Ernest Gibbons Captain Aaron Sheffield “Happy” Daze Proscribed Prisoner No. 83M2742 Mr. Justice Lenox Dr. Lafayette ‘Lafe’ Hubert Corporal Ted Bronson His Serenity Seraphim the Younger, Supreme High Priest of the One God in All His Aspects and Arbiter Below and Above.
1. Only in America……. can a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance.
2. Only in America……. are there handicap parking places in front of a skating rink.
3. Only in America….. do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front.
4. Only in America……. do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a diet coke.
5. Only in America……. do banks leave both doors open and then chain the pens to the counters.
6. Only in America……. do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put our useless junk in the garage.
7. Only in America……. do we use answering machines to screen calls and then have call waiting so we won’t miss a call from someone we didn’t want to talk to in the first place.
8. Only in America….. do we buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight.
9. Only in America…… do we use the word ‘politics’ to describe the process so well: ‘Poli’ in Latin meaning ‘many’ and ‘tics’ meaning ‘bloodsucking creatures’.
10. Only in America…… do they have drive-up ATM machines with Braille lettering.
… and to a big degree your son – we don’t want to be discriminative, do we?
Make your bed every day, even if it’s right before you get in it.
Don’t wear holey underwear…in case you’re in an accident and they cut your clothes off.
Travel light through life. Keep only what you need.
It’s okay to cry when you’re hurt. It’s also okay to smash (some) things; but, wash your face, clean your mess, and get up off the floor when you’re done. You don’t belong down there.
If you’re going to curse, be clever. If you’re going to curse in public, know your audience.
Seek out the people and places that resonate with your soul.
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
Five-second rule. It’s just dirt. There are worse things in a fast food cheeseburger.
Happiness is not a permanent state. Wholeness is. Don’t confuse these.
If you’re staying more than one night, unpack your bag.
Never walk through an alley alone.
Be less sugar, more spice, and only as nice as you’re able to without compromising yourself.
Can’t is a cop-out.
Hold your heroes to a high standard. Be your own hero.
If you can’t smile with your eyes, don’t smile. Insincerity is nothing to aspire to.
Never lie to yourself.
Your body, your rules.
If you have an opinion, you better know why.
Practice your passions.
Ask for what you want. The worst thing they can say is no.
Wish on stars and dandelions, then get to work to make them happen.
Stay as sweet as you are.
Fall in love often. Particularly with ideas, art, music, literature, food and far-off places.
Fall hard and forever in love with nothing but yourself.
Say Please, Thank You, and Pardon Me, whenever the situation warrants it.
Reserve “I’m sorry” for when you truly are.
Naps are for grown-ups, too.
Question everything, except your own intuition.
You have enough. You are enough.
You are amazing! Don’t let anyone ever make you feel you are not. If someone does….walk away. You deserve better.
No matter where you are, you can always come home.
Be happy and remember your roots, family is EVERYTHING.
Say what you mean and mean what you say.
No one will ever love you more than I do.
Be kind; treat others how you would like them to treat you.
If in doubt, remember whose daughter you are and straighten your crown.
… better known as Mark Twain, whose stories of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn I LIVED when I was a kid.
Here’s a bit of his wisdom:
“A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.”
“A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught.”
“Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.”
“All generalizations are false, including this one.”
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.”
“Do not have sex with a girl who is too strongly attached to you. If this attachment is not mutual, trust me it ends breaking plates on your head.”
“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”
“Don’t wrestle with pigs. you both get dirty and the pig likes it.”
“Each man is afraid of his neighbor’s disapproval – a thing which, to the general run of the human race, is more dreaded than wolves and death.”
“Every person is a book, each year a chapter.”
“Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”
“Give every day the chance to become the most beautiful day of your life.”
“Human beings are the only creatures who blush – or who need to.”
“I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.”
“I deal with temptation by yielding to it.”
“I find that the further I go back, the better things were, whether they happened or not.”
“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. if you do, you’re misinformed.”
“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”
“If you want love and abundance in your life, give it away.”
“It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart: the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.”
