ellauri014.html on line 76: I started going to see The Beatles in 1961 when I was 14 and I got quite friendly with them. If they were playing out of town they’d give me a lift back home in their van. It was about the same time that I started getting called Polythene Pat. It’s embarrassing really. I just used to eat polythene all the time. I’d tie it in knots and then eat it.
ellauri020.html on line 391: Trump spoke in a hypnotic, unending torrent of words. Often he appeared to free-associate. He referred to himself in the third person: “Trump says. . . Trump believes.” His phrases skibbled around and doubled back on themselves like fireworks in a summer sky. He reminded me of a carnival barker trying to fill his tent. “I’m more popular now than I was two months ago. There are two publics as far as I’m concerned. The real public and then there’s the New York society horseshit. The real public has always liked Donald Trump. The real public feels that Donald Trump is going through Trump-bashing. When I go out now, forget about it. I’m mobbed. It’s bedlam,” Trump told me. Donald is a believer in the big-lie theory,” his lawyer had told me. “If you say something again and again, people will believe you.” “One of my lawyers said that?” Trump said when I asked him about it. “I think if one of my lawyers said that, I’d like to know who it is, because I’d fire his ass. I’d like to find out who the scumbag is!”
ellauri038.html on line 147: When it comes right down to it I’d much rather have been a Basel professor than God; but I didn’t dare be selfish enough to forgo the creation of the world.
ellauri069.html on line 497: I suspect I would need to read it a few more times to really “get” it. I’d prefer an eBook with deep annotations into the Gravity's Rainbow Wiki
ellauri088.html on line 230: In general, green is what you’d normally call “universal healthcare free at point of service”. Blue denotes “free but not universal”; the US is in a category basically its own, “Not free but universal”, which reflects how Obamacare is a strange hybrid. I’d say what you’re looking for is “the second most developed non-green country on this map”.
ellauri088.html on line 231: The answer to your question is probably mostly down to what you’d call “most developed”. I’d pick Mongolia, but I’ll gladly admit to not being an expert on any of the non-green countries; I’ve only visited two of them myself.
ellauri092.html on line 427: Crumbling buildings, unique people, right up against the Mississippi River flood plain with a giant wall; this was the weirdest place I’d ever been in America. Precisely every third house was burned to the ground on one street, everyone standing on both sides of another street was a dwarf, a clerk looked like a zombie. Most American cities have odd scenery. Luxora had that and weird people as well!
ellauri094.html on line 318: God has a funny way of treating his “chosen people.” Apparently, the Jews were misbehaving and being ungodly. After several years of some other shenanigans in Babylon, god decided it was time to put his foot down and end the free will of the king by having him take the Jewish people captive. This was in ca. 597 BCE. First I’d like to ask the following questions: Shouldn’t god have known that his “chosen people” were going to act like brats? Couldn’t he have chosen a better, more well-behaved group of people to whom to deliver his word? Anyway, moving on.
ellauri100.html on line 1363: Jean-Paul Sartre is sitting at a French cafe, revising his draft of Being and Nothingness. He says to the waitress, “I’d like a cup of coffee, please, with no cream.” The waitress replies, “I’m sorry, Monsieur, but we’re out of cream. How about with no milk?”
ellauri111.html on line 255: As I’d had to admit, I hadn’t read The Diary of a Writer (actually a kind of journal that Dostoevsky published monthly and that consisted entirely of his own thoughts about issues of the day), but I did know that he had been involved in several criminal cases, some of which were about the kind of cruelty to children that Ivan Karamazov cited as evidence against the existence of God. I couldn’t remember any details, though. I felt rather like a student who hasn’t done his homework hoping that he’s not the one going to be asked the next question. Only there wasn’t anyone else to ask. In the event, Fyodor Mikhailovich let me off fairly gently.
ellauri112.html on line 796: If I kept the 7th day as the Sabbath rest, then I’d be “a debtor to keep the whole law”, and then I will “become estranged from Christ” and “fallen from grace” (Gal. 5:3-4). I will not be estranged from Christ and fall from His grace nor will I teach my family nor my congregation family this. Who wants to keep all those 10 plus obsolete paragraphs anyway? Love is all you need.
