Category: Random Stuff (Misc.)

“Stanislaw Jerzy Lec Polish writer” by Photographer Jan Popłoński – scanned from Ty i Ja monthly, Warsaw May 1966. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Wikipedia: After Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union he was imprisoned in a German work camp in Ternopol, from which he made several attempts to escape. He received a death sentence for his second attempt to escape, but managed to escape again after killing his guard with a shovel when taken to dig his own grave. This became the subject of his most famous poem. After that he participated in partisan warfare within the communist formations of the Gwardia Ludowa and the Armia Ludowa, and eventually served in regular units of Polish army until the end of the war, which he finished in the rank of major^[2] and was awarded the order of “Polonia Restituta”.^[3]

According to Clifton Fadiman‘s introduction to Lec’s book Unkempt Thoughts (Myśli nieuczesane):

Lec has led the strange (to us), hunted, haunted life of thousands of Central European intellectuals, their experience inexorably shaped by war and revolution. At the outbreak of the war he was imprisoned in a German concentration camp. There he stayed until July 1943 when the camp was liquidated by mass executions. Escaping in a German uniform, he succeeded in reaching Warsaw where he joined the underground fighters. After the war he continued his writing, varying his career by brief service as cultural attache of the Polish Embassy in Vienna. He has also spent two years in Israel.

Lec’s aphorisms

• Beyond each corner new directions lie in wait.
• The exit is usually where the entrance was.
• He who limps is still walking.
• In a war of ideas it is people who get killed.
• The mob shouts with one big mouth and eats with a thousand little ones.
• Even a glass eye can see its blindness.
• To whom should we marry Freedom, to make it multiply?
• I am against using death as a punishment. I am also against using it as a reward.
• You can close your eyes to reality but not to memories.
• Optimists and pessimists differ only on the date of the end of the world.
• Is it a progress if a cannibal is using knife and fork?
• If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he lucky?
• No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.
• All is in the hands of man. Therefore wash them often.
• Do not ask God the way to heaven; he will show you the hardest one.
• If you are not a psychiatrist, stay away from idiots. They are too stupid to pay a layman for his company.
• Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man, but they don’t bite everybody.
• The first condition of immortality is death.
• Suppose you succeed in breaking the wall with your head. And what, then, will you do in the next cell?
• When smashing monuments, save the pedestals—they always come in handy.

Read More >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Jerzy_Lec

I walked into the kitchen where my son was eating his breakfast the other morning and said “hi Tiger Tank” to him.  I call him random things like my “little Pumpkin Spice Latte”, “Pumpkin Pie”, Buddy, and of course “Tyler”.  When I called him Tiger Tank he asked me what a Tiger Tank is and I didn’t know myself since I just made it up on the fly so I said “oh you know tanks are what armies use to fight the bad guys” and tigers are strong animals so I thought I would call you Tiger Tank.  He looked at me and considered my craziness and then said “hey dad, sometimes the bad guys are stronger and kill the good guys”.  For some reason I found that profound.  It could have been the time of day, the fact that I hadn’t had coffee yet, or both.

Image Source: dailymail.co.uk

Do not stand at my grave and weep is a poem written in 1932 by Mary Elizabeth Frye. Although the origin of the poem was disputed until later in her life, Mary Frye’s authorship was confirmed in 1998 after research by Abigail Van Buren, a newspaper columnist.^[1]

“Do not stand at my grave and weep,

I am not there; I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow,

I am the diamond glints on snow,

I am the sun on ripened grain,

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning’s hush

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circling flight.

I am the soft starlight at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,

I am not there; I did not die.”

– Wikipedia Article

1. The Statue of Liberty’s index finger is eight feet long.
2. Rain has never been recorded in some parts of the Atacama Desert in Chile.
3. A 75 year old person will have slept about 23 years.
4. Boeing 747’s wing span is longer than the Wright brother’s first flight. The Wright brother’s invented the airplane.
5. There are as many chickens on earth as there are humans.
6. One type of hummingbird weighs less than a penny.
7. The word “set” has the most number of definitions in the English language; 192 Slugs have four noses.
8. Sharks can live up to 100 years.
9. Mosquitos are more attracted to the color blue than any other color.
10. Kangaroos can’t walk backwards.
11. About 75 acres of pizza are eaten in in the U.S. everyday.
12. The largest recorded snowflake was 15 Inch wide and 8 Inch thick. It fell in Montana in 1887.
13. The tip of a bullwhip moves so fast that the sound it makes is actually a tiny sonic boom.
14. Former president Bill Clinton only sent 2 emails in his entire 8 year presidency.
15. Koalas and humans are the only animals that have finger prints.
16. There are 200,000,000 insects for every one human.
17. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery had in it to begin with.
18. The world’s largest Montessori school is in India, with 26,312 students in 2002.
19. Octopus have three hearts.
20. If you ate too many carrots, you would turn orange.
21. The average person spends two weeks waiting for a traffic light to change.
22. 1 in 2,000,000,000 people will live to be 116 or old.
23. The body has 2-3 million sweat glands.
24. Sperm whales have the biggest brains; 20 lbs.
25. Tiger shark embroyos fight each other in their mother’s womb. The survivor is born.
26. Most cats are left pawed.
27. 250 people have fallen off the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
28. A Blue whale’s tongue weighs more than an elephant.
29. You use 14 muscles to smile and 43 to frown. Keep Smiling!
30. Bamboo can grow up to 3 ft in 24 hours.
31. An eyeball weighs about 1 ounce.

Source: http://www.citehr.com/

I had to geekify Christina’s Christmas decorations tonight. One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn’t belong, can you tell which thing is not like the others…