Posted: 11 Dec 2006, 17:40
Nawemilystrange wrote:is that from 'the once and future king' or whatever that merlin book is called?
Nawemilystrange wrote:is that from 'the once and future king' or whatever that merlin book is called?
Oh right. Sorry. But no, I know what it's from.emilystrange wrote:well i dunno. it made me think of the great Salmon of Llew.
da dum da dum da dum da da damarkfiend wrote:Oh right. Sorry. But no, I know what it's from.emilystrange wrote:well i dunno. it made me think of the great Salmon of Llew.
A much bigger fish than a salmon.
It ispaint it black wrote:
da dum da dum da dum da da da
the book is much racier than the film isn't itbeen eons since i read it
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"Jaws", Peter Benchley. Freakin' great book, way better than the fillum.scotty wrote:"The great Fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail"
Next meet up... I will make the next meet up..."The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."
Italo Calvino - Invisible Cities
(Neuromancer, by William Gibson)The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
(Introduction to Crash, by J G Ballard)The marriage of reason and nightmare that has dominated the 20th century has given birth to an ever more ambiguous world. Across the communications landscape move the spectres of sinister technologies and the dreams that money can buy. Thermo-nuclear weapons systems and soft drink commercials coexist in an overlit realm ruled by advertising and pseudo-events, science and pornography. Over our lives preside the great twin leitmotifs of the 20th century - sex and paranoia.
(Not from a book but from an interview with Charles Bukowski)For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
It's written by the keyboard player of Nicos last tour, James Young.I first met Nico in November 1981 in a now-defunct Oxford nightclub, playing to an audience of amphetamined undergraduates hyped-up on the Velvet Underground myth and enjoying their brief fling with Bohemian lowlife before taking up their careers in advertising. She seemed both amused and bemused by her celebrity. Once again the promiscuous attentions of the pop world had settled upon her, identifying her as the precursor to a tortured nihilism then fashionable amongst the young.
In the cramped dressing-room, while poetically thin young men hung upon her every word and Nico lookalikes with pale lipstick stared relentlessly at their “Warhol Superstar�, hoping to discern the secrets of her charisma, she rummaged through her cavernous shoulder bag with increasing desperation. The little wrapper of heroin she’d spent so much of the day trying to obtain had disappeard.
I forgot all about that one.lazarus corporation wrote:(Introduction to Crash, by J G Ballard)The marriage of reason and nightmare that has dominated the 20th century has given birth to an ever more ambiguous world. Across the communications landscape move the spectres of sinister technologies and the dreams that money can buy. Thermo-nuclear weapons systems and soft drink commercials coexist in an overlit realm ruled by advertising and pseudo-events, science and pornography. Over our lives preside the great twin leitmotifs of the 20th century - sex and paranoia.
(Introduction to The Ego and Its Own by Max Stirner.)What is not supposed to be my concern ! First and foremost, the good cause, then God's cause, the cause of mankind, of truth, of freedom, of humanity, of justice; further, the cause of my people, my prince, my fatherland; finally, even the cause of Mind, and a thousand other causes. Only my cause is never to be my concern. ''Shame on the egoist who thinks only of himself!"
Let us look and see, then, how they manage their concerns - they for whose cause we are to labour, devote ourselves, and grow enthusiastic.
You have much profound information to give about God, and have for thousands of years "searched the depths of the Godhead," and looked into its heart, so that you can doubtless tell us how God himself attends to "God's cause," which we are called to serve. And you do not conceal the Lord's doings, either. Now, what is his cause? Has he, as is demanded of us, made an alien cause, the cause of truth or love, his own? You are shocked by this misunderstanding, and you instruct us that God's cause is indeed the cause of truth and love, but that this cause cannot be called alien to him, because God is himself truth and love; you are shocked by the assumption that God could be like us poor worms in furthering an alien cause as his own. "Should God take up the cause of truth if he were not himself truth?" He cares only for his cause, but, because he is all in all, therefore all is his cause! But we, we are not all in all, and our cause is altogether little and contemptible; therefore we must "serve a higher cause." - Now it is clear, God cares only for what is his, busies himself only with himself, thinks only of himself, and has only himself before his eyes; woe to all that is not well pleasing to him. He serves no higher person, and satisfies only himself. His cause is - a purely egoistic cause.
