Month: April 2022

Space Flavored Coke – Starlight Edition Coca Cola – Review – What Does it Taste Like

What does it taste like?
Sweet. Sort of fruit flavored. Kind of like Cherry coke vibe, but instead of Cherry maybe they went with Raspberry or something. How they get Space flavor from this I don’t know. Sounds cool anyway.

2 out of 4 stars.

Random Pic – Denver – April 25, 2022

Foundations – Leopold Staff

This poem was written immediately after World War Il, in Poland, among the ruins, of which those in the figurative sense were even more oppressive than the physical ones. There was literally nothing. How could a poet react to that situation? What was left was to do what a child does, who when trying to draw a house often starts with the smoke from the chimney, then draws a chimney, and then the rest. So this is a poem of naked faith.

FOUNDATIONS
I built on the sand
And it tumbled down,
I built on a rock
And it tumbled down.
Now when I build, I shall begin
With the smoke from the chimney.

LEOPOLD STAFF 1878 – 1957
Translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz

A Book Of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry

Some Epigraphs Recently Encountered

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion it has taken place.”
– Often attributed to George Bernhard Shaw. Although its doubtful he ever said it.

If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?
Alan Alda

There is no intellectual exercise that is not ultimately pointless.
– J.L. Borges, in “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote

A Student’s Guide to Analytical Mechanics
John L. Bohn

This morning I met a woman with a golden nose. She was riding in a Cadillac with a monkey in her arms. Her driver stopped and she asked me, “Are you Fellini?” With this metallic voice she continued, “Why is it that in your movies, there is not even one normal person?”
— Federico Fellini

The Promise
Damon Galgut

Definition of epigraph
1: an engraved inscription
2: a quotation set at the beginning of a literary work or one of its divisions to suggest its theme

How I Learned to Drive – NYTIMES Review

It’s rare to encounter the kind of breathless silence I experienced during an unnerving hotel room scene in the unforgettable revival of Paula Vogel’s “How I Learned to Drive.”

On the night I saw the production, hundreds of audience members listened with rapt attention — I didn’t hear anyone unwrap a mint or fumble for a tissue. I didn’t even hear a whisper break the stillness in the air. There was just the steady buzz of the lights, suddenly deafeningly loud, as if they were performing their own monologue.

If I could direct a scene representing why I love theater, it would look something like this: Mary-Louise Parker and David Morse delivering crushing performances — both sentimental and horrific, utterly complex — of a Pulitzer Prize-winning play to an enthralled audience.

‘How I Learned to Drive’ Review: Many Miles to Go Before a Reckoning
Mary-Louise Parker and David Morse have returned to Paula Vogel’s 1997 Pulitzer-winning play about sexual abuse for its Broadway debut.
Maya Phillips

Queen Elizabeth – Big Jubilee Read – 70 Years Of Commonwealth Literature

A collection spanning six continents
To mark Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee, The Reading Agency have compiled a list of seventy novels, short story anthologies and poetry collections published in the Commonwealth since 1952.

An expert panel of librarians, booksellers and literature specialists has chosen seventy titles from a “readers’ choice” longlist with ten books for each decade of Her Majesty The Queen’s reign.

BBC

1952-61
The Palm-Wine Drinkard – Amos Tutuola (1952, Nigeria)
The Hills Were Joyful Together – Roger Mais (1953, Jamaica)
In the Castle of My Skin – George Lamming (1953, Barbados)
My Bones and My Flute – Edgar Mittelholzer (1955, Guyana)
The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon (1956, Trinidad and Tobago/England)
The Guide – RK Narayan (1958, India)
To Sir, With Love – ER Braithwaite (1959, Guyana)
One Moonlit Night – Caradog Prichard (1961, Wales)
A House for Mr Biswas – VS Naipaul (1961, Trinidad and Tobago/England
Sunlight on a Broken Column – Attia Hosain (1961, India)

