THE LAUGH IS ON US - AND WITH IT DISRESPECT

When I last visited Europe, I went to Austria, Italy and Germany. While there, I met a couple from Sydney, Australian. Hans and Lynn asked me to go along one rainy day in their rental car to be a tourist with them. So I did. We met where we were staying in Villach, Austria. And then again in Venice, Italy and spent a day together on Murano. After I returned home in the USA, they came to stay with me for a few days in Rhode Island. Recently I received an email from them which included the following:

Britain is Repossessing the U.S.A.

A Message from English citizen John Cleese to the citizens of the United States of America : In light of your failure to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas , which she does not fancy).

Your new prime minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a governor for America without the need for further elections.

Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect: You should look up 'revocation' in the Oxford English Dictionary.

1. Then look up aluminium, and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.

2. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'favour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters, and the suffix -ize will be replaced by the suffix -ise. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up 'vocabulary').

3. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as 'like' and 'you know' is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as US English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of -ize. You will relearn your original national anthem, God Save The Queen.

4. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.

5. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun.

6. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

7. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and this is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.

8. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

9. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline) -roughly $6/US gallon. Get used to it.

10. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.

11. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. Australian beer is also acceptable as they are pound for pound the greatest sporting Nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer.They are also part of British Commonwealth - see what it did for them.

12. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie McDowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.

13. You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies). Don't try - the Australians and Kiwis will thrash you, like they regularly thrash us.

14. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America . Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the South Africans first to take the sting out of their deliveries.

15. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.

16 An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).

17. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 pm with proper cups, never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; strawberries in season. God save the Queen. Only He can. John Cleese

I found this humorus, or is it humourous?

After googling the title and John Cleese, it appears I am late to the "party" - I am using this term loosely. Also, it appears that it is unclear at best as to whether or not John Cleese actually wrote this. In any case.....I continue to perpetuate it.

This was someone's comment left on a post after reading it:



The thing is this isn't funny:
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George W. Bush Blames Torture Policy on U.S. Troops
Uploaded by mmflint

and this isn't either
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President Bush embarrasses himself (only he doesn't know it):
White House Meals Remind Bush of Filipino-American talent
Uploaded by tpmtv

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Bush Press Conference on North Korea's Nuclear Declaration
Uploaded by tpmtv

Jon Stewart Downgrades North Korea from Axis of Evil

Bush's 'Axis of Evil' Comes Back to Haunt United States

By Glenn Kessler and Peter Baker

Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 10, 2006; Page A12

Nearly five years after President Bush introduced the concept of an "axis of evil" comprising Iraq, Iran and North Korea, the administration has reached a crisis point with each nation: North Korea has claimed it conducted its first nuclear test, Iran refuses to halt its uranium-enrichment program, and Iraq appears to be tipping into a civil war 3 1/2 years after the U.S.-led invasion. Read the article from the Washington Post

Another article: A_bend_in_the_axis_of_evil
June 27, 2008

BOYFRIENDS AND LIFE

"...Our loves are only symbols of an unknown immortality...and what is supposed to be gone and past is often more real than ever..." Cedric Wright

For the most part I find it pleasant thinking about my life. I have taken the road less traveled in terms of the family I came from. Even though my most impressionable years were in the 60's and 70's, I never inhaled. Meaning I never did any drugs of any sort. I never have been the daughter my mother wanted me to be. But it's not clear to me what it is she wants.

One of my unlived dreams is to sing in public. I have been practicing to try to overcome this. And I know my biggest obstacle is the fear that I have. Tonight just before sitting down to feed my need to write, I was playing the piano and singing and thinking about my dad. My father passed away May 10. 2007. But he always came in and sat down to listen to me sing and play the piano. Then when my mother put him in an institution the last couple years of his life, I would sing and sing for him in his room. The last thing I did was sing to him on the phone and he took his last breath at the end of that phone call. He lived in Indiana and I, in Rhode Island. So it felt like dad was there tonight enjoying the music.

In my early twenties, I moved from northern Indiana to Sturbridge, Massachusetts for my first year of teaching. My next two moves were chosen by taking out the map and finding towns along the New England coast. Leaving that one year of teaching behind and going through one personal time of transition, I connected with an old boyfriend.

Old boyfriends are fun to think about. Having kept a lot of the memorabilia, once in awhile I immerse myself in reading through old journals and letters. Nothing wrong with retouching the lessons and feelings of the past.