ellauri141.html on line 354: And by way of further warning, I’d better say up front that my reading of this poem differs radically from every other that I’ve seen. What follows is, I think, pretty well uncharted territory in the Persicos Odi canon. I’m going to try to make the case for and translate Pericos odi as a sex poem!
ellauri152.html on line 626: I’d never heard of this story before, but all the thoughts you had are so interesting! I totally get your frustrations about the movie changing a pivotal scene to make it more “romantic and dramatic” though – why can’t movies just appreciate subtlety and friendship sometimes?
ellauri164.html on line 370: I thought this was one of those books that comes with a “guarantee.” But of course there is no such thing. Still, I’d read only glowing reviews and boy was I ready for a “triumphant experience.” But on p. 26 I couldn’t make heads or tails of what I was really reading about. On p. 54 the voice of the innocent and well-meaning young priest began to irk the shit out of me. On p. 55 I skipped ahead to see if anything would ever actually happen to dilute all the fluffy introspection and it didn’t look promising. On p. 64 I took the kitty to the well and drowned it.
ellauri192.html on line 605: I’d just returned from the cemetery Olin juuri palannut luutarhasta
ellauri222.html on line 281: Mitä vetoa että Rothin kuikelo veti tästä herneen nenään? Sai takuulla paskahalvauxen. No, Saul was definitely not a good friend. Phil said something like: ‘He wouldn’t be the first guy whose companionship I’d seek out in the afterlife.’”
ellauri236.html on line 499: “I’d love it! I’ll wear my new dress! Let’s go to the Champagne Room! I’ve never been there. I hear it’s a knockout.”
ellauri272.html on line 416: M.L. Rosenthal felt that although Ammons shares Wallace Stevens’s desire to intellectualize rather than simply describe, he falls short of Stevens’s success. Paul Zweig agrees that “unlike T.S. Eliot or Stevens, Ammons does not write well about ideas.” When the narrator finds the dead mole under the leaves, he says, “mercy: I’d just had / lunch: squooshy ice cream: I nearly / unhad it.” Vendler commented, “There has been nothing like this in American poetry before Ammons—nothing with this liquidity of folk voice.”
ellauri321.html on line 301: Pete: If Putin told me it was snowing outside the igloo I’d still check … lying poisonous insufferable dwarf!
ellauri324.html on line 680: perhaps not the word I’d use, but a few things was a very
ellauri324.html on line 687: taxes. This was quite strange for me. I’d pick out a 2
ellauri324.html on line 770: Sadly I am stuck here. My daughter and her soon-to-be husband want to stay and my wife and I don’t want to move far away from her, so here we are. Fortunately our life is very good because we have invested well and have our own business. Life for most is nearly impossibly difficult here. Hopefully, one day my daughter will say, “pops, lets get the fuck out of here.” I’d be gone in three nano-seconds. That is how bad I feel this country has gotten.
ellauri336.html on line 368: The other point I’d like to make is that a woman’s hair is cited (somewhere,) as her crown. After she is married, the beauty of her hair is only available for her husband to see. This helps makes her seductive to him. I also have to say that I can’t imagine having an intimate relationship with a woman with a shaved head as I have referenced in the previous paragraph.
ellauri389.html on line 235: “But I feel weighed down by the short sightedness, the petty bureaucracy, and the often pointless activities that are creeping into higher education. These things eat time and, more importantly, sap energy. Meanwhile the sand sifts through the hourglass. At the Open University I’d always hoped that we’d be able to offer a named undergraduate degree in philosophy, but actually the subject has, if anything, become marginalised, with fewer courses available than when I joined nineteen years ago, and with much higher fees. This at a time when philosophy is becoming increasingly popular. There had also been suggestions that I might be able to take on an official role promoting the public understanding of philosophy, but that didn’t materialise either.
ellauri389.html on line 237: “The easy option would have been to sit it out and keep taking the salary, but I respond better to interesting challenges than pay cheques. I knew I’d made the right decision when I felt exhilarated rather than scared after handing in my notice, and already I’ve had numerous offers of paid work of one kind or another, including some interesting journalism and plenty of invitations to speak in schools. Interview me again in ten years to see if I was crazy.” The ten years are gone, where's the interview?