1962-71
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess (1962, England)
The Interrogation – JMG Le Clézio (1963, France/Mauritius)
The Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark (1963, Scotland)
Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe (1964, Nigeria)
Death of a Naturalist – Seamus Heaney (1966, Northern Ireland)
Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys (1966, Dominica/Wales)
A Grain of Wheat – Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1967, Kenya)
Picnic at Hanging Rock – Joan Lindsay (1967, Australia)
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born – Ayi Kwei Armah (1968, Ghana)
When Rain Clouds Gather – Bessie Head (1968, Botswana/South Africa)

1972-81
The Nowhere Man – Kamala Markandaya (1972, India)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John Le Carré (1974, England)
The Thorn Birds – Colleen McCullough (1977, Australia)
The Crow Eaters – Bapsi Sidhwa (1978, Pakistan)
The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch (1978, England)
Who Do You think You Are? – Alice Munro (1978, Canada)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams (1979, England)
Tsotsi – Athol Fugard (1980, South Africa)
Clear Light of Day – Anita Desai (1980, India)
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie (1981, England/India)

1982-91
Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally (1982, Australia)
Beka Lamb – Zee Edgell (1982, Belize)
The Bone People – Keri Hulme (1984, New Zealand)
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood (1985, Canada)
Summer Lightning – Olive Senior (1986, Jamaica)
The Whale Rider – Witi Ihimaera (1987, New Zealand)
The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro (1989, England)
Omeros – Derek Walcott (1990, Saint Lucia)
The Adoption Papers – Jackie Kay (1991, Scotland)
Cloudstreet – Tim Winton (1991, Australia)

1992-2001
The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje (1992, Canada/Sri Lanka)
The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields (1993, Canada)
Paradise – Abdulrazak Gurnah (1994, Tanzania/England)
A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry (1995, India/Canada)
Salt – Earl Lovelace (1996, Trinidad and Tobago)
The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy (1997, India)
The Blue Bedspread – Raj Kamal Jha (1999, India)
Disgrace – JM Coetzee (1999, South Africa/Australia)
White Teeth – Zadie Smith (2000, England)
Life of Pi – Yann Martel (2001, Canada)

2002-11
Small Island – Andrea Levy (2004, England)
The Secret River – Kate Grenville (2005, Australia)
The Book Thief – Markus Zusak (2005, Australia)
Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006, Nigeria)
A Golden Age – Tahmima Anam (2007, Bangladesh)
The Boat – Nam Le (2008, Australia)
Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel (2009, England)
The Book of Night Women – Marlon James (2009, Jamaica)
The Memory of Love – Aminatta Forna (2010, Sierra Leone/Scotland)
Chinaman – Shehan Karunatilaka (2010, Sri Lanka)

2012-21
Our Lady of the Nile – Scholastique Mukasonga (2012, Rwanda)
The Luminaries – Eleanor Catton (2013, New Zealand)
Behold the Dreamers – Imbolo Mbue (2016, Cameroon)
The Bone Readers – Jacob Ross (2016, Grenada)
How We Disappeared – Jing-Jing Lee (2019, Singapore)
Girl, Woman, Other – Bernardine Evaristo (2019, England)
The Night Tiger – Yangsze Choo (2019, Malaysia)
Shuggie Bain – Douglas Stuart (2020, Scotland)
A Passage North – Anuk Arudpragasam (2021, Sri Lanka)
The Promise – Damon Galgut (2021, South Africa)

What is something you have done only once but never want to do again? AskReddit

What is something you have done only once but never want to do again? from AskReddit

justshtmypnts
Donate a kidney.

robotmonkeyshark
Getting married. I don’t regret getting married, but if my wife were to pass away or our marriage otherwise ended, I doubt I would go through the dating and getting to know them and getting married and such again. I’m too old for that, and I’m not even that old.

Botryoid2000
Farted in a board meeting.

Leaned over to get a pen out of my purse on the floor. Completely unexpected BRRRRRAAAAAPPPPP

Shocked silence from a group of uptight executives.

Scouseuserman
Haha can’t beat a good fart story. Did it smell?

BuyMyNFT
Did it smell?
Smelled like Indeed.com

Botryoid2000
I don’t remember. I was so paralyzed with embarrassment afterward.

zerbey
Pepper spray, did it once on a dare. I can say with 100% conviction that it works exactly as intended.

