[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKw-xV_IN_I&w=700] From 1981, here's dancers Elaine Balden and Bobby Burgess putting a little soul into this episode of the Lawrence Welk Show, they dance to the big band arrangement of Wilson Pickett's "Land of a Thousand Dances".
Oh, and here's the original, with The World's Most Dangerous Band (and a particularly painful bit of vintage crowdsurfing: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk4Uwge4DzQ&w=700]
Fun to read, harder to say. If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world. After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud. It was also, rather satisfyingly, written by a Dutchman.
The Chaos
Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer. Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. (Mind the latter, how it’s written.) Now I surely will not plague you With such words as plaque and ague. But be careful how you speak: Say break and steak, but bleak and streak; Cloven, oven, how and low, Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe. Hear me say, devoid of trickery, Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore, Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles, Exiles, similes, and reviles; Scholar, vicar, and cigar, Solar, mica, war and far; One, anemone, Balmoral, Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel; Gertrude, German, wind and mind, Scene, Melpomene, mankind. Billet does not rhyme with ballet, Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet. Blood and flood are not like food, Nor is mould like should and would. Viscous, viscount, load and broad, Toward, to forward, to reward. And your pronunciation’s OK When you correctly say croquet, Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, Friend and fiend, alive and live. Ivy, privy, famous; clamour And enamour rhyme with hammer. River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb, Doll and roll and some and home. Stranger does not rhyme with anger, Neither does devour with clangour. Souls but foul, haunt but aunt, Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant, Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger, And then singer, ginger, linger, Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge, Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age. Query does not rhyme with very, Nor does fury sound like bury. Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth. Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath. Though the differences seem little, We say actual but victual. Refer does not rhyme with deafer. Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer. Mint, pint, senate and sedate; Dull, bull, and George ate late. Scenic, Arabic, Pacific, Science, conscience, scientific. Liberty, library, heave and heaven, Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven. We say hallowed, but allowed, People, leopard, towed, but vowed. Mark the differences, moreover, Between mover, cover, clover; Leeches, breeches, wise, precise, Chalice, but police and lice; Camel, constable, unstable, Principle, disciple, label. Petal, panel, and canal, Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal. Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair, Senator, spectator, mayor. Tour, but our and succour, four. Gas, alas, and Arkansas. Sea, idea, Korea, area, Psalm, Maria, but malaria. Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean. Doctrine, turpentine, marine. Compare alien with Italian, Dandelion and battalion. Sally with ally, yea, ye, Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key. Say aver, but ever, fever, Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver. Heron, granary, canary. Crevice and device and aerie. Face, but preface, not efface. Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass. Large, but target, gin, give, verging, Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging. Ear, but earn and wear and tear Do not rhyme with here but ere. Seven is right, but so is even, Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen, Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk, Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work. Pronunciation (think of Psyche!) Is a paling stout and spikey? Won’t it make you lose your wits, Writing groats and saying grits? It’s a dark abyss or tunnel: Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale, Islington and Isle of Wight, Housewife, verdict and indict. Finally, which rhymes with enough, Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough? Hiccough has the sound of cup. My advice is to give up!!!
English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenité
Jeepers that must have taken a LOT of sweat to compose. Via the excellent Spelling - Teaching Spelling - Spelling Rules.
Incidentally, if you liked that, then THIS might also tickle your fancy.
So...how did you do? [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=131GfEv4WVg7&w=700]
...it was amazing. They can pull up to 900 tonnes on a road rail. And off-road they are, quite simply, BONKERS. Want want want.
[youtube=http://youtu.be/67gNWxHV0gk&w=700] Such a beautiful groove by the Texan troubadour. The video is made of scenes from the documentary film "The Blues Accordin' to Lightnin' Hopkins" (1967). It might be Billy Bizor or Sidney Maiden on the harp in the film though, rather than Sonny Terry. If you like Lightnin', and you like the blues, listen to him sing "Mr Charlie your rollin' mill is burnin' down". He tells a little story and everything. I love it:
[youtube=http://youtu.be/rtXD4wZobnA&w=700]
"You may see a fast life woman sittin' round a whiskey joint, Yes, you know, she'll be sittin' there smilin', 'Cause she knows some man gonna buy her half a pint, Take it easy, fast life woman, 'cause you ain't gon' live always..."
Ouch!
The sea runs back against itself With scarcely time for breaking wave To cannonade a slatey shelf And thunder under in a cave.
Before the next can fully burst The headwind, blowing harder still, Smooths it to what it was at first - A slowly rolling water-hill.
Against the breeze the breakers haste, Against the tide their ridges run And all the sea's a dappled waste Criss-crossing underneath the sun.
Far down the beach the ripples drag Blown backward, rearing from the shore, And wailing gull and shrieking shag Alone can pierce the ocean roar.
Unheard, a mongrel hound gives tongue, Unheard are shouts of little boys; What chance has any inland lung Against this multi-water noise?