ellauri402.html on line 680: One of the reasons Americans are against “free” healthcare is because they believe that what they pay for healthcare is actually what it costs. “Why should I pay $30,000 for someone else to give birth?” The answer of course is you wouldn’t, you would contribute to the $3000 – $5000 that it really costs. When I had a small carcinoma removed at a private clinic, paid for by the NHS of course, the Doctor told me that I would have paid £600 privately. What would that cost in the US? Not your co-pay or whatever it’s called, but the actual bill? Thousands I’d guess. If Americans understood how much they’re being shafted, ($3k for an ambulance? Really?) they would see that Universal healthcare would be far cheaper than they could possibly imagine. And no, the Doctors would still be paid well, because it’s the insurance companies and hospitals taking all the extra cash you pay. A copayment or copay is a fixed amount for a covered service, paid by a patient to the provider of service before receiving the service. Eli omavastuu, jolla vakuutusyhtiöt pitää korvauxenhakijat ruodussa.
ellauri409.html on line 264: Or I’d blubber, for I’m made of greens and sod: Tai alan parkua, kun olen silkkaa purjoa.
ellauri412.html on line 64: I met a sweet gal named Jerusha. Upon hearing her name, I squealed, “I’ve never met a Jerusha!!” She looked rather startled. (I do that to people sometimes.) “You know who Jerusha is?” “Of course! She’s King Uzziah’s wife in the Bible.” This sweet girl smiled and confessed she’d stumped many Bible nerds with her name. I wouldn’t have known either unless I’d been studying Isaiah and the kings who reigned during his ministry. Here’s another woman I’ve read over at least a dozen times–Ahinoam. I knew one of David’s wives was Ahinoam, but did you know King Saul’s wife was also named Ahinoam? Aha! Got you there! And what about Job’s wife? Scripture doesn’t even name her. We only know her as the crotchety old gal that gripes at her suffering husband. The shepherd girl in Solomon’s Song of Songs is another one who gets no name. At least we know she was loved. And how! Isaiah’s wife is another woman mentioned but given no name.
ellauri430.html on line 273: In Washington, there is a new sheriff in town. And under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer in the public square. I’d ask my European friends to have some perspective. You can believe it’s wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections. We certainly do the same. You can condemn it on the world stage, even. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.
ellauri476.html on line 243: Donna luki jopa Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States.” Oh my, oh my, oh my: It wasn’t the land of hope and glory, was it? We weren’t the good guys, were we? Well, I’d spent my youth in Cloud Cuckoo Land, hadn’t I, but Professor Zinn was there to whack me upside down on the head. Bless him for that. Strangely enough, when I went to teach in China a few years later, his was the only book that disappeared from the box of books I’d sent myself. CIA or ICE most probably. Susan Sontag’s “The Volcano Lover” oli siitä paska, ja varmaan onkin. Any idiot can write a book. Pres. Trump ei osaa lukea.

ellauri481.html on line 439:

Day and night, I kept thinking, We needed US soldiers on the ground! We need them to do the fighting! We need them to block a possible al-Qaeda escape into Pakistan! I’d sent my request for 800 US Army Rangers and was still waiting for a response. I repeated to anyone at headquarter who would listen: “We need Rangers now! The opportunity to get bin Laden is slipping away!!” . . .
ellauri481.html on line 441: I’d made it clear in my reports that our Afghan allies were hardly anxious to get at al-Qaeda in Tora Bora. So why was the US military looking for excuses not to act decisively? Why would they want to leave something that was so important to an unreliable Afghan army that’d been cobbled together at the last minute? This was the opportunity we’d hoped for when we launched this mission. Our advantage was quickly slipping away. . . .
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 242: Besides: which is it to be? We have to tend our own gardens, and only write about ourselves or people just like us because we mustn’t pilfer others’ experience, or we have to people our cast like an I’d like to teach the world to sing Coca-Cola advert?