1980pzx
I came home hammered one night in my early twenties and decided to cook some ramen noodles. Before I set down to eat the bowl I put some Daves insanity sauce on the noodles. I had to piss real bad, so I went and did my business, forgetting to wash my hands off beforehand. I wish I would’ve because I had gotten some of the hot sauce on my fingers when I opened the hot sauce bottle. A shower didn’t help. Hell I poured milk on my junk in a last ditch effort to ease this horrible pain. One of the dumbest things I’ve done.

The_mystery4321
Been born. Fuck reincarnation I wanna chill in the afterlife.

Car as Status – Two References

Thunderbirds had been out for only a year now, since ‘55, and because they were new and there weren’t that many of them they were considered somewhat cooler than Corvettes. It was early evening. The Thunderbird was idling before a red light at the intersection, and from our perch behind the parapet we could hear the song on the radio – “Over the Mountains and across the Seas” – and hear too, just below the music, the full-throated purr of the engine. The black body glistened like obsidian. Blue smoke chugged from the twin exhausts. The top was rolled back. We could see the red leather upholstery and the blond man in the dinner jacket sitting in the driver’s seat. He was young and handsome and fresh. You could almost smell the Listerine on his breath, the Mennen on his cheeks. We were looking right down at him. With the palm of his left hand he kept the beat of the song against the steering wheel. His right arm rested on the back of the empty seat beside him, which would not remain empty for long. He was on his way to pick someone up.

We held no conference. One look was enough to see that he was everything we were not, his life a progress of satisfactions we had no hope of attaining in any future we could seriously propose for ourselves.

The first egg hit the street beside him. The second egg hit the front fender. The third egg hit the trunk and splattered his shoulders and neck and hair. We looked down just long enough to tally the damage before pulling our heads back. A moment passed. Then a howl rose skyward. No words – just one solitary soul cry of disbelief. We could still hear the music coming from his radio. The light must have changed, because a horn honked, and honked again, and someone yelled something, and another voice answered harshly, and the song was suddenly lost in the noise of engines.

This Boy’s Life
Tobias Wolff

I said, What’re you gonna do, man? Get a job up at the mall? Yeah, right, Chappie. The mall. The line forms at the end, man. They got fucking college graduates up there flipping Big Macs and carrying out the garbage. Forget it, man.

Well maybe you could sell your Camaro. You could get eight, nine hundred bucks easy for it. More maybe.

You bet your ass more. A grand and a half easy. But no fucking way, man. That car’s all I got between me and total nothingness.

Rule of the Bone
Russell Banks

Moving is so embarrassing. Like why is your tv on the sidewalk – Will Shipman

Paris, 13th District / Les Olympiades – Trailer

IMDB

Happy Friday

Denver Housing – Unaffordable

Talk to anybody looking to buy a place to live in Denver and they’ll tell you about their struggles. Properties are too expensive for most mortals to afford, bidding wars have been raging, and even though there are slight signs the market is cooling down, prices are still higher than ever.

In fact, Denver just ranked as the fifth least affordable real estate market in the United States. That’s according to an April report from Ojo Labs, an Austin-based real estate company.

In March, the median selling price for a home in Denver was $564,990 (compare that $520,000 in the New York City area). That was 23.2% higher than the previous year, according to the report.

The least affordable city was San Francisco, where the median home price was $1.3 million.

Only four U.S. cities were less affordable than Denver in March
Other than San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles and Miami, pretty much everywhere else is cheaper to live.
Kyle Harris

April 13 – Some Thoughts – Tolstoy

We understand the divine, spiritual beginning of our life both with our intellect and with our love.

A man is wise who does three things: first, he does by himself those things which he advises others to do; secondly, he does not do anything that contravenes the truth; and thirdly, he is patient with the weaknesses of those who surround him.

Great thoughts come directly from the heart.
Luc DE VAUVENARGUES

A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul
Leo Tolstoy

London Parkour POV

NOTE – From the youtube description: It’s fake BTw 😂😂
(Looks cool to me, regardless.)