Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole;
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance,
I have not winced, nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance,
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade;
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll:
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

for Sparky

Ozymandias by P.B. Shelley

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear —
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Marine Corps Times reports on secret weapon program

In an exclusive, copyrighted story that appears on newsstands Monday, Marine Corps Times reports that the weapon, called the Vehicle-Mounted Active Denial System is designed to stop an individual in his tracks and make him turn and flee.

I don’t know, but if a bunch of marines showed up with a vehicle mounted weapon, and aimed it at me… I’d run.Heck.. don’t they already have one? I think it’s called a “Machine Gun”…

The ‘Summer of Love’ started on a street called Haight.

I always thought that was weird.

speaking of which…

I avoided the vw bug resurgence, even though it was pretty neat. But now the microbus is coming back? Neato Bandito! I’ve always enjoyed vehicles that look like a cross between a cold pill and a space capsule….

Cartoon update

I quote –

“Folks, Harry here and right now I’m in a bit of shock. I’m just stunned. I can’t believe that someone somewhere is making a FAT ALBERT movie. Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Bill Cosby and Charles Kipps have teamed up to deliver the screenplay… which allegedly will have some animated moments… And FOX is going to make this as a tentpole picture.”

Careful!-

A so-called proof-of-concept worm started spreading over the weekend among the PCs of people using the peer-to-peer file-swapping protocol known as Gnutella.

Planet of the Monkees continues

Gangs of monkeys are behind a wave of burglaries in the port city of Durban. The adaptable vervets have become ingenious and efficient raiders who break into houses to search for food.The vervets, also known as green monkeys, enter properties in large numbers and even post lookouts in garden trees to alert them to any threats from humans or dogs.

This song is stuck in my head…Steve Martin from ‘let’s get small’

Thank you. You know folks, when I was a kid, I was pretty close to my grandmother and she used to sing a song to me when I was about this high. It always meant something to me and I’d like to do it for you right now because it does have meaning in today’s world even . . . all these years, you know those, even during the “hip drug days” you know when everybody was supposed to be so cool and everything had double meanings and this little simple tune would keep coming back to me and I think it kinda guided me through those years and I’d like to do this song for you right now, I think it might have a little meaning for you, so here it goes.

Be courteous, kind and forgiving,
Be gentle and peaceful each day,
Be warm and human and grateful,
And have a good thing to say.

Be thoughtful and trustful and childlike,
Be witty and happy and wise,
Be honest and love all your neighbors,
Be obsequious, purple, and clairvoyant.

Be pompous, obese, and eat cactus,
Be dull, and boring, and omnipresent,
Criticize things you don’t know about,
Be oblong and have your knees removed.

Be tasteless, rude, and offensive,
Live in a swamp and be three dimensional,
Put a live chicken in your underwear,
Get all excited and go to a yawning festival.

O. K. everybody!

Be courteous, kind and forgiving,
Be gentle and peaceful each day,
Be warm and human and grateful,
And have a good thing to say.

Be thoughtful and trustful and childlike,
(O. K. everybody on this!)
Be witty and happy and wise,
Be honest and love all your neighbors,
Be obsequious, purple, and clairvoyant.
(Let ’em hear you outside!)

Be pompous, obese, and eat cactus,
(Everybody sing!)
Be dull, and boring, and omnipresent,
Criticize things you don’t know about,
Be oblong and have your knees removed.

(Ladies only)
Be tasteless, rude, and offensive,
(Now the men)
Live in a swamp and be three dimensional,
(Everybody)
Put a live chicken in your underwear,
Go into a closet and suck eggs.

http://www.vny.com/cf/news/upidetail.cfm?QID=162585

Lyudmila, wife of Russian President Vladmir Putin, thinks he is a vampire, and mourns the fact that the former KGB agent went back into espionage as head of Russia’s Federal Security Service in 1998 — and even then he would regularly go to Finland to get away from the omnipresent microphones.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42991-2001Feb22.html

The Food and Drug Administration is weighing whether to approve a Pennsylvania biotechnology company’s proposal to conduct an experiment that would leave hundreds of sick, premature infants in Latin America without proven lifesaving medications.