Imogen Heap and City of Derry International Choral Festival - City Songs

 published on Nov 8, 2013

St Columb's Hall plays host to Eriks Esenvalds' City Songs, featuring Imogen Heap, Holst Singers, Codetta, Roundhouse Choir, Encore Contemporary Choir, Colmcille Ladies, Music Promise Junior Choir and the Orchestra of Ireland.

• Category

  Entertainment

• License

  Standard YouTube License 

 Link: http://youtu.be/Q8eBTxMwrEs

Malcolm Gladwell - David and Goliath

Culture
Books
Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell: 'If my books appear oversimplified, then you shouldn't read them'

The star writer discusses his new book, David and Goliath, which examines the role of history's underdogs and misfits, and replies to critics who say his ideas are too simplistic.





by Oliver Burkeman
The Guardian, Sunday 29 September 2013 

 

Malcolm Gladwell at his home in New York. Photograph: Tim Knox for the Guardian

Malcolm Gladwell is in his natural habitat – a cafe in New York's West Village, down the street from his apartment – engaged in a very Gladwellian task: defending Lance Armstrong. 

The bestselling author of The Tipping Point and Outliers, who despite all appearances just turned 50, has a tendency to hoist both arms aloft like a preacher when a topic inflames him. 

And the topic of doping in sports does. Why, he wants to know, is it OK to be born with an abnormality that gives you surplus red blood cells, like the Finnish Olympic skiing star Eero Mäntyranta, but not OK to reinfuse your own blood prior to competing, as Armstrong apparently did? 

Why are baseball players allowed performance-enhancing eye surgery, but not performance-enhancing drugs?

 "Imagine," Gladwell says, "if all the schools in England had a rule that you can't do homework, because homework is a way in which less able kids can close the gap that Nature said ought to exist. Basically, Armstrong did his homework and lied about it! Underneath the covers, with his flashlight on, he did his calculus! And I'm supposed to get upset about that?"

David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants
by Malcolm Gladwell

This argument enraged various sports pundits when Gladwell made it in The New Yorker, where he's been a fixture since 1996. But it will presumably only enrage them more to learn that he doesn't fully believe it himself. 

"When you write about sports, you're allowed to engage in mischief," he says. "Nothing is at stake. It's a bicycle race!" 

 

As a serious amateur runner himself (just the other day, he finished the Fifth Avenue Mile race, in Manhattan, in five minutes and three seconds) he's "totally anti-doping … But what I'm trying to say is, look, we have to come up with better reasons. Our reasons suck! And when the majority has taken a position that's ill thought-through, it's appropriate to make trouble." His expression settles into a characteristic half-smile that makes clear he'd relish it if you disagreed.

 

Gladwell has always excelled in this role as intellectual provocateur. At their best, which is often, his articles and books force you to reappraise assumptions so deeply held that you didn't realise you held them, and millions have found the experience intoxicating. 

What if the most successful entrepreneurs aren't the risk-takers, but the risk-averse? 

Might the world's intelligence agencies be better off firing all their spies? 

Is there a good reason why there are multiple kinds of mustard, but only one major brand of ketchup? 

The point isn't necessarily to accept his conclusions, but to be jolted – even if via the improbable medium of ketchup – into seeing the whole world afresh. 

This galls some critics, who'd prefer it if Gladwell made smaller, more cautious, less dazzling claims. ("The problem with the Malcolm Gladwell Piece," a New York Observer journalist once wrote, "is that it always seems to contain phrases like 'the problem with the Malcolm Gladwell Piece.'") 

But it's also what stimulates audiences in such vast numbers: Outliers reportedly commanded a $4m advance, and dominated bestseller lists on both sides of the Atlantic for months; while his live lecture events, which reliably sell out, have made him the only person about whom the labels "rock star" and "journalist" are both routinely used. 

He's also responsible more than anyone else for the birth of the modern pop-ideas genre, in publishing and beyond. "Without Gladwell," Ian Leslie wrote recently at Medium.com, "no Daniel Pink, no Steven Johnson … no Brainpicker, no TED. I exaggerate, but only slightly."

 
Gladwell in 2005. Photograph: Rex Features

Gladwell will perform four more such events, in London, Liverpool and Dublin, later this autumn. The occasion is the publication of his new book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants, which is published in the UK on Thursday.

There's a case to be made that it's his best yet: on the counter-intuitiveness front, it's classic Gladwell, but it's also more socially and morally engaged than his previous work.

That title might smack of how-to-get-ahead-in-business, but he's no longer focused on the secrets of marketing or corporate success.

David and Goliath explores when, and why, apparent disadvantages – poverty, personal setbacks, military weakness – turn out to be advantages, and when advantages, like wealth or status, aren't what they seem.

"The fact of being an underdog changes people in ways that we often fail to appreciate," Gladwell writes. "It opens doors and creates opportunities and enlightens and permits things that might otherwise have seemed unthinkable."

