- You know, for a guy who makes his living dealing with technology, I’m really starting to hate technology.
- No, that’s OK, mister work phone, please spontaneously reboot and reset yourself to factory settings.
- Of course, miss laptop screen, it’s perfectly fine for you to start having fuzzy weird digital ghosts at odd moments while I’m scrolling around.
- Oh, no, please, excuse me, mister TV remote. It’s entirely my fault that you have decided that you will only work at angles ranging from 0 to 15 degrees from center of the television screen.
- The peanut butter eggs in the white wrappers are not, in fact, ‘diet’ peanut butter eggs.
- I stand corrected.
- I can wait another week or two for the movie I ordered to arrive because Amazon has it on backorder, or I can cancel that order and go to the local Big Box Retail Cooperative and buy a copy there.
- The downside of waiting is, well, waiting.
- The downside of buying local is that I’ll have to go to Big Box Retail Cooperative and deal with, shudder, people.
- Oh, well, movie’ll get here when it gets here.
- One advantage of working from home a couple days a week is that my lunches are of higher quality.
- You see, when I take my lunch to work, I usually just have leftovers microwaved on a paper plate.
- When I’m at home, I can get fancy and use an actual dish to heat up my leftovers. Perhaps I can even use real silverware.
- Not only that, but I can have tap water cooled in my very own refrigerator. At work, I have tap water that’s cooled with ice chunks like a peasant.
- Apparently, “‘Tear down the flood walls, bulldoze it flat, and salt the earth with radium” was not the answer the young lady with the clipboard was looking for when she asked me what I thought the mayor could do to make Louisville better.
- When that answer seemed to confuse her, I told her to just put down that I thought we ought to hire more teachers.
- I saw an ad the other night for a company called ‘Dads Heating and Cooling’. I imagine their service calls involve a lot of demands for you to get out of their light and to fetch them the 3/8’s.
Musings
Posted by daddybear71 on April 20, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/04/20/musings-235/
A Year of Poetry – Day 362
Here bounds the gaudy, gilded chair,
Bedecked with fringe and tassels gay;
The melancholy mourner there
Pursues her sad and painful way.
Here, guarded by a motley train,
The pampered Countess glares along;
There, wrung by poverty and pain,
Pale Misery mingles with the throng.
Here, as the blazoned chariot rolls,
And prancing horses scare the crowd,
Great names, adorning little souls,
Announce the empty, vain and proud.
Here four tall lackeys slow precede
A painted dame in rich array;
There, the sad, shivering child of need
Steals barefoot o’er the flinty way.
‘Room, room! stand back!’ they loudly cry,
The wretched poor are driven around;
On every side they scattered fly,
And shrink before the threatening sound.
Here, amidst jewels, feathers, flowers,
The senseless Duchess sits demure,
Heedless of all the anxious hours
The sons of modest worth endure.
All silvered and embroidered o’er,
She neither knows nor pities pain;
The beggar freezing at her door
She overlooks with nice disdain.
The wretch whom poverty subdues
Scarce dares to raise his tearful eye;
Or if by chance the throng he views,
His loudest murmur is a sigh!
The poor wan mother, at whose breast
The pining infant craves relief,
In one thin tattered garment dressed,
Creeps forth to pour the plaint of grief.
But ah! how little heeded here
The faltering tongue reveals its woe;
For high-born fools, with frown austere,
Condemn the pangs they never know.
‘Take physic, Pomp!’ let Reason say:
‘What can avail thy trappings rare?
The tomb shall close thy glittering day,
The beggar prove thy equal there!’
— Mary Robinson, The Birth-day
Posted by daddybear71 on April 20, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/04/20/a-year-of-poetry-day-362/
A Year of Poetry – Day 361
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
-- Edgar Allan Poe, A Dream Within A Dream
Posted by daddybear71 on April 19, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/04/19/a-year-of-poetry-day-361/
A Year of Poetry – Day 360
“What is the real good?’
I asked in musing mood.
Order, said the law court;
Knowledge, said the school;
Truth, said the wise man;
Pleasure, said the fool;
Love, said the maiden;
Beauty, said the page;
Freedom, said the dreamer;
Home, said the sage;
Fame, said the soldier;
Equity, the seer;—
Spake my heart full sadly:
‘The answer is not here.’
Then within my bosom
Softly this I heard:
‘Each heart holds the secret:
Kindness is the word.’
— John Boyle O’Reilly, What is Good
Posted by daddybear71 on April 18, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/04/18/a-year-of-poetry-day-360/
A Year of Poetry – Day 359
“Are you deaf, Father William!” the young man said,
“Did you hear what I told you just now?
“Excuse me for shouting! Don’t waggle your head
“Like a blundering, sleepy old cow!
“A little maid dwelling in Wallington Town,
“Is my friend, so I beg to remark:
“Do you think she’d be pleased if a book were sent down
“Entitled ‘The Hunt of the Snark?'”
“Did you hear what I told you just now?
“Excuse me for shouting! Don’t waggle your head
“Like a blundering, sleepy old cow!
“A little maid dwelling in Wallington Town,
“Is my friend, so I beg to remark:
“Do you think she’d be pleased if a book were sent down
“Entitled ‘The Hunt of the Snark?'”
“Pack it up in brown paper!” the old man cried,
“And seal it with olive-and-dove.