Here where the cliffs alone prevail I stand exultant, neutral, free, And from the cushion of the gale Behold a huge consoling sea.
...because we need things like this in our lives. FIVE albums worth! [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP0kjIHjDIE&w=700]
(Keep listening, because then he goes through their names too, RZA, GZA, ODB etc)
"RZA has by far the most mentions. Maybe he had a clause where if they didn’t keep talking about him, he’d put out another Bobby Digital album"
(via - though original post is here)
Justin Halpern, the brains behind the excellent Shit My Dad Says (he basically just tweets things his dad says), writes this on Funny or Die: I don't get to spend as much time with my father as I once did, and he's not the type to call me up just to shoot the breeze. So when I receive calls from him, I know it's either my birthday or something has pissed him off. Yesterday was one such day.
"Hey, Dad," I said, answering the phone.
"I just read on the internet that you're a talentless piece of shit," he said.
"What?"
"Yeah, I was on the internet trying to find that picture of you from your college baseball team where you look real skinny and gangly like a circus freak, and so I type your name in to Google and I see some comment about you that says you're a talentless piece of shit," he said.
"Why were you looking up that picture of me?"
"Cause you look funny in it and it makes me laugh. I wanted to show your brother. That's not my point though."
(The pic he's referring to)
"Doesn't it bother you that people can go on the internet and call you a talentless piece of shit, and never have to say it to your face?," he continued.
"I don't know. Doesn't really bother me. I got my break writing down things you say. I think just karmically speaking I deserve to hear that on occassion," I said.
"I'm not talking about you. I'm speaking fucking globally. If you can't handle some pissant writing something nasty about you, then I failed as a father. What I'm trying to say is, don't it trouble you that there's a whole generation of people growing up that just say whatever the fuck they want, without any consequences?"
"I don't know, that's just the internet," I said.
"Don't you get what that means, though?"
"Not really," I replied.
"Jesus H. You're a bright kid but you sure like to wear an asshole's costume every once in a while. It means that the future leaders of your country, I say your 'cause I'll have long decomposed, are gonna be people that have absolutely no experience with actual confrontation. Thirty years from now the President of the most powerful country in the world is going to be some little shit who sat at his computer and hurled insults three feet away from his mommy's tit like it was no big deal. I don't condone fighting, but when a human being understands that his or her actions might result in a giant fist up his or her ass, he or she learns a thing or two about acting before they speak. All I'm saying is, I'm glad I'm going to be dead. Also, happy birthday. That's why I called."
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ-TQwMhPDg&w=700] Good lyrics, too.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv2J09XgO2g&w=700] Amazing. Spotted by Wendy (thankyouthankyou) on Queen Mafalda.
They shrugged at each other. Fook composed himself. "O Deep Thought computer," he said, "the task we have designed you to perform is this. We want you to tell us...." he paused, "The Answer.""The Answer?" said Deep Thought. "The Answer to what?" "Life!" urged Fook. "The Universe!" said Lunkwill. "Everything!" they said in chorus. Deep Thought paused for a moment's reflection. "Tricky," he said finally. "But can you do it?" Again, a significant pause. "Yes," said Deep Thought, "I can do it." "There is an answer?" said Fook with breathless excitement. "Yes," said Deep Thought. "Life, the Universe, and Everything. There is an answer. But, I'll have to think about it." Ford glanced impatiently at his watch. "How long?" he said. "Seven and a half million years." Lunkwill and Fook blinked at each other. "Seven and a half million years!" they cried in chorus. "Yes." said Deep Thought.
[Seven and a half million years later.... Fook and Lunkwill are long gone, but their ancestors continue what they started]
"We are the ones who will hear," said Phouchg, "the answer to the great question of Life....!" "The Universe...!" said Loonquawl. "And Everything...!" "Shhh," said Loonquawl with a slight gesture. "I think Deep Thought is preparing to speak!" There was a moment's expectant pause while panels slowly came to life on the front of the console. Lights flashed on and off experimentally and settled down into a businesslike pattern. A soft low hum came from the communication channel.
"Good Morning," said Deep Thought at last. "Er..good morning, O Deep Thought" said Loonquawl nervously, "do you have...er, that is..." "An Answer for you?" interrupted Deep Thought majestically. "Yes, I have." The two men shivered with expectancy. Their waiting had not been in vain. "There really is one?" breathed Phouchg. "There really is one," confirmed Deep Thought. "To Everything? To the great Question of Life, the Universe and everything?" "Yes." Both of the men had been trained for this moment, their lives had been a preparation for it, they had been selected at birth as those who would witness the answer, but even so they found themselves gasping and squirming like excited children. "And you're ready to give it to us?" urged Loonsuawl. "I am." "Now?" "Now," said Deep Thought. They both licked their dry lips. "Though I don't think," added Deep Thought. "that you're going to like it." "Doesn't matter!" said Phouchg. "We must know it! Now!" "Now?" inquired Deep Thought. "Yes! Now..." "All right," said the computer, and settled into silence again. The two men fidgeted. The tension was unbearable. "You're really not going to like it," observed Deep Thought. "Tell us!" "All right," said Deep Thought. "The Answer to the Great Question..." "Yes..!" "Of Life, the Universe and Everything..." said Deep Thought. "Yes...!" "Is..." said Deep Thought, and paused. "Yes...!" "Is..." "Yes...!!!...?" "Forty-two," said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.
