atticus_91

the single greatest rendition imaginable

Goodbye, Fravia

http://fravia.com/swansong.htm

We all knew he was a wicked giant,
but have you ever heard of a good one?
He was all we had, lord of the realm,
the crumbs from whose table could not be
numbered. We were hungry, or would have been
were it not for those crumbs. Is that complicity?

Now we are paying the price. We have become
somebody else's crumbs. The whiskbrooms
deal with us briskly. He brandishes
his carving knife and slices off a slice
of breast. Our priests advise us to keep
silent. If this were on TV we'd watch appalled.

-Thomas Disch, "Oil", from right here on LiveJournal

"The stillness was that of a deep grave, save for the raindrops, falling light as thistledown, with a faint, monotonous sound like a whisper that dies and begins again and dies there behind the wet, glistening trunks."

~J. P. Jacobsen

Darwin, born into a large family that for two generations had been scientists, engineers, industrialists, and well-to-do landowners, and yet who, despite his genius, was a sufferer of neuroses, constant illnesses (he vomited every afternoon at four), a kind of hysteria that took the form of gasping and palpitation, and seizures of depression in which he wept uncontrollably.
- Guy Davenport

An interesting site I stumbled onto, http://www.speechwars.com/index.php, allows you to compare the number of times presidents have said any two words in state of the union addresses. The word 'global' has been said 86 times in the union address, all in the last 50 years; the word 'american', 2431 times. 'Future' has been said 960 times, 'Environment', 88 times.


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