Metamorphose

METAMORPHOSE

I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy the air, look you, this mighty o'rehanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire; why, it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, how like an angel in apprehension, how like a God! The beauty of the world, paragon of animals; and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dusk. Man delights not me, no, nor women neither, nor women neither.

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Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Lesson 1: Comedy 101 (Gina)
Ahhhhh the lovely Gina provides, long overdue but worth the wait - I have a new one to complete as well, which is going to be hard for me to get into words, I love the challenge, anyhow read on;

Date: 23 August 2005
Lesson Plan 1: Comedy 101
Subject matter: Gina Schauffer
Deadline: long gone
Words: No longer than 400 words, no less then 350.

Question: Take a personally humorous moment within the last week (or before deadline) and discuss why and how you find the subject matter funny.

Why do relationships between passengers on aeroplanes progress at such lightening speed? Last time I checked, air travel didn't involve time travel.

First there's the introductions, usually pre-empted by the fact you've just stood on your neighbour's foot or woken him/her up as you gently removed their slumbering head from your dead shoulder.

This quickly progresses to love, kids, marriage and employment, followed swiftly by Reasons for Travel.

Then - and this is where I come undone - this can progress to deep and dark secrets, hope and fears, or even, heaven forbid, the exchange of details with a view to meeting up again groundside.

In mine and may other weary travellers' defence: You're thousands of miles up, more than a little drunk, with endless hours of mind-numbing travel stretching in front of you. Naturally, the person sitting beside you is going to come across as the most wildly interesting person you've ever had the pleasure of meeting.

And naturally, you're going to feel no qualms whatsoever about revealing intimate personal details to someone who for all intents and purposes could be an inmate on parole, on his way to Vegas, looking for a good time.

And in fact, on a recent trip, I did meet what seemed like a charming, well-travelled, dare I say it, dishy, City broker, clearly loaded and generous with his iPod. So you have a few laughs, you have a few too many bottles of wine, get a reprimand from a stewardess - all of which convince you you've found your new best friend.

Without hesitation you reveal everything bar your bank account details - only to find your in-box clogged the next day with mails from a complete stranger, claiming to know your favourite song and dog's name.

Worse still, when you do finally agree to meet, the charming banker from your flight-addled memory turns out to be a limping ex-army man with a massive under-bite and a chip on his shoulder to match.

We're a strange old breed, humans. By the way, how's your in-flight meal? And would you mind if we swapped seats, I really do prefer the aisle seat.

ed: Must say Gina has a great sense of humor and in my reply to her was as follows - 'You had me enthralled the whole way along, a few grammar and spelling mistakes in there (but that would be the same for mine), but overrall a brilliant story with a often familiar, joked about punchline and 'yep that will probably happen to me' attitude. It's a keeper!'

LS at 10/12/2005 09:38:00 PM

Tube encounter 309
So I decided to head out to Jo's last night to help her with exams. She is currently about to do her final Wednesday so I quizzed her with some pysch questions from the text book. I left around about 10:30pm and headed back to Tooting Broadway, a good 10 minute walk. Weather was a little barmy, strange as it's Autumn and well it's been cold each and every other night, so I enjoyed the cool breeze and headed off to the tube, inserted my return ticket and headed down to the platform.

Now on the way from work to Tooting I was sardined most of the way, but managed to find a piece of some paper and it described an American Naval Muslim Chaplain who was arrested and convicted in Camp Delta in Cuba. He was there to serve as a chaplain to the inmates and people managed to twist it into destroying his life and making him become one of those inmates. Very interesting read - looks like he has written a book (Yee) God and Country, then I read up on that one of the two Ronnie's had died, and read some exerts from his biography from the other Ronnie and John Cleese in regards to the David Frost Report. Highly entertaining and found myself in Tooting no problems, a little disheveled and sweaty but survived the ride.

So on the way home, I knew I was going to get a seat, but probably not a paper as by then the cleaners would have taken them all, fortunately I found the most oldest Metro on the tube which looked like it had travelled all around London all day to end up in my hands, it's dog earred corners and foot-printed pages were testiment to the strife it acheived to turn up still readable and still efficiently enough time to read for my 1 hour trip home on the tube.