The outcome of the original David-and-Goliath clash wasn't a miracle, he argues: it's just what happens when the weak refuse to play by rules laid down by the strong.

 (Sample sentence: "Eitan Hirsch, a ballistics expert with the Israeli Defence Force, recently did a series of calculations showing that a typical-sized stone hurled by an expert slinger at a distance of 35m would have hit Goliath's head with a velocity of 34m per second – more than enough to penetrate his skull and render him dead or unconscious.")

"With each book that passes, I think my personal ideology becomes more explicit … and this one is a very Canadian sort of book," says Gladwell, who was born in Fareham, in Hampshire, but grew up in Ontario. 

"It's Canadian in its suspicion of bigness and wealth and power. Someone told me – did you know that there's never been a luxury brand to come from Canada? That's never happened. That's such a great fact to have about your home country."

Difficulties and afflictions frequently foster creativity and resilience, the book shows.

Studies on "cognitive disfluency" have shown that people do better at problem-solving tasks when they're printed in a hard-to-read font: 
the extra challenge triggers more effortful engagement. 

We meet dyslexics whose reading problems forced them to find more efficient ways to master law and finance (one is now a celebrated trial lawyer, another the president of Goldman Sachs); 

we learn why losing a parent in childhood forges a resilience that frequently spurs achievement in later life, and 

why you shouldn't necessarily attend the best university that will have you. 
(The answer is "relative deprivation": the further you are from being the best at your institution, the more demotivating it is; middling talents perform better at middling establishments.) 

Conversely, having power can backfire, not least because it tricks the powerful into thinking they don't need the consent of those over whom they wield it. 

In a compelling account of the Troubles, Gladwell argues that the British were plagued by a simple error: the belief that their superior resources meant "it did not matter what the people of Northern Ireland thought of them". More isn't always more.

There's a reactionary way to interpret all this: if the human spirit finds ways to triumph over adversity in the end, does that mean we needn't worry about poverty, prejudice, childhood traumas, and the rest? "In the 19th century, people like [the industrialist] Andrew Carnegie did talk about poverty being useful as a justification for doing nothing about it," Gladwell says.

"But if this book's interpreted that way, that would be a disaster. I'm just trying to say that it should reassure us that the inevitable traumas of being human do end up producing some good. Otherwise, the human condition is overwhelmingly depressing.

" We used to be genetic determinists, he says. "We used to say poor people had lousy genes. Then we decided that wasn't OK, but we transferred the prejudice to upbringing. We said, 'You were neglected as a child, so you'll never make it.' That's just as pernicious. This book is anti-deterministic in that sense."

It is hard to resist trying to understand Gladwell's own life and background in terms of Gladwellian theories. Indeed, in 2008's Outliers he does so himself, explaining, in line with the book's thesis, how the right combination of effort and contextual factors – such as her light skin – enabled his Jamaican mother, Joyce, to end up at University College, London, where she met and married an Englishman, Graham Gladwell. (She became a therapist, he a maths professor.)

When Malcolm was six, they moved to Canada, to a heavily Mennonite community; Gladwell imbibed that denomination's focus on social justice, while excelling as a runner at school.

After a history degree in Canada, and a couple of years at conservative magazines, including the American Spectator, he joined the Washington Post in 1987 – where he spent a decade accumulating the 10,000 hours of practice which, according to Outliers, is they key to mastery in many fields.

He joined the New Yorker in 1996, and published the original "Tipping Point" article that same year, analysing the plummetting Brooklyn murder rate through the lens of epidemiology. As has been frequently observed, the book, released four years later, was his professional tipping point, too.

Blink, his 2005 book on the strengths and weaknesses of unconscious decision-making, consolidated his status.

He has continued to produce tirelessly since then, with little time, as far as one can tell, for much in the way of a personal life. ("He's dated a lot of women. He loves other people's kids. But he has work to do," his oldest friend, Bruce Headlam, told the Observer a few years ago.

Gladwell charmingly but firmly rebuffs all questions in this vein.) He lives in a book-lined apartment on one of downtown Manhattan's loveliest streets, but has often described his preference for a "rotating" approach to writing, involving stints at several local cafes, in an effort to recreate the ambience of a newsroom.

We are now sufficiently far into the Gladwell era that the Gladwell backlash is well under way.

He is routinely accused of oversimplifying his material, or attacking straw men: does anyone really believe that success is solely a matter of individual talent, the position that Outliers sets out to unseat? Or that the strong always vanquish the weak? "You're of necessity simplifying," says Gladwell.

"If you're in the business of translating ideas in the academic realm to a general audience, you have to simplify … If my books appear to a reader to be oversimplified, then you shouldn't read them: you're not the audience!" (Another common complaint, that his well-paid speaking gigs represent a conflict of interest, is answered in a 6,500-word essay on Gladwell's website.)

A subtler criticism holds that there is something more fundamentally wrong with the Gladwellian project, and indeed with the many Gladwellesque tomes it's inspired.