My second college boyfriend was a political science major and was reading Eldridge Cleaver’s book Soul on Ice back then. All people who have touched my life have left their mark. There is a part in the book where Mr. Cleaver, who is in Folsom Prison, and attorney, Beverly Axelrod, exchange letters. Deep letters. But I love deep. The letters began September 5, 1965.

E.C. writes: “I feel impelled to express myself to you extravagantly, and words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs leap in my mind. But I beat them down, refuse to write them, because it all seems so predictable and trite...What right have you to summon my soul from its slumber?......You have tossed me a lifeline. If you only knew how I’d been drowning, how I’d considered that I’d gone down for the third time long ago, how I kept thrashing around in the water simply because I still felt the impulse to fight back and the tug of a distant shore...”

B.A writes back: “...Believe this: I accept you. I know you little and I know you much, but whichever way it goes, I accept you. Your manhood comes through in a thousand ways, rare and wonderful...I have no measuring stick. I accept you...What an awesome thing it is to feel oneself on the verge of the possibility of really knowing another person. Can it ever happen? I’m not sure. I don’t know that any two people can really strip themselves that naked in front of each other. We’re so filled with fears of rejection and pretenses that we scarcely know whether we’re being fraudulent or real ourselves...”

E.C. answers back: “Your letters to me are living pieces – chunks! – of you, and are the most important things in my life...It only happens in books – or...Do you know what shameless thought just bullied its way into my consciousness? That, I deserve you, that I deserve to know you and to communicate with you...I seek a lasting relationship, something permanent in a world of change, in which all is transitory, ephemeral, and full of pain. We humans, we are too frail creatures to handle such titanic emotions and deep magnetic yearnings, strivings and impulses…

…The reason two people are reluctant to really strip themselves naked in front of each other is because in doing so they make themselves vulnerable and give enormous power over themselves one to the other. How awful, how deadly, how catastrophically they can hurt each other, wreck and ruin each other forever!...Better to maintain shallow, superficial affairs; that way the scars are not too deep, no blood is hacked from the soul. You beautifully – O, how beautifully!! – spoke...of ‘What an awesome thing it is to feel oneself on the verge of the possibility of really knowing another person...’ and...I do not believe that a beautiful relationship has to always end in carnage. I do not believe that we have to be fraudulent and pretentious,...I know that sometimes people fake on each other out of genuine motives to hold onto the object of their tenderest feelings. They see themselves as so inadequate that they feel forced to wear a mask in order to continuously impress the other. I do not want to ‘hold you’, I want you to ‘stay’ out of your own need for me. ...It takes time and deeds, and this involves trust, it involves making ourselves vulnerable to each other, to strip ourselves naked, to become sitting ducks for each other...I am vulnerable and defenseless and I make myself a duck for you. ...And it is not a fraud, forced out of desperation...”

Isn’t this beautiful?

Excerpts from love letters taken from the book SOUL ON ICE, by Eldridge Cleaver, 1965.

"What an awesome thing it is to feel oneself on the verge of the possibility of really knowing another person... and...I do not believe that a beautiful relationship has to always end in carnage. I do not believe that we have to be fraudulent and pretentious" ~ I so love this because I, too, believe pretense shortchanges us out of the life we were born to have.

Above picture of me from my first trip to Europe by myself ~ taken on the encouragement of a boyfriend! Six weeks including Luxemburg, France, Switzerland, Italy, Greece and Spain.

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I organized the
Providence, Rhode Island
October 27, 2007 Torch Relay
as a part of the
Dream for Darfur Campaign
to pressure China to act and end the Darfur geonocide.

The culminating Torch Relay is taking place in Washington, D.C.
on International Human Rights Day, December 10, 2007.

Edwin Mutanguha has passed the torch to his brother Edward Mutanguha who is carrying the torch in the picture.

The t-shirts say I CARRY THE TORCH FOR DARFUR on the front
and STOP GENOCIDE on the back.



Left to right: Samantha Brilhante, Frankie Daponte, Sandra Hammel, Edwin Mutanguha

Call 1-800-GENOCIDE
Tell U.S. Senators to support SADA to help end the Darfur Genocide

www.dreamfordarfur.org
www.savedarfur.org
www.genocideintervention.org

Call President Bush and tell him to actually act on his words
regarding the Darfur genocide: NOT ON MY WATCH.
Talk is useless, President Bush.
His number: 202-456-1111