Hugh Grant adores cats ! ~ The Graham Norton Show

 

Hugh Grant adores cats ! 

~ The Graham Norton Show ~

 

Brian and Frosty ! ~ by Hénock Gugsa (ሄኖክ ጉግሣ )

 

Brian and Frosty !
~ by Hénock Gugsa  (ሄኖክ  ጉግሣ ) ~

     It didn't happen to me, but it did, many years ago, to a wacky co-worker of mine named Brian.  He was a rather slender fellow with a voracious appetite.  You never saw him without some piece of food in his mouth.  He was always noshing on something, and he was always bragging about his bacchanal attachment to food.
     Brian would tell of his nightly raids on his well-stocked refrigerator at home.  So, one night, he had awoken from a deep slumber and was heading barefoot to the kitchen as usual.  But this time, he hadn't even bothered to turn the light on and was blindly feeling his way to his destination.  Suddenly, he stopped!  He had stepped on something wet and gelatinous under his errant foot.  He described this experience glowingly and almost with some kind of worshipful ecstasy.
     He said he was envisioning melted chocolate on his foot and his mouth was salivating as he spoke.  He said that his foot began to quash the sticky stuff as his toes wriggled in harmony with his every movement.  At last he couldn't stand it any longer.  He had
to see what a delightful vision awaited him on his foot.
     He reached to the nearest wall that had a light switch and turned it on.  He looked down at his foot ... and what he saw did not shock him at all.  Instead, he was delirious with the insane hilarity of the situation ... he had stepped on his cat's poop!  Frosty had had an accident early on that evening and left a generous deposit on the kitchen floor!
     Brian wished his wife and children were up to see the masterpiece mousse he had created that wondrous night!  But no matter! ...  at least Frosty was there looking up quizzically at him !!! 🤔 👍

Tom Brady at the White House ~ by Tod Perry

 

 

Tom Brady at the White House
~ by Tod Perry ~  

[] [] [] []

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers were honored by President Joe Biden in a ceremony on the White House lawn Tuesday. The event celebrated their Super Bowl win over the Kansas City Chiefs in February.

In his short speech, quarterback Tom Brady found common ground with president Biden. Brady, 43, was the oldest quarterback to win the Super Bowl, and Biden, 78, is the oldest to ever win the presidency.
"Personally, it's nice for me to be back here," Brady said. "We had a game in Chicago where I forgot what down it was. I lost track of one down in 21 years of playing, and they started calling me 'Sleepy Tom.' Why would they do that to me?"

Biden, who was often referred to as "Sleepy Joe" by Donald Trump during the 2020 election, responded with a smile, saying, "I don't know!"
Brady also noted that the Bucs were such underdogs midway through the season that few people thought they could or did win the title. He jokingly compared that to a large number of Republicans who can't bring themselves to accept Biden's victory.
"It didn't look great there at one point. We were 7-5, struggling a little bit, as the President alluded to. But we found a rhythm, we got on a roll," Brady said. "Not a lot of people think that we could have won. In fact, I think, about 40 percent of the people still don't think we won."
"I understand that," Biden responded.
"Do you understand that, Mr. President?" Brady replied.
"I understand that," Biden jokingly confirmed.
Coach Bruce Arians (68) and Brady's victory made them the oldest coach-quarterback combo to ever win the Super Bowl.
"Well I'll tell you right now, you won't hear any jokes about that from me," Biden said. "As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing wrong with being the oldest guy to make it to the mountaintop. That's how I look at it."
Brady is a seven-time Super Bowl champion but this is the first visit he's made the trip to the White House to celebrate since 2005 when George W. Bush was president. He turned down Barack ibama's invitation in 2015 and Trump's in 2017.

The Patriots chose as a team not to attend the White House event after winning in 2019.

 

The "Lying Down" Movement in China ~ by Elsie Chen, The New York Times

 

  Luo Huazhong, who popularized the idea of adopting a more relaxed approach to life, taking a break in Jiande, China.Credit...Qilai Shen for The New York Times

The "Lying Down" Movement in China 

~ by Elsie Chen, The New York Times ~

<><><><><><><>

Young people in China have set off a nascent counterculture movement that involves lying down and doing as little as possible.

July 3, 2021

阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版

     Five years ago, Luo Huazhong discovered that he enjoyed doing nothing. He quit his job as a factory worker in China, biked 1,300 miles from Sichuan Province to Tibet and decided he could get by on odd jobs and $60 a month from his savings. He called his new lifestyle “lying flat.”

