Fighting the Current

shock and awwwww

To clear up anything, I am not neurotic, but I sure as hell act it sometimes.

I sat down at the computer with the express intention of downloading my pictures. In the past 11 days, I have taken over 198 pictures. Well, with two trips, the beginning of Spring, and some strange atmospheric occurances, pictures add up. lol, I never said all 198+ were any good. I have maybe 10-20 which I am very proud of. The others... eh,varying degrees of quality. Some are all right. Some are horrible.

My garden is clear of debris, and everything is cut back to the buds. I even was able to climb through the weeds and ivy to get rid of a lot of the honeysuckle. It smells pretty on the breeze, but it really threatens my garden some years. This way, I won't have to pull any out until, if I'm lucky, mid-July.

You wouldn't think ancient Roman poets could write humor. It's just not something people tend to think about. And yet, we just translated a few poems in class which definitely had some humor to them. One was about a man who put on a fake accent (the entire poem had strange spellings, it was titled in English "Arrius' Phony Haccent").

Odd how violent pacifists can be.

I was looking through my quote collection for a specific Einstein quote. I could remember most of it, but I wanted the exact words. I finally found it:

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

It's one of the most profound statements I know of.

Anyway, I decided I'd list off some of my other quotes. Quite a few of them are relevant to the war. Some of the rest have relevance known only to myself. The ones not in either category are ones I just happen to like.

“Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.”
– Shakespeare

“I am become death, destroyer of worlds.”
– Oppenheimer, one of the inventors of the atomic bomb

“He said the dead had souls, but when I asked him
How that could be--I thought the dead were souls,
He broke my trance. Don't that make you suspicious
That there's something the dead are keeping back?
Yes, there's something the dead are keeping back.”
– Robert Frost, "Two Witches"

“Earth is the cradle of the mind, but one cannot stay in the cradle forever.”
– Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

“Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.”
– Frank Outlaw

“So you see, imagination needs moodling--long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.”
– Brenda Ueland

“Creativity represents a miraculous coming together of the uninhibited energy of the child with it apparent opposite and enemy, the sense of order imposed on the disciplined adult intelligence.”
– Norman Podhoretz

And some more from Albert Einstein...

God may be subtle, but He isn't plain mean.

Man grows cold faster than the planet he inhabits.
I am absolutely convinced that no wealth in the world can help humanity forward, even in the hands of the most devoted worker in this cause.

Anybody who really wants to abolish war... must, in the most uncompromising fashion, support disarmament all round, as is actually envisaged in the unfortunate Treaty of Versailles.

If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

Warfare cannot be humanized. It can only be abolished.

Violence sometimes may have cleared away obstructions quickly, but it never has proved itself creative.

Strange that science, which in the old days seemed harmless, should have evolved into a nightmare that causes everyone to tremble.

Do not pride yourself on the few great men who, over the centuries, have been born on your earth--through no merit of yours. Reflect, however, on how you treated them at the time, and how you have followed their teachings. [Now, you have to wonder whether he was referring to himself in this statement...]