To some critics, usually those schooled in the methods of the natural sciences, it's flatly unacceptable to proceed by concocting hypotheses then amassing anecdotes to illustrate them. 

"In his pages, the underdogs win … of course they do," the author Tina Rosenberg wrote, in an early review of David and Goliath. "That's why Gladwell includes their stories. Yet you'll look in vain for reasons to believe that these exceptions prove any real-world rules about underdogs."

The problem with this objection is not that it's wrong, exactly, but that it applies equally to almost all journalism, and vast swaths of respected work in the humanities and social sciences, too. You make your case, you illustrate it with statistics and storytelling, and you refrain from claiming that it's the absolute, objective truth. 

Gladwell calls his articles and books "conversation starters", and that's not false modesty; ultimately, perhaps that's all that even the best nonfiction writing can ever honestly aspire to be.

Gladwell once wrote an article defending a playwright who'd lifted material from one of Gladwell's own articles, so perhaps it's not surprising that he also defends his former New Yorker colleague Jonah Lehrer, who admitted fabricating quotes in his book Imagine.

"In the classic sense of the word, it was a hysteria," Gladwell says of the anti-Lehrer uproar.

"There was a kind of frenzy about it that was disproportionate to the crime.

Jonah screwed up, and he's the first to say he screwed up, but I'm puzzled by how much vitriol was directed at him. If I was going to be psychoanalytic about it, I'd say it has to do with anxiety within the world of journalism, about its loss of authority: we think we're losing our place in the world, and so we're hypersensitive about those who undermine that place further."

Then again, Lehrer recently obtained a new book deal: perhaps his new-found position as an underdog will benefit him yet.

The most powerful section of David and Goliath concerns the climactic battle of the civil rights movement in Alabama, in 1963. 

In public, Martin Luther King and his aides maintained a dignified facade, but behind the scenes, King's organiser in Birmingham, Wyatt Walker, used cunning to turn the movement's weaknesses into strengths. 

By delaying street protests until late afternoon, when Birmingham's black residents were walking home from work, he led authorities to believe that onlookers were actually protestors. 

("They cannot distinguish even between Negro demonstrators and negro spectators," Walker later recalled. "All they know is negroes.") 

By luring police into arresting hundreds of children, they overwhelmed Birmingham's jails, turning police commissioner Bull Connor's eagerness to arrest black people against him. 

Perhaps it wasn't "right", by some definition of that word, to send children for arrest, or to engineer confrontations between passers-by and police dogs – 
-- but Gladwell argues:
"We need to remember that our definitions of what is right are, as often as not, simply the way that people in positions of privilege close the door on those at the bottom of the pile." 

Underdogs have to use whatever they've got. And in the end, "much of what is valuable in our world arises out of these kinds of lopsided conflicts … the act of facing overwhelming odds produces greatness and beauty."


  Details: malcolmgladwell-live.com

Jimi Hendrix and Billy Gibbons

BILLY GIBBONS + THE MOVING SIDEWALKS: Home Town Band Plays NYC

Jimi Hendrix with The Moving Sidewalks

Fort Worth, Texas, 1968

(left to right): Keyboardist Tom Moore, Jimi Hendrix, Bassist Don Summers, guitarist and lead singer Billy Gibbons (pre-ZZ Top), and drummer Dan Mitchell. Photographer unknown.
 

 

ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons pulls up to my house

Houston, Texas, 1973  

Photograph © Elizabeth Paul Avedon  

 

When the Moving Sidewalks opened for The Doors at the Houston Coliseum in 1968, their hit single 99th Floor was No. 1. It became one of the most famous Vintage Garage 45's.

BILLY GIBBONS, pre-ZZ Top fame, founded the '60's blues-based, psychedelic rock ‘n’ roll group, The Moving Sidewalks. They came into prominence opening for The Jimi Hendrix Experience during Hendrix's first American tour. Billy was still in high school when Hendrix, one of the greatest electric guitarist in rock history, named Gibbons his favorite guitar player on "The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson". Billy went on to ZZ Top fame (Sharp Dressed Man, Legs...).

In a recent New York Times 'ArtsBeat' piece, "The Return of The Moving Sidewalks," Allan Kozinn writes, "Before ZZ Top became a blues-rock band known for gritty, boogie-based rhythms, sizzling guitar flights, humorous lyrics and luxuriously long beards, it was a Houston-based psychedelic proto-punk garage band called the Moving Sidewalks. And though its following was decidedly regional at the time – its biggest hit, “99th Floor,” was a chart-topper in Houston for six weeks in 1967 – the group’s recordings can be found on more than half a dozen compilations of 1960s garage band tracks, not to mention the ZZ Top anthology “Chrome, Smoke & BBQ: The ZZ Top Box.”

