Here is a peck of quotes about kissing...


"Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves."
-Albert Einstein

"I do not know how to kiss, or I would kiss you. Where do the noses go?"
-Ingrid Bergman

"Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul."
-Marilyn Monroe

"Kissing is a means of getting two people so close together that they can't see anything wrong with each other."
-Rene Yasenek

"I kissed my first girl and smoked my first cigarette on the same day. I haven't had time for tobacco since."
-Arturo Toscanini

"Many kiss the hand they wish cut off."
-George Herbert

"Excuse me while I kiss the sky."
-Jimi Hendrix

We don't need a formal declaration of recession to know that we are in one.  But for those few who still don't believe we are in a financial slump, maybe this year's Christmas Price Index from PNC Wealth Management will change their minds.

According to this PNC website the total cost for the items in the song “Twelve Days Of Christmas” is $21,080.

The cost are as follows:

1 partridge     = $   20.00  
1 Pear Tree     =    199.99  
2 Turtle Doves     =     55.00  
3 French Hens     =     30.00  
4 Calling Birds     =    599.96  
5 Gold Rings     =    349.95  
6 Geese A-laying     =    240.00  
7 Swans A-Swimming     =  5,600.00  
8 Maids A-milking*     =     52.40  
9 Ladies Dancing**     =  4,759.19     
10 Lords A-leaping**     =  4,413.61  
11 Pipers piping**     =  2,284.80  
12 Drummers Drumming**     =  2,475.20  

If True Love actually bought the items repeatedly as the song suggests, then the total cost would be $86,609.  This is up $8,509 dollars from last year.  For most of us, twelve days of Christmas is just twelve days too long.

* minimum wage
** per performance

Sure, it's strange to have cube-shaped watermelons, but have you seen a pyramidal one?  How about cucumbers  that slices into heart or star shaped bits.  Link.

Have you heard of the Miracle Berry (also known as Magic Berry)?  It's a fruit with Miraculin, a type of protein that when it binds to the tongue's taste buds causes subsequently eaten sour or bitter food to taste sweet.  Some say it made sour lime taste like limeade.  Link.

Going Bananas?  Or should I say going, going, gone bananas?  Now there's nothing unusual about this fruit and people haven't shaped them into bulbous balloon animals (not yet anyways).  But apparently, this fourth largest harvested crop in the world is in danger of extinction, the common Cavendish variety that is.  Link.

Lastly, if you don't like eating fruits, maybe you could wear them... as earrings!  Link.

This truly is a weird wonderful world.

One of the poems I loved reading since childhood is Robert Frost' The Road Not Taken.  It has come back to memory lately and since it has been several years past my childhood, I had grown to appreciate it more now.  Here is Robert Frost's poem...



The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I have a cold that is clogging up my ears so I can't her very well lately.  On account of this, I'm listing eleven quotes related to noise, silence, and hearing.

Most of the basic truths of life sound absurd at first hearing.
- Elizabeth Goudge

I did never know so full a voice issue from so empty a heart: but the saying is true 'The empty vessel makes the greatest sound'.
- William Shakespeare

Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.
- Napoleon

Silence is not a thing we make; it is something into which we enter.
It is always there.  All we can make is noise.
- Mother Maribel of Wantage

Not merely an absence of noise, Real Silence begins when a reasonable being withdraws from the noise in order to find peace and order in his inner sanctuary.
- Peter Minard

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness.
- Mother Teresa

Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.
- Leo Tolstoy

If thou are a master, be sometimes blind; if a servant, sometimes deaf.
- Thomas Fuller

From the persistence of noise comes the insistence of rage.
From the emergence of tone comes the divergence of thought.
From the enlightenment of music comes the wisdom of... silence.
- Visions of Gregorian Chants

(John of the Cross) points out that the divine music can best be
heard in solitude and silence.  The sonorous music is not a physical
sound that vibrates the eardrum but something transcending the
senses.  Physical solitude and silence remove the distracting noises
that prevent us from hearing on deeper levels.
- Charles Cumming

What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

A picture of Liberty Enlightening The World.  (July 206)

When I redesigned the website I lost the link to the original photo so I'm posting another Liberty photo here.  It simply is a beautiful sculpture and of course it reminds me of the freedom and democracy she symbolizes.

It's party time, Mexican style.  I'd like to celebrate Cinco De Mayo but Life Nowadays (this website) and life nowadays (my reality) is not giving me enough time to party.  Well, I'll just grab a Corona later and chill.  I am happy though that I managed to finally post the new website design.  Still a few things to adjust here and there but overall it's fairly done.

Check out the new section,Lexis Flexis.  Basically a vocabulary builder blog.  Feel free to subscribe to it if you want coz' like most great things on the Web are free.  The Profiles page will be the next step once I get Lexis Flexis going smoothly.

Hola!

Hi there.

I've been silent here for a while.  Well, that' life nowadays - sometimes, you get so busy you don't get enough time to sit and type.  Oh, alright, maybe part of the reason was that I felt lazy at times.

Well, I'm back now and, in fact, I'm redesigning the site so it's easier for me to update to.  In the meantime, please be patient if you get a missing link here or the web design gets crazy sometimes.

By mid April (this year 2008 of course), the new design should be in place, by May 5th (hey that's Cinqo de Mayo), new content should be available to you Googlers, web surfers and bloggers out there.  Till then enjoy your own life nowadays!

-Dan

"We are students of words; we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing." - Ralph Waldo Emerson<< MORE >>

When I woke up on July 18, 2007 it wasn't even raining. By the time I got in the car forty-five minutes later, it was pouring. I had my wipers sloshing at top speed and still visibility was poor. My usual fifteen minute commute was definitely not happening; half an hour into my drive, I was still nowhere close to work. There was flood in almost every street corner I crossed. There were broken down cars at the most inopportune places. Railroad crossings were barred down and the trains would come crawling slowly or they wouldn't even come at all. Now, this seem frustrating but in reality I was o.k. with it - the last thing I wanted was to get into an accident. How many accidents have occurred because people rush in inclement weather? I was patient and smug about it as other cars honked their horns without acheiving anything.<< MORE >>