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Quid Pro Quo With The Gods

Discussion in 'Cheeniya's Senile Ramblings' started by Cheeniya, May 20, 2017.

  1. Cheeniya

    Cheeniya Super Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    @Novalis
    1343 The Microbe that was Guinnessed
    And God was feeling uncomfortable on the Seventh Day. He knew he had missed something. When the eighth day dawned, he remembered.
    And on the 8th Day God said: Let there be a microbe that will survive the holocaust of the final nuclear war and let it start a new series of lives that will be capable of living in the Sun.
     
  2. Novalis

    Novalis Gold IL'ite

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    Having had to look up the unknown poem, I agree with your point! No human! I also happened to notice Pippa Passes was dedicated to Thomas Noon Talfourd. That fact would have grazed above me had it not been on furthering note that Charles Dickens dedicated The Pickwick Papers to the same Talfourd.

    Who is this Thomas Noon Talfourd honored with friendly dedication? He has a delightful name.

    ...I further mused, Robert Browning and Charles Dickens are still renowned today but that Mr Noon prized in high esteem to whom they both dedicated their works is a vanished puff.

    ...which reminded me of these famous lines from the poem Ballade of Ladies of Time Gone By by François Villon. I remember that poem only because this Villon (amusing name!) is a quite a villainy character in real life. The relevant verse:

    "Where is the very wise Heloise,
    For whom was castrated, and then (made) a monk,
    Pierre Esbaillart (Abelard) in Saint-Denis?
    For his love he suffered this sentence.
    Similarly, where is the Queen (Marguerite de Bourgogne)
    Who ordered that Buridan
    Were thrown in a sack into the Seine?
    Oh, where are the snows of yesteryear!"​

    Great names from the past blurred out with time. This Thomas Noon Talfourd is also that snows of yesteryear, illustrious for his times with honorary dedications but uncelebrated in our times.
     
    Last edited: May 25, 2019
  3. Novalis

    Novalis Gold IL'ite

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    We both might be the third and fourth person in the world with this enigmatic knowledge after the two bloggers who fact-found this mythological lineage. A very worthy milestone in QPQ!
     
  4. Novalis

    Novalis Gold IL'ite

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    You should also be guinnessed for your wit in verbing a tribute. I love it - guinnessed !

    I anxiously scrambled on the net whether guinness has ever been elevated to action -- Guinnessed (v) : The feeling one gets of complete bloatedness, lethargy and self-loathing when too many guinesses have been consumed.

    The urban dictionary is such a foil in rendering 'guinnessed' with a prosaic, albeit tipsy, semantics. I love your inventive guinnessed!

    The small-built Pope was prodigious in tinkering with god's plans. He quoted:

    “Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
    God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.”
    ― Alexander Pope​

    But he never ventured beyond the seven days. See, he cluttered Newton also in the canonical timeline.

    You boldly took upon yourself to institute the necessity of the eighth day for a tough and freakish microbe which even Newton could not earn.
     
  5. Novalis

    Novalis Gold IL'ite

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    The scuttle is mutual. I often read up further on your referential waypoints, like ten minutes ago on Pippa Passes. During the course of QPQ, I have learnt about movies and books and anecdotes in playful conversations over dull eyeballing which I would not have recalled the next day.

    Learning through a dialogue is the best form of active learning!

    That quote was mentioned in the book Read Something Else. I chuckled on reading it. Only a person lumbered with double-chin could ironize such import onto fate. I feel writers with double-chin whip up double-excuse in their peccant lenience for allowing two chins to co-exist, and then further justify that fated felony.
     
    Last edited: May 25, 2019
  6. Novalis

    Novalis Gold IL'ite

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    @Cheeniya

    If D. radiodurans has been guinnessed for toughness and recombination, its foil must be this flatworm planarian.
    I love the Deep Look series featuring curious facts on animals.



    The planarian rather than stitching itself up to selfsame on breakdown of its slinky body, develops into a whole new body duplicating itself.