"The group recently released an archival trove, “Moving Sidewalks – The Complete Collection” (Rockbeat Records), bringing together its only album, “Flash” (1969), a handful of singles (including a bruising cover of the Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand”) and several outtakes. With ZZ Top between tours, Billy Gibbons, the guitarist and founder of both bands, has reconvened the Moving Sidewalks for a gig – its first in 44 years – at B.B. King Blues Club and Grill in Manhattan on March 30."  (read the entire NY Times piece here)

The Moving Sidewalks Play

B.B. King Blues Club and Grill in Manhattan
March 30

 Former producer and co-writer Steve Ames and his '66 Corvette

Photograph © Elizabeth Paul Avedon  

 Drummer Dan Mitchell and his Jaguar XK-E, 1967

Photograph © Elizabeth Paul Avedon  

Keyboardist Tom Moore, 1966

NY Times: The Return of Moving Sidewalks

PHOTO + ART NOTES

Gary Moore Live Blues Ballads And Blues 2002

Robert William Gary Moore (4 April 1952^[1] – 6 February 2011), was a Northern Irish musician, most widely recognised as a singer and guitarist.
In a career dating back to the 1960s, Moore played with artists including Phil Lynott and Brian Downey during his teens, leading him to memberships with the Irish bands Skid Row and Thin Lizzy on three separate occasions. Moore shared the stage with such blues and rock musicians as B.B. King, Albert King, Colosseum II, George Harrison, and Greg Lake, as well as having a successful solo career. He guested on a number of albums recorded by high profile musicians, including a cameo appearance playing the lead guitar solo on "She's My Baby" from Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3.

Moore performing, 23 October 2010

Thin Lizzy in early 1974. Left to right: Brian Downey, Phil Lynott, Gary Moore.

LINK:  http://youtu.be/XLLCrWLjZOU

Jeff Beck live at Ronnie Scott s - Full show

Jeff Beck live at Ronnie Scott's. Full show.
 

 

Link:  http://youtu.be/uIwSt2R54Xs



 

Sonny Boy Williamson - Help Me - CHESS E.P 6001 w / Pic Sleeve UK

Link: http://youtu.be/Pddm5_VGp84


 

Howlin Wolf Highway 49

 

Howlin Wolf does Highway 49 live in 1970

 Link:

 http://youtu.be/Iwkiy9QnD80

• 
  

Don t Start me Talking - Sonny Boy Willamsom

Link: http://youtu.be/3KD6jqmKYt8

Counterpoint ............

Deteriorata!

Last Modified On: April 29, 2007

---

The following poem was not found in an old Baltimore church:
Introduction
You are a fluke
Of the universe.
You have no right to be here.....
Deteriorata! Deteriorata!

Go placidly
Amid the noise and waste.
And remember what comfort there may be
In owning a piece thereof.

Avoid quiet and passive persons
Unless you are in need of sleep.

Ro-tate your tires.
Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself
And heed well their advice,
Even though they be turkeys.

Know what to kiss.....and when!
Consider that two wrongs never make a right
But that THREE.........do.

Wherever possible, put people on hold.

Be comforted that in the face of all aridity and disillusionment
And despite the changing fortunes of time,
There is always a big future in computer main-te-nance.

Chorus
You are a fluke
Of the universe.
You have no right to be here.
And whether you can hear it or not
The universe is laughing behind your back.

Remember the Pueblo.

Strive at all times to bend, fold, spindle and mu-ti-late.

Know yourself.
If you need help, call the FBI.

Exercise caution in your daily affairs,
Especially with those persons closest to you.
That lemon on your left, for instance.

Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most souls
Would scarcely get your feet wet.

Fall not in love therefore;
It will stick to your face.

Gracefully surrender the things of youth:
The birds, clean air, tuna, Taiwan
And let not the sands of time
Get in your lunch.

Hire people with hooks.

For a good time call 606-4311;
Ask for "Ken."

Take heart amid the deepening gloom
That your dog is finally getting enough cheese.

And reflect that whatever misfortune may be your lot
It could only be worse in Milwaukee.

Chorus
You are a fluke
Of the universe.
You have no right to be here.
And whether you can hear it or not
The universe is laughing behind your back.

Therefore, make peace with your god
Whatever you conceive him to be---
Hairy thunderer, or cosmic muffin.

With all its hopes, dreams, promises and urban renewal
The world continues to deteriorate.

GIVE UP!
Reprise
You are a fluke
Of the universe.
You have no right to be here.
And whether you can hear it or not
The universe is laughing behind your back.


Performed by National Lampoon on "National Lampoon Radio Dinner," a 1972 recording by Blue Thumb Records. Lyrics by Tony Hendra.

The Original

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world in full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is: many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Often attributed as "Found in Old Saint Paul's Church, Baltimore: Dated 1692."
Actually, Desiderata was written in 1927 by an obscure Indiana lawyer and poet named Max Ehrmann. Sources include: The Washington Post, November 27, 1977.

Jim Reeves

On Air Now

• Listen live

 

 

 

Not being a big Country Music fan, I'm surprised how entertaining the BBC can make almost any topic...  Reeves became a big hit in Europe and all over the Globe.

