"Have no fear that the wine [of my book] will fail, like happened at the wedding feast of Canna in Galilee. As much as I draw from the tap, I will replace in the bunghole. In this way the barrel will remain inexhaustible." François Rabelais (1494–1553)
jueves, 27 de febrero de 2014
jueves, 20 de febrero de 2014
martes, 18 de febrero de 2014
domingo, 9 de febrero de 2014
POLLUTION, by Tom Lehrer
If you
visit American city,
You will find it very pretty.
Just two things of which you must beware:
Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air.
Pollution, pollution,
They got smog and sewage and mud.
Turn on your tap and get hot and cold running crud.
See the halibuts and the sturgeons
Being wiped out by detergents.
Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly,
But they don't last long if they try.
Pollution, pollution,
You can use the latest toothpaste,
And then rinse your mouth with industrial waste.
Just go out for a breath of air,
And you'll be ready for medicare.
The city streets are really quite a thrill.
If the hoods don't get you, the monoxide will.
Pollution, pollution,
Wear a gas mask and a veil.
Then you can breathe, long as you don't inhale.
Lots of things there that you can drink,
But stay away from the kitchen sink.
Throw out your breakfast garbage and I've got a hunch,
That the folks downstream will drink it for lunch.
So go to the city, see the crazy people there.
Like lambs to the slaughter,
They're drinking the water
And breathing the air.
You will find it very pretty.
Just two things of which you must beware:
Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air.
Pollution, pollution,
They got smog and sewage and mud.
Turn on your tap and get hot and cold running crud.
See the halibuts and the sturgeons
Being wiped out by detergents.
Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly,
But they don't last long if they try.
Pollution, pollution,
You can use the latest toothpaste,
And then rinse your mouth with industrial waste.
Just go out for a breath of air,
And you'll be ready for medicare.
The city streets are really quite a thrill.
If the hoods don't get you, the monoxide will.
Pollution, pollution,
Wear a gas mask and a veil.
Then you can breathe, long as you don't inhale.
Lots of things there that you can drink,
But stay away from the kitchen sink.
Throw out your breakfast garbage and I've got a hunch,
That the folks downstream will drink it for lunch.
So go to the city, see the crazy people there.
Like lambs to the slaughter,
They're drinking the water
And breathing the air.
BUNGHOLE OF THE WEEK: TO SOW ONE'S WILD OATS
The saying
is referring to a European grass species with the formal name Avena fatua, which has for
centuries in English been called wild
oats. Some botanists think it’s the wild original of cultivated
oats. Farmers have since ancient times hated it because it’s a weed that’s
useless as a cereal crop, but its seeds have always been difficult to separate
from those of useful cereals and so tended to survive and multiply from year to
year. The only way to remove it was to tramp the fields and hand-weed it. Even
today it’s still a problem, despite modern seed cleaning and selective
weedkillers.
So sowing wild oats was the
archetypal useless occupation, indeed worse than useless. It’s not surprising
that the phrase sowing wild oats was
applied figuratively to young men who frittered away their time in stupid or
idle pastimes. But there’s a strong sexual association here, too, because the
phrase was often applied, in a more or less indulgent way, and always to young
men, to what was politely referred to as youthful dissipation. The associations
between male sexual activity and sowing seed are obvious enough.
The saying is first recorded in
English in 1542, in a tract by the Norfolk Protestant clergyman Thomas Beccon,
though I’m told that a related phrase appears in the works of the Roman author
Plautus. It’s common in older English literature, no doubt because the image
struck a chord in a society that was still mainly agrarian. Here’s a typical
example, fromLittle Women by
Louisa May Alcott, of 1869: “Boys will be boys, young men must sow their wild
oats, and women must not expect miracles”.
Source: http://www.worldwidewords.org/
Source: http://www.worldwidewords.org/
sábado, 8 de febrero de 2014
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