    I am unable to decide whether the radiodurans or this planarian should be held triumphant. Both recover in their unusual ways. One coalesces back and the other departs in regeneration.

    Strange that nature generously evolves species into every possibility to survive!
     
  7. Novalis

    Novalis Gold IL'ite

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    I just finished reading Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.

    upload_2019-5-24_21-57-40.png

    More on the book tomorrow but for now this:

    "It seemed there was an announcement every five minutes from the mythical conductor, imparting sagacious gems such as large items should be placed in the overhead luggage racks, or that passengers should report any unattended items to the train crew as soon as possible. I wondered at whom these pearls of wisdom were aimed; some passing extraterrestrial, perhaps, or a yak herder from Ulan Bator who had trekked across the steppes, sailed the North Sea, and found himself on the Glasgow–Edinburgh service with literally no prior experience of mechanized transport to call upon?"
    Eleanor raises a pertinent observation, such amplified announcement for seasoned (or even tenderfoot) commuters is a nuisance. Of course, every foot that ever stepped (or freshly stepping) onto a train can intuitively grasp that overhead racks are meant for luggage and the cushioned seats are for our sagged fannies. Which perplexed idiot would awkwardly sit on the overhead rack and visibly place the luggage below on the seat!
     
  8. shravs3

    shravs3 IL Hall of Fame

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    :roflmao:
    This word reminded me of my childhood days. We friends had the habit of scolding each other using uncommon words/animals. One day I opened my Oxford dictionary and found this word and thought I should use this. Next day I yelled this word at my friend “You are an okapi”. She is like what on earth is this! :lol: She was asking me for the meaning I never told her :grinning-smiley-048:
     
  9. Novalis

    Novalis Gold IL'ite

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    Shravs,

    If you fancied okapi to slur your friend, then you might also like capybara. Both the names sound pretty much like doped heads of overdosed coffee. Here's a clip of the verstatile capybara.



    Why versatile? Because the animal through ages was identified as a rodent and rabbit and water pig and even waived as a large-sized swimming fish by the Vatican during dietary crisis. No other animal would have endured such identity conundrum amongst human machinations in self-centered foster care.

    Stun some friend with a capybara insult if they try to be too fickle in their disposition -- one day this, another day that! ("Make up your mind. What are you, a capybara?!")
     
    Last edited: May 25, 2019
    shravs3 likes this.
  10. Novalis

    Novalis Gold IL'ite

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    Cheeniya,

    Elsewhere in the forum, I noticed Saint Simeon Stylites mentioned.

    He is very QPQ worthy for having cooped up on top of a pillar for 37 years.

    "Saint Simeon Stylites was a Syriac ascetic saint who achieved notability for living 37 years on a small platform on top of a pillar near Aleppo (in modern Syria). Several other stylites later followed his model (the Greek word style means "pillar"). He is known formally as Saint Simeon Stylites the Elder to distinguish him from Simeon Stylites the Younger, Simeon Stylites III, and Saint Symeon Stylites of Lesbos."​

    With several imitators over the devoted years, he is still credited as the trend-setter for reclusive contemplations wanting to escape from the noisy public. His hoisted plan backfired as his fame pulled visitors in droves wanting to steal a glimpse of the man perched atop a pillar.

    upload_2019-5-24_23-47-31.png


    ...this admirable stylite living reminds me of the Fatakulu tribe in East Timor building bamboo houses on stilts.

    upload_2019-5-24_23-47-47.png

    There is no necessity for higher-ground planning in this dry landscape as is with over-water dwellings in Borneo. But the tribe construct their houses aloft for philosophical reverence leaping skywards to hug the ancestral spirits or even thwart temporality suspended midway between past and future.

    I am thinking, do the Fatakulu tribe living in Uma Lulik (native name for the raised houses) know about this Saint Simeon Stylites?

    I love the book shelf of Lonely Planet in my library. Even wantonly flipping the lettered books provide much delight on the diversity of culture and beliefs. Thus, I wish the Fatakulu know of their patron architect, Saint Simeon Stylites.
     

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