Author: gabrielsmy

Feed the brute

Advice on Marriage to Young Ladies:
do not marry at all but if you must
avoid the Beauty Men, Flirts and Bounders,
Tailors Dummies and Football Enthusiasts.

Look for a Strong, Tame Man, a Fire-lighter,
Coal-getter, Window Cleaner and Yard Swiller.
Don’t expect too much, most men are lazy,
selfish, thoughtless, lying, drunken, clumsy,

heavy-footed, rough, unmanly brutes,
and need taming. All Bachelors are
and many are worse still. If you want him
to be happy, Feed the Brute. The same

remark applies to dogs. You will be wiser
not to chance it, it isn’t worth the risk.

(Suffragette marriage advice from Pontypridd Museum, via History Hit)

Dead brown mice

At sundown the western sky turned a deep
and almost brilliant red, changing
and softening in colour in its upward
spread until the verge from south to north
was like an immense but yellowing rainbow.
Then frost came lightly; there was the merest
sound of a crinkle in walking over the grass
away from the oak wood. This morning the air
was softer. On the broad marl and flint track
there were dead brown mice; they had crept
from among the withered leaves under
the bramble bushes; it is one of the signs
that winter is sharpening.

(From 100 years ago: Rooks set about the acorns in an orderly way)

10 more years

Ten years of being loved up
fucked up 
fucked off
loved up 
very loved up
totally fucked off 
so fucking loved up 
I love you so fucking much
fuck you and the fucking horse 
you rode in on. 
Yeah? 
Well, fuck you, too. 
And utterly 
utterly 
loved the fuck up. 
Another ten, then? 
Yeah, go on 
you sexy mother fucker.

(A friend’s Facebook status celebrating 10 years of a relationship)

Going on

The dog on a train station on my bed 
and Netflix 
and I’m working fine now 
and I’m not working on a new phone 
and then I’m driving to this room with me 
and I don’t know if I’ll get it back 
or I get it now 
I got a problem 
that I’m just going on with my life

(Generated by hitting the suggested text button in iPhone Notes repeatedly)

Théodore Monod’s flan

Place some pastry in the flan-tray
in irregular masses, these
are the Precambrian mountain chains.

One fine day, while iguanodons
are blundering around in Picardy
and swarms of ammonites
are scudding around in the Parisian sea
a second tap is turned on again
and adds another layer,
this time of cream.
The sea re-invades a good part of the Sahara
and deposits the usual sediments —
Cretaceous and Eocene.

Gradually, the country comes to be
like it is today;
sprinkle with granular sugar
(fresh-water Quaternary deposits)
and icing sugar dunes.
Serve hot or chilled.

(From French naturalist Théodore Monod’s Méharées: Explorations au vrai Sahara, 1937)

Can you die of a broken heart?

Researchers have looked at what goes on in the brain,
and for lovers and addicts it’s exactly the same.

Those who are newly in love
experience joy in their minds from a dopamine flood.

And it’s this same pattern that goes on in the brain
as that which occurs when you’re hooked on cocaine.

So in the first throes of passion you’re literally addicted to love,
and that’s probably why those feelings all hurt so much.

(From Can you die of a broken heart? Submitted by Ben Mellor)

Almost never losing

My whole life is about winning.
I don’t lose often.

I have a great relationship with the Mexican people.

All of the women on The Apprentice
flirted with me – consciously
or unconsciously.
That’s to be expected.

I have a great relationship with the blacks.

I better use some Tic Tacs
in case I start kissing her.
You know I’m automatically attracted
to beautiful women,
I just start kissing them,
it’s like a magnet.
You know when you’re a star they let you do it.
You can do anything.
Grab them by the pussy.
You can do anything.

I have tremendous respect for the Japanese people.

You know, it really doesn’t matter what they write
as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.
But she’s got to be young and beautiful.

Part of the beauty of me
is that I am very rich.
A person who is very flat-chested
is very hard to be a 10.

Black entertainers love Donald Trump.

Well, someone’s doing the raping, Don!
I mean, somebody’s doing it.
Who’s doing the raping?

With the proper woman you don’t need Viagra.

I almost never lose.

Who’s doing the raping?

(Quotes from The Collected Donald Trump and 32 quotes that sum up Donald Trump’s election campaign)

Let’s Bubble Up to the Surface and Smell the Numbers

now when things went south for you…
and the value has obviously increased…
that’s my question where’s the damage…

assume that everything went horribly wrong…
what’s your damage assume your damage…

you can’t just roll on and on…
let’s make the motions…
let’s start pushing this…

a healthy lawyer-to-lawyer relationship…
give me whatever you got…
to me it sounds a little skeptical…

so what I’m thinking is…
maybe what I can do is…
something like that could even…
if I have to hire somebody like that I just might…

you got burned on this one but life moves on my friend…
I think we need to take care of all the…
and then you and I will sit down and…

bubble up to the surface, smell the numbers…
get all our ducks in a row…
stop the hemorrhaging…

this is my stop I’m getting off…
call my girl…
we’ll get your gravy back…

(A cellphone conversation overheard on the Long Island Rail Road. Submitted by Derek Owens)

Specific comments about certain aspects of the meals service

In reply to a comment about the
fish batter not being sufficiently
crisp, Mr Howe explained that one of the fish
friers was not working properly, but
that he hoped that this would be put right
in the near future.

Mr Howe also
mentioned that recently it appeared
that a small number of undergraduates
in lunch and informal hall were taking
two portions of sweet or cheese and biscuits.
The committee agreed with him that people
should not take an additional helping
which they had not paid for.

Mr Howe said
that there was a tendency for the pencils
to disappear from the ticket machines
outside hall; the committee felt that
for the benefit of others, people
should not remove the pencils from the ticket
machines.

Mr Howe was worried about
standards of hygiene in the ‘servery’
and thought that undergraduates could
play a part in preserving standards by
refraining from peering into the food trays.

(Kitchen Committee minutes from Fitzwilliam College Magazine, 1971)