 

 

 

 

Buddy Guy & John Mayer - What Kind of Woman Is This? (Live at Farm Aid 2...

Uploaded on Jul 13, 2011

Buddy Guy and John Mayer perform "What Kind of Woman Is This?" live at Farm Aid 2005 at the First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre in Tinley Park, Illinois on September 18, 2005. Get this concert on DVD at: http://FarmAid.org/2005DVD

Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp founded Farm Aid in 1985 and serve on the board of directors. The three agreed that family farmers were in dire need of assistance and decided to plan a concert for America.

Dave Matthews joined Farm Aid's Board of Directors in 2001 to help further Farm Aid's mission of keeping family farmers on their land.

For more, visit http://FarmAid.org/youtube

• Category

  Music

• License

  Standard YouTube License

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

The Art of Underground Dining

Straight from the Wolvesmouth on Nowness.com

Straight from the Wolvesmouth

Chef Provocateur Craig Thornton On the Art of Underground Dining

“The opening dish is venison, ripped apart and strewn onto the plate to look like a bloody and decayed piece of meat,” says Craig Thornton of the visceral food he will be serving up at Cut Your Teeth, the collaborative installation made with artist Matthew Bone that opens today at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. “You are eating something that looks eerily similar to a deer carcass, but the dish itself includes moss, blackberry beet gastrique, coffee cocoa crumble and purple cabbage.” Armed with a range of culinary experience—from learning his trade at Thomas Keller’s Las Vegas bistro Bouchon to becoming Nicholas Cage’s private chef—and having recently received profiles in The New Yorker andHollywood Reporter, the man behind culinary sensation Wolvesmouth is captured here by filmmaker Jordan Bahat in a Downtown Los Angeles loft during one of his monthly conceptual dinners. “The Santa Monica installation is the first foray into a direction I’ve wanted to take Wolvesmouth for a long time,” says Thornton, who will be working with art impresarioJeffrey Deitch when Cut Your Teeth moves to New York. “It is a snapshot of everything we push away to keep this perfect idealized box of what we think reality is, leaving a lot of people devoid of knowing where their food comes from.”

Cut Your Teeth runs at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, October 16 through October 26 and in New York City November 7 through December 14.

http://www.nowness.com/

NOWNESS:

'via Blog this'

Imogen Heap and Jeff Beck - Rollin and Tumblin live at Ronnie Scott's 20...

Uploaded on May 21, 2009

ROLLING AND TUMBLIN Imogen Heap with Jeff Beck live at Ronnie Scott's 2007 from BBC 4 TV special

LYRICS:

Well, I rolled and I tumbled,
Cried the whole night long
Well, I rolled and I tumbled,
Cried the whole night long
When I woke up this morning,
Didn't know right or wrong

Well if the river was a whiskey
And I was a diving duck
If the river was a whiskey
And I was a diving duck
Well I would dive to the bottom
I swear, I'd never come up.


Well I could have had religion,
In this bad old Sunday
I could have had religion,
In this bad old Sunday
But whisky and bad love,
Wouldn't let me have my way

I rolled and I tumbled
And I rolled and I tumbled
I rolled and I tumbled

• Category

  Music

• License

  Standard YouTube License

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  LINK:  http://youtu.be/uuXcGHjBeac 

  
  

Jeff Beck featuring Imogen Heap - Blanket

LINK:  http://youtu.be/z79pgPn357g

Write Drunk, Edit Sober - Hemingway

Write Drunk, Edit Sober, $17 on Fab

Verse - DRINK AND DRINKING

DRINK AND DRINKING
And here's to a' in barley bree,
      Oursel's and a' the warld thegither,
To a' wha luve the kilted knee,
      Or bonnie lasses in the heather.
--Geo. Robertson, Jr.

He is not drunk who, from the floor,
Can rise again and drink some more;
But he is drunk who prostrate lies
And cannot drink or cannot rise.
--Eugene Field

I wish I could drink like a lady
I can take one or two at the most
Three and I'm under the table
Four and I'm under the host
-- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
Now fill your glasses ane an' a',
      And drink the toast I gie ye, O.
"To merry chiefs and lasses braw,
      And every joy be wi' ye, O."
      Fair fa' the whiskey, O
      Fair fa' the whiskey, O
      What wad a droughty body do,
      If 'twere nae for the whiskey, O?
---D. Henderson

St. Patrick was a gentleman,
Who through strategy and stealth
Drove all the snakes from Ireland-
Here's a bumper to his health.
But not too many bumpers,
Lest we lose ourselves, and then
Forget the good Saint Patrick
And see the snakes again.
---Anonymous
There was a young fellow named Sydney,
Who drank 'till he ruined his kidney.
      It shriveled and shrank
      As he sat there and drank,
But he had a good time at it, didn't he?
--Don Marquis (1878-1937)