How is it with mankind, whose cause we are to make our own? Is its cause that of another, and does mankind serve a higher cause? No, mankind looks only at itself, mankind will promote the interests of mankind only, mankind is its own cause. That it may develop, it causes nations and individuals to wear themselves out in its service, and, when they have accomplished what mankind needs, it throws them on the dung-heap of history in gratitude. Is not mankind's cause - a purely egoistic cause?
I have no need to take up each thing that wants to throw its cause on us and show that it is occupied only with itself, not with us, only with its good, not with ours. Look at the rest for yourselves. Do truth, freedom, humanity, justice, desire anything else than that you grow enthusiastic and serve them?
They all have an admirable time of it when they receive zealous homage. Just observe the nation that is defended by devoted patriots. The patriots fall in bloody battle or in the fight with hunger and want; what does the nation care for that? By the manure of their corpses the nation comes to "its bloom"! The individuals have died "for the great cause of the nation," and the nation sends some words of thanks after them and - has the profit of it. I call that a paying kind of egoism.
But only look at that Sultan who cares so lovingly for his people. Is he not pure unselfishness itself, and does he not hourly sacrifice himself for his people? Oh, yes, for "his people." Just try it; show yourself not as his, but as your own; for breaking away from his egoism you will take a trip to jail. The Sultan has set his cause on nothing but himself; he is to himself all in all, he is to himself the only one, and tolerates nobody who would dare not to be one of "his people."
And will you not learn by these brilliant examples that the egoist gets on best? I for my part take a lesson from them, and propose, instead of further unselfishly serving those great egoists, rather to be the egoist myself.
God and mankind have concerned themselves for nothing, for nothing but themselves. Let me then likewise concern myself for myself, who am equally with God the nothing of all others, who am my all, who am the only one.
If God, if mankind, as you affirm, have substance enough in themselves to be all in all to themselves, then I feel that I shall still less lack that, and that I shall have no complaint to make of my "emptiness." I am not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing, the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything.
Away, then, with every concern that is not altogether my concern! You think at least the "good cause" must be my concern? What's good, what's bad? Why, I myself am my concern, and I am neither good nor bad. Neither has meaning for me. The divine is God's concern; the human, man's. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is mine, and it is not a general one, but is - unique, as I am unique.
Nothing is more to me than myself!
Hunter Thompson wrote:We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to kick in.
too obviousnick the stripper wrote:While reading through the thread, I was surprised to find no one had posted this fantastic sentence:
Hunter Thompson wrote:We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to kick in.
and so it goesIf you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book.
never left me since i was six and now it is my time to pass it on`You are old, Father William,' the young man said,
`And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head--
nick the stripper wrote:While reading through the thread, I was surprised to find no one had posted this fantastic sentence:
Hunter Thompson wrote:We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to kick in.
And the bit about throwing the radio into the bath while it's playing Jefferson Airplane's White RabbitHunter S. Thompson wrote:We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole multi colored collection of uppers, downers, laughers, screamers... Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge, and I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.
That would just be 'An Unfortunate Series of Events'paint it black wrote:and so it goesIf you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book.![]()
tp. the hogfatherAn education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.
paint it black wrote:never left me since i was six and now it is my time to pass it on`You are old, Father William,' the young man said,
`And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head--
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less.'
Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said: 'one CAN'T
believe impossible things.'
'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen.
'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day.
Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things
before breakfast.'
Doesn't say anywhere in the Manual that you can't, Claireboudicca wrote:Can we quote from non-fiction, Master Iz?