     “I have been chilling,” Mr. Luo, 31, wrote in a blog post in April, describing his way of life. “I don’t feel like there’s anything wrong.”

     He titled his post “Lying Flat Is Justice,” attaching a photo of himself lying on his bed in a dark room with the curtains drawn. Before long, the post was being celebrated by Chinese millennials as an anti-consumerist manifesto. “Lying flat” went viral and has since become a broader statement about Chinese society.

     A generation ago, the route to success in China was to work hard, get married and have children. The country’s authoritarianism was seen as a fair trade-off as millions were lifted out of poverty. But with employees working longer hours and housing prices rising faster than incomes, many young Chinese fear they will be the first generation not to do better than their parents.

     They are now defying the country’s long-held prosperity narrative by refusing to participate in it.

     Mr. Luo’s blog post was removed by censors, who saw it as an affront to Beijing’s economic ambitions. Mentions of “lying flat” — tangping, as it’s known in Mandarin — are heavily restricted on the Chinese internet. An official counternarrative has also emerged, encouraging young people to work hard for the sake of the country’s future.

     “After working for so long, I just felt numb, like a machine,” Mr. Luo said in an interview. “And so I resigned.”

     To lie flat means to forgo marriage, not have children, stay unemployed and eschew material wants such as a house or a car. It is the opposite of what China’s leaders have asked of their people. But that didn’t bother Leon Ding.

     Mr. Ding, 22, has been lying flat for almost three months and thinks of the act as “silent resistance.” He dropped out of a university in his final year in March because he didn’t like the computer science major his parents had chosen for him.

     After leaving school, Mr. Ding used his savings to rent a room in Shenzhen. He tried to find a regular office job but realized that most positions required him to work long hours. “I want a stable job that allows me to have my own time to relax, but where can I find it?” he said.

     Mr. Ding thinks young people should work hard for what they love, but not “996” — 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week — as many employers in China expect. Frustrated with the job search, he decided that “lying flat” was the way to go.

     “To be honest, it feels really comfortable,” he said. “I don’t want to be too hard on myself.”

     To make ends meet, Mr. Ding gets paid to play video games and has minimized his spending by doing things like cutting out his favorite bubble tea. Asked about his long-term plans, he said: “Come back and ask me in six months. I only plan for six months.”

     While plenty of Chinese millennials continue to adhere to the country’s traditional work ethic, “lying flat” reflects both a nascent counterculture movement and a backlash against China’s hypercompetitive work environment.

     Xiang Biao, a professor of social anthropology at Oxford University who focuses on Chinese society, called tangping culture a turning point for China. “Young people feel a kind of pressure that they cannot explain and they feel that promises were broken,” he said. “People realize that material betterment is no longer the single most important source of meaning in life.”

     The ruling Communist Party, wary of any form of social instability, has targeted the “lying flat” idea as a threat to stability in China. Censors have deleted a tangping group with more than 9,000 members on Douban, a popular internet forum. The authorities also barred posts on another tangping forum with more than 200,000 members.

     In May, China’s internet regulator ordered online platforms to “strictly restrict” new posts on tangping, according to a directive obtained by The New York Times. A second directive required e-commerce platforms to stop selling clothes, phone cases and other merchandise branded with “tangping.”

     The state news media has called tangping “shameful,” and a newspaper warned against “lying flat before getting rich.” Yu Minhong, a prominent billionaire, urged young people not to lie down, because “otherwise who can we rely on for the future of our country?”

     Mr. Luo decided to write about tangping after he saw people heatedly discussing China’s latest census results in April and calls for the country to address a looming demographic crisis by having more babies.

     He described his original “lying flat” blog post as “an inner monologue from a man living at the bottom of the society.”

     “Those people who say lying down is shameful are shameless,” he said. “I have the right to choose a slow lifestyle. I didn’t do anything destructive to society. Do we have to work 12 hours a day in a sweatshop, and is that justice?”

     Mr. Luo was born in rural Jiande County, in eastern Zhejiang Province. In 2007, he dropped out of a vocational high school and started working in factories. One job involved working 12-hour shifts at a tire factory. By the end of the day, he had blisters all over his feet, he said.

     In 2014, he found a job as a product inspector in a factory but didn’t like it. He quit after two years and took on the occasional acting gig to make ends meet. (In 2018, he played a corpse in a Chinese movie by, of course, lying flat.)

     Today, he lives with his family and spends his days reading philosophy and news and working out. He said it was an ideal lifestyle, allowing him to live minimally and “think and express freely.” He encourages his followers, who call him “the Master of Lying Down,” to do the same.