There was a young man who said: "Why
Can't I drink this good wine with my eye?
      It is now on my clothes,
      In my hair, up my nose-
Well, you never can tell till you try."
'Tis pity wine should be so deleterious,
For tea and coffee leave us much more serious.
--George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)
AN OLD BACHELOR
Tudor Jenks (1857-1922)
'Twas raw, and chill, and cold outside,
      With a boisterous wind untamed,
But I was sitting snug within,
      Where my good log-fire flamed;
As my clock ticked,
My cat purred,
And my kettle sang.
I read me a tale of war and love,
      Brave knights and their ladies fair;
And I brewed a brew of stiff hot scotch
      To drive away dull care;
As my clock ticked,
My cat purred,
And my kettle sang.
At last the candles spluttered out,
      But the embers still were bright,
When I turned my tumbler upside down,
      An' bade m'self g'night!
As th' ket'l t-hic-ked,
The clock purred,
And the cat (hic) sang!
ARMY TOAST
Here's to wives and sweethearts sweet!
May they never, never meet!
A TOAST
Anonymous
Here's to ye absent Lords, may they
Long in a foreign country stay
Drinking at other ladies' boards
The health of other absent Lords.
BATHTUB GIN
Philip H. Rhinelander
Oh, ancient sin, Oh, bathtub gin,
      How rare and how robut,
Bouquet of tin and porcelain
     And little grains of rust.
Our cares dissolved as you evolved,
      Your beauty was benumbing.
You rose full-armor'd from the bath
      Like Venus from the plumbing.
When hardened hearts in foreign ports
      Deride your name with scorn,
And whisper calumnies and say
      That you were basely born,
I plant a wreath of juniper,
      My thirsty tonsils ache
To fill my skin with bathtub gin
      Like Father used to make.
DISGRUNTLED GUEST
The meat is high,
The bread is dry,
The wine is bitter
And so am I.
DRINKING SONG
She tells me with claret she cannot agree,
And she thinks of a hogshead whene'er she sees me;
For I smell like a beast, and therefore must I
Resolve to forsake her, or claret deny.
Must I leave my dear bottle, that was always my friend,
And I hope will continue so to my life's end?
Must I leave it for her? 'Tis a very hard task.
Let her got to the devil!--bring the other full flask.
Had she taxed me with gaming, and bid me forbear,
'Tis a thousand to one I had lent her an ear;
Had she found out my Sally, up three pair of stairs,
I had balked her, and gone to St. James's to prayers.
Had she bade me read homilies three times a day
She perhaps had been humored with little to say;
But, at night, to deny me my bottle of red
Let her go to the devil!--there's no more to be said.
GET DRUNK
From the PROSE POEMS OF CHARLES BAUDELAIRE, translated by Geoffrey Grigson
It is essential to be drunk all the time. That is all: there's no other problem. If you do not want to feel the appalling weight of Time which breaks your shoulders and bends you to the ground, get drunk, and drunk again.
      What with? Wine, Poetry, or being good, please yourself. But get drunk.
      And if now and then, on the steps of a palace, on the green grass of a ditch, in the glum loneliness of your room, you come to, your drunken state abated or dissolved, ask the wind, ask the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, ask all that runs away, all that groans, all that wheels, all that sings, all that speaks, what time it is; and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, will tell you: 'It is time to get drunk!' If you do not want to be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk, always get drunk! With wine, with poetry or with being good. As you please.
Give me women, wine, and snuff
John Keats (1795-1821)
Give me women, wine, and snuff
Untill I cry out "hold, enough!"
You may do so sans objection
Till the day of resurrection:
For, bless my beard, they aye shall be
My beloved Trinity.
IF YOU STICK A STOCK OF LIQUOR
Norman Levy
If you stick a stock of liquor in your locker,
It is slick to stick a lock upon your stock,
Or some joker who is slicker's going to trick you of your liquor;
Though you snicker you'll feel sicker from the shock.
Be a piker though your clubmates mock and bicker,
For like brokers round a ticker they will flock
To your locker full of liquor, and your stock will vanish quicker,
If you fail to lock your liquor with a lock.
IN JAPAN
Edward Rowland Sill (1841-1887)
At the punch-bowl’s brink,
Let the thirsty think
What they say in old Japan:
First the man takes a drink;
Then the drink takes a drink;
Then the drink takes the man.
JUDGED BY THE COMPANY ONE KEEPS
Anonymous
One night in late October,
When I was far from sober,
Returning with my load with manly pride,
My feet began to stutter
So I lay down in the gutter
And a pig came near and lay down by my side.
A lady passing by was heard to say:
"You can tell a man who boozes
By the company he chooses,"
And the pig got up, and slowly walked away.
THE MASSACRE OF MACPHERSON
Sir William Edmondstoune Aytoun (1813 - 1865)
Fhairshon had a son,
Who married Noah's daughter,
And nearly spoiled ta Flood
By trinking up ta water:
Which he would have done,
I at least pelieve it,
Had the mixture peen
Only half Glenlivet.
NO, THANKS
Marcus Valerius Martialis (born A.D. 40 in Spain)
They tell me, Paulus, when you dine,
You serve a very potent wine.
They also say, or so I've heard,
You poisoned your four wives. Absurd!
No one believes it. Still, I think
I'd just as soon not have a drink.
REASONS FOR DRINKING
Dr. Henry Aldrich
If all be true that I do think,
There are five reasons we should drink.
Good wine-a friend-or being dry-
Or lest we should be by and by-
Or any other reason why!
THE PORT OF REFUGE
R. Von Muhler
Out of the grog-shop, I've stepped in the street.
Road, what's the matter? you're loose on your feet;
Staggering, swaggering, reeling about.
Road, you're in liquor, past question or doubt.
Gas-lamps, be quiet-stand up, if you please.
What the deuce ails you? you're weak in the knees:
Some on your heads-in the gutter, some sunk-
Gas-lamps, I see it, you're all of you drunk.
Angels and ministers! look at the moon--
Shining up there like a paper balloon,
Winking like mad at me: Moon, I'm afraid--
Now I'm convinced--Oh! you tipsy old jade.
Here's a phenomenon: look at the stars--
Jupiter, Ceres, Uranus, and Mars
Dancing quadrilles, capered, shuffled, and hopped.
Heavenly bodies! this ought to be stopped.
Down come the houses! each drunk as a king--
Can't say I fancy much this sort of thing:
Inside the inn, it was safe and all right,
I shall go back there, and stop for the night.
THE SONG OF RIGHT AND WRONG
GK Chesterton (1874-1936)
Feast on wine or fast on water
And your honour shall stand sure,
God Almighty's son and daughter
He the valiant, she the pure;
If an angel out of heaven
Brings you other things to drink,
Thank him for his kind attentions,
Go and pour them down the sink.
Tea is like the East he grows in,
A great yellow Mandarin
With urbanity of manner
And unconsciousness of sin;
All the women, like a harem,
At his pig-tail troop along;
And, like all the East he grows in,
He is Poison when he's strong.
Tea, although an Oriental,
Is a gentleman at least;
Cocoa is a cad and coward,
Cocoa is a vulgar beast,
Cocoa is a dull, disloyal,
Lying, crawling cad and clown,
And may very well be grateful
To the fool that takes him down.
As for all the windy waters,
They were rained like tempests down
When good drink had been dishonoured
By the tipplers of the town;

