Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Hail to the master

Upon learning today about an article entitled “Oldest Living Thing On Earth Discovered” in The Telegraph, humorist Dave Barry immediately created a post with the title “Incredibly, It’s Not Keith Richards”....

12 comments:

  1. How ironic. Just as we discover 200,000 year-old seagrass, we also discover that it's probably dying.

    We had seagrass matting in my first house when I was growing up. It was terrible to do colouring-in on; all my crayon marks went all bumpy.

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  2. Katherine, there is nothing worse than bumpy crayon marks.

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  3. Don't they have paper in New Zealand? Maybe we could organise a fundraising initiative - 'Paper and tables for deprived Kiwi children forced to draw on the mats of their houses to express their creative urges.' We would ask Katherine to be the patron, as an artist who showed the courage in adversity of such stifled conditions and went on to great things. Bob, lead the way. After all, while mats are getting ruined with crayon marks, new ones need to be made, seriously depleting the already dwindling resources. Something must be done! ♥

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  4. Elizabeth, I do not want to take away choices from children; I want them to be able to use crayons on either paper or matting. I would, however, join the courageous fight to provide all children everywhere with washable crayons. Part of the funding must be earmarked for education of their mothers. Another part will go to blanket advertising on radio and telly touting the virtues of washable crayons. In the end, I suspect, if all goes in the normal fashion and the usual cost overruns occur, there will be very little left for the children themselves.

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  5. This is all true. It needs to be thought through thoroughly.

    Just so that we are clear, what knowledge are we giving to the mothers? How to wash the matting or the children? Perhaps we forego the media razzmatazz and ask all children everywhere to be creative on whatever surface they can, writing the byline 'Washable Crayons for the World Unite'. The message will soon get picked up and we'll get the publicity for free! A board of sensitive directors is called for - I vote Katherine on, and YP too, as he has seen the terrible conditions these non-washable crayon, tableless, paperless people are living in. Who else? Penny Crayon, perhaps? We could make rag dolls of them all to help raise funds and encourage people to collect the set.

    A while ago, I took this intriguing picture in the middle of woods where there was no evidence of any crayons in sight. At the time, I couldn't make head nor tail of it. Now, I realise it was a serious cry for help - http://flickr.com/gp/elizabeth_11/CE414T - thank goodness that Katherine has drawn our attention to this terrible plight in the nick of time.♥

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  6. Elizabeth, I can see you have given this a great deal of thought. I meant educate the mothers to wash the matting, but perhaps some of them would also need remedial education in washing the children as well. However, we need every penny we can get for the washable crayons themselves, so I propose we leave the tangential stuff to the conservative group called End Filth In Our Time.

    I think you misread the sign in the woods. It apparently is working perfectly, having the effect desired, if there was no evidence of crayons in sight. A stitch in time saves nine, you know, and a rolling stone (or a Rolling Stone) gathers no moss.

    I am nominating you for an O.B.E.

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  7. Although I hate to in any way stem this delightful flow of comments, just for the record, let it be said that I never allowed crayon to touch the precious, 200,000 year-old matting in our home. All my colouring-in was done on colouring-in books, lying on the floor.
    This was possibly because when I was one year old I had horrified my parents by 'drawing' with a knife on the fabulous walnut dining-table, and had probably been banished down there.

    But I would be happy to be Lady Patroness for any initiative that encourages art expression in almost any form.

    I lost one of my teeth in the seagrass matting too, so never got the shilling from the tooth fairy for that one.

    So you see I have a love-hate relationship with seagrass.

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  9. Well advised, Bob.

    Thank you, but I shan't rush out to get a new hat yet!

    Let the washable crayons flow first...get the future artists of this world out of their simple mud huts with mats woven from the grasses outside their door and give them the crayons and paper they deserve and need for true creativity.Sound the clarion call.

    My medal goes to Katherine for rising above the deprivation to become the truly talented person that she is. Such fortitude, such grass-stained knees, such cruel endurance of bumpy crayon marks...she has suffered for her art, a martyr to the cause.

    ----------------

    And now, just at the point of commenting, I see that she has even lost body parts to this dreadful experience. Deify the woman, quick. ♥

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  10. Aaagh!! Call the whole thing off. Our patron has a knife; there's no knowing what she's capable of!!! ♥

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  11. Have you seen Keith Richards perform live lately. He might look a little the worse for wear, but he's a phenomenal athlete to be able to run and sing at the same time.

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  12. Snowbrush, he might look a little the worse for wear? He MIGHT look a little the worse for wear? This may be the understatement of the year. The decade, even.

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<b>Always true to you, darlin’, in my fashion</b>

We are bombarded daily by abbreviations in everyday life, abbreviations that are never explained, only assumed to be understood by everyone...