     After hearing about Mr. Luo’s tangping post on a Chinese podcast, Zhang Xinmin, 36, was inspired to write a song about it.

     Mr. Zhang, a musician based in Wuhan, had quit his job in advertising five years ago to pursue his music, and the idea of lying flat resonated with him. He called his song “Tangping Is the Right Way.”

     Mr. Zhang uploaded the song to his social media platforms on June 3, and within a day censors had deleted it from three websites. He was furious.

     “Nowadays, only running forward is allowed, but not lying down,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense to me that they deleted this song.”

     He eventually uploaded the song as a video on YouTube, which is blocked in China. The video shows him lying down on his sofa, casually strumming his guitar as he sings in a breezy voice:

     Lying down is really good
     Lying down is wonderful
     Lying down is the right thing to do
     Lie down so you won’t fall anymore
     Lying down means never falling down.

On Parenthood ~ by TPO

 

On Parenthood (ስለ  ወላጅነት)

 ~ by TPO ~

**** /// **** 

  From a Facebook thread under the heading -- Husbands' and Wives' Jokes

   After 10 years, the wife starts to think their kid looks kinda strange so she decides to do a DNA test.
  She finds out that the kid is actually from completely different parents.
Wife: Honey, I have something very serious to tell you.
Husband: What’s up?
Wife: According to DNA test results, this is not our kid.
Husband: Well you don't remember, do you??
   When we were leaving the hospital, we noticed that our baby had pooped.
   Then you said:
 - Please go change the baby, I’ll wait for you here.
   So I went inside, got a clean one and left the dirty one there.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
KG ===> This is really really serious.  I could not laugh but be sad. But, being it is a joke    ... why not I chuckled a bit.
GB ===> Very funny! Thanks for the laughter!
EM ===> Well....... He is done.
BZ ===> Omg ....this is not funny even if it is joke!

Hénock Gugsa ===> This is hilarious ! What is there to be serious about ? A baby is a baby  ... is it any more special than another ?

KG ===>  If you do not mind raising somebody else's child of course not ....

Hénock Gugsa ===> KG -- In the final analysis, it's how a child is raised that matters. Babies are like clean slates. Some great personalities started out as orphans or babies given up for adoption. And then, of-course, there is no iron-clad guarantee that real (natural or blood) parents will automatically love and bond with a child. እንዴ የባዳ ልጅ ይወደዳል አይደል አንዳንዴ ? የክርስትና ልጅም ከራስ ልጅ እኩል ወይም የበላይ የሚታይበት ጊዜ አለ ።

KG ===> Hénock Gugsa -- yehe k[l]ej yetewisedew ke hospital new eko. Yerasun kej kezen netreg aketote yelela sew lij yezo temelese.. bakebeteh yanten lij lewita betmeta behetsanenetu tej[k]ebekeh setasadig noreh yante lij aydelem betebale [gize] men yisemahal. [sic]  [Apparently no access to the Amharic alphabet font !]

Hénock Gugsa ===> KG -- ታድያ በዛች ሰዓት ልጁን እርግፍ አድርጌ እጥለዋለሁ ማለት ነው እንዴ ？ ምንም ቢሆን ፥ ምንም ቢሆን ያው ልጄ ነው ። እርግጥ ሕግ ወይም መንግስት ወይም ዘመዶች እና ማህበረ ሰቡ (society) ላይስማሙኝ ይችላሉ ። ግን የልጁን መውደድ ከመቅስፈት ሊያጠፉት አይችሉም ፣ የራሴንም ልጅ እንኳን ቢመልሱልኝም እንደ አዲስ ሀ ብዬ ነው ላፈቅረው የምጀምረው ! በነገራችን ላይ ባዳ （stranger) የሚባለው ቃል እና ሃሳብ (concept) ዋጋ የለውም !  It's nonsense ! ለመሆኑ ባዳ አይተን ፥ ወደን ፥ አግብተን ዘመድ እናደርጋለን አይደለም እንዴ ?  በሕግም በሃይማኖትም ከስጋ ዘመድ መውለድ ክልክል (taboo) ነው !  On the other hand, when you think about it, the child we make with a stranger is actually half a stranger too !
=======================
  7/4 -7/5, 2021

Old farmer's Advice ~ from the Midwest

 

