ODD SHOTS and IDLE PENSEES Nr. 8
[More thisses and thats picked up over the years and now shared with YOU!]
In 1991, Ft. Lauderdale’s Vice-mayor was involved in a notorious sex scandal. It caused Ft. Lauderdaleans “to prick up their already stiffened ears.” Billy Dee Williams, “Ft. Lauderdale: Sin in the Sun,” City Confidential.
She forced me to lead her astray. A seldom-used excuse.
Constantine, the first “Christian” emperor was Serbian! The buggers have been screwing the world over “forever!” First Christianity, then World War I, then Milosovik the Ethnic Cleanser. What a brave, noble people. Shudder.
“Who was it said, ‘The ship of state is the only ship that leaks mainly from the top?’” Daniel Schorr.
Ancient Egyptian proverb: “A trifle, a little, the likeness of a dream, and death comes as the end.
Functionaries of the First Church of the Foursquare Paradox and the Revealed Uncertainty United: Keeper of the Holy Nonsense; Radical Truth Teller.
Ancient Greeks: To sin = “to miss the mark”. Can be high or low. Sin is not living up to, or being who you are.
Dead, uncorrupted saints make good listeners.
Maybe human civilization has progressed; it depends on what you’re measuring.
And the drum beats, “How-ward Thomp-son, How-ward Thomp-son…”
Note: Feel any loss of identity? Eager to believe in something? You’re prime fodder for cults!
Edward Gibbon writes that it’s less difficult to invent a fictitious story than to support a practical fraud. It is the character of falsehood to be loose and inconsistent. The most incredible parts of the legend are smoothed and softened by [minions or apologists]. Religion depends upon credulity and craftiness, which insensibly corrode the vital principles of virtue and veracity. The useful prejudice, which has obtained the sanction of time and opinion produces the effect of truth. People in the heat of religious faction are apt to despise the profane virtues of sincerity and moderation.
Human progress and perfectibility are two man-made ideals without much moral evidence to support them.
Jimmy Neutron: “I didn’t know my candy would be that popular.” Candy Store Guy: “That’s what the man said who invented underwear.” (more…)