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 257:
I’m from a small rural community, and ev’rybody who lived in my neighborhood, if you want to call it that, were relatives. We called it “the circle,” and our house was there, my grandmother’s house was there, an aun’ an’ uncle who were childless lived there, and (uh) a couple of aunts an’ uncles who had children. There were five female cousins, an’ in the summertime we hung out together all day long from early until late. In my grandmother’s yard was a maple tree, and the five of us developed that into our apartment building. Each of us had a limb, and [small laugh] the less daring cousins took the lo’er limbs, and I and another cousin a year younger than I always went as far to the top as we could, an’ we– we were kinda derisive of those girls who stayed with the lower limbs. We had front doors an’ back doors. The front door was the — the limb — were the limbs on the front, that were nearest (um) the boxwood hedge. And the grass was all worn away in that area. An’ then the back doorwa–was on the back side of the tree, an’ you could only enter the front an’ exit from the rear. And that had to be done by swinging off a limb that was fairly high off the ground, and (um) my cousin Belinda and I had no problem with that, but the other girls — that was always somethin’ we had to coax them into doin’. But still, you entered the front, you left the rear. We (um) ate our lunches together. When it was lunchtime — an’ our mothers always cooked lunch in the summertime ’cause they didn’ want to be in the hot kitchen at night. So we would just take our (um) — go home, an’ we’d load our plates with all the vegetables an’ the cornbread, an’ get our glasses of milk or ice tea or whatever we were havin’, an’ we would head for somebody’s yard, where we would all sit down an’ eat together. It was just an institution: lunch in somebody’s yard. An’ if you wanted to go home for a second helping– sometimes that was quite a little walk, but it was worth it, because that was our thing, having lunch together, every day. (Um) We gathered at my grandmother’s on Sundays. All my aunts would get those chairs, form a circle. (Uh) One crocheted. (Uh) Most of them just sat an’ talked, an’ we girls hung out for the main part with the women. (Uh) The men would gather around the fish pond, which was in a side yard. It was (um) — it was kind of a rock (um) pond that my granddaddy had, had built. There was a ir’n pipe in the middle, an’ when he went fishin’, he would put his catch in there. Or he caught a mud turtle, he’d put it in there. An’ there it stayed until it was time to kill it an’ cook it, whatever it was. The pipe in the middle had water that sprayed up all the time. There was a locust tree near there, an’ that’s where we girls picked the leaves an’ the thorns to make the doll clothes out o’ the locust. It’s where we always ate the watermelon. We always had to save the rind, an’ we always had to leave some pink on that rind, because my grandmother made watermelon pickles out o’ that rind. I hated the things. I thought they were the worst things I ever put in my mouth. But ever’body else thought watermelon pickles were just a great delicacy. That was also around the time that ev’rybody grew gladiolias [sic] an’ I thought they were the ugliest flower I’d ever laid my eyes on, but ever’body had gladiolias. ‘Course now I’ve come to appreciate the gladiolia, but back then I had absolutely no appreciation for it. It was also where we made (uh) ice cream, (uh) on the front porch. We made ice cream on Sunday afternoons. I had an aunt who worked in the general mercantile business that my family owned, an’ she was only home on Sunday, so she baked all day: homemade rolls an’ cakes. And so, she made cakes an’ we made ice cream, an’ ever’body wan’ed to crank, of course. (Um) That was just a big treat, to get to crank that ice cream. It was jus’ our Sunday afternoon thing, an’ I, I think back on it. All the aunts would sit around an’ they’d talk, an’ they’d smoke. Even if you never saw those ladies smoke, any other time o’ the week. On Sunday afternoon when we all were gathered about in gran- in granny’s yard, they’d have a cigarette. Just a way of relaxing, I suppose. The maple tree’s now gone. In later years, it was thought the maple tree, our apartment building, was shading the house too much an’ causing mildew, so it was removed at some point. And I don’t, to this day, enjoy lookin’ (uh) into that part o’ the yard. …

xxx/ellauri113.html on line 220: Personally, as someone with no religious beliefs, I’d feel a bit weird about the idea that someone might launch my ashes into space after my death. Sort of seems like a terrible waste of rocket power. It’s irrelevant what happens to my ashes after death.