When red wine had brought red ruin
And the death-dance of our times,
Heaven sent us Soda Water
As a torment for our crimes.
THE WORKMAN'S FRIEND
Flann O'Brien (1911-1966)
When things go wrong and will not come right,
Though you do the best you can,
When life looks black as the hour of night--
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.
When money's tight and hard to get
And your horse has also ran,
When all you have is a heap of debt--
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.
When health is bad and your heart feels strange,
And your face is pale and wan,
When doctors say you need a change,
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.
When food is scarce and your larder bare
And no rashers grease your pan,
When hunger grows as your meals are rare--
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.
In time of trouble and lousy strife,
You have still got a darlint plan
You still can turn to a brighter life--
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.
WINE AND WATER
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
Old Noah he had an ostrich farm and fowls on the largest scale.
He ate his soup with a ladle in an egg-cup big as a pail,
And the soup he took was Elephant soup and the fish he took was Whale,
But they all were small to the cellar he took when he set out to sail.
     And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine,
     "I don't care where the water gets if it doesn't get into the wine."
The cataract of the staff of heaven fell blinding off the brink
As if it would wash the stars away as suds go down a sink.
The seven heavens came roaring down for the throats of hell to drink,
And Noah he cocked his eyes and said, "It looks like rain, I think,
     The water has drowned the Matterhorn as deep as a Mendip mine,
     But I don't care where the water gets if it doesn't get into the wine."
But Noah he sinned, and we have sinned: on tipsy feet we trod,
Till a great big black teetotaller was sent to us for a rod,
And you can't get wine at a P.S.A., or chapel, or Eisteddfod,
For the Curse of Water has come again because of the wrath of God.
     And water is on the Bishop's board and the Higher Thinker's shrine,
     But I don't care where the water gets if it doesn't get into the wine.

 Source: http://littlecalamity.tripod.com/Poetry/Drink.html




 

Nice Guitar

Ibanez AFS77T MG
Neck Style: 3-piece ArtcoreNeck Material: Mahogany/mapleBody: Maple top, back and sidesFrets: 22, large Bridge: ART2 tremolo Tailpiece: VBF70 Neck Pickup: ACH1 Bridge Pickup: ACH2

Art sites

 

 

“You almost have to be gifted to do what I’ve done” — Fred Smith / blog, folk art environment, Midwest

Link:
http://www.detourart.com/










 



















 Link:
 http://www.peterclarkcollage.com/pages/home.html



(based on a painting I love
by artist Jonathan Green)



(based on a painting I love
by artist Jonathan Green)


















source:  http://www.bigalsartgallery.com/links.html

Quotes - The Uncommon Reader By Bennett, Alan (Book - 2007)

This book is an evening's read of a cute little book wherein the Queen gets the reading habit.  It is worth a few chuckles...