“I command you to do it!” he added with pride,
“Nor forget, my good fellow to send her beside
“Easter Greetings, and give her my love.”
— Lewis Carroll, Another Acrostic
Posted by daddybear71 on April 17, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/04/17/a-year-of-poetry-day-359/
A Year of Poetry – Day 358
MOST glorious Lord of Lyfe! that, on this day,
Didst make Thy triumph over death and sin;
And, having harrowd hell, didst bring away
Captivity thence captive, us to win:
This joyous day, deare Lord, with joy begin;
And grant that we, for whom thou diddest dye,
Being with Thy deare blood clene washt from sin,
May live for ever in felicity!
And that Thy love we weighing worthily,
May likewise love Thee for the same againe;
And for Thy sake, that all lyke deare didst buy,
With love may one another entertayne!
So let us love, deare Love, lyke as we ought,
–Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.
— Edmund Spenser, Easter
Posted by daddybear71 on April 16, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/04/16/a-year-of-poetry-day-358/
A Year of Poetry – Day 357
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
— Walt Whitman, Oh Captain! My Captain!
Posted by daddybear71 on April 15, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/04/15/a-year-of-poetry-day-357/
Sacrifice
The old man lifted his bundle onto his shoulder after stooping over and picking up his walking stick. Next to him, his son bent over with his own burden of food and water. He had sprouted up that spring, and had the gangly look all boys get just before they start to fill out into manhood.
“Heavy?” Abraham asked.
“No, father,” Isaac said stoically.
Abraham smiled sadly at that. Isaac had his mother’s eyes and laughter, but his stubbornness was wholly from him. He marveled at how much joy their son brought to him, even now.
Sarah, her long silver hair pulled back and covered with a linen cloth, leaned down and kissed her son, smoothing down the unruly mop of dark curls on his head. She turned and smiled at her husband.
“Be safe,” she said, “and come home quickly.”
“I will, love,” he said quietly, reaching out to…
View original post 3,373 more words
Posted by daddybear71 on April 14, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/04/14/sacrifice-2/
A Year of Poetry – Day 356
Great big lolloping lovable things!
Rolling and tumbling on every lawn,
Tearing at slippers and bones and wings-
Wonderful loot from the ash-heap drawn:
Foxhound puppies
Contented puppies
Dipping your ears in the dews of dawn!
Lapping your porridge at farm-house doors,
Cracking a biscuit, robbing a nest
Printing your tracks upon kitchen floors,
Dodging a broom when the cooks protest;
Foxhound puppies,
Delinquent puppies,
Cursed for a moment and then caressed!
Wandering out where the spaniels walk,
Following slow when the guns go by,
Streaking for home when the twelve-bores talk,
Clumsy and puzzled and suddenly shy;
Foxhound puppies
Bewildered puppies
Lone and unwanted and wondering why!
Never mind puppies, your day will come;
By distant coverts your kingdoms wait,
When the spaniels doze and the guns are dumb
And hoofs are loud by the bridle gate;
Foxhound puppies,
Yet scarcely puppies,
Raised as you are to a hound’s estate.
Lost will your lolloping ways be then,
Your timid glance and your shrinking pose,
As you shoulder the gorse in glade and glen,
Lifting the line that your tongues disclose;
Foxhound puppies,
No longer puppies,
But trusted names that the huntsman knows!
— William Henry Ogilvie, Foxhound Puppies
Posted by daddybear71 on April 14, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/04/14/a-year-of-poetry-day-356/
A Year of Poetry – Day 355
Lo! where the rosy-bosom’d Hours,
Fair Venus’ train appear,
Disclose the long-expecting flowers,
And wake the purple year!
The Attic warbler pours her throat,
Responsive to the cuckoo’s note,
The untaught harmony of spring:
While whisp’ring pleasure as they fly,
Cool zephyrs thro’ the clear blue sky
Their gather’d fragrance fling.
Where’er the oak’s thick branches stretch
A broader, browner shade;
Where’er the rude and moss-grown beech
O’er-canopies the glade,
Beside some water’s rushy brink
With me the Muse shall sit, and think
(At ease reclin’d in rustic state)
How vain the ardour of the crowd,
How low, how little are the proud,
How indigent the great!
Still is the toiling hand of Care:
The panting herds repose:
Yet hark, how thro’ the peopled air
The busy murmur glows!
The insect youth are on the wing,
Eager to taste the honied spring,
And float amid the liquid noon:
Some lightly o’er the current skim,
Some show their gaily-gilded trim
Quick-glancing to the sun.
To Contemplation’s sober eye
Such is the race of man:
And they that creep, and they that fly,
Shall end where they began.
Alike the busy and the gay
But flutter thro’ life’s little day,
In fortune’s varying colours drest:
Brush’d by the hand of rough Mischance,
Or chill’d by age, their airy dance
They leave, in dust to rest.
Methinks I hear in accents low
The sportive kind reply:
Poor moralist! and what art thou?
A solitary fly!
Thy joys no glitt’ring female meets,
No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets,
No painted plumage to display:
On hasty wings thy youth is flown;
Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone
We frolic, while ’tis May.
— Thomas Gray, Ode on the Spring
Posted by daddybear71 on April 13, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/04/13/a-year-of-poetry-day-355/
DaddyBear
DaddyBear’s Den 