xxx/ellauri123.html on line 562: Before I left, I tried to fight my nervosity in many ways. I read everything I could get my hands on that seemed relevant to my chosen academic field — a mix of business and engineering. I prepared my courses in advance. I sought reassurance from others that I’d chosen a good school and degree.
xxx/ellauri123.html on line 568: First of all, I didn’t know that what I’d come up with weren’t actually principles. They were just rules.
xxx/ellauri123.html on line 677: I don’t know how long the rules from the movie will last for you on this never-ending mission, but, like one of its characters, I’d like to remind you:
xxx/ellauri123.html on line 693: If you’ll allow me, I’d love to share my latest work with you. To respect your time, I’ll only email you when I’ve created something meaningful. That’s what friends do, don’t they? You can sign up below or go here.
xxx/ellauri124.html on line 424: “I’d rather not.”
xxx/ellauri130.html on line 583: “I don’t think there’s ever been a time when you could just say anything.” He recalls an early comedy show – this must have been in the late 80s – where the host apologised to the crowd after Skinner had performed some risque sexual material. “He said I’d never play at the venue again – and then he launched into a load of racist material and brought the house down. Everyone’s got their own standards and restraints. But I think it’s been good for me to keep questioning what I say. It’s made me think more positively about racist jokes and not so much about penises. My knob is not working anymore BTW, I'm 65. We’re both deeply ashamed. Can't lift our eye to the public.”
xxx/ellauri165.html on line 579: There’s a tonne of therapy and sexual issues wrapped up here isn’t it? Who in their right mind would want a perpetually healing hymen? Or was this just a one time deal - just when conceiving via holy spirit? I should add why was her virginity so important anyway? Seems a throw back to a time which virginity may have been prized. I’d image venereal diseases were considered a curse for those fornicating, a moral judgement. But it still seems over blown.
xxx/ellauri225.html on line 324: She was a little sharp, though, acerbic, which I gather was not uncommon for her. I was a young writer, halfway through an MFA at Mills College, attending a reading in Berkeley given by my literary hero. I had gathered up all my courage to ask a question. I’d spent a few years writing and publishing explicitly about sex, fighting through my own hesitations and society’s disapproval – my parents were tremendously upset with me for writing under my own name, another writer at a writer’s gathering accused me of being a nymphomaniac, and I even received hate mail from men in India, furious that one of their women was writing about sex.
xxx/ellauri225.html on line 328: When she took questions after her reading, I stood up from my spot in the back of the room and asked Le Guin why she didn’t talk explicitly about sex, hoping for I’m not sure what — some response that would both justify the work I’d been trying to do and connect it to her own work, that I so admired. Instead, Le Guin gave a curt answer about those details not being that interesting. I said, “Oh.” And “Thank you.” I sat down, and tried not to be crushed.
xxx/ellauri229.html on line 114: Bible Reading Plan Spreadsheet. I wanted to start doing the Robert M’Cheyne Bible reading plan this year. In it there is about 4 chapters per day, organized to have two from the Old Testament, and two from the New. There is an emphasis on reading the New Testament twice throughout the year. Here’s a PDF of M’Cheyne’s plan with some pros and cons mentioned at the start: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EL8rR56QBu1lJwgEVos9IiOuLgfLgEud/view?usp=sharing. No big deal – there are a lot of ways to keep track. Well, I’m the kind of guy I don’t want to have paper around, so I’d like to avoid printing something off. I also … Continue reading Bible Reading Plan Spreadsheet.
xxx/ellauri415.html on line 52: I’d love for anti-Semites to keep out of my vagina, but also, these stereotypes are just fucking wrong. Take note, people: no shame = great sex. Except it is false to fact. Shame plays a big part in it.
xxx/ellauri417.html on line 598: DNF at 104 pages. I loved Morningstar and expected, well, SOMETHING with this book. But so far, it’s just a plodding, litany of the protagonist’s moves - minute-by-minute. “I had eggs and fish, then walked to the post office. There was an atttactive woman on the tram. I bought a sausage. Ove and I smoked hash in his basement and listened to Judas Priest. Ove’s sister is attractive. I had a wank….” Yadda yadda. I sooo wanted more. If someone tells me it moves into something with more substance as of page 105, I’d be willing to give it one more go.
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