Thermo-Dynamic Society

 (~ 429–425 B.C.)  The Tragedy of Oedipus One of the most dramatic and touching stories of the world is the ancient Greek, 2500- year- old tragedy of the kingly family of Oedipus of Thebes , who, cursed and cast out as an infant for his father's own pedophile misdeeds with tragic end (and with the consent of his mother), and spiritually blinded by the Gods, as a grown man unwittingly kills his own father and marries his own mother (thus fulfilling the curse), and begets four children with her: Two boys and two girls. After coming to knowledge of what he had done, he physically blinds himself, while his mother and wife commits suicide. Yes, that's the one. The two brothers, Polynices and Eteocles , then personally kill each other in a civil war over the heirloom kingdom, after first having agreed to share the throne alternately (naturally, the first one won't relinquish when the time has come), and the two daughters get into a dispute about whether they should both be...

Wilco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CAYFIpi89k How To Fight Lonelines One day before Christmas , I took my little son to the mall. He was of that age when he had just learned to run, and in the crowd and bustle, he broke loose. Looking round, he did not see me, though no two steps behind him, blocked from view by people, legs and parcels. Frightened by the thought that maybe he had been distracted and was lagging behind, he suddenly bolted and ran ahead, heading straight toward the doorway to the parking lot outside. I fought my way through the merry crowd after him, trying to keep up and shouting his name, but the Christmas din drowned me out, and the shoppers blocked my way. Running between the legs of the grown-ups, he was much faster than me; and losing him, I say him head straight for the cars driving through the snowy, slushy dusk past the entrance with their headlights already on. If he ran out, there was no way they wouldn't run him over; they wouldn't even ...

The girl with bony shoulders When I was young, we used to go to a vacation resort in the mountains during the summer recess. The parents had their leisure, and we kids frolicked around the countryside, did sports and got into the usual trouble, as we had the run of the land. As the years went on, people came and went; some you met again, others you didn't. One summer vacation I met a girl I hadn't seen before. She may have been 13 or perhaps 14; I myself was maybe around 15 or thereabouts, and we pushed our bicycles along the lake and talked, and when I tentatively put an arm around her shoulders as we sat by the waterside, and smelled the scent of her hair baking in the sun, with crickets chirping and dragon flies buzzing around us and the clean, muddy smell from the lake in the upcoming afternoon wind, I felt the thin bones under her shirt (and to this day, I'm into bones). I'd grown up with girls all around, but this one was the first I was, well, personally i...

😀   Rough and politically wrong. In a fake TV documentary many years ago, some faked 'Citizens of Poland' in very loud clothes 'claimed' that their deceased uncle had authored every pop song of the last century, and proceeded to prove this by playing them with tubas and other very loud instruments - making every one sound like a polka. The whole extended family joins in, ' Seductive Sis ' sings while her pay-by-call phone number is displayed on the screen, and so on. "Having stolen their electricity" (another bad cliche, if anything, we're stealing theirs), they are 'forced' to turn the volume down to a whisper from their side so as not to attract too much attention, thereby forcing everyone watching the show to turn up their own TV sets to *full volume* so as to even hear anything - knowing full well they would suddenly turn it up again at the other end, but not WHEN... After lulling the audience by drawing it into the nati...

😀   Refined masters of double and triple entendre. " I'm a senna pod tea addict , and now I'm on the run! " meaning: 1. From the police 2. Searching for a toilet 3. ( must I explain ... ? ) From the Goon Show, Confessions of a Secret Sennapod Drinker OR " Lady Constance de Coverlet " 1. Harmless name 2. Lady, constantly uncovering herself 3. Lady Constance of the Bedsheets With the famous line: Strange Man : " I must warn you, I have no scruples! " Lady Constance de Coverlet : " Oh, you poor man, you! " (Both characters played by a man, of course...)

  The best of times and the worst of times. Now Science with its right hand unveils the more and more delicate machineries of life just before (or after) its left hand destroys them. The same ravaging giant who threatens to demolish it utterly on earth is the only creature who can comprehend and glorify Creation… but no, we'd better not allow ourselves even that little egoism. Doesn't the crane whoop in celebration, the honker honk in celebration, the otter dive and slide in celebration, the coyote bark in celebration, the buffalo paw and grunt in celebration? We aim a black box and scratch on beaten wood pulp. A man will never know again. Thinking we won, we were the only losers. Man always kills the thing he loves... We must look funny to Someone, Tumbling through the universe locked in a death grip with our tiny ball Earth and ripping her busily to pieces, trailing a stinking film of gas and pieces of satellites and mushroom and dust clouds. The weed will win in the e...

  Rooting for Alzheimers All the things you never did And all the things you do They all return in later years They all return to haunt you The most beautiful short poem ever   Flutter by, Butterfly   Sadly (or rather: gladly) as Google told me, I wasn't the only one to dream that one up. So, no copyright there; and so I tried to top that with the arguably less beautiful, but even shorter poem, the shortest possible ever, so there! I die That's it, Folks! ;-)

This is a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) which contains some of the most defining verses in German poetry (and which used to be part of the school curriculum - long, long ago...) It's title, Erlkönig (literally: Alderking) was later used as a term for camouflaged prototypes of new automobiles, which, still in development, were being secretively tested of the streets, and of which one could catch a fleeting glance or make a blurry photograph of, only to have people doubt what you saw. The defining line, " And if you are not willing, I shall employ force! " was cited by generations of Germans wresting with uncooperative artifacts (and people). It is a short ballad about a father desperately trying to reach home on a horse through a forest in the dead of night, holding his fevering, deliriously moaning and dying young boy under his cloak (note the steady escalation of both coercion and violence ). Here's what every German used to know by heart (a...