However - I get off onto the Piccadilly line and I've read the Metro and now have another 30 minutes, so I sit down with a few people this time in the carriage. Some large guy to my right (thinking Italian) and two Russians to my left. A nice looking girl sitting next to the large guy and a frumpy looking one sitting on reading. A typical night home. Now I'm in the tube relaxed position, head in one hand, eyes closed and thinking happy thoughts when I hear the 'Italian' guy speaking to the nice looking one. I'm thinking he's a pimp, he's a dirty old bastard or he's loaded as he is sleazing it up hardcore, they are talking chit-chat and I realise by the time she gets off she is amused by him but they are now departing their ways for eternity and only fate slip in where needed.

So back to relaxed position and 20 minutes to get home, and then he starts on the frumpy one... and I hear the word --- 'Magic tricks'. So I look up and he produces a deck of cards and is asking her to pick one... I'm saying to myself 'I suppose if you ugly and bald like you mate, I'd have to find a magic trick to work it.' Then he does a nice simple card trip and she's all astonished. He turns to me and I'm captivated but dubious.

'What's your name?'
'Luke'
'Do you believe in magic?'
'Yes and no'
'Do you believe in ghosts?'
'No'
'Ok Luke, I have a deck of cards take one....'

I take one - 9 of clubs - and give it back to him. He then tells me to cut the cards and he puts it into the sleeve packet and says;

'Hold this string...' He is holding an imaginary string above the pack of cards in the sleeve...
I hold the string.... and he says 'I thought you don't believe in ghosts?!'

Now I laugh, he's broken my ice and everyone else in the carriage is now looking up, so I go on and he says.. 'Pull'

And as I pull out flies my card from the deck in the sleeve... nice trick!

I'm laughing and saying nice trick.... he's saying 'Yes but not magic...'

He then fans the cards again and says 'Pick...' I pick a 10 of hearts and put it back in the pack and cut the cards again. He then says 'Put them in piles.' I arrange them in a 4 piles. 'Pick up a pile.' So I pick up the second pile.
'Your card is in here you think?'
'How the hell would I know...' I say.
'Ok now I take this and I going to deal five cards from the top... one two three four and five. Now Luke... Magic --- pick up your card.'

I'm looking at five cards in front of me, and the odds are stacked against him, I know for certain one of those cards is mine, and mediorce magician can slip it in, but now I choose. So I choose the third card... It's the 10 of hearts, the other 4 are all different. I'm astonished and puzzled as I wanted to show him up and he just showed me up... I know a lot of these tricks depend on word and gesture association but that just flattened me.

'One more...' I'm currently deciding to even miss my station if he keeps going.
He pulls out another pack from his jacket pocket, old packet seen better days with an elastic band around the top and the front card is a 4 of Spades.... he fans them out and then puts them back together...
'Now Luke, think of a card in your head.'
I'm thinking, and I want to do this bastard over... 2 of hearts hit me, then I change it to say
'Ace of spades'
Now he's fanned these cards back out and one is upside down... he turns it over and yep it's the
ACE OF SPADES! I then said... 'Fucking hell I was going to say 2 of hearts.' I yelp with some of the passengers clapping in the background.

'Ahhhhh Luke I knew you were going to think that too.' He looks down tapping his a finger from his other hand on his forehead and while he has it fanned out I see the corner of another card which is turned over... I reach over and I pull it out and turn it over....

I still don't know how he did it, nor do I wish to learn how, but it made my night and I'm still smiling today because of this encounter.

Maybe you don't need to believe in the essence of magic of what society of individuals may think and what the dictionaries phrase, but I realise you need to remember the magic of the event which has happened at that instant, and realise that people aren't really who you think they are....

he was from Slovakia.

