Saturday, December 29, 2007

The world is an evil place

I can't believe the news today
I can't close my eyes
And make it go away
How long...How long must we sing this song?

And it's true we are immune
When fact is fiction and TV reality
And today the millions cry
We eat and drink while tomorrow they die
- Sunday Bloody Sunday, U2


More pain and misery in the history of mankind
Sometimes it seems more like
The blind leading the blind
It brings upon us more of famine, death and war
You know religion has a lot to answer for

And all because of it you’d think
That we would learn
But still the body count the city fires burn
Somewhere there's someone dying
In a foreign land
Meanwhile the world is crying stupidity of man
Tell me why, tell me why...
- For the Greater Good of God, Iron Maiden


Why can't we treat our fellow men
With more respect and a shake of their hands
But anger and loathing is rife
The death on all sides is
becoming a way of life

But some are just not wanting peace
Their whole life is death and misery
The only thing that they know
Fight fire with fire life is cheap

But if they do stop to think
That man is teetering right on the brink
But do you think that they care
They benefit from death and pain and despair
- The Legacy, Iron Maiden


The world is a dangerous place to live, not just because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
- Albert Einstein

Sunday, December 9, 2007

A Piece of Hiker

From the Reader's Digest:

Every year, the organizers of the Bulwer-Lytton prize based at San Jose University, California, invite entrants from around the world to come up with terrible opening sentences to imaginary novels. Here are some of this year's best efforts:

Danny, the little Grizzly cub, frolicked in the tall grass on this sunny Spring morning, his mother keeping a watchful eye as she chewed on a piece of a hiker they had encountered the day before.

And this year's winner: Gerald began--but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them "permanently" meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash--to pee.


I like the Reader's Digest. Besides liberal doses of humour, it also had great articles - from people's experiences to real-life dramas. The tagline pretty much sums it up - 'Stories about life, Advice about living'. In fact, I'd recommend that you go and get it now.



[To read the rest of the funnily terrible opening sentences, visit: http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/english/2007.htm]