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)

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)

Sweet poison

When I first started selling wild honey
the price was extremely high. Then someone
in Korea ate too much and died.

This year’s harvest: quarter of a teaspoon.
You have a few minutes before
you are overcome with an urgent need
to defecate, urinate and vomit.

After the purge, you alternate between
light and dark. You can see and then
you can’t see. A sound, jam jam jam pulses,
like the drone of a bee hive, in your head.
Then you lose all motor function.
The paralysis lasts for a day or so.

Normally we have to see a doctor
to get bad things taken out of our bodies,
but the honey does this for us.

(From a National Geographic photo of wild honey caption)

A modern gentleman

Carries house guests’ luggage to their rooms, breaks
a relationship face to face
has read Pride and Prejudice, demonstrates
that making love is neither a race
nor a competition. Never lets a door
slam in someone’s face, is unafraid
to speak the truth, arrives five minutes before,
possesses at least one dark suit, well-made.
Can undo a bra with one hand, has two
tricks to entertain children, can prepare
a bonfire, says his name when introduced,
cooks an omelette to die for. Knows that there
is always an exception to a rule;
avoids lilac socks, polishes his shoes.

(From Revealed: The 39 steps to being a modern gentleman)

Not given to imagination

Mummy, I’m not afraid to die.
Why do you talk of dying
and you so young
do you want a lollipop?

No, but I shall be with Peter and June.

Mummy, let me tell you about my dream last night.
Darling, I’ve no time now. Tell me again later.

No, Mummy, you must listen.
I dreamt I went to school
and there was no school there.
Something black had come down all over it.
You mustn’t have chips for supper for a bit.

The next day off to school went her daughter
as happy as ever.
In the communal grave she was buried
with Peter on one side
and June on the other.

(From an account of 10-year-old Eryl Mai’s premonition of the 1966 Aberfan avalanche disaster)

A year ago last September

A YEAR AGO LAST SEPTEMBER TWO ladies with a child
were travelling on the Hudson River cars,
one of whom offered a seat to a middle aged gentleman
with light whiskers or goatee

slightly gray, who kindly pointed out to her
the red leaved trees
and said he had a number of them on his place
and made himself otherwise agreeable;

and when she was leaving him
(ten miles this side of where he stopped)
gave her a parting embrace, which she has never
been able to forget.

(A personal ad from the New York Herald, 25 January 1862)

On the division of animals

More often than not, the linguist or anthropologist just throws up his hands and resorts to giving a list — a list that one would not be surprised to find in the writings of Borges.
George Lakoff

Those that belong to the Emperor,
embalmed ones,
those that are trained,
suckling pigs,
mermaids,
fabulous ones,
stray dogs,
those that are included in this classification,
those that tremble as if they were mad,
innumerable ones,
those drawn with a very fine camel’s hair brush,
others,
those that have just broken a flower vase,
those that resemble flies from a distance.

From ‘Other Inquisitions’ in which Borges writes of a strange way of classifying animals in an ancient Chinese encyclopaedia. Via Futility Closet. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

CV

My Most Illustrious Lord,

I know how, in the course of the siege of a terrain,
to remove water from the moats and how to make
an infinite number of bridges, mantlets
and scaling ladders and other instruments
necessary to such an enterprise.

I have also types of cannon, most convenient
and easily portable, with which to hurl small stones
almost like a hail-storm; and the smoke from the cannon
will instil a great fear in the enemy
on account of the grave damage and confusion.

I have means of arriving at a designated
spot through mines and secret winding passages
constructed completely without noise, even if
it should be necessary to pass underneath
moats or any river.

Also I will make cannon, mortar and light ordnance
of very beautiful and functional design
that are quite out of the ordinary.

I will assemble catapults, mangonels,
trebuckets and other instruments of wonderful
efficiency not in general use.

And should a sea battle be occasioned,
I have examples of many instruments
which are highly suitable either in attack
or defence, and craft which will resist the fire
of all the heaviest cannon and powder and smoke.

Also I can execute sculpture in marble,
bronze and clay. Likewise in painting, I can do
everything possible as well as any other.

From a letter Leonardo da Vinci wrote to Ludovico Sforza around 1483, commending himself for court employment. Via Letters of Note. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

The burn

Boredom makes us do it, that and the chase.
The sun whitens the grass until it’s ripe
to burn and then we light it, watch and wait.

The flames take the land, they come and we run.
Us in our shorts, them in their gear, too
clumsy to run but fast because they’re men.

We’re laughing and falling, stumbling and rolling
safe if not caught, too young to worry
about the dead birds and black landscape.

From Gawain Barnard’s photography exhibition, as previewed on A Fine Beginning: Made in Wales, BBC News In Pictures, 14 March 2014. Words omitted: ‘and then’ (line 4), ‘and’ (7), ‘from the burn’ (8), ‘broken land’ (9). Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

Stroke

In case you don’t know me, Hi. Im Diana.
I’m a 30 year old lady.
Itallerthan your average girl,
thinner tha your average girl,
and and active than your average girl.

Yeah I run an ice crea business for a living,
but like to thing
I’m healthier than your average girl too.
No priorn medical history. Nothing.

my first ever ride in an ambulance
was uneventful – the hops;ital
is a 5 minute drive from my folks’ house.

By now I had somehow regained some ability to sspeak
and answered the EMT’s incessant questionsining.
still stuumbling over my words,
even laughin at my mstakes.

(From Bad Year for Boars, an immediate account of suffering a stroke)