“Besides, to believe in Santa Claus is to believe in magic. The belief in magic in many respects is a pernicious thing. Because of it you’ve got countless multitudes thinking that aliens abduct people, that Elvis is alive, that you can earn big money stuffing envelopes in your home, and that the TV preacher can cure you if you send him 50 bucks. A certain class of persons, of whom your columnist is one, will go through their lives attempting to extinguish these foolish hopes. No doubt in the main it is good that we do so. But even the sternest among us remembers the wonder we felt as children to think there was a force having a kindly interest in us that wasn’t bound by the rules of this drab world. Wherefore if there’s someone who’s going to say flat out that Santa Claus doesn’t exist, it’s not going to be me.”
–Cecil Adams, The Straight Dope
Month: December 2003 Page 2 of 4
http://peterdavid.malibulist.com/gmlog/00000683.html
In other news, Bakersfield prostitute strips attacker and takes him to police
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (AP) – A skinny rapist met his match in an angry, 275-pound prostitute, police said.
Adrian Castillo Ramirez, 140 pounds, allegedly tried to sexually assault a 24-year-old Bakersfield prostitute who was nearly twice his weight.
But she took his knife, stripped him naked and paraded him in front of other prostitutes, after asking how many of them had ever been forced into sex at knifepoint. Then she tried to take him – still naked – to the police station, reports said.
Castillo was charged with failing to register as a sex offender, and with committing forcible sex acts on the 24-year-old and on a 37-year-old woman in a previous incident. He also was convicted of four counts of rape in 1988.
Castillo pleaded innocent Wednesday, and is being held in lieu of $250,000 bail, police said.
In an interview with Diane Sawyer, the most amazing thing came out of President Bush’s mouth:
DIANE SAWYER: But stated as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons still ?
PRESIDENT BUSH: So what’s the difference?
DIANE SAWYER: Well ?
PRESIDENT BUSH: The possibility that he could acquire weapons. If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger
is it just me, or did he not just say, more or less, the equivalent of “Well, it depends on what the definition of the word ‘is’ is.”?
Tonight, the Fab Nine visit the home of Frodo Baggins, on “Burning Lidless Eye for the Hobbit Guy”
UNENDING LOVE
by Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spell-bound heart has made and re-made the necklace of songs
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,
Its ancient tale of being apart or together,
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.
You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount
At the heart of time love of one for another.
We have played alongside millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love, but in shapes that renew and renew forever.
Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you,
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life,
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours-
And the songs of every poet past and forever.
“Santa Claus emerges from three-week bender, vows he’ll be ready for annual toy run”
One of my correspondents (Hi Ann!) mentioned in an e-mail recently that zie really misses my links to oddball gifts.
And it *is* the season for giving.
So I couldn’t resist sharing with you all:
Possum Fur Nipple Warmers and matching G-string
(link is not especially work-safe)
Found via browngirl, and cellio, and epi_lj, and otherdeb, and….
“I know very little about some of the people on my friends’ list. Some people I know relatively well. I read your fic, or we have something else in common and we chat occasionally. Some of you I hardly know at all. Perhaps you lurk, for whatever reason. But you friended me and I thank you.
But here’s a thought: why not take this opportunity to tell me a little something about yourself. Any old thing at all. Just so the next time I see your name I can say: “Ah, there’s so and so…she likes spinach.”
I’d love it if every single person who friended me would do this. Yes, even you people who I know really well. Then post this in your own journal.”