Old farmer's Advice ~ from the Midwest

<><><><><><>

- Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and bull-strong.
- Keep skunks and bankers at a distance.
- Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.
- A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor.
- Words that soak into your ears are whispered... not yelled.
- Meanness don't just happen overnight.
- Forgive your enemies; it messes up their heads.
- Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you.
- It don't take a very big person to carry a grudge.
- You cannot unsay a cruel word.
- Every path has a few puddles.
- When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.
- The best sermons are lived, not preached.
- Most of the stuff people worry about, ain't never gonna happen anyway.
- Don't judge folks by their relatives.
- Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
- Live a good and honorable life, then when you get older and think back, you'll enjoy it a second time.
- Don't interfere with something' that ain't bothering you none.
- Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.
- If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin'.
- Sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got.
- The biggest troublemaker you'll probably ever have to deal with, watches you from the mirror every morning'.
- Always drink upstream from the herd.
- Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.
- Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin' it back in.
- If you get to thinking' you're a person of some influence, try ordering' somebody else's dog around.
- Live simply, love generously, care deeply, speak kindly, and enjoy the ride.
- Don't pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight, he'll just shoot you!

 

Ethiopia: Comical Conflict and Angst among the Youth ~ by TPO

 

Ethiopia: Comical Conflict and Angst among the Youth
L'éthiopie:  Le conflt et l'angoisse comique entre la jeunesse
(ጆኒ ምን እዳ ነው / አልማዝ ምን እዳ ነው)
💚 💛 ❤️ 

 

Sometimes ...! Quelquefois ...! ~ (by) de Hénock Gugsa

 

Sometimes ...!  Quelquefois ...! 

~ (by) de Hénock Gugsa ~

 

The Pastor and His Donkey - by Anonymous

 

 The Pastor and His Donkey 

- by Anonymous -

The Pastor entered his donkey in a race and it won. The Pastor was so pleased with the donkey that he entered it in the race again and it won again.  

The local paper read: PASTOR'S ASS OUT FRONT! 

The Bishop was so upset with this kind of publicity that he ordered the Pastor not to enter the donkey in another race.  

The next day the local paper headline read: BISHOP SCRATCHES PASTOR'S ASS.

This was too much for the Bishop so he ordered the Pastor to get rid of the donkey. 

The Pastor decided to give it to a Nun in a nearby convent.  

The local paper, hearing of the news, posted the following headline the next day: NUN HAS BEST ASS IN TOWN.   

The Bishop fainted. He informed the Nun that she would have to get rid of the donkey so she sold it to a farmer for $10.  

The next day the paper read: NUN SELLS ASS FOR $10!  

This was too much for the Bishop so he ordered the Nun to buy back the donkey and lead it to the plains where it could run wild.  

The next day the headlines read: NUN ANNOUNCES HER ASS IS NOW WILD AND FREE.  The Bishop was buried the next day !  

The "Lazy" Student ~ by Hénock Gugsa

 

 

The "Lazy" Student *

[totally revised, edited, and translated]

 by Hénock Gugsa

Modern education finally arrived in rural Ethiopia.  Students began to be taught not only reading and writing but also basic arithmetic.  Some students were very bright and were advancing pretty well in their studies, but others were finding the going pretty near impossible.   But, the situation was especially more challenging to the teachers who had to improvise and find new ways of teaching. 

One such teacher began a method called "Applied Arithmetic" .... Basically, he was now using examples from daily rural life to make problems comprehensible and solvable to students.  Among his charge was one particular student who was finding the concept of "subtraction" completely incomprehensible.

“Look,” said the teacher, “Say you have five sheep in a pasture. If one sheep goes away from the herd,  scampers off  by itself and escapes, how many sheep would you now have left? ”

“ None,” replied the student firmly.

“Incredible! ” said the teacher with a heavy sigh.  “How did you arrive at that answer? ”

“This one actually made sense to me, teacher, ” said the wide-eyed student.  “If one sheep goes, all the rest will follow! ”

The teacher gave up.  He couldn't begin to argue with a student who was also a shepherd boy.

_________________________________________________________

* inspired by an Amhara folk tale from Ethiopia that was narrated by Kassa Alamrew

 

Mt Olympus ~ by TPO

 

 

Mt Olympus 

** by TPO ** 

 

"The Banister of Life" ~ by Walter McCorrisken

 

"The Banister of Life"
by Walter McCorrisken
(the World's Worst Poet, 1979)
====================
As you slide down the banister of life
Slide with joy and not with dismay
And I hope sincerely for your sake
The splinters are facing the other way.

 

The Vanquishers! ~ by TPO

 

The Vanquishers ! 