He wrote The Meaning of Liff (one of my favourite books as a youth), but what Douglas Adams is really famous for is the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy. The book (and radio and TV series - sadly he died whilst working on a script for the film) fired my imagination and poked fun - gently, satirically - at everything from bureaucracy to religion. Some of his stuff reads more like an extended koan than a science fiction book. I used to try and write like him. Still do, sometimes.
Adams was a Character in the best way. A conservationist, atheist and environmentalist, a lover of fast cars and technology, he seemed blessed with a perspective that could find the absurd in our daily lives and pick out themes for the future. Richard Dawkins dedicated his book, The God Delusion (2006), to Adams, writing on his death that, "science has lost a friend, literature has lost a luminary, the mountain gorilla and the black rhino have lost a gallant defender.
A member of Footlights whilst at Cambridge, he found it hard on graduating to get his style right, so had a variety of jobs to make ends meet - hospital porter, barn builder, chicken shed cleaner, even bodyguard to the Qatari royal family - before finding his stride. Maybe that helped him develop his sense of the absurd. There's loads of stuff on him here (where I got the picture below) and here.
Next year would be his 60th birthday, and it's nearly Christmas, so what better time than now (or whenever you happen to be reading this) to celebrate his wit and wisdom.
It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it... anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
We don't have to save the world. The world is big enough to look after itself. What we have to be concerned about is whether or not the world we live in will be capable of sustaining us in it.
We are not an endangered species ourselves yet, but this is not for lack of trying. He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realised there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife. Humans are not proud of their ancestors, and rarely invite them round to dinner.
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase 'As pretty as an Airport' appear.
Life... is like a grapefruit. It's orange and squishy, and has a few pips in it, and some folks have half a one for breakfast. The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
You live and learn. At any rate, you live. Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.
Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. "Ah, this is obviously some strange usage of the word 'safe' that I wasn't previously aware of." [as Arthur Dent in Hitchhikers Guide...]
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons. Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer. Even he, to whom most things that most people would think were pretty smart were pretty dumb, thought it was pretty smart.
Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all. There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
[youtube=http://youtu.be/6ygqJ5ZA5ss&w=700]
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarise: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarise the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
When you blame others, you give up your power to change. If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat.
[youtube=http://youtu.be/0kK1YgR7J0g&w=700]
There are some people you like immediately, some whom you think you might learn to like in the fullness of time, and some that you simply want to push away from you with a sharp stick.
So this is it," said Arthur, "We are going to die." "Yes," said Ford, "except... no! Wait a minute!" He suddenly lunged across the chamber at something behind Arthur's line of vision. "What's this switch?" he cried. "What? Where?" cried Arthur, twisting round. "No, I was only fooling," said Ford, "we are going to die after all.
I'd far rather be happy than right any day.
[youtube=http://youtu.be/kyYS-GzBSIg&w=700]
Don't Panic.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_hLIkQBRBs&w=700] Bloody hell.
[youtube=http://youtu.be/Xpz_4S3ohZw&w=700] This came via the excellent Daily Rubbish blog, which you should all bookmark. There are more on that link.
Everything about the blue whale is enormous. It is the largest animal on earth, ever. A big blue whale can be 100 feet long and weigh up to 150 tons. That's as large as a Boeing jet. Its heart is as large as a small car. Fifty people could stand on its tongue. Its spout shoots up at least 30 feet when it surfaces for air.
A blue whale's milk supposedly tastes like a mixture of fish, liver, milk of magnesia, and castor oil. Bleech! But it's very rich and nourishing for baby blues. A baby blue whale drinks over 50 gallons of its mother's milk in a day. In its first several weeks of life, it gains 10 pounds an hour or a little over 200 pounds a day!
When a baby blue whale is about 6 months old, it starts to eat small shrimp-like animals calledkrill. During its high feeding season, a blue whale consumes more than 4-6 tons of krill in one day. In order to get that much to eat, a blue whale can expand its throat to take in as much as 50 tons of water in one gulp. Then it forces the water out through comb-like plates which keep the krill in and let the water filter out. These huge plates are called baleen. Baleen is made of the same material as our fingernails.
Blue whales may also make sounds to communicate with other whales and to find a mate. Imagine what it would be like to be the biggest animal in the world swimming alone through the cold ocean waters.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWkqACt1Xi8&w=700]
[youtube=http://youtu.be/jqMG3VR5PP4&w=700]
[youtube=http://youtu.be/IaCP4gEuIYE&w=700]