LS at 10/12/2005 03:41:00 AM

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Year plus one
A lady just came in the office to hand in her references and while she was talking to Lynn she would whistle her 's', and it reminded me of my Nan and when she got new teeth and they look like bigger and brighter than usual, and remembered she would whistle her 's' also. Brought a tear to my eye as I remembered a perfect image of my Nan smiling with her new teeth.
I missed my one year anniversary of the blog and in doing so I was going to go back and have a read through my old input, but I think I won't until further down the track.

It's been an off and on year of sorts and amazing how in 12 months my road and train of thought has changed and metamorphed into other bizarre areas. Just coming back from Munich with Horse and Benny makes me even more happier to be in London again, even though I fell ill to some sort of mad-cow disease and made my ribs hurt, Oktoberfest is something everyone in their life should go along to, the amount of crazy stuff that we got up to and missed out on is well... I cannot explain it - you just need to experience it.

Jo and I are starting to commit a little more every week and I'm finding it difficult to pull away from the individual aspects I have made for myself in the land of single-dom. Going to leave you all with this. It's from one of Jo's friends as she use to live in Taiwan and this guy still lives there, I do believe somehow she misses her life there and I'm sure I would love for her to re-visit it... sooner rather than later.


How-D all,
Sorry for the mass-mail, and for the lack of communication from my side.
I'd like to claim all kinds of excuses; Typhoon Haitung destroyed my
computer and a lot of Taiwan - but for some reason Taiwan was prepared
for a massive tropical storm (because they don't spend all of their time and
money looking for oil) and they had the manpower to offer aid to those who
neened it (because they didn't send almost 90% of their National Guard to fight
in a war thousands of miles from the nation they were supposed to be
guarding)... so that excuse is only valid if I happen to be American.
I'm not trying to sound callous, but really - I live in a country where
the majority of people live below the poverty line. The storm that struck
here was as large as Katrina (and the waves that surely followed), but for
some reason the only fatalities in Taiwan happened to be reporters that
decided to step into a flooded river to demonstrate how fast the waters were...
and they were fast enough to swallow reporters whole - more news at eleven.
Could it be that a country deemed "Third World" by most of western
society has a more advanced global weather monitoring system... or could it be
that every American satelite and television is focused on a shore far from
home?
I saw yesterday on CNN that Hurricane Katrina has been deemed "The Most
Devestating Natural Disaster of Our Time." It's a good thing that every
major international television station is American - otherwise people
would know about that other natural disaster that struck Southeast Asia... I
remember something about a tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands -
but that's an acceptable loss because Southeast Asia has neither the
resources, money, television networks, or celebrity power to be deemed "The Most
Devestating Natural Disaster of Our Time." No, that title is reserved
for A-list celebrities to spout in a plea for aid. If Mike Myers tells us
it's important, then it must be.
I'm not trying to demean the deaths of Americans or any other losses in
any other nation - I'm just trying to reinforce a fact that CNN and every
other major "News" broadcaster has omitted in each of their commentaries -
people die all over the world, every day. Every race, nationality, and age -
they die just like the rest of us will. Where they - or we - happen to call
home makes no difference, and hundreds of thousands of dead is no less a
travesty than one. Just because there's more coverage in the news, it doesn't
give something a greater impact.
Yeah, it's easier to look in our own backyards and see problems there
than it is to see the problems in the rest of the world. It's easier to bitch
about the war in Iraq than it is to do something to stop it, and it's
easier to call president Bush a chimp than it is to prove he is one (that one's
debatable). When someone we've all seen in movies tells us that Katrina
is "The Most Devestating Natural Disaster of Our Time," it doesn't mean
they're saying anything other than what they were paid to say - and when we
believe it... what does that say about us?
I say we take all of those blowhards that appeal for cash, all of those
famous faces that manned the phones after 9/11, and all of those
corporate emperors that cash in on conflict, and ask them to donate 2% of their
annual salaries to a global relief fund. Suddenly telethons will be extinct,
relief funds will be in a surplus, and the average Joe can sit back and
forget about the rest of the world, watching pre-fabricated sitcoms on
tv and munching on equally pre-fabricated food. Welcome to utopia.
Cheers - hope your day's a sunny one,
Brad

LS at 10/05/2005 10:03:00 PM

Diary of the Gods - Jetblack