~ by TPO ~
~ Whoever they are I love them !
~ Actually they are the Salut Salon Quartet from Hamburg, Germany
Angelika Bachmann (violin)
Iris Siegfried (violin)
Anne-Monika von Twardowski (piano)
Sonja Lena Schmid (cello)
❤️  ❤️  ❤️  ❤️

 

 

Conversation with a Vampire ! ~ by Anonymous

 

Conversation with a Vampire !
~ by Anonymous ~
===================

“Vampires change humans, but humans change vampires too,” said the vampire.

The human frowned. “Like - into humans?”

“No, no, it’s like - it’s like the sunlight thing. One day we’re fine with sunlight, and then the next day you go, ‘You know what, we’re changing the rules, now sunlight makes you burst into flames and die.’ Half of us were wiped out because we didn’t get the memo, and the other half had to go underground.”

“We never ...”

“You did,” said the vampire. “Ever since Nosferatu came out, humans have known that sunlight kills vampires. It never did before, but it always has ever since.”

“Because of a movie?”

“Because of stories. That’s your part of the power. Humans tell stories to change the world around them. You don’t know you’re doing it most of the time, but whenever we get too big, you change the rules and make us start from scratch.”

“So you get super-strength, shapeshifting, flight, mind-control, and an unending blood-lust-”

“And you get to be the kid on the playground who says he has an ‘everything-proof-shield.’”

“I still think you have the better end of the deal here.”

“We really don’t. Now let me in.”

“No.”

 

Panic Notes to Self ~ by Hénock Gugsa

 

Panic Notes to Self

by Hénock Gugsa

     I can relate completely with almost everyone of the items on anybody's Panic list.

     I wonder ... do you also write little panic notes to yourself on any piece of paper and have them laying around on desks, night stands, kitchen counters, dining-room table, etc. ?! 

     I have found these notes helpful although I have been curious at times about why I wrote them down in the first place !  Also, sometimes I wonder if I should dispose of them completely knowing full well that I have already dealt with them once and for all !  Maybe I should now write a new note to myself about this !

 

Archie's America! ( የ አርቺ አሜሪካ) ~ by Hénock Gugsa

 

Archie's America!

 😀 ( የ አርቺ አሜሪካ ) 😂 

 by  Hénock Gugsa

 

Judgemental perhaps ?! ~ by Hénock Gugsa

 

Judgemental perhaps ?! ~ 

by Hénock Gugsa 

I asked a lady friend of mine, " Why are more and more men shaving their heads completely and trying to look like Yul Brynner?!  What's up with that?! " ....

She answered :  Coz men are getting vainer and vainer by the day.  They prefer no hair to hair loss or graying hair !!!

There might be some grains of truth to that !!!
________________________________________
Comment by FC on Facebook :
Hénock, judging men as a hole is like judging women as a hole, irrelevant.
A perfect example of misandry. 😉
-------------------------------------------
Hénock responds :
FC --- And there may be more grains of truth here !

 

Retired and Prankish ! ~ by Anonymous

 

 

Retired and Prankish !
~ by Anonymous ~

Yesterday, I was at my local TSC store buying a large bag of my dog's food for my loyal livestock guard dog, and was in the checkout when a woman behind me asked if I had a dog.

What?  Did she think I had an elephant?  So, since I'm retired and have little to do, on impulse, I told her that no, I didn't have a dog, I was starting the Dog Diet again.  I added that I probably shouldn't, because I ended up in the hospital last time.  But I'd lost 10 pounds before I woke up in intensive care with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IVs in both arms.  I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way that it works is to load your pockets with dog nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry.  The food is nutritionally complete so it works well and I was going to try it again.  (I have to mention here that practically everyone in line was enthralled with my story!)

Horrified, she asked me if I ended up in intensive care because the dog food poisoned me.  I told her no, I stepped off the curb to sniff an Irish Setter's rear end and a car hit me.

I thought the guy behind her was going to have a heart attack he was laughing so hard.  I'm now banned for life from Tractor Supply.

Better watch what you ask retired people.  They have all the time in the world to think of things to say !

 

Richards and White : Time Travelers ~ by TPO

 

Richards and White : Time Travelers 

~ by TPO ~

Keith Richards (born 1943) :

- grizzled and gnarly rocker,

- has lived  a life full of hell-raising and bizarre antics,

- a miracle where he gets his stamina even in his elderly years !

 Betty White  (born 1922) :

- irrepressible and  uninhibited comedienne and show-biz perennial,

- full of vim and vigor,

- on the cusp of attaining centenarian status and still going strong !

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Richards & White :

- They're made of rare stuff,

- ... and they're irreproducible ! 

 

 

On a Bridge Strategy ~ by Frank Stewart

 

On a Bridge Strategy 

~ by Frank Stewart ~