“Its not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”
“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
“Knowledge becomes wisdom only after it has been put to good use.”
“Life is short, break the rules, forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably, and never regret anything that makes you smile.”
“Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.”
“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”
“One can enjoy a rainbow without necessarily forgetting the forces that made it.”
“Only he who has seen better days and lives to see better days again knows their full value.”
“Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.”
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
“The more I know people, the more I love my dog.”
“The most permanent lessons in morals are those which come, not of book teaching, but of experience.”
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and starting on the first one.”
“The trouble is not in dying for a friend, but in finding a friend worth dying for.”
“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
“To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.”
“When your opinions start to coincide with those of the majority, it is time to reconsider your opinions.”
“Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.”
“You meet people who forget you. you forget people you meet. But sometimes you meet those people you can’t forget. Those are your friends.”
“You want to be very careful about lying, otherwise you are nearly sure to get caught.”
(A little gem I found in the couch cushions of my hard drive)…
Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ’98:
Wear sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.
Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday.
Do one thing every day that scares you.
Sing.
Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.
Floss.
Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself.
Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.
Stretch.
Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.
Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.
Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.
Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.
Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.
Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.
Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your parents. You never know when they’ll be gone for good.
Be nice to your siblings. They’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.
Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard.
Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.
Travel.
Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.
Respect your elders.
Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you’ll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.
Don’t mess too much with your hair or by the time you’re 40 it will look 85.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it’s worth.
Instead of reading the text below you could just listen to it…
At the time of this writing (July 2020) the US of A experiences mayor racial upheaval. I am convinced that this is mostly politically motivated to discourage the population to reelect Donald Trump, but there must be some fertile grounds for this seed of discourse to flourish.
At this time mostly racial discourse is pushed and the gender questions are put on the back burner. But at one point the man vs woman question was a preferred area to create separation and establish hardened fronts.
I still have faith in the American People that they will not fall for the instigated war of the races, and the presenter of the following TED talk is one of the shining beacons that gives me that hope.
She had been a proponent of solidifying the fronts between genders, which usually is a cherished subject of politicians to create controversy. But she was fortunate to see through her self-created biases and was able to start to break down those walls.
As of the date of this writing, all this is an eternity ago – a quarter of a century, in fact. One of the two is nearly forgotten, and it is not Jennifer – thank God!
We have to admire the cloud and the foresight of Bill Gates to hire Jennifer and her co-star Matthew Perry to lend their fame to teach people about Windows 95. When the infotainment, below, was published, Friends was in its first season, and it could not have been clear what phenomenon Friends would become.
About a decade earlier Steve Jobs had rocked the world of product announcements with his Superbowl commercial introducing the MacIntosh. Boring Microsoft – in comparison – had to come up with something earth-moving, and celebrities probably seemed like a good idea.
The first move was to include a pretty cool music video on the distribution CD, Eddie Brickell’s Good Times, but the problem here was that you must have already bought the software, so it was not a particularly good promotional tool.
For this, Jennifer was put to work. At least by today’s standards, it was rather cringe-worthy, but then again, many of the 90s soaps carried the same hallmark.
Lean back, pour a drink and enjoy – all while learning how to use Windows 95.
As an afterthought – how much more fund would that have been, had Bill Gates hired Ross instead of Chandler!?
Each of the statues is around 2 feet tall – some a bit less, some a bit more. With the exception of one, they have their deity name written on the bottom of the stand and the following shows a photo of the bottom, and then a full photo from the front. As for size, the boards under the statues are standard 1×4 boards.
People in the know around the world recognize today – May 25th – as the day that made clear to all the importance of carrying a towel with you at all times.
Google is certainly aware of it
as is your’s truly
Merlin Silk prepared with towel
One thought I want to give to you on your way to life from now on. Ponder the question how you learn to fly…
… and get the mind-boggling answer: You throw yourself to the ground – – – – and miss!
Blows all your accepted reality to bits – doesn’t it?
DAVID BOHM: “Reality is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we perceive depends on what we look for. What we look for depends on what we think. What we think depends on what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality.”
A human being should be able to
