe \ih-FEEB\  , noun:
A young man.

His glance touched their faces lightly as he smiled, a blond ephebe.
-- James Joyce, Ulysses

The three Florentine Davids, those of Donatello, Verrocchio, and Michelangelo, represent the changes in the ideal of male beauty and the model of an ephebe. They are ever smaller, more strained, girlish.
-- Jan Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary

The summer before his senior year of college, in 1997, he worked as an intern atThe Paris Review. James Linville, who was then the magazine’s editor, recalled Rowan as an “ephebe type, almost Truman Capote-like.”
-- Lizzie Widdicombe, “The Plagiarist’s Tale,” The New Yorker, Feb. 13, 2012

Ephebe stems from the Greek word for a young man just entering manhood and commencing training for full Athenian citizenship. It comes from the roots ep-meaning "near" and hḗbē meaning "manhood."

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for ephebe

the word of the day

sylph \silf\  , noun:
1. A slender, graceful woman or girl.
2. (In folklore) one of a race of supernatural beings supposed to inhabit the air.

The sylph had been as slender as a willow, with long silver hair and eyes like the dark between the stars.
-- Jenna Reynolds, Kiss of Honor

Ben was frantic. He lifted the stricken sylph in his arms and held her close against him
-- Terry Brooks, Magic Kingdom for Sale – Sold!

The girl's slender and sylph-like figure, tinged with radiance from the sunset clouds, and overhung with the rich drapery of the silken curtains, and set within the deep frame of the window, was a perfect picture.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Snow-Image, and Other Tales

Sylph was coined by Paracelsus. It is a blend of sylva, which meant "forest" in Latin, and the Greek word nymph.

word of the day

zeitgeber \TSAHYT-gey-ber\  , noun:
An environmental cue, as the length of daylight, that helps to regulate the cycles of an organism's biological clock.

The light–dark transition Zeitgeber is widely used by plants to set internal clocks not just for leaf movement but for many other activities as well.
-- John King, Reaching for the Sun

The most prominent zeitgeber in humans is the light/dark cycle.
-- Harold R. Smith, Cynthia Comella, Birgit Högl, Sleep Medicine

Zeitgeber comes directly from the German word which literally means "time-giver." It entered into English in the 1970s.

word of the day

grouse \grous\   , verb:
1. To grumble; complain.

noun:
1. A complaint.

Today, he went on to grouse about some "pipsqueak" new arrival at Claverack who was only thirteen.
-- Lionel Shriver, We Need To Talk About Kevin

He continued to grouse as they headed toward the taxi line.
-- James Rollins, The Doomsday Key

Grouse originally referred to a type of bird. It is uncertain why it began to mean "to complain," though it bears a resemblance to the word grouch.