Archive for Interesting Excerpts/Thoughts

The Trip

{ March 13, 2009 @ 9:33 am } · { Dini the Journeyor - Adventures in Fizrail, Interesting Excerpts/Thoughts }
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The plane only landed, it seems, yesterday

And now I’ll be boarding another, come what may

But it isn’t to home I am heading (not yet)

Rather into a past that we cannot forget

Is it my past? Not quite – it’s my people’s, you see

Yet it really is relevant to all, even me.

The aim is to see and to learn and to feel

What life was like then, what we had, what was real

What we subsequently lost, through no fault of our own

Or was it? It’s true that you reap what you’ve sown…

And so I start packing, with much trepidation

For this Trip really is about me, and my nation

I’m fearful - almost – about what I will learn

But it’s vital, I think, and the knowledge I yearn

 

So even if you don’t get the chance I will get

Just search for yourself, for a moment – you may yet

Learn, and remember – just never forget.

 

 

- For MD, my faithful fan ; )

Reading fun

{ April 24, 2008 @ 8:16 pm } · { Interesting Excerpts/Thoughts }
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Okay, here’s the post I promised. Topic: Books. Well, specifically good books. For example, recently I have found myself lost in Jasper Fforde’s books – both the Thursday Next series and the Jack Spratt NCD series. Sightly reminiscent of my favorite The Phantom Tollbooth, these books are funny and crazy and confusing and thought-provoking, everything I like in a book. They’re long, too, and you don’t finish them too quickly – one of the best parts! HIGHLY recommended.

Other good books…funny, once I’m immersed in a series I can’t immediately think of other good ones I’ve just read. I’ll get back to you…

See, the problem with really good books is that once you start, you can’t stop and if you have to stop you find any excuse to go back to the book. You’re always thinking about the book, you wish it never ends, and when it finally ends (sob), you search for a sequel or another book by the same author. The most ideal solution is if the author is still alive; if he/she wrote no other books, you can bombard him/her with letters begging him/her to write another, and it actually might happen. If the author’s dead, then you’re in trouble, unless you happen to know a good psychic…

Poetry – The Embarrassing Episode of Little Miss Muffet

{ March 11, 2008 @ 1:31 am } · { Interesting Excerpts/Thoughts }
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I’m going to be posting some poems I like to read. This first one is a funny one by Guy Wetmore Carryl, who writes parodies of fairy tales and nursery rhymes. This is a favorite of mine. Enjoy! 

THE EMBARRASSING EPISODE OF LITTLE MISS MUFFET

by: Guy Wetmore Carryl (1873-1904)

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      ITTLE Miss Muffet discovered a tuffet,
      (Which never occurred to the rest of us)
      And, as ’twas a June day, and just about noonday,
      She wanted to eat–like the rest of us:
      Her diet was whey, and I hasten to say
      It is wholesome and people grow fat on it.
      The spot being lonely, the lady not only
      Discovered the tuffet, but sat on it.
      A rivulet gabbled beside her and babbled,
      As rivulets always are thought to do,
      And dragon flies sported around and cavorted,
      As poets say dragon flies ought to do;
      When, glancing aside for a moment, she spied
      A horrible sight that brought fear to her,
      A hideous spider was sitting beside her,
      And most unavoidably near to her!
      Albeit unsightly, this creature politely Said:
      “Madam, I earnestly vow to you,
      I’m penitent that I did not bring my hat.
      I Should otherwise certainly bow to you.”
      Thought anxious to please, he was so ill at ease
      That he lost all his sense of propriety,
      And grew so inept that he clumsily stept
      In her plate–which is barred in Society.
      This curious error completed her terror;
      She shuddered, and growing much paler, not
      Only left tuffet, but dealt him a buffet
      Which doubled him up in a sailor knot.
      It should be explained that at this he was pained:
      He cried: “I have vexed you, no doubt of it!
      Your fists’s like a truncheon.” “You’re still in my luncheon,”
      Was all that she answered. “Get out of it!”
      And the Moral is this: Be it madam or miss
      To whom you have something to say,
      You are only absurd when you get in the curd
      But you’re rude when you get in the whey.

Funny Quotes

{ February 29, 2008 @ 7:32 pm } · { Interesting Excerpts/Thoughts }
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Some random quotes I felt were worth sharing…not sure who said them, if you know please tell me…

-No sense in being pessimistic, it wouldn’t work anyway

-If practice makes perfect, and nobody’s perfect, then why practice?

-Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations?

-Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity

-Junk is something you’ve kept for years and throw away three weeks before you need it

- A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory

-A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking

-Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it

-To teach is to learn twice

-If you think nobody cares if you’re alive, try missing a couple of car payments

-Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana

-In theory, everything works

-If something goes without saying – LET IT!

-Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine

Play on words…an excerpt

{ February 20, 2008 @ 3:51 am } · { Interesting Excerpts/Thoughts }
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This is one of my favorite parts of The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster – a great wordplay and funny besides…just felt like posting it. 

‘On they went, higher and higher up the dizzying trail, on one side the sheer stone walls and brutal peaks towering above them, and on the other an endless, limitless, bottomless nothing.

“I can hardly see a thing,” said Milo, taking hold of Tock’s tail as a sticky mist engulfed the moon. “Perhaps we should wait until morning.”

“They’ll be mourning for you soon enough,” came a reply from directly above, and this was followed by a hideous cackling laugh very much like someone choking on a fishbone.

“I don’t think you understand,” said Milo timidly as the watchdog growled a warning. “We’re looking for a place to spend the night.”

“It’s not yours to spend,” the bird shrieked again, and followed it with the same horrible laugh.

“That doesn’t make any sense, you see–” he started to explain.

“Dollars or cents, it’s still not yours to spend,” the bird replied haughtily.

“But I didn’t mean–” insisted Milo.

“Of course you’re mean,” interrupted the bird, closing the eye that had been open and opening the one that had been closed. “Anyone who’d spend a night that doesn’t belong to him is very mean.”

“Well, I thought that by–” he tried again desperately.

“That’s a different story,” interjected the bird a bit more amiably. “If you want to buy, I’m sure I can arrange to sell, but with what you’re doing you’ll probably end up in a cell anyway.”

“That doesn’t seem right,” said Milo helplessly, for, with the bird taking everything the wrong way, he hardly knew what he was saying.

“Agreed,” said the bird, with a sharp click of his beak, “but neither is it left, although if I were you I would have left a long time ago.”

“Let me try once more,” he said in an effort to explain. “In other words–”

“You mean you have other words?” cried the bird happily. “Well, by all means, use them. You’re certainly not doing very well with the ones you have now.” ‘