The Uncommon Reader
By Bennett, Alan (Book - 2007)


“What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader


“A book is a device to ignite the imagination.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

“You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader


“Books are not about passing time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader



“Above literature?' said the Queen. 'Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader





“The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader



“[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader 



“The days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

 

“...she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

 


“To begin with, it's true, she read with trepidation and some unease. The sheer endlessness of books outfaced her and she had no idea how to go on; there was no system to her reading, with one book leading to another, and often she had two or three on the go at the same time.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

 

“It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

 

“Authors, she soon decided, were probably best met within the pages of their novels, and were as much creatures of the reader's imagination as the characters in their books. Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader


“... Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up. Books, bread and butter, mashed potato - one finishes what's on one's plate. That's always been my philosophy.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

 

“Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

 
“One reads for pleasure...it is not a public duty.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

 

“I would have thought," said the prime minister, "that Your Majesty was above literature."
"Above literature?" said the Queen. "Who is above literature? You might as well say one is above humanity.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

 

“One recipe for happiness is to have to sense of entitlement.' To this she added a star and noted at the bottom of the page: 'This is not a lesson I have ever been in a position to learn.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

 

“I have to seem like a human being all the time, but I seldom have to be one. I have people to do that for me.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader


 

“To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit in itself were less...selfish.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

 


“Archbishop. Why do I never read the lesson?”

“I beg your pardon, ma’am?”

“In church. Everybody else gets to read and one never does. It’s not laid down, is it? It’s not off-limits?”

“Not that I’m aware, ma’am.”

“Good. Well in that case I’m going to start. Leviticus, here I come. Goodnight.”

The archbishop shook his head and went back to Strictly Come Dancing.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

 

“She‘d never taken much interest in reading. She read, of course, as one did, but liking books was something she left to other people.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

 

“...to her all books were the same and, as with her subjects, she felt a duty to approach them without prejudice...Lauren Bacall, Winifred Holtby, Sylvia Plath - who were they? Only be reading could she find out.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

 

“[...] But then books, as I'm sure you know, seldom prompt a course of actions. Books generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly, decided to do already. You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated. A book, as it were, closes the book.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

 


“When they arrived at the palace she had a word with Grant, the young footman in charge, who said it was security and that while ma'am had been in the Lords the sniffer dogs had been round and security had confiscated the book. He though it had probably been exploded.

'Exploded?' said the Queen. 'But it was Anita Brookner.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

 


“The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic. Actually she had heard this phrase, the republic of letters, used before, at graduation ceremonies, honorary degrees and the like, though without knowing quite what it meant. At that time talk of a republic of any sort she had thought mildly insulting and in her actual presence tactless to say the least. It was only now she understood what it meant. Books did not defer. All readers were equal and this took her back to the beginning of her life. As a girl, one of her greatest thrills had been on VE night when she and her sister had slipped out of the gates and mingled unrecognised with the crowds. There was something of that, she felt, to reading. It was anonymous; it was shared; it was common. And she who had led a life apart now found that she craved it. Here in these pages and between these covers she could go unrecognised.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

Online writing exercises,

Practice spending more time in the place you want to be...It's from such small beginnings that great things grow. —Jordan Peterson, professor of pyschology


Jordan B. Peterson is a tenured research and clinical PhD psychologist who currently teaches at the University of Toronto. He frequently appears on TVO on various topics. His research interests include self-deception, mythology,religion, narrative, neuroscience, personality, deception, creativity,intelligence and motivation.


Dr. Peterson has produced a series of online writing exercises, available at www.selfauthoring.com. These include the Past Authoring Program, a guided autobiography; two Present Authoring Programs, which allow the user to analyze his or her personality faults and virtues in accordance with the Big Five personality model; and the Future Authoring program, which steps users through the process of envisioning and then planning their desired futures, three to five years down the road. The latter program was used with McGill University undergraduates on academic probation to improve their grades.

The Self Authoring programs were developed in partial consequence of research conducted by James Pennebaker at the University of Texas and Gary Latham at the Rotman School of Management at theUniversity of Toronto. Pennebaker demonstrated that writing about traumatic or uncertain events and situations improved mental and physical health, while Latham has demonstrated that planning exercises that are personal help make people more productive.

Current Projects

Prediction and Analysis of Academic, Industrial and Creative Performance

Psychology of Myth and Religion (see Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief)

Motivation for Social Conflict (see Individual Motivation for Group Aggression: Psychological, Mythological, and Neuropsychological Perspectives)

Self-Deception: Experimental and Theoretical Analysis

Predisposition to Alcoholism and Drug Abuse

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Peterson

http://www.selfauthoring.com/index.shtml

http://www.mapsofmeaning.com/

http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/peterson/

peterson@psych.utoronto.ca